Over the Edge (17 page)

We were in a slight depression and it was raining hard, so all I could see in every direction was moor that faded away into the mist. Nothing stirred at the farm, although a newish Landrover was parked outside. I looked at it and wondered about the people who lived there. This was the stuff of gothic novels: remote and isolated; washed by perpetual
rains and racked by the mother of all
thunderstorms
every Halloween.

I pulled on my boots and full waterproofs and checked the compass. A path was visible, snaking off into the gloom, and in the distance I could see a waymark. I locked the doors and set off. The waymark told me that I was on the Coast-to-Coast path, and a notice nailed to it advised on various routes to take to spread the erosive effects of the thousands of boots whose wearers had chosen to spend two weeks of their lives tramping across the breadth of the land. I pulled up my hood and followed their trail.

It was three miles to Nine Standards Rigg, and I made it in under an hour, which put me just a few minutes early, as intended. I don’t know how it gets its name, but I was impressed. Just as you begin to worry if you’ve missed it, several tall columns of stones appear in front of you, in a line, but of various sizes. It’s a good path, and you wonder if your eyes are playing tricks as the wind swirls the rain and the Riggs loom in and out of focus. Some are giants, standing as high as three or four men; some are mere striplings and some have collapsed under their own weight. None of them have any cement bonding the stones. They stand there day and night, through all the seasons, sentinels over nothing, their origins lost in antiquity.

There are more than nine of them, the exact
number depending on at what size you start counting. Several upstarts, probably made by energetic school parties, have sprouted between the bigger constructions. One of them was a good representation of a Stone Age throne.

A man with a beard was sitting in it, looking like something from a Tolkein story, only the banana he was eating casting a discordant note. He looked round as he heard me approach and threw me a friendly wave.

‘That looks a good seat,’ I said.

‘It is, and most welcome. Are you doing the Coast-to-Coast?’

He was, and for the next ten minutes he told me all about it. He’d just retired after umpteen years as a schoolteacher, and this was a treat he’d promised himself for years. He was enjoying it immensely and he’d resolved to do other walks of a similar nature, but earlier in the year. This was his new beginning and I almost felt envious.

Except, I thought, after seven days on the road he’s craving human company. He asked what I did and I admitted to being a cop. This triggered him off about problems he was having with his pension, but I wasn’t listening. I decided that this was one of the most remote places I’d ever been. In every direction there wasn’t a sign of civilisation, just rolling moorland that merged into a monochrome sky.

I wandered off to the far end of the line and had a pee. When I looked again the man had packed his sack and was hooking it over his shoulders. I gave him a wave as he turned to go. There’s a happy man, I thought.

I saw the runner when he was only about 300 yards away, heading towards me, head down into the driving rain. He was tall, as tall as me, and even skinnier. He had a headband tying his long hair back, a waterproof top and his legs were enclosed in black Lycra. His trainers were chunky and looked expensive, even at that distance.

He chugged up the hill, bursts of vapour from his mouth indicating his exertions. I’d walked back to the throne and was sitting on it when he saw me and slowed to a walk. When he was ten yards away he said: ‘Are you Priest?’

‘I might be. Who are you?’ He was about 30, I reckoned, and when it came to fitness and fiddles he was in the Stradivarius class. He tilted his head warily, and walked across the front of me in an arc, not coming too near.

‘Nobody,’ he replied. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He had a tiny, streamlined rucksack on his back and runnels of water were dribbling down his clothes.

‘Sit down,’ I invited, indicating a pile of stones, ‘and tell me what you know.’

‘No, I’ll stand. And don’t try to grab me.’

‘I’ve no intention of trying to grab you,’ I told
him. ‘I give you my word on that. What is it you wanted to tell me?’

‘Have you caught Krabbe’s murderer?’

‘No. I was hoping you’d tell me who it was.’

‘I don’t know. But I can tell you about, um, about Jeremy.’

‘Jeremy Quigley?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘He was on Everest with Krabbe when he…when he was…when he was k-killed.’ The word
killed
stuck in his gullet until he spat it out.

‘So I understand. What can you tell me about it?’

‘There was a notebook and a camera. Jeremy kept a diary. It was found on his body by some Austrian climbers who gave it and the camera to…to…somebody else.’

Steam was rising from him but he seemed oblivious of the weather. I said: ‘Look, you’re going to catch your death in this. Why don’t we meet at the pub in Keld in say, an hour? Or at my car in Ravenseat?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m OK.’

‘Fair enough. So what did the diary say, and where is it now?’

‘Jeremy wrote it at camp IV on the last day, before they pushed for the summit. He said that Krabbe had been first to wake and had made a drink for them, which was unusual, but he was
eager to go. It was dark, of course, but they had head torches. Jeremy said that Krabbe had put the wrong crampons on. He’d put them on in the tent, and shredded the floor. He was in a hurry to get out and have a look at the Hillary step. He didn’t come back so Jeremy put Krabbe’s crampons on and followed him. That was the last entry.’

‘Where’s the diary now?’ I asked.

‘Krabbe stole it. Destroyed it.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because it proves he took Jeremy’s crampons. His own were useless. He stole it and destroyed it.’

‘What was wrong with his crampons?’

‘They were his own make. Krabbe Klaws he called them. They were both wearing them, and climbing Everest was going to be good advertising. They were OK, gripped well, but Krabbe had modified his. He’d cut more teeth into them and drilled some holes, to make them lighter. Mark two, he said they were when he showed us them. But he must have cut too much off them, made them weaker, because the front points broke off. He must have known what was happening. Maybe he saw they were cracked. You couldn’t get up there without points on your crampons. It’s a knife edge, with an 8,000 foot drop on either side.’

When he showed us them
, he’d said. Was that a slip of the tongue? Was my mystery witness there with them, on Everest?

‘Is that it?’ I asked.

‘There are some photographs,’ he replied. ‘The Austrians took them. That’s what they do, when somebody dies. For the insurance people. They prove what I’m telling you.’

Great, I thought, except that I wasn’t sure what he was telling me. That Krabbe wasn’t the hero we all thought, but was driven by ambition to the extent that he’d jeopardise – sacrifice – a colleague’s life? ‘Why haven’t you told all this before?’ I asked.

‘Because, um, because nobody would listen. I tried to, but they wouldn’t publish it.’

‘So why are you telling me now?’

‘Because…’

‘Because what?’

‘I don’t know. It’s the truth. Perhaps I want to help the murderer, understand him. Because I want the world to know what sort of a person Krabbe was.’

‘Who has the photos?’ I asked.

‘The Austrians gave the film to Krabbe, because he was the expedition leader. Krabbe gave it to Jeremy’s girlfriend, Gabi N-Naylor, so she could do all the legal stuff.’

‘Before it was developed?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he didn’t realise it might incriminate him?’

‘No.’

‘I see. Anything else?’

He stood there, swaying slightly, looking at me. The wind had pushed his hair to one side so it clung to his cheek and covered an eye. He’d been standing slightly sideways-on to me, ready to bolt like a rabbit should I try to grab him, but now he turned to face me and came a step nearer. ‘Do you know about the d-death zone?’ he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘A little.’

‘You’re OK up to about 17,000 feet,’ he told me. ‘No problem. But after that some people get mountain sickness. So you acclimatise. You go up, then come back down again. You do that for three of four days and then move your camp higher. Base camp is at 17,700 feet. But above 26,000 feet acclimatisation doesn’t work. The air is too thin. Above that height your brain cells start to die and your lungs fill with fluid from pulmonary oedema. Down here, at sea level, life expectancy is about 75 years. Above 26,000 feet, in the death zone, life expectancy is two days. Two days maximum. Everybody is dying. Nobody can help you. Helicopters can’t go that high. At midnight you start out for the summit, and if you don’t make it by two in the afternoon you turn around and come back. If you don’t you’ll be stranded. You rest every two paces.
Two
paces. There’s no way you’ll make it through another night, up there. The blood vessels in your lungs and your brain are leaking and you’re hallucinating, and you don’t know which
way is up and which is down. That’s when you need somebody like you’ve never needed anybody in your life. They leave the bodies. You can’t do anything about them. There are about 200 frozen in the ice, including Jeremy’s.’

Rain was running down his face and there were tears mixed in with it.

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ he continued. ‘It’s the highest point on Earth, and it’s right at the limit we can exist at. Who dares say that we weren’t designed to live on this planet?’

Yeah, I thought. Hilarious.

Wallenberg’s briefs didn’t complain to the chief constable. No doubt he ordered them to forget the whole thing. His wife was mixed up with some shady characters when she was young and struggling to make her mark on the modelling scene, he’ll have told them, and the conviction was all a big mistake. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr Wood wanted a full review of progress so I spent most of Monday morning in his office.

Dave had left a note on my desk about the crash that cost Sonia Thornton a place at the Olympics. I read it, rang High Adventure to confirm that she was working, and drove over to see her. Robert had been hard at work at a VDU. Before I left I asked him if he wanted to come, but he said he was busy
and he wasn’t keen on ice maidens.

She was standing at the foot of the climbing wall, holding a rope. Belaying, I believe, is the proper term. A little girl, aged about ten, was just starting to climb. She moved like a monkey, stretching and reaching for grips, shifting her weight, moving higher all the time. Sonia pulled spare rope through the belay and it coiled at her feet. Unfortunately the little girl was wearing low-cut pants, which were highly fashionable but impractical for climbing, so we were treated to a view of her bottom as she moved up the wall. After every move she reached back and tried to hitch the pants higher.

I was grinning as I said hello to Sonia. She turned and returned the smile, almost as if she were pleased to see me.

‘She’s a natural,’ I said, nodding towards the little girl.

‘A natural what, though,’ she laughed, then, seeing the photo album under my arm, added: ‘Oh, you’ve brought my pictures back.’

I said: ‘I’m not saying anything until that young lady is firmly on the ground again. If it were me up there I’d expect you to give it 100 per cent attention.’

‘Well done,’ Sonia called up to her as she reached the top. ‘Lean back and let go.’ She paid out the rope and the girl came down in a series of jerks, her feet dancing against the wall.

‘Want to try the blue route?’ Sonia asked.

‘No thanks, my dad’s waiting,’ the girl replied.

‘That was brilliant,’ I told her, but she just adjusted her jeans and dashed off to hand in her harness.

I tapped the book and looked at Sonia. ‘I’d like to hang on to this and the other a little longer, if you don’t mind, but there’s a couple of questions I need to ask you.’

‘OK,’ she replied. ‘Let’s go in the office.’

The office was just a partitioned off area behind the wall, but there were four desks each with a VDU. I placed the album on a desk and opened it a couple of pages from the end. ‘Who is that?’ I asked.

‘Hum, that’s Chris,’ she replied. ‘Chris Quigley.’

‘Jeremy’s brother?’

‘That’s the man.’

‘Tell me about him, please.’

‘Oh, let me see. I’d never met him until after the Everest expedition. Like with Gabi, I met him at the memorial service. It was at Selby Abbey. I think they’d both been choirboys there. Afterwards he came to visit a couple of times. He took his brother’s death badly. His big brother’s death. Apparently he hero-worshipped him, couldn’t believe he was dead. He just wanted to talk.’

‘Was he on the expedition?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think he was in a summit team.
He paid his way, just for the experience. According to Tony he cracked up, became a liability.’

I said: ‘Those crampons we saw in your attic. Were they the ones Tony wore to the summit?’

‘Yes. That’s why he wanted them saved. They’d been on top of Everest.’

‘Can you remember what colour the straps are?’

‘The straps? Hm, they’re blue, aren’t they? Why?’

I opened the album at the last page and placed my hand over the bottom of the picture. ‘Which one is Tony?’ I asked.

Sonia placed a finger on one of the grinning faces, saying: ‘He is. That’s Tony.’

‘And the other one is Jeremy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘Of course I’m certain. What’s this all about?’

I moved my hand away. ‘I’m not sure,’ I lied. ‘Look at the shadows. They’re long, so the sun must have been low. I’d guess that this was taken at Camp IV the evening before they pushed to the summit. They’d grab a few hours rest and set off, I’m told, around midnight.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘That’s how I understand it.’

‘If you look carefully,’ I said, ‘you’ll see that in this photo Jeremy is wearing the crampons with blue straps. Tony’s straps are black.’ The climbers’ feet were thrust towards the camera, the wide-angle lens making them look disproportionately large.