‘Which is why most Americans are pasty-faced asthmatics,’ said Hazlitt triumphantly. ‘Apart from the walking, what do you think of my plan?’
‘It stinks,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s a rotten plan.’
Secretly Hazlitt agreed. It was an absurd plan. What he really intended to do was rather more complicated and not very nice. He was going to steal all Caroline’s money, abandon her and let the police know where they could pick her up. Despite the altruism of his motives, he did not view the prospect with any great pleasure. One of Caroline’s blind spots was her refusal to recognise his infallibility. When the time came—if it ever did come—to explain himself, he anticipated trouble.
‘What do we do in the meantime?’ asked Caroline. ‘Till it gets dark?’
Hazlitt looked around. They were in a little fold of land running down to the ocean. A grassy bank with a slight overhang made it a natural place of concealment. The sun was in decline but still very warm. He reached into the carrier bag and produced his bottle of Highland Park.
‘Let’s sit down,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’ll think of something.’
‘Any news of Caroline?’ enquired Nevis anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ said Poulson.
‘Oh God. And Hazlitt?’
‘Nothing there either. But everyone up here’s working on it.’
‘I know, I know. Do your best, please, Tommy. Promise.’
‘Of course. But if she gets in the way when we catch up with Hazlitt she’ll just have to take her chances,’ said the young man.
‘At least give instructions she’s not to be harmed, if possible,’ said the grey man.
‘I’ll do that. But I won’t jeopardise the whole exercise just for her sake. You understand that?’
‘I understand,’ said Stewart Stuart. ‘You won’t reconsider? Everything’s run so smoothly here until these last few weeks.’
‘No. Hazlitt’s in my way,’ said Sholto Grieg. ‘I was worried long before the African business came up. You knew that. I’ve no desire to do his work for him.’
‘Ambition’s a killer,’ said Stuart sadly.
‘Yes,’ said Sholto Greig.
The Reader in Moral Philosophy plunged deep into the dark waters of the pool, slid torpedo-like along the bottom till he saw the outline of a body above, and broke the surface beside it.
‘Tarquin,’ he said, ‘we can’t go on meeting like this.’
‘All right!’ said the Old Etonian angrily. ‘I’ve had quite enough. Quite enough. I don’t suppose Durban’s showed up yet? I thought not. Well, you and Smithson will have to manage yourselves. Just bring him back, that’s all. I’m tired of subtlety. If you tread on his toes a bit and he shouts out any names, I won’t object. The girl? Her, too, I suppose. But no fuss. Please, no fuss.’
He slammed down the receiver and looked around the room, wondering as he had often done in the past whether his masters had got it bugged. It seemed likely. They were not men given to easy trust.
Anger rose again, turning back the years like the elixir of life, till he was a Yorkshire schoolboy again.
He blew a long and loud raspberry and went out in search of a drink.
It was nearly midnight before Hazlitt decided to move. Caroline was asleep with her head on his chest. To leave her to wake up in this lonely spot and discover he was gone would be too cruel, he decided. But he seized the opportunity to steal her money. Caroline, he reasoned, would be safely in the hands of the police who would feed, shelter and transport her back to Lincoln where, after a bit of token finger-wagging, the charges against her would probably be quietly dropped.
He meanwhile would also be making his own way south by a less public route. There was a man he wanted to see. Running had been stupid. Reason was now due for a turn. If he was important enough to chase and kill, for his silence, then he was important enough to keep alive for it. As for the threat of charges under the Official Secrets Act, that was surely risible. After twenty years what kind of case could they bring?
His sleeve extension flopped down as he tried to close Caroline’s purse and she awoke. Gently he dropped the unclosed purse back into her duffel bag.
‘Time to go,’ he whispered.
She sat up and gave a huge yawn, which, as she stretched out her arms and realised how stiff she was, turned into a groan.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘The Puritans were right. We certainly pay for our pleasures.’
‘Quite right too,’ said Hazlitt. ‘Well, let’s toddle off, shall we?’
A nearly full moon hung heavily in the sky. The broad plate of its light was cracked and fragmented by the sea and after a few moments they found they could see almost as well as in daylight. Though what they saw, thought Caroline, pressing close to Hazlitt, now seemed very different in form and presence. A wind had sprung up off the ocean and moved through the coarse sea grass like a living thing. Rags of grey cloud were fluttered across the face of the moon. And the custodian’s building by the ruined village sat dark and squat as though by night it took the function of guardian on to itself.
For all that, it was a kind of comfort to reach it and feel that something man-made was close at hand on this strange non-human plane of shifting air and sea and sky. But Hazlitt’s words were not comforting.
‘Right,’ he said in his best Officers’ Selection Board (Failed) voice. ‘You wait here while I check on the car.’
‘Are you crazy?’ hissed Caroline. ‘If you think I’m staying here by myself …’
‘Just for a minute,’ assured Hazlitt. ‘I can move much more quietly by myself and if there is a bobby sitting up there waiting, we don’t want to disturb him, do we?’
Yes, please, thought Caroline, in whose mind flashed a sudden picture of her cell in Thurso with all the nostalgic potency of the slave’s dream of home. Hazlitt thrust the almost empty bottle of whisky into her hands and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
‘Pip-pip,’ he said, and moved swiftly away.
‘Bill!’ said Caroline tremulously, but there was no reply.
‘Oh, Bill,’ she said to herself miserably, and sitting down on the custodian’s doorstep tried without success to convince herself that it was impossible to detect a note of finality in a ‘pip-pip’ and a kiss on the forehead.
Hazlitt was tortured by guilt as he made for the road. His reason told him no harm could come to Caroline. When she became worried by his non-appearance she would head for the car park and look for him there. By which time if, as he expected, the Cortina were still there, he would be miles away and phoning the police. Once in their hands, she would be absolutely safe.
He made little attempt to conceal his presence till he saw the white scar of the road, then moved with greater caution towards the park. The car was still there, he saw with relief. Despite his enthusiasm for exercise, he had no real yearning to be afoot that night.
His experiences during the past few days had taught him to take nothing on trust and he did not approach the car directly, but moved round the park in a series of concentric circles, making absolutely certain that no reception committee lurked in the long grass. Satisfied, he crouched low and darted swiftly across the tyre-beaten turf towards the Cortina.
As he reached it and put his hand out to open the driver’s door a sense of something not quite right struck him and he paused. All looked well. In the darkened in terior he could see the key still in the ignition as they had left it. What then?
Imagination! he told himself and took hold of the door handle. Then in the corner of the eye on the rear sill he saw the model Alsatian nodding its head in idiot welcome.
Even as his mind pumped out all the possible implications, it was too late.
A figure rose from the floor at the back, in its hand a dully gleaming automatic.
‘A man may drink and no’ be drunk, a man may fight and no’ be slain, but I wouldna bank on it,’ said Lackie Campbell. ‘Will you no’ step inside for a wee chat, Mr Hazlitt?’
I
’ll count up to one hundred, thought Caroline, and that’s it. I’ll wait no longer.
She began counting, slowly at first, accelerating rapidly from about twenty to forty, then with deliberate self-control returning to her first measured counting for the last fifty.
That’s it, she thought, and began to rise from the doorstep.
Somewhere close by she heard a noise.
The night was full of sounds. Wind in the grass, sea pulling at sand and stones, the cry of sea birds out on some unimaginable late mission.
But this was different. Why it was different, she could not tell. What the noise had been was itself not clear. A twig snapping? Hardly. There were precious few trees on Orkney. One stone struck against another? Perhaps.
But it didn’t matter. What did matter was her certainty that it was a man-created sound.
Hazlitt returning. Her heart flooded with relief. What else could it be? But still she did not move out of the shelter of the doorway.
Then she heard a voice. Hazlitt’s voice, she tried to reassure herself. But unless Hazlitt’s admittedly high-pitched voice had risen several tones further, unless Hazlitt was walking along talking to himself, and unless Hazlitt had doubled round so that he was approaching the site from the same direction as before, this was not Hazlitt.
Worse, there was a hardening suspicion in her mind that she knew exactly who this was. Or these were. For now the sound of at least two people walking and talking could be heard. It was some comfort that they were making very little attempt at concealment.
She crouched down on her haunches, then bobbed forward, rabbit fashion. It was very uncomfortable. Hazlitt would have been pleased, she thought. Most of his recreational activities seemed to involve a certain degree of discomfort.
To make room for the custodian’s building, a section had been cut out of the mound in which the remains of the huts were set and Caroline now crouched at the end of the natural wall so formed and carefully peered round the corner.
Her care was very necessary. Sharply she drew in her breath. She had been right. It was that popular music-hall threesome, Cherry, Chuff and Sandy, in person. And they were no more than five yards away.
‘This is stupid!’ proclaimed the woman, who was obviously in a very bad humour. ‘I told you he wouldn’t hang around near the car. He’s long gone.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said the man Caroline now knew as Chuff. Even in the moonlight his swollen ear could be spotted. ‘But we had to look.’
‘Well, we’ve been a mile that way and a mile this and I’m damned if I’m going any further!’ said Cherry.
They must have walked by us while we were sleeping! thought Caroline, horrified.
‘All right,’ said Sandy. ‘It’s late and we’ve been wandering around for more than an hour. Let’s head back to Stromness and get some sleep. We’ll need to be up early in the morning to check the ferry.’
‘What a farce,’ said Cherry. ‘He can’t be that important, surely. He struck me as being a pretty futile little man.’
Caroline felt herself swelling with indignation at this gratuitous attack on Hazlitt. Fortunately Sandy put at least part of her thoughts into words, saying, ‘He can’t be all that futile, can he? He’s given us the slip a couple of times and survived things that would have killed me. Let’s not underestimate him. He’s important enough to kill and slippery enough to escape. That’s all we need to know.’
‘What about this blasted girl?’ grumbled Cherry.
‘She’s not to be hurt unless absolutely necessary,’ said Sandy. ‘Special orders.’
‘That’s what I mean. We can’t even get on with the job properly! And it’s my kids who are suffering.’
Up you too! thought Caroline, shocked at this lack of female solidarity.
‘Come on. Let’s go,’ said Sandy. They began moving forward again. It was time to retreat. She did her rabbit trick again, bobbed back to the doorway and pushed herself as far into the shadows as possible.
Her leg struck something cold which moved. Her throat constricted with fear and she thrust out her hand in an instinctive sportsman’s movement which Hazlitt would have been proud of.
Her fingers settled round the neck of the whisky bottle just before it tumbled off the doorstep. But not soon enough to prevent a small clinking noise.
She froze. It had, after all, been a very small noise. Surely no one would be interested in such a minute noise.
‘Over there,’ said Cherry. ‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘Oh, stop being so damned nervous,’ growled Sandy. ‘And come on!’
A grunt of protest cut off short came from Cherry, then there was silence broken only by the sound of footsteps receding along the shore.
Thank God they’re tired, thought Caroline. But it wasn’t very professional of them, for all that. In their shoes, well it was hard to imagine herself in their shoes, but what she would have done was … shut Cherry up, then pretended to move off without suspicion, but in reality let only one of their number move away, trying to make enough for three, while the others … suddenly it became important not to stay in this little trap of a doorway any longer.
Grasping the whisky bottle firmly in her left hand, she slid out of the doorway and began to edge her way carefully down the side of the building. Her duffel bag was over her shoulder and while it was a bit of an encumbrance, it was a lot better than leaving it as firm evidence that somebody had been hiding there. Only when she turned the corner and put the whole building between herself and the sea did she remember the carrier bag.
They had finished all the food hours earlier—and Caroline had noted that despite his scorn of it, Hazlitt had devoured at least two-thirds of the meat pie. The bag had almost been left behind, but Hazlitt was a compulsive protector of the countryside and had remembered it after only a few steps. Normally Caroline would have been completely in accord with his anti-litter attitudes, but now she wished he kept the countryside as untidy as he kept his flat. (Anyone who married him, she thought parenthetically, would have a hell of a job house-training him.)
Of course, it might still pass for ordinary tourist debris. But one thing was certain—its discovery would prompt a wider search. She had to get away from the building and keep out of sight.
She pressed close against the wall and strained her ears. All the noises of night crowded in on them, harmonising with her own desperately controlled breathing and wildly pulsing blood till she could not distinguish the external from the internal. A sound that might have been a carefully muffled footfall came from the left side of the building. She could only trust her instinct now and instinct told her to move fast.
She headed right, scrambling up the steep side of the mound in which Skara Brae was set. How much noise she made she could not tell. At least she was out of that hole. But now instinct said that she had to find another one. Up here she was an eye-drawing lump against the skyline.
Slowly she began to push herself backwards, her eyes still fixed on the rear wall of the custodian’s building. It was deep in shadows, a black contrast with the moon bright tiles on the roof. But she had no doubt at all when a new lighter shadow merged with the others. She thrust herself back with all her strength, the ground fell away beneath her body and she rolled down into one of the passages that ran between the huts.
Here she crouched for a moment, half of her mind longing for Hazlitt to return, the other, and still stronger, half praying fervently that he wouldn’t.
Again it was time to be on the move. She still couldn’t tell whether she had been detected or not. Either way, retreat was the best policy.
The passage was deep enough for her to walk upright without risk of detection from anyone not on the mound. But animal instinct was practically in full control now and she crouched low as she moved.
For the moment safety lay down here in these ancient remains. But something else was there too. The almost sudden awareness she had experienced in the afternoon that human beings had l
ived, loved, given birth, cooked, eaten and slept here now returned. Not quite the same now. Then in the light of day it had been an awareness of domesticity, a shock of recognition across the ages, an outgoing of affection. Now it was different. True, beings distantly related to herself had lived here, but they had died here also. Bodies had been found here buried beneath the walls so their ghosts would sustain them. The last educible use made of Skara Brae had been as a burial ground. And the last living inhabitants of the village had fled in panic and terror as the great Atlantic gales set the dunes in motion and forced the blinding abrasive sand down passages and through doors like embalming liquid into the veins of a mummy.
Now panic and terror could easily return to Skara Brae. Caroline recalled the custodian telling her that a trail of beads had been found along one of the passages and that the archaeologists theorised that one woman in her terror had broken her necklace as she squeezed through the narrow door and the beads had fallen unnoticed in her flight to safety. The odd thought came into Caroline’s mind that perhaps somehow she was related to this woman. Not impossible. Hazlitt would be amused. Another example of American ancestor worship. Whatever the case, Caroline hoped that the neolithic girl had made it.
She paused once more with no real idea of where she was and glanced back. Nothing. And down here it was so silent. Silent as the grave. A handy thought.
She looked up now and though darkness was her friend, wished that more of that glorious silver moonlight could spill into this pit.
As if at her command some way behind her a light flickered momentarily into being, stabbed down into the passage and disappeared.
Someone was on top of the mound and using a torch. In one way this was a comfort. Such open searching could mean they had pretty well decided no one was there. But the chances of detection were much increased.
She hastened forward. Here the passage went underground for a short way and it took an act of will to leave the moon and stars behind. But again and again with increasing frequency the torch beam was flickering above.
Death Takes the Low Road Page 13