A cold treachery - Charles Todd [56]
At the far end, where the valley was closed, another peak rose, swelling gently and then showing a precipitous wall of scree where no snow clung.
It was easier to breathe here, on the slopes, where he could look down as well as above his head. As if he'd reached an unexpected equality with the land. His claustrophobia began, a little, to recede.
Drew was pointing. “There's the Elcott farm—the barn's just visible. No, to the left of that boulder shaped like a chimney . . .”
“Yes, I see it now.”
“Look how it's situated. If you were the boy, which way would you go?”
Rutledge considered the setting. “It's impossible to say. There's nothing to stop him until he's well up the shoulder in any direction.”
“Look at the sheep pens, high up on the slopes. You can see some of them. There— Over there— And there— To the left of the last one, some three hundred yards lower, is the ruin of the old Satterthwaite farm. And over to your right, near the top of that saddle, is a small stone hut built for walkers to take shelter in bad weather.” Drew looked around him. “In the spring, there are wildflowers everywhere. Tiny things, that cling to the rock like the sheep.”
He went on, identifying the landmarks, laconically naming the farms one by one. Specks of civilization in a wilderness of rock. Lanes, their snow cover already broken and dirty, wound with the land, sometimes disappearing into the distance without a sign of life.
It was a vast area, this valley and its mountains. Most of it impossible to cover well on foot. Rutledge, whose sight was very good, peered into the hazy sunlight, trying to identify what Drew could pick out so easily. Sometimes only a sharp-edged shadow betrayed a man-made structure. The dirty-white bodies of sheep, now finding grazing where they could break through the snow, were all but invisible, although Drew recognized them without trouble. Only when the animals moved could Rutledge see them. A needle in a haystack, indeed. . . .
“There're tracks and footpaths everywhere. If the Robinson lad found one, he could go some distance, depending on the depth of the snow. They twist and branch. Some of them have names, some don't. Some of them lead to the pens, some go nowhere in particular. He'd have to be lucky.”
“We must assume,” Rutledge replied, “that the killer came up the lane. Blocking the way back to Urskdale. And so the boy would have gone in another direction. The question is, did Josh try to circle around in the hope of reaching the village? If he chose the high peaks instead, why did he believe he was safer there? Because he couldn't be followed there? Or was he not thinking at all, just fleeing blindly?”
Surely Janet Ashton couldn't have followed him out into the snow, if she had murdered her sister and the children. She was more likely to find herself lost than the boy, and even his rudimentary knowledge of the slopes would put him at an advantage.
On the other hand, Paul Elcott had lived here all his life. It wouldn't matter which direction Josh Robinson took; the older man would be able to outwit him.
It always came back to one central problem. They'd have to find the boy before they could know the whole story.
Rutledge scanned the land again, thinking about the boy. That night it was stormy, the air filled with snow, the ground possibly already invisible—
“That farm there