Orkney Twilight (22 page)

‘It’s just an undercover thing that was set up ages ago,’ she said. Fuck it. Why shouldn’t she tell him? She was so fed up with all the secrecy rubbish. Just tell him and forget it. No big deal. He’d already guessed most of it anyway. ‘It’s run by this Commander bloke. I’ve never met him. I’ve just heard stories from Jim. Apparently he used to be in Intelligence. And then he moved and set up this funny lot. Half spies, half cops. Policemen who use spy tradecraft: fake ID, secret messages, that sort of thing. Jim calls them the Diggers.’

‘Diggers? What you mean like the seventeenth-century radicals? Why?’

‘Because they go underground, I suppose. Maybe because they are always trying to pass themselves off as road workers or builders. Easy identities to adopt. Deep cover. Drop the agent behind enemy lines and leave them there to work their way in. Except that in this case the enemy lines are domestic. The enemy within.’

She regretted telling him as soon as she had stopped talking, saw his eyes had registered interest, realized she’d said too much, given him too many juicy details. She felt slightly sick.

‘Half cop. Half spy. Now that could make quite a good story,’ Tom said.

Jesus. Good story? Her stomach churned. ‘I don’t see that there’s much of a story there,’ she said too quickly. ‘I mean, like you said, everybody knows already. Where’s the news? Undercover cops watching loony lefties. Nothing you couldn’t have guessed anyway. Cops with delusions of grandeur. Policemen with beards and dark glasses. Silly disguises.’

She told herself to shut up, she was making it worse. She turned her wrist slightly, checked the time. ‘We have to go.’

Jim was in the kitchen hovering by the kettle, still a little bit grey, a little bit hunched.

‘Feeling any better?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘I’ve been listening to the radio most of the day,’ he said. ‘Nothing but the miners’ strike. Sounds like it’s a bit of a mess at Orgreave. Violent clashes between the police and pickets. Injuries on both sides. Glad I’m up here.’ He winced. ‘So what have you two been up to while I’ve been lying on my deathbed?’ He eyed Tom suspiciously over her shoulder. She could sense Tom fidgeting, flicking his thumb against his finger.

‘Oh this and that,’ she said. ‘We weren’t short of things to do.’

‘No. I’m sure you weren’t.’

Jim glugged some milk into his mug of tea. ‘I’m going back to bed. I’ll be out and about tomorrow, if I survive the night.’

She asked casually, ‘Where are you going?’

He narrowed his eyes until they were little more than splinters.

‘I’m going to visit Bill, follow up on a couple of other people I need to see, find out what crimes and misdemeanours have been committed in my absence.’

She smiled, willed herself not to redden. ‘We’ll be out all day tomorrow as well.’

‘Will you now. And where are you going?’

‘Haven’t decided yet.’

‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. At some point.’

‘If you survive the night, that is,’ she replied.

He stared at her, hard. ‘I’ve reviewed the situation. And I’ve decided that I’m going to make it after all. I’ll be alive tomorrow all day.’

‘That’s good news. I won’t have to waste any time making funeral arrangements for you then.’

‘No. You won’t.’ He paused. ‘I’ve made my own arrangements for that eventuality anyway. Or should I say inevitability. But you won’t have to do much when it comes to it. Not that much anyway. No more than a loyal and dutiful daughter should have to do.’

He disappeared into his room leaving her to listen to the clock ticking. She wondered whether he was serious about the funeral arrangements.

They sat huddled over their tea in the living room, the night’s silence punctuated only by the crow scrabbling on the roof, and the stiffening gusts of wind whispering down the chimney.

Tom leaned forward, ‘What was that all about? Do you think he suspects something is up?’

‘He always suspects something is up.’

‘Do you think we should say something to him about the man in the house?’

‘What, you mean like, Jim, we found out where that woman you were talking to in the café lived, we broke into her house and there was a strange man upstairs snooping?’

‘I see your point. Best not say anything then.’ He yawned. ‘I’m dropping off. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.’

As he stretched, the metal spiral of his shirt-pocket notebook glinted.

‘See you.’

She wasn’t tired. She went outside. Everything was quiet. The amber eyes of a cat glowed from the far side of the courtyard. She crossed to the garden, inhaled the perfume of the roses, circled her miniature stone monument glowing in the half-light, feeling comforted to be near it, her own shrine to the happily ever before and after. She gazed down at Tirlsay, followed the hill’s contours to the wood, searching for an amber flare, a movement, shadow. Nothing.

She stood quietly in the hall outside Tom’s bedroom. The door was open a crack, the light was still on. She caught a glimpse of him sitting in bed, writing in his notebook. She pulled back and waited silently for a moment, pondering. Knight or knave. Knave or knight. And then she pushed open the door, swung suddenly into the room. A real Jim manoeuvre. He looked up, startled, and jammed his notebook under the blankets.

‘Just thought I’d say good night,’ she said. ‘See you in the morning.’

She pulled the door shut again, left him looking guilty. Shit. That was a stupid slip-up. What an idiot she had been. Telling him about the Diggers. She was going to have to find out what was in his notebook. She retreated to her room, stretched out on the candlewick bedspread. In the distance she heard the low call of an owl. It was answered by another call, nearer. Then another. Up on the roof.

She sat up, startled awake by, what? It sounded like the blast of a horn. Perhaps it was the wind. It must have been the wind, surging out of nowhere, rolling in waves down the hillside, crashing on to Nethergate, howling, making the gale at Kitchener’s Memorial feel like a taster, a forewarning of the worse storm to come. Another blast, fusing with the growing rumble of approaching thunder, made her duck instinctively. A wailing rush of air pulled at the eaves of the croft as it hounded past. Debris hurled on to the slates. Clattering like hooves. Cries of crows caught up in the mayhem. And then she heard something else, closer, softer, almost drowned out by the raging of the sudden summer storm. She held her breath, trying to identify the sound below the turbulence. There it was again. Faint brushing. Not above but outside. Just beyond her window. The careful tread of a footstep. Nils? Had Nils come back to visit her again? It didn’t seem likely. This was somebody trying to disguise their presence, not attract her attention. An intruder. Her brain seized up. Stupefied with fear. Flat for an eternity of thirty seconds before her mind flipped into overdrive. Panicking. Flailing around inside her skull. Sending her brain spinning into frenetic activity, shooting urgent messages out to her limbs. She had to stay calm, be sensible. She needed to wake Jim. He could deal with it. He would know what to do.

She edged herself off the bed. Crept towards the door. Peered into the gloomy hallway. The door handle to the front garden glinted as it moved. The intruder was trying to break in. She froze again. Inside her petrified body the panic was rising. No air drawing into her lungs. Her eyes locked on the door handle as it was forced down and up, down and up. She willed the external presence away with her mind. The handle stopped, horizontal, released from the pressure of the outside force. Footsteps retreated along the side of the house, eaten up by the wildness of the wind. She sidled along the hallway, listening to Tom’s stertorous breathing. She considered waking him, rejected that course of action, peeled away from the wall and put one foot over the entrance to the sitting room. She stopped. A distant flash of lightning illuminated the menacing clouds and outlined a shadow against the window, the gleam of a handgun arcing through the air. She would have screamed if she could have found her voice. She pushed herself back into the darkness. Hardly breathing. Another lightning flash. And then another. Jagged electric bolts flared above the sea, turning the sky blue, outlining the square-shouldered figure of the Watcher retreating.

She flung herself across the sitting room. Down the steps. Hurtled into the kitchen. Jim was already standing there. Filling the doorframe. Dull black metal in his hand. Walther. Licensed? Or not.

‘Back,’ he snarled. ‘Get back in there. Behind the sofa. Don’t move until I tell you.’

She hesitated, eyes frozen on the gun’s barrel.

‘For fuck’s sake, just do what you’re told for once.’

She noticed a sheen on his upper lip.

‘Where’s your mate?’ he asked.

‘Asleep.’

He grunted, headed to the kitchen door and out. She charged back into the sitting room, crouched down, jammed herself between the sofa and the back wall, the gale booming as it gusted down the chimney, rattling the windows, determined to enter one way or another. The force of the thunderbolts shaking ornaments, rocking the floorboards. How did Tom manage to sleep through this? He could sleep through a bloody revolution.

She cowered behind the sofa, waiting for the crack of gunshot. Holiday cottage shoot-out. In the terror of anticipation, she imagined Jim lying in the courtyard with a wave of blood seeping from his body. A tsunami rolling towards her. Tomato soup not blood, she told herself. It was just Heinz tomato soup spilling across the table. She pushed the image of Jim’s oozing corpse out of her mind. But all she could see now was the round end of a gun barrel. She lay still, squeezing her eyes shut, reciting the comforting litany of the stations on the line to Victoria: Sydenham Hill, West Dulwich, Herne Hill; and there she was back on the train heading for Dennis Cockell’s tattoo parlour, yakking to Becky, blathering on about being a wrinkly seventy-year-old with a tattoo, a lifelong inked sign which, she had added, would still be there if and when she died, and Becky had laughed, pointed out there was no ‘if’ about it. Halfway between West Dulwich and Herne Hill she had realized she was mortal. She was going to die. But please Lord, not there and then, curled up below a game of Trivial Pursuit and a pile of well-thumbed copies of the
Reader’s Digest
.

A clattering on the roof made her look up. Christ, what was that? It sounded as if somebody, or something, was running across the slates. Scrabbling. Slithering down the tiles. Was it Jim? The hooded crow? She heard a bird craw. Another answered. And then the screech of an owl, carried along in the baying wind. A flash of lightning turned the room white. Almost immediately thunder cracked. Deafening. The storm must be right overhead now. She caught sight of the print above the fireplace. The black horses were moving, galloping across the night sky, animated by the lightning strikes, the malicious spirits of the night. She had a sudden urge to follow, a deep pull luring her out from her hiding place, calling her, telling her to do something, anything. Stop playing the part of the secret policeman’s daughter. Forever doing what she was told. Shut up. See, don’t say. Head down, keep quiet, be invisible, stay below the radar. Or else. Or else what? Or else she’d had it. A lifetime of crouching behind sofas in case she was caught in the crossfire.

From somewhere faraway Jim’s voice floated in on a gust. ‘And don’t fucking come back.’

A crack? A shot? Or wind slamming a door shut. Rain peppering the window like a burst of machine-gun fire. Heavy footsteps on the gravel.

Jim reappeared in the doorway. Breathless. Puffing. Drenched by the summer night downpour, a watery trail behind him. ‘You can come out. I’ve seen him off.’

She hesitated, reluctant to move.

‘Out now,’ he ordered.

She crawled out from behind the shelter of the sofa.

‘I need a cup of tea,’ she said. She stumbled wearily into the kitchen, reached for the kettle, let the gushing tap water splash over her wrists, its coldness making her skin tingle, reminding her she was alive. The storm was still raging, but not as violently now; blowing itself out in the valley, not tearing across their roof. She could sense Jim standing there behind her, arms folded.

‘Have you seen him before?’ he demanded.

She concentrated on filling the kettle. Remained silent, uncertain of the best response.

‘Well?’

She turned and saw the bead of sweat on Jim’s upper lip still. At least he didn’t have the pistol in his hand. He must have returned it to his haversack.

‘It was the Watcher, wasn’t it?’ she said.

‘The Watcher?’

She momentarily considered telling him about the murky face in the window of Mark Greenaway’s house. Decided against it. There was too much to explain. He would kill her if he knew what she had been doing with Tom.

‘There was a man with black hair and a moustache watching Nethergate from the woods in Tirlsay.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you saw him there?’

‘I wasn’t really sure what he was doing.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘And anyway, I didn’t have a chance,’ she added. ‘I didn’t want Tom to overhear.’

‘I told you not to be a smartarse. I told you there were dark forces at work.’

She seethed. What right had he to be angry with her? No one had ever asked her if she wanted to be the daughter of an undercover cop. She wasn’t the one who had signed up to the fucking Force. She folded her arms, mimicking his body posture, staring at him truculently, resenting him and his questions, his stupid bloody job.

‘Anything else you should have told me?’ Jim asked.

She tried to avoid his gaze, but she could feel the daggers of his eyes needling her. ‘There was a woman,’ she said. ‘Short brown hair. Drives a Merc.’

‘You’ve seen her, have you?’

She nodded.

‘Where?’

‘Up on the hill behind Nethergate.’

He paused, puzzled perhaps, the half-light exaggerating the deepening lines on his forehead. ‘I know about her,’ he said. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

She tried to turn the tables, pose the questions. ‘So who is the Watcher?’