Chapter 41

The difference between life and death is a single step, Harri thought as she stood at the very edge of the cliff and peered into the ravine.

She remembered being afraid to look down after Sabih had fallen. Perhaps age had hardened her, or maybe she was less concerned by the prospect of her own death and was untroubled by the thought she might follow her friend. She could picture him now, his body on the mud-covered rocks below, broken, twisted and lifeless.

A step, a breath, a heartbeat – such transient, insignificant things were all that stood between life and death, separating light from endless night. She looked at the cube she carried on the book. She held it like a tray, and for a moment she thought about dropping it so it would smash on the very spot Sabih had fallen.

‘I don’t think you need to hold it like that,’ Elliot said, and she glanced over her shoulder to see him smiling uncertainly. ‘I don’t think it’s dangerous. I can carry it if you like.’

Harri shook her head. She felt there should be some memorial to mark the place where her friend lost his life, but she couldn’t bring herself to drop the cube, so she stepped away from the edge. She took the cube in her left hand and slipped the book into her coat pocket.

‘We should find the way down,’ Elliot said, and he started searching the undergrowth a short distance from where Harri was standing. ‘Ben brought me back here the night Sabih Khan died, after you and all the police and ambulance people had gone.’

‘It’s over here,’ she told him.

She walked past him and pushed through the bushes until she found the first stone step. She would never forget her journey down to Sabih’s body. It had been a descent into Hell.

They walked the old weathered steps, following countless others who’d worn away the stone over what might have been centuries. Who built the steps – and why – were secrets lost to time, but they had clearly been constructed long ago.

Elliot hesitated at the bottom and got his bearings.

‘I think about that night. About what I could have done differently,’ Harri said. She looked at the spot where she’d found Sabih’s body. ‘If I hadn’t shouted his name, would he still be alive?’

‘Would Ben be dead?’ Elliot wondered.

They considered their questions silently, while the leaves rustled high above them, and an unseen stream babbled over rocks some distance away.

‘I don’t think any of us could have done anything differently,’ Elliot said. ‘We all make mistakes. We have regrets, and sometimes we do things we think are right, but time makes fools of us all. Our intentions are good, our outcomes bad.’

Harri nodded. She seemed to have had more than her share of bad outcomes, but Sabih’s death was by far the worst.

‘It’s this way,’ Elliot said.

He walked past the spot where Sabih had been found, and moved into a narrow gully. Harri followed, treading carefully to avoid slipping on wet rocks. They went through a four-foot gash that looked as though it had been etched in the rock by ice many thousands of years ago. The walls of the slabs on either side were sheer and tall, and Harri started to feel claustrophobic as they went on. The cut appeared to come to a dead end, but there was a dogleg turn that went off to the west. Elliot started down it and Harri took a deep breath and followed.