Obviously, I did not fit her notion of glamour. Fag ash hung from her mouth and keys at her side. Deftly she fingered the collection, recognising every one by touch alone. She unlocked the door–I had never noticed any of them creak before, but when a small crowd is silent, holding its breath, every little noise is exaggerated.
The door swung outwards from the twelve-foot cell, briefly obscuring my vision. Epinephrine was surging through my body, heightening my senses, so that I became aware of a scent, delicate and sweet, dancing towards me.
I had been taken aback when I saw Kailash Coutts in the flesh for the first time.
There are women whose eyes meet for a moment, and, although they are not friends, they know each other. Instantaneously, they sum one another up, their eyes flicking from hair to shoes, and for a second their souls unite. When I met her, I thought: I could be friends with you. We are women at the height of our respective professions, daily we fight men to get on top. In my case it was, thankfully, only figuratively.
I recalled the bald details given to me about my client: Female, forty-one years of age, mixed race. Those empty words didn’t come close to describing her, the photographs I had seen didn’t do her justice.
Kailash Coutts was a woman gifted by nature–and what nature didn’t give her, she went out and bought. And she certainly knew where to shop. Her long, black hair fell glossily to her shoulders, as she turned to look at me it rippled like a waterfall. A few seconds in her presence and I wasn’t sure whether the voice inside my head sounded like Mills & Boon or Loaded.
‘You’ve got five minutes.’ Sergeant Anderson’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘I’ve got paperwork to do if Ms Coutts is to appear in court today.’
I was astounded at the respect he was giving my client. And perhaps a tad resentful that I was never accorded the same. What was it about her, and why didn’t I have some of it? Kailash was the product of an affair between a married Donegal nurse, and a young surgeon from the Punjab. Her father disappeared home to an arranged marriage, her abandoned mother threw herself on the charity of her cuckolded Irish husband. In his generosity, he agreed to keep the child, and raise it as his own provided the baby was white. When she was born, it was immediately obvious that Kailash’s olive skin did not pass the paper bag test. If her skin were lighter than a brown paper bag, she would have been kept and passed off as a genetic throwback to the Spanish Armada that wrecked itself on the rocks off the west coast of Ireland. Unfortunately for the young Kailash, mixed-race babies are often very dark skinned in the early days of their lives. Her fate was sealed. Home for her was a series of fostering residences. Nobody wanted to claim the dark eyed child as their own.
Times change. My father abandoned my own mother, yet it was acceptable in society for her to raise her fatherless child alone. My mother adored me–in her own way–and was always determined to give me every opportunity possible, with or without a man by her side. If I had been consigned to the life that Kailash had led, would I have walked in her footsteps?
I’m a sucker for any fatherless child. As I looked into the black eyes of Kailash Coutts, I swore that I would do everything I could to get her off. I knew that I was in danger of committing professional suicide. The woman who had almost ruined my firm, almost ruined me personally, was now about to be charged with the murder of one of the highest Law Lords in the country. And, on the basis of us both being deserted wee girls, I had decided she was my new best pal.
I grabbed her arm as she walked out to Sergeant Anderson. ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ I reminded her. ‘Use that right. This morning there will be a court hearing. We will make no plea or declaration in response to the charge of murder. Later, there will be a judicial examination. It will be tape recorded, and at that stage we must state your defence, otherwise the Crown can found upon our silence.’
‘Our.’
I was already linking myself emotionally to her. I would have to pull back, but as Kailash smiled at me, I realised grimly that it wasn’t going to be any time soon. I hoped she understood what I was saying, hoped she recognised the coded message in my words. I did not want to hear that she was guilty, as that would place me in an awkward position as an officer of the court. I was giving her time to think up a defence.
I stood for a moment, watching her walk away to be charged with murder, and I silently cursed my own absent father. I was in her web now, and I was sure Kailash Coutts was not going to let me go.
‘You look rough.’
‘I feel worse than I look.’
‘Well they do say beauty comes from within, so try to cheer up.’ Lavender smiled at me as she handed me a steaming cup of coffee. In that instant I could have forgiven her anything. Even the fact that she was sitting in my chair didn’t bother me–neither of us harboured any illusions over who really ran the show in my office. Lawyers may be the public face, but the real power lies with their secretaries.
I sipped gingerly on the burning liquid, staring out of my office window at Edinburgh Castle, as Lavender began to read out today’s cases from the diary.
The court diary is the most important record in a legal firm–a missed court date or a misplaced trial is a sack-able offence. The consequences of such a mistake can’t be overstated–it is imprisonment for the client, and even worse for the solicitor. If a punter does not turn up at his trial date, a warrant will be taken for their arrest–if the lawyer doesn’t attend they face contempt of court charges.
Going over the court diary was a ritual that Lavender and I did every morning at 7.30a.m. if we could, we gave it the respect it was due even when a huge case like that of Kailash Coutts was going to blow everything out of the water. So much of my time was going to be spent on her, that I needed to ensure that nothing else was going to suffer.
‘How many trials?’ I asked Lavender.
‘One jury, and a continued High Court job. Robert Dunlop already has his papers, he’ll do it for you, and I’m sending the first year trainee in to sit with him. On top of that,’ added Lavender, ‘we’ve got five summary trials and two of them are in Kirkcaldy.’ Her voice got lower, and although she didn’t exactly mumble, she certainly hurried through the next part of her list of points.
‘I instructed Eddie last night and I dropped the files off at his house.’
She fumbled with the pages of the diary as colour flooded her face. I didn’t have the energy to tease Lavender about her unrequited love for Eddie Gibb. Eddie was a brilliant court lawyer whose genius at the bar was exceeded only by his excess in the bar. I was never quite sure whether it was me or Lavender who kept forgiving Eddie his misdemeanours. I do know that Lavender had to pull him out of the pub on so many occasions we had a code name for it–Eddie was in court nine.
Most of the Sheriffs knew about Eddie’s difficulty and forgave him for it. I reckon that we all knew we had a bit of Eddie in us.
‘You know I like Eddie as much as the next person, Lav, but we’re shooting ourselves in the foot to put him in Kirkcaldy on his own.’
‘So Sheriff Robertson hates him? He’s not too fond of you either, Brodie.’
‘I’m not talking personalities here, Lav–if Eddie has hit the bevvy at lunch time who’s going to pull his arse out the fire? You can’t be in Edinburgh running the show,
