The Kanchenjunga Manifesto—Chapter Two
A serialised novel of dark deeds and the great outdoors.
If you haven’t already, catch up with Chapter One…
Simon
Stromness Police Station, late afternoon
Detective Chief Inspector Leigh Summers was about my height, fit-looking, probably around my age too. Introductions were made and handshakes exchanged, making me think we probably weren’t regarded as suspects. At least, not for the time being…
“Well,” she said, wasting no time, as we all settled in a rather crowded meeting-room; Dino and Jez present now too, plus the two local officers. “I’ve been looking at your video and I’d think you’d need Hollywood-scale CGI to fake it. Plus DI Tait tells me that we’ve had confirmation from passing ferries that the Old Man of Hoy is no longer standing. Seems there was great consternation on the first one that passed by.”
“Aye,” said Tait. “It’s something people look out for. There’s usually a line of folk on deck, if the weather’s not too bad…”
“They’d get quite a shock, then… but not half the shock you people have had…” She smiled. No lipstick, no obvious make-up. Hair short and neat, pearl studs in her ears the one obvious concession to conventional femininity. Eyes somewhere between green and brown. Perhaps hazel was the word.
Somehow, I seemed to have been elected spokesperson for the four of us. “I think we’re still in shock…”
“I can understand that. Sorry to have to make you relive it, but I’m afraid we have to.”
Again we ran through the sequence, such as it was. Really, most of the story was in the video. Then she asked, “Any of you have any thoughts as to why someone might want to blow up the Old Man of Hoy?”
“It just seems mental to me,” said Dino.
“That’s one possibility,” she said. “Someone who’s seriously disturbed… but a seriously disturbed person with access to explosives and enough knowledge to place them effectively. That’s a worrying scenario in itself. “
“Someone with a grudge against climbers…” suggested Jez.
“Interesting… what makes you say that?”
“Who else really cares about the Old Man of Hoy?”
“Mm, see what you mean. Well, as DI Tait says, it’s something people look out for. Quite a sight, I gather. But it would have special meaning for climbers?”
“I’ve been wanting to climb it for years,” I said. And now I never will…
I wondered briefly, stupidly, if anyone kept records of Last Ascents, as they did for First ones; but DCI Summers wasn’t waiting. “At least—if the timing isn’t purely coincidental—they didn’t have enough of a grudge to blow the thing up when you were actually on it. And right now, it’s the timing that intrigues me. They were obviously in situ and ready to go… did they bring the detonation forward to avoid endangering the four of you? In which case we would at least have someone who apparently would rather not endanger human life. But were they planning to blow it with no eye-witnesses at all or were they waiting for someone to come along? I guess not too many people go that way?”
“A few walkers, a few climbers.”
The young DS raised her hand, eager to speak but waiting for permission. At a nod: “The next ferry to Scrabster would have been due past at about 11.30.”
“Ah…” said Summers. “I think you might have it, DS Watson. If you're wanting to make an impression, a boat full of witnesses would be just the thing. But they had to bring the moment forward before you could start your descent. Well, this is all speculation anyway…”
She looked around. “We’re taking a helicopter in the morning. I’d have liked to go tonight but that wasn’t possible. Do you mind sticking around till then?”
“We're booked on the ferry tomorrow—the same sailing DS Watson mentioned, in fact.”
“Hmmm…” She thought briefly. “Can one of you stay at least?” She seemed to be looking at me. “Then we’ll put you on a flight out of here in the afternoon. What would suit you best? Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh?”
“Glasgow’s a morning flight, ma’am,” said DS Watson. “But there’s also Inverness.”
“Just the one? Okay, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh?”
I looked at the others, thinking about the complications for them of arranging a rendezvous with me somewhere versus driving straight back to Lancaster. “Edinburgh, I think. It’s easy to get a train home from there.” And also thinking, it’s a good job it’s not my car.
And one way or another, we’ll all see the absence again tomorrow…
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Hoy, Thursday morning
Even though I’d seen it collapse, it was still sickening to see nothing but a blocky stump, like a broken tooth, where the Old Man should have been. The breeze was a good deal stronger than yesterday, the sea much rougher, and every now and then a big wave would break right over the base and drench the rock over most of the stump. The newly-exposed rock was a vivid mulberry hue compared to the weathered cliffs, and strangely clean. I guessed the waves had already cleared all the smaller debris.
A few paces away from me, Leigh Summers was peering at the remnant through binoculars, while Tait and Watson were busy with a Canon and long lens on a tripod. To me that tripod hardly looked solid enough to keep the image steady in the buffeting wind—but was it my job to tell them their business?
Leigh Summers lowered the glasses. The breeze ruffled her hair. She looked more relaxed today, I thought, in jeans and a mustard-coloured Rab softshell. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything in the way of forensics down there.”
“The waves pretty much covered the whole thing immediately after,” I pointed out. “Backwash after it collapsed.”
“Aye,” she said, “That’s on your video, too, isn’t it? No, I very much doubt it’d be worth the risk of the descent… how the hell do you get down to that thing anyway?”
Before I could answer, her mobile buzzed. I was left wondering how she got a signal here when none of us had had any luck, as she wandered a few paces away, turning her back against the wind. I heard nothing of the call except one moment when her voice rose: “The Golden what?”
"Can I ask you a couple of things?" she said after the call ended. The others were prowling along the cliff-top for an alternative vantage point, and the pilot was inspecting something near the tail rotor, so we were effectively alone. "Because, as of this moment, you're my on-site climbing expert. It’s not my field, I'm a mountain biker myself."
She clocked my blink of surprise. "What? You didn't expect that?" I floundered for a reply and she smiled. "Don't worry about it, just focus on the matter in hand. First question is, would you have to be a climber to get down there to the base?"
I considered. "Bearing in mind we never actually did the descent, so I'm only going on what the book says, what other people have told me, but it isn't technical. You'd call it scrambling rather than climbing. But it's exposed in parts and they say it's often slippery… And right now it could be unstable too. It felt like an earthquake even up here."
She nodded. "But whoever placed the charges, if not a climber, would at least have to be able to handle themselves on that sort of ground?"
"Well," I said. "Unless they came in by boat."
"Do people do that?"
"I've not heard of climbers doing that, but I guess it would be possible, at least when the sea's calm." I looked down. "Not sure how often that's the case. You need someone with local knowledge."
We both glanced along the cliff-edge to where the local guys were setting up the tripod for a new angle. "I'll ask them in a minute," she said. "But while I've still got you here, tell me more about the Old Man of Hoy… From a climber's point of view, I mean. How significant is—was it?"
"Well," I said, "I've dreamed about it almost since I started climbing."
"Which is how long, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Well, I started when I started at Uni. Shit, that's twenty years ago… Pardon my French," I added belatedly.
"Forget it," she said. "I'm a police officer—and a mountain biker." We shared fleeting smiles; then she was all business again. "Go on."
"Yeah, first year at Uni, someone gave a slide show—and it was slides, back then. Showing my age… I think he was related to someone in the club, but quite a renowned climber, and there were some shots of the Old Man… And it—well, it was just the look of the thing. I guess if you're a climber, if it's in your DNA, you can't see something like that without wanting to climb it. And gradually I found out more about it. Tallest sea-stack in Britain. And there's quite a history. The first ascent was done in 1966 and the following year they did a repeat for TV, you know? It was a pioneering event for Outside Broadcasting as well as for climbing. It drew a massive audience, lots of people who knew nothing about climbing. It was well before I was born, but my Mum remembers it. So I guess at that time the Old Man of Hoy was a household name. It made some of the climbers household names too, especially Chris Bonington and Joe Brown."
She nodded. I guess Bonington, at least, still is a household name.
"Then there was another TV extravaganza in the mid-eighties when Joe Brown came back and climbed it with his daughter. Lot of people saw that too. Found it on YouTube myself… And just a year or two ago Chris Bonington came back and climbed it again. Not bad going for 80-something."
"How hard is it? Was it?"
"Well, the normal route, the one we were going to climb, isn't technically that hard. I guess most regular climbers could climb it, as far as the technicality goes, the actual moves up the rock." I thought about the blind guy who'd done it, but maybe that was too much incidental info. "But it's big, it's remote, it's serious, and you have some awkward abseils to get back down, so all that puts a lot of people off. Plus the time and expense and all that just getting here. So it still commands—commanded—a lot of respect."
"And—not to put words in your mouth—but would it be fair to say it was iconic, among climbers? I know, it's a cliché, but…"
"Well, it's a cliché, but clichés are often true, aren't they?"
"Thanks," she said. "That's all helpful."
#
We had one more brief conversation, back in Stromness, standing by the car that was waiting to take me to the airport.
"Your mobile number," she said. "Is it okay if I keep it on file? Just in case there's anything else I need to ask you? And…"
"And in case this mad bastard strikes again? Or bastards…?"
"Let's hope not, but, yes… Just in case. Because if they do… Well, I was thinking on the chopper coming back. Your mate's comment about somebody having a grudge against climbers… Who knows? All I know is, people who do things like this… They don't tend to think quite the same way as the rest of us.” She smiled. “Mad bastards, like you said.
“So I just wondered, if you didn't mind, whether you'd like to think about where a few other targets might be. I'm sure it's a long shot and I hope it turns out to be a complete waste of your time, but it might be something to think about on your journey?"
"Sure," I said. "You want iconic locations for climbers… In Scotland? Or the whole UK?"
"Well, start with Scotland, but if you feel like extending it south of the border that would be great…"
"I'll give you one right now," I said. "The Inn Pinn."
"The what?"
"You said you're a mountain biker, right? You must have seen that video—what's it called? The Ridge?"
"Oh, yeah—Danny MacAskill."
"That's the guy. Well, you know there's a bit where he climbs up with the bike on his shoulders then holds it over his head at the top? That's the Inn Pinn—the Inaccessible Pinnacle. Although despite the name I’d think a lot more people have climbed it than the Old Man. If someone blew that up, they might provoke even more outrage among climbers."
"Sounds like the kind of thing…" she said. "Well, I'd better let you go, you don't want to miss that flight. I'll text you my number and my personal email if that's okay?"
We shook hands again and she smiled, opened the car door for me. For some reason that smile stuck in my mind as the car pulled away.