The truth became evident round the next bend. Distantly on a grassy headland overlooking the sea, the good people of Durness and at least an equal number of visitors had indeed gathered. Pipe music came drifting mournfully towards her and what looked like an animated telegraph pole momentarily reared its length into the breathless air.
It came to Caroline that probably her only chance of getting a long cool drink in this place today would be at the Gathering.
With a sigh she parked her car and set off across the field in search of a refreshment tent. It was not difficult to find. Only the pipe band could have hoped to compete with the happy chatter that was coming from its vicinity and as most of the pipers themselves seemed now to have abandoned the charms of music and joined the drinkers, it was no contest
What most of those near the bar seemed to be doing, Caroline rapidly observed, was getting as much whisky as possible into their bellies via a kind of bucket chain of cardboard cups. Whether they were motivated by some fear that the cardboard would absorb the liquid or, worse, grow soggy and spill it, Caroline could not say. But she began to suspect that her own desired concoction was going to be difficult to find. Nevertheless she asked for it. Hazlitt, who made much more fuss about food and drink than she ever did, would have found her ridiculous. ‘Good catering,’ he said, ‘is doing what is possible perfectly. Only half-wits and Americans always expect the impossible and never appreciate perfection.’ To which Caroline had offered the only possible counter: ‘Oh wrap up, you pompous gnome.’ This moment had been if not a turning point, at least the first screech of a rusty hinge in their relationship.
‘I should like,’ she said, to the amiably smiling girl at the other side of the bar, ‘a dry Cinzano with ice, lime juice, a sprig of bruised mint if you’ve got it, but otherwise a zest of lemon will do, all topped up with soda.’
To her surprise the girl nodded brightly, seized a cardboard cup, thrust it over the counter and said, ‘Fifteen pee.’
It contained, of course, whisky. Caroline shook her head. Her principles demanded that she start all over again with her explanation, but the flesh was suddenly weak and wilting.
She turned, left the tent, bought herself a huge ice-cream cone and settled down to watch the Games.
They seemed an interesting mixture of the usual athletic pastimes and the peculiarly Scottish ones of hurling weights and telegraph poles (called ‘cabers’, with a short ‘a’) great distances and heights. Caroline could not really claim it grabbed her. Athletic pursuits of any kind usually bored her. Though there was, she had to admit, a certain kinky pleasure to be got out of watching scenes like that before her now, in which a kilted man swung a huge metal weight between his legs, then hurled the thing high over his head and ran quickly forward before it could descend on him. She presumed the first person to incur a serious injury in the groin or the skull lost.
The sporting world was, she realised, another area of complete lack of harmony with Hazlitt. Truthfully speaking, she thought we have nothing in common. Why do I bother?
For a moment, standing there almost as far north as she could get, eating an ice-cream she hadn’t wanted, watching a spectacle she didn’t care for, surrounded by people she didn’t know, it seemed a very good question.
Then she saw Hazlitt and her heart turned over. It was like being struck in the stomach by a blunt instrument. In fact, looking down, she realised that if a Great Dane’s head could be called a blunt instrument this is just what had happened. Dogs provided another area of disagreement with Hazlitt, who had now disappeared from view. She cared little for most dogs. Big dogs that seemed intent on ravishing her, she hated. The brute reared up and attempted to place its paws on her shoulders. Over its great slobbering head she saw Hazlitt again. He was on the far side of the ground, separated from her by a mere fifty yards of grass and, of course, half a hundredweight of canine flesh.
A shirt-sleeved, handkerchief-hatted man carrying a thonged leather dog lead and wearing on his face the revolting smile of one who thinks attention from his pet is like a mention in the New Year’s Honours List, nodded encouragingly at Caroline and said, ‘It’s your ice-cream he’s after, lassie. Och aye, he’s a rare boy for the ice-cream.’
‘You don’t say? Then he can bloody well have it!’ exclaimed Caroline, and thrust the remnants of her cone into the animal’s mouth. Far from being gratified at such largesse, the animal began to howl piteously and retreated behind the legs of its owner, whose reaction was equally lacking in pleasure.
‘Hey now, hey now, there there, hen, it’s a’richt, hey now, what for did ye do that? This is a highly strung beastie …’
But Caroline had not time to argue or to utter even a small selection of the twenty or thirty pieces of fine abuse which came to her mind. She had lost Hazlitt again and began ranging around trying to catch a glimpse of that familiar sun-reddened pate.
There he was! Someone had stopped him. A woman. Caroline’s heart turned over again, this time for a different cause. Could the answer to all the mysteries be simply this, that he wanted to get away with some female whose identity needed to be kept secret? A colleague’s wife perhaps? Or the Vice-Chancellor’s daughter. Or even that awful girl in the Registry who came to work mini-skirted, obscenely astraddle a motor-bike? That would be unbearable. An older woman was one thing, but that young piece would be very hard to take. Or wouldn’t be, which was the trouble.
No, this woman was no dolly bird. And even at this distance their relationship didn’t look very affectionate, though they were standing close together. Caroline began edging her way round the edge of the games arena. The crowd was most tightly packed here and progress was slow, but at least she could keep Hazlitt in sight.
But now something else was happening. Two men had joined the woman and Hazlitt was quite enveloped in this little triangle. Caroline had been delighted to feel that the previous relationship had not been affectionate. Now suddenly she got an impression of menace which was multiplied as the little group began to move off away from the main Gathering. Then another figure detached itself from the crowd and began to move after them. It was the tall, bearded, Peugeot-driving Scot.
Convinced now there was something very wrong, Caroline tried to increase her speed of progress, but the crowd seemed set on hindering her. Exasperated, she ducked beneath the rope barrier which marked the edge of the track, ignored protesting cries from a couple of elderly stewards and began to sprint across the central arena.
It would not be a good idea, some still rational section of her mind told her, to get in the way of that man with the caber. But he, bulging muscles shiny with sweat and eyes tight-closed with effort and concentration, seemed determined that the encounter should take place.
A great shout went up from the crowd as Caroline dodged like a quarter back (or whoever it was that did the dodging in that tedious game) through the wondering competitors and officials and bore down upon the lumbering caber-tosser. The noise, and that instinct which says all is not right, finally caused him to open his eyes. Running directly towards him with menace written broad on her face was a girl. There was no way in which he could know the menace was not aimed at him. He turned at right angles, seeking escape, realised he was still carrying the caber, a considerable impediment to most normal methods of self-protection, and flung it forward as the easiest method of getting rid of it.
Fortunately there was nothing human to hinder its progress. What did lie in its way, however, was a table on which in bright and shining array stood the trophies. Cups for running; cups for jumping; cups for piping; cups for dancing; and, of course, a large elegant, silver cup for caber-tossing.
The great length of wood smashed down on one end of this table, flattening some trophies and catapulting the rest high into the air in the direction of the crowd. Among them was a box, of no great intrinsic value, but containing the money prizes to be won that afternoon, ranging from 50p for the boys under-fifteen long jump (confined) to several pounds for the
throwing events. After ducking out of the way of the heavier pieces of flying metal, the crowd seemed disposed to regard the descent of pound notes and coin as an acceptable compensation for the danger they had undergone and a version of the Eton Wall Game rapidly developed as they burrowed and scrabbled in pursuit of the spoils.
Caroline, meanwhile, had made the other side of the ground and broken through the ring of spectators there. Distantly she could see Hazlitt and his companions almost arrived at the car park. She tried to shout, but had little breath to spare. The squeak she managed, however, caught the attention of the bearded man, who was much closer than the others. He swung round and looked at her in some surprise. Over his shoulder she could see the others stepping over the rope barrier into the park and, working on the bird-in-the-hand principle, she flung herself desperately at the bearded man.
‘What are you doing with him?’ she screamed. ‘You bring him back, you hear me? Bring him back!’
Easily he disengaged himself.
‘A word to the wise,’ he said. ‘Keep out of this, lady. It’s no’ your speed.’
So saying, he turned swiftly away and mingled with the crowd. For a moment Caroline contemplated further pursuit, then looking behind her saw the welcome black-and-white check of a policeman’s cap. It was time to get the professionals in, she decided, and began to trot towards it as swiftly as her laboured breathing would permit.
The policeman, it seemed, was just as eager to meet her. He ignored her attempt at explanation, her demands for urgent action.
‘Name,’ he kept on saying.
‘Caroline Nevis!’ she exploded finally. ‘What’s it matter if I’m Mary Queen of Scots? Are you going to do something?’
‘Aye, I thought so,’ said the policeman with grim self-commendation. ‘Will ye come wi’ me, please, Miss Nevis?’
Caroline would not have believed anything could have put Hazlitt’s fate out of the top placings in her matters of immediate concern, not for a couple of days, at least. But ten minutes later, as she sat in the dark little police station looking at the copy of that morning’s Scotsman which had been placed before her, her mind had only space for one thought: How can this be happening to me?
‘Miss Caroline Nevis,’ said the newspaper report, beneath a not very flattering picture of herself, ‘failed to answer a shop-lifting charge at Lincoln magistrates’ court yesterday morning. A warrant was issued, police went round to the house of her uncle, Professor James Nevis, well known for his television lectures on molecular biology. With his permission, they searched her room. A quantity of marijuana is believed to have been found. The police are eager to interview Miss Nevis who may at present be holidaying in Scotland.’
That was it. But it was more than enough. There was only one thing to be said.
‘I want a lawyer,’ said Caroline.
Suppose, thought Hazlitt, one were to marinade a piece of pork tenderloin in a mixture of malt whisky and heather honey for, say, two or three days, then bake it with a nutmeg in a case of choux pastry, what might that taste like?
He had always found the invention of new dishes a useful and profitable means of distracting his mind from external unpleasantnesses. Some of his greatest triumphs had been created in the dentist’s chair.
But at this moment the digestive juices were refusing to trickle and the thought was beginning to predominate that unless something happened quickly, very soon he was going to be heading for that Great Kitchen in the Sky.
It had been foolish to appear so soon so publicly so close to his last place of disappearance. But that morning he had chanced on an old farmer having trouble with his even older car and by some miracle he had managed to poke the right wire to get it going. In gratitude the old man had shared the best part of a gill of whisky with him and offered to give him a lift to the Gathering. Like so many other disastrous decisions in his life, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Even when Tom (Mark II)’s woman had approached him on the field, he had been comparatively unworried. Surrounded by people, he felt safe. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? All this business of bumming around on bog, mountain and moor was pointless. Crowds were the thing, especially when open assassination was not part of the plan.
So if Cherry had produced a gun, he had been ready to laugh at her and walk away.
Instead her two new friends had suddenly appeared, aubergine-ear had gripped his left wrist most painfully, while the other had produced a wicked little knife and described with graphic economy what he proposed to do with it.
Crowds, realised Hazlitt, were no use at all. All crowds could do was provide a ring of bewildered, nauseated, or frightened faces to stare down at some odd stranger lying on the crushed grass with blood and guts seeping from his belly. They might not even notice.
As he was hurried towards the car park he heard a great roar of excitement behind him. Doubtless someone had thrown a hammer or putted a shot or tossed a caber some extraordinary distance, while over here an ordinary man was getting into an ordinary car and being driven along an ordinary road to what was after all a very ordinary fate.
‘And all this,’ said Hazlitt, ‘because of the Young Conservatives.’
‘What?’
‘You see,’ continued Hazlitt, ‘my mother made me join the Young Conservatives. And the majority of National Service officers were Young Conservatives. So by the time I got to Berlin in the fifties, I had had a bellyful of Young Conservatives. Oh yes.’
‘Can’t you shut him up?’ asked Cherry. ‘The sooner this is all over the better. I’ve left my sister looking after things and that means chaos.’
‘If you and Sangster had been a bit more alert on Skye we’d have all been home by now,’ said the knife man reprovingly.
‘There’s nothing like a bit of good old British inefficiency,’ said Hazlitt. ‘But let me get this straight. Sangster was the young man in the tartan shirt who threw me in the loch. Then the US cavalry in the form of, let me think, yes, the big chap with the beard turns up, is obliged to shoot Sangster, ties you up and pulls me out. How’s that? I wake up and off I go. You somehow get back in the game and let your playmates here know what’s going on. They set out to intercept.’
He looked around triumphantly, bringing a sharp pressure in the ribs from the automatic which had been substituted as a deterrent for the knife.
‘Do we have to listen to this all the way?’ demanded Cherry.
‘Let the poor sod talk,’ said the knife man pityingly.
If anything, Hazlitt preferred the woman’s acrimony. At least it seemed based on a simple domestic longing to get home.
‘I’m sure it’s struck you,’ he said, trying to prevent his normally rather high-pitched voice from soaring to the upper registers of fear, ‘that whatever else intervention from our bearded friend shows, it shows that somebody knows what you’re up to.’
‘So?’
‘So what’s the point of doing it … getting rid of me … quietly when somebody else will know what’s happened?’
‘That depends who he is, doesn’t it?’ said aubergine-ear.
‘You see,’ explained the knife man, ‘when you’re found after your accident there’ll be plenty of people who will know what’s happened. There always are. But what will be accepted, of course, is what the evidence points to. It always is.’
‘What about the police?’
‘They’re not involved.’
‘Not involved,’ snorted Hazlitt. ‘When your buddy, Sangster, is found full of bullets, they’ll be involved!’
‘You underestimate Cherry,’ said the knife man. ‘They won’t find Sangster, not for many a long year.’
Hazlitt looked at the woman, who ignored his glance—so much for domesticity. A long silence followed and he began to pay attention to the road. They were travelling east, he realised, following the contours of the coast. What their destination was, he didn’t know, nor did he care to enquire. There are some things it is better to remai
n ignorant of.
‘I could change my mind,’ he said suddenly.
‘What about?’
‘About doing what they want. Suppose I agreed? That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?’
‘No,’ said the knife man sadly.
‘I mean it.’
‘No doubt. I’m happy for you. Now I reckon the Roman Catholics are one of our biggest obstacles in the modern world, but I’ve got to admit the Inquisition had the right idea about eleventh-hour converts. They were delighted about it, praised God, gave thanks, but they still went through with the executions. Only now they were sending souls to heaven not to hell, which was nice. Alas, our own system doesn’t hold out any such pleasant prospect for you. But it’ll be a comfort for those who remain to know you returned to the fold before the end.’
‘But I could be useful! That’s what this is all about!’
‘Look,’ said the knife man. ‘I don’t know what this is all about, not precisely anyway. And I don’t want to know. But I can tell you this—it’s not what you will or won’t do that’s the trouble. It’s what you know. Anybody can do things. That’s why I like my job—I’m a doer. It’s knowing things that’s bloody dangerous.’
‘I know nothing,’ said Hazlit unconvincingly, and, staring out of the window, tried to concentrate his mind on the possible advantages of stuffing a tightly trussed quail with rosemary, basil, saffron, a head of garlic and a pound of wet uncooked rice, so that the whole thing exploded aromatically in the oven.
9
‘Hello! Uncle James? Hello, hello!’
Suddenly Professor Nevis’s voice came through loud and clear.
‘Caroline, my dear. Are you all right?’
‘Hello, Uncle James! Yes, fine. You don’t know how great it is to hear you!’
So great, realised Caroline, that she had given him once again his childishly reassuring preface of ‘Uncle’. But childish reassurance was what she felt like at the moment.
Death Takes the Low Road Page 8