Spylark

by Danny Rurlander

  It was a relief to leave the village behind. They tramped along the pavement for half a mile, and discussed whether they should take Snakey’s threat seriously.

  ‘How could they possibly know where we’re going? It must have been a stupid threat,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joel uncertainly. ‘Although somehow that doesn’t seem Snakey’s style.’

  They turned off the road to follow a path that began to climb north-east, and away from the village. Joel set the pace, map in hand. Archie bounded ahead at first, but as the way became steeper he tired and trotted along at their side. After a while the path joined a stream of smooth pools, but as they climbed higher the water bubbled over hidden rocks into foaming white cauldrons. Before a bend they looked back to see the village, now far below, and the lake a slice of silver, disappearing into a haze. They could see a family of hikers beginning the long trek that they had just covered. Apart from that they were on their own.

  ‘I don’t think those clowns will come near us now,’ said Maggie decisively. ‘They haven’t got the guts for a march like this without a McDonald’s at the top of every hill. Come on. Forget them. We’ve got more important things to do.’

  For a while the murmur of the stream and their footsteps on the path were the only sounds to accompany their own quickening breaths. A jackdaw coasted past them, its kyow kyow bouncing off the rocks.

  ‘Corvus monedula,’ Joel muttered automatically.

  Maggie suddenly stopped dead. ‘What if Hollowdale isn’t even the right place?’

  ‘And they’ve taken Tom somewhere else!’

  ‘Come on!’ she said, striding forward again. ‘Jim says “the truth will out”. Let’s make sure he’s right.’

  The path soon entered an old oak wood. After the trek from the village, the change in air was like a cool flannel and their eyes took time to adjust to the shade.

  ‘We can take a shortcut here,’ said Joel, looking at the map. ‘If we head off the path straight up through this wood, we’ll come to a higher path eventually. It’ll be hard going for a bit but it’ll save us time.’

  They had a drink and some Kendal Mint Cake and began to climb directly into the steep wooded hillside. For some time they scrambled over roots and rocks and ducked their heads under lichen-bearded branches. As the gradient became more severe, the oaks gave way to beech and hazel, and beneath them wizened mountain ashes clung to outcrops of limestone. Eventually they joined a distinct bark-chip path curving in from the right, which took them in zigzags through the trees.

  Soon the ancient deciduous trees surrendered to larches and Scots pines stretching up to a dense canopy, which shut out light and sound and trapped the resinscented air below. Even their footsteps were silenced by the drifts of dry needles that covered the floor.

  Joel was ahead, compass in hand. ‘We should come to the tarn in a few minutes.’

  His voice seemed muffled, as if the air were thicker under the trees.

  ‘This silence is weird,’ said Maggie. ‘It feels like the trees are watching us. As if the whole wood is holding its breath, waiting for something.’

  ‘Come on. We’re nearly there.’ Joel marched ahead with Archie at his heels.

  Then there was a glow of light ahead and they spilt out into the open so abruptly that they had to shade their eyes. In front of them was a lonely-looking tarn fringed with reeds. On the far side of the tarn, rows of pines rose up steeply towards a ridge of jagged rock. The water was rippled and gave no reflection. The place was eerie and enclosed, and Maggie felt trapped.

  ‘We need to head for that ridge,’ said Joel, looking at the map again. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Tom, it’s the importance of getting a bird’s-eye view.’

  ‘Emily said it was going to rain,’ said Maggie. ‘Maybe we should get the tent up first, and then go and work out how we’re going to rescue Tom.’ She looked across the tarn, where the tops of the pines were shivering in the breeze. Behind the ridge the sky was thick. ‘If we’ve even got the right place.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Tom put his head in his hands and tried to get a grip on himself, but all he could think about was the double horror of being imprisoned and underground at the same time. He could not imagine a worse situation to be in.

  He forced himself to breathe steadily. His prison was a small basement room, every inch of the walls painted an unpleasant kind of green. A single bare bulb threw a circle of dirty yellow light over the table and two chairs.

  He began to wonder where the spider had disappeared to. He got down on his hands and knees and put an eye to the crack in the concrete. There was nothing but black, though he could feel the breath of an updraught on the surface of his eyeball.

  And there was a scent too. A faint, familiar taste of the outside world, which he couldn’t quite place. He pressed his nose to the crack. The smell seemed to suggest an empty cavity below him, of rock and earth and hollow spaces. The flash of memories sent a long, cold shiver through the back of his skull and down his spine until his feet tingled.

  Now he put his ear to the crack and the sound he heard far below explained the scent. It was the sound of moving water. Not rushing and tumbling like a mountain stream, or gushing and whining like a pipe. But it was the sound of a vast and endless flow of water, snaking invisibly through the darkness, somewhere deep beneath his feet.

  There were footsteps approaching. He went to the door and peered through the bars, straining to hear. But it was just someone walking past the top of the stairwell. Then he caught sight of something glinting against the wall at the top of the stairs. It had to be the key to his cell! If only he could reach it, but there was no way, even with his stick—

  Tom felt an electric shock shoot up his spine. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He unscrewed the top of his walking stick with shaking fingers and lifted Gnat out of its tube. He looked at the machine, lying in his palm like a sleeping bird, and could have cried at the beautiful sight. The miniature drone looked unharmed and its lolly-stick sized rotor arms sprang into position with a click. He opened the control panel and pushed the throttle. This, he told himself, as he felt the cool breeze of the blades on his cheeks, was going to be a very long shot.

  There were more footsteps in the corridor above. Mike McCain had said he’d be back to collect him. Once he was outside that door, Gnat was his only chance. He quickly slipped the drone into his pocket and screwed the top back on to his stick as Mike appeared, silhouetted at the top of the staircase. He grabbed the key from the nail, stomped down to the door, unlocked it, and yanked Tom back up the steps. At the top he turned right and dragged Tom along a dim passage with windows looking out to the yard. In the fading daylight he could see vehicles, shiny in the rain, and recognized the Bentley he had seen at the quarry. A low-level humming, little more than a vibration in the soles of his feet, was coming from somewhere in the building. The smell of the place reminded him of school science labs: burnt metal and gas and sulphuric acid, with a background note of floor cleaner. Everywhere was spotlessly clean, like a hospital. No evidence of ice cream making, Tom thought. Mike clamped an arm behind his back and steered him around a corner and down a long corridor, starkly lit by bare bulbs, with a single, unmarked door at the end.

  As they approached the door, Mike’s boots clopping hard on the polished floor, images of what lay behind that door crowded into Tom’s mind: a dark, windowless chamber, full of instruments of torture, some grinning psycho smoking a giant cigar and stroking a cat behind a desk, face bottom-lit blue by flickering screens.

  Instead, Mike opened the door without knocking, and pushed Tom into a bright, business-like office. He pointed to a comfortable-looking chair, and turned back to the door. ‘Wait there. And don’t try anything stupid.’ The door shut with a soft click, and to Tom’s surprise, he was alone.

  The chair, with its cool, leathery smell, seemed to swallow him up. He gripped on to his stick, and glanced warily around the room. In front of
him was a large desk, bare except for a Moleskine notebook, a photo frame, and a small varnished wooden box with brass hinges and a brass handle on the lid. To the right of the desk was a table with a large-scale map of the lake spread out and pinned down at the corners with paperweights. On the other side of the room was a tall wooden cabinet, like a wardrobe, and some bookshelves. The wall opposite Tom, behind the desk, was taken up by a wall-to-ceiling window, which framed a view of Sour Hollow Crag, brooding over Hollowdale’s grey and misty gullies, like a black-and-white photograph.

  ‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’

  Tom swivelled around to see Rufus Clay standing by the door.

  ‘I had to have the desk positioned with my back to the window, because I found such a beautiful view distracted me from my work.’ He spoke in a calm, deliberate manner, like someone used to being listened to by intelligent people. ‘Tom Hopkins, I believe?’ He came towards Tom, and held out his hand. Tom instantly wished he had not shaken it, but it was too late. Rufus Clay walked round to the other side of the desk and sank into the swivel chair.

  ‘Good to meet you, Tom. Very good to meet you.’

  Close up, Rufus Clay looked as unlike a psychopath as it was possible to imagine and, not for the first time in recent days, Tom found himself questioning his own grasp of reality. He was tall, with a reddish, slightly puffy complexion, and a full head of white hair, neatly cut. Wearing a grey suit and a pale yellow shirt, without a tie, his hands clasped loosely together in front of him, an open, intelligent expression on his face, he could have been a head teacher having a chat with a struggling student, or a vicar about to offer advice to a parishioner. Tom found himself wondering what was in the photo frame on the desk. Would it be family, children, friends, a cat?

  But then, as he opened the notebook and smoothed the page flat with the back of a hand, Tom caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the back of his wrist: the winged messenger! Tom remembered the photograph of the group of soldiers they had found on the internet. Experts in electronic warfare. No, it was real. Here was the mastermind behind it all.

  ‘I want to apologize for this –’ Rufus Clay looked at the ceiling, searching for the word – ‘inconvenience. Right at the beginning of your summer holidays too. But we can make this as painless as you like.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Tom’s throat was dry and his voice sounded reedy. He grabbed hold of the arms of his chair with both hands and tried to breathe steadily. Somehow he had to gather his wits.

  ‘You rumbled us, Tom. And that is very impressive. Because no one else did. And I mean no one.’ He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and held it poised over the notebook, like a waiter ready to take an order. ‘So I need to know how you knew about us, and to whom you have spoken about us, that’s all. Once you have explained that to my satisfaction, this process can come to an end.’

  Tom shrugged and tried to look confused. ‘Knew about you? How do you mean?’

  Rufus Clay smiled and wagged a finger at him. ‘OK. Let’s make this simple. Why don’t we go for yes-and-no-type questions? So. Did you or did you not heroically save the Queen’s life on Wednesday by ensuring that the vessel she was aboard, in avoiding a collision with yours, unwittingly took evasive action from an aerial attack by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles camouflaged as birds? Yes or no?’ He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

  Tom felt like a criminal in the dock being interrogated by a brilliant barrister. He looked at the table and imagined, as he had done many times before, his father being questioned somewhere in a windowless room: the bare bulb swinging above a table, the slam of metal doors. How would he have handled it? Would he have given in or held out, no matter what they did to him? Tom felt sure he knew the answer.

  He looked Rufus Clay in the eye. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘That’s the spirit! I like someone with a bit of bottle. So few young people these days seem to have any resilience. Good for you, young man. Good for you.’ He paused and flicked through the notebook. ‘But please do not lie to me, Tom.’

  The very quiet way he said this made Tom start. Rufus Clay noticed, and raised his palms disarmingly. ‘Look, Tom,’ he continued, ‘I have absolutely no gripe against Her Majesty. Or the Duke of Lancaster, as we like to call her affectionately around here. And thanks to you, she lives. But what I need you to tell me is how you worked it out. The Queen is one of the most protected individuals on the planet. And the best intelligence agencies in the world – I ought to know, as I was one of them once – knew nothing at all. But a thirteen-year-old boy with a limp and a boat called Maggot knew all about it? Now, either I made a schoolboy error in my planning, or –’ he folded his hands in his lap and smiled – ‘or you are quite a remarkable schoolboy!’

  Tom’s mind was in turmoil. Even if he told the truth, would they let him go, now he had seen what he had seen? The only thing he could do was buy himself some time. The longer he kept them guessing the better.

  Rufus Clay looked at his watch. ‘No rush, Tom. I do have an important meeting at eight o’clock, but until then I’m at your disposal.’

  ‘I worked it out,’ Tom said, shrugging again. ‘Guess-work, really. I’m into birds, you see. I happened to be on the lake to see the Queen, like everyone else. I saw the seagulls circling down and thought they were behaving strangely. You know, unnaturally. And I . . . I just put two and two together. It was a spur of the moment thing.’

  Tom let out a silent breath, relieved he’d found his voice. He thought he’d sounded convincing.

  ‘I see.’ Rufus Clay made a steeple with the tips of his fingers and looked at Tom over the rims of his glasses. ‘The problem, my dear boy, is that the version of events you have given me does not fit with events as I saw them unfold. On the contrary, I saw you emerge rapidly from the river mouth and speed across the lake, looking for a way through the security cordon. That didn’t look like a spur of the moment decision to me. It looked like someone acting with great purpose on the basis of some accurate information. And I must know, Tom, where that information came from.’

  Tom opened his mouth to speak, but Rufus Clay held a palm up to silence him. His face was set like rock, though Tom thought he saw the faintest quiver on his top lip, as if there was some pool of rage under the surface trying to escape. Tom knew that he had to escape before it had a chance.

  CHAPTER 29

  Maggie got to work pitching the tent, while Joel disappeared into the trees to gather firewood, Archie dashing ahead, nose pressed to the ground. The tarn was surrounded by boggy pools dotted with sedge and long grasses, and the only firm place to make a camp was on the embankment of a slow-flowing stream that emptied into the tarn alongside a narrow spit. Maggie found some large stones in the stream and arranged them in a circle for a fire. She felt a raindrop on her head and looked up to see a bank of heavy clouds barrelling in from the north.

  ‘Look what Archie sniffed out,’ called Joel, returning breathlessly from the trees. He held something triumphantly in the air. In his hand was what appeared to be the remains of a bird that had been torn apart by a fox. On closer inspection, what looked like a wing was a piece of plastic, edged with grey feathers, and where there should have been a mess of veins and bone and cartilage was a tangle of coloured wires and twisted aluminium.

  ‘A piece of bird drone!’ said Maggie.

  ‘A piece of a rudder disguised as a tail, to be precise. This proves we’re on the right track. They must have been flight-testing them and one crashed into the trees and broke up. Someone obviously came to retrieve it but didn’t get every bit. I followed the tracks for a little way and there’s no doubt that they came from over the ridge.’

  Maggie grabbed his arm. ‘What if they see us here?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if they do. We just look like some campers, don’t we?’

  Maggie looked at the little tent with its neat fire by the stream. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Let’s get up to the ridge and have a lo
ok at the place,’ said Joel.

  They closed up the tent and plunged into the thickly planted conifers, stooping under low branches and scratching their heads on twigs. At times they were almost crawling over the carpet of needles. They came out into the open again so suddenly it was as if the wood had spat them out, and then the ridge was right in front of them. This was steeper than it had looked from below, and they fell silent as they searched for hand-and-foot holds in the near-vertical rock, hoisting themselves over boulders and through crevices until they emerged, panting, on to the crest of a limestone escarpment.

  Maggie felt a rush of wind in her hair as she looked out over a deep, empty gorge. Directly below them, the escarpment gave way to loose scree, which bottomed out in a gentle curve, studded with sheep half-lost in bracken. An insignificant beck wound its way along the valley floor and on the other side of this a rutted track clung to the fellside for a while before plunging out of sight towards the main road. Across the valley was a rambling cluster of buildings, squat and grey.

  ‘It just looks like an ordinary farm,’ said Maggie.

  ‘From a distance,’ said Joel. He had taken out his binoculars and was scanning the farm slowly. ‘Let’s see: some four-wheel drives, a quad bike, one of those yellow dump truck things, the sort you see in building sites. And there’s the ice cream van. Nothing unusual in that. But how many farms do you know that are surrounded by razor wire fences? And have men with guns standing guard? And . . .’

  His head moved in a circle as he followed something around the edge of the farm.

  ‘. . . spy drones guarding their perimeters?’

  Maggie took the binoculars and when she had focused the lenses she could see a raven-sized multirotor flying in a rectangular circuit around the edge of the farm. ‘It looks more like a prison camp than a farm.’

  ‘Or a terrorist HQ,’ said Joel.

  They lay on the sloping ground, leaning on their elbows, with their heads above the ridge and watched the place without speaking. A buzzard mewed somewhere in the air above them. Joel pulled a tuft of grass up and threw it over the ridge and the wind blew it straight back over his shoulder.