Orkney Twilight

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Orkney Twilight Page 26

by Clare Carson


  ‘Gotcha.’

  She yelped with pain as her arm was grabbed and yanked backwards.

  ‘Saved you,’ said her captor.

  She recognized the voice. ‘Becky,’ she said, attempting to control the quaver in her throat. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Coming to check up on you. Make sure you’re okay. You looked as if you were preparing to throw yourself on top of your father’s coffin.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I should bloody well hope not.’

  ‘I am feeling a bit wobbly though. I could do with a spliff before I go to the pub.’

  They wandered down the path to the south side of the graveyard, through a wooden gate into a meadow beyond; heifers idly loafing in a far corner, the air humming with bees and the cat-pee whiff of Queen Anne’s Lace. They perched on the rotting planks of a moss-covered bench, hidden from the churchyard by a hedgerow of hawthorns.

  ‘What was all that chucking dust about anyway?’ Becky asked. ‘Why do you think he insisted on that? It felt like a scene from a film about the Mafia.’

  Sam attempted a smile. ‘I will show you fear, perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’

  ‘Oh, that bloody misogynist Eliot. The Waste Land.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Jess taught me a great new way to roll a reefer.’

  She removed two Rizla papers from the red packet, delicately licked their gummy edges with the tip of her tongue, stuck them together carefully at an angle, struck a match and held it to the side of the surplus seam. Just as Jess had done. The thin paper instantly burst into flames, whipped into the air, narrowly missing her hair, transformed into a puffball of grey ash and floated away. Becky snorted, laughing. Sam laughed too. Manically.

  ‘You idiot,’ Becky said.

  She snatched the Rizla packet and nimbly rolled a joint. They puffed contentedly in the late afternoon sun. Sam found herself mesmerized by the gleam of a dazzling emerald jewel in a fresh cow pat; a green dung beetle frantically waving its clubbed antennae. Swimming through the shit. Or perhaps it was drowning.

  Ambling back through the graveyard, weaving around the grassy mounds covering long-forgotten bones, she automatically glanced across at Jim’s plot. A small black plaque marked the head of the pit. Strange. She couldn’t remember anybody leaving a plaque. Somebody must have returned to the grave while they were having a spliff. She darted off the path, picked up the etched marble stone. In one corner, there was a pair of ghostly hands pressed together in prayer. In the opposite, Sam identified the familiar crowned badge of the Force. Becky stepped over to join her as she read out the words carved diagonally across the plaque’s face.

  ‘Ars longa, vita brevis.’

  Latin.

  ‘Art is long, life is short,’ said Becky. ‘Hippocrates. He was talking about medicine, his professional skills. There’s a lot to learn and not much time to do it.’ She hesitated. ‘Odd thing to put on a memorial.’

  Becky was right; it was a peculiar sentiment.

  ‘Who do you think left that then?’ Becky asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Sam stood up and returned Becky’s hard brown gaze unblinkingly.

  ‘You’re not very good at lying,’ Becky said.

  ‘I’m not lying. I don’t know.’

  But she could guess. Only one of Jim’s companions was big on Latin. She screwed up her eyes, squinted along the path leading under the lychgate, searching for movement, a figure, a stranger. The Commander must have found out where the funeral was being held and left the plaque on Jim’s grave. Ars longa, vita brevis.

  ‘Don’t,’ Becky said.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Leave it alone. Stop digging. Jim’s dead and buried.’

  Sam lifted a small pebble distractedly with her foot and sent it arcing over the edge of the grave in a neat parabola. It curved down and bounced on the coffin’s lid, making a hollow drum-like plop as it landed.

  Becky folded her arms, shook her head. ‘If you don’t go chasing him,’ she said, ‘he’s not going to come after you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ Sam smiled wanly. ‘Let’s go and join the wake.’

  Along the sunken lane, dappled light playing around the twisting trunks and gnarly roots, the leaves rustling in the breeze. Ars longa, vita brevis, the oak trees whispered. Taunting her with the hidden meaning of the Commander’s message. There is a lot to learn and life is short. Was it a warning? Don’t be a smart-arse if you don’t have the tradecraft. Or else you’ll cop it. She instinctively reached for the feather in her pocket, hoping to gain comfort from its touch. But, instead, it made her think of Odin and his ravens. The wild hunt. Searching out the traitors. Hunting them down. She silently cursed her mother’s insistence on banning the Commander from attending Jim’s funeral, rueing again her lost opportunity to get rid of the envelope.

  They reached the turning point for the double-deckers at the end of their route out of London; a triangular patch of tarmac covering what had once been the village duck pond. She scanned the parked cars and driveways, hoping for some evidence of the Commander’s presence, but the village was deserted. All was silent, apart from a pub sign clanking in the wind. The Green Man. The yellow eyes of the strange foliage-entwined creature followed her as the sign swung to and fro, pushed by the strengthening gusts. Odin, master of the winds, she thought. King of the underworld. Lord of the dead. Sam shivered in the rapidly cooling air of the late afternoon, plagued by the nagging sense that now Jim was gone, she had become the hunt’s main quarry. The object of the chase.

  19

  The day after the funeral, everyone was hanging around the house aimlessly. The phone rang as Sam brushed past it on the way to the kitchen to make another cup of coffee. She picked it up without thinking. It was Tom. Just the sound of his voice put her on edge, her brain searching for a way of cutting him off quickly while she politely said hello.

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. I’ll call you back later. I’m about to go out,’ she lied effortlessly.

  ‘Sam. It’s important.’

  ‘This afternoon. I’ll call you then.’

  ‘Listen. I’ve found out about Shinkolobwe.’

  The name gave her a start, a painful reminder of her unfinished business. She checked over her shoulder, heard Liz clanking about, busy in the kitchen.

  ‘I know about Shinkolobwe,’ she said. ‘Shinkolobwe is a mine in Zaire. Katanga.’

  ‘Yes, but do you know what kind of mine it is?’

  She dug the fingers of her free hand into her thigh. ‘Tell me then,’ she said. ‘What kind of mine is it?’

  ‘Uranium.’

  Uranium. Her legs suddenly felt heavy, tingly. She collapsed on to the floor, back against the wall, the receiver pressed to her ear.

  ‘It was the world’s richest bloody deposit of uranium,’ Tom continued. ‘Shinkolobwe is the mine that supplied the uranium for the Manhattan Project, which developed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs. But it’s officially closed,’ he added. ‘It’s been abandoned.’

  An abandoned uranium mine. No wonder it wasn’t marked in the atlas.

  ‘I asked this mate of my mum’s – weirdy-beardy, department of development studies, specializes in Africa – his eyes just lit up when I mentioned the name. Set him off. Shinkolobwe is a hell-hole of capitalist history. A magnet for the darkest forces of the colonial endeavour. A conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.’

  She clicked her tongue impatiently ‘So when was it closed?’

  ‘In 1963. Zaire was called the Congo then. Shinkolobwe was owned by a Belgian mining company. When the Congo was given independence from the Belgians in 1960, Katanga declared itself an independent republic. The Belgians who owned the mines there financed a puppet regime so they could carry on mining. And the Katanga army that defended them was run by a bunch of European
mercenaries.’

  Jesus. Jim and Don Chance. 1960. Shinkolobwe. That was where Jim had parted from Chance in 1960, he had said. She tried to trace his course in her mind, remember what he had told her, piece the fragments together. Gun-running. He had been transporting weapons across southern Africa. He must have delivered the guns to the Katanga army. But then he had been shocked by the conditions in Shinkolobwe, argued with the foreman, had his toes shot off and decided he’d had enough. He wasn’t prepared to fight the Belgians’ battle. He had seen the bigger, bleaker picture, had already acquired too many mercenary scars. Backed away from the precipice. Her hands were sweaty. She wiped her palms on her trousers.

  ‘So what happened after 1960?’

  ‘A lot of fighting. And assassinations. UN Secretary Generals dead. Prime Ministers bumped off. Anybody and everybody was involved apparently. MI6. CIA. KGB.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Exactly. But, despite the West’s efforts to keep control of the area, presumably to keep it out of the hands of the Soviets who were backing the Congolese, the Belgians were forced out and Katanga was reunited with the rest of the Congo. The Belgians filled the mineshafts with concrete before they left. 1963. Mobutu became President in 1971. That’s when the Congo’s name was changed to Zaire. The state took ownership of the mines. And Katanga’s name was changed to Shaba.’

  Shaba? Shaba Security Limited. The torn receipt in the manila envelope must have come from Shinkolobwe. Black dots started dancing in front of her eyes. She rubbed the back of her neck. Trying to clear her head, make sense of it all.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘So Shinkolobwe is still closed?’ she demanded.

  ‘Officially. Heavily guarded by security companies supposedly. But, according to my mum’s mate, people have carried on mining anyway. Illegally. The locals just go into the mines because they don’t know the risks. Or don’t care because they are so desperate for cash. They dig the stuff out by hand, would you believe, carry it out in sacks. Presumably if they survive the mines, they die horribly a few years later. Apparently uranium is found in copper ore, and that’s how it’s smuggled out of the country. Every now and then some border guard decides to run a Geiger counter over a copper consignment and the needle goes ballistic.’

  Christ. What had Jim said? Chance had been back to Shinkolobwe. To do what? Providing security services: turning a blind eye, oiling palms, greasing wheels. Enabling illegal uranium mining perhaps? For a cut of the profits. Backhanders. She inhaled, attempting to fill her lungs. Her chest was too tight. She tried breathing through her nose. It wasn’t helping. She opened her mouth wide. No oxygen.

  ‘Sam, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Just.

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘This mate of my mum’s said he’d heard from one of his academic contacts in Kinshasa that there were rumours of some sort of massacre there a few months ago.’

  ‘Massacre? What kind of massacre?’

  ‘The story is that the locals who were going into the mine were fed up with the size of the bribes that the security guards were demanding. So some of them got together and organized a deputation to confront the guards, there was an argument, and the guards shot the lot of them. A Danish demographer was doing some research on maternal mortality in the area. But all the villagers wanted to talk about was the deaths of the men at the mine. So this researcher reported the story to an official at the Danish Embassy and it seems as if somebody there has decided to try and follow it up.’

  Sam stared into space, her brain racing.

  ‘Sam. Why do you think Jim asked us whether we knew where Shinkolobwe was?’

  She was glad he couldn’t see her reddening face. ‘He was probably just showing off. Demonstrating his superior knowledge of geography.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him about it?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘He brought it up. He mentioned it. So why can’t you ask?’

  ‘Because he’s…’ She stopped. She didn’t want to tell Tom about Jim’s death, didn’t want to prolong the conversation.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘thanks for telling me all this. It’s very interesting. But I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Sam. Is there some connection between Shinkolobwe and something that happened in Orkney while we were there?’

  ‘I doubt it very much. I really do have to go now. Thanks for phoning. I’ll call you.’

  She slammed the receiver down, sat there on the floor, turning Tom’s question over in her mind. She tried to recall Jim’s exact words about Shinkolobwe on the train coming back from Orkney. When Chance told him that he had been back to Shinkolobwe, he hadn’t thought it was significant. And then oddly enough, he had said, something turned up in Orkney that made him think about Shinkolobwe again. A funny connection. A funny connection with what? With the Watcher and Intelligence plans to fix the miners’ strike perhaps? And what had turned up in Orkney? The manila envelope of course. She pushed herself up from the floor and ran to her bedroom.

  She ferreted under the bed, removed the shoebox, extracted the manila envelope and emptied its contents on the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, concentrated, trying to comprehend all the links in the chain. She started shuffling the pieces around on the floor. On her right-hand side she placed the receipt for electrical wire, the list of bomb-making parts, the hand-drawn map of the station, the photocopy of the passport for Anthony Baines. Those were the papers, she reckoned, that gave away information about Intelligence and the strike. On her left she put the torn receipt from Shaba Security Limited, subsidiary of – whatever the missing word was – Asset Management. That piece of paper, she now knew, came from Shinkolobwe. How did it get into the envelope? How was it connected to Intelligence and the miners’ strike?

  She held her palm over the papers as if she were divining their hidden meanings. She shut her eyes. Opened them again. Reached for the passport photocopy. This was, she reckoned, fake ID for a man who was working with the Watcher and Intelligence, possibly as some kind of provocateur. Was he also, somehow, connected with Shinkolobwe? Was he the critical link? There was, she realized now, only one way she could find out. She would have to ask Anne Greenaway. She gathered up the pieces, stuffed them back in the envelope and placed the envelope in the side pocket of her Laurence Corner cargo trousers. She rummaged in the shoebox, glanced at Anne Greenaway’s address on the purple envelope – 24 Milton House, Brixton. She would go to Brixton and talk to Anne Greenaway. And then she would work out what to do with the envelope.

  She grabbed her coat, put her hand on the door handle, caught sight of the fading burn mark on her forearm, grimaced. She must be crazy to be doing this, messing with the professionals – the wet-workers, the hitmen. Her brain churned, searching for any shred of information that might help her make it through the day. Ruth’s whispered words to her at the funeral floated into her head; Jim had left her a number. She dived across the room, fished around in the shoebox once more and retrieved the scrap Tom had found under Jim’s bed in Nethergate. She glanced at the scribbled London phone number and added it to her pocket.

  Liz was in the kitchen, standing by the sink, rubbing her hands vigorously under a gushing tap. As Sam entered, her mother’s eyes darted sideways towards the holiday brochure lying open on the counter.

  ‘Greek Islands,’ Liz said. ‘I’m thinking of going with Roger in September after you’ve gone up to college.’

  Sam put one elbow on the counter, flicked casually through the pages, perusing the descriptions of the exquisite villas with their windows opening on to the Aegean. She could feel Liz watching her, nervously trying to gauge her reaction. The song of a thrush drifted in through the open kitchen window.

  ‘Mum,’ Sam said. ‘You know all that stuff about chucking dust on the grave. You don’t think there was a bit of a message there, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was there a message for Roger in th
e dust-throwing? “I will show you fear.” Jim getting in the final word to the Professor of English Literature.’

  Liz opened her mouth, a protesting oh, and closed it again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She gave her hands one last rinse, shook them dry. ‘The dust. That was just Jim and his weird relationship with religion.’

  ‘I don’t think he had a weird relationship with religion,’ Sam replied. ‘He had spiritual beliefs about the world; he just didn’t think much of the church. Not the Catholic Church at least.’

  ‘Well, the dust was just one of Jim’s idiosyncratic gestures.’ Liz waved her hand dismissively.

  Sam stared pointedly at the holiday brochure in front of her. ‘Why did you stick with Jim?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’

  ‘Relationships are complicated.’ Liz was talking to the cooker. ‘They’re not like your beloved cryptic crosswords. You can’t just work them out by parsing all the clues. The thing is; I fell in love with Jim. He was the man I wanted to marry. But it wasn’t easy. His job made it difficult from the start. He was never there anyway, and when he was at home, he wasn’t always pleasant company. I often felt that he was married to his job, to the bloody Commander. But sometimes you just have to stick things out. For the sake of the family.’ She paused, twisted her wedding ring. ‘I’m not sure he turned out to be the man I thought I’d married.’

 

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