‘Oh yes, but now!’ said Hugh. ‘Fuck!’
He didn’t need to spell it out. Something about that call had tipped Hope’s personal profile over the edge into something of active interest. The raid on their flat would be only one part of the response: the police in Stornoway would no doubt have been alerted before the raid even took place, and were almost certainly already on their way.
‘Sorry,’ said Hope.
‘Can’t be helped.’ He smiled sidelong at her, put an arm around her shoulders. For a moment she leaned against him, then they walked on.
How long would it be, Hugh wondered, before she realised that hiding in the hills would be impossible for more than a few hours, that running away was not going to help their case at all, that the plan he’d told her made no sense whatsoever and that his secret plan would sound delusional even to him, were he to speak it aloud?
He looked back again. Still no sign of pursuit.
They reached the top of the hill after about half an hour’s climbing. The smirr of drizzle had drifted inland. Out to the north and west, the sky had cleared. Hugh didn’t welcome the blue.
They all paused, taking a breath. Hugh took out the binoculars and scanned the roads. Nothing, nothing… wait. There. A police car came around the shoulder of the far hill, on the Stornoway road. No flashing light, no siren. No rush. No need, Hugh thought bitterly. He nudged Hope, and pointed. She suppressed a gasp.
Hugh stepped back from the skyline and walked a few yards on to the plateau.
‘Now,’ he said to Nick, ‘let me show you how we find our way with just a compass and a map.’
He didn’t really need the map, nor the waste of the minute or two spent taking the compass bearing and explaining the process to Nick. He could see the lochs, way ahead across the wilderness of boulder and outcrop, bog and bracken, heather and moss. But somehow it had seemed important to include the boy in it, to show him at least the rudiments of a skill that he might not otherwise come to know about, one small element of independence from the satellite-surveillance world. And more urgently, to make him feel part of this, involved and not just dragged along.
Hope passed Nick a water bottle, then a chocolate bar. She offered one to Hugh. He shook his head. On they went. Hugh took to swinging Nick across dips and holes in the peat and clefts in the rock. The sun was out now, the shadows short. Hugh opened his jacket, and took his hat off, then put it back on again.
From above, he heard a faint, persistent buzz. He looked up, and back. The drone was climbing in an ascending, widening spiral above the village and its surrounding hills. Its next turn would take it almost overhead. There was nothing to be done about it. Nick looked delighted at the sight.
‘What are they looking for?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hugh. ‘Maybe someone’s got lost on the hills.’
Now Nick looked worried.
‘Or maybe they’re just practising,’ said Hope.
They reached the loch. Hugh stopped, checked the map and the compass, confirming his memory.
‘That way,’ he said.
They hurried around the shore of the small loch, and on across the rough, rocky ground.
The buzz of the drone became louder. They all looked back. The drone swooped towards them like some predatory pterodactyl. Nick cried out, his arm shielding his face. The drone passed a few metres overhead, a small unmanned microlight about a metre and a half in wingspan, then soared to circle high above.
‘Are they looking for us?’ Nick asked.
‘We’re not lost,’ said Hope. ‘So they must be practising.’
Hugh looked behind him again, and saw five figures just reaching the top of the hill, skylined. They weren’t even running. They were that confident. Hope saw them too.
‘This is useless,’ she said. Nick was as usual a few paces ahead, unaware of the pursuit, out of earshot of her low voice. ‘We can’t hide.’
‘We can,’ said Hugh. ‘There is a place.’
‘I knew this,’ said Hope. ‘I knew that’s where you’re taking us. Your bright land.’
‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘that this is completely insane?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she told him, fiercely. ‘I believe you more than you believe yourself.’
Hugh grinned at her. Together they ran a few steps forward, to where Nick hesitated at a hollow in the heather, and caught a hand on each side and swung and jumped at the same time.
‘Nearly there,’ said Hugh.
‘Nearly there,’ Hope echoed.
She didn’t believe him at all, Hugh thought. It would have alarmed him if she had. He wouldn’t have wanted her caught up in it, turning his forlorn hope – hah! – into a folie à deux. She was coming along, she was going along with this, because she needed to know, to see for herself whatever it was that had so shaped his life, and indirectly her own.
She couldn’t, surely, expect to escape, into that past or future or parallel world from which his visions came? At some level he, he knew, didn’t expect to either. He just wanted to give them a run for it.
He looked behind. Five police officers, now about half a kilometre away.
Up ahead, Nick stopped and looked back, and then pointed.
‘Dad! Mum! There’s policemen behind us!’
Hope and Hugh hurried up.
‘It’s all right,’ said Hope. ‘They must be looking for someone. Maybe we can help them.’
Hugh looked down. Nick had stopped because he’d reached the edge of a hollow far too wide for him to jump over, and almost two metres deep.
It was the place.
22. The Light at the End of the Tunnel
‘It’s a game,’ Hugh said. ‘The police are practising finding people on the moor. And here’s how we can help them. We’ll hide, and make it more interesting.’
‘Where can we hide?’ Nick asked.
‘Right here,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll show you.’
He sat down on the edge, then pushed himself off, landing with a lurch. He turned and lifted Nick down, then caught Hope under the shoulders as she slithered over the bank. To the pursuers they must have simply disappeared into the ground. Even the drone was, at that moment, below their skyline. Hugh looked quickly to left and right. The dark rectangular opening was still there.
‘Let’s hide in here.’
Hope and Nick followed him as he ducked into the culvert’s entrance. Nick hung back, just inside.
‘Don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Dark.’
‘It’s all right,’ Hugh said. ‘I came here when I was a boy, and it’s all right. There’s something really exciting inside. Have you got your torch?’
Nick reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a yellow plastic torch and switched it on. Hugh turned away, blinking at the after-image, and switched on his own torch. Hope’s beam joined it, wavering around the floor and walls.
The floor was damp, and the smells were stronger than he remembered. Old concrete, mould, rotted vegetation, droppings that had dried and then got wet again. He had to bend almost double to walk forward. He looked behind, at Hope and Nick huddled together. Hope looked excited, surprised, Nick a little scared.
‘I’ll go in front,’ he said. ‘Nick behind me, OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Hope, easing Nick forward.
They’d taken only a step or two when the drone’s buzz came out of nowhere behind them, loud in the tunnel, a waft of air disturbing the floor litter. Hugh could imagine the drone banking to angle its camera, skimming the lip of the gully, and the cops running. He hastened forward, torch beam probing ahead. The downward slope and rightward curve were just as he recalled, his progress more uncomfortable with his adult height, but quicker.
He saw the light ahead, and stopped, switching off his torch. Nick bumped against the back of his legs.