Orkney Twilight (8 page)

‘See you in Inverness tomorrow morning,’ he said over his shoulder before he vanished in the crowd.

‘We haven’t even left London and he’s given us the slip,’ said Tom.

Sam’s stomach twinged; he was obviously taking the surveillance of Jim seriously then. That really wasn’t going to help.

They struggled to negotiate the narrow door into the tiny cabin with its neatly made-up bunks. She felt a sudden flush of awkwardness: too close for comfort. Tom seemed unperturbed by their forced physical intimacy. He dumped his bag carelessly on the bottom bunk. She grappled with the truculent ladder, heaved and pushed herself inelegantly on to the top bunk, tried to sit up, banged her head on the ceiling. Ten minutes ago she had felt too small and now she was too large. She propped herself awkwardly on one elbow and interrogated the reflection of Tom in the mirror as he shuffled around in the cramped space.

The train shuddered to life, jolted, lurched out of the cover of the station into the nicotine-stained evening haze.

‘We’re off,’ said Tom. ‘On our journey into the unknown.’

‘Your starter for ten,’ she said. ‘Name the song that begins with a summertime train journey into the unknown and ends with a death.’

He rubbed his chin stubble with a grubby finger, ‘Oh, that sounds familiar. Let me think.’

‘I can give you a clue.’

‘No, no. I’ve got it. Kenny Rogers. “The Gambler”,’ he shouted. He started singing the first verse. She joined in the refrain. Loudly. Wildly out of tune. Laughing. There was a thump on the compartment wall.

‘The walls must be a bit thin,’ said Tom.

‘That’s us,’ she said, still snorting. ‘On a train journey to nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere. Although it is a long way north. Fifty-nine degrees, to be precise.’

‘Is it really fifty-nine degrees? That’s almost as far north as Leningrad.’

‘Yes, and it’s too late to turn back now. We’re on the run to Orkney.’

Her own words sobered her. She crawled down to the bottom of her bunk, lay on her stomach and peered out of the window, calculating their coordinates. The train was passing Camden. It had swung round from the west and joined the mainline north. She pinpointed Helen’s bedsit in relation to the tracks, imagined her sister getting ready for a night out at the Camden Palace. A jagged blue flash illuminated the skinny backsides of the grey terraces. The first fat drops of summer rain blitzed the window, hitting her with an inexplicable anxiety, a need to be with her sisters.

‘Jim’s good-looking, isn’t he?’ said Tom, ignoring the lightning streaks outside. ‘In a rugged sort of way. That rough look that women always seem to find attractive. But obviously a bit of a difficult old sod,’ he added.

‘I did warn you.’

‘So what exactly does he do anyway? You said he’s an undercover cop.’

Sam winced.

‘Does he keep an eye on organizations like CND?’

Jesus, he didn’t waste time. She caught her reflection in the train window, staring at her with its firmly pressed lips. She was losing it these days though, her self-censorship. Her ability to manage a convincing cover-up for Jim.

‘He doesn’t talk much about his work,’ she said.

‘But what do you think Jim is up to in Orkney then? You obviously think he’s up to something.’

She shrank back into her bunk so she couldn’t be seen in the mirror, grappled with the urge to confide, wondering what she could say that wouldn’t give too much away, sound too ridiculous. Too alarming. The proclamation of impending death. Operation Asgard. The Walther.

‘Maybe it’s something to do with the miners’ strike.’

‘What, you think he’s picking up some information on the strikers from a contact to pass on to the Force or something like that?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But why would he go all the way to Orkney to do it?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s where his contact lives. Orkney is full of dropout lefty types who might have some information on the strike. Although I suspect it’s not quite that straightforward.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not sure it’s as straightforward as him looking for intelligence on the strike to feed to the Force.’

She shouldn’t have said that, should have kept her hunches to herself.

‘You mean, you think he’s feeding information to someone else?’

‘Possibly. I don’t know.’

‘Who would he be feeding it to?’

‘I’ve no idea really. KGB perhaps.’

‘Sounds a bit far-fetched. Why would the Soviets go to a cop for information about the miners’ strike? They can probably get it direct.’

He pulled a dismissive face, irritating her instantly. What did he know about anything?

‘Actually, he used to hang out with the KGB.’

‘Did he? The KGB?’

‘He worked at the docks. Tilbury. He checked the boats coming from the Soviet Union and he was mates with some of the KGB agents.’

Well, she had always assumed they were KGB agents. She sensed Tom assessing her disbelievingly; she could tell he thought she was a bit of a fantasist. She tried him with the story about the strange men from the Russia she had seen drinking at their house. Related how she had corrected their English. Tom laughed. She was momentarily chuffed by his reaction.

‘But even if they were KGB, they were probably really low level,’ he said. ‘More like security guards.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘And I really don’t see what the connection might be to a trip to Orkney twelve years later.’

She couldn’t see a connection either. ‘I guess you’re right.’

Rain-blurred brown semis rattled past, the dog-end of the periphery. They cracked open a couple of miniature bottles of whiskey, purchased from the buffet car. Jameson’s. One of Jim’s pearls of wisdom: if you can’t afford a single malt, buy Irish. It’ll leave you with less of a headache. Some people’s parents steered them through difficult career choices. Jim gave her guidance on what to do when faced with a confusing array of bottles behind the bar.

‘What are you thinking?’ Tom asked.

Why did anyone ever ask that question? As if they seriously believed they would get an honest answer. She searched for something to say. ‘I was thinking that it’s a compulsion. It’s a way of life he’s incapable of giving up. He can’t exist with only one identity; he has to have secrets, somewhere else to escape. Sometimes I think undercover work is little more than a professional licence for men who want to avoid any form of domestic obligation. Whenever Jim is asked to do something tedious or time-consuming, he just disappears and nobody can ever ask him about it. Official secrets. Matters of national security. I reckon that’s the appeal of the spy story to men; it’s not the complexity of the politics that’s the pull, it’s the fantasy of the man with no commitments. Personal betrayal not political betrayal, that’s the draw, that’s what people are really interested in.’

She broke off abruptly. She was rambling: one of her feminist diatribes.

‘Now there’s a possibility,’ said Tom.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think that’s the most likely explanation for the sudden trip to Orkney. He’s dodging his domestic responsibilities.’

She frowned.

‘He’s having an affair,’ he said triumphantly.

‘I had thought of that,’ she said. Of course she had thought of that. ‘But he asked Liz to go with him, which sort of rules out that theory.’

‘Maybe he knew she wouldn’t be able to make it anyway.’

‘But if he’s having an affair, why would he let us tag along?’

‘To give himself an alibi; a cover story to throw your mum off the trail. She obviously suspects he is having an affair and that’s why she asked you to keep an eye on him. He must have known that she suspected him, which explains why he agreed to let you go too. The double bluff.’

‘But why he would go all the way to Orkney to do it?’

‘That’s what men are like. Don’t like to crap in their own backyard. So they go on holiday without their partners, arrange to meet their bit on the side. Playing away.’

He was checking her reaction in the mirror. She scowled. The train plunged into the darkness of a tunnel, the noise of the wheels on the tracks echoing, making conversation impossible.

‘At least, that’s what married, middle-aged men do,’ he said as they emerged into the dwindling light.

She folded her arms across her chest.

He continued, unperturbed. ‘It’s the hair.’

She looked blank.

‘Older women always go for a bloke who still has all his hair. Do you think it’s screwed you up in any way? Having such a difficult dad?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘You don’t think it’s stopped you from forming proper relationships with men?’

‘No.’

Christ almighty. They had hardly left London, hardly passed the Heinz factory, and now he wanted to talk about relationships. She wasn’t sure which was worse – the relationship questions or the questions about Jim. Couldn’t quite tell what he was really after. In which direction his sights were set. How did she get herself boxed into this corner?

‘Don’t you ever worry about the repeat patterns?’ he persisted.

‘What?’

‘The repeat patterns. The cycles you can’t break. Ending up like your parents.’

‘I’m hardly going to end up like Jim. I’m not going to turn into an undercover cop.’

‘Yes, but do you have a clear idea of where you are going? If you want to move forward, you’ve got to be able to leave the past behind.’

She shivered, worn down already from the effort of keeping the conversation from sliding off track into the undergrowth. ‘How many people,’ she said, ‘do you think Agatha Christie murdered on a train?’

He screwed up his face. ‘That’s a tough one. I’m not sure I know the answer to that. I’ll have to work it out.’

She tried to decipher the black letters of a sign as they steamed through a station. Milton Keynes, she guessed. Milton Keynes: home of the Open University’s headquarters.

‘Did I tell you his explanation for his sudden urge to return to Orkney?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘He told Liz he wanted to go somewhere quiet so he could have some space to think about leaving the Force; taking early retirement and doing something else.’

‘Is he old enough to retire? He’s still in his forties, isn’t he?’

‘Forty-six. Policemen always find some way of retiring early. Health grounds. Something like that.’

‘You said he was thinking of doing something else.’

‘History degree with the Open University. He started a course on the early Middle Ages years ago, but never finished. He’s always been interested in all that stuff, the Norsemen. And I suppose Orkney is a good place to go to rekindle an enthusiasm for history. But I still can’t really believe the Open University story. It just seems unlikely to me.’

‘Perhaps he really is thinking about doing it. It’s not that unlikely. It’s a bit of a classic, isn’t it? Affairs, the Open University, early retirement. It all adds up. Mid-life crisis.’

She shook her head, stuck her hand into her backpack, rummaged, fished out the book of Viking history that Ruth had given her, waved it at Tom. ‘I wonder whether he’s been doing his homework on the Vikings,’ she said. ‘We can test him on the drive to Scrabster tomorrow.’

‘What’s his starter for ten going to be then?’

‘Women in the Viking age.’ She scanned the index, found what she was looking for and flicked to the page.

‘Listen to this. “Women had little formal authority in Norse society, but there is some evidence that they could achieve power and high status by becoming a priestess in the religious cults of the Vanir. Norse mythology contains two, sometimes warring, pantheons of gods. Odin and his descendants formed the Aesir, the gods of war, law and death. The Vanir, to which Freyr and the goddess Freyja originally belonged, were the rulers of the earth, nature and fertility.”’

She leaned over the side of the bunk, dangling upside-down, to see if Tom was paying attention. He was fiddling with a hole in the toe of his sock. She hauled herself back up, continued anyway. ‘“Vanir cults emphasized the importance of veneration of the ancestors and encouraged the living to visit them in their burial mounds, invoke their spirits and ask them to ensure the rebirth of the land and the continuity of the family.”’

She glanced in the mirror. Tom was studiously picking at his toenail.

‘This next bit is really interesting.’

He reached for another miniature whiskey bottle.

‘“Freyja was the High Priestess of the Vanir. She was believed to be able to take on the form of a falcon and travel vast distances. Freyja’s name was linked with a kind of witchcraft and prophecy known as seiõr. Female practitioners of seiõr would erect a tall platform on which a seeress would sit, sing spells and fall into trance induced by hallucinogenic drugs. At the close of the ceremony, the seeress would be able to answer questions put to her by others participating in the ritual.”’

Tom shrugged indifferently.

‘That’s what I would have been if I was a Viking,’ she said, ‘a priestess in the cult of Freyja. A drug-smoking seeress and a practitioner of witchcraft.’ She gave Tom’s reflection a hard stare.

‘I’m not disputing it,’ he said.

‘Apparently, archaeologists in Scandinavia have unearthed all these graves of women who have been buried with their magic tools. Metal staffs. Animal bones. Pouches with henbane seeds and cannabis.’

He drained the final drops of the last bottle, slumped back against the pillows. She gave up. Closed the book, returned it to her bag.

He yawned and, as he stretched his arms behind his head, she glimpsed a notebook with a mottled yellow cover in his shirt-pocket, a biro stuck through its spiral binding.

‘How’s your search for work going anyway?’ she asked.

He replied groggily, ‘I applied for a six-month placement on a local newspaper and I heard yesterday that I’ve got an interview the week after next.’

‘So you’ll be speaking truth to power, holding the elected representatives of Manchester to account, exposing their corruption and lies?’

‘Something like that.’

She paused. ‘How do you get a career in journalism then?’

‘There’s no real career path. You just have to work at it. Make a bit of a name for yourself. Get noticed. Get a by-line. Get a story on the front page. I might try doing a bit of investigative stuff. See if I can dig up something that might interest one of the nationals.’