‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘You could have told someone. We could have brought someone up here who knew what he was doing.’
‘You’re not going to leave me here alone, are you?’
‘We should,’ Doris snorted, ‘but we won’t. Mad Angus is slogging his way up to us with a rescue party – not that you deserve it.’
‘What happens after that?’ he asked me, as if Doris hadn’t spoken to him.
‘Wait and see, but whatever it is you won’t like it.’
Nor will I, I thought. If Fabian of the bloody Yard gets hold of me after this, he’ll bloody strangle me. I heard some shouts drifting up from low down on our original path, and hollered back. All of a sudden Cyprus was not so bad a prospect after all. Provided I could get there before I was picked up.
Carrying a man on a stretcher down a mountainside is one of the few situations where a small man like me comes into his own. It always helps to have a couple of small guys at the back – you work it out. The other small guy was a shepherd who’d come in for a drink and had been shanghied onto a rescue party. I knew he was a shepherd without asking, because he smelt like a wet sheep and was sure-footed. George groaned all the way, and I was tempted to drop him. The laird was still doing the lairdy thing and leading the party, but he dropped back from time to time to keep my morale up.
‘Doing OK, Charlie?’
‘Yeah. How long before we’re back down on the flat stuff?’
The light was beginning to draw in. I didn’t fancy stumbling around in the dark.
‘About twenty minutes. Then a couple of the bigger guys can finish the job. You’ve done very well under the circumstances.’
‘And you’re a patronizing bugger.’
‘It’s Lord of the Isles syndrome – I slip back into it as soon as the need arises. I’m supposed to be Galbraith of Shieldaig up here. Sorry.’
He was right though. Twenty minutes it was. He was probably quite good at this sort of thing – his family had probably been directing hill rescues for generations. As soon as the paths began to flatten out, two hulking great brutes took over from me and the shepherd, and matched up with the two hulking great brutes on the front of the stretcher. Oddly, I found that when I handed it over my right arm and curled fingers had locked shoulder height in the stretcher-bearer position, and for a few minutes I had to march along with a raised clenched fist like an Italian Boy Fascist. That made Doris laugh. I didn’t mind – we all needed a little something to laugh at. It dropped suddenly as the blood flooded back into it, and was temporarily too heavy to lift. All my strength had been expended carrying George. Doris had been behind me with Chris. Now she moved up, and took my arm. The track was wider, but even so we swayed like a couple of boozers.
She asked me, ‘What happens to George?’
‘Arrested, I hope . . . along with all the silly beggars who put him up to this.’
‘He won’t like that.’ They seemed like words I had heard before. I laughed, and eventually Doris laughed with me – the others must have thought we were touched.
‘And what about me?’
‘How good are your good friends at the consulate?’
‘Very good. I knew one of them very well.’
I could imagine Doris’s very wells.
‘Then I should imagine you’d be all right.’
‘And George’s bomb?’
‘I think I’ll leave that to our bold new leader. He seems to be properly in charge, and I suspect he knows what he’s doing. Did you deserve that black eye George gave you?’
‘Only with you. Ut victor praemium.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘To the victor the spoils, I think. George lost this time. We won. I flunked Latin.’
‘I learned some Latin phrases from a girl in Egypt a few years ago.’
‘What were they?’
‘Tell you tonight if we’re not in a cell somewhere.’
After a pause she squeezed my good arm, and said, ‘Maybe if we’re good they’ll put us in the same one.’ Doris was a girlful of transferable allegiances. George was suddenly not a good bet.
When we stumbled into the hotel it was full dark, and I was reacting to the physical effort I’d just put in. I was shaking. Doris was so close alongside you’d think she was welded. There was a new Scottish Ambulance Service Daimler outside, a police Land Rover and a police car. And a policeman at the door who said, ‘You’ll be Mr Bassett, of course.’
I couldn’t stop shivering. I hoped he didn’t think I was in a funk. Doris pushed us past him, and on into the small bar. She said, ‘Yes, sheriff, he is, but he needs a fire, and his hand around a whisky glass before I let you at him.’ She must have thought I was worth looking after: that was nice.
The copper smiled. That was nice too. I suppose you can afford to smile if you are about eight feet square and built like the proverbial brick privy. He said, ‘As you say, ma’am, there’s nothing that can’t wait.’ His smile had turned into a big grin as if someone had told him a decent joke. He followed us through to the small bar where the fire was burning. He even went behind the counter to pour me the drink himself. That wasn’t a first as it turned out. When he couldn’t hold it in any longer he kind of smirked, and said, ‘Hello, Charlie. Long time no see.’
‘Hello, Alex. What are you doing here, and why do you sound like a Scottie?’
The
