The boat docked at a makeshift wooden pier. The three passengers disembarked. A minibus waited for them. Every hour, so the timetable said. They got in. They were met by a cheery driver, dressed in a blue uniform and blue cap. The cost was five pounds, there and back. He would drop them off at the lighthouse, then pick them up. He immediately launched into a history of the area, shouting above the grind of the engine. Black gave a wintry grin. It was no use talking the place up. It spoke for itself. Remote, desolate, brutal. Nothing else. You loved it, or hated it.
The road was a single track stretching up and skirting the cliff edge. The weather did not improve. The bus bounced and lurched over a range of potholes. The road weaved its way around the cliffs. Sixty feet below, the sea boomed as it crashed against the rocks. Black could see it was shaping up to be a wild day.
A half hour later, the bus stopped, a hundred yards from Cape Wrath lighthouse. They trooped out, all three passengers. The couple immediately set off for the obvious tourist attraction, which was the lighthouse itself. Black had other thoughts.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” said the driver. Black acknowledged by a wave of his hand.
He set off in the opposite direction, away from the cliff edge. A route unfrequented by tourists. Across moorland. An inhospitable place, impossible for vehicles to traverse. An area of land comprising little more than low rolling hills coated in cotton-grass, wild bracken, gorse, sticky bogs. One hill, however, stood out in the landscape. Even as Black set off, he could see it, a mile distant. Noticeable because of the lump of rock sitting on top, protruding on the horizon like a dark wart. Memories resurfaced for Black. All of them painful. Training for those elite soldiers handpicked to serve for the Special Air Service.
Black headed across the wild lands of Scotland, towards Bastard Rock.
14
The hike across the moorland was a slog. Black was undeterred. He had experienced landscapes much worse. In particular the mountain range of the Hindu Kush, in the north of Afghanistan, hunting Taliban at night on steep, hazardous slopes in blizzard conditions. Sometimes being hunted. Walking for miles in darkness so deep, it was easy to think you’d gone blind, nerves stretched, waiting for the impact of a bullet. Or being caught in a trap, and then the ultimate nightmare. Capture.
A walk in the rain during daylight hours on Scottish moorland did not faze Black.
He made good pace. The rain slackened. Nothing seemed untoward. Yet something niggled Black. He turned back. No one was following him. The scenery was unblemished by human presence, at least as far as he could tell. If a sniper was lying flat, covered by the vegetation, then that was it. Game over. Black would take a bullet in the head, and his problems were gone. It would be sudden. Instant oblivion. His body wouldn’t be found for weeks, maybe months. Maybe never. He had to take his chances. No one would miss him, he thought ruefully. Maybe Tricia, his secretary. A few would perhaps uncork champagne, to celebrate.
Time passed. Fifteen minutes later, Black stood at the foot of a steep hill, which flattened into a plateau after about sixty feet, then rose again, maybe another sixty feet. At the top was the rock each soldier was required to kiss, then immediately turn and scramble back down. Over twenty years ago. Not easy with a full, forty-pound Bergen pack strapped to your back, clutching a standard issue C8 assault rifle. Again and again. Until you dropped. And then you dragged yourself up and carried on, staff screaming abuse in your ears. Part of SAS selection training. A very small part, but enough for seasoned soldiers to fling in the towel, there and then, and tell their instructors to fuck the hell off.
Black climbed up the hill. He reached the plateau, and surveyed the land from his new vantage. To the west, the lighthouse. Beyond that, the grey expanse of the Atlantic. In all other directions, the monotonous spread of moorland, rising and falling like the gentle swells of a great green ocean. The rain had stopped. A brief respite. Brittle sunlight glinted through gaps in the cloud.
Black continued. He wondered if he could still run up with a pack on his back. He reckoned he could. Black had made it his business to stay supremely fit.
He got to the top. There it was, five feet from him. Bastard Rock, as it had been affectionately nicknamed by the regiment. Twenty feet high, thirty feet wide. Unchanged. Black looked up. A big square monolith of pale grey sandstone. An ugly piece of rock, providing Black and many other soldiers with unpleasant memories.
According to the will of the late Gilbert Bartholomew, Black had to look for what he needed. And what he needed was at the foot of Bastard Rock. A cryptic message. He slowly made his way round, searching for something, anything. He squinted in its shadow. There! A small arrow in grey paint, barely detectable, at the base of the rock, pointing downwards.
Black was mystified. He scanned the ground to where the arrow was pointing. A patch of grass. Nothing to make it stand out. Nothing had been disturbed. Black had an idea. He unzipped his jacket, reached round and unclipped the top of the sheath attached to his belt, and drew out his Ka-Bar knife. He thrust it into the ground. The grass was moist. It entered easily. He dug up the soil, using the blade like a
