“My husband and I, we no longer get on.” She bowed her head again. “We very much don’t get on. You see, he has a temper.”
Black waited.
“He’s got a very important job. Sometimes it gets to him. The pressure, I mean. I can understand.” She looked up suddenly. “I really can.”
“What can you understand?” asked Black gently.
“Why he beats me.”
Black did not reply. She blames herself.
“But I don’t have the strength anymore,” she continued, voice faltering. “Last night was… particularly bad. I packed a suitcase this morning. He doesn’t know I’ve left. I’ve got a room in a hotel. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“What he’s going to do?”
“When he finds I’ve gone. I’ve never done this before. He’s a powerful man.”
“Who is your husband?”
“George Reith. Lord Reith. You may have heard of him.”
Black knew him. Knew of him. Lord Reith. Prominent High Court judge. Dispenser of justice. Upholder of law. Now beater of women.
“You’re right,” agreed Black. “He’s a powerful man.”
“Which is why I’m here.” Her shoulders trembled. She started to sob – quiet, desperate tears. She opened a handbag on her lap and pulled out paper tissues, which she used to dab her eyes underneath her glasses.
Black regarded her for several seconds, then spoke.
“Why me, Mrs Reith? There are a hundred lawyers out there. Good divorce lawyers, all of them capable. With resources. I’m amazed you could even find my office. I have one part-time secretary, and I don’t own a computer. Plus, I work from a shithole. So why me?” Black asked the question, but had a fair idea of the answer.
“My husband will make a fearful enemy. Those good divorce lawyers you mention? He knows them all. And they know him. No one’s going to take him on. No one would dare. I’m…” She frowned as she searched for the right word. “…toxic.”
“You have rights. We have a legal system.”
She straightened her back, reached up, removed her glasses. Both eyes were purple, her right eye badly swollen, reduced to a slit, protruding an inch from her face. “He is the legal system!”
Black took a deep breath. “You need a lawyer he doesn’t know and who has nothing to lose. Is that it?”
She shook her head. She put her sunglasses back on. “I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time, Mr Black. Thank you for seeing me. This is no use.” She started to rise.
Black remained seated. “I’ll help you, Diane. But you have to understand something. There are certain cases where the law is no use, and the courts can’t assist. That’s when we look for different remedies.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. I’ll take your case.”
He asked questions, making notes with a pencil on a lined notepad. She gave quiet, faltering answers, and gradually her story unfolded – one of woe and dread. Existing from minute to minute, hour to hour. Constant beatings. Constant humiliation. Constant fear. Reith was a serial abuser.
One thing Black knew for sure: the law did not protect the weak. The courts were used as tools for the powerful. Men like George Reith understood only one message.
And Black believed he was the man to deliver it.
Diane got up to go, hesitated.
“Beware, Mr Black. My husband is a monster.”
Black nodded, but did not reply.
He was in the habit of dealing with monsters.
3
Black visited the village of Eaglesham once every month, for one specific purpose. The place conjured up many memories. One memory, above all others. One which was particularly horrific, which plagued Black every hour of every day, the details branded into his mind, clear and stark – the day he arrived home in the middle of a cold March afternoon, to their ivy-clad cottage, to find his wife and daughter lying dead. Voices silenced. Smiles obliterated by pistol shots fired at close range.
Once every month, he came back. To visit the cemetery on the outskirts. Where they were buried. A place set back from the road, half hidden behind silver birch, in the shadow of ancient oak trees, enclosed by low, red sandstone walls.
After Diane Reith left his office, Black had a sudden, strong desire to be there. He decided to go, leaving Tricia in charge. He drove the ten-mile journey. He bought flowers at a corner shop on the road there. He arrived at the cemetery. The day was warm and bright. It seemed to Black, when he came to this place, a stillness settled. Any wind lessened; any rain slackened. The air was tinged with… what? Black often wondered. A bleak melancholy, perhaps. A sadness he was unable to articulate.
He stood by the headstone and laid the flowers. The words on the inscription were simple and true:
Jennifer Black
1971-2010
My love, my heart
Merryn Black
2005-2010
A moonbeam
Lighting up the dark
He gazed at the piece of stone. After serving with the Parachute Regiment, and then the Special Air Service, he had come to the conclusion the world was mad. Mad, but not lost. He’d found Jennifer. They had Merryn. He had a family. Then, the madness returned, his family killed.
He took a long, deep breath, smelling the freshly mown grass, felt the sun on the back of his neck, heard the trill and chirp of birds.
Diane Reith had come to him. She needed help. She was deeply afraid. She had asked for sanctuary.
Black possessed many skills. He had been trained to survive. He had been trained to kill in almost any situation imaginable, by the very best, to become the very best. And most of all, he had nothing to lose, because he had lost everything already.
Diane Reith had set off a spark. Black wanted to give the world back a little of the madness. He felt it owed him. It was something he excelled at. It was something he craved.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
He left. He had preparations to make.
4
Lord Reith. Black did some background checks. Reith sat in the High Court of Justiciary, the supreme criminal court in Scotland.
