October Song

by Ru Pringle

  ‘Rooftop,’ she growls as she passes her boss, pushing aside the door without a further word. She waits for him in the lift as she rummages in her bag for her Gauloises. Presses the up button. Presses a cigarette, unlit, between her lips as she strides for the stairs serving the roof area. Lights it as she leans on the block wall retaining the building’s two-acre cap of flat concrete and seagull shit, and inhales.

  Relaxing a little, she watches the smoke curling away over industrial roofs and honey-coloured sandstone terraces towards the craggy outline of Arthur’s Seat and the distant castle. The thick autumn light is also like honey. She can hear police sirens from at least four different parts of the city, but the only smoke she sees today is her own.

  ‘You’re not the only one having a bad day,’ she informs Sebastian as he leans on the railing beside her. He’s wearing a smile that’s half-annoyed, half ruefully amused.

  ‘Give me one of those,’ he says, pointing at her cigarette. She stares at him.

  ‘You’re joking.’

  By feel, he plucks one dextrously from her bag. Presses it to the end of hers until it smokes, and inhales on it deeply.

  ‘I get the craving now and again,’ he tells her. He inspects the cigarette, like it’s somehow not what he’d expected.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it, Sebastian? How we can’t get food. But things like cigarettes … Coffee …’

  ‘Cocaine …’

  She chuckles. ‘Heroin. Crystal meth. Khat.’

  ‘We do get food from other places. It’s just expensive.’

  They’re quiet for a minute or so.

  ‘You go first,’ she says eventually, turning from the view. Sebastian’s craggy features seem to darken. She’s never been able to work out what colour his eyes are. At times she’s thought they were anything from deep blue or brown to pitch black. Set deep in his face they seem camouflaged somehow, transforming in response to the light or his mood.

  ‘I’m being stonewalled.’ He takes another drag. ‘I finally got refused a direct information request, by some tin-pot chief of staff. Well – at least by his personal secretary: the man himself is “unavailable until further notice”. Which is about as direct a slap-down as I’ve heard of from the Air Force. I’ve tried all the usual channels, and calling in a few favours. I even made threats – which these people should know aren’t empty.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve never seen such a tight line of stonewalling.’

  He hasn’t mentioned it, but they both know the loss of six men will require an official review. The Craobh Haven operation is an area potentially grey enough to cost Sebastian his career. ‘So what can we do?’

  ‘Little we can do. For now, at least. It’s a message. Not subtle either. Whatever this is, it’s coming from way above our heads. Push any harder, and we’ll get fucked.’ He glares at the horizon. ‘Must admit I’m tempted to have a go at the bastards just for the hell of it, but as you pointed out we don’t have resources to split on what’s basically a side-issue, and they know it, damn them.’

  ‘So we let it go?’

  He grins without humour. ‘I never let anything go, Lorna. Should know me by now.’

  She pulls at the collar of his shirt. It’s folded against his neck, as though he’d dressed in a hurry. He touches her hand, briefly.

  ‘Your turn.’

  She sighs heavily. Sucks on her cigarette. ‘So – on the subject of stone walls, Shegen and Derek hit Gartcosh with a requisition order. Paperwork for the remains was there, but when they got to the morgue the body wasn’t. The police blamed a clerical error.’

  Sebastian blinks. ‘Tell me they found it?’

  ‘They’ve done little but chase it ever since. It’s off the system. Eye-witnesses swear the body was bagged on-scene and loaded in a meat wagon. There are no witnesses to it reaching the morgue.’

  He looks into the distance, clearly unsure whether to be irritated or grateful that she’s kept him out of the loop. ‘They need to requisition the car, quickly. Use the prints off that.’

  ‘Way ahead of you.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s proving unexpectedly hard to find.’ Sebastian displays his teeth. ‘That’s not all. Our dead car owner’s house?’

  Her boss actually laughs. ‘Let me guess. An accidental fire?’

  ‘Close. Gas explosion.’

  ‘Oh, this is priceless. Christ on a bike.’ He wipes away imaginary tears. ‘Anything left?’

  ‘Forensics will let us know as soon as they have anything.’

  ‘Fuck. Well, weirdly that’s cheered me up a bit.’ He sighs. ‘Okay, what else.’

  ‘Right – so, then there’s the marina. Local police were slow to co-operate, but our reliably unpredictable field officer at the site seems to have got them whipped into shape. I’m taking a helicopter over tomorrow morning.’

  Sebastian frowns. ‘That wise?’

  ‘Safer than road these days – read the stats. Anyway, I strongly feel I need to go, and I can’t afford the day’s round trip it’d take by car. If Resources don’t like it, just this once they can sit and swivel.’

  ‘The plod find anything?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Three bodies identified. The most interesting – down near the water – has been DNA profiled already. It seems Scenes of Crime Officers are using a portable DNA lab I didn’t know about. Processing takes half an hour, given a suitable tissue source, and they found a whole foot. Swedish national, by the name of Matteo Brandel. The team is checking him out, but it seems he was involved in Scottish-Swedish trade negotiations a decade ago.’

  Sebastian pulls down the corners of his mouth. ‘The talks the Nats hoped would lead to Scotland joining the Hanseatic League?’

  She nods; blows a smoke ring. Sebastian watches it rise, the corners of his eyes wrinkling.

  ‘Sounds like progress,’ he says.

  ‘Remains of thirty people so far. That’s their best guess – most of the remains are unidentifiable. Or indistinguishable. There are locals at the scene with missing family members who reckon there are at least a dozen more casualties. We may never know.’ She looks at her cigarette. Notices the way the breeze makes the smouldering tobacco pulse and flicker. ‘How many did Coira’s group kill?’

  ‘Forty-seven. At last count. Lorna – I know where you’re going with this, but we can’t afford to think like that. Don’t worry. There’ll be a reckoning.’

  ‘You believe that? Honestly?’

  ‘We still have to catch Coira.’

  ‘I know.’

  Lorna gazes at the horizon. Thinks how deceptively peaceful it all looks.

  ‘Our Covert Human Intelligence Source at the marina, Tom Driscoll, was twenty-seven. He could have been my grandson. He liked twentieth-century kung fu films, and he thought he was helping. Later today, I have to go to his parents and tell them he is probably dead, though we may never be able to identify or even find his body. When they ask how and why he died … I’m going to adopt the requisite sympathetic face while I tell them some concoction of shit I make up between now and then to cover the arse of whoever signed off this – this …’

  She flicks the cigarette away, unfinished.

  ‘Yup,’ he says. ‘Bad day.’

  ‘I knew Coira, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She was …’ Lorna swallows. ‘She had her problems. But … she was a good kid.’

  Sebastian doesn’t respond. For a while there’s only the sound of traffic, car horns and the occasional siren.

  ‘Our resources are definitely being squeezed.’ Catching Lorna’s look, he goes on: ‘I don’t think it’s necessarily sinister. It’ll be … some bureaucrat who’s read that missing persons are exponentially less likely to be found after the first few hours, and is conflating that with tracking a fugitive. Jesus.’ He inspects his cigarette in disgust. Flicks it away. ‘I was right to give these up.’ Lorna watches the glowing butt
arc into the street.

  ‘I don’t have much news for you there. Even most of our smaller surveillance drones have been redirected to riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow.’

  ‘I agree with our officer at the marina. Until we’ve evidence otherwise, we have to assume she was there and that she saw what happened and escaped. Which means our search radius is still relatively small.’

  ‘Assuming she’s not on her way to Sweden.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can muster three field officers; eight quad-prop drones. Range is about three kilometres. Not really designed for open country.’

  ‘That’s a lot more blind than I wanted to be.’

  ‘And, of course, the local plod.’

  ‘Who are proving pretty unco-operative.’

  ‘Can you blame them, Sebastian? They’re more overstretched than we are, and we’ve been doing our best to monopolise them for the best part of a week.’

  He doesn’t reply, and at length the two wander, heavy-footed, back to the Ops Room. There, leaning wearily over the war desk, Sebastian impresses upon the team the importance of confirming whether or not Coira Keir was ever at the marina, knowing as well as Lorna that the chances of this are slim.

  CHAPTER 24

  ______________

  The Strait

  THE NIGHT IS STILL AND CLEAR. Harried by shreds of blue cloud, a gibbous moon casts a death-glow on the bluffs and knolls, snuffing out all but the brightest stars. Northwards, near the horizon, a band of Aurora Borealis has escaped the moonlight’s predilections. It flickers corpse-green and the red of arterial blood.

  Having passed the tip of Seil and turned north, Coira had paddled hard for what felt like forever, with no hiding place presenting itself on the island’s shoreline of low, slabby rocks. The sky had been darkening, and a deluge of icy rain suddenly began. There was a small bay, but it seemed smooth, shallow, and terribly open. She pushed on, expecting the sound of an outboard to erupt behind her at any second.

  Despairing, she saw two tiny rock islets, separated by a rocky crevice above the waterline. It didn’t look much of a hiding place. Then she thought: maybe this was a good thing. If she could hide the boat there, her persecutors might not spare it a second glance.

  She leapt out, cutting her feet on the sharp barnacles. Having shoved the kayak on its side into the crack, she covered it as best she could with strands of dark brown seaweed and wedged herself in after it.

  Karen had been wearing her coat.

  She kept preparing for what she had seen happen to Karen and the boat people to hit her like an oncoming car. To her dismay she felt nothing. Well – not nothing, exactly. Just a kind of hollow ache. Like an organ had been removed under anaesthetic.

  What’s wrong with me? Am I a bad person?

  Her internal voice sounded childish, so she banished it, opening her mouth to silence her breath as she strained for sounds. The gunshots had stopped long ago. She looked at her watch.

  Not even ten in the morning. She already felt far from warm.

  It was going to be a long, cold day.

  The expected RIB finally appeared at half past. The six men on it didn’t seem in any hurry. They just looked around, smoking or chewing what she assumed to be bubble gum or khat, guns held nonchalantly at the ready, content with what they probably considered a thorough search of the strait. They passed close enough to where she lay, cramped and shivering, for her to have hit them with a pebble.

  The sound of the outboard receded northwards towards the narrows.

  It was back an hour later as she was munching some of Hedge Trimmer’s dense, flavourful bread. This time it was going full-tilt, which she hoped was a sign they’d given up. She’d had plenty of time to think by then. While she was fundamentally no further forward, she had at least decided on a short-term plan of action.

  Her priority, she realised, was deciding what she now hoped to achieve. Any pretence of some higher purpose had, for now at least, gone right out of the window.

  All that mattered was survival and escape.

  But escape to where? And how?

  She’d always assumed her Craobh Haven contact would have a new identity for her, or a way of spiriting her across the North Sea. Probably both. Now she had no ID card, which by itself was enough to get her arrested. Coming after the unexpected furore in Edinburgh, the Lochgilphead roadblock had forced her to assume her co-conspirators were already being interrogated. Having burned her real ID card back in Edinburgh, she’d thrown her counterfeit into Loch Sween. Short of encountering a sympathiser with their own private seaplane, she no longer had any way of leaving the country. Which left just one – temporary – option she could think of.

  She would need to cross the ever changing no-man’s land between the UK-controlled southern Highlands and separatist territory to the north.

  But how?

  She’d seriously considered ditching the kayak and trying her luck on foot. But she felt in her bones this was a bad idea. What few roads existed would be patrolled and roadblocked, while the tortuous coastline would reduce progress to a crawl if she went cross-country, making her vulnerable whenever she was forced close to roads or habitation. Working with the tide, however, she might expect to cover eight kilometres an hour by kayak.

  Moving at night, her luck had so far held.

  So – she would wait until dark and use the incoming tide to push her soundlessly through the strait. That was where her map ended, but afterwards she’d be on home turf. She’d cross the big bay south of the island of Kerrera. Then, depending how things felt, she’d risk either another brush with the mainland by paddling north-east up the Sound of Kerrera, or a five-kilometre open-water crossing of the Firth of Lorn westward to the sprawling island of Mull.

  Enough boat traffic was likely in the firth for the Sound of Kerrera to seem the more attractive option. Added to which, if she was to find a safe way through the fighting, she was in urgent need of intel.

  Despite the obvious risks, she would try to smuggle herself ashore for a few minutes in the town of Oban.

  AND SO HERE SHE IS, with her heart lodged in her throat, dark peat rubbed into her face and wetsuit, and the shores of Seil and the mainland closing like jaws on either side. She curses the moonlight. It’s easily bright enough for her to be visible to dark-adapted eyes. A handful of large houses slip silently past on her left. Lights are on inside, though blinds and curtains are drawn. Burned-looking boats litter the shore. A blade-like structure looms out of the water ahead, and it dawns on her only gradually what it is: the aluminium wing of an aeroplane. A roughly painted sign slides past. Proclaiming “MIGRUNTS DIE”, it glistens in the chill light. Below the daubed letters is a child’s cartoon of a gun.

  Jetties drift by. One has a powerboat moored to it. She stiffens: sprawled on the boat’s deck she can clearly make out an inert man, cradling what looks like a hunting rifle. He doesn’t turn at her passing, however, and as she floats downwind she clearly hears his snoring.

  The water here stinks.

  She can see a road angling towards the shore on her left. From what she remembers, it’s narrow and single lane. Ahead, headlights flicker between tree trunks, lighting up the water. She lowers her paddle and freezes. The car rumbles past close enough for her to see the driver, its smoky old engine releasing a cloud of fumes over the channel.

  She passes a jetty of ruined concrete. It looks like it could have been bombed. The current slackens as the channel widens once more, and she begins gently paddling again. Somewhere nearby, an owl hoots. Senses at full alert, she grows aware of a deep, rhythmical thumping sound. Then beats at higher registers, growing louder.

  Music. To her, it sounds like the currently popular brand of traditional music- and bhangra-infused hardcore rap.

  Ahead, reflected in the surface of the strait to her right, are the orange flickers of a fire. Floating closer, she can see flames just above shore-level amongst a stand of trees.
The channel is narrowing again. She steers away from the glow, towards the road. Watches through her binoculars.

  Figures are leaping around a bonfire. On a tree-stump nearby is a chunky solar-charged stereo. All the figures look to be in their twenties at most: young men and women, stark naked but for fanciful patterns tattooed or roughly painted on bodies and faces. They are engaged in a kind of pseudo-tribal dance which is both comical and intimidating. Intimidating both for its grim intensity and the fact some of them are brandishing very real-looking spears.

  She’s too close for binoculars now. Close enough to see their expressions are ferocious or blissed-out, with little in between. She can clearly hear the lyrics of the current song.

  All is corrosion

  All is confusion

  No absolution for your collusion

  In this dystopian fusion

  It’s no illusion, motherfucker

  Now we’re cruisin’ and bruisin’

  Yeah, it’s no illusion, motherfucker

  We be cruisin’ and bruisin’

  Coz we’re hurtin’ and losin’

  Twitchin’ and burnin’

  In this fire of our parents’ choosin’

  Yeah, come on, now …

  She’s too low to see clearly, but there’s something odd about the ground within the circle of dancers. Somehow, it’s undulating. At her closest point she realises with a jolt that what she’s seeing is a carpet of patterned flesh, entwined and writhing. Pinned on a tree behind the little clearing, an inverted cross burns like a torch.

  She drifts numbly on. Another structure looms from the river, gleaming. It’s a pile – almost a tower – of mangled cars. She has no clue what it means, or why it is there. The channel broadens briefly, constricting up ahead to the width of a small river. Bright-walled houses are appearing on the left, with a ribbon of Tarmac descending towards the narrows on the right. Where it meets the water she can make out the pale stone arch of the ludicrously monikered “Bridge over the Atlantic”.

  As she drifts into the narrows there’s a noise from downwind, somewhere in front of her. She squints into the dark and raises her binoculars again.