There were No Vacancy signs everywhere, till we asked at a pub on the road back out of town. Bel had wanted to stay near the dockside, and I told her that was fine by me, I just hoped she’d be warm enough sleeping out of doors. When she saw our two rooms at the Claymore, though, she brightened. The woman who showed us up said there’d be a ‘rare’ breakfast for us in the morning, which I took to mean it would be very good rather than hard to find or undercooked.
The rooms smelt of fresh paint and refurbished fittings. Bel had a view on to fields next to the pub. There were sheep in the fields and no traffic noises. It was just about perfect. The rain had even stopped.
‘And I could understand every word she said,’ she claimed with pride, referring to our strained conversation with the car hire man in Glasgow, and the local in Crianlarich who had tried engaging Bel in conversation about, so far as either of us could make out, trout-tickling.
We ate in the bar, and asked casually if our hostess knew where Ben Glass was.
‘It’s out past Diarmid’s Pillar. Hillwalkers, are you?’
‘Not exactly.’
She smiled. ‘Beinn Ghlas is a summit between Loch Nell and Loch Nant.’
‘That doesn’t sound what we’re looking for. It’s more of a ... commune, a religious community.’
‘You mean the New Agers? Yes, they’re off that way.’
‘You don’t know where, though?’
She shook her head. ‘How was the Scotch broth?’
‘It was delicious,’ Bel said. Later, we asked if we could borrow a map of the area. Most of the roads were little more than tracks. The only Ben Glass I could see was the summit.
‘I don’t suppose they’d be in the phone book?’ Bel suggested.
‘We could try Yellow Pages under cults.’
Instead, we went back into Oban itself. It was too late in the day to start our real business, so we became tourists again. The wind had eased, and there was no more than a marrow-chilling breeze as we traipsed the harbour area and the shops which had closed for the day. Bel huddled into my side, her arm through mine. She had the collar of her jacket up, and the jacket zipped as high as it would go. There were other holidaymakers around us, but they looked used to the climate.
‘Let’s go in here,’ Bel said, picking a pub at random. I could see straight away that it was a watering-hole for locals, and that strangers, while tolerated in the season at least, couldn’t expect a warming welcome. The customers spoke in an undertone, as though trying to keep the place a secret. Bel ignored the atmosphere, or lack of one, and asked for a couple of malts.
‘Which malt?’ the red-cheeked barman asked back.
‘Talisker,’ she said quickly, having just seen a bottle displayed in a shop window.
The barman narrowed one eye. ‘What proof?’
That got her. She thought he must mean proof of age.
‘Seventy, I think,’ I said.
‘And double measures,’ said Bel, trying to recover. As the barman stood at his row of optics, she saw there were three grades of Talisker: seventy, eighty and one-hundred proof. She nodded at me and smiled, giving a shrug. We paid for our drinks and went to a corner table. The bar grew silent, waiting to eavesdrop. They were out of luck. The door swung in and a laughing group of teenagers stormed the place. They couldn’t be much over the legal drinking age, and a few of them might even be under it. But they had confidence on their side. Suddenly the bar was lively. Someone put money in the jukebox, someone else started racking up for a game of pool, and the barman was kept busy pouring pints of lager.
They kept looking over at us, probably because Bel was the only woman in the bar. One of the pool players, awaiting his turn, came over and drew out a chair. He didn’t look at us, but returned to the seat after he’d played. This time he gave us the benefit of his winning grin.
‘I don’t know why I bother,’ he said. ‘He beats the pants off me every time.’
I watched the other pool player potting his third ball in a row. ‘He does seem pretty handy.’
‘He’s lethal. Look at him covering that pocket.’ He got up to play, but was quickly back in his seat. ‘On holiday?’
‘Sort of.’
‘It’s all right, I don’t mind tourists. I’m a carpenter. I work for this other guy who sculpts lamps and stuff from bits of old wood. The only people who buy them are tourists.’
‘Maybe we’ll look in,’ I said. ‘Where’s his shop?’
‘He doesn’t have a shop. He’s got a workshop, but he sells the stuff through shops in the town. Souvenir shops, fancy goods.’
‘We’ll look out for them,’ Bel said. ‘Meantime, could you do me a favour?’
He licked his lips and looked keen. Bel leaned across the table towards him. They looked very cosy, and his friends were beginning to exchange comments and laughter.
‘We were told there’s a sort of religious commune near here.’
He looked from Bel to me. I tried to look meek, harmless, touristy, but he seemed to see something more. He got to his feet slowly and walked to the pool table. He didn’t come back.
We drove into town next morning and bought a map of our own. It was newer than the hotel’s map, but still didn’t help. We sat poring over it in a coffee shop. The other customers were all tourists, their spirits dampened by another cool, wet day. The rain was as fine as a spraymist, blowing almost horizontally across the town. Bel bought a bottle of Talisker to take back to Max. An old van puttered past the cafe window where we were sitting. It was an antiquated Volkswagen bus, most of its body green but the passenger door blue. It squeezed into a parking place across the street and the driver cut the engine. He got out, as did his passenger. The driver pulled open the sliding side-door, and three more passengers emerged. They all seemed to be holding scraps of paper, shopping lists maybe. They pointed in different directions and headed off.
‘Stay here,’ I said to Bel.
By the time I left the coffee shop, they had disappeared. I crossed to the Volkswagen and walked around it. It was twenty-four years old, two years older than Bel. There was a lot of rust around the wheel arches and doors, and the bodywork was generally battered, but the engine had sounded reliable enough. I looked inside. The thing was taxed for another three months. It would be interesting to see if it passed its MOT this time round. There were some carrier bags and empty cardboard boxes in the back of the bus. The rows of seats had been removed to make more space. There was a dirty rug on the floor and a spare can of petrol.
The passengers had looked like New Agers: pony tails and roll-up cigarettes and torn jeans. They had that loose gait which hid a post-hippy sensibility. The few New Agers I’d come across were a lot tougher than their 1960s ancestors. They were cynical, and rather than escape the system they knew how to use it to their advantage. Aesthetics apart, I had a lot of time for the ones I’d met.
‘Something wrong?’
I turned. The driver was standing there, lighting a cigarette from a new packet.
‘The way you were looking,’ he went on, ‘I thought maybe we had a bald tyre or something.’
I smiled. ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Maybe you’re thinking of buying?’
‘That’s pretty close to the mark. I used to own one of these, haven’t seen one in a while.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Out in the States.’ I hadn’t actually owned one, but the New Agers I’d met there had.
The driver nodded. ‘There are a lot of them still out there, on the west coast especially.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘They don’t use salt on the roads.’
‘That’s it. They last longer than this rust-bucket.’ He gave the van a playful slap.
‘The one I had blew up. I’d twin-carbed it.’
He shook his head. ‘That was a mistake. You don’t live around here, do you?’
‘No, why?’
‘You’re talking. Not everybody does.’
‘
You’re not a local yourself then?’
‘I haven’t lived here long.’
He inhaled on his cigarette and examined its tip. He was in his 20s, nearer Bel’s age than mine. He had short wavy black hair and a week’s growth of beard, and wore liver-coloured Doc Marten boots with stained jeans and a thick woodsman’s shirt.
‘I’m just visiting,’ I said.
‘Enjoy the trip.’ He nicked his cigarette and put it back in the pack, then got into the van and put some music on. As far as he was concerned, I had already left.
I walked back across to the cafe and got Bel.
‘I nearly yelped when I saw him coming out of the shop,’ she said. ‘I knew you couldn’t see him. What did he say?’
‘Not much. Come on.’
We got into the Escort and drove back the way the Volkswagen had come in. Once we were out of sight, I pulled over again.
‘You think it’s them?’
‘I get that impression. We’ll find out.’
So we waited in the car, until the bus announced itself with its high-turning engine. It could put on good speed, which was a relief. I hadn’t had much experience in tailing vehicles, but I knew that out here, with so little traffic on the roads outside the town, I’d have trouble keeping my distance from a crawling VW. The thing didn’t have side mirrors, which helped, since the driver probably couldn’t see much from his rearview mirror other than the heads of his passengers. Habitations became sparser as we drove, and a sudden heavy shower slowed us down, though the driver didn’t seem to worry. At last, the tarmac road ended, we went through a five-barred gate and were driving on a gravel track. I stopped the car.
‘What’s up?’ said Bel.
‘If he sees us behind him, he’ll know we’re headed the same place he is. How many houses do you think are up this road?’
‘Probably just the one.’
‘Exactly, so we can’t really lose him, can we? We’ll sit here for a minute, then move at our own pace.’
‘What are we going to say when we get there?’
‘Nothing, not this visit. We’ll just take a look at the place, not get too close.’
I looked in my rearview mirror. Not that I was expecting any other vehicles.
The gate behind us was shut.
I turned in my seat, hardly able to believe the evidence in the mirror.
‘What is it, Michael?’
There were figures outside the car. One of them pulled open the passenger door. Bel shrieked. The figure bent down to look at us. He was big, cold-looking and soaked, with a beard that looked like it could deflect blows.
‘Keep on going up the trail,’ he said, his accent English. ‘It’s another mile or so.’
‘Can we give you a lift?’ I offered. But he slammed the door closed. I counted four of them out there, all of them now standing behind the car. If I reversed hard enough, I could scatter them and maybe smash my way back through the gate. But it looked like a quality gate, and since we were where we wanted to be, we might as well go on.
So I moved forward slowly. The men followed at walking pace.
‘Michael...’
‘Just remember our story, Bel, that’s all we need to do.’
‘But, Michael, they were waiting for us.’
‘Maybe they always keep a guard on the gate.’ I said this without much confidence. The man hadn’t asked us what we wanted or whether we’d taken a wrong turn. It was true, we were expected.
Well, they might be expecting us, but I doubted they’d be expecting what I had in the car-boot.
The MP5.
The commune sat in a glen with a stream running through it. It reminded me of one of those early American settlers’ communities, just before the bad guys rode into town. The houses, little more than cabins, were of wooden construction. There were a few vehicles dotted about, only half of them looking like they were used, the rest in a process of cannibalisation. Solar heating panels sat angled towards a sun that wasn’t shining. A large patch of ground had been cleared and cultivated, and some lean black pigs were working on clearing another patch. I saw goats and chickens and about thirty people, some of whom, all women, were helping unload the VW bus. The VW’s driver nodded at us as we stopped the car. I got out and looked at him.
‘You want to make an offer on it after all?’ he said, slapping the van.
An older man emerged from the largest cabin. He gestured for us to follow him indoors.
The cabin’s interior was spartan, but no more so than a lot of bachelor flats or hotel rooms. It was furnished with what looked like home-crafted stuff. On one table sat a lamp. I ran my hand over the gnarled wooden base.
‘You’re the carpenter?’ I said, knowing now why we were expected.
The man nodded back. ‘Sit down,’ he said. He didn’t sit on a chair, but lowered himself on to the floor. I did likewise, but Bel selected a chair. There was a large photograph of a beneficent Jeremiah Provost on the wall above the open fireplace. He looked younger than in some of the newspaper photos. There was a tapestry on another wall, and a clock made from a cross-section of tree.
‘You’ve been asking about our community here,’ the man said, eschewing introductions.
‘Is that a crime?’ Bel asked. He turned his gaze to her. His eyes were slightly wider than seemed normal, like he’d witnessed a miracle a long time ago and was still getting used to it. He had a long beard with strands of silver in it. I wondered if length of beard equated to standing within the commune. He had the sort of outdoors tan that lasts all year, and was dressed for work right down to the heavy-duty gloves sticking out of the waistband of his baggy brown cord trousers. His hair was thin and oily, greying all over. He was in his 40s, and looked like he hadn’t always been a carpenter.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but we prefer visitors to introduce themselves first.’
‘That’s easily taken care of,’ Bel said. ‘I’m Belinda Harrison, this is a friend of mine, Michael Weston. Who are you?’
The man smiled. ‘I hear anxiety and a rage in your words, Belinda. They sound like they’re controlling you. Their only possible usefulness is when you control them.’
‘I read that sort of thing all the time in women’s magazines, Mr ... ?’
‘My name’s Richard, usually just Rick.’
‘Rick,’ I said, my voice all balm and diplomacy, ‘you belong to the Disciples of Love, is that right? Because otherwise we’re in the wrong place.’
‘You’re where you want to be, Michael.’
I turned to Bel. ‘Just ask him, Belinda.’
She nodded tersely. ‘I’m looking for my sister, her name’s Jane.’
‘Jane Harrison? You think she’s here?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because when she ran away, I went through her room, and she’d cut pieces from newspapers and magazines, all about the Disciples of Love.’
‘One of them,’ I added quietly, ‘mentioned yours as being the only British branch of the sect.’
‘Well, Michael, that’s true, though we’re about to start a new chapter in the south of England. Do you know London at all?’
‘That’s where we’ve come from.’
‘My home town,’ Rick said. ‘We’re hoping to buy some land between Beaconsfield and Amersham.’
I nodded. ‘I know Beaconsfield. Any chance that Jane might be there, helping set up this new... chapter? I take it she’s not here or you’d have said.’
‘No, we’ve got nobody here called Jane. It might help if I knew what she looked like.’
Bel took a photograph from her pocket and handed it over. I watched Rick’s face intently as he studied it. It was the photo I’d taken from the flat in Upper Norwood, the one showing Scotty Shattuck and his girlfriend.
‘That’s her,’ said Bel, ‘about a year ago, maybe a little less.’
Rick kept looking at the photo, then shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never seen this woman.?
??
‘She may have cut her hair shorter since,’ Bel pleaded. She was turning into a very good actress.
‘Take another look, please,’ I urged. He took another look. ‘She ran off with her boyfriend, that’s him in the photo.’
‘I’m sorry, Belinda.’ Rick handed the photo back.
‘And you’re sure she couldn’t be helping start off your new branch?’
‘They’re called chapters, Michael. No, there’s no possibility. We haven’t bought the land yet, there’s another bid on the table. None of our members are down there at present.’
I saw now that in a corner of the room beyond Rick sat a fax machine and telephone.
‘The estate agent contacts you by phone?’
Rick nodded. ‘Again, I’m sorry. Bel, why does it worry you that Jane has left home? Isn’t she allowed to make her own choices?’
Maybe the acting had proved too much for her. Whatever, Bel burst into tears. Rick looked stunned.
‘Maybe if you fetch her some water,’ I said, putting an arm around her.