All that Glitters

by Les Cowan

  “No, I’ve got a life, remember?”

  “Absolutely. And you don’t want to be walking around in body armour.”

  “Likewise.”

  “So what then? Ignore it?”

  “Can’t do that. It’s happened. I think I have to just go on as normal – or as normal as possible. We all know we might be hit by a bus…”

  “Or a tram more likely nowadays…”

  “Whatever. The point is we all live just a few heartbeats from ‘eternity’, whatever you take that to mean. I don’t intend to worry Gillian, James, or the girls with this. It may mean that it’s only me he wants to upset. And it might be nothing more than that – just basic harassment and intimidation. We know he loves mind games – remember that disgusting book he used with the girls? He likes to mess with your head. So if I allow that to happen, I’ve lost the battle already. I just have to take things one day at a time and let what happens happen.”

  “Sounds like a theme for a country song. Are you a country fan, David?”

  “Hate it with a perfect hatred.”

  “Well, there’s another thing we have in common. So we can’t give you a twenty-four-hour armed guard. You don’t want to be in a witness protection programme; you’re not going to try to move to Tahiti like that guy in The Truman Show. What will you accept?”

  “My mum used to say, ‘Take everything but blows.’ What have you got?”

  “Having run out of other options, I’ve one idea left. Hang on a minute.”

  McIntosh disappeared and came back clutching something small. He placed it gently on the table.

  “Remember the live broadcast from Duff Street? We gave Tati one of these. Obviously, you can’t broadcast live audio the whole time but when you push the clicker down that turns it on. It’ll give a reasonable audio feed over about a hundred yards. Beyond that all we get is a blip to say it’s been activated. If I give you this it would have to be on the understanding that you take it with you wherever you go – at least in the UK – that you don’t fire it off accidentally, if possible, and that you don’t try writing with it.”

  “Ok, I’m up for that. Did they not have something like this in The Man from UNCLE on the telly?”

  “Bit before my time I’m afraid,” McIntosh said with a grin.

  So, after some training and testing, David took the pen and did his level best to remember to take it with him and not use it to poke debris out of the plug hole in the kitchen sink. The next text came a week later. Deuteronomy 32:35 – “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.” That was a little more specific and more worrying so he decided to share the situation with Juan.

  “¡Hombre!” Juan exploded. “I still have some friends in Madrid who could sort this guy out!”

  “Yes, no doubt,” David concurred. “Me too. But not if we can’t lay hands on him. I’m not telling you for the sake of doing anything; it’s just to let you know. Please don’t tell Gillian. You can tell Alicia if you want – we’re more or less family anyway – but I don’t want to worry anyone else. And certainly not Mrs MacInnes or it’ll be on Reporting Scotland.”

  “Vale. De acuerdo,” Juan confirmed. “Just don’t take risks. Keep your eyes open.”

  Three days later Revelations 22:12 arrived: “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.” By this time David had the pen on his bedside table and routinely put it into the breast pocket of his shirt every morning and took it out at night. It was one Saturday evening when he’d just nipped downstairs to Ali’s and Ayeesha’s fantastic late-opening mini market, mainly for a box of their delicious marzipan sweets, that it happened. He got back in, pulled the door behind him, and somehow instinctively felt another human presence in the flat. Without even exploring, he took the pen out and clicked it. The tiny blue light on the clicker flashed once, twice, three times in the dark, confirming it was working. He put it back in his pocket and quietly laid his groceries down. What now? He’d always thought a baseball bat or a poker was traditional for intruders but how many households have a poker now? And he didn’t play baseball. He could have just quietly opened the door again and slipped back out but that would have meant sentencing himself to a never-ending cycle of uncertainty. Who was that man who just went through the entrance door ahead of him? Who was following him a little too closely as he crossed the Meadows on a dark, winter night? Who was sitting, back on, as they ate in a nice Italian restaurant? At least this would finish it one way or the other.

  The clinching factor was that he was alone. Gillian was out at music so whatever happened, at least she’d be safe. That was as it should be. He was the one who had connected with Spade, which had started the trail of connections that eventually brought Blatov down. Let the show begin. He quietly took his hat and coat off, went through to the living room, and switched on the light. Maxim Blatov was sitting at the table smiling serenely. He was fingering a heavy hand gun in front of him.

  “Pastor David,” he said warmly, “or should I say, David H: Pastor. From the first day we met I was sure our paths would cross again, that our destinies were somehow intertwined, and so it has transpired. How are you?”

  David sat.

  “I’ve been better,” he admitted. “I suppose I don’t need to ask what brings you here.”

  “Well, looking up old friends is always a pleasure. And since many of my old friends seem to be otherwise engaged, I’m here to catch up with you.”

  David was wishing he’d kept his coat on. A shiver ran through him. The curtains were still open and the orange sodium glow of the street lights outside cast an unnatural, unhealthy light into the room.

  “From the first time I heard you speak I’ve wanted to compliment you on your English,” David offered, stalling for time. “Hardly a trace of an accent and very natural expressions.”

  Blatov inclined his head.

  “Coming from a linguist and a teacher I appreciate that. I’ve worked very hard on my accent over the years. It was important to achieve my goals.”

  “Of deceiving your congregations?”

  Blatov made a mock scowl.

  “Now, now! You put it so crudely. Of starting and running a successful enterprise in Britain. Has it never occurred to you that a church is just another sort of enterprise? It has a mission and goals, it has a product – of sorts – it has a market of course, and customers. It has an infrastructure and staff. And sometimes it may have, how can I put it, ‘extension ministries’. You had that yourself in Madrid, I believe. All these houses for the addicts. You could say we had addicts’ houses as well, I suppose.”

  “With a difference.”

  “And how would you characterize the difference?”

  “Our addicts were trying to get clean. You were feeding an addiction.”

  “Nonsense.” Blatov sounded offended. “We were providing entertainment. And the churches do that too. All these racks and racks of ‘worship’ music, garage musicians not good enough to cut it commercially selling to the Christian market. And the books, the bookmarks, the notepads, the inspirational artwork. It’s all commerce – and you know it. We just don’t try to pretend. That’s the difference.”

  “And ruined lives? A by-product, or was that the main product?”

  “Not so ruined from what I hear. Apparently all the little girls have been substantially enriched by their experience. I mean, in tangible terms, not just by broadening their minds. That’s my money and I’m in the process of getting it back.”

  David found himself losing patience with the pretence, despite the need to spin things out. If the pen had sent a signal, if anyone was listening on a Saturday night, if they understood what the red light meant on the control panel, if they were able to raise a patrol, and if the patrol had a clue what they were supposed to do. So, in all likelihood, there wouldn’t be any cavalry coming over the hill and he was onl
y spinning out his last few minutes. He had been hoping for more. There was still a wedding to organize and a life to lead. A bullet from Maxim Blatov hadn’t so far been in the plan.

  “Excuse me – am I boring you, Pastor David?” Blatov said, still sitting across from him, still smiling but now also holding the gun. “I wouldn’t want that. And there’s no point waiting for help. DI McIntosh is on his holidays. I checked.”

  Yet again Blatov was showing that alarming gift for almost reading minds.

  “Just one thing, before you pull the trigger,” David said, racking his brains for what that one thing might be. He grasped a passing straw. “Have you never thought how things might have been if you’d been a genuine prophet, not just a sham?”

  “But I was a prophet, Pastor David,” Blatov protested with mock outrage. “I was. Have you not spoken to Alexander and Sonia? I changed their lives. And many others besides. Sandy only did what I asked because he owed me a debt of gratitude. I saved his marriage. I helped him get his job – and his house of course. Their family life improved immeasurably because of me. He says it himself.”

  “I know. But Sandy and Sonia have had to recover from discovering they’d been deceived, as have many others. Now they’re trying to find out what’s true. You could have told them that yourself.”

  “You mean to sincerely believe all that claptrap? I don’t, you don’t, not one in a thousand in pulpits around the land genuinely believe what they say on a Sunday morning. I think you’re asking too much there.”

  “There are things we struggle with – I grant you – but I do believe what I say. And if I have doubts I’m honest. I tell them where the problems lie. What I’m saying is that you are a man with incredible gifts. What good you could have done with them instead of what you have done – maybe what you’re still doing now, for all I know.” David wasn’t sure how long he could keep this up but he was giving it his best shot. Strangely, he seemed to have tapped into something that connected for Blatov, who still hadn’t pulled the trigger and, even while he was still smiling, was thinking it through. The sodium street light outside the window had started flickering and somehow added to the garish, ghostly fairground effect. David dimly recognized the revving of a diesel engine of whatever device they’d sent to repair it.

  “Are you seriously suggesting that I should believe all that Middle Eastern folklore?” Blatov demanded. “Adam and Eve, the walls of Jericho, the virgin birth, water into wine, and all the rest of it?”

  “Lots of intelligent people do,” David persisted. “Nobel prizewinners, MPs, judges, actors, businesspeople, scientists. It’s not automatically nonsense just because it’s outside your own experience.”

  Outside the window, over Blatov’s shoulder, David could see the platform of the cherry picker slowly rising, the two men in it unusually not wearing hi-vis vests. They had got that together pretty quickly. He only needed to keep Max talking for a few minutes more. Just a few minutes more. Blatov just laughed.

  “Well, we all know about MPs and judges,” he said mockingly. “I’ve fitted them out with some splendid evenings’ entertainment. So don’t talk to me about the moral intelligence of MPs and judges, or actors or businessmen, for that matter. Some of the worst. At least a bent copper is an honest man in a sort of way. They never pretended that what they were doing was for any other reason than personal gain or pleasure. Have I ever told you about the Christian minsters we accommodated? I could write a book! But anyway. None of this is to the point. I am not going to write a book about my experiences. And neither are you, David H: Pastor.”

  Finally, Maxim Blatov lost his smile as he raised the gun and pointed it without a hint of a tremor at David’s head. Without that mask of amiability he seemed to finally reveal the self-obsession and arrogance that lay beneath it all.

  Suddenly the room exploded. David threw himself to the floor. Once again fragments of glass covered the carpet and pricked his palms and face. The front door came crashing in and uniformed officers filled the room. Blatov lay slumped across the table, blood pouring from his head. A friendly hand was on David’s shoulder, a figure kneeling on the carpet beside him.

  “You ok?”

  He managed to raise and turn his head.

  “I thought you were on holiday.”

  “Had to make it as authentic as possible. I just had an idea that if I slipped out of the picture for a bit it might precipitate something. Here. I’ll help you up.”

  David sat up gingerly, brushing sharp needles of glass from his pullover and hands.

  “I think we can say it did. Well done in reacting so quickly.”

  “I’d introduce you to the marksmen but they like to keep out of the public eye.”

  As they were talking, a stretcher team came into the room and strapped Blatov onto it. A medic was applying pressure to the head wound while another opened a dressing pack. Then he was gone. David was just getting up when a vision of loveliness in a black strappy frock burst into the room, ignored everyone else, and almost squeezed the life out of him.

  “Thank God. Thank God you’re safe,” she said.

  When the dust had settled, McIntosh insisted on a debrief as soon as David had had a check-up. They offered him a sedative in A&E and he put it in the breast pocket of his shirt just in case. The pen was still there. I suppose I should turn this thing off, he thought. Don’t want another SWAT team shooting the place up. McIntosh explained that it seemed every time they were hopeful of tracking Blatov down it turned into another damp squib and he wasn’t where they thought he should be. The thought occurred that maybe he had regained access to police computers and was anticipating every move. So, they put a big thing into all the databases that the inquiry was being scaled down, that Blatov had been identified and detained by Belarusian law enforcement, and that McIntosh was taking three weeks’ leave while colleagues went to Minsk to do the interviews. The cherry picker had been a DC’s idea – if they could do it, why couldn’t we? David was about to start recounting his conversation with Blatov when McIntosh held a hand up and pressed a button on the unit in front of him. David heard himself remonstrating about how the mastermind’s gifts could have been put to better use.

  “Did you seriously mean that?” Gillian asked. “That, in another life he could have been a better man and used all of that for good?”

  “Are you joking?” David asked. “He was a maniac. All tares and no wheat, as far as I can see. But I could have been surprised.”

  “Right now, I just want us both to live and not be so surprised,” said Gillian. McIntosh offered them a lift home but they turned it down.

  “I think we’ll walk,” David said. “I’d like to just walk through my city. Not to have to look over my shoulder. Be a normal bloke again.”

  “Whatever you are, you are not a normal bloke, David Hidalgo. That’s what I love about you,” Gillian whispered.

  She kissed him lightly, then they gathered up their things and walked out of the police station into the Edinburgh evening. The air was sweet and smelled slightly of hops.

  EPILOGUE

  Several days later, on the other side of town, Sir Patrick Stenhouse sat at his desk – not the desk he had used in the Scottish Office up until just six months ago but the smaller, more personal one at home. A formal portrait of himself and Lady Mhorag on the day he got his gong stood at an angle on one corner. An old school photo of the twins matched it on the other side, and a copy of the Evening Times was open in front of him. A Macmillan Cancer Support letterhead peeped out from underneath. He let out a long sigh and looked first at one photo then the other.

  As far as any of his well-connected and well-off friends and neighbours knew, he was a thoroughly decent sort. Not perhaps the ultimate high flier but a safe pair of hands in uncertain times. For more than a decade he had successfully steered a series of simultaneously dull and overconfident ministers – a dangerous combination – through the rapidly changing landscape of Scottish politics. Not something achieve
d simply on the basis of an expensive education and good RP vowels – though both of these he certainly had. Then the end to a long and distinguished career had finally brought the customary tap on the shoulder and change to his letterhead on retirement. Mhorag had only made it to Buckingham Palace with a bucketload of morphine so she could stand the pain, but the downside was only being partly aware of where she was and why. The twins saved the day and were wonderful throughout, allowing him to do the necessary with a fixed smile and the expected bonhomie. By the time they got back to Edinburgh he just drove straight back to the hospice and saw her into bed. He was called later that night and by 4 a.m. it was all over. Her last words were “I’m glad I went – you deserved it” and “You’ve made me very happy.”

  Some men would have kept a stiff upper lip, spent more time at the allotment, or turned to the Famous Grouse for company. Sir Patrick, as he now had to think of himself, was in reality very different from his calm and collected public persona and found it impossible to dissemble. He also hated gardening and drank only spring water. But he needed company. Not chummy golf club company and certainly none of Mhorag’s friends, all pearls and bridge or else walking shoes and spaniels. He needed anonymity. Someone who knew nothing of his past life and did not judge. Someone with whom he could have some simple pleasure to dull the pain. Someone who could remind him of Mhorag when they still had time on their side.

  How does a man in his sixties find such a thing? Obviously he pays for it. He found out about the House from multiple sources: rumours in the press, banter online, whispered, abruptly halted conversations by the water cooler. When he did finally make contact, at once terrified but also desperate for distraction, he knew full well how it might end. And so it now was proving.

  He was never under any illusions about Tati’s circumstances but always tried to make it as easy for her as he could, or at least not as brutal as he supposed some of her clients would be, though how sex for money under duress could ever be anything but brutal he couldn’t imagine. Still, inflicting gratuitous pain revolted him so he tried to be gentle. She was exactly what he needed. Young, delicate, utterly lovely in a sweet elfin way but also intelligent, articulate, and sensitive. She asked nothing about who he was or why he was there but he rapidly found he had grown to trust her and he wanted to talk. In fact, the talking turned out to be much more therapeutic than the sex. He made up a career and a jovial, simple persona as an excuse for his healthy finances but about Mhorag he told the truth – more than he intended and certainly more than was safe. About Tati he asked nothing because he could guess. The couple of occasions she asked something of him he was grateful to comply. Getting a couple of keys cut. Posting a letter. It was the least he could do.