I turned on the radio, without much hope of a signal, but a mournful Celtic tune came out of the speakers. It was company of a sort. Maybe we'd get some upbeat drums or fiddles after a time, rather than just grim tales of disaster and despair and love gone wrong.
What was it about Gaelic folk songs, anyway? I let my mind turn it over—something to think about besides the very real possibility of plunging over a cliff to my death in an Alfa Romeo with a priceless jewel tucked in my bra. I thought of the quote from Yeats: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." Certainly seemed to hold true of Scots, as well. All that drama and tragedy sung in the old songs.
A gust of wind caught the car and I swerved to correct. Tires hit the wet road just right, and the wind caught the tail of the car, and I was suddenly whipping around in a circle on the narrow, cliffside road, the car completely out of control.
Chapter 11
Diamonds were also used as a poison. The stones were ground to a powder and put into the enemy's food and drink. Many prominent people's deaths were attributed to diamond poisoning.
—Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewski, B.F.A.
I
t happened so fast, I hardly had time to do the usual inward screech—
ay yi yi yi yi!
—before instinct kicked in.
Never lose your head
, my father's voice said. Steel nerves, they said of him, and the sound of his voice in my mind steadied me. He used to take me to safe places where he'd lead me to deliberately losing control of the car, so I would learn how it felt, and would know, in the very cells of my body, how to regain control.
Letting go of my high, taut nerves, I fell into the feeling of the car itself, the sensation of the frame around me, the tires on the road, the engine humming through the machinery of the car. My hands and arms, my feet and legs, my eyes, my body, became an extension of the vehicle. I downshifted and steered into the spin, bringing it down from the dizzying height of the punishing, whipping turns. As long as I didn't go over the edge, everything should be okay.
The car slammed into the hillside, hard enough to jolt my teeth, but it was finally enough to stop the spin. I let go of my breath, listened to the sound of the car around me. For a minute, I paused, feeling the heat of fear leak out of my lungs, the cold clamminess of certain death ease away from my forehead.
Inexplicably, I thought of my cat, Michael. A gigantic, silvery, fluffy Siamese mix, he was the opposite of the aloof and complaining cat of legend. He loved me, followed me from room to room. Sulked when I took out my suitcase to go away somewhere. I'd left him with my best friend, Janine, and I was sure she was taking good care of him, but it hurt me to imagine how he'd feel if something happened to me.
It made me furious, suddenly. How had I ended up in this mess, with Frankenstein's thugs on my tail on a very bad night in the west of Scotland?
The answer, as it so often was, couldn't be blamed on anything but me running away from my life. Running from San Francisco and my ex-husband, who was quickly marrying someone else, before even a full year had elapsed. Marrying money, which is what he'd thought he was doing with me. A fair assumption, since my father is so rich. And it's not like I'm poor or even struggling, but my father spends a lot, spends fast and furiously and I'm not likely to have much of an inheritance unless he dies early before he has a chance to spend it all. And only then if the wife-of-the-moment doesn't have some great team of lawyers.
It's always humiliating to lose out to another woman, but there's nothing quite like realizing you were being used. Paul tried to tell me, too, which is why I still haven't spoken to him until now. He pointed out, quite accurately, that my ex was a gold digger. We had a huge fight; I kicked him out of my wedding rehearsal, and in a snit, he flew back to Paris that night, missing my wedding entirely.
Which wounded me more than his eventually correct assumptions that Timothy was wrong for me.
Staring now into the dark, with the sound of the sea crashing to rocks somewhere not very far away, our fight suddenly seemed absurd. He'd tried to contact me several times, but I'd steadfastly avoided him.
Why had I felt so betrayed?
The answer, lurking somewhere in my memories of Arran, suddenly felt too dangerous. The one thing I most certainly did not need was two-bit psychology. I had enough problems.
Beneath me, the engine still rumbled quietly, apparently unhurt. The weather seemed to be easing. I realized I'd been staring out the windshield, waiting for my heart to slow down, and I could actually see out for most of the swipe of the wipers.
Improvement, anyway.
On such a grim night, I wasn't terribly worried about traffic coming up on me one direction or the other, but it was better to get moving anyway. I turned the car around and headed, at a moderate pace, toward the north once again. It wasn't great, but it was a lot better. The car seemed to be all right, despite the bumps and bangs she'd taken the past hour.
I patted the dashboard. "Sorry, baby. You deserved better."
In my coat pocket, my phone suddenly started to ring. I grabbed it and pushed the speaker function. "Make it quick, it's pissing rain and I'm driving."
Paul's voice came through, staticky, but audible. "Sylvie, is Luca with you?"
"What if I said he's right here beside me?"
"Stop playing games. Is he or not?"
I flushed. "Not. Long story."
"He is very dangerous, Sylvie."
"Funny, he says the same thing about you."
"I will admit this was not the most straightforward way of attaining a prize," he said. "But you know I am not a killer."
"Neither is Luca."
"Is that what he told you? Who do you think killed Gunnarsson?"
Damn. I'd bought Luca's story, hadn't I? My head ached with the tangled levels of play at work here. "I don't know."
"Sylvie, I know he is the kind of man who makes young women swoon. But be very wary."
"I am, all right? He's not with me."
"I want to help you, Sylvie. Where can I meet you?"
The car shivered on a rocket of rain. "Hold on," I said, and put my concentration on navigating a steep curve. At least the road was heading away from the very edge of the cliffs. "I'm taking the Katerina to the police."
"Are you? Then why are you driving all over the country tonight?"
"I got distracted," I said, and it was true. It was also very plain that exactly what I needed to do was get the Katerina to the Glasgow police. "I'm going to Glasgow now."
Silence met that statement. "You have her?"
"Yes."
"You know it would mean a great deal to me to hold her for only a moment. Will you give me that chance, Sylvie? I will not ask you to do anything else. Just let me see her, touch her. One hour."
I made a skeptical noise. "Please. You won't hold her for an hour. You'll take off and I won't do anything because you know—"
"What? I know what, Sylvie? Hmm?"
"Stop it," I said sharply. "Luca underestimated me because he doesn't know me. You know better than that. Don't try the charming routine, all right?"
Surprisingly, he laughed. The sound was wildly distracting, and I had to take a breath to keep my attention on the road. Just ahead was a wide spot for letting faster cars pass and I pulled into it so I could talk without killing myself. "I don't have a lot of time, Paul. There's a good chance I'm being followed, and I need to get to Glasgow before I get killed by thugs."
"What are you talking about? What thugs?"
"I don't know. Three guys followed me—or Luca—to my cousin's holiday caravan. You remember Alan McPheator, don't you?"
"Of course. But who were the men who followed you?"
"I don't know, Paul! They broke in, and I took off." The reality of this whole situation was beginning to annoy me, and now that I was away from the heady presence of Luca's luscious voice and beautiful eyes, I no longer felt any conflict. For lots of reasons, the least of which was my career reputation, I had to get the Katerina to the inspector in Glasgow. "Look, I'll call you later, all right?"
"Sylvie," he said, and there was command in the word. "Will you let me see it? One hour, I promise you."
"What will that do, Paul? Except frustrate you?"
"You know better. It will please me. I will not ask you to compromise your values. I will not stand in your way if you must take it to the police. It is only that I have gone to a great deal of trouble to find this gem, and I only wish…. the intimacy of holding it, seeing it. I know you understand that."
A thousand things were pounding through me—Luca's curls and smell of oranges, my reputation, hanging now by a very slim thread indeed, the lingering low roar of airplane engines that seemed to always take a day or two to go away.
As counterpoint, there was Paul's liquid voice, a narcotic that spun over the bones of my spine, easing the tension at each little bump. I sighed, pressed my head to the steering wheel. "I don't how the thugs found me," I said. "This is also a jewel with a pretty serious curse, you know. Maybe I just want to get rid of it." I laughed without much humor. "You know me and curses."
Again there was a long quiet at the end of the line. This one went so long I said, "Are you there?"
"I am here,
mon petit chou.
I was thinking that it is wonderful to hear your voice again. I have missed you. Terribly."
"I know," I said in sudden honesty. "Me, too."
"Have you forgiven me?"
I thought of our huge scene, in front of the small, quaint church in San Francisco. "Yes. It wasn't you anyway."
He chuckled. "I know."
"Don't get cocky on me, huh?" I looked in the rearview mirror. Still nothing but darkness. "I have to go, Paul."
"Do not go home without seeing me this time, huh? Jewel or no, let me buy you supper one night while you're in Europe? I am staying this week at my cottage on Arran. Come visit me."
"Arran! What are you doing there?"
"I knew you would be in Scotland, Sylvie. Your grandmother told me."
A hard, painful flash of a gorse-covered field on a rocky cliff, myself at seventeen, sent a fist into my chest. "Paul, I don't—"
"You are still angry with me."
"No! I mean, I probably am, but not for the reasons you—"
Lights were coming up behind me, and a sudden tenseness rose in my chest. In a split second, I had to decide: flip the lights off and let the car pass, or take off and try to outrun them on these bad roads if it turned out to be the thugs.
"Sylvie?"
"I think have company," I said, and turned off the lights.
The thugs had been driving a small dark car, which was all I'd known about it. It was hard to tell what this was, coming on the road from the south. Small, nothing fancy about the lights. In the rainy dark, however, I couldn't really tell what it was. Maybe it was a Mini, maybe not. Maybe I hadn't even seen a Mini at the caravan. It was hard to know in the darkness and the rain.
At the last minute, I ducked down to make it appear as if the car was empty. A small dodge, but if it worked, a very easy one. Their car was anonymous. Mine was not.
Holding the phone, I said, "I'm going to take the Katerina to Glasgow," I said. "But I'll meet you on Arran first. Only for an hour, Paul, though, I mean it."
"Thank you," he said quietly. "I'll make your room ready in case you'd like to stay."
"I'm not staying, Paul. I'll just stop in and let you see it."
"All right. When will you be here?"
"In the morning, I suppose. I've
got
to get some sleep."
"Tomorrow will be very good, then."
"Don't hang up for a moment, please," I said, peeking my head up to see if the car was the one I thought. It hadn't slowed, didn't appear to be stopping. Maybe I was getting a break, finally.
And maybe that was because I was finally going to do the right thing by taking the jewel to the Glasgow inspector who'd invited me here.
"I am here," Paul said.
"It's okay. I think I'm safe, finally." I paused. "Thank you."
"My pleasure. Good night, Sylvie," Paul said.
The phrase brought back a thousand memories. I pushed them down into their box. "Goodbye," I said, and hung up.
Then I started the car and headed north once again. There were still monsters about. It would do to be careful.
Chapter 12
Marbode, Bishop of Rennes (1061–1081), wrote "De gemmarum," on the spiritual and medicinal attributes of gems. In a book lacking in the expected Christian symbolism, Marbode describes diamond: "This stone has aptitude for magical arts, indomitable virtues it provides the bearer, nocturnal spirits and bad dreams it repels, black poisons flee, disputes and screams are changed. Cures insanity, strikes hard against enemies. For these purposes the stone should be set in silver, armored in gold, and fastened to the left arm."
T
he weather settled a bit into a normal sort of rain. I thought of my father and wondered again where he might be staying. I could use a little advice. Not that he'd ever been particularly wise, you understand, but I could be fairly sure he had no hidden agenda. That was a lot more than could be said of anyone else in this little drama.
I thought of Luca and I wondered if he was still alive.
I thought of the Katerina, tucked into my bra, and all the trouble she'd gotten me into.
I thought of Paul and the summer I was fifteen and about the awful school year in Brazil when I learned to fight.
At the end of that academic year, Paul arrived to whisk me away to his apartment in Paris. I was exhausted and withdrawn, tense as a street cat. Which I suppose, in some ways, I'd become.
Paul was furious with my father for neglecting me so, but in his defense, my father was in terrible condition himself, swirling downward in a spiral of self-destruction. I don't remember if he raced—he must not have, since I was staying with him in Rio. There was a woman at the start, then quite a lot of them, all lush, ethnic beauties who were nothing like my slim, pale Scottish mother.
It's hard to remember, too, how Paul discovered my plight. Perhaps my grandmother was worried about me—she repeatedly asked my father to let me come live with her, go to school in Ayr, have regular meals and a regular life, but he wouldn't hear of it—and sent Paul to investigate the situation. Perhaps he only visited and made sense of it himself. I have no memory of it. The year is a blur of survival challenges.
It would make a good television show—
Reality: Rio Girl Gangs.
Ha.
Somehow, anyway, Paul discovered the miserable truth of my situation. That we were living in a hovel, and I was virtually on my own in a city of millions, attending a school at which I did not know the language and the girls beat me up on a regular basis, with the meanest of girls right in my own building.
I still want to kill them, those girls, though perhaps I owe them a great debt. They made me tough.
Paul sent me an airline ticket to Paris at the end of the term and I flew in on a Tuesday in May. He picked me up at the gray airport on a soft sunny morning. I had brought little with me—most of it shoved from my drawers into an oversized rucksack—and I was jetlagged, heart-sore, soul-ragged. I felt like an orphan.
He stood there waiting in the gray, grim, cigarette-stained airport with its Jetson styling, tall and loose-limbed in a pale green cambric shirt that showed off the warmth of his olive-toned skin. His hair was a little long, wavy in the back, the dark, dark ends just touching his collar. To me, he looked like everything good and safe and real in the world.
My defenses dissolved as I moved toward him, and like a very small girl, I flung myself into his arms and wept. He held me. "Oh, my little Sylvie," he murmured, petting my hair, holding me. "I am so sorry,
ma petite puce,
my little flea, so sorry we did not see sooner."
Embarrassed suddenly at this show of emotion, which was very unlike me in those days, I tried to pull away. "I'm all right."
Putting his big, raw-boned hands on my face, Paul said, "You do not have to pretend now, Sylvie," he said. "Not with me." He frowned.
"Oui?"
I nodded.
"Oui."
He kissed my brow, took out a white handkerchief and wiped my tears. "Come," he said, "you will eat and sleep and not worry about a thing."
"All right." I kept my head down as he took my bag and we headed out into the brilliance of a French spring. The sunlight felt as delicate as butterfly wings, and there was a scent of grass in the air. I stopped, let the sun touch my face, let the scents of diesel and roses and Paul himself fill me up.
"I love France," I said. "I never want to live anywhere else again."
He touched my arm. "Come. You are worn out." He settled me in his Jaguar, a low black bullet of a car. In every detail, it was built for speed and control, one of the only possible cars for a man who once had raced at extremely high speeds on dangerous courses and nearly killed himself doing it.
By then, I'd learned to love things about cars. This one had a wooden dash. I ran three fingers over the silky smoothness of it. "Sweet."
He gave me a sideways grin. "Indeed…"
* * *
By the time I got to Troon, I was cold, wet, grouchy and not in the mood for any bullshit from anyone, an attitude that no doubt cloaked me as I entered the pub. Certainly no one bothered me. It was old and agreeably dim, with a heavy wooden bar and a few businessman-golfer sorts telling tales of their games.
I took a table well away from the bar, and shrugged out of my wet coat. A girl with her hair dyed an unrelenting shade of black came over to take my order. Her skin was the color of a carp.
I ordered tea. "And would you happen to have a pen and a piece of paper I could use?"
Her pencil hovered over a tiny tablet. "Noffin to eat?"
My whole body felt chilled. "Have you got a bowl of soup?"
"We do." Happy to have something to put on her tablet, she laboriously—tongue involved—wrote it down. "Be right back."
Which she was, bearing a welcome steel pot and cup, and a yellow legal pad with two pens. "Will that work?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Are you American?" she said.
It was never a question I quite knew how to answer. "My father is," I said. "And I live there now." Sometimes people are still charmed. "San Francisco."
"Oh, I'd love to go there." It sounded more like
ach, eye'd luve to goooo th'r.
"It looks beautiful."
"It is. You should go someday." I could see she would stand and talk all day, but there was a lot I needed to sort out. "Thanks," I said, and smiled.
She took the hint. "I'll bring your soup out when it's done."
On the paper I drew three columns, one for Paul, one for Luca, one for me. Paul's story was that Luca was a dangerous criminal who would kill for what he wanted. Luca's story was that Paul was a dangerous criminal who would kill to get what he wanted. I didn't think either of them would kill me, and I was fairly certain Paul was not a killer of anyone.
What was bothering me was whether Paul had had anything to do with the first thug in my hotel room. Had he sent someone there to find the diamond, so he could sidestep me in the process?
It illuminated certain questions I'd always avoided asking myself. Paul had always been rich, but I had no idea how he earned that money. It had not been inherited, that much I did know—he'd had a very tough childhood in the industrial city of Lyons. Some of it had likely come from the purses he'd won racing, but it had gone long beyond that now.
So, how did he earn his living? Why had he been mixed up with a notorious drug lord at any point? I wondered if my father would tell me, if he even knew. In another hour or two, I would be able to call him.
One thing that was not in dispute was the fact that Paul had engaged Luca's services to steal the jewel from Gunnarsson. What was less clear was whether Luca had always intended to steal it for himself, or had indeed planned to take it to Paul.
It also seemed plain that Luca had chosen me at some point early in the process, maybe even before he'd stolen the jewel. If he'd known ahead of time that he was going to double-cross Paul, I would be an obvious choice to pull into the situation—not only a jewel expert, but also someone Paul would be reluctant to endanger.
The one element I still didn't understand was the thugs. Who had hired them? The clearly visible answer seemed to be someone connected to Gunnarsson, someone who would know about the jewel.
Or perhaps I didn't want to think about it being Paul.
I poured tea and stirred in milk, rubbing my forehead. What difference did it make in the end? I couldn't trust either one of them, and my obligation lay to the police here in Scotland. They'd hired me to assess the rest of the collection. My integrity was on the line.
The same thing had happened in Egypt last summer. Not the exact scenario, but one where I'd found myself in possession of a great jewel. That one I'd tracked down and managed to return to its rightful place, but I'd encountered some…er…resistance along the way. As with all such jewels, there were those who wanted it for themselves.
I sipped the hot, strong tea. Sylvie Montague, Liberator of Jewels. It had a nice ring to it.
Discreetly, I touched the Katerina below my blouse. Maybe she was simply being liberated here. Maybe the horrific history attached to her needed to somehow be put to rest. On some level, I believed Luca's story about taking the jewel home. It was his very real dread that gave me insight, that and the sense that a jewel thief might feel a lot of respect for a jewel of this much magnificence.
Okay, so: Luca wanted to take Katerina to Romania, where she would end up in a celebrated spot safely behind glass. Luca would be a hero, like his martyred father.
Paul wanted the jewel because he was a collector of beautiful things—paintings, jewels, women. Because he'd heard the story as a boy and yearned to see it, and then his father—not a martyr by any stretch of the imagination, but a petty thief with few graces—had died after taking possession of it.
In a way, I suppose Paul wanted redemption, too. He'd wanted to own the Katerina as long as I could remember. He'd told me stories about it from the time I was small. "Sylvie," he would say, "imagine…a diamond with a ruby inclusion! The ruby is said to be a full carat."
I had a reputation to uphold, but I was also neatly torn. I would not mind helping Luca take the jewel to Romania. I also wanted to deliver it to Paul—to see his face when he held the Katerina. I was not immune to the beauty and lure of the gem.
But if I wished to continue to work in assessment, there was only one right answer. I had to follow the law. I had an obligation to the Scottish police.
Besides, if I morally rearranged facts to suit what I wanted, rather than to do what was right, I'd be just like my father, like Paul and Luca and the rest of the world. Maybe it was just the Catholic in me, but I hated that whole idea of relative morality—it gave people too many excuses to do the wrong thing and call it right.
In this case, it was possible there was a higher moral ground here—that this particular jewel did belong to Romania and should, thus, be delivered there—but that wasn't my decision to make.
From my wallet, I took a card. It was late, but not so late I'd feel bad calling a police inspector's work line. Surely I'd be able to leave a message. On my cell phone I dialed the number.
Voice mail picked up. In a heavy Glasgow accent, a burly male voice said, "You've reached Inspector Barlow. Please leave your message at the beep."
"Hello, Inspector," I said, "this is Sylvie Montague, and I've come into possession of a jewel that is part of the collection you want me to assess. I've had a little trouble tonight, but I'm safe now and should be able to bring it in tomorrow afternoon." I left my cell number and hung up.
The girl was coming to the table with my soup. With a flourish, she put it in front of me, a steaming broth with a hearty scent of beef. Bits of onion floated in it, and she'd brought a good piece of bread and some butter to go with it. "Anythin' else?" she asked.
"No, thanks."
"Ye look so familiar to me," the girl said. "You're not an actress or somethin' are you?"
Ah. "Not exactly," I said with a chuckle. "My father is a Formula One driver. Sometimes, when he's winning, photographers sort of follow me around."
The girl raised her brows. "Well, now, that's something. Do they bother you?"
"Yes. Often." I buttered my bread, picked up my spoon.
The cell phone rang. Thinking it was probably Paul again, I snatched it up. "Excuse me," I said to the waitress. I flipped open the phone. "Hello?"
"Is this Sylvie Montague?" said a male voice with a heavy Scottish accent.
"Speaking."
"This is Inspector Barlow, Glasgow. I just received your message."
"Hello, Inspector. I'm glad you called. I—"
"You're in a bad spot, girl. Is it Katerina's Blood you've got? Half the world is going insane looking for it."
"I'm not surprised. I'll bring it in tomorrow morning."
"You should come tonight."
I shook my head, stirred the soup around. "That's not possible, I'm sorry."
"Where are you, Sylvie? Let me send some protection at least."
Jeez. It seemed like everyone and their brother got weird when it came to this diamond. "No, thank you. I can handle myself, trust me."
"You don't know the kind of people I'm speaking of, young lady."
"I do, sir, and I'll be all right. Thank you for your concern. I'll see you tomorrow, and we can get started." Before he could protest again, I hung up.
Maybe it was just the phone call making me paranoid, but I suddenly realized that if Luca had managed to get away from the guys back at the caravan, he would be meeting me here. We'd agreed to meet here, but I didn't know if I could deal with him again.
When in doubt, run.