There was an anchor in my stomach and cement in my shoes. There was a persistent throb at the back of my head that was a sure-fire indication of a mean hangover to come. All-day drinking had once been my forte, but age and lack of practice had laid waste a once great talent. I had a can of Tennent's in each pocket, possibly the last two on the island. I had swiped them from the fridge when she wasn't looking. I felt mean about it, but not as mean as I felt about betraying Patricia.

I opened a can and kept walking. I'd forgotten how dark the countryside could be. I was a streetlights-and-shopwindows kind of a guy, not a pitted, muddy, splashy-lane bloke. As I walked, the can grew so cold that I was reduced to holding it between the two sleeves of my coat, supping at it like a leper, or so I supposed. I didn't have a lot of experience with lepers, although I soon would if Patricia ever found out I'd made love to Moira McCooey.

I'd been walking about twenty minutes when I heard a splash behind me. There had been other splashes, of course, rabbits or hares frolicking, raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, but this was different, heavier I turned and stared into the darkness, but it was pointless. I could see nothing beyond the vague outline of the track leading back to town. I walked on. I dismissed it. A few minutes later there was another. I strained my eyes, but still nothing. A nothing I didn't like much. I was thinking of ghosts. Headless hors.e.m.e.n and wailing banshees. My heart was speeding up. I finished my can. I knelt down and placed it sideways in the road between two wide puddles. If there was someone following he would have a choice to make, either vault the low stone walls on either side of the road and continue after me over some very rough ground or wade through the puddles and really give himself away; much more sensible to walk the thin strip of dry track between the puddles. I hunched my shoulders and hurried on. I'd barely gone fifty yards when I heard the rattle of the can being accidentally kicked.

It could just as easily be someone else on the way home.

But I'd been in trouble before, many times in many places, and I knew better than to think bright, positive thoughts.

I started to run.

Whoever it was must have realised. There was a flash and a roar and for a split second the lane was illuminated, not that I had any intention of looking back. I knew what a shotgun sounded like. I had the sensation of something hot and dangerous shooting past my head, but I couldn't judge how close. On the same island was close enough. I let out a little shout of surprise then vaulted over the wall to my right.

There was only a short drop, three or four feet at most. My landing was soft. I put my head down and started to run. The gra.s.s was thick but the ground pitted from rabbit tunnelling. I stumbled and fell three or four times before I dared to look behind me. When I did, my blood froze. The night sky was lit by the beams of several high-powered torches. They were coming after me at speed.

18.

Obviously they didn't know who they were up against. I had been a crack member of the Boys Brigade before being thrown out for drunkenness. And I had read Bravo Two Zero. If they wanted to get involved in a firefight, well, they'd better have matches.

I giggled and ran, then fell, giggled, ran, fell, giggled . . . it a.s.sumed a rhythmic but never monotonous pattern. There were advantages and disadvantages to the chase. I had the advantage of darkness, they had the advantage of torches to stop them falling down every hole they came across. I had the advantage of alcohol in my blood and the proof from past experience that a drunk can cover vast stretches of terrain without even being aware of it. He can leave the pub and one minute later wake up in bed, albeit with his trousers on fire. They had the advantage of knowing the land, knowing the island, knowing that it was an island and that eventually, if I didn't outwit them, they would drive me into the sea.

I crouched in the long gra.s.s for several moments, catching my breath and taking stock. There were six of them, spread fairly evenly apart. The ones on the outside were moving quicker or had easier terrain to cover and so had forged slightly ahead of those in the middle, creating a loose semi-circle. The speed of the chase, inevitably, meant that they couldn't cover every square yard with their torches; it wasn't inconceivable that I could lie down in the rough gra.s.s and hope that they pa.s.sed over me. But in the end that would be down to good luck, two words which didn't figure large in my vocabulary, unlike effusively.

I started running again. There was a shout as one of them spotted me, and the torch beams began to converge. With a little zigzagging I managed to lose them again. I giggled. This was so f.u.c.king stupid. I wanted to stop and shout, Are we playing hide and seek? I wanted to shake my finger at them and tell them to catch themselves on, grown men chasing a wee fella like me. But I didn't even know if they were men at all. For all I knew it could be the women of Wrathlin on my tail. G.o.d knows, they're big enough and hairy enough. The thoughts piled in on top of each other as I charged breathlessly across the fields: had they been after me all along, or had they found out about Moira and me? Had Father White sent them? Or Christine?

The ground had been rising for several hundred yards. Even though I was running into the teeth of the wind the incline allowed me to put a little extra s.p.a.ce between me and my pursuers. I'd been a runner at school and still played five-a-side, the hardest sport on earth, twice a week, so my legs were reasonably fit, even if the rest of me was a bag of bones. With the thin light from the stars I could see that I had reached the top of the island's central saddle, the highest point on Wrathlin. A mile ahead of me there was the chop of the waves, further still the lights of the mainland, civil isation. Snow Cottage was about a mile in the opposite direction. By accident rather than design I had led my pursuers away from it, which was good news for Patricia and Little Stevie but somehow made my own safety seem even more remote.

There was a whirring sound ahead of me. I slowed up, suspicious. As I drew closer I could just make out the most bizarre outlines: like three helicopters had crash-landed and buried themselves in the soil, leaving only their rotorblades revolving. Still, they seemed less threatening than what came behind. When I was right up close it was suddenly obvious that they were wind turbines, and, once identified, that I knew something about them. Father Flynn had spoken glowingly about them. He'd helped engineer a European grant for them. They provided two thirds of the island's electricity. He'd even told me their names. Conn, Aedh and Fiachra. I had the info on tape, and had reviewed it the previous day while trying to make some sense out of Flynn's visions. If I'd had the inclination I could have waited for my pursuers and explained that the turbines had been named after the three sons of the mythical chieftain Lir, who'd been turned into swans by their wicked stepmother and spent hundreds of years floating on the Seas of Moyle around Wrathlin. Like most natives, the chances were that they didn't know much and cared less about their own history; they were too busy catching fish and killing rabbits and generally surviving to give a toss about myths and legends. If there was even a slight inclination to stop for a chat, my mind was made up by the sudden shotgun blast that whooshed past my ear and snapped an arm off one of the turbines. We live in an information age, but it's not much use to you if your head is splattered all over your computer. I ducked and ran.

As my fatigue grew, the icy wind began to catch me, cutting into my chest. I had run myself sober. In a different environment I could probably have stayed ahead of them indefinitely, as long as I didn't do anything stupid, like twist my ankle, because I was sure they weren't super-fit athletes either. But I had to face up to one indisputable fact. Sooner or later I was going to run out of land.

As I ran I tried desperately to remember the map of the island I had pored over before leaving Belfast or the route of the walk I had taken with Father Flynn. I tried conjuring up the points of the compa.s.s in my head: the old schoolboy method of remembering the order in which they came a Never Eat Shredded Wheat. North, east, south, then west. I'd walked west on leaving town, heading home, then been shot at and started running north; after a while this had taken me onto the higher ground where the turbines were, and now I was heading down towards . . . what was it, Artichoke or Altachuile Bay and the freezing . . . Straits of Moyle? It was coming back to me. I giggled again. It was like the moment of clarity which precedes death. I cursed. My teeth were starting to chatter. I needed to find another way, and fast. The sea was no use to me. To the east I could see the beam of the East Light, one of the three unmanned lighthouses on the island. Close by it, I knew, was Robert the Bruce's cave. It was probably the first place they'd look, figuring me as a mainlander and a tourist. Even if I went for it, it was also only accessible by boat, and the last thing I intended to do was venture anywhere near a boat.

I stopped for a moment and desperately tried to catch my breath. I looked back. The beams seemed further away now. Behind them, and therefore useless to me, was the town, then the southern leg of the island, with the second lighthouse in the far distance at Rue Point. I turned to my left. The third light, the West Light, winked into the darkness. It was the only way to go. The west of the island offered the greatest stretch of land for me to outrun them; eventually, of course, I would come to the sea again, but somewhere between there and now I would have to find help or a way of doubling back on them and seeking salvation in the town.

I took a deep breath and started to run again, keeping my head as low as I could.

I'd been moving for about five minutes when I chanced another look back.

The lights were gone.

My heart would have skipped a beat if it hadn't been too busy racing itself to death.

I stood gulping in the freezing air, trying to work out what was going on. I allowed myself a brief flurry of hope before settling into a more familiar mode of black pessimism. I made a quick calculation of the possibilities. 1) They'd given up. 2) They'd decided the torchlights were giving me too much of an advantage and had switched them off. 3) Their batteries had run out. On the whole, I thought number two was the most likely. But the only way to be absolutely sure was to wait and find out, and I didn't think that would be very healthy.

I pressed on.

Another fifteen minutes and there was still no indication of anything behind me. I had slowed down, and not just from extreme tiredness, but also because the absence of lights had somehow lessened the horror of being chased by men with guns. What you can't see can't hurt you. Was that the expression? If it was, it deserved pride of place in the Big Book of Stupid f.u.c.king Expressions. I had just reduced my pace to a hurried stroll and was focusing my attention on reaching the West Light when there came a sudden fit of coughing off to my right, barely a dozen yards away. I turned, panicked, lost my footing and before I could right myself I was tumbling down a small hill. In a matter of moments I went from fleet-footed escapologist to sad drunk entangled in gorse.

And then there was a torch beam blinding me.

The voice, English, said, *What on earth are you doing down there?'

Instinctively I said, *Hunting for blackberries.'

There was a pause, and then, *You won't find any blackberries down there, old son, not this time of year.'

*I know,' I said. *Only joking. *Fraid I got lost.'

A hand, thick and hairy, warm, reached down to me and dragged me screaming from the th.o.r.n.y gorse. My rescuer, or cunning executioner, shone the torch in my face, then in his own. He was wearing a big green parka with a fur-lined hood. His face was bearded and round and he had bottle-thick gla.s.ses and an eagle smile. There was a pair of binoculars around his neck. No sign of a gun.

*Look at you,' he said, *you're freezing. Come on down to the caravan for a cuppa.'

He turned his back on me and started walking. *Thanks,' I said, after him, and followed. I looked warily about me, waiting for the surprise attack, which would therefore, of course, not be a surprise. The ambush, then. But there was nothing, just the wind and the whispering gra.s.s and this rotund furball with the endearing smile and the kind invitation. I said, *I know you, don't I?'

He shrugged, without turning. *The caravan's just down here.'

*Where do I know you from?'

He shrugged again. *I'm the warden. Maybe you visited the platform.'

*What platform?'

He stopped, looking at me oddly as I caught up. *The birds.'

*What birds?'

He sighed. *Oh dear,' he said. *You're just a drunk, then.'

*What?'

*Just over here.' He pointed, and started off again. There was a small caravan, a two-berth at most, sitting rusty and neglected on a steep incline about twenty yards back from the edge of a large concrete platform. There was a y-framed metallic clothes line spinning at a hundred miles an hour in the wind beside the caravan. Three sets of bulky binoculars were set into the platform wall, with coin slots beneath them, giving a kind of Edwardian-looking pay-per-view over the cliffs and wild sea beyond. Only as we drew close could I hear the sound of thousands of seabirds over the roar of the wind.

*Bird observation platform,' I shouted.

He nodded. The wheels of the caravan were anch.o.r.ed into place by several breezeblocks. He yanked open the door and ushered me in. The inside smelt of burnt toast. There were piles of clothes lying everywhere. He had a flask of tea already made. He poured me a cup and even though I never drink the stuff, I was so cold I supped it eagerly just for the heat.

He had pulled his hood back now and I got a better look at his face. He was in his mid-fifties, probably, but his red cheeks and blond eyebrows gave him a boyish look.

*You're lucky I found you,' he said. *I take a walk around the platform about this time every night. Just in case. Usually don't go over where you were, but I was having a pee-pee. Bucket gets full up in here, makes the place a bit whiffy. Anyway, welcome to my humble abode.'

*You're the warden?' I said.

He nodded. *Bill.' He reached his hand out to me and we shook. *During the summer I have a couple of a.s.sistants, but the winter I'm here alone. We're not officially open, but I never turn anyone away if they make the effort. You're not a twitcher, then?'

*Sorry?'

*Ornithologist. Bird watcher.'

There were answers to that, but they would take me into Carry On territory and I wasn't in the mood. I shook my head.

*You don't know what you're missing.'

I had a fair idea, actually. Lots of birds.

*Finest breeding colonies in Ireland,' he continued. *Do you know anything about birds?'

I shrugged.

*What would your favourite be?'

*Sparrow. Blackbird. My wife has a lot of experience with thrush.'

If he got it, there was no reaction. *Kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and puffins . . . oh, it's a sight, it's a sight indeed. Tens of thousands of them, beautiful . . . not so many places like this any more . . .' Bill looked dreamily out of the window. Then abruptly snapped out of it. *Still, no concern of yours, eh . . . what was it, wandered off from the pub?'

*What pub?'

His brow furrowed. *Jack's . . . Jack McGettigan's . . .'

I cleared my throat. *The pub's been closed for months. Drink has been outlawed.'

*Out . . .?' Bill looked at me for several moments as if I was mad. Then he shook his head and said, *Oh dear, oh dear. They really went ahead and did it, did they? Oh my.'

Now that I was a little more settled, I could see that every available s.p.a.ce in the little caravan was stacked with cans of food and bottles of mineral water. *You mustn't get into town much,' I observed.

*No,' Bill said, *nothing much there for me. Used to go for a beer, occasionally, bit of a sing-song, but they stopped that. And then no one seemed to drink any more. I only went for the company, didn't seem much point after that. No, I keep to myself up here, right through to summer. No family, see? Not any more, any rate. I suppose I do get a little out of touch.'

*But you'll know about Christine. The Messiah?'

He laughed. *Oh yes. All that b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense. No time for that, have I? Anyway, I thought it would have all blown over by now, but if they've closed the pub I guess it hasn't.' He sighed. *I don't see anyone now, really, not till summer. There's a radio down in the storeroom, chat with headquarters sometimes, keeps me in touch with the football results on a Sat.u.r.day, but that's about it.'

I looked at my watch. It was a little after 9 p.m. I'd been on the run for less than an hour, although it seemed like seven. I'd not given Patricia any particular time for my return, but with no pub on the island to distract me she would probably be concerned by my failure to return. I didn't mind that. What I did mind was her going to Moira's looking for me and Moira letting something slip. Or Christine. I shivered.

*What you need,' the warden was saying, *is a hot whiskey.'

I looked up, smiling.

*It's a pity I don't . . .' At that moment the caravan moved. Just slightly. *. . . have any.'

We looked at each other. I could tell by the surprise on his face that it wasn't a regular occurrence.

*Wind must get pretty wild round here,' I said.

The caravan moved again.

*You must have it pretty securely anch.o.r.ed,' I said, *with that strong a wind.'

He was nodding, but it was not a confident nod. His hands were gripping the table. *The thing is,' he said, *the wind's blowing in the other direction.'

There were voices outside. Then the caravan gave a ma.s.sive shift forward, throwing us both out of our seats.

Then we were moving downhill at speed. Somewhere in the background I heard excited yells. And somewhere ahead of us, and getting closer, there was a very tall cliff, an angry sea and some very sharp rocks.

19.

As we trundled towards the edge of the cliff and the three-hundred-foot drop to death, I had one of those moments of frightening clarity with which I was becoming increasingly familiar. I looked at Bill beside me, helpless on the grimy birds.h.i.t-spattered floor of the caravan, and said, *You used to be in The Goodies. You're Bill Oddie.'

*This isn't the time!'

*I know, I've seen the repeats.'

For the second time in a couple of minutes he looked at me like I was mad. I could have explained to him about defence mechanisms and the trouble they'd gotten me into, but he was right, this wasn't the time. He had been a television comedy star in a previous incarnation, but now he was just a bird warden scrabbling along the floor in a desperate attempt to get to the door of a caravan moving at speed towards disaster. Every time we hit a rock it threw the front of the caravan up in the air, and him back towards me. I tried myself, with no better results.

And then it was too late.

We struck something solid, we were tossed forward and then the whole caravan was over the edge and falling. We both smacked into the gla.s.s at the front with five hundred cans of food for company.

Remarkably, the gla.s.s held.

Big deal as we . . .

Then there was a sudden jolt and we stopped dead in the air . . .

No, not dead . . .

Swinging.

Back and forwards, like the pendulum on a grandfather clock.

Bill was clutching the back of his head where he'd cracked it on the gla.s.s. He groaned and moaned, *What's . . . what're we . . .'

I stared at the water barking and biting far below. It was almost hypnotic. *The answer, my friend,' I said slowly, *is blowing in the wind.'