by Ru Pringle
‘You?’ He looks nervous. ‘Any black-belted Mr Coira Keir I need to be worried about?’
‘Fuck, no.’
‘Well that’s okay then. No guilt. No hearts to break.’
They’re grinning at each other.
‘If you’re anything like the state I woke up in,’ Alistair tells her, rummaging in his ear with a little finger, ‘you could probably do with a shower.’
‘You have one?’
‘In the heads. It’s kind of hidden – you pull it out of the wall. But as you probably noticed, it’s a bit tight in there. There’s something much better outside.’
He grabs her hand, pulling her firmly towards the hatch. She hasn’t finished eating. Wondering if it’s some kind of solar shower he’s set up, she allows herself to be led up to the cockpit. A glimmer of suspicion is forming when she sees he’s taking them to the stern. Before she can react, however, she finds herself lifted bodily off the deck, wrapped in the blanket so she can’t even move her arms.
He’s very strong.
‘No!’ She yelps, knowing exactly what’s coming. Then she’s in freefall, hitting the water with a wool-cushioned smack.
She kicks and thrashes free of the blanket, and breaks the surface squealing with shock. ‘You’re … dead!’ she manages, when she can speak. Alistair is clutching his thighs, face knotted with mirth. Then he leaps off the back of the deck in a graceful backflip – an actual fucking backflip – folding at the waist before diving neatly into the water.
He surfaces holding a scuffed-looking bottle of something.
‘Salt water soap and shampoo,’ he declares, spitting seawater, wearing an idiot’s triumphant grin she itches to wipe off his face with her knuckles.
‘I’m still going to kill you.’
ALISTAIR CLEANS THE DISHES at the sink as Coira towels herself and dresses. Her clothes are starting to smell a bit. ‘That stuff works for laundry as well,’ Alistair tells her, as though reading her thoughts. ‘Should be a good drying day. I’ve a bucket we can use to wash them.’
He twists his mouth to one side. ‘Sheets might benefit from a wash, too.’
‘How’s your arm?’
He flexes it. ‘Hurts like a bastard, but it works.’
‘Let’s go ashore.’
For a moment, Alistair just looks at her. ‘You mean Staffa? With our maniac friends just round the corner?’
‘Have you ever visited Staffa?’
‘Well … no …?’
‘Mendelssohn was a German who wrote music about Fingal’s Cave before there were even cars. We grew up half a day’s journey from it, and we’ve never seen it. Don’t you think that’s sad?’
He seems genuinely horrified. ‘You’re crazy. Unless we’re careful, we really could end up dead soon.’
‘So? That seems an excellent reason to make good use of what time we have. Wasn’t it you who was talking about last chances, and proving you’re still alive?’
She has her hands on her hips. He’s looking at her as though expecting a trick of some kind. Then a grin slowly breaks through.
‘We should get the washing soaking first. I’ll get the bucket. You can borrow some of my clothes.’
THE MOUTH OF THE CAVE is only a couple of hundred metres from where they’re anchored, on the far side of a cliff-girt headland. It proves to be the deepest of a series of cavities, eroded in a band of hexagonal basalt columns that wrap round the island like the filling of some weird geological sandwich.
They tie the dinghy to the old concrete steps at the cave’s opening, clambering into the gloomy interior. Deliciously cool, the air is thick with damp and the smell of guano. The cave is smaller than Coira imagined, but both surreal and very atmospheric. It has a great echo, as Alistair proves by singing, in a surprising baritone, lines from Harnick and Bock’s If I Were a Rich Man, from the twentieth-century musical Fiddler on the Roof.
They clamber round the coast after that on giant hexagonal plinths stacked and twisted against each other like a staircase for long departed aliens. Having rolled up her overlong trousers to avoid tripping, Coira finds herself skipping between the pedestals like a little girl. She’s wearing Alistair’s hat again. Although he’s looked askance at her, he so far hasn’t asked any questions.
They can clearly see Iona in the distance. Alistair searches the sea nervously with his binoculars, but says he can’t see any boats or signs of movement, and she’s content to believe him. Before they return, she stops to rinse the kitchen rag she’s been forced to line her knickers with in the sea.
Back aboard Otter’s Pocket, Alistair insists they move off to the north. ‘Tide should be in our favour at the moment,’ he says. ‘Wind’s lighter today. I’ll put up the genoa – it’s like a bigger version of the jib. Then you can steer while I repair the mainsail.’
She remembers him well enough to tell how jumpy and preoccupied he’s been getting as the morning’s worn on. He’s managing to smile, but it’s largely bravado.
‘Is the sail badly damaged?’
‘Should be okay. But I don’t want to chance it if the wind kicks up again. We’re bound to get hit by a storm at some point. Last thing we want is the main ripping in half.’
‘Is it worth trying the radio again?’
‘I did, before you were up.’ Alistair shakes his head. ‘Useful channels all have mad interference. I think jamming stations must be running round the clock up here. The clear frequencies I found had some comms I’m very suspicious of. My worry is that if I answer, some bunch of predators like yesterday’s will know there’s prey around. I hate to say it, but I think we should only reveal ourselves if we’re sure of who we’re talking to.’
‘Is that likely? That we’ll be sure, I mean. Anyone could be pretending to be anyone.’ Coira frowns. ‘Even if the jamming stops, do we even know that official channels haven’t been hijacked by someone with the right equipment?’
Alistair’s shrugging, pulling a face that says Why are you asking me? She’s torn between grinning and wanting to slap him.
‘I agree we can’t stay here. But where do we aim for?’
He scratches his beard. ‘I think the mainland’s out.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Islands, then?’
She nods. If they can avoid places with radios and television, or anything else likely to give the game away, this could at least give her the space she needs to devise a long-term strategy. ‘Things might be more civilised away from the war.’
‘In that case, my suggestion’s that we do more or less what we originally talked about, and head up through the Small Isles towards the Isle of Skye. I can’t say I’m too confident any more, but we might be still able to find internet there. Or at least a shop where you can buy wee white mice for your lady garden.’
Coira blinks at him. ‘I can’t believe you actually said that.’
‘The old folk used sphagnum moss.’ That grin of his is back. ‘If all else fails, there’ll be islands where we can find some.’
She helps him unfurl and stow the jib, then haul the new sail up from its storage beneath their bed of the previous night. He shows her how to haul up and safely stow the anchor. ‘What’s that?’ she asks, pointing at something at the bottom of the anchor chain’s little lidded compartment. Heaving aside coils of chain, Alistair pulls out what transpires to be an ancient anchor. Unlike the boat’s real anchor, which looks like a tiny plough, it’s a “proper” one with twin curving spikes, as worn on the blue jersey of Captain Haddock from the old cartoons by Hergé. Its surface is quite uneven – from corrosion, she assumes – but it’s been lovingly polished and painted.
‘My lucky anchor.’
She gives him a quizzical look.
‘Boring story: I found it one day, snorkelling. Brought it up to the boat. Then I lost my anchor one night anchored in a storm. Think I must have forgotten to tighten the pin or something. Anyway, I ended up using this thing.’
‘Never had you down as the superstitious type, Alistair.’
‘Yes, well – if nothing else, that episode proved it’s good to have a spare.’
He scurries back to the cockpit to sheet in the genoa. Then he grabs the tiller and points the boat north-east towards a gap between more small islands.
A thickening of the horizon beyond them marks the long, low islands of Tiree and Coll.
CHAPTER 41
______________
Surprise
SEBASTIAN BLAKESLEE’S ROOM is a soulless affair. The original hotel had burned down six years ago, a victim of the so-called Edinburgh Food Riots. Redistributing farm produce south during both the effective devaluing of Scotland’s reintegrated currency and a housing crisis created by the Translocation Programme had been one of the government’s less farsighted moments. The subsequent riots had actually ignited in towns and cities all over the territory’s central belt. Along with the predictable ensuing government clampdown, they had been serious enough to make the London news. He can’t recall the official death toll, but it had been in the high hundreds. Nationalists had called it a massacre. The Scottish Tiananmen Square.
The hotel was rebuilt using panels of the recycled fibres found in almost everything from the past decade, painted a utilitarian white with too few coats to hide the roller-strokes. Ornamentation consists of tramlines scored around the edge of each panel. Other than that, the room boasts a table of varnished MDF by the window, a couple of plastic chairs, a re-upholstered Ikea Karlstad sofa in red, and a fibreboard bed with a thin but surprisingly comfortable foam mattress. The mirror behind the headboard makes him wonder what clientèle the hotel caters for.
Sebastian doesn’t mind. It’s everything he needs. The en suite even has hot water during daylight.
He sits at the table, peering at his tablet. Four storeys below, rickshaws, cyclists, pedestrians and a few powered vehicles bustle along centuries-old cobbles between lines of street vendors, shoe-shiners, fortune-tellers and beggars. He’s grateful for the double glazing, but he’s opened the window a crack. It lets in the rumble of voices, tinned music, the odd car or bike horn, and smells of exotic frying.
For a moment it’s almost like he’s back in London.
He’s going through the suspects’ files again, on the old ’net-disabled tablet he uses for work he can’t risk being hacked. If the four weren’t involved in the bombing, it’s clear they were involved in something. In the sixteen preceding months they had taken pains to meet regularly, in private, and rarely in the same place. As campaigners for Scottish independence in the run-up to the final referendum, all except Sinclair-Kohli had been on MI5 files. After Reunification their meetings were deemed suspicious enough to get them red-flagged – but, strangely, surveillance had tailed off. A couple of months before the bombing, it had virtually ceased.
He flicks through telephoto shots of the four sitting together in restaurants and bars; faces serious, discussing animatedly. Yet it strikes him that what he’s looking at is fluff. Where’s the meat of all this? Heavy surveillance, for eighteen months, and all they had to show for it was photographs and a list of meeting dates?
No ’phone conversation recordings or transcripts, no texts. No emails. Either the conspirators were exceptionally careful, or there was nothing to report.
He does find Sinclair-Kohli’s shopping lists, about which so much has been made in the press. He does find occasional items on it that could be used to make a bomb. Then again, they could equally have been used for building a shed, or for gardening. Or just cleaning a house. As evidence, it’s at best inconclusive.
He goes through Keir’s file.
She seems to have been quite a force of nature. Starting her police career several years later than her peers, she had overtaken almost all of them by the time she was thirty. The word exceptional keeps popping up: target scores, physical and aptitude training, undercover work, team leading. He finds the word abrasive used several times, mostly by male officers, yet it seems she was respected by nearly all her colleagues, if not exactly liked. The impression he has is of someone unflappable. Imperturbable. He sees what Tiles means about a self-destructive streak: she’s an idealist, to a fault. This is a woman capable of anything, if she thinks it’s right.
McCoull is an entirely different kettle of fish. The impression he gets from the file is much darker. The man is like a continually picked scab. He’s not sure he agrees with Tiles. He can see McCoull planting a bomb.
A ’phone rings. He pulls his personal handset from his pocket, but the screen’s blank.
It’s the other one. He digs it out and flicks it on. His pulse quickens as he stares at the screen.
‘How’s your day so far?’ Lorna’s trying to hide it, but she’s excited. More than he’s seen her in weeks. He doesn’t recognise where she is. It’s not the MI5 building. It looks almost like a prison.
‘So-so.’
‘It’s about to improve. I got a call half-an-hour ago from Shegen, asking me to meet him. He was keen that we couldn’t be eavesdropped.’
‘Cut to the chase, Lorna. These ’phones should be secure.’
‘Something’s happened. If it’s all the same I’d rather not say what, just in case. Even if the ’phones are okay, do we know for certain we got every bug? Wait … is that street noise?’ Her eyes narrow to slits. ‘Are you by an open window?’
He manages a weak smile.
‘Christ, Sebastian. Have you never heard of a shotgun mic?’
He coughs. Stands to close the window. ‘Consider me admonished,’ he tells her, sitting again.
‘Still at the hotel?’
He nods.
‘Then I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes. I’d suggest waiting in the lobby – and do sweep it first, won’t you? We want to be certain we’re not followed. I’ll be in a taxi.’
‘All very cloak and dagger.’
‘Trust me, you’ll understand. Although I’ve a curious feeling you’re behind this somehow. Will I pick us up something to eat? I’ve a feeling this is likely to warrant your attention for at least the rest of the day.’
CHAPTER 42
______________
Boat for hire
LINA INSISTS on accompanying you in the Renault to the place she thinks is your best bet for commandeering a boat.
Oban is off-limits, unfortunately: even if you weren’t off-book, the remains of the town will be under something like martial law. Your story of chasing a dangerous fugitive for MI5 seems to have fired Lina’s imagination, and she’s been almost desperate in her willingness to assist. The road winds down the hill and rejoins what she calls the Gallanach Road, where a few algae-stained grey buildings with the bleak puritanism of turn-of-the-century Scottish architecture cluster round a tiny harbour. What looks like an old a toilet block still cheerfully proclaims “Puffin Dive Centre”, although the puffin on the cracked and peeled sign has gained a cartoon cock and balls and is smoking a joint.
Lina directs you to the last of four semi-detached houses above the harbour. You park the car as she raps on the door. The face that appears could only be the product of decades of alcohol abuse. There’s a brief exchange, and the two approach as you step out of the car on to the potholed gravel.
‘You are wanting to hire a boat?’ says the man in a thick, Gaelic-infused accent from somewhere considerably west of here. It’s hard to tell his age, he’s so crumpled and alcohol-sodden. His nose looks like a piece of offal. His eyes, however, though bloodshot, are quick and alert.
‘That’s correct.’
‘Well, now.’ He fingers remnants of yellow-white hair. His breath smells extraordinary. ‘My first question to you would be: when was it that you stopped taking the medication? My second would be: who, or what, are you escaping from?’
You show your teeth. ‘I need to find someone. Urgently. Someone in a boat.’
The man sucks at gums you’re getting
a nasty feeling are toothless. Fortunately, you haven’t seen him smile yet. ‘And, where would they be, this person?’
‘That’s what I need to find out. Somewhere north-west of here, I think.’ More gum-sucking.
‘And do you have much experience, with the boats?’
‘Not much,’ you confess.
‘So, you’ll be needing a guide, then.’ You bob your head, non-committally. ‘And how much would it be worth to you, this hiring of a boat and a guide?’
You’d anticipated this question. Unfortunately, the available answers aren’t as compelling as you’d like. ‘You can have the car.’
Straggling white eyebrows go up. ‘Indeed, now? And that would be James and Ceit McAlpine giving you permission to give away their car, would it?’
You curse small communities. ‘Plus two hundred and twenty thousand in cash. For up to a week.’
The creature fixes you with a steady gaze. ‘That’s not a lot to be risking my life for, now, is it?’
‘It’s all I have to spare.’ This is mostly true. You’re keeping a slush fund for bribery and other emergencies. ‘You could feed yourself for a year with that.’ Or drink yourself to death.
The man blinks. His eyes flick to the sea, then towards Lina.
‘One more condition,’ he says. ‘Your gun. I want it. Also, the ammunition.’
How does he know I have a gun? You hope your surprise isn’t showing. This is a very bad idea. By itself, losing your gun is enough to get you disciplined. ‘Very well.’
‘Before we leave.’
‘Not a chance. After. I may need it. To protect us.’
The man considers this, and nods.
‘Your boat – is it fast?’
‘No, indeed.’
Your heart sinks. ‘We’ll be chasing a sailing boat with two days’ head start.’
‘My boat will go at twice the speed, and a sailing boat will also need to tack.’
You do the calculations. Should be enough. ‘What about fuel?’