Drummond watched McBride from behind the wheel of his car as the Irishman walked along the beach below him towards Scullane Point. The tide was out and he would be able to round the headland to Toe Head Bay without leaving the beach. When he had done so, they would call it a day, and go back to the unrewarding task of pub- watching and shop-to-shop enquiries for strangers, for increased orders of food and supplies.
Drummond jogged in his seat with the slow, careful movement of the car along the narrow cliff-top track, his patience almost as exhausted as his physique. He was cold, and uncomfortable, and frustrated. He could scent, with certainty, a German preparation for something hitherto outside his range of experience and expertise. Yet still McBride had found nothing.
McBride was waving, yelling — was McBride waving? He tugged on the handbrake, leaned out of the window. They were past the few straggling cottages on the cliffs, almost at the point. Yes, McBride was waving—
Drummond got out of the car, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled down at McBride. The wind from the sea seemed to throw his words about like gulls, but McBride was nodding furiously, beckoning him down. He'd found something.
Drummond began running back along the cliff until he reached the nearest path down to the beach. He scrambled down it, his shoes scuffing, almost slipping on the loose gravel and rock. The cliffs were low, but he was out of breath and almost dizzy by the time he reached the soft sand. McBride was waiting for him right under the cliffs overhang, sitting on a large rock smoking a cigarette. He seemed, after his frantic semaphore, relaxed and unconcerned. Drummond approached him as if he suspected a joke, and he its object.
'Well?'
McBride gestured over his shoulder. 'Behind me there, weighted down in a rock-pool. One very obviously German raft.' McBride was studying Drummond as if he expected an immediate explanation. Drummond scrambled over the rocks. Just as McBride had described it, a grey inflatable raft — now deflated — lay at the bottom of the shallow pool, weighted down almost carelessly with a few heavy rocks so that it would not drift back out to sea with the next high tide. It seemed undamaged. Drummond scrambled back to McBride, and sat down, lighting his own Player's cigarette.
'Well?' he said again.
'You know, I'm thinking that we were meant to find that thing there.'
'What?'
'It's never been so easy before. As if they wanted to tip us off they're here. Now, why would they want to do that? If we hadn't found it, someone who would have told us about it or might have done — we'd have come here anyway.' McBride looked about him almost with a sense of threat. He continued in a murmur, clarifying something for himself. 'There's a man in Castletownshend would help them, and there are more than a few in Skibbereen. He might have been met here — now, why didn't they take the raft if they met him?'
'It's really worrying you, isn't it?' Drummond's features were sharpened by cold rather than concentration.
'It is. They're landing more agents than before, and taking less care — at least on this occasion. Downright sloppy, if you ask me.'
The sharp plop of something in the rock-pool behind them was clearly audible before the flat crack of the Lee Enfield rifle came to them, muffled by the wind. The second shot splintered rock near McBride, and he felt the patter of tiny pieces on the back of his left hand before he was able to absorb the sensory information, understand it, and begin to move.
'Get down!' he yelled at Drummond, who was far slower to react.
McBride began running, stepping from rock to rock with unbalanced speed, changing direction by instinct as he moved closer to the cliff-face, under its overhang. Two more shots, the bullets skipping like angry insects away from his feet.
Then, ahead of him, and with a clear view of his dodging, almost hysterical passage across the rocks, a second rifleman opened up at him from Scullane Point. There was no shelter beneath the cliff-face from the second man, whose vantage looked down the length of the beach towards Horse Island.
The first two bullets plucked through the tail of McBride's donkey-jacket as it flew in the wind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Weight of Evidence
McBride felt the tug of the bullets as they passed through the tail of his jacket as a momentary hand restraining him. Then he pitched, off-balance, across the rocks, scraping his shins and hands, but already adopting the momentum-of the fall and rolling with it, sliding down the face of a boulder, his cheek dragging painfully against its surface. He came to rest half-sitting in the shallow water of a rock-pool. He lay back as another shot splintered the grey rock, whined away towards the cliff-face.
He was out of sight — trapped, but temporarily safe.
'Drummond?' he called, and found his voice ragged and dry. 'Drummond, are you all right!' A gap of time that the wind filled and the cry of a gull; but there was no shooting.
'Yes, where are you?'
'In the rocks. Are you hit?'
'No, thank God, are you?'
'No.'
Then there was nothing more to say. McBride broke the contact that seemed as fragile as a long-distance telephone call. Drummond was, presumably, out of sight. McBride lifted his head, and began studying the cliff-face that leaned out over him, hiding him from either of the snipers who might walk along the cliff-top to that point. But as long as the second man remained on Scullane Point, McBride could not move.
A bullet screamed off the rock beside his head, and the flat crack of the rifle pursued it.
One of them would come down onto the beach — by the path Drummond had used — while the second man kept them pinned down. It was a simple task, like killing seals or seabirds. McBride felt infuriated at the helplessness of his situation, knowing even as he raged inwardly that he was wasting adrenalin, wasting rationality. But there seemed nothing he could do.
He raised his head again, in a different position further along the narrow pool. The water was chilly, seeping into him already, suggesting lethargy, insinuating inactivity. He was a hundred yards from the cliffs of Scullane Point, from their shelter. A hundred yards across outcrops of rock, fallen boulders, and loose sand. He could die a dozen times before he reached the shelter of the overhang. Again, his hands bunched into fists, and he hugged himself with the fury of impotence.
He had no other choice. Drummond receded in his awareness, as if he had begun clearing out the lumber of his life in preparation for dying. The man might already be coming down the cliff-path, might kill Drummond while he was still running for the cliff-face, but it could not be helped. He slipped out of his jacket, wondered for a moment about his boots but left them on, then began breathing deeply, easily. He lifted his head again, ducked back as the bullet whined across the rocks, waited a moment before turning onto his hands and knees — then thrust himself up and out of the shelter of the rock-pool.
The wind seemed to cut through his wet trousers, the noise of the sea was more ominous, omnipresent, a gull screamed as if to warn the sniper, he felt buffeted and unbalanced. He drove on, senses flooding with information, every inch of his skin alive with nerves that anticipated the impact, the dulling blow of the first bullet.
He jumped onto sand, a shot plucking up shells and sand near his boot, then began weaving in a broken run towards the point. A speeded-up drunk. He moved by instinct, the awareness of his body's paper-like fragility growing with each moment.
His mind chanted in chorus with each thudding footstep, come on, come on,
