Cold Fusion (6 page)

“You shouldn’t call them by their name. I understand it’s best to say the good folk.”

I spun round to see if he was serious. But who could tell? His expression was neutral, the angle of his high cheekbones enigmatic in the fading afternoon light. If he was the elfin king around these parts, that would actually explain a lot. Then he shrugged and looked ordinary again. “My father had a steward, an old man called Alfred who helped him look after the castle and the grounds. He drives past the end of the lane twice a day. If he sees that note under the stone, he’ll do some shopping for me and bring it back within the hour.”

I couldn’t resist. I bit my lower lip, but the bubble of amusement kept on rising. “Hang on. You have a faithful old family retainer—a
butler
, you might say—called Alfred?”

“Yes. What about it?”

I shook my head. I put the note into my pocket and headed for the door. I paused on the step, enjoying without thinking about it the clean, bouncing sweep of the wind. “Never mind. You just carry on with your wiring, Bruce. And once you’ve got it all fixed up, you and I need to sit down and watch some serious TV.”

I set off down the track. To retrace my steps like this was weird, although only the most basic things had changed. I was clean and warmly dressed, the dragging burden of my rucksack taken from me. My empty stomach only made me more keenly aware of the frozen-sea wave-scape of the dunes, the shift in the air towards winter. I could have tackled the first sharp rise of the track as I had done as a child, grabbing at the marram to haul myself up, leaping from clump to clump of turf. The thrifts were dry and dead but still gave off hot summer scents underfoot, and the yarrows with their endless flowering season were everywhere. I crushed one leaf between my fingers to release the spicy oils, felt a surge of energy and broke into a run.

Alice Maguire would have liked to have been here too, no doubt, smelling the yarrows and running the crests of the dunes. I hadn’t known Oskar well enough to be sure how he spent his off-duty, but he probably would have enjoyed the air and the views out towards that deceiving Greek-blue sea. Just breathing and seeing, both of them… I couldn’t begin to fathom the differences between the way they were when I’d stood on the
Sea Hawk
’s deck and talked to them last, and the way they were now. My mind wouldn’t compass it. But the change was my fault. Somehow over the last few hours I’d managed to forget that. The strength ran out of my limbs, and I dropped back to a walk.

Vivian’s eight-tenths of a mile felt long. I’d never have made it all the way down to the village. Coming to a halt at the place where the track met a rutted farm road winding down from the hills, I picked out the white marker stone. I took out the sheet from my pocket. I wouldn’t have read his private mail, but his handwriting was large and clear and caught my eye.
I have a guest. Please bring nice things.

I was setting the rock back into place when a distant roar made me look up. A Range Rover was bouncing down the hillside. It was battered and elderly, but a gold-painted family crest shone on its panels. I couldn’t see a driver, and I rubbed my eyes as it apparently made its way down the last few yards of the road all by itself. Then I got a glimpse of cropped white hair, and the door swung wide to reveal a short, sparely built old man in magnificent tweeds. He got out of the vehicle and stood with his hand on the door, looking me over. I guessed whatever conclusions he’d drawn weren’t in my favour when he turned, reached into the Rover’s back seat, and carefully withdrew a gleaming double-barrelled shotgun.

I should have minded. At the least I should have cared. But Alice and Oskar were ghosts at my shoulders, and I was still breathing their good air. I raised my hands, less in a gesture of surrender than a shrug. “There’s already a bloke down in Kerra who’ll shoot me if he can. So if you want to do his job for him, go ahead.”

The old man put the gun over his arm. He slammed the Rover’s door and stamped over the turf to stand in front of me. “Will you do me a kindness,” he said, glancing down at the stone, “and fetch out that note for me? The young laird has no care for my rheumatics.”

I supposed I had no care for the back of my head, because I obeyed him. “I thought it wasn’t a hereditary title.” God, even now my puerile sense of humour might sink me—if the old man had called Vivian
young master
, I might have died laughing before he could shoot me. “The lairdship, I mean.”

“It is’nae. But there are still proprieties, for those who care to observe them.” He scowled at Vivian’s message. “I take it you’re the guest.”

“Yes. I suppose so.” I swallowed hard and composed myself. “Are you Alfred?”

If Vivian hadn’t heard the joke before, it wasn’t a new one on the old man. His scowl deepened. “I’m Mr. Macready to you, Kier Mallory. Aye, I do know who you are, so don’t look so sick—I dinnae listen to village gossip. Here, take this back. You might as well wait here for me and take his lairdship’s groceries back to him. I’ll no’ be above twenty minutes.” He gave me a wry glance, not entirely devoid of sympathy. “I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting a ride.”

My impulse to laugh had died a sudden death. “No, thanks, Mr. Macready.”

He turned away. He paused halfway into the Rover and squinted back at me. “It is no’ any of my business how the young laird picks his guests. But since you’re here, you should know this—Vivian Calder isn’t alone, no matter how lonely he may appear to be.”

“I—I’ve no intention of harming him, sir.”

“And he is’nae quite like other people, much as other people might benefit from being more like him. You bear that in mind, Mr. Mallory, and I shall be glad to bring you your shopping.”

If I didn’t, he’d be equally glad to ventilate my skull with a twelve-gauge. I wouldn’t have thought Vivian the type to inspire protective loyalty in a tough old Scot like this. “Don’t worry. I’m only here for a couple of days. I’m…helping him out with his work.”

“Are ye? Mind you do exactly as he tells you, then. He understands such things.” Macready got into the car, then leaned an elbow on its open window. His face was drawn with weariness. “There are things he does not understand so well, like the loss of his father and what it means for us all. We dinnae expect it of him, and nor should you, but if he should wish to speak to you about it, mind you listen well.” He shook his head. “It cannae be good for a man not to grieve.”

I watched the Rover disappear down the track. The wind was turning cold, so I sheltered in the lee of a rock. Vivian might not be grieving, but the old man’s heart was clearly breaking for his laird.

Well, there were still people around here who thought Dave Mallory was just a good old boy. Family friends, and even faithful old family retainers, couldn’t always penetrate the shadows where fathers took their bitterness out on their sons. I wondered what had happened to Vivian’s mother, and how his boyhood years had passed for him, alone with the laird in the echoing halls and corridors of Calder Castle. I flinched from my own thoughts and glanced at my watch. Vivian had been doing all right before my arrival, so I couldn’t account for my unease at leaving him alone now. Still, I sat and counted down the minutes, huddled in my coat against the rain-flecked wind, until I caught the Rover’s distant growl again.

Vivian was waiting for me when I got back. At least that was my brief impression, tramping up the steps of the old weather station, hauling the grocery bags Alfred had handed to me without a single word. There’d been a candle in the cafeteria window, and a shape in the candlelight, elegant and watchful. When I stumbled into the room, however, Vivian was perched on a stool by his workbench, dismantling a tall glass tube with electrodes running into it.

“Oh,” he said, sparing me a glance. “You’re back.”

“Well, even a genius can point out the obvious at times.” I dumped my shopping bags on the floor. The fact that we were down to candlelight told me no miracles of cold fusion had happened in my absence, but still it was only polite to ask. “How did things go in the huts?”

“All wired up. Now I have to adjust my cathodes and extraction monitors, and—”

“Nope. You have to knock off work, sit down with me and eat before you swoon into your gadgets. Alfred’s orders.”

“You met him? Was he polite to you?”

“Once he lowered the shotgun, he was very civil indeed.” I examined the contents of the bags. For all his loyalty, it looked as though Alfred had no illusions about his young laird’s project, either. Most of the things he’d bought could be served just as well cold as hot. “It’s freezing in here. Did you never think to light the stove?”

“Is there a stove?”

“Yes, over here, though you seem to be using it as some kind of cable caddy.”

“We won’t need it, once I’ve adjusted my cathodes and extraction monitors, and—”

“Okay, okay. Do you mind if I unwind a few of these, and…”

“Please don’t touch them. I’ll do it.”

I stood well clear while he unhooked a few yards of black rubber-coated wire from the stove’s elderly flanks, and to my amusement removed a small tool kit from inside it. I guessed everything, including his visitors, became subservient to the needs of his project.

“Thanks,” I said when he was finished. “We used to run this for the tourists in the caff. A lovely natural driftwood fire, you know, in keeping with such a beautiful lonely shore, but…” I knelt by the stove, reached behind it and adjusted a bolt on a metal tube. “Well, we were all too fragile and creative to go and gather the wood. This runs off gas. Now, if there’s anything left in the canister, and I can get the ignition to work…” I turned the knob, and after a few alarming clicks and a choking acrid stink, the fake coals burst into life. I dragged two chairs over from the nearest table. “There we go. You sit your skinny backside down there, and I shall prepare dinner.”

“I just need to do something first.”

I took the shopping bags into the kitchen. The bunk bed where I’d spent the night had been made with military neatness. I unloaded the food, noticing that the crockery in the cupboards had been arranged with precision, all the cup handles pointing the same way. I pushed the new tins in at random, grabbed two plates and began to set out the fresh things. Chicken, salad, a crusty loaf. Alfred must have held up the Co-op at gunpoint to get such nice stuff out of it at this hour. There was a bottle of chilly white there too, which I thought I’d leave to the young master to uncork. I chopped up the lettuce and peppers, dug out a second set of cutlery from a drawer, and headed back into the café with the plates.

I stopped in the doorway. Everything in the room—from the equipment on the workbench to the two chairs I’d set in front of the stove—had been slightly moved so that it was either lying parallel to the object next to it or set at neat right angles. The overall effect was weird, the order imposed at once strict and meaningless. And Vivian was still busy—while I watched, he picked up his own boots and the pair I’d kicked off to avoid treading sand across the floor, and lined them up with mathematical accuracy by the door.

“Vivian.” He jerked up his head as if he’d forgotten I was there. “I’m serious. Go sit down.”

He might balk at suggestions, but he was pretty cooperative when given a direct order. That made me think even less kindly of the old laird. Still, it was useful.

“Eat,” I said, once he’d joined me by the stove and I’d pulled the chairs back to a less comfortless angle, and after raising one dark eyebrow at me he obeyed, cautiously at first and then with half-starved appetite.

The stove began to dispel the room’s chill. He tucked up his feet onto the rung of his chair, politely offered me the last of the bread, and when I refused, polished it off himself. He stretched as if he’d forgotten how it felt to be warm and well fed. Then he picked up the wine bottle, which we’d both forgotten in our haste to get some food on board. “Is your hangover gone?”

I blinked. Was he kidding? I’d felt sick this morning on waking, but I could metabolise a hell of a lot more than a measly quart of scotch without suffering all-day effects. Suddenly that didn’t seem like a very nice boast for a man in his twenties—more the kind of prowess my father would claim—so I just nodded. “Yeah, it is, thanks.”

“I should open this, then.” We both reached into our pockets at once. He produced a multi-tool pocketknife at the same time as I found my battered fisherman’s Swiss Army, and we traded amused glances in the firelight. “Go ahead,” he said, handing me the bottle. “Unless you feel it might be better not to drink. Given your family history.”

Jesus. Way to destroy a comradely moment. “What do you know about my family history?”

“A great deal, but it isn’t personal. My father considered it part of his duty as laird to understand and help the people in Kerra if he could. He knew a great deal about everyone.”

“He sounds like fucking Santa Claus.” I pierced the cork savagely and ripped it out. “Forgive me for saying so, but no one helped us. And it would have been patronising feudal bollocks if they had.”

“Perhaps. There was little he could do for your family. He used to discuss strategy with Alfred, and Alfred argued against having your father’s drink-driving charges dropped. Perhaps he interfered unwisely, and it would have been better for you if your father had been sent to jail.”

“Vivian…” My voice was hoarse and unsteady, so I sloshed wine into the mugs I’d brought through to give myself time to calm down. “Listen. I know all this might seem like something at the end of a microscope to you, but it was my life. I can’t just…chat to you about it like this.”

“All right.”

“And I’m nothing like my father.” I handed him one mug, knocked back the contents of my own and poured myself a big refill, certainly feeling that I needed it. “You don’t have to worry. Okay?”

“All right. What specification were the RIBs?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The rigid inflatable boats. From the Peace Warrior vessel. What specification were they?”

I sat back in my chair. In his head, he was simply picking up a conversation from the point before he’d become distracted by his work. Alfred Macready had been too kind or respectful to stick a label on him, but he was clearly deranged, autistic maybe, incapable of emotional engagement. Which meant there was precious little point in throwing an emotional reaction back at him. All my outrage, all the tears in the world, wouldn’t change what had happened. So despite the fact that he was nuts and I was probably nuts for sitting here trying to talk to him, I drew a deep breath and replied. “Redbay Stormforce models. Twelve feet long, 190 HP Steyn outboard motors.”