'R. J.?' What a damned silly name to have to yell, but he yelled it louder anyway: 'R. J.!'
There were no footprints visible here. The ground was rough. He could smell the decay of a swamp somewhere, as rank as dog's breath, and it was dark, too. He would have to watch himself, he thought, keep his back firmly to the road, because if he went too far, he would lose his bearings, and maybe end up walking further and further away from the car, until there would be nothing left to do but lie down in the darkness and freeze.
There was a sudden heavy crash off to his left, and then a succession of smaller bursts, like echoes. It sounded at first like someone running but then he realised it was only snow-dislodging from the tops of some branches and plunging to the earth.
He cupped his hands.
And then he heard a human sound. A moan, was that it? A sob?
He tried to place where it was coming from. And then he heard it again. Nearer, and behind him now, it seemed to be. He pushed through a gap between a couple of close-growing trees into a tiny clearing, and there was O'Brian's camera case lying open on the ground and there, beyond it, was O'Brian himself, upside down and swinging gently, his fingertips barely brushing the surface of the snow, suspended by his left leg from a length of oily rope.
THE ROPE WAS attached to the top of a tall birch sapling, bent almost double by O'Brian's weight. The reporter was groaning. He was barely conscious.
Kelso knelt by his head. At the sight of him, O'Brian began struggling feebly. He didn't seem able to form a sentence.
'It's all right,' said Kelso. He tried to sound calm. 'Don't worry. I'll get you down.'
Get him down. Kelso took off his gloves. Get him down. Right. Using what? He had a knife for sharpening pencils, but it was in the car. He patted his pockets and found his lighter. He flicked it on, showed the flame to O'Brian.
'We'll get you down. Look. You'll be all right.'
He stood and reached up, grabbing O'Brian by his booted ankle. A noose of thin rope had dug deep into the leather. It took all Kelso's weight to drag him down far enough for him to apply the flame to the taut rope just above his sole. O'Brian's shoulders rested in the snow.
'Asornim,' he was saying. 'Asornim.'
The rope was wet. It seemed to take an age for the lighter to have any effect. Kelso had to stop and shake it. The flame was beginning to turn blue and die before the first strands started to smoulder. But then under the strain they parted fast. The last of them snapped and the sapling whipped back and Kelso tried to support the legs with his free hand but he couldn't manage it and O'Brian's body crashed heavily into the snow.
The reporter struggled to sit up, managed to prop himself on his elbows, then slumped back again. He was still mumbling something. Kelso knelt beside him.
'You're okay. You'll be fine. We'll get you out of here.'
'Asornim.'
I saw him? I saw him.
'Saw who? Who did you see?'
'Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck.'
'Can you bend your leg? Is it broken?' Kelso shuffled on his knees through the snow and began digging with his fingernails at the knot of the noose, embedded in the side of O'Brian's boot.
'Fluke -' O'Brian held up his arm, desperately flexing his fingers. 'Give me a lift here, will you?'
Kelso took his hand and pulled until O'Brian was sitting upright. Then he put his arm round the reporter's broad chest and together they managed to get him up on to his feet. O'Brian stood, leaning heavily against Kelso, putting his weight on his right leg.
'Can you walk?'
'Not sure. Think so.' He hobbled a few steps. 'Just give me a minute.'
He stayed where he was, with his back to Kelso, staring into the trees. When he seemed to be breathing more normally, Kelso said, 'Saw who?'
SAW him, said O'Brian, turning round. His eyes were wild and fearful now, searching the forest behind Kelso's head. Saw the man. Saw him staring out of the fucking trees next to the car. Jesus. Just about jumped out of my fucking skin.
'What do you mean? What man?'
Took one step towards him - hands up, let's be friends, white man he come in peace - and presto! he was gone. I mean, he vanished Never saw him properly again after that.
Heard him, though, and kind of glimpsed him once -moving fast through the forest up ahead, away to the right -sort of a sawn-off figure, like a quarterback, built low to the ground. And quick. So quick you wouldn't believe it. Man, he seemed to move like an ape. Next thing I know, the world's turned upside down.
'He led me on, Fluke, you know that, don't you? Led me right into his fucking trap. He's probably out there now, watching us.'
He was getting his strength back, his recovery speeded by fear.
He hobbled a few steps. When he tried to put his left leg down properly he winced. But he could move it, that was something. It definitely wasn't broken.
'We gotta go. We gotta get out of here.' He bent awkwardly and closed the catches on the camera case.
Kelso needed no persuading. But they would have to go carefully, he said. They had to think. They had blundered into two of his traps already - one on the track and one here - and who could guess how many more there might be. In this snow it was so damned hard to see.
'Maybe,' said Kelso, 'if we try to follow my footprints -'But his tracks were already beginning to be lost beneath the ceaseless soft downpour.
'Who is he, Fluke?' whispered O'Brian, as they went back into the trees. 'I mean, what is he? What is he so goddamned scared of?'
He's his father's son, thought Kelso, that's who he is. He's a forty~fiveyearold paranoid psychopath, if such a thing is possible.
'Oh man,' said O'Brian, 'what was that?'
Kelso stopped.
It wasn't another avalanche of snow from the treetops, that was for sure. It went on too long. A heavy, sustained rustling, somewhere in front of them.
'It's him,' said O'Brian. 'He's moving again. He's trying to head us off.' The noise stopped abruptly and they stood, listening. 'Now what's he doing?'
'Watching us, at a guess.
Again, Kelso strained his eyes into the gloom, but it was hopeless. Dense undergrowth, great patches of shadow, occasionally broken by torrents of snow - he couldn't get a fix on anything, it was so unlike any place he had ever seen. He was really sweating now, despite the cold. His skin was prickling.
That was when the howling started - a deafening, inhuman wail. It took Kelso a couple of seconds to realise it was the car alarm.
Then came two loud gunshots in rapid succession, a pause, and then a third.
Then silence.
AFTERWARDS, Kelso was never sure how long they stood there. He remembered only the immobilising sense of terror:
the paralysis of thought and action that came from the realisation there was nothing they could do. He - whoever he was - knew where they were. He had shot up their car. He had booby-trapped the forest. He could come for them whenever he wanted. Or he could leave them where they were. There was no prospect of rescue from the outside world. He was their absolute master. Unseen. All-seeing. Omnipotent. Mad After a minute or two they risked a whispered conference. The telephone~ said O'Brian, what if he had damaged the Inmarsat telephone? It was their only hope and it was in the back of the Toyota.
Maybe he wouldn't know what a satellite telephone looked like, said Kelso. Maybe if they stayed where they were until dark and then went to retrieve it -Suddenly O'Brian grabbed him hard by the elbow.
A face was looking at them through the trees. Kelso didn't see it at first, it was so perfectly still – so unnaturally, perfectly immobile, it took a moment for his mind to register it, to separate the pieces from the shapes of the forest, to assemble them and declare the composite human: Dark impassive eyes that didn't blink. Black, arched brows. Coarse black hair hanging loose across a leathery forehead. A beard.