October skies

‘It is very detailed. I mean, the author obviously had a lot of time to fill, waiting to die up in those mountains. So look… I presume we’re both thinking it’s the same person?’

‘The religious leader chappie.’

‘Uh-huh, Preston.’

He heard Griffith shuffling position, the sloshing of water in the background, and remembered the large Welshman kept his phone by his side, even in the bath.

‘A fascinating character by the sound of him. A classic cult patriarch, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah. Look, Tom, I can email you what I’ve transcribed already of the journal, and attach a load of jpeg images of the other pages I’ve yet to work through, if you’re interested in taking this further?’

‘Yes, please do.’

‘And then when you’ve had a chance to look through, perhaps we can arrange to get together for lunch and talk about it?’

‘That would be marvellous,’ Griffith boomed back.

‘Great. Your email address — still the same?’

‘As always.’

‘I’ll put “Preston” as the subject heading so you don’t miss it amidst all the spam.’

‘Very good.’

‘How long do you want to have with the material? Thing is, I’m here in the UK for another three days, then I’m heading back out to the States to rejoin Rose. We’ve got to move quite quickly.’

‘Why’s that? It’s sat around a century and a half already.’

‘We’ve got a grace period of a couple of weeks, courtesy of a kind old park ranger who’s sitting on it before she calls whatever US heritage department covers this kind of find. So, we’re scrambling around to get as much virgin footage of the site as we can.’

‘I see. Well, hmm… you’ve caught me at a good time. I could do with a break from the current routine. Give me a day with the notes, and then we’ll talk.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh, and Julian?’

‘Yup?’

‘Do you know how it ends? What do you know of what happened?’

‘As far as we can surmise, no one survived. There’s no record of it anywhere.’

‘Oh that’s good — somewhat chilling,’ he said, the water sloshing again. ‘I like that.’

Julian smiled. ‘I thought you would.’

‘Well, send me what you have, and then we’ll do lunch later on this week. I’ll make sure my publicist keeps Thursday and Friday lunchtimes free.’

‘I will. It’s been good to speak to you again, Tom. Been a while.’

‘And you.’

Dr Griffith hung up abruptly and the line purred. Julian was about to set his phone down when he heard the faintest click over the earpiece. The purring sound cut out momentarily and he thought he could detect, if only for a second or two, the rustling sound of movement picked up by an open microphone. Then another click, and the purr resumed.

He put the phone down, still looking at it.

‘That’s… that was odd,’ he muttered.

And not the first odd thing, either, is it?

Returning from a visit to the Soup Kitchen office earlier today, he had an inexplicable feeling that his flat had been entered. Not quite able to put his finger on the tiny, intangible details that made him think that — a book out of place, the mouse cable coiled differently around the back of the keyboard — he hadn’t been certain enough not to dismiss it as some sort of creeping paranoia.

But now this.

He looked again at the phone, long enough to convince himself that all he’d really heard was a digital gremlin on the network or, quite possibly, his line crossed with another for a fleeting moment.

He shook his head reproachfully. ‘Come on, Julian, get a grip.’

CHAPTER 39

24 October, 1856

A light downfall of snow during the night had not managed to fully conceal the trail left by the Indian; there were enough dark patches of almost black blood that had soaked into the snow and were now a frozen part of it.

Keats led the way up through the trees, his keen eyes squinting and watering from the dazzling upward reflection of sunlight off the snow. The sky was a clear blue, combed with one or two unthreatening clouds, and the sun beat down a welcome warmth on their backs and shoulders as they went uphill, moving between the trees from one splatter of frozen blood to the next.

A search party had not been painstakingly chosen; the old guide had simply emerged from his lean-to as soon as the sun had breached the tree line, and bellowed out with his foghorn voice that he was ready to go and wanted some volunteers.

Within a few minutes every single man and boy old enough to carry a gun had mustered in the centre of the camp around Keats and Broken Wing. Preston joined him promptly and then they dismissed roughly half the men to stay behind and guard the camp. The other half, eighteen men including the two trail captains, set off swiftly from the clearing and up the shallow bank of the forest floor, through saplings stripped bare for kindling and into the deep foliage of older trees.

They followed the trail for only about ten minutes, just long enough to lose sight of the camp below, climb a small spur and descend the other side towards a small glade beyond, when Broken Wing suddenly raised a hand and shouted out something in Ute.