Philip Kerr - Esau

‘So now I start yellin’ away like a bastard, telling this thievin’ shite what I’m going to do to him when I get my hands on him. But just as I’m about to unzip the tent, I suddenly stop like, because I hear something that doesn’t sound anything like a man breathing in and out. It’s something a lot bigger than a man. Know what I mean? Like it’s maybe not a man at all. And at the same time as that happens I get this musky sort of stink in my nostrils. Like an animal, y’know?’

‘I get it,’ said Boyd, interrupting. ‘You’re saying that whatever it was, the smell was abominable, right?’

MacDougall shot Boyd a homicidal look as the other man started to chuckle at his own joke.

‘Aye, maybe that’s right,’ he said through gritted and carious teeth. ‘Anyway, the next minute, whatever the bastard is it takes off. I mean really runs, and on two feet. Fast too. Very fast. Well, now I’m scared. And the guy I’m sharin’ the tent with, he’s heard it too and he’s as feared as I am. But I open the flap anyway and have a wee look out. So then. Whatever it is has vamoosed, right? No tracks, nothin’. It was too rocky, I guess. But the kit—’

Mac shivered visibly.

‘It still gives me the heeby-jeebies thinkin’ about it, even now. The kit, right? The kit is all spread out on the snow, as neatly as if you had laid it out on your bed for an army inspection. And on the rucksacks, wee buckles had been opened. Not broken or chewed or anything, mind. In fact there’s nothin’ damaged at all. But the buckles have just been unfastened. No animal could have done it. Except maybe some kind of ape or monkey. Nothin’ with claws anyway. This was a job for fingers.’

Mac shook his head and stuck his small hand inside the pocket of his fleece.

‘I took a picture of the scene, just as I found it. Come to think of it, probably a whole roll of film. But this one was the best. For obvious reasons I’ve been keeping it on me since I came on this bloody tour.’

Swift had already seen Mac’s picture. Like his story it would appear in the book she was planning to write about the yeti. Even if they didn’t actually find a living specimen, the skull had given her more than enough material to make some informed guesses.

Mac fixed Boyd with an accusing stare, and handed him the photograph as if daring the other man to contradict him now.

‘A picture, mind? Not a hallucination. Not high-altitude deterioration. Not a Hammer horror movie. A bloody photograph.’

Mac jabbed a finger at the photograph Boyd was holding, his pale face reddening as if someone had plugged him into the Semath Johnson-Mathey fuel cell.

‘You tell me what kind of hallucination could have laid out my kit like that, pal? You just tell me that.’

Another piece of ice hit the clamshell, making everyone jump with fright once again.

‘Can I see that picture?’ Jameson asked Boyd when he had looked at it for a few moments.

‘Perhaps a langur monkey,’ said Boyd, handing him the photo.

‘Langur monkey, my ass,’ snarled Mac. ‘This was a big animal.’

‘It was you yourself who said that it could have been a monkey,’ argued Boyd. ‘And by your own admission you never actually saw it, so you can’t be sure that it was a big animal any more than a small one.’

‘I believe you, Mac,’ said Jameson, clapping the Scotsman on the back. ‘I’ve never heard of a langur that was more than a meter high.’

‘Me neither,’ echoed Cody.

‘Nor for that matter have I heard of one that strayed very far from the forest. A langur up a mountain that high would be easy meat for a snow leopard.’

For some of those who were gathered under the clamshell, Jameson’s Zimbabwean accent, which sounded to an untrained ear exactly like a South African accent, was sometimes so strong that they had to strain hard to understand what he was saying. Swift thought it was another reason he and Mac seemed to get along so well. Mac’s accent was equally strong and, on occasion, equally unintelligible. Their close friendship was as ineffable as it was hard to understand.

‘You’re Scotch, aren’t you, Mac?’ said Boyd.

‘The word is Scottish,’ he snarled. ‘Scotch is something you drink, you daft Yank so-and-so.’

‘Good point,’ said Boyd, refilling Mac’s glass and then his own. ‘I was just wondering if you also happened to believe in the Loch Ness monster.’

‘Not everyone from Scotland believes in the Loch Ness monster any more than all Yanks believe in Santa Claus.’

Mac snatched a packet of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and lit one with an angry snap of his lighter.

Boyd raised his hands peaceably.

‘Hey, what the hell do I know? Me, I don’t even believe in evolution. If you ask me, it’s all there in the Bible.’

‘The Bible?’ Mac laughed harshly. ‘The Loch Ness monster and the yeti look bloody ordinary compared to what’s in the bloody Bible. Christ, I’ve read kids’ comics that seemed more probable than the Bible.’

‘You don’t believe in evolution?’ Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s a strange thing for a geologist to say.’

‘Recent research into the age of the earth has produced evidence that our planet may be a lot younger than the Darwinists have argued,’ said Boyd. ‘Perhaps as young as 175,000 years. Many geologists, myself included, believe that only a catastrophist model of development can account for the way the earth is now. And that many of the important assumptions on which Darwinism rests may be wrong.’

‘Darwin has been killed dozens of times,’ smiled Swift. ‘And yet still he refuses to lie down and be buried. With views like yours, Jon, I’m not surprised you chose to become a climatologist.’

‘As it happens you’re right,’ he said. ‘Except that I didn’t exactly choose to become a climatologist. I was kind of forced into it. Because of the perceived heresy of my geological views. In my opinion, contemporary Darwinists are no less intolerant than the Spanish Inquisition.’

Byron Cody cleared his throat in an effort to head off disagreement.

‘Perhaps, under the circumstances,’ he said, nodding his head and grinning, ‘it would be best if we left this discussion for another time?’

Cody kept on nodding his head and grinning affably. It seemed a suitably simian kind of behaviour for the Berkeley primatologist.

Swift looked around the clamshell at the faces of her team. Cody was right. Morale would not be well served if they had some kind of argument now, albeit a scientific one. Perhaps, she thought, as the person most responsible for bringing everyone here, I ought to say something, formally, to them all.

‘Okay, let me tell you why I think our expedition stands a reasonable chance of proving that the yeti exists, where others have failed, most notably the British expedition sponsored by the Daily Mail in 1953. They chose the Sherpa district of Sola Khumbu in northeastern Nepal, to make their search.’

‘It’s near Everest,’ said Jack. ‘Rough country.’

‘This isn’t exactly the Hamptons,’ said Lincoln Warner as the wind reached a new crescendo.

‘No, that’s true,’ said Swift. ‘But I believe they were unsuccessful for a number of reasons, not the least of these being that this was over forty years ago, and the Himalayas were more of a mystery than they are today. We’re much better equipped to find the creature than they were back in 1953.’

‘And how,’ murmured Jack.

‘I also think that some of those other expeditions must have failed because they came at the wrong time of year. Remember, this is most likely a very shy animal. Probably much more shy than a giant panda or a mountain gorilla.’

‘A gorilla,’ said Cody, ‘will go a long way to avoid making contact with human beings.’