She ate her porridge and kippers with relish, at the same time recognising the restrictiveness of such a diet. She also recognised in herself a reluctance to settle down and work out her next move. The source of this reluctance was obvious—lack of data. She knew, or believed she knew, that Hazlitt was in Scotland. It seemed likely he was in trouble. It seemed likely that his being in trouble had something to do with her. being in trouble. Therefore for both their sakes it seemed a good thing to seek him out and exchange notes. Which was why she was presently sitting in an Edinburgh café drinking vile black coffee (the alternative had been offered as ‘brown’ … What did they add? Mud?).
The only clue to his precise whereabouts was a memory of places he had mentioned in conversation with her. That he would have headed for somewhere familiar rather than braved new terrain seemed a fair deduction. Which left her with a list of half a dozen ‘possibles’ (plus the other possibility that he had gone somewhere he hadn’t mentioned). But which to start at and what to do once she got there, she had no idea.
What I need, she thought, is a clue. Everyone deserves at least one clue in this life. It’s time I got mine.
She realised she was being a little unfair to whoever provided clues as she had already received one or two fair pointers back in Lincoln. But yesterday’s gratitude was as cold as yesterday’s porridge. Clues should come daily like newspapers.
A man sat at the table opposite her glanced at her with disconcerting lack of interest and raised his newspaper in front of his face.
It was the Scottish edition of one of the popular dailies and Caroline looked across at it without interest until suddenly, violently, it struck her that this was more than a newspaper, this was her clue!
There on the front page was a picture. It seemed to show a van half submerged in water, with a bearded ballerina rising from, or sinking below, the waves. But this unusual scene was not what caught Caroline’s eye. In the foreground, near enough the camera to be out of focus, was part of a man’s head. Fuzzy it was and ill-defined, but at this distance it seemed to Caroline to have the unmistakable form and contours of William Blake Hazlitt’s.
She stood up and went nearer. Fuzziness increased and it might have been a turnip. Back two paces, however, and there it was again. Hazlitt’s balding dome, distinctive as Edinburgh Castle.
The man lowered his paper as she advanced again and looked at her with the wary puzzlement of one who fears he is being threatened by eccentricity.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Caroline. ‘Your paper.’
Perhaps her accent made the man think he was being accused of some illicit paternity. Whatever the case he rose and shook his head, holding out the newspaper before him like a charm to ward off evil spirits.
‘Thanks,’ said Caroline, taking it and examining the picture eagerly.
Over the sea to Skye? said the caption whimsically. There followed a light-hearted and very sketchy account of how the van had rolled into the water in the wake of the ferry. But this Caroline disregarded. There was no reason for her to connect the amphibious van with Hazlitt’s presence on the ferry. All it meant was that her immediate problem was solved.
‘Thanks,’ she said again, but the owner of the paper had disappeared. Shrugging her shoulders, she carefully tore out the front page, folded it and thrust it into her already overcrowded bag.
‘Can I have my check please?’ she said to the waitress, who had been watching the scene with lively interest. ‘And tell me. How do I get to the Island of Skye?’
‘Lost him!’ exclaimed the Old Etonian. ‘That’s very careless of you. Very careless. No, no excuses, please. One of you had better take a chance and head north. Yes, that would be best. The other can cast around a bit, try to pick up a scent. Or he may have learned low cunning from the natives and try to double back. If he heads south, we’ll spot him, never fear. Some of us are still earning our money.’
He replaced the receiver and went back to bed.
‘Lost him!’ exclaimed the young man. ‘And Sangster dead. For Christ’s sake, there’s only one of him, isn’t there? And he’s getting old and fat. You go and get him bloody quick. Make it look good if you can, but, above all, get him.’
He slammed down the phone in anger. A capacity for decision-making drew notice, that was certain. But it only drew approval if it were matched by an equal capacity for acting on those decisions.
‘What is it this time?’ demanded the Old Etonian. ‘Durban? I might have known. You’ve lost her? What’s happening to everybody today? No, no, don’t say anything, be it apology or impudence. Just find her, that’s all. Oh, the horror of it all!’
Hazlitt sat in the back of a mini-bus, allowing his lips to move in some kind of synchronism with the jolly protest song the six geology students from Manchester were belting out with much gusto. His flight from Kyle of Lochalsh, the mainland arrival point of the Skye ferry, had taken him as far as Garve in mid Cromarty on a public transport bus. The dangers of this mode of travel were obvious. It left a trail easy to follow. Drivers and conductors could easily be prodded to recall such a figure as he was. It was because of this fear that he had descended near Garve where the road divided, going south-east to Dingwall or Inverness, or north-west to Ullapool. He had spent an uncomfortable mosquito-bitten night on the banks of a river and found himself longing for a soft bed and crisp fresh sheets. But the following morning brought him a stroke of fortune when he ran into the geologists who were camping a little farther upstream. They were a sociable crew and it had been easy to solicit an invitation to join them in their mini-bus. Their ultimate destination was Durness on the north coast of Sutherland, whose rocks seemed to have some peculiar attraction for students of the earth. The main attraction for Hazlitt was that with a bit of luck his tracks would fade out completely at this point. If he kept himself inconspicious between here and Durness there would be no way of picking up his scent again.
Though, of course, he had thought that on Skye.
He wondered if once more he would be able to create that simple, timeless Tom and Jerry world which he had inhabited by Coruisk. He doubted it. It had not been just the mosquitoes which had thwarted his attempts to sleep last night. The past and the future were pressing in hard on him and there had been times in the night when there had seemed only one possible escape from both. Devils, he recalled, had appeared to Faustus, offering knives and ropes to entice him to dispatch himself. The thought made him shudder. But had some benevolent old devil, made up like a maître-d’hôtel, appeared in the night and offered him some gentle, tasteless opiate gently stirred into a glass of Armagnac (not cognac—the dillution of an Armagnac he felt he might just bear, but not a cognac), then he might have fallen. But his mind had started working back over possible menus for this his last meal—a soufflé à la liqueur perhaps, with a Château d’Yquem; preceded by Rognons de Veau Flambes with a bottle of Burgundy. Clos de Tart? Too rich a combination? Then why not? … and so on. And only the mosquitoes had come, and then morning, and here he was still running to some quite unattainable refuge where the croissants were fresh and the brandies very very old.
‘You all right?’ asked Eric, the leader of the party.
Hazlitt realised the singing had stopped but that his mouth was still open and shutting in silent harmony.
‘Oh yes. Fine thanks. I was miles away. Where are we?’
‘Soon be at Kylesku. There’s a pub there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Just in time for opening. We’ll have a pint and a sandwich, then go over the ferry.’
Another ferry. The sea came at you from all sides in this country. He glanced back out of the rear window. Nothing. Dare he start feeling safe for a while? It would be foolish, certainly. But he was not built for perpetual trepidation.
He moistened his lips and grinned at Eric.
‘That’ll be nice,’ he said.
It was nice. After his second pint of heavy he began to feel all was right with the world. Perhaps everything was a simple misun
derstanding, easily cleared up by a rational and tolerant approach from both sides. Correction. All three sides. How nice it would be to return to the status quo, looking forward to Africa with beyond that the prospect of Stewart Stuart’s retirement to keep the digestive juices running. A watercress soup of a life, simple, creamy and refreshing, the only fly in it being the prospect of separation from Caroline for a few months.
Caroline. He shuddered to think how close he had come to making a serious committal in that direction only a few weeks earlier. To have done so, to have come out in the open, might, of course, have brought rejection, even derision. He hoped not. But had his declaration been accepted, reciprocated, then the thought of the worry and unease he would now be causing the girl would have been intolerable. As it was she might be a little piqued, perhaps even slightly hurt, by his sudden most unchivalrous disappearance, but that was all. She’d get over it; their relationship would become a mere episode, a brush with middle-aged, English academic eccentricity. There had been plenty of young eligibles in the wings waiting to take over when he found the pace too hot. Tarquin and Sholto, those well-bred young shits in his own office, for instance. Or Tom Poulson, that vague lawyer even. Not to mention the whole horrid hairy and horny student brigade.
Oh yes, he thought gloomily (going up to the bar for another pint and thus not noticing the large white shooting-brake containing two men, one with a thick ear, and an exasperated-looking woman, which drove straight on to the ferry), oh yes, he thought, she’ll have lost sight of me by now. Wherever she is at this moment, she’ll be all right.
Caroline was driving hard through Glen Coe determined to perpetrate a second and more fearful massacre on any sheep, cyclists or caravans that got in her way. It had been a frustrating morning. The car-hire firms she had visited in Edinburgh had all with one accord assured her that hire cars were at this moment rarer in Scotland than good cooks. Finally she had descended upon a used-car lot, picked out the first post-1970 car she saw with a current road-fund licence and offered to buy it. The ‘salesman’, an elderly Scot, whose attention to her needs was continually interrupted by calls for his services at the petrol pumps, advised her that his ‘laddie’ looked after that part of the business and would be back in ‘no time at a’.’
Finally Caroline wrote a cheque for the amount asked and thrust it at him, along with her full array of cheque and credit cards. The old man turned them over hesitantly, his eyes more concerned with the display of panties which had spilt out of the bag.
‘What’s the problem?’ demanded Caroline. ‘Do I get the car or don’t I?’
‘Well noo,’ said the old man, turning the cheque over and over in his hands. ‘Do you no’ have proof of your identity?’
‘Such as? Such as?’ cried Caroline.
‘Well, say, an old envelope with your address on?’
‘Would a postcard do?’
‘Aye. Aye, I reckon so.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Just you wait. Don’t go away.’
She gathered up her things, went into a newsagent’s shop next door to the garage and bought a view of the Forth Bridge. Quickly she addressed it to herself.
‘Here,’ she said to the old man. ‘Will that do?’
Two minutes later she was in the car and on her way.
There was no straight road to Skye, she discovered, merely a choice of circumgyrations. To complicate matters the roads were narrow, seemingly packed with cyclists, completely open to suicidal sheep, and bestridden by monstrous, dangerously swaying caravans.
‘No man is worth this,’ she told herself, cutting in on one travelling suburban bungalow in order to avoid collision with another. Both drivers blew their horns abusively, but Caroline ignored them. She had grown exhausted with making rude gestures a good hour earlier. ‘But,’ she went on to herself, ‘if any man is worth it, then he’s really worth it!’
She nodded vigorously and pressed her foot hard on the accelerator with the certainty of a logician who has produced a flawless syllogism.
Hazlitt would have recognised and approved of the logical system thus demonstrated. He himself had just carried out a similar feat of disjunctive reasoning, to wit, that it is better to be driven by a man made capable by drink than by a man made incapable by it.
Eric had indicated that he and Lawrence, the only two qualified drivers in the party, had embraced the dangerous Scottish habit of taking a whisky chaser with their beer. The result was a certain dissociation of sensibility which made driving difficult. Either they rested at Kylesku for another couple of hours to sober up, or perhaps Hazlitt could help …?
After his recent experiences in the van, Hazlitt had felt certain he would never be able to sit behind a wheel again. But three pints of the ‘heavy’, plus a desire to keep moving, made him agree without demur.
He moved the mini-bus into position for the ferry. It was a short crossing here over Loch Glendhu and the ferry was small, taking only half a dozen cars at a time. As they waited for the south-bound cars to disembark, Hazlitt saw in his mirror a small convoy come into line behind him, headed by that scourge of Highland driving, a caravan. A couple of cars behind this was a red Capri, whose driver now got out and glared contemptuously at the caravanners.
Hazlitt stared into the mirror in disbelief, then stuck his head out of the window and peered back to make sure.
It was Tom. Not (thank heaven!) Tom (Mark II), last seen lying dead by the waters of Coruisk, but Tom (Mark I), the burly, sinister figure in the fawn raincoat and brown trilby, who had first aroused Hazlitt’s fears yesterday (could it only be yesterday?) morning.
Coincidence? Possibly. There was nothing except that initial intuitive fear to connect this man with any of his pursuers. And the North of Scotland offered such a comparatively limited selection of roads that it was not surprising to re-encounter other travellers.
The ferry was empty now. Tom turned back to his car, but as he did so, their eyes met.
There was not a flicker of expression, not a hint of emotion, but Hazlitt knew with the certainty of a seventh child of a seventh child that he had been recognised.
It seemed possible for a happy moment that the caravan would take up so much room that the Capri would be left behind. But it just made it and when they reached the other side the Capri even made an effort to disembark before the caravan. Hazlitt was delighted to see the attempt thwarted as he pulled away up the hill from the ferry. It gave him a chance to get some kind of lead and he urged the mini-bus forward with all the rusty skill at his command.
It was not a road for fast driving. It was a wild road, narrow, winding, dangerous, at one with the turbulent landscape which it traversed. Sudden views of lochs and bays flashed on the eye between grassy knolls and outbursts of massive rock. It was as if the landscape had boiled up and suddenly set. From time to time there were small lay-bys which acted as passing points. It provided a stem test of judgment and often a clash of wills when two cars approached each other. For Hazlitt, desperately trying to make the best speed he could in his unwieldy and unfamiliar vehicle, it was nightmarish. Fortunately the geologists were still sufficiently euphoric or somnolent from their protracted halt at the inn for his excesses to go unremarked.
The road behind remained clear, though there was never much of it visible at any one time. His spirits began to raise themselves slightly. Perhaps he could get to Durness without being overtaken. Perhaps he could go to earth there and sort things out in his mind.
Perhaps Tom (Mark I) was, after all, merely a chance tourist, seeking the solace of nature after fifty weeks in a stuffy office.
Perhaps … there was a flash of red on the road behind him, then he was round another bend and it was gone. Perhaps it had never been. Oh no. That way disaster lies. Admit what you see. A sixty-yard straight. Foot down and get the needle up to fifty. Jesus how these things bucked and swayed!
‘What’s the rush, squire?’ asked Eric. ‘We’ll be there for opening, so take it easy.’
He slowed for the bend. Behind him, at the other end of the straight, appeared the Capri. That was it. He might as well slow down to a crawl.
But he was finding out quite a lot about the psychology of the hunted, especially the hunted who had been shot at and half drowned and who had three pints of the ‘heavy’ in his belly. This creature didn’t slow down until exhaustion brought it down. And even then, perhaps, it turned at bay and fought. But he wouldn’t know that till the moment came.
He took the bend on two wheels and immediately thrust down on the accelerator once more. Everyone was awake now, surprised to find themselves all at the same side of the bus with most of their luggage.
‘For Christ’s sake, watch it!’
‘Stop the bus, I want a pee.’
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Please!’
‘Oh Jesus Mary Mother of …’
Coming towards them was a truck, just a medium-sized truck, but on this road and at this moment it assumed the dimensions of a Juggernaut. There was a passing spot just ahead, but it would have been impossible to halt in it even had Hazlitt so desired. He kept his foot down and concentrated his attention on the next passing spot about seventy yards on. The truck had almost reached it and the driver was flashing his headlights madly, whether in anger or some kind of signal Hazlitt did not know.
The red Capri was closing fast. The truck had not quite reached the lay-by when the mini-bus passed it. The nearside wheels strayed off the road on to a narrow strip of rock-lined grass. One of the hub caps hit a rock, scraped along it with a terrifying screech, then they were past and back on tarmac again.
The geologists were silent now with the silence of utter fear. Hazlitt felt it emanating from them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
But his apology was of little use. He swung round the next bend and saw why the truck-driver had been flashing his lights. Parked by the roadside was a large white shooting-brake, jacked up and with one wheel removed. There was just enough room to squeeze by for a driver of care and skill, travelling at five or six miles an hour.
Death Takes the Low Road Page 6