Game Ten: A gripping conspiracy thriller, page 29
After half an hour’s fruitless transmission, he drove further south. Past the Argyll Hotel at Bellochantuy, in a strange scatter of rocks where decaying caravans were tucked in every nook and cranny, he stopped and tried again. ‘Sea Witch, Sea Witch, come in Sea Witch.’ Nothing. Line of sight, he remembered, you’ve got to be in line of sight. He began to climb the escarpment inland from the road. At the top, he tried again.
This time there was an immediate response, a crackle and a man’s voice in broad Scots: ‘Person calling Sea Witch. This is Peninver Lady, who are you?’
I’d better be a boat, thought Harry, and pressed the button again. ‘This is the, er, African Queen. Come in Peninver Lady.
‘Mr Bogart, I presume,’ said the voice and laughed. ‘You’re looking for Sea Witch? Would she be a Contessa?’
Harry couldn’t remember. ‘I think so,’ he said.
‘She’s moored just west of Carrer Island. I passed her two hours back.’
‘Thanks, where exactly did . . .
The batteries died on him. He looked down at the car, five minutes down the hill, the car with the other batteries in it, and swore bitterly. Old stock. By the time he’d got down there and put in a fresh set, the Peninver Lady was gone. He spread the Ordnance Survey map and began to search it. ‘Carrer’ had to be Cara Island just south of Gigha. It was eight miles back up the road and three miles out to sea. He started the engine.
*
So bloody near, so bloody, bloody near. Claire was at the end of her tether, awake all night, sailing north, then north-west, burning up her dwindling reserves of energy and fortitude. She’d gone to sleep in the cockpit once and had a nightmare that turned into a waking horror: lights and a loud engine pounded at her, and she awoke with the boat broaching in a huge bow wave as the vast steel plates of a big freighter rushed past yards away. Freezing, shocking water filled the cockpit, washing right over her and pouring down the open hatch as the boat tipped on to its beam ends, swinging to a violent stop as the sails scooped down into the water. Claire’s head cracked into one of the winches and she lay there with the water surging over her as the freighter roared away into the darkness, unseeing. The boat slowly picked itself up – like the rubber duck it had originally been named after – shook its wet sails, and lay low in the water, rolling soggily in the diminishing wash.
When she’d got the sails down, she saw the dinghy had been washed from its position, folded and deflated on the coach roof, and was nowhere to be seen. She opened the cockpit locker and pumped and pumped, warming herself and using herself up at the same time. When her arm muscles were on fire from the awkward stroke of the pump handle, it finally sucked air and the bilges were dry once more. She went below to make hot packet soup and found a dripping scene of devastation. The boat had been knocked down on to her starboard side. That was the side with the electronics, and now the satellite navigation was dripping wet, and as dead as a doornail.
Her sailing bag had stayed in its locker on the port side, above the incoming water, and she changed into dry clothes and drank the soup with shaking hands. In other circumstances, knowing she was at the very end of her reserves of energy and sanity, it would have been tempting to call, to hear the reassuring voice of a coastguard rescue centre, but for her, she knew, there could be no rescue, no comfort except in the outside chance that a man she knew so very slightly would be waiting there at the end of the wet miles ahead, at a landfall that only a huge final effort now could take her to.
There was more to come. Exhaustion undermined her navigation. An unexpected light flashed through the dark morning and it took her precious minutes to identify it. Up on deck she heard breaking waves, smelt not just seaweed, but rotting seaweed, and knew it had to be land. More by luck than anything else in her groggy state, she pulled the helm towards her and bore off downwind, to the east, away from the claws of Rathlin Island, the western sentinel of the fifteen-mile channel between Ireland and the Mull of Kintyre. At least she knew for certain where she was then, and she steered north north-east up the wide sound between Islay and Kintyre.
The wind dropped at dawn and she anchored off Gigha but as soon as she slept, it got up again and a dull rumbling transmitted through the chain into the forepeak told her the boat was dragging its anchor. The effort to haul it up almost finished her. She started the diesel, intending to motor round the south of the island to find shelter on its east coast. The depths on the chart were dancing before her tired eyes; the echo sounder was sopping wet and low, blowing mist completed the impossible barrier in front of her.
She went aground on a falling tide close in to the west side of Cara. A sloping ledge of rock took the boat’s bows up at a sharp angle with a dreadful scraping, then dropped it down to wedge the keel in a cleft. The boat settled upright, held tight, and it was no longer a shock. Nothing could be a shock now. She shut off the engine, slumped back into the corner of the cockpit and fell into a half-dreaming, half-waking daze. The sun came up and the tide dropped but nothing came near. She was able to climb down on to the barely-covered dry rocks and see for herself how the boat was wedged. Given the energy she might have found a way to get off, to put out anchors ready to use a winch at high tide, but she was moving and thinking like a sleepwalker now.
At 1p.m., after another fitful doze in the warm sun, she remembered Harry and stumbled to the radio, but the VHF set was also suffering from its immersion, and all she could get were a few crackles. At two, the tide was up around the hull again and the boat looked just as if it were peacefully at anchor. Claire was in her bunk, fighting in a black, despairing dream in which men with no faces were surrounding her, pushing her backwards into a sheer pit which, when she looked back at it, plunged a million miles down. The fishing boat’s engines woke her, but it had gone past when she worked out what the noise meant and groped her way up on deck.
‘You could bloody help,’ she mumbled to the man in the cockpit. The tide was lifting the hull now, banging the keel against the encircling rocks. High tide was soon after five, but she panicked at the thought that Harry might come and go. At four she started the engine, revved it in reverse and tried to back the boat out, but her reflexes were tuned, through tiredness, to her own boat, not this one, and in her boat with its ancient gearbox the prop turned the other way. The paddle-wheel effect of the screw began to swing the stern sideways, towards a sharp projecting rock spur. She mistook it for the effect of the tide and her tired mind told her to rev the engine harder to correct. On her boat it would have worked, on this one it simply drove the rock spur with a splintering finality, straight through the rounded bulge of the hull. She switched off, facing utter defeat.
She tried the radio one last time in complete and justified certainty that it would not work and then, reluctantly, logic clouded by intense fatigue but knowing it was a choice between drowning, hypothermia or simply risking arrest, she went shakily to the end locker, took a flare out of its plastic container and made her slow way up on deck to let it off and put her fate in the hands of others. That was when, from just behind her, Harry’s voice said, ‘Hello Claire, did you have a good trip?’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Wednesday August 21st
Harry had found what he was looking for north of Muasdale, just before the road was separated from the sea by a wedge of green fields. The water was choppy, reflecting grey as a thin layer of cloud scudded over in the fresh breeze. Cara Island’s strange silhouette was clear; a flat-topped, almost square hill at the southern end rearing up from its low outline. He switched on the VHF transmitter and started to call, sure this time that her voice would respond, but there was nothing, and after five minutes he switched off, bitterly disappointed.
The cloud passed over and the water before him turned sparkling blue. Distance seemed to change with the brighter light; Cara Island came nearer and the sound between seemed less forbidding. A hundred yards down the road was a cottage, a holiday cottage from the look of the piled-up garden furniture and the rusting chain-store barbecue. In the garden, upside down, was a fibreglass dinghy.
Harry knocked on the door, prepared to spend however much of Gilligan’s money it took to borrow the boat. No one came. Through a grimy window, he saw there was very little furniture and a dusty look of neglect. That solved the problem.
The dinghy was heavy and slimy with green mould, but when he lifted it under the stern and heaved it over he found a pair of oars and rowlocks under it. If Harry had known anything about boats he would have known that one should never drag a fibreglass dinghy down an abrasive concrete drive, across an abrasive tarmac road, and over a rocky beach, not if one wanted to go on using it. He did it because there was no other way. The effort made him breathe heavily and wore half-way through the bottom of the boat under the bow where it was scraping along as he dragged it backwards.
Another big cloud came over as he brought the oars to the dinghy. The sound took on a threatening grey colour and Gigha moved twice as far away again. He’d never liked water, and he’d never rowed a boat. He took his shoes and socks off, pushed the boat a short way into the water, and climbed in. His weight promptly embedded the stern on the bottom, whereupon a wave and the wind pivoted the bow and pushed it sideways up the beach again. He got it right on the third try, but only by pushing it out up to his waist and clambering in, soaked through.
Rowing wasn’t as easy as it looked, but Harry was possessed by a grim determination. He was extremely lucky that high tide was approaching and the strong south to north flow had slowed to near slackness. He progressed unsteadily, catching the blades awkwardly in the waves and veering from side to side, but he learnt fast and when he realized he could keep a steady course by fixing his eye on a point on the slowly disappearing mainland over the stern, life became much simpler. A competent, fit oarsman could have done it in an hour. Harry did it in an hour and a half with hands that were blistering in agony for the last half of the journey. He passed between Gigha and Cara, and suddenly there it was; a white hull, wreathed in exhaust smoke, with a distant figure bending, looking down over the stern. Then he heard a crunch, the engine stopped, the figure disappeared below and the boat was left cocked oddly at an angle to the water. He was close enough now to read the lettering on the blue panels by her cockpit; Sea Witch. He pulled on the right oar to swing towards her, rowing as hard as his hands allowed. He had no idea how to come alongside, and swung around in a circle ten feet from her. Then a head appeared out of the hatchway and he saw Claire – a changed, blonde Claire – pull herself up from below and stand painfully upright, facing away from him with a tube in her hands.
‘Hello Claire,’ he said. ‘Did you have a good trip?’
She turned, looked around her, not seeing him, and bent to something next to her, a yachting cap on some sort of dummy. ‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Claire, look round,’ he called urgently, ‘in the dinghy. It’s me.’
This time she did see him, and gaped at him, shaking her head, then collapsed back into the cockpit.
He had no idea afterwards how he managed to get out of the dinghy and up on to the deck, but he had the presence of mind to take the painter with him and tied a knot of sorts round the yacht’s hand-rail. Then he was in the cockpit with her, trying to get his arms round her as she strained away from him in a terrified, huddled ball.
‘Claire, it’s me. Harry. Come on, you’re all right, I’m here. It’s me.’ He went on saying it over and over again until he felt her start to relax, turn a doubtful face to him and then sag into his arms.
*
It took much longer to get back. Harry had strips of torn-up shirt wound round his hands. The dinghy was weighed down with both of them and what they could salvage of Claire’s clothes. The ebbing tide was setting them down the shore of the peninsula and Harry, prompted by listless corrections from Claire, was forced to row crabwise to keep the dinghy clawing across the tide.
‘Tell me what’s been happening,’ he said, but she shook her head.
‘OK, later. I’ll tell you my end, shall I?’
She seemed lethargic now, but she nodded.
‘I know who they are; well, the name of their group, anyway. And I know what they did.’ And he told her, in bursts when he had the breath, in bursts to distract from the sharp pain of his hands and the duller pain of his arms, shoulders and back. After a long, long time they grounded, exhausted, and just sat there in the boat.
‘We ought to put it back where it came from,’ Harry gasped. ‘Leave no trace.’
They carried it, one at each end, three yards at a time between rests, into the cottage garden, then, arms around each other for support and comfort, limped down the road to the parked car. In the car, Claire, in a weak but steadier voice, said, ‘What do you mean, leave no trace? We’ve left a bloody great boat out there. Someone’s going to see it.’
‘We’ll muddy the trail a bit,’ said Harry, and reached into the back for the VHF set. He found a channel where two boats were talking, waited for a pause, and called out with a slight Irish brogue in his voice, ‘This is the Tipperary Mary, come in any boat receiving, over.’
A strong reply came booming back. ‘This is fishing vessel Dancer Four, Dougie MacAllan, go ahead caller.’
‘This is the Tipperary Mary. I can’t select Channel 16 – radio trouble. Could you pass a message to the coastguard?’
‘Reading you clearly. What’s the message?’
This time Harry thumbed the transmit key a lot and scratched the plastic surface of the mike before replying. ‘I’ve picked up two crew members from the yacht Sea Witch. She’s aground off Cara Island. They’re OK. I’m taking them to . . .’ here he made a loud whistling noise and pressed the key rapidly up and down.
‘Lost the last part of your message, Tipperary Mary, please repeat with names of crew, your destination and whether they need salvage assistance for the boat?’
‘Negative the last, arrangements are being made. Crew are David and er, Catherine Pope. Destination is er . . . Sligo.’ Oh God, he thought, I haven’t got a clue whether Sligo’s on the coast, let alone which bit of Ireland it’s in.
It clearly puzzled his listener too. ‘Repeat destination, please.’
For an answer he made frenzied atmospheric noises into the mike, then clicked it off for good.
Campbeltown was a dour, old-fashioned town, away from the fishing quay, but Harry got what he wanted, leaving Claire tucked away in the car in an out-of-the-way street while he used Gilligan’s cash recklessly to hire a holiday apartment. It had a built-in garage underneath, with direct access from the apartment. Harry left Claire soaking and slowly recovering in a hot bath while he went to stock up on food.
He got Gilligan on his carphone.
‘It’s Harry Chaplin.’
‘God, Harry, I’ve been praying for a call. What have you got?’
‘Exactly what I said I’d get.’
‘Really? Tell me more.’
‘Not on one of these things, if you don’t mind. Can you get an outside broadcast truck?’
‘The OB’s ready and waiting in Manchester. Where do you want it?’
‘Move it to Scotland tomorrow. Get them to a place called Tarbert on the west bank of Loch Fyne. Get me a mobile number for them, and I’ll call them first thing Friday morning with the final rendezvous.’
‘Do you want to give me your number?’
‘I haven’t got one. I’ll call you.’
‘Are you with . . . our friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘No, that was the deal. I can’t say.’
‘OK, I understand. Just tell me, just so I know if it’s good. Has she told you anything yet?’
Harry plugged on with his chosen course. ‘Not a thing. She won’t. I’ll hear it when you do, on the air.’
‘What sort of state is she in?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘You’re a clever boy, Harry. Take care, please.’
*
The bath, the hot food that followed it, and the huge Scotch Harry poured for her, combined to bring back part of the hard, confrontational Claire that was still wrapped round the depleted inner core. They lay together on a cheap double bed with nylon covers in a room furnished with cheap varnished pine and hung about the walls with cheap Highland scenes. There was no sexual thrill. They were two threatened animals taking primitive physical comfort from huddling together, but their talk was the talk of fighter pilots going into attack against overwhelming odds. There was a quaver in her voice and from time to time she would lose track of her sentence and have to start again.
‘What did Lawless actually do?’
‘This is my best guess. They fixed Beaconsbridge. Maybe not all the different polling stations, maybe only some. Who knows? Anyway they had duplicate ballot boxes prepared. Lawless drove the van into some disused factory and they swapped them and later on, just to make sure nothing leaked, they killed him.’
‘Somebody would have noticed.’
‘No. It all goes back to the main point. You could drive a bus through election security these days. It’s designed to stop one bent candidate doing a low-grade fiddle. We’re talking sophistication and money here, big money. They would have known the counterfoil numbers issued to each polling station. They would have duplicate ballot papers, identical boxes, identical security seals. For the final check, the polling clerk puts in a list of the total number of votes cast at that station. It goes with the boxes. It’s meant to stop anyone adding more votes. I guess they just put in a different list.’
‘All right. Loony right-wingers might just have done that, but where do these Americans come in?’
