Coffin Road

Chapter twenty-six

It was almost two hours since Karen had boarded the train at Inverness. She was travel-weary after nearly three and a half hours on the train from Glasgow, and then hanging around at Inverness Station, waiting for her connection. The time had been passed with coffee and sandwiches in the Pumpkin Café, and an almost incessant stream of banter from a young Polish guard who seemed to have nothing better to do while waiting for his train than regale Karen with tales of his lazy Scottish girlfriend.

Since then, the West Highlands had slipped past the window of her seat on the train to Kyle of Lochalsh in a gloomy blur of lochs and mountains. Places like the Valley of Drizzle, and Raven Rock, seemed somehow reminiscent of Tolkien in this land torn and shaped by the great glaciers of some past ice-age. Tree-covered islands in vast, still lochs cast dark reflections on darker water, great jagged mountains rising above the treeline to vanish in brooding low cloud.

It was Karen’s first time in this part of the country. She felt dwarfed by it, lost and insignificant, and it cast a doubtful perspective on her foolish endeavour to track down Billy Carr in some distant, hidden valley. But his address, at least, had a postcode, so it couldn’t be impossible to find.

At last the train rumbled into the tiny station at Strathcarron, the village of Lochcarron strung out along the far shore of the loch itself, the jagged peaks of the Torridon mountains rising into an ominous sky. She was the sole passenger to leave the train here, stepping down on to a deserted platform, a blue and cream-painted rusty metal bridge straddling the track. As the train pulled away, she felt dumped and deserted in the middle of nowhere. She zipped up her hoodie and went out into a small car park. There wasn’t much here. A line of whitewashed cottages stretched away along a narrow lane. There was a Post Office in what might once have been the old station house, and beyond the car park, the Strathcarron Hotel.

Here, she asked a smiling young receptionist if she could call her a taxi. ‘Where are you going?’ the girl asked, and Karen showed her Billy Carr’s postcard. She frowned. ‘No idea where that is. The driver’ll probably know, though.’

The driver didn’t. It took fifteen minutes for him to come and pick her up from the car park behind the station, and when he looked at the address he shook his head. ‘Strathdarroch? Never heard of it, and I’ve lived here all my life.’ Then he grinned. ‘Thank the good Lord for GPS, eh?’

Programmed with Billy Carr’s postcode, the GPS took them off into the wilderness on a single-track road that rose up through wild, uncultivated country in the approximate direction of Loch Kishorn, or so the driver said. They passed through Forestry Commission plantation, and then what might have been the remains of ancient Caledonian forest, stands of ragged Scots pines and the deciduous oaks and birch and aspen of Scotland’s long-vanished temperate rainforest.

It took almost twenty-five minutes before the driver turned into a metalled cul-de-sac, where a wooden gate blocked their further progress and the road became a rutted track that cut up the hill through thick forest.

‘It’s up that track somewhere, love. But I’m afraid this is as far as I can take you. Rip the underside off my car if I try and drive her up there.’

Karen was reluctant to get out of the taxi. If she couldn’t find the Darroch Cottage of Billy Carr’s address, she would be stranded out here with nowhere to go, and no way back. They hadn’t seen a cottage, or a car, or any other sign of life for the last fifteen minutes. The light was already starting to fade from the east, and there could be no more than a couple of hours of daylight left. If she let the driver go, she was absolutely on her own. She checked her phone. There wasn’t even a signal here to call for help. ‘How much do I owe you?’ she said, in a voice that sounded a great deal more confident than she felt.

‘Forty-five quid, love.’ He paused. ‘Sure you know where you’re going?’

She nodded, almost afraid to speak in case the fear that was churning in her stomach would make her throw up.

After she had paid him, she stepped out into the dusk and watched as he turned the car and headed back the way they had come. She stood for a long time, listening to the sound of its motor fading into the early evening, until she could hear nothing except for the birdcall that filled the air all around her and, somewhere, the distant sound of running water.

Finally, with feet like lead, she unlatched the gate and slipped through it, fastening it again behind her, and started up through the trees, darkness closing in around her. She had never felt so entirely alone.

With her eyes turned down, watching each and every step on the ridges and ruts of the track so that she didn’t turn her ankle, she failed to notice how the trees around her were beginning to thin. And when finally she looked up, she saw that the track was leading her out of the forest and into a beaten clearing that sat in the lee of the hills.

Off to the right, on the very edge of the forest, stood a dilapidated stone cottage with a lean-to extension. To the left, a tiny loch lay still and dark in the gathering gloom, its waters lapping gently against the edge of the clearing. On the far side of it, a small waterfall tumbled through trees and rocks to send ripples arcing out towards its centre. A dusty, mud-spattered red Mitsubishi four-wheel-drive Outlander sat at an angle under the shade of a mountain ash growing among a cluster of rocks. Billy Carr, it seemed, liked red.

As she crossed the clearing, a couple of brown hens went skittering and clucking away into the trees, and she called out, ‘Hello, anybody there?’

She was rewarded with a silence broken only by the birds. The door to the cottage stood ajar, and she could see that the place lay in darkness beyond it. She reached out a hand and pushed the door open into the dark. The hinges creaked like a sound effect from a bad horror movie.

‘Hello?’

Still nothing. She stepped inside and allowed a few moments for her pupils to dilate. Most of the footprint was occupied by a single room, cluttered with old furniture standing at odd angles on an uneven stone floor. A sofa and a couple of armchairs, horsehair bursting through where the upholstery was worn thin or torn. An old rocking chair, with a red cushion, pulled up beside a wood-burning stove set in what must have been the original fireplace. To the left of the door, a dining table covered by an old, stained cloth was cluttered with all manner of bric-a-brac. A fishing rod and flies, boxes, and tornopen cartons of some kind of scientific supplies. There was a pair of large, padded white gloves, an SLR camera fitted into a bracket with a clamp on one end, a scattering of inch-long red plastic tubes with flip-over lids.

Through an open door that led into the lean-to, she saw dirty dishes piled around an old Belfast sink. A gas cooker caked in grease. She heard the hum of a refrigerator. The air was thick with the odour of stale cooking and woodsmoke.

‘Can I help you?’

The voice startled her, and she wheeled around to find herself faced by a tall figure wearing a white circular hat. Netting that hung from its wide brim obscured the face, like an alien from the same horror movie as the door with the sound effect. She let out a small, involuntary scream.

A hand shot up to whip away the hat and reveal the grinning, bearded face of the young man whose photographs she had seen on the Billy Carr Facebook page. His hair was longer. The beard, too. And it tangled around a tanned face that was more handsome in life than captured on a screen. He wore a grubby white T-shirt and jeans tucked into mud-caked boots. He said, ‘That’s the trouble with this country practice of leaving your doors open. Sometimes folk wander in uninvited.’

Karen recaptured a little of her composure. ‘I’m sorry. As you say, the door was open. I’m looking for Billy Carr.’

He looked at her appraisingly. ‘Oh, are you? And I suppose you’ll be the Karen who told my maw that I knew her from the Geddes.’ He chucked his hat on to the table and swung a pack from his back to set down on the floor at his feet. ‘She was pretty pissed off at you stealing my postcard and running off without so much as a thank you or goodbye. Good thing my email address was in her mailer, or she’d never have been able to get in touch with me.’ His smile had long gone. ‘So you want to tell me what the fuck your game is?’

Karen took a half-step back. ‘I’ve come a long way to see you, Billy.’

The grin returned, although there was no humour in it that Karen could see. ‘All the way from Glasgow, no doubt. I’m flattered. There’s not many lassies would travel that far just to see me. Must be my irresistible charm, eh?’ The grin vanished again. ‘Or maybe not. What are you after, Karen?’ And he put a heavily sarcastic emphasis on her name.

She was determined not to be intimidated and stuck out a defiant jaw. ‘I was hoping you could tell me whether or not my father is still alive.’

It was as if a light had been switched out behind his face. Darkness fell across it like a shadow, and his black eyes widened. ‘Jesus Christ! Karen Fleming?’

Karen sat at the space Billy had cleared for them on the table and smoked nervously as she waited for him to come back out from the kitchen. He had already broken the seal on a bottle of Australian shiraz and poured them each a glass of the dark purple wine. She didn’t much like the taste of it, and left it untouched after the first sip.

Now he arrived with a wooden chopping board laden with chunks of cheese and glistening, freshly washed grapes, and half a French loaf, which he cut into pieces on the table and dropped into a basket with a hand engrained by grime and punctuated by the odd bee sting.

‘Not really hungry,’ Karen said.

Billy sat down opposite her and shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He cut some slices of cheese to lay along a piece of bread, which he wolfed down hungrily, washing it over with a mouthful of wine. As he picked a couple of grapes from the bunch, he said, ‘You know as well as I do that your father’s dead.’

‘I know as well as you do that he’s not.’

He eyed her suspiciously. ‘And just how exactly would you know that?’

‘He left me a letter, which I wasn’t supposed to get for another year.’

Billy paused, with a grape at his lips. ‘What, and he told you in this letter that he was still alive?’

‘As good as.’

‘Fuck!’ He popped the grape past his waiting lips and bit down on it to release its sweet juices into his mouth. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because he figured that, by the time I read it, he wouldn’t have to pretend any longer that he had committed suicide.’ Billy gazed at her thoughtfully while he took another mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘Aye, well, since he didn’t mean you to get it for another year, maybe he still wants people to go on thinking that. Does it not occur to you that by blowing his secret you could maybe be putting his life at risk?’

She drew on her cigarette and blew smoke into the thick, fetid air of the cottage. ‘Funny. You’re the second person to suggest that in the last couple of days.’

He frowned. ‘Oh, yeah? Who else?’

‘Richard Deloit.’

Billy’s eyes opened wide. ‘Deloit spoke to you?’

‘Well, no. I spoke to him, and he as good as told me to fuck off.’

He breathed consternation through his nose. ‘So why are you pursuing this?’

‘Maybe if you’d ever lost your father, only to find out that he was still alive, you wouldn’t have to ask.’

He took a large gulp of wine. ‘Aye, well, I know what it’s like to lose a father, right enough. It’s tough. Especially when you’re still a kid. Different for a girl, maybe, but for someone like me, suddenly it brings responsibilities.’

‘Your mother.’

He nodded. ‘I’d fucking do anything for her, you know? She and my old man both. Sacrificed almost everything to send me to a good school. I mean, there’s not many kids from Balornock get to go to Hutcheson’s Grammar, do they? A working-class boy among all the toffs. School fees, university. I owe them everything. And my dad goes and dies just when she needs him most. So it’s down to me now. Payback. Not that I resent it. I love that woman.’

And Karen wondered how it must feel to love your mother.

‘So what are you doing here?’ she said.

He placed his glass carefully on the table and thought about it. Then he stood up. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’ He lifted his beekeeper’s hat and walked out from the gloom of the cottage into the dusky pink twilight of the clearing. Karen stubbed out her cigarette and followed. He led her then along a well-worn path that wound its way through the trees. A startled fawn bounded away into the darkness of the woods, crashing through the undergrowth and sending birds screeching and cawing into the high branches.

After just a few minutes they emerged into a natural clearing where trees had been brought down by rockfall from the hill above, and eighteen beehives stood secured to wooden pallets set among the rocks and the tangling remains of fallen tree trunks.

They cast shadows there in the dying light, among the trees, like sentinels standing guard over the future of mankind. A few bees were still making their return to the hives at the end of a long day of foraging for pollen. Billy went to the nearest of them and removed the lid and the crown board, setting them carefully on the ground beside it. He turned to see that Karen had not moved from her place on the clearing’s edge. ‘Come and see,’ he said. ‘They’ll not sting you unless they think you present a threat.’ He grinned. ‘Though they like to crawl into tight, dark spaces, like nostrils and ears. That’s why the hat.’ And he put it on, letting the netting drape itself over his shoulders, before reaching in to slide out one of eleven frames containing honeycomb and crawling with bees. Karen approached cautiously, nervous of the bees that buzzed around the hive, and the netted figure of Billy Carr as he held up the frame. They were crawling all over his hands, but he didn’t seem troubled by them. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they beautiful? A perfect matriarchal society, behaviour elaborately preordained for perpetuation of the species. The honey and the beeswax and the propolis are just side products that we have learned to harvest. If there is some kind of intelligent design to this world, Karen, then bees are the key to the survival of Man. Even if it was only a random process of evolution, we can’t do without them.’

Karen nodded. ‘I know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘I know that they pollinate two-thirds or more of the fruit and vegetables and nuts, and other crops that feed us. I know that without them tens of millions of people or more would probably starve to death.’

He grinned. ‘Your father’s daughter, I see.’

‘Actually, it was Chris Connor that told me about bees.’ Billy glowered. ‘Connor? What the fuck’s he been saying?’

‘That you and my dad did an experiment proving that neonic pesticides are screwing with bees’ brains.’

‘Fucking idiot! He should have known better than to go opening his mouth like that.’ Billy slid the frame back into place and started replacing the crown board and lid. ‘That fucking idiot was my godfather. And he won’t be opening his mouth again, because he’s dead.’

Billy turned, removing his hat, and she saw that his face had gone deathly pale. ‘Dead? How?’

‘A car accident. Apparently. The day after he met me and told me all about you and my dad, and your experiment.’ She paused and cast her gaze over the eighteen silent sentinels. ‘You’re repeating the experiment, aren’t you?’

He sighed and seemed resigned to the fact that there was little point in trying to hide the truth from her any more. He nodded. ‘Here and at two other sites. Chosen because of their purity. Areas uncontaminated by pesticides or herbicides. So that, when we introduce neonics to the diet of the bees, we know with certainty no other cause can be attributed to the effects. We even monitor the bees for disease and mites, though that’s not really a problem, since we had the original colonies checked and declared disease-free before we brought them on site.’

‘So nine of these would be control hives?’

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Oh, you know about that, do you?’

‘Chris explained.’ She nodded towards the hives. ‘I’m assuming that you let the bees in half of the hives forage for pollen naturally, and feed the other half with... what? Imidacloprid?’

Billy grinned now. ‘You must have been paying attention, girl. You’d make a good student.’ He paused. ‘We actually let both groups forage naturally, and at certain times feed both groups sugar syrup. The difference is that we introduce tiny quantities of imidacloprid into the sugar syrup of the non-control group. The kind of quantities they would expect to encounter in the pollen and nectar of any environment where crops have been treated by neonic pesticides. About 2.5 parts per billion, which is already proven not to kill bees.’

‘But it destroys their learning and memory.’

He nodded grimly. ‘It does.’

‘How do you know that, Billy?’

‘Because we monitor their performance.’

‘How? How’s that possible?’

He shrugged. ‘Lots of ways. We measure the colony once a week by weighing the hives. But only at night, when they’ve all returned. We mark the queen to keep an eye on her and make sure she’s not been replaced. We photograph all the frames, after shaking off the bees, to estimate areas of honey stores, and pollen, sealed brood, larvae, eggs. We place cameras above the entrance to the hives to collect data on activity levels. Mainly the number of bees returning with pollen. We can measure the amount of pollen gathered by using pollen traps. And we can use that same pollen, when foraging is good and they’re not interested in the sugar syrup, to contaminate it with imidacloprid then give back to them the following day. We even screen foraging bees for gut parasites at the entrance to the hive using a handheld field microscope.’

‘So the effect of the pesticide is measurable?’

‘Absolutely. And, Karen, it is seriously fucking with their ability to do their job.’ He grinned. ‘Which is...?’ He held open hands out towards her to prompt a response. She tutted and raised her eyes skyward. ‘To feed the world.’ He rang an imaginary bell. ‘Brrrrring! Well done, you’ve just won a microscope and a holiday for two in a tropical rainforest somewhere in South America.’

She shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. ‘What’s amazing about bees, Karen, is their ability to associate colour and smell with good food sources. You can actually teach them to remember and identify smells that will lead them to food. They are so good at it that the military are now using bees to sniff out explosives, like landmines, or IEDs. Feed them after exposing them to the smell of any explosive substance, and they will identify it with food. Release a bunch of bees where you suspect there are buried landmines, and they will immediately cluster around them, smelling the explosive. Without, of course, setting them off.’ His face clouded. ‘But the effect of the neonics is to destroy that ability. It damages their brain cells. The cells don’t die, but they stop generating the energy that fuels their memory. So they don’t remember the smell, or the colour, or the way to the food or the way back. And, you know, bees communicate all this information to one another by these amazing dances they do in the hives. Where the good food is, what direction to go, how far. But, without memory, there is no accurate communication. And, without either, the colony will wither and die.’ He turned to wave his arm towards his hives. ‘And that’s exactly what’s been happening here.’

He raised his head, and Karen followed his gaze up through the trees to where the first stars were appearing faintly as blue faded to black. He took her by the arm, and she was reminded momentarily of Richard Deloit and the way he had expelled her from the offices of OneWorld. ‘Come on, we should go back to the cottage before it gets dark and we get lost in the woohooooods.’ He waved his arms, ghostlike in the air, and laughed. ‘Actually, after eighteen months of this, I reckon I could make it back blindfolded.’

Darkness fell suddenly, and evening became night even before they got back to the cottage. Strangely, it almost seemed lighter. The sky was clear and crusted with stars, and a nearly full moon rose up over the hills to cast its shimmering silver luminescence on the still, reflective surface of the loch.

Billy switched on a light when they entered the cottage, and the dismal yellow that washed over the room from the single naked bulb at its centre made it seem even more miserable. It really was a mess, Karen saw now. The floor strewn with discarded food wrappers and cigarette ends, and dried mud from caked boots. Clothes lay over the backs of chairs, and socks and underwear hung drying from a rack near the stove. Karen looked around with disgust. The contrast with the pristine, sanitised middle-class existence that her mother had contrived for her in suburban Edinburgh could hardly have been more stark, or unpleasant.

Billy followed her eyes and looked embarrassed. He ran his hand back through his hair as if somehow trying to make himself more presentable. ‘If I’d known I was having a visitor, I’d have tidied up. Never seems much point when you’re just on your own.’ He nodded towards a large flat-screen television in the corner. ‘TV’s my only company. No signal up here, of course. I’ve got a satellite dish out back.’

Karen could only imagine how depressing it would be. ‘And you’ve been here eighteen months?’

‘Yep. Had a wee break during the winter months. Without that, I’d have gone stir-crazy a long time ago. Thank God it’s just about over.’

‘Is it?’

‘Pollen season’s all but finished. We’ve got two years of results from three separate sources. Identical experiments with eighteen hives, each in contaminant-free environments. Covers all the variables so that the statistician can draw incontrovertible conclusions.’

‘Statistician?’

‘Yep. An independent fourth party, who takes all our figures and results and crunches the numbers. When his report on our experiment gets published, it’s going to blow the agrochem industry out of the water, Karen.’

‘So you already know what the results are?’

‘Well, we anticipated what they might be. But I haven’t actually seen the final figures myself.’

‘Why not? If you’re taking all these daily and weekly measurements, then you have all the figures yourself, surely?’

‘Not the most important ones.’ He headed towards a door in the far corner of the room. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

Karen followed him into what must once have been a storeroom of some kind, built out from the back of the cottage under a sloping roof. The light he turned on here was much brighter than the one in the sitting room, throwing everything into sharp relief. In contrast to the chaos outside, there was a sense of order in the tiny secret lab that it revealed. Worktops set out with scientific equipment. Microscopes, micropipettes, tweezers and scissors. Electrical equipment, a laptop, a small freezer humming in the corner. Shelves laden with glass jars and Petri dishes and bottles. Everything was shiny clean, and, unlike the air in the sitting room, there was a smell in this little room of antiseptic, almost hospital-like.

‘This is the nerve centre, so to speak. Most of the rest of what we do is keeping and collecting numbers. Figures. Statistics. Here, under that microscope, we dissect contaminated bees towards the end of their pollen-collecting lives, which are only about three weeks long, by the way. We remove brain matter and send it in ice-packed flasks to a laboratory in Edinburgh.’ He laughed. ‘I’m sure the good folks in the Post Office down in Strathcarron must wonder what it is I’ve been sending away in these wee parcels every week. But, anyway, the lab in Edinburgh measures levels of the contaminant, and is then able to relate them to cell damage.’

Karen looked at him. ‘But they don’t send the results back to you?’

‘No. They all go to the PI, along with all my stats, and those from —’ he grinned — ‘my co-conspirator.’

‘PI?’

‘Principal Investigator. He’s the team leader. The third in our little triumvirate.’ Billy turned out the light and pulled the door shut behind them as they went back out to the sitting room. ‘All the data goes to him, and he’s the one who feeds it to the statistician.’

Karen shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you all share in the data?’

‘Because the PI trusts nobody but himself, Karen. Not even me, or Sam. And the PI’s known Sam since his university days. But he’s probably right to be so careful, because these bastards will go to any lengths to stop us publishing.’

‘Ergo?’

Billy nodded. ‘That’s why all the secrecy. I’m sure they know what we’re doing, just not exactly who’s doing it or where.’ He sat down at the table and took out a tin filled with loose tobacco and a chunk of cannabis resin wrapped in silver paper. ‘See, nobody’s done this kind of detailed research before, Karen, because the only people likely to fund it would be the industry themselves. And they just bury the results that they don’t like.’ His laugh lacked humour. ‘That’s why, when your dad went to Ergo with the results of our accidental experiment, they buried us. Threatened to withdraw funding from the Geddes, got your dad sacked and my fellowship withdrawn.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I wasn’t kidding when I said publication of our results would blow them out of the water. The European Union will be forced to extend its ban on neonicotinoids. The fucking British government, would you believe, has been trying to get that ban lifted, under pressure from the farmers’ union. So they’re going to have to change their tune pretty bloody fast. And then there’s the Americans. They’ve been resisting all attempts at banning neonics. We are going to leave them with no choice.’

‘And the agrochem industry is not going to be very happy.’

‘Fucking right, they’re not!’ He held the flickering flame of his lighter under the little tinfoil package he had made containing the cannabis. ‘They don’t care about the planet or the bees, Karen. They don’t give a shit about people starving. All they care about is money. Profit. The bottom line. Like the tobacco industry’s big five, they are just in total denial. And trust me, they will do anything, anything, to stop us from publishing.’

He laid tobacco along a sheet of cigarette paper and crumbled the cooked resin into it, before rolling it up, licking the gummed edge and sticking it down. He put the deformedlooking cigarette to his lips and lit it, drawing deeply and holding the smoke in for some moments before blowing it out.

He held the spliff out to Karen. ‘Want a drag?’

She took it, and sucked hot smoke into her lungs. When she exhaled, she felt a sense of something like relief wash over her. She handed it back and looked very directly at Billy. ‘The PI. The Principal Investigator. That’s my father, isn’t it?’

Billy took another long pull, then slowly nodded as he blew smoke at the ceiling.

The moon was almost startling in its clarity. It had risen well above the hills now, shrinking in size as it rose above the Earth’s atmosphere. But vivid in its illumination, sprinkling colourless light across the hills and the trees, reflecting in the waterfall at the far side of the loch and delineating the ripples it sent out towards Karen, who stood at the water’s edge contemplating all the contradictions of her young life.

That her father was still alive was confirmed now beyond doubt. But elation in that discovery was tempered by the anger that still festered at what he had put her through these last two years.

Yellow light spilled out across the clearing as the door of the cottage opened, and Billy’s shadow extended long across the dry, beaten earth. It grew even longer, then faded, as he moved towards her, until she saw his reflection in the water as he reached her shoulder. ‘A month ago,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t have stood out here on a night like this. The midges would have eaten you alive.’ He chuckled. ‘Just one of the many joys of living here. Midges from June to September, cleggs in June and July, cold bloody weather in spring and autumn. We had snow here in May, and they’re predicting an early frost next week.’ He looked at her. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

She laughed. ‘Well, I was hoping that might be here. Not really anywhere else for me to go, is there?’

He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to stay if you want. But like I said, I wasn’t exactly expecting visitors, so you’ll have to take things as you find them. There’s a bed in the back room. Never been slept in, so it might be a wee bit damp.’

She looked at him, surprised. ‘Where do you sleep?’

‘Sleeping bag on the couch. It’s always been warmer in front of the stove.’

She turned to gaze back out across the silvered surface of the loch. ‘Will you take me to my father?’

There was a long silence, during which she daren’t even look at him. Then she heard him sigh. ‘Karen, I can’t.’

And a spike of anger shot through her. ‘Why not?’

‘Because everything we’re doing and have done has only been achieved through secrecy. Your father would kill me if I told you where he was. The whole point of the three of us living like this, no contact with friends or family, was so we’d drop below the radar. So Ergo wouldn’t know how or where to find us.’

She turned blazing eyes on him, and he very nearly flinched.

‘Hey, don’t look at me like that. None of this was my idea.’ He hesitated. Then, ‘Just how well do you know your dad, Karen?’

‘Well enough.’ All her defiance apparent in the set of her jaw.

But Billy just shook his head. ‘I doubt it. You’ve never worked with him. You don’t know him like I do.’ He gazed out over the loch. ‘He’s brilliant, sure. No one’s going to argue with that. But I’ve never known a more difficult man in my life. Obsessive. Relentless. Demanding. You wouldn’t want him on your team, cos he’d never give you the ball. He’d have to be the gaffer, and you’d damn well do it his way or he’d deselect you in a nanosecond. And he’s paranoid, Karen. Paranoid.’

‘About what?’

‘That Ergo might fuck him again.’

‘Well, he must have been pretty desperate to fake his own suicide.’

Billy dragged his eyes away from the loch and turned them on Karen. ‘He didn’t do that for himself.’

‘How do you mean?’

He paused only for a moment. ‘When your dad was forced out of the Geddes, he went around trying to raise finance to privately fund a repeat experiment. And that’s when they told him.’

Karen frowned. ‘Told him what?’

‘That if he didn’t drop it, they’d go after his family.’

Her eyes opened wide in shock. ‘Who? Who told him that?’

Billy snorted and threw his hands loosely in the air. ‘Christ, Karen, who knows? These people never speak to you directly. Threats are never specific. They’re veiled. And, in a way, that almost makes them even more sinister. I don’t know who threatened him, or how, but he was spooked. Man, was he scared. Not for himself. Cos, really, he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to back down from anything, or anyone. I bet he got a few doings at school for standing up to the class bully.’ He looked at Karen’s upturned, wide-eyed face. ‘The only reason he faked his suicide was to protect you. If he was dead, you were safe. That’s why he’s spent the last two years living under an assumed identity in the back of beyond.’

Karen felt like she was wearing lead boots. She could not have moved her feet from that spot if she had tried. Her whole body felt heavy, and stinging as if from an electric shock. And all she could remember were her final words to her dad. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. She felt tears filling her eyes. Those were the words he must have taken with him as he faked his own death and embarked on a life of denial, sacrificing everything to protect her. If anything, her sense of guilt was even greater now than it had been when she learned that he had gone missing. ‘Please.’ Her voice felt very small and quiet. ‘You have to take me to him.’

He turned and put his arms around her, and she let him draw her to him, pushing her face into his chest and trying not to cry in front of this young man she had known for only a matter of hours. ‘Karen, I can’t!’

She pushed away again, suddenly, misery morphing to anger. ‘Billy, you must. You’ve got to.’

He shrugged helplessly. ‘Honestly, Karen. That’s not even a decision I can make on my own.’

‘Well, who can make it, then?’

He sighed. ‘We could ask Sam, okay? That’s as much initiative as I’m prepared to take on my own. And if he says no, then that’s it. No argument.’

‘Who’s Sam?’ There was real aggression in her voice.

‘Sam, your dad and me are the ones who’ve run this whole experiment. Sam Waltman. Your dad knew him from his time at University College, London. They studied cell biology together. One of the few people in the world he trusts. Our funder sponsored him on a two-year sabbatical to do the research.’

‘Well, what? Can you phone him? Email him?’

Billy laughed. ‘Karen, we don’t communicate directly. Mobiles and emails are not secure. Not that I’ve even got a signal here. We’ll have to go and see him.’

‘Now?’

Billy laughed again and shook his head. ‘No, Karen, not now. Tomorrow. We can go and see him tomorrow. He has his hives hidden away on the Waternish Peninsula on the Isle of Skye. It’s just a couple of hours’ drive from here.’

Scattered moonlight somehow made its way down through thick foliage on the trees behind the cottage, to creep in around the edges of the frayed curtain Karen had dragged across the window. She wasn’t sure why she had bothered. She had no intention of undressing, or getting into the bed, and in any case there was nobody out there to peek in at her even if she had.

She lay on top of a soft, damp-smelling quilt, and heard all the old springs of the bed creak beneath her. The room was small and square and cluttered, a dumping ground for anything and everything that had been displaced from the rest of the house, including beekeeping equipment and shelves of honey. The air was infused with the sweet smell of it, and the astringency of cedar wood and smoke. It was cold in here, too, and she understood why Billy preferred the couch in front of the stove. What kind of miserable, lonely existence must it have been, stuck out here on his own for a year and a half, cut off from friends and family, miles distant from the nearest human life? And she realised it could not have been so very different for her father, wherever it was he might be. Had it really all been worth it? To bring the results of some experiment about bees into the public domain? And no sooner had she asked the question in her mind, than she knew the answer.

This wasn’t just some vague, scientific experiment he had sacrificed himself for. This was about the survival of one species, and the future of another. About naked greed versus the very existence of mankind. She got that. She understood what must have driven him, what still drove him. And, yet, there remained a part of her that resented it. Why had she, and her dad, and her family had to suffer? It made her mad at Ergo.

She heard the creak of the bedroom door, and a pencil-thin line of pale light fell across the room, zigzagging across the clutter. She sat bolt upright, heart hammering, and watched as the line of light widened and the door opened.

‘Billy?’ Her voice rang out in the dark, shrill, frightened. ‘It’s okay.’ His voice came reassuringly, and she saw his silhouette as he stepped into the room. ‘Just checking that everything’s alright.’

‘Everything’s fine.’

But he didn’t go away again. Standing hesitantly in the open doorway as if undecided about what to do or say. Then he started easing his way through the debris, towards the bed. ‘I said everything’s fine.’

‘I know, I know...’ He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she moved away until her back was against the wall, and she felt the cold of it seeping through her clothing. ‘Just checking.’

‘You said that.’

There was a long silence, in which all she could hear was her breathing and his. ‘You have no idea how lonely it’s been here, Karen.’

‘Yes, I have. I can imagine it.’ Her voice sounded shrill.

‘I’m mean, I’m just a young guy, you know? It’s not normal to be cooped up on your own all this time. It’s only natural.’

‘Billy, please go.’

More silence. She felt him move in the dark, the squeak of the springs. But he was the merest shadow, and she couldn’t tell if he was moving closer or about to get up. Until she felt his breath on her face, and his hands on her body, clumsy and clawing. His mouth trying to find hers.

She reacted violently, clenched fists flying blindly in the darkness, sometimes striking air, sometimes connecting with flesh and bone. But he was so much stronger than her, and it was only when she bit his lower lip hard that she felt, more than heard, his voice exploding in her face with pain. He recoiled immediately, slipping from the bed on to the floor, then clambering to his feet and staggering to the door. There, he flicked a light switch, and she blinked in the sudden harsh glare of the naked flickering bulb that hung from the ceiling.

He stood at the door, holding it open with one hand to steady himself, his other at his mouth. She could see blood oozing through his fingers, and she realised for the first time that he was wearing only boxer shorts. His skin was pale, apart from forearms, neck and face, which had been burned by the sun or weathered in the wind. He was wiry thin, but had well-developed pecs and the hint of a six-pack on his flat white belly. He took his hand from his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. It was smeared all around his mouth and beard, too. She had the iron taste of it in her own mouth, and she leaned forward on the bed to spit on the floor.

‘You fucking little bitch!’ he hissed at her, spraying blood into the blinding dazzle of electric light.

Karen was scared. By the attack, by his anger, by what she had done to him. But more than anything, scared that he wouldn’t take her to see Sam tomorrow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You frightened me. I... I overreacted.’

‘Fucking right you did.’ He put his hand to his mouth and brought it away with more blood. ‘Jesus, you damn near bit my lip off!’

She slipped off the bed, her heart still hammering, and crossed the room to pull his hand away from his mouth. ‘Let me see.’

He submitted like a child, and stood acquiescent as she tipped his head down towards her and took a look at his lip. The blood was coming from the inside. She could see her own teethmarks on the outside, but they hadn’t broken the skin, just bruised it.

‘Do you have a first-aid kit?’

He nodded.

‘Show me.’

He took her through to the kitchen and they found a green plastic box with a red cross on it, tucked away in a drawer. She opened it up to find a roll of cotton wool, a selection of plasters, a tube of antiseptic ointment and various silver-packaged painkillers.

‘Do you have salt?’

He opened a wall cupboard and pulled down a packet of salt, and she immediately took a clean glass to make a strong solution of salt and water.

‘Here. Rinse your mouth with this. Don’t swallow. Spit out in the sink and rinse again.’

Once more, like a child, he did what he was told, and rinsed several times before she drew his head down and gently pulled out his lower lip to see inside. She held it open to slip in a wad of cotton wool, pushing it down between his lip and his front teeth. Then she rolled kitchen roll into a thick wodge and held it under the cold tap until it was soaking, then made him hold it hard against his outer lip. She took him by the arm and led him back through to the sitting room.

‘Come and sit down. And hold the kitchen roll like that for five or ten minutes. The pressure should stop the bleeding. Mouths are great healers, and the salt solution should have disinfected it.’

He sat meekly on the edge of the settee and looked up at her with now mournful eyes. Both his lust and his anger had dissipated. Perhaps, she thought, all he had really craved was the human contact.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘You really did scare me.’

He nodded, but was afraid to speak in case he aggravated the bleeding. But the blood had stopped within a matter of minutes, and didn’t restart when finally he removed the kitchen roll and cotton wool fifteen minutes later. His voice came muffled through lips that he didn’t want to move. ‘Sorry I scared you.’ He met her eye. ‘Just wanted a cuddle.’

It had seemed to Karen in the moment that he was after much more than that. But now she felt guilty, almost sorry for him. Gently, she encouraged him to lie down on the sofa. ‘You should get some sleep,’ she said. ‘The lip will be a bit swollen and bruised tomorrow. But you’ll live to kiss again.’ She grinned, and he returned a pale smile. ‘I’d better get some sleep, too. See you in the morning.’

She walked carefully across the room, as if afraid to break the spell of tranquillity she had somehow managed to cast over his masculine aggression, and turned the light out before she slipped into the darkness of her bedroom, closing the door behind her and turning the key in the lock.

For a long time she stood with her back to the door, listening to the pulsing of blood in her head and allowing her breathing to subside slowly. Then she tiptoed through the shadows to lay herself carefully down on the bed, wincing with the creak of the springs, her body still rigid with tension.

It was going to be a long night, and she had no intention of sleeping.