by Karen Swan
‘Now!’ Bertie snapped.
The room sprang into action, the volunteers shrugging on their waterproof coats and putting on headtorches as they headed for the door like a herd of bison crossing a river.
‘Wait!’ someone cried from the back. ‘What’s this fella’s name? Who are we even shouting for?’
‘Gilmore,’ Bertie said. ‘Ben Gilmore.’
Chapter Twelve
The wind was punishing, pushing them back as they rode headlong into it on the quads. Ottie felt her eyes stream, her heart pounding fast as she tried to keep up. Bertie, driving just ahead, was like a man possessed. No matter that he’d completed the course himself in twenty-six hours, that he hadn’t slept, that his body was wrecked, here he was out in the deathly December temperatures when he should have been recovering himself. But his reputation was on the line. He knew that if this man, Gilmore, was – God help them – dead, that would be the end of Ultra.
And it’d be all her fault, for hadn’t she seen with her own eyes this morning that he wasn’t back? She’d seen it and she’d done nothing about it. She’d opened his empty tent, knowing he’d said he would be back and gone by this morning, but instead of checking he was still competing and that everything was okay, she’d let another twelve hours slip by.
By definition, this was an extreme event. It was supposed to be tough – but not hazardous. It was why there were so many checks and marshals along the route. It was why only people with a proven completion track record of endurance events were allowed to qualify and participate. To have been so cavalier about his continuing absence, to have assumed he had simply lied and overstated his ability, rather than think something had happened . . .
Bertie cut the throttle and jumped off his bike as they reached the Kinaughton Point station. The small blue and white striped waterproof tented canopy with the desk and metal chair inside was still there, the chair collapsed and set on its side, ready to be dismantled and collected tomorrow.
The peloton of marshals following him stopped in line and they all stood together in a huddle, braced against the winds that felt gale-force as they buffeted straight into the cliffs, fresh from a four thousand-mile surf from the American coast.
‘The coastguard’s been notified,’ he shouted, straining to be heard. ‘They’re going to do a sweep of the area below,’ he cried, waving his arms around to indicate the treacherous and rocky cliffs. ‘You are not to attempt to go down there yourselves. I repeat – do not go down onto the cliffs yourselves! I want you to break up into small groups of two or three and concentrate on hundred-yard stretches of the ground immediately around the track. Do not go beyond your own search zone. There’s enough of us here to cover the area quickly if we work thoroughly and methodically.’
A sudden gust of wind rammed at his back, almost sending him sprawling to the ground and he widened his stance, his waterproofs flapping loudly. ‘Use the bikes to travel to your designated search zone. I’ll go up front, Ottie can come with me. She worked the Devil’s Fork station yesterday and knows this stretch better than anyone. The rest of you, get into groups between here and there and let’s get on with it.’
Everyone did as they were told, even her, following meekly after Bertie as he indicated for her to get on the quad bike with him. Without a word, they pulled off again, the small convoy behind them steadily dropping away, two by two, over the eight-mile stretch, until eventually it was just them.
Bertie didn’t speak. His jaw was set to thrust, his whole body primed and tense. Ottie thought he looked like a safari tracker, his eyes darting intently into the dark, his head twitching as his ears strained to pick up any stray sounds over the wind.
‘You go up to your station and work your way back to me. We’ll meet in the middle.’ His voice was hard and emotionless and Ottie nodded, knowing he was only doing the right thing – a man’s life was at stake. Still, she felt that tightness in her chest that she sometimes got when she sensed – feared – she was losing him, that perhaps his interest was waning . . .
She ran in a half-crouch along the stony track, the beam of light from her headtorch bouncing up and down as she desperately scanned the dark for signs of a body. What if they were already too late? It would be on her. Unless he had fallen and been killed outright, death by hypothermia or exposure would be her responsibility.
‘Of course, he’s not dead,’ she told herself as she ran, her breath coming hard, her feet stumbling over the rough ground. But the facts suggested otherwise; people died all the time – her father, so nearly Pip too. Didn’t things come in threes?
The wind howled. A couple of miles inland in the village, protected by the bluffs and the trees, no one would particularly notice the gusts tonight; but out here, exposed on the very edge of the Atlantic, it was merciless and bitter.
Ottie saw the fork on the path and gave a groan of relief as she jogged past. She was within metres now of her station. She could . . .
Wait.
She stopped and looked back. She walked over and shone her beam onto the fork. The lower path couldn’t be called a track as such; it was so narrow, only goats and surer-footed animals would attempt to get down it. Her father had always warned them about it as girls – it led to nowhere, the faint trail segueing into a grass pitch that was too steep and slippery even to stand on. They knew that, the Lornes. This was their land, ordinarily this stretch for private use only, except for this one event in which her father opened up access for his old friend. He never took any money for it but made only a single demand: that this section was properly signposted.
The thought of someone taking the wrong fork – and subsequently suing him – had worried him so much he had made it the condition of his agreement that an arrow needed to be placed here on the course, to be on the safe side.
But there was nothing here now.
‘Gilmore?’
She could hear Bertie hollering into the wind, his voice faint from here but the desperation clear. It was the sort of tone reserved for mothers seeing their child drop a ball on the road, for soldiers running into a barricaded house.
‘Ben!’ she joined in, turning her back to the wind and shouting as powerfully as she could, hoping her voice would carry too. ‘Ben Gilmore!’
She scanned everywhere she could see, looking behind rocks where he might have hidden for shelter – they were all far too small to be effective, but something had to be better than nothing out here, surely. She peered over the sides of the path where the ground fell away sharply, but it was just a dark void. Surely not . . .? Please no.
But there was nowhere else he could be: he was either on this track or in the sea. She felt a hollow whistle through her bones as sheer logic closed down the options. According to the charts, he had been sighted and recorded at Kinaughton Point but had never made it over to her. Here. And she had just driven the eight-mile length of this section with Bertie; thousands of other competitors had followed after him too. Marshals had double-checked it. If he was on the track there, someone would have seen him. Which meant . . .
It meant . . .
Far, far below, she could just hear the heavy rise and fall of the ocean. It sounded immense and almost corporeal, a great mass shifting. If he was down there, they’d never find him tonight. If they waited till morning, he would definitely be a dead man.
‘Gilmore! Ben Gilmore!’ she screamed into the night. Her voice felt as ragged and torn as the rest of her.
Bertie’s shouts intersected with hers; he was close now and drawing nearer quickly. ‘Anything?’ she asked breathlessly as he reached her. It was a pointless question, of course; they’d all know if there was something to know.
He shook his head, looking wretched. This would be the end of his Ultra empire, he knew it. People couldn’t be dying on these events. They were supposed to be about endurance, not survival.
‘Bertie, you don’t think . . .?’ She stared down at the lower track on the fork.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.
He wouldn’t have gone down there. It’s clearly impassable.’
‘. . . But where’s the sign?’
He looked over to where the sign should have been. A strong silence pulsed. ‘Well, obviously it’s been cleared away.’
But her gaze fell to the ground, followed by his. There was no sign of any hole in the ground to indicate a sign had been positioned there recently. And none of the rest of the signs or huts had been cleared yet.
He turned to face her, paler now. ‘Well, you were the steward on duty for this stretch, surely you remember? Did you see the sign here?’
She stared at him, trying to think back. Had she? ‘I . . .’ She squinted against the wind. ‘I can’t remember. I don’t recall noticing it.’
‘But it was your job to notice it, Ottie! That’s why you’re stationed here – for the competitors’ safety.’
His words were brutal but they were right. She felt her breathing come faster, a lump swell in her throat as tears began to press against the backs of her eyes. ‘I don’t think I did see it.’ She had failed in her one duty, knowing better than anyone this spot was hazardous. How could she not have noticed the sign hadn’t been put up?
‘Oh Jesus,’ he suddenly whispered, putting a hand over his mouth as he remembered something. ‘You’re absolutely right. The sign never did go up, I remember now.’
‘Bertie, why not?’ she cried, looking up at him desperately. ‘You know it was Dad’s one demand. The only one.’
‘Yes. But it was because of you, Ottie. The other night – when I came to see you, remember? You’d been texting me all day, saying how bad you were feeling . . . I was supposed to be putting the sign out but I came over to your place instead. I was worried about you.’
Ottie felt her panic gather. Her texts. Her tears. Her anger with Willow. Her father. ‘So then, it’s . . . it’s because of us that he’s . . . down there?’
‘Us. Me. You.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows how the authorities will view it.’ He looked down the fork path again, seeing how it led to nowhere. ‘The priority has to be find—’
Another memory made him startle and Ottie flinched as she watched him, feeling her panic gather again. ‘Christ, there was someone ahead of me along this stretch, I remember it now.’ He scrunched his eyes shut as though that would make the memory brighter. ‘He was a few minutes ahead – sometimes he was in sight and sometimes not.’
‘You think it was Gilmore?’
‘I’ve no idea, he was just a shape from where I was.’ He frowned, looking at her again quizzically. ‘But you must have seen him coming if he was just ahead of me. And he must have seen you too. How could he not have? Your station is on the nose of the bend for that very reason.’
Ottie felt the blood pool at her feet. No, it couldn’t be. That moment, that one minute when she’d deliberately hidden herself from view . . . That was when he’d come along? Spending a penny had cost a life? ‘Oh God, Bertie, it’s all my fault,’ she whispered. ‘I had to pee. I ducked out of sight around the corner. Only for a minute. Not even!’
His eyes widened. ‘Fuck!’
She felt like she was going to faint – shock, horror, panic, exhaustion . . . She swayed, eyes closed, sinking down onto her heels in a controlled swoop and dropping her head in her hands. This couldn’t be happening. She opened her eyes, needing comfort, reassurance, but Bertie had already set off again, shouting orders frantically into his radio and heading down the fork.
‘Bertie, no!’ she screamed, forcing herself after him.
He was already on the lower path, and she angled herself into the lee of the cliff as she followed after, her father’s warnings – ‘Never, ever, go down this path! You will die!’ – reverberating through her head.
She couldn’t see Bertie clearly, only the bouncing beam from his headtorch as he scrambled down on his haunches, his hands behind him to keep his weight back and to counterbalance the forward momentum that wanted to hurl them both from this cliff into the frothing waters below. She had no idea where the trail petered out, when what little grip they had would suddenly stop and the slide would begin . . .
Suddenly, the headbeam stopped bouncing. ‘Gilmore! Ben Gilmore!’ Bertie’s voice was a warrior’s cry, splitting the sky like an arrow. ‘Gilmore! Jesus!’
He turned back, his expression changing in an instant as he saw her twenty metres behind him. ‘Ottie, get back!’ She stopped obediently, sinking onto her bottom and trembling violently. ‘Get back up onto the path. I can see him!’
‘Is he alive?’ she screamed. Oh please, God, let him be alive.
There was a long pause. ‘I don’t know, he’s not moving! I can’t get any closer! Get back onto the fork and call mountain rescue! We’re going to need a stretcher and ropes!’
Pip stared out of the window, biting her nails frustratedly as she watched Willow struggle with the buckets of feed across the yard. She was carrying them all wrong and she’d put far too many oats in the feed.
Willow glanced up, as though sensing her sister’s disapproving stare, and – in the absence of having any free hands – nodded her head by way of reply. Pip nodded back, biting hard on her lip. It was like torture, being forced to watch and not ‘do’.
It was also ridiculous. She was perfectly capable of feeding her own horses. She was fine. She had slept well last night in her old bed at the castle, she’d eaten all the breakfast Mrs Mac could put in front of her; she’d even put on a vest to ‘keep her core warm’. But a deal was a deal. Her mother had only allowed her back here – ‘out of sight’ – if she agreed to rest and let Willow muck out and feed the horses for the rest of the week. What choice had she had? It wasn’t like Willow had looked thrilled by the prospect either. The sooner they could all get back to normal, the better.
She moved away from the window. It was better all round just not to look; she’d never been a good delegator. The television was on – some property show she remembered from a sick day back when she’d been a student – but she couldn’t bring herself to watch it. She wasn’t sick, just stupid. And selfish.
She put the kettle on again – the third time since getting back twenty minutes ago but she kept forgetting to pour the tea. She was so used to always being on the go, she didn’t usually step indoors between the hours of seven and seven. What was she going to do all day?
The dishes on the draining board stared back at her as if in reply. She supposed she could make a start by putting them away . . .
‘I timed it well, I see.’
The sudden male voice in the room made her scream in fright and she spun round, an omelette pan outstretched threateningly in her hand.
Taigh put his hands up in a sign of surrender, a small smile playing on his lips at the sight of her weapon. ‘I’m definitely not taking you on with that thing in yer hand. You’d beat me to a pulp.’
‘I’d beat you in an arm wrestle,’ Pip muttered, knowing it was blatantly untrue but trying to cover the fact that she’d just screamed like a little girl. ‘What the hell are you doing here, anyway?’
Confusingly, he was wearing his postal kit but was holding his paramedic’s bag. ‘I saw Willow downstairs. She told me to come straight up.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘No, I mean, what are you doing here?’
‘Didn’t they tell you?’ he frowned. ‘I’m here to check up on you.’
‘What? I don’t need any checking up on!’ she protested vociferously. ‘The doctors discharged me. I am absolutely fine.’
‘You’re fine enough for someone who almost accidentally killed themselves two days ago, but there’s still checks need to be done. I know they’d have mentioned there’s a bit a shadow on your chest that they’re wanting to keep an eye on. Last thing you need is pneumonia. That really would stuff up your Christmas plans.’
Pip glared at him. The doctor had indeed said exactly that, but she’d expected a community nurse or her GP at least. Wasn’t it bad enough to have been saved by him? Now he had to carry on l
ooking after her too? ‘Surely there’s someone else who could do it.’
‘Thanks!’ he replied with a sarcastic smile, before crouching down and opening the bag, slinging a stethoscope around his neck and rummaging for something else too. ‘But I was passing on the newspaper round anyway and I’m sure you’re aware resources are tight enough, without people having to make duplicate visits.’ The kettle boiled, switching off with a distinct click. ‘Ah, just the milk and two for me, thanks for asking.’
With a groan, Pip turned away and reached for the cups. The nerve of the guy.
‘So I like what you’ve done with the place,’ he said to her back.
She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Very funny,’ she snapped, but as he chuckled to himself, she sneaked a surreptitious fresh look at her little flat. It was true she had never touched it; the walls had been left with the original rough lime plaster, and the only things on them were flyers for hunt meets, yard sales, horses for sale. A newspaper cut-out of Midnight Feast winning the Grand National had been sellotaped, in lieu of something more formal or framed, above the brown cord sofa that sagged in the middle. Much like at the castle, the floor was covered with dozens of small overlapping threadbare rugs she had found rolled up in the attic there, and she’d come away with several blue and white lamps too – not because she liked or prized them, but because she desperately needed the light. Her flat was in the eaves above one of the stable blocks and aside from rudimentary electrics, any heating she had came from the coal-burning stove set in the middle of the wall (which also provided her hot water); her bed was set behind a slightly moth-nibbled silk screen, also taken from the castle attic, and her clothes (what few of them she had) hung from a washing line tied up between hooks on the walls. ‘It serves a purpose,’ she said defensively.