He reacted a fraction of a second too late to the brief disturbances, the movements stilled by the time his eyes had picked out the area of their source. He had to concentrate on focusing not on the vivid light and activity above the surface, the play of the sun and the reflections of the trees, but below, into the slow-time haze of shapes – boulders, dead branches, silt. Like looking out of a window at night with the light on in your room.
The shadow of a cloud drifted over the stream, and in its brief passing revealed them; more, he could still make them out when the shadow cleared. Dozens, lazy wee bastards. Lounging underneath and sometimes lying on top of the rocks, sunning themselves like they might be about to get the paper out at any minute.
Trout.
And once he could see them, it seemed impossible that they had remained camouflaged before. He strained and leaned out a little further, feeling his stomach muscles stretch and tense as he held his right hand about an inch and a half from the surface. He slowly, gradually, delicately penetrated the surface with his fingers, edging his hand underneath millimetre by millimetre. Then another shadow suddenly loomed across his field of vision.
“Have you been sick?” asked a low, droning voice, causing Tam to quiver in a moment of startlement, brief but enough to ripple the surface and cause several fish to reach frantically for their beach towels and disappear indoors.
Tam turned his head around slowly to look up at Spammy, who was standing over him, chewing on some kind of stem, perhaps in search of hitherto undiscovered natural opiate sources.
“Whit?” he asked, with unconcealed irritation.
“You’re Iyin’ doon. I thought you were mibbe bein’ sick in the watter.”
“I’m tryin’, Spammy,” he said with an obvious effort of restraint, “to sort us oot wi’ some breakfast. Noo staun oot the wayan’ let us get on wi’ it.”
“Aye. Nae bother. Cool,” Spammy said, shifting to one side with his hands in his pockets.
Tam concentrated on the stream once more. The surface was restoring its dignified expressionlessness, and the trout were slapping on the Nivea again. Tam’s fingers were teasing their way back into the cool liquid when he sensed more movement to his side.
“Throat’s as dry as an arab’s sanny,” Spammy declared hoarsely, crouching down at the water’s edge.
“Downstream,” Tam hissed.
“Whit?”
“Downstream. Downstream of me, if you’re gaunny start skiddlin’ aboot.”
“Sorry.”
Tam once more resumed his attempt to guddle a trout, trying to shut out the slurping and grunting sounds to the left of him, where it sounded like Spammy and a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig were attempting to drown each other. He eventually got his fingers underneath a biggish one, and drew them tantalisingly along its belly with a deft and reflexive sensitivity that his hands seemed to remember better than his mind.
“Spammy,” he whispered as the big yin wandered back over to observe his prostrate industry, “you used tae play in goals, didn’t you?”
“Aye. How?”
Tam felt himself giggle in the sudden action of flipping the fish out of the water and into the air behind him, where Spammy flapped and flailed at it in surprise, the wet and slimy thing bouncing off his thigh before landing, gasping on the grass.
“Wow,” Spammy said, genuinely impressed. “How’d you manage that?”
Tam looked up from the waterside, right arm dripping from the open-palmed hand he held up.
“Kinda thing we had to amuse oorsels with years ago, when we didnae have access to mind-altering chemicals.”
They made their way back up to the hollow with Tam’s catch, Spammy protestingly carrying two of the fish, expressing his concern at his hands “mingin’ like a eat’s arse” as a result. Paul was completing the task of hauling the logs back under the trees to remove the evidence of their camp. He had a look of intense concentration on his face as he manoeuvred a large trunk up on to his shoulder, Tam guessing he was trying to lose himself a little in everything he did. Easier just to think that you’re shifting some wood than that you’re shifting some wood to cover your tracks because there’s a manhunt on and etc etc.
Tam crouched down and picked among the scattered twigs on the dry carpet of pine needles beneath the woven green canopy.
“Small, dry and clean bits of wood,” he told Spammy. “Nothing with bark on it, unless you can get the bark off. And definitely no leaves.”
Spammy crouched in a familiarly ungainly cluster of jutting and jagged knees, shoulders and elbows, long shaggy hair tumbling from around his face as he bent his neck to scrutinise the forest floor.
“Zat so there’s nae smoke?”
“Aye.”
“Cool.”
Bob sat on a fallen tree, holding his staff in his left hand, a strained look of pain contorting his features and ruddying his cheeks. He glanced down glumly at his damaged ankle, moving it slightly and wincing, shaking his head.
“Ma leg’s fucked,” he declared with regret and ominous portent.
Tam looked at it, swollen and discoloured, an angry riot of bruising and inflammation under the streaks of dried blood. A combination of desperation, determination and pure adrenalin had allowed Bob to continue the night before, but once his system had been given time to rest and react, it had reached a condemnatory verdict on the abused limb.
“I cannae go on, Tam,” he said, looking his old friend firmly in the eye.
Their gazes remained in silent intercourse for a few moments, as a burdensome inevitability closed in upon them.
Tam nodded. “I know,” he said softly.
The trout tasted of charcoal in the places where the sticks had pierced them – near each end – for holding them in the heat. Other mouthfuls had a bland, chewy consistency that betrayed where the flames had been a little tentative in their ministrations. However, the flavour, warmth and solidity of it in Tam’s mouth and going down his throat, together with the smells and the muted crackle of the small fire, made it the most satisfying meal he had eaten in ages. It could have been some primal sense of fulfilment that did it, of having hunted or caught the meat you ate, but Tam suspected it was probably the even more primal matter of being absolutely fucking starving.
They sat on the ground or on logs, gnawing at their fish on sticks, surreally reminiscent of kids working away at big ice lol-lies. It was unlikely to catch on, though, Tam thought. Definitely not at the pictures, anyway.
“Have you tasted the finest of trou-out,” Spammy sang, inexplicably, to no-one (of course). “In the woods pickin’ skelfs oot your mou-outh.”
“I never knew you could cook, Dad,” Paul said, gesticulating with his skewered breakfast. “Why’d you never bother at hame?”
“Ach, your mother wouldnae have it,” he said.”
“What? Have you offered?”
“Aye. But she’ll no let me build a fire on the kitchen flair.”
“So what’s the plan?” Paul asked. They had disposed of the sticks and fish skeletons by burying them a few yards into the trees, then kicked away the ashes of the fire and covered the site of it with handfuls of pine needles.
Bob looked over at Tam, then at the ground.
Tam sighed with resignation. “Bob’s no comin’,” he announced.
“Whit?” asked Paul.
“Ma leg’s totally knackered, son,” Bob explained regretfully. “I cannae go on.”
“Aye, but we could cairry you, couldn’t we, Spammy?”
“Sure. We could make a stretcher wi’ jaickets an’ a coupla logs.”
Bob smiled, laughed a little, and shook his head.
“I’ll bet you could as well,” he agreed. “But I think it’s the end o’ the line for me on this wan.”
“Bob needs treatment,” Tam explained. “His leg’s in some state, and Christ knows what infections he might be gettin’ in thon cut.”
Bob nodded affirmation. “There’ nothin’ else you can dae
aboot it, boys. I’ll have to take ma chances wi’ the polis again.”
“But, Bob,” Paul protested. They had come a long way together. A hell of a long way.
“But nothin’, Paul,” he interrupted. “Never bother aboot me. I’ll be in a nice, comfy, warm hospital bed the night, while you’re under another fuckin’ tree wi’ eariwigs crawlin’ up your arse.”
Paul smiled sadly in reluctant acceptance.
“I’ll tell them everythin’ that happened,” he said. “I’ll tell them all aboot the crash an’ aboot how it was that wee shite an’ his china that kill’t the polismen. An’ this time they’ll already have proof that there was somebody else there – that there was somebody else on that bus wi’ us, and that it was him took the guns. And mibbe by the time they catch up wi’ you I’ll have sewn a wee bit o’ doubt aboot what happened at Craigurquhart.”
“Fuck, let’s hope so,” Paul breathed. “So what are we gaunny dae?”
“Well, we’re no just leavin’ Bob here,” Tam stated. “There’s the off-chance that we’ve actually done this runnin’ cairry-on quite well, and that nae bugger’ll come along here to find him for a wee while. We don’t want him sittin’ here freezin’ his baws aff an’ starvin’ to death. We also don’t want it to be too obvious what way we’ve gone when they do find him. So I’m gaunny help Bob back doon the hill a wee bit. I’ve done a bit of a recce this mornin’, an’ there’s a road on the other side o’ this hill, runnin’ through part o’ the forest in places. I’ll get Bob doon as far as that, then I’ll catch up wi’ you pair.”
“Where are we gaun, then?” Paul asked.
“Onwards and upwards,” Tam stated, looking along the trail. “This forest sits on these hills like a big green blanket. It goes ower the ridges, doon the sides, into the valleys. Just acres an’ acres, miles an’ miles of pines or firs or whatever they are. I want you pair to head upwards to the ridge an’ wait for me there. Fae that kinna vantage point you’ll be able to see me comin’ nae bother, but mair importantly, you’ll be able to see anybody else comin’. If you see polis or sodgers before you see me, then just get aff your marks an’ let me worry aboot maself. And while you wait for me, you can keep yoursels amused by findin’ water sources an’ anythin’ that’s edible.”
“Like what?” asked Paul?
“Mushrooms,” said Spammy with a grin.
“All right, correction,” said Tam. “Edible and non-hallucinogenic.”
“So where are we gaun after that?” Paul enquired.
“Doesnae matter,” Tam said curiously. “We’re no headin’ anywhere specific. We’re just stayin’ hidden. Like I says, this is a big forest. If the weather stays mild, and we’ve got food, water and shelter, we can lie low here for days.”
“Days?” Paul exclaimed. It was as much a protest against circumstance as against his dad’s judgment.
Spammy just gave a low giggle. “Mental,” he gurgled.
“They’ll have roadblocks all over the place, Paul,” Tam explained. “They’ll be watchin’ towns and villages, railways, everythin’. There’s naewhere we can go.”
“What, so are we gaunny all turn into fuckin’ Grizzly Adams?”
“Naw. But if we can stay oota sight for a wee while, they might start to think we’ve got past them somehow, and they’ll relax the search aroon’ here. They’ll be expectin’ us to turn up in a hijacked motor or somethin’, headin’ for Glesca or somewhere they think we might have pals.”
“Ferr enough. But then what?”
“Then . . . we’ll see.”
There was comfortingly little sound as they made their progress along the forest floor, the soft cushion of needles and moss muffling the whump of Bob’s makeshift staff and his lopsidedly heavy footfalls. Bob had his left arm thrown around Tam’s broad shoulders and gripped the wooden shaft with his right hand, his injured left leg dragging uselessly beneath the multi-limbed and two-headed arboreal creature they had formed.
“Will thae two be aw right?” Bob asked in a gasping whisper, resting breathlessly against a staunchly straight-climbing trunk, a tree so formidably solid and strapping that it looked like further up it ought to have its arms folded.
“Aye,” nodded Tam. “They’ll no dae anythin’ stupit. And there’s mair to that Spammy wan than he lets on.”
“Aye, you’re tootin’ there,” Bob concurred, with a wee grin and a shake of the head at some memory of the lanky zombie’s inexhaustibly bizarre behaviour.
“You know, he could be the wan that saves us in court,” Bob added.
Tam furrowed his brow, curious but suspicious.
“See, the prosecution’ll describe everythin’ we’re meant to have done. Then the defence’ll put Spammy on the witness stand, then the jury’ll clock ’im and just go: ‘Naaaah. You’ve got to be fuckin’ kiddin’. He doesnae look like he could brek intae a run, never mind a mansion.’”
Tam laughed, finding a pleasure in the return of the once so-familiar sparkle in his old pal’s eye, and a sadness in the prospect of its impending loss.
“You realise, Bob, we’re all probably famous by noo,” he observed, opting not to expel the two of them from the comfort and shelter of their patter. It was very cold beyond it, and there was no need to go out there just yet.
“We were famous before,” Bob replied.
“Naw, back then the Robbin’ Hoods were famous. Naebody knew who they were, that was the point. But you can bet just aboot every person in Britain knows oor names right this minute.”
“Probably got nicknames as well,” Bob added. “To make us sound mair authentically criminal. Tam ‘mad dog’ McInnes.”
“Bob ‘the bastard’ Hannah.”
“Cameron ‘where am I?’ Scott.”
They laughed together for a few moments before setting off once more.
“I think infamous is mair likely the word, actually,” Tam reflected. “I don’t imagine we’ve been portrayed in a very flatterin’ light by the media. Specially as that Voss bastart owned hauf the media.”
“Aye, true enough. But at the same time, we’re probably no public enemy nummer wan for everybody. I know what happened to him was terrible, an’ I’m no sayin’ it was right or he deserved it, but he was a bad, bad man, Tam. There’d have been plenty queuein’ up to kill that bastart. An’ there’ll have been a few havin’ a fly wee drink tae oor names this week.”
“Aye. Not least whoever it was that actually fuckin’ kill’t him.”
“Well,” Bob sighed, shaking his head, “I wouldnae be wastin’ brain cells wonderin’ aboot that wan, cause we’re never gaunny fin’ oot.”
“Naw, you’re right.”
They came to a tiny stream, just a couple of inches of water spilling over gravel and rocks, but going at a splashing, cascading pace, so they stooped for a few mouthfuls.
“Aw, that tastes guid,” Bob declared with a growling approval. He bent to the flow again and slurped up another couple of handfuls.
“Keep at it,” Tam suggested. “Could be a wee while before you get the chance o’ mair.”
“You as well,” Bob replied. “Specially wi’ that pair on watterdivinin’ duty.”
Tam laughed.
“What are you gaunny dae, Tam?” Bob asked, his tones suddenly low and serious.
Tam looked up from where he knelt by the stream.
“Don’t know, Bob,” he admitted. “Couldnae tell the young yins that, obviously, but . . .” He looked away, turning his head.
“You’re just buyin’ time, aren’t you?”
Tam nodded, saying nothing, still looking away into the trees.
“I’ll do what I can,” Bob said. “Tell somebody that’ll believe us. They cannae keep up this terrorist shite any mair, so sooner or later they’ll have to let us talk to a lawyer.”
“It’s no a lawyer we need, Bob, it’s a fuckin’ miracle.”
“Noo, less o’ that, big yin,” he said, reaching out a hand and grabbing Tam’s shoulder. Tam look
ed back at him.
“Don’t you be lossin’ the place at this stage,” Bob chided him. “You dae what you can dae. Stay hidden, lie low. This isnae aw as cut an’ dried as you think. Mind how fucked-aff the polis were gettin’ back in Embra, just before we got huckled intae the bus. They were gettin’ frustrated, cause aw they had was us. They’d nae murder weapons and nae witnesses. Just circumstantial evidence, an’ that might no look quite as fuckin’ dramatic when everybody’s had a wee while to calm doon an’ look at the picture again in the cauld light of day.
“You stay doon, Tam. Bide your time. Keep thae boys safe. An’ don’t gie up. Never gie up.”
Paul watched Spammy’s progress a few yards ahead of him, struggling to think of a word to describe his curious gait, reminded as ever of images from wildlife documentaries featuring baby deer taking their first steps. Lolloping seemed to cover the long-limbed stride, but carried utterly inappropriate connotations of haste and energy. Equally, it would have been unfair to say he was slow, because Spammy somehow covered a lot of ground underneath those uncoordinated legs, but there was a lethargy about his motion sufficient to belie the fact that he was moving at all. In that respect, Paul reflected, the appropriate metaphor was a corporation bus.
They were able to walk along the forest floor in the daylight, the limited visibility of their moonlit trek having restricted them to the path the night before. There was a fresh, clean and wonderfully pure smell, sharpened by the slightest chill in the air. Paul breathed it in in greedy snorts and gulps, filling himself with it like he was quenching a thirst. Every sound they made was muffled by the trees and the springy ground underfoot, the clear but softened tones of their voices not carrying more than a few feet, like they were in a recording studio.
Spammy had gone through a brief fixation with stamping on loose sticks and twigs to try and make them snap.
“See in the films nawrat, some daft bastart ayeways gives himsel away by staunin’ on a stick,” he had mumbled. “It goes KE-RACK, like a fuckin’ gun gaun aff. It reverberates for fuckin’ miles, as well. Folk in Alpine villages comin’ oot their doors to see what the noise was aw aboot. Fuckin’ avalanches startin’ fae the earth-shakin’ impact of this mighty stick gettin’ stood on by some skelly bastart, or a fuckin’ deer.
Country of the Blind Page 19