Peter May: Coffin Road

Karen crouches and Bran turns to her, sniffing excitedly. Maybe he can tell from her scent that she is a part of me, and that she deserves his love as much as, if not more than I do. She spreads her hands on his head and he licks her face, and when she puts her arms around him, he leans in to her, making funny little noises, looking up at me with big soulful eyes as if seeking my approval.

When she stands up, she says, ‘I phoned Mum.’

‘How was she?’

‘I think, incandescent would probably describe her best. Of course, she was pleased to hear I was safe. But the bit she liked most was when I told her you were definitely still alive.’

I grin. ‘That must have been disappointing for her.’ But Karen doesn’t smile, and I see only pain in the face she turns up towards mine.

‘You have no idea what you put me through.’

I put my arms around her and pull her to me. ‘I think I do.’ And I make her look at me. ‘And I’m so, so sorry. I would never have done it this way if I’d had a choice.’

She nods. ‘I know. Billy told me. They threatened me.’

‘You were my one weak spot. My Achilles heel. And they knew it.’

‘In spite of how horrible I was to you?’

My smile is rueful. ‘We are all teenagers once, Karen. Your mum and I had already burned ourselves out. But leaving you behind was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.’ I turn towards the laptop on the kitchen table. ‘That Facebook page of your Uncle Michael’s... That was me. So I could watch you, even from here. See you growing up. From your posts and your photos. It was just about the only thing that kept me sane.’

She nods. ‘I think I figured that out by now.’

A shadow falls across her face, just as if the sun had slipped behind a cloud. ‘And I fucked it all up for you.’

I am shocked to hear her swear. But more disturbed by what she says. ‘How?’

‘All that data. Lost. Because of me. Two years of research. You’ll never be able to set that up again, will you? You could never finance a repeat of it all.’

I take her into my arms again and rest my chin on the top of her head, closing my eyes. ‘I don’t have to.’

She draws back and looks at me. ‘Why not?’

‘Karen, I may be all the things that Billy accused me of. Manic, selfish, paranoid.’ I pause. ‘But I’m not stupid.’ I take her hand. ‘Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet.’

This is the first time I have driven out across the machair to where the old caravan is roped down and pegged into the sandy soil. I could never risk being seen here, or having any contact with the man known as Buford.

My car is not well suited to this track with its ruts and potholes, and it lurches from side to side, creaking, and banging as the underside of it hits bump after bump.

The breeze is stiffening again as we step out into it, but the clouds gathering to the west are light and blow in shreds across the sky, sending shadows careening ahead of them over the sand. I breathe deeply and know I am going to miss this place.

I guide Karen around the giant satellite dish and a generator whose motor is barely audible, and we hear the radio mast vibrating and singing in the wind. At the front of the caravan, a Land Rover sits proud on the machair, a stone’s throw from the beach.

The caravan door opens, and the man with the binoculars and the straggling hair grins out at us. He steps down on to the machair and we embrace. A long, heartfelt embrace. He grins at me and shakes his head. ‘Man, I really thought I was never going to see you again.’

I turn to my daughter. ‘Karen, this is Alex. He’s my statistician. Being an obsessive twitcher, and a man who likes his own company, he jumped at the chance of a six-month sabbatical from St Andrew’s University, funded by OneWorld, to come up here and crunch the numbers on our research.’ She shakes his hand. ‘And be glad he did, because he saved my life.’

Alex scratches his head ruefully. ‘Aye, and very nearly got myself killed in the process.’ He steps back into the caravan. ‘Come in.’

It is the first time I have been in here, and I am immediately struck by the smell of stale cigarettes and cooking and body odour. Alex might well be a genius with figures, but I fear his personal hygiene leaves much to be desired.

One half of the caravan is a shambles of clothes that lie in crumpled heaps, a tiny sink piled high with dirty plates and tin cups, a table littered with books and papers and an ashtray overflowing with the remains of roll-ups and who knows what else. Three blackened pots crowd together on a two-ring cooker.

The other end is like some high-tech IT lab. There are several computer screens on a table that groans with black and silver boxes that spew cable in all directions. There are three keyboards and umpteen mice. Beneath the table, I see at least two large processing units.

‘Contrary to appearances,’ I tell Karen, ‘Alex is not an avid watcher of satellite TV. The dish provides him with a high-speed internet link, and the little generator out back supplies him with power. He also has secure radio comms with OneWorld, so he is in constant touch with our funders.’

‘Wow.’ Karen gazes at the computer equipment that Alex has assembled. ‘You’d never know there was all this stuff in here from the outside.’

‘That was the idea,’ Alex says. ‘Everyone thinks I’m a traveller, or a New Age hippy. The kids are scared of me and stay away. The adults want me gone, but the authorities can’t move me, so here I am.’

I clear away some laundry and sit down. ‘I was afraid from early on that the whole research project might be compromised. Billy was right, I didn’t trust anyone. And when the Harrisons turned up, it just seemed a little too pat. So I asked OneWorld to check them out. And guess what. They weren’t at all who they said they were. Which meant that someone on the inside had sold out to Ergo.’

‘Billy,’ Karen said.

I nod. ‘Deloit had someone run the rule over him. Turned out he had an awful lot more money sloshing around than they were paying him. So security became paramount. I stopped sharing with both Sam and Billy. We funnelled all the results through me, and from me to Alex. Nobody but me and Deloit knew about Alex. I worked on an external hard drive that I hid out on Eilean Mòr when there was anything of any value on it. I copied my data on to thumb drives that I left for Alex in waterproof bags under a couple of stones up on the coffin road, near where I have my hives.’

Alex said, ‘So all the research data was coming to me, and I was doing the statistical analysis as it came in. I have everything on my hard drives.’

I smile. ‘And just to be extra safe, we backed everything up on the internet.’ I turn to Karen. ‘Remember that web space I got you about three years ago? You were going to try your hand at website development.’ I pause. ‘And never did.’

She looks guilty. ‘Like all those things I was going to do and never did. It’s what Gilly was doing. I guess I just wanted to keep up. But I was never really that interested.’

‘Just as well,’ I tell her. ‘That’s the space we used to store our backup. On private pages. Somewhere no one would ever think of looking.’

‘So what happened out on the island between Billy and Sam?’

I exchange a dark look with Alex. ‘That was a bad idea,’ I say. ‘And I only have myself to blame. I thought, if we could draw Billy out in the open, confront him with the fact that we knew he’d sold out... I thought I could talk him round. Get him on our side again, then maybe we could find out what Ergo and the Harrisons were planning.’ I shake my head in raw regret. ‘I confided in Sam and we hatched a plan to snare Billy. Stupid! Sam deliberately let it slip to him that he and I were meeting up to exchange final data, and the statistician’s analysis.’