I know Billy will know all about Mr Lennox. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘God bless you, hen, mind how you go.’
And I trot away.
A team of six of us set out to walk to Lorna’s last known point, the point where she fell to her death.
An hour and ten minutes later. I am running, thinking that Lorna, marathon fit with all that muscle memory, could have run here from bloody anywhere, no matter what state she was in. She was tough.
The first part is almost a clamber up a few rocks, and it’s easy to see where Lorna had come down. I have the camera fixed to my hat, a small flat torch clipped to my waist and two big clunking brutes of men behind me. I try to find a rhythm, ignoring the discomfort of the guy behind me trying to talk down his radio, his lack of breath giving his speech a staccato arrhythmia. My instructions were to go and to keep going, so I ignore him and push on. From the point where she fell, the natural path is upwards. She would have run down this gully, not realising she was being funnelled into the landslide and the sheer drop to the road below. Half a mile north or south she would have had an ungainly clamber down, but not here. Because of the heather I look down as I run and the torch finds the footprint before my eyes register it. A crescent moon of toes embedded in the mud on the bank of a stream that gurgles loudly in protest at all the rainwater pouring into it. So Lorna jumped it here coming the opposite way, this was her take-off point. The torch finds her landing footprint just beside my own take-off one. One of the cops takes a photograph of them, they look so slight, so inconsequential – just small imprints of a bare sole and toes. I am on the right track. So where she ran up, I run down. I feel she’s talking to me, guiding me.
I look behind me along the grey outline of the tops against the dark sky, and see a gap. She must have seen it too, must have thought that was her way down on to the road, her way to safety and sanctuary. I slow my pace and move on, searching for any signs that she passed this way, then quicken my pace when I realize I’m on a hillwalkers’ path. If she found it she would stay on it, conserving her energy. She would have had the gap in sight and she would move towards it just as I am moving away from it. I run on, heading north, not watching where I am going but running faster as I gain confidence that this path will meet a track of some kind and spark a chain of evidence that Billy is hopeful of.
Suddenly I am airborne, there is a pain in my ankle and the torch catches a sky full of rain and clouds, then grass, then mud. I fall straight into the soaking, spongy earth which does its best to swallow me up. The ground beneath me is giving way, and I stumble into a roll. The landslide flashes in my mind and I grip on to a clump of earth that yields and tumbles until it and I both come to a halt.
I hear one of the cops behind me say
Fuck,
the other say
Oh my God
,
then one of them starts to retch and a terrible smell floats to my nostrils. The smell of dead flesh. I think I have tripped over a dead sheep. I lie there looking at the sky, at the huge dark clouds chasing each other, shape shifting the landscape, some so low I think they are snatching at my feet. The footpath has gone, the gap in the hills has gone, I have no idea where I am. The landscape has lied to me as it lied to Lorna.
The beam of light from the cop’s torch bobs around me and I raise my head to examine my ankle which feels both hot and numb. I look around me, frowning as the rain and wind sting my eyes. The cop calls my name, nods to me then beams his torch to the ground where my hand is, where the remains of another hand lies in disturbed earth, its fingers entwined in mine.
The arc lights of the police team cast bright beams of white, catching the dance of the summer heather rippled by the wind. The crime scene officers are silent phantoms, no point in talking when the wind cuts the breath
‘God bless you, hen, mind how you go.’
And I trot away.
A team of six of us set out to walk to Lorna’s last known point, the point where she fell to her death.
An hour and ten minutes later. I am running, thinking that Lorna, marathon fit with all that muscle memory, could have run here from bloody anywhere, no matter what state she was in. She was tough.
The first part is almost a clamber up a few rocks, and it’s easy to see where Lorna had come down. I have the camera fixed to my hat, a small flat torch clipped to my waist and two big clunking brutes of men behind me. I try to find a rhythm, ignoring the discomfort of the guy behind me trying to talk down his radio, his lack of breath giving his speech a staccato arrhythmia. My instructions were to go and to keep going, so I ignore him and push on. From the point where she fell, the natural path is upwards. She would have run down this gully, not realising she was being funnelled into the landslide and the sheer drop to the road below. Half a mile north or south she would have had an ungainly clamber down, but not here. Because of the heather I look down as I run and the torch finds the footprint before my eyes register it. A crescent moon of toes embedded in the mud on the bank of a stream that gurgles loudly in protest at all the rainwater pouring into it. So Lorna jumped it here coming the opposite way, this was her take-off point. The torch finds her landing footprint just beside my own take-off one. One of the cops takes a photograph of them, they look so slight, so inconsequential – just small imprints of a bare sole and toes. I am on the right track. So where she ran up, I run down. I feel she’s talking to me, guiding me.
I look behind me along the grey outline of the tops against the dark sky, and see a gap. She must have seen it too, must have thought that was her way down on to the road, her way to safety and sanctuary. I slow my pace and move on, searching for any signs that she passed this way, then quicken my pace when I realize I’m on a hillwalkers’ path. If she found it she would stay on it, conserving her energy. She would have had the gap in sight and she would move towards it just as I am moving away from it. I run on, heading north, not watching where I am going but running faster as I gain confidence that this path will meet a track of some kind and spark a chain of evidence that Billy is hopeful of.
Suddenly I am airborne, there is a pain in my ankle and the torch catches a sky full of rain and clouds, then grass, then mud. I fall straight into the soaking, spongy earth which does its best to swallow me up. The ground beneath me is giving way, and I stumble into a roll. The landslide flashes in my mind and I grip on to a clump of earth that yields and tumbles until it and I both come to a halt.
I hear one of the cops behind me say
Fuck,
the other say
Oh my God
,
then one of them starts to retch and a terrible smell floats to my nostrils. The smell of dead flesh. I think I have tripped over a dead sheep. I lie there looking at the sky, at the huge dark clouds chasing each other, shape shifting the landscape, some so low I think they are snatching at my feet. The footpath has gone, the gap in the hills has gone, I have no idea where I am. The landscape has lied to me as it lied to Lorna.
The beam of light from the cop’s torch bobs around me and I raise my head to examine my ankle which feels both hot and numb. I look around me, frowning as the rain and wind sting my eyes. The cop calls my name, nods to me then beams his torch to the ground where my hand is, where the remains of another hand lies in disturbed earth, its fingers entwined in mine.
The arc lights of the police team cast bright beams of white, catching the dance of the summer heather rippled by the wind. The crime scene officers are silent phantoms, no point in talking when the wind cuts the breath
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