by Ru Pringle
Echoing her thoughts, a couple of powerful-looking assault boats thunder out of the sound, passing within a couple of hundred metres as they make a bee-line for the marina. By the light of Oban’s burning buildings, she can see more coming from the north.
Then she sees the yacht.
It’s the one she saw earlier, she thinks, at anchor as she rowed across to Oban. Now it’s underway, heeled over in the stiff breeze, its taut, patterned sails lit a flickering orange by the flames. It looks weirdly, ethereally beautiful: an apparition. It’s obviously making for the Sound of Kerrera.
Anyone could be on board, she tells herself. With motives that are unlikely to be good. She’s beginning to panic.
Out of options.
With a yell and a massive spurt of adrenaline, she turns the dinghy, and pulls for all she’s worth towards the middle of the sound. Maddeningly, the tiny boat keeps trying to turn, and she has to slow down to heave it back on track. The yacht, in contrast, is moving fast. Too fast.
With a hollowed-out feeling she realises she’s not going to make it.
Then she finds that the tide’s working in her favour too. It’s caused her to overestimate the boat’s speed relative to hers, and for a while she allows herself to hope.
She still isn’t going to make it.
‘Hey!’ she calls, abandoning the oars and waving. ‘On the boat! Over here! Help!’
A huge, grey vessel is pushing itself into the harbour round the north tip of Kerrera. Hatches along the sides of its hunched spine are opening and lighting up from the inside. She can clearly see the hot blue trails of whatever is launching out of them arcing into the sky and down on to Kerrera.
Again though, someone is firing back. Explosions begin to pepper the boat’s armoured hull.
‘HELP! HEY, FUCKING HELP!’
In desperation she lofts an oar, and throws it at the boat like a javelin.
It splashes into the water well short of its target.
The yacht sails on by, oblivious.
There’s a man on the yacht’s deck. She’s close enough now to see him clearly. He’s peering in her direction, round the base of the big triangular front sail. His chin is dark with hair, and he’s holding a bar at the rear of the boat – the tiller, she thinks it’s called – that’s attached to the top of the rudder.
He shifts the tiller. Does something with a rope. The boat turns, sails flapping noisily until it’s leaning in the opposite direction. The man is furiously turning a handle on deck. The sails snap taut with a crash, illuminated like Chinese lanterns by the lights of the burning town.
The boat draws closer. She can hear the gurgling rush of its hull through the water. She begins to hope again.
There’s an extended arm, and a voice.
It’s urging: ‘Grab me! Grab my arm!’
Coira knows she has one chance at this, but the man’s steering is very good. The side of the boat catches her dinghy’s bow as it goes past, turning her.
Then she feels a strong forearm hook her biceps as she grabs the man’s arm with both of hers, letting her momentum flip her up between the deck and the lowest cable of its safety railings. She clings on in a thoroughly undignified position, her thighs wrapped precariously round the edge of the deck with a leg trailing in the water.
‘I’m slipping!’
‘Grab a stanchion,’ the voice urges. ‘Pull yourself up.’
The voice seems oddly familiar. ‘What the fuck is a stanchion?’
She feels herself grabbed by the back of her boiler suit and dragged unceremoniously into the nook at the back of the leaning deck. She stays there on all fours for a while, trembling and gasping like an asthmatic.
‘Thanks,’ she manages, eventually.
‘I was passing. I couldn’t exactly …’
There’s a very loaded pause.
‘You’re kidding me.’
Definitely familiar. She looks up, and her gaze meets a pair of piercing eyes in a face made demonic by the flickering glow. Despite the age and the beard, both the face and the eyes are terribly recognisable.
For a moment she’s speechless.
‘Alistair?’
PART TWO
____________
YACHT
CHAPTER 29
______________
Mull
THE FLICKERING LIGHT and the boom and crack of explosions fade gradually in the distance. Occasional jets scream overhead. At one point, a silhouetted phalanx of half a dozen attack helicopters roars northwards towards the fray.
Coira has been given two jobs to do. One is to pay out or take in the rope controlling the front sail, which Alistair calls the “jib”. The other is to keep tabs on the little illuminated liquid crystal display of the depth sounder, which is screwed to a curved plywood board above the cabin hatch. The man is silent, intently watching the water ahead, casting occasional anxious glances back over his shoulder in the direction of Oban.
By unspoken agreement, neither of them says a word.
South-moving headlights occasionally light up the shore she paddled along only hours earlier. It’s a journey that seems from a separate reality. The road is single track, and goes nowhere except the remote farm of Gallanach. Torch beams and actual burning torches are visible moving amongst the trees, and there are candles in windows of the houses scattered along the shore. Beside the depth sounder, a second LCD is showing a speed of seven knots. This seems agonisingly slow. As far as Coira can remember, a knot is fractionally more than one of the old miles per hour.
After a tense half-hour or so, she watches the southern promontory of Kerrera sliding past on their right, silver in the moonlight.
‘Beautiful night,’ says Alistair, breaking the silence.
She stares at him. His responding grin shows as a bright wedge in his dark beard.
‘Take good stuff where it’s given, and all that.’
She grunts. It’s not quite a laugh. It’s the best she can do. ‘What happens now?’
‘I’m quite keen to get away from this shore,’ he tells her, nodding towards the bay where her morning run-in with dolphin hunters took place. Apparently, he hasn’t lost his gift for understatement. ‘Things seem to have gone better when I’ve stuck to open water.’
You and me both. She sucks a thumb she discovers she’s lacerated on something. ‘Where are you headed? Or were you headed?’
He shrugs. ‘Not sure. Up the coast?’
‘You’re cruising. Are you mad?’
Another shrug. ‘Is anywhere particularly safe now? Most of the cities are getting bomb attacks pretty regularly at the moment. As for the roads …’
She can’t think of a sensible reply to this, so she just shakes her head. His accent’s more English than she remembers.
‘Okay,’ she says eventually. ‘Where are we headed tonight? Surely you must have a plan?’
He goes motionless for a few seconds. Blows air across his bottom lip.
‘I think a hop across the Firth is in order. Then following the south coastline of Mull. Normally I’d be sailing north-west – you know, the Sound of Mull? Nice and sheltered, picturesque views of Tobermory harbour and all that malarkey. However, I think that could be a wee bit interesting at the moment. Especially given how annoyingly perfect the visibility has become. I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.’
His eyes lock on hers, glinting in the cold light.
‘Want me to drop you somewhere? Seil might be worth the risk. You’d be far enough from Oban to be out of immediate danger.’
She wonders how much he knows. Alistair was never much of a linked-in kind of guy, but it seems unlikely he could be oblivious to what the news has been reporting. Then again, he’s not reacting to her the way she’d have expected. Her head-shake at the mention of Seil must have been wild, because he recoils. ‘Ehm,’ she falters, ‘would it be alright if I stick with you? At least for a while. Today has been …’ s
he licks her lips. Swallows. ‘Intense.’
He doesn’t answer for a while. Then he says, ‘Okay.’ She has a strong urge to explain, to make her story convincing, but pushes it away. The most basic mistake in lying. Giving too much information.
She hadn’t noticed the futuristic-looking binoculars round his neck until now. They must have been tucked in his fleece. As if taking a cue, he puts them to his eyes and takes a long, hard look around.
‘Night vision,’ he murmurs. ‘Great toy.’ He lowers them. Leans forward to squint at the depth gauge. ‘Okay, we’re going to harden up.’
His eyes flick to hers.
‘That means pull the sail tighter, by the way.’ Coira complies, cranking the winch in the way he’s shown her. It takes surprising effort, and she looks at him anxiously when the rope tied to the sail’s corner starts pinging with strain. Angling the tiller away, he nods encouragement. ‘It’s okay, keep going!’
He drags a pulley up the metal track spanning the cockpit behind the hatch. This pulls the aluminium boom retaining the bottom of the mainsail almost parallel with the hull. Leaning steeply, the boat turns into the wind. Coira finds her hair ruffled with increasing vigour.
It’s decidedly chilly. Ahead, Mull’s coastal cliffs are like a dark strip torn from where a horizon should be.
‘See the Windex? That little wind-vane thing at the top of the mast?’ Where Alistair’s pointing Coira sees a little arrow silhouette, flicking as the boat pitches through the choppy waves. ‘Shows relative wind direction. The true wind’s coming from less directly ahead than it seems, because our boat speed has added seven knots to its actual speed.’
‘Sounds complicated.’
He dismisses this with a gesture. ‘Things with boats are just experience. I’ve books below decks if you want to read up.’
She realises she does. A glimmer of a plan is beginning to form.
‘Used to be a radar-reflector up there as well,’ he is telling her. ‘I took it off. I figured other boats seeing us coming might be the last thing I want at the moment.’
She raps a knuckle on the bench-shaped moulding she’s sitting on, producing a dull knocking. ‘Your boat seems pretty solid.’ She has no idea whether this is true or not.
‘Like a tank. One of the reasons I got her. These things were built with two skins of fibreglass round a core of closed-cell foam. Supposedly unsinkable. Plus, she’s lovely to sail. Fast too, for her length. Even against modern yachts. She’s almost twice as old as I am.’ He seems inordinately proud.
‘Is anything that old safe?’
Alistair gives her a baleful look. ‘Main drawback is she’s not as roomy as fat-arsed modern tubs.’
‘So you could make long voyages in something like this?’ She tries to say it casually. ‘Sail around the world, even?’
‘Oh yes. Quite a few of these have done just that. She’s a proper blue-water boat.’
Coira hugs herself for warmth, nestling into the relative shelter behind the cabin.
‘It can get pretty cold going upwind,’ Alistair tells her, eyes glinting in the silver-blue light. ‘Why don’t you go below and get yourself a jacket? There’s a locker opposite the heads, forward of the living area. Heads is nautical for “shitter” by the way, in case you didn’t … Um, anyway, there’s fleeces and jumpers too. I’ll hold the fort here. Don’t worry – the chart’s in my head.’ He taps himself on the temple. ‘Take whatever fits.’
She rises. Takes a step towards the hatch.
‘In fact – why don’t you make us both a cup of tea? Bags and cups are above the cooker on the left. Don’t turn on the main light. It might get us seen. Use the headtorch on the chart table to the right. Mind the steps on the way down!’
Despite herself, his absurd relaxation is beginning to calm her. It seems unbelievable that only an hour ago she was dodging gunfire. ‘Aye, Cap’n.’
She extends a leg into the hatch’s wedge of darkness and locates the first step with her foot. It’s canted at the same steep angle as the deck. She finds a couple of wooden grab-handles and turns herself round, descending into the cabin backwards.
At head-height on the boat’s uphill side, moonlight leaks through rounded window-slits half a metre wide. All she can see through the age-hazed plastic of the opposite windows is rushing water. There’s a faint mustiness to the air, mixed with smells of plastic, cooked food and oiled machinery. She waits a minute for her eyes to adjust, then gropes for the table by the steps. Sheets of paper are on it, pinned beneath what feels like a hefty ruler.
Locating the head-torch by its harness, she fumbles with it until she finds the switch.
The living space is surprisingly homely. There are big upholstered benches along each side, the U-shaped left-hand one enclosing a collapsible table. Astern of this is a neat little kitchen area, opposite a cosy wooden desk strewn with marine charts. Below one of the windows, built into the hull next to the desk, is a minimal rack of electronic equipment. There are half-a-dozen black switches, what looks like a radio set, an MP6 player, and a handful of other modules and dials she can’t identify.
Behind the desk, a narrow door leads to a weirdly-shaped sleeping cabin under the cockpit. Evidently twentieth-century sailors favoured dwarf sleeping companions. A second door in the bulkhead at the living area’s forward end opens on to a tiny space with an even tinier toilet to one side and rails for hanging clothes on the other. A similar door opposite leads to a V-shaped sleeping area in the bow. The cabin smells like it’s not been used in a while.
Coira selects a fleece from the clothes rails and a jacket that isn’t too monstrously big. Having swapped them for her soaking boiler suit, she lurches across the crazily canted floor towards the cooker. The angle is playing tricks on her brain; her eyes telling her clearly that the floor is horizontal while her inner ears are screaming that it’s not. She’s feeling a little queasy.
Concentrating on breathing, she examines the stove. It’s hung on a gimbal so the top is kept level when the boat isn’t. She turns a knob, presses the button with a lightning bolt etched on it, and a little burner springs satisfyingly to life.
‘Milk?’ She calls up. ‘Sugar?’
‘Black, please.’
Pouring tea out of the little aluminium kettle takes care. The boat is buffeting quite a bit, and the hot spout wanders about like a snake. To keep her balance, she has to find ways to wedge herself against the furniture. With two enamel mugs in one hand, she grabs a rail in the other and is about to pull herself up the stairs when she makes the mistake of looking up.
The sight of Alistair standing nonchalantly beside the tiller at a completely impossible angle does something to her. It’s like the world’s fastest emetic. The world spins and her stomach lurches. Showering tea, she scrabbles up the ladder and sits with a thump on the higher side of the boat, clutching dripping mugs in one hand and her own twitching lips in the other.
‘On second thoughts,’ Alistair muses, after a pause filled mostly by her trying not to moan, ‘on deck might be the best place while we’re under way. At least ’til you find your sea legs.’ He extends a finger.
‘Don’t suppose there’s, um … any tea left?’
Head down, she passes a mug over. ‘Chip supper earlier,’ she says, between her knees. ‘Not sure it agreed with me.’
‘Aha. That’ll be what it was.’
The mainland recedes steadily into the distance. Coira can’t see Oban from here – Kerrera is in the way – but there’s a flickering glow on the thinning clouds. If she concentrates, she can hear rumbling.
The further away the place gets, the better she feels.
At some point she falls asleep.
CHAPTER 30
______________
Dip
COIRA SMELLS FRYING.
There’s light on her eyelids. Her bed is moving. Somewhere close to her ear, water is slapping gently against plasticky surfaces.
She licks her lips.
Judging by the sensations in her mouth, some kind of noxious, absorbent creature has crawled into it while she slept, and died. Her skin feels tacky and dirty, her wound and her palms are sore, and virtually every other part of her seems to ache in diverse and fascinating ways. She couldn’t care less. For what feels like the first time in weeks, she’s warm and comfortable. Wherever she’s lying feels blissfully cocooning, and the nightmares that have dogged her since becoming a fugitive those long days ago seem to have left her in peace.
What she feels is safe.
Everything, she supposes, is relative.
Sitting up before properly opening her sleep-gummy eyes proves a mistake. Having brained herself on something hard, monolithic, and positioned unreasonably close to an unconscious person’s face – I mean, what the fuck? – she flails around swearing for a while until her sleep-fogged brain works out that her upper body’s in the low-ceilinged half of that odd rear cabin. Squirming to where things are less claustrophobic, she leans against the curve of the hull as her heart-rate subsides.
Through a tiny window, she can see into the cockpit’s footwell.
Great view.
The boat doesn’t feel like it’s under sail. Stealthy sounds are filtering through from the main cabin. As well as footsteps there’s sizzling and the clank of utensils, interspersed with snatches of tuneless whistling as though their creator keeps forgetting he’s trying to be quiet. The strangely-shaped mattress is very comfortable. She slumps back on to it and hides under the blankets for a while.
She’s fully clothed. As she ponders why this seems surprising, what’s been eating at her subconscious bubbles unpleasantly to the surface.
Can Alistair really not know about the reward money?
Coira takes a deep breath. Swings her legs off the edge of the bed.
She’ll play along for now. See what his game is, if he has one. The truth is, at the moment she doesn’t really have any other option.
She counts to ten, steels herself, and pokes her head out from behind the door.