The Falconer's Tale (6 page)

“You hear me?” Dave said.

“I did.”

“You're done. Head out.” He jerked one thumb toward the
door. “Look for a Land Rover.”

Hackbutt at last managed to open his mouth and wheeze,
“Yeah, but—Jack, Jeez—”

Piat was on his feet. He patted Hackbutt's shoulder.
“Everything'll be fine. It'll be great.” He glanced at Dave and
saw an expression of malice and triumph. Dave, he knew,
was right—the case officer's the boss—but my god! he was
a shit. Piat walked the few steps to the entryway, picked his
raincoat off a hook, and opened the door. It was raining
harder. He didn't look back because he didn't want to see
Hackbutt's face.

He went out to the road and started looking for a Land
Rover, found one around the corner of the restaurant. Partlow
was just visible through the rain at the wheel. Piat climbed
in the passenger door.

“There we are, Jerry,” said Partlow. “Probably the easiest
ten thousand dollars you ever earned.” He put the car in
gear and started out of town. The big chassis barely fit the
single-lane road past the old inn that dominated the north
end of Salen.

“That's it?” asked Piat. “And you're sure
Dave
can handle
this from here?”

Partlow changed gears. “I'm sure Dave can handle him as
well as anyone, Jerry.” There were headlights visible on the
long hill down from Aros Mains, and Partlow pulled into a
lay-by to let the other car pass.

Piat considered a number of bitter replies and realized that,
whatever mistakes Dave made, he himself was out of it. For
two days, he had returned to the world of being a case officer.
He had allowed Hackbutt's needs to become the horizon and
limit of his world, just as he always had. The shoulder to cry
on. The voice in the dark.

All done. Never again, and all that. He took a deep breath
and let it out.

“So, now what?” Piat asked. He was gripping the hand-
hold over the passenger window a little too hard. Partlow
was driving fast in the rain, taking curves too aggressively,
and with what Piat saw as a reckless disregard for the possibility
of further oncoming vehicles on a single-lane road.

“I take you back to the hotel. You check out and take the
ferry back to the mainland. And goodbye.”

Piat trod hard on his anger. Partlow's dismissal was a little
too much like Dave's.
Stick to what matters
. “When do I get
my money? And my rods?”

“Why, immediately, if you like. Really, Jerry, your constant
paranoia depresses me. You are done. You were hired to
perform a service and you did a fine job. No hard feelings,
I hope?”

Piat eyed an upcoming double hairpin turn with some
misgivings, but he said, “No, Clyde. For once, I have no hard
feelings.” He shrugged, mostly at himself. But Partlow was
clearly pleased with the progress of the operation, and he
probably had money just lying around—“Although I did lose
a thousand dollars' worth of fishing in Iceland, a trip I had
planned and anticipated for some time.”

“Jerry, just come out with it. I take it we're leading up to
a demand for more cash?” Partlow sounded like a loving but
aggrieved parent.

“Well.” Piat's grasp on the handle loosened as Partlow
reached the two-lane road that led into Tobermory. “Well,
to be frank, Clyde, I'd think you could get me an airplane
ticket and refund me the value of my trip to Iceland.”

Partlow sighed. “I had intended to add fifteen hundred
dollars as a success bonus, Jerry. Is that sufficient? You can
purchase your own ticket.”

Piat watched the town of Tobermory spreading out below
them as they drove around the traffic circle. “Throw in the
car for the rest of the day,” he said. “Let me have the car.
I'll go fishing.”

Partlow sighed again. “Jerry, sometimes I think you aren't
quite sane. It's raining. It's cold.”

“So you won't leave the hotel. It's a spate, Clyde. Give me
the money and my rods and I'll get an afternoon's fishing
here. And no hard feelings.” Curious how easily manipulated
Partlow was on this. It had never occurred to Piat before
that Partlow wanted his approval. But he did.
Interesting
.

Partlow turned and looked at him, as if assessing him.
Almost certainly
was
assessing him. Then he smiled. “What
the hell. Just don't run off with the car, Jerry, okay? It's a
rental, and I signed for it.”

Piat smiled. “Clyde, why would I run off with the car?”

Piat spent thirty minutes with Partlow signing forms. It
amused him that Clyde was so punctilious on his forms—
another sign that the man hadn't spent enough time running
real agents. Perhaps that was the root of his insecurity. Piat
complied cheerfully, however, especially when he discovered
that he could sign all the forms in a cover name. He acquired
sixty-five hundred dollars in large bills and retrieved his
fishing gear and his battered backpack.

In his own room at the Mishnish he called Irene. Hackbutt
would still be at the restaurant; Piat's responsibility to the
operation was over; what better time to get her to join him?
Except that nobody answered at the farm. He called airlines
at Glasgow and discovered that, as he had suspected, he
couldn't get back to Greece for twenty-four hours. Irene was
vanishing over his horizon—Hackbutt would get back to the
farm soon; complications would set in. He shrugged. In an
hour, he was in the car, which he loathed as too big and too
flashy—and too damned short to carry his rod already set up.

He had ideas about where to go to fish—he'd virtually
memorized the green tourist brochure in his room. He sat
in the car, watching the rain over the sea, and tried to
remember how fishing worked in Scotland. You had to buy
tickets—there was virtually no public fishing. At least, that's
what he'd read in the brochure. A glance at his watch told
him that it was two p.m. He shut off the car and went back
into the hotel.

The windows of the bookstore were full of children's books
and travel guides to catch the tourist's eyes, but as soon as
he was through the door and out of the rain he saw the case
of flies and the corner dedicated to fishing. The floor was old
wood, the ceiling low—it was an eighteenth-century shop
front, or perhaps two joined together.

A pretty young woman stood behind the counter, perhaps
sixteen years old—a little young for Piat, but a pleasure to
see. “I wonder if you could tell me about the fishing,” Piat
asked. “I have the afternoon.”

“Would you be wanting the trout, then?” she asked.

“Salmon?” Piat asked, a little wistfully. “Or is there sea
trout fishing here?”

“Some, aye. My da would know better.” She spoke quite
seriously—fishing was a serious subject here. “He's in the
back. Shall I get him, then?”

She made Piat feel quite old. “Yes, please,” he said, like a
boy on his best behavior.

She vanished into an office in the back. Piat began to
browse. The front of the store was full of books for tourists,
with maps and walking guides and a whole series of books
on the genealogy and history of the island. All locally printed.
He flipped through one, a walking guide with historical notes.
The antiquarian in him automatically counted the hill forts,
the duns, the standing stones—the island boasted a strong
archaeological record.

“Are you looking for sea trout?”

Piat turned from the book rack and saw a tall man, gaunt,
with a huge smile and a shock of black hair. He did not have
the expected accent.

“Yes. Sea trout,” said Piat.

“Not what they used to be, I'm afraid. Had some Americans
catching them in the Aros last year—they come every year.
Aros estuary. I can give you that for this evening, but there's
no point in going there now. The tide's down.”

Piat nodded. “How much?”

“Five pounds for the estuary. It's best fished two hours
either side of high tide. I wouldn't even start on it until six.
I'm Donald, by the way.”

“Jack,” said Piat, shaking hands. He'd been Jack for two
days. The lie came automatically, and Piat thought
Why'd
I
do that?
“I'd like to fish this afternoon, too.”

“You have a car?” Donald asked. Donald spoke the way
Clyde Partlow wanted to speak, with no trace of an island
accent—like someone who had gone to all the best schools.
Eton. Oxford. Maybe Cambridge. “I don't guarantee you'll
get any fish, but Loch Làidir is available.” He seemed wistful.
“It's quite a climb from the road.”

The man was already filling out a bright orange card. “Leave
this on the dashboard of your car.”

Piat watched him for a few seconds. “Where am I going?”
he asked.

“Oh, yes. Right.” Donald flashed his gigantic smile again.
“Do you know the island at all?”

“I can get from here to Salen,” Piat replied with a shrug.
“I've driven over near Dervaig.”

“Right. You'll want a map.” He pointed to the rack of
Ordnance Surveys. He rattled off driving directions. “It should
take you less than half an hour to get there. Then the climb—
you see this stream?—strenuous but worth it.” His forefinger
covered the mark on the map. “Just follow it up to the loch.
Nothing in it but wee trout. The sea trout come up the other
side, from the sea, of course. Once you reach the loch, it's
still difficult going—rock all the way round. But there's a
gravel beach on this shore. I'd fish there, by the crannog.”

Piat saw a tiny island on the Ordnance map, with the word
“crannog” in minute italics. “What's a crannog?” he asked.

Donald laughed. “A local oddity. An artificial island. Built
long ago. You have waders?”

Piat shook his head.

Donald considered him. Piat knew that Donald had just
written him off as a novice.

“I forgot them,” he muttered.

“You really will need them.” Then, cheerfully, “I suppose
that you could just skip about on the shore. The loch is very
deep in places.”

With a sigh for the money, Piat chose a pair of heavy
rubber thigh waders from the fishing equipment. He
wondered if the bulky things would go in his pack. He noted
that the shop had light waders—very pricey. But they'd fit
in his pack, and in effect, Partlow was paying.
What the hell
.

Piat paid.

The climb to the loch
was
spectacular. The terrain was very
like Iceland, with shocks of coarse grass over gravel and
volcanic rock. There was a path at first, but it soon divided
into hundreds of sheep tracks, all going in the same general
direction up the stream. It took him almost an hour to climb
over the last crest and look down into what had to be the
caldera of an extinct volcano. The shingle of gravel was clearly
visible across the loch, and so was the crannog, seen at this
distance as a humped island with a single tree growing from
it, the tree visible for a mile in any direction because it was
the only one. Again, Piat was reminded of the immense vistas
of Africa.

Beyond the far lip of the caldera was only sky. High above,
an eagle circled. Piat drank a cup of tea from his thermos
and started down. The sense of openness—freedom, even—
Piat couldn't think of the origin of the tag, but the words
above him, only sky
ran around and around his head. The
Bible? The Beatles?

It was three-thirty before he arrived on the gravel and set
up his rod. He fished the shallow water between the gravel
and the crannog for fifteen minutes, hooking and releasing
a half-dozen minute brown trout. Then he put on the light,
stocking-foot waders, a wet task in the rain, and pulled his
boots on over them. No choice there. His boots were in for
a pounding.

He worked the seaward end of the gravel, moving slowly
into the deeper water. The loch itself was quite deep and
very clear, so that when the watery sun made momentary
appearances, he could see the complex rock formations in
the depths. Right at his feet was a hollow cone of rock thirty
feet across and so deep in the middle that light couldn't penetrate
it, some sort of ancient volcanic vent. He cast to the
edge of the vent and immediately caught a strong brown
trout, perhaps a pound, which he watched rise from the
depths to seize the sea-trout fly. As far as he could see, the
loch was short on food for fish and long on fish, but watching
the predatory glide of the brown to his fly was pure joy.

A younger and braver fisherman could walk out along the
vent's top ridge to fish the deeper water. Piat actually considered
it for a moment while he landed the brown trout before
deciding that the creeping cowardice of age was going to win
this one. He released the brown. He'd eat in a restaurant for
his last meal on the island, and they wouldn't want to cook
his fish.

The crannog rose like a temptation, only fifteen or twenty
meters off shore, the perfect platform from which to fish the
vent, and whatever further wonders might lurk in the loch
beyond. Piat climbed out of the water on the shingle and
eyed the crannog. The water was too deep to walk out
directly—he'd be over the top of his belt at the midpoint,
soaked to the skin and cold. But there were stones under
the surface of the water, two sets of stepping stones. The
stones themselves were well down, but he
thought
he could
move from one stone to the next without going over his
waders.

Piat knew he was going to attempt it. He laughed at
himself while he drank some tea, because his failure to
accept the lure of the vent ridge meant that he was going
to try and prove himself on something just as ridiculous.
Partlow had thought he was crazy for fishing in the rain.
Piat raised his cup of tea to Partlow. Then he stowed it, put
his pack under a particularly large clump of grass as the
best shelter from the rain available, and studied the stones
one more time.