FORTY-SIX

They were nearing the Scottish border as dawn broke, a windless, mizzly morning revealing itself in ever paler shades of grey. Harry had still not decided what to say to Donna when he phoned her, as phone her he must, before she reached Swindon and found 37 Falmouth Street a burnt-out ruin. She was somewhere over the Atlantic now, her mobile switched off, decisively out of contact, asleep perhaps — or more likely wide awake and thinking of him, even as he was thinking of her. What had she learned from Samuels? What had prompted her to fly to Harry's rescue? What did she know that he did not?

'Want something to read now it's light?' Howlett asked suddenly. He was hunched beside Harry at the wheel of the Fiesta, gazing ahead along the unwinding ribbon of road. Chipchase lay asleep behind them, sprawled across the back seat, his snores drowned by the noise of the engine and the babble of the latest radio station Howlett had tuned to. 'I brought with me the report on Haskurlay Karen wrote as part of her dissertation at Leeds. It'll give you most of the known facts about the island. Interested?'

'You bet.'

'OK. It's in my bag in the boot. I'll dig it out when we stop for breakfast.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The breakfast stop was not long in coming. A wash, a shave, a fry-up and several strong coffees were had in virtual silence at Gretna services, then Howlett went outside to phone in sick to the trade magazine he worked for. This offered Harry the chance he had been waiting for to give Chipchase the news from Vancouver.

'She's on her way?' Chipchase spluttered through the fumes of his post-bacon-and-eggs cigarette.

'Even as we speak.'

'Bloody hell.'

'Yeah. Which there'll be to pay when she reaches Swindon.'

'You need to head her off at the pass, Harry old cock.'

'How do you suggest I do that?'

'Well…' Chipchase applied his mind to the problem. 'There's Jackie, I suppose. We could ask her to meet Donna at Heathrow and explain you only kept her in the dark about the fire so as not to put the wind up her and that… you and me have had to…'

'Yes? What exactly have we had to do, Barry?'

'OK. Let's regroup. Jackie meets her, fills her in on the fire but assures her you're fine — we're fine, in case she's two bits bloody bothered about how old Chipchase is faring — and invites her to stay at her place, pending word from us, which we've promised there'll be… as soon as… possible.'

'She'll think I'm trying to avoid speaking to her.'

'Aren't you?'

'No. Of course not. It's just…'

'If you do, I bet you'll end up telling her where we're going and why. She won't let you get away with anything less than the truth and once your over-developed husbandly conscience kicks in…'

'I don't want her coming after us, Barry. It's too…'

'Dangerous is the word you're groping for, Harry.'

'Let's just say… risky.'

'Whatever we say, the only way you can be sure she won't follow us is by staying incommunicado.'

'It's not as simple as that. She might have found out something about MRQS. Something we need to know.'

'Or she might not have.' Chipchase took a drag on his cigarette and studied Harry through a slowly exhaled lungful of smoke. 'It's your call.'

—«»—«»—«»—

It was indeed Harry's call. He made it a few minutes later, from one of the service area's payphones. Jackie responded surprisingly well to being woken from her beauty sleep early on a Sunday morning with a thinly reasoned request to cancel whatever else she had planned for the afternoon and drive to Heathrow to collect an unexpected house guest off the two o'clock flight from Vancouver. But she had a warning to give as well.

'Donna will realize why you're staying out of touch soon enough, Harry. You have to give me something more to tell her.'

'Tell her I'll phone… tomorrow.'

'What time tomorrow?'

'I don't know. It depends.'

'What on?'

'I don't know that either. But tomorrow… without fail.'

—«»—«»—«»—

They drove on north. Harry started reading Karen Snow's Haskurlay report, grateful for anything that might distract him from the subterfuge he had been forced to resort to. There was not much he could be sure of. But the overriding need to keep Donna out of whatever was waiting for them at the end of their journey constituted one certainty he could cling to. He tried to concentrate.

HASKURLAY

Summary Report of Study Party Visit (Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Leeds), April 2001, by Karen Snow.

Haskurlay lies 13km SSW of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. It covers an area of 415 ha and has a maximum height of 238m. It is composed mostly of gneiss, with some granite. Its last human inhabitants left in 1910. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, who acquired it in 2000 from a syndicate of Barra crofters, who grazed sheep there.

The cliffs on the western side of the island are 150m high in places and are an active breeding site for various sea-birds, including guillemots, kittiwakes and skuas. There is also a colony of puffins on the island. There are two inland summits of more than 200m. Between them, grouped around an east-facing bay, are the heavily overgrown ruined cottages of the deserted village.

The purpose of the study party visit was to examine the remains of ancient human occupation to be found on the island, in particular a 7m high burial mound located on the northern side of the bay. It is unclear whether this is a neolithic structure or of later origin. Tradition has it that a large stone circle stood at the opposite end of the bay until it was demolished by the villagers in the 18th century, the stones being incorporated in the walls of their cottages and bothies. This suggests active neolithic occupation. Unfortunately, no trace of the circle now remains. Several stones near the ruined chapel bear Pictish carvings, however. The mound might therefore date from the Pictish period. The island was presumably also occupied at different stages by Celts and Vikings, though there is little or no visible evidence of this. The chapel itself is a 19th century structure.

The remit of the study party was to excavate a portion of the burial mound and to recover sufficient ossified human remains to facilitate a more definite dating of its origin. Unfortunately, for reasons outside the study party's control, this project had to be abandoned shortly after initial excavation had begun in what appeared to be a disturbed area of the mound. As a result, no ancient material was removed for analysis and dating of the mound remains speculative.

It was decided, in the interests of making best use of the study party's time, to leave Haskurlay following the abandonment of the excavation and to carry out a survey of known burial cairns on the neighbouring islands of Mingulay and Berneray. These have, of course, been adequately surveyed in the past and no new findings were therefore anticipated. (See separate report for details.) It is to be hoped that a future study party can return to Haskurlay and implement a definitive dating of the mound. When that might be possible is presently unknown.

Harry read the report through again to be sure he had not missed something, then handed it to Chipchase with a warning that he should not hope to learn anything valuable from it.

'You wouldn't even know why the dig was abandoned if Karen's account was all you had to go on.'

'It's a piece of academic writing,' said Howlett, snappishly enough to suggest he did not like anyone to criticize his girlfriend, however mildly. 'What do you expect?'

'You promised me “most of the known facts about Haskurlay”, as I recall.'

'And that's what you've got.' Howlett shot Harry a grim little smile. 'There just aren't many of them.'