'About there. A little south from Barra and east from South Uist. Shoal water. Only someone as crazy as Fleming would have risked it in such bad visibility. But the Navy will go on looking, just as a routine formality.'
The two men sat in silence for a time. 'I'll see if the canteen can manage some lunch,' said Osborne. Geers nodded.
He made no move to accompany him.
It was a day of abnormally high temperature for so early in the year. The air was saturated with moisture and the mist turned to a steady rain over the land. Out at sea visibility went from bad to worse. Even for Western Scotland, the weather was breaking every kind of record. Fleming normally ignored the climate, but now he found it oddly in tune with the melodrama of the crisis at Thorness.
Clambering around the island, he heard the occasional impatient whoop-whoop of a destroyer's siren and the regular throb of dieseled launches cruising slowly. Once or twice raucous voices cursed cheerily as the search parties tried to find some humour on their boring, pointless task.
He had told Preen he needed exercise and would collect firewood. He had said nothing about the possibility of a major search for Andre and himself. Preen was patently anxious not to enquire too closely into what the whole escape was about, though Fleming suspected that a man who had been a C.N.D. marcher would not have ignored Thorness or the possibility that a man and a girl fleeing for their lives on a winter's evening might be connected with the place and with nefarious reasons for getting away from it.
But Fleming was not really worried about Preen. The streak of anarchy in the man's make-up practically guaranteed that he would not pompously blether about a citizen's duty and so forth. By almost fantastic good fortune they had found a well-nigh perfect ally.
Fleming was far more preoccupied about Andre. He suspected that even her formulated constitution, free from the defects of heredity which were the birth-wrong of every human being, could not battle against the poisonous sepsis in her hands. Somehow he would have to get skilled help for her.
All that day the patrol boats cruised off the island. Late in the afternoon the mist thinned sufficiently for a couple of R.A.F. helicopters to nose around. Fleming was outside when he heard them. Alarmed, he ran back to the cottage.
He grabbed a couple of green logs which were smoking on the fire and doused them in a rainwater butt at the back door.
'The choppers may sweep over here,' he explained quickly to Preen. 'Though I doubt it; a bit tricky to mess around in lousy visibility at zero feet with this hunk of granite in the way. Still, there's no future in arousing their curiosity with a smoking chimney.'
Preen mumbled something incoherent and retired to the ingle nook with an obscure volume of Middle English texts to annotate. He had done his best to suppress his misgivings about the continued presence of his visitors, but he left Fleming in no doubt that he would be glad when they were gone.
Andre was sitting placidly on the sofa. She had gone out with Fleming after the makeshift lunch Preen had devised and walked a few steps. The effort had quickly tired her, and she seemed afraid of the loneliness. Fleming carried her back to the cottage.
He was getting more and more worried about her; not only was she physically exhausted and in severe pain but her mind seemed to be more or less a blank. He had noted how she seemed to be unable to make any spontaneous effort except for the basic ones of walking, drinking, and eating.
Preen had rustled up some boiled sweets and when he had offered her the tin she had simply stared at it, not recognising their purpose. Fleming had put one in his own mouth and sucked it noisily before she got the idea.
Now, with one ear alert for the sound of the helicopters, Fleming sat beside her, his arm protectively along the back of the sofa and his hand touching her shoulders. 'What do you remember of all that's happened?' he asked gently.
She gave him the look of a bewildered child. 'It's all jumbled,' she murmured. 'I ran. Then I fell. In water.'
She tried to clasp her hands and drew in her breath sharply at the stab of agony.
Fleming got up, rummaging on the mantelshelf above the half-dead fire for some scissors Preen kept there among a conglomeration of useful articles. 'I don't think these rags I put round your hands last night were a very good idea.
There's a lot of suppuration. I'll have to cut them away.'
With almost feminine gentleness he began to cut into the material, trying to ease it off. He bent over her hands so she could not see them, and he talked quickly to help her ignore the pain.
'Before the running - you remember nothing?' he asked.
She spoke hesitantly, not only because she was searching for memories but in the effort to prevent herself crying out at the throbbing darts of agony. 'There was a camp, a kind of camp, with low concrete buildings and huts. We were there, and lots of other people.'
Fleming had got most of the matted linen off one hand.
What was revealed wasn't pretty. 'The machine?' he asked.
'Do you remember a machine?'
'Yes,' she said, nodding to herself. 'It was big and grey.
There was always a low hum, and often a lot of clicking.
Those were the figures emerging. Everything was in numbers.'
She frowned and her mouth puckered, as if she was going to cry with frustration. 'It's the numbers I can't remember.'
'Good,' said Fleming. 'We can get along without the numbers. They don't mean anything any more to you or anyone. Those numbers were evil; they...'
He stopped abruptly. The bandage on the other hand had come away easily - too easily. A whole crust of matter came with it. Underneath there wasn't pink, healing flesh, but the ominous purple of necrosis. He could not recognise gangrene, but he had some idea about septicaemia. He bared Andre's arm past her elbow. The sleeve of her dress could not be pushed further up. The arm was swollen, and the main artery stood out dark on the white skin.
'Preen,' he said quietly. 'Just come over and look at this, will you?'
Their host unwillingly laid down his book and walked across. He glanced down and then abruptly shut his eyes, swaying a little with nausea.
'My dear!' he whispered, 'how can you stand it?'
Fleming got up and took Preen across the room to the window. It was quiet outside, with the familiar mist eddying back in whorls from the sea. No helicopter engine marred the silence.
'I hate asking you for another favour,' he said, 'but could I borrow your boat?'
'Why?' Preen demanded suspiciously. 'Where do you want to go with it?'
'To the mainland.'
'It isn't seaworthy enough.'
'All right, to Skye then,' said Fleming impatiently. 'I could arrange a meeting on Skye.'
'You want to find a doctor, I suppose? Bring him here? That poor girl's hand...'
He swallowed down another surge of nausea.
'Not a doctor, something better. I'll not bring anyone here; I promise you.'
Preen rather sullenly agreed to loan the boat. Once the decision was made he was anxious for Fleming to go. The sooner he went the sooner he'd be back. And then perhaps he could see some possibility of getting rid of his visitors so that he could be left alone in peace.
He accompanied Fleming down to the little beach where his launch was kept under the shelter of a leaning rock. A jerry-can of petrol stood close by. While they prepared the boat for sea. Preen tried to apologise once more for his attitude.
He said he would do his best to look after the girl.
'Fine,' said Fleming with more optimism than he actually felt.
'I shouldn't be gone more than twenty-four hours at the very most. Now, if you can brief me on the course for Skye.'
Preen gave a landsman's vague instructions. 'The current and what wind there is are always north-west. If you keep heading that way you'll pick up the light buoys at the entry to Loch Harport in under half an hour. I always beach at the end of the loch, where there's a little hamlet with a general shop.'