October Song

by Ru Pringle

  Had they found the car? Did they already know that she was on foot?

  It seemed the most likely explanation.

  But perhaps she was getting ahead of herself. She lacked proof that any of this activity was even for her. They could be looking for anything.

  After what you did? Fat chance.

  She put her face in her hands and groaned.

  What now? Was it over? She couldn’t think of a way out. She certainly couldn’t go back.

  More out of a desire to act than anything rational, she found herself stumbling down across more interminable ridges and hollows towards the shore. Having scurried across a single track road that was more potholes than tarmac, she drifted through scrub fringing the high tide line as the sky brightened, eventually finding herself in the gardens of a big, abandoned old farmhouse. Bullet holes were dark spots in the flaking pebble-dashing. Four-wheel drives rusted where they had burned on the overgrown, rubble-strewn drive.

  She considered checking the house for somewhere to sleep, but rejected the idea. Time was slipping away. She moved on. Smelling wood-smoke, she waded in a daze through a stream spilling into the loch below a little wooden bridge.

  Beyond, on a little grassy meadow above a wrinkle in the coast, embers of a camp fire were still glowing. Amazingly, beside it was small, camouflage-green tent.

  Pulled up on the shore below was a shiny, purple kayak.

  CHAPTER 7

  ____________

  Sleep on It

  YOU PULL INTO A HOTEL in the drab little southern Highland village of Crianlarich, ten kilometres north of Loch Lomond.

  The trail’s gone cold. You can feel it.

  You don’t like it, but there’s no way around this. You’ve done well on fumes, but the time when you need more information has arrived. Which means rest, and some clear thinking. And, if you’re lucky, progress from the team back at HQ.

  Would she have gone north and then west to the town of Oban? Or taken the westwards turn-off halfway up Loch Lomond, following the long, winding road up through the Arrochar Alps and down around Loch Fyne – the longest of North Britain’s fjord-like sea-lochs – to the fractured coast between Oban and Lochgilphead?

  There’s been a roadblock at Lochgilphead since the evening of the bombing, and slightly later ones on the main road north of Crianlarich and the more minor road from Inveraray to Lochawe. However, they’ve reported no white Volkswagens, nor anyone lacking ID cards or matching Coira Keir’s description. And so you headed north, towards the so-called “front line”.

  It quickly felt wrong.

  Even so, you checked all the quaintly dilapidated hotels along the tortuous road hugging Loch Lomond’s northern shore in case anyone had noticed anything.

  Nothing.

  Hardly surprising.

  And so, you’ll get a good night’s sleep. In the morning you’ll take a leisurely breakfast; read the daily news blogs. Then you’ll head wherever your gut takes you.

  What would you do, Coira Keir?

  You honestly don’t know. This woman is … contradictory; you realise that now. She won’t be an easy nut to crack.

  But where can she go? Options around here are few. It’s simple, really: road or sea. Road seems to have been ruled out for now. And marine options are also limited. She would have needed to take a boat down the full sixty-five kilometre length of Loch Fyne, only to end up in the heavily patrolled waters of the Firth of Clyde. Which she could have reached more quickly, and far more easily, from the Ayrshire coast.

  Could she have doubled back through Dumbarton? Got herself recorded on the service station cameras just to throw you off the scent, and then crossed the River Clyde to Ayrshire?

  Maybe your hunch to turn north at the Erskine bridge was wrong after all.

  You’ll sleep on it. If nothing else occurs to you, you’ll take the road to Oban, then head back south down the coast to Lochgilphead and see what you can find.

  CHAPTER 8

  ____________

  Meghan Trainor

  SHE’S PADDLING FOR HER LIFE. Land seems very far away. The Sound of Jura might as well be an ocean, the way she’s feeling. The wind has risen and swung south-west. The sky suggests rain is coming. Surging from the south, the swell has grown mountainous.

  She’s nearly been knocked over twice by foaming walls of water. If she capsizes out here, she has no delusions that the morning’s pathetic little practice session will help in the slightest. And then, if hypothermia doesn’t get her, she will drown.

  On the plus side, she’s discovered that bracing the paddle against the faces of the waves battering her from the left every few seconds keeps her stable. At least until one rolls past underneath, leaving the kayak perched on its crest. She hasn’t yet worked out what to do at that point, apart from flailing for balance. She can’t remember feeling so tired, nor so continuously terrified.

  At least the tide has helped, so far. At first, progress was slow. Then it was like someone had turned on a conveyor belt. The first few kilometres passed without incident. She’d felt sufficiently confident to clamber on to a little islet to eat the last muesli bar and study the map.

  Just round the corner lay Tayvallich.

  The village itself was hidden on the opposite side of the peninsula, overlooking Loch Sween – but on this side was a roadhead suburb with a handful of houses. If she was in a car and wanted to keep watch over the sound, this was where she would do it. She could also see that if she hugged the mainland on her way north, she’d soon need to cross the mouth of a wide bay in full view of the settlement of Crinan and the entrance to the Crinan Canal. Given how effectively her pursuers seemed to be anticipating her, she saw no need to make things easier for them than she had to.

  Her only real alternative was to follow the wild east shore of the Isle of Jura. The weather was turning. A blanket of high cloud had formed, and morning’s sporadic gusts had coalesced into a steady breeze. While the island might offer shelter, she’d need to cross five kilometres of dauntingly open water to get there. Also, reaching Craobh Haven this way would involve crossing the mouth of the Strait of Corryvreckan, between Jura and the even wilder island of Scarba to the north. From what she could remember, the whirlpool and other tidal craziness was a couple of hundred metres further west, but currents in this whole area were faster than any kayak, and she didn’t want to think too hard about the consequences of misjudging them.

  All being well, once past these obstacles she could use the coast of Scarba and the islands of Luing and Shuna for cover, giving her a chance to reconnoitre Craobh Haven’s harbour before revealing herself.

  Now, in the middle of the Sound of Jura, she’s doubting she’ll make it to Jura, let alone Craobh Haven. She’s been around people who seem equipped with a kind of internal camel’s hump, allowing them to function without food for days. Boyfriends have been like this: having cleaned her kitchen like locusts, when shown a weekend’s stiff walking in the mountains, when calories should have been vital, they barely nibbled a few biscuits.

  Such an energy store isn’t one of her blessings. Her body seems simply to munch through whatever she puts in, and if she doesn’t keep her energy topped up, suddenly it’s gone. It’s like hitting a wall.

  She hit this wall yesterday morning.

  She feels drugged. Each lift of the paddle requires concentration. Her subconscious keeps insisting that an unstable, wave-battered kayak kilometres from land is the perfect place for a snooze. Whenever this happens, her eyelids droop, and only immense effort stops them from closing.

  She begins wondering how much of the state she’s in is down to lack of food, and how much is loss of blood.

  Blood?

  SHE’S BACK IN HER APARTMENT, in her so-cosy bed. Has she been dreaming? She feels tipsy from half a bottle of Shiraz. Dark memories crystallise. She pushes them away. She’s left the TV on. Some nature documentary, by the sound of it. Wind is blowing. She can hear
water. It’s hissing. Why would water hiss?

  Then the bed is falling …

  She snaps back with a yelp, lashing out with a paddle. Just in time to stop her toppling in. She swears. She screams. Not violently – she doesn’t have the strength – but it helps. With each few strokes she begins to curse. It’s like a mantra.

  Rage keeps her going, and fuelling it isn’t hard.

  The wind is still rising. Northwards, mountains on the island of Mull wear tall caps of lenticular cloud. She’s starting to suspect a proper storm is brewing. Feeling infinitely alone, she tries to develop a rhythm, but it eludes her. The fucking boat will not stick to a straight line. Each time she thinks she’s cracked it, another wave comes, and she needs every scrap of attention and energy just to stay upright. As well as being exhausting and nerve-shredding, it means the shore is approaching at a snail’s pace.

  At some point she becomes aware of a throbbing hum. Its source is difficult to pinpoint, but it seems to be somewhere behind. For a while she does her best to ignore it, but when the irritation shows no sign of going away, she starts hunting its source.

  It sounds like an approaching engine. She can smell fumes.

  She risks a proper look over her shoulder. As the kayak rides over a wave crest, she glimpses something dark and angular. The next crest provides a longer look.

  A snub-nosed, rust-streaked tub is closing on her from the south, belching black smoke ahead of itself. She can’t make out anyone aboard, but its appearance doesn’t suggest police, coastguard, army or government.

  She decides to ignore it.

  Some time later she can feel she’s in the island’s lee. The wind has slackened and the waves are less alarming. Their direction’s changed, too. They seem to be diffracting round behind her, and she finds them shunting her forward in little spurts of speed.

  It’s a welcome relief until a wave she’s surfing bulldozes the kayak’s stern to one side. She does her best to straighten, but the force is inexorable. With no idea how to react she flails for balance as the kayak spins round, bracing desperately against the wave as it punches the kayak from the side, swapping sides as the crest rolls past and she’s thrown in the opposite direction.

  Fuck!! Her entire body is shaking. Having dragged the bow round to face the wind, she slumps over her paddle, doing her best to rest as freezing waves roll over the deck.

  After a couple of minutes she’s sufficiently recovered to try again.

  She’s soon despairing of ever controlling the kayak. Then she discovers that a flurry of correcting strokes at the first hint of the bow veering away is enough to keep it on course. She’s been too passive: the key is anticipation and aggression. She begins linking correcting strokes. There’s a rhythm to it, like Morse code. To her surprise the faster she pushes, the more secure she feels. She stops letting waves outpace her, and paddles like hell to keep up. This would be exhilarating, she thinks, if she wasn’t so scared, weary and ravenous. As well as her wound and countless new aches from the unfamiliar exercise and ill-fitting seat, what began as blisters have flayed her palms and the arches of her fingers of much of their skin.

  Details on the approaching shore are clear now. She’s beginning to think she can make it. A flash of movement next to the kayak gives her the fright of her life, but then she’s amazed to find herself amidst a school of grey-blue dolphins. She has no way of gauging their numbers: the sleek shapes porpoise out of the gunmetal waves only for an eyeblink, and there’s no way to identify individuals she’s seen already. They show no sign of recognition or interest, which she finds curiously disheartening.

  Then they’re gone, leap-frogging into the darkening north.

  Final push …

  She clamps her teeth. Knowing that land is near enough to swim to will take a weight off her mind, but she’s uncertain now what to do. She had hoped to keep going, but she’ll be in real trouble soon if she can’t get food. She wonders if anyone lives in the north of Jura. She wants it to be uninhabited, but suspects some kind of contact will be necessary if she doesn’t want to capsize and drown from sheer hunger.

  Perhaps she can catch fish? She could make a line from the tent. Probably fashion a hook from the wire she got from the kayak. She’ll have to eat what she catches raw: fire’s something she can’t risk. Assuming she could find even firewood on the barren hump of heather and quartzite ahead …

  As she approaches the coast, the unidentified boat recedes in the direction of the dolphins. Despite the gathering murk, its navigation lights are dark. For the second time in as many days, she’s dangerously cold. Torn between pushing on and resting, she curses herself for being in such a fluster when she took the kayak. So stupid, not to check the camp more thoroughly for a sleeping bag. There had been a tent, with a foam sleeping mat inside it. But nothing obvious for sleeping in.

  Why would a kayaker stay out overnight in the autumn without a sleeping bag?

  One more mystery to add to the fucking list.

  She pushes on.

  JURA’S COAST PROVES ROCKY and unforgiving. On the positive side, the waves are now small enough for her to relax a little. Her boat control’s improving and, despite increasingly violent shivering, paddling has started to feel something like second nature. A squadron of canard jets – the old Eurofighter Typhoons, she thinks – screams overhead, afterburners shining orange. Seven of them, with blue and red RAF roundels, rockets, and streamlined things stuck like remoras to their bellies.

  World and its dog seems to be heading north today. What’s going on up there?

  She wonders if she’s been guilty of hubris. Assuming she’s somehow central to a universe with so many more important things to worry about.

  The shore creeps by. Her progress has slowed considerably, and she doesn’t think it’s entirely because the adrenaline that sustained her during the crossing has worn off. The band of barnacles exposed at low tide is already half covered. If the tide’s as strong coming in as it was going out, she’ll need to stop soon, but the coast here is pretty rocky. She hasn’t seen anywhere she’d want to haul the kayak out in her weakened state.

  Out in the channel, wave-tips are starting to foam. The wind is rising again, and has shifted behind her towards the east. This isn’t good news. Sure enough, as she paddles she feels the waves swing round and start to build. A song is stuck in her head. It’s one she knows from her childhood, and it infuriated her even then.

  Because you know I’m all ’bout that bass, ’bout that bass, no treble

  I’m all ’bout that bass, ’bout that bass, no treble

  Why this now? Is she going senile? She hasn’t even heard this song for decades, and now it manifests out of the blue like she’s back jigging in her bedroom in her Frozen onesie.

  Try as she might, she can’t shake it, and she finds herself jerking and grimacing in something like physical pain as it overruns her protesting brain like it’s on some endless loop – except with half the words missing, because she doesn’t know them. Things become even worse when her subconscious starts transposing the word “arse” for “bass”. Her generation of teenagers had been obsessed with their own glutei. In retrospect it was fucking weird.

  Yeah, it’s pretty clear, I ain’t no size two

  … Mumble mumble, shake it like … la la la

  ’Cause I got that boom boom … all the boys chase

  blah blah

  …

  … ’bout that ARSE, ’bout that ARSE …

  Shut UP!!

  The shift in direction seems to have thrown the waves into turmoil. It takes a while for her to work out that they’re reflecting off the rocks, creating pyramids of seawater as the reflections slap into oncoming waves, throwing up geysers of spray. She’s never seen water behave like this, and has no idea how to deal with it. When a couple of waves meet beneath her, it’s like a mini depth-charge going off. When the foam clears she’s somehow still upright. Across the water, she can feel
the roadhead at Tayvallich like staring eyes.

  The wind keeps rising. With the sky turning purple-black, it starts to gust. Her exhaustion is like a coat of lead. She’s stopped shivering again: not because she has warmed, but the reverse. Rain blatters against the back of her oversize wetsuit, fitfully at first, then like salt from a gritter. The light is failing. Whether from sunset or weather, she’s not sure: her arms feel dead, and she can’t summon the motivation to check her watch. Saturated air whistles round her ears. Free of their nylon scrunchie, ropes of wet hair are doing their best to blind her. Still no obvious landing point. It’s hard to tell, though, because dark patches are dancing across her vision.

  She’s properly fighting the tide now. Panting, teeth bared, she inches around the corner of an open, rocky bay. The water here is madness. She’s getting thrown around like a cork.

  Ashore, she thinks she sees a tiny point of light, moving …

  What feels like a giant, wet hand swats her sideways. She barely reacts. Not that reacting would have done much good. The contact is casual, gentle; almost tender. And quite irresistible.

  I got that boom boom that all the boys chase

  All the right junk in all the right places

  As she goes under and inhales shockingly cold water, she finds herself thinking: what a shit final thought. Meghan Trainor, I hate you.

  CHAPTER 9

  ____________

  From the Top

  ‘POLICE HAVE FOUND THE CAR.’

  Sebastian looks up from his coffee, the third of the morning. The movement proves more abrupt than he’d intended.

  Damn.

  As he does his best to swipe the – fortunately lukewarm – liquid from his trousers, he sees someone’s holding up an arm. James Fields, judging by the red-blond hairs and Swiss watch. The police officer’s spent much of the last forty-eight hours teasing details and inconsistencies from quantities of data that would have defeated most people. If anything, he’s proving more effective at it than Scott Petrie, the team’s official data wizard. And it’s not even meant to be his primary role.