Aftershock

One Hundred

And Caitlin walked out again, along her beach path, for the fourth time since she had moved into the lighthouse. Yes, it was lonely, but she was content, for there were the birds. There were the gulls, and there were those that she now knew to be gannets, thanks to her afternoon visit to the Sea Bird Centre at North Berwick. She had been recognised there, from the television interview. When the manager had asked her if she would be prepared to help with fund-raising by staging a show there, she had replied, regretfully, that her work was not suitable for the venue, given the limitations of its hanging space.

She had spent the rest of the previous day logged on to her website, which had registered more than a hundred hits following her media coverage. Her work was displayed there, and her biography: single, born in Largoward thirty-one years earlier to an English father and a Fifer mother, educated in Canada and at the New York Academy of Art; successful exhibitions in Toronto, Québec and Calgary, as well as in major American venues. She had received twelve feedback messages, and she had replied to them all, including the man with the Australian Internet address who had asked her to marry him. She had told him to send a photograph. The others had been innocuous, most of them from people wanting to know where they could buy her work.

She was still smiling over the Australian as she closed the door behind her, but soon she had left him behind, as she listened to the cries of the gulls and watched the plummeting of the gannets, and the darting of the occasional puffin. They were good company, and so were the voices in her head.

The voices were always with her in the outdoors. Most people would have thought her crackers, told her to get a life, to seek help, but she liked the voices. They were her friends, they gave her comfort, they helped her plot every step she took, every path she trod. She listened to them as she walked, her hands plunged deep into the big pockets of her canvas jacket.

On previous mornings she had walked for four miles, to the site of the fossilised forest and a little beyond, then back to the lighthouse, trying not to look beyond, to the great grey mass of the nuclear power station, where two reactors supplied the energy to power huge turbine generators. This time, she had decided, with the consent of her voices, to walk all the way to Dunbar, although the second part of the journey would be even more isolated. She would be doing it only once more, maybe twice, before she had to concentrate on other things. ‘Mustn’t get too set in our ways, must we, Caitlin?’ she said, to the voices as much as to herself.

She walked on until she reached the petrified forest or, rather, the spot on which it had once stood, where now only holes in the ground remained to show where the trees had been, inland in those times, before the North Sea had encroached. She stopped, and looked at it for a few minutes, stilling her voices until she was ready to go on.

The terrain changed as she neared the Burnmouth Estate, where a modern forest grew. Caitlin knew her history: she had heard of the decisive battle at which General Leslie’s Cromwellian army had defeated the Covenanters before going on to punish the rest of the area for their insurrection. Three and a half centuries later, the place still had a dangerous air about it.

The path seemed to level out, then led on to a small beach, with the wood close by. As she stepped on to it, she thought she heard a crunch behind her, but she resisted the temptation to turn round. A little further and Dunbar golf course would come into sight.

And then one of the voices in her ear spoke again. It was the South African and this time its tone was different, no longer laughing, no longer soothing: instead it was urgent.

‘We have a man in sight, behind you. He mustn’t close on you! Go now!’

Several things happened at once.

The woman known as Caitlin Summers threw herself to her right. As she landed on the sand she rolled over and came up to one knee, her right hand clear of her jacket pocket and clutching a pistol.

From somewhere behind the tree-line an amplified voice boomed, ‘Armed police officers! Stand still immediately. Put both your hands on your head. Do not move, repeat, do not move or we will shoot.’

The figure at the centre of it all paused. He looked at the woman on the beach, his eyes hidden from her sight by the enveloping hood of a light grey cotton garment. He saw the gun in her steady shooter’s grip, pointing at his chest. Then, slowly and carefully, he spread his arms out wide, then brought his hands together, interlacing his fingers as they met.

He stood like a statue as the woman rose from the sand and as Ray Wilding and Griff Montell emerged from the wood. The two detectives held their weapons on him as Wilding approached him and patted him down until he reached the right pocket of his jacket from which he removed a silenced pistol.

As the sergeant pulled the man’s arms behind his back and cuffed him, a fifth person stepped out of the trees. He walked slowly towards the prisoner; as he reached him, he took hold of the hood, and pulled it backwards, revealing his face.

‘Old friend, old friend,’ said Bob Skinner, sadly. ‘What the hell has all this been about?’