Watcher (8 page)

Danube Street, Edinburgh
Sunday 23 December, 6.30 p.m.

The Watcher smashed the streetlights and huddled in the dark to wait – he was used to that. All good things come to those who wait. He kicked the shattered plastic into the gutter; he couldn’t afford to inadvertently stand on it. He knew he had to be extra vigilant, although the noise from the casino covered any din he made and he made sure to stand at least one hundred yards from the entrance. Kailash’s employees were always on the lookout for those who would stalk her doorstep, either as a police informer or a pervert. The Watcher was nothing if not careful.

He placed his gloved hands over his mouth and blew; there was no warmth left in him to thaw his fingers. His lips were frozen. It was even too cold to blow rings with his breath. The wind howled down the street. He felt an icy chill run up the back of his thighs as a gust lifted the flaps of his overcoat. He clenched his teeth and heard his breath hiss:
this feeling had better just be the cold
.

He had arrived at the corner of Danube Street just in time to see Brodie disappear into the high rollers’ casino. Joe kept the journo and the old woman on the doorstep longer than the rest of the party, allowing The Watcher time to choose the perfect viewing point. His heart fluttered – things were going according to plan. He felt a surge of pride that he’d tracked her down so quickly.

The feeling of elation was fleeting.

For a few long moments after the party had disappeared, Glasgow Joe remained on the front stoop, staring up and down the street, searching the darkness. The Watcher held his breath. A tingle of excitement ran through his loins – he was unused to being the hunted. He had to fight the urge to run. From inside the casino, a voice called, ‘Joe!’ Reluctantly, the former assassin turned to answer it, granting The Watcher a stay of execution.

As the door slammed shut, The Watcher allowed himself to think that maybe things were going his way after all; he deserved a break. The snow was falling thick and fast. He was unable to move from his hiding place – the snow formed a virgin perimeter around the casino and his footprints would be obvious as there was no other traffic on the street.

The lamppost was covered in a thick layer of frost. He spat on the end of his glove and traced doodles on the ice with his finger. All the time he whistled softly and pictured how it would be. He felt a familiar stirring – it was never too cold to dampen his ardour for the plan. The Watcher settled himself down, his heart rate slowed as he took himself on a mental journey from the last time. He kept each experience in a separate room in his mind – only he had the key and, when he chose, he unlocked the room and let the exquisite memories unfold.

Years of training had enabled him to recall every minute detail. He sniffed the still night air deeply – underneath the aroma of snow, he imagined fear intermingled with sweat and cheap perfume. Although smell was undoubtedly his favourite sense, he also enjoyed remembering the tiny whimpers that escaped from deep within their bodies. His memories came flooding into his mind – perhaps, after all, the taste of salty skin was his favourite.

There was no sign of life. All was quiet, except for the sound of the wind rushing down the Georgian street, rattling windowpanes, rustling through the bare trees that lined the Water of Leith and provided his cover.

Kailash’s girls opened the shutters – obviously the kitchen must have been too hot. In the darkness, the light from the basement of the casino reminded him of watching a drive-in movie. The girls had come to enjoy a coffee break – The Watcher could see them in their underwear. His hand went to his trousers as he felt himself stir to life. He unzipped his fly as the red silk gown fell off the girl he watched; he stroked himself and stared at her. Now he envisioned what it would be like if she wrapped those long bare legs around him. He stroked himself faster still. He grunted loudly in his head, but stopped himself just before he ejaculated:
he who
lives without discipline lives without honour
.

He stood chewing his lips. It seemed like an hour, but in reality it was only a matter of minutes before the front door swung open and the girl kicked the old woman down the steps.

The Watcher heard every word.

‘
Vacu draculi!
’

The Watcher whispered it under his breath, interpreting Contessa’s words. He sniggered and repeated the words – ‘You are the devil’s cow!’ So, that’s the way it was. It was no surprise to him; there was no evil that his mind could not conceive of. He had little or no faith in his fellow man. The Watcher knew the score from these shouted words. He had heard the old babushka’s story increasingly often in recent years – a worthless daughter had suddenly become the family’s greatest asset for the price her body bought in Bucharest. The girl would be taken out of the country to work in a brothel. After she had paid off the initial money outlaid to her family, her new owners would take rent from her and send any remaining pennies home to the family. The babushka had travelled to Scotland to slap the wretched girl for withholding the money.

She picked herself up out of the gutter and brushed the snow from her coat. As she retied her headscarf, The Watcher noticed a ribbon of blood running down her face from a cut above her eye. Slowly, she lifted her hands and wiped it away. For a few long seconds, she stared at her bloody palms and fingers. A little surprised, The Watcher opened his eyes wider as he waited for her to seek absolution. Reaching into her deep pockets, she pulled out a string of rosary beads. Limping slowly along Danube Street, she passed close to The Watcher’s hiding place; he heard her prayers.

He guessed that she was praying for herself.

Court Meeting, Lothian and St Clair W.S.
Monday 24 December, 7.30 a.m.

By virtue of rising at the crack of dawn, I’d finally made good my promise to check out the mysterious website Joe and Bancho had been discussing, and I had only one word to go on: ‘Hobbyist’.

I don’t know what I was expecting – disgruntled legal clients bad-mouthing myself and others of my illustrious profession perhaps?

It took a lot of Googling, but the only Hobbyist I could find appeared to be an American-based ‘adult’ site where men with bizarre and violent tendencies got their rocks off discussing the adventures they’d enjoyed with prostitutes – sometimes very young and not always willing prostitutes. I comforted myself that, as usual when men discuss their fetishes, at least 50 per cent of it could probably be dismissed as fantasy and wishful thinking.

It certainly wasn’t my reading of choice, and I was about to give up and log off when I caught sight of my name. One of the dirty old fuckers had been trying to get in touch with a ‘Brodie McLennan’. Okay, it’s not a common name, but I reasoned there must be at least a few Brodie McLennans in the States or on the worldwide web. I checked the date of the entry. Six months ago. Before I could read any more – not that I really wanted to, having established that I clearly wasn’t the vice girl he was looking for – Lavender staggered into my office labouring under the weight of a tray of coffees and a basket of muffins.

‘I don’t pay you enough to turn up to work on your wedding day!’ I shouted to her, while quickly closing down my web access. She held a handful of napkins between her teeth – it was bliss: for once she was unable to answer me.

At Lothian and St Clair, we’re family. It’s a small court practice and if it’s a day when the court is sitting, at least one of us has to be there. My well-publicized fights with the Law Society and the Edinburgh Bar Association meant we had difficulty getting solicitors to work for us, so our choices were limited.

Eddie was nervous about the wedding ceremony, so he came in for me to hold his hand. Lavender didn’t trust us to appear on time for the ceremony, so she had everything arranged.

I pulled the plastic lid off a takeaway coffee cup. ‘I asked for a skinny latte!’ I said, grabbing a bran and molasses breakfast muffin. I dropped it like a hot potato as Lavender smacked the back of my hand.

‘The dress is a size ten. I told you at the time you’d never stick to that diet – you lost twenty pounds on that bloody Atkins Diet, which, by the way, we all had to suffer for with your cranky cravings for carbs, and now you look as if you’ve put on thirty. Skimmed milk isn’t going to cut it, Brodie.’

‘Well, this won’t make much difference either then.’ I grabbed the muffin out of the basket, making sure to take a big bite before she could snatch it and give it to someone else. I wandered over to the outsize mirror. Breathing on it, I pulled my sleeve over my hand, and rubbed.

‘Bloody hand prints – again,’ I said.

‘Better than bum prints!’ She laughed. Lavender’s natural curiosity had led her to develop skills that would have given Sherlock Holmes a run for his money. She had been unable to settle until she’d uncovered the origin of the strange body prints I periodically found on the mirror. Apparently, a security guard and a cleaner were having an affair – and they were rather partial to watching themselves. It was bad enough that illicit sex was taking place in my office whilst I wasn’t getting any, but these two?

‘There’s nothing on at court today,’ Lavender told me. ‘A few custodies that Danny can cover – you and Eddie have a deferred sentence each. Get your arse into court early – ask the fiscals to call your cases first. I want you in and out of court – you
will
be at the Sheraton no later than ten thirty a.m., Brodie!’ she ordered. Lavender ran the office like a border collie herding a flock of sheep – I met Eddie’s eyes and held them. We were having our heels nipped – if we knew what was good for us, we’d obey her commands to the letter.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ I asked Lavender. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the bride to see the groom on the morning of the wedding?’

‘I know what you two would get up to if I was stupid enough to leave you to your own devices – I’d be left standing at the altar while you acted like this was just any working day,’ she replied.

There was one cup of coffee remaining on the tray. Eddie, Lavender, Danny the agency lawyer and Louisa the trainee were all sipping away in companionable silence watching the winter sun struggle to rise above the Castle Rock. The door creaked open – Grandad was here. At first it irritated me, him hanging about the office controlling things, demanding to see me rehearse my jury speeches – but I couldn’t deny that I had improved under his tutelage; so much so that the challenge had gone out of defence work. Maybe it was having Connie in my life, but suddenly I wanted the streets of Edinburgh to be safe so she could go out without the fear of being attacked by some little shit I had got off.

Grandad kissed me good morning, smelling of expensive gentlemen’s cologne, the type that was probably in vogue in the 1940s. His eyes glittered and he clapped his hands excitedly; he couldn’t wait to get down to business. He had made it clear that the only thing better than walking Lavender down the aisle would have been to have me on his arm – under the strict proviso that he approved of my choice of groom, of course. Everyone knew that would never happen.

‘Did Joe phone you yet?’ Grandad asked.

‘No.’ I narrowed my eyes, suspicious of his motives. It was no secret that Grandad liked Joe, but not enough for me to marry him – again. ‘Have you heard the news this morning?’

‘Er, yes,’ I answered. ‘Why?’

‘Not the stuff on the radio or TV – the real stuff. According to Joe, they’ve caught the Ripper – it was too late to catch the morning edition of the papers and they’re trying to keep the media circus in check until after the indictment hearing.’

‘Why did he call you?’ Eddie Gibb asked Grandad. ‘No disrespect, Your Lordship, but you’re hardly bosom buddies.’

‘No offence taken, Eddie,’ Grandad beamed, his ancient yellow teeth glinting. ‘DI Bancho asked for my phone number – quite rightly Joe wasn’t prepared to give it to him without checking with me first.’

I looked at him quizzically – he really was muscling in on my life. I coughed, inviting him to explain further. Lifting an eyebrow, he turned and faced me. His look told me he wasn’t used to being questioned, silently or otherwise, but on this one occasion he would do what I wanted. Arrogant old bastard.

‘This case has to be handled correctly. Bancho cannot allow trial by media – if the press isn’t tightly reined in, then the case could be dropped if the defence demands a mistrial.’

‘So Bancho has finally succeeded,’ Danny whistled through his teeth.

‘Don’t be so sure. After all, it’s Bancho we’re talking about – I’m willing to take a bet he’s got the wrong man, and that he won’t care too much as long as he gets a conviction,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so hard on him. Bancho’s a better cop than you give him credit for – if he was such a dunderheid, Brodie, Lothian and Borders police wouldn’t have sent him to Quantico on that profiling course,’ Eddie said.

‘Profiling my arse – how hard can it be if they sent Bancho? What are they going to say? That the perp is single, Caucasian, a white-collar worker approaching forty who lives with his mother?’ I said, looking around for support. I didn’t find it in their eyes. ‘I take it back – he lives with his redheaded mother.’ I smiled and sarcastically threw a tenner on the table. ‘Put your money where your mouth is,’ I told them.

Danny McCabe laid a ten-pound note on the desk, as did Lav. ‘I’ll bet it’s a woman,’ she said. ‘Only a woman is smart enough to have escaped detection for so long.’

‘I hate to disagree with you, darlin’ – but serial killers are overwhelmingly male and of European descent,’ said Eddie, throwing in another tenner. ‘But my money’s on Bancho.’

‘Eddie’s right … it’s a man and he’s white, he hates women and he’s pretty much killing in his own ethnic group, but Bancho has made a mistake if he tries to impose archetypes on this guy – you need to be open. The Ripper is a thrill seeker because he’s playing with the media and he’s targeting prostitutes, so he could be on a mission to exterminate certain types from society,’ I said. ‘The red hair thing is creepy. I think he does live with his redheaded mother.’

‘You’ve more money than sense, the lot of you,’ Grandad sounded off, but he was right. We weren’t exactly model profilers. ‘And you have other things to be thinking of today,’ he emphasized, looking at Lavender. She sniffed in the background and pointed to her watch. It was 8.45 a.m. and she wanted us to be the first lawyers at the Sheriff Court. Eddie threw my court gown to me. I caught it and lifted the two files Lavender had laid out. I was going to walk to court with Eddie, then I had to meet Kailash, Lavender, Connie and Malcolm at the Sheraton hotel. I was already imagining myself in the spa, lying back in the Jacuzzi, quaffing champagne. I knew that Kailash had other ideas though. Malcolm was a fabulous stylist and my mother wanted us to look our best. She didn’t have any formal photographs of Connie and me together, and this was her chance. I was halfway out of the door when the phone rang. Lavender’s face fell; reluctantly she raised her arm and curled her index finger. I took the receiver from her.

‘Hello?’

‘Brodie McLennan?’ I knew it wasn’t St Leonards; as far as I knew they didn’t employ any policemen with American accents. ‘Adie Foster here.’

I may never have met Adie Foster – but, like everyone else in the country, I’d heard of him.