Devils way, p.14
Devil's Way, page 14
29
They walked back to where Ade was waiting on the broad, smooth rock above the gorge. He was sweating profusely in the hot sun.
‘Do you want to come with us into the gorge?’ asked Kate.
‘Yes. It’s in the shade,’ Ade said, heaving himself to his feet. They took the footpath down into the gorge, which was much cooler, surrounded by the damp mossy walls.
Their last visit had been at dusk, and she could see better in the light. Kate noticed the water level was lower than the previous week, and she estimated that the narrow rocky path next to the river was around two or three metres above the water rushing past below. They came to the tall grille at the bottom where the path ended, and the water continued to rush through. Kate put her hand out onto the cold metal. It was thick and sturdy, and the rusted padlock was wet from the water running down through the fronds of moss above.
On the other side of the grille, the gorge’s walls made a smooth wide semicircle, like the cross-section of a deep well in front of them. The water poured into this large basin with a gush of foam and then formed a natural whirlpool which grew in intensity in the middle, whirling with force like the plughole in a vast sink, and then the water just disappeared.
‘It’s quite overwhelming to look at,’ said Ade, raising his voice above the roar of the water. ‘One reason they call it Devil’s Way is that the whirlpool runs anti-clockwise.’
The ‘plughole’ where the water was vanishing was half a metre wide.
‘A three-year-old would easily fit down there, and even a full-sized adult,’ shouted Tristan, following her train of thought.
‘When you and your team came to look at the river, it was swollen by several metres?’ asked Kate. Ade nodded. ‘What about this footpath here?’
‘We couldn’t get down it. We had to stay up top. The water was raging down here, covering the footpath,’ said Ade.
‘If Charlie fell into the gorge, could he have been washed over the grille into that hole?’
‘Yes. But only if he floated. He could have been sucked underwater and stuck against the grate. But that didn’t happen. The water level dropped after a few hours, and there was no body.’
Tristan and Ade turned to go back up, and Kate had a sudden image of being dragged under the water. She gripped the grate and closed her eyes for a moment. Her hands were shaking. She took deep breaths until the panic passed, then followed the guys back up the footpath.
The sun was still scorching hot when they came out of the shade of the gorge. Ade asked to be excused and returned to the car because the heat was getting to him. Kate and Tristan decided to walk along the riverbank in the other direction. As they set off under the relentless glare of the beating sun, Kate wished she’d brought a hat with her.
They had to climb up a steep bank of rock, where they followed the river for another ten minutes. They passed the large tree at a distance and, after a couple of minutes, came to a small waterfall. Kate stopped for a moment and leant forward. There was sweat dripping off her nose, and she felt faint.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Tristan.
‘I’m sweating and drinking nothing,’ she said. She eyed the crystal-clear water gushing down over the rocks. ‘Do you think this is safe to drink?’
‘I think so,’ said Tristan. He squatted down, scooped up some water, and drank out of his hand. Kate knelt beside him, ladling up handfuls of the sweet, freezing cold water and drank. It tasted good. Tristan moved downstream, stepped into the current, stripped off his T-shirt and dunked it in the water.
‘That’s better,’ he said, wringing it out and putting it back on. Kate leant forward and submerged her head. The water was so cold it jarred her teeth. She wrung out her hair and sat back on the bank.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ asked Tristan.
‘I don’t know. I suddenly feel the weight of responsibility for finding Charlie, and if he did fall into the river, we could never prove it.’
‘I meant, are you okay in the heat? You look really pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s keep going.’
He got up and started to climb the steep slope up the side of the waterfall. The heat was getting to her, and Kate struggled to keep up. She slipped a couple of times, and Tristan reached out to grab her arm. For the first time in ages, Kate felt the age gap between them.
When Tristan put out his hand to catch her at the top of the slope, it only annoyed her even more. They carried on walking as the river began to widen and move past at a much slower pace. Devil’s Way Tor was now a hazy blob on the horizon.
Kate’s hair was almost dry when they reached the point where the river spread out on an extensive open patch of flat boggy ground, with undulating fields of moss and short grass reaching out to the hills in the far distance. She stopped to catch her breath. The bright sunshine made her squint, and it was suddenly far too dazzling. She closed her eyes and felt another wave of dizziness. When she opened them, she saw Tristan had walked across the grass for a couple of metres, and she watched as he jumped up and down. The grassy surface around him rippled, and as he landed, it shifted like a giant water-bed.
‘It’s the weirdest thing. It feels firm, but it’s all moving, as a big block,’ he said, looking back at her and grinning.
‘Are you crazy? That’s bog land,’ shouted Kate, afraid for him and annoyed at his immaturity. She’d heard stories of people getting out of their depth in boggy land on Dartmoor and drowning. He jumped up again, this time higher, and as he landed, the grass seemed to sink into a depression and then right itself. The gorse and scrub surrounding it rippled outwards. Her headache was now pounding behind her eyes.
‘Lewis told me the police search teams got as far as this and searched the boggy land for Charlie’s body, but the dogs didn’t detect a scent. The river is wider here. We don’t know how much higher the water level was here, on the night Charlie went missing.’
He jumped up and down again, the ground rippling under him like a large saggy trampoline.
‘Tristan. Stop! If you get pulled under, I’m not coming in after you.’
He walked back to her, picking his way over the rolling grass until he joined her on the firmer ground. ‘I had a horrible vision of you sinking into the bog and me having to tell Sarah you’re missing. And she isn’t my biggest fan.’
‘Okay, go easy,’ he said. There was an awkward silence, and they both looked out on the boggy land. A group of birds took off into the sun, cawing as they crossed the sky.
‘Do you really think that a three-year-old would come all this way in the middle of the night?’ asked Kate. ‘We’ve been walking for almost half an hour. It doesn’t add up. He’d have had to climb that steep slope back by the waterfall, and when he finally reached this point, he’d have had to start out across the moors. He might have got lost in the long grass outside the tent and stumbled about for a bit, but why would he turn and walk all this way in the other direction?’
‘What if he was sleepwalking?’ asked Tristan. Kate’s headache was intensifying like a needle in her eye. She shook her head, which set off even more pain. Tristan looked at her.
‘People, children, do sleepwalk. And Charlie left the tent in the middle of the night.’
‘I can’t go back to Jean and tell her that all we’ve come up with is that Charlie might have gone off sleepwalking,’ Kate snapped.
‘I’m not saying we present it to Jean.’ Tristan sighed and shook his head with frustration. ‘Perhaps you should have something to drink—’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Kate, her anger and the pain in her head mingling. He stared at her.
‘I meant another drink of water. We’re probably both dehydrated. What did you think I meant?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. You’re right.’
‘Did you think I was talking about alcohol?’
Kate rubbed her eyes. She just wanted this conversation to be over. She wanted to be lying down in a dark room.
‘Just forget it. It’s the heat.’
‘Okay. But just for the record, I would never...’
‘I know. Fine,’ said Kate.
They stood there in awkward silence. This was the first time she’d argued with Tristan, and it felt horrible. He shielded his eyes and looked back across the expanse of moorland. Far in the distance he could see the hazy blur of Danvers farm.
‘When Lewis mentioned his visit to the Danvers farm close to the gorge, he said the farmer and his wife were acting jittery. What if they saw something? That’s something more concrete than my sleepwalking theory.’
Kate closed her eyes against the sun, and took a deep breath.
‘Yes. That’s something we should look into.’
‘Come on, let’s go back to the car,’ said Tristan, moving off. They walked back in stony silence, sweltering in the midday heat. They stopped to drink at the waterfall, and she saw Tristan wanted to help her down the slope, but she sat down on her haunches and skidded down so she wouldn’t trip. She was now feeling awful. The cold water had been refreshing, but she’d drunk so much that it sloshed around in her stomach and made her nauseous.
She was relieved when they drew close to the Devil’s Way Tor and the car. Kate could see Ade sitting on the bumper under one of her umbrellas from the boot. Tristan was a few feet ahead when she suddenly went ice-cold and felt dizzy, like she was going to faint. As she sank down on her haunches in the grass, Ade noticed her, got off the car bumper and came rushing over. Tristan turned back as Kate crumpled, her stomach lurched, and she threw up on the grass.
30
‘Sorry if that’s cold,’ said Dr John Boucher, Kate’s GP. She was lying on the examination table in his office as he listened to her chest with his stethoscope. She winced at the feeling of the cold metal on her breast bone.
‘Thank you for seeing me so fast,’ she said.
‘It seems this afternoon is unusually quiet in the surgery.’
His office in Ashdean was quiet and calm, and he had an Axminster carpet on the floor under his desk, which softened the room. She watched his face as the clock ticked in the silence.
‘Breathe in. Good. And out.’ He listened for a moment longer and then took the stethoscope out of his ears and hooked it over his shoulders. ‘You can put your shirt back on.’
John slid his chair back to the desk. Kate sat up and pulled on the T-shirt, still damp with sweat. Tristan had given her one of his sports rehydration drinks to sip as he drove them back to Ashdean, and she was already feeling better.
‘I think I just got dehydrated in this heat,’ she said. ‘I was out on the moors all day and forgot to drink.’
‘You’ve only just been discharged from hospital. You have an upper respiratory tract infection. It’s a side-effect of the seawater on your lungs. How’s your breathing?’
‘My chest feels heavy,’ said Kate. He consulted his notes again.
‘You were discharged from hospital—’
‘A week ago.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘And you are back at work?’ Kate nodded. ‘You should be signed off sick.’
‘I need to work. I have a new case.’
He looked up from his notes.
‘What about your AA meetings? You missed the last two.’
John was a fellow AA member, and they’d been going to the same Thursday night meeting at the Kingdom Hall in Ashdean for the past few years. He had also been Kate’s friend Myra’s doctor.
‘I was in hospital,’ said Kate, hearing the flimsiness of her excuse.
She watched as he paged through her medical file. This was the first time she’d visited John as her GP in a few years. Seeing him with his doctor’s coat on felt a little odd. He sighed and peered over his glasses at the computer screen.
‘Okay. I’m going to put you on a different course of antibiotics. The Levofloxacin could be the reason for your stomach problems and lack of appetite.’
‘Yes. I’ve lost a bit of weight and didn’t have that much extra to begin with.’
‘This new course is a lot kinder on the tum.’ He typed away, and the printer whirred and spat out the prescription. He signed it and went to hand it to her. Kate got up. He put the prescription back on his desk. ‘Don’t stop coming to meetings. It’s hard, I know. So many times I want to stay home, but if you start skipping them, it’s not good.’
‘I know all of this. I know it,’ said Kate.
He looked at his watch. ‘I have ten minutes until my next patient. Would you like to have a meeting?’
Kate was surprised. ‘Now?’
‘Yes. Our consultation is over. I sponsor a couple of guys, and we sometimes do emergency meetings.’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Hi, I’m John. I’m an alcoholic and drug addict. It’s been seventeen years since I last used.’
Kate looked at the signed prescription sitting on his desk. She wanted to grab it and leave, but she sat back down on the edge of the table. Kate and Myra had had one-on-one AA meetings in the past, and she’d heard John talk about his struggles with alcohol and prescription drugs.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Hi. I’m Kate, and I’m an alcoholic. It’s been thirteen years since my last drink.’
John nodded.
‘That’s impressive. How do you feel about that?’ he asked.
‘I wonder if it’s worth it right now.’
‘Okay. Why?’
‘Alcohol hasn’t been on my mind since the accident. Actually, that’s not true. I was so close to making myself a hot toddy, for medicinal purposes. Is it written in my medical file about my accident?’
He shook his head.
‘I’m not here as your GP, Kate.’
She nodded, took another sip of the energy drink and tried to organise her thoughts.
‘I swim every morning in the sea. I started sea swimming to combat depression, and I love it. Particularly in the winter, the cold water and the positive feeling afterwards. Last week I went down to the beach the same way I do every day, but I wasn’t paying attention and blundered into a riptide. I almost drowned and was pulled out by a couple of surfers. It’s mortifying. And now… I’m afraid to get back in the water.’ Kate felt tears in her eyes and wiped them away. ‘Of course, I can’t go back in the sea whilst I feel like this. I have this infection—’
John nodded and listened.
‘—swimming in the sea is part of my routine. It is my routine. I sort of hang the rest of my day off it, if that makes sense. It clears my mind. It makes me feel good about being alive. I started just when I got sober and moved here. I moved here to stay sober and alive, so I could regain custody of my son, Jake… But he’s grown up now. He’s in America studying at university, off by himself, which is a good thing. I lost custody of him when he was six. He went to live with my mum in Whitstable when I… wasn’t capable, and by the time I got well, he was almost eight and had friends at school in Whitstable, and they had a dog, he had his own room, and he’d just got through a period of night terrors which I think stemmed from me. He was happy there with my mum and dad. I didn’t want to break that. I spent so long working on being sober so he could be with me for the school holidays and Christmas, and when he was sixteen, he came to live with me full-time, which was great, but those two years went by so quickly. And now he’s gone again, studying in California. He was meant to come back for the summer, but he’s staying there and I probably won’t see him until Christmas.’
Kate wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘When I was in hospital, I met this woman whose grandson went missing, and we’ve ended up taking on her case, and this one, it’s really haunting me. It’s haunting me that the more we learn about the little boy, Charlie, the less we know. It’s complicated, and it’s pushing my buttons. There was a social worker who got involved, and it reminded me of that time when social workers got involved with me and my fitness to look after Jake… I always thought I’d made it right with Jake, but now I’m worried I didn’t have enough of a chance, and I keep thinking about Charlie. I want to make it right, but I don’t know how. I’m scared that this one won’t be solved. We’ll never find out what happened to him.’
Kate finished, and sighed. It felt good to talk to someone who just listened, and that was what AA meetings were about. Listening.
‘I can’t solve any of your problems, Kate,’ said John. ‘But you do know that having a drink won’t help any of it.’
‘I don’t want a drink.’
‘Good, but don’t let this all overwhelm you, so you end up wanting to drink.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, and putting my doctor hat on again, I can recommend paddling,’ he said, handing her the prescription. ‘Even if you can’t swim, you can paddle. It might help you get back on the horse.’
31
It was late in the afternoon after they dropped Kate at the doctor’s surgery. Ade and Tristan went to The Blue Boar pub, which was nearby on Ashdean high street. They were starving, so they each ordered a curry and a pint of lager which they quickly demolished.
‘I feel like Kate is annoyed with me,’ said Tristan.
‘I think she’s still run down from her accident,’ said Ade, delicately wiping the last of his naan bread around the remnants of curry sauce. ‘She looked very peaky, poor thing. You have to be so careful about getting dehydrated.’
‘You weren’t there when we were on the moors. I was stupid.’
‘What did you do?’ said Ade.
‘I was jumping up and down on the bog land.’
‘Which is just what a stupid teenager would do. Have you seen how many people come a cropper on Dartmoor bog land? It’s dangerous.’
‘I stayed near the edge.’
‘Spoken like a true teenager.’
Tristan sighed and watched Ade, still wiping at the plate with the piece of naan.
‘You’re going to wipe the pattern off that plate. Why don’t you just order another curry?’
‘No. I can’t eat any more,’ said Ade, pushing the plate away.
