There was a girl behind a counter at the back, blonde and slim, sorting through some kind of box of samples.

On impulse, Henry walked in. The girl looked up, took him in at a glance — so it seemed — and went back to her rocks.

On her desk, there was a card. THE WORLD STORE. S Kapur J Dundas, props. Telephone, fax and e-mail.

Dundas. He remembered the rocks in the car, Mike’s crystal-gazing sister.

Henry drifted past the wooden elephants and pan pipes and other New Age crap, and made for the racks of minerals. It was mostly the usual eyecatching commercial stuff, sliced geodes and quartz crystals and pyrite clumps. Some of it looked native, but most of it was polished, even dyed and carved. Here was a necklace of bottle-green beads, for instance. And he found a tiger carved from a shining black rock, covered in pale grey blotches.

He looked sideways at the girl.

She was older than Mike, maybe as old as thirty, but she had the same Nordic colouring. Blonde hair tied back, revealing a composed, thoughtful face. Strong hands. Blue eyes you could swim in. One hell of a set of cheekbones, the essence of beauty. No body parts pierced that he could see, which was a good thing. She was eating something. A rice cake, maybe.

She glanced up and caught him looking at her. She put down the rice cake.

He was holding the tiger; he fumbled and nearly dropped it.

“You pay for breakages,” she said. Her accent was the same as Mike’s — soft Scottish — but her tone was cold.

“Sorry.” He put the tiger back. “I was just thinking.”

“What?”

“You ought to put a best-before date on that tiger. Ultimately it’s going to turn grey all over—”

“I know. In sixty million years. It’s snowflake obsidian.”

He nodded, surprised, approving. “You know about rocks.”

“I know my job.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. “You’re an American. And you just arrived.”

He faced her. “Is it that obvious?”

She looked him up and down. “Look at the way you’re dressed. It’s only February, for God’s sake.”

“You don’t like Americans?”

“I don’t dislike them. I don’t know you well enough to dislike you. Yet.”

He glanced around. “You like rocks. I know about rocks.”

Those eyes narrowed again. “You’re a geologist.”

Strike two, he thought. “Is that bad too?”

“If you’re with one of the oil companies, yes.”

He shrugged. “Edinburgh may not like me, but maybe I’ll like Edinburgh.”

“Why?”

“Volcanoes and a river sound. It reminds me of Seattle.”

She snorted. “Seattle in three hundred million years, maybe, when the volcanoes have died.”

He was impressed; that was about right.

She said, “What have you seen?”

“Just the walk from the hotel. The Balmoral.”