by Dan Latus
‘Let’s go,’ I added.
We were only just in time. As we left the house, I saw two vehicles turning onto the track. They would be carrying six or eight men, I assumed. We needed to move fast.
I had switched off the lights and locked the door although, if they wanted to get inside, a locked door wouldn’t stop them.
I ran round the back of the house and led the way into rough ground, where there was little risk of car headlights catching us. The trouble was it was also difficult to see where we were going. The driving sleet and howling wind were one thing; the low cloud, and the darkness it brought, another. I had a head torch with me but I didn’t dare use it. Still, this was my home patch. So I moved fairly quickly.
Sasha kept up with me, I was relieved to see. No whinging about the dark and the cold, or anything else. She was doing well. A tough girl.
I knew that already, of course. Doing what she had been doing the past few days, she had to be tough. Not just physically. Mentally, as well. Things hadn’t got to her. Despite the fear – the sheer terror! – and the hardship, she had clung to her priorities. Misha was a lucky guy to have a girl like this rooting for him.
I hit the top of the path and we began the descent, slithering fast down slimy rock coated with sleet. Caution was out of the question. I didn’t look back either. Whatever Borovsky’s men might be doing at my cottage, there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. Priorities again. My priorities.
A few paces down from what there was of a skyline, I paused and waited for Sasha to come to me.
‘This leads down to the beach,’ I told her, ‘but it’s not a proper path.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It is the way I come.’
I shook my head and gave a wry smile. Of course she knew this way down. There was no other.
We went on, with me no longer making allowances for her. There seemed to be no need for that, no need at all.
26
That was one difficult journey, that journey in the dark. I dared not use a light even for a moment in case someone happened to be looking over the cliff at the time. So we slithered and groped our way down the track. And not once did Sasha complain. I heard her following close behind, as we clambered and slid across icy rock and floundered through wet patches of rotten shale, all the time with the wind and the sleet in our faces. But not once did I hear even a word of reproach, still less a wailed protest. This is some girl, I thought with admiration. Some woman.
We got there. We hit the beach at last. Not far to go now, thank God. Thankfully, the hut hadn’t moved, and we found it in the darkness. It was almost as cold inside as out, but at least we were out of the wind.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, wiping my face with my sleeve, ‘but it would be better not to light the stove tonight.’
‘No,’ Sasha agreed. ‘They might smell the smoke.’
‘Exactly.’ I smiled in the darkness and pulled out a small torch that I switched on and shaded with my hand. ‘You must have done this before.’
‘Many times.’
Well, three or four, I thought. It wasn’t that long since she had first turned up at my house.
‘You did well, coming down the cliff.’
‘It was not so bad,’ she said with a shrug.
Tough kid, I thought again. I wondered if there were many like her, where she came from.
‘Get some sleep,’ I told her. ‘You’ll soon get warm in the sleeping bag. I’ll keep watch for a while.’
No argument. She sorted herself out and got her head down. I donned my extra fleece, wrapped my sleeping bag round me and started to wait. It was going to be a long night but I couldn’t risk us both being asleep at the same time. Never underestimate your enemy, someone I admired had once told me. I’ve always believed that was good advice.
The wind began to shriek ever louder. The sleet rattled against the hut with increasing ferocity. The sea roared and did its best to compete. The hut was a noisy place that night. Just as well, really. It might have been difficult to stay awake otherwise.
So I had plenty of time to consider our situation, and to wonder about my companion. Companion, colleague, victim – what was she, really? She certainly wasn’t a normal victim, and no frightened young woman either. I was beginning to think Sasha was a bit special. Russian art schools must be formidable places if they produced graduates like her.
There were other possibilities beginning to edge into my mind during that long night but I resisted them. The time might well come when I would let them into the full glare of my consciousness, but not yet. We needed each other too much.
All the same, there were still things I couldn’t get my head around. One question was, why were Sasha and her friend Misha so important to Borovsky? Sasha seemed to think it was because she and Misha were great painters. They made him money, presumably. So he didn’t want to let them go. Could that really be the answer, though – all of it?
But I could appreciate the nature of the equilibrium between them. Borovsky couldn’t dispose of Misha because Sasha would then be free to tell everything to the authorities. With the aid of the most expensive lawyers he could hire, Borovsky might well be able to survive police inquiries, and even a court case, but it would be the end of what he was doing.
All that would change if he could get his hands on Sasha. Then he could dispose of them both without fear of consequences, if that was what he wanted. Me, too, probably. So I had to keep her out of his hands. That had to be my priority for the moment.
I don’t know if Sasha really slept, but she seemed to. Then, after exactly four hours, she stirred and spoke to me.
‘Everything is well?’
‘So far,’ I told her, trying hard to put a smile into my voice.
‘Then you must sleep, and I will watch.’
I hesitated.
‘You must,’ she said softly. There was a rustling sound and then suddenly she was alongside me, her fingers stroking my face. She leaned down and pressed her own face against mine. ‘You need sleep, too. I will watch.’
She was very persuasive. I shrugged and trapped her hand between my cheek and shoulder for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’ She hesitated and added, ‘Trust me.’
And, strangely enough, I did.
A couple of hours’ sleep worked wonders for me. I came out of it ready to go. Sasha was by the window, her back to me.
‘Anything?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe I hear something. Maybe not.’
I was up and out of my sleeping bag immediately. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen through the window. I turned to the door and eased it open a crack. The view was of the track. I saw movement on it. I closed the door and scrambled for my things.
‘Someone’s coming!’ I snapped. ‘Get ready.’
She was already packed and set to go. She hadn’t wasted her time on watch. A minute later I was ready, too. It would have taken longer if I hadn’t slept in my boots.
I took another look through the door. I could see three, possibly four, figures now. They were descending the track steadily. Another five minutes, I estimated, and they would be on the beach. I wasn’t in any doubt as to who they were, and I wasn’t about to hang around to discuss the weather with them.
‘We will go?’ Sasha said.
‘We must.’
There was no way we could hold them off for long from inside a ramshackle wooden hut. With a mobile that worked down there, I might have called Bill Peart at that point. As it was, we had to get out fast – while there was still time. I grabbed my rucksack and the shotgun, and opened the door.
We broke cover and were spotted immediately. I led the way, jogging south along the beach. The tide was well in but there was still a narrow strip of firm, wet sand.
Sasha ran beside me. She had no questions, which was just as well. I needed to think ahead rather than engage in conversation. Fortunately, she s
eemed to understand, and there were no signs of panic for me to worry about.
We reached the end of the little beach. I looked back and saw there were four of them following us. Already they were on the sand, and perhaps only two hundred yards behind us. Too far for them to shoot, probably, and certainly out of range of my shotgun.
‘We must go across the rocks and round the headland,’ I shouted.
‘There is a way?’
‘Perhaps. I mean, yes!’
I was thinking aloud, and not altogether coherently. If we could get round the headland, there was a possibility of escape, but no certainty. Stay where we were and there was certainly a certainty. I didn’t want to tell her that, though.
The tide was already raging across the rocks in front of the headland. Spray was sweeping overhead in vast, hissing sheets. I hesitated. It was too late, really. Far too late. But it was too late to go anywhere else either.
I plunged through the shallows, heading for the first of the rocks. I hoped Sasha would follow, and she did. Her confidence in me was astonishing, not that I was thinking that at the time. I was soon up to my knees, and then my thighs, in swirling water that sucked and pulled, trying to bring me down. Spray was arcing overhead in bigger sheets than ever. I glanced round. Sasha was still with me.
I went on. Now we were threading our way between large boulders, with fierce currents of seawater pulling at our legs, and sending us first one way and then another. A massive wave hit the rocks. I ducked and reached back to grab hold of Sasha’s coat. We stood still, holding on until the water level receded from our chests. Then I forged on. There was no going back. Either we got through or we’d had it.
We got through.
I tramped through shallower water and made it to the beach, still hanging on to Sasha. On the sand, I doubled over for a moment, catching my breath, spitting out volumes of sea water. When I straightened up, Sasha was looking back anxiously.
‘Come on!’ I urged.
We started running again, heading for the next obstacle. That was the shallow depression that ran all the way up to the foot of the cliffs. I hoped to God the water wasn’t too deep yet. We had to cross that hollow or we were done for. No way either back or forward then. We had to get through.
I didn’t hesitate. I ploughed straight in, towing Sasha after me. Every second counted. Twenty yards to cross. The water was up to my waist, and even higher on Sasha. More waves were lining up to hit the beach. The next one would probably take the water over my head.
We made it. I hauled Sasha up out of the water onto sand. Before we started off running again I glanced back. Two of Borovsky’s men had followed us round the headland. From a distance one of them looked like part of the pair that had trashed my house and beaten up Jimmy Mack. His pal was lucky. I’d given him a broken leg, and he hadn’t been able to come.
The two still following were racing towards us, with about fifty yards to go to the depression, entirely oblivious of the danger ahead. I thought of holding them up with a warning salvo from the shotgun, but that was when I realized the shotgun had not made it round the headland. The sea had taken it, and I hadn’t even noticed it going.
It didn’t matter anyway. They couldn’t get across to us. Not any more. The surging water was too deep to wade through and too violent to swim.
They couldn’t get back either now, of course.
I touched Sasha’s arm. ‘Come on!’ I said.
She turned unquestioningly and we began to run again, jogging along the water’s edge. I didn’t bother looking back. There was no need. Borovsky was now two men down, if not four.
27
We weren’t out of the woods yet ourselves. The beach we were now on had no way off that I had ever used or seen. Unless I could find the old route Jimmy had mentioned, we would face the same fate as Borovsky’s men. I wished now I’d got him to write it down.
Sandstone, Jimmy had said. As we jogged along the beach, with sheets of water pushing us ever closer to the foot of the cliff, I was looking out for a sandstone bluff that came down to ground level – sea level, actually. I was also looking out for anywhere else where there was a possibility of getting off the beach before the tide took us.
Sasha was keenly aware of the danger, too. ‘Frank, you know the way out of here?’ she panted.
‘I’m looking for it.’
She grimaced and shut up – for which I was grateful – and kept running.
We were halfway along the beach. So far I had seen nothing. I wouldn’t say I was beginning to despair, but I wasn’t far off. By now we were slapping along in shallow water. The incoming tide had used up most of the beach and was pressing us ever closer to the base of the cliff.
It was no good. I stopped running. I stood still and looked around desperately. We had no more than a couple of minutes left before we would be swimming, or washed away like the rest of the flotsam and jetsam.
Then I saw it. I’d been looking in the wrong place.
From what Jimmy had said, I had assumed the sandstone wall came down to the bottom of the cliff. But it didn’t. It stopped about ten feet above the beach. It was right above us. I knew we were in the right place because I could see a couple of short iron bars protruding from the cliff face.
‘This is it!’ I said.
Sasha just looked at me.
‘Our way off the beach.’
I pointed. She looked up, stared and then nodded. She had seen what I was pointing at. If she was unimpressed by it as a route, she didn’t say so. She just looked at me expectantly.
There were no footholds, or handholds either, close to the ground. Somehow we had to get up to the first of the iron bars, ten feet above us. Anything lower down had been eroded away, leaving a sea-smoothed blank wall.
‘You first,’ I said. ‘On my shoulders.’ I pulled off my leather belt and handed it to her. ‘Drop this down for me to grab.’
Then I braced myself against the cliff wall. Sasha seemed to understand what I had in mind. She climbed onto my back, stood upright on my shoulders and then could easily reach the first of the bars.
‘There is a place for my feet,’ she called down.
‘Good. Use it!’
I felt her weight leave me as she transferred to a thin foothold on the rock. Then I waited impatiently, sea water washing up to my waist, as she threaded the belt round the bar. I gritted my teeth against the cold and tried to ignore the big waves pounding in towards me. Soon. I knew I had to go soon.
Fully extended, the belt was a tantalizing few inches above my outstretched fingers. I tried to jump, but it was difficult in deep water. I couldn’t reach the end of the belt. Desperately, I kept trying, but it was no good. I couldn’t do it.
Suddenly, a boot appeared above my head, a few inches lower than the end of the belt. Sasha had taken hold of the stanchion with both hands and lowered herself until she was hanging full length. She had understood my predicament and was inviting me to use her as a human ladder.
I grasped her boot with my right hand, placed my right foot against the rock and heaved myself up so that I could catch hold of the belt with my left hand. Then I transferred my right hand to the belt, as well, taking my weight off Sasha. I was on my way, and I didn’t pause until I was standing precariously alongside her on the same foothold.
Keeping tight hold of the iron bar with my left hand, I reached my right arm round her and gave her a hug to express my gratitude and appreciation. She grinned and pressed her forehead into my shoulder.
I glanced upwards and my eyes traced the route. The way ahead was now clear. The booming of the sea hitting the cliff and the lash of spray made it too noisy for conversation between us but I pointed to the holds leading upwards and urged her to go first. She didn’t hesitate and began to move quickly and surely up the cliff, seemingly unintimidated by the exposure and growing drop below.
It wasn’t too bad. Usually there were decent holds for either feet or hands, and if there were none there were more iron b
ars that some old-timer had spent precious hours cementing into holes drilled into the rock.
We made it, and at the top we both collapsed on the ground not caring about wind, sleet, mud, or anything else for a couple of minutes. It was glad-to-be-alive time.
‘You didn’t warn me, Frank,’ Sasha said eventually.
‘About what?’
‘That we would have to go mountaineering.’
‘Would you have come, if I had?’
She grinned and shut up. We both knew we had been lucky.
We moved on down the coast. Just north of Port Holland we dropped down onto a little beach and sought refuge in another fisherman’s hut. This one looked to be a class up from Jimmy’s place – it had a lock on the door. By then, though, we were so cold and wet no lock in the world would have stopped me getting through the door. I stamped it open.
‘Luxury!’ I said with satisfaction, once we were inside.
And it was. A wooden table and two matching chairs. Bunk beds with bedding. A stack of logs and kindling by the stove. Even a gas hob attached to a propane cylinder.
Sasha made straight for the hob. I held my breath and watched with interest, and with hope. Neither of us had dry matches. Sasha fiddled. The hob burst into flame; it was self-igniting.
She turned to me with a smile, even though she was shaking with cold.
‘Well done!’ I told her.
We were both absolutely sodden as well as dangerously cold. But now we had a flame we could fire up the wood-burning stove. I got to work. As soon as the kindling took, I started stripping off my outer clothes. I turned to Sasha to urge her to do the same, rather than sit in wet things, only to find her ahead of me. Already she was in next to nothing at all, and hanging her clothes up to dry.
‘You have seen my body already,’ she said with a smile. ‘I have no surprises for you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ I said with feeling.
