Dead People. Ewart Hutton

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СКАЧАТЬ and a fitter. Which will not be a company priority up here at the moment,’ Jeff said, smiling wryly.

      I turned to Donnie. ‘Can you show me which way he ran off ?’

      He looked surprised. ‘It’s night, Sergeant.’

      ‘Humour me.’

      We walked to the edge of the light-spill and Donnie pointed out the direction the figure had taken. He had kept off the track, knowing that a vehicle could have outrun him, and instead used the gully that the stream ran down.

      I walked forward slowly, shining my torch ahead. It was rough, shelving terrain with irregular banks and terraces.

      ‘You looking for footprints?’ Donnie shouted after me.

      ‘No, the shape of the ground. You say he just kept on running?’

      ‘Yes, as much as I could see.’

      The guy had known what he was doing. Keeping up a pace in the dark over rough terrain like this. He knew this place, exactly where he was, and how to get out.

      I felt it then. A prickle at the back of my neck. Someone watching?

      I turned around and quartered the side of the hill slowly. But it was useless. Too many vast patches of dense shadow. He went down the hill, I reminded myself. No one could be watching me from up there.

      Unless there was more than one of them?

      Jeff banged on the side of the pickup to catch our attention. ‘I’m going to take Tessa back up the hill now,’ he shouted.

      ‘Wait for me, I’m coming with you,’ I called up. I saw him flash a look at Tessa, still inside the car.

      ‘I’m just taking Dr MacLean back to her camp,’ he explained as I approached, not doing too much to disguise his annoyance. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

      ‘Good, I’ll tag along for the ride.’ I grabbed my binoculars from my car, and got into the back seat of the crew cab before he could launch another objection.

      ‘It’s dark, Sergeant, you won’t be able to see anything.’ Tessa spoke from the front seat without turning round. I wondered if I had just imagined a touch of intentional ambiguity in her voice.

      ‘It’s the company I crave, Dr MacLean,’ I announced cheerfully.

      I was conscious of her eyes on me in the rear-view mirror. I was probably not making the best impression. The rumpled creep on the back seat. Outside, by contrast, we heard Jeff, manly and incisive, instructing Donnie to jury-rig a set of lights over the earth-moving machinery.

      He got into the pickup, and we set off. Lurching and swaying on the rough track. No one speaking. One of those ramrod silences. I watched the track unrolling in the headlights, waiting for the moment to break it.

      I saw the ground rise ahead and leaned forward into the gap between the front seats. ‘After we go over that rise we’ll be out of sight of your camp.’

      ‘So?’ he asked, puzzled.

      ‘When you’ve gone over the top, slow right down, as if you’re negotiating a deep puddle or something, but don’t stop.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I don’t want them to know that I’m getting out.’

      ‘What the hell do you want to get out for?’ Jeff protested.

      ‘Who’s “them”, Sergeant?’ Tessa asked, picking up on the important question.

      ‘I don’t know, Doctor, it’s just a hunch that I want to run with.’

      ‘This is crazy.’ Jeff shook his head despairingly.

      ‘Be careful,’ Tessa said, turning round. This time, as she looked at me, I hoped that she was seeing a little bit of the Apache in my soul.

       4

      I paused, crouched down, with the door open to get the feel for the car’s motion, and then tumbled myself out of the cab, and rolled a couple of times with the momentum. And stayed down, flat on the ground, still and quiet. Which was not Apache training, but more to do with the fact that I had winded myself.

      I sucked in air, and watched Jeff’s brake lights flicker like an overworked Aldis lamp as he continued up the track. If there were anyone out there watching, hopefully they would assume that I was still in the car.

      Or was I just being crazy? Allowing a spook impulse to drive me to mad and essentially pointless acts? I suppressed the thought. Just as I had already buried the one that told me I was showing off for Tessa’s benefit.

      I kept low and worked myself up along the hidden side of the rise to the top of the saddle. At that point I dropped to the ground and crawled over, keeping my head below the skyline, until I could see down into the construction camp.

      Donnie was working on setting up the lighting. Standing on top of the machines, moving over them like stepping stones, stringing lamps onto an invisible wire. As I adjusted to the soft swish of the wind and the backdrop of the night, I started to hear the sounds of the generator and a radio playing rock music coming up from the camp.

      I started to get really cold. The chill in the wind pressing in on my head, the damp cold clutch of the bare ground working its way in through my clothes. Instinct told me to move, to jump-start my circulation, but I knew that if I really wanted to find out if there was anyone else out there, I was going to have to stay totally still.

      I heard the sound of the engine announcing Jeff’s return. I smiled childishly to myself. He hadn’t stayed very long. It didn’t look like an invitation for coffee and comfort had been forthcoming.

      The sound drew closer. Donnie had almost finished setting up the line of lights, and nothing else moved down on the site. It looked like I had been wrong. Then Jeff’s engine note changed. Out of gear. He had stopped.

      The sound of his horn was an auditory shock that broke the night up.

      And it confused me. I only realized that it was a signal when I saw Donnie jump down off the top of the last earthmover in the line and trot towards a parked pickup. What had Jeff found? I tried the binoculars on him, but he was too deep in shadow.

      I was about to stand up and run down the hillside to find out when I saw him. A fragmentary movement in my peripheral vision. I swung the binoculars, and when I managed to focus I picked out a dark, crouched figure slipping in and out of the shadows formed by the lights over the line of machines. Unseen by Donnie, who had now left the camp, and was driving towards Jeff’s pickup.

      I got up and started running down the hill, keeping low, hoping that the figure would be too intent on his purpose to look my way. I measured out the imaginary parabola in front of me that would intersect with the line of machines.

      I was back to being Geronimo until something hard, at ankle level, took my feet out from under me. I was catapulted into sudden bad momentum on a steep, stone-pocked hillside.

      Which СКАЧАТЬ