(13) The Day the Sun Came Out

Maggie parked her coupe at Grassmarket that afternoon and walked along Candlemaker Row, the Greyfriars park on her right. Her heart was in a hurry but her feet were not.

Always in Edinburgh she wanted to blend in with the pedestrians but not look like a tourist. She never wore or carried anything that looked touristy. On this day, with a fragile sun shining in a small field of blue, Maggie had on a long felt coat of mustard yellow, a drab flower-print dress, and a head scarf. A hemp purse with a braid shoulder-strap was carried in her left hand. It brushed her ankle as she strolled in a leisurely fashion, with a bored air and eyes straight ahead.

She was going to Gerard's rooms above the Greyfriar Bobby's Bar. He had invited her by phone the night before. She used his invitation as an excuse to leave Pitcox early, so she could have a drink at the Royal McGregor on High Street, and a bite of scone. Gerard's poundcakes she could do without, she thought, as she slowed her walk at sight of the old brick three-story above Bobby's.

"Beware the Ides of April."

Maggie turned and saw the typical interloper: the open newspaper in tense hands, the cap worn low, the sloppy look of coat and shirt untucked, a good three-day growth of whiskers and the grin of he who thinks he's clever.

"Smitchee," she said, stepping up to him behind a mobile pizza stand. "What brings you around?"

"You got me out of a spot of bother with Wallace. I thought I'd do you a bit of luck, a heads up. Valentina's coming tonight. Rumor has it that a shake-up is in the works."

"Who sent you?"

"Meself. A wee bit of trouble it was, too. But I'm doing a job for some people across the water, a peep job. You haven't anything too crusty to worry your bob about."

"Valentina, ha ha." Maggie sniffed, her chin up. "Saw her the other day. She's a broom now, she is. Laundry lass. Stay-at-home. Will you be telling me that you know different?"

Smitchee folded the paper and put it under an arm. He reached out and smoothed her collar. "Look your best tonight," he said, "but not for Wallace. Aye, there's a difference now. One too many cooks in the kitchen, and one of them a madman swinging knives."

"Stop talking in riddles. There's thin ice under your brogues, as usual. Watch your step, teddy boy. Valentina, hm. Is she up to her old tricks? I saw what she had hanging over her veggie garden, the vigilant dark angel. Is it that again?"

"Would she be coming if it wasn't? Want a slice of pizza before you go up?"

"I had a scone."

"And a pint too, I don't wonder. A drunk tongue is a loose one, old girl. Best you bite down on it tonight."

Maggie slapped at his paper, smiling at him. "Get off the ice, Smitchee. Good'ay to you."

Gerard MacGalt stood in front of his dresser mirror and considered his velvet smoking jacket of burgandy red. It would do. The casual look. He went downstairs to the sitting room and put coasters on the endtables beside each of the four wingback armchairs.

The sky was clouding over again. That pleased him. He lit a fire and poked at the logs, sending ash and sparks up the flue with a certain intensity of feeling. Then he was off to the kitchen to make a lazy susan of sliced pepperoni, three types of cheese, malted crackers, and little squares of poundcake. The traditional barley wine was chilled enough. He took the four bottles from the fridge by the cast-iron stove, where a pheasant was baking, and set them, with four glasses, on the low coffee table in front of the fireplace.

He was coming out of the kitchen with the lazy susan when the doorbell rang.

He set the tray on the coffee table, then, tidying up his flyaway white hair and drawing a licked finger across his mustache, he went to the door and opened it with the austere movements of a butler.

"Hallo!" said Maggie.

"Old chum. Enter."

She came in from the threadbare strip carpet in the corridor, in from the dwindling sunlight that shone through a window by the landing, and into the warmth and quaintness of the rooms. Gerard took her coat and hung it on the hat rack in the entry hall. She followed him with her purse strap held in both gloved hands, to the woodsy heat that embraced her as she chose a chair and sat down.

"A long walk?" he asked her.

"From Grassmarket. Who else is coming?"

"Thomas Ingols, a friend of our Lord Advocate."

"And who else?"

"You seem so certain about that, Maggie."

"I count four glasses."

"Have you spoken about our meeting to someone when you know that's really quite frowned upon?"

"You've Christ's own nosiness, ha-ha! Just a word a minute ago to Smitchee. He always knows more than he says. Are those bottles going to pour themselves?"

Gerard grinned down at her. "It will be amusing, when a particular guest arrives." He filled a glass and handed it to Maggie, adding, "When he finds out that the leopard has changed its spots. No, actually, changed its entire skin."

Maggie sighed, the glass to her lips. "Riddles make me ill," she said. "Are you referring to the assassin from Red Rum?"

Gerard gave her a long smiling look, then laughed. He poured a glass for himself, pinched a square of poundcake, and sat in the chair opposite her. "Yes, but not before Ingols gets here, we do hope. Smitchee hired a private cab for Sanguineus that is scheduled to arrive at the man's hotel at nine. So we've plenty of time to prepare."

He started to say something more, leaning forward with an elbow on his knee, but Maggie forestalled him.

"And what about Valentina?" she asked. "When is she arriving? Is she coming with this Ingols fellow? Why haven't I heard about Thomas Ingols? What is his capacity? Is it wise to keep me, of all people, in the dark about--"

"My God woman! Let me breathe! What in hell's belly are you talking about? Valentina, coming here? She's suffering a psychosis! She came to see me today. Some nonsense about an underground secret chamber in the Parliament building!"

Maggie stared into her empty glass. With a guilty glance at Gerard she snatched up a bottle and filled her glass to the brim. "She always was a bit off, if truth be told."

She reached for the snacks. "I'll try a piece of your delicious homemade poundcake if you don't too terribly mind."

She smiled brightly, a painful failure of a smile that had Gerard looking confused.

"Of course not, please... do," he said lamely. "You know, she... she had pictures. I mean photographs. Of drawings you made when you were designing Parliament. Pictures of what she said was a secret room."

"Well ha-ha, what rubbish. It's worse than silly, it's slanderous. Where did she say she got them?"

"Your office. She broke in. It was your day off today."

"Was it really? Why no wonder I was tooling around Pitcox." She smiled that stressed artificial smile again and shook her head. "So you see, Gerry, she's up to her old tricks. Smitchee says there's to be a shake up. This Ingols person, probably. Do you know him well? A shake up because of Valentina going nuts on us?"

Gerard stared a moment at the fire, as if a semblance of sanity could be found in the ordered flicker of flames; there, surely, if nowhere else.

"A shake up?" he said, lifting his glass, breathing deeply. "I met Thomas only once. He struck me as a man who appears when the devil is in the details, and an exorcism is in the cards. I must suppose that something needs fixing."

"Yes, Valentina, ha-ha!"

They drank and avoided one another's eyes while the clock above the mantlepiece ticked its countdown.

"Oh," said Gerard, taking out his cell phone. He put it to his ear. "MacGalt."

Maggie was pretending to look at the miniature statuary on a shelf behind Gerard's chair, and at the portrait of his grandmother in an oval frame on the wall above the shelf. But her peripheral vision saw Gerard clearly; the drawn brows, the teeth snipping at the edge of his mustache, his head nodding slowly. "Yes, nine o'clock or a little after. I have a pheasant in the oven. Come before eight and join us."

Maggie helped herself to more wine and a malted cracker.

"Was that our Thomas?" she asked nonchalantly when Gerard had put away his phone.

He nodded slowly. "Tony is in custody," he said and made a face of surprise. "Ingols is a law enforcement man of some sort. But... easy, old chum, he's totally for Whitestone. It's just that Tony mistakenly released Tanya Wilde from a holding facility somewhere, thinking she was Valentina."

Gerard made a desperate effort to look calm and contented. But he was remembering Valentina's crazy story about being abducted and tortured, and how disturbingly close her story came to what little he knew of the interrogation of Tanya Wilde.

"Well," he said, "Ingols has no idea where Tanya is. It seems no one does. Except... possibly... Sanguineus."

Maggie stood up and looked toward the kitchen. "That pheasant needs looking after. He's coming for dinner?"

"Who?"

"Ingols."

"Yes. Can you make a salad?"