The light began to fail. I was tired and I wanted to sleep. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not here. Not without seeing Charlie again.
Eventually the road curved off a hill and made its way into the little fishing village of Elgol. Seeing houses on either side of the road, I felt less nervy. A bedroom light here. A flower garden there. It seemed almost normal.
We turned a last corner and Becky brought the bike to a halt on a tiny stone jetty which cut into the water. An old man was standing on the jetty tidying lobster pots and coiling ropes. Beside him, his cocker spaniel was sitting quietly, panting and scratching its ear with a paw.
Becky lifted her helmet and leaned back to speak to me. “That’s the way,” she said, pointing her gloved hand along the coast. “Now, let’s go and find somewhere to camp.”
The sky was purple and orange in the sunset. The mountains were silhouettes, like jagged strips of torn black paper laid against the sky.
“I want to go now,” I said with determination.
“Jimbo, you’re barking mad,” said Becky. “It’s eight miles. It’s a rocky path. It’s getting dark.”
“You saw them in the flat, Becky,” I said. “They’ll be following us. I know they will. We can’t waste any time. We’ve got to help Charlie. I’m going. With you or without you.”
“All right, all right,” she grumped, getting off the bike and helping me to transfer our stuff from the panniers to the holdall. “I’ll come. Not that I’ve got any choice. Mum would murder me if I went back and said I’d lost you.”
“You’re a pal,” I said, shaking her hand.
“I’m a moron,” she replied.
We’d just locked the bike, picked up the bag and started out for the footpath when we were greeted by the old man who’d been tending the lobster pots.
“Evening,” he said in a broad Scots accent.
“Evening,” we replied suspiciously.
“Ah, city folk,” he said, looking at my trainers and Becky’s black nail polish. “You’ll no be walking in that get-up, will you? With the night coming down.”
“No. We’re going to see a film,” snapped Becky. She was always rather touchy about her ‘get-up’.
“Yes. We’re walking,” I explained politely. I wanted to get away. I didn’t want to stand around chatting to strangers.
“To Camasunary? Or all the way to Coruisk?” he asked.
Then, very slowly, he lifted his pipe to his mouth, so that the sleeve of his oilskin fell away to show a band on his left wrist. I stepped backwards.
“To Coruisk,” said Becky curtly, “so we haven’t got any time to waste chatting.”
I expected the old man to come and grab me by the scruff of the neck. I expected to see his fingers light up. But neither of these things happened. He smiled. Then he chuckled.
“Well, you enjoy yourselves,” he said. “It’s going to be a nice pitch-black night for a walk along the cliff path.” And with that, he turned and walked back up the road, the cocker spaniel trotting at his heels.
“The wristband…” I said to Becky.
“I saw it,” she replied.
“They know we’re here,” I whispered, looking around to see if there was anyone within earshot, crouching behind a lobster pot or an upturned boat.
“Maybe,” said Becky. “Maybe it was just a brass wristband, Jimbo. Like people wear. Maybe we’re getting paranoid.”
“Maybe,” I said. But I was right. I knew it. He was one of them. The way he showed us the wristband. The chuckle. On the other hand, if he was one of them then we were on the right track. Coruisk was important.
So why didn’t he stop us? Perhaps he knew we wouldn’t make it along the path in the dark. Perhaps he knew we would find nothing when we got there. Perhaps he knew there were others waiting to greet us at the far end, flexing their neon-blue fingers in the windy dark.
“Well,” said Becky, “what are we waiting for?”
I fell into step behind her.
We didn’t need the torch. The lobster fisherman was wrong. The night was not pitch-black. Ten minutes after we set off, threads of grey cloud dissolved to reveal a perfect full moon suspended above the sea. It felt like walking through a scene from Son of Dracula. But at least we could see where to put our feet.
A good job too. The path was narrow and stony and cut into the steep, scrubby cliff rising high above the water. We had to duck under gnarled trunks, clamber over boulders and move fallen branches out of our way. The sea lay to our left like a great sheet of beaten silver.
To our right, rocks, trees and bushes climbed up into the night sky.
Out in the bay an island floated like a great barnacled whale. Beyond it, the ocean, blackness and stars. Everything looked mind-bogglingly big. I was lonely and frightened, even with Becky in front of me. If we tripped and fell, we’d helter-skelter down into the icy water and be swept away. No one would ever know.
To make matters worse, my city-folk trainers were not made for trekking and I was getting a large and painful blister on my right heel. I stuffed the shoe with tissues, gritted my teeth and marched manfully onwards.
After two hours we reached the bay of Camasunary. The path dropped down and the cliff flattened out into a gentle, sloping meadow of spiky grass. We crested a small ridge and the beach lay in front of us. We crossed a tiny stream and stepped into the field.
“Jeez!” I said.
“Now that does my head in,” echoed Becky.
The field was full of rabbits. A hundred. Two hundred. I’d never been frightened of rabbits before. But this lot gave me the creeps, sitting there with their powder-puff tails and their spoony ears like something from a horror film called Rabbit.
“Let’s keep going,” I said.
We began the second, more difficult section of the path.
Except there wasn’t much of a path any more. There were rocks, nettles, thorns, trees and mud, and my blister was getting worse.
After half an hour of slipping, tripping, grumbling and hobbling we came to an unexpected halt. In front of us lay a smooth, steep face of blank rock covered in patches of moss, like a giant granite nose. No mud, no branches, no clumps of grass. Nothing. Starting high above our heads, it swooped down to a ragged edge hanging over the surface of the black water. The map called it ‘The Bad Step’. You could see what the map meant.
“You first,” I said. “You’re older.”
“Thanks, Jimbo,” Becky replied. “You’re a real gentleman.”
We couldn’t go up and round. And we couldn’t go down and under. The slope was just too steep. We had to go over.
Becky shimmied up. I shimmied up behind her. We lay face down on the rock, spread-eagled like sunbathing lizards, and shuffled gingerly sideways.
We were doing all right. My trainers were rubbish for walking but the rubber soles stuck to the rock pretty well. Sadly, the moss didn’t. I was halfway across when I put my foot on a clump of the stuff, and as I shifted my weight it tore away beneath me.
I shot downwards, braked only by my knees, my fingers and the end of my nose. My heart stopped and my feet slid over the bottom edge into space. I heard Becky scream and closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable plunge through the air onto the pointy rocks half submerged in the freezing water below.
I came to a sudden halt, my legs dangling in the empty air. My fingers were jammed into a crack that ran across the surface of the stone. It was a narrow crack and my fingers were hurting and I wasn’t going to be able to hang on for long. I tried to swing my legs up onto the rock, but I was too far over.