Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

He came to the hiding-place.

Andy Chalmers hadn't slept in the night, nor in the day.

He could control tiredness, had contempt for it and for hunger, but he had biscuits in his pocket for the dogs. In the night he had listened to the silence, and in the day he had watched the flight of the bird.

To stay awake, and keep alert, he had chosen to concentrate his thoughts on the big birds of his home under the mountain slopes. The bird he watched was half the size of the eagles, pretty and interesting but without majesty… If he had been home, that day, he would have gone to the eyrie on a crag face of Ben More Assynt, scrambled on the scree then climbed and taken cut hazel branches from down beside the loch with him, to repair the eyrie from the storm damage of the winter.

At first, watching the bird in the early daylight, Andy Chalmers was confused. The bird hunted. It dived on a young duck and carried it to the heart of the reed-beds. He understood that. He could see that the bird had no grace in its flight, but was able to hunt. It was recovering from injury, could have been a strike against a pylon's cables or a shotgun wound. After it fed, the bird circled one area at the heart of the reed-beds. It was too immature, without the width thickness in the wing-span, to have a mate nesting below, and at first he had been confused.

He watched that place.

He waited for some reaction from the other birds: for the ducks to rise screaming, or swans and geese to clatter for open water, but he saw only the circling bird, until the afternoon.

Then, a single curlew had flown, startled, from the place he watched. It had taken him minutes to re~Iize that the bird was no longer over that same place and could not have stampeded the curlew. In his mind, he made a central point for the arcs the bird flew, and that point changed, moved gradually away. If he had not been so tired, Andy Chalmers would have understood sooner. The central point for the arcs of flight neared the far shore-line of the marsh, where the trees and scrub merged with the reeds. He did not know why the curlew had crashed out of the reeds, only that its flight had been a moment of luck and had alerted him.

There was a pattern here that he was struggling to understand. At the limit of his vision, he had seen a sparrow break cover from the scrub.

The bird no longer circled, wheeled, but climbed. It was a distant speck when Andy Chalmers moved from his cover and went down into the mass of reeds.

He took the dogs with him, would not be separated from them. It was only when he reached the focus of the harrier's arcs that he realized it was a hiding-place, and as such it was well chosen. Many years before, enough years for it to be before his birth, the marsh waters had rotted a tree's roots. The tree had fallen, the branches had decayed. An empty oil drum had been driven by the winds and tides against the remaining branches and had wedged. It was a refuge, a safe place. Where the trunk peeped above the water was the stripped carcass of a duck, and in the drum was the faint smell of a man. The bird had shown him the place. He could have passed within two yards of the tree's trunk and the almost submerged drum and would not have seen the biding-place.

He had the line. The bird had given him the line to the shore.

Wading through the mud and carrying his dogs, swimming and having them paddle after him, he found not a trace of the man he tracked. He had followed men who had come on to the mountain to raid the eyrie nests, and those men took precautions, faced prison and had cause to be careful. This man was better than any of them. He had the point on the shore-line from which the sparrow had flown. He had the marker.

At the edge of the reeds he lay still in the water, and listened. There was a tangle of bramble a few paces away. He could smell him, but couldn't see him. The dogs were against his body with only their heads above the water. He held his breath and waited. He did not have a profile of the man, could not be inside his mind to know how he would react and how he would move… It was more interesting, there was more unpredictability, in tracking a human than a deer. The tiredness had left him. He lay in the water, was fulfilled, and listened.

The dogs would have told him if the man was close.

The dogs smelt him, as Andy Chalmers did, but knew he was no longer there. He came out of the water and the dogs bounded forward, splashing clear.

He found rabbit's bones and the rear leg of a frog. He knew the man had gone, moved on.

Meryl kissed him. She had her coat on and she held her Stephen's hand. There was another coat over her arm, and four suitcases behind her.

Davies was at the back. Perry couldn't read Davies's face as Meryl kissed him. Rankin was closer: he tousled Stephen's hair and his machine-gun flapped loosely on the webbing when he bent to pick up the child's football.

"You'll be all right?"

"I'll be fine."

"Bill's going to shop for you."

"I'll manage."

The bell rang.

"You won't worry about us."

"I won't."

"I'm just so frightened."

At the third blast of the bell, Rankin peered into the spy hole then nodded to Davies. The key was turned, the bolts drawn back. Davies watched them. Were they ready? Had they finished? It hadn't been there before, but Perry saw compassion in Rankin's face. And he noticed the sharp movements of Davies's jaw as his teeth bit at his lip hard bastards, and they were moved. He had not been upstairs while she had packed. He had not found the quiet corner in the house, away from the microphones. She kissed him one last time her boy wore a new England football shirt that Paget and Rankin had given to him. God alone knew how they'd obtained it, must have had a shop in the town opened up at dawn. Perry felt helpless, as if the eyes, the micrc~hones and the watchers ruled him. He wanted it over, her gone, before he wept.

"You should go, Meryl."

"I'll see you."

"Some time soon."

"Keep safe. Be careful. Don't forget, ever, our love, don't-' "Time you were gone, Meryl."

He could hear the cars outside, the engines starting up.

Davies said, calm voice, "Don't stop, Mrs. Perry. We believe that the area outside is secure, but still don't stop. The pavement time is the worst. Straight out and into the lead car. There's no going back for anything. Keep moving directly to the lead car."

Rankin pulled the door open. Davies hustled them forward, past the two men who waited on the step. They went at a charge. Perry saw his Meryl go, and Stephen with the football, pushed forward by Davies towards the door of the lead car. The two men came behind them with the suitcases and pitched them into the rear car. Rankin snapped the front door shut. He didn't see them go, didn't have the chance to wave. He heard the slam of the doors and the roar of the engines.

"The best thing for now is a fresh pot of tea," he said.

She had taken a position beside the lavatories near the hall. From there she had a view of the gable end of the house and a small part of the green. The light was going. Hours ago, Farida Yasmin had learned the patrol pattern of the unmarked cars, and each time they came by she was behind the toilets and beyond their view. She had hung on there because she had found out nothing that would help him. She stretched her body.

"Hello, my dear, still here, then?"

The woman had come behind her, on the path that led to the beach.

"I was just going."

"I can't remember what you said, why you were here."

The woman would not have remembered because she had not been told.

Farida Yasmin explained pleasantly, "It's a college project on the modern pressures affecting rural life. It seemed an interesting place to come to. I'm getting the feel of it, then I'll be looking to interview people."