by Ken McClure
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ agreed Turnbull. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of survey work on my own in the hope that I can impress them.’
That sounds exactly like the kind of initiative they couldn’t ignore,’ said Bannerman, draining his glass.
‘Can I get you another?’ asked Turnbull.
Bannerman shook his head and said that he was having an early night. He had another hard day ahead of him tomorrow. As he got up, Turnbull looked up at him and said, ‘‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this Doc but I think you should be a bit careful.’
The words chilled Bannerman. He looked at Turnbull and saw embarrassment more than threat in his eyes. ‘‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
The power station has local support. It provides a lot of jobs round here. Criticism isn’t welcome, if you get my meaning?’
‘I do,’ replied Bannerman. Thanks for the warning.’
NINE
Despite the soothing effects of the whisky, Bannerman had a restless night, plagued by thoughts of the warning given to him by Turnbull and what he saw as the stupidity of his actions at the power station. He would not now be sorry to leave Achnagelloch. Whether or not he found evidence of contamination that day he was resolved to return to Edinburgh on the following day. There was nothing else to be done here for the moment. He felt sure that the only source of the rogue virus was in the experimental mice at the university.
The rain of the previous day had cleared away to leave a bright blue sky but looking nice was about as far as it went. It was bitterly cold and the wind was strong enough to make the chill factor a significant problem up on the exposed sides of the glen. The landlord had done a good job in drying out his clothing and had also offered to provide him with two thermos flasks, one filled with soup, the other with sweet coffee, an offer Bannerman readily accepted.
As a matter of courtesy Bannerman telephoned John Sproat at Inverladdie to ask for permission to spend another day on his land. It was granted without comment. Bannerman had half hoped for an offer of a rough terrain vehicle so that he would not have to trek all the way up the glen again, but this was not forthcoming. He steeled himself for the hike.
Although numbingly cold as expected, Bannerman found the going easier than the day before because the overnight plunge in temperature had caused the earth to freeze hard, providing a firmer footing than the slippery mud of yesterday. This was a positive advantage in climbing up to the head of the glen but on the descent over the rough, broken ground to the shore it presented a new danger in the form of ice filled gulleys and steep, slippery rock falls with little or no sure footing to be had.
Bannerman was relieved to make it to the railway line by the shore without causing himself any more injury than the bad bruising to his left knee caused when he had slipped and gone down heavily on it while negotiating one of the rock falls. He found a hollow to shelter in and had the soup from the Thermos, cupping both hands round the mug so as to make as much use of the heat as possible. The soup was followed by a Mars bar and a cigarette.
With his back against a rock, Bannerman propped his rucksack between his knees and got out the Geiger counter. MacLeod had also given him a few specimen containers which he could use to take soil samples back if necessary. He brought these out and stuffed them into one of his jacket pockets where they would be more readily accessible. He had already decided that the sensible thing to do would be to walk as far west along the shore as he intended to monitor and then turn round and carry out a slow sweep with the counter on the way back. That way he would have the wind behind him on the actual slow monitoring leg.
Making sure that all his zips and toggles were properly closed and tightened, he leaned forward, bowed his head and set off into the wind. He had barely gone a hundred metres when a sudden loud noise penetrated his hood and startled him so much that he lost his footing; he stumbled and fell to the ground. A freight train, which he hadn’t heard because of the wind, rolled past on the single-track line. Its driver looked out of the cab but did not acknowledge him.
Bannerman got slowly to his feet and watched the trucks trundle by. The train seemed to consist mainly of fuel wagons and empty hoppers on their way up to the quarry. Bannerman silently gave thanks that he hadn’t been walking on the line at the time. The locomotive would have hit him before he had heard it. He reached what he thought was a reasonable point to start working back from. If there had been any contamination of Inverladdie from the sea he would be bound to pick up signs of radioactivity in the four hundred metres or so of the shore that he planned to scan. He knelt down to take the lens cap off the Geiger counter’s sensor.
The cap was a bit tight because the cold had made the plastic hard and unyielding so he laid down the meter by his side while he wrestled with it. Suddenly the glass on the meter shattered and the whole box jumped up into the air. Bannerman looked at the instrument stupidly as if it had been subject to the attentions of a poltergeist. ‘What the …’ he exclaimed before realizing in a searing flash of panic what had really happened. A high velocity bullet had hit the Geiger counter! Someone had shot at him!
It seemed that his capacity to coordinate his limb movements was deserting him just when he needed it most. His arms and legs insisted on trying to behave independently as he half ran, half stumbled his way up the shore and over the railway line to tumble down into the first gulley that presented itself. It was his misfortune that it happened to have a puddle of water in the foot of it. There was a layer of ice on its surface but it gave way when he crashed down on it and he found himself kneeling in icy water. It was deep enough to cover his calf muscles and he felt them contract and threaten cramp in protest as he pressed his face to the muddy wall of his refuge.
As the seconds passed in silence, apart from the sound of his breathing, Bannerman became aware of the pain and discomfort afflicting him. These had been ignored as secondary considerations in his desperation to get out of sight of the gunman but now they screamed for his attention. He had come down heavily on his already bruised left knee and it was throbbing. Both his legs from the knees down had become numb with cold and his back was aching through holding himself against the wall of the gulley at an uncomfortable angle. He couldn’t stay like this for ever but, on the other hand, he would be a sitting target for the gunman if he broke cover.
Perhaps the gunman wasn’t there any more, thought Bannerman as what seemed like an eternity passed without any further shooting. His breathing quietened and he became aware of gulls wheeling above him in the wind. The analogy with vultures circling a dying man was inescapable, although he could only have been hiding for four or five minutes. His body was insisting that he move, so, very slowly, he edged himself up on the frozen mud wall and looked over the lip of the gulley. He was rewarded with a face full of grit as a bullet slammed into the ground less than a metre in front of him. He tumbled back down into the icy puddle and let out a cry of anguish as his injured knee took yet another knock.
Bannerman could hardly see through tears of frustration and pain but he fought to get a grip on himself and tried to consider his position as logically as he could in the circumstances. It was a crisis and he had to deal with it. At the time of the first bullet he had no idea where it had come from; the Geiger meter had just exploded and jumped up before his eyes. The second bullet had, however, given away the gunman’s position because of the way the grit had flown up from the impact point. His attacker was almost due west of him. Big deal, thought Bannerman cynically. The truth was that if his attacker wanted to come down and finish him off there and then there was nothing he could do to stop him. The question was, did he?
Bannerman looked at his watch and had cause to rue his disdain for modern digital watches and their shockproof, waterproof casings. His own stylish, traditional watch had stopped. The blob of water under the cover glass told him why. He swore, looked up at the sky and tried to guess the time. Somewhere around two in the afternoon, he reckoned. In a couple of hours it wou
ld start to get dark. That was his only hope of escape. But if he were to have any chance at all of getting out under cover of dark he would have to get himself out of the icy puddle and get his circulation going. At the moment hypothermia and frostbite seemed a more likely scenario than escape.
It occurred to Bannerman that his attacker might have had that in mind. If he were to die of exposure it would look like an accident. There would be no inconvenient bullet holes to be explained away. Was that the reason the gunman did not appear to be interested in advancing on him? Was his plan to keep him pinned down until nature took its course?
Bannerman put his theory to the test by raising himself cautiously, once more, to the rim of the gulley. He was rewarded with a bullet a couple of metres away. The sound of the report was no nearer and the direction of the grit spurt had not changed; the gunman hadn’t moved.
Survival against the elements was now the name of the game. He had to get through the next couple of hours as best he could and still be fit enough for a trek back to Inverladdie in darkness. As a start, he crawled along the bottom of the gulley and pulled himself out of the water and up on to a small rocky ledge where, if he kept himself bent over, he could still be out of sight of his attacker. With great difficulty he managed to loosen the straps of his rucksack with numb fingers and got out the unopened coffee Thermos. He removed the cap slowly so that he wouldn’t spill any and poured some steaming coffee into it. Each burning sip was like a life-giving transfusion.
As soon as he had finished, Bannerman took off his boots and peeled off his wet socks. He put them to one side and replaced them with his spare pair from the rucksack, then he emptied the water out of his boots and laced them back on. He spent the next few minutes massaging his calves vigorously until the circulation returned to his legs bringing with it an agonizing pain which made him throw his head back against the wall of the gulley and screw his face up tight until the pain began to subside.
Bannerman instigated a programme of wriggling his toes non-stop, for periods of thirty seconds, every few minutes. At the same time he would swing his arms across his chest and move his fingers in synchronous exercise. After an hour of this regime he permitted himself the luxury of the last of the coffee and a cigarette. After another hour he prepared to leave. He tied the wet socks he had taken off round his injured knee to provide some protection against accidental knocks and tried to psych himself up for the coming test.
Bannerman’s new problem was in deciding just when it would be dark enough for him to make a move. He desperately wanted there to be some light left so that he could make reasonable progress over the worst part of the journey, the stretch between the shore and the head of the glen, but, of course, this part came first and he would be hopelessly exposed if he just made a run for it. He looked anxiously at the sky. It was definitely getting dark but there was no cloud cover. It would be a clear and bitterly cold night.
Bannerman could feel his heart pounding as he tensed himself to move out of the gulley. He had decided on his first gambit. He vaguely remembered seeing another rock gulley about twenty metres to the left when he ran from the shore. When the moment came, he would pull himself out of his present hole and make a run for it.
With a last rub at his legs to make sure that they would support him, he placed his hands on the rim of the gulley and concentrated hard. He took three deep breaths to steady his nerves and then pulled himself strongly upwards to roll over the parapet. Fuelled by panic and adrenalin, he scrambled to his feet and made for the next gulley in a crouching zig zag run. He had almost started to think there was no need for this precaution when a crack rang out behind him and the whine of a ricocheting bullet sent him tumbling down into the safety of the new trench. ‘Bastard!’ he cursed, his nerves threatening to fray at the edges.
He had seen where his next run was to take him. Without waiting to consider, in case courage failed him or his adrenalin surge dropped, he crawled along to the end of his present cover and pulled himself up again. Another crouching fun and he was into cover again. This time there was no accompanying shot and twilight was beginning to give way to darkness. Yet another zig zag run, and this time Bannerman made it a priority to get a good view of the general direction he wanted to head in. Safe in his next cover he got out his compass from his jacket pocket and made a mental note of the bearing of the head of the glen and the path back to Inverladdie.
The temperature was falling; the ground felt like concrete beneath his feet and every scrape or fall brought new agonies. The air was so cold that it pained him to take the deep breaths that his level of effort dictated he must if he were to fight off hypothermia. More and more his feet began to lose grip as he gained height and frost coated everything. As he hit his injured knee once more on a sharp rock — the wet sock protection kept slipping — he cried out and sank to the ground in helpless frustration. He wanted to scream and curse but the intake of icy breath made his throat contract, denying him even that release.
Discipline and coordination were all but gone by the time he made it to the head of the glen and he was reduced to making progress on all fours. Even this was lop-sided because of a reluctance to put all of his weight on his damaged knee. His efforts over the first stage of the journey had brought him to the point of exhaustion and he had been forced to slow down, which was causing him to become even colder. It was a vicious circle which was getting the better of him. There was a plus side to it. The coldness was numbing the pain. He was actually beginning to feel better. The gnawing soreness was slipping away to be replaced by an almost pleasant sensation of nothingness, a feeling of lightness, a pleasant tiredness … He would stop for a while, have a cigarette and then think about going on … Bannerman reached into his pocket feeling distinctly light-headed and deliciously tired. There was a vague warning signal at the back of his mind but he was in no mood to heed it. He needed a rest. The small voice telling him that he mustn’t stop would have to wait.
He found his cigarettes and matches and managed to open the pack with his tongue and teeth. He extracted a cigarette with his lips and then removed one of his gloves to light a match. Trying to shield the match with cupped hands which also contained the match box proved to be a disaster. The match ignited but fell into the half open box and the whole thing flared up in front of his face. Bannerman shied back stupidly from the firework, thinking how pretty it was, but then darkness returned and he was tired again, oh so very tired …
Bannerman opened his eyes and saw the face of an old man smiling down at him. Was there a god after all?
‘How are you feeling?’ asked the old man.
‘Where?’ …
‘You’re in the Achnagelloch Hotel and you’re quite safe,’ said the voice.
The mention of the decidedly earthly sound of ‘Achnagelloch’ cleared Bannerman’s head of all ethereal thoughts. He even recognized the voice. It was Angus MacLeod.
‘How did I get here?’ he asked as consciousness and pain sought to re-inhabit his body at an alarming rate. He remembered everything at once, except how he came to be in bed at the Achnagelloch Hotel.
‘The search party found you,’ said MacLeod, ‘thanks to your brilliantly improvised flare.’
‘Flare?’
‘The matches,’ said MacLeod.
‘Oh the matches,’ repeated Bannerman, none the wiser.
‘Another few hours and it might have been a different story,’ said MacLeod. ‘You have the young lady to thank for insisting on a search party.’
‘Young lady,’ repeated Bannerman, feeling that he was a distinct outsider in what was going on.
‘Me,’ said a female voice.
Bannerman looked in the direction of the voice and saw Shona MacLean standing there. She was smiling the same smile he remembered when she had opened the door to him on North Uist. It was all too much for him; he allowed his head to fall back on to the pillow in bemusement. Shona came to the side of the bed and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s a perfectly logical
explanation for everything. I had to go to Inverness to discuss some illustrations for the Highland craft fair so I thought I would look you up. Seeing as how there is only one hotel in Achnagelloch it wasn’t that difficult. The landlord told me that you had gone off into the hills this morning, so I decided to wait. When you weren’t back by nightfall I started to get worried. The landlord agreed that if you didn’t turn up by seven we would raise the alarm. That’s what happened.’
‘How did they know where to look?’ asked Bannerman.
‘I told them,’ said MacLeod. ‘The police called to warn me of a possible emergency on the hills. They said a man was missing and when they said it was you I was able to give them a fair idea of where you had gone. They found you at the head of Inverladdie Glen.’
Bannerman digested this information in silence for a moment then he suddenly began to think about his medical condition. Frostbite! He wriggled his toes and fingers in unison and found that they all moved. MacLeod saw what he was doing and said, ‘You’re fine. You’ll be right as rain in the morning apart from your knee, which I suspect caused all the trouble in the first place?’
Bannerman looked at him and suddenly saw the easy way out of all the explanations he feared he might have to make. ‘Yes, I fell and hurt it. It slowed me up so much that I got caught out by darkness and wandered around in circles I suppose.’
‘Easily done,’ said MacLeod. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting to my bed.’
Thanks Doctor,’ said Bannerman sincerely.
‘You’re welcome,’ replied MacLeod.
Shona reached out her hand and smoothed the hair away from Bannerman’s forehead. ‘What really happened out there?’ she asked.
For some reason, Bannerman did not even consider lying to her. ‘Someone took a shot at me.’
‘The same someone who killed Lawrence?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Bannerman.