Powerstone (35 page)

‘That is only my business, I’m
afraid,’ Irene felt her back stiffen as she waited for Drew’s reaction. When he
only shrugged, she reached over and switched on the radio. The educated tones
of a
Highland
broadcaster filled the car.

‘…terrorist attack in the
Middle East
. Back here in
Scotland
the police have finished
interviewing a woman over the theft of the Crown Jewels. The woman was caught
on CCTV camera speaking with one of the thieves, but police are now satisfied
that she was not involved with the July 12 attack. The Scottish Crown and Sword
of State have since been recovered, but the sceptre, a gift from the Pope in
1496, is still missing.’ ‘Detective Chief Inspector Murdoch, leading the
investigation, said yesterday that he was vigorously pursuing a number of lines
of enquiry and expected further developments to occur shortly.’

‘A number of lines of enquiry?’
Irene turned the radio off. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that they have not got a
clue what to do next.’ Drew grinned to her. ‘Anyway, you’ll be out of the
country within a few hours and then you’ll have nothing to worry about.’

Irene nodded, but when she closed her
eyes, she could see Desmond fall as the soldier lunged with his bayonet. With
every member of her team dead except her, it seemed that the Scottish
authorities were not interested in arresting those who stole their Honours.
Like King James V, they were more intent on vengeance than justice. ‘Put your
foot down, Drew, and get me out of this country.’

They passed over a hump-backed
bridge and stopped at a black and white road sign that said Alltgobhlach. Only
the sea broke the silence when Drew switched off the engine, and Irene studied
the village. It did not take long. A single medium sized building with two
petrol pumps stood beside a small terrace of cottages, and then came a small
church, another bridge and then a final road sign.

‘
Highland
metropolis, eh?’

‘Alltgobhlach. The forked burn.’
Drew had parked in a small area of grass beside the beach, where a single
child’s swing creaked slightly in the breeze and a herring gull watched from
the back of a green wooden bench. ‘We’ll have a wee breather here, a bite to
eat and it will be time for a spot of fishing.’

Irene was still dazed at the
thought of a secret society chasing her across
Scotland
. ‘The sceptre?’

‘Leave it where it is.’ Drew had
repacked the sceptre in a stout canvas bag, which he had placed beside the
spare tyre in the boot. ‘You can hardly carry that around with you.’

The larger building boasted a sign
proclaiming that it was the Alltgobhlach Hotel and claimed to have the last
petrol for forty miles. It also extended a hundred thousand welcomes in Gaelic,
but the woman behind the tiny reception desk spoke with the sharp accent of
London
. She signed them in without
interest.

‘We’re here for the fishing,’ Drew
told her breezily. ‘So I’ll want to hire a boat for the night.’

‘That will be great,’ the woman
said. ‘I’ll get my husband to see you.’

After they had eaten a poor meal
of overcooked chicken and vegetables straight from the freezer, Irene followed
Drew outside. Ignoring the distant shrill of what she took to be bagpipes, she
looked out to the bay, seeing a group of humped islets and the faint line of a
larger island on the far horizon.

‘The big one’s Lewis,’ Drew told
her. ‘The largest of the
Outer
Hebrides
.’

There was one large boat afloat in
the water and five smaller hire boats lying bottom up on the shingle beach.
Drew chose one at random, and the hotel owner helped him turn it the right way
up for a proper inspection.

‘Not bad,’ Drew probed the wooden
planks of the clinker built hull. ‘Sound as a pound.’ Eighteen feet long, the
boat came equipped with a Yamaha outboard motor and a set of oars. ‘I’ll take
it out tonight,’ he said. ‘Could you put it on my bill?’

‘Of course.’ The owner smiled.
Irene guessed that he would add everything possible to the bill, on any
pretext. ‘We can hire our rods too.’

‘We have rods in the car,’ Drew
said. ‘I like to use my own. I know the balance better.

Irene had been with Drew when he
walked into the sports shop in
Edinburgh
and asked for a sea fishing rod. ‘Do you do a lot of fishing, sir?’ the
assistant had asked, and had provided a free crash course on the basics when
Drew admitted that he had never fished in his life.

‘Of course, sir. Well, I’ll leave
you to get acquainted with the boat, if you will excuse me? Best to take it for
a short trip in the bay here before nightfall, to make sure you know how she
handles.’ The hotel owner walked briskly away, red tartan trousers bulging
around his hips.

‘I still don’t understand exactly
what we’re doing.’ Irene disliked the small-girl complaint in her own voice.

‘Trust me.’ Drew looked up as the
piping sound began again. ‘But we’ll be moving under cover of darkness.’ He
tossed the car keys over to her. ‘Get the fishing gear from the boot, could
you? Just carry the whole bundle over and dump it into the boat.’

Irene opened the boot and hauled
out the three long rods that Drew had bought, together with the large bag that
held the wriggling live bait and the various reels. After checking to ensure
that the canvas bag that held the sceptre was secure, she carefully locked the
boot and carried the fishing gear to the boat. ‘What now?’

Drew looked at his watch. ‘
Seven o’clock
. Now we’ll go fishing. Get
changed into your warmest clothes, Irene, as it can get damned cold out there,
even in summer.’

‘Why are we going fishing?’ The
long drive had wearied Irene more than she knew, so her words sounded slurred
even to her own ears.

‘To get your sceptre to
America
, of course.’ Drew grinned across
to her. ‘Now go and get changed. And bring your passport, and anything else
that might be used to identify you.’

‘Why?’

‘In case anybody goes through our
stuff when we’ve gone.’ Drew grinned. ‘It’s all right, Irene. I do know what
I’m doing.’

Despite the light sky, the air was
cool when they pushed away from the shore, leaving behind the inevitable host
of midges. Irene leaned closer to Drew. ‘The sceptre!’ she hissed. ‘It’s still
in the car!’

‘The sceptre is safe enough,’ Drew
told her. ‘Trust me!’ He hauled powerfully on the oars until they were into
deeper water, and then tilted the outboard motor so the propeller was
submerged. The engine sounded loud in the
Highland
quiet. ‘We’ll go between these two wee islands,’ he said, pointing to
a narrow channel of sombre sea.

Seabirds screamed overhead, and a
large marine creature surfaced nearby. Unsure what it was, Irene edged closer
to Drew.

‘Just a seal,’ he told her. ‘It’s
perfectly harmless.’

Birdlime smeared the bare rock of
the nearest islet, with the swell rhythmically swaying its fringe of seaweed. ‘That’s
Eilean Beg,’ Drew told her, ‘and a good place for sea bass, so I’m told, so if
you’d like to get the rods out now?’

‘Is this necessary?’ Irene stared
at the collection of long rods and fishing equipment with incomprehension.
‘I’ve no idea what to do with all these.’

‘You don’t have to. You only have
to look as though we’re fishing.’ Settling down, Drew produced a small pair of
binoculars from inside his waxed Barbour jacket. He examined the shore for a
few minutes, grunted, and handed the binoculars to Irene. ‘Look at the car.’

It took a few moments for Irene to
adjust the focus, and then she swore. ‘They’re in the boot! Who are they?
They’ll find the sceptre!’ Dropping the binoculars, she glared at Drew, her
voice rising to a scream. ‘You did this on purpose! You bastard, you sick,
dirty bastard! You came out there to give them the sceptre.’

‘Hardly.’ He ignored her insults.
‘Keep looking.’

‘Turn round! Get back to the car!’
Furious that she had trusted him, Irene grabbed at Drew’s jacket. ‘You meant
this! You’re working for your father.’ Only the rocking of the boat and the
lingering pain in her right hand prevented her from slapping him.

Drew picked up the binoculars and
handed them back to her. ‘Keep looking.’

‘You bastard!’ Irene sat heavily
on the centre thwart. She glowered at Drew, then lifted the binoculars and
watched all her dreams disappear. There were two men examining their hired car,
and although both seemed familiar, she could not say exactly where she had seen
them.

‘Who are they?’ I know them!’

‘The small, stocky one is Iain
Hardy. He followed us here from
Inverness
, remember? The other is Kenny Mossman, the jeweller that made your Luckenbooth
brooch. They are both Society men.’

Aware that she was shaking with
fury, Irene watched the two men remove the spare wheel from the boot and
rummage around with the tools. After a few minutes they lifted the long canvas
bag in which she had placed the sceptre.

‘They’ve got it,’ Irene said quietly.
‘They’ve got it. You’ve won.’ She lowered the binoculars as the realisation of
defeat came to her. Her anger dissipated, leaving only numbness. She guessed
that bitter despair would come soon, as it had when she lost
The
Neophyte
final.‘ Very clever, Drew, very, very clever. Lure me up here with the promise
of help, and then hand everything over to your father’s goons.’

‘They might be many things,’ Drew
said, ‘but never dragoons.’ He sounded as calm as ever. ‘And if I had intended
taking the sceptre, why should I come away up here? I could have done that at
any time. Look again.’

By now the boat was quarter of a
mile out to sea, with the waves hissing and bubbling around the wooden hull.
They had penetrated deep into the channel between the two islets and were
within casting distance of Eilean Mor. Irene could see a host of seabirds among
the grass, as well as the ubiquitous black-faced sheep.

‘Go on,’ Drew encouraged. ‘It’s
all right. We’re a dark shape against dark rock. Damned near invisible, indeed.
So they can’t see us watching them.’ She raised the binoculars just as Iain
unzipped the canvas bag and plunged his hand inside. Irene watched his
expression change from triumph to shock. He withdrew his hand very quickly, and
jumped back, his mouth working frantically as he shook his hand as if to rid it
of something very unpleasant.

‘What? What’s happened?’ Irene
half stood, trying to improve her vision. She sat back as the boat rocked
unpleasantly.

‘Maggots,’ Drew said. ‘I made a
few alterations at our last comfort stop. I took out the sceptre, put in an old
length of wood and poured some of the bait on top. Just a wee message for the
boys.’

Irene stared at him, and then
began to smile. ‘So where is the sceptre?’

‘At your feet. In the real bait
bag. I can’t imagine anybody poking in there for long.’ Drew winked at her. ‘So
let’s get you over to
America
, shall we? Once they’ve
recovered, they’ll be after us like a shot.’

‘You could have told me,’ Irene
stared at him, her initial relief fading to irritation, then fury. ‘You made me
believe that they had the sceptre.’

He grinned at her, obviously
enjoying her anger. ‘Yes. And it serves you right, Miss Rogue. I told you to
trust me, so when you don’t, you deserve all the torment that you bring on yourself.’

‘You truly are a bastard,’ Irene
said. ‘It’s no wonder that all your previous girl friends left you!’

Drew nodded, his face more
serious. ‘I’m sure that I warned you. It would take a special kind of girl to
stay with me, Irene. But I’ll enjoy your company as long as I can. Now, let’s
get you home.’ Sparing only once glance behind him, Drew pushed the throttle
and the boat began to speed up. Spray rose from the bows, spattering over
Irene.

‘We can’t go all the way to
America
in this,’ she shouted. ‘It’s
thousands of miles!’

Drew grinned again. ‘Have you
still not learned to trust your Uncle Drew? Hold on, now.’

Irene shuddered as she eyed the
small islet to which Drew steered. A fury of frothed sea and spindrift shrouded
the rocky shore, but there was a small bay on the north side, with deep grooves
in a rocky beach and a copse of wind stunted rowan trees clustered around the
ruins of an ancient building. Hardly slowing down, Drew guided the boat
straight toward the moss-furred walls. ‘Duck!’

Irene did so, and Drew eased
through a dripping archway into the dark interior. ‘That was the sea gate,’ he
said, ‘and this is an old stronghold of the Macraes,’ he said. ‘They were the
local hard men, the body guard of the Mackenzies, and they used this castle as
an outlying fort to guard Coigach.’

The walls were of blocks of stone,
streaked with birdlime and moss, with vegetation spouting from the upper
courses. Irene ducked as a wave splashed against the wall, slopping cold water onto
her coat. ‘So this was a castle then?’ She tried to imagine the romantic old
clansmen here, with their claymores and targes, but instead saw only piracy,
poverty and pain. ‘In
America
, we would have preserved this as
a national monument, with an interpretation centre and a shop.’