by Clare Carson
*
SHE HADN’T FLOWN to Orkney before. A first time for everything. It was the quickest way to get there and, she figured, the easiest way to throw off any watchers. Becky had a Debbie Harry wig which she had bought for some student union bash. Sam jammed it on her head, examined herself in the mirror, startled by her own reflection – a more glamorous version of herself. She ferreted for her baker boy cap and perched it on the artificial hair, grunged the look down a notch. It would have to do. She bolted along South Lambeth Road, head down, to the Portuguese tourist agent, always open at the crack of dawn. The woman sitting behind a computer, lacquered nails and false eyelashes, gave Sam’s bouffant wig an approving nod, asked what she was after, tapped the computer keyboard. A return to Kirkwall, flying north today, returning south tomorrow. Kirkwall? Where was Kirkwall? Orkney. Scotland. Pained face. Wasn’t it cold and wet? Could she make a flight that left Heathrow at twelve thirty? She would need to be there an hour before, that gave her three hours to cross London. She could do it, but she would have to run. She paid in cash – twenties from Pierce’s stash.
She stopped at a phone box on the way home, called the archaeologist, checked whether she could use the Honda. He said he was going to Kirkwall that morning. He’d drop it off at the airport car park, key in ignition, helmet by the wheel. Nobody would take it, not unless they were mad.
*
BECKY RETURNED HOME bleary-eyed as she was about to leave.
‘Why are you wearing that wig?’
‘Got to run. Might not be back tonight. Tell you later.’
*
SHE SLOUCHED INTO the airport with her cap over one eye, avoiding the focus of the security camera, checked in, made her way through the metal detector and went straight to the ladies’. She locked herself in a cubicle, put the toilet lid down and sat. The smell of crap was overwhelming, but she was prepared to put up with it if it meant she was less likely to be seen. She waited until her flight was called, exited the cubicle, straightened her wig in the mirror. She looked like a madwoman. Too bad. She bought the Guardian from a newsagent and headed to the departure gate.
*
THE PLANE WAS half empty. She had a window seat and nobody sat next to her. She peered through the porthole at the receding ground, transfixed by the autumnal spread of London below, the silver Thames looping through the gilded city. She unfolded the Guardian as they reached the clouds, thumbed the pages searching for the cryptic crossword. She was in luck. Araucaria; her favourite setter. Her eye caught the date at the top of the paper – 31 October. Halloween – it had almost slipped by without her noticing. She smiled, remembering Halloween parties past; dressing up as witches, carving jack o’ lanterns from gnarly turnips, parading around the block while their neighbours eyed them with suspicion and the local boys jeered. Not that they cared what the wankers at the end of the road thought of them, not then. Jim joined in the party games if he was around, playing the old hag in grandmother’s footsteps, bobbing for apples, hamming up his part in murder in the dark. Samhain, he called it. The feast of the dead. The end of harvest and the beginning of the darkness. Even when they were teenagers, the sisters had insisted on having a Halloween party. Although by then they had graduated from bobbing apples to the Ouija board, Helen doing her tarot readings. Liz joined in, after a fashion. Fear death by water, she had said when Helen handed her the Hanged Man from the tarot pack. It’s a quote, she had added when Helen had pulled a puzzled face. The Waste Land. Jim’s participation had dwindled. Maybe that was the pattern in all families – the increasing distance between father and children as they aged. Perhaps it would have happened that way anyway, even if he hadn’t worked as a police spy, preoccupied by the dangers of his job. Perhaps it wouldn’t. She folded the paper in half, cast her eye over the list of clues and picked out an anagram, rearranged the letters in her head. Cryptic crosswords were much simpler than relationships and in some ways more satisfying. At least they were resolvable.
Her head was itching by the time they landed at Glasgow. She bought two cheese sandwiches, three bottles of water, two bars of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, shoved them all in her backpack and headed to the toilet. She removed the wig in the privacy of a cubicle, wondered whether she really needed to wear it as she stared at the gap under the door and watched feet passing. High-heeled courts. Tasselled brogues. Adidas trainers hovering. The door clattered as the trainer wearer tested the lock.
‘This one’s free,’ somebody shouted further down the line of cubicles.
‘Zank you.’ East European accent.
Her heart thumped. The trainers moved away. Sam jammed her wig and cap on her head, opened the cubicle door, dashed to the departure lounge, saw the boarding light flashing for Kirkwall, ran to the gate, straight on the titchy plane. She huddled in her seat, unfolded the Guardian and used it as a screen to mask her face. She watched the shoes boarding below the paper. No Adidas trainers. The air hostesses closed the doors. The plane trundled along the runway, propellers blurring, stomach surging as it tilted, grey and green below.
They dropped below the clouds over the Pentland Firth, the sun sinking into the sea, burnishing the sky as they landed. A battalion of geese flew overhead – winter arrivals she assumed, like her. She made a beeline for the toilets, removed the wig, stuffed it in her rucksack. She checked her watch. Four fifty. She had shouted goodbye to Becky at ten. Six hours and fifty minutes to travel from one end of Britain to the other. She now had forty minutes to reach Houton and the ferry to Lyness.
She trotted to the car park, located the Honda, helmet waiting by the front wheel. She twisted the key, kicked the starter pedal. Nothing happened. She froze. Until this point she had been carried along by the momentum of the journey. A leaf on the wind. Her plan was simply to find Pierce and warn him about Reznik. She hadn’t thought beyond reaching the ferry at Houton on time. She patted her coat pocket, comforted by the torch and penknife. Once she got to Rackwick she’d be fine anyway; she had her doubts about Pierce’s relationship with Karina, but they didn’t detract from her view of him as the type of man you could rely on in a crisis. He knew how to stay calm in dangerous situations; that had been his job before he’d gone to ground in Hoy. He’d dealt with terrorists. Arms dealers. She kicked the starter pedal again. The bike chugged and shook.
Beyond Kirkwall the houses thinned, and the comforting glow of the street lamps evaporated. She knew this road but the darkness transformed the landscape. She focused on the tarmac, ignored the menacing shadows and movements in the corner of her eye. Headlights of passing cars came and went. A short-eared owl swooped too close and she swerved, almost lost control. She followed the lane past the Earl’s Bu. The filigree branches of the coppiced sycamores were black against the sky and Jim was standing in the shadow of the hedgerow. She took a second look. Nothing. Ghosts of the past. She remembered him standing in that same spot in the summer of ’76 as if it were yesterday, not thirteen years ago. She could recall the details – the jeans, the boots, the shirt he was wearing, the tightness in her stomach as she watched Pierce’s retreating Volvo. What had Pierce been doing there that day? Jim had never said whether the meeting happened by chance, although she had sensed Jim’s surprise when he saw Pierce watching through the window of the Round Church. Perhaps he was alarmed, not surprised. Pierce had located her in exactly the same place thirteen years later. He was always careful, Pierce had told her, when he visited Stromness; he didn’t want his face well known. And yet he visited the Earl’s Bu regularly. He found solace in the place, he had said. Or perhaps he was drawn back to those events in the summer of ’76 that wouldn’t let either of them go.
*
THE FERRY WAS waiting at Houton pier. A curlew flew along the coast, its haunting song hanging in the air. The wind had dropped, the clouds cleared, the night sky darkening from crimson to violet, the first stars glinting. She boarded the ferry, parked the Honda, sat on the passenger walkway, ate one of her sandwiches. The ferryman wandered over; s
he recognized him from her previous journey to Hoy in September and was comforted by the familiar face even if he wasn’t somebody she knew. She dug in her pocket for her wallet.
‘You’re going to Lyness?’
‘Yes.’
‘There isn’t a return ferry tonight.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you going to stay in the hostel?’ Concerned, rather than nosey.
She nodded.
He took her money.
‘Don’t you miss the sun here in the winter?’ she asked.
‘There are compensations.’ He pointed to Orion. ‘On a clear winter’s night, the Milky Way stretches from horizon to horizon. That makes the darkness worthwhile. Mind you, there are plenty of nights when it’s wild and wet and all you can do is pray for the dawn to come.’
‘Do you think it will be a wild and wet Halloween tonight?’
‘Not a chance. Somebody’s been to see Bessie Millie.’
‘Bessie Millie?’
‘The witch of Stromness who tamed the winds if you gave her enough money.’
‘A night of Samhain supernatural calm then.’
‘Aye. Supernatural, that’s for sure. The ghosts will be out tonight. Samhain,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘That’s a Gaelic word. Are you a Scot?’
‘No, but my father was.’
‘Not from here.’
‘Glasgow, or thereabouts.’
‘You don’t sound very certain.’
‘I’m not.’
He handed her a ticket. ‘Families are funny things.’
Especially when they live in the shadow of the secret state. He ambled away, left her staring at the black and glassy water.
CHAPTER 28
Orkney, 31 October 1989
THE WALLS OF Lyness harbour solidified in the dark. She clanked on to the harbour road, glanced behind for a last sight of the ferryman, waved as she passed the derelict army barracks. A dog howled. The grizzled head of a Halloween turnip lantern glimmered on a front step. Halloween. She had enjoyed the spooky games with her sisters, but here, alone in the darkness, Samhain was not so much fun. Unnatural calm the ferryman had said, and there was something too still, too expectant about the air, as if the restless souls were waiting for the wall between here and eternity to crumble so they could cross over to the land of the living for this one night. She conjured the faces of the dead people she had known, chanted their names in her head. They were reaching out to her, she couldn’t hold them back. Not tonight. She headed north along the coast, the bleak slopes of Hoy on one side and on the other, the ocean. The road was wide but in the dark she had a continual sense she was too close to the edge, in danger of falling.
The road dipped to Pegal Bay, the scrubby willows and stunted ashes hunched like witches in the gulley, the burn gurgling and frothing. A bird of prey screeched and the bike’s headlight caught the bleak emptiness of the moor ahead. Flickering lights in the distance took her by surprise; she couldn’t recall a settlement along this part of the road. She instinctively clutched the brake, peered ahead as the beam caught the white marker of Betty Corrigall’s grave. Stooped figures, candles blazing in the stillness of the air. Halloween ritual, she supposed, locals remembering the dead. The scene made her think of Pierce, leaving one of the white tiles that Anna had given him in the jam jar on the grave. Why had he placed it there? Was he recalling his own dead in some muted way, remembering those he had lost? She twisted the throttle, urged the small bike to go faster as she descended the hill, keen to put some distance between herself and the grave. She glanced behind but could no longer see people or flames – some trick of the landscape. She flicked her eyes forward and caught a figure in the beam, running along the verge. A woman. Small. Perhaps it was a girl. Where had she appeared from? She swerved, glimpsed a long white dress and bare feet in the periphery of her vision. She veered again, heart beating. Panicking. The girl was in trouble, fleeing from the graveside mourners. Betty Corrigall. She looked in the wing mirror, spotted the white dress, except it wasn’t white, it was dirty, smeared with gunk, dark bloody gunk, the woman’s pale face with its delicate bird-like features locked in a scream. Valerie. Anna’s mother. She gripped the front wheel brake too hard, almost sent herself flying. Came to a halt. Dismounted. Stood in the road. Deserted. She yelled.
‘Valerie, where are you? Are you OK?’
Words eaten up in the gloom. No answer. She fumbled in her pocket for her torch, directed it along the road – empty blackness. No sound. Not even a gust of wind rustling the heather. She must have been mistaken. Jumpy. Her panicky brain churning, calling up the dead, making subconscious connections between Valerie and Betty Corrigall because she’d found Pierce’s white tile on the grave. Two young dead women. She was imagining things, telling herself Samhain ghost stories.
She remounted the bike, set off again. Confused and shaken. She almost missed the turning for Rackwick Bay, swung at the last moment, headed inland, heart still hammering. She hated this part of the journey, trapped between the mountains, the sheer walls enclosing her in their rocky hold. Everything worse at night. She glanced at her watch. It was only seven p.m. It felt much later. Her tormented mind was playing tricks. She concentrated on the road. Past the path to the Dwarfie Stane, the strange tomb carved out of a huge sandstone block; the only human landmarks in this desolate stretch of Hoy commemorated death. Gravestones. Tombs. No place for the living. A ghostly creature sprang down the slope below the ancient cairn, darted in front of the bike – a mountain hare, fur white in the beam. The hare flipped away, engulfed by the heather. She caught her breath, drove on. The black peaty water of a burn gleamed; she must be close to Rackwick. She stopped, listened. Gulls mewing. An owl’s hoot. The distant thrum of an engine. Not a car. What was it? A generator perhaps. She decided to push the bike the rest of the way. The darkness was almost total with the headlight extinguished. She didn’t want to use her torch, not yet anyway. It might help her to see but it would also give away her presence if anybody was watching Pierce’s place. She tipped her head back, found the crescent moon, Orion’s belt and then the brilliant yellow of Capella, the seafarer’s guide. The atmosphere was so clear and sharp it magnified the light, made the stars seem brighter, closer. Time and space collapsing.
She rounded the bend to the hollow of the bay. Only one croft with windows glowing. What had Pierce said about his neighbours? A couple of old fishermen who couldn’t bear to leave and some artistic types – a photographer and a musician – who rocked up in the summer months. They wouldn’t be here this late in the year. She pushed the bike into a field at the inland end of the near deserted settlement, leaned it against a crumbling stone wall, placed the helmet on the grass by the front wheel. She decided to leave her rucksack too – cumbersome to carry – and took her bearings. The bay facing west, Pierce’s croft halfway up the slope to the north. Dark. Her stomach rose to her gullet. His paraffin light was never very bright anyway; maybe he had curtained his windows. She shivered. She wasn’t sure which was scaring her more: the possibility that something had happened to Pierce or the prospect of being out here alone at night. She’d been banking on Pierce to take over once she had reached him – she wanted him to deal with Reznik. And now it seemed as if he’d already vanished. If Pierce wasn’t there, she would go straight back to Lyness and find the hostel. Maybe she should do that anyway, turn around right now. No, she had come this far, she had to see it through.
She stumbled on the uneven path, but by the time she had reached the slope her eyes had adjusted to the dark. First curve. Second curve. The ridge of the hill clear against the pale glow of the northern sky, lighter than she had expected. It couldn’t be the moon – that was behind. Perhaps it was Stromness, or a lighthouse. Either way, it cast the hill in relief. Her eye travelled down and she could just make out the white of the croft against the purple of the hill. Definitely no light inside. No sign of the Volvo in its usual spot either. She craned over the path’s bank, assessed the house a
gain as best she could in the dark, searching for movements, faces in the window, gleams from the paraffin lamp. Nothing. Pierce was not there. She looked back at the bay; the one croft that had been illuminated was now dark. All she could see was the faint golden crescent of sand and white foam of breaking waves. She was the only visitor here tonight, there was nobody else about. She might as well go and check through Pierce’s windows, make sure he wasn’t at home, lights dimmed. And then she would ride back to Lyness and stay the night at the hostel.
She trod the path to the croft’s entrance, knocked. No answer. She depressed the squeaky handle – it needed oiling – pushed her shoulder against the door. Locked. She sidled around to the valley side of the croft, the window overlooking the bay, squinted through the pane, leaned back to see if she could find a better angle. Pointless exercise because it was too dark to see inside anyway. A crunch startled her. She froze. Listened. Waves pounding. Fulmar’s guttural call. Heart thumping. Another crunch. Shoes on gravel. Somebody was walking down the cliff path, towards the croft. Perhaps it was one of the old fishermen out for a night stroll. She ducked below the window, crept to the corner, feet silent on the grass, pressed herself against the wall. Waited, hoping to see a figure below her on the path. Nobody. The night stroller hadn’t gone past – he had taken the path to Pierce’s croft and was heading for the door. A neighbour hoping for a Halloween hot toddy? She waited for a knock, an enquiring hello. The door handle squeaked. A thud and another, louder. Harder. Whoever it was, they were trying to force the door. Her mind raced, searching for a plan, the safest path. The sharp crack of a kick and wood splintering shattered the night air. Shit.
Getagrip. Return to the Honda. Head start. Drive to Lyness. Safety. She had to move now while the intruder was in the house. Intruder? Reznik or his enforcer Wolf. Whichever, he would be armed. She had to run. The downhill path was hidden from view by its banks. She could make it to the bottom without being seen but she had left the Honda, stupidly she now realized, on the far edge of the hamlet – she would have to break cover and follow the track in full view of the croft window to reach it. There was no guarantee the bike would start first time. If he heard her and had a torch, she would be caught within range; he was bound to be an expert shot. The ruined bothy was at the bottom of the slope. She could cut across the grass, down the path, hide in the derelict shelter, and assess the situation again. He must have parked his car somewhere else. Where? If she watched which way he went, picked her moment carefully, she would be able to escape without being seen dashing to her bike.