Dark Angels (11 page)

The chest cavity on the cadaver was still open. Patch, bloody after his earlier excavations, was looking over both his shoulders. He moved cautiously forward, towards Lord Arbuthnot’s feet. Then he placed his
hands on the deceased’s hips, and rolled him in my direction.

Horrified, I stepped back, Patch’s irreverence knew no bounds. The body groaned as gases escaped, pressure widened the hole in the chest wall and I could see right inside. I knew that I would be having nightmares about this for weeks to come.

‘Stop lolly gagging over there and come and see this.’

Patch was staring at Lord Arbuthnot’s backside. I could see no way that this could get any worse. Frank Pearson was already green to the gills, and if there had been others present I would have been running a book on how much time he had left before he was sick. I shouldn’t have been so smug.

At first I couldn’t make out what I was looking at. It was faded with age. Patch swung his large magnifying glass in front, and we stared mystified.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘What does it look like?’ Patch sounded irritated by my puerile question.

‘It looks like a tattoo,’ Frank replied, unabashed.

‘Well, it’s not. It’s a burn.’

‘Like a cattle brand?’ I had found my voice again.

‘Precisely!’

The autopsy room fell silent. Far away in distant corridors, I could hear the rattle of trolleys. Porters shouted greetings to one another, normal life continued. In this room, it had stopped; nothing was as it should be. We stared in quiet communion at the mark, burned long ago into the rear end of Lord Arbuthnot.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ The words tripped softly out over my lips.

‘I have obviously seen burn marks on children made by cigarettes and heated objects,’ answered Patch, ‘but I have never observed first hand such a brand. Note these indentations–also old burn marks.’

Patch’s plum eyelid twitched, as he observed the oddity. His curiosity was aroused, but from past experience, I knew he would add nothing to his disclosures. We were lost to him now as he studied the grooves and indentations on the flaccid, bloodless, buttock.

I felt the vomit rise into the back of my throat, acidic and sour it burned its way up my gullet. Fire flushed through my system. Last time, I barely made it to the ladies room. The race was on, no time for niceties. I grabbed my helmet off the steel table by the mortuary room door. I had no time to say goodbye, or to hear Frank Pearson’s muffled guffaw.

The place was a maze. I ran directionless through the corridors, searching for a toilet. No luck, so I pushed down hard on a fire exit handle, praying it wasn’t alarmed, and escaped into the fresh air of the car park.

The autopsy room had been windowless; the storm clouds outside took me by surprise. My lungs gasped for cool clear air, but to no avail: the afternoon was warm and muggy. A summer storm was building. My t-shirt clung to my back; small streams of sweat ran down my neck, as I sprinted towards Awesome. The sun was hidden behind heavy clouds, and even Awesome gleamed dull in the flat light. The shine had been taken off everything.

Escape was all that I had in mind. I needed something more than I could get from my Harley. Heading for Arthur’s Seat, I was sure to find solace. Unfortunately, I didn’t find good sense and the black saloon car behind me with tinted windows was nothing but another bit of traffic to me.

The car was of the same mind, but the driver was obviously too taken with the sight of Holyrood Palace to pay attention to the road. His wheels–I assumed he was male as they cause ninety-five per cent of accidents–just missed my back tyre.

Fat drops of rain fell on my visor as the heavens poured. I opened up my throttle and increased my speed. I had to shift to lose that idiot. The rain came down faster. The rumble of thunder travelled over the River Forth as I climbed Arthur’s Seat.

Dark and stormy, I continued to climb higher. Puddles of water lay on the road, the sprayback on the engine made Awesome sluggish.

The black saloon caught up with me as we reached Dunsappie Loch. Every sinew in my arms was tight as I struggled with the conditions. The car moved out to overtake on the single track, one-way road. I tried to facilitate his manoeuvre but I wasn’t fast enough. His bumper caught my exhaust and shunted Awesome across the road. The tyre caught the kerb and I spun over the handlebars as the first sheet of lightning cracked the sky.

The thick leather of my jacket protected me as I skidded along the road. I stopped, face down in a puddle of muddy water. The water, mingling with my blood,
rose up my nose. Coughing, I tried to lift my head up. At speed, the car reversed back towards me, its tyres spewing muddy water over me in a deluge.

Too late I recognised the vehicle. I had last seen it outside Lord Arbuthnot’s house. The storm raged on, even the ducks took refuge in the reeds at the edge of the pond. The grumbling thunder masked the sound of his footsteps.

Mercifully, blackness descended shortly after I received the first blow.

Fortunately, the drugs clouded my consciousness. Foolishly, I welcomed sleep. Unconscious, the nightmare truly began.

Inner turmoil makes for restless slumber. The hand on my shoulder was firm but friendly. Fishy shook me awake.

‘You’ve got a visitor.’

His blue eyes crinkled with laughter. Relief flooded through me. I was going to recover, or else Fishy would look worried rather than bemused.

My eyes strained to adjust to the light. I blinked and blinked, but I appeared to have brought a strange apparition back with me from my dream state. No matter how many times I opened and shut my eyes, the bizarre man at the foot of my bed didn’t move.

Red tartan trews emphasised his elegant limbs–dancer’s legs once upon a time I’d guess. Black patent shoes, polished to within an inch of their life. No greater contrast could have been found to my scuffed black courts, lying discarded in the corner. Placing his hat
on the chair, the man removed his black velvet jacket. I pushed myself hard against the pillows as he began to amble towards me.

Suspicion must have shown in my eyes, as he began to speak softly like someone singing a lullaby.

‘Hush now, child. Kailash has sent me to care for you.’

That was a frightening prospect on its own. She was paid to hurt people–it was her job. And right now I didn’t know who had sent my attacker. For all I knew it could have been Kailash herself. One of the few things I had been able to stammer at Fishy when he found me, was that he was to tell no one, until I had figured out who had sent my baseball bat message.

I was angry at him for betraying my confidence, for not protecting me better. Maybe the responsibility of caring for me was too much. Perhaps I should have gone to hospital, but official police involvement was not the wisest course of action. I had made too many enemies, and I was starting to get as bad as Jack Deans with conspiracy theories. I didn’t know who to trust.

Fishy stood staring at the doorway eyes protesting his blamelessness. I broke contact with him; he would be dealt with later.

‘You’re in terrible shape, Brodie,’ Fishy began huffily. ‘You need a doctor or you need a miracle–he’s the best you’ve got.’

I raised my fuck you finger at him but he didn’t move. The man we were referring to did–gently pushing my hand into a ball to remove the offending gesture.

‘I’m Malcolm.’ He had been filling his eyes on me
since I had noticed him–and for God knows how long before that. As he introduced himself, his liver-spotted, manicured hands gave me a tiny white pill and a glass of tepid water. Suspicion must have shown in my eyes.

‘Do I scare you?’ Malcolm asked. Never one to admit weakness I shook my head.

‘Well, then open your mouth…it’s only lady’s slipper.’

As I still looked confused, Malcolm continued with his explanation.

‘A Native American remedy.’

‘For?’

‘Calming your nerves, stopping you greetin’. It’s an extract boiled from the roots. It’s good stuff.’ He failed to tell me it was also superior to opium in inducing sleep.

I hadn’t had the energy to cry. Yet. His little tablet must be to stop the tears that would surely come once I thought about what had just happened to me.

Deftly he placed the pill under my tongue.

‘Keep it there, and let it melt.’

Malcolm bent down and picked up a battered brown leather physician’s case.

‘You’re the strangest looking doctor I’ve ever seen.’ I blurted it out.

Malcolm hesitated for a moment, then sat down beside me. He looked at my face, at the bruises and the swelling and the blood, and I saw a change come over his face.

‘You may be right, Brodie McLennan. But by name and by bloodline, I am related to a healing tradition that stretches back a thousand years.’

I looked at him expectantly.

‘My family name is Beaton and our history was as bone-setters and healers. Not many options for me–there weren’t many chances for…Well, in Inverness in the sixties I was what they called a pansy. It wasn’t the most swinging of places then. Or now.’

Clearing his throat he added: ‘I was maybe a wee bitty obvious.’

From his get-up, this didn’t come as a huge shock, but I kept my tongue silent as distant pain flickered over Malcolm’s face.

‘I tuned in, dropped out and headed for San Francisco. Learned about Native American remedies. I found people who appreciated my skills–and who did not denounce my…personal habits.’

‘How did you meet Kailash?’ I asked.

‘Ordinarily, I never talk about her. People…’ Malcolm appeared to be searching for the correct word, ‘misunderstand.’

Organising himself in silence, he placed ointments and unguents on the bedside table. Outlandish aromas from his pots and potions quickly filled the room.

‘Please? I’d like to understand her…’

Sensing he would do anything for Kailash, I deliberately hit his hot buttons.

‘If you want to protect Kailash, Malcolm, if you want to keep her out of jail, then give me your help. The more I know Kailash, the better able I am to defend her.’

It was enough. I had played my part well. Without stopping to catch his breath, he launched into their history.

‘When I met her, in the eighties, in Amsterdam, she was just a wee slip of a thing. Doing the only thing she could to make ends meet.’

Education had obviously never been part of her curriculum, but I refused to accept that the only escape route for a young girl was prostitution. I thought it wisest not to voice my opinion.

‘Initially, she was the injured party in rich men’s sadistic sex games. That’s how we met. I used to patch the girls up and send them out again. Kailash is a smart one. As soon as she realised a certain type of man paid more to be hurt, then she found she had a talent for it.

‘Freud said that the sexual history of an individual begins at birth, and sexual pleasure in the beginning has no aim or object. The only way it can get an object of desire is through experience. This is complex and it can go wrong.

‘With all the clients in Kailash’s place in Amsterdam, that process had most definitely gone wrong. Successful businessmen who crave humiliation and pain.’

He paused–presumably running a few scenarios through his memory bank.

‘There are older ladies I’ve worked with who earn a small fortune dressing men as babies and changing their nappies.’

‘I can’t understand why the women do it,’ I interrupted.

‘For the money, lassie. So what if they have to change shitty nappies? They’d be doing the same thing working as a carer in an old folk’s home–only there they’d get
minimum wage. Not every woman has the opportunities you have.’

Malcolm turned from me to prepare ointments, leaving me to think about my senior partner. Roddie Buchanan’s predilection was harder for me to figure out. Where did he come up with the notion of having his testicles injected so that they swelled to the size of small melons? How did he explain that to his wife? I assumed that part of his thrill was the excitement of getting caught.

The drug was taking effect; my mind was fuzzy. It was getting harder to distinguish between reality and the dream state. I tried to fight Malcolm as he removed my nightdress, but the drug had lowered my inhibitions. A strong woody scent filled my nostrils as he applied warm oil. Vaguely aware that Fishy was in the room, I felt protected rather than horrified by the presence of my friend.

‘Black birch oil…its astringent properties will help her wounds heal.’

Malcolm’s voice was soft and low as he spoke to Fishy. His experienced hands kneaded the oil deep into my flesh and I felt myself drifting in and out of consciousness.

‘What do you want the vodka for?’

Fishy was keeping a watchful eye on Malcolm.

‘Have you warmed it?’ queried the older man. His voice had changed to brusque and efficient. ‘Vodka is a spirit I use, because it is readily available, to help me make a poultice. Do you see these lesions on her back?’

I could not hear Fishy’s reply. I felt as if I was floating away from them both.

‘These wounds were not caused by a baseball bat. When you picked her up, did you see a thin metal bar or a baton lying around?’

I still could not hear Fishy.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ agreed Malcolm in response to a comment I had not heard. ‘These red marks across her back could have been caused by a walking cane.’

Drifting into my nightmare world, I fought hard to stay awake but the drug overwhelmed me. Moses Tierney interlinked with my absent father, tormentors together, scornful of my efforts. There was something I wasn’t seeing. I have always abhorred stupidity–particularly my own–but, without realising it, Malcolm’s intention to make me sleep while my body healed plunged me into my own personal hell.

I was past caring when he applied the leeches to my swellings. Somehow he managed to convince Fishy that standard medical practitioners were once again using them. They didn’t hurt as he positioned them on my body to release their natural anaesthetic. Leeches, Malcolm assured Fishy, would also release a powerful antibiotic into my bloodstream. When they were satiated with my blood, they dropped off naturally and the inflammation was reduced.