Over the Edge (26 page)

‘Dave?’ I said. ‘Oh, its his turn to mind the shop. I should have brought some carrots, shouldn’t I?’

‘That’s OK.’ she replied. ‘They’re cheap enough
at the moment. I’ll sell you some Christmas cards, though. I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.’ She led me into the kitchen and beckoned for me to sit down. As before, she put the kettle on and spooned coffee into mugs without asking if I wanted one.

‘DI Priest,’ I reminded her, ‘but Charlie will do.’ We talked about the animals enjoying the sunshine and she told me that they’d just taken in a python that some youth in Hull had kept in his bedroom until it gave him a near-death experience.

‘I can’t keep it,’ she said, ‘but we’ll find a home for it in a zoo somewhere.’

‘Do you ever turn anything away?’

‘Not so far, but these days…It’s weird what some people keep as pets. I don’t suppose you want a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, do you?’

‘No thanks,’ I replied, ‘unless it’s cut up and jointed.’ She placed a mug of coffee in front of me and pulled out a chair. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’

She gave me a big smile. ‘Only on Fridays. No milk, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’ There was something about that kitchen, with the Aga gently clicking and hissing against the wall and the sun casting patches of brightness on all the surfaces. My eyes were heavy and I remembered that I’d had a sleepless night. The paperwork was still on the table, untouched, but
now there was a tiny blue vase containing pansies next to it, and cyclamen were blooming in pots on the windowsill. I took a sip of coffee and wondered if Gabi had found what most of us are looking for.

‘I’ve seen Chris Quigley,’ I said.

‘Chris? You’ve seen Chris? How is he?’

‘I’m not sure. He was a bit upset.’

‘That sounds like Chris.’

‘Tell me about him, please.’

She looked at the steam rising from her coffee for nearly a minute, as if she were trying to conjure up his image, swirling in the mist, and I remembered him appearing almost out of nowhere when I met him.

‘He’s a strange man,’ she said, eventually. ‘But he’s a gentle soul. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was devastated when Jeremy died. I didn’t realise he was in this country. Where did you see him?’

‘At Nine Standards Rigg, up in Arkengarthdale. Where did you think he was?’

‘In Nepal, or possibly Tibet. He was caught up in the whole mysticism thing. He wanted to join a Buddhist monastery, but I don’t know if he did. I doubt it. Chris wasn’t as single-minded as Jeremy. He’s a butterfly, flitters from one thing to another.’

‘How well did you know him?’

‘Quite well. Then, after the expedition, when he came back, he started coming round more frequently. I think…I think…’

‘What?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Who was it in the Bible who married his brother’s wife? I think Chris thought that because Jerry was dead he and I would automatically become a couple. I had to spell it out to him that I wasn’t looking for anybody else.’

‘But you were seeing Krabbe at the time?’

She looked uncomfortable, picked up a spoon and slowly stirred her coffee.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘It was awkward.’

‘Did you know that Chris blames Krabbe for Jeremy’s death,’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your take on it?’

She shook her head. ‘Tony was ambitious,’ she replied after a pause. ‘He wanted Everest more than anything. Jerry was more happy-go-lucky. He climbed for the fun of it. He wasn’t expected to be in the first summit team, but he proved to be stronger than the others. They’d climbed together before but weren’t friends. If they didn’t make the top it was no big deal to Jerry, but it was everything to Tony.’ She looked down at the table and said, very quietly: ‘Knowing what I know now, I believe he’d have done anything to get to the summit.’

She stood up and walked over to the window. Pedro was outside, hoping for scraps to eat. Gabi pushed the window open and threw him a crust.

I said: ‘Chris told me that Jeremy left a diary.
Do you know anything about that?’

‘Well,’ she began. ‘It’s true that he always kept a diary or journal on all his climbs, so there must have been one.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘I only know what Chris told me. He claims two Austrian climbers took it from Jerry’s body and gave it to him, but he lost it. He reckons that Tony stole it.’

‘Did he tell you what it said?’

‘About the crampons? Yes.’

‘Do you believe it?’

‘Yes, but it could have been accidental. I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that Jerry’s still up there, frozen in the ice, with other climbers passing him by and barely sparing him a glance.’ She’d been standing with her back to the window, facing me, but she turned away and I heard her sobbing. I stood up and offered her a tissue, my other hand in the small of her back. She turned to me, put her arms on my waist and I felt the shudders of grief passing through her body.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and wrapped one arm around her shoulders.

After a moment I made her sit down and I put the kettle on again. Gabi dried her eyes and apologised.

‘It’s me who should be apologising,’ I said. ‘This must be unpleasant for you. I’ve some more questions but I could always come back.’

‘No, Charlie. I’m all right. Honest I am.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘I am.’

‘Chris said that the Austrian climbers took some photographs, for insurance purposes.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you have copies?’

She said she had and went to fetch them. I stepped over to the window where Pedro was still looking in. There was a bunch of celery on the drainer so I broke a stick off, had a bite and passed the remainder out to the donkey.

Gabi came back with a manila envelope. ‘They’re here.’

I looked into the envelope and saw about four ten-by-eight colour prints. I said: ‘Why don’t you go feed the animals for a couple of minutes while I look at these?’ She thought it was a good idea and left.

I spread the prints on the table and stood so that they were in the shadow of my body. When I saw the first one I was glad that Gabi wasn’t looking over my shoulder. It was of the dead man’s face, in close up and full colour. His eyes were closed and his lips were slightly parted. He’d died cold and alone and feeling betrayed, and it showed in his expression. Clods of snow were stuck to his skin and a film of ice covered his features as pitilessly as if he were a rock.

The next one was a general one of his body. It was snowing and out of focus. I thought about the Austrian climber who took the pictures. He’d have to remove his mitts, find the camera and fumble with the controls. And all the time his chances of making the summit, or returning safely, were diminishing. Photo three was the one I wanted. It was a close-up of Jeremy’s legs, taken to give a reason for his predicament. One was twisted, looked broken. He’d died trying to crawl back to camp, up there in the death zone. The left boot was thrust towards the camera, and the front two points of the crampon were missing. No doubt about it. I remembered how prominent, how vicious, they’d looked in the photo that Sonia Thornton loaned me, but I couldn’t see the colour of the fixing straps now because his ankles were caked in snow.

The final shot was entirely different. It was of the Himalayas, the roof of the world, stretching out for what looked like infinity. Hundreds of peaks, many unclimbed and unnamed, all the way to the Karakorams. The left corner of the picture was lost in cloud as a storm moved across, and the mountains in the foreground were shivering in the shadows while the distant ones were bathed in
alpenglow
. It was a view in a million, and you had to brave the death zone to see it. Again, I wondered about the photographer. Had he taken this shot to show where the body lay, or was he trying to tell us
much more than that? Was he saying that this was the last view the dead man saw? That this was what it was all about? Don’t ask me, I’m only a cop.

I put the photos back in the envelope and went outside. Gabi was sitting on a garden seat, rubbing Pedro’s nose.

‘Did you find what you wanted?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Thank you for letting me see them. The crampons look broken, but it wouldn’t stand in a court of law. There’s no overlap of the photos, so the one of the legs couldn’t be proved to be of the same body. It could’ve been faked. It obviously wasn’t, but I doubt if CPS would let it through in a murder case. That’s not what they had in mind when they took the pictures.’

‘Is Chris a suspect?’ she asked.

‘Yes, as much as we have any suspects. Do you think he could have done it?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt it, but somebody did it.’

‘He was at base camp, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. I think he went to pieces. He tried to go up there, into the death zone, to find the body. An American team brought him down.’

‘Can we go inside,’ I said. It might have been a bright day but the wind was from the east and I didn’t have my porridge for breakfast. She followed me in and I closed the door behind her. ‘Sit down, please,’ I said.

I moved the envelope containing the photographs
to one side and looked at her. I’d raked up events that she’d tried to forget, and it showed on her face. The counsellors believe we should face up to our problems and talk about them, but I’m not so sure. Some things are best left undisturbed.

‘What do you know about Krabbe’s business interests?’ I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not much. He spent a lot of effort over there meeting people, looking for products, chasing contracts. I didn’t know anything about it, except for…’ She let the sentence tail off.

‘Except for what, Gabi?’ I prompted.

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Like with the crampons, there’s no proof.’

I picked up my coffee mug, now cold and empty, looked at it and replaced it on the table. ‘I’ll make some more,’ Gabi said, half rising to her feet.

‘No, it’s OK,’ I insisted. ‘I was just fidgeting.’ When she was seated again I asked: ‘Did you ever hear Tony mention a man called Peter Wallenberg?’

She looked thoughtful before saying she’d never heard of him. ‘Who is he?’ she asked.

‘Peter Wallenberg? He’s a businessman in Heckley. He sponsored Krabbe for the Everest expedition, and they have business connections. I went to a charity function that he organised, about a month ago, and Wallenberg’s wife was there, as you might expect. She was wearing a sexy dress that left little to the imagination, with a rather nice
shawl to protect her modesty and keep her shoulders warm. The person I was with asked her about it. The shawl, that is. Apparently it was called a shahtoosh, and they’re very expensive. What can you tell me about shahtoosh, Gabi?’

She sat back, her hands still on the table, and I noticed the missing pinky for the first time. Her face coloured up and her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed. ‘Is it true,’ she asked, ‘about the shahtoosh?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘You tell me what you know.’

It took her a full minute to gather her thoughts. ‘I was working with this film company,’ she began in a very soft voice. ‘It was a dream job. Tony helped me get it, pulled some strings. It was just what I wanted to make me forget Jerry. Not forget him. I’ll never forget him. To help me build my life again without him. We were making a film for TV about the Silk Road through west China and the Changtang region of the Tibetan plateau, into Nepal and then Kashmir. I fell in love with the land; I could understand for the first time what it was that kept drawing Jerry back there. It’s probably due to the altitude and the thinness of the air, but you feel slightly high.’ She smiled at the pun. ‘
Light-headed
, I think that’s a better explanation. You feel slightly drunk, all the time. Well, I did.’

And then the smile fled from her face. ‘We saw
the birds first,’ she said. ‘Dozens of them wheeling in the sky. One of the technicians said: “I wonder what they’ve found?” so we had a drive over.’

‘They were eagles and vultures. Lammergeiers and black vultures. Griffons, too. You could see them thousands of feet up, like little black flies, homing in on the place. They have territories that they patrol, way up high, watching the ground, endlessly circling. Out of the corners of their eyes they can see their neighbour tens of miles away, patrolling his domain. If he suddenly vanishes they turn that way to see what he’s found. In minutes, birds from hundreds of miles around converge on the spot.’

‘And what had they found?’ I asked, although I knew the answer.

‘The ground was black with birds in a feeding frenzy. I should have been thrilled to bits, seeing those great birds for the first time, and so close, but it was frightening. Carcasses were spread all around with these big black monsters tearing and pulling at them. We could see by the horns that they were some sort of mountain goat, but they’d been skinned. Everyone of them had been skinned. We watched these great birds gorging themselves until they were too heavy to fly, reducing the carcasses to skeletons before our eyes. It was sickening. It was obscene.’

‘How many dead goats did you estimate there were?’

‘Between 40 and 50. I found out later that they are called chiru, or Tibetan antelope. They live at about 15,000 feet and have the finest wool in the world. It’s used to make shawls which are considered high-fashion items in America and parts of Europe, even though it’s against the law to possess one. The antelope can’t be farmed. The only way to gather the wool is to kill them. It’s illegal in China, but there’s a ready market in the West for the shawls, which can sell for over
£
10,000. The poachers use high-powered rifles, and kill the animals as they migrate. The females are pregnant, but that makes no difference. They skin them where they fall and smuggle the skins through Tibet or Nepal into Kashmir, where the wool is plucked from them and woven into shawls. What we saw would make four, possibly five, shawls.’

‘So what did you do?’ I asked.

‘I wanted to expose the whole racket. We met up with Tony in Kathmandu, as we’d arranged, and told I him all about it. He tried to persuade me to forget the whole thing. He said that if we caused trouble we wouldn’t get filming or climbing permits; the government was corrupt – they turned a blind eye to the trade; I could jeopardise the contracts he’d negotiated; and so on. Then he said that if we did report it to the authorities, all we would succeed in doing was force the price even higher, and make the trade more lucrative for the
poachers. I’m ashamed to say I fell for that one. I did nothing, held my silence.’