With My Little Eye

by Gerald Hammond

  When Tash remarked that he did not seem to be taking the threat too seriously he retorted that she never stood still for long enough to give a sniper a chance. There was some truth in this. She was labouring to ensure that Douglas’s paperwork for his clients would be wholly up to date. At the same time, while Tash’s mother was satisfied that she herself was performing all the duties proper to the mother of the bride, every decision and the resulting action was referred to Tash.

  The father of the bride had returned from the Middle East but was little help. His contribution seemed mainly to consist of remembering ever remoter relatives who simply had to be invited. A high proportion of these accepted and when the hotel’s bedrooms were fully booked it was left to Tash to find accommodation for them elsewhere. A halt was called only when it was clear that the hotel’s dining room could not possibly accept even one more diner.

  All in all, it was a relief when the great day dawned. Autumn in Scotland can be fine, warm and colourful, and this was just so. Rowan was bestowed in kennels but was not more than mildly disappointed, having been there before. Winnie, Stan Eastwick’s bulldog, had been left behind when George made his getaway and was handed over to Douglas, who had become mildly fond of the bitch, for safe-keeping. She also went into the kennels but seemed comforted by Rowan’s company. Douglas’s BMW, with empty suitcases on display, stood outside the hotel, ready to be decorated by his friends. Behind the hotel and screened by wheelie bins was a fast but inconspicuous grey Ford hired in strict confidence from Seymour McLeish, who had the keys and would take the BMW into his care as soon as the couple had made their escape. Unfortunately, in his haste, Douglas had chosen a car unseen from the list of vehicles traded in and now available for sale, only satisfying himself that the car had a valid current MOT certificate. Nobody mentioned that it had little chance of getting another one.

  A civil ceremony can be very short. There was only the briefest music to accompany the bride’s entrance to the ballroom and the couple’s exit. There was much kissing and handshaking. The dining room was lavishly decorated with tasteful floral arrangements. It was filled with guests. The meal was excellent although the soup could perhaps have done with a touch more paprika. The speeches went well in an atmosphere of great jollity but were interrupted when the younger bridesmaid was smacked for flicking pats of butter across the room. The bride’s father told a story about a couple on the verge of their golden wedding who announced that they were to be divorced. There was horror in the family and an outburst of phone-calls. ‘Well, it worked,’ said the husband. ‘They’re all coming to persuade us to stay together, for the sake of the grandchildren. And this time they’re paying their own fares!’

  When it was understood that the couple were about to leave the company assembled on the tarmac around the much decorated BMW, nobody paid any attention to the grey Ford that skirted the side of the hotel and took to the back drive.

  They had left in good time, but Douglas had not been able to avoid a few drinks and so Tash, who had only recently passed her test, was driving. In an unfamiliar and more powerful car she was not the most confident of drivers and she did not have the experience to explain that the car handled very badly. They were in no great hurry; nor were they hungry.

  ‘Is it just my inexperience talking or is this a damned awful car?’ Tash asked.

  ‘It is damned awful, as you say. Seymour was busy so he just handed me a list and said, “Tell Charlie which one you want.” I don’t think Charlie realized at the time that anybody was proposing to drive the thing and I just checked that it had an MOT certificate and was taxed and insured.’

  ‘Well, Charlie should be ashamed of himself.’ Tash was silent while she slowed to let a tanker overtake. Then she said, ‘Isn’t Charlie the one that George Eastwick was buddies with?’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘Well, that’s just dandy. So George probably knows exactly what car we’re in as well as where we’re going.’

  They came off the motorway and stopped for a snack at Kinross. They spent the night in Perth and then took what had once been the main road, slightly encumbered by small towns and restricted to sixty miles per hour, but shorter and safer than the notorious dual carriageway to Aberdeen which they rejoined for a few miles before cutting off in order to climb over the Cairn o’ Mount. Before that climb, however, Tash noticed one of the yellow, short-term signposts that are used for passing events such as game fairs and pop concerts.

  ‘What’s happening at Straloch Moor?’ she asked.

  Douglas had been preoccupied after observing a brown van that had been two, three or four vehicles behind them for some miles, visible in the door mirror on his side of the car, but he realized suddenly that he was being offered an opportunity. ‘Turn off. We can go that way. There was something about it in the paper,’ he said. ‘There was a very rare blue grouse seen there. That’s an American bird. It’s not known for its long distance capability so they think it must be a fugitive from a private collection. The twitchers are getting excited about it.’

  Tash slowed, signalled and made the turn. ‘Those are the people who tick off the birds they’ve seen in notebooks, aren’t they? Do people still do that?’

  ‘It’s harmless and healthy and it keeps them off the streets. It may have been coincidence, but I think we’re being followed.’

  ‘The brown van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wondered about it. Do you want to drive?’ Her voice shook slightly but he was delighted by her cool resolve.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Suspicion was becoming a habit with Douglas. In the let-down after all the fuss and flapdoodle, Tash was basking in the happiness of having achieved her one desire – marriage to Douglas. He, on the other hand, now that he was out from under what he believed to be Honeypot’s protective shelter, could not keep his ever active mind from turning over and over the permutations of what the next day or hour or minute might bring. Half expecting an ambush, he had laid his two shotguns, in their bags, on the back seat and he had a handful of cartridges in his jacket pocket. He thought about using his penknife to make a ring of cuts around a cartridge between the propellant and the shot, transforming it into a formidable and longer-range weapon where the shot-filled end separated off and flew as a solid missile. But if he attempted such surgery in the car, which was bouncing over what was degenerating into a farm track, he would probably cut his wrist, severing his hand.

  Douglas had one big advantage. While he was a student, a small legacy had enabled the purchase of his first motorcycle, and in the thrill of novelty he had explored every little-known road or track that he could find within a day’s run of Aberdeen. If only he had a photographic memory and total recall of that track instead of a vague recollection. It had been passable for a motorbike and might accept a car, but he doubted very much if the van could pass that way. Or was he being paranoid? Was the presence of the van a mere coincidence?

  Sheep hurried out of their path. He was reminded that somewhere along here there was an isolated farm where a farmer scraped a living by running sheep in the grass and heather. A drastic plan crept into his mind. If indeed the presence of the van were coincidence, not very much harm might be done. If not … they would see what they would see.

  Before he had time to think it out they came over a crest and the farmhouse stood up beside the road, stark and unyielding. It looked as though it had been abandoned leaving the remaining sheep to manage and breed if they could. ‘Turn round past the house,’ he snapped. ‘Stop dead. And then move over. I’ll drive.’

  Obediently – and Douglas sent a prayer of thanks To Whom It May Concern, that he had been granted a wife who could do the right thing immediately and argue afterwards if at all – Tash swung round the gable of the farmhouse and skidded to a halt. Douglas was already out and running.

  The driver of the brown van came over the crest to find a figure in his path with a gun to its shoulder, aimed at his head. There was a
bang and his windscreen became a myriad splinters of glass but it stayed in place. Douglas was ready to dive over the low, dry stone wall if necessary, but the van swerved onto the humped and overgrown heather. On the downhill slope with the heather rolling under his tyres, it took him ten seconds to pull up.

  Douglas piled into the car and drove back over the crest. Tash was right, the car did handle badly. It put him in mind of steering a wild elephant backwards by its trunk, not that he had ever attempted that feat. His limbs were shaking and his mouth was very dry.

  They hit the major road not far south of their intended turn-off. Douglas drove with one eye on his mirrors until he had made the turn. Tash must have reacted similarly because it was just as his breathing returned to normal that she said, ‘Was it George?’

  ‘I thought so, that’s why I fired. I still think so, for all the glimpse I got of him. I bloody well hope so, anyway. And it wasn’t a plain van. It was a camper though with that dark colour and darkened windows you could hardly tell. By the time he gets it back on the road he won’t know which way we went. Get my mobile phone out of my pocket and phone Honeypot. Tell her what happened.’

  He listened with half an ear while Tash gave a remarkably accurate and unemotional account of what had occurred. Concluding the call, Tash said, ‘She wants us to carry on as planned but to keep her posted.’

  From a call phone in their home village, Douglas had booked a room in a fishing hotel overlooking one of the best stretches of the Aberdeenshire Dee but so secluded by woods that few people other than addicted salmon anglers knew that it was there. Honeypot had recommended it. The salmon would not be running for some weeks yet so that the rates were not at their vertiginous highest.

  They were expected. Their room was all that it should be. Tash was her usual loving self. She put Douglas’s lacklustre love-making down to tiredness. It had been a long day.

  Breakfast next morning was designed to give stamina to a man who was going to spend the day standing in the river with ice floes nudging his bottom. Douglas was unsure what the day would bring so he stoked up with bacon, eggs, mushroom and black pudding and encouraged Tash to do the same.

  There had been no signs of a hostile presence but Douglas was anxious to escape from where his movements might be predictable. He settled their bill and stowed the car with both of his shotguns (already loaded, contrary to all good safety practice) in the back of the car, where they were hidden behind two suitcases but quickly accessible from under a rug.

  He was slightly ahead of his time. As instructed, he had phoned Honeypot to report their safe arrival and had been told that an officer from the Grampian force would join them at ten sharp. They waited for a few minutes on a settle facing a log fire in the hall.

  ‘What will your mother think of me?’ Tash whispered. ‘Will she think me not good enough for you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that she’d consider Her Gracious Majesty good enough for her baby boy. She would probably accept the Archangel Gabriel as a reasonable second best.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. Not really. I think she’s been worried in case I’m of the professor’s persuasion. She’s been so keen to see me married that she would welcome Lucretia Borgia into the family.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  A single, tough-looking plain clothes officer arrived within a few seconds of the planned time. He introduced himself and showed his identification, confirming that he was Charles Ziegler, a member of the Armed Response Unit. He looked enormous, but that, Douglas soon decided, was due to a loose suit of heavy tweed under which all sorts of weaponry could have been concealed. Douglas suspected that he was also wearing light body armour but that he might have been bulletproof without it. His partner, he said, was off sick.

  ‘I’ve to meet a trade delegate at Dyce Airport at the back of four,’ he said. His tone made it quite clear that compared to Douglas and Tash a trade delegate was important. ‘You pay your visit. I’ll make sure that the outside’s clear. Tell me now what time you’re going to leave and I’ll see you on your way for as long as I can.’

  ‘I was planning to get away at about twelve thirty,’ Douglas said.

  Ziegler nodded. That time was now set in concrete. ‘Away you go,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  Mrs Young had her own bungalow in an attractive sheltered housing complex on the other side of the river and about five miles nearer to Aberdeen. The different units were clearly signposted. For the first time since leaving their wedding hotel they were where they might have been expected and Douglas felt exposed. He could see that Tash had been suddenly reminded of George Eastwick and his threats but she bore herself bravely. As he pulled up at the door he saw Ziegler park a heavy looking Mercedes where he had both the car and the door in view.

  Mrs Young came to the door. It took her several seconds to identify Douglas. The family had been warned that although her dementia was at an early stage her short term memory was already affected; but she looked hale, her colour was good and for the moment only a tremor in her hands betrayed her failing health. She was shorter than Douglas but she tried her best to envelop him in a big hug. She managed better with Tash, who was of much the same height as herself. ‘So you’re Natasha,’ she said. ‘My new daughter. Come away in.’

  She brought them into a small, cosy sitting room with a pleasant outlook towards the river. Coffee things were already on the low table with a percolator bubbling quietly on the floor and out of harm’s way. She had a struggle to lift the percolator, which had evidently been filled to more than its usual capacity in honour of the visitors.

  When all three were sipping at a coffee which, considering the rituals that had gone into its preparation was surprisingly awful, she had to be regaled with details of the wedding, who had been there and what the ladies had worn. Douglas promised more than once that she would be sent a DVD of the whole wedding, including speeches. Her small TV had no viewing facility but there was a DVD player, she said, in the common room and all the other ladies loved a wedding. She was quite happy in her sheltered home, she said, and she had both friends in the home and visitors who still remembered her and Douglas’s father. But she was not allowed to cook for herself apart from making hot drinks, because of the shakiness of her hands, which made it impossible to give them lunch. If she had had more warning …

  Douglas avoided mentioning that she had had several weeks of warning. They had to leave soon, he said, to catch a plane from Dyce. Friends were expecting them.

  ‘But you will bring …’ She stopped, searching for Tash’s name.

  ‘Tash.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Natasha.’

  She lit up. ‘That’s it! Natasha! We haven’t had time for a proper chat. You will bring her back again?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will, Mother. We’ll make a much longer visit next time, picking the weather. If business goes well I might even come for a week’s fishing on the Dee and you can have her with you all day.’

  His mother smiled sweetly. ‘I’m sure I’ll like that, dear. I always wanted a daughter to talk girl things with. Make it soon. Goodbye – er …’ She had forgotten Tash’s name again.

  Douglas got back on the North Deeside Road. There was some other traffic but nothing that he considered significant. Ziegler was following but staying well back.

  It would soon be clear to any follower that, instead of going back by the road on which they had arrived, he was heading for the road by Braemar and over Glen Shee. It was a long road and as soon as they had crossed the old boundary into Tayside what had been a straightened road suddenly reverted to a twisting switchback through wild looking moors and heavy hills. It was a popular tourist route and although the schools were back at work the tourist season still lingered as childless families took advantage of the lower rates. Traffic was thin but steady.

  ‘Take my mobile phone again,’ Douglas said. ‘At the first sign of any kind of trouble phone Honeypot. S
he can contact Ziegler for us and she has enough clout to get even the SAS out if she thinks it’s necessary. Just key in one-eight-six and tell whoever answers where we are and what’s happening to us.’

  They travelled in silence for some miles. Tash nursed the phone on her lap. The car had a good radio, probably more valuable than the car itself. They listened to the news, none of it very newsworthy, and turned it off.

  ‘If that was some innocent van driver who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she said suddenly, ‘we’d have heard by now. It would have been all over the news. Anyway, a camper makes a lot of sense. He could watch for us and be on our tails immediately. He couldn’t stay in a hotel while the police are looking for him – I mean, even if they don’t take the threat to us as seriously as Honeypot does, the least they could do would be to phone around the hotels and boarding houses, but he has to sleep somewhere and the weather isn’t settled enough for him to sleep out of doors, except maybe in his car. I’m sure that was him in the camper van.’

  ‘I agree. You’re probably right. I hope you are; I’d hate to find that I’d shot up the bread van. I’ve been trying to think what I’d do if I was in his shoes. Not that I could be in his shoes,’ Douglas said absently. Most of his mind was on keeping the car on the road. ‘I don’t have enough hate in me.’

  ‘Try to imagine really, really hating somebody.’

  ‘I think I’d walk into a caravan dealer’s yard and drive out in a motor caravan. But I think he’d have been safe enough in a hotel if he’d changed his appearance a bit. He might have been using a tent.’ As he spoke, they saw a small tent on the further side of the stream that followed the broad valley of the Clunie Water. A motorcycle and sidecar stood beside the tent and a man was frying something over a small spirit stove. Douglas watched the man in his mirror but there was no sign of a firearm.

  ‘Hello, we’ve lost Ziegler,’ he said. ‘He’ll have turned back to meet his VIP.’

  It was left to Tash to break another long silence. ‘When you shot at that man yesterday – all right, shot at his windscreen – were you reasoning or going on a hunch or did you see him to recognize or what?’