Powerstone (23 page)

Irene did not notice Mark opening
the door for her, and she checked her purse as she walked the familiar streets.
The small card oblong seemed to cling to her fingers, with its bragging claim
to a royal connection and the telephone number scrawled across the back.

Irene held the card in her hand as
she walked across the city. There were many places in
New York
from where she could make a
transatlantic call.

Edinburgh, June

‘Well now; this is an unexpected
pleasure.’ Drew held out his hand.

Irene took it. For years she had
calculated every move, ensured that all the angles were covered before she
committed herself to anything, but now she had acted on the spur of a very insubstantial
moment. She looked up at this smiling Scotsman and wondered if she was being
completely stupid, decided that she probably was and then decided that she did
not really care. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

They strolled a few paces with the
sound of birds in the air and the castle a friendly giant in the background.
Princes
Street
Gardens
may have been much smaller than
Central Park
, but the scenery was just as
interesting.

‘It’s good to see you, too,’ Drew stepped
back, ‘but don’t tell me that you’ve come to
Scotland
just for my sake.’

‘Of course not.’ Irene dismissed
the notion with a slight shake of her head. ‘No. I was coming here on business
and I thought that I’d look you up.’

‘I see.’ There was an awkward
silence for a few moments, and then Drew shrugged. ‘Well, here we are. Do you
want the tourist bit? Or a meal in some fancy restaurant? Or what?’ He
shrugged, suddenly serious. ‘I’ve never been out with an American before, so
I’m not sure what to expect. I’m not even sure if this is a formal date, or
just a casual hello.’

Irene laughed. ‘I don’t think I’m
any different to any of the thousand Scottish girls that you’ve dated in your
life.’

‘God, I hope so,’ Drew met the
laugh. ‘They all dumped me, and the last one slapped my face.’

‘Oh, I can do that too. You
probably deserved it anyway.’ They found a handy bench and sat side by side,
with the world strolling past them and the hum of traffic pleasant in their
ears. A squirrel scurried close, hoping for nuts.

Drew nodded. ‘Probably, but that’s
hardly the point.’ He said nothing for a few minutes, but Irene saw his eyes
roaming over her face. ‘So what brings you back to
Edinburgh
? Apart from an overpowering
desire for my company, of course.’

‘Is that not enough?’ she answered
at once. If she was brutally frank, she did not know why she had arranged to
meet him. Her telephone call had been made in anger, a spur-of-the-moment
decision. This liaison was madness, considering how close she was to committing
a crime that would dominate every media outlet in the world.

He was quiet again as Irene
examined him. His clothes were different to those of Patrick, not quite tweedy,
but certainly conservative. She could not imagine Drew wearing a baseball cap
and tight denims, and there was an aura of quiet confidence about him that she
found nearly disturbing. He seemed so sure of himself that she felt somehow
superfluous, yet simultaneously completely secure.

‘Who are you, Drew? I don’t even
know your last name.’

‘Me?’ His shrug was
characteristically self-deprecating. ‘I’m just myself. It’s who you are that is
more interesting. You don’t know my last name; I don’t know any of yours.’

‘I’m an American tourist in your
city.’ Recognising his attempt to turn the conversation, Irene refused to be
drawn. ‘And my name is Ire…Amanda,’ she used the name that was emblazoned on
her false passport, and then stood up. ‘Take me to the castle.’ It was an
insane idea, returning to the target so soon before the hit.

‘Come on then, Ire…Amanda.’ Drew
was on his feet on the last word, automatically reaching for her hand in a
gesture that Irene found quite appealing. ‘As I still don’t know your real
name, and I object to using a nom-de-plume, I’ll settle for no name at all.’
When he did not press for an answer, she stepped in front, until she realised
that she was unsure of the route.

‘That way,’ Drew helped her out. ‘Over
the railway bridge and up to the left.’

He took her up a steep path that
skirted the base of the Castle Rock and ended at a small gate into the
Esplanade. The place was busy with workmen erecting scaffolding, their
Edinburgh
accents raucous with abuse.

‘What’s happening? Is this for the
Queen?’ Irene felt a slight thrill of apprehension, in case there was something
new to add to her calculations.

Drew shook his head. ‘The tattoo.
It’s like a military pageant they hold every year. Lots of tartan and pipe
bands. ’ He led her past the scaffolding and into the castle. The soldiers at
the gate stared directly ahead, wooden-faced.

The castle was much busier than
during her previous visit, with more visitors crowding the open spaces and the
military more active than ever. Drew pulled her back as an army Landrover
roared past, and a small group of soldiers wandered past, chattering cheerfully
to some children. She watched them for a second, trying to reconcile her images
of the military in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
with these noisy, laughing young
men who lacked any of the machismo she had expected.

‘Awright?’ The word seemed a
common greeting among British soldiers, until Irene realised that the soldier
was addressing her. He was smiling, his freckled face alive with recognition.
‘Are you still here?’

‘Hello there!’ Irene tried to
bring the memory back. ‘We met in the pub didn’t we? I thought you were off to
Afghanistan
or somewhere.’

‘So we were,’ the red haired
private said, ‘but they brought some of us back. We’re going in the Tattoo.’ He
sounded proud, but there were new lines on his face and a shadow behind his
eyes. ‘Wee Tammie’s here too,’ he indicated the private with the scarred lip,
who acknowledged Irene with an inclination of his hand. ‘So who’s this then?’
The red head nodded to Drew. ‘Did you dump the marine? Quite right, he looked a
complete wanker.’

Irene nodded, surprised at his
frankness. ‘He was.’ She saw no reason to explain herself to a couple of
Scottish private soldiers. The memory of a slogan came back to her. ‘Up the
Royals!’

‘Up the Royals!’ Both privates
returned the words, one looking sideways at Drew, as if expecting him to
complain.

Drew grinned. ‘Wrong regiment,’ he
sounded quite comfortable in their company. ‘I was a guardsman.’

The red haired Royal surveyed him
for a second before shaking his head. ‘Nah. You’ve got the height, right enough,
but too many brains.’ His companion laughed. ‘So where are youse off to then?’
The question was directed to Irene.

‘Nowhere, anywhere. It doesn’t
matter.’

‘Aye, there once was a fairy,’ the
private with the scarred lip shrugged. ‘We’ll have to be getting along. You two
enjoy yourselves.’ He moved away, with the red haired man giving a final grin.

‘There once was a fairy?’ Irene
looked at Drew for an explanation.

‘There once was a fairy,’ Drew
grinned, ‘and she was called Nough. Fair enough?’

Irene laughed and, linking her arm
with his, walked up toward the battlements. She knew that she should be missing
Patrick, that she should feel guilty, that she should feel hurt, but she felt
none of those things. Instead she allowed the
Edinburgh
wind to blow her hair free across her face, and jumped at
the sharp crack of the One-o-clock gun, the artillery piece that fired every
day at one in the afternoon.

‘I forgot about that,’ she giggled
like a child. Drew had taken the opportunity to grab her arms and was now
holding her tight.

‘It’s a thing we do in
Edinburgh
,’ Drew told her solemnly. ‘It
helps us to distinguish the locals from the tourists.’

‘What do you call this, the
Edinburgh
bear hug?’ He released her
immediately and she stepped back. ‘I was not complaining, you know.’

The view from the battlements was
as breathtaking as she remembered, with Drew producing a camera for the
highlights that she pointed out. A friendly Japanese couple took their
photograph as Irene straddled one of the eighteenth-century cannon, with Drew’s
arm light but supportive around the waist.

‘Down you come,’ he lifted her as
if she were a child, and she laughed, impressed by his strength.

They spent a contemplative quarter
hour in the War Memorial, with Drew leafing through the Book of Remembrance for
the Scots Guards, and then brightened their mood with a pair of giant ice-cream
cones complete with chocolate that dripped crumbs down Irene’s shockingly
expensive blouse.

‘I’ll brush it off for you.’

‘You won’t bother.’ Laughing,
Irene pushed away his hovering hand and guided him inside the Royal Apartments.
‘My accustomed lifestyle,’ she explained. It seemed only natural that they
should graduate toward the Crown Room, and both gaped at the Honours as they
glittered in splendour in their glass case.

‘That’s something,’ Irene
muttered, as though she had never seen them before.

‘Aye. Not bad. Not what I’m used
to at home, of course,’ Drew’s sudden grin took her by surprise and Irene could
not contain her laughter.

She was quiet again as she stared
at the glory under the lights. Here was history and sacrifice and splendour.
She knew their story so well now, from the simple coronet that Robert Bruce had
slipped on at
Scone
to the gunfire and powder smoke
of the siege of Dunnottar and the long century when the Honours had been
believed lost. ‘What are they worth, do you think? In the open market, I mean?’
Irene did not know why she asked the question; perhaps she just wanted to hear Drew’s
opinion.

He shook his head. ‘Incalculable.
Intrinsically they are probably worth millions, but the historical associations
would multiply that a hundredfold, or more.’ When he looked up, there was a
quizzical smile on his face. ‘If I said a king’s ransom, I would not be far
wrong, but they’re worth more than any monarch. And yet,’ he pointed to the
rough oblong of sandstone that sat nearby, ‘to the Scottish people, that is
probably worth more.’

‘It’s just a lump of stone,’ Irene
complained. ‘It’s ugly.’

‘I’ve heard it called the soul of
a nation,’ Drew said, ‘and that’s probably ugly too, given its history.’

Irene smiled and shook her head.
She allowed her fingertips to brush against Drew’s arm as she moved past him. ‘Enough
history now. Surely there’s more in this city than old things.’

‘Surely there is.’

Drew knew of an intimate French
restaurant tucked into a basement in a New Town side street, but his impressive
knowledge of the cuisine was spoiled by a poor command of the language.
Laughing, Irene helped him out.

‘My father insisted that I learn a
foreign language,’ she explained, as the waiter bowed toward her. ‘He said it
would help my career.’

‘Good for him,’ Drew approved, not
in the least embarrassed by his display of ineptitude. In a similar situation,
Patrick would have withdrawn into a tongue-tied sulk, with his male ego wounded.‘
You’ll know about French food too, then. Recommend what’s best.’

They lingered over the meal, with
Irene insisting on lighted candles for the wine and Drew barely flinching at the
bill. By the time they left, the traffic had calmed down and long evening
shadows picked out the dressed stonework of the architecture.

‘Take me somewhere nice,’ Irene
demanded. ‘Somewhere quiet where we can walk and talk.’

Drew nodded, catching her mood,
and guided her down a short hill to a walkway beside a river. ‘This is the
Water of Leith,’ he explained, and she did not object when he took her hand.
There were the ubiquitous blackbirds singing nearby, and a brood of mallards
paddling in the water.

‘This is nice.’ Strangely
disinclined to stride in her usual fashion, Irene stood for a moment, listening
to the ripple of the river.

‘Not bad,’ Drew agreed, and led
her slowly down a flight of steps. They were in a gorge with wooded sides that were
alive with birds, while insects hung on the shafts of sunlight. They walked for
a few minutes, passing under the massive arches of the
Dean
Bridge
over which she had once peered, pausing to stare at the
thunder of a small waterfall before reaching an area of red-stoned houses
unlike anything Irene had seen before.

‘This is the
Dean
Village
,’ Drew told her.

Irene smiled and looked around.
‘When I first came here I expected small cottages with thatched roofs, or ugly
stone buildings with no plumbing. This is more like fairyland. Who lives in a
place like this?’