October Song

by Ru Pringle

  And yet … why should she think he’s any different from her? She hasn’t lied to him, exactly. But she’s kept a whole wardrobe of secrets from him.

  Including the stoater that you’re wanted for mass murder.

  She’s sweating. Which is strange. If anything, she feels cold. She changes into dry clothes. Gazes around the cabin.

  Idly at first, she starts leafing through Alistair’s bookcase.

  To begin with she’s not entirely sure why. It feels like a reflex. But it’s a familiar reflex, she recognises after a while. One she used to experience in crime cases. Especially difficult ones. She supposes it’s a way for her subconscious to guide her to patterns or inconsistencies it’s picked up when obvious clues are missing.

  She gets up. Begins rifling through the drawers of his chart desk. There’s not much to see, but she makes a thorough search.

  Nothing.

  But what is she looking for?

  She has simply no idea. She suspects she’ll know when she finds it, but has a feeling that it won’t be found by accident.

  She looks in the kitchen cabinets.

  Nothing. Nonetheless, a horrible formless dread is crystallising inside her. She can’t explain it, or why it has come now. But it’s growing – and suddenly she has a conviction that before Alistair makes it back to his boat, she must turn over every millimetre of it.

  She looks in the fridge.

  Pooh! She hadn’t noticed before, but it’s not a very effective one. Or well-cleaned.

  Typical fucking boy-fridge.

  She moves to the rear cabin, where she spent her first night on the boat. Alistair has dumped a lot of his junk into it to make room for her in the forward cabin, and it’s a bit of a mess. Trying to memorise where everything is so she can put it back unnoticed, she goes through bundles of clothes, bags containing sails, miscellaneous bits of sailing paraphernalia … There’s a bundle of documents in a plastic binder which prove to be declarations of earnings and tax for the Inland Revenue. She unzips covers from the cushions. Gropes around inside.

  Nothing.

  It’s clear she’s getting nowhere. She has to think about this. Guilt consumes her. Since meeting Alistair, she’s been nothing but danger and difficulty for him, and not only has he saved her life, more than once, he’s borne it without complaint.

  Ears straining for sounds from outside, she brews some tea. Then she wraps a dry blanket round her shoulders and goes out to the relative darkness of the deck, cradling a hot mug as she slumps on to one of the cockpit’s benches with a heavy expulsion of breath.

  Car headlamps are moving slowly along the road near where Alistair and the two Africans went ashore. She stiffens, experiencing a pang of worry both for Alistair and herself. She does a complete three-sixty, squinting at the horizon, willing her eyes to adapt to the leaden dusk. There’s a constant rumble in the distance across the bay, where more monstrous cliffs tumble from the clouds. She realises the bright slash she can see cleaving them is a waterfall, pouring down them into the sea.

  She’s being foolish, she tells herself. Easy to be paranoid when you’re a fugitive.

  But he worked for MI5!

  She’s been assuming the past tense, she realises. Taken his story at face value.

  But what if he never stopped?

  It’s a paralysing thought. He’s already admitted to working undercover. The fact is, she’s wanted to believe everything he’s told her. But isn’t she being arrogant, thinking she knows him? Someone like that – a charming man, trained in the art of manipulation, of deceit – could make anything believable.

  No. The thought that he, or MI5, have been laying some bizarrely convoluted trap is ridiculous. Besides, all this effort just for her? It doesn’t add up. Surely there are enough videos and eyewitness accounts of where she was before the bombing to cast doubt on her involvement, or at least show she can’t have been more than an accessory? Either to the bombing which made the news, or the one she knows actually hospitalised Faulkner and Coombes.

  And, seriously – using a sailing boat?

  Which just happened to be passing at exactly the time I need rescuing …

  She shakes her head to try and clear it. She’s had days to mull over the attack on Craobh Haven, too. Its timing feels more than coincidental, but the idea that it might be linked to her in some way seems far-fetched and doesn’t fit with anything else that’s been going on. She feels like screaming. No matter how she looks at things, none of this makes sense.

  Okay, so think reductively. What do you know, and what do you need to find out?

  Answers to the first question are relatively easy. One, she has feelings for Alistair. Whatever else they may be – foolish, misguided, or the most important thing in the world – these are undoubtedly clouding her judgement. Two, whatever happens, she needs an exit strategy, if not several.

  Three, if – and it’s a big if – Alistair has been deceiving her, that means there’s almost certainly something aboard this boat that he doesn’t want her to find. Which means she has to find it. Before he comes back. She won’t get another chance before they reach Stornoway.

  Okay, she’s used to this kind of puzzle. Ignoring for now the question of why Alistair might have taken her on this insane tour of the west coast if he’s trying to trap or kill her – and assuming he’s plotting something against her, and isn’t working in isolation (which seems unlikely) – what would he need?

  He’d need a reliable way of contacting whoever he’s working for. He might have to abort; might even be killed. Without regular updates to base, each passing day would compound the risk of whatever he’s doing coming to nothing.

  But this seems impossible. He’s been with her all the time, pretty much.

  So, Alistair, if you were undercover on a small, not very private boat and wanted to send messages, without the person you were sleeping with and spending almost every waking minute with knowing about it, how would you do it?

  Or, perhaps more importantly – where?

  Coira gulps down her tea. It’s lukewarm. In Alistair’s over-large oilskin boots she clumps down the steep wooden steps to the main living area. Goes through to the heads.

  She breathlessly opens the door.

  The heads is a tiny space – not really tall enough to stand in because the fibreglass moulding of the deck encroaches half a metre into it at chin-level. It’s claustrophobic for her: she can’t imagine how Alistair copes. Must have to pee like a girl. There’s a little mirror-doored wooden cabinet fixed to the side of the hull in the corner beneath the deck.

  She opens it.

  A toothbrush, which they’ve been sharing. A rechargeable beard trimmer, a few unused safety razors. Tweezers, rudimentary first-aid kit. Antiseptic cream, sun-block, fishing hooks, a couple of toilet rolls …

  There’s a smaller cabinet under the tiny plastic sink. She tries it as well.

  More toilet roll. Toilet brush and disinfectant. Marigold gloves. Cloths made from pieces of old T-shirt. She empties the compartment on to the floor. Feels around its edges.

  Nothing.

  She sits on the lid of the little toilet. Leans her head against the cupboard. He could be back any second now. She’s surprised how scared that makes her feel.

  Think, dammit!

  She drums her fingers on the sink. It sounds hollow.

  But then, it would, wouldn’t it?

  She pulls the sink experimentally from side to side. It gives by a couple of millimetres. It’s not fixed down.

  Sliding two fingernails under the edge nearest the door, Coira carefully teases the rectangular sink up from its recess. The taps are attached by hoses of flexible plastic, which uncoil as it hinges aside. All the surfaces have been carefully padded with foam tape. To stop them rattling while at sea?

  Or so they don’t make a noise when the sink’s removed.

  She looks inside.

  A small wooden box has bee
n screwed to the inside of the cabinet, forming a secure little hidden shelf. A transparent, A5-sized wallet is on it. Made of a rubbery plastic, the wallet doesn’t rustle when she lifts it out. It’s sealed with a ziplock. Like an evidence bag.

  She replaces the sink. Looks at the wallet.

  The first thing she identifies is the ’phone.

  Hairs all over her body are standing up.

  She unseals the zip. She can hardly breathe. She’s about to empty the contents into her lap, but stops dead. Takes a moment to remember how everything was arranged in the bag.

  Then she reaches inside, lays the contents in turn carefully on her thighs and stares at them.

  In addition to the ’phone, there’s a series of cards with what look like random numbers printed on them. She’s at first perplexed, then alarmed, to see two stoppered syringes of clear liquid, and a pair of handcuffs with a key.

  And there are passports. Five of them.

  She stares at the syringes. Then begins studying them. No labels. She uncaps one and squeezes a drop of clear liquid from it onto the edge of the sink. Sniffs it.

  No odour.

  Tranquilliser? Poison?

  Drug habit?

  But the handcuffs …

  She re-stoppers the syringe and turns her attention to the passports.

  They’re for seven different states. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Canada, the US and the UK. All have the same photo of Alistair on them.

  None show his real name.

  She picks up the ’phone. She finds she is shivering. It feels like the tiny room is spinning around her.

  The ’phone is sleek and very modern. It’s the kind with enough computing power for editing a feature film, as long as it’s not holographic. It’s also the kind with a satellite uplink and a GPS tracker which is pretty much impossible to turn off.

  The ’phone almost drops from her fingers.

  Alistair could have contacted anyone. From the moment he “rescued” her, anyone could have been eavesdropping, or following the progress of Otter’s Pocket on a map. It doesn’t take a genius to guess who that “anyone” is. Not only is Alistair likely to have been exchanging messages with his superiors – his handlers – but they almost certainly know exactly where the two of them are, this minute.

  But the picture might not be so simple. Her meeting with Gryanov was enough to convince her that anything is possible. And the question remains: why go to such elaborate trouble? It seems obvious they could have snatched her at Oban, if they wanted. Come to that, even back at Craobh Haven. If they knew her movements well enough to position Alistair and his boat exactly where they needed to be as she fled from Oban, surely they had to have been tracking her long before that?

  Maybe they tracked her all the way from the crashed car. Even from when she left Edinburgh.

  What if they’ve watched me since before the bombing?

  It’s an appalling thought.

  But then … why not just pick her up? Or, if they wanted her dead, quietly deploy a sniper somewhere with a Barrett rifle for a critical shot? None of it makes any sense!

  She holds a hand over the ’phone. It’s trembling. She takes a deep, controlling breath and turns the ’phone on. As expected, there’s a lock screen. She swipes random shapes over it with her finger, but knows it’ll be pointless.

  She rocks back and forth. ‘Fuck!’ Her thoughts feel like hyperactive children trapped in a bouncy castle with a tiger.

  She considers just throwing the thing overboard. Quickly sees that she can’t. If the ’phone dies, it’ll alert Alistair’s handlers, giving them last known co-ordinates and a time. They could likely scramble a search and apprehension force to those co-ordinates within an hour, armed with helicopters, drones, boats, tracking dogs – even satellite imaging, assuming available satellites aren’t occupied with more pressing tasks. Her options would be to steal Otter’s Pocket or swim ashore and flee on foot. Either way, even without satellite help, a radius search would find her within a couple of hours of the signal failing.

  All the time he was screwing me, has he known he was going to kill me?

  Perhaps his intention is just to hand her in?

  The difference is probably academic.

  It occurs to her that her meeting in Stornoway is almost certainly blown. Meaning she can no longer consider anywhere near the place to be safe. Mungo is presumably in custody. Her eyes brim at the thought that Kenneth must have given her up. It’s followed by the creeping realisation that she may already have got another contact either captured, or killed.

  Aren’t you just a regular one-woman clusterfuck?

  The awkward truth is that she can do nothing to make either Alistair, or whoever he’s in contact with, suspicious. She’s going to have to find a way of making it seem like she doesn’t know. She shivers, hoping she’s a better actress than she thinks. Somehow she needs to devise a watertight plan which will allow her to contain Alistair, then establish who he’s working for, what these people are hoping to achieve with her, and when they expect him to report. Then it needs to provide escape to a Hanseatic League nation without her being tracked or followed, and a way of entering that nation without being shot at, extradited to UK authorities, or both.

  She’s so far from having any of that, it’s almost funny.

  Something bumps the side of the boat. Coira avoids screaming only by clamping her hand over her own mouth. She fumbles everything feverishly back into its bag and stows it as silently as she can back under the sink.

  Ears pricked, she waits in utter stillness. Eventually she tiptoes, barefooted, back on deck. Peers over the side of the deck in the direction of the sound.

  There’s a darkness in the water, nudging the side of the boat. Having stared at it for a few moments she fetches Alistair’s spare anchor, ties a cord to it, and uses it to hook the object.

  It’s a log.

  Laughing in a way that sounds insane even to her, she nudges the log past the stern of the boat and watches it drift towards the shore. Then she goes below to plan.

  The footsteps clumping up the ladder and along the cockpit floor a couple of hours later make her feel like her heart is going to burst out of her chest.

  CHAPTER 60

  ______________

  A Lack of the Health

  YOU AWAKE WITH A START. Sunlight is streaming through algae-fogged glass. Shielding your eyes, you peer about in momentary confusion. On the floor where Somhairle was sleeping is a lone whisky bottle. It’s empty.

  You experience a stab of panic.

  He’s gone!

  You’re being histrionic, you tell yourself, as your faculties regain a semblance of order. He has only half his money. Then again …

  You urgently pat your pocket. The roll of notes is still there.

  Perhaps he’s decided that, in the circumstances, half is enough?

  You spring out of your blankets. And instantly regret it. The draughty floorboards you’ve slept on have left you stiff and sore. Uncoiling to a percussion of vertebrae, you limp to the door and swing it open, squinting into the light.

  The sun’s still low. Eyes adjusting, you study your watch. Ten past eight. Meaning you’ve slept through your alarm, but it could be worse. You relax further as you see Orca still tied to its tree at the top of the beach.

  ‘Somhairle!’ you call, through cupped hands. ‘Somhairle! Time to go!’

  You pack your duffel-bag, and he’s waiting for you at the boat with a little plastic crate you suspect he’s scavenged from the drift-line. Inspection reveals it to be half-filled with assorted shellfish. ‘Dinner,’ he explains.

  He looks terrible. Smells worse. But you can’t help noticing that he seems more energetic than you this morning. He treats you to a ghastly grin.

  ‘Well, now. You’ll be wanting to go north now that the weather has improved, I take it?’

  COMPARED TO THE PAST FEW DAYS, the weather’s excellen
t. There’s a damp autumnal coolness to the air, and while the sun has risen behind a ceiling of cloud, it’s doing its best to break through. The engines burble contentedly. Despite a residual swell, the waves are much less troublesome than yesterday’s.

  Loch Brittle passes with pleasing swiftness, and the cliffs on the right seem more benign in the thin morning light than during your attempt to pass them a few hours ago. You rub your hands to warm them. Lumps and banks of fog have formed out to sea, leaving a curious corridor between themselves and the cliffs. Orca moves steadily up the canyon of clear air. It tastes and feels like a freshly cleaned freezer. Tiers of vegetated rock pass above your head. Occasional waterfalls spill down them like ribbons of lace.

  After fifty minutes, the land flattens. A sea-loch snakes into the distance. Loch Eynort, you presume.

  The cliffs resume, bigger and darker.

  ‘A great day to die,’ announces Somhairle happily, already a quarter of the way through his first bottle of the day.

  ‘You’re expecting to die?’

  ‘Well now, and why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Why would you be?’

  ‘I am always expecting to die.’

  You laugh. You’re not sure why. You feel a bit weird, actually. ‘Here. Give me some of that.’

  The whisky is cheap and rough. It goes down your throat like petrol. Or medicine.

  ‘Slàinte,’ Somhairle tells you. There’s a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Or the lack of it.’

  ‘Tha. Indeed, indeed, indeed. Here’s drinking to a lack of the health.’

  You feel your tension grow as the boat forges doggedly on towards the western tip of the Isle of Skye.

  CHAPTER 61

  ______________

  Shangri-La

  ALISTAIR’S COOKING BREAKFAST. He’s whistling to himself: some traditional tune she doesn’t recognise. Eggs again this morning, but also something else. Fresh vegetables, she thinks. Which could only be from last night’s time ashore.

  Coira is sitting on the toilet, chewing her nails. This is the day when things come to a head. The day when she gets to live, or …