Since he made them, Silas’ revelations had not been spoken of by anyone in the squad. There seemed to be a collective instinct to avoid the matter.
There was some sensibility of kameradschaft, of a working comradeship forged by fire and also of the schoolboy code of no snitching. It was clear that disclosure would certainly result in the destruction of Silas, beginning to be perceived as a misled soul encumbered with social conscience. He was surely of their sort with similar values and aspirations. And so they procrastinated, for not one of them could face the enormity of what Silas had unleashed. He had meant well and things had got out of hand. This conclusion brought relief, for it persuaded them to keep the ethic of squads the world over, and volunteer nothing to the undemocratic authority that ruled their existence.
They had spent the last working days of the week clearing away debris, a satisfying task that brought the return of normality and reinforced a sense of accomplishment. The work was cathartic. Beside scorched woodland, the road now ran cleanly, indentations and footprints etched in its asphalt surface. A faint odour of charred wood lingered under an unrelenting sky, for the dry spell showed no sign of ending.
Robbie had continued with the same pairings; Roland and Guy, Noel and Alex, Ruairidh and Blue, Silas and George. Iain stayed with the ganger to odd-job and courier. A distant roar of fire and the cloud over inaccessible forest was no longer remarkable, nor was the sharpness in an atmosphere that irritated throats and discouraged small talk. From time to time tipper lorries would drive up to them and wait to be filled with detritus. Such a routine made little demand on them and they were grateful.
They had rationalised Silas’ crime as an act of civil disobedience, as if he was some kind of Ghandi. The terrible deaths at the farmhouse had, after all, been caused by a helicopter pilot tempted to low level overflight by a desire for lucrative images. Each member of the squad viewed the matter from a similar standpoint and everyone kept silent without conspiring to do so. The forest had been planted too close to Polloch. Fire in the wood meant destruction. It was an accident waiting to happen.
Of them all, Noel had been most profoundly affected. There was empathy in his reaction to Silas’ grief and guilt. His once firm belief that there was an integrity intrinsic to the Establishment had already been destroyed. He saw the Establishment as self-serving, its goal a perpetuation of wealth in its core families. People were the source of that wealth, nothing more.
Silas’ confession of fire raising had connected itself to Noel’s memory of Lashkar Gah. In dreaming, images of fire and explosion, of violent death, of banal blue skies harbouring destruction, were tortured into the misshapes of nightmare. The nightmares now became especially graphic and wild shouting awakened the others night after night. Indecipherable, his language resonated with rage, and every man except Alex wondered what experience had left these irreconcilable images in Noel. At first light of day there would be snuffles and, finally, silence. It was unsurprising that Friday night saw them reading instead of heading for after dinner beer in the Argyll. Silas tinkered with the Enfield for an hour or so, then took an early shower and slid into his sleeping bag.
Saturday’s recreational trip to Fort William was extended by two hours in recognition of an immediate need to buy clothing, footwear, toiletries and such other articles as each considered necessary. Their mood was sombre. They were tired and sluggish. The spring heeled Roland plodded like the others. A reserve of inner strength had been sapped. Physically they were drained.
Silas had followed on his motor bike and parked behind the Commission vehicles at the town centre. He joined the squad in shopping for the week ahead, pushing his supermarket trolley behind the trolleys of George and Blue as they rolled growing piles of foodstuffs along the aisles.
They filled a long wheelbase landrover with their purchases and went to the Jacobite for a beer. Special Branch, advised of their recreational trip, followed them in. He ordered a pint of real ale and sat at a window bench made bearable by fitted cushions adorned with round cloth buttons. Soft red geraniums decorated a wooden shelf behind him. He opened a local newspaper and appeared to read.
He had finally received and scrutinised the results of the preliminary hunt through employment and income tax records, focusing on those six of the planting squad who had joined the Commission most recently. Of the six, three had come as a group already well known to each other, and Special Branch tended to discount them. The fire raiser would almost certainly be a soloist, just possibly a duet. Obvious lines of enquiry, emanating from a mass of material found in the biker’s possession, were highly likely to be successful in identifying the arsonist but Special Branch was disinclined to merely wait for a name. He enjoyed investigation for its own sake.
The remaining trio intrigued him: an ex-army officer; an accountant; an enigma. The strong likelihood was that at least one of them was guilty of arson and culpable homicide, the term applied by Scottish law to a death resulting from wrongdoing without intent to kill, the crime rather luridly catalogued as ‘manslaughter’ in England. He also knew that in Scotland Munro’s death would constitute murder if found that it arose from an act of ‘wicked recklessness’.
He studied the enervated group in short takes over the newspaper, and became certain that he had identified his triumvirate of suspects. Silas was obvious – leather jacket and helmet, Enfield parked next the long wheelbased vehicles. Beside each other, in the ease of close friendship, sat the powerful figure of Alex and the slender Noel. Conversation was sporadic, but not of the sort that punctuates embarrassed silences. They had endured hard days together, and it showed.
The group drank their beer slowly. Several had bought newspapers which they seemed reluctant to read. There was no light heartedness, no joking. Observing them, Special Branch recognised a powerful unity.
There was a brief exchange and the two originals, Guy and Roland, went to the bar and returned, each with a tray of drinks. Glasses were raised in simple acknowledgement, without fuss, and the group re-settled.
Who exhibited sign of mens rea, a guilty mind? In each triumvir he could see a dullness of exhaustion. He observed Silas particularly, but saw only the reserve of one who enjoyed congenial company without any desire to contribute to it. Not striking in a physical way, but not nondescript, Silas struck him as being very ‘average’, a blend rather than a personality, self-effaced rather than self-effacing.
Anonymous behind broadsheet pages giving the latest on the forest fire, Special Branch pondered the three men he had marked as being the most likely candidates for arson.
The squad drank more beer. Their conversation remained disinterested and their expressions slack. Poor buggers are knackered, Special Branch thought. Rays of bright sunlight shone through the pub window and the geraniums glowed in their elongated box. He folded his newspaper and left the bar.
It was a short distance to the hospital. He ambled into Intensive Care and saw a nurse busy making the biker’s bed. There was no sign of the biker. His neck prickled and he beckoned to an ill-at-ease duty constable.
“Where is he?” he asked curtly.
“He’s gone for another x-ray, sir, according to the consultant,” the officer answered stoically. “He was in a little pain. Doctor is checking that they haven’t missed a hairline fracture in one of his arms. Sister said it won’t take long.”
“And you let him out of your sight? You should be right there with him. Only joking, old son,” Special Branch added as an afterthought, seeing the constable stiffen.
“Sir,” the officer said, “he has a different accent sometimes, when he’s a bit dopey with the drugs that he’s on, I mean. It’s an English accent, but regional, like Liverpool.”
“You know a Liverpool accent? I don’t mean have you been listening to old CD’s of Gerry and the Pacemakers or Paul McCartney.”
“Used to have holidays in Bootle, sir, family connection there.”
“Dear God,” Special Branch said. “Look, keep this under your hat for now. We don’t want to alarm Merseyside.”
“And, sir, a couple of pressmen spotted me the other day. One was an old paparazzi. They showed interest.”
“Hard to avoid. They get close?”
“No sir, saw them off the premises.”
“No doubt they’ll have plied the nurses with pan drops for information,” Special Branch said. “Never mind, the ward nurses don’t know anything. Christ, I hardly know anything, come to that.” He turned to leave, then looked back at the constable, standing awkwardly beside an empty bed, his expression resigned.
“Not bad, son,” he said, “you just eliminated 98% of the haystack. Now then, where can I find Doctor Jekyll? He’ll not be bothering to x-ray an arm…he’s too brainy for that.”
“I think he’s in his office,” the constable said. “It’s down the corridor.
The freckle faced consultant was relaxed, hands clasped behind his neck, seated in a space that Special Branch suspected had once contained piled bed linen.
“And what can I do you for, Detective Chief Superintendent?” he wore a Saturday grin.
“Detective Inspector, doctor, just a DI who needs enlightenment from a top medical professional. Especially one who knows all about amnesia,” Special Branch said.
“Nobody knows all about amnesia, Detective Inspector, but, if you’ll unfold that deckchair and seat yourself comfortably in the corner, then I’ll begin.”
The doctor leaned further back in his seat, hands still clasped behind his head, and contemplated the creamy paint on the door lintel opposite. He spoke in a gentle, textbook tone. Several concussive blows to the skull, consistent with unexpected departure at middling speed from a Ducati, had resulted in post-traumatic amnesia of a type generally characterised as retrograde. This was commonly a transient condition. However, while neither general knowledge nor muscle memory was affected, and distant recollections usually returned in full, memory of recent events may never be regained. He trusted that such unimpressive advances in the science of neurology did not discommode the Detective Inspector and deplored an inability in the medical profession to be more precise.
Special Branch sat gingerly on a deckchair which he felt sure to be on the verge of collapse and listened meekly while the sandy haired doctor, who had captured the heart of the Chief Inspector’s daughter, spoke fulsomely of the strange effects of damage to the cortex and either or both lobes of a human brain. That the Celtic doctor was amusing himself, was evident. Special Branch disposed himself to appear attentive.
An hour later, he returned to the Jacobite Bar, but the squad had gone.