Kindred (Genealogical Crime Mystery #5)
Steve Robinson
Prologue
Karwendel Mountains. Bavaria, Germany. November 1973.
He wished now that he had taken the road. The road would have led him down to a town or village where he could have sought help. But he knew that if he had tried to escape by the road, he would already be dead. The mountains, on the other hand, gave him places to hide, but beneath an overcast sky, amidst frozen rocks that were already partly settled with snow, he felt so cold. He pulled his jumper up over his mouth and tried to calm himself. His breath, swirling up into the chill morning air, could certainly give him away. Despite trying to warm his hands in his pockets and in the folds of his jumper, his pale, blueing fingertips were already losing sensation and he had only stopped to rest for a few minutes.
He had to keep moving.
These mountains were no strangers to him. He had spent much of his youth among them, a rope and harness and all manner of equipment to aid his ascent and descent. But he had none of that equipment with him now. He looked up to his right and saw an uninviting snow-capped peak he knew he was ill-prepared for. Yet for now it was the only direction open to him. To his left was a sheer drop of thirty metres or more, and before him in the direction he was heading, away from his pursuers, was a high overhanging rock face, impassable to all but the very best mountaineers. Going up and around it was his only option.
He peered out from his cover, out over the sprawling green valley below him. Looking back he could see no movement among the rocks, and for a moment he wondered whether the people hunting him had given up. It was mere wishful thinking; he knew they would not. There was too much at stake. He blew warm air into his hands in an ineffective attempt to breathe life back into them. He reached beneath his jumper and pulled out the hem of his shirt, which he ripped against the edge of a jagged rock. Then he tore off enough material to wrap around his hands before he began to climb.
The first few metres were relatively easy, barely more than a scramble. After that he had to rely on cracks in the rock to gain any kind of purchase. His progress became slow, and he felt certain he was losing the early advantage he had made over his adversaries. As the angle of ascent became more shallow again he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he froze, his heart suddenly thumping. A second later he heard a familiar sound and he breathed again. It was a goat, perched at a seemingly impossible angle on the mountain face to his right. He smiled to himself, and then another sound almost caused him to lose his footing. It was a gunshot, loud enough in the quiet, still of the mountains to cause an avalanche in more favourable conditions.
He didn’t dare look back. The fact that he had heard the shot at all meant the bullet had missed him, but it also meant that the hunters had spotted their quarry. He made haste, tempering speed with safety. He would not give whoever had fired the rifle a second shot at a stationary target. He scrambled again, moving higher. He was almost there. Another shot was fired, and this time he saw the bullet ricochet off the rocks above him.
He kept going, knowing that all the while he was out in the open, life or death would be determined only by chance, and the skill of the rifleman below him. A third shot caught his boot. His ankle spun around and he slipped momentarily, but he felt no pain. Looking down, he saw that the bullet must have glanced off his heel. There was a tear in the leather, but nothing more.