Requiem (10 page)

He calmed himself. He hadn’t chosen a house in a remote corner of Scotland with automatic gates and high fences for nothing. Nevertheless, he felt guilt. Years ago, he’d made himself a promise never to leave her alone again. Now after all this time, he’d broken it and he couldn’t for the life of him think why.

He pushed his foot down and the Mercedes leapt forward, accelerating out of Inveraray and along the winding lochside road. Another fifty minutes to the airport if he stepped on it and went in for some adventurous overtaking. He could be back at Glen Ashard by eight.

The afternoon sunlight was spreading a golden glow over the hills, like molten honey. Away to the right, above the ruffled waters of the loch, a small black dot appeared, moving smoothly across the absolute clarity of the sky. For a moment Nick thought that Helen in the estate office might have got it wrong and ordered a helicopter to take his visitors to the airport, but then he saw that it was not a helicopter but a light plane, and turned his attention back to the road.

The plane carried straight on, heading south-west, down the loch towards Glen Ashard.

Duggan wrestled with the Ordnance Survey map. The damned thing was not designed for small cockpits, nor for much else as far as he could tell. The multitudinous folds did not lend themselves to being pulled open and refolded. Though he’d prepared the blasted thing back in the Portakabin, he now needed to take a closer look at the terrain around the target area, specifically the area to the northwest, a patch he’d not planned on overflying, and would, under normal circumstances, have avoided.

But since his backup was as usual nil, and the weather information he’d been given by Jeannie as good as useless, he was having to think again. The north-westerly he’d been promised on take-off had developed a distinct northeasterly slant, and increased from a light wind to a firm breeze. The easterly twist might possibly result from the funnelling effect of the hills, but more likely the weather information was simply hours out of date. Whatever, he would have to look carefully at the approach angle. As far as he could estimate, the wind strength was ten knots or so. Well, maybe it was a touch more, but as long as he could fly crosswind on an east–west slant without hitting a hill on the way out, then it shouldn’t be too much of a bother. Inveraray was down to starboard. The target area would be coming up shortly. With a last angry punch at an obdurate crease he finally got the map into some sort of order and started comparing the symbols with the landmarks below. The target area was immediately obvious, a large block of high-standing conifers, planted in serried ranks with occasional fire breaks.

The northern and eastern perimeters were clear-cut – the forest ended in rising moorland – but to the west and the south the conifers blended into broadleaf forest with no obvious boundary, excepting the contrast in colour. There was some broadleaf forest in the south-west corner too, but it soon gave way to pasture, paddocks and, beyond, a large castle-type house belonging to the neighbouring estate.

Duggan made a couple of passes over the timber, assessing the local wind conditions, gauging the lie of the land, checking for livestock. The obvious run was parallel to the high land, on a line south-west to north-east. The approach was long and reasonably level, and the exit even kinder, the land dropping gently away to the open pasture. Plenty of turning room. A doddle in a northwesterly.

The only problem was he didn’t bloody well have a northwesterly. And, trying a dummy run, he soon discovered that the northeasterly that he did have was powering over a wide cleft in the hills in nasty gusts, causing the Porter to crab sideways.

He considered the possibility of flying on a south-to-north line. But while it might be easier to control the aircraft that way, it would also in all probability kill him. Quite apart from an approach over sharply rising ground, which was bound to be prone to down draughts, the way out was steep and craggy.

This was not the sort of job Duggan needed at the end of a long day. Not after an inadequate recce, not with the corking headache that refused to go away, not with the dodgy spray mechanism that might or might not have been fixed. Davie had sworn it would be okay, but then he would. Mechanics always said they’d fixed things even when they’d patched them up with sticky tape.

For the umpteenth time he cursed Keen who, after creating the maximum disruption and aggravation, had pissed off back to Glasgow in his vulgar little motor, throwing a last Hitlerite command over his shoulder to the effect that everyone had better pull harder or else they’d all be in trouble.

If anything, the wind seemed to be freshening. No point in hanging about then.

He took a swig of lemonade, pushed a toffee into his mouth and banked steeply to port to line up for a dummy run.

Rona snorted in sudden agitation. Alusha paused in her work to shush her. ‘What’s the matter with you? Go away.’

The mare stamped her feet, her shoes ringing on the hard standing in front of the stable.

‘Away,’ Alusha Mackenzie repeated. ‘You’re being a nuisance.’ She waved her paintbrush at Rona and shooed her into the paddock. ‘Off with you.’

The pony trotted off and stopped a short distance away, tossing her head. Turning back to the stable door, Alusha dipped her brush in the preservative and slapped some more onto the bare wooden door. The thin green mixture had an evil smell and instinctively she pulled back to avoid inhaling it.

Somewhere an engine buzzed lazily in the sky, like an insect in the sun. Rona snorted again.

Alusha laughed at her. ‘What do you want this time, eh?’ She finished the door and, fetching a large metal bucket, upended it and positioned it in the doorway. Balancing on it, she could just reach the lintel.

When it came to it, there was no decision really. It had to be the south-west–north-east line; Duggan wasn’t about to kill himself to earn a mention in anyone’s rule book. Besides, he should be able to adjust his course to allow for drift. It couldn’t be that difficult.

He found his height, lined up on an imaginary line a width inside the southern perimeter of the plantation, and, holding a steady course, hovered his thumb over the spray switch.

The conifers sped towards and under him. He switched on. There was an answering billow of vapour from under the wings. That was something anyway; he supposed he should be grateful. Eyes front again, he was surprised to see broadleaf trees moving in under his port wing. The gust must be stronger than he’d thought. He compensated, touching the rudder once and again, only to find that either he’d overdone it or else the crosswind had dropped suddenly, because he was too far into the conifers now. Cursing, he eased the Porter back on line, only for the same thing to happen again. He was weaving about like a bloody amateur.

Not a moment too soon, the end of the plantation loomed up and vanished beneath. He switched off the spray and swivelled his head back.

No change: the spray continued to course lavishly from the atomizers. He felt a vicious choking anger. Swearing loud and long, he flicked the switch rapidly back and forth, kicking the heel of his hand against it, then leant down and rapidly rotated the control valve beside his feet until, quite suddenly, the indicator light went off and, an instant later, the trail of vapour finally thinned and died.

He looked up.
Christ!
He was almost over the parkland; the big house was not far ahead to port. Instinctively he took the Porter into a tight turn to starboard, rapidly gaining height to clear the rising ground beneath.

He twisted in his seat to press his face against the Perspex and look back towards the park. Nothing. Thank God. No sheep. No small figure, face upturned, like that child the other week.

The relief left him exhausted. He knew exactly what he was going to do now: give up and return to base. And he knew precisely what he was going to do once he got there: telephone Keen. Rehearsing the exact combination of expletives kept him occupied all the way home.

The buzzing hung languorously in the air, faded, then got louder again. Rona, unseen by her mistress, sidled silently back towards the stable and, blowing loudly in Alusha’s ear, gave her a terrible fright.

‘That’s it!’ Alusha exclaimed, stepping off the bucket. She made a grab for Rona’s bridle, but the mare was too quick for her and danced away.

Alusha held out some sugar. ‘Come on, you greedy pig.’

The pony, despite her uncharacteristic nervousness, couldn’t resist the sugar and within a minute Alusha had caught her and hitched her to the ring on the stable wall. ‘And here you stay until I’ve finished.’

The soft drone grew louder again. Alusha shaded her eyes and looked up but, seeing nothing, returned to her brush and her pot and dabbed some more green fluid on the door frame.

For some reason the smell of the stuff suddenly clutched at her throat. It was incredibly strong, like ammonia or worse. She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose and tried not to breathe, but the stuff seeped into her nose and throat. She staggered off the bucket and retreated onto the apron. She coughed, and the act of coughing made her pull a deep draught of air into her lungs. Air that wasn’t air; air that was sharp and burning. Inexplicably, the fumes seemed to have followed her across the apron. By the time she had raised her collar over her mouth, it was too late. The acrid vapour was eating at her lungs, her eyes were streaming, her head was weaving violently.

She tried to find her way back to the stable. She was dimly aware of noise, of a clattering of hooves and sounds of alarm from Rona. But the collision, when it came, caught her by surprise. One moment she was groping her way back towards the stable, the next moment the bulk of Rona’s hindquarters was barrelling into her, a solid weight that cannoned into her shoulder and toppled her over.

Her head didn’t hit the concrete terribly hard – in fact, the impact was more like a hard knock than a solid thud – but it was enough to send her sliding into a grey land somewhere between panic and nightmare, a land in which her eyes saw nothing, in which every breath drew her deeper into some terrible darkness.

F
IFTEEN COLUMN-INCHES
. Daisy pasted up the fourth and final cutting, already worn and ageing from the cutting agency’s tardy service, and held the finished montage at arm’s length. Not bad if one overlooked the origin of the stories – the
Newbury Chronicle
, the
Reading News
and such like – and imagined that the items had appeared in the national dailies. Alice Knowles’ demonstration hadn’t merited the attention of the nation, not in print, not on radio or TV. Nor had it, apparently, justified the undivided concentration of the journalists who’d covered it. One described Aldeb as a fumigant instead of a fungicide, while another talked vaguely about the dangers of processing potatoes as if the Knowleses ran a chip factory instead of a farm. All in all, the coverage was no better or worse than she’d expected.

The street door banged as someone arrived and Daisy heard the unmistakable sound of Alan clearing his throat, something he did so regularly first thing in the morning that she suspected him of being a secret smoker. Not that she dared say so; Alan wasn’t too good with jokes.

She heard him enter the cubicle next door and shuffle around, the rubber soles of his shoes squelching softly on the lino-tiled floor. Catch didn’t run to carpets or other such luxuries. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have run to an office near King’s Cross either, but the place had been let to them by a sympathetic developer at a peppercorn rent. Situated in the rambling basement of an Edwardian house due for demolition in a couple of years’ time, with high barred windows and woefully little daylight, it was not the ideal workplace, and certainly not in winter when, for lack of central heating, they had to suffer the fumes of mobile gas heaters, an expedient which did little for their corporate image let alone their lungs.

Alan appeared round the door and, sorting through the mail, dropped a batch onto Daisy’s desk. ‘Can we have a talk some time?’ he said.

‘Now, if you like.’

He hesitated as if he’d rather have put the moment off, then sank into the chair beside her desk. Alan, dark and slightly built with the stoic tenacity of the seasoned campaigner, had come to Catch by way of Greenpeace, the anti-fur campaign Lynx and, for a brief time ten years before, his own environmentally friendly cleaning products company which had folded after six months, a victim of being ahead of its time.

Picking up a bulldog grip, he started operating the jaws. ‘The Knowles case. What exactly
are
we recommending to the Committee?’

Daisy was on her guard. The two of them had discussed this only the previous afternoon. Alan was well aware of her views on the subject, so this could only be the opening gambit in an attempt to shift her.

‘We’re going to recommend full backing for the Knowleses, in their legal action and whatever else is needed,’ she reminded him.

Alan closed the bulldog grip on his finger, screwed up his mouth in mild pain. Withdrawing the finger, he examined it carefully. ‘I think it would be a mistake.’