Grace Monroe - Blood Lines

‘Has Grandad been speaking to you?’ I said accusingly.

‘Maybe …’

‘Family trees, now cosy chats with my grandad? I’ll just nip out and get you some slippers and a pipe. The years are taking their toll.’

‘I’m not daft, Brodie – even if I wasn’t … keen on you,’ he raised his eyebrows at me as he found the right word, ‘I’m a journo, I’d have to be stupid to ignore everything in my line of work. Look at this …’

Jack pulled his laptop across from the table at the side of him and fired it up. My heart sank as I saw that the Journal of the Law Society was in his favourites list. He clicked on the icon and opened up an article I recognised only too well. The words in the piece were engraved on my mind, because – rightly or wrongly – I had felt they all applied to me. Complaints about falling standards were pretty predictable from the old guard who moaned every century or so when they were nudged out of their complacency by the recognition that there were others out there who wanted to drag law into this millennium. But this article was far more strident than usual. The author had chosen to remain anonymous, which was very rare in itself. They must be pretty well in with those at the top of the tree if they were being allowed to hide. Whoever was behind it – and I had my suspicions of who it might be – was on their high horse about the fact that they believed solicitors were looking on what they did as a business, not a profession. They rattled off a few sound bites about whether they were lawyers or ambulance chasers, which had got a few snippets of coverage from the papers. However, the most interesting – or irritating – point for me, was the remark about ‘rumbles’ from last month’s meeting of the Edinburgh Bar Association, where, allegedly, there had been talk about how one firm in particular was going to be reported to the Law Society for blatant touting.

‘Come on, Brodie, you know all about this – you’re one of the lawyers they’re particularly worked up about. You’re too successful – they prefer mediocrity to brilliance.’

I stared at him long enough for him to feel uncomfortable.

‘And gorgeousness too – obviously, gorgeousness too.’

‘Yeah, that’s it, Jack. They’re terrified of my brain and my thighs. In the real world, I think you’ll find it’s all down to what it’s always been about with lawyers – money and power.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said, ‘but ask yourself this – just how many clients can one firm represent without there being a conflict of interests?’

‘No idea, Jack, but I guess I’ll find out pretty soon.’

‘Alex Cattanach is keeping an eye on you. You don’t want head-honcho accountants on your tail at the best of times – you certainly don’t when they are telling everyone in town that they have enough to take you down. I’m usually all for smart-arses, Brodie, but you can’t keep annoying the Bar Association or they’ll take you out. They might be wankers … but they’re not stupid wankers. You can’t watch your back the whole time.’

‘You watch it for me then, Jack,’ I threw back at him and wiggled my arse right out his door, vowing never to return.

Not even I believed it.

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.’