The Firebird (5 page)

Breathing deep, I echoed, ‘So. It’s good to see you, Rob.’

‘It’s good to see you, too.’

‘I’m really sorry—’

‘There’s no need,’ he cut me off, and took a drink before continuing. ‘I told you at the time I understood your reasons. I still do.’

He very likely understood them better than I did myself, I thought. I cleared my throat and said, ‘I’ve been to Edinburgh this afternoon.’

Whatever else he knew, it was apparent that he hadn’t known that, because he lifted his one eyebrow in the way he always had when I’d surprised him. ‘Oh, aye?’

‘Yes. I went to visit Dr Fulton-Wallace.’

When I hesitated, not quite sure how to proceed from there, he sent me a lopsided smile. ‘Is this a twelve-step programme that you’re on, then? Making peace with all the people from your past?’

His tone was teasing, but I shook my head with an unnecessary force. ‘No, it isn’t. I …’ I faltered, not sure how to ask this question.

Rob said, ‘Of course I will.’

‘Will what?’

‘Come with you to Dundee.’

There was no need for him to ask if that was what I’d wanted; I had always been an open book for him to read. Too bad it didn’t work the other way around, I thought. I tried to read him now, and met a stubborn wall of static as his blue gaze levelled calmly on my own.

I took a long drink of my wine. ‘I suppose that you already know all the details.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘but you’ve had a long day, it’ll keep. I’ve the day off tomorrow; we’ll drive to Dundee in the morning, and on the way up you can tell me the whole story. Suit you?’

It suited me fine, and I said so. ‘Rob?’

‘Aye?’

‘I am sorry.’

The warmth of reassurance wrapped around me like a hug, so nearly physical I couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t moved. He looked away. ‘I ken fine how you feel,’ he said, and moved his pint of ale aside to make room for the plates as Sheena brought our meals.

When Sheena brought the final bill she set it on the table so it was beyond my reach and said, ‘You see that Keen-Een pays that now, when you’ve come all this way to visit. Where’s he disappeared to?’

‘He thinks he left his mobile at the lifeboat station,’ I explained. ‘He’s gone across to look.’

She smiled. ‘I’m that surprised he disnae keep a room there. He was all about the lifeboat from the time we were at school. If they’d not let him join the crew we’d all have raised a protest, for there would have been no living with him.’

I didn’t know too much about the running of the lifeboats. ‘It’s a volunteer thing, isn’t it?’

‘The lifeboat? Aye, they do it for the love of it, or from the wish to help. It isnae everyone could wear that beeper, let themselves be dragged away from anything and everything, and wakened at all hours. Myself, I’d never last a week.’

I doubted I would, either. I didn’t know how Rob could find the energy to serve as a policeman and be at the lifeboat’s beck and call as well, but Sheena, when I said as much to her, advised me, ‘Never let him fool you into thinking that he’s calm; it’s all an act.’ Her tone was certain. ‘I’ve kent Keen-Een all my life, and I can tell you that it isnae in his nature to sit still, he’s only taught himself the trick of it.’

He certainly looked calm enough when he came back, his gaze shifting indulgently from my face to Sheena’s as she asked, ‘Found your mobile then, did you?’

‘Aye.’ Rob, without sitting, reached down for the bill. ‘If you’ve finished telling her my shortcomings,’ he said to Sheena, ‘we’re away.’

‘Och, Keen-Een, it would take more time than this to tell her everything.’ The waitress went off with a wink and a smile. ‘Have a good night, the pair of you.’

Thanking her, Rob took his wallet out, put down enough for the bill and a generous tip, and then tucking the wallet away looked at me as I stood. ‘D’ye not have a jacket?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t really think … I mean, it’s August, and it’s warmer down in London, and I didn’t …’ I was babbling again. I stopped myself and started over, more coherently. ‘This trip was a last-minute thing. I didn’t plan ahead.’

Rob hid a smile. ‘A first for you, then.’ Shrugging off his own dark-blue windcheater, he held it for me. ‘Here, put this on.’

The coat was lined with thermal fleece that felt blanket-soft on my bare forearms, and when I stepped from the cheerful pub to the dark pavement outdoors I was grateful for both the coat’s warmth and the sheltering windbreak of Rob at my back. He didn’t crowd me, didn’t touch me, but I felt the force of his protection all the same.

Even though it was properly dark now, the cold wind roughening the water of the harbour so whatever light was coming from the fishing boats and those few windows on the black hill opposite reflected only briefly in a thousand scattered fragments that were swiftly doused in blackness, still the harbour was alive with people out to find their fun on Friday night. As Rob shepherded me past the Ship Hotel, a trio of men stumbled out of the door to the public bar, where they’d apparently been for a while from the look of them, and from the loudness of their voices, cursing cheerfully and often.

One man staggered into Rob and let loose with an expletive before he noticed who he’d just bumped into.

Rob said, ‘Heyah, Jimmy.’

The man, less belligerent, gave a nod. ‘Keen-Een.’

Rob looked at the man’s mates and said, ‘You’ll be helping him home, will you?’

‘Aye,’ said the nearest man, dragging his friend back. ‘We’re gaun hame the now.’

‘See that you don’t wander off into Armatage Street,’ he advised them. ‘I’ve been on a shout with the lifeboat the day, I’m fair jiggered, and getting called out to a housebreaking widnae improve my mood any.’

The nearest man stared at him hard for a moment, and then his mouth twisted into something approaching a grin. ‘All right, Keen-Een. We’re gaun hame, as I said.’ And he herded his friends away, all of them walking unsteadily.

Watching them, I asked Rob, ‘Will they go home, do you think?’

‘Oh, aye. It spoils their fun,’ he told me, ‘when they ken I ken they’re at it.’

I imagined that the crime rate here in Eyemouth had gone down since Rob McMorran joined the force. Whereas I only ‘saw’ things when I held an object, Rob’s own gifts were greater than that, as I’d learnt in the short time I’d known him. He read people’s minds with astonishing ease.

I remembered that talent now, trying to keep my own thoughts in control as I asked, ‘Do you live very far from here?’

‘Not far at all.’ He nodded to a block of flats scarcely a stone’s throw away. ‘I’m just there, Chapel Quay, but it’s only a bedsit, and you’ll get no sleep with my snoring.’

His tone was normal, but I felt the line that he was drawing in between us, whether from his own desire to keep me at a distance or to show me that he understood my coming back for help meant only that, and nothing more.

‘I see. So then where … ?’

‘You’ll find more comfort out at the cottage.’

‘The cottage?’

My mind filled with images, swirling, receding – the brightness and warmth of a low-ceilinged kitchen, the edge of a lace curtain brushing the white-painted sill of a deeply set window with one cracked glass pane, a succession of snapshots so rapid and fleeting I couldn’t catch all of them, blending to one strong impression of
home
.

Rob said, ‘I’ve rung my mother, let her know you’re coming. You can sleep in my old room.’

That seemed even more personal, somehow, than spending the night at his bedsit. ‘Won’t your mother mind having a guest to look after?’

‘My mother? She’s probably baking something as we speak. She loves company.’ Stopping at a navy-blue Ford Focus in the car park, he opened the passenger door for me. ‘It’s my father you’ll want to be keeping an eye on. He’s aye had a liking for blondes.’

It was only a short drive, not more than a mile or two out of town, on a narrow road banked at each side with wild hedges that grew in the low, twisted way that things did near the coast where the salt wind was constantly beating them down. I could see the black tangle of trees to the left, and the dark rise of hills to my right, and a few scattered houses set back from the road as though wanting seclusion.

The cottage, though, sat at the road’s very edge, spilling welcoming light from its windows. Rob turned in beside it and parked at the foot of a long private drive winding up through tall trees to a larger dark house on the hillside above. ‘Rosehill House,’ he supplied, when he noticed my interest. ‘The owners are away on holiday, just at the moment. My granddad was their groundskeeper, afore he retired, and my mother keeps house for them, off and on.’

I was looking out of my window past the line of trees that edged the low stone wall beside my door when Rob came round to help me out. I frowned. ‘That field …’

‘… was once a Roman battleground,’ he said with understanding.

Which explained the faint uneasiness I felt as I stepped out and stood, my gaze fixed on the night-black field that stretched beyond the wall. I almost heard the battle cries still hanging on the wind, the clash of swords, the frenzied galloping of horses’ hooves that passed by in a rush and drowned the sound of marching feet … except for one lone set of measured footsteps, coming down the gravelled drive towards us.

I couldn’t help the tiny chill that chased between my shoulder blades, but when I turned to look I only saw a friendly border collie, black and white with one ear perked and one flopped over, long tail wagging as it trotted up to say hello.

Rob bent to give the ears a scratch. ‘Good boy. Come meet Nicola.’

I loved dogs. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jings.’ He smiled. ‘In Scots, that’s what you say when you’re surprised, like, and when this one was a pup he was forever underfoot, and my mother was aye tripping over him and saying “Jings!” until he thought that was his name, so we just called him that. We couldn’t call him what my granddad said when
he
tripped over him.’

I shared his smile and turned my collar up against the chill that brushed my neck as I bent down to pat the dog myself. I might have been mistaken when I thought I saw Rob give a nod of greeting to the empty air behind me. But I didn’t mistake the short laugh he gave, low, nor the phrase he spoke, not for my ears. And in Latin.

I understood then. I looked up, but the footsteps had started again, moving off and away from us, into the field. I gave Jings’s head one last pat, straightening. ‘Friend of yours?’

Rob looked where the footsteps had gone. ‘Aye, a very old friend.’

‘Can you actually see him?’

He nodded.

I tried to imagine what that would be like, to be able to see ghosts. Converse with them. ‘He’s one of the Romans, I take it?’

‘Their sentinel, aye. Keeping watch, still.’

A lonely thing, keeping watch over an empty field, night after night through the centuries. Having someone who could see him, as Rob could, must be a relief. I covered up my sudden ache of sympathy by asking, ‘And does he like blondes, as well?’

Rob laughed. I had forgotten just how great a laugh he had. ‘No, he prefers dark-haired women. You’ve nothing to fear from the Sentinel, Nicola.’

Rob’s father, though, was a charmer. He greeted me as we came through the low doorway and into the warmth of the kitchen, his accent betraying his Newcastle origins, more
north-of
-England than Scottish. He might have been anywhere from his mid forties to late fifties, I couldn’t tell. While his hair was a silvery grey, he was muscled and fit and the lines round his eyes seemed to come more from smiling than age. He was smiling now, white teeth flashing against his tanned skin as he said, ‘So you’re Nicola, are you?’

I couldn’t see any resemblance to Rob in his features, but he tipped his head sideways the same way that Rob often did and I caught the gold glint of a small hoop in one ear that gave him the look of a cut-throat, as did the tattoos snaking over the strong forearms showing beneath the rolled sleeves of his shirt.

He said, ‘Robbie was saying you came up from London?’

‘I did, yes.’

Before he could ask me more questions, Rob cut in with, ‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Making the bed up,’ his father replied.

I felt guilty. ‘I’m sorry to be such a bother.’

His laugh was like Rob’s, too. ‘You don’t know my Jeannie. She lives for this, eh, Robbie? She’s got biscuits in the oven and all.’

Rob glanced down at me with an ‘I-told-you-so’ look, and pulled one of the chairs at the old kitchen table out so I could sit.

I got feelings from rooms, sometimes, and the warmth in this one came from more than just the Rayburn cooker wafting strong spice-and-ginger scents into the air. There was love here – not perfect, but strong – and a kind of a peace that came with it and helped me relax as I sat, with the collie, Jings, settling under the table and coiling his warm body close by my feet.

Rob sat, too, taking a chair at one end of the table and rocking it back on two legs till his shoulders were propped on the wall behind.

‘Don’t let your mother catch you doing that,’ his father warned, good-naturedly, as he crossed to switch the kettle on. ‘So, Nicola, where did you meet my son?’

Rob exhaled, weary. ‘Dad.’

‘I’m only asking.’

Slipping off my borrowed coat, I hung it on the chair back and said, ‘Edinburgh.’

Rob’s father turned, with interest. ‘Oh, aye? When was this?’

‘Two years ago.’

‘Two years ago?’ His interest seemed to sharpen as he looked at Rob. ‘When you were at the uni doing all those tests?’

The look that Rob sent back to him was plainly meant to kill the topic, and his father shrugged and turned away again, returning to his role as host. ‘Will you have tea or coffee, Nicola?’

‘I’d love a cup of tea, please.’

His father’s smile when he glanced round looked curiously pleased, and it was only when I saw Rob bring his own head round to look at me that I became aware of what had happened.

Rob’s father’s eyes met mine and though he didn’t move his lips I heard his voice say,
Interesting
.