The activist was early among an array of tables laid neatly, and whitely, for breakfast. It amused him to request a ‘full English’ in this mountain centre of Caledonia and he ate leisurely, nodding and smiling at several pensioners as they creaked between his table and the buffet. The ability to remember him, let alone describe him, would be compromised by the blandness of his pleasantries.
He checked out together with a number of other guests. Reception was cluttered with luggage and fussing over hotel bills and timetables, and gratuitous conversation at the desk was absent. It was typical of a busy Monday morning, and sunny again.
Through lobby windows he could see the bustle of people going to work. Before reaching the door, he picked from a rack a copy of the local daily newspaper. A laconic paragraph floating above threequarters of a page of hospitality adverts intimated that a wildfire of unknown severity, posing no danger to the lieges, had broken out in a remote area of Lochaber. He folded and replaced the newspaper on a lobby table. The aroused sleeper in Polloch was apparently able both to embed successfully and to execute securely. Although he had no real grounds for either, these presumptions had his features smiling pleasantly as he pushed at the swing door, bulky in black leathers.
Still smiling, he walked heavily around the building and into the hotel’s private car park. There, he stowed his luggage on the pillion of the black Ducati, carefully strapping everything down.
He regarded the motor cycle. It was considerably more conspicuous than he was, but he was fond of it nevertheless. He had taken pains to be seen as just another Mike-on-a-Bike, touring the ruins of a romantic Scotland, residing at a typical Hotel Splendide in Macsville, and the Ducati was his essential prop. He had also reasoned that getting rid of the Ducati would attract attention quite unnecessarily. Much better that he return south on his growling friend. He swung a leg over the petrol tank and, united with his machine, leaned out of the hotel carpark and into traffic.
Leaving Fort William for the south is a wearisome business. The narrow stretch along the side of Loch Linnhe is tree lined and he grew impatient trapped behind an old 8 tonne tipper lorry, the Ducati virtually idling. He inclined his head and glanced past once, twice – nothing coming towards him – and swung the big bike out to overtake. In dappled sunlight he had not seen the pale red indicator on the lorry become active, did not know that he was arriving at the Corran Ferry turn-off on his right. He blinked in surprise just before his front wheel struck into the front wheel of the turning wagon, then flew sideways across the road, the Ducati striking sparks from the road surface as it slid behind him.