A Line in the Sand (58 page)

isolation,

which is why they're offering a hand of friendship, and they can't be

frightened any more. Their understanding of living and suffering

is

different from what you've found here. But, Meryl, I can't tell you what to do, go to them or go to a hotel. They might be right for

you,

they might be wrong. It's your decision."

He came to the hiding-place.

Andy Chalmers hadn't slept in the night, nor in the day.

could control tiredness, had contempt for it and for hunger, but

He

he

had biscuits in his pocket for the dogs. In the night he had listened to the silence, and in the day he had watched the flight of the bird.

To stay awake, and keep alert, he had chosen to concentrate his

on the big birds of his home under the mountain slopes.

thoughts

The

bird he watched was half the size of the eagles, pretty and

interesting

y... If he had been home, that day, he would have

but without majest

gone to the eyrie on a crag face of Ben More Assynt, scrambled on

the

scree then climbed and taken cut hazel branches from down beside the loch with him, to repair the eyrie from the storm damage of the

384

winter.

At first, watching the bird in the early daylight, Andy Chalmers was confused. The bird hunted. It dived on a young duck and carried

it to

the heart of the reed-beds. He understood that. He could see that the

bird had no grace in its flight, but was able to hunt. It was

recovering from injury, could have been a strike against a pylon's cables or a shotgun wound. After it fed, the bird circled one area at

the heart of the reed-beds. It was too immature, without the width thickness in the wing-span, to have a mate nesting below, and at first he had been confused.

He watched that place.

He waited for some reaction from the other birds: for the ducks to rise

screaming, or swans and geese to clatter for open water, but he saw only the circling bird, until the afternoon.

Then, a single curlew had flown, startled, from the place he watched.

It had taken him minutes to re~Iize that the bird was no longer over that same place and could not have stampeded the curlew. In his mind, he made a central point for the arcs the bird flew, and that point moved gradually away. If he had not been so tired, Andy

changed,

sooner. The central point for the

Chalmers would have understood

arcs

of flight neared the far shore-line of the marsh, where the trees

and

scrub merged with the reeds. He did not know why the curlew had

crashed out of the reeds, only that its flight had been a moment of luck and had alerted him.

There was a pattern here that he was struggling to understand. At the

limit of his vision, he had seen a sparrow break cover from the

scrub.

o longer circled, wheeled, but climbed.

The bird n

It was a distant

speck when Andy Chalmers moved from his cover and went down into the mass of reeds.

He took the dogs with him, would not be separated from them. It was only when he reached the focus of the harrier's arcs that he realized 385

it was a hiding-place, and as such it was well chosen. Many years rs

before, enough years for it to be before his birth, the marsh wate had rotted a tree's roots. The tree had fallen, the branches had

decayed. An empty oil drum had been driven by the winds and tides he remaining branches and had wedged.

against t

It was a refuge, a

safe

Where the trunk peeped above the water was the stripped

place.

carcass

uck, and in the drum was the faint smell of a man.

of a d

The bird

had

shown him the place. He could have passed within two yards of the tree's trunk and the almost submerged drum and would not have seen the

biding-place.

He had the line. The bird had given him the line to the shore.

Wading through the mud and carrying his dogs, swimming and having

them

paddle after him, he found not a trace of the man he tracked. He

had

followed men who had come on to the mountain to raid the eyrie nests, men took precautions, faced prison and had cause to be

and those

careful. This man was better than any of them. He had the point

on

the shore-line from which the sparrow had flown. He had the marker.

At the edge of the reeds he lay still in the water, and listened.

There

e of bramble a few paces away.

was a tangl

He could smell him, but

couldn't see him. The dogs were against his body with only their

heads

above the water. He held his breath and waited. He did not have

a

profile of the man, could not be inside his mind to know how he would how he would move... It was more interesting, there was

react and

more

dictability, in tracking a human than a deer. The tiredness

unpre

had

im. He lay in the water, was fulfilled, and listened.

left h

ould have told him if the man was close.

The dogs w

The dogs smelt him, as Andy Chalmers did, but knew he was no longer there. He came out of the water and the dogs bounded forward,

splashing clear.

386

He found rabbit's bones and the rear leg of a frog. He knew the man had gone, moved on.

sed him. She had her coat on and she held her Stephen's

Meryl kis

hand.

ere was another coat over her arm, and four suitcases behind her.

Th

as at the back.

Davies w

Perry couldn't read Davies's face as Meryl

kissed him. Rankin was closer: he tousled Stephen's hair and his

machine-gun flapped loosely on the webbing when he bent to pick up the

otball.

child's fo

e all right?"

"You'll b

fine."

"I'll be

o shop for you."

"Bill's going t

manage."

"I'll

The bell rang.

"You won't worry about us."

"I won't."

"I'm just so frightened."

At the third blast of the bell, Rankin peered into the spy hole then nodded to Davies. The key was turned, the bolts drawn back. Davies watched them. Were they ready? Had they finished? It hadn't been there before, but Perry saw compassion in Rankin's face. And he

the sharp movements of Davies's jaw as his teeth bit at his

noticed

lip

ards, and they were moved.

hard bast

He had not been upstairs while

she

d. He had not found the quiet corner in the house, away

had packe

from

ophones. She kissed him one last time her boy wore a new

the micr

England football shirt that Paget and Rankin had given to him. God alone knew how they'd obtained it, must have had a shop in the town opened up at dawn. Perry felt helpless, as if the eyes, the

s and the watchers ruled him.

micrc~hone

He wanted it over, her gone,

before he wept.

387

"You should go, Meryl."

"I'll see you."

"Some time soon."

love, don't-'

"Keep safe. Be careful. Don't forget, ever, our

ime

"T

you were gone, Meryl."

uld hear the cars outside, the engines starting up.

He co

Davies said, calm voice, "Don't stop, Mrs. Perry. We believe that the

area outside is secure, but still don't stop. The pavement time is the

worst. Straight out and into the lead car. There's no going back for

anything. Keep moving directly to the lead car."

Rankin pulled the door open. Davies hustled them forward, past the two

men who waited on the step. They went at a charge. Perry saw his Meryl go, and Stephen with the football, pushed forward by Davies

towards the door of the lead car. The two men came behind them with the suitcases and pitched them into the rear car. Rankin snapped

the

front door shut. He didn't see them go, didn't have the chance to wave. He heard the slam of the doors and the roar of the engines.

"The best thing for now is a fresh pot of tea," he said.

She had taken a position beside the lavatories near the hall. From ll part

there she had a view of the gable end of the house and a sma

of

the green. The light was going. Hours ago, Farida Yasmin had

learned

the patrol pattern of the unmarked cars, and each time they came by she

was behind the toilets and beyond their view. She had hung on there he had found out nothing that would help him.

because s

She stretched

her body.

"Hello, my dear, still here, then?"

388

hind her, on the path that led to the beach.

The woman had come be

"I was just going."

"I can't remember what you said, why you were here."

The woman would not have remembered because she had not been told.

Farida Yasmin explained pleasantly, "It's a college project on the modern pressures affecting rural life. It seemed an interesting

place

to come to. I'm getting the feel of it, then I'll be looking to

interview people."

"I don't know what you'll learn about us from our toilets."

She had her back to the green and the house. She hadn't seen the

cars

come. They swept past her. She saw the child and a woman in the

back

seats of the lead car, and a man who had his head turned away sat

in

the front. There were cases in the second car, piled high, clearly visible in the rear window. Their headlights speared away into the early dusk.

The woman coughed deep in her throat, drew up the spittle, spat it out

through her gaudy lips. She murmured, "They've gone. Damn good nce."

ridda

Yasmin shook.

Farida

The shock swept through her. She watched the

tail-lights disappear around the corner, at speed. Now she had

learned

mething, but it was nothing that would help him.

so

She began to walk

briskly from the toilets, past the front of the hall.

The woman called after her, "Come and see me, when you start your s."

interview

She had been cheated.

The bird hovered in the last of the afternoon's watery sunshine, then dived.

its wings, it strutted close to him. He saw the wound.

Beating

389

There

ny scrap of grease proof paper, the sort used to wrap the

was a ti

meat

brought home from the butcher in Lochinver, and he found

his mother

soaked, muddied mince, buried in grass, where the bird had walked

and

pecked. As if it had been tamed, the bird came close to him. The head

keeper had a peregrine falcon in a cage behind the house and near

to

his caravan: it had no fear of him because it had been fed by him

since

the day he'd found the abandoned fledgling, wounded by ravens. Andy ad come out of the marsh, stinking of it.

Chalmers h

The bird trusted

him. Other than the head keeper, he knew of no man who would nurse an

injured bird and win its trust. The head keeper was one of the very hat the taciturn and sullen Andy Chalmers had respect for.

few men t

ked up the scent.

The dogs pic

They meandered either side of the path

and crisscrossed over it. Without water to go into, it was hard even lled man not to leave a scent for dogs.

for a ski

hem lead through the wood.

He let t

lt a sense of burgeoning regret.

He fe

s burst from the wood and tracked at the side of a grazing

The dog

car's lights illuminated the top of the hedgerows,

field. A

ceding.

re

He went around the perimeter of the field.

he tyre marks.

He saw t

He could smell the man and the marsh. The

tyre

were at the gate of a field, on the verge of the lane.

marks

ed to go home.

He want

He had no hatred of a man who had nursed and

d

fe

a bird. He wanted to be back with his mountains. He called on the dio for Markham to come and collect him, and gave no explanation.

ra

far distance, silhouetted against the darkening sky, was the

In the

shape of the church, and the shimmer of the village lights. It was not

his place and not his quarrel, he had no business there.

390

Chapter Seventeen.

"You are certain?"

"It's what I saw."

nd two

In the rear car was the heap of suitcases on the back seat, a

men

at the front.

looking out through the

In the lead car were a child

ndow, a woman staring straight ahead, a man with his head turned

wi

in the front

away, and more men

she did not recognize; she had not

seen

the child before but the woman had been there, weeks earlier, when she

had come to photograph the house.

Farida Yasmin had been walking up the road through the village when the

two cars had come back past her, the same two men in the front of

each

d no suitcases on the back seat of the second

but no passengers an

car.

lked on in the darkness. There was a cottage with an