‘Well,’ I said, ‘we might as well get our money’s worth from all this gear we’ve brought.’
So we got ourselves made up to look like hikers, Clancy carrying the only rucksack we’d need, and I locked the car.
‘You’re not carrying heat?’ he inquired.
‘You’ve been watching too many gangster flicks.’
‘But are you or aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
We walked for about half a mile, till Bel suddenly stopped. I asked what was wrong. She was looking all around her.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Listen: nothing. Look, not a soul around.’
She’d barely got these words out when a party of three walkers emerged on the trail ahead of us. They nodded a greeting as they passed. They hadn’t spoilt things at all for Bel. She looked the way I’d seen girls in my youth when they were stoned at parties. She was an unfocused, all-encompassing smile.
‘It’s the lack of toxins in the atmosphere,’ Clancy explained. ‘If your system isn’t used to it, weird things start to happen.’
We walked on, and she caught us up. Clancy had the map.
‘There’s a picnic area at North Shore,’ he said, ‘but we’ll see the cabins before that. They’re between this trail and the one leading up Pyramid Mountain.’
We came upon them sooner than expected. It was a bit like the set-up at Oban, but a lot less obtrusive. No signs or fences or barriers, except that the very existence of the cabins, here where there should be nothing, was a barrier in itself. I couldn’t see the Disciples getting many casual visitors.
‘So what do we do now?’ Bel said.
‘We keep walking,’ I told her. ‘We’re just out for a hike. We’ll soon be at North Shore. We’ll have our picnic and we’ll talk. Just now, we’re walking.’
But from the corner of my eye I was taking in the cabins, the small vegetable plot, the boat on its trailer. I couldn’t see any signs of life, and no cars, no pick-ups or vans. No smoke, but then the cabins didn’t have chimneys, with the exception of what I took to be the original structure, slightly larger than the others. Instead, there were solar panels on the roofs, and a couple more on the ground. There was plenty of tree and bush cover around the cabins, and no sign of any pets. I wasn’t even sure you were allowed to keep pets inside the park.
There were boats out on Lake Crescent. They looked like they’d come from Lake Crescent Lodge. I could see fathers wrestling with the oars while spouses caught the antics on video and the children rocked the boat further to discomfit ‘pop’. We sat down at the picnic site and gazed out over the lake.
‘It is beautiful,’ said Bel.
‘Almost as pretty as a baseball game,’ Clancy agreed. Bel ignored him.
‘So that was it?’ I said.
‘That was it.’
‘I was expecting more.’
‘The Disciples are small-time, Mike. I could show you a dozen cults bigger than them in the US, including the cult of the Sainted Elvis. They’re not big, they’re just rich and obsessed with their privacy.’
Bel turned away from the view. She had been bitten already, and sprayed more gunk on her bare arms. I’d bought a dark blue baseball cap at Archie’s, and was now glad of it. The sun beat down with a sizzling intensity. Clancy opened the cooler and handed out beers.
‘So now we go and knock at their door,’ said Bel, ‘ask them what the hell they were doing murdering my father?’
‘Maybe not straight away,’ I cautioned.
‘But I thought that was the whole point?’
‘The point is to play safe. Sam, have you ever heard of anyone leaving the Disciples?’
He shook his head and sucked foam from the can. ‘That was my first line of inquiry. If you’d been a real reporter, it’s about the first thing you’d’ve asked me. I was desperate to find someone with inside info, but I never found a soul.’
‘Ever talk to any existing members?’
‘Oh, yes, lots of times. I’d strike up conversations with them when they went into Port Angeles for supplies. I have to tell you, those were very one-sided conversations. Hamlet’s soliloquies were shorter than mine. I got snippets, nothing more.’
Bel was sorting out the food. We had ham, crackers, cold sausage and potato chips.
‘Bel,’ I said, ‘how’s your acting?’
‘I think I played a policewoman pretty well.’
‘How about playing a very stupid person?’
She shrugged. ‘It’d be a challenge. What sort of stupid person did you have in mind?’
‘One who’s on vacation and has gone for a walk on her own. And she comes across these cabins and thinks they must be a restaurant or something, maybe a ranger station or some souvenir shops.’
Clancy was looking at me. ‘You’re crazy.’
Bel opened a packet of chips. ‘Are you saying, Michael, that I’d be going in there on my own?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
‘Why?’
‘I think they’d suspect you less if you were on your own.’
‘Yes, but why do I need to go there at all?’
‘Reconnaissance. I want you to learn as much as you can about the lay-out, memorise it. Are there locks on the doors and windows? Are there any alarms or other security precautions that you can see? Any skylights, loopholes, chinks in the armour?’
‘You’re thinking of paying a night-time visit?’
I smiled at her and nodded. She wasn’t fazed at all by my intention. She just ate some crisps and thought about it.
‘I’d have to go into the cabins,’ she said at last.
I shook my head. ‘Just the one, the main cabin. That’s the one I want to know about.’
‘You’re both crazy,’ Clancy said, gripping his beer with both hands.
Bel finished her crisps and stood up, wiping her hands on her legs. ‘I need a pee,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you back at the trail-head.’
‘We’ll be waiting.’
I watched her walk away. I’d promised Max she wouldn’t be in any danger. I’d been breaking that promise time and time again.
‘She’s got guts,’ Clancy admitted.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Clancy couldn’t get a word out of me the rest of the makeshift meal.
We walked back along the trail quite slowly, nodding to people who passed us. Again, we didn’t look at the cabins as we passed within a hundred yards of them. They were built on a fairly serious slope. Slopes and night-walking did not make good companions. But if I stuck to the path by the lake, there’d be more chance of being spotted. I had a lot on my mind as we walked the rest of the route. We sat in the car for a while. Clancy switched the radio on and retuned it, and I got out and walked about a bit.
It was over an hour before we saw Bel. She was hurrying towards us, her cheeks flushed with what I took to be success. When she gave me a grinning thumbs-up, I hugged her, lifting her off the ground. Then we got back into the Rabbit and on the way back to the campsite she told us all about it.
Not that there was a whole lot to tell. She’d found a young woman first of all, who’d turned out to have studied in England for several years. So she’d wanted to ask Bel all about how England was these days, and then Bel had asked to use the toilet, and only then had she asked the woman what this place was exactly. At which she got the story and even a brief tour. Because she and the woman appeared to be friends, no one else batted an eye at first. Then a man came up and asked who she was, and after that everything was distinctly cooler. She’d lingered over a cup of herbal tea the woman had prepared, but then had been asked politely but firmly by the man if she would leave.