by Ru Pringle
Or something else.
But what if she’s wrong? What if she’s just got herself into some mad, paranoid hole, and he really is just the capable, concerned, often sweet guy he seems to be, trying to do his human best for the both of them?
Last night, as she closed the hidden sink compartment for the last time, she wedged a single grain of sand in the gap between the sink and the pedestal.
This morning it’s gone.
It could still be innocent. He could just be keeping in touch with his mum, for fuck’s sake!
Then why keep the ’phone secret?
‘You alright?’ Alistair enquires breezily as she emerges. Saucepan in one hand, he studies her with concern. ‘You look a little pale.’
‘Feeling rough, to be honest,’ she growls. ‘Maybe all the excitement yesterday.’ She rubs her stomach. ‘Also think I might have had something during the last few days which wasn’t good for me.’
Frowning, he puts the steaming pan on the table. ‘Could be the water tank. I meant to run disinfectant through the system before I came away. But I left a bit more abruptly than planned.’
She watches as he scoops fried eggs, carrots and beans onto her plate. ‘So, you’re okay.’ She hopes her tone is admonishing rather than accusatory. He plonks down the ketchup and looks at her.
‘Oh – you mean …’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d make it back.’
He sits himself down. Puts a steaming kettle of tea between them. ‘Yes. I owe you an explanation. Sorry. You were zonked out when I got back. I didn’t want to wake you.’
He pours tea into two mugs. Puts one under his nose briefly, but doesn’t drink.
‘It was fine, actually,’ he goes on. ‘Suleyman and Hugo – the two we got off the ship – were pretty switched on. We went to Milovaig – the township – and I knocked on a few doors. Took a while to get someone to answer, but eventually I got the local minister for the Wee Frees. Gave a bit of a sermon on how morals were plummeting, how I should prepare for the second coming and all that … How the men and women of Milovaig were resolute in the face of the heathen barbarism from the south, etcetera, etcetera. To his credit, though, he did manage to rouse the whole village into lending a hand. Even drove us off in a car to get more men from up the glen in Glendale.’
Coira makes interested faces as he tucks into his plate of eggs and beans.
‘So. There’s an old fire-engine in Glendale, and we drive off in that, leading a growing posse. Most of them walking, but a few have horses and carts full of ropes and other gear, and there are a couple of other cars too. They also have a big diesel generator and portable floodlamps. From where, I’m not sure, but we were pretty thankful for them when we got over to the ship.’
He pulls what looks like one of his own blonde hairs from his teeth. Looks suspiciously at it and throws it away.
‘It took us about an hour to get up over the hill, by which time the tide had gone down quite a bit. Some guys scrambled right up to the top of Waterstein Head with the floodlights: lit up the whole scene like it was Murrayfield Stadium. The others walked below the cliffs as far as they safely could, then got a human chain going, hammering these big pitons into the rocks and running a line of thick nylon ropes – from fishing boats, I think – all along the top of the beach. Then, I kid you not – some old guy has a harpoon. Like, from a twentieth-century whaler? And he uses it to shoot this thick harbour rope right up over the ship. The ship’s back’s broken over the rock it’s wedged on, and as the tide’s fallen it’s started to come apart. The waves are as bad as when we were there, but there’s a narrow bit at the back of the beach where they aren’t hitting too hard now. Everyone just belays themselves to this long line of rope with loops of creel cord.
‘Anyway, the people on the ship cotton on pretty fast, and fix the end of the rope that’s just been fired at them to a container scaffold. A few try just shinning along the rope. Bloody idiots. Pretty quickly got shaken or washed off. I’m not sure what happened to them.’ For a moment he stares at his beans.
‘So, the old guy with the harpoon – he ties a short line round his waist to a pulley on the big rope, and shins up along it, towing a second rope. All the time the ship’s heaving and bucking, and I keep thinking the front half’s going to separate and roll over. Then people start coming down the rope in pairs, pulled to safety by a gang on the shore. Then the pulley’s pulled back to the ship by harpoon-man. They all got so good at this they were taking two people off every couple of minutes.’
Coira’s genuinely impressed. Wait a minute. ‘Even so, surely it must have taken … hours?’
Alistair’s nodding, cramming his face with egg and carrots. ‘Still at it when I left.’ His cheeks are bulging like a hamster’s. Seeing Coira’s raised eyebrow, he says, ‘I wasn’t really contributing, to be honest. They had more men – and women – than they could use. They had things well in hand.’
He grins.
‘We did a good thing yesterday, Coira. Thank you.’
She smiles, tightly. ‘I didn’t understand the risks. You were the one who knew. And you did it anyway.’ He’s raising his hands in protest, so she adds: ‘Do you think they got everyone off?’
‘I don’t doubt it. There’ll have been casualties. But I don’t think anyone could humanly have done better.’ His eyes focus somewhere else. ‘It was pretty awesome, actually.’
‘Do they need people with medical experience?’
‘Portree Community Hospital is still running, apparently.’ He frowns, spits something on to his palm, studies it and throws it into the sink. ‘Shit. Filling.’ He probes a tooth with his tongue. ‘There’s been separatist activity in the south of the island, but they haven’t made it to the north yet.’
‘So. What’s next for us?’
He gives her an unreadable look. ‘You mean – what do we do?’
She nods, jaw locked.
‘Well … unless you’ve anything better to do, I was thinking we could head straight for Stornoway. Winds look close to ideal today. Southerly, starting light but building later, I think – and the tide looks favourable too, especially in the afternoon. I was thinking we could scoot across Loch Dunvegan to the tip of Waternish, the next peninsula up. Then run across the Minch to Harris. We’ll have the wind almost at our backs, and it’s only about twenty kay. Should be a great sail. Then up the east coast of Lewis to Stornoway. We’d be there by tea-time. We could both be safely home tomorrow.’
‘Great,’ she manages. Alistair’s eyebrows go up before dropping in an apprehensive frown.
‘But something’s wrong. Isn’t it?’
‘No! No, not really. Well, it’s just that …’ she manages to laugh. ‘The truth is, in a weird kind of way, this has all been …’ She squints at the table, struggling not just for the words, but guidance as to whether she should be using them. ‘Fun. You know? Compared to the last few days, my life … feels like I’ve been sleep-walking. And now, it’s like, somehow, I’m awake. Somewhere with the most spectacular colours.’
Alistair looks at her. There’s something in his face that she can’t quite read. She’s not used to being unable to read him. It scares her. It doesn’t look threatening, however. More lost. He stares at his bowl.
‘I thought about your offer,’ he says quietly.
Her throat constricts. She hadn’t expected this. ‘Offer?’
‘Well; suggestion.’ He looks up, a corner of his mouth upturned as though it wants to smile but can’t commit. ‘You know? That we sail away together. Away from …’ He falters.
‘And?’ Her voice is cracking.
‘It surprised me how much I want to.’
She waits for more. It’s clear nothing more is coming. ‘But you’re not going to.’
His expression suggests physical pain.
‘Why?’
‘Not that easy.’
‘How could it be easier?’ She’s aware her voice
is rising. She badly doesn’t want it to. Just this once. ‘You’re fed up with your job; you seem to have no attachments. Well, not to people, at least.’ She says this rolling her eyes around the cabin of Otter’s Pocket, trying to make a joke of it. ‘The place where both of us live is coming apart at the seams – and you have the ideal getaway vehicle.’ Not to mention passports to relatively stable foreign countries. ‘Didn’t you tell me this boat could travel round the world?’
Alistair puts down his knife and fork. ‘But …’ he hesitates. ‘Being serious about this for a moment, where would we go? Nowhere’s safe now. This thing that’s in motion – it’s like a fire. The countries that seem relatively okay now … they’re only like that because the fire-front isn’t there yet. But it will come there too. It’ll burn everything, Coira, until nothing’s left. Everyone who’s trying to survive will move anywhere they think things are better than wherever they are just now, until those places are burned up as well. There are too many people for individual states to do anything but delay the inevitable. Can’t you see? This can’t be stopped. There is no outside of what’s happening now!’
Coira chews on this for a moment. ‘We’re in our forties, Alistair. We won’t live for ever. Life expectancies are shortening. There might be some corner somewhere that’ll last long enough for … I don’t know, at least for us to be happy for a while.’
‘You mean, like Greenland?’
‘Maybe. Why not?’
‘You serious?’ Bits of egg spray onto the table. ‘Greenland is like the wild west! It’s the colonisation of America over again. Militia-wielding mineral prospectors and misty-eyed middle-class migrants who’ve had the same idea as you. Corporate money flooding the place is making everyone mad.’
She looks at her untouched food.
‘There is no Shangri-La, Coira. No paradise islands are left. This is our reality. Here, in this country, or whatever you want to call what this mess is. I have –’ he grinds out the next words with apparent effort ‘– an obligation to be here. I can’t just leave. I … I can’t.’
There’s silence as they both look anywhere but each other. Coira still hasn’t touched her food.
‘Sorry,’ she says, emptying her plate into his. ‘Not hungry.’
She rises and starts to wash the dishes.
THE FOG’S DISPERSING by the time Orca makes it to the broad mouth of Loch Harport. Small islands spatter the sun-dappled sea. You see nothing moving. No boats, no cars. Certainly no triangular, patterned sails.
You have no concrete plan of action beyond finding the boat you saw leaving Oban and verifying that Keir’s still aboard. Or, if she’s not, determining whether she’s gone ashore or on to another boat. You know you’ll be lucky to achieve what you need without storming the yacht, but you figure that’s a bridge you’ll cross when you come to it.
Assuming the boat’s around here, and this whole thing hasn’t been some humiliating, career-imploding red herring, you’re still faced with the problem of getting close enough for a visual without anyone on board realising they’re being tailed. It’s an interesting conundrum. In daylight, the yacht will stick out like a neon sign kilometres away, but at night or in poor visibility it could pass metres from you without a sound. Hidden by waves, Orca can probably get quite close without being seen, but will be betrayed by the sound of its engines, even at night. To approach, you’ll need to make sure you’re upwind.
You’re still trying to decide when you should inform HQ.
Not until I’ve more information …
You’ll need to be prepared, whatever happens. You’ll have to pick your moment. Probably during darkness: you have only an automatic pistol, and you’ve no idea what they’re likely to be packing. Your long-range accuracy with a pistol is better than most civilians would find believable, but you’ll be no match for even an average sharp-shooter with a rifle and scope.
Whatever you do will need to be by stealth.
You squint into the distance up ahead, but see nothing. Photographs on your ’phone viewed at full zoom reveal the same. You hope the fog won’t be a problem. As the RIB hobby-horses across the mouth of the loch, you wedge yourself in the stern and begin to strip and clean your Walther.
CHAPTER 62
______________
Fog
COIRA AND ALISTAIR LEAVE without saying much. Coira knows what’s required well enough now not to need instruction as they ready the boat, and settles in her customary spot just behind the cabin, ready to adjust the sheets. Spiced with fire smoke from the receding houses of Milovaig, the morning air is chilly.
Otter’s Pocket turns north, hugging the cliffs. There’s a healthy breeze, but tall banks of fog hang over the sea. Higher up, the clouds of the previous day are dispersing, and golden beams of low sun spill through cracks opening between them, like a CGI effect from some science fiction film. The cliffs to starboard yield to a broad bay with islands lodged in its throat. It’s followed by more cliffs, though crumblier-looking and not so high.
With a lighthouse-crowned headland approaching, Alistair announces a gybe to take them west-north-west over the Minch towards the “island” of Harris, the southern peninsula of the much bigger island of Lewis.
The air grows damp and several degrees colder as they enter the nearest wall of fog. Its smell is something she recalls from skiing when she was a kid. The sails flap restlessly. Alistair keeps his eyes on the compass and the depth sounder.
After half an hour or so the air brightens, and they burst into sunshine. Glowing feathers of fog are suspended over the water all around. There’s a clean, salty tang to the air now. Above another fog bank a few hundred metres away, Harris’ rounded little mountains jostle on the horizon.
‘Great visibility,’ Alistair enthuses. ‘Outside the fog, obviously – but I think that’ll burn off.’
Despite the listlessness of the breeze, the swell is still sizeable. Like the wind, it’s from the south. The boat seems to slip backwards into the troughs before being seized by subsequent waves and thrown forwards, surfing down their northern faces until the next crest passes and the cycle renews. Alistair seems happy. In his element.
Coira looks at him and does her best not to cry.
Despite successive fog-banks, the crossing passes without a hitch. She doesn’t see a single boat. Besides two lost officers from the police and MI5, the only inhabitants of the Minch seem to be jellyfish. Alistair’s baited the drag-line with more rancid squid. Nothing bites. Once, Coira sees a southward-moving glint above the horizon. She wonders if it’s the plane from Stornoway to Glasgow.
With each passing minute she feels Lewis’ capital town growing closer, and the knot in her stomach tightening.
She feels like she’s going mad. She knows what she has to do, but can’t bring herself to do it. It feels unconscionable even thinking of it. But now the hummocky, glacially scoured coastline of Harris is approaching, and she feels like a fox cornered by an overwhelming force of hounds – her choices reduced to waiting, breathless and terrified, to be torn to pieces, or clawing, snarling and fighting, out of blind instinct and the possibility a few extra moments might come of it.
‘I’m making tea,’ she says, watching the approaching shore. ‘Want some?’
He nods. Regards her with that unreadable expression.
She goes below.
‘CAN YOU PULL IN at that slipway? Or what about the pier?’
Somhairle nods and guides the RIB towards the eroded concrete pier, which laps at the water like an infected tongue. This little sea loch didn’t look like much from Google Earth, but now you’re here, it feels surprisingly sheltered. Across the water, a waterfall thunders down the locally popular brand of black, layered cliffs straight into the sea.
You’re aware that coming here is a calculated risk. With luck, what you stand to gain will make up for the time you’re losing. You’ve been trying to put yourself in Keir’s shoes again, or at least those
of whoever’s driving the boat. As you passed the container ship that recently broke its back on the far side of this wind-blasted extrusion of land, your radar started pinging. You’re not sure why, exactly. It’s just that she’d have seen it too. Probably around the time she’d have been looking for an anchorage. You’ve explored the idea of her crossing to the Western Isles during yesterday’s gale, and it feels wrong.
Somhairle agrees.
You strap your armpit-holster over your drysuit and pull your fleece jacket over the top. With the RIB grinding against barnacles near the pier’s low tide mark, you grab a badly rusted ladder and scurry to the top with a rope. What had been a concrete hardstanding is now a couple of acres of rubble and corroded rebar.
Having tied the boat to the ladder, you unclip your holster, check you can access your Walther easily, and stride towards the white-painted houses scattering the hillside.
Your legs seem a little unsteady after your liquid breakfast. They take you up a track of overgrown gravel to a single track road you can see looping around the tiny village. On a whim, you turn left. After a couple of hundred metres, having passed a fallen sign declaring “Lower Milovaig”, you turn up a gravel drive towards a medium-sized house. There’s a B&B sign near the gate.
Skin tingling, you raise your hands above your head as you approach.
The house itself looks surprisingly well tended. There’s a stack of fresh peats drying on the front lawn where two tethered goats are grazing. Smoke is streaming from the chimney. At the plain uPVC door there’s no sign of a bell or knocker. You hold your breath and use your knuckles.
Nothing happens for a while. Inside, however, you can hear stealthy noises and a rumour of whispering. Eventually the door opens a crack, revealing a bespectacled, elderly male face. There’s no sign of a gun, but you can’t see his hands. While he’s doing his best to look stern, his eyes are busy with fear and suspicion.