Events grew in fibres of circumstance. Tedium had nurtured impatience. Impatience had overwhelmed him. His mission had been to accumulate information in evidence of the Commission destruction of a landscape. Tens of thousands of repetitive thrusts of his planting spade had stirred a desire for a more tangible retribution than the bureaucratic compromise which his information would bring. Solitude nurtured a desire of lonely men for memories to feed from; memories that reinforced self esteem.
Months of anonymity and friendless solitude had also created a need of individual expression. Munro had been a point of transition; the cusp of change, a personal exercise of power, a judgement against hubris.
Then, unaccountably, his mission had elevated from simple information gathering to punitive action. On one of several weekend visits to the city he had rejoiced on being instructed by the cell leader, ‘Control’, to select a suitable location and be in readiness for fire raising.
His head bowed to the handlebars of the Enfield. With the conflagration, past hatreds of hierarchy had distanced to the point of irrelevance. Faced by brutal and ferocious fire, political systems seemed abstract fairylands, and the Commission a caring governance. The inferno was feral, beyond intellect. A few hours earlier his breast had throbbed in excitement at the creation of flames in the night. Now he sat aghast at the sight of burning buildings and, beyond them, trees that smoked or flamed. When he heard the woodsman screaming he had closed both eyes only to feel his eyelids sear in the heat. He remembered a destructive arrogance and wished that he had been less enthusiastic. It would have been so easy to confine fire to a restricted area, make a gesture. Dear God, that would have sufficed.
“Are you all right?” a voice inquired and he dropped his head, hiding his eyes, convinced that his thoughts were nakedly expressed in his face. He could only nod in response.
“Have some of this,” and George bent a bar of melted chocolate into approximately equal portions while paramedics carried the bandaged casualty into an ambulance. Silas nodded again without speaking and accepted the little package without raising his face. He peeled open the silver paper, ran a forefinger into soft chocolate and placed the finger in his mouth.
Mackinnon watched as the vehicle drove off into a surrounding haze then returned to the office, angular features set and angry. Inside, he faced the logistics ganger who continued to man the phone.
“Get me Inspector Anderson, at his home if necessary,” he said grimly, “I’m reporting this as arson.”
“You think the fire was started deliberately?”
“You catch on quick, eh?” Mackinnon responded. “How could a fire have started in the early hours of the morning with dew forming? A calm night with no electrical disturbance, no lightning. On Sunday, quietest hours of the week, and it began close to the road.” Somebody from Polloch was to blame for this, he thought. Each early morning traveller was conspicuous in these parts. Some opportunist coming here not long before dawn? That made no sense. Sweat trickled coldly from his armpits and he felt an urge to rage aloud. A tic vibrated his eyelid.
“Iain,” Mackinnon said, noticing the young man’s unobtrusive presence, eyes wide, “not a word to anyone, eh?”
Iain nodded with some vigour. The logistics ganger peered at a phone list and began his search for the local police inspector. He ran him to earth at the police station. News of the fire was spreading. Mackinnon reached to grasp the receiver and the ganger saw that the forester’s hand trembled. A glance at Mackinnon’s face showed the tremor to be a symptom of fury.
Soon after, fire reached the shrub and heather that surrounded the island of hardstandings. At its perimeter the men formed a line with Mackinnon joining them, a beater in his hand.
They had been overwhelmed at the bothies. Now the entire body of men hafted their beaters and watched the fire approach, again raising scarves over the bridge of their noses as smoke drifted thickly towards them. The beaters rose and fell, pounding at flaring clumps of old heather and bush.
After the hell of conflagration at the houses and the forest, the burning heath around the area of hardstandings was readily dealt with, the men succeeding also in safeguarding the adjacent stand of pine which faced wildernesses of smoking forest. The thudding of beaters fell silent. For several minutes, the men stood quietly, blackened land in front of them, before turning and trudging towards the parked vehicles.
The fire moved inexorably onward, travelling south and east of Polloch, but not yet threatening the remaining exit road that led to Strontian. In a slight breeze, smoke trailed from scorched ground around the hutments and rose thickly from charred bothies and trees not fifty metres beyond them. An orange sun began to penetrate the canopy overhead. There was a glimpse of blue sky and occasional puffs of air became fresh and sweet.
Next the huts and vehicles, the men rested, black streaked, aware of the bitter wood smoke in their mouths and the burnt smell that hung to their clothing. Now several hundred metres distant, the fire continued its red destruction of the forest but its roar was passing into background sound.
A local van approached carrying the food and drink earlier requested by Mackinnon. The usual clusters of men formed and suddenly all were in good spirits. Groups intermingled and Mackinnon inside the office heard laughter. He looked through the window to observe food and drink being distributed. It made a bizarre picnic scenario. Something odd niggled and disturbed his thought process. His eyes widened and he went to the door calling urgently to Robbie who left a knot of the older Commission men and hurried over to him.
“Something wrong?”
“You said Silas went to get his motorbike, that it was full of petrol, eh? Petrol, you are sure that’s what he said?”
The ganger replied quickly, “Yes, I’m sure. Petrol – that’s what he said all right. Must have had a full tank.”
Mackinnon looked behind Robbie to the men milling, eating sandwiches and drinking from cans of beer. Silas was straddling his bike talking with Blue and George. He appeared to be in high spirits. Mackinnon’s features lengthened in anger.
“His bike is an Enfield, a Royal Enfield. He’s sitting on it just over there. That bike takes DERV, diesel.” A pause, then, “Come with me, I’ll show you something.”
Mackinnon crossed the hardstandings and entered the principal storage hut, the ganger following behind. He indicated a large cardboard box with the pasted paper legend:
25KG
MECH. GALV.
ROUND WIRE NAILS
125 X 5.00
BS1202 Part 1
He dragged the box away from the wall. It had already been opened and he scrutinised the contents. “It’s a little more than half full, around 10kg of nails missing, 125 millimetre nails, the 5 inch nails we said we didn’t have. Look, over here, opened boxes of barbed staples, plenty of them.”
“Bloody hell, you think that Munro…?”
“Munro and the fire…neither one was a bloody accident. What do they call it? A Freudian slip, eh? Petrol on his mind. An accelerant, that’s the smart word for it. His bike doesn’t run on petrol.”
“For God’s sake…” the ganger stood erect and very still. “My God, he was the one who was nearest that flare up the other day. Remember the bit of glass? I’ll rip that bastard’s head off.”
Mackinnon raised his palm, “We can’t be certain. For now, I want you to keep a close eye on him, but discreetly, Robbie, discreetly, eh?”
The ganger’s thick frame shook with anger. His bloodshot eyes seemed to redden further.
“Fine, I’ll watch the bastard.”
“He must not know that we’re on to him,” Mackinnon said. Then, after a pause. “Ok, we can do no more here. We only had the one man hurt, but take the roll call just to be sure. After that we’ll get back to Strontian. I’ll need to fix up something quick for the homeless.”