‘I love the hair,’ Luke said to Aurora as they sat smoking cigarettes on the rooftop terrace overlooking Arthur’s Seat. Aurora looked at Luke. It was great being with him again. Luke seemed changed by his recent experiences. He was now looking happily at the craggy hill in the distance. It was like an old friend. She knew he had painted it innumerable times. The rain had stopped and the sun was out, although it was bitterly cold with a biting breeze. He smiled at her affectionately.
She patted his hand. He had told her how he’d felt he’d been afforded a glimpse into a world that previously he had no real conception of. A terrible, lawless place where people were casually and unimaginably violent. A place where people were hurt and killed. Hanlon was at home there, as was the man wearing the motorbike leathers they could see through the glass of the bi-fold doors.
Luke wasn’t and she was very glad of it.
Aurora had texted Luke earlier that morning to come and join her at the flat where she was staying. She had wanted to hear from him what had been happening. Particularly the incident at the studio. She knew what had happened after McDonald had arrived, but not what had been the lead-up to it.
McDonald was inside the flat watching TV. He’d been drug-free for nearly a week now, since the row with Aurora in the Park Bar off the Gorgie Road. She wondered what had happened the night before. He had gone out on his bike early in the evening and had been silent and preoccupied ever since his return, as if he had something on his mind. He was not in the best of moods today either. Something was eating him up. She was worried for him – keeping secrets and drug addiction were always closely allied.
Now she turned her attention to Luke. God, how she’d missed him. After all the crap she’d been through recently it was wonderful to be with someone who was innately good, innately innocent.
‘So, where’ve you been hiding, then, Luke, since those goons that my uncle sent turned up at your place?’
‘We were staying at Julia’s house,’ he said.
‘Julia who?’ asked Aurora.
‘Julia, that woman who works at the university. I think she is the secretary of the English department – you must know her.’
Aurora frowned. There was something about Julia that she had never really liked or trusted. ‘What did you make of her, Luke?’
‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
Aurora looked at Luke. There were three things that Luke could do unbelievably well: he could make genius art, he was an inventive, attentive lover and he was an eerily good judge of character. Maybe all three went together.
‘I’m serious, Luke,’ she said. She really needed to know what he thought.
‘I didn’t like her.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t explain it, she’s… I don’t know, bad inside, like an apple that’s turned to mush but still looks good. Rotten to the core.’
Aurora nodded. She had her own suspicions about Julia; she wanted them confirmed.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked.
‘It’s strange you should ask. It was when I was drawing her…’ He took out the small artist’s sketchbook he always carried about with him and flipped through the pages. As he did so Aurora glimpsed several pen and ink sketches of Hanlon. Her face in repose, proud, fierce, beautiful. The self-assurance even though she wasn’t awake. Aurora was half her age and beautiful, but she envied the other woman’s iron determination and self-confidence. Luke had obviously sensed it too. She felt a stab of jealousy.
‘Here we are…’
And here was Julia.
The woman that she knew was slim, with large eyes and high cheekbones, very attractive, she had to admit. Here she wasn’t. The wide mouth was cruel and voracious, the eyes cold, calculating, dead. It was the face of a monster.
Aurora said, ‘That’s really what you saw?’
‘That’s what I saw.’ Luke nodded in confirmation. ‘I think she’s evil. I know it’s weird. I didn’t understand it myself. I was bloody glad to get out of that house, I can tell you.’
Aurora frowned and thought back. She thought of Morag, of Morag’s manuscript. Morag hadn’t wanted her to read it, she’d said that she was worried that it wasn’t good enough. That, coming from a girl who thought that the sun shone out of her arse, was starkly unbelievable.
Well, she had read it all right. Pinched one of the copies on a memory stick.
Read it with an increasing sense of betrayal, a raging sense of betrayal. Everyone was in it, all ordered according to Morag’s Moragcentric world view. Aurora was in it – that was what had sparked the rage. What Morag had written was true, but it was privileged and she had stabbed her in the back. But she remembered now what Morag had written about Julia. It tallied with what Luke had just said.
‘Did you tell Hanlon what you thought?’ she asked.
Luke shook his head. ‘She’d got more than enough on her plate, what with one thing and another.’
Aurora felt cold fingers down her spine. How did Millar know they were in Morningside?
Luke’s phone pinged. He looked at it, looked at the message.
‘Hanlon’s there now.’
Jesus! she thought. She knew instinctively Hanlon was in trouble. Big trouble.
‘Stay here, Luke…’ She was already on her feet. ‘Text me the address,’ she called over her shoulder as she yanked open the glass doors to the flat.
‘Jamie.’
He looked up, saw the panic in her face, jumped to his feet. She thought he had never looked so good. If what you wanted was a good man in a fight, they didn’t come much better than him. Six feet and fifteen stone of hard muscle and violent competence. His dark eyes looked at her steadily.
‘What is it, Aurora?’
‘Come on, Millar’s got Hanlon!’