Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson Read Free Book Online

of her most recent trip there with Becky. They had cut the fence and trespassed on the base. Searching for the supposed weak link of the bunker’s communication system, the old telephone cable cabinet. They had narrowly missed being caught by the Ministry of Defence police.
    Becky was sitting up now, staring down at Sam almost accusingly as she lounged on the floor. ‘Why don’t you come to Greenham with me?’
    ‘I ought to go with Jim.’
    Becky’s eyebrows fused above the bridge of her nose. ‘You haven’t told Jim about cutting the wire, have you?’
    ‘No. Course not. He’s not interested in that sort of stuff anyway. He’s just a normal plainclothes cop.’ Sam smiled briefly, and then glanced away. Paul and Lee returned from the offie. They demolished a spliff. Necked the contents of a cheap white wine box. She was ready to call it a night. Becky had other plans. She wanted to spray-paint the fence around Crystal Palace Park, the starting point of the march. Sam said she felt too stoned and woozy, needed to go home to bed. Becky gave her that slightly suspicious, accusing look again. Sam felt aggrieved. She didn’t have anything to prove. But she dragged herself out into the night all the same.
    They traipsed to the top of Crystal Palace Park. The sky was inky and star-spangled here, away from the lights of the high street. At the park entrance they decided to split; Becky and Lee trekked off, leaving Sam alone with Paul. Sam tossed a coin, Paul called it and decided to take the easy option – lookout. She left him standing at the corner of the main road as she strolled casually back down the hill, the spray can in her pocket cold against her thigh.
    It was quiet along the park boundary, her only company the strange Victorian clay monsters skulking in the shrubbery on the other side of the fence and the deep gurgle of the Effra spring waters bubbling somewhere way below. She reached a section of the fence where the overhanging horse chestnuts camouflaged the pavement, checked over her shoulder, shook the can quickly and started to spray. The whiff of peardrops tickled the back of her throat and the nozzle kept jamming, but she was enjoying herself now, fuelled by the addictive crack of rule-breaking. As she prepared to join the final line, the beam of a headlight swept across her and illuminated her outstretched arm. Startled, she hastily stuffed the spray can in her pocket and backed away. The car’s elongated bonnet appeared over the hump, beams arcing across the sky, slowing to a crawl as it passed. She shuddered, sensing eyes peering through the window, locked on her face, checking her features. Rover. Black. She squinted as the dark vehicle accelerated up the hill, trying to read the number plate before it was swallowed up by the shadows. MVF something or other. Enough to tell her it was a south London registration anyway. Jim had taught her how to decode number plates on their occasional strolls through the outer reaches of the suburbs, searching for blackberries, walking the wretched dog. The dubious perks of being the daughter of an undercover cop.
    She rubbed her neck, stared up the hill into the darkness. A wave of paranoia threatened to swamp her; fears about her own illegal activities mingling with anxieties about Jim’s covert work. Was somebody following her? She was being stupid, surely. Over-reacting. It was just a stuffy stockbroker in a Rover. She retrained her sight on the spot where Paul should have been standing and watching her back: he had disappeared. Thanks a bunch.
    She hesitated, dug her hand into her overcoat pocket, fingered the metal canister, drummed her fingers on its side, turned back edgily towards her unfinished handiwork and, in the tail of her eye, spotted a panda car cruising down the hill. Shit. He had probably been hanging out on the forecourt of the all-night garage; the coppers often waited there – easy access to the coffee machine and Mars bars. The driver of