Kissing Toads (30 page)

I was overreacting on the guilt issue, I know. But in Scotland in the dark, even the flimsiest spectres can grow huge, acquiring claws and teeth.

Harry was up ahead with Young Andrew, followed by Ash, then Delphi and me. Although we kept close together, we didn't talk much. Harry and Young Andrew paused from time to time to consult.

‘Is he looking for tracks?' Delphi whispered during one brief halt, referring presumably to the guide. ‘You know: broken twigs, footprints, that sort of thing.'

‘He's not Aragorn,' I whispered back. The vision of Young Andrew as Strider, listening, ear to the ground, for the rumour of distant feet, made me stifle a giggle.

After a short exchange about our route, they went on. We trailed after them.

The mist had closed in and beyond the torch beams was a grey, formless world. At Ash's suggestion we used only one between us, saving the battery on the other since we had no idea how long we'd be out. Harry and Young Andrew also shared. Ash, no doubt accustomed to working in the dark, kept his switched off most of the time, following the two leaders without a stumble. Tree roots sprawled across the path like knobbled snakes, ready to trip the unwary, and the occasional low branch brushed my face with twiggy fingers, but our pace was slow and such hazards were a minor factor. There seemed to be little undergrowth and the trees grew some way apart. We couldn't see far to either side; I knew the lake was on our left, quite close by, but the night was windless and the sleeping water made no sound. Once, there was a kind of slither and a soft splash a short distance away – we all jumped – but according to Young Andrew's unruffled mumble it was only a small animal.

I found myself muttering the traditional prayer Jennifer had taught us in childhood:

Delphi had always thought
long-legged beasties
meant spiders, of which she was terrified. I had marked reservations about
ghoulies
. But in the gloom it was all too easy to imagine a dripping head rising from a dim swirl of water, serpentine neck extended, or grey shaggy shapes flickering between the trees, trailing bits of shroud. I found myself wishing I'd never seen
The Blair Witch Project
or
The Evil Dead
. Woods in daylight are beautiful places, with the sun-spatter coming through the leaves and the piping of invisible birds, but by night they change, becoming shadow-forests haunted by our darkest fears. A few thousand years ago our ancestors trod lightly through such woods, in dread of nocturnal hunters: the wolf, the bear, the sabre-toothed tiger. And then there were the demons of our own invention, the blood-drinkers of nightmare and legend: the vampire and the werewolf, Grendel and his mother, the Ringwraith and the Grey King . . .

‘Should we call out?' Delphi asked. ‘They might be nearby and not know we're here.'

‘Good idea,' Harry conceded.

Every so often we called, paused, listened, called again. No answer. The ground grew more rugged, making walking harder. The damp of the mist and the chill of the night began to eat into me. Discomfort took the edge off my fears, but I had no intention of complaining: I wasn't giving the men the chance to act superior.

‘Aren't you c-cold?' I said to Delphi, keeping my voice low.

‘Not really. This jacket is amazingly warm.'

It would be. My supposedly practical and weatherproof Barber wasn't doing the job at all. But then, I only had a light sweater underneath.

‘Your teeth are chattering,' Ash said, passing me his scarf. It was long and wide and felt like cashmere. ‘Tuck that inside your jacket and wrap it round you. It'll help.'

‘Thanks.'

I saw the turn of Delphi's head as she glanced towards me, but I couldn't distinguish her expression.

Fenny created a diversion by stopping to growl, and then bark, but whatever it was must have fled. There was a growing murmur up ahead, like the rush of water.

‘That'd be the Cawdron,' Young Andrew said, in response to a question from Ash. ‘We maun go careful here. Mony folks ha' slippit in wi'out seeing the edge i' the dark.'

‘What's the Cauldron?' Delphi asked.

‘It's a pool,' Harry explained. ‘There's a stream flowing into the loch via a couple of short falls and it's scooped out the Cauldron among the rocks. It isn't very wide or deep but the water swirls around like a whirlpool and the drop into it is about fifteen feet. If you missed your footing and went in you could easily be knocked out and drown.'

We went forward cautiously. The murmur swelled to a roar, but fog and darkness alter your perceptions and it was hard to judge how close we were. Harry and Young Andrew halted suddenly, and the rest of us came up beside them, Delphi picking up Fenny in case he attempted to leap over the edge. The earth thinned to rock and a chasm opened at our feet, a roughly circular pit perhaps ten yards across at the widest point. Foam gleamed on the fall that poured down from above; the torch beams glanced along the steep sides enclosing the pool. Below, the water seethed and bubbled, spilling over another, shorter fall through an opening in the rocks down to the loch. Crawling plants trailed over the lip of the ravine; a stunted shrub clung to the further edge, root filaments webbing the rock face like a wispy growth of beard. My torchlight skittered downwards and arced along the rim of the pool. At one point the rock didn't drop sheer into the water – perhaps the level was low – and there was an exposed sliver of earth or stone, a snarl of tangled stems. And something else, something white, hooked on the claws of the plant.

A shoe.

To be exact, a white canvas trainer. It was impossible to be certain in the torch-glimmer, but it didn't look as if it had been there long. Bits of it were still clean enough to gleam in the probing light.

Harry said: ‘Shit.'

‘Has anyone called the police yet?' I said, stating the obvious.

‘Yeah,' he said, ‘but the professionals won't come looking till morning. You've got to be a local to risk a search at night.' He added, after a pause: ‘Does anyone know if those hacks wore trainers?'

No one knew.

‘I could climb down and take a look at it,' Ash offered, discarding his jacket, which was padded and bulky.

‘In the dark?' Harry sounded scathing. ‘Don't be idiotic.'

‘It isn't far, and there are plenty of handholds. If a couple of you keep your torches fixed on the rock I can do it. By day, it would be nothing.'

‘It's much too dangerous,' I said.

‘You're crazy.' Delphi.

But he had already handed me the jacket and was making his way round the edge, following the oval of his own torchlight. ‘You can cross above the fall,' Harry said. ‘They've put stepping stones in the stream.'

‘I see them . . .'

The ray of the torch crossed the water in three short bounds, then zigzagged along the far side of the pit, pausing every so often to dart down towards the pool. Right above the shoe it stopped, and went out.

‘Harry . . . Ruth . . . can you focus here?'

We did our best to comply. They were good torches, sending two distorted oblongs of radiance flickering across the rocks, but the shadows played tricks, shrinking into every crevice or stretching out like a spear behind each tiny notch of stone. It was impossible to tell rock-knuckle from twig-finger, or what was solid from what would snap.

‘This is bloody stupid,' Harry said as Ash lowered himself over the edge. ‘For God's sake be careful.'

‘I have a bad feeling about this,' Delphi announced in the language of
Star Wars
.

Young Andrew muttered something in Scots too broad to understand.

I didn't say anything at all. My breath stuck in my chest; I moved the torch beam to instruction, desperate not to let my hand shake. There are some instants in your life when you exist totally in the moment: there is no past, no future, only Now. A Now so powerful that it excludes all thought. The moment when he says ‘I love you' (or ‘It's over'); the peak of orgasm; the zing of fear. The best moments, the worst moments.

This was one of the worst.

Ash moved down the rock with the agility of Legolas, only slower. Much slower. There was a second when his foothold slipped – he seemed to be hanging on by his fingertips – then he retrieved his position and was somehow back on track. Harry said, ‘Fuck.' I breathed again, but not much.

At the bottom Ash turned round carefully, steadying himself against the wall of the ravine. Then he dropped to a crouch and felt his way over stone and plant-tangle, reaching for the shoe. I could see the surge of the water over his ankles, buffeting his legs. As he grabbed the trainer, trying to yank it free – the laces must have been caught – he almost went in.

‘Don't do that!' Delphi begged. ‘
Please
.'

‘It's okay. There's nothing else here, I'm pretty sure.' He was fiddling with the laces, tying them together to loop round his arm.

‘How many shoes did he expect to find?' Delphi said.

‘He means there's no body,' Harry said tersely.

‘Oh . . .'

We trained the torch beams on to the rock face again, and there was a further hideous interlude while Ash climbed back up. He was quicker than on the descent, and didn't slip, but even when he reached the top it was a few seconds before my heart started beating again and normal service was resumed. A sudden lightning-flash of awareness streaked through my brain:
If anything had happened to him . . .

I didn't take it further. Not then, not later. There was too much else to think about, and
further
was a place I wasn't ready to go. But the lightning had flashed, and it wouldn't quite go out.

Guided by Young Andrew, we skirted the pit and crossed the stream (not difficult: it was narrow and the stepping-stones were broad and flat) to join Ash. A torchlit examination of the shoe didn't tell us much, except that it had belonged to a man with size nine feet.

‘Not worn much,' Harry deduced.

‘How do you work that out?' I asked.

‘It doesn't pong.'

Delphi insisted on encouraging Fenny to sniff it. ‘Then he can track down its wearer!' she said brilliantly.

‘The smell might've washed off in the pool,' I said.

‘It's not that wet,' said Ash. ‘The wearer could have gone into the pool, but the shoe didn't. It's only damp from splashback.'

‘Could a body be swept away over the lower fall?' Harry asked Young Andrew.

‘In the winter months maybe, if it wasna froze. But there's no muckle water tae gang over it the noo,' Andrew responded inscrutably.

But Harry had been living at Dunblair for over half a year, and his ear was attuned to the native brogue. ‘Good,' he said. ‘We'll keep going.' And to Delphi: ‘Better get that bloodhound of yours on the trail.'

‘No need to sneer,' Delphi snapped. ‘He's more of a bloodhound than . . . than you are a butler any day.'

‘I wasn't sneering,' Harry said. ‘I have absolute faith in him. Anyway, I'm an extremely good butler. I give satisfaction, as the saying goes, whoever I'm with.'

‘You're a fake,' Delphi said, ignoring my elbow in her ribs. Possibly she couldn't feel it through the layers of Wookie. ‘And if you come up with one more sexual innuendo, I'll – I'll –'

‘What sexual innuendo? Don't tell me you're one of those deluded women who think they're so beautiful every man they meet must be after them. So sorry, Miss Dacres, but your fan mail hasn't exactly been piling up on the doormat—'

‘My fan mail,' Delphi said, her voice rising, ‘is dealt with by my fan club, in London, where my PA – where
several
people – spend
hours
answering it. And I'm
not
deluded, because I'm marrying an incredibly handsome, gorgeous,
rich
young man who adores me and who—'

Who is currently back at the castle watching TV while the rest of us are trekking through the woods in the dark in search of stray journalists.

I didn't say it, Delphi didn't say it. The words hung in the air, unsaid.

Then Delphi walked into a bush.

‘Look where you're going,' Harry said, taking her arm and steering her back on to the path.

‘I think you're part of a criminal plot,' she resumed in a low voice. ‘A butler should be more like Jeeves, or—'

‘Jeeves was a valet.'

‘Or Batman's Alfred—'

‘You can call me Alfred,' Harry said, ‘if it makes you happy.'

I managed to kick Delphi on the shins – in a minute she'd be telling him she'd searched his room – and she subsided, switching her attention to encouraging Fenny.

‘Does HG's property extend much further?' I asked, fishing for a viable change of subject.

‘All round the loch,' Harry replied. ‘He's got about twenty-five thousand acres. It's a big estate.'

‘Do we go on till we bump into the search party coming the other way?'

‘We go on till I can get a signal on my mobile and report finding the shoe,' Harry said. ‘After that, we'll see. We can't scramble about in the woods all night. Still, it really depends on Andy here. What do you think?'

Unnerved by the mantle of responsibility which had settled so suddenly on his shoulders, Young Andrew was silent for some time. ‘I'm clemmed,' he volunteered at last.