Dark Angels (37 page)

‘I did no such thing,’ she stated and the way she said it made a chill run down my spine. Both her hands were placed on the table, like a feral cat she was facing me down, furious that I could suggest she had taken such a step.

‘He did it, or his people did–they threw the baby into the water to get rid of the evidence.’

‘There must have been plenty of other evidence to convict him?’

She grunted at me. ‘You’d think so–groups of children complaining over thirty years. No one listened–he wasn’t acting alone, you know. There was a ring of high-powered men with influence. High-powered people with influence.

‘I was left for dead after I had my baby. I was pumped full of heroin. It was their intention to dump me somewhere, probably in a bag like the other girls.’

‘Do you think they were pregnant too?’

She nodded. ‘There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. I’ll bet amongst the body parts that were recovered–I bet they never found any wombs.’

I would have to ask Patch; he had not been forthcoming with information, but I wasn’t going to be fobbed off now.

‘You can’t win against these people, Brodie. They’ve got the law on their side. But I will not plead–Alistair MacGregor is not being deified as a result of my actions.’

‘There is one way that we can verify what you’re saying, Kailash.’

I reached over and pulled a strand of hair from her head.

‘DNA testing. If you were raped by him, if you did have a baby by him, and if that baby was thrown into the sea…these things can be proven. We’ll test the baby’s DNA and Alistair MacGregor’s–it will confirm that he is the father.’

‘You’ll do DNA testing on a baby that has been buried for years, Brodie. Dead and buried a long time.’

‘I know that and I know that this might be distressing for you–the baby will have to be exhumed for us to get a DNA sample.’

Shrugging her shoulders she sighed: ‘Is that what you really think will solve all of this? You’re going to waste time getting an order to get an exhumation? You’d never get it anyway. What are you going to say? That you’ve got a hunch? That you’ve got a notion to dig up the bones of a long-dead child to satisfy your curiosity?’

I had to think on my feet. ‘I know that, I know we’d never get it–that’s why we can’t go through official lines.’

She caught my drift quicker than I would have liked.

‘You’d be robbing a grave, Brodie–if you were caught. You would be stealing a baby’s bones. Is that how far you’re willing to go to get to the bottom of this? That baby–the key to all of it: but at what cost?’

Her voice trailed off.

Thoughts of Burke and Hare came to me; they got away with it for some time before detection. But they did it under cover of darkness, we still had long light nights, and I would be visible if I attempted this.

‘If I was caught, I’d be arrested–my life as I know it would be over. But I’d still be alive.’

There was nothing else for us to say to each other. We both knew the implications of what I was suggesting and we knew that I would carry the burden of it.

I left Cornton Vale knowing that the night ahead would change my life–one way or the other.

I drove from Cornton Vale to Edinburgh, yawning all the way. I had become obsessed with sleep–I wanted the trial over for many reasons, the whole business over, but none so much as the fact that I just wanted to lie down and rest. Preferably somewhere without phones always ringing in the middle of the night.

When I got back to the flat, it was clear that the usual suspects were still there. Fair enough for Fishy–he lived there after all–but did the others not have homes to go to? I swear when this thing is over, I thought to myself, I’ll move away and give none of those buggers my address. It was only after such a glib and normal thought had passed through my mind that I remembered exactly what I had planned for myself in the much nearer future. Christ, if I managed to successfully grave-rob, the whole shower could move into my room in celebration if they wanted to.

As soon as I walked in, Fishy was on me.

‘I know where you were,’ he said accusingly.

I stared at him–which part did he know? Joe’s big gob came to the rescue.

‘Aye–PC Fulton phoned. Was it really necessary to have Moses arrested?’ Joe pushed Fishy out of the way so that he could glare at me.

‘We’ve got too much to do to get caught up in personalities,’ I snapped back at him. I was stripping out of my bike jacket as I walked into the kitchen. Patch and Jack looked at me reproachfully.

As I took my seat Jack handed me a cup of steaming espresso perfectly made with just a touch of golden froth on top. At least he hadn’t started on at me–yet.

Patch had photographs from Lord Arbuthnot’s post-mortem on the table, the series of pictures that detailed his back and buttocks. I pointed to the inverted pentagram.

‘Can you just go over this again, please?’ I asked. I needed to collect my thoughts again and assimilate all I had learned since my visit to Kailash. The hour-long trip back from Stirling was a blur of sleepiness; I hadn’t done much thinking or analysing–or even plotting.

‘I’ve explained to the boys the significance of the mark, and we’ve been over it before,’ he said, putting another picture up on the makeshift board inside his briefcase.

‘But we need to consider it in conjunction with this. Laura Liddell–note the mark on her right buttock…and here,’ he placed another image up for us to look at.

‘A section of the second body found in 1985. The same mark visible.’

‘Now, note the marks on the deceased’s back.’

He pointed to Lord Arbuthnot’s image.

‘These marks are old–they have been made by cigarette burns. Initially they concerned me because most likely they came from the deceased indulging in a sexual game known as smoking where he in effect becomes a human ashtray.’

‘And anyone who would allow himself to be used as an ashtray would not be dominant,’ I said, following Patch’s line of thought.

‘Precisely.’ Patch looked around the table.

‘What kind of nutcase does these things?’ Joe shivered involuntarily. ‘I can understand people giving–and getting–a good kicking; but this kind of pervy stuff? Christ, I’ve a lot to learn.’ I remembered the last time I had heard that phrase–when Kailash had spat it out at me in Cornton Vale.

‘More people do this than you would imagine,’ I said.

‘Well, the fact that anyone does it is more than I can fucking imagine,’ answered Joe.

‘Anyway,’ said Patch, ‘I’ve been researching this stuff and there are some people known as switches–they change from submissive to dominant depending on who they are with.’

‘Arbuthnot was a paedophile. So with helpless kids he was a dominant, sadistic torturer, but when it came to himself, he was the victim?’ I said.

‘No, that wasn’t what I meant,’ Patch said huffily. ‘Don’t twist my words, Brodie. Dependant on who his companions were–what they encouraged him to do–that would decide which role he took.’

We were back to a killing team. One of the only explanations that had ever made sense for the attacks on me starting after Lord Arbuthnot’s death.

As I looked round the bunch of misfits in my kitchen, I wondered how much more of this they could take–we were all in way too deep. Could I push them deeper still?

‘How the hell did I let you bully me into this?’ Joe gasped as he climbed the high wall surrounding Seafield Cemetery.

‘Christ, this must be twenty-five feet–and you don’t see many climbers that weigh as much as me.’ Sweat rolled down his face as he attempted to get a foothold on the wall. It was difficult, as it was intended as a deterrent to keep grave-robbers like us out.

Jack Deans sat in his car listening to the police radio–our early warning system so that he could alert us if we were likely to be receiving police attention. The thud as Joe fell off the wall into the graveyard made me certain that someone would notice something soon to announce our presence.

‘I don’t want to do this, Brodie–it’s sick. Have you thought it through? If you need to do a DNA test on this poor bairn’s bones, what do you hope to find? That Kailash is the mother or isn’t she? That Arbuthnot is the father or isn’t? I don’t get what you want, Brodie. I just don’t get it.’

Joe was expressing my own thoughts, but as I looked around the tombstones, I knew I didn’t want to join them. I’d take confusion and illegality over that option any day.

‘Piss off then, and I’ll do it myself,’ I said, secure in the knowledge that he would stick to me like glue.

I ran in front, crouching down so low that my thighs screamed and my lungs were fit to burst. Naturally, I arrived at the grave first. The six-foot marble angel stared down at me from her plinth. As I moved her eyes followed. The ground was wet and clawing. I started to dig with my bare hands straight away, the black earth sticking to my fingers, creeping under my nails. It felt cold and damp beneath my touch, chilling my heart. I knew the words on the gravestone off by heart–the dark made no difference–they were burned into my vision:

The priest put ashes on my forehead and uttered those words on Ash Wednesdays.

‘Well, I don’t want to be dust yet,’ I muttered at the angel.

‘Will you stop tickling that ground?’ Joe was beside me as I continued to try to get through the earth. ‘Move so that I can get on.’

I had merely scratched the surface, but I didn’t see how Joe could do much more. He might have muscles, but he hadn’t brought any tools.

‘Christ, Joe,’ I whispered as loudly as I could. ‘Some help you are–where’s the shovel?’

‘Fuck!’ he said, a bit louder than I felt comfortable with. ‘I’ll have to go back and get it. That fucking wall’ll do me in one way or another. If I’m not back in…God. How long would it take for me to get arrested, do you think?’

‘Piss off, Joe–the sooner you get the shovel and the crowbar, the sooner we can get this over with.’

As soon as I saw the back of him, any streak of bravado I had left me.

It was dark, it was cold, and I was alone in a graveyard intending to dig up a baby’s corpse. Images poured into my head–what would it feel like to pull a tiny white coffin out of the ground, where it had lain for almost three decades? The wood would be rotten, the brass handles tarnished. Would I touch worms? Rats? Would I be sick?

As soon as I let myself think about it, I knew I couldn’t do it.

There were steps too far even for me.

And this was one of them.

How could I throw a coffin lid onto the ground? How could I look at a skeleton covered in a tiny white gown and a pink teddy eaten by God knows what? I knew too much from old newspaper reports–that baby was still real to me.

I heard something move, I thought I heard something from the direction of the stone angel above me. My mind was racing–everything seemed alive in this place of death.

I thought I heard the angel scream.

I thought I heard my mother cry.

That baby.

That baby.

That baby.

That was what she had called it.

That baby.

Not ‘my’ baby.

Not ‘my’ child.

She was cold, but was she that cold?

The silence I needed to keep didn’t matter. The noises I thought I could hear seemed less threatening.

‘Joe! Joe!’ I shouted as I ran towards the gates and the wall.

I was running as fast as I could. Trying to get away from what I carried, the knowledge that I was bearing, rather than what I had left behind. Joe was clambering over the top just as I reached the entrance to the cemetery. I reached my arms up to his and, vaulting the wall, barely noticed the drop. Jack drove off whilst the passenger door was still open.

My mother’s cries rang in my ears–and I was sure I heard the fractured weep of a newborn soul.

They drove me on.

The end was coming.

Soft goose feathers encased in linen cradled my head, the pillow was worth every penny I had spent on it, for it lulled me into a sleep that, at many points, had seemed as if it would never come.

The alarm must have gone off but didn’t wake me. The desire to sleep late was too strong even for the threat of imminent death to break.

‘Get up you lazy toe-rag–your breakfast’s out and the Prof’s on his way.’ With one tug Joe had pulled the covers from my bed. Curling more tightly into the foetal position I tried to ignore him, until his words permeated my coma-like slumber.

Jumping up and down on one foot I pulled my socks on. My balance had improved by the time I was forcing my second leg into my jeans. The t-shirt from last night lay rumpled on my chair, lazily; I was about to put it on, then I recalled where I had worn it last, and what exactly I had considered doing.

I went the extra step and pulled a fresh one from the drawer. My hair could wait; getting rid of that
t-shirt could not. Holding it at arm’s length I walked into the kitchen, not stopping until I reached the bin. I threw it in.

Joe had a blue striped butcher apron on, he was frying sausages. Jack and Fishy were already seated round the table looking as if they had been up all night. Starving, I grabbed a piece of hot buttered toast from the pile. Joe slapped my hand.

‘Wait till it’s ready–have you washed your face this morning?’

Holding on to half a slice of toast, I stared in the large mirror on the wall behind the kitchen table. Mud smeared my face, from temple to chin. Grave mud. Slowly, I looked at my hands fearing confirmation of my thoughts. True enough my fingernails were still black from the baby’s burial place.

Standing at the table I threw the toast, aiming for the bin. I missed.

‘Clean yourself up–I’ll get this,’ Joe shouted. I was already on my way to the shower.

Through the streams of cold water running down my head I heard the muffled sound of the doorbell. My fingertips had been scrubbed so hard they bled, and it was difficult for me to dress quickly for my legs were still wet; the jeans got stuck halfway up my thighs.