Dark Angels

‘I feel worse than I look.’

‘Well they do say beauty comes from within, so try to cheer up.’ Lavender smiled at me as she handed me a steaming cup of coffee. In that instant I could have forgiven her anything. Even the fact that she was sitting in my chair didn’t bother me–neither of us harboured any illusions over who really ran the show in my office. Lawyers may be the public face, but the real power lies with their secretaries.

I sipped gingerly on the burning liquid, staring out of my office window at Edinburgh Castle, as Lavender began to read out today’s cases from the diary.

The court diary is the most important record in a legal firm–a missed court date or a misplaced trial is a sack-able offence. The consequences of such a mistake can’t be overstated–it is imprisonment for the client, and even worse for the solicitor. If a punter does not turn up at his trial date, a warrant will be taken for their arrest–if the lawyer doesn’t attend they face contempt of court charges.

Going over the court diary was a ritual that Lavender and I did every morning at 7.30a.m. if we could, we gave it the respect it was due even when a huge case like that of Kailash Coutts was going to blow everything out of the water. So much of my time was going to be spent on her, that I needed to ensure that nothing else was going to suffer.

‘How many trials?’ I asked Lavender.

‘One jury, and a continued High Court job. Robert Dunlop already has his papers, he’ll do it for you, and I’m sending the first year trainee in to sit with him. On top of that,’ added Lavender, ‘we’ve got five summary trials and two of them are in Kirkcaldy.’ Her voice got lower, and although she didn’t exactly mumble, she certainly hurried through the next part of her list of points.

‘I instructed Eddie last night and I dropped the files off at his house.’

She fumbled with the pages of the diary as colour flooded her face. I didn’t have the energy to tease Lavender about her unrequited love for Eddie Gibb. Eddie was a brilliant court lawyer whose genius at the bar was exceeded only by his excess in the bar. I was never quite sure whether it was me or Lavender who kept forgiving Eddie his misdemeanours. I do know that Lavender had to pull him out of the pub on so many occasions we had a code name for it–Eddie was in court nine.

Most of the Sheriffs knew about Eddie’s difficulty and forgave him for it. I reckon that we all knew we had a bit of Eddie in us.

‘You know I like Eddie as much as the next person, Lav, but we’re shooting ourselves in the foot to put him in Kirkcaldy on his own.’

‘So Sheriff Robertson hates him? He’s not too fond of you either, Brodie.’

‘I’m not talking personalities here, Lav–if Eddie has hit the bevvy at lunch time who’s going to pull his arse out the fire? You can’t be in Edinburgh running the show, and Kirkcaldy watching over lover boy.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Brodie–I had to keep other agency lawyers on standby to deal with Edinburgh, leaving you free to cover the custodies–you didn’t call me last night to let me know if you were overstretched and I didn’t want another lecture on “Delectus Personae”. I did my best, and I think Eddie can do this.’

Lavender’s blonde curls bobbed merrily–in contradiction to her mood. Her forty-three-year-old face was untroubled by wrinkles, fat was the filler she preferred to keep her face smooth, and it suited her. She was gorgeous and I loved her like a sister. Never a size 8, her figure was a walking Rubensesque fantasy. She generally drew men to her like moths to a flame, but Eddie’s love of the booze meant that he always seemed one step away from her, even though he relied on her so much.

Lavender knew as much as any solicitor on the team at Lothian & St Clair. She understood what it meant to build a successful criminal practice, and Delectus Personae meant that there were some clients who would only stay with the firm if I represented them. Her intuitive instincts were buzzing last night–she knew we had a client; a Mr Big who would demand my undivided attention.

She just didn’t know who it was yet–I hadn’t summoned the courage to tell her.

Lavender was indispensable to me. After the Kailash affair, the firm’s serious financial trouble meant that my life hung in the balance–the bank balance of Lothian & St Clair. The only way for me to find freedom was to make the firm financially successful again. To do this I took on every case I could–but there was one difficulty. Although I was prepared to work every hour outside the office, I couldn’t be in two places at once. I didn’t have the resources to take on extra bodies, so I had a team of agency solicitors. Agency lawyers are like Japanese Ronin–Samurai without masters. They are lone warriors who owe allegiance to no one. The Japanese didn’t trust them–but I didn’t have a choice. Anyway, it was generally left to Lavender to keep them in check.

She interrupted my thoughts. ‘I’ll find out you know.’

‘What?’

‘The secret you’re trying to keep from me–I’ll find out. I always do.’

It was true, no one could have any privacy whilst Lav was about. You simply had to accept it because, as well as running my life for me, her gift of hacking into computers was so useful at other times.

It all started with eBay. Lavender began buying and then selling. Buying from the fifteen-year-old shoplifters and then passing it off on the net. Quite the entrepreneur. No one was any the wiser and her computer skills developed until her natural inquisitiveness got the better of her.

There was a man–with Lavender every story could begin that way–and she wanted to know more about him. When does infatuation become stalking, as she is so fond of saying? Anyway, this man was interested in computers so Lavender took a course on computer security–how to keep company firewalls safe from hackers. To build firewalls you have to know how to take them down, and the secrets hidden behind those walls were irresistible to her.

The mystery man worked in a city bank, and the Metropolitan police completely misunderstood Lavender’s interest in the bank’s security systems. The outcome was leaving her former life in London behind and a change of name–Lavender Ironside, stolen from a gravestone in a Highland graveyard. We were made for each other. Lavender needed me as much as I needed her.

I looked over to see what was keeping her so busy.

‘You could at least wait until I left the room,’ I said.

‘You’re showing no signs of going,’ she retorted, unashamedly rifling through my briefcase. ‘You’re so untidy–don’t you realise I have to try and make some sense of all this scribble?’ She pulled my notes closer to her face.

‘Kailash Coutts?’ Her eyes narrowed in contempt.

‘I knew we were desperate to get clients, Brodie, but I didn’t for one moment think things were this bad.’

‘How do you think I feel? I’ve been up half the night because of that woman.’

Why didn’t you say “no,” then? You’re the one who’s prostituting yourself if you can’t say “no”.

‘I tried–but Roddie wouldn’t let me. Well, his wife had some say in it too.’

‘I hope that sounds as pathetic to you as it does to me,’ she retorted.

‘Look at me, Lav–look at my life.’

‘You haven’t got one–you work all the time trying to dig yourself out of a hole caused by Kailash Coutts. A hole that’s getting bigger. We’ve got one jury and three summary trials plus the custodies to be covered in Edinburgh today, and it could all blow up in our face because of that woman. Again.’

‘Well, here come the cavalry.’

I could see movement through the glass panel in my office door.

In they trooped.

Robert Girvan–smart and sharp as any bankrupt could be. He had a restricted practising certificate because his senior partner had messed up the firm’s accounts and, like me, Robert was jointly and severally liable for the debts. He was my warning. If at any time I felt like bunking off, I thought of Robert and a shiver ran down my spine. We both knew that was why I gave him work.

Danny Bishop–nice guy shame about the face. He was scarred from his cheek to his chin. Legend had it that he went out with his client’s girlfriend and was offered the choice–his balls or his face. Most people knew that although he had chosen the latter, the experience had taken his balls anyway.

The trainee was following him, smart-suited and relatively eager, she wasn’t to know that they all looked the same to me; even the ones who were pretty much my own age.

Trailing up the rear, both physically and metaphorically, was David Bannatyne. He had his own firm until he left his wife and developed a habit of picking up young men and taking them home only to find that they had loaded his gear into his car and driven off into the sunset without him.

These were my Ronin, the ones who were going to save the day. In spite of their personal problems, if you could actually get them into court, they had a flair not often found in the more clerical amongst us.

They perched their backsides on any available ledge and looked at me expectantly. As was usual, Lavender handed out the coffee before I dispatched the files and instructions for the day’s work. I started with the trainee.

‘HMA v Marjorie Pirie; it’s a High Court trial. Donnie Dunlop has already been instructed and he appeared on the last date in court–it was continued from the fifth of June because a crucial prosecution witness went into premature labour. It’s straightforward. Just do exactly as counsel tells you and don’t bad mouth the judges to the client.’

‘Why would I do that?’ the youngster protested.

‘A friend of mine agreed with a divorce client that the Sheriff was a bastard for giving his wife an interim aliment settlement of £250 per week.’

‘So?’

David Bannatyne shook his head and got up to refill his coffee.