off the streets and who now made an honest living as a landscape gardener. They were all here, his pals from the old division as well as the familiar faces of neighbours, good Lord even Joyce Rogers! His eyes scanned the crowd, picking out some of his cousins and their wives and, oh there was Rosie looking ultra glamorous, hanging onto Solly’s arm.
‘Good Lord!’ he said at last, turning to Maggie. ‘You wee rascal!’ he beamed.
‘You’re not cross?’
‘Do I look it? No way,’ he whispered, bending to kiss her lips and evoking a cheer from the assembled guests.
Three dark-suited waiters appeared bearing trays of champagne and then, amidst the buzz of talk and glass in hand, Lorimer found himself moving amongst his friends, shaking his head in mock bewilderment, as they all tried to tell him how his face had looked when the lights had gone up.
‘Maggie’s been really good at keeping it a secret,’ Rosie told him.
‘And I didn’t say a thing,’ the deputy chief constable said. Resplendent in a short black number she gave him a toothy grin as she raised her champagne flute in a silent toast. ‘Just made sure you weren’t on duty, that’s all.’ She winked conspiratorially.
The dark-haired woman regarded herself in the bedroom mirror. Her face was thin and devoid of make-up, her chiselled cheekbones giving her a haunted look. She could easily be taken for a junked-up street woman. Her hand hovered above a mass of brushes and make-up palettes. Was it better to keep to her natural pallor or to go through a routine that would find her looking back at the sort of face that might grace a glamour magazine? She had to tempt him, ensure that he stopped to pick her up, didn’t she? Tilting her head upwards so that the light caught all the angles and shadows, she squeezed a blob of foundation onto the back of her hand then dipped her finger into it like an artist beginning a new canvas.
Downstairs there was a birthday party going on. She had heard the noise of celebrations earlier and had seen the pale blue balloons with their ribbons stacked in a corner of the dining room as she had finished her meal. So much better for her: the noise and goings on would keep the staff too busy to notice her leaving and returning late on into the night, especially now that she was familiar with the back stairs that led to the upper floor.
This was her last night here, she told herself. She shivered as though some premonition had caught that thought and held it up for scrutiny, daring fate to meddle in her plans. She was overwrought with nervous excitement; that was all. Her eyes fell to the Starfire pistol lying openly on the counterpane. One swift shot and it would all be over. Then her nights would be free once more, memories of Carol tempered by the knowledge that she had avenged her killing.
A swathe of blood-coloured cloud split the sky above the horizon, its edge like the crest of an endless wave, silvered in the moonlight. Pinpoints of red and amber twinkled and shimmered; the city seeming vibrant and alive those miles away to the east.
He tried not to stare at the moon that was looking down upon him from the upper darkness. Wisps of cloud rolled off the mass like smoke, obscuring the moon, its white gold glow an arc of mysterious light. Then the shreds and scraps of cloud separated, drifting apart to reveal the face that was leering down at him once more.
As though in a dream he picked up the clothes he had left on the chair by his bed and began to dress. It was time. The image of the sabre downstairs came to him as sharply as its cutting edge. The house was in silence, Vlad and Aunt Andrea asleep long since. But they could not awake tonight. This was his time, his destiny. Still, he tip-toed quietly downstairs, despite the certainty that they were colluding in this enchantment that kept all bad things from him.
The sabre flickered in the moonlight as he drew it from the case and he breathed a sigh of gratitude that it had waited for him, for this night.
He had left the car parked near the open gates, facing outwards. Placing the weapon reverently across the back seats, he started the engine and drove slowly onto a road that was a stream of moonlight pulling