Powerstone (27 page)

‘Sorry, Irene, but there’s no room
at the inn.’ Reaching into his pocket,
Bryan
pulled out a pistol and shot Stefan through the head. The Ukrainian
fell without a sound.

‘No!’ Irene screamed the word.

‘I’ll get the sceptre,’
Bryan
volunteered, but Patrick shook
his head.

‘No time! The crown will do! It’s
the best of the bunch anyway.’ When he looked round Patrick wore the familiar
boyish grin that Irene knew so well. ‘Bye, Irene. I’ll think of you clawing ass
in jail, you perverted bitch.’

‘Patrick!’ Irene reached forward,
grabbing at the door of the helicopter, but Mary was quicker. She placed her
foot against Irene’s chest and pushed hard. Irene screamed as she fell back,
her fingers scrabbling uselessly.

Mary leaned out of the open door,
grinning. ‘Paddy prefers a real woman to an arrogant child!’ Extending her
fingers, she blew on her nails, mocking. ‘But don’t you fret, girl, I’ll treat
him real good, better than you ever did!’

As the helicopter began to rise,
Irene jumped up. Her fingers closed on the rounded steel lip of the doorframe.
‘You can’t leave me! Patrick! Please!’

‘Bye, Irene. Thanks for the
crown.’ Mary placed her foot on Irene’s hand and exerted a little pressure. She
leaned closer, ‘we’ll talk lots about you.’

‘No!’ Irene looked up, but Patrick
was concentrating on the controls. Mary lifted her foot and stamped down hard.

As the pain lanced through her
fingers, Irene jerked back her hand and felt a sickening second of nothingness
as she fell the fifteen feet that the helicopter had risen since she had taken
told of the doorframe. She yelled again at the immediate agony down her left
side as she thumped on to the ground.

The churning throb of the
helicopter receded into the distance, carrying off the Scottish crown and her
dreams of success.

She lay on the short grass for a
long moment, hearing her breath gasping in her lungs and waiting for the first
thrust of pain to diminish. The temptation to remain down was very strong, but
she knew that she had to rise, for she could hear oncoming police sirens.
Pushing herself to her feet, Irene gasped at the sickening pain in her right
hand and down her left side. She began to hobble backward until she kicked
something soft and solid.

Stefan lay face up with a tiny
hole between his eyes. There was an ugly patch of blood and a puddle of brains
behind his head, and the sceptre lay just outside his outstretched fingers. For
a second, Irene could only stare at the glittering item with the clear bauble
on top, and then she stooped, scooped it up and stuffed it inside her coat. If
she was going to prison, at least she could hold the damned thing that sent her
there.

The sound of sirens increased and
a car slithered onto the grass. A policewoman emerged, gesticulating at the crowd
of onlookers that was gathering.

‘God,’ Irene glanced behind her.
There was a stretch of smooth grass, and then a scattering of trees; while to
her right were the scree slopes that led to the red crags of
Salisbury
.

‘You there! That woman!’

Irene heard the police moving
toward her. She had no choice. She had to run. With the pain begging her to
stop, she began to move through the crowd and toward the Crags.

‘There it is!’ A man pointed
upward, where Patrick’s helicopter was a rapidly diminishing speck. ‘They shot
that man and escaped! A woman tried to stop them but they pushed her out!’

‘Bastard! Bastards, bastards!’
Irene drew strength from her anger as she increased her speed. Intent on the
helicopter, the crowd parted to allow her passage, and then closed again as a
hundred faces concentrated on the free drama that she had provided. A small
convoy of police cars rolled along the road that encircled the park, and a
score of uniformed officers descended on Stefan’s body.

‘She was one of them!’ A small
girl jabbed a finger toward Irene, but nobody listened to the accusations of a
child.

Irene moved on, heading right,
away from the mob. She contemplated the
Radical Road
that led around the Crags, but the slope was too steep
and she limped on, with the noise gradually diminishing behind her. Holding the
sceptre tight beneath her coat, she reached the smooth black tarmac of the road
that encircled the Queen’s Park. Her dreams were shattered, Patrick had
betrayed her and she was a stranded fugitive in a foreign country. When Irene
closed her eyes she could only see the panicking crowd, children gasping for
breath and an old woman with tears weeping from her swollen red eyes.

There were more sirens ahead, but
a low iron railing to her right suggested sanctuary. She glanced over
hopefully, but she could not have negotiated the steep cliff even when she was
fully fit. She had no chance with her present injuries and the sirens were
coming at speed. Sobbing with pain, Irene crossed the road, and angled back, up
a short incline that led to the edge of the Crags. Keeping her head low, she
forced herself to keep moving, fighting the weakness and the agony but grasping
the sceptre as if it would repair all her ills.

This part of the park was
unfamiliar and virtually empty of people. Sinking onto a shattered red rock,
Irene looked for somewhere to hide. She sat in the rear of Salisbury Crags,
where the ground declined in uneven undulations to a straight path and then
rose again in the rougher slopes of Arthur’s Seat, the eight-hundred-foot high
hill that dominated the eastern section of
Edinburgh
. There were a dozen people walking here, but none gave
her more than a passing glance. Incongruous in the midst of a city, a rabbit
jinked from cover and scurried upward among tangled undergrowth.

Moving uphill toward the rearmost
lip of the Crags, Irene found an area of broken ground, screened by yellow
gorse. She slumped down, swearing, dashed away tears of frustration and scanned
her surroundings. The crags provided cover from any searching police, but she
knew that any asylum was temporary. As soon as they learned that she had been
thrown from Patrick’s helicopter, the police would scour the park. However, the
confusion in the Royal Mile would keep them occupied for some time yet. Lying
on her back, Irene closed her eyes.

She should be cruising over the
Hebrides
now, approaching the tiny pier at
Bunnahabhain in
Islay
, where her chartered yacht was
waiting. Within the hour she would have been out in the
Atlantic
, heading west. Instead she was
cowering in a gouge in the ground, grasping only one third of the treasures
that she planned to take to Ms Manning. Irene glanced at her watch. It had been
just after two when Desmond triggered the first of the smoke bombs. Now it was nearly
four. What had happened to the time? She lay back, fighting the nausea of
tension, CS gas and fear. The memory of Desmond’s death was so vivid that she
had to think about something else, she had to use her analytical brain to get
out of this mess.

There were three questions. How
could she get away from
Edinburgh
, how could she reach safety and
should she still hand the sceptre to Ms Manning?

The first question was more
immediate. The city was already crammed with police and security. They could
hardly fit any more in, but most would concentrate on the safety of the heads
of state. What remained would pursue the trail of the thieves. Once the police
heard what had happened, they would expect her to run out of the city as
quickly as she could. The best answer then, was to remain in
Edinburgh
, perhaps even as herself. Dispose
of Amanda and recreate Irene Armstrong.

That answer helped the second
question. If she kept her nerve, she could use her own passport to return to
the
USA
. With her original plans in
disarray, she could not yet think how to carry the sceptre.

The third question was more
awkward. With the worldwide publicity that this day would create, Ms Manning
might be reluctant to accept the stolen sceptre, however valuable it was. At
present she could do nothing to alter that, so she must concentrate on the
first two points. She was an intelligent, logical woman; she could think her
way clear of this situation.

Taking a deep breath, Irene viewed
her situation rationally. Despite the smoke, CCTV cameras would have caught her
image, but the wig and dark glasses should have provided a disguise. Now she
had to lose them, together with her outer clothing, so she was not immediately
recognisable. After that she could plan her next move.

Removing the wig, Irene stuffed it
inside the pocket of her coat, which she took off, reversed and draped over her
shoulder. The sceptre was a larger problem. It was longer than she had thought,
and bulged awkwardly around the crystal ball. Lacking any choice, Irene stuffed
the lowest part into the waistband of her jeans and thrust the upper half under
her loose tee shirt. It felt extremely uncomfortable, but there was little else
she could do. Standing up, she hobbled downward, toward the rough track.

With every step, the shaft of the
sceptre scraped against her leg and ribs, but
Edinburgh
in summer was used to eccentrics. She was just another
tourist among thousands. When the track merged with the road that encircled the
park, Irene turned right, away from the Royal Mile. She could hear the
continual scream of sirens, while the air still held the sting of CS gas.

Irene checked her watch again.
Nearly five in the evening and it was still full daylight. This far north,
darkness would not come until well after ten, so she had no natural shield
under which to shelter. Her choice now was stark; either she walked out of the
park in full view of the police, or waited for night. She glanced ahead, seeing
a small loch to the right, beside which a group of mothers-and-children fed a
horde of ducks, uncaring of the drama that had happened only a few hours ago.
Beyond the loch was a road junction, with two police cars, lights flashing, and
a group of dark uniformed officers.

Irene turned to the loch, lifted a
piece of discarded bread and pretended to join the happy feeders. She could
feel the frantic hammer of her heart and hoped that she did not look
conspicuous.

‘It’s a lovely day,’ she said to
the nearest of the young mothers.

‘Certainly is,’ the woman replied.
‘Big trouble in town though.’ She looked about seventeen; far too young to be
responsible for the child that stood at her knee, and the second that wriggled
in the pram she rocked back and forth.

‘Oh? I wondered why there were so
many police. What happened?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Don’t know.
Somebody attacked the Queen, I think. Something like that. They’re closing off
all the park exits anyway.’

Irene looked up. The police were
speaking with a small group of men. ‘So I see. Was anybody hurt?’

‘Don’t know.’ The woman shrugged.
‘Anyway, I’d better be off. I’m on night shift.’ She gave Irene a small,
frightened, smile. ‘Are you all right? You’re bleeding.’

Irene raised her left hand, for
her right was throbbing painfully. For the first time she felt the dried blood
and mud on her face where she had fallen from the helicopter. ‘I had a bit of a
fall,’ she explained. If this busy young mother had noticed, then so would the
police at the park entrance. Forcing a smile, Irene waited until the woman
wheeled away her pram before she began to walk slowly back toward the park. She
would have to wait until night before trying again.

Standing on a prominent knoll, the
ruin of an ancient building overlooked the loch. It might have been important
at one time, but now consisted of a stone shell with only three walls and no
roof. Irene struggled up the slope, stopping to nurse her ribs or her leg every
few steps, and collapsed thankfully into the angle of two of the walls. Now she
had shelter and a viewpoint. The sceptre was hard and warm against her body so
she slipped it free and placed it at her side.

Perhaps it was the strain of the
previous few hours, but she suddenly felt very tired. As she closed her eyes,
images from the day burst into her mind. She saw Desmond being bayoneted;
yellow smoke slithering between the Canongate tenements; the retching
casualties in
Holyrood
Road
, Mary’s sneer
as she stamped on her hand, Patrick’s taunting face as he left her behind.

Irene woke with a start, aware
that she was shivering and in a very unfamiliar place. She looked around,
seeing utter blackness in one direction and the glow of streetlights in
another. Something splashed coldly in the loch beneath. She checked her watch.
It was two in the morning, with stars pricking the sky and the breeze moaning
through the gaps of her ruin.

Where could she go? Not back to
the hotel, for if she had been identified the police would be waiting for her.
Where then? For a second she thought about approaching the United States
Consulate, but dismissed the idea immediately.

The memory of Drew’s calm presence
came to her. Drew. Although she hardly knew him, something instinctively told
her that he would provide sanctuary. Drew would know what to do. Irene shivered
and straightened her legs, gasping at the renewed pain in her side and the
constant throbbing of her knuckles. Lifting her coat, she held it tight in her
left hand as she replaced the sceptre under her clothes, flinching when the
cold metal touched her skin. Her injuries had stiffened while she slept so the
descent from the ruin to the loch was jolting agony.