Intrusion (34 page)

‘Let’s hide in here.’

Hope and Nick followed him as he ducked into the culvert’s entrance. Nick hung back, just inside.

‘Don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Dark.’

‘It’s all right,’ Hugh said. ‘I came here when I was a boy, and it’s all right. There’s something really exciting inside. Have you got your torch?’

Nick reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a yellow plastic torch and switched it on. Hugh turned away, blinking at the after-image, and switched on his own torch. Hope’s beam joined it, wavering around the floor and walls.

The floor was damp, and the smells were stronger than he remembered. Old concrete, mould, rotted vegetation, droppings that had dried and then got wet again. He had to bend almost double to walk forward. He looked behind, at Hope and Nick huddled together. Hope looked excited, surprised, Nick a little scared.

‘I’ll go in front,’ he said. ‘Nick behind me, OK?’

‘Yes,’ said Hope, easing Nick forward.

They’d taken only a step or two when the drone’s buzz came out of nowhere behind them, loud in the tunnel, a waft of air disturbing the floor litter. Hugh could imagine the drone banking to angle its camera, skimming the lip of the gully, and the cops running. He hastened forward, torch beam probing ahead. The downward slope and rightward curve were just as he recalled, his progress more uncomfortable with his adult height, but quicker.

He saw the light ahead, and stopped, switching off his torch. Nick bumped against the back of his legs.

‘Do you see it?’ Hugh said, looking back. ‘The light.’

‘Yes,’ said Nick.

Hope was peering forward, over Nick’s head, and had just opened her mouth to say something when a much brighter light shone behind her. An amplified voice boomed down the tunnel, echoing against the sides, distorted but plain enough:

‘Armed police! Come out at once! Throw out your weapon!’

‘
What
bloody weapon?’ said Hope.

Hugh gave her a feral grin, and slapped his jacket pocket.

‘Oh God,’ said Hope. ‘What use is that?’

‘It’s not for them,’ Hugh said. ‘Come on!’

And with that he lowered his head and shoulders and almost ran, knees partly bent, in an ape-like shamble. The light ahead became brighter than the light behind. He felt the fresh air on his face again. He guessed Hope felt it too; he heard her gasp.

Another shout echoed down the tunnel.

Hugh ignored it. The light was now plainly a rectangular opening a few metres ahead.

‘Hugh,’ Hope said, ‘they’re coming after us!’

He looked backward. Were those shadows, moving, on the sides of the tunnel, not far behind?

‘Nearly there!’ he said.

He flashed an encouraging grin at Nick. The boy didn’t look back at him. His gaze was fixed on the light ahead. Behind Nick, Hope was stumbling along, in the same half-crouch, torch swaying in front of her, head down. Hugh couldn’t see her face.

He looked ahead and found himself a step or two from the door in the hill. He reached back, catching Nick’s hand, and drew forward, squeezing to one side so that Nick could press in
alongside him and look too. Side by side they took the final few steps, and gazed out.

Hugh saw the same landscape as he’d seen before, but this time in summer, the steep hillside covered not with snow but with heather and gorse and patches of grass speckled with daisies and buttercups. Woodsmoke drifted above the small houses and huts in the middle distance, and some way beyond them, the sea-loch shone blue.

For a moment, woodsmoke apart, it could have been static scenery. Then the bat-like shape of a hang-glider rushed into the view, as if it had just been launched from a little farther uphill on the slope behind and above their heads. Hugh saw the pilot’s legs swing to the side as the glider banked and passed out of view.

‘Wow!’ said Nick. ‘It’s real!’ He shaded his eyes, leaning forward, peering out.

Hope had come to a halt right behind. She reached forward and gripped Nick’s shoulders.

‘Hugh!’ she groaned. ‘Please! Don’t
do
this to us!’

Her voice didn’t echo. The heavy footsteps not far behind her did. Over his shoulder, over her shoulder, Hugh saw the swaying lights, the shadowed figures moving slowly forward. As he looked back, they came to a halt. They might have been twenty metres away.

‘Don’t do what?’ Hugh asked.

‘Don’t wade into that pool.’

‘Pool? There’s no pool.’ He turned back to the light, waving a hand at the opening. ‘It’s – it’s what I told you I saw long ago. It’s open! We can go through!’

‘There’s
nothing there
, Hugh.’ She was still clutching Nick’s shoulders, but she looked as if she wanted to grab Hugh’s and shake him. ‘It’s just
water
, and the torchlight shining off it. It’s deep, it must be, the slope goes sharp down and the roof comes down to the top of the water. You’ll drown, and you’ll drown Nick.’

‘No, Mummy!’ Nick cried. ‘It’s real! It’s not a picture! It’s a nice place! Why can’t you see it?’

‘I can’t see it because it’s
not real
,’ Hope said, to Hugh rather than to Nick.

Hugh looked from her beseeching, angry, tearful face to the hills and the blue sky outside. He felt dismayed and defeated.

From behind him a voice boomed:

‘Throw down your weapon! Raise your hands and turn around!’

‘Oh, fuck this!’ Hugh snarled. He reached into his pocket, pushing his hand down hard in the squeeze between him and Nick, and pulled out the air pistol. He passed it to his other hand and groped for the ammo box. It might have seemed to Hope he was trying to turn around, to bring the futile weapon to bear.

‘No!’ Hope cried. ‘Hugh, no!’

She let go of one of Nick’s shoulders and lunged to grab Hugh’s wrist. He evaded her, and threw pistol and carton as far away as he could in front of him. He thought he heard a clink as the pistol hit the ground outside; a skitter of metal on rock. Then he lifted both hands above his head, stepped forward and turned around, blocking Nick between him and Hope. The
light from the torches shone straight in his face. He couldn’t see who was holding them.

‘It’s all right!’ he shouted. ‘We’re not armed! We’re coming out!’

‘Stay where you are! Throw your bags and torches forward!’

‘It’s
my
torch,’ Nick protested, as Hope took it from him.

‘It’s all right,’ Hope whispered. ‘We’ll get them back.’

She slipped the small rucksack from Nick’s shoulders, and unslung her own.

‘We’re doing that now,’ she called out, and tossed the bags forward, then the torches, still shining. Some kind of pole or probe waved above the bags, poked them, then withdrew.

‘Walk forward slowly with your hands in front of you and away from your sides.’

Then:

‘The child first.’

‘No, Mummy.’

‘He’s afraid,’ Hope shouted back.

‘All right,’ the voice boomed.

They walked forward, Nick upright and straight with his hands up, as if playing soldiers; Hugh and Hope knock-kneed, bowed, arms outspread as wide as the cramped space would permit. In front of them, the shadowed figures and the lights backed away. Hugh took a last look over his shoulder. The light was still there, the door to the bright land.

He turned his head away from it and walked forward, into the different light, the light at the far end of the tunnel.

Hope emerged from the culvert into the gully, daylight, sunlight, and arrest. Her arms were grabbed the moment she stepped out, and the two policemen rushed her up the gravel slope to the end of the gully in seconds. They cuffed her hands behind her back and ran a scanner up and down her body. She was just able to turn her head enough to see Nick being scooped up by a policewoman and carried, yelling, thrashing and lashing out with all four limbs, to the other end of the gully. Good boy, she thought. Get in a bite while you’re at it. A moment later, Hugh stumbled out and was grabbed too.

Then, to her utter surprise and indignation, she was shoved down on to her knees.

‘Hope Morrison,’ said one of the cops, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of offences under the Children and Young Persons Protection (Scotland) Act.’

‘What?’ Hope yelped.

‘You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and recorded and may be used in evidence … ’

He was a big man with a Lewis accent and the correlated ruddy, freckled features and sandy hair, and looked slightly embarrassed as he recited the formula. Hope turned her head around and looked up at him.

‘Look, this is about the fix! I know it is! I’ll take the bloody fix! It’s in my pocket! Just give me it and some water, you can put it in my mouth yourself if you like.’

At that moment, she meant it; she meant it as firmly as she’d ever meant any promise in her life.

‘Do you understand what you have just been told, Mrs Morrison?’

‘Yes, I understand. Don’t take the boy! He has nothing to do with this. Just take him to the house down the hill, or Mairi’s shop, she’s his grandmother.’

‘Well, Mrs Morrison, that’s—’

Another voice and accent interrupted. ‘That’s not for us to decide, Constable.’

Anything Hope might have said next was drowned out by the sound of a helicopter, approaching and then landing behind her. She felt its downdraught through her clothes, whipping her hair. As the rotors’ throb slowed to a steady whump, earmuffs were placed on her, and she couldn’t hear anything. Two men in flying suits hurried past, carrying between them some heavy apparatus and a coil of cable, towards the
gully. Her elbows were grabbed; she was hauled to her feet and propelled towards the helicopter. It was a big yellow Sea King. Her shins banged on the steps. Inside, she was pushed into a bucket seat, facing the rear of the cabin, her arms around the seat back, and was strapped in using the fitted safety belts. Her ankles were zip-tied to the seat’s supports.

The two officers who’d grabbed her then moved towards the front of the cabin. She turned her head around just in time to see Hugh likewise bundled on board. He had a hood over his head and face, with earmuffs on top of it. He was pushed out of her sight. Then the door was closed.

‘Where’s Nick?’ Hope yelled, struggling against the straps. Her voice sounded strange. ‘Where’s our son?’

The Leosach constable came around and stood in front of her. He gestured with his finger across his lips, and mouthed, ‘Shut up!’

‘Where’s our son?’ Hope shouted again.

From an inside pocket the policeman took a paper sachet and ripped it open, then slapped an adhesive tape, like a sticking-plaster without a pad, across Hope’s lips. Then he went away.

She tried to open her mouth but the tape hurt too much when it pulled on the skin. The engine’s vibration changed, the noise became loud even through the ear protection, and the floor lurched and tipped. Acceleration and inertia swayed her, this way and that. After a minute or two the aircraft levelled off into forward flight. Hope slumped in the seat, her mind lurching as uncontrollably as her body had during the take-off. One moment she would be frantic at
the thought of Nick alone among the strange people who had taken her from him; the next she would reassure herself with images of him being taken to Mairi’s place by a kindly policewoman. Then she would think of him falling into the care system, taken away, fostered – no! They couldn’t do that!

But she had just been arrested under the child-protection laws … which meant they
could
do that … and that thought would segue into relief that at least she hadn’t been arrested under the terrorism laws, which she’d half expected. Under the child-protection laws she could fight, she could get legal support, she wouldn’t just disappear into the global archipelago of interrogation cells and black sites and ghost prisons, about which the authorities were reticent but rumour was eloquent.

But Hugh had been hooded, and that wasn’t something they did for child-protection arrests, except for abusers, and it couldn’t be that, so maybe he was being arrested under the terrorism laws …

At this point she realised that she was inflicting on herself the kind of undermining and disorientation that the arrest and interrogation process was designed to induce, and to which she would no doubt be subjected in the coming hours and maybe days, and that she might as well leave it to the professionals, who at least knew when to stop, or so they claimed, though maybe …

Stop.

She stopped, and turned her head to the side, not so far as to be uncomfortable, but far enough to let her see the patch of
sunlight on the floor. She concentrated on that, and on imagining the land below.

The helicopter landed. The two policemen reappeared in front of her, and released Hope from the seat straps and leg restraints. She stood up, and stuck her chin forward. The policeman who’d put the tape across her mouth shook his head. He and his colleague took her by the upper arms and escorted her to the doorway, and then one of them went in front to guard and guide her down the steps on to a runway. A police car was waiting just beyond the rotors’ circuit.