Dead Man Walking (6 page)

Nothing stirred out there.

These were foul conditions, they’d say.

It was a foul night all round.

The foulest really.

Abhorrent.

Loathsome.

‘We just have to get to lower ground,’ Tara said tiredly. ‘Then we can flag a car down or something.’

‘I agree that’s the obvious solution,’ Jane replied, vexed, ‘but don’t keep saying it over and over, as if it’ll be some kind of doddle and that it’s somehow stupid of us to not have done it already. For the last three hours, the only way to get to lower ground has been over precipices or down vertical drops.’

Tara made no initial response, mainly through guilt.

It had been her idea to finish their week-long camping trip by taking a well-trodden hilltop path from Borrowdale, over High Raise and Great Castle Howe, and down into Great Langdale. On paper it had all looked so straightforward; in fact easier than that, and probably very rewarding. After a difficult week, it had felt as if she was plucking victory from the jaws of defeat. The campsite at Watendlath hadn’t been all they’d hoped for, primarily because it was late November and the tourist season was long over. A few other hardy campers were present – hardier than Tara and Jane, it had to be said – but the site was largely empty, and its facilities operating at a reduced level; the toilets and showers were open, and that was about it. The weather conditions, while not exactly disastrous, were testing; the mornings damp and cold, the afternoons slightly drier but still cold, and the nights, freezing. On top of that, they were not experienced at this sort of thing. Their tent was old and somewhat mouldy; it was also single-skinned, which offered them zero protection against insects and condensation; they’d brought foam mats instead of truckle-beds, and their sleeping bags were old and filled with duck-down, which when it got damp stayed damp – and it had rained several times already that week; boy, had it rained.

None of this had made for a comfortable time. But worse still, they were bored. Neither Tara nor Jane classified themselves as party girls, but they were on their holidays and would have liked a drink now and then. Unfortunately, they’d used up all their spare backpack space on food supplies, and had assumed before arriving there’d be somewhere close by where they could stock up on booze once they’d got here – but there wasn’t and neither had a car, so they couldn’t just drive out. Jane had her iPad, so they could watch movies and listen to music – at least that had been the plan, but the device’s battery had died within a day and Jane had neglected to bring her charger.

As such, Tara’s sudden suggestion that they stop moping around the camp and actually get up into the wilderness – do some real walking, get some proper exercise and fresh air – had seemed like a godsend. It wouldn’t even be that difficult, she’d said, as they pored over a map on the fourth morning. Watendlath to Elter Water was not a great distance. The guidebooks described it as a ‘challenging route’, but they weren’t looking for a stroll in the park. If it took them all day, so much the better – they had nothing but time anyway. Once they reached Elter Water, they could catch a bus to Ambleside, stay overnight in a B&B, and head for home by train.

‘I mean, how difficult can it be to just check the weather forecast?’ Jane grumbled as they trudged doggedly on, their backpacks jolting their aching spines.

‘With what, Jane?’ Tara retorted. ‘The club and bar were closed, so we had no access to a telly. Our phones aren’t getting any signal up here. No one was selling newspapers on the site, and even if there’d been sufficient Wi-Fi for your iPad to be any use, the bloody thing ran out on us …’

‘Alright, alright, for Christ’s sake!’ Jane’s face reddened, and not just from the unaccustomed exertion.

On all sides, meanwhile, the midnight fog hung in impenetrable drapes. At this height and temperature it was like movie fog, a dense, grey mantle that rolled and twisted, obscuring everything. There hadn’t been any sign of this when they’d set off that morning, in broad daylight – it had been clear as a bell. But even if it had still been daylight now, only a few yards of harsh, rocky ground covered with frost-white tussocks would be visible. And of course, it wasn’t daylight; it was dark, which didn’t so much obscure the surrounding landscape as obliterate it. Naturally, they’d neglected to bring a torch. The last few occasions they’d needed light – to try to make sense of a dog-eared map, which was now next to useless anyway, as some time back they’d unconsciously veered off the flinty footway that was their prescribed route – Tara had switched her phone on, using the dull glow of its facia. She was increasingly reluctant to do this now, as she didn’t want to run its power down. It would be typical of their luck if they suddenly entered a better reception area and were able to make an emergency call, only for the battery to die.

The guidebook had predicted the journey would take six hours, meaning they’d finish well before nightfall, but they’d now been struggling along for at least twelve.

‘Look …’ Tara tried a more placating tone. ‘If we can’t find our way down to a road, we should maybe think about pitching the tent. Just camp for the night. Hopefully this fog will have lifted by morning.’

‘Newsflash, Tara … it’s perishing bloody cold!’

‘So we wrap up.’

‘Everything’s wet, you dozy mare! We’ll die from bloody hypothermia.’

Their voices echoed and re-echoed, creating the illusion they were in a chasm rather than on some open hillside. It was more than uncanny.

‘Jane, it can’t be a good idea to just keep ploughing on. We don’t know where we’re going, and this ground seems to be sloping upward.’

‘We can hardly pitch the tent when we can’t see our hands in front of our faces,’ Jane said. ‘Anyway, what if the fog hasn’t gone by tomorrow? We’re up on the fells, remember … not in some nice park a few yards from your mum and dad’s nice little middle-class house.’

‘Alright!
You don’t need to be such a bitch about it.’

‘Anyway, what good is sitting tight going to do? No one’ll come looking for us, Tara, because no one fucking knows we’re here. Didn’t it ever enter that air-filled brainbox of yours to tell someone what we were planning? And I don’t mean that bloody campsite owner. I mean someone who might actually care about us, who might actually have been listening when you were talking to them. Like our fucking parents, perhaps! I mean, Jesus, how difficult can it fucking be …?’

‘
Alright, I said!
Christ’s sake, Jane … I’m in as much danger as you are!’

Jane muttered some incoherent, vaguely foul-mouthed response, and they trod along in silence for a few more minutes, hearing only their own grunted exertions and the hollow thuds of their feet. Fleetingly, oddly, Tara was uncomfortable with the otherwise complete silence. It was a stupid thought, of course. There was no one else up here, but why did she get the sudden feeling their latest outburst, which would likely have been heard for miles and miles on a night like this, might have drawn the attention of someone listening? Even if it had, that ought to be something they’d want – and yet there was a brief queasy sensation in her tummy.

‘Sorry about the airhead thing,’ Jane muttered self-consciously.

‘It’s alright,’ Tara said. ‘Sorry about the bitch.’

Tara Cook and Jane Dawson were able to converse like this, one minute at each other’s throats, the next offering consolation, because they were close enough to be sisters, having grown up together in Wilmslow.

Jane was now a sales assistant at Catwalk, a clothing retailer whose branded products were strictly mid-range, while Tara had a bar job but was also studying for her PhD at Manchester Met. Money was tight for the both of them and, wanting to get away for a bit, it had been Tara’s idea that they visit Cumbria.

‘Let’s just put everything on hold for a few days,’ she’d said enthusiastically. ‘Let’s go camping in the Lakes. We both love it and it will do us a world of good.’

It was true, they did both love it. As children they’d holidayed in the Lake District many times with their respective families. But on those occasions, they’d stayed at hotels, rented cottages, or bed and breakfast accommodation. More to the point, they’d travelled up here in June, July or August – not November. Even so, Jane had thought the idea a good one.

‘Let’s do it,’ she’d said.

It hadn’t been difficult arranging it, given it was the off-season, and they’d been able to sort everything out that same evening. It was going to be great, Tara said.

It scarcely felt that way now: lost, frozen and well over a thousand feet up, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the ground was indeed sloping upward again. It had been difficult enough coping with loose, ice-slippery stones, and clumps of spiky mountain grass – so much so that they hadn’t initially noticed the shallow upward incline – but now it was steepening sharply. In addition, the fog seemed to be thickening, which was hardly helped by the clouds of soapy breath billowing from their lungs. Even walking shoulder-to-shoulder, they were only aware of each other as featureless phantoms.

‘Look Tara,’ Jane said, unconsciously lowering her voice. ‘We need to get real about this. We’re in pretty serious trouble here.’

‘I know …’

And Tara did, though perhaps only now was it really dawning on her. When you were down in the Lake District’s lower country on a bright summer’s morning, taking tea and crumpets in whitewashed villages, it seemed such a benign environment. The stories you heard about people getting lost on the fells and dying from exposure surely applied to another time and another place.

And yet suddenly, bewilderingly, that time was now and that place was here.

The oft-quoted phrase, ‘how did we get into this mess’, occurred to her with shocking force. It felt as if they’d led themselves blindfolded, for several hours, to this apparent point of no return.

‘Well if we’re not going to camp, we have to keep moving,’ Tara said, doing her best to stay upbeat. ‘That’ll help us stay warm.’

‘And will wear us down,’ Jane argued, seemingly unaware she was contradicting her own position of a few minutes earlier. ‘Reduce our ability to resist the cold. I can barely feel my hands and feet as it is.’

Tara knew what she meant. It was just before twelve o’clock now, but the temperature would continue to drop until well into the early hours.

‘Can’t feel our hands and feet, can’t
see
our hands and feet more like,’ she mused. ‘We’re disappearing by inches.’

‘Not funny, Tara, Jesus!’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘At least the slope’s levelling off.’

Thankfully, the gradient had flattened out again, and a second later they walked into a dry-stone wall. It came to roughly chest-height on Tara, higher still on Jane, and yet the fog was so impenetrable they blundered into it with enough force to induce pain and surprise. Tara switched her phone on. It created a minor capsule of dim aquamarine light around them, and shimmered over the smooth, neatly stacked stones. The wall led away to left and right, quickly vanishing.

Tara switched the light off again, plunging them back into darkness.

The wall wouldn’t be difficult to scale, though both of them were aching and bone-weary, but at least it was a solid fixture, and it broke the surreal monotony of this place – not that it was something to actually be reassured by. Hundreds of miles of dry-stone walls snaked across the Lake District National Park, through the lower valleys, up the teetering fell-sides, across the desolate tops of ridges and plateaux. Sure, it was a sign that civilisation wasn’t too far away – as the crow flew, or if you were on horseback. Not so much if you were a tired, and increasingly cold and disoriented foot-slogger.

‘So do we climb over it and keep going?’ Tara wondered.

‘Why?’ Jane asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why climb over it? Why not follow it?’

‘It won’t lead to a farmhouse, or anything like that.’

‘At least we’ll know we aren’t walking in fucking circles.’

‘Jane …’ Tara tried to remain patient. It served no purpose to stand here sniping at each other in the murk. ‘Look … people don’t walk around in circles, okay? Not in real life. That only happens in the movies.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ … we’re lost in the middle of nowhere, and you’re giving me Halliwell’s fucking Film Guide.’

‘Jane, come on …’

‘I’ve got a film for you, Tara.
The Shining
. Remember that … when he got lost, and in the morning he was dead, covered in ice?’

‘That was up in the mountains.’

‘
We’re
in the fucking mountains!’

‘Not in Colorado.’

‘Look, Tara … below zero is below zero, whether it speaks with a Yank accent or Cumbrian.’

‘Jane, panicking won’t help.’

‘I’ll tell you what … let’s get over this blessed wall. We have to do something soon, or I’m going to smack you one.’

Jane’s voice had taken on a new, shrill intensity. Tara imagined that, were she to switch her phone on again, she’d see eyes like polished marbles straining from her friend’s long, boyish face; the skin stretched like shiny parchment over those unattractive, hard-angled bones.

That was when they heard the whistling.

Or rather, Tara heard it.

‘Wait,
shhh
!’ she said, fumbling at Jane’s arm.

‘Don’t shush me, Tara!’

‘No,
listen
.’

Because she was in such a state that she’d grab at any straw, no matter how slender, Jane allowed her friend to speak. But of course, she heard nothing herself.

‘Yeah, great … the silence that signifies impending doom.’

‘No, I heard something.’

‘What?’

‘Listen!’

They fell quiet again, and now indeed there was something – a tune of some sort. At first it was very faint, as though being carried on the breeze. Except that there was no breeze. And the longer they listened, the clearer it became. Incredible though it seemed, someone relatively close by
was
whistling. Both of them recognised the tune, though neither could initially put a name to it, and now they were too excited to try.