Lie of the Land Read online

  As he ate, he became conscious of the watchers and the silence. Maybe he shouldn’t have made the effort to smarten himself up. He glanced round the table, carried on eating. ‘I’m still alive,’ he stated. ‘I’m not the ghost at the feast, I hope.’

  George sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t call it a feast.’

  Carl smiled. ‘Thanks.’ He caught Simone’s eye. ‘For everything.’

  She nodded.

  The boy had lost interest in his food. Isaac was silent, eyeing the skeletal stranger from upstairs who had appeared like magic, like the first time. Only back then lots of bad things had happened. Maybe he was going to make more bad things happen this time.

  Carl slurped his stew, though he had no appreciation of what he was eating, only a studied lifting of the spoon. He began to sweat, food and silent awkwardness going to work on him.

  ‘The Aurora was out the other day and came across a yacht, a big one,’ said George, trying to ease the tension.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Carl, the food dry in his mouth. ‘Simone said.’ He took a sip of water.

  George offered another forkful of food to Isaac, but the boy squirmed in his seat, lips clamped shut and eyes on Carl. George shook his head, exasperated. ‘You’re far too old for this nonsense. Do we have any of those biscuits left?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I do know there is something sweet for boys who eat their dinner.’

  George pressed the fork up to the boy’s mouth. It could have been a shit-covered slug Isaac was being asked to eat, but, after a prolonged show of disgust, he accepted the piece of boiled carrot.

  ‘It’s a pity about the yacht,’ said Carl.

  Isaac chewed another mouthful. Every time Carl spoke he felt pinned back by the boy’s stare. Maybe the kid knows the truth.

  ‘A lot of gear on a boat that size,’ agreed George. ‘She wasn’t in sail, probably broke her moorings down the coast in the storm last week. But the tide took her into the redzone.’

  The only two questions that mattered to Carl had been answered: the redzone was still there and Simone was still pregnant. Nothing else really mattered.

  ‘Too bad,’ he said.

  His mind blank, Carl ate quickly, desperate to leave the table. Isaac’s unyielding scrutiny hastened his exit.

  Stop staring at me, you little fucker, or I’ll stick that fork in your fucking eye.

  After dinner he made for the hotel’s residents’ lounge, where a fire burned beneath a grand hardwood mantelpiece. There was a massive portrait above the fireplace, of some bewigged gentleman of yore gleaming with brocade and buckles, a sword hanging by his side. The guy had more or less founded Inverlair, back when war meant Napoleon. Captain Theodore Melkins looked very satisfied with himself, his military colours and stern smugness glowing above the mantelpiece. It’s amazing how something as simple as processing potash from seaweed could make a man important enough to be preserved in oils.

  Carl went over to the bookshelves. He pulled out a book on geology, and sat down by the fire.

  He read: ‘The Moine Thrust is a linear geological feature in the Scottish Highlands which runs . . . extensive landscape of rolling hills over a metamorphic . . . Ben More Assynt (pictured) in the centre of the belt, is a typical example that rises from a glen of limestone caves . . .’

  He recognised the picture in the book straight away. There was no mistaking it. Now he had a name to go with the unmistakable image of the mountain. Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, a hail shower machine-gunned against the high casement windows. Carl jumped at the sound of ice clattering on glass.

  Fetching a dog-eared road atlas, he traced a path all the way up from Glasgow, along the edge of the Moine Thrust, until he found Ben More Assynt on the map. He recognised it from the drive up, a million years before, looming like something out of legend. Now he knew the mountain’s name; maybe he’d climb it one day. Everything has an identity: a name and a purpose. Even hills. That was the rule. Surely there were still rules to obey.

  Tectonics and the Moine Thrust were the reason for Ben More Assynt’s existence. Shifts and faults and time: a combination that could produce innumerable consequences.

  He pulled another book from the shelf: Highland Animals. Flicking though the pages he learned that adders are Britain’s only poisonous snakes and are found throughout the Highlands. Vipera berus was sure to sink its fangs into him at some point. Perhaps its bite would prove fatal.

  3

  Thick cord rattled against the metal flagpole. Maybe another electrical storm was on its way.

  Carl looked up at the gathering clouds, and wondered what would happen if lightning struck the viewpoint flagpole. Would an arc of current reach out and fry him?

  No flag flew above Inverlair. Maybe the pole had never been used. But there were wooden picnic benches, flaking apart, below on the crumbling concrete platforms, and the concrete stairway that led to the viewpoint was overgrown with a gnarled prickly plant. It had yellow flowers: dollops of sunlight on stunted branches. Honeysuckle was yellow – he knew that, so maybe that’s what the plant was. Surrounding the flagpole, at the highest point of the picnic site, was a waist-high concrete wall. Carl picked his way up the steps, his jeans snagging on inch-long thorns.

  He was now facing inland and had a clear view of the whole village, the steel-grey length of Inverlair Bay, and the tops of the mountains beyond, to the south and east. The hills in the distance could be five miles away, or they could be fifty. It was impossible to tell. There was an interpretative weatherproofed plaque, angled like a lectern, set into the viewpoint’s wall. Each mountain peak on the inland horizon was named, and the area’s geology described. The plaque told him he was exactly 190 metres above sea level.

  The wind whipped the flagpole’s cord again. Carl turned up his collar against the cold breeze, read the rest of what was written on the plaque, then took the steps back down to the path that eventually came out near the hotel’s moss-covered car park. One old car – tyres flat, packed with junk – lay abandoned in a corner.

  Almost a thousand metres of ice. That’s what the plaque had said. Ten thousand years ago there would only have been the tops of the highest hills poking through, nothing but rock and scree and the grinding ice advance.

  The path down to the hotel branched off and took him onto the north road, beyond the last house, where he could relax, the pressure of curious others falling away. He turned up the forestry track and headed inland, between blocks of tightly packed pine trees, up the boulder-strewn slopes of Ben Bronach. Two hundred metres up from the road, beyond the greying swarf of felled timber, an excavator-type digger stood, hydraulic arm poised. Yesterday he had seen it working, roaring, buzz-sawing, stripping and sectioning trunks into manageable lengths, each one processed in less than a minute. He walked the wide access track into the scented forest, climbing, then along a narrow trail, teasing out the contours of Ben Bronach, on a walk he knew too well.

  On the hill’s shoulder he looked down on the village. Inverlair was definitely a rosier prospect from here than seeing it up close. He felt his mind wander, growing less focused. Up here on the hillside there was nothing but wind and open sky to bother him. Even in the middle of Glasgow he hadn’t felt so suffocated, even with CivCon snoopers breathing down his neck 24/7. It was good to get out, to get better, good to walk out of the hotel and away from the village. He was stronger now; a week of generous portions had fattened him.

  He walked.

  There was only one destination that mattered. No point in pretending otherwise. Now that he was well enough he could get there easy enough, following the sheep track through Ben Bronach’s gullies, along the hill’s northern ridge.

  He made the edge of the inland moors in less than an hour, through heather and rushes and bracken, past wind-shivering pools; a bird, some kind of raptor, vigilant, gliding away over the village and the arms of the bay. He walked on, heading downhill off the ridge this time, to where the River Lair rose, oozi
ng from the blanket bog through numberless pores and streams and capillaries.

  Dr Morgan had told him not to overdo things for at least two weeks. A stroll around the village was okay, she said, until he got his strength back. Perhaps she would take a dim view of a nine-mile hike up into the squelching hills on a chilly October day. But he was stronger now, and anyway, he had to go to a certain place. There was unfinished business to finish. And he had to walk. If he stopped he would go crazy.

  Skirting an outlying house at the head of the bay, he started climbing the southern hills, moving away from the sea all the time, but still able to make out the river, sunk deep into the fathoms of peat, before it plunged through Inverlair at the head of the bay. Further on and he crested the hill’s swelling moorland summit, where he could no longer see the sea or the bay.

  Here he was.

  Below him, in a deep glen, was the same farmhouse, the door still wide open, the Range Rover still with one wheel in a stream, and the driver, or what was left of him, scattered between the vehicle and his idyllic downsized cottage-industry-cum-bolthole. The recording in Carl’s head raced to its screaming climax.

  This is the edge of the Inverlair notspot. This is the end. This is where it happened.

  Heart pounding, Carl spun from what he saw and remembered, and half-ran back towards the village. After a while he stopped, turned around.

  No point in running away. Better to let it in, to face it. That was the way it had to be done.

  A while later he was sitting on the ground, looking down at the farmhouse and Range Rover, waterproof trousers keeping out the wet but not the cold on his arse. He took Howard’s deltameter out of his pocket; there were spikes right across the waveform. This was almost as far as he could go before the redzone started to bite. He coughed, pain in his chest. Perhaps he’d pushed himself too hard.

  This pilgrimage, this penance, hadn’t turned out the way he thought it would. Here was the place where the knife had been twisted, where Howard had died. There should be a reckoning, or at least a revelation of some sort. But, after the shock of remembering that day had subsided, there was nothing, just the impassive context of land and sky.

  From his pocket he took out a bottle of water and a plastic bag containing four slices of venison and two waxy cubes of polycarb. Without taking his eyes from the farmhouse, he ate and drank. It might rain; in borrowed clothing he’d be safe and dry.

  He just wouldn’t mention it. That was the way to handle things with Simone. Keep ignoring it and it’ll go away. It: growing inside her, not yet a bump. A lump? Embryo or foetus? There was no accelerated hormonal flood to swell her like a balloon, give her all sorts of cravings and mood swings. She would be an invalid in a few months’ time. Isn’t that what happened? He would end up doing everything for her. She would expect that, and so would everyone else.

  He shook his head. It was hard to believe. The more he thought about it, the more unjust and unfair it seemed. It was almost funny. By next spring, it would come along, and the non-stop crying and shitting would start. Isn’t that what happens? And what would Isaac think — the kid who already thought the Grim Reaper stayed upstairs?

  Man appears. Granny vanishes. Everyone gets sad and starts crying. Now man reappears, and Mum’s talking about a baby. Man is the baby’s daddy, but he is not my daddy. The man from upstairs was the angel of life and death. But maybe kids didn’t think like that, didn’t mull over all the ins and outs of a situation. He didn’t know how they thought.

  It couldn’t be ignored, though. Not a hope in hell. Younger guys might carry on as before until reality kicked them in their dog-blind bollocks. But he couldn’t push it away, could he? There was no bump yet. Nothing obvious. But it was coming. He could wriggle and struggle and ignore it all he liked. She could miscarry. There was still time.

  From the north a gunshot cracked, breaking Carl’s febrile cascade of thoughts. The sound bounced around the bay, fading into a scatter of echoes. He cocked an ear, looked towards Ben Bronach and the ridge, but the gun was not fired again.

  Must be the stalker.

  Should really go and say thanks to the guy. But Carl didn’t even know what he looked like. He’d get round to it. Soon.

  It was no small thing what the man had done.

  A crescent moon came out from behind the clouds. Birds flew towards the forest for the night, and the wind picked up.

  Better get used to it. Better forget about what once had been out there, including himself. Everything is here. There’s no point trying to deny the truth of that. But it wasn’t easy, and just thinking about it made him want to tear his hair out, hurt himself, do something crazy. How could the world just cease to exist? How could it all be unreachable, a shadowy realm of the past? What kind of arrangement was that to come smacking out of clear blue nothing? The whole thing was deranged. Rotten. But the world had been pretty deranged and rotten before the redzone threw a curtain of delta wave sleep around Inverlair. It was no change of state, really, just an end to all the familiar derangement he had known.

  Carl pulled his hat down over his ears and shivered. It was getting dark, and the first nameless stars had come out. At the far end of the glen, pools of still water, like spilt mercury, reflected the half-light in the soundless, windless evening.

  People were watching him, judging him.

  From somewhere below – in the farmhouse glen, but from precisely where he couldn’t say – an animal noise boomed, a deep bellowing that rolled around the slopes. He stood still, listened.

  A cow? It certainly wasn’t a sheep or a dog; hell of a racket whatever it was, as if someone was retching into a toilet bowl. A deer?

  He strained to hear.

  Not a sound came from the glen, its electricity pylons carrying their dead wires to the silent south.

  Wind gusted from the east.

  In an instant it started blowing, with force, picking up bits of dry grass. A few seconds later and the first crackle of electricity fizzed across the upper atmosphere, then another flash, and another, until the ionosphere blazed with a tracery of angry voltage.

  It was just like Howard had said.

  The electrical storm crackled across the eastern sky, lighting up the dark hills. He felt small and exposed under the storm.

  Carl hurried down the rocky slope to the main road, the Atlantic horizon still aglow, sky flashing and sparking behind him in the east. For a split second, he was relieved to be going back to the hotel. He almost formed the word home. There were four walls, a bed and a regular supply of calories given to him by other people. But there was nothing and no one he had known from the life before. Now there was just hunger and the redzone and the consequences of action and inaction.

  As the wind dropped a little, the animal noise came again from the glen below, a roar that rang around the regimented forest. From deep in its throat the cow-dog-bear called, a moaning bass note that swelled and echoed.

  Carl quickened his pace down the gloomy track, between the gorse, and into the dark trees that loomed along the back of isolated houses, stumbling in the fading light. The old fear was behind him, on the hunt. After every few strides he cast a wild glance back through the wind-tossed trees, as if he were being followed, as if he were being watched and there was no escape, and nowhere to find rest.

  July

  4

  The 11 p.m. surveillance drone, tail-light blinking red, banked at 600 metres over the city centre, heading north towards Bishopbriggs. There was something comforting in the regularity of the machine’s routine, beyond his window, as it flew past, on the hour every hour, by day and by night. No matter what was going on in the rest of the world, the CivCon drone turned at the scheduled time, banking left over Glasgow, scanning for ID defaulters and clocking up their zonal debits for the council. Everything was as it had become.

  Carl sat at the window of his third-floor flat. He wasn’t really paying much attention to the drone’s tail-light as he thought about the following day. Poll
okshaws Road was dry and quiet.

  Reports and photos and witness testimony covered his desk. It all added up to a great story, and one his boss would undoubtedly spike. It wasn’t really Eric’s fault though; he didn’t make the rules; he just knew what would happen if they weren’t followed. The newspaper had run out of last-chance saloons. It had called the Emergency Authority’s bluff once too often.

  Carl got up from his desk and made himself a fruit tea. As he flopped onto the sofa, the wall screen bleeped again, for the third time that day.

  He let it ring until his ansa clicked on, watched Sarah’s moon-face in the inset as she left her message. She was still playful, sarcastic, even though it was her fourth unreturned call of the day. Her blonde hair was more ruffled than earlier, her lipstick smudged.

  ‘Hello, my darling,’ she crooned. He reckoned she was stoned; her voice was hoarse. ‘Are you there?’ She waited. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’ve really and truly had enough?’ She smiled, seemed to look right into him. Even though she couldn’t see him, Carl turned away towards the window as she left her message. ‘Sorry I’m making a show of myself,’ Sarah continued. ‘Sorry I over-stepped the mark the other day. I mean, this is as good as it gets, right? Me here and you there, but that’s okay because . . .’

  Carl sighed. ‘Mute ansa,’ he ordered, and Sarah was left to plead with her mascara-lined blue eyes alone. After a minute or so she hung up. Call and message logged.

  He couldn’t figure her out. First of all she seemed not to care about anything expect having fun and sharing her new lenses with him. It was a turn-on; the lenses she’d sent him were amazing. An imitation of life, every pore and hair, reproduced in high-res perfection and beamed right onto his retinas. Like she was actually in the room with him. But it was still just self-stimulation, for all the cleverness embedded in the biogel lenses. With spraysuits they could have crossed over into the promised land of personalised virtual togetherness. Without them, it was literally wanking 500 miles apart. The company promised a secure connection, but Carl had his doubts about that. There was always a chance that CivCon were listening in, although they had more to worry about than a largely neutered journalist at a failing newspaper.