by Louise Welsh
Pistol ran back to greet Stevie, tail wagging. Magnus had resolved to save the potcheen for emergencies, but he opened the bottle, lifted it to his lips and took a quick swig.
Stevie crouched on the edge of the pier, looking down at him.
‘Confident you and your white lightning can find the kids and bring them back?’
Magnus tipped the bottle again, though he knew it made him look foolish.
‘We’ll give it a good shot.’
Stevie draped an arm around Pistol’s neck. ‘My dog’s got more sense than you.’
‘Then I must be bloody thick. Your dog’s the stupidest mutt on Orkney.’
Magnus was not sure why he was being rude to her, except that it made him feel better. He was tired and hungry and his boy was missing.
‘Not just thick, arrogant.’ Stevie looked like she wanted to smack him with her rifle. A quick jab in the solar plexus would send him into the water. Magnus braced himself, but Stevie held the gun firm, its stock resting against the ground, business end pointing towards the sky. ‘You really think you could bring them back without any help?’
She was right. It was reckless to tackle the sea crossing solo. Stupid to think he could find Shug and his friends on his own, but Magnus did not want anyone with him. Even before the Sweats he had preferred to travel alone. Had never minded late-night drives along the familiar motorways that linked the comedy circuit, that night’s gig still playing in his head.
He looked at the crowd gathered on the pier. Some of the islanders had lifted the last bags of provisions, ready to help him pack them on the boat. Magnus forced a smile.
‘I can’t fit you all on board.’
Stevie said, ‘You don’t have to. I’m the only one coming with you.’
The news surprised him. He had expected a squad of boats to head for the mainland.
‘How come?’
‘I’ll explain once we’re underway.’ Stevie grabbed Pistol by the collar and said to Alan Bold, ‘Look after him for me. He’ll be a pest on the boat and cities were never good places for dogs.’
The deputy gripped the collar. They had talked quietly of how long the search should go on for. What to do if she did not come back. Bold said, ‘He’ll miss you.’
The dog looked from one to the other and whined. Stevie scratched his head. She had raised him from a pup. They had never been parted before.
‘I hope he doesn’t interfere with your love life.’
Bold glanced to where Lorna Mills was standing. ‘My wandering days are drawing to a close.’
Stevie gave him a quick hug and whispered, ‘Which is not quite the same as saying they’re over.’
The deputy held her tighter than she expected. Stevie hoped that he had not taken her words as an invitation. She pulled away and climbed into the dinghy.
Pistol broke free just as the rowing boat pushed off from the quayside. Alan Bold made a move to catch him, but the dog was swift. Magnus dipped the oars again, sending the boat on its way before he realised that the dog had escaped. Pistol did not hesitate. He leapt, hurtling over the water.
There was a moment when the dog seemed to hang in the air, an ungainly mess of legs, tongue, ears and tail, and then he landed, splay-pawed and awkward amongst the supplies. The boat rocked like a leaf in a river at full swell. They looked certain to overturn, but the little craft righted itself.
‘Shit.’ Stevie pushed Pistol to the floor. She pressed her hand on the top of his head – ‘Bad boy’ – keeping him still, letting the dog know who was in charge. She could do nothing about his tail which thump, thump, thumped against the rowing boat’s hull.
‘Let him stay.’ Magnus had regained his rhythm. He dipped the oars and they pulled further away from the pier, closer to his sailing boat. ‘He’s a good omen.’
Pistol grinned, but he was a dog. He lived in the moment and knew nothing of the task ahead.
Twenty-One
Magnus and Stevie took turns napping in the yacht’s single bunk during the crossing. The sky shifted through a palate of greys and blues but the wind stayed with them, gusting the sails full-bellied, away from the Orkneys. They were careful beneath their recklessness, as behoved true survivors; wearing their lifejackets above and below deck; clipping themselves to the vessel for fear of being tipped overboard. Magnus was the better sailor. Even stumbling with tiredness he could still anticipate the pitch and roll of the deck. Before the Sweats, Stevie had never captained anything larger than a pedalo. She had learned quickly, but possessed none of Magnus’s natural instinct for the craft or the water. Every act she made on board was conscious; each correction of the sail or shift of the boom a calculation.
Pistol grew miserable from lack of exercise. His tail lost its usual buoyancy and he prowled from deck to cabin to deck, head hanging like a guilty thing. Magnus saw the dog slink beneath the sails and thought that it could be his own miserable soul roaming the boat.
Stevie’s footsteps sounded on the cabin stairs. She had found a yellow cagoule and was wearing it on top of her lifejacket. She pulled its hood over her head as she came up on deck.
‘You’re some banana.’
Magnus had greeted her with the same joke ever since she had taken to wearing the yellow waterproof. Stevie did not think it funny. Neither did he.
Stevie unpeeled the lid from a tin of baked beans. She ate half of the can and handed it to Magnus, the spoon still resting inside. Their journey had been full of such unacknowledged intimacies. They had taken a turn at sleeping between the same sheets, but had barely talked during the crossing, shifting politely around each other.
Magnus tried to savour the beans. Processed food was a rare luxury, saved for journeys like these. The sauce tasted sweeter and saltier than he remembered. He wondered if they had gone bad, but he was hungry. He finished them and set the empty tin by the wheel, ready to stow beneath the deck. Aluminium was a luxury too.
He took the wheel, kept his eyes on the horizon and waited for Stevie to say something. The air was more alive at sea than on land. Even at the top of a mountain, peaked high above everything else, the wind did not rush with the same vitality, touching every exposed part of skin, grabbing at hair, reaching up sleeves, down backs and necks. Magnus tightened his scarf. There were more gulls in the sky. He nodded towards them.
‘We’ll reach land soon.’ They had not discussed what they would do when they got there.
Stevie kept her silence. Magnus said, ‘We’re assuming Connor told us the truth and the kids are headed to Glasgow. But they could have steered him wrong to throw us off the scent. They might be halfway to Norway by now.’
Belle’s blonde hair and pale skin made her look like a Viking warrior. It was not hard to imagine her there.
‘I know.’ Stevie’s features were hidden in the shadows of her hood. ‘If we could have spared the people I would have sent a boat in that direction too, but it’s too risky. They’re lucky we’re coming after them at all.’
Magnus heard the resentment in her voice. He said, ‘I’m surprised you left, if you think our hold on Orkney is in danger. You’d make a better general than Alan Bold, or is this part of your election campaign?’
Stevie ignored the jibe.
‘I don’t know if I made the right decision.’
She pulled her hood back, showing him her face. It was a conscious gesture of openness. Magnus was not sure that he trusted it.
Stevie said, ‘It’s not certain the islands will come under attack, but we know the children are gone. I think there’s a chance I can find them.’
‘And if the islands fall?’
‘I’ll have made the wrong choice.’ Pistol rested his head against Stevie’s leg. She ran a hand along his muzzle. ‘Poor dog, not long now.’ She glanced up at Magnus. ‘I don’t mean I could save the islands. But if something were to happen there, I’d want to be a part of it, for good or for bad. You feel the same way.’
Magnus nodded. ‘But here we are, sailing in th
e wrong direction.’
The dog left Stevie’s side and loped to starboard, sniffing at the air. Magnus wondered if it could scent land. He said, ‘It was necessary for me to come. Shuggie’s my responsibility. I’m not sure what compelled you.’
Stevie shrugged. ‘I promised their parents.’
Magnus checked the compass in the centre of the wheel, making sure they were still on course, and then trained his eyes on the horizon.
‘You did, but I’m guessing you didn’t do it just to be kind.’
The wind was high, spray dashing over the deck. Stevie pulled her hood up, protecting her face from icy stabs of water, hiding her expression.
‘So why do you think I’m here?’
Magnus’s eyes met hers. ‘Either you’re electioneering or you want to find out who killed Bjarne and Candice.’
Stevie looked away. ‘You found their bodies. Don’t you want to know who did that to them?’
‘I want to find Shug more.’ He waited for her to say that perhaps they were searching for one and the same, but Stevie was silent and he added, ‘What makes you so certain it wasn’t me?’
‘You didn’t kill them.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Bjarne’s brains were splattered across the living room. Whoever shot him would have been covered in blood and grey matter. When Connor found you in the house you were wearing the same clothes you’d had on earlier that day. The only marks on them were mud.’
Magnus thought of Shug’s white jacket. It had been streaked with mud and blood.
He said, ‘I could have stripped off, murdered them in the scud and put my old clothes back on.’
‘You could have. But I’m guessing that would have set Bjarne on his guard. Whoever killed him had the advantage of surprise.’
A thin strip of darkness was sandwiched between the sea and sky. Magnus pointed towards it.
‘Land ahoy.’
Stevie took a set of binoculars from the pocket of her cagoule and trained them on the horizon. The dog was running up and down the deck, snapping at the seagulls reeling around the boat, his tail waving, as if to tell the birds that it was all in fun. Magnus watched the horizon take shape and wondered what waited there. He might have been an astronaut about to step onto an uncharted planet. Stevie passed him the binoculars. ‘Look.’
Magnus focused the lenses. He had thought the terminal, where ferries loaded with cars, lorries and containers had once begun their journeys to the islands and beyond, might have decayed and slid into the sea. But it looked in decent shape. He squinted and saw a thin pall of smoke curling from the chimney of one of the flat-roofed buildings. Belle’s boat was moored in the harbour.
‘Someone’s there.’
‘Good.’ Stevie retrieved her rifle from the cabin and loaded it. ‘Maybe whoever it is saw our kids.’
Magnus nodded at the rifle. ‘Go easy with that thing.’ But he took his pistol from the inside pocket of his jacket, where he had stowed it safe against the salt spray, and checked the ammunition clip. He raised the binoculars to his eyes again. A figure stood on the quayside, watching their boat approach. It was too far for him to make out any details, but Magnus thought it was a man. He felt a shiver of apprehension. It was as if he was seeing himself, waiting by the shore.
Twenty-Two
The man was called Rees. He was bald beneath his knitted cap, a surly Cornishman with no resemblance to Magnus except for the gun on his hip and a tendency to favour his own company. His pair of ridgebacks hurtled towards Pistol; a rush of sharp teeth and slavering jowls. He called them and they loped to his side, hackles erect. Stevie held Pistol by the collar, outgunned.
‘Leaving your boat there?’ Rees sheltered a roll-up from the wind in the curl of his hand.
‘Any objections?’ They were barely one up from the dogs, Magnus reflected, a step away from a snarl.
‘None.’ Rees ruffled the head of one of the ridgebacks. The beast panted, its tongue lolling. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it for you.’
Stevie cast a look around the empty ferry terminal, at the expanse of cracked tarmacadam and squat ferry offices that quickly gave way to hills. The three of them were exposed; visible from sea, high land and the shelter of the buildings. She said, ‘How many people are settled here?’
‘Just me.’ Rees cast a glance in the direction of the hills. ‘I live here alone.’
‘Must get lonely.’
‘I’ve got the dogs.’ He flicked the ash from his cigarette onto the ground. ‘And people come and go.’
‘People returning to the cities?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t ask where they’re going, or where they’ve come from for that matter. I’m a trader; goods and services.’
‘What did they trade?’ Stevie nodded to where Belle’s boat bobbed in the water.
Rees shrugged. ‘The usual, tobacco, drink, weapons. I don’t remember.’
Stevie said, ‘We’re looking for the crew of that boat.’
Rees dropped his roll-up and ground it into the tarmac with the heel of his work boot. ‘Sometimes I trade information, at a cost.’
Then he turned his back on them and led the way to a row of shipping containers set along the quayside. Magnus tensed as the Cornishman unfastened the padlocks that secured the door of the first container. Locks and confined spaces set him on edge.
Stevie caught Magnus’s faint intake of breath and gave him a searching look. He shook his head to show it was nothing.
Rees pulled the final chain from the hasp. ‘You’d best leave your dog outside.’ Stevie hesitated and he said, ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing to harm him here. Wolves don’t venture close during the day.’
‘Wolves?’
Rees grinned. ‘Wolves are the least of it. When the Sweats took hold some idiots had the great idea of opening up the zoos. There are lions and all sorts out there. Mostly they keep to themselves, but it’s best to have your wits about you after dark.’
Stevie fondled Pistol’s ears and then sent him out towards the cracked tarmacadam lot, still marked with lanes, where cars had once formed orderly lines as they waited to board the ferry. ‘Lions couldn’t survive in Scotland, it’s too cold.’
‘We’re not the only ones who are adaptable.’ Rees pushed open the door to the container and they followed him inside.
Narrow window slits let in arrow points of light. Rees lit a couple of oil lamps, and the interior glowed into focus. The sides of the container had been faced with hardwood, the floor coated with deck paint. A counter along one wall acted as a kitchen, a small platform in the corner as a bed. A table and chair set by the far wall hinted at a spartan life. He shut his own dogs in the adjoining container. The briefly opened connecting door offered a quick glimpse of shelves stacked with boxes.
Rees set a tin kettle of water on a lit stove. ‘They sailed in, same as you did. Three girls and two boys with a blonde woman and two men. She had something wrong with one of her eyes.’
Magnus said, ‘How did the kids look?’
The kettle screeched; a barn owl on the kill. Rees took it from the hob, poured boiling water into three mugs and added something black and dried from a canister on the countertop.
‘Nettles and mint.’ He stirred the mugs and passed them each one. ‘Tastes like piss, but you get used to it.’
Magnus took a sip. The liquid was thin and grass-tainted.
‘One of the boys is my son. His name’s Shuggie.’
‘They looked okay.’ Rees did not ask which of the boys Shug was. ‘Tired, but you’d expect that.’
Magnus knew it would make him look weak but he said, ‘He was in a fight not long before he left.’
‘That was him, was it?’ Rees looked amused. ‘His face was a few pretty shades – a nuclear sunset – but no lasting damage I’d say.’
‘Good.’ Magnus resented the trader’s smile, his own gratitude at news of Shug.
In the room beyond the ridgebacks were whining. Exiled in
the car park, Pistol picked up the noise of the other dogs and barked. He butted the container door, eager to be inside.
Stevie said, ‘Did they have a toddler with them?’
‘Why do you ask?’
She had meant to say that Evie belonged to her, but paused a beat too long.
‘She’s the daughter of a friend.’
Pistol barked again.
Stevie went to the door and opened it. ‘Go.’ She pointed towards the parking lot and the dog trotted off, head hanging. A splash of yellow by one of the low buildings snagged Stevie’s eye, a small shape moving against the concrete. She narrowed her eyes and saw that it was a child. As she watched a figure appeared, snatched up the child and hurried indoors. Stevie thought the person looked in her direction, but the distance was too far for her to make out their features. She could not be sure that they had seen her.
She shut the door and turned back into the container’s dim, metallic gloom. ‘Evie’s eighteen months old. They kidnapped her.’ The word sounded strange in her mouth. ‘She’ll be missing her mother.’
‘She looked happy enough when I saw her.’
Rees’s beard was grey and neatly trimmed. Stevie wondered who he groomed himself for.
‘Her mother’s distraught.’
‘So why isn’t she looking for her?’
‘She thought we would do a better job.’ Stevie had slung her rifle across her back. She fingered the clasp on the strap crossing her chest. ‘She’s right.’
Rees looked her up and down; the quick, reflexive flit from breast to crotch to breast that Stevie had grown used to.
‘That remains to be seen.’ He took a sip of his drink and leaned against the counter, regarding her. ‘Like I said, the kid seemed happy enough. They all did.’
Magnus took a sip of his brew. It tasted no better than before, but he swallowed it.
‘Did they mention where they were going?’
Rees shrugged. ‘Where does anybody go? You were young once, you know the script – bright lights, big city.’