The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  I’d taken part in two studies she’d led. The first one, where I’d hidden in among the normal people who had volunteered. And one more, after that.

  “I had a question,” I said now, “about the psychometry study.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  The question made more sense, I reasoned, if I backtracked just a little and explained about my job now, and the fact I had a carving that I wanted to authenticate. “I thought I might try using my… I might just try psychometry, and see if that can lead me somewhere, help me find the proof of where it came from.”

  She thought that was a very good idea. “You know me. It’s the practical applications of ESP that interest me the most. How can I help?”

  “Well, to properly do this, I need to be able to zero in on one particular person who once owned the carving,” I said, “and I thought I remembered you saying there might be a way to improve… to get better at doing that.”

  “You did rather well at it, as I recall.”

  “Did I?”

  Lifting her brows at my tone, she said, “Nicola, you had the second-best scores in the study. Or you would have done, if you had…”

  “If I had finished it.”

  “Yes.” It was simply a statement of fact, with no judgment attached. “I could look up your actual scores, if you like. I still have them on file.” With a swivel and roll of her chair, she pulled open a drawer in her filing cabinet and drew out a folder, then opened it up on her desk and examined the papers inside. “Here it is,” she said, passing it over.

  I looked at the scores and I knew they weren’t high enough. Not to do what I would need to do. My disappointment must have shown, because she reassured me with, “But it appears to be a skill that can improve with practice. Some of our subjects who started with scores rather lower than yours averaged nearly that high by the end of the study. You might have done better yourself, if…”

  I said it again for her. “If I had stayed.”

  She’d never asked me why I hadn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t ask me now. Her scientific need to know was tempered with an empathy that seemed to make her understand my conflicts. “Never mind,” she said. “You can practice it anywhere, really.”

  Except, I thought bleakly, I didn’t have time. If I were to help Margaret Ross, I’d have to find a quick way to improve, or…

  I gave a nod down at the file on her desk and said, “I know you’re not allowed to tell me how anyone else did, but can you just tell me… the highest score, was it…?”

  “Yes.” Her lively green eyes plainly showed she knew exactly who I meant. “He scored direct hits, every time.” She did give in a little, then, to curiosity. “Do you still see him?”

  “No.” It wasn’t a lie, I decided. Not really. I didn’t see him in the sense that she was asking me.

  “Well.” She defused the moment deftly with a smile. “I’m very glad you thought to come see me. Another biscuit?”

  “Thanks, but no. I should be getting back up to the station.”

  “What time’s your train?”

  I wasn’t altogether sure. I’d seen a couple of later Dundee trains listed up on the departures board at Waverly, so I knew my odds of catching one of them were fairly good. But not wanting to let Dr. Fulton-Wallace know that I’d been so haphazard with my travel plans, I made up a time. “Six o’clock.”

  She stood with me. “It really was lovely to see you. I’m glad that you’re doing so well down in London.”

  I thanked her and turned away, stopped at the door. And because I felt I owed it to her, I looked back. “I’m really sorry,” I said, “that I didn’t stay and finish what I started.”

  Her eyes were understanding. “It’s never too late. Anytime you feel ready, come back and I’ll finish your testing myself.”

  But she probably knew from my face that I wouldn’t be back.

  It was good to step into the sunlight, where lengthening shadows walked with me back up to the still-crowded pavement of Princes Street. It seemed a short walk back to Waverly Station. The woman at the ticket window gave a dry nod as I showed her my ticket and told her, “I missed my connection.”

  “Aye, so you did. That train to Dundee left two hours ago.” Squinting down at her schedule she told me, “I’ve one at 18:18 that’ll get you there at 19:44. Would that suit you?”

  I didn’t answer straightaway. My thoughts had slipped backward to yesterday morning—the dim, shadowed room with its gray light that might have been filtered through clouds, or through rain, that I’d viewed through the eyes of a man waking up in his bed.

  He’d scored perfectly, so Dr. Fulton-Wallace had said. Every time we’d been given an object and asked to zero in on just one person who had used it, he had done it. Every time.

  I wavered.

  Only for a moment. Then I roused myself and faced the waiting woman at the ticket window. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind.” I put the Dundee ticket in my pocket, and breathed deeply before telling her, “I’d like to have a single, please, to Berwick-Upon-Tweed.”

  Chapter 4

  Finding a taxi in Berwick was much easier than finding one in Edinburgh, and the driver who sped me the short distance northward and over the border again into Scotland was a friendly man with tattoos and a thick Geordie accent, who’d spent his life working “offshore.” Throughout the swift ten-minute drive, he kept the conversation going.

  “…and they have an accent all their own, do Eyemouth folk,” he commented. “But likely you’ll know that already from living there.”

  Not sure why he’d think that, I said, “I don’t live in Eyemouth.”

  “No?” His eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise. “I’ve never known a woman yet to travel with no suitcases,” he told me. “You’re my first.”

  We’d reached the fringes of the town now, where elegant-looking Victorian homes perched on steeply banked tidy front gardens, with lights coming on to glow warmly in windows against the descent of the dark.

  I closed my eyes a moment and reached outward with my thoughts, a little hesitant from being out of practice. Not that it would matter, I felt sure. He was better at this than I was, his own thoughts so strong that unless he were actively blocking me, it would be like hearing somebody shouting at me in a room full of whisperers. And even if he blocked me I would “feel” the block—a solid wall of static.

  I felt nothing. That might have discouraged me more had I not been aware of my limits. He might have been able to reach me in London, and do it without really trying, but I’d never managed that kind of a range.

  I was trying again when the driver asked, “Where would you like me to drop you, then?”

  I wasn’t altogether sure. Where did one get dropped off in Eyemouth, I wondered? It wasn’t a large place. On inspiration, I turned to him. “Do you know where the police station is?”

  His eyebrows lifted higher but he gallantly said nothing, only took the necessary turns and stopped outside a cream-painted stucco house trimmed with redbrick, that looked just like an ordinary house till I noticed the blue “Police” signs. The lights were on here, too, and my driver remarked, “You’re in luck. It’s not always manned.”

  And that was all he said about it, as though it were commonplace for him to drive young women with no suitcases to places where they didn’t live, and drop them at police stations. I tipped him very generously.

  The wind was fierce. It struck me full on as I climbed the few steps to the marked public entrance that bade me to “Please knock and enter.” Inside, the small reception room was clean and warm, with nobody in sight behind the glassed-in service counter. I felt ridiculously nervous, so much so that when a friendly young constable came out from the back room to see what I wanted, I stumbled on the words. “I’m looking for a man.” Then, as his eyebrows started to rise, I collected myself and explained, “A policeman. He works here, I think.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “Yes. Rob McMorran.”

  The cons
table’s grin was good-natured. “And why are you looking for him, then? I’m clearly the better man.” But through the teasing I knew the first part of his question was valid, and needed an answer before he would help me. After all, for all he knew, I might be intending to lodge a complaint.

  I smiled back, in an effort to show I was harmless. “I’m a friend of his.”

  “Oh, aye?” he asked me again. “Not a local one, though, or I’d surely have seen you.”

  I said, “I’m from London.”

  “From London? A long way to travel to visit a friend. Did he ken you were coming?”

  I shook my head. “That’s why I’m trying to find him.”

  The constable studied me closely a moment, then seeming to reach a decision, he picked up the phone. “He’s not working the day, but I’ll see if I can’t hunt him down for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  I waited.

  The first number he dialed got no answer. “He’s not got his mobile. I’ll just try the flat.” When that didn’t work either, he frowned for a moment, then tried a third number, growing so purposely charming that I guessed it was a woman he was talking to. After exchanging a quick bit of banter that I couldn’t follow because of the accent, he said, “I’ve a lady from London here with me who’s wanting to find Robbie Keenan. Would ye ken where he might be?”

  “It’s McMorran,” I corrected him. “Rob McMorran.”

  He gave a nod to reassure me as he listened, then he thanked the woman and rang off. “He’s on a shout the now,” he told me, “with the lifeboat, but Sheena says they’re on their way back in, they’ll not be long, and if you’ve a mind to go down to the Sole, she can give you a meal while you’re waiting.”

  I absorbed all this as best I could. “The Sole?”

  “Aye, the Contented Sole, down by the harbor. Just go down this road here, the Coldingham Road. There’s a church at the bottom. You keep to the left, it’ll take you right down to the harbor. The Sole’s at the far end of that, you’ll not miss it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. A word of advice, though,” he said as I started to leave. “When you go into the Sole, don’t use the same first line you used with me and tell them that you’re looking for a man.” He flashed the friendly grin and said, “You’ll not get out again.”

  I didn’t actually see that many men about when I reached the harbor.

  Narrow and long, it still looked to be a working harbor, with several small fishing boats moored at the walls, but I remembered Rob telling me once that the fishing was done, or as good as; that government quotas and standards had killed off the whole way of life, and his father had sold his own boat to a big corporation and bought a much smaller boat so he could go for the lobster and crab, like the rest of the few men who’d clung to their trade here.

  The seagulls had not given up, though. They wheeled and shrieked everywhere, hopeful, although at this hour of the night with the dark coming on there were probably no scraps around for them.

  Even the long covered building that must once have been the fish market had found a new purpose as part of a Maritime Center that loomed overhead at the edge of the harbor and had been designed to look like an old seagoing frigate.

  I passed a white pub with a sign that proclaimed it the Ship Hotel, and at the door of the public bar two men did turn from their talk to regard me with curious interest as I walked by, but I carried on briskly a few buildings farther until I caught sight of the Contented Sole.

  It looked much like the other pub—plain and pale-walled, standing square at the edge of the dark road with space for a few cars to park at the front, its windows spilling warmly yellow light across the pavement at the water’s edge.

  I’d nearly reached it when I saw a boat slip boldly through the breakwater that stood against the sea. About the same size as the fishing boats, this one was dark on the bottom but painted bright orange above and marked with the distinctive emblem of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. More gulls had come in with it, fighting the wind as they cried their displeasure at not being fed, but the crewman who stood by the rail in the bow took no notice. Wearing his bright yellow kit with a full life vest harness strapped round it, he was readying the mooring rope, it looked like, as the lifeboat started turning to reverse into its berth along the harbor’s far side.

  I stopped walking. The wind blew my hair briefly into my eyes and then whipped it away again, stinging, but I didn’t move.

  The crewman stopped, too, with his back to me. Angled his head very slightly, as though he’d just heard someone calling his name. And then he looked straight back and over his shoulder, directly at me.

  “Hi,” he said. He didn’t say the word out loud—there wasn’t any way I would have heard him at that distance—but his voice still resonated clearly in my mind as though he’d spoken. It’s a hard thing to explain to anyone who’s never carried on a conversation that way, but for me it came as naturally as breathing. It was how my grandfather had realized I’d inherited his “gift,” when at the age of three I’d answered him at table, “When I’m sleeping,” and my mother, glancing up, had smiled and asked me what I meant by that, to which I had replied, “Granddad asked me if I ever would stop talking.” I could still see their exchange of glances; still recall the silence that had followed.

  Now I met Rob’s gaze across the harbor. Hi.

  I’ve got to finish up here. Can you wait?

  Yes.

  He sent me an image of warmly lit comfort, a cozy room with pale green walls and polished dark wood tables. Upstairs, he told me.

  I nodded. I’ll get us a table.

  Thanks. Turning away with the rope in his hand, he went back to the business of bringing the lifeboat in, and I uprooted myself from the pavement and walked the few steps to the door of the Contented Sole.

  Inside, I had to climb a flight of stairs to reach the dining lounge, but I didn’t need to see the pale green walls or dark wood furniture to know that I was in the right place. This room already felt familiar, from the glimpse of it he’d given me. I knew there’d be a tartan carpet woven in deep blues and greens, and flowers on the tables, and a deep-set window looking out toward the harbor, flanked by high-backed benches that formed cozy-looking alcoves in the corners.

  I sat in the nearest alcove, drawing a few curious glances from the people eating at the other tables—a middle-aged couple, three elderly men, and a young mother keeping her eye on two toddlers.

  The waitress came over and shot me a friendly smile, setting two menus down. “Heyah. You’ve just come from the police, then, have you?” The curious glances intensified as she went on, without needing an answer, “The lifeboat’s just come in, he’ll not be long. He always comes in for his supper Fridays. Can I get you a wee drink while you’re waiting?”

  A drink suddenly sounded like a very good idea. “Can I have a dry white wine, please?”

  The wine helped. It went straight to my head and relaxed me, so that I was feeling remarkably calm by the time I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs.

  I’d rehearsed this scene, with variations, all the way from Edinburgh, perfecting my dialogue based on the things I felt sure he would ask me, but all of that went out the window the minute he took the seat opposite, leaning back easily into the bench as though these past two years hadn’t happened. In that heartbeat as I looked across at him, I could have made myself believe they hadn’t.

  He looked just the same, with his almost too-perfect face. When I’d first met him I’d thought he looked French from his bone structure—straight nose and boldly drawn eyebrows and deep-set blue eyes, and that sensual mouth that could suddenly change from its serious line to a quick boyish smile more in keeping with the black unruly hair that always flopped onto his forehead. At the moment his hair was damp, trying to curl at the ends. In a gesture I remembered well he pushed it back and nodded at my drink. “You want another one of those?”

  “Please.”
/>   “Right.”

  He didn’t need to call the waitress over. She had seen him coming in and was beside us in an instant. “So you’ve found each other, then.”

  “We have, aye. Sheena, this is Nicola.”

  She gave a nod of greeting and assured him we’d already met. “George sent her from the police station. I’d just heard it on the radio that you were on your way back in. Everyone all right, then?”

  “Aye. It was fairly straightforward, a couple of fishermen taking on water. We gave them a tow back to Burnmouth.”

  “Better than Tuesday’s shout,” Sheena agreed. Then, to keep me included, she told me, “A couple of tourists capsized off St. Abbs, Tuesday morning. The woman was nearly done in when the lifeboat arrived, and she’d have likely drowned if not for Keenan, here. He’d seen it already, up here,” she said, tapping her temple, “and he’d telt the coxswain who did a phone round so the crew were all kitted up and on their way in the lifeboat afore the call even came in.” She winked at me. “He likely kent that you were coming, too. That’s why he’s dressed so nice.”

  He said to her drily, “There are other places to eat in Eyemouth. I could take her to the Ship…”

  But Sheena only grinned and told him, “Never. Did you want a pint of Deuchars?”

  “If you think that you can manage it. And one more glass of wine, please.”

  As I listened to their easygoing banter, I was trying to imagine how incredible it must feel to be living in a place where everybody knew—and from the sound of it, accepted—that you saw things that they couldn’t see. Small wonder Rob McMorran was so well adjusted.

  And he was dressed nicely, now I noticed it. His fine knitted sweater of deep navy blue looked like cashmere, and followed the breadth of his shoulders and chest in a way that looked tailored without being tight. He kept his head bent as he studied the menu, but from the quick glance that he gave me I halfway suspected he’d noticed me noticing, so I looked down myself, reading the menu without really seeing it, trying to summon up small talk.