The Firebird

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It had seemed a good idea at the time.

I hadn’t wanted Rob to drive the whole way back to Scotland in the dark, not after all he’d done to help me. And I knew his nature well enough to know he would have pushed on and not taken a hotel room here in London for the night. And while I didn’t have an extra bedroom in my flat, I had a sofa that converted to a bed that both my brother and his girlfriend had assured me was quite comfortable.

So it had seemed a natural extension of our travelling together that, when Rob had found a spot to park along my road, I should invite him up to have a meal and stay the night to rest before he headed home to Eyemouth.

When I’d asked him, it had all seemed very reasonable. But …

‘The trouble is,’ so my brother had once told me, ‘you never really stop to think things through.’

And he was right. I hadn’t stopped to think how small the flat would feel, when Rob walked in. Or how a simple, stupid thing like watching Rob eat steak-and-onion pie with salad at my cluttered table would so traitorously push all my domestic buttons, sending my mind wandering to thoughts of sitting down to dinner with him every night. I found the easy-going comfort of his company seductive, like a lazy current drawing me downstream, and every now and then I’d lose my grip upon the shore and float a little further down before remembering I ought to swim against it.

When Rob half-rose from his chair after dinner, intending to help with the washing-up, I made him sit again.

‘You cooked the meal,’ was his reasoning.

‘Hardly. I warmed up a frozen pie. Somehow I doubt that will get me on MasterChef. Give me that plate, will you? Thanks.’ There was no way, I thought, I was going to let him help out in my kitchen, a room so incredibly small that I couldn’t take two steps in any direction without bumping into the worktop. I said, ‘The TV remote’s there by the sofa, if you want to watch something.’

I took my time with the washing-up, although there weren’t many dishes to deal with. But when I came out again into the sitting room, Rob wasn’t watching TV. He had sat himself down at my desk in the corner, where earlier I had switched on my computer, and with his head propped on one hand he was reading what looked like a digital scan of an old book.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘The Old Scots Navy, by James Grant,’ he told me. ‘I’m getting to know Captain Gordon.’

‘The man Anna left with? You found him?’

‘I did. Mrs Ogilvie said that his first name was Thomas.’

‘When did she say that?’

‘When she was talking to those English guys,’ he told me, ‘at the bar.’

I took his word for it. ‘And?’

‘Captain Thomas Gordon,’ he said, clicking back to open up the screen for Wikipedia. ‘Or Admiral Thomas Gordon, as he later was. That’s him, right?’

I leant closer in, to look over Rob’s shoulder at the image of a painted portrait on the screen. It showed an older man than we had seen, white-wigged and softer round the chin than I remembered, but the eyes were still the same, and he was standing with the same square-shouldered confidence. ‘That’s him.’

‘He used to be a captain in the Old Scots Navy,’ Rob said, ‘and it seems he was acquainted with our friend the Earl of Erroll up at Slains. But after Scotland lost its independence in the Union, there was no Scots Navy any more. They took the Saltire down and flew the Union Jack instead, and after that Queen Anne died and the military men like Captain Gordon had to swear an oath to say they’d only serve King George. I guess his conscience wouldn’t let him swear that, not when in his heart he thought James Stewart was the rightful king, and so he quit.’ Rob turned his head so I could see the crinkles of good humour at the corners of his own eyes. ‘Guess where he became an admiral?’

‘Where?’

To answer me, he scrolled down to show me a subheading: Later Career – Russian Navy.

‘You’re joking.’

‘The Tsar himself, Peter the Great, hired him as a captain, and brought him to Russia.’

I read through the article. ‘Yes, but it doesn’t say where … ?’

Rob switched screens again to the page of another scanned history book, this one about Scottish soldiers in Russia. He pointed the paragraph out. ‘To St Petersburg.’

‘Wow.’ It was more than I’d let myself hope for – the link that not only tied Anna to Russia, but to St Petersburg. And if the Tsar himself had hired Captain Thomas Gordon, and had known him, it was possible that Anna could have met the Tsar’s wife, Catherine.

I looked at the long row of reference tabs open across the top of the computer screen, showing the trail of his search. ‘You’ve been busy,’ I said. ‘Thanks for doing all this.’

‘Aye, well, I’m only an ordinary constable, not a detective, but I can still find the occasional suspect. If you tell me where the paper is for that,’ he nodded briefly at my printer, ‘I can print you off the whole of it, so you can take it with you.’

I’d have much rather taken him with me instead. How on earth was I going to manage to find Anna all on my own, without Rob?

While he printed the pages, he opened a new search window, saying, ‘It might help to find a few maps, as well, showing the place as it would have looked then …’

I was glad I was standing behind him, so he couldn’t see me, or know from my face how uncertain I suddenly felt. ‘Rob, I wish—’