Madeleine's War (8 page)

I had my first Scotch of the evening in my hand as I approached them. It was about twenty minutes before dinner.

“You're back!” I said softly. “And both in one piece. I take it the experiment in living off the land didn't kill you?”

“It would take more than a few cold nights to do that,” growled Madeleine.

“The men aren't back yet,” said Katrine. “Maybe they had more of a problem than we did. Men are so hopeless at fending for themselves.” She smiled sarcastically.

I looked about me. No, neither Erich nor Ivan was in the room.

“The exercise wasn't meant to kill you, just to—”

“Yes, what exactly
was
it meant to do?” said Madeleine. The loam had left her voice; her tone hinted that she was spoiling for a fight.

“Can you just step apart, slightly, please? So someone else can feel the fire.”

Neither of them moved.

“I see. What went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong. I dined on fried fish both nights,” said Madeleine. “And Katrine here was just telling me she had rabbit both nights too.”

“Delicious,” said Katrine.

“Good,” I said. “And how did you manage that?”

“I dammed a stream,” said Madeleine. “At this time of year salmon smolt are leaving their spawning ground for the ocean. They congregated at the dam. I broke off a branch, to use as a fishing rod, and I used my hat, fixed to the branch by holes, as a net. I caught several smolt. Then I roasted them. Im-pecc-able.”

“Enterprising,” I said. “How did you start a fire?”

Madeleine eyed me. “When I went back for my coat and hat, I took some cigarettes and matches—”

“So you cheated!”

“I did not!”

“I said, Take nothing else, other than your hat and coat.”

“And who are you to lay down the law? In the field, if we ever get there, we all know that lighting a fire is the most difficult thing to do in the wild—it's common sense, and it said so, in Duncan's booklet. And we all know that, if you are alone, a cigarette is at least a little bit of company. None of us is going to be separated from tobacco and matches for very long, and it's unrealistic of you to expect otherwise.”

“I agree,” said Katrine Howard before I could interject. “I didn't think of it like Madeleine did, but she's right. She gave me some of her matches and a few fags.”

I edged nearer the fire as she moved. “How did you catch your rabbits?” I asked.

“I came across a broken gate, and used one of the planks as a shovel. I found a rabbit den and made a deep hole nearby in the peat, a trap, which I covered over with leaves. Two animals fell in during the night and couldn't get out. I skinned them and cooked them on a fire.”

Before I could congratulate Katrine, there was a commotion behind me and I turned, to discover that Duncan had barged into the room. He ran towards me and then stopped. “We can't find Erich,” he snapped. “He didn't make the rendezvous point at the time we agreed.”

I put down my glass. “Were you supposed to pick him up at the same spot you dropped him off?”

Duncan nodded.

“Where was the rendezvous?”

“Where the Loch Loyne road meets the track from Glen Fada.”

I knew it. I nodded. “Very well, we'll take all three Land Rovers, plenty of lights, plenty of ropes, water, the medical box, climbing stuff—it should all be on standby.”

“It is,” said Duncan, beginning to leave the room. “I'll take one Land Rover, you take the second, Ivan can drive the third.”

I turned back to Madeleine and Katrine. “Are you coming?”

“Of course, we are,” said Madeleine, putting down her glass. “I'll get back into my slacks.”

“Me too,” said Katrine.

“It could be a long night,” I called over my shoulder, as I left the room. “Bring some cigarettes.”

TEN MINUTES LATER WE WERE SPEEDING
down the drive of Ardlossan Manse. The beginning of Loch Loyne was about thirty minutes away, on a fast single-track road. We didn't expect to see any traffic—nor did we. We frightened a few rabbits and a solitary deer, but we saw no humans.

At the junction of the road and the track there was a patch of flat ground where we could park without blocking the road. Here we all got out.

Duncan had with him two men: one from the Cypriot section, the other I didn't recognize. Ivan had the Glaswegian cook with him, and I had Madeleine and Katrine—that made eight of us in all.

I looked about me. “This is where he was dropped?”

“Yes,” said Duncan.

“Well,” I said. “The land slopes away here, towards South Andvart. I'm sure he would have gone that way; it's much easier than turning inland and climbing. Do you agree, Duncan?”

Duncan was a local. He knew the area better than I did.

“Aye.” He was handing round ropes and torches and bottles of water, taking what looked like flares out of his pocket. “I suggest we split up into three groups. If anyone finds him, light one of these flares—the others will then come looking for you.” He handed one each to Ivan and to me.

“I'll stay in the middle,” he said. Nodding to me, he went on, “You keep to the north, sir—depending on how long it takes, you'll eventually get to Loch Hourn.”

I nodded.

To Ivan, he said, “You keep on the southern edge, and you'll come to
Loch Morar eventually. It will be daylight before any of us reaches the sea, and if we don't find him…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Leave the headlights on in the Land Rovers,” I said. “That will help guide us back.”

Without any more preamble, we set off. If Erich had fallen and broken his leg, say, hypothermia would be an issue, so speed on our part was important.

My group started out. I was in the middle, Katrine on my right and Madeleine on my left. We were about twenty yards apart but we fanned out—so that we were soon separated from the other groups. The area we had to cover was large.

We had our torches, ropes around our waists, and bottles of water in our pockets. Every so often we called out, “Erich!,” “Hello?,” or “Can you hear me?”

The night closed in around us. Soon we were out of sight of the cars. The wind—more than a breeze—was cold. Occasionally we disturbed rabbits or hares, grouse and small deer. We always stopped and examined these locations, just in case Erich had fallen there. But he hadn't.

After an hour we came to some pines. We worked our way through those, shouting, with torches ablaze.

Nothing.

After that I suggested we spread out even more; we were now a hundred yards apart. There was no sign of the other groups.

The ground here was heather, broken by occasional trees, where we disturbed a range of birds. And the ground was steeper, and getting more so. I thought I heard running water in the distance.

We had been on the go for nearly two hours now. The moon was up—and visibility could have been worse. It would be midnight soon.

I saw a shape ahead of me. A cow? A deer? Erich? It suddenly lurched off into the darkness—a magnificent stag. Why on earth had it allowed us to get so close?

The sound of running water was definitely louder now, and the land was falling away quite sharply. I stopped briefly for a water break.

“Matt! Matt! Over here! Katrine, here, quick, I think I've found something!”

Screwing the top on my bottle, I hurried towards Madeleine, playing my torch ahead of me.

As I approached her, I noticed that she was coming towards me.

“What is it?” I said. “What have you found?”

“Stop here,” she said urgently. “Let's wait for Katrine. The land falls away here quite quickly—it's dangerous.”

“Yes, but—”

“Here's Katrine.”

Katrine arrived, out of breath. “What is it?”

“Just stand here for a moment, and turn and look at where I shine my torch.”

Madeleine turned and shone her torch in a slow sweep along the ground beyond where we stood.

“See, there's a cliff here, a vertical drop of about a hundred feet. It must be the lip of a quarry wall—I nearly fell into it myself. There's no warning.” She held Katrine's elbow with her hand. “Now, inch forward, till you are standing on the very edge of the lip. Careful, Matt!”

We inched forward.

“Follow the beam of my torch as I shine it downwards. Try to move as little as possible…Do you see what I see?”

We looked down.

“A mass of rubble,” said Katrine softly.

“Is that fresh earth?” I said.

“Yes!” said Madeleine. “That's what I thought too. I think Erich came this way, at night like we are doing, and slipped over the edge of the quarry. Say he fell down the quarry wall and started a small avalanche, a landslide. Maybe it covered him. Maybe he's buried underneath all that rubble.”

“If he is,” murmured Katrine, “is he still alive?”

“That depends,” I said. “His head may be near the surface, but his legs may be trapped. He could have enough oxygen but not be able to move. We've got to go and see. But he may not be there at all.”

I gripped both their arms. “Right,” I said. “Let's all step back carefully from the edge. We don't want any more landslides.”

“Shall we set off a flare?”

“No, not yet, Madeleine. We don't know for sure that he's here. No point in stopping the others searching until we
are
sure.”

“We need other men to go down into the quarry,” Katrine protested.

“We need them to bring him up,” I replied. “Especially if he's injured. But at the moment we don't know if he's down there.”

“So what do you—?”

“Look about you,” I interjected. “There are no trees or rocks to fix a
rope to. But I am a big man—biggish anyway. Katrine, you and I can hold the rope while Madeleine goes down, over the edge—she's the lightest.”

I looked at Madeleine. “Think you can manage it?”

She hesitated, but then nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. I'll thread the rope under my thigh, which will take the strain. I was a nurse, remember—we do rudimentary physics, pulleys and all that, for patients who are badly hurt. Don't worry about me.”

“Good. We won't descend here. If Erich
is
down there, we don't want another landslide.”

We moved about thirty yards along the cliff. I unwound the ropes from around my waist, and from around Katrine's, and tied them together. Then I roped Katrine to me and we sat on the ground some ten yards back from the lip of the quarry, both of us gripping the heather groundcover.

Madeleine slipped the end of the rope under her belt, yanked it once or twice, to test how firm we were, and began to gently lower herself over the lip of the cliff.

“If he's there and alive, yank the rope twice,” I said. “If he's dead, once, and if he's not there at all three times, and I won't set off any flares. Understood?”

“Yes.”

The moonlight was still quite strong. I could see Madeleine clearly.

Then she disappeared and the tension on the rope increased. I dug my heels into the peat.

Katrine did the same.

The wind gusted. Clouds floated past the moon.

After three or four minutes, the line went slack. Madeleine had reached the floor of the quarry.

I looked at Katrine and she looked at me.

We waited.

We heard scrabbling in the landslide earth. From where we had stood it had been difficult to gauge the size of the slip.

The wind was getting up, larger gusts now, sending swooping sounds through the heather.

Then Madeleine's voice broke into the night air as she shouted.

“What did she say?” I asked Katrine.

She shook her head. “I couldn't hear either.”

“What did you say?” I shouted across the quarry but my words too were caught up in the wind that was rushing in from the Atlantic.

Madeleine didn't reply.

Then the rope jerked, hard. Twice.

THE SMELL OF FRIED BACON LEAKED
into the dining room. Duncan looked at me and grinned.

“I think we need an emergency more often.”

I grinned back, and nodded.

We both looked across to the sideboard, where Craigie, the cook, had brought out a big tray with a mound of bacon rashers heaped on it.

All of us in the canteen rose, as one.

Bacon breakfasts were few and far between at Ardlossan, generally kept for bank holidays and other celebrations. Erich's rescue certainly counted as a celebration.

Where the bacon actually came from was a well-kept secret, by Craigie, but, as a line formed next to the tray, I said, to no one in particular, “Leave some for Erich. He's the man who's been through it.”

“Where
is
Erich?” asked someone in the queue.

“Having a hot bath, with a whisky,” replied Duncan. “He'll be down directly.”

“What exactly happened to him?” said Ivan. “How come he was in a landslide, and how come he survived?”

Duncan answered.

“As far as we can make out, in the depths of the night Erich came across an old truck. It was cold and he climbed into the cab for warmth. But the truck was on the lip of a quarry—it had been left there after a landslide had broken away part of the quarry cliff, and was too dangerous to move. The truck had been rusting there for years, abandoned, and the quarry was disused because its walls were unstable. There were warning signs all around, but in the dark Erich didn't see them. It would only have been a matter of time before the truck fell into the quarry all by itself.”

Duncan reached for a plate on a side table. “Anyway, Erich's weight shifted the truck's balance.”

The queue moved. We were a little nearer the bacon.

“As I say, there were signs all around the quarry, indicating the danger, but in the dark Erich simply didn't see them. Once installed in the cab of the truck, his weight shifted the balance—it tipped over into the quarry, falling down the cliff and causing a landslide.”