Andy Chalmers would have understood sooner. The central point for the arcs of flight neared the far shore-line of the marsh, where the trees and scrub merged with the reeds. He did not know why the curlew had crashed out of the reeds, only that its flight had been a moment of luck and had alerted him.
There was a pattern here that he was struggling to understand. At the limit of his vision, he had seen a sparrow break cover from the scrub.
The bird no longer circled, wheeled, but climbed. It was a distant speck when Andy Chalmers moved from his cover and went down into the mass of reeds.
He took the dogs with him, would not be separated from them. It was only when he reached the focus of the harrier's arcs that he realized it was a hiding-place, and as such it was well chosen. Many years before, enough years for it to be before his birth, the marsh waters had rotted a tree's roots. The tree had fallen, the branches had decayed. An empty oil drum had been driven by the winds and tides against the remaining branches and had wedged. It was a refuge, a safe place. Where the trunk peeped above the water was the stripped carcass of a duck, and in the drum was the faint smell of a man. The bird had shown him the place. He could have passed within two yards of the tree's trunk and the almost submerged drum and would not have seen the biding-place.
He had the line. The bird had given him the line to the shore.
Wading through the mud and carrying his dogs, swimming and having them paddle after him, he found not a trace of the man he tracked. He had followed men who had come on to the mountain to raid the eyrie nests, and those men took precautions, faced prison and had cause to be careful. This man was better than any of them. He had the point on the shore-line from which the sparrow had flown. He had the marker.
At the edge of the reeds he lay still in the water, and listened. There was a tangle of bramble a few paces away. He could smell him, but couldn't see him. The dogs were against his body with only their heads above the water. He held his breath and waited. He did not have a profile of the man, could not be inside his mind to know how he would react and how he would move… It was more interesting, there was more unpredictability, in tracking a human than a deer. The tiredness had left him. He lay in the water, was fulfilled, and listened.
The dogs would have told him if the man was close.
The dogs smelt him, as Andy Chalmers did, but knew he was no longer there. He came out of the water and the dogs bounded forward, splashing clear.
He found rabbit's bones and the rear leg of a frog. He knew the man had gone, moved on.
Meryl kissed him. She had her coat on and she held her Stephen's hand. There was another coat over her arm, and four suitcases behind her.
Davies was at the back. Perry couldn't read Davies's face as Meryl kissed him. Rankin was closer: he tousled Stephen's hair and his machine-gun flapped loosely on the webbing when he bent to pick up the child's football.
'You'll be all right?'
'I'll be fine.'
'Bill's going to shop for you.'
'I'll manage.'
The bell rang.
'You won't worry about us.'
'I won't.'
'I'm just so frightened.'
At the third blast of the bell, Rankin peered into the spy hole then nodded to Davies. The key was turned, the bolts drawn back. Davies watched them. Were they ready? Had they finished? It hadn't been there before, but Perry saw compassion in Rankin's face. And he noticed the sharp movements of Davies's jaw as his teeth bit at his lip hard bastards, and they were moved. He had not been upstairs while she had packed. He had not found the quiet corner in the house, away from the microphones. She kissed him one last time her boy wore a new England football shirt that Paget and Rankin had given to him. God alone knew how they'd obtained it, must have had a shop in the town opened up at dawn. Perry felt helpless, as if the eyes, the micrc~hones and the watchers ruled him. He wanted it over, her gone, before he wept.
'You should go, Meryl.'
'I'll see you.'
'Some time soon.'
'Keep safe. Be careful. Don't forget, ever, our love, don't-' 'Time you were gone, Meryl.'
He could hear the cars outside, the engines starting up.
Davies said, calm voice, 'Don't stop, Mrs. Perry. We believe that the area outside is secure, but still don't stop. The pavement time is the worst. Straight out and into the lead car. There's no going back for anything. Keep moving directly to the lead car.'
Rankin pulled the door open. Davies hustled them forward, past the two men who waited on the step. They went at a charge. Perry saw his Meryl go, and Stephen with the football, pushed forward by Davies towards the door of the lead car. The two men came behind them with the suitcases and pitched them into the rear car. Rankin snapped the front door shut. He didn't see them go, didn't have the chance to wave. He heard the slam of the doors and the roar of the engines.
'The best thing for now is a fresh pot of tea,' he said.
She had taken a position beside the lavatories near the hall. From there she had a view of the gable end of the house and a small part of the green. The light was going. Hours ago, Farida Yasmin had learned the patrol pattern of the unmarked cars, and each time they came by she was behind the toilets and beyond their view. She had hung on there because she had found out nothing that would help him. She stretched her body.
'Hello, my dear, still here, then?'
The woman had come behind her, on the path that led to the beach.
'I was just going.'
'I can't remember what you said, why you were here.'
The woman would not have remembered because she had not been told.
Farida Yasmin explained pleasantly, 'It's a college project on the modern pressures affecting rural life. It seemed an interesting place to come to. I'm getting the feel of it, then I'll be looking to interview people.'
'I don't know what you'll learn about us from our toilets.'
She had her back to the green and the house. She hadn't seen the cars come. They swept past her. She saw the child and a woman in the back seats of the lead car, and a man who had his head turned away sat in the front. There were cases in the second car, piled high, clearly visible in the rear window. Their headlights speared away into the early dusk.
The woman coughed deep in her throat, drew up the spittle, spat it out through her gaudy lips. She murmured, 'They've gone. Damn good riddance.'
Farida Yasmin shook. The shock swept through her. She watched the tail-lights disappear around the corner, at speed. Now she had learned something, but it was nothing that would help him. She began to walk briskly from the toilets, past the front of the hall.
The woman called after her, 'Come and see me, when you start your interviews.'
She had been cheated.
The bird hovered in the last of the afternoon's watery sunshine, then dived.
Beating its wings, it strutted close to him. He saw the wound. There was a tiny scrap of grease proof paper, the sort used to wrap the meat his mother brought home from the butcher in Lochinver, and he found soaked, muddied mince, buried in grass, where the bird had walked and pecked. As if it had been tamed, the bird came close to him. The head keeper had a peregrine falcon in a cage behind the house and near to his caravan: it had no fear of him because it had been fed by him since the day he'd found the abandoned fledgling, wounded by ravens. Andy Chalmers had come out of the marsh, stinking of it. The bird trusted him. Other than the head keeper, he knew of no man who would nurse an injured bird and win its trust. The head keeper was one of the very few men that the taciturn and sullen Andy Chalmers had respect for.
The dogs picked up the scent. They meandered either side of the path and crisscrossed over it. Without water to go into, it was hard even for a skilled man not to leave a scent for dogs.
He let them lead through the wood.
He felt a sense of burgeoning regret.
