Highlander

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Just then Nash stepped from behind a curtain and crossed the floor. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  Rachel had flushed again. ‘Um - this is Brenda Wyatt, Mr Nash.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ve already met, Rachel.’

  ‘I said you were out.’

  ‘That’s what I asked you to say to visitors.’ He turned to Brenda again. ‘I get all sorts of weirdos coming in here with junk they think is worth a million bucks. Rachel is my filter. You mustn’t blame her for lying to you. She hates it - you can see that by her face.’

  Brenda suddenly melted towards the other woman, seeing the need to block visitors as an unpleasant, if necessary task.

  ‘What can I do for you anyway?’ he asked. She looked him straight in the eyes.

  ‘I’d like some advice.’

  ‘Are you the sort of person who takes advice?’

  She turned and picked up a figurine, an African statuette made of ebony. It was smooth, and surprisingly light. She put it down again, aware that he was waiting for an answer.

  ‘That depends.’ Was this game irritating him? It seemed to be.

  ‘Advice about what?’

  She drew a deep breath. ‘What can you tell me about a seven-foot lunatic hacking away with a broadsword at one o’clock in the morning, in New York city, 1985?’

  Rachel, who had been standing listening all this while, suddenly gathered together some papers and walked to the far end of the shop. A customer had entered and Brenda thought that no doubt she had blessed his arrival in order to get out of the embarrassing scene she was witnessing.

  Nash scratched his cheek. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘You were there. It was probably some guy crazed on dope, or something. Happens all the time.’

  ‘Only recently. All right, we’ll skip that for the moment. What about a Japanese sword, dated 600 B.C. - the metal in the blade folded two hundred times?’

  ‘Ah, now we’re talking antiques,’ he said.

  ‘Can I show you something in 18th-century silver?’ Brenda felt herself becoming annoyed.

  ‘That’s not why I came here,’ she hissed, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘Do you cook?’ he asked.

  She moved back from him in surprise and Rachel, now returned, gave her a little smile.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  He said, ‘I thought we might have dinner together.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her mind was working very fast. Should she trust him? The hell with that. He was mixed up in something very weird. She found him attractive but that was no reason to trust the character. She would need some backup. . .’

  ‘Fine, I’d love to make us a meal. When?’

  He named a day and time, which she agreed suited her. Then she left.

  Chapter 20

  When Brenda Wyatt had left the shop, MacLeod went back into his room and began working on the invoices she had interrupted. He still had a business to run.

  At lunch time, he went up to his apartment. A stranger walking into the rooms might think that MacLeod had no divisions between his private life and his professional hours. The room, at first glance, into which he walked was circular, with many bookshelves and what might be regarded by others as antiques, lining the walls.

  They were in fact, all personal mementos from various times in his own history. In a rosewood box, on the coffee table, was the only piece of jewellery that Heather had owned: a pendant - a Celtic bronze cross set with uncut garnets. MacLeod had made it himself, fishing the garnets from a burn on the slopes of Ben Law, where they were as plentiful as pebbles, and had worked the bronze at the forge. Heather had adored that cross and made him promise to keep it, rather than bury it with her.

  He went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. There had been a time when he had been unfaithful to Heather, in the sense that he rarely thought of her and when he did, he dismissed that thought from his mind, because it was painful to look back. But just lately he had slipped back into his old dreams - those he used to have when Heather had recently died. Now why was that? He went to the rosewood box and with the coffee in one hand, took out the pendant and studied it. How crude the workmanship looked now. Yet, as he held it in his hand, the past came flooding back to him. He could recall the smell of the highlands, there was nothing else like it, and the rough weave of the texture of Heather’s tartan as she leaned against him in the doorway to the croft. They used to stand there together and stare out at the mountains, telling each other how lucky they were to have been born in the highlands. He could recall the smell of woodsmoke in her hair and the scent of womanhood about her after he had lifted her coarse kilt and made love to her in some hollow in the glen.

  He sighed. It was all romantic rubbish, he supposed. Perhaps he had forgotten the harsh winters and the times they had gone hungry, and the infernal lice problem things like that tended to get pushed to the back of the mind centuries later, in a comfortable apartment in New York city. He replaced the pendant.

  Suddenly, he knew why he had been reminded of Heather, and he felt guilty that the dreams had needed a trigger. It was because of that woman, Brenda Wyatt. There were certain physical resemblances between her and his Heather. The colour of the hair, the shape of the face. Memory was a funny thing though. He could recall things that happened in his first fifty years on earth, with far more clarity than many more recent events. With the exception of one. The day on which he had found Rachel.

  It had been in World War Two, in a bombed out factory in Germany - the heart of the Rhineland. He had wandered into the ruins and found this little bundle of rags, inside which slept a small girl, amongst the broken glass and smashed crates that were scattered over the floor.

  She had been frightened of him at first. When he woke her, she edged away from him with wide eyes. He must have looked pretty rough: unshaven and battlegrimed. They had been pushing units of the SS back for days and the diehard Nazi’s had been harder to winkle out than rats from holes.

  ‘Shhh!’ he had said, trying to calm her. ‘It’s all right - I’m not going to hurt you.’

  But of course, she did not speak or understand English and it was only the tone of his voice that reassured her (so she told him much later).

  ‘What’s your name?’ he had asked her. ‘Namen? Ah wie heisen sie?’

  ‘Rachel. ‘

  He had searched his mind for his meagre German. ‘Wo - deiner mutty - mama?’

  ‘Tot. Alle ...’

  Gently, he said, ‘I’m like you. I’m alone.’ He bent to pick her up.

  At that moment a German officer in the uniform of the SS, stepped through a doorway and raised a sub-machine gun. Without any hesitation or regard for the little girl, he pointed the weapon towards them and squeezed the trigger.

  Luckily for Rachel he had aimed high and an arc of bullets swept across the spot where MacLeod stood, three of them hitting him full in the chest. He sank to the ground with a sigh.

  The German ran forward and stood over him, looking down. He kicked MacLeod in the ribs and as he did so, the Scotsman grabbed his boot and threw him off balance. The gun dropped from his grasp and MacLeod picked it up. The officer was looking at him with astonishment.

  ‘Get up,’ he said. The man climbed to his feet and brushed down his uniform. He looked as tired and beaten as MacLeod felt, but there was still arrogance and contempt in his eyes.

  ‘Move,’ said MacLeod, flicking the gun.

  The officer stood his ground. Perhaps he had had enough? When the dead start climbing to their feet you begin to wonder what kind of enemy you are fighting and how the devil you can win against black magic.

  ‘Nein!’ The officer began to stride off in the opposite direction, unconcerned about the fact that he was being covered by his own weapon.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ sighed MacLeod, ‘You’re the master race.’ He pulled the trigger and the officer spun on his heels and fell to the floor bleeding from several wounds. He lay
still. Rachel looked at the body, as if she expected that at any moment it would get to its feet, the way MacLeod had done, and the whole thing would be re-enacted in reverse again. She told MacLeod later that she thought it was magic. When he thought she was ready, long after he had adopted her, he told her who and what he was.

  She said, ‘I was right. It was magic.’

  MacLeod had raised Rachel as his own daughter, finding a new interest in his jaded life in parenthood. Now she looked almost twice his age. He had told her all about Heather and for once it was good, it felt good, to talk to someone about the past - someone whom he could trust completely. It was like having a Heather to live with again, without the future pain of losing a wife and lover. Of course, he would be very sad when Rachel died, but it would not be the same as having his heart torn out of his chest. It would be a gentler parting. He thought.

  There was a knock on the door of the apartment. He went to it and looked through the spyhole. It was Rachel.

  ‘I just called by to see if you needed anything?’

  ‘No, I’m all stocked up. Do you want to stay for a drink?’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’ She entered and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re looking tired.’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Does it have to be this way - the Gathering?’

  ‘I don’t know any way of stopping it.’

  He went to the drinks cabinet and poured them both a scotch. When he turned, she was staring at him in a peculiar way.

  ‘What are you looking at, Rachel?’

  ‘The eyes in the back of your head.’

  He nodded. ‘Funny.’

  She said, ‘People are asking about you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What am I supposed to say?’

  He said wryly, ‘Tell them I’m immortal. Tell them how you saw me die, then stand up on my feet and walk away.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘For you maybe. The Boston Tea Party - now that was a long time ago, to me.’

  She seemed to be getting impatient with him. ‘Would you listen to me for one minute please?’ She sat down in a chair, the light shining on her long, black locks, and in her dark eyes. She said, ‘You can’t hide your feelings from me. I’ve known you too long.’

  ‘What feelings?’ he mumbled quietly. He did not want to hear what she had to say. He felt he knew what was coming.

  ‘How about loneliness?’

  ‘I’m not lonely. I’ve got you. I’ve got everything I need right here.

  ‘That’s not true. You don’t have everything you need. I can see it in you, quite plainly. You refuse to let anyone love you.’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t you love me, Rachel?’

  ‘Not that way.’

  ‘Romantic love is for poets.’ He stroked her cheek.

  ‘You’re such a romantic, Rachel.’

  She smiled. ‘You always were,’ he said.

  Chapter 21

  BRENDA WYATT WAS not above using the Force to protect herself. After all, what was the point in working for the cops if you were finicky about using them? She did not want to bother Moran, so she swallowed her pride and went to Bedsoe.

  ‘Brenda,’ said the bald-headed Bedsoe, knocking over a cup of coffee on his desk. ‘What can I do for you?’

  She looked at the coffee, running down the desk top, in alarm.

  ‘Hadn’t you better mop that up first?’

  There were reports on his desk and from the look of them they would be unreadable if something was not done to stem the tide of brown liquid.

  ‘Uh. Yeah, sure.’ He took some paper towels and cleaned up the worst of the mess. The soggy pieces were thrown into the waste bin and then Bedsoe stood there awkwardly fiddling with his gun belt.

  ‘So, what can I do for you, Brenda?’

  She was beginning to wonder whether this was a good idea, but since she had gone this far. . .

  ‘I want you to do me a favour, WaIt.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘You don’t know what it is yet.’

  He smiled, sheepishly. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘And there’s no strings attached - you understand me?’ He looked disappointed and she felt a heel, but he smiled again and the inevitable, ‘Yeah, sure,’ followed. However there was no point in raising his hopes.

  ‘I’ve got someone coming to dinner tonight - Nash Russell Nash.’

  ‘The guy we picked up in the Garden? Hey, Brenda, he’s not clean yet. We got nothing on him, but that don’t mean he didn’t do it. I wouldn’t trust that guy as far as Mexico.’

  She waited patiently for the tirade to finish, knowing she had to go through the ‘big brother’s protecting you’ bit, before she would be allowed to speak again.

  ‘You got to be careful with guys like that, Brenda.’ ‘Exactly Walt, which is why I came to you.’

  Bedsoe drew himself up, tightened his gun belt and sat on the edge of the desk - right in a pool of coffee. Brenda winced. ‘I wondered if you’d stake out for me. Just in case I need assistance. I want to pump him for some information and if you’re outside on call, I won’t feel so - frightened.’

  Bedsoe was a fool about women, but not where his job was concerned.

  ‘Does Moran know about this? You’re way out of line here, Brenda. You know that.’

  ‘This is not about the case, Walt. This is about antiques. I wouldn’t interfere in your work, you know that.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. You wanna pump this guy Nash for some information about antiques - nothing to do with the case, right? And because of his recent activities, you would feel safer if someone was on call?’

  ‘That’s exactly it, Walt.’

  He walked around the desk, tapping his fingers.

  ‘Still sounds a bit out of line, Brenda. Moran wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘And if I was a man,’ she snapped, ‘then it would still be out of line?’

  ‘No - aw shit. Okay. When do you want me there?’

  She felt relieved. She was just about ready to give the whole thing up.

  ‘Eight-thirty - no, you’d better get there a bit earlier. Say, eight. This evening.’

  She went to the supermarket after that, to get the food they were to eat. Then back to work for the rest of the day. When she got back to her apartment, in the early evening, she set the place up as she wanted it. Her father had bought her a Smith and Wessen .38 before leaving for Florida, telling her she couldn’t be too careful in New York city, with all those weirdos that hung around the Square. This pistol was now loaded for the first time and placed in the top drawer of her writing bureau. Then there was the tape recorder in her father’s old cigar box. Finally, she began to prepare the dinner.

  At eight o’clock, she looked out of the window and saw Walter’s car already parked on the far side. Good old reliable WaIt. She still felt guilty about using him. Still, he was on stake outs all the time. This sort of thing was a busman’s holiday.

  At eight-seventeen the front door bell rang. She yelled, ‘Wait a minute,’ took off her apron and started the tape recorder. Then she went to the door, checking with the spyhole first, to make sure that it was Nash.

  He stepped inside the room. ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Hi. Let me take your coat.’ Not too eager, she thought.

  Not too gushing. The guy will know that there’s something going on, other than dinner. She stood, staring at him, for a while, wondering what to say next.

  ‘I think I’ll hold onto my coat, thanks,’ he said. Really? she thought. What does he think I’m going to do with it? Throw it out of the window?

  ‘Oh, fine,’ she said.

  ‘You want to dine in the hall, or shall we step inside?’ he said.

  ‘Oh - come in.’

  He walked into the room and sat down, picking up a magazine that she had dropped on the floor. He tossed it onto the opposite chair.

  ‘Would you make us some drinks?’ she said. ‘While I put th
e finishing touches to the supper?’

  ‘Okay. What would you like?’

  ‘I’ll have a dry martini. The drinks cabinet is over there - you’ll find the olives in there too.’

  She went into the kitchen then. A little while later he brought a martini to her and she said, ‘Thanks.’ When she began carrying the food into the living-room he was standing at the window, looking down at the street. Damn him, what was he doing? Do you know what you’re doing? she thought, with herself in mind.

  ‘Interesting view,’ he said.

  She laughed, a little too tinkling.

  ‘Yes. Good old New York skyline.’

  He nodded at the rest of the room as he walked away from the window.

  ‘I like your place, Brenda.’

  She said, ‘I’ve only been here three months. I’m still fixing it up. I used to live with my father, but he’s retired now. Florida.’

  ‘Lucky man.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s a funny thing to say. He’s not lucky. He just waited until he got old, that’s all.’

  ‘Is that all he did?’ This conversation was leaving her behind a little and she decided to change the subject.

  ‘That woman who works for you. . .’

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Yes. She’s very attractive.’

  ‘Yes, she is, isn’t she? And you’re wondering whether we have a relationship outside that of the business?’

  ‘No I was not,’ cried Brenda, hotly.

  ‘Oh, but you were. And you’re quite right. We’ve been together for a long time. I’m her adopted son.’

  Brenda kicked herself, mentally. Ouch. Why did she always assume the wrong things?

  ‘Your mother works for you?’

  ‘Anything wrong in that?’

  When she thought about it, there wasn’t. If the guy’s mother wanted to work for her adopted son, why not?

  ‘You never told me what you do for a living,’ said Nash.

  Oh, Christ. Here it comes. The whole police bit.

  ‘I - work for the Metropolitan Museum. In acquisitions. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Ah. That explains your interest in ancient weapons.’