by William Paul
‘More like camel number five.’
Ross swung the boat to the left and with his free hand picked another ready-made roll-up from the tin held between his legs. They had already passed the Isle of Maree. He would circle round and get it next time, once he was fully awake. He aimed for the channel between two half-formed islands as they emerged evenly from under the grey blanket. Their edges pressed in on the boat as it entered the narrows. The smell of the unseen goat quickly faded. Ross chuckled silently at Barrington’s bulky figure hunched in front of him. A sucker for the ghost stories Barrington had been and, with the snake out, it had been a virtuoso performance by Ross. It only backfired when the man banged on his door wanting to go stag and ghost hunting when all sensible people were fast asleep.
Ross had been counting on a long lie. A ghillie’s hours were long enough without adding to them unnecessarily. In ten years, coming to the job late at the age of thirty-six to escape the insurance industry and a looming nervous breakdown, Ross had never seen a single swimming stag or a floating ghost. But he couldn’t admit that. He had to keep the punters happy. He had to make a living.
‘What’s that? Out there.’
Barrington was pointing ahead and looking back. His cheeks and nose glowed shocking pink. The tears were pooling in the creases around his eyes. Ross looked round him, trying to make sense of the solid shadows gradually forming from the grey haze. There was something ahead, something fluttering in the breeze like gala-day flags.
Ross rubbed his eyes and blinked. He half rose to better see past Barrington. The boat rocked slightly. The only noise was the metallic beat of the motor and the tinkling of the water against the hull. The mist stubbornly obscured the shape as the boat approached Parliament Rock, a large low-lying slab of stone in the loch where legend said Viking chiefs held their councils of war. It was hardly noticeable from a distance, even on a clear day. The rock rose no more than a few inches above the surface and was often submerged when the feeder rivers were in spate and the water was high.
The boat was less than twenty yards from it when the mist seemed to spontaneously part, like curtains being swept aside. Directly ahead the figure of a woman lying on her side was revealed.
‘Is it a princess?’ Barrington asked. ‘Is it a Viking princess?’
Ross didn’t reply. He stared open-mouthed. He saw the bare feet, the transparent white dress rippling over her, the curve of a hip, the long elegant fingers poised as if to conduct music, and the mass of black hair obscuring her face.
‘Is she asleep?’ Barrington asked.
He looked back at Ross and his eyebrows arched in mock amazement. Ross couldn’t understand why Barrington was grinning so inanely. He looked from the Englishman’s florid face to the motionless body and back again. He saw bright red cheeks on the Englishman and shiny black blood on the rock, reflecting the colourless dawn light that was pouring into the world all around them. The blood puddled in a cushion under her head and fanned out. Black slowly turned to pale grey as he stared at it and the sun clawed its way through the mist. It wasn’t blood at all, he realized. It was overlapping spirals of lichen growing on the rock.
‘What a beautiful Viking princess you have here,’ Barrington said.
A deep sense of foreboding paralysed Ross. He stood in the stern and could not move. The water beneath him could have been an empty space he was falling into. He watched as the bows struck the rock at an acute angle. There was a loud scraping noise. Both men were knocked off balance and ended in a heap in the bottom of the boat. The outboard motor raced as the boat turned lengthways and the propeller lifted clear of the water. Barrington scrambled to his feet and fell again. He was shouting something but Ross could not hear because of the whirling blades as they struck screeching sparks off the flinty hardness of the smooth rock.
Chapter Eleven
Thursday, 07.20
David Fyfe rolled on to his back in the warm bed and enjoyed the taste of the farewell kiss that was planted softly on his lips.
‘Are you going in to work today?’ Sally asked.
‘I might,’ he said. ‘I was going to take the afternoon off.’
‘Don’t overstretch yourself, will you?’
‘I won’t,’ he replied, ignoring the heavy sarcasm.
‘You need a shave.’
‘Consider it done.’
‘Are you looking after the dogs?’
‘They can look after me.’
‘What have they done to deserve such a fate?’
She kissed him again. Fyfe opened his eyes and closed them again immediately as the curtains were drawn back to let in an avalanche of bright daylight. Through half-shut eyes he was able to make out Sally blowing another kiss from the bedroom door. Then she turned away and was gone in a swishing curve of long coat and long hair. He listened to the sound of her footsteps going downstairs, the thump of the door, the car engine labouring to start and the cheery toot of the horn on departure. The silence afterwards was embroidered round the edges with birdsong.
I give it ten seconds, he thought, and began to count down by patting the covers. The rumble came rolling up the stairs by the time he reached six, across the landing by eight, and on the tenth beat exactly a black shape shot across the floor and jumped onto his chest. Fyfe was braced for it but still cried out in surprise when the black labrador bitch hit his stomach and almost winded him.
‘Number Five, you beautiful black beast,’ he said, grabbing her by the ears and rocking her head from side to side. ‘Thanks for the alarm call. Now get off me.’
He pushed her off the side of the bed so that she fell on top of the other black labrador bitch sitting there. They were virtually identical apart from the grey hairs round the muzzle of the older dog. ‘Sorry Jill, but you should learn to control your children,’ Fyfe said.
Number Five, the runt of Jill’s litter that he hadn’t had the heart to part with, playfully pretended to bite her mother, who stoically ignored her. Fyfe stepped over the pair of them and went to the wash-hand basin in the corner. The dark shadow of the stubble growth on his chin made him look like a cartoon criminal. He splashed cold water in his face to kick-start the day and then scooped a couple of handfuls over the dogs. Number Five barked noisily and scrambled out of the way. Jill just looked up at him with sad eyes and twisted round to lick herself dry.
Fyfe was in a good mood. The world was a pleasant place. In the inside pocket of his suit jacket was his resignation letter, carefully phrased around mysterious and unspecified personal reasons. That would get them wondering. He liked the touch of intrigue and intended to offer no other explanation. The letter was kept in an unsealed envelope so that when the moment came he could write in the date and slap it down. The moment had to be right. When it came he would recognize it and savour it. Meanwhile, he was enjoying his life as it was and the envelope was getting ragged at the edges.
He dressed and checked the letter was in his pocket. He took it out and kissed it. He held it up to the light to see if he could read it through the envelope. Maybe today would be the day he would make his move. Maybe. Maybe not. For him, it was spiritually uplifting to have the option.
The phone rang while he was pulling on his trousers. Sally had already activated the answering machine. It cut in before he could get to it. He waited to see if it was anybody he wanted to talk to but whoever it was hung up when they heard the tape being triggered.
Fyfe frowned. He shifted the machine onto divert so the calls would follow him in the car. For some reason he interpreted the morning’s first incoming call as a bad omen. It shattered his optimistic mood. Things couldn’t keep going so well for him. Something had already happened and the consequences were out there waiting to mess him up. He was heading for a fall. Nothing surer.
‘Come on, dogs,’ he shouted, unnecessarily because they were sitting at his feet. ‘Let’s see what the big city has in store for us today.’
Chapter Twelve
Thursday, 07.28
The whining had woken him. It was a rhythmic keening that tore through his alcohol-sodden consciousness and demanded his attention. He pushed the bedcovers from his face and listened more carefully. The sound seemed to make the air around him vibrate. He sighed and frowned and shivered. Big sister Norma was having one of her fits. He had better check she was all right.
She had given him the room in her flat on a temporary basis while he sorted himself. That had been almost two years ago and Illingworth had no real intention of shifting himself. The arrangement was convenient, and the flat big enough for them not to get under each other’s feet. They worked together at the office and then went their separate ways. More often than not Norma stayed elsewhere at night, presumably with one lover or another. She had a steady stream of them. Little brother Eddie didn’t feel it was his place to ask and she didn’t volunteer the information. She was a big girl and could take care of herself. She didn’t charge him rent either. He wasn’t going to crap in his own nest.
Illingworth opened Norma’s bedroom door reluctantly. He had been vaguely aware of her arriving home at a ridiculous time in the morning and banging about the flat, but he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t just imagined it. But she was there in the bedroom. There was no doubting that because as the door swung back the whine, like a wounded animal suffering intolerable pain, increased in volume. Norma was on her knees on top of the bed. She was motionless with her hands clutched tightly between her legs and her head bowed. She had torn her nightdress and scratched her breasts and stomach. In the doorway Illingworth almost choked on a throatful of saliva. His heart thumped painfully, making him worry needlessly that the long dissolved stitches from his by-pass operation would burst open, little intrusive shreds of blue in a torrent of red pouring from his chest.
He hated it when Norma got like this. Thankfully, it wasn’t a regular occurrence. In fact, this was the first time he remembered it happening since he had set up residence in the flat. But whenever she succumbed it took him right back to his childhood and that first terrifying night when he was ten years old and his sister went mad.
Norma was fourteen then. She had been in her bedroom all evening, sulking because she had not been allowed to go on a school outing to the theatre. The whining was an unexpected, alien intrusion into the house. His mother had thought it was a gas leak or something but it didn’t take long to follow the sound to the bedroom and find Norma kneeling on the bed. She was resting on her elbows with her backside in the air. Her nightdress was torn and there were scratches round her neck. As soon as her mother touched her the whining stopped.
‘Michelle’s hurt,’ Norma said, looking up with unseeing eyes. ‘Michelle’s lying in the road. There’s blood.’
Illingworth had stood in the doorway watching his mother comfort Norma and coax her back under the sheets and back to sleep. He was told she was having a bad dream. The next day Norma remembered nothing of what she had said. Later, they heard about the accident on the return trip from the theatre. Michelle was Norma’s best friend at school. She was two months in traction recovering from her injuries.
There had been other times, most notably when she sensed the death of their father who was in hospital recovering from a heart attack. The ward sister phoned fifteen minutes after Norma’s announcement. But more frequently her visions were obscure and apparently meaningless. Bad dreams, sceptics would call them. A couple of lucky hits from simple short-circuits in her brain didn’t mean she could really see into the future. The educational psychologists had never found anything wrong with her. They put it down to her dependent and quixotic personality. Illingworth was a sceptic too, except he knew better.
So here he was again, standing in a doorway with his sister bent over on all fours on a bed, whining mournfully. She was a few inches taller than him, and a few inches wider all over. When they were children he had always been jealous of her for being bigger and stronger than him. It wasn’t fair. She had been jealous of him for being daintier and more small-boned than her. His hair was longer than hers. The family resemblance could be seen in their faces.
He stepped forward and touched her gently on the shoulder. The sound stopped abruptly. Her head swivelled round but her tear-damp eyes stared right through him. He felt the familiar icy chill at the base of his spine. It flowered outwards across his back like a frost pattern on a window pane. Having a psychic sister was fun as long as it wasn’t taken seriously and the paranormal was confined to loopy stories on the glossy pages of the magazine he edited. This close up it scared the shit out of him.
‘She’s dead,’ Norma whispered. ‘Very dead.’
‘Who’s dead, Norma?’
Illingworth held her by the shoulders and tried to make eye contact but there was no connection there. She could hear him though. Her head cocked curiously at the sound of his voice.
‘Can’t see. I can’t see. She’s face down.’
‘Where?’
‘Water all round but she’s floating. The fish are eating her.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Can’t see.’
‘Do you recognize her?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Norma subsided slowly. Her eyes closed and her whole body relaxed. Illingworth eased her back down onto the bed and covered her up. She was sound asleep now. He knew she would remember nothing when she woke. He wouldn’t tell her. It would only upset her.
He stood over her for a while, wondering if there really was somebody drowning, and where. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. The build-up of psychic energy, or whatever it was, had dispersed. The bedroom was warm not cold. The stiff frost pattern on his back had melted into cloying dampness. Illingworth listened to his heart slowing to a more sedate pace.
Norma’s large frame looked incongruously delicate curled up in the foetus position with her sweat-damp hair on the pillow. A flutter of sibling love inspired him to lean over and kiss her forehead. He did love her hugely although it wasn’t something he would ever admit to her. It was an innate thing, a genetic transfer he couldn’t alter. He didn’t know what he would do without her. He got a wet cloth and washed the superficial scratches she had inflicted on herself before going to get himself a can of beer for breakfast. Still three and a half days to go.
Chapter Thirteen
Thursday, 07.39
Moya McBain sprinted the final one hundred metres to her back door and checked the time on her wristwatch. Twenty-two minutes and four seconds for the three-mile course. Not bad. A reduction of more than thirty seconds over three months. Add to that the loss of eight pounds and the new-found fascination with physical fitness triggered by the inevitability of her fortieth birthday was paying big dividends. She felt better. She looked better. She wanted it to last.
Her daughter Isabel was seated at the kitchen table, hurriedly spooning cornflakes into her face and brushing her hair at the same time. Moya tried to say good morning but there was not enough air in her lungs. Her legs were very tired as well and she was suddenly dizzy. She had to sit down.
‘It’s not good for you, mum,’ Isabel said with her mouth full of cornflakes, speaking over the wallpaper music on the radio. ‘This health kick you’re on is downright dangerous. Life’s short enough without wasting your time running round in circles.’
Moya tried to speak but couldn’t. She smiled weakly instead and accepted the glass of orange juice Isabel pushed in her direction. It was ice cold. She could feel its coldne
ss spreading down into the centre of her body and then flowing quickly out to the extremities.
‘You should be taking things easier at your age, mum. Wild nights out with your fancy man followed by cross-country runs. I worry about you. Who’s going to pay for me to get through university if you drop dead from a heart attack?’
‘Don’t worry, dear daughter,’ Moya managed to say. ‘I’m well insured.’
‘Oh well, that’s all right then.’
Isabel was up and away, shouting ‘See you later’ from the doorway. She looped a scarf round her neck. The coats on the back of the door billowed out and settled back as they had done when Ian Dalglish had left in the huff the previous night. Moya stared at the space where her sixteen-year-old daughter had been and wondered morosely if she was sleeping with her boyfriend yet. If she was, it was more than her mother was doing with hers.
Moya wanted to ask Isabel but was afraid to hear the answer. Her only baby had grown up into an attractive and intelligent young woman, very much like herself. Innocence was so soon gone. The girl should have been more suspicious of men since she knew the whole story about her long-lost father doing a runner at the first hint of pregnancy. But she wasn’t. She wouldn’t be told. Isabel would learn the hard way. Like mother, like daughter.
Moya sighed and rose to her feet, kicking off her trainers. The muscles had tightened in her thighs and she walked stifflegged up the stairs to the bathroom. She dumped the tracksuit top and trousers in the laundry basket. The plain T-shirt was soaked in sweat and sticking to her breasts and stomach. The shorts were skimpy on top of a slim pair of legs. Her short hair was unkempt and spikey. She would have looked several years younger than her age if it had not been for the heavy bags under her eyes. They piled on the years. The more she worried about them and tried to get rid of them, the less she was able to sleep and the worse they seemed to get.