A voice called, and he swung round. It was a woman’s voice, muffled, but with a high pitch of hysteria. She was calling his name and he lunged for the door at the other end of the hut, clawing at the wooden bars, then hammering them up with the butt of the gun he still held in his hands. The door thrust open and she was there, her arms round him, half laughing, half sobbing, her hair dishevelled, no make-up and her clothes in a mess, blood and dirt and all creased with constant wear. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t say anything. They just clung to each other, like two lost souls. Then she saw me and she smiled, looking past his shoulder. ‘Philip. It was you, wasn’t it?’
I didn’t say anything and she pushed him away — but gently, almost reluctantly. ‘Tom, you’ve been taking that stuff again. You’re high.’
‘Of course I’m high. I’m on top of the world.’ He laughed, the sound of it a little wild. ‘If I hadn’t been high I’d never have had the guts to come here with that little Mexican bugger Rodrigo looking for you and walking s-slap into the bloody neat little trap they’d laid for me.’
She came across to me then, holding out her hand. ‘Thank you, Philip.’ And as I took it she leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth. ‘I’m filthy,’ she said. ‘I’m going down to the lake to clean up.’ But she hesitated, staring down at the man who had been her jailer moaning and squirming on the ground, only half conscious now.
‘Did he kill Olsen?’ I asked her.
‘In a way, yes.’ She had turned back to the two-tier bunks to grab a piece of soap and a towel that was hanging there. ‘Thor wasn’t young,’ she said, turning to face me. ‘Over sixty, he said, and he’d had a hard life. I think it was a heart attack. He was tied up and that sadistic beast was hammering at him with a rough jagged end of a cedar branch, and then suddenly Thor collapsed, and he was dead — just like that. No sign of life. I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but no good. He was gone.’
She went out then, stepping past the figure on the ground and going down to the lake, where she stripped off her clothes and began washing herself, her movements practical and energetic, an essential action for any woman who had been cooped up for several weeks in a small room, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off the scene. It was so like some of the great pictures I had seen in magazines and books-Nude Bathing in a Lake. She looked beautiful.
‘You going to gawp at my wife all day?’
I turned to find Tom laughing at me. And then I remembered — Camargo and Lopez. And I shouted to Miriam, a sudden vision in my mind of the canoe emerging out of the grey veil of the mist and one of them lifting his gun to his shoulder. Swan Lake and Miriam in the role of Odette, falling and dying there, naked by the quiet, still waters of a lake deep in the Rockies.
She came back into the hut then, her breasts bare and the towel wrapped round her middle, her skin glowing with the coldness of the water.
I started explaining to Tom how his son and I had gone down into High Stand and how we had split up, Brian staying there while I hurried back up to the lake ahead of the two South Americans.
‘So they could be here any minute.’
I nodded.
‘And they’re armed.’ He was already moving round the hut, gathering up food, kit, clothes and a torch. ‘We must be out on the lake before they get here. You got all you want? Miriam! Bring your blankets, we may have to sleep out tonight, it depends when the tug arrives.’ He took down the walkie-talkie hanging on the wall and passed it to me. ‘Sling that over your shoulder. Now let’s get moving. We’ll take the hut work boat and tow yours. Then they’ll be stuck here till that dirty little lying pusher of a Mexican comes back for more snow.’ I’d never seen him like this, so sure of himself, so in command, not even at his own dinner table back at Bullswood House. But the mention of Rodrigo made me wonder whether the man could have heard the shot, might even now be lurking in the mist at the edge of visibility. Tom was sure not. ‘He’d never have heard it, not above the sound of water falling to the lower lake. Ready?’
I nodded and he called to Miriam again. She came out of the room, fully dressed with a bundle of blankets under her arm. ‘I’ve enough here for both of us,’ she told him.
‘Good.’ He went out and I followed.
Miriam hesitated. ‘What about Thor? We ought to bury him,’.
‘No time.’ He was standing over the man whose knee was a pulp of blood and bone showing through his trousers. The dark eyes were blank with pain, his breath coming in quick gasps. ‘I ought to knee-cap both your legs,’ he said, and I saw the man wince, his eyes half-closing and his teeth gritted as he waited in fear for the impact and the agony. Then he passed out.
We shut the door of the hut, locked it and took the key. ‘If they land here th-they’ll be fully occupied dealing with that guy and trying to get back down to the camp.’ Tom was moving across the little beach to where the aluminium boat lay. We dumped our things in it, dragged it down to the water, and while Tom dealt with the outboard, Miriam and I carried the semi-inflatable down, making the painter fast to an aluminium cleat close by where Tom was sitting.
He was pulling the starter cord then, and as we climbed in, the engine burst into life. I thought I heard a shout, somebody calling out of the mist. Miriam had sat herself on the flat platform of the punt’s bow and she thought she heard it, too. But by then I was pushing off with an oar, the outboard lowered and the prop biting, a froth of water astern as the boat gathered way.
It was then, as we were moving out from the shore, the hut already gone and the trees fading into mist that Tom saw it, and as I turned it was just emerging from the mist, a canoe’s bows and a man’s body, ghostly and unreal.
Tom half rose, his eyes widening, his mouth open. The engine roared, the boat skidding round in a tight turn, and he was suddenly singing, bawling out at the top of his voice: ‘… the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored — ‘ The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the boat driving straight for the canoe, which was now broadside to us, the two men in it kneeling and staring at us.
Lopez was the first to react, leaning forward and grabbing his rifle.
‘You fool!’ I yelled, for Miriam, seated in the bows, was more at risk than either of us.
‘.. the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword — ‘
Camargo, too, had got hold of his gun, both of them starting to aim and the canoe so near and clear now I could see the moisture beads on moustache and beard, the frayed stitching of an anorak and their faces set, their dark eyes staring.’..
sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men — ‘ The crunch as we hit the canoe was instantaneous with the crash of their rifles, the flat punt-end riding up on it, trampling it down into the water, the two men falling, their hands thrown up and Tom’s voice still drumming out the words, the crash of the shots reverberating, wood splintering… ‘Our God is marching on.’
He leaned out and grabbed hold of Camargo’s rifle, wrenching it out of his hand as the canoe disappeared. ‘Swim for it, you buggers,’ he yelled at them, lifting the outboard clear of the wreckage, then revving the engine again and heading down the lake, the semi-inflatable riding through the remains of the canoe and their two heads watching us from the water, two disembodied faces staring in disbelief.