Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game (17 page)

It was cold. That was the first sensation. My mind then did a quick inventory. It flicked round my body. Everything seemed to be in the right place. Feet, legs, arms, hands, head. No pain. No obvious disorders.

I was outside. That was for sure. I was lying uncomfortably and definitely not on a bed.

The whole process of coming to my senses must have only taken a split second but there is no sense of time when you crawl out into the real world.

The five senses kicked in immediately. Touch. I was lying on my front, face resting on something uncomfortable, my right arm and hand stretched out above my head. My hand was resting on a hard, uneven surface. It felt like rock. I moved my fingers gently and this confirmed the impression.

Sight. I wasn’t about to open my eyes. I don’t think I wanted to see where I was.

Sound. All I could hear was the wind. I must be outside my brain told me. Then there was the sound of a seagull, cawing raucously. Was I by the sea? Perhaps, but not for sure. Seagulls do fly a long way inland in Scotland.

Taste. Nothing. My mouth was dry. Smell. Again the smell was of the outdoors – a musty earthy smell, mixed with a slight trace of chloroform in my nostrils.

I flicked my eyes open, not daring, as yet, to move any other muscles in my body. I looked and listened. I could only see about a foot in front of my face. There was dirt and rock just in front of my eyes and some kind of foliage was obstructing my view.

Slowly I raised my head. My field of vision was limited but it was enough to observe a rolling expanse of heather and rocks with the sight of blue grey mountains in the distance.

I checked that my feet and legs were functioning. I could feel that they were there and was relieved to find that I could move them. The same with my arms and hands.

Being now more or less fully conscious, I levered myself up into a kneeling position on all fours and moved my head slowly around the horizon.

I was out in the wilds, apparently in the middle of nowhere. Was I, in fact, dreaming?

I manoeuvered myself into a sitting position for a second and, as no one or nothing seemed to be around to prevent me, I slowly clambered to my feet, completely at a loss. So far there was no sense of fear – rather one of total bewilderment.

I felt no particular pain anywhere but I seemed to ache all over. Once on my feet the effect of the wind was greatly increased and I shivered violently. I realised how cold I was. Where the hell was I? I looked around for shelter. There was none. Only shallow dips in the ground or the customary boulders that you find out on the mountains in the wilder parts of the country.

I decided to risk the cold for a minute or two on the grounds that it was more important to try and establish where I was. I stepped over to the nearest rock and sat down and did a three hundred and sixty degree survey.

I learned nothing. All I could tell was that I was somewhere high up in the mountains and there were no obvious signs of civilization. Not a house or a road of any description.

Still no fear. More curiosity. How the hell did I get here? Because here was definitely where I was.

My memory brought back the last picture I had in my mind which was of being in my garden that afternoon where I had been pruning my roses. Or was it that afternoon? I had no sense of time. Then it came back. I had been kneeling down at the edge of the flower bed, secateurs in hand, when I had suddenly been grabbed from behind. Someone had grabbed me by both ankles and a hand had seized me by the back of my neck and forced my face down into the soil.

I touched my face. It was still covered in dirt. It had happened so quickly that there had been nothing I could do. It must have been two people. I had been completely immobilised and then a cloth covered in some chemical had been thrust over my nose and mouth. That was all I could recall.

Who and why? I would have to work that out later. My immediately problem was to get out of these mountains and get home. I considered my position. It was not very encouraging. Even in summer, Scotland’s mountains can be very dangerous places. Practically every year there were one or two people who lost their lives up here. The weather can change in an instant and it is very easy to lose all sense of orientation. The rain can come on suddenly. The wind can get up and also the mist can appear from nowhere. Hypothermia is the big danger. I knew this and reviewed the state of my belongings. I was still dressed as I had been when I had gone out into the garden. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might need a survival kit just to prune the roses. This meant thin cotton trousers, ordinary shoes and a denim shirt. Not much protection if the weather turned nasty.

I checked my pockets. Not much there either, apart from a handkerchief, some loose change and piece of string that I had taken for tying up any plants that needed it. The only positive thing was that I still had my cap which would at least keep my head warm.

Ever the optimist, I got up and tried to work out which way I should go, because the only way I was going to get out of here was by walking.

Don’t blunder off in any old direction I told myself. Think it out first. First work out where north was. That was easy because the sun was right in front of me low on the horizon. I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. The sun sets in the west. Let’s watch it for a while to check that it is indeed going down. Then I can determine the points of the compass.

Observing that the sun was indeed setting enabled me to establish direction but it also meant that I was probably facing a night up here. What the temperature drop would be I had no idea but with the wind and the damp it wasn’t going to be funny.

In all directions I was surrounded by mountains. Great, craggy, grey forbidding chunks of rock. They look lovely on the postcards but, right then, it felt to me that I was surrounded by enormous evil monsters, implacable, immovable, laughing at me.

What could I see in the landscape that might help me? For a start there were no trees visible. A stick therefore was unlikely to be available.

Not a house in sight. No smoke on the horizon. There were no roads or paths that I could see, which made me wonder how they had got me up here. The only thing I could think of was that they had dumped me from a helicopter. Even two strong men couldn’t have lugged me up here and then wandered off.

I figured I was not likely to be more than ten miles from somewhere – but in which direction? If I picked the wrong one and had to trek for twenty miles then I knew I was going to be in trouble. There was also the problem of food and water. Maybe there was a burn but I couldn’t see one.

I had to decide – and quickly. I had to get as far as I could before dark set in.

No matter which direction I chose I was going to have to do a bit of climbing. I didn’t much look forward to this but I reckoned that, at least from higher up, I might be able to have a wider view.

I decided on east. The mountains looked slightly less forbidding and I’d be walking towards the rising sun. That seemed to have some kind of sense. Whichever half of Scotland I was in there was either the coast or the A9 which sliced the country in two. A maximum of twenty miles ought to see me safe. At this point I was more angry than frightened.

It wasn’t going to be long before that changed. Disaster struck after about an hour and a half of laboriously trudging through the heather. It had been slow going because I was walking carefully. The last thing I wanted was to turn an ankle and be immobilised. The sun behind me was down on the horizon by now and dusk was setting in. But far worse than that the wind had died down and an infamous Scottish mist was descending on the whole landscape. The mountain tops had disappeared and visibility was down to about fifty yards. How was I going to be sure I was progressing in a straight line? I had heard of people getting lost in the mist and ending up walking round and round in circles.

And with the mist came that damp cold which cuts right through to the bone.

I was slowly starting to realise that this mess was not going to be as easy to get out of as I had initially thought. Hunger set in. I could handle that. Thirst was also a problem. I then started to seriously curse the bastards that had done this.

I first thought it must be revenge on the part of Purdy but, thinking a bit more about it I came to the conclusion that it was unlikely to be him. He was a bully and a coward, but I doubted he would have the guts get rid of me completely. He hadn’t done so with the car bomb. But the man who instilled such fear in Purdy might. Dewar? He was an unknown quantity as far as I was concerned. As far as I knew I had upset no one else to such an extent that they wanted me dead. Because clearly that was the intention. I could see the headlines.

“Man Found Dead on Mountain. Another walker has been claimed by our inhospitable mountains. When will people learn to take survival gear with them when they go walking in the Highlands?”

It would be written off as an accident and nobody would imagine that a murder had been committed. Dewar must still consider me as a danger. Purdy would have been explaining to him what had happened to him when they were observed by Mac in the squash club. Getting rid of me would make him feel quite safe.

These thoughts actually gave me added strength. I was damned if I was going to let him get away with it.

I decided that as long as I had fifty yards visibility I would carry on up towards the cleft that I had been heading for. With a bit of luck I might get up and over and who knows what might be on the other side. I had started to climb now, occasionally having to use my hands to clamber over rocks. My bad back was giving me hell. My hands were soon scratched and bleeding. My feet ached and I had developed blisters. It required tremendous willpower to keep going.

It didn’t last much longer. The mist descended inexorably until soon I could see no more than twenty yards ahead. I couldn’t carry on. It was too much of a risk. I was confronted with, not only the problem of direction, but also the possibility of falling off some cliff. It wouldn’t need to be a massive drop to finish me off. Falling twenty feet off a rock would probably do the trick.

There was no alternative. I was going to have to stop for the night until the sun rose and burned off the mist.

With no experience of survival techniques I only had my own common sense to rely on. The key was going to be keeping warm. A cave? A small shelter under a rock face? Anything that I could find that I could somehow turn into a makeshift cocoon to protect me.

As far as I could work out the only source of warmth was the little that my own body generated. How could I harness that? When I was younger I had done a fair amount of windsurfing so I knew the principle of the wet suit. The thin film of water next to your body warms up and acts as insulation against the colder water outside the suit. Was there any way I could use this principle?

The only thing that I could have access to were stones, earth and an abundance of heather.

I found a crack in a facing of rock which would be just large enough to take me and where the ground was dry. I started to gather heather, ripping it up with my already damaged hands. I tore at it until it was in as small pieces as possible and covered the ground where I intended to sit and doze.

By ripping strands of the heather through the open buckle of my belt I managed to create a pile of tiny bits of the plant, a bit like the lavender you might find sitting in a bowl in someone’s hallway. The pile grew. There was enough of the stuff around me. The exercise also kept me moving and kept my body warm. I wanted as much as I could possibly get. This was going to be my salvation, I decided. Next to my body it would help to trap air which would be kept warm by my body heat and act as insulation. I had no idea if it would work but I couldn’t think of a better idea.

The pile grew slowly. My hands got more and more scratched and my anger at Dewar more and more intense.

Finally I could go on no longer. I could just make out the time on my watch. It was nearly midnight. I knew that sunrise was only five or six hours away. I hoped I could survive until then.

I managed to cut the piece of string from my pocket into four short lengths by rubbing it against a rock. I tied each of the four pieces tightly around the ankles of my trousers and the wrists of my shirt and then proceeded to stuff my insulating material into them. I quickly filled up the legs of my trousers so that they were packed tight. The shirt was more difficult. Filling up the body was relatively easy. I was then able to fill up one arm but had to give up on the second one. I guessed that it wouldn’t matter too much. It was the body that I had to keep warm. I also managed to cram the remains of my magic product into my cap and thrust it firmly down on my head.

Looking a bit like a Michelin Man with a withered arm I crawled into my crack in the rock and curled up, hoping that I would manage to see the next morning.

Before I dozed off I cursed Dewar again.

The coming of the dawn after my first night in the mountains gave me hope. I was still alive, if not exactly kicking.

The sky was slowly lightening in the east and I crawled out of my shelter intending to get going as soon as possible. If nothing else the movement would bring me some warmth. Walking was not going to be easy in the state I was in. My back was aching. My feet and hands were in a mess and I decided to keep my suit of heather on in case I had to try to survive another night out. If it had actually done any good or not I had no idea. It had at least occupied me and kept the blood circulating the evening before and it had, perhaps more importantly, helped to keep my mind positive.

Count your blessings, I said to myself. You’re still alive. I managed to get into a sitting position on a rock and proceeded to slowly loosen up my muscles. Hands, arms, legs were, one by one, stretched and contracted until I felt they were reasonably operational.

While I was doing this I was searching the horizon. It was still mountain after mountain. None of them had miraculously disappeared during the night. I forced myself to stick with the direction plan I had decided on last night. I would continue east in the direction of the lightening of the sky.