A Line in the Sand (42 page)

tyre screams and panicked shouts. There were enough complications in

Bill Davies's work day without added responsibility for the

neighbours.

ing the bell.

He felt the burden of it, and stamped up the path to r

The

previous week, he would have sworn it couldn't happen, that he would be

pal's family.

emotionally involved with his princi

Blake told him that a dog team had arrived three hours earlier, found a

trail through the gardens down the green, across rough ground and

had

lost the trail in the river. Apparently there was no blood on the trail.

e dogs had worked the riverbank, Blake said, but had failed

Th

to regain the scent. A van had come an hour before and collected

the

assault rifle.

How were they, in the house? Blake shrugged, they were predictable.

edictable? They were on the floor.

What was pr

Would they get off the floor? And again Blake shrugged, as if it

his concern, but the woman had cried in the night and twice

wasn't

277

the

man had come down the stairs and poured whisky, swigged it and gone back up. They'd had the kid in the bed with them.

Was Blake, ten hours later, sure he'd hit the man? Blake was sure and,

to emphasize his certainty, led him to the car and showed him the

sharp

dent in the paintwork over the near side wheel.

A small car, a city runabout type, came towards them. Instinctively, his hand slipped inside his outer coat and rested on the Glock.

He saw a young man at the wheel, his eyes raking the ground ahead

as he

approached. Bill Davies thought he was looking for the evidence of what had happened in the night but there was nothing for him to see.

It

was like the aftermath of a road accident when the fire brigade had hosed down the tarmac, the traffic police had swept up the glass and very truck had towed away the wrecked vehicles.

the reco

stopped. The window was lowered. The young man, stubble

The car

on

his face, tie loosened, held up an ID card. Davies thought he had been

up all night.

kham, Geoff Markham, I'm the liaison from Thames House.

"I'm Mar

Are

you Bill Davies?"

He nodded, didn't bother to reply.

"Pleased to meet you. They're singing your praises at our place, up to

defence of a target. We'd

the rafters. I mean, it was a quality

have

expected unadulterated chaos, but what you did was brilliant.

There's

a big meeting this morning, up at secretary-of-state level, that's why

I'm here, for liaison. There has to be an evaluation of how the

target

will take the pressure waste of time, really, because your report

indicates exceptional calm. We'd have reckoned they'd be screaming and

278

bawling and packing their bags. What was it like?"

Davies tried a thin smile.

"Well, it's what you're trained for, yes? We understand the dogs lost

him on the way to the marshes going south... I'll talk to your

principal later, when I've had a walk about the place and found

somewhere to bed down. Hope I won't be in your way. There's talk of

putting the Army in to flush him out, but that's for the meeting to decide..."

"I won't have it, I can't accept it." The secretary of state flexed his fingers nervously, ground the palms of his hands together.

"We should be there, we've the expertise." The colonel had driven from

Hereford through the dawn hours.

"Out of the question, there has to be a different way."

"Special Forces are the answer, not policemen."

Fenton was there with Cox, at the side of the secretary of state but a

step back from him. It amused Fenton to see the politician writhe in

the confrontation with the stocky, barrel-bodied soldier. He

understood. The Regiment's commitment to Northern Ireland was

reduced:

the colonel was touting for work for his people, and for justification of their budget.

"With the military and their back-up, all their paraphernalia, equipment, we escalate way beyond any acceptable level to

government."

cannot do it, Counter-revolutionary Warfare wing should

"Policemen

be

deployed," the colonel demanded.

"The military going through those marshes, like it's a pheasant-beat, a

nding in gunfire and a corpse. That's an admission of

fox-hunt, e

our

279

re."

failu

"Then you take the risk on your shoulders for the life of this man, and

for the lives of his family we can do it."

The colonel wore freshly laundered camouflage fatigues and his boots glowed. Fenton and Cox were, of course, in suits. The politician was

eed, dressed down for a Sunday morning in corduroys and

of the new br

a

r. At Thames House, they harboured no love for the

baggy sweate

Special

ice Regiment. The gunning-down by plain-clothes soldiers

Air Serv

of

three unarmed Provisional IRA terrorists in daylight, in a crowded street in Gibraltar had been, in the opinion of the Security Service hierarchy, simply vulgar.

before he launched

Each time, the moment

mself in speech, the secretary of state glanced at Fenton and Cox

hi

as

might offer him salvation, and each time both men gazed away.

if they

uld smack of persecution.

"It wo

We have close to two million Muslims

y gun-club drive could be

in the country, the effect of a militar

tastrophic for race relations in the United Kingdom."

ca

o you want the job done or don't you?"

"D

ations are fragile enough. Even now we're walking a

"Those rel

e between the cultures.

tightrop

Deployment of the Army against what

is

d his inevitable death, would create

probably a single individual, an

ngerous tensions, quite apart from the effect on international

da

l thwacked his fist into the palm of his hand.

dialogue... The colone

"The idea of sending policemen into those marshes, that sort of gainst a dangerous fanatic, is preposterous."

terrain, a

nother way, there has to be."

"A

My men have to go in for him."

"No.

The politician rocked and reached out to his table to steady himself.

enton thought, he saw an image of camouflaged soldiers

Perhaps, F

dragging a body from the water of those hideous marshes that bordered the road going away from the godawful place.

280

ps he saw an image of young Muslims barricading streets in old

Perha

mill towns of central and northern England. Perhaps he saw an image of

a British diplomat being pulled from his car by the mob in Tehran

or

Karachi, Khartoum or Amman. Every politician, every minister of

t he had ever known, was traumatized when the men came from

governmen

the dark crevices at the edge of his fiefdom, did not confide,

demanded

free-range action, and dumped on the desk a sack-load of

lity. The colonel had his finger up, wagged it at the

responsibi

secretary of state as if he prepared to go in for the kill..... there ther way.

is no o

's moment.

It was Fenton

He enjoyed, always, a trifle of mischief.

He

nd Cox nodded encouragement.

looked at Cox, a

Fenton smiled warmly.

"I think I can help. I think I can suggest an alternative

"

procedure...

ad been there through the night and all of the day before.

He h

The

necessary stillness and silence were as second nature to him.

In that time he had eaten two cold sausages given him by his mother and

not needed more.

the worst of the wind.

He sat motionless, sheltered by a rock from

He

was a thousand feet above the small quarry beside the road where the waited, two hundred feet above the escarpment of raw stones

police

and

tree sprigs where the eyrie was.

weathered

He had his telescope and

the binoculars but he did not use them; he could see all that he needed to see

out

with

them. There was only the wind's light whistle to break

the silence rippling around him; it was an hour since he had last

nto the radio the police had given him, and the birds at

whispered i

the

rie were quieter now.

ey

he egg thieves came to the mountains the police always called

When t

him

281

as they told him, he was the best.

because,

nger burned slowly in the young man's mind.. . When he had

The a

climbed to his vantage-point, using dead ground, never breaking the or making a silhouette, the birds had been frantic at the

skyline

eyrie, wheeling and crying. It was impossible for the young man to comprehend that a collector would hire people to come to the eagles'

eyrie to take eggs, and harder than impossible for him to understand me eggs, a pair of them, would be valued by the collector

that those sa

at a figure in excess of a thousand pounds. The notion that the

collector would hide the dead, smooth eggs away from sight and keep them only for a personal gratification was impossible for him to

believe... He loved the birds. He knew every one of the nine pairs that flew, soared, hunted, within twenty miles of where he now sat.

The previous afternoon he had seen the decoy come down the mountain.

It

was intended that the movement should be seen. There was a routine and

he had learned it. The eyrie would be hit in darkness. A pair of men

would climb to it with the aid of passive infrared goggles, and would lift the eggs. They would move them down a few hundred metres and hide

them. They would be clean when they reached the road and their car.

A

decoy would go on to the mountain the next day and appear to make

a

pick-up, would search in the heather or among boulders, would seem to

lift something, and would then come down. Were he stopped and

arrested, the decoy, too, would be clean, the surveillance would be blown and the eggs abandoned. If the decoy were not stopped then

a man

would come for the pick-up the following day.

man had

The pick-up

gone

close in the misty dawn light to a group of hinds, had been within thirty yards of them and not disturbed them, had been good. But,

he

for the

had disturbed a solitary ptarmigan, and that had been enough

young man at his vantage-point. He had followed the pick-up, his

eyes

edling on him.

ne

He had seen him lift the eggs from a hiding-place

and

art, with great care, to come down from the mountain.

st

He had told

ce over the radio where he would reach the road.

the poli

282

The mountains of this distant corner of north-west Scotland, their d the vantage-points, were the young man's kingdom.

eyries an

s Andy Chalmers, twenty-four years old, employed to shoot hinds

He wa

in

ry plantations for ten months of the year, and to stalk

the forest

stags

for the guests of the owner of his estate Mr. Gabriel Fenton to shoot during the remaining two months of the year. He was the junior by ars of the other stalkers of the neighbouring estates, and

twenty ye

in

l, close-knit world he was a minor legend.

that smal

If he had not been exceptional, he would never have been allowed near Mr. Gabriel Fenton's guests. Were it not for his remarkable skills at

ground in covert stealth, he would have been relegated to

covering

renewing boundary posts and hammering in staples to fasten the

fencing

wire. He was surly with the guests, had no conversation, treated

wealthy men with undisguised contempt, made them crawl on their

stomachs in water-filled gullies till they shook with exhaustion,

them if they coughed or spat phlegm, and took them closer

snarled at

to

than any of the other stalkers would have dared.

the target stags

The

s adored his rudeness, and insisted on him accompanying them

guest

when

urned in subsequent years.

they ret

d the distressed wheel of the birds above their thieved

He watche

eyrie.

times the pick-up, from cover, searched the ground above and

Many

below

ce that he was identified, and failed to find it. There

him for eviden

was little satisfaction for Chalmers in the knowledge that the police waited in the small quarry beside the road. The life warmth of the eggs was gone and the embryos already dead. The pick-up disappeared into the tree-line that hid the quarry and the road.

The radio called him.

The wind blustered against him and rain was shafting the far end of the

glen.

283

He looked a last time at the birds and felt a sense of shame that

he

could not help them.

ook the direct route down, using a small stream bed. The