Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  Polly had wondered if he would play Samaritan and offer to take the rucksack, but he had not. He had kept two paces in front of her and when she had tried to close the distance and be beside him he had lengthened his stride; she thought if she had run then so would he. Far to their left she had heard the rumble of the surf breaking, and to their right she saw the low dunes where the coarse grass was flattened by the wind's blast. The beach sand stretched to the surf and it reached as a thinning finger towards the far length of the island. Out to sea, she had not seen a single ship's silhouette against the horizon where clouds seemed to chase away the clear skies. And there had not been another living soul for distant company. At the tip of the finger, facing another island across a channel, he had turned inland. High on the beach, where the sand was softest, she had struggled under the weight of the rucksack but had kept pace with him. Polly Wilkins had pride and his rejection of her presence wounded her. He had led her on to a path among the dunes and there, in gullies, they had found protection. The wind eased against the rucksack, which seemed lighter on her shoulders.

  'I'll do very well without a lecture.'

  'That sort of man, he's all eyes and ears.'

  In the dunes, her mobile had rung. She had rummaged in pockets for it, found it, held it clamped to her ear. Gaunt. How was she? Where was she? She had shrieked against the wind that she was fine, on Baltrum, and had been told she was lucky to get the best damn holiday-place postings – and that it was about debt. About what? she had howled, louder than a crying seagull that balanced on the wind above her.

  Half of the call was lost on a fade-out, but she caught enough to hear that Timo Rahman had called in Ricky Capel's debt. The call was cut. They had walked on through the dunes, along a scuffed path, and each few paces she had seen his head swing right, then left, as if he soaked up an understanding of the place and memorized it.

  They had dropped down into a dip, then the path bent sharply, and they had seen him – the first life since the harbour and the homes close to the sea defences. An old man was huddled against the wind, and did not have the strength to fight it, but tried to straighten the supports for a viewing platform above a shallow, weedy, stagnant pond. Maybe, she thought, the old man in combat with the wind had the same awkwardness as herself, the same bloody-minded obstinacy as Malachy Kitchen. Without help, she realized, he would fail and the platform would collapse.

  'Everyone needs help. I do, you do – he does.'

  'It's wrong, involving others. Involve people and they're likely to get hurt.'

  "Total rubbish. If you've finished your quest for the Grail then bugger off. I haven't, and I need help.'

  She saw the savagery, and heard it. 'And you won't be around after you've involved a man, and he's hurt, won't be around to pick up the pieces.'

  'What do you think I've done with you, if it's not involve you?'

  'I'll pick up my own pieces.'

  The ethos of the Service, which they taught recruits, what was practised in field operations was the supremacy of officers over informants – milk and dump, exploit and quit. But Malachy Kitchen had told her that he was trained in intelligence-gathering, would know first hand what she had been taught and practised. The old man had his shoulder wedged against the right forward support of the pillar… Of course she would milk and exploit, dump and quit.

  'I'm not out on a stroll, looking to get back my self-respect. My work is life and death and-' She regretted the pomposity.

  He said quietly, 'Maybe there's a shop in the village up the other end and you can buy yourself a medal.'

  If she had not had the rucksack on her shoulders, Polly Wilkins would have flounced away, but she hadn't that spring in her. She trudged towards the man on a tramped-down track that skirted the pond.

  There were ducks – heavy white ducks, who didn't seem to know it was about life and death. Her father was enthralled by birds, and her mother made sandwiches for them to take to the Chew and Blagdon reservoirs where they'd sit and watch waterfowl. As a child Polly had been dragged along too and had squinted through her father's telescope. For her sixteenth birthday they had given her a pair of pocket binoculars. There were big military-strength ones in the rucksack but she would not show them.

  She moved quietly to the scrub between the track and the pond, made certain she did not disturb the ducks. She reckoned that any man who was not a fanatic or a lunatic would have been behind his front door that afternoon, not heaving, without a hope of success, at a platform's support poles. He would not have heard her against the wind but he must have seen her from the edge of his vision… Damn good eyes, a hawk's eyes. He stopped, took his shoulder off the pole.

  As she came closer, she could see the gathering malevolence at his mouth and the suspicion in his eyes. She reached him. She saw the scarred, fleshless hands, the face creased with age and distrust, the way his overalls hung on him as if worn on a skeleton. Nothing to say. Her work was 'life and death', and for that innocents were involved. She smiled at him coolly.

  She swung the rucksack off her shoulders and let it fall, as if it contained nothing of importance.

  She went past him. Where his shoulder had been, she put hers. She heaved, gasped, and felt the support straighten two or three inches towards the vertical.

  She could smell him, the tang of dirt and stale sweat.

  How bloody long would he stay back and watch?

  Three inches or four… Her feet slipped but she dug them into the mud. There was a grunt, then the old man's body was against Polly's. Five inches or six.

  They pushed together. Six inches or seven. He was groping in his pocket, then nails filled his mouth, half swallowed between bloodless lips. She thought she might buckle under the weight that knifed her shoulder. The hammer slammed into the nails, taken one at a time from his mouth.

  When Malachy came to them and put his weight against the support pole on the left side, she knew his name. She knew his age. She knew the name of his wife. She knew of his love for the eider ducks on the pond.

  Dusk came and the platform was secure. Polly had been the leech and had sucked blood. She knew that a paradise was threatened by strangers – that if it was lost, it could never be regained.

  'You should go home now, Oskar, get warm and cook yourself something hot. Mal and I will be here tonight, and we'll watch out for strangers.'

  The light, through the plantation's trees, failed.

  The wind sang above them and the upper branches shook. The man stood easily, then bent and took a sandwich from the bag, unwrapped it, checked its contents and wolfed it. Ricky was propped against a tree trunk and watched the man's movements in shadow. After the sandwich had been eaten, the weapon was secreted in an inner pocket, then the flashlight was thrown to him, without explanation, and he scrabbled to catch it. The man hooked the case with the radio under his arm; his posture said he would wait a moment but no longer.

  'So, what are we doing?'

  They had not spoken since the Mercedes had been driven away. They had gone into the depth of the trees and had each found a trunk to rest against, backs to each other. Ricky had waited for him to speak, but he had not. Ricky had been reluctant to break the silence between them, as if it would show weakness. They had sat, spine to spine, through the day, had shared the quiet.

  The man had an easy voice, clear but accented English, and seemed to mock: 'Does your trawler come here, Ricky, across the fields? Or do we go to your trawler?'

  In Ricky Capel's world, disrespect was a crime. The punishment for that crime was handed out by Davey

  … but Davey was not here, and this was not Ricky's world. He had seen the photograph in the newspaper, a younger man but clearly recognizable, and the picture of a woman. But there was an envelope in his pocket, which contained cash, and he had been threatened. He trembled. Sitting against the tree, he had eaten two of the sandwiches left for them, but he was still hungry. What screwed his mind: the man seemed to have no fear, seemed not to care that the
Mercedes had gone.

  He pushed himself up, felt weak. 'Do you have a name?'

  The man looked at him, pondered briefly, then again seemed to laugh at him. 'You follow football?'

  'A little.' Ricky blinked, confused. 'Why?'

  'In London, yes? What team?'

  'My boy goes to Charlton, with his grandad. That's Charlton Athletic, at the Valley. What's that got to do-'

  'What is the name of the goalkeeper?'

  'He's Republic of Ireland and… Dean something.

  Christ, I can't remember his bloody name.'

  'I am a goalkeeper, Ricky. Quite good, not very good… To you I shall be Dean. For you, Dean is my name.'

  'That's just daft,' Ricky spluttered.

  The mocking ended. The man said, 'If you need a name for me, it shall be Dean. What you should understand, Ricky, the less you know of me the better you are protected. I am very serious. The less you learn is the best. We go now to find a way to the island, where your boat will come.'

  'Right…' Ricky hesitated. He pocketed the bag with the one remaining sandwich. 'Right, Dean.'

  They left the plantation. The light was a fading smear ahead. The man led, not taking the signposted road to Nessmersiel, but headed out across fields and found a track flattened by a heavy tractor's wheels.

  The mud clung to Ricky's shoes – lightweight and top of the range – and spattered his trouser hems below the waterproof leggings. Gulls from the fields scattered in front of them, screaming. Once, his feet slithered away under him and he was pitched down on to his backside, but he groped himself upright and followed. The man ahead never broke his stride.

  They went round a farm where security lamps were bright and saw a yard of cattle, but dogs barked and they kept clear of the buildings. They went right through a mass of wind turbines, whose great propeller blades churned circles over them, then crossed a field that had been ploughed and sown. Ricky lost his right shoe and had to grope for it in the growing darkness, then had to run to catch his man. He was panting, heaving. He was led over a barbed-wire fence and the goddamn goalkeeper didn't hold the wire down for him, and when his turn came it slashed his hands and ripped the crotch of his leggings. They crossed a tarmacadam road, then another fence, and then they climbed a steep slope of grass. Sheep, barely visible, stampeded away from them. Ricky sobbed for breath. When they reached the top, when the wind's strength slashed at them, the man stopped. He stood erect and gazed out towards a little cluster of lights beyond a black emptiness, short of the horizon's last light. Ricky felt himself shaken by the wind's force.

  'That is the island, where we go.'

  'Brilliant, Dean. Bloody brilliant,' Ricky gasped.

  'And how do we go?'

  They went down the slope, slithered and slid, and more sheep ran from them. They climbed another fence and then they were on the shoreline. Away to the left, a mile and a half or more, they saw the fierce, shining lights of a harbour, and out in that part of the emptiness there were navigation lights, but not in front of them. Too bloody easy to go where the lights were, where a ferry boat sailed from – not a clever place to be for a man with his face plastered all over the front page of a newspaper. There was the stink of the sea, and Ricky's eyes were better now in the darkness than they had been in half-light. He could see white caps in front of them that seemed to ride into little gullies.

  'How do we go? We have to find a little boat.'

  'What if, Dean, we don't find a little boat?'

  'We walk and we swim – but I think we will find a little boat.'

  They did.

  It was up on grass. It was as small as the boat, twenty years back, that Mikey might have hired for an hour down at Folkestone or Margate – if he'd been out of Wandsworth or Pentonville on a nice summer Sunday – and no way Sharon would have gone in it.

  The rowing boat was upturned on the grass and a frayed rope tied it to a rotted stump. Ricky thought the man had faith in luck, or faith in God, for thinking he'd find a boat. They had damn near walked into it. When they'd tipped it over, the man took the flashlight, switched it on for a few seconds at a time and ran his hands over the planking as if that way he'd find a hole in it; there were oars too.

  They dragged the boat away from the grass and down on to mud. The man pulled it by the rope and Ricky pushed it. The mud clung to him. Next it would be his bloody shoes going down in the mud and bloody lost. He took them off, and his sodden socks, and shoved them into his outer pockets. At each step the mud seemed to pull him back, but he had his shoulder against the wood of the boat; funny, but Ricky Capel, who could strut in any company, found that he needed not to fail, had to show his worth to this man, was not going to be found bloody wanting. For two whole hours, with one rest time of not more than five minutes, they scraped the boat over the mud and then they reached the water. The surf came in spurts up to their knees, then ran back.

  When they floated off, when the man dragged on the oars, Ricky lay in the floor of the boat and water sloshed round him. He found, under his back, a saucepan tied with string to the boat's side, and began to use it to ladle out the water. As fast as he did so, the boat filled. The water level crept up – the saucepan could not compete with it. It lapped at the top of his knees and up his hips, but he kept bailing because he could not let the man see him fail.

  They grounded across the channel. The moon had come up and he could see the line of a shallow hill in front of them. They stepped out, water up to their thighs, went down in a hole and crawled out.

  'Well done, Ricky. That was good.'

  He flushed at the praise, and a little of his exhaustion fled.

  If she had asked, Malachy would have said, 'Perhaps Timo Rahman'll drop them by the ferry or have them brought over in a fast craft. They'll link up with a boat offshore, use a radio for it. The size of boat that can get across the North Sea would be too large to come in close, so it'll have to launch a dinghy and come right in to the beach, somewhere along the stretch we walked. They can use a radio for the final contact with the boat but they'll have to signal an exact spot for the dinghy, and my guess is that they'd use flashing lights to guide it in. That won't be easy – of course, I'm not a seaman and don't have exact knowledge – because of the surf that the storm's knocking up. I hope to see them when they've put the light on. It'll be when their plan is most vulnerable, but they'll know with the weather that no living soul is going to be out and watching for them, which will give them confidence.

  I'm not reckoning, where we are, that we can miss the light they'll use, could be tonight or could be tomorrow night – maybe right now they're lying up.

  We'll see that light. I want to hit them when they think they're on the last leg – they're coming down from the dunes and they're out on the beach without cover…

  I want to screw it up for Ricky Capel. You've your own target and that's your business – mine is with Ricky Capel. I want him out there in the sand and unable to get to his dinghy – for him the whole thing is failure on a mind-blowing scale. It's only a gesture, but it's what I want… I want to hear him scream, and then I can walk away.'

  She was beside him and her sleeping-bag was already half buried in the sand that the wind pulled off the beach. He could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing. He sat hunched, and his eyes raked the shoreline and the upper points of the dunes as he watched for a light. The same sand that covered her was caking on his chest and shoulders, on his lips, cheeks and around his eyes. He would have liked to listen to his voice telling her that he would hit Ricky Capel, then walk away, but she slept and would not have heard him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He sat on an upper point of the dunes, and the rain was back, and the pledge made to Malachy was broken.

  He watched and she was huddled on her side in the sleeping-bag, eyes clamped shut, sand carpeting her hair. When the drizzle had started, he had carefully lifted the bag's neck so that her mouth and nose were covered; through her misted spectacles he could see
that her eyes stayed closed. The pledge, broken, had been that he would watch till two in the morning, and then she would take her turn, and he would sleep. He had not roused her.

  He glanced regularly at her, a few seconds in each two or three minutes, but his focus was on the sea, where a boat would come. More likely the boat would reach them at night, guided by lights, but he thought the weather – rain that drove up on to the dunes, mist, low cloud that shortened the horizon – gave enough cover for a dinghy to be launched. It was as if the few clustered houses by the harbour where the ferry docked were detached from the rest of the wilderness of the island. The voices he heard were those of gulls that ducked and dived in the wind. The tide was up and they had fewer acres of sand to feed from, so their hunt for shells to split open was harder and more frantic. Other sounds were from the wind's thrust in the dunes, and its singing in the low branches of the few trees behind him. He thought she would wake soon because her breathing was less regular than it had been during the night.

  The expanse of the beach was being steadily sub-merged. The tide rolled in. In the gloom, sometimes, he saw the light of a buoy, but no boats came past it.

  She woke. Sudden movement. Wriggling in the bag and fighting to get an arm clear, trying to see a wrist and a watch. Cursing. Head lifted. Spectacles snatched off and wiped crudely on the underside of the bag. Spectacles replaced. Looking around, eyes fastening on him.

  'Damn you.'

  It amused Malachy to see her annoyance. 'Good morning, Miss Wilkins.'

  'You promised.'

  'An earthquake wouldn't have woken you.'

  Her fingers were in her hair and sand flew clear. She shook her head violently. 'Damn you because you promised to wake me. If you didn't know it, that is insulting.'