Vortex (5 page)

'Oh, yeah.' Ben grinned at her. 'I guess you're right. Fancy some breakfast?' He pulled a couple of chocolate bars out of his rucksack and they ate them in silence before continuing their trek by following the perimeter fence westwards.

They spotted the occasional interesting bird throughout the morning, but nothing more than they had seen at dawn, and no sight of the hen harrier. By early afternoon, their feet were getting sore and the rucksacks heavy, so they agreed to turn round and head back to the hostel. On the way, they found themselves chatting to pass the time. 'You've got a real thing about the RAF, haven't you?' Ben asked Annie as he caught her looking over the Spadeadam perimeter yet again.

She smiled. 'You could say that. When I'm old enough, I'm going to join up.'

'Why? I mean, I know because of your dad and everything, but you're the first girl I've met who wants to be in the military.'

Annie didn't answer for a moment, but walked thoughtfully by Ben's side. 'People think being in the army is all guns and fighting, but it's not,' she said finally. 'You get to help people - people who really need it. When my dad was in the Gulf, he found two Iraqi children whose parents had both been put in prison. They were living on the streets. He was able to do something for them, make sure they got a roof over their heads and something to eat.' She flashed a quick grin at him. 'Plus you get all the guns and fighting on top of that.'

Ben laughed, but as he did so Annie suddenly interrupted him. 'Shhh,' she hissed, grabbing him firmly by his arm and using her other hand to point in the air. 'Look!'

Ben followed the direction of her finger. Two birds were flying over Spadeadam in the distance, performing an intricate aerial dance. 'Hen harrier,' Annie whispered; they both fell instinctively to their knees and put the binoculars that had been hanging round their necks up to their eyes. In rapt attention, they watched the birds somersault in the air.

'Look at the male,' Annie whispered. 'He's got something in his talons. Do you see?'

Ben strained his eyes and thought he could just make out what Annie was talking about.

'Yeah,' he said. 'I can.'

'Watch carefully,' she told him. 'They do this amazing thing. The male bird performs a sky dance and passes the food to the female in mid-air.'

Ben watched it happen, and found he was holding his breath in anticipation as he did so. The male swooped and dived and then, in one spectacular movement, they met and the food passed from one to the other. Ben couldn't help breaking into a grin as it happened. He turned to look at Annie, to see that she too was beaming with wonder.

It all happened so quickly after that.

The sound of a single gunshot echoed around the countryside. A flurry of birds rose up from the high grass of the marshland; but there was one bird that would never rise up again. The male hen harrier dropped from the air like a stone.

Annie gasped. As she did so, there was another gunshot and, with pinpoint accuracy, the female fell to earth.

The girl's binoculars remained pointed at the empty sky where the hen harriers had been flying only seconds before; but something urged Ben to scour the ground. Gunshots didn't come from nowhere, and he was determined to find out who had just shot down the birds. High grass suddenly filled his vision, and as he moved his head swiftly from side to side, flashes of sky and the distant forest replaced them momentarily, until finally he found what he was looking for.

The man must have been several hundred metres away, and as he came into Ben's field of vision he was breaking his shotgun and allowing two spent cartridges to fly out over his right shoulder. 'Look,' Ben whispered hoarsely.

'I see him,' Annie replied, and they both stared at the man as he turned and walked away. Neither of them said what was clearly obvious, but Ben knew beyond question that they were both thinking it.

The man who had just shot two rare hen harriers was wearing the distinctive khaki uniform of an RAF combat soldier.

As he walked out of sight, Ben and Annie lowered their binoculars in unison. And then, as though the sky itself was mourning the horrible sight they had just witnessed, it started to rain.

Chapter Four

It was a long walk back, not just because of the rain but also because of a frosty silence between them. Annie seemed to have taken the death of the bird as a personal insult, and Ben felt that as he was the closest person to her at the time, he was at the receiving end of her prickly reaction.

It was early evening by the time they returned, their clothes saturated by the rain. Ben felt numb, not only from the wet but also from the strain of the last few hours. Annie hadn't spoken, but he could tell she felt the same too. They changed into some dry clothes, hung their wet walking gear in the hostel's boiler room, a cavernous, musty basement thick with the aroma of drying clothes, and then headed off to the common room together.

The common room was a cosy but slightly shabby place. There were squashy old sofas that sank deep as you sat in them, and low coffee tables that had seen better days. A soft-drink vending machine hummed gently in the corner, and on one side there was a kettle and tea-making things. Ben made a cup of hot, sweet tea for them both, and they sat side by side on a sofa in a deserted corner of the room. Small groups of people sat together talking quietly; here and there was the occasional solitary guest, minding their own business. They were a mixed bunch - not many of them were particularly young, despite the fact that this was a youth hostel. Ben wasn't minded to make eye contact with many of his fellow guests - he felt subdued and not much like talking to anybody.

They were glad of the warmth of the room after the soaking they had received, but were halfway through their tea before either of them spoke. 'Pretty weird day, huh?' Ben offered. He knew it sounded stupid even as he said it.

'Weird?'
Annie spat. 'Is that all you can say? It was horrible.' She slammed her tea down on the table in front of her, causing some of it to slosh over her hand.

'All right, Annie,' Ben snapped at her, suddenly infuriated by her attitude. 'It wasn't me that killed the birds, you know.'

She wiped her tea-moistened hand against her trousers in annoyance. 'No one
said
you killed the birds, Ben. I'm just saying it was horrible, all right?'

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. 'You're right,' he said quietly. 'It
was
horrible.' Annie was clearly spoiling for an argument, and there was no point getting into one with her. 'Do you think we should tell someone? I mean, surely it's illegal, what we saw.'

His cousin shrugged. 'Yes, I suppose so. We can call the RSPB when we get back: they'd definitely want to know about stuff like this going on - shooting hen harriers is illegal, and it's important to notify the authorities. I just wish we could identify the guy who did it. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. He should be prosecuted.'

'I could contact my mum,' Ben offered, trying to raise Annie's mood a bit. 'As she's an environmental campaigner, I bet she'd know people who would take an interest in all this.'

'Yeah, I guess,' Annie replied sullenly.

'I just--' Ben hesitated because he knew that what he was about to say would touch a nerve. 'I just don't understand why the RAF would be involved. Why are they shooting rare birds? It doesn't make any sense.'

'It's not the RAF,'
Annie said through gritted teeth. 'I know it's not. They go out of their way to look after the environment up at Spadeadam.'

Ben gave her an involuntarily sceptical look. He knew what he'd seen, after all, and it had been Annie herself who had identified the guy's RAF combat dress.

'Don't look at me like that, Ben,' Annie warned him. 'I know you think I'm only saying this because of my dad, but I'm not. Think about it - there'd be an outcry if that amount of land was given over to military training without any regard for the environment whatsoever. There's some other explanation. There has to be.' She stood up, and Ben was alarmed to see tears filling her eyes. 'I'm going to bed,' she said. 'And tomorrow, we walk in a different direction. I never want to see Spadeadam again.'

As she stormed out of the room, Ben realized that the other occupants had all stopped talking and were staring at them. Slightly embarrassed, he sat down again and went back to contemplating his cup of tea. Despite the fact that half of him wanted to follow and have it out with her, he knew Annie well enough to realize that continuing the row now would be the worst thing to do, especially as he was pretty on edge himself. Stuff would be better in the morning, he hoped. Besides, he didn't blame her for being angry - he'd been as shocked as her when they saw the birds plummet to the earth, and like her he didn't feel any desire to head back towards Spadeadam.

'Spadeadam?'

Ben jumped. The voice seemed to have come out of nowhere. He looked up sharply and couldn't see anyone - for a moment he wondered if he had been imagining it.

'Been up to Spadeadam, did she say? The girl? The girl who just left?' The words seemed to tumble nervously over themselves.

Ben realized the voice was coming from behind him. When he turned to look at its owner, however, he had to catch his breath.

He recognized him at once, of course. The long floppy hair; the hook nose; the piercing green eyes; the grey overcoat that he wore despite the fact that it was quite warm in the common room. The ghostly old man from the railway bridge the previous day did not look quite so sinister close up, but that did not stop him from being spooky. He did not take his wide eyes off Ben, and the tic on his face seemed metronomic, like clockwork. Ben found the sudden shock of his presence so surprising that he was unable to answer; he just watched mutely as the old man walked round and took a seat on the sofa next to him, his wild eyes fixed on him all the time.

'I was just going to go to bed,' Ben said uncomfortably, desperate to get away but not wanting to appear rude. At these close quarters the old man was distinctly fragrant - Ben wondered what he was wearing under his overcoat, and noticed that his slip-on shoes were soiled, the bottom of his thin trousers torn.

The old man acted as if he hadn't even heard him. When he spoke again, it was in a conspiratorial whisper. 'Strange things happening at Spadeadam,' he said, his accent a curious hybrid of dialects. 'Always have been, ever since I can remember, ever since Blue Streak.'

Ben shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 'What's Blue--?' he started to say, but the old man continued to talk as though Ben wasn't even there.

'They cover it all up, of course. Have to, don't they?' Suddenly his head twisted back over his shoulder as though he were looking for someone, or something, and his face started to twitch more frequently. He continued to look around, and his eyes even started darting up and down, as though he expected something to come at him from one of the top corners of the room.

Ben wanted to stand up and leave; but something about what the old man was saying had grabbed his attention. 'Cover what up?' he asked. 'What are you talking about?'

The old man seemed suddenly to remember that he was there. He turned his attention back to Ben, and slowly his lips curled into a grotesque mockery of a smile, displaying yellowing teeth with more gaps than there should have been. It was as though his face had forgotten what a smile looked like.

'Not a place for young 'uns, Spadeadam,' he whispered. 'Best to stay away.' The old man started looking up to the ceiling again.

This conversation was giving Ben a very uneasy feeling. Spadeadam was just an RAF base, wasn't it? There were plenty of them dotted around all over the country - what was so different about this one? Any other time, he would have dismissed this guy's comments as the ramblings of a crazy old man. Problem was, he seemed to be echoing all Ben's unspoken feelings about the place. Annie had been right - there had to be some sort of explanation for what they had seen earlier in the day. It was a long shot, but maybe this old man had the answer.

'Um . . . excuse me,' Ben asked politely, and the old man's eyes shot instantly back at him. 'Can I ask you a question - about Spadeadam, I mean?'

The old man didn't answer, but Ben assumed that his fixed stare was an agreement.

'We saw something earlier on, me and my friend. Two birds, being shot down by a guy in an RAF uniform.'

Suddenly the man grabbed Ben by the wrist. As Ben looked at his hand, pale and covered with prominent blue veins, he noticed that it was surprisingly strong. 'Rare breed, was it?' the man asked.

'Very rare,' Ben replied. 'One of the rarest.'

'Makes sense, doesn't it? Makes perfect sense.'

But it didn't make any kind of sense to Ben. 'Not really,' he started to say. But as he spoke, he sensed someone else approaching them. He looked up to see the friendly receptionist who had greeted them when they arrived the previous day. He was still smiling, but had a firm demeanour as he approached. The old man saw him too. Immediately he let go of Ben's arm and, as swiftly as a bird flying from a loud noise, he stood up straight and walked to the common-room door. Ben and the hostel worker watched him go, but before he left the room the old man turned round and fixed Ben with another of his piercing stares.

'Stay away from Spadeadam,' he called hoarsely, ignoring the fact that all the other guests were now looking at him. 'It's not safe.' And then, with a final twitch of his face, he was gone.

Ben blinked, then looked up at the youth hostel worker with a flicker of annoyance. He almost said something, but stopped himself at the last minute. 'Sorry about that,' he mumbled. 'He sort of latched onto me.'

'Mind if I sit down?' the receptionist asked. 'Name's Don, by the way.'

'Ben,' he replied shortly, shaking Don's hand.

'Was he bothering you, Ben?' Don asked.

Ben shrugged noncommittally: truth was, he didn't really know the answer to that question. The old man still made him feel a bit jumpy, and the idea of him creeping around in this old stone building didn't make Ben feel particularly at ease; but he had found himself drawn in by what he'd been saying.

'He arrived here last night, a few hours after you. Says his name is Joseph. I put him in a dorm on his own - didn't think any of the other guests would really fancy sharing with him, and we're not busy.' Don stretched out, put his feet on the table and clasped his hands behind his head. 'We get quite a lot of them round here, to be honest.'