Cape Wrath (9 page)

He strolled down the ravine at a gentle pace. The sea-wind had dropped remarkably when he'd moved back from the precipice, but down here it was almost non-existent. Overhead, the sun had gone among the clouds, but a still, sultry heat remained. Alan couldn't help thinking that had he been here for a holiday, he couldn't have asked for finer weather. As it was, it might make work on the dig difficult, assuming he could bear to do any. He took his sweater off and tied it around his waist as he walked, mopping sweat from his brow with his forearm.

And then, once again, several pebbles came down from above.

As before, Alan stopped immediately and glanced around. Also as before, the gorge behind him was deserted, but this time he looked up as well. He saw nothing there, but some extra sense was now tingling. He held his ground for a moment, listening. Silent moments passed. Then he heard it: a low, drawn-out snarl; the sound a dog might make when squaring up for a fight.

Alan felt the skin on his neck start to crawl. Perplexed and frightened, he backed away into the middle of the ravine. Just as he did, another stone came bouncing down towards him, this one larger and more jagged. Had it struck him, it might have inflicted injury. Alan didn't wait to see where it had come from. He continued on his way, hurriedly, determined not to panic, though he glanced overhead constantly. The snarling had ceased, but he imagined that whoever – or
whatever
– had made it was now stalking him, following him along the high shelf. Even as the student considered this, more dirt was dislodged from above and came trickling down. There was a further, prolonged snarl, this one more a throaty growl. It was still abreast with him. There was no doubt now; whatever it was, it
was
trailing him.

Alan began to run. Moments later, he was out of the gorge and back among the trees, but the pursuit, he fancied, continued. It sounded as if a heavy body was close behind. Underbrush thrashed, there was a muffled thumping of feet in the heaped pine-needles. The student glanced over his shoulder as he ran, but in his wild, haphazard flight, it was difficult to see anything clearly. Evergreens bounced past, filling his vision, but something
was
back there, coming at speed, following him in leaps and bounds. And now he heard the growling again, hideous and feral, rising steadily in intensity, punctuated by guttural grunts for breath.

Alan's heart was pounding as the adrenaline took over. His lungs were fit to burst, but he charged on all the same. So frantic was he now that he could hardly think straight. He wasn't even sure which direction he was headed in. He began to shout, to scream. Flailing branches tore at his face and body. He darted left and right to avoid tree-trunks, stumbling, staggering, but keeping going. Still it came after him, now howling with animal rage. It couldn't have been more than two or three yards behind. Alan felt that raw, bone-chilling peril that only an unlucky few in life ever experience …
that death is right behind you, clawing at your collar, its fatal touch terrifyingly imminent.

Alan gasped for air as he ran, felt the sweat streaming down into his eyes. His lungs exhaled and inhaled in agony. He wanted to plough on, oh how dearly he wanted to plough on, but his strength was ebbing, he was tiring, he wasn't going to make it.

And, more by luck than design, the triangular outlines of the tents hove into view ahead.

With muted sobs of relief, Alan blundered towards them. The sudden smell of wood-smoke was Heaven-sent; the sight of his colleagues moving lazily back and forth – yawning, stretching with the morn – was the finest thing he ever saw. He didn't know whether or not he was still being followed, but he plunged on at full speed.

The others turned questioningly as he finally tottered in among them and fell onto his face, gesturing wildly, stammering as he tried to explain. Even then, at that late stage, he expected something to come and leap onto him from behind, to tear and rend his flesh and clamp its inhuman jaws over the nape of his neck … so that when someone knelt down and tapped his shoulder, he threw himself over, kicking out, swearing hoarsely.

“Jesus … Alan!” Nug fell backwards.

“There was something,” Alan blathered, his face red as a lobster, his lips flecked with froth. “I'm telling you, there was something …”

He scrambled to his feet and gazed out into the encircling woods. They were still, silent, laced with morning sunlight. Tendrils of mist still hung there, but nothing moved.

“What do you mean, ‘something'?” Clive asked. He and the rest approached curiously.

Alan stared around at them. David and Linda looked surprised, Professor Mercy dubious … perhaps a little sceptical.

“It came after … it came after me,” Alan added, suddenly acutely aware how bizarre a figure he must be cutting.

“What came after you?” Again, it was Clive who asked the question.

Alan was about to try to explain when there came a sudden movement to the west of the camp. Instinctively, everyone went on their guard. Alan turned madly, gazing into the depths of the trees. Something was approaching, that much was obvious. They heard heavy footfalls, saw branches being pushed aside. There was a loud puffing and blowing; something wasn't just approaching, it was approaching at speed.

“Jesus Christ,” Alan whispered.

He began casting around for a weapon, any kind of weapon. At last he put his hands on a spare tent-pole, and swung it up, ready to brandish it like a club. He wheeled towards the approaching noises ... and, like everyone else, was then nonplussed to see Barry Wood emerge from the trees in shorts, vest and sneakers, coming at a slow, easy trot. The athlete's flesh was pink and gleaming, his blonde hair a wet, tousled mop.

“Morning all,” he said, as he finally reached the camp, slowed up, then commenced a series of stretch exercises.

“Y … you!” Alan stuttered, approaching him on unsteady feet.
“You bleeding mental case! What did you think you were playing at?”

Barry looked up, apparently baffled. “What are you on about?”

“You scared the crap out of me!”

Barry considered this, then shrugged and shouldered his way past. “Sorry pal. Can't help it if you're a chicken-shit arsehole.”

The athlete was just in the process of taking the water-bottle out of his kit, when Alan grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him about-face.

For tense seconds they eyeballed each other, nose-to-nose. Barry was reacting in his normal aggressive fashion when someone hassled him, though on this occasion he was just slightly surprised at the way his height and breadth didn't seem to be giving him the usual advantage of intimidation; there was also, of course, the not insignificant matter of the tent-pole Alan was wielding. Alan, for his part, was more than ready to fight. Taken to the edge of fear and beyond, a red mist now possessed him … but even if it hadn't done, with his Lancashire coal-town upbringing, he certainly wasn't going to back off from some Home Counties public school-boy, star rugby union player or not.

Alan muscled right up to the big guy: “You. Fucking. Wanker.”

“You'd better watch it, bud,” Barry warned.

“Or what?”

“All right, that's enough,” Professor Mercy said, coming between them. The others stepped in and helped, Nug hauling Alan backwards, Linda putting her arms around Barry and glaring at Alan. The two parties separated, though eye-contact remained locked.

The Professor turned to Barry. “What exactly have you been doing?”

He indicated his sports get-up. “Jogging. What does it look like?”

“He's a lying sack of shit!” Alan snapped.

“I said enough, Alan!” the Professor shot in. “And I mean
enough!
”

Another second passed, as she surveyed them both. “Now look,” she finally said. “Back off, the pair of you. We've had a shock, a nasty one … but Alan, you're handling it worse than anyone else here. And Barry, you're not helping one way or the other. We've got to get a grip, do you understand? That goes for all of us. We've got to pull ourselves together. We've invested a lot of time and money in this dig, we're not screwing it up by going crazy on each other.”

“He's the one who's screwing it up,” Alan retorted, jabbing at the big athlete with the tent-pole.

“Put that bloody thing down,” the Professor said coldly. “Right now.”

Grudgingly, Alan threw the item away. His eyes never left Barry's, however.

“Come over here,” said the Professor, beckoning to them both. Sheepishly, rather like chastised schoolboys, they followed her to a spot several yards outside the camp, where she turned to face them again.

“I'm going to have to go back to the mainland tomorrow with Craig,” she said quietly. “Alan, you'll probably have to come too, as the person who found the body. It may be that the police will want to question all of us. We don't know yet. But the point is this: tomorrow, as soon as
that
, I'll be in a position to turf anyone off this expedition who isn't fitting in. Do you understand?” There was a steeliness about her as she spoke, a tautness in her voice that betrayed real anger underneath. “Be under no illusions. I
know
why you two are at odds with each other. I'm sure tensions have been heightened by the accident, but I'm damned if I'm going to blow something as important as this find over a teenage-type squabble!”

She paused. They waited in guilty silence.

“That's how the situation stands,” she finally said. “Another incident like this, and you two are
both
going home.” She paused again. “Now, is there any chance at all that you might shake hands and make up?”

Barry seemed the keener of the two. He offered his hand first. Alan eventually took it, but only sullenly, with extreme reluctance.

“I still don't know what you were talking about,” the athlete said. “I've just been jogging, that's all.”

Alan didn't bother to reply. He shook hands, then turned and strode away. This wasn't so much rudeness or defiance on his part, it was determination. Determination not even to contemplate the possibility that it
hadn't
been Barry back there in the woods.

 

With the semi-fossilised warrior protected by his burial mound, normal stratigraphic procedures were unnecessary. Aside from the dust, time hadn't added its own layers of dirt or topsoil to the interior of the site, animals hadn't disturbed any of the artifacts, there was no danger of contamination of the find by the relics of other periods. Even so, in order to assist in the planned reconstruction of the site back at the lab, before any digging and picking could commence everything had to be carefully measured and photographed. This took up much of the rest of the morning.

Linda laid out the trays and brushes and bags, then prepared her fold-out stool and table, and began sterilising the various tools they'd need in a dish of chemicals. Barry wandered back and forth, writing up the notes of the dig thus far, while Alan, David and Nug put everything on film. This latter task involved shooting the exterior of the barrow with the video-camera, and squirming back inside it with a Polaroid, to take additional snaps of the remains before they were removed.

Professor Mercy, meanwhile, brooded over the engraved serpent on the portal-stone, then went back to the megalith, crouching and re-studying the runes carved there. Alan noticed that she was diverting from her normal methodology. Ordinarily, when puzzling over an inscription, she would first and foremost sketch it out in detail, so that it could be dealt with back at the lab, where source-materials and data-banks might be accessed. Not on this occasion, apparently. She had her sketch-pad and pencils in hand, but no attempt was being made to jot anything down. She seemed determined to try and translate these symbols on the spot.

“She's pretty engrossed,” Alan finally observed.

Clive, who was just about to worm his way back into the barrow, having started to make delicate trips to and fro bringing items out, turned and looked. The Professor was still so busy with her analysis, that she wasn't aware she'd become the object of scrutiny.

“This dig could potentially put her in the history books,” the tutor said. “I suppose it would be nice for her to find evidence that she's on the right track straight away.”

This made sense, Alan thought. Clive then hunkered down, clambered under the awning and began the complex and fatiguing process of working his immense body through the narrow gap that was the access-tunnel. From inside it, repeated bright flashes indicated that Nug and David were still photographing. Even these were blotted out, however, when Clive finally got in there.

Alan lowered the video-camera, and went and stood beside the Professor. A moment passed, then she glanced up at him. “Any thoughts?” he wondered.

She still seem preoccupied. “Er … not really, no.”

Alan looked again at the uneven lines of writing. They were facing due-east and, as much of the wind and rain on Craeghatir came from the north and west, only minimal erosion had occurred. The moss and lichens had probably played their own part in preserving the ancient signatures.