The Rocks Below (5 page)

     They might have looked like any bunch of ramblers or twitchers if it hadn’t been for
the shotguns that Sam and Dougal had slung over their shoulders.
 

     All was quiet. There was a damp feel to the air and the ground was sodden after a night of rain. It would make walking less pleasant but meant that any paw-prints would be easily spotted.
 

     The three men set off without talking, alternating their gazes between the ground and the woodland.
 

     The brief was simple. Find anything that might suggest a large animal on the prowl. Dung, footprints, chewed carcasses, bones, scratches on tree bark, fur, a lair or even the large animal itself, heaven forbid. Whatever they found, they were to map it, take a sample or make a cast and get it straight to Edinburgh Zoo for analysis. If they could prove that Martin was right, that’s when the really big guns would come down.
 

      “
Dougal,” Sam asked in a loud whisper. “What the hell does Panther poo look like anyway?”
 

      “
How the hell should I know?”
 

     Martin took out his smart phone with enthusiasm. “I’ll look it up, shall I?”
 

     Sam pointed down at the ground. “Whatever it looks like, I think I’ve just stepped in some.”
 

     There was a smear of dung all over Sam’s right trainer and behind him on the ground was a large pile of brown poo that had been spread along the floor like melted chocolate. From it, a strong smell of rancid meat slowly rose in the air until it reached the nostrils of the hunters.
 

      “
Pwah,” they all managed through the hands that covered their mouths and noses.
 

     Sam felt his stomach tighten and his breakfast rising in his stomach like it was keen to make a reappearance. The back of his throat retched and retched again. He bent over and put his hands on his knees just in case.
 

      “
You found the thing,” Dougal said. “I guess that means you’ll be taking the sample.”  He smiled at Martin and winked. “He who did the crime does the time…”
 

     This time Sam couldn’t hold his breakfast back. It forced his way up and out of Sam’s mouth like a Tsunami of soup and carrots. Noises came from his mouth with the vomit – ‘Bleurrrrrrrgh’ and ‘Awghhhhhh’ and ‘Jeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’.
 

     Once the spewing had finished, Sam stood and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. There were tiny orange splashes on his trainer and on the stookie the hospital had put around his ankle that complemented the browns of the poo.
 

      “
That the new Adidas logo?” Martin asked, chuckling.
 

     Sam set to wiping his shoe clean on a thick knot of grass.
 

      “
Don’t think throwing up’ll get you out of the work, neither,” Dougal told him. “Here. Take this. Fresh and uncontaminated. The doctor opened the health centre especially for us. Least he could do under the circumstances.”  He passed over a small plastic container with a white lid and a long wooden stick that looked like a coffee stirrer. “Take as much as you can get on the stick and put it in the tube and label where you got it from, that’s a good boy. Me and Martin, we’ll crack on.”
 

     There was no way around it for Sam. He set down his crutches, knelt down by the pile and gently moved the stick forward. As it penetrated the surface, Sam pulled his head away and half-closed his eyes. He lifted the stick and pulled it towards the container. “Gross, man,” he said, and scraped the sample into the jar.
 

     As he screwed on the lid, Martin shouted that he’d found something too. “Would you look at the size of that?”  He squatted and reached down to the ground. “It’s bigger than my hand.”
 

     There was a print in the mud. They could clearly make out a large pad at the back, with four round toes around it.
 

      “
I’m no expert,” Dougal said, “but I reckon you were right mate. There’s something huge out there alright.”
 

      “
Big enough to be eating our dogs?”  Martin pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave his glasses a wipe.
 

      “
Aye. Big enough for that.”
 

Sam hobbled over for a look. “You think it could be a panther?”

      “
Haven’t got a Scooby, but I’m sure we’ll be finding out soon enough.”
 

      “
How so?”
 

      “
See that poop you just scooped. Smells to high heaven. Which means it’s fresh.”
 

      “
Which means?”
 

     Dougal rubbed at his brow. Sam was a good bloke, but when it came to giving out the brains, he’d been too busy searching for the best waves to collect his. “Which means it’s not far away, no?”
 

     As if it had been counted in, there was a low growl from somewhere close.
 

     Sam froze where he was, as if cursed by some magic spell.
 

     Martin stepped back and stood behind Sam.
 

     Dougal pulled the gun from his back and leant the stock against his shoulder.
 

     The three pairs of eyes scoured the brush under the trees. There was another growl, more vicious than the one before and definitely closer to them.
 

      “
It’s coming for us,” Martin said, his voice being a full octave higher than the one he was used to.
 

      “
Don’t be daft,” Dougal said. “We’ll have it, no problem. Eh Sam?”
 

     Sam looked down as if someone had clicked their fingers to break the spell. He seemed to realise what was going on and had his gun ready within seconds, the strap tangled with a crutch and both barrels trained straight in front of him.
 

     A large, black shape appeared in between bramble bushes.
 

      “
Shoot,” Martin shouted.
 

      “
Wait!”  Dougal had seen it straight away, the red collar and the rough, matted hair. Knew it was Thumper. The Murphy’s dog. The enormous Irish Wolfhound. Dougal leaped over. Put his hand on Sam’s barrels and pushed just as the shot was fired. Managed to tilt the aim by a few degrees.
 

     A pitiful whimper filled the ears of the hunters as they looked at the dog before them, the muscle of his hind leg tattered and bloody.
 

     Thumper tried to get away from the threat, dragging his wounded limb behind him, but it was no good. Instead of escaping, he collapsed to the floor and licked his wounds.
 

      “
Oh no, man.”  Sam had realised his mistake. He fell to the ground and dropped his head between his knees.
 

     Dougal and Martin acted quickly.
 

     They were over to cushion Thumper’s head and to stop the licking.
 

     Martin had his belt off right away. Strapped it around the top of the thigh and pulled tight. “This should stop most of the bleeding. You hold on while I call for a…a what?  An ambulance?”
 

      “
Dinnae be daft,” Dougal snapped. “Give me your phone and I’ll get the vet. You hold on to this and put some pressure on the other bleeds.”
 

     Martin pulled a different pristine, white handkerchief from another pocket and applied it to the tiny holes on Thumper’s abdomen. He pressed hard to try and stem the flow as red petals stained the cloth, all the while talking to the dog as if it were a tiny child who’d lost its mother in a crowd.
 

White Heat

White Sands was the last of the East Lothian beaches to be cleared of rubbish.

     The county owed the Surfers Against Sewage a great deal for their help in tidying up the beaches so quickly. The movement had taken a break from their protests against the
fracking in the central belt to work on something closer to their heart.
 

      “
You wouldn’t believe how the businesses are getting away with it,” Hashtag told Sam. “Shame our government won’t ban it, like.”  Hashtag had a hint of a Geordie accent that didn’t really suit him.
 

     Years of outdoor living had tanned his skin and sun-bleached the dreadlocks that he wore tied back in a ponytail held together with a yellow, tie-dyed scrunchy. He wore sunglasses that were like two dark mirrors in front of his eyes. He looked more like an exotic Frenchman than a boy from the streets of Newcastle.
 

     Then again, he looked more like a hippy than a police officer. He’d been working undercover for a few years when his love of surfing and the sea made him the perfect plant into the new Surfers Against Sewage movement. Problem was, he already sympathised with the cause, it being about keeping the water clean for bathers, so it was only a matter of time before he became a full convert to their ideas.
 

     From what he’d seen, the world was upside down. Here were these gentle people trying to make a difference while the government and the police were trying to stop them. That same government and police force were also allowing hydraulic fracturing to take place along the coal seams of Scotland. It was madness Hashtag thought and he wasn’t the only one. Pumping into veins and dikes to split them and extract hydrocarbons for energy use risked so much – air pollution, contamination of the surface water that people would be drinking and general spillages that might cause lord-knew-what. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the chance of causing earth tremors and quakes.
 

     Things like this ought not to be messed with, not when there were so many renewable alternatives, but as always seemed to be the case, money and old-school ties seemed to be doing all the talking.
 

     That was why Hashtag had turned. Become one of the protestors. A double-agent no longer working for the police in his heart even though they still paid his wages and expected him to keep them in touch with the movements of the group’s leaders.
 

     He’d not only joined the protest group, he’d become one of the main organisers. His police bosses thought he was doing a great job; if only they’d realised that he’d fallen in love with a surfer girl and they were soon to have a baby together, or that the man was the force behind the group’s spreading of news via the internet, a skill that had earned him his new nickname.
 

      “
I can’t see us winning this one,” he went on, all the while his eyes pointing in the direction of the police car that was parked just behind them. “Not unless the local people listen to us and join the action. Without them, the fracking goes ahead.”
 

      “
I hear you,” Sam said as he drew stick men in the sand with his finger. “I really do.
I’ll make sure I get to the protests when all this cleaning’s been done.”
 

      “
Aye. One last effort to get these beaches into shape and we can go on with saving our water supply.”
 

     Along the beach, a gang of some fifty surfers and Dunbar volunteers were standing in a line that stretched over a mile of sand and rubbish.
 

     They walked ahead, each clearing the strip of land that was two metres to each side of them.
 

     Bags were filled with discarded fishing net, bottles, shoes, plastic toys, crates and rope, then dumped in the skips at the foot of the road where the old arcade had entertained the holiday makers in the years before cheap breaks abroad became the thing.
 

      “
It was good of you to stop the protesting for us,” Sam said. “We’d have been busy for months if the council had been left to it.”
 

     Hashtag dropped his head and looked down at the sand in case anyone watching could lip-read. They could do things like that and he knew it.
 

      “
Stop protesting? You must be joking. Tonight’s when we paint the town red, if you get my meaning.”
 

      “
You spreading the word?”
 

      “
The messages have gone out on Facebook and Twitter and around the circuit. It’ll be a big turnout, you wait and see.”
 

      “
Where and when?”
 

     This time Hashtag didn’t speak.
 

     Instead, he wrote in the sand. 8 o’clock. Bridge to Nowhere.
 

      “
And one more thing,” he said as he scribbled away the message. “You still got those paddle boards of yours?”
 

      “
How many do you need?”
 

      “
We’ll take as many as you’ve got.”
 

The Lab

Labs had always been Jenny Wilson’s favourite places since she first discovered them at High School.

     Science was a great leveller. It put the brains before the looks and that was important. It also meant that when everyone had their white coats on and their safety goggles, everyone was about as pretty as everybody else, something Dr Wilson treasured above all things.
 

     Better still, when you got to her level, there was rarely anyone about to get on your nerves or to get in the way and, if an occasional student happened by, they were usually too shy and nerdy to strike up a conversation.
 

     She stood in front of the X-ray defractometer and made sure her samples were in position. Each sample consisted of a slide where she’d put tiny amounts of crushed rock that she’d taken from the boulders on the beach in Dunbar.
 

     Crushing it up with the pestle and mortar hadn’t really given her any clues. It might have been granite, she thought, or quartz, but most definitely wasn’t the sandstone that one might have expected to find in the area.