Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

It came as a low rumble at first, a thunderstorm far away and the clatter distorted in the wind. He strained to hear better. Fixed-wing and likely circling to locate the strip on Westray island. Coughing and louder, an engine straining at the limits of its power. The wind-sock would be horizontal and the wind coming across the runway. Gaz evaluated… He would have said that he knew by face each and every islander, some better than others, but knew each well enough to nod and wave, including the kids and the old people who hardly left their homes… and had known by sight every villager, resident that day in Delta Alpha Sierra, knew their trades and their habits and the routines of their days, and had watched them and stayed hidden from them – and realised a simple truth. An aircraft coming to Westray on such a night, in pitch-dark blackness, with a minimum of navigation lights and with wipers on the cockpit windscreen barely able to clear the rain and give the pilot what visibility he needed, meant a matter of life and of death. He straightened his body and then edged across the floor, did a leopard crawl that he had perfected in a former life, unforgotten, and reached the window and dragged aside the curtain. He wondered for whom the aircraft came. An emergency: a man or woman or child would be in that half-world that was divided by the two extremes, by life and by death. Who had fallen, who had suffered a coronary, who was a stroke victim, who was in such danger that a doctor and nurse had been despatched from Kirkwall on the mainland and sent north to Westray, risking their own survival? He saw the lights. They were low and seemed to waver, to dip and toss and swing to the side then jump, then fall. He wondered which of the islanders had suffered the calamity requiring a flight on that bad a night. Or who was about to be born?

A matter of life and a matter of death for one of their number. The aircraft lights seemed to drop, fall away and the engine roared in the night.

A car braked. He heard a door opening, splashed puddles, a door slamming shut. The car pulled away. His gate, for want of oil, groaned as the wind buffeted it, and slammed it shut. Footsteps on the gravel.

There was an old knocker on the door, rarely used but serviceable. Two loud raps. Gaz knew what defined a stranger: was a front door locked in the night hours? Islanders, those with pedigree stock who might have a grandfather buried in the cemetery down on the shore, who knew the land and its people and the history, would not have bothered to fasten a door, turn a key, push a bolt. That night, Gaz locked the door, a defence against the demons who hunted him. He had been in the darkness when the car had approached, come warily up the track. He did not have anything in the bungalow that was worth stealing and seldom had more cash than what his wallet held. He might as well have left the door unlocked, but had not, and he had believed himself more secure behind the newly fitted mortise… He realised a truth. He had thought the aircraft landing in the night, in the teeth of the storm, was a matter of life and a matter of death. But the rap was on his door. Gaz’s life and Gaz’s death. His vehicle was parked at the bungalow’s side. If it had been the islander who managed several jobs, among them the Westray taxi service, then a clear question would have been met with a certain answer. Was this resident at home? Was definitely at home. Gaz was on the hall floor. The door handle was not tried but he heard impatience expressed through a hacking cough and a spit, then a curse, then stamped feet. Another rap, and another, and a shifting of squelching shoes. A voice from far back, then it had been sparse with words, just enough to nudge along his story as told in the Portakabin where the debrief had taken place. Not a shout but a voice competing with the wind’s howl and the downpour of rainwater from the overload in the gutters.

“Come on, Gaz, open the bloody door. Raining out here if you didn’t know. I’m Knacker, met you that night at the FOB, heard your story, the eyewitness account. Flown in through a bit of a squall, and come to see you. A little proposition… Like I say, it’s raining. I’m already half drowned. Gaz, get a move on.”

He reached towards the key in the lock, groped and felt the jamb until the chain was in his fingers. The door was locked but not chained. Had been chained for the first months he had been on Westray, but six month ago he had abandoned that level of security. He fastened the chain. Then, only then, did he turn the key and ease the door back as far as the chain permitted. A man stood on the step. The security light at the end of the front wall of the bungalow lit a shoulder of a sodden raincoat, but most of the face was in shadow from the brim of a trilby hat, and rain ran off it in rivers.

“We’re not going to mess about are we, Gaz? Tell me that we aren’t. Famous for hospitality aren’t you, up here? Getting out of this shit would be a small mercy.”

Of course, Gaz remembered him, remembered his face and the sound of his voice that was so bloody calm, and the eyes doing a stiletto job on him, and remembered also two women who had hovered in the background, one behind Knacker and one behind Gaz: a pretty woman and a butch woman, neither in uniform, both with leather shoulder-holsters and handguns draped on their chests. A tape had turned and he had told his story, the story that had near destroyed him, and he had hidden from it.

“I cannot see what business I have with you.”

“Easier if I’m inside, hopefully with a fire lit.”

“The past is done, I don’t live there.”

“Just a little matter, something simple and quick. Better if it were explained.”

“You should go away.” A quaver shook Gaz’s voice. “Should leave.”

“A bit of business to run by you, Gaz. Something that’s worthwhile. Did I tell you it’s raining out here, or did I forget to tell you, and blowing a bit.”

“I have moved on. I have a new life.”

“Better if I tell you, face to face, what we’re looking at. Wouldn’t want you to think, Gaz, I haven’t more in my life than pitching up in the night, in a serious storm to look up old chums, or reminisce old wars. Never was good at nostalgia. Am I going to charge the door, break it down? No… but would enjoy helping you with your road back.”

“Would you go away? Please go away.”

“Read your notes, Gaz, and the diagnosis. I could do you more good than you sitting on your backside in the dark, frightened of your own shadow. I reckon I could put some purpose your way, better – short-term, long-term – than a bottle of pills and hiding.”

“I want nothing from you.”

“I saw that girl today. Pleasant kid. Attractive if it weren’t for the scar. Brave as a lioness, of course. Not hunkered down and self-pitying. Do I need to remind you of what she did? What do you think, Gaz? Memory drooping, is it?”

“Just go. Go back where you came from.”

“Forget it ever happened? Be nice. Forget that place? Forget what was done? Forget the perpetrators? Keep on mowing grass and mending leaky roofs, and doing some bog standard plumbing, or electrics? An option, Gaz, turning your back on it. Or, should I tell you what I want of you?”

“Nothing for you to say to me.”

“Certainly comes down here, the rain… The girl, Faizah, has helped us discover the Russian who was liaison, and we’ve done the checks. Got a name and a work location, and that’s where we need you on board, Gaz. Need you doing what you do well.”

“I’m not listening. I’m hearing nothing.”

“I’m cold, Gaz, and wet, but this is too important for me to be worrying about myself. He’s in Murmansk, the Russian with a shed load of guilt… All we want from you is that you pop in there, use a few of the skills you’re noted for. Have a look at him, identify him for certain, copper-bottom stuff. Come on out after marking him. He’s a major in FSB and thinks he’s clear, why wouldn’t he? But he’d be wrong, and that’s not your problem, that’s mine. It’s not a big ask, Gaz, and you’d be well rewarded: not cash, wouldn’t insult you, but pride and respect and the knowledge that you didn’t walk away when the chance was offered. Get that chain off the door, be a good fellow.”