Boom!

11 The bad step

In Skye we stopped at a Co-op for bread, biscuits, lipstick, strawberry jam and Cheddar cheese. Becky took out her mobile and found that she had no reception. We were now officially off the map.

We headed into the hills. There was a village or two. There was a car or two. But mostly there were mountains, grass, lochs, cattle, sheep, rock and more mountains. It looked like the Land That Time Forgot. If you closed your ears to the roar of the Moto Guzzi, you could imagine a brontosaurus lumbering out of a valley between two cloudy peaks.

I thought about the men in the expensive light-grey suits. I thought about Mr Kidd and Mrs Pearce. And I simply couldn’t connect any of them with this place. I began to wonder whether it was all a mistake, whether the map was just a map, a leftover from a holiday spent exploring Scottish castles. I began to wonder whether Charlie really was in Portugal. Or whether something worse had happened.

The light began to fail. I was tired and I wanted to sleep. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not here. Not without seeing Charlie again.

Eventually the road curved off a hill and made its way into the little fishing village of Elgol. Seeing houses on either side of the road, I felt less nervy. A bedroom light here. A flower garden there. It seemed almost normal.

We turned a last corner and Becky brought the bike to a halt on a tiny stone jetty which cut into the water. An old man was standing on the jetty tidying lobster pots and coiling ropes. Beside him, his cocker spaniel was sitting quietly, panting and scratching its ear with a paw.

Becky lifted her helmet and leaned back to speak to me. “That’s the way,” she said, pointing her gloved hand along the coast. “Now, let’s go and find somewhere to camp.”

The sky was purple and orange in the sunset. The mountains were silhouettes, like jagged strips of torn black paper laid against the sky.

“I want to go now,” I said with determination.

“Jimbo, you’re barking mad,” said Becky. “It’s eight miles. It’s a rocky path. It’s getting dark.”

“You saw them in the flat, Becky,” I said. “They’ll be following us. I know they will. We can’t waste any time. We’ve got to help Charlie. I’m going. With you or without you.”

“All right, all right,” she grumped, getting off the bike and helping me to transfer our stuff from the panniers to the holdall. “I’ll come. Not that I’ve got any choice. Mum would murder me if I went back and said I’d lost you.”

“You’re a pal,” I said, shaking her hand.

“I’m a moron,” she replied.

We’d just locked the bike, picked up the bag and started out for the footpath when we were greeted by the old man who’d been tending the lobster pots.

“Evening,” he said in a broad Scots accent.

“Evening,” we replied suspiciously.

“Ah, city folk,” he said, looking at my trainers and Becky’s black nail polish. “You’ll no be walking in that get-up, will you? With the night coming down.”

“No. We’re going to see a film,” snapped Becky. She was always rather touchy about her ‘get-up’.

“Yes. We’re walking,” I explained politely. I wanted to get away. I didn’t want to stand around chatting to strangers.

“To Camasunary? Or all the way to Coruisk?” he asked.

Then, very slowly, he lifted his pipe to his mouth, so that the sleeve of his oilskin fell away to show a band on his left wrist. I stepped backwards.

“To Coruisk,” said Becky curtly, “so we haven’t got any time to waste chatting.”

I expected the old man to come and grab me by the scruff of the neck. I expected to see his fingers light up. But neither of these things happened. He smiled. Then he chuckled.

“Well, you enjoy yourselves,” he said. “It’s going to be a nice pitch-black night for a walk along the cliff path.” And with that, he turned and walked back up the road, the cocker spaniel trotting at his heels.

“The wristband…” I said to Becky.

“I saw it,” she replied.

“They know we’re here,” I whispered, looking around to see if there was anyone within earshot, crouching behind a lobster pot or an upturned boat.

“Maybe,” said Becky. “Maybe it was just a brass wristband, Jimbo. Like people wear. Maybe we’re getting paranoid.”

“Maybe,” I said. But I was right. I knew it. He was one of them. The way he showed us the wristband. The chuckle. On the other hand, if he was one of them then we were on the right track. Coruisk was important.

So why didn’t he stop us? Perhaps he knew we wouldn’t make it along the path in the dark. Perhaps he knew we would find nothing when we got there. Perhaps he knew there were others waiting to greet us at the far end, flexing their neon-blue fingers in the windy dark.

“Well,” said Becky, “what are we waiting for?”

I fell into step behind her.

We didn’t need the torch. The lobster fisherman was wrong. The night was not pitch-black. Ten minutes after we set off, threads of grey cloud dissolved to reveal a perfect full moon suspended above the sea. It felt like walking through a scene from Son of Dracula. But at least we could see where to put our feet.

A good job too. The path was narrow and stony and cut into the steep, scrubby cliff rising high above the water. We had to duck under gnarled trunks, clamber over boulders and move fallen branches out of our way. The sea lay to our left like a great sheet of beaten silver.

To our right, rocks, trees and bushes climbed up into the night sky.

Out in the bay an island floated like a great barnacled whale. Beyond it, the ocean, blackness and stars. Everything looked mind-bogglingly big. I was lonely and frightened, even with Becky in front of me. If we tripped and fell, we’d helter-skelter down into the icy water and be swept away. No one would ever know.

To make matters worse, my city-folk trainers were not made for trekking and I was getting a large and painful blister on my right heel. I stuffed the shoe with tissues, gritted my teeth and marched manfully onwards.

After two hours we reached the bay of Camasunary. The path dropped down and the cliff flattened out into a gentle, sloping meadow of spiky grass. We crested a small ridge and the beach lay in front of us. We crossed a tiny stream and stepped into the field.

“Jeez!” I said.

“Now that does my head in,” echoed Becky.

The field was full of rabbits. A hundred. Two hundred. I’d never been frightened of rabbits before. But this lot gave me the creeps, sitting there with their powder-puff tails and their spoony ears like something from a horror film called Rabbit.

“Let’s keep going,” I said.

We began the second, more difficult section of the path.

Except there wasn’t much of a path any more. There were rocks, nettles, thorns, trees and mud, and my blister was getting worse.

After half an hour of slipping, tripping, grumbling and hobbling we came to an unexpected halt. In front of us lay a smooth, steep face of blank rock covered in patches of moss, like a giant granite nose. No mud, no branches, no clumps of grass. Nothing. Starting high above our heads, it swooped down to a ragged edge hanging over the surface of the black water. The map called it ‘The Bad Step’. You could see what the map meant.

“You first,” I said. “You’re older.”

“Thanks, Jimbo,” Becky replied. “You’re a real gentleman.”

We couldn’t go up and round. And we couldn’t go down and under. The slope was just too steep. We had to go over.

Becky shimmied up. I shimmied up behind her. We lay face down on the rock, spread-eagled like sunbathing lizards, and shuffled gingerly sideways.

We were doing all right. My trainers were rubbish for walking but the rubber soles stuck to the rock pretty well. Sadly, the moss didn’t. I was halfway across when I put my foot on a clump of the stuff, and as I shifted my weight it tore away beneath me.

I shot downwards, braked only by my knees, my fingers and the end of my nose. My heart stopped and my feet slid over the bottom edge into space. I heard Becky scream and closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable plunge through the air onto the pointy rocks half submerged in the freezing water below.

I came to a sudden halt, my legs dangling in the empty air. My fingers were jammed into a crack that ran across the surface of the stone. It was a narrow crack and my fingers were hurting and I wasn’t going to be able to hang on for long. I tried to swing my legs up onto the rock, but I was too far over.

“Jimbo!” shouted Becky. “Hang on!” I looked up. She was shifting herself slowly down the giant nose towards me with the holdall looped over her shoulder.

“There’s a crack,” I said, and at that moment one of my hands slipped free and I screamed.

The toe of Becky’s boot found the crack. She took the holdall off her shoulder and lowered it down to me. “Grab this!” I grabbed it. “Now pull.”

She pulled. I pulled. The handle stretched horribly. I swung my right leg. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, I got it over the lip of the rock. I heaved again and pulled. She heaved again and I got my other foot over the lip and lay flat against the slope, panting.

“Crikey, Jimbo,” she said. “Don’t do that to me again. Ever.”

We waited until we’d got our breath back, then started shuffling sideways, with our toes in the crack. We rounded the curve of the rock and were able to grab a gnarly root and swing ourselves onto the safety of the damp earth.

“Holy hotdogs, Batman,” said Becky. “That was a close call.”

I put my hand to my face and realized that my nose was bleeding where I’d used it as a brake-pad.

“Well,” she said, “you don’t get this kind of excitement at school, do you?”

Coruisk caught us by surprise. The path led down to sea-level, where we found our way blocked by a little channel leading to the shore. We turned and followed the channel inland. We crossed over a rocky hump and the loch loomed into view, several billion gallons of cold dark water stretching away in front of us.

“Coruisk,” said Becky, standing on the rocky hump like someone who had just climbed Everest. “We did it, kiddo.”

Around the loch on every side the Cuillin Hills rose into the night. The central strip of water shone blue in the moonlight, but the distant banks vanished in the soot-black shadows of the peaks. High above us plumes of mist were forming on the very tips of the mountains and trailing off into the star-filled sky.

The sea had seemed big, stretching out to the dark horizon. But the size of the silhouetted mountains made the loch seem even bigger. The silence was complete. There were waves on the sea. And the sound of water lapping against rock. The water here was as smooth and motionless as mercury. This was not a place where human beings were meant to be after dark.

“So,” said Becky, “what do we do for our next trick?”

I thought about Charlie. “I don’t know.” I could feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. We’d spent two days getting to this place. We’d risked our lives at least twice. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find when we got here. But I expected to find something at least. And this was the emptiest place I’d seen in my entire life.

“Chin up,” said Becky. “Let’s fix ourselves some dinner.”

We trudged along the edge of the channel, crossed over using a series of stepping stones and looked for a good camping spot. En route we found the ruins of an old cottage that for a few seconds looked as if it might offer some kind of clue as to why Coruisk was so important. But it was just a ruin. Four crumbling walls, a doorway, two window holes, a mud floor. We climbed up to a flat area of grass, neatly protected from prying eyes and the growing wind by a large oval boulder.

Becky erected the tent behind the big stone. I got out some plasters and antiseptic wipes and Savlon and did first aid on my heel and my nose. Once we were snuggled into our sleeping bags we broke out the bread and cheese.

Well fed and footsore, we lay on our backs looking up at the stars through the open tent flap. Becky jammed her iPod earphones in and listened to some Evil Corpse. Or Gangrenous Limb. Or Dead Puppy. Or whatever else she’d downloaded recently.

I tried to remember the names of the constellations. The Bear. The Plough. Orion. Finally, I zipped up the tent, pulled the sleeping bag round my neck and closed my eyes.

“Uh-uh-uh-uh,” moaned Becky tunelessly. Then she stopped. She took one of the earpieces out of her ear, shook it, stuck it back in and tore it out again. I could hear a strange bubbling noise coming out of the tiny white speaker. “It’s broken,” she snapped. “Again.”

“Your watch,” I gasped. “Look at your watch.” She looked at her watch. The face had lit up and the hand was spinning backwards. “Ouch,” she yelped, ripping it off her wrist. “It’s hot.” Somewhere inside the holdall, the torch was turning on and off. Two seconds later the whole tent was bathed in a brilliant blue light.