Orkney Twilight (20 page)

‘It’s my boyfriend’s car.’

Avis turned to Tom.

‘Who are you working for at the moment?’

‘I’ve just been taken on by a local paper. I’ll be starting in a couple of weeks.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Sam muttered under her breath.

Tom glared at her.

‘Come on,’ she said, tugging on Tom’s arm, ‘we should go.’

He pulled his arm free. ‘Will you be okay driving back along that track?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Don’t worry. This car can deal with anything. I’m fine now I know where I am.’

‘Maybe we’ll bump into each other again.’

‘Yes. It’s a small island.’

Sam yanked Tom away by the hem of his windcheater. He turned and waved goodbye to Avis as they rounded the corner.

‘What did you tell her about Jim for?’ she demanded when they were back on the road, out of earshot. ‘I could kill you.’

‘I only said we were here with your dad. It’s not as if I gave away any official secrets. Anyway, she wasn’t interested in Jim.’

‘She was staring at bloody Nethergate.’

‘Sam, she was interested in my writing.’

‘What writing? You aren’t doing any writing.’ And as she said it, she remembered that Tom was doing some writing: his notebook. She took a deep breath of air and narrowly avoided swallowing a midge.

‘She’d have your guts for garters,’ she said.

‘You’re just jealous.’

‘No I’m not.’ Her voice sounded shriller than she had meant it to.

‘You don’t really believe she’s a freelance writer, do you?’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘The car for a start.’

‘She said it was her boyfriend’s.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Why not? Attractive, intelligent woman. Rich boyfriend. Makes sense to me.’

She shook her head, exasperated. ‘You don’t think it’s strange to drive your Merc quarter of a mile off the road down a tractor track?’

‘Not necessarily. And anyway it wasn’t quarter of a mile. It was more like an eighth.’

‘Okay. Don’t you think it’s strange to drive your Merc an eighth of a mile down a tractor track? You really think she’s just hanging out in an off-the-road hidden spot in the middle of nowhere, doing a bit of background research for a tourist guide?’

‘No. I reckon it’s far more likely that she’s working for the KGB and she’s on a secret mission to monitor your dad and report his movements back to Moscow.’

She tried to kick him, but he dodged her foot. He prodded her in the ribs. She knocked his hand away.

‘Did you see her watch?’ she said.

‘No. What about it?’

She paused. ‘Oh nothing. It just looked very posh; a lady’s version of one of those expensive diving watches, a Tag or something like that.’

‘There we go,’ he said. ‘Gift from rich boyfriend.’

They walked on in silence, round the curve in the road, past the standing stones, across the ley-line, down the hill, back to Nethergate. The hooded crow was squatting on the roof tiles. She gave the bird a dirty look. It squawked at her.

‘Anyway. We’re evens now,’ Tom said.

‘Evens? What do you mean?’

‘Oh forget it. I can’t be bothered. It’s too much like hard work.’

Jim was in his room. Tom wanted to finish the abandoned game of Triv. She played but her mind was absent. Elsewhere, trying to make the connections. She glanced down at her watch on the inside of her wrist. Just like Jim’s.

‘Decider,’ Tom said. He rubbed his hands together. ‘Science and nature.’

‘Okay. Here goes.’ She picked up a card, read the question silently, groaned. Easy-peasy; even he would be able to answer this one.

‘What is a devil’s coach-horse?’

He searched her face for clues. He knew she knew the answer. She tried to keep her mind blank, but she couldn’t keep up the resistance.

‘Tick-tock, tick-tock,’ she said. ‘Your time is running out.’

She pictured Tom’s trainer chasing a small black object across the tarmac, tail above its head.

‘Beetle,’ said Tom.

‘Damn. I gave that one away.’

‘I’ve won,’ shouted Tom. ‘I’m on an upward curve. The trend is my friend.’

‘One victory hardly counts as a trend. Anyway, I only let you win because I thought you might sulk otherwise.’

She stood up, walked away and left Tom looking smug.

She could hear Jim moving around in his bedroom. She knocked gently on his door.

‘Go away,’ he said.

‘Are you feeling okay, Dad?’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated, wondering whether she should mention Avis: her feeble explanations, her overplayed American accent, her knack for wheedling information out of Tom. Her expensive watch. The one she wore on the inside of her wrist, like Sam. Like Jim. Like somebody who had military training. Somebody who knew how to use a gun.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes. Now piss off and leave me alone.’

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Retreated to her room.

She had a bad night, dreaming that there had been a mistake, somebody had put her name on the wrong list, and she didn’t have a place at Oxford after all. She woke feeling uncertain, unconfident, miserable. She dressed, crept out of bed and peered at Tom through the hinge-crack in the door. He was asleep, his bed bordered by a mosaic of dirty teacups, casually strewn clothing, snotty tissues and a pile of
Reader’s Digests
sequestered from the front room. He had, she reckoned, been testing himself with the it-pays-to-increase-your-word-power page. She wandered through to the kitchen, searched the back of a cupboard for a clean cup, brewed herself a cup of tea to the metronome beat of the clock. No sight nor sound of Jim. Strange, she was rarely up before him.

Tom emerged, bleary-eyed.

‘We’re running out of mugs,’ she said.

‘What do you want me to do about it?’

‘You could try taking the large collection that’s littering the floor of your room to the kitchen, washing them up and putting them back in the cupboard.’

Jim always cleared up after himself, she thought, wiped away the traces, never left a trail.

‘Sounds a bit drastic. What’s wrong with that one?’ he said pointing at her teacup.

‘Oh forget it.’

‘You’re grumpy this morning. Where’s Jim anyway?’

‘Lying in bed dying from toadstool poisoning probably. Serves him right. I reckon he’d have eaten them even if they were stamped with a skull and cross-bones. Just to prove a point.’

‘Shouldn’t you check he’s okay?’

‘I suppose so.’

She knocked on Jim’s door. There was no response. She pushed the door open cautiously; a shaft of grey light had inveigled its way through the curtain and was falling on the indistinct form of Jim rolled up in the bedclothes, his haversack next to him, wedged between his body and the far wall.

‘Morning,’ she said.

The sheets shifted.

‘Leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a cold.’

‘That’s okay then. I thought for a moment you might have food poisoning. Can I fetch you anything?’

‘No. Bugger off.’

‘Really, Dad. Let me fetch you a drink.’

There was no response from Jim. She cast her eye down, spotted an empty Jameson’s bottle lying under his bed.

‘Water perhaps?’

Silence.

‘We are going out for the day so this is your last chance if you want me to bring you something.’

No answer.

‘I’m going.’

‘Good.’

She retreated back through the doorway, pulled the door shut behind her.

Outside, a thick mist draped the courtyard, muffling all sounds, making everything indistinct and flimsy. The black cat appeared from nowhere, stared at her with amber eyes fizzling, before padding off silently, swallowed by the brume.

Tom appeared at her elbow. ‘So how is he?’

‘As well as could be expected for a man who has single-handedly polished off a plateful of poisonous toadstools and the contents of a whiskey bottle.’ She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t want any help from me anyway.’

‘Might as well go to Waulkmill Bay then,’ he said. ‘If we can find it in this fog. Do a bit of detective work.’

The Cortina’s headlights carved out a hazy cone in the dripping vapour.

‘It’s getting worse,’ said Tom. ‘I’m sure it’s following us.’

The fuzzy lights of an oncoming car appeared out of nowhere, briefly lit up the road and passed by silently, leaving them sealed in their own world again. It was hard to tell whether they were moving let alone where they were. She checked the map, trying to identify passing shapes as they loomed and disappeared, listening for the dampened bleats of sheep.

‘We should be coming up to the café now. So you need to turn right.’

He turned, pulled on to the verge when the headlights caught a gap in the hedgerow, a track running away from a gate. ‘Assuming we are where you think we are,’ he said, ‘this footpath runs round the back of the houses that Jim’s friend was heading for. We could walk along, see if we can spot her car.’

She sighed. ‘Okay.’

The path curved inwards around the edge of a field, hugging the lower contours of the hill that rose behind and disappeared in dense nothingness. She trailed after Tom, feet soaking, ankles crosshatched with thistle scratches, shoulders hunched against the cold drizzle.

‘We should be more or less directly behind the houses now,’ he said.

‘I can’t see anything.’

At least no one could see them either.

‘Let’s just climb up here and rest a moment,’ he said. ‘See if the fog lifts.’

They sat on their coats, backs against a clammy outcrop of rock, peering down. She idly picked up a feather that was resting lightly on top of a clump of grass at her feet: white with a black tip as if someone had dipped the wrong end of the quill in the bottle of ink. A lapwing perhaps. She peered through the mist, thought she spotted an amber flare above them in the distance, glowing momentarily before it vanished. Perhaps it was an animal’s eyes. Or nothing. They gazed vacantly into the void, both lost in their own thoughts.

A warm breath of wind lifted the fog to reveal a purple thistle-spiked meadow dripping with water-jewelled cobwebs. Beyond the field at the bottom of the slope the back of a dour farmhouse was visible, lording it over the crofts of the hillsides with its two-storeyed grandeur.

Tom pointed. ‘That’s the red 2CV she was driving.’

It was parked on the grass behind the house, next to a hatchback. Blue.

‘I wonder who owns the other car,’ Tom mused.

His interest was niggling her again. ‘This isn’t going to get us anywhere. It’s pointless sitting here staring at cars. Let’s go to the café and find something to eat.’

Tom folded his arms stubbornly. The air was suddenly filled with peewit cries as a black cloud of lapwings rose, swirling, flapping, and then descended, landing in a nearby field on the other side of a dry stone wall. The disturbance unnerved her.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

He pursed his lips.

‘The Oyster Catcher it is then,’ he said.

‘It always makes me laugh,’ Tom said through a mouthful of bacon butty, ‘how easy it is to spot the undercover cops on a demonstration or at a peace camp.’

She nodded.

Tom continued. ‘They just give themselves away with their brand new leather jackets and the wires of their radios poking out the bottom. And there are always four of them who turn up together in a red Ford Fiesta. Why do they bother? Everybody knows they’re cops. They might as well stick a blue flashing light on top of their heads.’

‘Jim told me once that they let all the rookies loose on what he calls the moaning minnies, so that when it comes to something really important, they’ve acquired a bit of experience.’ She cringed. She sometimes felt that the activist daughter of an undercover cop couldn’t be anything other than an informer. A tout. Whichever way you cut it. She lifted the top slice of her sarnie and squeezed a glob of tomato ketchup on to the bacon beneath.

‘If you saw Jim in a meeting or on a demonstration,’ Tom said, ‘do you think you would guess he was an undercover cop?’

She took a bite of butty, let the ketchup squelch out, chewed before answering.

‘Well, there’s definitely something of the copper in his mannerisms. The way he walks and talks. And I think the military training comes through in small but significant ways. But then I’m probably more alert to the signs than the average person. Do you think you would guess?’

He rubbed his neck. ‘I’m not sure. If I walked into a meeting – you know, your typical CND meeting at the Friends Meeting House with the whole spectrum of lefty types – I wouldn’t immediately look at Jim and think he must be a cop. But he definitely has the manner of a man who is used to getting his own way. So I might mark him down as somebody who could be difficult, someone who isn’t going to back down. A bit of a nutter possibly. And I would steer clear.’

‘You’re right. It’s the military thing, the authoritarian edge. I’d think the same thing too. Potential headcase. Steer clear.’

‘I’m not sure you would steer clear. I think you’re drawn to potential headcases.’

‘No, I’m not.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s just an observation.’

‘Well, I’ve observed you’re drawn to cod psychology.’ She crammed the last of the bacon into her gob, wiped the excess tomato ketchup from her lips with a finger, licked it. ‘Beach,’ she said.

‘Let’s just go back and check the house one more time.’

‘What for?’

‘Just to see if anybody is out and about. It’s clearer now, so we might have a better view of what’s going on.’

Her gut lurched. She knew it was a bad idea, but somehow she couldn’t resist the pull, let herself be dragged along.

The sky was duck-egg blue as they reached the rocky outcrop and surveyed the back of the house again, clearer in its solid drabness now it was bathed in afternoon light.

‘There’s nobody at home,’ said Tom. ‘Both the cars have disappeared.’

‘That doesn’t mean there’s nobody there though.’

He set off across the meadow. She ran after him. She had to stay with him, try and keep him on a short lead. He walked straight up to the back door.

‘Hello. Anyone at home?’

There was no reply.