We all watched the men leave in silence. They didn’t even pick up the money. It was a bit much.
I ran after them. I thought they deserved an explanation. I told them, you know, all the shops will be shut for three days. You can’t just roll into town and buy everything up, d’you see what I mean? They seemed quite interested in that but the rude one said, you know what, to hell with it, we’re not coming back to this shit-hole. We’ll be gone by tomorrow. Then they climbed up into their all-terrain Range Rover and sped off to the headland.
They were right. They were gone the next day.
Margie and I were out for our “Yule day yomp” and ended up at Saxa Vord. I heard her shout: “Oh God, no!”
We stood looking over at the cliff top, the bitter north wind stinging our faces. There was no one in sight. The tent was gone. Their Range Rover was still there, one door jammed open and stuff strewn all over the ground. The heavy chassis was rocking in the wind.
We hurried over, buffeted one way and another. The wind caught my hood, shoving me in a staggering little circle. Margie caught my arm and we looked at each other. We both knew they were all dead. Margie looked at me, frightened and sad. I cupped her face to comfort her. She didn’t want to go over to the car, she wanted to turn back but I made her come with me to make sure.
We got there, finally, and they were gone. The grass was flattened in a rectangle right on the headland. Tent pegs lay on their sides like sharpened metal question marks. A length of rope was trailing on the ground under the car, whipped hither and thither by the wind, tied to the door handle as if they’d used it as a winch. Anyone seeing it could well imagine those men staggering around in their specialist clothes, unable to see, tying off the rope and lowering it down to the companion who had slipped onto a ledge, clinging on for dear life. Margie was shaking her head and asked, why didn’t they tie the rope to the axle? Why the door? It made no sense.
On the way back we passed the sunken radar bunker. If they’d had any sense they would have sought shelter in it. We slipped in and saw the brand new visitors’ book. They had all signed it and written, “Here for midnight 2015! Happy Yule!”
I groaned inwardly at that.
We went home to phone and tell everyone. Then the cops came from the neighboring island. Two incomers, both transferred up here from Glasgow. They asked after Shirley. They knew her from there. Said she had worked with them before.
They went off to see the campsite. They were there for a while. They came back with Shirley: they’d picked her up on the way back. Awkward, they said, to bring it up but they’d heard on the ferry that there was an argument in the bakery yesterday when Margie refused to sell them pancakes?
“No,” I corrected, “Margie refused to sell them all of the pancakes. That was the point. They wanted to clear the bakery out of pancakes and leave none for the rest of us. That’s not on.”
“I see,” said the one policeman thoughtfully. “Thing is, we looked in the car and found three pancakes on the back seat. It seemed strange.”
I suggested that the pancakes could have come from elsewhere. They seemed quite selfish, those men. Maybe they already had pancakes before they came into the bakery and were just being really greedy?
No one answered, but Margie looked uncomfortable. They took out a phone and showed her a photograph of the pancakes in situ. Yes, she said, they did look like her pancakes. She makes them big and half an inch deep. They left to go back and see the scene again and took Shirley with them. She might have something to add, they said. Margie sat crying in the front room.
An island is a self-selecting community, and that attracts a lot of oddities. People move here without really knowing anything about it. If an incomer mentions getting away from the rat race you know they won’t last. Give them one winter. They’ve usually argued with everyone, wherever they were before, and think other people are the problem. It takes coming here for them to realize that they’re the problem. We get cast in this uncomfortable psycho-drama every so often. When anyone comes here you wonder why. You wonder what their motive is. Not me though. I’m from here, as is Margie. Shirley isn’t, but we know she’s here for peace and quiet. And now the police are taking her to Saxa Vord and that’s the opposite of peace and quiet.
I like Shirley. I was a bit worried about her. That’s why I followed them.
Up across the hills and heaths, over the headland and down into the shallow valley, I followed the cops in my car. The wind was pulling and shoving my old Mini. It’s built for a city and not this exposed rock on the very edge of the Arctic Sea. It was already getting dark, still only early afternoon but the night glowered on the horizon, the sea clawing viciously at the cliffs. I drove with my lights off. No point in giving them a rear view warning.