Duncan Kyle - Terror's Cradle

Interrupting her wasn't easy, but I managed it in the end. I was worried about the time. '

Will I be able to hire a car

at this hour of night?'

Òh yes. You see the Shetlands aren't like other places. Not so rigid, d'you see. And much more friendly. People help, d'you see. That's why we're all so worried . . .' We were back to the oil again, but I'd got my answer.

She was right. About the car, certainly and probably about the oil, for that matter. The Dennetts dropped me outside a garage just beyond the harbour, and drove off, waving. Ten minutes later I was also driving away, in a nearly new purple Mini as stiff as six planks and with brakes that might have been adjusted in a try-your-strength competition between malicious mechanics. The man who rented me the car also told me how to find the Sandness road, and provided me with a map and the advice that I should keep an eye on it, since visitors seemed to find the road signs difficult, though he himself couldn't see why.

I blinded away with my nasty Metropolitan driving habits and discovered rapidly that the Shetlanders have a few of their own. Twice in as many miles I met them on hairpins, headlights blasting and using all the road and I calmed down a bit, especially as it was borne in on me that these roads hadn't been designed in highway engineering establishments; they'd been scraped into hillsides and round sudden contours and half the bends were on the edges of sharp drops with long, moonlit, gunmetal stretches of water far below. Every so often I'd find a sheep standing transfixed in my lights, brace myself, and touch that fiendish brake pedal and slide towards the beast on locked wheels, thanking my lucky stars I was driving something as sure-footed as a Mini. The Shetland population is thin on the ground, and by the time I was half a dozen miles out of Lerwick, there was only the occasional light from a hillside croft house to interrupt the endless dark landscape. Even these sparse friendly gleams became fewer as I worked my way steadily westward, concentrating ferociously as the road narrowed and wound, stopping occasionally to consult the map when

a sign arrowed the way to a place that might or might not be on the way to Sandness. I'd made a mental note of the mileage before leaving Lerwick, and driving as fast as I dared on that tricky road, it took me an hour and twenty minutes to cover thirty-two miles to the tiny cluster of houses that was Sandness. I opened the car door and stepped out into half a cold gale sweeping powerfully off the Atlantic Ocean less than a mile away and bringing with it a deep, damp chill.

Picking a cottage at random, I knocked on the door and asked the old woman who answered about Anderson's house. She told me, in the heavy, Norse-laden accents of the islands, that there were two Andersons nearby. Would I be wanting old Mr Anderson because he was away in Lerwick? No, I said. Mr Anderson the bird watcher.

`That would be young Mr Anderson, away up the hill.' She was old and bent, but spry and alert, and she slung a dark shawl over her shoulders and stepped out into the wind to point the way. I thanked her, began to return to the Mini, then went back to find out whether anybody else had been asking for young Mr Anderson. Ì didn't hear,' she said firmly, and there was something in her emphasis that said she'd certainly have heard. I thanked her and drove off, backtracking a little way, then turning, up a rough track towards the rearing moonlit bulk of Sandness Hill with the cloud shadows flying across it. The distance from the road was perhaps five hundred yards, a very gentle rise that became steeper near the house. I turned the car round, switched off the engine, and went up the slope on foot.

No light came from the house. Blind glass shone the moonlight at me as I climbed. The house was of grey stone, small, with a couple of gabled windows to the upper floor and as I moved towards it I looked carefully at the barren, empty landscape around me, feeling a real sense of isolation. Nothing moved except the air; there was nothing to hear except the sound of my own footfalls and the buffeting

of the wind in my ears. I had hoped to find Anderson there, but the lack of lights made it seem unlikely now.

The door was white-painted, so the small black lettering was easy to read. One word; the name of the house, Jarlshof. I nodded to myself, then knocked and heard the sound echo emptily. There was no response. I tried again, several times, sadly certain now that the house was empty, then moved away from-the door to look in through the windows. What I could see, lit palely by the intermittent moonlight, was a shadowed and fairly spartan room : a wall full of bookshelves, a bare table with two or three plain wooden seats, a couple of old armchairs. It fitted with what little I knew (which was what Alsa had written) about Anderson. This was a place where one man lived and worked, a man not much interested in comfort, a man who chose remoteness and absorption and didn't care to chase the phantom satisfactions of goods and chattels. You meet people like that occasionally and usually find yourself envying them, grossly tempted to follow their example until the realization of your own dependence on creature comforts enables you to thrust the idea away. But guiltily, always guiltily.

I worked my way round the house, looking through windows. A couple were curtained, but I peered in through all the others and finally found myself standing before that white front door again, feeling helpless. There were two possibilities now. I liked neither. I could wait here for Anderson, not knowing how long the wait would be; it could presumably be days if he was off on some prolonged observation, and I didn't have days, or even hours, to spare. The alternative was to go looking for him, and that prospect didn'

t thrill me. He could be anywhere in this mass of islands, pursuing his solitary studies, and unless he made a practice of telling somebody where he was, there'd be no chance of finding him. I remembered what Mr Dennett said, the rumour that he'd discovered some rare birds, and scowled to myself. If he had, he'd be keeping very quiet indeed. The hell with it then. The need to find the man was too

great for me to be scrupulous. Somewhere in the house there might be an indication of his whereabouts. I'd have to break in.

But as it happened there was no need. Trying the door without hope, I found that it was unlocked and simply stepped inside, then used my lighter to try to find the switch. No switch. There was a Tilley lamp on the table and I searched back through my memory and fumbled with it until I recalled that it was necessary to get the pressure up before the vapour mantle caught and glowed. Now, at least, I had light. I looked first at the floor behind the door to see if mail was still lying there. There wasn't any, but a couple of opened envelopes lay on a sideboard, window-fronted envelopes, one from the Inland Revenue, the other from a garage. Each bore the Lerwick postmark for three days earlier. I swore, looking at them. Were they the last mail to come to the house? What the hell would have happened to a packet posted to Sandnes, Norway? Would the post office in Sandnes, realizing there'd been some kind of mistake, forward the packet to Sandness, Shetland? Would they even know there was a Sandness, Shetland? And if they did, if they had redirected the packet, how long to reach this lonely spot? Was it conceivable that there was a Jarlshof at Sandnes in Norway? Even the bloody word was straight Norwegian, held here unchanged through long centuries of the powerful Norse link with these islands. I had uncomfortable visions of the blasted packet being shoved through the door of some uncomprehending Norwegian in the other Sandnes, whose house happened to bear the same name.

I began to ferret round the room, opening drawers and cupboards, then moving to Anderson's old steel desk and rifling through the papers, hoping to find a diary or a log; something here had to give a clue to Anderson's activities. There was nothing. Circulars from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, letters from other ornithologists, a few still photographs, some notes. There were even a few transparencies and my heart thumped as I picked them up and held them to the light. No luck; they were just birds.