Black Cairn Point (9 page)

But my hands had frozen. There, untidily stuffed around Darren’s things, was a very familiar red jumper. I pulled it out. Underneath that were a glasses case and a pair of corduroy shorts that Darren would never be seen dead in.

‘Dougie …’

I’d found Martin’s stuff.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

It was the fourth time I’d asked and once again my question was met with a curt ‘I’m fine.’

We were hiking up the road towards civilisation, the Volvo waiting idly in the car park at our backs. Darren had refused to let us take it. Dougie, blood still streaming from his nose where Darren had smacked him hard in the face, had been uncontainable. It was all I could do to convince him to wait the three minutes it took me to claw on my clothes before he took off, storming away from the campsite.

‘Would you like a tissue?’ I asked, trotting to keep up.

‘No.’ Dougie wiped his lower face on his sleeve, coating his white top in vivid red blood.

I fell silent then, concentrating on keeping up, avoiding the deep pot-holes that rutted the surface of the road. My calves were burning and hunger sapped my energy. I didn’t want to ask Dougie to slow down, though. Not when he was in this mood. To be honest, I was a little frightened of him right now. He seemed out of control and though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I saw his lips trembling as he muttered under his breath.

Then suddenly he stopped short and whirled to face me. I made to back away but then steadied myself.

‘I mean,’ he exploded, continuing a thought I hadn’t heard, ‘I know he doesn’t like Martin, but for God’s sake! He spent the whole night last night
knowing
Martin was missing, properly missing, and he didn’t bat an eyelid. All he could think about was getting Emma into the damned tent. What is wrong with him?’

I looked at him anxiously, uncomfortable with the idea of having to reply, nervous of saying the wrong thing.

‘And I can’t believe he wouldn’t let me have the car,’ he went on when I didn’t respond. ‘We could be up there right now, phoning him. Instead we’re hiking halfway across the frickin’ countryside. And if he doesn’t answer …’

Dougie trailed off, looked away out over the sea, a darker blue today now that the sky had clouded over. I understood. If Martin didn’t answer, how the hell would we know what had happened to him? How would we find him? We’d already retraced his steps, what else could we do?

‘Come on,’ I said gently. ‘Let’s just get up there, find a signal.’

Dougie took a deep breath, blew it out and then looked at me and nodded, a ghost of a smile about his mouth. His shoulders dropped and the expression on his face became more like the boy I knew. Apart from the blood.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a tissue?’ I asked as we started walking again, at a much more sedate pace this time.

Dougie reached up to tentatively assess his nose. He winced and dropped his hand quickly.

‘Do I look terrible?’

‘Red’s not really your colour.’

It was a poor attempt at being funny, but Dougie laughed nonetheless, though the sound was sour.

‘Here.’ I dug a pack of Kleenex from my pocket and held one out to him. ‘People with hay fever always carry tissues,’ I explained, catching his quizzical look.

‘Right.’ He took a tissue and tilted his head, using it to try to stem the trickle of scarlet that was still dribbling from his nose. ‘I’m not going to forgive Darren for this,’ he mumbled through a face full of paper.

I understood that he meant the whole situation with Martin, not the bloody nose. Still, that was something to add to the list. Darren was the world’s biggest git. I had no idea what Emma saw in him, besides his muscles. She had been upset with him after the fight, mostly because Dougie was bleeding rather than the fact that he’d lied about Martin, but now she was down there at the beach with him, not up here with us. That spoke volumes.

Dougie was right, we didn’t see a single car all the way to the main road. When we reached the top, the only noise came from an electricity generator buzzing quietly. Dougie checked his phone: no signal. Mine was the same. After several minutes, a white van zoomed by. Five minutes after that, an old couple in an aged but spotlessly clean Mercedes came ambling along. They actually stopped, the man rolling his window down to check that we were all right, but his cheerful demeanour cooled rapidly when he caught the sight of Dougie’s bloodied face and they didn’t linger long.

‘Maybe Martin did catch a ride,’ Dougie murmured as the car disappeared around the corner.

Perhaps.

We climbed a fence and walked halfway through an empty field. It was the highest point for miles around and we reckoned if we were going to get a signal, it would be there.

‘Well?’ I asked as he held up the little rectangle. My own phone still showed zero bars.

‘Hang on, it’s searching,’ he replied. He held it a little higher, eyes on the screen. ‘Ah-ha!’ He grinned at me triumphantly. It looked a little manic on his blood-spattered face. I smiled, making a mental note to hand him another tissue as soon as we’d spoken to Martin.

And I told myself we would. It was the only way I could stop from feeling sick with worry.

Dougie held the phone to his ear, gaze fixed on me.

‘It’s ringing,’ he mouthed.

I waited, my pulse throbbing painfully, heart thudding in my chest. I couldn’t hear the rings but I counted them in my head, matching each one to the surge of adrenaline-filled blood pumping around my system. One. Two. Three. Four. Any second now Dougie’s face would stretch into a broad grin. Five, six, seven. Any moment, any moment now. Eight, nine, ten. Why wasn’t he answering?

My stomach twisted uneasily as I watched Dougie’s face cloud. Slowly he dropped the phone.

‘It went to the answer machine,’ he whispered.

‘Try again,’ I urged.

He obeyed me silently and I began my count all over again. I tried to hope but already I knew what the result would be. It was still a blow when Dougie shook his head, his expression grim.

‘Nothing,’ he said, confirming my fears.

‘What do we do?’ I asked. I felt lost, like a child. ‘Should we phone his parents?’

Dougie made a face. I knew exactly what he was thinking. If we rang anyone’s parents, or the police, it made it real. Terrifying. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to admit that Martin was really missing.

‘I don’t know.’ Dougie echoed my hesitation. ‘What would we tell them?’

I twisted my mouth to the side. Was there any way to check if Martin was home without revealing that we’d lost him, that there was any danger? If he wasn’t there I didn’t want to frighten his parents, not when there was still a chance he might be hunkered down somewhere, ankle twisted or broken, waiting impatiently for us and annoyed that we hadn’t found him yet.

‘Don’t tell them it’s you,’ I suggested. ‘Pretend to be someone else. Ask if he’s home.’

Dougie looked doubtful. ‘You don’t think they’ll realise it’s me?’

‘I’ll call then,’ I said, though my insides squirmed at the thought. ‘I’ve never even met them.’

To my surprise Dougie let out a laugh. A real one this time.

‘Trust me, if you phone up they’ll be suspicious. Martin doesn’t get calls from girls.’

‘Oh.’ I smiled uneasily. ‘Right.’

‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘Okay, I’m calling.’

He held the phone to his ear, but quickly he was frowning. I watched him pull the handset away, glare at the screen. ‘Oh come on! You were there a minute ago!’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Signal’s disappeared.’

Dougie tapped several different locations on the screen, but the expression on his face didn’t change.

‘Want to try mine?’ I offered. I fumbled around in my pocket and drew out my own phone. ‘What network are you on?’ I asked.

‘EE.’

‘I’m on Vodafone. Let me double-check … Nope,’ I sighed. ‘Not a thing.’

‘That’s so weird,’ Dougie said. ‘It was fine a moment ago. I had four bars. Maybe I need to get higher.’

‘Higher?’ I said dubiously. We were as high up as it got.

‘I could climb a tree,’ Dougie suggested, eyeing up the tall birches that lined the back of the field.

I stared at him, fighting the urge to say what I thought, that he was clutching at straws. But I didn’t have any better ideas. How far would we have to walk to find a house? If it came to that we’d have to go back and make Darren hand over the keys. And that wasn’t a conversation I was keen to have.

‘I’ll give you a leg-up,’ I said.

With me giving him a punt up to the lowest branches, Dougie was able to scale the sturdiest-looking tree in quick, lithe movements. He paused in the centre, testing out the higher branches with his hands. They swayed easily under the pressure.

‘Don’t go too high,’ I warned. ‘The last thing we need is for you to break your neck!’

He chuckled, but stopped trying to climb higher.

‘Any luck?’

‘No. Yes! We have lift-off! Hang on, it’s ringing now.’ I waited, both anxious and eager. Then … ‘What the hell?’

‘What?’ No answer. ‘Dougie, what is it?’

‘My battery just died.’

I huffed a laugh, though it really wasn’t funny.

‘You’re joking?’

‘No.’

‘Hang on.’ I dug into my pockets again. ‘Catch! See if I have signal.’

I threw my phone up into the tree, wincing apprehensively, but Dougie’s deft hands caught it easily. I watched him jab at the screen.

‘How do you turn it on?’ he called down.

‘It is on,’ I replied. ‘Is the screen locked?’

‘No. Heather, it’s definitely not on.’

I looked up at him, mystified. It had been on a minute ago. Maybe my fingers accidentally hit the switch when I threw it, although you had to hold it down for at least five seconds. I described the way to start it up, then waited. And waited.

‘Nope, it’s not turning on. Could it be out of power?’

‘No. I still had half a battery. That should do me till at least tomorrow.’

‘Well, it’s not working.’

‘Chuck it down,’ I sighed, exasperated.

Dougie obediently dropped it into my waiting hand and I plunged my thumb down onto the power key, waiting for the little red Vodafone symbol to dance across the screen. It didn’t.

‘That’s not right,’ I murmured quietly. Was it broken?

‘I told you,’ Dougie called down.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, raising my voice so he could hear. ‘It was fine a second ago.’ I looked about me. ‘Could it be the generator thing? Can it drain batteries?’

‘Dunno.’ Dougie’s voice was closer now. I looked up to see him slipping down through the branches. ‘Just our luck this weekend.’

He scuttled lightly onto the final branch and hovered there for a moment, judging the distance to the ground. As he bent his knees, preparing to jump, I heard a deep crack resound from the trunk. Dougie’s face dropped in time with the branch and both of them tumbled to the ground.

‘Dougie!’ I cried out, already reaching for him. He was sprawled on the ground, tangled up in the whippy, leaf-covered shoots spiking off from the broken branch. Even as his hands tore at the foliage I knew something was wrong. Peeking out from the confusion of glossy green was his ankle, turned awkwardly under him. His mouth twisted in a grimace of pain and he gripped his leg just above his foot. He groaned, still trying to extricate himself from the chunk of tree.

‘Are you all right?’ I gasped.

Dougie huffed. ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I took hold of his hand and hauled him to his feet. He hissed in pain as soon as he tried to put any weight on the damaged ankle. ‘Maybe,’ he amended.

‘Is it broken?’ I asked.

Please let it not be. How the hell was I meant to get him back down to the campsite and the car if he couldn’t walk? There was no way I could carry him that far.

‘No, doesn’t feel like it. Hurts, though.’ He blew out a breath, tried gingerly to step on his right foot. I watched him grit his teeth. ‘I think it’s just sprained.’ He laughed, though the sound was slightly hysterical.

‘What’s funny?’ I asked, my eyebrows rising in puzzlement and disbelief. Laughing was the last thing I felt like doing.

‘It’s just … could it get any worse?’

I smiled, though the muscles in my jaw had to work harder than usual to achieve the effect.

‘Don’t say that,’ I warned. Then I sighed. ‘You’re not having much of a birthday trip. What are we going to do, Dougie?’

We still had no idea what had happened to Martin and now Dougie probably needed a visit to A&E.

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s just get back to the campsite. Then we’ll work it out. Darren’ll have to drive us somewhere.’

I wasn’t so sure. The look on Darren’s face when we left had been unambiguous: he was furious. And in my experience a furious Darren was not a helpful one. Still, maybe if he saw the state Dougie was in he’d warm up a little. That’s if I could get him there.

‘Think you can walk?’ I asked, eyeing him dubiously. He was trying to stand normally but it was obvious that it was agony to put any weight on his foot.

‘I’ll try,’ he offered.

It was very slow progress. Dougie attempted to walk by himself at first but he couldn’t manage anything more than a snail’s pace, limping a few inches at a time. His face was drawn and his top teeth were gnawing down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. After only a few hundred metres, he had to surrender.

‘Look, I’ll wait here,’ he said, preparing to lower himself down onto the grass verge. ‘You can walk back down and get Darren to come up with the car.’

I paled. I did not want to have to face Darren without Dougie.

‘Maybe I could carry you?’ I suggested.

Dougie snorted.

‘Are you Wonder Woman at the weekend?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But look, put your arm round my shoulder. I’ll be your human crutch.’

That worked a lot better. Dougie had to walk in a slightly awkward crouch because I was so much shorter than him, but it meant he was able to take a step without dropping his full weight onto the rapidly swelling joint. It was hard work and my arm, wrapped around his waist and gripping him so hard my fingers went white, quickly started to ache. But I knew we only had a couple of miles, maybe a little less, to go.

The sun was at its peak by the time we limped back to the car park, although it was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds. Hungry, knackered and aching, I dropped Dougie against the bonnet of the Volvo. He slumped down by the dirty grey metal, his mouth pressed into a thin line. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.