Intrusion (33 page)

‘Excuse me, Nigel.’

Nigel gave him a worried look.

‘Something wrong?’

So his expression must be as much a giveaway as his voice.

‘Maybe. I need to get back to the house.’

‘Is everyone all right?’

‘Oh, yes, nothing like that. It’s just … a bit of an emergency.’

Nigel handed over the car keys.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘Yes, sure, Donald can give me a lift back. Want me to put in a word with the foreman?’

‘Yes please,’ Hugh said, though he didn’t think keeping the
job was top of his list of worries at the moment. ‘Thanks, Dad. See you.’

Nigel wiped droplets of water from his eyebrows, caught Hugh’s elbow and turned him aside.

‘Is this it?’ he asked in a low voice, not looking at Hugh.

‘Could be,’ said Hugh. ‘Police have broken into our flat.’

Nigel swung around, facing him.

‘What could that be about? Not Hope, surely?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing wrong we’ve done, anyway.’

Nigel’s eyes and lips narrowed.

‘I’ll come with you.’

Hugh shook his head. ‘No. I need you to … be around, and not to know where I’ve gone.’

Nigel considered this for a second, then nodded.

‘Don’t do anything foolish,’ he said, as if Hugh were still a teenager, setting off for a night in Stornoway.

Hugh clapped his father’s shoulder and ran to the Nissan. He strapped in, backed out of the awkward space in which it was parked, and bumped down the unpaved track to the road. He turned on the headlights and drove as fast as he dared, swinging around bends, hurtling along straights. Across the moor and into the glen and along to the village. It took him twenty-five minutes. He left the car outside the front gate and sprinted up the drive and around the back of the house.

Hope and Nick stood in the open doorway, wearing wet-weather jackets, boots and hats, and each clutching a small backpack, as if they were going for a walk in the rain. Hugh skidded to a halt, brushed Hope’s cheek with a kiss and Nick’s
head with a pat, then sidled past them and into the house. He stepped out of his boots, stripped off his overall and hard hat and slung them in a corner of the scullery, and ran upstairs to the bedroom. It looked untidy, with the dress that Hope must have thrown off to pull on her trousers crumpled on the bed. Hugh took from the dusty top of the wardrobe the air pistol and pellet box he’d left there as soon as he’d arrived. He fingered inside his shirt pocket to make sure he still had the printed-off map, then picked up from the dressing table the old Silva compass he’d left hanging by its lanyard on the mirror. The little radio was still in his trouser pocket, with a new AA battery in it, along with one spare.

His booted feet thundered down the narrow staircase. He rushed through the living room and into the hallway and pulled on his jacket and boots. He stuck the air pistol in the jacket pocket. He jammed on Nigel’s waterproof hat.

Hope and Nick watched him from the doorway.

‘Why are we in a hurry?’ Nick asked.

‘Something interesting to see,’ said Hugh.

‘Then we’ll need binoculars,’ Nick pointed out.

Hugh tied his bootlaces, stood up, and grabbed the smallest pair of binoculars hanging in the clump of instruments on the coat hooks. He zipped up his jacket, closed the door behind them all and went out into the thin rain.

‘Where do we go?’

Hope’s upturned, enquiring face was beaded with water. She looked a lot less agitated, and more trusting, than he’d expected. This was more than he deserved. He had expected
calls and emails from social services, maybe a visit, perhaps some legal pressure, the sort of thing that could be evaded for long enough by a simple change of address. He’d already sounded out an aunt in Tolsta and a cousin in Garynahine. But at another level, he had contemplated the escape he now had in mind. Why else had he made the map, and brought the pistol? The plan had had the quality of a daydream. Now it seemed the only way out. It also seemed delusional.

He thought, for a moment, about the car at the foot of the drive, and then dismissed it. The vehicle was relevant to the social-services scenario, not to this. If the police were looking for him and Hope, there was nowhere to drive to. Four roads led out of the village. Two were dead ends, on different sides of the same small peninsula. The other two – the Stornoway road over the bridge, and the Timsgarry road up the glen – offered more possibilities but for the same reason would be the first to be blocked. And the car would in any case be tracked automatically.

His mind was made up.

‘We’re going for a walk up the hill,’ he said. ‘Let’s turn off our phones. Nick, do you want to see how people could find their way, before GPS?’

‘Yes,’ said Nick, doubtfully.

Hugh switched off his phone. Hope took out her glasses, looked at them almost helplessly for a moment, then dashed back into the house and came out without them.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, clutching Nick’s hand.

Hugh led them around the back of the house and up the
slope to the fence. He lifted Nick over, pushed the top wire down for Hope, then vaulted the fence himself. He looked at the roads, saw no police cars, and set off up the steep, rocky, heather-covered slope. At this point he didn’t need the map; he remembered the route just fine, partly because it was the only sensible way to go. He watched Nick go a few steps ahead, and let Hope set the pace as she walked beside him.

‘Do you have a plan?’ Hope asked.

He had, but he wasn’t telling her.

‘To hide out in the hills. Shelter in that tunnel I told you about. At least until we know what’s going on.’

‘Hours? Days?’

‘Not days,’ Hugh said. ‘Maybe overnight.’

‘We won’t find out what’s going on without you turning your phone on. And then we’ll be located in minutes.’

Hugh slapped his hip. ‘I have a radio. If the police are looking for us, it’ll be on the local news.’

‘Why did they raid our flat? I mean, they must know we’re here anyway.’

‘Looking for evidence.’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘That terrorism nonsense.’

‘Oh, I know. I’m not kidding myself. I’ve been so worried about that. Ever since that call yesterday.’

‘What call yesterday?’

‘It was that woman who spoke to you before. Geena. She was using a friend’s phone, to get around the block. Same old thing about the magic gene. Her friend claimed he’d run a sim that
showed you could see tachyons, or something. I just told her the same answer as I gave you. Not interested.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Hugh tried not to sound as surprised and indignant as he felt.

‘I didn’t think it was worth bothering you about,’ Hope said. ‘But now … ’

‘Oh yes, but now!’ said Hugh. ‘Fuck!’

He didn’t need to spell it out. Something about that call had tipped Hope’s personal profile over the edge into something of active interest. The raid on their flat would be only one part of the response: the police in Stornoway would no doubt have been alerted before the raid even took place, and were almost certainly already on their way.

‘Sorry,’ said Hope.

‘Can’t be helped.’ He smiled sidelong at her, put an arm around her shoulders. For a moment she leaned against him, then they walked on.

How long would it be, Hugh wondered, before she realised that hiding in the hills would be impossible for more than a few hours, that running away was not going to help their case at all, that the plan he’d told her made no sense whatsoever and that his secret plan would sound delusional even to him, were he to speak it aloud?

He looked back again. Still no sign of pursuit.

They reached the top of the hill after about half an hour’s climbing. The smirr of drizzle had drifted inland. Out to the north and west, the sky had cleared. Hugh didn’t welcome the blue.

They all paused, taking a breath. Hugh took out the binoculars and scanned the roads. Nothing, nothing … wait. There. A police car came around the shoulder of the far hill, on the Stornoway road. No flashing light, no siren. No rush. No need, Hugh thought bitterly. He nudged Hope, and pointed. She suppressed a gasp.

Hugh stepped back from the skyline and walked a few yards on to the plateau.

‘Now,’ he said to Nick, ‘let me show you how we find our way with just a compass and a map.’

He didn’t really need the map, nor the waste of the minute or two spent taking the compass bearing and explaining the process to Nick. He could see the lochs, way ahead across the wilderness of boulder and outcrop, bog and bracken, heather and moss. But somehow it had seemed important to include the boy in it, to show him at least the rudiments of a skill that he might not otherwise come to know about, one small element of independence from the satellite-surveillance world. And more urgently, to make him feel part of this, involved and not just dragged along.

Hope passed Nick a water bottle, then a chocolate bar. She offered one to Hugh. He shook his head. On they went. Hugh took to swinging Nick across dips and holes in the peat and clefts in the rock. The sun was out now, the shadows short. Hugh opened his jacket, and took his hat off, then put it back on again.

From above, he heard a faint, persistent buzz. He looked up, and back. The drone was climbing in an ascending, widening spiral above the village and its surrounding hills. Its next turn would take it almost overhead. There was nothing to be done about it. Nick looked delighted at the sight.

‘What are they looking for?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hugh. ‘Maybe someone’s got lost on the hills.’

Now Nick looked worried.

‘Or maybe they’re just practising,’ said Hope.

They reached the loch. Hugh stopped, checked the map and the compass, confirming his memory.

‘That way,’ he said.

They hurried around the shore of the small loch, and on across the rough, rocky ground.

The buzz of the drone became louder. They all looked back. The drone swooped towards them like some predatory pterodactyl. Nick cried out, his arm shielding his face. The drone passed a few metres overhead, a small unmanned microlight about a metre and a half in wingspan, then soared to circle high above.

‘Are they looking for us?’ Nick asked.

‘We’re not lost,’ said Hope. ‘So they must be practising.’

Hugh looked behind him again, and saw five figures just reaching the top of the hill, skylined. They weren’t even running. They were that confident. Hope saw them too.

‘This is useless,’ she said. Nick was as usual a few paces ahead, unaware of the pursuit, out of earshot of her low voice. ‘We can’t hide.’

‘We can,’ said Hugh. ‘There is a place.’

‘I knew this,’ said Hope. ‘I knew that’s where you’re taking us. Your bright land.’

‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘that this is completely insane?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she told him, fiercely. ‘I believe you more than you believe yourself.’

Hugh grinned at her. Together they ran a few steps forward, to where Nick hesitated at a hollow in the heather, and caught a hand on each side and swung and jumped at the same time.

‘Nearly there,’ said Hugh.

‘Nearly there,’ Hope echoed.

She didn’t believe him at all, Hugh thought. It would have alarmed him if she had. He wouldn’t have wanted her caught up in it, turning his forlorn hope – hah! – into a
folie à deux
. She was coming along, she was going along with this, because she needed to know, to see for herself whatever it was that had so shaped his life, and indirectly her own.

She couldn’t, surely, expect to escape, into that past or future or parallel world from which his visions came? At some level he, he knew, didn’t expect to either. He just wanted to give them a run for it.

He looked behind. Five police officers, now about half a kilometre away.

Up ahead, Nick stopped and looked back, and then pointed.

‘Dad! Mum! There’s policemen behind us!’

Hope and Hugh hurried up.

‘It’s all right,’ said Hope. ‘They must be looking for someone. Maybe we can help them.’

Hugh looked down. Nick had stopped because he’d reached the edge of a hollow far too wide for him to jump over, and almost two metres deep.

It was the place.

‘It’s a game,’ Hugh said. ‘The police are practising finding people on the moor. And here’s how we can help them. We’ll hide, and make it more interesting.’

‘Where can we hide?’ Nick asked.

‘Right here,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll show you.’

He sat down on the edge, then pushed himself off, landing with a lurch. He turned and lifted Nick down, then caught Hope under the shoulders as she slithered over the bank. To the pursuers they must have simply disappeared into the ground. Even the drone was, at that moment, below their skyline. Hugh looked quickly to left and right. The dark rectangular opening was still there.