Rough Cut: Rosie Gilmour 6

by Anna Smith

  ‘I’m just heading back to Glasgow. Sure. We can have a bite to eat. How about that bistro at the bottom of West Regent Street? We were there before. I can be there in an hour.’

  ‘Okay. I see you.’

  He hung up. Man of few words, was Adrian. Rosie felt a little glow inside, part desire and part happiness that she didn’t have to spend the evening alone in her flat.

  ‘Is that me blown out then?’ Matt made a hurt face. ‘I was going to invite you for dinner. I didn’t know Adrian was in town. You kept that quiet.’

  ‘It’s only a flying visit – he was travelling with a friend and helping them to get settled,’ Rosie said, a little defensively. ‘You know how he likes to fly below the radar . . . Why don’t you join us for a drink?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll leave you to it, I think. Just in case there’s a posse of Pakistanis hunting you both down. I don’t want to get lynched.’

  Rosie chuckled. She hadn’t thought about that.

  *

  Adrian was already sitting at the table and Rosie stood for a few seconds to look at him through the half-glass door. He had a bottle of red wine in front of him and was smoking a cigarette, lost in thought. The warm air of the bistro hit her as she opened the door. He looked up, but didn’t quite smile. His eyes softened as he stood up and took a step towards her. He kissed her on the lips briefly, and hugged her.

  ‘I got some wine. I’m thinking you might need it if you had a long day.’ They sat down and he half filled her glass. ‘I saw your story in the paper this morning. Last one on the shelf at the newsagent next to my friend’s house. It was very good.’ He shook his head. ‘The poor woman attack by the stones . . . And the young girl. This is not right.’

  ‘I know.’ Rosie clinked his glass. ‘Cheers, Adrian. Here’s to . . .’ She caught his eye and for a moment they held each other’s gaze. Rosie felt heat rising in her chest. ‘Here’s to getting out of another scrape and living to tell the tale.’ She quickly composed herself, aware that he was watching her. ‘At least I didn’t put you in any danger this time.’

  ‘I would have come if you told me. To Pakistan.’

  ‘I know. I did consider it, but Pakistan is different from a lot of other places, and anything could have happened. Best you lie low for a while anyway, after all that business here the last time.’

  Adrian nodded and sipped his wine. Rosie felt a little awkward in the silence, and she picked up the menu.

  ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, Rosie.’ Adrian broke the moment, his voice low and deep.

  Rosie heard it as she swallowed a mouthful of wine, and hoped, when she looked up from the menu, that her face didn’t show the slap of disappointment she felt.

  ‘Oh. So soon? Is your friend settled?’

  ‘Yes. She is fine. She has some part time work. Not legal, but she is doing some small cleaning jobs for a woman in the city.’ He paused, fiddling with the menu. ‘I have some work I must do back in Sarajevo. In the importing business I told you I am in just now. My friend called me last night and said the people he wants to make a deal with want to talk to me. They were not supposed to come until next week, but now is urgent. We are trying to build things up.’

  ‘I see,’ Rosie said. ‘Oh, well. It was lovely to spend some time with you, Adrian. Really.’ She locked eyes with him again, and felt for his hand across the table.

  ‘Me too. I like you . . . I think about you a lot when I go back home. I hope you know that.’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’ Rosie caressed the back of his hand.

  ‘I . . . What I’m saying . . . is I don’t want you to think that I am only here just to sleep with you. I want that, yes. But you are my friend . . . I do think about you.’

  Rosie didn’t know what he was trying to say, or even what she should say to him.

  ‘I know that, Adrian. You’re a good person . . .’ She paused as the waiter came up. ‘Can you give us a minute?’ she asked him and he backed off.

  ‘I . . . I know you’re not here to sleep with me, Adrian. I suppose what I’m saying is that we’re friends first and most importantly, and we probably shouldn’t have got involved the way we did, but it was one of those things.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You have regrets?’

  ‘No. But I don’t think we should get too hung up about it.’

  Adrian’s face stayed its usual deadpan, but something else flashed across his eyes. Disappointment, sadness? It was always so hard to tell with him because there was something much deeper behind those soft grey eyes.

  Listen to yourself, Rosie thought. You’re sounding as if it didn’t matter a damn. You’d think you’d hardly given this man a thought, when the truth is he was never far away from your mind, and right now you want nothing more but to lean across the table and feel the softness of his kiss. Rosie took a long breath and looked him in the eye.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is, Adrian. We’re both in a situation where we don’t think we can go anywhere with this . . . I mean, we’re not really sure what it is. Am I right so far?’

  ‘I suppose.’ He nodded, looking at her, then away.

  ‘Do you want it to go anywhere?’ she asked.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know, Rosie. All I know is you are on my mind and I would do anything for you. But I don’t think I can make you happy.’

  There was a little sting in that, and she wondered if Adrian would have known that when he said it. Her heart sank a little. Her life was okay if she didn’t address that single question – could anyone make her happy? Yesterday in O’Brien’s, she was the happiest she’d been in a long time – but it was because of work and the success of nailing the story. This? This reminded her of sitting with TJ, and him questioning her closely on her feelings. Look where that got her. Eventually, after a long silence she answered, swallowing the emotion.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know Adrian. It’s a very difficult thought, if I was to accept that nobody can make me happy.’

  He put his hand up apologetically, then touched her face.

  ‘No. Please. I don’t mean to hurt you. I never do that, Rosie. I just know that you are . . . I don’t know the word . . . Comp . . . comp—’

  ‘Complicated.’ Rosie half smiled and shrugged.

  ‘Yes. I think that is the word. Like your life is already too full.’

  ‘But what about your life, Adrian?’ Rosie paused, choosing her words. ‘Sometimes I look at you and I know you will always be somewhere else. Like your heart is always in a . . . well, in a dark place.’

  Adrian said nothing and stared at the table for a long moment. She could see a muscle in his jaw twitch. She had crossed a line. When he looked up she could see the pain in his eyes.

  ‘I don’t think I can be a whole person again – like other people. I am different. I am living the life I have, the life I have been left with. The truth is, I don’t even know if I want to be a whole person, you know, with the normal things . . . a wife, a family.’ He swallowed hard.

  They sat in silence, the door opening and closing as people came and went. Rosie wanted to ask him about his anger inside, to ask him to talk about why he was so violent. The truth was that if Adrian hadn’t been prepared to kill, then she would have been murdered the first night he had saved her life on the Clydeside, when Jake Cox’s henchmen had been about to throw her into the river. Time and again, it was his quickness to violence and his instinctive action that had saved both of them. But the other night, watching his attack on the Pakistani, there was something in his eyes that told her he wanted to hurt and hurt. Rosie waved to the waiter for the bill, and reached across and squeezed Adrian’s arm as he went to go into his pocket for money.

  ‘No. You don’t buy the wine when you come to my city.’

  Adrian held her hand and they sat looking at each other as the waiter placed the bill on the table.

  ‘Let’s go home.’ Rosie said.

  They paid the bill and left.

  *

  Rosie’s dreams h
ad been peaceful when she drifted off after they’d made love. Now, as she was beginning to wake up, she reflected on how gentle, yet fierce and passionate it had been. It suddenly came back to her that Adrian had said ‘I love you’ when they were in the throes of passion. She hadn’t said it back. Had he been waiting? She pondered the moment as her eyes opened slowly and she got used to the light. She reached across the bed. It was empty. She didn’t need to get up and look through the house. She knew he wasn’t in the shower or making coffee. Adrian was gone, without a word. Her heart sank.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  McGuire already had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and it wasn’t even time for the morning editorial conference. He usually began his day at the Post striding out of the lift, impeccably dressed, slipping out of his suit jacket as soon as he got into his office, where Marion was ready with his first coffee of the day. But the sleeves were always down at this point, usually cufflinked with something monogramed or with a ruby – depending on how he felt of a morning. The rolling up of the sleeves was part of a ritual, like a ringmaster preparing for showtime. Once they were up, they stayed that way all day, as he fought and jostled with his subs and executives on all corners of the room. Today, he was ready for anything. Rosie was glad. He was sitting with her splash and spread on his desk. It was Laila’s story of her escape and her plans for the future, alongside some other Pakistani women’s accounts. He was taking no nonsense today. He’d said that to Rosie last night after her meeting with Don, when she’d told him about the knife and how they’d nicked her attacker. ‘We have plenty of ammo now, if they come for us. Wagons in a circle,’ were his parting words. ‘Boots and saddles . . . we’re ready.’ Any melancholy thoughts she’d had about Adrian’s exit from her bed were quickly banished by his infectious dynamism.

  ‘Right, Gilmour. Great stuff this morning, but where exactly are we on this now? This is the big day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yep. All set. I went across to Stirling with Matt and saw the girls last night, so they’re all wired up.’

  ‘How confident are you that their bottle won’t crash if things get a bit hairy out there?’

  ‘As confident as I can be.’

  McGuire shot her a glance.

  ‘I think I want to hear more than that.’

  ‘Come on, Mick. You know how these things are.’

  ‘Yeah. If it goes tits up, are the cops on hand?’

  ‘No. Not yet. We agreed not to.’

  He ran a hand through his hair.

  ‘What if this bastard Gordy shoots them and there’s some kind of bloodbath on the farm? I don’t want this all over us.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You can just blame me.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘I bloody will.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  Rosie laid it out for him, how she and Matt would go to a back road at the edge of the farm that they’d already recced and wait there for the signal from Julie that the diamonds had been handed over. Then Julie and Nikki would make themselves scarce. They’d all meet up later on a location on the M74 as the girls drove south. Only when she had the tape in her hand and the story ready for the paper, would they tell the cops – in time for the first edition to bang onto the streets.

  ‘I’m edgy about it. How do we know Gordy’s not going to turn up armed to the teeth?’

  ‘We don’t. We’ll just have to go with the flow.’

  ‘I worry about you. In case anything happens to you.’

  ‘Stop it, Mick. You’ll have me greetin’.’

  He sat back, clicking on his keyboard, looking at the screen, gnawing the inside of his cheek.

  ‘Right. Okay. Off you go. But keep in touch with me, every half hour. You hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  Rosie picked up her bag and left.

  *

  The rain was horizontal, sweeping across the fields and lashing onto the motorway. Matt kept to a steady sixty, which was unusual for him, because so many cars had slowed down amid flashing overhead warnings of black ice. For all its rain and snow, Scotland never really seemed to cope well when a hard winter struck. As Matt took the slip road and drove into the slush-filled back road towards Bannockburn, Rosie felt the familiar mix of excitement and dread, as she always did on the verge of a big story coming together. Julie had sounded relaxed when she called Rosie earlier, as arranged, to say that Gordy had phoned and everything was going to plan. Nikki was nervous, she’d said, but she was wired up with the camera and was also wearing the recording device discreetly in the waistband of her trousers. They’d packed everything into the car last night and all they had in the house were the attaché case and the diamonds. They were ready. Matt took the first lane before the farm road leading up to the house. Previously, he’d established that the lane was part of the farm’s land and if you followed the narrow path long enough, it brought you in at the back of the farmer’s house. The road was, as they expected, deserted. The snow in the fields was disappearing fast under the rain, and the thaw was definitely on. Matt pulled the car into the layby and switched off the engine.

  ‘So. Now we just wait.’ He eased his seat back a little, then stretched over to the back seat for his camera bag.

  ‘Yep. Could be an hour or so, by the time it’s all sorted and we get the call from Julie. It might get cold here, so we’ll have to put the engine on from time to time.’ Rosie took out her mobile. ‘I said I’d give Julie a text once we were in place.’ She pulled off her gloves and punched out a text.

  *

  Rosie gazed out of the windscreen. The rain had stopped, but the sky was dark and threatening. She checked her mobile again to see if there were any missed calls or texts from Adrian, even though she knew there wouldn’t be.

  ‘So, where’s the big man?’ Matt said, without looking up from the camera as he attached a long lens.

  She turned to him, a little embarrassed that he seemed to be reading her mind.

  ‘You mean Adrian?’ She said it as if she’d already forgotten about his visit.

  ‘Yeah. Is he still here? I wouldn’t mind a pint with him. Talk about old times. He’s some guy!’

  Rosie felt her face moving to a smile, a flurry of memories of Spain and Morocco and their narrow escapes. She remembered Javier, and the easiness of how they all threw themselves into the venture to get the missing kid. And Sarajevo, and their long, emotional trip back through Kosovo. It seemed such a long time ago, and now it had developed into something that, no matter how much she pushed it away, still gave her a dull ache, which would come in waves whenever she thought of him. Why hadn’t he woken her before he left, to say goodbye? He shouldn’t have done that. She wasn’t angry – she was big enough to know that things like this didn’t last – but she wanted him to be her friend. The passion of that hot night in Sarajevo should never have happened. When would she ever learn?

  ‘I haven’t heard from Adrian. Maybe we’ll try phoning him later.’ Rosie knew that he was probably already on a plane to Belgrade.

  She glanced at her phone again, a bit surprised that Julie hadn’t replied to her text.

  *

  Nikki pulled on a heavy jumper over her long-sleeved T- shirt. She was surprised at how easily she’d adapted to working with only one hand. Simple things like buttoning a blouse or doing up her jeans had reduced her to a frustrated wreck in the beginning, but if she took her time, it was all workable. You adjust to your life and what you’ve been left with. Julie had told her that two years ago when she’d found her in bed in a stupor, a bottle of paracetamol and a half bottle of gin by her side. She hadn’t wanted to live any more. The darkness she woke up with every morning had grown heavier and she’d become less and less attached to the world. She’d be better off dead, she’d pleaded with Julie, who’d dragged her into a cold shower. Then, Julie had told her that when you lose someone you love, what you get back is what is left of you. You’re never the same person again, but you hold
onto what is left and make the best of it. She told her to do it for the baby who didn’t get a chance, and for all the people in their lives who had gone – their mothers, both dead in their sixties from heart attacks. Hold onto what you’ve got, she told herself as she looked in the mirror and smoothed her jumper over the recording device. She felt a little flurry of nerves, but she was determined to make it through this day.

  There was a gentle knock on the front door and Nikki went into Julie’s bedroom, where she was dressed and ready, applying the final stages of her make up. There was something of the girls-on-holiday feel about this, Nikki thought . . . if only that’s how it was.

  ‘The door,’ Nikki said. ‘Someone’s at the door.’

  Julie looked at her watch.

  ‘It’ll not be Gordy. He’s not due for another half hour. Go and answer it. Maybe it’s Euan.’

  ‘What will I do if it is?’

  Julie made eyes at her.

  ‘Make him a coffee, for God’s sake. Just be normal. Relax. We don’t want to arouse any suspicion.’

  Nikki went out the bedroom and crossed the hall to the front door. Euan smiled and held up a plate as though it were a trophy.

  ‘Wee chocolate sponge Mum’s made for you. Honestly! You’ll not be able to resist it.’

  Nikki opened the door wide and smiled back at him. He was lovely, all sparkling eyes with a hint of mischief in them. She wondered what he must have been like before he was stuck in this wheelchair, relying on his parents.

  ‘Come on in. We’ll have some coffee. I’ll never say no to a chocolate cake.’

  She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle as Euan made his way inside.

  *

  Julie dabbed some perfume on her wrists and glanced at herself in the mirror. She was looking well, considering all the shit that had been flying around, The fact that this was coming to an end had given her a new lease of life. By this evening, she and Nikki would be in a hotel in Manchester, sinking a bottle of wine and gearing up for their flight to Malaga in the morning. They’d be free. And they’d be rich. There was as much chance of her parting with all the diamonds to that bastard Gordy as her flying in the fucking air, she told herself. He was such a stupid prick, he’d even told her how this Jew fence had described the difference between a good rough diamond and a bad one. Well, there was probably no such thing as a bad rough diamond, but a good one from a not-so-good one, was how he’d described it. Last night, once Nikki had fallen asleep, she’d gone into the pouches and taken a closer look at every one of them. There was a fortune in this stuff. Plenty of white ones, and good sizes too. She didn’t know how valuable the other ones were, but she concentrated on the white ones. She took out three white ones from each pouch and stashed them away in her zipped bag. No need to get greedy. She could have taken more. Gordy or this Vanner guy didn’t really know exactly how many diamonds there were anyway. But she decided she’d take just enough to give her and Nikki the chance of a decent start in whatever new lives they were about to embark on. She also took the rest of the money and hid it. Stuff them! Gordy would be so grateful to get the diamonds, he wouldn’t be hanging about counting – especially if he was planning to stiff Vanner. She could hear Nikki and Euan chatting as she headed for the living room.