The mountains of this distant corner of north-west Scotland, their eyries and the vantage-points, were the young man's kingdom.
He was Andy Chalmers, twenty-four years old, employed to shoot hinds in the forestry plantations for ten months of the year, and to stalk stags for the guests of the owner of his estate Mr. Gabriel Fenton to shoot during the remaining two months of the year. He was the junior by twenty years of the other stalkers of the neighbouring estates, and in that small, close-knit world he was a minor legend.
If he had not been exceptional, he would never have been allowed near Mr. Gabriel Fenton's guests. Were it not for his remarkable skills at covering ground in covert stealth, he would have been relegated to renewing boundary posts and hammering in staples to fasten the fencing wire. He was surly with the guests, had no conversation, treated wealthy men with undisguised contempt, made them crawl on their stomachs in water-filled gullies till they shook with exhaustion, snarled at them if they coughed or spat phlegm, and took them closer to the target stags than any of the other stalkers would have dared. The guests adored his rudeness, and insisted on him accompanying them when they returned in subsequent years.
He watched the distressed wheel of the birds above their thieved eyrie. Many times the pick-up, from cover, searched the ground above and below him for evidence that he was identified, and failed to find it. There was little satisfaction for Chalmers in the knowledge that the police waited in the small quarry beside the road. The life warmth of the eggs was gone and the embryos already dead. The pick-up disappeared into the tree-line that hid the quarry and the road.
The radio called him.
The wind blustered against him and rain was shafting the far end of the glen.
He looked a last time at the birds and felt a sense of shame that he could not help them.
He took the direct route down, using a small stream bed. The cascading icy water was over his ankles, in his boots, and he felt nothing but the shame.
He came to the quarry. They were big men, the police out from Fort William, and they towered over him, but they treated this slight, spare, filthy young man with a rare respect. They thanked him, and then led him into the trees and pointed to the yellowed yolk of two eggs and the smashed shells. The pick-ups always tried to destroy evidence in the moments before they were arrested. He looked at the debris and thought of the fledglings they would have made, and of the sad, aimless flight over the eyrie of the adult birds. He started towards the police car where the shaven-headed pickup sat handcuffed on the back seat, but the policemen held his arms to prevent him reaching the door.
He was told there was a message for him, at the factor's office.
Peggy was a cog in the wheel of the village's life. She thought of herself as a large cog but to others in the community she was of small importance. She didn't care to acknowledge that reality. Her husband, dead nine years from thrombosis, had been a district engineer with the water authority, and within a week of burying him she had joined every committee that gave her access. Her loneliness was stifled by a workhorse dedication to activity. Nothing was too much trouble for her: she hustled through the hours of the day, out with her bicycle and her weathered bag, on her duties with the Women's Institute and the Wildlife Group and the committee for the Red Cross. She had a checklist of visits to be made each week to the young mothers and the sick and the elderly. Dressed in clothes of violently bright colours, she believed herself popular and integral. What she was asked to do, she did. She was happily unaware that, to most of her fellow villagers, she was a figure of ridicule. She had no malice. She had a loyalty. On that Sunday morning she was tasked by the Wildlife Group to perform a duty which would also feed the curiosity, inquisitiveness, on which she lived.
Frank Perry could see, side on, the slight wry grin on Davies's face, and his hand sliding away from under his jacket. It wasn't anything Perry had seen before: Peggy's coat was a technicolour patchwork of colour, and her garish lipstick matched none of the coat's hues.
"Hello, Peggy, keeping well? Yes?"
Peggy stared past him, a sort of disappointment clouding her features.
"Not too bad, thank you," she said severely.
Peggy's disappointment, he thought, was that she hadn't spied out an armoured personnel carrier in the hall, nor a platoon of crouched paratroops. She was on her toes to see better into the unlit hall. Perry wondered if she'd noticed the new tree and the new post, the tyre marks; she probably had because she missed little.
"How can I help?"
"It's Meryl I came to see Wildlife Group business."
"Sorry, you'll have to make do with me. Meryl's still upstairs."
The unmarked car cruised behind her and Davies gave it a small wave as if to indicate that the woman in the dream coat was not a threat. There were two more cars in the village that morning. Perry was unshaven, half dressed, and he had left Meryl upstairs in bed. She had been crying through half the night, and only now had slipped into a beaten, exhausted sleep.
Peggy blurted her message, "I was asked to come, the Wildlife Group asked me. Meryl was doing typing for us. I've come for it. I've been asked-' "Sorry, you're confusing me." But he was not confused, just wasn't going to make it easy for her.
"Your next meeting's not till Tuesday. She'll have it done by then, she'll bring it with her."
"I've been asked to take it from her."
"By whom?"
"By everybody chairman, treasurer, secretary. We want it back." He was determined to make her spell it out, word by bloody word.
"But it's not finished."
"We'll finish it ourselves."
He said evenly, "She'll bring it herself to the meeting on Tuesday."
"She's not wanted there. We don't want her at our meeting."
The day after he, Meryl and Stephen had moved in, Peggy had brought a fresh-baked apple pie to the house. Of course, she'd wanted to look over the new arrivals, but she had brought the pie and talked about infant schools for Stephen with Meryl, the better shops and the reliable tradesmen, and introduced her to the Institute. She had made Meryl feel wanted… He didn't curse, as he wanted to. He saw that the grin had chilled off the detective's face.
Perry said quietly, "I'll get them. Would you like to take the stuff for the Red Cross? Have they decided that Meryl is a security risk too? It'll save you two visits."
"Yes," she said loudly.
"That would be best."
He went inside. Meryl called down to him to find out who was at the door. He said he would be up in a moment. He went into the kitchen. Last night's supper plates were still in the sink, with the whisky glass.