Her responses had been given in both smoke signals and words, her cigarillos never far from her lips. They had got a description and an idea of Martin’s preparedness. Sturdy boots and sunglasses. A lightweight top that glowed a distracting radioactive green as he stood in the dimly lit lobby. A tiny backpack which couldn’t have contained enough for an extended trek. An angry young man, she’d gauged, recently spilt up from his girlfriend. A nasty split she speculated.

Bill Ashcroft shot one further question, delivered in his inimitable gruff style. ‘Did he inform you when he was coming back?’

Eleanor shook her head. Martin had not asked her to hold a room so what business was it of hers. She ended the conversation by returning to the glossy lifestyle magazine on the reception in front of her.

Information gleaned from his family and friends marked Martin as a semi-experienced hiker with a number of weekend-long treks under his belt, but for this excursion Martin had disregarded a couple of the basic tenets: hiking alone and not informing a responsible person of his proposed route and expected time of return. No one would call Eleanor Trebech responsible, certainly not with her three and a half husbands and history of inebriated car crashes. But not providing her with any information on his future plans seemed a wilful act of abandonment.

The only clue as to where he had set off from was the rusty Holden found abandoned in the gash in the trees that constituted the dirt car park partway up Gardner’s Hill. Tests showed that there was nothing but fumes in the Holden’s tank, the suspension held together by prayers more than mechanics. How it survived the treacherous road to get that far was anyone’s guess.

In the car they found a compass, tent pegs and a jacket, a necessity as the temperature could plummet overnight. A small first-aid kit was wedged under the passenger’s seat, where it could be easily forgotten. Maybe on purpose.

At that stage no one had put forward the possibility – out loud at least – that Martin was dead. What was speculated was that he was very much alive and completely oblivious to the search operation now under way. That he had hitch-hiked somewhere else without informing anyone. Maybe even on to the old mining grounds. It wasn’t uncommon. Three times in the past two years they had been called out to incidents where environmental activists had trespassed on to mining land only to stumble into one of the many open pits. Two had escaped with broken bones and a substantial fine, but one had picked the wrong hole to fall down and broken his neck. He’d gone undiscovered for six months. It was the same up here on the Hill, natural pits and hollows hidden in the undergrowth in abundance. If Martin had fallen into one no one would have heard him scream.

7