Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

‘Are you sure?’ said Clémence.

The old man nodded. ‘He’s bound to go down not up. We should have a few minutes before he has checked the house and realized we skipped out the back.’

So they clambered uphill, along the side of the stream. At one point they heard Jerry call Clémence’s name again.

After fifteen minutes they were coming to the edge of the wood, and the old man was getting tired.

‘What now?’ said Clémence.

‘Is he following us?’

They both sat still, although the old man’s panting made it difficult for him to hear much.

‘Can’t hear him,’ said Clémence. ‘We could hide here until dark.’

‘And then what?’ said the old man.

‘Go back to Culzie? Ring the police? Get my car?’

‘He’ll be expecting that,’ said the old man. ‘Where are the keys?’

‘I’ve got them,’ said Clémence.

‘Well he’ll disable the car. Let down the tyres or something. And he’ll probably cut the telephone wires.’

‘Livvie will be furious,’ said Clémence.

‘Livvie?’

‘Friend at uni. It’s her car. Wait a moment! Let me try my phone.’

‘Your phone?’

‘Mobile phone. I grabbed it when we left the cottage. There was no coverage there, but there might be up here.’

She rummaged in her coat pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. The old man realized he knew what it was. How? He didn’t think he had ever owned one, but friends had, people he knew. He saw an image of a middle-aged woman outside a shop in Mundaring talking on one. Who was she? How did he know it was Mundaring? When would his brain start working properly?

Clémence jabbed a few buttons and swore. ‘The stupid phone is out of battery.’ She looked around the desolate moorland above them. ‘Who am I kidding? There’s no chance of reception up here anyway.’

From somewhere down below they heard the sound of breaking glass.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Clémence.

‘Don’t know. But that probably comes from the cottage.’

‘Or Livvie’s car.’ Clémence stuffed the phone back in her pocket. ‘So what can we do?’ she said. ‘There’s only one way out of Wyvis. Along the track by the loch to the entrance of the estate at the lodge. He’ll be watching it.’

She was right. ‘It’s at least three miles from here to the lodge. It would take us over an hour.’

‘What do you think he will do next?’ Clémence asked. ‘I can’t see him.’

‘He could wait for us at the cottage. Or hide by the side of the track. Or he might go back to his own cottage to get his car.’

‘I’m scared,’ said Clémence.

The old man looked at the young woman who was his granddaughter. She looked scared. So she should be.

‘So what do we do, Alastair?’

He thought through the options. They could hide. If it was summer, that would have been the best bet; Jerry would never find them unless he was an expert tracker, which seemed unlikely. But in March, a cold night on the mountain might kill them. Or kill him. Clémence would probably be fine, with her youth, her health and that little layer of fat she carried. He was skin, bones and bad circulation. He remembered — how did he remember? — those news stories over the years about badly prepared walkers dying of hypothermia in the Scottish mountains. Or on Snowdon. And they were under eighty.

There was another possibility.

‘We could go that way.’ The old man pointed to the mountain above them. ‘Jerry would never expect that.’

‘Are you crazy?’ said Clémence.

‘Remember the walk described by Angus in the book? They went up to the top of Ben Wyvis and saw a road on the other side. Close by.’

‘Yes, but that took them all day. It’s going to be dark in an hour or two. And it’s a big mountain.’

‘We don’t go over it, we go around the side. Look.’

They both looked up at the rough moorland above them. To the right of the massive dome that was Ben Wyvis, a path snaked up a shallow valley, perhaps the ‘stalker’s path’ mentioned in the book, and disappeared around the corner of a crag. Although the summit of the mountain was still covered in snow, the path seemed clear.

‘That crag is about a mile and a half, two miles away,’ the old man continued. ‘We could get there in an hour; it will still be light. And once we are going downhill on the other side we will be OK if it gets dark. We just follow the path. Eventually we’ll get to that road — the Ullapool road. Then we flag down a car.’

‘Are you sure you can make it?’ Clémence said.

It would be tough. But the old man was determined. And he didn’t want to be shot by Jerry Ranger. More to the point, he didn’t want Clémence to be shot. He would do anything to avoid that, push himself to the absolute limit of his endurance if he had to.

‘I might be an old bastard, but I’m a fit old bastard.’

Clémence looked again at the mountain, and then at the old man. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But if we are going to do it, we had better get a move on before it gets dark. Let’s go.’

Jerry scrambled down the gully, as fast as he could. He rounded a rocky outcrop and the loch opened up before him.

He paused and dug out his field glasses. He scanned the woods beneath him and what he could see of the track. No sign of them.

After searching the cottage he was sure that Alastair Cunningham and the young woman had sneaked out of the back door. The gully had seemed like the most logical route for them to follow. But now he wasn’t so certain. Maybe they had hidden before doubling back to get in Clémence’s car. If they had done that he had lost them for good.

Cursing to himself, he turned and climbed up the bank out of the gulley and back up the slope towards the cottage, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. In less than two minutes he broke out into the clearing. The car was still there, and the cottage seemed quiet.

He had to disable the car. He remembered from TV that there was something you could remove from a car engine to disable it. What was it? He knew nothing about car engines. The fan belt? Spark plugs? Alternator?

He stared at the hood of the Clio, and fumbled around. There didn’t seem to be a way of opening it outside the car. Where were the keys? In the house? Or did the girl have them with her?

He swung the rifle off his shoulder and smashed the window of the car on the driver’s side. He unlocked the door and groped for a lever to pop open the hood. He found it and stared at the engine. He yanked a few wires and then started pounding it with the butt of his rifle. Some things cracked, some things twisted. Then he crouched down and let the air out of all the tyres. He thought of shooting them, but a rifle shot would echo around the valley and might alert Trevor MacInnes. The last thing he wanted was the stalker to start driving around looking for poachers. He needed him tucked up inside his cosy lodge with a glass of whisky watching the TV.

So where the hell were they?

You couldn’t see anything very clearly from outside the cottage because of the trees. The view would be better from the upstairs windows. Jerry ran into the cottage and up the stairs. The front bedroom had a good view of the loch. He quickly scanned the track and couldn’t see anything. He pulled out his binoculars and started a more methodical sweep.

No, nothing.

But there were lots of blind spots, stretches of track which were out of the line of sight of the bedroom window.

Maybe they had gone the other way, up to the head of the loch and the big house. That was empty and there were plenty of places to hide and shelter in there. He would have to check for signs of a break-in and search the house and grounds, and the outhouses.