booksnew/build/bane/OEBPS/ch12.xhtml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
    <title>1</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href="page-template.xpgt"/>
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>12</h1>

<p>The new road that would soon by-pass Arden was taking shape. Along much of the fifteen-mile length, rocks had been blasted and hardcore laid. It would become a two-lane dual carriageway to be used by the Ministry of Defence as their main transport route to the Trident base on the Kilcreggan peninsula.</p>

<p>On that sunny day, men were preparing to finish work on phase four, a two-mile stretch that skirted Cardross Hill to complete the sections between Levenford and Kirkland.</p>

<p>It had been a long and hard day for Bert Milne, a big, grizzled digger driver who had been at the controls of his yellow monster since lunch-time when he'd sat with his mates round a brazier that they'd made out of a fifty-gallon drum, punctured with a pickaxe and loaded with wood chips and any debris left from the land clearance. They had made thick tea in their smoke-blackened cans that hung over the flames, bubbling and frothing over in the red heat.</p>

<p>Bert Milne had sat down on a plank that was raised up on a couple of concrete kerb-stones and he had taken off his cap and mopped the sweat of his brow.</p>

<p>He had waited for his tea to infuse then he'd wolfed his big box of sandwiches with a fervour known only to those who work in the open air. Cheese and pickle, corned beef and pickle, and a great treat - tuna and pickle. The sub contractors, earning huge wealth from the defence work, were paying handsomely. Bert's wife could afford tuna.</p>

<p>He sat with his mates, big and bulky in his chequered shirt, savouring the tea and the sandwiches, the sun and the heat from the fire. He belched loudly and satisfyingly and swapped jokes. He had another cup, lifting his can off the coals with a deftness born of experience and thickly calloused working-man's hands which defied the scorching. He enjoyed the tea, and two unfiltered cigarettes, and when he'd finished he and his workmates went back to the job. Some to lay pipes for drainage, some to manhandle the heavy kerbs into position, and Bert to his JCB backhoe.</p>

<p>He sauntered along the dusty road to the end of the built-up section, then out on to the hardened mud where all morning he had been clearing debris from the base of a blasted rock face.</p>

<p>The engine roared into life seconds after he had heaved himself into the dusty and oily cabin and the shovel clanged down into position for the first thrust.</p>

<p>Bert liked his work, he could handle this big machine. It suited him. He was conscientious and drove the digger forward and backwards, pirouetting like a forty-ton ballet-dancer, moving mounds of rock.</p>

<p>His hands juggled with the controls as the sunlight streamed through the plexiglass window that was smeared with dust.</p>

<p>Bert worked and sweated all afternoon, feeling the throbbing of the great diesel engine underneath him. A slight case of haemorrhoids would start to give him gyp, no doubt, later on, a condition caused by sitting in his sweaty box all day long, but one which he bore with relatively cheerful stoicism.</p>

<p>Late in the afternoon, Bert's stomach started playing up. The muscles spasmed tightly, causing him to suddenly wince.</p>

<p>'Bloody pickles,' he muttered to himself in between trying to belch to ease the gripping pain. This action did not prevent him manoeuvring his big machine and lowering the jaw down for another foray into the mound of rubble.</p>

<p>The pain did not go away, and Bert began to feel nauseous. He started to sweat, not in the way he had been perspiring all afternoon, but coldly, all over his face and at the back of his neck and on his chest.</p>

<p>Then suddenly there was what felt like an enormous wrench deep inside his rib cage, a huge pain that caused him to lurch forward over the controls. Bert was dead before his face hit against the screen as the rupture in the big artery leading from the top of his heart spilled everything into his chest cavity.</p>

<p>The JCB had a life of its own.</p>

<p>Unguided, with Bert's body sprawled over the levers, the machine lurched forward, its jaw raised high. Instead of digging into the base of the mound, the flat plates of the caterpillar tracks carried its immense weight right up the side of the slope without faltering. Then as it neared the top, it began to slew sideways.</p>

<p>It seemed to pause on the crest, then with a screech of metal on stone it turned and started to tumble. The jaw slammed against the crumbling face and a welter of rock broke away, big jagged stones that battered against the cab. The machine just rolled over in a slow motion action and hit the near edge of the face, bringing down an avalanche. Then it and the rocks that had dislodged crashed down into the little stream below.</p>

<p>When the dust cleared, the men who had started running even before the digger had started to topple, were sliding down the scree of the new slope, in the rubble that half covered the JCB lying on its side where the stream had flowed. By the time they had prised off the loose rocks and hauled Bert Milne's body out of the wreckage, the water was brown with silt and had started backing up in a deepening pool.</p>

<p>The yard-wide steel and concrete pipe that had carried the water from further up the gully cut into the hillside was plugged tight with stones and shattered rock, mixed with mud and clay.</p>

<p>By evening, after the ambulance had come and gone, the backed-up water spilled over the low edge of the gully and found a new way out into a drainage ditch that had been cut and cleared along the length of the roadway to carry off the spill water from the hill. The ditch travelled more than half a mile, taking the extra load easily until it reached the Kilmalid Burn, the largest of the four streams that passed within the boundaries of Arden.</p>

<p>The silted water soon cleared and the Kilmalid took the water of both streams now instead of one, down its steeply etched valley past the grey concrete council houses and under the bridge on the Kilcreggan Road. It meandered more slowly now alongside the pigeon huts and shacks of the shore side of the Milligs, and out into the flat expanse of the mudflats, midway between the long rifle barrel of the sewage pipe and Ardmhor Rock. Then it drained into the firth and was dissipated in the salt water.</p>

<p>Below the backed-up pool, downstream from where the plugged pipe, the clear waters of Strowan's Well ran more slowly, became a trickle that quickly drained away, leaving a punctuation of shallow pools that trapped some small trout. Through the good farmland the waters diminished and died away, and the silver fork of the stream that cut across the Ardhmor peninsula east and west became a patchy ditch of still water that began to evaporate as soon as the sun rose in the morning.</p>

<p>By nightfall on the following day the bed of the stream was just muddy and moist. Two days later it was dry.</p>

<p>Kitty MacBeth would have been the first to notice the disappearance of the water of Strowan's Well from her vigil watchpost on the point. But on the night that Bert Milne died in the cabin of his digger, the old woman took ill with what she thought was a summer cold, and took to her bed. Two days later, racked with a cough that seared her throat, and running a fever, she could hardly move.</p>

<p>That's how I found her in her neat little shack, shivering and coughing under the pile of blankets. There was no fire under the kettle and no air in the cramped space.</p>

<p>I knocked several times on the hardwood door that had in a former life graced a more imposing homestead, but there was no reply at all. I assumed the old woman had gone beachcombing and was about to leave when I heard a weak, rasping cough. I stood on some of the logs that she had collected for firewood and had to rub the dust off the glass to peer inside.</p>

<p>It took a few moments for my eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom, and at first I saw nothing, then I noticed the shape under the pile of blankets. I knocked on the window with a knuckle, but there was no further response, not even a cough.</p>

<p>The big door looked as if it was going to take a lot of shouldering to get it open, but it didn't. I turned the handle and it opened with hardly a creak. It wasn't locked.</p>

<p>Inside, the air was foul, reeking of damp and sweat and more besides. I crossed over to where Kitty's pallet was tucked in against the wall and pulled a blanket back from her face.</p>

<p>Ghastly is the only way to tell you how she looked. In the couple of days since I'd seen her she had lost a deal of weight, and her eyes were sunken into sockets that seemed much too large to hold them. They had lost their sparkle, and only stared in a dull, confused way. Her hair was lank, and her neck was like a chicken, scrawny and scraggy. A pulse beat in one of the blue veins that stood out against the pallor of her skin.</p>

<p>I took hold of her right hand that was up close to her neck and she tried to grip mine, but there was no strength at all in the grasp. The movement ended almost as soon as it began. I could feel the heat from her body coming off her like a radiator.</p>

<p>
    'Kitty,' I said, bending low to speak.</p>

<p>Her eyes swivelled in their sockets, coming to rest, slowly, on mine. For a moment there was nothing, then a brief, tired moment of recognition before they glazed over again. She coughed, and the sound seemed to be coming from way down deep inside.</p>

<p>
    'Sick,' she murmured. 'Got sick.'</p>

<p>'Yes, I know you're sick. I've got to get a doctor,' I said quickly.</p>

<p>'Doctor. Yes. Please.' The words were just a dry whisper, but again I felt the pressure of her hand tighten on mine. I pulled away gently and tucked the blankets around her as tightly as possible. In the few moments it took, the old woman had drifted off to sleep.</p>

<p>The mile from Kitty's shack to my house was possibly the quickest I've run since I was a kid. By the time I got there I was panting like a dog, and I had to lean against the lintel to get my breath back before I could get my key into the lock. I barged in and ran through to the study where the phone was, and picked up the receiver to dial.</p>

<p>I just got straight on to emergency services and asked them to send an ambulance, then I ran all the way back down to Kitty's place, albeit at a much slower pace, promising myself that I must do something to get myself as fit as I should be.</p>

<p>The ambulance managed to get within a quarter of a mile of the shack, and quite quickly too, before the two men had to get out and foot the rest, carrying their stretcher between them. I had told the operator that an old woman was dying and needed a stretcher. For all I knew she was, but I didn't want to take any chances. Once inside the shack, the men were briskly efficient, checking pulse and heart rate almost at the same time as they lifted Kitty out of the bed and on to the stretcher.</p>

<p>
    'Dehydrated,' the older of the two said. 'She's pretty weak.'</p>

<p>'Any idea how long she's been like this?' asked the other. I shook my head.</p>

<p>
    'We'll get her on a drip as soon as we get to the van. Do you want to ride with us?'</p>

<p>'Yes, of course. Thanks.'</p>

<p>I helped spell the older man along the track and through the beechwood to where the ambulance was parked. Kitty didn't stir.</p>

<p>As soon as we got there and put Kitty inside, one of the men ran round and started up immediately, while his partner hauled over some sort of intravenous array and affixed it to Kitty's arm. It looked yellow and thin, and the veins were sticking out clearly from the surface. I suppose that it made the job of getting the needle inserted a lot easier.</p>

<p>'What is that stuff?' I asked.</p>

<p>'Just a saline solution with some vitamins. I can't give her anything else until she's been examined, but saline will thin her blood. Make it flow easier.'</p>

<p>The journey to the little cottage hospital on the west of Westbay took ten minutes at the most, and within fifteen minutes Kitty was getting checked out by the youngish doctor. His work took less than half an hour, and when he came out he called me across from where I was sitting in the little waiting room. Through in his tiny office, he told me that Kitty had a temperature of a hundred and four, was thoroughly dehydrated as the paramedics had suspected, and had swollen lymph-nodes in various locations on her body.</p>

<p>'Too early to say at the moment, but possibly some sort of virus,' he said. 'We'll have to keep her here of course.'</p>

<p>I nodded.</p>

<p>
    'I'll need some personal details,' he said. </p>

<p>'I don't know how much I can help you there.'</p>

<p>'Oh? I thought she was your .... '</p>

<p>'Friend. No relation. I can tell you how old she is, and where she lives, and her name. Not much more than that.'</p>

<p>'Well, it'll do for a start. Do you know if she has any relatives in the area?'</p>

<p>'No, she has none that I know of. But if there's anything that's needed, I'll be available. You can put me down as next of kin for practical purposes.' '</p>

<p>'I thought you said there was no relation,' he said, looking bemusedly over the top of his bi-focals.</p>

<p>'Well there isn't really, but I suppose I'm all she's got.'</p>

<p>That seemed to satisfy the bureaucrat in him and he filled in a little form as I supplied him with what little information I had. Later he let me in to see the old woman. She was cleaner than before, but just as pallid against the white linen of the hospital sheets. I could see the orbs of her eyes move under the delicate thin eyelids. I sat myself down by the bed and was just looking at her when the eyes slowly opened.</p>

<p>She raised a hand that was pinned with the intravenous drip, so I leaned forward and held it still, hushing for her to relax in the way they do on television. She eased her head round slowly to face me.</p>

<p>'Wooden box. Under bed,' she whispered hoarsely. 'Take it. Use it.'</p>

<p>'Later. Talk later. Just rest now.'</p>

<p>'No. <em>Now</em>. Take it.
    <em>Use it</em>!' she said, with as much vehemence as she could muster. I could see that even that effort drained her.
</p>

<p>'All right, Kitty. I will,' I assured her. Her eyes started to close, then they snapped open, gleaming brightly for an instant, beaming the full blue straight into mine.</p>

<p>'The walls,' she hissed. 'You take care of the walls!'</p>

<p>For the third time that day, I went down to the point. This time I walked, feeling depressed and oppressed. I knew inside myself that the old woman was seriously ill, and for some reason I found a weight of responsibility on my shoulders, although I was unsure what I should feel responsible for.</p>

<p>I wandered, hands deep in the pockets of my bomber-jacket, in the shade of the beech trees, along the path that skirted the shore. I stopped for a few minutes beside the big standing stone where the old woman had shown me the inscription on the standing stone. The small part she had scraped away with the dogfish skin was still lighter than the rest, but already the lichen was returning in a thin sheen of green. The script was invisible again. Had it been real?</p>

<p>Had it?</p>

<p>Kitty's shack door was open. I must have forgotten to close it in my haste to get her to the ambulance. Inside, the little packed room was well aired. The stench of sweat and illness had blown out of the door and had been replaced with a fresher air brought in on the light sea breeze.</p>

<p>To tell you the truth, I felt a bit ghoulish, but I had made a promise. I tend to keep them. Kitty had told me to find her box. It was under the bed where she'd said it would be.</p>

<p>It was small and very old, made of a polished hardwood that had been etched in a Celtic pattern all over its surface. There was a hole for a key, but the box was not locked. I lifted the lid a fraction, then lowered it again. I didn't feel like poring through the old woman's possessions inside her home.</p>

<p>I decided to take it back to my place although, in fact, I would have preferred to leave it where it was until the old woman came out of hospital.</p>

<p>There was a big key hanging on the back of the door, which fitted the mortise lock. I turned it twice, hearing the clicks that would secure Kitty's home from any but the determined, and I gathered there would not be many of those in Arden. I hefted the solid little box under my arm, and was about to head back along the track to the stone and up to Westbay again when I heard a shout in the distance. Someone was calling my name.</p>

<p>'Hold on, Nick,' the voice came from the shore, carrying clearly from halfway along the curve, close to where the sand gave way to the marshes.</p>

<p>I raised a hand over my eyes to ward off the glare, and saw the figure striding towards me. I didn't recognise him and I remember thinking he must have bloody good eyesight if he could make me out at that distance. I watched as the man walked steadily across the sand, his feet kicking up little plumes of the line grains. At about half the distance, I recognised the major, Donald MacDonald, the old soldier, and Gaelic singer, who was a friend of Jimmy Allison.</p>

<p>He waved when he was closer, and there was a smile on his broad face.</p>

<p>'Housebreaking or socialising'?' he asked.</p>

<p>'A bit of both ,' I said. 'The old woman took ill today. I got her up to the hospital.'</p>

<p>'Och, that's sad. She's a fine old one, that,' Donald said, 'despite what they say about her.'</p>

<p>'She asked me to come down and collect something for her.'</p>

<p>Donald nodded, accepting my explanation. He was wearing a peaked hunter's hat that was camouflaged just like his sleeveless jacket. Around his neck hung a pair of Zeiss binoculars that looked powerful and heavy.</p>

<p>'I often drop in to see the old lady when I'm here,' he said. 'Makes me a nice cup of tea and doesn't complain when I put a wee dram in it neither.'</p>

<p>He hefted the binoculars. They explained how he'd been able to recognise me from the far side of the bay.</p>

<p>'The birds, you know,' he said by way of explanation.</p>

<p>'Oh, I didn't know you were an ornithologist,'</p>

<p>'More just an observer. It's been a passion with me since I was a boy on the islands. And here is a wonderful place for the birds.'</p>

<p>He nodded back in the direction from which he'd come. 'Do you know we have an avocet there?' Noting my expression, he went on: 'No, you wouldn't. And nobody else does, either, except for the old lady. She knows them all.'</p>

<p>The major reached into one of the dozen or so pockets that patched his jacket and pulled out a little silver flask. He offered me a taste and didn't mind when I declined. He sat himself down on a flat stone a few yards from the shack, where the grass of the point gave way to the stone dip that led down to the water's edge, and took a little swallow, smacking his lips with relish.</p>

<p>He gazed over the water of the bay out into the firth. The hulk of the Cassandra was a black curve in the silver blue, a reminder of the big storm. Between the shipwreck and Ardmhor, the water was calm, with hardly a ripple from the light sea breeze. Much further out there were two black buoys that marked the north sides of the shipping lanes for the boats heading for Glasgow.</p>

<p>Nearer in, about a mile offshore, a small dinghy was moored at anchor. I could just make out the yellow jacket of the angler, sitting hunched in the thwarts, and if I strained hard I could see the rod he held over the side.</p>

<p>
    'That's the life,' Donald said. 'That and sailing and the wildlife. Give me them and a dram and some good singing company, and I'll never need anything else.'</p>

<p>I nodded in agreement. There were a few other things in life that I would have thrown in for good measure, like books and women and cold beer, but Donald was on the right track anyway.</p>

<p>'Oh, by the way,' he said, 'I'm planning to sail up to the islands in a couple of weeks. Do you still want to come with me?'</p>

<p>'Yes, I'd love to. I could use the break. When are you planning to go?'</p>

<p>'Soon. Soon. They're just putting a new skin of paint on the old boat, so I'm planning to be away by the end of the month. Mind you, you'll have to work for your holiday. I need some young muscle.'</p>

<p>'Well, if you don't mind showing me the ropes. It's been a long time since I did any serious sailing.'</p>

<p>'Och, I'm only joking.' he said. In his accent, it came out like 'choking'. 'I don't believe in all that heave-ho stuff. I've got a diesel engine in that beauty that would drive a bus to the islands. No, you come along for the company. Just as long as you can put up with my singing.'</p>

<p>'I think I'd rather be keel-hauled,' I told him, and he laughed so hard he almost choked on his whisky. When his laughter subsided, and he wiped his eyes, Donald was about to say something else when out in the bay a movement caught his eye, and he raised an arm to point it out to me.</p>

<p>'Look, over there,' he said. 'The gannets. Just off the rock.'</p>

<p>Again I had to strain against the glare, looking out to where his finger was pointing. At first I saw nothing, then a flash of white silver twinkled out over the water. A small flock of gannets were wheeling in the air over what must have been a shoal of sprats.</p>

<p>They spun and turned, then, with their wings folded, they dropped like arrows, plunging into the blue water, sending up tiny explosions of gleaming silver.</p>

<p>'Ah, the lovely birds,' Donald said. He had his binoculars up to his eyes and was staring intently across the water, gently turning the focusing ring with his linger.</p>

<p>'Oh, look at that,' he muttered. 'Beautiful.'</p>

<p>To me they were just white dots in the distance. He was getting a close-up view. He stared for a few minutes, then realised the scene was practically lost on me because of the distance.</p>

<p>'Here, you have a look,' he said, handing the glasses over.</p>

<p>I put them up to my eyes, and the white dots swam into focus as big white birds. The binoculars were truly powerful. At that distance I could make out the yellow spears of their beaks and the black lines across their eyes as they wheeled in the air, catching the sun on their snow-white feathers.</p>

<p>With the glasses, I could easily follow the trajectory as one bird wheeled then dived to spear the water like a missile, leaving nothing but a spray of spume. Perfectly designed bodies and beaks hunting through the shoal, the gannets were a beautiful sight.</p>

<p>'He won't be a happy man,' Donald said.</p>

<p>
    'Who?' I asked, still taking in the wheeling, plunging scene.</p>

<p>'The fisherman,' he said. 'He's in amongst them. They'll be scaring his catch away. He'll be cursing the birds.'</p>

<p>I handed Donald back the glasses and he swung them up to his eyes. Looking out, I could make out the flock - how small they were in the distance without the Zeiss's powerful magnification - now hunting close to the boat. '</p>

<p>'Ha, I was right. He's trying to wave them away,' Donald snorted. From out across the bay I could hear a faint noise. The angler was shouting at the birds that were wrecking his day. I saw some splashes close to the boat and turned to Donald, hoping for another shot of the glasses. The man's face could probably be picked out by the lenses.</p>

<p>But even as I turned, the expression on Donald's face suddenly changed. His jaw dropped open and he let out a grunt of surprise.</p>

<p>'Good God would you. . . ?' His voice trailed away. 'Dear God ... it can't be .... '</p>

<p>
    'What's wrong?' I asked.</p>

<p>'The birds. The birds. They're . . . they're .... '</p>

<p>
    'They're what?' I asked. I hadn't a clue.</p>

<p>'Look. Oh dear God. I don't believe it.'</p>

<p>I snatched the glasses out of his hands. In the split second before I raised them to my own eyes, I caught a glimpse of Donald. His face was white. His mouth hung open in a slack circle and his eyes were wide.</p>

<p>Again the white birds zoomed into view against the blue of the sky. I followed them down again and what I saw made my heart lurch so hard I almost dropped the glasses. Out there, nearly a mile from where we sat, the birds were spearing down out of the sky, but their target was not the shoal of sprats.</p>

<p>Their wings folded against their sides, they were lancing down with those great stabbing beaks and spearing into the fisherman in the boat.</p>

<p>As I watched, one bird plunged, its neck outstretched, and hit the man on the shoulder with a thump that I could feel across the distance. The beak drove straight through the coat and into the flesh and a gout of blood spattered both coat and the bird's feathers. The wings beat for a second, and stopped, beak still stabbed inside the man's body. Through the glasses I could see him waving his hand frantically as more gannets lanced down.</p>

<p>One of them hit the boat with a thump that I did hear, rolling in across the distance. Another shot down and hit the man's stomach, and a scream, faint in the distance, but loud as all hell in my ears, came rending across on the wake of the other sound.</p>

<p>My eyes were jammed up against the glasses, mesmerised with the horror that was going on out there on the bay. Beside me I was dimly aware of Donald muttering curses and prayers, all in a jumble.</p>

<p>A white bird shot across my field of vision, driving its beak into the bottom of the little wooden boat that was now rocking violently on the still water. The muffled thump of the impact came again. The man in the boat was jerking about, all red and yellow. I couldn't make out his face, which was turned away from me, but I could see his jaw working, stretching his mouth wide in what must have been a scream. Just then his head turned towards me, splattered with blood, and as it did there was a flurry of white as another gannet plunged down. Its spear of a beak plunged straight across my line of sight, driving with phenomenal accuracy into the circular target that was the man's open mouth.</p>

<p>The angler's head snapped back.</p>

<p>I dropped the glasses from my eyes, the spell broken. Something inside my stomach gave way and my lunch promptly expelled itself, on to the rock where I sat.</p>

<p>'Oh, fuck,' I said, helplessly.</p>

<p>Donald was staring out across the bay. His eyes were still wide and he was shaking his head slowly, as if to deny the reality of what he had just seen.</p>

<p>Bile burned in my throat.</p>

<p>'They can't do that,' Donald said in a voice that was just a moan. 'Gannets don't do that.'</p>

<p>I couldn't think of anything to say. There were just no words, just pictures in my head, instant action replays of what we had just seen. My stomach lurched and heaved again, but there was nothing left.</p>

<p>Out in the bay, the action had stopped. Donald reached over and slowly took the glasses from my hands, prising them slowly out of my numb fingers, and raised them again, almost fearfully, to his eyes.</p>

<p>
    'It's stopped,' he said. 'They're all dead. And so is he. It's all wrong. Just <em>wrong</em>.'</p>

<p>He stared through the glasses for a long time, then he said: 'It's sinking. The boat. It's going down.'</p>

<p>He handed me the glasses again. I didn't want to look, but I couldn't stop myself.</p>

<p>The scene swam into focus. Only minutes before it had been a picture of nature's beauty. The wheeling and diving of the beautiful white birds, so fitted for their way of life.</p>

<p>Now there was a little boat, listing to one side, and in it was a red and white and yellow mess, tattered feathers and tattered clothing, the bodies of the birds and man bent and broken and torn.</p>

<p>As I watched, the boat sank further in the water, tilting slowly until one gunwale was beneath the surface. Then it seemed to heave and in seconds it had disappeared, leaving a faint streak of pink in the water.</p>

<p>Them the surface became calm again.</p>

<p>There was nothing there, except for a few white and red feathers floating on the surface, and soon scattered by the gentle breeze.</p>

<p>'Here. Take the glasses. There's nothing left,' I said, handing them back to Donald. He was still shaking his head numbly.</p>

<p>'How could that have happened?'</p>

<p>'I don't know,' I said. I was lying. There was no coincidence in this at all. Right at that moment I almost got a full-focus glimpse of the big picture. Almost, but not quite.</p>

<p>
    'We'd better go and tell them about this,' Donald said.</p>

<p>'I don't think they'll believe us,' I told him. 'But we have to, anyway. We have to.' Donald's face was chalk white. That terrible scene had robbed him of his appreciation of the wonders of nature. It had stolen his picture of the rightness of things, the beauty of the natural world.</p>

<p>It was only adding to my picture of one that was not natural at all.</p>

<p>Murdo Morrison, the sergeant up at the little police station, took our statements, slowly writing down everything we said in his neat, painstaking way, occasionally looking up, and glancing from Donald to me and back down at his sheet.</p>

<p>'And you say the birds attacked him?' he asked.</p>

<p>
    'That's right,' Donald said. The shock had begun to wear off a bit. 'Gannets.'</p>

<p>'Gannets actually flew down and, er, hit him? Stabbed him with their beaks?'</p>

<p>
    'That's what happened.'</p>

<p>'But seabirds don't do that.'</p>

<p>'Well, they do now,' Donald said, almost angrily. 'I've been watching the birds for forty years and they never did that before, not until today. But it happened.' Donald's voice had risen steadily during that statement.</p>

<p>'All right, don't get yourself all worked up. I didn't say I don't believe you,' Murdo said. He hadn't said it, but he certainly didn't believe it.</p>

<p>I noticed when he was questioning me that he leaned in very close, as if to pick out every word. It was only later I realised he was trying to smell my breath. He probably caught a sniff of Donald's whisky, but there was nothing on me, and I knew, and it should have been apparent, despite the tale both of us were trying to tell him, that Donald was as sober than he'd ever been in his life.</p>

<p>Murdo took our statement, then said he'd be in touch. Donald asked him what he was going to do, and the policeman said he'd send out the inshore lifeboat to have a look round. He was as good as his word. Dave King took the boat out and quartered the calm bay for hours, and came up with nothing, not a sign. Murdo had quite wisely told him only that a boat had been in difficulties. He hadn't mentioned anything about gannets. Donald and I told the lifeboat cox exactly where the fishing boat had sunk, and the orange inflatable crisscrossed the area in ever widening circles until it had checked out the whole of the bay.</p>

<p>But they found nothing.</p>

<p>Murdo called us back to the station that night and asked us to go through it with him again. We did. He asked us straight if we had been drinking, or smoking anything unusual. No, we told him, we hadn't. He looked as bewildered as a big, canny village policeman could manage. What we had told him took a lot of believing.</p>

<p>The next morning we were back in his office at his request. He wanted us to describe the boat, which we did in a limited fashion. You don't remember paint colours when a flock of birds are breaking all the laws of nature and spearing a man to death. We could tell him roughly what the boat was like, and what the man seemed to be wearing.</p>

<p>He wrote all this down again on the forms, nodding to himself as he did so.</p>

<p>When he had finished, he looked up and said: 'It's a strange tale to be coming to me with.'</p>

<p>'I know that Murdo. A terrible tale. But it's the truth,' Donald assured him.</p>

<p>'Aye, well maybe it is. And before you say I'm calling you a liar just let me finish,' he said, and Donald sat back in his chair.</p>

<p>'I can't say you didn't see something out there, but I've got to tell you I'm not happy about sending this report to the fiscal. Not yet anyway, until there's something to show from the search. So I'll hold on to it for a day or two, just in case.'</p>

<p>
    'That's fine with me,' I said, wearily. 'I didn't think anybody would believe us.'</p>

<p>'Well, that's another matter. But in the meantime, we've got a search going on. It seems that one of Davy McGlynn's boats was hired out yesterday and the man hasn't brought it back. A Glasgow fellow down for a day's fishing. Davy tells me he was wearing a yellow oilskin.'</p>

<p>
    'That'll be the man,' Donald came in. 'A yellow coat with a hood.'</p>

<p>'Aye, that's what it seems like. We'll keep looking, but as a favour to me I'd like you to keep your story just between the three of us, just in case there's been a mistake.'</p>

<p>I agreed for the both of us and got Donald out of there before he started on the sergeant. The island man was stocky and strong, but I could see he was still carrying the vision of what had happened out there on the bay, and he didn't like anybody telling him he'd made a mistake.</p>

<p>The search went on and Davy McGlynn's little dinghy didn't show up. There was not a trace of it, or the Glasgow man who had hired it for his fishing. Nobody was reported missing.</p>

<p>But other events left the incident behind.</p>

<p>It was not until November that the currents threw the boat up on the rocks at Kilcreggan, some miles away. And on the same rocks, a bunch of children found the remains of the fisherman, and the remains of the birds, still tangled and nailed together in death as they had been on the day when Donald and I had watched the man die in agony and terror.</p>

<p>By then, there was no point in telling Murdo we had told him so.</p>

</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>