Amaryllis was hot on the trail. The Big Issue seller had put on a good turn of speed, but he would have to stop if somebody wanted a copy of the magazine. He headed up the hill, ran past some of the shops and then turned down a lane that led, as far as she knew, to the loading bay for the incongruously glitzy furniture shop that had mysteriously opened in Pitkirtly High Street. She had already made a mental note to have the shop checked out in case it was a front for something – perhaps the fictitious terrorists whose activities she and her colleagues were supposed to be monitoring in the Firth of Forth.
Wondering whether to call for backup now – although realistically the nearest backup was either in London or even further away – Amaryllis cautiously entered the lane, not liking the way the stone walls loomed taller and taller as the lane narrowed down towards the other end. But then it opened out a bit into the loading bay, where there was some activity going on. She glanced round suspiciously, but the activity turned out to consist of two men loading furniture into a small van bearing the logo of the furniture shop. They stared back at her suspiciously.
‘Nothing for you round here, hen,’ said one of them. The other, younger one giggled. They carried on with what they were doing. There was no sign of the Big Issue seller in the multi-coloured blanket. The lane came to an end just after the loading bay in a cluster of giant black wheelie-bins and a battered motorbike with only one wheel.
Wishing there was some sort of a law against young men who thought all women over forty were too decrepit to bother with, Amaryllis retraced her steps. There were few hiding places along the lane. One doorway with a door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened for several centuries, and that was about it. The only possibilities seemed to be that the Big Issue seller had dived into the furniture shop through the open roller-shutter door while the two men were busy in the van, or, and her instinct told her that this was the correct one, he had returned to his hideout in one of the large black wheelie-bins.
She couldn’t investigate just now, because she didn’t want to attract even more attention from the two delivery men, but she resolved to come back later – preferably in the dark when everyone had gone home apart from the people she was searching for, and when they might be asleep, or at least drowsy and off their guard.
Amaryllis wandered back down towards the Cultural Centre. She might as well amuse herself with events there while she waited for the right time to pursue her real aims. She might even be able to assist with the police investigation, while remaining firmly in the background, of course. It didn’t normally do for people in her profession to interfere with other professionals – except when they were desperate to know something, as she had been the night before.
Her pace quickened when she saw the queue of people outside in the car park. It was amazing – she had never seen so many kilts in one place before. The variety of tartans clashed horribly.
She hoped Grumpy Graham wasn’t stopping them from going in on some bizarre pretext of his own concoction.
‘I’ve got the shortbread,’ said Christopher cheerfully from her side. He waved a Greggs bag at her.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘What’s going on with all the kilts?’
His jaw dropped as he stared down the road. ‘They weren’t there when I left.’
He speeded up, and she had to quicken her pace again. ‘I’d better get back. They’ll be swamped.’
‘I hope Grumpy Graham won’t give you a row.’
‘It was his idea to send me out. Christopher’s the only one who won’t be missed for half an hour. Hmph!’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say Hmph before. You must have caught it from Jock.’
‘Wish me luck,’ he said as they approached the sea of tartan. Even the women were wearing big tartan scarves, pinned at the shoulder with thistle brooches.
‘Hope you’ve got enough shortbread,’ she called after him.
She waited in the queue. She heard a variety of accents, but there was only one topic of conversation. By the time Amaryllis got into the building she was much more familiar with the history of emigration from Scotland than she had been before, and the question uppermost in her mind was why people bothered coming back. The couple just in front of her had spent ten minutes arguing about why they were in this god-forsaken place at all, while the family in front of them had been divided on whether the breakfast served at their hotel had been continental or full Scottish and whether they wanted to complain about it with a view to getting a reduction in their bill. One man further ahead in the queue, whose girth seemed to be putting a severe strain on the fastenings on his kilt, got into an argument with Grumpy Graham as soon as he was in the building about whether he could take photographs or not.
All in all, it wasn’t a very good advert for ancestry research.