Murder on the Edge (10 page)

Skelgill
sits forward again and with a flourish of his pen casually scrawls four rough
circles on his desk pad.

‘What
worries me, Jones, is that the killings are random.’  He marks a cross
between the circles.  ‘If they are, even their unabridged autobiographies
won’t help us.’

Again
a silence pervades the office.  Skelgill has the window ajar, and the song
of a blackbird quite close at hand fills the temporary void with its melodic
mourning lilt.  All three detectives appreciate only too well the spectre
Skelgill has raised: there is a certain type of serial killer for whom only one
thing makes them stop – and that is getting caught.

DS
Jones clears her throat and her colleagues glance her way.

‘What
do you think about there being an accomplice, Guv?’

‘Quite
possible.’

Skelgill’s
instantaneous reply catches DS Leyton by surprise.

‘Really,
Guv?’

Plainly
it is news to him that his boss is thinking along these lines – when Skelgill
has thus far been determined that a single person could transport the bodies. 
DS Leyton remains wide-eyed but he does not protest further – the idea of
one person hauling the dead weight of a grown man has clearly been at odds with
his estimation.

‘Stands
to reason, Leyton.’  Skelgill springs to his feet and snatches up the car
keys that rest on top of his towering in-tray.  He strides out of the door
with a parting shot.  ‘Takes four fit blokes to stretcher a casualty off
the fells – and that’s downhill.  You’d want certifying to take the
weight the other way.’

At the
parking place along the ‘tiny back road to nowhere’ (as DS Leyton put it),
Skelgill, who has changed into outdoor gear, is methodically loading stones
from a collapsed wall into a large army surplus backpack.  He has lined
this with a sturdy woven rubble-sack, and chooses with care, weighing each
boulder in turn, rejecting some as either too light or too heavy (or perhaps
too angular), before lowering them into position.  The rucksack stands
upright on the flatbed of his estate car, about a foot from the rear sill. 
The car’s suspension creaks a protest with each new addition.  On the face
of it, he might be making a collection for some gardening project – a
rockery, perhaps.

But,
no.  When the bag is almost full, he tightens the drawstring, buckles down
the hood, and turns to sit with his back against it.  He shrugs his
shoulders into the straps and adjusts them to fit.  Without further ado
– other than taking a deep breath and bearing his teeth in a fearsome
grimace – he pitches forward, pivoting at the hips and levering the
burden from the car.  As he intimated to DS Leyton, it is a method he has
marvelled at when employed by diminutive
Tamang
porters – lifting
huge composite bundles of trekkers’ rucksacks held only by a head-strap or
naamlo
. 
On occasion it takes a giggling gaggle of kinsmen to raise one man to his feet
and set him in motion.

Without
such assistance Skelgill staggers drunkenly, alarmingly in fact, and only the
close proximity of a wooden farm gate prevents him from toppling over and
ending up on his back, kicking like a stranded beetle.  Swearing colourfully,
beads of perspiration breaking out upon his brow, he clings on to the uppermost
bar of the gate until he steadies himself.  But this is no time to
dwell.  He wrenches up the bandana that he wears around his neck to form a
sweatband, and, bent over like the crooked man of the nursery rhyme, unsteadily
retraces his steps to his car.  He drags his walking poles clattering from
amongst the untidy debris of assorted tackle.  Using one of the poles he
tries to snag the hank of baler twine – Cleopatra’s makeshift leash
– that hangs from one of the rear coat-pegs.  This proves tricky and
he is almost defeated, but at what might be the final attempt he manages to hook
it and transfer it to his back pocket.  Finally, reaching up blind, with
outstretched fingertips he just obtains sufficient purchase to wrench down the
tailgate.  Then he produces a short piercing whistle.

‘Come
on, lass.’

Belying
her age – which is currently uncertain, though undoubtedly well into
maturity in doggy years – Cleopatra springs through the gap in the wall
from the pasture she has been exploring.  A matted wad of blackish silage
dangles from one side of her muzzle rather like a half-smoked cigar, complementing
her Churchillian demeanour.  However, the similarity ends here, for the
great wartime leader was not known to eat his Cuban coronas.  She circles
Skelgill, probably rather too closely for comfort, and gets a poke in her
sturdy rear from one of his poles.  He can’t now bend to tie her onto the
twine, but she seems to know his mind as, obediently, she trots ahead, leading
the way across the lane to pick up the worn path that is their route to Scales
Tarn.

From
here the ascent, relatively short in terms of distance, breaks into three
distinct stages.  First, there is the climb up through Mousthwaite Comb,
an increasingly steep valley that accounts for roughly half of the required height
gain.  Second, there is the respite of a traverse across the north-eastern
flank of Scales Fell, where the gradient rises imperceptibly.  And third
is the sting in the tail, a short, sharp five-hundred-foot haul up beside
Scales Beck to its source at the eponymous tarn.

Ordinarily,
Skelgill would deal with this degree of difficulty without breaking sweat or straining
his capacious fell-runner’s lungs.  Even carrying a regulation fifty-pound
backpack, sufficient to sustain him for a week in the hills, tent, food and
all, he would set a brisk pace and spend his time admiring the scenery. 
No so today.  Walking flat-footed and bent almost double beneath the
extraordinary (and yet only human) weight, and despite the mountainous
incentive to get the crazy masochistic experiment over and done with, Skelgill
does rather exude the appearance of one on his last legs.  He is not
assisted by the warm, muggy conditions and the fact that the entire route is in
the lee of the hill to his left, sheltered from the day’s light westerly
breeze.

Nonetheless,
there is a limit to how slowly a person can actually walk and, inch by inch,
step by step, he makes steady if unspectacular progress.  At one point he
is overtaken by a group of hurrying hikers, four well-equipped and lively
sounding young guys who look like they know what they are doing.  Their
conversation wanes as they pass him, perhaps recognising something of his
ordeal, and – when their chatter resumes a few moments later – they
can be heard speculating in awed tones whether he might be an SAS trooper in
training.  Perhaps hearing this spurs a flagging Skelgill on and, one
hundred minutes after setting out, several litres of body fluid the lighter, he
sheds the rucksack and throws himself full length and fully clothed into the
cold, clear waters of Scales Tarn.  As he submerges his burning muscles, his
already lofty estimation of Nepalese porters has surely soared to Himalayan heights.

He
surfaces to find himself face to face with a rather bemused-looking Bullboxer. 
Cleopatra has waded out to join him, and now seems dismayed that he has failed
to produce whatever prey item it was that he dived for so eagerly. 
Skelgill blows a spout of water out over the dog; amusingly she makes a leap
for this, and as he follows her trajectory a splash of pink up on the fell
catches his eye.

Then
he hears the faint cry for help.

Struggling
to his feet he extends a downturned palm to the dog.  She seems to
understand this command and immediately stiffens, watching him avidly. 
Skelgill pulls off his bandana, for it is causing water to trickle down his
brow.  He stares hard, shielding his eyes with his left hand from the
brightness of the sky above the dark line of the ridge.  The plaintive exhortation
comes again.  Someone is in trouble on Sharp Edge.

Without
further hesitation he wades to the shore and jogs past his abandoned rucksack
and poles.  He could loop around and pick his way along the arête, but
instead he opts for the direct route, three hundred feet up the steep southern flank,
over loose soil and scree and smooth slabs that slope at a dizzying sixty
degrees.  But Skelgill, his wet clothes sticking to his body, swarms up
like a bedraggled
Spider-Man
refusing to be vanquished.  Perhaps an
equally remarkable sight, though, is the faithful hound at his heels –
what the sturdy creature lacks in finesse she more than makes up for in dogged
determination.  Skelgill might reflect that four feet and sixteen claws
have their uses where gravity is concerned.

The cries
– they are of a woman – are becoming increasingly desperate, and
Skelgill pauses to bellow that help is at hand and the stranded person should
hold on for another minute.  But when he gets within about thirty feet he
sees that she is in fact a small girl – perhaps aged seven or eight. 
The explanation for the vocal mismatch becomes clear when he pulls himself up
beside her – he realises there is another female beyond and below, a
youngish woman who clings to the upslope halfway between them and the walker’s
path that shadows the scrambler’s route.

The
girl is ashen faced and perched astride the very crest of the arête, frozen
with fear and rightly so, for the drop to Scales Tarn is not easily survivable;
recorded deaths on Sharp Edge number in double figures.  In mountain
rescue parlance, she is
cragfast
.  Skelgill wedges himself into a
crevice so he can’t go anywhere, and reaches out and takes a grip on one strap
of the denim dungarees she wears.

‘It’s
alright, lass – you’re safe now.  What’s your name?’

The
girl’s lower lip turns out, and tears begin to stream down her cheeks –
but no words are forthcoming.

‘She’s
called
Rhian
– her name’s
Rhian
!’

Skelgill
glances down at the mother – or aunt or cousin or whatever relation or
otherwise the woman might be.

‘Get
yourself back down to the path and stay there!’

Skelgill’s
bark is fierce, but he knows Sharp Edge’s marginally less formidable northern
flank has taken its share of casualties down the years.  The woman holds
out her hands despairingly.  There is fear in her dark eyes but she begins
to comply with his order.  He watches with concern.

‘Take it
steady – keep a firm grip with both hands each time you move a foot.’

As all
mountaineers know, twice as many accidents happen on the descent, when momentum,
restricted vision and fatigue unite to summon ill fortune.  But the woman
is at least athletic in her movements, and with the prescribed care she makes
it back to the narrow mudstone shingle ledge that is the path.  Now
Skelgill turns his attention to the girl.

‘Right,
little lady – think you can climb down with me?’

The
girl shakes her head.

‘Rhian
– is that your Mum?’

She
nods once.

‘You’re
a better climber than her, aren’t you?’

Another
nod.

‘So
you can do better than she just did.’

A
blank stare.

‘Look –
I’ll go first, just ahead of you.  If you slip – I’ll catch you.’

As
soon as he has uttered the word
slip
Skelgill must inwardly curse his
own slip of the tongue – she shrinks away from him and clutches more
desperately at the rock in front of her.  In the explosive wake of this embedded
command her confidence plummets away like a landslide.  Only once has he
experienced vertigo brought on by fear of falling – but he knows that if
the girl is similarly struck then all her instincts will be screaming at her to
cling on for dear life.

For a
moment he looks at her as if he’s sizing up the possibility of making a grab
and taking her down over his shoulder.  But in their exposed position
there is a risk that the girl will panic and kick herself free.  Then an
idea must come.  Still holding her in his firm grip, he casts about for
sight of the dog – but in the interim the inquisitive Cleopatra has descended
to investigate the other stranger, and is providing moral support of a fashion
as mum, on bended knee, anxiously watches proceedings above.

‘Do
you have a dog, Rhian?’

A
slight but perceptible shake of the head.

‘When
we get down in a minute, I’m going to have to put my dog on a lead. 
That’s because if she chases sheep, a farmer could shoot her.  We wouldn’t
want that, would we?’

Now a
more discernable shake.

‘Do
you think you could hold the dog’s lead for me?’

A
slight nod.

‘She’d
like that.  Her name’s Cleopatra.’

‘We’ve
done Cleopatra at school.’

Bingo. 
Or so must Skelgill be saying to himself.

‘Well,
my
Cleopatra – just like the Egyptian queen – can be a bit
naughty.  But I reckon you can manage her, eh?’

‘Aha.’

‘Okay
then, here’s what we’ll do.’

With
his free hand Skelgill reaches into the damp recess of his back pocket. 
Slowly he draws out the hank of baler twine.

‘Cleopatra’s
a Bullboxer – that means she’s very strong.  So I have this special
unbreakable string – that’s what I use for her lead.  It’ll keep her
safe.’

The
girl stares curiously at the bright blue twine.

One-handed,
Skelgill shakes out the twine and presents a tied end.  A little pink hand
tentatively reaches forward and small fingers close around the loop.  He
lifts up the other end, which also has a knotted loop.  He clenches his
fist around it with a gesture of import.

‘In
one minute, this will be Cleopatra.’

He
winks, and the girl winks back.

Together,
jerkily, painstakingly at first, and then more easily, with Skelgill a yard
below and the magic baler twine dangling loosely between them, they begin to
scramble down.  In the dry conditions it is not so difficult; the girl has
her mother’s innate agility, and it really does just take a minute to cover the
thirty feet or so in order to gain the protection of the path.

As
might be anticipated, mum envelops daughter in a great hug, the former’s eyes
brimming with tears of relief and thanks as she gazes at Skelgill standing
close behind.  He reaches out to place a palm on the little one’s head,
but the woman intercepts and gives his fingers a long hard squeeze.  He looks
somewhat sheepish held in this pose.  But quickly he turns to practical
matters.  With the thumb of his free hand he indicates the dangers of the
steep downslope.

‘Let’s
get off here – we’ll stop beside the tarn.’

Mother
nods and detaches herself from her daughter.  At this point Skelgill
skilfully renegotiates the plan, suggesting that they allow Cleopatra free to
lead them to the water, where the girl can take her for a drink, and after that
hold her on the leash.  This finds agreement, and in Indian file they cautiously
retrace the steps the small family party made before going astray.