by Ru Pringle
Coira would have had similar problems, you realise. The crossing’s intimidating enough in a boat with an engine, and there’s nothing in her file to suggest she was an active kayaker. Was all this too much? Could you realistically have made it over here, hungry and injured, and with the wind and the waves rising? For the first time you start to wonder if she might simply have drowned.
You’ve looked up kayaking speeds on your ’phone. Four knots is apparently good going over long distances. But you would be slower than that. It would likely be getting dark by the time you reached the other side. You’d be feeling alone, overwhelmed, with the weather getting worse. What would you do?
You’d look for shelter.
Might she even be desperate enough to look for help?
But this part of the coast of Jura is nothing but scrub, rocks and heath. It seems to go on and on. There are a few tiny rocky bays, but nothing looks inviting. This would have dispirited you. You’d have been cold – possibly even hypothermic – and worried about a night in the open. You’d have pushed on. Feeling yourself growing more and more tired. You’d have been hoping for somewhere – anywhere – to pull in.
You’d have started taking risks.
At length you come to a vague headland where the coast kinks slightly north. On its far side is an equally unconvincing bay.
On the bay’s north side, sheltered in a wrinkle in the land – almost a miniature valley – much to your surprise, you see a big old white-painted house.
You can’t see people. Smoke, however, is issuing from its chimneys. And parked near the door is a curious vehicle like a camouflaged, eight-wheeled bathtub.
CHAPTER 17
______________
Luing
FROM BETWEEN RAGS OF CLOUD, low moonlight gleams off a ribbon of restless sea. The sea reeks of seaweed and seal dung. The wind is again strong enough to whistle in Coira’s ears, and the choppy silver-capped swell looming all around is worrying in the dark. Twice already she’d feared she was capsizing, but each time managed to flail her way back to an even keel.
She’d considered using her wait for nightfall to practice self-righting the kayak again. In the end, she decided to stay hidden. Besides being spooked by her earlier brush with the drones, the evening was growing chilly and she was far from warm even in relatively dry clothes. Keeping them that way seemed important.
Soaked through by spray, she’s regretting that decision now.
The house is still burning, though less fiercely. Using its glow as a guide, she aims well south of the bay on Luing, knowing the wind and current will push her towards it. Not far from the shore, she begins panicking. She’s underestimated how far she will drift. She’s going to end up picked out by the firelight for all to see, smack in the middle of the bay.
She puts her back into pushing against the current. Her wound, if anything, is more painful than before her brief convalescence, and the effort makes her gasp. The shore races past.
Not going to make it …
With a few kayak-lengths to go, as the flames swing fully into view around the bay’s southernmost tip, she feels both the wind and the current slacken, and by the skin of her teeth manages to drag herself to the sheltered shadows of the rocks around the corner.
ABOVE THE CRASH OF WAVES and her own ragged breathing she hears voices, and the clanging of car doors. A car revs into the distance. The language sounds foreign: she has no idea what it is.
Trusting she hasn’t been seen, she pulls her kayak as gently as she can up on to the rocks, crawls up the shore to a line of tussocky grasses, and peers over the top.
Standing around an old Toyota Land Cruiser in the pool of light from a nearby house are five men. Their skin is very dark. They are carrying automatic weapons – old Kalashnikovs again, she thinks. The house is neatly turned out, with a fresh-looking B&B board flapping in the wind. The men are talking. Relaxed, as if they haven’t a care in the world. She can both hear and smell a nearby diesel generator. It’s loud enough that the men have to raise their voices. There’s something else, though. A strange animal noise she can’t identify, although it’s making the hairs on her arms stand up. It’s coming from an outbuilding with a roof of stained asbestos sheeting.
The men turn at the noise. One of them says something. Whatever it was seems to have been funny, because the others laugh.
A door in the shed opens, and a tall, thin man comes out of it, fastening his trousers. One of his companions slaps him on the back in a comradely fashion, and another of the group swaggers into the shed, closing the door behind him.
Coira looks on in horror. She knows exactly what she’s witnessing. She feels physically sick.
What can she do?
She knows with cold certainty that she should walk away. She can achieve nothing here. Except get herself, and perhaps someone else, killed.
But she can’t stop herself.
Almost suffocating because her chest feels so tight, she retreats to the shadows, and squirms her way around the top of the beach until the shed is between the men and her. Using the shed’s shadow for cover, she creeps through squelching rushes. Her constricted breathing seems supernaturally loud. They must be able to hear it, surely?
How the fuck will she get in?
This is madness.
She fumbles as gently as she can round the back of the shed. Whimpering and rhythmic noises are coming from within, audible over the generator, which she reckons is in the smaller shed next door. She knocks over what transpires to be a bucket, but she’s lucky. It falls into mud, with barely a sound. Her luck continues as her fingers find an entrance in the back of the shed at ground level, about forty centimetres high and the same wide. Some kind of animal entrance?
She squeezes inside.
She’s immediately confronted by something made of chipboard. Smelling overpoweringly of mould, it comes apart at the slightest touch. There is light in here, though it’s not bright.
Gingerly, she raises her head above what turns out to be an old kitchen unit.
On its knees near the door, hunched in the shadows over a filthy old mattress, she sees a human shape. Shiny, muscular buttocks are thrusting between a pair of lifeless-looking splayed legs.
Coira scans the room. Halfway between her and the mattress is a heavy-looking threaded iron bar she thinks might have been used to adjust scaffolding. Her heart is now beating so hard her vision seems to pulse with it, but she doesn’t hesitate. The floor is concrete and her feet are bare, so she makes very little sound as she advances.
She reaches the bar.
She knocks it over in her haste, but catches it, open-mouthed in silent horror, before it clangs to the ground.
The girl on the bed is staring at her. Her eyes are huge and wide, but with a kind of hard blankness in them that Coira finds terrifying. The man is starting to groan. Won’t be long now …
Eyes locked on the girl’s as she creeps forward, Coira puts a finger to her lips and shakes her head. Her toes brush the foot of the mattress. She can feel it moving. More potent than the mould and manure, there is a repellent smell in here of sex combined with terror. The girl’s eyes, impossibly, widen further.
Every nerve in Coira’s body is shrieking.
She raises the bar …
‘Psst.’
She has a brief impression of twin circles of white and an open mouth of stained teeth turned in her direction.
Then something that isn’t quite her brings the bar smashing sideways into the space between them.
THROUGH THE METAL BAR there’s a sickening sensation of things mashing and splintering. Then the man is twisting away from her over on to his back, legs whipped from under him by the force of the blow, obscenely pumping a glistening arc high into the air as he falls.
‘Keep making the noises,’ Coira hisses, finger once again at her lips. The girl looks blank. Framed by a dishevelled black bob, her eyes are pools of dark in a sheet-white fac
e. ‘Make the noises you were making!’ She starts slapping her thigh, and the girl gets the idea.
Still slapping, she takes the girl’s hand and, pausing to let her pull down the T-shirt which is all she’s wearing, drags her up from the bed. The girl moves like a robot. Coira guides her behind the kitchen unit. Motions her none-too-gently through the hole.
Casting a nervous glance at the door, she follows a fearsomely bruised backside out into the night.
ONCE BACK AMONG the shadowed boulders below the tussock grass, she pulls the girl into a crouch, and turns so they’re face to face.
‘I’m Siobhan,’ she says. ‘What’s your name?’
The girl looks startled by the question, but seems to collect herself. ‘I’m Karen,’ she says. Her accent is English.
‘Karen. We have to get off this island. Right away.’
‘But my family.’ Karen’s voice rises. ‘My mum and dad, my sister …’
‘We can’t help them now,’ Coira tells her, thinking fast. ‘But we can go and get help. We can send for a party with weapons to come and find them.’ As she speaks, the germ of a plan is forming.
The girl nods. She’s starting to shiver. No, no – please don’t go into shock!
She grabs the girl’s chin. Brings their eyes very close together. ‘I want you to listen carefully, Karen. You must breathe deeply. A bad thing has happened to you, but we’re going to get you out of this. Nothing else matters. Do you understand?’
Another nod.
‘Good.’ Keep her busy … ‘We need a boat. We’re going to take it to Craobh Haven, where a friend is waiting for me. We can get help there. We can get you medical attention. Where can we get a boat?’
Karen looks dumbly at her as though she hasn’t understood the question. Coira wonders how old she is. She doesn’t look more than sixteen.
She’s about to repeat the question when the girl says, ‘There’s a RIB at Lachlan McInnes’ house. You know: Rigid Inflatable Boat?’
‘Good girl. How far?’
She points. ‘It’s only three hundred metres.’
‘Are any of those men there?’
‘I … I don’t think so.’
‘The boat: are you sure it works?’
‘No. But he used to keep all his machines really well. He was always tinkering.’ Seeing the question in Coira’s eyes, she says: ‘They killed him. Made him kneel, and then shot him right in his face.’ A spark of something that isn’t terror enters her expression.
Coira gives the girl a fierce hug. Then holds her at arm’s length.
‘Listen – I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need you to do something. I have a kayak just over there.’ She points. ‘I need to go and get it. I want you to go over to the place where the boat is. Make sure you keep to the shadows. I’ll be in the kayak, and I’ll follow you as you walk. When you stop, I will get out and help with the boat. Can you do that? I won’t leave you, I promise.’
Again, the girl nods.
‘We have very little time. Hurry! And take this.’
She hands the girl her oilskin, and scampers off into the shadowy boulder field of the shore. Moving as quickly as she dares, she reaches the kayak without making too much noise.
Querying shouts are coming from ashore.
Coira pushes the kayak into the water, and inches unsteadily into it. The waves don’t make it easy. She doesn’t bother with the splash deck; just paddles as quietly as she can as the boat slowly fills. Keep calm, breathe slowly. That’s it. She can just make out Karen’s pale legs moving along the shore.
Oh help, what have I done?
Presently, the legs stop. She can hear agitated shouting back up the shore. She prays the men will do a methodical search, starting near the shed.
‘Up here!’ hisses Karen’s voice, and the girl grabs the tip of her kayak, hauling it bodily out of the water. Coira half-falls, half-crawls on to a rough but extraordinarily slippery slipway. A boat shed looms above them. They slither and teeter towards it. Then Karen is crawling around on her hands and knees, lifting things and swearing.
‘Can I help?’
‘Found it!’ Karen says, holding up a softly glinting key.
She could kiss the girl.
There are gunshots, not far to the north. The youngster flinches. Oh fuck, no. An engine starts. There’s more shouting: louder this time.
‘Help me!’ urges Karen. Having flung open the doors, she’s already inching what transpires to be a hefty boat trailer out of the black interior.
Coira grabs the other handle at the front of the trailer. The RIB is larger than she was expecting – about the size of a minibus. It’s very heavy for two slight people, but once over the concrete lip at the top of the slipway it picks up speed, and it’s all they can do to control its runaway descent. Unable to see her own feet, at the bottom Coira loses her footing on the frictionless seaweed, avoiding the boat rolling over her by clinging to the handle.
They all slide into the water with a resounding splash.
‘Whole fucking island’ll have heard that.’ A horrible thought occurs to her as she climbs in, dripping. ‘Fuck … The keys! Tell me you know where the boat keys are?’
In response Karen leaps up into the boat, pulls them from the ignition, and holds them up.
Right enough, who was ever going to steal a boat out here? ‘My kayak.’
Karen jumps over the side again, helping Coira heave the kayak’s bow on to the back of the boat. They have to turn it over to empty the water out before it’s light enough to drag aboard.
Already the boat’s floated free of the trailer. A vehicle is approaching. Karen’s about to jump in again, but Coira stops her with a hand on her arm.
‘Karen. Perhaps you should wash. Inside – at least quickly. To get rid of … you know.’ She licks her lips. I’m so bad at this. ‘It’ll at least decrease the chances.’
She nods at the boat.
‘I’ll make sure we’re ready to go.’
She doesn’t wait for a response, but slides up on to the driver’s seat. It’s like perching on a bar stool. She fumbles for the keys, checking they’re back where they need to be, and scans the controls. There’s a lever she assumes is the throttle, and a steering wheel. That seems to be it. Close by, she can hear vigorous splashing.
Something in her peripheral vision makes her look over her shoulder.
The boat shed is silhouetted by headlights.
‘Time to go,’ she hisses, holding out a hand.
Having yanked Karen aboard, she turns the ignition. The engine doesn’t start.
Heart in her mouth, she tries again.
Nothing.
On shore, a few metres away, people are yelling.
She feels a body push past her. ‘You have to open the fuel valve,’ says Karen’s voice, as the girl turns a lever and shoves her way firmly into the pilot’s seat. The big outboard rumbles to life. ‘Pull that lever!’ she demands, pointing near the stern.
Coira does, and the outboard rotates into the water with a thump.
‘Hold on!’
The engine is a powerful one, and it’s all Coira can do to hold on as the RIB bucks away into the channel. The lights shrink quickly behind them. Angry-looking people are milling about near the boatshed.
So what now? The boat doesn’t seem to have any lights, and even if it did, they daren’t use them. Should they attempt to make Craobh Haven by night?
This seems a really bad idea. Anything or anyone might be waiting for them. They’ll at least need to scope it out first.
‘I think we should ease off,’ she tells Karen, shouting almost in her ear, gently pulling her hand back on the throttle. ‘We’ll be quieter that way – and we have only moonlight to navigate by. We don’t want an accident. We also need to think about what to do. Things have been getting difficult on the mainland. There’s been fighting. I think … we should go around the south of Luing and up the strait
between Luing and Shuna – the next island east? – and pull ashore on the north tip of Shuna. I have binoculars. We can check how things look from there. If everything seems okay, we can go ashore by night. Or we could wait until morning to be sure.’
The girl doesn’t respond for a while. Then she nods.
‘You did well back there, Karen. Really well.’
It seems pathetically inadequate, but it’s the best she can manage.
CHAPTER 18
______________
Donkey
JURA RECEDES BEHIND YOU. You’re pushing the fishing boat’s miserable little engine as far as it will go. For once you’re cursing the methods you use as much as your less charitable colleagues do.
On the surface of it, the bearded bear of a man clearly in charge of the curious little multi-ethnic sect you’ve just been hosted by couldn’t have been more forthcoming. You were invited in for a drink, which turned into dinner. A tasty one, you have to admit, of home-grown vegetables and venison, washed down with highly illegal beer. You understood this to be part of an unspoken trade you were negotiating. Be patient, allow us to follow this ritual, even if its purpose is stalling for time, and you’ll get your questions answered.
And so it proved. As the dishes were tidied away by the small oriental woman who had prepared the meal, the bearded man, who had damaged ex-army written all over him, had asked for the room to be cleared, and – without prompting – had come right out and told you the person you were looking for had been in the same room just hours ago.
Despite yourself, you felt your pulse quickening.
Yes, the man said, she had been in a kayak. Colour? Bright purple. Paddles yellow.
What was she wearing?
Wetsuit. Several sizes too large for her.
Where was she going?