Blood Lines

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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