Dark Angels by Grace Monroe

confidential?’
    Patch turned to look at me. He seemed relieved that I had finally asked the question which needed to be spoken.
    ‘I understand that someone–I don’t know who–will have a “watching brief”.’
    I could tell that Patch would have felt more comfortable discussing such matters privately. Guilt stabbed at me. Like Fishy, he had been neglected by me. I figured he felt he had to speak to me now, or he might not get the chance again until the trial. It wasn’t a wise decision. A watching brief meant overseeing how events unfolded, and if anything untoward were to come out then the individual given it would have to act. What form that action would take, I had no idea. A watching brief certainly explained Sheriff Strathclyde’s extraordinary behaviour at the judicial examination.
    Kailash Coutts was a powder keg, and everyone knew that she would not go down alone–as long as she didn’t take me with her, I felt I could cope.
    The whirr of the blade and the crunch of bone brought me back to reality. Patch had switched the tape-recorder back on and was cutting through Lord Arbuthnot’s ribcage. Snap, snap, and he was in. Stealthily, like a burglar, he reached inside, droning on into his microphone. I preferred not to listen, concentrating instead on blowing air onto my heated face.
    Scales were on the bench beside him. He plucked the still heart out of the body and placed it to be weighed. The ancient Egyptians believed that after death, your heart was weighed against a feather; if your heart was heavier you were not admitted to heaven. They understood that you had to receive joy and give joy, and they believed you should be rewarded or punished accordingly. To my fanciful eye, Lord Arbuthnot’s heart looked heavy on those scales. He didn’t give or receive joy from his father. Had he shared such an emotion with anyone else in his life?
    ‘I hardly knew the man in life–I didn’t like him then and I certainly don’t like him after dissecting him.’
    Patch sounded disapproving and it snapped me back to attention. It wasn’t hard to breach his moral code because of the strict tenets of his religion. In fact, it was a surprise to me that he tolerated my behaviour, although he did often say it was because I knew no better. I was sure that wasn’t a compliment.
    ‘As I said before, to have saved this man’s life would have been so straightforward. It turns out it was onlya question of time anyway.’ None of the condemnation had left Patch’s voice.
    I followed him to the metal side table where he had placed the heart. Scalpel in hand, he progressed with the dissection, shaving slivers from the heart. He stained the shavings and invited us to look down the lens.
    Chivalry has no place in law. Frank Pearson moved forward to examine the slide first. Nervously, he cleared his throat, and again he coughed. Either he didn’t know what he was looking at or he was reluctant to say.
    ‘So, Frank, what do you see?’
    It was like an oral exam at university. I shifted uncomfortably. So many years had passed–he wouldn’t be able to remember. I didn’t want to risk putting myself in the same position.
    ‘Some fibres are missing their nuclei, indicating necrosis or death of the tissue.’
    ‘Very good, Frank.’
    Patch turned to face me.
    ‘Now, Brodie, what else can you see?’
    Reluctantly, I looked down the powerful microscope.
    ‘There’s inflammation, old scarring, and narrowing of the coronary arteries.’
    Lord Arbuthnot was sixty-four when he died–nothing unusual so far. I was missing something. There had to be evidence in the heart tissue of wrongdoing, that was the only phenomenon that could have incited Patch’s moral indignation.
    ‘Trust your intuition.’ He used to drum that into me. ‘It comes from your subconscious mind that knows far more than your little brain.’
    I relaxed, and spoke more freely. It was obvious once I stopped looking at a Law Lord and just saw a