The path was damp underfoot and she had to skirt patches of brilliant green mossy bog. She loved the colours of the island. So many varied greens. Sedge-like light green spiky grasses grew in clumps and there were big tussocks of dark green heather occasionally blocking the way. She jumped over oozing black peaty muddy soil, which the path periodically ran into. Off the trail the going would have been ridiculously tough; the ground was mainly heather and bracken with occasional birch trees and outcroppings of impenetrable, sharp-spiked gorse and tangles of bog myrtle.
And dominating everything, the huge grey stone swell of the Paps.
It was completely silent apart from the wind in the foliage, the ubiquitous sound of running water, and the occasional cry of a bird.
Below her, to her right, the forestry road made of hard impacted stones wound its way into the hills. She had been told that if she followed it, it would lead her to the far side of the island, the western side.
She ran on, ever upwards, her running shoes now sodden with peaty water. The path was occasionally crossed by several small burns, their water icy despite the summer sun, as they ran towards the sea.
She followed the track until it ended at a small loch, not much bigger than a football pitch. Its brown peaty water reflected the sky, and reeds waved mournfully in the breeze. There was a rocky outcrop to the side of the hill, and she climbed up it to get a better view.
It was worth it. Behind her towered the Paps, now much nearer, and she could see how hard it would be to scramble up them. Their rocky slopes, although not needing climbing, would require a slow, painstaking ascent. You would have to clamber up and over countless boulders to reach the summit.
Not today, thought Hanlon.
In front of her she could see just how high she had climbed. She could see the Mackinnon Arms far away now to the right and the cottages where Donald and Kai stayed. From up here, the hotel was a dark, foreboding mass, squatting on the shoreline, guarding its malign secrets. Out in the loch she could see two fishing boats, and in the distance, an enormous ferry, sailing back from Islay.
She jogged back down the path, occasionally taking wild leaps across the boggy patches, disappearing into the black, peaty mud almost up to her knees when she landed with a satisfying squelch, exulting in the fitness of her body. You didn’t get this running around Hammersmith, she thought.
She carried on down towards the road then, as she rounded a twist in the path, she suddenly saw Kai through a gap in the alder trees that grew between the path and the forestry track.
What was he doing here? She crouched down in a clump of bracken that reached as high as her chin and watched through the fronds as he walked up the slope. She wondered where he was going. It seemed impossibly out of keeping with what she had seen of Kai for him to decide to go for a stroll, much less a heavy-duty hike into the hills. Kai was a Paisley boy. He hadn’t embraced the country life; exercise was alien to him.
Kai was only in his early twenties, tough and strong, she had seen that, but he was not in good shape. She could hear him fighting for breath as he walked up the steep slope into the hills. He certainly wasn’t enjoying his walk. He stopped a couple of metres away from her and she could see his forehead slick with sweat, his dyed blond hair flat against his head from perspiration. He was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a bomber jacket, not a good choice for a hill walk.
He put his hands in his pockets and took out a joint, which he lit, puffing away; the sweet, cloying smoke, that to Hanlon always smelled like compost, billowed around his head. He closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply. He pulled the bomber jacket off; his T-shirt was wet with sweat. He took several more deep drags on his joint.
That’ll help your fitness levels, thought Hanlon.
She watched as he finished his joint, which he tossed into the deep drainage ditch that ran alongside the road, took a deep breath and set off once again.
Hanlon turned around and followed him, keeping parallel on the path that she had just run up.
Twenty minutes later she had reached the loch again. She was now ahead of Kai by her reckoning. She climbed up the rock to the right of the loch, stretched out on it and looked down at the view below.
The hillside fell away below her. The trees that had grown between here and the road had been felled. Occasionally a grey, dead pine, useless for timber, still stood. The woodland floor was carpeted in dead pine needles, sawdust and twigs. Very little could grow here now. It looked as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped nearby, destroying the landscape. Or maybe like a World War One battlefield. It was a dying and devastated landscape, desolate and eerily quiet.
She had a perfect view of the road that dropped down into the valley, bearing away to the right. Eventually she saw the plodding figure of Kai, walking slowly along, carrying his balled-up bomber jacket. His head was bent; he looked thoroughly miserable. You need to get out more, boy, she thought.
She waited until he had walked past where she was concealed and then hurried down as best she could to the track. It was hard going, clambering over the tree detritus that was a kind of woody obstacle course. To make matters worse, the land had been ploughed into ridges upon which the
