As he returned the Swede's firm handshake. Bob was struck by the clarity of his ice-blue eyes, and by the easy confidence with which the man, whom he judged to be around thirty, returned his appraising gaze. He tried, but failed, to read his thoughts through his calm expression. Behind the smile, Ingo Svart was impassive.
Alex reclaimed his attention. 'Pops, d' you mind if we pass on supper? There's a first-night cast party, and we've really got to go to it. You two could come with us, if you like.'
As his daughter spoke, Skinner caught sight, over her shoulder, of a tall, balding figure framed in the door at the side of the hall.
'No, babe. Thanks, but we won't. I want to have a look round here. Then we've got our table booked at the Waterfront. Can't let it go to waste. You go on, though. Enjoy yourselves. You've both earned it. Now, I must say hello to Brian over there.'
He walked with Alex and Ingo back across to the side door.
Detective Inspector Mackie smiled, and nodded a greeting to Alex.
Then he stepped aside and held the door for her and her companion, before turning back to Skinner.
'Evening, boss. Good show?'
'I'm biased, I know, but it was one of the best things I've seen in a long time. A Fringe award-winner for sure. How're you doing?'
'Fine. I've just been scouting round this place – and the other theatre. No problems with either from a security viewpoint, but the bars and that open courtyard scare the hell out of me. It looks virtually impossible to make them secure, as things are just now.
Mind you, there are only two ways into this complex. How would you feel about blocking the back way, and then searching everyone as they come through the arch?'
Skinner shrugged his shoulder. 'I'd feel uneasy about it, but maybe we don't have a choice. Think through the pros and cons and give me a recommendation in the morning. While we're here, why don't you walk me through it. After that, we're off to eat.
Want to join us?' "Thanks, boss, but I won't if you don't mind. I'm rubberducked. So I'm bound for an early night, Saturday or not!'
15
As Skinner and Sarah chose their late supper from the blackboard menu in their crowded dockside restaurant, a mile or two away Andy Martin's evening was moving towards a satisfactory conclusion.
Earlier he had inspected Filmhouse, the base of the Film Festival, from its attic to its cellars. There seemed to be no wasted space at all in the building, and it seemed to pose no problems. Its two purpose-built cinemas had numbered seating, and everyone entering had to pass through a single wide foyer before reaching either of them – or the restaurant and bar. Julia Shahor had quickly agreed to his suggestion that she should install two video cameras in the foyer, but placed where they could be seen clearly, their value being deterrence rather than detection.
They had sat side-by-suie in front row seats during the film, an intense drama set in revolutionary France. Before the dimming of the lights for the screening, Julia, a designer outfit replacing the white robe she had worn earlier in the day, had launched her film Festival with a short, assured and politically clever speech about the economic importance of the British movie industry, ending with an appeal to the financial leaders who made up a sizable chunk of the invited audience to recognise the earning potential of a successful film by providing risk capital for worthwhile projects.
When she had finished, and had taken her seat by his side, Andy had realised that his earlier assessment of the woman as naive or gauche had been well wide of the mark. So he had warmed to her even more.
After the film, they had eaten in the Filmhouse restaurant, at her suggestion. They had discussed the film itself, and others which were to be the highlights of the ensuing Festival. They had made small-talk, learning more about each other as their conversation developed, sparring gently with words, each establishing in the process that the other had no serious entanglements. And then, just as Andy had been deciding what might happen next, and how he should play it, she had beaten him toil. •I don't suppose you'd feel like giving a working girl a lift home, do you?'
In the same moment as Bob Skinner's baked red mullet was placed before him by the Waterfront's young waiter, Andy closed the passenger door of his red sports hatch and Julia settled into her seat. The moon was bright and clear as they drove through the New Town. As Andy changed gear, turning into Northumberland Street, Julia reached out and stroked the back of his hand. Her touch was featherlight, and he felt a tingle run up his arm.
'I bet all the girls say this, but you're quite different from my idea of a policeman. Although you're not just any old policeman, are you? You're one of the Special kind.'
He laughed. 'Not that Special, honest. And what all the girls say, after a while at least, is more like "Typical bloody copper!" – followed, as a rule, by a slamming door.
'Along here, did you say?'
'Yes, just around the corner. But it gets narrow. If you park there, we can walk the rest.'
Julia's home was a two-storey mews house in the lane which linked Dublin Street and Northumberland Street. A tiny flowerpot garden, surprising in the heart of the city, was divided off from the roadway by an iron fence with a narrow gate. She put a hand on its latch, then suddenly stood on tiptoe and kissed him. Her face shone in the moonlight which flooded the lane. Andy was reminded of the taste of honey and the scent of fresh lemons.
'I'm really just a nice Jewish girl, you know. Come in and I'll prove it.'
Andy knew that if he tried to speak, it would come out as a husky croak. So he said nothing, but followed her into the cottage, closing the gate quietly behind him.
The house had no hall, and the front door opened straight into the living-room. It was in darkness, and so the woman's voice, when it sounded from the far corner, took him completely by surprise.
'Julia?' The accent was guttural, unspecified middle-European.
'Yes, auntie, it's me.' She flicked on the light. Andy saw, sitting in the corner, a small grey-haired woman. She turned her face towards them, with a smile which the policeman thought had something strange about it. 'I've brought a new friend home. His name's Andy Martin. He's a policeman. Andy, this is my Aunt Dome – Mrs Rosenberg.'
Andy smiled towards her and knew with certainty, as he did so, that Mrs Rosenberg was completely blind. Julia tugged at his sleeve, pulling him towards an open door which led into the kitchen. At the same time she spoke across the room to her aunt.
'I'm going to make coffee. Would you like some?'
'No, thank you, dear. I'm off to bed. My radio programme finished some time ago. Very pleased to meet you, Mr Martin.'
She stood up from her chair and began to tap her way expertly, with a white stick, towards a door on the far side of the room.
Andy was still recovering from the surprise. 'Very pleased to meet you too, Mrs Rosenberg,' he said belatedly. 'Goodnight.'
As the old woman left the room, he followed Julia into the kitchen.
"There. I told you I was a nice Jewish girl. And aU nice Jewish girls have to have little old Jewish mothers – and, if not, aunties.' •How long…?'
'Three years now, but her sight was failing for five years before that. It's a very rare condition. Seventeen cases currently on the record in the UK. The vision starts to go in the centre, and the blind spot just widens out until it's all gone. Quite incurable.
Uncle Percy took her everywhere, looking for a different opinion, but all the diagnoses were the same – and all the prognoses. She can't see a thing now, not even the faintest hint of light. Hardly any point in her coming to a film festival, is there? But she said she'd just like to be here in the city while it was on. She can hear, though. Can she hear! A mouse hiccup at fifty paces, she says.'
Julia drew Andy's head down towards her and kissed him. 'So we'll just have to be very quiet. Won't we?' she murmured.
Quieter than mice, and being careful not to hiccup, they tiptoed upstairs. Much of Julia's bedroom was filled by a king-size brassframed bed, po
sitioned opposite a narrow white-curtained window. The drapes were tied back to allow in as much light as possible. Andy felt inside the doorway for a light switch, but she placed a soft hand on his arm to stop him.
She led him gently towards the bed and, without speaking, began to unfasten his shirt, kissing his chest as each button came undone. Her hunger for him was frank, honest, and somehow touching in its fragility. For his part. where he would normally have been confident and dominant, now he felt as awkward and clumsy as an inexperienced teenager. He was amazed to find that his fingers were trembling as he fumbled with the catch of her dress, but eventually the zipper came free and unfastened in one long movement.
She stepped out of the expensive garment and laid it on a chair near the bed. And when she reached out her arms to him, and moved towards him, her pale skin shining in the silver light like fine china, he embraced her with a catch in his throat, and with the knowledge that he had come to a pivotal moment in his life, after which nothing would ever be as it had been before.
Julia was generous and tender and enormously affectionate in her love-making. He responded to her touches, as she did to his, with shivers and gasps, allowing her to express herself as she chose, as she introduced herself to his body. He took pleasure in her tenderness, finding himself excited as never before by her patience and by the relaxed fashion in which she unfolded herself to him. He drank deeply from the well of her passion, matching her pace where he would once have rushed, holding back to sustain her as she climaxed, letting go only when he could control himself no longer. As he did, he scaled a peak of pleasure which he had never reached before, realising as he stretched himself on its summit, that he was experiencing for the first time all the sensations of a genuine union between two bodies and souls.
When they had reached the other side of the mountain, they lay side by side on the fluffy cover, naked, smiling at each other in the moonlight. Martin felt enriched, and it came to him with the greatest clarity that the essential ingredient, intimacy, had been missing from the string of hollow, purely physical relationships in which he had been involved over the previous few years.
'I don't do this ever, you know,' she whispered to him, very softly. 'On the first date, I mean. Not very nice Jewish behaviour at all.'
He blew gently into her ear, and smiled as her back arched and her nipples hardened in a second. Then he turned her face to his and said very softly: 'Would you believe me if I told you that was the first time I've ever made love?'
Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but he stopped her with a kiss.
'It's true. Until now, what I've known has been no more than screwing.' He paused. 'Suddenly, I'm scared. This is new territory for me. We met what, eight hours ago? – and yet… Well, it's incredible. I'm a logical man, I'm pushing thirty-five, and here I am, gone, shot, stoned… in love, I think. Do you think I'm crazy?'
She laid two small fingers across his mouth. 'If you are, my darling, it's contagious.' She took his hand and placed it between her breasts. 'Feel here. I'm shaking.'
It was true. Under his touch, Andy could feel a faint trembling mixed in with the steady pounding of her heart. He moved his hand round and drew her, gently, close against him. He nodded his head towards the window. 'Maybe it's just that full moon.
Maybe tomorrow…'
She smiled. 'Maybe. But it doesn't feel that way to me. In the meantime…'
She pulled his head towards her and began to chew his earlobe, gently. A shaft of pleasure ran down his body, all the way to his toes.
'Julia!' Mrs Rosenberg's voice came in an insistent whisper from the open doorway.
In her surprise, Julia bit down sharply on Andy's ear. He managed to stifle a yelp. Taken completely unawares by the silence of the woman's approach, and forgetting that she was blind, he reached out automatically for his clothes.
The whisper came again. "There's someone downstairs.
Someone trying to get in.'
'Are you sure, auntie?' Julia whispered in return.
'Of course I'm sure. At the front door. As well we have a policeman here.' In the moonlight, he saw her smile faintly into the room.
Martin was into his slacks and shirt before she had finished speaking. Barefoot, he moved silently through the doorway and crept downstairs. He and Julia had left the living-room door ajar when they had gone up. He stood behind it and listened. At first there was nothing, only a heavy silence, until he heard a scratchy, creaking noise, which he recognised as a jemmy on the door-frame.
Keeping out of the moonlight and close to the wall, he slid into the room and up to the front door. Grabbing the oval handle of the Yale lock. he twisted it and pulled, hard. The door swung open, only to be stopped after a few inches by a brass security chain, fixed peculiarly a few inches above floor level.
'Shit!'
Martin closed the door again and freed the chain, then pulled it wide but, in those few seconds, the intruder had bolted. The garden gate swung creaking on its hinges. He had just time to see what he was certain was a male figure disappearing around the corner. As he ran from the lane into the sloping Dublin Street, he saw his quarry at the foot of the hill, racing into Drummond Place. Martin gave up the chase. Seconds later he heard a motorcycle bark into life, then roar away. He jogged back to the house, where he found Julia standing in the doorway, once again wearing her white robe.
'Sorry, love. He got away. I'd have had him, but I didn't notice the chain.'
'You were in the kitchen when I fixed it. I do that every night without even thinking. A previous occupant installed it down there. He must have been a midget. Oh, but, Andy, thank God you were here. So much for my precious alarm system!'
Martin looked up at the big red box above the door. 'Don't blame that too much. The guy's pumped some quick-dry stuff into it. A pound to a pinch of pig-shit, this was the container.' He knelt and picked up a long cylinder, with a pistol grip at one end, and a nozzle at the other. 'Yes. Sure enough. Quick-dry mastic: a sort of rubber solution. Your alarm probably still thinks it's working. It won't realise it's been choked to death. I don't suppose it's linked to the Gayfield police station?'
Julia shook her head.
Together they went back indoors, Martin carrying the mastic tube.
'Where's your aunt?'
'I made her go back to bed.'
'Well, go and tell her everything's ok, but first show me where the phone is. I'm going to call this in.'
'It's in the kitchen. Will that mean police here tonight?'
He chuckled. 'Apart from me, you mean? No, I'll tell them I'm handling things here. But for the next half-hour or so I want anyone going through this city on a motorcycle pulled over and questioned. On you go, now. Put your aunt's mind at rest.'
She started towards the stairs, then looked back at him from the doorway. 'Andy,' she said quietly. 'Will you stay till morning?'
He smiled his widest smile. 'And the morning after, and the morning after that; as many mornings as you want. Try and stop roe. You, lady, now have the highest-ranking personal bodyguard in Edinburgh.'
She was waiting for him under the duvet – after he had made his call and issued his orders to the Gayfield night-shift. Her white robe lay on the floor, the curtains were drawn, and a lamp on the bedside table was lit. He undressed and slipped into bed beside her.
As she hugged him, he felt her shiver very slightly.
'Andy, you don't suppose there could have been any connection between that burglar and the things you told us about this afternoon.'
He shook his head vigorously. 'Not at all. That was just a Saturday-night chancer. The sort of thing that happens every weekend in life, in any city.'
As she smiled and pulled him towards her he hoped that he would never have to lie to her again.
16
'I know it's a big if, boss, but she is connected with the Festival.'
'Yes, but hold on, Andy. You said yourself that the curtains were open at the front of the
house: downstairs and upstairs. And your car was parked round the corner. The guy probably just guessed, wrongly, that the place was empty. How was he to know that you just like having it off with the curtains open?'
'Aye, very funny, Bob. Look, damn few opportunists come equipped with a cylinder of mastic to fuck up any alarm system they might happen to come across.'
'OK, maybe he was a professional Saturdaynighter.'
Skinner saw Martin's frown deepen, his expression made even darker by the stubble on his chin. He put a friendly hand on his shoulder.
'Look, Andy, I know you're worried about this girl. Nothing's impossible, and the chances are we'll never know whether there was a connection. But one thing's for sure: after having a close shave like that, there's no way the bastard will come back.'
'Maybe so, boss, but I'm still having that house watched, and Julia escorted to and from work. And once the alarm's fixed, it's being linked to Gayfield.'
Skinner whistled at Martin's vehemence. 'Here, this sounds serious. How long have you known this lass? One day? Is this the Andy Martin that I know, and that dozens of women have come to love in vain? Your thinking must be affected, right enough. Otherwise, last night you'd have let that boy get all the way in the door! Then you could have stiffened him and we'd have got all the answers that we're just guessing at now. That's what I'd have done if I'd been there – and been thinking straight, that is!'
Skinner and Martin were alone in the private office of the Special Branch suite. It was 8:50 am on Sunday morning, and the headquarters building was weekend quiet. But suddenly, they heard the outer door open.
'Someone's keen said Skinner. 'We told them nine o'clock.'
There was a soft knock on Martin's door. 'Come!' he shouted.
The door opened and a little round man, no more than five feet four inches tall, seemed to roll into the room. At first Martin was reminded of a football, then, noting the way in which the little man appeared to taper inward and down from the shoulders, decided that he looked more like a spinning top.
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