Operation: Loch Ness

- 6 -

Banks’ descended from the top deck and went to join Hynd at the rear of the boat. Visibility was down to 10 yards, and the only sound was the low thrum of the boat’s engine; Seton had cut speed, and they were now moving at little more than a brisk walking pace. That suited Banks just fine, as he knew there were large rocks breaking the surface in the shallows near the shore, and he didn’t fancy hitting anything at speed.

He took a smoke when Hynd offered.

“Do you buy any of the wee man’s story, Cap?” the sergeant said as they lit up.

“Not that alchemy bullshit and mumbo-jumbo, no. Well, not really. But the bit about it being a fucking huge otter rings true given what we’ve seen so far. Plus, having a lend of his boat for the day is handy, so I’m not about to argue too much with him just yet.”

“I’ve been thinking, Cap. He seems like he’s a smart man. Maybe it wasn’t a total coincidence that we found him last night.”

“Aye, the thought had crossed my mind too. Maybe he found us. But either way, we’re out on the water where we want to be, and so is he, so nobody’s losing out of the deal. Keep an eye on him though. I’ve got a feeling things might turn hinky. Antarctica-type hinky.”

“I thought you weren’t buying his spiel?”

“I’m not. But my gut is.”

“Bugger,” Hynd said with a smile. “Your gut’s right more often than not.”

“Tell me about it.”

They motored slowly through the fog for 10 minutes, and Banks developed a stress headache from trying to peer into the shifting gray wash of dampness. The engine cut off and he heard a clank of chain then a splash as they dropped anchor. He went to go back up top and had to stop on the ladder as Seton made his way down.

“Coffee and smoke break?” Seton said with a smile. “Then I want to try something, if it’s okay by you?”

The squad kept their positions while Seton clattered about in the cramped kitchen in the cabin and returned a few minutes later with a tray of five coffee mugs and a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.

The coffee was dark, strong, bitter and obviously expensive, and the biscuits filled a hole Banks hadn’t known was there. Seton kept up a constant chat of information about the loch itself as they drank; details of its depth, volume of water, and some of the more comical aspects of its history. The small man was a born storyteller, and he had all of the squad smiling by the time that the coffee and a smoke to go with it were finished.

“Now that I’ve got on your good side,” Seton said, “I’ve got something I want to try.”

“Some of your mumbo-jumbo, wee man?” Wiggins asked.

“If you like to call it that, yes,” Seton replied. “It’s an incantation, an ancient chant. And if I’m right, it’s one that Crowley could well have used to control his beasts during his experiments. It’s certainly clearly copied down in his journals.”

“Chanting? Give over,” Wiggins replied. “How’s that going to work on a murdering beastie?”

“A lullaby can send a child to sleep, can it not?” Seton said calmly and reasonably. “Why should something similar not work with another mammal? After all, we are quite close in kind, evolutionary speaking. We share 99 % of our DNA after all.”

“Speak for yourself,” Wiggins said. “The only time I share my DNA is with the sarge’s missus.”

Seton ignored that, and walked around the cabin and up to the bow. He stood right at the point and raised his hands.

“What is he now, Kate bloody Winslet?” Wiggins muttered.

Seton sang in a fine high tenor that belied his age. To Banks’ ear, it sounded like Gaelic, but he had no understanding of the words.

“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.

“That’s a Highland prayer,” McCally said. “I remember it from when I was a lad. My auld grannie sung it to keep the kelpies at bay.”

“What’s it about then?” Wiggins asked.

“It’s a call for peace and calm.”

Seton kept singing, kept repeating the same two lines. The fog continued to swirl and roll around them but the water itself was flat and still, almost as if a mirror lay just below the shimmering surface.

“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.

Seton continued in this vein for two minutes longer, then stopped. The fog deadened all sound, and the water was so still there was no sense of rocking or bobbing. They lay dead calm in the middle of a circle of gray and it was as if the world held its breath.

“Aye, very nice I’m sure, pal,” Wiggins said. “But if you’re done with the opera, do you have any more chocolate biscuits?”

He was answered by a loud bark from somewhere deep in the fog.

Seton sang again, the same two lines.

“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.

Another bark punctuated the last note of the chant.

“Fucking hell, the wee man’s onto something,” McCally said.

“Maybe aye, maybe no,” Banks replied. “But we’d best be ready for anything. Back to your positions, lads, and keep your eyes peeled.”

Once again, everything fell deathly quiet and still. The fog swirled, and Banks thought he saw a darker shadow move, just at the edge of his visibility, but by the time he’d raised his weapon, there was only fog again, although a slight swell made the boat rock, twice, underfoot. There was another bark. Louder this time, then three dark humps broke the surface right at the edge of their visibility, parallel to the boat at first then heading northwest away from them at speed, back into the fog. The middle hump, the otter’s body if Seton was right, rose a good three feet above the surface, more than 12 feet long and five feet wide and covered in slick black hair. From the tip of the front hump to the end of the rearmost one spanned a distance several yards longer than the craft they stood in.

The humps had already moved off into the fog before anybody reacted; they’d all been struck dumb and immobile by the sheer size of the thing as it passed. The boat rocked under them again in the beast’s wake.

“Fucking hell,” Wiggins said, loudly enough for them all to hear. “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” *

“After it,” Banks shouted.

Seton was already on the move and heading back up the ladder to the top pilot deck. The chain rattled again as the anchor was drawn up and the calm was broken further by the thrum of engines as the boat started up and was quickly put in high gear.

They plowed quickly through the fog, casting caution aside, and Banks went up front, weapon raised, hoping for a clear shot at their quarry. But even at full speed, they didn’t catch it. He only got a short glimpse of it and saw a tail splash as the beast, some 20 yards ahead, dived. By the time they reached the spot, the water had stilled again.

Seton cut the engine and let them bob slightly in a small swell.

“I don’t suppose anybody took a photie?” Wiggins said from up front. “We could make a mint in the tabloids.”

Seton shouted down from the top deck.

“I could try singing again?”

“No, it’s off and away for now. Heading for the north bank is my guess,” Banks said. “We’ll follow that way for a bit, and hope this bloody fog lifts and we can get a clear shot at it.”

Seton looked as if he might argue, then thought better of it, and went back to the wheel. The engines started up again, and they headed north into the fog, all of them more alert than they had been previously.

The fog started to lift five minutes later, and minutes after that, they were motoring in clear water, a hundred yards from the north bank. Banks climbed up the ladder to the top deck and swept a 360-degree turn, looking for any sign of the beast, but there was only the receding fog, and the, now slightly choppy, surface of the lake. A wind was getting up, and the rougher water wasn’t going to help their search, for the humps and hollows of the waves in the wind looked all too similar to the outline the beast had made earlier. On impulse, he checked the near shoreline, panning from the bank up the slope to where trucks sped by on the northern road between Inverness and Urquhart Castle, their drivers oblivious to the hunt going on in the loch below. All he saw was thick scrub and rhododendron bushes; even a beast as large as the one they’d seen might be hiding in that dense undergrowth, and they’d never spot it.

“What now, Captain?” Seton asked.

Banks checked to the northeast where the loch narrowed before the stretch of canal that led into Inverness. The fog had almost completely lifted, and he saw the taller buildings of the city in the far distance.

“I told the colonel a full sweep, so I’d better do it. All the way up to the top end, then we’ll crisscross the loch on the way back and make for Urquhart Castle if we don’t get lucky.”

“Or unlucky, as the case may be. I do believe yon beastie could swamp this boat with one flick of that tail. I wonder why it didn’t attack?”

“Maybe it was your singing,” Banks said.

“Maybe,” Seton replied. “Or maybe it just wasn’t hungry.” The older man looked over at Banks. “I’d like to try again, up at the north end. It’s a common spot for sightings, and we know now it responds to the song. And I have a request of you.”

“Ask away.”

“If it comes back, I’d like to try to calm the beast. To control it if you like. It may be that we can avoid both further bloodshed, and the death of a monster, the death of a legend.”

“And then what?” Banks said softly. “I have some sympathy; I’m a Scot, and Nessie is iconic. I don’t want to be the man who goes down in history as having killed the myth, but it’s not as if we’ve got a handy fucking big cage, and even if we had, I can’t see the brass allowing such a thing to be left alive.”

“Let me try? Please? Call it payment for your passage on my boat if you like, but I have to try.”

Banks saw the naked need in the man’s face, and couldn’t bring himself to say no.

“As long as nobody gets put in harm’s way in the effort, you get first dibs. That’s a promise. But if yon beastie gets frisky, I’ll order the lads to put it down”

Seton smiled and shook Banks’ hand.

“I accept your terms of surrender.”

When they reached the top end of the loch, they cut the engines and anchored offshore just before the shallow waters around the canal inlet. On a normal summer day, there would be boats lined up here to head into Inverness, but today they had the loch to themselves.

“More coffee, gentlemen?” Seton asked. “I need to wet my throat if I’m going to be singing again?”

“Only if there’s more chocolate digestives,” Wiggins said from the bow.

“Oh, there’s always time for chocolate digestives,” Seton replied with a laugh.

Banks took the relative peace and quiet as an opportunity to check in with the colonel in Urquhart Castle, relating the details of their sighting.

“A giant otter? Really?” Banks heard the incredulity in his superior’s question.

“Yes, sir,” Banks replied, “or as near to one as makes no difference. We all got a good look at it as it passed us. Nearly 30 feet nose to tail at a guess.”

“Is it still in your area?”

“Hard to tell, sir. We’re working on something. I’ll get back to you if we’re successful.”

“Make it fast, Captain. We found what little was left of the wee girl floating by the shore on the south side an hour ago. The press, blast them, have got wind of something. That List D notice won’t hold for long if they know there’s a dead child involved in the story.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll check in when I get to you, if not before.”

“Make it before.”

He closed the call just as Seton arrived with the coffee and biscuits, and they drank, ate, and smoked in silence this time; he guessed Seton was saving his voice for the singing to come.

“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.”

Seton’s high tenor rang across the waters of the loch as he repeated the same two lines for several minutes. Banks went up onto the top deck and scanned the loch surface with the binoculars, but with the wind still getting up, the water was even choppier now, and if the beast did appear, they might not see it until it was almost upon them.

“Heads up, lads,” he shouted, “and take positions. This might go south on us fast.”

Seton raised his voice higher, putting everything into one last repetition.

“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.

“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.”

There was no warning, no sign of its presence. The beast surfaced 20 yards off their port side and came toward them with a surging rush of spray.