Blood Lines

‘Do you mean Peggy?’

‘You do know her then?’

‘Everybody knows Peggy Malone – and I do mean everyone.’

‘Well, she looks a pretty settled item with Duncan Bancho.’

‘That’ll never happen.’

‘Well, I’m telling you it has.’

‘Peggy Malone would never settle with a man – she’s too into women for that.’

‘Don’t tell me she fancies me.’ I felt faintly uncomfortable – had all that bum wiggling been for me?

‘No – she’ll be shagging Duncan Bancho all right, I’m just saying he won’t be the only one.’

I didn’t want to ask Joe how he knew so much about Peggy Malone; after all, he had never claimed to be celibate.

I turned to face him, throwing myself against his chest and listening to the Water of Leith run past me over the stones. His leather jacket was soft against my face. I pressed in so hard I could hear his heartbeat. I had my excuse ready. I was only protecting myself from the midges if Joe asked why I was getting all cuddly and soppy. He didn’t.

I suddenly thought of something. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I knew you thought you needed a miracle – and when divine intervention is your only hope, you come to St Bernard’s Well.’

‘It’s never worked before,’ I whined.

‘It has – I told you; your spots have gone.’

We came to the well when I was thirteen to wash my face in the healing waters, because Joe told me pilgrims had been coming to this site since the thirteenth century.

‘Nothing happened, Joe, I was still acne-ridden and, at thirteen, spots are social suicide.’

‘And where’s your acne now, Brodie?’

‘It disappeared when I was sixteen.’

‘See? I told you it would work. Some miracles take longer than others. Your spots disappeared and your chest arrived – that seemed pretty miraculous to me.’

Was it my imagination or was his heart beating faster? Reluctantly, I pushed myself away from the safety of his arms. That was a bad habit of mine, rejecting protection. It was sod’s law that the midges really started to swarm around my head and munch on me.

‘I see they still like you then,’ Joe commented.

‘Parasites always do.’

I waved my hands around my face like a lunatic and, as a result, the little bastards promptly bit them. I climbed up the riverbank to the glorious pseudo-Roman temple that occupied the site of St Bernard’s sacred spring. Maybe, like the holy man, I had been restored by the waters, because I certainly sprinted up that bank. Waiting for Joe to join me, I leaned against one of the ten Doric pillars that supported the temple roof, and I stared at Hygieia, the goddess of health.

‘What’s happened to you now?’ shouted Joe. ‘Any chance you’ve perked up there? What’s wrong, Brodie?’

‘Everything, Joe; everything in my life is shite.’

‘Not everything – you can see and you can hear. Helen Keller couldn’t do any of those things and she danced on Broadway.’

‘At least she didn’t have to listen to people criticising her all the time. Did you ever think of that, Joe? I am just so tired of snide remarks.’

‘Well, do something about it, then. When did you become so pathetic?’

It was a question I had been asking myself since Duncan Bancho had arrested me. Somehow it seemed so much more insulting when asked by someone else.

‘You have choices,’ stated Joe.

‘What? What choices do I have? Private practice is becoming impossible, thanks to the Edinburgh Bar complaining about me to the Law Society. The complaints about me haven’t stopped – that’s all the mail I get from them these days. One way or another, it’ll ruin me.

‘The one thing keeping me going recently was the thought that I could escape private practice and become a sheriff. Now, thanks to Bancho, that can’t happen. Before becoming a judge I have to sign an affidavit that there are no court actions outstanding against me. I can’t do that. Even if Bancho fails in hauling my arse into the High Court on some trumped-up murder charge, he has promised he’ll still do me with wasting police time.’

‘You don’t need to be a lawyer, Brodie. There are other ways to earn a living.’ Joe’s whisper entered my ear, curled all the way down the inside of my neck, into my chest, where it stopped my heart.

And, for the first time in years, I realised I wanted to do this job. I’d been kidding myself. I loved fighting with the Crown Office. I relished my small victories of holding on to someone’s liberty. Punters who had been given every opportunity in life and squandered them annoyed me. I was only too aware that I could have gone either way. Each time I looked into a client’s face and heard about their tragic background, I thought, there but for the grace of God go I … Luckily for me, I’d had Mary McLennan. It was the thought of her – the woman I still considered to be my real mother, even if she hadn’t carried me in her belly and brought me into the world – that kept me going through all of this.

The clock on the church tower in St Stephen’s Street interrupted my thoughts as it chimed eleven bells. The sky was bright and clear. Summer in Edinburgh was a gorgeous time. The birds made noises as they flew overhead. They circled slowly before roosting in the trees that lined the walkway by the Water of Leith. I should have expected it. But even as I felt the wet blob land on my head I didn’t want to acknowledge what had happened.

‘That’s lucky, you’re destined for greatness,’ said Joe, smiling as he took his clean white hankie to my hair. ‘You’ve got to read the signs, Brodie. Before I spoke to you this morning, I thought you had two choices: take your grandad’s advice and become a sheriff, or be hounded out of the profession.’

‘Has he been speaking to you as well?’

Joe nodded.

The old man was nothing if not thorough.

‘Kailash wants me to get out as well. I suppose I should listen to her – after all, she is my mother.’

‘Your mother is dead, Brodie. I will never consider that woman to be your mother.’

I wished he hadn’t said that because, although I denied it to Joe, when the cell door slammed shut on me I was crying for my mammy, and it wasn’t Kailash Coutts. Joe saying what he had just made me feel her loss even more, because he had adored her too. Mary McLennan fought for me and she would have taken on Duncan Bancho too. But, as Joe had brought home to me, she was dead.