Cape Wrath (8 page)

“About what?”

“About what I told you.”

Alan gave him a quizzical stare. “I never had you down for the superstitious type.”

Nug shrugged. “I'm not. It's just, well, this whole business seems wrong to me.”

Alan was about to reply, when they heard raised, heated voices from the direction of the tents. They looked at each other, then dashed out of the cave and scurried around the marsh, trying not to muddy themselves any more than they already had, in the process.

Two minutes later, they were back in the camp. The first person they met was David. He had a pale, vaguely child-like look about him. “You're not going to believe this,” he blurted out. “The satellite phone's gone.”

Alan felt his hair prickle. “What?”

The others were standing around between the tents, gazing at each other in bewilderment. Professor Mercy stood in the centre, holding the waterproof satchel, which was now open and empty.

“I'll ask again,” she demanded of them, “is someone playing some kind of joke?”

“It's a bloody unfunny one, if they are!” said Nug.

“Where was it?” Alan asked.

She threw the empty sack on the floor. “In the satchel, along with my mobile.”

“Has that gone too?”

Clive nodded grimly. “They both have.”

“There's a surprise,” said Alan.

The Professor glanced sharply up at him. “And what's that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged and waved it away. “Nothing … I'm just getting paranoid. Look, Craig had a phone, didn't he?”

There were a few mumbles in the positive. Uncomfortable glances were then exchanged.

“Well
someone
had better go and get it,” Linda finally said.

No-one moved, until Alan lurched off back in the direction of the cave. Dejectedly, Nug went with him.

Getting Craig back out of his shroud was harder than they expected. First off, the zip on the sleeping bag jammed, then the ground-sheet somehow got twisted and knotted beneath the body, so they actually had to lift and turn his dead-weight over, in order to free it. He slumped back and forth as they moved him, nothing now but clay – cold, ghoulish clay, for his flesh was hideously clammy to touch, and, in the dusky half-light, had turned the colour of bleach.

For all this, it was a futile endeavour. They went through Craig's pockets and searched inside his clothes, even going so far as to strip off his sweater and take down his pants … but though they found a wallet and two spare reels of film for his shattered camera, there was no trace of his mobile phone.

Alan knelt back up, now bathed in chill sweat. “Not here,” he said simply.

Nug stood. “Obviously he dropped it when he fell.”

Alan gave him a cynical stare. “Oh,
obviously!
”

“I hope you're not thinking what I think you're thinking.”

“It's bloody convenient, isn't it?” Alan said.

Nug shook his head. He clearly didn't want to believe what his friend was implying.

Now Alan stood up too. “Nug. No-one's nicked the sodding satellite phone! You know how expensive that piece of gear is. Don't you think she'd have gone absolutely fucking berserk if it had really gone missing?”

“Any luck?” Professor Mercy asked them from the cave entrance.

They both turned quickly. Her silhouette almost blotted out what little light there was filtering in.

“Er … not much,” Nug said awkwardly. “We'd better go and check where his body was.”

She considered for a moment, then nodded. “We'll go through his tent and his rucksack as well. Even if we don't find it, it's no disaster. The boat'll be here the day after tomorrow. I think we can manage for that long.”

And then she was gone, marshalling the others, audibly sending them back to the camp. Nug made to follow her, to Alan's further irritation. “
I'll
wrap him up again, shall I?” he said pointedly.

“Sorry, mate.” Nug came back in to help.

A moment passed as they re-swathed Craig in his groundsheet. When Alan was sure the Professor was out of earshot, he leaned over. “I thought you were the one who was worried something was going on?” he said quietly.

“It's not
her
, though, is it,” Nug protested. “I mean, we
know
her.”

“What the hell's got into her, then?”

Nug shrugged, and pulled the sleeping bag up over the corpse's still booted feet. “Same as has got into everyone else, I suppose.”

“Which is?”

“Grief. Worry.” Nug drew the zip up. “Look … she stands to carry the can for this cock-up,
whoever's
fault they decide it is. It's already fucked up the biggest find of her career. She's probably just bottling it all in.”

Neither of them spoke further, but, inside, Alan was in deep distress. He'd long been entranced by Professor Mercy. It wasn't just the fact that every heterosexual male who laid eyes on her wanted to take her to bed, or that she was a dominant figure in her field, with a knowledgeable and charming manner that made her seminars a pleasure to attend; it wasn't just the care and concern she showed, and the fact that she was always there for those to whom she was personal tutor. It was the combination of all these; the blend of professional yet motherly control she exercised over those in her charge. Yet how different things suddenly were now. Alan didn't feel disappointed by her, so much as betrayed … betrayed that she was so interested in her career, betrayed that at the end of the day that meant more to her than the lives of her students, betrayed that this perfect person wasn't as perfect as he'd imagined.

What other revelations awaited them?, he wondered. At least 32 hours had to pass before they could get off this island. How many other startling stress-cracks would start to show in their fine façade?

 

The howl was long and low, and it hung on the night air with a mournful resonance.

At first, Alan thought he was dreaming. He
had
been dreaming earlier; dreaming that they weren't camped out on a teeny island just off the northern British coast, but were actually in some vast wilderness of mountains, glaciers and snow-deep pinewoods. How natural that a howl should have sounded in a place like that, but now, as he lay in that vague state between slumber and wakefulness, there came a bustle of movement from the other tents, and a low mumble of voices, and at once he realised that the howl he'd heard hadn't been part of any dream.

Hurriedly, Alan shook himself to clear his head, then glanced at his watch. In the still-pitch dark, the luminous dial told him it was just past two o'clock. He hadn't been asleep that long. By the voices outside, however, the others were clearly up and milling around. He wormed out of his sleeping bag, pulled his boots on and slid from the tent. Various torches had been switched on, which fleetingly had the effect of concentrating the darkness around them, so it was several moments before he was able to recognise who was who.

“I suppose you all heard that, did you?” came a tremulous voice. It was David Thorson. He hadn't yet put his sweater on over his t-shirt, and was hugging himself, either from the cold or from fear. Probably a mixture of both. His normal irreverent humour already looked like a thing of the past.

Alan glanced around, his eyes slowly attuning. Nug was present, looking sleepy and dishevelled, alongside Professor Mercy, who was shining her torch out into the surrounding pines, but finding nothing unusual.

Nug yawned. “Someone playing stupid games again?” he said.

“Where's Barry Wood?” Alan asked.

Nug shrugged.

“
Here
. Any problem with that?” came a terse reply.

Everyone looked round and saw Barry weaving his way down through the trees on the higher slope. A moment passed, then Linda appeared behind him. She looked a little sheepish. Barry on the other hand was his usual brazen, swaggering self.

“Someone's farting about,” Alan said, biting his lip on what he really wanted to say. “Don't suppose you know anything about that?”

Barry grinned as he ambled up to the remnants of the fire and warmed his hands. “Nah … I've had better things to do.”

Alan glanced at Linda, but she averted her eyes.

Now Professor Mercy came forwards. “I'm not sure it's a good idea wandering off in the dark. We don't want any more accidents.”

“No problem,” Barry replied. “Everything's done and dusted, anyway.”

Linda made a move to her tent, but saw that Alan was still watching her. “What are
you
looking at?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he replied, meaningfully.

“Woaa!” David shouted, suddenly bug-eyed. “Someone's over there!
Who's that?
”

Again, everyone turned, and this time they were transfixed by a humanoid figure, immensely broad and unwieldy, coming slowly and quietly up through the veils of mist hanging over the bog-pools. It was a nightmarish shape, with a burly outline and foggy aura, reminiscent of a hundred cheap and nasty horror movies.

“
Who's that?
” David shouted again, his voice breaking like a prepubescent schoolboy's.

“It's me,” said Clive, suddenly recognisable in the torchlight, and not a little baffled at the panic he'd caused. “I've been for a pee. That okay?” He was still in the process of zipping himself up.

“You didn't hear anything odd while you were down there, did you?” the Professor asked.

Clive shook his head. “Such as?”

“A wolf,” David told him.

“Bollocks a wolf,” Alan said, still glaring suspiciously at Barry's broad back. “It was someone
pretending
to be a wolf.”

“Put the bloody wind up me whatever it was,” David replied.

Clive shrugged. “I didn't hear anything.”

Everyone pondered this, then Professor Mercy flicked her torch off and moved back towards her tent. “In that case it's probably a false alarm,” she said. “It's not as if there aren't plenty of other explanations. For one thing, Craeghatir has been a sanctuary for rare seabirds for quite some time.”

“Yeah,” Alan muttered, “like poor Craig told us.”

One by one, the others moved back and clambered under canvas. Aside from Alan and Nug, Barry was the last to go. He didn't seem concerned that Linda had already disappeared into her tent without so much as a goodnight kiss. Once the athlete had vanished, Nug turned to Alan.

“You know that was no seabird,” he said.

“I know.”

“So what's going on?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Alan replied, though he was now gazing at Barry's tent. Briefly, there was a light on in there, then it was extinguished.

Nug shook his head. “Why are you trying to pin it on him? I mean, apart from the fact you hate his guts.”

Alan looked at him, surprised. “He was out there when we heard that howl.”

“So was Linda, so was Clive.”

Alan snorted. “Linda and Clive aren't tosspots interested in fucking with everyone else's mind.”

“But why would Barry do that? What's he got to gain?”

“I just think he's a prat,” Alan said, “and that he's capable of doing anything to keep himself amused.”

“And you're absolutely certain your judgement isn't being clouded by …
something else
?” Nug wondered.

Alan gazed at him hard. “Whatever
I
think about that goon is irrelevant,” he said. “Just consider the position, Nug. Someone is fucking around in the wake of a fatal accident. Now, call it moronic insensitivity, call it bad taste, call it silly thoughtlessness. Call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day who do
you
think it's most likely to be?” And with that he went back to his own tent, leaving his pal alone and thinking by the fading glow of the fire.

But sleep wasn't to come easily for the remainder of that night. Despite the emotional drain of the previous day, Alan's brain was now too alert to be closed down. He rolled over and over in his sleeping bag, did everything in his power to relax, but always now his ears were primed for the slightest sound, each one of which caused him to tense up and listen warily. If he heard so much as a flutter of leaves on the breeze, or a snap or pop in the burnt-out embers of the fire, it set his nerves on edge.

As the night wore on, Alan began to feel like a first-time camper. The cold was suddenly getting to him, the dankness was an irritant; he found lumps under his mat which were surely imaginary but which discomforted him nevertheless. His wide-awake eyes constantly scanned the inner nylon skin of the tent for the faintest sign of movement or shadow. Repeated checks with his watch revealed only that the night was slipping steadily past. The first time he looked, it was just past three; the second time it was almost four; the third time it was half past four, and now the pale light of sun-up was infiltrating the camp, the dawn chorus twittering madly in the branches overhead. Still, sleep eluded him.

Some time between five and six, he gave up on it. He climbed out of his bag again, drew on his boots and went outside. It was another glorious summer morning, the sun already high and throwing dazzling light on the bog-pools, dappling the shady areas under the trees. Nobody else was astir yet, so Alan took a long drink of water, then a leak. After that, it crossed his mind that he might again busy himself clearing the ashes from the night before and preparing another fire. But it was still a little early even for breakfast and, in any case, why should
he
be the one to do all the work?

So thinking, he stuck his hands into his pockets and set off for a walk. He hadn't seen a great deal of the island as yet, and with the death of Craig, it didn't seem like he was going to. Not unless he made a few forays of his own. This seemed like a good time … if any time could be called ‘good' in such a predicament.

For several minutes he strolled up through the woods in a vaguely north-westerly direction. Though he could hear the distant
hushing
of the waves, there was a pleasant coastal calm. Blue-green shadows lay between the trees. Alan saw a flash of red as a squirrel scampered along a low bough. At length, however, the trees thinned and he found himself at the head of a gorge or ravine lying between high granite bluffs. It was narrow – perhaps 20 yards across at the most – and deep in lush grasses and fallen stones. It ran in a reasonably straight line for about a quarter of a mile. At the far end of it he could see open hillside and, surmounting that, a tall whitewashed spear-like structure with a glazed section at its top.

The lighthouse.

Alan knew it was private property up there, but he didn't see any harm in taking a look. The building might well be fenced off, in which case his problem would be solved for him, but if it wasn't, what was the harm in a quick mooch about? He set off at an easy pace, hands still in his pockets. As he strode, the sounds of the ocean grew louder, clearer. Now he could hear the crashing of surf, the calling of gulls and gannets.

And then, somewhere close behind him, there was a faint
skitter
, something like a small pebble rolling over rocks.

Alan stopped and turned, but there was nothing and nobody behind him. In all probability, eroded pieces occasionally fell from the walls of the ravine, while there were almost certainly animals around here too. He'd have thought a remote isle like Craeghatir wouldn't be home to the larger north British mammals, like the wildcat or pine marten, but one never knew. He'd just seen a squirrel, after all. It also seemed highly likely there'd be wild hare around.

He continued on his way, though he had to admit the noise had unnerved him. Despite the warmth of the sun and the mellow feel of the land and sea, Alan was now on edge, distinctly uneasy … the way a trespasser might feel when he knows he's on somebody else's land and is constantly expecting to be spotted. Even when he emerged from the gorge and found himself way out on a headland with sheer drops to either side, he felt no great relief.

Shaking his head at the curse of his imagination, he progressed up a shallow slope towards the lighthouse and its associated buildings. None of these was fenced off, but all were closed up and wore heavy-duty padlocks on their solid steel doors. On the lighthouse itself, there was a red sign, reading ‘DANGER' and painted with streaks of electricity. Alan gazed up. So close, the white-washed signal tower seemed colossal in height. The lowest window in it had to be 20 or 30 feet from the ground. Not that he envisaged trying to get inside for any reason.

He glanced around. In the age of pre-automation, this must have been a desolate post indeed. Having said that, he still found it difficult to shake himself of the conviction that he wasn't alone here. He glanced again towards the high lantern-gallery, to see if someone was up there, gazing back down at him. Of course, nobody was. The feeling lingered, however, even when Alan made his way among the outbuildings; the electricity sub-station, the storage houses, the heli-pad. At length, he moved on past the far perimeter of the complex, and progressed over the final 50 yards of thistle, clover and sea-campion until he reached the tip of the headland. A few feet short of it, he stopped cautiously. He'd just had the brief but chilling sensation that if he went right to the edge, somebody might come sneaking up from behind and push him over. He looked back, but not only was nobody there, nobody could have got within 30 yards of him without his becoming aware of them.

Even with that knowledge it was a dizzying sensation finally to approach the precipice and gaze over it. Cape Wrath, it seemed, was well named, for a spectacular vision of elemental fury now confronted Alan. Some 200 feet below, a bottle-green swell – monumental in size and strength – rose and fell around the jagged black rocks, sending eruptions of surf to phenomenal heights, roaring in the zawns and crannies of the cliffs. Farther out over the tempestuous seascape, the tide drove in via an endless succession of gigantic waves. Here and there among them more shoals of rocks were visible, protruding like teeth through the cascades of foam, creating currents and whirlpools all of their own. These weren't even storm conditions, yet the wind here howled at gale-force, threatening at any moment to pluck Alan from the headland and cast him into infinity, a dust-mote in Nature's blinking eye.

Almost breathless, he finally backed away, turned and staggered towards the station. The very ground had seemed to move beneath his feet back there. It had left him lightheaded.

In comparison, the silent buildings and their aura of desertion, were strangely homely … almost comforting. Alan hung around them for a moment longer, wondering just when it was that the manned operation here had ceased, and figuring that it must have been at some point in the mid-1980s – 15 years ago, at least. A long time for a modern structure to be left disowned; though no time at all, of course, in comparison to the Viking barrow. Eventually, he started walking back. A glance at his watch showed that it was now a quarter to seven. Things might be starting to happen in the camp.