‘I’m no’ wantin’ your dug!’
Murray wasn’t playing around, however. He was shouting down the line. ‘Nell’s slipped her lead and raced off up the boulder pass. I couldn’t keep up. I think she’s half whippet after all!’
Some of Finlay’s rescuer instincts kicked in. ‘And where are you?’
‘I don’t know, somewhere up past your cruive and in between a rocky, thin bit?’
‘A rocky, thin bit? Are you meaning the Gillie Fell walls? Did you pass through a wide crevasse onto the upper trail?’
There was silence. Of course, the townie had no idea what any of that meant. ‘What can you see?’ Finlay yelled.
‘Just… cloud.’
‘Start making your way down.’ Finlay was already heading in Murray’s direction, only a matter of thirty minutes downhill then west up the fell trail. If indeed that’s where he was.
‘But what about Nell? I have to find her, it’s freezing up here!’
Finlay could already hear Murray’s teeth chittering.
‘She’s covered in fur and, from the looks of her, she’ll come down herself when she smells the town cookin’ their dinners.’
This clearly didn’t quell Murray’s panic. ‘No, I think I’ll look for her a bit longer. Nell!Nell!’
Pulling the phone from his ear, Finlay felt his nervous system shift gears from fraught to frantic.
‘I’m telling you, Murray McIntyre, to retrace your steps andget back down.’
Finlay moved swiftly. He’d always been nimble like a mountain buck, and he was now deftly covering the distance between his hiding place (what a bloody stupid thing to do, he berated himself,hiding from a man and his dog!) and Murray’s location. Or at least, the place hehopedMurray might be, given the fool’s scant description of his route.
He muttered all the way, thinking how, when he reached him, Murray wouldn’t just be on the receiving end of a safety leaflet and a lecture; this fellow was getting a clip around the ear and roared out for endangering himself, coming up here dressed in stupid white town gear,andbothering wildlife with that out-of-control mutt of his.
Before that could happen, he’d have to locate him.
As Finlay descended, expecting to come out of the clouds at any moment, consulting his watch altimeter, he swallowed a hard gulp. He’d come down a good hundred yards and the hill was still engulfed in white fog, and not only that, but freezing, sun-glaring fog too, the likes of which every hillwalker should fear for their lives in.
He knew the drill for when this happened.Stop in a sheltered place. Report your location to your contact down on the ground. Bivvy up, stove on, sleeping bag if you have one, and sit it out safely.Because Murray, always underprepared and flighty, wasn’t equipped to doanyof that, Finlay wasn’t wasting any time.
‘Murray!’ he yelled, marching on, leaving behind the ice-scoured rock underfoot and hitting slippery, grassy earth, thin over smoothed rock, knowing that ridiculous man would be well out of his hearing if he really was up in Gillie Fell, but still responding to the deep need within him to yell his name anyway.
‘Murray!’
He heard a loud bark somewhere way up behind him where the white was thickest, its echo dampened by the wet air.
‘Dammit!’
He had his radio in his hands and the call connected in seconds.
‘Scramble A-Team from Cairn Dhu station. There’s one man off the paths and in cloud somewhere near Gillie Fell, possibly. Visibility for me is at two metres. Over.’
‘A-Team preparing to move out, Finlay. We’ll just need the go-ahead from mountain rescue re visibility,’ came Jemmy’s crackling reply. ‘I’ve no sign of you on our GPS, by the way. Have you yer tracker on? Over.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ said Finlay, still walking fast, consulting his compass in the haze of the low morning sun at his back which shone diffuse through the cloud, turning the fog into a glaring cottonwool soup.
However, walking while hurriedly attempting to stow away his compass in his backpack, and with his thick gloves on, combined with the difficulty of keeping hold of his radio and his mobile phone, proved too much at once and before he knew it, Finlay’s phone had dropped to the rocks at his feet. He lunged for it as it tumbled over wet ground, then without knowing how, his boots were suddenly out from under him, his right shoulder hitting the rough terrain, his face in damp grass, a glove somehow gone, his hand stung on something and with grit in his teeth.
He was sliding downhill, something hideous crunching at his collarbone when he tried to stop himself. Ten or fifteen feet of ground covered in a downward slide, he estimated, still unable to stop himself, and then suddenly his legs were unsupported by the earth, and now his back too.
Out over a precipice he went, and no matter how he clawed with his fingernails he couldn’t prevent himself going over the drop and into the air, cascading into white nothingness, bracing himself for a hard landing he didn’t know where.
