booksnew/source/Bane/Bane12.txt

CHAPTER TWELVE
The new Fruin road that would soon by—pass Arden was taking
shape. Along much 0f the fifteen-mile length, rocks had been
blasted and hardcore laid. It would become a two-lane dual
carriageway t0 be used by the Ministry of Defence as their main
transport route to the Trident base 0n the Kilcreggan peninsula.
On that sunny day, men were preparing to finish work 0n phase
four, a two-mile stretch that skirted Cardross Hill t0 join up with
five and three, completing the sections between Levenford and
Kirkland.
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 to sizzle in
the red heat.
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 dirty cap
and mopped the sweat of his brow.
He had waited for his tea to infuse — with a little piece of twig
floating on the surface to draw all the particles of dust and ash — a
trick that every labourer has known since tea was first brewed — and
then he had guzzled his big box of sandwiches with a fewour
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.
Bert 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 of stewed, sweet tea, 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
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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.
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 rock face that hadjbeen
blasted out.
The engine roared into life seconds after he had heaved himself
into the tiny, dusty and oily cabin and the great shovel clanged
down into position for the first thrust.
Bert liked his work, he could handle this big machine. It suited
him. He was conscientious and drove the JCB forward and
backwards, pirouetting like a forty-ton ballet-dancer, rumbling
across the earth, and moving great mounds of earth. His hands
juggled with the controls as the sunlight streamed through the
plexiglass window that was smeared with dust. 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.
Late in the afternoon, Bert’s stomach started playing up. The
muscles spasmed tightly, causing him to suddenly wince.
‘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.
The pain did not go away, and Bert started feeling nauseous. He
started to sweat, not in the way he had been perspiring all
afternoon, but coldly, in copious amounts that oozed out all over
his face and at the back of his neck and on his chest.
Then suddenly there was what felt like an enormous explosion
deep inside the big man’s 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 hole that had suddenly appeared in the big
artery leading from the top of his heart spilled everything into his
chest cavity.
The JCB had a life of its own.
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. It J
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seemed to pause on the crest, then with a rending screech of metal
against stone it turned and started to tumble. The jaw slammed
against the crumbling rock 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 with a huge noise into the little stream below.
When the dust cleared, the running men who were moving even
before the digger had started to topple were sliding down the scree
of the new avalanche slope, and were in the rubble that surrounded
and half covered the JCB which lay on its side where the clear
water 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.
The yard-wide steel and concrete pipe that had carried the water
from further up the gully that cut into the hillside was blocked with
stones and shattered rock, mixed with mud and clay.
By evening, when 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
wide carriageway. 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.
The silted water soon cleared and the Kilmalid ilowed, taking 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 as the
waters gurgled in a serpentine shape 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 Ardhmor Rock. Then it drained into the firth and was
dissipated in the salt water.
Below the backed-up pool, downstream from where the plugged
pipe allowed the newly formed pool to grow, 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 started to evaporate as soon as the sun rose in the
morning. r
By nightfall on the following day the bed of the stream was just
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muddy and moist. Two days later it was dry.
Kitty MacBeth would have been the iirst 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 went to her bed. Two days later, racked
with a cough that seared her throat, and running a fever, she could
hardly move.
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.
I knocked several times on the hardwood door that had
obviously 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. It
took a few moments for my eyes to accustom themselves to the
gloom, and at Hrst I saw nothing, then I noticed the shape under
the pile of grey blankets. I knocked on the window with a knuckle,
but there was no further response, not even a cough.
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. She hadn’t locked it.
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.
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 blue
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 sweaty, and her neck was like
a chicken, scrawny and scraggy. A pulse beat in one of the blue
veins that seemed to stand out against the pallor of her skin. 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.
‘Kitty,’ I said, bending low to speak.
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 g
sound seemed to be coming from way down deep inside. ‘Sick,’ she
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murmured. ‘Got sick.’
‘Yes, I know you’re sick. I’ve got to get a doctor,’ I said quickly.
‘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 that took, the old woman had drifted off to sleep.
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 instead of using the phone book to find the local
doctor’s number. 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 Ht as I should be.
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.
‘Dehydrated,’ the older of the two said. ‘She’s pretty weak}
‘Any idea how long she’s been like this?’ asked the other. I
shook my head.
‘We’ll get her on a drip as soon as we get to the van. Do you want
to ride with us?’
‘Yes, of course. Thanks}
I helped spell the older man along the track and through the
beechwood to where the ambulance was parked. Kitty didn’t stir.
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.
‘What is that stuff?’ I asked.
‘Just a saline solution with some vitamins. I can’t give her
anything else until she’s been examined, but the solution won’t do
any harm, no matter what. r
‘She’s running a fair old temperature too, but if she’s
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dehydrated, that stuff will help bring it down a bit.’ 4
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 ambulancemen had
suspected, and had swollen lymph-nodes in various locations on
her body.
‘Too early to say at the moment, but possibly some sort of virus,’
he said. ‘We’ll have to keep her here of course.’
I nodded.
‘I’ll need some personal details,’ he said. ·
‘I don’t know how much I can help you there.’
‘Oh? I thought she was your .... ’
‘Friend. No relation. I can tell you how old she is, and where she
lives, and her name. Not much more than that.’
‘Well, it’ll do for a start. Do you know if she has any relatives in
the area?’
‘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} `
‘I thought you said there was no relation,’ he said, looking
bemusedly over the top of his bi-focals.
‘Well there isn’t really, but I suppose I’m all she’s got.’
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.
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.
‘Wooden box. Under bed,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Take it.
Use it.’ .
‘Later. Talk later. Just rest now.’ S
‘No. Now. Take it. Use it,’ she said, with as much vehemence as
she could muster. I could see that even that effort drained her.
‘All right, Kitty. I will,’ I assured her. Her eyes started to close,
then they snapped open, gleaming brightly for an instant, beaming I
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the full blue straight into mine.
‘The walls,’ she hissed. ‘You take care of the walls!’
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. I wandered, hands deep in the
pockets of my bomber—jacket, in the shade of the huge beech trees,
along the hard—packed path that skirted the shore. I stopped for a
few minutes beside the big stone dragon’s tooth 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. Already the script was invisible. Had it been real?
Had it?
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. 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. I found it under the bed where she’d said it would be. It
was small, made of a polished hardwood that had been etched in a
stunning labyrinth 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. 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.
There was a big key hanging on the back of the door, which fitted
the mortice 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.
‘Hold on, Nick,’ the voice came from the shore, carrying clearly I
from halfway along the curve, close to where the sand gave way to
the marshes.
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
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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.
He waved when he was closer, and there was a smile on his broad
face.
‘Housebreaking or socialising‘?’ he asked.
‘A bit of both ,’ I said. ‘The old woman took ill today. I got her up
to the hospital.’
‘Och, that’s sad. She’s a fine old one, that,’ Donald said, ‘despite
what they say about her}
‘She asked me to come down and collect something for her.’
Donald nodded, accepting my explanation. He was wearing a
peaked hunter’s hat that was camouflaged just like his sleeveless
jacket. Around his neck there were a pair of Zeiss binoculars that
looked powerful and heavy.
‘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.’
He hefted the binoculars. They explained how he’d been able to
recognise me from the far side of the bay. ·
‘The birds, you know,’ he said by way of explanation.
‘Oh, I didn’t know you were an ornithologistf
‘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.’
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.’
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.
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 great dead
reminder of the storm in the spring. Between the shipwreck and
Ardhmor, 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 decreasing '
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number of boats that used the waterway up the iirth to Glasgow.
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 little boat, and ifI strained hard I could see the rod
he held over the side.
‘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.’
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 cool beer, but Donald was on the right track anyway.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, ‘I’m planning to go up to the islands in
a couple of weeks. Do you still want to come with me?’
‘Yes, I’d love to. I could use the break. When are you planning
to go?’
‘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.’
‘Well, if you don’t mind showing me the ropes. It’s been a long
time since I did any serious sailing.’
‘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
s1ng1ng.’
‘I think I’d rather be keel—hauled,’ I told him, and he laughed so
hard he almost choked on his sip of 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.
‘Look, over there,’ he said. ‘The gannets. Just off the rock.’
Again I had to strain against the glare, looking out to where his
linger 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.
They spun and turned, then, with their wings folded, they dropped
like arrows, plunging into the blue waters, sending up tiny
explosions of gleaming silver water.
‘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.
‘Oh, look at that,’ he muttered. ‘Beautiful.’
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To me they were just white dots in the distance. He was getting a
close-up view. He stared rapturously for a few minutes, then
realised the scene was practically lost on me because of the
distance.
‘Here, you have a look,’ he said, unlooping the leather strap
from around his neck, and handing the glasses over.
I put them up to my eyes, and the white dots swam into focus as
great 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
bright sun on their snow-white feathers. I would concentrate on
one bird as it hung in the air, then it would turn, fold its wings and
lance downwards.
With the glasses, I could easily follow the trajectory as the bird
shot out its neck and speared 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.
‘He won’t be a happy man,’ Donald said.
‘Who?’ I asked, still taking in the wheeling, plunging scene.
‘The fisherman,’ he said. ‘He’s in amongst them. They’ll be
scaring his catch away. He’ll be cursing the birds.’
I handed Donald back the glasses and he swung them up to his
eyes. Looking out, I could make out the birds — how small they
were in the distance without the Zeiss’s powerful magnification —
now hunting close to the boat. `
‘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 furious
angler was shouting at the birds that were wrecking his fishing. 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. I wished I could see the expression on his
face.
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.
‘Good God would you. . . ?’ His voice trailed away. ‘Dear God
. . . it can’t be .... ’
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘The birds. The birds. They’re . . . they’re .... ’
‘They’re what?’ I asked. I hadn’t a clue.
‘Look. Oh dear God. I don’t believe it.’
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 I
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· face was white with shock. His mouth hung open in a slack circle
and his eyes were wide and staring.
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.
Their wings folded against their sides, they were lancing down
with those great stabbing beaks and smashing into the fisherman in
the boat. j
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 the yellow of the coat and the
white of the bird’s feathers. The bird’s wings beat for a second, and
stopped, it’s beak still jammed inside the man’s body. Through the
glasses I could see him waving his hand frantically as more birds
lanced down. One of them hit the boat with a thump that I did
hear, rolling in across the smooth surface of the water. Another
shot down and speared the man’s stomach, and there was another
great gout of blood.
An anguished scream, faint in the distance, but loud as all hell in
my ears, came rending across on the wake of the other sound.
My eyes were jammed up against the glasses, mesmerised with
the horror that was going on out there on the bay under the heat of
the sun. Beside me I was dimly aware of Donald muttering curses
and prayers, all in a jumble.
A white bird lanced 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. Again came the muffled thump of the
impact. The man in the boat was jerking about in agony, 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 despairing 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.
The angler’s head snapped back and more blood splattered. With a
rising lurch of nausea, I saw the huge beak sticking straight out of
the back of the man’s neck.
I dropped the glasses from my eyes, the spell broken. Something
inside my stomach gave way and my lunch promptly expelled itself,
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spattering on to the rock where I sat.
‘Oh, fuck,’ I said, helplessly.
Donald was still sitting, 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.
In my throat, the bile was burning.
‘They can’t do that,’ Donald said in a voice that was just a moan.
‘Gannets don’t do that.’
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
there. A
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.
‘It’s stopped,’ he said. ‘They’re all dead. And so is he. It’s
terrible. Just terrible.’
He stared through the glasses for a long time, then he said: ‘It’s
sinking. The boat. It’s going down.’
He handed me the glasses again. I didn’t want to look, but I
couldn’t stop myself.
The dreadful scene swam into focus. Only minutes before it had
been a wonderful picture of nature’s beauty. The wheeling and
diving of the beautiful white birds, so fitted for their way of life.
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. 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
bubbling water.
The bubbles soon stopped and the surface became calm again.
There was nothing there, except for a few white and red feathers
that Hoated on the surface, and soon scattered in the gentle breeze.
‘Here. Take the glasses. There’s nothing left,’ I said, handing
them back to Donald. He was still shaking his head numbly.
‘How could that have happened?’
‘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.
‘We’d better go and tell them about this,’ Donald said.
‘I don’t think they’ll believe us,’ I told him. s
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‘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.
It was only adding to my picture of one that was not natural at
" all.
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.
‘And you say the birds attacked him?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ Donald said. The shock had begun to wear off a
bit. ‘Gannets.’
‘Gannets actually flew down and, er, hit him? Stabbed him with
their beaks?’
‘That’s what happenedf
‘But seabirds don’t do that.’
‘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.
‘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. 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 more sober than he’d ever been in his
life.
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. There was nothing to be
found.
Murdo called us back to the station that night and asked us to go
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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.
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. I
You don’t remember paint colours when a iiock 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.
He wrote all this down again on the forms, nodding to himself as
he did so.
When he had finished, he looked up and said: ‘It’s a strange tale
to be coming to me with.’
‘I know that Murdo. A terrible tale. But it’s the truth,’ Donald
assured him.
‘Aye, well maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. And before you say
I’m calling you a liar just let me iinish,’ he said, and Donald sat
back in his chair.
‘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 iiscal. 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.’
‘That’s fine with me,’ I said, wearily. ‘I didn’t think anybody
would believe us.’
‘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.’
‘That’ll be the man,’ Donald came in. ‘A yellow coat with a
hood.’
‘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.’
I agreed for the both of us and got Donald out of there before he
started on the sergeant. The island man was a stolid, placid type,
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.
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, and other
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events left the incident behind.
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. By then, there was no point in telling
Murdo we had told him so.
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