The Tightrope Men

Twenty-Three

The car slowed as it came to the corner. Harding, who was driving, said, ‘This might be the turn-off. Check it on the map, will you?’

Denison, in the back of the car, lifted the map from his knee. ‘That’s it; we’ve just passed Kaamanen. The Kevo Camp is eighty kilometres up this side road and there’s damn-all else.’ He checked his watch. ‘We ought to arrive before eleven.’

Harding turned on to the side road and the car lurched and bumped. After a few minutes he said, ‘Make that midnight. We’re not going to move fast on this road.’

Diana laughed. ‘The Finns are the only people who could coin a word like kelirikko. It’s a word Humpty-Dumpty would be proud of.’

Harding notched down a gear. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means, “the bad state of the roads after the spring thaw”.’

‘Much in little,’ said Harding. ‘There’s one thing I’m glad of.’

‘What’s that?’

‘This midnight sun. I’d hate to drive along here in the dark.’

Denison glanced at Lyn who sat by his side. She was apparently asleep. It had been two days of hard driving, very tiring, and he was looking forward to his bed. He wound the window down to clear the dust from the outside surface, then looked at the countryside covered with scrub birch. Something suddenly caught him in the pit of the stomach. What the hell am I doing here? Hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle in the Finnish wilderness? It seemed preposterously improbable.

They had left Helsinki very early the previous morning and headed north out of the heavily populated southern coastal rim. Then they had left the rich farmlands very quickly and entered a region of forests and lakes, of towering pine and spruce, of white-trunked, green-leaved birch and the ever-present blue waters.

They took it in turns driving in two-hour shifts and made good time, sleeping that night in Oulu. After Oulu the land changed. There were fewer lakes and the trees were not as tall. A birch that in the south towered a hundred feet now had hardly the strength to grow to twenty, and the lakes gave way to marshes. As they passed through Ivalo, where there was the northernmost airstrip, they encountered their first Lapps, garish in red and blue, but there were really very few people of any kind in this country. Denison, under the prodding of Carey, had done his homework on Finland and he knew that in this most remote area of the country, Inari Commune, there were fewer than 8,000 people in a province the size of Yorkshire.

And there would be fewer still around Kevo.

Diana stretched, and said, ‘Stop at the top of the next rise, Doctor; I’ll spell you.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Harding.

‘Stop anyway.’

He drove up the hill and was about to pull up when Diana said, ‘Just a few yards more — over the crest.’ Harding obligingly let the car roll and then braked to a halt. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, taking binoculars from a case. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Denison watched her leave the car and then opened his own door. He followed her back along the road and then into a growth of stunted birches. When he caught up with her she was looking back the way they had come through the glasses. ‘Anything in sight?’

‘No,’ she said curtly.

‘You’ve done this every hour,’ he said. ‘And you’ve still seen nothing. Nobody’s following us.’

‘They might be ahead,’ she said without taking the glasses from her eyes.

‘How would anyone know where we were going?’

‘There are ways and means.’ She lowered the glasses and looked at him. ‘You don’t know much about this business.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Denison said reflectively. ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in it? You’re American, aren’t you?’

She slung the binocular strap over her shoulder. ‘Canadian. And it’s just a job.’

‘Just a civil servant,’ he said ironically. ‘Like any nine-to-five typist in Whitehall.’ He remembered the occupation given in Meyrick’s passport. ‘Or like Dr Meyrick.’

She faced him. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. From now on you do not refer to Meyrick in the third person — not even in private.’ She tapped him on the chest with her forefinger. ‘You are Harry Meyrick.’

‘You’ve made your point, teacher.’

‘I hope so.’ She looked around. ‘This seems a quiet spot. How long is it since you’ve seen anyone?’

He frowned. ‘About an hour. Why?’

‘I want to find out how much you lot know about guns. Target practice time.’ As they went back to the car, she said, ‘Go easy on Lyn Meyrick. She’s a very confused girl.’

‘I know,’ said Denison. ‘She has every reason to be confused.’

Diana looked at him sideways. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘You could call it confusion — of a sort. It’s not easy to fall in love with a man who looks like the father you hate, but she’s managed it.’

Denison stopped dead. ‘Don’t be idiotic.’

‘Me!’ She laughed. ‘You do a bit of thinking and then figure who’s the idiot around here.’

Harding pulled the car off the road and into the trees. Diana loaded a pistol from a packet of cartridges and set an empty beer can on a fallen tree trunk. ‘All right; let’s see who can do this.’ Almost casually she lifted her arm and fired. The beer can jumped and spun away.

They took it in turns to fire three shots each. Denison missed every time, Harding hit the can once and Lyn, much to her own surprise, hit it twice. Diana said to Denison caustically, ‘You were right; you can make the gun go bang.’

To Lyn she said, ‘Not bad — but what would you be like shooting at a man instead of a beer can?’

‘I... I don’t know,’ said Lyn nervously.

‘What about you, Doctor?’

Harding hefted the gun in his hand. ‘If I was being shot at I think I’d shoot back.’

‘I suppose that’s as much as I could expect,’ said Diana resignedly. ‘Let’s go back to the car.’

She gave them each a pistol and watched them load. ‘Don’t forget to put on the safety catch. More important, don’t forget to release it when you shoot. You’ll put those in your bedrolls now. When we move off on foot tomorrow you’ll need a more accessible place for them. Let’s go.’