GRACE MONROE

Blood Lines

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

A Paperback Original 2008

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Grace Monroe 2008

Grace Monroe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560414

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007281817

Version: 2018-05-22

Gordon, Caitlin, Patrick, Brogan and Keanu you are my raison d’être. Maria

Still appreciating you really, Dr Cairney. Linda xx

Contents

Title Page Copyright Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Acknowledgements About the Author By the Same Author: About the Publisher

Prologue

Ruthven Barracks August 2005

The Jacobite ruin stands high in the evening mist. Ruthven Barracks, set on a mound in the Scottish Highlands, echoes with ghosts and lovers’ tales. The settlement which had existed there for over a thousand years is long gone, but the rumours of betrayal and obsession are as fresh as if whispered yesterday. Alisdair Mor mac an Righ once made his home here, but few round these parts referred to him by that name then and nor do they do so now. One of the blackest bastards ever to walk through Scotland’s history, the son of King Robert II lived in barbarous times – times which he, the Wolf of Badenoch, made darker and more murderous every day he lived.

Now the earth which the Wolf walked is hard from the constant tramp of tourist feet. The day-buses and walking tours have long gone as the low evening clouds scurry past the moon. It is almost midnight, but it is as bright as day underneath the startling Scottish night sky. The lovers walk up the steep gravel path from the roadside and, hand-in-hand, enter the stony ruins. They sit down amongst the ancient stones, their heavy voices echoing with lust – and revenge.

A hip flask is taken from the backpack of its owner. It is handed to the other, who fingers it anxiously, thinking of past indiscretions.

‘Take the whisky and seal the deal,’ come the words as the dark fluid is thrown down a throat parched from the wanting. The breath of the lovers is sweet in the night air. They search for words, for an appropriate toast to what they feel for each other. Both seem content to drink in the surroundings and the presence of the other alongside the liquid from the pure waters of the nearby distillery.

This is a betrothal. A consummation. The reverberations of words exchanged and vows underscored will last beyond this night.

The Earl of Badenoch had ruled these lands in a cruel way – always taking more than he was entitled to, yet never satisfying himself. He knew the meaning of betrayal; he knew the cost of love. When he deserted his wife for his mistress, the Church ruled against him – and entire towns paid the cost. The Wolf sought revenge in an orgy of ransacking, burning and murder, eventually offering superficial repentance in order to win his way back into society.

But he, more than most, knew that what lies on the surface matters nothing compared to what lurks beneath.

Legend interrupts fact with the Earl’s story at this point and says that his final visit to Ruthven was for an infamous chess battle to the death – with the Devil. As the Devil called ‘checkmate’, a terrible storm of thunder, hail and lightning surrounded the place. In the silence of the morning, all of the Wolf ’s men were found blackened and dead outside the castle walls, with their master discovered lifeless in the banqueting hall, unmarked but with the nails from his boots ripped out. The Devil had won yet again – as the Wolf had always known he would.

‘Don’t you want me?’ comes the voice from the seated woman, who raises the hip flask to her lips once more as soon as she has whimpered the words.

‘Don’t you want me?’ she asks again, her craving for love more overwhelming than the feeling of fear which batters these walls. The betrothal is not going as planned. Where are the dual commitments? Where are the exchanged vows of lifelong adoration? As the woman reaches out to touch the face of her beloved, she also raises the pewter flask above her head as a sign of dedication. Her voice echoes around the ancient stones, joining the many pledges made there over the centuries.

‘Join me,’ she says, but her words do not invite, they beg.

‘May the hinges of our friendship never rust, nor the wings of our love lose a feather,’ she continues, trying to ignore the silence of her beloved. ‘Slainte.’

The whisky warms her heart as she takes another sip. Warms her heart more than the presence of the one she loves. As it trickles down her throat, the taste awakes demons. It dribbles down her chin as she tries to wipe it away with the back of her hand. Her co-ordination is all wrong – has her old friend affected her so quickly? She drinks more, but the dribbles increase, and the woman looks to her love for help.

The words that reach her do not comfort.

‘You greedy bitch. I should have known. That whisky was the one thing I needed to rely on – and the one thing I couldn’t control. You didn’t disappoint me, did you? You just had to drink it, you just had to take what you wanted, just like you always do.’

The woman beseeches her lover with her eyes. Why is there such cruelty in the words? Why is there such hatred in the face of the one she worships?

‘My legs aren’t working properly. Help me.’

Even to her own ears, the words sound slurred as she falls heavily to the ground. The woman’s tights rip on the rough stony hillside of the barrack floor, but her darling moves towards her, bringing hope. Her arms are pulled together above her head and held there as she is dragged still further. There is no help, there is no hope. The soldiers’ latrines await her as she is hauled round a corner.

‘This is for you,’ whispers her darling into her ear. The woman fleetingly thinks of love, of surprises prepared by the keeper of her spirit. As she is thrown into the hard-packed six-foot trench, lovingly dug just for her, her hopes are dashed and her heart knows that it has been betrayed. Silently she screams, incapable of making a sound.

‘If I’d known you were so fond of the taste of sodium pentathol, I’d have tried it years ago,’ come the words, but the woman is too busy watching what is happening to pay attention to the one-sided conversation. Her lover has picked up the spade resting on the rough stone wall and starts to dig afresh.

‘Normally it’s injected – but I find needles really … unpleasant …’

The pile of earth is considerable now. It has also managed to change the channel into something else. With the presence of the woman within, it is no longer a trench.

It is a grave.

Such alchemy.

The legs and the arms of the woman are useless. They are drugged into stillness, numbed into inefficiency, but it is the loss of love which immobilises her totally. The voice she once adored now drones on as the owner of it continues to dig.

‘Truth serum. That’s what most people know it as. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that ironic? I couldn’t be less interested in your truths, my darling. I’ve had to put up with them for long enough. I think it’s much more worthy of reflection that this stuff is also used in executions.’

The face of the woman manages to contort with fear – no mean feat given the amount of paralysing drug she has willingly swallowed.

‘You betrayed me. You put your truths before everything. Before me. Before our love. Do you know what that does to someone? To me?’

She cannot answer, she cannot plead for her life or use her words to escape the fate she knows is awaiting her. Flecks of spittle foam around the mouth of the one she loved to kiss. She longs to wipe them away, to show a caring touch even with the knowledge that her lover has become her executioner. Pins and needles start in her fingers as the feeling spreads throughout her entire body. The winding sheet starts at her feet as her beloved ineptly wraps her in a shroud. This will be her bridal dress, this will be the culmination of their love.

‘My love, my love – why did you make me do this?’ asks the undertaker of her heart.

A tear escapes the woman’s eye as she is wrapped tenderly in her beloved’s arms who, struggling with the dead weight, lays her roughly in the grave. Still the woman cannot speak. The tears run down her face unchecked – her hands are close enough to scratch her nose but they are bound and crossed on her chest where there is no strength to break free.

The shovel of earth hits her heavily, knocking the wind and the life out of her body. Painstakingly, the grave is filled, each load crushing her body and stealing her soul.

There is hope.

Her head and neck are uncovered. She tells herself that this is no more worrying than a game children will play at the beach when they bury each other in the sand.

At any moment, her love will release her, they will embrace and their betrothal will continue.

As the knife pierces her cheek, the sensation returns to her body as pain slices through – as does the awareness that this is no childish game, this is no lovers’ diversion. The metallic smell of blood joins the stench of terror. The woman’s face is warm and wet as her beloved rubs dirt into the open wounds over and over again. Finally, strength returns to her fingers – as the first dirt lands on her face.

She tries to claw her way out.

She breaks her fingernails to the quick.

She feels the blood run down.

She cannot see for the suffocating darkness.

She cannot breathe for the earth in her nostrils.

She cannot scream for the muck in her mouth.

What starts in pleasure always ends in pain.

As the final words of the treasured one scrape against the ancient stones, the Wolf of Badenoch enjoys what he sees, savours what he hears.

‘Who will love you now?’ asks the beloved one as the knife cuts, the blood pours, and the Wolf howls with delight.

Chapter One

My knickers felt cold and squidgy when I pushed them into my jacket pocket. I tried not to notice the embarrassingly large bulge that they created. If I didn’t look at it, it wasn’t there. I liked that view of the world. At least for now. I was obviously quite good at only recognising what I wanted to recognise, given that whatever I had expected when I left the office last night hadn’t involved squelchy undies and drunken sex.

Especially with him.

I’d felt so moral going in on a Saturday – it’s usually the quietest time to work, much better than Sundays when people sometimes panic and decide to get a head start on the week. Even Lavender sometimes isn’t there to give me directions on how I should spend my time. But yesterday, a combination of dull reports and accounts followed by too much rotten wine in a nameless Rose Street pub had brought about a distinct lack of continuation of my moral superiority.

Where the hell was my left shoe? I was at the stage where staying and looking would have probably been more embarrassing than leaving in my bare feet and answering lecherous questions from a taxi driver.

‘Are you looking for this?’ a voice called from the bedroom.

Shit.

No escape.

I’d have to go back and retrieve it now or have him think I was too lovestruck to face him rather than too hung over to think about it. If only I had just gone home after the office. If only I hadn’t bumped into him making his way back from a Saturday shift. If only I hadn’t said hello and noticed how bloody gorgeous he was. I hobbled my way along the hallway like Long John Silver on a bad day – although, for all his worries, I’m sure he didn’t have to deal with not taking his mascara off and being covered in stubble rash the morning after.

With one shoe off and the other dangling from his hand, I lurched towards him. Towards it. Towards my shoe. Towards Mr Jack Deans, Esquire.

I was very upset. Very, very upset. Unlike me, the bastard looked good. Even in the morning light after a very heavy session I could see why I’d finally been unable to resist. Before last night, I’d only ever seen him in his work clothes – crumpled suit, clichéd raincoat. Now, covered only by an impressively white bath towel, he looked damn fine. Just back from the South of France – research, I’m sure, not a piss-up – he was dark, handsome, and absolutely chock-full of himself. A very useful bout of food poisoning had knocked a stone off him and there wasn’t a moob in sight.

‘I bet you’re just thinking what a lucky girl you are,’ he crooned as he launched himself off the bed and walked towards me, twirling the shoe on one finger.

‘No, no … I was “just thinking” that fat looks better when it’s brown.’

‘Liar,’ he whispered into my ear, giving it a surreptitious lick for good luck.

I was back to our familiar double-act of winding each other up much quicker than he was. I took the end of my jacket and wiped the inside of my ear dry. My gesture of dismissal was wasted because Deans was already in the kitchen – with my shoe.

What had once looked a very attractive half of an LK Bennett leopard-print combo was now just pissing me off. It was a shoe, not the bloody Holy Grail, yet he was dragging it from room to room as if I was in thrall to the wonder of a well-turned heel at the cost of my pride.

The offending article was on top of the kitchen table.

‘Don’t you know that’s bad luck?’ I said, forcing my foot into the shoe. It scraped on my skin, hurting my little toe. Actually, come to think of it, they’d always nipped – I should have left the buggers whilst I had the chance.

‘Let me guess, Brodie – that’s one thing you don’t need more of?’ He wriggled his pelvis at me in a way that would have put a geriatric Chippendale to shame. ‘Aw, I don’t know – looks like your luck might have turned. Do you want sugar in your coffee?’

‘You know I don’t take sugar.’

‘With a face like yours this morning, you look as if you could do with a little sweetness.’

‘You weren’t complaining about my face last night.’

Damn. I was the first one to obviously refer to the sex thing.

‘Last night I thought I was the sugar you were needing, darling.’

‘You must have been drunker than I thought then. But definitely nowhere near as comatose as me – obviously.’

‘Frankly, Brodie, I was a bit hurt that you were going to sneak out without saying goodbye. I felt used. A piece of meat. Just a plaything for you.’

For the first time that morning I actually looked into his eyes – only to see his smile lighting them.

‘I’m in no mood for jokes, Jack. I’m pissed off, I’m late, and my shoes hurt.’

‘I can see that. Well, I can see the pissed-off bit anyway. Christ knows what you’ll be like when you get a look at your face – it’s dragging along the ground.’

I tried to ignore him, took my coffee and wandered round his tiny kitchen. I did what I could to avoid facing the fact that he was almost naked.

‘What are you up to today?’ he asked.

I hesitated to answer in case he was going to ask me out.

‘Don’t worry – you’re safe. I’m just going to bide my time and catch you when you’re lonely – again.’

‘Was I that pathetic?’

I didn’t have to turn to know that Deans was nodding his head.

‘Actually, I do have plans. I’m supposed to be seeing my grandad and my moth— and Kailash – they tell me they’re worried about me, so I need to go and calm them down.’

‘They’re not the only ones bothered,’ he commented.

I looked at him sharply. Insulting me, glorying in finally getting me into bed, I could take – but care and concern?

‘Not me.’ He looked as aghast as I felt. ‘It’s the hairy-arsed sheep-shagger you hang around with who’s all het up.’

‘Glasgow Joe?’

‘Aye, the one and only.’

‘Jack – you’re the only one I know who could consider Glasgow the heart of sheep-shagging land. It fits in so well with your impeccable journalistic credentials. Never let facts get in the way of a good insult.’

My heart started racing at the thought of how Joe would react if he knew what we’d done.

‘Whatever you want to call him, he’s the one who’s concerned.’ I sighed. One problem after another. Right now, there was one particular issue that I had to bring up with Jack.

‘Jack? Do me a favour? Don’t mention last night to Joe.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t – under usual circumstances it would be the talk of the steamie, but …’

‘But you’re rather attached to your bollocks?’

‘No, it’s not that – actually, Brodie, you won’t understand this, but I like Joe and I wouldn’t want to hurt him.’

‘Don’t give me that crap – if you really felt like that you wouldn’t have dragged me back here last night,’ I countered.

‘As I recall, Miss McLennan, it was you doing the dragging.’ He paused for effect.

Jack moved towards me at the kitchen table – I expected him to kiss me or try to do the dragging to bed this time. I don’t really know whether I felt relieved or disappointed when he only reached down for his battered briefcase which he threw on the table.

‘Like I said, Kailash and old man MacGregor aren’t the only ones who are concerned,’ he said, handing me some sheets of paper. ‘Take a look at this.’

‘You sad git, Jack. I didn’t know you were into tracing family trees. It’s the new train-spotting for blokes your age, isn’t it?’

‘No – blokes “my age” have got other things to do with their time.’ He managed to say this whilst looking lecherously at me – I was touched: I looked a right state but he was still so desperate he wasn’t kicking me out.

‘It’s your family I’m digging at, Brodie, not mine. Now stop being so vain and put your specs on to look at it properly. Don’t worry about me seeing you less than perfect – I’ve seen it all now, even …’

‘I’m putting them on,’ I said loudly, cutting him off mid-sentence.

I looked at what was in front of me.

My line.

My blood.

The blood that I didn’t even know I had running through my veins until just about this time last year. At the bottom of the page, I saw my own name and that of my parents. If you could really call them that – a paedophile and a whore. A match made in heaven. My blood parents.

Alastair MacGregor ———Kailash Coutts

|

Brodie McLennan (bastard)

The line ended with me.

Even on the sheet of paper I looked lonely.

‘Cheers, Jack, I’m moved. It makes me feel all warm inside. How nice of you to remind me what I came from.’

I threw the papers down on the table.

‘Don’t get bloody touchy with me, Brodie. Those bits of paper simply state facts. You always knew your dad wasn’t around, you always knew you were a bastard – you just have to understand that now you are a high-class bastard.’

He poked his fingers at names above my own.

‘All high-court judges. All above the law. They’re protected, Brodie. To a man.’

‘My father wasn’t safe, though, was he?’

I still felt odd calling the man who had raped Kailash by that title. And poor dead Mary McLennan, cold in the ground with only me to remember that she was the woman I considered my real mother. She’d taken me on with more love than most people receive in a lifetime. Running through it all in my head made me think I was reading the TV listings guide for a particularly tempting episode of The Jerry Springer Show. There wasn’t much to laugh at when it was my own life, though. Jack’s words dragged me away from my reflections.

‘Alastair MacGregor was protected, Brodie. He was protected by the law – not the law that you and I live by, but the law that has protected men like him and their interests for centuries. That’s why Kailash had to kill him. He had gotten away with it for decades. All those girls, all those boys, with no families to worry about them, being taken out of the care homes and sent to be abused by good, upstanding legal men like your father? Fucking protected to the hilt, the lot of them. I’d rather there were a thousand Kailashes than one of him. She may not be the usual type of mother, but she knows right from wrong – and she fights for what’s hers.’

I imagined my mother in her work guise as Scotland’s most notorious dominatrix, running her girls across the country, and doing it all with beauty and style. I wasn’t much closer to understanding her than I had been a year ago when I represented her – not knowing then that our connection was so much more than lawyer and client – but I did realise that she loved me – in her own way.

‘You’re not your father, Brodie. Just like he wasn’t his. All the stuff you learned last year might make your head spin, but it’s true – it’s your truth, the truth of who you are. It’s not every day your mother asks you to defend her for killing your father. But there are decent people in your blood, Brodie – your grandfather is a good man. Like Kailash, he loves you and knows that his only son was an evil bastard. What more evidence do you need? He saved Kailash, he stands by her now – and they both want one thing: they want you to be careful.

‘Yes, you have enemies. You’ve made a lot in the last year – but they’ll back off if you decide to toe the line. You have to listen to the old man, Brodie.’

‘Has Grandad been speaking to you?’ I said accusingly.

‘Maybe …’

‘Family trees, now cosy chats with my grandad? I’ll just nip out and get you some slippers and a pipe. The years are taking their toll.’

‘I’m not daft, Brodie – even if I wasn’t … keen on you,’ he raised his eyebrows at me as he found the right word, ‘I’m a journo, I’d have to be stupid to ignore everything in my line of work. Look at this …’

Jack pulled his laptop across from the table at the side of him and fired it up. My heart sank as I saw that the Journal of the Law Society was in his favourites list. He clicked on the icon and opened up an article I recognised only too well. The words in the piece were engraved on my mind, because – rightly or wrongly – I had felt they all applied to me. Complaints about falling standards were pretty predictable from the old guard who moaned every century or so when they were nudged out of their complacency by the recognition that there were others out there who wanted to drag law into this millennium. But this article was far more strident than usual. The author had chosen to remain anonymous, which was very rare in itself. They must be pretty well in with those at the top of the tree if they were being allowed to hide. Whoever was behind it – and I had my suspicions of who it might be – was on their high horse about the fact that they believed solicitors were looking on what they did as a business, not a profession. They rattled off a few sound bites about whether they were lawyers or ambulance chasers, which had got a few snippets of coverage from the papers. However, the most interesting – or irritating – point for me, was the remark about ‘rumbles’ from last month’s meeting of the Edinburgh Bar Association, where, allegedly, there had been talk about how one firm in particular was going to be reported to the Law Society for blatant touting.

‘Come on, Brodie, you know all about this – you’re one of the lawyers they’re particularly worked up about. You’re too successful – they prefer mediocrity to brilliance.’

I stared at him long enough for him to feel uncomfortable.

‘And gorgeousness too – obviously, gorgeousness too.’

‘Yeah, that’s it, Jack. They’re terrified of my brain and my thighs. In the real world, I think you’ll find it’s all down to what it’s always been about with lawyers – money and power.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said, ‘but ask yourself this – just how many clients can one firm represent without there being a conflict of interests?’

‘No idea, Jack, but I guess I’ll find out pretty soon.’

‘Alex Cattanach is keeping an eye on you. You don’t want head-honcho accountants on your tail at the best of times – you certainly don’t when they are telling everyone in town that they have enough to take you down. I’m usually all for smart-arses, Brodie, but you can’t keep annoying the Bar Association or they’ll take you out. They might be wankers … but they’re not stupid wankers. You can’t watch your back the whole time.’

‘You watch it for me then, Jack,’ I threw back at him and wiggled my arse right out his door, vowing never to return.

Not even I believed it.

Chapter Two

‘I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but you’ve achieved in months what no man has done for the past two hundred years – you’ve united the Bar. Unfortunately, it’s against you.’

Lord MacGregor, my newly found grandad, was sputtering his words out. I was still coming to terms with things. Until recently, I had thought of another woman as mother, another man as father – albeit an absent one – and didn’t think I had a grandad to call my own. It was a lot to take in – on top of that came the spectacle of the man who was universally recognised as one of the greatest legal minds to ever come out of Scotland lying half-naked on a table in front of me. Behind him, the masseur gave a deep-tissue massage to help loosen the old man’s blue-veined limbs, which were becoming knotted with arthritis. I didn’t want to imagine the conversations Malcolm, my mother’s gay personal dresser/masseur friend, could be having with the pillar of the legal community when I wasn’t there. What could they possibly have in common? Apart from a genuine admiration of Kailash Coutts, I couldn’t come up with anything.

I shook myself out of my reverie.

‘Have you finished yet?’

‘You’ll know exactly when I’ve finished with you, young lady.’

This was something else I was having to get used to. To him, I wasn’t kicking thirty now, nor did I have a career of my own – I was just the wee lassie who needed to be kept in line.

It irked and delighted me at the same time. His face was turning puce, whether from temper or the pain of the massage, I couldn’t tell.

‘Grandad, I was speaking to Malcolm.’ It still felt weird that, a year ago, I had virtually no family to speak of, and now, here I was calling one of the most important and influential men in Scotland ‘grandad’.

‘Five minutes, Brodie. I told Lord MacGregor that if he cancelled this appointment, I couldn’t fit him in for another ten days. I’m very busy with colonics these days, you know.’

‘If you’d arrived when you were supposed to, Brodie,’ started my grandad again, ‘I’d have met you with my breeks on. But that’s the state of Edinburgh today – I can’t get help with my arthritis for the citizens of Edinburgh wanting the shit washed out of them. More money than sense. In my day we went to the toilet ourselves.’

Malcolm rolled his eyes dramatically. As usual, he was immaculately turned out in purple and green tartan trews. His black patent dress brogues twinkled beneath the massage table as he pushed and pummelled my grandad. The scent of warm lavender oil filled the air. Pig farmers have been known to use that essential oil to stop sows eating their young – but it wasn’t working on my grandad and his savaging continued.

‘Kailash? Kailash? Where are you, girl?’

Lord MacGregor looked like an old tortoise without a shell as he craned his neck upwards to shout for my birth mother.

Malcolm pushed his client’s head down onto the table. Lord or not, Malcolm would allow no one to be harsh with Kailash.

‘She’s making some tea. It’s no good getting yourself all hot and bothered – you only make your blood pressure go sky-high.’

Malcolm was from Inverness via San Francisco. His curious lilt soothed the belligerent old man in front of him; either that or it was the vision of loveliness that kicked open the door carrying a butler’s tray of steaming cups.

Kailash floated in, dressed in soft white linen. Her black hair rippled around her shoulders. It was obviously freshly washed, whereas mine felt itchy and I fought the urge to scratch the crown of my head until her back was turned. To make things worse, the smell of Malcolm’s unguents and potions were bringing on my hangover again. Seriously dehydrated, I almost snatched the mug of steaming tea from Kailash’s beautifully French-manicured hands. Rats were chewing at the base of my skull and I gingerly reached out to find a seat.

‘Are you still on that diet?’ Kailash queried.

‘I didn’t know I was on one,’ I answered.

‘I could have sworn last time we spoke you mentioned something.’

I knew what she was doing. Her underhand tactics weren’t going to work on me, but maybe I could lay off the booze for a couple of days. Or months. In truth, I was quite impressed that she had managed to cotton on so quickly to that mother’s way of hiding insults behind innocent comments. I bit my bottom lip.

‘Show it to her, Kailash,’ interrupted my grandad. ‘I don’t think she’s seen it.’

Kailash reached down to a chair and picked up today’s paper. They had all paused their various activities to look at me. I sensed that it was going to be news best taken standing so I feigned disinterest and moved over to stare out of the window.

Kailash’s voice was slow and warm. I tried to listen with half an ear, sure that that the words she spoke were not going to be good. I stared out of the windows in Ramsay Gardens and watched the people scurrying below in Princes Street. I loved my grandad’s flat. There wasn’t a garden but the place snuggled in deep beside Edinburgh Castle. Built before planning regulation, it was a delightful hodge-podge of styles. There had been dwellings on this site for centuries and, as I looked at my grandad lying there, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that he had been amongst the first residents.

I turned my attention back to the pedestrians below. I wished that I was one of them. Even the road-sweeper’s job looked alluring right now. Kailash’s words brought me back to the moment.

Cash laundering link to missing law chief

Scottish solicitors suspected of money laundering are to be interviewed by detectives investigating the disappearance of the chief accountant of the Law Society of Scotland.

Former Scottish rugby internationalist, Alex Cattanach, has not been seen for ten days. Cattanach is known to have launched what colleagues describe as a ‘fatwa’ against corruption in the legal profession.

Police are probing a theory that Cattanach was the victim of a revenge attack ordered by a lawyer whose criminality was about to be exposed.

Cattanach, characterised as ‘a tough customer’ by more than one top lawyer, is understood to have spearheaded a recent crackdown on all forms of misconduct relating to finance, including money laundering.

At present, sixteen Scottish solicitors face charges. A Lothian and Borders Police source said, ‘We will be questioning people we suspect have been involved in money laundering, given that Cattanach’s team would normally investigate them. There are some guys – especially some guys in criminal practice – who give us a lot of concern because of the people they associate with.’ One police officer who wished to remain anonymous added, ‘These solicitors are not whiter than white themselves. They know some pretty disreputable characters. Characters who are proud to let it be known that they can make problems – or people – disappear.’

Police will also this week begin sifting through all Law Society files that were being dealt with by Cattanach and the team of twelve accountants. They will be looking for anyone who had a grudge against Cattanach or who may have feared being investigated. The police source added: ‘It’ll be a pretty long list.’

Silence.

I didn’t turn round. I continued staring down, ignoring my racing heart as much as I could.

Lord MacGregor, now dressed in a robe, tapped me on my shoulder whilst Malcolm and Kailash scurried in the background pretending not to listen.

‘Now, lass, I’m not suggesting that you’re one of the lawyers that’s going to be investigated.’

By his glinting eyes, I guessed that something must have shown in my face. The wily old fox was used to reading witnesses.

‘Tell me things haven’t got that bad?’

He moved on to shaking my shoulders roughly.

I shrugged him off.

‘Brodie – the Edinburgh Bar is gunning for you. You are building a practice that is enviable – but you’ve no protection. The clients that you are representing are coming to you from somewhere. Someone else’s pocket is empty since you’ve got so popular.’

I continued to look as disinterested as I could muster. ‘Other lawyers,’ Kailash butted in. ‘You’re taking money from their purses and they’re getting worried and angry.’

‘If they can’t keep their clients happy, that’s their problem.’

I sounded more bullish than I felt.

I thought of all the complaints from the Law Society that I had received. Their headed notepaper was usually green – every letter I had was in red. Warning letters. Even Lavender was worried.

‘Don’t take that tone with me – I know better,’ said my mother. ‘The Bar might be full of absolute tossers, but they’re razor-sharp when it comes to protecting their purses, and I, for one, wouldn’t cross swords with them lightly.’

‘Well then, it’s lucky someone in this family has guts,’ I responded.

Kailash and Grandad looked at me. I was a bit worried; the seriousness of my situation had stopped them laughing out loud at me even though they should have. I was behaving like an impudent young pup – no wonder they were treating me like a child. I was Grandad’s last blood relative, so I really couldn’t doubt that my best interests were of paramount importance to him.

And yet I tried.

My grandad tried again to make me see sense.

‘Brodie – I know about the letters of complaint. I’ve tried to buy you time. I’ve been told that if you mend your ways, pull back on your empire building a bit, and stop annoying everyone in the entire field, then they will be put on the backburner until we can find a different path for you.’

I was furious. How dare they lecture me like this?

‘Might I remind you both that my life was going well until you two became involved in it again. “The rising star of the Scottish Bar” – that was me. And then you …’ I pointed at Kailash, ‘decided to settle your differences with my senior partner by involving him in a sex scandal and splashed it all over the papers. So what happens then? My firm gets plunged into debt because of the defamation charge going against us and unless my firm pays off its overdraft then I’ll be bankrupt and unable to practise on my own? Thanks to you, Mummy dearest, I’m looking at a future of being someone else’s cash cow, so don’t start telling me what to do when the best thing is probably that you keep well out of things.’

Kailash didn’t look fazed in the slightest. I suppose a lot worse had been said to her.

‘Brodie,’ she went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘you play the cards you’re dealt. If you could win carrying on the way you are – making enemies left, right and centre – I’d say go ahead. But you simply can’t win.’

‘You don’t trust me?’ I asked her. ‘You don’t trust me to do things properly?’

‘Too bad,’ she cut back. ‘Your life is at stake now – and that’s far more important.’

‘You’re using a lot of gambling terminology, Kailash,’ I commented, trying to move the conversation on. ‘Are the rumours correct?’

‘Yes, they are. For once. I’ve taken over the Danube Street casino.’

She mentioned it as if she’d bought a new handbag. And that was the rub. I knew that all I would have to do would be to ask either of them for money to buy my way out of the firm. Lothian and St Clair would see the back of me and I would be, technically, free. I knew that Kailash and my grandad would give me as much as I needed without a second thought, but my damned pride insisted that I had to do it my own way. If I did rely on the money of others, who would I choose anyway? Which fortune was more acceptable to me? The one made recently by one woman’s ingenuity and willingness to do anything to survive, or the other based on old, aristocratic money handed down through the ages? I told myself it wasn’t a choice I was ready to make.

‘Enough of these diversionary tactics. Kailash – can’t you see what she’s doing?’ Lord MacGregor was shouting.

He was a great lawyer in his time, my grandad, but the judge in him took over now. There was only one person in charge in his drawing room and it was clear that it wasn’t going to be me.

‘Brodie – the only route open to you is to take a position as a sheriff. Put in a few years in the lower courts and then get a seat in the College of Justice. Join the family firm and become a judge. It would make me very proud to see you wear the red robes.’

‘Easy as that, is it?’ I asked. ‘Just say what you want and it all comes together? Even for your annoying bastard granddaughter?’

He looked slightly flustered. Unusually.

‘Well, the only reason I can even suggest this is that the powers-that-be are looking for more women to become judges. Political correctness or some other such bloody nonsense. It can work in your favour, my dear.’

‘Follow in my father’s footsteps?’

‘If it will save you from being ruined, then yes, do whatever you have to continue.’ Kailash joined in the shouting match.

‘Some people would bite their arm off for the chance we are offering you.’ Grandad’s voice was raised.

We. I didn’t want to know about Kailash’s involvement. Thinking about what favours she was pulling in on my behalf made my blood run cold. No one likes to think about their mother having sex, much less for money or other favours. It was enough to keep me in therapy for years.

My grandad’s next words made that thought disappear.

‘Bridget Nicholson is wining and dining as we speak. That girl is desperate to be elevated to the bench.’

‘Girl? She was born middle-aged, and she’s certainly looked it ever since I’ve known her. She’s probably excited by the huge pension.’

‘Whatever her reasons are, Brodie, could you really imagine yourself scraping and bowing before Lady Nicholson?’

And there he had it – my hot button.

I didn’t want it, but I was bloody sure I didn’t want Bridget Nicholson to have it either.

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