and had taken this further at university by joining the mountaineering club. It had been hard, al the way through, but he had kept his jaw tight and his hands strong in a domestic climbing career which had taken in some of the finest climbs in the Cuillins, the beautiful mountains of the Island of Skye, and in the spectacular, craggy Lake District.
Yet a true phobia is never banished; it is only overcome moment by moment. And so, as the police helicopter swept over the purple heather of the moorland, Martin, in the co-pilot's seat, stil felt a lurching in his stomach as he looked down, and stil fought to master the panic at the back of his brain.
'Okay, John,' he said to the police pilot through his headset, essential equipment given the booming noise within the cockpit from the engine behind them, and the whirring of the rotors above. 'That's the fifth sector on this map covered, and no sign of any recent activity up here, other than bloody sheep. One more to go: bank south please, down towards Longformacus.'
The pilot nodded in confirmation and swung the craft round. They were flying at a height of around three hundred feet, high enough not to be easily identified from the ground, low enough to allow Martin to scan the area beneath with powerful wide-field binoculars. They flew on for ten minutes, sweeping the sector in swathes, east to west, west to east, as if they were mowing it from a great height.
'There's a bothy down to the right,' Martin cal ed out at last. 'Drop us down a bit and let's take a closer look.' The pilot obeyed, dropping the helicopter by around fifty feet and slowing their steady speed still further.
Martin peered through the glasses. The bothy, a stone-built shelter, was in poor repair. At one corner, its slate roof had col apsed. There had once been glass in its single window, but now its panes were smashed, and its door hung by a single hinge. Al around, the grass 112 stood high, and the narrow worn path which led to the door from the heathery pasture was overgrown and barely discernible.
The Chief Superintendent shook his head. 'No,' he called, into his microphone, 'another dud. There's been no-one there for years by the look of it. Pick it up again.'
The pilot flew on as ordered, through one swathe, then another, until finally they were almost over the village of Longformacus, beyond which the character of the land changed. They were to the west of the tiny community when Martin spotted the caravan. 'What's that doing there?' he asked himself.
It was a touring van, stil shiny and new. Yet it was wel away from the roadway, parked on the bank of a small, fast-flowing stream feeding into a small loch, over which they had just flown. There was no car alongside it, but the grass around it was crushed and torn, as if a vehicle had turned and reversed there, recently and frequently.
'Where are we?' Martin muttered again. He looked at his map, tracing their progress with a finger. The loch was marked as the Black Water reservoir, but there was no carriageway shown at al.
'Know what that road is down there?' the detective asked the pilot.
'Either I'm misreading the map, or it doesn't exist.'
'That's the Southern Upland Way, sir, the walkway that crosses the country from the Solway Firth to the East Coast. There's going on for a hundred miles of it. You can manage a car along part of it
… just about.'
'Let's see if we can find out who owns that caravan, then. We came over a farmhouse a couple of miles back. Put me down near there and I'l see if anyone knows.'
The pilot nodded and swung the helicopter around. He found a flat spot in an empty field just over a quarter of a mile from the house and set it down. Martin jumped out, grateful y, and set off across the dry grass. The gravel ed road to the farmhouse ran beside the field, turning through a high-pillared gateway. As the detective slid through a gap in the beech hedge which served as a boundary, a man appeared at the head of the driveway.
'What's up?' he asked, cheerful y. 'Mechanical trouble?' He stood around six feet four, and despite the warmth of the day he was dressed in country clothes: twill trousers, heavy shirt and tweed jacket. But Martin noted his hands before anything else. They were, he thought, bigger than any he had ever seen.
He smiled at the man, shaking his huge right mitt. 'No,' he replied.
'Nothing like that. I'm a policeman, from Edinburgh. We're looking for someone, and we thought that he might just have a hideaway up here on the moors.
'My name's Martin, by the way. Detective Chief Superintendent.'
'Robert Carr,' said the ruddy-faced man. 'I own this land. Thousand 113 bloody acres of it, much of it useless for anything but sheep.'
'Does that extend up there,' he pointed westwards, 'past the reservoir?'
'Yes,' replied Carr, 'and a damn sight further.'
'There's a caravan up there, beside the stream.'
The farmer looked surprised. 'Is there? Stil?'
'You know about it?'
'Yes, but I'd assumed that the fellow would have been gone by now.'
'What fellow?'
Robert Carr turned towards his big grey stone farmhouse, beckoning Martin to fol ow. 'Chap rang the doorbell about a week ago. Said his name was Mr Gilbert. He told me that he was planning to do some walks along the Way, and that he had a caravan as a base. He asked me if he could park it somewhere out of the way.
'He seemed like a decent chap, so I said okay, and gave him directions up the road. Told him he could set up by the stream, and take fresh water from it… just as long as he didn't put anything back in! He offered me cash, but I told him I wasn't that strapped.'
'Have you seen him about much?'
'I haven't seen him at al, not since then. I'd thought he'd moved on.'
Martin looked up at him as they reached the farmhouse's kitchen door. 'Can you describe him for me, this Mr Gilbert?'
Carr ushered him indoors. 'Mary!' he bellowed. 'Tea for two, lass!'
As he led the policeman through to a comfortable study, a small grey woman scurried in the opposite direction, smiling and nodding.
'Housekeeper,' he said. 'I'm a widower.'
He paused. 'Gilbert,'he went on. 'Description. Right. Same height as you, few years older maybe. Clean- shaven, fair hair, though not as fair as yours. Short and very well cut. Slim build, but not skinny, if you know what I mean. Wearing light cotton trousers and a red teeshirt, with a badge saying Reebok or something. Also, wore sports sandals, without socks.'
'What about his accent?' asked the policeman.
For the first time, the farmer looked puzzled. 'Haven't a bloody clue,' he said eventually. 'You know, I don't think he had one.'
'No? You sure? Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh?'
Carr's eyes narrowed, as he tried to hear again the sound of the man's voice. But eventual y he shook his head. 'Sorry. Not Welsh or Irish: that's all I can tel you with any certainty.'
The study door opened, and the housekeeper appeared with tea and biscuits on a tray. She filled two cups and handed one to each of the men before leaving, still without having uttered a word.
Martin declined milk and sugar. Actual y, he disliked strong tea, but was too polite to say so. 'What about his car?' he asked.
'Never saw it,' his host retorted. 'He left it at the foot of the road and walked up the drive. I could just see the top of the caravan over the hedge.'
The tal man beamed. 'So, could he be your quarry, my Mr Gilbert?'
'No idea,' Martin lied. 'But I would like to talk to him.' He smiled across at Carr. 'Can I use your phone? To be on the safe side, I think I'd better call in the Cavalry!'
33
