Trick of the Dark

by Val McDermid

  When we first caught sight of the In Pinn it was a bit of a let-down. From that distance, it looks insignificant, a canine tooth a bit longer than the incisors and premolars around it. But as we scrambled and traversed, crossing bealachs - the Gaelic word for mountain pass - and scree slopes, the scale of what we were going to attempt gradually dawned on us. And it was daunting.

  The pinnacle itself is an obelisk of gabbro, an imposing fin of rock that stretches 50 metres upwards from a small plateau just below the main summit of Sgurr Dearg. It doesn't sound much, but once you start the climb, there's a 1000-metre plummet to the valley floor on one side. If you can look at that without feeling vertigo, you've got a stronger stomach than most climbers.

  Before we climbed, we ate a bar of chocolate and took long drinks from our water bottles. There's no water once you get up on to the Cuillin Ridge so you have to carry what you need with you. Taking a big drink before you start means you've got less weight to carry on your back. Kathy's face was alight with anticipation and excitement. I imagine I would have looked much the same.

  I don't know how to explain the exhilaration of climbing to someone who has never done it. Nothing else in my life has ever felt quite the same. I was once in an Alpine climbing hut with a Scottish poet who said he thought it was similar to the excitement you feel when you've clicked with somebody you know is special and you realise tonight's the night you're going to sleep together for the first time. I didn't agree then and I don't agree now. Here's the difference. You don't enter into a partnership with a mountain. A climb is a challenge and it's about victory. I don't feel like that about love, or even sex.

  Jay smiled to herself. Another little white lie to keep Magda happy. Of course love was a challenge. The moment she'd seen Magda as a woman rather than a child, she'd been determined to find a way to have her. So yes, it was like a climb. You assessed the obstacles, you figured out how to surmount or go round them, you planned your route and then you got on with it.

  But the feeling of facing a climb - that was different from waging a campaign of conquest against a woman. Maybe it was something to do with the absolute focus that climbing required. The blend of mind and body, both operating at their limits to make sure you ended up where you wanted to be. Maybe it was also something to do with the danger. Love had its dangers, but they were seldom fatal. Whereas a climb always contained the seeds of disaster. Jay remembered the words of the legendary Joe Simpson, the man who had crawled down a South American mountain with a broken leg and frostbite after being left for dead at the bottom of a crevasse: 'Everything is safe until it goes wrong.'

  8

  Walking back to her parents' house, Magda felt slightly bemused. She wasn't in the habit of opening up to virtual strangers. But there was something about Charlie Flint that invited confidences. Maybe that was why she was so good at her job. Or maybe it was a skill she had acquired because of her job. Chicken, or egg? Then it dawned slowly on Magda that since she'd fallen in love with Jay, Charlie was the first lesbian she'd spent any time with who wasn't already a friend of her lover's. And she'd seized that chance to talk about what was real, not the confection she'd created for public consumption. Although she didn't recognise it at that moment, Magda had just passed the milestone that marked the end of the first phase of being in love - the unfolding of the need for confidantes other than her lover.

  As she approached the house, her spirits sank. Her father's bike had joined the others chained up in the lean-to by the back door. Henry was home. However awkward things had been with her mother, they were about to get a whole lot worse.

  When Magda walked into the kitchen, Henry looked up from the plate of food he was eating and smiled. 'I wondered where you'd got to. Your mother said you'd gone for a walk, which seemed . . .' He searched for the word. Magda had heard the faint slur in his voice and knew he'd already had a couple of gins. 'Unlike you,' he said.

  Both Corinna and Catherine looked wary. Magda crossed to her father and kissed his bald patch. 'I've been stuck in stuffy courtrooms all week,' she said. 'I just needed some fresh air.' She shrugged off her coat and sat down opposite him. Henry drained the glass of red wine in front of him and waved the empty glass at his wife. She pushed the bottle towards him and he helped himself to a brimming refill. As if she was seeing him for the first time after a long absence, Magda noticed with a shock how much he had aged. Her mother seemed timeless, but the years were trampling all over Henry. His lank gingery hair had greyed to the colour of scuffed ashes in an early-morning fireplace. The flesh of his face seemed to have melted away, leaving his cheeks hollow and his watery blue eyes more prominent. He'd always looked pink and scrubbed like one of the schoolboys he taught, but lately his cheeks had grown purplish red. He was only fifty-eight, but he looked like a wrecked old man. She didn't need medical training to know this was what drink had done to him. Once she had despised him for his lack of self-control; now she pitied him.

  'At least the jury came up with the right verdict,' Henry said. 'Mind you, I suppose they'll be out on the streets again in no time. Bloody murderers, half of them get shorter sentences than bank robbers. The punishment should fit the crime.' Another swig of wine, a couple of mouthfuls of food, then he pushed his half-full plate away from him. 'You always give me too much.' Corinna said nothing, merely taking his plate and noisily scraping the remains into the bin.

  'How was your Open Day?' Magda said, expecting a series of complaints.

  She wasn't disappointed. Standards, apparently, were dropping like a stone. The quality of prospective pupils, the social class of prospective parents and the laziness of his colleagues all came under fire. 'Thank heavens I'll be retiring in a few years,' Henry concluded. He'd been counting the years to his retirement for as long as Magda could remember. Once, in her teens, she'd asked him why he stayed if he hated it so much. He'd looked at her, bleary with drink, and said, 'The pension, you stupid girl. The pension.' She'd understood enough to realise it was one of the most depressing things she'd ever heard.

  'Will you retire at the same time as Dad?' Catherine asked Corinna. 'I bet you're making plans already.'

  Corinna looked startled. 'I've a few years yet, Wheelie. I can't say I'd given it any thought. Of course, I can stay on past minimum retirement if I want. And unlike your father I still love the teaching. So I don't know.'

  'Bloody college. It's always been more important than your family,' Henry muttered.

  Well done, Wheelie. The last thing Magda wanted right now was a retread of the familiar parental row that had echoed through her life. 'Dad,' she said quickly, 'I've got something to tell you. I wanted to wait till after the trial. Time for a fresh start, you know?'

  Henry leaned back in his chair and beamed at her, his irritation with Corinna vanquished by the prospect of good news from his favourite child. 'That sounds promising. Fresh start. So, what is it? You've met someone? Some chap taken your mind off all the sadness? About time, my girl, You can't mourn for ever.'

  Magda closed her eyes momentarily and prayed for courage. Catherine reached out under the table and patted her thigh. 'I have met someone, yes. But it's not a man.'

  Henry squinted at her, as if he couldn't quite make sense of what she was saying. 'I don't understand. Not a man? What? Someone's offered you a job or something?'

  'No, Dad. Not a job. I'm in love with someone. But it's not a man, it's a woman. I'm having a relationship with a woman.'

  Henry looked confused, then appalled. 'You're a lesbian?' It was hard to imagine how he could have packed more disgust into three words.

  'Yes,' Magda said.

  He pushed his chair back and stood up, reeling away from the table, his head in his hands. 'How can that be? You were married to Philip. You've always had boyfriends. This is madness. ' He whirled round and glowered at the three women. 'Someone has corrupted you. Taken advantage of your grief. Weaselled their way in when you were down.' His voice dropped, dark with anger. 'Who has done this to you? Who's seduce
d my daughter? Tell me, Magda.'

  Magda jumped up, determined not to be faced down. 'I'm a grown woman, Dad. I'm not a child who can be sweet-talked into something she doesn't want to do. I'm in love and I'm not ashamed of it. And if you're interested in who my lover is, I'll tell you. It's Jay Macallan Stewart. You probably remember her as plain Jay Stewart.'

  Henry stopped in his tracks, mouthing the name without any sound coming out. Then he turned to Corinna. 'Jay Stewart. Isn't that . . . didn't she . . . wasn't she one of your retinue? The silly hero-worshippers you lined up to babysit the kids?'

  Corinna sighed. 'Jay was one of my students, yes. And yes, she did babysit the kids.'

  Henry clutched at the lower half of his face. 'You left my children with a pervert.' Now his hands were like claws, waving in front of him as if he was looking for a target to rip apart. 'Now look what's happened.' He pointed at Corinna. 'This is all your fault.' Henry enunciated each word carefully and softly, his disdain obvious.

  'Dad, calm down.' Catherine walked up to her father and put a calming hand on his shoulder. 'Jay's not a pervert, not like you make it sound. She was great with us when we were kids. She never did or even said anything remotely inappropriate. ' Henry shrugged off her hand and stepped forward, pushing her aside. He was only feet away from Corinna, his hands balling into fists. Corinna stood her ground, and Magda understood that her mother was safe from physical attack. Henry was too much of a coward to risk hitting a woman as tough as his wife.

  'Jay's a lesbian, not a paedophile,' Magda said, her jaw tight with anger. 'Just like me, actually. Get it straight, Dad. She's not a Catholic priest, she doesn't prey on children. And even if this was about blame, which it isn't, it wouldn't be Mum's fault.'

  'This is disgusting,' Henry said, his voice cracking. 'You disgust me. We brought you up with standards, with beliefs. And now this . . . this vile, vile thing.'

  Catherine tried again to inject some calm into the moment. 'Dad, you're getting this all wrong. How can two people loving each other be vile?'

  This time, Henry turned on her. 'How can you be so naive, you stupid girl? If love was enough, then incest or paedophilia would be acceptable in the eyes of the world, and the church. Some things are just wrong. They're sins. They go against nature.' He spun back round and glared at Magda. 'That your sister can even ask that question . . . you've corrupted her as well.' He shrugged off Catherine's hand and slumped back in his chair, head in hands. 'I can't bear this.' He looked up at her blearily, his eyes bloodshot and damp. 'My beautiful girl. Tainted now.'

  'Can we all stop being so melodramatic?' Catherine said plaintively. 'Let's just sit down and talk about this like adults.'

  'Be quiet, Catherine,' Henry said savagely, his voice low and hard. 'Magda, I can't bear to look at you. I want you out of this house, now. And don't even think about coming back till you've repented of your evil. Get out, Magda.'

  'This is wrong, Dad,' Catherine said. 'This is so wrong. We're family. You can't treat Magda like this.'

  'I can and I will, because right is on my side,' Henry said, his face tight and mean with conviction.

  'You make me sick, Henry,' Corinna said.

  'You brought the sickness in,' he replied. 'Believe me, I know who to blame for this. Think yourself lucky I'm not throwing you out along with your sick daughter.'

  'I've heard enough of this,' Magda said. 'If there's anybody sick in here, it's you. You're a drunk and a bigot and you'd love to be a bully if you only had the guts. Well, you won't bully me out of happiness.' She grabbed her coat and ran for the stairs.

  Catherine moved to face her father. 'And I'm saying goodbye too. What Magda's doing, it's life-affirming. It's about love. I don't think you know what that means any more. You need help, Dad.' Without waiting for the abuse she knew would come, she followed her sister.

  She caught up with Magda as she reached the car. She flung her arms round her sister and held her tight. Magda gave a shaky laugh, tears in her eyes. 'So how do you think it went, Wheelie?'

  Catherine rubbed her back. 'Could have been worse, Maggot. Hard to see how, but I'm sure it could have been worse.'

  9

  It was amazing how vivid her memories were of that morning on Sgurr Dearg. Jay didn't even have to close her eyes to see the monochrome landscape of cloud and rock and snow and ice. Kathy's red jacket and fleece hat were a splash of outrageous colour in the landscape. What should have been a breathtaking panorama over peaks to the sea lochs to east and west was pared to the bone by the low cloud and the scattered bouts of sleety rain. But the view had never been the point of the trip.

  We were quiet as we put on our harnesses and roped up in preparation for the climb. The rope is the symbol of the bond between climbing partners. Its practical purpose is to minimise the risk from dangers that the individual climber would struggle to handle alone. No matter how high your levels of skill, experience and physical ability, it's always psychologically easier to be attached to somebody else when you're struggling for the next handhold on a sheer slippery slab of rock.

  The east route up the In Pinn was described by the Victorian climbers who first conquered it as a ridge less than a foot wide, 'with an overhanging and infinite drop on one side, and steeper and further on the other'.They weren't exaggerating. Technically, it's only a 'Moderate' climb in terms of the skills you need to be able to accomplish the ascent. But a glance to either side at any time during the ascent can make your bowels turn to water and your stomach flip. And in terms of the consequences if you get it wrong, it's totally unforgiving. Nobody knows that better than me.

  When we set off, the clouds were heavy and the air was freezing, but the sleet had stopped and we felt confident we could manage the climb. And to begin with, that's exactly what we did. We set off up a short, steep but easy pitch, the perfect confidence builder for what was to come. And so we began the next pitch, a section of rock that rewarded slow and steady progress. We'd built up a rhythm with hands and feet, moving with confidence, trusting the rock and trusting each other. At the halfway point, we stopped briefly on a ledge. But there was no shelter from the biting wind so we set off again almost immediately. The first few moves were tricky and I had to get my ice axes out, but then the route appeared as obvious as a flight of stairs.

  But what a flight of stairs! Imagine crawling up a fifty-foot set of uneven steps with a sheer drop on either side. Now think about doing it on ice. Now think about doing it on ice with someone throwing handfuls of stinging snow in your face. For by now, our worst fear had come to pass. It was snowing. Not just the odd flake, but a full-on fall. Great flakes that covered my eyes and filled my mouth and nose, hurled at me by the harsh wind. Kathy had taken over the lead at the midway point, and the snow that had come out of nowhere was like a curtain between us. She was only a few feet ahead of me yet I could barely see her.

  At moments like this, there's not a climber in the world who doesn't know the fear. You try to force it from the front of your mind by concentrating on every move, making sure your hold is solid before you trust your weight to it. But the fear can't be denied. It hums through your veins alongside the adrenaline that keeps you going. That day, as I carried on towards the summit, all I could think was that I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, and as the wet and cold ate into me I was gradually becoming less capable of feeling my hands and feet. In no time at all, I felt like an automaton struggling to keep with the programme.

  When the change came, it came without warning. The rope jerked so suddenly and so hard it nearly pulled me straight off the mountain. If I hadn't been wearing spiked crampons on my boots, I'd have been ripped straight off the icy surface to the valley below. As it was, I was yanked sideways so that the top half of my body was twisted across the ridge. The pain was instant and excruciating. My instinct was to grab the rope, to try to shift some of the weight that was pulling me on to the edge of the ridge so hard I could scarcely breathe. It took an agonisingly long time, but at last I managed to str
aighten myself enough to be able to catch my breath and try to work out what had happened.

  The one thing that was clear as soon as I started thinking rather than reacting was that Kathy had come off the mountain. What I desperately needed to find out was what kind of state she was in. If she was conscious and relatively unhurt, it shouldn't be a problem. We both carried the equipment to make what's called a Prusik loop which can be used to help a climber get back up a rope. If I could hold on, she could get back up little by little.

  If she wasn't able to climb, things would get more difficult. Using the same piece of equipment, the Prusik loop, the climber who's left on the mountain can attach the rope to a solid piece of rock and let that take the strain. If I could get out of the rope like that, I could try to hoist Kathy back on to the ridge. Or in the worst case, I could secure the rope and go for help.

  I prayed the vertigo wouldn't get me and moved my head so I could look down the side of the In Pinn ridge. I needn't have worried.The snow was so thick by then that I could barely see the scarlet of Kathy's jacket. As far as I could make out, she was swinging in the wind, arms and legs dangling. 'Kathy!' I yelled at the top of my voice. 'Kathy!'