replied Eilidh Buchanan. ‘You’ve just laid something on the table, Brodie. I think we need to examine your attitude closely. If you can’t stop what needs to be stopped, we’ll need to find someone who will.’
‘Is that a threat?’ I asked.
‘I’m just stating a fact. For the record.’
My pet hate is pointless conversation, and nothing could be gained by continuing this tête-à-tête, so I said goodbye and within seconds had grabbed my scuffed black biker’s helmet, worn from years of use, and left for St Leonard’s Police Station.
The night air was damp and earthy; a soft haze covered the slate rooftops. There were no lights in the windows of my neighbours’ houses. I threw myself onto the kick-start, praying the pistons were on their firing stroke, otherwise I would be thrown off the bike. Not that it was just ‘a’ bike; it was my pride and joy–a 1970 Ironhead Fat Boy Harley, and it thankfully roared into life, the huge 1200v twin engine with straight through pipes woke half the neighbourhood in the process.
I looked up. I wasn’t too bothered about waking neighbours, but there was one person I cared about and I cared about the fact that he never got enough sleep (not that I would necessarily ever tell him). I didn’t want to be the one responsible for waking him if he had finally dropped off. The bedside light was still on in the first floor bedroom in our house. Fishy must still have been awake anyway. This must be another night when he would be plagued by his worries, where sleep would evade him, and he would ponder over his work until morning. This would be one more day, when I wasn’t there to listen to him. Fishy and I went back a long way–we had met on our first day in the Law Faculty at university and he was the only student to win more prizes than I did.
When I first bought my flat, I adored the isolation. I revelled in the space and light, and particularly in the fact that I could have anyone to stay over without withering looks or comments from others. Of course, by ‘anyone’, I mean men–my track record meant that few of them ever stayed more than one night. My romantic dreams of finding someone a bit more permanent were as much coloured by my habit of pushing away most men who tried to get close as by the fact that they were generally losers anyway. It wasn’t that I didn’t get on with men–far from it; some of my closest friends were afflicted with excess testosterone, and I wasn’t averse to non-committal relationships based purely on a nice backside and a lie-in–but as soon as any man started to get, as my mum would have put it, ‘serious’, the shutters came down and the metaphorical locks got changed.
By the time I realised this, I also realised that I was spending a hell of a lot of time alone anyway. I decided that a flatmate was in order and texted lots of old pals from university and around–Richard Sturgeon and I had got on well when we were students together, and I was delighted when he got back to me and said he was working in Edinburgh and needed somewhere to stay.
I had hardly seen him recently. We both shared a house, and, when we had time, shared laughs too, but those times were rare just now. Not only were we both working ridiculous hours, but the bone of contention which was always between us seemed to be even more problematical than usual. I wasn’t fighting Fishy–I was fighting DC Richard Sturgeon. I had always thought Fishy had thrown his talent away by joining the police force. I knew how good a lawyer I was, and the thought that the one person who I thought was better than me had actually chosen a different path was unfathomable. His job appeared to be just as stressful as mine, judging by his insomnia and weight-loss, but I didn’t have much sympathy. I just couldn’t understand why he was taking this career path–I wasn’t just being stubborn; I genuinely thought he would be better out of the police force, especially given that he seemed to be miserable all the time anyway. Still, as every women’s magazine on earth would tell me, I needed to be there for him as a friend rather than a constant critic.
In truth, Fishy was just another one to add to my list. Another one hacked off at me, another one to push out of my mind as I headed off to the station. Sergeant Munro would be there having a fit at my lack of promptness, and Eilidh Buchanan was already gunning for me.
Roll on Kailash Coutts–could it get any worse than a tart who already disliked and had tried to bankrupt me, now demanding that I represent her in a murder case?
There was no traffic–quite right too, normal people should be in bed at this time of night/morning. The cobbles were greasy and wet though, and I had to keep my speed down to stop the bike from skidding on the road.
Driving conditions were treacherous. I had no time to enjoy the beautiful buildings as me and Awesome climbed Dundas Street in the heart of the New Town.
Stuck at the traffic lights at the bottom of Hanover Street, the Sphinx sitting atop of the National Gallery stared down ominously at me. If she was foretelling something, I couldn’t read her warnings, but I knew that the day would bring a stark new world for someone. Out there, somewhere, a wife was waking up to the news that her husband was dead. Does he have children, I wondered? If so, how will they feel? They will be expected to walk upright, go to work or school, and keep a roof over their heads. Crime rips people apart and I see it every day, it’s what pays my mortgage and it’s what keeps me awake at night. It surprises me that more people don’t seek revenge.
The lights changed, and my musings continued. I always think on my bike, solve problems, but Kailash Coutts eluded me. What could this man have done that was so heinous it warranted his murder? Kailash was the self-appointed dissolute ruler of the city. Her wealth, which was considerable, was built on men’s depravity, but to acquire her fortune, she must have seen everything (and been well paid for it). What could have been so new to her, or so terrible, that she felt she had to deal with it–permanently?
I wanted to know who this man was who had been dismissed by her. He was probably white, with the usual number of fingers and toes; he was doubtless older than my twenty-eight years. He would be ordinary by most standards, and I’d imagine his wife and work colleagues would have no idea of his secret life. Or would they? One thing my work has taught me: you can never tell someone else’s vice, unless you have that particular sin in you. It was a truth I often saw in my work. Edinburgh is the city of split personalities, its establishment was the inspiration for the original schizo-boys, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and there were plenty of men out there who still led pretty effective double-lives of suburban normality married to episodes in the likes of Kailash Coutts’ dungeon. There wasn’t much I could say in favour of Kailash herself, but at least what you saw with her was what you got, or in any event, it was after the Roddie Buchanan scandal.
Edinburgh Castle sat, impenetrable on its rock, shrouded in mist, as I turned down the Royal Mile, past Deacon Brodie’s pub. The sign on the tavern wall told the true tale of his downfall and continued the myth of two-faced Edinburgh denizens: ‘worthy by day, a gentleman burglar by night, hung on the very gallows he invented’. As a child, I had stood with my mother in front of the painting of the hanging Deacon, relentlessly questioning her: was he my namesake? Was I named after Deacon Brodie? To my disappointment, she always blasted my romanticism out of the water, repeatedly telling me that I was named after the old tea factory that our thirteenth-storey flat overlooked. I still clung to the hope that I had more in common with a licentious, gambling, thieving criminal hanged for his sins than a packet of tea.
On the opposite corner to the pub that still drew me in, outside the High Court, sat a statue of Hume, the father of Scottish law. Draped in a sheet, I felt the artist could have used some aesthetic licence–the sagging pectorals of the carved man made me swerve every time I drove past, although it appeared that only the pigeons and I took any notice of him.
I increased
