Stronger Than Death Read online

  EDGE OF DEATH

  Lee came up over the edge and she clipped in but she did it blindly and she didn’t move. She crouched, two inches from the edge of a four-hundred-foot drop, and stared past me to the man beyond. The man who was lying at all the wrong angles against the rising wall of rock, waiting for something that was never going to happen, grinning to himself and the gods and the open sky at the immense ridiculous irony of it.

  “Eric?” She said it softly. A half-question. The way you would wake a friend in the morning, or offer a fresh mug of coffee. He gazed back as he had gazed at me for the eternal half hour of her climb: a fixed-wire stare, seeing nothing. The breeze shifted round to the side and the smell of him flooded the fresh, barnyard smells of the sheep. He was not newly dead.

  “Eric?” One more time—to wake him up. She’s a pathologist. She’s used to death—just not this one. She moved forward eventually and slipped her hand in his. One small, living hand lost in the bear-paw grip of the dead. She was shaking all over, a fine, vibrating tremor that rippled through her to him. His hand shuddered gently but not the rest of him. He was too big to shake much. Too solid, too long dead.

  Also by Manda Scott

  Hen’s Teeth

  Night Mares

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  There was a claim some years ago that treatment in the area of medicine described in this novel has caused harm to a number of patients. This is as far as the facts go in this novel. Every other detail (including details of the medical treatment and its effects), every clinical case, every clinician, every particle of the landscape is a product of the author’s imagination. None of them has any basis in fact whatsoever. I wish to make it clear that, although there is a real Glasgow hospital called the Western Infirmary, it was not implicated in the claim in any way whatsoever and its involvement in the plot is entirely invented.

  STRONGER THAN DEATH

  A Bantam Crime Line Book / published by arrangement with

  Headline Book Publishing

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Headline trade edition published 1999

  Bantam paperback edition / July 2000

  CRIME LINE and the portrayal of a boxed “cl” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a

  division of Random House, Inc.

  ‘Examination at the Womb-Door’ by Ted Hughes from Crow, published by Faber

  & Faber Ltd, 1970, reproduced by permission.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1999 by Manda Scott.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

  any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or

  by any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Headline Book Publishing, 338 Euston Road,

  London NW1 3BH, England.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80175-3

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  For my father, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.

  Who owns all of space? Death.

  Who is stronger than hope? Death.

  Who is stronger than the will? Death.

  Stronger than love? Death.

  Stronger than life? Death.

  But who is stronger than death?

  Me, evidently.

  ‘Examination at the Womb-Door’ by Ted Hughes

  Eric was on the ledge at the top of the fourth pitch, three-quarters of the way up the cliff. It was a good place to be: high and airy with a clear view of the sea and the gulls and the islands, an ideal spot to sit and watch the sun slide down behind the mountains of Jura, or to wait for two climbers on their way up from sea level, aiming for just that point on the ledge. We were not expecting him to be there, had made no arrangements to meet, but Eric was ever one for surprises and there’s no reason, even now, to suppose it would have made the climb any faster if we’d known he was there. It certainly wouldn’t have made it any easier.

  No one said it would be easy. She didn’t want it to be easy. All the way through the winter, reading the maps and the tide tables, hanging off abseil ropes in the pouring rain, bribing fishermen to take her closer in to the rock than any sane human being would want to go, Lee Adams was not looking for a climb that was easy. Just one step this side of impossible and no more, otherwise what’s the point? And all through winter, sitting at the top of the cliff catching the falls, driving the car to the jetty, going out to buy one more bottle of Scotch for a skipper who needed half a year drying out more than he ever needed another drink, I listened, as we all did, with half an ear to the moves and the holds and the nightmare of a chimney at the base of the crack and I knew that, when the time came for her to choose a partner to climb it with her, she would ask Eric. Of all of us, he was the only one who came close to climbing at the level she climbed. He was the only one who made sense.

  But then, Lee doesn’t climb to make sense. I was waiting by the car on the jetty at Tarbert on a windblown, rain-sodden Saturday afternoon less than a month ago when she made the last boat trip out to the cliff: one final attempt to find a way in to the base of the crack that wasn’t going to get her drowned before she ever started the climb up. I remember the sight of her, soaked and scratched and decorated in odd places with algal streaks as she came up the path from the boat. I pulled a rucksack from the boot and passed her a T-shirt as she reached the car. There was no real need to ask how it went—her whole body was alive with the buzz of it, like a horse before a race, fighting the pull of the bit. She sat on the sill of the boot, staring out to sea, her focus on something a long way out of sight.

  ‘And so?’ I asked. ‘Will it go?’ It’s good, sometimes, to get the details.

  ‘It’ll go.’ She nodded, chewing her bottom lip. ‘There’s only one place the boat can put in with any chance of getting out again in one piece and it’s a real bitch of a traverse from there along to the crack. Sixty foot of blank rock with bugger all to hold on to but the seaweed.’ She waited, expectant, as if I was supposed to have some kind of opinion on that.

  Traverses are not really my thing. I haven’t done enough of them to comment. ‘I thought there was the ledge?’ I said.

  ‘Sort of.’ She threw the wrecked remains of her old shirt into the boot and there was a pause as she pulled the fresh one over her head. The dry, laundered smell of it mellowed the ranker smells of rain and sea. ‘It breaks up in places, but it’s better than nothing,’ she said. ‘We’ll be fine as long as we time the tide right. Bearing in mind how much you hate the sea, the least I can do is see that you keep your feet dry before we get to the crack.’

  There was another gap th
en, filled by the wind and the flapping of old newspaper on the tarmac of the jetty. I looked out to the sea and back again. She sat on the boot, her head cocked to one side, watching me.

  ‘My feet?’ I asked.

  ‘Your feet,’ she agreed. Her smile was indulgent; maddeningly so.

  ‘What about Eric? I thought you were going to do it with him?’

  ‘Only if you turn me down.’ She stood up, then ducked back into the lee of the boot as a westerly gust threatened to knock us both flat. ‘We’ll find something with more of a challenge in it for him later. This one is for you and me. Unless you’re going to tell me now you really don’t want to do it?’

  Maybe I should have done. I have known Lee Adams for over half my life and I know just where her limits are: a long way past mine in almost everything we do, especially on the rock. But the rain was easing and the wind was fresh and we had spent all winter planning for this one. I thought I knew where the worst bits were. Besides, in that moment, I really did want to do it.

  ‘OK.’ I pulled the car keys from my pocket and flipped then the two feet through the air to her waiting hand. ‘If you’re sure I can do it.’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything. I’m not even sure I can do it. That’s what we’re here to find out.’ She tossed the keys high up in the air and caught them again on the downswing. ‘Just don’t forget to trust your feet. If you can hang on to that, you’ll be fine.’

  You hate the sea. I don’t hate it. I am terrified of it. There is a difference. Not normally, in everyday life, I’m not afraid of it then. I can walk along the shore and breathe in the salt and feel the power of it and be inspired with the rest of them. I respect it. I admire it. I wish I could paint it, or photograph it, or do something else to catch the extraordinary, restless beauty of it and take it home. I am not afraid of it. But put me on a two-inch tightrope of sea-greased rock with the water kissing the soles of my climbing shoes, with barnacles the size of walnuts knifing the palms of my hands and leathered ribbons of weed draping themselves like malign bandages over my eyes so that the rock and the sea and the rope are all flashes seen in the darkness, then I can reach a level of terror that knows no bounds.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I felt her voice through the rope, calm and steady, a verbal life-line. If I were to take my cheek from the rock, shift my balance outwards, I could probably see her, ten feet on, just round the curve of the cliff. I would rather not do that just now.

  ‘Don’t ask.’ My voice came out muffled, gagged by the rock.

  ‘The ledge narrows down a bit just beyond your right foot. There’s a finger-hold up about eye level and another one beyond the big patch of weed. You’ll need them both to bridge over the gap.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘When you land you’re on the shelf. You can sit down here if you need to.’

  Really? Then perhaps I am not going to die. I reached up and found the holds: smooth-shouldered dimples in the rock, just deep enough to take the crook of a finger, just safe enough to bear weight for the straddling hop across the gap to the wider platform of the shelf. I felt her hands on my waist and heard the blessed snick of the karabiner clipping safe to my belt. I leant back against the cliff and breathed in the first full breath since I stepped off the boat. Her hand stayed flat on my sternum, pressing me into the rock.

  ‘Now how are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The shelf under my feet was broad and flat, and here, the barnacles made foolproof friction. She relaxed the pressure on my chest and I sat down, easing the knot on the safety rope to give me the extra length. Clumps of weed slithered wetly under my legs. The sweet-salt smell of it hit the pit of my stomach and curdled the remains of breakfast. I put my palms to my eyes and breathed through my mouth. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Liar.’ I heard the rattle of her rucksack as she pulled out her belt. ‘Sit still for a while and I’ll get the gear ready.’ She said it as if we had all the time in the world, as if she hadn’t timed this to the nearest five minutes and I hadn’t already wasted all the slack dithering on the ledge. If her timing is right, the first one up should be leaving the shelf at the turning of the tide. When we got out of the boat, the mark of its highest point was thirty feet above the top of my head. We have stepped down several feet since then.

  I took my hands from my eyes. ‘How long have we got?’

  She paused, thinking. I felt her shrug ripple down the rope. ‘Not long,’ she said. ‘Have a look.’

  At what? Looking up, all I could see was rock: a wide blank wall rearing up out of the water with the crack a dark shadow on the right. Looking down, there was only water: grey-green Atlantic water laced in lazy sworls with the foam of an ocean crossing. It slopped idly against the lip of the shelf, dark and oily and colour-coded for the depth. Shallow water sparkles with the colours of the sky and the clouds and the patternings of sand. There are places round here, off Arran, out from Oban, where you can lean over the edge of a dinghy and count the legs on the starfish three fathoms down. Water like that is friendly; it holds no menace. Here, it is deep, dark and silent and deep. It took the submarines out of Faslane to map the contours of the sea-bed round this coastline and I checked the maps before we ever came out: a thousand feet of hungry water, straight down. I heard Lee curse, a quiet, savage whisper, and saw a No. 8 nut drop from the open mouth of her rucksack and slip over the edge to the water. I reached for it, too late, and we watched as it sank, straight and fast, the krab spiralling behind on its bit of a sling like a slow-motion propeller. A salutary warning. I stood up and moved in closer to the edge of the cliff.

  ‘Lee? Give me a time scale I can believe in.’

  Her watch was clipped to the gear loop on the back of her belt. She twisted round to read it. ‘Lead climber needs be on the way up by seven minutes from now.’

  ‘Right.’ Just so long as I know.

  I pulled my kit from the rucksack and started clipping gear into my belt: slings and krabs and nuts and hexes and the tiny 5-mm friend that I bought for a V Diff on Stanage and have never used. For eight years, it has gone with me up every route I’ve climbed, my talisman for when things go wrong, the one piece of protection that will save my life when everything else has fallen apart or fallen out. I clipped it into my belt, dead centre at the back where I could reach it with either hand, and then I braced myself in the harness, feet wedged firm in the angle between the shelf and the cliff, and turned round to look for Lee. She was across on the far side of the shelf, leaning back against the rock, head bent in concentration, tuning her belt in the way a player might tune an old and favoured lute. I watched her fit a set of hexes, seven of them in ascending order, around the loops on her belt, careful and neat, like her post-mortems. When she was done, she shifted a bit and stood there for a moment, one foot on the ledge, the other toeing the water: a slight, dark rock-being, making her pact with the sea. She looked up then and smiled, one of those images that outlasts the rest: the dark hair and the dark eyes and the odd, bright calm of her smile. As if she’s at peace doing this and all the rest is a game to pass the time. Some of us climb for the sigh and the bit of a buzz at the top. Lee climbs because it gives her life meaning.

  We stood in the silence of the ledge and I heard the tide change. The rush of it in the crack-cave to the right sounded louder suddenly and the spray began to reach higher up the rocks as the waves hit the wall with more malice. It was only then that I noticed how carefully she had picked the first stance. For thirty feet on either side, I could see waves smashing high up the foot of the cliff. Water ran off the rock, wetting the weed and the algae to a well-oiled sludge. Except where we stood. The sea beyond the shelf swirled like a pike-ridden mill-pond, but it wasn’t running in over the edge. I turned round. Eight feet out, in the open sea, a rising boulder caught the shoulder of the surf, spinning it out to both sides. I looked down at my feet. For what it was worth, the rubber soles of my shoes were still dry.

  I looked up and found her waiting. However calm the w
ater, it still rises with the tide. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘I think we should.’ She tossed me the free end of a rope. I tied it in a double loop and clipped it into my belt. ‘Do you want to go first?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Fine.’ She slid past me to the mouth of the crack, reached round and stepped in on to the knucklebone pebbles and finger-wide ridges of the walls. The rope ran out through my hands as she moved round. A red rope. Her colour, her half of the umbilical cord, an active, pro-active scarlet. My half is blue, a peaceful, dusky, purple blue, a measure of sanity and calm.

  ‘OK. That’ll do.’

  Her voice echoed and came back round a half-beat later. I looked up. She stood at the far mouth of the crack, leaning slightly towards me, hovering on the edge of balance, one finger hooked in the rock behind her.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’ She lifted the flat of one foot to the rock. ‘OK. Let’s get her done.’

  It was half past three on the afternoon of 21 June on the first day of the new moon. The longest day and the lowest tide. A turning point between the worlds. The kind of day when anything is possible. I hitched the red rope tight and then let out slack as she lifted her feet off the ground and started up. Nothing was ever the same after that.

  It was a bastard of a climb. Just standing at the bottom you could see that. Given dry rock, the crack would have made a good chimney. At the base, it was wide enough to take a small boat. Or a climber at full stretch, back jammed on one side and feet on the other. At the top, half a rope’s length up, it narrowed to maybe the width of her shoulder, side on. The rock was reasonable: ridged and uneven with places you could push down on with heel or hand and expect one or other to stay—given dry rock. But we were not given dry rock. We were given wet, tide-worn rock that spent most of its life underwater. The kind of rock beach-pools are made of, the ones you spent your childhood splashing around in, fishing for hermit crabs and sea-anemones, where you slipped and got your feet wet because the slime spread like oil and made it impossible to walk even on a dead flat surface. This crack was made of rock like that. I stood on the shelf, paying out the line of the rope like an unravelling apron string, knowing that if a foot or a shoulder or the small of her back were to slip, she’d drop out like an egg from its shell and the best I could do would be to pull her up from the water before she drowned.