Poe checked the luminescent hands on his Timex. He’d been inside Herdwick Croft for an hour. The first timer would switch on his bedside lamp in another five.
Plenty of time.
Poe put his hands on the edge of the hole he’d made in the roof and hoisted himself up and out. He waited, made sure there were no surprises, then quietly dropped down to the soft Shap Fell.
So far, so good.
Chapter 102
The moment Poe stepped away from the back wall of Herdwick Croft was the moment he knew Puck was out there. Watching his cottage, his sight trained on the front door. He couldn’t explain how he knew, just that he did. It was like the air was charged. Or maybe it was because the hair on his arms and on the back of his neck was standing up.
Poe got down on his belly and crawled to the edge of the ridgeline, the lip on which Herdwick Croft perched. Made sure he kept to a ninety-degree angle. That way, the cottage watched his back. Puck wouldn’t be able to see him, wouldn’t be able toshoothim. It was only a 10-metre crawl, but it took Poe five minutes. When he reached the lip, and slithered into the safety of the dead ground behind it, he had sweated so much his T-shirt was soaked through. Towler had said that would happen. He’d said that there was no rush. That as soon as he was over the ridge, he should stay still for thirty minutes. Get reacclimatised to the sounds of Shap Fell. Learn that night’s rhythm. He said Poe would hear things he hadn’t heard before and that was normal. That his senses would be heightened to unprecedented levels. Poe hadn’t believed him. Now he did.
He’d left his Timex in his soap dish as he hadn’t wanted the luminescent hands giving him away, so he counted out thirty lots of sixty in his head. It was weirdly therapeutic. Calmed him down. Steadied his breathing. After his final sixty seconds, he got to his feet and made his way down the slope. He then bore left and followed the lip of the basin-like crater. Poe had learned to move quietly in the army, and he’d perfected it on Shap Fell. He liked to walk at night, and he liked to see the wildlife. Thebadgers and foxes, the rabbits and hares, the voles and shrews. Plus, ewes in lamb were easily spooked.
When he rehearsed it for the first time, the three-quarters of a mile walk to the opposite side of the crater had taken him twenty minutes. He’d told Towler. Who had said Poe was walking too fast. That it should take two hours. Poe tried again. Made sure he thought about every single step. And the time went up. He tried again. It went up again. After seven rehearsal journeys, it was taking him ninety minutes. Good enough, Poe thought. Towler hadn’t truly understood how well he knew Shap Fell. That there were parts of the walk he didn’t need to tippytoe. A 300-metre sheep trail, a well-worn, animal-made track, forged by generations of Herdwicks as they trekked from one grazing ground to the next, meant he could move quickly and silently for almost a third of the way.
Poe walked carefully, though. Nothing to be gained by rushing. He tested each step before he put his weight on it. He avoided the boggy areas. Lifting his boot out of a bog would make a sucking sound that would carry all the way to Ezekiel Puck. For the same reason, he avoided the granite outcrops that littered Shap Fell like acne. He might pick up a pebble in his boots’ thick rubber treads. A pebble on granite would be loud and unnatural, like the metal segs he used to hammer into the heels of his school shoes. Tried to impress the girls by kicking them off the ground, making sparks. Which probably explained why Poe had been a girlfriend-free zone at school.
Ninety minutes. That was what Poe had allowed. He wasn’t wearing his watch, but he reckoned he was close to where he’d been on his last two rehearsals. When he and Edgar were roaming the fell for hours and hours at a time, he’d got pretty good at measuring time by tracking the moon’s passage. Everything in the sky with an orbit was like the hand of a clock. They all measured time.
‘When you get into position, you sit for an hour,’ Towler had said. ‘Don’t be tempted to look for him straight away. Trust that he’ll be there. You might have spooked an animal. As quiet as you think you’ve been, he might have heard something. You sit still and you don’t move. If hedidhear something, he’ll dismiss it if he hears nothing to back it up.’
It was good advice. Poe ignored it. Towler had identified four potential firing positions. He’d said the fourth was by far the most likely. It was the perfect sniper’s nest. But Poe didn’t want to get to the fourth position to find Puck wasn’t there, not without having checked the first three positions. Anyway, he figured crawling over the edge of the crater’s lip would be good practice. Rehearsing this was fine, but he was playing with live bullets now. It would be different.
Poe rolled on to his stomach and belly-crawled to the edge of the Shap crater. He peered over the edge. Waited for the moon to clear the wisp of cloud it was hiding behind. When it did, he saw position number one was empty. No Ezekiel Puck.
He crawled back and skirted along to the next one. Repeated the action. Found he was more confident this time. Same result, though. The nest was unoccupied. Third time lucky, maybe? Not for Poe. The third position was emptier than a pandemic bog-roll shelf.
Poe made his way to the final position. The one Towler said he’d have chosen. If Puck wasn’t there, he was going to have to do all this again the next night. And the next night.Ad infinitum.
Nowhe could take Towler’s advice. He could rest. Make sure his breathing was steady. The sweat had cooled. His head was clear. Focused on the task in hand. He closed his eyes and counted to five hundred. He opened them and checked the position of the moon. He reckoned it was coming up to 5 a.m.
Time to move.
Chapter 103
Poe had approached the first three positions knowing in his heart that Puck wouldn’t be using them. That Puck was good enough to select the same sniper’s nest as Towler. The first three positions had been dry runs.
Now it was the real thing. On the other side of the Shap crater was a man with a gun. Poe was sure of it. He found he was breathing hard again. He wished Towler was with him. Strength in numbers. A problem shared. Useless clichés, but at least he wouldn’t have been up there alone. He found he was scared. That he was rerunning that night with Clara Lang, the closest he’d ever come to dying. Maybe he wasn’t up to this. Maybe he should carry on walking, get to Shap Fell and call in Towler. Use the ex-Para as the weapon he clearly was.
But then he thought of Bradshaw. She was officially dead. And unofficially she would be pacing her room in the MI5 building she was using. She would be terrified. As would Doyle, all the way across the pond in the desert state of Arizona. Even Flynn would be mildly concerned.
No, it had to finish tonight.
Poe gritted his teeth, ignored the blood pounding in his ears and got to his knees. He dropped to his belly. He crawled on his elbows and his knees to the lip of the Shap crater, an inch at a time.
He saw Herdwick Croft’s silhouette. The cottage looked closer than the 500 metres he knew it to be. He moved another inch. As silent as the moon lighting his way.
Then he moved another inch.
And another.
His head was completely over the crater.
He waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadows. He stared into the last firing position. And saw nothing.
Chapter 104
