***
It seemed to Isaac and Larry as they drove back to London that Hampton’s hatred of Angus Simmons was ill-founded. On a mountain, the wind strong enough to blow you off, the temperature well below zero and getting colder, was not the place to undertake a detailed analysis of how a person should or should not behave. And besides, nothing that had occurred hadn’t been detailed by Angus Simmons after their return to England. The slipping, the hanging from a rope, the tragic fall and the breaking of Hampton’s back – all recorded in detail.
According to Simmons, there had been a tragic set of circumstances, and the decisions made, based on years of climbing together, had been correct. Hampton’s blaming Simmons after the accident and making that invective public led to him becoming ostracised by his mountaineering peers.
If Hampton had a jaundiced view on life, it was clear that his wife, Kate, didn’t. One day after the visit to her husband. Wendy and Larry sat down with her at a restaurant in Knightsbridge. Larry, always ready for a good meal, ordered a steak, and Wendy, more conscious of the calories, ordered fish, the same as Kate Hampton, an attractive woman in her early forties.
‘Mrs Hampton,’ Larry said, ‘thanks for meeting with us.’
‘Please, call me Kate.’
‘Kate,’ Larry said, ‘your husband was a great friend of Angus Simmons.’
‘He was. Did he mention about my having an affair with Angus?’
Wendy was taken aback by the woman bringing up the subject, assuming that she and Larry would have to tease around the subject.
‘He inferred it,’ Larry said. ‘It could be that his current situation may cause him to say things that he doesn’t believe, a need to get a reaction, to be noticed and listened to.’
‘Sympathy, that’s what you mean. When we met, a wonderful man, so alive, full of dynamism, optimistic without equal, and then, that accident. It not only destroyed him, but it destroyed me as well.’
‘You realise that our interest in your husband and your relationship with him is because of Angus Simmons’s death.’
‘I do. Mike and I will resolve our issues, although Angus won’t. He was a good man; someone, my husband, had loved.’
‘Loved?’ Wendy said.
‘As a brother. Two men able to judge each other’s mood, what the other was thinking, an ideal attribute when mountaineering. Mike used to say, “the man’s got my back; I’ve got his”. They had great success up until that incident.
‘I was against them going; too much in one year. They had climbed K2 in the Himalayas, and then they were off to Patagonia. They were pushing the envelope, too many mountains, too much success. We all need a rude awakening at times to give us a sense of reality, but the two of them, lauded from pillar to post, endorsements for this and that, plenty of money, not that Mike ever needed it.’
‘Your husband alluded to that, that he didn’t care for money or assets.’
‘Angus didn’t come from money, not as much as Mike’s anyway. Mike’s parents in the north of England, successful in business, made sure their son could follow his dreams.’
‘We researched it, found that neither he nor Angus used their own money, not if they could, sponsors once that had made their mark, friends in the early days or on a shoestring.’
‘You’ve met Mike, formed an opinion, probably not favourable. Regardless, he never was into showing off, no designer clothes, expensive motor cars, big houses. He could have afforded it all.’
‘Embarrassed?’
‘Of his wealth, yes. Mountaineering, his great passion, is to do with struggle, forcing the body and the mind to tackle extremes. He didn’t want to be a champagne climber.’
‘Did Angus know this?’
‘He did, not that he ever betrayed Mike’s confidence. Mike changed after he came back, and sure, once or twice after he came home, we slept together, but his heart wasn’t in it. He had become depressive, too sorry for himself. After that, he and I went our separate ways, led our own lives. It’s a pretence, but what can I do?’
‘He said you wouldn’t leave on account of the money.’
‘I don’t leave because I’d prefer it to be the way it was, not that he’d believe it.’
‘Since you and he stopped sleeping together, what have you done?’ Larry asked.
‘A person doesn’t live by bread alone; I find myself the occasional man, no emotional involvement. Mike knows, I’m sure he does, but what can I do?’
Wendy understood the dilemma: an aura of all-pervading negativity would eventually suck the life out of any in the immediate vicinity.
‘Angus, one of these men?’
‘Never. I’d meet with him occasionally. Angus was concerned for Mike, always wanted to help, blamed himself for what had happened.’
‘I thought no blame was attached to him.’
‘None was, but you always wonder after the event. A tragedy had occurred; the instinctive reaction is to look for a reason, to justify it, but Angus had done the right thing. Two men trapped in an impossible situation with no ideal solution, only the reality that someone was likely to be injured or killed. It could easily have been Angus, but it wasn’t. I wish Mike would understand, and then he and I could continue as before.’
Chapter 6
The only person who professed genuine hatred of the dead man was Mike Hampton, and he wouldn’t have been capable of taking the shot.
As Homicide’s senior investigating officer, Isaac Cook surfed the internet, checked out the backgrounds of both men, their climbing exploits, the picture of the two of them on the top of Mount Everest, a Union Jack strung from one to the other. The
