Authors: Michael Wood
Chapter 14
After Cumbria, Sutherland is their favourite county. Its unpopulated, barren, wilderness of moorland, rock, and water is the perfect place to escape from work, renew your natural senses.
Its grotesquely shaped bare rock mountains, suddenly rearing up from bleak, heathered plains, looking like giant thimbles, seem to have been transported from the Arizona desert.
When all these elements reach the sea, they produce scenery of stunning natural beauty. Here, the craggy, luminous, rock plunges steeply into pristine water, made light green by unsullied white sand beaches. Massive sea lochs, hewn over centuries, play host to wild life and nothing else.
*
Ben allowed himself a yawn and a smile as he passed a sign saying ‘Dornoch 4 miles’. He had been driving a long time since picking up the motor home in Edinburgh, but he was delighted to be back. He glanced at Helen, to share the moment. She was still asleep in the passenger seat, catching flies as her mouth lolled open, ridding herself of exhaustion.
Though still enthusiastic and motivated at work, she had simply ran out of energy after a long tiring spell of teaching courses, and the inevitable staffing problems.
As the motor home buzzed across the bridge over the spectacular Dornoch Firth, Ben could no longer contain himself. He nudged Helen. She moaned. He nudged her again. She opened her eyes.
‘We’re here,’ he exclaimed.
Helen slowly shuffled into an upright position and surveyed the moving scene like a drowsy, brainless kitten. ‘Lovely,’ she purred, and sank back into oblivion.
*
Helen was back to normal the next morning. She took the wheel and started singing: ‘ye tak the high road’ as they pulled out of Dornoch. Ben joined in the discordant duet, and settled back to enjoy the scenery from the motor home’s high perspective.
After picking up some supplies in the east coast village of Helmsdale they took the A897 for a diagonal cross-country drive to the north coast. An hour later, they arrived at the north coast village of Melvich, turned west on the A836 coast road, and soon were pulling-in to the Strathy Inn for a cup of coffee and the last chance to use a civilized toilet.
After coffee, they left the motor home in the pub’s car park, and walked the three miles to Strathy Point headland: past the dotted, lonely, crofts, to stand on the cliff tops and feel the eagerness of the North Atlantic wind.
The seals were still there, lounging on the rocks below, the gulls were still agitating along the cliff face, and along the coast to the east, in the distance, the Dounreay nuclear plant still looked inappropriate.
Back at the motor home, lunch had to be jock pie and beans, then it was off again along the A836. In late afternoon they arrived at their first major highlight - the Kyle of Tongue. The massive sea loch, penetrating deep into the interior, opened its vast mouth to shout a greeting to the arctic, lurking somewhere beyond the horizon in cold infinity.
Driving around the Kyle’s coastline they eventually came to the scattered community of Talmine. They parked up for the night on a grassy knoll above a pristine beach, and went for a stroll.
On their way back to the motor home, they were enticed into the village pub by the sound of traditional Scottish music.
A large, bearded man was playing the piano accordion and a tall, thin man was playing the fiddle. Three regulars, judging by their glazed stares, propped up the bar, and a group of men were gathered in conversation around a large table in a corner of the dingy room.
Ben risked a pint of processed beer, there being no real ale on tap. Helen sat with a dry sherry. She tapped her feet in time with the music and got into the swing of things, while Ben, grimacing at every gulp of his beer, found himself listening to snatches of the conversation going on in the corner.
He heard them talking about ‘hill familiarisation’, ‘casualty evacuation’, ‘stretcher rigging’, ‘first aid’. From this, he gleaned that the men had been carrying out a training rescue that afternoon, and they were now comparing notes, and discussing good and bad practice. Clearly, they were part of a local mountain rescue team.
Ben’s next trip to the bar, this time for two non-risky drams, coincided with the arrival at his side of one of the men from the corner table. He was young, wiry, weather-beaten, with strong hands impatiently waving a ten-pound note.
‘Six halves here, Willy,’ he shouted to the landlord, who had temporarily disappeared to serve someone in the snug.
‘Had a good day?’ Ben enquired, conversationally.
‘Aye.’
‘Thirsty work - lugging stretchers about.’
‘Aye.’
‘Is there a collection box in the pub? I’d like to contribute.’ That did the trick.
‘Aye. Over there, at the end of the bar.’
Ben followed his directions to see that the box was being obscured by the well-worn Harris Tweed elbow of one of the regulars. Ben sauntered across, put some pound coins in, and returned to the young man.
‘Thanks,’ the young man said. ‘On holiday?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Just a few days. I couldn’t help overhearing. What rescue team are you in?’
‘Assynt. We’re from the base at Thurso. We cover the north coast area. The main team operate out of the headquarters at Inchnadamph near Lochinver.’
‘So, how many’s in your team at Thurso?’ Ben asked.
‘Fourteen at the moment!’
‘And have you got a full set-up, with base control and all that?’
The young man laughed. ‘Naw...we’ve just got an equipment store behind the police station. It’s all controlled from Inchnadamph. Mind, it’s not much better there. Just a garage with a store and a common room in it. Are you in a rescue team yourself?’
‘No ...no,’ Ben smiled, pleased that the young man thought he looked young enough and fit enough. ‘I’m from the Lake District. I work for a little newspaper there. I do a weekly report on the local rescue team’s call outs.’
The landlord returned and took their orders.
‘My name’s Ben, by the way,’ Ben said, holding out his hand. ‘I’ve got a lot of respect for you blokes. You do a great job.’
The young man shook his hand. ‘Alec...Alec Gordon. How come a Sassenach gets named after a Scottish mountain?’
‘My mother was a Scot.’
‘So you can’t be all bad,’ Alec joked. ‘Who’s your local rescue team then?’
‘Keswick.’
‘They must be busy if you have something to report every week.’
‘Virtually every week,’ Ben corrected. ‘It’s a very busy holiday area. I don’t suppose you’re quite as busy up here.’
‘No, thank God,’ Alec said, gathering the six halves on to a tray. ‘I don’t suppose we have more than ten incidents a year. Mostly walkers getting lost. And the odd sea cliff rescue, usually over at Dunnet Head. I believe they get very busy down at Glen Coe, but not many people come this far north.’
‘Do you get many fatalities?’ Ben wasn’t sure where the question came from. Something at the back of his mind must have pushed it forward.
Alec held the tray of drinks, and turned to leave the bar. ‘There’s usually one or two. Usually walkers getting lost in the winter...hypothermia.’
He started walking towards the corner table.
A raised voice came from behind Ben. ‘What about that time, three years ago. There was a lot dead that year.’
Obviously, one of the regulars had been listening to their conversation.
Alec returned to pick up his change from the bar. ‘Aye, it was a funny year that year right enough.’
‘What happened?’ Ben asked.
Alec pocketed his change, and stared in recall. ‘We had about eight deaths that year. And they weren’t the usual walkers getting lost. They were all fallers off crags. All badly damaged. There was some couples.’ He shook his head. ‘It was bad.’
‘Did the doctors or police have anything to say about them?’ Ben pressed on.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know, when they came out to the scene to certify them.’
‘We can’t do that up here,’ Alec said. ‘We don’t have enough doctors or police and the distances are too great. We bring the bodies in to the nearest police station, and they call in a doctor for certification.’
‘Do you take photographs at the scene?’
‘Aye - they go to the police.’
‘And, no doubt, you keep a written record of each incident and do an annual incident report.’
‘Aye.’
Ben searched his pockets and found an old bill and a pen. ‘Look, Alec,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to keep you from your mates any longer. I’m putting my home address and E Mail address on the back of this bill. Would you mind sending me a copy of your annual report for that year?’
‘Aye - nae bother.’ He took the piece of paper, and didn’t ask Ben why he wanted the information, presumably because he wanted to get back to his meeting.
As he made his way back to Helen, Ben shouted to Alec: ‘where’s the next mountain rescue team south of Inchnadamph?’
‘Torridon,’ Alec shouted back. ‘It’s in the Torridon youth hostel.’
Ben raised his hand in acknowledgement, as he sat down beside Helen, and proffered the long-awaited dram.
‘What was that all about?’ Helen asked, patiently.
‘Oh! It’s just the local MR team...he’s going to send me some stuff down,’ Ben said, dismissively, not wanting to spoil Helen’s enjoyment of the music or her holiday.
Helen sensed that there was more to it than that, but knew he didn’t want to interrupt the holiday atmosphere. She could read his mind, and was grateful for his thoughtfulness. Her feet started tapping again.
*
Three days later, after a magical drive down the west coast of Sutherland, revisiting the wonderful beaches, the weird mountains, and the vast panoramas, they arrived in the more conventional, though still spectacular, landscape of Wester Ross where the daunting Torridon Mountains throw down their challenge.
At the eastern end of Loch Maree, Ben stopped to check the map.
For the past three days, he had been so wrapped up in the enjoyment of the holiday, that he had forgotten about his chat with the Assynt Mountain Rescue man. Now it all came back. Was it fate, or just a strange coincidence, that he was about to drive past the next mountain rescue team’s headquarters?
*
Ben dropped Helen off at the Torridon visitor centre, while he went in search of the Torridon youth hostel.
There was no one in the room, set aside within the youth hostel for the Torridon Mountain Rescue Team, but the man running the hostel was a team member and very helpful. He let Ben read through the last few years’ annual incident reports, and allowed him to take a photocopy of the report of two years ago. Ben had noticed a spate of deaths in that year, mostly falls from high crags.
*
After returning the motor home to the hire company in what now seemed to be a disagreeably noisy and overcrowded Edinburgh, Helen, now back to her energetic self, persuaded Ben to end the holiday by spending the night in one of the city’s best hotels. She also persuaded him to leave his seventh-floor view of the city lights, to join her in bed early. It was her way of ensuring that their holiday came to a satisfying climax.
Chapter 15
Back at the cottage, they were greeted by hyperactive pheasants and ducks, like children who had been deserted by their parents for a week - excited, noisy, and hungry. Ben hoped that there was still some bread in the freezer.
He had difficulty in opening the cottage door because of the mail on the floor. Among the diatribes from insurance and credit card companies, miraculously offering to save
you
money while taking it off you, he spotted a Thurso postmark. Alec Gordon had kept his promise.
Later that night, with the unpacking finished, the washing machine whirring, the birds and humans fed, he settled down to read the Assynt team’s annual incident report of three years ago.
It got off to a humorous start:
25th March Shin Falls
Call out for missing child (3 years) who had wandered off
from visitor centre play area. Found safe and well by RAF
SARDA at 08.30, having been looking for dinosaurs.
9th April Ben Klibreck
Call out to search for owner of rucksack abandoned at
col. Owner identified from passport as ——————,
an American. Despite an extensive search involving 12 AMRT, 14 Kinloss MRT, 8 SARDA, and helicopter, nothing was found. After reports of various sightings, eventually found by police in Thurso the following Tuesday and bollocked rigid!
Ben’s guffaw made Helen jump. She was already back to the grind, poring over papers taken from her briefcase
.
He apologised and carried on reading.
10th MayInchnadamph
Call out to search for six missing Dutch women. Found by
helicopter on path behind Beinn Uidhe cold and wet but
unhurt.
2nd JuneScourie
Call out for missing fisherman. Walked out to Lower Badcall having become completely disorientated in the area around Loch Mhuirt. No map or compass.
11th JulyGolspie
Call out for missing person, probable suicide. Nothing found.
Body found in sea off Peterhead two weeks later.
18th JulyAchmelvich
Call to assist Police in search for person thought to be ‘On the Run’. Nothing found.
3rd AugustBen More Assynt
Call out for missing woman on Ben More Assynt. Body found below top section of south ridge east of Dubh Loch Mor. Sustained extensive injuries to body and head.
Helicopter unable to reach the casualty because of low cloud.
Body evacuated to a pick up point with some difficulty.
29th August Fannichs
Call out to assist Dundonnell MRT with search. Body found.
18th SeptemberBen Hope, Central Gully
Call out for missing man on Ben Hope. Body found among
boulders 250’ below Central Gully. Sustained various
multiple injuries consistent with his fall. Taken by helicopter
to Inverness.
The usual mixture of stupidity, tragedy and a little humour continued to unfold. Ben had seen it all before. But, the man in the pub had been right. The difference with this one was that it contained eight deaths out of 15 incidents, compared to an average of one or two in other years. And six of them were falls from high crags.
Next, he studied the photocopy he had picked up at Torridon Mountain Rescue headquarters, reporting on incidents of two years ago. Again, it contained an exceptionally high mortality figure of nine, with five being falls from crags.
Maybe they were just freak years, he reasoned. Statistical blips. But it was strange that the years came one after another. What were the odds on that? Something itched at the back of his mind. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d scratched it. He was stubborn, and stupid, like that. He had chased up many a blind alley in his time; spent hours and days on a detail others couldn’t or wouldn’t be bothered with, often to find that he had wasted his time.
But, just occasionally, he hadn’t wasted his time, and he had found great satisfaction when his persistence paid off. This is what kept him going, like the good golf round remembered, the bad ones forgotten.
Tomorrow, he determined, he would visit Keswick Mountain Rescue HQ to check on their annual fatality statistics, and he still had to check whether Tessa Coleman’s fall from Dale Head was a one-off, or was it a regular accident black spot?
*
There was only one car in the Keswick Mountain Rescue headquarters’ car park. Ben recognised it as belonging to Ian the Controller
.
‘One day I’ll remember to ask him his surname,’ Ben thought to himself as he walked across the empty
yard. Clearly, there was no call-out or training taking place.
Ian was sitting with his back to him when he entered the Control Room. He jumped, and shuffled some papers, as Ben greeted him.
Probably caught him reading a dirty book, Ben thought, smiling inwardly.
‘You frightened the life out of me,’ Ian barked.
He was renowned for stating the obvious. A crumpled anorak and muddy boots lay close to his stockinged feet.
‘Been far?’ Ben asked, conversationally.
‘Not really,’ Ian said. ‘Just along Friars Crag, down to Lodore and back along the valley.’
He was one of those strange characters you can never get close to, Ben had decided some time ago. He answered questions or made pronouncements, but he didn’t hold conversations. And he was always on his own. He never joined in the camaraderie of the rest of the team and never went to their fund raising events or annual parties. But, he was a very good controller: meticulous, accurate, reliable, fastidious with paperwork and records, often nagging team members to speed up and improve their written reports.
Most organisations have an Ian, Ben thought, remembering his work days, at the same time realising he didn’t know what Ian did for a living. That was something else to ask him - one day! Right now, he wanted to make use of Ian’s meticulous records.
Ian produced them with great alacrity, and spread them neatly on the control room table, obviously proud of their perfection. There were pie charts and graphs and lists and reports. All were colour-coded and bound in protective plastic sleeves.
Ben took out his notebook and pen as he glanced at last year’s Incident Report. As well as a written, detailed, summary of each of the 69 incidents, there was a pie chart showing the ‘Type of Incident’, and three graphs showing ‘Times of Day’, ‘Days of The Week’, and ‘Months of the Year’.
At a glance he could see that the most common incident was a lower leg injury, occurring between 13.00 and 16.00 hours, on a Saturday, in September. ‘Must remember not to walk on a Saturday afternoon in September’, he joked with himself.
The inner smile vanished when he returned to the pie chart. Opposite the large orange segment declaring 22 lower leg injuries, with a red hypothermia segment on one side and blue paragliding segment on the other, was a green one announcing 15 fall fatalities.
He turned the page to find a chart summarising the number of incidents and fatalities since the team was set up in 1948. Scanning across the green and red columns he found that the highest number of fatalities before last year had been in 1989 when there had been nine fatalities. An average across the whole period was four fatalities.
Last year’s 15 fatalities now looked like yet another, very large, statistical blip. It now seemed to him beyond coincidence that a statistical blip could appear in successive years in three different rescue teams. So if it wasn’t coincidence, what was it?
He was going to have to dig much deeper, try to find out more about each fatal incident. Could there be a common link? Did other unfortunate victims work for the government, like Jack Fraser? Was Sophie Lund right after all? Was this how they got rid of the government’s perceived enemies? His mind was starting to whirl with alternatives. His imagination was up and running, and he didn’t like where it was taking him.
The obvious starting place was Tessa Coleman, tragically the most recent statistic, and known personally. Clearly, she didn’t work for the government. Clearly, she had no enemies. Hers was probably a genuine accident. And yet, something still niggled him.
‘Have you any statistics on the most common fatality locations, Ian?’ he asked. ‘I was wondering....’
‘Right here,’ Ian said, proudly pulling out a folder from his desk.
A glance along the columns showed that Sharp Edge on Blencathra had claimed the most victims, followed by Striding Edge on Helvellyn. These were dangerous places where ordinary fell walkers sought adventure.
The rest of the statistics confirmed that it was mostly fell walkers who perished, not climbers, even though they tackled far more hazardous routes. Dale Head, where Tessa had died, didn’t appear. Nor did Little Man, where the Frasers had died. As he had suspected, these were not inherently dangerous places
.
You would have to be blind not to see where the summits dropped away on one side, into the valley. The edges were clearly visible. The only other explanation was that the victims were suicidal, or had been pushed.
Maybe Tessa had been suicidal. She had suffered a marriage breakdown. She led a lonely, insular, life working and living in the same building.
But why take your climbing gear and your sketch pads with you if you are going to commit suicide? There had been no suicide note left in her flat, or at the scene of death. Anyway, he knew her well enough to be almost certain that she wasn’t the suicidal type. He had rarely met someone so full of zest and confidence.
So, if it wasn’t suicide, or a climbing accident - the rope was still on her body, unused - that left an accidental slip while near the edge, looking for a subject to paint.
Her sketch pad was still in her backpack. Even if she had been sketching near the edge, she would probably have been seated, and therefore safe. And, she was an experienced, very fit climber, and the edge is not sudden but gradual. Had she slipped, he felt sure she would have been able to grab hold of something before the ground fell away completely.
That left one more alternative. She was pushed. But who would do such a thing? What was the motive? How could such a beautiful, harmless woman have any enemies?
Ben let these thoughts settle in his mind. Things like this didn’t happen in the Lake District. Motiveless murder happened on squalid city streets. It didn’t happen to beautiful people in beautiful places...did it?
Now he recalled that sudden feeling that something was wrong when he saw the photographs of Tessa lying like a discarded scarecrow. It had been transient, but strong. He had returned to it in his mind many times since, usually when first waking, when he was at his sharpest, but nothing had revealed itself.
He handed the folder back to Ian. ‘Thanks.’
Then he found his voice assuming a quiet, reverential, tone. ‘Do you still have the photographs of Tessa Coleman?’
‘Naw. We don’t keep photos. They go to the police. They keep them.’ Ian’s reply was irritatingly brusque, as usual.
Ben pocketed his notebook and headed for the control room door. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, as he left the room.
Ian waited until he heard the main door close, then stood at the window to watch Ben walk across the car park. He returned to his desk and took out an envelope from the back of a drawer. From it, he carefully picked out a negative of a photograph, and held it up to view via the light from the window.