Bitter End Part 21

There was no sign of him at his dad's mini supermarket across the road from her flat but the old boy, Rajinder himself, was sitting behind the counter watching his dear wife stacking the shelves. Rajinder and Fizz had known each other since she had first come to school in Edinburgh at the age of fourteen. They were both strangers in a strange land at a time when the capital had probably been as much of a culture shock to a native of Am Bealach as to a young man from Kalat.

'Hi, folks,' Fizz said, taking a wire basket and starting to fill it with vegetables. She'd already been in for her necessary shopping in the morning but she had a hundred stairs to climb to her flat and, there being no way she could carry a load up there all at once, she never climbed them empty-handed if she could help it. 'Is your amazing son around?'

'He is -amazingly,'

Rajinder snorted, his heavy Edinburgh accent indistinguishable from that of his customers. 131. 'It's taken him since three o'clock this afternoon to deliver a couple of orders down at the Cowgate and that's him just back. Is that amazing enough for you, eh? Gurbachan!

Here's your girlfriend looking for you.'

Gurbachan was now nineteen but he could still blush, and his beautiful cafe-au-lait face, as he emerged from the back shop, appeared to be lit by one of those bulbs you put in fake-fire radiators. It amused Fizz no end to see the prim mask he wore in front of his despotic parents. Away from their sphere of influence, which was extensive, he made up for their repression with a vocabulary of invective, blasphemy and abuse which rivalled Fizz's own.

'Wa.s.sup?' he said, being gruff and casual, which was currently regarded as cool by his coterie of buddies.

'Are you doing anything tonight, Gurbachan? I need a favour.'

A lift?' He always liked to get straight to the nitty gritty and, anyway, lifts were invariably all that Fizz required of him.

'Your Aunt Janna is coming to dinner.' His mother's soft voice floated forth from behind the breakfast cereals. 'I want you to at least eat with us, Gurbachan.'

His back to his parents, Gurbachan mouthed something obscene.

That's no problem,' Fizz said, dropping her voice a notch. Any time after half-nine would be fine. Unless you had other plans?'

'Nup. You want me to come round for you?'

'Would you? I'll watch for you at the window.'

'Where're we going?'

Fizz avoided looking at his parents but he spotted her minute hesitation and got the message.

'Not far,' she murmured. 'I'll buy the petrol. Thanks, Gurbachan.'

'No sweat.'

As she turned away from him to pa.s.s her basket of vegetables to Rajinder her eye was caught by a vaguely 132. familiar profile across the street and just visible through the stacks of canned goods in the window. A second look confirmed that it was undoubtedly the centurion, who was engrossed in perusing a stand of postcards in a shop doorway.

There was not the slightest justification for the bolt of uneasiness that hit Fizz amidships. He was only doing what every other tourist would be doing at some point in their holiday: exploring the medieval Old Town, window shopping down the Royal Mile, and buying postcards. He wasn't to know that she lived just a few paces away, and the fact that he had already crossed her path two or three times in the recent past was far from sinister but, all the same, she was suspicious enough to say, 'See that guy across the road, looking at postcards? The guy with the tartan umbrella. Ever seen him before?'

Rajinder, Gurbachan and Yasmin crowded up at the window to look, which would have been unfortunate if the centurion had glanced in their direction.

'Yes,' Yasmin said right away. 'I sold him a Yorkie bar right after we opened the shop yesterday morning. Why?'

'I just wondered if he lived locally,' Fizz evaded, and they all drifted back to what they were doing.

Nothing odd in the guy buying a Yorkie bar, she thought, waiting for Rajinder to weigh out her potatoes.

However, the Royal Mile section of the High Street didn't begin to wake up till at least nine-thirty or ten. Apart from the newsagents, Rajinder's shop was the only one open at eight-thirty. Hardly the hour for a tourist to be wandering the streets, especially if he were based an hour's drive away in Chirnside.

She was tempted to kill time in the supermarket and watch to see what he did but patience had never been her strong point so she chose the alternative of the direct approach. A few sociable words with him of the 'h.e.l.lo-we meet-again!'

variety would soon tell her whether the encounter was of the third kind or not. 133. Unfortunately, Rajinder was now disposed to be chatty and it was a further two or three minutes before she fought clear, by which time there was no sign of the centurion in any direction. This struck Fizz as even more ominous than if he'd been visible, and she had a momentary impulse to phone Buchanan and apprise him of her suspicions. Only the thought of her nefarious plans for the latter part of the evening stayed her hand.

She didn't want Buchanan doing his mother hen act and insisting on sleeping across her doorway armed with a howitzer, as he had been p.r.o.ne to do in the past. Time enough to tell him in the morning, when she would be in the office and would, hopefully, have something more positive to report.

She spent the ten minutes before nine-thirty behind her window, waiting for Gurbachan and sussing out the shop doorways and the dark entrances to the closes. It was still raining intermittently and there were fewer people about than usual so she was able to take time to study those that pa.s.sed, but she could spot nothing out of the ordinary.

Nor, at any point in the journey to Chirnside, could she detect any sign that they were being followed. The roads were not busy enough to provide cover for a vehicle on their tail and after Gurbachan branched off the main drag to take the longer -but, on a motorbike, infinitely more exciting -route over the hills, it was easy to be sure that they had the road more or less to themselves.

Gurbachan was not at all happy to discover, upon arrival, that he was expected to a.s.sist in a housebreaking.

'You don't know what my sodding father would do to me if he found out, Fizz! Jesus! He'd have the skin off my back!'

He had lately taken to embellishing his speech with as many swear words as he could fit in, no doubt as some sort of rebellion against his father's autocratic rule and pious rect.i.tude.

'Who's going to tell him?' 134. 'The police, if we're caught! No, Fizz, I'm not b.l.o.o.d.y doing it.'

'We're not going to be caught, dammit. Look around you, Gurbachan. That house is burned down, that house is empty at the moment, and that one faces in the wrong direction for anyone to spot us. n.o.body's likely to come down the road at this hour -it's a dead end. If we take care to be real quiet getting the wood off one of those windows -the one at the back where we'll have the house between us and the Armstrongs' place -n.o.body's going to know a thing about it. We can put the wood back afterwards and leave no trace of our visit.'

'No,' he said, refusing to get off the bike. 'You don't know my dad, Fizz. It's not worth the risk.'

'Risk? You think I'd be taking chances if I thought there was that much of a risk? If Buchanan gets to hear about this he'll have me strung up at the hatch covers and given three dozen of the cat.'

That's your worry.'

Fizz took off her helmet and hung it over the handlebars.

'OK. I'll do it myself if I have to, but the least you can do is help me get in.' She reached inside her jacket and brought out the claw hammer and tyre lever she'd borrowed from Mr Auld across the landing. 'It shouldn't take a minute, Gurbachan, and then you can take off somewhere and leave me to nose around for half an hour or so.

I'll keep watch while you do it and let you know in good time if anything stirs.'

Gurbachan rolled his eyes and groaned as he strove with the devil but he succ.u.mbed at last and accepted the tools Fizz was thrusting at him.

'Just. . . keep your eyes open,' he warned pathetically and skulked into the shadows of Poppy Ford's garden.

Fizz left the bike behind the wall where Gurbachan had parked it and walked a few paces away to where she had a better view of the Armstrong house as well as a prospect of the road in both directions. Nothing stirred. In the 135. distance, the sky above the village was fuzzy with the pale orange haze of streetlights on rain, but only the faint hum of an infrequent vehicle drifted this far. If a car were to come within a mile of where she stood she knew she'd hear it instantly and in plenty of time to warn Gurbachan.

Only one light showed behind the curtains of the Armstrong household but it was at an upstairs window, which was probably a bedroom. That meant they were turning in for the night and, the curtain being already closed, there would be little chance of either of them taking a last look out the window. Even if they did, they'd see nothing: Gurbachan, the motorbike and Fizz herself were all well hidden.

Her skin was buzzing all over with excitement, reminding her of other occasions when she had lurked around in the dark like this, usually for iniquitous reasons like (just the once) digging up a corpse or spying through someone's window. Darkness held no fears for her. Back home, she and her brother had spent many a night in bivvy bags under the stars and she'd always loved the magic of it. It was like being on another planet: one with unfamiliar creatures, strange sounds and smells, and where the sun was just another speck in the Milky Way.

She could detect a discreet tapping coming from the Fords' house as Gurbachan did his dirty work but it was certainly not loud enough to carry to suspicious ears. It was too cold and miserable for anyone to be about and the night sky was still heavy with clouds: just about as good a night for devilry as Fizz could have wished.

Not having a watch, she couldn't determine how long Gurbachan was gone but she was antic.i.p.ating the imminent onset of gangrene in her toes before he materialised against the gleam of the wet road, panting as if he had just run a marathon and speaking in tongues unintelligible to a well brought up young lady.

'It's open. You're in. I'm off,' he said succinctly, handing the tools to Fizz and throwing himself on to his bike. He 136. freewheeled as far as he could before starting the engine and, a minute later, he had faded from both sight and earshot.

The night closed over Fizz like a blanket.

She took a last careful look around and then wound her way through the dripping bushes to the entrance Gurbachan had left open for her. She didn't dare use her torch but as she got nearer it was easy to pick out the pale oblong of board below the gaping window. She sidled towards it, careful to keep covered from the direction of the Armstrongs' house. There turned out to be a window frame still in situ and it was ringed with vicious teeth of gla.s.s that would make entry dangerous -and a fast exit even more so. Gingerly, she inserted an arm, loosened the catch, and the frame swung outward.

A noise -something that sounded like metal sc.r.a.ping against stone -abruptly froze her against the wall, jerking both her breathing and her heart to a standstill for the long seconds it took to establish that she was not about to be jumped on. She stayed there, at a crouch, with her eyes at their fullest f-stop as long as she could afford to wait, and then, as certain as she could be that she was alone, she clambered up on to the window sill.

Seconds later, after traversing an unexpected sink, she found herself in a pine-floored kitchen/dining room that, after the pure night air, smelled faintly of cream cleanser and bleach. Her torch showed her a spotless working surface, a pine table and chairs, a kitchen clock (still going) and gla.s.s-fronted cabinets full of china and gadgets. If Poppy had known what was about to happen to her husband and herself, the night of the explosion, she could not have left her kitchen tidier. It was like a variation on the change-your-pants-in-case-you-get-hit-by-a-bus theme.

Even the gla.s.s from the smashed windows had been removed, presumably by whoever had boarded them up.

The living room, which faced the kitchen across an L-shaped pa.s.sageway, was at the front of the house so she 137. had to draw the heavy velvet curtains before she dared use the torch. It wasn't a big room but it contained, as well as the usual lounge suite etc, a shelved alcove full of books, a bureau, and a modern storage unit, all of which could hold valuable clues.