Frozen in Crime

Chapter 33 Following the Trail

The men on the ground had made better progress than anyone expected: the helicopter made several sweeps over the whole area: the grounds of Old Pitkirtlyhill House, the towns of Torryburn, Pitkirtly and Culross, Pitkirtly and Preston Islands and the mud-flats in between them, and nobody saw them. Amaryllis couldn't believe Mal and Jimbo had just vanished into thin air. For a few moments she wished she was on the ground chasing them. If they had skied along the line of trees it would have been easier to follow on foot than from the air. But surely they would have to emerge at some point.

Listening in on a headset she heard an exchange of radio messages between people on the ground and the pilot. A place was named where the helicopter could touch down, but it hovered for a while. Just after that, the helicopter suddenly lurched, the pilot corrected it and they headed out to the middle of the river.

'Sudden cross wind,' Amaryllis shouted in Charlie's ear.

'Are you enjoying this?' he shouted back.

She nodded and smiled. 'How did you know?'

'Your hair!' he said, and pointed at her head. 'It's standing on end.'

Her hands instinctively went up to try and smooth it down, but it was a lost cause, what with the adrenalin that always seemed to go straight to her hair, and the draught that whistled through the interior of the helicopter.

Charlie's expression told its own story. He would have done anything to avoid this sort of scenario, she knew. Almost like Christopher, except that none of it seemed to have an impact on the loose partnership between him and Amaryllis, which she knew some people considered completely incongruous. It seemed to work though. The helicopter hovered over Pitkirtly Island for a few minutes, then circled above the mud-flats in the bay. It was frustrating not being able to see the action at closer range, but she had a lot of sympathy for the idea of not being caught in cross winds. She listened to the headset again and frowned.

'Still no sign of them,' she called to Charlie. Even in this raised voice he detected a note of grudging admiration. 'They've disappeared, maybe gone to ground... There's going to be hell to pay in the army over this - they always claim they can spot people who are likely to do this kind of thing, and to alert the civil authorities to people leaving the forces. But presumably you didn't get any word of it?'

'Nobody would have told me anyway,' said Charlie gloomily. He had spoken almost too quietly for her to hear, but she sensed that he hadn't really been speaking to her at all.

'Not your fault!' she yelled.

'Too bothered about the weather, and Christmas... We had Christmas dinner at the station... Microwaved sprouts. Might as well have been cold pizza... Minds on the job instead of...'

She wasn't sure if she had heard him properly. What was all that about microwaved sprouts?

'Charlie, what are you talking about?' she shouted in his ear. 'Microwaved sprouts? Cold pizza?'

'We had Christmas dinner,' he shouted back. 'At the station. Instead of concentrating on the job. Might as well have been cold pizza.'

'Everybody deserves a Christmas dinner,' she yelled, although she was far from convinced of the truth of this.

As the helicopter's circuit widened to include Preston Island and Culross, Amaryllis glanced down. The top of the old mine shaft leading to the workings that had once extended out under the Forth caught her eye. There were patches of snow scattered across the seaweed, but it was freshly fallen and would melt quickly with all the salt water and mud around it. She pictured men working in tunnels far below, in constant fear of the water breaking through and drowning them, or the tunnels collapsing and burying them forever in layers of rock and mud. She shivered. They had worked there all the year round, even in this weather. Who knew how many tunnels criss-crossed each other below the mud flats, as well as inland around the power station?