To get to him he was going to have to follow him.
Suddenly the indoor climbing wall which he was accustomed to running up like a spider diminished in his recollection to little more than a gentle slope liberally scattered with regular hand and footholds.
But where a fucking cripple could go, he could go too!
Not before he had a rest, though, and some refreshment.
He squatted down and pulled a small plastic bag out of an inner pocket. From it he took a pinch of white powder, set it to his right nostril and sniffed. Then he repeated the process with the left.
Now he sat for a couple of minutes till he felt strength and clarity return.
At last he was ready.
He took a deep breath, said a prayer to his birth-saint (who after so many years of neglect probably wrinkled her face and said, Who?) and began to climb.
6
‘Hello, Wolf,’ said Imogen.
Hadda looked up and saw her standing above him. She was in her forties now, but she still had the clear glowing skin and the fresh-faced beauty of a Botticelli angel.
If she wanted, she could drive her boot into his face and send him tumbling five hundred feet, give or take a bounce. End of all her worries. End of his too, and perhaps not the worst way to go, with those calmly lovely features the last thing he saw on earth.
She reached her hand towards him and he thought for a moment that maybe his fantasy was going to come true. Then she grasped his hand and hauled him up towards her.
They stood facing each other.
‘So here we are,’ she said.
‘Again,’ he said.
‘Yes. Again. Only I didn’t need a rope this time.’
‘I don’t think you needed a rope the first time.’
‘But then you were worried about me,’ she said. ‘Funny, isn’t it? All the climbing we did, we never came back here.’
‘There was nothing to come back for. I mean, nothing that could be added to that first time. Not for me, anyway.’
‘Oh, Wolf,’ she said. ‘You made a bad choice.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never made any choice. Choosing didn’t come into it. It was you who made the bad choice.’
She nodded gravely.
‘You’re right. I chose. And it was a selfish choice because I could see you had none.’
He realized he was still holding her hand and let it fall.
He said, ‘Let’s sit down.’
‘Why? Have you brought a picnic?’
He said, ‘No. I was thinking, violence is more difficult from a sitting position.’
‘Ah.’
They moved away from the edge and sank on to a rib of dry rock. He’d unslung his axe and now he laid it between them. Then he reached into the pocket of his cagoule and produced a pewter flask.
‘No picnic,’ he said. ‘But a drop of the Caledonian cream to keep the cold out. You could have frozen to death, waiting up here.’
‘I’m like you, I don’t feel the cold,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t been waiting long. You must still move fast.’
‘For a cripple, you mean.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘For a geriatric.’
That almost made him smile. He unscrewed the flask and passed it over. She took a short drink. He took a slightly longer one.
‘So, Wolf,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk seriously. There’s just me left, now that you’ve pronounced judgment on Johnny, Pippa and Toby.’
‘Have I?’ he said. ‘I thought I’d just been sitting quietly up here in God’s Own Country, minding my business.’
‘That’s what you were doing when you chopped our rowan tree down, was it?’
He said, ‘Woodcutting’s always been my business. But I doubt anyone will be able to link me with whatever’s happened to the Nutbrowns and your husband.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ she said. ‘Just as I’m sure that, if you wanted, you could arrange for me to be dealt with at a distance. But you’re here.’
‘Justice is like sex,’ he said. ‘Less satisfying at a distance. That could be my explanation for being here. What’s yours?’
‘Oh, you know me,’ she said. ‘Just an old-fashioned girl who prefers most things face to face. Especially a trial.’
‘So you’ve come to make your defence?’
‘No. No defence. Guilty as charged. But I would like to exercise my right to make a plea in mitigation.’
He took another drink, offered the flask. She shook her head.
‘Plead away,’ he said.
‘Well, first of all, I have never lied to you.’
‘You’re saying you weren’t screwing Estover before and during our marriage?’
‘No, I’m not saying that. And not just Toby. There were others,’ she said. ‘You did spend a lot of time away from home, Wolf. If I say it meant nothing, I would be lying. But it meant no more or less than eating. Always a necessity, only occasionally a real pleasure. Never like it was when you came home.’
‘So you were just keeping in practice, is that it?’ he said harshly. ‘And you don’t count that as deceiving me?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t deceive you. I said I never lied to you. If you’d ever asked, I would have told you. But you never did. Was that because you trusted me, Wolf? Or because you were frightened to ask?’
‘Forget the psychoanalysis,’ he said. ‘I’m done with that. If I were your brief, I’d advise that your plea in mitigation is getting off on the wrong foot. When are we going to get on to the disturbed childhood, the school bullying, the dysfunctional family stuff?’
‘I had all of those,’ she said evenly. ‘The bullying stopped when those concerned found they suffered far more than I did. As for my family, well, you know my mother.’
‘Ah yes. Kira. All her fault, is it?’
‘To a large extent. Didn’t you wonder why she stopped objecting to our marriage?’
‘I always assumed it was because I got you pregnant and she didn’t care to have a bastard for a grandchild.’
‘The second part of that is certainly true,’ said Imogen.
She spoke so calmly that it took several seconds for the implication to sink into Hadda’s mind.
He scrambled to his feet and took a few steps back from her. His fists were clenched. He had clearly realized, she thought, that sitting down wasn’t such a disincentive to violence as he’d imagined.
He said, ‘Now you’re lying.’
She said, ‘No. I got confirmation I was pregnant about a week after your return. Far too early for it to have been you. But, if it’s any consolation, I didn’t know about it when I said I’d marry you.’
‘And when you did know, you just let me think it was mine?’
‘If you’d asked, I’d have told you the truth,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t. So I didn’t. Wolf, I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry! For what particular lump of all this shit you’ve piled on me, may I ask?’
‘I’m sorry I connived at keeping Ginny away from you after . . . after it happened. I told myself it didn’t matter as she wasn’t really yours. But that was wrong. I see that now. She was as much yours as . . .’
‘As whose? Who was Ginny’s real father? Estover?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said indifferently. ‘Does it matter? You were the only father Ginny ever knew. That was a pain I had no right to inflict on either of you. For both your sakes, I should have let your letters reach her. I shouldn’t have listened to Mother.’
‘Ah, the bitch-queen. I knew she’d be in there somewhere. What did she advise then?’
‘That now was the time to tell Ginny the truth about her parentage. I agreed because I thought it would make her feel better, less connected . . . She was very upset.’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Hadda, his face working with rage. ‘Upset! You mess up her mind and then send her out of the country! No wonder the poor kid never got in touch with me, no wonder she went completely off the rails. Whatever else I blamed you fo
r, I tried not to blame you for her death. But now . . . For Christ’s sake, Imo, forget all this crap about a plea in mitigation for what you’ve done to me. How can you ever forgive yourself for what you did to Ginny?’
She said urgently, ‘Wolf, I can’t, I don’t. Believe me, for a long time now, I’ve been frozen inside. When I melt I’m simply going to wash away. You and I are very much the same. We survive by not asking questions. We create a world we can live in because we have invented our own rules. We climb not because we want to reach the top but because deep down inside, what we really want is to fall. We are the same!’
Her voice had become increasingly agitated till the final words came out in a single breath. Her agitation seemed to calm him and when he replied it was in a low, even tone.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘Don’t try to tar me with your brush, Imo. All I ever wanted was to get into your world so I could have you, but it was a delusion, a madness, and I’m over it now. When I was a boy I always thought you were far beyond my dreams and now I see how right I was. But not beyond. Beneath! I thought I had to climb up to get to your world, now I see that all I did was let go of everything real and fall till I hit rock bottom!’
He had moved steadily forward as he spoke and now he stooped to pick up his axe.
She looked up at him and said softly, ‘Oh, Wolf. It’s not worlds I’m talking about. It’s genes. We’re sides of the same coin, that’s what drew us together. You weren’t the first woodcutter to feel the pull of the magic castle. Did you never wonder why we were so drawn to each other? And when we made love there was a darkness in it that made it all the better, don’t say you never felt that.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he repeated, this time more vehemently. ‘The same coin? Darkness? Come on, woman, speak plain while you’ve still got the chance!’
She regarded him sadly and said, ‘Haven’t you guessed? I thought you might have guessed long ago. We’re brother and sister, Wolf. Fred was my father too.’
7
At Wasdale Head, Alva parked her car alongside Hadda’s Defender. Next to it was a blue Mercedes. No way to identify it positively as Imogen’s, but she recalled a similar car standing outside Ulphingstone Castle when she’d called there in January.
She took her small day-pack out of the boot and checked its contents. Waterproof, spare pullover, mint cake, isotonic orange juice, lightweight binoculars, map, compass, whistle, torch. Everything the wise psychiatrist should carry on the fells. All her Lake District walking had been done on the east side, so she opened her map to check the route to Pillar, but when she heard Sneck’s bark, she realized she needn’t have bothered. The dog was standing on the track that led past the side of the inn, looking back at her impatiently. As she went after him, he turned and ran ahead with a reassuring certainty.
Perhaps Hadda wasn’t as far in front as she’d feared. Perhaps for some reason he’d diverted on his way here.
As she reached the main path running up the right-hand side of Mosedale along the flank of Kirk Fell, she glimpsed a figure far ahead and her heart leapt. But when she paused to focus her glasses, she quickly realized it wasn’t Hadda. Just another walker, and one moving fast. She put the glasses away and settled into the long rangy stride that had been the envy of her college friends when they went hiking together. ‘For God’s sake, Alva, it’s not a bloody race!’ they’d say. But, being a student psychiatrist, she’d known that it usually was.
Sneck knew exactly where he was going and in his eagerness often disappeared from view, but always he returned as if to reassure himself she was keeping up. She thought of urging him to take off by himself in the hope that he’d catch up with his master and let him know that she was following. But what good would that do?
And while the path ahead was perfectly clear at the moment, if ever she reached a point of divergence, she’d need the dog to guide her to the right choice.
As the angle of ascent steepened, the rangy stride became harder to maintain. At the crossing of Gatherstone Beck she paused and rested for a moment, looking up the slope towards the col and seeing the other walker silhouetted momentarily against the skyline. She’d made up ground on him but this was no guarantee she’d made up any on Hadda.
What the hell did she think she was doing here, anyway? Their rendezvous on top of Pillar Rock was probably going to put them out of her reach – she was no mountaineer, and from what she recalled of Wolf’s description of the climb, it posed real problems for a novice.
But she’d come this far and wasn’t about to turn back now.
Carefully she crossed the stream and then began the haul up to the pass.
She knew from the map that to approach the Rock she needed to move off the main track to the summit of the fell, but it was Sneck who showed her where the diversion began. Now she found herself in an airy craggy area that made the track up to the col seem homely by comparison. The river winding along the valley bottom far below seemed little more than a blue ribbon. She felt that surge of exhilaration which is the mountain walker’s true reward for effort, and normally would have paused to savour the experience. But today she was walking not for pleasure but for something that she didn’t quite understand, though she felt that somehow the meaning of her future lay in it.
She increased her speed along the narrow path. Increasingly the way ahead was obscured by mist. At a large cairn with a memorial plate screwed into a rock beneath it, she paused for another sweep ahead with the glasses. As if at a command, the mist cleared and for the first time she saw the Rock. It was an awe-inspiring sight. She couldn’t make out anyone on top of it but when she lowered her sights to the approach path, the figure of the other walker swam into view.
This was good, she told herself. If he too was looking to climb the Rock, then surely the presence of a stranger would inhibit Wolf from offering any violence to his ex-wife?
She was about to lower the binoculars when the man ahead halted. He seemed to be pulling something out of his jacket. Now he was pointing it ahead . . .
Oh Jesus Christ! she thought. It’s a gun!
John Childs’s message erupted into her mind. Tell him Nikitin knows. Tell him the man with the broken jaw is still on the loose.
She couldn’t see what the man was aiming at but assumed it was Hadda. She tried to scream a warning but the wind drove the sound back into her throat. All she could do was wait for the sound of the shot.
It didn’t come. The man slipped the weapon out of sight and a moment later he too had vanished behind a crag.
She hurried on. She was taking risks now to move at speed, but she knew it was in vain. The gunman was too far ahead. If he got Wolf in his sights as he was climbing up the Rock, that would be an end to it. Her only hope was that Wolf would reach the top unharmed and she could somehow get a warning to him. How the hell she would do this, she didn’t know, but as she scrambled up the track to a point where the side path the man had been on branched off, she began to get the glimmer of an idea. This diversion had to lead round the huge crag ahead of her to the foot of the climb. The main track ran up a steep scree slope to the top of the crag and presumably thereafter led all the way to the summit of the fell. From up there it must be possible to look out directly on to the top of the Rock.
She attacked the slope ferociously. After a moment or so she realized that Sneck had opted for the path taken by his master. For the first time she felt truly and frighteningly alone. At the top of the slope the path turned along a more gently inclined rock shelf that on her right side fell steeply into the valley. She fixed her gaze firmly ahead. A mountain rescue stretcher box came into view, more of a dreadful warning than a comfort. Now the track headed up another scree slope. The Rock loomed to her right, but she still wasn’t high enough to view its top.
Soon, she told herself. Soon!
But what was she going to see when she got high enough to look down at it?
She recalled the shining blade o
f the axe that Wolf had carried out of Birkstane with him.
But he wasn’t a killer, she told herself. It had been unnecessary killing that had made him fall out with JC.
Unnecessary.
There was the rub. The death of the innocent had filled him with rage.
But the death of the guilty . . .
She pushed herself still harder.
8
As Lady Kira told her story at the breakfast table, Imogen had noticed with a slight distaste how her voice grew mellow under the power of sensual recollection.
‘It wasn’t long after I came to the castle,’ said her mother. ‘Your father, well, let me put it this way, your father had a very English attitude to making love. He was the perfect gentleman, very concerned in case he hurt me, and anxious to make what he assumed might not be a very pleasing experience for me last as short a time as possible. I tried to let him know that I didn’t care about being hurt as long as I was overwhelmed, but . . . anyway, things weren’t going too well, and after a particularly unsatisfactory night, I wandered out in the morning, across the lawns and into the forest.
‘I heard him before I saw him. The perfectly regular, powerful crash of an axe into the trunk of a tree. A rhythm that seemed to vibrate through my whole body. I walked towards it. Then in the light of the early-morning sun slanting down through the trees, I saw him at the edge of a clearing, tall, fair, naked to the waist, already sweating through his effort though the morning air was still cool.
‘I sat down on an old stump and watched him, delighting in his strength, his vigour, his strong rhythmic movement. He paused to wipe his brow with a large red kerchief. And then, though I made no sound, he became aware of me.
‘He stood and looked at me for a moment, then he came towards me. He was still carrying his axe. I remember the blade seemed huge close to my head and he himself looked like a giant towering over me.
‘He said, “I shouldn’t sit there, my lady. Tree ’ull be coming down shortly.”
‘I didn’t say anything, but just drank in his closeness. His belt buckle was only a foot or so from my face. Almost without thinking, I reached up and began to undo it. For a moment he went tense and I thought he was going to pull back.
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