Crisis (26 page)

Bannerman instigated a programme of wriggling
his toes non-stop, for periods of thirty seconds,
every few minutes. At the same time he would
swing his arms across his chest and move his
fingers in synchronous exercise. After an hour of
this regime he permitted himself the luxury of the
last of the coffee and a cigarette. After another hour
he prepared to leave. He tied the wet socks he had
taken off round his injured knee to provide some
protection against accidental knocks and tried to psych himself up for the coming test.

Bannerman’s new problem was in deciding just
when it would be dark enough for him to make a
move. He desperately wanted there to be some light left so that he could make reasonable progress over
the worst part of the journey, the stretch between the
shore and the head of the glen, but, of course, this
part came first and he would be hopelessly exposed
if he just made a run for it. He looked anxiously
at the sky. It was definitely getting dark but there
was no cloud cover. It would be a clear and bitterly
cold night.

Bannerman could feel his heart pounding as he
tensed himself to move out of the gulley. He had
decided on his first gambit. He vaguely remembered
seeing another rock gulley about twenty metres to
the left when he ran from the shore. When the
moment came, he would pull himself out of his
present hole and make a run for it.

With a last rub at his legs to make sure that they
would support him, he placed his hands on the rim
of the gulley and concentrated hard. He took three
deep breaths to steady his nerves and then pulled
himself strongly upwards to roll over the parapet.
Fuelled by panic and adrenalin, he scrambled to his feet and made for the next gulley in a crouching zig
zag run. He had almost started to think there was
no need for this precaution when a crack rang out behind him and the whine of a ricocheting bullet sent him tumbling down into the safety of the new trench. ‘Bastard!’ he cursed, his nerves threatening
to fray at the edges.

He had seen where his next run was to take him.
Without waiting to consider, in case courage failed
him or his adrenalin surge dropped, he crawled
along to the end of his present cover and pulled
himself up again. Another crouching fun and he
was into cover again. This time there was no
accompanying shot and twilight was beginning to
give way to darkness. Yet another zig zag run, and
this time Bannerman made it a priority to get a good
view of the general direction he wanted to head in.
Safe in his next cover he got out his compass from
his jacket pocket and made a mental note of the
bearing of the head of the glen and the path back
to Inverladdie.

The temperature was falling; the ground felt like
concrete beneath his feet and every scrape or fall
brought new agonies. The air was so cold that it
pained him to take the deep breaths that his level
of effort dictated he must if he were to fight off
hypothermia. More and more his feet began to lose
grip as he gained height and frost coated everything. As he hit his injured knee once more on a sharp rock
- the wet sock protection kept slipping - he cried out
and sank to the ground in helpless frustration. He
wanted to scream and curse but the intake of icy
breath made his throat contract, denying him even
that release.

Discipline and coordination were all but gone by
the time he made it to the head of the glen and he
was reduced to making progress on all fours. Even
this was lop-sided because of a reluctance to put all of his weight on his damaged knee. His efforts over
the first stage of the journey had brought him to
the point of exhaustion and he had been forced to
slow down, which was causing him to become even
colder. It was a vicious circle which was getting the
better of him.
There was a plus side to it. The coldness was
numbing the pain. He was actually beginning to feel
better. The gnawing soreness was slipping away to
be replaced by an almost pleasant sensation of noth
ingness, a feeling of lightness, a pleasant tiredness
…
He would stop for a while, have a cigarette and
then think about going on
…
Bannerman reached
into his pocket feeling distinctly light-headed and
deliciously tired. There was a vague warning signal
at the back of his mind but he was in no mood to
heed it. He needed a rest. The small voice telling
him that he mustn’t stop would have to wait.

He found his cigarettes and matches and managed
to open the pack with his tongue and teeth. He
extracted a cigarette with his lips and then removed one of his gloves to light a match. Trying to shield the match with cupped hands which also contained the match box proved to be a disaster. The match
ignited but fell into the half open box and the whole
thing flared up in front of his face. Bannerman shied back stupidly from the firework, thinking how pretty
it was, but then darkness returned and he was tired
again, oh so very tired …

Bannerman opened his eyes and saw the face of an
old man smiling down at him. Was there a god
after all?

‘How are you feeling?’ asked the old man.

‘Where?’ …

‘You’re in the Achnagelloch Hotel and you’re quite
safe,’ said the voice.

The mention of the decidedly earthly sound of
‘Achnagelloch’ cleared Bannerman’s head of all
ethereal thoughts. He even recognized the voice.
It was Angus MacLeod.

‘How did I get here?’ he asked as consciousness
and pain sought to re-inhabit his body at an alarming rate. He remembered everything at once, except how
he came to be in bed at the Achnagelloch Hotel.

‘The search party found you,’ said MacLeod,
‘thanks to your brilliantly improvised flare.’

‘Flare?’

‘The matches,’ said MacLeod.

‘Oh the matches,’ repeated Bannerman, none
the wiser.

‘Another few hours and it might have been a
different story,’ said MacLeod. ‘You have the young
lady to thank for insisting on a search party.’

‘Young lady,’ repeated Bannerman, feeling that
he was a distinct outsider in what was going on.

‘Me,’ said a female voice.

Bannerman looked in the direction of the voice and saw Shona MacLean standing there. She was
smiling the same smile he remembered when she had opened the door to him on North Uist. It was
all too much for him; he allowed his head to fall
back on to the pillow in bemusement. Shona came
to the side of the bed and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s
a perfectly logical explanation for everything. I had
to go to Inverness to discuss some illustrations for
the Highland craft fair so I thought I would look
you up. Seeing as how there is only one hotel in
Achnagelloch it wasn’t that difficult. The landlord told me that you had gone off into the hills this
morning, so I decided to wait. When you weren’t
back by nightfall I started to get worried. The
landlord agreed that if you didn’t turn up by seven
we would raise the alarm. That’s what happened.’

‘How did they know where to look?’ asked
Bannerman.

‘I told them,’ said MacLeod. ‘The police called
to warn me of a possible emergency on the hills.
They said a man was missing and when they said
it was you I was able to give them a fair idea of
where you had gone. They found you at the head
of Inverladdie Glen.’

Bannerman digested this information in silence for
a moment then he suddenly began to think about
his medical condition. Frostbite! He wriggled his toes and fingers in unison and found that they all
moved. MacLeod saw what he was doing and said,
‘You’re fine. You’ll be right as rain in the morning
apart from your knee, which I suspect caused all the
trouble in the first place?’

Bannerman looked at him and suddenly saw the easy way out of all the explanations he feared he
might have to make. ‘Yes, I fell and hurt it. It slowed me up so much that I got caught out by darkness and
wandered around in circles I suppose.’

‘Easily done,’ said MacLeod. ‘Now if you’ll excuse
me I’ll be getting to my bed.’

Thanks Doctor,’ said Bannerman sincerely.

‘You’re welcome,’ replied MacLeod.

Shona reached out her hand and smoothed the hair
away from Bannerman’s forehead. ‘What really hap
pened out there?’ she asked.

For some reason, Bannerman did not even con
sider lying to her. ‘Someone took a shot at me.’

‘
The same someone who killed Lawrence?’

‘
I don’t know,’ replied Bannerman.

‘Do you know why?’

‘
They obviously didn’t want me poking around
that area of Inverladdie Farm.’

‘Because it’s contaminated with radioactivity?’
said Shona.

‘I suppose so,’ agreed Bannerman. ‘But the truth
is that I had found no evidence of that at all.’

‘What if you had?’ asked Shona.

‘I would have reported it to the authorities and
presumably action would have been taken.’

The station would be closed?’

‘I suppose that’s a possibility.’

‘
Then it’s not difficult to see who wouldn’t want that,’ said Shona.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Bannerman, with
an attempt at a smile. ‘Half the workforce of
Achnagelloch for a start.’

‘But finding radiation wouldn’t have cleared up
the mystery of the cause of the men’s deaths would it?’ asked Shona.

‘No. I need the results of lab tests in Edinburgh for
that, but if I’d found radiation then almost certainly
that would have been specified as the cause for a
mutation occurring in the virus.’

‘It seems that someone is going to extraordinary lengths to see that the nuclear industry doesn’t get
the blame for that.’

Bannerman shrugged but didn’t say anything.
They were both considering whether or not these
lengths included murder.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Shona.

‘I’m going back to Edinburgh. Lawrence Gill inocu
lated some experimental mice with brain material
taken from the dead farm workers.’

‘Why?’ asked Shona.

‘
To grow the infecting agent so that we would have
a source of it to test and identify.’

‘You’ll be able to tell if it’s a new form of the
virus?’

‘Yes. We’ll be able to find out everything about
it. Its host range, its incubation time, its virulence,
everything. It’s important to know your enemy.’

‘Will you be fit to drive back to Edinburgh?’ asked Shona.

Bannerman had been wondering this himself. The thought of changing gear several hundred times with
his injured left leg did not fill him with pleasurable
anticipation. He moved his knee under the blankets
and winced. ‘I’ll manage,’ he said.

Shona smiled and said, ‘I’ll make a deal with you.’

‘What?’

‘If we can go to Inverness first, I’ll do the driving
and take you back to Edinburgh.’

‘You’re serious?’ said Bannerman.

‘Of course.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I want to,’ said Shona. ‘It’s ages since I’ve been in Edinburgh. What do you say?’