October Song

by Ru Pringle

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ you say, getting your explanation in first. ‘That’s all. It’s very important. I wondered if you might have seen them?’

  You can clearly hear whispers now. Looking relieved, but still wary, the man opens the door wider. Behind him, a plump, similarly aged woman is protectively positioned in front of at least a dozen very out-of-place-looking children and adults of various ages. All have wide eyes and very dark faces. ‘From the boat?’ you ask her, flicking your eyes in the direction of the people she seems to be shielding.

  The woman folds her arms.

  ‘So, who is this person that you’re looking for?’ The man’s tone is reasonable enough. His accent is similar to Somhairle’s, though less impenetrably diphthong-heavy.

  ‘They’re in a boat. A sailing boat. With patterned sails. I urgently need to find the people on it. One is a woman. Mid-forties, medium height. Grey eyes and hair?’

  His eyes narrow. ‘Are they in some kind of trouble?’

  A thrill surges through you. I was right! You’ll need to be careful, however. Something is going on here that you’re not aware of. You look at the people in the back of the room.

  ‘Have they … helped you in some way?’

  No response.

  ‘I know Coira’s like that. She would help anybody. But, well – it’s her family, you see. There’s been some terrible news, and she’s not answering the radio or her ’phone. I hear there have been problems with reception up here.’

  ‘And what is the name of this boat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ you answer truthfully. ‘It’s not hers.’ You decide to go out on a limb. ‘It belongs to her boyfriend. I barely know him, but if you ask me he’s totally irresponsible. Going out in that boat of his when things are so unsettled? Please tell me – did you see them? Which way did they go? We just need to know she’s well, and to pass on the message about her family.’

  ‘The other one,’ the man says, seeming to soften slightly. ‘Long blonde hair and a beard? Tall?’

  ‘Could easily be him,’ you say cagily, wondering if you’re stepping into a trap. ‘Though he had no beard last time I saw him. The boat – it’s quite small. Distinctive, though. It has these unusual, patterned sails.’

  There’s chattering from the group in the back. You already have most of the information you need, but the man exchanges a look with the woman you take to be his partner. She nods, and he turns back to you and says: ‘They helped with the evacuation of a ship that ran aground south of here. They left this morning.’

  You freeze. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That I don’t know.’

  ‘We just looked out of the window this morning,’ says the woman, ‘and the boat was gone.’

  You try to keep your tension hidden. ‘Did you see which way it went?’

  ‘I saw,’ one of the others tells you, in a very African accent. ‘I saw them leave! I saw their little boat go that way.’ She moves forward and points out of the window. ‘Underneath the very big cliffs.’

  You gush your thanks and are about to leave when a thought strikes you.

  ‘Does anyone here have a pair of binoculars I might be able to buy or barter?’

  YOU’RE NOT SURE how reliable this intel is, but it’ll have to do. You jog back down the road towards the pier. As you turn down the track, you slow to a walk.

  Somewhere during the past few days, you realise, you stopped thinking straight.

  Okay. Calm down. Time to lay your cards on the table.

  There’s a knee-high rock by the track. You sit on it and stare at your ’phone, for what seems a long while.

  Then you switch it on and dial the number.

  Almost instantly a familiar female voice on the other end hisses: ‘You’re in big trouble, you know that? Did you seriously think no one here would know the difference between natural signal loss and you moving in and out of a building, or shielding your antenna, or whatever it was you did?’

  You squeeze suddenly throbbing temples between a finger and thumb. ‘I need to speak to the chief.’

  ‘Well, that’s a wonderful coincidence, because I know she’s just itching to speak to you. Hold the line. Ah, wait a minute … She’ll call you back.’

  The line cuts off abruptly. You stare at the home screen and concentrate on your breathing.

  Presently the ’phone rings. It’s a number you don’t recognise. You answer it.

  ‘I know where they are,’ you say, before the caller has a chance to speak. ‘I’m in Lower Milovaig …’

  ‘Not another word,’ Lorna Ainsworth’s distinctive voice cuts in. ‘I’m perfectly aware of where you are. You’re using your ’phone, aren’t you?’

  You glance involuntarily at the sky. ‘I can catch her,’ you say thickly, feeling slightly sick. ‘I can bring her in.’

  ‘You fool. Have you any idea of the damage you might have done? Do you think this personal crusade of yours, or whatever the hell it is, is the only angle we’re working on this case? We shouldn’t even be talking about this. Especially on a ’phone that’s GPS traceable. There is far more going on here than you know. We’ll discuss your arrogance,’ she almost spits the word, ‘your inability to follow orders and the training you’ve evidently forgotten later, but for now, before you do any more damage, tell me your status.’

  You’ve never heard your boss so angry. You swallow, hard. ‘Provisioned, operational, good to go. Hot if necessary. I have transport, speed advantage, binoculars. Awaiting orders.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Negative. I … requisitioned transport. Transport came with owner.’

  A pause. ‘Reliable?’

  ‘So far a definite asset.’

  You hear a sigh. ‘The truth is that we’re stretched thinner than ideal at the moment, so perhaps we can turn this … potential disaster into something more positive.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I know you don’t, and it will stay that way until you return to HQ to face the music. I’m sending you an encrypted data packet. For your ’phone. Install the contents. Then follow the instructions. To the letter. Out.’

  You stare at the ’phone, lean your head briefly against it, and make your way back to the boat.

  BY THE TIME COIRA’S back on deck, Alistair has gybed the boat to keep them parallel with the coast. Between lumps of lingering fog, the shoreline of Harris looks like it’s been flayed to its bones by a mad god. It’s utterly naked and desolate. Occasional telegraph poles, leaning fence posts, and sun-faded buoys marking the odd lobster creel only serve to emphasise the otherworldly sense of isolation.

  She hands him the tea. Studiously keeps her eyes on her own mug. She looks away, towards the rocks. Hears Alistair sipping. As her tea cools, he begins glugging the liquid back. She feels numb.

  There’s a tap on her shoulder. He’s holding his empty mug out at her. Smiling.

  Oh God, she thinks. What if I’m wrong? For a mad moment she wants to blurt it out, to tell him what she’s done. But at the same time, another half of her is thinking: what if it doesn’t work? Then what’ll you do?

  But things are taken out of her hands. Alistair’s pawing at his neck. He seems to be having difficulty breathing. He’s swaying. His eyes swim towards hers.

  ‘I don’t feel right …’

  He starts keeling forward. She slides over to support him. He drops the tiller; she grabs it. He’s coughing.

  Oh please, no – what if it’s poison?

  The thought is unbearable. She always knew it was a possibility: she had no way of testing what was in the syringes, or whether it would even work orally. So she used the contents of both. She had reasoned at the time that if it was poison intended for her, it served him right.

  That’s not how it feels now.

  ‘Coira …’ he gasps, pawing her, his hair ruffled by the breeze. His eyes look confused.

 
Hurt.

  Then he slips forward into the cockpit, mashing his face against the deck, and lies there without moving.

  Coira’s heart is exploding. She feels like screaming; like crying. Like harming herself. She balls her fists and shrieks. Kicks him hard in the ribs.

  ‘Fucking bastard!’ she cries. She collapses on to the bench, sobbing.

  Then she pulls herself together, ties off the tiller, furls the jib, and points the boat back out to sea.

  CHAPTER 63

  ______________

  Juggled

  THE DATA PACKET transpires to be code. Code which turns your GPS into a tracking device. You stare at the red dot winking out to sea a few kilometres north-west of where you’re standing.

  You can hardly believe it. Don’t want to believe it. But finally, it’s all starting to make sense. And what a spectacular dolt you have been. What a gung-ho fool. You thought you were The Shit. The life and soul of the hunting party. When, all along, the real party had been going on somewhere else – and not only were you not invited, you were explicitly ordered to stay away.

  You could practically punch yourself for your hubris.

  Well, you tell yourself – you were working with no more than a glimpse of the whole picture. What did they expect? Why had they not seen fit just to tell you? What you’ve learned in the last few minutes seems key to your ability to carry out orders which otherwise made no sense.

  Has your loyalty been in question?

  Seeing your fist is clenched, you force yourself to take a mental step back. You close your eyes, controlling breathing which has grown erratic.

  You’re taking this too personally, you realise. One of the few negative threads in your assessments has been a tendency towards obsession, and, if you’re honest, it’s a flaw you recognise. You got too close to the task you were set. Failed to appreciate the importance of context. And, it’s a tough admission, but in the scheme of things you’re still pretty green. Experience is how Blakeslee and Ainsworth have got to where they are. Actually, you’re a little in awe of the way you’ve been used. All this time they’ve been keeping balls in the air you weren’t aware even existed.

  You try not to dwell on the knowledge that one of those balls was you.

  Track, but do not engage. On no account reveal yourself to the target. All being well, meet reception team in Stornoway harbour, but be alert for mission updates.

  Along with your orders, there are dark hints of some kind of further risk. You wonder what that could mean. The thought that your new brief might be linked to a potential rerun of what happened either at Craobh Haven or Oban isn’t comforting.

  ‘And how far from the target would we be, according to this new contraption of yours?’ Somhairle inquires. He seems boyish in his enthusiasm now you’ve revealed your tech upgrade. It occurs to you that he still hasn’t asked why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s as though, for him, all this represents is a game. Or, perhaps, a year’s supply of alcohol.

  ‘Forty kilometres, as the crow flies. They’re currently moving north at …’ You shield the screen from the sky’s brightness. ‘Five and a half kilometres an hour. Providing this fog clears, we should have a visual on them in an hour or less.’

  Feeling a strange mix of anticlimax and trepidation, you watch the village of Lower Milovaig shrink in Orca’s wake until fog envelops it.

  CHAPTER 64

  ______________

  Unimaginable

  WHAT ALISTAIR FEELS is not quite like waking. It’s more like being in a film with a bad editing error. A film where he’s cut from one scene which could have been a lifestyle advert from the teenies to one which is more like a horror, if the sensations in his body are anything to go by. His muscles ache, and a swarm of bees seems to have taken up residence inside his skull. His hands seem immobile, there’s a sharp pain in his wrist, and his neck is sore because of the awkward angle his head is resting at. It feels like he’s been kicked in the mouth. His tongue seems coated in something bitter, and nearby there are smells of damp nylon and what could easily be a Parisian drain.

  Something cold and wet hits his face and chest, and then he’s choking and spluttering, struggling to pull himself upright and open his eyes.

  At least the bees have gone.

  An amorphous moaning sound is coming from somewhere. It takes a while for him to recognise that its origin is him. A familiar cabin swims into view. Daylight is spilling through the little head-height windows. Though the light seems painfully bright, he can see it’s clouded over outside.

  He looks down.

  He’s half-kneeling, half sitting in the doorway between the heads and the forward cabin. On the floor nearby is the plastic bucket whose contents have just been flung over him. Looking up at his hands, he finds they’ve been handcuffed together. Not around the sturdy wooden pillars supporting the roof of the cabin, but through a hole that’s been specially drilled through the wooden bulkhead. It means he can’t touch his hands together and can only move them a few centimetres from side to side.

  Clever girl.

  Coira is lounging on the larger of the cabin’s two facing upholstered seats with her back against the sink unit. She’s toying with something he realises is his one of his passports, turning it end over end on her lap. His assault rifle is resting on the folded table at the cabin’s centre. Its placing looks casual, but it’s already pointed at him. All she needs to do is grab the trigger.

  Locked on his, her eyes are like splinters of granite.

  ‘Not poison after all,’ she says. ‘Should I be flattered you weren’t just going to kill me?’

  He says nothing. He’s slightly distracted by a building headache. It feels like an axe in his cerebrum. The boat doesn’t feel like they’re at anchor. The waves are too big for one thing. Doesn’t feel like they’re under sail either. Otter’s Pocket must be drifting. She must have sailed them back out into the Minch.

  ‘Seems to have been pretty potent, though. You thought you’d need two doses of that stuff for little old me?’

  He stands up. The hole he’s handcuffed through forces him to stoop, awkwardly. He kneels again.

  ‘So,’ she says. ‘MI5 operation?’ She seems to have found something in his expression, because she concludes: ‘Thought so.’

  Alistair nods at his hands. Does his best to lubricate his tongue. ‘Professional job. Looks like you’ve done this before.’

  ‘I was a police officer,’ she hisses, eyes flashing. ‘A good one. I know about security. I also know when things don’t add up.’

  ‘Going to torture me?’

  For a long moment she looks like she hasn’t decided yet. Then she shrugs. Rotates one of her long, clever hands demurely, studying her fingers. ‘I was hoping we could just have a frank discussion. One to one, like the old friends we could have been. No shite.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘Where am I going to go?’ She says this looking around the cabin. ‘You’ll have been reporting daily to your handler. I imagine they know our planned course. I’m pretty sure there’s already a reception committee at Stornoway, or one on its way. When we don’t turn up, they’ll backtrack to our last known position and do a sweep based on this boat’s top speed.’ She scratches her head. Pulls a face. ‘What I can’t figure out, though, is why the pretence? You could have had me at Oban. Possibly before.’

  Alistair looks out of the window. Then decides: what the hell.

  ‘Wouldn’t be enough to capture you or shoot you,’ he says. ‘We have Ken McCoull. Or should I say, Mungo.’ She tries to hide it, but he can see the shock in her face. ‘We thought he would be a stubborn bastard, but – he sold you out, Coira. Trouble is, he likes his games, and without corroboration we can’t know to what extent he’s playing us. We needed to find leads on everyone involved. James Teith is dead, and we can’t find Sinclair-Kohli. You’re the only other suspect.’

  Her face slackens. ‘You were a h
oney trap?’

  ‘We had limited options. If we brought you in, your file suggested you’d be a tough nut to crack. We needed names. There were things about the bombing that didn’t add up. Hints of a bigger organisation. We needed … not just to find you, but to bring that organisation down. The only way to do that was to get you to reveal things in confidence. And they thought …’

  She cuts him off with a laugh. ‘So, they thought that as an ex-sweetheart, you could – what? Fuck me into spilling my guts? You’re fucking kidding!’ For a moment Alistair thinks Coira might be sick. ‘Well, you can have this for nothing.’

  She leans forward. Puts one hand on the stock of the L85.

  ‘There was no organisation, Alistair. No great conspiracy. There were just four of us. Four people who felt we couldn’t just sit by and watch all the shite being perpetrated on our home any longer. Swedish sympathisers offered help with leaving, but we acted alone because we didn’t want anyone else involved in case we got caught. Knowing you, despite everything, you’ll be asking why. As far as I was concerned, it was like trying to assassinate Hitler.’

  He’s staring at her. She cants her head. ‘Is that really so hard to believe?’

  ‘Are you really that deluded? How can you compare someone who murdered millions –?’

  ‘Of course Faulkner’s not Hitler! And before you say it, yes, he’s little more than a puppet. But it was his smirk all over the BBC as the tanks rolled into Edinburgh, and his regime – and that’s what it is, Alistair – is in blood up to its elbows, like British governments for centuries. We used white phosphorous, Alistair. On fucking civilians! Have you any idea what that stuff does to people? You think … just because the millions we’ve dropped bombs on have been Middle Eastern or African, they don’t matter? Or that because the government’s a little more reluctant to massacre its own citizens on TV, British lives aren’t being systematically destroyed? Do you know what happened to all the political prisoners my department was forced to arrest? Because I sure as fuck don’t, once your government’s goons took them. Look at the so-called emergency laws; the tens of thousands who’ve been shot in the street or imprisoned without trial. The “North Britain Act” effectively revoked the human rights of everyone north of the border! Look at relative life expectancy in Scotland, or any indicator of poverty. In a country – sorry, territory – exporting more food and energy per head than any in Europe! How is any of that right?’