CHAPTER 3 MAY                                              Languid as a lemur he climbed. The cliff overhung but the crack which split it like a sabre slash took a jammed fist nicely. As he moved upwards his lean frame swayed gently, rhythmically, reptillian, conserving strength. The rock was smooth and grey and flecked with the metallic glitter of mica but it was dry. Friction and wrinkles gave purchase to the hard rubber of his climbing shoes. Above, the wall leaned outwards into a true roof overhang but he did not look up at it. It would come soon enough. He had been there before.          He moved steadily upwards. The wall began to lean out and more of his body weight dragged at his arms. Muscles stood out like rods. The wrinkles were no longer sufficient and he had to wedge his feet in the crack. He was pushed further backwards as the rock curved out over his head. The crack narrowed - too narrow now for a fist. He dipped his hand into the chalk-bag dangling at his waist and then, with thumb curled across the palm, he wedged the hand sideways into the crack, bracing his fingers to increase the friction.          The strain increased. His arms were trembling. He was now horizontal, face upwards and a few inches from the stubborn rock, clinging like a cat. Big unyielding boulders littered the hillside at the base of the cliff sixty metres directly below his back.          The crack was splayed now and useless for a hand-jam. He dipped again for chalk and groped. A wrinkle within the crack gave him an indifferent finger-tip hold.          This was uncharted territory. Don't stop. Move on or retreat.          He shifted his right foot to a higher position and moved outwards taking most of his weight on the fingers. He took air in rapid gulps, blowing like a tank engine through pursed lips. Only seconds left. He reached beyond the edge of the overhang, urgently exploring the smooth surface - nothing. He released his left foot and thrust with his right. Still more strain on his right arm and hand but a few more inches for the grasp of his left. A ledge - slim as a pencil. His urgent fingers closed it and pulled to ease the strain on his other hand. The ledge broke. A flake the size of a roofing slate went spinning out of sight and his whole weight lurched backwards on to the fingers of his exhausted right hand. He held on, willing strength into his fingers and right arm. Time held still until there was a clatter as the flake hit the boulders below. With the left hand he gropped again round the overhang. The broken flake had left behind another ledge, lower than the other and wider - by a fraction. He grabbed it and pushed outwards so that his head shot out from under the overhang and for the first time he could look directly up the cliff above to the fluffy clouds sailing past overhead, giving the impression that the cliff was toppling. His foot came out of the crack and his body was swung free, a dead weight on his arms. As he swung he brought his right hand out from under the overhang to join the left on the narrow ledge at eye level. For a fraction of a second he paused. Then as his full weight came on his left hand he snatched with his right at the duralumin ‘nuts’ which dangled on nylon lanyards from his waist and tried to slam one into the slender crack which split the rock just above the tiny ledge. The nut was too big. He let out a despairing gasp. His fingers straightened and he fell.          He fell about three metres before he fetched up at the end of the rope and bounced like a puppet, swinging inwards with a powerful pendulum motion. He got a foot up in time to stop himself being slammed into the cliff face. There was a ribald cheer from the gallery below. Someone shouted ‘hard luck!’. Clapping. There was blood coming from somewhere. ‘That looked a right cunt'i'a position!’ That was Harry's voice. There must be women about. Harry was always deliberately crude and loud-mouthed when there were women about.          Hamish was cramped on to a ledge about twenty metres below threading the brightly coloured ropes through a snaplink. He grinned hugely and paid out more rope, lowering Allan until he could touch the ledge with an outstretched foot.          ‘Well done lad! You got at least two metres further than Johnny Wentworth’. Such praise! Johnny Wentworth was the current TV-media climbing person.          Allan examined himself. He had a gash on his left forearm which was dripping blood and he had split the thumb nail on his right hand. That would have been when he tried to cram the oversized nut into the crack.          They organised the ropes and abseilled down.          More sardonic applause came from the group lying about on the boulders below. A middle-aged man in breeches with a balding head, a beard and a pipe. A group of three unshaven and pimpled youths. Their attention was split between Allan and the pair of girls in shorts and bikini tops. The girls had long slim brown legs which disappeared into chunky white socks and oversized climbing boots. Ian and Harry were there too. Harry was lying back with his hands clasped behind his head looking extremely pleased with himself. Anoraks and ropes and rucksacks and packets of sandwiches and oranges lay all around like flotsam on a beach.          Ian offered him a swig of orange juice from a plastic bottle. The middle aged man came over.          ‘Was that Gibbet you were on lads?’          He was looking at Allan. The girls were looking at him as well. Allan fumbled with his harness. Hamish said ‘Aye - Gibbet Corner’.          ‘Does it have a grade?’          ‘Pure dead bloody impossible,’ said Hamish. He jerked his thumb in Allan's direction, ‘but Spiderman here got higher than anyone has ever got before’.          Allan pulled a jumper over his head and took his time about getting it clear of his face which was glowing like an electric fire.          ‘Can it be done do you think?’          ‘Sure,’ said Ian. ‘See next time? Dead cert. What do you say Allan? Next weekend?’          Allan shook his head.          ‘Not next weekend’.          ‘Oh, of course,’ said Harry standing up and putting on his red jockey cap which said KING SIZED BURGERS in flourescent green, ‘The brand new job and all that. The weekend after then. We'll all come up in your Rolls-Royce.’          Allan smiled weakly and wished that Harry would shut up. The man was still there looking at him.          ‘Can you do it? What was it like at the overhang?’          Allan unclipped his harness and dropped it to the ground. He looked up at the climb.          ‘Maybe.’          But he knew that next time he would do it. Next time he would know what to expect. Next time there would be no flakes breaking off in his hand. He would have a nut of the correct size in his teeth as he swung round the corner, so the upper part of the climb would be protected. He would get to the crux more quickly and with more energy in reserve so he could finger-jam up the slim crack until he could get a foot on the thin ledge.          For a while Ian and Hamish played around on another climb over to the right. Harry hung around the girls telling them exaggerated stories, pointing out climbs. The sun went and grey clouds welled up from the West. Spots of rain began to fall half-heartedly, swirling in the eddies round the cliffs like thistle down. Cold isolated spots landing on bare arms and foreheads. They packed up and began to make their way down.          *      *      *      *      *          Allan hated pubs. There was the problem of buying rounds. If only everyone would just buy their own. There was all this hassle about making sure you didn't fall behind in the round buying stakes and the problem of explaining that he did not drink alcohol, and the noise of canned music, and the tobacco smoke, and the smell of beer, and the uncomfortable seats and drinks being knock over by semi-drunks. Sometimes it was not so bad in the winter when they would go into a quiet country hotel and he could have a mug of soup in front of a log fire while the others boozed, but often it was not like that and he would have to drink cold ginger beer standing up on a stone floor while the melting snow trickled down his back of his legs and squelched about in his boots, while the others got congenially warm from the inside and all he wanted to do was to get back to the hut or the tent and get out of his wet clothes.                   Harry put a round of drinks on the table. ‘So what's all the funny goings on at the new job Allan? I hear they are dropping like ten green bottles.’          ‘Two bottles. And they're not connected. So the polis says anyway.’          Ian said, ‘An' what do you say?’          ‘I didn't know them. They tell me the guy who was in our department Tommy Harkness was a quiet wee fella who minded his own business. Hardly the stuff of conspiracy and gang warfare. The polis have just announced that there are no suspicious circumstances.’          ‘Do you believe that?’ said Hamish. ‘The papers keep saying there was some kind of secret work. Are you sworn to silence?’          Allan said ‘No. There's nothing cloak and dagger about the work. The company doesn't like its competitors knowing what it is about but all these hints about secret projects are a bit over the top. I can't tell what to believe but the folk in the department were a bit surprised.’          ‘So what sort of thing are you doing?’ Ian asked. ‘Hasn't it got something to do with your thesis stuff?’          ‘Well it was supposed to be about that but with Tommy Harkness gone so suddenly they have asked me to take over his desk in the meantime. I have been writing programs to test out the chips. It's not my line really but quite interesting I suppose.’          ‘You don't sound very enthusiastic.’          ‘Well. Yes. Its a bloody bore actually.’          ‘Why were they surprised?’ Ian offer crisps round.          ‘He is supposed to have hanged himself, on the back of a door. The trouble is that the hook he hung himself on was so low his feet could touch the floor.’          Hamish said ‘Yes I saw that in the paper. Sounds distinctly improbable. Sounds pretty creepy to me Allan. You'd be far safer up a rock-face. What happened to the other guy?’          ‘Drove his car off a cliff, just down the coast a bit from the MCI place. I am told they didn't know each other but neither of them were reckoned to be suicidal.’          ‘And you are doing the old job of one of them,’ said Ian. ‘Does that worry you?’          ‘No. Of course not.’          But it did.          *      *      *      *      *          There was the tape that Jack had copied. It sat there in the desk at the back of the second drawer down on the right. He couldn't forget that it was there, sitting among the other legitimate tapes. It was not as if there was much danger in it being discovered and anyway the date on it pre-dated his own access date to the computer, but it was as though it had a kind of radio-activity which irradiated him all day long with beams and particles of nagging anxiety. It probably glowed in the dark.          For four days he had tried to ignore it, four days, in which he had found his way around Gairnock, found temporary digs at Mrs McCulloch's place and moved in, been assigned Harkness's old desk, and been given official access to the files on the computer which had belonged to Harkness. He had even been able to give the files a cursory examination. It seemed routine stuff, all fully documented in the work schedule and every update fully authorised. He was able to copy the files to tape for safe keeping and to do so legitimately. He stored these tapes beside the illegal one. There was nothing to worry about. They were identical - or were they?          For four days he had thought about it. If he restored the tape by loading its contents on to the disc, the amount of space he required would double. Surely someone would notice that. Once the contents were there on disc there was no way of being absolutely certain that the data would not be monitored. Jack's suspicions about bugging were ludicrous - of course - and yet - bugging a computer user was the easiest thing on earth. The systems manager could install a special program so that everything you typed or printed on the screen was carbon-copied elsewhere and you wouldn't ever know.          To complete his own log of work he needed to re-check the contents listing of a tape. He reached into the drawer and for a moment his hand hovered over the illegal tape. Suppose he made a mistake and loaded the wrong one? That would be an explainable mistake which he could not be expected to detect until he had printed out the contents list.          He did not have the sang-froid of a natural criminal. His hand trembled as he withdrew the tape from the drawer and loaded it into the tape drive. One command and the tape contents were displayed and transferred to the printer. Interminable seconds dragged past while the printer hummed and spewed paper before he could delete all trace of his action from the screen. His actions could have been monitored but who would think to check such an innocuous listing? He repeated the operation for a second legal tape and then placed both tape cartridges back into the drawer. Trying to look casual he glanced round the office. Everyone seemed fully occupied. He laid both printed lists together on the desk The illegal tape contents list was longer than the other. That meant that some of Harkness's files had been deleted. And the contents of those files were on the illegal tape.          He slipped both pieces of paper into his satchel.          How easy. How trivial. The kind of thing Jack would have done ten times a day without blinking, but for Allan, looking back on it afterwards, it was some kind of private Rubicon which he crossed that day. It was the first occasion on which he had ever knowingly breached regulations about computer use. Strange that he should be so fearful of being caught in breach of regulations, and an insignificant breach at that which at worst would have meant a simple reprimand. Doubly strange when he so willingly placed his life at stake every weekend in the mountains. For him, however, physical danger was well explored territory. He had no map to the pitfalls of human relationships, just a big label, ‘Here be Dragons’. But cross the Rubicon he had done. The next step came a little more easily.          *      *      *      *      *          The two girls who had been on the mountain came into the bar and the bald-headed man was close behind. Harry chose the prettier of the two girls and sat down beside her, unnecessarily close. She recoiled.          ‘It's all right hen. You're quite safe,’ said Harry, patting his breast pocket, ‘There's a big fat wallet between us’.          The girls laughed. The bald-headed man came over and asked what they would have. Allan shook his head but Hamish said ‘A pint of export and Allan'll have an apple juice - won't you Allan?’ The man sat down at their table and breathed pipe fumes.          ‘I don't suppose you've got a sponsor?’ He was talking to Allan again.          ‘A'm his manager,’ said Harry instantly. He had his arm round the waist of one of the girls. ‘Ye'll need to talk to me’.          ‘Seriously,’ said the man. ‘You looked pretty good on the cliff today. If you were interested then I am sure my company would be. We could put you in for the autumn trials. You would do well.’          ‘What about it Allan lad?’ said Ian. ‘You might earn a crust and get yourself on television like Johnny Wentworth.’          ‘Go on Allan,’ said Harry. ‘I can just see you in a pair of lurex tights and with an advert for double glazing across your back.’          ‘More than a crust,’ said the man, ‘and it's home security systems actually.’          ‘Allan gets embarrassed if more than three people look at him at the same time,’ said Hamish. ‘He'd be paralysed on television.’          The man offered his business card. Harry materialised at the man's side with his hand out and received a card but Allan took one too. Somehow Harry talked the two girls into giving him a lift back to Glasgow. That left the other three to travel in more comfort in Ian's car. Allan wound himself into the back seat with a pile of rucksacks and fell asleep as they trundled down the Loch Lomond road.          He woke to find that they had come to a standstill in a queue of cars some distance north of Balloch. Out on the loch which was now still and glassy, a water-skier was making a splash, leaping the wash of the powerboat, swaying to and fro to the limit of his tether, but with no freedom to decide, compelled to go as the powerboat dictated. Was he like that? Was he being towed into something? Hamish and Ian were discussing plans for a trip to the Alps. Normally he would have joined in but his preoccupation with events at Gairnock took over. It had been so easy to take the next step.          *      *      *      *      *          He had shown Jack the two lists. They were sitting in a pizza place in the centre of Gairnock. Jack had got very excited and ordered a ‘Knickerbocker-Glory’ and a ‘Death-by-chocolate’. He ate both when Allan declined. He kept saying ‘We're on to something de-fin-ite-ly.’          Allan wondered if the copy of the files which the police had made had contained the two extra files. He supposed so since the two tapes were made only minutes apart. But if it did not. Well. That would really point the finger.          ‘We've got to do it,’ said Jack. ‘We've got to get a printout of those two files.’          ‘They may be big files. Its one thing to print out a contents list, quite another to print out two whole files without being spotted.’          ‘We've got to get it out of the building and run it through another computer,’ said Jack.          So that is what they did. Jack stuck the tape in his briefcase and walked calmly through the detectors which were switched off. Later he dropped the tape off at Allan's digs.          *      *      *      *      *          ‘What do you think Allan?’          He started out of his reverie. ‘Sorry! What about?’          ‘About the Dolomites. D'you fancy it this year?’          ‘Oh. Oh aye. Yes I suppose so.’          ‘Well don't get carried away will you.’          ‘Sorry. I was thinking about something else.’          ‘What's eating you Allan?’          ‘Nothing. Nothing really. Hamish. Do you have a Unix-box with a quarter inch tape drive in your department?’                   *      *      *      *      *          The University was a voracious devourer of properties. In some places the original houses had gone completely, totally digested and replaced by an excretion of concrete, but other areas had been fenced in and were being fattened up for consumption at a later date. In the meantime they led a precarious existence, their exterior stonework cleaned and windows refurbished, but internally their fabric had been prey to a burrowing parasite which had pierced them through with connecting corridors, communication cable ducts, fire doors and unlikely staircases which turned the block into a spongiform of academic life. Each front door in the terrace had a maroon noticeboard with the University crest and the name of some obscure department, a niche for the survival of rare and highly specialised academic species.          The Department of Economic Forecasting and Statistics was the third in the block. It shared a doorway and a noticeboard with the Industrial Intelligence Unit - a contradiction in terms mused Allan - and the Institute for Innovative Practice - something to do with whips and brass studded leather perhaps. At that late hour he had to ring the bell and wait. On the third pull he heard someone coming down a staircase four at a time and in a moment Hamish opened the door.          ‘Sorry! I was at the other end of the building.’ He closed the door and latched a pair of locks. ‘We're supposed to be security minded these days. Somebody walked in last week and lifted a wallet and a handbag from one of the offices.’          He led the way up the wide and once elegant staircase with heavy carved banisters, through a door in the mezzanine landing, up two steps, round a right angled bend, through another door, down three steps and along a corridor. At the end of the corridor they went up a spiral staircase, along a short corridor through another door and down another staircase like the first. Hamish's room was at the top of a short curved staircase above the ladies' toilet. It was an L-shaped room with one curved wall and a window you couldn't see through for foliage. It was the kind of building Allan liked.          ‘So what's the mystery then? I would have thought the one thing you would not be short of at MCI would be a computer.’          Allan pulled the tape cassette out of the pocket of his windcheater.          ‘No. We're not short of computers but we are short of a computer I can use without someone else breathing down the back of my neck.’          ‘Hello! Skullduggery afoot! That's not like you Allan. Somehow I hadn't cast you in the role of anarchist.’          ‘Times are changing Hamish. And so am I.’ He waved the tape. Can I stick this into a tape drive. Its high density, quarter inch 'tar' format.‘          Hamish scratched his head for a moment and then led the way out of the room and through another series of Escher-like manoeuvres to arrive at a large room with two sets of bay windows. There was a wooden bench along one wall with three computer workstations and a shoe-box sized tape drive. He inserted the tape and sat down at the terminal.          ’So what do you want done?‘          ’I want a printout of these two files.‘ Allan laid the printout on the bench. Two of the file names were highlighted in bright pink. Hamish logged in to the computer and typed the commands as Allan suggested. The tape drive hummed.          ’Great. Now how about a printout or better still do you have a PC on the network? Could you dump the stuff to a three and a half-inch floppy?‘          ’Sure.‘ Hamish remained sitting at the screen. He held out his hand like a collection plate. There was a pause, then Allan started.          ’Oh! Sorry!‘ He dug into another pocket and produced a floppy disc.          ’You didn't think I was going to give you a whole floppy for nothing did you?‘ He lead the way on another mystery trip. ’This is a university mate not a rich multi-national company. We don't buy even paper-clips here. We rent them.‘          They came to another room where a large piece of computer machinery of ancient vintage was sitting under dust sheets. It was disconnected and derelict. It also looked as though some of the guts had been cannibalised. In the corner of the room was a modern PC. Hamish stuck the floppy into the drive and typed a few commands. Minutes later he pulled the floppy out and handed it to Allan. ’There you are. Was there something else?‘ He didn't really want to know.          ’How about a quick look at it on the screen.‘          Hamish's fingers rattled on the keys. ’Big files,‘ he said, and then the screen filled with gibberish, bleeping and squirming, with just a few decipherable words like 'ERROR 22'’.          ‘That's enough,’ said Allan. ‘Kill it. It's just a bloody executable.’          ‘Not a secret code? How dull. I thought we would at least it would be a plan to assassinate the Prime Minister. What's an executable when it's at home?’          ‘That wouldn't be a secret, just a bore,’ said Allan. ‘Everybody's got a plan to assassinate the Prime Minister. An executable is just a program which has already been compiled. So it is in machine code ready to run on the computer. It's just ones and noughts, so it is not meant to be read as text.’          ‘How do you know it's an executable and not a cipher?’          ‘Because there are so many non-printable characters and a few strings of clear text. You don't get that in a cipher. I don't suppose you would have a dis-assembler on your machine?’          ‘Come again?’          ‘A dis-assembler. A program which will translate the code back into assembly language so that we can read what the program is trying to do.’          ‘We're Statisticians Allan. We USE computers here mate. We don't climb inside them.’          After a pause he said, ‘Was there something else then?’          ‘My tape,’ said Allan.          Hamish snorted. ‘At least we keep fit here’ and off they went on another tour. When the tape was back in Allan's possession Hamish said, ‘D'you fancy a drink? I'll buy you an orange juice.’          ‘No thanks. I've got to get back to Gairnock.’          When they reached the door Hamish said, ‘Are you going to tell me what the hell you're up to?’          Standing on the doorstep. Allan considered that for a moment. Then he waved the tape cassette and said, ‘This is a tape of the files which belonged to Tommy Harkness the guy who died and used to work in my department. The files you copied for me were deleted from his directory by person or persons unknown. I just want to see if there was a reason.’          Hamish made a whistle shape with his lips. ‘You watch it lad,’ He wasn't joking.          ‘It's ok. I thought it might be a document or a letter or something that would give some clue about his death. No one at work seemed to believe the suicide verdict. But it is just an executable so I guess it's nothing to get up tight about. I'll just drop it. Forget it Hamish.’          ‘This is not like you Allan. What would you have done if it had been something to get up tight about.’          ‘Well.... Do you remember the lad we pulled off the Dearg Slabs? The one who was up on the rock? Well he was the nephew of the Chief Inspector who is in charge of the investigation. I would have handed over the stuff to him and asked him to keep me out of it.’          Hamish leaned on the door. He spoke as though explaining to a child. ‘You shouldn't have those files, right? If you think the police would `keep you out of it' then you must be daft. My advice is to throw that bloody thing away. See you in gaol.’ He closed the door and locked it twice.          The train down to Gairnock was empty. Allan let his forehead rest against the window and dozed as points clattered and yellow sodium lit streets chugged past. Hamish was right of course. The whole thing was daft and he was relieved to find that the files held nothing mysterious. That was definitely the end of the cloak-and-dagger stuff. He would tell Jack in the morning that he would have nothing further to do with his stupid schemes.          As he rounded the corner from Shore Road into Loch Ranza Road he told himself it was a temporary place. That was supposed to raise his spirits. It didn't work. The road was short, pot-holed and dingy. Polystyrene carry-out packages littered the gutters and the gardens, such as they were, looked as though they had been pounded by pneumatic hammers to the consistency of black concrete. But at least it wasn't carpeted in broken glass as some streets were and the place had one advantage over others. It was cheap.          That was one of the surprises of his new job. He hadn't expected to be hard up. His salary from MCI was enormous when compared to his income as a student, but somehow it had disintegrated under the impact of unexpected expenditure. He had a student loan to repay. He had arranged with his sister Jean to make a monthly payment into her account to pay his whack of Uncle Roddy's upkeep and then he had had to lash out on new clothes. When he sat down to calculate the remainder he was shocked to find himself poor yet again. The advance he had got from MCI didn't look as though it would stretch to the end of the month.          Mrs McCulloch's house had a narrow frontage in the middle of the block which was two stories high. His room was on the upper floor and his window overlooked a derelict court yard which gave him a view of the backs of other buildings and a dirty patch of earth. Here some enterprising child had dug an earth-pit and surrounded the shrine with a number of offerings - a plastic lorry with no wheels - a headless horse which did have wheels but only three of them and a spade. Not the kind of tin spade you buy along with a bucket to play on the beach but a real navy's spade with the shaft snapped off just above the spit.          The room was damp. It had an unnatural chill and an aura of sadness about it as though the walls had absorbed the emotions of life's flotsam and jetsam which had lodged there over the years. He had a bed, a small table, two chairs and a ply-board wardrobe containing a large collection of wire coat hangers which jangled like distant cow-bells as he moved about the room.          He threw the tape cassette and floppy disc on to the bed and looked round. It was just a temporary place, he told himself yet again and now that he knew there was no mystery about the files he could put all that behind him. His aberration was over. No more tension. He would get back to doing what he wanted to do and what he was good at - working on the theory of computer correctness and mountaineering. Perhaps with a bit of care he could afford the Dolomites this summer. And of course there was the problem of not having a girl friend. That deserved some serious thought. He fancied Jennifer on the enquiry desk and wondered how he could engineer an introduction. She was probably spoken for.          He lay in bed with his hands behind his head and stared at the hideous floral pattern of the wallpaper. The lack of a television set did not worry him. He enjoyed the peace to think his own thoughts. Why, he wondered idly, were those two files not on the log of work which Tommy Harkness had kept so neatly up to date, and why were they so much larger than the other files?