His body vibrated with shivers he couldn’t control.
Bloom, his mother had written. He was supposed to bloom and live a long life on earth, and yet here he was, willingly giving himself to the cold ground. While he still had air in his lungs he should at least try to shout, but when he opened his mouth, he found only one word would do.
‘Murray!’
The pain in his shoulder bit hard with the effort, and the white blanket over the range absorbed the sound as soon as it formed, yet he called on, into the fog.
‘Murray!I’m here!’
34
‘There has to be something more you can do!’ Roz begged, while her husband held her by her shoulders. ‘Heat detection cameras? Rescue dogs?’
Jemmy opened his mouth to speak but Kirsten Holmberg, the chief mountain rescue officer for the area, answered in her Scottish-Scandi accent. ‘We can’t launch the helicopter in zero visibility. Likewise, a hill party wouldn’t be able to see the ground in front of them. We have to wait until it starts to clear.’
Everyone assembled at the mountain rescue office (little more than an equipment store and comms room at the back of the police station) looked to the window where, beyond, there was nothing but white.
‘And how long’s that going to be?’ asked McIntyre, his voice cracking. ‘It’s been two hours since Murray rang us to say he was stranded up there.’
‘Weather reports say at least another six hours, less if the winds pick up and move the cloud, but it’s as still as unstirred Scotch broth out there.’ This was Jemmy, all in mountain ranger green, trying to keep a lid on his worst fears. ‘Soon as it thins, we’ll have every unit up there searching.’
The call had gone out to all rescue units across the region to be on standby for a Cairn Dhu recovery mission, but half of them had reported their own stranded walkers hunkered down somewhere up in the clouds, and who knew how many of them were getting into difficulties and would need carrying down or airlifting out of their positions when the weather allowed?
‘We’ll do everything we can,’ Kirsten said, standing over the map across the office tabletop. ‘Finlay Morlich reported Murray was between the rocks of Gillie Fell at precisely eleven zero one this morning.’
‘Aye, that’s where Murraythoughthe might be when he phoned us too, but…’ Roz hesitated, not wanting to criticise her son’s geography skills, ‘but he isn’t all that familiar with the mountain.’
‘But he did say he’d been walking towards Finlay’s cruive when the fog swallowed him and the dog ran off?’ Kirsten said, pinpointing the little cottage. ‘That means that, even if he’s continued to attempt to travel on foot, he can’t be anywhere outside of this perimeter.’ She drew a reassuringly small circle on the map with her finger.
‘I think he has the good sense to stay still and await rescue,’ put in Jamie Beaton, the local police officer who’d come in early for his shift as soon as he’d heard about the missing men.
Roz and McIntyre exchanged glances.
‘Not necessarily,’ said McIntyre, blanching.
‘There’s a good chance he’d keep going, trying to find Nell,’ Roz said, ready to weep.
‘He doesn’t know Finlay is now considered lost on the mountain, right?’ asked Jamie.
‘I imagine he’d have tried phoning him again, after he spoke with me, but…’ Roz shrugged, ‘did he get through? We don’t know.’
‘Could he have realised, in the same way we’ve lost touch with him, that Finlay could be in danger, and put two and two together? Could he have tried to go looking for him, as well as looking for the dog?’
‘That’s an unknown,’ Kirsten concluded coolly. ‘Let’s work with what we do know, yes? Two men, one a skilled mountain ranger, probably dressed for the weather, who could, if required, navigate the mountain even in lower visibility…’
‘If he isn’t injured,’ Jemmy put in, his face sickly green. ‘And now he’s out of communication, making no traceable signals.’
‘And there’s one man, dressed in…’ Kirsten paused to check her notes, ‘white casualwear, possibly a cream cashmere jumper, with zero survival experience and also now with no signal from his phone.’
Roz threw a hand to her mouth to stifle the sob. McIntyre crumpled around her in a clinging hug. ‘They’ll be all right,’ he told his wife. ‘It’s just a wee spot o’ fog.’
Now it was Kirsten and Jemmy’s turn to exchange doubtful glances, before the whole lot of them fixed their eyes on the slowly shifting candyfloss white beyond the pane.
Kirsten lifted the radio to her lips. ‘This is Cairn Dhu mountain rescue centre. Over. Do you read us, Ranger Morlich? Over.’
Nothing but a static buzz came over the open channel.
McIntyre clung to his wife all the tighter.
