The man who had taken a bullet for him. Who had thought he was good enough to save.
A light rap sounded at the door, and Amanda ushered in Dr. Taylor, a small, sweet-faced woman who endeared herself to Grace straightaway by ignoring all the adults in the room, crouching and shaking her hand. She would be all right for now, wouldn’t she? McBride would never abdicate his duties toward her again, but…
“Are you going to see Toby?”
Grace was looking straight at him—brightly, sweetly, without judgement. Libby was watching too, her expression not so sure. “Yes,” he said honestly. “If I can find him.”
“Well, if you do, give him this.” She reached into her sleeve and pulled off a plaited bracelet from her wrist.
“Your friendship bangle? From your boyfriend in France? Are you sure?”
“He is no’ my boyfriend. And Toby said he liked it.”
McBride took the bracelet. Grace was surrounded by women now. There was half an hour left of Christmas Eve. Backing out of the room, he saw the office where Toby had been giving his report was empty. The duty sergeant was gathering up papers, putting files into drawers. He glanced up when McBride pushed open the door. “Looking for Agent Leitner, Jim?”
“Yes. Is he still here?”
“He got a phone call. Said he had to go. I don’t know where, but I think they’re taking the Israeli ambassador back home tonight. He might have gone straight to the airport.”
* * *
Even the most desperate of last-minute shoppers had long since gone home. Most of the revellers too—Auld Reekie was putting on her white coat, and those who knew her well took cover when that ermine descended more than four inches deep. A city of culture she might be, a city of lights, but she was the ancient hill fort still, Dùn Èideann, fifty-six degrees north, a stern and icebound place in winter’s heart.
Princes Street was almost deserted. The snow had stopped, but the sky was still laden with it, orange clouds brushing Arthur’s Seat with their swollen bellies, parting in scraps to show vistas of diamond-hard stars. Oh God, it was cold. McBride pulled his coat collar tight over his chest, blew into his hands but couldn’t begin to ward off the all-consuming chill, the hunger of the night. Anyone left out here would be eaten alive. At Turnhouse, the runways would freeze. Flights would be cancelled: Ambassador Zvi might not be able to leave.
And if he couldn’t? What was McBride going to do—pursue the Israeli team out to the airport? Wait there like the end of a bad chick flick for Toby to reappear, in a rush of orchestral music, from passport control? He snorted faintly, aware he had given the scenario a few seconds’ serious thought. No. If Toby had gone, so be it. He had crossed McBride’s life like a meteor—that unexpected, that bright. If he’d chosen to vanish just as abruptly…
A pain went through McBride’s chest, so sharp and physical he had to stop and lean against a lamppost. For a moment he wondered if all the years of desk work, drink and bad diet were about to catch up with him. It was true he’d steered clear of fried Mars bars, but there wasn’t much else that was bad for him he’d turned away.
He realised his eyes were full of tears. Transiently they sharpened his vision. In the next parting of the clouds he saw, with stunning clarity, the hunter god Orion. McBride was too tired to smile, but the resemblance was good. Dashing, broad shouldered. Even a bright red bullet-wound star, though it was on the wrong side…
He stepped blindly into the middle of the road. It was one of the few times in the year when you could do so without being mown down instantly. He seldom looked up when making his way along Princes Street, always too busy threading his way through the crowds. He knew the ground-floor buildings well. Shops and restaurants and coffee bars. The upper storeys, though, with their balconies and pillars and other sombre fantasies of Gothic architecture—those were often given over to hotels. He was standing opposite one now. It was called the Sinclair, and its name meant something to McBride because this was where Harle Street recommended its political and diplomatic visitors to stay.
One high window was brilliant with candlelight. McBride didn’t know much about Jewish tradition or symbolism, but he’d chased enough skinheads away from the Salisbury Road synagogue to recognise the shape of a menorah. Odd, though—he’d always seen those with seven lights. This one had nine.
He climbed the steps to the reception, not allowing himself to think what he was doing. Inside, a muted chaos hit him. Red-faced businessmen, sherry glasses in hand, were lumbering about, roaring and laughing, someone’s idea of a traditional Christmas medley blasting from speakers in the lounge. McBride edged around the fringes of the party until he found the desk. “Hello. Is there a Tobias Leitner staying here?”
The girl on reception smiled at him too brightly. Maybe she’d been on the sherry too. She gave him Toby’s room number without a bat of an eyelid. And this was where Harle Street sent its diplomats. He thought about pulling his badge. At least ask who I am. But she had turned away to answer her next enquiry. McBride decided that, if the streams of life were for once running his way, he would let himself be carried.
Music being piped through the stairways and corridors too. The Sinclair had gone all-out this year to produce what looked like a Japanese tourist’s idea of a traditional Highland Christmas—plastic holly draped from every cornice, fibre-optic trees, light-up decals of sleighs and reindeer flashing. Normally McBride didn’t mind such excesses, or at any rate didn’t notice, but now the commercialism clamoured at him emptily. He was tired, his nerves frayed to thin bare wire. He found himself, before he knew it, in the top-floor corridor, and then—still unsure if he was going to knock or turn and walk back into the night—outside Toby Leitner’s door.
He raised his hand. He had barely brushed the woodwork with his knuckles when the door swung wide. Toby smiled at him, and he stepped into candlelit silence.
He stood in the middle of the room. It seemed to be rotating gently around him. Toby came up behind him, and the sense of vertigo increased.
“Let me take your coat.”
McBride surrendered it. Only when Toby lifted its weight off his shoulders did he realise how heavy and cold it had become. He said, unable to turn round, “I thought you’d gone.”
“I’m sorry. I had to take a phone call, and…when I looked back, you were with your family, with Libby and Grace. I thought you might stand a better chance if I wasn’t around.”
No. I never stood any chance there. “I mean…I thought you’d gone to the airport. With Zvi and the others.”
“Oh, did they leave?” Toby was still close behind him; McBride felt the brush of his chuckle on his nape. “They’ll be socked in till dawn. No, I’m not part of Zvi’s team anymore. The call was from my Mossad katsa. I was cleared of any wrongdoing at an enquiry board yesterday. I’ve been reinstated.”
McBride wasn’t sure what to say. Toby hardly sounded overjoyed. “I’m pleased for you,” he offered at length.
“Thank you. It doesn’t bring Avrom back. The only difference for now is that I get to travel first class on my way home, and…I don’t have to leave straightaway.” His voice tightened.
“I’ve got one night, James.”
Finally McBride turned to face him. He was made for candlelight, McBride thought indistinctly, taking in the darkness and the brilliance of him. His hair—damp from the shower, tousled—was like raw black silk. He’d pulled a shirt on in a hurry: hadn’t finished fastening it, and it was clinging here and there to his skin. The elegant planes of his face were shadowed and fervent, and the insane thing was that he was looking at McBride as if he were the loveliest sight in the world. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he said. “Did you see my sign?”
“Was that…was that for me?” Toby nodded, and all McBride could think to say was, stupidly, “I thought it was seven lights. On a menorah.”
“It is, but that’s a chanukiah. One light for each of the eight nights of Chanukah, and the ninth to serve them. Maybe I’m
not as faithless as I thought.” He paused. Very gently he brushed McBride’s snow-damped fringe back from his brow. “Tradition says they’re a reminder that miracles can happen. That we should place them in a window, to…to call wanderers home.”
* * *
Toby led him to the sofa. McBride had a moment of heart-stopping awkwardness: what should he do when they sat down together? Stick to his own end? Show Toby he wasn’t afraid or naïve by starting things off, putting an arm around him, or…
The problem didn’t arise. Leaving him there, Toby went to lean over the tray on the dressing table. McBride heard him switch the kettle on. “Oh, it’s all right. I don’t…”
“You’re freezing. I’m sorry it’s just instant. I’ll call up room service if you like.”
“No. Er, no thank you.”
“At least the milk is real.”
“Aye. I don’t know why they bother with those wee plastic pots. I think it must be just to change the colour.” McBride shook his head in bewilderment: was he really up here talking to Toby about coffee lightener? Toby seemed amused by the idea too. When he came back, he was smiling. McBride took the cup and knocked it back almost in one, realising only as he did so how much he needed it. It was scalding, absurdly good for hotel-room instant. Did Toby turn everything he touched into gold? The sudden heat set off shivers in McBride: the cup rattled in its saucer, and he couldn’t keep it still.
Toby took it from him and laid it on the floor. “There,” he said. “There, it’s all right.”
He sat on the sofa with McBride, and there wasn’t any awkwardness at all—not a second of it; no struggle over who would start. They reached for each other with the same tired, hungry gesture. “Oh, Toby,” McBride gasped over his shoulder, shakily stroking his hair. “It’s been so long since I was with another fella—properly, I mean—I’m not sure I remember what to do…”
“Whereas I spend my entire time cutting a swathe through the gay population of Israel.” Toby kissed the angle between McBride’s neck and shoulder, a place he hadn’t even known was sensitive until the caress sent a kind of thunderbolt down through him, stiffening his cock.
“When were you last with one…improperly, if I can ask?”
“You can.” McBride shuddered, putting both hands on Toby’s ribs and encouraging the movement that would bear them down onto the couch. “It was very improper. Andy Barclay sucking me off in the locker room at Harle Street. Lila told him to keep tabs on me, and…” He groaned and laughed, suddenly not minding that or anything else anymore in the wonderful press of Toby’s whole weight against him. “God help him, he thought that was the most direct route.”
“Ma pitom! No wonder he was so keen to walk the fire for you. For Grace, anyhow.”
“Is that what he did?”
“When Lila sent the balloon up—all those sirens—he stood off Carlyle’s men, stopped them coming up the stairs. He must have known he didn’t stand a chance, and I was busy with Grace. I couldn’t help him.”
“You saved her. You both did.” Fresh joy kindled in McBride at the knowledge of his girl safe at home, probably being tucked into bed with all Libby’s pent-up maternal ferocity. He grabbed Toby’s shoulders, bearing him down into a kiss. “God, I owe you everything—her life, my own. Why?”
“I was trying to tell you when DS Barclay fell through the door at the Black Cat. I don’t even know how to tell you now…”
“Don’t. Please just show me. Show me.”
Toby thrust his hips against him, a light rocking movement that made McBride cry out. All the cold was banished from him now, a fine sweat breaking. He dared to put his hands on Toby’s backside, on the strong curves of it, encouraged when Toby gasped and pushed harder.
“James, let me feel you. Is it okay…”
It was, though McBride couldn’t do more than nod frantically and push clumsy hands down to undo Toby’s belt and zip and then his own. Toby moaned, cock rising into McBride’s grasp. He shivered, seeking the contact, and McBride caressed him, letting him work up his pace and pressure until suddenly he pushed up on his arms. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Come if you’re ready. Let go.”
But Toby’s eyes were full of tears. “I…I wish I could forget about Avi.”
“What? Somebody you loved that much? Did you live with him?”
“Yes. For six years.”
“And was that easy, over there? In Jerusalem?”
“Nn-nn. Hard like rocks.”
“Right. I bet. Listen—I had a lover once, another man. Not like Andrew—a real lover.” He brushed the tears off Toby’s cheeks with his free hand. “That was twenty-four years ago. We don’t forget, not if they were worth anything. Not if we are. Now…sit up a second and let me at you.”
Toby obeyed. Too startled to do anything else, McBride thought, seizing the moment. Quickly he slithered off the sofa and knelt in front of it, parting Toby’s knees. His shaft was standing ready and proud, such a sight in the candlelight that McBride caught his breath.
“Oh, James. You don’t have to…”
“I reckon I do. Shut up. Let me see if I’m still any good at this.”
Turned out, he was. It took him all his time and self-control to accommodate the length of that big cock, and after a minute he had to grasp its base to keep from choking, but that didn’t seem to bother Toby. He’d locked one hand into the nape of McBride’s shirt and was clutching a sofa cushion with the other, his arm rigid, hips bucking wildly. McBride heard his warning shout, felt him writhe to be away—but McBride wanted all of him, right or wrong, and pinned him down hard, sucking and driving his tongue down his shaft’s pulsing length until the rush came. Toby arched, a cry ripping out of him, and then he was folding into McBride’s arms, sliding halfway off the sofa before he could catch him. “All right!” McBride’s throat was sore, the tang of semen real and immediate in his mouth. “All right, I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
They knelt together, breathless, tangled. McBride felt his unsatisfied erection pressing against Toby’s thigh, and willed it to subside. Nothing to say Toby wanted to be lover as well as beloved; could still be too snared up in his memories of Avrom to wish to go further. He waited, holding him.
Slowly Toby’s breathing calmed. He got his head up. McBride’s heart shifted at the beauty of him—flushed, tearstained, an unsteady smile lighting his face. “I’d take you down here on the carpet, James,” he said at length. “But that seems uncivilised, after all we’ve been through. Will you come to bed?”
Chapter Twelve
McBride stood staring at the bathroom door. Toby had meant it—come to bed, not come for a fling-down on top of the duvet, and no way had McBride been about to inflict himself naked between the Sinclair’s linen sheets without a shower. Toby hadn’t wanted to wait. Said he liked the smell of a long, hard day in Auld Reekie, when McBride had described it like that. McBride could still feel the tingle on his skin where Toby had gently tried to separate him from more of his clothes, had tried to hold him back.
He had escaped, for complex reasons. There was no doubt whatever in his mind that, when he left this bathroom, he was going to let Toby fuck him, and alongside the wild excitement of that there was a fear. He and Andrew had got nowhere near to this: the last time had been Lowrie, under whispering birches at Loch Beithe. It was that long since McBride had surrendered—even come close to letting himself go.
And he wasn’t what Toby was used to, was he? The bathroom was full of mirrors. McBride, naked as day, tried not to cast yet another sidelong glance at his own solid frame. There was nothing wrong with him, he told himself sternly. He looked like what he was—a hill farmer’s grandson, a copper in his middle years who seldom got enough sunshine. At least he was clean. He was fine.
But he couldn’t walk out there naked. There was a robe on the back of the bathroom door—should he borrow that? And if he did, should he fasten it or leave it seductively open or…
A light tap sounded on the far
side of the door. McBride was so close to it that he jumped back.
“James? Are you all right in there?”
“Um. Actually, no.”
“I didn’t think so.”
The door swung open. McBride didn’t try to stop it and didn’t reach for the robe. With Toby stark naked before him, he couldn’t even think about himself anymore: he was dazzled, lost. Toby took him in—head to toe, smilingly, lingering over the hard-on that had never quite quit and, under this tender scrutiny, came back in full glory. “Perfect,” he said and reached to take McBride’s hand.
The room was softly lit, the big double bed inviting. Toby had turned back the quilt. He grabbed it as they folded down onto the mattress, pulling it over them. McBride gasped at the warmth, the feel of skin on every inch of skin. So good to have this strong male body in his arms, all springy muscle, long, tough lines, calling up uninhibited movements from his own, a power he’d never have unleashed on Libs. Toby grunted in pleasure as McBride seized him. They tussled for a few moments, strength to strength, neither of them minding the bruises. Then Toby went under, with a grin that told McBride he’d be happy to stay there if that was his partner’s pleasure. “No,” McBride whispered. “Please, not this time.”
“What, then?”
McBride looked into the bright gaze fixed on his. He was not used to articulating his desires. He lay, his shaft wedged tight between Toby’s thighs. He could give it up and come right there in one great thrust, expend the fiery ache in his balls, the hunger that felt like snakes coiling up and down his spine. Toby wanted an answer. Wanted him to say. “Go inside me,” he groaned. “For God’s sake. I’m going to die if you don’t.”
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