Dave Hutchinson - Europe in Autumn

“Whereas the English…?”

“Everything. Garrisons just south of Berwick and Gretna, regular patrols, fences, sensors. Drone flights along the border – which the Scots tend to shoot down; the Chinese gave them some obsolete automated sentry guns. The thing is…” He smiled.

“The thing is…?” asked Rudi.

“The English are watching for stuff coming south. Not going in the opposite direction.”

IT WAS STILL raining the next morning, and great gusts of wind and water were blowing in veils and sheets down the valley where the farm sat. Seth and Rudi came to breakfast – a very passable selection of sausage, bacon, black pudding, fried potatoes, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, fried bread, baked beans – to discover that in the night the bed-and-breakfast had acquired two more guests, a couple of young women named Annette and Lauren, who had taken shelter at the height of last night’s storm.

“Couldn’t see more than a couple of feet past the end of the car,” Lauren told them from the adjoining table. She had a Glaswegian accent. “Just a solid wall of water. Right, Nette?”

“Right,” said Annette, who was small and taciturn and sounded – from the few words she said – as if she was from down in the West Country somewhere.

“Thought we were going to have to pull over and sleep in the car, then Nette spotted a sign for this place. Right, Nette?”

Annette was examining a triangle of fried bread as if the conjunction of frying pan and bread had never occurred to her before. She looked up and nodded. “Right.”

“We’re off to Hawick, see my parents,” Lauren said. “How about you guys?”

“Glasgow,” said Seth. “We’re opening a restaurant.”

“Yeah? Whereabouts?”

“Down by the river. Near the SEC.”

“Ach, I wish you luck with that,” Lauren said.

“Thank you,” said Rudi.

Lauren looked at her watch. “How’s the rain?”

Seth leaned back in his chair so he could see out of the window; the glass was running with water. “Still pouring down.”

“Hm. What do you reckon?” she asked Annette. “Shall we chance it?”

Annette put down her fried bread. “I can’t eat this,” she said. “What’s wrong with you people?”

Lauren chuckled. “Nette’s not been feeling well,” she told them.

“I feel all right,” Annette protested in a low voice. “How can you do this to bread? It’s a sin.”

“Okay,” said Lauren, getting to her feet. “That’s us away, then. Nice to meet you, guys.” Annette stood up too, and looked around the dining room as if searching for more abused bread.

“Drive carefully,” said Rudi.

“Yeah, you too,” said Lauren. “Happy trails.”

After the girls had gone, Seth looked at Rudi. “We ought to be getting on our way too, you know.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Rudi told him.

“I know what I’m doing,” Seth said.

“Good.”

“I’m going to Europe with you, we’re going to find out who ordered that bloke to kill Lewis and Angela, and I’m going to kill them .”

Rudi sighed. He looked down at the remains of their breakfast. “She’s right, you know.”

“Who?”

“That girl. Fried bread. I’ll never understand what goes on in the heads of the English.”

THE RAIN SEEMED to be easing up a little as they checked out and carried their luggage out to the car, but the moment they were on the road again it started bucketing down. The hills and moors and forests withdrew behind a pounding grey curtain and all the windscreen wipers did was divert the stream of water first one way, then the next.

“This is a terrible place,” Rudi said from the passenger’s seat, having turned the driving over to Seth for a while. “I’m never coming here again.”

“Northumberland,” Seth said, peering through the windscreen. “Part of the ancient kingdom of Bernicia.”

“The fucking Bernicians are welcome to it. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Hm.” Rudi crossed his arms and stared out at the lashing rain.

They drove through what seemed to be a huge area of forest, and skirted the edge of a big lake, its other shore completely lost in the rain, then out onto moorland and back into the forest again. At one point a colossal truck carrying logs emerged from the rain, lights blazing, and blew past them at such a speed that the car rocked in its wake and Seth swore and fought not to lose control of the wheel.

A few minutes later they passed a car pulled up at the side of the road, its bonnet open and two sodden, wind-lashed figures standing looking at the engine. Seth drove past a hundred yards or so, then pulled in to the side and stopped the Espace. When he saw Rudi staring at him he said, “We’re Coureurs. We’re supposed to help people.”

“It’s the two girls from the farm,” Rudi said, “and they’re part of the English security presence here.”

“No they’re not,” Seth said, opening the driver’s door. “The farmer and his wife are.”

They took their bags from the back of the car and trudged back along the roadside to where Lauren and Annette stood waiting.

“I think it’s the electrics,” Lauren said, gesturing at the engine of her car.

“We’re in a hurry,” said Seth.

She looked at him. “Aye,” she said, nodding. “Aye, everyone’s always in a hurry. Get in.” She turned and dropped the bonnet, then she and Annette got into the front seats and Rudi and Seth in the back. Lauren drove. The engine started first time.

“What about our car?” asked Rudi.

“Someone’s following two miles behind us,” said Lauren. “They’ll pick it up and take it to Manchester or Newcastle and leave it with the keys in the ignition. It’ll be nicked in an hour, resprayed and replated in three.”

“You’re not Coureurs,” Rudi said.

“No,” Annette said, turning in the front seat and holding out two cloth bags. “We’re not. Put these over your heads.”

“Why?”

Seth put his hood on. “Nobody knows how they do this,” he said, his voice muffled. “They want to keep it that way.”

Rudi shrugged and put the hood on.

They drove for another ten minutes or so, then made an abrupt left turn onto a jolting, uneven road, then another series of right and left turns until Seth had no idea where they were. Then all of a sudden Lauren stopped the car.

“You can take your hoodies off now, lads,” she said brightly. “Welcome to Scotland.”

“I’m sorry?” Rudi said, removing his hood.

Lauren said, “Welcome to Scotland,” again, and pointed through the windscreen at a narrow track running away through the forest. “If you walk down there about five miles, you’ll come to a road. You can get a bus into Hawick from there. After that, you can get a train anywhere you want.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” Rudi asked.

“No, it’s not,” said Seth. He took a fat envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Lauren, who opened it and rifled through its contents. “Come on,” he told Rudi.

They got out of the car and stood in the rain while Lauren turned the vehicle around. She lowered the driver’s window and poked her head out. “Don’t try and follow us,” she told them. Then she rolled the window back up and drove off into the dripping, windy dimness between the trees, leaving Seth and Rudi standing in the middle of the track.

“How much did you give them?” said Rudi as the car’s lights bounced away down the track.

“The rest of the operational fund,” Seth said.

“The rest of the operational fund,” Rudi repeated, looking around him. “Okay.”

“I heard about them when I was in Edinburgh,” said Seth. “There’s a group running people and contraband back and forth across the border, and nobody knows how they do it.”