‘Well, Mrs Mackenzie, I can’t tell you how much I would appreciate that. Your full Scottish breakfast and a large pot of tea will be just fine.’
I replaced the receiver and giggled at the picture of Murdo, every step a worry, struggling manfully upstairs, tray laden with porridge, kippers, bacon, egg, black pudding and toast. I wouldn’t manage to eat all that myself, of course, but Gorgonzola would definitely appreciate the kippers.
I thought about the note I’d sent to Spinks. Our organisation could use a guy like you. Meet me in Edinburgh at St Anthony’s Chapel in the Queen’s Park. 11.30 tomorrow morning. It was too late to back out now.
The narrow road was signposted Church of Scotland, Duddingston. Historic Scottish Kirk, 12th Century. To my right, spacious villas of imposing architecture peeped over high stone walls. I slowed the car and risked a quick sideways glance at the old church with its worn horse-mounting platform. A strange iron collar on the end of a short chain hung from the adjacent wall. I caught a fleeting impression of spiked barred gates, lichened tombstones, crenellated battlements… Then I was past.
The entrance to the Queen’s Park lay a hundred yards ahead. It was 9.45 a.m. That gave me plenty of time to climb the swelling ridge of Arthur’s Seat and approach St Anthony’s Chapel from the rear. I got out of the car and looked around. In the distance the Pentland Hills smudged the horizon, and on the other side of the road, a reed-fringed loch sparkled in the sunshine. I leant on the waist-high iron railing, gazing down at the geese and ducks sunning themselves at the water’s edge. An old man was scattering bread on the ground. Beside him, a small girl, herself not much taller than the geese, was holding out a lump to entice them closer. Reluctantly, I turned my back on the tranquil scene. I was part of a grimmer world.
According to the guidebook, there should be a path from the car park that would take me up over the hill, a much longer route than the more direct approach from Holyrood Palace, but with luck I might catch Spinks unawares, putting me psychologically one step ahead. I scanned the hillside opposite. My way lay to the right of that neat Victorian park-keeper’s cottage.
Steps, hundreds of them. I took a deep breath and began to climb. 48, 49, 50. Already my leg muscles were starting to protest. 98, 99, 100. I paused for breath, making an excuse to gaze down over the pretty loch with its border of trees. In the distance, a romantically half-ruined castle rubbed shoulders with some hideous twentieth-century high-rise flats.
I toiled on upwards, a dense thicket of hawthorn to one side, and a high pinkish wall covered with ivy on the other. When I glanced back a hundred or so steps later, the view of the loch was almost totally obscured.
Steps, wall and hawthorn gradually petered out. The path was now a grassy track, still going uphill but much easier on the legs. It was all so incredibly peaceful – tall wild grasses, purple thistles, the hum of insects, the rays of the sun warm on my back. A gentle breeze quivered through the grasses, wafting with it the muted hum of distant traffic. I could have been miles out in the country instead of near the centre of a busy, car-choked capital city.
I scrambled up to an ornate black metal post sprouting incongruously in the middle of the deserted hillside, and, to my surprise, found myself on the edge of a road. I sank onto a thoughtfully placed wooden bench, another unexpected mark of civilisation – like the car park a short distance away. If I’d studied the map properly, I could have driven up here and saved myself a lot of effort.
I pulled the map out of my pocket and refolded it with the area of St Anthony’s Chapel and Holyrood Palace uppermost. The main route for traffic rounded the bulk of Arthur’s Seat and squeezed between Duddingston Loch and the hill, before merging with the street network of south-east Edinburgh at the Duddingston Kirk entrance. I must be about two hundred feet higher up. I swivelled round on the seat. There was the main road far below. This upper road joined the one that ran past the Chapel and Palace, and was quite plainly marked. How could I have missed it?
The sound of an engine starting up broke my concentration. I looked up to see a Range Rover move slowly out of the car park off to my left. I turned my attention back to the map. Should I continue with my original plan and climb up over the hill to my rendezvous point at St Anthony’s Chapel? Or should I walk along this road? It wouldn’t take any longer, and would definitely be a lot easier…
An engine roared harshly at full rev. A squeal of tyres brought the acrid smell of burning rubber. In that split second I realised the danger I would have been in if Spinks had driven with murderous intent towards me in the Tantallon fog. Instinctively, I flung myself off the bench, curled myself into a ball, and rolled over the edge of the slope.
I came painfully to rest against a sharp and prickly bush. Arthur’s Seat is famous for the gorse that clothes its slopes, and here I was getting a close-up view. A hands-on experience, you could call it. I lay there winded for a few moments, in my ears the sharp crack of splintering wood. The engine roar faded…
‘Good gracious me, are you all right, my dear?’
I rolled away from the bush’s scratchy embrace and looked up. Two horrified elderly faces were peering down at me from the road above. A third face joined them, a whiskery West Highland terrier’s. It seemed to be laughing at my predicament.
‘Don’t be silly, Edith! Of course she’s not all right.’ This was accompanied by a vigorous shaking of his head. ‘She might have been killed. Aye, killed.’ The man’s white hair fluttered and bounced as shake turned to nod. ‘Such driving! And by a woman, even!’
‘You do talk a great deal of rubbish sometimes, Harry. It wasn’t because she was a woman. It was because she was a foreigner. They’re not used to driving on our side of the road, you know.’
‘She wasn’t just driving on the wrong side of the road, Edith. She was driving on the pavement! Even foreigners can tell the difference between the road and the pavement.’
I tottered unsteadily to my feet and climbed back up the slope. The bench lay on its side, the splintered wood, the jagged pieces of plastic bumper, the sprinkling of orange glass, all mute evidence of Spinks’s latest attempt to get rid of me. So he hadn’t been taken in by my message…or perhaps he had. And this was his way of getting rid of an unwelcome rival, just as he had got rid of Hinburger and Lombardini. There seemed no point now in going ahead with the meeting at St Anthony’s Chapel.
‘No, Harry,’ Edith was adamant. ‘You can’t convince me. No woman would deliberately try to knock someone down.’
That took a few moments to register.
Edith and Harry, lost in the pleasures of verbal sparring, seemed to have completely forgotten my presence.
I gave a tentative cough. ‘Er, excuse me.’
‘Oh, Harry! That poor lady – you’ve been arguing and here she is, all scratched and bruised…’ Edith drew breath to fuel another lengthy conversational duel with her husband.
‘No, no, I’m quite all right,’ I interrupted. ‘Did I hear you say that it was a woman driving the car?’
‘It was indeed. And a foreign woman at that.’ Harry pursed his lips in disapproval.
For once he and Edith seemed to be in agreement. ‘Oh yes, definitely foreign,’ she nodded.
‘Foreign?’ How could they possibly know? I had the surreal vision of a Gallic assassin dressed in striped Breton jersey and designer beret.
‘We’d passed her earlier, you know… Standing just about here, she was, looking down at the loch.’ Edith’s eyes gleamed with excitement as she relived the moment. ‘I said to Harry, didn’t I Harry, “There’s another of those foreign tourists.” Edinburgh’s getting really busy with them now that summer’s here and—’
‘We said good morning to her. Well, it’s only manners, isn’t it?’ Harry interrupted, unwilling to let Edith monopolise the conversation. ‘Not very friendly, she was. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at us with those almond eyes and—’
‘Almond eyes?’ My voice was louder and sharper than intended.
Harry’s white eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Why yes, Oriental, you know. Chinese or…’
‘Or Japanese?’ I said slowly. Had I been right about a connection between Kumiko Matsuura, Lombardini and Spinks?
The sensible thing now would be to let the local police take over, let them handle everything. But Spinks would go to ground as soon as they started nosing round the White Heather Hotel. And he’d not leave anything incriminating behind. Even if they caught up with him, there was nothing they could actually charge him with. Reluctantly, I had to admit that my only chance of keeping in touch with him was to continue in my role of Mafia go-between and turn up at our rendezvous. An extremely dangerous course, but it might convince him that I was genuine.
I sensed eyes watching me and looked up. Edith and Harry were gazing at me anxiously. The dog was rootling and snuffling under a nearby bush, paying me no attention at all.
‘She looks a bit dazed, Harry. I think we should call an ambulance.’ The faintly etched age lines on Edith’s face had deepened into worried furrows.
Harry tugged absent-mindedly at the dog’s lead. ‘We should get the police, Edith. That was a hit-and-run. They might catch that maniac woman before she leaves the Park.’
‘There you go again, Harry. There’s no chance of that. At that speed, she’ll be miles away by now. No, an ambulance is—’
‘No, really. That won’t be necessary. I’m quite all right,’ I said to forestall another lengthy argument. ‘I’m meeting somebody at St Anthony’s Chapel and I’m a bit late. If you’ll just tell me how to get there…’ This was a mistake.
‘That’s the quickest way,’ Harry pointed to a broad well-beaten path leading uphill to the right of where we stood. ‘Most people take that route, don’t they, Edith? It goes right to the top. It’ll take you about half an hour.’
At precisely the same moment, Edith pointed to a narrow path winding off to the left through the gorse bushes. ‘Now, Harry, I think you’ll agree that’s definitely the best way.’ She turned to me, ‘It might take you a little longer, but it’s not nearly so steep.’
I winced. I was about to be engulfed in yet another argument. I made an instant diplomatic decision.
‘Thank you. Over the top would be the best way, but I don’t think I feel quite up to it just now. The other way does look a little easier. I’d better go that way. Thanks again for your help.’
Before either could say anything more, I gave them a cheery wave and headed for the path on the left. At a safe distance I risked a glance back. Edith and Harry were examining the remains of the bench. They seemed to be arguing. The dog sat scratching its ear, its hairy head on one side as if trying to decide who was right.
The path slanted gradually upwards. From a sea of waist-high grass the occasional rounded grey boulder surfaced like some smooth-backed creature of the deep. The waspish whine of a motorbike far below competed with the hum of insects. My jangled nerves began to relax.
This pleasant stroll lasted for less than five minutes before the path began to climb steeply and I had to stop for breath. Not nearly so steep, Edith had said. Just as well, then, I hadn’t taken Harry’s route. That brush with death had taken more out of me than I’d realised. I glanced at my watch. No need to hurry, I mustn’t arrive too exhausted to cope with anything Spinks might, literally, throw at me.
On the skyline, a paper kite spiralled and swooped, bright against the blue sky. Most of my own clumsy childhood attempts to get a kite airborne had ended in tears. It had seemed like the end of the world then, when it had crashed to the ground or entangled itself inextricably in a nearby tree, but, as I’ve said, it was a grimmer world now.
If anything, the path ahead looked steeper and narrower, more like a sheep track. Edith and Harry must have the stamina of mountain goats if they thought this was easy. From far below the wail of a siren drifted up. If the hit-and-run had gone to plan, that ambulance could have been coming to whisk away my shattered body. A surge of anger made the incline ahead surprisingly easy going.
Five minutes later, where the hill’s brown bones burst through the thin turf, and a tumbled rockery of greyed lava boulders eerily evoked weathered and lichen-covered gravestones, the path levelled out and broadened to a wide grassy track. Was Spinks, that master of planning and opportunity, thinking of me as the late Miss Smith after a successful ‘accident’? And what kind of little accident would he have arranged if I had tried to reach St Anthony’s Chapel by the direct route, instead of by Duddingston? I’d have to be very careful indeed.
As I came over the shoulder of the hill, the summit lay off to the right, not deserted as I had somehow imagined but really quite busy, with little groups clambering over outcrops, or chattering and laughing as they trudged up the path of volcanic gravel that zigzagged up the reddish summit mound.
Just after 11a.m. Would I have time to stand for a few minutes on the very top of Arthur’s Seat? I hesitated, indecisive, looking longingly at the rocky summit. I made a quick calculation of time and distance. If I made a detour to the top, there should be a splendid bird’s eye view of St Anthony’s Chapel and its surroundings. I could spy on him, and it would certainly make me feel less twitchy if I could check my route down for any figures lurking behind overhanging rocks. That clinched it, I’d make a quick dash to the top…
Spread out below me lay the grey buildings of Edinburgh, and in the distance glittered the blue ribbon of the River Forth. I could see Inchcolm and the other islands quite clearly, but the chapel was hidden by the shoulder of the hill. Perhaps from over there…
I picked my way carefully across the lumpy summit rock, polished to a black sheen in places by countless tourists’ feet. Directly below me lay the small loch shown on the map. Swans floated on its smooth surface. That dark irregular shape must be the chapel itself, perched precariously on an outcrop of rock. I hadn’t expected the building to be quite so small or so ruined – only a couple of walls and an outline of tumbled stones. There was no sign of anyone, lurking or otherwise, down at the chapel. No photographers. No tourists. No sinister figure.
My route down was via a wide valley, open and grassy with no ambush places. And quite a few people were toiling up it towards the summit. At least I wasn’t alone on the way down.
Just before the chapel, the path dipped sharply into a hollow. I stood for a moment gazing up at the crumbling walls. Byron must have had just such a gloomy place in mind when he penned the line, Childe Harolde to the dark tower came.
No bird sang. Utter silence, apart from the whisper of wind in the grasses. I stared back up the way I’d come, up to the summit with its throng of laughing and chattering holidaymakers. It was a world away.
When I looked round again at the chapel, he was there. Standing framed in the ruined arch, outlined against the blue sky, his face in shadow. But I could see that he was smiling. Gorgonzola smiled just such an anticipatory smile when she toyed with a mouse before gobbling it up. I’d thought I was prepared, but my stomach lurched and my throat felt sandpaper dry.
I feigned a confident smile and marched briskly forward. It’s difficult to march up a steep incline briskly and with poise. By the time I was face to face with him I was struggling to avoid gasping and gaping like a newly landed fish. Please God, he’d take my flushed face and heavy breathing for signs of anger.
For a long, long moment he was silent. Then he rasped, ‘Got your message.’
‘And?’ I managed, still struggling to regain breath control.
That threw him. I’d obviously hit on the right tactics. He was used to calling the tune and being the one to ask the questions.
Before he could recover, I stepped forward and poked him in the chest so hard that it rocked him back on his heels.
‘The thing is,’ I said, looking him squarely in the eye, ‘I’m not sure if there’s room for you in our organisation. Know what I mean?’
He frowned, at a psychological disadvantage, the meeting not going the way he’d vis
ualised. I made my move. Whipping out my mobile phone, I punched in my date of birth and my National Insurance number.
‘Smith here. He’s being stupid. He even tried a little GBH.’ I paused, eyes on Spinks.
A voice in my ear said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but is this some kind of joke?’
Incredibly, my random numbers had found a target. I took my cue from the squawking voice, gazed speculatively at Spinks, and pursed my lips.
‘No, I’m not joking.’ I paused. ‘You want that I should take action?’
An alarmed screech from the voice.
‘OK. I’ll ask him.’
I severed the connection.
‘You want another chance? We’d need to see how neatly you handle your next drop.’ I turned my back on Spinks and walked away, heart racing, legs weak. ‘Let me know by tonight. I’ll be checking out of the White Heather early tomorrow. Your move.’ I tossed the words carelessly over my shoulder.
I waited for the impact of the bullet between my shoulder blades, the nanosecond of searing pain, oblivion. But a minute passed…then two…three…
When I reached the road, I risked a quick glance back. I could just make out the thin figure. Still standing in the ruined archway. Still watching me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was entirely the wrong direction to retrieve my car, but I kept on going. Past the high wall of the Palace gardens. Past the black lacy filigree of the Palace gates. Past the angular modern architecture of the Scottish Parliament. Sure at last that I was out of sight of Spinks, even if he was watching through high-powered binoculars, I headed up the crowded Royal Mile. At a running walk that would have done credit to an Olympic athlete, I weaved my way through the knots of tourists idling along in the June sunshine. I didn’t know and I didn’t care if those heads were turning in admiration of my athletic fitness, or in annoyance at being hustled out of the way. All I wanted was to put as much distance as possible between Spinks and myself. If you want the truth, my nerve had failed.
No Suspicious Circumstances Page 13