He let Andrew roll to a halt, then called his men around him. Lila had only given him a handful, but at least they were good—Royston and Davies, both top marksmen, and McKay, eerily talented at picking out a wrong face in a crowd. Three others, all fine lads. He told them all the usual things. That part was easy. To look out for the venue’s weak points and for one another. To mind what Zvi’s men had said. To make sure no part of their evening’s draperies was going to foul up their pull, and to keep their weapons otherwise well concealed. They listened dutifully. They laughed at McBride’s dutiful effort at a joke.
And they were polite, which made his blood run cold. Anyone who’d ever stood in front of a squad room full of Edinburgh coppers knew he need not expect to be treated with kid gloves. McBride wondered how much they had heard about why he was here with them tonight. What Lila had told them.
Then, did he really need to look to her for blame? McBride tried to remember the last time he’d sat down with his colleagues. When had he last gone with them to the pub after work? Ever since his divorce, he’d grabbed every chance that had come up for him to be a lone wolf. He realised with a shock that these men weren’t his friends anymore. They would obey him because he’d been put in charge, but that was all.
A loneliness seized him. Finishing the briefing, McBride reproved himself. He couldn’t have it both ways, could he? Not the cameraderie and the teamwork and the dark freedom of the streets. Once they were done here, that was where he was headed. His little snitch had found another link, a better one, between those shallow graves and Sim Carlyle. He could do it. He knew it would be worth the price.
Chapter Five
The doors of the conference hall were open, the early arrivals filtering through. Dinner suits and djellabas, a composite rustle of German, Arabic, Hebrew and Auld Reekie filling the air. From his position by the marble statue of Sir Walter Scott, McBride watched the stream. Diplomats and politicians, that was all. No one walking too fast or too slow, no sweaty brows or overly dilated pupils.
Nevertheless he wasn’t happy. He glanced ruefully up at Sir Walter, envying him his stony calm. Where was the unease coming from? He’d barely slept for the past few days, what with his extracurricular activities and the raw-nerved tension they left in their wake. This was just street-fear, he tried to persuade himself. Nothing for him to worry about in this haven of chandeliers, dazzling white tablecloths and champagne glasses adroitly balanced on silver trays. McBride resisted the urge to filch one from a passing waiter, though he couldn’t half have used a drink. He’d drawn the line at carrying a tray himself to enhance his cover—another of Lila Stone’s suggestions, and he wondered if she’d sat up long the night before thinking up further small twists of the knife.
Speak of the devil. There she was, halfway up the magnificent staircase that connected the foyer with the conference chamber. Locked in debate, it looked like, with Agent Leitner.
McBride hid a smile. If ever a haughty woman had met her match… The pair of them looked like two cats facing off. Pedigree versus moggy, McBride added for his own entertainment, watching. Lila’s fur was practically on end. After a moment she turned on her heel and stalked up the rest of the red-carpet flight into the hall.
Leitner did not look as if he’d scored a victory. He just looked bloody lonely. He went to lean on the marble banister, the incoming crowds parting round him. For a moment he lowered his head.
He lost his partner, McBride remembered suddenly. He hadn’t properly taken it in when Andrew had first told him: had been too busy falling under the spell—bizarre and mercifully short-lived—of whatever he thought he’d seen in Leitner’s brown eyes. Well, McBride could look at him with perfect disenchantment, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t sorry. He had no idea how Leitner had felt about his partner, but to lose even an imperfect one like Andrew Barclay would break McBride’s heart.
He made his way up the steps. When he was four or five away, Leitner turned, his movement casual but edged. Cop to cop, McBride recognised it. A stranger entering your personal space. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Leitner wasn’t just a cop. He was Israeli secret service.
And he was ready to jump out of his skin. McBride halted one step down. “What do you think of our choice of venue, then?”
Leitner stared at him. First McBride wondered if he didn’t speak English—not that, as far as he knew, Lila counted Hebrew among her accomplishments. Then he wondered why on earth he’d thought this man could be in need of human sympathy. There wasn’t a flicker of expression on his elegant face. McBride became intensely aware of himself. He and all his men, even the ones who could carry their tartans, had looked like clowns coming out to meet their exquisitely tailored Israeli counterparts. “Our choice?” Leitner echoed. “Did you select this?”
“No, not a bit of it. Figure of speech.”
“Good. Because you look like a sensible man, Detective Inspector McBride, even if you are wearing a dress. This venue is grossly inadequate, a triumph of arrogance over experience. I cannot defend Zvi in here.”
Nothing wrong with the English, then. McBride drew himself up, resisting the impulse to straighten his skirt. “You have the advantage of me.”
“Tobias Leitner.” Leitner put out a hand. Taking it, McBride noticed vividly how his own square Scottish one locked into it. How Leitner’s tanned grip warmed his. Strange—he hadn’t noticed he was cold. “My second has spoken to your sergeant Andrew Barclay. We agree the positioning of your men. Clearly you’ve identified the same points of weakness we have.”
“Aye. The back staircases, the eastern windows and the library stairs that connect the galleries.” For a moment McBride was too amused by Leitner’s rendition of Andrew’s name—Bar Clay, two separate words, as if that prosaic Lowland soul were biblical royalty—to realise their hands were still joined. He stepped back, letting go. “Between my team and yours, we can just about cover it, but…”
“But there are gaps. I explained this to your superintendent.”
“Who told you any risks were negligible and more than outweighed by the splendour and historical significance of the venue.”
“In almost those exact words.” Leitner looked around him, then turned his attention back to McBride. His dark gaze was as steady as the clasp of his hand, and McBride saw kindling in it the subtle fires that had touched him at their first encounter. “Is she a fool?”
“No. That’s the strange thing. But she’s trying to bring police work into the twenty-first century, and—” McBride cleared his throat, which had gone dry, “—Edinburgh’s not ready for it.”
Leitner smiled. It was just a flicker, bittersweet, full of amusement and pain. “Well, I can assure you, neither is Jerusalem. We had better go, McBride. Zvi is due any minute.”
* * *
McBride struggled for focus. The conference had droned on into its fourth hour. At this rate he’d miss the appointment with his snitch down in Cowgate. Restlessness tugged at him, as if he had mice in his bones. He wanted to be out there in the star-shivered night. He wanted the hot wildness of a quart of scotch inside him.
Unexpectedly, what he also wanted was to be laid out somewhere getting fucked. The thought struck him with such force that he twitched and stifled a gasp. He analysed it. Yes, getting, not giving. Not with Libby, then. Nor with Andrew, whose cock hadn’t really been in it any more than his heart. Christ, the last time he’d done that had been with Lowrie, and a right dog’s breakfast they’d made of it, though their clumsy attempt had been sweet to McBride, vivid in his memory still.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, making what felt like his fifty-ninth visual check of the gallery above him. What the hell was wrong with him tonight? Ever since Libby had left him—oh, further back than that, if he were honest—his libido had been a well-damped fire, flaring on command to let him perform his marital duties and not much more. Certainly it never distracted him with sexual fantasies during an op. He was tired. Defen
ces down. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, couldn’t skip night after night of sleep like a kid in his twenties.
Sixtieth check. This damn conference had to end soon. Even the ambassadors looked bored. Drawing deep breaths, McBride dismissed all thoughts but those of the moment. Sixty-first…
He froze. Something in the fall of light and shadow on the gallery was wrong. Or perhaps not wrong, but just a fraction different. The back of McBride’s neck prickled. Andrew was in place up there. If anything was off, he would see it. A glance from McBride would alert him. They had no trouble, he and his partner, in catching each other’s eye across distance. Stepping forward, McBride looked for him.
His place was empty. McBride scanned the gallery, pulse picking up in his veins. Finally he saw him—way off, right at the far end of the hall, gazing down like the lord of the bloody glen at the diplomats. Probably dreaming about Janice Dee, not that McBride could really talk.
Quietly he eased back out of the hall. There weren’t many places other than the Tattoo where he could wander round dressed like Robert the Bruce and not be noticed, but this was one of them: none of the staff or the Israeli guards dotted about the staircases cast him a second glance as he made his way up to the gallery. No sense in alerting anyone yet. Lila would never forgive him a false alarm.
Which was what it would have been. Emerging on the second level, McBride released a breath. He was getting bloody jumpy in his old age, that was all. The staircase and the doorway were empty. Except for…
Shit. A lean figure, moving at speed, disappearing between one pillar and the next. Straight into one of the blind spots you’d have to be blind to miss. Nobody had any business up here except Leitner’s men and his own. McBride set out in pursuit. He didn’t have time to stop and try to alert his partner, but no matter: Andrew had to have seen him, picked up the unusual movement. They would converge at about the right place.
It would have to be soon. Only a sniper would head with such purpose for the end of the gallery. McBride knew this in the way any good copper would who had learned over the years to think like a criminal himself: if he were going to knock off Ambassador Zvi, that was the spot he would pick.
He rounded a corner and stopped, staring down the barrel of a gun. Black eyes returned his gaze frigidly. Two steady hands held the weapon at his chest. McBride had time to observe the silencer: it was huge, elaborate.
He would die with a pop that barely disturbed the air. Oh, Grace, he thought. A pang went through him, a sorrow, sharper than he’d imagined it would be if ever this came to pass. Somewhere between Lowrie’s embrace on the banks of Loch Beithe and this night, he had lost his love of life for its own sake. But he wasn’t ready to leave it. Not yet…
The tiny sound came. McBride scarcely noticed. In the instant before it—the grunt, the champagne-cork explosion—a shape had come between him and the gunman. McBride was still standing, and someone had crashed to the ground at his feet. He understood this in retrospect, perceptions running backwards as his hands dealt with the physics of the moment, unholstering his Walther.
He was a decent marksman, but that hardly mattered anymore. The gunman was four feet away from him and taking aim again. McBride’s life—his flawed, precious life—had just been saved. He couldn’t waste that. He whipped up the P99 and fired point-blank.
His gun had no silencer. In the hall below, all hell broke loose. The effect was instantaneous. Lurching to the rail, McBride saw Zvi being dragged down to the parquet by one of the Israeli guards. He saw which of the other diplomats and staff were also diving. And he saw who stayed upright, reaching for weapons that had got in because Lila wouldn’t even have her guests subjected to the indignity of a search. Christ, they’d been infiltrated. McBride counted ten or so, in strategic places round the table and the hall. Frantically he tried to distinguish the good from the bad, hostiles from security. They all looked the bloody same.
Only behaviour distinguished them. McBride got his first clue when another silenced shot scorched past his ear and buried itself in the venerable panelling behind him. Fine; that cleared things up. Ducking behind the balustrade, he took out the man in the hallway below with cool dispassion. Once battle was declared, what did it matter? There was Andrew, in the wrong place, but alive—for the time being, anyway; oblivious to the sniper taking aim on him from the gallery opposite, who in his turn was briefly oblivious to McBride. The Walther jumped in his hands again. Another good shot, and he could see the Israeli men getting their act together, finding cover and their targets, with the exception of…
Where was Leitner? Who the hell had saved his life?
Oh God. Two questions with one answer. As the gun battle started below, McBride scrabbled round and saw the hunched figure in the shadows behind him. Leitner, one hand pressed to his left shoulder, was reaching with the other for his pistol. His head was down, his face a grim blank. There was blood everywhere.
McBride grabbed the gun for him. “Christ on a boat, Leitner! What have you done?” Leitner took the weapon in a red-streaked grip, and McBride, getting close enough, seized him by the armpits and dragged him into the shelter of the stairwell. “Here. Stay still, stay still. Let me look at that.”
“Why…why is he on a boat?”
“What?” McBride propped Leitner against the wall. He looked for a second into his beautiful, shock-grey face, then turned his attentions to the fist he had clenched against his shoulder. “Let go. Let me see.”
“Christ. On a…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s an expression.” McBride prised apart Leitner’s fingers and bore his hand down. Blood surged immediately. The fine charcoal jacket of his suit was soaked through with it—the shirt beneath too. Unceremoniously McBride ripped open Leitner’s tie and shoved his clothes back far enough to see the bullet wound, a raw red-black hole punched in the satiny skin. “That missed your heart by three inches, you bloody nutcase. What did you do it for?”
“I saw your partner wasn’t in place. I saw you look for him.” Leitner grimaced as McBride tore off his cloak, bundled it up and pressed it to the gaping hole. “Oh, that hurts.”
“I know. Hold it in place, nice and tight. You don’t believe in him, anyway, do you?”
“Who—your partner?”
“No. Christ.” It was a ploy of distraction only, something to take Leitner’s mind off passing out from the pain. “On a boat or otherwise.”
“I believe he existed, just not…in his divinity. I’m not a religious Jew—I don’t believe in anyone’s divinity. Do you?”
“Not right now, no.” McBride shook his head in wonder at a man who would pursue such debate with a pouring shoulder wound and crossfire raging over his head. He had to get help for him or find him at least a better hiding place than this, until the battle was lost or won downstairs.
No. Too late. Footsteps scraped at the foot of the spiral below him. Leitner seized McBride’s shirtfront, leaving scarlet stains. “Leave me! Get out of here!”
“Shut up. Ssh.” McBride clamped a hand to his mouth. The man climbing the stairs wasn’t one of Zvi’s or Lila Stone’s. That left only a hunter, coming after his missing colleague. He put his arms round Leitner and hauled him close, dragging him farther into the shadows.
“You’ve got to be quiet.”
Leitner was rigid with the effort to silence himself, face contorted and dampening with sweat. “This is how my partner died,” he rasped out. “He was alone.”
“Well, you’re not. And you’re not gonna die. Shut up.”
Leitner’s head jerked back, his eyes glazing, filling with long distances. “Avrom! Oh, Avi…”
“Leitner! That’s all over. You have to hang on.”
The desolate gaze found focus and came back to him. After a moment Leitner struggled round and buried his face on McBride’s shoulder, stifling a cry. “That’s it,” McBride whispered, pressing a hand to the back of his head. “Hang on. Not going to let anybody hurt you now.”
&n
bsp; And that was a bloody stupid promise. McBride didn’t know why he had made it. He didn’t know why, clutching this stranger in the middle of a firefight, a predator closing in on him, he felt calmer and more real than he had done in months. The Walther had five left in the clip. Shifting Leitner in his arms so that he was shielding him, with his bulk and his ancestral tartans, McBride took a good, steady aim down the stairwell.
Another gun barked. McBride knew it well—Andrew’s, the weapon that sang next to his on the firing range. The gunman making his way up the stairs jerked and fell. Andrew, his face blanched with fear, stepped straight over the body, lurched his way up the rest of the spiral and stumbled out onto the gallery. “James! Jimmy!”
“I’m here, you great clown. Did we win down there?” Andrew stood staring at him, long enough for McBride to guess that they had. The rattle of crossfire had ceased. “Then get a bloody ambulance!”
“I…I will. Oh my God, James. Is he alive? He saved you. I saw him save you. I…”
“Barclay.”
“Yes.” He pulled his mobile phone, to McBride’s pained amusement, out of his sporran.
“Jesus, James. Lila’s never gonna get her money back on that kilt now.”
Chapter Six
At half six the following morning, McBride stopped on the pavement outside the Royal Victoria Hospital. A faint promise of daylight was gathering between the streetlight halos. He had made the appointment with his Grassmarket snitch after all, although the poor bastard had been ready to jump out of his skin by the time McBride arrived at their rendezvous, out of breath, traces of blood still on his shirtfront. And the meet had been well worth it. The snitch, a loose satellite of Carlyle’s, had heard more women were being smuggled into Leith aboard a cargo ship Carlyle had used before. Driven by his drug habit, McBride’s snitch had taken his chances and hidden in a dockside warehouse with a camera. McBride, who could no longer call on police funds to pay for information, had fully appreciated the irony of handing over poker winnings from one of Carlyle’s dens so the trembling little man could go and buy drugs from another: half now, the rest when he was sure the evidence was good.
His for the Holidays Page 13