Dead Man Walking (26 page)

‘I’ll be honest, I’m thinking thermal imaging …’

‘Dear God!’ Gemma said. ‘If he’s got something like that, he can spot us up here on the fell-side as easily as he could down in the farmyard.’

‘Agreed. So we’ve got to get a move on …’

Renewed fear fuelled their uphill flight. Lungs working like bellows, muscle-blood pumping hard, they continued up a path which in some sections was more like a stepladder, ascending tier after tier of broken ground, tripping on ruts and loose stones. To make life worse, the path branched several times. On each occasion Hazel dithered, uncertain of the route, but Heck always urged her on. Once they were past the aprons of scree, the fell-side steepened to the point where it became impassable, the path meandering sideways, a ledge hanging above a mist-filled abyss. They scrambled along it in single file, all the while thinking how badly exposed they were, how their foe might be scoping the fog with some hi-tech device. Abruptly, they slid to another halt. Hazel, who was at the front, slammed her torch on.

‘Ms Carter, that’s not a good idea!’ Gemma said.

‘I need to,’ Hazel replied. ‘We’ve already passed so many of these, I don’t know where we are anymore.’

The path had branched again, the right-hand route tilting back downhill, the left-hand route ascending sharply.

‘Which way?’ Heck said.

‘I’m thinking …’

‘Which bloody way?’

‘Stop rushing me, Mark … we could have gone wrong half a dozen times already.’

He glanced over his shoulder. The torchlight limned the vapour with a near-phosphorescent glow. Nothing stirred. He strained his ears, but all he initially heard was the wheezing of his own breath, the thunder of blood in his ears.

‘Left,’ Hazel decided.

‘Uphill again?’ Gemma said wearily.

‘We go back down into the corrie, he could be waiting there for us.’

‘Not if he’s chased us up the path.’ Gemma glanced around at Heck. ‘Any sign we’re being followed?’

Heck motioned for quiet. Still they heard nothing, which gave them no clue either way. It might be the madman was down there somewhere, watching, waiting for them to re-descend. On the other hand, he could have prowled up after them, and even now was stealthily encroaching.

‘If we keep going uphill, we make it harder for him,’ Hazel said, snapping off her torch. ‘Besides, you ever tried running down a scree-track in the dark?’

‘No disrespect, Ms Carter,’ Gemma said. ‘But we need a better plan than this. We know he’s been up in these fells before. He may know them like the back of his hand, he may be perfectly kitted out for them. But
we
aren’t.’

Hazel considered this. For several seconds, all Heck could hear was the declining rate of her breath. It was undeniable that plunging endlessly on into this blind, frozen wilderness would gain them no obvious advantage when they had no clue who their pursuer actually was, or even whether he was anywhere near – though that latter issue was resolved half a second later when they heard a scraping of slate on the path behind, and then a casual, tuneful whistling.

As always, it was
Strangers in the Night.

They stood rigid. Thanks to the crazy mountain acoustics, he could still be over a hundred yards away. Alternatively, he might be much closer.

Heck pushed the women forward. ‘Go, go …’

‘Which way?’ Hazel moaned.

‘It doesn’t matter, just go …’

She took the left-hand path, heading to higher ground again. They were no longer concerned about noise. It was impossible to move quietly anyway. Loose slate clattered under their feet as they grunted and groaned their way up a zigzagging path that was so steep it might have been designed for goats. Only after ten minutes did it level out again, though now the ground ramped up both to the left and right of it, forming a gully. They ran on regardless. Soon walls of sheer rock hemmed them in from either side. After a few minutes, Heck, who was at the rear, stopped to listen – perhaps in some vain hope that merely keeping going would have been enough to put their pursuer off. It was amazing how quickly the clamour of Gemma and Hazel running on ahead faded. But it was equally amazing how the sound of someone advancing up the path behind them – heavy breathing and stumping footfalls – grew.

Heck sped on, thirty yards later running into the back of Gemma, who had halted for some reason, bowling her over.

‘What the hell …?’ he stuttered.

‘We’ve got trouble!’ she said, jumping back to her feet.

Hazel snapped her torch on. Its beam played over the rough surface of a plank barricade, which blocked all further progress along the path.

‘Oh God,’ Hazel said weakly. ‘I forgot all about this.’

The barricade had been painted with crude crimson letters:

DANGER! DO NOT USE VIA FERRATA UNSAFE!

‘What does this mean?’ Heck demanded.

‘It’s a Via Ferrata … don’t you know?’ Hazel was ash-pale in the torchlight; her hair hung in sweat-sodden strands. ‘Via Ferrata … it’s Italian, it means “iron road”.’

‘Oh … bloody hell,’ he said.

Gemma still looked perplexed.

‘They have these in mountains everywhere,’ Hazel added. ‘It’s like a fun thing. You know, for climbers and hikers. Plus it helps them get from one ridge to the next.’

‘You’d know it as a cable-walk or monkey run,’ Heck explained.

‘You mean like a rope bridge?’

‘Bit more solid than that.’

‘Except that this one’s closed,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s been closed for about five months. The pins will have rusted or the cables frayed, or something.’

‘So … is that it?’ Gemma asked, incredulous. ‘This is as far as we go?’

Heck turned his torch on and shone it up the canyon walls on either side, but they were sheer, offering no visible escape.

A shot was fired.

It was difficult to say how far back along the passage it was fired from. And thankfully it wasn’t a clear shot, caroming from the left-hand wall and ricocheting from the right, before smashing a hole through the planking on the left of them. Both Gemma and Hazel dropped to crouches, the latter just managing to suppress a scream. Heck spun to face the barricade.

‘Either he can’t see us, or he’s a crap shot, or both!’ he said, tearing with his fingers at the splintery-edged bullet hole, then stepping back and kicking with his right foot. ‘Either way, we’ve no choice now!’

‘You’re going across the bridge?’ Hazel said, eyes bugging.

‘Not just me,’ he responded.

Gemma joined him, ripping and rending, pulling the planks apart until there was space for a body.

‘Go!’ Heck ushered her through, then leaned down and grabbed Hazel by the arm.

‘I’m not going through there,’ she said hoarsely.

‘Hazel … if this guy’s who I think he is, he used to open women up like tins of dog-meat.’

‘But it’s not safe …’

‘We’ve got to try.’ He yanked her to her feet and hauled her through the shattered barricade after him.

On the other side, they crossed an open flat area like a small plateau, before hitting a rusty iron safety-barrier, which was the only thing stopping them pitching over an edge into a terrible gulf.

‘Here!’ Gemma said, emerging from the fog on their left.

They felt their way along the barrier, the plateau narrowing until soon they were on another ledge. This narrowed too until it was replaced by a timber catwalk. The safety-barrier now gave way to a row of upright steel pegs, each about three feet tall, equidistant from each other and connected by chains, though both the pegs and the chains were corroded, and in some cases missing. The footing comprised loose, uneven planking, which creaked and shifted. Just thinking about the bottomless mist underneath it stiffened Heck’s hair. Again, they could only progress in single file and now did so by hugging the left-hand rock-face, which though it sloped as it ascended away from them, was rubbed smooth by the numberless hands and bodies that had sidled along it, offering no purchase if the structure suddenly collapsed – which it threatened to constantly, shaking, shuddering, pins swivelling in their holes.

Some fifty yards later, they reached a chunk of timber decking jutting from the cliff-face. This at least felt secure, though it was small, no more than four feet by four. From here, the only progress possible lay out across the chasm courtesy of the Via Ferrata. In appearance, it was a V-shaped bridge constructed entirely from steel cables so old and rotted they were crabbed with rust. Two cables in particular served as hand-rails, one on either side at roughly waist-height, connected by occasional lengths of wire to the single cable serving as the footway. This was thicker than the other two, but any person walking along it would have to tread with care, each foot planted crosswise as though he were traversing a tightrope. By the foggy light of their torches, the structure protruded no more than ten yards before this too was hidden in fog.

They stood there, paralysed.

‘If this thing’s unsafe,’ Hazel said in an eerie monotone voice, ‘we surely can’t risk it all at the same time. I mean, the combined weight …’

Immediately, the wires and cabling along the ledge behind began to vibrate. Heck stared at Hazel, then at Gemma – even
she
wore an expression glazed by fear. The metallic vibrations resolved themselves into repeated heavy clanking: the sound of footfalls approaching. Still none of them moved.

‘How far to the other side?’ Heck asked dry-mouthed.

Hazel swallowed, as though about to vomit. ‘Two hundred yards … maybe.’

He gazed down into the mist. ‘And how far to the bottom?’

‘Rough guess … a thousand feet.’

‘Mark, you cannot be serious!’ Despite the clattering approach of those heavy feet, Hazel hung back. ‘We haven’t got harnesses or safety-lines.’

‘Hazel, we’ve no choice,’ Heck said. ‘Look, let Gemma go first. I’ll bring up the rear.’ He caught Gemma’s disbelieving eye. ‘Gemma … you know this guy’s going to kill us all. He wanted to do that before – that’s why he lured us up to Fellstead. We’re the protectors of this place, so he needed to eliminate us first. But now he
really
has to do that. Listen to me, he
can’t afford
to let us live!’

Gemma clearly couldn’t believe what he was asking of her. But by the same token, she knew he was right. Abruptly, she took a breath and, turning back to face the bridge, tucked her torch into a side-pocket and zipped it tight, so that it shone ahead. Planting a firm grip on its two hand-rails, she slowly, extremely tentatively, set her first foot on the cable-walk. A second step followed, and a third, and now she was out over the abyss. The bridge shuddered and sang and appeared to sag. There were deep groans from the network of lesser cables connecting it to the cliff-side. But conversely, the approaching footfalls fell silent.

Gemma glanced back. Heck did the same, expecting a gun-toting figure to emerge from the wall of blankness behind them.

It made no sense that one didn’t.

What was the bastard waiting for? Did he want them to try and cross the bridge? That didn’t bode well. Was he thinking he could make this whole thing look like an accident? Either way, they couldn’t hang around.

‘Go, Gemma,’ Heck said.
‘Just go!’

She went, foot over foot, hand over hand, moving further and further from the platform. The flimsy metal structure shuddered and thrummed.

‘Now you, Hazel.’ Heck placed his hand in the small of her back. Hazel was rigid, like a post. She resisted the pressure, so he increased it, pushing her gently but firmly forward. ‘Come on, now … there’s no other way.’

Seeming to get hold of herself, she ventured onto the bridge. As it didn’t immediately fall apart in a welter of lashing, snapping cables, she was able to steel herself further, going forward in pursuit of Gemma, who had now almost vanished into the vapour. They were both of them stiff as pegs, hands clamped around the safety-rails like talons. Swallowing a lump of bile-flavoured saliva, Heck stuck his own torch into his belt, and started after them, trying to ignore the perilous drop beneath his feet, but already fighting to keep his balance. It went against all the rules of logic of course. Every bone in his body told him this was a bad idea.

Danger!
Unsafe!

A wooden barricade had been erected to prevent people doing exactly
this
.

But the alternative could be worse, particularly for the two women.

He glanced back, sweat beading his face. With his torchlight angled upward, the platform behind was already shrouded in darkness. A figure could have appeared there by now, it could be gazing silently after them, and they wouldn’t know. That said, if whoever it was had a thermal imager, he could still pick them off with ease, which thought goaded Heck to greater efforts, sending him blundering on along the slender cable, gloves sopping with sweat as he slid them over rusted, twisted steel. The bridge juddered in response, dipping and bouncing the further over the gulf he proceeded.

A thousand feet down.

Heck did his damnedest not to think about that – and in some ways it was easier than expected, because this was close to the most unreal experience of his life. On all sides, above and below as well, hung only swirling mist – it was like a studio set, partly negating that gnawing sense of vertigo. Ahead, he could no longer see the two women, could merely hear the clunking of metalwork, the vibrations passing backward with a force he felt through the rubber soles of his trainers. He tightened his own grip as he swayed from side to side. A small whimper floated back to him.

‘Stick with it, Hazel!’ he shouted. ‘Couple of minutes and this’ll be over.’

He didn’t know if that was true. What rate of progress were they actually making? Could they really cover two hundred yards in two minutes?

He tried to increase his speed, but a couple of times his feet slipped, shooting downward either left or right, leaving him dangling, lopsided. Though he never let go of the hand-rails, these were moments of the purest terror – yet thanks to the unseen presence behind, he always levered himself to his feet and pushed on with reckless speed.