Evans Above Read Free

That’s good news, isn’t it? Haven’t seen one of them for years.”
    â€œEr, quite.” Major Anderson cut him off. “But to get back to the point, constable. I wouldn’t have come to you if I wasn’t concerned.”
    â€œHe was definitely planning to come back to you tonight, was he then?”

    â€œOh yes, definitely,” Major Anderson said. “He told the staff he’d be in for dinner.”
    â€œAnd you think he was planning to go climbing, not just walking?”
    Major Anderson sucked his teeth as he thought. “I couldn’t actually say,” he admitted. “He asked for the easiest way up Snowdon and said he was meeting a friend up there. But he was wearing pretty decent boots and he did have a pack. So maybe he was planning to do some climbing with his friend, once he was up there.”
    â€œThere you are then,” Evan said. “He met the friend and they decided to go down another way together. Probably went down on the railway to Llanberis. Like as not they’re having a drink there now and the friend will run him back here later in his car.”
    â€œBut he said he’d dine here,” Major Anderson said patiently, as if Evan was a slow two-year-old. “And he knows that dinner is at seven o’clock sharp. He’d need time to change, wouldn’t he? We have a very strict dress code in the dining room.”
    â€œMaybe he’s changed his mind,” Evan suggested. “People are allowed to change their minds, you know.” He turned to wink at Charlie. “It’s not the army, is it?”
    A spasm of a frown crossed the major’s face. “Obviously you don’t share my concern, constable. I have my hotel to think of. People stranded on the mountain are bad publicity for us. Rescues always seem to make the TV news, don’t they? If he’s stuck up there, I want him brought down right away.”
    â€œHold on a minute,” Evan said, putting a calming hand on the major’s shoulder. “If the gentleman was going up the Pig Track or the Miners’ Track, straight to the top of Snowdon, he’d have been on a well-travelled route. If he’d hurt himself,
or got himself into trouble, we’d have heard about it. There’s nowhere on that route that he could have got himself stuck, is there? Like a bloody great motorway, isn’t it? And just as well travelled.”
    He found himself thinking back to his early childhood spent among these mountains and to the happy days with his grandfather up in the high country. In those days it seemed that it was just the two of them, alone on the roof of the world, sometimes in the clouds, sometimes above them, with eagles soaring below their feet.
    But now it was hard to find a place of solitude, even for someone like Evan who knew these mountains like the back of his hand. Most frequently he’d be settled and sunk into contemplation when laughter and loud voices on the path below would announce the arrival of another group of tourists. They’d stagger up the path, often clad in the most unsuitable clothes—shorts and T-shirts—no foul weather gear in case the cloud came in, sandals or city shoes, videotaping as they went. It was all a big lark to them. They had no idea that a storm could roll in and blow them off the path with gale force winds, or that the cloud could come down and blot out the way back, that one step off the path could lead to destruction, and that a night on the mountains could finish them off.
    â€œGive him until morning, major,” he said, drawing his mind back to the present problem. “I can’t have my lads missing their chapel over every climber who comes back late, can I? Likely as not you’ll have heard from him by morning. I’d wager your boy shows up late for dinner, or gives you a ring from Llanberis. And if he is stranded up there for the night … well, it’s not going