Murdo's War (30 page)

Murdo rinsed his hands at the bank, and taking a few deep breaths of the sweet air, retraced his steps to the house. Before he went indoors he lingered for a while in the last of the sunshine, looking up and down the glen. It was broad and bowl-shaped. Upstream the mountains gathered close, dominated by the great white flanks of Carn Mor, and another rugged mountain almost directly behind the cottage. Downstream, towards the coast, the land flattened, the moors rising no more than two or three hundred feet above the valley floor. Trees covered the opposite, southern slope. When he went down the next morning, that was the route he must take. The going would be harder, but the trees would give him protection.

High over the wooded ridge a large bird was circling, too large for a buzzard and to his sharp eyes with the wrong silhouette. It was joined by a second. They could only be eagles. For several minutes he watched as they passed slowly upstream, and vanished towards a high spur of the mountain.

The afternoon was drawing on. Already the sun was dipping behind the peaks of the moor and the glen was filling with blue shadows. The warmth that had been in the air was gone. A bank of rain clouds was gathering in the west. Murdo shivered, and turned indoors to warm himself at the fire.

It was an hour later that the thunderbolt fell.

THE ROOM WAS DARK, though enough daylight still lingered to brighten the shabby curtains that Murdo had pulled across the window. The fire glowed hot, and yellow flames licked ar
ound the edges of a new log. The smell of burning mutton was in the air. A scrap of whittled wood, showing the rough outline of a deer in flight, lay broken in the hearth. Murdo had taken off his jacket and sweater and lounged on the sofa in grubby shirt sleeves. He felt dispirited and washed out, and thought gloomily of the long night ahead. Idly he scratched at the sheep-blood stains that had dried stiff down the leg of his trousers. If only it was morning, he hated hanging about; and sitting there in front of the fire made him feel worse, as if the fever was returning. Bleakly he regarded the half- eaten slice of meat that lay beside him on the arm of the sofa.

Suddenly, on the edge of his awareness, there was a faint whisper of sound from outside. He sat bolt upright, and froze. Eyes wide, he stared at the window. His ears strained. Nothing was to be heard save the deep drumming of the river and tinkle of water from the drainpipe. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Then again there was a muffled sound, the soft swish and crunch of a boot in the melting snow. A moment later the footstep was plain and a dark shape passed across the light of the curtains. Murdo’s heart thudded. The silhouette returned and lingered at the window for two or three seconds, then passed on. There was silence. He waited. Abruptly there was a loud knocking at the front door.

For a moment Murdo could not move, then forcing himself to overcome the weakness of instant surrender, he rose and crept cautiously to the window. There was a little chink at the top of the curtains. Pulling himself to the broad window ledge, he peered along the side of the house. A man – at least he could only see one – stood at the front door, looking this way and that as he waited for an answer.

It was no good pretending there was no-one in the house, for there were his tracks criss-crossing the snow half a dozen times behind the man’s back, and he would have seen the smoke from the chimney too.

Again the man rapped on the door with his knuckles and the noise boomed in the empty house.

‘Hello!’ he called loudly. ‘Is there anybody there?’

For a desperate, confused moment Murdo could think only of escape, climbing from the little window at the back and running away across the snow. But he could scarcely have run a hundred yards, he had not the strength. There was no hope of escape that way. He climbed down from the window ledge, and as he stood he felt the panic ebb away, drain from his head and neck and arms, and he grew still. It was strange, something beyond determination: in that moment of crisis, though his heart still pounded, he found himself possessed of an icy inner calm. Quietly he crossed to the stack of wood beside the hearth and picked out a short branch the thickness of his arm. Then, pulling on his unlaced boots, he walked into the hallway and opened the front door.

A big man stood on the step. He was quite young and wore a heavy jacket and rubber boots. His hair was dark and cropped short. Clearly he was not a Highlander.

Murdo stood in the narrow gap of the doorway and grasped the hidden branch tightly in his hand. He was a wild sight, with burning black eyes and shaggy hair, his shirt crumpled, trousers torn and stained.

‘Yes?’ he said enquiringly.

The man regarded him closely. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ his English was very precise, ‘but can you tell me whether there is another house further up the valley?’

Murdo looked up the deserted, snowy glen to where it turned out of sight behind a long ridge of the hillside.

‘Just ours,’ he said, ‘and a couple of old ruins.’

‘Oh.’ The man seemed nonplussed. ‘You don’t live here, then?’

‘Hardly.’ Murdo opened the door a little wider so that he could see into the deserted hall.

‘I saw the smoke from the chimney and I thought…’ his words trailed away.

‘No, the place has been empty for years. Dad and me use it when we’re down at the sheep sometimes, that’s all.’ Amazed at the ease with which the lies were springing to his lips, Murdo waited for a moment. ‘Why? Are you looking for somebody?’

The man considered the tousled figure before him, trying to read the face that regarded him with such disconcerting frankness from the half-open doorway.

‘Yes, we are, as a matter of fact,’ he said at length. ‘There’s a boy missing. We think he might have been lost up this way in the snowstorm.’

Murdo shook his head. ‘We haven’t seen anybody at all,’ he said. ‘Not for a week or more. Not even Davie with the sheep.’ One of his legs was beginning to tremble. He fought to keep it still. ‘Who was it? No-one from around here?’

‘No, a boy from Berriedale.’

Murdo knew Berriedale, or at least he had been there a couple of times when his father’s regiment was on manoeuvres nearby.

‘Oh? Who?’ he said.

The man was taken aback momentarily. ‘Oh, well, he’s not a local lad. Up here on holiday.’

‘Ah!’ Murdo shifted his feet and cleared his throat. His voice felt none too steady.

‘Is your father about?’

‘Yes, somewhere. He went out the back a while ago. Do you want to see him?’

‘No... No, it’s all right.’

‘Are you sure?’ Murdo drew a breath and gripped the branch tightly. ‘Come in for a minute, if you like, and I’ll see if I can find him.’ He opened the door a little wider.

‘No. I must be getting back. It’ll be dark soon.’

Murdo looked up at the sky. ‘Yes, it’s going to rain, too. It’s always bad when it comes in black like that over the hill – my father says.’ He bit the inside of his lip – he was overdoing it.

The young man followed his eyes and smiled wryly. ‘You’re probably right.’ He eased his cold feet in the snow.

Murdo waited and did not speak.

‘Well, thank you for your help.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ Murdo said. ‘I hope you don’t get too wet.’ The man nodded and made his way back between the house and shed towards the white track that ran down the side of the glen. Murdo raised a hand in farewell, and closed the door.

For a moment he slumped against it, too stunned to move. Then pulling himself together, he hurried into the back kitchen where there was a good view of that side of the valley. His visitor was stepping out as briskly as the ground permitted, moving from side to side as he picked his way through the melting drifts. But two hundred yards on he paused irresolutely and looked back. For long moments he stood there, then stepped off the track into deeper snow and began making his way towards the river, looking this way and that as if he was searching for somebody.

The view from the window was limited in that direction, and quickly he passed out of sight behind the end of the house. Murdo moved back into the room in which he had been living and pulled the curtain aside. A minute or so later the man reappeared, moving along the near bank of the river and heading towards the barn. Nervously Murdo passed his tongue across cracked lips. Another fifty yards and the stranger would see the track where he had dragged the sheep through the pasture, and the blood in the snow. He leaned across the window to see clearly, and the movement must have caught the man’s eye, because he stopped for a moment, then waved a casual arm and turned up towards the front door. As he came forward he felt unconsciously at the belt of his trousers, then pretended he was tucking in his shirt, but the movement was not lost upon Murdo. His heart began thudding once more, and there was a burning, sick feeling in his gullet. He took deep breaths to calm himself, and a few moments later opened the front door as the big man came up smiling.

‘I thought I had better have a word with your father after all,’ he explained. ‘But there seems to be no sign of him.’

‘Oh, most likely he’ll be in one of the sheds,’ Murdo said as casually as he could, ‘or down behind the sheep fanks. Come in for a minute, and I’ll fetch him for you. Have a warm at the fire.’ Again he opened the door wide, and tightened his trembling grip on the rough club.

‘Well, I must say I could do with a sit-down,’ the young stranger admitted. ‘Thank you.’

Ducking his head in the low doorway, he stepped through into the dim hall. Even before he had a chance to turn, Murdo slammed the door behind him, and raising the heavy branch, thrashed it across the side of his dark head. And the German saw him – a glimpse, forever photographed into his memory, of the boy’s face, savage as an animal – fierce black eyes, bared teeth, his whole stocky body twisted with effort. His hands went up too late, and the vision shattered in a blinding explosion of red and black and a great pit down which he was falling, falling – and that was all.

Appalled at what he had done, Murdo looked down at the sprawled figure on the boards at his feet. The man seemed to take up the whole of the narrow hallway. He had fallen awkwardly across the foot of the stairs and his face was hidden against the bottom tread. Murdo bent and tried gently to turn him over, to see how badly he was hurt. But the limp German was a dead weight and he had to grasp the front of his jacket and use all of his strength to haul him on to his back. The man’s head knocked heavily against the bottom post of the bannisters. Anxiously Murdo examined the body for signs of life. He did not seem to be breathing. Perhaps he had killed him! Murdo pressed his ear against the German’s chest, but nothing was to be heard. He grabbed his wrist and searched for a pulse – and abruptly he found it, strong and steady, throbbing powerfully beneath his fingers. With a sigh of relief he sank back on his heels. Then suddenly he was frightened that the man might recover too quickly. He ran out to the barn for the length of cord he had used to tie up the joints of mutton. Dragging meat and all with him, he raced back to the house and bound the man’s wrists and ankles tightly.

When he had finished he felt inside the young German’s jacket, and removed the heavy service revolver from the holster at his waist. The magazine was full. Feeling through his pockets in case he carried any other weapon with him, Murdo came upon twelve more rounds of ammunition lying loose. The only other items of interest were a map, a wrist watch, and the greater part of a large bar of milk chocolate. He laid them on one side and replaced the other odds and ends in his pocket – a handkerchief, a comb, an assortment of small British coins, and a nicely marked pebble from the beach.

The young man still showed no sign of coming round. It was cold in the hall. Taking him again by the front of the jacket, Murdo dragged him into the living room and laid him on the old length of carpet beside the fire. Five minutes later he groaned and began to stir. His eyes flickered open. Murdo rolled up his own jacket and sweater and placed them under the German’s head.

The interminable hours of darkness drew on. A rattling, gusty rain set in and the wind roared about the house, making the windows shake and the doors tug against their fastenings. The barn door slammed back and forward, so loud and insistent that at length Murdo had to go out through the pelting rain to tie it shut again. Half a dozen sheep, which had been feeding on the hay and oil cake, burst past him through the black doorway and ran away bleating. Throughout the night they gathered for shelter in the lean-to, their coughing and low notes comforting and familiar sounds in the darkness. It was cold, and Murdo kept the fire stacked high with wood and peat. The wind sucked the flames up the chimney so that the sparks flew and little flames at the back burned green and blue.

Murdo stuck one of the old candle stubs on a piece of wood and pored over the map. He was, so far as he could tell, at a cottage named Dalgarbh, and the mountain which rose above was called Sgorach. Below it the glen wound six miles through descending moorland to the east coast, reaching the sea at Berriedale. Just above the shore, where the river was crossed by the road, it was joined by the stream he had followed from Duncan Beg’s cottage beyond the mountains. He traced them down with a black forefinger. Clearly, he thought, ‘Operation Flood-Tide’ could not yet have swung into action, for if it had they would not still be searching for him. All he had to do, once daylight came, was follow the river down to Berriedale, then telephone the police. As he travelled through the trees on the southern slope of the glen he must keep his eyes open, for when the young German beside him did not turn up, they would be sure to send out a search party. He broke off two more squares of milk chocolate, put one into the German’s mouth and ate the other himself. It tasted much better than the mutton.