Idea in Stone (38 page)

“I’m happy for you, Ste,” said Peter, giving Stefan’s hand a squeeze.

“Oh,” said Stefan, “I brought you something.” He pulled out the opened tissue with the chocolate inside.

“It’s opened. Couldn’t you have waited till you got here? What is it? Looks like a chocolate pretzel.”

“I bought it from these women who said that it would make people forget who you are. If you ate it, you could just walk out of here.”

“And how far do you think I’d get? Where would I go? They still don’t know anything about you, do they?”

“No,” he admitted.

“So it’s yours. You’ve got things to do.”

Stefan nodded. Peter was right. He took the chocolate from the crinkly red paper. “Here goes.”

“Wait,” said Peter, “this is for you.” He held out the poly bag. Stefan took it and reached inside, pulling out handfuls of paper curls. “They’re from your dad.”

“Holy—”

“Yeah, he’s been keeping busy. I still have no idea what they are, but they’ve been there every morning. Then two days ago, they just stopped. I guess that’s all of it.”

“Whatever it is.”

“Okay, better eat your thing and get out of here. I just—I don’t want to forget that you visited.”

“I have an idea,” said Stefan, popping the chocolate into his mouth. He leaned over the table and kissed Peter. The warders looked alarmed and started toward them, but Stefan stayed where he was, letting the chocolate melt and flow down his throat. A second later, the guards stopped and looked around distractedly.

Stefan broke contact with Peter’s lips. “I love you,” he whispered.

Peter opened his eyes. He blinked, then smiled. “I love you, too,” he whispered back.

Stefan grabbed the plastic bag, waved, then let himself out the exit.

~

Stefan tried to call home again. The money he’d borrowed from Fiona was getting low, and he didn’t want to leave another message. He was about to hang up, but there was a click on the line: someone picked up the receiver on the other end.

“Hello?” said Stefan.

“Stefan,” said a voice. It wasn’t his mother.
Cerise
. “Stefan, you have to stop calling here. You’re upsetting Delonia terribly.”

“I just need to talk to her. Could you put her on?”

“Stefan, she—she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“But I need—”

“She told me to tell you to call Helen.”

“Okay, I will. But could you—”

“I’m sorry,” said Cerise, and she hung up.

Stefan uncrumpled the sheet of telephone numbers Charlene had printed out for him months before. He’d accepted it at the time, embarrassed that she’d even put his mother’s telephone number on it. He traced his finger along and found Helen’s number, along with the international dialling code he’d need.
You’re brilliant, Charlene, wherever you are,
he thought. He popped the rest of his coins into the telephone and dialled Helen’s work number. Doing some quick addition, he figured she would have just started work.

“Hello?” asked her familiar croaky voice.

“Hello, Helen,” he said.

“Oh my God!” she said. “It’s you!”

“It’s me,” he said, laughing. It made him happy to think of Helen, to be talking to her. “My mother won’t speak to me. She said I should talk to you.”

“Yes, it’s damn well time you did. Hey, you’re a wealthy man, did you know that?”

“I swear I did not.”

“This play of your father’s—it’s like a revolution. People are walking out all over the place. There are protests and rallies and parliamentary debates—and best of all, there are residuals pouring in from all the different productions around the world. Your mother doesn’t want the money. She set up an account and asked me to put all the residuals into it for you, because she figured that at some point you’d run out of money.”

“Well, she’s partly right—I am out of money—but not because I’ve pissed it away like she probably thinks.”

The electronic pips told Stefan he was running out of time. He fumbled through his pocket for a pen.

“Helen, I’m running out of time. Could you maybe give me the numbers for that account?”

“You bet. Let me just find them. They’re here on my desk here somewhere.” She found them and barely finished reading them out when the final pips came.

“ThankyouHelenbyebye!” he said as they were cut off.

I’m broke,
he thought as the coins fell inside the telephone.
I’m rich,
he countered, looking at the piece of paper in his hands. Once that would have made him very happy. All he cared about now was trading that money for Peter’s freedom.
 

Twenty-Two

Expansion and Contraction

“Ow,” said Mairi, pulling back her finger. She stuck it into her mouth to suck away the blood.

Morton didn’t break his stride. “All good lobby-art,” he said, “is dangerous and extremely expensive. It lets everyone know you’re serious.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mairi.

He stopped and faced her. “Do you know why I hired you as my personal assistant?”

“Em, to—”

“To ensure that my time is used to maximal efficiency. I am this company’s most valuable and most expensive resource.” He ran a hand through his swept-back hair. “Since this is your first day, I’ll give you some leeway. Beginning tomorrow, though, I’ll expect nothing less than perfection in your handling of my details. Do you understand?”

“Yes I do, Mister Morton.”

“Good, because if you slip up, I’ll have you killed.”

Mairi held her clipboard to her chest. “Sir?”

“What?”

“You just said you would have me killed.”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t. I said I would have you fired.”

“Em, yes, of course.”

Morton strode away toward his private office lift. Mairi followed a few steps behind. The door closed behind them, sealing them in what felt like an industrial refrigerator. When the door opened again, Mairi squinted in the morning light that shone into Morton’s office through a vast wall of windows. Below were the spires, steeples, and angled roofs of the Old Town.

“Look at that,” he sneered, “the decay of it. In its time, it was a wonder, but then the progress all just stopped.” He turned to her. “We need to bring this city up to speed. We can make it relevant again, the envy of all Europe. Nobody has done anything with any—if you’ll pardon the expression—with any balls in centuries.”

Mairi lowered her clipboard. “But what about the Museum of Scotland, and the new parliament?”

“Small scale, Maura—”

“Mairi.”

“These were one-offs. The parliament? Really? The half-baked doodles of an impractical Spaniard who’s now dead. What would have happened with the parliament if we hadn’t stepped in to rescue them? Finishing the project was just their first hurdle, but then dealing with all the flaws, figuring out how to maintain the thing—they were just not prepared. And why? Why is that?
Vision
, Maura. These people are managers, but I’m a visionary. In the past this city knew real vision, and it’s time again for someone with a vision for its future.”

Mairi nodded idly, looking at the metal stalagmite sculptures around the room.

“Could you write that down? What I said about vision. That’ll be useful somewhere.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, swinging open her clipboard and scribbling.

“That’s all. Print off my day’s itinerary, and get me something to eat for lunch. Nothing in batter for heaven’s sake!”

“Yes, sir,” she said, scribbling some more.

He turned from the vast black slab that was his desk. “Could I reread those thoughts on vision?”

Mairi clutched the clipboard against her chest. “Let me type them up properly for you, sir,” she insisted, heading for the lift before he could reply. Inside, she let the clipboard hang by her side. Across the top sheet were the words “Delusional elitist egomaniacal fascist bastard fuck.”

~

“Hello, John,” said Stefan, shaking John Hailes’s hand. John pulled him close, giving him a double-pat on the back.

“How’s my wee grandson?” asked John, reaching past Stefan for the baby as Fiona came up the walk.

“Heya, Dad,” said Fiona, handing over the baby.

“Och, he’s huge!” said John, pretending he could barely hold him. “What are you feeding him?”

She slapped her father lightly on the shoulder and turned back toward the car. “C’mon, Roddy, bring it through here,” she said, as Roddy followed with a cardboard box.

“I’m really sorry to be putting you out,” said Stefan. “Fi didn’t expect the flat to sell so quickly. I can stay someplace else, though, because—” he started to gesture toward the house, but stopped himself, realising he was about to suggest that it was small. It
was
small, a box of a council house with bumpy white pebbled walls and two small front windows, plopped at an oblique angle on a street lined from end to end with identical houses.

“No, you’ll stay here with us, lad. You’re family,” he said with a wink. Stefan smiled, reminded of countless uncomfortable moments in which his mother demonstrated her ‘coolness’ about his romantic life.

~

By nightfall, they’d moved their everyday things into the house and stacked the rest in closets and the small shed in the back garden. John made a simple meal for them of potatoes, parsnips, and pork chops. It hadn’t occurred to Stefan to mention that he was vegetarian—or, rather, that his mother was, and he’d become one by proxy. Instead, he kept quiet and tucked into his food. He loved John for his simple goodness, and felt sad to think of him making endless dinners here to eat by himself. John was clearly happy for the company.

Throughout dinner, Stefan noticed Fiona looking at Roddy as he picked another pork chop from the centre plate without asking, or drank from a beer bottle while the rest of them drank water or milk. Stefan knew the look on her face, though Roddy wasn’t paying enough attention to see it, and she likely didn’t realise she was showing it. Ming looked at him this way shortly before telling him that it was over between them.

Heart tissue, he read once, never regenerates once it’s damaged. He wondered how long it would be before she told Roddy he had to go.

All John, Fiona, and Stefan were concerned with was Peter’s upcoming trial. Barry sent his regrets that he couldn’t make it back, but assured them that his lawyer friend was the man to help them. They were scheduled to meet him the next day.

~

The meeting took place in an upscale restaurant in the New Town. Stefan had money now, and wanted to treat Barry’s lawyer friend well, to make Peter’s case his utmost priority. The lawyer was a tall, stocky man with thin ginger hair and a young boy’s face. He was warm and friendly, and had none of the cruelty Stefan witnessed in Barry’s other friends at the wedding. Better still, the lawyer believed he could help Peter.

“Admittedly,” said the lawyer, “Peter did turn himself in the day of the explosion. But he never explicitly said that he caused the explosion, that day or since.”

“But the paint?” asked Stefan.

“It places him at the scene, yes. There’s definitely grounds for suspicion, and, if we’re not lucky, a charge of malicious mischief. But it’s not enough to conclusively prove that he blew up the building.”

“This is good,” said Fiona, smiling and sitting back in her chair to sip her white wine. She’d commented when they’d first sat down that it was a nice restaurant. She hadn’t said it, but Stefan got the intended irony, that they should be in such luxury on Peter’s behalf while he sat in jail.

“The prosecuting lawyers are fairly convinced that he’s not actually the one who did this.”

“That’s good, because he’s not,” said Stefan.

“Yes, well, the trial is about establishing that. If you know anything more, I’d love to hear it.”

Stefan looked at Fiona, then shook his head.

“Alright,” said the lawyer, unsure but not pressing. “Say they can’t prove that he was responsible for the explosion, and say they decide there isn’t enough evidence to proceed with any other charges. Then he’ll be okay. Unless, of course, the police feel that he’s involved in some kind of terr—” The lawyer’s mobile phone made a warbling noise in his pocket. He took it out and read a text message on it. “I should get going,” he said, holding up the mobile as his explanation. “Let’s meet again later in the week to go over what we’ve got.”

“Thanks,” said Fiona.

“Thanks,” said Stefan, shaking the lawyer’s hand. Stefan sat as the lawyer left, then leaned over to Fiona. “Where can I find our friend Rab? I need to have a talk with him.”

~

It didn’t surprise Stefan to learn that Rab lived with his mother. Short months ago, he would have felt himself in no position to judge, but now everything was different.

Rab’s mother gave Stefan a mobile number to call. To be safe, Stefan called Rab from a payphone. Stefan geared himself up for a confrontation, but Rab actually sounded glad to hear from him. “There’s a meeting tonight,” he told Stefan, “and you have to be there.” He gave Stefan directions to the meeting-place.