Over the Edge

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘That’s what you assume happened, is it?’

  ‘It must be, mustn’t it?’ but he didn’t sound so sure.

  I wanted to hit him with: ‘So how do you explain the tape binding his hands and feet?’ but it was Nigel’s show and it might be expedient to keep that little cookie under wraps for a while longer. Nigel does things patiently and methodically and teases out the answers; I like to jump in and cause confusion and panic and then put the pieces back together. I had the stage, and we’d learnt as much as we’d get, so I decided to go out on a high note.

  I said: ‘You mentioned your wife, Mr Wallenberg. The lovely Selina. Is it true that you met her in a whorehouse in Amsterdam?’

  That did it. The brief jumped up, Wallenberg’s mouth dropped open and the sergeant nearly exploded.

  ‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say,’ one of the briefs protested as soon as the power of speech returned. ‘I demand an apology right now, or this interview is terminated.’

  All eyes fell on me. I held up a placatory hand. ‘I apologise,’ I said, ‘unreservedly. My information is that Mrs Wallenberg, in a previous existence, made a lucrative living administering sexual services to the rich and famous. I am apparently misinformed about Amsterdam, for which I apologise.’

  ‘We’re not standing for this,’ the brief proclaimed. ‘And I’ll be having a word with the chief constable. Let’s go, Mr Wallenberg.’

  They were all on their feet, now. I said: ‘Did you know your wife was having an affair, Mr Wallenberg?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied as they ushered him towards the door. ‘Yes, I did. We have an open relationship.’ He didn’t say: ‘So there,’ but I could feel it in his tone.

  ‘And don’t you mind?’

  ‘No. We go with whom we please. We trust each other. You should try it, sometime.’

  ‘C’mon, Peter,’ the brief urged. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Did you know who it was with, though,’ I shouted at him. ‘Did you know that her bit of rough trade was one of your heavies?’

  It hit him like a double-decker bus travelling downhill back to the depot at the end of the shift. With no brakes. He twisted round and shrugged out of the brief’s grip. ‘What did you say?’ he hissed at me.

  ‘You heard,’ I told him. ‘I said did you know it was one of your semi-house-trained thugs she was having it off with?’

  The briefs put themselves between us and pushed him towards the door. ‘Ignore him, Peter,’ one of them said. ‘He’s winding you up. They’ve nothing to go on so he’s having to resort to desperate measures. Selina’s not like that.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Priest,’ I heard him shout. ‘And a disgrace. I’ve raised half a million for cancer research. What have you ever done, eh? Answer me that. Answer me that.’

  The voices faded down the corridor and Nigel turned to me, a big grin on his face. ‘Well, you fucked that up good and proper, boss,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ was the best I could do.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Appendix 1

  Crash Analysis Report

  Speed at instant of impact: 60 miles per hour (96 kph)

  This equals: 88 feet per second (27 mps)

  Impact + 0.1 second

  Plastic bodywork at front destroyed

  Crumple zones deformed

  Impact + 0.2 second

  Air bags deployed

  Active seatbelts deployed

  Driver and front seat passenger thrown forward against seatbelts

  Front of vehicle crushed

  Engine forced forward through radiator

  Coolant hoses, petrol pipes ruptured

  Windscreen projected out of frame and other glass shatters

  Rear of car projected upwards

  Impact + 0.3 second

  Engine torn from mountings

  Roof buckles inwards

  Vehicle floor buckles upwards

  Driver’s arms and legs strike interior surfaces. Legs broken; internal injuries caused by seatbelts; head injuries against roof

  Similar for front seat passenger

  Fuel tank torn from mountings

  Doors thrown open

  Impact + 0.4 second

  Front wheels, suspension and steering gear forced into cabin space

  Engine forced into cabin space

  Car body stationary

  Occupants at limit of forward travel; begin to rebound. Severe whiplash injuries to neck of driver and of front seat passenger

  Impact + 0.5 second

  Car body rebounds

  Rear of vehicle falls back to ground

  Impact + 1 second

  Vehicle comes to rest

  Occupants fatally injured

  Coolant, petrol and brake fluid released

  Danger of fire

  ‘Have you seen the accident examiner’s report?’ Dave asked as he seated himself in the visitors chair.

  ‘Mmm, I’ve just been looking at it. What’s this other thing in with it?’

  ‘It’s a paper he did for Police that he flashes around at every opportunity. It’s his great crusade for road safety. If we all knew what happened in a crash in gruesome detail we’d drive more responsibly. That’s the theory.’

  ‘Looks a good way to go, if you ask me. One second and you’re dead. Finito.’

  ‘I agree. He reckons Dale Dobson was doing about a ton. There was a dip in the road and then a brow just before where he crashed and he says the car would have taken off at that speed.’

  I pinned the sheets of the report back together and handed them to Dave, saying: ‘Stick them in the file, please.’

  ‘I think Nigel should spin Wallenberg’s place,’ Dave stated.

  ‘I don’t think he’d get a warrant,’ I replied.

  ‘You could get one.’

  ‘I’m flattered, but I doubt it. What would he be looking for?’

  ‘The remains of the rolls of masking tape.’

  ‘Hmm. And what would we be looking for? I presume we’d tag along for a look-see.’

  ‘That pile of sawdust and the other end of the ice axe.’

  ‘I think the tape and the end of the shaft will be miles away by now. Probably in a landfill site.’ I sat back in my chair and thought for a few seconds. ‘There was another car accident,’ I said, eventually.

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Yeah. The one involving Krabbe and Sonia Thornton, back in ‘97. I’ve been thinking about it. Have a word with traffic; see if you can find who covered it. Two celebrities like that; they’ll remember.’

  I stayed behind for an hour, filling in the diary and catching up with report reading. There was one from Jeff Caton saying that the package that Parcel Force had tried to deliver was from a company in India. According to Jeff it contained ‘lots of little animals carved out of that smelly wood,’ and it was clean. I took a Chinese takeaway home and ate it sitting at the kitchen table, listening to The Archers. After I’d washed my plate I rang Rosie and left a greeting on her ansaphone. It was the fortieth anniversary of JFK’s assassination over the weekend, and there were several programmes on TV covering it. I intended watching as many as I could and Dave had promised to tape them. Friday’s was a straightforward documentary outlining the build-up to the president’s visit to Dallas, with a graphic reconstruction of events and much playing of the Zapruder film. There was no conspiracy, I was sure of that. No big conspiracy, that is. There may have been somebody behind it all, encouraging him, but Oswald alone did the deed. There was just one little doubt in my mind: how did he manage to land a job in the book depository just four weeks before the president was due to pass under the sixth floor window? There was something we all agreed on, though: a little bit of each one of us died on that day in Dealey Plaza.

  I was ready for bed when the phone rang. Rosie, I thought, but it was a man’s voice.

  ‘Are you Inspector Priest?’ it asked, barely audible over the background noise. There was a hubbub of conversation overlaid by a str
angled tenor murdering Will you go, lassie, go?

  ‘Who’s calling?’ I replied.

  There was a long silence, and I’d have thought the connection had been broken if it hadn’t been for the background noise. Eventually he said: ‘It’s not important who I am. I read about you in the paper. You’re conducting the enquiry into Tony Krabbe’s murder.’

  ‘That’s right. Do you have some information?’

  ‘I…um, I’m not sure. I might have.’

  ‘Can I have your name, please?’

  ‘No. My name doesn’t matter.’

  ‘OK. So what do you want to tell me?’

  ‘I’m not talking on the phone. I want to see you.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘No, tomorrow.’

  ‘Right. Where are you?’

  ‘I’ll be at Nine Standards Rigg at about one o’clock.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘Nine Standards Rigg.’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’ His voice was soft and hesitant, and Pavarotti in the background wasn’t helping.

  ‘I said Nine Standards Rigg.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s, um, up near Kirkby Stephen.’

  ‘That Nine Standards Rigg. It’s miles away.’

  ‘It’s not that far. Tomorrow, one o’clock.’

  ‘How do I know…?’

  ‘You don’t,’ he said, and put the phone down.

  Tomorrow was Saturday, so I rose early, called in the office to deploy any troops who turned up, and sneaked away. It was over a two-hour drive, right up to the northern-most outpost of the county, and then along roads designed for nothing wider or faster than a horse-drawn hay cart. That, however, doesn’t stop the locals driving their four-by-fours at breakneck speeds. It had occurred that it might be a hoax, or that somebody wanted me out of the way, but if I hadn’t gone I’d have never learnt what it was all about. It might have been dangerous, too, but I doubted it, and a little danger never hurt anyone. What the heck, it was an excuse for a day out, and I needed a day out.

  I stopped in Keld, which is an ancient Viking name meaning place-where-the-ground-is-soggy-and-the-clouds-perpetually-sit-on-the-earth-where-the-people-are-as-morose-as-the-sheep, to check the map, then took it slowly until I reached a turnoff signposted to Ravenseat.

  The last stretch was on an unfenced strip of tarmac laid across the moor like a discarded bootlace for two miles until it ended in a farmyard. There was a stream with an ancient bridge that had been widened in years gone by, but still wasn’t wide enough for modern agricultural vehicles. A ford next to the bridge catered for them. I parked outside the farm, next to a rusting cattle trailer, and took stock.

  We were in a slight depression and it was raining hard, so all I could see in every direction was moor that faded away into the mist. Nothing stirred at the farm, although a newish Landrover was parked outside. I looked at it and wondered about the people who lived there. This was the stuff of gothic novels: remote and isolated; washed by perpetual rains and racked by the mother of all thunderstorms every Halloween.

  I pulled on my boots and full waterproofs and checked the compass. A path was visible, snaking off into the gloom, and in the distance I could see a waymark. I locked the doors and set off. The waymark told me that I was on the Coast-to-Coast path, and a notice nailed to it advised on various routes to take to spread the erosive effects of the thousands of boots whose wearers had chosen to spend two weeks of their lives tramping across the breadth of the land. I pulled up my hood and followed their trail.

  It was three miles to Nine Standards Rigg, and I made it in under an hour, which put me just a few minutes early, as intended. I don’t know how it gets its name, but I was impressed. Just as you begin to worry if you’ve missed it, several tall columns of stones appear in front of you, in a line, but of various sizes. It’s a good path, and you wonder if your eyes are playing tricks as the wind swirls the rain and the Riggs loom in and out of focus. Some are giants, standing as high as three or four men; some are mere striplings and some have collapsed under their own weight. None of them have any cement bonding the stones. They stand there day and night, through all the seasons, sentinels over nothing, their origins lost in antiquity.

  There are more than nine of them, the exact number depending on at what size you start counting. Several upstarts, probably made by energetic school parties, have sprouted between the bigger constructions. One of them was a good representation of a Stone Age throne.

  A man with a beard was sitting in it, looking like something from a Tolkein story, only the banana he was eating casting a discordant note. He looked round as he heard me approach and threw me a friendly wave.

  ‘That looks a good seat,’ I said.

  ‘It is, and most welcome. Are you doing the Coast-to-Coast?’

  He was, and for the next ten minutes he told me all about it. He’d just retired after umpteen years as a schoolteacher, and this was a treat he’d promised himself for years. He was enjoying it immensely and he’d resolved to do other walks of a similar nature, but earlier in the year. This was his new beginning and I almost felt envious.

  Except, I thought, after seven days on the road he’s craving human company. He asked what I did and I admitted to being a cop. This triggered him off about problems he was having with his pension, but I wasn’t listening. I decided that this was one of the most remote places I’d ever been. In every direction there wasn’t a sign of civilisation, just rolling moorland that merged into a monochrome sky.

  I wandered off to the far end of the line and had a pee. When I looked again the man had packed his sack and was hooking it over his shoulders. I gave him a wave as he turned to go. There’s a happy man, I thought.

  I saw the runner when he was only about 300 yards away, heading towards me, head down into the driving rain. He was tall, as tall as me, and even skinnier. He had a headband tying his long hair back, a waterproof top and his legs were enclosed in black Lycra. His trainers were chunky and looked expensive, even at that distance.

  He chugged up the hill, bursts of vapour from his mouth indicating his exertions. I’d walked back to the throne and was sitting on it when he saw me and slowed to a walk. When he was ten yards away he said: ‘Are you Priest?’

  ‘I might be. Who are you?’ He was about 30, I reckoned, and when it came to fitness and fiddles he was in the Stradivarius class. He tilted his head warily, and walked across the front of me in an arc, not coming too near.

  ‘Nobody,’ he replied. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He had a tiny, streamlined rucksack on his back and runnels of water were dribbling down his clothes.

  ‘Sit down,’ I invited, indicating a pile of stones, ‘and tell me what you know.’

  ‘No, I’ll stand. And don’t try to grab me.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of trying to grab you,’ I told him. ‘I give you my word on that. What is it you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘Have you caught Krabbe’s murderer?’

  ‘No. I was hoping you’d tell me who it was.’

  ‘I don’t know. But I can tell you about, um, about Jeremy.’

  ‘Jeremy Quigley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘He was on Everest with Krabbe when he…when he was…when he was k-killed.’ The word killed stuck in his gullet until he spat it out.

  ‘So I understand. What can you tell me about it?’

  ‘There was a notebook and a camera. Jeremy kept a diary. It was found on his body by some Austrian climbers who gave it and the camera to…to…somebody else.’

  Steam was rising from him but he seemed oblivious of the weather. I said: ‘Look, you’re going to catch your death in this. Why don’t we meet at the pub in Keld in say, an hour? Or at my car in Ravenseat?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I’m OK.’

  ‘Fair enough. So what did the diary say, and where is it now?’

  ‘Jeremy wrote it at camp IV on the last day, before they pushed
for the summit. He said that Krabbe had been first to wake and had made a drink for them, which was unusual, but he was eager to go. It was dark, of course, but they had head torches. Jeremy said that Krabbe had put the wrong crampons on. He’d put them on in the tent, and shredded the floor. He was in a hurry to get out and have a look at the Hillary step. He didn’t come back so Jeremy put Krabbe’s crampons on and followed him. That was the last entry.’

  ‘Where’s the diary now?’ I asked.

  ‘Krabbe stole it. Destroyed it.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because it proves he took Jeremy’s crampons. His own were useless. He stole it and destroyed it.’

  ‘What was wrong with his crampons?’

  ‘They were his own make. Krabbe Klaws he called them. They were both wearing them, and climbing Everest was going to be good advertising. They were OK, gripped well, but Krabbe had modified his. He’d cut more teeth into them and drilled some holes, to make them lighter. Mark two, he said they were when he showed us them. But he must have cut too much off them, made them weaker, because the front points broke off. He must have known what was happening. Maybe he saw they were cracked. You couldn’t get up there without points on your crampons. It’s a knife edge, with an 8,000 foot drop on either side.’

  When he showed us them, he’d said. Was that a slip of the tongue? Was my mystery witness there with them, on Everest?

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  ‘There are some photographs,’ he replied. ‘The Austrians took them. That’s what they do, when somebody dies. For the insurance people. They prove what I’m telling you.’

  Great, I thought, except that I wasn’t sure what he was telling me. That Krabbe wasn’t the hero we all thought, but was driven by ambition to the extent that he’d jeopardise – sacrifice – a colleague’s life? ‘Why haven’t you told all this before?’ I asked.

  ‘Because, um, because nobody would listen. I tried to, but they wouldn’t publish it.’