Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but he stopped her with a kiss.
'It's true. Until now, what I've known has been no more than screwing.' He paused. 'Suddenly, I'm scared. This is new territory for me. We met what, eight hours ago? – and yet… Well, it's incredible. I'm a logical man, I'm pushing thirty-five, and here I am, gone, shot, stoned… in love, I think. Do you think I'm crazy?'
She laid two small fingers across his mouth. 'If you are, my darling, it's contagious.' She took his hand and placed it between her breasts. 'Feel here. I'm shaking.'
It was true. Under his touch, Andy could feel a faint trembling mixed in with the steady pounding of her heart. He moved his hand round and drew her, gently, close against him. He nodded his head towards the window. 'Maybe it's just that full moon.
Maybe tomorrow…'
She smiled. 'Maybe. But it doesn't feel that way to me. In the meantime…'
She pulled his head towards her and began to chew his earlobe, gently. A shaft of pleasure ran down his body, all the way to his toes.
'Julia!' Mrs Rosenberg's voice came in an insistent whisper from the open doorway.
In her surprise, Julia bit down sharply on Andy's ear. He managed to stifle a yelp. Taken completely unawares by the silence of the woman's approach, and forgetting that she was blind, he reached out automatically for his clothes.
The whisper came again. "There's someone downstairs.
Someone trying to get in.'
'Are you sure, auntie?' Julia whispered in return.
'Of course I'm sure. At the front door. As well we have a policeman here.' In the moonlight, he saw her smile faintly into the room.
Martin was into his slacks and shirt before she had finished speaking. Barefoot, he moved silently through the doorway and crept downstairs. He and Julia had left the living-room door ajar when they had gone up. He stood behind it and listened. At first there was nothing, only a heavy silence, until he heard a scratchy, creaking noise, which he recognised as a jemmy on the door-frame.
Keeping out of the moonlight and close to the wall, he slid into the room and up to the front door. Grabbing the oval handle of the Yale lock. he twisted it and pulled, hard. The door swung open, only to be stopped after a few inches by a brass security chain, fixed peculiarly a few inches above floor level.
'Shit!'
Martin closed the door again and freed the chain, then pulled it wide but, in those few seconds, the intruder had bolted. The garden gate swung creaking on its hinges. He had just time to see what he was certain was a male figure disappearing around the corner. As he ran from the lane into the sloping Dublin Street, he saw his quarry at the foot of the hill, racing into Drummond Place. Martin gave up the chase. Seconds later he heard a motorcycle bark into life, then roar away. He jogged back to the house, where he found Julia standing in the doorway, once again wearing her white robe.
'Sorry, love. He got away. I'd have had him, but I didn't notice the chain.'
'You were in the kitchen when I fixed it. I do that every night without even thinking. A previous occupant installed it down there. He must have been a midget. Oh, but, Andy, thank God you were here. So much for my precious alarm system!'
Martin looked up at the big red box above the door. 'Don't blame that too much. The guy's pumped some quick-dry stuff into it. A pound to a pinch of pig-shit, this was the container.' He knelt and picked up a long cylinder, with a pistol grip at one end, and a nozzle at the other. 'Yes. Sure enough. Quick-dry mastic: a sort of rubber solution. Your alarm probably still thinks it's working. It won't realise it's been choked to death. I don't suppose it's linked to the Gayfield police station?'
Julia shook her head.
Together they went back indoors, Martin carrying the mastic tube.
'Where's your aunt?'
'I made her go back to bed.'
'Well, go and tell her everything's ok, but first show me where the phone is. I'm going to call this in.'
'It's in the kitchen. Will that mean police here tonight?'
He chuckled. 'Apart from me, you mean? No, I'll tell them I'm handling things here. But for the next half-hour or so I want anyone going through this city on a motorcycle pulled over and questioned. On you go, now. Put your aunt's mind at rest.'
She started towards the stairs, then looked back at him from the doorway. 'Andy,' she said quietly. 'Will you stay till morning?'
He smiled his widest smile. 'And the morning after, and the morning after that; as many mornings as you want. Try and stop roe. You, lady, now have the highest-ranking personal bodyguard in Edinburgh.'
She was waiting for him under the duvet – after he had made his call and issued his orders to the Gayfield night-shift. Her white robe lay on the floor, the curtains were drawn, and a lamp on the bedside table was lit. He undressed and slipped into bed beside her.
As she hugged him, he felt her shiver very slightly.
'Andy, you don't suppose there could have been any connection between that burglar and the things you told us about this afternoon.'
He shook his head vigorously. 'Not at all. That was just a Saturday-night chancer. The sort of thing that happens every weekend in life, in any city.'
As she smiled and pulled him towards her he hoped that he would never have to lie to her again.
16
'I know it's a big if, boss, but she is connected with the Festival.'
'Yes, but hold on, Andy. You said yourself that the curtains were open at the front of the house: downstairs and upstairs. And your car was parked round the corner. The guy probably just guessed, wrongly, that the place was empty. How was he to know that you just like having it off with the curtains open?'
'Aye, very funny, Bob. Look, damn few opportunists come equipped with a cylinder of mastic to fuck up any alarm system they might happen to come across.'
'OK, maybe he was a professional Saturdaynighter.'
Skinner saw Martin's frown deepen, his expression made even darker by the stubble on his chin. He put a friendly hand on his shoulder.
'Look, Andy, I know you're worried about this girl. Nothing's impossible, and the chances are we'll never know whether there was a connection. But one thing's for sure: after having a close shave like that, there's no way the bastard will come back.'
'Maybe so, boss, but I'm still having that house watched, and Julia escorted to and from work. And once the alarm's fixed, it's being linked to Gayfield.'
Skinner whistled at Martin's vehemence. 'Here, this sounds serious. How long have you known this lass? One day? Is this the Andy Martin that I know, and that dozens of women have come to love in vain? Your thinking must be affected, right enough. Otherwise, last night you'd have let that boy get all the way in the door! Then you could have stiffened him and we'd have got all the answers that we're just guessing at now. That's what I'd have done if I'd been there – and been thinking straight, that is!'
Skinner and Martin were alone in the private office of the Special Branch suite. It was 8:50 am on Sunday morning, and the headquarters building was weekend quiet. But suddenly, they heard the outer door open.
'Someone's keen said Skinner. 'We told them nine o'clock.'
There was a soft knock on Martin's door. 'Come!' he shouted.
The door opened and a little round man, no more than five feet four inches tall, seemed to roll into the room. At first Martin was reminded of a football, then, noting the way in which the little man appeared to taper inward and down from the shoulders, decided that he looked more like a spinning top.