Philip Kerr - Esau

‘Will it work, do you think?’ she asked him. ‘Your trap?’

‘Never can tell,’ he said. ‘Best thing you can do with any trap is to try to forget all about it.’ Jameson shrugged. ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’

When she had finished her own soup and eaten a whole chocolate bar without feeling any guilt — something she could never have done back in California — Swift went into the tent where Jutta was sleeping and crept into the empty sleeping bag beside her. Inside the third tent the Sherpas were talking quietly and the pungent smell of their cigarettes and their cha prickled her nostrils. With her head propped on her rucksack and wearing her headlamp, she found her own paperback copy of Little Dorrit and tried to read a few pages before going to sleep. The Marshalsea Bleeding Heart Yard, and the Circumlocution Office were the principal features of a landscape that was very different from the one she inhabited now. She did her best to give herself up to Dickens’s world of prisons, real and metaphysical, and felt her eyes closing...

She sat up with a start, aware that a very loud noise had summoned her from sleep, and found Jutta, similarly disturbed, already lacing up her boots. The echo of the sound still hung above the Machhapuchhare Rognon like a cannon shot.

‘What on earth was that?’ said Swift.

‘It sounded like a bomb going off,’ said Jutta, pulling on her wind-proof jacket. Crawling out of the tent, she immediately took on a pink glow as if she had started to catch fire.

Jutta was looking up at the sky, her russet-coloured face now a pink carnation of wonder.

‘It looks like some kind of distress flare.’

‘Who could be in distress?’ said Swift, following her outside.

A pink flare hung over the Rognon like a shooting star, dyeing the snow the colour of cotton candy. Mac’s own bad-tempered face looked as if he had spent too long on the beach. Or drank too much, which would have been more likely.

‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he said testily.

Miles Jameson was grinning excitedly.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he shouted, his accent suddenly thicker than usual. ‘Christ, we’ve done it. We’ve sodding well done it, man.’

He hugged Mac, and then Jutta and Swift in turn.

‘We’ve caught one. We’ve caught ourselves a yeti.’ He stared up at the sky as if he was witnessing a scarlet epiphany.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Cody, ill-tempered from interrupted sleep. ‘It seems to me we’ve caught everything but a cold on this expedition so far.’

‘Quite sure,’ insisted Jameson. ‘It would have to be something pretty big to set off that rocket. Bigger than a leopard or a wolf, that’s for sure. And I don’t think there are likely to be many yaks at this altitude.’ He laughed and then hugged Cody. ‘Take my word for it. This time we’ve really caught one. We’ve caught a yeti. We’re in the history books, my friend. You’re going to be famous, damn you.’

Hurké Gurung saw a small yellow spot of light on the shelf ahead of him and knew that he had found Jack. He was lying facedown at the bottom of an icy slope that curled away into the darkness like the yellow hat of a Gelugpa monk. He seemed to be unconscious.

Hurké knelt beside his old friend and, noticing the blood on his shoulder, turned him carefully onto his own lap. The pain of being moved and the bright light from the sirdar’s own halogen lamp brought Jack back to consciousness.

‘Hurké Gurung calling Camp One. Come in please. Over.’

‘Go ahead, Hurké,’ said Mac.

‘I’ve found Jack, sahib.’

‘Is he okay?’

‘I think so, yes. Alive, for sure.’

‘Miles thinks he’s caught a snowman,’ said Mac. ‘He’ll want to organize a helicopter to take it down to ABC. If Jack is injured, then we could call in a rescue now. Kill two birds with one stone. Can you advise, over?’

‘ Huncha, huncha. Wait a moment, please.’

Hurké took off Jack’s helmet. Groaning and rolling his head from side to side. Jack blinked several times, like someone awakening after a long sleep. The sirdar blinked too, so powerful was the odour coming off his friend’s hair.

‘Jack sahib, how are you, please?’

‘Hurké? Is that you?’

‘Yes, sahib. It is me.’

Seeing that Jack’s drinking water pipe was missing, the sirdar leaned closer and fed his own between Jack’s pale lips.

Jack drank some water, coughed painfully, and then shivered. ‘Cold. Broke some ribs, I think.’

His teeth began to chatter: Inside the resonance of the crevasse, the sirdar thought they sounded like one of the other sahibs typing something on his laptop computer.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here, Hurké, before I freeze to death.’

‘Can you walk, sahib?’

‘Probably.’ He sat up, wincing visibly. ‘Either way it’s too cold not to. My fingertips have gone hard. Frostnip, I’d say. Couple of stops short of frostbite. But don’t worry, it won’t stop me. Here, give me a hand up.’

The sirdar replaced their helmets and then assisted Jack to stand. The shelf was too narrow for them to go two abreast, and it was plain to see that Jack would have to go unaided. Or be carried on Hurké’s back. The sirdar knew the American well enough to be aware that this second alternative was not worth mentioning. If Jack said he could probably walk, then he could.

‘Mac sahib, this is Hurké. Jack sahib is walking but thinks he has broken ribs. And frostbite very possible also. I think you should call in rescue helicopter now.’

‘That’s good, Hurké. Thanks a lot. Keep us informed of your progress, will you?’

‘ Huncha. ’

Hurké unwrapped a length of rope and tied it around Jack’s waist and then his own, indicating that Jack should go first. That way if he stumbled and fell there would be a better chance of catching him. Jack nodded and turned unsteadily to face the long route back along the shelf. Slowly, painfully, he started to walk.

The team from Camp One was still under a kilometre away from the crevasse when they began to hear the screams and hoots of the trapped creature. Neither Jameson nor Cody had ever encountered animal sounds like these before, and this only made them more certain that they had caught a yeti and not a wolf or another snow leopard. The screams were shrill and prolonged emissions of sound that seemed more expressive of alarm, whereas the hoots, although just as plaintive, were more suggestive of some kind of communication.

‘Jesus,’ said Mac. ‘Sounds like my ex. She used to complain a bit herself.’

‘Hoo-hooo-hoooo-hooooo!’

‘That’s the damnedest sound,’ Cody observed, puffing loudly, as he tried to keep up with the rest of the team. ‘I can’t wait to record and play these noises in conjunction with a vibraliser.’

‘Let’s hope it didn’t injure itself during capture,’ said Swift.

Dawn was breaking by the time they reached the ladder that led up the wall of the ice corridor to the crevasse. A faint orange glow was appearing over the eastern edge of the Sanctuary like some distant conflagration. Nearer to the gigantic mass of mountain, everything was the flat blue-grey colour of a warship.

Jameson taped a Maglite to the barrel of the Zuluarms rifle, which he loaded with a cap and a dart. Next he tied a rope around his waist, handed the end to Tsering and one of the other Sherpas, and started to climb the ladder up the corridor wall.

‘Hoo-hoooo-hoooo-hoooo!’

The series of hoots started at a low pitch and became louder as they became longer. To Swift the animal sounded like a very large owl.

‘If that’s a cry for help,’ said Cody, ‘then it’s just possible another animal might hear it and come to investigate. What I mean to say is that Jack and the sirdar might find themselves followed along that ledge.’