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# https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore
# https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files
# Example .gitignore files: https://github.com/github/gitignore
/bower_components/
/node_modules/

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<container version="1.0" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container">
<rootfiles>
<rootfile full-path="OEBPS/content.opf" media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>
</rootfiles>
</container>

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content=
"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 February 2006), see www.w3.org" />
<title>Dedication</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h3>About the author</h3>
<p>Joe Donnelly was born in Glasgow, in Scotland, close to the
River Clyde, but at a very young age he came to live in Dumbarton,
which is some miles from the city and close to Loch Lomond, Ben
Lomond and the Scottish Highlands.</p>
<p>At the age of 18, he decided to become a journalist and found a
job in the Helensburgh Advertiser, a local paper in a neighbouring
town where he learned the first essential of writing: how to type.
Quickly.</p>
<p>A few years later, at the age of 22, he became editor of his
local newspaper, the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton, before moving to
the Evening Times and then the Sunday mail in Glasgow where he
became an investigative journalist.</p>
<p>During his career he won several awards for newspaper work
including Reporter of the Year, Campaigning Journalist and Consumer
Journalist.</p>
<p>It was while working in newspapers that he wrote his first
novel, <em>Bane</em>, an adult chiller, which was followed by eight
other novels, mostly set in and around the West of Scotland and
loosely based on Celtic Mythology.</p>
<p>This was followed by <em>Stone</em>, <em>The Shee</em>,
<em>Shrike</em>, <em>Still Life</em>, <em>Havock Junction</em>,
<em>Incubus</em> and <em>Dark Valley</em>.</p>
<p>Recently he decided to write for children, although he says his
books are aimed at "young people of all ages, those with some
adventure in their soul."</p>
<p>The <em>Jack Flint Trilogy</em> is his first venture at telling
stories for the young at heart.</p>
<p>Joe is now working on two novels: A chiller for adults, and
another rollicking adventure for young people, based on Nordic
mythology.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content=
"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 February 2006), see www.w3.org"/>
<title>Full Proof</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt"/>
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h3>Full Proof</h3>
<p>The town is on its knees. The jobs have gone. The companies have shut or sold out.</p>
<p>The only distillery is about to close just after the last batch of high-octane vintage scotch is bottled and
shipped.</p>
<p>But that batch is 250,000 gallons of full-proof whisky. It’s worth MILLIONS.</p>
<p>And it’s there for the taking.</p>
<p>All it takes is somebody with an idea, and some friends willing to take a big risk.</p>
<p>It’s the only thing that can turn a ghost town into a boom-town.</p>
<p>As long as you can outwit the cops. And the customs men. And the hoods who want it all.</p>
<p>It’s a tall order, but somebody has to do it. A man with a masterplan, and some crazy friends.</p>
<p>And nobody said you can’t have fun when you set out to save a town from the scrap-heap!</p>
<p>Joe Donnelly’s Full Proof is a roistering thriller, as high-octane as the scotch.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>1</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt"/>
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>1</h1>
<p>IT WAS Gus Ferguson's heavies who started the whole thing off. What they did to Donny Watson, that was well out of
order and they deserved a real comeuppance for it. </p>
<p>It was them, and the spilt whisky, and the fact that right then everything was loaded against the bunch of friends.
To tell the truth, everything was going wrong and there seemed no end to it. </p>
<p>That whisky. That and the hot summer sun, and those arseholes at the golf club. And then there was Alistair Sproat
who thought he ran the town and now he was bailing out to the highest bidder. Selling out, selling everybody
out. </p>
<p>It was all of these things, these people. The sell-out, the whisky, the arseholes, Donny Watson getting kicked black
and blue and bloody, on his way home. They all made it happen, one way and another, because sometimes you get to the
end of the rope and you've no choices left. But that's just the hindsight talking. If you're going to hear this
story, you might as well hear it from the start. </p>
<p>Five of them, two cans of cold lager and a skinny greyhound with serious personal problems, playing a four-ball from
the tenth to seventeenth. No medal, no handicap except the usual. </p>
<p>Jed Coogan had his cart and the old set of clubs his uncle had left him in his will. He'd pawned the shoes because
the last time they'd caused big blisters that he burst with a needle until the water came out. Six of them, hunkered
and sprawled down in the gorse and broom, waiting for a foursome of Ralph Lauren shirts and big check trousers to
make their way to the twelfth, then a pair of loud women with wide round backsides in even louder checks, these daft
gamblers' visors they wear these days and snooty Kelvinside accents that could grind glass to a bevel finish. Half
way along the straight they looked round and saw the guys passing the cold lager back and forth and gave reproving
sniffs and tut-tutted loud enough to hear. Everybody laughed. Just two minutes before, one of them had stuck her
hand down and hauled the seam of her pants out of the crack of her arse. Ladylike it wasn't. </p>
<p>"That one's younger than your girlfriend," Donny said. </p>
<p>"Jealous git," Jed said. He was sturdy and dark, that Irish kind of way, and he was up to all kinds of stuff with the
ex-wife of one of the town councillors who'd done the dirty with a young secretary from the council office. She was
getting her own back and everything else from Jed several nights a week and some more at weekends. Truth to tell,
Margery Burns might have been on the far side of forty five and getting some of the blonde out of a bottle to shade
the fade but there wasn't one of them there, except maybe Jack Lorne, who wouldn't have jumped at the chance of a
weekend indoors with Mrs B. </p>
<p>"You just can't get away from her," says Donny. " 'cause old women run faster. They only wear sensible shoes."</p>
<p>"And big loose cotton knickers."</p>
<p>"She doesn't wear knickers," Jed threw back. "Not when I'm there. And she never wakes me up after it and asks what
I'm thinking. Not like your bunch of bimbettes." He went into falsetto: "Do you love me Donald, I mean
<em>really</em> love me? Honestly?"</p>
<p>He reached into the bag and rummaged for the second can. Two between six was hardly a boozy afternoon, but it was
still cold and on a day like this, you couldn't have gone nine holes without a refreshment. It was hot as anybody
could remember..</p>
<p>"Oh, Mrs Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" Neil was good with the accents.</p>
<p>"You couldn't get a scabby sheep to seduce you, Big Stuff."</p>
<p>Neil had a tight grip on the greyhound's leash. Every now and again she'd let out a little soulful whine and rub her
backside along the grass..</p>
<p>"You couldn't even pull Fannieboz, here, and she's hot for anything."</p>
<p>Levenford Golf course is flat as a salt pan. On the north side there's some scrubby gorse and broom and straggly
hawthorn butting up against Aitkenbar Distillery and its old storage sheds, bonded warehouses that give off a sweet
heady smell some days when the wind is right. Then there's the big inlet, what they call Bruce's Harbour, where they
used to load the whisky on to barrels and down the river to the big ships moored at the castle rock. They say King
Robert himself used to stash his warship here, back when they didn't just talk hot air and politics in Edinburgh,
but who knows? It was a while ago.</p>
<p>Along by the twelfth and thirteenth, the curve of the river shoves up against the big levee bulwark that's the only
thing keeping the water out and the golfers in. You have to be a member on this course, which costs some fancy money
and cash was something none of them had to waste, not this summer anyway.</p>
<p>This day the heat made the air twist and dance and shimmer way along the fairway, like half-seen ghosts in the grass.
You could see pools of water sparkling along the flat in the distance and when you got up to them, they'd be gone.
All illusion. </p>
<p>Three weeks of solid rain and then two of a sunshine heatwave that left cracks where the shallow mud had been and the
straight along by the built-up riverbank was lush and green, tangled with willow herb and that creepy wild rhubarb
that grows in the damp, crawling with centipedes and earywigs. It was all alive. Warblers warbled non-stop and the
drone of bees up in the high elms could put you to sleep if you sat down under them. The gorse and broom pods popped
open with little crackles that made it sound like the bushes were on fire. Three small boys paddled about barefoot
up to their thighs in the rough marsh, feeling for lost golf balls with their toes and feeding them into a big
plastic bucket. </p>
<p>The four-ball took their time and one of them hooked a fast curver straight into the marsh. The nearest boy marked
where it went and then looked the other way. There was no chance that pringle man in the while flat cap and the
Payne Stewart knickerbockers was going to risk his spikes in the deep marsh. Every footstep set off a jacuzzi of
nitrates and methane that smelt worse than old cow farts. </p>
<p>"Have you seen the ball, sonny?"</p>
<p>"No mister." A blatant lie. It had missed him by only three yards. "But I've got some spares. Sell you half a
dozen."</p>
<p>Swift negotiation, and to the boys out there, it was a seller's market, always had been. Jed Cooper and Jack Lorne
had done that job plenty of years before and had bought good bikes with the proceeds. Then they got a paper round
and sold the golf franchise to two other boys from down the street and passed on the tradition. Good days. </p>
<p>"Supply and demand," Jack said. He always came out with these things. "Nothing changes."</p>
<p>Pringle man did his deal, keeping his black and white brogues away from the gassy muck and they sauntered on, rotund
rotarian senior partners killing time. The fat-arsed women came by, hacking pretty wildly, and a stray ball smacked
into the gorse nearby, sending up a thick, somehow exotic scent of coconut oil. </p>
<p>"Stupid cow," Neil said. "That could have brained me."</p>
<p>"You'd have ended up with more brains than you were born with."</p>
<p>Donny pulled a long black tube from the cart. It came out like a blunt sword. </p>
<p>"This is the piece of the resistance." He murdered a French accent. </p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"A golf ball holder. Got it in a sale for two quid."</p>
<p>"Total waste of money," Jed said. </p>
<p>"Watch this." Donny thumbed off the plastic lid and put the top of the tube to his mouth. They heard the glug as the
liquid went down. </p>
<p>"What the hell's that?"</p>
<p>"The angels share." Donny wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Want some?"</p>
<p>"But what the hell is it?" Neil wanted to know.</p>
<p>"Only the finest twenty-five-year-old Glen Murroch. Made before you were even a glint. It'll set you back fifty notes
a bottle, maybe more."</p>
<p>"You ripped it off?"</p>
<p>"They're ripping <em>me</em> off," Donny came back. He smacked his lips. "That's what I call a drink. Take it while
it's going, for it won't be going long."</p>
<p>That was true enough. The sun might have been high and the bees doing the sleepy thing up on the leaves, but it had
not been the best of times, and from the looks of it, it was going to get a whole lot worse come the autumn.</p>
<p>Jack had summed it up. "You get screwed, and then they really fuck you." Jack wasn't really that given to swearing
either, but he hit it right on the head. </p>
<p>Donny was screwed, one way or the other. He'd only been told two weeks back that he was on short time working and the
distillery was going to shut for good. Him and another two hundred would be out to scrap, and then Alistair Sproat
would make a fortune selling off the land for a useless shopping centre that was going to try to sell lots of things
to people with bags of no money. It was worse for Donny Watson. He'd just been made up to chargehand, in the
cooperage where they made the barrels, and there sure wasn't going to be a big demand for his services around here
any more, not with Sproat aiming to get into the designer moonshine market that didn't need any years in oak
conditioning doing nothing but getting smooth. It was much the same for the rest of them, even Jack, who everybody
had said was the one most likely to make something of himself, but here he was, down in the gorse with the rest of
them, Saturday afternoon and nothing much else to do. Soon they'd be able to play midweek, for the same reason.</p>
<p>He passed the tube untouched to Jed who lifted it up like he was playing a trombone and poured some down his own
throat. His face went red and he started to cough and somebody thumped him on the back. "Lordy lordy, that's the
real stuff. Smooth as silk."</p>
<p>"They'll be doing a last bottling sometime soon," Donny said. "Clearing all the old barrels out of stock. Sproat
wants a special blend before the doors shut."</p>
<p>"Scraping the bottom of the barrel."</p>
<p>"No, this is real good stuff. It's been there for years. It was made for some boat, the Queen Elizabeth probably, and
then it just got locked down in customs bond. The buyer went bust, years ago, so there's tons of it, all over-proof
as well."</p>
<p>"And then you're out on your ear."</p>
<p>"Then we're all out," Donny agreed. "Life's a pure bitch." He grabbed the whisky and took another slug at it. Neil
had a mouthful, then Jed and then Tam Bowie who hadn't said much because he was still working, at least until they
finished the houses out on the east end of the town. It came back to Jack. </p>
<p>"Life is a box of chocolates," Jed said. "You end up getting left with all the hard ones that break your teeth."</p>
<p> "Look at this place," Jack said. "We got a river, and a castle and the best pubs in the west. Fishing and climbing
and everything else, wall-to-wall women and then the arseholes come along and totally screw it up."</p>
<p>"You'll be okay when you finish your college stuff," Jed said. </p>
<p>"Sure, I'll be rich as sin. I don't think. If I even get to finish, now."</p>
<p>Everybody knew Jack was paying his way through, working his way to some degree in business or management, studying
after his morning shift in the dairy. Nobody really knew exactly what it was for and he never said much about it. He
was up at four in the morning delivering milk, and then half the day cleaning out the tankers at the dairy and God
alone knew when he had the time to study, but they all had to hand it to him. He was trying to pull himself up by
the bootstraps, make something of himself like his grandad always said, and since his old man had died, it had been
no easy garden stroll. </p>
<p>Now the dairy was teetering on the edge and Andy Kerr was staring disaster in the face. The two hundred grand he'd
invested in new tankers had proved a bad bet after the big supermarket chain he'd been supplying for ten years
pulled the rug and left him flat. They'd been trying to drive the wholesale price down to where even the dairy
farmers would operate at a loss. Now Andy Kerr and the farmers, and everybody who worked for them were all going to
lose.</p>
<p>On top of that, the Town Council had doubled the rent on the dairy site, and Jack said he was sure some of the
councillors were on the take. You get Andy out and you've got five prime acres to build on and Asda and Safeway and
Sainsbury's are biting each other's backs to get flat land to trade on. That was a sellers market. So the
supermarkets won whichever way.</p>
<p>Eighteen prime acres when you threw in Bruce Harbour, where Sproat planned to bulldoze all the old distillery
buildings and warehouses. Another piece of town history gone forever, but that was nothing new. What could you
do?</p>
<p>"Bastards," Donny said, and everybody agreed with the sentiment. He had Irish red hair and freckles and his face was
scarlet from the sun. </p>
<p>"Sure they are," Jack said. "They're tearing the heart out of the place. It's going to be like a ghost town. Five
hundred out of work, and worse to come."</p>
<p>"How d'you figure that out? It's only two hundred at the distillery."</p>
<p>"<em>Only</em> two hundred," Jed butted in. "Get real!"</p>
<p>"Okay," Jack said. "You got the two hundred from Sproat's. Another forty from the creamery. That's the start. Plenty
of people not earning, and not spending. That's going to hit the shops and the bars, and when they get hit, they lay
off. So there's less rake-in to the council. So they start cutting services and jobs."</p>
<p>He shook his head. "Look what's happened after the banks crashed. Thousands of jobs wiped out. Less taxes for the
government. So they start cutting costs. More jobs down the drain. Less taxes. It's a vicious circle."</p>
<p>"Bastard!" Donny repeated. "Somebody should do something about it."</p>
<p>Jack just nodded. </p>
<p>Jed got to his feet.</p>
<p>"Enough of this dismal crap. Come on and finish the game."</p>
<p> "Hey mister, you want some balls?" One of the boys held up a plastic bag.</p>
<p>"His granny's got them," Tam chipped in and everybody fell about. </p>
<p>"What's it like with her teeth out?"</p>
<p>"You'll never know. What's it like being a dildo?"</p>
<p> Tam lined up. He had the six iron and the wedge. Jed had the three and a big old wood. Everybody else had two clubs
apiece. Tam hit a scorcher that went straight down the middle and nearly hit the woman who had pulled the gusset
lining from her cheeks and she turned round to glare. </p>
<p>"Fore. . . . " he bawled. </p>
<p>"<em>Sixty </em>bloody four."</p>
<p>"That would be the only bang she'd get," Neil said. </p>
<p>"Not unless Jed catches her up."</p>
<p>"Shit upon you, gentlemen" Jed said, very agreeably. "Don't knock it until you've tried it, not that you're going to
get the chance. The mature lady, she don't yell, she don't tell and she be grateful as all hell."</p>
<p>Jack hit a grass cutter that glanced off a handy rise and took off, almost catching up with Tam's ball on the middle.
Neil managed all of twenty yards and scooped a two-foot gouge. Jed topped it hard and the ball dug in to a knoll,
under the roots of a tree. Donny hit his a smack and his did a fast curve to the left. The greyhound whined and
rubbed her backside along the grass again.</p>
<p>"Sliced and diced," somebody said. </p>
<p>"No. It was hooked."</p>
<p>The ball kept curving past the willow stumps and came down into the march, not far from the furthest swamp kid. Donny
swore. </p>
<p>"Anybody got another ball?"</p>
<p>"There was some in the bag."</p>
<p>"No," Jed said. "I took them out for the lager."</p>
<p>"Oh, brilliant! That's me out the game."</p>
<p>"Want a ball mister? Ten for five. Brand new, no totties."</p>
<p>"How much for one?"</p>
<p>"Got to buy bulk, mister. Ten balls, five notes."</p>
<p>"That's bloody robbery. I'll wrap this six iron round your ear."</p>
<p>The boy shrugged. He was safe, up to his thighs in clinging mud. No club member would get near to him out there.</p>
<p>But Donny was no member. </p>
<p>"Screw it," he said, and maybe it was the whisky, or just the way Donny was. Once he got hold of an idea, there was
no stopping him. His cargo pants were down at his ankles before anybody could say a thing. </p>
<p>"Just leave it," Jed said. "We can take shots each."</p>
<p>"It's only a bit of mud." He heel-toed out of his trainers and stood there in tee shirt and jockeys, surveying the
scene. His ball had landed thirty feet out, close to a lone squat bush. </p>
<p>"It's too deep. You'll soak your pants."</p>
<p>"To hell with the pants." He pushed them down too and stepped out. His backside was pallid furred with golden hairs
which contrasted with the dark tee shirt. He pulled the edge down to cover his balls and tried to wedge it between
his thighs. </p>
<p>"Let it swing, Donny boy."</p>
<p>"There's piranhas in there. They go for worms."</p>
<p>Jack cupped his hands to his mouth and bawled to the women golfers who were just turning the bend at the end of the
straight. </p>
<p>"You don't know what you're missing here, ladies."</p>
<p>Everybody laughed, even Donny. He scratched his backside and then started wading until the mud came up to his thighs.
Every step made a gloopy sucking sound and set up and gobble of bubbles and sighed when they reached the
surface. </p>
<p>"What a smell, man. That would knock you out flat."</p>
<p>"Let's make it a four ball," Neil said. "I'm not playing with him when he comes out."</p>
<p>Donny was bending down now, arms deep in the mud, white backside catching the sun, nose close to the surface. </p>
<p>"Use your feet," Jack shouted. </p>
<p>Donny stood up and held his hand up in triumph. His arm was black from fingers to shoulder. </p>
<p>"Got it," he called back, floundering to catch his balance, and then laboriously turned to make the long sticky walk
back to the hard ground. </p>
<p>"Shit," Jed said. "That's what it smells like. That is rank rotten."</p>
<p> Neil laughed. "Momma always said, stupid is as stupid does."</p>
<p>Donny stood there and the black greasy ooze slowly slid down his thighs. The tip of his penis bore a black dot of
mud.</p>
<p>Fannieboz strained at the leash and shoved her nose into his crotch.</p>
<p>Donny stumbled backwards. "Jeez, Neil. You got to get that bitch fixed."</p>
<p>"It's her hormones. Something wrong with her glands. She can't help it."</p>
<p>The greyhound mewled and rolled her eyes at Donny.</p>
<p>"That's one seriously screwed pooch," he said.</p>
<p>"Hey, mud man, you have to get cleaned up." Jed held his nose. "That's bog awful."</p>
<p>"Along here," Jack said. "If there's any water in the steam you can wipe it off."</p>
<p>They all sauntered off, taking shots when they came across the balls, Donny leaving black and smelly footprints on
the green grass, until they reached the little runnel that crossed the fairway. There was about a foot of water,
flowing slowly, with a thick candyfloss of algae on either side. Some water skaters skimmed the surface and a family
of whirligig beetles madly made themselves dizzy. </p>
<p>Donny slid down the bank and into the water and immediately a trail of ooze washed downstream in slow whorls. He bent
and started wiping the mud off.</p>
<p>"What's that smell?" Tam asked, sniffing the still air. </p>
<p>"It's the dog."</p>
<p>"No it's the ginger loony from the black lagoon," somebody said. </p>
<p>"Not that. I smell more drink."</p>
<p>Jack sniffed. "Me too."</p>
<p>"Look," Jed said. "Where did these fish come from?"</p>
<p>They all peered into the clear water upstream of where Donny stood. A half a dozen small fish, maybe brown trout,
floated in a little pool that was blocked off by a fallen branch. They were pale and bloodless, floating belly
up.</p>
<p>"It's whisky," Jed said. </p>
<p>"No. That's just because you're drinking the stuff."</p>
<p>"No, he's right," Donny said. "This must be where it came out. Man, the shit really hit. It was just last Friday,
before a big decant. Somebody must have moved the wedges on the barrel stack and three of them rolled. They hit the
concrete like bombs."</p>
<p>He laughed. "Sproat went berserk, but it's his fault for not making sure the barrels were checked. Some of the hoops
had rusted in store, and when they hit, they just broke away. You ever see a hogshead explode?"</p>
<p>Nobody had.</p>
<p>"Malt whisky fountain, that's what you get. The decant tank drain valve was still open and all the spillage went
straight into the pipe."</p>
<p>Donny stood up, cupping water in his hand to loosen the mud on his caked arm. </p>
<p>"It all went down the drain and that was that. Couple of hundred gallons. And believe me they get worked up if you
take a half bottle for medicinable purposes."</p>
<p>"Sure, like you've got a dangerous case of being sober?"</p>
<p>"Imagine their faces when all that went down the swanney. You can still smell it down here."</p>
<p>"Must have killed the fish. They'd have been swimming in it."</p>
<p>"What a way to go. Suberb. That's how I want it."</p>
<p>Jack stood at the edge and looked upstream. "So it all went down a drain and into this?"</p>
<p>"They tried to hush it up. Sproat got them to block it off. He's scared he'd get done for polluting the place. But if
it got to the environmental people, I never heard."</p>
<p>"So three barrels, how much is that worth?" Jack had that look in his eye. </p>
<p>"Depends," Donny said. He was bending down again, now winning the battle. His legs were becoming paler as the muck
washed off. "Depends on how old, what blend and whether the duty's been paid. That's about eighty percent."</p>
<p>"Eighty percent?" Jed said. "That's what they take? That's robbery with violence."</p>
<p>"Too true," Donny agreed. "Anyway, three barrels is about a hundred and fifty gallons."</p>
<p>"Six bottles to a gallon," Jack said. He was quick.</p>
<p>"And what's that over-proof thing?" Jed asked. </p>
<p>Jack stepped in. He was always good at pub quizzes, knew all the obscure stuff that wasn't music and football. "They
used to test whisky with gunpowder to see if it was strong enough. If it exploded, it was. That was it proved."</p>
<p> "Yeah," Donny said. "A hundred proof is about sixty percent. The raw stuff they make in there is about a hundred and
thirty, so that's eighty percent pure alcohol, twice as strong as normal, so you have to water it down."</p>
<p> "That would blow your head off."</p>
<p> Jack was still picking at it. "So that's like three hundred gallons, eighteen hundred bottles, all down the drain.
No wonder they were pissed off."</p>
<p>"It was just the angels share," Donny said, almost clean. "You can still smell it down here."</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"Cooper's trade secret."</p>
<p>"Ex-cooper soon," Tam said, and that was true enough. </p>
<p>"Okay. Your barrels are made of oak, right? Whisky has to be stored in oak for three years minimum, to be real
scotch. And some of it evaporates through the pores in the wood. They call it the Angels Share. </p>
<p>"Can't you make barrels with no holes?"</p>
<p>"No," Donny said, not bothering to explain. He hauled himself up to the bank. </p>
<p>"You forgot to wash your dick," Tam pointed out. </p>
<p>"Shouldn't have been looking, sweetheart." Everybody laughed. Donny started climbing back into his shorts and when he
straightened he reached for the black tube, popped the top and took a big one. He gasped and wiped his mouth again,
unaware that he left a wide grey streak from one cheek to the other. Nobody bothered to tell him. </p>
<p>"And this is the angels share too. Everybody gets a share."</p>
<p>"Like Catch 22," Jack said. </p>
<p>Everybody looked at him and none of them knew what he was talking about. </p>
<p>Donny pulled on the cargo pants and slipped his feet back in the trainers. </p>
<p>"Where's that ball?" </p>
<hr/>
<p>"Hey, you there! Are you members?"</p>
<p>It came from off to the left, back the way they had come. Tam was hacking away in the rough, not far in, close to a
thin birch and he'd taken about ten fruitless swipes, cursing after every one of them, but the ball was still stuck
in the long grass.</p>
<p>Another designer shirt came striding up, dragging a big red bag of Ping clubs with little woolly hats to keep them
warm, even in this heat. </p>
<p>Donny was taking another drink of the amber stuff and Jed had the can of lager in his hand. They all turned. </p>
<p>"On you go," Donny said, waving them forward when he put the tube down. "You can play on through. We're not in any
rush."</p>
<p>"I asked if you are members," the man asked. He had thin grey hair and a thick stubbly presbyterian moustache.</p>
<p>"Yes, we are. Of course." Tam hiccupped at the end of that and Jed giggled. It had been that kind of day so far. </p>
<p>"Oh really. And what is this, a five ball? And where are your clubs?"</p>
<p>Donny held up a driver and a wedge. The bag stood alone on its little wheels with only a black tube protruding from
the top. </p>
<p>"You know the rules."</p>
<p>"What rules?"</p>
<p>"Or you would if you were members, which you clearly are not." He looked Tam up and down, taking in the jeans and the
old Jesus sandals. "No denim, only golf spikes, and definitely no, repeat no low-life vagrants."</p>
<p>Jack knew the face. Jamieson Bell, one of the big-wigs on the council. Every one of them were in Alistair Sproat's
pocket as far as he could tell.</p>
<p>"Who are you calling a low-life?" Jed stepped forward and stuck his chin out. </p>
<p>"What's the problem Jamieson?"</p>
<p>Jack recognised the voice and spun round. Gus Ferguson hove into view, bright in a yellow polo shirt and sky blue
trews. He was stocky, with thick lifter's arms covered in black curly hair.</p>
<p>"No problem Fergus. These people were just leaving."</p>
<p>"Look, we said you could play on through. Just you go ahead. We're not bothering anybody."</p>
<p>"You're bothering <em>me</em>," Bell said. Donny had recognised him too even though Bell wouldn't have known him from
Adam. </p>
<p>"Yeah. Get lost," Ferguson said. "You're cluttering the place up."</p>
<p>"Get yourself lost," Tam came back. "We're just having a game."</p>
<p>Ferguson came right up to them, passing Bell. He leaned in on them, bull-like and broad. He had some sort of share in
the big scrap yard out beyond the railway bridge where Jed and Neil rummaged for parts for the stock-car bust-ups.
He did a bit of car trading from a yard on the east side, and they were the only things he did that were anywhere
close to being legit. Everybody knew he was into every mucky scam going.</p>
<p>"Listen, you low-life bunch of shite, get yourselves off this fairway or I'll fucking kick you off myself."</p>
<p>"You and whose army?" Donny demanded. Jack clapped a warning hand on his shoulder, but Donny was up for it. His
freckles stood out like ink-blots on his skin, the way they did when he was losing it just a bit. </p>
<p>Ferguson leaned in further. "Do I know you? I do, don't I?"</p>
<p>"So what?"</p>
<p>"You're Skid Watson's boy, that right? Like father like son. Last of the great unwashed."</p>
<p>"You keep my dad out of it, you slimy bastard." Donny's old man had never been an outstanding success at anything,
apart from football, when he had been noted for a vicious sliding tackle, but now he had bad arthritis that curled
his fingers into claws and welded his knee bones into knots and was in a lot of pain a lot of the time. </p>
<p>"You'll amount to the same thing, Ginger boy. Nothing."</p>
<p>Neil Cleary broke in and Ferguson rounded on him, slab-faced, grizzle haired. </p>
<p>"You too, beef lard. See me after you've been to weightwatchers and got rid of the flab"</p>
<p>"Come on," Jack said. "We don't need this."</p>
<p>"Yeah. Take the rest of the dead-end kids and get to fuck out of my club."</p>
<p>That was enough for Donny. </p>
<p>"You're club? What club would have you? You're nothing but a fucking low-life, slimy, tuppeny-ha'penny dope dealing
fuckin' shark. People like you give fuckin' criminals a bad name."</p>
<p>Ferguson whipped round to see how far off Jamieson Bell was. Maybe they had just been pitched together in the medal,
and maybe Bell was too far up the social scale to know just who and what Ferguson was, but Donny had touched the
spot all right. Gus Ferguson had built up his racket in the seventies and eighties when all the big Yank firms had
pulled out to chase the dollar in the Pacific rim sweats, and after Thatcher yanked the plug on everybody else, when
every other home in the schemes needed the tide-over loans the banks never dished out as low as the council house
strata. Everybody knew Ferguson turned a dishonest buck here and there besides and under the Lacrosse polo shirt
there would be enough dope rope to hitch a coach and four. </p>
<p>He leant in further and lowered his voice. </p>
<p>"You got a fast mouth ginger nuts. I'll remember you said that. And I'll remember the next time your Aunty Jean comes
looking for a leg-up, like she does every other week. Her rate just went up. She gets a leg up when I get a leg-over
her skanky arse, <em>capice.</em>"</p>
<p>"Go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on, you wide-boy skag."</p>
<p>"Aye, get lost Ferguson," Neil Cleary butted in. He was still stung by the fat boy remark. "That's well out of
order."</p>
<p> Ferguson smiled that way hard men do, letting it even reach his eyes, like he was really having a laugh, but you
know it's just the poison in them. He never took them off Donny. </p>
<p>He was right up against his ear and nobody else heard it except Jack Lorne. </p>
<p>"And <em>you</em>, you get to follow the old man. You're in a fuckin wheelchair, got me?"</p>
<p>Jack bit his lip, but Donny was too far gone with the insult. </p>
<p>"Fuck yourself on a sharp stick, arsehole."</p>
<p>Down at the edge of the rough, Jamieson Bell called up. </p>
<p>"Just leave them Angus. They're not worth the trouble. I'll call the greenkeeper."</p>
<p>He pulled out a little Ericson job the size of a penguin biscuit and flipped its lid. They heard the beep of
dialling. He started talking loudly into it. </p>
<p>Tam Bowie pulled at Donny's arm. "Come on you. Ignore it. Just walk away."</p>
<p>Donny shrugged him off, ready to get waded in again, but Ferguson was walking away and all the fun had gone out of
the game. Donny stood there, face still smeared in grey, whisky on his breath and his hands were shaking. He never
did anything in half measures, drunk or sober. </p>
<p>"That slimy <em>cunt</em>. I could fucking have him."</p>
<p>"You and whose army?" Tam mimicked, all sarcastic. "You want to stay well clear of that bastard. He's a total loony
and he's got a bunch of crazies backing him up."</p>
<p>Jack nodded. "Come on. They're just a pair of wankers."</p>
<p>Ferguson didn't even look at them as they pulled away to the side. Donny and Neil still wanted to go on with the
game, and Donny looked as if he wanted to have a real go with the sand wedge, but the others pulled them back. The
game was a bogey, as the kids say here. The ball was on the slates. They went back up to the gorse-covered hillock
and sat in the sun, drinking the rest of the lager and the whisky and Tam threw a six iron at a pheasant that
wandered out of cover and got the fright of its life. He missed by a hand span. </p>
<p>"Sliced it again," he said and everybody laughed and then they all got up, emptied the water out of the bag, stuck
the clubs back in and started sauntering home along by the old distillery. Apart from Ferguson and that creepy
Jamieson Bell, it hadn't been such a bad afternoon when there was nothing better to do. </p>
<p>Kerr Thomson, the customs man at the big distillery gate nodded to Donny as they passed and he waved back.</p>
<p>Jack turned to Donny. "What did they do when they spilled the whisky?"</p>
<p>"Nothing they can do. They had to write it off."</p>
<p>"Just like that?"</p>
<p>"Sure. It happens all the time. Sometimes a barrel will split a hoop and you lose the lot. You don't pay tax on what
you haven't got. When it's in customs bond, it's like a duty-free zone, know what I mean?"</p>
<p>Tam and Neill headed off up to Overburn which looked out over the rest of the town down on the flatland, and the
other three trundled on towards Drymains, on the other side of the main road, past the row of bonded warehouses and
Levenford Dairy where the clanking of the bottles on the racks told them they were getting filled for the next day.
Jed peeled away and the other two strolled down to the turn. </p>
<p>"Catch you in Mac's tonight."</p>
<p>"Not tonight," Jack said. "I got to hit the books. See you Friday."</p>
<p>Donny hitched the cart behind him and its wheels juddered over the rough road and then bumped back up onto the
pavement. The sun had turned the back of his neck bright red, that raw Celtic way that needs factor forty on shady
days and still hurts like hell the next morning.</p>
<p>Jack sauntered down the street, hands in his pockets, deep in thought. The sun was in his eyes as it began its slide
down the slope of the Cardross Hills, getting more red-fevered as it sank, and Jack never really noticed the big Jag
as it cruised past. He was vaguely aware of somebody turned to face him, but then it was gone. Only the low squeal
of tires as it picked up speed at the far corner made him turn and take a glance. He turned back, hands in his
pockets, thinking of the dead fish in the little stream and trying to work out the value of those lost bottles of
whisky in his head, doubling up for dilution, charging at shop prices. It was one of those things that always
snagged his brain, the way a tune will go through your head and you can't get rid of it. Jack always had a head for
figures and if he hadn't left school early to get a job after his dad had died, he'd have got through college a
whole lot sooner. He was converting gallons to seventy cubic-centilitre bottles in his head when he suddenly stopped
dead. </p>
<p>He turned round fast again, looking up in the direction the Jaguar had gone. </p>
<p>Somebody had turned round to look at him and the sun had been in his eyes and he'd been doing mental arithmetic. </p>
<p>Somebody had turned. . . . . </p>
<p>Gus Ferguson's face spun right into sharp focus. </p>
<p><em>Jesus!</em> Gus Ferguson. What was he doing here . . . . ? </p>
<p>Jack was running even before he completed the thought. The sun was at his back, sending a long shadow ahead. Two
small boys on bikes scattered out of his way as he reached the corner, got a hand to the <em>children crossing</em>
post and spun himself round it. Up at Crosswell Street the road took a bend as it narrowed, on the short cut through
to the Orlett houses where Donny lived. There was a narrow stretch here, bounded on both sides by a hawthorn hedge,
and a small field that used to be a paddock back when this had been farmland. </p>
<p>There was no sign of anybody. But the Jag had definitely turned up here. That meant it was up the lane. Jack was
breathing fast, and he speeded up, trainers slapping the tarmac. <em>Jesus</em>. </p>
<p>"Donny," he bawled. "Watch your back." A woman at an upstairs window leaned out curiously as he passed and followed
his run up the street. He got to the narrow part and just as he was turning, saw the back end of the Jag angled out
of the gateway to the field. Off in the distance some boys were playing football. Two dogs were barking at each
other. A blackbird bulleted out of the hedge with that daft alarm call they all have and clattered away into the
bush at the far side. </p>
<p>Donny's golf bag was lying at the side. </p>
<p>On the other side of the thick hedge, somebody was taking a real kicking. </p>
<p>Jack skidded to a halt. Even from here he could hear the blows land, solid and meaty and of a sudden his heart was
somewhere up in his throat. </p>
<p><em>Fuck!</em> He couldn't think straight. The wheels on the little trolley were still spinning lazily. The tube was
out of the bag and a few of the clubs had shot from the mouth to scatter on the track. </p>
<p>Donny called out and it didn't really sound like him at all. It was all froth and gulping. </p>
<p><em>Fuck! </em> Jack was suddenly scared in so many directions his fear was three-dimensional. He was scared to go
round that corner and face what was happening, scared that Ferguson would mark him out. But what scared him most was
that if he didn't go round the corner, then Donny would end up like Ferguson had said, and that vicious bastard was
mad enough to make it happen. </p>
<p><em>Wheelchair. . . wheelchair. </em></p>
<p>Just what right did Ferguson have to think he had the power? </p>
<p><em>Fuck!</em> That thought punched through the fear and Jack bent down and snatched up the heavy sand wedge. </p>
<p>Jesus, they had only gone for a couple of cans and a swing at the ball. Just passing the time.</p>
<p>Behind the hedge Donny coughed again and it wasn't really a cough. Jack swung the iron and went through the gate
fast. Somebody was in the driver's seat and he felt like taking a smash at him, but all he could think of was
getting to Donny. Christ, hadn't they backed each other since they were four years old? </p>
<p><em>What fucking right. . . . . ?</em></p>
<p>There were two of them and they were kicking the shit out of him. One of them had an old baseball bat and he was
swinging like a slugger, every one connecting in a dull meaty thud. Donny was down on his knees and he was coughing
again. It sounded like an underwater sob. </p>
<p>He recognised the nearest man. Seggs Cullen, medium height, stocky, head shaved, thick as shit, but he was hard
enough. Seggs waded in and put the boot in under Donny's ribs and some blood and snot sneezed out onto the dry
flattened grass. </p>
<p>Jack heard a singing in his ears, a juicy little mosquito hum as if his blood pressure was building too fast and
suddenly he was up on that high dry plane where everything is stark and clear and all motion seems to go
treacle-slow. The fear shrank under the cool anger.</p>
<p>"Okay gentlemen, it's showtime. What's the par for this course?"</p>
<p>Seggs Cullen froze half way through a swing, taken completely by surprise. Jack stepped past Donny, aware on another
level that the blood mixed with the grass turned it a sticky brown.</p>
<p>"Do I hook or do I slice?"</p>
<p>Jack swung the club up and took Seggs on the side of the cheek, just on the turn. It hit with the most satisfying
crunch Jack could ever remember in his life. <em>Jesus!</em> No slice, no hook, just on the sweet spot. Seggs did a
backward flip and sent up a cloud of dust when he hit. Jack swung, way beyond the fear now, riding on the anger and
the sudden savage joy that had bloomed when he connected with the sand wedge. </p>
<p>The other man was turning, ready to swing again and Jack spun on his right foot, like a hammer thrower. Donny was on
the ground, on hands and knees, dribbling blood all over the place, and a matt of it darkening his red hair. He made
a horrible, scary little noise, the kind of noise you hear down in the slaughterhouse when they put the pin in the
brain of a black Angus and then it paws and dribbles, not yet aware that it's gone forever. </p>
<p><em>". . . . oh. .</em> " Donny just made that little bewildered noise and then a big gout of blood came out along
with the beer and the whisky. </p>
<p>Jack swung like a clansman, pivoting fast to take the other guy straight on the chin. He put the weight on his left
foot and stepped in the beer and snot, slipped sideways and the wedge missed by a mere inch. It slammed into the
man's upper arm just as he was about to land another killer on Donny's kidneys. He let out a blurt of pain and the
slugger went flying off into the hedge. </p>
<p>"What the fuck. . . .? "</p>
<p>Jack was still on the curve of the adrenaline roller, with that odd singing in his ears and everything was going in
backlit slow motion like in one of those old Jap samurai films. He regained his balance, used the spin to follow
through, turned, and sunk a fast boot into the man's groin. The thug doubled up and made an odd, gasping growl of
sound. Jack brought the sand-wedge up and whipped it down as the guy bent over and the heavy face connected with his
left buttock in a wondrous meaty whack.</p>
<p>The man roared like a bear.</p>
<p>"You get to fuck and take that garbage with you," Jack said, hearing his words come out in a snarl that didn't sound
like him at all. </p>
<p>Donny was down again, unable to take his weight on his hands, snuffling like a pig in the dirt and all of a sudden a
huge and overwhelming fury swamped Jack Lorne and he swung out again with the wedge, taking the other man on the
ribs so hard that it doubled him over. Seggs Cullen was on his feet, holding his mouth, dribbling the same kind of
blood and snotters and yelling in a mush behind his fingers. The second man gasped for breath, caught it and came
forward, reaching for the club. Jack swung again, fast left and right and managed to catch a knuckle with a sound
like stone on stone.</p>
<p>Up at the Jaguar somebody was bawling and Jack couldn't make out the words. The man with the sore knuckles and arm
and balls backed off, growling and cursing incoherently and making sure he would recognise Jack Lorne if he ever saw
him again and then they were up at the Jag and the doors were shut and it sizzled away, sending up dry earth and
grass and a pall of blue exhaust. </p>
<p>Donny pushed himself up again and crawled around blind on his hands and knees, making a complete, confused little
circle, and Jack caught him just before his arms gave way again. </p>
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<h1>2</h1>
<p>Friday night and Mac’s Bar was all noise and laughing. The juke box competed with MTV and the karaoke was setting up.
A couple of kids were over at the bandit, thumbing
coins and staring at the flashing lights, going for the full epileptic. The joint would be juddering by
midnight. </p>
<p>"Who said this place was dead?" Jed straightened up from the pool table to watch two slender blonde girls doing the
dance they must have been practising in their bedrooms, metronome perfect. Behind the bar it was all bustle and
hustle, Frank and the girls weaving their own dance in the tight space; in front of it, three deep in the shallows,
getting to six near the door. </p>
<p>"Of all da gin joints in all the towns in all the woild, they has ta walk into mine." Neil did GBH to old Bogey..</p>
<p>"They see you and walk back out again, fast."</p>
<p>They were up at the held territory of the far corner, squeezed in by the press of new arrivals, close to ten at night
and it was still warm. Here in the confined space, the moving of bodies added another ten degrees. The heatwave had
stretched to three weeks and while the puddles of the summer deluge had finally drained and dried to cracked china,
it was still lush, getting to the hot and sticky stage that's still a rarity in these parts, even with the global
warming coming on apace. </p>
<p>Jed had trails of sweat rambling down his cheeks. Neil took a shot, potted and ended up right on line to make another
drop.</p>
<p> "Fat man, you shoot a great game of pool." They were a good double act.</p>
<p>Neil started to laugh just as he was about to take the pot and he sliced the white. It skittered away without
doing any damage.</p>
<p> "Cheating rat, you put me off." He turned and held the queue up in both hands. "You don't understand! I could've had
class. I coulda been a <em>contender</em>. I coulda <em>been</em> somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am."
</p>
<p>"Exactly."</p>
<p>"Yeah, but for a pint, who said it?"</p>
<p>"Marlon Apocalypse Captain Kurtz Brando. On Da Watafront."</p>
<p> "Every one a winner. You get the pint." Neil called the barman. "You want another, Jack? Put a smile on your torn
face?"</p>
<p>They'd been hunched at the bar, waiting for the pool table to free up, and Jack hadn't been his usual self. Friday
night was fun night, always had been, but Jack Lorne had a deep side to him that sometimes showed through to make up
for the mischief. You never could tell just when it would.</p>
<p>"The town's dead on its feet," Jack was saying. "This is just the nerves jumping. You watch, rigor mortis will set in
quick as a blink."</p>
<p>"You're nothing but a pessimist." Jed always got optimistic on Smirnoff Ice. "If it's just the nerves, this place is
jumping pretty good. Alive and kicking."</p>
<p>"Pessimist? <em>You're </em>facing ninety days notice. The dairy is about to fold. Donny and Neil are just waiting
for the axe."</p>
<p>It was Friday night and he knew he should have shrugged it off, followed the Friday night current and just gone for
the fun, but it was hard to get the chuckle engine started tonight. Donny had got out of casualty strapped up and
stiff and nobody believed he had fallen down a flight of stairs, but there was no way he'd finger Ferguson or his
team of pit-bulls. You just wouldn't win, because it was two of them against three, and then Ferguson would start
leaning on people. He threw a bit of tonnage in this town and you could walk down River Street and get a sore face
and cracked ribs from a stranger anytime he said so. Most of the hurt was bruising and some internal stuff that was
healing slow and sore and every time Jack thought about it he got a hot clench in the middle of his belly while his
nails dug hard into the palms of his hands and he knew it was just impotence. There was nothing he could do, and
that was the worst of it. The story of their lives.</p>
<p>He kept picturing Donny, red hair matted and blood dripping to the grass, turning round in that stupid little circle
on his hands and knees and moaning like a dying bullock. God, that had been scary. He closed his eyes and flicked
the picture away. Donny had managed to get to his feet and the pupil of one eye was shrunk down to a pinhole. He had
started gurgling up the blood he'd swallowed and half of it went over Jack's tee shirt. It had taken them twenty
minutes to get round to Jed's and a miraculous eight minutes of crazy driving in that souped up little stock-car to
get to casualty. Jed could wheel it like nobody's business. The doc said Donny was dead lucky he still had his
kidneys and any brains left, but it didn't seem lucky to either of them. The nurse gave him a jab and rubbed alcohol
on the dirt and then the young houseman had started in with the needlepoint where they'd shaved the hair. He made a
good job of it. </p>
<p>Jack was on ice cold Guinness, taking it slow. It had been a long day and it was taking him a while to shake it
off.</p>
<p>"I'll get another job no bother," Jed was saying. "Everybody needs drivers." </p>
<p>"I sincerely hope do. That means you can start buying drink."</p>
<p>Tam pushed his way through the crowd and shoehorned into the corner. He had slicked his hair back behind his big red
ears that glowed with the heat they picked up during the day. Neil was leaking, carrying a couple of stones more
than a heatwave made comfortable.</p>
<p>"What's happening?" Tam was up for mischief.</p>
<p>"Couple of parties ongoing, or we could cut about River Street. The town's one big Mardi Gras tonight, wall-to-wall
women. Some of them not too sore on the eyeball."</p>
<p>Jed looked at Jack. "Told you, didn't I?"</p>
<p>"You just don't know when you're down and out."</p>
<p> "You okay Jake?" Tam was holding out a ten-spot for the next round and one of the girls behind the bar was volleying
verbals with him. </p>
<p>"Sure. Just tired. Got to get my second wind. "</p>
<p>"You'll be glad to get a lie-in these mornings," Tam said and as soon as he did he realised that might not have been
the diplomatic thing. </p>
<p>"Sure, sleep it off. It's time I checked out Australia House. The outback's got to be better than this."</p>
<p> "Come on you guys," Neil said, barrelling in against them. "It's Friday night and we've got the whole weekend ahead.
I mean like, hol'on, consarnit, golly-darnit. I'll be a horn-swaggeled bushwackin' side-windin' saddled horn...
rivvid, ravvid, ravvid...You going to the party?"</p>
<p>"Maybe," Jack said. "I told Robert we'd show up sometime."</p>
<p>"You Jed? You coming with the boys or going for a leg under with her indoors. Mrs Round the Block Many Times?"</p>
<p>Jed aimed hard fingers at Neil's belly, dug in and squeezed hard. Neil yelped.</p>
<p>"She's not been around. She's a previously enjoyed companion. Who will be enjoyed some more, given half a
chance."</p>
<p>"And you're not a sex machine, you're just hormonally automated."</p>
<p>Jed laughed. Everybody knew he would peel away some time late on and head up to Margery Burns' place for a night on
the springs. </p>
<p>"Come on Jed," Tam wanted to know. "Is it the grey hair or what?"</p>
<p>"None of your business. Do I ask you about the chicks you shag?"</p>
<p>"All the time!"</p>
<p>"What chicks?" Neil pumped his fist. "He only knows Pamela. Gets by with a little help from his friends."</p>
<p>"That's very true," the bar girl agreed, and that broke the mood for Jack. They all cracked up again and handed over
their empty glasses to start on the next round. </p>
<p>"Listen," Jed said. "Don't knock it until you try it. Tell you one thing, she's taught me plenty. Swear to god, even
the neighbours need a smoke afterwards."</p>
<p>They all fell about.</p>
<p>"Has she got a daughter?" Jack asked.</p>
<p>Somebody called for order and Frank the barman bulled round through the crowd and slung an arm round one of the
dancing girls and the karaoke started with his Friday night version of Meatloaf getting up to naughty by the
dashboard light. The noise cranked up until it drowned MTV. </p>
<p>Over by the door a small commotion started and none of them noticed until Donny eased his way in beside them, his
normally red face a whiter shade of grey. He let out an involuntary grunt when an inadvertent elbow brushed against
his ribs. Jack could see him grinding his teeth. </p>
<p>"Jesus, Don. What are you doing out?"</p>
<p>Donny had taken the bandage off his head and sometime between the golfing disaster and tonight he'd managed to shave
the rest of his hair down to stubble. His scalp was just as white as his face, and the stitches just to the left of
his crown looked like a patch of spiky thorns. </p>
<p>Somebody got one of the stools and shoved it under his backside. Tam shouted up another lager. </p>
<p>"Stay in on a Friday night? Goes against my religion."</p>
<p>"You should have stayed in your <em>bed </em>Don. Look at the state of you. You're having a right bad head day."</p>
<p>He shook it, regretted it. "My ma keeps asking me what happened. She's driving me up the wall. I'm scared I'll crack
and tell her Ferguson's going to pull the plug on Aunty Jean. And then she'll call the cops and the shit will hit.
Anyway, I need help, you guys. I haven't had a stiffy for days. It's got me worried."</p>
<p>"What do you expect? You've just had your ribs caved in, got concussed, and nearly lost a kidney. You have to give
yourself time to heal."</p>
<p>"But I wake up hard every morning," Donny said. "What if that's me for life? I mean, I'm only twenty four."</p>
<p>"And that's six years past your prime. It's all downhill from here on."</p>
<p>"It's not funny. You know where I can get viagra?"</p>
<p>"Stick to lager. It'll do you better."</p>
<p>Over in the other corner, a tableful of girls from the Starlight stage group were out on the town, up on their feet
murdering Gloria Gaynor, all of them promising that they would survive, though half of them didn't look as if they'd
see the night out still awake or still standing. One of them was blowing kisses at Jack and he blew one back just
for the hell of it. </p>
<p>"Does Kate know you're out?" Jack's sister Linda was amongst the crowd.</p>
<p>"Kiss my ass, little mother."</p>
<p>Linda had her arm around Neil's sister Joanne and another girl called Donna Bryce who worked with them in the
hairdressers. All of them were ready for the karaoke to do the number they'd been practising for the past five
weeks. The kiss blower pushed her way across.</p>
<p> "Jack Lorne. Haven't seen you in years. Here, give us a real kiss."</p>
<p>There was no preamble. She just lunged at him and there was nothing he could do. All the other girls started hooting
and he held up two fingers to them all. </p>
<p>"Put him down," Linda ordered. "I know where he's been."</p>
<p> "Look at that girl go," Neil broke in. "She's eating him alive."</p>
<p>"That should cheer up his miserable face," Tam said agreeably. </p>
<p>Jack finally managed to break away. He wiped a hand over his mouth to clear the lipstick. </p>
<p>"Are you going to Clare Jamieson's party?" the girl asked. </p>
<p>"Sure," he said. </p>
<p>"See you there," she said with drink, hope and promise chasing each other in her eyes, gave him a squeeze and went
back to the group. </p>
<p>"So we're going to Robert's, for definite," Jack said. "She'll cook my rabbits."</p>
<p>Neil got to the mike and gathered up Linda and Donna Bryce and Joanne, who sang the doo-wah backing vocals in the
Starlight show. Neil had a terrific baritone voice that he loved to show off and as soon as the music kicked in,
they were belting out one of the stage numbers, all in close harmony, making the walls shudder.</p>
<p>Tam called Frank over and the boys chipped in the kitty money for their party drink. Frank filled two big plastic
bags and they were just about to leave for Robert's place when there was another commotion at the far door as a new
group of people pushed their way in. In a crowded bar, you can always tell when the atmosphere changes. It's
something in the tone of the noise that just alters and gets the nerves on full alert. Even the air seems to turn
brittle. Jack felt it and looked up. </p>
<p>Over at the microphone, Neil broke off the song and the girls backing stumbled to a fade.</p>
<p>"They're he-eeeere." He announced in a high girlish voice.</p>
<p>Jack turned, aware of the change.</p>
<p>"The boys are back in town," Neil sang right out against the music, looking at Jack but pointing down the far end.
Jack followed the direction. He stopped still. A man stared right at him down the length of the bar. Frank the
barman caught the look and did a double take. </p>
<p>"Dear oh dear oh dear," Jack said. </p>
<p>"What's up?" Tam turned and saw the man lift a hand. Beside him another man, squat and shaven headed was looking
around, obviously searching the faces. He had a big plum-coloured bruise right across his cheek and his lips were
scabbed and raw. </p>
<p>The first man jabbed a finger straight at Jack. Donny looked up and saw Seggs Cullen first. </p>
<p>"Aw, holy fuck!"</p>
<p>"Is that them?" Tam wanted to know. "Jeez Jake, that's Wiggy Foley. He's just got out of Barlinnie jail. He did six
for armed robbery. Full stretch for bad behaviour."</p>
<p>He turned to Jack. "You never hit that psycho with a club, did you?"</p>
<p>Jack nodded, feeling less heroic than he had when his anger was hot and high. They were stuck here right at the end
of the bar, on the opposite side from the door. </p>
<p>"You should have made sure that nutter stayed down."</p>
<p>Down there, somebody shouted in protest. At the corner of the bar, Donna Bryce's boyfriend, a fellow they knew called
Ed Kane leant in towards them.</p>
<p>"Do you guys need a hand?" Ed was dark and wiry. He and Tam sometimes kicked about together. It was a good offer
under the circs.</p>
<p>"Thanks Ed." Jack said. "Best not get involved. It's a grudge thing."</p>
<p>"Any time," Ed said. "You give me a shout." Even in the tension of the moment, Jack thought that was a fine thing to
say.</p>
<p>"Nick out the back, Jack," Neil was pushing towards them, microphone still in his hand, still keeping a tune. "Make a
new plan, Tam."</p>
<p> "Outamaway... !" It was just an angry growl. Wiggy Foley had recognised Jack all right, just as his eyes had
promised back there on the sunlit field. They could see people push back as the two hard men shouldered their way
through and the atmosphere suddenly crystallised. </p>
<p>"Hey what the fu... ?"</p>
<p>"He spilled my drink... "</p>
<p>"Watch it you... "</p>
<p>Tam grabbed Jack by the collar. "That was really clever, <em>Die Hard</em>. Him of all people."</p>
<p>He pulled Jack back away from the corner. "Grab these bags, quick."</p>
<p>For once Jack let himself be led. He hoisted the bags, even though logic and survival instinct told him to dump them,
but it was Friday night, and some instincts are even more deeply rooted. Tam raised a foot against the bar of the
door that nobody ever used and kicked it in a downward stamp, proving once and for all that the Tae Kwan Do lessons
had not been all a waste of time. The door punched outwards and cool night air sucked in. </p>
<p>"Get going." </p>
<p>"What about Donny?"</p>
<p>Donny was moving slowly, as if he was encased in plaster and hurting all over, which was probably true. Neil helped
him out and down the little alley behind the bar. Tam turned and pushed the door closed again. Foley and Cullen were
halfway to the corner, shoving people out of the way. They could hear the shouts from halfway down the alley. Tam
kicked again and the door clammed. He swivelled to the left while Jack went to the right, hoisted two aluminium kegs
and jammed them in against the door. If there was a fire inside, everybody would burn to carbon, but that didn't
seem likely the way the beer was flowing. Jack grabbed a wooden pallet and pushed it hard against the casks,
managing to force a corner against the brick wall to hold it in place. As soon as it locked, something hard hit the
door on the inside and somebody was bawling incoherently and it was perm any one from two. Cullen or Foley. </p>
<p>"Right let's <em>getty-fuh</em>," Tam said. Jack picked up the remaining bag, trusting that Jed had the other and
they scooted down the alley towards the river, knowing they only had a minute before the two pit-bulls got
themselves back through the crowd and out the front door. He was thinking of Donny, who might make two miles an hour
if he worked hard at it and picked up speed. </p>
<p>They turned the corner and caught up with them. </p>
<p>"You come with me," Tam said, taking Donny by the arm. Across the street Tam's Yamaha Dragstar was canted over on its
strut, shiny in the summer night light. </p>
<p>"Can you get a leg over it?"</p>
<p>"I'm like Jed. I'll get a leg over anything."</p>
<p>Tam helped him on and the other three disappeared round the corner to where Jed had parked the old Skoda shell with
the big V6 Saab engine under the hood. They jumped in and the engine growled like a beast. </p>
<p> Jed grinned. "Fasten your seatbelts kids, it's going to be a bumpy ride."
<em> </em>"Pop-eyed Betty Davis," Neil guessed correctly.</p>
<p> "If you gentlemen could tear yourselves away from Hollywood quiz night, I really think we should be in transit."</p>
<p>Round the corner the bike snorted, purred smoothly and Tam and Donny came cruising past them, just as Foley and
Cullen came barrelling round the corner in pursuit.</p>
<p>"Watch this thing shift," Jed said. He slipped on his sunglasses, hit the throttle and Jack was thrown right back
into the seat. They were across the old bridge and gone in five bare seconds</p>
<p>Robert Wardell might have been an air steward and as camp as a girl guides jamboree, but he was a mate and he never
threw a bad party. </p>
<p>The place was heaving when they got there and Robert </p>
<p> never Bob, or Rab, always Robert </p>
<p> had as usual, stored away his collection of china from his long haul stopovers, and lifted the zebra skin that he'd
smuggled from Kenya. He loved a party and hated a mess.</p>
<p>"Jack, Thomas! Come away in boys. I though you were never turning up."</p>
<p>Robert was effusive in his welcome. He bought duty free exotic drink on long hauls and his parties just never ran
out. Nevertheless, it was always bad form here to turn up empty handed. </p>
<p>"Just dump it anywhere," he insisted, taking the two of them by the arm, knowing he was the only non-female who would
get away with it. He was a mate. In primary school he'd always held the jackets when the rest of them were tumbling
in the mud and they'd always taken care of trouble for him when it showed up. </p>
<p>"Listen. I've brought a couple of friends I want you to meet."</p>
<p>"If they're like the usual, forget it," Jack said, completely inoffensively. </p>
<p>"No, not at all. You think I'd waste them on the likes of you phobic barbarians?"</p>
<p>He raised a hand and beckoned across the room. Tam and Jack looked at each other, taking in Robert's silk hipsters
that were just a shade too tight and a lot too purple. He was a dead ringer for Rock Hudson in the old Doris Day
movies and women always wanted to reform him, with remarkably little success. Or none at all.</p>
<p>"Ilse and Ingrid, come and meet Jack and Thomas."</p>
<p>He leaned in to Jack. "You don't see too many of these walking down River Street."</p>
<p>Jack turned. </p>
<p>She was one of the most stunning women he had ever seen, and the one next to her was nothing less than a blonde
vision. </p>
<p>"Be still my beating heart," Tam said. </p>
<p>"Be still your hormones," Robert said.</p>
<p>"Hello," Ilse said, holding out a perfect hand. Jack shook it and forgot to let go. She smiled as if this was nothing
less than expected. </p>
<p>"We're from Sweden," she said, totally unnecessarily. You never got skin and hair and teeth and everything else in
packages like this anywhere else in the world with the exception of Estonia and that was just a hop-skip away.
Robert had got the boys a free flight there a couple of years back for a stag night and they all wondered why he
still swung the funny way. </p>
<p>"And what brings you here?"</p>
<p>"Robert did. We work with the airline in Stockholm. Our uncle is the captain of a ship here, so we come to see
him."</p>
<p>"That's awfully nice. Would you like a drink?"</p>
<p>"Of course. That's the other reason we are here."</p>
<p>Ilse took him by the arm and led him towards the kitchen. Ingrid took the other arm and Tam was left standing with
Robert, making goldfish faces.</p>
<p>"Don't worry," Robert said. "I've some free flights coming up. There's a million just like them where they come from.
And the boys are world class."</p>
<p> Donny was on the leather settee, propped up in a couple of cushions, spinning some yarn about fighting for a girl's
honour that got more preposterous by the minute, but he had a sympathetic audience and the sympathy vote was better
than nothing. With his head shaved and stitched and his face swollen out like a fed hamster, it was all he was going
to get. They kept the drink coming and minded his bruises and he seemed okay. Jack ended up on a double-seater with
Ingrid on one side and Ilse on the other and a big bottle of Bailey's Irish cream between them. He was drinking
double handed, alternating Guinness with sips from their liqueur glasses.. </p>
<p>"Poof's drink," Neil said, flicking through the discs, then he remembered where he was. "No offence Robert."</p>
<p>"None taken, Big Stuff. I got a crate of the stuff in Gibraltar for next to nothing."</p>
<p>"It's a total rip off," Jack said. "That's nearly fifteen notes a bottle and most of it's milk."</p>
<p>"But beautiful," Ilse said. Her hair was short and spiky and so fair it was like fibre-optic. The Irish cream left a
pale rim round her mouth. "We do not taste this in Sweden, you know. Much too much <em>kroner</em>. Too much money."
</p>
<p>"I'll send you some," Jack said. "Just leave your address and phone number."</p>
<p>"But the customs men, the Duane, you call it? You know what I mean? They catch it and ask for even more money. My
father, he make his own drink, with sugar and water and blueberry." She screwed her mouth into distaste. "Not nice
like this."</p>
<p>"So why can't you buy it?"</p>
<p>"Too much money. Your whisky, it costs... " She closed her eyes and did a mental conversion. "Fifty of your pounds
for a litre. All is taxed you know. They say everybody would just be drunk all the winter."</p>
<p>A short-dark haired girl came up and gave the two Swedes the measuring eye. </p>
<p>"Is Kate not coming tonight Jack?" she asked him, but directed the question at them. </p>
<p>"Sure. She'll be here."</p>
<p>"Well you better not let her catch you then."</p>
<p>He shrugged, all innocence. "International relations Jeanette. You got to be diplomatic."</p>
<p>Ilse leaned over him. "Kate? Is this a friend of yours?"</p>
<p>He was about to answer when the old Stealers Wheel number came belting out of the surround-a-sound and Neil was up at
the microphone. His big voice suited his frame. </p>
<p><em>"Don't know why I came here tonight, I got the feeling something ain't right."</em></p>
<p>He was pointing at Jake as he sang. Tam picked it up and shoved himself in towards the mike. </p>
<p><em>"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right."</em></p>
<p>They stuck their fingers straight at Jack.</p>
<p><em>"Here I am stuck in the middle with you"</em></p>
<p>He woke early, too early, with a minor hangover, glad it was Saturday, and that somebody else was filling in on the
round. He heard the float trundle past, and the rattle and clank of the crates, wondering just how long he'd be
hearing that noise in the mornings. Outside the thrushes were competing with the blackbirds, belting it out at the
top of their voices. He always pictured them, like the boys on a Friday night, trying to get the double message
across. </p>
<p><em>Hey you arseholes, stay off my patch... hey you girls, come and get it. </em></p>
<p>A lone robin pitched in, off key, high and shrill. It had hung about the garden since winter, feeding on whatever he
threw out. It took on all comers, no matter the size or species. </p>
<p>He lay still, letting himself come to, piecing together the remnants of the night after they had run out the back of
Mac's bar. </p>
<p>That had been a hairy moment, and just as well Tam had his Yamaha out in the street and not stuck up in his garage,
otherwise they'd have been caught down the alley trying to get Donny free and clear. </p>
<p>Close. Too close. And all for what? He'd felt a buzz of sudden adrenaline when the two of them had come in and stared
him right in the eye, but not the way he had when he had a six iron in his hand and Donny was down in the dirt.
Foley was a crazy horse, just out of the jail, and god knows what he'd been carrying. If they'd got stuck in that
corner with no way out, there could have been yellow tape round the front door by midnight. Tam had been thinking on
his feet. He was a good man to have at your back. Now he'd have to stay clear of those psychos for a bit, and not
for the first time he wished Donny had kept his big mouth well shut. Even as he said it he knew that was the wrong
way to think.</p>
<p>Why the hell should they sit still for it?</p>
<p><em>Jesus.</em> That's what they spent their lives doing; sitting still and taking what they handed out. In school,
it was Lorne, Watson, Coogan, Bowie, Cleary. Present and correct. Not Jack or Don or Tom or whatever. It was like
you were there on their sufferance. The big American firms came in and acted like lady bountiful and thought they
owned the place and then they found some Korean kids could do the work for half the wage and the yanks were gone in
a puff of smoke, <em>sorry Jock, but business is business</em>. Got to supply the demand. Keep the shareholders
satisfied.</p>
<p>He stared at the ceiling, knowing it would be two hours before the house slowly came awake and wondering how he could
do it on four hours sleep at night. Saturday morning, hung over or not, he still woke at the same time and lay there
just thinking, chewing over the week, planning the next, solving the problems of the world and resolving nothing at
all. </p>
<p>You get through a lot of thoughts from five until seven. More if you wake at four, and sometimes Jack wished he could
do what Donny did at the weekends, sleep until eleven, back down the pub, up to the match, back into the pub, kill a
whole Saturday and be as carefree as a kid. </p>
<p>Close horizons, that's what it was. Donny was taking what they handed down. In less than two months he'd be on the
scrap and with three hundred more chasing every opening. Chances were he'd still be signing on for benefits a year
from now. Neil was the same, on ninety days notice. Tam was okay, and as long as they were still building houses on
every vacant space, he'd still be okay, but when the jobs went, the money went and everything slowed down. Supply
and demand again. It slowed down and Tam could well be looking for homers and weekend casual stuff, fitted kitchens
and bathrooms on the grip and the lump, no questions, no tax, no national insurance. No future.</p>
<p>He shook his head, trying to get his mind on to another tack, but at this time in the morning, minds have a mind of
their own and he couldn't jump the track to a mellower tune. He wondered if he was turning into a depressive.</p>
<p>Andy Kerr had taken him into the office and laid it on the line. He was going round the banks like the last man on a
Saturday night, when all the girls have put their coats on and the DJ is packing up the lights. The two new
stainless steel tank-trucks would have been a good investment, except for the fact that the supermarket that sucked
up most of the dairy products around here had put the squeeze on, and hard. It was a take-it-or leave it deal. Andy
had to take their price or go out of business. And if he took their price he couldn't make a profit. A lose-lose
situation all round.</p>
<p>Jack had gone over the books with Andy. There was no way he could keep his head above water. The dairy was on its
knees and its days were numbered.</p>
<p>Up at four in the morning wasn't much of a job, but it brought in a wage and it would help put Mike through Uni and
gave him a chance to haul himself up and get his chin over the bar. Up at four and that gave you time in the
afternoon to hit the books and watch the tapes and in two years time he might get the chance to put on the swanky
hat and bat-cape and see his mother in a good suit and a tear in her eye when he graduated. </p>
<p>Business. You got nowhere unless you understood business and until you did that you were dancing to somebody else's
tune. Andy Kerr, he was a grafter, but he only understood the milk trade, that was all, and look where it was
getting him: right into bankrupt court and receivership unless a miracle happened. </p>
<p>Jack turned over and thumped his pillow into a better shape, thinking about the night before..</p>
<p>Ingrid had pressed svelte curves up against him he knew every guy in the place had wanted to trade seats with him.
Ilse had waylaid him in the kitchen with a more than affectionate lingering kiss, while both his hands were occupied
with two full pints. </p>
<p><em>Clowns to the left ... Jokers to the right. </em></p>
<p>And a fool in the middle, that was for sure. He closed his eyes and remembered the suction of the kiss and he knew if
he'd stayed he'd have tried to get the two of them upstairs for a smorgasbord sandwich. And that would have blown
everything. Kate would not have been amused. </p>
<p>Just as well Lars Hanssen had turned up. Uncle Lars. <em>Jeez. </em>When he'd come in from the front room the place
had darkened. He was built like a bulldozer and looked like Thor Sledgehammer or whoever the crazy Viking was that
used to cut people's hearts out in AD 2000 or some other adventure magazine. He had wheat-fair hair like his nieces,
but long and shaggy and a big thick moustache, and man, could he shift drink. <em> </em>He had brought a couple of
bottles of Absolut blue label and seemed determined they would never see the light of day. He was half Finnish and
half Swede and claimed he was half Laplander as well and nobody except Jack knew the distinction. </p>
<p>"<em>Holigen-goligen</em>!" A big clap on the back and another shot was down his throat. He said it meant the same as
<em>Skol</em> in the Lapp language and at the end of the night everybody was saying it.</p>
<p>"I go back in three weeks when I have a good screw," he told Jack, and the rest of the guys laughed at that until
Jack explained the screw was the propeller. "It got twisted on the rocks at Harris."</p>
<p>It came out <em>tvisted on de rooks at Horace,</em> but everybody knew what he meant and Jed, he got mischievous and
started looking out old tracks and belting them out, like <em>Tvisting der Noot Avay</em>, and <em>Tvist and
Shoot</em> and big Uncle Lars never caught on to the fact he was having the piss ripped out of him. </p>
<p>"<em>Anyvay</em>," he said. "I have another three weeks and then back to Oslo first and then Stockholm. I have twenty
things to take and some pipes and I stay a week and be back on Skye in another week. Never stop, back and here,
there and back, all the times, until you get dizzy."</p>
<p>He lifted up his glass. "But it is nice to visit with my sister's babies, no? They worry all the time about old Uncle
Lars."</p>
<p>Ingrid lifted a balloon glass half filled with ice and Irish cream. Lars took it and gulped half of it and then he
pulled a face. </p>
<p>"What is this? Are you sick?"</p>
<p>Jack laughed. </p>
<p>"Like medicine it is!"</p>
<p>Jed laughed louder. "He talks like Yoda. Drunk he is!"</p>
<p>"Daft you are!"</p>
<p>"Uncle Yoda, another drink you want?" Everybody fell about. </p>
<p>"Always another drink," he bellowed, treating Jed to a one-armed bear hug that could have cracked ribs. "And what is
this <em>Yoda</em>?"</p>
<p>It all got a bit foggy after that and Jack remembered Jed sneaking off to finish the night and start the morning with
Margery Burns; helping Donny into a taxi and wondering what would have happened if he'd stayed. Ingrid being sick in
the back garden and Ilse leaving her to it and slinging her arms around Jack's neck again, all pliant and boneless
after a night on the Baileys. Uncle Yoda discovering a taste for the stuff after claiming it was a drink for
girly-boys, followed by an embarrassed silence that was finally broken by Robert's quick camp: "Suits me sir!"</p>
<p><em>.... I feel I'm going to fall off my chair.... and I'm wondering how I'll get down the stair..... </em></p>
<p>Gerry Rafferty's nasal voice kept coming back to him, as if there was a tape loop stuck in his head, but that's the
way it had got later on and Uncle Lars had got to the singing stage and in between times he was doing a deal with
Robert to take some of the Irish Cream home for his <em>vife</em>. </p>
<p>.... <em>You started off with nothing and you're proud that you're a self-made man... </em></p>
<p>Chance would be fine. Self-made milkman. He closed his eyes listening to the robin song merge with the lyrics in his
head. </p>
<p>Self made? He'd taken too long going about that and now he could be stuck half way through a degree and nothing to
show and no money either. He knew he should have bit on the bullet when he was just out of school, but his old man
had only been gone three years and his mother had still been wading through a swamp of grief, struggling to get to
the other side and able to cope only with that and there had been nothing for it but Jack to take charge. <em>Self
made</em>. He could be running his own business by now, or half way up some corporate ladder. Everybody had
expected him to make it. <em>Jeez</em>, he had expected that himself, and here he was, a soon-to-be-out-of-work
milkman with a special aptitude for hosing out the trail tankers. </p>
<p>Self made? Or self deluded. Over there on his desk he had a rack of books and a second-hand computer that was
dinosaur slow and he could rhyme off all the theory, Galbraith, Keynes, carried interest, value addition, double
entry, equity, bonds, the lot. </p>
<p>And still he was stuck here well below the middle line and the chances of breaking through were further and further
away. </p>
<p><em>Yet.... </em></p>
<p>There was something. It had snagged him on the golf course when Donny had been down in the gully, washing the crap
off his legs and there had been an oddly sweet scent in the air mixing headily with the coconut oil of the gorse
bloom, and those dead little trout belly up in the stream. </p>
<p><em>The angel's share. </em></p>
<p>Donny still had the mud stuck to the end of his dick and Tam had been laughing and pointing, but Jack's mind had done
the usual and shot off on a different tack. </p>
<p>"We're screwed. First they screw you and then they really fuck you."</p>
<p>Tam turning round, the only one with a safe job and a decent set of wheels, unless you counted Jed's V6 that needed a
different scrapyard bodyshell every time he and Neil hammered it round the stock circuit. Tam said: "God helps them
that helps themselves."</p>
<p>His grammar had left some to be desired, but that was true. They were all at the mercy, taking what was handed down,
and Jack knew he'd never get on that corporate ladder because unless you were at the very top, you were still taking
what they handed down. </p>
<p><em>God helps those.... </em>He closed his eyes, chasing the thought, and a picture of the stunning Ingrid came
suddenly into his mind. </p>
<p>"You come to Sweden," she had said in a flawless accent, and if it had been a year ago he'd have been on the next
plane. </p>
<p>But there was something else she had said that really snagged him. </p>
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<h1>3</h1>
<p>The pigeons clattered round the chimneys, white wings exploding on the rise to catch the morning sun, fantails and
blues in tight formation. He watched them circle and wheel. A lone snow feather cradled its way to the grass.</p>
<p>"Is that you Jack? Come in, <em>hombre</em>."</p>
<p>Jack waited a minute or two, admiring the way the birds stayed tight and drilled, turning or gliding, all in
unison, perfect teamwork. </p>
<p>He pushed between the pigeon loft and his uncle's big old motorbike, opened the door and almost fell over a
thigh-high black plastic bin. He sniffed thick musty air.</p>
<p>"What's that stench? It would knock you flat."</p>
<p>Sandy Bruce laughed. "You get used to it."</p>
<p>"Man, you'll <em>never</em> get used to that. What the hell is it?"</p>
<p>Sandy came out of the kitchen into the hall. He wore a sixties-style string vest under his boiler suit, a
pair of fifties style octagonal glasses and a quarter inch of silvery stubble from two days before. He must
have been busy with the pigeons or the boat boys who hung about down on the river. </p>
<p>Sandy pointed to each of the three plastic bins, counting off in turn. "Irish stout, heavy and lager. Pilsner
lager, the kind you young fellas like. <em>Bueno cerveza.</em>" Sandy had picked up a few languages from his
sailing days. Tomorrow it might be Italian. Today it was something like Mexican bandido.</p>
<p>"Are you sure? It smells like dead bodies. "</p>
<p>"Sure I'm sure. That's just the mash fermenting. Once it stops, it's okay." </p>
<p>"How much are you making?"</p>
<p>"Sixty gallons this time. It's the club's AGM in two weeks and you probably heard that tosser Tim Farmer's
done a bunk with the kitty. Being entertainments convener, it's up to me to make sure we've got a decent
purvey."</p>
<p>He was using a broom handle to stir the contents of the bin nearest him, sending up a blister of bubbles that
stank as badly as the marshes out on the golf flats and looked even more poisonous. Jack held his nose. </p>
<p>"I really don't think it's worth it."</p>
<p>"Sure it is. You get to pension age and see how much beer you can buy. The price of it's just an absolute
scandal and every year the tax goes through the roof. Hell, it's the only pleasure a man's got left, that
and the birds."</p>
<p>"So you say. You're up to every scam going."</p>
<p>"You know what it's like Jake. The older I get, I stand for more and fall for less."</p>
<p>"I thought you were racing the birds today."</p>
<p>Sandy shook his head and kept stirring and Jack kept his hands clamped on his nose. The thick malty smell
caught him in the back of the throat and he wished he hadn't had so much to drink the previous night."</p>
<p>"Have you got a license for this?"</p>
<p>"Don't need one, seeing it's just home brew. Me and Willie McIver chipped in for the sugar and stuff and what
we'll do is charge entrance money, so we can't get done for selling."</p>
<p>"You're a twenty carat scoundrel, Sandy."</p>
<p>"Takes one to know one. Tell you what, if I had a still, I could turn this into whisky, and then we'd really
be in business."</p>
<p>"And then I'd be bailing you out of jail."</p>
<p>"My old grandfather, he had a still himself, him and my uncles, up the back of beyond some place near the
Cardross Hills. Made it out of an old copper boiler. That was back in the twenties, a whole long time ago.
That stuff they made would have lifted paint and raised blisters but they got a taste for it. All you do is
make beer and then steam it off."</p>
<p>"And you end up going blind."</p>
<p>Sandy laughed and stirred and the bubbles farted about on the surface as if the mash was alive. </p>
<p>"You got to take the opportunity. Like what you're always telling me about supply and demand. I've got the
supply, and the boys in the club, well, they'll be doing the demanding, and me and Willie can make enough to
get another batch going and make a bit of profit besides."</p>
<p>"But it stinks. I mean, it would make you boke. You should let him do it in his place."</p>
<p>"He's <em>doing</em> it in his place. That way we end up with a hunner' and twenty gallons. There's a bowling
club smoker coming up as well and we're catering for that as all. Then the Boat Club bash. Next thing you
know, we'll be bigger than Interbrew."</p>
<p>Sandy laughed again and scratched his stubble. "Wish I'd thought of this years ago. I could have been big.
<em>Muy grande.</em> Here. . . " he made a beckoning motion. "Bring that siphon across. I have to decant the
first batch."</p>
<p>He opened the little cupboard beyond the kitchen door and Jack stood, open mouthed. From floor to ceiling it
had five deep shelves and each one of them was jammed to the edge with bottles of all kinds. Lemonade, Iron
Brew, Lucozade, a few dry sherry bottles and a couple of big whisky optics that had obviously made their way
from some bar.</p>
<p>"Been all over the place this week, collecting them. Me and Willie. You wouldn't imagine how much good glass
people throw away."</p>
<p>"Oh, come on, Sandy, you can't go feeding people moonshine in old chuckaway bottles. You never know who's
pee'd in them. You could poison all of the old biddies."</p>
<p>"Less of the old. And don't you worry boy, they're clean as a whistle. We got your Mam to go into Boots and
buy us some of that stuff she used to clean your baby bottles. If it's good for babies, then it's good for
the pigeon men. You think my head buttons up the back?"</p>
<p>"I'm not so sure."</p>
<p>Jack handed him a corrugated tube that looked like a windpipe with some plastic attachment that Sandy jammed
onto the third bin and the beer started to flow. Jack had to admit that the finished article smelt a whole
lot better than the fresh stuff and he was surprised that it actually looked like beer when it began to fill
the bottles. He did a mental calculation on how many bottles would be needed for twenty gallons and worked
it out that they could be siphoning the brew for an hour and a half. He turned out to be off by only twenty
minutes. </p>
<p>"You want a beer?"</p>
<p>"At this time of day? Give me a break. Your kidneys must be like saddlebags."</p>
<p>"Don't get smart. Put the kettle on then and I'll get the board."</p>
<p>It was a tradition between them and had been since Jack had been only seven or eight and they'd started
playing draughts before progressing to chess. Sandy sometimes managed to con him into a game of shoot
pontoon and always took a few notes off him and Jack never saw how he palmed the royals but he knew his
Uncle was fast as a snake when he wanted to be, a throwback to his old days on tramp steamers up and down
the Americas. He'd been a wild man, so the stories went, and Sandy embellished just a few of them. Jack made
tea thick as tar and got a pair of penguin biscuits from his jacket pocket. Sandy dunked them until the
chocolate spread out on the surface and then slurped them between his teeth. Nothing changed. </p>
<p>"Here," he said. "You have to try this stuff."</p>
<p>He went into the hall and came back with a big demi-jon that held a gallon of opaque liquid.</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"Try it first and you tell me." He poured some into a small glass. Jack raised it, sniffed, recognised a
familiar scent and tasted.</p>
<p>It was smooth as silk with a full, warm aftertaste. For a moment he thought it was the stuff he and the
Swedish twins had been drinking at Robert's party. He drank again, and Sandy grinned.</p>
<p>"Not bad, eh?"</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"I met this widow woman in Ireland last year, when we were across for the Connaught race. Me and her, we sort
of..."</p>
<p>"I know what you sort of, you old skank chancer. I swear to god, when you go, you'll be the last of the
diehards. They'll never get the lid down."</p>
<p>Sandy cuffed him light on the back of the head.</p>
<p>"Some respect young man. Anyway, she had the recipe for some woman's drink from the place she worked. She
made a batch, just some whisky and bits and bobs. It loosened the laces on her inhibitions right
enough."</p>
<p>"And you loosened the rest. Heard it already."</p>
<p>"Anyway, I watched her and picked up the gist of it. Then I added a few things of my own. The old biddies,
they can't get enough of it. The bowling night's going to be a hoolie. Want some more?"</p>
<p>"Another time," Jack said. It was good, but not with a fading hangover. He took a sip of tea to kill the
alcohol taste, Sandy moved a pawn and they were off, sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by bottles of every
variety, in a fug of beer and Sandy's Virginia flake roll-up, stout tea and chocolate biscuits and apart
from the beer and the creamy liqueur, that's how it went most early Saturday mornings. </p>
<p>"It's not looking too clever at the dairy." Pawn up two squares. </p>
<p>"I heard that too." Knight two up, freeing the bishop. "I also hear Andy Kerr's facing a whole heap of
trouble."</p>
<p>"Looks like. His cousin Billy's been at some sort of scam. I'll get the details on Monday."</p>
<p>"Billy was always sticky fingered. Had too much too easy. I hear he's done a bunk with some bimbo, just like
that daft old git Tim Farmer. He's nicked off with a secretary from the distillery, just half his age."</p>
<p>"Tim's about seventy, is he not?"</p>
<p>"Aye, and she's about forty. Far too young for him. Once the money's gone he'll be back with his tail between
his legs and his willy shrivelled to a peanut." Bishop out and hunting. </p>
<p>Sandy looked at him over the cup, judging his next move and his next remark. </p>
<p>"Billy Kerr was keeping two sets of books and working one for himself. He was supposed to pay the VAT and
your national insurance, is what I heard, and none of it's been paid, and that means you could be in a wee
pile of hot manure."</p>
<p>"I heard that as well. You don't miss much."</p>
<p>Sandy winked, while Jack contemplated the defence of his queen. </p>
<p>"But what are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"I'm going to take your queen's knight."</p>
<p>"Don't get smart." King's knight out on a flanker, threatening the queen.</p>
<p>"Watch the board." Jack looked up. Sandy was still gauging him. "It looks like I'll get to sleep late in the
mornings."</p>
<p>"Billy Kerr will take a fall as well. Once a chancer, always a chancer. Makes you wonder Jake, does nobody do
a decent job around here without their hands in the till or stealing off somebody else? Look at Tim Farmer.
Off with two grand of our money that was set aside for the big Christmas party and all the prizes. Brains in
his balls and head up his arse. Everybody stealing from everybody else. Used to be a time when people were
honest. Honest enough anyway. Nowadays it's the done thing to rip people off. That's the way business is, am
I right? Dog eat bloody dog and to hell with the hard-working folk."</p>
<p>He watched as Jack moved his queen deep infield and tut-tutted disapproval like the old women on the golf
course. </p>
<p>"And what are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"I don't know, Gramps. Tell you the truth, I'm really fed up getting up at daft o'clock and delivering other
folk's milk. Fed up bursting my arse."</p>
<p>"Watch your fucking language, boy."</p>
<p>Jack laughed. His Sandy always said that.</p>
<p>"And don't call me Gramps. You make me feel old."</p>
<p>"You are old."</p>
<p>"Not too old to cuff your ear. Watch your queen."</p>
<p>"Don't make me laugh. Watch your king. Check." The games were always fast. </p>
<p> Sandy castled, got the king right out of there. </p>
<p>"You don't steal off people, that was always the rule. Maybe lift a length of two by four, or a bag of coal
from the railyard. Lead off a roof, or some whisky from the distillery, but you didn't steal off
<em>real </em>folk. Maybe net a salmon or two out of the river, but not steal folk's money." He shook his
head and rubbed his chin, a gesture of scratchy disgust. Jack ignored it. He always did that to distract
him. </p>
<p>"Ever tell you about the time your Granddad stole a bull?"</p>
<p>That got Jack's attention. He finished the biscuit and washed it down with thick tea. </p>
<p>"That would be when you rode the trail in the wild west, I suppose. Rustlin' Sandy Bruce rides the
range."</p>
<p>"Don't mock boy, I got around when I was your age. Went right round the world with the marines and then on
the boats. And watch your queen." </p>
<p>Jack had seen it coming and took the other knight, quick as a blink. Sandy sat back and kept on scratching
his chin. He was under pressure. </p>
<p>"Was back in the fifties. Fifty two I reckon, just after the big TB epidemic that took your aunty Janet.
Rationing was still on and we were all built like whippets, skin and gristle. I'd be about three or four. My
old Grandpa, he was still alive at the time and stayed with us, down in the old house beside the river
before they cleared all the tenements away. He was a tough old coot, I can tell you."</p>
<p>The stories always started with a preamble. Sandy had been plenty of places and seen things in his service
days and always had a yarn and some of them were undoubtedly true. Jack couldn't always tell which ones
were. </p>
<p>"Anyway, the old man was knocking on, and he hated the rationing. He used to take me up the hill, snaring
rabbits, and once he caught a sheep that had its horns caught in some bushes and before you knew it the skin
was off and buried under a pile of rocks and the whole street was eating mutton. It was tough as old boots,
but with the rationing you'd have eaten old boots and the insoles, laces, hob-seggs and all. Everybody stuck
together and nobody said a thing. We took about forty salmon out of the river that spring and Jimmy
Crawford, who was foreman at the shipyard wood store gave us all the oak sawdust we wanted and we cured them
in Malky Dunnet's rail shack and then the whole street was like royalty, eating smoked salmon for weeks. You
did what you could, know what I mean?" </p>
<p>Sandy moved a bishop up in a new threat. Jack pulled his king back, on the run, waiting for the rest of the
story. </p>
<p>"But beef? You couldn't get beef, or chicken either. The old fella had worked the railroads in the states
back in the twenties when my dad was a boy, and he used to talk about steaks the size of washing boards. Two
inches thick. I tell you Jake, sometimes I was drooling at the mouth just listening to him, sitting at the
fire, just thinking about big beefy steaks. Anyway, your granddad and Willie McIver and a couple of others,
yon ginger boy's grandfather, Davie Watson, dead now, bless him. They were on a trip up by Linnvale and
there were fields full of cattle, every one fatter than the next, and with udders like blown up bagpipes.
The guys were droolin' just to look at them, because there were no cows around here. All the farms were
growing turnips and potatoes. But up there it was all the Colquhoun land and the laird, whatever pull he
had, he had one of the best dairy herds in the country, all of them feeding all day and getting fat as
lard."</p>
<p>Sandy laughed, thinking back, and Jack knew this would be a true one. </p>
<p>"They hatched this idea, and a mate of theirs, he was in the army, doing national service but he was in the
transport corps and he got the loan of a five tonner. They went up, all of them in old uniforms so they
could say we were on exercise if they got caught, and they went into this shed at night and got a rope
around this big cow. It never said a word and they walked it up the back ramp in pitch dark and freewheeled
it down the track for half a mile without the engine on and back home. Big Peter McFarlane, the butcher's
apprentice, was all set to cut the thing up and they had worked out who was going to get what, and
somebody's mother could make sausages for everybody. It wasn't until they got it round the back of Malky
Dunnet's old yard and into his shed that they saw it wasn't a cow at all. Even I could tell that. It had a
pair of <em>cojones</em> like melons, scraping and bouncing off the ground they were, and something else
they never noticed in the middle of the night. It had a big brass ring stuck through its nose."</p>
<p>"That would be better than a cow," Jack said. "Better beef."</p>
<p>"Aye, so you'd think. But what they never knew that the <em>merdo</em> had hit the fan in a big way. Somebody
had seen an army truck out in the middle of the night and there was a general alert out and the laird, he
was spitting bullets and going to sue the ministry of defence."</p>
<p>"For a bull?"</p>
<p>"For <em>his </em>bull. He had the best milk herd in the west, and that was because he had the biggest bloody
prize bull you ever saw. Even then it was worth five hundred guineas. It was more famous than <em>him</em>
even. It's picture had been in all the papers. My dad was only earning seven pounds a week back then, so It
was like ten years spending money, all of it stamping about on the hoof."</p>
<p>"So what happened?"</p>
<p>"Pete McFarlane, he took cold feet and said he couldn't cut the beast and Mickey Dougan, he was shitting
himself because he had nicked the van for the night. That turned out okay, because it was never signed out
and nobody was the wiser. So there they were, with a fortune on legs and nobody knew what to do, and all of
them facing the jail. Yon old chinless wonder would have hanged them for rustling, without a second
thought,"</p>
<p>The old man chuckled again, scratched his chin and moved a pawn to free the bishop's line of sight, making it
look casual. </p>
<p>"Somebody came up with the idea of taking it back, and they decided just to dump it along the Linnvale Road,
make it look like it had just gone a-wandering, and maybe later on go after one of the cows. But when they
were getting the thing into the back of the truck to take it back, it started kicking and hauling and it
butted Willie right in the chuckies and he went down like a sack. There was only your Grandad and Mickey
holding it and that wasn't enough and the bull took off with them dragging behind it. I swear to god it was
like a rhino, must have weighed a ton. Off it goes, slipping and sliding in its own shite and it knocked the
yard door off its hinges and out in to the street. You should have heard the screaming then. There was a
bunch of women all gabbing together and when this thing came out, snorting and pawing they all started
yelling and running about like headless chickens. Mickey grabbed the rope and it tossed its head and he went
flying arse over tit and then it was off. It went down the alley by Thomson's bakers, and across the greens,
dragging all then washing with it, and straight through the hedge at the dairy as if it wasn't there. It
came out the other side and hit a car straight on and knocked it into a wall. It went bombing up Gooseholm
Street, ploughed up all the allotments and out the other side, doing about forty, balls swinging like a
sporran and it clattered straight through the big fence on the far side and onto the flat."</p>
<p>Sandy chuckled again. "What a mess!"</p>
<p>"What happened?"</p>
<p>"It ran straight on to the railway line and the big morning freight from Oban smacked its head clean off its
shoulders."</p>
<p>He shook his head, grinning. </p>
<p>"There wasn't much anybody could do then, and everybody was up on the line before the cops arrived. There was
no mobile phones then, and they only needed half an hour. Pete McFarlane had his bone saw and a set of
butchers knives and somebody brought a big two-handed bandsaw and in no time at all there was nothing left
but a puddle of stinky grass that had been in its belly. Everybody got a share and that night we threw the
biggest street party we ever had. My grandfather had a T-bone a yard wide and we were all eating beef for a
fortnight. The Laird, he could do nothing about it, even after the cops identified the hide they found
hanging on the railway fence. It was just an act of God, so they said. It was finders keepers, and nobody
ever said a thing. It was the best kept secret ever. But like I said, that's the way it was."</p>
<p>He reached out and moved the bishop. <em>Check. </em></p>
<p>Jack pulled the king back and the rook moved to block. <em>Check. </em></p>
<p>He ran back, using his queen as a shield. His grandfather took her by automatic reflex and Jack used the
vacant space to free his second bishop and move six diagonals until he was two in front of the white
king. </p>
<p>"You're screwed."</p>
<p>Sandy paused, scanned the deck and blew out from puffed cheeks. </p>
<p>"Sucked me in, Jake, so you did. Best of three?"</p>
<p>He shook his head. "I've got to sort a few things out."</p>
<p>"Like Gus Ferguson?"</p>
<p>Jack was pushing his chair back and he came to a sudden stop. </p>
<p>"How did you know about that?"</p>
<p>"I'm an old soldier. Knowledge is power. What you don't know sneaks up and bites your arse. I hear that
polecat's well pissed off at you."</p>
<p>Jack shrugged. There wasn't much he could say.</p>
<p>"I heard what you did, and that was pretty good. Yon Cullen's got brains in his arse, but he's an animal. I
heard you hit Wiggy Foley with a six iron."</p>
<p>"It was a sand wedge."</p>
<p>"Even better. That would give you lift." Sandy chuckled at his joke, but not for long. </p>
<p>"Both of them are worth the watching, but Ferguson, he's loony tunes, so you keep an eye on your flanks Jake,
and have somebody watch your back."</p>
<p>"They were kicking him half to death."</p>
<p>"I saw the boy last night. He's carrying the tattoo marks. Your pal's a good lad, but he can't put a brake on
his mouth. It'll get him into worse trouble some day, you wait. Anyway, Ferguson, he's a stoat, and I don't
want to have to look out the old Italian shooter, know what I mean?"</p>
<p>Sandy fixed him with hard eyes behind the glasses. Jack knew he was tough as nails and had been things and
seen places too. The looted gun was their secret from way back. </p>
<p>"Ferguson," Sandy let the look fade. "I grew up with his old man, and he couldn't punch his way out of a wet
hankie. But big Rosie, she was something else, a mean big bitch if ever there was one and that boy took
after his mother. I remember the dancing down at the Burgh Hall, me in brothel creepers and a velvet jacket,
doing the palais glide. She was only sixteen, but big with it. Hands like hams. Anyway, this wee fellow
dances her and asks her up again and when he walks off he claps a hand to her backside. Man, he was very
brave or really stupid. Next thing he's up on his tiptoes and she's got his goolies in a grip of steel,
giving them a twist. I never saw the blood drain out of anybody's face just as fast. She walked him straight
across the floor and out the door, slammed him into a wall. Told him never to embarrass her like that in
public again. She made him walk her home all the way to Corrieside and <em>then</em> she made him give her a
standy-up in the washing shed, and by Christ, he had to do the business right or she'd have torn them off."
</p>
<p>He looked over at Jack.</p>
<p>"You watch that Ferguson, <em>compadre</em>. Okay?"</p>
<p>Jack nodded. He didn't need to be told. </p>
<p>"And I'm sorry about the job. It doesn't look too promising. You keep at the books and make something of
yourself. It's a good wee town for them with no ambition, but there's nothing here for a man with your
brains, so you got to grasp the opportunity and run with it, know what I mean? Screw the opposition. You
supply the brains and they'll demand it. Start your own business and make something of yourself before it's
too late. You don't want these tossers to be ruling your life, do you? Get to my age and you have to brew
your own beer in a bin? Get cuffed at chess by a bloody milkman?"</p>
<p>Jack laughed, but he knew the old guy was serious now, trying to make it light. </p>
<p>"You have to remember who you are."</p>
<p>He knew what was coming, but he sat still for it. </p>
<p>"Told you before, You're a Lorne on your father's side, god rest him, and a Bruce on your mother's. Go back
far enough and the Lornes were the kings of the islands, and Bruce, I don't have to tell you about him. You
come from good stock boy, and you've got a good head on your shoulders. Don't let these creeps rule you. You
get out and take what's yours."</p>
<p>"Sure."</p>
<p>"Remember the story of Bruce in the cave? Before Bannockburn?"</p>
<p>"Sure I do."</p>
<p>"That spider tried six times and failed, and then succeeded on the seventh. If at first you don't succeed. .
. Then you know what happened?"</p>
<p>Jack waited for it.</p>
<p>"Robert the Bruce picked it up in his royal mailed fist and smacked it flat with the other. Splat! He hated
those crawly fuckers."</p>
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<h1>4</h1>
<p>Kate Delaney had a slash of green paint running from her eye to the curve of her chin, and a clown dab of red on
her cheek as though she had deliberately drawn it there. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a casual knot,
copper bronze gleaming in the afternoon glow. Fast confident brush-strokes streaked the white wall, making the
picture come alive like a slow fade-in. He watched her from the other side of the street, hands jammed in his
pockets, shoulder against a lamppost. </p>
<p>Bend and dip, raise and stroke. She was lithe in faded, paint-spattered pants with big pockets on the thighs and
an old shirt tied in an old-style sixties knot, showing a five inch band of silky summer tan. </p>
<p>She was halfway along the hundred yards of old brick railway wall whose crumbling surface had been patched up and
whitewashed bright. The bunch of kids were doing their own thing, talent from the primary schools, daubing and
spattering as the sun quick-dried the paint.. </p>
<p>Kate felt his look on her back and turned, backhanded her brow and put the pot down on the crusted sheet. He
waited until she came across the street, leaving the youngsters and the other teacher to get on with the slap
and dash. </p>
<p>"It's coming along," he said. She leaned into him and slipped a thumb over his belt. The sun gave her hair the
sheen of new-stripped copper. </p>
<p>"Art for arts sake, money for god's sake."</p>
<p>"You've been listening to too much of that old stuff."</p>
<p>"We've the same taste, retro man" she said. Her eyes swept the wall scene, east to west. "You get a perspective
from here. Up close it's just paint and you have to imagine it. But you're right, it <em>is</em> coming along."
</p>
<p>The Heritage Wall. The project had fought off dozens of other contenders for Millennium money from the arts
council and then it had been forced to wait all this time to get the cash and the permissions needed to take a
bunch of kids and some pots of paint to cover a decaying eyesore and put some colour on it. </p>
<p>"When will you finish it?"</p>
<p>She laughed, cocking her head to lean it light on the side of his arm. "By the next millennium probably. It'll be
like Stonehenge."</p>
<p>He could admire it from here, the whole town spread in a foreshortened panorama with an almost medievally
distorted perspective that gave the highlights an arbitrary prominence. The castle on the big basalt rock that
sat at the mouth of the river overshadowed the whole scene, as it did the whole town, black and green and grey,
all angles and planes of fissured and fallen stone and ancient battlement. The silver meander of the river
snaked between the tall buildings, each one an unmistakeable landmark, the old Ballantyne's distillery and its
high retort tower, the old tenements on River Street, the big gasometer. All of the old companies had their
names and insignia neatly done in exaggerated emphasis. The Latta shipyard, closed in the fifties. Carden's
engineering, down in the sixties. McMillan's forge, a late survivor that finally fell its length in the
eighties. The old glass factory that still stood but nobody living remembered bustling. The dye works that had
used the soft river water for global success before synthetics knocked it on the head. All of them remembered on
the heritage wall. A history of boom-times past.</p>
<p>"It's good."</p>
<p>"Sure it's good," she agreed. "It's a history lesson, but that's what they wanted. I argued that we should be
looking to the future. Put in a couple of heliports. A rocket pad. A touch of pizzazz, inject some damned <em>ambition</em>."
</p>
<p>"Or you could put in the call centre, the supermarket, Ferguson's scrap yard and the Corrieside team shooting up
and drinking superlager and buckfast tonic wine."</p>
<p>"Oh, we are a true cynic this sunny day." She gave him a quick squeeze, more friendly than anything else. "What's
up?"</p>
<p>"I've got to go in later on. Andy Kerr wants to talk to us."</p>
<p>"Is this the big crunch?" She pulled back and looked up at him, shading her eyes from the sun. </p>
<p>"Same for Don and Jed. Sproat's called a mass meeting at the distillery, no surprise."</p>
<p>She pointed to the long street-art mural. "I'll have to red ring the distillery and the dairy now, how our town
<em>used </em>to work. In the good old days. What do you plan to do?"</p>
<p>"Let's wait and see what Andy says. We might have some time left. After that, well I've got a couple of ideas
that I'm still kicking around in my head."</p>
<p>He couldn't tell her any of them. Nor anyone, yet.</p>
<p>"I hope they still include getting your degree."</p>
<p>He gave a short laugh. "Don't nag. Sure, I'll go for it, but it's time I branched out. I'm thinking of setting up
on my own."</p>
<p>"Doing what?"</p>
<p>"Observing the two golden rules for success."</p>
<p>"And they are?"</p>
<p>"Don't tell people everything you know."</p>
<p>"What's the second one?"</p>
<p>He clapped an arm round her shoulder and put a finger to his lips. For a second she wondered what he meant and
then the penny dropped and she elbowed him in the rib.</p>
<p>"Oh, big secrets now? Well, things don't look as if they could get much worse."</p>
<p>A couple of the kids across the street turned round to watch them and she moved herself out of his grasp, almost
imperceptibly, making it casual. The children were dressed, despite the sun, in coveralls and rubber boots, and
the multi-coloured splashes showed this had been a well thought precaution. </p>
<p>"Like you say. We're living on history and nostalgia, hanging on to the past when we should be fixing things for
the future. Our Mike should breeze his highers and there's enough on place to see him to his honours if he wants
to go the distance, so that lightens the load a bit. I can do whatever I want."</p>
<p>"I agree, Jack Lorne. You can do <em>absolutely</em> anything you want. I've told you that before."</p>
<p>"Ye of plenty faith. No, what I meant is that this might be the best thing that's happened to me. Sometimes you
need a kick in the backside."</p>
<p>"Or you need to hit bedrock."</p>
<p>"That too. Look at this place." He pointed at the heritage wall, whitewash bright, brilliant with acrylic colour
that was somehow too day-glow to be a true depiction of the old town, as if an alien sun gave it a chromatic
boost. He moved his finger up and down, shooting off at the old company signs. "Closed. Closed. Shut. Bust. Gone
away. Receivership. Closed. Shut."</p>
<p>"My my, Mr Lorne, we <em>are </em>pessimistic."</p>
<p>"No, just realistic, and just waking up to it. We have to turn this around or we'll be living in a ghost town.
You're lucky there's a wall still standing for you to paint on."</p>
<p>"That was touch and go. They were set to rip this down before we got the grant."</p>
<p>"Anyway, I'm working something out."</p>
<p>"Ah, ze <em>beeg</em> secret." She elbowed him in the ribs. "And I hear you've got more secrets. I hear you made
it big with two blonde bimbos."</p>
<p>"You hear wrong." He felt his face redden. The guys knew he had a thing for Kate. He just hadn't pushed it, not
while he was still delivering milk in the mornings. Maybe it was pride.</p>
<p>"Not wrong. My sources are impeccable. Astrid and Britt, something like that?"</p>
<p>"Ilse and Ingrid," he said and she laughed again. She had suckered him so easily. </p>
<p>"Big tits, long legs, <em>sveedish</em> accents, helium brains. And two of them? A bit ambitious, Jack the lad,
or are you ambidextrous?"</p>
<p>"Tempted, but I didn't go the distance."</p>
<p>"Oh, you <em>vonted to be alone?</em>"</p>
<p>"I needed some time to myself. Give me a break."</p>
<p>"You think Gus Ferguson will give you a break?" She kept her hands over her eyes and fixed on him, suddenly
serious. "You have to watch yourself."</p>
<p>"Jesus! Does everybody in the whole town know about that? I was just helping a mate."</p>
<p>"I know you were. Come on Jack, it's not New York. You're better known than you think. Everybody knows what they
did to Donny, and what Don Watson knows, everybody knows. He's a mobile phone on feet. He should carry a bell
and shout <em>oyez</em>."</p>
<p>She was still holding his eyes with her own. "I do mean it though. You watch yourself."</p>
<p>"My uncle told me that already."</p>
<p>"Well listen to him. You don't get to that old fox's age without having some brains." She slipped a hand round
and gave him a quick and surreptitious hug, maybe a gesture of solidarity, but it felt like more. She smelt of
paint and turpentine; faint flowers and hot woman sweat and if the kids hadn't been watching he might just have
tried a response, tried a try, but it was still the middle of the day. She patted his backside, squeezed a
tease. </p>
<p>"Back to work, some of us have to. You go find out whether you're on the dole or operating secret plan number
one."</p>
<p>She started to cross the road and was half-way to the kerb when she turned. "Come down to the corner at five and
I'll treat you to a coffee. Deal?"</p>
<p>"Wish I could, but we'll have some things to chew over, me and the boys. But I was thinking of going to Stirling
tomorrow to watch Jed on the stock circuit. Want to come?"</p>
<p>"And watch macho loonies smash metal?"</p>
<p>"If you want to go up by Creggan way, I'll buy you an ice cream."</p>
<p>"You know the way to a woman's heart, you smoothie." She laughed and added more light to the day's aggregate.
"You're on."</p>
<p>He held up a thumb and waited until she picked up the brush again and slashed another clear green line, no
hesitation, no pondering, as if she had the complete picture all in her head. He knew she most likely did. </p>
<p>He wished <em>he</em> had.</p>
<hr />
<p>Andy Kerr had a face like granite, grey and rough, matching his hair. It was amazing what a couple of months on
the edge could do for a man. Whether his cousin Billy had been a chancer or a thief, it made no difference. The
walls were closing in on all sides. </p>
<p>"I won't lie to you guys," he said. The stress made him hoarse. "It's not looking too clever."</p>
<p>"Is our national insurance paid?" The demand came from the back for the group. Jack turned to look. It was a
legitimate question, sure enough, but a bit early in the day. </p>
<p>"Hear the man out first," he said. </p>
<p>"No, Jake, that's fair enough. You've all got a right to know. You're right. We discovered a discrepancy in the
national insurance contributions," He nodded to Jake who had helped him go through all the books in the past
couple of weeks. "but I've been on to the Inland Revenue and that's all been taken care of. So no matter what
happens here, you are all up to date. That's a personal guarantee from me."</p>
<p>"I was just saying...." the man at the back piped up, embarrassed now. Andy was known to be straight, no
matter what folk thought of his slimy cousin Billy. The rest of the guys shooshed him to silence. </p>
<p>"Right, let's get down to business, so much as it is. I have to raise a hundred thousand minimum in six weeks,
pure and simple as that. Sproat wants me off the ground so he can sell it and the lease is up for renewal. I
still have the option, but everybody knows he wants the ground and it's a big hike, so for the next little
while, I'll be trying to get some backing, and Jim McGuire will be running the show on a day to day basis."</p>
<p>Andy wiped his face with a dry hand, flattening out wrinkles on his brow that seemed to have sneaked up and dug
furrows overnight. </p>
<p>"But we still have the problem of the contracts. They're cutting the price to the bone and the farmers can't
operate at that level. My guess is that if we can't squeeze a couple of points, some of them will go over to
barley and potatoes and cull the herds. Under the circs, it's a real bastard, so I'm not going to bullshit you.
Things are <em>not</em> looking hunky dory. Not good at all."</p>
<p>"Tell us straight Andy, are we in a job or out?"</p>
<p>"You're in for six weeks, but not all of you. I've got a choice to go on short time, or short staff, and short
time just won't work. I have to lose half of you as of now."</p>
<p>"That's twenty men."</p>
<p>"Men <em>and </em>women," one of the girls chipped in, making the point, as if it mattered.</p>
<p>"Twenty. For the time being. If we survive this and pick up, then I'll do my best to bring you back. If we don't,
then there's no point in talking about it."</p>
<p>"Who's the twenty?" Big Trevor Hannah wanted to know now. Everybody was angry and worried and some were scared
more than a little. </p>
<p>"I could do last in-first out, but I won't. I need Jim, Fergus McCann on the bottling, Sally on the phones and
paperwork. George and Bill on the tankers, but only for two weeks or so because we're giving them up and I'll
get a lease deal on old stock. I need two deliverymen door-to-door and two bulk. A couple of others. What I've
done is put the names in a hat, for apart from the key people, I'm not going to say who's out and who stays.
It's only fair."</p>
<p>Jack had no quarrel with that and hoped nobody else had. He'd find something to pay the bills and hit the books
hard. And in his mind he was out of here, on to the next plan. On to the first real plan in his life. </p>
<p>He made it to the bank just before it closed, trying to shake off the hollow sensation of disquiet that had
transmitted itself from the rest of the dairy people. He could only empathise, soak up their anger and
apprehension. Most of them had worked nowhere else but the dairy, and all of them would have a hard time getting
something new. It had always been a job for life. Dairies and distilleries, they never closed, did they? You
left school, you got a job when one was going, and you stuck to it and it saw you through. That was the way it
was. <em>Used</em> to be.</p>
<p>Now, it was all changed.</p>
<p>He had the passbooks with him, jammed in the back pocket of his chinos, and he had decided not to waste any time.
He'd seen all this coming and he had to pick himself up, move right along. No time to lose.</p>
<p>Janey Cooper, Jed's cousin was behind the counter in the bright building society, all glass and wood and red
corporate blazers. She gave him her usual big smile and he handed over a wad of notes and the book. Getting the
money out of the bank had been a matter of moments. In, out, and years of savings were wedged into his front
pocket. When you thought about it, it didn't amount to a hell of a lot, but then again, he'd had other things to
do with his cash. </p>
<p>"I want to make this a joint account," he told Janey. </p>
<p>"Oh really? Is there something I should know?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. I've met a really nice boy and we're moving in."</p>
<p>Her eyes widened in disbelief, saw he was kidding and went along with it.</p>
<p>He handed over the little form he'd filed in and she changed the passbook without demur. He was well enough known
on River Street.</p>
<p>He could have gone back along through the town, but word would be out by now and he didn't want to face all the
people who would clap him on the back and condole.</p>
<p><em>Your friends all come running, clap you on the back and say....</em></p>
<p>Not please. Not this time. They say sorry mate, something will turn up. Tough break.</p>
<p>He went down by the river and strolled along by the railing, watching the flow of the deep black water, swirling
down under the low bridge. Across and downstream, the old boatyard still stood, but there were damn few Rinkers
and Bayliners there. A couple of sea trout broached the surface and snatched at flies, and a pair of diving
birds surfaced and scattered them and the old river went rolling right on down to the castle and to empty itself
out into the Clyde.</p>
<p>You could go with the flow. You could let the flow just catch you, like Franky Hennigan and Tig Graham over by
the water edge, side by side on a bench drinking cheap rotgut wine, lost in the current, unable to stand against
it.</p>
<p>Or you could maybe find a way of going against the current, moving under your own power, haul out somewhere and
find your feet.</p>
<p>Maybe, <em>maybe</em>.</p>
<p>He went home and his mother had heard the news. She gave him a tight hug that said it all and asked him what he
was going to do. He said he had some things to think about. Sheena came down and told him she would light a
candle for him and say a prayer, which was what Sheena always did in times of crisis and every other time
besides. He ruffled her hair and then went up to the room he shared with Mike. His brother was still down in the
supermarket, stacking shelves until he went to Uni in the autumn. Jack sat on the bed and brought out the second
thick wad of cash.</p>
<p>Very methodically, he took them note by note and crumpled them up, until he had a thick, unruly ball of money. He
jammed it in an old syrup tin he'd used as a kid to keep loose change.</p>
<p>At Aitkenbar Distillery, a fair crowd had formed around the gatehouse, muttering the way they do when they're not
happy and unsure of what to do next. Disorganised dismay. </p>
<p>Alistair Sproat was less blunt than Andy Kerr had been, but everybody knew he hadn't been just as honest. He
flanked himself with a couple of the suits from the offices and James Gilveray who headed the customs post,
while the rest of them faced him in the canteen, stacked in rows on plastic chairs. Everybody was there,
coopers, bottlers, the maltmen and distillers, three forklift drivers and the barrel rollers who did everything
from that to slungeing out the mash bins and scaring the seagulls from the roof. </p>
<p>Donny Watson sat listening to the Sproat drone on, watching Gilveray survey them all as if he expected them all
to be leaving with a dozen bottles down the legs of their overalls, which, considering the state of things,
wasn't so far fetched. Gilveray would be just fine and dandy, because come what may, he was just a civil servant
and they'd squeeze him in somewhere else. He treated every drop of whisky as if it was from his own personal
hoard and like every boss in a uniform he could be a mean-minded bastard. </p>
<p>"We're gathered here today," Sproat had started and some of the coopers had laughed at that, even though there
was nothing much to laugh at. "Because there are great changes in the air, and it's best for me to tell you
about them personally. It's a great opportunity for Aitkenbar to progress and diversify, and frankly, it will be
a great wrench to me in a personal way, having grown up in this business, here in Levenford."</p>
<p>There was plenty more of the same and the upshot was that Sproat was moving on and up, investing his money in
designer drinks and to finance that, well Aitkenbar and Dunvegan distilleries had to go. A team of the maltmen
had come down from the little distillery on the far edge of the Isle of Skye, a handful of angry workers who had
travelled two hundred miles to be told it wasn't worth their while going back up north again. Their shop
steward, Donald Munro stood with his shoulders hunched and his arms folded, glowering like the Cuillin Ridge on
a November day and muttering under his breath. He'd have to take the word back up to Skye that two hundred years
of history was washed up and washed out with this tide. </p>
<p>Mac's bar was full at five, full of long faces and wall-to-wall resentment, but the beer was going down fast
enough, faster than it ever did at this time in the afternoon. </p>
<p>"Jack Lorne, meet Donald Munro," Donny did the introductions. </p>
<p>"Too many Donalds here," the big islander said. "You call me DJ."</p>
<p>He was drinking dark single malt and that figured, seeing he had grown up with the stuff up there on Skye where
the water ran though miles of peat and turned the whisky a rich tawny dark. Jack wasn't in the mood for a big
drink, but solidarity was a great primer and, well, it seemed the thing to do under the circumstances. </p>
<p>Now he knew he should be drinking coffee, but it was still hot in Mac's and he thought he'd keep an eye on Donny
who was making a short-term career of getting drunk. Ed Kane matched him drink for drink and while he was a good
couple of stone lighter, he could hold it a whole lot better. Jack remembered he'd offered to give them a hand
against Cullen and Foley. He'd a steady look in his eye then and now. Tough. A good man at your back.</p>
<p>"Me? I'll get a job somewhere. They always need people to roll barrels and drive a fork-lift."</p>
<p>"That's very good for you," DJ said solemnly. His full black beard made him look ten years older than thirty.
"But up at Dunvegan, there's nothing at all, at all. "</p>
<p>"I heard about the cheese plant," Jack put in. "That was a shame. It's happening all over, especially with
ScotMilk taking everything over."</p>
<p>"That was the problem. It's my cousin's place and he's facing a hard wall, I can tell you. They said it was too
far to collect the milk and cancelled the contract and now he's left with a herd of five hundred pure jersey
milkers he'll have to put to market if something doesn't come up. The cheese market's never big enough to use it
all."</p>
<p>DJ lifted his whisky and looked at the lights though the dark amber.</p>
<p>"It's like the highland clearances all over again. It's true what they say. Human beings are worth less than
damned sheep."</p>
<p> "You're right," Ed Kane came in. "What Sproat's doing to this town is a pure crime. Flattening the place and
making a shopping centre car park. That'll be forty shelf stacking jobs paying peanuts."</p>
<p>Jack hadn't been there, but he'd heard the gist of it. Sproat had told them the new closing date was in two
months time, but they would all be getting a special presentation bottle of the last historic blend of the
finest whiskies made at both distilleries, a one-off bottling that would be a historic occasion.</p>
<p>"I think we should strike," DJ said in his measured island tones, "and fuck the smarmy bastard. It's well seen
what he's up to. Same thing happened at Corrievreckan when it closed. They took every barrel from the warehouse,
almost all of it twenty years old and they made a special presentation box. There was a huge demand for it from
collectors all over the world, because it was the last whisky ever to come out of there. I heard they were
selling it for a hundred a bottle."</p>
<p>"They must be crazy paying that," Ed said, but that was understandable, because most of the boys at Aitkenbar
came out almost every night with a thin sauce bottle of the finest blends and malts stuffed down the legs of
their overalls and they never paid a penny for it. The Angels' share.</p>
<p>"Well, I say we shouldn't let him away with that. We should get everybody on strike and picket the place."</p>
<p>"What good would that do?" Donny's face was red with the heat and the drink. His bruises were healing well.
"There's too many women on the lines anyway. They never strike."</p>
<p>"It's time we did something," Jack said. "He's screwing you lot and killing the dairy. That's too much power in
one man's hands."</p>
<p>"Did something," Donny demanded truculently. "Like what?"</p>
<p>"It's time we went into business for ourselves."</p>
<p>"And what business would that be?"</p>
<p>"The success business."</p>
<p>She picked him up at two in the little red Volks. He had waited in the corner caf\u0061, going over the stories
in the Levenford Gazette. Blair Bryden, who ran the paper had got the stories right, and he'd made a good, if
subtle attempt in his leader column.</p>
<div class='block'>It is time to call a halt to the old decline and the new rush to destroy the past.</div>
<div class='block'>The only thing we learn from history is that we do <span class='noital'>not</span> learn from
history. The
closure of two vital facets of the community will have a devastating effect.
</div>
<div class='block'>It is also time for men of good will, of good standing, to look upon their responsibilities and seek
to
repay the loyalty and the profits they have received in abundance from this town and its people.
</div>
<div class='block'>As for our civic leaders, it is in their hands to help prevent such a catastrophe in a town already
hit by a
succession of closures. In the interests of the young, they should examine what powers they can bring to bear to
do right by the people who vote them to office. And then they should use those powers for the good of all.
</div>
<div class='block'>In destroying the past, we jeopardise the present, and we endanger the future.</div>
<p>Jack had smiled. It was easy to read between those lines, but it was a triumph of hope over experience to expect
Jamieson Bell or any of his snout-in-the-trough burghers to go against Sproat and his old money. Jack remembered the
old saying. A good politician stays bought, and that lot were right in the cash-bag with the draw-string tight.</p>
<p>It was good of Blair to give it a try, stand up and be counted, rather than taking the free whisky Sproat sent out to
anybody he thought he could hook. It was good, but it was only words. What they needed was some action.</p>
<p>Kate pumped the horn and got his attention. He crossed and got in the passenger side. They talked of a few things on
the way north, with the sun flashing stabs of pure light through the tall sycamores that lined the shore road
towards Arden, and then they were on the high road that curved inland and then came out at Creggan, a small village
at the end of the picturesquely rugged peninsula that jutted down into the sunlit estuary.</p>
<p>She pulled in at Julio's caf\u0061 and they had a fine Italian coffee, watching the waves lap the smooth rocks. She
bought
him a piece of millionaire's shortcake and the irony of that made him laugh. It was rich and sweet. He might not be
getting too much of that in the near future.</p>
<p>"Not good news then?" She had finely tuned antennae. He shrugged. He'd been thinking all the way down the line. </p>
<p>"Some people got upset. They've been there longer than me and they'll be on the dole a long time, them and the
Aitkenbar crowd. It's really a shame."</p>
<p>"So what's your plan?"</p>
<p>"A big Swedish guy says I can come and work on his boat any time."</p>
<p>"<em>That's</em> the big plan?"</p>
<p>"I'll speak to him anyway. It could be something new."</p>
<p>"And what about your degree?"</p>
<p>He shrugged again. There were some things he couldn't say. Kate shook her head. "So really, what will you do?"</p>
<p>"I'm going to develop anti-gravity, so I can pull myself up by the bootlaces. That's the trick. Everybody can do it.
All you need is an idea, create a demand, find a supply, screw the competition, beat the tax-man."</p>
<p>"And you can do all of this on a boat?"</p>
<p>He laughed aloud and the old biddies having their afternoon tea turned round, curious. </p>
<p>"You never know."</p>
<p>She slapped his arm and told him to get serious, but he didn't want to talk about it any more. He steered the
conversation away. </p>
<p>The ice-cream was the best Kate had tasted, so she asserted.</p>
<p>"You are a super smoothie," she said as she licked a circle round it, savouring it right down to the wafer. They had
taken a walk on the south side of Creggan strolling along the path on the high red cliffs that overlooked the sunlit
reach, and he'd already decided to give the stock-racing a miss. He wouldn't dare tell Jed, or Neil who was a
mechanical magician, but today, this was better than watching the boys. He needed the quiet, to think and
reflect.</p>
<p>They sat for a while, watching the gannets wheel and dive, folding their wings back into cruciform shapes to spear
into the water, graceful lances. Out on the firth, a few sleek yachts caught the breeze and billowed their
spinnakers, puffed with pride and money. Over close to the Creggan pier wall, a couple of the usual suspects on
jet-skis buzzed the shore, irritating wasps.</p>
<p>The air was clean and fresh, with that tang of bladderwrack and kelp and everything else that makes the sea. He sat
at the edge, peering down the straight hundred feet to the rocks below, while she warned him to beware, concerned
he'd be too careless.</p>
<p>"That's what I want," he said. She eased closer, nervous of the height. He slipped an arm round her shoulder and she
went along with it, leant a little closer. Down below, half inside the natural harbour formed by the jutting red
sandstone wedges, a big Moody forty-footer lay at anchor, sail furled, streamlined, like a fast fish that could
suddenly flick and be gone in a surge. A couple of people sunbathed on deck.</p>
<p>"You want a boat?"</p>
<p>"If you can afford that boat, you've got the freedom to do what you want. That thing will take you round the world.
You could keep going forever and never have to stop."</p>
<p>"Sounds like you want to escape."</p>
<p>"Don't you?"</p>
<p>She turned to face him and the sun lit emeralds in her eyes.</p>
<p>"Travel maybe, keep on going if you like, but not escape."</p>
<p>"I suppose you're right. Escape isn't the answer."</p>
<p>"What is?"</p>
<p>He tapped his temple. "You have to escape in here. Free yourself up."</p>
<p>She smiled, slipped a hand round his waist, just a gentle touch, but it made him feel okay.</p>
<p>"You're free to do what you want, Jack Lorne. I told you that before. There's nothing you can't do if you put your
mind to it. I'm a good judge of character."</p>
<p>"I'd take that as a compliment, if I had a character to judge." He eased her to her feet, pulled her back from the
edge. "I just have to get out of the way of thinking that other people control my life. Once I do that, it's
anti-gravity. Only one way, and that's up."</p>
<p>Further along, a narrow trail led an easy way down to the sea level. She held his hand all the way, trying not to
slip on the dry earth, and when they reached the bottom, he walked along by the water, skipping the flat stones,
while she hunted for pieces of shells and water-smoothed rocks. She had an artist's eye.</p>
<p>Ahead of them, the tall spar of the big yacht pendulumed slowly in the rising tide, the hull hidden by the big line
of house-sized rocks that pushed out into the firth. He made his way up onto the boulders and followed the line
out.</p>
<p>She had razor shells and a big gannet feather when she joined him out at the edge. A hundred yards out, somebody in a
wet-suit was diving down in the clear green depths, sending up a shoal of bubbles. The drone of the jet-skis got
louder as the riders scooted out from Creggan. </p>
<p>"If you had a boat, where would you go?"</p>
<p>"Out to sea," he said. She punched his shoulder.</p>
<p>"Don't get smart, smartass. Anyway, I can't join you. I've got things to do."</p>
<p>He raised an eyebrow, waiting.</p>
<p>"We're trying to set up an organisation to protect the harbour. I spoke to a few friends and we have a constitution
going. Charter 1315, we'll call it."</p>
<p>"Catchy name."</p>
<p>"You think? That's the year after Bannockburn, when Bruce gave us the Royal Charter, made the town a real Burgh, and
gave the river and everything on it to the people."</p>
<p>"Sure, I remember. I went to school too. Don't let the unemployment fool you."</p>
<p>She punched again, gentler now.</p>
<p>"Sproat wants to dump those old buildings in the harbour inlet and reclaim land, which is sheer vandalism. It's going
to destroy our heritage."</p>
<p>"It will get him another three prime acres and make him a couple of million. That way he gets to build his new spirit
distillery and wipe out Donny and Ed, kill off Andy Kerr's business and screw up a lot of good honest working
people."</p>
<p>"But if we can show that the harbour really belongs to the people, we could try to stop him filling it in. And then
the mall developers won't see it as such a good proposition."</p>
<p>"Sounds like a plan," Jack conceded. "But you won't be able to take Sproat on, not without money. A whole lot of
money. It's the only language these days."</p>
<p>"And I thought you were a scrapper, Jack Lorne. We plan some fund raisers to...."</p>
<p>Jack was suddenly on his feet. "What the hell are they doing?"</p>
<p>She was stopped in mid sentence. He stepped forward on the big rock, looking out at the water. The two jet-skis left
froth trails behind them, each weaving past the other, both skittering fast on the surface. The engines whined like
hornets.</p>
<p>"Jesus!" Jack was waving his arms now. He bawled out a warning.</p>
<p>Out there where the shore sloped away into the depths, the line of bubbles showed where the diver was getting close
to the surface.</p>
<p>"Fucking idiots," Jack said, almost snarling. Kate had never heard him swear. She was up beside him, shading her eyes
against the glare.</p>
<p>Whatever prescience he had, Jack saw it before she did, saw it before it happened. The nearest speeder came in close
to the jutting point, hopping across the troughs. The kid on the back was howling arrogance. His pal tried to catch
up.</p>
<p>Jack was moving, running across the uneven rock.</p>
<p>The jet ski hit the surfacing diver with such a thump they heard it twice when the echo threw it right back from the
high cliff.</p>
<p>"Oh my god," she blurted.</p>
<p>He was off, sprinting for the edge. She followed, keeping to the flat sandstone, watching him move, shirt pulling out
from his jeans, feet thudding on stone. The jet skis veered away, seemingly unaware of what had happened, though the
boy couldn't have failed to notice. He didn't even look back. A patch of pink tinged the water out from the
point.</p>
<p>Jack dived, no change of pace, no hesitation, a long, low arc, out and down and he was under. She saw the splash and
hurried to the edge. The diver was just a dark shape in the water, not moving. Jack reached him in twenty seconds,
got an elbow round the swimmer's chin, hauled for the low shore on the lee of the rocks. It took him ten minutes of
hard struggle to drag both of them to the shingle and he stopped just on the waterline, shoulders heaving, lungs
hauling.</p>
<p>She ran for them and got down beside the diver, flipping off the mask.</p>
<p>A bright stain of blood pulsed from a gash high on the crown, blurted through the wet fair hair. He was only a boy,
sixteen maybe, not much younger than Michael, deadly pale. His eyes were rolled up, showing whites. The breather
mask hung uselessly where it had been torn free.</p>
<p>Jack got himself to his elbows and knees and flipped the boy on to his side while she loosened the suit. He pushed
him onto his face and started to press his weight under the shoulderblades. Water trickled from pallid lips.</p>
<p>"Come on, son. Come <em>on.</em> Give it a go."</p>
<p>He pushed again, harder this time, got no response and flipped the sagging youngster back over, grabbed his nose and
breathed into him.</p>
<p>He felt the reaction and pulled back. The boy spasmed, every muscle trembling like a taut wire, coughed hard and a
gout of seawater just missed Jack's face.</p>
<p>Over by the rocks people were shouting. Jack rolled the youngster back on his face and pushed on the ribs, forcing
him to lie still, helping ease the rest of the water out. The eyes were still wide and blank, but at least the kid
was breathing again.</p>
<p>A man with iron grey hair came pounding up.</p>
<p>"Jason. Dear God, <em>Jason</em>." They could hear the dread in his voice. A woman was not far behind, screaming her
son's name.</p>
<p>The boy was suddenly violently sick, just as his parents scrambled down on the shingle to get their hands to him.</p>
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<h1>5</h1>
<p>Alice Lorne asked the same question Kate had. Jack shrugged and told his mother he had some plans, but he was in no
big rush.</p>
<p>The new building society passbook lay open on the table between them, both their names on the inside cover, and they
had the kitchen to themselves.</p>
<p>They faced each other, drinking sweet, strong coffee. Sheena was upstairs playing bimbo music on her CD and Michael
was stacking shelves at Safeway. </p>
<p>"Are you sure about this?" Alice held up the booklet and the bright plastic card. </p>
<p>"Sure I'm sure. I have to get a few things sorted out, and Mike, well, one of the Lornes has to end up a job that
needs a suit."</p>
<p>"It's a lot of money."</p>
<p>"Yeah, so it is and that's what it takes. That's why I put it in joint names. You can use the card to take it out,
and keep that pin secret, okay? It's better you have it than me, because I'll just piss it away when I'm skint."</p>
<p>She gave him a quick flick of reproach for his language, cuffing his ear with the back of her hand, but she was
laughing as well. She was dark, same as he was, with thick, heavy hair cut in a short bob that took years off her
and some tiredness under her eyes that could have been age creeping up or maybe just lying awake at night worrying
for one or all of them.</p>
<p>"Anyway, with what he gets at Safeway this summer, that should get him through and then he's got a chance. He can buy
me a Bentley when he's stinking rich."</p>
<p>"And what will you do?"</p>
<p>"This and that." She'd be the last to know, he'd make sure of that.</p>
<p>"But you'll finish your course?" Everybody seemed to ask that these days. Too many people were pinning their hopes on
a damned business course.</p>
<p>"Sure I will," he said, not sure that he meant it. This was not a time for absolute truths, no time for serious
promises. It all depended on how things went over the next couple of weeks, and how many of the boys would come in
on the deal that was still growing in his head.</p>
<p>She put a hand on his arm and he felt the warmth of her, the way he always had and she gave him a mother's look that
didn't require too many words for what she wanted to say. He shot her a wink and clamped his hand down on her
fingers, gave them a squeeze and that was all that needed to be said. </p>
<p>"I'll be here and there," he said, trading her a reassuring smile. "I have some people to see, fix a few things
up."</p>
<p>Some of that was true, but he'd been fixing things up already. He'd scraped down to the bone to get things for Mike
sorted out and he had to meet the rest of the guys later, see what they could pull together. There was some cash
left, enough, hopefully, for what he needed. He'd beg, borrow or bully for the rest, and he'd get the boys to chip
in to the kitty, once he brought them in. But the truth was, he'd got himself down to the essential and that was the
best. He was stripped for action and that was the way to be for what he had planned on the long walks along the
Creggan Cliffs and up on the crags that overlooked the town. He'd have no need of extras in the next couple of
weeks, and maybe none in the time after that. </p>
<p><em>Seatbelt on when the devil's at the wheel.,</em> his grandfather had been fond of saying. </p>
<p>But the Stealer's Wheel song kept coming back to him: <em>You started off with nothing and you're proud that you're a
self-made man.</em></p>
<p>One out of two so far. He was starting out with nothing, very nearly. </p>
<p>Glasgow had been sweltering hot and every now and then the thermals spiralling over the city would raise little
whirlwinds of papers and road dust. Mothers heaved foot-dragging children, girls in tight tee-shirts wilted and
couples drank cold beers at pavement tables and soaked it all up. Buskers baked, bakers burned.</p>
<p>He had been up to the city centre, dodging between the commercial offices and lawyers' branches, then along the west
end, checking out some of the old tenement properties before doubling back down to Argyle Street to the bank and
then up to the bus station at Buchanan Street where it cost him fifteen notes for a season ticket to somewhere he'd
never been before. He puffed out his cheeks and bit on his bottom lip as he waited for the camera in the booth to
click and flash and then another three minutes for the column of pictures to slide out, smelling of fix. The girl at
the counter took the photo without looking at it and pressed it down between two sheets of plastic. </p>
<p>"Just show this when you want to renew," she said. </p>
<p>He looked at the photograph. It was just like any passport picture. It looked nothing like him. </p>
<p>Down on St Vincent Street the bank tellers were suffering as the air conditioning tried to cope and failed valiantly.
The big ornate doors were wide open, wasting the cool air, and heavy women fanned themselves while perspiration laid
flood-trails in their make-up. </p>
<p>"Any identification?"</p>
<p>"What do you need?"</p>
<p>"A driver's license? A passport?"</p>
<p>"I don't drive, and I've never been abroad," Jack said. He fumbled artlessly in his pockets. "But I have to get one
soon. Here. All I've got is a bus pass, but it's me all right. See?"</p>
<p>She checked the picture and the address. "Looks nothing like you."</p>
<p>"I don't take a good picture," he conceded. "Camera doesn't like me."</p>
<p>She allowed him a smile. "Normally we need a passport, but this will be fine, I suppose. Do you want to make a
deposit today?"</p>
<p>"Sure," he said. "I shouldn't keep this in a coffee jar, should I?"</p>
<p>The girl flashed him a bigger smile. "Heavens no, that's <em>far </em>too much." All the notes were crumpled into a
wasp-nest wad and she separated them before flattening them out under her hand. The crumple made him look
disarmingly na\u00EFve, and that's just how he wanted it. She started to count, still smiling and throwing him the
occasional look that told him she didn't much care what his picture looked like.</p>
<p> "Look, I could get one of our advisers to have a chat about investments. This money hasn't been earning if it's been
stuck away in a tin."</p>
<p>"Maybe another time," he said agreeably. "I just have to get used to the idea of somebody else holding on to it."</p>
<p>"Oh, we'll look after it for you. The papers will arrive with your card in five working days. And be very careful
with the pin, won't you."</p>
<p>"In case I jag myself?" He made it sound truly gauche and got the expected chuckle. </p>
<p>"No, it's a security number. It's <em>your </em>secret."</p>
<p>This time he did the smiling. He had a few of those already.</p>
<p>The post office had been even hotter, the still dry air filled with paper dust and burlap haze. Sweating men hoisted
big sacks non-stop, dripping down shoulderblade and armpit. The man at the hatch never looked up as he gave his
details and signed a name he'd practiced from a receipt he and Jed had got in a car-dealer yard. The form redirected
the mail he expected to arrive soon. All of this took three hours and he made his way slowly up towards Sauchiehall
Street and the MacLellan Galleries, taking his time as he passed the tailors shops on Renfield Street, thinking
about the right kinds of clothes to wear, thinking about all the other things he had to do, and wanting to be down
in Kelvingrove Park in the sun with the fast river at his feet watching the kingfisher dive for minnows and Kate
Delaney soaking the sun.</p>
<p>She had dropped him off down at the graving dock on the other side of the Clyde before the sun rose high and began to
heat the city. It was Thursday, six days after they'd all been given the long awaited bad news and it seemed to need
some time to sink right in. The Levenford Gazette carried a picture of angry men self-consciously glowering at the
camera outside the distillery gates, and that was just a repetition of front page pictures from decades past. Even
the headlines were familiar by now. It was no shock and no horror. The drama might start building up in a couple of
months when everybody was ducking and diving for the same handful of low-pay jobs. </p>
<p>Kate had looked up dubiously at the ship in dry-dock, more of a boat than a ship, short, stubby and built neither for
comfort nor speed. Nothing at all like the big Moody sailboat he'd wanted to cruise away in.</p>
<p>"<em>This</em> is your great idea?"</p>
<p>"Got to start somewhere," he said. Men were working on the propeller down there in the depths and a hot electric blue
sizzle of an arc-welder's torch punctuated the grey below the red lead. The air smelt of oil and burning metal and
stale brackwater. </p>
<p>"You'll be back in a week," she retorted with some certainty. "You can't even think about giving up the degree for
this. I thought you wanted a real boat, not a rust-bucket."</p>
<p>She was on her way to the gallery where three of her oils were among a hundred new works by young local artists. He'd
taken advantage of the fact she was heading for the city, and he told her he'd join her there after he'd spoken to
Uncle Lars. </p>
<p>"A week's a long time. I might be back a lot sooner than that," he allowed. "And don't you worry about me."</p>
<p>She was about to respond when a figure blocked the light on the passenger side and the door yanked open. Lars Hanssen
leaned in. </p>
<p>"<em>Yack!</em>" he bawled, beaming through the hair and the beard. "You feeling brave, hey?" He sounded exactly like
a cartoon Swede should. </p>
<p>Kate's fingers were engulfed by the massive hand and her arm wobbled up to the shoulder joint. He was bull-broad and
had a battered face that could have stood in for big Jimmy Cosmo in a gritty Glasgow movie. Jack was not small but
he looked slight and boyish beside this bear of a man. </p>
<p>"Come and I show you my <em>Valkyrie.</em>"</p>
<p>"I suppose that's another blonde?" He knew she was just being arch. The name stood out clear against the black of the
hull, and she knew her mythology too. </p>
<p>"You want to come on board too?" </p>
<p>Kate shook her head. "Another time perhaps."</p>
<p>The boat was well used, plate-dented and paint-chipped and strung with cables and hoists and between the bow and the
wheelhouse was an empty well that yawned to the sky, all hatches flat back. She couldn't see a space where anybody
could possibly sleep, unless it was down in a hold. </p>
<p>Jack looked down and she touched a finger to her temple, letting him know exactly what she thought of all this, then
smiled sweetly before swinging the car back to the gates. </p>
<p>"You come up now and see what we can do for you," Lars said.</p>
<p>A few hours later, she saw him come walking down the length of the wide upstairs gallery. Here it was cool, lit from
up on high so that fine dust motes cascaded in slow gold shimmer slides down the beams.</p>
<p>"My fan club of one," she said. </p>
<p>"Wait until they see your stuff."</p>
<p>"They have done. Got a couple of compliments, but that's all so far. I don't need a sale, just a show of my own."</p>
<p>Jack had scanned some of the rival frames on the way to the far end where the light was from the north and gave the
best. He stopped dead when they reached the corner where her three oils huddled close together and now it was her
turn to laugh. </p>
<p>"Close that mouth or the wind might change." She hooked an arm round his and leaned in, patting his shoulder. </p>
<p>"What do you think?"</p>
<p>She'd caught him three quarters on, deep in shadow, looking down from the window, a faint wash between the painter
and subject, like dust or clouds, just easing the features out of focus, making the whole scene grainy and not quite
distinct. The light was stolen from Rembrandt's <em>Man in Armour</em>, and the haze from Keir's <em>Ballet
Practise</em>. </p>
<p>"You never told me," he finally said. She'd only sketched him one time, fast crayon on black card, strong lines, soft
fill. </p>
<p>"You never asked. And anyway you'd have said no, wouldn't you?"</p>
<p>He nodded, leaning in. A small oblong card read: <em>Not Quite</em>, oils on canvas. Kate Delaney. </p>
<p>"Not quite? What's that supposed to mean?"</p>
<p>"Too many things to explain right now. It's you, isn't it? I like it. Close and far away, Jack Lorne. You want to buy
it?"</p>
<p>"When I've got some money, sure. Then nobody gets to see it."</p>
<p>Neil Cleary's brother got him a mobile phone and a modem that took Jack and his brother two hours to slot into the
old computer and rig up to the internet. Paddy Cleary could get you anything, anytime, given enough notice. Cloned
phones, digital receivers, chipped DVD's, whatever technology you wanted, he knew somebody that could figure out how
to make it work and by-pass the usual encumbrances, like rental or call charges. The black economy never had it so
good. Jack put in an order for some more equipment they'd need in the next little while, confident that Paddy could
deliver.</p>
<p>Jack knew his way around the web and knew what he wanted. Once Mike had gone out, he checked the little notebook he'd
been filling in for the past week and called up a couple of sites for firms that could set up a new company on
demand. He gave the details asked for, name, address, credit card, and after that he had seven days to wait. Time
was moving fast in some directions and slow in others, as if he was caught in a deep event horizon round some
gravity well that was sucking him in while he looked out. He had to work to keep a tight rein on it. The plan had
now almost crystallised in his mind.</p>
<p>He went on a visit to Aitkenbar Distillery and Ed Kane recognised him right away.</p>
<p>Ed did a comical double-take and Jack put a finger to his lips and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It
had surprised him, but Ed was sharp enough and Jack knew he'd have to haul him right in on the game. He stood with
his arms folded and said nothing and Jack hoped it would stay that way until he could get a hold of him and he
wondered why he hadn't thought of him in the first place. He could have saved himself all this bother and used the
time to better purpose. </p>
<p>The guide had that kind of determinedly cheerful voice that made you wonder how she could keep it up day after day.
The crowd was from Newcastle, up on a trip to the Trossachs on a bus, doing a tour of the distilleries and the
tartan tat outlets that sell hairy jackets and frilly shirts and effete velvet waistcoats with the kind of buttons
clan chiefs would never be seen dead in outside a Walter Scott fantasy. Most of the tourists were old and grey and
slow-moving as cattle but there were a handful of young couples who looked as if they'd got on the wrong coach and
Jack was glad of them, otherwise he'd have stuck out like a sore thumb. He'd had to go through to Edinburgh and pick
up the bus and he'd slicked his hair back with gel and borrowed Mike's glasses and still Ed Kane saw through it. He
realised he'd have to do a whole lot better next time. </p>
<p><em>Good enough never is!</em> Rule number three in the ten top tips for success. It went through his head like a
mantra and he knew he should have thought this out a little better. One wrong word and he'd be back to square one,
or out in the North Sea with the same rank as the ship's cat, down in the bowels covered in oil and shit and
bilgewater. </p>
<p><em>If better is possible, good is never enough</em>. That was the rule. Better <em>was</em>
possible. He was running out of time and the mail still hadn't arrived. </p>
<p> The guide was talking away, with that cheery smile surgically on planted. </p>
<p> "Whisky. The name is an English corruption of the ancient name for spirits - water of life - which in Scottish and
Irish Gaelic is <em>uisge beatha</em> and sounded to the English ear like whisky."</p>
<p> It was straight out of the hundred things you ever wanted to know about Scotch handbook, but the Geordies never knew
that. They hoovered it all up in that slow, bovine-hungry senior-citizen way that needs to be fed new but pointless
facts by tour guides, to ponderously chew, swallow and digest. </p>
<p> "Scotch means simply that the whisky was distilled and matured in Scotland. Whiskies are made in other countries,
notably Ireland and Japan but whiskies they may be, and good ones even, but Scotch they are not. Scotch comes from
Scotland."</p>
<p> Indeed it does, he thought. They were coming through the first long, high building and the smell of malt was
overwhelming, like sweat-soaked towels from the team gym drying out over hot pipes. The men turning the barley with
long flat paddles kept on, ignoring the herd as they slowly passed to the walkway above the malt kiln where the
sprouting shoots were killed off in the slow heat and where the air clogged like treacle in the throat. </p>
<p>"Malt is essentially barley which has been allowed to germinate by soaking in water then has been dried by the
application of heat." He knew she was reading this off a page in her head and it came out almost sing-song, like a
kid repeating the nine times table. Nobody spoke in sentences like that.</p>
<p>"The malting process converts the stored starch into soluble compounds such as the sugar maltose and by so doing
makes fermentation possible. Drying the malt over a furnace stops the germinating process and lacing the furnace
with peat imparts a peaty aroma to the malt."</p>
<p> The English folk were fascinated. He wanted to hurry them along, with sharp sticks if necessary. The guide had it
timed and took plenty of it, earning her money. He forced himself to be patient. This part of the plant was old,
maybe two hundred years and more and it had no interest for him. He'd lived with the malt smell hovering over the
town like a friend's flatulence, familiar, but still very unappealing. This process here had no interest either.
Production would stop in a couple of weeks time and whatever came from this malting would end up in somebody else's
warehouse, waiting to be mixed with a good smooth gain and blended for the supermarket trade. </p>
<p> "This indicates that the raw material is barley malt, by itself fermented with yeast and distilled in a pot still,"
she was off and running again. The oldsters listened, sheep eyes wide and docile. "This produces a far superior
whisky to the common grain whisky found in blends. Note however that just occasionally quality single grain whiskies
<em>can </em>be found."</p>
<p> The distillation hall was different. Two massive copper stills squatted, belly broad and tapering up to the high
ceiling. At the far end of the big hall, a modern stainless-steel contraption made the old malt stills look even
more primitive. The flat stench had faded out when they had come through the doors and up the stairs, like
submariners escaping through an air lock, and here the sharply sweet smell of alcohol was thick enough to tickle the
back of the throat. </p>
<p> "Newly distilled malt whisky is generally a hundred and twenty degrees proof, but we double distil here and it can
be up to a hundred and forty. That's about eighty percent by volume of alcohol which is <em>much</em> too strong to
drink."</p>
<p> Jack remembered Donny Watson down at the golf course. That just about matched with what he said. He suddenly got the
premonition that she would tell the gunpowder story and sure enough, as soon as the thought sparked in his head, she
was fascinating the southerners with the tale. </p>
<p> The stillmen in white coats looked like scientists at retorts and apart from a faint hiss of steam and a steady
bubbling from deep inside the casks, there was little action. </p>
<p>"The size of the batch depends on many different factors, but each distillation can be up to ten thousand
gallons."</p>
<p>Somebody whistled, impressed. </p>
<p>"But then, of course, it's not real Scotch until it has lain in barrels for three years, and that's the minimum. All
over Scotland, there are millions of gallons of whisky, just getting older, and better, just like fine wine and good
women.</p>
<p>Another round of obedient laughter.</p>
<p>"And then, of course, there is the second tax on whisky. While in storage, whisky evaporates at the rate of two
percent every year, so for a fine old malt of twenty five years, that's a lot of evaporation. But we don't grudge
it, of course, because that's what we call the Angels Share, and what the angels take only improves the whisky."</p>
<p> Jack went from foot to foot, impatient to be at the far side, working out his bearings inside the distillery by
comparison to the outside walls. He recognised several of the faces here and kept his head down, but nobody looked
their way. They were used to having the herds shunted through here twice a day and they pretended not to notice, or
perhaps simply didn't see them.</p>
<p>Finally they were through, past the filling bay where a constant stream off clear liquid was siphoned into a rack of
barrels that came rolling along a trough, one by one, watched by two uniform customs men who took careful notes of
the amount each barrel held before making sure the beech bung was hammered home and the barrel stamped and
stencilled. </p>
<p>The bottling hall was as familiar as the dairy, miniature roller coasters where racks of bottles shunted along onto
the shiny machines that spat golden liquid and screwed on corks, all automated apart from the labelling down at the
far end. He kept to the back of the crowd, because Linda had some friends who worked the lines here and would
recognise him too, but the guide hustled them through, glancing at her watch, to the decant room where the barrels
were emptied prior to the final blend and bottle operation. </p>
<p>It was all steel and brass here, twisting pipes and valves in a wide room dominated by a massive central tank that
sank below the steel-grate floor. Down below he could see the pipes lead off in parallel lines, twisting round stout
pillars. This was what he had come to see. </p>
<p>"The tank holds up to fifty thousand gallons, but most blends are under thirty, especially at this time of the year."
The guide was tiring now, and the travelogue seemed to be more hackneyed. She explained how the barrels of malt and
grain were decanted into the tank and stirred for up to a day before being filtered and pumped out and up to the
lines. </p>
<p>"And that is the end of a journey that could have taken a quarter of a century," she declared. "And the final journey
will be in four weeks time, when the very last special bottling of Glen Murroch will be made, a sincere tribute to
all the men down the years who have helped create something truly Scottish and truly special."</p>
<p>She gave them all a big grin that looked forced. Jack realised that she too would be out of work, and felt a pang of
regret at his disparaging thoughts. </p>
<p>"And if you want to discover if it was all worth while, follow me to the distillery shop, where you can sample some
of the whisky that the angels left behind."</p>
<p>She did a little bow and got a patter of applause and they all followed through for their sip of whisky and wedge of
shortbread and Jack had to wait for them to make up their minds over which special blend they would scrape up the
money for before he got out into the sunlight. He picked a ten year old in an elaborate presentation box and tucked
it under his arm. </p>
<p>He stopped the coach a mile outside the town and got off, leaving the driver to wonder where he'd gone. </p>
<p>His uncle was delighted with the bottle. </p>
<hr />
<p>"What are you up to?" Ed Kane stopped him down at Gooseholm on the way to the dog-track, taking Jack by surprise
because he'd spent the past hour looking for Ed. </p>
<p>"I thought it was Clark Kent when I saw you. Made you look a real four-eyed geek. So what's the score?"</p>
<p>"Anybody else see me?"</p>
<p>Ed shrugged. He was slim and wiry with knotty muscles on his arms and despite his featherweight frame, he could
handle himself well and he never missed a trick. "How should I know?"</p>
<p>"Did you tell anybody?"</p>
<p>"Tell them what? Jake Lorne wears horn rims and brylcreem? What's the deal?"</p>
<p>"I mean did you. . . "</p>
<p>"No, man, I never told anybody. Why should I? I thought you'd get round to it. Sneaking about with the grannies, I
had to hear it straight. Are you shagging old birds?"</p>
<p>"I'm meeting some of the guys tonight."</p>
<p>"Mac's?"</p>
<p>He nodded. "Me, Donny Watson, a couple of the lads."</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"I'll tell you when we're there."</p>
<p>"Okay." He seemed to accept it. Jack liked that.</p>
<p>Neil and Jed were coming down Gooseholm Street, hands in their pockets, heads down against the lowering red glare of
the sinking sun. Woodsmoke and grass smoke billowed down from the Cardross Hills where a bunch of wild youngsters
had torched the gorse and heather in the seasonal burn-off, rolling a grey pall over the river flood-plain. Off in
the distance, a fire engine siren whined its song.</p>
<p>They all sauntered along the path, following the line of trees and crossed over the bridge, pausing only to stop and
lean on the railings to watch the water flow, much as they had done as kids when they came down to guddle trout from
under the rocks or spear flounders under the deep banks. The field on the south side of the river was long and
narrow and bounded by thick hawthorn hedges that shielded it from the road. The smell of fresh cowshit mixed in with
the smoke and wild rose and broom flourish, oddly heady and somehow wild and primitive. </p>
<p>Tam and Donny were there already, mixing with the crowd in the corner. The dog-men had set up their traps and right
off at the far end a little diesel motor chuntered slowly, feeding power to a small wheel. Two men came down the
field, dead in centre, hauling the hare, just an old skin stuffed with straw, sorry and ragged. The greyhounds
whined and snarled in the traps, pin-faced and anorexic, wanting to run. </p>
<p>Dan McGraw, who had a predictable nickname, was taking bets on the dogs, stuffing notes into a wad that could have
served as a doorstop. A couple of runners passed from group to group doing the same thing. Gus Ferguson and his
scrapyard crew were in a huddle around a big black dog that he kept in the yard cages and doubled up as a
guard. </p>
<p>A few of the bottle men who'd been laid off along with Jack and Neil nodded condolences and came up to part with the
cash they could little afford, but that's the way it is in these parts. Jack would have forked out five on a hungry
black dog with unblinking eyes in trap two, because he knew Mick Haggerty the owner and he'd seen the Dozy Ray take
a hare right up on the Longcrag straight, moving like a cheetah and snapping it clean before it had a chance to
jink. But not today.</p>
<p>Tam was keeping an eye on the odds. Ferguson's beast was favourite so far, but dog races, particularly illegal ones
like this are too easy to fix. Some egg white smeared on the balls could slow a runner down, human of canine. A long
walk on rough ground, or a heavy meal of oats and sausage would do the same thing. You had to really look at the
animals and see how they squared.</p>
<p>They had wandered around, all placing small bets with each of the bookies on a runt of a bitch that had no chance
against the bigger dogs. Good long odds.</p>
<p>Jack scanned the field and eventually caught sight of Neil Cleary hunkered down beside his old van at the far corner,
hidden behind a hawthorn bush. The bitch was draped in a hand-made coat that came down to her ankles. Jack wet a
finger and tested the wind direction. He grinned to himself. Tam winked.</p>
<p>The greyhounds were buzzed, waiting for the start. Down the far end, somebody raised a white handkerchief. Out of the
corner of his eye, Jack saw Neil whip the coat off Fanny.</p>
<p>Five seconds later, the breeze carried her overladen scent to the traps and the dogs started howling and twisting
around in their cages.</p>
<p>The marker dropped his hand and the little petrol motor dragged the old hare, bumping and scraping across the uneven
ground and for a moment you'd have sworn it was the real animal. The gates swung up and the dogs exploded out.</p>
<p>The hare streaked away in a straight line.</p>
<p>All the dogs veered to the right, howling, and heading for the hawthorn bush. Jack saw Neil bundle Fanny into the
back of the van and then take off down the lane, with five snarling dogs in raunchy pursuit.</p>
<p>The little runt bitch, totally unaffected by whatever was carried in the wind, went straight after the hare, running
at forty to one, and crossed the line in a grey streak.</p>
<p>"What the <em>fuck</em>?" Gus Ferguson's bellow came from down the field. His big black brute was leading the field,
as he probably would have but for Fanny's compelling scent. They hit the scrubby hawthorn in a mass of yelps and
snarls. Tam chuckled beside Jack. Neil had tied an old rag to one of the branches, but before that he's assiduously
rubbed the rag on Fanny's, well, fanny. The sex crazed dogs just followed their noses. </p>
<p>By the time the handlers reached the hedge, two of them were at each other's throats, trying to win the rag of their
desires. And Gus Ferguson's big black champion was busily trying to hump one of the runners who seemed to take great
exception to having a dog's sharp business end rammed up its sphincter.</p>
<p>Ferguson's minders waded in and tried to separate them, grabbing each dog by the scroff of the neck. The one under
Ferguson's dog came willingly, but the big beast arched its neck and sunk its canines into Seggs Cullen's palm.</p>
<p>He bawled in pain. Instinctively his meaty free hand came down in a swift arc and caught the dig on the side of the
jaw. It gave a muted help and went down like a sack, teeth still clamped on Cullen's hand. He clubbed it again and
was about to get its head under his boot to drag his hand free when Gus Ferguson grabbed his arm, swung a roundhouse
that caught Cullen on <em>his</em> jaw and sent him sprawling on the grass, still attached to the dazed greyhound.
</p>
<p>"You don't <em>ever</em> hit my fucking dog, you fucking mutt!"</p>
<hr />
<p>The steward's inquiry was impromptu and prompt.</p>
<p>Jack and the boys had spread small bets around on the little bitch. At forty to one it would be playing money for a
while, and the bookies were happy to pay out, chiefly because their losses were minimal.</p>
<p>"It was a fuckin' fix." That was the general impression, but nobody could work out why the pack had veered in the
opposite direction to the prey.</p>
<p>"No race!" somebody demanded. "I demand a re-start."</p>
<p>Dangerous Dan McGraw held a hand up, the other protecting the big wad in his pocket. Most of the bets had been with
the two favourites and he wasn't prepared to part easily with the cash.</p>
<p>"It would be void," he agreed, "If they had all gone off the track. But they didn't, not all of them, did they?"</p>
<p>He pointed to the little brown bitch. "And we have a clear winner."</p>
<p>Gus Ferguson glowered at him, but there was nothing he could do, at least not in public. The other bookies closed
ranks, keeping their fists tight on their money. Over in the corner, Seggs Cullen was wrapping his hand in a dirty
handkerchief and looked as if he was ready to fight anybody who looked at him the wrong way. He turned and saw Jack
and the others. Jack saw he still had bruises around his mouth and cheeks where the six iron had hit the sweet
spot.</p>
<hr />
<p>As an ambush it lacked the all-important ingredient of surprise. Cullen and Wiggy Foley stopped them on the towpath,
as they walked alongside the river but Jack was ready for it and he knew just where they'd be, behind the old wall
of the dyeworks, just round the corner where the path narrowed, out of sight in both directions. </p>
<p>Jack had all his antennae out and working, aware of how it was likely to turn out and he had watched the pair of them
saunter off, taking sneak backwards glances, unconsciously telegraphing every intention.</p>
<p>He was walking with Donny, just the pair of them, when Cullen and Foley came out from the gap. Cullen had picked up a
heavy branch and held it waist high in both hands. </p>
<p>"Hey you."</p>
<p>They turned, as if surprised. Jack could sense Donny's tension. </p>
<p>"Payback time for you bastards."</p>
<p>Jack stepped in front of Donny. "Payback for what?"</p>
<p>"You know what the fuck <em>what</em>."</p>
<p>"I don't think so," Jack said. Donny held his ground, but Jack could hear his breathing come in short intakes. He'd
taken a real beating last time and while he'd always been quick in the mouth, he was never fast with his fists. He
was no scrapper. </p>
<p>Cullen took a step forward, with Foley at his shoulder. Foley was a bull of a man, with a nose that had come off
second best a couple of times, and a dark red toupee that was just a shade too red for the thick natural hairs that
sprouted behind his ears. He was muscle, pure and simple, one of Ferguson's stick-men.</p>
<p>"Can we help you gentlemen?"</p>
<p>Cullen and Foley whipped round.</p>
<p>Tam Bowie stood behind the pair of them, flanked by Neil and Jed. They had come through the hawthorn and climbed over
the old wall to come in the back way. A simple ambush on the ambush.</p>
<p>Cullen spun back, towards Jack, completely taken by surprise. Tam had a four foot piece of scaffolding tube in his
hands.</p>
<p>Behind him Ed Kane sauntered into view. Ed hadn't even been involved before, but he walked right up to stand beside
Tam, with a pugnacious look to him. He held an old length of two by two. Neil hefted a half brick. </p>
<p>Jack stuck his hands in his pockets. "Come on guys. Time to call it a day, eh?"</p>
<p>"No fuckin' chance, Lorne." Cullen's eyes screwed up to slits. One of the scabs on his lips had cracked and dribbled
a little red. "You're a fuckin' dead man."</p>
<p>Jack shrugged, wondering what the hell he was going to do about these two. He needed no distractions now. </p>
<p>"Well, what do you think then? You want to pitch it here?"</p>
<p>"Six against two?"</p>
<p>"It was two against one last time," Donny piped up. "With a baseball bat, you gutless skags."</p>
<p>Kate had been right. Donny just couldn't button it. Tam tapped the scaffolding iron on a rock and the other two
backed in against the wall. Jack pulled back, giving them space. If they got down to it here, there could be broken
arms and heads and they didn't have the time to wait for bones to knit. Time was sucking him down.. </p>
<p>Some deep and feral part of him still wanted Cullen and McFall to make a move and for him and Tam to take a swipe,
but he forced himself back another step, giving them a way out. Old Sandy had always told him: <em>Never back a man
into a corner, because there's only one way out, and that's through </em>you<em>.</em></p>
<p>Cullen dropped the branch and hauled Foley by the arm. </p>
<p>"Next time, Lorne. Just you and me."</p>
<p>"And whose fuckin army?" Donny bawled. Jack slapped him backwards with an impatient hand against his chest. That's
what had got them into trouble in the first place. </p>
<hr />
<p>The big grey limousine cruised slowly along Crosswell Street and turned down into the narrow avenue, windows darkly
opaque, engine almost silent. It finally stopped at the house and two dark shapes behind the glass paused, checking
the number on the door.</p>
<p>"Sandy. Are you expecting somebody?"</p>
<p>Sandy looked up from the board. He had his old motorbike carburettor in pieces on the table. The chess-board was on a
space between them and a couple of beers stood in amongst the oily tools. </p>
<p>"You're up to something, Jackie-boy," he'd said. "I can tell."</p>
<p>"What makes you think that?" Jack had changed his mind about the beer. Despite the foul smell in the making, it had
mellowed to the taste. Sandy had another forty gallons on the go, but they were out in the little greenhouse next to
the pigeon hut, covered in big black bin-liners to soak up the heat. It made it ferment quicker and kept the smell
out of the house.</p>
<p>"You always had that look about you when you were up to some mischief. I'd recognise it across the street, <em>Muchacho</em>.
You can't change your spots."</p>
<p>"You can talk. You were the biggest chancer in Levenford, from what I heard."</p>
<p>Sandy laughed. "That's what the army does for you. And the merchant marine. It taught me to swear in three languages,
how to change money and how not to get caught. Anyway, you want to tell me what's the moves?"</p>
<p>"Nothing fixed yet."</p>
<p>"I heard you had another showdown with Ferguson's muscle."</p>
<p>"What are you? A spymaster?"</p>
<p>"I told you, knowledge is power. I heard it from one of the boat club boys. So what's the score with these
gorillas?"</p>
<p>"They want a return bout for Donny."</p>
<p>"You better stay here for a couple of days, out of the way. You can't appeal to Ferguson's better nature, because he
never had one to start with. And he's ambidextrous; that polecat can steal from your right pocket as easy as your
left."</p>
<p>Jack agreed with that. It wouldn't be too easy in a town the size of Levenford, but he'd really have to try to stay
out of Ferguson's way for the next couple of weeks.</p>
<p>Sandy poured himself a short one from the presentation bottle and sipped appreciatively. He reached behind him and
hefted a big padded envelope, drew out a thick sheaf of papers.</p>
<p>"I might have something here," he said. "Me and Willie and the boat boys were checking out old navigation tidal
charts for the river and we came across some good stuff from the Charter."</p>
<p>"The Bruce Charter?"</p>
<p>"That and some later papers. It's all down in the archives that aren't open to the public, but Willie's nephew works
down there and we can get what we want. I think you could have some fun with that skunk Sproat."</p>
<p>Sandy wiped his hand on a cloth, opened the wad of papers and photocopies of old documents and drew them out onto the
table.</p>
<p>"Amazing what you can find out when you've got time on your hands." He stopped at a page and turned it round so Jack
could read it.</p>
<p>"It turns out that the Charter was never repealed in all these years, and we've got old maps, going back five hundred
years that shows the harbour inlet was there long before Sproat's family were heard of. It was the mouth of a
stream, so it was a natural inlet. That means it's part of the river, and all of the river was put in trust for the
people of the town. That means he can't just fill it in any time he likes."</p>
<p>Sandy sounded pleased with himself.</p>
<p>" He needs the two bits of land together for it to be worth the real big bucks. <em>Contiguous. </em> I looked that
up. Tell you another thing, if he knocks down the distillery, it's going to cost him nearly forty notes a ton in
landfill tax to dump it anywhere else, so I reckon his whole deal depends on getting the go ahead to dump in the
harbour and reclaim the land."</p>
<p>"There might have been some transfer deal way back in the past," Jack played devil's advocate.</p>
<p>"Might have been, but if there was, we can't find it. All we were looking for was something that gave us mooring
rights, and this is what we turned up. Even if there was a transfer, we don't think he can dump in the river anyway.
Because we found the old Harbour Act as well, and that says it's a crime to throw anything in the water. If the
council let him do it, <em>they</em> could get sued."</p>
<p>Jack bent forward and started to flick through the sheaf.</p>
<p>"Do you mind if I take this away and have a look at it?"</p>
<p>"No problem. I was going to get the boat club interested, just to have a go at Sproat after what he'd doing. People
like that have no sense of responsibility. Putting people out of work just to make a few extra bucks is exactly the
same as stealing, and like I said, stealing from ordinary people is a right dirty business."</p>
<p>Jack smiled at the logic of it. He stuffed the papers back into the envelope, determined to read them carefully over
the weekend. Something in what Sandy said had given him an idea.</p>
<p>Sandy sipped again.</p>
<p>"Have you any idea of what you're going to do?"</p>
<p>"I'm still thinking about it."</p>
<p>"There's nothing for you here, Jake. You should get out and see what the rest of the world has to offer. I got the
chance when I was younger than you, in the army, then on the boats. Gave me a chance to see a bit of the world as
well. You got a good brain on you, and you could make something of yourself."</p>
<p>"That's what everybody seems to think," Jack said.</p>
<p>"So you might start believing them. You've got your whole life ahead of you. Your Mam told me what you've done for
your Michael, and that's a big thing. But you can't live your life for the boy. He'll find his own feet."</p>
<p>"He needs a chance. Too many people in this town don't get one."</p>
<p>"You could have had the chance yourself."</p>
<p>"Sure, maybe I could. I got the chance now."</p>
<p>"To do what?"</p>
<p>"Watch this space."</p>
<p>Jack caught the movement through the kitchen window. He pulled back behind the curtain just as a tall man in
impenetrable sunglasses got out of the car. He was wide as a shack, solid and square and had a no-nonsense chin that
jutted like rock.</p>
<p>"Hell," Jack muttered.</p>
<p>"What's the matter?" Sandy looked out from the edge of the curtain.</p>
<p>"You know them?"</p>
<p>Another man got out of the car, hidden from view by the rowan tree that Sandy had let Jack plant from a berry years
ago when he was just a kid.</p>
<p>"You sit here son. I'll take care of this."</p>
<p>Sandy picked up a ballpeen hammer from the toolbox and hefted a big stilson wrench in the other hand. The back of his
hands were oil-streaked and the overalls stained. He would look just like a man working with car parts. No need to
look tough or stupid, just handy.</p>
<p>The bell did its sing song. Sandy had been standing just behind it and he opened it very fast, taking whoever stood
there by surprise. A tall, well dressed man stood on the doorstep, flanked by the big slab in the chauffeur's
suit.</p>
<p>"I'm looking for Jack Lorne," a man's voice said. Jack was close behind his grandfather, just out of sight, but
ready.</p>
<p>"Oh yeah, and who wants him?"</p>
<p>"My name is Hammond Hall. Mr Lorne did me a great service. He saved my boy's life."</p>
<p>Sandy looked him up and down, weighing him. After a while he nodded.</p>
<p>"Maybe you'd better come in and speak to him yourself."</p>
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<h1>6</h1>
<p>They all gaped at Jack Lorne and if he’d had the camera with him he’d have taken a picture, every one of them caught
with their mouths slack open.</p>
<p>"You have to be totally fucking kidding," was all Tam Bowie could finally say. </p>
<p>A long silence stretched out as what he had told them began to sink in.</p>
<p>Mac's Bar had been fairly quiet when they got there, still pumped from the nearness of the action with Ferguson's
gorillas. Jack thumbed a few coins into the box and Tam and Jed groaned when the music started and the heavy Hendrix
base came thumping out. It was good music for a slow come-down.</p>
<p>"Where do you get your taste retro-man?" </p>
<p>"What, you prefer the spice bimbos? Lady Gaga? These old guys could play."</p>
<p>Old dead Jimi came out with it. ...<em>everything just don't seem the same.</em> Jack let an ice cold sip trickle
down his throat. Nothing was the same, nor would it be from here on in, win or lose.</p>
<p><em>Acting funny but I don't know why.</em></p>
<p>Neil leant in, faking a tight guitar, put a smacker right on Jed's cheek.</p>
<p>" 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy."</p>
<p>"Bugger off you. I told you a million times, it's <em>kiss the sky.</em>"</p>
<p>Everybody laughed, and it eased the tension. Jack asked Frank behind the bar if they could use the upstairs room, but
it turned out the domino team had it for the night.</p>
<p> "Jimmy Gillespie's boat's up on the stacks," Tam said. "He's away on holiday and he wants us to keep an eye on
it."</p>
<p>They trooped out into the mellow evening sunlight and followed the river towpath downstream. Franky Hennigan and Tig
Graham sat on their usual bench and when they passed by, Franky got up and did a drunken little shuffle-dance,
snapping his fingers.</p>
<p>"Well boys, you wouldn't have any loose change, would you?" Franky and Tig had both worked in Aitkenbar and gone the
way of so many who'd got a big taste for what they had rolled in barrels.</p>
<p> Tam dug into his pocket. Jack and Ed managed a handful of coins between them and gave it to Tam.</p>
<p> "But you have to promise me, you're not going to waste this on anything stupid like food."</p>
<p> "No problemo senors," Franky drawled a fake Mexican accent. He threw a pantomime salute. "You have the word of an
officer and a gentleman."</p>
<p> Gillespie's boat had seen plenty of better summers, and it would take another year to get it back into the water,
but it was big and spacious, up on the blocks right at the end of the sandy point opposite the towering castle rock
where the river fed into the Clyde. It was better inside than out, and the six of them were round the table. Neil
fanned out the cards for shoot pontoon and they'd rattled the money down, watching it change from hand to hand, as
the sun sank lower to turn the slow waters of the incoming tide deep red on the estuary.</p>
<p>Jack had known Cullen and Foley would come at them again and if they didn't, Ferguson would send somebody else and
despite himself he muttered a curse at Donny letting his mouth do the thinking, even though he knew it had always
been the same since the pair of them had started school. Donny's mouth spoke for somebody two foot taller and a
whole lot tougher. It was like a half-developed tourette syndrome, shooting off when they needed it holstered.
Ferguson might have forgotten the slight, even though that was unlikely, but he couldn't let a couple of boys from
Drymains give his minders a doing. That was definitely something he didn't want spread around in the gossip, and if
it had gained currency, then he'd have to convert it back, with commission.</p>
<p>Jack was ahead on the five he'd slapped on the table, but he kept the fifty still in his hip pocket, knowing it had
been money earned by stealth, no luck or insider knowledge required A part of his mind was on Cullen and Foley and
Ferguson, wondering where they would turn up next, knowing they would, and if it had been any other time, he'd have
watched his back, waited for the hit and taken it with a fight, but the time was all wrong and the last thing he
needed was a mess of bruises on his face. The walk along the towpath from Mac's bar had been full of talk of
might-have-been and could-have-done, though Tam said little and Ed Kane even less. Tam had got his black belt in Tae
Kwon Do and could have given them a run if he'd really wanted to, but it was better to scare them off than get down
to it. Two could become six too easily and you could start a street war that would bring all the nutters from
Corriehill down on River Street and have a real rammy that would do nobody any good. </p>
<p>Donny was all pumped up, his face matching his ginger hair, talking big and they all slapped him down for it. Ed Kane
had heard about the first set-to and Jack was glad he'd been right solid with them. Since the first night in Mac's
bar he'd realised just how handy Ed could be. He had that calm sort of understated toughness that doesn't need a lot
of talk.</p>
<p>Jack tapped and got a three and ran it all through to a five card trick, took two notes from Tam and on the next hand
turned up an ace and a face. Tam handed over the pack. Jack began dealing and taking the bets, getting a run of high
cards as the notes piled up at his corner, but he was working on automatic. Pontoon takes no brain. Working the odds
was just maths. His mind was elsewhere. </p>
<p>Ed Kane said nothing about seeing him in the distillery and that was a plus point too. He'd been a class behind them
in primary and his girlfriend Donna worked in the hairdressers down on Castle Street. She sometimes cut about with
Linda, and the pair of them sang in the Starlights chorus. </p>
<p>"So what's the next move?" Jed Coogan asked. "I hear you're jumping a ship."</p>
<p>"I'm still thinking about it." Big Lars had welcomed him aboard and shown him round, while a crane had lifted the big
propeller from the water. The shipwrights at Scotts yard would straighten out a big crumple on the vane. He'd half
expected to see Ilse and Ingrid and had quickly looked over his shoulder to make sure Kate had driven off. The
prospect of being out in the dirty little supply ship in a howling and heaving North Sea did nothing at all for him.
It was no prospect. </p>
<p>But they'd sat down and got talking and big Lars had finally got the <em>Absolut</em> from his cabinet and they'd
chewed the fat for a couple of hours and then arranged another meeting to get things really sorted. He had a couple
of days to get things going, but he had to broach it here and now. This dry dock was the first port.</p>
<p>"I've been to the Australia office," Neil said. "The chance of finding something around here's less than damn
all."</p>
<p>"Somebody should shoot that prick Sproat," Jed said, and they all nodded. "He's selling every one of us down the
river. It's all the same with those rich bastards. They come up on daddy's money and never get their hands dirty and
think they can just buy and sell folk."</p>
<p>"I'd like to see him signing on the dole. Trying to get money out of those snooty bitches."</p>
<p>"Hey, my cousin works in the Jobcentre," Donny protested. </p>
<p>"Yeah, and she's the snootiest of them all, spawney-eyed bitch."</p>
<p>Donny shrugged. "You've got a point, right enough."</p>
<p>"You're right Jed," Jack stepped in to the little silence. "Sproat needs a come-uppance. I heard what he told you all
at the meeting. It was thanks for all your hard graft and now get lost and let me make more money."</p>
<p>"That was about the size of it." </p>
<p>"He's a fucking charmer, that Sproat," Donny observed. "A regular Don Coyote."</p>
<p>Jack turned for a second look, decided it wasn't worth the correction. </p>
<p>Tam got out a little nut of hash and rolled one long doobie. The air thickened into a sweet mist. Jack took a couple
of deep draws, because he could still think clearly on hash, while his mouth and his brain got completely out of
step on beer. </p>
<p>"So what are you going to do about it?" he asked nobody in particular.</p>
<p>"What can we do?"</p>
<p>"You could help yourselves and really screw Sproat, that's what you could do."</p>
<p> He let that float with the smoke. </p>
<p>"Aye, brilliant. What do we do? Let the tyres down on his Beamer?"</p>
<p>"Everybody's got a weakness. You just have to find out what it is. It's not that hard to find out what Sproat's
weakness is."</p>
<p>"Listen to mister open-bloody-university here. Is that the kind of stuff they teach you in business management?"</p>
<p>"Business is just like anything else. You find out what people need. You find a way of giving it to them, or keeping
it from them. It's all about knowing what to do and when."</p>
<p>He looked round the table. "I'll tell you what business really is. It's a way of stealing money from people without
having to beat them up. It's just legalised robbery."</p>
<p> "Thanks for the lesson, Jake. But is there a point in there somewhere?" Tam drew on the joint and held it in. </p>
<p>"First of all you have to realise what the score is," Jack said. He deliberately slowed the dealing down to a stop.
"And the score is, we've all been screwed arsewards, all except Tam, and he'd enjoy that anyway. Look at the unions,
talking about setting up pickets and begging the MP for some help. He's in Sproat's pocket anyway. So what will they
achieve?"</p>
<p>"Nothing," Ed said flatly. </p>
<p>"Exactly. Sproat called you in and kicked your stupid and everybody said <em>yes boss,</em> Same as ever. It's in the
blood. People here all work for somebody else and they take what's going. It's about time we did something for
ourselves."</p>
<p>"Like what, set up in business?"</p>
<p>"Something like that. No. <em>Exactly</em> that."</p>
<p>"With what?" Donny asked. "I've got damn all.<em> </em>I'm between a rock and the deep blue sea." </p>
<p>"Look," Jack said, putting the cards down on the table, face up. He had a king and an ace and nobody could beat him.
Good symbolism. He let them all see them and then quickly scooped up the dead hands. </p>
<p>"Two hundred years. That's how long the distillery's been going and in all that time folk have been busting their
balls for Sproat's people. They do all the work, and he gets all the cash and he's the only one living up Kirkhill
and driving a big shiny car. He's got a boat you could sail the world on. Holidays in Hawaii. What's he done for it?
He was <em>born</em>, that's what. But that's the old way. Now he's selling up to make more money, because there's
just not enough in a wee malt and grain business that's too labour intensive, not when you pay eighty percent in
excise. I got on the internet and had a look. It's easy. Aitkenbar's been run down for the past three years. Sproat
hasn't been out searching the markets because he's a total airhead. But he's smart enough to sell when the builders
are killing each other for empty land. They're paying twenty three pounds a square foot, and he'll make enough to
clear himself and put up a kitty and with the last big blend he's free and clear and we're all in the shit. He's
crippling Andy Kerr because he needs that land, and that puts another forty on the dole and the whole town goes down
the stank. And don't forget those poor boys up at Dunvegan. They're all back to cutting peats and eating porridge
and shagging mountain sheep."</p>
<p>Jack stopped for breath. Tam was curious.</p>
<p>"You can find that all out on your computer?"</p>
<p>Jack nodded. "If you know where to look, except for the sheep thing. Anyway, that's business, they're all at it. It's
business, and it's the way it works."</p>
<p>"They're all a bunch of crooks."</p>
<p>"Sure they are, but it's all <em>legal</em>. You see that wall Kate Delaney and the kids are painting? All those
firms that just pulled out of the town and set up in Taiwan or Korea. <em>That's</em> business. Money talks, and
everybody else gets their marching orders. "</p>
<p>"So what are you saying?" Ed Kane eyed Jack through the smoke. </p>
<p>"It's time to take a stand. Make something of ourselves."</p>
<p> "Yeah," Neil went into grizzly old cowboy mode<em>. </em>"I was born here, an I was raised here, and <em>dad gum
it</em>, I am gonna die here, an' no sidewindin bushwackin, hornswaglin, cracker croaker is gonna ruin me bison
cutter."</p>
<p> "Fat man," Jed said, "You're purely talking out of your ass."</p>
<p> "No," Jack contradicted. "He's got a point. We were all born and raised here, and some prick is ruining it for
everybody. So it's about time we took back our bison cutter."</p>
<p> "How? Go on strike?" Donny asked a stupid question. </p>
<p>"Get real. That's what the Dunvegan boys want, and it'll do no good. You can't strike at a moving target, and Sproat
is moving. You can only hit him if he sits still. So what you have to do is stop him dead in his tracks"</p>
<p>"How?" Ed leaned forward. He knew a moment was coming. Jack recognised that in him.</p>
<p>"I've been doing some checking. This big last batch is something special. Sproat wants to market it all over the
world, and it's worth a fortune. My Uncle Sandy says God helps those who helps themselves, and it's time we helped
ourselves."</p>
<p>"Helped ourselves to what?" Ed was staying with it. Donny scratched his head, waiting for Jack to get right to the
point. </p>
<p>"See that last batch of whisky? It's a quarter of a century old. Just think about that. Our grandfathers made it. Our
fathers and uncles stacked the barrels, turned the barley, did all the sweating. There's near enough thirty thousand
gallons of it, all sitting there in the bond and in a couple of weeks time, they're going to roll it out, mix it up
and bottle it and after that it'll be gone."</p>
<p>"Yeah, we know that," Neil said. His broad cheeks turned concave as he sucked in on the joint. "What's that got to do
with us?"</p>
<p>"Our families made the stuff. I reckon we've as good a claim to it as anybody."</p>
<p>"You won't buy much with what you get in redundo," Jed said. </p>
<p>"I told you. God helps those who help themselves, and we should help ourselves."</p>
<p>"To what?"</p>
<p>"I reckon we can take those thirty thousand gallons right from under Sproat's nose. I got a plan."</p>
<p>He reached into his cotton jacket and drew out a sheaf of blue paper. </p>
<p>"I got all the plans."</p>
<hr />
<p>The silence stretched as if time had expanded. For a long time, nobody spoke, and Jack just waited until what he had
said percolated through. </p>
<p>"You have to be totally fucking kidding." Tam finally said.</p>
<p>"Fuck me gently," Jed agreed. </p>
<p>Jack shuffled the cards and dealt another round. Neil, who had held his breath for more than thirty seconds let it
all out slowly. Ed Kane said nothing at all. He just waited. </p>
<p>"Are you serious?" Tam Bowie ran his fingers through his hair. </p>
<p>"Sure I'm serious."</p>
<p>"That's why you were done up like Clark Kent?"</p>
<p>Jack nodded. Ed got it in one. Nobody picked up the cards now. They just lay unturned.. </p>
<p>"I need another joint," Jed said. </p>
<p>"I need a drink," Donny said. </p>
<p>"I'm agog."</p>
<p>"I'm even agogger than you," Jed told Neil.</p>
<p>"See you? You always have to be the agoggest," Neil came back.</p>
<p>Jack paused, mouth open, did a sharp double take at Neil and then just exploded with laughter. It broke the
moment.</p>
<p>"So you're serious then?" Tam said.</p>
<p>"You think you can really heist a whole decant?" Ed steered them right back to it, needing to hear it again. Jack
could almost hear his brain working. </p>
<p>"It's possible."</p>
<p>"How are you going to do that?</p>
<p>"With some serious planning, a bit of hard graft, and split second timing. But I think it <em>can</em> be done.
Supply and demand. This time they've got the supply and we've got the demand."</p>
<p>"Then what?" Tam finished rolling the third and passed it to Jed who sucked it like a condemned man facing
rifles. </p>
<p>"You work it out. You get thirty thousand gallons. Multiply by six and you get bottles."</p>
<p>"How many is that?" Donny asked. </p>
<p>"More than a hundred thou," Ed Kane broke in. Jack nodded approval. </p>
<p>"Hundred and eighty. But then it's double strength, so when you dilute it, water it down, you get three sixty." He
paused for effect. "<em>Thousand</em> bottles. Nearly half a mil." </p>
<p>"Jeez."</p>
<p>"Supply and demand. You get the right market and you can flog them at a five-spot apiece."</p>
<p>"That's more than a million." Ed was faster than any of them.</p>
<p>"One point eight."</p>
<p>"<em>Jeez</em>!"</p>
<p>"Million?" Donny's face was a picture of incredulity. </p>
<p> "Million. One million, eight hundred thousand. Minimum. Sterling. All profit. No tax."</p>
<p>"You're going to walk in there and lift thirty thousand gallons of hooch?"</p>
<p>"That's the plan."</p>
<p>"And then what?"</p>
<p>"Then we get rich."</p>
<p>"Jesus holy fucking <em>Christ</em>. You're serious, right?" Tam gave a little disbelieving laugh. </p>
<p>"Sure I'm serious." Jack held up the translucent blueprint. "I can't say where I got these. But this is the plan we
need. All it needs is some nerve and organisation and we can pull it off."</p>
<p>"Don't be daft man," Donny came in. "The customs would be all over you like a rash. And the cops along with them.
Thirty thousand gallons? Where would you put it?"</p>
<p>"You came out with the stuff in a tube, didn't you? When we went golfing?"</p>
<p>"Sure, stuck down my leg."</p>
<p>Jed came in: "You get thirty K gallons and you'll need the biggest colostomy bag in the history of the universe."</p>
<p>Everybody laughed. </p>
<p>"Or the biggest pair of incontinence pants."</p>
<p>"Ye of little faith," Jack said. He knew he had their attention now. Everybody was thinking, despite the hash. "If
you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it."</p>
<p>"Big words for a milkman. They teach you that in business?"</p>
<p> He nodded. "Plenty more where that came from. I've read all the greats. Graham Bell, Ford. Hammer. Edison. One thing
they tell you is that if you don't do it for yourself, nobody's going to do it for you.<em> </em>We can look for
four leaf clovers trying to get lucky and miss a big chance""</p>
<p>"<em>Carpy Dime</em>," Tam said. Jack patted him on the shoulder.</p>
<p>"Dead right, Thomas. Seize the moment. And the harder you work at it, the luckier you get." </p>
<p>"That would be a real sickener for Sproat," Jed put in. </p>
<p>"Believe it. I've spent a while working it out. He needs the big batch for cash flow, and he'll be wrapping it in
cling film and ribbon and selling bottles at a bullseye a throw. You take off excise and the overhead he's still
talking about three mil, all skimmed. But he has to dump the distillery in the harbour to reclaim the land or pay
another three mil in landfill tax, so there might be a way to screw that plan."</p>
<p> "Anything to put it to that bastard."</p>
<p>Everybody agreed with that sentiment. </p>
<p>Ed leant forward, wiping the cards away with his bare arms. The lowering sun beamed in the little porthole, making
the dust sparkle across the cabin in a translucent tube. </p>
<p>"Thirty thou is a whole lot of hooch. So how are you going to do it?"</p>
<p>"What's this <em>you,</em> white man? I told you I got a plan. What I need to know first is, are we all in? It has to
be all of us or none of us, and you have to think of what you can lose. Especially you Tam, seeing as you're in
work."</p>
<p>"Screw that. The site's going to be worked out by September and then it's back on the scratch again. Anyway, I'm a
plumber and that's like a doctor. Everybody shits and gets sick. I'll pick up bits and pieces. But that's all."</p>
<p>"You do house calls Tam? I think I'm going to fart."</p>
<p>"Jesus, Donny, not another one." Neil slipped the catch on the port and swung it inward, bringing with it a warm
smell of cut grass and drying seaweed from the estuary. Gulls mewed in the distant still air.</p>
<p> "It's six or none," Jack said, pressing it. "That's the way it has to be, and we have to keep it really tight. First
rule of good business: A closed mouth gathers no feet. </p>
<p>"I can't see how you'd get away with it." Jed was shaking his head. </p>
<p>"How <em>we'd</em> get away with it, man. You remember what Donny said down at the golf course before he gave
Ferguson the verbals? When he was washing the crap off in the ditch? How much was it went into the stream Don?"</p>
<p>"Three barrels, so Billy Butler said."</p>
<p>Ed agreed. "Three hogsheads broke open, about two hundred gallons. A drop in a bucket compared to what you're
thinking about. . . "</p>
<p>Jack held his hand up. Ed went silent. </p>
<p>"Six bottles to the gallon, double strength, Say twelve bottles at forty percent. Times two hundred," Jack was
motoring now.</p>
<p>"At least a thousand," Donny said, screwing his eyes in concentration.</p>
<p> "There's three kinds of people," Tam said. "Those who can count, and those who can't."</p>
<p> Donny sat for a moment, working that one out. Everybody laughed again and Jack waded on.</p>
<p> "It's nearly two and a half, and we're talking quality stuff, not your average blend. Say twenty a bottle, with tax.
Fifty grand down the Swanee and what did they do about it?"</p>
<p>"Damn all."</p>
<p>"That's right. It was an accident, so nobody got fired. Sproat was worried he'd have the environment people down his
throat and crawling all over the place because it went into the burn and probably right into the river. Christ knows
how many salmon parr died of drink. And what did they do?"</p>
<p>"Fuck all," Ed said. </p>
<p>"Dead right. And there must be a reason for that. Okay, customs have to wear it, because it's still in bond, and they
lose eighty percent, but Sproat's still down what, fifteen grand? And still not a dicky bird. They just let it go.
Sproat hushed it up. Why?" He looked at Donny. </p>
<p>"How should I know?"</p>
<p>"Either he doesn't want people poking around the place, or he doesn't want anything to queer the big deal."</p>
<p>"No way he'd going to sit still for thirty thousand gallons taking a walk," Ed said. "A couple of barrels, okay. But
not a whole bottling decant getting nicked."</p>
<p>"What makes you think it'll be nicked?" Jack smiled for the first time that night. He'd been concentrating the whole
while, happy enough to see them getting brave on hash just for the moment, needing to win them across. </p>
<p>"Anyway, I have to know if you're in, simple as that." </p>
<p>"I'm game," said Tam. "A million notes? Jeez, I can quit doing the lottery."</p>
<p>"It's no game. We do this, we do it right, and we stick to the plan. It's going to take a lot of work and a bit of
risk, but I reckon if we do it right, we'll get away with it. Like I said, our people have worked for it all down
the years and Sproat's selling the town out and taking the dairy with it. Nobody's got that sort of right."</p>
<p>He was pressing triggers now and he knew it. </p>
<p>"Too true," Donny said. "You got a plan Jack, I'm up for it."</p>
<p>"Me too," said Jed. "I got bugger all else to lose."</p>
<p>"Investments can go down as well as up," Jack said, now serious. "You can lose your shirt on this if we screw it.
More than your shirt. "</p>
<p>Neil scratched his head. "Christ knows how you're going to do it."</p>
<p>"One point eight million," Ed said. "You're talking big numbers. How can you work that?"</p>
<p>"I can't say until we're all in, and then it's hands to the pumps. It's six or nothing, and if we don't have
everybody, then I'll go do my own thing, go my own way. I just think it's time we did something for ourselves and to
hell with the rest of them. Where are we going to get jobs with four hundred guys chasing every opening? You want to
stack shelves at whatever they build on Aitkenbar once it's cleared?"</p>
<p>He was thinking of his Uncle talking after he cuffed the old guy at chess. </p>
<p><em>You're a Lorne on your father's side, a Bruce on your mother's. Don't let these creeps rule you. You get
out and take what's yours.</em></p>
<p>"Fuckit," Ed Kane said. "I can't be rolling barrels all my life. You really think it can be done?"</p>
<p>"No. I'm just pissing into the wind. Listen, why do you think I bust my arse trying to get these plans? They guy who
had them's dead and nobody knows I've got a copy. That's our key to a million eight."</p>
<p>"Okay." Ed stretched out his hand. Jack gave it a grip. "I'll come along for the ride."</p>
<p>"Some ride," Tam said. "So what do we do now?"</p>
<p>"First of all, nothing gets beyond here," Jack gestured to the walls. "Not one word. This stays between us all. I
reckon I can make it work, but one word outside and we're all screwed, and I'm talking banged up in the Bar-L. They
don't like rip offs and especially they don't take ripping off her majesty's customs and excise too well. They've
got more power than the cops and nobody asks questions about what they do."</p>
<p>"Dead right. The cops can't shove a finger up your bum."</p>
<p>"Ain't that a shame," Neil half sang.</p>
<p>"Customs can do what they want, so we have to make them look the other way. I don't want to get into it all, but I've
thought it all out. That's why we need six. And I need some money, so you all have to chip in."</p>
<p>"I knew there would be a catch," Donny said, all sarcastic. "How much?"</p>
<p>"A ton apiece, for starters."</p>
<p>"A hundred? You kidding?"</p>
<p>"It's a drop in the ocean. Look on it as an investment."</p>
<p>Donny was still mulish. "That's a whack."</p>
<p>"Come on, you took sixty from Dangerous Dan on the first race. And all it cost was a tin of Chum for Fannyboz. Look,
if we do this we do it right and we do it prepared. You can't just walk in and take it and then wonder what you're
going to do with it. We need cover and that's why I need to buy some stuff."</p>
<p>"Like what?"</p>
<p>"Paper. Cards. I need a whole set of mobiles. Your brother can fix us up Neil, right"</p>
<p>Neil shrugged agreement. "Depends how soon." </p>
<p>"Five days, no more. I need a printer for the computer, full colour - they're cheap and we might as well buy new. I
might need a good suit, and a coat, for a touch of class. A briefcase. We have to get a van, nothing big. Borrow if
we can, buy if we must. And Tam, we need your bike."</p>
<p>"You can borrow it, but not for keeps."</p>
<p>"I don't want to borrow it. I want you <em>on</em> it."</p>
<p>Tam furrowed his brows. It was all going pretty fast and he didn't quite understand it all yet. </p>
<p>"I need to get into somebody's house."</p>
<p>"Come on," Jed said. "I'm not stealing from <em>people</em>."</p>
<p>Jack grinned, remembering his grandfather again. Stealing might be acceptable if it was from the big boys, but not
from the common man. </p>
<p>"I'm not stealing. I just have to get in. Don't worry, there's nobody home. It's just for a drop."</p>
<p>"I'll get you in," Ed said quietly. "Once I've seen the locks."</p>
<p>"Good man. What else? Jed. I might need to speak to your bird. We'll tell her it's union stuff."</p>
<p>"Jees. We can't bring her into it."</p>
<p>"She won't know. Anyway, she's out of a job as well in six weeks. We'll pay her if we have to. She works in Sproat's
office, am I right?"</p>
<p>Jed agreed, but he still looked uncomfortable about it. </p>
<p>"That's about it for now. Donny and Jed, I need you to whip up the union men, get them to start a protest, bring the
Dunvegan men into it. Me, I have to get some art-work done, but I think I can get that for nothing."</p>
<p>"What's that for?" Donny looked as puzzled as the rest. They were itching to know the details, but Jack knew he had
to play it tight. </p>
<p>"Two rules of good business. Don't tell everything you know."</p>
<p>"What's the second?"</p>
<p>Jack tapped his nose. Ed Kane got it right away and laughed. </p>
<p>"But what's the second rule," Donny wanted to know and this time everybody laughed. </p>
<p>"When do you need the cash?"</p>
<p>"Yesterday would be good."</p>
<p>"Can I pay it up?"</p>
<p>"Piss off, Neil. Friday at the latest."</p>
<p>"Christ, you sound just like Ferguson."</p>
<p>"Yeah, that's another thing. Keep an eye out for him and his muscle. You especially Donny. That loony could screw the
whole thing up. We don't want any broken bones and I don't want anybody in jail for breach. They'll come back for
another go, so don't wander down any dark alleys, right?"</p>
<p>He sat back, knowing he had their full and undivided attention. </p>
<p>"You know all that stuff that's been lying in barrels since we were kids? It loses two percent year on year. That's
it half gone in twenty five, and they don't even miss it. So we're just taking the other half."</p>
<p>He couldn't keep the smile off his face. </p>
<p>"The angels have had their share. It's high time we had ours."</p>
<p>That was how it all started.</p>
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<h1>7</h1>
<p>"You’re up to something <em>Muchacho</em>. I told you I can always tell. You've got mischief and mayhem written all
over you."</p>
<p>Uncle Sandy's eyes challenged him from across the table. Against one wall of the kitchen, crates of home brew beer
stood one atop the other, almost to the ceiling. Sandy had been cleaning out his pigeon hut when Jack came round,
head encased in an old biker's balaclava that covered his nose, and eyes protected from the feather dust by an
ancient pair of bikers goggles that made him look like an old air ace. He stripped them off and put the kettle
on. </p>
<p>"Like what?"</p>
<p>"If I knew I wouldn't ask."</p>
<p>"You didn't ask. You made a statement."</p>
<p>"Don't get smart with me."</p>
<p>"I'm already <em>too</em> smart for you. Check." Jack's queen was dangerously close. "I hear you got the whole pigeon
club rat-arsed. What strength is that beer?"</p>
<p>Sandy sacrificed a knight, trying to con Jack into taking it with the queen. No sale. </p>
<p>"About ten percent, higher if you put more sugar in. They're all developing a taste for it."</p>
<p>"It takes dedication. Your liver must be like portland cement. Some of the club, they're about seventy. You could
kill them."</p>
<p>"It's probably keeping them alive. Anyway, I'm over sixty and I'm fitter than you." Jack looked at him and grinned.
They were about the same size and build, despite the difference in years. He hoped he looked as fit when he was that
age.</p>
<p> "Yeah, right. How about Tim Farmer? Any sign of the money?"</p>
<p>"Not a hide nor hair. And nobody's seen him either, daft old bugger. I heard he's in Majorca. He'll come back with a
bad sunburn and a sore dick."</p>
<p>"What will you do, call the cops?"</p>
<p>"What's the point in that? <em>Check</em>. Concentrate on the game, will you? No, that would just be too much hassle.
What we did, we got a bunch of us round to his place and took all of his birds. We'll have an auction next week and
raise about a grand, maybe more. He's a daft thieving bastard, but a good bird man."</p>
<p>"And then what, will he get expelled?"</p>
<p>"Are you kidding? If he's had a month in Majorca with Meg McLaren, he's not getting away that easy. No, he can start
at the bottom and buy back his own birds, and then he's going to have to tell us the whole story, every pant and
grunt and heave. That should keep us going till Christmas, and me and Willie McIver should have enough stock here to
keep us and the bowling club <em>and</em> the boat men going right through the new year. We never had it so good."
</p>
<p>"And you think <em>I'm</em> up to something."</p>
<p>"I don't think, son. I <em>know.</em> You never were good at hiding it."</p>
<p><em>I bloody better be,</em> Jack thought. </p>
<p>It had been a couple of days since Hammond Hall had come to the door, taking Jack by surprise. He hadn't known the
kid in the water had been diving off the big Moody yacht in the inlet, and it hadn't mattered at the time. After it
he had just walked away barefoot, dripping water, and Kate holding tight to his hand.</p>
<p>"I got your name from Miss Delaney," the man had. The driver had gone back to the car and Sandy had cleared a space
at the table, shifting some of the machine parts. Hall's shirt and slacks looked like a month's wages with overtime
thrown in, but he never seemed to notice the oil. He took a glance down at the board, gave a tight smile.</p>
<p>"Mate in three." Jack wondered vaguely how the man had got Kate's name in the first place.</p>
<p>"You like a beer?" Sandy broke the ice. Jack felt a little uncomfortable. What did you say on these occasions. <em>Don't
mention it</em>? </p>
<p>Hall took the beer, drinking from the bottle and smacked his lips. "I don't often get the chance. My wife, Jason's
mother, she's got me on a killer diet."</p>
<p>The man had smacked his lips and then he'd thanked Jack very much and then he'd just let it all pour out, how close
he'd been to losing his boy.</p>
<p>"You never told me, Jake," Sandy chided.</p>
<p>He shrugged. He hadn't told anybody. It wasn't the done thing.</p>
<p>Hammond took another beer and Sandy told him about the home brew and then they all had another and Hammond Hall
seemed to relax. He rolled his sleeves up and started playing with the pieces of carburettor. Sandy hauled out the
big demi-jon of liqueur and they started in on that and by midnight the pair of them were swapping army and navy
stories and Sandy was telling them about some mischief he'd got up to with some NATO buddies in Italy when they were
running trucks of red wine to Dusseldorf.</p>
<p>It was close to one in the morning when Hall insisted that he could only have one more liqueur and no more beer.</p>
<p>"You make this yourself?" He was more than half drunk, but still clear.</p>
<p>"Sure. It's the best in the whole street," Sandy said. "This side of it anyway."</p>
<p>"Good enough for me," Hall said, just slightly slurred. "She'll kill me when I get home."</p>
<p>He turned to Jack and formally shook his hand.</p>
<p>"From Mrs Hall and myself, we just want to say thank you for what you did for Jason. And if you ever want to come
aboard the Valkyrie, you will be more than welcome."</p>
<p>Jack smiled. The difference between the two <em>Valkyries</em> could not be greater.</p>
<p>"And if there's any way we can repay you."</p>
<p>Jack took in the expensive slacks and the designer shirt. The man wore a Rolex oyster.</p>
<p>"There is one thing," he said.</p>
<p>"Name it, young man."</p>
<p>"I lost one of my shoes in the water. A good Nike trainer."</p>
<p>"You want a new pair?"</p>
<p>"No, but if your Jason goes diving up at Creggan again, see if he can pick it up for me. I had them just broken in
just right."</p>
<hr />
<p>Michael came stumbling through the front door, face caked with dirt and blood streaming from both nostrils. One eye
was hidden under a big soft bruise.</p>
<p>"Holy mother of God, what's happened to you?"</p>
<p>Alice Lorne was out of her seat, overturning a teacup and scalding Jack's bare arm. Michael had tears running down
his face. </p>
<p>They had grabbed him on his way home, taking a shortcut through the allotments just after he finished stacking in
Safeway. He was walking the centre path, hands in his pockets, sun on his back when Seggs Cullen came up behind him
and clamped a beefy arm round his neck. </p>
<p>Michael struggled, unable to shout, but Cullen outweighed him two to one. Foley was leaning against the van. Cullen
let go and shoved Michael forward to stumble against the other man. </p>
<p>Foley brought him up sharp, two hands twisting his shirt tight, forcing his chin upwards. </p>
<p>"Leave me alone," Michael managed to gasp. The knuckles under his throat made it almost impossible to draw a
breath. </p>
<p>"This the brainy one?"</p>
<p>Cullen nodded, keeping the pressure on. </p>
<p>"You go to college, arsehole?" Foley loosened the grip just a little. </p>
<p>"What's it got to do with you?" Michael knew who they were and he was scared. </p>
<p>"Don't give me any shite." He shoved Michael backwards. Cullen caught him and put him in a full nelson, bending his
head right down towards the ground. Michael grunted with the pain. </p>
<p>"You go to college?" Foley asked again. </p>
<p>"What if I do? What's it to you?"</p>
<p>"So you've got brains, right?"</p>
<p>Michael tried to straighten up. </p>
<p>"If you've got brains, then you can take a message to that brother of yours."</p>
<p>Cullen loosened his grip and let Michael get vertical, while still keeping the lock on, forcing his arms above his
head. </p>
<p>"What message?"</p>
<p>"This."</p>
<p>Foley leaned in and drove a short, fast punch, putting his weight behind it. It took Michael just below the eye with
a watery crunch. Little sparks fizzled and danced and for a second his knees began to buckle. Cullen let go the grip
and Michael sank towards the ground. He could smell blood somewhere and couldn't tell if it was from his eye or
nose. He landed on his knees, hands up, protecting his eyes. Cullen kicked him hard on the back of his thigh and the
force of it threw Michael forward onto his face. The dirt and dust clogged his throat when he hauled for air. </p>
<p>"Make sure he gets it," Cullen said. "He'll know who it's from."</p>
<p>His eye was closed by the time he got home, drizzling tears through the dust on his cheek. he bruise was purpling
fast and blood was running freely from his nose and dripping from his chin. </p>
<p>"I fell," Michael said. </p>
<p>"Like hell you did," Jack said. His arm would be up in a blister later, but he was totally unaware of the scald. He
had seen many a scrap before, been in many a scrap before. Alice Lorne was getting ice from the fridge and wrapping
the chunks in a cloth. Sheena was fussing around, gushing a litany of Holy Mothers and Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph's. </p>
<p>Jack pulled him up. </p>
<p>"Who did that to you?" he could feel his hands bunch into fists. "Come on Mike, spit it."</p>
<p>"You leave the boy alone Jack Lorne," Sheena scolded. "Can't you see he's hurt?"</p>
<p>"I'm okay," Mike protested. He wasn't crying, but near to it. The tears were from the sting in his eyes. He knew if
he said, Jack would be out there and it was two of them to one. </p>
<p>"I fell."</p>
<p>Alice looked at Jack.</p>
<p>"Is this something to do with you?" She pulled Michael in and dabbed at his eye, making him draw sharp breath, then
forcing the cold cloth down onto the plummy bruise. Michael grunted and squirmed, trying to get away. </p>
<p>"Fell? My arse!"</p>
<p>"Jack, you watch your language!"</p>
<p>"Somebody took a poke at him. Right Mike? You been scrapping?"</p>
<p>He shook his head, trying to pull out of his mother's grip, but Alice was no stripling. </p>
<p>"Hold still and hold your wheesht." It came out sharp, an order, but she was smoothing his hair with her other
hand.</p>
<p>"You bullshit me and I'll do the other eye," Jack said. </p>
<p>"Don't you dare, you big bully." Sheena turned on him. "What a terrible thing to say."</p>
<p>"Somebody gave him a doing and he's too scared to say." Jack pulled away and snatched his jacket from the hook. Real
anger was clenching at his belly. </p>
<p>"Get back here.... " The door slammed on his mother's words.</p>
<p>They were waiting for him on the other side of the common. Jack could figure out what had happened, for if Mike was
too scared to say it was only because he knew Jack would go and do something about it, so it couldn't have been a
scrap with somebody his own size and weight. It was time to get this sorted out once and for all, get it over
with. </p>
<p>The white van's engine was still running and he recognised it in the haze of exhaust, down by the boat yard. Jack
just followed Michael's route home. It was not difficult to figure it out. The van reversed in through the big
wooden slat-gate. </p>
<p>Foley kicked it shut as soon as he walked in. </p>
<p>"Tough nut, Lorne." Cullen's scabs were healing and peeling. "Your poofy brother must have brains after all."</p>
<p>Jack was in for it, in for a doing, but there was nothing for it if they were going to pick on his brother. This had
to finish. Anger and apprehension wrestled inside his belly. Anger won the first round and adrenaline took
over. </p>
<p>He swung in fast and punched Cullen on the eye. No pause, no hesitation, and it took Seggs completely by
surprise. </p>
<p>"Bastard!" Cullen swung at him. Jack jinked back, still angry and wary, but taking great satisfaction in the feel of
knuckles against cheek, then something slammed into his pelvis with such force the pain seemed to sing in a high
clear note. He went down sideways. Foley raised the spar again and put all his weight into it, brought it down
across his shoulders. Jack felt the leather of his bomber jacket rip as he twisted, vaguely aware that it gave him
some protection. </p>
<p>Cullen swung a boot and he turned away, grabbing at it, kicking out with both feet to keep Foley away while he tried
to roll out of range. He got to a knee, twisting Cullen's foot back, then levered up, throwing the other man off
balance. Foley came in again and swung hard, just as Jack pivoted in his foot, twisting Cullen round. Seggs took the
two-by-two across his shoulder and bawled. Jack pulled back and Foley swung again. This time he connected and Jack
was down in the oil and the dust and the pair of them came in with the boot, kicking and stamping, forcing him into
a corner. Jack swivelled right and left, arms up to protect his face, taking most of it in his belly and his back,
rolling with it as much as he could, lashing out all the time to keep the punishment to a minimum. </p>
<p>"Kill the cunt," Foley snarled. "Kick his fucking head in."</p>
<p>Jack was squeezed up between two old oil drums, and the rust dust was in his eyes. Blood streamed down from a cut in
his scalp and he tried to wipe it away. Foley peeled off while Cullen kept up the kicks, missing more than he
connected, but connecting enough to make it matter, and then Foley swiped down at him from the low sun side and Jack
just caught the movement in time to jerk away. </p>
<p>The metal bar hit the drum with such force it left a straight dented valley two inches deep. </p>
<p>Jack realised he was in big trouble. </p>
<p><em>"Hit him</em>," Cullen bawled. </p>
<p>Jack rolled scrabbling half blind, trying to find anything to lift and use. </p>
<p>"Do it," Cullen grated. Jack saw Foley lift and swing. </p>
<p>The sudden gunshot blasted everything to frozen silence.</p>
<p>Cullen visibly jerked back. Foley was half way through the swing and the noise broke his aim. The heavy bar slammed
into the ground, missing Jack by a scant inch. </p>
<p>For a second Jack was blinded by the rolling dust. He scrabbled backwards, heels in the dirt, until he fetched up
against the drums. </p>
<p>"What the fu..... ?"</p>
<p>The big gun bucked again, a fast crack of noise that spanged and echoed off the high corrugated iron fence. </p>
<p>"Drop it."</p>
<p>The barrel was up against Foley's head. Jack was struggling to his feet. </p>
<p>"Drop it or the next one's in your fucking skull."</p>
<p>"Jesus man don't... " Foley's voice was high and tight and all the roughness gone. </p>
<p>Cullen was frozen in the act of kicking. His eyes were fixed on the man with the gun. Foley tried to turn up to face
him, but the barrel poked him down.</p>
<p>"Go on, <em>amigo, </em>make my day."</p>
<p>Foley still held the bar. </p>
<p>"Who the fuck are you?"</p>
<p>"I'm your worst fuckin' nightmare, fat boy."</p>
<p>"Fuck."</p>
<p>Jack felt a bubble hysteria try to force its way up and out over the sharp pain in his sides. His uncle's voice
sounded rough and ragged, and he had put on a crazy Clint Eastwood accent. The balaclava almost completely hid his
face, and the old goggles did the rest. The overalls were stained with oil and pigeon shit and the whole get-up made
him look like a crazy Monte Carlo racing driver from the thirties. </p>
<p>The old Italian Beretta was jammed up against the back of Foley's head, forcing the woolly hat, and the coarse nylon
wig to slip over one eye. </p>
<p>"Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?"</p>
<p>"Don't shoot man."</p>
<p>Sandy grabbed his collar and jammed the barrel in under his ear. </p>
<p>"You fuck with us, you make a big mistake."</p>
<p>Jack almost laughed out loud. The accent had changed to something from Goodfellas. He peeled away, hustling between
the two of them. Sandy jerked his head towards the gate and then slammed Foley forward, fast and unexpected. The man
lurched, fell against Cullen, and they both went tumbling into the drums which scattered underneath them. Sandy
grabbed Jack and pulled him away through the gate and slammed it shut again. </p>
<p>"Daft bugger. Don't you ever do <em>that</em> again."</p>
<p>The old Honda engine was running and they were on and gone before Cullen and Foley could get to their feet
again. </p>
<p>"Who the fuck was that?"</p>
<p>"He scared the shite out of me," Foley said. He was searching about amongst the scattered drums for his hat and his
wig, all the blood sapped from his face. </p>
<p>"Don't you ever do that again," Sandy repeated. "You could get yourself killed."</p>
<p>"They beat Michael up."</p>
<p>"No. They hit him a punch so they could get you out, and you fell for it."</p>
<p>"I never fell for it. I wanted to finish it. I don't need the hassle right now."</p>
<p>"But you need your head caved in?" Sandy was angry with him, and scared for him. </p>
<p>"So now they'll come back again."</p>
<p>"And if they do, you wait and pick your chance. You don't go walking in somewhere with two loonies on your tail. Not
when they can shut the door behind them and do it all out of sight. You go get your friends. Or your family."</p>
<p>"I never wanted you in it."</p>
<p>"We <em>are </em>in it. Listen Jake, I've been in more scraps than you've had your nookie. I saw Michael going up the
road with one eye shut and his nose dripping red snotters. It wasn't hard to work it out, and you should have done
the same."</p>
<p>"I did. I thought I'd take a couple and call it quits."</p>
<p>"You could have ended in the hospital, or worse. You take on somebody like Ferguson, you have to use your brains, if
you have any. You never walk in and let them close a door on you. You never go in anywhere without a way out. Jesus
boy, I should get you signed for the Paras and teach you some sense."</p>
<p>Jack had to concede the point. The pain under his ribs was nagging like an angry wife and a dull ache moaned in his
thighs where he had taken some damage on the big muscles, not enough to cripple, but he knew it would be worse by
the morning. </p>
<p>"Right okay, okay. I just got pissed when they came for Mike."</p>
<p>Sandy was stripping off the balaclava and his white hair was sticking up in unruly corkscrews. It just made him look
like an old tough nut. Jack recalled the sudden crack of the gun. </p>
<p>"I thought you were going to pull the trigger."</p>
<p>"Then we'd both have been in the shit," Sandy said, and his face suddenly creased into a big grin that made his
two-day beard stand on end. He could have doubled for the old gold prospector in the Treasure of Sierra Madre. He
cracked a bottle and poured one for each of them, letting the home brew froth up to the rim. Jack drank it,
surprised at how quickly it took the dust from his throat. It tasted great. </p>
<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
<p>Sandy jammed a hand into the bib pocket of his overalls and drew out the mean-looking big gun. He raised it and
pointed it straight at Jack's chest, pulled the trigger and Jack jerked back on reflex at the sudden explosion. It
made the window pane shudder and rattle. </p>
<p>"What... ?" His ears were ringing. </p>
<p>"Caps," Sandy said. "You wanted a gun like my old Italian job after you went rummaging up the loft. Christ, boy, your
mother nearly ate my face off when that happened, for you could have put a hole through the wall, or through
yourself. So I got you a replica. Cost me a fortune, by the way, but she said it looked too real. I was going to
give it for your birthday when you were nine, but she kyboshed that idea. You don't fight with our Alice, not
twice."</p>
<p>He grinned again and pulled the trigger five times in succession and now that he knew, Jack could hear the difference
between explosive caps and real gunfire. Down in the scrapyard it had sounded all too real. </p>
<p>"You old bloody con-man," he said. </p>
<p>"Takes one to know one." Sandy raised his glass and Jack began to laugh. "But as Al Capone said, you can get more
with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone, and I wasn't in the mood for kind words."</p>
<p>He jabbed a finger at Jack's chest. "Now are you going to tell me what you're up to?"</p>
<hr />
<p>The geese turned out to be a major problem. They were noisy and they were ill-tempered and they had little beady eyes
that missed nothing at all. </p>
<p> Neil stared at them through the chain link and they stared back, with that half-sneer-half-snarl that big geese seem
to be able to express while still only wearing beaks. They craned up, necks at full tilt, hissing like
rattlers. </p>
<p>"They're worse than dobermen," Neil said, with some conviction. He pulled back from the fence and one of the geese
stood up straight and flapped its wings so hard the air sang a set of low whoops. It honked its irritation,
eloquently conveying the need to see these intruders off. </p>
<p>"And they've got dogs as well," Jed said. "Once the picket went up, they hired a team of security guards."</p>
<p>"That's all we need." Jack took out a small notebook and wrote something down in it, before tucking it into his
inside pocket. He had a big bruise just north of his knuckles, an angry looking cleat mark that disappeared up his
sleeve. Under his chin, another one was fading quickly and his swollen nose was less inflated than it had been
yesterday. He walked stiffly, favouring the bruise-seized muscles in his thighs, but he'd managed to keep his face
from getting broken. </p>
<p>"What will we do about these?"</p>
<p>"You'll have to make friends with them," Jack said. "Just pretend they're chicks at Mac's."</p>
<p>"He always gets a knock-back from the chicks," Jed said. "He's the last man standing at the end of the dancing."</p>
<p>"But he tries hard. These birds have got as much brains as the ones he goes for anyway, and with a bit of luck he'll
get a gobble."</p>
<p>"That's turkeys, smartarse. Geese honk."</p>
<p>"And so do you, pal. Anyway, get down to Ryan's pet shop and get a load of pigeon feed."</p>
<p>"What's that like?"</p>
<p>"It's like sweetcorn, only hard as rock. But that's what birds eat. Stick it in a pan with some butter and you get
loads of the stuff."</p>
<p>"Okay. And then what?"</p>
<p>The geese were still giving them the hostile beady eye. Hereabouts they were famous, like the big white King Geese at
Ballantines distillery, and Alistair Sproat had pinched the idea from them. They were mean and hard and missed
nothing. Bunched together in a gang they'd have a go at anything on two feet or four, and apart from the crazy noise
they set up that could be heard halfway across town, they never came off second best.</p>
<p>"Then you start feeding them. Every night, same time, same place. You'll have to work on them, but as long as they
get used to getting their dinner right round the corner, we have a chance. But you have to make a career out of it.
Ever heard of Pavlov's dogs?"</p>
<p>"What, is he a breeder?" </p>
<p>Jack shook his head in disbelief. Jed just looked blank. </p>
<p>The dogs were another problem. Jack wrote another note in his book as Neil was asking for some money from the kitty
for the bird feed. The security men were new, not from around here. They had two big black and tan panting dogs that
hauled them around on short leads, patrolling back and forth behind the gates. </p>
<p>"Sproat's worried they'll torch the place."</p>
<p>"Just as long as they wait until after we're done," Jack said, "Then they can do what they like. In fact, that might
not be a bad idea at the end of the day. I'll have to think."</p>
<p>Neil looked at him in shock.</p>
<p>"Only kidding."</p>
<p>He had come from the dairy with his last wages tucked in his hip and a P45 in his inside pocket and despite it all,
he felt more sorry for Andy Kerr who had done his level best. </p>
<hr />
<p>It had been a glorious morning, the best Jack could remember for years, up at four, washed and out, with the sun
hidden behind the rise of Longcrag Hill, lancing its beams upwards to touch the high haze a sweet rose pink. The
robin had been bursting its guts from its stance on the garden fork and the blackbirds gave it everything they had.
The air had that July scent that told you the sun would stay high and the air stay dry. Far-off in the sky, three
wild ducks whirred down from Loch Humphrey up in the hills to feed on the estuary. Early pigeons purred from the big
weeping ash in his mother's back garden that his grandfather had planted before Jack was born. </p>
<p>Michael had been snoring, curled up on himself, with that bruise like a blue hammock under his eye. The odd punch
never did a youngster any harm, but Jack still felt the clench at the thought of Cullen and his sidekick having a go
at a boy half their size. Mike was the baby of the family, the one with brains. He'd no part in any of this. </p>
<p>Jack wrapped his sandwiches, slung them in the haversack, and closed the door quietly on the way out. It took ten
minutes to get down to the dairy, walking in the pre-day light, smelling the scent of hawthorn and the river. Jed
Coogan was slowly backing the big tanker up against the loading bay. </p>
<p>Andy Kerr rolled up the shutters and gave Jack a slow wave that said a lot. It had been a while since he'd been up
with the deliverymen and the dawn, but it was Friday and Jack knew he was there to make it personal. Poor bugger,
he'd tried hard and done his best. </p>
<p>It was the usual run, Drymains, Overburn, out to the east of the town and back along by the castle and finished by
six, aware of the sun rising over the crags, lancing through the pines on the crest of Drumbuie Hill and turning the
Clyde into a molten silver snake on its way up to the city. </p>
<p>"I never meant for this to happen," Andy said. He had a bit of colour back in his face, from the exertions of the
morning, but his hair looked even greyer. Jack had been helping hose down the big tanker, shielding his eyes from
the reflected light from the stainless steel bulkhead when Andy came out onto the step and whistled through the hiss
of the hose. He beckoned a come-on and Jack turned the water off. </p>
<p>"I know that," Jack said. "It's been hard going."</p>
<p>"Believe that, it's been a ballbreaker." Andy fished in his desk drawer and drew out an envelope. "Holiday pay, two
weeks money, and redundo. I've done my best on that, Jack, so you're not on the minimum. You've done me good and I
appreciate that. For what it's worth, if things had worked out, you were to be off the run in a couple of months and
in here with me. If we'd been able to expand I'd have made you up. I know you're halfway through your course and I
can use somebody with a bit of savvy. It would have been good for us both."</p>
<p>"I appreciate that," Jack said, feeling awkward, but knowing Andy wasn't just saying that to hear his own voice. He
took the envelope and stuck it in his pocket, sight unseen. </p>
<p>"You'll be glad to get a long lie."</p>
<p>"I'd rather this place wasn't going down."</p>
<p>"You and me both," Andy said, forcing a smile. "My great grandfather started this place. I never thought I'd be the
one to see it shut, but everything came at once."</p>
<p>"What about Billy?"</p>
<p>"Billy is just part of it. You know the score anyway, so I might as well tell you. He pocketed the national insurance
and the tax and he had a couple of deals going with the hotels. A big discount. A big backhander to you and me. It
was all going into his back pocket and the bastard looked me straight in the eye day after day. The bank bailed me
out, but that was just robbing Peter to pay Paul."</p>
<p>"So what next?"</p>
<p>"I pull in my belt until my eyes pop. Sproat's given me two months and then he wants vacant possession. There's
nothing I can do unless I come up with the money, which is as likely as the Pope turning protestant. Sproat's got me
by the shorts and he knows it."</p>
<p>"He's a prick," Jack said, feeling the clench of anger again, anger at Sproat's arrogance.</p>
<p>"That's business Jack, never forget that's what happens. You should never be in business if you can't stand with the
big boys. I could take on Scot-Milk and make a living, and I could maybe take on Sproat, but both of them and
Bastard Billy all at the same time? Six in the morning and I feel punch drunk already."</p>
<p>He looked over at Jack. "I feel the way you look."</p>
<p>"Just a couple of slaps. Boy stuff." Jack looked back. "I was talking to the Dunvegan lads. They're really screwed up
on Skye. The whole plant is closing."</p>
<p>"Yeah, I heard."</p>
<p>"There's a cheese plant up there that's hit the skids. ScotMilk pulled out and left them high and dry. They've got a
dairy farm with a big surplus. Maybe it's something you should think about."</p>
<p>Andy rubbed his chin. </p>
<p>"Skye? That's a bit of a distance. No, it's a hell of a distance. The milk would be butter by the time I got down
here."</p>
<p>"It's a herd of jerseys, real prime, so I'm told. Five hundred head and averaging five gallons a beast every day.
You're talking top quality cream content. And it would be a good source."</p>
<p>"I'd have to find a market, Jack, and I'm up to my eyes looking for second hand tankers. These big Freuhaufs have to
go back."</p>
<p>Andy looked as if his eyes were going to fill up. The tankers had come at almost a hundred grand a piece, state of
the art twelve wheelers that had been an extravagance maybe. No, <em>definitely</em>, but that had been before Billy
had done a runner and before ScotMilk's muscle had come in undercutting every contract. </p>
<p>"When to they go?"</p>
<p>"I'm clear to the first day of the month, then they're gone."</p>
</div>
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<h1>8</h1>
<p>Tam Bowie jumped like a startled rabbit when Jack climbed over the sumps and surprised him. He was down and out of
sight in a natural niche surrounded by the big yellow polyurethane tanks that would eventually be sunk with the
drains on the building site. The sun was high overhead and Tam’s overalls were stripped off his shoulders as he sat
slumped against the side, soaking up the rays, eyes closed. A tattered Knave magazine had flopped to the side,
opened at the centrefold and displaying a dark haired girl with impossible gravity-defying breasts, her spine
contorted into a pouting position that would have made a gynaecologist’s job a dawdle.</p>
<p>Jack thudded his hand hard against the side of the tank, making it boom like a deep bass drum and Tam came awake with
a start. </p>
<p>"Whah?"</p>
<p>"Lazy shirking skiver. Haven't you got work to do?" </p>
<p>"Lazy nothing." He rubbed his eyes. "I've been grafting all day, not like you, finished by twelve o'clock, half-day
merchant."</p>
<p>"P-forty five by twelve," Jack said without rancour but deliberately embarrassing Tam. "I just got my jotters. Give
us a job."</p>
<p>"Oh, hell man, did you get the bullet today?"</p>
<p>"It's worse than that," Jack said. "We're in a spot of trouble." He picked up the Knave and thumbed through it,
holding a centrefold wide. "I thought you got a <em>D</em> in biology."</p>
<p>"I've studied it a lot since then. What's the problem?"</p>
<p>"We might have to go early. At least start early. Andy Kerr's getting rid of the trucks at the end of the month.
They're coming to take them away."</p>
<p>"So?"</p>
<p>"So we haven't got a date for the decant. I'm going to have to get some inside knowledge. If we don't get a date
we're slaughtered before this thing gets off the ground."</p>
<p>He sat down in the sun, feeling the heat reflect of the big plastic tanks. </p>
<p>"What are these things?"</p>
<p>"Drain sumps. This place is too near the river and if there's a lot of rain, you have to hold it somewhere when the
tide's in. Then it drains away later."</p>
<p>"Big, aren't they?"</p>
<p>"This whole site needs ten of them, just to be on the safe side. They take a hell of a lot of rain."</p>
<p>"Do you fit them?"</p>
<p>"Come on man, I'm a plumber, not a navvy. They just dig a big hole and slot them in. I do the delicate work. I'm a
<em>craftsman</em>."</p>
<p>"Well get yourself along to Neil's place tonight. We've got to work out just what you <em>can</em> do."</p>
<hr />
<p>Neil Cleary had searched the old cellars at the back of the tenement gardens and found the biggest jam pan any of
them had ever seen. It sat on the hot gas ring while he poured a stack of corn kernels into it. </p>
<p>"What the hell's that?" Jed wanted to know. </p>
<p>"Bird feed."</p>
<p>Ed Kane looked up, eyebrows raised, face all questions. </p>
<p>"It's a long story," Jack said. He bent to the plans that were spread out over the table. </p>
<p>"How long have we got?"</p>
<p>"At least a fortnight," Neil said.</p>
<p>"No, I mean tonight."</p>
<p>"A couple of hours, my mother won't be back until after ten when the bingo comes out, but we have to disappear by
then."</p>
<p>"Doesn't she like you having your mates in?" Ed asked. Neil, like Jack, still stayed at home. </p>
<p>"No, she doesn't give a toss. But she'll be bringing my aunts with her and they'll all have a wee Carlsberg and a
vodka. That's their Friday night treat. Then they all start talking at once, non stop, total marathon earache. You
can stay for that if you want, but I'm telling you man, it's like Chinese water torture. It would drive you
demented."</p>
<p>Neil turned to the pan. "How much of this stuff do you put in?"</p>
<p>"Who knows?" Jack said. "My Grandad feeds it to the pigeons and they don't care. Just make sure you've got plenty.
We've got two hours, so let's get down to it." Jack flattened out the blueprint creases and Ed and Tam leant
over. </p>
<p>"That's the bottling hall," Ed said. Jack recognised the plan from his visit. His eye traced the white lines of the
filling rack where the bottles shunted round on a circular gantry to have the whisky force-injected down their
necks. "Which part do you want?"</p>
<p>"You tell me. I'm guessing here, but it's that big steel tank that holds all the whisky, isn't it?"</p>
<p>Ed agreed. "That's where it's going to be, sure. But it takes three days to get it from the barrels in there. I know,
because I'll be the one rolling them up the ramp and hooking the bungs out. You're talking five hundred barrels,
give or take. Less if they use butts or hogsheads, but it's all got to come out the bunghole."</p>
<p>"Tam should know. He's good at biology."</p>
<p>"Go take a flying f...."</p>
<p>"Anyway, you'll never get it out of there, not if it takes three days to put it in."</p>
<p>"How long does it take to bottle all that lot?"</p>
<p>"Another three. You can only go as fast as they can stick the labels on, but it's all automatic. They've got pressure
pumps, the lot."</p>
<p>Jack sat still for a minute, head in his hands, thinking hard. He turned the blueprint over, closing his eyes to
recall the scene in the decant hall. The next level down from the metal platform they'd stood on was on the next
sheet. He unfurled it and flattened it out, keeping the first one at the side, so they could have a ready
reference. </p>
<p>"This is the important part. That's where Tam comes in."</p>
<p>The tracery of pipes showed up white against the blue. </p>
<p>"You're the expert, you can tell us what's what"</p>
<p>Tam angled his head so he could read the blueprint. </p>
<p>"You got to be joking. I'm a plumber, not a rocket scientist."</p>
<p>Jack sat back, brows down. "Come on, man. You put in central heating, I've seen it. This is just the same thing,
isn't it?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, right." Two positives made a flat negative. "Central heating is ten radiators and a circuit of ten mil copper.
What the hell is this?"</p>
<p>Ed broke in. "You got coolers, drains, blend feeds, washers."</p>
<p>"So which ones are which?"</p>
<p>"Don't you know?"</p>
<p>"How the hell should I know? They're just a lot of squiggly lines."</p>
<p>Jack put his face in his hands. "Get with the program, Tam! What's the point in being a plumber if you don't know
what pipes are for?"</p>
<p>"Where does it say what these bloody pipes are for?" Tam demanded. </p>
<p>Jack patiently tapped the bottom of the blueprint, where a schematic of varying lines matched up with a list. He
looked at Tam: "Great achievements involve the co-operation of many minds - Alexander Graham Bell. First
ensure mind is clear. Then put it in gear. Release the clutch slowly. Proceed with caution."</p>
<p>"Sarcastic prick," Tam said sheepishly. "Right. What have we got?"</p>
<p>"Donny, that last lot of whisky that went down the drain. It came out the south side, right?"</p>
<p>Donny screwed his eyes up, made a left and right signal while he worked out east and west. </p>
<p>"Sure. It came right down the pipe and into the golf course drain, remember? Billy Butler was as mad as a wet
blanket."</p>
<p>"Here, look at these." Jack handed him a set of colour prints that zoomed in to the base of the distillery wall about
fifty yards inside the perimeter fence. </p>
<p>"You never got these done in Boots, did you?"</p>
<p>"It's digital.. Take a look and tell me where the stuff came out."</p>
<p>Donny held the prints up, scanning them one by one. The fourth showed three low down entrances on the wall, each
protected by a small metal grate that was fixed with a padlock. In front of the three little gates was a wide
concrete depression which fed into a drainage grille. </p>
<p>"One of them, but I don't know which one. Does it matter?"</p>
<p>"Sure it matters, and we have to find out. That's not too far from the cooperage, you reckon you could take a swing
past and sniff around."</p>
<p>"Better I do it," Ed said emphatically. "I'll be moving the barrels that way anyway."</p>
<p>"We need those doors off, so it'll take a pair of cutters. We can replace the padlocks. I'm guessing they never get
opened one month to the next."</p>
<p>Ed shrugged and they turned back. </p>
<p>"Does this stuff need sugar or salt?" Neil was getting the kernels ready. </p>
<p>Tam traced the lines with his finger, leaning close to the print. </p>
<p>"That's the big wash drain," Ed said. But you got the floor system as well. Everything gets hosed and then
chlorinated. There's a third one for the washroom."</p>
<p>"How do they get the whisky out for bottling?"</p>
<p>Tam sat up. "There. That's a big pipe. Is it copper or brass?"</p>
<p>Ed shrugged again. "Beats me. I can try and check."</p>
<p>"Good man," said Jack. "We need the specs and then we have to do a divert. That's a whole mess of pipes down there,
so we have to get something in there so they won't notice. We need to get the stuff out of the tank and through that
wall."</p>
<p>"And how are you going to manage that," Tam asked. "It's not just a matter of turning a tap. You'd have to connect
this," he jabbed a finger straight down, "to this. Not easy."</p>
<p>"But you'll manage it, right?"</p>
<p>"How do you mean <em>I'll</em> manage it?"</p>
<p>"You're the technician. We're going to get you in there."</p>
<p>Tam sat up straight, jaw agape. </p>
<p>"You have to be jokin'. "</p>
<p>Ed laughed. "Hey, you know him better than me, and <em>I </em>know he's not joking."</p>
<p>"You trying to get me the jail?"</p>
<p>This time they all laughed, even Neil.</p>
<p>"Tam, if we screw up in this, we'll all end up in jail. I told you, you could lose your shirt. But there's nearly two
million in high tension hooch there, just waiting for somebody smart enough. We can't get it out if we can't get you
in, <em>kapeesh</em>? You know pipes, so you're the man. <em>Plumbermeister</em>."</p>
<p>"Jesus. The last central heating job I did I flooded a woman out. That's nothing compared to this. And where are you
going to be?"</p>
<p>"I'm the man with the plan. I know bugger all about pipes and drains."</p>
<p>"You're bloody cold-hearted crazy Keyser Soze. And just how the hell are you going to get me in there?"</p>
<p>"That's the interesting part," Jack said. "You're really going to love it."</p>
<hr />
<p>Gus Ferguson was up in the far corner of the bar in the Capstan, down near the river quay, well away from the front
door. The Capstan had been an old riverman's bar in the old days, when the barges and puffers brought in coal and
steel for the shipbuilding and herring from Loch Fyne way back before the war, and it still has that kind of
atmosphere; rough and ready, sometimes as rough, as they say hereabouts, as a badger's arse. The wood around the
gantry was blackened by more than a century of plug tobacco smoke. A back door led onto Barley Cobble and any number
of old narrow alleys, so if trouble came in the front, that was the exit for the wanted, the wary, and a variety of
stolen goods.</p>
<p> "What sort of gun was it?"</p>
<p>"How should I know? It went off right next to my ear. What you think? I'm going to ask the make and model?"</p>
<p>"Don't get smart. What did it look like, a revolver? A rifle? Was it a fuckin' shotgun?"</p>
<p>"No. It was one of those James Bond things. Shit, man, I don't know."</p>
<p>"And the shooter, what was he like?"</p>
<p>"He was done up like the bloody IRA, man. Had a fucking balaclava and big biker goggles and he sounded Irish as
well. </p>
<p>"Irish American," Foley chipped in. "a right hard nut an all. You could tell."</p>
<p>"Brilliant. You two tossers were supposed to slap that ginger prick around, give him a sore face and swollen balls
and what happens? You get tanked. Twice. <em>Jesus</em>."</p>
<p>He lifted his whisky. </p>
<p>"That milkman. Jake Lorne. Where's he getting IRA men to fight his battles? Is he connected? I never even knew he was
a Tim."</p>
<p>Cullen shrugged. "We were doin' him. No contest."</p>
<p>"Aye, right, so you were. You got another one in the eye. You don't look like you were getting first prize. What a
pair of tits."</p>
<p>"No, honest. He was down and taking it. We were getting tore in, and then this nutter comes in and pulls out a
shooter and nearly takes my head off with it. He had that barrel jammed in my neck. If he'd have fired it my brains
would have been all over the place"</p>
<p>"What brains? He'd have to be a fucking sharpshooter to hit your fucking brain at point blank."</p>
<p>"Swear to Christ Gus, he wasn't kidding. Then the two of them fuck off on a bike. That's definitely IRA style, innit?
That's how they topped that Irish bird from the paper. You don't mess with these loonies."</p>
<p>"Could have been UDA," Foley observed. "I think Lorne's a proddy."</p>
<p>"He's a fuckin' <em>milkman</em>, for christ's sake," Ferguson was beginning to lose it just a little. Some of the
guys down the far end of the bar looked up. Charlie Neeson started clearing tumblers off the deck, just in case some
hooking and jabbing ensued. A true professional, he got the big towel ready to protect his face from shrapnel.</p>
<p>"A mouth and a milkman, and they've made twats out of you two. And that means they've made one out of me an'all. You
get slapped around, what are folk going to think? You pummel his wee brother, a boy just out of school, couldn't
punch his way out of a wet poke. Very good. Real big hard men."</p>
<p>"It got Lorne going," Cullen said, beginning to laugh. </p>
<p>Ferguson snaked a thick forearm out and his beefy hand grabbed Cullen by the shirt collar. The smile died a
death. </p>
<p>"Aye, that's just what I need, eh? You want folk to think I go around slapping wee boys and getting tanked by their
big brothers? Jesus, I should slice you where you stand, loony tunes. That would fucking show them, and you as well.
You're the talk of the street, the pair of you. You walked into Mac's and they dodged out the back and left you
hanging like limp dicks."</p>
<p> He punctuated his words with hard dunts of his calloused knuckles against Cullen's chin. Cullen's face went bright
red, but he just took it, no chance of him coming against Ferguson. Foley stepped back just in case it all developed
into some serious hitting. He'd put on a clean pair of jeans just that night. </p>
<p>"Daft bastard. What were you going to do in front of a hundred witnesses? You were going straight to the Bar-L in
cuffs, that's what. I ask you do to a job, a bit of slap and tickle, and the pair of you come back like the walking
wounded, like you've been hit by a fuckin' truck."</p>
<p>He shoved Cullen one more time and let go, sending the other man stumbling back into the cigarette machine. It
rattled hard, and for a second Charlie Neeson thought it was going to come off the wall. It wouldn't have been the
first time. He stayed down the far end, polishing a clean glass, seeing nothing at all. </p>
<p>"Right. Stay clear of the pair of them. <em>I'll </em>find out who's who in the fuckin' zoo. Got that?"</p>
<p>Foley nodded. Cullen had barged into him on the way and his wig was slightly askew again. </p>
<p>"I want to know who the shooter was. If it was any of the Corrieside team, then I'll have the fucker. And once I've
found out, I'll sort Lorne out myself. No milkman's going to make a fanny out of me, right?"</p>
<p>Cullen nodded, ready to agree to anything.. </p>
<p>"You stay well away. From here on, you're collecting and delivering, okay?"</p>
<p>They both nodded. </p>
<p>"And if that delivery boy is going to bring hardware against me, he'll wish he'd never been born, IRA or no
<em>IR</em> fucking <em>A</em>." </p>
<hr />
<p>"All we have to do is find out when the decant is," Jack said. "We got three days from the start, maybe four, right
Ed?"</p>
<p>Ed was okay with that. </p>
<p>"Donny, we're going to need some barrels."</p>
<p>"Sure, I can fix you up. Sproat's going to have to sell the stock anyway."</p>
<p>"How will you get them?"</p>
<p>"Same as last year. Remember the river burst its banks? Half the used stock went floating down to the Clyde. Took
weeks to get them back."</p>
<p>"That's okay for you guys," Tam said. "But I still don't know how I'm going to get in there. There's security cameras
and dogs and those loony geese and damn customs men crawling all over the place."</p>
<p>Jack tapped his nose again. "Need to know. But take your tools. And by the way, it's no names after tonight. Neil,
any further forward with the mobiles?"</p>
<p>"Thursday. Friday latest. Paddy says no problem."</p>
<p>"Chargers as well. I don't want the thing going dead on us at the crucial. And I need hands-free stuff as well. Can
Paddy do that?"</p>
<p>"Sure he can. What do you mean no names?" Neil was peering over the pot. An ominous smell of burning fat heated the
air in the kitchen. </p>
<p>"Like Reservoir Dogs. Mr Pink, that's you."</p>
<p>"I'm not bloody Mister Pink."</p>
<p>"And Donny's Ginger minge." Tam burst out laughing. </p>
<p>"And you're Mr Banker."</p>
<p>Tam stopped laughing. "What's that mean?"</p>
<p>"Total wanker," Jack said. The rest of them hoo-hawed. </p>
<p>"No, seriously. Once we get the gear, we need a code. And we have to have some rules."</p>
<p>Neil turned from the big pan, went to Brad Pitt mode<em>: "</em>The first rule of fight club is, you don't talk about
fight club. The second rule of fight club is, you don't talk about fight club."</p>
<p>"Got it in one. We don't mention Aitkenbar, we don't talk about whisky, and if something goes wrong, we don't talk
about <em>anything</em>. First thing the cops do is divide and conquer, pretend your mates have grassed you up.
Don't believe them because if you do, then we're all going down. Everybody must have total amnesia."</p>
<p>"Who said that?" Jed said, going for the laugh.</p>
<p>Jack pulled out his little notebook. He looked at Tam: "You're Harley. Neil, you can be Elvis."</p>
<p>"Uh huh-huh."</p>
<p>Jed waited expectantly. "Bullitt."</p>
<p>"Suits me, boss."</p>
<p>"Donny, you can be Tarzan."</p>
<p>He did the expected yell, beat his chest.</p>
<p>"And what about you?" Tam asked.</p>
<p>"I let my music speak for me. You can call me Retro."</p>
<p>Tam was about to respond when a key rattled at the front door and bustling noises came down the narrow lobby. </p>
<p>"What's that smell?" A woman's voice, throaty with cigarette smoke. "Something's burning in here. <em>Neil!</em>"</p>
<p>"Is your Neil cooking?"</p>
<p>"That'll be the first time. He can't make corn-flakes without burning them." Women's laughter echoed up the hallway
and the door opened. </p>
<p>"Oh hullo boys. Dear me, it's a full house tonight. Are you having a wee party? And Neil, son, what on earth is that
awful smell?"</p>
<p>"Hi Ma, did you win?"</p>
<p>"No son, no luck tonight. Never even got a line. What are you doing, making jam?"</p>
<p>"No. I thought I'd made the boys some sweet corn," Neil said. </p>
<p>"Pop corn," Jack corrected. "Hullo Mrs Cleary. He's practising for Masterchef. We're the judges."</p>
<p>"But it's not working."</p>
<p>The second woman bustled in. "That's awfully nice, cooking for your pals, Neil."</p>
<p>Neil was leaning over the pan and the smoke was beginning to pool around the ceiling light in darker billows. The
smell of burning spread out. </p>
<p>"Neil, are you sure you know.... "</p>
<p>Something exploded in the pan and he jerked back as a white missile whirled over his shoulder. </p>
<p>His mother squealed. </p>
<p>"What in the name of the wee man... ?" The second aunt let out a little yelp and barked her shin on a chair. </p>
<p>Suddenly the whole pan seemed to leap off the stove and the corn simply blasted out in a fountain that crackled like
fireworks. A piece fell into the blue gas flame and flared alight. Neil jerked back in alarm, covering his face and
volcano of popcorn erupted outwards, hitting the ceiling and walls, bouncing off the work surface, and cascading to
the floor. In a few seconds it was almost ankle deep. </p>
<p>Jack and the rest of them ran for the door and left Neil to explain to the squealing women, while the corn torrent
began to pile up on every surface and ricocheted off the walls. </p>
<hr />
<p>Alistair J. Sproat slapped the paper down on the long mahogany desk that had been polished by the fine wool and tweed
elbows of his ancestors for almost two centuries.</p>
<p>"They want have the whole plant listed?"</p>
<p>"No," Jamieson Bell said. "Not the bottling hall and the warehouses."</p>
<p>"But all of the distillery? The malt house, the still-room?"</p>
<p>"And the pot stills themselves. They're a hundred and fifty years old." Jamieson Bell might be the council leader,
but old habits died hard hereabouts. The ship owners and distillerymen always had a finger in the works and though
the shipping was long gone, the Sproats still wielded some power in this town. </p>
<p>"Scottish Heritage could get involved. Almost certainly they <em>will</em> get involved. We've had a request to apply
for listing."</p>
<p>"Which you will no doubt file until this deal is done?"</p>
<p>"If I can. It might not be just as easy."</p>
<p>"I don't understand this, Jamieson. You run the council and you make the decisions. What else is there to know?"</p>
<p>"If it were just a case of getting a request, we could keep it going long enough, but they've gone to the press, and
they've got some muscle."</p>
<p>"Who are <em>they?</em>"</p>
<p>"Charter 1315" Bell said. "A bunch of teachers and academics. Tree huggers and friends of the earth, but they're a
loud bunch of agitators. They took us on a couple of years back over the river rights, and we don't want to go down
that road again if we can help it. They could cause us a lot of trouble in an election year."</p>
<p>"I've forked out for every damned election you've ever faced," Sproat said, finger poking the air in short stabs for
emphasis. </p>
<p>"I know you have." Bell tried placation, "And don't think it's not appreciated, Alistair."</p>
<p>Sproat stared him down, scenting a sell-out. </p>
<p>"The problem is, some people have been researching the Bruce Decree. It could be these Charter people."</p>
<p>"And that's supposed to mean something to me?"</p>
<p>"I'm afraid it could mean a lot. To both of us. You've got your unions set to picket because of the jobs loss, and
Charter 1315 are fighting to have the buildings listed. But the Bruce Decree, that could blow you out of the water."
He raised his drink. "Literally and figuratively."</p>
<p>"I'm all ears," Sproat said. </p>
<p>"Your plan to demolish the distillery and infill in the old harbour basin, that's the real problem."</p>
<p>"Filling that in saves me three million in landfill tax and gains me another three acres, nearly four. What's the
problem?"</p>
<p>"According the decree, after the battle of Bannockburn, Bruce moored his warship in the river basin. As a reward, he
made a royal decree and granted the river and the basin to the people of the town in perpetuity. Allegedly the Bruce
Decree has never been repealed."</p>
<p>"For God's sake. That was seven hundred years ago."</p>
<p>"The chief librarian tells me some people managed to get into the archives. I'm trying to find out how, but they've
got a copy of the old decree charter. Apparently it says the river belongs to the people, and that would include the
harbour."</p>
<p>"And?"</p>
<p>"And unless we find a way of proving that the inlet is not the one Robert the Bruce used, they could have a good
chance of wiping the floor with us. They could hold everything up for years."</p>
<p>"Trust me," Sproat said. "That is <em>not</em> going to happen. This deal goes through in six weeks or we forget it,
and when I say <em>we, </em>I mean <em>us. </em>You included. And I'm telling you, this land has been part of my
family's estate for two hundred years and it still is. My great whatever-times grandfather had them dig the inlet
out to float barrels downstream for export."</p>
<p>"Not according to the archives."</p>
<p>"I don't give a damn about the archives. You make this go away and it will be very much worth your while. Once this
deal is done, I'll be in a very generous mood. What's it going to take?"</p>
<p>"Well, I suppose nothing's impossible, if you've got the will."</p>
<p>"And the incentive," Sproat added, dripping sarcasm. </p>
<hr />
<p>Kate Delaney was still high after the Charter 1315 meeting in the town hall, and he took advantage of it to ask for a
favour. She'd caught up with Jack on his way home with a pile of mail in a haversack slung over a shoulder and
surprised him at the corner of Drymains Street. </p>
<p>"We'll beat them," she said, without preamble. "We've got a team of people working on architectural research. If we
can get the buildings listed, Sproat can't demolish them, and that could halt the whole development."</p>
<p>"As long as you can hold him off for a while anyway."</p>
<p>"But you're off to sea aren't you? Shovelling coal on a lugger."</p>
<p>"It's diesel."</p>
<p>"Never mind what it is. If we can stop the sale of the land, Sproat could be forced to re-think, and that could at
least save the dairy. We've got to try."</p>
<p>He had the bag held tight under his arm and normally he'd be pleased to dawdle up the road with her and maybe
persuade her to invite him in for a coffee or a nightcap. The last time he'd done that she'd got her sketch book out
and done him in pastel and that had ended up in oils the MacLellan Galleries, but now he wanted to get home and get
through the stuff they'd managed to snatch from Tim Farmer's house. He had all the research he needed from the river
boatmen.</p>
<p>It had been dark and the pigeon loft was empty, thanks to the Pigeon Club sense of justice. </p>
<p>"Whose house is this?"</p>
<p>"Doesn't matter. Some old geezer ran away with a woman. He'll be gone for some time."</p>
<p>"You sure?" Ed kept his voice low. </p>
<p>"Maybe he'll peg out on the job. He's pushing seventy."</p>
<p>"Hope I'm still going when I'm that age."</p>
<p>"Hope I'm still going when I'm half that."</p>
<p>"I thought you were already."</p>
<p>"Very funny, Eddy."</p>
<p>Ed searched the bird-hut first, going by feel in the shadows over the door lintel and checking under a couple of
feeder trays. </p>
<p>"People leave their keys in the garden hut most times," he explained. </p>
<p>"How do you know?"</p>
<p>"My cousin was an expert. He got me into a whole heap of shit when I was a kid."</p>
<p>Ed checked a couple of flower pots, but old Tim Farmer had been more careful then than he was now. The house was
secure. </p>
<p>"What now?"</p>
<p>"Shhh... I'm concentrating." Ed had his fingers through the letterbox on the back door, eyes tight closed. Something
knocked against the inside panel. </p>
<p>"Typical," he said. "He must have skinny hands."</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"Letterbox at the back. Nobody gets mail in the back door." Jack's eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark and he
could see Ed smiling in the faint moonlight from a thin crescent in a cobalt sky. He drew his hand out slowly, along
with the braided twine. Metal jangled softly and a mortise key dangled between them.</p>
<p>"Bingo."</p>
<p>The door opened with hardly a creak and they were inside. The kitchen was cold and the still air held a flat scent of
mouldy carrots. They eased through towards the front of the house. Jack flicked on a little maglight, casting a pool
of illumination on the floor at the front door. </p>
<p>"What do you want?" Ed whispered. </p>
<p>"This." Jack was down on his knees, sifting through the pile of mail behind the door. </p>
<p>"Is that all?" Ed stood at the other end of the hallway, peering into the small living room. A row of trophies
glinted along the length of a shelf above the fireplace. "He's got some silver."</p>
<p>"Sure. All of it with his name on it. Let's try and stay out of jail for a while yet. "</p>
<p>Jack was separating the spam from the rest, rejecting all the book offers, the take-away flyers and the pigeon
magazines. </p>
<p>"Here," he said. Ed came down and hunkered beside him, the pair of them kneeling in the faint glow. Jack lifted up a
large manila envelope and focused the flashlight on the address. A post office sticker showed it had been
redirected. </p>
<p>"Sparta D'Angeli? Who are they?"</p>
<p>"The key to our fortune. Ever wanted to be a company director?"</p>
<p>"Sure, wear a suit, fart about all day. And I want to win the lottery an' all."</p>
<p>"Now's your chance. You've just been appointed to the board as director, special projects."</p>
<p>"What do I have to do?"</p>
<p>"More of this." Jack started sorting the mail, moving fast, weeding out Tim Farmer's mail from the envelopes from the
banks in different names. He just watched for the redirect mark and started to build up a small bundle, whispering
to himself as his hands moved. </p>
<p>"What's it for?"</p>
<p>"The only way to get ahead is to set up for your self. Nobody takes you seriously unless you look the part and talk
the talk, know what I mean? <em> </em>And I need this to make Sproat an offer he won't understand. First rule of
business. Get an image and some credibility."</p>
<p>"Just the same as conning folk."</p>
<p>"What's the difference?"</p>
<p>"What offer are you going to make?" Ed's voice was just a whisper. </p>
<p>"I can't tell you yet. I've still got some detail to work out, but you have to think of every eventuality, and I just
want to keep ahead of the game<em>.</em>"</p>
<p>"You really think we can pull this off?"</p>
<p>"It's gone okay so far. You got us in here, didn't you? Anyway as long as we pull most of it off. <em> </em>Then you
have to work out what you do if you don't, and even more important than that, what we do if we <em>do</em>."</p>
<p>"And what will <em>you</em> do?" It was a serious question. Jack experienced a little unreality flip. Here they were,
kneeling behind somebody else's letterbox in the middle of the night, calmly discussing the proceeds of a robbery.
"You say there's a million eight." </p>
<p>"You work it out yourself. No income tax, no VAT. No money back, no guarantee."</p>
<p> "Just like Del Boy. And what about selling it? You going to have to bottle it? "</p>
<p>Jack grinned in the dark. "You think we should use the dairy? That might be an idea!"</p>
<p>"It'll take a long time to shift a zillion bottles." </p>
<p>"Lateral thinking. We have to cut the time down, and I have a plan. But first, it's supply and demand. We have the
supply, we create a demand, and there's always a demand for good scotch. Look what happened during prohibition.
Everybody wanted booze. We have to get ourselves a real- life prohibition scenario."</p>
<p>"Okay, but you'll have the customs on your tail."</p>
<p>"Not me. <em>We</em>. If we don't do this right they'll be all over us like a bad suit. Trick is to think of ways to
do it right. Make them look the other way."</p>
<p>"So now what?"</p>
<p>"We have to start a diversion. So we're going to start a shipping business." Jack turned back to the bundle of mail.
"You have to speculate."</p>
<p>"Hey," he said, lifting up a small brown envelope into the cone of light. "What's this?"</p>
<p>"What's what?"</p>
<p>"A present from Uncle Ernie. Sandy won the premium bonds last month. Fifty notes. This old bugger's won something as
well." He grinned in the dark and stuffed the envelope into his inside pocket. "Finders keepers. I'll say this was
delivered by mistake."</p>
<p>He was just turning to pick up the first bundle when something slammed into the door only inches away from his
head. </p>
<p>"Jesus!" His heart vaulted into his throat and sat there shivering. </p>
<p>"Come out you old bastard," a man's voice bellowed. "I know you're in there."</p>
<p>"Shit! Who's that?" Ed's voice was a harsh shaky whisper, and Jack could almost hear the sudden pulse beat in his
temples. </p>
<p>The door slammed again, making the letterbox flap open and close with a snap. Dust flew. </p>
<p>"Get out here and take what's coming, you geriatric lecher."</p>
<p>"Who the hell is that?"</p>
<p>A heavy boot crashed hard into the bottom panel, sending little splinters spinning into the circle of light. </p>
<p>"Turn it off, for Christ sake."</p>
<p>Jack hit the button and the faint light died. </p>
<p>"I saw you," the voice came again, angry and petulant at the same time. </p>
<p>"It's Gordon McLaren," Jack said. "He's well pissed."</p>
<p>"What does he want?"</p>
<p>"Old Farmer ran away with his missus. He's not happy."</p>
<p>"I know her. She's a torn-faced old slag," Ed whispered. "Who would want her back?"</p>
<p>"No accounting for taste."</p>
<p>The boot hit the door again and threw off more paint splinters. Jack scrabbled back in case the bottom panel came
spinning off. </p>
<p>"He'll have the whole street up."</p>
<p>"That's what I was thinking." He started moving slowly up the hallway. </p>
<p>Two more crashes shivered the door and there was more bawling and shouting, then, outside, a winking blue lit up the
frosted glass at the top of the door. </p>
<p>"Bloody hell," Ed whispered. "It's the busies."</p>
<p>"Get your skanky arse out here and take what's coming," Gordy McLaren sounded as if he was going to burst in to
drunken tears. </p>
<p>"What seems to be the problem here?" The voice was firm, a policeman's tones. </p>
<p>"That old bastard won't come out. "</p>
<p>"Which particular old bastard would that be sir?" PC Douglas Travers came up the path.</p>
<p>"The dirty old shite's been shagging my wife."</p>
<p>"Oh dear sir. That would be a disappointment."</p>
<p>"I want him out here to sort it out. Sort <em>him</em> out."</p>
<p>Jack and Ed sat dead still on the bottom stair. </p>
<p>"Not a good idea sir." A powerful flashlight beamed through the living room window, sending silver highlight
reflections from the line of pigeon club trophies. "And there seems to be nobody home."</p>
<p>"There is. I saw a light behind the door. The old bastard's hiding."</p>
<p>Footsteps thudded on the outside and then the knocker rapped four times in quick succession. </p>
<p>"It's the police, Mr Farmer. You're quite safe."</p>
<p>The flashlight pierced the darkness of the hallway and they jerked to the side, in against a couple of coats hanging
from hooks. </p>
<p>"Jesus!" Ed's whisper was just like a prayer. </p>
<p>The knocker rapped again and then a two-tone tubular bell chimed only inches from Jack's left ear. He jumped like a
cat. </p>
<p>"Sit quiet man!" Ed's stayed still as stone. </p>
<p>"The old man's away abroad." A woman's voice broke in.</p>
<p>"Is he hell. The old shite's in there with my wife."</p>
<p>"Come on sir. Let's go down the station and get this sorted out."</p>
<p>"Are you arresting me?" the voices were fainter now, down at the end off the path. </p>
<p>"No sir."</p>
<p>"Well go fuck yourself then." The footsteps thudded up the path again and then a weight hit the door with such a
clatter that it almost came right off its hinges. </p>
<p>"Right, get him."</p>
<p>"He'll knock the door in," Ed said. "We'd better shift."</p>
<p>Outside, the shouting got louder. The pair of them got off the stair and into the kitchen, closing the door behind
them. </p>
<p>"They'll come round here any minute," Jack said. He opened the back door. Round the front, somebody was bawling at
the top of his voice and they assumed it was Gordon McLaren. Another weight hit the front door again and Jack said a
silent prayer that the glass would stay intact. He had more mail to collect.</p>
<p>They came out into the dark of the back garden while round the front, the men's voices were getting louder and a
woman's had joined in. There was no way they could get to the front gate again, and lights were now coming on in the
neighbouring houses. </p>
<p>"Which way?"</p>
<p>"There," Jack pointed. A big lattice fence stretched from the pigeon hut to the neighbouring garden. It was six feet
high and in front of it, some dark shrubs huddled together. Jack slung the mail in his haversack and clipped the
flap shut and then the two of them took a run at the fence. Ed hit it with one foot raised, intending to clamber
over the top, but his other foot got caught in the thorns of the shrubs and he fell forward. His weight careered him
over the shrubs, slammed him into the thin lattice and the whole fence buckled and cracked from top to bottom with a
sound like a gunshot. Ed slipped, hit the dirt. Round the front the noises suddenly stopped. </p>
<p>"Damn!" Jack was up and half-way over the swaying fence. The flashlight flickered round the side and sent a bright
beam up the path. </p>
<p>"Come on!" he was balanced there, swaying, but he managed to reach down, get a hand to Ed's collar, and hauled him
over. Ed scrabbled up, tumbled over to the other side, falling heavily and a big bamboo cane jammed right up the
crack of his backside. He let out a little squeak of surprise and pain and then the two of them were over, through
the withered chrysanthemums and hollyhock, out the gate at the far side and running hell for leather down Swanson
Street. </p>
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<h1>9</h1>
<p>They stowed Tam Bowie in a big oak barrel. It was the only way to get him inside Aitkenbar Distillery, and he was not
at all happy..</p>
<p>Things had happened so fast it all seemed to go in a blur of urgency and motion. Kate had stopped Jack on his way
home with the mail from Tim Farmer's house just after Ed peeled away, and his heart was still thudding hard from the
adrenaline hit of near miss. </p>
<p>"You should come in with us," she said. "If we stop Sproat, then it can maybe save the dairy, and you'll have a job
again."</p>
<p>"I quit," he said. "For good. No more running around for somebody else, working before anybody's awake. It's time for
me to move on and up."</p>
<p>"In the hold of a lugger?"</p>
<p>"It's a supply ship. There's big business out on the north sea. It's the last frontier."</p>
<p>"It's the last place you want to boldly go." Her expression couldn't hide the disappointment. "So what about Charter
group? Are you not interested in helping the town?"</p>
<p>He laughed out loud and she looked up at him, a little hurt, more annoyed. </p>
<p>"What's so funny?"</p>
<p>"This town just puts its head under its wing and goes to sleep. You said it yourself. That Millennium Wall just shows
that this town hasn't got the bottle or the stamina and it just doesn't care. People like Sproat have the council in
their pockets and they do what they want. To hell with the rest of us."</p>
<p>"That's why it's important to stop them now!"</p>
<p>"You think you have a chance?" She didn't know about the conversations he'd had with his Uncle Sandy.</p>
<p>"Yes, I do, really I do. And only because some people are getting off their backsides to do something, rather than
just accept what's been done to them."</p>
<p>He stopped and leant against a lamp post. She folded her arms and looked up at him, hair glinting like hot metal in
the helium glow. </p>
<p>"I'm not doing nothing," he said.</p>
<p>"Sure. You've got a <em>plan</em>."</p>
<p>"I'm working from the other end." He had to tell her something. "These boys from Dunvegan, they're bringing down a
bunch of pickets from Skye. They've called the press and I said I'd help them out, them and Donny and Ed Kane."</p>
<p>"I don't know why you spend so much time with that wild bunch," she said, changing tack. "They'll hold you back."</p>
<p>"Elitist," he said, but he kept it light.</p>
<p>"Great phrase for a milkman." She was angering a little, exasperated. "You've got a chance to improve your lot, show
them what you're really made of, and you plan to throw it away."</p>
<p>"What's it to you?" He was riling her and she knew it.</p>
<p>"I'd rather see you fly than see you sink. Of all the people I know, you could do it Jack. You really could. You were
wasted in that dairy and you'll be ruined on a lugger."</p>
<p>She reached up and knuckled his forehead. "There's a good brain in there. Don't waste it Jack. Honestly, you could be
whatever you want."</p>
<p>"And I still will. Anyway, I know all about the Bruce Decree. My uncle and his pals in the boat club did some
research at the library. If anybody can stop Sproat, these old boys can."</p>
<p>She pulled back, surprised. "You never told me that."</p>
<p>"You never asked. Anyway, I need a favour. I want to hire your talent."</p>
<p>"What makes you think it's for hire?"</p>
<p>"Art for arts sake, you said. Money for god's sake."</p>
<p>This time she laughed and he knew he had diverted her. He wasn't in the mood for an argument, even though he admired
the way she was so quick to burn hot. </p>
<p>"What makes you think you can afford the likes of me, Mr Lorne?"</p>
<p>"I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. I need some artwork."</p>
<p>"What's it for?"</p>
<p>"To have a go at Sproat."</p>
<p>"Well, if you'd said. I'm very reasonable."</p>
<p>"Who ever told you that?" He pushed away from the lamp post. "Come on. I'll walk you home and show you what I
need."</p>
<p>He turned around and she slinked a hand round his arm and it made him feel good, even though he hadn't exactly told
the truth. </p>
<hr />
<p>Donny Watson had fixed the hogshead. He might have been half daft, according to Kate Delaney, but he could work wood
and he worked it good. It was solid oak and built up from spare staves from old Amontillado sherry casks that had
been dismantled and re-cut, bound with new iron hoops and end-panel flats. </p>
<p>The cooperage was the weak link in Aitkenbar Distillery's security. Jack had sat up on the knoll on the day after
Andy Kerr had drawn his short straw, watching the proceedings through the old field binoculars, taking zoom shots
with the little Minolta camera Neil's brother had sold him. Here, close by the river, busy flocks of goldfinch
fluttered and argued in the hazels and a lone wren, tiny and perfect, whirred back and forth on blurred wings to a
moss nest woven into the upturned roots of an alder. It had been difficult to concentrate on the job in hand, but he
forced himself to it.</p>
<p>The barrel store was closer to the harbour basin than the rest of the distillery, on the flat low ground bordering
the inlet that filled up to the slate flagstones at high tide, even through it was almost a mile up from the river
mouth. The bottling plant was to the west and Jack could identify the various sections from the shape of the roofs.
His notebook lay open on his knee, with the little sketch plan of the bottling hall and the stillroom and the big
decant tank, roughed out in pencil, with prison-garb arrows to indicate what was where. </p>
<p>The tank filling hall was furthest from the river, built on higher ground where the land rose close to the railway
line that once delivered the grain directly along the spur, crossing the dip in the road that swooped under the iron
bridge. From there the whole plant was cut off from the rest of the world, not like the cooperage which was bounded
on two sides by a chain link fence, but by a solid iron affair with triple top-spikes to discourage the reckless.
The geese marched up and down the grass behind the fence, honking at anything that moved within vision, or pausing
to feed on the scattered grain. Jack took a picture of the fence around the cooperage where the dark barrels were
stacked in rows five high. A couple of men shunted around on fork-lifts. At lunch-time, a group came out for a
kick-about and two men ambled over to the fence where it was shaded by the trees, surreptitiously drew dark bottles
from their overalls and pushed them through a hole into the undergrowth beyond. </p>
<p>They got Tam in at the lunch break, through the same hole a week later. Jed widened it with a big pair of bolt
cutters, snipping the links right down at the bramble level, just enough for Tam and his toolbox to slither through.
It was overcast now, threatening a summer downpour and Tam's face was as grey as the sky. </p>
<p>"I'm losing a day's wages," he complained, but that wasn't what bothered him. This was the first big risk. This was
the start.</p>
<p>"You have to speculate to accumulate," Jack told him. "Check the phone."</p>
<p>Paddy Cleary had come up with the goods just the night before and they had to move fast because they had to get in
and get things sorted before the decant. If they missed that, they missed everything. Jack heard it first from
Margery Burns and he hoped nobody else found out about that or he'd be dead in the water in so many ways. </p>
<p>She'd been at the bar in the Castle Bowling Club and the beer had gone down a treat. The boatmen had stagged the
function room and then once the drink had started flowing, they'd opened it up to women members, using Sandy's cream
liqueur as an enticement and some of the old duffers were three sheets to the wind by half past nine. Jack had
helped load Willie McIver's van with the crates of Irish stout and lager in bottles of every shape and size and when
they were uncorked, the place really did smell like a brewery. Sandy insisted he had a beer and he took a stout that
had sat in Willie's cooler in the garage for the weekend and Jack couldn't believe how much it had improved with
age. </p>
<p>He had promised to go down and see Neil and the girls in the Starlight show where they were trying an ambitious
version of Shop of Horrors, but it was only Wednesday and he'd some things to work out and needed the time to
himself. If he turned up there, Kate would nab him and take him backstage where she had designed and painted all the
flats and then she'd give him more earache about going to sea with big Lars Hanssen. </p>
<p>As it turned out, Margery Burns was worth her weight in gold and he didn't even have to push it. She had short,
shiny-blonde hair that looked as if it had only minor assistance from a bottle and very good legs that she took no
precautions to hide. She must have been going on forty five, but could have traded at a good handful less than that.
Jack had pulled away from the boat club gang when the speakers had started belting out the fifties rock and jive and
the old biddies started to believe they could still throw themselves about the way they used to. </p>
<p>He moved up to the bar and Harry Conroy who had the license for the place gave him the nod. </p>
<p>"Bad news at the dairy." </p>
<p>"Bad news all round," Jack said. "This'll be like the saloon in Deadwood."</p>
<p>Harry laughed. The club didn't take passing trade, so business would go on.</p>
<p>"Better that than competing against your Uncle," Harry said. "That devil's brew could wipe us all out."</p>
<p>The woman at the end of the bar spoke up. </p>
<p>"You work in the dairy?"</p>
<p>"Until Friday," Jack said. He hadn't seen her, but as soon as he looked up he recognised her. She'd been married to
councillor Ronnie Burns, still was, despite the fact that he'd moved in with one of the council secretaries. Jack
wondered how Jed Cooper had managed to pull her. </p>
<p>"So you'll be another victim of the great A.J. Sproat master plan."</p>
<p>"One of many," Jack said. Harry turned away and began pouring for somebody else and Jack moved along a little. </p>
<p>"And you work in the distillery, right?"</p>
<p>"For the next six weeks," she said. "Then we're all expendable, even his PA."</p>
<p>"I thought you office staff had a chance of new work."</p>
<p>"So you'd have thought. That's not part of the plan."</p>
<p>She was about to go on when a mobile phone rang inside her bag and she fished it out. Jack pretended not to listen.
She spoke quickly, short sentences and then disappointment registered clearly on her face. </p>
<p>"Damn," she said. "I've just been stood up. And by a woman." Jack had guessed that already. </p>
<p>"It's happened to me millions of times," he said, making light, and gave Harry a signal to give him another beer and
a gin and tonic for the lady. They segued into a conversation about what a bastard Sproat was and how he had let
down the whole town and how it would be nice to get a come-uppance. He offered her another drink and she told him
she was driving and was about to lift her handbag when she paused. </p>
<p>"Listen. I was having dinner with my sister and she'd had to cancel. I've still got a table booked. You want to have
a bite and have a moan about the bastards of this world?"</p>
<p>It was as easy as that. He paused just enough then shrugged and then they were gone before his uncle came out. It was
just a small restaurant at Barloan Harbour where the old canal tipped itself through the lock and into the Clyde,
nothing fancy and not expensive. They had pasta. </p>
<p>"You're Sandy Bruce's nephew," she said. "You're like him."</p>
<p>"But younger."</p>
<p>"That's a plus. He had a thing for my mother, so I'm told, or vice versa."</p>
<p>"She wouldn't have been the only one, so I'm told. Does that make us related?"</p>
<p>"God, I hope not," she said and she laughed out loud and it took another five years off her in a split second. </p>
<p>Jack had steered the conversation round to the Charter group and the plan to stymie Sproat's pull-out and she said
she'd contribute to the cause any time. </p>
<p>"Men. They think they own the world." It came out in a bitter snap. </p>
<p>"Some of them do," he said. "Glad I'm just a boy."</p>
<p>She raised her eyebrows and gave him a look. </p>
<p>"I'm just waiting for the third thing to happen. Life can be shit when you get dumped twice in the one year."</p>
<p>"Twice?" he tried to look innocent. She saw through it. </p>
<p>"You know what I mean. But I need that job and that little chinless shit couldn't give a damn. Once the big
bottling's done on the sixth, the place will be closed in eight weeks."</p>
<p>"The sixth?" Jack's brain did a very fast calculation. His forkful of pasta was poised half-way and stayed
there. </p>
<p>"You look surprised."</p>
<p>"I thought it was earlier."</p>
<p>"They have to get the last shipment from Dunvegan and they're gone. <em>We're</em> gone. After fifteen years that's a
real slap in the face."</p>
<p>"I know a few guys who want to have a go at Sproat."</p>
<p>She raised her eyes. "How are they going to do that?"</p>
<p>"They're working on something. To do with the old charter. They're well pissed off at what he's doing."</p>
<p>"They're not the only ones. Fifteen years I worked for him. Where am I going to get a job?"</p>
<p>"There could be a job in it at the end of the day. . . " Jack just let that dangle.</p>
<p>"What would I have to do?"</p>
<p>"Nothing much. Just keep an eye on a couple of things. It would be very worth while."</p>
<p>She looked at him straight in the eye and then slowly reached a hand across the table and placed it gently on
his. </p>
<p>"And you think you could make it worth my while?"</p>
<p>She squeezed his fingers, still holding his eyes level with hers. Her touch was smooth and warm. Jack gulped. His
throat was suddenly dry.</p>
<p>"I can be very helpful," she said, letting a lazy smile spread. It spelled mischief. "When I want to be. Why don't
you get us another gin and see if we can work something out?" </p>
<hr />
<p>The phone chirruped a high warbling note. A starling in a high elm mimicked a passable repetition before Jack
answered. </p>
<p>"Hello?" He was only ten feet from Tam but despite the closeness the phone crackled in his ear. Neil had only managed
to get the mobiles that morning and swore blind he'd had them on charge since breakfast. </p>
<p>"These things better work," Jack said. "Hello?"</p>
<p>"I can hear you," Tam said. He was wearing a set of green overalls that made him look just like any of the other
warehousemen at Aitkenbar. All of his tools were wrapped in an old blanket - to deaden the sound - and stuffed into
a huge hold-all. </p>
<p>"Okay, smartarse. Speak through the damn phone." Jack squeezed down on the tension. This was the only chance they
would get at this and if they blew it today, they might as well all troop down and sign on the dole. </p>
<p>Tam laughed, high and girlish, and they all knew he was nervous as hell. Ed gave them a quick hand-signal from the
far side of the fence, way over at the corner of the bottling block. Donny was out of sight, but well primed. </p>
<p>"Hello, hello, who's your lady friend?" He sang it. </p>
<p>"<em>Jesus</em>, keep it down!" Jack could hear him in the earpiece, but the static was like sand shifting on a flat
shore. "Okay, it's not great, but you're on. You got the number?"</p>
<p>"I pasted it on the back," Neil said. </p>
<p>"Okay." He clasped his hands together, cupping them into a hollow and blew into the space between his thumbs. It made
a summer sound of woodpigeons in the trees. Right away a woodpigeon above them called back and Tam laughed again,
tight with apprehension. Ed lifted a hand and came away from the corner, tapping a plastic football with his toe. A
hundred yards away, a group of workers were kicking another ball about, interested only in running themselves ragged
for the scant hour. Jed got the bolt cutters and worked them fast, scissoring through the wire links, unzipping them
from the ground up. Neil bent to it and forced the edges apart. </p>
<p>"Right. Showtime." Jack clapped Tam on the back. "You up for this?"</p>
<p>"Can I back down?"</p>
<p>"Can you hell. Stay cool and this will go like clockwork."</p>
<p>Ed kicked the ball. He was halfway from the corner, dribbling it as he walked, and when he got to the grass verge, he
swung hard and lofted it into the air. They all watched it sail up. Ed's face was a picture. He was supposed to tap
the ball in at the corner of the fence, where the elm hung over the triple barbed line, but the miss-kick sent it
right over the fence and into the trees. </p>
<p>"Shit!" They all heard it from the shadows of the undergrowth. Above them two woodpigeons exploded into flight and
went clattering away. </p>
<p>"Where it is?" They were all craning their necks. </p>
<p>"What a duffer," Tam said. Jack groaned a string of curses. The ball was wedged in a fork ten feet above their
heads. </p>
<p>"What do I do now?" Tam looked as if he'd won a reprieve. The plan was for him to come out from the shadow, kicking
the ball, looking nonchalant. Jed didn't wait. He dropped the cutters, started shinning up the tree and managed to
get along to the fork. The ball looked like a big white egg. Jed knuckled it out of its wedge and it came tumbling
through the thin branches. Tam grabbed it. His hands were shaking. </p>
<p>"Stay cool," Jack told him, clapped a hand to his shoulder, turned him round, and shoved him towards the gap. As soon
as he was through, Neil and Jed started stitching the hole up with thin wire so that the cut ends wouldn't show, and
then pushed some thick bramble runners around it to discourage closer inspection. </p>
<p>Tam crawled through, got to his feet, slung the green bag over his shoulder on the opposite side from the playing
men, then tapped the ball out. </p>
<p>"Sorry about that," Ed said. </p>
<p>"You'll never get off the subs bench." He kicked the ball to Ed and they went across to the corner, just as Donny
came rolling the hogshead round from the cooperage. That part worked just like clockwork. Jack breathed out a long
slow breath. It had all started now and the clockwork was ticking. There was nothing for it but to wait and
watch. </p>
<hr />
<p>Jed Cooper got in through the back toilet window at the dairy. It was filled with echoes and shadows and very
different from the bustle of the early morning when the vans were loaded, or the afternoon when the bottling
operation made the place shake, rattle and roll. It was still and hollow and somehow haunted. He shivered. He
thought he could walk this place blindfold, but in the dark of night it was all different. </p>
<p>He closed the window behind him, just in case, and wished Jack had come with him instead of sitting in the little
tent on the far side of the knoll. It was all in Jack's head, the whole plan, or most of it anyway, so everybody had
things to do. Jed was the only one skinny enough to get through the little vent window and that was fair enough. He
still wished Jack or one of the others had come with him, instead of just handing him a copy of the key that he'd
picked up from christ knew where. Jack was playing it pretty close to his chest. Jed knew he'd been wasted on the
milk round, but Jack always did it his way. Now they were <em>all</em> doing it Jack's way, and Jack <em>still</em>
played it close to his chest. </p>
<p>The washroom door squealed in protest when he eased it open and the high sudden sound made his heart kick like a
scared rabbit. </p>
<p>"Fuck this," he muttered aloud and his echo hissed back at him. It was creepy, somehow damp and the smell of chlorine
from the floor wash hung in the air. Strange that out on the stock track Jed was scared of nothing at all, doing
eighty in a souped-up Skoda shell, ramping around the dirt with tons of old rolling stock trying to mow him down,
while here, on his own in the dark, the unfamiliarity of the daytime familiar made him nervous as a cat. </p>
<p>Andy Kerr's office was at the other side of the bottling hall and Jed made his way past the gantry that shuttled the
bottles down to the filler. In the night it was like the inside of the <em>Nostromo</em> in Alien, all angles and
points of faint brightness where the metal edges picked up moonbeams through the skylight. Jed cut across, going
more by memory than sight, alert for any sound. </p>
<p>The office door was locked and when he tried it, the key protested and stuck and it took him a deal of manoeuvring
and jiggling to get it to turn. Inside it smelt of Andy's thick plug tobacco. A coat hung from a hook behind the
desk and for a moment it looked like a floating entity. Jed pulled back before his eyes adjusted to this dark and
realised what it was. He cursed again and made his way to the big filing cabinet, using Jack's tiny maglight to
search for what he wanted. </p>
<p>Ten minutes later he was on his way out again, creeping past the lines towards the far door. He was halfway through
the loading bay when a faint noise stopped him in mid stride and he turned, holding his breath, eyes wide for any
movement, wondering if he'd been seen climbing in the half-light. He held still until a pulse started pounding in
his temples and he realised his breath was still backed up and he had to let it all out. He turned quickly in the
dark, too quickly and crashed straight into a pile of crates stacked at the doorway. Little stars swirled and a
balloon of pain swelled where his nose had hit the corner of the crate. For a second the column swayed back and
forth and his breath backed up again. He stumbled forward, eyes watering, and his shoulder hit the stack just on the
out-sway. Jed stumbled to the left and the column of crates continued to the right. He grabbed for it and snatched
only air and the top crate flipped off, throwing the empty bottles outwards. </p>
<p>They hit the floor in a crash of exploding glass that rose to a sudden crescendo in the hollow of the loading bay.
. </p>
<p>"Fuck!" The expletive was drowned out by a deafening crash that reverberated from wall to wall. Glass shattered and
scattered all across the floor. A thick shard flipped through the air and caught his ankle and he felt a strange
cold trickle into his shoe. </p>
<p>The wave of sudden sound flared and then faded into a musical tinkling. By this time Jed's hands were shaking so
badly he wasn't sure he'd be able to climb out of the window. He got to the washroom and hauled himself up onto the
line of washbasins and forced the half-light open again, listening out for any hint that the crashing of broken
glass had been heard, fully expecting the wail of a siren approaching from across town. He was half-way out when he
remembered what he'd forgotten and cursed non stop for a minute with hardly a repetition, before easing himself down
again and back through the whole route to Andy's office. He unshipped two keys from the dozen on the hook board,
replaced them with a pair he had in the pocket of his jeans and then had to make his way back through one more time.
They needed those keys just in case.</p>
<p>By the time he got out into the fresh air again, a faint summer rain had begun to fall and dawn was slicking the low
east sky. </p>
<hr />
<p>Tam Bowie never even got to see the dawn. </p>
<p>He kicked the ball to Ed and tried to look casual as they walked across the grass towards the corner of the decant
hall. Jack watched them go, knowing it all depended on Tam now. And Donny and Ed. Damn, it depended on every one of
them and if Jed found out he'd come sneaking out of Margery Burns' house at the time he'd normally be getting up to
deliver milk, it could get down to some serious hooking and dodging, even if nothing had happened. And if Kate found
out, then that would be the and of any ambition in that direction, and he really needed Kate Delaney as much as he
needed Margery Burns in the big plan. He shucked those thoughts away, knowing Jed had to get in and get what he
needed from the creamery because since Saturday and his final pay-packet, the doors and the high sliding gates were
closed to himself. </p>
<p>They sat still while the men played football and Tam and Ed reached the corner and the timing came together
perfectly. It just couldn't have been better. Donny came up from the cooperage, rolling the big hogshead on its
convex curve, one-handed with ease of practise, and flipped it through a gap between the stacks of barrels, close to
where one of the red fork-lifts stood idle. Jack watched through the binoculars, thinking of all the things that
could have gone wrong, like Ed kicking the ball out of sight, or one of the other men lofting their ball into the
same patch of scrub and them all having to scramble for cover. That hadn't happened and Tam and his tools were
across there and now they were out of sight. He breathed out and opened his little notebook. </p>
<p>"Okay, so far so good. I just hope he's half the plumber he cracks himself up to be."</p>
<p>He jammed the mobile into his pocket and they all pulled back from the fence once the edges had been zipped together
and waited under the trees, not far from the inlet on the river that would soon be filled up and sold, if Alistair
Sproat had his way. </p>
<p>Donny left the big hogshead on its side until the pair of them came round to the lee of the wall, and into the little
hollow passage between stacks. </p>
<p>"Is this it?" Tam looked at the barrel with a measuring eye. </p>
<p>"No, it's one I just found a minute ago."</p>
<p>"Don't get sarcastic."</p>
<p>"Don't get stupid. It's taken me three days to get this right."</p>
<p>"Right guys," Ed said. "We can stand here and argue or we can get on with this before the whistle blows."</p>
<p> Donny pulled out a small monkey wrench and stuck the shaft end into a shallow depression in the end panel. Ed kept
watch, but at this time of the day, there was nobody around, and all the security cameras were up at the front of
the building. Donny pushed anti-clockwise and the whole panel turned quite easily before it gave a little pop and
sprung upwards. He pulled it clear and they all looked inside."</p>
<p>"Neat," Ed said. Donny had worked a screw thread right round the edge of the barrel. The inside plate had a
two-handed bar that could be used to twist the plate open or closed. </p>
<p>"There's two holes for air, and that's plenty," Donny said. "They look just like knots in the wood. And look, I built
you a bench seat. All home comforts. "</p>
<p>"There's not much room in there," Tam said. </p>
<p>"Think yourself lucky they're using hogsheads. Barrels would be a real tight fit. Come on, we've not got much time.
Get in."</p>
<p> Tam got a leg over the rim while Ed put his hands together to form a stirrup to help him up and in two seconds Tam
was standing inside. </p>
<p>"Still not much room," he complained. Ed handed him the bag of tools and pushed down on his shoulders, making him sit
on the little shelf bench. It left very little room to manoeuvre.</p>
<p>"Check the time," Ed said and Tam did, making sure the face lit up when he pressed the button. "It's okay." Donny
lifted the lid and Ed forced Tam's head down and then the end panel was screwing down. In another two minutes, it
just looked like a normal sixty-gallon keg.</p>
<p>"Check the handle," Donny said. </p>
<p>"Jesus. I can't move." Tam's voice was muffled and indistinct, but too still far too loud. </p>
<p>"Shoosh man. What's the problem?"</p>
<p>"It's too tight. I can't breathe."</p>
<p>"What's wrong with him?" Ed asked. </p>
<p>"I'm claustrophobic!" The word came clear enough through the little breathing hole. They could hear Tam sucking hard
for air. </p>
<p>"Why the hell didn't you tell us?"</p>
<p>"I never bloody knew. Jees man. I got a cramp in my leg. I'm going to suffocate in here."</p>
<p>"No you won't. Just take deep breaths."</p>
<p>"Deep breaths of what?"</p>
<p>"What a panic merchant!" Donny looked around. Tam was still sucking air through the hole. Donny grinned, turned to Ed
and then learned back against the barrel and let out a watery fart right on the level with the airhole. Ed doubled
up in silent laughter. </p>
<p>"You ginger prick." Tam's claustrophobia seemed to vanish. "When I get out of this I'm going to wring your neck."</p>
<p>The pair of them erupted while Tam banged on the inside and Donny kept the monkey wrench in the slot to make sure he
didn't try an early exit. Finally the noise subsided. </p>
<p>"Are you going to behave, or do you want more of the same?"</p>
<p>"Okay, okay. Just keep that arse's arse away."</p>
<p>Ed went for the fork-lift and Donny tipped the keg up. The tines went underneath and Ed backed out of the bay. He
swivelled, winked at Donny and then hustled for the big blue shutter door. Donny followed round, keeping the truck
between him and the footballers and Ed paused it just beside the three little hatches on the wall. Donny took the
spare cutters and snipped the padlocks one by one and replaced them with new matching brass ones, before peeling
away and back round to the cooperage. </p>
<p>It was now up to Tam and Ed.</p>
<p> The whine of the engine in the forklift truck sent a sympathetic vibration through the keg, enough to rattle Tam's
teeth together and the shiver made the tight wad of tools jangle, despite the deadening insulation. </p>
<p>It was pitch black and only seconds after the lid screwed down, the air got hot and thick. Tam jammed his face up
against the little hole and sucked. It was so tight in here that he couldn't move his hands, and the big bag of
tools clamped into his lap prevented any movement at all. It gave him the trapped sensation he always felt when he
woke up after a good drink, lacquered with sweat and knotted in damp clinging sheets. </p>
<p>"<em>What am I doing here</em>?" The question popped into the front of his mind and stayed there. </p>
<p>Just what the hell <em>was</em> he doing here?</p>
<p>It was okay for Donny Watson and Ed. They worked in the place. But if he was caught inside Aitkenbar, that was
breaking and entering. Conspiracy. Worse even. And he <em>had</em> a job to lose. </p>
<p>The air thickened and got clammier and Tam braced himself against the sides of the barrel while he slipped a hand
inside the toolkit and rummaged for a piece of plastic piping. He drew out a two foot length and felt in the dark
for the air-hole and forced the end into it. Cool air flowed in. </p>
<p>The fork-lift trundled round the corner, straightened and rolled on over the old cobbles, vibrating hard enough to
make his molars clash. </p>
<p>"Slow it up, Ed," he called out, but the trundling rumble drowned him out.</p>
<p>Finally the motion stopped. Tam took two breaths, listening for the motor to start up again. </p>
<p>"Where are you going with that?" It came faintly, but he heard it clear enough through the other air-hole. </p>
<p>"They sent it round from the cooperage," Ed explained to the unseen voice. "They said they needed another
hoggie."</p>
<p>"Get it later Ed. Take the truck round and pick up half a dozen pallets for the bottling hall. "</p>
<p>Tam held his breath and listened intently. Suddenly the was a fierce bump and the whole barrel rocked violently. </p>
<p>"Shit!"</p>
<p>"Keep quiet," Ed grated from close in. "I'll be back in a minute."</p>
<p>"What's happening?"</p>
<p>"Shut up and stay still."</p>
<p>The barrel rocked again and the lower lip cracked against the ground, but it was still upright. </p>
<p>"What's going on? Ed?. . . . ED?"</p>
<p>There was no reply. </p>
<p>From over by the scrub behind the fence, they could see the carefully prepared plan was all going catastrophically
wrong. </p>
<p>"Who's that?" Jed craned to see through the brambles. </p>
<p>"Billy Butler," Jack said, almost a whisper. "The plant manager. What the hell does he want?"</p>
<p>They watched as Ed clambered off and tilted the barrel on the tines of the lifter and then eased it, still upright,
onto the ground. Jack clenched his teeth and discovered his nails were pressing into the palms of his hands. </p>
<p><em>Stay cool. </em>That's what he'd told Tam. He had to do the same himself. <em>Stay cool and hope for the best and
pray that it's not all over before it's even begun. </em></p>
<p>Ed reversed the lifter and then trundled away towards the corner leaving the barrel on its end just at the big blue
shutter door. Billy Butler made a pantomime of checking his watch and then gave a whistle to the men on the sloping
grass. </p>
<p>"You men want to play football for the rest of the day?"</p>
<p>One of them shrugged and even at this distance you could read plenty in the body language. They had six weeks left to
work and they were all on protective redundancy notice. A couple of minutes here and there would make no difference
at all. You could even see in Billy's posture that he was going through the motions. He wasn't bad as gaffers
went. </p>
<p>"Come on men, we might as well just get on with it. Shift that hoggie for me. Put it in the stack with the rest of
them."</p>
<p>Two of the men in green overalls got their hands to the keg just as Ed came round the corner with a stack of wooden
pallets balanced on the forks. He came round doing thirty, just about the top speed the little truck could make, and
a whole lot faster than anybody ever travelled here at Aitkenbar. The pile of pallets swayed alarmingly as Ed tried
to get back to Tam before the rest of them started to pull and haul. </p>
<p>He tried his best, but in his haste to reach the hogshead first, the speed was just a little too much and as he
turned in at the shutter, the angle was so tight that Billy Butler had to jump back or lose his toes. Over at the
fence they heard him bawl. </p>
<p>"Slow that thing down. You think you're Michael bloody Schumacher?"</p>
<p>Ed jammed on the brake right on the turn and if the pallets had been secured, everything would have been fine, but
they weren't and when he stopped, they kept on travelling. </p>
<p>"Fuck sake Ed!" Billy bawled, and then the rest of them were scattering as the pile slipped forward in a slow
avalanche and clattered to the cobbles. </p>
<p>The phone rang just as Jack clapped a hand to his brow, unable to believe the farce that was unravelling his plan
only forty yards away. For a couple of seconds, the mobile chirruped its little bird-like call and it took that time
for them to realise it was actually ringing. Jack finally connected and snatched the thing out of his pocket. </p>
<p>"Who the hell. . . . hello?"</p>
<p>"What's going on? Is that you Jack?"</p>
<p>"Who is this?"</p>
<p>"It's Tam, you bam. What in the name of Christ is happening, man?"</p>
<p>"Jesus Tam, would you just sit still? I said we had to have radio silence." </p>
<p>"He's gone and dumped me."</p>
<p>"Well they're coming back right now. Over and out."</p>
<p>Jack switched off. Jed looked at him, chuckling. "Over and out? What is this, Memphis Belle? Roger wilco Ginger!
What's your vector Victor?"</p>
<p>"Piss off." Jack was back up at the fence, peering through. </p>
<p>Tam heard the clatter of pallets and some shouting and then the silence as the phone went dead. He took another
breath through the tube and then the whole world just flipped over and his head hit hard against the hard oak staves
and a sharp pain flared in the dark. </p>
<p>"What was that?"</p>
<p>"What was what?"</p>
<p>He was on his back and the big bag of tools thudded right down onto his stomach, knocking all the wind out. </p>
<p>"Just get that inside and a stack it. Ed, what are you playing at?"</p>
<p>"Sorry Billy. Something was in my eye. Here, I'll get that."</p>
<p>"Never mind. It's just an empty. Get them stacked up and over to the loading bay."</p>
<p>Tam listened, gasping for breath. His head was jammed up against the end panel, twisting his neck to the right. A
cramp pain was starting in the muscle at his shoulder. For a moment everything was dead still and then without
warning he was spinning and rattling as the big keg rolled over the uneven cobbles. </p>
<p>Jack watched in dismay as the two workers put their backs into it and wheeled the hogshead out of sight. </p>
<p>"He'll be sick as a parrot," Jed observed. </p>
<p>The nightmare seemed to last forever, even if it was only for fifty yards and Jed almost had it right. The barrel was
rolling and Tam was rolling with it, face down and then face up and every motion cracked the back of his head
against hard oak or thudded the heavy bag down onto his belly and for a second or two it was touch and go. He gulped
against the reflex and kept his breakfast inside, screwing his face against the hot acid heartburn. </p>
<p>"Where do you want it?"</p>
<p>"With the rest. Just dump it and get back to the bottling hall."</p>
<p>Tam was rolling again and the nausea came rolling with it, looping up in his throat and then the world flipped
violently and he was heels over head and crumpled in the bottom of the barrel. </p>
<p>"What the fu. . . . ?" His neck was stretched as his whole weight pressed down on his cheek and a grind of pain
knuckled in on his temple. He shifted, succeeded only in jarring his ear against something grainy and hard and then
the phone rang, right in his ear. </p>
<p>"What was that?"</p>
<p>"What was what?"</p>
<p>"I heard something again."</p>
<p>The phone bleeped insistently and Tam couldn't get his hand to it. He tried to twist and found himself jammed under
the weight of the tools. </p>
<p>"You hear that?"</p>
<p>"It's a phone. Have you got a phone?"</p>
<p>"What would I be doing with a phone?"</p>
<p>Tam twisted again and his neck squealed a protest. The mobile was loud in the tight confines and he knew it would
give everything away and there was not a chance that he'd come anywhere near to thinking up a plausible excuse for
being inside an empty hogshead in Aitkenbar distillery. </p>
<p>"It's over there."</p>
<p>Footsteps came closer. Somebody bumped into the barrel. Tam grunted. The phone cheeped a cheery tune. </p>
<p>"It's somewhere here."</p>
<p>"No that's just an echo." The voice faded then came back stronger. "Hey Billy, did you leave a mobile somewhere?"</p>
<p>Tam found it jammed inside his shirt and he forced his thumb down on the face, hitting as many buttons as he could to
silence the thing. It took five hits before the ringing stopped and he shoved it up against his ear. </p>
<p>"Jake, for Christ's sake," his voice was suddenly hoarse. "I'm upside fucking down."</p>
<p>"Can I have a taxi for Castlebank?"</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"Twenty Four Bruce Street, Castlebank. The name's McMenamin."</p>
<p>"Jake, what the hell are you playing at?"</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>A sizzle of static fuzzed out the word and then another woman's voice came on. </p>
<p>"Taxi for Castlebank." She sounded unbelievably bored. "Taxi for Castlebank. Any takers?"</p>
<p>"Hello?"</p>
<p>"Jake, quit screwing about!"</p>
<p>"Where are you going dear?"</p>
<p>"Just down to the town centre."</p>
<p>"Taxi for Castlebank. Red six, come in Jimmy. Town centre drop."</p>
<p>Outside the barrel the voices came again. </p>
<p>"Did you hear that?"</p>
<p>"Hear what?"</p>
<p>"There's people over there."</p>
<p>"Don't be daft."</p>
<p>"I'm telling you. I can hear people talking."</p>
<p>"You better lay off the sauce, man. You're hearing things."</p>
<p>Tam hissed into the phone, frantically trying to find the off button. "Get off this line."</p>
<p>"I want a taxi to the town centre."</p>
<p>"We don't have any bloody taxis."</p>
<p>"There's no call for that language, you. I'm a paying customer."</p>
<p>Outside, a man's voice came from close in. </p>
<p>"There. I heard it again. There's people in here. I can hear them talking."</p>
<p>"You've definitely loony-tunes, you are."</p>
<p>"Shhhhh. . . . can't you hear it? In amongst the barrels. There's people in there."</p>
<p>"You better go see a doctor. You've scooped too many free samples. Maybe you should go and lie down for a
minute."</p>
<p>Billy Butler called from much further away. "What's the matter with him?"</p>
<p>"Nothing much. He just thinks this place is haunted. Isn't that right Wullie? He says he can hear voices."</p>
<p>"He'll hear my voice in a minute if he doesn't get moving. Come on you lot, we haven't got all day to hang
around."</p>
<p>"I'm telling you," the first man insisted, audible through the breathing holes. "There was people talking right over
there. Swear to God."</p>
<p>The voice faded away, leaving Tam still upside down, with a dreadful crick in his neck and an even worse sensation
that the walls were closing in on him. His hand finally found the off button and the angry voice in his ear
died. </p>
<p>Jack called Margery Burns because there was nothing else for it and the whole radio silence routine went straight out
the window. </p>
<p>Ed managed to get to the payphone on the far side of the bottling hall. </p>
<p>"He's stuck in the loading bay."</p>
<p>"Can he get out?"</p>
<p>"God knows. I don't even know where they put him."</p>
<p>Jack scratched his head. </p>
<p>"You'll have to go in and find out."</p>
<p>Ed came back round the corner, this time on foot, and he looked right and left before ducking into the bay and out of
sight. They waited in silence until he came back out again five minutes later, did the right and left again and his
eyes found the old ball at the corner. He reached for it and booted it hard in their direction. This time his aim
was much improved. He came across to the shadows under the overhanging tree. </p>
<p>"Jake, all this plan's gone to pot."</p>
<p>"What's up?"</p>
<p>"He's stuck in a pile of barrels. I can't get near them just now."</p>
<p>"You'll have to try later."</p>
<p>"Aye, but there's a problem. He'll never get out of there on his own. They've turned him upside down. He's
stuck."</p>
<p>"Holy mother." Jack slapped his own forehead. "This should have gone like the cat-sat-on-the- mat, no bother at all."
He paused and chewed on his knuckle. The whole plan in his head was complex enough without it turning into the
keystone cops. "Right. There's nothing for it, but you'll have to stick with him."</p>
<p>"Until when?"</p>
<p>"Until you can get him out. There's none of us can get in there and do it."</p>
<p>"I could be there all night."</p>
<p>"If that's what it takes, <em>Eduardo</em>. Donny and Jed have a job to do themselves tonight."</p>
<p>"And what are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"I got plans. You stick with him."</p>
<p>"Okay, but I'll need clocked out at five. Otherwise the customs will come looking for me."</p>
<p>Jack leaned back against a tree, thinking fast. He looked at Jed, already feeling guilty. </p>
<p>"Okay. Leave it with me. I'll get that fixed. You stay with Tam and make sure he gets out. We have to get this sorted
by tonight."</p>
<p>Ed looked dubious about the whole thing, but they were all in, for good or bad, and Jack had told them they might
lose their shirts. He'd do what he could to save his, even if it meant taking more of a risk. Finally he
nodded. </p>
<p>"If they catch me in there, it's all blown to hell."</p>
<p>"We're sunk if we don't," Jack said. "Just tell them you fell and cracked your head." Ed walked back towards the big
blue door and Jack turned away. </p>
<p>"Give me a minute, Jed. I have to make a private phone call."</p>
<p>He wandered to the edge of the scrub and it took three attempts before he got through to Margery Burns. </p>
<p>"Hello stranger," she said. "I never expected you back so soon."</p>
<p>"I need a favour," he said. "Can you clock somebody out?"</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"It's a 'need to know' kind of thing," he said. "But it's important."</p>
<p>"Oh, we're Mr Mysterious today. All I need to know is, what's it worth? I do you a favour, you do me one."</p>
<p>"Right."</p>
<p>Jack thumbed the off button. Yet another fix he'd have to get out of.</p>
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<h1>10</h1>
<p>At ten minutes past five Margery Burns made an excuse to get out of the office and took the back corridor
down to the loading bay where she waited for two minutes before selecting Ed Kane’s card from the slot and
feeding it into the time-stamp.</p>
<p>Ed was only sixty yards away and twenty feet higher, reading an old Hello magazine he'd found in the
washroom, out of sight, mostly in shadow, but with just enough fluorescent light to read by. It was
comfortable here in the barrel store and the smell of oak and old sherry thickened the dusty air to a mellow
fug. He had sneaked out to the washroom and from there taken a side door to the big load store where the
barrels were stacked lengthways in a great pyramid that reached almost to the high ceiling. It had taken him
only seconds, using the big kegs as steps, to get up almost to the roof and then along the stack just below
the skylight. Nobody could see him here, but the position gave him a view through to the loading bay and to
the bottling hall beyond. </p>
<p>There was no night shift, not this close to the end run, and in any case Sproat was saving as much as he
could before having to pay out the statutory redundancy, so at the back of five, everything started shutting
down. Ed watched Kerr Thomson, the fat customs man begin his round of checks before locking each
self-contained sector. In the distance, the other guards rattled their keys like jailors. Gradually
Aitkenbar Distillery was battened down for the night. Ed listened as the other sections shut down, the
clanging noises getting fainter with the distance, and then the place grew quiet. Muffled sounds told him
the cars were moving out of the car-park and finally the big front gate rumbled shut on its rollers. </p>
<p>Madonna grinned gat-toothed from the front cover, hugging some guy she'd married up in the highlands a while
back (and divorced later) and Buffy the Slayer pouted doe-eyed down the page. It was an old magazine. He
read the banal captions, forcing himself to wait until it was all dead quiet and then eased himself along
the top of the barrel stack. </p>
<p>Tam punched him a right hook that caught him on the cheek right under his eye, and if Tam hadn't been knotted
with cramp after six hours in a hogshead, it would have raised a hell of a lump. </p>
<p>Donny had marked the keg in big yellow stencil letters and that made it stand out from the rest of them,
which was just as well, with more than a hundred of them, all virtually identical, in the loading bay. It
was jammed in between two others, still on its end. A very faint grunting sound told him Tam was still
trying vainly to turn the handles to unscrew the lid, but he was getting precisely nowhere at all. </p>
<p>Ed rapped a knuckle on the base which was now the top panel. </p>
<p>"Tam. It's me."</p>
<p>"Where the hell have you been?"</p>
<p>"Never mind that. I'm going to get you out. Hold still will you?"</p>
<p>Ed put a foot to the base and hauled on the top, just giving it enough to cant the keg off balance. He stood
back and let it drop onto its side, rocking violently, spinning slowly at the same time. Something inside
clunked hard on wood. He hoped it was the tools. </p>
<p>"What in the name of Christ..... ?" Ed steadied the hogshead with a foot and jammed a big screwdriver into
the slot, heaved anti-clockwise and the panel suddenly popped out and rolled away on its edge. </p>
<p>Tam Bowie fell out onto the concrete floor, rolled, groaned, tried to get up and only managed to a knee. His
head was still bent over to the side and his shoulder hitched up almost to his ear. In the dim light of the
big bay he looked like some twisted, cursing goblin. </p>
<p>"Bastard," he repeated. "Left me upside fucking down."</p>
<p>He scuttered across, still unable to straighten his legs, and aimed a quick one at Ed who didn't expect it
and took it on the cheek, but there was no force behind it. </p>
<p>"It wasn't my fault."</p>
<p>"You put me upside fucking down," Tam said again, trying to straighten knotted muscles. "Look at the state of
me. I nearly died in there."</p>
<p>He hobbled forward quickly and aimed another one. Ed jinked back and Tam punched air. </p>
<p>"Come on Tam. It wasn't me."</p>
<p>"Six bloody hours in there. You could have killed me. Jesus, look at the state of me. There's no two bits of
me hanging together the right way."</p>
<p> He came lunging at Ed again, like a skinny bat-eared <em>Quasimodo</em> and Ed began to giggle. </p>
<p>"Come on, you twisted loony, give it a break."</p>
<p>"Give it a break? I'll give you a bloody break. Break your bloody neck. How would you like it, stuck upside
down in a barrel all day?"</p>
<p>"It was just the afternoon," Ed said, dancing away like a boxer. Tam swung and missed. Ed jinked in and
tapped him playfully on the chin. "Prince Naseem you ain't. Float like a bumble bee, sting like a flea."</p>
<p>"Bastard," Tam spat, all froth and temper now. "And when I get that ginger farty nutcase, I'll put a
blowtorch up his arse."</p>
<p>He came for Ed and managed to grab him and the pair wrestled each other for five minutes before Tam ran out
of steam and temper and Ed was unable to move for laughing and finally they collapsed in a heap. </p>
<p>"Are you all done now?"</p>
<p>Ed looked over at Tam. His neck was still twisted stiffly to the left and his arms still hugged in tight to
his body and Ed started to laugh again. </p>
<p>"Yeah, go on, laugh," Tam said. "I suppose you think this is funny."</p>
<p>Ed burst into another fit of the giggles and despite himself, Tam began to laugh and for a couple of minutes,
neither of them could move as the sound of it echoed all over the bay. </p>
<p>They hauled the toolbag through to the decant hall. There was a small ventilation and access hatch high on
the wall that they could reach from the barrel stack and then, once through, two parallel pipes only a foot
from the roof led round the perimeter. Ed slung the strap over his shoulder and the pair of them inched
their way along the pipe for thirty yards, almost twenty five feet off the ground, until they got to an
upright H-beam that let them shin down to ground level. They waited for five minutes to catch a breath. </p>
<p>"Where now?"</p>
<p>Ed pointed at the big tank lip. They were close to the half landing that would let them down to the maze of
pipes and connections below. Ed shouldered the bag and Tam followed him down into the dark. </p>
<p>The tank was fifteen feet across and its stainless steel sides gleamed in the faint light from the high
hatch. An intricate maze of pipes ran this way and that. </p>
<p>"Looks like a plumber's nightmare," Ed conceded. </p>
<p>"Not just looks like," Tam said. "I'm hoping I wake up soon." He opened the bag, drew out the blueprint copy
and spread it on the ground. Ed flipped on the flashlight and stood it on its side, so that light pooled
between them. </p>
<p>"Do you know what's what?"</p>
<p>"Not yet, but I'm working on it. You'll have to show me around." Tam was suddenly glad Ed was with him now.
He didn't fancy working here alone in the middle of the night, even if it was summer. From the looks of
things, it could take until dawn, and no matter what he'd told Jack Lorne, he wasn't entirely sure he'd be
able to do this at all. </p>
<p>"Right," he said twisting his shoulders to ease the ache. "Talk me through it."</p>
<p>"I thought you knew all this."</p>
<p>"You work here. Save me time."</p>
<p>Ed got to his feet, scratched his head. </p>
<p>"Okay," he strolled across and lay a hand on a manifold of pipes snaking round the tank. "These are coolers,
they come from the refrigeration unit. They help prevent evaporation. Here," another tap on a thick steel
pipe. "this is the wash drain. One of these will empty the tank after cleaning. This one will fill it with
cold, and this one with hot."</p>
<p> He marked them all off. Tam watched him and kept bending down, following them with his finger on the
blueprint. </p>
<p>Finally he stood up and brought the flashlight with him. Ed watched him angle across to the wall, following a
set of brass pipes. </p>
<p>"Where do these go?"</p>
<p>Ed shrugged. "I dunno."</p>
<p>Tam tapped the pipe with a wrench and the harsh metal clang echoed right across the hall and came back in a
jangle of sound. </p>
<p>Ed jumped. "Quit that. They'll hear it all through the building."</p>
<p>"You said it was shut."</p>
<p>"Yeah. But there's a security team and night customs."</p>
<p>They'll think it's a rat," Tam said. He moved back to the tank and crawled into the space underneath where it
was supported on a series of short concrete pillars. </p>
<p>"Is this a drain?"</p>
<p>Ed nodded. That's for when it gets cleaned out."</p>
<p>"So it's a gravity feed?"</p>
<p>"Sure, I suppose."</p>
<p>"Right. I got the picture. He put his hand on a two-inch steel pipe. "This here feeds the bottling lines, am
I right?"</p>
<p>"I think that's the one."</p>
<p>"Sure it is." Tam was into it now. "Okay. I need to see the valves."</p>
<p>"Over here." Ed hunkered down. "They're all marked."</p>
<p>"So we have to join the fill to the drain." He started unloading the tool-bag. "If we have to rely on gravity
it's the only way."</p>
<p>He pointed to the small hatch in the outside wall. "That's an ingress for a fire hydrant. I thought it was an
outlet pipe, but it lets water in."</p>
<p>"Is that a problem?"</p>
<p>"Not unless there's a fire. If I can get a connection to that, then we're cooking."</p>
<p>"And what if there's a fire?"</p>
<p>"They're going to flatten the place anyway, aren't they? But if all we have is gravity, then this is the only
way out, and we have to get to somewhere lower than that tap out there."</p>
<p>"There's only one place lower," Ed said. "Under the railway bridge."</p>
<p>"I hope that fits in with Jack's plan," Tam said, "Because it's the only way we're going to do this, and
we'll still need a pump."</p>
<p>He rummaged around and brought out a big tap wrench. </p>
<p>"Right, I need to find a two inch bore that nobody plans to use in the next two weeks." He went back to the
plans, spent five minutes tracing lines again with his finger. "Got it. Now watch the master at work."</p>
<p>He rummaged in the bag again and brought out a hacksaw. He bent to the pipe. </p>
<p>He was half-way through the pipe, building up a sweat when the phone rang. The pair of them jumped like
startled cats. </p>
<p>"Tam? Ed?"</p>
<p>"Ed. What is it?"</p>
<p>"Are you both in?"</p>
<p>"We must be in, or you wouldn't be speaking to us."</p>
<p>"Don't get lippy. Where the hell are you? And what the hell's that noise?"</p>
<p>Ed turned to Tam and held his hand up for his to stop sawing at the pipe. </p>
<p>"It's El Capitan," he said. "Hold it a minute."</p>
<p>Tam pulled back. </p>
<p>"Ed. Somebody's on their way in. A couple of cars pulled up."</p>
<p>"Great, that's all we need."</p>
<p>"Better find some cover. I'll give you a shout when it's clear. But tell Tam to stop that racket. You can
nearly hear it out here."</p>
<hr />
<p>Alistair Sproat came in through the security doorway at the side of the big storage hall. It was dark now,
with only the small winking light from the heat detectors on the roof giving a faint illumination. Sproat
could walk round this place blindfold. </p>
<p>"Who's that with him?" Ed had his eye up against the security slot in the door that separated the decant hall
from storage. When the rattling of keys echoed through the empty space they'd frozen in sudden fright. </p>
<p>"Cops?" Tam's face had gone pale. Ed shrugged, face blank. Tam pulled back from the pipe and gentle levered
the hacksaw from the groove it had cut. It made a creaking scrape of sound that set the hairs on the back of
his head standing on end, then finally it worked free. Ed was already wrapping up the rest of the tools in
the big blanket. </p>
<p>A second door opened and they heard footsteps. Ed stashed the toolbag right underneath the decant tank and
the pair of them tiptoed to the far door. Tam eased the slot back and peered through. </p>
<p>"Two of them. It <em>is</em> the cops."</p>
<p>"Let me see." Ed shouldered him out and got his eye to the hole. "No. It's Sproat and Kerr Thomson. He's one
of the customs men. What are they doing in here at this time of night?"</p>
<p>Tam breathed a long and eloquent breath. </p>
<p>"You think they heard something?"</p>
<p>Ed paused for a moment, watching Kerr Thomson turn to re-lock the door they had just come through. That was
odd enough. Thomson was still in black uniform, a dumpy figure with badly pocked skin that he tried to hide
with a sparse beard, and an arrogant manner that came with the customs and excise uniform.</p>
<p>Sproat stopped ten yards from the door and waited for Thomson to catch up. He had a clipboard under his arm
and a thick file folder. The pair of them walked down the side of the hall and stopped at the first rank of
barrels. </p>
<p>"What's he doing here?" Ed asked in a whisper. "Nobody's supposed to be inside after lockup."</p>
<p>"As long as they're not after us, I couldn't care less."</p>
<p>"Thomson's a scumbag. He'll shop anybody unless he gets a cut."</p>
<p>Sproat and the customs man walked towards the stack and the distillery owner opened the file. He was just ten
yards from where Ed peered through the hole. Thomson flicked on a fluorescent flashlight and set it on top
of a barrel, casting a blue light over the first rack. </p>
<p>Sproat's voice came clear in the hollow. </p>
<p>"Let's start with the eighty six blend." He flipped the first page of the file and brought out a pen and
pointed to the rack. The light caught the stencil number. Sproat read it out. </p>
<p>"Fifty six gallons."</p>
<p>"Make it forty five. You can match this with the whisky safe records?"</p>
<p>Ed pulled back from the hole. </p>
<p>"Sproat's at the fiddle," he whispered. "That's the stock he's clearing out. He's changing the tallies before
it goes to the brokers."</p>
<p>"What good does that do him?"</p>
<p>"He'll declare a loss, and sell the rest off and pay only a fraction of the duty. That's neat. You need the
customs to back you up. Thomson must have a way into the back records. All the gear that comes out of the
still is counted up in the whisky safe. They must be fiddling them."</p>
<p>"But how can he say there's less whisky in the barrel?" the voices on the other side of the door were
checking off the tally. </p>
<p>"Easy. He'll just say there was extra evaporation. The customs can't do anything about the Angels Share. If
it's in the book, it stays in the book. Devious bastard."</p>
<p>"I don't care what he does," Tam said. "As long as he gets it over with before the morning and we can get
done and out of here."</p>
<p>"We better let Jack know," Ed said, grinning. "It's nice to have something on that smarmy bastard. And
Thomson? He's a snake. I'd like to see him fixed."</p>
<p>It was close to midnight and the tank hall was dark by the time Sproat and Thomson finished checking off the
barrels in store. Sproat finally flipped the folder closed and the pair made their way out by the steel
door. Ed and Tam listened silently as the successive gates clanged shut and the locks shot home and then
waited another ten minutes before they called Jack Lorne. </p>
<p>"They're gone now, whoever they were," Jack said. "I thought it was the cops."</p>
<p>"So did we. Tam nearly filled his pants. It was Sproat the stoat, and that spawney-faced Kerr Thomson, you
know him? The customs man?"</p>
<p>"Not personally."</p>
<p>"They were fixing the totals in storage. They never knew we were watching."</p>
<p>Jack listened silently as Ed talked him through what they'd seen and he was silent for a little while
longer. </p>
<p>"Can you get the barrel numbers?" he finally asked. </p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"Knowledge is power. You never know when we'll need it."</p>
<p>"I'll see what I can do."</p>
<p>"Roger," Jack said. Ed just laughed. </p>
<p>Tam sawed through the pipe in less than half an hour and it was tough going. He had to change the blade close
to the end before he could remove a whole section that was maybe ten feet long, and then he used the monkey
wrench to screw on two pressure ends that were half hidden behind other pipes. Unless somebody knew the
layout intimately, no-one would see that a length of steel pipe had vanished from the maze. </p>
<p>Ed watched him use a length of steel spring to bend the pipe, bracing it against the concrete pillars, into
right angles and curves until it was twisted all out of shape. </p>
<p>"This is the piece of the resistance, mon ami." He manoeuvred the misshapen pipe up against the wall,
threaded it behind the others until the one cut end was in line with a steel piece of exactly the same
width. The far end, ten feet away and kinked at an angle where it met the corner of the wall, came to rest
against the fire hydrant inlet. </p>
<p>"Perfect." Ed had to admire his skill. </p>
<p>"Now what?"</p>
<p>"Now we join them all up." He fished in the toolbag again and brought out a big butane blowtorch. </p>
<p>"Some solder and flux and then we can get out of here."</p>
<p>Ed looked at him. "You can't use that here."</p>
<p>"Why not?"</p>
<p>Ed pointed up at the winking blue lights. "No naked flames, no matches, no smoking. They're heat sensors.
They decant double strength whisky in here. The whole bloody lot could blow."</p>
<p>"I thought they just worked on smoke."</p>
<p>Ed looked at him. "No. You set of that torch and we'll have everybody down on us."</p>
<p>Tam leaned against the pillar. His big ears reflected, even more magnified, on the polished curve of the
massive steel tank. </p>
<p>"Okay then, I can fix that. Lift that blanket and bring it over."</p>
<p>Ed did as he was told and Tam rummaged in the box again and drew out the powered drill bit. "Just as well I
charged this up."</p>
<p>He reached up amongst the tangle of pipes on the wall, touching each one in succession and finally chose one
which came down vertically from the ceiling. He got Ed to use the blanket to form a sound shield around him
and triggered the drill. It bit into the metal with a high-pitched scream. </p>
<p>"What's this for?"</p>
<p>"You'll see in a minute," Tam, said, grinning. </p>
<p>The drill screeched again and little whorls of silvery metal peeled away from the hole. </p>
<p>"Come in closer," Tam said, moving to allow more space close to the pipe. Ed moved in. Tam kept up the
pressure and then, as the bit began to shudder in the hole, he motioned Ed even closer. </p>
<p>"Look at this."</p>
<p>Ed craned in. Tam squeezed the trigger, put his weight to it and then suddenly pulled back. Something hissed,
loud as a snake, and he snatched the drill-bit out of the narrow hole. </p>
<p>A hard jet of well-chilled water belted out of the tiny perforation under high pressure and hit Ed in the
eye. He yelped and fell backwards, slipping onto his backside while the thin stream expanded into a thick
spray that drenched him from head to foot. </p>
<p>"It's freezing.... " he finally said, catching his breath, crawling away from the misting spray hissing from
the cooling pipe. </p>
<p>"That's what we need. Get the blanket."</p>
<p>Ed shivered violently. The spray was condensing on his dark hair in silvery beads and the whole front of his
overalls was soaked from chin to crotch, but he reached for the blanket that had served as a sound dampener.
Tam made him hold it up to catch the cold water and waited until it had absorbed enough to start dripping to
the ground. </p>
<p>"Right Ed, you'll have to spread it round me, so keep it in the jet." Ed moved closer, holding the thing at
arm's length, but it didn't provide enough cover. </p>
<p>"Huddle round me," Tam told him. </p>
<p>"But that means I'll get soaked again. It's freezing."</p>
<p>"We need it freezing. Come on Ed, I'll be quick as I can, but if I can spend six hours upside down in a
barrel you can spend a couple of minutes in the damp." Tam grinned and Ed glared at him. "If somebody had
told us about the heat sensors, then I'd have thought of something else. But nobody told us and that's a
shame really, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"You're just getting your own back, aren't you?"</p>
<p>"Would I do a thing like that?" Tam nudged him with his elbow. "That's it. Stand right inside there." Ed's
teeth began to chatter and he held the blanket round him like a cloak. Tam sparked his lighter and the
blowtorch flame suddenly growled, a sharp blue dagger of heat. </p>
<p>"Nice and easy Ed, keep us all covered." Tam bent to the pipe and began to apply heat and solder to the
two-inch yorkie ring that could join the ends of the pipes. He worked carefully, making sure he wouldn't
have to go back over the job, and every now and again he leant back out of the protection of the damp
blanket to make sure the blue heat warning lights were still flashing at one per second. </p>
<p>"Come on," Ed said, hardly able to articulate the words. "I hate the bloody cold. I can't hold this much
longer."</p>
<p>"Another ten minutes," Tam said, trying not to smile. This revenge was worth spinning out.</p>
<p>Ed swore a shuddery curse. Even Tam could feel the cool of the spray water. Ed had the blanket across his
shoulders, taking the whole jet on his back and letting the fabric absorb all of the chill. </p>
<p>"What's a bit of water anyway?" Tam asked. </p>
<p>"It's bloody f... f...... "</p>
<p>"Cool?"</p>
<p>"Fuckin' freezing."</p>
<p>"All the better then." Tam carefully ran the flame over the join, watching the flux carry the gleaming solder
away. </p>
<p>"I'm getting a cramp."</p>
<p>"Nothing like the cramp I got stuck in that barrel." Tam's grin was pasted on. Ed squirmed away from the
jet. </p>
<p>"Back in," Tam insisted. "You don't want to blow it now."</p>
<p>"This is giving me an ice-cream headache."</p>
<p>Tam turned away, unable to keep from laughing. </p>
<p>"Only another five minutes, he managed to say. </p>
<p>"B.... b..... b..... arsehole."</p>
<hr />
<p>Kate Delaney brought him the artwork and it was perfect. She was backstage at the Starlight show in the
little theatre where she was up to her elbows in paint and grease, hair pulled back in a rich copper
twist. </p>
<p>Jack stood in the corner as the cast prepared for the final curtain and he winked at Neil Cleary as his
sister dragged him on for the line-up. </p>
<p>"I thought you'd be all at sea by now," Kate whispered. The sound of applause from the front of the house was
muted beyond the heavy curtain. </p>
<p>"First things first." He still wasn't giving anything away. </p>
<p>"Good. You can make the final night party then, and make sure I don't get up to anything."</p>
<p>He was killing several birds with the one visit tonight. Joanne Cleary was a friend of his sister and he
needed a favour from her and Ed's girl-friend Donna Bryce, who was in the Starlight chorus and doubled as
make-up artist. Kate's flats were as vibrant as the paintings on the heritage wall, characteristic bold
strokes and contrasting shadows. </p>
<p>"Did you do the banners too?"</p>
<p>"You can't rush good art." She left him hanging and he had to wait. "What I don't understand is why you want
one of the council's sewage section. They're not going out of business."</p>
<p>"The committee asked for it," Jack said, knowing he was lying, hoping she didn't notice, not entirely sure
she hadn't. He'd have to get a whole lot better at this. "We have to show what a bunch of shits they
are." </p>
<p>"Oh, you're organised now? That makes a change for you."</p>
<p>"Yes mother."</p>
<p>This time she laughed. "You're up to something, Jack Lorne."</p>
<p>"That's what Uncle Sandy says."</p>
<p>"He's not so old he's addled. Come on, what's going on? What are these things for?"</p>
<p>She held up a big art folder and opened it up. She had done them just the way he'd asked, all in sections, on
clear plastic, the lettering perfect. Just what he needed. </p>
<p>"It's amazing what you can do with computers," she said. "I did some of these myself, and some of the class
did them on the CAD program. It's them you have to thank."</p>
<p>He lifted one of the sheets up and held it to the light. The letters were clearly visible, done in brown in
an old Victorian script, edged with gold. One quarter of an old pot still could be seen in the corner.</p>
<p>"They're terrific," he said.</p>
<p> "Want to tell me what they're really for?"</p>
<p>"The workers' revolution. We're taking over the world." </p>
<p>"You and daft Donny Watson? I don't think so."</p>
<p>She handed the artwork over with more questions in her eyes, but he just thanked her and said he'd reveal all
sometime soon.</p>
<hr />
<p>Jack looked at his watch. Ed and Tam were still inside Aitkenbar and neither of them had phoned, which meant
they were still working, but there was nothing he could do to help them now. Donny had complained at being
left as a lookout with the spare phone, but he had the geese to feed for Neil anyway, and Jack had other
things to do. As long as Tam Bowie knew his stuff, they were on their way. One step at a time, that was the
way. But this was a big step. </p>
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<h1>11</h1>
<p>The geese fell in love with Neil Cleary, and the fish, well they caused a hell of a stink in more ways than one. That
was after Tam and Ed got out of Aitkenbar Distillery and after Jack Lorne had his hair dyed an odd shade.</p>
<p>Tam could hear the birds through the ventilation gap as dawn broke in the east, honking in that aggressive
territorial tone geese adopt. It had taken him two hours to finally get the connections made and he was
confident enough that whatever he had done couldn't be easily discovered. The maze of pipes still did what
they were supposed to do, for the time being at least. The final job had been to tighten a little grub screw
into the tiny hole in the coolant pipe and seal it. The freezing spray simply shut off. By that time Ed was
blue with the cold. </p>
<p>"God, I'm f... f... chilled to the bone." He could hardly speak for the chattering of his teeth and Tam
couldn't help grinning. Ed glared at him. </p>
<p>"You did that on purpose." It took him almost a minute to get the accusation out. The blanket was down on the
concrete and cold water pooled out from the fabric. Ed was scrambling to get out of his overalls. "Look at
me. I'll get pneumonia."</p>
<p>"It's only a bit of water. Us plumbers get wet all the time." Tam's neck was still sore from the cramp of the
barrel, and Ed just happened to be the nearest and easiest to take revenge on.</p>
<p>"If I snuff it, it's down to you." The overalls were off and Ed was trying to unbutton his shirt with stiff
numb fingers. Above him the heat sensor winked its blue metronome. He got the shirt off and stood there
shivering in his boxers, skin roughed and puckered with gooseflesh. He glared again at Tam. </p>
<p>"This had better work."</p>
<p>"Sure it'll work. Here, do you want something to heat you up?"</p>
<p>"Give me your shirt."</p>
<p>"Bugger off. I'm the tradesman here. You're just the hired help."</p>
<p>"Thanks pal." Ed stomped off, swinging his arms out and then around himself, trying to get the circulation
back. His jockeys dripped down his legs and left a trail on the floor. If it had been winter he'd have been
in serious trouble. Tam heard footsteps on the metal stairs and then a door open on the far side of the big
tank. A few minutes later Ed came back, wet feet slapping on the floor. He was buttoning a white lab coat
that built for someone several stone wider. Tam burst into a gale of laughter. </p>
<p>"What <em>do </em>you look like?"</p>
<p>Ed stopped and looked down at himself, hairy white legs poking down beneath the hem, and then he started to
laugh too. </p>
<p>"Here," Tam said. "This is the second Easter miracle." He held up a tin mug that was chipped with long rough
use. Ed took it, smelt it and his face lit up. </p>
<p>"Where did you get this?"</p>
<p>"Trust me, I'm a genius. You just have to know where all the pipes go, and a shifting spanner comes in fine
and dandy."</p>
<p>Ed took a big swallow of the overproof whisky and then coughed as it hit the spot. Colour came back into his
cheeks. </p>
<p>"Man, that goes down a treat."</p>
<p>Tam started dragging the toolbag away from the wall towards the shelter under the big tank, out of the direct
line of the heat sensor. He sat down with his back to a pillar and Ed joined him. He passed the mug back and
Tam took a fine swallow. </p>
<p>"Here's the good bit," he said. "If we have to wait for the morning, we might as well sit back and enjoy
this."</p>
<p>He dig into the bag and pulled out a long jointing compound tin, hut when he opened it, Ed saw a stack of fat
roll-ups. </p>
<p>"Finest Leb red," Tam said, handing one across. He lit up, sucked in and held it until his vision began to
waver. </p>
<p>"You're forgiven man, that's the business."</p>
<p>Sometime in the morning, after Marjory Burns had stamped Ed's card again, the pair of them hid behind the
barrels until Donny gave them the all clear, and Tam staggered out into the light of day, wove his way
across the grass, and stumbled face-first into the chain-link fence. The boys had to haul him and his
toolbag through the hole in the wire and drag him through the brambles. He was still singing an hour later
before he fell asleep in the sun. Ed was sent home sick. </p>
<p>The geese watchdogs had taken to the popcorn and somehow they had imprinted on Neil and now he couldn't get
rid of them. It had been a good idea that for a while had worked just a treat but now it had developed
unexpected complications. They had got used to coming to the fence for a feed, marching up and down, beaks
pointing at the sky, honking anticipation. Then he had weaned them away from the front, scattering mounds of
the stuff further and further way, until they became accustomed to gorging only a few yards from the
cooperage at the back of the building, well away from the decant hall. </p>
<p>"They can smell me half a mile away," he told Donny . "Either that or they're telepathic."</p>
<p>The pair of them had lugged another couple of plastic bags of corn feed through the new-worn track in the
bushes and far in the distance, the geese had already begun their cacophony.</p>
<p>"Listen to them," Neil said. "They love this stuff, but as soon as I get anywhere near the place they start
up that racket. It'll screw us for sure."</p>
<p>"You think we should shoot them?" Donny asked. "I've still got my old slug gun."</p>
<p>"Sure, great. Shoot the fuckers. Don't you think it might give the game away when they find dead bodies all
over the place?"</p>
<p>"If they keep that up they'll give the game away anyway. It's back to the drawing board."</p>
<p>Neil had been taken completely by surprise by the amount of popcorn that erupted from just a small pack of
kernels on that first night. His mother and his aunts had screeched like scalded cats when the stove had
turned itself into a fountain of the stuff and the kitchen ended up ankle deep after the boys had made a
fast exit. The women soon calmed down when he shovelled it up into a bin liner, but they were still finding
pieces of corn in all sorts of corners. It was more than a week since he had first turned up to wean them
away from the gatehouse and the first day they had set up such a commotion that the security men had come to
investigate and he'd had to sneak away through the undergrowth. Now the problem was even worse. </p>
<p>They reached the fence and two dozen big geese were strutting their stuff right up against the wire, ready
for a feeding frenzy. They had long white necks and strong beaks and little beady eyes that had a mean look
about them, but as soon as Neil started shovelling the popcorn through the wire they attacked it as if they
were starving. The noise of their bickering could have been heard across the other side of the river, and it
was just as well the birds were at the back end of the cooperage, where the high warehouse wall deflected
most of the sound. </p>
<p>"They're getting fatter as well," Neil said. "They must have put on a stone at least."</p>
<p>Donny watched in amazement as the birds fought and squabbled amongst themselves, scraping up against the wire
and flapping their wings with such force that the bushes rocked in the wind. White and grey feathers
spiralled into the summer air. </p>
<p>"What a commotion," Donny said. "You better tell Jack we got a problem."</p>
<p>"He just said keep them away from the front."</p>
<p>"But he never said you had to wake up the whole town."</p>
<p>Donny had problems of his own to worry about. He'd been detailed to get the decoys and that meant recruiting
his young brother and some of his pals to get themselves down the Kilmalid Burn with fishing nets made out
of old onion bags, trying to catch as many minnows and sticklebacks as they could find. </p>
<p>"What do you want them for?" Kevin Watson needed to know. </p>
<p>"I'm going to breed them," Donny said. "What's it to you? Just get down there and catch me a couple of
hundred."</p>
<p>"What's the catch?"</p>
<p>"No catch. I'll pay you"</p>
<p>"How? You'll be on the dole in a couple of weeks."</p>
<p>Donny grabbed Kevin by the collar and the boy's pal Danny Kane pulled back in case he got some too. Kevin was
just as red-headed as Donny was, that fine, bright, corkscrewed electric shock sort of ginger that's never
ever going to be in style until it's shaved right to the wood and maybe not even then. Kevin had been an
afterthought child, if indeed any thought had been put into his conception at all by his parents. He was
sixteen years younger than Donny, but you'd still know they were brothers. </p>
<p>"Listen, you cheeky wee bugger. I got money."</p>
<p>"How much?" Danny Kane had an eye to the main chance. He was Ed's nephew and every bit as smart on the
uptake. </p>
<p>"How much what?"</p>
<p>"How much for a fish?"</p>
<p>"Ten pence."</p>
<p>"Get lost, cheapskate." Donny still had Kevin by the lapels. His brother's voice sounded strangled, which was
not unreasonable under the circumstances. </p>
<p>"What do you mean get lost? That's a good deal."</p>
<p>"That's only a pound for ten. How much do you need?"</p>
<p>"About a hundred."</p>
<p>"A hundred my bum. It'll take us days to catch that many. A tenner for all that? No way."</p>
<p>Danny Kane piped up. "Tell you what, make it a pound and you got a deal."</p>
<p>"A pound?" Donny 's voice raised an octave. "A pound. For a stickleback? We used to catch them by the ton
when I was your age."</p>
<p>"Aye, well, you can go and catch your own ton then," Kevin said, "seeing you're such a big hot shot
expert."</p>
<p>"Look, I'll give you twenty pence a fish."</p>
<p>"Eighty," Danny said, grinning, and everybody could see where this would end up.</p>
<p>Donny let go when it got balanced out at fifty pence and hit Kevin a perfunctory slap on the back of his head
just for the hell of it. He'd have to ask Jack for a decent hit at the petty cash fund and he hoped there
would be no problem there. There was no chance he'd come back and lose face with Kevin and that sly little
Danny Kane by admitting he couldn't cough up. </p>
<p>What he didn't realise was that Danny Kane was every bit as smart as his uncle and despite the fact that
there was nothing better for twelve-year-olds to do in the high summer than spend a couple of afternoons
down at the Kilmalid stream hooking out brown trout and little tidal flounders, he had, even at this age, a
good estimation of time and motion and value for money. It was he who directed Kevin to build two lines of
stones in a downstream pointing chevron and drive two stakes into the steam bed with the onion mesh bag
stretched between them. After that the pair of them went fifty yards upstream, cut two straight ash saplings
with a thick crown of leaves and used them to sweep right down the little stream, driving every little fish
with the flow and into the bag. In less than half an hour they were trundling homewards pushing a wooden
bogey with ten big sweet jars filched from the back of Thornton's shop, each filled with an assortment of
gasping freshwater fish.</p>
<p> If it hadn't been for Danny Kane's ingenuity, then things might not have turned out the way they did, and
Donny Watson might not have ended up with an awful sore face and worse, but like the poem says, for the want
of a nail, the shoe was lost, and so on right up to the end where that one nail ends up closing the coffin
lid. But that's for later. </p>
<p>On the day Neil took Donny down with him to feed the geese, the boys made it back home with the fish gulping
for oxygen, and tipped them into the big plastic rain-butt behind the greenhouse that served as an ad-hoc
watering can during the height of the summer. Fortunately for the fish, the tub was full of mosquito larvae,
letting them gorge for a while until there were none left. Unfortunately for the little sticklebacks and
minnows, there was a hairline fracture in the base of the butt, that let out a fine trickle of water which,
as it was out of direct sight, nobody noticed. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the container sat at
the corner of the house, and for half the day it got the direct rays of the sun in the hottest summer
anybody could remember for a long time. Almost immediately the water began to heat up as its level lowered.
Donny treated the captives to a huge handful of goldfish food from Ryan's pet shop and left them to get on
with it, confident that they'd have enough to keep them going for the next couple of days. </p>
<p>It came as a great surprise to him when he next inspected the tank to find it half empty, filled with a
thick, foetid liquid, and giving off such a stench that he almost lost his lunch of pies and beans. And by
that time things had moved on. It was too late to send the boys out on another fishing expedition and Donny
had to think of another plan and that's what got him a really sore face and testicles and put the whole
operation in serious jeopardy. </p>
<hr />
<p>Jack's brother Michael was a natural when it came to computers. Jack and their mother had scraped together
six years before and bought him an old Toshiba at Christmas. Mike had learned to programme by hacking in to
his games to gain more lives and become the envy of the gamers in street. It had seemed natural for him to
progress through school and now be applying for a place in a degree course on programming. He was eight
years younger than his brother and that gap was a huge chasm when it came to electronics. Jack could work
the phone and the stereo and managed to laboriously type his course reports on the old Dell, but Mike seemed
to be able to work the things telepathically. </p>
<p>"You want me to scan it or copy it?"</p>
<p>"What's the difference?" They were up in the loft that the pair of them had converted into men's territory,
with Jack's desk jammed in at a gable corner and Mike's study area festooned with wires and hardware. Mike
gave him a suffering look. </p>
<p>"If I scan it, I use the scanner. It has word recognition of a sort and will convert it into type. Or I can
copy the whole thing and jiggle it around to get the font right."</p>
<p>"Don't you get technical on me," Jack said. Mike was more slender, but dark like himself. "Jiggle it around.
Is that in the manual?"</p>
<p>Mike laughed. "It's quicker to scan. I got a program here that will do a great imitation."</p>
<p>"Then that's the one I want. I need it to look like the real thing."</p>
<p>He handed over the papers that Jed had sneaked out of the dairy. </p>
<p>"I need this and this," he said, spreading the sheets. He took out another paper unfolded it. "And can you do
me something like this?"</p>
<p>"Carson Convoy? Who are they?"</p>
<p>"Can you do it?"</p>
<p>"Does the pope wear a pointy hat?" Mike glanced up from the sheet of paper. "This is a lease document. What's
it for?"</p>
<p>"Trust me, Mikey boy, you don't want to know. Anybody asks, you know nothing, right?"</p>
<p>"What are you up to, Jack? Anything to do with those guys that duffed us up?"</p>
<p>Jack ruffled his bother's hair and Mike dodged out of the way. He'd always hated that. "Yes and no. I'm
trying to get a few things sorted out. And get a few people sorted out while I'm at it."</p>
<p>"But this is a hire agreement for trucks. You fake them and you're in deep shit."</p>
<p>"Look kiddo, we copy these and print them out, making them look like the real McCoy, and then you forget
about it, or I make you eat the damn things. Got the picture?"</p>
<p>"Don't get shirty, shorty."</p>
<p>Mike pulled back and looked Jack in the eye. "Listen Jake, you sure you're okay? I mean, if you're up to
something that could get you the nick, I mean.... "</p>
<p>"Nothing like that, egg-head. You're the brains of the family. I'm the brawn. You get this fixed for me and
I'll see you're fixed okay. Trust me, I'm your brother."</p>
<p>"That never made any difference before now," Mike said, but he was smiling now. </p>
<p>"Trust me or I'll kick the shit out of you."</p>
<p>"That's more like it."</p>
<p>"And we need a web site of our own," Jack said.</p>
<p>"Who's we?"</p>
<p>"Need to know," Jack said. He thought he should just engrave that phrase on his forehead. "And you definitely
don't."</p>
<p>"You have to start telling me something sometime. I can fix up a website, but I have to know what you want in
it."</p>
<p>"A whole lot of lies," Jack admitted.</p>
<hr />
<p>Kate never recognised him at all. Joanne Cleary was an expert and Ed's girlfriend Donna Bryce had teamed up
with her to put fifteen years on him. He had done the deal backstage at the Starlight show, when the rest of
the cast were swilling beer and cheap white wine after the final curtain on the last night, air-kissing and
signing programmes and pretending to be real actors. Kate had given him the big posters he needed and after
the party he had gone home and sat up half the night, working a few things out.</p>
<p>Donna spread newspapers on the kitchen floor, slipped an old tablecloth around his neck and began to cut his
hair, starting with the hank that fell down over his eyes. She worked fast, talking all the time, while Neil
and Jed watched. Joanne was the direct opposite of her brother, fine featured and dark, with eyes that were
almost jet black and an olive complexion that contrasted with his freckles. She took after their mother in
looks and temperament and her three years at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and drama were paying off
here. She sat at the kitchen table, preparing her make-up box while Donna began the bleaching process and
then added the colour that converted the former black into a steely grey. She blew dried Jack's hair into a
short slashback style and stripped off the tablecloth. When he turned round, even Joanne was amazed. The
change in style and colour had added ten years to him. It was up to her to do the rest with the collection
of brushes and skin tones and latex.</p>
<p> When they had gone, he put on his grandfather's old brown tweed suit and when he looked in the mirror, he
almost stepped back in real amazement. A stranger stared back at him over the top of grandad's rimless
glasses, a stranger who looked remarkably like the photograph of the wold man that stood on his mum's
dresser.</p>
<p>Jack's eyes were the same blue they'd always been, and his brows still dark and thick, but it was the face of
a forty-year-old who bent forward to examine him. He had one thumb hooked in the belly pocket of the
waistcoat, faint crows feet around the eyes and a sharper nose. He smiled and the brackets on either side of
his mouth appeared deeper and darker. </p>
<p>"Now would you look at that?"</p>
<p>The Irish accent came out of the blue, unplanned and spontaneous, but it fit with the image. He had the right
colouring and the right suit. "Top of the morning to you, and bottom of the afternoon as well, begod."</p>
<p>He grinned at himself and knew he could pull this off. Jack walked back into the hallway and began to strip
the jacket off when the door suddenly opened.</p>
<p>"What it the name of christ...." His uncle took one look and for a man on the other side of sixty he was on
him faster than even Jack himself would have believed. The old man flung a straight punch which caught him
right on the cheek with a meaty thud. Jack was standing with the jacket peeled off, his arms still jammed in
the sleeves, defenceless. The punch was hard enough to rock his head to the side. Two quick belly blows
doubled him up as he struggled to free himself and knocked the wind from him before he could get a word
out.</p>
<p>"Scumbag," Sandy grunted. Jack got his arm out of a sleeve, trying to shake the old man off, still unable to
catch his breath. "I'll teach you to break in on me."</p>
<p>He'd always been strong, Jack knew that, but he was still surprisingly fast. Jack squirmed out of the
head-lock, managed to push himself to his feet, grab a breath.</p>
<p>"Stop it, Sandy . You're killing me."</p>
<p>Sandy Bruce raised a gnarled fist to catch him another one on the eye and Jack blocked it with his left,
grabbed the wrist and hung on tight.</p>
<p>"Honest. I give in."</p>
<p>"Jack?" Sandy pulled back, startled. "What the hell.....?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, it's me. I never expected you back for ages."</p>
<p>"For heaven's sake, boy. What in the name's happened to you?"</p>
<p>Jack held on to the wrist, just in case. Sandy leant forward.</p>
<p>"Is that my glasses?"</p>
<p>"No, it's grandad's old pair."</p>
<p>"And what's happened to your hair, man. You look like you've seen a ghost." He pulled back further. "Just
what are you up to?"</p>
<p>Jack eased himself upright, and pulled Sandy up to his feet. He sat down while his uncle got his own breath
back.</p>
<p>"Put the kettle on. I suppose I'd better tell you the score before you kick the living shit out of me."</p>
<p>Sandy made a cup of tea and then he broke the first of the two rules of business. He told his uncle
everything.</p>
<p>They welcomed him at Dunvegan distillery and insisted he took a dram of the finest malt that was even older
than he was. It had taken two hours and twenty minutes to get from Levenford to the bridge across the sound
to Skye, and then another hour to cross the whole island to get to the little distillery nested in a narrow
little glen, huddled in from the big winds and storms that swept in from the other side of the Atlantic. The
time factor bothered him and his backside was numb and sore. Tam was used to travelling about on the big
Dragstar and maybe his skin was calloused by now, but three hours on the rough roads north wasn't merciful
on the tailbone and Jack needed a hot bath to soak the stiffness out. He glanced at himself in the mirror of
the hotel bedroom, and realised he felt the way he looked. Tam stayed out of sight when he called for a
local cab to take him up to the distillery and none of the Dunvegan union men who had been down protesting
at the closure gave him a second glance. He got a tour of the premises and the stock, and Alistair Sproat
called from Aitkenbar just to make sure everything was going to plan. Jack didn't even have to concentrate
on the accent. The very fact of wearing his grandfather's good tweed suit just brought out whatever Celt was
in him. His cheek still hurt, but Neil's sister had smoothed over the abrasions with some thick cream and
managed to get it to match the other one.</p>
<p> "Mr Gabriel," Sproat had shaken his hand, strong and surprisingly firm when Jack had expected it to be weak
and sweaty.</p>
<p><em>Never make assumptions, they just make an ass out of u and me. </em>Was that from one of the business
course chapters, or had he heard it in a movie? Jack shucked the thought away, needing to concentrate. This
was the difficult part. The rest of it was just down to timing and organisation and making sure everybody
did their bit.</p>
<p>Margery Burns had given him the eye when he sat down in the neat reception area with the big coffee table
books that showed the basics of how whisky was made at Aitkenbar. She brought him a coffee and looked him up
and down, taking in the good handmade suit cut in a classic style, and the thick grey hair. Jack nodded, not
risking a smile just in case any of the latex peeled away from his nose.</p>
<p>"You're from Ireland?"</p>
<p>He nodded again, wishing she would go away. She'd made sure her fingers touched his when she passed the
coffee and he wondered if Jed knew he wasn't the exclusive stable jockey. Maybe he didn't care.</p>
<p>"And are you staying here today?"</p>
<p>He shook his head, lowered his voice and the Ulster accent didn't let him down.</p>
<p>"I'll be flying back tonight."</p>
<p>"That's a shame," she said, and smiled, letting him know that if he changed his mind, accommodation would not
be a problem. She was either making up for lost time or really going for revenge. Whatever way, she was
doing a fine job.</p>
<p>Sproat saw him in to the board room, narrow and panelled, with a big mahogany table from the golden days of
the past before the big conglomerates began to squeeze everybody and before designer drinks took the wind
out of the old whisky sails. Jack concentrated on his manner, glad that he'd spent the night going over
everything, predicting any questions. If Margery Burns hadn't recognised him, nobody would. The octagonal
rimless glasses gave him an air of aloofness, and that was no bad thing.<em> We never get a second chance to
make a good first impression.</em> Another rule. He was well primed.</p>
<p>"A client of mine understands you have a fine supply of whiskies that you might be looking to move on," Jack
said. </p>
<p>"There's always a possibility of business," Sproat said urbanely.</p>
<p>Jack had seen the books. Margery was truly helpful, if extremely insistent. It had not been an easy thing to
keep out of the grasp of those red nails.</p>
<p>"We'd be interested in an initial tranche of a hundred barrels of eight-year-old. You have that, plus another
hundred of five and a considerable bulk of under-age that's going to take a bit of moving. There's a
possibility we could be talking about a fairly sizeable order."</p>
<p>"I have to say you're very well informed, Mr Gabriel." Sproat was smiling as he crossed to the ornate
tantalus that caged three exquisite decanters.</p>
<p>"Call me Michael," Jack said. "Everybody else does. Sure, it's best to do the homework first, so you can
enjoy yourself afterwards."</p>
<p>"I've done some homework myself. Your brokerage is fairly new."</p>
<p>"Brand spanking new. It's a branch-out, some young heads and some old money. It's just a change of market. We
were mostly in the Balkans until the market fell away, if you understand. Now there's better business in the
Baltic. They're fed up with the Vodka and like a taste of the ould stuff, even if it's costing an arm and a
leg."</p>
<p>"Yes, I saw that on the web-site." Sproat poured two manly glasses. </p>
<p>"If we don't take care of the customer, somebody else will. My clients believe in that philosophy and if
you're interested, you can get a better deal than from any of the big boys. There's a lot of new money over
there looking for a place to come in out of the cold, if you take my meaning. Good quality Scotch is in big
demand, and over there, quality remains long after the price is forgotten."</p>
<p>"Over here too," Sproat beamed. Jack had done his homework and he knew just how keen Sproat was to empty the
warehouses now that the deal was almost complete with the developers. Everybody knew he'd be doing a stock
clearance and the buyers would be waiting to the last minute to scoop low at auction. Anything that upped
the price and achieved a quick sale would have the gleam of gold over it.</p>
<p>"Tell me Michael, do you play golf?"</p>
<p>"Indeed I do. You'll be looking for a challenge would you?"</p>
<p>"I'll fix up a game at the club," Sproat said.</p>
<p>"Good. You do that." Jack was well into it.</p>
<p>"Now, we also understand that your place on Skye, well, that's just going to be empty warehousing now."</p>
<p>"There's interest from the tourist board," Sproat said. Dunvegan was tiny, not a major part of the set-up.
"They've applied to enterprise for money to turn it into an attraction."</p>
<p>"Shame to see it change business," Jack said. "Now, we would be needing somewhere to store and mature."</p>
<p>He could see the money signs light up in Sproat's eyes. Jack lifted his glass and allowed himself to drain
it. It was the smoothest whisky he had ever tasted in his life. He wondered where he could get a bottle for
Sandy.</p>
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<h1>12</h1>
<p>Tam walked straight in through the front door of the dairy and slapped the papers down on Jim McGuire’s desk.</p>
<p> Everything was speeding up, moving in a blur, and now they had too few days to do too many things. Marjory Burns had
done her job and intercepted the outgoing mail at Aitkenbar and Jed had kept his ear to the ground in the dairy. He
phoned Jack from the call box round the corner.</p>
<p>"They're coming on Tuesday."</p>
<p>"Too soon. That just gives us two days."</p>
<p>"How are we going to do this?"</p>
<p>Jack paused. "I'll have to think of something quick."</p>
<p>"Andy Kerr's going to be away tomorrow. We might get a chance then."</p>
<p>It was only two days since he'd come back down from Skye, butt-sore from the long ride. Kate had passed him in the
street and taken a second glance and then walked on, and instead of going round to his mother's house, he had passed
straight to Sandy's. He'd already gone through all this with his uncle and didn't feel like making up any more
stories. Now the big Fruehauf dairy tankers were going back to the dealer and the window of opportunity was closing.
He called Tam and sent him round to Donna Bryce for a new identity.</p>
<p>The red hair and beard looked ridiculous to anybody who knew him, and just about everybody did, but with a pair of
aviator sunglasses it changed Tam's appearance just enough. So long as nobody examined him too closely, they might
get away with it. Jack hooked out an old flying jacket and pulled on a couple of sweaters to bulk him out and by the
time they got to the dairy he was drenched in sweat, from the heat and from the tension. Everybody here had known
him for years and he had to stay out of sight as much as he could. Jed had the spare mobile and he managed to sneak
away from the delivery bay and get into Jim McGuire's office when Jim was out organising the next day's deliveries.
All he had to do was steal his reading glasses and hope for the best. He waited at the end of the corridor when Tam
went inside.</p>
<p>Tam carried it off almost perfectly.</p>
<p>"You have to wait and see Mr Kerr." Jim searched around the top of the desk for his glasses. "He'll be back
tomorrow."</p>
<p>"No can do, my man." Tam's east coast accent was atrocious. He had found an old seventies car-coat and put on a
battered trilby hat from Oxfam and looked a total mess, but it was enough to get past the manager.</p>
<p>"There it is. Date stamped and all."</p>
<p>"I'll have to call the boss."</p>
<p>"You do that." Tam half-turned and when McGuire called to Jessie in the front office for Andy Kerr's mobile number,
he gave Jed a thumb's up.<em> </em>Jessie called out the digits and the manager dialled. Jed bent down and hooked
the little electrical field generator on to the phone cable in the hallway. Tam could hear the sudden burst of
crackle in the receiver. Jim jerked it away from his ear and looked at it as if it was a snake.</p>
<p>"Damn thing, half deafened me." He hung up. "Must be in a tunnel."</p>
<p>"Aye, well. Here you are. I have to get a signature."</p>
<p>The documents would probably have passed a perfunctory scrutiny in any case, but Jack had not been prepared to take
that chance. Jim called to Jessie again and got her to bring in the file and he opened it on the desk, leaning
forward to peer at the text.</p>
<p>"Damn and blast. Jessie, have you seen my specs?"</p>
<p>"It's just a standard repo agreement," Tam put in. "Mr Kerr knows all about it, y'ken? It's all fixed. I can leave it
with you, but they trucks have to go today, like."</p>
<p>Jim hesitated, wondering what to do.</p>
<p>"Bugger it," he finally said. A day wouldn't make any difference. He signed the sheet and Tam made a production of
peeling a back copy away. Jim stuck it in the file.</p>
<p>"You got the keys?" After Jed's night foray they already had spares, just in case this whole thing went wrong and
they had to come back at midnight, but he had to go through the motions.</p>
<p>"On the board. They're marked with the numbers."</p>
<p>"Aye, right." Tam reached for them, snatched and got himself out of there. Jed stayed at the back door, making sure
no-one was about, then motioned them forward. Jack sneaked in, got in the cab and started up the big diesel. Jim
McGuire watched as the silver tankers pulled out, with Jack taking the lead, as Tam had never driven anything that
size before. Jed ducked back in and palmed the static gadget and by the time he got back to the bottling hall, the
big shutter doors were closed again and the tankers were gone.</p>
<p>They got to the burgh boundary and Jack slowed to a crawl near the Drymains roundabout and took a side track that led
down by the old castle access road that was banked on either side by the tall walls that used to hem in the
shipyards. They stopped here and Donny pulled up in Willie McIver's van.</p>
<p>They began hauling the blue tarpaulins out from the back. The rest of the boys worked quickly, dragging the tarps
over the big silver cylinders and tying them onto the stanchions, while Tam used the electric drill to screw on the
fake plates. The whole operation took fifteen minutes and then they were off again. They headed out past Drymains
towards Barloan Harbour, then took a left up to the old Overburn estate grounds and when they reached the height,
they had a tricky turn up to the big forestry commission spruce plantation. Donny opened the gate and the tankers
eased through, taking the forest track for half a mile and then backing into an even narrower track. Tam only killed
one spruce sapling and that was good going for him.</p>
<p>"You better hope there isn't a forest fire," Donny said.</p>
<p>"We'll chance it for two days," Jack assured him.</p>
<p>The next day, the police were swarming all over the dairy, and Andy Kerr was really in the thick of it. Of all the
crazy things they did that summer, that was the one that gave Jack Lorne the most guilt.</p>
<p>But if they were going to do everything he planned, they had to have Andy's big tankers.</p>
<p>It hadn't been hard to figure out what Sproat had been up to with Kerr Thomson on the night Tam and Ed fixed the
pipes in Aitkenbar Distillery. The three of them had sat round the kitchen table late in the afternoon when
everybody else was out, and they'd gone through what the pair of them had seen. Jack had questioned them closely and
had modified his plan just a little, realising Sproat would fall heavily for the chance of some extra cash and
knowing he had made himself vulnerable. The following day he was back on the web again and set up yet another
company, digging in to the dwindling petty cash. Once again he got a re-direct on the mail and made sure Margery
Burns was well briefed. She was a demanding woman, but so well placed that her importance was strategic, and Jack
decided that all was fair in love, war and business, and just so long as Jed and Kate never found out, well he could
handle it. He hoped.</p>
<p> The faxes came in from Aitkenbar in the next few days and Jack took two calls direct from Sproat, calls that were
diverted from the land-line to his mobile, and Sproat never knew the difference, especially when Margery Burns was
handling the link.</p>
<p> "Michael, good to speak to you again. I think we can accommodate that request."</p>
<p> Jack punched the air, then held his hand up for total silence, Tam and Ed held still. </p>
<p>"That's terrific. My people will be well pleased at that. How soon do you want to get this done, for I know time's
pressing for us both."</p>
<p>"You come down here on Wednesday and I think we can do business. Maybe we could take in a quick nine holes if the
weather holds."</p>
<p>"Sure, that would be fine. Maybe we can make it interesting, Alistair. Perhaps a pound a hole."</p>
<p>"I'm sure we can do better than that Michael."</p>
<p>Jack hung up. "He's going for it. He'll probably go for more, greedy little reptile."</p>
<p>Tam looked at Jack's new hair colour. "You look just like your Dad, God rest him."</p>
<p>"I know. That's why I'm scared to go home. It would freak my mother. You, on the other hand, look like a child
molester. You think maybe you could take that daft beard off?"</p>
<p>Jed got a dose of the jitters because the following day the agent came down from the dealership to collect the
tankers and found them gone. At almost a hundred grand each, the theft was a very big deal in a small town like
this. Chief Inspector Angus Baxter handled this one personally and he took it personally too. He had Andy Kerr in
for a full day of querstions, and Jim McGuire for longer than that, dragging them through the details.</p>
<p>"It's clearly a fake," Baxter said. He had that slow island way with him, speaking the way DJ from Dunvegan did, as
if he was translating from the Gaelic into English every time he opened his mouth. That made him sound slow, but he
was sharp as a tack. "It's a forgery." He pronounced it <em>four-cherry</em>.</p>
<p>"I know that," Kerr said. "Unless Carson Convoy are at it."</p>
<p>"Do you think they are?"</p>
<p>Andy shook his head. "I don't know what to think. All I know is I was waiting for them to come down and take the damn
things back and now they're gone."</p>
<p>"And who else knew?"</p>
<p>"Everybody knew. It wasn't any big secret they were going. I don't think anybody knew when, though. I had to lay off
some people and the tankers were too big an oncost."</p>
<p>"Yes, I understand you have had cash flow problems. And these tankers, they'd be worth a lot of money?"</p>
<p>"Nearly a quarter of a mil.....what do you mean?" Andy's face was getting greyer by the minute. "Are you suggesting I
had anything to do with this."</p>
<p>"I'm never <em>suchesting</em> anything at all," Baxter said. "I'm chust inquiring."</p>
<p>Jim McGuire had it just as bad.</p>
<p>"And where were your glasses then?"</p>
<p>"On my desk."</p>
<p>"And you couldn't find them when you signed this <em>fourcherry</em>?"</p>
<p>"No, I couldn't. This chap with a Newcastle accent showed me the thing and said it was all okay. How was I to
know?"</p>
<p>It went on like that all day, with the rep from Carson Convoy relaying the details back to his head office and the
messages coming back that Andy Kerr was in the deepest shit imaginable and he'd better have a good lawyer. The whole
thing just spiralled down to a real mess.</p>
<p>"I feel really rotten about this," Jed said. "I mean, he's done his level best and we've gone and landed him well in
the shit."</p>
<p>Jack felt the same way, and he'd always known he would. That had been the difficult part, knowing the cost and still
going ahead with it.</p>
<p>"We'll make it up to him," he said, hoping he was right.</p>
<p>"How? Visit him in the Bar-L? He looks as if he's been hit by a truck. I really don't know if I can do this to
him."</p>
<p>Jack rounded on him. "Sure Jed. You want to pull out now? Maybe go talk to Baxter. What are you going to say?"</p>
<p>"I only said..."</p>
<p>"Only losing your nerve. Come on Jed. You back out now and we're all in the shit along with Andy with absolutely
nothing to show for it. We all go down for stealing the trucks that were going back to the dealers and we haven't
even had a chance yet."</p>
<p>He breathed out through pursed lips, as if he was letting off pressure. <em>Casualties of war. You keep them to a
minimum. </em>He clapped his hands to Jed's shoulders. The others watched silently. </p>
<p>"Come on man. You have to hold on. I told you could lose your shirt, but not if I can help it. And as for Andy, well
the business is going down the stank anyway, so if it comes sooner, then it makes hardly a splash, does it? If I can
help him, I will, but we have to get this thing done first. You have to trust me, right? It'll all come good."</p>
<p>Jed bit his lip. There was no bad in him. Everybody waited. They all felt guilt for Andy Kerr.</p>
<p>"Aye, sure," he finally said, head down. Jack felt a wrench in his belly. It was another hurdle he didn't need.
Another burden.</p>
<p>They were back in Gillespie's boat down at the sandy point where the river joined the Clyde. The first meeting was
only weeks past, and it seemed a whole lot further away than that. Tam had got rid of the hair and the beard, but
Jack was still wearing the grey and keeping out of sight. </p>
<p>Margery Burns had been determined to find out what was really going on, when she brought him the news.</p>
<p>"You're face is melting," she had hissed at him, taking him completely by surprise and his heart seemed to leap up
and lodge under his chin. "Into the bathroom, quick!"</p>
<p>She dumped the coffee, grabbed him by the elbow and hustled him into the ladies toilet round the corner from Sproat's
office.</p>
<p>"What a mess," she hissed again. "Was that you on Thursday?"</p>
<p>He nodded, trying to peer over her shoulder past the tampon machine. She leaned in.</p>
<p>"Just what are you up to, Mr fake-face Lorne?"</p>
<p>"No time," he managed to get out.</p>
<p>"Plenty of time. He's just taken a call from Trading Estates, those mall developers. He's never less than twenty
minutes. This is more than just a union thing, isn't it."</p>
<p>He managed to see himself in the mirror. A piece of latex was peeling away from his nose, like flaking skin. <em>Jesus,
I don't need this</em>, he thought.</p>
<p>"And it's not just the Charter protest either. You have me intercepting phone calls and outgoing mail and then you
turn up in a disguise like Val Kilmer in The Saint."</p>
<p>She reached up and smoothed the latex a little, leaning in close. "Tell you what though, you suit the distinguished
look."</p>
<p>Margery reached down to her bag and rummaged inside. "Here," She brought out a small sticking plaster. "It's the best
I can think of, unless you want to tell him you've got leprosy."</p>
<p>"Thanks Marge, you're a lifesaver."</p>
<p>"And you can dispense with that phoney accent with me. You sound like a thick Ulster oaf. Like my dear and very
soon-to-be-<em>ex</em>-husband."</p>
<p>"Is it working?"</p>
<p>"Passable," she said. "But tonight you're coming round to my place and you're going to tell me everything."</p>
<p>"What about Jed?"</p>
<p>"Don't you worry about Gerard," she said. "What's for him won't go past him, and after being stuck with that
dead-head of mine for twenty five years, I'm wasting no time. Life's for living. He can enjoy it while he lasts. And
so, young Mr Lorne, can you."</p>
<p>His heart was slowing down. She had him by the shorts and there was no getting round it. He wondered if she'd have
the bottle to know it all. It was bad enough bringing his uncle into it, but a woman? This woman? </p>
<p>"You're playing golf today?"</p>
<p>He nodded.</p>
<p>"Right. He hooks, so you'll get him on the ninth, thirteenth and fifteenth at least. And he cheats, so you can take a
few extra balls in your pocket, for he certainly will. And he's under a lot of pressure from these Charter people
who want the place listed, so take him for plenty."</p>
<p>She leant in even closer and nipped his bottom lip in a slow, sensuous, woman's bite and when she pulled back she was
wearing the most mischievous grin he had ever seen on a human, with the possible exception of Uncle Sandy. Maybe he
should fix the two of them up.She drew a hand down underneath his jacket.</p>
<p>"Just don't lose all your balls," she said. The quick squeeze almost doubled him up.</p>
<p>Sproat cheated shamelessly. It amazed Jack that he thought nobody noticed him, but then again, Jack told himself, if
Marge hadn't mentioned, maybe he never would have picked it up. He was a bad-tempered player and Jack could see why
he hooked the ball. He was all tight and tense on the left side, lowering his shoulder just on the strike. Jack took
a fiver on the three holes Margery had said and another four in succession. By the time they got to the thirteenth,
he was twenty notes up and Sproat was fuming, but that's the way he wanted it. He needed Sproat to get reckless.</p>
<p> "What if we double it for the final three," the other man said. He reminded Jack of the snooty members in pringle
jumpers and Ben Sherman polos who had chased them on that blistering savannah day. "Give me a chance to win
back."</p>
<p>"Sure," Jack said, easily, putting on the accent now he was sure it was working, hoping the latex wouldn't peel
further. "Whatever you think."</p>
<p>He deliberately sliced the tee shot out into the swamp and ignored the shouted offers from the three mud boys.</p>
<p>"Good that we could get this thing moving. My clients are delighted. Not at your tax though. Eighty percent? That's a
huge amount."</p>
<p>Sproat hit well down the middle. "It's killing us. That's why we're better off in the designer drinks market. It's
expanding when everything else is tightening up, takes less alcohol, and doesn't need to age for half a
century."</p>
<p>"Eighty percent tax. It's like prohibition. You look at America, what it was like back in the twenties. And Sweden,
that's even worse, you know. You wouldn't believe what they're paying for in spirits. It's got so bad they've
developed this new home brew yeast that gives them twenty percent alcohol. It keeps them comatose through the dark
winter nights. Instant hibernation."</p>
<p>"Each to their own," Sproat said. "The Customs and Excise, it's always been a law unto itself. The Scotch Whisky
Association has been banging its head on the front door of Downing Street for decades, but they're farting against
thunder."</p>
<p>Jack laughed at the mix of metaphor. Sproat just didn't realise that.</p>
<p>"Just think the profits you could make if you could push some untaxed onto the continent. Eighty percent! It would be
like a windfall would it not?"</p>
<p>Sproat nodded. Jack let it sink in. The other man lined up to the ball and was just on the backswing when Jack looked
away.</p>
<p>"Here, while we're talking I know some folk who might be interested in taking that wee distillery on Skye right off
your hands."</p>
<p>Sproat hooked so far into the marsh that he had to drop another ball.</p>
<p>The meeting had to be set up as a matter of urgency. Margery Burns slipped the note into his pocket when she helped
him on with his jacket.</p>
<p>"Face still intact," she whispered. Sproat looked up but she had turned away again. Jack took a glance at her legs
and thought she really still had it for a woman of her age. Just as well, he told himself. Sproat caught the glance
and smirked.</p>
<p>"I could maybe fix you up."</p>
<p>"Very nice thought, Alistair, but I've taken forty quid and I feel bad enough already." Jack grinned. If she knew
Sproat had said that, she'd personally strangle the little prick with one of her expensive sheer stockings.</p>
<p>She met him that night, after he and Sproat had chewed a few things over and got close to the heads of agreement.
When he'd heard there was interest in the Dunvegan distillery, Sproat's tongue had almost been hanging out, and that
had been enough to chivvy him into the first deal. He was in the bag. Mike had already printed out the contract on
his computer system. Apart from the numbers, it was word for word identical to the blanks Margery had managed to get
from the files. All Sproat could see were dollar signs.</p>
<p>Here on Gillespie's dry-landed boat they listened while he ran through the plan.</p>
<p>"Just as well we got those trucks," he said. "The decant has been switched again."</p>
<p>He didn't tell them that the change in timing was because Sproat thought he was clearing out one of the storage sheds
and wanted to get this out the way as quickly as possible. The rules of business still applied and the less people
knew, the less they could tell. And the fewer people who did know, the fewer you had to trust.</p>
<p>"To when?"</p>
<p>"Wednesday."</p>
<p>"Nobody told us," Ed said. "Are you sure?"</p>
<p>"Got it from as near the horse's mouth to smell the breath." Nobody knew about his deal.</p>
<p>Jed gave him an odd look. </p>
<p>"So now we have to get things moving. I need another ton from everybody, no cheques, no plastic and no IOU's. Just
cash."</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"Diesel for a start. These tankers don't run on air. We have to hire a pump, so get a good Dewalt one Ed, something
that can do five thousand gallons an hour, and that's minimum. See what they've got and how heavy. Try Harcourt
Plant and if they haven't got what we need, we'll borrow one from Direct Works."</p>
<p>"The council don't hire plant," Tam said. "They're as tight as crab's arses."</p>
<p>"I said borrow from them," Jack said. "Big Shug Cannon will get us anything we want for two bottles of hooch. If it
comes down to it, we'll use drain pumps."</p>
<p>Everybody agreed with that, so there was no problem either way, but they had to move fast.</p>
<p>"Any problems?"</p>
<p>There was a silent pause. Neil looked at Donny and gave him a go-ahead sign, trying to make it look as if he hadn't,
but Jack caught it. It was all so close now that everything seemed picked out in a strange clarity, the edges
sharply defined, the colours clear and separate, as if all senses were up and working at max. He felt completely
alive.</p>
<p>"What's up Donzo?"</p>
<p>Donny's face tried to match his hair. He squirmed a bit and shuffled like a schoolboy trying to sneak his first
kiss.</p>
<p>"It's them fish you wanted."</p>
<p>"Yeah? You told me you'd got hundreds of them."</p>
<p>"Sure, I did."</p>
<p>"Good, they cost me fifty. That's our venture capital. A big investment."</p>
<p>"And then they died," Donny admitted and his face turned pure scarlet. "I had them in a tank, but it must have got
too hot in the sun, so they all cooked. I only discovered it today."</p>
<p>"That's okay. We don't need them alive."</p>
<p>"No, you don't understand. They <em>cooked</em>, man. I've got a tankful of mush, know what I mean? It's like
stickleback chowder and it smells to high heaven. It would make you puke."</p>
<p>"Great," Tam said. He looked at Jack. "What the hell did you need fish for?"</p>
<p>Jack didn't even respond to that. He rounded on Donny.</p>
<p>"Well, I paid fifty and I want fish. Just go and get some more."</p>
<p>"My wee brother's gone to scout camp," Donny said helplessly.</p>
<p>"I don't care if you have to go down the burn and hook them out with your teeth. But if we don't have a decoy,
everybody will know what's happened once we move. Just make sure you get them, right? That's your job, and we don't
have time."</p>
<p>"I might need some more dough."</p>
<p>Jack looked at Ed. "Give him a bullseye from the kitty." Ed opened the tin and flicked out the two tens and a five.
Donny took it sheepishly.</p>
<p>Jack breathed out. "Anybody else?"</p>
<p>This time Neil did the sand-dancing. It was hot in the boat and he had big damp patches under his armpits.</p>
<p>"Okay Neil man, you got the floor. Hit me now."</p>
<p>"Listen Jake, I did my best, honest."</p>
<p>"You only had to feed the birds Neil, what's the but?"</p>
<p>"They think I'm their mother, that's the but. I did like you said and it worked just like clockwork. I've got them
coming right round the back of Aitkenbar. But now if I get inside half a mile of the place they go berserk. You were
right about the popcorn, they're hooked on the stuff. But they go totally crazy for it. And they follow me all over
the place, but the noise would wake the dead, man."</p>
<p>Jack put his head in his hands, elbows on the little formica table. Sunlight streamed in the brass porthole and he
felt a little bubble of hysteria build up. All of a sudden it just burst out and a fit of uncontrollable giggles
shook him.</p>
<p>"Jesus," he gasped when he could finally get a breath. "Donny screws the fish, and geese fancy Neil. What the hell
are we doing?"</p>
<p>Ed let him go until the laughter finally subsided.</p>
<p>"And then there's these rottweillers," he said. "They've brought in new security guards."</p>
<p>Jack sat back, clamping down on the laughter.</p>
<p>"Dogs now? We'll just have to get a gun and shoot them."</p>
<p>"Shoot them? Jesus Jake, are you crazy?"</p>
<p>He held his hands up. "Probably, bringing you shmucks in on anything. Christ, you can't even catch a few fish and
feed a few geese? Right. Okay. We'll do it Chaucer's way again."</p>
<p>"What way is that?"</p>
<p>"Tam, don't you ever read anything without a staple in its belly? You ever read Canterbury Tales?"</p>
<p>"Listen to the mental milkman!"</p>
<p>"You have to learn, chance fights ever on the side of the prudent."</p>
<p>"Okay, who said that one?"</p>
<p>"Euripides.</p>
<p>"You rippa dese pants," Neil came in. "I kicka your balls."</p>
<p> "Jeez. I'm chief whip to a bunch of ignoramuses. Okay, forget the culture, just stick to the plan."</p>
<p>Sandy was blunt about it.</p>
<p>"It's far too complex," he said. "The best plans are really simple."</p>
<p>"This has to be complex if we're going to get away with it</p>
<p>"You're taking on too much. Listen Jack, you've got six of you involved in it, and that's six places for a tin can to
leak like a sieve."</p>
<p>"Eight now," he said. "Including yourself."</p>
<p>"Who's the other one?"</p>
<p>"You don't want to know."</p>
<p>"It's not that nice artist girl, is it? Pretty one with red hair and all the brains?"</p>
<p>Jack shook his head. "No. She's well out of it."</p>
<p>"I wish I was too. It's okay brewing a bit of beer and making that fancy woman's stuff for the club nights. But hell
and shite, Jack, this is in a different league."</p>
<p>"You're not <em>in</em> this. Not this part of it anyway. You tell Willie we'll give him a ton for the van for one
night. Any comeback and he says it's been nicked. And all we have to do is put on the dog for Sproat, and that's
legit anyway. He's got his tongue hanging out and he's not thinking straight."</p>
<p>"Just you make sure you don't get too smart, my boy. Big Angus Baxter's all over the town like a coat of cheap paint,
and he's nobody's mug. Your mother would kill you."</p>
<p>"So don't tell her."</p>
<p>"You think I'd cut my own throat?" His uncle grinned at him, but there was concern in it. Jack caught sight of them
both in the hallway mirror and, with the grey still in his hair, he was astonished at how similar they were. Margery
Burns was right. It did make him look distinguished. For a fleeting moment he wondered if he should keep it this
way.</p>
<p>Kate had been round at the house on the pretext of asking for Jack's help in the next Starlight production, but
nobody was fooled.</p>
<p> "I haven't seen him for days," Alice Lorne said. She poured them a cup of tea. "You know what he's like sometimes.
Just goes off on his own for a while. He's got a few plans."</p>
<p>"I know," Kate said. "He told me. I said I thought it was a complete waste of time."</p>
<p>"What was that, love?"</p>
<p>"Going out on the North Sea on a supply boat. It's just manual labour with no future."</p>
<p>"Out on a boat? He never told me anything about that. It would surprise me though, for our Jack, he gets awfully
seasick, always has since he was small. Are you sure that's what he told you?"</p>
<p> She asked Jed and Neil when she met them in the street, stopped at the traffic lights on River Street in the souped
up Skoda that Jed was still working on for the stock racing. It sounded like a hog with a sore throat and looked
like it was held together with string and duct tape. They were about to pull away when she climbed in the back and
leant on the roll-bar,</p>
<p> "Where are you guys off to?"</p>
<p>They were heading down to Gillespie's boat for the meet. Neil and Jed exchanged fast glances and she caught that
right away.</p>
<p>"A big secret then, is it? Just for the boys?"</p>
<p>"No!" They both replied at once.</p>
<p>"Oh really. And of course I believe you. Anybody seen Jack?"</p>
<p>They looked at each other again.</p>
<p>"Haven't you?" Neil asked.</p>
<p>"Now would I be asking if I had?" She leaned forward between them. "What's going on, boys? I hear Jack got a neat
haircut, and a wee birdie tells me he's gone and had it coloured."</p>
<p>"Who told you that?"</p>
<p>She laughed out loud, hanging on to the roll-bar. They were transparent to her.</p>
<p>"More secrets? I think I've stumbled into the masons."</p>
<p>"No, honest, Kate. I haven't seen him for days. He's got a job on a boat somewhere."</p>
<p>"And he hasn't told his mother?"</p>
<p>"It's just a try-out," Jed put in too quickly. "To see if he likes it."</p>
<p>She sat back, thinking. Jed slowed down at the bridge, hoping she'd take the hint, worried in case Jack came round
the corner.</p>
<p>"You sure he's not getting all tarted up for a couple of Swedish bimbettes?"</p>
<p>"Come on Kate. That was just a one night," Jed said.</p>
<p>"And he never put a hand on them," Neil interjected quickly. "Honest."</p>
<p>"So he's gone to sea, has he?"</p>
<p>"Far as we know," Tam said, trying to keep his face straight. They dropped her at the corner and she was still none
the wiser. But later in the afternoon she met Michael, and he was no match for her at all.</p>
<p>Gus Ferguson was also looking for Jack Lorne. He'd put the word around the Corrieside boys, who would always exchange
a tip for a bottle of Buckfast wine, but in the past couple of days, nobody had seen him or heard a thing.</p>
<p>The Irish connection had him beat, and he'd even made a couple of tentative inquiries up the city, just in case. You
never knew, with all these nutters out of the Maze and lots of time on their hands and here on the Clydeside, the
sectarian thing was still in the blood. You never knew who was related to who back in the old country. Wiggy Foley
had hit it on the head when he said he didn't know whether Lorne was a Tim or a Prod and at the end of the day
Ferguson still didn't know either. He'd found out Lorne's father had been Catholic, and his mother protestant, so he
was a half-caste in these parts. He could jump any way at all.</p>
<p>Guns: They put a different slant on things. Cullen and Foley, they were never the most reliable at the best of times,
solid muscle from ear to ear, and generally handy enough for a bit of shoving and shaking, although in recent days
he'd had to revise his estimate of their worth. Who knows what had happened in Whitehead's scrap yard. Somebody had
pulled a gun and almost singed Wiggy's ear, and that changed the situation. So far he hadn't heard the story
repeated on the jungle drums, and that was a good thing, because it meant he still had some face, but it would
eventually get out and he'd have to take some swift action to put that right, once he'd found out who and what he
was up against.</p>
<p>Lorne, on the other hand, seemed to have done a runner. Nobody had seen him anywhere and that could be a plus
depending on how you looked at it. Maybe Seggs and Wiggy had given him a tanking, despite the evidence to the
contrary, and maybe Lorne had buzzed off to lick his wounds. It could be that, but Ferguson didn't think so. Maybe
he was just lying low. He certainly had no team to back him up, not in this town.</p>
<p>But who was that masked man? It wasn't the Lone Ranger and it wasn't Batman either, Ferguson told himself. And the
stranger spoke with an Irish accent.</p>
<p>Which part of Ireland? North or South? Belfast or Dublin? No-one knew.</p>
<p>What Ferguson did not know was that he had passed Jack twice in the past two days, and once was on the golf course.
Alistair Sproat had waved him through when his ball had disappeared into the scrub and had given him the nod. The
big fellow with him had tipped his cap, but he'd been wearing mirror sunglasses and Ferguson couldn't tell where
he'd been looking.</p>
<p>The second time was when he was collecting personally from that mouth Watson's aunt Jean Bailey, standing on the
front doorstep to let all the neighbours know. She was a thin woman with hair dyed the colour she was sure she
remembered having some years back and it made her look like a Swan Vesta match. No matter what he'd said to Watson,
there was no chance in hell he'd put it to this skanky bitch.</p>
<p>"Haven't seen your Donny in a while."</p>
<p>"Me neither," she said, keeping her voice flat. She needed the dough week on week, just like the pawnshop, so she
wouldn't offend him if she could help it. Times were hard.</p>
<p>"That's a shame. I was hoping we could have a chat."</p>
<p>"I thought yon Cullen already spoke to him."</p>
<p>"Don't you worry, Ginger. It's not him I'm looking for. But I hear he's in with a bad crowd. Somebody should just
point him in the right direction, maybe give him good advice."</p>
<p>"Oh yes. You?"</p>
<p>"Has to come from somebody, Jean. You let him know it could be worth his while. And I tell you what, honey. I'll make
it worth your while too. I never forget a favour, know what I'm saying?"</p>
<p>"Okay. I'll let him know then."</p>
<p>He squeezed her just above the hip, one handed, like he was copping a quick feel.</p>
<p>"Good. See you next week then and see what we've got."</p>
<p>He drove away in the Jag, through Drymains and close to where Lorne had turned up to see the boys off. He slowed down
when he passed the Lorne house, just in case, and speeded up again, round the corner and along the straight. At the
far side of Drymains, close to where it gets to Gooselade, he passed Sandy Bruce's house. The old man was in the
front garden, talking to some other fellow. The man turned, saw him and kept on turning as if nothing had happened,
but Ferguson was long in the tooth and he had eyes on the back of his head. He knew he had been clocked.</p>
<p>Was that the Irishman? He had to find out.</p>
<p>Margery Burns followed the note up with the call and he dropped in just after he and Ed sneaked back in to Tim
Farmer's to pick up the mail. There was more behind the door this time and fortunately, no nonsense in front of it
and no police around. They were probably all out looking for the two tankers.</p>
<p>"Just what are you up to, Jack Lorne?" It was the third time she'd asked it, and about the tenth time he'd heard
it.</p>
<p>She was standing behind him, as he sat at the kitchen table, hands on his shoulders, squeezing them gently and trying
to be seductive, but it just helped ease the tension out of his shoulders. </p>
<p>"Just trying to give Sproat a taste of his own."</p>
<p>"Sure you are. But it's got nothing to do with the closure, that's for sure, nor the unions. They've accepted the
deal, damned weaklings."</p>
<p>"Best you don't know."</p>
<p>"So you're up to something illegal."</p>
<p>"I wouldn't say that," he lied.</p>
<p>"Then it's got something to do with that stack of barrels of three-year-old you're trying to con out of Sproat."</p>
<p>"How did you know about...?"</p>
<p>"Don't be daft. I'm the original eyes and ears. Knowledge is power, that's what you say, isn't it?" She chuckled.
"So, are you going to let me in on it?"</p>
<p>"Honest Marge, it really isn't a good idea. You can always say you never knew a thing."</p>
<p>"Oh, I'll say that anyway, don't worry your head about that. But so far I've snaffled the outgoing mail you wanted,
and I've diverted phone calls, and I've looked up some paperwork I shouldn't, so I'm in it, whatever <em>it</em> is,
no matter what. And I'm thinking I'd better know what to do when whatever it is that I'm not supposed to know about
takes place and various solid things hit the air conditioning."</p>
<p>He closed his eyes, enjoying the back rub, but thinking about Kate and Jed and feeling guilty. She ploughed into the
silence.</p>
<p>"Now, remember you wanted me to clock somebody out. Eddie Kane, wasn't it? And he got sent home the next day, first
thing in the morning just after I clocked him in again."</p>
<p>Jack stiffened and she slapped the back of his head, almost motherly. "Sit still. I don't do this for everybody, you
know."</p>
<p>She chuckled again. "So he got sent home an hour after I clocked him into the building. What I'm wondering is, where
was he all night? And if I put two and two together, I'd say he was inside Aitkenbar all night."</p>
<p>God, she was sharp as cut glass. Jack wouldn't want to be her soon-to-be-ex by the time she was finished with
him.</p>
<p>"Then I'd be wondering <em>what </em>he was doing all night," she said, still kneading, enjoying this now. So was he.
He had to admire her. "I know what <em>you </em> were doing for some of it."</p>
<p>He couldn't strangle the sudden smile.</p>
<p>"So here we have you trying to look like Al Pacino." She bent forward and pecked his cheek. "But a whole lot better
looking than that scrawny wee Italian. You get anxious when I tell you the next decant has been put on hold. You get
me to clock your friend in and out."</p>
<p>She paused. She had him. "Am I getting anywhere?"</p>
<p>"Maybe." If she could work it out this far, maybe anybody else could.</p>
<p>"So now I'm wondering, should I tell you that the decant date has been shifted again?"</p>
<p>He froze.</p>
<p>"Gotcha."</p>
<p>There was nothing for it but to bring her in.</p>
<p>Sometime later, when it was almost dark, she leaned over and cupped the back of his head, pulling him a little
closer.</p>
<p> "You think I can get a BMW roadster out of this operation, young man?"</p>
<p>She chuckled mirthfully in the shadows.</p>
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<h1>14</h1>
<p>It took ten minutes before anybody realised the tank was empty. </p>
<p> The shift was just starting and the bottling hall was primed and ready. Billy Butler and the filling-line charge
hand were over in the glasshouse going through the paperwork when somebody knocked on the door. Billy looked up.</p>
<p>"You better come and see this." One of the operators stood there, rubbing his jaw.</p>
<p>"We're just about to start. Give us ten minutes."</p>
<p>"No, I think you <em>really</em> should come and see this."</p>
<p>Billy stuck a pen into his top pocket and came walking out, white coat flapping.</p>
<p>"What's the problem?"</p>
<p>"Best you see for yourself."</p>
<p>The man walked along the gantry and stopped at the balcony. From there, the big tank was almost directly underneath,
its sectional hinged lids thrown wide like stainless steel petals. The inside walls gleamed in the overhead
light.</p>
<p>"Oh, holy <em>fuck</em>," Billy's face went slack. </p>
<p>"That's what I though too."</p>
<p>It had been simple for Ed to get in quickly, turn the key to close off the bottling line feed and then throw the
handle that would drain the tank after a sterile wash. It took him eighteen seconds in all and he was back in the
washroom before anyone even knew he was gone. Jack had insisted on that last move, even though Tam had said it
wouldn't be needed.</p>
<p>Good enough, <em>never is</em>, Jack had said. Or conversely: <em>there is absolutely no substitute for a genuine
lack of preparation. </em>Another of his throwaway lines, but Ed had gone along with it. Jack Lorne had it all
together. One mistake, he said, and we're all in the shit.</p>
<p>Out of the corner of his eye Ed saw Billy Butler take two steps back and come to a halt against the banister. His
face seemed to turn the colour of old putty and he looked as if he was having a heart attack.</p>
<p>"Are you all right?" Jim McCabe, the charge hand was starting up from the bottom stair.</p>
<p>Billy Butler was far from all right. He came down the stairs, went straight to the glasshouse and picked up the
phone.</p>
<p>"Get me Alistair Sproat."</p>
<p>"He's tied up at the moment Mr Butler," a woman's voice answered.</p>
<p>"Fucking untie him and get him down here," he said. "And I mean <em>pronto</em>."</p>
<p>Alistair Sproat had not seen Billy Butler's shock, but he made a very passable imitation when the manager took him to
the tank rim. He clutched a hand to his chest and almost doubled up.</p>
<p>"What's happened?"</p>
<p>"It's gone."</p>
<p>"Oh my god. Oh my <em>god</em>!" Sproat held on to the rail. "Where's my Glen Murroch?"</p>
<p>"Damned if I know," Billy said. "We left it to settle out last night after we emptied the last barrel. It was ready
for the bottling filter."</p>
<p>"So where is it, man? You had twenty five thousand gallons."</p>
<p>"I know that Alistair."</p>
<p>"So where in the name of god is my whisky?" He couldn't assimilate this yet.</p>
<p>Billy shrugged helplessly. The tank was completely empty. It had been six feet deep in fine malt twenty four hours
ago.</p>
<p>"I'm buggered if I know. The Glen Murroch's gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Vamoosed."</p>
<p>"That's three million pounds Billy. The bottling line's waiting to go. We've spent a fortune on presentation boxes.
For heaven's sake, Billy. It's Murroch <em>twenty-five-year-old</em>."</p>
<p>"I know that Alistair. But it's not there now."</p>
<p>Sproat was backed against the rail, still holding on, white knuckled.</p>
<p>"Billy." Sproat sounded as if he was choking. He looked as if he'd been hit with a bung-mallet. "<em>Billy.</em>
Don't bugger me about now. Just tell me what's happened."</p>
<p>"We've lost a whole decant."</p>
<p>"Well, you'd better damn well find it, or we're both in extremely deep manure."</p>
<p>The whole town knew all about it by mid morning. Sproat was besieged in his office and the customs men were crawling
all over the place.</p>
<p> "It was there yesterday", Jim Gilveray, the excise chief said to Angus Baxter. The big inspector had his pipe jammed
in the corner of his mouth. Powerful blue smoke billowed from his nostrils. "I saw it myself. Here's the
paperwork."</p>
<p> Gilveray pushed a thick file across the table. "It's an excise matter anyway. The material has not left customs bond
yet."</p>
<p>"So we would hope," Angus said. It wasn't a police matter, not yet, but Alistair Sproat had been in such a panic he'd
put a call through to headquarters before he sat down to think, so for now, at least, there was police interest.
"Such a shame to think somebody has misplaced all that whisky. It would be criminal negligence, is my view. An
affront to our Scottish heritage."</p>
<p>Kerr Thomson shifted from foot to foot. The big detective had given him a weighing look when he'd come in to
reception and for a moment Thomson thought he was about to say something. He hadn't had a wink of sleep all night,
thinking of that patrolman and his flashlight. Had he gone straight back to the station and told everybody?</p>
<p>"I've had to call in the investigation unit," Gilveray said. "Just in case."</p>
<p>He was looking Sproat straight in the eye. </p>
<p>"Just in case of what?"</p>
<p>"Just to protect Her Majesty's interest." All of the brass sat around the boardroom table. "They'll be here by
lunchtime."</p>
<p>"I don't think that's going to be necessary," Billy Butler said. He had just arrived up from the decant hall with one
of the maintenance men.</p>
<p>"Why is that?"</p>
<p>"We've found the problem." Billy started to unfold a schematic that was almost an exact replica of the one Jack Lorne
had spread on Neil Cleary's kitchen table. He bent over it and everybody crowded round. He jabbed a finger at a
junction where lines converged. "Somebody opened the cleaning cock."</p>
<p>"What would that do?" Angus Baxter.</p>
<p>"Very similar to the bottling valve here," Billy said, indicating a small detail. "Except that instead of pumping the
whisky to the lines, it just vents the tank. We use it after a steam clean."</p>
<p>"And what would that do?" Baxter insisted.</p>
<p>"What it <em>did</em> do," Billy corrected. His face was still ghastly pale. "I just don't know how anybody could
have made that mistake."</p>
<p>"You <em>vented</em> the decant?" Gilveray demanded. "Twenty five thousand gallons?"</p>
<p>"I don't know who threw the cleaning cock. But somebody has pulled the wrong lever."</p>
<p>"How many barrels would that be, now?" Baxter was curious.</p>
<p>"Four hundred and fifty hogsheads. They're bigger than barrels. Take about fifty five gallons apiece. We emptied them
over the past two days. It's a big operation."</p>
<p>"It was the <em>last</em> big operation," Sproat said, voice hollow and weak. "It's priceless."</p>
<p>"So where does it vent to?" Baxter seemed to take charge now.</p>
<p>"Here." Billy jabbed a finger at the schematic. They could see his hand was shaking. "It just goes down the drain and
out."</p>
<p>"Out where?"</p>
<p>"Into the river."</p>
<p>In five minutes they were all at the chain link fence and the smell of whisky was heavy on the wet air. The
thunderstorm had passed by in the early morning, leaving the ground sodden and soft, and beyond the fence, the golf
course was punctuated with big puddles in the fairway dips. A light smirr of rain fell out of low clouds.</p>
<p>They had paused by the little hatches where Billy Butler indicated the different pipes.</p>
<p>"Two inlets for fire hydrants. The third is a freezer valve." He moved between them. "This here is the vent for the
tank. He hunkered down close to the wall where a pipe curved down into a drain sump. "From there it discharges into
the runnel beyond the fence."</p>
<p>"I think that's confirmation enough," Baxter said, sniffing the air. His face was a picture of disgust. "It seems you
have a few problems, Mr Sproat."</p>
<p>Everybody turned to him. </p>
<p>"That's a lot of whisky to lose. We'll have to see what damage has been done."</p>
<p>"Damage?"</p>
<p>"Pollution. That much whisky can't have been good for the environment. The protection agency will have to be
informed."</p>
<p>He tapped his pipe out on a concrete stanchion. "And anybody who flushes away twenty five thousand gallons of good
Scotch whisky." He started filling the bowl again. "It's a personal thing, mind you, but in my opinion, that should
surely be a hanging offence."</p>
<p>Sproat looked as if he might faint. His face was drained of all colour and now matched the grey of this suit.
Everybody could see the mental calculations going on.</p>
<p>"This can't get out," he said.</p>
<p>"It already did," Gilveray said. "We'll have to find out how. And who is responsible."</p>
<p>"No. This has to remain confidential. Completely confidential, That's imperative, is that clear?" Sproat was
frantically thinking of how he would make up the shortfall. The three million was crucial for his development plan.
Without it he could be in serious trouble.</p>
<p>What he <em>thought</em> was, that without it he was totally fucked.</p>
<p>"I'm swearing you all to secrecy."</p>
<p>The big policeman took a step back, hunched over his pipe, straining to get it lit again. His eyes twinkled with arid
humour.</p>
<p>"Oh yes, I'm sure I remember the very mention of the secrecy clause in the police operational handbook."</p>
<p>Sproat looked at him, anger chasing shock.</p>
<p>"Just how secret do you think this can be?" Baxter asked him. "You've twenty workers in there who saw your empty
tank. It's going to be all over the town in ten minutes."</p>
<p>In less than an hour, the phone calls were coming in.</p>
<p>They had hid the tankers in plain sight, right at the back stretch of the container park on the east end of the town.
It was enough out of the way, and the fake tarpaulins on the makeshift brackets were sufficient camouflage amongst
the scatter of other trucks and trailers. They unhitched the drive units and left the big tanks up on their
brace-legs and parked the cabins on the other side. Anybody hunting for Andy Kerr's vehicles would be looking for
complete tankers. </p>
<p>"Nobody else is to know where they are," Jack said after he and Jed eased them into position. "Just let them think
they're back up on the plantation."</p>
<p>"You mean don't tell the lads?"</p>
<p>"I mean that exactly." Rain had been pouring down Jack's face and he slicked it away with the back of his hand.</p>
<p>"I thought we were <em>all</em> in this," Jed protested.</p>
<p>"Sure we are. But from now on it's going to get hairy. The customs men will be all over the place like flies on a
cowshit. The less people know, the less they can tell, even accidentally."</p>
<p>"You mean Donny?"</p>
<p>"I mean we just play it safe. Just you and me know where it is. That's enough for now."</p>
<p>They met at Gillespie's boat late in the afternoon after Donny and Ed clocked out. The pair of them looked as if they
could use some sleep.</p>
<p>"They bought it," Ed said. "The shit really hit. Every one of us got hauled in. You should have seen Sproat's face.
He looked like he'd swallowed a dead rat."</p>
<p>"They brought in the council and a whole team of big shots from the Customs and Excise." Donny was animated. "They
could get done for polluting the river."</p>
<p>"Did you leave the red herrings?"</p>
<p>Donny gave him a blank look.</p>
<p>"The fish, Donzo. Are the fish in the stream?"</p>
<p>"Sure they are. They can't miss them."</p>
<p>He had got up before dawn, unable to sleep, and taken the river towpath shortcut while the rain was still pounding
down. By the time he got to the little runnel, the smell of whisky was thick and powerful. He followed the streamlet
up to the bushes, counting off the pale bodies of the fish in the shallow water and then he plunged into the sodden
undergrowth until he reached the drainpipe. The big plastic container was full to the brim. He hauled it out,
grunting with exertion as he managed it onto his shoulder, and then bulled back out onto the path. In half an hour
he was back home again, and the five gallons of whisky hidden behind the old outhouse at the bottom of the
garden.</p>
<p>"What now?" Tam wanted to know.</p>
<p>"Now we sit and wait for the heat to die down."</p>
<p>"How long will that be?"</p>
<p>"We have to be careful," Jack said. Jed caught his eye, but said nothing. "As long as they think that stuff's gone
into the river, they won't come looking. But we have to make sure."</p>
<p>"How are we going to get rid of it?" Donny asked.</p>
<p>"Good question," Jack said, grinning. Some of the grey had washed out of his hair in the thunderstorm, leaving it
dark and metallic. He'd need more work. "Next question."</p>
<p>"No, really," Donny said. "It's a hell of a lot to start hawking." Neil backed him up.</p>
<p>"You all said you'd trust me, didn't you?" Jack was amazed that Donny hadn't asked the obvious question before.</p>
<p>Donny nodded.</p>
<p>"Right. Trust me some more. We just sit still until the time is right, and we'll know very soon. Be patient and don't
get greedy."</p>
<p> "Greedy? We're in this for the money," Neil said. He flipped his accent into Michael Douglas<em>: </em>"Greed is
good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary
spirit."</p>
<p> He held both hands theatrically wide. "Greed, in <em>all </em>of its forms."</p>
<p>"Greed just gets you caught," Ed said quietly.</p>
<p>"But are we going to have to fill up lemonade bottles or what?" Donny wanted to know. "That would take forever."</p>
<p>Jack laughed. "You fancy selling this door to door?"</p>
<p>This time Ed caught his eye and held it. He was cool.</p>
<p>"You've sold it already, haven't you? You've done a deal."</p>
<p>Jack winked, but he said nothing. Since first thing in the morning he'd been up and all over Glasgow, working on the
next leg of the plan. He hadn't had any sleep and he was now so tired he could drop.</p>
<hr />
<p>Big Lars Hanssen crushed his hand in a big double-handed grip. "<em>Yack!</em>" He boomed like a foghorn, hauled Jack
up the Valkyrie's gangplank and guided him past the wide open hold.</p>
<p>He'd been standing up at the boat prow, leaning in a proud pose over the dry dock. A radio somewhere was playing the
theme from Titanic. Jack hoped it wasn't an omen.</p>
<p>"Nearly ready to roll and rock," Lars said. "You do good business?"</p>
<p>"Good enough," Jack said. Lars closed the door on the foredeck and sat on the swivel seat.</p>
<p>"You want a vodka?"</p>
<p>"No. Here, try this." He pulled a bottle from the backpack and held it up.</p>
<p>"Is this it? Lagavullin?"</p>
<p>"That's just the bottle. What's inside is much better."</p>
<p>"We'll see." Lars unshipped the top and took a big swig. He held it in his mouth then swirled it around like a real
wine-taster. But instead of spitting it out, he closed his eyes and let it drain down his throat. He breathed out
through his nose and Jack got a whiff of strong whisky.</p>
<p>"<em>Holigan-goligan</em>. This is the business, no?"</p>
<p>"I think so."</p>
<p>"How much you got now?"</p>
<p>"Twenty thousand gallons plus. Double proof. Lets say forty thou at forty percent. Let's say a quarter of a million
standard bottles."</p>
<p>"That's one big hell of a lot of whisky, you know." It came out <em>viskie.</em></p>
<p>"What would that cost in Norway?"</p>
<p>"A king's ransom, Yack. In Sweden, even more than that, and Finland, you must go see the bank manager for a big loan.
With tax, at least sixty a bottle, your money. Some more maybe."</p>
<p>Jack had done his research. That came out about right. </p>
<p>"And a premium for prime twenty five year old."</p>
<p>"Not as much as you would think, ya? With the tax so high, those Swedes, they drink any old cows piss out of a rusty
bucket and like it, true? But still, maybe half the same again.</p>
<p>"So even at a big drop, taking it down to five apiece, we're still on for one and a quarter."</p>
<p>"Easy. In the winter when it gets dark, there is nothing else to do. Drink and women, this is all. The whole of
Scandinavia, it needs to cheer up and stay warm in the cold weather."</p>
<p>"Good. It'll have to be a quick turnaround. Now we have to talk business. I've fixed up for a marine assessor to come
round today. Some time in the afternoon. Is that okay with you?"</p>
<p>"Why would you want to do something like that?"</p>
<p>"To find out what your boat is worth."</p>
<p>Lars took his massive arms off the table. </p>
<p>"I know what my boat is worth." His voice had a sudden hard edge.</p>
<p>"Sure you do," Jack said. He had to handle this fast and steady. "But I don't know the first thing about boats."</p>
<p>"But why do you want to send someone to my boat to find that out?" Lars' brow was creased into a heavy frown. His
blue eyes glared across the table.</p>
<p>Jack sat back. It was always going to be a game of chess, but he'd already drawn Lars out.</p>
<p>"Simple. I need a guarantee, and the best way to get that is for you to give me a carried interest in the Valkyrie's
operation."</p>
<p>"I think you better explain this. I thought we did a deal."</p>
<p>"So we did, and it's a good deal."</p>
<p>"We shook hands on it."</p>
<p>"That's true. We did. You nearly broke my knuckles. And now we move to the next stage. I've got the whisky, twenty
thousand gallons of it, and you've got the boat. Now I've got something you want, and vice versa."</p>
<p>"I don't think I like this way of doing business," Lars said.</p>
<p>"It's the only way, Lars." Jack put his hands down on the surface, palms up, showing he was hiding nothing. "Cards on
the table, okay?"</p>
<p>Lars shrugged, as if it didn't matter what Jack could say. </p>
<p>"Right. You can get in and out of Norway and Sweden. You've got a thousand miles of fjords and a customs set up
that's full of holes. You can get the stuff in."</p>
<p>"Sure I can. Nobody searches the Valkyrie, especially on the waste disposal."</p>
<p>"And you've got a market for the stuff?"</p>
<p>"For sure I have."</p>
<p>"So all you have to do is load up, pull out, and make a million plus, no tax."</p>
<p>Lars shrugged again. "Easy."</p>
<p>Jack knew he'd make a lot more than that.</p>
<p>"So we've done all the work, taken all the risk, and now you have to take a little risk for me."</p>
<p>He leant over the table, holding Lars with his eyes.</p>
<p>"Listen, big man. You <em>know</em> I don't want your boat. I don't know the first thing about sailing. I'd ram it
into the other side of the dock if you put me up at the wheel. What I do need is for you to give me half the boat,
half the operation, as a loan. That's what a carried interest is. Equity. And this way none of us can lose. You sign
half the boat to my company, all above board and legal. We get a paper drawn up so you're still the operator and
senior partner. But I have a share."</p>
<p>"So why do you need to do this?"</p>
<p>"Simple. I need an asset, and it's only temporary, like an advance. A deposit against future profits. Carried
interest gives us a share that we give back to you when we divvy up."</p>
<p>"Divvy up?"</p>
<p>"Redistribute the spoils."</p>
<p>Lars still held that frown and Jack knew he's have to work on this a bit more, or the deal would go down the pan. His
big weapon was the fact that Lars Hanssen had a whiff of big money. He'd just have to be convinced to take another
risk for it.</p>
<p>"Look at it this way. Your boat's been on the stocks for what, four?"</p>
<p>"About that."</p>
<p>"A month of good summer weather. I did my homework and I know the North Sea has never had it so good. Must be
something to do with global warming. Anyway, four weeks laid up with no money coming in. A big boat like this? That
should have been working every day, so your profits are down the swannee. And the repairs, okay, that's probably
insurance, assuming you have some."</p>
<p>"I have insurance."</p>
<p>"But you're off hire. You're not trading, so you're in a loss situation that's getting deeper every day, and that
means you're spending your own hard-earned cash or spending the bank's money. If that's the case, you're on
short-money interest, and that's making your eyes water."</p>
<p>"How do you know all this."</p>
<p>"Trust me, I'm a smartarse. I'm doing a course. Anyway, now you have a chance to make a million, maybe one and a
half. Higher than that if I know you. That'll give you a chance to buy another boat and start your own fleet, double
your profits, or just retire to some tropical island. I don't know."</p>
<p>Lars watched him, truculent, like a bear in a corner, but didn't answer.</p>
<p>"It's a big chance for both of us. So we each have to take some of the risk. For you, it's not that much, and you
have to speculate to accumulate. Anyway, you could take the stuff in legit, pay the tax, and still make a fortune,
except that it's stolen and you'd have to find a supplier to back you up. You give us the carried interest for,
let's say, two months, three at the outside, at which time you have the option to buy it back at a fixed price
agreed between us. I've got a good contract lawyer set up to draw up the deal, but you can pick one of your own if
you want. Anyway, that gives me the security I need, and you keep your option."</p>
<p>"You want to hold my Valkyrie hostage?"</p>
<p>"You're the Viking, Lars. I just see it as a good deal. It's security."</p>
<p>He wasn't being exactly honest in this, but he told no lies. Lars didn't have to know everything he had up his
sleeve. Nobody did.</p>
<p>The big man scraped his nails across his beard. It sounded like wire wool. Jack kept talking.</p>
<p>"And as soon as you do your deal across the water and weigh in with the cash, I have to sign it back to you."</p>
<p>"What if something goes wrong?"</p>
<p>"You make sure it doesn't. Something goes wrong between now and delivery, I'm facing five years. If it goes wrong at
your end, then we're both sunk. Customs and Excise is just the same here as it is there. I checked. They'll impound
your boat and we both lose everything. They call this a pendulum deal. It's win or lose, no in-between. But when we
win, we win big. Lose and we drown together."</p>
<p>Lars bent forward, looming right up to Jack. "My father, he was a whaleboat captain. He bought the Valkyrie when they
stopped the whaling. He's one tough ol' man, you know. If I lose his boat, he'll put a harpoon in me."</p>
<p>"Families," Jack said. "You just can't pick them, can you?"</p>
<p>He raised his eyebrows, and smiled at the big boatman.</p>
<p>"What do you say?"</p>
<p>"I keep the option to buy back?"</p>
<p>"Of course you do, what do I want with an old rust bucket like this."</p>
<p>Lars pulled back. His eyebrows shot up and then he suddenly burst into a gale of laughter.</p>
<p>"You got the nerve Jack, I say this much for you."</p>
<p>He reached and clapped a vast hand on Jack's shoulder. It almost cracked with the impact.</p>
<p>"Okay, we sink or we swim together. That's fair enough."</p>
<p>Jack opened the bottle and poured Lars another shot. "But try to stay afloat, okay?"</p>
<p>"What you think I been doing all this time? Okay, we got a deal again. I can tell you what the Valkyrie is
worth."</p>
<p>"Sure you can, but I need it official."</p>
<p>"You don't take my word another time?"</p>
<p>"Let's not go down that road again. The man's coming at three and he'll do a rush job. He thinks we're going to
change the insurance policy. We'll get the paperwork tomorrow and then we get the agreement drawn up. Couple of
months down the line, you get to tear it up and sail into the sunset, or the northern lights or <em>Val</em>-bloody-<em>halla</em>.
Wherever."</p>
<p>"And you, Jack? What will you do?"</p>
<p>"I'm sure I'll think of something," Jack said. "Oh, and there's one more thing."</p>
<p>"Another thing, he says now."</p>
<p>"This one's easy. I don't want paid in notes. A simple cash transfer will do. I'll give you a number when the time is
right."</p>
<hr />
<p>Jack spent the rest of the day criss-crossing the city, making a round of calls and he got back just in time to meet
the boys on the boat. By the time they got finished it was after eight and they were all hungry and tired and just a
little deflated after the excitement of the night. Jack arrived at his uncle's house just in time to catch the nine
o clock news.</p>
<p>The disappearing whisky made the headlines.</p>
<p>Blair Bryden at the Levenford Gazette had been onto the story like a bloodhound and by two in the afternoon he had
syndicated it to every tabloid in the country, TV and radio as well. It was a silly-season certainty. The cameras
panned across the front of Aitkenbar Distillery and then flicked to an ashen-faced Sproat who stammered his way
though an interview. </p>
<p>Jack listened to the reporter who could hardly keep from laughing.</p>
<p>"Apparently somebody turned the wrong tap, and enough prime Scotch whisky to fill a swimming pool simply flushed down
the drain."</p>
<p>The scene shifted to the end of the fence where the geese were up and honking at the intrusion.</p>
<p>"The famous geese guards may be upset, and they're not the only ones. The thousands of gallons of famous Glen Murroch
had been maturing for a quarter of a century and was about to be bottled in special souvenir packs. It was the final
operation in the two hundred year old distillery which is being sold to make way for a new retail centre and leisure
complex."</p>
<p>The camera zoomed through the chain-link fence and got a good close up of an angry, mean-eyed goose, then panned
again, round towards the golf course.</p>
<p>"It is believed that the missing whisky ended up in the River. And the evidence?"</p>
<p>The reporter gave a lop-sided grin, turned his head, and the lens followed his downward gaze.</p>
<p>"A stream full of dead fish. Some might even say, <em>dead drunk.</em>"</p>
<p>Jack had been only half awake on the couch, eyelids too heavy to keep open.</p>
<p>He snapped completely awake as the camera brought the scene in the little runnel right into sharp focus.</p>
<p>The pale bodies of the dead fish floated in a small pool, all belly-up.</p>
<p>Jack covered his eyes with his hands, unable to believe what the television showed him.</p>
<p>"Oh brilliant," he breathed. "Donny, you stupid, stupid <em>bastard.</em>"</p>
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<h1>15</h1>
<p>Sandy Bruce shook his shoulder and woke him out of a deep sleep. He surfaced from a dream where pale, bloated fish
swam lazily in an amber stream and he tried desperately to hook them out with his hands, but they slipped easily out
of his grasp. The more he tried to catch them, the murkier and deeper the water became and he could feel the mud
sucking at his feet, trying to drag him down.</p>
<p>"Wake up Jack," Sandy shook him and the dream shattered into fragments, leaving him with nothing but confusing
afterimages and a deep sense of unease.</p>
<p>"Have you not been home yet?"</p>
<p>He shook his head, rubbing sore eyes.</p>
<p>"Your mother thinks you've been run over by a bus. From the looks of you, she's not far wrong. Better show up
sometime before she starts to worry."</p>
<p>He sat up, yawning. "What time is it?"</p>
<p>"After twelve. The club was late finishing. Did you see the news?"</p>
<p>"Yeah."</p>
<p>"So you daft buggers really went and did it."</p>
<p>"I told you we would."</p>
<p>"I never really believed it until I saw it for real."</p>
<p>"You told me to take the bull by the horns, make something of myself."</p>
<p>Sandy gave him a sidelong look.</p>
<p>"Don't you go putting the blame on me. There's a fine line between courage and foolishness and it's a damn shame it's
not a high wall. You want a cup of tea?"</p>
<p>"Sure. It's been a long day and a night."</p>
<p>"So what's the next move?"</p>
<p>"We have to wait until big Lars can get his act in gear. I'm back up town tomorrow, doing a bit of business. A few
more days and then it's gone."</p>
<p>"And after that?"</p>
<p>"Not what people think. I need to speak to the boys up on Skye. Then we'll all have to wait for the heat to die
down."</p>
<p>He kept seeing the after-images of the fish in the stream, pale eyed, slipping out of his grasp, and the images
somehow superimposed themselves on the memory of the camera shot on the news. The feeling of unease stayed with him,
stale and greasy.</p>
<p>"They all think it went straight down the drain. That's what it said on the news. The whole town's having a
laugh."</p>
<p>"That's the plan. As long as they keep on believing they pulled their own plug, then we're home and dry."</p>
<p>"Dry, with a zillion gallons of whisky? Sure you are. Where is it now?"</p>
<p>Jack tapped the side of his nose. "Need to know, Sandy. No offence, okay? I have to see a lawyer and a banker and a
bunch of would-be tycoons."</p>
<p>"Just you watch yourself. I told you there's too many people in on this. I said to keep it simple as possible."</p>
<p>"Smash and grab is simple. I have to make sure they all look the other way."</p>
<p>"You think it's a game of chess."</p>
<p>"It <em>is</em> a game of chess. You have to keep four or five moves ahead. With this much moonshine, there's going
to be a hell of a lot of interest, and that customs man Gilveray, he's not entirely daft."</p>
<p>"He's a jobsworth, Jake, just a civil serpent. He's well up his own arse. He's not the one I'd be wary around. Yon
big highlander, Baxter, that's one who doesn't miss anything. I saw him along there at the bonded warehouse. He acts
like a half daft big hick, but he's pin sharp."</p>
<p>"There was always a chance they'd call in CID. I hoped it would stay in-house."</p>
<p>"Now you're beginning to talk like one of the suits."</p>
<p>"We better get used to that."</p>
<p>"So what's the next move?"</p>
<p>Jack knew he was going to be asked that a lot in the next couple of days. His job was to keep a lid on the rest of
them, make sure they stayed quiet, make sure they stayed tight.</p>
<p>"Hopefully the diversion worked. We just wait and see how the wind blows."</p>
<p>The image of the dream came back to him and he shoved it away. In any plan as complex as this, you had to allow for a
few things going wrong, or some people doing stupid things. He'd a big bone to pick with Donny Watson.</p>
<p>"You just take care then."</p>
<p>"I will. Oh, by the way, your popcorn idea worked a treat. That and your beer mash."</p>
<p>"I'm glad I was some help. I just hope I haven't helped land you in the jail."</p>
<p>"There's something else I'm hoping you can do for me." Jack knew he should keep this for the cold light of morning.
Waves of tiredness were washing over him in a tide.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"I want you to become chairman."</p>
<p>"Chairman of what?"</p>
<p>"I'll tell you in the morning. And it will be legit. One thing though, how's your Italian?"</p>
<p>"A bit rusty. I haven't needed it since my Nato days when we were running bootleg wine up to Germany, but I watch all
the gangster movies. They're my refresher course. Why do you ask?"</p>
<p>"I'll get you a tape. And I think we'll have to spruce you up in a good suit. Any preference?"</p>
<p>"Remember what old Thoreau said." Sandy had eclectic reading tastes. "Distrust any enterprise that requires new
clothes. So what's all this about?" </p>
<p>"Our Mr Sproat wants to meet the client. I need somebody respectable."</p>
<p>"Thanks very much." Sandy shot his grandson a questioning look.</p>
<p>"But I suppose I'll just have to settle for you."</p>
<p>Kate called him in the morning and woke him out of a dreamless sleep. The sun was high, but hidden by low cloud and
the air, eddying through the open window, had a fresh, cleansed scent of blossom and dug earth.</p>
<p>"What time is it?"</p>
<p>"That depends on where you are."</p>
<p>"Oh, it's you. Hi. What's happening?"</p>
<p>"That's what I phoned you to ask. That was a bit of a brush-off the other night."</p>
<p>"Yeah. Listen I'm sorry about that." He was coming awake now, grasping at reality. "I was kind of in the middle of
things, you know?"</p>
<p>"Middle of what, the North Sea?"</p>
<p>"No," he fumbled for an answer. "There's been a hold up on that. The boat's not ready."</p>
<p>"So I still have some time to talk you into seeing sense."</p>
<p>He didn't have much time for anything. Everything was moving at light speed and he when he finally located his watch,
he realised he had already wasted too many good hours of daylight. He stretched with one arm, getting the blood back
into his muscles. At least he was rested.</p>
<p>"When's the big demonstration. I want to be there. A gesture of solidarity."</p>
<p>"What demonstration?"</p>
<p>A hollow silence developed on the line. Finally she came back.</p>
<p>"What do you mean <em>what demo</em>?"</p>
<p>Damn! He could hear him talking himself into a corner. And who had given her the number?</p>
<p>She over-rode the thought. "The one you wanted the posters for. I presume you still have some sort of social
conscience, or did I just waste my time?"</p>
<p>"No, not at all. The posters are brilliant. Absolutely perfect. I'll be talking to the Dunvegan boys later today."
That much was true, if nothing else was, and nothing else <em>was</em>. He would have to get used to the deceit, but
this was not the same game as chess. Lies were different from bluff. He didn't like lying to Kate, and if she ever
found out about Margery Burns, well he'd be dead in the water with her, that was for sure.</p>
<p>"Good. Maybe you can do me a favour."</p>
<p>"Sure I will."</p>
<p>"You haven't heard it yet."</p>
<p>"You wouldn't ask if I couldn't do it."</p>
<p>"That's very sweet of you to say. Okay, I need some money."</p>
<p>His heart sank. He had been spending it like tomorrow was wiped off the calendar, and there was more spending, big
spending to come. He knew he would have to drain the kitty dry over the next couple of days and squeeze the boys for
more.</p>
<p>"How much?"</p>
<p>"About five grand to start with."</p>
<p>He hesitated and she heard it. She laughed.</p>
<p>"Oh don't worry, I'm not after your redundancy. I'm just collecting, and you can pass the hat round as well. We
finally got the Charter group moving, and we got some free advice. The next stage won't be free."</p>
<p>"What next stage?"</p>
<p>"We have to raise a lot of money to slap an interdict on Sproat. Him <em>and</em> the council. We got a rough legal
opinion at the citizen's advice office. They think we've got a case to interdict the distillery, which prevents them
filling in Bruce's harbour. After that, we would have to argue it in court, and that will take plenty."</p>
<p>This time Jack smiled. His uncle and the boatmen had all the free time in the world, when he wasn't making beer and
hooch and racing his pigeons. They had trawled through all the old records in the library and Jack had seen what
they had turned up even before Charter 1315 had been anywhere near it. It had convinced him.</p>
<p>"So if we raise the cash, we can get the buildings listed and stop Sproat. We prevent the council from giving him
permission to demolish and dump. Just as long as we can fund it before they send the bulldozers in. It takes time,
but an interdict could hold everything up long enough. If the developers think they're going to have a fight on
their hands, it could make them back away."</p>
<p>She was sharp. He'd already realised that. If Trading Estates realised there was any smell at all, they would pull
out. Any whiff of fish about the deal, the money would dry up. Jack came fully awake. Another plan took root in his
mind.</p>
<p>"How can I help?"</p>
<p>"We're having a fund-raiser. The Starlight Company are putting on a show. You can come and help backstage, move the
flats."</p>
<p>That was one promise he couldn't make. </p>
<p>"Maybe," he extemporised. "When is it?"</p>
<p>"Two weeks."</p>
<p>It was well out of the question. "I'll see what I can do."</p>
<p>She sensed his hesitation. "Sound enthusiastic, won't you? If we stop the demolition, we keep the distillery. Maybe
we can find a buyer. And the dairy might be able to keep its lease. Jack, we're trying to do some good for the
town."</p>
<p>"Yeah." He closed his eyes. This was a no win, not with Kate. </p>
<p>"Where are you?" She took him by surprise.</p>
<p>"Out of town." He lied.</p>
<p>"Can't say, or won't say? You're being evasive, Jack Lorne, and you're not very good at it."</p>
<p>"No. I'm not really. I'm just kind of tied up at the moment."</p>
<p>"Are you avoiding me?"</p>
<p>"No, not at all."</p>
<p>"Doesn't sound like it. Doesn't matter anyway, does it? It's not like we're joined at the hip. I just thought we were
friends, that's all. You know, thick and thin?"</p>
<p>"Of course we are." She was better at this than he was. He wondered how much of that she really meant, or if she was
just pressing the right buttons. She was <em>good.</em></p>
<p>"Doesn't sound as if you really mean that, but suit yourself. So, are you hooked up with Captain Lars and the <em>sveedish</em>
bimbettes?"</p>
<p>"He's agreed to take me on," Jack said, and that was true enough in its fashion.</p>
<p>"So you're going through with this?" The disappointment took the strength out of her voice.</p>
<p>"It's the only way."</p>
<p>"When?"</p>
<p>"Soon." He could tell her nothing. He couldn't speak to her, not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't
trust himself to stop once he got started, and there were so many things he needed to get done.</p>
<hr />
<p>Angus Baxter stood back from the rest. The environmental experts were taking samples of the water from the runnel,
using plastic bottles as scoops. A couple of golfers had stopped by to watch the proceedings, sniffing the air as
they slowed. Here the smell of malt whisky was thick on it. Jim Gilveray had already been down with his own scoop
and ascertained that a substantial quantity of Her Majesty's excisable liquor had indeed disappeared down the
drain.</p>
<p>Two small boys paused in their treasure hunt in the marsh, legs black with mud. The big policeman lit up his pipe and
blew out a plume of strong fumes. The health men finished their work, capped off the jars and stowed them in the
boxes.</p>
<p>"What about the fish?" Baxter asked.</p>
<p>"First things first," the lead man said. He shouldered the bag and started off with his colleague.</p>
<p>Baxter stood for a while, looking down into the runnel.</p>
<p>"Funny that," he said.</p>
<p>"What's that?" Gilveray saw his presence as an intrusion on his patch. Baxter didn't give a damn what he thought. He
knew Gilveray was just a turnkey in a warehouse.</p>
<p>"The fish," the policeman said, no elaboration.</p>
<p>"Alcoholic poisoning probably."</p>
<p>"No. I don't think that was it."</p>
<p>Blair Bryden from the Gazette had a photographer with him. He and Baxter knew each other well. "How do you mean?"</p>
<p>"In fact I know for certain it wasn't alcohol poisoning."</p>
<p>"Ethyl contamination," Gilveray said. "We're wasting our time here. My samples show high levels of ethyl compounds
here. We're satisfied that it was a spill. I'm only interested in explaining the loss of revenue. I don't know about
the environmental damage."</p>
<p>"So what's the next move?"</p>
<p>"A customs tribunal will decide if there is any duty payable and by whom. I imagine Sproat's insurance will cover his
loss."</p>
<p>"You would hope so," Baxter said, agreeably. "Such an awful waste, though."</p>
<p>He turned away and called to the boys in the bog. "You there. Is that a fishing net?"</p>
<p>One boy held up a small net on a pole.</p>
<p>"Aye."</p>
<p>"Bring it here then."</p>
<p>"Get lost."</p>
<p>Baxter walked across the narrow fairway and stood at the brink. "If I have to come in and get that net, the pair of
you will spend the weekend in the jail for trespassing and stealing golf club property." He reached in his pocket
and drew out a shiny pair of handcuffs and held them up. He grinned widely.</p>
<p>"I never knew you were the polis, mister."</p>
<p>"Just bring the net and we'll say no more about it."</p>
<p>He wiped the muddy cane with a tissue and went back to the runnel. Gilveray and Blair Bryden watched him get as close
as possible, lean forward, and dig the net under the clear surface. A trail of muddy brown swirled down with the
current.</p>
<p>"I was an expert at this as a boy. You never forget." He jerked his arm, scooped and brought it out of the water.
Gilveray expected him to bring up one of the bigger fish that were caught where the streamlet narrowed. Instead,
when the policeman turned, they saw he had two tiny silver fish wriggling slowly in the net.</p>
<p>He beamed. "Still got the knack, eh? Once a fisherman, always a fisherman."</p>
<p>"And what's the point of that?"</p>
<p>"You'll observe that these fish are very much alive. Lethargic, maybe, but still going."</p>
<p>Gilveray raised his eyebrows. "So what?"</p>
<p>"So there's a noticeable discrepancy between these and the deceased down there."</p>
<p>He winked at Bryden. "Maybe your man will want a picture of this?"</p>
<p>The newspaper man nodded the go-ahead and Brian Deacon shot a couple of frames.</p>
<p>"Maybe they're a bit wobbly. Might even have an awful hangover, who can say? But they're definitely not dead." He
pointed down with the net. "Now why do you think that is?"</p>
<p>"Maybe whisky affects some fish more than others," Bryden ventured.</p>
<p>"Not at all. They all breathe in through their gills, all sorts of stour in that water." Baxter flicked his wrist and
the two little fish shimmered through the air to make tiny splashes in the pool. He scooped up one of the dead
floaters and brought it round for them all to see.</p>
<p>"The big difference is that these fish were deceased before they got into the water."</p>
<p>"That's amazing." Bryden was well impressed. "How can you tell?"</p>
<p>"Elementary." Baxter's blue eyes twinkled mischievously. The sun was poking out through the evaporating clouds and
the fish were going off as the temperature rose. "These fish are the wrong species." He turned to Gilveray. "You
should take up the fishing. It's good for the mind and calms the soul."</p>
<p> Bryden could tell he was relishing this, spinning it pout.</p>
<p>"It gives you time to reflect on the perfection of nature and the folly of jumping to conclusions. Now," he brought
the net down and emptied it onto the short grass, "speaking of reflections, you'll notice how this fish throws back
the sunlight. I'd call that iridescence, hm? All the colours of the rainbow."</p>
<p>"Okay," Gilveray conceded. "You've got a bright shiny fish."</p>
<p>"All those colours tell you that this fish is not native to these waters. It's not a brown trout, which is the best
you could expect. In fact, there's only three places that you'll see a fish like this."</p>
<p>"That really is amazing," the photographer whispered to Bryden. "He's like Cracker. He must really know his
stuff."</p>
<p>"So where would you find them?" Gilveray suckered himself.</p>
<p>"The lakes of Canada for one. Marvellous fighters they are, rainbow trout. I went there fishing the lakes with a
cousin of mine, and they were simply jumping out of the water and into the boat, there was that many of them."</p>
<p>He turned and winked at Bryden again.</p>
<p>"And the other places?"</p>
<p>"You get them in fish farms these days. And then again you might look on the slab in Gallagher's fish shop window.
They're six pounds a kilo. One thing's for sure."</p>
<p>He held them all while he fished out his pipe again and got it stoked up.</p>
<p>"Somebody planted these fish in the steam so they'd be found. They left them here to make folk think there had been a
leak."</p>
<p>"But there <em>was</em> a leak," Gilveray said. "The air's full of it, man."</p>
<p>"I smell something. I'd even concede that it was whisky an' all."</p>
<p>He blew out a long breath. </p>
<p>"But if there had been twenty five thousand gallons down that trickle of water, then I'm sure even the wee fish would
have died happy. So now, I'm afraid, this is a police investigation. Either somebody has taken off with a lot of the
amber nectar, or some poor soul has the mother of all hangovers today."</p>
<p>Baxter beamed, and the photographer caught it for the news.</p>
<hr />
<p>Sproat took his call right away. Margery Burns transferred him through and Jack could hear the strain in the other
man's voice.</p>
<p>"I hear you had a bit of a setback," he said.</p>
<p>"Just an accident," Sproat said, trying to make it light. "It's a damned nuisance."</p>
<p> "Four hundred barrels is more than a nuisance." He tempted Sproat out.</p>
<p>"How did you know how much it was?"</p>
<p>"You have to keep your ear to the ground," Jack said. "I hope you're well covered. I hear that the presentation packs
would have brought you in three million. That's good cash flow."</p>
<p>"We're in talks today."</p>
<p>"And my principals hope you've some stocks left."</p>
<p>"Don't worry about that," Sproat said, too anxious. "We're sorting that out now."</p>
<p>"Good. We can refine figures and times, if you're still on."</p>
<p>"Of course we are."</p>
<p>"Okay, my principal is keen to do a deal."</p>
<p>"Sooner the better," Sproat tried to keep his voice flat. </p>
<p>"Oh, and we'll probably need to borrow transport." Jack threw it in casually.</p>
<p>"That's not a problem."</p>
<p>Sproat put the phone down and let out a sight of relief. A quick deal with Michael Gabriel's group could turn this
around while the insurers argued over who was to blame for what and how much they would pay out. He'd have that
jumped-up clerk Gilveray breathing down his neck, but that was always an occupational hazard.</p>
<p>Jack sat back and cupped his chin in his hands. It was all chess now. Sproat was about to expose his queen. On the
other board, big Lars was drawn right in to a corner. So far, so good, apart from that daft prick Donny. Margery
Burns was proving worth the cost. Just a few more days and they'd be home and clear.</p>
<p>He'd been up at the crack of dawn and in to the city. The marine assessor had been and gone and given Lars the
re-insurance documents which went straight into the bin. Jack called a cab and took them up to Bath Street and into
the lawyer's office. It was a straightforward deal. Lars needed more talking to, but when he was totally convinced
he'd never get his hands on the whisky without a signature on the bottom of the agreement, his good business sense
finally won out.</p>
<p>They shook hands on the steps on a brightening morning. Jack winced and rescued his fingers.</p>
<p>"So now you got half a Valkyrie," Lars said. "But only for a loan. I want my baby back."</p>
<p>"You can have her," Jack said. "She's got the looks only a mother could love."</p>
<p>The big man slapped him on the shoulder.</p>
<p>"Anybody else says that and they finish up in the water, tied to the anchor."</p>
<p>He left Lars to make his own way down to the dock and checked his pocket for cash. The kitty was running low now, but
he had the top copy of the document in his pocket and enough company plastic to make a couple of big buys. He
whistled up another taxi and in five minutes he was down in the Italian Centre looking at the racks, before picking
up a little android phone and a fine brushed-silver fountain pen.</p>
<p> Rule number three from the ten steps to success. <em>You never get a second chance to make a good first
impression.</em> Jack really had to put on the dog.</p>
<p>In an hour he was just two minutes late for an appointment down on St Vincent Street where all the banks huddled
cheek by jowl. </p>
<p>The young banker took in the Armani and raised his eyebrows appreciatively. Jack accepted a weak tea and presented
the company's credentials. He laid out his new passport on the walnut desktop, the incorporation papers, and details
of planned trading, along with the heads of agreement Sproat had signed.</p>
<p>"So what you want, Mr Gabriel, is a rolling letter of credit."</p>
<p>"My company hopes to expand. We may have to make moves very quickly and credit will give us the flexibility." He was
talking straight out of the manual now.</p>
<p>"And how much credit would you require?"</p>
<p>Jack held his breath for a moment. This might still be chess, but it was a big league game.</p>
<p>"Half a million for now," he said, and bit down on the dainty little chocolate biscuit.</p>
<p>"You'll need security, of course." He delved into the shiny new case that smelled of well-worked leather, and brought
out the documents.</p>
<p>"We have a carried interest in a successful North Sea supply operation. Here's the assessor's valuation as of
yesterday. As you'll see, my company has forty nine percent of both the operation and the vessel. We plan to make
more acquisitions and establish trading connections in this country and on the continent."</p>
<p>By one in the afternoon, Jack Lorne had his letter of credit and a cash transfer into the company account, express
clearance. The interest might have been fierce, but in all the lessons he'd learned on his course, one thing always
held true. Money begets money. Even a promise of money was enough. That's how it worked, and he wished he'd known
that years ago.</p>
<p>Now he had what he needed for the next step, and as long as everybody held their nerve, as long as Margery Burns
could do her job, and old Sandy Bruce could pull off a fast act, they'd all be on the final straight.</p>
<p>And just as long as big Lars Hanson didn't ever find out his old whaling father's pride and joy had been hocked to
the bank.</p>
<p>Jack stood for a minute in the sun, almost paralysed with the enormity of it all. He caught sight of himself in a big
dark plate glass window and for a moment he was completely taken aback.</p>
<p>Three weeks ago he had been studying in the afternoons after driving round Levenford in a rattling milk-van, scraping
to get his brother into university.</p>
<p>The tall man who faced him, eyes hidden behind the designer dark glass was somebody else entirely. The brief-case
caught the high rays of the sun as it burned off the thin clouds and the burnished reflection gleamed back at
him.</p>
<p>He held all the strings, and while he knew that any one of them could slip from his grasp and fray at the end, he
knew he'd come this far and had to take it to its conclusion, come what may.</p>
<p>Take your future in your own hands, old Sandy had said. Now it was there, in his own hands and everybody else's
future besides. A shiver of excitement and anticipation juddered down his back, and a trickle of sweat eased its way
down his temple. He took the monogrammed handkerchief from his top pocket, looked at the embroidered letter
<em>G</em> on the silk, and wiped the bead away.</p>
<p>Across the road, a Starbucks coffee house was open and all of a sudden he needed either a strong coffee or a strong
drink. He opted for an espresso. He'd have to be very sober from here on in. He paid the girl and couldn't miss the
appreciative look as she took in the Armani gear. He gave her a big tip and a wide smile.</p>
<p>Ten minutes later, armed with a letter of credit for half a million pounds, he was in the plush office of one of
Glasgow's most successful corporate law firms.</p>
<p>"I'd like to fund a legal action," he told Kerrigan Deane.</p>
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<h1>16</h1>
<p>He grabbed Donny Watson when he was half-way up the ladder and hauled him so violently into the boat that the pair of
them ended in a struggling tangle of arms and legs.</p>
<p>"What the fuck.....?</p>
<p>Jack hit him a slap, hard enough to sting, not to really hurt. He wanted to curl his hand into a fist and really give
him a couple of dull ones, maybe some worse even than that. He kept a hold of Donny's collar and dragged him to his
feet, gripping it in a twist that was tight enough to make his face match his hair again.</p>
<p>"What's going on?" Ed asked. Nobody interfered at all, they all just watched, taken by surprise. Neil pulled back,
face slack. He hated violence.</p>
<p>Jack hit Donny another slap, catching him on the ear, getting really right to the edge of some serious stuff. Donny
tried a punch back but Jack knocked his hand away. His brows were drawn right down and his dark eyes hot. None of
them had ever seen him this angry. They hadn't seen his face when Michael came home with a bloody nose.</p>
<p> "You stupid lazy <em>bastard.</em> Everybody is in this, we all pull together. You had the easiest job in the world
and you fucking blew it."</p>
<p>"I don't know what you're talking about." Donny struggled to force the words out past the tight constriction.</p>
<p>"Yes you bloody do, you lazy wanker. All you had to do was get a few fish for a diversion."</p>
<p>"I did that. I got the fish. There was plenty of them."</p>
<p>"Some diversion."</p>
<p>"What's the score?" Ed wanted to know.</p>
<p>"Did you see the news?" They all had.</p>
<p>"Big close-ups of half-a-brain here's effort. Did you see them? Bloody <em>rainbow trout</em>. I swear to god they
still had the parsley in their mouths."</p>
<p>Donny struggled. "It was fish, wasn't it? They cost me a fortune."</p>
<p>"Sure they did. Cost <em>us</em> a fortune. We'll be lucky if they don't cost us the jail. That big inspector, he's a
fox. It'll be a miracle if he doesn't spot them."</p>
<p>"They were just <em>fish</em>," Donny protested again. He got his hands to Jack's wrists and tried to pull them
apart. Jack simply let go in disgust.</p>
<p>"Rainbow trout from the shop. Am I right?"</p>
<p>Donny nodded. "They're all the same, aren't they?"</p>
<p>"No, they're not all the same. How are fish that size supposed to get up a trickle of water like that? And rainbow
trout? You don't even get them in the river. You should know that. Christ, we went there fishing every weekend when
we were kids. Where did you get them, Gallagher's?"</p>
<p>"No, they never had any." Donny's head was down. "I had to go up to Barloan Harbour."</p>
<p>"You better hope nobody else goes there to check. If they do, you better be ready to say you had the biggest barbecue
in the fucking town."</p>
<p>He turned to them all, his face tight with strain and anger.</p>
<p>"I told you, good enough <em>never is</em>. We're all on this together. If somebody fucks up, he fucks everybody
up<em>. </em>Miss a chance and it's no boomerang. It doesn't come back. You have to treat your mind like a
parachute; it only works when its open. We all have to think and we all have to go along with the plan, or we're all
down the drain."</p>
<p>He pulled Donny close again and sniffed.</p>
<p>"And I'll tell you another thing. You better lay right off the booze, okay Donny? You're hitting it too hard and I
can't have any drunks on the team."</p>
<p>"I'm not a drunk," Donny protested.</p>
<p>Neil put his chin in his hands. "Red, I do believe you're talking out of your ass."</p>
<p>It was meant to be light. Jed got the Shawshank connection, but didn't manage a smile. Ed sat still, realising now
how important Jack's idea of a diversion had been. It gave them time, and that was most precious of all.</p>
<p>Jack loosed his grip and let Donny sink to the little bench seat, panting with anger and shame, while Jack tried to
shake off his own fury at Donny's stupidity.</p>
<p>Yet as he did so, he knew he himself had broken one of his own cardinal rules.</p>
<p>He had humiliated one of the team in front of the others</p>
<hr />
<p>Alistair Sproat was aghast at the news that the huge decant of Glen Murroch had been stolen. He had spent most of the
morning with the insurance rep and the loss adjusters while Billy Butler and the customs men had hauled everybody
who could have been near the flush valve into the glasshouse for interrogation. Ed Kane wasn't one of them. His
worksheet showed that he'd been stowing barrels all afternoon, and Butler recalled sending him round to get the
pallets.</p>
<p>"Stolen? What do you mean stolen?"</p>
<p>"I could give you the dictionary definition," Baxter offered. "Purloined, appropriated, swiped, filched and pilfered.
Wrongly removed from ownership."</p>
<p>"Yes, thank you inspector," Sproat said. His throat was dry as his sarcasm. "What I mean is, how can anybody steal
twenty five thousand gallons of scotch?"</p>
<p>"It's only a theory, mind you, so that's what we have to ascertain. In the meantime, I've called headquarters and
they're sending down a couple of lads from the crime squad to help out. We'll have to speak to everybody involved in
the process."</p>
<p>Sproat ran a hand through his thinning hair. Everything was coming unravelled, and he'd spent the whole morning going
over the company insurance policy. Aitkenbar was covered for fire and flood and all sorts of disasters that can
befall a distillery and a bonded warehouse. He couldn't recall seeing the word theft anywhere at all. A hollow
sensation of impending disaster had started to expand in the pit of his stomach. </p>
<p>"Impossible," he said. He tapped the intercom and told Marge Burns to get Billy Butler.</p>
<p>"What, are you saying we can't interview your staff?"</p>
<p>"No. We're already doing that, trying to find the idiot who pulled the flush-cock. His feet won't touch, I can tell
you. I'll have him charged with sabotage."</p>
<p>"I don't think it might be quite as simple as that."</p>
<p>Billy Butler arrived from the glasshouse where every man had stared blankly at him, insulted at even being asked the
questions.</p>
<p>"I'd like to inspect the whole area," Baxter said.</p>
<p>"What for? We know what happened." Butler knew his job was on the line, even if he'd be out of one in a month's time
when the gates finally shut. He didn't want this on his reputation.</p>
<p>"I want to make sure that what you know happened actually <em>did </em>happen."</p>
<p>"Sure," Butler said, obviously puzzled. "Be glad to help."</p>
<p>Baxter beamed. Sproat put his head in his hands.</p>
<p>They found the connection at seven that night, after the place was closed. The women on the bottling lines had been
sent home early, seieng the Glen Murroch would never be bottled, and the two constables from CID were going over the
work records.</p>
<p>"That shouldn't be there," Butler said. He had the big plan spread on the floor and the maintenance crew were with
him. </p>
<p>"What's that?" Baxter walked over.</p>
<p>"This pipe. I never saw that before."</p>
<p>The big policeman peered behind the tangle of other pipes and followed the line of the torch.</p>
<p>"Wait a minute," Butler said. "Somebody's welded in a new length of pipe."</p>
<p>The pair of them traced it back and saw the join where it connected to the bottling filler.</p>
<p>"That's where it comes from," Baxter said. "But where does it go?"</p>
<p>Butler followed the wall. Baxter told him not to touch anything, an unnecessary warning. In the flashlight he could
see the pipe was shiny clean. They came to the turn and the pair of them had to admire the workmanship. Only a very
close examination of the maze of connectors could have shown up the new piece of pipework. Butler pointed out where
it had been sawn from the original and capped off.</p>
<p>"So we've got an expert," Baxter said.</p>
<p>Butler looked at him, grinned, feeling a sense of relief that the blame for this might be shifted from his shoulders.
"That rules out anybody from in here."</p>
<p>The policeman went along with it. </p>
<p>"So, it joins to here." He hunkered down, admiring the clever line of the pipe that kept it hidden from view. "And
what's this."</p>
<p>"That's the fire hose inlet."</p>
<p>Baxter stood up and took out his pipe.</p>
<p>"You can't smoke in here," Butler said. "All the high proof spirits. It's a fire hazard."</p>
<p>This time Baxter winked. He bent over and flicked his lighter on, sucking furiously.</p>
<p>"All the spirits, eh? You show me all the spirits first." He nodded at the connector. "That's where all the spirits
went, I imagine. But where did they go after that?"</p>
<p>They found the fire hoses and when young constable Jimmy Balloch unravelled them, the smell of whisky was
unmistakeable. Butler made them roll it into a wheel, so that any residue would be forced to one end, and he managed
to get a mere half pint of liquid from the hundred-yard length. He held up the little jar, letting it flash amber in
the setting sunlight.</p>
<p>"Can you test that here?"</p>
<p>"Sure I can," Butler said. Sproat stood there in the humid evening, squinting against the sun, audibly grinding his
teeth. There was nothing he could do now. He just wished Butler would drop the damn sample and let it shatter.</p>
<p>Baxter walked across the turf, crouching here and there, trying to see if there were any tracks in the grass, but
even with the sun so low in the sky and sending slanted shadows in the low dips, it was hard to tell.</p>
<p>He called Butler across to the fence, about forty yards down from the bushes on the other side, close to the barrier
gate that led to the cooperage. The grass was strewn with little wormy coils of goose shit, and peppered with
hundreds of little white down feathers.</p>
<p>"What's this?" he said, hunkering down low again. He picked up some light material from the grass and held it out to
Butler.</p>
<p>"Looks like popcorn to me," Butler said.</p>
<p>"Is that what your geese eat?"</p>
<p>"I think they'll eat anything. But I'll have to ask."</p>
<p>A half hour later, Butler had used the hydrometer and confirmed the tiny drop of whisky they'd found had exactly the
same specific gravity as the Glen Murroch they'd decanted into the holding tank. He showed Baxter the shade-match
apparatus, turning the little coloured glass spheres clockwise until he had an exact match with the sample in the
hopper.</p>
<p>"We can do an ethyl alcohol and trace elements check," he said. "But I'd say that's pretty conclusive. At a hundred
and forty proof, it's particularly volatile. Fast evaporation. Another two hours and there would have been nothing
left. What's in the hose hasn't been there long. The rain probably helped keep it humid." </p>
<p>Sproat stormed out, fists clenched. It was all coming apart.</p>
<p>"Marge!" She had stayed behind when the rest of them had gone. Sproat appreciated that.</p>
<p>"Get me Michael Gabriel," he snapped as he walked into his office and slammed the door behind him.</p>
<hr />
<p>Donny Watson got drunk. He'd hefted the water container into Willie McIver's van and stowed it behind his garden
shed. He was thinking how they'd all been on an adrenaline high on the night of the heist. They'd all been wet and
excited and absolutely amazed at what they'd done. Like Commandos on a mission. Like the SAS. Like a <em>team.</em>
</p>
<p>Tonight they had all gone and left him on Gillespie's boat, still smarting at the humiliation.</p>
<p>"Shouldn't have done that," he muttered to himself. The whisky burned a trail down his throat. "Not in front of
them."</p>
<p>He had been embarrassed and ashamed and totally taken aback that Jack had treated him like that. Hell, they went back
years. Before school even. They'd been friends so long he couldn't recall a time when they'd not been. That's what
hurt. He'd hauled him up in front of Tam and Neil and the others. Friends never did that.</p>
<p>He took another swig from the plastic bottle and felt hot tears nip at his eyes.</p>
<p>"Bastard Jake," he said aloud. All this over a couple of fish in the burn. He'd tried his best, hadn't he? It wasn't
his fault the first batch had turned to mush, and then his young brother had gone to scout camp with the rest of the
kids, and there was nobody to go up the stream and catch some more.</p>
<p>Another slug of whisky.</p>
<p>He'd done his best. That was enterprise, wasn't it. And who would know? Really! What stung was the other thing Jack
had said. <em>You had the easiest job you lazy wanker.</em></p>
<p>Jack had given him the easiest job, the simplest task, and everybody else were doing more important things. Like Neil
in the van, and Jed on the tanker. Ed and Tam inside. Jack doing his own thing, organising the whole operation. But
Donny had ended up with the easiest job, and that stung and itched at him. Jack hadn't trusted him, had he? His old
mate Jack Lorne. He remembered Jack explaining what he had to do, telling him to make sure he got it right. And on
the night when the hose burst <em>he</em> had to sit like that little Dutch fucker with his finger jammed in the
hole. And there just now, he'd told him to lay off the booze. What the hell did that mean? And if they were all in
it together, how come nobody knew what was happening to all the whisky they'd heisted? How were they going to share
it? That was all a big secret. <em>Jack's</em> big secret.</p>
<p>Donny took another pull at the whisky, now feeling misery pile up on his anger, and maudlin distrust climb on top of
that.</p>
<p>"They could be out selling it now," he mumbled. "For all I know."</p>
<p>He tried to shake that thought away. No! <em>No?</em> They had all gone off together, hadn't they, leaving him to
stew in it.</p>
<p>He sat back, thinking. No, they couldn't leave him out of it. They were all in it together, weren't they? He'd paid
in his two hundred smackers.</p>
<p>But why should he wait to get his money back?</p>
<p>Donny's mouth twisted down in something close to a grin, seeing a little ray of sunshine poke through the gloom. He'd
got himself a bonus, something of his own. It was sitting behind the garden hut, all five prime gallons. Ten if you
diluted it by half. Sixty bottles at a fiver apiece, that would do for a start.</p>
<p>He jammed the cap on the bottle and twisted it tight, hauled himself off the bench. The boat swayed alarmingly and he
had to steady it with his hands. It took him several minutes to find his way down the narrow ladder to the ground at
the corner of the boatyard and a lot longer to wend his way home. In the morning he had a monstrous hangover, but he
still had five prime gallons behind the shed.</p>
<p>"You're in a lot of trouble, Jack," Marge Burns said. Her voice was sharp and terse. She sounded wound up.
Worried.</p>
<p>"No names on the phone." At least she'd called this mobile.</p>
<p>"Okay. The police are crawling all over the place." Margery Burns spoke in a whisper. "They know it was stolen."</p>
<p>"Shit!" A long silence drew out and then he was back. "Sorry about that."</p>
<p>"That's all right. I've heard a whole lot worse. I was married to a councillor."</p>
<p>"How do they know?"</p>
<p>"I got it from one of the customs men. They found something down in the stream. He said it was some kind of
fish..."</p>
<p>Jack punched the wall in his uncle's house. Sandy came in from his pigeon hut and looked at him, eyebrows raised.</p>
<p>"Anyway, they're all over the place and Sproat's going berserk. He's as mad as a wet hen and now he wants to talk to
you."</p>
<p>"Stall him," Jack said. "I have to think." He gritted his teeth so hard they creaked glassily. "What are the
insurance people saying? Can you talk?"</p>
<p>"Just for a minute," she spoke so softly it was difficult to make it out. "He's expecting you right now. Anyway, he's
been on to them all day. They sent a loss adjuster, but that's all up in the air now, isn't it? He's not covered for
theft."</p>
<p>Jack blew out slow. They had needed the few days to let the heat die down, and now it was clear they'd be denied
that. It squeezed the pressure too tight.</p>
<p><em>Stupid lazy bastard Donny!</em></p>
<p>"Right. That's in our favour." You always had to think of a way out, not get caught in a corner. Every disadvantage
carried a hidden advantage. So they said. He was thinking fast.</p>
<p>"If he's not insured, then his three million is down the drain."</p>
<p>"That's what he's worried about."</p>
<p>"Fine. That puts him well on the back foot, so let's keep him hanging on. You tell him I'm out of the country. I
won't be back for two days. We have to turn the screw."</p>
<p>"That will be my pleasure, young man."</p>
<p>Jack clicked off and closed his eyes. They'd have found out eventually, nothing surer, but he'd hoped to be home
clear by then. That was the plan, but like every plan, there were weak points and when he'd seen the item on the
news he knew he'd found one.</p>
<p>He recalled Donny's red, shameful face and his hand drew into a fist again, just in sheer frustration. He punched the
wall hard and the pain in the knuckles brought him up sharply.</p>
<p>They'd have found the pipe sometime and eventually put two and two together and they'd have come looking. He had
hoped that would have been later. The window of opportunity was closing, but Sproat would be in a blind panic, and
Lars was in the bag. He had a couple of people to speak to first and then work out the next move under the new
circumstances.</p>
<p><em>Christ,</em> he said to himself. Nobody ever said it had to be easy.</p>
<p>"Sandy?"</p>
<p>There was no reply and he had to shout.</p>
<p>Sandy came back in and took the safety goggles off. He slipped the walkman plugs out of his ears and Jack heard the
faint sounds of Louisiana blues.</p>
<p><em>One whisky, one bourbon, one beer.</em></p>
<p>"What's up?"</p>
<p>"I was right about the fish. Big Baxter worked it out quicker than I thought."</p>
<p>"I told you he was sharp. Okay, he knows. You tried to make it idiot-proof and somebody came up with a better idiot.
Like I said before, you can chalk it down to experience."</p>
<p>"Some experience."</p>
<p>"Experience is what lets us repeat all our old mistakes, except with more finesse, panache and <em>je ne sais
quois</em>. So what's the next plan. I have to assume you've got one?"</p>
<p>"We're going to have to take the fight to them. I hope you brushed up your Italian. How do you fancy a shave and a
haircut, all on me?"</p>
<p>"And there's a catch of course."</p>
<p>"Of course there is. But you're going to love the suit."</p>
<p>The two patrolmen faced Angus Baxter across the table. He flicked from one to the other and settled on the one on the
left. Constable Derek Travers.</p>
<p>"So tell me again," Angus said. "You spent half the night chasing a couple of dogs round the distillery. Tell me, did
you see anything at all?"</p>
<p>"There was nothing to see. The dogs were going wild," Travers said. "We had a couple of calls from people on the far
side, complaining about the noise."</p>
<p>"And it turned out they were the guard dogs," Walter Crum said. "Something got them all worked up. We thought we'd
have to send for a vet and get them tranquillised."</p>
<p>"So, just to get this straight, the guard dogs were all excited, and nobody thought to check if perhaps they had
scented intruders?"</p>
<p>Blair Bryden had agreed to hold the story for a day at least, and that suited him, because he could slam it on the
front page of the gazette and then make a fortune selling it to every paper across the country. So far the two
patrolmen didn't have a clue. Baxter savoured his moment.</p>
<p>Travers shrugged. "The security men would have told us if anything was going wrong. Is there a problem?"</p>
<p>"So you think, with all the training you've had, and all the money we pay you, plus the overtime, the nice uniform
and the cosy patrol car for you to skive off up Overburn, shiny handcuffs and yankee-style night-stick, you think
that two part time security men on a bare five quid an hour should do your job for you?"</p>
<p>"I don't follow you, inspector. Nothing much happened. The dogs quietened down after a bit and that was that."</p>
<p>Baxter treated them to one of his very rare and special smiles. For a second Derek Travers had the sensation that he
was looking at a crocodile, and it was staring back right hungrily.</p>
<p>"Nothing happened." He nodded. "Nothing <em>happened</em>. Nothing at all except that while two of the county's
finest are chasing through the undergrowth after a couple of barking dogs, some enterprising ruffians were making
off with some of Aitkenbar's finest. Some twenty five-year-old Glen Murroch, to be precise."</p>
<p>Travers looked at his mate. He shrugged. "There's bottles of that stuff go out the door all the time. Everybody's at
it. The Customs just turn a blind eye."</p>
<p>"Not to this, they didn't. Like I was saying, you two were plowtering about in the bushes while these nameless
individuals took an entire decant tank of the stuff. Some twenty five thousand gallons, to give a rough estimate,
all pumped out of the place and gone."</p>
<p>Travers pulled back.</p>
<p>"They never did!"</p>
<p>Baxter started stoking his pipe again.</p>
<p>"I'm told it had a retail value of between two and four million. Not to mention the revenue accruing to Her Majesty's
exchequer."</p>
<p>He blew a thundercloud of smoke and let it hang in the air for a while, then bulled forward.</p>
<p>"And you two were right there when it happened."</p>
<p>"Oh shite," Travers said, with deep feeling.</p>
<p>"Indeed, I'd say that's what you are deep in, the pair of you."</p>
<p>He pulled back again and surveyed the two young constables who shifted very uncomfortably under his gaze.</p>
<p>"This is going to look extremely interesting on your records."</p>
<p>"Honest inspector," Walter Crum said. "There was nobody there. You can ask those council workers. They were right
next to Aitkenbar the whole time."</p>
<p>"And which council workers would they be?"</p>
<p>"The ones with the big tanker and the pump. They were emptying out a.......drain."</p>
<p>He gulped. Travers looked at him, a kernel of realisation beginning to form. Baxter glared at them both. A very long
pause developed while the smoke drifted slowly towards the ceiling.</p>
<p>"Now," the inspector finally said, speaking very softly. "We're going to go through this one step at a time, missing
nothing out, not a cough nor a splutter nor a sneeze, you got the picture?"</p>
<hr />
<p>Franky Hennigan woke up in a haze, disturbed by the crackling of bracken and twigs. He closed his eyes tight and when
he opened them again it was still fuzzy.</p>
<p>"What's that smell?"</p>
<p>"Oh, that's <em>awful</em>. Something must have crawled in here and died."</p>
<p>Franky saw blurred motion and moved back into the shadow, shading his eyes now against the light that filtered
through the brambles and into the little niche near the bridge.</p>
<p>"I hope at least it's an animal."</p>
<p>The dead bramble runners from last year crunched under heavy feet and Franky shrank away from them, cuddling his
bottle like a cherished child.</p>
<p>"There's something here."</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>A flashlight stabbed on, speared straight into his eyes, and Franky let out a yell.</p>
<p>"Oh, <em>man</em>. What a stench."</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"I found a body."</p>
<p>"Jesus."</p>
<p>"And the really horrible thing is, it's still alive."</p>
<p>A big shadow loomed forward.</p>
<p>"Manky Franky Hennigan. Heavens above, man, you need a heavy hose down with a drum of industrial strength
disinfectant and carbolic soap."</p>
<p>"Leave me alone." He pulled himself into the shadows, shielding his eyes. The air in here was thick with the smell of
drink and the unwashed Franky.</p>
<p> "Come on out, Franky. I want a word with you."</p>
<p>"Bugger off, you."</p>
<p>"Don't make me come in there after you."</p>
<p>"Rather you than me," the second voice said. "You're on your own."</p>
<p>"Leave me alone."</p>
<p>"You don't come out right now and I'm going to take that bottle away from you, and I'll be back every night for the
next one."</p>
<p>"Don't touch him. Get some gloves."</p>
<p>"Don't worry. I've not had my tetanus jabs." The first man switched off the flashlight and Franky made his way out of
the gloom, like a dishevelled bear at the end of winter, blinking in the daylight, a week-long growth grizzled on
grey cheeks.</p>
<p>He still held tight to the bottle.</p>
<p>Angus Baxter stood under the bridge, hands jammed in his pockets, sniffing the air and scanning the road surface.</p>
<p>"What's that here?" He scraped a toe across the tarmac where a light film stained the black.</p>
<p>"Looks like paint to me," the CID man said.</p>
<p>"Me too." He followed the stain across the spine of the road where it hadn't been washed away in the sudden downpour,
and hunkered down, poked it with his finger and sniffed again.</p>
<p>"Fresh emulsion," he decided. The two patrolmen were shifting from foot to foot.</p>
<p>"And this is where you saw the tanker?" </p>
<p>Derek Travers nodded. "They had that manhole up and had a pump taking the sewage out. It was definitely sewage. You
could smell it halfway up the street."</p>
<p>Baxter nodded agreeably. "And it was definitely a council vehicle?"</p>
<p>"Definitely. It had the council logo on the side. I saw it myself."</p>
<p>"What colour would the tanker have been?"</p>
<p>"The usual. Sort of buff colour. Beige."</p>
<p>Baxter tapped the road with his foot. "By any chance was it this colour?"</p>
<p>Travers felt his face go crimson. His mate looked as if he wanted to disappear.</p>
<p>"And this manhole here," Baxter went on. He beckoned to the council official and motioned him to get the lid lifted.
The inspector waited until it had been prised up and clanked to the ground. A deep hole yawned and as soon as the
cover was off, the acrid smell of ammonia soured the air. "This manhole, you're sure it was sewage?"</p>
<p>"That's the smell. They couldn't have fixed the leak."</p>
<p>Baxter covered his nose with a handkerchief and bent over the hole. Finally he straightened up and asked the council
drain man to lift out the plastic bottle five feet below the surface. He gave him the handkerchief and told him to
touch nothing else. The man went down and brought the bottle up. The Inspector stuck a pencil in the nozzle and
lifted it clear. He sniffed again, winced and they saw his eyes begin to water.</p>
<p>He held it up to the two patrolmen.</p>
<p>"<em>Permacurl</em>. Home perm solution. Recognise it?"</p>
<p>Travers wrinkled his nose.</p>
<p>"That's not sewage," Baxter said. "It's ammonia."</p>
<p>Franky Hennigan was surprisingly strong and not just in an olfactory sense. He was rake-thin and despite the heat, he
wore a big ex-army overcoat that had seen better decades. His dirty fingers clasped the bottle in an iron grip.</p>
<p>"Och, just let him keep it," Baxter said, running out of patience. "I can't see him reaching the fence, never mind
climbing it."</p>
<p>Franky sat on the wall, breathing powerful fumes.</p>
<p>"So tell me again Franky."</p>
<p>"It was the spaceman."</p>
<p>"The spaceman. Yes."</p>
<p>"In a space ship." Franky's eyes had cleared and were now wide and certain, if a little red-rimmed. "It was there.
Just there." He pointed a dirty nail at the space beyond the bridge.</p>
<p>"It was a miracle. A real miracle." Franky was surprisingly lucid. "It was a UFO, Just there. All silvery and the
whole sky was all lit up."</p>
<p>"And what did this UFO look like, this <em>space</em> ship."</p>
<p>"Big, and silver, like. And all the lights were flashing. And smoke coming out of it. And then the spaceman came out
and took my bottle and changed it."</p>
<p>"Run that past me again Franky." The two patrolmen snickered and Baxter shot them a look.</p>
<p>"I came out to see what the noise was and I saw it. The lights under the bridge. And then the spaceman came out and
took my bottle. It was a miracle. He went back to the ship and it was all smoke and when he came back again he
turned the wine into whisky. He must have had a transformerator or something."</p>
<p>Franky stopped dead and a sudden comprehension flicked in his eyes.</p>
<p>"I'm not saying any more."</p>
<p>Baxter leant in as far as he was able to brave the smell. "Why's that, Franky?"</p>
<p>"He said I was picked out special. He said if I told anybody he'd be back, with a ray-gun or something and blast me.
Fry my head. They're from a galaxity far away, but they can come back and find me. That's what he said, so I'm
saying nothing more."</p>
<p>He reached out surprisingly quickly and took Baxter by the lapel.</p>
<p>"Gonny just lock me up now Mr Baxter. If they creatures come back and find out I've blabbed, I'm a total goner."</p>
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<h1>17</h1>
<p>She hit him such a punch he landed on his backside with a jolt that shunted up his spine and rattled his teeth. It
took him completely by surprise.</p>
<p>"You are a lying, cheating, deceiving <em>shit</em>, Jack Lorne."</p>
<p>He sat on the grass, rubbing his chin, while tiny points of light spangled in peripheral vision. Kate waded in and
took another swing at him, clipping his ear with a sharp knuckle.</p>
<p>"Ow! Cut it out." It really stung.</p>
<p>"I'll cut out your black heart," she said, green eyes narrowed, hair like smouldering coal, temper several degrees
hotter still.</p>
<p>She jabbed another fast punch and he caught her by the wrist, trying to keep her off without hurting her. She pulled
against him, stronger than he'd have thought..</p>
<p>"Come on Kate. Stop that before you do me a damage." He could feel the skin begin to swell and his ear was ringing
hot. He held her and grabbed the other wrist and then used her to get to his feet. He had been strolling down the
lane from his uncle's house and she had turned the corner, walking fast, taken one look at him and hit without any
explanation.</p>
<p>"I'll do you a damage Jack Lorne. Helping the protest indeed! You <em>lied</em> to me. You deceived me. And you've
dragged me into whatever daft scheme you've hatched up, haven't you?"</p>
<p>"I don't know what you're talking about!"</p>
<p>"Oh no? Did you see the news at teatime? You can't have missed it. I didn't." She tried to pull out of his grasp, but
he knew she'd only have another go at him. She could really do him a bit of damage if she put her mind to it, and he
guessed rightly that her mind was made up.</p>
<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
<p>"You know exactly what I mean. Getting me to do some artwork indeed. Trying to help those Dunvegan boys get their
jobs back? The next thing I know it's on television, shown in every home in the country."</p>
<p>"Oh, <em>that</em>," he said.</p>
<p>Blair Bryden had got the story into the Gazette and then freelanced it across the news bulletins. The banner headline
was big and black and the story spared no detail. </p>
<div class='block'>Twenty five thousand gallons of vintage Scotch whisky which vanished from Aitkenbar Distillery was
stolen in
a daring raid, police confirmed today.
</div>
<div class='block'>What was at first believed to have been a freak accident when the 25-year-old special malt whisky
disappeared from the distillery's decant tank, was in fact a highly organised theft.
</div>
<div class='block'>The thieves are believed to have got away with exclusive vintage scotch worth upwards of three
million
pounds.
</div>
<div class='block'>The theft was uncovered by Detective Inspector Angus Baxter of Levenford CID after customs officials
and
company management insisted that the spirits had been accidentally flushed down a drain and into the river.
</div>
<div class='block'>The thieves had laid a decoy trail of dead fish in the polluted water, in an attempt to lead
investigators
to believe they had been killed by the powerful ethanol pollution but DI Baxter proved yesterday that the fish had
been planted as a ruse.
</div>
<div class='block'>It is understood that the professional gang used a pump and a tanker disguised as a council drainage
vehicle
to siphon off the huge haul of Scotch.
</div>
<div class='block'>It is believed they had painted the tanker in council colours.</div>
<div class='block'>Gazette sources reveal a complex operation which must have taken months of careful planning. Inside
sources
say the thieves welded a section of pipe to a bottling line filling pipe and connected it to a fire hydrant inlet on
the outside wall. They then used two of the distillery's own fire hoses to drain the huge haul of whisky into the
tanker and vanished in the small hours of the morning.
</div>
<div class='block'>It is not clear how the raiders managed to sneak past the famous geese which guard the distillery
from
intruders, but police are working on the theory that they must have had an inside accomplice. They are now
interviewing staff at the distillery.
</div>
<div class='block'>Mr Alistair Sproat, Aitkenbar Distillery chairman, whose family have owned the business for several
generations, refused to comment. Only three weeks ago he announced to the workforce that he planned to close the
complex which has produced malt and grain spirits for more than two centuries. The proposal includes the dumping of
the existing building into the river harbour basin and selling all the present and reclaimed land to a property
developer who plans a new shopping mall. The deal also means the closure of the adjacent dairy, which occupies
Aitkenbar land, with the loss of forty jobs.
</div>
<div class='block'>Inspector Baxter said: "I think we are dealing with a professional gang of criminals here. But no
matter how
clever they are, or think they are, we will do everything in our power to bring them to justice."
</div>
<p>Jack had read the piece in clenched silence when Sandy had brought the paper in along with the morning rolls.</p>
<p>"What are you going to do now," Sandy asked, genuinely concerned.</p>
<p>"Sit tight. Pray. Nothing else for it."</p>
<p>"Too many people know."</p>
<p>"The only ones who know are involved."</p>
<p>Sandy shook his head. "Three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead.</p>
<p>You've got a lot of nerve Jake, I'll give you that. But, like I said, that big highlander, he's no fool."</p>
<p>"Just a couple of days and it'll be gone. Sproat's going to need a deal and quick."</p>
<p> He sounded more confident than he felt, but now was the time to hold it together, hold himself together. "He'll be
worried the cops think he was involved, but he's now got a three million pound cash flow problem, and he's going to
have a few more worries very soon. I'm going to force him out of his corner and catch him on the move."</p>
<p>"You really think this is a board game, don't you?"</p>
<p>"Come on, Sandy, it's just juggling. He's had the ball so long it's about time he dropped it. What did he ever do
that he deserved to have so much control over people's lives? He's got no talent and no brains and no sense of
social responsibility, just Daddy's money that was made on the backs of our family and everybody else's."</p>
<p>"What I want to know is how you plan to get rid of the stuff."</p>
<p>Jack smiled. He trusted his uncle implicitly, but he himself had already made a couple of mistakes. One of them was
trusting Donny, and the other was humiliating him. God love that ginger haired cretin, he thought, you should keep
your friends in the pub and out of business altogether. Family? You kept them away if you could, but old Sandy, he
was still razor sharp, and could put it on when he wanted. </p>
<p>"Don't you worry about that. I've fixed up an appointment for you. Have you read the papers?"</p>
<p>"Sure I have. Child's play. We used to run a few good scams in National Service. Don't you forget Jake, I'm the
original wee fly man."</p>
<p>The job made headline news at six o'clock and Jack had sat fixed in front of the screen. It was almost word for word
what Blair Bryden must have sent round the newsdesks. The camera picked it all out, the runnel and Donny's stupid
rainbow trout. Jack fervently hoped the idiot hadn't gone to Barloan Harbour and then paid for them by plastic. The
idea that he had almost bought a crate at Gallagher's fish shop still gave Jack palpitations. That would be the
first place Baxter would look, and Jack would have had to raise another levy just to get Donny out of the country
for a while. He wasn't worried about the pump. He and Ed had got that well sorted out, and his hours trailing around
Glasgow had proved very worthwhile. The fish had been a mistake, but he'd made sure other things were battened down
tight. <em>He hoped</em>. It was time for more diversions. They were already in place, just in case.</p>
<p>The camera zoomed through the fence and picked out the two fire hoses and then the scene flashed to the spot under
the bridge. Baxter and the uniforms were hanging around while a man in council overalls lowered himself down the
manhole and handed the bottle up to the big policeman.</p>
<p>Jack shrugged to himself. The fish were a giveaway. Everything after that was up for grabs.</p>
<p>On screen, the reporter faced the camera:</p>
<div class='block'>This is where the thieves are believed to have siphoned the whisky from the decant tank which is just
a
hundred yards beyond the fence.
</div>
<div class='block'>Unbelievably, it is claimed that a local police patrol actually spoke to the raiders, who were
wearing face
masks, and who were pretending to be council workmen repairing a sewage leak. It was a skilfully planned operation
that relied on split-second timing, and a great deal of inside knowledge of the high-security distillery and plant
which is guarded round the clock by customs and excise officials, security teams, dogs, and, of course, the famous
geese. Police now have to work out how this elaborate security was breached.
</div>
<p>The reporter stepped to the side and blurred out of shot as the camera focused in on Angus Baxter. He was standing
just outside the shadow of the bridge, holding a clear plastic oblong in his hands. The camera expanded the scene
just as he looked up, directly into the lens, and the lettering on the plastic snapped into crisp focus.</p>
<div class='special01'>ENFORD COUNCIL</div>
<div class='special01'>ECT WORKS</div>
<div class='special01'>EWAGE</div>
<div class='special01'>EPARTMENT</div>
<div class='block'>Police are convinced that this find, some two hundred yards away confirms the suspicions that the
thieves
used a tanker disguised as a water and sewerage bowser.
</div>
<div class='block'>So far, there are no clues as to where the whisky is now.</div>
<p>The reporter stared into the camera and allowed himself a slanted grin.</p>
<div class='block'>Except for the testimony of one witness, who allegedly came across the raiders during the operation.
We'll
let him tell you his own story.
</div>
<p>The camera flicked to Franky Hennigan, somewhat cleaned up and shaved for his moment of fame, and obviously topped up
with sufficient alcohol to make him forget the threat from beyond the galaxy.</p>
<div class='block'>It was a space-ship. I saw it with my own eyes. They took my bottle and changed Eldorado into whisky.
Then
there was this big flash and smoke and it took off again.
</div>
<p>The reporter smiled again. </p>
<div class='block'>There you have it. The truth is out there....somewhere.</div>
<p>"Yes <em>that</em>," Kate stormed, "All my own work. You <em>conned</em> me Jack Lorne. You told me you were doing
something special, something important and I <em>believed </em>you."</p>
<p>She pulled back and he opened his hands, letting her wrists spring free. Two old ladies along the end of the lane
paused at their gossip and stared down towards the commotion at the far end.</p>
<p>"How could you do that, Jack?"</p>
<p>"It's not what you think."</p>
<p>"Not what I think? A fortune in whisky goes missing and the only piece of evidence they have is that logo you asked
me to do."</p>
<p>He scanned the lane, up and down.</p>
<p>"Shhhh."</p>
<p>She came in at him again, raised her hands and thumped him on the chest and then, without warning, she burst into
furious tears.</p>
<p>"You told me it was for a demonstration. To try to save the jobs. All for the workers."</p>
<p>The tears trickled down her cheeks and a sore twist wrenched in his heart. </p>
<p>"It's not what you think." He reached for her, caught her shoulders, brought her in and held her tight. Her sobs
heaved against his chest. There was nothing to do but wait until they were done. After a minute, she pulled back,
drained.</p>
<p>"Just what is going on Jack? First of all you tell me you're going out on the North Sea, then you disappear and the
boys won't tell me what's going on. You get me to do those damn logos, and it's just as well I didn't get the fourth
year kids to do that one or I'd be up there talking to Inspector Baxter, wouldn't I? Accessory to theft."</p>
<p>She looked up at him, tear streaked but still fiery.</p>
<p>"So what's happened, Jack. Can't I trust you any more? I really thought you were one of the good guys. I had <em>faith</em>
in you."</p>
<p>He blew out between tight lips, wondering what to say and where to start..</p>
<p>"Listen, Kate. I'm sorry I got you into this, really I am. I wasn't thinking, and I never thought for a moment
anybody would ever see it. They were supposed to be stripped off and burned."</p>
<p><em>Fuck Donny Watson. That had been his </em>other<em> job.</em></p>
<p>"So it was you? You really did it?"</p>
<p>He nodded, hardly able to look her in the eye. She had no such trouble.</p>
<p>"You stole a tanker of whisky?"</p>
<p>"No. I stole <em>two</em> tankers of whisky."</p>
<p>"My God, Jack. Just what have you got yourself into?"</p>
<p>He shrugged and then dived in.</p>
<p>"That's what my uncle said. But you and him, you're both the same. You said to me I was wasting my life. Get off my
backside and make something of myself."</p>
<p>"Sure we did. You're half way to getting your degree, aren't you?"</p>
<p>"And then what? Start on the corporate rung at my age." He reached a hand out and put it on her shoulder. Underneath
his fingers she was trembling like a tuning fork, fast and tight. He gently pulled her out of the lane and into the
field where he'd fought off the two heavies beating up Donny after the golf. The sun broached the hawthorn hedges
and he eased her away from the lane, away from listening ears, towards the old blowdown sycamore trunk that
sprawled, barkless in the grass. He sat her there and lowered himself on to the thick smooth jutting branch that the
small kids used as a step up.</p>
<p>"You said it yourself, these people, Sproat, the council, everybody, they just take advantage of the workers. Look at
all the firms that pulled out and went to whatever third world shithole would do the work cheaper than we would.
Sproat selling up for a shopping centre, putting Andy Kerr out of business, and everybody, every single person in
this town just tugs the forelock and says <em>yes bwana</em>.<em> </em>Turkeys voting for Christmas every time."</p>
<p>"But it's <em>criminal</em>, Jack."</p>
<p>"What he's done is criminal. But every court in the land will back him up, because it's all loaded against the common
man."</p>
<p>"So you think the answer is to steal from him?"</p>
<p>He wished he could tell her just what his answer was, but nobody knew that, not even his uncle, nor Lars Hanssen.
Nobody <em>could</em>.</p>
<p>"In a way. Change starts at the bottom. You only want a new deal when you've got a shit hand, not when your sitting
on four aces."</p>
<p>"So that's the philosophy. A little redistribution of wealth? When I said you should get into business, this is <em>not</em>
what I meant."</p>
<p>"I needed a head start. It was payback time for that cretin. All he needs is the money to take over Red Planet and
get in on the designer drink business and make another fortune. Goodbye sunny Levenford, it was nice knowing you.
Well, no matter what, he'll have something to remember us by."</p>
<p>"So you decided to risk jail and everything, all you've worked for, just to get even?"</p>
<p>"I'm not getting even with him. I don't give a tuppenny damn about <em>him</em>. I just needed an asset. Money breeds
money. It's like a magnet. Once you have it, you can pull in more, and when you have enough, you can do anything at
all. Look at me. I'm twenty seven years old. I'm a milkman for christ-sake with a half chance of getting a degree
and maybe a job in an office. Work my way up to middle management by the time I'm forty and then get kicked out for
being past it."</p>
<p>"That's the way you see it?"</p>
<p>"That's the way it is. Risk? What have I got to lose?"</p>
<p>"Freedom for one thing."</p>
<p><em> "</em>Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."</p>
<p> "Don't you give me Sartre. He wasn't talking about crime."</p>
<p> "He was talking about life, Kate. Real life, which is what we're stuck in."
"There's more to life than just money."</p>
<p> "You said yourself, art for art's sake, money for god's sake."</p>
<p> "Just the words to a stupid song, you <em>idiot</em>." She was angry and exasperated and close to tears again. "Try
this: don't risk what matters most for what matters least. There's no right way to do a wrong thing.</p>
<p> "How about, if two wrongs don't make a right, try three." He'd read the books. He could match her here, even if it
left a sour taste in his mouth.</p>
<p>"If it's is not right don't do it; if it's not true don't say it<em>.</em> You thought you'd just make yourself some
easy money."</p>
<p>"Nothing easy about it. The hard part's just starting." He reached and took her two hands in his. She seemed to
crumple in on herself.</p>
<p>"I never meant for you to be involved, honest I didn't. There's some things I have to do, and some people I have to
protect. Including you now. I'm really, truly sorry about that and I won't let it happen again. But what I have to
know now, is what are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"How do you mean?" Her eyes widened.</p>
<p>"I mean, now that you know, what are you going to do about it?"</p>
<p>She stared up at him, holding his eyes with his, the way she could. She pursed her lips into a tight bud and he felt
her grip tighten on his fingers.</p>
<p>"If you mean what I think you mean, you're going to get another punch," she said tightly. "You're asking me if I can
be trusted, aren't you?"</p>
<p>He said nothing, still locked on her eyes.</p>
<p>"Don't you ever dare ask me that again, Jack Lorne. Do you really think I'm going to see you thrown in jail?"</p>
<p>Sandy Bruce looked at himself in the mirror and let out a chuckle. The Armani fitted just as Jack knew it would.
Pierre Cardin shoes gleamed. Donna Bryce gave him a big smile.</p>
<p>"You look like Al Pacino, Mr Bruce, so you do."</p>
<p>"I hope I look better than that skinny wee 'Tally."</p>
<p>"Oh, much better. I mean you just look like the godfather, know what I mean? And that suit, that's just pure
brilliant, real class."</p>
<p>She beamed at Jack. "I never knew the two of you were into the acting. Where did you say the audition is?"</p>
<p>"Up at the Kings. They're doing the Capone story."</p>
<p>"Well, I hope he gets the part," Donna said. "That wee bit of colour takes years off you Mr Bruce, honest it does.
Dead elegant, know what I mean?"</p>
<p>"Nice of you to say, Donna." Sandy admired himself in the mirror again. "And this is our wee secret? I don't want
people to be thinking I'm getting vain in my old age."</p>
<p>"Totally confidential. That's me. What happens in the salon is between me and the client."</p>
<p>She stood back. "What a difference. No offence Mr Bruce, but you look dead young. A real catch, by the way."</p>
<p>Jack put his hand on Sandy's shoulder and caught both of them in the wide hallway mirror. His grandfather's thick
white hair was now almost black, and grey at the temples. Two days ago he'd been sweeping out the pigeon hut,
sporting a three day growth of silver bristles, a torn old boiler suit and balaclava. Now he was somebody you'd take
another look at. Jack took the light coat from the hanger and draped it across Sandy's shoulders.</p>
<p>"Look at the state of you, you old poser. I'll have to get a chisel to take the grin off your face."</p>
<p>But Donna Bryce had been right. She'd done a great job. He now did look the part.</p>
<p>All he had to do was play it.</p>
<p>The car picked them up at the Marriott hotel just south of Charing Cross. Jack paid the account with his new platinum
card and the doorman held it open for them as they stepped out into the morning.</p>
<p>"Mr Gabriel?" The driver was in grey livery, like the one who'd delivered that rich guy Hammond Hall to his uncle's
door what seemed like a lifetime ago.</p>
<p>"That's us," Jack said, switching to the Ulster accent. The Bentley had darkened windows and a rich mirror finish.
Sandy looked at his reflection and turned to Jack.</p>
<p>"Get in, you old Mafiosi," Jack whispered, pushing his grandfather by the elbow.</p>
<p>"Watch the schmutter," Sandy said. They got in, Jack gave directions and closed the hatch.</p>
<p>"Look at you. I get your old cast offs and you get the fashion statement."</p>
<p>"Class goes to class," Sandy said. They had wondered about a moustache and rejected the notion. The dark hair took
ten years off the old man, and that was enough. The double parenthesis that bracketed his mouth just made him look
weather-beaten and tough. Graduated amber lenses made him remote, slightly dated.</p>
<p>"We meet him in the Drumbuie Hotel. He's booked a side room. Remember, start at the outside cutlery and work your way
in."</p>
<p>Sandy turned to him, raised the glasses.</p>
<p>"You thinka I no unnerstan' how to eata da pasta?"</p>
<p>The pair of them suddenly burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter that took five minutes to subside. The
chauffeur checked them out in the rear view. They were out past Anniesland and heading for Levenford when the
laughter finally drained away.</p>
<p>Sproat met them in the foyer, checked out the limo, the Armani, the gold watch fob. Jack had thought he might bring
the company sales manager, but there was a good chance he'd picked up the hints he'd dropped. When they got to the
little bay-windowed private room, the table was set for three. Jack allowed himself a smile. He was drawing him
out.</p>
<p>"Alistair Sproat, meet Alessandro D'Angeli."</p>
<p>"Pleased to meet you," Sproat said. "Very glad you could make it."</p>
<p>"Grazie," Sandy said, keeping his voice low. "You call me Andro, <em>capiche</em>?"</p>
<p><em>He sounds like Marlon Brando,</em> Jack thought. <em>Don't overdo it, Grandad.</em></p>
<p>Sproat ordered an expensive Monticello and sat them down, poured for all three. Jack did the talking and let Sandy
come in with a few monosyllables.</p>
<p>"Acting as agent for Mr D'Angeli's company, I can say he will be in a position to place an initial order for
two-fifty barrels of three-year-old blend. We've checked your stock, and we're quite satisfied. On the heads of
agreement already discussed, we would take one hundred barrels on letter of credit, full price on delivery."</p>
<p>"We're talking half a million," Sproat was sitting forward, elbows on the table.</p>
<p>"Si. <em>Demi millione</em>," Sandy said. He was half turned, feigning disinterest, looking at the birds feeding out
on the lawn. "<em>Instante.</em> For now." </p>
<p>Jack tapped him under the table. No need to push his luck.</p>
<p>"We'll need transport, but you've confirmed that would be included. And we would like this to be the precursor to a
larger purchase." Jack had practised this in the mirror. "We understand that your entire stock will be cleared and
auctioned in less than a month's time. Going by brokerage realisation for three-year mature, you will drop ten to
fifteen percent plus auction fees of about the same. Mr D'Angeli and his partners can, without doubt, improve on
that."</p>
<p>Sproat's eyebrows went up. Jack could almost sense his need. He drew him out further.</p>
<p>"And for cash, of course. No ninety-day invoicing."</p>
<p>Sproat took a sip of whisky and tried to hide his smile.</p>
<p>"That would be a fair amount of whisky."</p>
<p>"We might," Jack gauged it, "be in a position to take the immature stock. At discount of course for added warehousing
costs."</p>
<p>Sproat shrugged, but his eyes were giving him away. The anti-pasti arrived and Sandy used the correct fork to pick at
it.</p>
<p>"<em>Multo bene</em>. Ver' nice."</p>
<p>"I thought you'd like a taste of home. The ciabatta is wonderful."</p>
<p>Sandy nodded, chewing on Parma ham. "Michaelo here tells me you had some...what is the word. Difficulty?"</p>
<p>Jack kicked him under the table.</p>
<p>"A full decant." Sproat knew it was all over the television news. "A wonderful twenty five year old Glen Murroch.
They knew what to take and when to take it."</p>
<p>Sandy tapped his nose. "My associates, I will ask them to, ah, check this matter out. You understand?"</p>
<p><em>What are you up to?</em> Jack twisted the napkin under the table.</p>
<p>"A bad business for you. Three million, maybe some more?"</p>
<p>"About that."</p>
<p>"And all this at a very bad time for you. Which is why it is good we do this business. We help each other, no?"</p>
<p>"That's what business is all about," Sproat agreed.</p>
<p>Jack felt a bead of sweat trickle down his ribs. Sandy was winging it solo, totally off the rehearsed lines. </p>
<p><em>Not the Godfather</em>, he suddenly realised. <em>He's doing De Niro.</em> Talking Italian.</p>
<p>Sandy gave him a sidelong glance and a little nod, every bit the egund don.</p>
<p>"You show him the papers, Mikey."</p>
<p><em>Don't gild it, Grandad.</em> Jack opened the briefcase and brought out the letter of credit, eager to draw
attention away from Sandy.</p>
<p>"Everything will be channelled through my agency," he said. "Mr D'Angeli and his partners wish this to remain
confidential."</p>
<p>"Of course," Sproat put in, a little too fast. He could see a way of getting his cash flow running fast again.</p>
<p>Sandy leant forward. "Cash on delivery, am I right? Michael here will handle all the arrangements. "And after the
first consignment, we talk about the rest."</p>
<p>"Sounds good to me. When do you want the delivery."</p>
<p>"The end of this week," Jack put in. "No point in delay."</p>
<p>Sproat poured another round of wines. Jack put his hand over Sandy's glass.</p>
<p>"The doctor only lets him have one."</p>
<p>Sandy shot him a look, gave a little snort of disgust and turned to Sproat.</p>
<p>"Orders, orders. Nothing changes, Si?" he bent forward. "Like your tax, eh? Ochento per cento? Eighty percent. <em>Infamita!</em>
Worse than anyplace else."</p>
<p>Jack clenched his fists under the table, gritted his teeth, unable to stop the old man.</p>
<p>"Nothing we can do about that."</p>
<p>"Nothing the small people can do, maybe. But a <em>pezzonovante</em> like yourself, must be different eh? Eighty
percent out of a business, that is <em>extorte.</em> You go to the jail in Sicily for that."</p>
<p><em>Italy, I told him Italy!</em></p>
<p>Sproat didn't seem to notice.</p>
<p>"If there was a way," Sandy said. He made a quick motion with his hands, sliding one palm past the other. "If there
was a way to evade such extortion, then good businessman should look for opportunities, no?"</p>
<p>"I'm not sure I understand," Sproat said. </p>
<p>Sandy motioned him forward, flicked his hand to Jack, sending him back. There was nothing for it but to go along with
it. Sandy's accent hadn't dropped once.</p>
<p>"You and me, we know business. You had some trouble that was not your fault, but will the taxman give you money back?
No. It is take, take take, all the time. You don't have to tell me. I know these things. It is <em>criminale, </em>we
understand each other."</p>
<p>"We do indeed," Sproat said urbanely. He was bending forward, drawn in. </p>
<p>"What I want to talk about is, maybe a good price, just between you and me. No tax, no customs. No nobody. What they
don't know, don't hurt, am I right?"</p>
<p>Sproat's eyes flicked from Jack to Sandy and back again. Jack gave an almost imperceptible nod. Sproat knew what they
were talking about. If he'd any brains, he'd know he'd already been well primed for this.</p>
<p>Sandy switched tack just then, catching Sproat off balance. Jack sat back and let him run with it, knowing there was
nothing he could do. Sandy had the Armani and the tinted glasses. He was the big client. That's what Sproat
thought.</p>
<p>"All the laws, they don't let a business do business, am I right? This protest, these interferers. They want to stop
you selling the business, eh? The small people want to tell a <em>pezzonovante</em>, a ninety-calibre, how to run
his own affairs. <em>Infamita egundo!</em></p>
<p>He motioned Sproat forward with a very Italian beckoning of his fingers.</p>
<p>"I hear they want to drag you through the courts. After a hundred years, they tell you what to do. One big problem
for you, am I right?"</p>
<p>"We'll beat them in court," Sproat said, eager to get back to the business.</p>
<p>"Maybe you will. Tell you what I'm going to do. I speak to my associates and I make this protest go away. I make them
an offer..."</p>
<p><em>Don't you dare say that Grandad!</em></p>
<p>"I make them an offer they don't understand," Sandy said. Jack breathed out. What the hell did that mean. "That's for
the good faith, yes?"</p>
<p>He jabbed his hand in front of Sproat, who took it automatically. Sandy clamped his other hand on top of Sproat's
knuckles, confirming the deal. He looked the part.</p>
<p>"Andro, why don't you come back to the plant with me and I'll show you around," Sproat said. "You and I can talk some
more."</p>
<p>"<em>Prego</em>," Sandy said through a mouthful of ciabatta bread. "I ever tell you about the time I met Carlo
Luciano? Lucky Charlie? A very nice man....."</p>
<p>The sweat began to cool on Jack's ribs. Sandy had played the black knight and hooked Sproat right in. He had to hand
it to him. It was <em>finesse</em>.</p>
<hr />
<p>The Charter campaigners had set up a little booth opposite the distillery gates and a few well-meaning local folk
hung about, self conscious about their protest. They had put up a few banners which read <em>Hands off Our
River</em> and <em>Jobs not Shops</em>, and <em>Pollute, Poison and Pilfer</em>.</p>
<p>Sproat growled as the limo swept them in through the gates and Jack slipped on the dark sunglasses when he saw Kate's
face in the little crowd. It was only when he got into the atrium that he realised he'd left the briefcase back at
the hotel.</p>
<p>"You take the limo," Sandy said, keeping up the accent beautifully. "Me and Alistero, we get a chance to talk."</p>
<p>There was nothing for it. Jack needed the signature on the document he'd drawn up, identically worded to the ones
Marge Burns had managed to get from the files. It was the only way to make sure Sproat was tied right down. He
gritted his teeth, knowing it was crazy to let Sandy loose on his own, and went back to the car.</p>
<p>"Back to the hotel," he said. "Speed of light if you can make it."</p>
<p>"I'll see what I can do, Sir," the driver said. It was the first time anybody in the world had ever called him
Sir.</p>
<p>Margery Burns was giggling like a schoolgirl when he got back. Sandy had the long Armani coat draped over his
shoulders, <em>Mafiosi</em> style.</p>
<p>"You Italians," she said. "You've always got such great<em> </em>style. Real <em>elan.</em>"</p>
<p>Sandy shrugged like a Frenchman. She leant in towards him and from twenty yards away, Jack recognised the body
language. He almost laughed aloud. She was incorrigible.</p>
<p>"And what part of Italy are you from."</p>
<p>"Just beside the Lake Como," Sandy said. "In the mountains. Beautiful."</p>
<p>She took his cup and saucer, then took his hand. "Why don't you sit down here."</p>
<p>Sandy caught Jack's eye before she turned round, and gave him a big wink. Sproat put his coffee on the table.</p>
<p>"Ah, Michael. That was quick."</p>
<p>The driver had crashed two ambers for him there and back. The Bentley had a surprising turn of speed for such a big
limo.</p>
<p>Margery turned and saw him and had the grace to blush.</p>
<p>"I'll just clear these away," she said. "You want anything else, just give me a call."</p>
<p>Jack smiled again. She'd tried to make it general, but he knew it had been aimed at Sandy. That dark colour did take
years off him. The Armani and an open-razor close shave did the rest.</p>
<p>"I've pulled," Sandy whispered as Sproat closed the boardroom door. "Can you spring me for another night in the
Marriott?"</p>
<p>"You pull this off and you can have a week there," Jack said.</p>
<p>He suddenly realised he could kill two birds with one stone. It could get him off the hook.</p>
<p>Sandy turned to Sproat. "Maybe we can get the business done, no?"</p>
<p>Sproat walked right in, stepped right up.</p>
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<h1>18</h1>
<p>They picked Donny up on the quayside and slammed him in the back of the white van. It hadn't been that
difficult, because he was drunk at the time and while he'd put up a bit of a struggle, his co-ordination was
well off. He had a hundred and twenty pounds in crumpled notes in his hip pocket, and an Irn Bru bottle half
emptied of whisky in a haversack.</p>
<p>He'd got very drunk and he'd been very stupid</p>
<p>Cullen and Foley picked up the word late in the afternoon and that was easy to figure. There had been a
steady drift of the layabouts and workshy down to the quayside where the Corrieside team hung about playing
quoits and pitch and toss, waiting to sign on the dole, the sick, share a bottle of wine, or get a deal on
any of a number of exotic substances to inhale, ingest or inject. </p>
<p>Donny had sold three gallons to some of the happy lads at a fiver a pint and told them they were getting a
bargain. He'd done his own decant and filled eighteen Iron Brew bottles and stacked them in two plastic
crates. As soon as the wasters who hung about down the Riverside Quay got a taste for it, there was a rush
on the market and business was brisk. Donny's trade made him the most popular man on the cobbles and there
was always a scam going on down here where car radios had been replaced by CD players, transistor sets by
mobile phones. Alloy wheels were a regular deal, along with fake designer jeans. A couple of months back,
two Irish labourers had strolled out of Aitkenbar Distillery with ten feet of nine-inch drainage pipe slung
between them and five gallons of immature spirit sloshing about in the curve of the hose. It might have been
clear as water and strong enough to bubble paint, but it had sold like a drug on the market and nobody had
asked any questions about where it came from. It only mattered that it was there, it could help blur the
remainder of the day, and it was going cheap.</p>
<p>Donny's enterprise elicited few questions, but one was enough. The trouble was that he had kept back a bottle
for himself and was taking slugs from the bottle every time he did a deal, so by dinnertime he was half
drunk and when the sun was over the old bridge upstream, with the whole crate gone, he was well over the
line.</p>
<p>"I hear it's good stuff," Cullen said.</p>
<p>"You'd better go find out," Ferguson told him. "Anything that gets sold down here, I get to know about it. I
don't remember giving anybody a franchise. Whoever's dealing pays double community tax."</p>
<p>Cullen and Foley bumped into Franky Hennigan's drinking buddy Tig Graham who was in the shadow under the
bridge and took the bottle off him, which was easier said than done, because any time Tig had a bottle of
anything he held onto it with ferocious determination and it took a couple of dull ones on the ribs to make
him loosen his grip. Seggs Cullen poured some into the empty can of coke, rather than put his lips to the
neck of the same bottle Tig had been drinking out of.</p>
<p>"That's the business," he said, while Tig struggled with Foley to get close and snatch it back. It was no
contest. Wiggy Foley was slab-like and lived on beer and burgers, while for Tig, solid food was only an
irregular necessity.</p>
<p>"Where did you get this?"</p>
<p>"Bought it this morning. There was a rush on."</p>
<p>"How much?"</p>
<p>"What's it to you?"</p>
<p>Cullen held the bottle out beyond the walkway railing and poured a golden drizzle in to the deep fast
current.</p>
<p>"Okay, okay, I'll tell you. It cost me a five spot. It's class stuff."</p>
<p>"How would you know, Tig? You'd drink watery shite out of my dirty boxers, wouldn't you?"</p>
<p>"Come on guys. Away and buy your own. He's still down there at the end of the quay."</p>
<p>"Who's dealing?"</p>
<p>"Some young fella from Drymains. Forget his name. Ginger-headed lad. Come to think, he might be one of Skid
Watson's boys."</p>
<p>Cullen looked at Foley and Foley grinned back.</p>
<p>"Bingo," he said. They jumped back in the van, sped round River Street and came down the Barley Cobble at the
far end of the quay half a mile away near the river mouth. They picked up Donny Watson as he sat on an old
worn capstan, with half a bottle of the moonshine still in his bag and a wad of notes in his hip pocket.</p>
<p>"Where did you get this?"</p>
<p>Donny had tried to fight them off, but he was no scrapper and his co-ordination left him swinging at fresh
air. After the last beating down the lane he remembered the pain of the bruises and the cracked ribs and
that recollection took the heart and fight out of him as much as anything else.</p>
<p>Wiggy Foley dragged him into the back of the van and casually slapped him around while Cullen held him in a
head-lock. After that Foley sat on him and the doors slammed and no matter how hard Donny tried, he couldn't
move.</p>
<p>When the doors opened again he was in Whitehead's scrap yard. You could tell by the smell of rusty and oil
and burning cable, and the sounds of hammers and wrenches and angle cutters on old metal. They were far down
one of the lanes, bounded on either side by stacks of bent cars. Foley dragged him out the back and into the
big shed. Cullen slammed the door shut.</p>
<p>"I hear you're in business," Ferguson said. He had his feet up on an old metal desk that bore a couple of
battered biscuit tins and big black welding mask. The chair was tilted back. Over by the wall, a crumpled
BMW stood up on bricks. Cullen had come in first before Foley had brought him out and the half-empty bottle
from Donny's bag now stood on the surface beside the tins.</p>
<p>"And it's class merchandise."</p>
<p>Donny said nothing.</p>
<p>"Not like you, Ginger, is it? Most of the time you're running off at the mouth like a burst main, am I
right?"</p>
<p>"I got nothing to say to you, Ferguson."</p>
<p>"Oh really. You really reckon?"</p>
<p>Donny shook his head.</p>
<p>"You're going to tell me what the fuck this is." He nudged the bottle with his foot. It teetered dangerously
and then righted itself.</p>
<p>"Piss off," Donny said. His eyes flicked left and right, trying to see a way out of this. He'd been down here
often enough with Jed and Neil, looking for parts for the stock cars, to know he was at the far end of the
yard. The chances of making it through the warren of aisles to the big gate were between zero and damn all,
even if he could fight his way out of the shed. A trickle of sweat started between his shoulder blades and
worked its way down.</p>
<p>"Fighting talk," Ferguson said without even raising his voice. He sniggered. "You'll have met Mr Foley. He's
just out of Barlinnie Jail, you'll have heard. Armed robbery and grievous bodily harm. He's trying to mend
his ways, but it's never easy is it? And by the way, when I say grievous, I mean really fucking brutal, know
what I'm saying? Desperate stuff."</p>
<p>Ferguson looked at him, squat and weasel eyed. </p>
<p>"Everybody wants to get into business these days. But, son, you know you can't go selling without a license,
am I right? Anybody deals down the riverfront, they got to come and see me."</p>
<p>"You don't own the place. I can do what I like."</p>
<p>"You would think that, wouldn't you? But you still owe me one from the golf course."</p>
<p>"Oh yeah, and I've got Deja Moo: I've heard all this bullshit before." Despite everything, Donny's mouth
broke free and was off on its own.</p>
<p> "Don't try and get smart with me." Ferguson's eyes glinted with irritation.</p>
<p>"Am I getting smart with you? ....How the hell would you know?</p>
<p> Ferguson shook his head. He raised an eyebrow, let his eyes drift to Foley, lowered them. Foley hit Donny a
fast one in right the kidney and the shock of pain dropped him like a sack. Ferguson waited until he'd
slowly got back to his feet again, using the desk for leverage, gasping painfully for a breath.</p>
<p>"You would think you can do what you like and say what you want, but you better get real. You know the score
and I know the score so you and me, we're going to stop fannying around. I don't have the time. So," he
tapped the bottle again. "unless you want more of the same, let's try again. Here's you doing a brisk trade
down on the quay, and we find out it's not the usual dregs that's been siphoned out of a barrel. I should
know. They serve this at the golf club and they charge you less for Glen Grant and if you swirl it around it
dries up before you even get a taste. And now you're selling it out of soda bottles and drinking it by the
pint."</p>
<p>He took his feet off the old desk and let the chair fall forward.</p>
<p>"Give him a spin," he said. Cullen put a meaty hand on Donny's back and slammed him forward over the surface.
He patted him down quickly and fished the notes from his pocket. Ferguson counted them, slipped off about
half and chucked the rest back.</p>
<p>"Don't say I'm unreasonable. You don't pay the tax, you get to pay double. But I'm an honest man, so you get
to keep the rest."</p>
<p>"Thanks a million," Donny grunted. He felt as if something had burst inside. He urgently needed to piss.</p>
<p>"So where were we? Yes. You're doing a turn on hooch, and it's no fucking moonshine. Now what I want to know,
is where did you get this?"</p>
<p>"He works in the place," Cullen put in. Ferguson froze, slowly turned to face him and Cullen's eagerness
vanished. Ferguson stared hard for an uncomfortable stretch.</p>
<p>"I want to ask you, you'll hear me ask you, right?"</p>
<p>Cullen backed right off, two or three steps. Even Foley shifted his stance and Donny sensed the tension
suddenly rack up tight. He began to sober up very fast. If Foley was scared of Ferguson, that made Ferguson
even worse than that lunatic. Outside, the angle grinder shrieked like a pig in the slaughterhouse. The
smell of burning rubber and plastic was thick on the air. The money lay untouched in a crumpled heap.
Ferguson lit a cheroot.</p>
<p>"Just to recap, in case anybody forgot where we were, here's you selling some prime brew, and here's me
wondering where you got three gallons of Grade A, single malt."</p>
<p>He turned to Cullen and Foley. "You wouldn't recognise this because you've got no class and no style, but
this is definitely the bees knees. The real McCoy. You ever watch the fuckin news? Read the papers? Some
team of hot-shot bandits just swiped a distillery load of the stuff that's been lying there since the
seventies, since Noddy Holder was wearing platforms and Elton John still had his own head of hair. No
offence Wiggy."</p>
<p>Donny swallowed hard in a dry throat. Ferguson turned back to him.</p>
<p>"Not that I think you've got half the brains or half the bottle, Skid, but I have to ask the fuckin question,
don't I? Where the fuck did you get this?"</p>
<p>"Fuck off, arsehole" Donny said, unable to stop his mouth spitting out the words. As soon as they were past
the retrieval stage he felt a sudden clench of fear in his stomach. </p>
<p>Ferguson flicked his cigarette at him. It whirred in the air and caught him just under the eye. Sparks flew
and little needles of fire stabbed at his skin.</p>
<p>"Now, we can do this the hard way, or the <em>very</em> hard way. And after that we can do it in ways you
don't fuckin' want to think about. Bobby Whitehead's got a fuckin' monster crusher out there. Put you in
that old car and you're gone for good and we let his Alsatians lick up what leaks out."</p>
<p>Donny's knees started to tremble and without warning the image of Jack and the others down at the boatyard
swam into his memory. They had all stared him down when Jack had told them about the fish. </p>
<p><em>Bastard, Jack. You got me into this!</em></p>
<p>"So I'll ask you one more time. Where the fuck did you get it?"</p>
<p>"I found it," Donny's voice was shaky.</p>
<p>"Sure you did. And I'm Mother fuckin' Theresa." Ferguson heaved himself off the chair and turned away, bent
and picked up a piece of equipment on the floor nearby. He held it up to Donny.</p>
<p>"A sticky situation," he said. "That's what you're in. Just you watch this."</p>
<p>He picked out big sixteen-mil bolt from a box on the table and rolled it across the surface. With the same
hand, he lifted the welder's mask and slipped it on. He held the nozzle, pressed the little trigger and
touched the thin wand of the arc-welder to the bolt. Bright blue sparks fountained into the air in a hot
sizzle and the bolt jerked across the desk as if it was alive. Donny pulled back to protect his eyes. Foley
slammed him forward.</p>
<p>"You get this stuck on your prick and you'll stick to anything." He grinned. "How would you like to be the
Rolls Royce lady? I can weld your balls to the hood of that Beamer.</p>
<p><em>Jack, you bastard. </em>Resentment and fear tussled for dominance. <em>Jesus, Jack I need you now.</em>
</p>
<p>"Now what can you tell me?"</p>
<p>"I found it. Honest."</p>
<p>The wand touched the bolt. It was only inches away from Donny's groin. Foley kept him pressed forward. </p>
<p>Ferguson hit the trigger and pressed it straight down, jamming the bolt against the metal surface. A volcano
of sparks shot upwards and the hot air screeched. A shock of heat blasted through Donny's denims and he let
out a strange high squeak. Little metallic rivulets skittered silver across the surface.</p>
<p>"How many inches can this get through?" Ferguson asked. Blinding afterimages danced in Donny's vision. The
big bolt was white hot, all the rust cascading off like falling stars</p>
<p>"Ever smell human flesh roast? It's like pork, they tell me. Long Pig<em>.</em>"</p>
<p>He turned off the power.</p>
<p>"You know how much it was worth? Three million, maybe four. And you know something else? Trust me Skidmark,
for that kind of dough, I'd skin my old granny alive. You're going to tell me."</p>
<p>And he did.</p>
<p>Angus Baxter was quick on the uptake and he hauled Andy Kerr in for another session of questions and answers.
It was all over town and when Jack heard it, he had to bite down hard on the surge of guilt. Andy's business
was down the drain and everybody was beginning to think he'd nicked his own tankers for the insurance. He
was even greyer now than he had been when he'd called them all into the meeting.</p>
<p>"He's like a dead man walking," Jed said. "Honest man, I wouldn't be surprised if he goes and tops
himself."</p>
<p>Jack had heard that Baxter had put two and two together and come up with four. If he hadn't heard, the news
on Radio Clyde was fairly explicit.</p>
<div class='block'>Police now believe that the two tankers stolen from Levenford Dairy may have been used in the theft
of the twenty five thousand gallons of Scotch whisky from Aitkenbar Distillery.
</div>
<div class='block'>It is now thought that a gang of professional thieves were involved in the daring, highly organised
robbery.
</div>
<div class='block'>But CID sources reveal that inside accomplices are still being sought, and staff in both companies
are being questioned.
</div>
<p>CID sources, Jack sneered. Just big Baxter putting out propaganda, trying to put the wind up. He'd know there
had to be some local involvement.</p>
<p>"I feel sorry for Andy," Jed said. They were on the boat again, five of them, down the end of the yard.
Nobody could find Donny, and he wasn't at home. "The cops think he was involved and the dairy's down the
tubes. He's going to lose it and we've dropped him in the shite."</p>
<p>"He was going to lose it anyway. The finance company owned the tankers."</p>
<p>"That's a bit callous," Jed countered. Neil agreed, but Ed and Tam said nothing. They knew they had come too
far. There was nothing they could do for Andy Kerr, no matter what they thought.</p>
<p>"What do you want me to say? What <em>can</em> I say? The tankers were no good to Andy. He told me that
himself, said he was going to get second hand wheels and give these back. We just did it a day early, that's
all."</p>
<p>"I was just saying..." Jed started. Jack snapped at him.</p>
<p>"Just don't say, all right? We've done this. Okay, sure, Andy's a good bloke. I know that. I'll fix it so
nothing happens to him, but we just need a couple of days. There's been a delay."</p>
<p>Neil pounced on that. "What delay?"</p>
<p>Lars had contacted Jack on the mobile later in the day, about an hour before Ferguson's heavies picked Donny
up on the quayside.</p>
<p>"The screw, that they fix okay. Did good work too. But the engineer, he found in the testing, a bend on the
shaft."</p>
<p>"So what does that mean?"</p>
<p>"It gives a vibration and metal fatigue. After a while the heat causes the shaft to crack. They say they can
take it out and replace. That's what they are doing just right now. But now I need four more days."</p>
<p>"Four days? Lars, that's much too much. We were ready to roll."</p>
<p>"I know <em>Yack.</em> Me too. But if the shaft goes out there on the North Sea, that is bad news."</p>
<p>"Okay. I'll have to think of something."</p>
<p>Four days. Like Donny always said, every silver lining had a big grey cloud inside it. Four days would have
been fine if it hadn't been for Donny's stupid bloody rainbow trout in a trickle of water, and the fact that
big Angus Baxter spent any off duty hours fly fishing on the Endrick and the Fruin rivers. He knew what fish
looked like. Because Donny had lost a piece of Kate's artwork from the tankers, Baxter had made the
connection between them and the job, and that mean the whole of the force would be scouring the country for
the big Fruehaufs.</p>
<p>"Where's Donny?"</p>
<p>"He's not home. I checked Mac's and he's not there either."</p>
<p>Jack had initially formed the idea that he'd give him a going over for the lost logo, but now he just wanted
them all together, pulling together.</p>
<p>"He took the huff with you," Neil said. </p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"You put him through the blender. He was well pissed off."</p>
<p>Jack put his head in his hands. There were too many things to do than get bogged down in this.</p>
<p>"Okay. Let's find the daft bugger and give him a big hug. I'll talk to him and make him feel better, right?
It's not the end of the world."</p>
<p>But Baxter knew about the tankers and the logo. Sooner or later he'd really start asking a lot of questions
and they had to be well out of this town before he got some answers.</p>
<p>"Keep your eye on the job and keep steady. The only thing that's going to kill us is if we lose our nerve
now."</p>
<p>He knew nothing about Gus Ferguson and what he was doing to Donny.</p>
<p>The interdict was slapped on Aitkenbar Distillery at four thirty on the Friday afternoon and that left Sproat
no time at all to counter it that weekend. He put a call in to Jamieson on the council and caught him just
as he was leaving the chamber for a weekend break.</p>
<p>"Who the hell are these people?"</p>
<p>"Charter 1315? I told you, just a bunch of locals," Jameson Bell tried to assure him. </p>
<p>"But I thought you said you had it sorted?"</p>
<p>"How was I to know they'd interdict? I never thought they had the finances."</p>
<p>"You've got a whole team of lawyers down there. Good god man, they say they own the whole damned river and
they got that information from your damned library?"</p>
<p>"It appears so," Bell said. "It's a public library. The documents go back centuries."</p>
<p>"They can go back to the age of the fucking dinosaurs for all I care. What I want to know is what you are
going to do about this."</p>
<p>"There's not much I can do. They've hired Kerrigan Deane, and he's no slouch."</p>
<p>"He's slapped an interdict on me. It prevents me reclaiming the river land."</p>
<p>"And he's taking us to the court of Human Rights. In Strasbourg for Christ's sake. They're now demanding that
we defend their rights under the Bruce Charter, and prevent you dumping the building into the river
basin."</p>
<p>"You can tell them to get stuffed." Sproat's voice was rising. He was losing his cool. Out in the vestibule,
Marge Burns listened to the conversation with her hand over the mouthpiece.</p>
<p>Bell sighed. "I really wish it were as easy as that."</p>
<p>"What could be simpler? <em>I</em> fund your party and <em>you</em> make sure I don't get shafted. Which I am
most definitely getting. Totally and completely."</p>
<p>"Well, they seem to have got the public fired up about this. And there's an election coming up in three
months time. I can't just tell them to bugger off now, can I? It would be suicide."</p>
<p>Sproat spluttered into the phone. The Charter 1315 protesters had somehow raised the money to get Kerrigan
Deane to fight their corner and it would cost him an arm and a leg to get the interdict lifted.</p>
<p>"So what are you telling me? You're going to back them?"</p>
<p>"I might have no choice in the matter. Our legal people think they might have a case."</p>
<p>"Nonsense. I told you, all this land and the river have been owned by my family for nearly two hundred years.
I'll be damned if I let a bunch of unwashed hippies tell me what to do. And as for you, you damned spineless
cretin, you better think of something. If I can't infill the basin, I can't reclaim the land, and that means
Trading Estates will pull out of the mall development. That happens and you can forget any funding forever.
That happens and everybody gets to know about all of it, you got me? All the brown envelopes. Let me give
you a for instance, shall I?</p>
<p>"I hear you," Bell said dryly. "I really think there's no need to make threats. I really don't see what I can
do. There's not much I <em>can</em> do in the face of public opinion."</p>
<p>"You just wait and see what opinion the public gets, you treacherous shit." Sproat was almost frothing at the
mouth. "If you won't do it, I'll find someone who will. And believe me, I'll break <em>you </em>into the
bargain."</p>
<p>He slammed the phone down and on the far side of the door, Marge Burns eased the receiver onto the
cradle.</p>
<p>"Marge," Sproat bawled, his voice strangely high and tight. He sounded as if something had burst in his
throat. </p>
<p>"Get me Michael Gabriel. I want to speak to that Italian client of his."</p>
<p>"Mr D'Angeli?"</p>
<p>"Him. Right away."</p>
<p>Kate could hardly believe the letter from Kerrigan Deane. It had come in the post, right out of the blue on
the Tuesday morning, addressed to her personally.</p>
<div class='block'>Dear Miss Delaney</div>
<div class='block'>We have been instructed to offer our services to the Bruce Charter 1315 organisation of which, we
are reliably informed, you are a key member.
</div>
<div class='block'>Our client, who wishes to preserve anonymity, has supplied us with a study and complete historical
background to the protest and the ramifications of infilling the tidal basin in Levenford. Our client has
financed such action as is necessary to counter these proposals by way of injunction or interdict against
any and all parties involved, such funding being sufficient to cover our estimated legal and court costs.
</div>
<div class='block'>You have been nominated to us as representative of Charter 1315 and as such, we would require you to
speedily obtain the consent of your organisation to enable us to immediately apply for interdict in the
first instance and to prepare a legal case.
</div>
<div class='block'>We eagerly await your instructions in this matter.</div>
<p>She stared at the letter for five minutes, letting her morning coffee grow cold, hardly able to comprehend
what she had read. Finally she picked it up again, folded it carefully, and put it back in the envelope.</p>
<p>"This is what we needed, Jack Lorne," she said aloud. "<em>Real </em>action."</p>
<p>She pushed her chair back and found her summer jacket and stepped out into the sunshine. She would show him
the letter that could help scupper Crichton and save the jobs at Aitkenbar</p>
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<h1>19</h1>
<p>They had to move the stuff and fast. It should have been out of Levenford by now, long gone, but for the fact
that the engineers had found a bend in the prop shaft of the Valkyrie and that set Lars back at least four
days. Four days in the rising heat of the town was four too long as far as Jack was concerned. Big Angus
Baxter was good and eventually he’d come sniffing around. No doubt at all about that now.</p>
<p>They just had to be clean and clear when he did.</p>
<p>"They'll find the tankers," he told Jed and Ed on the way out towards the east of town to pick Tam up. He
wanted a lift with his tools for a weekend home job. He always kept his eye on the next contingency in case
the big plan fell on its face. In his view, that was not an unlikely scenario.</p>
<p> "It's a miracle they've not been discovered before now, so we'll have to find somewhere else to stash the
stuff."</p>
<p>"Easier said than done," Ed said. "The only place to put it is in another couple of tankers."</p>
<p>"We could pump it back and hope they don't notice," Jed offered and they all laughed, but they knew they were
in trouble.</p>
<p>"We need to store it for a couple of days. Eventually Baxter will get round to checking out every twelve
wheeler that comes in and out of the place. The decoys are good, but if anybody looks under those
tarpaulins, then we're all down the tubes."</p>
<p>Jed turned the beat-up yellow Skoda in at the far side of the building site where a whole block of little
brick houses were being thrown up on the wide flat wasteland of the old engineering factory that used to
employ three thousand souls in its heyday. Most of the site workers were clocking off early for the
weekend.</p>
<p>"Where is he? I told him to be ready to move."</p>
<p>A couple of dirt-encrusted cars passed by in convoy on the access road as the workers clocked off, sending up
little whirlwinds of dust and grey cement powder.</p>
<p>"I know where he'll be," Jack said. "I caught him skiving with a couple of noodie books the last time I was
here."</p>
<p>He pointed over to the enclosure where the big moulded-resin tanks were stacked like monstrous children's
blocks.</p>
<p>They piled out of the car and went across the strip of ground. Most of the joiners and brickies were gone by
now, leaving that distinct unfinished building site smell of tar and cut wood and diesel oil. Jack and Ed
carefully climbed up on the giant staircase of the tanks and peered down.</p>
<p>"Bowie, you're <em>fired</em>," Ed bawled, and Tam came awake with a dreadful start.</p>
<p>"What the fu....?"</p>
<p>They burst out laughing and jumped down into the hollow where Tam had been napping.</p>
<p>"Rip van Bowie," Ed said. "You could sleep standing up."</p>
<p>"So would you if you worked as hard as me." Tam rubbed his eyes. One side of his face was bright red where it
had faced the sun and that told them he'd been bunking off in the makeshift shelter for most of the
afternoon.</p>
<p>"Lazy git. No wonder you can never get a plumber when you need one."</p>
<p>They clambered back up and over the pile and down to where Jed waited in his stock-car.</p>
<p>"Don't tell me," he said. "He was zedding it, right? Out for the count."</p>
<p>"You could hear the snores across town." Jed started the engine and the pair of them piled in the back. Jack
had turned back and was facing in the opposite direction. Jed gave the horn a toot.</p>
<p>"Has he lost something?"</p>
<p>Jack slowly swivelled and came back to the car.</p>
<p>"Tam. What's the score with this place at the weekend? Is it busy?"</p>
<p>"No. Maybe a couple of roofers and glaziers on the other side, and some of the plasterers will get some
double time on the houses that are nearly finished. Everybody else will be at the match."</p>
<p>Ed came out of the car and stood beside him.</p>
<p>"You've got that look in your eye again."</p>
<p>"I think I've just seen the answer to the problem." For the first time that day, Jack Lorne seemed to be
happy about something.</p>
<p>"And we might just get away with it."</p>
<p>Old Tim Farmer came back two hours past midnight on the Saturday morning and almost gave Ed Kane a heart
attack. That was after Donny showed up and after five of them had sneaked into the transport park and got
the disguised tankers out through the big gates.</p>
<p>Donny was in a real mess.</p>
<p>The found him soaked to the bone and limping up the towpath, one side of his face swollen to twice its normal
size and a shirt stained a deep rosy pink where the blood had washed into it. "What the hell happened to
you?" Ed had asked, stopping him on the track. "You look like you walked in front of a bus?"</p>
<p>Donny tried to keep walking, tried to turn away so they wouldn't see the bruises. Jack put an arm round his
shoulder and felt him shiver violently despite the mildness of the evening.</p>
<p>He groaned at the pressure.</p>
<p>"Come on, Don. What's the score?"</p>
<p>"Bastards," Donny grunted, chittering with the chill.</p>
<p>Jack and Ed got him into the van and took him straight to Sandy's house.</p>
<p>Foley had hit him, back of the knuckle stuff, hard on the mouth, and his lip had split like a ripe tomato.
Cullen had him by the hair, pulling his head back so that his face was an easy target. Ferguson still held
the welder's wand, clicking the trigger on and off.</p>
<p>"So you and your teardrops swiped a tank-load of whisky, but you don't know where it is, that's what you're
telling me?"</p>
<p>Donny tried to nod against the tight burn of Cullen's grip.</p>
<p>Foley slapped him again, easy meaty thuds. Ferguson touched the wand to the table and made the bolt leap in a
bluster of sparks.</p>
<p>"I'll put your fucking eye out with this."</p>
<p>"Stick his head in the vice," Foley said. "You see Goodfellas? Put his head in and turned the handle. His
fucking eye popped out. It would give you the puke."</p>
<p>Ferguson turned to Foley, momentarily diverted. He stared at him a while.</p>
<p>"That was Casino," Cullen said.</p>
<p>"What the fuck is wrong with your mouth? You want to put a zip on it. Maybe a padlock, even. Christ, I can
weld your trap shut just as quick."</p>
<p>They made no reply. This was Ferguson's show.</p>
<p>"You and that smart cunt Jake Lorne and a bunch of losers. You hooked into Aitkenbar and went walkabout with
a tank of high tension and you don't fucking know where it is?"</p>
<p>"No. Honest to god," Donny was panting against the pain and the taste of blood at the back of his throat.
"Jack said it was need to know stuff. Just in case we got caught. It was just him. Christ knows where it is
now."</p>
<p>Ferguson sparked the gear. The sizzle reflected in his eyes.</p>
<p>"You want me to pop a ball for you? That what you want?"</p>
<p>Donny shook his head, despite the hurt it cost. "God's honest. He just drove it away."</p>
<p>"So where did you get the stuff you were trading down the quayside?"</p>
<p>"In the drain. I stuck a big plastic bottle down there. All the rest was going to go in the river, so I just
took some. The others never knew. It was just a bit extra."</p>
<p>Ferguson turned to the heavies. "See you guys? You never think of a scam like that. All muscle and gristle
you are. Right. Get him out of here and make sure he keeps that trap shut."</p>
<p>He leant over the old desk top and jammed the metal up close to Donny's face. The smell of burned metal was
sour and heavy.</p>
<p>"I see you again, Ginger pubes, and you get this torch up your arse. I'll cure your constipation for good,
know what I mean? I hear you've blabbed, the same goes."</p>
<p>Cullen hauled him backwards. Donny grunted. Ferguson held a hand up.</p>
<p>"Oh, now that I remember. Who's the Irishman?"</p>
<p>"What Irishman?"</p>
<p>Foley slapped him casually. "Mr Ferguson asks the questions. You do the answers."</p>
<p>Donny held his breath, scared to talk, scared not to.</p>
<p>"Who's the fucking Irishman who backed him up against me. The one with the shooter? What is he? IRA? UDA?
Family or what?"</p>
<p>"I don't know any Irishman," Donny said truthfully. "He never told me."</p>
<p>"Keeps you well in the dark, does our Jake. More need-to-know stuff? I find out you're lying and you won't
like what I'll do to you. Got the picture?"</p>
<p>They slammed him in the van again and Foley got in with him while Cullen drove out of the yard and along to
the station on the west side of town before taking the curve of the road that went down towards the river
and the little warren of streets and alleys off the main drag. It was late and it wasn't quite dark, though
the sun was low and just behind the Cardross hills out to the west. Down by the river it was shadowed and
silent.</p>
<p>Foley hauled him out and the pair of them dragged him, a hand clamped over his mouth, along the old cobbles
to the shadow under the bridge where they had come across Tig Graham drinking the whisky. </p>
<p>Cullen pushed him back against the railing, shoving so hard he thought he heard his spine creak with the
pressure. Foley dug fast knuckles right into his belly and all the air exploded out. The punch drove in
against skin and flesh stretched taut and Donny felt something rip. He grunted, unable to cry out and Foley
hit him again, hooking up between his legs, catching him right on the left testicle. The explosion of pain
was so sudden, so great, that Donny's teeth clenched together in a violent spastic snap.</p>
<p>Cullen's fingers just happened to be in the way and the teeth crunched right to the bone.</p>
<p>He let out a howl that echoed all across the river and reverberated from the unseen bridge arches, and Donny
felt the fingers drag out from his teeth. A new taste of blood hit his tongue.</p>
<p>"You bastard!" Cullen's other arm slammed against his shoulder. "Fucking bit me."</p>
<p>The blow was just enough. Donny was bent so far over the rail that the force against his shoulder just tipped
the balance. For a moment another huge screech of pain twisted in his back just above the thin part at his
pelvis and then his legs were in the air, feet lifting higher and he toppled towards the water.</p>
<p>"Get him," Cullen bawled. Foley snatched for the rising legs, got a hand to an ankle. Cullen's free hand, the
one that wasn't now between his own teeth, being sucked tenderly, caught Donny by the calf, but not fast
enough, not tightly enough. Donny was up and over sliding down the hand-smoothed railing bar. Something
gripped him at the heel and he felt his weight stop and judder. </p>
<p>"Weighs a fucking ton," Foley growled. Another hand made a grab for Donny's knee and Donny kicked out at it,
squirming, suddenly desperate to get away at all costs. His flailing heel caught Foley right on the eye and
raised a grotesque soft bruise that instantly purpled. Foley grunted, swore, hauled at him.</p>
<p>His boot came off. It just popped off as Foley tried to drag him up and over the bar and Donny's own momentum
carried him down, tumbling into the dark.</p>
<p>He hit the water with a numbing crack and five feet below that, drove into the silty bed with a soft,
smothering squeeze and for a moment all movement stopped.</p>
<p>"Where'd he go?"</p>
<p>"Fucked if I know."</p>
<p>The fading sun didn't reach under the bridge. Ten feet below them, the water at flow tide was dark, almost
black. The sounds of the splash faded away and the fast current carried the foam and ripples down with
it.</p>
<p>"He'll drown," Cullen said.</p>
<p>"I could care less."</p>
<p>"Don't come the cunt, arsehole. He kicks it and we're in the shit."</p>
<p>"Not me. Never saw him, don't know him. Never met him."</p>
<p>"Well, for a start, you better get rid of that fucking boot."</p>
<p>Foley looked at it, shrugged, let it fall into the water.</p>
<p>"Will that do?"</p>
<p>"You better be right."</p>
<p>Down in the water all he could hear was the ripple of the current over the bricks and stones and bottles,
thrown in by generations of drunks and small boys. Above him a thin crescent moon wavered in and out of
existence, and as the motion turned him over, he saw the two dark shapes leaning out from the rail, until
the fine silt of his impact rose in a cloud and obscured everything. The river rolled him down along the
slick side of the quay wall. For a second his one boot snagged on a brand new supermarket trolley, but he
was too numbed to panic. The boot came free and he drifted out from under the bridge moving faster as the
flow quickened. His groin ached and his back hurt, but the chill was leaching the pain away and down here in
the dark it was cold, but somehow hazy and comforting.</p>
<p>He surfaced forty yards down while Foley and Cullen still bent over the railing further up at the bridge. A
couple of swans powered themselves out of reach, hissing in fright as he gasped for breath, glided away like
ghosts, and he was past them, heading towards the Clyde as the numb cold of the river water began to drain
the heat from him. A hundred yards down the river shallowed at the old ford, and if the tide had been any
higher Donny would have been carried right on past the town, drawn on the flow beyond the old boatyard at
the sandy point where the rest of them had talked about the danger that Inspector Angus Baxter posed.</p>
<p>As it was, the tide was just low enough now and he got his feet to the slippery rocks and half crawled, half
stumbled across the current, towards the high wall at the far side, spluttering and gasping now with cold
and exhaustion and the aftermath of fear. When he reached the other bank he stopped and held on to an old
iron boat ring, trying to get his breath back. It took him twenty minutes to cross the water, and another
ten to climb the slippery stairs that led up to the towpath, and had begun to stumble homewards when out
from the trees two shadows suddenly loomed and for a moment he thought he'd been caught all over again.</p>
<p>They needed the van again and Willie McIver was glad enough to take another cash donation. If they were
caught, he'd say it was stolen and apart from that deal, he wanted to know no more. It was none of his
concern.</p>
<p>Neil hauled the pump around and waited for them behind the workmen's hut. When they arrived, they just looked
like two big covered container wagons and their passing made the ground tremble. Jed went ahead, reversed
expertly, and slowly backed the first vehicle across the hard-pack mud and dirt on the edge of the building
site until he reached the stack of tanks.</p>
<p>"Will they take the weight?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Sure they will," Tam assured him. "They're epoxy resin and PVC. They can take two hundred pounds a square
inch before they rupture. They have to be tough in case they ice up."</p>
<p>Tam had assured Jack that the big water sumps would not be used for weeks, when the diggers would come in and
excavate the drainage pits for the second phase of the project. Neil backed the van and pump up on the far
side, away from prying eyes and the old watchman who was half asleep on the other end of the site, and the
bulk of the sumps hid the noise of the little engine.</p>
<p>The whisky began to flow, gallon by gallon, barrel by barrel, for more than an hour, each minute racking up
the tension and the chances of being caught in the open, caught in the act, and after that, Jed got into the
cab and reversed in again to repeat the process. They filled six of the sumps to the brim and Tam used a big
steel chuck key to fit the coin-shaped lids back on. Jack slathered them first in epoxy glue that would bind
them tight in an hour. After that, the only way in or out was to cut a hole in the sides.</p>
<p><em>Hide them in plain sight.</em> You couldn't get any plainer than this. Half the labourers on the site
would be passing by here or climbing over to dodge work for a half hour. It was a risk, maybe a big risk,
but Jack thought that for a couple of days more, they could take it. Maybe it was all the other ends of the
strings he was holding that tired his brain out, but he had run out of ideas. This was as good a place as
any, and because Tam was on site all the time, they could keep an eye on it. The rest of them could come
strolling through in denim jackets and workers' boots and pass for any one of the sub-contractors mates.
Building sites were like that.</p>
<p>Ed and Jack dropped the others off and went round to old Tim Farmer's house to pick up the mail, close to ten
thirty when the sun was just sliding down to the curve of Cardross Hill, turning the sky a deep red that
held the promise of a fine bright morning.</p>
<p>"What's all this stuff," Ed asked as they sneaked up the garden path, screened by the tall bushes.</p>
<p>"Phase four," Jack told him.</p>
<p>"How many phases has this scam got?"</p>
<p>Jack laughed. "Getting to the end-game soon."</p>
<p>"Okay," Ed conceded. "You've got a buyer. But the last time we were here, we picked up a whole bunch of
stuff. Different names too. You're up to something."</p>
<p>"Just diversions," Jack said, appreciating the compliment. He began to roll down the woolly hat until it was
over his eyes. Ed was sharp, totally wasted shoving barrels in the distillery. So far Jack's judgement had
been right. He <em>could</em> use Ed Kane. "We have to keep several jumps ahead of everybody, try to figure
them out two, three steps down the line. That way, when things go wrong, you can't get taken completely by
surprise."</p>
<p>"You can't think of everything," Ed said, tucking his own hat down. He was on his knees, feeling for the
string through the letterbox. His fingers found it and he drew it out. "There's always something you haven't
thought of."</p>
<p>He slotted the key in the door and they both sneaked inside, closing it behind them, walking softly through
the back kitchen and down the darkened hallway.</p>
<p>Without any warning at all a light clicked on, leaving them totally exposed.</p>
<p>"What the hell...?"</p>
<p>Old Tim Farmer stood at the top of the stair in a dressing gown.</p>
<p>"What the fuck do you want?" His voice was high and shrill and his white legs stuck down like
matchsticks.</p>
<p>"Oh shit," Ed said, with great feeling. "Bet you never thought of that!"</p>
<p>Up on the stair, Tim Farmer was raising the long barrel of a shotgun. Jack caught the motion and
instinctively dragged Ed back, his heart leaping right into his throat.</p>
<p>"Is that you McLaren?" Farmer's voice was even higher. "That bitch of yours isn't here. She cleaned me right
out."</p>
<p>Jack jerked Ed back and the pair of them hit the wall and just then he saw it wasn't a gun. Farmer was
holding an old walking stick in one hand. The other one reached out and snatched a big vase from a stand
beside the window and the old man slung it down at them. It caught Ed on the shoulder and smashed against
the wall. Ed yelped.</p>
<p>"Get out of here and don't come back and if I see that gold-digging bloody wife of yours I'm going to call
the police."</p>
<p> Jack almost laughed with relief. He pulled Ed away, crunching the fragments of pottery underfoot, and the
pair of them scuttled for the kitchen and out into the air, leaving the old man still bawling from the
stairhead.</p>
<p>"Dead right you are. I never thought of <em>that</em>."</p>
<p>"That old man, he ran away with some bird?" Ed was scrambling through the hedge behind Jack. "No wonder you
never expected him back. He should have had a thrombo by now."</p>
<p>They got out the far side and down the small slope to where they had parked the van, got in quickly and sped
away.</p>
<p>Jack stopped laughing. "I thought he had a shot gun. No kidding, I thought that was it for the pair of
us."</p>
<p>Ed rubbed his shoulder. "Skinny old bugger. Nothing wrong with his aim, though."</p>
<p>"You'd think at least one bloody thing would go right without any problems," Jack said. "Just when you think
you've hit bottom, some loonie throws you an anchor."</p>
<p>Ed had to agree. "No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and into the wind."
"All we have to think of is how to get the mail out of there. Any ideas?"</p>
<p>"You're the ideas man, Jake. I just do the lifting. You'll think of something."</p>
<p>In the light of day, it was Ed who came up with the idea, but that was after the pair of them realised their
troubles were only beginning. Just along the road they came across Donny Watson stumbling up from the
towpath.</p>
<p>He was chilled to the bone, shivering like a child. Jack's uncle put a big quilt round him in the kitchen and
fed him a mixture of hot chocolate and the cream liqueur he was selling to the women at the bowling club
dances.</p>
<p>"Take your time with that," he said. " You'll get drunk and scalded at the same time."</p>
<p>Donny's face was pumped up swollen and he listed to the side, cradling some part under his ribs that was
causing him pain. The mud and the blood on his shirt had merged into a flesh-coloured stain on his
chest.</p>
<p>"Tell us what happened, son," Sandy encouraged. "Somebody had a good go at you."</p>
<p>"Ferguson," Donny managed to get out in a shuddery breath. "Him and Seggs Cullen and that nutter Foley. I'm
sorry Jake."</p>
<p>"Don't worry Donzo. That lunatic. After all this time I thought he'd forgotten about it."</p>
<p>"Not Ferguson," Sandy said. "He's a stoat." Ed nodded agreement.</p>
<p>"No, not that, Jake." Donny's face crumpled and he coughed, sending a spasm though him. "I had to tell him.
He had a welders lance. Jesus, he was going to stick it right in my eye."</p>
<p>Sandy put an arm round him. "You're okay now son. Take it easy."</p>
<p>"Tell him what?" Jack had gone very still, so still that Ed felt it.</p>
<p>"God, man. Jack, I'm really sorry. I thought it would be okay, just a couple of bottles. No harm in it. What
you don't know can't hurt you."</p>
<p><em>What you don't know will </em>always<em> hurt you</em>. Hadn't he told them all?</p>
<p>"No harm in what, Donny?"</p>
<p>"I had to tell him." Donny lifted his head and looked Jack right in the eye, held it for a moment and then
flicked to Sandy.</p>
<p>"That's all right Donny. You can tell him what you tell me. So what did you tell Ferguson?"</p>
<p>"I had to tell him about the whisky, Jake. Christ, he was going to skewer me. They took me down to the
scrappie's and he had this thermic lance. It would put a hole in you."</p>
<p>"I know what a lance does," Jack said. He put his fingers to his temples, closed his eyes. It was all coming
unravelled. Sudden anger at Donny flared up inside him and he squeezed down on it, damping it away.</p>
<p>"Let the boy tell it," Sandy said softly.</p>
<p>"How did he know what to ask."</p>
<p>Donny turned back to him, looked up and then dropped his eyes.</p>
<p>"I punted some of the stuff. God, Jake, I'm really sorry. I never meant it to happen, but I got mad, you
know? When you tore me up in front of the guys. I got a bit pissed and I took the buckshee stuff."</p>
<p>"What buckshee stuff?"</p>
<p>"I stuck a container in the pipe to catch some."</p>
<p>"Oh shit." Jack breathed out. Ed bit his lip. If Ferguson knew, then they really were in it, chin deep and on
tiptoe. </p>
<p>"Honest Jake. I never thought."</p>
<p>"No." What else was there to say? Jack's words dried up as he saw the whole plan going down the stank.</p>
<p>"I thought it would be okay. It was going to waste, you know? God, I was just mad after that time on the
boat. I got pissed and stupid and I fucked up." The three of them watched him, let him run on. "They got me
down on the quay and slammed me in the van and next thing I'm in a shed at the scrap yard. He put this thing
up to my eye and said he was going to burn it out."</p>
<p>"Bastard," Jack said through his teeth. "I knew he was going to be trouble."</p>
<p>"I'm sorry Jake. They kicked the shit out of me and then I was in the river. I don't know how I got away, but
I crossed at the ford and then I met you guys. I think they bust my ribs again."</p>
<p>He coughed hard, holding his side down at his hip, and a little trickle of blood oozed out of this mouth and
trickled down his chin.</p>
<p>The spasm passed and he shuddered again.</p>
<p>Jack's moment of anger peaked and then oozed away, like Donny's trickle of blood. There was no point in
holding on to it. What was done was done.</p>
<p>"Okay man. You had to tell him."</p>
<p>He moved round the table and sat next to Donny, clamped a hand round his shoulder and drew him right close.
<em>Donny! Crazy schmuck!</em></p>
<p>They'd been friends longer than he could remember, since playschool days. Before that even, just babies, just
kids, toddling together, all the way through school together. Friendship and history counted, Jack realised,
friendship and history and the whole of their lifetimes. He'd ignored Donny's fast mouth and death-wish
craziness, never analysing it. He knew now. He'd given Donny the easy tasks because he wasn't the brightest
spark, not the sharpest. That was something he'd never consciously thought, never had to consider. He'd
brought him in because he was a mate, and loyalty was the thing, and he should never have humiliated him
down at the boat. </p>
<p>He clapped him around the shoulder.</p>
<p>"Don't worry about it old son. If he'd come at me, I'd have told the bastard." Donny was shuddering and Jack
knew he was crying now, from pain and fright and shame.</p>
<p>He looked past him at Ed, at his uncle. "Can we keep him here tonight?"</p>
<p>"Better here that anywhere else."</p>
<p>"Okay mate. Come on. You get the good bed and I get the hard couch. Come on and get these wet clothes
off."</p>
<p>"I never meant it," Donny whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.</p>
<p>"I know that Donzo. You don't have to tell me that."</p>
<p>It was well past midnight, and the three of them sat in the kitchen. Sandy had poured them all a cold beer
when Jack came back down.</p>
<p>"He's sleeping. Those two animals gave him a doing."</p>
<p>"It's about time we sorted them right out," Ed said. </p>
<p>"Yeah. Later. We'll have to think of something."</p>
<p>"That's the second time you said that tonight," Ed said, and Jack managed an arid laugh.</p>
<p>"That's me. The man with the plans. Except I'm running out." He closed his eyes, rubbed them with his
thumbs. </p>
<p>"Ferguson's going to come after you," Sandy said. "Sure as night follows day."</p>
<p>"I know that. I'll just have to stay out of his way for a couple of days. That's all I need. And all you need
to get the business sorted out."</p>
<p>"What business is that?" Ed asked.</p>
<p>"I'll tell you everything tomorrow, the point of this whole thing. You need to know now. We have to think
about Ferguson, you and me. And Tam and Jed. Neil's no scrapper and Donny's had the guts pulled out. But
Ferguson, he could screw up the whole thing, so it's a real game of chess now. I'll have to figure out his
moves. Be diplomatic."</p>
<p>Sandy laughed. "I told you before. Being diplomatic means saying <em>nice doggie</em> and getting ready to
hit with a half brick."</p>
<p>"I know. What did you think I meant?"</p>
<p>Ed came in. "You reckon you can outguess him?"</p>
<p>"We don't do that, he'll carve us up or put us in jail, and we lose everything."</p>
<p>"I thought I was going to lose it tonight," Ed said, and he laughed. Sandy looked from one to the other,
eyebrows raised.</p>
<p>"What happened?"</p>
<p>"I'll tell you tomorrow as well. Right now by head's full of mince and broken bottles. I need some sleep.
Tomorrow, Ed, you and me, we're up the city, get a couple of things sported out, see a couple of people.
Sandy, you better get yourself up and see DJ and the boat boys."</p>
<p>Sandy took off his tammy hat and ran his fingers through his dark tousled hair.</p>
<p>Ed whistled.</p>
<p>"Nice colour Mr B. It takes years off you."</p>
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<h1>20</h1>
<p>She saw him coming down Bothwell Street as she was walking to the lawyer’s office and pulled back into the open
doorway of Starbucks coffee house, wondering what he was doing in Glasgow. Had he followed her here?</p>
<p>"Can I get you something?" The girl held up a cup.</p>
<p>Kate shook her head, craning forward to watch him striding fast down the street towards George Square. Something was
different about him. The suit looked new. And she'd never seen him with a briefcase either. It gleamed a burnished
ox-blood.</p>
<p>Kerrigan Deane had persuaded the sheriff to slap on the interdict against Aitkenbar Distillery.</p>
<p>"It's a holding operation," he said. "All that does is prevent any action on their part until they come to court and
try to get it lifted."</p>
<p>"Can they do that?"</p>
<p>"Of course they can try. But at the moment they can't take any action, which gives your organisation the chance to
prepare your case. As I see it, the research we have provides us with a <em>prima facie </em>case."</p>
<p>"We've got some research. Where did you get yours?"</p>
<p>"I'm afraid that's confidential. But it is very informative, very detailed, and as far as I can see, historically
accurate."</p>
<p>She wished she knew his source, but that was as far as she was going to get today.</p>
<p> "Whatever. It's there. On the face of it, there is a strong a case for public ownership of the River Harbour which
will stand as long as Mr Sproat cannot produce title deeds. Initial checks show this is a strong possibility, but
one never knows when we're dealing with ancient history. This will at least prevent the destruction of the harbour
in the meantime. In a word, he's stuck."</p>
<p>"That's all we want," she said. "If he can't dump the buildings in the basin, we'll win."</p>
<p>Jack had talked through it out on the Creggan Cliffs, before that boy almost drowned down near the rocks. Sproat
needed that big hole in the river to bulldoze the rubble and reclaim all that acreage of land. If he couldn't use
the river, it would have to go somewhere else and that would cost millions in landfill tax, millions that Sproat
didn't want to spend, millions Sproat didn't have anyway, Jack had said.</p>
<p>Now they had a chance, thanks to whoever the mystery benefactor was who had funded this operation. Kate had a
sneaking suspicion about that. It could have been the fellow from the big yacht, the one who had somehow traced her
and gone round to thank Jack for saving his son. He certainly looked as if he was worth some sort of money. Kerrigan
Deane was steadfast in his refusal to disclose that piece of information, but it didn't matter. It would have taken
Charter 1315 months to raise the money they needed, maybe a year, and by that time the distillery would be down,
dumped in the river, and the shopping mall developers in on the new site.</p>
<p><em>Damn Jack Lorne.</em> He had helped kick this whole thing off, in a way. His anger at the steady drain of jobs
and money from the area had spurred her on with the charter protesters. </p>
<p>Then despite all that, he had turned his back in it and his bunch of wild men had hijacked the big whisky decant like
a gang of hoods. She couldn't understand that at all.</p>
<p>She recalled his look of surprise and incredulity when she had come round the corner, sizzling with anger, and lumped
him one on the jaw.</p>
<p><em>You stole a tanker of whisky?</em></p>
<p><em>No. I stole </em>two<em> tankers of whisky.</em></p>
<p>He'd kept his face straight, dead serious.</p>
<p><em>I needed a head start. It was payback time for that arsehole.</em></p>
<p>That wasn't the laid-back Jack Lorne of old. He'd had a look in his eye she'd never seen before. What was it, anger?
Bitterness? Maybe both. He sounded tougher, harder. And he wasn't for backing down one inch.</p>
<p><em>....twenty seven years old milkman with maybe a chance of a job in an office. Work my way up to middle management
by the time I'm forty and then get kicked out for being past it.</em></p>
<p>This was a new Jack Lorne. He'd been coasting for so long, taking it easy, the original laid back retro-music man.
Now the police were after the raiders at Aitkenbar, after <em>him</em>, and if they caught up he'd go down for five
years, Jack and that whole team of daft boys who never grew up.</p>
<p>And it would break her heart.</p>
<p>She froze, just on the point of stepping out of Starbucks.</p>
<p>"Cappuccino? Latte?" the girl's voice seemed way in the distance.</p>
<p>He could go to jail and it would break her heart. The realisation of just how much she cared felt stopped her dead
and shook her to the core. <em>Damn damn damn!</em></p>
<p>Kate finally got a hand to the door and walked out into the busy street. He was far down the slope now, waiting for
the lights to change and her heart was still pounding harder than it should.</p>
<p>Did he have any idea how she felt?</p>
<p>And how did she feel anyway?</p>
<p><em>Damn him.</em></p>
<p>He was way in the distance now, head and shoulders just visible.</p>
<p>It was just then that his appearance finally struck her. What was he doing with an Armani suit? And what the hell had
he done to his hair?</p>
<p>Early Monday morning and Jack juggled the grille and the frying pan. The smell of bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes
filled the kitchen and soon percolated through the house. Donny was at the table, still wrapped in the dressing
gown. Jack was stiff from another night on the couch, but that would wear off quickly when he got busy. Ed buttered
the rolls while Sandy read the paper. </p>
<p>Donny had woken in the middle of the night and come downstairs, still favouring his side.</p>
<p>"What's the matter? You still hurting?" Jack came awake quickly at the sound of the door opening and sat up, yawning,
while the dream he'd had fragmented into shards and he tried to hold on to them as they scattered.</p>
<p>"It's okay," Donny said.</p>
<p>"You need a doc?"</p>
<p>"No. I think I just tore a muscle."</p>
<p>"You never had any muscle to tear, you big Jessie." Jack reached over and ruffled Donny's hair. All the anger was
gone now. <em>Friends</em>. You couldn't pick them, not when you were a kid. They were just like families sometimes.
You had to make allowances.</p>
<p>The anger had evaporated, replaced by a determination to get past this.</p>
<p>Donny's face was still pale and miserable, more so in the thin light that leaked in between the slats of the
blinds.</p>
<p>"Jake, I..." he began.</p>
<p>"You tell me you really, really love me, I'll hook you."</p>
<p>"No its..."</p>
<p>"I know what it is, man. You screwed up. Okay. Right. That's it said. And so did I."</p>
<p>Jack punched him on the shoulder, hard enough to get his attention. "We can go on about it all day, or we can get on
with the business, you and me and the boys."</p>
<p>Donny looked back at him, surprise and shame fighting it out.</p>
<p>"Come on Donzo. What's done is done. Everybody has to fuck up. The trick is to shove past it and move ahead, which is
what we're doing. We've got a long way to go and you're still my main man. We're all solid, and I mean <em>all</em>
of us. And I need you in the team."</p>
<p>He sat back, suddenly struck by the desire for a fast shot of Lars Hanssen's good vodka.</p>
<p>"You want a drink?" he tried to change the subject.</p>
<p>"No. I'm off it."</p>
<p>"Good. Stay off it until this is over." The thing with Donny was past. They had to get by the obstacle and think of
what to do now. If he dwelt on it, that would slow everything up. He poured a shot, added some fresh orange, using
the time to think.</p>
<p>"What about Ferguson?"</p>
<p>"Him? He's all mouth and muscle. If he'd brains, he'd be dangerous."</p>
<p>Jack was just talking now, still holding on to the half dream. Ferguson <em>was</em> dangerous, and not just because
he had Cullen and Foley and a whole team of the Corrieside animals on the payroll. He was dangerous because of what
he knew, and if he didn't get what he wanted, he'd shop them all, that was for certain. Honour amongst thieves
wasn't in his lexicon.</p>
<p>"He's not daft," Donny said. </p>
<p>"No. He's got animal cunning, but can he <em>think?</em>"</p>
<p>Could he really think? Muscle and cunning was sometimes enough. But put Sandy Bruce up against Ferguson, and Jack
knew who his money would be on. But Sandy had taken a big risk for him before, and Jack wasn't ready to let that
happen again. He'd do it <em>his</em> way. In fact, he'd already, and quite instinctively, started the battle, the
first time he went up to Glasgow.</p>
<p>The dream kept trying to force its way back in on his thoughts again. Jack took another sip of the drink. He'd be all
the better for a good night's sleep and a tightener. Something had clarified while he slept and he smiled to
himself. It wasn't the first time that had happened. He should sleep more often.</p>
<p>"Listen man. You get to your bed and we'll talk in the morning. I'm going to need you to do something for me."</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"It's a big job. And it's Something only you can do."</p>
<p>Donny looked at him, grateful, strangely tongue tied. Jack punched him on the shoulder again, the way friends
can.</p>
<p>"You tell me what it is Jake. I'll do it right."</p>
<p>"I know you will. Now piss off before you start kissing me," Jack said.</p>
<p>But they hugged anyway. Friends, what could you do?</p>
<p>Jed Cooper took him aside to ask him a question. They were down by the boat and Donny had gone to start his shift.
Tam was on the site, keeping an eye on the big tanks. It had been a busy morning and Ed had woken him at dawn with
an idea.</p>
<p>It was dead simple. Tommy Dunbar was a regular in Mac's Bar and it was easy to keep him occupied for five minutes
talking about football at the post office hatch where they handed out the parcels that hadn't been delivered. Ed
simply reached around the door and snatched one of the red and blue jackets hanging there and then they both went
round to Tim Farmer's house.</p>
<p>Ed knocked tentatively, while Jack remained outside.</p>
<p>"What do you want?" The old man's voice came from behind the door.</p>
<p>"It's the postman," Ed said. He leant in towards the frosted glass, showing the colours. Tim Farmer took his time,
and finally opened up.</p>
<p>"You think this is the town dump?" </p>
<p>"What do you mean?" Ed was taken by surprise.</p>
<p>"Look at all this stuff here. Somebody just dumped it through the door. I've a good mind to chuck it in the bin."</p>
<p>"That's what I'm here about," Ed said. He looked beyond the old fellow and noticed that the shards of pottery had
been cleaned up. "There was a mistake. We had a new boy, stuffed the wrong mail through the door. I'm here to
collect it."</p>
<p>"I could charge you storage," the old man said.</p>
<p>"You could, but that would be interfering with her majesty's mail. You can get three years for that. And a big
fine."</p>
<p>"Really?"</p>
<p>"True. It's the law."</p>
<p>"Well you better take it then. Just make sure I don't get any more of this."</p>
<p>Ed bent, stacked it all together and was gone in a minute. Jack sorted through the pile of envelopes on the way down
the road and by the time they reached his grandfather's place, Sandy was gone.</p>
<p>"Good stuff," he told Ed. "We're finally on our way. Just a couple of days more and we're home clear."</p>
<p>"As long as we can stay ahead of big Baxter and that nutter Ferguson."</p>
<p>"He doesn't know where I am."</p>
<p>"Let's keep it that way."</p>
<p>Alistair Sproat had signed on the line, eager to get his cash flow going now that his own deadline was rushing
closer. He had aged five years in the past fortnight and Jack could see the need in his eyes. Daddy's money might
have given him the firm and the lifestyle, but he'd never been hungry until now, never really had to work at it, and
it was a bit late to learn the tricks. Jack had drawn him out and Sandy had played him like a trout. Kerr Thomson
had been crucial to the deal.</p>
<p>They had cornered him in the car park off river street just after the end of the shift and it was clear he was
waiting for Betty McKinley from the charity shop to get off so they could go somewhere quiet. Tam Bowie wondered if
they should wait and follow them, but Jack vetoed the idea. There was always a chance she'd get such a fright that
she'd blurt it out to her husband and do true confessions. That would just open up a new can of probabilities and
imponderables. They needed Kerr Thomson by himself and preferably by the balls.</p>
<p>Tam knocked on the window and the customs officer didn't recognise him through the glass. Tam flashed him a wallet
and mimed rolling the window down. He leant an elbow on the car roof.</p>
<p>"Mr Thomson?"</p>
<p>"Yes?" Wariness showed already.</p>
<p>"I'm afraid you'll have to come with me and answer a few questions."</p>
<p>"Who the hell are you?" Thomson tried bluster despite the quick fear in his eyes.</p>
<p>Tam flipped the wallet open again and this time Thomson got a clear look at his own white backside sticking up in the
air and his face half turned, mouth slack.</p>
<p>"Oh shit." He'd seen the flicker in the dark and had thought it was a flashlight.</p>
<p>"The lady in question works in the charity shop?"</p>
<p>"How did you.....?"</p>
<p>"Never mind how. You were warned about your behaviour and it seems you haven't learned a lesson. But there is
something else we have to talk to you about. Please step out of the car." </p>
<p>"Am I under arrest?"</p>
<p>"That remains to be seen." Tam enjoyed putting it on. He turned to Jack, who stood with his arms folded at the
entrance to the car park and gave him an exaggerated wink. Jack kept his face totally straight. He looked the
part.</p>
<p>They shut the private car park gate behind the chemists shop, shielding themselves from the traffic. Thomson looked
Jack up and down, took in the well cut tweed jacket and the rimless glasses.</p>
<p>"We have good information that you and Alistair Sproat have been involved in an attempt to defraud Her Majesty's
Customs and Excise of its rightful revenue." Jack kept his face stern.</p>
<p>When Tam showed Thomson the picture of him and Betty McKinley the blood had drained out of his face. Now he looked as
if he might have a stroke. Thomson put a hand to his chest and slumped back against the brick wall, breathing
hard.</p>
<p>"No need to tell you how many years you could be facing for offences of this nature," Jack kept up the pressure.
"Fraud, conspiracy to defraud. Breach of trust."</p>
<p>"I...I...I...."</p>
<p>"You were involved in remarking barrels of bonded spirits in B Hall at Aitkenbar Distillery. I can give you date and
times, and if you would like to see them, the surveillance tapes."</p>
<p>"But there's no surveillance in...." Thomson's mouth closed like a trap.</p>
<p>"You might think that," Jack said. "You would be wrong." He stood back, folded his arms.</p>
<p>"However, this is your lucky day. We don't want you. You're small fry. We're even prepared to grant you immunity for
your complete co-operation. And my colleague here will try to forget he ever took that interesting artwork. We've
been watching you for some time."</p>
<p>Thomson licked his lips. The beads of sweat that had sprung on his forehead had transformed themselves into rivulets.
They could almost see steam rising from under his armpits.</p>
<p>"What do you want me to do?"</p>
<p>"I want you to sit down and tell us everything you can. Times, numbers, amounts, everything. Tomorrow, we'll expect
to see the relevant paperwork, and we'll expect your complete co-operation and total discretion. You tell anyone
about this and the deal is off and I'm afraid you'll be facing multiple charges. Total silence is imperative."</p>
<p>"And I get immunity? You won't charge me?"</p>
<p>"You might even get to keep your job if you do this right. We always reward good citizens who realise the error of
their ways and help the police with their inquiries."</p>
<p>Kerr Thomson started talking and didn't stop for two hours.</p>
<p>Alistair Sproat had supplied the big flatbeds and drivers and it took a morning to roll the barrels out and load
them. Things were looking up today, with the news from Dunvegan. They had done the deal in the Drumbuie Hotel on the
Friday and Sproat had been cheered up enough to offer them champagne. Sandy took a brandy, looking quite the part in
Armani.</p>
<p>He'd passed the envelope across the table. Sproat made a play of opening the flap and taking a cursory glance inside,
too arrogant to get right in there and check in front of them. That was a mistake. The deal was bent and they all
knew it, and if you did bent deals, you dealt with bent people. You counted your fingers if you had to.</p>
<p>"Go on, you count," Sandy said. His accent stayed the distance.</p>
<p>"This is just the first tranche," Sproat said. "I trust you."</p>
<p>The five thousand was all there, just a taster. For good faith.</p>
<p>"We're loading up today. It'll be ready for you tomorrow. And thanks for helping out with the Dunvegan deal."</p>
<p>Sandy waved his hand, as if it was nothing, and Jack smiled. DJ Munro and the rest of the boys up there had taken a
bit of convincing, for it was their redundancy money and their futures stacked up on the line.</p>
<p>"I hadn't expected a management buy out," Sproat said.</p>
<p>"All they needed was some leverage," Jack told him. "Mr D'Angeli's associates were pleased to assist."</p>
<p>"Frankly I thought I'd never get rid of the place. I'm just glad to see it off my hands. No demand for those single
malts these days, and it's far too labour intensive. Designer drinks, that's where it's going. You can sell the
stuff in three days, not three years, and the tax is by alcohol volume, so your costs are a third. You can't
lose."</p>
<p>"We're just pleased to help," Jack said. "We kill two birds with the one stone. They give us the storage, which means
we don't have to take the goods out of customs bond until we need them, which is good for cash flow, and we give
them the business."</p>
<p>"You're happy, we're all of us happy." Sandy said.</p>
<p>It had been more difficult to persuade DJ Munro than it had been to persuade Sproat. All Sproat could see were fast
dollar signs and they had focused his attention on another target. All he needed was to get shot of Dunvegan to
concentrate on the Mall deal. Jack had brought DJ down to Kerrigan Dean's office and with the big credit guarantee
from the bank they'd thrashed out the details and the lawyer had gone to Aitkenbar to fix it up. Sproat would rather
have had the money up front, but Deane explained that the local boys were talking a chance, and Sproat knew they had
no major market. At the end of the day, he'd be stuck with an empty distillery and the redundancy payments for the
men he was throwing on the scrap. Sproat signed the deal for a ten-year reducing payment and washed his hands of an
asset that would have cost a fortune in care and maintenance. What he didn't know was that the money to fund the
buy-out came from a bank guarantee on a share of a boat that had been bought with the whisky that had been stolen
from under his nose. That would have rankled.</p>
<p>It would have been a lot worse if he'd known the first moves had been made to obtain the European regional grants
that would mean the buy-out by the Dunvegan management and their backers would cost them virtually nothing over the
ten years.</p>
<p>But he didn't know that, and Braveheart Distilling became a reality.</p>
<p>Jack phoned ahead and told DJ to expect the first delivery. Kerrigan Deane rang him just after that to tell him the
property transfer had gone through the register. Everything was coming together now, building up under the plan's
own gravity.</p>
<p>The big trucks got rolling. From Levenford to Skye, it's a long and winding road up through the highlands and out to
the wild wastes of the west, and it's rare for Scotch whisky to travel in that direction. Normally it's made up in
the north and gets transported south by the same road. But times were changing.</p>
<p>Kerr Thomson had aged faster than Alistair Sproat had. Ed had watched him as he worked, all the bravado and bluster
knocked out of him; like a man imploded. By the Monday afternoon, he had come up with the paperwork Jack needed and
Margery Burns searched the records for the rest of it. By this stage, the operation had gained its own momentum. All
Jack needed was the word from Lars Hanssen.</p>
<p>He used the time to set up yet another mail drop, and that was one thing he had planned for, just in case Murphy's
Law kept to the usual rules: Anything that can go wrong, <em>will</em>.</p>
<p>When he said that, Ed told him Murphy was a rose tinted optimist. He was probably right.</p>
<p>"Trouble's like a wet-suit," Ed said. "Easy to get into, murder to get out of."</p>
<p>They had a week's credit on the batch of whisky Alistair Sproat was glad to see gone from Aitkenbar distillery,
especially since most of the money would be clear profit, no income tax, no VAT. That gave Jack Lorne a breathing
space, so long as Lars Hanssen got his boat fixed and managed to get out of the Clyde in just a couple of days time.
He could sense Angus Baxter ferreting about the town, working his way closer. No matter what happened, it was only a
question of time before he came sniffing around.</p>
<p>"He knows it was an inside job," Ed told him.</p>
<p>"Not entirely."</p>
<p>"You know what I mean. I'm in the clear anyway, but he looks right through you, as if you're guilty anyway. They
haven't figured out when the pipes were welded. There were a dozen guys in the decant room on the night and they're
all in the frame."</p>
<p>"They'll be all right," Jack said with some certainty. "They haven't done anything."</p>
<p>"That's what you think. They've all been scamming whisky out of that place since they were boys just out of school.
They're all shitting their pants thinking Baxter will get them for something."</p>
<p>Jack laughed. "That's the trouble these days. You just can't trust anybody."</p>
<p>He got up to Dunvegan on Skye by six that night, almost dead on his feet, and stayed at DJ Munro's place a half mile
down the road from the little old distillery that was tucked into a little narrow glen not far from the old castle.
He had a fast meeting with DJ's cousin, two quick beers in the back room of the village pub, tying up final details,
and when he hit the pillow at nine he fell asleep immediately. DJ's wife woke him with a big breakfast twelve hours
later, and at eleven in the morning, the big flatbeds arrived from Aitkenbar, with the hogsheads of young whisky
pinned down on their backs with ropes and steadied with big curved wedges.</p>
<p>At the same time Angus Baxter brought his team of investigators together in the CID operations room in Levenford.</p>
<p>"The engineers tell me they couldn't have used a gravity feed to fill the tankers." He managed to talk and light his
pipe at the same time, a trick that only veteran pipe smokers know. "And from what our observant patrol officers
noted, they had a pump. Any leads Jimmy?"</p>
<p>The young CID constable shook his head. "We're still working on it. The local hire companies have eighty pumps
between them, most of them on lease to local contractors. We're checking them all out, but some of them are working
out of town, or don't have proper schedules."</p>
<p>"Give me the full list. Check them with companies house, Benefits Agency, Inland Revenue, the lot. We want to pin
them down by tomorrow, so get them at home if you have to. We find that pump and we'll have our men."</p>
<p>He turned to the rest of them. "They had to have a man on the inside, and somebody who's an expert on pipes. We need
to know who all had plans, and we've narrowed the field of expertise down to four people inside the plant. Now I
want everything you can get on them. Who they see, where they go. If we have to get taps, them we'll do that. One
thing's for sure, we're going to catch this bunch of buggers."</p>
<p>One of the other constables put his hand up and waited until Baxter caught his eye.</p>
<p>"I heard there was some whisky getting dealt down the quay."</p>
<p>"The day it's not, then that'll be a first. The distilleries around here leak like burst mains."</p>
<p>"I though we should check it out."</p>
<p>"Fine. Make a couple of inquiries, but they won't be selling this piecemeal down the quay or anywhere else. This is a
bulk job and it's been sold already. We just have to find out who it was sold to, and by whom." </p>
<p>Gus Ferguson was not happy. He was down in his yard adjacent to the lorry park, where he sold a couple of used cars
as a cover for the rest of his business. He did not know that he had been operating only yards from the loads of
whisky he was now desperate to get his hands on.</p>
<p>"So where is he?"</p>
<p>"Nobody's seen him," Seggs Cullen said. "Not for the past week."</p>
<p>"He must be somewhere. That ginger idiot said he hasn't left town."</p>
<p>"Well, he's not staying at home. We've asked around."</p>
<p>Ferguson bit on his thumbnail.</p>
<p>"Okay. He's gone to ground. All we have to do is give him a reason to come out again."</p>
<p>Just as Ferguson began to outline his plan, Jack had gathered the others down at Gillespie's boat to talk about that
very problem.</p>
<p>"He's going to come at us," Tam said. </p>
<p>"Sure he is. We have to figure out how and when. First we have to keep a low profile. Donny and Ed are staying at my
Grandad's place. You three hole up together and keep out of the way. I don't want you on the streets. We need the
advantage."</p>
<p>"Cullen and Foley have been asking questions."</p>
<p>"Sooner or later, they'll get answers. All we have to do is hold them off for a couple of days."</p>
<p>"What will Ferguson want? Can we do a deal?"</p>
<p>"No," Ed said. "You can't deal with him. He's a hyena. We make the kill, he wants to eat it."</p>
<p>Jack agreed. "We've come too far now. Just so long as we can hold out. Once it's gone, he can't touch us. And neither
can Baxter. If he comes asking, we stick to the plan. If he takes anybody in, he'll try the usual trick, playing one
off against the other, trying to make you believe somebody's caved in. Just as long aswe all walk together we'll
beat that big highlander. Just have to have confidence in each other to know that nobody will say anything, and if
we stay tight, he can't break us no matter what."</p>
<p>He turned to Donny. "How's your end coming along?"</p>
<p>"Good. I've got fifteen barrels ready to roll. Stencils and the brander."</p>
<p>"Right. I've got the numbers we need."</p>
<p>"What's that for?" Tam asked.</p>
<p>"Need to know. Everybody does their own job."</p>
<p>Tam knew where the whisky was stashed, but Donny was still in the dark after the Ferguson complication. Jack needed
to play it like that. Only he knew the final plan, and if the others knew exactly what it was, maybe they'd have
second thoughts. Definitely maybe.</p>
<p>"How did you get the numbers?"</p>
<p>"A friend of a friend," Jack said. Nobody else knew what he was talking about.</p>
<p>Marge Burns had promised the rest of them from the computer files, but Kerr Thomson had come up with what they needed
and despite the catastrophe over Donny's fish, the fact that Jack had got Tam out on the bike scouting the streets
for intruders on the night of the raid had been a major piece of serendipity. It allowed him to ratchet the plan
into another dimension.</p>
<p>But he was acutely aware of the pressure of time. The only thing he couldn't hurry was the repair job on Lars'
boat. </p>
<p>"Just watch your backs everybody," he said. "Stay away from Ferguson and his hoods, and just act normal."</p>
<p>Tam laughed. "How can you act normal with your hair like that?"</p>
<p>Jack ran his hand through it. "Look at the state of me. I'm old before my time."</p>
<p>Everybody had a job to do. Neil was detailed to hire the lifting gear they'd need and Ed had to help Donny with the
empty barrels. Jack knew Ferguson would make his move sooner than later and he had to be ready for him.</p>
<p> "He thinks he's got us by the balls, down and out. But remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and
bending over."</p>
<p>Jed stopped him at the bottom of the ladder as the rest of them strolled away from the boat. Night was falling here
where the river flowed into the Clyde, and the oystercatchers out on the flats wheedled in the dimming light. A
smell of pine and oak woodsmoke mixed with the exotic scent of gorse blossom. </p>
<p>"Have you seen Marge Burns?" Jed seemed almost embarrassed.</p>
<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
<p>"I know you were talking to her. I just wondered if you knew what she was up to."</p>
<p>Jack swallowed, wondering what Jed was going to say next. A little greasy trickle of guilt ran through him and he had
to force himself to ignore it. Sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do, he'd reasoned. Desperate times needed
desperate measures. Any old excuse would do. Jack felt guilty for Jed and for Kate, but no matter what, Marge had
been worth her weight in any currency, and paying the price had not exactly been dogged with unpleasantness. Old
Marge knew just exactly what she wanted, and she was no hesitant maiden when it came to collecting. Jack just
wondered how he could extract himself from it without offending her. Right now he needed everybody pulling together.
The last thing he needed was a fatal attraction, and Sandy's racing pigeons baked in a pie.</p>
<p>"I'm not with you," Jack lied.</p>
<p>"I think she's seeing somebody else."</p>
<p>Jack stopped and stared Jed straight in the eye, forcing himself to look concerned for his friend and not worried for
himself.</p>
<p>"You think so? Any idea who?" Jed could twist and turn on the stock track, but he wasn't really devious. Jack
wondered if he was just testing him.</p>
<p>Jed shook his head glumly. "No. We had a great time, but I don't know what's the matter with her. I went round last
night and she never came to the door. I'm sure she was in. That's happened a couple of times. A few weeks back she
was all over me like a rash, and now it's like I've got a dose of the pox."</p>
<p>Jack's mind raced. Had he been round there? Things were moving so fast that it was getting difficult even to keep
track of himself. No. He hadn't been there. He breathed a sigh of relief and managed to disguise it.</p>
<p>"I don't know," he said. "But you know Marge. She's just split up with her man, so she's not going to let the grass
grow. And you're not planning to tie the knot, are you?"</p>
<p>Jed shook his head. "I suppose not. But, jeez Jake, she knows her stuff does Marge. Taught me a thing or two, I can
tell you."</p>
<p><em>I could believe that,</em> Jack thought.</p>
<p>"Don't tell me," he said, trying to keep it light. "There's some details I don't need. Anyway, you better just ask
her straight out, and if it's bad news, don't worry. Remember those Swedish twins at Robert Wardell's party? They're
coming back across in a couple of weeks. I can definitely fix you up."</p>
<p>"I thought you were well in with them. The boys said you had a Swedish sandwich."</p>
<p>"No, that's just a scurrilous rumour," Jack said. "I've got my eye on somebody else."</p>
<p>"Kate Delaney, right?"</p>
<p>Jack tapped the side of his nose.</p>
<p>"Need to know, old son."</p>
<p>He smiled conspiratorially, but he still felt like a shit.</p>
<p>Jed's suspicions gave Jack the excuse he needed. She had been demanding, but he'd always known what a tightrope walk
it had been, trading off what he could get from Marge Burns against what she wanted. Now he could genuinely tell her
that Jed was asking questions and if he found out what had been going on, well, it would upset him for a start, and
he didn't need any cracks developing right now.</p>
<p>He rehearsed the scenario as he made her way round to her bungalow in Castle Lane in the easy gloaming light just
before dark. He'd have to play her and he hoped she wouldn't make a big thing of it. He'd tell her what he'd told
Jed: there were plenty of fish in the river, and new ones swimming past every day. </p>
<p>It was close to midnight when he pushed the gate forward, automatically checking right and left for neighbours
peering from behind curtained windows. Her garden was encircled by a high hedge, which gave her plenty of privacy,
for which Jack had been grateful.</p>
<p>He walked round the side of the house to the back door, more intent on getting the figures he needed from her for the
next phase of the plan. He was concentrating so much that he didn't see the figure loom out of the gloom until he
was right on him.</p>
<p>"What the...?"</p>
<p>"Who the....!"</p>
<p>Jack pulled back a tight fist, ready to throw a jab, and he froze.</p>
<p>"Sandy?"</p>
<p>"Jack?" More of a whisper than a spoken question.</p>
<p>"What are you doing here?" The pair of them spoke at exactly the same time.</p>
<p>Jack pulled him round towards the front, where a street light gave just enough illumination. He couldn't see the
colour, but Sandy was shifting from foot to foot, body language eloquent of cringing embarrassment.</p>
<p>"You dirty old bugger," Jack finally said, when the coin dropped. "I thought you were kidding about this."</p>
<p>"Hell Jack, I <em>was</em> kidding, but <em>she</em> wasn't."</p>
<p>Jack had to really get a grip on himself to stop from bursting into laughter.</p>
<p>"Does she still think you're Italian?"</p>
<p>This time Sandy coloured to the darkened roots of his hair. "No. But she likes me to talk it. She says it's like
Robert Di Niro."</p>
<p>"More like John bloody Cleese," Jack said. He let go his grandfather's lapel and looked up at the sky where flimsy
clouds scraped past the thin crescent moon. "Thank you dear lord!"</p>
<p>"What's that supposed to mean?"</p>
<p>"Nothing. It's too long a story. All you have to know is you've solved a big problem for me. Just so long as you
don't have a heart attack while you're at it."</p>
<p>This time Sandy pulled him forward and lowered his voice.</p>
<p>"You're not kidding Jack. She's bloody insatiable. But I'll tell you one thing."</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"I can still pull the chicks, right?"</p>
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<h1>21</h1>
<p>Seggs Cullen and Wiggy Foley snatched Jack’s young brother in the lane as he made his way down to the library a
couple of hours before noon. They were at the tight bend where Kate had surprised Jack, and as an ambush point, it
was ideal, for the tall bushes and the dog-leg in the narrow lane hid them from either direction. They had watched
Michael come along the street, ambling in the morning sun, daydreaming as he strolled. The van was backed in to the
open gateway into the football field and when Michael passed it, Cullen came round the side, clamped a meaty hand
over his mouth and he and Foley lifted him bodily into the back.</p>
<p> Michael tried to fight them off, tried to yell for help, but he'd never been a scrapper. Foley just batted his fists
away and gave him a lazy slap before he pinned him to the floor and told him if he made another sound he'd really go
to work. Foley stank of stale sweat and old tobacco. Cullen was on the mobile.</p>
<p>"We've got him right now. In the back of the van. Where do you want him, the scrappie's?"</p>
<p>"No, that's the first place anybody's going to look, and there's going to be too many faces watching out after this.
Bring him down to the yard where we can keep an eye on him."</p>
<p>Foley sat on Michael the way he'd done to Donny Watson, keeping his weight on his shoulders and forcing him face down
to the dirty floor. It only took five minutes to get to the yard on the east end of the town and Michael felt every
inch of it. Cullen was no smoothie on the wheel and when he finally swung the van onto the rough cobbles on the
narrow road up to the yard, Michael's cheek hammered up and down against the metal.</p>
<p>The door slammed wide and Foley stood for no ceremony. He grabbed Michael by the hair and yanked backwards, forcing a
cry of pain. He just kept on walking and Michael had no option but to follow on fast or lose hair and some scalp.
The big blue door slid open and Michael was bundled inside. It slammed behind them and he stood there, blinking back
tears of pain, as his eyes began to adjust to the dim strip light.</p>
<p>"Is this him?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. It's him all right." Foley pushed him forward, twisting his fingers just before he let him go, and smirked at
the grunt of pain.</p>
<p>Michael watched as the stocky man came out from behind an old Rover that was up on the ramp. He had a thin cheroot
jammed in the corner of his mouth, and thick grey hair that needed a trim. Michael knew who he was. He'd heard his
reputation and he knew that Ferguson was a hard man. Everybody knew he and some of the wasters from Corrieside were
into every scam from hash and smack to sharking and cut-and-shut cars. If there was an illicit buck to be turned,
Ferguson's hand was on the lever. Michael bit down on the rising panic, wondering what this was all about.</p>
<p>Two chairs stood in the middle of the concrete floor. Ferguson took one, spun it and straddled it, thick arms crossed
on the back. He gave a quick nod and Foley forced Michael into the other chair, keeping a hand on his shoulder, in
where the muscle curved at his neck, digging deep with hard fingers. If he really squeezed, Michael would know all
about it. </p>
<p>"You know who I am?"</p>
<p>Michael looked blank. Behind the expression he was thinking furiously. What had Jack always told him? Never give
anybody an advantage. <em>Always keep them guessing</em>.</p>
<p>He shook his head. "No. Am I supposed to? Who are you?"</p>
<p>Ferguson raised his eyebrows, surprised.</p>
<p>"Never mind, son. All that matters is, I know who you are. Got the picture?"</p>
<p>"What picture?"</p>
<p>"Don't get smart. You answer what I ask. What's your name?"</p>
<p>"Chandler Bing."</p>
<p>Ferguson's eyes flicked to Cullen. "You sure this is the right guy?"</p>
<p>Foley hit Michael another slap, rocked his head to the side. Michael gasped.</p>
<p>"That's some guy on the telly," Foley said. He bent to Michael's ear. He had a big half-moon bruise under one eye.
"Listen wanker, you think you're as smart as that brother of yours. We've got news for you. He's not as smart as he
thinks he is, so don't get any ideas."</p>
<p>"Oh really? And who did you come off second best to?"</p>
<p>Foley drew back a hand. Ferguson laughed.</p>
<p>"Got you there Wigs." Foley dropped the hand.</p>
<p><em>Jack. That's what it's about.</em> Michael had guessed that already and his mind was racing. What did they have
against Jack? All he knew was that it had been Foley and Cullen who had given him a sore face last time, and he'd
been told to give Jack a message. He just assumed that there had been an argument in the pub, or that thing with
Donny Watson. Jack was the kind of guy who would wade in when somebody was in trouble and sometimes that could earn
<em>him</em> a sore face. But this was different. It had to be more than just some pub fall-out.</p>
<p>This was real trouble.</p>
<p>"You're Jack Lorne's brother." Ferguson kept his voice even.</p>
<p>"What's it to you?"</p>
<p>"Oh, you really are a wee hard man?" He looked at Foley. A hand came down and slapped Michael right off the chair. He
sprawled on the greasy floor, head ringing, blinking against the tears once more. Foley grabbed him by the collar
and almost choked him as he dragged him back again.</p>
<p>"We want to know where he is."</p>
<p>"I don't know where he is," Michael said. He flinched at the expected blow and mortifying tears trickled down his
cheeks.</p>
<p>"Really. He's your brother and he stays with you and you don't know where he is?"</p>
<p>"He hasn't been here for a couple of weeks. He got laid off at the dairy. I think he's away looking for work."</p>
<p>"Oh, he's working all right. He's done a great job."</p>
<p>Michael rubbed the tears away, wondering what Ferguson was talking about. This had to be something to do with the
papers Jack had got him to print off.</p>
<p><em>Keep them off balance. </em>It wasn't easy when your head was ringing.</p>
<p>"He's going to be well pissed at you," he said, battening down the fear, preparing for another dull one on the side
of his head. </p>
<p>Ferguson laughed. "That's for sure."</p>
<p>"You hurt me and our Jack'll come for you." </p>
<p>He was dead sure of that. Despite the tears that spilled over he would show these scum he was tougher than he
looked.</p>
<p>"Yeah yeah." Ferguson puffed his cheroot and blew smoke across the space between them. "That's just what I want. Him
to come to me. Now how are we going to go about that?"</p>
<hr />
<p>The flatloaders had arrived at Dunvegan at eleven in the morning, stacked four barrels deep. From Levenford the
journey had taken four hours, given the speed of the laden trucks on the narrow roads through the highland
glens.</p>
<p>Jack was up and ready for them after the huge breakfast DJ's wife had cooked for them. They stood at the gates of the
little distillery with its distinctive malt-house chimney. A light breeze brought the scent of seaweed and ozone
straight in from the Atlantic. He let DJ handle the drivers, made a quick call to Alistair Sproat, and the
deliverymen went back down south in the three trucks, leaving two empty ones here as agreed. Sproat would have
agreed to anything to clinch this deal and get shot of the young whisky at a better price than he'd ever get in an
auction.</p>
<p>"So what now?" DJ stood beside the lines of barrels in the storage hall, stacked on their ends in ranks that reached
the far wall. The customs man for the island had signed them in to bond. Jack took DJ aside.</p>
<p>"We take what we need out of bond," he said.</p>
<p>"Can't do that. It's illegal."</p>
<p>Jack chuckled. "Sure we can. And it's not illegal, not the way we're going to do it."</p>
<p>He reached in to his inside pocket. DJ still had the customs docket in his hand, each barrel accounted for on a long
printed list, its contents clearly marked out in gallons beside its own identifying stencil code.</p>
<p>"How many barrels?"</p>
<p>"Two hundred. And they're hogsheads."</p>
<p>"Excuse me, Mr distillery manager. I bow to superior knowledge of the trade. And let's have a bit of respect for the
senior partner, if you please."</p>
<p>"Aye, and you can go take a flying fu......" DJ had put his redundancy money into this, and he was taking no
nonsense.</p>
<p>Jack laughed aloud. It rang around the long store.</p>
<p>"Now, here's the miracle." He unfolded the sheet that Marge Burns had copied from the files at Aitkenbar. "Two
hundred barrels, sorry hogsheads, at an average of thirty."</p>
<p>"The total's here," DJ said. "Six thousand. They're all carrying light for young spirit."</p>
<p>"That's what it says. Now see here."</p>
<p>Donny crowded in, looked at the sheet, which was an exact replica of the input paper except for the numbers in the
columns.</p>
<p>"What's this?"</p>
<p>"This is what we've really got in those barrels."</p>
<p>Donny scratched his head in momentary puzzlement. "That's more than eleven thousand gallons. How do you work
that?"</p>
<p>"Eleven sixty. That's five grand extra. We call that the Angel's Share. Somebody up there is really watching over us.
They gave it right back."</p>
<p>"I still don't understand."</p>
<p>"This stays between us, just you and me, or this new venture goes down the tubes, right?"</p>
<p>Donny nodded seriously. "Not a word."</p>
<p>"Sproat was at the fiddle. And he thinks I am too. He had a customs scam going down south, but he just met somebody a
little bit smarter. Now here we are, with three thousand free gallons, courtesy of your former boss. And there's
nothing he can do about it."</p>
<p>"What do you want us to do?"</p>
<p>"Take every barrel and subtract what it says on that sheet from this sheet. Siphon it off and then just hammer the
bungs back in again."</p>
<p>"Then what?"</p>
<p>"Then customs are happy. We have what we signed for, and the rest is ours."</p>
<p>"What will Sproat say?"</p>
<p>"What can he say?"</p>
<p>"And what do we do with the barrels then?"</p>
<p>Jack cocked his head. "Need to know DJ. You just store them for me until the time is right."</p>
<p>"Are you sure this is legal?"</p>
<p>"What <em>we're</em> doing is legal. Now we have our first batch, all for free, and that means we're into profit
already. Twelve thousand litres, that can't be bad for a new business."</p>
<p>By one in the afternoon, DJ's team had started popping the bungs. The scent of young whisky was sharp in the air as
the boys decanted the spirit into the tank, letting it slowly fill, a pool of light wavering gold.</p>
<p>Jack watched them for a while, savouring the fumes that competed with the sea breeze, as DJ checked off the barrels
after the men hammered the bungs home on each of them, and then he asked if he could borrow the van.</p>
<p>"It's the company van Jack," he said, shrugging. "Just as long as you're insured."</p>
<p>He drove down the hill from the glen, taking the narrow little road that the flatloaders had struggled to negotiate,
until he reached the flat pasture fields where the herd of jerseys lazily chewed the cud, udders pumped like pale
bagpipes.</p>
<p>DJ's cousin Ronnie Munro met him at the modern production shed where the small factory had produced the strong island
cheeses.</p>
<p>"You want to do business then?" Jack asked.</p>
<hr />
<p>The call came in at three, as Ronnie Munro shook hands with Jack on a deal that was just between the pair of them for
now. He now had to wait for the word from Lars, get back to the lawyer, and see another man in Levenford to tie up
some final loose ends.</p>
<p>DJ took the call at the distillery and spent an hour trying to get Jack on the mobile, but up here, with the high
Cuillin Ridge blocking off all but the most powerful signals, the cellphone service was hit and miss. Finally he
contacted his cousin Ronnie who handed the phone over.</p>
<p>"He says it's urgent."</p>
<p>"Hello?"</p>
<p>"Jack, is that you? We've been trying to find you for hours."</p>
<p>"Sandy? What's the matter?"</p>
<p>He listened, not saying a word, letting his uncle do all the talking. After a while he nodded, hunched over the
phone.</p>
<p>"I'll be right down. Don't do anything and don't let anybody else make a move. Not a word to anybody. You know what
I'm talking about." He put the phone back on the hook, breathing long and slow between pursed lips.</p>
<p>"Problem?" Ronnie was taller than his cousin, quicker on the uptake.</p>
<p>"Nothing for you to worry about," Jack said. "Listen, I have to get back down the road right now. You tell DJ I'll be
back whenever I can."</p>
<p>"Have we still got a deal?"</p>
<p>"Sure we have," Jack said. He had his fingers crossed. He hoped he would have a deal to come back to, but there was
no point in voicing misgivings right then. It took three hours to get back down and he had to force himself to stay
under eighty all the way. There was no point either in skidding off the road or getting pulled over by the mountain
cops, not today.</p>
<p>He got over the Skye bridge to the mainland driving at the limit down past Fort William and once he was through
Glencoe, the phone chirruped, letting him know he was back in range again. He pulled into a lay-by.</p>
<p>"<em>Yack,</em> is that you?"</p>
<p>"Lars. Good to hear from you." The call broke into his thoughts, and he welcomed the interruption. His mind had been
racing all the way down from the west, working out his next moves, trying them in his head like mental chess. "What
can I do for you."</p>
<p>"You can give me half my boat back."</p>
<p>"Sure I will. As soon as you come up with the goods."</p>
<p>"You, that's who the damn Viking is." Lars started to laugh, big deep guffaws that made Jack pull the phone a safe
distance from his ear. "You pillage and plunder with paper."</p>
<p>"Just getting our own back for Eric Bloodaxe," Jack went along with it.</p>
<p>"I got good news. The shaft, it was only a small twist, and just at the stern. They will have it fixed in two days.
Can you be ready by then?"</p>
<p>"I hope so," Jack said. He'd been pressuring Lars to get out of dock and gone, and now he himself sounded
hesitant.</p>
<p>"What you mean you hope so?"</p>
<p>"It means I hope I still have the whisky. The shit has just hit the fan down here."</p>
<p>"You better have the damn whisky Yack, You still have half my boat."</p>
<p>"Just you keep thinking happy thoughts. I'll get things sorted here and get back to you."</p>
<p>"You make me worry Yack. Should I worry?"</p>
<p>Jack eased round a long, slow bend, letting the big flatloader drift into it and the mountain's bulk suddenly cut off
the signal, leaving Lars and his question unanswered.</p>
<p>"Nothing to worry about," Jack thought, repeating in his mind what he had said to Ronnie Munro. "Nothing for
<em>you</em> to worry about."</p>
<p>Behind him, north and west, the sky was clear, turning a deep red beyond the high peaks as the sun began to sink.
Ahead of him, big clouds were building darkly.</p>
<p>It was close to six in the evening when he finally turned up on his own doorstep.</p>
<hr />
<p>"Where in the name of God have you been?" Alice Lorne was drawn and pale. Sheena and Linda sat close, Linda with
mascara smudged, Sheena bare of make-up as usual, lips moving to silent prayers on the rosary.</p>
<p>"I'm here now."</p>
<p>"My <em>God</em>, Jack Lorne. I haven't seen you for two weeks and now this happens." Sandy put his hand on her
shoulder, making her hush.</p>
<p>"Give him a chance Alice. Let the boy catch his breath." Sandy was in denim overalls and his woollen hat. It hid his
new hair colour. Jack looked at the table. Three cups, a half filled ashtray. A crumpled handkerchief. A book.</p>
<p>"Aw Mam, you haven't been smoking?"</p>
<p>"Don't you talk to me about smoking Jack Lorne. I want to know what this is all about."</p>
<p>"Me too, Mam." He sat down and put his hands on the table, looked up at Sandy.</p>
<p>"What's the score."</p>
<p>Alice pushed the book across the table. She had given up cigarettes ten years before, so the ashtray showed him she
was really upset. That he could understand. He had to force down on the churning in his own stomach. It was time for
thinking, not emotion.</p>
<p>"It's Michael's book."</p>
<p>He flicked the cover open. His brother's name was written on the fly-leaf.</p>
<p>"Where is he?"</p>
<p>"We don't know," Sandy said.</p>
<p>"Well, that's what we've got to find out first."</p>
<p>"Linda, be a pal and make me and Sandy another cup of tea, would you?"</p>
<p>She shot a look at her mother, drew him a dark and angry one that was so like himself it would have made him smile
under other circumstances. </p>
<p>"Go on darlin' I'd love a cup." Sandy threw her a wink and Linda got up, filled the kettle and came back to the
table."</p>
<p>"You and Sheena, give us a minute."</p>
<p>Sheena stopped muttering her hail marys. "He's our brother as well, you know. Where were you when he needed you?"</p>
<p>Sandy broke in again. "What matters is, he's here now. Go on, let Jack talk to your mum."</p>
<p>"No. They can stay. We're all family." Alice Lorne put her hands flat on the table.</p>
<p>"Right Jack." She looked him straight in the eye, measuring him up. "What's going on? What's Michael got to do with
that Ferguson? Is this got anything to do with that leathering he got a couple of weeks ago?"</p>
<p>"He's got nothing to do with him. Ferguson wants me."</p>
<p>"What for? Do you owe him money? That man's a money lender. And I heard he sells drugs as well. Have you
been....?"</p>
<p>"No, don't be daft Mam. I wouldn't touch him with a long stick and gloves on. It's just, just an argument. Something
between him and me that needs sorted." </p>
<p>"I don't believe you."</p>
<p>"It's all I can tell you. But don't worry. I'll sort it."</p>
<p>"Just what are you up to? Where have you been?"</p>
<p>"I've been fixing up some business."</p>
<p>"Business? What kind of business? If it's the kind of business Ferguson's into, you better get yourself right out of
it. I won't have it."</p>
<p> "No, Mam. I'm not doing business with that scum." What could he tell her? </p>
<p>"Was this why you gave me the money for Michael? That bank account?"</p>
<p>She was quick. He had inherited his height from his father. His dark colour and his brain he got from Alice
Bruce.</p>
<p>"It doesn't matter. What matters is that I get this sorted out."</p>
<p>"I'm going to call the police. They could be doing anything to that boy."</p>
<p>Sandy broke in. "I never let her call."</p>
<p>"Good." Jack leant across the table, took his mother's hands in his own. "I don't think that's the thing to do,
Mam."</p>
<p>"Why not? They're a bunch of animals, the whole lot of them. What right have they got to put their hands on him?"</p>
<p>"None at all. But leave it to me. I'll make sure he's okay."</p>
<p>"The police can sort them out. It's their job."</p>
<p>Sandy broke in again. "I don't think so, Alice. You listen to Jack."</p>
<p>She turned on him, quick as a cat. "You're in this as well, aren't you?"</p>
<p>Sheena was beginning to sniffle. "I'm going down to light a candle," she said. "Come on Linda. I don't want to hear
any more of this."</p>
<p>Jack waited until they went, both of them flicking hurt, hard looks at him.</p>
<p>"You just let Jack handle this," Sandy said. "He'll fix it."</p>
<p>Alice put her head in her hands. A big tear built and spilt, trickling down her cheek. She looked younger than she
was, older than she should. Jack shifted his chair closer and put an arm round her shoulder, pulled her closer
still.</p>
<p>"You call the police and there's a chance he'd get hurt in the scramble. They won't hurt him."</p>
<p>"How do you know?" She was trembling under his hand, holding herself tight. For the first time he was aware how
slight she was.</p>
<p>"Because they want me."</p>
<p>"For what?"</p>
<p>"That doesn't matter." He looked her back, keeping his eyes steady, forcing her to accept it, not liking the way he
could dominate his mother. It made him feel cold and heartless.</p>
<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"I'm going to make it better. I'm going to get him back."</p>
<p>This time she put the pressure on him, dark, like Linda, like himself. "You promise me Jack?"</p>
<p>"I promise, Mam. You know I'll do it."</p>
<p>He felt her fingers clench round his.</p>
<p>"And what about you? What's going to happen?"</p>
<p>"Don't you worry about me, Mam. I can look after myself."</p>
<p>"Sure you can Jackie." His stomach clenched. She hadn't called him that in a handful of years, not since he'd left
school and started bringing in some money after John Lorne had collapsed halfway across River Street, dead before he
hit the ground. "Sure you can. And you've been looking after yourself and the rest of us since you were younger than
your brother." </p>
<p>Her grip tightened. The strength of it hurt his heart. "You've taken a lot on yourself, and I'm sorry for getting
sharp at you."</p>
<p>"Nah, Mam. You'll have me bubbling. Now, what I'm going to do is have a talk with Sandy, and get this all sorted
out."</p>
<p>He waited until the girls came back and then went out with Sandy. The clouds were building again, like they had on
the night they'd raided Aitkenbar, but there was still a red sheen in the west. The air felt heavier, but it
wouldn't rain yet.</p>
<p>"What happened?"</p>
<p>"I got a call. Michael must have said there was no point in calling your Mam's, but they sent his book to the house,
just to make sure."</p>
<p>"Good for him. That means he's thinking. Who called?"</p>
<p>"Never gave a name. Said he was speaking for the man you met at golf. It wasn't hard to figure that out. He said your
brother was paying them a visit, a kind of paying guest. They said they want you to get in touch."</p>
<p>"Did you say where I was?"</p>
<p>"I didn't know where you were, I just guessed. But no, of course I didn't. I just said you were out of town."</p>
<p>"Just as well you were in, then. You could have been round at Mrs Burns' place for the night, rattling the
bones."</p>
<p>Sandy coloured, then managed a hard smile. It was the effect Jack wanted. Inside he was clenched with hot anger, but
on the outside, he knew he had to be calm. It was all going to depend in him, on what he could do, and what he could
persuade people to do. The long ride down from Skye had given him the time to think, and now he needed some more
time to act.</p>
<p>"So what's the plan? They left a mobile number for you to call."</p>
<p>"Plenty of time for that," Jack said. "I'll call them tomorrow."</p>
<p>Sandy pulled back, but Jack had anticipated his surprise.</p>
<p>"Don't worry. They don't want Mike, so they won't hurt him. A couple of slaps and I'll get them back for that,
believe me. They'll call you first, that's a given. When they do, you tell them I was in London, and I'm on a train,
so I can't call them until I get back. That gives me some time to get myself organised."</p>
<p>"But it means young Michael will be left the night with them. Your Mam won't go for that."</p>
<p>"She'll go for it. You just make sure you stay close. I don't want any calls in or out of the house, so you'll have
to take care of that. If you have to cut the wires, get the clippers out. We don't know where he is, so if we call
in the gendarmes, he could get hurt, and even if he doesn't, they'll come at me again, and this time they won't take
prisoners. Don't you worry about Mike, he's a lot tougher than he looks, and smarter than the pair of us. He'll sit
tight and make them work for their money, and it'll be a good experience for him. Listen Sandy, they're just local
neds, all shell suits and pit bulls; no class, no brain. No <em>finesse</em>. They've got muscle and mince where
their brains should be."</p>
<p>"That doesn't stop them hurting the boy."</p>
<p>"There is no <em>them.</em> It's one man. Gus Ferguson. He's a shark, right? It's just a business to him. We know
what he wants, because he wormed it out of Donny, and as long as we know what he wants, it gives us an edge."</p>
<p>"You're pretty sure of yourself."</p>
<p>"Learned it from you Sandy. You taught me chess, good books, and how to whistle at girls. And hopefully when I get to
your age, I'll still be shagging women half my age."</p>
<p>"You're a cheeky bugger, Jack. I hope you got this right."</p>
<p>So did Jack Lorne.</p>
<hr />
<p>Angus Baxter had a couple of leads and he'd worked out how the big decant had been pumped out of Aitkenbar. He'd sent
one of the team down to the quay to rumble the Corrieside boys just in case the rumour of the whisky auction down at
the waterside had been connected. So far he'd nothing to show for it. The first sign of a question or a black shoe
at that end of town usually precipitated an immediate dose of temporary amnesia and three monkey syndrome, which
caused all senses to fail.</p>
<p>But the job had to be local, and for his money, it had to be inside, although there were other possibilities to be
considered too. He had worked it out that the theft of the tankers from Levenford Dairy had been stage two. Stage
one was getting the intricate plumbing work connecting the outflow to the fire inlet. They'd hidden the tankers
somewhere, anywhere, probably not in this patch, kept them for a couple of days and then wheeled them out for the
job. But to do all that, and to get inside Aitkenbar, they had to have local knowledge of both companies, their
security, their business. That made it reasonable to assume that it had been inside work, completely or in part. The
fish in the stream, that had been a mistake, but Baxter had worked out the why of it. Putting fish, even the wrong
kind of fish, in the rivulet had been an attempt to reproduce the damage of the previous spill that had killed the
tiddlers a couple of months back and earned Aitkenbar and environmental slap on the wrist. That could only have been
known locally. It had made only an inside page in the Levenford Gazette, knocked off the front page by the news of
impending job losses and a pretty spectacular accident up near Drumchapel where a local man had a head-on argument
with a tree and came off decidedly second best. All the clues told him this had been a home baked affair.</p>
<p>So if it was local, and organised, who could have done it?</p>
<p>Baxter had spent the last couple of nights thinking long and hard. Sproat had called the police in the first
instance, and that could have been a crude attempt at double bluff. The distillery owner was not out of the woods,
not even close to the scrub, despite all his protests. If it had been an insurance job for quick cash, it had been
an inside job that had failed. But if it had been simply an attempt to fleece the customs, then it could have
worked. Angus worked it out that even at a big discount for risk, selling whisky without the burden of an eighty
percent tax slice, that could be lucrative, but he had to balance that against the amount Sproat would make on prime
spirit a quarter of a century old, packaged and marketed to the connoisseur. The scam came out slightly ahead, but
it was still an either-way call.</p>
<p>Andy Kerr? He had a motive to screw Sproat, no doubt about that. Everybody knew the story, and when Baxter had gone
over the books, it was written in easy-to-understand arithmetic. The land lease had come up for renewal, and Sproat
had hiked the rent to a level that made Kerr's business so marginal that one lost contract could flush it down the
bend and into the Clyde. Everybody knew Billy Kerr had taken his cut from the bottom and left his cousin in a lot of
trouble, and his fiddling had never quite got to the stage of being reported as a crime. Andy knew, and the town
knew, but it was a family thing. Could Kerr have had a go at Sproat, out of revenge, out of desperation? Another
each-way call. Kerr could have done a deal for his own tankers, trying to keep the company afloat, and he could have
used them to take from Sproat just as Sproat was taking from him. He'd need a team, people who could do the job, and
while Baxter knew there were a couple of handy guys working in the creamery, he didn't know of anybody who would
shit so heartily and so publicly in their own back yard.</p>
<p>It could have been neither of them. There was Gus Ferguson, who had his dirty fingers in every mucky deal from here
to Barloan Harbour, and a big Irish fellow called Stick Milligan, from along Arden way who ran the franchise on the
west of town and up as far as the Loch. Ferguson was a player, and every cop knew he ran the sharking and was the
money behind all the smack and some snow that was coming in via Glasgow, but while he was dirty and he stank like
the fish in the stream, he was cunning enough to keep the business at arms length and use his hired muscle.</p>
<p>Could he have done it? Set up the team, carried out the planning? Baxter was not so sure about that. He
<em>would</em> have done it, sure. But it would take more than Cullen and Foley and the Corrieside wide-boys to get
it done right. Baxter was sure of that.</p>
<p>The pressure was coming down from upstairs to get this one nailed and he was making very slow progress.</p>
<p>Big Angus Baxter was professional enough and sure enough to be able to walk between the pressure points and keep
steady. But he'd better come up with something concrete pretty soon, just to stay on the safe side.</p>
<p>He sat down at his desk, puffing on the pipe, going through all his notes. The answer would be in there somewhere. He
turned a page and somebody knocked on the frosted glass. Young Jim Balloch popped his head round.</p>
<p>"I've been through the local list of hires," he said, holding it up as if to prove it. "Nothing out of the ordinary,
so I've spread it a bit out of the area. There could be something."</p>
<p>Inspector Baxter sat back. "Let me see it?"</p>
<p>Constable Balloch brought the papers across and put them on the desk.</p>
<p>"There was one hire, one day before the event. A diesel-powered water pump, silent mode, high capacity."</p>
<p>"How high?"</p>
<p>"Ten thousand gallons an hour, maximum."</p>
<p>"That would do the trick."</p>
<p>"And it's still out on lease," Jimmy Balloch said, pleased with himself. "And better still, it's a local hire."</p>
<p>"Let me see that." Baxter took the papers and held them up. He scanned the docket. "Never heard of them at all.
You?"</p>
<p>The young detective shook his head. </p>
<p>"And where do you get the idea it's local? This is a Glasgow address."</p>
<p>"Sure it is. But I had a hunch and I took a turn round there, just to check, and it turns out to be an empty student
flat. Nobody's stayed there since the end of the term. So I went to the post office, and guess what?"</p>
<p>"I'm not into guessing games, constable."</p>
<p>The smile faded just a little. "They got a redirect on the mail. Here's where it's been going."</p>
<p>He handed another sheet of paper across. Baxter looked at it and his eyebrows slowly reached for his hairline.</p>
<p>"Well done that man. That is a good piece of police work. But let's not go off half-cocked. You check them out. Do a
company search and see who's who in the zoo. Soon as you have it, we'll have a chat. Keep it to yourself for the
moment."</p>
<hr />
<p>Jack called an emergency session and they met late on Gillespie's boat when the last of the light was fading from the
sky and after that there was no time to spare. </p>
<p>"We really needed this," Jed said.</p>
<p>"Is he okay?" Donny asked. He still had a bruise under his eye and bigger, purpling ones on his ribs and kidneys
where they didn't show.</p>
<p>"He'll be fine," Jack said. "There's no point in hurting him. Ferguson won't do that unless he has to, and there's no
point in pissing me off for no reason."</p>
<p>"Have you spoken to him?"</p>
<p>"No. When I do, he'll want everything fast. He thinks I'm still travelling, and that gives us time to get organised.
I'll talk to him in the morning and we'd better be ready by then.</p>
<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"We're going to have to give him something."</p>
<p>"Fuck that, man," Jed said. "We don't owe him a thing. I say we get some of the boys round and rough him up, teach
him a lesson he won't forget."</p>
<p>"No," Ed said quietly. "He'll expect that, so he'll be team-handed. And even if we did, Mike could get hurt. And
after that, word would be out and everybody would know. Jack's right. We have to give him something. See what he'll
take."</p>
<p>"Good man." Jack was impressed again at Ed's quick assessment.</p>
<p>"That bastard will want it all," Donny said bitterly.</p>
<p>"Maybe," Jack said. "We'll have to see. But we might as well get things ready. Donny, I've a few more barrels on the
truck. I want you to have a look at them too."</p>
<p>He brought out his notebook and began to detail what needed to be done. After half an hour, Neil sat back, cupped his
chin in his palm.</p>
<p>"This was supposed to be easy money," he said. "But it gets harder all the time."</p>
<p>"Life's short and hard," Ed said. "Like a dwarf pumping iron." It got a wry smile.</p>
<p>Jed picked it up. "As one door shuts, another one slams in your face."</p>
<p>"Okay, I'm too tired for this," Jack said, pleased they were into the spirit. "I'm away to my bed, we got an early
start."</p>
<p>"It's money and adventure and fame," Neil quoted in his fake accent. "It's the thrill of a lifetime and a long sea
voyage that starts at six o'clock tomorrow morning."</p>
<p>"Earlier than that," Jack said. "Make sure you're awake."</p>
<p>A half-hour hour later, Jack Lorne let himself into Sandy's house. He went upstairs and stood on tiptoe to reach the
catch on the loft hatch, eased it down and lowered the aluminium steps to the floor. He climbed up and in to the
musty dark, using the flashlight to find his way around. He hadn't been up here since he was a kid, but he'd spent a
lot of Sunday nights exploring the boxes his uncle kept up here, relics of his army days, and the times after that
when he was on the merchant boats. It hadn't changed at all since then. The dust was just a bit thicker. </p>
<p>It didn't take him long to locate what he wanted, and he let himself out again, closed the door, and was back home by
one in the morning. Nine hours later, four hours after he'd got up and got busy, Jack knew he couldn't delay it any
longer. He put a call through to the number Sandy had been given.</p>
<p>"I want to talk to my brother," he said. </p>
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<h1>22</h1>
<p>They were on the move by eleven. The clouds had built up overnight, dull weight pressed low over the Cardross Hills
and the big line of the crags on the northeast of town, making the air moist and heavy. A thin misty drizzle turned
the whole town grey.</p>
<p>Donny and Neil looked dog tired, which was not unreasonable. They'd been working until first light and everything was
set. The barrels were stacked on the loader from Aitkenbar, held in place by webbing belts and Neil had built the
frame around them the way he'd done with the tanker, covering the whole load with tarpaulin. Donny had re-stencilled
the barrels and used a soldering bolt to rework the brands on the heavy oak, following the numbers from the papers
Jack had given him. It had taken them a good hour to load the barrels and get them set in place and Donny had
checked and double checked to make sure they wouldn't shift in transit.</p>
<p>"Okay," Jack said. "Wagons ho."</p>
<p>Ferguson had been all smiles when he turned up at the yard in the morning. Cullen opened the gate and closed it
behind him. Foley made a big play of patting him down, the way they did in the movies, and Jack knew if he'd been
carrying, the big dope would have missed it. With Michael still out of sight, that would have been too risky. He
wasn't here to fight.</p>
<p>The call had been brief and to the point. Ferguson was holding Michael and he didn't want to waste any time.</p>
<p>"Put my brother on," Jack had said.</p>
<p>"Fuck off. He's here. You get your arse down here pronto."</p>
<p><em>Mistake,</em> Jack thought. Ferguson was so sure of himself that he had told Jack what he had suspected already.
They were holding him in the used car yard. He knew it well from the times he'd helped Jed pick up rally gear. In
the early hours, before the dawn had backlit the swirling low cloud, he'd gone over his own diagram once more. </p>
<p>"How do I know he's there?" He had to make sure.</p>
<p>Through the phone he heard the sound of a flat slap, and winced. Michael yelled, cursed. Jack gritted his teeth.
There would be time to think about that later on.</p>
<p>"Okay, okay," he forced the anger out of his voice, made it sound anxious. "I'll be there."</p>
<p>Michael was out of view when he arrived. Besides Ferguson and the usual shadows, there were a couple of others there,
hard men from Corrieside. Jack knew them, Buzz Barclay, Face McQueen who'd had a run in with a heavy ballpeen hammer
once that had crumpled his cheekbone and left him lopsided and wall-eyed.</p>
<p>"Down to business," Ferguson said. Jack watched him, stocky, but charged with energy, all set to make a big
score.</p>
<p>"We don't do any business unless I see my brother," Jack said evenly. Ferguson looked at him, taking his time,
pretending to decide. Jack knew he'd expected that.</p>
<p>"What the fuck. Come on in." Cullen opened the door to the workshop and stood back, letting Jack and Ferguson in
together. The rest of the heavies followed. Michael was hunched on a plastic chair in a corner, next to the ramp. He
got up quickly when they came in, and Jack saw the red weal on his face. Cullen clamped a hand to his shoulder and
forced him back down. Jack gave him a look that told him to stay still. He forced his own face slack.</p>
<p>"Right. What do you want?"</p>
<p>"You know what I want. You got twenty five thousand gallons of hooch."</p>
<p>"No. We only got ten thousand. The rest went down the drain." Jack knew what Donny had told him, so he could take a
chance.</p>
<p>"The cops say twenty five."</p>
<p>"That was in the tank. We couldn't take all of it, and we couldn't turn it off."</p>
<p>"That's a shame," Ferguson said. Disappointment was evident on his face but he recovered quickly. Donny Watson had
jammed a container in the pipe to catch the outflow. "Well, whatever. Nice work, good plan. But now I want it."</p>
<p>"Not all of it." Jack knew he'd be expected to protest.</p>
<p>"Yes, all of it. You got no cards to deal. If you'd asked me if you could play, I'd only tax you fifty percent. But
tough, that's business. You never asked."</p>
<p>"All of it's too much," Jack pushed the protest some more. "We took a big risk for it."</p>
<p>"Maybe you did, but like I said, tough shit. What are you going to do? Go to the cops? Big Baxter will sling your
arse into Barlinnie. We'll come and visit."</p>
<p>Ferguson came right up to him, not as tall as Jack, but thick set, wide shouldered and solid. He could handle himself
if he wanted.</p>
<p>"You get it down here, or I put his head in a vice. You ever see that movie? What's it called?."</p>
<p>"Casino," Foley told him. </p>
<p>Jack got the picture. He'd seen it. </p>
<p>"You're over a barrel, and just to let you know I'm serious," Ferguson said. He turned away and Jack followed him
with his eyes.</p>
<p>The blow came from behind, a hard jab right on the kidney, plenty of weight behind it. He went down in a sudden
explosion of pain and breath.</p>
<p>"Leave him alone," Michael bawled, leaping to his feet. Cullen slapped him down. Foley braced and swung a boot into
Jack's belly, humping him up off the ground. He rolled, vomited bile and dribbled blood from where he'd bitten his
tongue, got to his knees. He held a hand out at Michael, palm forward, shoving the air. Michael took the silent
instruction, and sat down.</p>
<p>"That's for the fucking golf club," Foley said. He bent and grabbed Jack by the collar and he and Face McQueen hauled
him to his feet.</p>
<p>Ferguson jabbed a finger. "Any time this morning will be just fine. Okay?"</p>
<p>Jack nodded, hauling for breath, shoulders down, beaten. </p>
<p>"What about my brother?"</p>
<p>"Straight swop. Make a mistake and he gets hurt. And you know I mean <em>damage</em>."</p>
<p>"Right. I'll bring it. Give me an hour."</p>
<p>"Smart man," Ferguson said, clapping him on the shoulder, really pleased with himself. This would be the easiest pile
he'd made this year.</p>
<p>Jack looked at Michael. "You stay cool Mike. I'll be back."</p>
<p>"Fuckin' Schwarzenegger," Foley said. He slapped Jack casually on the back of the head, like an adult chastising an
insolent child, and the pair of them hauled him through the open doors and led him to the gate. They said nothing as
it closed behind him.</p>
<p>Jack closed his eyes, getting his breath. Mike was fine, apart from the slap in the face, and he was holding up. He
flipped the hinge on the mobile, called his mother.</p>
<p>"I've seen him, Mam, and he's fine. There's not a mark on him." A white lie, but Mike could take a slap or two with
no real damage done. Ferguson would know just far he could go before it got out of hand and there was no percentage
in going further and hurting the boy.</p>
<p>She burst into tears on the other end and he was glad he'd called, rather than going round.</p>
<p>"I'll have him home in the afternoon."</p>
<p>They had the barrels filled and it hadn't been easy. Tam had managed to get a roll of blue plastic water pipe and
somehow coupled it to the pump. He ran it through the chain link fence, past the pallets of bricks and along to the
corner where the big tanks still stood. He used a circular immersion heater bit to make a hole in the resin and fed
the hose inside. Neil started the pump and they sucked up what they needed.</p>
<p>For all that work it took them only eight minutes to get enough whisky into the two barrels, and that was all Jack
wanted. Donny had sorted out the rest of them before dawn, and they were stacked and ready to go. All they had to do
was manhandle the pump onto the trailing edge of the flatbed and Jed curtained the tarpaulin over the frame. To the
casual observer, the rig looked like any longhauler. Jack took the duct tape they'd used to mend the hose on raid
night, climbed up on the cab and worked quickly, stripping the tape off and laying sections behind the curve of the
roof.</p>
<p>"I want to come in with you," Donny said.</p>
<p>"No," Jack said. He finished off, climbed down. "Best if I go on my own."</p>
<p>"I'm not scared," Donny protested, clearly lying. He was scared and so was Jack Lorne. He just hoped he had judged
his man correctly.</p>
<p>"And I have to go in with you. I set up the barrels, and you'll need a hand."</p>
<p>Jack looked at him, pondering. He could hear the apprehension in Donny's voice, and he didn't want him to freeze at
the wrong moment, but there was value in what he said. Donny was desperate to make up for all this. He needed to
make amends, and that drive might be stronger than the fear. In any case, he knew the load and what needed done.</p>
<p>"Okay, fine. You come with me." He turned to the others. Jed and Ed, you better get moving. Neil, you got the
gear?"</p>
<p>"Sure. Everything's cool."</p>
<p>"Good. Get climbing." He patted Neil on the back, winked at Ed. "Wagons ho."</p>
<p>The big hauler started at first turn and sneezed a cloud of black smoke. Jack let the handbrake off and eased it
forward, pulling out of the side street that led down to the boatyard, and headed up towards the old bridge. Once
over, he made his way to the east side of town, taking it easy, to attract no attention. A patrol car sat quiet on
Quay Street, not far from where Donny had punted his eighteen bottles of whisky, and Jack took a quick glance. It
was the same two beat men who had stopped at the pump on the night of the raid and almost given them collective
thrombosis.</p>
<p>Ferguson had a man on the corner and he banged on the big gate as soon as the loader turned along the narrow lane
that followed the line of the high wall on the east side of the yard. There was only one way in here, which might
have suited Ferguson. Now it suited Jack Lorne. One way in and one way out. A dead end.</p>
<p>The brakes snorted as he slowed the approach and he had to swing right to the opposite wall to get the nose through
the entrance, whipping the wheel fast and taking the rig right at speed past the service bay where they'd held Mike,
deliberately scattering the small group who stood in the yard centre so that he could manoeuvre the load into the
space on the far side. It was exactly as he remembered it. Mentally he pictured the sketch he'd made of the place
and glanced upwards towards the block of high flats towering on the other side of the river. He imagined he saw a
flash up there on high, but with the low cloud, there was not enough light for that. He just hoped Neil had a good
view. They had to depend on his eyes.</p>
<p>Neil watched the truck approach and smiled to himself. The light frame he'd designed held its shape and the tarpaulin
stayed taut, so that nobody could guess what was underneath. He saw the group on the centre as the gate swung wide
and had another smile when he saw them jink out of the way as the big loader hauled in. The binoculars had a little
spindle on the right side and when he thumbed it down, the whole scene zoomed into sharp detail. Ferguson was close
to the bay door, with Cullen and Foley. </p>
<p>Jack stopped and opened the door. Donny was out of sight in the back, as planned, staying quiet, which wouldn't be
easy for him, but Jack knew he would put his heart into this to make up for before. He stood on the plate and stole
a quick check glance at the roof. The lump under the duct tape seemed very conspicuous from here, but the chances of
any of them climbing on top of the cab were remote. If his uncle knew he'd been up in the loft and swiped the big
old Italian gun, he'd be far from pleased, but Jack needed that protection. With six of them waiting, he had to be
able to control the moves. The second last thing he had done, early in the morning, had been to thumb the shells
from the biscuit tin, one by one, into the magazine, and slam it home. The last thing had been to click the safety
clip to off. He didn't want to fumble.</p>
<p>He climbed down to the ground, mouth dry. It all depended on Neil, and Donny. Hell, it depended on them all.</p>
<p>Neil watched from the high vantage, lying flat. On the near side of the yard wall, another truck rolled up to the
corner of Castle Street, did a complicated reverse and trundled back until it reached the lamp post. He had to force
himself to wait a few minutes more as Jack crossed the yard, taking it slow. Finally he reached for the mobile and
called the number.</p>
<p>"I want to speak to Detective Inspector Angus Baxter," he said, in the accent he'd developed for Little Shop of
Horrors. It was awful.</p>
<hr />
<p>They hit Tim Farmer's house with a search warrant and gave the old fellow the second biggest fright of the year.</p>
<p>He was on the toilet when the door caved in with such a crash that he fell off the pan and got jammed between it and
the bath, gasping for breath, his face the dangerous purple it had achieved in Majorca after heated sessions with
Gordon McLaren's wife. They found him there and hauled him out, skinny legs trembling, and Angus Baxter made them
brew up a cup of tea for him, just in case the old fellow did peg out. It would look bad if they hadn't tried to be
courteous after kicking the door off its hinges.</p>
<p>"I'm telling you, it was a mistake. The postman said it came to the wrong address."</p>
<p>"What postman?"</p>
<p>"The one that was here the other day. Jesus, you nearly gave me a fit and a bad turn, so you did. Look at the state
of my door. I been on syrup of figs for the past week, and I'll never need them again, I can tell you. You turned my
arse inside out."</p>
<p>The old fellow was feisty enough. Angus showed him the papers.</p>
<p>"You know this company?"</p>
<p>"FF Enterprises. Never heard of them."</p>
<p>"They have an address up in Glasgow. Maryhill Road, you know it?"</p>
<p>"I told you, I never heard of them. I know Maryhill Road. That's where Partick Thistle play. Been there a couple of
times, useless bastards. Can't kick, can't pass, never win. Waste of space."</p>
<p>"What I'm trying to understand is, why they had their mail redirected to this address."</p>
<p>Baxter looked at the old fellow. He was still waiting for Jimmy Balloch to come back with the company search which
would tell them who was who in FF Enterprises, <em>if</em> they were registered. Normally a search would take ten
minutes on the net, but for a new company, it would take longer. He'd despatched Balloch up to Company House in
Glasgow, but he'd still heard nothing yet.</p>
<p>The old man sipped his tea. The flutter of his hands had settled down the Richter scale to a mere tremble that
rattled cup on saucer.</p>
<p>"Well?"</p>
<p>"Well what?"</p>
<p>"I asked why they had the mail redirected."</p>
<p>"No you didn't"</p>
<p>"Yes," Angus said patiently. He took out his pipe and clamped it between his teeth. "I did."</p>
<p>"No. You said you was wondering why they did it. That's not asking a question, so don't you get smart with me young
fella, not when you and those numpties have kicked my door down. And I want to see a right good job of getting it
fixed, mind. And a new lock an' all. One of them mortise security ones with deadbolts. I'm fed up with folk just
coming and going as they please. You're as bad as the last lot."</p>
<p>"Oh? What lot would that be?"</p>
<p>"I had a couple of them break in the other night. Thought it was that daft Gordon Mclaren come for a set to over his
missus, the bitch. Great in the sack, mind you, so she was, but a damn gold digger if you ask me. You ask me again,
I think she was trying to get me to pop an artery. Tell you something, she nearly did, but it was worth it while it
lasted."</p>
<p>Baxter flicked the lighter.</p>
<p>"And don't you smoke in here either. Bad enough you give me a heart attack and make me shit my pyjamas without I get
that damn cancer as well. Does your <em>mother</em> know you're out?"</p>
<p>Angus put lighter and pipe on the table.</p>
<p>"Sorry. Tell me about these people you say broke in."</p>
<p>"What's there to tell you? I threw a big stookie vase at them and saw them off. I might be knocking on, but I'm no
pushover. You ask Meg McLaren."</p>
<p>Angus leant forward, needing to know more, when his mobile rang.</p>
<p>Neil made the call. It was all down to timing now. He had the binoculars trained on the scene in the yard. He waited
while the operator put him through to CID and he listened to the hum on the line. Somebody picked it up.</p>
<p>"Mr Baxter?"</p>
<p>"No. he's out. Can I take a message?"</p>
<p>"No, you can't. I need him personally."</p>
<p>"Who's calling?"</p>
<p>Neil kept up the accent. "It's just somebody with some information. It's very urgent that I speak to him right
now."</p>
<p>"I'll have to take your number."</p>
<p>Neil felt his heartbeat skip a beat. This could fall at the first hurdle just because of a missed connection. He felt
a little panic rise in his chest.</p>
<p>"No, you can't take my bloody number. I told you it was fuckin' urgent." The accent had started to slip already.</p>
<p>"No need to take that tone sir. And I don't appreciate the language either. Now, can I have your name? </p>
<p>Down there Jack was on his own. Neil felt like shouting, but he forced his voice to be steady.</p>
<p>"No, you can't take my name either. Give me Inspector Baxter's mobile."</p>
<p>"I can't do that sir."</p>
<p>"Fuck!" Neil couldn't help it.</p>
<p>"Sir, I did mention the language."</p>
<p>"Listen. And listen carefully." Down there Jack had reached the group of men. Ferguson was walking with him towards
the back of the truck. Jack pulled back the tarpaulin. From up here the little pump was a dull red, squat on the
back of the loader.</p>
<p>"It's that whisky they stole from the distillery. Thousands of gallons? I know where it is right now, and if you
don't get me through to your boss, <em>right now,</em> it's going to disappear. I'm going to call you back in two
minutes, okay? And when I do, you better patch me through to him or he's never going to get his hands on it. By the
way, what's your name?"</p>
<p>"Well well." Ferguson was almost expansive when Jack pulled the tarpaulin back from the end of the loader. "What's
this?"</p>
<p>"That's the pump we used to get it out."</p>
<p>"Neat. Well, we don't need that." He climbed on the back and motioned to the others to shift the equipment. They
unloaded it right behind the truck.</p>
<p>"Give me a jemmy," he called down to Cullen. "And a length of window-washer tubing."</p>
<p>He might have been strong, but he knew nothing about popping a bung. He worked on it for five minutes, cursing as he
did. Finally Jack asked for the jemmy. He had no time to waste here. He took the bar, rapped the curve end on either
side, six or seven times, setting up a vibration. He jammed the sharp end in, levered fast and the little beechwood
puck flipped away to roll on the ground. Ferguson nodded his appreciation, fed in the clear plastic pipe and sucked.
Cullen handed him a bucket and they watched it slowly fill. Ferguson took a mouthful, swallowed, nodded.</p>
<p>"Good stuff. That's the very stuff. I think I'll accept the whole delivery."</p>
<p>In the back, behind the barrel stack, Donny listened, braced in the little hollow right at the top of the pile. He
could hear them pop the barrel, a sound he'd recognise in his sleep, and then he picked up the scent of fresh air
and whisky. Ferguson spoke, Jack spoke back. Somebody laughed.</p>
<p>A jagged cramp started to twist in his calf.</p>
<p>Angus Baxter answered the phone, turning away from the old man who glared at him over the top of his teacup.
Constable Jimmy Balloch spoke into his ear.</p>
<p>"You'll never believe it," he started.</p>
<p>"I might if I hear it," Baxter said, automatically reaching for his pipe. Old Tim Farmer slapped his wrist and the
inspector drew back, a massive man with the response of a chastised boy.</p>
<p>"FF Enterprises. They set up business only three weeks ago, brand new, which is why they're not on the system. But I
have it here. They're registered office is in Maryhill Road, and the post office confirm the company had the mail
redirected."</p>
<p>"Yes, we know all that already," Baxter said. "So what is it I won't believe?"</p>
<p>"It's a limited company, with three directors. You'll love this." Jimmy spun it out, so pleased with himself he
couldn't sense his boss beginning a slow burn on the other end. Baxter forced himself not to light the pipe or bark
down the line.</p>
<p>"One Fergus Ferguson, home address, Brewery Lane, Levenford."</p>
<p>"Gus Ferguson!" Baxter allowed himself a smile. "And that's not his home address. That's the used car yard. Who are
the others?"</p>
<p>"Seamus Cullen and Anthony Foley."</p>
<p>"The usual suspects," Baxter said. "Bring me the paperwork."</p>
<p>He ended the call. Tim Farmer looked at him expectantly.</p>
<p>"So who's going to fix my door then?"</p>
<p>Baxter would have repaired it himself, now that he had a name in the frame. Ferguson was one contender for the
Aitkenbar Distillery job, but Baxter had relegated him down the list. He had been sure the dirty little dealer
didn't have the brain for it. He was strictly a heavy. The inspector shrugged to himself. Everybody could get it
wrong now and again.</p>
<p>He was about to respond, when the patrolman, knocked on the door and came in holding his radio. "I've just had a
message. Can you call the ops room?"</p>
<p>"I'm busy at the moment," he said.</p>
<p>"They said it's urgent, sir. Very urgent."</p>
<p>Jack heard the grunt at the back of the load. The muscles all down the back were bunched with tension and all his
senses were wound up tight. <em>Don't screw it now, man.</em> He scratched his head through the woolly hat. Ferguson
heard something, looked round, Jack waded in.</p>
<p>"Are you quite happy now?"</p>
<p>"Is this is all of it?" Jack nodded. There was no chance Ferguson knew how much a hogshead could take. Stacked four
deep, the load looked like an immense amount of whisky. But there was less than a hundred gallons on board. And they
had stacked them so that only the first two barrels held any of the good Glen Murroch from Aitkenbar, filling only
plastic containers Donny had built into them. The stack behind them were filled with a mix of the cheap young scotch
that DJ had drained off up on Skye heavily diluted with tap water. Jack had taken a risk, but it stood to reason
that Ferguson wouldn't open them all and even if he did, all he'd smell would be whisky. There hadn't been time for
Jack to lay a perfect scam. He'd been down south in London, hadn't he?</p>
<p>"So, I want my brother now." He couldn't help a glance at the high flats. Up there, the low cloud was swirling around
the winking red flight warning light. He hoped it would not obscure the view completely. They were getting right
down to the wire.</p>
<p>Donny squeaked. Ferguson paused again, looked towards the back of the truck, then shook his head. It sounded enough
like metal in the engine. Jack cursed silently.</p>
<p>Ferguson cocked his head at Cullen who went back into the bay and brought Michael out, gripping him by the back of
the neck. Mike tried to swing a punch at him, but he still didn't have the weight for it. He saw Jack and went still
when he caught his brother's eyes. He had a big bruise under his eye, curving round his temple and Jack forced the
surge of fury down to a tight ball. </p>
<p><em>Mam, she'll kill me.</em> He forced himself to keep his mouth shut. This was no time for bravado and heroic
gestures. The clear part of his brain, the part that played the fast chess against Sandy, was counting off the
seconds. </p>
<p>"Maybe I should hold on to him a while longer, just until we get this stuff out of here."</p>
<p>"We did a deal."</p>
<p>"No, son. There was no deal, remember? You just did what I told you. Now, once you're out of here, why should I trust
you? You could call the cops."</p>
<p>Jack wasn't surprised. He'd have done the same. He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out the little phone. Mike
watched him silently, knowing to keep his mouth shut. </p>
<p>"I don't have to call the cops." He made a show of checking the time. "I don't make a call in five minutes, somebody
else calls them. You got the stuff here."</p>
<p>"You'll go down as well."</p>
<p>"So, we all go down together, and you get done for kidnap." Not quite checkmate, but better than stalemate. Ferguson
was stuck. He rubbed his chin with his free hand, eyes glittering and angry. Foley took a step back, just in case.
The crowbar was within easy reach and Ferguson could sometimes just explode.</p>
<p>Jack waggled the phone.</p>
<p>"Okay. Okay." He turned to Cullen. "Reverse that over to the door. We don't want to hang around here with this
lot."</p>
<p>He grabbed Michael by the shoulder, making him wince, taking his temper out in that one savage grip. The youngster
made no sound and Jack was proud of him.</p>
<p>Neil was in a real panic. He'd timed the two minutes to the second and then got a voice telling him lines were
engaged and he was in a queue. He thumped the roof bitumen with the heel of his hand, the cloud was lowering now and
the drizzle up here falling in a continuous spray, making the view through the binoculars hazy and indistinct.</p>
<p>Murphy's law. Jack had got it right: <em>If things can go wrong, they will.</em></p>
<p>Ed had it closer.<em> Murphy was a rose-tinted optimist.</em></p>
<p>A woman's voice came on.</p>
<p>"CID please."</p>
<p>It took another ten slow rings before the phone was picked up. He recognised the voice.</p>
<p>"It's me again." The fake accent had to work because they'd be taping this, Jack had told him. "Did you get the
inspector"</p>
<p>"He's still out, but I've got somebody standing by." The seconds ticked on and Neil's heart started began to pick up
speed.</p>
<p>The woman came on again. "Putting you through now."</p>
<p>"Inspector Baxter?"</p>
<p>"This is he."</p>
<p>Neil started talking, very fast. But his appalling accent went the distance.</p>
<p>The phone rang in Jack's hand. Everybody froze. He held it up and Ferguson nodded, bending to pick up the black steel
jemmy. Michael was only yards away from him and Jack waited until he reached his side. In the back, Donny heard the
sound and braced himself against the barrels, trying to ignore the pain in his calf muscle.</p>
<p>"Elvis calling Retro. <em>Roxanne</em>."</p>
<p>Jack smiled. Neil was trying to be funny, but he knew Jack would get it right away. No red light. That meant green
for go.</p>
<p>"Who the fuck's that?" Ferguson wanted to know.</p>
<p>"It's just Elvis, calling from up there." He pointed at the skyline.</p>
<p>"Smart cunt," Foley said. He looked a question at Ferguson, ready for action.</p>
<p>"Just kidding. Wrong number," Jack said. He had Michael by the cuff now and pulled him closer towards the cab. "I'll
just get my jacket."</p>
<p>Very quickly he turned to his brother, keeping his back to the others. "Stand there," he hissed, "and don't move a
muscle."</p>
<p>Finishing the turn, he stepped on the plate, reached up for the handle and clambered in the open cab door. Michael
stood straight, not moving any of his muscles. </p>
<p>Just then somebody hammered on the big yard door, hard fast thuds.</p>
<p>Jack turned the key and the engine roared. He floored the accelerator, not bothering to close the door, slammed the
stick into reverse and let the clutch out. The truck shot backwards.</p>
<p>Inside Donny yelped as the nearest barrel the other way a couple of inches, crushing his thumb against a stanchion.
But over the noise of the engine, and the wool of his balaclava, it was drowned right out. Michael stood there,
frozen, wondering what Jack was doing.</p>
<p>The rig careered backwards and scattered Ferguson and the rest of them, knocked the pump two metres. Ferguson bawled
a string of curses, Cullen jerked away. Buzz Barclay was standing pretty close and the nearest of the twelve wheels
went over his toes. He screeched in pain just as the back end went crashing through the bay door with a sound like
an explosion.</p>
<p>Jack glanced down at Michael, slammed the stick into drive as soon as the rig hit and it virtually jumped forward.
The barrel just behind the cabin rolled backwards, freeing Donny's thumb. The tip was crushed flat and it oozed dark
bruised blood.</p>
<p><em>Shit!</em> He was missing it. He pulled the carpet knife from his belt, got the hook round the holding strap,
ignoring the sudden flare of agony in his thumb. He slashed upwards, once, twice and the tension in the weave
snapped the lashing like a guitar string.</p>
<p>Over the sound of splintering glass and wood, the hammering at the door came again like bass drumbeats. Jack was too
busy, but Michael heard it.</p>
<p>"This is the police." A voice on a PA system. "We have a warrant to search the premises. Open up immediately."</p>
<p>Ferguson spun away from the truck towards the door.</p>
<p>Jack hit the pedal hard and the loader launched itself towards the space where it had been before. Michael stood
still, pale face, wide eyed. It missed him by a mere foot and Jack held it on the line until it went straight up to
the corner beside the tall brick wall. The forward momentum shunted the load of barrels backwards. Donny grabbed the
wooden mallet and slammed it against the peg holding the stay-rope he'd rigged to the frame. He put all his weight
behind it, not trusting to finesse. The thin peg snapped at the end and the pull on the rope jerked it backwards.
The single vee-wedge under the curve of the back barrel shot out like a missile. It missed Face McQueen's good cheek
by a half inch.</p>
<p>As soon as the wedge launched out, the whole load started to move. Donny knew barrels and he'd worked on this lot
since before midnight. The top shifted, as if just settling, and he pulled backwards, scrambling out from the
tarpaulin, grabbing for the stanchion on the back of the cab roof. Just as he did so, the supporting barrel shot out
from under him. He held tight to the mallet with one hand. </p>
<p>Ferguson whirled towards the door. Cullen was running towards the truck. Buzz Barclay was bawling and hopping around
on one leg.</p>
<p>The first barrel tumbled out and hit the pump with a sound like a cannon-shot. Immediately the steel hoop that Donny
had rasped down in the night snapped on its weak edge, sending two vicious curves of metal whooping through the air.
One went straight over the big gate. Out there somebody yelled and a sound of breaking glass followed. The pump
crumpled under the shock.</p>
<p>The barrel exploded in a golden eruption. The curved staves blossomed open and the amber liquid blasted outwards,
sweeping the foot from Buzz Barclay, knocking him into the flood.</p>
<p>"Jesus <em>fuck!</em>" Ferguson spun back like a pit bull, unable to decide who to go for first.</p>
<p>The second barrel rolled out and the whole stack sagged forwards. The third barrel hit the second, knocking it to the
side. Donny had not touched these. The kegs stayed intact, but the fourth and fifth shot out like skittles, end over
end, and the bottoms spun off like wheels, pouring a hundred gallons across the ground and through the wreckage of
the bay doors.</p>
<p>A noise like thunder rolled out from the truck and Donny swung over the edge and down the side as the framework
collapsed on itself and the rest of the barrels cascaded, tumbling and rolling, off the back of the lorry, breaking
up as they did, sending staves whirling across the yard. Harsh fumes filled the air.</p>
<p>"You, bastard! Where do you think you're going?"</p>
<p>Seggs Cullen reached for Donny as he clambered down from the back. Jack was up on the cab, a foot hooked on the
window edge, reaching across the curve of the roof.</p>
<p>"Watch out," Michael suddenly broke his silence.</p>
<p>Donny spun just as Cullen was reaching for him. Whether by accident or design, as he turned the wooden mallet came
swinging upwards and caught Cullen right on the chin. His head snapped back so fast you could almost hear his neck
crack. The second swing was no accident. Donny used his two hands this time, pivoting on one foot. The head took
Cullen on the top of the thigh just as he was tumbling backwards and the blow almost snapped the bone. Cullen
flipped to the side with a groan like a stunned bull, flopped into the pool of whisky, throwing up a bow-wave. </p>
<p>"Open this door." Jack recognised Angus Baxter. "We have the premises surrounded. Do not move. Do not try to
escape."</p>
<p><em>Liar</em>, Jack thought. There was only one way into Brewery Lane, one way out. Neil would have called again,
three rings if there was any danger. He rolled his uncle's woolly hat down, converting it to balaclava mode and
snatched at the duct tape, grateful for the foresight in leaving a loop free to get his hand through, for he'd never
have managed to unpeel it wearing thick leather gloves. He pulled it back, and the big black pistol almost leapt
into his hand.</p>
<p>"Get Michael," Jack rasped over his shoulder. Foley was wading through whisky, coughing as the fumes caught in his
throat. Face McQueen was pulling himself out of the wreckage of the service bay. Ferguson had the jemmy in his hand
and was rushing towards the truck. Donny already had Michael and was dragging him to the front and he climbed
upwards, a foot to the bumper, another on the hood, a third on the wing mirror. It was like climbing a ladder.</p>
<p>Jack was on the roof, feet planted apart. He snatched a look behind him to make sure Mike was clear. Donny had him by
the arm, clambering fast. Ferguson would never reach them in time, not through a foot of swirling whisky.</p>
<p>He squeezed the trigger. The gun roared.</p>
<p>Everybody froze. It sounded like a grenade in the confines of the yard, a sudden <em>huge</em> punch of sound that
jerked them all to a stop.</p>
<p>"<em>Fuck!</em>" Ferguson skidded to a halt, splashing in the mix of water and whisky. The cannonade reverberated
from the walls in solid blows that could be felt as well as heard.</p>
<p>The big lead slug slammed the edge of the door and kicked off a six-inch splinter of wood.</p>
<p>"Shit! It's the fucking IRA<em>"</em></p>
<p>"I'll give them <em>I-R</em> fucking <em>A</em>."</p>
<p> Cullen was rolling in the whisky, trying to get to his feet, but his injured left leg kept giving way. He was
cursing non stop.</p>
<p>"Cover," somebody bawled outside. "Take cover. They are armed and dangerous."</p>
<p>Jack aimed again and the gun bucked, once, twice. Michael almost fell backwards and Donny held him by the arm just as
he got to the cabin roof. Down below, Foley had instinctively dived behind an old car. Ferguson was running for his
office shack, jinking behind the pile of broken barrels. The whisky swirled in a maelstrom as it began to disappear
down the big storm-drain.</p>
<p>Three shots, four. He counted them off in his head, each of them slamming into the big, heavy door. He sighted along
the barrel, taking the shocks on straight arms, making sure he hit the metal reinforcing plates. The slugs
ricocheted off with deadly little hornet whines. </p>
<p>Five six seven in quick succession.</p>
<p>Ferguson came out again, unwrapping something from a piece of sacking.</p>
<p>"Go, go go!" Jack felt the gun heat up through the gloves. Donny pulled Michael up and then pushed him forward,
towards the high brick wall.</p>
<p>"Move it. Grab the fence."</p>
<p>Michael reached up, got a hand to the metal bar that held the three strands of barbed wire, Donny gave him a boost
and he was up and out of reach.</p>
<p>"Good man," Ed Kane said from the other side.</p>
<p>Michael got such a surprise he almost fell off the wall. Donny kept a hand clamped to his belt, steadied him, pushed
higher.</p>
<p>"Come along the ladder," Ed told him. The aluminium steps they'd used to get over the high Aitkenbar fence now
bridged the pavement between a second truck and the high wall. "And don't look down."</p>
<p>Ferguson was bawling non stop, the total incoherence of bewilderment and rage. Foley was reaching under his jacket.
Jack aimed the gun at him and he pulled back.</p>
<p><em>Eight, nine.</em> Hard shunts of sound. He'd knelt on the cab, taking good aim, kicking rust from the doors,
making them shiver on their high posts.</p>
<p>"Cease firing. This is the police."</p>
<p>Ferguson was on one knee, now only six inches deep in draining whisky that sloshed in a spiral whirlpool into the
ground-drain. He drew something black from the sacking and Jack saw the twin stubby barrels of a sawn-off
shotgun.</p>
<p><em>Hell!</em> There had always been a chance, but Jack had reckoned he wouldn't be so stupid, not with the police at
the door. Maybe he thought it was all a con. Ferguson swung the gun up and Jack switched his aim. Two slugs slammed
into the glass right beside Ferguson's ear. The panes shattered into dust, but the force and shock was enough to
make Ferguson pull up.</p>
<p>Both barrels blasted within a split second and this time the sound really was like a cannon. A deep shockwave almost
threw Jack off the roof, but it was only sound. The crash of glass was just enough to spoil the aim and the heavy
goose-shot went buzzing harmlessly into the air.</p>
<p>"Nice try," Jack said tightly. Foley came darting out from between the two rusted hulks. Cullen got to his feet
nearby, leaning against the car. Jack turned, held the gun up. He aimed it directly between Cullen's eyes.</p>
<p>The other man's mouth opened into a shocked circle. He sank backwards.</p>
<p>"Want this?"</p>
<p>Cullen shook his head. His eyes were wide and his face a blank mask of fear.</p>
<p>"Sure you do."</p>
<p>He pulled the trigger, but as he did so his foot seemed to slip on the paintwork on the roof of the cab. The gun
bucked and the recoil tumbled it out of his hand and dropped directly towards Cullen who was taken by surprise and
instinctively caught it. He looked at it, almost puzzled, then he turned it up, aimed and fired.</p>
<p>Jack clutched at his chest and staggered backwards, out of sight.</p>
<p>"I plugged the bastard!" Cullen bawled.</p>
<p>Michael almost fell off the wall. He was just stepping over when he turned and saw Cullen fire up at Jack. A streak
of flame shot out from the barrel and Jack slipped backwards. Cullen fired again, holding the pistol in two bare
hands. Foley was running towards the corner.</p>
<p>Donny was up and over, forcing Michael across the wall.</p>
<p>And miraculously Jack was behind him, a wide grin splitting his face. He was still counting. <em>Thirteen,
fourteen.</em></p>
<p>The third last thing he'd done, before he loaded the gun and slipped the safety off, had been to use the pliers to
prise out the old lead slugs in the last three shells. He'd replaced the lead with soft wax from one of Sheena's
holy candles, making the final two shots totally harmless.</p>
<p>Jack croosed the ladder. Foley reached the corner, him, got a foot to the truck plate, started to clamber
upwards.</p>
<p>Ed's face was just visible above the top of the wall. </p>
<p>He gave Foley a little wave. "Hasta la vista, baby."</p>
<p>Foley snarled so viciously he started to slaver at the mouth.</p>
<p>Somewhere in the distance, the wail of a siren tore through the misty air, getting louder every second. Jack crossed
the spindly ladder and onto the roof of the truck. He and Donny helped Ed haule the steps back, banged hard on the
roof. </p>
<p>Jed Cooper stepped on the pedal and got them moving.</p>
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<h1>23</h1>
<p>Neil watched them from his high vantage, focusing in on the other side of the wall, then down the street to the main
road. Jack had set the phone so it only took one thumb touch to call Jed in the covered tanker.</p>
<p>"Elvis calling Bullitt. The road's clear, go, go, go. Johnny B Goode." </p>
<p>Jed floored it and hustled towards the corner, wanting out before the back-up arrived in the approaching hurry
wagons. After the gunplay, they'd be all over the place like ants. He got to the junction, spun the wheel, taking a
huge arc to keep the weight in place, was out and down the road with the winking blue lights far behind him.</p>
<p>Angus Baxter commandeered a bulldozer from a demolition site two hundred yards away and the big blue door simply flew
off its hinges, broke into three pieces, one of which whirled across the yard, slammed through the crumpled service
bay and almost decapitated Seggs Cullen as he crawled through the dwindling puddle of dilute whisky. The fumes of
evaporating spirit were so strong that they caught in the back of the throat.</p>
<p>The firearms team went through the space like the SAS and Gus Ferguson raised the empty shotgun in an even emptier
gesture. He took a butt under the jaw which dislocated it on the left side, but as he fell, he slammed against the
brick wall and miraculously popped the bone back into the socket. It was the only good thing to happen to him that
day.</p>
<p>Six policemen surrounded Cullen, each of them with a vicious looking fully automatic held at arms length, every
stubby barrel pointing at his head. Cullen's leg gave way under him and he flopped once more to the draining golden
pool.</p>
<p>"Drop the weapon," the lead man ordered. He put his boot right on Cullen's neck, forcing his head under the surface.
The thug coughed, spluttered, managed to raise his head up and sprayed whisky for a yard.</p>
<p>"It's not mine," he managed to gasp. A gun-barrel was dug right in behind his ear and he dropped the Beretta.</p>
<hr />
<p>They were out on the main road, haring for the turn that would take them up past the castle on the circle road out of
town, Jed and Michael and Ed Kane in the front, with Jack and Donny in the tight space at the back of the cabin.</p>
<p>Jed had the wheel and he handled the big rig the way he drove on the stock circuit, fast and hard and very sure. The
only difference was that this one had twelve wheels and a lot more inertia once it really got going.</p>
<p>He turned to Michael. "That's a hell of an eye you got there. It'll be shut like a clam tomorrow."</p>
<p>Michael grinned shyly. "You ought to see the other guy."</p>
<p>"Oh, and what's he like?"</p>
<p>"He's built like a fucking brick shithouse. There's not a mark on him."</p>
<p>Jack reached forward and cuffed his brother lightly on the back of his head.</p>
<p>"Language! You're supposed to be the smart one. Your mother would clap your ear."</p>
<p>"So let her do it," Michael shot back. It was as if his overnight captivity had never happened. "You don't have
mother privileges."</p>
<p>Everybody laughed. Jack ruffled his hair.</p>
<p>"You did good Mike. You stayed cool."</p>
<p>"I knew you would show up, one way or the other." He dabbed his cheek, gingerly testing the skin. "Has anybody got
anything to eat? I'm starving to death."</p>
<p>Ed flipped the glove box and pulled out a couple of Mars bars.</p>
<p>"Okay Jake, that's two pints I owe you."</p>
<p>Michael only raised his eyebrows, not stopping to ask the question. Half the bar was in his mouth already.</p>
<p>"Jack said those cretins wouldn't feed you. He tries to think of everything."</p>
<p>The phone trilled unexpectedly. Ed snapped it open.</p>
<p>"I got bad news," Neil said quickly. "You've got a passenger."</p>
<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
<p>"Somebody must have jumped off the wall. I never saw it, but he's there now."</p>
<p>"Where?"</p>
<p>"He's on the nearside. High on the load."</p>
<p> Ed leant to the left, as close as he could get to the wing mirror.</p>
<p> "What's the matter?" Jack pushed forward, following his gaze. He froze. They were on the road out of town now, past
the old quarry behind the school, hammering along the road as the buildings petered out through a stand of old oaks
and tall birches, sending up a buffeting silver spray from the big wheels.</p>
<p>Jed craned over the wheel to view the mirror.</p>
<p>"Warning," he said. "Arseholes are much closer than they appear."</p>
<p>"Right, that's it," Ed said quietly. Wiggy Foley was hanging on to the tarpaulin rope with one hand, and gripping the
top of the frame with the other. His face was twisted with effort and anger as he inched his way along the side of
the truck.</p>
<p>"I don't believe it," Jack said. "He thinks he's Bruce Willis. Try to shake him off."</p>
<p>Jed got to the straight, spun the wheel left hard and then right again, as much as he dared with such a big load. The
tail swung alarmingly and Foley flipped outwards, legs in the air, but he still hung on.</p>
<p>"Coming up to bends. I can't risk that again."</p>
<p>Ed opened the door, forced it wide with his foot.</p>
<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
<p>"I'm going to knock him off."</p>
<p>"Don't be crazy. You'll kill yourself."</p>
<p>"That Foley, he's the crazy one," Ed said. "He always carries a blade. He's mad enough to do somebody some hurt. And
I owe him one."</p>
<p>"Where's the shooter?" Donny wanted to know.</p>
<p>"I gave it away."</p>
<p>"Brilliant," Donny said. He didn't know Jack's plan. "We could finish it right now."</p>
<p>Ed gripped the handle above the door, waited until they were on a right bend which let the door swing wide, and he
flipped himself out with athletic grace.</p>
<p>"Get back in," Jack bawled. "You're Ed Kane, not Eddie Murphy"</p>
<p>Ed hung onto the grip, facing backwards. "Hold it steady, and don't hit the trees."</p>
<p>He winked at Jack and then he started moving towards the back.</p>
<p>Foley had his face against the tarpaulin, trying to clamber on to the top of the truck and when he raised it again he
saw Ed clinging to the side. He snarled and let go with one hand, reaching into his pocket with the other.</p>
<p> "He's got something," Jack said, pushing past Michael, clambering onto the front. "A knife. A gun maybe." Foley had
done six years in Barlinnie for grievous bodily harm and had earned no remission. Anything at all was possible.</p>
<p>Ed was fast and his next move surprised both Foley and Jack. He took one of the rope lashings in his free hand, wound
it round with a few flicks of his wrist and gave it a tug. The slip-knot looped to the frame came free and Ed just
threw himself outwards.</p>
<p>As an act of sheer audacity Jack had never seen anything like it in his life. For a moment he thought Ed had slipped
off the speeding tanker and his heart leapt into his throat.</p>
<p>But Ed hadn't slipped. The momentum carried him out and away from the side, flipping close to the bushes that lined
the road and the edge of the tarpaulin followed him like a sail. As soon as the wind caught the canvas, it drove it
back in to the side again, carrying Ed's weight with it, but the length of rope looped round his wrist gave him
another couple of yards. He was swung back, beyond the point where Foley was reaching into his pocket, and the
tarpaulin simply folded on itself to trap the other man behind it. Ed grabbed the frame and held on with his right,
keeping the tarp tight. Underneath it Foley bellowed like a bull. Ed used the frame like an exercise bar, pivoted
his weight again and drove both feet forward, just where he estimated Foley's ribs would be.</p>
<p>The hard jolt and the immediate grunt from under the flapping canvas told him he'd connected.</p>
<p>He swung again, and this time used his knuckles, one-two-three, hitting in a blur, short powerful jabs. Foley punched
outwards, trying to shove his way through the material. Ed pulled back just as a thick steel blade stabbed through
it, curved down in a fast slash and ripped the canvas open in a four-foot shriek.</p>
<p>"Bastard." Foley's frothy snarl was almost lost in the flapping of the tarp and the strangle of his own rage. He
slashed again, hauled himself through the hole in the fabric, swung the knife back at Ed. The point of it sliced air
only inches from his face and Ed pulled back, quickly unspinning the rope from his hand to free it.</p>
<p>"I'll fuckin' fillet you." Foley lunged again and the tanker hit a pot-hole, jolted and one foot slipped from the
frame. He scrabbled for purchase, still gripping the knife. Jack Lorne was clambering through the cabin window,
wielding a big tyre iron. Foley got back up again and pushed past the flapping canvas shreds, digging the knife
forward. Ed gripped the frame with both hands, flipped himself up onto the roof, ignoring the buffeting turbulence,
and scrambled to the other side. He was faster and fitter than Foley, sure of his grip. The big thug came scrambling
after him, round the back of the tanker. Ed braced, dug a heel into his face, two quick slams. Foley roared fury and
frustration. His nose burst flat and the wind carried the blood round to both ears. But without hesitation, Foley
slashed forward and caught Ed's calf, slicing his jeans to the knee, and digging a groove up the front of his shin.
The pain burned like brief fire and was lost in the adrenaline surge.</p>
<p>Ed kicked again, another two quick ones, driving his heel in hard, catching him on the other eye. A plummy bruise
began to match the other. Foley cursed, dripping blood and came swinging round on the off-side. Ed scrambled away,
hand over hand, until he got half-way to the cabin.</p>
<p>Jack was up on the roof, crawling over the top, desperate to get at Foley. The trees were flashing past in a blur as
Jed speeded up, sending up a buffeting spray from the wheels. He took the corner tight on the left, trying to give
Ed as much room as he could, when a lorry came hurtling round in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>"Shit," Jed blurted, jerking at the big wheel. The other truck was way across the centre line. The other driver's
face was a pale wide blur.</p>
<p>"Watch out!" Michael was thrown to the right as the tanker slammed right. </p>
<p>Jed felt it happen before anyone else did. Years of hammering round the stock track gave him the edge. The other
lorry was past in a roar and a cloud of spray, scraping by with only inches between its front and the tanker's rear.
He flicked a glance at the wing, saw Ed thrown outwards by centripetal force, with Foley close to him.</p>
<p>He spun the wheel again, forcing the tanker right, aiming to pull Ed back in and then he just ran out of road. The
tight bend was only fifty yards ahead and he was on the wrong side. He pulled left yet again, braking sharply and
that's when it happened. The whole rig slewed out, all wheels drifting on the road-slick. The whipping action of the
weight on the tail dragged it round on the off-side.</p>
<p>Trees loomed dead ahead. Jed slammed the stick forward, gunned power to the drive as he felt the front and rear began
to shut on each other like a jack-knife. The corner came zooming up, a tangle of trees and scrub.</p>
<p>"Hold on," Jed bawled. Michael grabbed the handle above the door. Up on top, Jack felt the slide and threw himself
flat, grabbed for the whipping rope end and the side of the frame.</p>
<p>The rig slewed on... Jed gauged it, feeling for the weight, got the wheels to grip and just on the point of
sideswiping the big oaks, he caught the line. Branches lashed at the windscreen, slammed against the wing and
slapped the mirror right back against the door.</p>
<p>Ed Kane was catapulted right off the side and his weight tore the lashing from the canvas. He went tumbling though
the air and disappeared into the trees.</p>
<p>A big branch caught Foley under his chin and flicked him off the side. The knife whirled out of his hand and thudded
twenty feet high in the trunk of an oak tree to bury itself four inches deep in the solid wood.</p>
<p>Jack saw them disappear, tumbling through the foliage to crash somewhere out of sight in the dense undergrowth. The
force of the turn dragged him right across the roof to the far side and his own feet were dangling out into space by
the time Jed straightened up. He hauled himself forward, wind whipping his hair, and hammered on the roof of the
cabin.</p>
<p>"Stop. Pull up."</p>
<p>A hundred and fifty yards along the Glen Murroch Road, Jed managed to slow down with a howl of rubber and a grind of
protesting gears, pulled right in and got wheels up on the verge. He drove forward for another hundred, to where an
access lane led away into the trees, steered up as far as he could until the tanker was out of sight of the road.
Jack clambered down, face white.</p>
<p>"What happened?" Jed was just as pale.</p>
<p>"Ed got thrown off," he said. "Come on. He could be hurt."</p>
<p>Michael clambered down from the cabin, hands shaking.</p>
<p>"You stay here," Jack ordered. He turned and started running back through the scrub with Jed right on his heels and
Donny close behind.</p>
<p>They reached the turn, scattering a couple of blackbirds rooting in the undergrowth and plunged through the clumps of
honeysuckle clinging to the saplings just in from the edge. Jack still had the tyre iron, ready to use it on Foley
if he put up a fight.</p>
<p>Apart from the sound of their passage, the trees were silent.</p>
<p>"Where did he come off?"</p>
<p>"Just on the turn." Jack pulled back out onto the road. Wide parallel lines curving from one side to this showed
where Jed had braked, throwing the load into a slide. Twenty yards back from that, the lines took a sharp angle to
the left, where he had managed to whip it out of a jack-knife.</p>
<p>"In here," Jack said, shoving back in. here two big oaks reached for the sky, trunks hoared with moss and overgrowth.
He stopped and listened. Something moved, but a good few yards further in away from the road. He hefted the
iron.</p>
<p>"Ed? Is that you?"</p>
<p>Jed looked at him. "Foley's got a blade."</p>
<p>"I know. Watch for him. Don't let him near you."</p>
<p>Something shivered the branches ahead of them and they barged through.</p>
<p>Somebody was on the ground, driven right down into the soft mud where a puddle had formed in a hollow. All they could
see were a pair of legs and some of the back. The mud had splashed all over it, making recognition difficult. There
was no movement at all.</p>
<p>Just to the left, the branches started to shake again.</p>
<p>"Ed, is that you?"</p>
<p>Jack turned and saw Foley caught in a thick hawthorn bush, his face jammed right up against the front of an oak tree,
arms pulled back by the clutch of thorns. His eyes were wide open and his legs were kicking against the branches.
Blood trickled from his nose.</p>
<p>"This must be Ed," Jack said, turning to the prone shape. "Come on."</p>
<p>The Donny was right beside him and without hesitation they grabbed the blackened legs.</p>
<p>"Watch, he could be hurt."</p>
<p>"He'll be hurt if we don't"</p>
<p>They hauled on the feet and Ed came slurping out of the soft mud. Jack let go and the pliant body oozed to the
ground. Jack got to his knees, used a hand to wipe the mire from his face.</p>
<p>"Ed! Come on man." He jammed a finger inside his mouth and hooked out a plug of leaves and slime. "Come on!"</p>
<p>"Is he....?" Jed couldn't even say it. Jack didn't hear him. Instead, he flipped Ed round onto his face and thudded
him hard between the shoulderblades with the flat of his hand. The force of it drove another black wad out of Ed's
throat and his whole body jerked in a violent spasm. He coughed, spluttered and rolled over, gagging for breath.</p>
<p>"Jesus man. You scared the shit out of me." Jack moved forward, clapping Ed on the shoulder and just as he did so a
movement at the side caught his eye and he turned in alarm.</p>
<p>Michael stood there, pallid and out of breath..</p>
<p>"Is he all right?"</p>
<p>"Jesus Mike. I told you to stay by the truck."</p>
<p>Jed got to his feet, turned to the left. Foley was still suspended in the hawthorn bush, still trapped by the thorns
which had hooked into his denim jacket, but there wasn't a mark on his face apart from the blood from where Ed had
kicked his nose and those two bruises. His legs still kicked violently against the branches, making the whole bush
shudder and shake.</p>
<p>"Jack," Jed said. "You better come and see this."</p>
<p>"What is it?" Jack was wiping the thick mud off Ed's face, making big pale streaks. Ed was coughing, still
winded.</p>
<p>Foley's eyes were rolled up so far all you could see was white. His neck was twisted at an odd angle. Meaty hands
trembled with uncanny life.</p>
<p>"I think this one's a gonner."</p>
<p>Michael looked at Foley. A thick of saliva and blood drooled from the thug's slack mouth. His hair was unpeeled from
the front to the back of his head, leaving an angry bloody patch.</p>
<p>"Oh god," Michael said in a stricken gasp. "He's been scalped."</p>
<p> He turned away and without warning at all he was violently and comprehensively sick in to the forest ferns.</p>
<p>Donny clapped him on the back, holding him steady until he was finished.</p>
<p>"No, man. That's just Wiggy's toupee."</p>
<p>Blair Bryden got the story of the big raid out on the news long before anybody got a sniff of it. He and his
photographer were on the scene seconds after the heavy squad arrived with all sirens blaring and their squat black
guns locked and loaded. This time Blair was smart. The money he'd made from spreading the whisky theft story around
the networks had been well invested in a good handicam video and Brian Deacon captured all the action for the
tea-time news.</p>
<p>Gus Ferguson's face was pixelated out when he was seen being hauled away by a couple of tough looking policemen,
dragging his heels and hauling at the cuffs. The sound had to be damped right down for family listening.</p>
<p>The camera panned round the scene of devastation, the curved barrel-staves scattered in all directions, the
demolished bay and the bullet-holes in the big blue doors. Customs officers and policemen were everywhere. It seemed
as if every one of Levenford's finest had been roped in to get this done right.</p>
<p>Only one intact barrel remained in the middle of the yard. The one that Donny had made sure wouldn't explode.</p>
<p>"This is in customs jurisdiction." James Gilveray drew himself up to a height a good span shorter than Angus Baxter
.</p>
<p>"That might be the case, once it's been identified. We'll let you know."</p>
<p>"No. If it was removed illegally from customs bond, it's up to us."</p>
<p>"As I said," Angus paused to light the pipe, making Gilveray wait for it, "we'll identify it in due course of time.
Until we do, then you'll just have to cool your heels a little. It's evidence in a major police investigation."</p>
<p>"It was ours first."</p>
<p>"And you made a good job of keeping it," Angus said. With his highland accent it was hard to discern the dripping
sarcasm, but Jimmy Balloch didn't miss it. "Now, you run along like a good wee exiseman, and let proper policemen do
their job."</p>
<p>"You can't do that," Gilveray protested. He could see his own job whirling down the drain with the rest of the
whisky.</p>
<p>"Constable Balloch, would you be good enough to escort Mr Gilveray off these premises. And get some tape set up. This
is a scene of crime. We can't have every Tom, Dick and jumped up railway porter messing up the evidence."</p>
<p>"You can't do that," Gilveray was almost hysterical.</p>
<p>"Oh, and by the way," Angus said, blowing out a blue plume. "We'd like you to come down to the station as well.
Everybody who had anything at all to do with this whisky, well, you're all witnesses. I'll need a full statement
from you, if you don't mind."</p>
<p>The chief customs man looked as if he might suddenly burst a blood vessel.</p>
<p>Ferguson demanded to see his lawyer and Angus made him cool his heels too. The sawn-off shotgun was already in a
plastic bag and on its way down to forensics. Ferguson had been stripped to the skin and now he was dressed in a
papery one-piece that made him look like a pantomime polar bear. He sat and glowered as the forensic men swabbed his
fingers for traces of powder.</p>
<p>Billy Butler had come down from Aitkenbar Distillery and identified the contents of the two remaining barrels. There
was nothing left of the rest, all of it gone down the drain, leaving only a wide damp patch and a stench of raw
whisky.</p>
<p>"It's the Glen Murroch, all right. What I can't understand, is why it's back in the barrels."</p>
<p>"Explain that to me."</p>
<p>"Every barrel is stencilled when it's filled. After a while you get to know the codes. These are definitely the
barrels it's been stored in the for past twenty five years."</p>
<p>"And how would it get back in there?"</p>
<p>Billy shrugged. "I really don't know. Somebody must have put it there."</p>
<p>"Or maybe it never left the premises after all."</p>
<p>Angus turned to young Jimmy Balloch, whose good work had helped crack the case. "You can have the dubious privilege
of inviting Alistair Sproat esquire down for a chat."</p>
<p>In the interview room, Ferguson's lawyer sat with his hands on his briefcase. Baxter kept his eyes on him as he
spoke.</p>
<p>"Fergus Hector Ferguson, I am charging you with a number of offences. They are: possession of an illegal firearm;
discharging a firearm within a built-up area, discharging a firearm with intent to wound, discharging a firearm with
intent to murder, resisting arrest, assault, breach of the peace, theft of twenty five thousand gallons of whisky,
conspiracy to defraud Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, and loitering with intent. None of these charges are in any
particular order at the moment, are by no means comprehensive, and other charges will most definitely ensue. You
don't have to say anything."</p>
<p>The big policeman read him his rights.</p>
<p>"Now, as I said, you don't have to say anything. But..."</p>
<p>"I never took that whisky. It's not mine."</p>
<p>"We know that," Baxter said easily. "It's most definitely not yours."</p>
<p>"I never saw it before."</p>
<p>The lawyer leant forward. "You don't have to say anything."</p>
<p>"Fuck off you." Ferguson turned to Baxter. "I've been fucking set up."</p>
<p>"Indeed. And how do you explain this paperwork? The hire of the pump which is in your yard. Your company. Your
signature."</p>
<p>Ferguson stared at the document that was now sealed in a flat clear envelope.</p>
<p>"I never saw that before in my life."</p>
<p>"And I suppose you and Mr Cullen and the other one, Mr Foley, are not involved, or have no connection whatsoever,
with this company?"</p>
<p>"FF Enterprises? I never heard of that in my life. It's a fucking set up."</p>
<p>"So what you are telling me is that some time this morning, some individual drove a lorry load of stolen whisky into
your yard, with customs documents relating to the manufacture of said whisky in the glove compartment, with a pump
used to steal the whisky, hired by a company with you named as a director, and paid for by a cheque from the same
company, again with your signature. This person then left the premises without myself or any one of a number of
officers witnessing his exit, leaving you and the others armed with a shotgun and a handgun. Which you discharged
with criminal intent.That's the sum of it, am I right?"</p>
<p>"That's exactly it. We were set right up. I'll fucking kill that bastard."</p>
<p>"Which particular bastard would that be, Mr Ferguson?"</p>
<p>Over by the door, Jimmy Balloch chuckled. Angus looked at him and winked.</p>
<p>"None of your business. Once I'm out of here, though...."</p>
<p>"I think that should conclude this interview for the moment," he said. He checked the time and turned to the
lawyer.</p>
<p>"You don't mind if I take your client downstairs? He won't be leaving today."</p>
<p>Seggs Cullen couldn't believe he was up on an attempted murder charge. His leg hurt like all hell and an x-ray later
discovered a hairline fracture close to his pelvis. Any harder a hit with the keg mallet and he'd have been down for
months. He vowed a hard and bloody revenge against Donny Watson. That was twice now he'd had a go at that
ginger-headed Jessie and twice he'd come off distinctly second best.</p>
<p>Despite the evidence on the assault team's video tape, forensics made doubly sure and the swabs proved positive for
powder burns on his fingers, showing he had indeed fired the gun he'd been carrying. The bullets dug out of the wood
on the door were an exact ballistic match. </p>
<p>"So just to go though it again," Angus Baxter said. Cullen looked pitiful in the white overalls, pitiful and thick.
The inspector was beginning to think his own tone of weary incredulity would be fixed permanently. "This person <em>threw</em>
the gun to you?"</p>
<p>"Sure. He was blasting all over the place, then he threw it at me. Or he dropped it. I grabbed it, like. I mean, I
was down in the deck and all that hooch was spilling out. What could I do? He'd been shooting all over the shop. I
just turned it and fired at him. Christ knows what happened. He dropped. I plugged the bastard. It was self
defence. </p>
<p>"So you admit you shot the gun."</p>
<p>"Sure I did. He shot at me."</p>
<p>"And this Mr....ah, <em>Lorne</em>. Where did he go."</p>
<p>"He went over the wall."</p>
<p>"Over a fifteen foot wall, with barbed wire at the top?"</p>
<p>Cullen nodded, so engrossed in the memory that he couldn't see how ridiculous it sounded. "Him and his brother. See,
we'd snatched the boy, me and Wiggy. Just to put the frighteners on Lorne. He'd nicked the whisky, and Gus, well, he
wanted it, like."</p>
<p>"So, you and Foley, you <em>kidnapped,</em> this young man?"</p>
<p>Cullen nodded enthusiastically. Ferguson had not been so stupid. He hadn't even mentioned Jack Lorne's name. He knew
a kidnap charge and conspiracy would be even worse when piled on top of pulling a gun.</p>
<p>"So this Mr Lorne came in, rescued his brother from your clutches, gave you the whisky and the gun, scaled a wall,
and disappeared."</p>
<p>"Got it in one, Mr McLeod. That was after that bastard Watson swiped me with a hammer."</p>
<p>"Oh, there were three of them now?"</p>
<p>"Nearly broke my fuckin' leg."</p>
<p>Jimmy Balloch jammed his knuckles in his mouth to hold back the explosion of laughter.</p>
<p>Alistair Sproat was beginning to panic. Baxter had stared at him long and hard, forcing him to drop his eyes, and
that made him feel even more vulnerable.</p>
<p>"What puzzles me is this documentation." The inspector pushed the clear plastic wallet across the table. "It gives a
list of the barrels which we found this morning, all from your company. It's on your Aitkenbar Distillery transfer
sheets."</p>
<p>"I don't know anything about it."</p>
<p>"But the serial numbers on those barrels match those on the stock which was stolen."</p>
<p>"That can't be true. That was all decanted. The barrels were emptied into the tank. They'd be round at the
cooperage."</p>
<p>"Indeed." Baxter seemed to be enjoying this. "So, can you explain how we were able to retrieve intact barrel, bearing
the correct stencils, and containing the exact amount of your Glen Murroch as is stated in your own documents?"</p>
<p>"It can't be true," Sproat spluttered.</p>
<p>"Oh, I can assure you, it's true alright."</p>
<p>A bead of sweat started to swell at Sproat's thin hairline and quickly gathered enough weight to trickle down his
temple. This was a complete nightmare. He'd been hit with the writ from the Charter 1315 tree huggers and his legal
team had spent a whole day at court trying unsuccessfully to get it lifted. But somehow the protesters had raised
enough money to hire Kerrigan Deane, one of the sharpest legal infighters in the game and the interdict still stuck.
It would now take a fight to prove the big river harbour was distillery property, and until he did, he couldn't
demolish the old buildings and reclaim the prime land. The developers had already been on the phone demanding an
entry date and threatening to pull out of the deal. He was facing total ruin.</p>
<p>"I can't explain that. I'll have to go through all the stock sheets and transfers."</p>
<p>"No," Baxter said. "<em>We'll</em> go through all the stock sheets and transfers."</p>
<p>Back at the distillery, Sproat seemed to have shrunk into himself after his afternoon session with Baxter. Marge
Burns hung up his coat and watched him slump in the chair behind the wide walnut desk. A couple of weeks ago he'd
stood there in the hall, chest out and confident, and told all of his workers they'd be kicked out of their jobs.
Now he looked as if he himself was getting very close to the end of the line.</p>
<p>She made him a coffee. Two days ago, she'd got into the files and duplicated all the necessary papers, just as Jack
Lorne asked her to.</p>
<p>"Marge," Sproat said, voice hoarse. She bent over him, almost motherly, and gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat. He
didn't even seem to notice.</p>
<p>"I have to get in touch with Michael Gabriel. It's urgent. Really urgent."</p>
<p>"I'll see if I can raise him," she said.</p>
<p>Jack Lorne had told her he'd do just that.</p>
<p>They had all stood there in stunned silence, while young Michael bent low and retched the mars bar into the
woodferns.</p>
<p>Foley's suspended leg twitched and jerked. His eyes were wide and unfocussed, and he was definitely not
breathing.</p>
<p>"Get him out of there," Jack said.</p>
<p>"I'm not touching him," Donny said vehemently. He looked as if he might suddenly lose his breakfast. "Is that
normal?"</p>
<p>"What, the leg thing?"</p>
<p>"Yes, the <em>leg</em> thing."</p>
<p>"Sure. It'll stop after a while."</p>
<p>"How do you know?"</p>
<p>"I saw it in a movie."</p>
<p>"No, how do you know he's dead?"</p>
<p>Jack pushed into the bush, reached a hand to touch Foley's bull neck. The scraped-back wig made him look as if the
entire skin on his head had been torn away, but the blood was just from the hawthorns and the rough oak bark. He
pressed two fingers under the jaw, feeling for a pulse in the strangely warm neck. The body jerked again, and a
little gasp of air blew from the lungs. He felt his own throat tighten.</p>
<p>"Nothing at all."</p>
<p>"He might be faking it," Donny insisted.</p>
<p>"No. He's a stiff," Ed said quietly. Only a few moments before he'd been kicking and punching the man in the tree,
and then he'd been head first and up to his ribs in mud. He looked like he'd crawled through the trenches. "He
hasn't blinked once."</p>
<p>"For a stiff he's doing a lot of jinking and jiving. Should we get somebody?"</p>
<p>"Who should we get?" Jack asked. Michael was pulling himself upright again, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. Jack gripped his shoulder and made him face the other way.</p>
<p>"An ambulance?" Jed suggested. "They could use those jump lead things."</p>
<p>"What for? He's dead. Probably broke his neck. A zillion volts won't do him any good. And we can't call the cops
unless we want to hold out hands up and say <em>it's a fair cop guv</em>. <em>You got me bang to rights</em>. No.
He's a goner and it's nobody's fault but his own. He shouldn't have snatched Mike and he shouldn't have hit you Don.
And he shouldn't have come at us with a knife. The man was a cockroach, a disaster on feet, so I'm wasting no
worries on him. Sooner or later he'd have had another go and somebody would have got really hurt. Worse maybe.
Somebody could have got dead. One of us."</p>
<p>"So, what are we going to do?" Jed insisted. "Just leave him stuck up in a tree like the Christmas gargoyle?"</p>
<p>"No. Get one of the tarpaulins and wrap him up. We'll take him with us."</p>
<p>"Jesus man," Jed said. "What do we want to take it with us for? We get caught with a stiff, and we're in even bigger
trouble."</p>
<p>Jack managed a cold laugh.</p>
<p> "Might as well get hung for a shit as a scam."</p>
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<h1>24</h1>
<p>Dawn, and they were on the move again after the call from Lars Hanssen when he was just rounding the Mull of Kintyre.
Jack was haunted by the possibility of his boat hitting another rock <em>en route</em> and the whole plan
foundering. It was two days after the crazy scene at Gus Ferguson's yard and a lot had happened since then.</p>
<p>Jack had a new big bruise on the side of his jaw that Linda and Neil's sister Joanne had managed to hide to an extent
with some makeup from the Starlight stage box. His face still ached, and he had to chew on the other side of his
mouth until the loose molar settled back in. It hurt, but he knew he deserved it.</p>
<p>He'd arrived in Glasgow a bare seventeen minutes after they had lashed the rolled up tarpaulin that contained the
ponderous body of Wiggy Foley on top of an old container in the truck park where it couldn't be seen by anybody
passing by, or dug up by the local dogs. Tam Bowie was waiting for him with the spare helmet and the Dragstar engine
ticking over.</p>
<p>"You got out okay? How's your Mike?"</p>
<p>"He's okay, a bit of a sore face but it went like clockwork. In, out, shake it all about." His own hands were still
trembling just a little as he came down in the aftermath.</p>
<p>"Apart from this," Jed said. He and Donny were hauling the tarpaulin from the side, while Ed fixed the covering back
on the frame. Young Michael sat on the footplate, looking pale and lost.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"You mean <em>who</em>."</p>
<p>Tam pulled back a step. "What's going on?"</p>
<p>"That scumbag Foley. He came after us."</p>
<p>"And what happened?"</p>
<p>"He's snuffed it."</p>
<p>"Dead? You killed him? You <em>killed</em> Wiggy Foley?" Tam's face was a picture of incredulity.</p>
<p>"No," Ed said. He turned from the tanker, shaking his head. He was still covered in drying mud and old leaves. "He
killed himself, that's what he did. He came after us with a knife and fell off the truck. He must have broke his
neck."</p>
<p>"He was stuck up a tree," Donny said. "Like a big baldy gorilla."</p>
<p>"What are you going to do with him?"</p>
<p>"Just stash him for now," Jack said. "He's not joining our gang."</p>
<p>They had to get moving, then and there. Jack pulled on the windproof one-piece and the helmet. He came across to Mike
and grabbed him round the shoulder in a one armed big brother hug, holding him tight to let his own anger and fear
drain away now that he was safe.</p>
<p>"Mike, you go with Ed and Donny, okay? Get Sandy to take you to casualty right away to get that face seen to, no
delay at all, got that? He knows what to do. Tell Mam, not a word to a soul, no matter who it is. And for God's
sake, don't tell her about this, okay?"</p>
<p>Michael nodded silently, still struggling to cope with his first taste of violent death. Jack swung a leg over the
pillion and they were gone through the mesh gates. Tam slowed at the lights down on Castle Street, plugged the comms
lead into the helmet.</p>
<p>"Speed of light, Tam," Jack said. "Warp factor nine. I'm the only name they'll come after."</p>
<p>Tam sat back, throttled up and in five minutes he was across the big span of the bridge beyond Barloan Harbour, onto
the motorway and nosing up from ninety. Somewhere beyond Glasgow Airport, a patrol picked them up and started
flashing blue. Tam didn't twitch. He gave it a twist, reached a hundred and ten until he was far enough round the
bend, was up the exit and through the Clyde Tunnel and gone before they knew what was what. Jack took the samsonite
pannier into the bathroom in Starbucks and three minutes later he came out in the Armani suit carrying the
serious-business briefcase. He checked the wallet inside, made sure he had the return train ticket Tam had bought in
the morning.</p>
<p>Kerrigan Deane shook him by the hand.</p>
<p>"Sorry I'm late," Jack said, checking his watch. "The traffic gets worse."</p>
<p>"Tell me about it," Kerrigan Deane said. He led Jack into his plush office. "Just a couple of papers for you to sign.
Everything go well at Dunvegan?"</p>
<p>"I'll know by tomorrow," Jack told him. He had a couple of people to talk to and he knew it wasn't going to be
easy.</p>
<p>Kate Delaney smacked her face against the glass and reeled out of the revolving door into the arms of the concierge.
The thud rattled the pane in its metal frame. She had pushed her way inside just at the same instant that Jack was
coming out and when she did a double take she forgot where she was and stopped dead. The door kept right on spinning
and catapulted her into the atrium</p>
<p>Jack heard the jarring crack and saw the motion just as he stepped out into the street. He turned, peered through
against his own reflection and saw Kate steadying herself against the reception desk.</p>
<p>For a moment he was caught in a dilemma. He'd stayed out of her way since the day in the lane when she'd hooked him a
fast one. There had been too much to do and he didn't have enough excuses that she wouldn't see right through. Her
eyes were closed and her free hand was rubbing at her cheek and temple where the toughened glass had connected. He
needed to be gone, but he couldn't just leave her like that.</p>
<p>Then she opened her eyes, saw him, and that ended the debate. He pushed through the revolving door again.</p>
<p>"I suppose that was revenge," she said. Tears were silvering her eyes, and she blinked them back to prevent them
spilling over.</p>
<p>"I never even saw you," he protested. "Are you all right?"</p>
<p>"Sure I'm all right. You just broke my damn jaw." She knew it had been her own fault for stopping. He put an arm
round her, took her weight against himself. She sniffed and turned her head away, not wanting him to see the tear if
it got loose.</p>
<p>She dabbed at her cheek. "My head's ringing like a bell."</p>
<p>"You shouldn't have stopped," he said.</p>
<p>"Tell me something I don't know. I should have kept right on walking, right?"</p>
<p>He took the hit. "I suppose so."</p>
<p>She pulled away from him, kept a hand to her cheek. The skin under her fingers was swelling nicely. In a couple of
hours she'd be still pretty but lop-sided..</p>
<p> "So this is what it's all been about," she said, looking him up and down. "Armani labels from head to toe?"</p>
<p>There was no answer to that.</p>
<p>"Suits you, Jack. I just hope the rest of your ex-workmates can afford such nice gear."</p>
<p>He darted a concerned look at the concierge before she kept talking.</p>
<p>"You want a coffee?"</p>
<p>"I've got an appointment," she said, finally forcing the tear back. "But I'm early."</p>
<p>"Come on," he put a hand behind her back and steered her towards the doors again. The concierge came forward and
opened the side door for them.</p>
<p>"Just to be on the safe side, Mr Gabriel," he said.</p>
<p>He winced, kept on moving until he got across to Starbucks again. Tam was long gone.</p>
<p>"So you got a designer suit and tie," she said. "And a poncy briefcase. Was it worth it?"</p>
<p>He shrugged. The girl took the order and she waited until they were alone again in the corner.</p>
<p>"You might as well have got it covered in arrows."</p>
<p>"They let you wear denims in Barlinnie," he threw back.</p>
<p>"Maybe they'll let you finish your course. Then you can start your career the week before you retire. So what brings
you up here? Are you following me?"</p>
<p>"If I had, I'd have been behind you, not coming out the door you were coming in."</p>
<p>"So who were you seeing? Your criminal buddies?"</p>
<p>He didn't say. He knew who she'd been going to meet.</p>
<p>"Just a man. Doing some business."</p>
<p>"That's what they call it in the movies. There are other ways to describe it."</p>
<p>He sat back. Her face was swelling on one side. There was no point in arguing with her. She still felt betrayed and
let down, and there was nothing he could do about that. He hadn't meant to expose her to any danger, and he wasn't
going to risk any more. The best he could do would be just to take the punches and wait until it stopped. Maybe duck
a few.</p>
<p>"How goes your fight?"</p>
<p>She looked up. "What's it to you?"</p>
<p>"I'm interested."</p>
<p>"Oh, you mean the big battle against Sproat and his cohorts. The fight to save the river harbour and all the jobs?
The fight that you <em>pretended</em> to be interested in before, when you were just planning to get into the
robbery business?"</p>
<p>One, two, three, hard and fast, like Ed's punches and he was on the ropes. He felt like going down and staying there
for a mandatory eight count. He put his head in his hands, rubbed his temples. She paused, running out of steam and
fire.</p>
<p>"If you must know, we're going to win. It's going to be all over the Gazette tomorrow. Blair Bryden said he'll put it
on the front."</p>
<p>The girl arrived with the coffees, gave Jack and his fine suit a blatant once-over. He took a sip of cappuccino. Kate
didn't know anything about what had happened today, but he'd bet five to one that the scene in Ferguson's yard would
knock everything else off the front. Gunplay in the home town and a river of stolen whisky, that was the new story.
That was <em>news</em>. A fresh court action would make it somewhere after page six.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"We've won the interdict, thanks to our guardian angel. No thanks to some folk we could mention, including you and
your wild bunch."</p>
<p>He ignored that. He'd just have to get used to rolling with them.</p>
<p>"Guardian Angel?"</p>
<p>"Somebody who believes in the cause. Somebody who is willing to put his money where his mouth is. He's set up a
fighting fund to take it all the way. Kerrigan Deane, that's the lawyer I'm meeting today, he served a writ against
Sproat that stops him demolishing the distillery and dumping into the harbour."</p>
<p>"So, does that mean it's over?"</p>
<p>"No. Sproat's people are applying to have the interdict lifted. It's probably going to end up in court. At least now
we can consider putting up a fight."</p>
<p>"That could take months."</p>
<p>"It could take years."</p>
<p>Jack smiled. He knew all this.</p>
<p>"Mr Deane says we should now write to the developers to let them know about the legal problem, which might make them
pull out of the deal. He's dug up some research that shows Sproat's family might never had clear title to the
harbour, and even some of the land that's been reclaimed from the river."</p>
<p>Jack nodded, keeping his face straight. His uncle and the boat-club boys had spent many afternoons in the library
archives digging through the old records. They had only been trying to save the harbour for the flotilla of little
wrecks that took up their weekends, but they all had plenty of time on their hands and while none of them had a
university education, they knew the tides and currents and how to avoid the sharp rocks. They had done a real
job.</p>
<p>"Now the good Mr Sproat wants to speak to us. Amazing isn't it? Last week we were a bunch of agitators and
anarchists. He refused even to acknowledge our letters. Now he's invited us down for talks."</p>
<p>"Good for you," Jack said, and he meant it. Maybe she had got some leverage, but he knew that when Kate Delaney
started to fight, she wouldn't stop until it was won or lost. She'd give Sproat a real run for his money.</p>
<p>She looked at her watch.</p>
<p>"Time for me to go. What are you going to do?"</p>
<p>"This and that," he said.</p>
<p>"You're learning to be evasive, Jack Lorne. I really liked the straight version."</p>
<p>"Things happen," he said, aware of how lame it sounded.</p>
<p>"Indeed they do. Maybe you shouldn't let them."</p>
<p>He held the door open as they walked out into the thin rain. The bruise was beginning to colour now, titian, like her
hair.</p>
<p>He walked her across the street, weaving through the stalled traffic and stood on the pavement while she mounted the
steps. She turned, paused, came back down.</p>
<p>"Two things I'd like to know," she said.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"Why did the doorman call you Mr Gabriel?"</p>
<p>He felt colour flush into his face.</p>
<p>"Must have the wrong man," he said quickly. "Mistaken identity."</p>
<p>She stared up, held his eyes, measuring that response and finding it wanting. She was sharp.</p>
<p>"And what on earth have you done to your hair?"</p>
<p>Marjory Burns caught him on the mobile just as he came out of the railway station, only three hundred yards from
where the scene-of-crime boys had taped off Ferguson's yard. A thin smell of whisky still hung about in the soft,
damp air.</p>
<p>Jack backed in under the railway bridge out of the misty rain. The scramble over the wall and the crazy careering
along the old Quarry Road out of town, that seemed long ago and far away.</p>
<p>"Mr Gabriel?" He knew she was being overheard. "I have Mr Sproat for you."</p>
<p>He pulled out and round the corner, away from the traffic. There was a little nook of a shelter where the porters
used to keep their trolleys in the old days, and he squeezed in there for privacy.</p>
<p>"Hello?"</p>
<p>"Michael? Caught you at last, old boy. Alistair here." Sproat was trying to sound expansive, casual, but Jack knew
he'd be having a severe case of the squitters after the police found what he'd left behind in the lorry glove
box.</p>
<p>"Hi there, how is business?" He remembered the Irish accent just on time.</p>
<p>"Frankly Michael, it's just bloody awful. Some of that Glen Murroch turned up today. Seems a bunch of local idiots
stole it, but they're trying to implicate me in the whole mess. <em>Me?</em> Can you imagine that?</p>
<p>Jack almost chuckled, listening to Sproat's outrage. He'd been involved in scamming the customs, probably all his
life, if the flash car and the yacht down on the marina were anything to go by. Maybe Sproat didn't interpret that
as theft.</p>
<p>"They found some lading documents. Obvious forgeries, of course, but they've started a whole inventory of the stock.
I just had to touch base with you to warn you."</p>
<p>"Warn me of what?"</p>
<p>"The police and customs will want to go over the Dunvegan delivery, just to check the amounts against the files."</p>
<p>"That's no problem. They can come and have a look if they like."</p>
<p>"Good man. And I've got these Charter protesters all over me. You know they hired a lawyer and slapped an interdict
on me? <em>Me!</em> I'm going to talk to them this afternoon, see if I can palm them off. If I don't get reclaiming
the land, then the development deal will be down the river and I'll be up the sewage creek <em>sans paddle.</em>"
</p>
<p>Jack could heard the rising panic in Sproat's voice. His family had cruised it for generations, and according to his
uncle, they'd been running unmatured whisky across the Atlantic way back in the twenties during the prohibition
days. This was probably the first time in his life that Sproat had been really worried.</p>
<p>"Two things, Michael. Your associate, Mr D'Angeli, he said something about sorting these people out. If I can stall
them for a while, maybe he can do something for me? I really need some help on this one."</p>
<p>Jack paused, bit his lip, wondering if the time was right.</p>
<p>"Well, there's a bit of a problem there. It's Mr D'Angeli. He's not with us any more."</p>
<p>"Not with you? What, did he get fired? He quit?"</p>
<p>"No. I mean he's not <em>with </em>us any more. He's...ah....he's gone."</p>
<p>"You mean he's..."</p>
<p>"Yes," Jack broke in. "There was a bit of a run in with his....um, associates. They sort of voted him out.
Permanently. But don't worry, I'll make sure they don't know about you."</p>
<p>"Know about me?" Sproat's voice went up a whole octave. "What is there to know?"</p>
<p>"They know Mr D'Angeli was making a major purchase. If they thought there was anything untoward about the deal, maybe
they'd think they could put some pressure on you. I know them. It wouldn't be nice."</p>
<p>He had to put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.</p>
<p>"Pressure, what pressure?" He was all questions now.</p>
<p>"Don't worry about it. It's all there and documented. We got the two hundred barrels, average thirty gallons. Six
thousand in total. And you've had the five K up front."</p>
<p>"What are you talking about? It was two hundred at fifty five gallons per cask. That's <em>eleven </em>thousand
gallons."</p>
<p>Jack paused again. </p>
<p>"No Alistair, that can't be right. I've got the paperwork which tells me and everybody else that I bought six
thousand. All the barrels were carrying light. Must have been evaporation or something. What do you call it, the
Angels Share?"</p>
<p>There was a silence at the other end of the line. Jack could almost hear the workings in Sproat's brain. The cogs
reached the end of their travel and a cold realisation began to dawn.</p>
<p>"You can't do this to me." Sproat's voice had a cold shiver in it, as if he'd been sitting on ice all morning and big
cracks were starting to spread out from under.</p>
<p>"Do what, Alistair? <em>You</em> signed the paper."</p>
<p>"I'll have the law on you, you slimy shit, you and your greasy Italian hoods."</p>
<p>"Sure, Alistair. You go tell them you were selling short. Tell you another thing, you only saw <em>half</em> the
paperwork. I've got the other half. It shows the amount that went through the spirit safe when those barrels were
first filled and marked. Mr D'Angeli, he had a lot of contacts, God bless his dear departed soul. Don't go checking
the computer records, because they've all been put back to the original versions, and I've got a sworn affidavit
that details exactly what you were up to. You raise any waves and you have to tell the customs why you've been
ripping them off."</p>
<p>"You.....you...." Sproat sounded as if he was strangling. "You fucking <em>bastard.</em>"</p>
<p>"Very possibly," Jack said, agreeably. "You could come and take the barrels back as they are now, if you like. Oh,
no, sorry Alistair. There's a problem about that too. With the unfortunate Mr D'Angeli's disappearance, his
partnership's been wound up. Having sold on the latest delivery from yourselves, there don't seem to be any assets.
So you really can't come to collect, can you? Your former employees bought them in good faith, and paid good money
too. All receipted. That seems to have gone with Mr D'Angeli, wherever he is. I'm afraid this really hasn't been
your day."</p>
<p>He paused for a moment, savouring this. "In fact, I'd go as far as to say, you've <em>had</em> your day."</p>
<p>Sproat made spluttering sounds. Jack allowed himself a hard smile. He remembered Andy Kerr's face when he told the
men they were laid off, and he remembered how Sproat had brazenly told his own people they'd be out of work. No
matter what happened from now, he could take some satisfaction on hearing Sproat losing it.</p>
<p>"And as for those protesters who are soon to haul your well tanned arse into court, well, you're big enough to take
them on yourself. They'll skin you. Mr D'Angeli has checked out beyond reach, and now, as far as you're concerned,
so have I. And I have to say, it's been a real pleasure doing business. Pip-pip, <em>old boy</em>."</p>
<p>He hit the clear button on his cloned phone, dropped it to the hard tiles of the old railway room and stamped down
with his heel. He put all his weight into it. The mobile crunched and scattered, the last contact with Sproat
severed.</p>
<p>He went home first to get changed and get half an hour's sleep before he went round to Andy Kerr's house. Andy lived
on the far side of Drymains and Jack had been there many a time before, in pleasanter days. Sylvia Kerr was taking
the boys to the scouts.</p>
<p>"He's in the garden," she said, hustling the kids into the car. "Just go right round."</p>
<p>Sylvia flashed him a smile that she tried to make bright, but he could see the strain on her face from the events of
the past few weeks. He took a big breath and pushed the gate.</p>
<p>"If you've come for your job, I'd love to help, Jake." He poured them both a cold beer. "But it looks like
everybody's going to go."</p>
<p>"What's the score on the lease?"</p>
<p>"Sproat's squeezing my balls so tight my eyes are watering. I'm really sorry I had to lay you off, but I did my best.
Billy skimming from the bottom and then Scotmilk forcing me to cut to the bone on the Co-op contract, they were both
backbreakers."</p>
<p>Andy looked as if he hadn't smiled in months. His mouth was turned down at the edges, and last year's laughter-lines
had turned into deep, depressed furrows.</p>
<p>"And that Angus Baxter, he's run me through the grinder and back again. I hear they picked somebody up for the whisky
this morning. There was a bit of a shoot-out in the east end, so it said on the radio. I hope the bastards squeal
like pigs."</p>
<p>Jack bit his lip. This was not going to be easy.</p>
<p>"I've got some news for you. Maybe it'll cheer you up."</p>
<p>"It would have to be really good," Andy said. Jack hadn't touched the beer. Andy told him to drink it while it was
going.</p>
<p>"I heard Sproat's in big trouble."</p>
<p>"Couldn't happen to a nicer wanker. But who isn't in trouble?" He pointed at his fine sandstone house. "I'm going to
have to put this place on the market. Want to buy it?"</p>
<p>Jack laughed drily. "With what you paid me? That's a good one."</p>
<p>"So what about Sproat, may that creep rot and burn."</p>
<p>"He won't get the mall deal. He's had a writ slapped on him that stops him demolishing and dumping into the harbour.
It'll be tied up in court for years. He can't reclaim the land, so the mall doesn't get built. And that puts him in
a whole lot of trouble."</p>
<p>"Too late for me."</p>
<p>"Well," Jack said. "Not necessarily so." He prepared himself.</p>
<p>"There's a couple of other things I can't tell you about, but he's in a real heap of trouble."</p>
<p>"Nice to have company," Andy said. "I'm in so deep I'm on tip-toe."</p>
<p>"What I mean is, he's getting very strapped for cash."</p>
<p>"How do you know?"</p>
<p>"Trust me. I've been working on it. Anyway, I've got some friends who are looking for business. They want to know if
you're up for a deal."</p>
<p>"What kind of a deal?" Andy bent forward over the garden table.</p>
<p>"Remember I told you about that cheese business that went flat up on Skye?"</p>
<p>"Sure. I told you it was too far away."</p>
<p>"Well, they've got five hundred head of jerseys that they're sending to slaughter unless they find a market for the
milk and cream. Scotmilk won't touch it because of the distance."</p>
<p>"That's the problem."</p>
<p>"I've worked out something that might just come together. If they were to get the milk to you, could you process it
for them?"</p>
<p>"What do they want, cream? Pasteurised, UHT? I don't have the transport, remember."</p>
<p>"They've got wheels. You can work the percentage between you."</p>
<p>Andy pushed back and sized him up.</p>
<p>"What's the score Jack? You've only been out of work a couple of weeks."</p>
<p>Jack met his look. He remembered his uncle playing with Sproat.</p>
<p>"I'm going to make you an offer you won't understand. How do you fancy getting into the drink business?"</p>
<p>"I <em>am</em> in the drink business. For about a month, anyway."</p>
<p>"No, I mean <em>real</em> drink."</p>
<p>It was time to put the cards on the table. "Listen to this, I've done a deal with some friends of mine up there. In
fact, what we've done is, well, we've gone and bought a distillery."</p>
<p>"You bought a distillery? <em>You</em>? Come on Jake, don't yank it. Where would you get the cash?"</p>
<p>"I didn't need cash, just a promise. That's how it works, only I never knew it before. Anyway, it's only a wee place,
falling apart, but it makes malt and it's got plenty of storage. But best of all is, along with this distillery
comes a licence to make spirits. That's a licence to print your own banknotes if you use it right. And it's
mine."</p>
<p>Andy's face was a picture of incredulity. Jack pushed on regardless.</p>
<p>"Anyway, here's where you come in. You've got the plant and the bottling line. I've got somebody working on a grant
that would cover the transport costs back and forth, and some development dough for tooling up."</p>
<p>"But I won't have the premises. Sproat's rent is through the roof."</p>
<p>"Don't you worry about Sproat. Anyway, you sign up and no matter what happens, you can work a deal or relocate, but I
don't think you'll have to move."</p>
<p>Andy shook his head, and Jack could see the faint ray of new hope tussle with old despair.</p>
<p>"If I was to change production, I'd need a cash-flow and I'm strapped Jake. The bank's pushed me so far out, they
only touch me with a billhook. The pointy end."</p>
<p>"You won't need the bank. I'll fix you up with some rolling credit. They've got the transport. They deliver and you
get paid per processed load. It's guaranteed. Look, there's a herd of Jerseys up on that farm with tits like full
bagpipes making them buckle at the knees. We're talking fifty percent cream. Champion grass munchers. And the
farmer, he's desperate for the business too or his herd goes down for dog-meat. You're teetering on the edge. The
distillery needs a supply. It's like a triangle. Each side supports the other."</p>
<p>"Jeez, Jake, this is all a bit sudden. How did you get into all this?"</p>
<p>Andy picked up the beer and downed it in a single long swallow. He put the glass down and then groaned. He put both
hands up against his forehead and rocked back and forth. For a moment Jack though he had burst into tears.</p>
<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
<p>"Ice cream headache. I drank it too fast."</p>
<p>Jack exploded with laughter in a sudden release of tension.</p>
<p>"You scared me there. I though you were having a stroke."</p>
<p>Andy shook his head as if to clear it.</p>
<p>"I've thought that myself this past couple of weeks. Listen Jake, I have to tell you, Angus Baxter thinks I'm
involved in some scam over these tankers. I'm not out of the woods yet."</p>
<p>"Don't worry about that. Everything's going to be okay. You were going to give them up, weren't you? They just
repossessed them a day early. They'll turn up, I'm certain about that."</p>
<p>Andy Kerr froze on the point of leaning forward.</p>
<p>"How did you know that?"</p>
<p>"Know what?"</p>
<p>"They were repossessed. Nobody knew that. Just what is going on?"</p>
<p>"Nothing you need to know about Andy. Everything's going to be okay. If we've stopped Sproat in his tracks, he can't
sell, and the only reason he hiked your rent was to get you out. If he can't sell, he's stuck for cash and he can't
afford to lose you as a tenant. He's in the bag."</p>
<p>"You've got it all figured out Jake," Andy said, but his tone was all full of gravel.</p>
<p>"I hoped if I could bring you a deal, you could keep the boys on."</p>
<p>Andy stared unblinking. "Jake, what happened to my tankers?"</p>
<p>Jack met him eye to eye again.</p>
<p>"You don't want to know."</p>
<p>"Jake. I'm asking you again. What the fuck happened to my tankers."</p>
<p>"Well, if it's between you and me. I really have to trust you on this." Jack made it a question.</p>
<p>"Between us then. You and me. Just tell me."</p>
<p>"We had to borrow them, Andy."</p>
<p>He never saw the punch. One minute he was eye to eye with Andy Kerr and the next he was right out of the garden chair
and flat on his back. The crash of his landing socked all the air out of his lungs and little golden stars spangled
in peripheral vision.</p>
<p>Andy was across the table, knocking it on its edge. The beer glass spun away and smashed against a small grinning
gnome. He grabbed Jack's collar with one hand and swung another roundhouse. Jack just had time to block it and
almost dislocated a thumb.</p>
<p>"You nearly put me in the fucking jail. Jesus! I've been hauled in there and that big Baxter's put me right through
the wringer and everybody's been pointing the finger." He swung again, clipped Jack on the chin and Jack didn't have
the heart or the urge to fight back. He knew he had this coming.</p>
<p>"I've had the house on the market and Sylvia going half demented and people round to put a price on the plant."
Andy's voice was rising. "All because you and a bunch of loonies think they're Ronnie fucking Biggs!"</p>
<p>He swung again and Jack caught his hand, held it in a tight grip, taking the force out of the blow and preventing
Andy from drawing back. They lay on the glass, straining, faces almost touching, both of them breathing hard.
Finally Jack felt the strength go out of him. He eased himself out and rolled away. Andy got up, his anger part
spent in the action.</p>
<p>"<em>Fuck</em>." A long exhale.</p>
<p>"Okay. You're right. I deserved that. But it's done and it's almost over, and I know you won't believe this, but we
had to do it, so we could get the rest of the stuff in place. You were always going to be part of the deal, but you
couldn't know about it. You're no crook. You'd never have gone for it. But if that's out of your system, and you
won't start hooking and jabbing again, we can talk. You were screwed anyway, you told me that yourself. This is a
chance to get unscrewed. You don't need tankers any more, so when they turn up, they'll be repossessed again, and if
they don't, the insurance will cough. All you have to do is take delivery from Skye and convert the supply."</p>
<p>"Into what?"</p>
<p>"Condensed milk."</p>
<p>"The Carnation stuff? There's no market for that."</p>
<p>"Sure there is. I can guarantee it. So do you want the business?"</p>
<p>"What's the catch?"</p>
<p>"No catch. You and me become partners. We save the dairy, and we make a few bucks. No, we make a lot of bucks."</p>
<p>Jack held out his hand. Andy looked at it for so long that Jack almost drew it back again.</p>
<p>Finally he reached out and took it.</p>
<p>"You've turned out a right devious bastard, Jack Lorne."</p>
<p>It was after seven by the time he got home and he felt as if he'd been on his feet for a fortnight. He went straight
into the shower to rinse off the grime of a long day, changed and came downstairs. His mother came in from the
garden and as soon as she saw him she threw her arms around him and hugged him so tight he felt his ribs creak.</p>
<p>"Mike okay?"</p>
<p>"He's fine." She put a finger to his cheek. "He's better off than you. What happened to your face? No, don't tell me.
Today's going to be a total blank from now on."</p>
<p>He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Andy Kerr was no slouch. The bruise was already turning purple and
swelling outwards..</p>
<p>"There's somebody here to see you," Alice said.</p>
<p>"Who's that?" For a moment his belly clenched tight. He didn't need any more surprises.</p>
<p>"She's out in the garden. Wants to talk to you."</p>
<p>"If you're going to start punching at me again, I've already had my quota for the day."</p>
<p>Kate Delaney looked up at him, saw the bruise that matched the swelling on her own cheek, and despite the ache, she
couldn't keep the smile off her face.</p>
<p>Kerrigan Deane had been all business, but by the time she got to talk to him, Kate's thoughts were all over the
place.</p>
<p>She'd gone through the revolving door again, with the last question still unanswered. The concierge pressed for the
lift and she rummaged in her bag for the papers the lawyer had sent to her. She was still doing that when she walked
through the open doorway, attention elsewhere, and stumbled straight into Deane's secretary who was coming in the
opposite direction, equally preoccupied.</p>
<p>Papers fountained and scattered all over the expensive carpet, while Kate and the other girl held on to each other to
save from falling, both of them apologising. They bent simultaneously to pick up the strewn papers, scooping at
random.</p>
<p>She was on her knees, a sheaf of documents in one hand, picking up another, when Jack Lorne's name seemed to jumpe
out of a mass of type into sharp focus.</p>
<div class='block'>...just to confirm the legal opinion is that there is a <span class='noital'>prima facie</span> case
for common ownership of the harbour at Aitkenbar Distillery. From the research studies you supplied, our own
investigations have been unable to discover any clear private title to the harbour basin. Such title is not included
in the Sproat family holdings or within the aegis of Aitkenbar Distillery.
</div>
<div class='block'> Consequently we are preparing a writ for interdict which will be served under the auspices of the
Charter 1315 organisation. We are confident this action will succeed and that attempts to have it lifted will be
denied. It is likely that the other party will seek an action of <span class='noital'>declarator</span>, to get a
formal ruling on ownership, which, whether it succeeds or not
</div>
<div class='block'>&mdash; and it is our considered opinion is that it will not - will lead to an extensive delay. Ms
Delaney will, of course, be kept apprised of developments.
</div>
<div class='block'>As you requested, details of costs will be forwarded to you as they arise. We thank you for the
initial retaining fee.
</div>
<p>Kerrigan Deane's flourish of a signature was jet black below the typeface. Above it Jack's name stood out in bold.
The address below it said: <em>c/o Bruce, Thornbank Cottage</em>.</p>
<p>Kate knelt on the carpet while the other girl scrambled for the remainder of the papers. It was only when the type
began to waver in her vision that she remembered to breathe again.</p>
<p><em>Damn you Jack Lorne. How the hell did you manage this?</em></p>
<p>She got up and came towards him.</p>
<p>"No. I'm not going to start punching, idiot. Though I really should, for the catalogue of bloody lies you've told
me."</p>
<p>"I only told you one." He looked at her warily. Her last hook had caught him on the same cheek that Andy Kerr had
cracked. A third punch would be too many. But she reached out and took both of his hands in hers.</p>
<p>"You put Kerrigan Deane up to it." A statement, not a question.</p>
<p>"He told you that?" A sear of indignation flared.</p>
<p>"No, he's a total professional," she said, squeezing his fingers. "I asked him, but he wouldn't say a thing. I had an
accident and knocked some papers out of his secretary's hand. Your name was on some of them. It wasn't her fault or
his."</p>
<p>He returned her gaze, saying nothing.</p>
<p>"Well?"</p>
<p>"You really should watch where you're going," he finally said." </p>
<p>"And so should you by the looks of it." She pulled him towards the bench where his mother liked to sit and read on
hot days. He caught Alice out of the corner of his eye, just passing the kitchen window. She flashed him a mother's
smile. He let himself sit.</p>
<p>"You paid Mr Deane to start the action, and you set me up for it."</p>
<p>"I'm saying nothing until I see my lawyer."</p>
<p>She laughed. "You really are an idiot, Jack Lorne. Why didn't you tell me?"</p>
<p>"You didn't need to know. You shouldn't know now. It could get dangerous."</p>
<p>"How did you do it?"</p>
<p>"Leverage."</p>
<p>"I don't understand." The sun was forcing its way through the thin clouds, low rays glinting copper on her hair.</p>
<p>"Aristotle's the man. He said if he had a long enough lever and a place to wedge it, he could move the world. It
turns out that leverage is what the Sproats and their likes have had all this time. It's time we had a turn. And a
crowbar helps."</p>
<p>"You're talking in riddles."</p>
<p>"I told you before. People like Sproat, they just push too far. Everybody gets used to it and they take, take, take.
They get so used to taking that they don't know what the real world's all about. They think it's their god-given
right, but it's not. Sproat never had it tough and he never had to work and all he's ever learned to do is use money
his daddy earned and fiddle the system."</p>
<p>"Is this a lecture?"</p>
<p>"It's a lesson it took me long enough to suss. Everybody was talking about what was happening to them, what was being
done to them. but words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing."</p>
<p>He paused, trying to rein himself in, but he was still hyped from everything that had happened and couldn't put a
brake on it.</p>
<p>"Sproat doesn't realise that it goes both ways, and now he's finding out what it's like to be under the gun. You get
enough people angry and one of these days they'll all gang up on you and you won't have anybody to back you up. That
is where Sproat is. His arse will be nipping, believe me."</p>
<p>"Nice picture," she couldn't keep the smile away. "And so eloquently put."</p>
<p>"And the higher up they are, the bigger the splat they make when they hit. Sproat's swaying on his feet when he
should be down and taking a long count. He's going to hit like a comet. A blaze of glory."</p>
<p>"The last one that hit wiped out the dinosaurs."</p>
<p>"That's a mighty metaphor, Kate. Those dinosaurs had their chance. With them gone, it gave all the little creatures a
start."</p>
<p>"You are one damn smartarse, Jack Lorne. You've always got the smart answer. Always have to have the last word, don't
you?"</p>
<p>"Does that mean I'm forgiven for the Armani?"</p>
<p>"Jack. You're a bastard, pure and simple. But I think I love the hell out of you."</p>
<p>"You what?" He wasn't sure he'd heard that.</p>
<p>"You heard what I said." She pulled on his hands again, eased him forward. "Thank those crazy boys for me, will
you?"</p>
<p>"No. They don't know I've been spending money on a good cause, not yet. I haven't got round to telling them the whole
plan."</p>
<p>"So what happens next?"</p>
<p>"I could tell you," he said, gripping her hands. "But then....then I'd have to kiss you."</p>
<p>"What did you say?"</p>
<p>"You heard what I said." He pulled and she bent into it. Both of them winced when their bruised cheeks collided, but
the pain faded out in the middle of it.</p>
<p>"Two things," she said when they broke away.</p>
<p>"No surprise there."</p>
<p>"I think you look terrific in Armani."</p>
<p>"And the other?"</p>
<p>"If your hair goes like that in twenty years, I won't really mind."</p>
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<h1>25</h1>
<p>They were on the move with the rising sun at their backs as the mist still hung in a thick veil over the curves of
the river.</p>
<p>Neil was at the controls of the crane in the wee cold hours, when the night watchman on the site was asleep and
snoring loud enough to make the hut shake. It was too early for any movement except the flutter of small birds in
the bushes beside the fence. The town was almost silent.</p>
<p>The crane, that hadn't been difficult to get a hold of, not when Shug Cannon was the chargehand in the direct works
site yard. Neil had told him he'd only need it for a couple of hours and would put it back long before the shift
started. Shug was okay about it for a couple of bottles. It was a town council mobile job and security was would be
so haphazard that nobody would ask any questions unless Neil hit an overhead cable or a passing bus, but he promised
not to do that.</p>
<p>Big Lars called at half past midnight when he and the Valkyrie and his four-strong crew were down off the south tip
of Kintyre and heading round to the little port at Tarbert on the Atlantic coast of Argyll, the jump-off for the
western isles. Jack took it on the spare mobile in the back seat of Jed's runaround.</p>
<p>"We have to change the plan <em>Yack.</em>"</p>
<p>"We can't change the plan. We're getting ready to move right now."</p>
<p>"It's the harbour at Tarbert." Lars bawled against static on the ship-to-shore. "There's a big boat stuck on a shoal.
They have to wait for the high tide to tug her off. You can't get in there with the load and I can't get in with the
Valkyrie."</p>
<p>"So what do we do? Put it on a boat and row out from shore?"</p>
<p>"It's okay. I spoke already to the harbourmaster at Oban. It's only two more hours and they have a boom rig to lift
heavy cargo. All fixed up, it is now. And the Valkyrie, the screw is okay. She is running sweet."</p>
<p>"Problem?" Ed asked. His face was rough with the scrapes and scratches of his flight through the bushes after he had
climbed out to battle Foley. Otherwise he was cool as ever.</p>
<p>"Was there ever a day without one? Eric the Red says we can't load at Tarbert. It has to be Oban. But at least his
screw is working."</p>
<p>Neil leant back over the seat. "Der scroo is voorking in de vooter." It got a laugh.</p>
<p>"How many miles to Oban?"</p>
<p>"Just over a hundred. It's nearer here than Tarbert, but he'll need another two hours, which is two hours more
exposure. We have to move now before the town wakes up."</p>
<p>The keys were in the crane truck. It belched black fumes until the engine heated up and Neil used the side roads to
get it beyond the building site and down the little track road on the other side of the fence, hidden from view from
most of the building site. Ed had the snippers and unzipped the chain-link in a matter of seconds. He and Tam
squeezed through the gap and made their way to the stack of big tanks.</p>
<p>"What's the weight of these things?" Neil was getting used to the controls. He was a good singer and good with his
hands. Jack thought he under-rated himself because of his weight.</p>
<p>"A zillion tons," Jack said. "Each of them's full to the top."</p>
<p>"This should take it."</p>
<p>"It better. You spill one and we're done for."</p>
<p>"We spill one and Donny will get down in the mud on his hands and knees and start licking."</p>
<p>They used the cradle hawsers to snag the first tank, Ed and Tam working fast and quiet. Tam stood on the stack and
waved the all-clear and Neil eased back on the sticks, taking the weight. The whole crane shuddered and the line
sang with tension and then, very slowly, the ponderous weight sucked up from the rain-wet earth and swayed in the
air.</p>
<p>"Told you it would take it." Neil pulled back on the little control with one hand and flipped down his sunglasses
against the sharp rays of the rising sun.</p>
<p>"Thank God for that." Jack allowed himself to exhale. Neil touched the lift again and the crane creaked and squealed
in a protest of metal and the big yellow tank raised slowly upwards until it was just over the height of the
fence.</p>
<p>"This is the tricky bit," Neil said. Jack said nothing while he worked. The crane arm swung slowly to the left and
the tank began to pendulum even more slowly, following the motion.</p>
<p>"Perfect," Neil said, but Jack's breath was backed up again as the first load approached the concrete fencepost.</p>
<p>Without any warning everything tilted downwards in a blur of movement and Jack was thrown forward so hard his bruised
cheek thudded against the window. The crane groaned as it lurched down and to the left.</p>
<p>Beyond the fence, somebody shouted in alarm and the yellow weight careened to the end of the pendulum swing, hit
against the post and then dropped to the ground again. Everything stopped.</p>
<p>Jack picked himself up, shook his head.</p>
<p>"What the hell happened?"</p>
<p>"Maybe it couldn't take the weight after all."</p>
<p>The whole cab was canted forward and the cables on the gantry arm had gone slack. Beyond the hedge and the fence, Ed
was bawling at them to lift the tank. A sharp whiff of whisky soured the morning air.</p>
<p>"Shit, we've sprung a leak," Neil said.</p>
<p>Ed came pushing through the hole on the fence.</p>
<p>"You have to lift it up again. Tam was under the tank when it came down."</p>
<p>"Is he hurt?"</p>
<p>"I don't know. He's yelling like a banshee."</p>
<p>Jack hauled himself out of the cab and ran for the hedge. It was only five in the morning and everything was going
wrong. He just had time to notice the crane's front wheels were buried up to their axles in the soft earth at the
side of the track and the whole machine was leaning at a drunken angle. He shoved through the gap in the fence.</p>
<p>"Get this off me," Tam was yelling. At least he was alive.</p>
<p>"Shhh...you'll wake the whole town." The early sparrows scattered in alarm.</p>
<p>"Screw them. Are you trying to kill me?"</p>
<p>Tam was face down in the mud, arms splayed out to the side. The back of his thighs and his calves were jammed
underneath the big tank and a tiny jet of good whisky was hissing from a puncture close to the top where the tank
had slammed into the upright. It splashed on Tam's back and soaked into his shirt.</p>
<p>"Are you hurt?"</p>
<p>"How should I know. I can't feel my bloody legs."</p>
<p>Neil came barrelling through, snagged his sweat shirt on either side of the gap.</p>
<p>"I can fix it," he said. "There's a set of bracing legs on the front, but I need something to wedge them on. Hi Tam,
are you okay?"</p>
<p>"No thanks to you. I thought you could operate that crane?" Tam made the statement a question. His fingers were
scrabbling at the rough earth, trying fruitlessly to pull himself free.</p>
<p>"I need some planks and I'll get you out."</p>
<p>"If my back's broken I'll kick your arse," Tam threatened. Jack managed a laugh despite the panic, sounding almost
hysterical. It was clear Tam was just stuck and not hurt. It took them another fifteen minutes to get some
scaffolding planks from the site and form a thick platform to brace the jacks against the mud. Neil was up in the
cabin again and the runners protested at the cable went taught again. Jack watched from ground level, just able to
see Neil beyond the hedge.</p>
<p>The big tank sucked upwards an inch at a time and when it was just clear of the muck, they dragged Tam free.</p>
<p>"Look at the state of these," he said, clawing the thick clay off his trousers. "I got these in the Gap sale and
they're totally ruined."</p>
<p>This time Neil got it right and the container cleared the fence by at least a foot, drizzling whisky all the time.
The hole in the tank was very close to the top, and they'd have to live with the small loss. If Jack could find the
duct tape he'd make an emergency repair to minimise the damage, but they were getting near to the end now.</p>
<p>It was almost six thirty when they got the last container onto the back of the flatloader and lashed into place. Ed
had found a hose hear the cement mixer and used it to jet the mud from Tam, pressing his thumb over the flow to set
it at stun. Clay flew everywhere but after a few minutes, most of it was elsewhere. Tam stood glowering and
dripping.</p>
<p>By seven they were gone and it was only when the flatloader cranked up to move out in a rumble of gears that old
Charlie Oliver woke up in his watchman's hut and stumbled out into the morning. It took him another half hour to
notice that the big tanks had disappeared and when he went to investigate the vacant space, he discovered the
miraculous puddle of pure scotch whisky.</p>
<p>He used an old enamel mug to scoop some for a cautious taste and by eight in the morning he was as drunk as a lord.
That's how the site foreman found him when the shift started and he called the police right away.</p>
<p>By that time the boys were on the road again.</p>
<p>"I never knew you had a gun until you started firing," Neil said. He'd taken the crane back to the old depot on the
broad meadow near the river and now they were all at the lorry park close to Gus Ferguson's yard, with the tall
tanks lashed and wedged in-line on the back of the flatloader. "It sounded just like a pop-gun from up there."</p>
<p>"It was like a cannon down there," Donny said. "He never told me what was happening. I nearly shit myself."</p>
<p>"I had the binoculars right on them. You should have seen the look on Cullen's face. He was like a goldfish when you
pointed the shooter at him. I kept thinking of that guy in Dirty Harry."</p>
<p>"What guy," Donny asked.</p>
<p>"You know the one." Neil's voice went husky and western. He held up his hands together, finger on an imaginary
trigger.</p>
<p>"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this
excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world,
and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya
punk?"</p>
<p>Jack laughed, and not just at Neil's word perfect soliloquy. He was picturing his uncle in mask and balaclava in
Whitehead's scrap yard, with the fake gun up at Foley's ear. <em>"Go on, make my day."</em> He'd been doing Clint
Eastwood too.</p>
<p>Neil snorted with laughter. "And then the cops came in. Oh, you should have seen that. Cullen was down there in the
puddle with the gun in both hands, and six of those swat guys on him. It was like Lethal Weapon all over again."</p>
<p> "What do we do about him?" Donny asked.</p>
<p> "He was caught shooting at the cops. We don't need to bother about him."</p>
<p>"No, I mean <em>him.</em>" He jerked his thumb towards the top of the tanker. Nobody had mentioned Foley for a while.
</p>
<p>"Better get him down here. We have to use everything we got. By now Baxter will have my name and I don't want to be
around when he comes sniffing. Old Sandy, he'll keep the family tight, but very soon Tam's site boss is going to
notice a big space where these tanks used to be, and with the amount of hooch we managed to lose, somebody's bound
to make a connection. So it's diversion time."</p>
<p> After he'd told them he had a market for the stolen whisky, four of them had gone out in Jed's wreck and Tam's bike,
scouting possible routes north. In this part of the west, roads are narrow and twisting and some of them won't take
a heavy load. It was imperative to Jack to have alternative ways to go, just in case of trouble. As he told them
many a time, straight from the manual of good business practise: <em>There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine
lack of preparation.</em></p>
<p>Tam came rolling up on the bike. He'd gone home and changed into his leathers. The spare helmet dangled on the
pillion hook and he swapped it with Jed's white racing lid. He slipped on the pale jacket with the big reflectors
while Jed carefully stuck the chequered tape round the helmet.</p>
<p>"All set?"</p>
<p>"Ready to rock and roll," Neil said. "Give us a hand with old Wiggy, would you?"</p>
<p>"I just had a shower."</p>
<p> Jack rapped his helmet with hard knuckles. "Don't get squeamish on us."</p>
<p>They got the heavy roll down from the frame Neil had fixed to disguise the tanker's shape, manhandled it to the
ground, and then stood it up as best they could against the lorry.</p>
<p>"Jed, you and Neil take him with you. But you better unwrap him first."</p>
<p>"Aw, come on," Neil protested. "I'm not travelling with that stinking up the place."</p>
<p>"It's okay," Jack said. "Me and Jed, we were out yesterday checking out some places. You just go along with him and
we'll be cool. Both of you, keep listening to the police band and make sure you watch my back. Make sure you run
interference all the way."</p>
<p>Foley's grey face lolled from the top where the canvas unpeeled and his wig was askew. Dried blood stuck to the scalp
where the hairpiece had been scraped off by the rough oak bark.</p>
<p>"God, he smells as bad as ever," Neil said dismally. "It's like Weekend at Bernie's."</p>
<p>Despite his misgivings, he hauled the stiffly sagging corpse up to the passenger seat, with a look of serious disgust
twisting his mouth downwards. </p>
<p>"Who's got the spare phone?" </p>
<p>"What happened to yours?" Neil reached for the bag.</p>
<p>"I stood on it. It's as dead as he is."</p>
<p>Jack took the mobile and put it in his inside pocket.</p>
<p>"Okay, this is it. We blow it now and we're blown away, so try hard not to blow it."</p>
<p>Jed took the other helmet, hauled Neil's arm and pushed him ahead into the cabin, up against their unwelcome
passenger. Ed climbed up into the second tanker and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, no need for words.
He started the engine and gunned the throttle.</p>
<p>Jack waved to them, got in the cabin of the flatloader and closed the door. He clapped Donny on the shoulder, checked
the phone, made sure Neil had programmed the one-touch.</p>
<p>"Calling Elvis?"</p>
<p>"Uh-huh-huh."</p>
<p>"Wagons <em>ho!</em>"</p>
<p>"Thang you ver' much, ladies n' gennelmen."</p>
<p>The big diesel snorted and the whole frame shuddered. He eased the long stick forward and the transporter picked up
speed as it headed for the gate. They all went in convoy and Tam paused outside, closed the gate behind them and
then got back on the bike, following the trail of new blue exhaust fumes.</p>
<p>Jack took the north route that would take the load up past Loch Lomond, easing the rig round the bends on the Quarry
Road where Foley had taken his fatal last powered flight.</p>
<p>The phone rang.</p>
<p>"Retro?" Neil's voice.</p>
<p>"Speak to me."</p>
<p>"It's 106 miles to Oban," his Philadelphia accent was spot-on this time. "We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of
cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."</p>
<p>"You keep your mind on the job and tell him to keep his eye on the road."</p>
<p>"Sure. But which movie was it." Jack could hear Jed laughing in the cab.</p>
<p>"Elroy Blues. Blues Brothers."</p>
<p>"Got it in one....."</p>
<p>A tremendous crash blasted through the receiver and Jack jerked the phone away from his ear. He tapped his foot on
the brake. Neil bawled a curse that even through the phone could be heard yards away.</p>
<p>"What's happened?" Donny turned round.</p>
<p>"Sounds like they've wrecked the truck."</p>
<p>Angus Baxter hunkered down to examine the marks on the scaffolding planks on the other side of the fence, puffing
furiously at his pipe. He'd been on his way to ask a few questions when the call came in and he'd diverted fast when
he heard the mention of whisky. The solid clay had kept the puddle from draining away.</p>
<p>"Is the watchman sober yet?"</p>
<p>"Not until next Tuesday," Jimmy Balloch said. "He's had a tankful."</p>
<p>"These marks here. Something heavy was pressed down on them. They've made square indentations in the surface."</p>
<p>Colin Dundas bent to join him. "Those are struts. You can see where the wheels went down in the mud, but the planks
took the weight here."</p>
<p>"And there's a yellow mark on the concrete post," Baxter said. "So it seems they used a crane to steal your
tanks."</p>
<p>"That's a bit risky for what they're worth," Dundas said.</p>
<p>"Not if they were filled up with the finest Glen Murroch, which is what I'm thinking."</p>
<p>He eased to his feet and turned to Balloch. "Get me control room. We've a chance to tie this whole thing up
today."</p>
<p>He walked away with him to gain some privacy.</p>
<p>"From the barrels in Ferguson's yard, they had only half the load, assuming the rest of it didn't all go down the
drain, which it didn't from the evidence here. But we know there were two tankers, so my guess is, they hid the
other half of it here where nobody would think to look. But they're moving now, and from the amount in that puddle,
they're not gone long. I want every available patrol car out looking for big loads."</p>
<p>"Where should they look?"</p>
<p>"Every damned where. I want tankers and containers. They're not daft, these people. They'll either have pumped the
stuff back into the tankers, or they'll have covered those big drain sumps so they don't show. One thing we can be
very sure about."</p>
<p>He sucked on the pipe until it blazed: "They won't be travelling very fast."</p>
<hr />
<p>Manky Franky Hennigan got such a fright that he fell off the pile of pallets he used for a bed and dropped his last
bottle of Eldorado wine. It shattered like a bomb on the old brickwork floor. The whole place shook and shuddered
the way it had on the night the black figure had come striding out of the light and replaced the wine with whisky.
He stumbled out of his little niche into the misty morning, pushed his way through the undergrowth until he came to
the side of the road and then he stopped dead, swaying only slightly.</p>
<p>The big silver thing was only yards away.</p>
<p>Franky took two steps backwards, reaching a dirty hand into his pocket for his glasses.</p>
<p><em> "We come from a distant galaxy far far away. We know who you are."</em> The clarity of that memory was pretty
spectacular for Franky at this time in the morning.</p>
<p>The figure had pushed in further and a black shiny finger touched him in the middle of the chest. <em>"Tell no-one,
or we'll be back with a death ray to fry your brain."</em></p>
<p>A sudden panic filled him. That crafty big policeman had got him to tell everything and then they'd stuck a
microphone in front of him and he just couldn't help himself. Didn't the thing in the black suit know he was a
drunk?</p>
<p>Had they come back? Had the come all that way for him?</p>
<p>The frame was a clear foot higher than the cabin roof and when they came to the low railway bridge behind Aitkenbar
Distillery, that bare twelve inches was just enough to catch the cast iron lintel edge as they went underneath.</p>
<p> It hit the metal with a sound like an explosion and the force of it ripped back the entire covering off the top, the
way Foley's wig had peeled.</p>
<p>"What the hell was that?" Jack heard the blurted question on the other phone.</p>
<p>Jed stamped on the brake and brought the whole rig to a sliding stop. His heart had somersaulted into his throat and
sat there shuddering. He finally got his breath.</p>
<p>"I think we hit the bridge."</p>
<p>Foley's body had pitched violently forward and was now jammed against the windscreen, the grey mouth oddly
fish-like.</p>
<p>"Put a seat-belt on that, would you?" Jed opened the door and hauled out. He swung on the footplate, looking
backwards and let out a groan. All of Neil's handiwork was a tangle of metal struts and tarpaulin, accordioned back
from the leading edge and piled at the rear.</p>
<p>"So much for the camouflage," he said. "The truck's okay, but we'll have to shift that lot."</p>
<p>He took the phone.</p>
<p>"It's okay, we did hit the bridge."</p>
<p>"You did what?" Jack sounded furious and incredulous all at once.</p>
<p>"No, it was just the covering on the tank. It was too high. We'll just strip it off and dump it." </p>
<p>"Nobody hurt?"</p>
<p>"Just Foley. He wasn't wearing a belt."</p>
<p>"I'll send him a get-well card. No more crazy stuff, Bullitt. Remember it's not a stock car."</p>
<p>"Roger wilco."</p>
<p>It took them only five minutes to rip the thin framework from the back and leave it beside the road under the bridge.
They were just about to pull away when Jed spotted Franky Hennigan standing in the undergrowth, face wide and pale,
mouth working silently. He grabbed the phone from Neil and reached out from the cab.</p>
<p>"You've been told before," he said, pointing the antenna straight at him. "You saw nothing."</p>
<p>Manky Franky Hennigan slowly sank to his raggedy knees, closed his eyes tight and clasped both hands together in
unspoken plea. By the time he opened his eyes again, the big silver machine had vanished in a swirl of blue
smoke. </p>
<p>They were rolling through the morning countryside by the time Inspector Baxter got round to Jack's house and already
Jack knew the big policeman had got the arithmetic right. Ed had picked up the cavalry call on the police band and
relayed it to him as he drove up past Luss on the Loch shore road.</p>
<p>"They're looking for tankers and heavy load," he said.</p>
<p>"Contact Bullitt and let him know. I need those diversions now."</p>
<p>Ed made the call and waited until he got to the junction of the main road crossing east to west and took the west
route, which could keep him well in range while Jack hurried on northwards. Here, the roads were narrower, and
allowed for some manoeuvre, especially with the height and panoramic advantage you got from the cabin as you
travelled past the country hedges. Sometimes you could get plenty of warning in the distance and take action.</p>
<p>Sandy Bruce let Baxter and Jimmy Balloch in. Alice sat at the table with a cup of tea. After the one-day lapse when
Michael was missing she had reverted to non-smoking mode. Michael ate his toast, nose buried as usual in a
text-book.</p>
<p>"I'm looking for Jack Lorne," the inspector said. He flashed a card very quickly. Sandy Bruce recognised him alright,
but he wasn't in the mood to make it easy.</p>
<p>"Who are you?"</p>
<p>"Detective Inspector Angus Baxter, Levenford CID."</p>
<p>"Show me your card."</p>
<p>"I showed you already."</p>
<p>"You must think I've got eyes like a hawk, young fella." </p>
<p>Baxter showed it again. Sandy took it, made a play of unfolding his glasses and putting them on. Jimmy Balloch
smirked behind his superior's back. Michael bit down on his toast to keep from laughing, despite his own
nervousness. Jack always said, <em>keep them off balance.</em> He must have got that from his uncle..</p>
<p>"Police eh? What do you want our Jack for?"</p>
<p>"Can we come in?"</p>
<p>Sandy stood back for a moment, rubbed his chin as if considering and finally nodded. "I suppose so. I expect he's
found some money and you're here to return it? Maybe a reward?"</p>
<p>"No, not that. Is Jack in? Or his brother?"</p>
<p>"Jack's down in London. He went two days ago, looking for work. It's a crying shame what a young fellow has to do to
get work around here these days. It's cost him an arm and a leg in train fares. Hey Alice, you think Jack should
apply to the police? He's got the height for it. And he's easily got the brains as well."</p>
<p>Michael snorted, unable to keep it in. Sandy made it sound as if he was rambling. Alice looked up as the two
policemen came crowding into the kitchen.</p>
<p>"Sit down," she said. She offered them a cup of tea, which both of them accepted, and then she asked what this was
about.</p>
<p>"We're hoping to speak to your son Jack."</p>
<p>"My brother-in-law just told you he isn't here."</p>
<p>"And is this your other son, Michael?"</p>
<p>Mike looked over the edge of the book, grinned and stuck his hand out quickly. Baxter took it, shook it, taken by
surprise. Sandy threw the boy a wink. <em>Keep them off balance.</em></p>
<p>"Pleased to meet you. You're an inspector? CID? Cool." He made himself sound naively enthusiastic. "Can I see your
badge?"</p>
<p>Baxter showed him the warrant. "Michael, can you tell us where you were on Monday at eleven am?"</p>
<p>"I don't think so, Mr Baxter," Alice butted in. She put both hands on the table. "You're in my house and you haven't
told us what you're doing here. I asked you what this is all about and so far you haven't answered."</p>
<p>Jimmy Balloch looked at her with some respect. His boss had been wrong-footed three times now. Baxter leant back,
seemed to ponder a moment.</p>
<p>"We're investigating a number of incidents surrounding the disappearance of a large quantity of Scotch Whisky."</p>
<p>"And you think my Jack is involved?"</p>
<p>"We're just checking out some information, which may or may not be correct. But unless we ask, we won't find out."
Baxter was trying hard to get control of this. "Now, can you tell me where Jack was on Monday at that time?"</p>
<p>"Sure," Sandy said. "I can tell you. He was up at his lawyers in Glasgow. He had an appointment. Do you want the
number?"</p>
<p>"What would he need a lawyer for?"</p>
<p>"That's surely none of your business, inspector," Alice cut across.</p>
<p>"Maybe we should call the lawyer, Alice. This sounds like harassment."</p>
<p>Baxter changed tack. "We have information that Jack may know some thing about the disappearance of whisky from
Aitkenbar Distillery."</p>
<p> "Where did you hear that?"</p>
<p>"I'm not at liberty to say. Michael, were you down at Ferguson's car yard on Brewery Lane?"</p>
<p>"Me? I don't have a car. I'm still at school."</p>
<p>"Is that where the shooting was?" Alice demanded.</p>
<p>"You think my nephew was involved in that?" Sandy put both hands on the table. "That's taking a big leap, Mr Baxter.
The boy's still at school, he just told you that."</p>
<p>Michael's nervousness was evaporating. He could see the big policeman struggling.</p>
<p>"What happened to your face son?"</p>
<p>Michael's hand flew to his cheek. Baxter smiled. Changing direction often produced results.</p>
<p>"It was my uncle. He hit me with a big bit of wood."</p>
<p>"He what?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, I was helping him with his pigeon hut and he turned round with a plank. It was an accident. That was on
Monday. At about eleven, I think. Grandad took me to the cottage hospital for a check.. Then he bought me a
burger."</p>
<p>"And you weren't down in Ferguson's yard?"</p>
<p>"What would I go down there for?"</p>
<p>"Has Jack ever owned a gun?"</p>
<p>"You should check your records, inspector," Sandy came in. "And you should check with Jack's lawyer. Here's the
number. And if you have any more questions about guns and shooting, that's awfully serious business and I really
think you should speak to him. And when Jack gets back from London, I'll get him to call on you. With Mr Deane, of
course."</p>
<p>Jimmy Balloch tried not to smile. His boss only had Cullen's word for it, and while they had to check out every
statement, the big man had been on to a hiding here. Baxter said his grudging thank-you and after he left, he sat in
the car for a while.</p>
<p>"There's something not right about them," he said.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"They had that too pat. As if they expected me and had rehearsed it."</p>
<p>"Or maybe they were just telling the truth."</p>
<p>"Maybe. We'll see when we speak to Mr Jack Lorne himself."</p>
<p>Before Jimmy Balloch could reply, the radio coughed and he put it to his ear before handing the receiver over to the
inspector.</p>
<p>"They've a possible sighting of one of the dairy tankers," he said.</p>
<p>"Bingo." Baxter smiled for the first time that day.</p>
<p>The patrol spotted Ed's rig just south of the Cardross Hills on the back road from Levenford. He was driving alone,
the way he preferred it, rather than having Donny in the cab chattering for an Olympic title. Jack said he needed
Don to help with the unloading up in Oban and Ed reckoned that had been diplomacy. Whatever it had been, Ed knew he
had room to manoeuvre when he only had himself to worry about and he'd thought about this for a while. He was in so
deep there was no point in worrying at all. That's the way he had felt when he had climbed out the back of the truck
to face Foley. It was make or break. </p>
<p> They all had a chance to make it.</p>
<p>He saw the white top of the patrol car from half a mile, well before the policemen saw him. It was moving fast on the
parallel road that would curve north to meet this road when it turned south, at the Cross Keys junction. Ed had the
phone stuck against the dashboard with glued-on velcro and the fine hands-free clipped to his shirt pocket. There
was no point in calling Jack. He had Donny to listen out on the radio and watch the rear-view. He keyed the third
number and raised Tam.</p>
<p>"Harley here. What's happening?"</p>
<p>"I'm coming down to the Cross Keys, heading east. A mile and a half to go and there's a boy scout coming up to it,
moving pretty fast."</p>
<p>"Got the picture," Tam said. The wind was muffling his words, but he shouted over it.</p>
<p>"Bullitt's four miles away with the canopy ripped off, so he'll be right in line if they keep going and it's a dead
giveaway. I think we try Plan B."</p>
<p>"Give me some time to catch you up," Tam said. He clicked off, dropped the visor and the front wheel lifted off the
tarmac when he fed the engine in a tight twist.</p>
<p>Ed hammered down to the cross, needing to get to the junction in time to catch their attention. The road curved to
the left and he held the rig close enough to the hedges on the slow bend that the thorns spanged off the struts that
held the green canvas taut. Any closer and he'd rip the whole cover right off.</p>
<p>Down in the distance, the white top bobbed above the hedgerow and a flash of red showed every time the patrol passed
a gate. Beyond it, about a mile away, Ed got a glimpse of the pale helmet. Tam was moving on the straight at suicide
speed, racing to catch up. They had gone over this in a lot of detail, using the road maps and a big cross country
ordnance survey job that covered the table, and then they'd gone out to get it first hand, Ed and Jack and Jed and
Tam, working out a few moves, if they ever got the chance.</p>
<p>The policeman saw him just as the patrol car crossed the junction. Ed had hoped it would be sooner, but on these
roads he couldn't get the weight moving fast enough, and he was doing plenty by the time he got to the cross.</p>
<p>The car reached the corner, nosed out. Ed was aware of it before the driver saw him. The policeman did his crossing
code, right, left and right again, judging the distance by the size of the truck and the speed of the road. He was
half-way across when he realised the big rig was moving faster than anything should have been on the narrow country
route.</p>
<p>The man's face was a pale oval and his mouth a dark one inside it that expanded hugely as Ed's juggernaut barrelled
down the road, clipping off pieces of straggly hedge that remained untrimmed. The patrolman let out a one-syllable
sentence that Ed lip-read with no difficulty whatsoever, and stamped on the accelerator. The car jumped across the
junction and almost into the hedge at the corner, so fixed was the driver's attention on the approaching
destruction. He compensated just in time and scooted up the north side of the cross as the lorry hurtled west,
buffeting them with its passage and missing them by mere feet.</p>
<p>The police driver cursed non-stop for forty seconds without repetition. He stamped on the brake just as hard as he
had hit the throttle, slammed into reverse for a very swift three-point turn while his colleague, equally pale and
shaking with the fright of near miss, dropped the receiver and had to bend to pick it up again and call in.</p>
<p>Baxter heard about the close call just two minutes later.</p>
<p>By this time the patrol car was moving in the opposite direction, following the tail of exhaust and clipped hawthorn
flourish in the wake of the big covered tanker that was doing at least sixty on a road where thirty was risking it,
but Ed had the height advantage and could see everything coming. Nothing was.</p>
<p>The phone beeped and he answered. "Ace."</p>
<p>"Harley. You've got an audience."</p>
<p>"I see them. I've got five miles."</p>
<p>"Okay, let's take them round the houses. Stay on line."</p>
<p>Tam was coming up fast, with the police car a half mile ahead, seen only occasionally on the few straight sections.
The patrol were closing quickly on the rig, pushing their own luck, but the driver was determined to get this one,
get in on the kudos of the Aitkenbar job, and to get revenge for the little cooling wet patch in his jockeys after
the fright he'd just had.</p>
<p>He looked in his mirror, saw the white shape on the bike, and the chequered helmet, and growled under his breath. No
traffic cop was going to steal this one. The road here was twisted and narrow and nothing could get past him on the
tight zigzags.</p>
<p>Ed pushed the speed up, now assured that Tam was close behind, and they kept going all in a line round the twists for
close to five miles until they got to the curve behind Cardross Hill where the road leads down to the little village
of Arden on the Clyde. Here there is a short straight section that has been widened to let traffic filter down to
Arden, and Ed knew the patrol would make their move at this junction, using their acceleration to get ahead. He
slowed down just a little, swaying from side to side, sure there was no oncoming traffic, keeping them behind
him.</p>
<p>The swerving kept the driver's attention on the shifting back of the big twelve wheeler where the tarpaulin flapped
like a loose flag. Because he was so focussed in front, he mistimed the straight by only a couple of seconds, but
that's what Tam had counted on. He came right up to a couple of feet from the patrol rear lights, and as soon as the
little filter gap expanded, he gunned the engine and went through it in a flash of white.</p>
<p>"Bastard," the policeman snarled. "What's that idiot up to?"</p>
<p>Tam never heard that. He was up parallel to the patrol car window and without changing his line, he took his clutch
hand off the grip and thudded the white gauntlet against the glass, three hard slaps. The driver was so startled, he
almost lost control and had to jerk the wheel again to avoid ending the chase in a ditch.</p>
<p>"Okay. I've got it," Tam spoke into the throat mike. "Give Bullitt a call and then get back." He keyed the off,
twisted the clutch to lower gear and swung right in front of the car.</p>
<p>"Who <em>is</em> that lunatic?"</p>
<p>The bike was careering left and right, only inches from the front bumper, blocking their passage and slowing down as
it did so. The high rig picked up speed, got past the wider straight and onto the narrow. There was no change of
getting past the bike now. It slowed still further.</p>
<p>"That's not a BMW," the passenger said. "It's a... it's like a Harley D."</p>
<p>"Son of a bitch. He's not even a cop." Realisation hit them simultaneously. "You better tell them he's getting
away."</p>
<p>In front of them, the drag-bike with the white jacketed figure had slowed from fifty down to thirty, crazily risking
a collision with his back wheel. The truck disappeared round the corner. Two small vans came in the opposite
direction, but each time one passed, the bike swung out to prevent a sneak overtake. He slowed to twenty, then
ten.</p>
<p>The police driver was now fuming with frustration. The bike slowed even further, forcing them to follow suit and then
eased to a halt right in the middle of the road. The patrol stopped just behind it, and for a moment of impasse,
nobody moved. The biker looked just like a police cyclist on an outlandish set of wheels. He cocked his head to
check the rear view, held his right hand up and waggled his fingers.</p>
<p>"Cheeky bastard. Get his number."</p>
<p>"I got it. They're checking."</p>
<p>"What next?"</p>
<p>"We arrest that joker," the driver said. "Then we get him in the back here and kick the shite right out of him."</p>
<p>The driver plipped the lock, pushed the door, hauled out warily. The bike engine revved and the cop almost got back
in the car. but the machine didn't move. He walked forward and his companion got out the other side. There was only
a twenty yard gap between bike and car. They got half way and Tam gave it a little fuel and eased away from
them.</p>
<p>They started back to the car and he stopped. They turned, knowing he was taunting them.</p>
<p>"We'll never catch him on foot."</p>
<p>"This is why they should give us guns," the driver said.</p>
<p>"What's that smell? Did you piss yourself."</p>
<p>"Don't <em>you</em> start."</p>
<p>They began to walk forward again and the biker turned right round in the saddle, beckoned them on. He held both hands
up. The big driver thought he had an opportunity and broke into a sprint. His hat flew off as he raced to make a
grab.</p>
<p>The phone chirruped a warble of notes and the biker dropped his hands to the grips. The cop skidded to a halt, turned
back to where his companion was now racing towards the car. For a second he looked as if he couldn't make up his
mind, which was true, and then he dashed forward again, hand outstretched to grab. </p>
<p>The engine roared and the bike took off like stallion, wheel in the air, rear treads burning a black strip on the
good country road.</p>
<p>"Come on," his partner bawled, quite unnecessarily. The patrolman reached it just as the bike was disappearing round
the corner.</p>
<p>"Hurry. We'll lose him." He hit the pedal and the car fishtailed crazily as he took off in pursuit.</p>
<p>"I see you," Ed said into the phone.</p>
<p>The bike came whizzing round the corner, going like a streak and seconds later the patrol car shot into view, lights
flashing, siren wailing. Ed was up the farm track where a big line of new birches had been planted as a windbreak
from the sea breezes pushing up from Arden. They were just tall enough to give the rig some cover. Ed eased the
clutch off, held everything still with the brake, though the powerful engine tried to shove everything forward. With
no load in the tank, there was a lot of spare muscle.</p>
<p>He was forty yards up from the entrance, watching through the only gap where he could see the road on both sides. It
would all depend on whether some innocent passer-by was travelling in the opposite direction. Ed craned in his seat,
making sure no farmer was plodding up from Arden. None was. He held his breath, fed in fuel.</p>
<p>Tam hurtled past the gap and was gone in a blur. Ed heard the protest of gears and axle as he launched the truck
forward right across the road and stamped on the brake. The tyres squawked like the angry geese and ground like rasp
files as they dragged grit across the surface. The rig juddered and the engine stalled. The road was now completely
blocked.</p>
<p>Out to the left, the police car was doing sixty, just coming out of the turn. He got a blur of white, a flash of blue
and red, and just an impression of two pale faces in aghast mode. He snatched up the phone in his gloved hand,
shouldered the door and was out the other side and running hard. All he could hear was the wailing ululation of the
siren and the urgent scream of rubber against rough road metal.</p>
<p>If he had been in the patrol car he would also have heard two grown men screaming.</p>
<p>The driver forgot every lesson he had learned on the advanced pursuit course. Maybe it was his temperament, or the
way the rider had blatantly taunted him, thumping the window, slowing them down, daring him to hit. </p>
<p>Whatever it was, all caution and prudence turned to uncontrolled rashness. He saw the bike disappear in a flicker of
white past the trees on the bend and took off in pursuit, cut the corner on the wrong side of the road, causing his
partner to grab the strap-handle and pray a hay-spiker or anything else big and mechanical wasn't out for a trundle
at that moment.</p>
<p>The pursuit cop double-declutched, dropped a gear tight on the cusp of the corner and used the centripetal force to
gain him another couple of clicks on the turn.</p>
<p>"I'll get that bastard if it's the last fuckin' thing I........"</p>
<p>The tanker lurched across the road like a charging dinosaur, its green tarpaulin skin iridescent in the spangled
light through the leaves, and sun glittering on the curve of the windscreen.</p>
<p> "Holy mother of......hit the brake...hit the fuckin' braaaa......"</p>
<p>That last consonant was lost forever in the horrified wail.</p>
<p>The driver stamped down, gripped the wheel in two death grips, eyes bulging in sudden realisation as the big truck
stopped dead, jolted back on its massive wheels as if pausing for breath.</p>
<p>The patrol car just kept on going. Hedges whizzed by in a blur and the slab-like side of the juggernaut just got
bigger and bigger until it filled the screen.</p>
<p>"You stupid mother-fucking pratt... we're going to hit the..."</p>
<p>The sound of the tyres on the road and the wide mouthed yell drowned out everything else. The patrol car fishtailed
again, burning parallel curves from one side of the narrow road to the other. They clipped a sturdy hawthorn stump a
foot in from the verge and lost the driver's mirror in one hard crack and then they were juddering forward, smoke
billowing from underneath as the brakes seized entirely. A tyre burst like a bomb.</p>
<p>"Hold on we're going to hit the....."</p>
<p>They were twelve feet away from the exposed nearside when the partner realised what would happen if a saloon car
their size hit the trailer-chassis that was four feet from road level. In a sudden burst of frantic motion, he
scrabbled to get the belt release and squirm downwards, out of the path of that murderous edge.</p>
<p>"Oh Jesus," he blurted feebly when the belt refused to loosen.</p>
<p>They hit with an almighty crack and the nose crumpled into the low protection bar, dived under it and the angle of
metal sliced the whole bonnet backwards in one violent rip.</p>
<p>The driver let out one last yell just as the side stanchion loomed towards his face and then everything just stopped
in a tremendous wrench of torn steel and the two airbags exploded simultaneously, smashing them back against the
head rests.</p>
<p>It took a couple of minutes for both of them to realise they were still alive.</p>
<p>The partner clutched his chest where the expanding bag had punched so hard it cracked two ribs. The driver made a
little mewling sound.</p>
<p>"You crazy fucking lunatic," the other man groaned weakly from behind the deflating bag. "You nearly had us
decapitated."</p>
<p>The driver moaned, got a hand to the door. </p>
<p>"What's that smell?" he managed. "Did you just piss yourself?"</p>
<p>"No I didn't," his partner grunted.</p>
<p>"Oh fuck. Tell me you haven't shit.....!"</p>
<p>Ed was on the back of the bike and they were gone down the Arden Road in a streak, leaning forward against the wind.
He was already on the phone, sheltering behind Tam, shouting to make himself heard over the slipstream.</p>
<p>"This road's blocked. You got ten minutes or so. Anything else will be coming up the Loch Shore Road."</p>
<p>That plan had worked, just as Jack said it would. He'd known just what Tam could do on a bike when he put his mind to
it, after the record-breaking runs up to Skye. Now they had one team out of the running. Ed had seen the sudden gout
of steam and smoke from the far side of the tanker and he'd known they had hit, but the loud cursing after the crash
told them they weren't dead, which was a bit of a relief.</p>
<p>"There's only one more car up here," Neil came back. "They're not happy with you."</p>
<p>"I'll live with it. Where are they?"</p>
<p>He and Ed shared the details they needed. The patrol was diverted north to check out a heavy load at the head of the
loch and they all knew there was a fair chance somebody had spotted Jack and Donny. There was a possibility the
tarpaulin had come loose and the big yellow tanks were showing. Anything could have happened.</p>
<p>"Do you need a back-up?"</p>
<p>Jed's voice came on the line. "No. Once they see us they'll follow. We lost the cover at the bridge, so the sign's
there for anybody to read."</p>
<p>Ed tapped Tam and he slowed.</p>
<p>"Drop me off at the junction. I'll get you back at the car." </p>
<p>He told him what Jed was planning, and Tam gave him a thumb's up from behind the visor. A few minutes later Ed patted
him on the helmet, waved him off, and began to take a short-cut through a grove of tall beech trees. The sun was
well up now and it was promising to be a good day. There was nothing else for him to do but enjoy it. A woodpecker
beat out a rap rhythm somewhere in the shade and Ed started to whistle a happy tune along with it.</p>
<p>Constable Derek Travers was cruising up the Loch Road, knowing he was on a wild goose chase, knowing he'd been sent
on it because he and Walter Crum had drawn the short straw and been called out to a couple of barking dogs on the
night of the biggest heist in the history of Levenford since Bruce took the castle and its garrison back from Edward
Longshanks; the night he'd seen them in action and failed to notice a thing.</p>
<p>It would take a long time for his career to get over this hiccup. It would need the equivalent of a Heimlich
manoeuvre and maybe even cardiac jump leads.</p>
<p>"There's a million wide loads up this road every week."</p>
<p>"We just have to check it out."</p>
<p>"They've sent us because we're the total numpties of the entire force."</p>
<p>Walter nodded glumly. "What's the opposite of Mensa?"</p>
<p>"Dunsa. We get to wear the pointy hat and sit in the corner with everybody laughing and pointing. Swear on my
mother's grave Walter, that big highland git would have been fooled himself. <em>Totally</em>."</p>
<p>"I've asked for a transfer."</p>
<p>"You what?"</p>
<p>"I have to get out of...." Walter paused. "Wait a minute, what's that?"</p>
<p>A big silver tanker crossed the main road about a half a mile up ahead.</p>
<p>"Go faster," Walter urged. </p>
<p>"What, you don't think....?"</p>
<p>Walter was scrabbling in the glovebox for the little binoculars he used for birdwatching on the quiet afternoons when
the pair of them sneaked up beyond Overburn for a smoke. They'd been having a contest for months, totalling the
sparrows and robins and magpies. It passed the time very equably instead of cruising around Corrieside and being
stoned by teenage layabouts and harangued by junkies.</p>
<p>He pushed the focus ring, just the way Neil had on the high tower block.</p>
<p>"You're not going to believe this," Walter said. For the first time in days there was a confident ring to his voice.
He thumbed the zoom just to be sure. The blue lettering stood out against the silver on the massive cylindrical
tank.</p>
<p>"Levenford Dairy," he said. "Prop. A. Kerr. Established 1934."</p>
<p>He turned to Derek Travers. "Consider that transfer application withdrawn. You and me, we're back in business."</p>
<p>A bird fluttered in a streak of black and white across the road.</p>
<p>"<em>Magpie</em>," Travers bellowed triumphantly at exactly the same time.</p>
<p>"We'll split the points later. Let's go catch those arseholes."</p>
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<h1>26</h1>
<p>Despite the rigor mortis, Wiggy Foley was a very fidgety passenger. Neil had strapped him back against the
passenger seat and edged away from him, trying to avoid any contact with the clammy body. Every time the
tanker hit a rough patch or pot-hole, Foley slumped right or left, his dead head thumping against the glass,
wig flapping in tempo. </p>
<p>"This would give you the bloody heebie-jeebies," Neil asserted. "How come it has to be us who end up with the
zombie?"</p>
<p>"Ed's on his own. You could hardly expect him to drive about just himself and the stiff."</p>
<p>"Another couple of inches and they could both have been stiffs."</p>
<p>Foley swung away from the window, lurched against Neil.</p>
<p>"Get off," Neil grated, pushing him back in disgust. He turned to Jed. "I think his beard's still growing.
That stubble's longer than it was. Maybe he's not dead at all."</p>
<p>"That would make him the world's best mime artist. Or he's in the dead gorilla sketch. Fix that wig, would
you, in case anybody gets suspicious."</p>
<p>"Suspicious? We're driving around in a nicked tanker with the cover ripped off and a baldy corpse waving to
pedestrians and you worry about being suspicious?"</p>
<p>"Well, put like that, I suppose you can maybe forget the wig."</p>
<p>Neil turned and stared at him and suddenly both of them burst into whoops of laughter. Some of it sounded too
close to hysteria.</p>
<p>Ed had called and told them about the end of the chase, and that meant there was only one other patrol car in
this area. Here in the west, there are too many roads with wide empty spaces and farm tracks between them to
ensure they're all easily covered. They had the police band on low, just to monitor the position, knowing it
would only be a matter of time before they crossed the path of the other patrol who were heading north.</p>
<p>They came along the Creggan Road which is five miles north of the Arden by-pass where Ed and Tam had put the
other pursuit out of commission. Here the road heads west to join the main route northwards and they
followed it for a while until they approached the junction. Jed eased down to a stop with a hundred yards to
go while Neil leant forward, past the unwanted guest, to view the southern approach.</p>
<p>"Five or ten minutes," he said. The airwaves had been punctuated with urgent calls back and forth after the
first two had hit the side of the tanker and the normally precise operational coding had been abandoned for
a few minutes of incoherence and panic. Three patrols were racing up from the other side of Levenford and
would be here in less than half an hour, along with the fire tender and the emergency rescue unit, Angus
Baxter and his team of detectives and anybody else they could muster.</p>
<p>It took only four minutes before Neil saw the approaching police car way down the straight and he nudged
Jed.</p>
<p>"Time to shift. Try not to kill us all."</p>
<p> "I'm an <em>excellent</em> driver," Jed drawled.</p>
<p> "Dustin Hoffman," Neil guessed. "Rain Man. Now pretend you're a real driver, get this heap in gear and keep
your mind on the job."</p>
<p> "Fat man, you think you're uncle Jack Lorne." Jed stuck it in gear and eased out onto the main road, giving
himself plenty of time. He had to assume the cops were not entirely stupid and would notice the dairy logo
as they approached, though if they didn't, he could easily find a way of attracting their attention.</p>
<p>There was a slight uphill pull, which allowed the approaching car to halve the distance by the time they
crested and then they were on the downslope and pulling hard left to get to the back road from Arden to
Creggan that cut from the hills to the high coastline overlooking the broad firth where Jack had sat with
Kate on a sunny night. From up here, distant water sparkled in the slanted rays. Jed checked the mirror just
before they disappeared from view.</p>
<p>"They're moving," he said. "They must be quick on the uptake."</p>
<p>"That makes a change. Just pray they're not heroes."</p>
<p>"When this baby hits eighty eight, you're gonna see some serious shit."</p>
<p>"I told you, Bullitt. Save it for later. And if you put it above sixty on this dirt-track, I'm asking Stiffly
Formal here to drive."</p>
<p>Half a mile behind them, Derek Travers was drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel as the patrol car
picked up speed.</p>
<p>"Should we call in?" Walter had his thumb in the radio.</p>
<p>"Give it a minute," he said. He pointed at the tanker in the now closing distance. "Let's see which way they
head at the junction."</p>
<p>Two miles north, the road split right and left. The tanker flashed silver through the patches of trees and
hedges as the police car hurried up behind it. After a few minutes, the nearside indicator began to flash
and the truck slowed for a turn.</p>
<p>Derek Travers turned to his partner. "We got them now. Where can they go?"</p>
<p>Walter thought about it. If it kept on this road, it would come to Creggan village at the end of the
peninsula overlooking the estuary. After that was the big submarine base round at Loch Long and the only way
out from there was on the high back road where a one-in-ten incline meant the big tanker would be gasping
uphill at walking speed.</p>
<p>"If we call in now," Derek said, "everybody and his dog will be in on it, and we'll be back where we started.
Let's give it a bit more."</p>
<p>In the truck ahead, Neil called Jack.</p>
<p>"Retro, looks like you're home clear."</p>
<p>"Speak to me, Elvis."</p>
<p>"We've picked up the boy scouts earning merit badges. You'll have it all your on way from here on in. Just
don't crash and burn, good buddy."</p>
<p>"We'll try our hardest," Jack said. The relief in his voice was pretty clear, even over the phone.</p>
<p>Neil pushed Foley to the side and watched in the mirror. The police car was closing the gap quickly now. Jed
breasted the hill and used the long downslope to gather his own momentum.</p>
<p>"They're sticking to us," he said. "Nothing yet on the squawk."</p>
<p>"I don't think they could have called in," Neil guessed astutely. "I think we've got a pair of wannabe
heroes."</p>
<p>"All the better," Jed said. "Two against two is very good odds these days."</p>
<p>Neil slapped the solid body beside him.</p>
<p>"Two against three."</p>
<p>Jed laughed, nervous bravado. "And twelve wheels against four. Man, they have <em>no</em> hope."</p>
<p>A quarter of a mile behind, Walter Crum was on the radio now, relaying their position and target to control.
Angus Baxter got the call within twenty seconds and was a patched right through.</p>
<p>"You're sure it's the one we want?"</p>
<p>"Yessir." Walter read out the dairy legend on the back of the silver cylinder.</p>
<p>"And they're moving in the direction of Creggan?"</p>
<p>"On the shore road, Sir. We are in pursuit, directly behind them."</p>
<p>"Stick with them. Don't lose them. Try to get close and find out who they are."</p>
<p>Angus Baxter got clearance to summon the force helicopter down from Glasgow and every other patrol car,
fire-tender and rescue vehicle that had been heading to the first crash scene diverted north and west in a
fast-moving convoy, leaving the first patrol sitting by their wrecked car arguing over who's bodily
functions had the least control.</p>
<p>"You heard the man," Walter said. "Let's be having them."</p>
<p>The tanker came hurtling down the hill at breakneck speed and Jed held the line steady on the bend, taking
the wheels right to the edge and giving the pedal just enough to get hard traction when they pulled out of
it. Wiggy Foley swung away from the window and Neil had to brace himself to shove him back.</p>
<p>Ahead of them was a straight stretch where the route widened just a couple of yards on the left as it
approached the cut-off to yet another small and lonely hamlet.</p>
<p>The pursuit sped up on the straight and Jed edged to the right, ensuring he couldn't be forced down the slip
and trapped on a single track. Behind them, the car jinked left. Jed pushed for more speed and the patrol
car more than matched them.</p>
<p>"They're coming up on the inside," Neil said.</p>
<p>"Just what I need," Jed told him. "Give them a wave."</p>
<p>Derek Travers ground out a curse when the tanker hogged the right. On this straight, they had the chance to
power ahead and block the road and that way they could have a leisurely wait for the back up posse, with the
suspects cuffed in the back of the car. All past failures would be forgiven and forgotten in one easy
move. </p>
<p>He pulled left just as the road widened and saw an opportunity develop. He gunned it hard.</p>
<p>"Take it easy," Walter warned, checking his belt.</p>
<p>"I can take them," Derek boasted. He nosed up on the inside, past the tail lights. The road seemed to vibrate
with the truck's weight and the turbulence buffeted them hard and then they were pulling alongside, doing
nearly sixty.</p>
<p>The car held it steady, creeping up to the cab. Walter leant forward to peer up.</p>
<p>A pale face swung towards him and a meaty hand waved through the glass.</p>
<p>"That's Wiggy Foley," he said excitedly, "one of Ferguson's minders. Cheeky sod. God, this is going to be
good."</p>
<p>Travers grinned. "We're in the money now."</p>
<p>He slammed down a gear to coax an extra burst just as Jed Cooper did the same in the high cab. They were
still on the downslope, which gave the big tanker a weight advantage. They were three hundred yards from the
turn off and now that the police car was still on the inside, Jed eased the tanker back to the left, forcing
the pursuit car closer to the edge.</p>
<p>"Watch out, he's going to force us...."</p>
<p>"Bastard," Derek mouthed. He got to sixty five, managed to get the nose past the front of the racing
juggernaut.</p>
<p>Wiggy Foley stared down at them, nose flattened against the glass.</p>
<p>Walter Crum got another glimpse, and something struck him as odd about the way Foley was sitting, but in the
heat of the moment, he had other things to think about. The two machines raced together, nose to nose.</p>
<p>Jed just held the line. The police driver might have had training on the skid-pan, but Jed Cooper had been
ramming round the stock circuit since he was sixteen. Derek Travers almost made it, and then, very abruptly,
the road disappeared..</p>
<p>"Derek....<em>Derek</em>...!" Walter panicked just a little.</p>
<p>There was suddenly nowhere for them to go. Jed got that extra few yards out of the rig, timed it to the split
second and the gap closed too tightly for the car to swerve through and get ahead. The truck thundered along
on the straight and the police car was suddenly facing a thick tangle of briars and brambles dead ahead.
Derek Travers jerked on the wheel with a bare second left and the car shot down turn-off curve. Even over
the roar of the diesel, Jed and Neil heard the squeal as he hit the brake hard.</p>
<p>"Back up, <em>back up</em>, they're getting away."</p>
<p>Walter managed to get the words past his heart which was now throbbing at the back of his throat. The fear of
a headlong crash into the undergrowth only beat the terror of career failure by a thin lip. His partner
slammed into reverse, wove at speed back along the curve and managed to get back onto the main road in
surprisingly quick time. The big rig was down the hill and round the bend and gone.</p>
<p>"Hurry, hurry. Come on man, he said don't lose them."</p>
<p>"Bastard forced me off the road. Could have killed me." Travers's face was a complex mix of fury and
fright.</p>
<p>He got onto the main road again and hared after the tanker.</p>
<p>"That was too close," Neil said. "You could have killed them."</p>
<p>"No chance. Cops don't kill themselves, not on duty anyway. He was trying to get in front of us, and if he'd
done that, there's no way I was stopping for him. It was just as well I sent him the wrong way, rather than
skite him off."</p>
<p>Neil was peering in the mirror, expecting the flash of white any second.</p>
<p>"I think we should have kept on the road north," he said. "I don't know why you took this road anyway. We're
heading straight for Creggan."</p>
<p>"So?"</p>
<p>"We're going to run out of road. There's nothing between us and the firth of Clyde, and there's a whole posse
chasing us."</p>
<p>"Plus Batman and Robin," Jed said, "if they haven't driven into a tree. Don't you worry, I can handle this
thing."</p>
<p>"You better start handling it good. They're back in the picture again."</p>
<p>Jed took a backward glance, saw the patrol gaining once more. He thumped the horn, making it roar like a
beast. Neil gave a visible start.</p>
<p>"Jesus, Jed. You scared the hell out of me."</p>
<p>They were coming up fast, lights flashing. The car feinted left as before, then came up on the right, on a
fairly tight bend.</p>
<p>"He's trying to take us."</p>
<p>"On this road? He must have a death wish," Jed said. He changed down to get more muscle. The police car
pulled out, began to accelerate and then a little post van came bizzing round the corner in a flash of red
and a wail of alarm. The patrol yanked fast back in behind the tanker at the last split second.</p>
<p> It tried again, risking it once more on a right bend and this time a slow-moving tractor was trundling close
to the hedge and the police car barely missed it in a screech of brakes.</p>
<p>"Definitely a hero," Jed said, watching as the pursuit tried again, nosing out on a little straight stretch.
He eased the tanker across the centre line, blocking its path. The policeman's face was just a pale shape,
but he knew he would be mouthing curses. It tried to squeeze through the cap and Jed pushed it almost into
the hedge. It braked sharply and its horn barked. </p>
<p>"Can't see why Ed should have all the fun," Jed said. He grabbed the helmet from the floor and slung it on,
fixing the strap one-handed with ease of practise.</p>
<p>"You get lidded up," he told Neil.</p>
<p>"I won't hear the phone, or the radio."</p>
<p>Behind them, the police siren began to howl angrily, and a flicker of red and blue winked bright in the rear
view.</p>
<p>"Doesn't matter. This loony fancies his chances. I'm going to try a few moves."</p>
<p>"What kind of moves?" Neil was clasping the helmet on, looking worried.</p>
<p>The phone rang and he paused to answer.</p>
<p>"Calling Elvis." Ed's voice.</p>
<p>"Uh huh huh. You're a wunnerful audience."</p>
<p>Ed came on.</p>
<p>"A whole squad of them just passed me north of Arden. Angus Baxter, a couple of fast cars. And he's called
out the chopper. You're running out of time."</p>
<p>Neil relayed the message to Jed.</p>
<p>"That's what we planned," Jed told him. "Now get that helmet on."</p>
<p>They were coming down the long slope now, with the flashing lights right on their tail, sun heliographing
through the tall trees. Jed pushed the big rig to the limit, taking the corners in a fine tight line,
getting the speed just right. In other circumstances, Neil would have admired the skill.</p>
<p>"Bullitt, we've only got a mile to Creggan and then we're done." He was sounding puzzled and worried.
"They'll have the local fuzz out with a barrier. Road blocks."</p>
<p>"You think a road block can stop this beast?"</p>
<p>"Don't you dare. I'm not going down for murder."</p>
<p>"Don't worry, Mr Elvis," Jed assured him. "We've got Wiggy here as a good luck charm." He bent to the left
and clapped the corpse on a meaty shoulder. "Touch wood."</p>
<p>"Watch, <em>watch</em>!" The rig swung to the left, clipping very close to the hedge. They were hammering
down towards a very tight right turn and Jed was picking up speed. Neil's voice was rising, suddenly
panicked. "Jeez man, keep your eye on the fucking road."</p>
<p>The turn loomed, all too sudden and they were going all too fast.</p>
<p>"Road?" Jed laughed crazily. "Where we're going, we don't <em>need</em> roads."</p>
<p>The engine was screaming and Jed's knuckles were white.</p>
<p>"Jed man. Oh holy mother of..."</p>
<p>He was doing fifty, sixty, far to fast to take this curve.</p>
<p>"You crazy pratt...." For a second Neil thought Jed was paralysed. His hands were gripped on the wheel, not
moving, just bracing it. He wasn't even making an attempt at the turn.</p>
<p>Neil saw the hedges loom. The tanker bulleted towards them, unstoppable now.</p>
<p>It smacked them flat with a crack like gunfire. Neil let out a little squeal that was miraculous high for a
big baritone.</p>
<p>The tanker rammed through the hawthorn hedge, scattered twigs and stumps like shrapnel and a confetti of
white flourish blasted out in a fluttering fountain. On the other side of the hedge a small field drain, a
couple of feet deep and three feet wide presented no obstacle at all. The speed and momentum carried the
front wheels over it and everything else followed, hurtling through the gap and into the field beyond,
bouncing crazily on the grass and carving great brown tracks through the turf. A herd of cross
jersey-friesians took off like chubby wildebeest, scattered in panic.</p>
<p>Derek Travers was thirty yards behind the tanker's tail lights, desperate to find a gap to shoot through and
halt them before the rest of the cavalry arrived. His need had made him reckless and he didn't even hear
Walter Crum's warning as they raced down the hill in pursuit.</p>
<p>He was so close to the rig that the corner was on him before he realised it and suddenly shrubbery and wood
was flying all over the place.</p>
<p>Walter Crum bawled another urgent warning and Travers hit the brake so hard the nose of the car dipped
towards the tarmac. Tyres howled on the dry road as he tried to hold the line and the patrol careered
forward, slowing as it went. The big tanker disappeared in a flurry of leaves and the road disappeared along
with it. Walter was still bawling incoherently as the back end began to swing round, even though the driver
had got it down from fifty to twenty. Travers over-compensated right on the point of the corner. Rubber
squealed and so did Walter. The car mounted the little verge, bounced nose upwards, shot through the raggedy
gap in the hedge and slammed down in to the small ditch, sending up a spray of mud, moss and tiny
frogs. </p>
<p>For a moment, nothing moved. The siren was still wailing and the lights still flashing, and the windscreen
was completely blanked out by a skin of red muck.</p>
<p>Derek Travers groaned through the numbness in his nose where it had hit the wheel. He eased himself out of
the car and stepped straight into two feet of mud, cursed and hauled himself away from the steam jetting
from somewhere in the front. Walter Crum stumbled out the other side, lost a shoe to the glutinous sucking
mire, amazed that he was totally unhurt.</p>
<p>Both of them looked at each other, faces pale and slack. Then, simultaneously, they turned.</p>
<p>The tanker was hammering on across the field, leaving parallel scars in the green, scattering the livestock
and a flustered flock of woodpigeons, rumbling like a runaway beast as it headed for the breast of the hill
beyond.</p>
<p>"Where the hell do they think they're going?" Walter asked.</p>
<p>"Nowhere for them to go," Derek said. "Come on. We've got them now."</p>
<p>Walter fished in the mud in the little runnel until he found his shoe, pulled it on and squelched to dry
ground. The pair of them set off in pursuit, leaving the patrol car nose down in the muck, but relatively,
miraculously, undamaged. </p>
<p>Jed stopped the rig on the brow of the little hill on the far side of the meadow, engine chugging exhaust as
if catching breath. It had been an exhilarating ride. Ahead of them, beyond the down-slope, the blue of the
Clyde firth scattered back spangled sunlight, below the precipice of the Creggan headland.</p>
<p>"You scared the living <em>shite</em> out of me," Neil finally said, tight with emotion, most of it pure
shock. He unstrapped the helmet and took it off, holding it in two shaking hands. Foley had slumped to the
side, his face smeared on the glass.</p>
<p>"I thought you'd like it," Jed said.</p>
<p>"Like it? You crazy schmuck. You could have killed us both."</p>
<p>"Don't be daft. You never really thought I couldn't take that bend, did you?"</p>
<p>"Are you telling me you had this planned all along?" Neil's breath was fast and shallow. "And you never even
told me?"</p>
<p>Jed grinned pure mischief.</p>
<p>"Sure we did. There's half a dozen places we worked it out, just in case we had to. This was the best of the
lot."</p>
<p>"How come?"</p>
<p>Jed pointed ahead. "Because of that."</p>
<p>Neil saw nothing. He was about to ask when Jed unclipped his own helmet and turned to him.</p>
<p>"Let's unfasten our mystery guest." He looked in the mirror. "And we'd better make it snappy. We've got
company."</p>
<p>Neil started to unsnag the seat belt that hadn't quite restrained Foley. The dead man's wig was flopped to
the side now, as if it was crawling down to his collar. Neil scanned the rear view and saw the two policemen
running across the field, maybe a quarter of a mile behind, while the herd of cows ran in confused little
circles, hampering their progress.</p>
<p>Jed helped haul Foley across the bench seat, pulling on the stiff arms. He heaved until the body was behind
the wheel and then let the handbrake off a couple of notches. Ahead of them, a row of thin gorse bushes
formed an insubstantial barrier and below that, a steeper slope leading right down towards the lip of the
old sandstone cliffs that marked the edge of the highland boundary. The truck eased down from the crest
until only its back end showed. Jed clambered up to the back of the cab, to make sure the policemen were
still in pursuit.</p>
<p>"What now?" Neil demanded.</p>
<p>Jed had to use a lot of force to get the stiff arms onto the wheel. He clamped the fingers around it, just
making sure. The truck wouldn't need any steering down this slope. Very quickly he pulled and hauled at the
dirty jeans until he got a dirty Doc Marten placed over the accelerator. He pressed down and the engine
roared.</p>
<p>"If you're going to do what I think, you're crazier than you look."</p>
<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
<p>Neil pointed ahead. "That's the Creggan Cliffs. I don't care what kind of a driver you are, you'll never
survive that."</p>
<p>Jed pushed on the leg again, making the engine rev faster. Behind them, panting very heavily, came two
policemen, one of whom had lost his shoe again. They reached the crest and stood there, holding their
sides.</p>
<p>"Open the pod bay doors, Hal."</p>
<p>Jed revved, stuck the gear stick forward and sent the whole rig running down the hill. "Smokestack
lightning!"</p>
<p>"Let me out," Neil bawled. " I can't swim?"</p>
<p>"Swim? The <em>fall's</em> going to kill you."</p>
<p>They were through the gorse, flattening a swathe of it. Foley was stiffly propped behind the wheel, his rigid
leg just enough weight to keep the pedal pressed. Behind them the two policemen stood dumbstruck as the
truck went straight down the slope, past the gorse and disappeared from view on the lower slope, on a direct
line for the cliffs.</p>
<p>"Come on man," Jed said. "Let's hit the ground."</p>
<p>He opened the door, grabbed the helmet, and baled out.</p>
<p>Neil bawled a string of curses, kicked open the other door and fell out onto a matt of jagged gorse, rolled
and skidded five yards, mainly on his face.</p>
<p>From the crest of the hill, the policemen saw the tanker disappear over the lower ridge, too exhausted to
chase it any more. They stood with their hands on their knees, hauling hard.</p>
<p>Derek Travers pointed ahead of them and eased upright, pulling Walter Crum with him.</p>
<p>"Look at that!"</p>
<p>The tanker suddenly appeared in view again, about half a mile away now, a big silver bullet trundling fast on
a straight line for the cliff edge.</p>
<p>"Thelma and fucking Louise," Walter said.</p>
<p>The rig reached the edge, no pause, no slowing, its own momentum taking over. The sun glinted off its bright
curve as it took off into the air above the blue, turned in slow motion in a very graceful, ponderous twist,
plunged downwards and was gone.</p>
<p>By the time the patrolmen got down to the cliff edge, a tower of thick black smoke was billowing high into
the air, and the police helicopter was chugging inwards over the Clyde Firth.</p>
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<h1>27</h1>
<p>Tam came racing along the trackway just below the flattened patch of gorse and pulled the bike up when the
reached the pair of them. Neil was brushing the matt of gorse bristles from his overalls, still slightly
winded by the heavy fall.</p>
<p>"What a show," he said, holding up Jack's little camera. "I caught the whole thing. Ka-boom!"</p>
<p>"Bloody maniac," Neil growled at Jed. "You could have warned me."</p>
<p>"And spoil the surprise?" Jed was laughing uncontrollably, hardly able to stand. "You should have seen the
look on your face."</p>
<p>He grabbed up the helmet. "Come on, let's get out of here before Mutt and Jeff show up."</p>
<p>"Will that take us all?" Neil had to know.</p>
<p>"It's just a short trip, climb on." </p>
<p>Neil squeezed behind Tam on the pillion and Jed squeezed behind Neil and the three of them trundled for the
trees at the south end of the big field, keeping under cover of the ridge. They were long gone by the time
the helicopter arrived to hover out over the drop where the tanker had thundered over. A hundred feet below
the cliff edge where Jack Lorne and Kate Delaney had sat watching the sun sparkle on the firth, the crushed
and mangled tanker was well ablaze on the big red rocks that were exposed at low tide.</p>
<p>It would be late in the evening before they would recover the charred body of Wiggy Foley still trapped in
the crumpled cab, and three more days to made a proper identification based mainly on the metal plate that
held his false teeth.</p>
<p>By that time it was all over and done.</p>
<p>The boys on the bike caught up with Ed Kane just north of Arden where he had reached the bright yellow stock
car in a clearing close to the by-pass road on which Ed had given his pursuit the fright of their lives.
Neil got the toolbox out and helped Tam refit the bike, stripping away the Harley logos and replacing them
with the originals. He used the electric drill to screw the panniers back on the sides. Ed lit a fire of
pine branches and slung on the white reflector jacket and the gauntlets, and almost as an afterthought, he
put the fake plates on the flames and watched them curl up and blacken. Tam hammered the chrome Harley
trademark to a big Scots pine tree as a souvenir of the trip and it's still there to this day.</p>
<p>They called Jack Lorne just as he and Donny were on the fast downslope that would take them and their heavy
cargo to the harbour at Oban where big Lars Hanssen was ready with the derrick and an hour after that, when
the first teams arrived down on the rocks below the Creggan Cliffs, the Valkyrie was ploughing into a gentle
headwind past Lismore Island and out towards the Atlantic for the run up and round the north of
Scotland.</p>
<p>There was nothing more to do but wait.</p>
<hr />
<p>The call came three weeks later, and plenty had happened in that time.</p>
<p>Angus Baxter cornered Jack and put him through it, and it was clear he knew Jack was somehow involved in all
of this, but the policeman didn't quite understand how. He had worked out that of the bunch of good friends,
three of them worked in the dairy and another two in Aitkenbar, and the sixth had worked the summer on the
building site where the big tanks had vanished.</p>
<p>He knew it, but what could he do with it? All that was just circumstantial. With Kerrigan Deane at his side,
Jack Lorne just blanked him, followed his own advice and kept the inspector off balance. Deane was able to
give him an unbreakable alibi for the day the whisky went down the drain in Ferguson's old yard. His uncle
backed him up for the rest. Jack's planning and foresight made it all unimpeachable.</p>
<p>Baxter had no muscle to push it. He had Ferguson and Cullen, and the carbonised body of Wiggy Foley, guns and
whisky, and while he could not put his suspicions to rest, they had to remain just that forever more. His
bosses were pleased that he'd solved the case, or most of it, and if there was any more whisky, it remained
a mystery.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, he wrote up the report saying most of it must have gone down the drain at the golf
course, and everybody was happy to let it lie. </p>
<p>Alistair Sproat was left with a big hole in his accounts and nothing to fill it with. His meeting with Kate
Delaney taught him only that she was one very stubborn lady and if he thought he could buy her off, he had
another think coming. Kerrigan Deane's legal action just inexorably ground him down and the development
company pulled out of the deal which left him with an unprofitable distillery, no way to buy the new plant
he wanted, and after paying all the redundancy, a mountain of backbreaking debt.</p>
<p>The big customs investigation into excise duties ripped through his books and records going back twenty years
and he ended up facing a string of fraud charges that was the final straw. Nobody cried for him. </p>
<p>"<em>Yack</em>!" the big sailor's voice boomed in his ear. "I want my boat back."</p>
<p>"You've got your boat."</p>
<p>"Just the half. You've got the other half, and I want it back. You can't sail just half a boat, and I want to
buy another as well, start my own line."</p>
<p>"I take it everything went well? They didn't blow you out of the water?"</p>
<p>"Everything is better than I even thought, myself. Tell you another thing, they will take twice as much next
time round."</p>
<p>"I don't think there's going to be a next time," Jack said. "My heart couldn't take it."</p>
<p>"You wait and see. We do good business again, you and me."</p>
<p>"And what about my share?"</p>
<p>"You check the number you gave me. We split fifty-fifty, right? It's all there."</p>
<p>And when Jack Lorne checked the number of the Cayman account he had set up in the summer, what seemed like a
lifetime ago, it was all there. One million, three hundred and fifty thousand. Untaxed, untaxable,
untraceable.</p>
<p>Now he had the difficult job of telling the boys they wouldn't get their hands on a penny of it.</p>
<hr />
<div class='block'><strong>Levenford Gazette</strong>. November 18.</div>
<div class='block'>By Blair Bryden.</div>
<div class='block'>A full sized replica of King Robert Bruce's warship will be the centrepiece of an ambitious
new heritage centre based in the Bruce Harbour at Aitkenbar Distillery.
</div>
<div class='block'>The educational and tourist attraction is the end result of a remarkable chain of events
which has turned around the fortunes of the town and given it great hope for the future.
</div>
<div class='block'>Announcing the construction of the warship, Charter 1315 Chairman Kate Delaney said it would
provide a historic link with the town's illustrious past and its promising future, provide new jobs in the
tourist industry and give the town a centrepiece which will be the envy of the country.
</div>
<div class='block'>Ms Delaney led the fight against the destruction of the historic harbour and the legal action
against Aitkenbar Distillery owner Alistair Sproat is seen by many as the catalyst in the recent upheaval in
Levenford.
</div>
<div class='block'>Sproat, who is facing a number of serious allegations regarding customs declarations lost
control of the family business earlier this year after a number of deals went spectacularly wrong and after
an equally spectacular raid on the distillery in which more than 20,000 gallons of vintage Scotch whisky was
stolen.
</div>
<div class='block'>Police inquiries into alleged connections between the whisky theft and the accused are still
continuing. Four arrests have been made.
</div>
<div class='block'>After announcing major job losses in the summer, and his plan to site a new designer drinks
premises in Glasgow, Alistair Sproat unloaded the failing Dunvegan Distillery in a management buy-out
leveraged by offshore firm Gabriel and Company. In a remarkable turn around, the small island distillery
altered its thrust to a new malt liqueur and cream-based drinks production which secured markets in the
supermarket and off license sectors.
</div>
<div class='block'>Levenford Dairy, facing closure to pave the way for the ill-fated mall development, joined
the co-operative in the production of milk products for the various drinks and also in the bottling sector,
which saved the jobs of more than forty local employees.
</div>
<div class='block'>The mystery Gabriel and Company, based in the Cayman Islands, seems however, to have put down
roots in Levenford, having appointed a number of local businessmen and former employees of Aitkenbar to its
management team.
</div>
<div class='block'>In October, the company stepped in when Aitkenbar faced receivership, and took over the
production and storage facility, and for the first time in 200 years, malt whisky production in Levenford
ceased. With the development of new plant, the premises have embarked on a radical 'designer' drink venture
which has so far secured the jobs of the former employees who were threatened by the mall development.
</div>
<div class='block'>Spokesperson Mrs Margery Burns, former PA to Alistair Sproat said: "We plan to convert the
old malt whisky production section into an industrial museum and tourist facility which will operate in
conjunction with the new heritage centre on the harbour.
</div>
<div class='block'>"Gabriel &amp; Company have relinquished any claim to the harbour and will match public
donations to ensure its success."
</div>
<div class='block'>The first production of the new designer drinks will begin next week to take advantage of the
Christmas trade. Already markets have been secured in Norway and Sweden and once again, the international
victualling and drinks chain Hammond Hall, has stepped in to support the company and concluded a deal for a
massive order.
</div>
<div class='block'>Ms Delaney, a local artist and teacher, whose works are on show in Kelvingrove Art Gallery in
an exhibition sponsored by the Gabriel Foundation said: "The change of fortunes in Levenford are all due to
the determination of some people to take huge risks and to show that with effort and imagination, they can
take charge of their own destiny. Without them, this town would remain forever a backwater."
</div>
<p>JUNE:</p>
<p>The sleek red car made its way down from High Overburn, flicking round the turns at ramming speed. The sun
was still low in the sky, sending bright rays through the thick leaves, making promise of a scorching day
ahead.</p>
<p>The car followed the same route down the hill that almost a year before, two stolen tankers had trundled in
the dead of night, freewheeling down from the hiding place in the plantation. This time the open-topped
tourer was using its power to negotiate the leafy bends.</p>
<p>It sped down to the dual carriageway, along the straight past the looming bulk of the castle rock and
followed the new river road to the big wrought iron gate of the distillery. It paused at the gatehouse and
the driver waved to Kerr Thomson, who, once badly bitten, could be trusted with anything. Somebody,
somewhere, still had the prints, and well he knew it.</p>
<p>It waited there until a big new truck pulled out from the loading bay and exited on the other side of the
security box, a twelve-wheeler flatbed with a silver container on its back. Along the side of the container,
a bright red piece of graphic art showed a winged vision flying. It was done in the fast, flash brushstrokes
that Kate Delaney had used on the heritage wall way back then.</p>
<p>Below it, in a red slash, the words could be read half a mile away.</p>
<p><em>The Angels Share.</em></p>
<p>The driver and passenger stopped to watch as the big truck eased out of the compound out, and then the car
swung away to pull in at the front of the new glass building. The driver stepped out, showing long and
shapely legs and a very expensive pair of stiletto heels.</p>
<p>She bent back into the car as the passenger shifted across to get behind the wheel.</p>
<p>"Pigeons or sailing today?" She pecked him quickly on the cheek, leaving a red smudge.</p>
<p>"Life is short," Sandy Bruce told her. "Probably both."</p>
<p>"Lazy old scoundrel," she said, and turned towards the tall glass door.</p>
<p>Margery Burns reached the big conference room at the end of the bright corridor, went in, closed the door
behind her.</p>
<p>"Okay," Jack Lorne said. "Lets get down to business."</p>
<p>Margery sat two seats away from him and began to write quickly in the minute book. The rest of them waited to
hear what he had to say.</p>
<p>"I've just had this idea," he began. He looked round at the faces of his friends.</p>
<p>"I think you might like it."</p>
<div class='end'>THE END</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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<li><a href="ch25.xhtml">Chapter 25</a></li>
<li><a href="ch26.xhtml">Chapter 26</a></li>
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<p>Other books by the author available on</p>
<img class='i' src='ak.jpg' alt='Amazon Kindle'/>
<p><a href="http://j.mp/RgVy9h">Full Proof</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/TjevrC'>Shrike</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/lTrdOF'>Incubus</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/darkvalley'>Dark Valley</a></p>
<p>All available now on the Amazon Kindle</p>
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</div>
</body>
</html>

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<h4>Joe Donnelly</h4>
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<p id="timestamp">2012-08-15</p>
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way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or
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form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
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<h1>1</h1>
<p>July 27.. .</p>
<p>"His ghost hangs around here," John Corcoran said. "I heard it was seen, plenty of times. They say it creeps about in the mist coming off the river. This place gives me the willies."</p>
<p>"Me too," Doug Nicol said. "I was told he calls out to other kids. He wants to drag them down there." Doug twisted his face into a snarl and held one hand up in front of his face, fingers clawed but drooping. "Like the monster from the black lagoon."</p>
<p>Everybody looked at Doug who was leaning against the trunk of the old elm tree that sprawled across the grass, an old giant that had given up the fight against a winter gale and had dug great gouges in the turf in its dead fall. Doug was running the blade of his knife under the bark, twisting it hard to break off chunks of powdery wood. He nodded as he spoke, showing his big, prominent teeth. The sun was shining through his equally prominent ears, tinting them red. "He hates being down there on his own."</p>
<p>"That's rubbish," Billy Harrison snorted. He blew out a grey plume of smoke and then let two tendrils curl down from his nose. This was a trick he had spent a lot of idle time mastering in the summer and it made him look like a big shot. Most of the time the smoke rose up and went into his eyes and everybody laughed while Billy spent the next while blinking back sudden tears. This time it worked just fine and Billy raised himself up to kick his heel against the bare root of the toppled elm.</p>
<p>"If he wanted company, he'd drag them up to the graveyard, wouldn't he?" Billy looked round, challengingly. There was a moment's silence while they all thought about it.</p>
<p>"No," John Corcoran contradicted and if it had been one of the others, maybe there could have been a bit of pushing and shoving because Billy was quick off the mark when it came to taking offence. "It would be his ghost. They always go back to where they died, trying to get back into the body. I read that once, so it's true. They don't know they're dead for a long time, years even, and that's why they haunt the places where they died."</p>
<p>Danny Gillan shivered and said nothing. He was sitting up on the sprawled trunk, his feet almost level with Billy's head. Billy nodded agreeably and blew two smoke rings in quick succession, making his jaw work like a fish to get the effect. The rings rolled in the air and played hoops with a rootlet before breaking up. "Maybe that's it, Corky, just maybe," he conceded. "I bet you wouldn't come down here at night."</p>
<p>"Not when the mist comes off the river." Tom Tannahill agreed vehemently. "You never know what's in there. It creeps like it's alive."</p>
<p>" <em>Gives</em> you the creeps," Billy said and laughed at his pun.</p>
<p>Over at Drumbeck Hill, a mile, more like two from where the boys were idling, beyond the double hump of the looming rock and the castle ramparts that rose above the flat mud of the estuary firth, a puff of smoke came billowing out from the crater where the quarry had dug a great scar into the side of the hill. Eight seconds later the booming rumble of the explosion came rolling over the town and across the black, fast water of the river.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan shivered again and though none of the other boys noticed, his eyes had taken on that flat look of someone whose attention is far away.</p>
<p>"Just like when they were looking for the body," Corky said, running with his story. He was goopd at that. "Remember? I thought they were firing cannons from the castle to raise him up. I read that too. They fired cannons over the water when they got a man lost overboard. In Treasure Island. The noise brought bodies up to the top."</p>
<p>"Like, wake them up, you mean?" Doug asked. Corky shrugged.</p>
<p>"It wasn't the quarry," Danny said quietly, not looking at any of them. His back was turned and he was facing across the river towards the rising plume of smoke and rock-dust. Over the distance came the heavy rumbling thunder of falling stones as the payload slid down the crater. Danny's eyes were now focused closer however, fixed on the quayside on the other bank of the river where the low tide had left a man-high slick of greasy algae and where the seagulls wheeled and squalled over something rotten among the mud and old tyres beside the mouldering ribs of some long-dead boat.</p>
<p>"It was a bomb. The one they found up in the reservoir up by Overbuck House."</p>
<p>"What a cracker," Doug nodded, remembering. "Smashed nearly all the windows up in Corrie Street, and a big boulder from the dam came right through McFarlane's barn roof like a
<em>meetcherite</em> comet or something. You should have seen the hole it made." Doug was grinning, showing most of his big rabbit teeth.
</p>
<p>"They blew it up all wrong," Billy said. The bomb was an old story, from way back in spring and that was ancient history. A lot had happened since that spring. "I heard a flock of Barrie's sheep got such a fright they went crazy and took a header off the cliff on the Langmuir Crags.</p>
<p>"An' I heard...." Billy told another rumour they'd all heard a dozen times since the spring, but never tired of repeating.</p>
<p>"But Paulie came up, didn't he?" Tom Tannahill asked. "Just like that book Corky was telling us about. Must have wondered what was happening up there."</p>
<p>"Yeah." Doug laughed and held his hands up on either side of his mouth. "Hey, who's making all the noise," he said, in a voice that wasn't quite ghostly enough.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan shivered again and not from the cold. The sun was high, beaming through the thick umbrella of leaves on the limes and elms that had weathered the winter gales and the air was thick with pollen and the sleepy high-summer buzzing of bees. He lowered his eyes from the skeleton of the dead boat and looked down into the black turbulence of the river. The sun reflected bright from the rippling water, spearing right back into Danny's eyes and in that instant the other boys' voices faded away and he was back in the springtime, on the far side of the river, on a day cold and sharp enough to make your eyes water and scrape the inside of your nose. There had been no leaves on the trees then, only buds sill tight-wrapped on stark branches and the big fallen elm showed redwood circles on the truncated ends where the council's parks department workers had chainsawed the massive branches that had fallen across Keelyard Road.</p>
<p>"Who's making all the noise?" Doug mimicked a dead boy and Danny saw it unreel again in his mind. Who's making the noise?
<em>Who?</em></p>
<p>He'd been there when Paul Degman went down into the water, tumbling with the current. Danny was glad he hadn't seen Paulie Degman's eyes, for that would have made the nightmares so much worse, but still, he swam and rolled in his dreams, drawn under the surface by a desperately strong hand clutching for rescue, clawing for life. He'd been almost there, almost at that very spot on that very day.</p>
<p>
<em>It could have been me!</em> The thought reverberated again and again, a boy's sudden comprehension of sudden, permanent end.
</p>
<p>Paulie Degman was thirteen, just the same age as Danny and while they came from different parts of town - Danny lived up on Corrieside where the municipal housing scheme petered out against the cleft of the gully and gave on to farmland - they knew each other. Paulie was a down-town boy, who lived in one of the gaunt old tenements that backed on to the river. This had been his playground, the alleys and closes of the quayside, the cobbles and old capstans where boats had tied up when the quay had bustled, back in history. He'd played here all his life and it had killed him, while Danny had come playing here one rare spring day and he'd stayed alive.</p>
<p>Danny remembered the scream. Some other kid had been playing there too, heaving rocks at the gulls they'd tempted down with old crusts from Christie's bakery. The sound had cut into his consciousness and frozen him in the act of hefting the stone he was aiming at a beer bottle bobbing along on the current. Over the space of the months since spring - and everything that had happened in the town since then - Danny was never sure why that sound had frozen him to the quick. There had been some quality to the cry, some urgency that had snaked into his nerves and set the hairs prickling under his woollen tammy-hat. He'd turned quickly and the high screech, so like the fighting gulls, had been joined by the frantic cry of a woman, somewhere high up in the sandstone tenement close to Barley Cobble. The stone had dropped from his hand and bounced glassily on the kerbstone at the edge of the harbour.</p>
<p><em>"Jesus Christ get back...."</em> Shouts, hoarse and urgent and somehow riven with shock.</p>
<p>
<em>"Oh mister it's Paulie he's in..."</em> panic in the voice of a small boy, closer now as Danny Gillan followed the strange and terrible magnetism in the air.
</p>
<p>A clatter of feet, seggs and hob-nails staccato against the cobbles.</p>
<p><em>"Oh sweet mother of god it's my..."</em> a woman's prayer in a voice that said she didn't yet believe.
</p>
<p>Big John Fallon the sergeant running the length of the quayside, leaping over a jumbled pile of bricks from the old boatshed that had collapsed in the frost of winter. He was stripping his tunic as he ran, hat flying off to roll alongside him for a few seconds. His white shirt flapping where it pulled out of his blue serge trousers.</p>
<p>Paulie Degman had fallen into the river and he'd gone down in the fast black current and his boots had got snagged on something.</p>
<p>
<em>And that was the worst of it,</em> Danny Gillan knew. Paulie hadn't collapsed and banged his head. He hadn't been hit by a big red bus going hell for leather round the corner from the old bridge to slam him against a wall and kill him stone dead in the blink of an eye. He'd gone down in the water and he'd got stuck and he must have fought and cried and hauled for breath and all the black silt had gone down his throat and he must have coughed out all of his air. Of all the million ways to go, all the hundreds of thousands of ways for boys to die, that was just about the worst, with only one exception young Danny Gillan could think of. You could fall off the big fan-shaped cliff up on Langmuir like Neil Kennedy's big brother who fractured his skull or you could take a header from the overhang under the castle ramparts down onto the flat basalt slope of eagle rock. You could climb one of the high tension pylons that strode over the hill from the power station to Barloan harbour and get fried to a cinder, so they said, to a crisp. You could slip on a rope swing and twist your neck in the noose and be gone before you knew it. You could even die in your sleep like they said in the prayers,
<em>if I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord...</em></p>
<p>But drowning...</p>
<p>Paulie had gone down in the river and he'd drowned. In a couple of minutes, Danny, casually walking towards Barley Cobble, targeting the bobbing bottle, would have got to where the boys had been chucking stones and he'd have joined in the fun, making it a team effort, enjoying the company and the contest, the way it always is with boys. He'd have seen Paulie heave his rock, one of the shards from the brick-shed, hurl arm over shoulder, seen him slip on the slick algae at the edge, take a tumble, arms outstretched, a yelp of surprise blurting before he plunged in like one of the big spring-run salmon going up the weir.</p>
<p><em>Except Paulie was going down...</em></p>
<p>Danny had seen big John Fallon come thundering down, scattering the pigeons feeding on the spilt grain from the distillery wagon. They had gone clapping into the air in a flutter of panic while Danny's heart had been fluttering inside him and the very air had been charged with a dread tension.</p>
<p>"Out of my way," the policeman had roared.
<em>Owramawae!</em> Like some charging clan chief, the words crammed together but as eloquent as any cry and somehow crystal clear. A cart of firewood went tumbling as his boot caught it. John leapt over a cringing dog, reached the quayside and launched himself into the air. Everything about the moment was fixed in Danny Gillan's mind. He could see again the arc of the big sergeant's dive, perfect in every way. Arms straight out, shirt tail flapping. Two rowing boats were anchored just out from the side, a two-man span from the wall. The tide was in, and running high though the downward current was still fierce from the melt rains, but there was still a six-foot drop to the water. The policeman went between the boats with hardly a splash - and if he'd hit either one he'd have broken his neck for certain. He went straight under and disappeared. Black ripples shivered outwards and the boats rocked on the surface.
</p>
<p>The boy saw all this from the other side of the loading stair where the old grain barges used to park in days gone by. Forty yards ahead a crowd had gathered, atoms drawn together by the magnetism of death. Two men came down in a boat, rowing hard to cut across the current, backs bent with strain on the downpush. The screaming woman had reached the bottom of the tenement and she was running down the uneven cobbles, one shoe on and one off. Another splash, this one huge and there was a second man in the water. John Fallon had disappeared under the surface. Danny knew him. The policeman sometimes came round the school if there was ever an accident, or maybe a spate of shoplifting at Woolworth's, the kind of thing which always peaked before Christmas (and wasn't it an amazing thing that mothers always lost the knack of arithmetic when they unwrapped presents pocket money could never have bought?) Fallon was a decent enough big fellow. His son Jackie was only a few years younger than Danny and the two boys sometimes knocked around together.</p>
<p>A clock inside Danny's head was ticking off the seconds.</p>
<p>Another man jumped in red haired and red faced. It was Paulie Degman's uncle Peter who drove the cleansing wagon that hosed down the drains and sucked up the crap inside them.</p>
<p>
<em>Come up, come up. The words came of a sudden, with their own beat, like a metronome. It was for the boy and for the policeman both.</em>
</p>
<p>The water erupted. John Fallon came splashing up, hauling for breath, his face smeared with thick river-bottom clay. He gasped once, twice, and then went porpoising down again. A siren came hee-hawing along River Street and its tone changed as it came fast as it could down the narrow scrape of Rope Vennell. Above it, up close to the shadowed back of the old tenement building, on the roof of the outhouses behind Cairn House, something flashed and glinted, a piece of metal or a shard of broken glass, catching the low light of the sun. It sent a white needle of light into Danny's eye and he screwed his eyes tight for an instant against the sudden glare. When he opened them again, the light was gone. Danny stopped and held onto the railing at the only part of the quayside where the council had fixed a safety barrier. Something made him turn away from the scene and look down into the water where sun glinted on the tumbling surface. The red wall of the distillery vented steam in a shriek of heat and a cloud passed over the sun. Down in the depths, something white moved. Danny's heart kicked like a mule and his throat clicked in a dry spasm. Something down in the depths of the water rolled over.</p>
<p>It could have been anything. It really could have been anything, a bundle of leaves, a piece of old rag, a discarded newspaper. Anything.</p>
<p>But for weeks after that, for months after that, in the dark of night as spring turned into summer and brought with it its own strange and terrifying days, Danny Gillan saw the bloodless face of Paulie Degman as he tried to claw his way to the surface.</p>
<p><em>"He came up, didn't he?"</em></p>
<p>Danny's daydream imploded and he came reeling back to this present.</p>
<p>"It could have been the bomb. What a blast. Like that Jap place." Doug's face was animated.</p>
<p>"Hirohito," Billy said.</p>
<p>"Naw, couldn't have been," little Tom Tannahill disagreed, shaking his head. "That was the atom bomb. It would have knocked the whole town flat. It was one of the five-hunner pounders. They say if it had hit the shipyard the whole place would have gone up like a rocket."</p>
<p>"Probably meant for the dummy village," Corky said. "That's where most of the bombs went."</p>
<p>Danny forced his mind away from the river and thoughts of the drowning of Paulie Degman. In a way he too was drowning. In their own way, all of them were, in this town on this strange and heavy summer. Mention of the Dummy Village had helped knock his mind off the dismal track.</p>
<p>"They say it's still standing," he told them. "Like a ghost town."</p>
<p>"Nah. Must have been blown to bits during the war," Billy said. "It was like the dambusters up there on the moor."</p>
<p>The war was twenty years gone and done but it was still close enough for each of them to remember the backlash.
<em>Eat that and be grateful, you couldn't get it during the war.</em> Austerity of a sort lived on for a while longer.
</p>
<p>"Has anybody ever been there?" Danny asked.</p>
<p>"My brother said he and a couple of fellas went up to have a look," Corky said. "But the place is guarded. Commandos or somebody. You can't get in, and if you do they can shoot you. It's the law. They've got the right."</p>
<p>Corky looked at them all, with a grin on his face. "But Phil's a lying toad. He couldn't find his arse with both hands in broad daylight."</p>
<p>Billy Harrison had just taken a deep draw on his cigarette. All of the smoke came out in a rush with his first bellow of laughter and then he went into a helpless fit of coughing. The others fell about laughing and even Danny laughed so hard he lost his balance fell off the tree trunk to land with a thump on the short grass.</p>
<p><em>That's how it all began....</em></p>
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<h1>2</h1>
<p><em>March:</em></p>
<p>On the same cold spring day that Paul Degman went into the river, on the same side of the harbour, though some three hundred yards upriver close to the weir at the bridge, Neil Hopkirk was watching the commotion from his vantage point on the roof of some outhouses behind the buildings fronting River Street.</p>
<p>Neil was sixteen years old and had lank dark hair hanging down below his collar and dangling in a straight and somehow imbecilic fringe over the rims of his glasses. He had a dark, pear-shaped birthmark on his left cheek, which earned him the nickname of Mole, but which only his best friends, a handful of idlers (including John Corcoran's brother Phil, who couldn't find his arse with both hands) could get away with, chiefly because they were as big and tougher than Neil Hopkirk himself. Neil had a vicious temper as many of the smaller kids could testify. He kept a bunch of keys on a long chain hooked to the belt-loop of his jeans, keys he had picked up here and there and which opened nothing, but they sounded good and important as they jangled on their chain, and to Neil they were the trophies that told the world that Neil Hopkirk was going to be the Best Cat Burglar in the History of Crime.</p>
<p>Whenever he daydreamed of his illustrious future, or occasionally confided to anybody who would listen, those words always had bold capital initials. Ever since he could remember, his hero had been Gentleman Johnny Ramensky, who had been a thief of heroic achievement, grace and style and whom the intelligence service had once sprung from Drumbain Jail to carry out a daring wartime raid behind the lines. Neil Hopkirk had seen that film in the old Regal Cinema four times, sneaking in without paying for three of those visits and demonstrating his uncanny ability (all of his abilities were uncanny, so Neil was convinced) to pass unseen, like an Indian tracker. In his fantasies he saw himself abseiling into a darkened vault from such a height no-one believed it humanly possible, snatching the diamonds, the bag of gold, the trunk of cash, or the secret plans worth a fortune. In those dreams, even the cops hounding him across rooftops - where he would slow down just to give them a sporting chance or a cheeky, swashbucklers wave - had a grudging respect for him. The newspapers would be full of stories of the Black Shadow, a name derived from another of his comic-book heroes, the Black Sapper who would tunnel under the earth in his mechanical mole. They would wonder who he was and in the Regal Cinema he would sit in the back seat, surrounded by the classiest girls in town - Neil was strictly limited in this part of his imagination - smoking king-sized cigarettes and tipping the ice-cream girl a wad of notes, seeing her eyes light up with gratitude and hero worship. All of the guys would be with them, Phil and Cammy and Pony McGill, basking in the warmth of his friendship while Tina Denny and Corrine Latta hung on his every word.</p>
<p>He would be the best, Neil knew. He'd boasted to the rest of the guys that he'd be a legend and while they'd laughed him down, he knew they'd eat it when he became the Best Cat Burglar in the History of Crime.</p>
<p>And now he was up on top of the old outhouses, lounging on the slates, with one casual arm hooked across the galvanised ridging.</p>
<p>He'd been trying a locked window at the back of the ironmongers, sliding the blade of his knife between the sash frames to kick the catch back, tongue out between his teeth. Crawford's Hardware sold fishing gear and hunting gear. In the front shop there was a glass case with expensive penknives including a horn-handled three-bladed beauty with Neil had been eyeing for some time. They had axes and glass-cutters, all part of the cat-burglar's kit, but they also sold shotguns and cartridges which were always stored in the back of the shop. Old man Crawford, who had a large white hearing-aid jammed up behind his ear and the milky, somehow mouldy beginnings of a cataract in his left eye always kept the guns in a back store and while nobody ever got in to the back room, Neil was convinced that this window was where the gun cabinet had to be, where big shotguns were stacked on a rack, along with boxes of shells. Already his imagination had taken over and he saw himself with a black balaclava, a figure of imposing menace, while the bank manager (though he'd never actually been in a bank, never mind met a bank manager) pleaded with please don't shoot. And the pretty cashier, she'd be eyeing up the tall, masked stranger, wishing he would take her away from this boring, humdrum job, to a life of luxury and hot adventure.</p>
<p>It was all within arms reach, Neil just knew.</p>
<p>Then, behind the bars, behind the frosted glass, a shape loomed up in front of him.</p>
<p><em>"Wah....!"</em> The eloquence that came so naturally in Neil's daydreams deserted him completely.</p>
<p>The shape leaned forward, right up against the pane. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" a voice roared from behind the pane, losing none of its force, making the glass itself rattle.</p>
<p>Instantly Neil recognised the bull-tones of Donal Crawford, the old man's nephew who worked Saturdays. He was six foot four and built like a brick shithouse and as tough as steel bolts too.</p>
<p>Big Donal reached for the catch and shoved the window up with a ratchetting clatter. Fortunately the frame hit the safety lock when the window was only six inches open. Neil backed against the wall at the far side of the alley and hit his head a smart crack on the crumbly stonework, hard enough to hurt but not enough to damage. Big Donal was yelling non stop, all the phrases jammed up against each other and ever one of them promising lasting pain to whoever had tried to break into his uncle's premises.</p>
<p>In the two seconds before Neil turned and scooted down the alley, he saw he had been mistaken in assuming the window led on to the storeroom where the shiny shotguns were stacked. Through the six-inch gap, quite clearly, he saw the hairy, spotty thighs of old man Crawford's nephew and he realised that he'd tried to break into the outhouse where big Donal was having a crap.</p>
<p>Neil came skittering out of the alley. There was a broken down wall where the old boatshed had collapsed in the storm and beside it a straggle of weeds from last year. Neil went ploughing into the scrub, crashing through the dried heads of dockens and the wood-saw teeth of bramble runners. Behind him Donal was still bawling in fury and Neil knew it would only be a matter of seconds before the big fellow pulled up his trousers and came barging out the back door on the alleyway.</p>
<p>Somewhere downriver somebody screamed, high and glassy on the cold spring air. Neil came stumbling through the weed patch when without any warning at all, a big dark shape loomed up. Neil whipped round and saw a policeman come running towards him. His heart stopped still and he felt the blood drain right out of his face.</p>
<p>It was big John Fallon. His black boots thumped on the cobbles and his hat went flying off to roll like a spare wheel along the flat. Neil's first instinct was to run, but the sergeant was going full tilt. The boy measured the distance to the corner of Rope Vennel, the next alley which led up to River Street, and he knew he'd never make it and even if he did, he'd be caught before he was halfway up and the sergeant would give him an extra toe up the backside for making him run.</p>
<p>Neil turned, hands out in a gesture that said he gave in and was ready to come quietly.</p>
<p>Big John Fallon came powering towards him. Neil stepped forward but the policeman simply leapt over the pile of bricks and crumbled mortar from the ruined boatshed. For an instant the boy thought the Sergeant was going to land on top of him, but Fallon's eyes were fixed dead ahead of him. He didn't even notice the cringing would-be burglar.</p>
<p>Amazed, Neil Hopkirk followed the thundering progress. The sergeant was stripping off his tunic. Neil watched him throw it to the side and again his instinct almost took over. There would be a whistle and maybe a set of handcuffs. Certainly a police warrant card that would come in handy to an international jewel thief. But just then he heard the slam of the service door at the hardware store and knew he shouldn't hang around.</p>
<p>John Fallon was halfway down the quayside. A couple of boys came round the corner, pushing a cart heaped up with chopped firewood and they tried to take evasive action. The policeman's foot sent it and all the bundles rolling across the cobbled walk. Neil went up the alley for a few yards, then turned, jammed his hands in his pockets and came sauntering back the way he'd come.</p>
<p>Big Donal stopped for a moment, his face red and so swollen with anger it looked as if it would burst. Neil nodded as calmly as he could, while thinking to himself that for such a big fella, Donal wasn't too gifted in the equipment department. In the hardware department, Neil thought, and started to giggle. Donal gave him a suspicious look before he turned to run down in the same direction as the policeman. Neil took a left up Fish Pend, the narrowest alley in town and which bore the powerful aroma of the fishmonger's filleting and gutting slabs. Phil Corcoran and Campbell Galt, they'd been with a couple of girls, at least so they said and they swore blind that when they got wet, they smelled the same way. Neil, who had never got as much as a kiss playing postman's knock, hoped that wasn't the case, otherwise it would make him pretty sick for sure.</p>
<p>He held his breath until he got to Boat Pend which led to the arched walkway right under the old tenements. There was a narrow niche here and a downpipe on the wall out of sight of people passing by up on River Street. Without much hesitation, Neil jinked into the space, took hold of the pipe and went up the wall, hand over hand, bracing his feet against the rough sandstone. In a matter of seconds, he was up on a low, swaybacked slate roof. He went over the ridge and slid down the lee, still out of sight. There was an old skylight here, which let little light though to whatever was below. He wiped the glass with the heel of his hand and peered in. It was some old shed full of rusted machinery, though the shadows changed everything and gave them all interesting shapes. The skylight was shut but he could have broken a pane and slipped the catch. He decided to leave it for the moment, at least until he'd swiped a few flashlight batteries out of Woolworth's.</p>
<p>Up on the roof, despite the cold of the spring day, the slates were surprisingly warm. Neil Hopkirk sat in the valley formed by the two slopes between the ridges, completely hidden from view. It was exactly his kind of place. Further down the quayside, there were a couple of men in a rowing boat and people were shouting. From along near Barley Cobble, a woman was yammering something and Neil thought that maybe somebody had fallen into the river. It was too far away to make out. He sat for a while, enjoying the warmth of the old slates and then he turned to look at the building behind him.</p>
<p>The tenement was in shadow. It was tall and gaunt and the windows were darkened and for a moment Neil Hopkirk didn't know which particular one it was. They all looked different from the back. Round on River Street, most of them had shops on ground level, Woolworth's, Crawford's the Ironmonger, Christie's bakery, dozens of shops in a busy town's main street. Round the back they didn't look so good. It was as if the builders knew the only people who would come round here would be fish-gutters and draymen and van drivers. This was the town's tradesman's entrance, dirty and unfinished, the hidden backside of a bustling town.</p>
<p>Neil stood up and took his keys out. He was far enough out from the wall to be in the sunlight. He swing them around, letting the round metal dog-tag glitter in the sun while he checked out the windows. The sunlight sent a circle of white reflected light flashing as it tracked up the slates and then sparked out down the quayside.</p>
<p>The valley of the low roof still afforded cover. The boy followed the line of the gutter and got to the first low window. It was only a foot square, probably a vent from a cellar and completely festooned with cobwebs. A roan pipe came down from the edge of the high roof, a slender tree of metal with chevrons of branch drains going left and right. Without hesitation, Neil scrambled up the pipe, followed the first branch out for five feet, straining to grasp the nearest window ledge. He reached it, hauled himself up to sit with his back to the window to check if anyone had seen. There were no shouts of alarm, at least none other than the turbulence down there where the men were rowing and the urgent yelling of men and women mingled to create a twist of tension on the air.</p>
<p>He felt behind him, got his fingers pressed up against the first panel of the six frame-panes and pushed hard. There was a soft squeal of protest, or dry wood on wood, and the window lifted just a little. Neil's heart started to beat faster. He turned on the ledge to peer inside. For an instant, his own reflection moved, as if there was somebody else inside the dark room and Neil almost fell down onto the slates. He had to wait until his heart climbed down from his throat before he could get a hand over his eyes to cut out the reflection and peer inside. The gloom had cleared and in that second he knew where he was. It was Doctor Green's old surgery. He'd moved out a couple of years ago and nobody had seen him since. There was some talk of abortions, but nobody knew why he had just upped and left. He had lived and worked here, using most of the third floor of Cairn House. From where he sat on the ledge, the boy could make out a table and chairs. Some cupboards. A bag which might contain a doctor's medical kit, shiny and deadly scalpels, maybe a syringe, or even some chloroform to overpower guards. Neil Hopkirk's imagination was off and running again.</p>
<p>He eased the window up, inch by inch, fearful that it might jam and he'd fail again this day. The window opened six inches, ten, a foot, a bit more. Enough to let Neil Hopkirk through. He squirmed in, head and shoulders first, feeling the weight on his ribs then his belly. The flat plaque of metal on his key-chain, where he'd had his name engraved in the cobbler's shop, caught the sun and flashed a sparkle of light over the roof and into the eyes of a boy who was watching a tragedy unfold down on the quayside. Neil wriggled some more, pushed forward. His legs were sticking outside when he got to the balance point of no return and started to slide forward. Unable to stop, he put his hands out in front of him while he slid down. His shins scraped painfully on the edge of the window and he landed with a thump and clatter.</p>
<p><em>He was in.</em></p>
<p>It took a minute or so for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom and for the hot abrasion-burn to fade from the skinny shin-bones. It was dusty in here, and there was a smell that was worse than the flat and slimy reek in Fish Pend. Neil wrinkled his nose in disgust. It was a sickly reek that reminded Neil of the time he'd reached into the pigeon's nest last summer when he was collecting eggs. He'd reached over the rim and put his hand into the flat twiggy saucer. His fingers had touched something cool and yielding and then they'd slipped inside the small mound. He'd felt the cold wetness and brought his hand back and he'd almost fallen off the wall under the railway bridge where the street-pigeons nested. It had been an abandoned nest. The two chicks had been half grown and now both of them were now half rotted. Their innards had the texture of cold custard and their half-feathered skins were thin as wet paper. Neil had brought his hand down to eye level - to nose level - and the white maggots had been pulsing in the viscid mess on his fingers and the smell had hit him so hard he had almost retched. He'd flicked his hand to whip them away and some of the mess had splattered Cammy Galt's cheek and he'd been far from pleased about that. Neil recalled Cammy waiting for him to gingerly descend and then he'd kicked Neil a smart one right up the crack of his arse with those winkle-picker teddy-boy boots he always wore and Neil's backside had gone into a puckering spasm that made him feel as if the boot was still stuck up there a full hour later.</p>
<p>The smell inside the old surgery was almost - but not quite - as bad as the foul reek from the dead squeakers in the nest. Neil supposed a pigeon had found its way in and not been able to get back out again. There was an overlying mustiness on the dusty air, a hint of dry rot, stale urine. This place hadn't been used for a couple of years, maybe more. There might not be anything worth stealing.</p>
<p>But he was inside, and that was a part of it, almost the best of it. There was an excitement of just getting inside a building, coming in through a window or down from a skylight into an empty place. Trespassing. Breaking and entering. Gaining illegal access. Neil's heart had speeded up and he could feel the delicious tension in the pit of his belly. All of his senses were alert, though he wished his nose wasn't quite so efficient. The hairs on his forearms were standing up as his hands clenched into fists. He was aware of everything, the far-off noises of whatever was happening down at the quay. The muted piping of gulls. The steamy crash of the jackhammer down at the shipyard next to the castle rock. He waited, listening for a few moments. The back room was still in shadow, but the sun glanced off a window of the yacht repairers across the river and sent a shaft of light straight in, cutting the darkness in an almost solid beam in which tiny dust-motes twirled and sparkled. Out on River Street, a big haulage wagon from the distillery rumbled past, shivering the foundations. The door of the room was open, just an inch or two, not much more. Beyond it, the rest of the building beckoned. It tugged at Neil. Somewhere in the dark of the hallway, something small squeaked twice and then stopped. For a small instant, all sound was cut off and the silent ambience of the empty building was filled with hollow echoes.</p>
<p>Neil crossed from the window, keeping low. There was a set of drawers which he opened one by one, instinctively doing it right, starting at the bottom so he couldn't have to close the next. Inside, there were some brochures about pregnancy and the kinds of things mothers should eat. The bag on the shelf was oddly clean. Inside there was some clothing, not very clean, and a half bottle of whisky with little more than a mouthful left at the bottom. Neil twisted the top and drank the dregs, savouring the burn, and he shuddered at the strange taste. He slung the bottle back in the bag and crossed to the door. The whisky fumes were warm on his breath and he was feeling pretty good about this whole thing.</p>
<p>The door opened with a tiny creak, not much louder and just as high-pitched as the squeak made by the distant mouse or bat or whatever small creature had panicked. He slowly crossed the narrow hallway. Here, on the floor, somebody had smashed a pane of glass and the shards crackled under his feet like sharp gravel. Three doors led off and Neil knew one of them would lead down the stairs and out onto River Street. As far as he remembered the whole building was empty and if he'd read the Levenford Gazette he'd have known that a development company planned to convert the whole of it into apartments, but Neil Hopkirk had progressed none since getting the basics and struggled even to read the shiny Superman and Fantastic Four comics from America.</p>
<p>The first room was the old surgery. It was not big, but laid out with a flat and mouldering trolley-bed with a thin plastic cover ripped in so many places that it looked as if it had been raked with machine gin fire. The stuffing puffed out like flak-bursts. The desk was plain wood and thick with dust. Neil opened a cupboard door and jumped back in fright as a white shape swung with it. It took a second for his brain to identify the floating ghost as a white overall. It took several seconds more for Neil to get his breath back.</p>
<p>There was nothing in the cabinet by the window where an old porcelain sink caught the light. It had two neat tap-handles that could be operated with an elbow.</p>
<p>There was nothing here worth stealing. On the wall, a couple of tracts, pages torn from a bible, were white against the peeling green floral wallpaper. They held no interest for the Best Cat Burglar in the History of Crime.</p>
<p>He turned away from the wall and sauntered back to the hallway.</p>
<p>Something froze him in his tracks.</p>
<p>Neil Hopkirk stopped still. The hair on his arms stuck out so high they formed gooseflesh. The hairs on the back of his neck began to crawl and the skin between his shoulder-blades puckered and tensed.</p>
<p>There was something else in the building. He started to turn, got one hand up against the doorpost. His breath had backed up tight in his throat.</p>
<p>A harsh scraping noise came from behind him. In that split second Neil Hopkirk realised it was the sound of broken glass grinding into the floor.</p>
<p>Something, someone, had taken a step behind him, crushing the shards of window-glass. Neil completed his turn. A white face came swooping out of the darkness of the corridor, fast, too fast to be anything more than a blur. A hand came up even faster and slammed into the side of his head, open handed and hard. Neil's head whipped back in a bright flash of pain and cracked against the doorpost, gouging a gash into the skin of his scalp.</p>
<p>A blurt of panicked sound escaped him. He reeled, instinctively going with the blow in the same direction as his reflex had swung him in an attempt to dodge it. The pain flared bright for only a second and then he was moving. Feet crunched on the glass again and he saw a grey motion out of the corner of his eye. He twisted, squirming past the doorjamb, fright galvanising him into suddenly fluid motion. A hand reached for him, almost caught the back of his jerkin and merely slapped him forward towards the stairs.</p>
<p>He hit the first flight running like a startled rabbit, whimpering as he went. All he had seen was a blurred shape and the hand that had swung round to slam into his head. There had been no warning at all, only the sudden violence.</p>
<p>Footsteps thudded now behind him in the hall. He took the steps two at a time, grabbing onto the old banister for purchase, heading up into the darkness. He skittered to the landing, swung himself round and up again into the gloom. Here there were another three doors, one of them slanted, torn from its hinges. The other two gaped black. Behind him, he could hear the blundering progress of whoever had hit him. He dived to the left, out of sight of his pursuer, got through the broken door and swung right down a very narrow little lobby that smelled of pigeon shit and rotted paper. He reached a small room with one window boarded with planks of wood. Over in the corner, there was a tall cupboard with no door. The backing plaster was punctured and rotten, and most of it had fallen to the floor in mouldering grains. The room was gloomy, but Neil Hopkirk's eyes were wide with fright and with the burst of adrenaline now shunting down his veins. He crossed quickly to the cupboard, all of his senses straining for signs of pursuit. He could hear the heavy footfalls of someone who did not care how much noise he made, and the harsh breathing. A meaty thud told him a hand was slapping on the smooth wood of the banister. He tried to slow his breathing to absolute stillness while he crossed the floor, silent now as a cat, to the open cupboard. He crouched, seeing no other avenue of escape, his glasses already dimming the poor light. He turned, pushed himself into the hole where the plaster had fallen away. It had looked deep, as if there was a passage that might lead into the thick wall itself. He pressed further and came to a sudden stop against the crumbling sandstone, jammed half in, half out.</p>
<p>The man's breathing came harsh. He reached the top of the stairs, paused. Neil could envisage him wondering which room to try and he pressed himself further into the cavity, managing to get his legs out of sight, but unable to pull his head and hands back. He curled himself tight, trying to make his shape as small as possible. In this gloom, if he stayed still, maybe the man wouldn't see him.
<em>Maybe</em></p>
<p>A scrape of sound came from beyond the room, much like the first noise that had alerted him, then a motion in the doorway.</p>
<p>His heart thudded in two hard kicks. A man came in, walking very slowly. His whole shape seemed to fill the space, shoulders almost touching each side. He came in, stood there, just a fuzzed shape in the darkness, but scarily defined, solid. Neil heard him breathe, fast and slightly ragged, but other than that, he made no sound. He cocked his head to the side, as if listening, turned to go out again.</p>
<p>Mole coughed.</p>
<p>It was as simple as that, a little catch at the back of his throat and a cough that just jumped out unbidden. The man turned, came stalking back into the room with no hesitation at all, pinpointing the source exactly. He reached, grabbed Neil by the hair, hauled him right out so violently one of his shoes caught in the old plaster and went whirling off. The world spun as the boy was thrown across the room towards the doorway. He tried to get to his feet and almost made it, too scared to cry out, his whole scalp burning in pain. Behind him the man moved, caught him by the back of the neck, and drew him to his feet pulling him out through the doorway. He dragged him down the stairs to the lower level, slammed him through the first doorway, feet crunching once again on the glass shards. Neil's glasses went spinning off to the side. All the sharp shapes blurred. The boy went staggering backwards and the man's other hand came up and straight-armed into his nose.</p>
<p>Brilliant hurt blossomed in the middle of his face and in his eyes. Tears simply spurted, just like the blood which blurted from both nostrils. Neil let out a squawk of pain and dreadful fear. The massive shape that had come through the darkened doorway slapped him again and sent him crashing against the desk. His thigh hit with almost enough force to break the bone and this time the hurt was so much that for an instant the room went completely dark, as if the power had somehow failed inside his brain. He went tumbling over the desk and his chin connected with the hard surface of the sink, thumping hard enough to clash his teeth together and strip a slice of skin from his tongue.</p>
<p>Neil was swimming in a sea of pain, shock now powering up so that his brain was unable to comprehend what had happened. Within the first seconds the shock began to overpower the pain, layering and lacquering it with a strange numbness.</p>
<p>A hand clamped on the back of his neck and lifted him straight upwards. The pressure was so great that Neil Hopkirk only felt himself hauled off the floor before everything faded away and a complete darkness swamped him.</p>
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<h1>3</h1>
<p><em>August...</em></p>
<p>"I bet we could find it."</p>
<p>John Corcoran had swivelled on the fallen elm and was clambering to stand up on the massive trunk. He shaded his eyes against the high sun and pointed across the river, indicating roughly north.</p>
<p>"It's up beyond the barwoods," Corky assured them. "Up on the moor."</p>
<p>"I heard that too," Tom Tannahill agreed. "There's the bomb craters on this side of the woods. Remember the craters where we used to catch newts and frogs? The dummy village must be up that way, 'cause that's where the bombs fell."</p>
<p>"I heard it was up at the Blackwood Stream," Danny Gillan pitched in. "Right at the source,"</p>
<p>"I bet it's not as far as that," Billy Harrison countered, which was not entirely unexpected. "That's about twenty miles away. You could never walk that far in a month of Sundays."</p>
<p>All of them had spent the better part of every summer holiday - except this one which was different from all the rest - playing in and around the Blackwood Stream which tumbled down a deep gorge beyond the barwoods and meandered to empty itself into the river just north of the town. They had been up beyond Blackwood Farm, and even to the low ridge of heathery hills beyond, but none of them had ever reached the end of the stream. There was a rumour that like Strowan's Well down in Arden the water came gushing pure and clear out of a cleft of rock, like the story in the bible, but nobody knew for certain, so Billy's estimate went unchallenged.</p>
<p>"It's pretty far up, I reckon," Danny insisted. "It would have to be if they didn't want the Jerries to miss and drop them right here."</p>
<p>"It would take too long," Billy argued. "We'd never get back in time. It would take more'n a day."</p>
<p>"Who cares how long it would take?" Corky said. He turned back towards them, spinning quickly and almost losing his balance on the smooth wood where the bark had been stripped away. He pinwheeled his arms for balance, regained it and stood with his legs planted apart. "We could take the tent."</p>
<p>Everybody stopped. It was one of those odd moments when an idea is tossed in the air like a shiny coin and just catches everyone's attention while it spins. There was a drawn-out silence. They all knew which tent. Phil Corcoran and some of pals had dumped it out of the scout lorry after a camp a couple of years before and it had never made its way back to the scout hall. Sometimes Corky and the rest of the boys would set it up on the flat meadow by the Ladyburn stream that wended its way down past Corrieside and on hot summer nights there would always be a selection of youngsters sitting out under the stars beside the red embers of a stickwood fire, playing three-card brag and pontoon, telling jokes and tall tales, poring over tattered copies of an old Parade magazine where they'd get all hot and bothered if they saw so much as one bare tit.</p>
<p>Not this summer, though.</p>
<p>Since long before the school term finished at the end of June, since April at least, there had been an unofficial curfew in the town that was as tight as any the council could have tried to enforce and for most of the summer, since the trouble began, no mother in town would allow any of her children to camp out at night. Most wouldn't let their children play out of sight.</p>
<p>"No chance," Billy said. "My ma would throw a fit and a bad turn. She'd go
<em>bonanza</em> if she even knew I was down here. She thinks I'm round at Doug's house reading comics right now."
</p>
<p>"Mine too," Doug agreed. "I have to tell her where I'm going and when I'll be back. After what happened to Don Whalen she was a nervous wreck. Our Terry isn't even allowed out of the front garden."</p>
<p>Danny nodded along with them. There was still a nervousness about the town after what had been happening since the spring, and although it seemed to be over now, seemed to be over, it took a while for mothers to settle down again. They were like chickens in a coop still fretful after the stoat has gone, leaving the thick scent of blood in the air. Mothers were instinctive that way. They could still smell the blood. They were still scared in case the next blood they smelled would the blood of their own.</p>
<p>"They would never know," Corky said, green-brown eyes bright and alive with that combination of mischief and adventure that made him the natural hub of their group. "We could say we're going along with the Scouts. They're doing the weekend camp up at Linnvale."</p>
<p>That was true and well enough known. The past couple of summer months had meant every kid was kept on a short leash and the community had organised a series of events, summerplay picnics and day-trips, just to give the mothers a break, and to relieve the boredom of boys who needed to roam. The scout troop were taking groups of boys, sometimes forty and fifty strong, to a campsite nearly thirty miles outside town and as far as most parents were concerned in that particular summer, the far enough away, the better.</p>
<p>"Nobody would ever know," Corky repeated. "We could load up with food and just skin out when the scout bus leaves. As long as we get back at the same time, we could still do it."</p>
<p>"It would be some hike," Billy objected. "Could be twenty miles like I said, even more."</p>
<p>"But we could be the first. The first ever. Nobody's ever found the Dummy Village before. Nobody's ever seen it, except Phil and he's a liar. We could bring something back to show the rest of them, eh? Better than hanging around all day going doo-lally, bored out of your brains."</p>
<p>"But what if...?:" Somebody asked and somebody else threw in another spanner and somebody else thought they might get away with it and while they were talking the quarrymen let off another blast up on Drumbeck Hill. The sound of man-made thunder came rolling down on the still air and rumbled across the water. Each of them stopped talking.</p>
<p>"Come on," Corky said. "This place still gives me the creeps."</p>
<p>Billy ground his cigarette out under his heel. Danny picked up a pine-cone and flicked it against Corky's head. Doug loaded his little slingshot with a smooth acorn and aimed it at Tom's backside. In a minute they were out of the trees that bordered Keelyard Road by the river and were heading up towards the bridge, the memory of Paul Degman's death fading just a little in the light of the sun and in the heat of the agreement which might have been yet unspoken, but was somehow fixed between them all.</p>
<hr/>
<p><em>March:</em></p>
<p>Sister Julia Gillies had come sweeping into the classroom in a rustle of beads and a jangle of keys. She was small and round and had a deep, almost masculine voice and an eye that could fix you like a spear when she meant business which was pretty much all of the time. She had a raised mole on her cheek with three stiff black hairs sticking out, as if her skin had trapped a fly under the surface and it was trying to work its way back out.</p>
<p>She nodded to Matthew Bryden who was attempting to teach a class of thirty boys and girls the finer mysteries of Shakespeare and, only with a phenomenal amount of luck, getting through to more than a scant half-dozen. Quarryhill School was perched on the edge of an abandoned hole in the ground where sandstone had been blasted and cut to build half the old tenements in the town. It was just like any other school, a place where kids were sent for five days of the week for the catch-as-catch-can lottery of learning. Here, the teachers churned and hashed their furrows, never deviating one year to the next, scattering their knowledge like confetti, or
<em>shite in a field,</em> as the local expression would have it. It landed on some and missed others completely and the grey teachers ploughed on regardless. It was up behind the school that something would happen, later that year, in the drop off at the old sandstone quarry. At this moment, however, the madness that would settle on the town was yet to stoke up. Only one person was aware of it, and he was not going to tell a soul.
</p>
<p>The tough little nun who ran the school turned at the table, one hand clenched around the wooden cross dangling from the outsize beads tied at her waist. She swivelled, as if on castors and scanned the class, eyes flicking from one desk to the next.</p>
<p>"Paul Degman is dead." No preamble, no softening of any blow, though everybody knew it anyway. In schools and in schoolyards rumours, gossip and truth travel somewhere close to the speed of light. "He drowned in the river on Saturday and now he is with Jesus." She nodded her head when she said the holy name. Down near the front, two girls sitting side by side burst into tears and automatically turned to hug each other. Up at the back Billy Harrison and Doug Nicol stopped digging each other's ribs and leaned forward on their desk tops.</p>
<p>"As you have often been told, playing by the river is dangerous. By now you will realise why. Remember that all of you."</p>
<p>She swept her eyes round them again, somehow catching every one of them, making beady contact.</p>
<p>"It could have been any one of you."</p>
<p>Danny Gillan felt that cold shiver again. John Corcoran saw the look on his face. "We can swim like fish," he whispered. "Paulie couldn't."</p>
<p>"The Good Lord can look down on you at any time and decide to take you, and that's what he did with Paul Degman, which is why you must always try to be in a
<em>state of grace."</em></p>
<p>"That's total shite," Corky said, keeping his voice low and Danny could tell he was angry just by the use of that word. Corky hardly ever swore, no matter how much his ne'er-do-well father and his crazy, jittery brother might curse. "What's she want to say a thing like that for? He fell in, poor sod. He was just unlucky."</p>
<p>Sister Julia's voice boomed on. "So let us hope that Paul Degman's immortal soul was in a
<em>state of grace</em> when the Lord decided to take him, otherwise...."</p>
<p><em>Otherwise, he'd be in</em> - Danny Gillan closed his eyes -
<em>He'd be in the bad fire,</em> wouldn't he?</p>
<p>Danny didn't have to hear Sister Julia to know what was coming. He'd lived with the spectre of the
<em>bad fire</em> flickering hot at the edge of his consciousness since before he'd even started in the primary school. Four and a half years old and he knew about hell and the everlasting flames that would burn and sear and never, stop.
<em>Not ever!</em> If there was a hell, then it had to be burning flames that went on and on and on and shrivelled your skin and flesh and could never be put out, while God in his infinite mercy and wisdom allowed it to go on.
<em>And on.</em></p>
<p>"Remember now, Daniel," It was always Daniel. Never Danny, or Dan. He'd read about Daniel in the lions den - and read every other book in the bible besides - and sometimes he felt a strange kinship with his namesake. There were times when he felt he'd been put into a hole and somebody had rolled a rock over to close out the daylight and down in the shadows, eyes would watch him and beasts might roar. In his imagination, lions prowled in the darkness. Somewhere in the distant dark, there would be the hint of burning, the smell of smoke. "Remember Daniel," his father never tired of reminding him. "<em>He</em> can see everything you do, and you don't want to go to the
<em>bad fire</em> do you now? That's where you go if you're bad."</p>
<p>Always a warning, always a parable, and hardly a laugh along the way. This God business was a serious thing, as the young Daniel Gillan discovered at a tender age, and
<em>He</em> was always ready to look down with fire in his eye and give it to you good and proper. No messing about here. His heavy hand could come out of nowhere and knock you to the ground. A paternal thing. What fathers were for, especially fathers almighty.
</p>
<p><em>Jesus loves me this I know&#8230;</em> But Good God's getting the furnace stoked and glowing.</p>
<p>At the age of three, Danny's sister Agnes had been helping their mother in the kitchen. She had come out with a bowl of piping hot custard and Danny had stumbled against her, sending the bowl flying. The boiling custard had come down in a searing, cauterising splash to cover his back and his neck and he'd fallen, screaming to the linoleum floor, trying vainly to crawl out of the puddle of scalding liquid. His hands and knees could gain no purchase and the more he tried the more he slipped, while the skin on his neck and back puckered and blistered. The family had no car then - and still didn't - so it took a half an hour to get to the cottage hospital and another hour to be transferred to Lochend General where he spent three weeks getting the dressings changed twice a day by nurses with kindness in their eyes and ruthlessness in their fingers. At the age of thirteen, Danny could still remember the sear of the pain as the nurses pulled the lint away, taking off the thin slick of blistered skin while another nurse held his shoulders flat on the bed to stop him squirming. They could not stop him hurting and they could not stop him screaming. That had been bad. That had been excruciating.</p>
<p>But it had been nothing compared to the scalding custard and the shriek of his nerve endings on the day it had happened. That had been the most fundamental experience of his entire existence. The pain had gone on and on and never seemed to stop while the skin all down his shoulders and back sloughed away and shrank on his flesh while he screamed and shrieked and tried to crawl.</p>
<p>Burning was something he knew about.
<em>Oh Hallelujah.</em> And according to Dan Gillan Senior, if you weren't in a state of grace when God took you, then burning is what you got. An eternity of it.
</p>
<p>All of his life, young Danny had been made aware of the
<em>Bad Fire</em> and until he was seven years old, his dreams had been fraught with heat and flickering red shadows and the smell of burning flesh.
</p>
<p>And the idea of a God who could do that, who knew everything from start to finish and had it all planned in his vast mind, that was a very scary idea altogether. The young Danny didn't want to believe in the kind of God who was so two-faced he would pretend to love you while he knew you would burn forever. It was a set up.
<em>It was a fix.</em></p>
<p>But as a kid he'd been too scared not to believe. He had prayed at night so that the God of his father would spare him from the flames. He'd prayed. And occasionally his own father would get the priest, Father Dowran, to come round and reinforce the lesson, Father Dowran with liquor on his breath and a strange heat in his stroking hands. They'd all prayed. For a state of grace.</p>
<p>"So tomorrow morning there will be special prayers offered up for the repose of his soul," Sister Julia was saying. A girl close to Danny and Corky burst into tears and beside her a boy started to snivel. Danny felt the cold shiver crawl up his spine and in his mind's eye he saw the pale shape under the dark surface of the river and the strange twinkle of light on the roof of the old outhouse buildings on the far side of Boat Pend.</p>
<p>"Everybody be there at nine sharp."</p>
<p><em>Yeah, so we can all pray,</em> Danny thought,
<em>that he doesn't end up in the Bad Fire.</em> Danny knew prayers did no good. What a deal for poor Paulie. Down there in the cold water. One minute he was playing on the bank, throwing stones at gulls and tin cans and the next he's down there in the cold and the murk, swallowing river mud, and then we've got to pray so that he doesn't get hauled away to the
<em>Bad Fire</em> by a terrible, vengeful god.</p>
<p>Danny wondered what a boy like Paulie Degman could ever have done to have been allowed to drown down there in the river; what he could possibly have done to be allowed to burn. He couldn't think of
<em>any</em> reason, any sin that would be bad enough to make you burn forever. On the curve of his shoulder, just beside his neck on the fine skin on the collarbone, there was still a flat, puckered scar that had been the mark of the scald as a child. Automatically, his fingers stroked the memory.
</p>
<p>"It's shite," Corky said again, snapping Danny out of the black thoughts. "Once you've had it, that's it. Finished. Gone and done. That's why you better make the most of it while you've got it, and you only ever get the one chance." He turned to Danny. "You believe in all this garbage?"</p>
<p>Danny shook his head. He'd shucked off his belief in an almighty only a year or so past, but old habits died hard and old indoctrination ran deep.</p>
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<h1>4</h1>
<p><em>March:</em></p>
<p>On the Wednesday that Neil Hopkirk was finally posted missing, big John Fallon had been round to have a chat with Phil Corcoran who answered in slow monosyllables. Danny and Tom had been sitting with Corky under the aluminium shelf that served as a porch when the policeman had come round. He'd stood on the step, nodding to them all in his sage and watchful way, letting them know that he saw everything they did and was all right about it so long as they didn't overstep his mark. They all nodded back, even Corky, which came as a surprise to the other two. They'd thought he'd hate the police after what happened to his old man, but Corky made a silent acknowledgement, as if determined not to show any weakness. It was almost man to man.</p>
<p>When the policeman had gone inside, Corky had shrugged off their inquiring glances and Danny sensed there was more to that simple nod than any of them realised.</p>
<p>"Sit up straight," Mamie Corcoran chided her son with a swift knuckle to his shoulder. He grunted a guttural response and through the open window - the three of them sat still so they could catch every word - they heard the policeman patiently try to ascertain Mole Hopkirk's last whereabouts. Phil Corcoran swore blind he hadn't seen Neil since Friday when they were down at Biagi's snooker hall on Kirk Street. In fact, he'd been with Mole Hopkirk on Saturday morning testing the locks on the old warehouses at the far end of the rough drain just in case one of them hadn't been snapped shut. Neil had had to go off on some errand and that's the last he'd seen of him. But Phil knew that the busy-boys could be sneaky and while it was true he hadn't seen Neil for a couple of days, he couldn't be sure that this was all a pretence on John Fallon's part and that he was just trying to draw Phil out so he could pin something in him like they had done to his old man.</p>
<p>The three boys listened to Phil's verbal swerving, grinning each time he sounded nervous and began to stammer but the policeman didn't hang around long enough to make him really sweat. The next day it was all round the school. Neil Hopkirk had left the previous autumn, having reached the age of fifteen. He was well known to most of the younger boys. The last anybody had seen of him was when Donal Crawford had passed him in the alley after somebody had tried to jemmy the hardware store's window. Now that Donal thought about it, that very person could very well have been Hopkirk, but now it was too late to do anything about it. As far as anybody knew, Mole had gone up the alley and disappeared along crowded River Street.</p>
<p>During the week, a different policeman had come round the classes, introduced by Sister Julia who would have been better at wringing a confession than a squad of police with truncheons. Had anybody seen Neil Hopkirk? Everybody had.</p>
<p>"...And he's a swine," Doug said when they were out behind the boys toilets, sheltering from the cold and blustery rain. "As crabbit as a stoat. He tried to kick me in the balls just because he thought I was staring at that birthmark of his. Chased me all down the Aitkenbar Hill when we were sledging. I thought the creep was going to kill me. Probably would have and all."</p>
<p>"Aw, there's nothing to him," Billy said. "He just talks big and flashes that bunch of keys about, but he couldn't punch his way out of a wet paper bag. He's as strong as a dry fart."</p>
<p>"I suppose you've fought him then?" Danny asked. He'd taken the odd sharp-knuckled punch on the arm, or the occasional dead-leg from a well placed knee. Mole Hopkirk could be mean whenever he wanted and with the younger kids, that was most of the time.</p>
<p>"No, I never fought him, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't if he claimed me," Billy asserted. "He's all mouth."</p>
<p>"So why did you give him a smoke down on Rope Vennel last week?" Tom demanded to know. He turned to the rest of them. "It was the same day Paulie went into the river. Mole came down the alley near the ironmongers, swinging those keys of his that don't fit anything and he saw me and Billy smoking. Right away he's in at us for one."</p>
<p>"I had plenty," Billy protested, his face reddening. "It wasn't a big thing. I just gave him one out of the goodness of my heart."</p>
<p>"Either that or he'd have swiped your face with his keys and taken the whole packet."</p>
<p>"Yeah, he can be a mean swine," Danny agreed, taking the heat out of it before Billy got any angrier and felt he had to prove something. "Maybe he's just left. Moved on."</p>
<p>"With any luck he's fallen in the river along with Paulie. Couldn't happen to a nicer person." Doug laughed. "I wouldn't miss him, I can tell you."</p>
<p>"Maybe he took on somebody bigger than himself and got a severe tanking," Billy said. "Maybe somebody beat the shite out of him and threw him in."</p>
<p>"Too much to hope for," Corky said. "He'll turn up sooner or later. Anyway, who cares about him? He's as thick as shit in the neck of a bottle."</p>
<p>The bell rang out, muffled only slightly by the drizzly rain. They hitched up their collars and filed across the yard from the old toilet block. The rain was still spring-cold and blustered in up the firth on the west wind. Summer hadn't yet arrived, but it was coming.</p>
<hr/>
<p>In the back room of Cairn House, in the old abandoned surgery, Neil Hopkirk was dying.</p>
<p>It was dark in the shadows, but a slanted beam of light piercing between some boards over the window, white and solid in the dust-laden air at the far end of the hallway told him it was daytime. The occasional rumbling vibration of a truck passing on River Street confirmed it.</p>
<p>The hurt had faded for now, faded to a burning glow from the intense flame of the last time he had come round and that had been really bad. Bad enough to make him scream but no sound had come out and all the screaming had been inside his head.</p>
<p>Mole was dying and he couldn't move. He had come swimming up from the black depths, floating towards the surface of wakefulness, unable to prevent the return of conscious thought. His dreams had been filled with a deeper dark where shadows came lunging from beyond his sight and grabbed at him and twisted and bent and broke him until he slipped away again.</p>
<p>He had broken through into a dopey wakefulness and after a while he had been able to open one eye. The other one was clamped shut and there was a numb sensation under his eyelid that felt like a pulse but his skin was wet and Mole was no longer sure whether or not his left eye was still in his socket. A slow breath escaped him and a jagged shard of pain dug into his back, making him wince involuntarily, again setting up a ripple, a vibration of hurt. With a great effort, he closed his eye and made the motion stop. After a while he struggled to lift the lid again. It slowly cracked open with an almost audible squeal of protest as if it needed oiled. The room was twisted somehow, with no vertical lines at all and even in his state - and at the best of times Mole Hopkirk was never the most eloquent or observant - he realised it was not the room, but himself that was twisted to the side. The light from the far window was a silver bar slanting down to a floor where it sparkled on scattered diamonds of shattered glass.</p>
<p><em>If thine eye offends thee, pluck it&#8230;</em></p>
<p>The memory came unbidden and the horror came on its heels and all of it came swimming back. His breath came ragged, through his nose and occasionally past the obstruction in his mouth. He had tried to get his tongue around whatever it was and force it out but there was something wrong with his jaw. It wouldn't work properly and when he did move it, splinters of pain ground inside him so fierce and hot that he had to stop. Every now and again, his nostril blocked and whether it was blood or snot he couldn't fathom, but when it happened he was convinced he was going to suffocate and a part of him didn't really mind that at all. His body, on the other hand, refused to go along with it quite as readily and his frantic breathing reflex took over and convulsed him so violently that he would pass out under the pressure of the pain.</p>
<p><em>If thine eye offends thee...</em></p>
<p>He had said that. The man in the shadows.</p>
<p><em>Oh Jesus where is he....? Is he coming back Oh mammy don't let him...</em></p>
<p>In through the window Neil had come creeping like a mouse while outside the seagulls were screaming as they wheeled around the chimney-tops and the masts of the old fishing boats and a woman was screaming and some men were yelling and it was all right because nobody was looking and he was ...
<em>in.</em></p>
<p>And then it had all happened so fast. The white face, just a blur, a ghost high up in the shadows and then the massive blow on the face and he'd been running and hiding and the man had filled the doorway. He'd coughed. Coughed. That was all, and that had finished it. The man had grabbed him and thrown him and dragged him, flopping and helpless down to the room and there had been a blurt of hot blood. He had hit something hard and the lights had gone out for a dreadful second when the pain had screeched inside his thigh and then a grip of metal - it had to be metal - on the back of his neck hauling him upwards, lifting him like a doll.</p>
<p>He was <em>in.</em></p>
<p>The pain had been there, waiting patiently for him to waken. The axons and dendrites inside his head were re-connecting themselves after the fragmentation of the shock of hurt and for a while he was cocooned in warmth, numbly aware of low sounds far off and for a sweet moment he imagined he was in his bed on a Saturday morning, dozing in the mid-morning light of the sun coming through a crack in the curtain. Even as he slowly uncoiled from unconsciousness he was aware of the heat in his nose, a burning throbbing just under his eyes, and another augur screwing into his thigh.</p>
<p>He breasted the tape and came through to the real world and the fear came exploding up from within as memory came back. He had twisted round, blurrily aware of the light in the hallway and a scraping sound, the noise of heavy shoes on broken glass had come in from the right.</p>
<p><em>Who comes like a thief in the night?</em> A man's voice, low and somehow hot, almost wheedling.</p>
<p>Neil was not an academic and he had left Quarryhill School having achieved a proficiency certificate in horticulture (he weeded the shrubbery) and a failure in metalwork and technical drawing. But he was not completely devoid of intelligence and at that very moment he knew he was in desperate danger.</p>
<p>The feet had crunched on the broken glass again, now louder, now closer and he had shrunk away from the shadow that came looming to cut off the dim light.</p>
<p>"The first woe is past, and the other woes are yet to come," The voice had been closer, hoarse and cracking as if the speaker had been breathing the dust.</p>
<p>"Wha...?" Neil had started to say, but a hand had come swinging up and clamped over his mouth.</p>
<p>The shadow came closer, right up to his face. Through the clog of blood in his nose he could smell bad breath and smoke and the flat scent of unwashed clothes.</p>
<p>"Nice and quiet now lad, eh? Nice and easy," the voice rumbled. The hand still clamped his mouth, fingers and thumb squeezing so hard on his cheeks that it forced his jaws apart. The other hand started pulling at the narrow leather belt around his waist.</p>
<p>
<em>"What's he doing?"</em> the jolted inside his head. The belt buckle jangled, fell free. The hand groped again and yanked at the popper stud. His zipper rasped and cold air puckered the skin on his belly. The hand dived straight in, horny and tough and everything Neil had shrank upwards reflexively.
</p>
<p>"No!" he blurted, though the pressure on his face made the sound come out in a single grunt. He had squirmed away from the probing, groping hand.</p>
<p>"Lie still," the man had hissed, hot and shivery. He'd leaned forward....</p>
<p>Time had changed. Everything had changed.</p>
<p>Neil was slumped against something hard that could have been the waste pipe of the wash-hand basin. His right eye creaked open and every movement set fire to some part of him. How long had it been? He couldn't say. He'd climbed in the window on the Saturday, sometime in the afternoon and while it seemed like a lifetime ago, it might only have been a day, maybe two days ago. Some things were hazy in his memory and other things might have been crystal clear, sharp as glass, but for the moment he kept them battened down. The numb sensation under his left eyelid was pulsing again, throbbing in time to the beat of his heart the way a finger will begin to throb if you coil a rubber band around it and let it go from red to purple. Another slow breath let itself out and the sliver of pain came arcing into his back. The puzzling slant to what should have been the vertical lines of the window shutters and the corner of the wall made all the perspectives incomprehensible. The light spangled blurringly on the scatter of broken glass and he remembered the other footsteps crunching them into the floorboards.</p>
<p>The pain had been intense, unbelievable. It had come burning up into the root of him and he had felt as if he would split apart.</p>
<p>The hand had kneaded between his legs and his panic had taken wing. He couldn't speak and the force on his jaw had made his eyes water so that the room swam in liquid ripples.</p>
<p><em>Oh mammy daddy it's a homoqueer..it's a BAD MAN</em></p>
<p>He'd been turned over, roughly, as if he weighed next to nothing and the calloused hand had slid across the skin of his buttocks. He felt the skin pucker and he felt his sphincter pucker and the fear had simply erupted.</p>
<p>Two days ago? Three days? It was far away, a lifetime away but the pain was here and now. Every movement scattered the anaesthetic affect of dehydration and blood loss. Every motion woke some broken and torn part of him. Down there, where his skin was pressed against the flat of the floor, he could feel the trickle begin again and he couldn't tell whether he'd pissed himself or shit himself or whether his insides were slowly leaking out onto the boards.</p>
<p><em>If thine eye offends me, pluck it....</em></p>
<p>A memory was trying to work its way back and Neil tried to dodge away from it because it came scrabbling up inside his head like a scary spider, dripping pain and poison and he didn't want to see that again....oh no!</p>
<p>"Don't look at me," the shadow had said and by now Neil Hopkirk knew it was the devil talking to him. This was sometime on the second day, maybe the second day, so it must be more than two, more than three days now and Neil knew he would never get out of here. His head slumped towards the floor making the slanted angles list even further. His arm twisted up his back but that was only a minor pain, adding little to the rest. He needed a drink and inside his mouth, where his tongue rasped against some rough fabric that might have been a piece of sackcloth but felt like sandpaper and the memory came crawling and scuttering back.</p>
<p>"Don't you look at me or I'll..." Neil had closed his eyes quickly. He had seen nothing except the looming shadow. All his senses were focused on touch and smell. The scent of old tobacco and the metallic cloy of his own blood and the burn of piss down there on the floor.</p>
<p>Then the voice had changed. There had been a silence for a moment, no more than two seconds and when the devil spoke again, it was in the different voice.</p>
<p>
<em>"Eye for eye, tooth for tooth and do not resist an evil person. If thine eye offends me pluck it OUT."</em>
</p>
<p>Sour breath blew in at him. The hand on the back of his neck squeezed tight, so tight Neil thought the thumb would come through the skin and into the muscle, popping through his windpipe. His eyes opened involuntarily and something fast flicked up, quicker than he could blink. It hit him in the eye, pecking like a blunt-beaked bird. His head jolted back and for an instant there was no pain at all inside him. It all flew away, leaving him floating in warmth. His right eye wheeled, panning in a short arc, taking in the shadow and the sliver of light and the other hand pulling away from him. There was a small sucking noise and a wetness trickling down his cheek and it might have been a tear.</p>
<p><em>"Love your enemy and pray for he who persecutes you that you may be sons of the father."</em></p>
<p>Neil Hopkirk had floated away on clouds of shock.</p>
<p>Now the shadows were lengthening and the angle of the beam of light was changing as the sun swung, weak and still wintry in the early spring and Neil knew it would be night soon. The memory had come crashing through, forcing past his defences and the realisation of all that had happened came back to him but he was too tired now to fight it, to exhausted to react. There was something wrong with his left eye and he didn't know exactly what it was because he couldn't move it and the eyelid wouldn't open but there was a strange feeling there as if something had caved in and he couldn't really tell whether he still had an eye in there.</p>
<p>The fabric in his mouth absorbed all of his saliva and made his throat dry and bleached. Neil felt himself slide to the floor and the motion blocked off the airway at the back of his throat. He breathed through his nose, or tried to and found it blocked. For a second the exhaustion claimed him, then he snorted hard, clearing the clotted blood, found another breathing hole and drooped further. One of the hands tied behind his back hit against a metal upright, just a touch but it felt as if a ton weight had slammed down on it. Another memory tried to come back, one in which a foot stamped down on his fingers again and again, but this time the lethargy was creeping into his brain and it was hard to think.</p>
<p>The hunger was gone and the thirst was so bad it felt as if all the moisture in him had been wrung out, but the tiredness was overwhelming and after a while the slanted light began to fuzz out. From his slumped position, jammed against the old wash basin he could just make out the gleam from the bunch of keys and the little polished metal disc as they reflected the light. The sun moved and the glimmer faded away and Neil Hopkirk went with it.</p>
<p>Over in the corner, a still shadow remained motionless. It stayed there for a long time, just waiting. After a while, a black fly came buzzing through the door and settled on Neil Hopkirk's cheek.</p>
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<h1>5</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 9am......</em></p>
<p>"Here come the teardrops," Phil Corcoran sneered and Campbell Galt and Pony McGill sniggered. "Snivel, sniffle and bawl." He winked at his two pals then turned back to his young brother. "And who said you could take my tent anyway?"</p>
<p>"<em>Your</em> tent?" Corky retorted. "You stole it from the scouts."</p>
<p>Phil had been sitting on the gate at the end of the road where the tarmac petered out when it met the hawthorn barrier of the farm track. In a couple of years all of the hedge would be gone and the road would continue in a wide arc past the cemetery and down to the main road and the greenery would be replaced by nearly three hundred council houses. It was all a time of change.</p>
<p>Phil stopped working the blade of his knife into the top gate spar where he'd been carving his initials. "Are you calling me a thief? Eh? You little shit that you are."</p>
<p>Being called a thief was a sore point with Phil. Old man Corcoran was banging the Drum, as they said hereabouts, banged up for six months up in Drumbain Jail. He was just half-way through his time for hoisting three hundred in used notes from the pigeon club's cashbox, which had been set aside for taking of all of the club's best birds to a race from Cherbourg in France. Everybody wondered why Paddy Corcoran had ever been voted in as club treasurer. Everybody knew that he hadn't done a day's work since before the war and hadn't had a drink-free day since it ended, even if he was good with the homing birds. Of his three sons, Phil would see the inside of Drumbain in four years time after several visits to approved school in his later teens for a rampage with a broken bottle along River Street in a drunken frenzy. Pat Junior was already in an army jail for head-butting a colour-sergeant to his severe injury. Both were cast in the same mould, and it looked to everyone like an odds-on certainty that John, the youngest of them (<em>Corky to his friends</em>) would be unable to avoid the consequences of his natural inheritance. He'd no doubt end up banging the Drum too.
</p>
<p>"Are you calling me a thief?" Phil wanted to know, and he wanted to know
<em>now.</em> They'd called his old man a thief and put him inside over what had to have been a misunderstanding, and according to Phil that was a slur against the whole clan. He came down off the gate and as he did so, his left hand casually hauled at the black lock-knife he had been digging into the wood. Behind Corky, Billy and Doug saw the glint of metal.
</p>
<p>"Let's get out of here," Doug muttered. He took a couple of steps backwards, pulling at the tent slung between himself and Corky. Billy agreed.</p>
<p>"Yeah. Let's skeedaddle." Corky turned slightly and they could see the freckles standing out like sepia ink-blots on his cheeks. Billy took up the weight of the old green tent.</p>
<p>"Are you? Huh? Calling me a thief?" Phil came strolling forward, all langorous and slow, arrogance on two feet. He had the same colour of hair as his young brother, the same cow's lick all the Corcorans had, but where Corky was stocky and looked small for his age, Phil was tall and thin as a stick. He threw the knife, spinning it with studied casualness to catch it by the handle again.</p>
<p>"Just saying it isn't yours." Corky said. "Everybody knows that."</p>
<p>"Just put it back where you found it. Right this minute."</p>
<p>"No chance. We're going with the scouts."</p>
<p>"Over my dead body," Phil said slowly. He put both hands on his hips.</p>
<p>"Suits me," Corky said. Campbell Galt snorted, dribbling beer-foam down his chin. Pony snickered like his namesake. Corky turned to the two of them, and while he was pretty sturdy for his size, he was completely dwarfed by his brother's friends.</p>
<p>"What are you laughing at <em>plook-face</em>," Corky snapped. The sunny day went suddenly quiet.</p>
<p>"Oh shit," Billy muttered. He and Doug were edging away and were half-way through the narrow gap in the hedge where the old blasted oak had come down. A blackbird chirped and clucked its liquid panic as they startled it among the nettles. A wasp flew right up against Doug's ear and he almost dropped the tent while batting it away. Corky stood there and Pony McGill's ravaged face looked as if it would erupt from within in to even greater devastation..</p>
<p>Pony was taller even than Campbell Galt, who himself would end up nearly six foot and he had shoulders that could have shored up a house. He was strong as an ox and would have been a good-looking big man but for the havoc his teenage acne had wreaked upon his face. His skin was angry and livid, rough as pebble-dash.</p>
<p><em>Face full of</em> plooks
<em>and a head full of broken bottles</em>. That was how Danny Gillan had described him after he'd kicked their football down into the stream where it had burst among the thorns. Corky had convulsed into manic laughter while thinking that Danny must have some kind of death-wish. That remark had almost cost Danny an arm after Pony had swing his big toe-tector boot again and clipped the smaller boy on the elbow so hard it had gone numb for the day. The phrase had come back to Corky just them and it had slipped out.
</p>
<p>"<em>Plook-</em>face?" An instant surge of blood suffused the big broad face, reddening in the clear spots but purpling among the acne scars. Very deliberately, he put down the beercan onto the flat top of the gatepost. "What the fuck did you call me?"
</p>
<p>"Come on Doug," Billy said, dragging the tent through the thorns and onto the farm track while they were out of the immediate focus. "Let's go." Doug didn't need a second telling. The pair of them scooted up the path.</p>
<p>Pony came lunging forward just as Tom and Danny came out from the lee of the end house in the gap where the fence had broken. Tom saw Corky, but the other big lads were hidden by the hawthorn hedge.</p>
<p>"Hey Corks," Tom called. "Did you forget the tent?"</p>
<p>Corky turned, taken by surprise and a big meaty hand came whooping out from the side in a wide arc. Corky must have caught the motion out of the side of his eye and ducked quickly, not quite fast enough to escape, but sharp enough to diminish most of the force of the swipe. His head was moving back and down, so instead of catching the knuckles on his temple, a blow which would have felled him like a bullock in the slaughterhouse, or at least knocked him arse over tit right into the sharp thorns of the hedge, he went with it. Pony McGill caught him by the underside of his big hand and sent him reeling backwards.</p>
<p>"What's happening...?" Tom started. Corky went stumbling back, whirling as he went, trying to catch his balance. It was then that Danny saw Pony McGill and Corky's big brother, along with Campbell Galt.</p>
<p>"Hey, leave him alone," Danny bawled before he had a chance to get a rein on his tongue. He'd had run-ins with all of them before - in fact there was no-one in the nearest five streets who hadn't - but the words just blurted when he saw Corky staggering back..</p>
<p>Phil Corcoran spun around. He was walking away from the fence and the two boys saw the sunlight spangle on the blade of the knife in his hand.</p>
<p>"Oops," Tom said, and then, quite unaccountably, especially for Tom, he giggled.</p>
<p>"Another couple of teardrops," Phil said. "We've got the complete crying match here."</p>
<p>"Bastard," Pony grunted. He'd expected his haymaker to connect squarely with Phil's cheeky shit of a brother and the force of it had almost thrown him off balance. He spun, moving much slower than the smaller boy. The two others had turned to face the new arrivals.</p>
<p>"They will insist on butting in," Phil went on, shaking his head with exaggerated regret.</p>
<p>"Leave him alone," Danny blurted again. Corky ducked another hooking punch, quite easily this time and as he did so, he snatched up a dried piece of hawthorn root from the demolished hedge which still had a hard sod of earth around it. He swung it against Pony's shin and the big fellow let out another grunt.</p>
<p>"Want to join the party?" Phil asked, smiling that creepy grin of his that made him look somehow like a weasel. He held up the knife and turned it slowly in his hand, the way knife fighters did in films, making sure it caught the light. As he did so he let out a beery belch.</p>
<p>"What, play with you three stooges?" Danny's tongue was off and running again, like the day he'd made the remark about Pony's acne. "Tweedle dumb, tweedle dumber and Crater-mess with the pits."</p>
<p>Big Pony was spinning around on one leg, lifting his shin up to cradle it in both hands. Campbell Galt, another big fellow whose blonde hair was slicked back into what the younger boys called an old fashioned teddy-boy quiff, took his eye off the action and whipped round. Phil Corcoran's grin froze solid.</p>
<p>"Hells bells, Danny, " Tom said. "I don't think he liked that."</p>
<p>"What did you say?" Phil's voice was as icy as his grin. For an instant his eyes seemed to flicker as if a sudden charge of emotion had sizzled behind them, which it most probably had and in that instant Danny and Tom saw the little craziness that lived inside Phil Corcoran's head. "What the fuck did you call me?"</p>
<p>Both boys stopped still. Big Pony was still hopping about, unable to keep his balance. He backed into the five-bar gate at Aitkenbar farm track and slammed it against the post with a sound like a gunshot.</p>
<p>"Bastard," he grunted. "Just wait 'til I get you."</p>
<p>Corky danced away from him, swinging the heavy root, unconsciously imitating Pony's hopping jig. "You and which chorus line, you big Jessie," Corky jeered, his mouth even more of a runaway now than Danny Gillan's ever was. Pony roared like a bull. Phil Corcoran didn't even look, his eyes were fixed right on Danny Gillan.</p>
<p>"Stop horsing around," he said. "This fuck-mouth needs shutting up." He favoured Danny with a wider grin this time and his eyes gleamed. "Maybe we'll have to make sure he gives us less of his lip." Phil held the knife up again, and flicked it forward.</p>
<p>Danny didn't wait. He turned on his heel and ran, not before Tom who was one split second ahead of him. Corky jinked back , swung the root again but this time it snapped in his hand and the heavy club of root and dirt went spinning away. It caught Campbell Galt just under his ribs and pushed him forward, sending him crashing against Phil whose hand came slashing down even as he went spinning sideways and the knife went flashing through the air.</p>
<p>Danny and Tom were scooting up between an old wooden garden shed and the side of the hedge, with Tom leading by three clear yards. Danny reached the corner, stuck a hand out to whirl himself around a fence-post when the knife hit him right behind the ear.</p>
<p>Corky saw it all, virtually in slow motion. The knife heliographed the sunlight as it spun black and silver, black and silver, through the air. Then it hit.</p>
<p>It made a small <em>bonk</em> sound and bounced off into the bush.</p>
<p>"<em>Jesus</em>, Phil," Campbell bawled.</p>
<p>"Jesus, <em>Danny</em>," Corky yelled.</p>
<p>"Bastard," Pony grunted again.</p>
<p>A hot pain blossomed behind Danny's ear and a sound like a gong vibrated right through his head. For a second he thought he'd been hit by a half-brick, but then he realised it wasn't sore enough for that. He didn't miss a step as he whirled round the corner.</p>
<p>Corky watched his pals disappear from view. Then Pony's meaty hand clamped on his shoulder. Without thinking, Corky turned and bit the big man's finger, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make Pony think he had. The big fellow grunted again, let go. Corky didn't hang around. He ran for the gate, clambered up the bars and threw himself over into the lane.</p>
<p>Campbell Galt swore comprehensively at Phil and
<em>he</em> swore unintelligibly and explosively at everything. It took him nearly half a minute to gather himself and set off running in thundering pursuit. Danny and Tom heard their approach and took off like rabbits. They got to the far end of the field where the bulldozers hadn't yet churned everything to mud and angled for the corner where the two thorn hedges met at right angles. Here, generations of youngsters had broken and worn a crawl-way through to the far pasture. Both boys, panting with the effort, unslung their haversacks as they ran. Tom slung his along the ground at root-level, followed it and Danny and his bag rolled in behind him. They came out of the other side, covered in dead leaves and spiked here and there by hawthorns, but otherwise unhurt. Behind Danny's ear, a hot glow of pain pulsed. He reached there, expecting to find blood, but there was none.
</p>
<p>They ran down the hill and onto the farm track angling across to the gully. Ahead of them, Billy and Doug were lumbering along with the green tent between them. Over the far side of the bushes, curses exploded. Danny and Tom reached the cross-roads where two farm roads intersected. A figure came hurtling out towards them and they pulled up in dismay.</p>
<p>"Only me," Corky said breathlessly. He grinned widely. "I don't think they're too happy with us." He giggled and the other two couldn't help but laugh, despite the fact that Crazy Phil and his crew would come crashing after them in a matter of seconds.</p>
<p>"He's a flippin' nutcase," Danny managed to say. They were running hard up the hill and he was getting a stitch in his side.</p>
<p>"You're telling me. I got to live with him."</p>
<p>"What will he do when you get home?"</p>
<p>"Hell knows. You can come to the funeral. No flowers please. And no priests." Corky laughed again, almost sadly as if death was a distinct possibility, then he turned, grinning. "He's not too bright, so he might have forgotten by the time we get back."</p>
<p>The boys caught up with the other two and with hardly a fumble, Tom and Danny each grabbed an end of the tent. They breasted the low hill just as Phil and the others came hammering round the corner. The younger boys went over the brow and down the lee and then, without a word, when they reached the corner, out of sight of the others, they slung the tent and the rucksacks over the three-strand barbed wire fence into a field of yellowing corn. They crawled underneath the lowest strand, Corky still laughing almost hysterically, and then doubled back for about twenty yards. Here there was a line of saplings which framed the drainage ditch leading down to the Ladyburn Stream. They followed this for a hundred yards, came to the brook and followed it up to where they could shelter under the footbridge. For a while, the sounds of the chase had disappeared, but Phil or Pony had figured out that they must have gone into the cornfield and in a few minutes, the pursuit had trailed them along the line of the ditch.</p>
<p>Under the low bridge, there was a niche, hardly more than a foot wide, where some of the masonry had crumbled. They crawled through into the small service duct where the waterworks engineers had built the valves for the reservoir up on the hill. Billy dragged the tent through and they all sat in the darkness, trying to slow their breathing, listening for the others. This had been their place last summer since Corky and Tom had found the hole in the wall while fishing for trout in the stream.</p>
<p>Two minutes later, footsteps came thudding on the bridge. Danny put his ear to an arrow-slit vent in the wall. Above the sounds of running water, he could hear voices.</p>
<p>"Must be here someplace," Phil said, breathless and wheezing. "Little bastard called me a thief. And Gillan, I'm going to wring his scrawny neck."</p>
<p>"You nearly stuck him like a pig.
<em>Jeez</em> Phil. If that knife had hit blade-first it would have pinned him. You could swing for that."</p>
<p>Overhead, the footsteps came louder then faded as the others crossed the bridge. Down in the dark, they heard Pony shout something and then came a pop and the sound of shattering glass. One of them had thrown a bottle into the stream.</p>
<p>"That's really great," Tom said. "Some kid's going to go paddling and get cut to pieces."</p>
<p>"They should be locked up," Doug said, he looked quickly across at Corky, whose face was just a pale oval in the dim light of the narrow vent. "Sorry Corks. I didn't mean anything..."</p>
<p>Corky shrugged. "You can't pick your family. I sure didn't. And anyway, everybody knows about the old man. Sometimes I wish he was still at home. At least Phil wouldn't be acting so big. He's really off his head."</p>
<p>He looked at Danny who was sitting beside the opposite arrow-slit. "Flamin' hell Dan, I thought that blade was going to nail you."</p>
<p>Danny rubbed the tender spot behind his ear. "I thought it
<em>had</em>." The others looked from on me to the other, unaware of what had happened.</p>
<p>"Phil threw it at Danny. You should have heard the noise. Just like that xylophone in the school band. The Glockenspiel thing." Corky let out a low laugh that threatened to get louder. He clamped his hand over his mouth until it subsided. Outside the others had moved to the other side of the bridge and then come back, their footsteps echoing down to the dark hollow -
<em>doom doom doom -</em> as they passed overhead. After a few moments they were gone.</p>
<p>"I tell you Danny boy. You shouldn't have run. Phil's been trying that knife thrower's trick all summer. Wants to be just like that knife-fighter in the Magnificent Seven. He says if he comes across ol' Twitchy Eyes he'll give it to him right in the eyeball. I've been watching him try to stick it in the old man's pigeon hut.
<em>Jeez-oh</em>, I've never seen him hit the flamin <em>hut</em> yet, never mind stick it in."</p>
<p>He went off into another convulsion and it was a moment or two before he could speak again. "Must be your lucky day Danny. Must be your lucky
<em>year</em>."</p>
<p>They all giggled at that, but the laughter stopped soon enough</p>
<p>It had not been a lucky year, not for any of them. It had not been a lucky year, not since the spring, since the day that Paulie Degman had gone down into the river and Neil Hopkirk had clambered in through the window on the old surgery at the back of the house on River Street. Corky had just touched upon it when talking about Phil's lack of expertise with the knife which had bounced off Danny's skull.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>There was a moment of silence, broken only by the hushed sound of running water from the Ladyburn Stream, running low and slow at the end of a dry summer.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em> The mad stranger who had slipped into town in the spring.</p>
<p>The silence ran on for a moment longer. Danny rubbed the hot spot behind his ear, feeling gingerly for the signs of swelling, but there was none. Billy leaned back against the wall, his face the dimmest of all in the shadows.</p>
<p>"They found her in the other bridge," Doug said after a while.</p>
<p>"No, the next one down from this," Tom contradicted. "It's got a bigger access tunnel. They think he was staying there a while, camping out."</p>
<p>"God a'mighty. We had a ganghut there last year before we found this place," Billy said. "Imagine we'd come crawling in there and found
<em>him</em>."</p>
<p>"As long as we had Phil with us he could have used his knife," Corky said, trying to lighten it a little. "Then we'd all have been up shit creek without a paddle." They all had a laugh, though a subdued one.</p>
<p>It had only been a matter of luck.</p>
<p>"They say she was cut to bits," Billy said. "They found her in a puddle of her own piss."</p>
<p>"<em>Don't</em>," Tom barked, and they all jumped, startled.</p>
<p>"Wha...?" Billy started to say.</p>
<p>"Don't talk about her," Tom said quickly. His curly fair hair framed him like a dim halo. "Jeez, she's dead, isn't she? It wasn't her fault."</p>
<p>Billy looked at him then as quickly looked away. He didn't say anything. Corky stuck his hand out and clapped Tom on the shoulder, the way boys do when they're on the way to becoming men and still have a way to go. Too old to put their arms around each other, still young enough to touch.</p>
<p>"Hey Tom," That was all he said.</p>
<p>"It's just that she was just a kid," Tom said and his voice cracked just a little, a hint of the pressure that was building up behind whatever dam he'd built. Everybody knew he was thinking about his little sister and what had happened in the winter.</p>
<p>"Sorry man," Billy said finally, reaching out a hand in the darkness. He took a hold of Tom's narrow wrist and gave it a squeeze. "I didn't mean anything, you know?"</p>
<p>Tom gave a little snort, like he was sniffing back hard. "Yeah. It's just..." He sniffed again then hawked and spat out, letting them know he was just clearing the dust from his throat. "It's just sometimes it looks like the whole place is going crazy."</p>
<p>"And Phil's leading the parade," Corky said, doing his best, easing them off this threatening track. He made an effort. "He's the craziest loony still walking outside Dalmoak. Crazier even than old Annie Monkton and she's so far round the bend she can see herself coming back."</p>
<p>"But not as crazy as old <em>Twitchy Eyes</em>."</p>
<p>"Yeah, but he's long gone, and Phil still lives at my house," Corky said, finally getting a laugh. In the gloom, Danny was the only one who saw that he wasn't smiling.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>He'd haunted the town for almost the whole of the summer, haunted the hearts of mothers, the dreams of children. He was the bogey-man, the
<em>Bad Man,</em> the ogre under every bridge (he'd been under the bridge with little Lucy Saunders, hadn't he now?) and the shadow outside the window in the night-time.
</p>
<p>"I reckon the cops caught him and hung him," Billy said. "They do that with some of the really bad ones. Just take them away where they can't be found again and do them in." He crept over to the hole they'd clambered through and began to crawl back out again. "I'll just see where they are."</p>
<p>"And made sure they don't see you or we'll be stuck in here with no way out."</p>
<p>"They'd brick us up and we'd never get out," Danny said, "like in the House of Usher."</p>
<p>"Jees, don't say that Dan. It gives me the creeps," Doug said. Already he was edging towards the hole in the wall, towards daylight. In an instant, Tom was clambering after him as the idea of being walled up inside the inspection chamber struck him.</p>
<p>Corky and Danny followed them out, neither of them just as panicked, but each unwilling to stay alone in the dark after what had been said. Corky started moving and as he did, his foot kicked against a loose stone which rolled into the corner of the small chamber. It hit something which rustled dryly and almost simultaneously, a clodden smell of rotting shit came wafting up accompanied by a frenzied buzzing of flies.</p>
<p>"Oh for God's sake," Corky said, gagging at the smell. At the same time, he realised that the five of them were not the only ones to have discovered the inspection pit under the arch of the bridge. Somebody else had been there too. They had all scurried in through the niche in the masonry and crouched in the first chamber, but there was a narrow crawl-way to the sump trap which they had explored weeks ago, using candles to reach the narrow space. It had been dry and dusty and festooned with spider's webs which showed it hadn't been touched for a long time. If somebody had found their way in to the first hollow, then they could get through to the back chamber.</p>
<p>They could be sitting quiet in the dark of the back chamber <em>right now.</em></p>
<p>The same thought had struck Danny, but worse, the buzzing of the flies had brought back a powerful memory, an image from late spring, before the real impact of the stranger had hit the town.</p>
<p>There had been flies in the window of the house on River Street, and that's where Mole Hopkirk had been found dead, with his hair and his fingernails still growing. The flies had pattered against the windowpane like black rain, hundreds of them. Thousands.</p>
<p>Suddenly the smell and the buzzing and the dark all gelled into one enormous powerful threat.</p>
<p>"Move it," Corky hissed in a voice that said he really wanted to shout but didn't dare. He shoved at Danny who was halfway through the hole and right at that instant Corky felt the creepy eyes on his back and sensed the long crooked fingers reaching out to grab him and drag him back into the darkness. That was enough to send him crashing into his friend who stumbled out, rolled off balance and landed with both feet in the stream.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell," Danny yelled. Billy and Doug turned round, right on cue.</p>
<p>"Shhhhh!" they both said, holding their hands up, miming the need for hush.</p>
<p>Tom was up on the bridge, peering over the parapet. Far along the road, the three others were sauntering away, almost out of sight round a slow bend.</p>
<p>"We're safe," Tom said.</p>
<p>"Good," Corky said. You can go back in and get the tent."</p>
<p>He was thinking of what Tom had said.
<em>We're safe</em>. But he wasn't prepared, right at that moment, to go back into the dark and put it to the test.
</p>
<p>Safe. He hadn't felt safe for a long time. Had anybody?</p>
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<h1>6</h1>
<p><em>May:</em></p>
<p>"Come on Jeff, it'll be dark by the time we get started." The voice floated up from ground level.</p>
<p>"It'll be the bloody weekend," somebody else chipped in. From the Irish accent, it had to be Neil Kennedy, who lived in Swan Street. Some time far in the future, Neil would go through the nightmare of losing a son in another spate of madness that would hit the town, but for the moment he was sixteen and had only two cares in the world. The second was to get on with the game of football they had going on the flat space next to the river where the old barge-loader shed used to be. Its flat base was now an ideal five-a-side pitch.</p>
<p>Jeff McGuire had punted the ball with an uncoordinated foot and sent it sailing over the low roofs of the outbuildings on the corner of Fish Pend where it had bounced on the slates, landing on the valley of the roof, well out of sight. He who kicked last was obliged to climb for it.</p>
<p>There were some little girls at the far corner, waiting for the end of the shift in the fishmongers where their mothers worked at the filleting slabs. They were playing a kid's skipping game chanting the kind of schoolyard rhymes that seem to have gone out of fashion.</p>
<p>"Hey McGuire get a move on," Neil Kennedy called up again. "Shift your arse. Another goal and we've got them beat."</p>
<p>
<em>Them</em> were the River Street team as opposed to the Swan Street crew in the days before the heart was ripped out of the town and replaced by a concrete and steel barracks of a shopping centre. Then, on this particular May afternoon, with President Kennedy dead only a couple of years, Mick Jagger every mother's nightmare and the Beach Boys getting around-round-round in surf city, there were plenty of people still living down by the river and there was always a game going on.
</p>
<p>One of the girls giggled. She was holding one end of the rope while her partner spun the other. A whole team of kids, all with pigtails or ponytails had lined up to skip in for a couple of fast beats of the rope before dancing out again on the far side in the elegant rhythm of play. When Neil Kennedy shouted up at the roof telling Jeff McGuire to hurry it up, the rhyme instantly changed.</p>
<p>
<em>Missus McGuire sat in the fire....</em>a tiny girl skipped in, agile as a fawn, kept the beat, feet feathering on the ground before skipping out again.
</p>
<p>"Okay, give me a minute willya?" The disembodied voice floated down. "Think I'm spiderman?"</p>
<p>
<em>The fire was too hot she sat in the pot...the pot was too wide, she sat in the Clyde...and all the wee fishes swam up her backside....</em>
</p>
<p>The girls tittered, some of the smaller ones holding their hands up over their mouths at the use of a naughty word..</p>
<p>"Hey Jeff, they're singing songs about your mother," Neil shouted up</p>
<p>Jeff McGuire didn't hear him. He'd just been bending down to pick up the old tattered leather football when a motion to his left caught his eye, a shadow at the window just above the slope of the low roof. He put a hand over his eye to block out the glare of the sun and peered forward.</p>
<p>Some small particles, like grains of sand, rattled against the dusty glass. The shadow changed shape and Jeff saw it for what it was. Flies. There were dozens of them, flying in tight circles or crawling up the window pane. He picked up the ball and threw it over his shoulder. It bounced on the ridge and then down the far slope. Down below somebody shouted. The thud of a boot against leather followed immediately and the game was back on. Jeff took a tentative step forward and then another, raising his hands to the sill. He put his face right up against the glass.</p>
<p>The room was dirty inside, from what he could see through a pane crawling with big bluebottles. Every now and again one of them would go buzzing off and come hurtling back in a kamikaze dive for the light and freedom, rapping with a chitinous click against the flat surface. Jeff eased himself up onto the diagonal waste pipe and got up onto the ledge. He pushed against the frame and it squealed up in protest. Five or six of the big shiny insects bulleted out past his face. One of them brushed his cheek with tickly wings and he drew back. Inside the room a swarm of them, spiralling like a miniature tornado, buzzed and hummed angrily in the hollow emptiness.</p>
<p>Jeff climbed in, curiosity aroused now, the way it happens with boys and empty buildings. They attract each other like magnets, with an irresistible pull of gravity. A bluebottle landed on his forehead and he slapped it off. Apart from the flies the room was empty. Outside somebody shouted something which he vaguely heard. The window creaked and slid slowly down on the sash-groove until it almost closed. Jeff edged along the wall, avoiding the dense insect whirlwind and went through the open door.</p>
<p>The smell hit him half-way down the hall.</p>
<p>"Oh my..." he gagged, unable to finish the sentence. There were flies here in the dark of the passage, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Most of them were crawling on the walls. Right away Jeff knew that something had died in here. Maybe a pigeon or a jackdaw which had come down the chimney and got trapped. Maybe even a cat. The smell was awesome, almost solid in the dusty air, flat, sweet and oily all at the same time. It was even worse than the throat-clenching stink of the dead sheep up on the moor if you got down-wind.</p>
<p>In that moment, Jeff knew something was wrong, but for some reason he could not turn back. The gravity of curiosity had him now. He took a tentative step along the corridor and the sound of his boot rasping on the shards of broken glass sent shivers up his spine. Something made him turn to look back into the room and in that instant, the cloud of flies coalesced, throwing a shadow against the pale light framed by the window. For a moment the shadow looked like the shape of a man and Jeff's heart kicked in a sudden spasm. He backed away, now gulping for breath through a dry gullet and knocked against the door half way down the hall. It swung open. Jeff stepped through, still half turned.</p>
<p>A black shape roared and came leaping up from the floor.</p>
<p>Jeff squeaked in utter fright. He flinched back, cracked his shoulder against the door jamb. The thing on the floor came bolting towards him. And he raised a hand up to protect his face, thinking that some monster was coming for him. Then it broke up into a cloud of black dots. More flies.</p>
<p>Jeff's heart came down from the back of his throat. He gulped again, still unable to speak, though if that had been possible he would have cursed without repetition for several minutes.</p>
<p>The insects were big and bloated, and where they passed the beam of sunlight coming through the chink on the wooden boards nailed over the window frame, they glittered the green-blue of rare metal. In the swarm they were creepy and scary, but in the sudden relief that they were only insects, only bluebottles, Jeff almost laughed. Flies couldn't hurt him.</p>
<p>Two of them tussled in aerial combat right in front of his eyes and then landed on his shirt. He swatted them away and just at that moment the stench really hit him.</p>
<p>"Oh my god," he mumbled, completing the sentence that he'd started in the other room. His hand flew to his mouth. His eyes watered and his throat spasmed. Jeff turned, ready to go stumbling out of the room when another shape on the floor against the sink snagged his attention.</p>
<p>At first out looked like a pile of rags and sticks jutting out from under the lip of the basin, hidden by the shadows. Despite the sickening stench, Jeff moved forward, brushing flies away with his free hand. They buzzed and hummed, skimming his skin and hair.</p>
<p>The form was crumpled and shapeless. He moved closer, holding his nose pinched tight shut between his fingers. Something stuck out from the bulk and for a long moment it didn't register on him. He turned his head, saw an off-white ridged line that reminded him of something. He drew his eyes along it, close to the floor, saw a gaping hole from which something liquid seeped. In that moment of time Jeff's brain seemed to have gone completely numb. He was tying to think but something inside his head was blocking out all thought. He shifted his gaze down the line of a ragged piece of damp cloth which covered a series of jutting lines.</p>
<p>Below the lines, where the fabric was ridged and folded, something moved. The cloth heaved. He stepped back one step. The thing sticking out from the mass moved too, just above the bent angle. Not a real motion, just a shiver under the skin.</p>
<p><em>Under the skin</em></p>
<p>It hit him then and the force of it was like a physical blow. He was staring at a corpse. It was bent almost double, face cheek down against the floor and the mouth agape, lips pulled back behind a line of teeth set in black gums. A trickle of some thick liquid had pooled by the head. An arm was hunched behind the body and a blackened hand was just visible, fingers hooked into claws.</p>
<p>The body was naked from the waist down, belly bloated underneath a desiccated and taut parchment surface and it was slumped in yet another pool of viscid liquid. At the abdomen, just up from the shrivelled crotch, the shirt was moving slowly as if the thing was trying to take a breath.</p>
<p>"Oh," Jeff said very quietly while his brain was yelling frantically at him.</p>
<p><em>getout getout oh for Christsake it's alive its fuckin'</em> breathing!</p>
<p>He felt his knees sag as he stumbled backwards. The scene suddenly leapt into startling focus. The head was down on the ground and a hank of hair was trailing on the old oak boards, growing right along the blackened puddle. The fingernails nails jutted down like curved talons, half an inch beyond the end of the fingers, like the claws of a monster in a nightmare.</p>
<p>And it was breathing. The belly was moving under the shirt, enough to make the fabric shiver.</p>
<p>A small, pearly white maggot dropped own onto the stretched skin of the abdomen and rolled to the floor where it pulsed weakly in the slimy puddle.</p>
<p>Jeff reached the door and just as he did so, all the flies swarmed together and like a single entity, they alighted on the body. In the blink of an eye it was covered in a blue-black skin and for an instant it looked like a man made up entirely of insects. At the far end, the filaments of hair grew out.</p>
<p>He backed against the door. It shut with a hard slam and all the light was cut off except for two slender needles of daylight piercing the cracks in the boards.</p>
<p>Panic exploded. He grabbed for the handle, fingers scrabbling down the dirty surface. A splinter went digging right up under his nail and he never felt a thing. He was in the dark with the body with its nails still growing and its hair still growing and its belly full of maggots. Behind him the flies buzzed and it sounded like the movement of a heavy body rising from the floor. Jeff's heart almost burst. His hand hit the handle and he hauled. The door opened and he threw himself out of the room.</p>
<p>He crashed against the far wall, made it to the back room and ran for the window. In his panic he hit the frame and it shuddered down the last few inches and slammed itself shut.</p>
<p>Jeff whimpered. A dozen or more flies which had followed through from the dark room came smacking against the glass and the sudden noise was loud in the empty room. Jeff reached for the frame and hit it with both hands. His right fist went through the old glass and a jagged edge raked his skin from wrist to elbow, drawing an immediate line of blood. The terror soared. Behind him the tornado of flies sounded like the scrape of a body dragging itself along the floor. Jeff pushed desperately at the flame. It gave an inch and then slid all the way up. He shoved himself through, all the time expecting to feel a black and wizened hand, armed with long, still growing nails, clasp around his leg. He cracked his knee on the sill as he threw himself out, jabbering incoherently. A swarm of flies followed him onto the low roof. He went stumbling across the slope of the slates, clambered up to the ridge and slid down the other side.</p>
<p>"Hey McGuire," Neil bawled. "What the hell's been keeping you?"</p>
<p>Jeff went sliding down the slant on the shingles, skittered across the guttering and tumbled ten feet to the ground, miraculously landing his feet and rolling with the momentum. The impact left him with a hairline fracture in his heel and a badly bruised knee. The blood from the cut in his arm trickled down onto the cobbles. Otherwise he was fine, at least physically..</p>
<p>Both teams gathered round him where he crouched close to the wall. "Did you hurt yourself?" one of them asked. Jeff's eyes darted left and right. He could see people around him, insubstantial figures in the light of day. In his mind, more clearly than anything, he saw the dripping corpse with the hair growing out along the mess on the floor and the clawed hands with the sickle nails and the shivery motion under the shirt.</p>
<p>"Gha...." Jeff managed. "Gha..."</p>
<p>"Hey, the idiot's gone ga-ga," Neil said, laughing. "Come on McGuire, stop fooling around and get back in goal."</p>
<p>It was two days before Jeff McGuire spoke a full word and by that time Sergeant Angus McNicol from CID had been up to the empty house that backed on to Boat Pend and he'd found the body of Mole Hopkirk. He later formed the opinion that Hopkirk was the lucky one of the two boys. The shock of it all had such an effect on young Jeff McGuire that he was never quite the same again.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Fatal Accident Inquiry into the death of Neil James Hopkirk. (Verbatim extract)</p>
<p>John J. Mack, Crown Office: "So you believe the boy took several days to die."</p>
<p>Dr Colin Bell, Pathologist: "No question of it. At least four days. Five at the outside."</p>
<p>Mack: "He would have been alive, and conscious for all of this time and possibly in considerable pain?"</p>
<p>Bell: "Perhaps conscious for some of the time, although blood loss and shock may possibly have rendered him unconscious for the latter part. Pain? Most certainly he was in very severe pain because of the nature of the injuries, the beating and the bites and the rest"</p>
<p>Mack: "So in your opinion, what happened?"</p>
<p>Bell.: "The attack on this young man was designed and deliberate and savage. It took place over a considerable period of time, I hasten to add. If I may venture an opinion, it is almost certain that death was a merciful release."</p>
<hr/>
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p>"First real bad one I had to deal with," Angus McNicol said. "And that was the start of it, though nobody knew that at the time."</p>
<p>He was sitting in the front room of his house out beyond Castlebank Church and sipping a mellow whisky. His eyes were bright blue and frosted under grizzled eyebrows and his expression said he was way back in his memory.</p>
<p>"I was a sergeant then, just promoted to CID. We had to break the door down. Young McGuire was very disturbed for a long time after that, and to tell you the truth, I think the shock affected the poor lad's head. He was mad as a hatter. John Fallon kicked the door off its hinges and when we got in the smell would have knocked you down for the count of ten. Millions of flies too, not pleasant.</p>
<p>"We found the lad tied up against the sink and I could see what gave the McGuire boy the heebie-jeebies. There was a fungus growing along the puddle, and it looked as if the boy's hair had grown there. The skin of the hands was pulled back and the nails were sticking up. Old Colin Bell, he was police surgeon in those days, said the nails keep growing for a bit after a death, but that was the first time I'd seen it.</p>
<p>"One of the others was sick right away, but I managed to get a handkerchief up quick enough so I didn't make a complete arse of myself. Hate to have destroyed evidence with my own puke, eh?" The old man grinned and took another sip, finishing his drink. He poured another two whiskies and offered the glass over.</p>
<p>"Don't suppose there's any harm in telling you any of this. It's long gone. Hardly anybody remembers it, but it was a bugger of a summer. Strange that somebody like yourself wants to go digging it all over again."</p>
<p>Another sip and he closed his eyes, concentrating. "That poor bugger Hopkirk had been lying there a long time, ever since March, and the flies had made the most of it. His mother damn near died when we told her and she kicked up a stink about wanting to see her boy's body. It was all we could do to stop her. She'd never have lived with the sight. Hell. It was hard enough for me.</p>
<p>"The pages were sheets from a bible. An old bible, according to the book expert we spoke to. Maybe one that had been handed down in a family. Some of the pages had been torn out and the killer had wiped his backside with them. Some of them were crumpled up and stuffed in the boy's mouth. They'd been scrunched into a thick wedge and it was no wonder the lad choked to death. Bell was right. When it came, it was a blessing. That poor boy had walked down into hell.</p>
<p>"Whoever did it had been squatting in the old surgery for a while, but at this time, we didn't know a thing about the man you kids called
<em>Twitchy Eyes</em>, but I remember getting a really bad feeling. We'd been looking for Hopkirk for a few weeks by then, five or six as I recall. So we knew then that there had been a killer around a month and a half before. But by then one or two other things had happened.
</p>
<p>"There was little Lucy Saunders....</p>
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<h1>7</h1>
<p><em>May.</em></p>
<p>"Lucy. <em>Lucy Saunders!</em>"</p>
<p>The hoarse voice echoed across the Rough Drain where the run-off from the gully at Corrieside found a flat level that was swampy and crowded with a tangle of scrub willow and twisted alder. The winking of torches could be seen as the line of searchers edged their way along the waste ground, some of them up to their thighs in the stagnant pools. Now an again, a beam would angle up towards the sky, seeming almost solid in the fine drizzling mist.</p>
<p>They searched all night, teams of policemen, workers just off the back shift at the shipyard. Neighbours from the row of houses at High Cross road, gardeners and pigeon fanciers who had their huts and allotments down the west side of the rough drain scrub. Every now and again, somebody would shout her name and the call would drift along the flatland. Everybody listened for the reply, the cry of pain, the whimper that would mean little Lucy Saunders was at least alive and with luck, maybe even well.</p>
<p>They searched all night and they found nothing.</p>
<p>Lucy Saunders was eight years old and she disappeared in the warm light of an early May afternoon. She had got the bike for her birthday in March, a little fairy two-wheeler and her dad Charlie Saunders had taken the stabilisers off only a fortnight before, down at the park where Lucy had wobbled her tentative way to learning to ride properly.</p>
<p>"There was a man," Chrissie McKane told John Fallon. He listened gravely, towering over Chrissie and her sister Janice who was only six. "We saw him on the path."</p>
<p>"What was he like?" John asked. He had a deep and rumbling voice, but despite that it conveyed gentleness and security. He gave the girls a smile and they grinned back.</p>
<p>"Big," Janice said. "A great big man and his hair was black like yours. But not short."</p>
<p>"Good girl. And where was he?"</p>
<p>"At the trees near the allotments," Chrissie said. "He was just standing looking at us and then he waved to us. Janice went across, but I said to her to come back. We had to go home."</p>
<p>"And then you saw Lucy?"</p>
<p>Both girls nodded. "She said she was going down to the shop. She asked if we would come with her, but we had to go home. She went round by the lane and we saw the man waving to her and then she went across to him."</p>
<p>"And what happened then?"</p>
<p>Chrissie shrugged. "We had to go home."</p>
<p>"He had twitchy eyes," little Janice said brightly. "Like this." She screwed her face into a grimace, narrowing her eyes to slits and blinked several times in rapid succession.</p>
<p>"Just like that. I think he had something in his eyes."</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>Tom Tannahill and Doug Nicol had come across the searchers on their way up from the scout hall at Castlebank. Their only concern was that because of all the activity they couldn't cut across by the old willow that had fallen across another blowdown, creating a natural shelter. It was one of their places, out of the way of prying eyes where they and their friends could creep into for a smoke or a game of cards, or a fascinated scan of a crumpled black and white picture from the magazines they could swipe from the top shelf of Walter Dickson's shop.</p>
<p>They watched the line of men trampling through the gloom of the rough drain, calling out the little girl's name, one voice louder, more desperate than the rest and that had to be Charles Saunders of course.</p>
<p>One of the men passed quite close and Tom asked what was happening.</p>
<p>"A wee girl's gone missing," the man said. "The police think she's been taken away."</p>
<p>It was all revealed the following day. Little Lucy Saunders' bike had been found not forty yards from the corner where the McKane girls had seen the tall stranger with the dark hair and the twitch in his eyes. The bike had been thrown well away from the track, the front wheel and fork still brand new and shiny but the back end now covered in slime and mud where it had sunk into the marsh. Somebody spotted the cleat-marks of boots on the soft earth beside one of the many tracks that criss-crossed the barren ground and another found an imprint of a kid's sandal. They searched the whole of the wasteland and all the area around it, down past the allotments and the old dye works. The police tracker dogs were called in and they followed the trail of something as far as the edge of the Ladyburn steam where it took its dog-leg turn down to the castle and from there the trail went cold. Lucy Saunders was gone.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan's aunt Bernadette lived only two doors from the Saunders house and Danny had listened, sitting quietly doing his homework in the corner of the living room, as she told of the girl's mother's complete and utter collapse and how the sobbing had gone on all night.</p>
<p>"There's no hope now," Bernadette said. "Poor wee thing's been taken away and they'll find her in a ditch somewhere, raped and strangled and cut to pieces."</p>
<p>Bernadette's prophesy was fairly accurate, so it transpired.</p>
<hr/>
<p><em>August 1. 10 am:</em></p>
<p>"How did you manage to get away?" Corky asked. The other three had fallen behind, two of them struggling with the weight of the tent.</p>
<p>"It wasn't easy, but he believed the Scout camp story," Danny said, grinning. "But if he finds out, I'm right up the creek. He said I had to go to mass tomorrow, no matter what, so I'd better find out who the priest is. He's always trying to catch me out. Asks me what the sermon was about or what colour of robes the priest wears. Sometimes I'd be better off just going to chapel. If he catches me dodging, it's me that'll need a priest, that's for certain."</p>
<p>"Oh, he'll never find out," Corky assured his pal.</p>
<p>"Well, if he does, it'll be the <em>Bad Fire</em> for me. He's dead keen on the old hellfire."</p>
<p>"Still got it bad?"</p>
<p>Danny nodded. "You know what it's like. Everything gets round to prayers and the holy virgin."</p>
<p>"My old man never bothered with that. He doesn't like priests. Me neither. But he was always kicking the hell out of me."</p>
<p>"I know," Danny said. He'd seen the bruises many a time. "Same as my dad. He's started using the buckle end of the belt. Says I have to show an example to the rest of them and if I don't, he'll show me an example. I got a thick ear last night just for not kneeling up straight."</p>
<p>"That's a real bummer. Having to pray all night and then getting a smack, that's not fair."</p>
<p>"You're telling me. You've got it made. I sometimes wish my old man was in the jail sometimes."</p>
<p>He nudged Corky to let him know he was kidding. His friend took no offence.</p>
<p>"He'll be back in a month or so," Corky said. "With a bit of luck it'll get Phil off my back, He's been acting the hard man ever since my Da went into Drumbain. But sometimes the old man's just as bad. Once he gets a hold of a bottle then everybody has to stay out of his way. Sometimes he'll come looking anyway and if you think the buckle end of the belt's bad, you want to see what he can do with the toe of his boot."</p>
<p>Danny and Corky had grown up together, along with Doug and Billy. Tom had been born two streets away, but his family had moved down south when he was seven and had come back again only two years before, just after they found out Tom's little sister Maureen had leukaemia. Tom had fallen right back into the way of things until the winter when little Mo had died and then he'd gone quiet, hanging around on his own, and occasionally hanging around in the cemetery, close to his sister's grave. It was only when the spring had turned to high summer that he really started chucking around with the boys again, going down to the ganghut at the Rough Drain or even to the new place they'd found under the bridge, but he was still silent, still withdrawn. He was taking a long time to get to grips with his loss.</p>
<p>"My Ma just said to be careful," Corky said. "She's still scared of old Twitchy Eyes."</p>
<p>"She's not the only one. If my Mum found out I was going up the hills she'd throw a fit."</p>
<p>"He's gone," Corky said. "I heard they think he's topped himself."</p>
<p>"But they never found a body or anything."</p>
<p>"Only a matter of time. I just wished he'd grabbed Phil before he went," Corky said, very sincerely. "He's a crazy fool, so he is."</p>
<p>"He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hell fire."</p>
<p>"<em>Jeez</em> Dan, wherever do you get all this crap?"</p>
<p>"That's one of the old man's favourites. It's in the bible."</p>
<p>Corky laughed aloud, head thrown back. "Well, I'm in for a right old roasting Danny Boy. I reckon I've called Phil a fool a million times."</p>
<p>"Maybe it doesn't work if you're telling the truth."</p>
<p>Danny glanced at Corky who looked back and then they both suddenly burst into a fit of laughter that swept through and over them, doubling them up so hard their sides hurt. It took them a while to chuckle it all out and it was the first real laughing Danny could remember since the spring. The sun was rising high over the oaks bordering the edge of the Corrieside Gully as they made their way up the hill in the warmth of the summer day. They were just two boys, only thirteen years old, glad to be out in the sun, glad to be out from under at last.</p>
<p>Behind them, tinny music floated up the slope of the path.</p>
<p>"Billy's brought his radio, silly idiot," Corky said. They sat down by the grass at the verge, waiting for the others to catch up. Corky leaned back and almost put his hand onto a wide cowpat and sent a riot of red dung flies whirling into the air.</p>
<p>Corky bared his teeth. "Remember the flies in the window?"</p>
<p>Danny nodded. His expression had gone flat and the bright twinkle of laughter faded from his eyes. "That could have been us, couldn't it?"</p>
<p>Jeff McGuire hadn't been the only youngster up on the roof behind the house on River Street. Corky and Danny and another fellow called Al Crombie had been on their way home from school, when they'd gone exploring up on the low roofs. You could always find a ball stuck up on the slates, or a birds nest in the eaves, even though it was still early in spring. All of the trouble was yet to erupt, so there was no reason to hurry home. They had gone clambering, pretending they were commandos, up and over the tin ridges and the swaybacked slopes on the roofs. Alan Crombie, who would have been with them on the trek to the Dummy Village if he hadn't been sent away, for safety's sake, to his uncle's farm at Creggan, had hooked a plastic toy glider out of a drainpipe.</p>
<p>They'd gone across the roof of the outhouse behind the old building and Corky had seen the movement in the window.</p>
<p>The flies had been crawling up the pane, hundreds of them, big and black, with that sheen of metallic blue at the edges. The three boys had stopped to look at the swarm on the glass, almost thick enough to cover half the window.</p>
<p>"Worth a look," Corky had said, but Danny had thought it was really creepy.</p>
<p>"There's millions of them. I read a story about flies that came and choked somebody to death and it gave me nightmares for weeks."</p>
<p>Just then, somebody shouted from a window of one of the tenements further along. A man was leaning out of a window and bawling at them to get down off the roof. The three of them had turned and scuttled over the ridge and down the far side, using the downpipe to get to the ground. They had forgotten all about the flies until Jeff McGuire had been a little bit more curious than they had. Now he was up in Barlane Hospital which was only one step away from being committed to Dalmoak where the real crazies were kept locked up.</p>
<p>"It could have been us," Danny said, giving a little shiver, though the day was warm.</p>
<p>"Flipping glad it wasn't." Corky said, chewing on a stem of grass he'd plucked. "Old Mole Hopkirk lying there with flies coming out of his mouth and all his hair growing across the floor. That would give you the heebie-jeebies. They say he was there for weeks and weeks and his nails just got longer and longer."</p>
<p>"If I'd have seen that," Danny said, "I'd have died on the spot. That would have been worse than Paulie Degman in the water and I had bad dreams for weeks after that."</p>
<p>Tom, Doug and Billy had almost reached them and the tiny music had swelled. Mick Jagger was growling that this could be the last time.</p>
<p>"Maybe the last time," Billy sang, well off-key. "I don't kn-o-ow...<em>oh no</em>."</p>
<p>"Give it a break Harrison," Corky told him, quite reasonably. "You can't sing for toffee."</p>
<p>"Great song that," Billy said. "But not as good as good ol' rock and roll."</p>
<p>"It <em>is</em> rock'n roll, idiot features."</p>
<p>"No. I mean the old stuff like Bill Haley and Elvis. My Ma's got dozens of records. Plays them all the time."</p>
<p>"So does our Phil. He's got all that old fashioned crap. He says Jagger's a poof and all the Beatles are big nancy boys." Corky turned to Danny and grinned. "Another step closer to hell for me. Phil really is a fool."</p>
<p>The other three looked at them askance. Danny and Corky burst into laughter again and the others watched them, wondering what the joke was. Billy waited until the end of the song and then turned the radio off. It was a tiny thing, hardly the size of a paperback, that he'd won by collecting tokens and you could pick up Radio Caroline, one of the pirate stations run from a boat of that name anchored just outside the official limit. Everybody agreed that the pirates were better at music and their deejays were far superior to anything on dry land. The radio was Billy's pride and joy.</p>
<p>They had reached the edge of the row of houses close to Cargill Farm Road that would take them up parallel to the Ladyburn Stream and then up onto the moorland. Here, the self-service general store served most of the families in the area. They came up round the back, still carrying the tent.</p>
<p>"How much have we got?" Doug said. They had pooled their money, not much of it, and certainly not enough for any expedition longer than a day. Corky told him not to worry as he unslung his haversack and brought out a bundle, wrapped in an old towel. He half unwrapped it until a beady eye showed, then a rounded head. It was a pigeon.</p>
<p>"What's that for?" Tom asked. Corky grinned.</p>
<p>"We can get what we want," he said. "You wait here and guard the tent". Billy laughed and Doug showed his big teeth. They followed Danny, who was holding the fistful of coins, into the shop and sauntered up the aisle while he went up the counter and pointed to the string of big beef sausages. He checked the price, saw that he could afford two pounds, and asked or it. Mrs Fortucci behind the counter, the mother of Brenda Fortucci who was a class above them in school and gifted with the most substantial breasts of anybody in the whole school, counted the sausages onto the weigh-plate, wrapped them, and passed them over. She cocked an eye up the aisle, checking on the other two. Danny was just handing over the change when the back door opened. He saw a hand push in, quick as a wink and then the sudden grey flutter.</p>
<p>The pigeon exploded into the air in a panicked clap of wings. A small downy feather tumbled out and rocked slowly as it fell towards the floor.</p>
<p>"What on earth...." Mrs Fortucci yelped. The pigeon came fluttering past her, heading for the window. It got half way there, saw the grille over the glass, veered, then flew in a tight, frenzied circle around the store.</p>
<p>"Oh, get it out of here," the woman squawked. She turned to the side and lifted a broom, swung it up into the air and started jabbing at the pigeon. Corky wasn't concerned. It was an old scrag from his father's pigeon loft, one of the street-tykes lured down b the big arrogant cock bird, and not a real homer. Even so, it was still easily fast enough to avoid the swinging brush head.</p>
<p>Up in the aisles, Doug and Billy were stuffing tins into their bags. Billy scooped cans of beans and tomato soup. Doug went for the corned beef and spam. He crossed the aisle, grabbed a loaf, stuffed it into his pack so hard that the paper burst, but he didn't stop. He spun and lifted a jar of strawberry jam and a packet of chocolate homewheat biscuits.</p>
<p>Above them the pigeon fluttered in a tight circle, wheeling round the light.</p>
<p>"I'll get it missus," Corky cried, running across from the back door. Beside him, the girl assistant was whooping in fright, hands clasped to her hair in the mistaken assumption that the bird's claws would get tangled in it. Corky crossed to the door, opened one side, then reached to swing the other, jamming it back. By now, Billy and Doug went out the back way. Light shone through the double doors and as soon as Corky moved away, the pigeon arrowed straight for the gap and swooped out into the summer air.</p>
<p>Mrs Fortucci dropped the brush, face flushed. Danny stood at the counter. She pointed at Corky.</p>
<p>"Come here," she said, beckoning with a thumb. Corky looked at Danny, wondered whether to make a break for the door, shrugged and came forward.</p>
<p>"I'd never have thought of that," Mrs Fortucci said. Her chest was heaving up and down, a vast double mound in magnificent motion. "That was good of you."</p>
<p>Corky shrugged again. She moved towards him and for a moment Danny thought she was going to hug him. He got a sudden vision of Danny disappearing into the deep valley and never coming out again. Mrs Fortucci passed him, heading straight for the till. She reached beyond it, lifted a large bar of chocolate and handed it to him.</p>
<p>"Can't stand birds in the shop," she said. "You go and enjoy it, son."</p>
<p>Corky almost burst out laughing, but he managed to keep it in until they were half-way up the farm track and then it all came out in a mirthful explosion. He sagged to the ground, dropping his end of the tent. Danny, holding his belly again, sat beside him. In a second they were all braying like hyenas. It took nearly five minutes before they could speak.</p>
<p>"Want a smoke?" Billy asked a while later, producing a packet. Doug took one and sat down on the rolled up tent. They were unfiltered full strength smokes that smelled like pipe tobacco. Doug inhaled, coughed heartily as the thick smoke dragged itself down into his lungs, and looked up at them, eyes brimming.</p>
<p>"Far to go now?" he asked through a dry throat.</p>
<p>"Miles and miles," Danny told him. "We've only just started."</p>
<p>"I'm whacked already."</p>
<p>Billy blew one of his famous smoke rings and made another one roll thorough the first. He'd been smoking since he was eight and had spent nearly six years practising the trick which he thought was just about the neatest party piece you could do.</p>
<p>"Great smoke. My old man used to smoke these in the war before he was killed."</p>
<p>The rest of them looked away hoping Billy wouldn't start about his war hero father.</p>
<p>"That's what my mum said. She's got a picture of him in his uniform and he's smoking a Capstan. Dead casual, like he's never been scared of anything."</p>
<p>Doug looked at Danny, a quick private glance.</p>
<p>"When we get up to this place," Billy continued. "And if we really find the dummy village, then I'm going to find something to bring back. Something from the war."</p>
<p>"Of course we'll find it," Corky said, trying to get Billy off the subject. Billy was fourteen and the oldest of them all and for most of his life he'd believed that his father had been a war hero, killed fighting the Germans. His ambition was to become a soldier when he grew up and go marching off, rifle in hand, to wreak his revenge. It was getting difficult for the rest of them to say nothing. They were hoping that Billy, who might have been the eldest but was academically the weakest, would do some mental arithmetic, some simple subtraction and come to the inevitable conclusion, and then shut the hell up. Nobody wanted to tell him to his face what he should already know.</p>
<p>"We should get going," Danny said. He stood up and took an end of the tent. Corky took the other and they hauled it up off the ground. Billy deftly nipped his cigarette and Doug tried the same manoeuvre without success. A red ember flew off the end and landed in the tall grass close to the hedge and immediately a wisp of smoke spiralled up. Billy stepped in and stamped hard.</p>
<p>"You'll set the whole place on fire," he said, giving Doug a shove.</p>
<p>Just then, something crackled, like a small branch breaking underfoot. It came from the shadows of the stand of trees on the other side of the track, and they all froze. Something moved again., a heavy object. Dry bramble runners snapped. Everybody looked at everybody else. Billy was about to speak but Corky held a finger to his lips.
<em>Ssssh</em>!</p>
<p>Another footstep, slow and deliberate. Somebody was in the trees, moving towards them, hidden only by the sprawling hawthorn that lines the track.</p>
<p>"Phil?" Danny asked in a tight whisper. Corky shrugged.</p>
<p>"Have they followed us?" Tom asked softly. "Sneaky rotten shites"</p>
<p>They looked at each other again, all of them holding their breath. Out there in the shadows beyond the farm road, under the canopy of oak leaves, something was moving slowly towards them, using the forest as cover. Danny felt his scalp prickle. Doug turned on his heel and scooted up the track. Billy was right on his heels and then they were all running, going hell for leather despite the drag of the stolen booty and the weight of the rolled tent. Behind them the sounds faded as the distance widened but they didn't stop until they reached the ruins of the old shepherd's cottage at the far end of the lane far above the town.</p>
<p>Tom climbed up onto the crumbling wall, right up the gable slope and craned over the chimney to see back the way they'd come. He scanned over the hedge and saw the black and white cow come shambling out of the trees, munching on the dry grass in the corner of the narrow field.</p>
<p>"It's only a cow," he called down. "We ran away from a bloody <em>cow."</em></p>
<p>The relief was so great they all started laughing again. It wasn't Phil and Pony McGill come to beat the living daylights out of them. And it wasn't anything worse that all of them had thought of and none of them had mentioned.</p>
<p>Billy said how if it had been Phil he'd have pulled his own knife and squared up to both of them and everybody just jeered that notion to scorn. Billy was tough when it came to talking but everybody knew Corky was the toughest of them all and even he would think twice about taking his brother Phil on in a serious square go.</p>
<p>They were still laughing when they turned and squeezed their way through the stile and headed up across the field of gorse, listening to the seeds snap and crackle in the heat of the sun, winding their way through the maze of vicious little spines, heading for the line of trees that separated the high and low pastures, the rugged moorland from the rich agricultural loam of the farms.</p>
<p>They were quite unaware that while they struggled with the tent and the weight of the rucksacks, a pair of black eyes watched them from the cover of the thick plantation high on the far hill.</p>
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<h1>8</h1>
<p><em>May.</em></p>
<p>Angus McNicol's boss, Commander Ross, who was head of the County force, made the announcement when Lucy Saunders was finally found. Angus the rest of the team under Hector Kelso who headed CID, had worked night and day for two weeks, going over the ground again with the tracker dogs, asking every boy and girl within a mile, trudging round the doors again asking them a second time if they'd seen anything. At the end of the day, it was the sergeant who pieced together what had happened to the child.</p>
<p>Her body was found under the third bridge over the Ladyburn Stream, a fair distance upstream of where it flowed to the sluggish marsh of the Rough Drain. She was lying crumpled and bloodied in a corner, slumped in a puddle.</p>
<p>From the Rough Drain, where the bike had been thrown into the muddy ditch, Angus McNicol, using hindsight, worked out the route the man with the twitchy eyes had brought the girl through the far side of the wasteland and up the curve of the stream where it skirted the lower end of the Overbuck estate, by the Dower House where the old Lady Hartfield had, according to legend, thrown some crazy, equally legendary parties back in the twenties.</p>
<p>He must have carried the child, it seemed certain, because it was unlikely a girl of eight would willingly go along with a man who had thrown her brand new bike into a stagnant pool. Also, Angus reasoned, she must have been unconscious, or silenced in some way, because to get to the stream, they would have passed by the old timber-frame houses still occupied by the estate workers. Somebody would have heard a child crying, or screaming, and would have come to investigate.</p>
<p>But nobody had heard a thing.</p>
<p>What was certain, from Dr Bell's post mortem report, was that Lucy Saunders had still been alive at that time. For, like Neil Hopkirk, it had taken her some time to die.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan's Aunt Bernadette had been right in her prophetic statement.</p>
<p>It was a matter of luck, if luck could be involved in such a thing, that they found Lucy Saunders so soon. She could have lain under the bridge for weeks, possibly months, had it not been for George Scott and his cousin Eric who had been poaching for rabbits on Overbuck Estate in the early hours of a May morning. They had just come down from the hill, using the trees by the stream as cover because the estate's fields were open and old Leitch the gamekeeper was as wily as a red fox. They came splashing down with the two terriers ahead of them and when they got to the bridge both dogs had started snuffling around at the darkened hollow of the metal access door into the water valve. The door had been pushed open and the two dogs disappeared into the gloom.</p>
<p>George bent in front of the low door, leaning into the gloom, calling on his terriers. They were scrabbling in the corner, both of them growling that low rumble, the way they did when they'd got too close to a fox in its den. Eric pushed by him and struck a match, sending a flare of light into the shadows. The dog's bobbed tails were sticking straight up, white salutes over in the corner. Beyond then, a white arm stuck upwards, as if waving.</p>
<p>Eric thought it was a doll at first and then he breathed in the stench. Right away he knew what he'd found. The arm was raised up and out. Below it, a small shape was slumped to the right, head down. The dogs were snuffling heavily and over the sound Eric could hear the humming of insects. He backed out fast, hissing at the dogs to come away, inadvertently grinding his heel down on his cousin's toe.</p>
<p>George yelped and cursed vehemently, but Eric didn't even hear it. "It's her George. That girl everybody's been looking for."</p>
<p>"You should watch where you're going," George said. "Nearly broke my flamin' toe."</p>
<p>"<em>Wheesht</em> man," Eric hissed, in the same stage whisper tone he'd used on the dogs. "It's that wee girl who's been missing. It must be."
</p>
<p>"What are you blethering on about?" George finally asked.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell man, would you listen to me," Eric grabbed his cousin by the lapel, forcing him to stop hopping around in the shallow gravel on the stream. "It's a dead fuggin'
<em>body!"</em></p>
<p>Angus McNicol and John Fallon were up at the third bridge in the space of fifteen minutes from the panicked phone call, and under the bridge, in the square stone box normally closed to the world by a heavy iron door fastened with a big brass padlock on a hasp, they found Lucy Saunders.</p>
<p>The pale little body was sprawled in a puddle, legs spread-eagled in pitiful invitation, arms outstretched, each one tied by a ripped piece of cloth to pulley-hooks set in the stonework. Her head was thrown back over to one side and her hair hung in rat's tails down on her bare shoulders.</p>
<p>The only article of clothing was the collar of a shirt and a scrap of cloth which hung down on her chest. One of her sandals was in the puddle, but there was no sign of the other.</p>
<p>At first, when the beam of the flashlight swept across the body, Angus McNicol thought, just as Eric Scott had done, that they'd made a mistake and merely found a discarded doll. The girl's small frame looked waxy, almost plastic in the damp gloom. But the smell was unmistakable, the stench of rotting flesh.</p>
<p>Even Dr Bell found it difficult to keep the emotion out of his post mortem report.</p>
<p>The name
<em>Twitchy Eyes</em> spread like a searing brush fire around the town. Mothers panicked, and down at the distillery, the biggest employer of women, two of the bottling lines had to shut down completely because so many women had taken time off to make sure they were home when their children arrived from school.
</p>
<p>Down on Strathleven Street, at the edge of the leafy path that angled down towards the allotments, a telephone line worker stepped into the shadow of an overgrown privet hedge to relieve himself of the pressure of two pints of beer he'd drunk in Mac's bar over lunchtime. He'd turned round, shaking himself dry the way men do, unaware of the mother and two children passing by on the other side of the street. All she saw was a man looming out of the bushes and exposing himself . She screamed like a banshee and dragged her girls to the nearest doorway, both of them squealing in fear and alarm though completely unaware of the workman's presence - and banged on the door until the householder who'd been tending his dahlias came running round the front of the house. A window next slammed open and a woman leaned out, yelling and pointing an accusing finger. Postman Brendan McFall came round the corner into the melee. A car stopped and two men - canvassers for the upcoming council by-election got out.</p>
<p>All they saw was the pointed finger and all they heard was a gabbled and garbled accusation and the four men took after the line worker. The dahlia gardener still had a long-handled weeding hoe in his hand and without any hesitation he took a swipe at the man, knocking his hard-hat into the privet hedge and knocking him to the ground. By the time the police arrived, the unfortunate man thought the whole world had gone crazy. He'd a lump the size of a pigeon's egg on the side of his head. Two streams of blood were dripping from his nose and one badly blacked eye was closed tight shut. Not only that, but when he'd tried to escape from the four madmen, two of them had grabbed his arms and out of nowhere a demented, screaming woman had come rushing across the road and kicked him right in the balls and drawn a row of bloody lines down his face with her fingernails. To add insult to this injury, on the following morning, when it was all accepted that he was not the crazed killer, he was hauled in front of Baillie McGraw at the Monday morning court and fined five pounds for committing a public nuisance. After that he refused ever again to work on Strathleven Street.</p>
<p>More unfortunate was the poor Asian salesman who had just come into town to take on a new territory for the Housemarket Supply Company. He had a dark coat and a turban and a glossy black beard and was a pretty exotic fellow by the normal standards of the backwater where he planned to sell his plastic toilet brushes and knickknacks.</p>
<p>He was on the far side of town, up by Arden Road, and he stopped to ask a directions of a group of children. Everything would have been fine, but for the fact that a four-year old had turned round and seen the dark face under the turban and the shiny beard and taken him for a pirate. She gave a wail of fright, which was immediately taken up by her younger friend and in an infectious wave of panic a bunch of little girls who had been skipping gaily in the late spring sun, were screeching like piglets.</p>
<p>A group of men playing quoits with old iron carthorse shoes on the wasteland where the old quarry buildings used to be came running round and attacked the salesman with such violence that he ended up in Lochend General where he needed a three-hour operation to relieve the pressure caused by a dreadful curved dent in his skull caused by a solid iron shoe from a Clydesdale horse.</p>
<p>It was that kind of panic, the jitters that sizzled through the town. There was a
<em>bad man</em> here, a murderer, and while people naturally suspected it must be a stranger, all that was known was that he was a man, tall, with dark hair. And with twitchy eyes.
</p>
<p>From the pulpit in St Rowan's on Sunday, the Father O'Connor who ruled the parish took the opportunity to warn the children of his flock.</p>
<p>"Let us pray for Lucinda Saunders," he enjoined them, joining his hands together to show he little ones exactly how it was done, "who was only eight years old and who met such a dreadful end."</p>
<p>The old priest, who sported an Italian-style Beretta hat and an accent as thick as the bogs of Ireland, was hell on pagans, protestants and purgatory, along with the devil and all his wiles who was lurking around every corner waiting to snare a good catholic boy. And the said devil wasn't above using flirty teenage non-Catholic girls to do his dirty work either.</p>
<p>"Yeah, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death," he began. "The Lord is with us. This poor girl was not of our faith, children, and because of that she had never been baptised in the cleansing water of Christ's Holy Church, and that is a terrible thing don't you know."</p>
<p>He peered at them, hands clamped over the ornate polished marble edge, marble that would have cost six months wages in a good-paying foreman's job and leaned forward.</p>
<p>"For that means she was not cleansed of the original sin and because of that, she will be tormented by the purifying flames of purgatory, burning until that sin is purged away and she comes out shining and clean and fit to meet the Lord in all his great glory."</p>
<p>Danny Gillan put his head in his hands and as soon as he did so, his father leaned over and knuckled him sharply, letting him know he had to sit up and pay attention. This was God's business and He liked straight kneeling. The old priest lumbered along on his theme, purging and purgatory, cleansing fires. Over by the side altar, Father Dowran kept his eye on the unruly boys.</p>
<p>Danny had vaguely known Lucy Saunders they way all children know the connections. She was the cousin of some of the guys who played football on the spare field at the bottom end of Overbuck Estate, and while he might not have picked her out in a crowd of small girls, she was no different from anybody else. Just a kid.</p>
<p><em>Burning and purgatory</em>. Just like the
<em>Bad Fire</em>, like hell itself, except that after a thousand years in the searing heat of the flames, you got a chance to get out and go to heaven and that was something Danny Gillan couldn't fathom out. He just couldn't get his thoughts to hold on to that concept at all.
</p>
<p>He looked up at his father, sitting straight-backed in his good Sunday suit, one long-knuckled hand clasped around Danny's little sister's dainty fingers, nodding all the while, as if mesmerised by the truth of the priest's words.</p>
<p>But Danny's thoughts had gone sparking off in a different direction. The kid was no different from anybody else, except fore the fact that when she was small and helpless, her parents hadn't brought her here to the old Italian marble fountain and had the water poured over her while they renounced Satan and all its works and all his pomps and because of that - according to old Father O'Connor - she would feel the cauterising sear of purgatory. After all she had suffered, (and Doc bell's report missed one of that awfulness) after having the life squeezed out of her in a puddle of her own piss, she had to suffer some more.</p>
<p>He shook his head at the immensity of it, the complete and utter wrongness of it. His father looked down at him, hunched in the corner of the seat, eyes diverted, and he thought Danny was daydreaming again. He reached once more and nudged his son's shoulder. Danny automatically straightened his posture while the priest asked them all to pray for the repose of the innocent but somehow tainted soul of Lucinda Saunders - and he wondered what his father would think if he knew that some of the boys in the Church Legion said that sometimes the curate, Father Dowran who ran the boys club would take them down to the room under the hall and chastise them for any perceived wrongdoing. And in the dark of the store-room, he would take their trousers down and....</p>
<p>"Daniel, pay attention."</p>
<p>Danny brought his eyes forward and thought of Lucy Saunders and Paulie Degman and not for the first time, he thought the whole world was going totally crazy.</p>
<p>Either that or <em>he</em> was going mad.</p>
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<h1>9</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 12 noon:</em></p>
<p>"Just climb down," Billy prodded, nudging Doug with his elbow. "Quick, before somebody sees us." The pair of them were up on the orchard wall, fifteen feet above the ground and it would have been an impossible climb but for the solid swathe of old ivy that festooned the stone. From up on the top, the thick growth helped hide them from view. An expanse of dead straight rows of vegetables, angled away towards the far wall, thick lines of lettuce, curly red or tight green footballs of new cabbage. There were beans on wires reaching for the sky, stalks of rhubarb as thick as a boy's arm.</p>
<p>They had taken a detour back down to the Ladyburn stream, rather than going up through the barwoods onto the high moor, for no particular reason except that it was a tiring hike up the hill and much easier going down in the shadow of the valley. Old Leitch the gamekeeper might chase boys off if he came across them, but it was hardly likely he was down in the gardens of Overbuck Estate, and so as long as they were quiet and careful, they'd be in and out again before anybody noticed.</p>
<p>"It's too high," Doug protested, "and there's no way back up." Doug had never liked heights.</p>
<p>"Course there is," Billy insisted, urging him over the parapet. " Look over there. They've planted trees against the wall. It's just like a ladder. No bother at all."</p>
<p>The pear tree espaliers slanted upwards, hugging the stonework, laden with half-sized stone-hard fruits. It was far too early in the season for them to be worth stealing but there were richer pickings on a hot August day and for the five boys, out on an adventure after the claustrophobic and tense summer months of the school holidays, they were too sweet to resist.</p>
<p>Already Tom, never one for taking huge risks, was crawling along by the wires where the tall raspberry canes nodded in a warm eddy of wind. Beyond him, Danny and Corky were leaning over the blackcurrant bushes. Billy could see their hands peck out and come straight to their mouths and in his imagination he could already taste the bitter-sweet juice bursting on his own tongue.</p>
<p>"Well, I'm not waiting around," Billy asserted. He scrambled along the top of the wall. Somewhere in the distance, in the shadow of the massive conifers, great Californian redwoods that towered over the water garden, a pheasant squawked its metallic challenge and overhead a wood pigeon murmured softly. Billy gingerly slid his feet over the other side and lowered himself down, tongue hanging out as he concentrated on finding a toe-hold. He dropped down another few inches and his tee-shirt, the kind of thing they used to call a
<em>Sloppy-Joe</em> scraped upwards, exposing his belly to the rough sandstone.</p>
<p>Finally his questing foot found a convenient cross-wire and he lowered himself backwards. Further along the wall, a lead fastener pulled out of its niche, instantly slackening all the tension out of the wire. Without warning Billy dropped almost a yard before it pulled him up sharp, wide eyed and heart-thudding. The wire sprung back, vibrating like an old guitar-string.</p>
<p>"Fu..." Billy mouthed, hands scrabbling for the edge of the wall, in case the wire snapped under his weight, but by luck, it held fast.</p>
<p>"Told you it was too high," Doug told him.</p>
<p>"Oh don't be such a
<em>crapper</em>," Billy shot back. The colour was coming back into his face after the fright. "Honest to God, Bugs, I never saw a bigger scaredy cat in my life."
</p>
<p>"Don't call me that,
<em>fatso</em>." Doug snapped back. He forgot his complaint and scrambled over the top, feeling for handholds. Billy climbed down the pear tree, one step at a time, trying to avoid the support wires. Over on the far side, they could hear somebody talking or singing, but there was nobody in sight.
</p>
<p>"Come on Doug," Billy cajoled when he'd reached the bottom. After a few moments, Doug carefully turned himself around and got onto sturdy lateral branch. Whispering loudly, Billy directed his feet, but it was slow going. It took several minutes of prompting and persuasion to get talk him down to earth. They finally reached the raspberry patch and found Tom stuffing himself with long pink fruits and the two of them tried to make up for lost time.</p>
<p>After ten minutes of pillaging, Tom asked where the others were.</p>
<p>"I saw them down at the far side," Doug said, his face stained with juice, making his chin as red as his big ears. "They getting tore into the goose-gogs, but I think they went through the door in the wall over there."</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>Doug shrugged. Billy was shoving raspberries into his mouth like a harvesting machine, making juicy little slurping noises all the while. He was enjoying this.</p>
<p>Danny and Corky stopped just beyond the green door at the far end of the vast greenhouse which took up half the length of the entire orchard wall. The panes had been whitened with the same chalky material that greengrocers used to advertise their prices on shop windows but there were a couple of clear patches which showed green shadows behind. Corky pushed himself up against the glass to cut off his shadow and peered inside. He turned and tapped Danny on the shoulder, eyes wide and mouth set into a perfect circle. Danny leaned, shaded his eyes and took in the enormous grape vine stretching from one end of the greenhouse to the other. For a second he saw nothing but a thick canopy of leaves and then the picture jumped into clear focus. Immense bunches of grapes, great purple inverted pyramids, hung down by the dozen. The grapes themselves looked as big and as succulent as ripe plums.</p>
<p>"I want some of them," Corky said. Danny nodded. He'd never seen such a wealth of exotic fruit, and he was sure nobody else had. If they were lucky, they'd maybe get an apple to eat in the schoolyard, but grapes, they were for rich folk. And nobody came any richer, in these parts, than the folk from Overbuck House.</p>
<p>The greenhouse door was unlocked and they let themselves in, looking apprehensively over their shoulders, every nerve alert and tingling, ready for the shout of rage that would follow discovery. Off to the side, they could see Billy's red shirt against the green of the raspberries. Inside the greenhouse the air was hot damp and just how Danny imagined it would feel inside a jungle in Africa. The vine was festooned with grapes, groaning and sagging with them. They seemed to glow with inner fire under the bloom on the top curves.</p>
<p>"We could take hundreds and they'd never even notice," Corky said. "But we'll need something to carry them in." He went out, beads of sweat already trickling down his temple and into the dry air outside. "Find a bag or something," he said, looking beyond the door. "Or a potato sack would be even better. We could carry more."</p>
<p>Danny thought they'd already done pretty well with the raid on the general store. They'd all shared the chocolate, giggling at the reward for mischief, none of them feeling particularly guilty at swiping a few cans from such bounty. Here was greater bounty, rich and lush; beyond their expectation. They went through the green door, following a line of nodding scarlet poppies towards the yew hedge.</p>
<p>"They must be as rich as sin," Danny said. The grey baronial columns of Overbuck house towered over the dark green of the tight clipped hedge, spiral turrets pointing to the sky.</p>
<p>"Richer than that," Corky said. "I read about them in the library. They've got millions and millions. My old man said they made their money out of making gas for the Germans to use and he says they should be strung up and bayoneted, but the book says it was guns and dynamite, and I reckon that's probably right. My old man doesn't read books unless they're about pigeons."</p>
<p>He turned, face earnest. "There was a picture of them from way back, before the first war, in the olden days. There were about a hundred people working in the house, just to look after the family, like make the beds and polish their shoes and even pour their drinks and wipe their arses."</p>
<p>He grinned. "They even had somebody to heat the bed up for them if it was old. Can you imagine that? Having as much dough?"</p>
<p>Corky raised up his hand, as if holding a glass. "More
<em>cavvy-yarr</em>, Jeeves," he said in a fake toff's accent. "And light me a cigar."</p>
<p>"You don't smoke," Danny said, returning the grin.</p>
<p>"I would if I had their fortune," Corky vowed. "Great big cigars."</p>
<p>The wealth of the place was unimaginable, beyond any of their dreams. The boys followed the track down to the stables and crept through the tack room, still buzzing with the delicious sense of danger. If the gardener caught them, they'd get a boot right up the backside, just for starters, but it was worth it. This was a fairyland, a film set. No money had ever been spared on Overbuck estate.</p>
<p>One of the dusty tack rooms was open, filled with sawhorses and horse-jumping fences. In the corner a trunk sat angled in against a horse-box. It was a wide, curve-topped wooden affair, bound with ornate metal ribs, and looked like every chest ever described in a pirate story.</p>
<p>"Treasure," Corky whispered. He pushed against the lid and to their surprise it creaked open. Corky got it up to head height and flipped it back slowly, letting it settle against the cobwebs on the wall. A shaft of light angling through the window made something glitter and for an instant Danny thought that they had indeed found treasure, but it was only the top of an old decanter, chipped on one side. It lay on a pile of old books.</p>
<p>"Some treasure," Danny said, but already Corky was turning them over in his hands.</p>
<p>"Celtic myths and legends," he said, leaning over to see the cover. "Must be about football."</p>
<p>"No," Danny said. "It's Irish stories. They're pretty good. I read some of them, remember I told you about Cuchullain the Hero. He beats superman any day."</p>
<p>Corky flipped the book open and a monstrous face, a witch from a bad nightmare glared out from an old woodcut print.</p>
<p>"The Morrigan," Corky read the caption. "The Irish goddess of destruction." He turned to the other boy. "Look at the mug on that. Looks like a really mean old bitch. Look Dan, she's a dead ringer for Sister Julia."</p>
<p>Danny suddenly burst into a fit of the giggles. The hideous face with feral eyes and the jagged, monstrous teeth looked nothing like the little nun who ran the school, but she looked just as fierce.</p>
<p>"<em>Wheesht</em> man, you'll get us both hung." Corky stuffed the book down the waistband of his jeans. On the wall, an old tattered nosebag hung from a nail and he reached to unhook it. They crept back up towards the greenhouse, keeping to the shaded side of the stables and just before they reached the green door in the wall, Danny heard somebody talking beyond the corner of the wall where the flower-garden sloped down to a shorn smooth lawn shadowed by trees. At first he almost called out, thinking it was the other three coming back. A shadow appeared, just a motion seen through a teardropped fuschia bush and a man came walking towards them, his head just turned away from them. Corky spun and pulled Danny backwards, yanking him by the collar of his tartan shirt back into a stand of flowering shrubs.
</p>
<p>The man was tall and had short blonde hair slicked back like an old movie star, though he was still young. He was dressed like a cricketer, all in white, with a pullover draped casually over his shoulders. It flapped behind him as he came striding up the path, his face sunburn-red.</p>
<p>"Fucking little whore," he spat, managing to curse in a way neither of them had heard before. It sounded like a dirty word properly spoken. He went loping down the path, feet crunching on the stone chips. "Dirty common
<em>slut</em>."</p>
<p>Corky started to rise out of the bushes but this time Danny pulled him backwards as another figure came tripping round the corner. This time it was a woman, maybe in her early twenties. Like the young man, her hair was that rich golden colour, but it fell in waves on either side of her face. She was wearing a pink shirt and a short tennis skirt. The top was open to her navel and as she moved, both boys saw one breast come swinging out. The motion flared the shirt, exposing its twin, both of them pert and firm and uptilted. She strode forcefully along the path, shoes grinding on the gravel, golden hair spilling and bouncing.</p>
<p>To Danny and Corky she was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen.</p>
<p>"Don't you
<em>dare</em> call me a whore," she called out in an accent they had only heard in English films. "At least I know which side of the fence I'm on." She stamped her foot, petulant as a little girl, and then went chasing down the path after him. Danny thought she looked like Marilyn Monroe, but even prettier. Much prettier. A waft of perfume drifted towards them, sweet as climbing roses, yet mingled with another scent that none of them recognised, because none of them had ever yet smelled the true scent of a woman.
</p>
<p>They huddled by the door, wondering whether anyone else would come through, but there was no sound on the bath beyond. They sneaked up to the door in the wall. Corky turned to check on the lawn. He stopped and pointed. Another man was standing beside a slowly swinging hammock. His back was to them and he was tucking a shirt into the waistband of his trousers. He was tall and slim and his hair was thick and grey.</p>
<p>"That was Janey Hartfield," Corky said. "What a pair of knockers. Hell's bells, she must have been
<em>doing</em> it."</p>
<p>"What, right there in a hammock?" Danny was shocked, amazed, strangely excited. He and Corky, they'd both confided in each other that there were a couple of girls who weren't too bad after all. Danny found that in recent months, Claire Brogan had developed an uncanny appeal. Corky admitted that her friend, Ann Coll, who had jet black hair and eyes to match, had the best smile ever. In hat moment, however, both the girls seemed thick and clodden compared to the slender, hot and prancing grace of Janey Hartfield.</p>
<p>"Looks like it," Corky said. "Lucky swine that he is. Look at the age of him. He looks like a colonel in a war movie" Corky nudged Danny forward through the doorway, but Danny's mind right at that moment was elsewhere. It was the first real breast he had ever seen outside of the tattered pages of Parade magazine and he was still stunned by the sight of it. It was the first time he had smelt a perfume just as rich and as heady as that, and the first inhalation of that other special scent. He did not know it, but that smell had affected him more than the perfume. Little hot shivers went juddering inside his belly and for an instant his jeans felt as if they had shrunk. Danny hadn't quite crossed over into puberty yet, but the chemistry was just beginning to happen. He felt as if a warm and soft hand had trailed up the inside of his thighs, making the skin ripple into gooseflesh.</p>
<p>"She's a goddess," he said in a whispering sigh. "A film star."</p>
<p>"No. She's a whore," Corky said. "At least that's what her brother thinks."</p>
<p>"He didn't look happy," Danny said. In his mind's eye he kept seeing that pink nub of flesh swinging out followed by the other one, defying gravity, smooth as polished marble, ruby crowned.</p>
<p>"And with all that money," Corky observed. "If it was me, I'd be laughing every day of the week." "If it was me, if I had all that and I could speak that way, I could do anything." He winked and held up the old canvas nosebag. "But I haven't, so come on, put your eyeballs back in again and let's give him something to worry about."</p>
<p>He pulled Danny's arm and hauled him along the track. Together they went in to the jungly heat of the greenhouse. When they emerged, crouched low, five minutes later, the bag was stuffed heavy with the biggest grapes any of them could remember. They reached the pear tree and clambered up to the wall, giggling all the while, Danny still unable to completely cast away the spell of the fair haired woman, but doing his best. Up and into the waxy ivy leaves, with the release of tension juddering inside them at the thought of almost getting caught and then winning through, they crawled along the wall. Finally, the giggles subsided.</p>
<p>"Where's Billy and the rest..." Danny started to ask when suddenly there was a crash of glass and a loud, hoarse shout.</p>
<p>"Come back here you thieving little cretins," the voice echoed across from beyond the wall. A split second later, Tom came streaking through the other door across the far side of the kitchen garden, the one that led to the majestic main house. Billy came next and went blundering across the cabbage patch. Doug came last, his face white, even in the distance, but in a couple of seconds, elbows pumping, loping with the grace of a startled roebuck, he had overtaken Billy who was an inch or so taller, but carried more weight. In a moment he was right on Tom's heels. The three boys came racing over the rows of lettuce, sending the leaves flying. Doug hit the wall first and came clambering up the pear tree, no hesitation now. He didn't even see the two others lying in the thick carpet of ivy. Tom followed next, gripping his way up the ladderlike branches, climbing quickly, but missing some holds in his panic. His body seemed oddly stiff. Behind him Billy was jabbering.</p>
<p>"Come on,
<em>Jeesacrist!</em> Move, will you!" The fright had screwed his voice up so tight the words were all jammed up against one another. He gave Tom a shove and the smaller boy almost went flying off the top of the wall. He grabbed for a piece of the ivy, felt it rip away, began to fall backwards, a yell blurting out. Then, quick as a snake, Corky stuck his hand out and snatched his wrist in a tight grip.
</p>
<p>"You were nearly a goner there."</p>
<p>"Stupid fat shite," Tom gabbled at Billy. Doug was halfway down the tangled ivy creeper on the far side. A big lumbering shape came crashing towards them across the garden. Danny thought he saw a gun and simply threw himself off the wall, using the thin ivy twigs to slow his descent. He hit the ground hard but kept his feet. Doug was running for the trees. Danny followed with Tom and Billy pounding after them.</p>
<p>Beyond the wall the angry man's voice followed them, but they were safe. They got to the trees and along the beaten earth path that led down to the stream and splashed over the shallows and up the other side. They didn't stop until they were up on the edge of the woods, sitting on the fallen spruce tree under which they'd hidden the tent and the bags.</p>
<p>Tom was hauling for breath. Billy's face was so red with exertion that it looked as if it might explode.</p>
<p>"Don't you ever call me that again, runt-face," he grunted.</p>
<p>"Stupid fat shite," Tom repeated, this time in a grated whisper. Billy's brows came down, visible now under the fringe of black hair. His eyes went dark.</p>
<p>"Lighten up," Corky said in that reasonable way he had. "We all got away, and look what we've got." He held up the old nosebag. Oily-black grapes seemed to be bursting out of the top, spilling out the way Danny had seen in the old paintings in the art gallery. Big as plums, swollen and somehow magical.</p>
<p>Billy's face lightened and instantly he forgot his gripe with Tom. "Not bad. But you never reached the kitchen, did you?" He turned to Tom and winked. Tom ducked his hand under his shirt and pulled out a bottle that was jammed into his waistband. Now the reason for his stiff-gaited climb was apparent. The wine glowed a deep red in the light of the noonday sun.</p>
<p>"And look at this," Billy said proudly. From under his tee-shirt he produced a rolled up parcel. He unravelled it and it turned out to be a kitchen towel. Even before the full unwrapping occurred, they could smell the juicy tang of roast chicken.</p>
<p>"It was just lying there and the window was open."</p>
<p>"<em>Jeez,</em> if they catch us they'll shoot us." Corky said.</p>
<p>"Not if we get rid of the evidence," Billy replied. "It's our lucky day."</p>
<p>"Lucky bloody <em>year!</em>"</p>
<p>It was less than two hours after they'd run away from Phil and the others at the gate on the farm road, and they had plenty of time. They hauled the tent out from where they'd hidden it and followed the stream up the hill, beyond the fork where the Ladyburn and the Langcraig tributary met, taking the left branch which would angle them north and west and up into the hills, climbing all the while. They stopped about two miles upstream at a natural clearing where the trees had petered out and the sheep had grazed the grass short. They fell on the stolen chicken and the grapes and Billy spent a lot of time with the spike on Tom's old army knife, working the wine-cork free. He finally popped it and took a deep drink, belching and gasping when he finished.</p>
<p>"Great stuff," he pronounced. "It's really hot when it gets down."</p>
<p>Tom and Doug tried it and then Danny took a swallow feeling his taste buds leap at the sudden infusion of a taste he'd never experienced before.</p>
<p>"Don't hog it all," Billy said. "Finders get first dibs." He took another swallow then passed it to Corky. "Here, take a slug."</p>
<p>Corky shook his head. Billy nudged him with the bottle.</p>
<p>"I don't want any," Corky said. "I can get any amount of wine at home." He caught Danny's eye. "It rots your brains out."</p>
<p>"Oh big tough Corky. Don't smoke, don't drink and don't swear," Billy scoffed. "Just what <em>do</em> you do?"</p>
<p>Corky ignored him. Billy pushed the bottle at him again and Corky just hit it with his hand. It went tumbling out and fell on to a stone where it caved in with a liquid crash.</p>
<p>"Flippin' hell," Billy bawled, rising to his feet. "You didn't have to break it." He reached for the bottle, but the bottom had cracked wide open and all the blood red wine simply drained into the grass. Danny watched it go with some regret. His mouth still tingled with the tantalising, rich flavour. He could have used another swallow. He had savoured riches.</p>
<p>Billy sat down again, still complaining, but everybody ignored him. Doug told how a gardener had spotted him under the net of the strawberry beds and how he'd almost got tangled in the mesh in his rush to escape. Billy and Tom had been ahead of them and one of them had put his foot through the glass of a cold frame.</p>
<p>"Could have taken my leg off," Billy said vehemently, forgetting the wine, and now checking his shin for signs of damage.</p>
<p>"Then you could have really hopped along," Doug told him.</p>
<p>"And you could save a fortune on shoes," Tom added.</p>
<p>"And gone in for the hop, skip and <em>hop</em>," Corky said, laughing now.</p>
<p>"Let's go to the hop," Danny chipped in, shoving himself up from the grass and getting onto one leg. He hopped to the edge of the stream and started to sing. "Oh baby....let's go to the hop."</p>
<p>Without any hesitation Tom and Dog followed him, both of them hopping jerkily and singing raucously until Tom lost his balance at the edge of the bank and slid down to land backside foremost in a couple of inches of shallow water at the edge of the stream. By this time they were all laughing, even Billy. Corky was lying back, holding his sides and Doug, who had eaten more grapes than he had consumed in his entire life was almost sick.</p>
<p>They were just boys out on adventure, glad to be away, glad to be out from under. The day stretched ahead of them, all the trouble and excitement behind them. They fooled around by the stream for a while, then climbed up the slope of the far side of the valley to the last fields where they hooked out a few pounds of early potatoes and some carrots, adding to their provisions. In half an hour they were beyond the line of the barwoods now and as they straggled up the natural track made by the cattle coming down to drink, a pair of dark eyes watched their progress from the shade of the tall spruce trees.</p>
<p>The eyes blinked in the glare of the sun reflecting off the water in the pool of stagnant water. The rays heliographed dazzling white light that made the eyes blink furiously against the glare, but they did not turn away from it. The light flashed sharp spears, fading out the colour of the grass and the thick ferns that crowded down the shoulder of the valley. For a second, the scene was fuzzed in monochrome, in layers of misty grey.</p>
<hr/>
<p><em>He was out of</em> this <em>time again. He was back....</em></p>
<p>The light was in his eyes, reflecting from the black space in the floating weed. An iridescent blue damselfly helicoptered in on impossibly slow wings, great black eye-spots winging seductively at the ends where they stroked at the air. The light was in his eyes and the beat of blood sounded like a mill-weir behind his ears.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly. Dung fly.</em></p>
<p>Somebody had spoken. He twisted round as far as he could but the sound hadn't come from Conboy who was slumped against the wedged open door, lying half in and half out of the truck as if and he couldn't make up his mind whether to come in or go. The flies were crawling all over Conboy's eyes and he wouldn't do a thing to make them go away. Black flies, humping and bumping, jittering into the air, in Conboy's eyes and in his mouth and in the other eye in the corner of his forehead. Conboy stank and he hadn't said anything for a while, but maybe he would talk some more later on.</p>
<p>The light was in his eyes and the pounding was in his head and he soared with it.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly. Dung fly.</em></p>
<p>Somebody had called it out. The darkness came and the light went out and he slept for a while and then he remembered the pain. The truck had rolled and bounced and he'd been thrown and now he was stuck under the fallen tree, unable to free himself and the flies had gathered on Conboy and they were crawling on the deep wound that scored down his own thigh on the leg that was trapped in the mud.</p>
<p>Up there in the track, he heard people moving about, and the chants in that strange high and bell-toned language where every word was a shout of anger or a cry of pain.</p>
<p>"All of them," the Sergeant-Major had said. "They're all gun runners and terrorists. Just keep them on the move and that makes sure the Reds got fuck-all to live on. And don't worry, they don't feel the same as you and me. They don't think the same. Don't feel pain and they don't cry tears."</p>
<p>He knew that. They were pagan people. Little barbarians. They had no belief.</p>
<p>Up on the track, people were moving beyond the lush foliage and he shrank back, unwilling to call out yet scared of the next rain and the water level of the pool rising up to his chin or higher still. How long he'd been here he could not say. Two days, maybe three. No longer than a week. The pain in his leg came and went and the buzzing in his head ebbed and flowed and Conboy sometimes looked at him with the flies in his eyes and when night came he could hear his blaspheming voice accusing him.</p>
<p>"Mad bastard. Mad bloody bastard." Conboy's voice grated. The way it had done when he had pulled him back by the arm, reaching to grab the still hot barrel of the rifle.</p>
<p>"Jesus fucking Christ you crazy shit." Conboy had been angry and scared then when he'd come round the side of the hut. Everybody had panicked when the shooting started and a couple of grenades had gone off with sudden concussions punching into the air, converting two of the little huts to fountains of tumbling chaff. Blood was splattered over one wall, a whole line of it. A flop of bodies lay in the corner, beside an overturned basket of grain or rice.</p>
<p>"No comfort," a voice said, deep inside him. "Give them no aid and no comfort."</p>
<p>"Holy mother," somebody had whooped. "Gideon's flipped his fuckin lid."</p>
<p>Gideon they called him. Well they might, for Gideon was a warrior for the lord.</p>
<p>Now Conboy was lying there with his third, ragged eyehole and accusations in his voice.</p>
<p>"You shouldn't have done it, man. Shouldn't have touched the kid."</p>
<p>Pain pulsed up from his leg and he prayed for it to stop and for Conboy to go away and leave him alone and he prayed for mercy the way the priests had shown him. But there was no God to hear him and succour him out here in the heat and the steam. They were down in the valley now.
<em>The valley of the shadow.</em></p>
<p>
<em>Dung fly.</em> That's what it sounded like. Over and over, hollow little clucks that sounded like no true language. He heard it again and something touched his cheek. Very slowly he forced his eye to open. The left one was thick and glued and he could feel a fly crawling over it.
</p>
<p>He squirmed awake, fighting off the dreadful tiredness. Two children were standing on the far end of the fallen tree. The girl a head smaller than the boy, both of them tiny and very thin, with long black hair and patina skins. The boy plucked another small berry from an overhanging bush and threw it towards him. It bounced against his forehead.</p>
<p>"Dung fly," the girl said. She pushed at the boy.</p>
<p>He turned, ignoring the pulses of pain and the ripples in the water.</p>
<p>"Do it, Gideon," Conboy said drily. "Get them quick."</p>
<p>The boy's eyes widened and the girl's face puckered as if she would cry. She pulled at his hand, tugging him away. Conboy's flies spun into the air and the boy started back. He jabbered again, a tumble of hard consonants and nasal dipthongs. They turned quickly and went scampering off the trunk, disappearing immediately into the sea of green with hardly a rustle, but he could hear the girl's high-pitched voice for a while until it too faded.</p>
<p>The blackness came back.</p>
<p>"They're all head-hunters," Conboy had said. "They've been at it for millions of years." The flies buzzed around him and his sockets opened wide. "They take the head and eat the brains and that way they got your soul forever. That's what they think. Crazy little shits. You can't tell what they're thinking, but you know what's in their heads. They put people on spikes and watch them die."</p>
<p>The humming sensation was back again, a shuddery little vibration that sometimes lifted him out of the pain and up into cool height where his thoughts were clear and powerful. And he knew that God had abandoned him out here, turned his back on him, but he also knew that now he did not need any other. He had the power of life and death. His given right.</p>
<p>The bamboo crackled and he forced his eye open again. The boy was back and this time there were two men. A third joined them and then a fourth.</p>
<p>"Dung fly," the boy said. That's what it sounded like. He pointed. The men stood together. They wore long skirts made of some rough cloth and they all had the parang blades for cutting bamboo. They regarded him solemnly and in silence. Finally one turned to the rest and made a short speech.</p>
<p>Out of sight, he lifted the butt of the gun and drew it towards him. The pain was high and glassy and he swooped along it.</p>
<p>They all turned round again. They looked like any of the villagers he'd seen in the past six months and each of them looked the same as the rest. Their villages went up in flames and their rice-stores scattered and burned. They were herded into the trucks and taken forty miles up the track to start again, and that made sure they were in no position to help the hordes of Godless commies trying to beat the forces of the good Lord.</p>
<p>One of the men lifted his parang and spoke. Another raised his blade. He watched them coming, through the half closed eyelid. They edged across the log, walking warily, feeling for purchase with their bare feet. The darkness closed in again and the rush of blood pounded behind his ears. The black flicked out and he was up in the cold again and he saw them moving towards him with chopping blades and there was no chance a slant-eyed little heathen was going to take his head.</p>
<p>"Shoot them," Conboy insisted from his vantage point. "I can see them coming. They're coming for you. You should finish what you started,
<em>Gideon</em>."</p>
<p>The men stopped, eyeing him warily. He squirmed a hand forward, drawing the gun towards him, skating on the smooth ice pain.</p>
<p>The men scattered. One second they were creeping towards him and then they were off and his gun was bucking again and they were screaming in terror and crashing through the green. The smell of cordite mixed with the smell of broken leaves and wet sap and the scent of blood.</p>
<p>"That showed them," Conboy said. "Kill them all and they can't touch us." The flies crawled out with the words, crawled back in again. Conboy's silent yell went on and on. His other eye bristled with life. Up the slope a line of people were moving fast, following a track and he could hear their yelling and he knew they'd come back again.</p>
<p>"We'll be waiting," Conboy said in his buzzing, hazy voice and the darkness began to crowd in again in billows of shadow.</p>
<p>The next time he saw the light he was in a hospital bed with a drip snaking into his arm and a pipe coming out of his leg where the flies had been eating at him and after a while the Major wanted to know who had put the bullet through Conboy's temple. And he couldn't remember anything except the voices and the look in Conboy's eyes as he lay back, talking to him while the flies buzzed.</p>
<p>The sun spangled on the water and the Major's face wavered away and the world gave a little
<em>shudder</em> and he was back on the hillside watching the line of boys moving slowly, following a track up the slope and he could hear them yelling at each other. The sun was high and it was hot and the buzzing of flies came drowsily down from the trees and he could feel the beat behind his ears again, the surge of hot blood, and the feeling started pushing its way back into him.
</p>
<p>It was hot under his shirt and a trickle of sweat rolled down from his armpit, a cold little line tracing its way across his ribs, and he blinked his eyes hard, once, twice, against the glare and for a moment their cries sounded like...</p>
<p><em>He was going up now, into that cold place where he remembered</em></p>
<p>They sounded like....</p>
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<h1>10</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 1.30 pm.</em></p>
<p>They sounded like.....</p>
<p>He watched from up on the hill, listening to them calling to
each other. He blinked his eyes hard, once, twice, against the
glare and for a moment their cries sounded like...</p>
<p><em>He was going up now, into that cold place where he
remembered</em></p>
<p>....."I have to go home mister." The girl had said, clear and
high.</p>
<p>She stopped her bike. Here at the edge of this waste ground
where the pools of run-off drainage water lay black and deep in
places, overhung by fronds of willow and the umbrella leaves of
giant hogweed that looked just like jungle rhubarb in the steamy
gulleys.</p>
<p>"Not far," he'd said, blinking against the sunlight on the slick
surface. "You'll like it."</p>
<p>"I don't see a rabbit," she'd said, looking up at him in
quizzical innocence. There was the slightest hesitation in her
eyes, the merest flicker of doubt. But they were beyond the low
bridge now. Here the pathway was narrow and it forked three ways
and he knew this place from a long time ago.</p>
<p>"Just down here," he told her. "You'll like it." He blinked
furiously. Under his tongue, the familiar surge of saliva squirted
juicily. "What's you name?"</p>
<p>"Lucy."</p>
<p>Lucy. Lucinda. <em>The light</em>. He remembered that from the
priests.</p>
<p>And the light was in his eyes.</p>
<p>He stood back to allow her past and she pedalled forward,
concentrating on avoiding a piece of broken bottle. He let her get
a yard ahead then stooped. Quick as a snake. His hand clamped
around her mouth and in a smooth motion he lifted her upwards. His
right hand shot out and grabbed the seat of the bike. She squirmed,
but he was too strong. He turned and slung the bike high over the
stand of hogweed. It spun in the air, red and silver, flickering in
the sunlight, to land with a splash.</p>
<p>She kicked her heels and he felt her fear sizzling through her,
letting it arc into his own body.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly.</em> The sound came back to him and fell out of
his mouth. He repeated it again and again, just under his breath as
he made his way quickly along the path. No-one came. He crossed the
water, wading knee deep through the reeds and iris stalks and then
he was past them, reaching the heavy cover of the far side. He
travelled some distance, stopping only once to settle her up in his
arms to make the carrying easier and in his head the thrilling
vibration was as pure as the hum of a mosquito.</p>
<p>She shuddered, shaking her head from side to side and the air
snuffled through her nose. He glanced down, and saw her eyes roll
madly and the fear was wide and clear in them. After a while he got
through the scrub and reached the bridge. In an instant he was
under the span. The door swung open with hardly a squeal. He
turned, pulled the girl behind him. Her foot hit the ground and a
little red sandal flipped off. He hooked it back towards him with
his foot, leaving a heavy cleat-mark on the damp clay.</p>
<p>He pushed the door shut. The girl hiccuped, sending a delicious
shiver through him. He waited until it passed and then he turned
and sat down on the wide metal pipe that carried water down from
the reservoir. He loosened his hand from her mouth, confident now..
She did not cry. A small groan escaped her but her whole attention
was focused on getting air into her lungs. He let her have one or
two breaths, great whooping scoops of air and then he closed her up
again.</p>
<p>"Blow," he said, and all she heard was the deep rumble of his
voice in the dark. "Blow <em>hard.</em>"</p>
<p>She blew hard, clearing both nostrils. When he was satisfied she
could breathe easily, even though the lungs were bellowing fast as
a rabbits, he reached down and found her foot, tugged hard at the
sock until it came off, balled it in his hand and then used his
thumb to force it between her teeth. She shook head with violent
desperation and a spasm rippled through her, but he persisted until
she made no sound. He could feel the shiver and knew she was beyond
crying out for the moment. He knew the fear was running around
inside her. It would chase her down in to the valley of the shadow
and she'd come through the other side, up in the cool, place where
there was no pain, the place that he himself could reach.</p>
<p>She knew. The certainty of it came off her in waves, like
electricity. There was no escape. She would die here.</p>
<p><em>Whatever thou doest to these, the least of my children, you
do also to me</em></p>
<p>In the dark, he nodded and he smiled a sly smile. <em>My Lord,
why hast thou forsaken me...?</em> His desolation was past now. He
was.</p>
<p><em>I am who am!</em></p>
<p>He reached for the mtches and lit the little lamp by sense of
touch. It flared, sent up a sputter of smoke and then began to
glow. He turned to look at her, a small form, pale and shaking
uncontrollably, a frightened bird caught in a trap. Her eyes were
wide and fixed on him and in them he saw the knowledge.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly..</em> the eyes of a child far away, begging
him.</p>
<p>The lamp guttered and Conboy's flies buzzed in the shadows and
the voice of the priest had come back to him.</p>
<p>"Holy orders. A gift from God. To make sacrifice to him."</p>
<p>But there was no god here.</p>
<p>After a while he crossed to her.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p><strong>"</strong>We knew, or at least we were fairly sure at
that time, that it had to be somebody who knew the area," Angus
McNicol said. "That was what we thought at first and we pulled in
the usual suspects, shirtlifters, flashers, the whole gamut. The
Hopkirk boy, he could have been just a one off, and that's what we
thought, until we found the girl. We'd spent six years teaching men
how to kill and were bad people then, just like there are bad folk
now. Look at your Nilson's and that nutcase down in Hungerford and
god save us, those babies in Dunblane. And nutters like the
Jonestown mob who think they're doing it all for the glory of
god."</p>
<p>Angus leaned back against the thick upholstery of his easy chair
and ran his fingers through a thick head of white hair.</p>
<p>"After we found Lucy Saunders we realised he knew that access
duct to the chamber under the bridge. "But how local is
<em>local</em>? "I mean it could have been somebody who had been in
the town before and moved away. I thought it had to have been some
fellow who played around the Rough Drain and up the stream as a boy
and knew the paths. But you have to remember <em>when</em> it
was.</p>
<p>"What I man is that there were no credit cards or the like.
"There was more work then, at least more than there is today and
people came to work the bottling lines for the summer and then were
off again. There were potato-pickers and dry-stone wallers, and
teams of folk who'd come in to help with the fencing for the
forestry commission, or digging the drainage ditches up on the
Langcraig moors for the plantations. A lot of movement in those
days, when you were doing the twist and growing your hair long.
Don't think I forget giving you a toe up the arse for breaking that
street light over at Station Street." He grinned again and the eyes
twinkled.</p>
<p>"The only thing we had was that people noticed more. If it was
somebody who lived in the town, he'd have been recognised and a
stranger would be noticed. That's why that poor Indian fellow got
such a beating up by Arden Road. Our man man was cunning enough,
though he took risks and let himself be seen a couple of times.
That made him arrogant and maybe not in control of himself.</p>
<p>"He was a big fellow. Bigger than me probably, going by the
weight he put on his toe-tector boots. And he took a size twelve,
which is about normal for a big man. He had dark hair and he
blinked all the time as if he had something in his eye and that's
how the name got around. We had his fingerprints, mostly from the
old surgery where they found the Hopkirk lad and they didn't match
with anything on CRO file. We could have done with some of this
computer technology then. Press a few buttons and you've got it.
Then It was all done with files and teleprinters.</p>
<p>"We had casts made of his boot-prints and we had pictures of his
bite-marks that showed he'd a bottom tooth mising. Fabric from his
jacket, hairs from his head and his crotch and we had bugger-all
really because <em>Twitchy Eyes,</em> he was a nobody. He just came
and he went.</p>
<p>"Oh, we knew he had religion, <em>Christian</em> religion, from
the pages of the bibles he left. You know this place. We've been
murdering each other for years in the name of God Almighty and
there's nothing to chose between them all. This man left the word
of God covered with shite and flies, and he was killing as
well.</p>
<p>"When I think of what he did to that wee girl under the bridge,
I tell you, I still wake up some nights and my hands are clenched
so tight the nails are digging half-moons into my palms. If I had
got that bastard, pardon my language, if I'd got him when I was on
my own, I'd have torn his arms off, I kid you not."</p>
<p>Angus McNicol drained his glass, but he did not smack his lips
as before. He put it down slowly.</p>
<p>"I would have done to him what he did to those people. I'd have
done to him what he did to that poor wee soul under the bridge, and
I'd have made it last. And then I'd have buried him."</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Interruption:</em></p>
<p>Angus McNicol's face had twisted with anger when he described in
detail what had happened to little Lucy Saunders in the mud under
the bridge, and I believe then that he would have done what he
said. He'd have killed the killer. The memory for him was as clear
as day, as defined and sharp as if it had happened only yesterday.
Some memories are like that.</p>
<p>Here I have to intrude. <em>Author intrusion</em>. My editor
will scream blue murder and I'll have to explain that sometimes
when you tell a story, you have to find your own way through it and
round it, and that's just the ones you make up and knit together
from the ideas in your head. Maybe one or two of you have read my
other books under my pen name, and you'll know I butt in now and
again, but hardly ever. But that's in the stories I made up, or at
least the ones which I dragged out of my nightmares to make into
horror stories and chillers to help me get rid of the dreams.</p>
<p>Now I know the dreams will never go away because this is where
they all live.</p>
<p>Back then. Back in the memory, hunched in the shadows under the
bridge like the troll waiting to eat the billy goats, under the
bridge like the man with the twitchy eyes. Under the bridge with
the smell of rot and the buzzing of the flies.</p>
<p>When I spoke to Angus McNicol I let him have only half of the
truth. I told him I was researching for a book, but I had no
intention of writing one then, not a true <em>story.</em> I was
asking for <em>myself</em>, in the hope that I could find some
meaning for all of that, for the monkey that's been hunched on my
shoulder, pressing down with the weight of the years. I thought I
could find a cure, a magic bullet, that would kill the thing off
and rid me of the dreams.</p>
<p>Dreams don't give up easily, and memories don't give up at
all.</p>
<p>In the end, I had to admit that part of it was just a need to
bring the memories right out into the open and face them in the
light of day instead of running away from them. I honestly don't
know if it's done me one bit of good.</p>
<p>But writing it down lets me spread it around a little, maybe in
the hope that a nightmare shared is a nightmare halved and I know
that might sound a little bit flippant. I am just not sure any
more.</p>
<p>Anyway, a little more patience and I'll be out to leave you on
your own if you want to read further. I've tried to put the
thoughts into people's heads, to express them the way they were
thought. Not an easy job, but further along there will be
occurrences that explain enough, that gave me hints as to what
thought processes - some of them murky and dreadful - were going
on.</p>
<p>Also, for many years before I sat down to write my first book,
and for some years after that, I worked as a newspaperman, checking
out facts, digging in under the surface of things, and I'm still
proud of the little card tucked in my wallet that tells me I'm a
journalist, a reporter of fact, a life member of a tarnished, but
still honourable breed, no matter how governments wriggle and
twist. Some of the stuff I got from Angus McNicol and some of it I
dredged up my memory and a few other facts I got from digging
around in some old dusty places. Maybe I've taken a bit of licence
here and there, but I don't believe I've gone over the bounds. I
want to impart some of the <em>taste</em>, the bitter apples and
hard pears and exotic black grapes.</p>
<p>But remember also that the five of us boys knew reach other, had
known each other and you know what it's like being a kid of
thirteen or so, just getting ready for your hormones to kick in,
getting set for big strides into that big world up ahead. You can't
keep a secret and you try to keep a promise and most of the time a
thought's in your head no longer than the time it takes to speak it
out, spit it out. Mostly we knew, just at a glance, what each other
was thinking.</p>
<p>Five of us.</p>
<p>There was Corky with his drunk of a father banged up in Drumbain
Jail and not for the last time either. There was Danny and his
father who had given up a good paying job in the shipyards to start
at university and spent all of his time either studying or praying
and threatening everlasting punishment from an angry god. There was
Doug whose father was already in Toronto, run out of town by his
wife's shame and the need to take his family out from under the
cloud. There was Billy and his strange failure to accept his
inheritance, nurturing his belief in a father who did not exist, or
who lived and battled only in Billy's imagination. There was Tom
Tannahill who had watched little sister slowly die of leukaemia in
the front room of their house while his mother was out at the shops
and who walked with the knowledge of death shadowing his steps.</p>
<p>Five of us.</p>
<p>And yet despite the storm clouds of those strange and crazy
times, we were trying to grow our hair long and get away from those
slick-quiffed old fogies who jived to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. We
wanted to be different from teddy-boys like Phil Corcoran and Pony
McGill with his cratered face. We wanted to be like Donovan, trying
to catch the wind and we had a ticket to ride. Gil Favor and Rowdy
Yates were our heroes on Rawhide. Old William Hartnell was Doctor
Who, going through time in a police box and that was the
mind-blowing marvel that made adventurers of as all. Woolworth's
still had wooden panels on the counters and sold bags of broken
biscuits for a penny. And a policeman could still kick your arse
and send you on your way to sin no more.</p>
<p>It was a year when everything was exploding and we had no
control over it and we knew that Mick Jagger was telling the truth
when he strutted up and told us <em>this could be the last
time.</em></p>
<p>Because it <em>was</em> the last time, and even then, in the
warm summer sunshine, struggling up the hill with a bellyful of
grapes and chicken, lugging the packed tent and (unsuspected by us)
a strange man's eyes drilling into the back of our necks, we knew
this <em>would</em> be the last time.</p>
<p>The world was changing and plans were in the air. In a couple of
months, in less than a year, most us would be scattered to the
winds. Jobs were hard to find even then, and besides that, other
things had happened that set in motion the irrevocable machinery
beyond our control.</p>
<p>There was the knowledge of the past season, from spring through
to summer, still fresh in our minds, the realisation forced upon us
that sudden death could come out of the blue, in the cold light of
day, whether by accident, or creeping sickness, or looming shadow
under the trees on the Rough Drain. There was the prescience of the
year to come that would change things forever.</p>
<p>Maybe it was to save something of it all, keep the essence of us
intact that we went up the hill searching for the decoy target,
looking for the Dummy Village. It was our last chance to find that
Eldorado before it was gone forever.</p>
<p>Maybe even then, we were trying to find ourselves before it all
slipped away from us and got lost.</p>
<p>And maybe that's what I set off to do when I began all of this.
Who really knows? I don't.</p>
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<h1>11</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 2.30pm</em></p>
<p>A sound of thunder cracked way over at Drumbeck Hill and the
noise of the explosion at the quarry face came rolling over the
fields and up the valley. Doug stopped on the brow of the hill
where the drystone wall angled back towards the barwoods.</p>
<p>"Houston, we have lift off," he bawled in a dreadful American
accent.</p>
<p>"Bombs away," Billy hooted and the rolling grumble in the air
passed them by in a shockwave they could actually feel. Doug
clambered up on top of the wall and helped Danny heft the tent
over.</p>
<p>"Look there," Doug said, pointing south and east towards where
the tall spruce trees crowded on the other side of the valley,
marking the edge of the Overbuck estates. He shaded his eyes and
the others followed the direction of his outstretched finger. "I
saw something."</p>
<p>"Yeah. The wild larch tree," Corky said. "Very rare. That's the
last million larch trees in the whole world."</p>
<p>"No, you daft <em>baskit</em>. I saw somebody. Over there at the
edge."</p>
<p>The boys all made visors of their hands and peered under the
shadow towards the edge of the plantation. The high trees
straggling close to the edge were all in silhouette against the
heat haze of the summer. Nothing moved.</p>
<p>"I saw somebody watching us," Doug insisted.</p>
<p>"It was the cow again," Billy said. "It's supercow oh-oh-seven.
Trained to search and destroy. Fitted with exploding tits. It won't
give up until it's molocated us all." Everybody laughed, even Doug.
Nothing moved in the plantation. They all climbed the wall and
lugged the tent along the bare path worn by the sheep as they moved
up onto the moor. The peaty ground was dotted with thick clumps of
gorse, wickedly spiked but in the warm updraughts and eddies,
wafting an exquisite scent of coconut and delicate oils into the
air. They ambled slowly up the track towards where the line of
electricity pylons marched west, trailing black cables under the
sky. The quarry blast rumbled again.</p>
<p>"That's what it was like all the time during the war," Billy
said. "Must have been great."</p>
<p>"Must have been murder," Corky said. "You'd go to bed and never
know if you'd wake up again." He swung his stick and lopped the
head off a thistle, watching it go tumbling through the air.</p>
<p>"Wonder if there's any more bodies in the river," Doug said.
"They'll all come floating up."</p>
<p>"Jeez Dougs, give it a break," Tom snapped.</p>
<p>"I was just thinking about Paulie. Just when I heard the quarry
blast."</p>
<p>"He was covered in all sorts of crap," Billy said. "The current
took him almost across to the other side of the river and he must
have been stuck under the ribs of one of the sunk boats down in the
mud. Al Crombie said he was all grey and stuck like this." Billy
hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands out, mimicking a twisted
corpse. "But the crabs and fish had got his fingers and the toes on
one of his feet where his boot had come off. Chewed them all away.
His lovin' mother wouldn't have recognised him."</p>
<p>"Jeez Billy, give it a rest." Tom pleaded again. Billy ignored
him.</p>
<p>"And they think Mole Hopkirk got his the same day. That's when
he went missing."</p>
<p>"Everybody knows that," Doug said. They were ambling along, in a
ragged line, weaving between the jagged thorns of the gorse,
listening to the drying seed-pods crackle and pop open in the heat
of the sun. "That was really creepy. Like old <em>Twitchy</em>
fixed it so nobody was looking."</p>
<p>"No. Mole was off his head anyway. Remember we saw him down at
Rope Vennel?" Tom asked Billy. "When he was cadging smokes? He was
always swinging those keys, trying to swipe them down people's
faces. He could have put somebody's eye out with them."</p>
<p>"And then somebody put his eye out. What a horrible way to go."
Billy turned to Doug who was just behind him. "You said with any
luck he'd fallen in the river. You wished it on him."</p>
<p>"No I didn't," Doug protested. "And anyway, you said you wished
he'd taken on somebody bigger than himself, and that's what
happened, so <em>you</em> wished it on him too."</p>
<p>"Listen to yourselves," Corky said. He was ahead of them on the
pathway, just behind Danny, both of them lacquered with sweat and
panting. Corky had taken off his frayed shirt and tied the arms
around his waist, leaving a tail hanging like an apron. The marks
of cleg-fly bites stood out on his shoulders. "You two would start
a fight in an empty house."</p>
<p>"But he said..." Billy started.</p>
<p>"So what? He's a goner isn't he? He was dead before any of us
knew about it, and he was as crazy as a cat with a poker up its
arse and all. It wasn't our fault he met up with some loony. He
shouldn't have been breaking in to houses anyway."</p>
<p>"Like we broke into Overbuck's kitchen," Billy asked
mischievously.</p>
<p>"That's different," Corky said. "They're as rich as sin. And
there was no crazy about to grab us."</p>
<p>"That gardener looked pretty crazy to me. If he'd have caught us
we'd have been in real stook. I nearly crapped my pants."</p>
<p>"I thought you had, from the smell of it," Corky said and
everybody laughed again.</p>
<p>They got to the brow of the hill and dropped the tent. Doug had
taken off his faded tee-shirt, revealing a tattered string vest
which more holes in it now that when it was new. Billy said it
looked like a lot of spaces joined together and Doug admitted
without rancour that most of the holes weren't joined at all.</p>
<p>"I want to get a tan," he said. "All criss-crossed."</p>
<p>"You'll look like a chain-link fence," somebody said and they
laughed some more. They were all in a circle, Corky standing
astride the green bulk of the tent, rapping his knuckles on the
polished-wood of the support poles jutting from the roll. Billy was
leaning against the creosoted trunk of an electricity pole which
bore three parallel cables down the side of the hill and across the
valley. He lit a cigarette and offered them around. Tom took one
and Billy lit for both, before flipping the match to the side.
Immediately a clump of grass started to shrivel and crackle as a
flame, made invisible by the bright sunlight, caught the tinder-dry
brush. Billy casually stamped his foot and put it out. He lifted
the long ash stave he'd cut in the valley and started peeling the
bark back in strips. Danny got his slingshot from his pack and shot
some small stones at the glass insulating plates high overhead,
missing with every shot. He was better at throwing. Doug switched
on the radio, made it whinge and whine as he spun the little dial
searching for a station. For a brief moment, the Righteous Brothers
cranked up to losing that lovin' feeling then they were gone, gone,
gone in a crackle of static.</p>
<p>"You're too near the power lines," Corky said. Doug looked up,
switching the little radio off.</p>
<p>"There's a nest up there," he said. They looked up and saw the
little tangle of grass and moss out on the arm where the black
cables snaked in their loop from one set of insulators to the
other. He got up and reached towards the overhead spar joining the
two poles. Beyond them barbed wire set round the uprights offered
resistance to temptation, and as an added deterrent, a tin plate
bearing a lightning-bolt motif blared in red letters: <em>Warning:
130,000 volts</em>. <em>Danger of Death.</em> Overhead, even though
the air was dry, they could hear the low, somehow animal, growling
vibration of power.</p>
<p>"Not worth it," Danny said. "You go near those wires and they'll
burn you to a crisp." He was sitting furthest away from the pole
and the trickling buzz of the voltage made him nervous. "And you
can't let go either. It makes you hold on tight and burns you up
until there's nothing left."</p>
<p>Doug moved back from the strut and ran a hand through his
straight fair hair.</p>
<p>"That can't be true," Billy said. "Look. There's a crow up on
the wire. It's just sitting there no bother at all and it's not
getting zapped."</p>
<p>"That's because it isn't earthed," Corky said. "Don't you ever
listen in science?"</p>
<p>"I don't believe it," Billy retorted. He jammed the cigarette in
the corner of his mouth and hauled himself up, using his stave as a
climbing pole. His weight drove the point deep into the earth and
he had to pull hard to get it out again. He hefted the straight
stick, holding it like a spear as he walked backwards up the hill.
They all watched him.</p>
<p>"What's he up to?" Tom asked.</p>
<p>"Damned if I know," Doug said mildly. Billy got about thirty
yards, right on to the shoulder of the slope. Behind him, two
lapwings flopped into the still air, beating jerkily while they
bleated their distress at the intrusion into their territory and
the danger to their nest.</p>
<p>Billy stopped, looked up and then came running back the way he
had come. He took ten steps and swung his arm back.</p>
<p>"Geronimo!" The stave soared like a javelin, heavy-end foremost,
curving through the air. It arrowed above the wires, seen from
where the rest of the boys were sitting and for a moment they
assumed it would fly straight over, to land in the gorse beyond. It
landed right on top of the wires, fifty feet from the pylon. It
made a pinging sound as it slapped across all three of the thick
cables.</p>
<p>A red flame flashed across its length.</p>
<p>There was absolutely no warning, no hesitation. It simply flared
with a sound of ripping canvas.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell," Tom mouthed.</p>
<p>"Yee-hah," Billy crowed triumphantly. The others watched in
amazement. The flames crackled across the ash stave, making it
jitter on the wires, twisting like a snake. An explosion of blue
sparks erupted where it lost contact with the centre-cable and a
sound like a road-drill came rattling down.</p>
<p>The five of them stood simply mesmerised.</p>
<p>"Look at it <em>burn,</em>" Billy yelled. He was jumping up and
down, his tee-shirt flopping, waving both hands in the air. A sheet
of flame flew off the burning branch, coiled into a sphere and
rolled upwards, roaring like an angry beast. Even from where the
four nearest boys stood, open mouthed, they could feel the heat.
Another shower of sparks fountained outwards, sparkling like
sapphires. The drill noise came rapping across, shuddering through
the wires. Then the stave just exploded.</p>
<p>It was a real blast, not merely a disintegration. The white
peeled sapling had turned to black in the space of mere seconds.
The flames were reaching up towards a blue sky and then a crack
like a shotgun blast punched the air. The stick was there and then
it was gone. Burning cinders catapulted into the air, trailing
smoke in grey streamers. A piece of charred wood came whirling
past, making a whoop-whoop sound as itspun, and hit Billy on the
cheek making him yell, though none of the others heard him. They
were running to get out from under the falling debris. Doug and
Corky reached the tent first and heaved it up. Danny and Tom
grabbed the rucksacks and Billy's army bag.</p>
<p>The crack of the explosion faded away, though it still crackled
in their ears.</p>
<p>"Did you see that?" Billy bawled, racing down towards them.</p>
<p>"You're a crazy <em>baskit</em>," Doug asserted.</p>
<p>Just then, the first crackle of flames became audible. Doug
stopped, almost pulling Corky off his feet. "Listen," he said
holding himself still, head cocked.</p>
<p>"Nearly put my eye out," Billy was saying, still rubbing his
cheek where the piece of charred wood had left a sooty smear.</p>
<p>"Wheesht," Corky hushed him to silence. For a moment, they were
still. Billy was standing with his mouth open and his brows drawn
down angrily, about to argue with Doug. Corky had his hand up,
telling everyone to hush.</p>
<p>The crackle of fire came from beyond the pylon. They all turned.
A gorse bush burst into flame. It was as if burning petrol had been
thrown over it and it just blossomed fire. It growled madly like
the flame-throwers of war movies. One second it was thick and green
and festooned with golden blossom; the next it was shrivelling
under a ten-foot flame. The heat came rolling on the dry air,
slapping them like a hot hand. Behind them, another bush roared
into flame, like a fiery lion rising from a thicket.</p>
<p>"Christ man," Corky bawled. "The whole place is going..."</p>
<p>Ten feet away, a second bush erupted. The fine hairs on Danny's
arms twisted and shrivelled in the sudden flare of heat. To the
right, two smaller bushes crackled into life.</p>
<p>"....out of here," Doug was yelling, the first words lost in the
roar of the flames, but the meaning perfectly clear. He and Corky
ran between two reaching hedges, bent with the heavy weight of the
tent. Danny followed. Tom and Billy were somewhere behind them.</p>
<p>"Yee-hah," Billy hooted again. "Bombs away." Beyond them, a
towering forest of flame reached for the sky, a great red animal
clawing at the sky. The air all around them danced as if it had
been turned liquid in the scorch. It tasted of pollen and charcoal
and instantly seared their throats dry.</p>
<p>Something flew round the corner of one flowering hedge and
missed Corky by a hair's breadth in a flurry of whirring wings. The
panicked woodcock jinked and headed for the stand of pines further
down the slope of the hill. Overhead, two skylarks warbled their
distress while somewhere in the bushes their almost fully fledged
nestlings huddled in fear, their instinctive compulsion to freeze
now acting against them as the flames licked around them.</p>
<p>A pillar of fire exploded into life to Doug's left and he jinked
right, holding a hand up to protect his face. Corky followed,
dragged by the tent, stumbling as he went. A gust of wind, sucked
in by the powerful updraught, dragged with it a wall of grey smoke.
Danny stumbled into it, felt the incredible blast of heat and
backed away. Corky and Doug kept on moving. They got twenty yards
and came scooting out of the gorse bushes and onto the flat of the
sphagnum damplands.</p>
<p>Danny reeled away to the right, smoke in his eyes and searing
down his throat. Somewhere close by, Tom yelled something and Danny
stumbled backwards, knuckling under his brows to clear the dust and
smoke-induced tears. By this time, the heat was unbelievable. A
roaring noise thundered close by and he shied away from it, falling
over one small bush which stabbed him in what felt like a thousand
places. A gorse spine went right up under his nail and a needle of
pain drilled into his finger. Danny rolled and found himself in a
small clearing. A chance eddy of wind sucked the smoke away. Ahead
of him, up the slope, he could see a line of flames, twenty feet
high. Behind him, hardly fifteen yards away, a stand of scrub hazel
was well alight. He turned, panic beginning to bubble up. A minute
before, Danny could have outrun anything except Doug who could run
like a greyhound. Danny was fast and agile and he'd been able to
show Phil Corcoran an easy clean pair of heels. But this fire, it
<em>moved</em>. It ran like a red tiger, chasing and hounding. It
had leapt in front of him to bar his way, catching him no matter
how fast he could run, no matter how he jinked and dived.</p>
<p>"Danny," Tom's voice came wavering from somewhere to the right.
"Help me!" Danny whirled, truing to gulp down the rising terror. He
spun again and stopped. Right in front of him, a roe-deer fawn
stood shivering, a tiny, spindly thing, no bigger than a mountain
hare, balanced on four stick legs. Its eyes were huge and black.
The deer and Danny looked at each other. The animal was shivering
so violently it looked as if it might have been connected to the
voltage in the black cables overhead. Then it turned. Danny
couldn't tell how it had done it. There was no visible movement at
all. It stared at him and then its back was toward him and it
flicked, as if my magic , between two bushes. To his left another
wall of flame burst into life. To his right, Tom squealed, high and
clear and there was real fear in the sound. Danny blundered through
the small gap, brushing past the spines which dug through his jeans
and drove into his knees. His lungs were hurting and the skin on
the back of his neck felt as if it was turning crisp and a dread
horror came rippling through him.</p>
<p>He was stuck here. He was trapped in the fire.</p>
<p><em>The Bad Fire</em></p>
<p>Sister Julia's face came wavering on the heat-tortured air.
<em>The Good Lord can look down on you at any time and decide to
take you</em></p>
<p>Like he had taken Paul Degman.</p>
<p><em>You must always try to be in a state of grace.</em></p>
<p>The fire was all around and the heat was searing his throat and
he was stuck in it. Real fear almost froze him to stone.</p>
<p>"Danny. Jesus Danny I'm stuck," Tom's cry came from just beyond
the next bush. It punched him through the membrane of
paralysis.</p>
<p>He fell over the hedge, almost blown over by the force of the
heat. Tom was snagged on a hazel branch. He'd been crawling under a
natural canopy and a dead branch had fingered down the neck of his
shirt and out the tail. Under any other circumstances, it would
have looked completely ludicrous. Tom's feet were scrabbling and
slipping on dried mud.</p>
<p>"Oh God don't let it get me," he babbled. In a flash of reality,
he saw the very real possibility that he could die. Panic soared.
The awesome finality of death had been with him since long before
Paulie Degman had fallen into the river, since little Maureen had
slipped away while his mother had been out at the corner shop
getting chicken soup. She'd gone and they'd taken her away and put
her in the ground, little Mo, his baby sister, and they'd all had
to pray while his parents stood frozen by a deadly graveside, too
poor to put up a headstone. Tom had held on to his other kid sister
Marie, held on so tight his fingers bruised her shoulder and as he
looked down at that hole in the ground, in the old graveyard behind
St Rowan's Church, it was like looking into a black well that went
down forever. Nobody who went down there ever came back.</p>
<p>"Danny," he screeched. "Help."</p>
<p>He pushed forward, the way a snared rabbit will, and felt the
branch strain against the cotton. He pushed again, felt the fabric
rip, pushed some more and was stopped dead. He could not go
forward; he could not go backward.</p>
<p>"Danny," he screeched again, voice high, just like a girl's.
"Help me Danny I'm stuck!"</p>
<p>He squirmed in a sudden desperate frenzy. He was stuck and the
flames were all around him and in that instant he clearly saw the
maw of infinity approaching fast. His feet shoved at the dusty
hardpack of the ground, gouging out two grooves but gaining no
purchase strong enough to break the branch that snagged him or rip
the shirt on which it hooked. The heat of the flames pressed in
from the side. A billow of smoke rolled over him and he coughed
violently, rasping his throat. Just then something hit him from
behind. At first he thought it was Danny pushing him through. Then
a soft body squeezed beside him, wriggled past in a shiver of
muscle and fur. The little roe deer, in its panic, hadn't even seen
him. It made it through the gap and flashed away. Tom was left
stuck.</p>
<p>Out on the far side, Corky and Doug watched the wall of flames.
Further up the hill, beyond the line of power-cable, Billy was
whooping with unfettered glee, completely unaware of the danger
Danny and Tom were in down the slope among the massed tangle of
burning gorse. It just hadn't occurred to him that they would still
be in there.</p>
<p>"Like a fuckin' bomb," Billy yelled. He had a bird's eye view of
the whole thing, but he couldn't see Tom or Danny were stuck in the
middle of it all. The flames absolutely gobsmacking fantastic. They
rumbled and roared, snarled and fought, leaping from bush to
thicket, a contagion of instant fire. The bushes just splurged into
flame. The heat warped the air so much the power-cables seemed to
shimmy and dance. Little birds spiralled up through the smoke. Only
fifty feet away he saw a yellowhammer come flitting up in its
bouncing, undulating flight and then suddenly fall like a stone
into the mass of flame below. Two hares came scooting from cover,
brown blurs that raced up the slope and swerved just before they
reached him, their eyes rolling.</p>
<p>"Christ on a bloody <em>bike</em>," he bawled to himself.</p>
<p>He trotted down the hill a little distance, getting to within
twenty feet of the nearest bush which had crumpled in on itself,
thin grey ash tumbling down in a stream where the spikes of gorse
powdered to threatless dust. The fire had eaten and moved on,
leaving a bare skeleton. Billy bent and grabbed at a tussock of
couch grass, rocking his weight from side to free the roots. It
finally came ripping up from the ground and without any hesitation,
he jammed it in against the smouldering roots of the burned bush.
The grass crackled and caught. He spun, whirling the turf and grass
around his head, then aimed for a clear patch down the hill where
the fire hadn't reached.</p>
<p>His grenade tumbled in the air, trailing smoke. He watched it
level out then curve down. It landed off to the right, almost due
south. Over the screaming of the flames he didn't hear the thud.
There was a pause and then, with a startling <em>whoosh</em> the
bush and its neighbour were ablaze.</p>
<p>Billy howled in delight. He saw himself in uniform, just like
his father, tossing grenades or hosing liquid fire from the
flame-throwers he'd seen in the films. The wavering air and the
heat, the smell of burning and the sudden <em>violence</em> of it
all was incredible. Billy just couldn't believe he'd done all that,
all with just one thrown piece of wood.</p>
<p>Out on the damplands where the sphagnum moss had sopped up the
moisture of the pre-summer rains and held it in the seeps and
depressions of the moor, Corky and Doug stood side by side.</p>
<p>"Can you see them?" Corky asked. Doug shook his head. His light
blue eyes were ringed with smudges and he used a finger to wipe a
trickle of dusty snot from his lip. A twig of gorse had snagged in
his hair like a miniature crown of thorns."</p>
<p>"Can't see a thing."</p>
<p>"I heard somebody. Sounded like Tom."</p>
<p>"What, in there?" Doug jerked his thumb towards the wall of
flames. His face went suddenly pale.</p>
<p>The flames rampaged along. Something came soaring over the smoke
and hit beyond them and another growl of flame started eating at
the gorse. The fire made strange sounds. It roared and rasped and
underneath that sound, it screamed and screeched as the branches
and roots twisted and gave off their gasses. It sounded as if lost
souls were writhing in agony in there, buckling and shrivelling in
the heat of the flames.</p>
<p>Corky remembered what Danny had said, his own vision of hell.
That's what it would sound like. Just screaming and shrieking and
it would go on and on. He shook his head. It was just fire. It was
just bushes. He'd seen the gorse go up before. It wouldn't last
long.</p>
<p>But what if...</p>
<p>It rustled and whispered, it crackled and it laughed as if it
could read his mind.</p>
<p>"No," Corky said, more in hope than in certainty. "They must
have gone down the other side. And Billy went up the hill."</p>
<p>Just as he said that, Billy let out a triumphant holler. They
saw a shadow move and he came lumbering through a pall of smoke. He
had a dry tussock in his hand and he set it alight before tossing
it down the slope, leading the fire on.</p>
<p>"Where's Dan?" Corky bawled, making himself heard above the
commotion. Billy shrugged. His face was aglow behind the
smudges.</p>
<p>"And Tom," Doug bawled. "You seen them?" Billy shook his head.
His mind was elsewhere.</p>
<p>Just then a flight of partridges came bulleting out of the smoke
on whirring wings, fat little propeller-driven birds. They arrowed
straight towards the boys, seemed to notice them at the last
possible second and veered up and over their heads. Right behind
them, the tiny roe fawn came springing out. It stopped on its
spindly legs, its tongue lolling. It didn't even see them. The
gorse crackled behind it and it was gone, a brown little blur,
spider fast, gone and away.</p>
<p>Corky looked at Billy. His eyes were alight and his face was red
with excitement. Doug followed Corky's look. Billy was prancing
around, throwing the sods of peat and grass into the flames,
spreading it further as if it needed stoking.</p>
<p>"He's off his bloody head," Doug said. The fire squealed as it
tortured a briar root into impossible torques.</p>
<p>Inside the burning swathe, Danny found Tom snagged on the hazel
branch. His old scuffed shoes were digging into the soft earth,
ploughing up their furrows as he frantically tried to free himself.
Danny could hear his panicked whimper. The heat was incredible now,
searing his cheeks, and there seemed to be no air to breathe. He
stumbled forward and tried to break the thin stick with his hands.
Tom's hand grabbed his ankle and pulled desperately, almost
throwing Danny off balance.</p>
<p>The branch wouldn't break. Without thinking it through, Danny
simply bent down and got his weight against Tom's skinny backside,
dug his own feet into the ground and pushed with all his weight.
There was a sharp crack as the branch snapped. Tom went flopping
forward and Danny fell on top of him, knocking the wind out of the
smaller boy's lungs.</p>
<p>"Oof..." Tom gasped and that was a whole lot better than the
fearful whimpering. Danny rolled, slipped and fell flat. Tom was
up, his canvas bag still slung over one shoulder. He grabbed for
the back of Danny's shirt and hauled first him to his knees, then
up to his feet. Without a word they stumbled forwards. Ahead of
them the flames danced in orange spires. But then a gust of wind
thinned them momentarily. They had reached the edge. Both of them
realised there was no turning back. They both closed their eyes and
ran for it. Charred twigs and branches crunched under their feet
and the dust rose up to clog their nostrils. They barged through
and for a second the heat soared up to an incredible scorch. The
whole world seemed to be on fire. Danny hit hard ground first but
the smoke was in his eyes. Tom reached for him, got a hand to the
strap of the rucksack and both boys came out of the burning gorse
like the two hares, running blind, cheeks tear-streaked. Danny went
crashing over the ridge of hummock-grass and down the far side,
lungs hauling for cool air, down the lee side, missed his footing
and started to fall. Tom was right behind him, flipping over,
bouncing on the moss, then tumbling in pursuit.</p>
<p>They rolled for fifteen feet past the ridge and then both of
them hit the water of the shallow pool at exactly the same moment.
The surface was covered in duckweed and the pond was less than two
feet deep, a low, circular depression on a flat shoulder below the
ridge of the hill. They tumbled into it and immediately the tepid
water sucked the heat from their skins.</p>
<p>Tom came up spluttering, coughing water out. It dribbled from
his nose in muddy streaks. Danny turned over, trying to push
himself to his feet and at first only succeeded in driving his hand
a foot into the mud. Finally he managed to get to his knees then
pushed himself up to a shaky stance. His tough jeans, cut-down
versions of workmen's denims complete with the long ruler pocket
down the leg, sagged with the weight of water. Tom was hauling in
great breaths, and still coughing violently, trying to expel the
slimy water that had splashed down his throat.</p>
<p>"Jeez, Tom, I thought we were goners there," he finally
blurted.</p>
<p>Tom nodded, still unable to speak. He opened his eyes and he and
Danny shared a look that expressed the words they couldn't say. It
had been a close thing.</p>
<p>Corky and Doug came running down the hill. "You all right?"</p>
<p>Both boys nodded breathlessly, chests hitching.</p>
<p>"Flaming hell," Corky said. "We thought you were in there."</p>
<p>"We <em>were</em> in there. Nearly singed all my hair off."
Danny held up his arm to show where the fine white hairs on the
side were twisted and curled. He peered closer and saw where the
ends were shrivelled. Each had a little dot of melted hair on the
end. He closed his eyes, remembering the heat on his face and the
back of his neck and felt the panic try to weasel in again. He
shook it away.</p>
<p>Billy came loping down the slope. Behind him the air was thick
with smoke. Pieces of grey ash were twirling skywards in the
updraught. The fire had crept down for more than fifty yards until
it reached a boggy patch where the gorse gave way to a dark patch
of low reeds. Beyond the marsh the land rose up again, golden with
furze and broom blossom, but the flames could not cross over the
reed bed to get to it.. Almost as quickly as it began, the fire
died, leaving little smouldering patches of charred briar root and
the twisted stems of the bushes blackened and skeletal.</p>
<p>"Pure brilliant," Billy said. "Fan-bloody-<em>tastic</em>."</p>
<p>Tom rounded on him. "You nearly killed us, you stupid fast
shite. Me an' Danny, we nearly copped it in there."</p>
<p>"Oh quit bubbling," Billy sneered. He took a step forward and
gave Tom a push, not hard, but enough to make the smaller boy take
a step backwards. "No kidding, your lip's always trembling. And
just watch who you're calling names, <em>Titch.</em>"</p>
<p>Tom hit his hand away. "You're off your head. No kidding. You've
got screws loose. You nearly killed us. That fire was... it was..."
Tom's mouth started opening and closing, but his throat and tongue
had ganged up against him and refused to let the words out. His
eyes filled with tears. Doug and Corky shuffled their feet,
embarrassed for him. Tom turned away and the others could see his
shoulders jerking up and down.</p>
<p>"What did I tell you,? Billy started to say. "Always whinging
about something."</p>
<p>"Leave off," Danny told him. Billy's eyes opened wide, taking
offence again but Corky spoke up. "Yeah Billy, let it rest eh? You
could have killed somebody."</p>
<p>This time it was Billy's turn to act like a fish. He looked from
one to the other then shook his head in disgust. For a second, Doug
thought Billy might have a go at Corky, just because he was all
fired up with the excitement. Billy was the biggest of them all,
almost a head taller than both Danny and Corky and he towered over
Tom who looked as if his wet clothes would make him stagger. Canny
said nothing. He just looked at Billy without any expression on his
face. The confrontation faded. Billy shrugged and walked up the
hill to get his rucksack.</p>
<p>He stood there while the others waited for Tom. He could hear
them mumbling and he assumed they were persuading Tom to come along
with them rather than turning to go back down the hill and home
again. Finally, Tom wiped his eyes and they started to straggle up
the hill.</p>
<p>"Come on you lot," he called down. "This ain't a picnic you
know."</p>
<p>The fire finally died out. Down at the station near Castlebank
Church, and over at the waterworks post up from Cargill Farm, the
smoke and flames had been monitored. It was always a hazard at this
time of the year and in the high summer, hardly a week went past
without a brush fire or a gorse fire. It was what the kids did,
part of the tradition. Most of the time, like this time, the fires
burned themselves out. When the smoke cleared, the light wind
carried the dust high over Langmuir Crags and everybody forgot
about it.</p>
<p>The five boys straggled over the brow of the hill and down the
lee slope on a slow descent towards the Blackwood Stream. Billy was
still in a high state of excitement over the violence, and the
sudden destruction, and while Tom and Danny could have cheerfully
choked him, his actions that day, while they almost killed two of
his friends, had a long-reaching effect.</p>
<p>When he'd tossed the stave onto the wires, shorting out the
voltage between the cables, a heavy breaker-gate slammed open and
shut off the current in the junction station just west of Barloan
Harbour, the next village along, near Old Kildenny. All the power
in Barloan Harbour winked off.</p>
<p>Down on Barge Street, where in the old days, the hauliers would
unload their goods from the canal bay, Terry Hughes, an engineer
with the sewage department was inspecting a blocked duct when the
lights went out. He had planned to stay down a half-hour longer
before coming up for a break. In the dark, he turned and his cable
light cracked against a rock with a pop of glass. Up in the fresh
air, he had a flask of strong coffee waiting. Terry made his way
along the duct and reached the up-well. He took off his hard hat
and hung it on the hook, going by sense of touch. He climbed the
fifteen horse-shoe steps set into the brick shaft. Somebody had put
the manhole cover down and Terry assumed that one of his colleagues
had been playing a practical joke, shutting off the light and then
shutting him in. He pushed it up, crawled into the daylight and let
it slam down again. He turned to the little canvas shelter where
he'd left his flag when the ground shuddered. The manhole cover
exploded upwards on a pillar of blue flame, tumbling like a tossed
coin. It soared right across the railway line and crashed through
the upper deck, the galley and the hull of a neat little ketch down
in the harbour basin, taking it straight to the mud at the
bottom.</p>
<p>Terry Hughes was knocked off his feet and he suffered a graze to
his finger.</p>
<p>Investigators later found it had been caused by a huge build up
of gas in a sump, gas which had leaked from a cracked mains pipe.
When the power winked back on, the cracked lamp had ignited the gas
and let rip an explosion so violent that it ruptured the entire
wall of the sewer duct and caved in a section of road fifty yards
long. Terry Hughes' protective hat was found, or what was left of
it a hundred yards away in the fork of a tree. It was split into
four ragged shell-pieces that made it look like a blossoming dog
rose. As he told his workmates in the Horseshoe Bar where he got
monumentally drunk that afternoon, if the lights hadn't gone off,
he'd have been down there when it happened and he'd never have come
back up again.</p>
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<h1>12</h1>
<p><em>June:</em></p>
<p>Kids were screaming and yelling. A rough voice cursed loudly and
comprehensively and a high pitched one cried out in sudden
pain.</p>
<p>"Let me go you big swine," the boy squawked, clenching his teeth
so that he wouldn't cry. Up on the hill behind the school, close to
the angle-iron fence that bordered the old sandstone diggings, it
was a bad idea to let people see you cry. It would let them know
you were soft. In Quarryhill School, rough and ready as any, you
had to keep your footing.</p>
<p>Further down the hill a crowd of boys broke into a raucous
cheer, the kind you hear in a school-yard when kids are up to
mischief. A bell rang in the distance and the smaller boy squirmed
away from the older one who was twisting his arm up his back.</p>
<p>"I'm telling the teacher," he yelled. "You're in trouble."</p>
<p>Quarryhill School. It stood just off the Arden Road leading out
of town on its west edge, and the paved schoolyard backed onto the
slope known to generations of pupils as The Hump. Here the tall
green-painted spiked fence formed the boundary of the school land.
Beyond it the chasm of the old quarry which had supplied stone for
most of the old tenement buildings in the town was a barren
landscape of sheer drops, massive tumbled blocks of stone, and
tangled weeds and scrub. The fence was supposed to keep the pupils
away from danger but naturally, this being a school, nobody ever
came up the Hump to check how effective the barrier was. In one
section, three of the spars had been torn away, leaving a space a
man could walk through without turning sideways There were other
places, closer to the low hill on the far side where the pigeon
huts huddled, where the earth underneath the bottom spar had simply
been scraped away by years of boys escaping the boredom of the
classes on sunny afternoons. That part of the fence was not visible
from any part of the school building, so any for any truant, the
space under the fence was the ideal escape route. It was used so
often that no grass grew there. It was Quarryhill's back door.</p>
<p>At lunch time, especially on a dry day, the back yard of
Quarryhill was just like tribal lands. Down close to the wall, the
first year girls played skipping ropes and a hopscotch game called
<em>peever</em>. Smaller boys played tag, though they called it
<em>tig.</em> High tig, low tig, ball tig if they had a ball. Over
at the sheds, the second and third year boys gathered to play
five-a-side, or heading the football onto the roof, taking it in
turn, scoring points if they could keep it up without letting it
drop. When they tired of that, they might goggle at the senior
girls of sixth year who hung around with the older boys who had
lost interest in heading the ball and cared no longer about games
of tig or kick-the-can.</p>
<p>On the Hump, lower downslope where the ground was almost flat,
teams of boys would mill around with a football, yelling and
bawling the way that they do, sometimes twenty to a side, everybody
chasing the ball at once to kick it between piles of schoolbags and
jackets. Nobody outside the game ever knew how the score was kept,
but again, that's the way it is in schools. Further up-slope there
was a hollow close to the fence where any of the fights took place
and that was generally a couple of times a week and an occasion for
half the male population and a substantial fraction of the girls
too, to come swarming up to spectate. Some of the fights were
particularly violent, though most of them were simply pushing and
shoving affairs involving a lot of swearing and name-calling as two
reluctant boys squared up to each other, each determined not to be
the first to land a blow. In real fights it was different. There
were bruises, contusions, broken noses, mud, blood and snot flying.
At any time outside class periods, the noise was horrendous. Kids
were yelling and screaming, roaring and bawling. The senior boys,
all of them smooth and cocky, or so it seemed to the
thirteen-year-olds, had their radios turned up to a roar, listening
to the Who or Manfred Mann, most of them with Beatles fringes and
hair down over their collars and most of them with bad florescent
acne. The back schoolyard and the Hump was like a cluster of
galaxies, every group milling around with its own kind, and two
groups hardly in contact, kept apart by the reverse gravity of age.
Whenever two groups collided, as happened now and again, somebody
could get hurt.</p>
<p>The smaller boy with the now-sore arm ran away threatening to
tell the teacher and the older boy, who was strolling up the hill
tapping a ball lightly ahead of him with the toe of his scuffed
Chelsea boot gave him the sign and turned away grinning. He kicked
the ball to his friend who passed it to the third and then it came
back. They were going up the hill towards the fence.</p>
<p>"Got any smokes?" Crawford Rankine asked. His voice was just on
the cusp of breaking, going from deep to high and then cracking to
a thin gravelly rasp. His skin was just beginning to erupt in a
line or risen weals on the edge of his jaw.</p>
<p>"A couple," Don Whalen replied. "But we can club together and
get more." He was a thin boy with fine, crinkled hair through which
his scalp showed pink. He'd pulled his tie off and was trying to
whip it against the third boy's backside.</p>
<p>"Chuck it," Derek Milne told him. Don ignored the warning and
whipped the tie, making it crack like a lash. Derek tried to catch
it but failed.</p>
<p>"If at first you don't succeed, fuck it, chuck it, never heed,"
Don chanted, mocking his pal.</p>
<p>"Use the boot and then the <em>heid</em>," Derek snarled back in
mock threat. There was no malice in it. They were pals. They moved
up the hill, skirting the low wall where the huddled groups of
gamblers sheltered from the breeze, deftly dealing cards for
high-speed three-card brag (deuces floating wild) brag, or rapid
fire blackjack pontoon with double odds for twenty one and better
than that for a five card trick. Some expert hustlers would be
thumbing coins against the brickwork in sudden death challenges of
pitch and toss.</p>
<p>"Deuce is wild," a high voice complained vehemently "That's
three aces. A <em>prile</em>, and that beats you."</p>
<p>"Piss off, you lunatic," a deeper voice countered "Jokers don't
count,".</p>
<p>"You're the flippin' joker Caldwell. That's my game. I win."</p>
<p>Somebody shouted and somebody else yelled back and there was the
unmistakable thud of a fist landing on a cheek.</p>
<p>"Fight, fight."</p>
<p>The words bounced from one group to another. The game of
football on the flat grass stopped.</p>
<p>"Fight, <em>fight!</em>"</p>
<p>The girls stopped skipping. The senior boys with the acne pushed
themselves away from the side wall, craning their heads to see what
was going on. Small galaxies spun off groups of wheeling
individuals and whirled them towards the gamblers. By now, two boys
were rolling on the ground, locked together, each of them grunting
and snorting with effort.</p>
<p>"It's a fight," Derek, said.</p>
<p>"No, it's a kissing and hugging match," Crawford said. "Look at
them. Just a pair of jessies."</p>
<p>He strolled on and the others followed as far as the fence. Up
against the green metal railings, another group of younger boys had
been playing dead man's fall, pretending to attack a machine gun
nest and then being shot and dying in the most spectacular and
dramatic fashion. When the fight cry had sparked from group to
group they had forgotten their little private war and gone trotting
down the slope like pups coming down to a kill, heads up, feet
fast. The three pals reached the fence. Crawford Rankine threw his
bag over the spikes at the top, eased himself down to the ground
and limbo-crawled under the deep space there the earth had been
worn away by the passage of generations of previous escapees.</p>
<p>"Listen," Derek said. "I can't go. We got Matt Bryson for second
period."</p>
<p>"So what?"</p>
<p>"He said if I don't bring in that essay today, he'll have my
guts. He will an' all."</p>
<p>"Oh, he's nothing but a big Nancy," Crawford sneered. "Come on
man. My uncle Mickey said there's a run of sea-trout coming up.
It's a great day for fishing."</p>
<p>Derek hesitated. Don urged him to come along and for a moment it
looked like their friend could be persuaded, but he shook his head
regretfully.</p>
<p>"Okay, don't say you weren't asked," Crawford told him. He
picked up his bag and started walking on the path on the other side
of the fence, heading away from the quarry and down toward the
pigeon huts and shacks where the Quarryhill men kept their lurchers
and greyhounds and occasionally, some fighting dogs. Don gave Derek
an apologetic shrug and then scrambled under the fence. On the
down-slope, the low rush of sound rolled up the hill, the tense and
somehow hungry sound a crowd of teenagers make as they mill around
two fighting bodies. Derek turned and walked towards the melee.</p>
<p>Don and Crawford skirted the top shacks, and followed the
natural alleyway between the old wooden huts. Pigeons coo-ed and
mumbled from behind slatted openings. Overhead a flock of them
clapped through the air, wheeling together with such perfect timing
they might have been joined together by threads. Here the track, no
more than a yard wide, fell away heading for the old back road that
was once the service access for the stone-haulers at the quarry. On
this party the yards and small paddocks were bounded by thick chain
link or heavy duty chicken wire. Crawford stopped at the corner and
Don opened the pack of cigarettes.</p>
<p>"Got a match?"</p>
<p>"Not since Samson died," Crawford threw back..</p>
<p>"You mean his crippled baby sister, don't you?"</p>
<p>They lit up and drew in deep then sauntered casually down the
hill to where some steps had been constructed with old planks of
wood in a rickety descent. Just as they reached the top stair a big
black shape came lunging out from behind one of the corrugated-iron
shacks and hit the chain-link with such force that the wire
shrieked through the stay-holes. Don drew back with a cry of alarm
and dropped his cigarette into the mud at the side of the track.
The pit-bull terrier lunged again, a squat and powerful beast with
a head twice as wide as any normal canine head should be. Its
pin-prick eyes were flat black in a grey face wrinkled into a snarl
and showing an impossible array of teeth. It growled deep and
rumbling in the back of its throat.</p>
<p>"Jee-<em>fuh</em>..." Crawford gasped. He was further from the
fence than Don but the powerful dog's attack had pushed the wire
right out to the middle of the path. The beast snarled and
slavered.</p>
<p>"Look at the teeth on that," Crawford said. "If that got you it
would take your bloody arm off."</p>
<p>The fighting dog launched itself at the fence, massive and
muscular, leaping right up from the ground to hit with ugly snout
and paws. Specks of saliva splashed on the two boys who had cringed
back to the far side of the track.</p>
<p>"It's like a Tasmanian devil," Don said, and they both laughed,
now realising they were safe and that the powerful beast couldn't
get through the fence. He picked up a slender twig from a privet
that overhung the track and poked it through the wire. The dog
leapt up at it, jaws snapping together with the sound of boulders
clashing and Don pulled his hand away. Crawford reached for Don's
smouldering cigarette. He drew hard on it, making the end glow
brightly.</p>
<p>"Here poochie-poo, here boy," he wheedled. The black dog twisted
its head to the side curiously, though the low rumble continued.
Crawford pushed a finger through the mesh. Without hesitation the
dog lunged. Crawford whipped his finger away, twisting as he did to
bring his other hand up. The dog hit the fence and Crawford jammed
the lit end of the cigarette against its shiny nose.</p>
<p>The pit-bull terrier seemed to explode. It leapt back in a
perfect somersault, howling madly with pain and rage. It landed
square on its feet, smooth hair now all spiked and hackled. Its
thick neck seemed to have ballooned to twice its previous bull
thickness. The howl turned into a slavering snarl and it leapt for
the fence again, hitting it with such powerful force that one of
the staples on the high upright popped out and pinged on the
barrier on the other side of the track.</p>
<p>"Flamin' hell Craw," Don yelped. The dog leapt at them, pushing
its nose far enough through the mesh that the skin beside its snout
pulled back so violently that it began to bleed. Its black eyes
were rolling wildly, showing a ring of yellow-white all around. It
snapped and slavered like a crazed beast, which in fact it was. Don
and Crawford took to their heels hooting with laughter.</p>
<p>Down to the left a trio of greyhounds started growling. Don and
Crawford scampered down the swaying steps past the dog pen while
the pit-bull terrier snarled and slavered behind them, attacking
the fence with such ferocity it seemed certain to break through and
come after them. The pair darted to the right past the greyhounds,
tall emaciated dogs with arched backs and goitred eyes and long
grinning mouths. They began to bark in chorus as the boys ran past,
thrusting their thin noses through the holes in the wire.</p>
<p>Crawford got to the flat just ahead of Don and they ran along
the gravel path, past a series of old shacks and reached the dead
end. Here a piece of sheet iron had been set up as a makeshift
gate, but it had been peeled back by others in the past and the
narrow gap allowed them to squeeze through. This was the final
paddock and beyond it, there was a secondary worn track that led
down to the back quarry road. They stopped and got their breath
back.</p>
<p>"Nearly shit myself," Don wheezed. "And look. My smoke's all wet
now. It's like a duck's arse."</p>
<p>Crawford flicked it out of his hand and ground it into the
earth. He passed his own smoke over and Don took a big draw.</p>
<p>"Cured my constipation as well," Crawford said. "If that thing
got out it would eat you alive." The danger over, they began to
laugh nervously.</p>
<p>"It would eat <em>you</em>. I'd be a hundred yards clear ahead
of you."</p>
<p>They finished the cigarette, smoking it down until it almost
burned Don's lip and then they moved through the mass of tall weeds
that filled the paddock. The brambles and willowherb grew higher
than their heads and they had to push the trailing runners aside to
reach the far side. Here an old railway box-car was angled against
the barbed wire fence that marked the east edge of the quarry. Don
made to go past it when he stopped and bent down.</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"A padlock." Don straightened up and turned to his pal.
"Somebody left it."</p>
<p>They turned simultaneously towards the boxcar which was grey
with age. A faded number 188 was just visible against the pocked
grain of the wood. Any time they had passed this way the truck had
been firmly closed. Somebody had jemmied the lock off. Don leaned
forward and touched the pale gouges where the wood had been chipped
off. Crawford moved past him and gave the door a tug to the left.
It refused to budge but he got two hands to it and heaved. It gave
a squeal of protest and slid back a few inches on its solid runner
wheels. He peered through the gap.</p>
<p>"Can't see anythinmg," he answered the unasked question. He
pulled back and his pal got a grip on the door and between them
they rolled it open enough to let them inside. A pale pillar of
light crossed the dusty floor and climbed up the wall, illuminating
the centrefolds tacked to the wall.</p>
<p>Crawford pushed his way inside with Don clambering just behind
him.</p>
<p>"Look at the tits..." he started to say craning forward to ogle
a blond boasting a stupendous and quite improbable chest. Behind
him Don grunted.</p>
<p>A loud thud shook the goods truck.</p>
<p>He turned round, only curious at that moment. Don came swinging
up in front of him., moving fast, his pale frizzled hair catching
the light.</p>
<p>"What the heck are you doing?" Crawford blurted in surprise.</p>
<p>Crawford grunted again. A tall figure loomed out from the
shadow. He had Don by the neck. Crawford got a glimpse, no more, of
thick fingers clamped against the back of the boy's head. His
friend hit the side of the wagon. Don's bag flew off to the
side.</p>
<p>"Donny...?"</p>
<p>The tall figure came lunging forward, his other hand reaching
out. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Don went slamming against
the side, flicking out of the light and disappearing into the
gloom. The pale hand, massive and wide came expanding toward
Crawford's face. It reached the pillar of light. The fingers
brightened. Crawford jerked back reflexively, instinctively. His
feet slipped and he fell to the floor. The hooked hand clawed the
empty air.</p>
<p>"<em>Ungh</em>," Don said. His feet hit the side again. His head
was almost at the curved roof of the wagon. Dreadful panic twisted
in Crawford's belly. The hand lunged for him again, crossing the
shaft of light once more. Crawford rolled. His bag slipped from his
shoulder as his feet scrabbled on the wooden boards. He twisted
again and, by a sheer miracle, he tumbled out of the wagon and into
the daylight.</p>
<p>The man growled, almost as loud, almost as ferocious the pit
bull. Crawford's shin scraped down the edge of the door runner,
burning a sliver of fire up on the bone, but at that moment he
hardly felt a thing. The awful sound that had come out of Don's
mouth was ringing in his ears, even louder than the growl of the
big man who had lifted his friend up by the neck and slammed him,
one handed, against the side of the rail truck so violently that
the whole thing had shook.</p>
<p>Crawford's foot shoved at the muddy ground, failed to grip. The
panic burst inside him and he whimpered in fear. His foot got a
purchase, pushed him forward. Something heavy - and he knew it was
that reaching hand - hit him on the backside. He felt fingers
hooking at the flannel of his pants, pulled away from it with a
desperate heave. The material dragged away. He shot forward, got to
his feet and crashed through the weeds. Behind him the man grunted
again and snarled ferociously. Crawford reached the makeshift gate
where he and Don had bent back the thin metal. They hadn't pushed
it back into position and it was still open. He dived through, not
trusting himself to squeeze between the uprights quickly enough.
His hip hit the ground on the other side, abraded a red scrape into
his skin, and then he was up and away.</p>
<p>Behind him there was a thud of something heavy hitting the side
of the wagon. Almost immediately the weeds and bramble runners
snapped as an even heavier mass pushed through them. Crawford's
whimper became a wail of pure terror. He ran along the track, past
the snarling greyhounds, pushed himself off a slatted wall to get
round the corner and then went skittering down the final track
towards the Lochend Road which curved in a long bend past the base
of the path. He stopped, head swinging right and left. If he used
the road, he had five hundred yards to get to the junction that
would lead him back up to the front of the school.</p>
<p>Five hundred yards. Would he make it? Could he make it? His mind
was jittering and jerking, not gauging consciously, but working it
out none the less.</p>
<p>To the left, the entrance to the quarry gaped, an overgrown and
rutted space between two perpendicular faces of stone where the
rock had been blasted and chiselled. Between them, a thick bow of
steel chain acted as a barrier against people who dumped rubbish on
any vacant spot, or who dumped cars there too.</p>
<p>The quarry was forbidden to every pupil at the school, which
meant that everyone, at least almost every boy had explored it at
some stage and some of the older girls had made their own teenage
explorations there too. There were paths up on the ledges, worn by
the feet of countless boys taking a short cut or playing
truant.</p>
<p>Behind him he heard the growling of the man coming after him.
Feet thudded on the track, heavy and deadly. Crawford froze for a
second, paralysed with fear and indecision, then he spun on his
heel and ran hell for leather for the opening of the quarry. He
reached the chain and leapt over it like a hurdler, his shirt-tail
pulled out of his waistband and flying free.</p>
<p>The man came thundering down the track, moving so fast that when
he reached the edge of the road his momentum carried him clear
across to the far side of the road and almost into the line of
trees. He looked left and right, much as Crawford had done, then
the boy's flapping shirt caught his eye. It flashed in the shadow
of the quarry like the tail of a startled fawn. He turned and went
thundering after it.</p>
<p>Even in the height of summer, the south faces of the quarry
never saw the sun. They were covered in ivy and moss and constantly
dripped the dampness down into the trenches where the masons had
carved the blocks way back at the turn of the century. Jumbled and
tumbled piles of stones were covered in willowherb and wild
rhubarb, while close to the sheer face, square blocks of stone,
some of them ten feet tall, lay like dice thrown by a giant hand.
Crawford ran for the nearest block, jinked round the side and
squeezed between it and its neighbour. The narrow defile led to a
series of steps which had been cut in the sandstone and he clawed
his way up them, breathing hard and fast. He risked a look behind
him and saw the big man come rushing in through the man-made chasm.
All he saw was a shock of black hair and a flapping coat. He could
hear the thud of boots on the hard ground and the angry, almost
inhuman growl.</p>
<p>"Help," he bawled. The cry bounced off the sheer faces of the
cut rock and faded to merge with the steady drip of the seeping
water.</p>
<p>From higher up, beyond the flat edge, the schoolyard shrieks and
shouts came louder as he scrambled up the narrow defile.</p>
<p>Behind him the man was growling words which were all mashed and
jumbled together and made no sense at all. Crawford pushed himself
up and through the cleft and onto the top of the first massive
stone block. From there he could take a run and a short jump over
the yard-wide cleft that would take him to the next block. The
sound of the running man's boots came thudding up to him.</p>
<p>"Help," his voice was getting higher and the word seemed to
squeak out from a dry throat. His heart was thudding and kicking
against his ribs and his knees threatened to buckle under him.</p>
<p>Up on the top, where the grass was short and the paths leading
away from the fence radiated in all directions, worn smooth by the
feet of those years of truancy, there was a hollow depression that
had once been the original quarry works when the stone was first
cut out for an ancient farmhouse which stood on the land now
occupied by the school. The hollow was bounded on three sides by a
tangle birch trees and over-run by a thick matt of creeping ivy.
From the school fence anyone inside the dip could not be seen.</p>
<p>Brenda Fortucci, a plump and dark-haired sixteen-year old whose
attractions included a large and pallid pair of soft breasts and
the fact that her uncle ran the cafe and snooker hall along Kirk
Street, pushed herself away from Brian Grittan. In a couple of
months a group of boys would use a scrag street-pigeon as a decoy
while they robbed the store where Brenda's mother worked.</p>
<p>"Did you hear something?" she asked. Brian ignored the question
and sneaked his hand back inside her school blouse to the smooth,
yielding warmth.</p>
<p>"Sounds like a fight," he said quickly, in a voice that said he
couldn't care about anything outside the hollow, or outside her
blouse for that matter. He gently pushed her back down onto the
grass and hunched over her to press his mouth against hers. She had
a soft tongue and clumps of black hair under her armpits and Brian
tantalised himself with the notion that between her thighs it was
the same luscious dark shade. He hadn't risked putting his hand
down there, not yet...</p>
<p>"Help, oh, please help me," Crawford Rankine bleated. The words
came out all crimped and squashed together.</p>
<p>Behind him he could hear the ragged breath of the man who had
lifted Don up by the neck and hit him against the wall. It was much
closer now. He leapt over the space onto the next block and angled
right up the steep track, hands scrabbling for purchase on the ivy
roots.</p>
<p>Up in the hollow, Brenda pulled away again. "I did hear
something," she said. Brian tried to fasten on to her again but she
squirmed away. "Sounds like some kid."</p>
<p>"There's always kids around here." Brain was seventeen and was
about to spectacularly fail in maths, French and physics because
his mind had recently become so distracted from schoolwork. "Come
on, Brenda, the bell's going to ring in a minute."</p>
<p>Over beyond the fence, a strangely hushed roar went up as the
crowd around the fighting pair of boys reacted to the contest.</p>
<p>"Kick his head in," a loud voice rasped.</p>
<p>Closer, on the other side of the dell, a higher voice called
out. Brenda sat up.</p>
<p>"There. That's it again. Don't you hear it?" She began to fasten
her blouse, flicking off the dried grass that stuck to the
material.</p>
<p>"It's only kids playing games."</p>
<p>Down below them, Crawford Rankine was climbing for his life.
Here the quarry ascended in a series of man-high steps, most of
them covered in ivy runners and bindweed. The boy pushed himself up
and through another narrow gap. The man was closer now, climbing
fast. The boy felt his sphincter clench and unclench as if he was
going to mess his pants. His throat clicked dryly. In his mind's
eye he saw Don's crinkly fine hair up close to the roof of the
railwagon, while the white hand floated into the beam of
sunlight.</p>
<p>"Ah...Ah....<em>AAAAAH!"</em> No words now, just a wavering,
inarticulate cry. He reached the flat of the wide ledge where the
birches leaned out of the face. There was a corner here with
handholds, maybe twelve feet high. He had climbed it many a time
without difficulty, taking a short-cut back into school. But he had
never climbed it with a maniac chasing him up the side of the
quarry. Behind him the man growled. Crawford launched himself at
the corner and began to climb up, moving so fast and so desperately
that his foot slipped on the smooth rock. He slid down two feet to
the flat of the ledge again and started upwards once more.</p>
<p>Up in the hollow, Brenda got to her feet. She pushed her way
through the tall stands of willowherb close to the edge.</p>
<p>"Watch that, or you'll go over," Brian warned. He was angry now,
frustrated and disappointed all at once, but he didn't want to see
her fall.</p>
<p>A hand clamped on Crawford's ankle.</p>
<p>It happened so suddenly that for a fraction of a second the boy
thought his foot had snagged on a loop of ivy.</p>
<p>The fingers squeezed so hard on his tendon that a dreadful pain
seared up the back of his leg. He thought he cried out but in fact
no sound came out of his throat. He struggled away from the grip,
managed to raise his foot six inches to the next little ledge.</p>
<p>Then he was down. The grip on his ankle simply jerked him off
the corner of the rock. His head hit against a knuckle of stone and
a white light flashed in front of his eyes. He came crashing to the
flat and hit with such a thud that all of his breath came out in a
whoosh of air. Another hand clamped on his neck and lifted him up
just as abruptly as he had been slammed down.</p>
<p>"Got you," the man's voice growled, deep as rocks grinding
together.</p>
<p>He was lifted up and turned, as if he weighed nothing at
all.</p>
<p>"And he took him up to a high place," the man said slowly, in a
strange, distant tone, as if he was talking to someone else. His
dark hair was falling over his brow and his eyes blinked so rapidly
it looked like a quick-fire series of tics.</p>
<p>A sudden and deadly knowledge sparked.
<em>"Twi....twi...twi..."</em> The boy stammered.</p>
<p>"Call thy angels." The face loomed close. "And they will bear
thee up."</p>
<p>Crawford dimly realised that the face had not moved. It was
himself who had been drawn down wards towards it. The face moved
away. Crawford felt himself rise up. The hands let go. He was still
rising. The sun flashed over the rim of the quarry. He went up into
the air.</p>
<p>And then he was falling.</p>
<p>Up at the edge where the brambles hung over the face, Brenda
Fortucci screamed. The boy soared out from the cleft. All she saw
were the arms windmilling for balance and the legs running in the
air. The figure went flying out from the rock and plummeted
straight down.</p>
<p>"Oh look...oh Brian....he's.."</p>
<p>"What is it?" Brian asked, bulling through the weeds. He reached
her side and she turned into him, arms grabbing for his support
breasts pressing into him.</p>
<p>"He fell," he bawled. "Oh, that boy. He fell."</p>
<p>A dull, somehow deadly thud rose up from below.</p>
<p>Brian peered over the edge. Down on a flat rock, fifty feet
below, the boy was spread-eagled on a flat block of stone. His legs
were shivering violently as if an electric current was running
through them. In the space of a few seconds, a stain spread out
underneath the boy's jacket, turning the rock dark.</p>
<p>"Oh Brian he's dead. I know he is."</p>
<p>He grabbed her by the hand and went running for the fence. Down
on the hillside, one of the teachers had pushed his way into the
centre of the crowd and was now hauling two bloodied boys out by
the scruffs of their necks.</p>
<p>"Help," Brian Grittan shouted. "Mr Doyle!"</p>
<p>Brenda made a soft sighing sound and fell in a dead faint at his
feet. Suddenly, without warning, Brian's gorge clenched, opened and
he retched so violently his recent lunch sprayed all over the fence
and his prostrate girlfriend.</p>
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<h1>13</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 3.30pm...</em></p>
<p>"Look at that," Doug called out, pointing straight ahead. The
others reached the low brow of the hill and stood beside him. Down
the slope, the four black pools, each of them almost perfectly
circular except for the last which was kidney shaped, descended in
steps. They were evenly spaced and nearly identical in size, as if
they had been dug for a purpose.</p>
<p>"Dead straight line," Billy said. "The bombers must have come
right over the hills." He stuck his arms out and made a noise like
a fighter plane in a dive and started to run down the hill
zigzagging left and right. He stopped half way and beckoned to them
with a wave of his arm.</p>
<p>The others started to follow him down towards the craters.</p>
<p>The first one was deep and ridged all around its rim where the
earth had been thrown up by the force of the explosion twenty years
before.</p>
<p>"Just like a crater on the moon," Corky said. A dragonfly came
soaring towards them, buzzing like a miniature helicopter. It
banked on clattering wings before it reached them and zoomed out
across the still water.</p>
<p>"We must be close," Danny said. "If they were dropping their
bombs up here."</p>
<p>Tom shrugged. "Could still be miles away." His face was still
smudged with dust and ash and streaked with his tears. He had come
along with them but he looked more reluctant to stay. Behind them,
far in the distance, a pall of smoke still hung in the sky, but it
was fading away now, just a smudge of grey against the blue. From
where they stood, the town, three miles away, was hidden from view
by the curve of the hill. The faint sounds of the foundry steam
hammer and the clanging from the shipyard down in the distance had
all but faded, leaving them only the piping of a curlew on the hill
and the liquid sound of a lark rising on the hot air.</p>
<p>They ambled down towards the lowest crater-hole, this one
completely round and deeper than all the others. The water was
slick and patched with duckweed. Pond skaters slid on the surface
while underneath them, water boatmen darted in search of prey. They
dropped their bags in a heap and slung the tent beside them. All
five of them lay on the sheep-shorn grass at the lip of the pond
and peered down into the depths.</p>
<p>Danny reached out slowly and dipped his hand under the surface
sending the slick of algae undulating in slow ripples. "It's warm.
You could swim in it."</p>
<p>He moved his hand slowly very slowly, only an inch or two above
the silt a foot below the surface close to the bank. Corky watched
and saw a long black shape resting on the mud close to Danny's
creeping fingers.</p>
<p>"What's that?" he started to ask, but just as he did, Danny
lunged and hauled his hand clear of the water. Without hesitation
he dropped the black shape on the grass. It was three inches long
and wriggled furiously out of its element twisting its segmented,
coal-black body this way and that.</p>
<p>"Dragonfly," Danny said and everybody crowded round.</p>
<p>"Can't be," Billy contradicted. "It hasn't got any wings. Creepy
looking beastie."</p>
<p>"It's a larva. It's got to change first. It climbs up a stalk
and breaks out."</p>
<p>"Metamorphosity." Corky said, knowingly.</p>
<p>"Ugly <em>baskit</em>," Doug said. "Bet it can't wait to grow
up." They all laughed.</p>
<p>Danny broke a stem of reed and jabbed it close to the insect's
bulbous eyes. Immediately the bottom jaw shot out with a tiny click
sound. It looked like a long, jointed arm, jagged with grabbing
spines. The underslung mandible clawed viciously.</p>
<p>"Jeez-o, it's a flamin' monster." Billy exclaimed.</p>
<p>The jaw snatched the reed and pulled at it, and they all crowded
round to watch the alien wriggling thing twist and turn, viciously
defending itself.</p>
<p>"There's a big water beetle that's got pincers," Corky said,
holding his hands up at the side of his mouth and using his first
fingers to imitate the motion of how those pincers worked. "Big
enough to go right through your skin right into the bone. If it
flies into you it can crack your skull."</p>
<p>"Well I'm not swimming in here," Tom said. "You could get bitten
to death. It must be full of creepy crawlies like that. Probably
piranhas as well.</p>
<p>Billy got to his feet and without warning he stamped down hard
on the black larva. It crunched against the grass. "Something that
ugly shouldn't be allowed to live," he said, grinning. Doug made a
disgusted sound in the back of his throat.</p>
<p>"How would you like somebody to do that to you?" Danny asked,
getting to his feet. The black larva twisted slowly now broken and
burst, its legs clawing weakly at the air. Yellow liquid oozed out
from the split in its abdomen.</p>
<p>"Nobody big enough," Billy said, wiping his foot on the grass.
He grinned. "And I'm not ugly, neither."</p>
<p>He sauntered round the pool while Danny watched angrily, wishing
he hadn't caught the insect, even if Billy was right. It was ugly
and alien, something from a nightmare, but it would have gone on
living if he'd left it, and some day it would have turned into one
of the long , flickering streaks of black and gold that cruised on
the summer air, hunting for insects.</p>
<p>Billy hunkered down. Something splashed in the water right in
front of him. He reached, made a grab, missed his footing and
stumbled forward into the pool. One foot sank into the soft
mud.</p>
<p>"Dammit," he grunted. He reached again and snatched a bobbing
shape up from the floating duckweed, then hauled himself out. His
baseball boot and the leg of his jeans was red with mud. He shook
his foot then turned and held up the fat green frog, waving it like
a trophy.</p>
<p>"Hello <em>froggy,"</em> he sang, making his voice grate like a
juvenile Louis Armstrong. He brought it across and thrust it in
Tom's face. The smaller boy squirmed away from it.</p>
<p>"What, scared of frogs?" Billy demanded.</p>
<p>"No I'm not." Tom protested. "It's covered in slime,"</p>
<p>Billy giggled. "You can have great fun with frogs. Watch."</p>
<p>He searched around for a dried piece of reed and broke off a
narrow stem, holding it up to the light to see if it was
hollow.</p>
<p>"You have to watch for earwigs with these things. They crawl
into your mouth and down your throat." He held the frog tightly
while they watched. The creature jerked powerfully in an attempt to
escape but Billy had its head in a strong grip. The legs pinioned
helplessly.</p>
<p>"See its hole?" Doug agreed that he could see it. Billy jabbed
the reed at it. The legs kicked desperately. There was a little pop
sound and the end of the reed disappeared into the frog's vent.</p>
<p>"Aw, Billy," Corky protested. "That's bloody awful."</p>
<p>Billy grinned and raised his eyebrows up and down. "Now for the
piece of the resistance," he said, grinning like Gomez Addams. He
bent his head, put the free end of the reed in his mouth and blew
steadily, puffing his cheeks out with pressure. .</p>
<p>The frog inflated. Billy squeezed the free end of the tube to
close it and leaned back.</p>
<p>"You're lookin' swell, <em>froggy</em>," he sang. He breathed in
through his nose and blew again. The frog blew up to the size of a
tennis ball. The sun glinted on transparent skin. The round body
swelled so much the spots on its pale belly had expanded to the
size of shirt-buttons. The yellow eyes glared out from a distended
head.</p>
<p>"Look at its face," Doug said.</p>
<p>It was an odd moment of fascination tinged with disgust and
blackly cruel humour. Danny and Corky each screwed up their own
faces, but they did not stop watching. Billy blew again and the
frog expanded even more. "I can tell, <em>froggy!</em>"</p>
<p>"It's going burst," Doug said, shaking his head and taking a
step back and holding his hands up protectively just in case. "Give
it a break Billy."</p>
<p>"You're still growin', you're still <em>growin</em>' " Billy
rasped.</p>
<p>"Oh, that's really rotten," Tom said, and then, without warning,
he burst into horrified laughter. Danny looked at him, feeling the
disgust rise inside himself. He turned to the frog. Its eyes were
bulging now and it bore a look of complete and mute bewilderment. A
hiccup of laughter bubbled up from inside him and he tried to
swallow it down feeling a flush of shame at how hysterically funny
he found this.</p>
<p>"Looks like Fat Sonia Kowalski," Corky said. Doug giggled then
the two of them exploded with laughter. Billy turned and the frog
slipped from his hands. It fell off the reed impaling its vent and
landed on the water. Immediately bubbles came farting out in a
steady stream. Its legs kicked out but it was still swollen to five
times its size and they only paddled against air, hardly touching
the water at all. It floated like a balloon on the duckweed,
turning slowly in a little circle.</p>
<p>Billy let out a howl. Tom was holding his sides. Danny and Doug
were holding on to each other, convulsing with laughter and Corky
was lying on the ground doubled up. They were completely helpless
for several minutes until the hysteria passed.</p>
<p>"God, that was really mean," Doug said, the manic laughter still
in his eyes. He tried to keep his face straight and failed. "You
should be done by the animal inspector."</p>
<p>"Look at it," Billy said. "It's as big as a flamin' football,
and it's farting away like crazy."</p>
<p>"Fat Sonia," Doug said, remembering what Corky had said, and he
was off again, bending over and holding his belly with both hands.
"Oh, stop it," he pleaded. "Don't make me laugh."</p>
<p>"That's really rotten," Tom said, stifling his laughter. "It
never did any harm."</p>
<p>"It's only a frog," Billy said, dismissively. "What are you
worried about? They don't feel pain like us." He turned picked up
his pack and started walking towards the lip of the valley.</p>
<p>The rest of them looked at each other. Danny felt flush of shame
creep across his face, making it hot and red. It had been cruel,
dreadfully cruel, but it had been funny and the frog <em>had</em>
looked like Fat Sonia Kowalsky. The inflated frog was out in the
midle, vainly trying to cross a patch of weed. It would die in the
heat for sure. The flush of hot disgust, at the frog's torture and
at his own laughter stayed with him.</p>
<p>"He's right off his head," Tom said with feeling. "I'm telling
you. He's ten cents on the dollar."</p>
<p>Behind the next ridge of tussock grass, Billy turned. "Come on
you lot. At the double."</p>
<p>Doug shrugged, sniffed. They moved on past the ridge of the
crater, leaving the algae ripples to settle to silence, and the
dragonflies snatching clegs and horseflies out of the air.</p>
<p>It was another hour before they got to the floor of the valley
where the Blackwood Stream tumbled clear and fast over the smooth
rocks. They had followed the contours of the hill, travelling
parallel to the flow of the water, walking on the sheep-tracks
until they reached the end of the thick forest that covered both
sides. Beyond that, single trees and small clumps grew here and
there, perched precariously on the steep sides of the valley,
hazels and ash and some alders. The stream had cut the moorland
into grooves here, deep gorges that fell away down to the twisting
flow below. High on the sides, scrubby hawthorns and an occasional
rowan clung to almost sheer walls. Branching tributaries bringing
the winter melt water down from the Blackwood Hills to the west and
the Langmuir Crags on the east side, cut the land into chevrons of
gullies and fissures. The five boys trudged along the edge, tired
and slow now and ready for a rest from carrying their bags and the
increasingly heavy dead weight of the tent. The valley swooped
below them, the steep sides lined and striated with alternating
dark bands of thick shale sandwiched between hard mudstone which
slashed white parallel lines in layers from the stream bed to the
high ridge of the canyon lip.</p>
<p>"It's like something out of the movies," Doug said. They had
caught up with Billy and nobody mentioned the frog. "Like cowboys
and indians."</p>
<p>"Treasure of the Sierra Madre," Corky said. "That's what it's
like." He turned to the others. "We don' have to show you any
<em>steengking</em> badges," he said in a reasonable imitation of a
Mexican bandido. Danny grinned widely at the impersonation and
lopped the head off a nettle with his stick. Billy looked
puzzled.</p>
<p>"It's a film," Corky explained. "Really good and scary too. The
baddy gets it in the end. But the book's better. You should read
one sometime."</p>
<p>Billy drew him a look that told them all he wasn't interested in
books.</p>
<p>"It's like the grand canyon," Tom said. "I saw a picture of it
in geography. It goes down for miles and it's got these lines all
along the sides. I've never been up as far as this before."</p>
<p>"Right up in the wilds now, Tiny Tom," Billy said. "Miles from
home. Only us mountain men and the wild frontier."</p>
<p>"There's bears and wolves and sabre-tooth tigers up here," Doug
added, grinning his wide goofy smile.</p>
<p>"Tyrannosauruses and stegosaurs." Danny threw in.</p>
<p>"Giant spiders." Corky said, keeping it up. "Martians with three
eyes."</p>
<p>"And window-lickers from the special school bus." Tom said. He
rolled his eyes up and let his tongue hang out imbecilically.
"That's you lot, that is. A bunch of morons if you believe all that
stuff. And I bet you do, every one of you."</p>
<p>They started down the slope, reached the edge where the grass
stopped and the steep shale fell away for more than a hundred feet
at such a steep angle it seemed almost vertical from where they
stood. Doug stepped back from the edge. "It's high, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"Not really," Tom said mildly. "Only from up here. It looks
further than it is, I think."</p>
<p>"I don't like heights," Doug said. "I got stuck on the quarry
once. Scared the shite out of me. It took me ages to get the nerve
up to climb down and I missed most of the afternoon."</p>
<p>"What quarry, the one behind the school?" Danny asked. "Where
Crawford Rankine fell off?"</p>
<p>Doug nodded gravely. "Yeah."</p>
<p>"Thrown off," Tom corrected. "They thought he fell at first, but
he got thrown off. Same time as Don Whalen was caught. Brenda
Fortucci saw it all."</p>
<p>Doug shrugged, not caring for the moment, though this was
something they'd all discussed, and at length, in the long weeks
running up towards the end of the school holidays. He looked down
to where the Blackwood Stream meandered down there, a silver snake
crawling through the steep valley. "I hate falling. I'd rather get
shot."</p>
<p>"Like my old man," Billy said. "He got shot a couple of times.
You don't feel it if it gets you in the head. You don't even hear
it. He wiped out a whole Japanese patrol, so he did."</p>
<p>He stuck his hands in his pockets. "He could have taken Cammy
Galt and Plooks McGill and your Phil all at the one time. He could
have molocated old <em>Twitchy,</em> that's for certain. No
bother."</p>
<p>Doug ignored him and looked away. They'd all heard it before.
"Can we find somewhere that isn't so steep? You could fall and
break your neck here."</p>
<p>"It's all right," Corky told him. "It's not as steep as it
looks, and even if you fall, you won't go far. Watch."</p>
<p>Corky took a leap forward. Doug blurted a warning as his friend
leapt off the edge. Corky yelled at the top of his voice and went
plummeting down. He hit the slope feet first, sending up a bow-wave
of shale and then went sliding down the scree on his backside,
forcing a fountain of gravel into the air, leaving a deep groove of
his passing. Danny went skidding right behind him and Doug was
encouraged enough to follow. Billy took the rear, bouncing down
heavily, leaving wide footprints with every stride. In only a few
minutes, they reached the bottom and followed the stream until they
reached a flat part at the conjunction with another of the feeder
tributaries that had cut the chasms in the moor slope. The twin
gorges angled away from each other, each of them filled with the
echoing sound of running water. Danny stripped off his canvas shoes
and threw his socks onto the grass. He rolled up the legs of his
jeans and waded into the clear stream shallows just down from the
deeper pool where the crystal water tumbled through a low cleft.
Corky kicked off his old scuffed boots and followed him in.</p>
<p>"What's it like?" Doug asked, struggling out of his torn
denims.</p>
<p>"Magic," Corky told him. He came out of the water and rubbed the
droplets from his legs. Already he was getting some brown hairs on
his calves. Danny, who had stripped off his own denims, looked at
them enviously. His own legs were white and smooth.</p>
<p>"Let's get the tent fixed up," Corky said when he came back out,
dripping water. "then we can light a fire."</p>
<p>"Bags me to light it," Billy demanded. "I can get a blaze going
with one match."</p>
<p>"Yeah, we know that. Just so long as it stays in one place," Tom
said rancorously. "You nearly killed us the last time."</p>
<p>"Oh, give it a rest, <em>Titch</em>," Billy rounded on him. "It
was an accident, OK? He pulled his tee-shirt over his head, slung
it behind him and ran up to the rocky ledge at the side of the
pool. Without stopping he scrambled to the edge.</p>
<p>"Bombs away..."</p>
<p>His cry echoed down the valley. He leapt into the air, bunched
his legs together and hugged his knees so that he curled into a
tight ball and hit the water so hard the impact it sounded like a
drum in the confines of the pool. An immense splash of water arched
out on all sides, soaking the bags and the tent.</p>
<p>Billy came up to the surface, his black hair glistening in the
sun. Underneath him the red mud which had dried on the leg of his
jeans dissolved in the current and trailed downstream in banded
clouds of ochre silt like streams of blood.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 1. 4pm.</em></p>
<p>He watched their progress from the cover of the thick trees on
the other side of the valley, standing very still so that he
betrayed no movement at all.</p>
<p>The fire had died away but there was still a musky smell of
grass smoke on the dry air, mingled with the aroma of burned gorse
and its perfumed pollen. The hills up beyond the farm rolled away
into the distance, barren of trees up this high, covered in heath
and heather and thick bracken fronds.</p>
<p>The five of them had followed the cattle track down to the pools
and then they had moved on. He followed for a while, feeling the
tide of heat swell inside him. He was in no hurry, none at all. The
time was not yet right. There were still things to do, important
things.</p>
<p>He hunkered down beside a fallen pine tree that had broken its
back as it tumbled, and pulled a piece of dried meat from his
pocket, smoked pork from the dry-store next to the farmhouse
kitchen. He chewed on it absently, waiting until the troop of boys
began to angle down the slope, like a patrol in the hills. If he
listened he might hear them call out.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly.</em> There was no rush. Up here he had all the
time in the world to do what he had to do. . There was no hurry for
now. He would watch and he would wait. He would let them know, as
some stage, when the time was right, who he was and why he had
come.</p>
<p>He rose to his feet and went down into the trees, heading back
towards the farm where the others were waiting for him. He blinked
several three times in quick succession, and the world flickered in
a strobe of flashes, intermittent light and dark. The boys were
going along the ridge at the edge of the valley where the land fell
away sharply in the narrow cleft down to the stream, and in a line,
just like a troop of infiltrators. It was steep there. Maybe one of
them might fall...</p>
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<h1>14</h1>
<p><em>June:</em></p>
<p>In the dark he could hear his own breathing, a watery snuffle.
He could feel wet on his cheek and the dull throb that told him
he'd been cut, but as yet there was no pain there. Not for now. The
memory of pain hovered close in the darkness, but it was hard to
remember anything else.</p>
<p>He'd been with Crawford and Derek. No, not Derek; <em>he'd</em>
gone back on the other side of the fence, gone back to school.
Crawford had been there. Where was he now?</p>
<p>He tried to think, but it was difficult. The dark wavered and
broke up into small spangles of light when the numb dizziness came
swirling in on him again. Going fishing. Taking the day off to cast
a spinner in the river and test that big run of sea trout. Down the
path, teasing the dogs, then through the corrugated sheet fence and
past the tall weeds. The door had squealed open and he'd looked in
and something had - <em>a man</em> - grabbed him. Hit him. It had
happened so quickly that he hadn't even had time to react. Crawford
had said something. The noise had come from the shadows. An image
of balloon-like breasts hovered there on the wall and then the
looming shape coming out of the dark.</p>
<p>The pain had been unbelievable. The shadow had slashed out and
hit him right on the side of the head and the whole world had
exploded into a fountain of whirling sparks. The pain had punched
from one side of his skull to the other as his head smacked against
the wooden planks. Another explosion, more fiery, more volcanic
than the first, blossomed in a burst of heat and hurt.</p>
<p>"Look at the ti..." Crawford had said and then he'd stopped. To
Don he had sounded suddenly far away in the distance.</p>
<p>Something had him by the neck but there were sparks bursting in
front of his eyes and he couldn't see. All he could feel was the
pain in his head and the rolling nausea bubbling up inside him.
There was a pressure on his neck and he was flying into the air. He
could remember his eyes, blind with the whirling lights, bulging in
their sockets and he recalled the collapsing sensation of his
windpipe.</p>
<p>The pain in his throat was coming back now and his head was
throbbing. The metallic smell of blood was in his mouth and his
nose and when he tried to cry out he found he couldn't make a
sound.</p>
<p>Where was Crawford? Had something happened to him?</p>
<p>He tried to move but his shoulder screeched with pain so badly
that the little lights started orbiting in the dark again. Outside,
out there beyond the door, the angry sound of dogs barking started
up. Somebody yelled and another boy laughed.</p>
<p><em>Crawford</em>? Was he and Derek coming back? He turned and
smeared a trail of blood on the floor.</p>
<p>Somebody rattled a stick along a taut wire, making it jangle.
The greyhounds started up their hysterical barking once more.</p>
<p>"Skinny big buggers," a boy's voice bawled. Another boy
sniggered again. Not Crawford, not Derek. A metal sound, like a tin
can banged against something hard, rang out tunelessly. The dogs
went into a frenzy. He could hear the thud of running feet and the
whoops of schoolboys, sounding just like himself and his pals, but
they were out there, running up the track he had come down. They
were heading back to school and he was, he was...</p>
<p>The bit bull terrier roared savagely and he could hear the
protesting squeal of wire as it slammed against the fence, followed
by the jeering laughter of the boys going up the hill. He tried to
call out again but all he managed was a gurgle in the back of his
throat.</p>
<p>He shivered involuntarily, smearing blood against the floor
again and a bubble swelled at his nostril before bursting silently.
Far off in the distance, he could hear the clamour of kids up on
the hill behind the school, like the squalling of wheeling gulls,
faint but clear. Here and there he could make out an individual
hoarse cry, a higher yell. Somebody screamed like a girl. All the
normal noises of school at lunch time.</p>
<p>The scream came again, high and wavering, distant, but closer
than the school sounds. A moment later the bell rang, to tell
everyone to line up and get ready for the afternoon classes.
Crawford had disappeared. Don tried to think but he couldn't
remember. Had he run away? He must have. He must have seen what had
happened. He would be up there at the school getting help, getting
a doctor, calling for an ambulance. Help would be here soon.</p>
<p>He tried to stop shivering, but he couldn't find a way and the
heel of his black school shoe drummed an uneven rap on the hard
floor. His throat spasmed and a sudden dread overtook him that it
would lock shut and he would choke on the blood. He coughed and a
saw-blade of hurt rasped into his shoulder. Of a sudden, Don
Whalen's mind cleared enough to let him realise that he was in
awful danger. Very slowly he got a hand to the floor. He could
smell the blood and the dismal reek of human shit and he couldn't
tell whether it was his own.</p>
<p>Crawford had gone to get help. That was for sure. Wasn't it? He
eased his hand down. It pressed into a wet puddle that could have
been anything, and then he gingerly levered himself up from the
floor, one millimetre at a time, breath rasping, head pounding,
shoulder screeching in protest. He got to a sitting position, still
in the dark. The school sounds had faded, though they would have
been hard to hear over the laboured rasp of his breath. Don pulled
himself to the corner, where he thought the door would be and he
raised his hand to press it against the planking.</p>
<p>His fingers left an almost perfect hand print. It was the full
stop at the end of his tortuous two-yard crawl. Another smudge of
dried blood showed where the sickness and pain and exhaustion had
caused him to slip to the floor. Some time later, he couldn't tell
how long, thudding footsteps roused him out of the dizzy
stupor.</p>
<p>Don Whalen came almost awake when the door opened and a slender
column of light widened to a thick pillar before being cut off
again. The floor and the walls of the rail-wagon shuddered as the
door rolled back on its casters and slammed shut with an awful
finality. He still had not seen anything except the brief flash of
light.</p>
<p>In the dark he could hear the rough sound of breathing,
overlaying his own rasping breath and he knew he was not alone.</p>
<p>"Crawford?" he tried to say, though he somehow knew it was not
his friend. He lay there, frozen in the sudden clench of fear. The
breathing continued for a while, ragged and effortful, dreadfully
close in the dark. Then a footstep shivered the floor and the
breathing got louder.</p>
<hr />
<p>Derek Milne had turned back from the fence, got half-way to the
wall and then stopped and turned back again. He'd an essay to hand
in to Matt Bryson the English teacher, one which should have gone
in two days ago, but which he had pretended to have forgotten,
though in truth he hadn't even written it. His two friends had gone
down the track and in half an hour, he knew they'd be at the Pulpit
Pool on the river, casting for sea-trout.</p>
<p>Indecision stopped him in his tracks. It was a good June day,
late for a run of trout, but last week's rain had raised the river
level enough to give a decent head of water and bring fish in from
the estuary. The afternoon stretched dismally ahead of him. A dull
period of maths and another two, even duller, of English. He walked
ten yards, stopped, looked back at the fence. Beyond there, he
could hear the yapping of the greyhounds and the deeper growl of
another dog and he knew his friends would be at the bottom of the
track by now, heading past the quarry to get the fishing rods from
Crawford's garden hut.</p>
<p>He turned back to the fence, swithered some more, torn between
the desire to go fishing and the sense of self preservation which
demanded he get down to school and write the essay for Matt Bryson.
Derek even put his hands on the fence, ready to limbo under the
bottom bar, when he changed his mind again and ruefully turned
back, heading up the hill towards the Hump. He got over the rise
and saw the milling crowd that had swelled to three or four times
what it had been when he and the others had gone up the hill
together. As soon as he crested the shoulder of the hill the noise
had hit him like a physical force. Boys and girls too, were in the
crowd, crushed together in a swarm. In the nucleus, from his height
advantage, he could see a fist rise up and fall again. The crowd
growled, like a single entity, a strange and eerily fierce sound, a
mixture of alarm and primitive hunger.</p>
<p>"What's going on?" a man's voice bellowed. Mr Doyle, the junior
maths teacher came hurrying up the slope on short, sturdy legs.</p>
<p>"Stop that this minute," he shouted, quite ineffectually. Nobody
heard him. In the milling crowd, everybody was trying to get a
ringside view of the two combatants. Derek made his way down the
hill just as Mr Doyle was coming up. He got to the edge of the
crowd as it swelled and contracted with a life all of its own,
feeling the strange infection of excitement reach and invade
him.</p>
<p>"All of you, move back from there," the teacher snapped, peeved
at the lack of response. His face was red with effort as he came up
the hill at a trot. A few of the girls closest to him peeled away
from the crowd. One of them had lost a shoe and was hopping about
trying to keep her white ankle-sock off the ground.</p>
<p>Another fist flew and a sound like a mallet-strike cracked in
the air. The mob let out a collective groan of appreciation. A boy
yelled, high and vicious. Another cried out, angry but also
frightened.</p>
<p>Mr Doyle waded into the crowd, pulling bodies by the scruff of
their blazers and the hoods of their anoraks, shoving them aside as
he thrust his way to the nucleus. In a few seconds he was up to his
shoulders in the press of pupils, as much part of the crowd as they
were, jostled left and right by the wheeling mass. Finally he
reached the centre. Derek Milne saw him duck down. He was almost
knocked off his feet but he managed to steady himself and when he
came up again, he had a boy in each hand, fingers clenched on their
collars.</p>
<p>The crowd sighed its disappointment and immediately began to
fragment as if some physical attractant had been switched off.
Derek Milne strolled down the hill past the scattering clumps of
pupils. The two boys were still charged up with anger and
adrenaline and despite the dire warnings from the young teacher
they were still trying to aim kicks at each other. Both of them had
bloodied noses and their clothes were slick with mud. The taller of
the two had a black eye swollen and closed over. The stockier one
had a thin trail of blood leaking from his ear.</p>
<p>Derek moved past them, feeling the hot and somehow dangerous
elation drain away from him, and walked down, bag swinging on his
hip, towards the school.</p>
<p>Just as he reached the wall a girl screeched from the top of the
Hump, up beyond where the fight had been. He turned and saw that Mr
Doyle had stopped. The girl screamed again, but from the distance,
Derek couldn't make out what she said. Mr Doyle let the boys go and
went up the hill. They made good their escape before he had got ten
yards. Derek grinned and turned into the doorway just as the bell
rang shrill, heading for the maths class where, with some luck, he
could sit at the back and write his essay. It was not until the
middle of the afternoon that he heard the news.</p>
<p>"Rankine's fell off the quarry."</p>
<p>Derek stopped in his tracks. He was just coming out of the maths
class and about to go up the stairs to Matt Bryson's room to
present his delayed and hastily scrawled work when he heard a boy
tell another with obvious shuddery relish:</p>
<p>"Broke his neck, so he did. There's blood all over the place, I
heard."</p>
<p>"What's that?" Derek asked, more curious, not sure of what he
had heard.</p>
<p>"Didn't you hear? Your pal Rankine fell of the quarry. Took a
header."</p>
<p>"Nah," Derek said, "he couldn't have. He was nowhere near the
quarry..." he stopped again. Crawford and Don had gone down the
track to the back road. They would only have been yards away from
the old quarry entrance.</p>
<p>"It's true, honest. Brian Grittan and big Brenda Fortucci saw
him. They were up on the other side of the fence. She's down at the
nurse screaming her head off."</p>
<p>"When did..." Derek started. "I mean..?"</p>
<p>The other boys looked at him. Everybody was buzzing with the
news, the little horror that had happened to somebody else, all the
more shivery and exciting because it had happened to somebody they
knew. He got to the top of the stairs where the rest of the class
were lined up outside the English room. Everybody was looking at
him expectantly.</p>
<p>"Didn't you and Don go up to the fence with Craw?" somebody
asked. Matt Bryson popped his head out of the doorway. Derek just
turned round and ran down the steps.</p>
<p>"Milne, get yourself back here boy!" the teacher bellowed. "And
you'd better have that essay."</p>
<p>Derek threw himself down the stairs and along the corridor,
pushing smaller kids out of the way. He got to the east exit and
went out, running hard now and by the time he got to the top of the
Hump, he was gasping for breath. On the other side of the fence,
the janitor and two of the teachers were standing close to the drop
off. Beyond the tip, Derek could see nothing, but the blue winking
light of an ambulance reflected repetitively from the damp stone
face on the other side.</p>
<p>"Sir," he called out. One of the teachers turned round. "Sir,
who was it got hurt?"</p>
<p>"Shouldn't you be in class?" Mr Doyle asked.</p>
<p>"Yes sir, but you have to tell me. Who was it?"</p>
<p>The teacher looked at him, considering. The boy was clearly
agitated. He have a little shrug which conveyed kindly intent more
than anything else.</p>
<p>"Crawford Rankine. Is he a friend of..."</p>
<p>"Sir is he dead?"</p>
<p>"That I can't tell you, sonny," Mr Doyle replied. Derek backed
away from the fence, hot tears beginning to swim and blur his
vision.</p>
<hr />
<p>Robert Doyle, known to the pupils as Wee Bob, had reacted very
quickly when he'd got to the top of the hill. The two combatants
escaped and ran away and he forgot all about them when he saw the
prostrate girl on the other side of the fence. He scaled it with
surprising agility and when he dropped to the far side where the
boy was kneeling over the girl, he smelt the sour stink of
vomit.</p>
<p>"What happened?" he asked. "Come on Brian, she's been sick. Has
she eaten something? Drunk something?" The boy mumbled and then he
threw up again. For a few seconds Bob Doyle thought they'd both
been sick. But the boy wiped his mouth.</p>
<p>"No sir, she's fainted." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
"It's the boy. He's dead."</p>
<p>The teacher looked at him, brows knitted together in puzzlement.
On the grass the girl moaned. A couple of her buttons had loosened
and a large white breast, marbled with blue veins, was trying to
pop out under the pressure of its own weight. Bob Doyle drew his
eyes away.</p>
<p>"Over there sir. He fell off the quarry." The boy's face
contorted and his mouth spasmed in a wide retching gape, but he
managed to contain it this time. "Brenda fainted. There's blood all
over the place," he added.</p>
<p>Just as he said that, the girl's eyes fluttered open and she
pushed herself upright. She took one look at Brian and fell back
against the grass again. Mr Doyle got to the edge of the quarry and
looked down. There was nothing to be seen down there. The base of
the old diggings was far below, hidden in the shade and the clumps
of brambles and tangled dog roses. The massive blocks of stone
heaped on each other in a series of giant steps leading to the
bottom. There was nobody down at the quarry bed, no bloody and
broken body.</p>
<p>Brian Grittan came stumbling over to join him and the teacher
grabbed the boy by the elbow, wondering if perhaps he and the girl
had been drinking. He began to lean inwards to smell the boy's
breath when the lad pointed down and to the left where the thick
ivy rooted in a crevice. Bob Doyle followed the pointed finger. The
flat surface of a block of red sandstone lay close to the vertical
wall. He blinked and everything jumped into focus. It was no red
sandstone. It was a red splash on the stone. The body lay
spread-eagled close to the edge. Palms up, white face tilted to the
blue sky.</p>
<p>"Oh my god," the teacher whispered.</p>
<p>He stared at the blood and at the still body for a few moments
longer. Then he turned, grabbed the boy by the arm and walked him
back to the fence. He told him to stay with the girl and not to let
her near the edge, fearful that she might wake up and stumble over
the precipice. That done, he clambered over the fence and ran down
the hill and into the school. The ambulance got to the quarry in
thirteen minutes and by the time the crew reached the flat rock,
Father O'Connor, the school chaplain who had been giving a
religious talk on the need for chastity in these devilish times,
had clambered down with Bob Doyle and Jake Dennink the physical
education teacher The priest was anointing the boy's bloodied head,
hoping to speed his soul through the searing, unavoidable cleansing
fires of purgatory.</p>
<p>As it happened, Crawford Rankine was not dead. He was one of the
few people who had come in contact with the man with the twitchy
eyes and survived. He lost four pints of blood and had a dreadful
depressed fracture in his skull. His pelvis and both elbows were
shattered and needed twenty seven pins in an operation described at
the time as 'pioneering'. But he was not dead.</p>
<p>It was a surprise to the police that he woke up two days later
and was able, despite his injury, to tell them what had happened,
up to the point of climbing up the quarry with the man hot on his
heels. After that, he could not remember anything. Neither did he
know what had happened to his friend Don Whalen. He thought the man
had hit him.</p>
<p>Derek Milne ran all the way to Crawford's place, still unable to
believe what had happened, that his friend had been killed in the
quarry. He sneaked in through the old wooden gate, hunching down
out of sight behind the trimmed privet hedge, and round to the
garden hut, knowing that the teacher had got it wrong, and that the
rods would be gone, and somebody else, somebody he didn't really
know, would be lying dead at the bottom of the cliff.</p>
<p>But the old Greenheart spinning rod and the even older
split-cane wand were angled in the corner of the shed.</p>
<p>By now Derek was badly frightened. He hadn't waited around to
ask what had happened to Don, but if he had been with Crawford in
the quarry, then he was probably hurt as well. No matter what had
happened, he himself, was in big trouble, because he knew they were
dodging off school to go fishing. He had condoned it. If he had
stopped them, Crawford would still be alive. (And if he'd gone with
them, he too could be smashed on a rock in the quarry) He went
round to Don's place and hung about, scared and guilty. His
friend's young sister came home after four and got the key on the
string inside the letterbox. She let herself in. Don waited for an
hour. Mrs Whalen came come, carrying two bags of groceries. Later,
Don's father came in, hands still black from the foundry. Derek
went home and his mother, who had been on the verge of calling the
police, demanded to know where he'd been. It was at this point that
Derek burst into real tears and he told his mother that his friend
had been killed.</p>
<p>At eight o'clock that night, Sergeant McNicol knocked on the
door. The big uniformed policeman who was with him accepted a cup
of tea and dwarfed Derek's father as they sat round the kitchen
table, with Derek's pale face between them.</p>
<p>Angus McNicol's face visibly brightened when he heard Derek's
story. It was bad, but it could have been worse.</p>
<p>"So the boys were going fishing and you turned back?"</p>
<p>Derek nodded.</p>
<p>"But they must have come back as well, taking the short cut to
school," Angus prompted and the boy nodded again. "So with a bit of
luck, then the other boy could still be in the quarry?"</p>
<p>Angus slapped the boy on the shoulder. He was grinning from ear
to ear because as soon as he heard a boy had gone missing, he had
feared the worst. Now there was a perfectly logical and reasonable
explanation. Both boys had scaled the face of the quarry. If one
had fallen, it was a fair assumption that the other had been with
him. He could have tumbled, fallen into a crevice and if that was
true, the chances were that he'd be hurt too, but possibly still
alive. Even if he was dead, McNicol thought pragmatically, it would
be better for all, better for the town if he'd fallen off a cliff
and died, rather than been killed by the maniac who had taken the
lives of Neil Hopkirk and little Lucy Saunders. Most likely, Angus
thought to himself, as he admitted many years later, Don Whalen had
got such a scare, seeing his pal crash onto the rock, that he'd
simply run away and was hiding somewhere, probably still in a state
of shock. He'd turn up.</p>
<p>"I've got good news, sonny," he told the pale and snivelling
lad. "Young Crawford's hurt pretty sore, but he's still alive. You
did the right thing not dodging school, especially with this bad
fellow around the town, but I hope you've learned a lesson. You've
got to stay with your mates, stay close, and don't be bunking off
anywhere out of sight. This man's a nasty piece of work."</p>
<p>"Don't worry sergeant," Derek's father said. "He certainly has
learned a lesson."</p>
<p>The police set up floodlights on the top of the quarry and
angled them down, bathing the whole workings in silvery light and
sending harsh shadows behind every bush and clump of ivy. The
lights glistened from the damp sheen on the vertical faces. They
brought the dogs in to search all over and a team of divers from
the navy base came down in a big blue truck and searched all night
in the narrow shafts that were filled with water. They found the
carcass of a black Labrador dog that had fallen in and was now
bloated with gas. At the bottom of one shaft they found a human
foot, now bare bones, inside a remarkably well preserved boot and
at first the police thought they had another murder hunt on their
hands until it was proven to be fifty years old. It's former owner,
a seventy five-year-old retired quarrier who stayed with his
daughter in the far end of town, had lost it in a blasting accident
just after the first world war and the foot had never been
discovered until now.</p>
<p>There was no sign at all of Don Whalen.</p>
<p>Two days later, Crawford Rankine woke up and told the police
about the man who had chased him. A tall man with dark eyes and
thick black hair hanging below his collar and Hector Kelso, who was
in charge of the murder hunt knew the man with the twitchy eyes had
struck again.</p>
<p>"We're looking for a body," he told the team.</p>
<p>They did not find it for ten days.</p>
<p>Police Superintendent Kelso, using his genius for reconstructing
the scene, worked out what had happened. The door of the railway
truck was wide open, letting in the bright sunlight. He'd put down
folded newspapers where he wanted to put his feet, even after the
place had been sampled and dusted by the forensics team. He pointed
out where the boy had been knocked against the wood, and where his
shoe had hit the other side, leaving a scuff of mud.</p>
<p>"My guess is that the man came back pretty quickly," Kelso had
said. "Maybe if the boy had more time, even just a couple of
minutes, he'd have found the door, but I don't think he'd have
opened it. But he was moving on his own all right. These prints are
clean, not smeared, and you can see where he's been pushing himself
along. He was hurt, but not dead. You can rely on that." Kelso
looked around at the rest of them. "But I won't take any bets that
he's alive now."</p>
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<h1>15</h1>
<p><em>August 1. 5 pm...</em></p>
<p>The bird flapped laboriously into the air, a grey shadow rising
above the ferns bordering the stream. Without thinking, more an
instinctive reaction, Danny threw his stick at the motion and his
aim, quite uncharacteristically for him, was easily six foot wide
of the mark. The stick flew though the air, making a whirring sound
as it spun end over end.</p>
<p>The slow, whooshing wingbeats pushed the heron forward, the neck
curved in a white serpent-shape and its long dagger-beak pointed at
the sky. It flew straight into the path of the whirling piece of
wood. The thrown stick caught it at the base of the neck and the
bird simply stalled in its flight. The branch flipped onwards and
landed in a hazel bush. A small white breast feather tumbled
outwards. The heron dropped to the earth and hit with a thump. One
wing flapped madly, while the other was clenched tight in against
its body. The beating wing carried the big bird around in ungainly
circles, a graceful thing now graceless, clumsy and broken.</p>
<p>"Bloody <em>great</em> shot," Billy whooped.</p>
<p>Danny's heart sank. He hadn't even known what he was throwing
at. He had only seen a movement beside the ferns, a rabbit, maybe a
hare. He'd lobbed plenty of rocks at plenty of rabbits for many a
summer and he'd never succeeded in hitting any one of them.</p>
<p>Now the beautiful bird was down, its beak opening and closing
like a slender trap, making no bird noise, but emitting a harsh and
ragged hiss that made him think it was choking. Its head was
twisted at an odd angle.</p>
<p>"Didya see that shot?" Billy yelled again. Doug, following
behind, still stripped to his sting vest popped his head over the
fern tops.</p>
<p>"What's happening?"</p>
<p>Danny ran forward, the soles of his thin canvas shoes pattering
on the smooth stones as he crossed the stream at the shallows.
Billy was right behind him, ignoring the stepping stones, splashing
through the water.</p>
<p>The heron flapped madly with its one good wing.</p>
<p>"Kill it," Billy said. "Kill it before it gets away."</p>
<p>Danny froze. The bird was broken. The long and slender legs were
stuck out below it as if they were incapable of taking the weight.
A delicate crest of feathers flowed back from the smooth white
head. The long, yellow dagger of a beak opened and closed with a
faint snapping noise.</p>
<p>"I didn't mean it," Danny said.</p>
<p>"Did you hit it?" Doug called from the far side. "What is it? A
cormorant?"</p>
<p>"It's a flamin' stork."</p>
<p>"A heron," Danny said lamely. He edged forward and picked up his
stick. The bird hissed and its bright yellow eye fixed on him. It
made a lunge to protect itself, the beak knifing forward, but its
co-ordination went awry and the lunge took it a foot past Danny's
toe. The beak slapped on the short grass like a mis-thrown knife.
An unbidden tear sparked in Danny's eye and he blinked it
back..</p>
<p>"I didn't mean it, honest," he protested. If he could have
<em>un</em>thrown the stick, if he had simply waited for a second,
the bird would have soared into the air, surprised by their
approach, alarmed maybe, but it would have risen on those whooping
wings and taken to the sky. The eye fixed on him again, bright
yellow with a sparkling black pupil that widened then contracted to
a pinpoint as the head turned towards the sun.</p>
<p>An awful feeling of wrongdoing settled upon him.</p>
<p>"Bloody brilliant shot," Billy was saying. "Got it right in the
neck." He was dancing around excitedly, poking his own stick at the
stricken bird. He knocked it on the beak and the heron snapped
weakly at the piece of wood. "Look at the size of the thing. It's
like a flamin' turkey. That could keep us going for a week."</p>
<p>"Can you eat them?"</p>
<p>" 'course."</p>
<p>Danny wasn't listening. All he could see was the bright, glazed
eye that seemed to be hold him with an accusing glare, and the
hissing rasp as the bird hauled for air through its damaged neck.
An ominous sense of foreboding stole over him. He'd thrown the
stick and hit the bird. He could see where its neck was broken,
down at the base close to the shoulder. It was dying.</p>
<p>A small cloud passed over and dimmed the bright sunlight. It
happened all of a sudden and Danny shivered inside himself as a
sense of misfortune overtook him. It was as if the deed had been
witnessed, the simple casual destruction of a heron, by some force
of nature that had darkened the day because of the act. A tear of
guilt and regret brimmed over Danny's eyelid and rolled down his
cheek. None of the others noticed. Doug had come across the stream
and was now crouched down some feet away. Danny knuckled the tear
away.</p>
<p>"Bust its neck," Doug said. "Spot on. Never knew you were that
good." There was no sense of regret in his voice, merely a
curiosity and, of course, admiration.</p>
<p>"I didn't mean it," Danny insisted. The bird was still flopping
around, though less frenziedly now. It whirled in a circle and then
stopped. The beak opened and it sighed, or at least that's what it
sounded like. From that long dagger, it had an oddly unnerving
human quality.</p>
<p>"What'll we do?" Billy asked.</p>
<p>"It's dying," Danny replied. He could hear his own voice tight
and cracking. "It's hurt." He took three steps forward and swung
his stick in the air and brought it down in a fast arc. It caught
the heron on the back of the head. The beating wing went into a
spasm of frantic movement then it slowed to a shivering tremble.
The beak opened once and then closed again very slowly. The
lifelight faded from the yellow eye and the bird was dead.</p>
<p>It lay there on the short grass beside a clump of ferns. In
death it took on a certain dignity and the twist in its neck, where
the fine bones had been dislocated was not quite so apparent. It
could have been sleeping - if herons ever did lie down to sleep -
except for the fact that its sightless eye was wide open and fixed,
still fixed accusingly on Danny Gillan.</p>
<p>He turned quickly and went across the stream again, this time
ignoring the stepping stones. The small while cloud passed quickly,
taking its shadow with it and the sunlight flooded back into the
valley. But as Danny followed the path back down to where they'd
stopped to camp, the strange and uncomfortable sense of foreboding
followed him.</p>
<p>Corky had the fire lit and it crackled inside the ring of smooth
stones they'd brought up from the stream. He and Tom were peeling
potatoes and in an old dried milk can, blackened and with a bent
wire for a handle water was bubbling away. Tom stood up when the
others approached.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"A heron," Doug said. "Danny hit it in the air. Must have been
fifty yards away." Doug exaggerated. The bird had been much closer.
"Knocked it right out of the sky."</p>
<p>"Big, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"You should have left it," Danny said. Corky was looking at the
bird admiringly as Billy spread out the wide grey wings.</p>
<p>"Never seen one up close before," he said admiringly.</p>
<p>"I didn't mean it," Danny said again, and the others looked at
him. "I wish I hadn't hit it. It'll have yunks in the nest waiting
for it. They'll starve."</p>
<p>Billy held the slender neck up in one hand, letting both wings
trail. The bird was as tall as Tom when it was stretched out. The
blinkless yellow eye still found Danny.</p>
<p>"This one won't scare all the trout away," Billy observed.
"We'll get all the fish we want. And we can eat this too."</p>
<p>"No," Danny said. "Hide it."</p>
<p>"What's the matter with you?" Corky asked reasonably. "It's only
a bird."</p>
<p>Danny tried to tell him it was more than that. He'd seen the
heron taking off, its neck coiled to rest the head on the shoulders
while the great beak pointed at the sky. It had been a magnificent
thing full of wild life and slender beauty and he'd thrown the
stick and broken it. <em>Killed it.</em></p>
<p>He couldn't explain. They wouldn't understand. Billy stood there
with the bird dangling from one hand, his dark hair gleaming in the
sun and his tanned shoulders making him look more like a young
Indian brave triumphantly showing a kill.</p>
<p>He turned and strode up to the gnarled hawthorn tree that spread
its twisted branches out in a high arch in the hollow beside a low
wall of rock. Before they'd gone off exploring the left side of the
stream they'd gathered sticks and branches for firewood and stacked
it in the rough natural shelf in case it rained. Billy put the bird
down on one log, letting the head dangle over the side. He slipped
his old knife from the leather sheath and started to hack away at
the neck. It took several hits before the head fell away attached
to six inches of white neck that ended in a bloody draggle of
feathers.</p>
<p>He held it up, wagging his hand up and down trying to make the
beak open and close.</p>
<p>"Look. I got it to talk," he called down. Doug laughed. Billy
did a little dance that made him look even more like a tribal
warrior, slapping his hand against his mouth to give a tribal yell.
The ragged end of the neck jangled in his hand and thick droplets
of blood splashed over his bare shoulders and chest. He looked down
at the congealing splotches and pulled a face.</p>
<p>"Oh Jeez," he bawled.</p>
<p>"Heap big warrior, scared of blood," Corky said.</p>
<p>"It's horrible," Billy protested. He turned and stuck the head
in the cleft between two branches of the hawthorn tree, leaving the
beak pointing down towards the campfire. He came down towards the
others. Out of the shade they could see the large drops of blood,
scarlet freckles on his smooth skin.</p>
<p>Doug reached out and speared one with his finger, drawing a line
of red down Billy's back. The other boy spun round angrily.</p>
<p><em>And they marked the lintels with the blood so that the angel
of death would pass over</em>. The line from Exodus sprung unbidden
into Danny's head, but the feeling of wrong-doing stayed with him,
as if he'd broken more than the heron.</p>
<p>"Makes you more like an Apache," Doug said. He poked out again
and smeared the blood on Billy's chest, leaving three thin
trails.</p>
<p>"That's really horrible," Billy said. "And it stinks as well."
He passed Corky who reached and smudged the lines, making a
criss-cross pattern. Billy jerked away, crossing to the other end
of the fire. Through the wavering air over the flames they saw him
head down towards the stream. As he passed close to a small wild
hazel bush, a small swarm of flies came buzzing out, danced in the
air and went following the scent of blood.</p>
<p>Billy did a strange little dance as the flies whirled around
him, suddenly taking him by surprise. He flapped them away and then
slapped at his own skin. "Bloody flies. They're eating me
alive."</p>
<p>"Heap brave warrior shitting his pants," Corky said and he and
Doug and Tom cracked up with sudden laughter. Billy got to the
stream, waded in without hesitation and then ducked right under the
surface. When he came up, snorting for breath they saw him quickly
wipe away the smears of blood. The coil of flies danced around him
momentarily and then flew back into the bush again.</p>
<p>Billy came wading up to the campfire grinning widely.</p>
<p>"What, no war paint?" Corky asked sarcastically. "You'll get
drummed out of the cubs."</p>
<p>"Out of the brownies, more like," Tom said.</p>
<p>"Honest to God, those flies are like vampires. See the fangs
they've got?" Billy clenched his own teeth in a demonstration and
then started to laugh. He came up close to the fire and the water
splashing from his soaked jeans hissed on the hot stones.</p>
<p>"So what's for dinner?" he asked.</p>
<p>The heron's head still stared out from the fork in the tree, a
trophy to Danny's great skill as a hunter. The staring, filmy eyes
snagged him while Billy was wading in the stream, trying to escape
the cloud of flies. The feeling of guilt and the underlying
sensation of foreboding, having broken a taboo still hung around
him.</p>
<p>"Come on, Danny boy," Billy called over. "Doug nicked a tin of
corned beef. Want some?"</p>
<p>A few large black flies were hovering around the bloody stump of
the dead bird's neck where it flopped across the log. Another one
flew up to the head and alighted on the yellow eye, rubbing its
forelegs together. Danny turned away, knowing he would have to take
the thing down and hide it.</p>
<p>"Will we eat first or fix up the tent?" Corky asked.</p>
<p>"Eat first," Doug and Billy said simultaneously. Tom voted along
with them. Danny came down from the tree and tried to put the
feeling of guilt and odd apprehension away from him.</p>
<p>The potatoes were hard from not being boiled long enough and the
beans were speckled with ash from the fire, but the boys wolfed the
lot and then threw their tin plates in the stream to let the
current clean them off. Danny and Corky dragged the tent out onto
the flat a few yards away from the fire and untied the stays, to
roll the heavy green canvas out. The bag of tent-pegs rolled to the
side and thumped to the ground. Another tightly wound roll of
burlap dropped and hit the hard turf with a clatter.</p>
<p>"What's that?" Corky asked. He unravelled the dirty piece of
sacking and spilled the contents onto the grass.</p>
<p>"No wonder it was so heavy," he said. A heavy ballpeen hammer
lay on top of the short black curve of a crowbar. Beside it lay a
pair of electrician's heavy duty pliers with insulated handles and
a long screwdriver with a crooked blade. Corky flipped the canvas
so that all of the contents rolled out. Billy darted forward and
grabbed a tightly-rolled magazine held in a cylinder with a rubber
band. Doug picked up a shiny and expensive-looking Ronson varaflame
cigarette lighter that was the height of technology of the day. A
small box covered in black velvet revealed two gold cufflinks
inlaid with black onyx. A smaller canvas bundle showed what Danny
thought was a Luger pistol, but turned out to be an old pump-action
airgun. Beside it a rattling tin held the lead slugs.</p>
<p>"No wonder he didn't want us to have the tent," Corky said.</p>
<p>"What do you mean?" Tom asked the obvious question.</p>
<p>"This is where he's been hiding his stash. And his gear."</p>
<p>"I don't get it? Tom insisted.</p>
<p>"It's his B&amp;E gear. For getting into places. Like garages
and bike sheds. Like people's houses?" He started meaningfully at
Tom who looked blank.</p>
<p>"Breaking and entering. Like what Mole Hopkirk used to get up
to. I never saw that lighter before, or the cufflinks. Or the
airgun. He must have swiped them and hid them there."</p>
<p>"And I never saw tits like that before," Billy said, spreading
out the magazine on the grass. "Look at the size of them." He
turned the picture around to show the others. "That's Marilyn
Monroe."</p>
<p>"No it isn't," Doug debated. "But it's like her." Unconsciously
he dropped his hand to his crotch and fumbled himself into a
comfortable position.</p>
<p>Corky gave the picture a glance. "Brenda Fortucci's got bigger
ones."</p>
<p>"She's got bigger everything," Doug said. "And a face like the
backside of a double-decker bus."</p>
<p>"We've seen better than that, eh Dan?" Corky asked, giving Danny
a wink. Danny still had that picture of Jane Hartfield branded on
his mind, every curve of her as she strode down the path with fire
in her eyes and a flush on her face. Doug was about to ask what
Corky was talking about when Billy whooped.</p>
<p>"A goddess," he said appreciatively, lowering his voice to what
he thought sounded like a lecherous growl. "A livin' doll." He
snatched the magazine up and formed his lips into a pout.</p>
<p>"Mmmm," he kissed the printed breasts then pecked at the red
lips of the smiling woman then dropped his mouth to plant another
smacker on the curve of her buttock.</p>
<p>"Wish you could see the front," Billy said.</p>
<p>"Wish you could see where that's been. Phil's probably had that
under the blankets, and now you've kissed it."</p>
<p>"Argh," Billy said, drawing his face into a contorted twist of
disgust. He spat quickly as if he'd eaten something foul.</p>
<p>"Oh, that's fuckin' awful. You don't think he <em>came</em> on
it?"</p>
<p>Tom started laughing and even Danny started to giggle though the
two of them were still below the cusp of puberty and while they'd
heard plenty weren't exactly sure what the description entailed.
Something came out and it was white and sticky, but what made that
happen wasn't within their scope of experience yet.</p>
<p>"Yeah," Corky said. "Every night for a week. All over it, and
now you've got it in your mouth."</p>
<p>"No. Don't say that," Billy pleaded. He held the magazine up to
the light to inspect the pages. "No, he couldn't have. I can't see
anything."</p>
<p>"That's 'cause it goes invisible," Doug said, keeping it up.
"Just like germs, but it's worse than germs. If you get somebody's
come in your mouth you get VD."</p>
<p>"What's that?" Tom asked.</p>
<p>"Venial disease," Doug said. "And it's fatal every time."</p>
<p>"No, don't say that," Billy begged. He stuck his tongue out and
began to wipe it with his fingers.</p>
<p>"It rots your skin and it gets into your dick and makes it fall
off," Doug pressed it home, winking at Corky, grinning broadly.</p>
<p>"And the only cure is to get a sharp spike with barbs on it.
They put it right down and then rip it back out and it brings all
the scabs with it, and all the poison and it feels like you piss
broken bottles for about a year. Mybe more."</p>
<p>Billy winced, screwing up his face at the very thought. He
crossed his legs in an involuntary protective motion against such
an event.</p>
<p>"They call it the Wassermatter reaction. Phil told me about it.
He knew a guy who had it done and it left his dick shredded to
pieces and he had to sit down to pee after that."</p>
<p>"Oh Jeez," Billy said, his imagination running riot.</p>
<p>"And if you get it," Doug said, head turned away from Billy so
that his grin couldn't be seen. "You can never get in the Commandos
once you've had VD. They do an inspection right down your willy to
see if you've had the scabs. And they can tell if you caught it
from somebody else's spunk. I read that somewhere. You'd get done
for being a queer-boy. Nobody likes them. They can even throw you
in jail for that."</p>
<p>Doug was about to go on when he realised what he'd said. Jail
was a taboo subject. He turned quickly to Corky.</p>
<p>"Sorry man. I didn't mean anything..."</p>
<p>Corky slapped him on the shoulder. "No problem Doug." He turned
and indicated the pile of tools and goods on the grass. "If Phil
gets caught with this lot, he'll be up in Drumbain himself." He
gave a rueful grin and Danny thought he was being really big about
it. "See, Billy? Once they catch you, you can have company in the
cell. You and Crazy Phil banged up in the Drum.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't share a cell with that bastard if he was the last
man on earth," Billy said with feeling. He spat again. "Not after
what he's done."</p>
<p>"Oh, don't worry about it. It might not be VD at all. It might
be <em>Siff</em>."</p>
<p>Billy raised his eyebrows hopefully. He might have been the
biggest among them and the oldest, but he was the least well
informed.</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"Don't you ever read anything except Commando comics?" Doug came
back in. "It's even worse than VD. It rots your nose and then your
skin it turns your brain to mush. You end up like a walking
skeleton. Like a zombie."</p>
<p>"That's all right then," Tom said. "Nobody will ever
notice."</p>
<p>Everybody looked at Tom. He looked back, face straight. Then all
four of them burst out laughing, all doubled up and howling
helplessly while Billy stood there, scraping his tongue against the
edge of his teeth, wondering what they were laughing at, convinced
he could already feel the contamination working inside him.</p>
<p>"What's this?" Doug asked. He'd lifted the box with the
cuff-links and the little velvet holder had flipped out, revealing
two oblong foil shapes. He held one up.</p>
<p>"Chewing gum?"</p>
<p>Corky reached for one. "It's a johnny," he said.</p>
<p>"What's that?" Tom asked, completely innocent.</p>
<p>"You put it over your dick so you don't get the siff," Corky
said. "It's got germolene or something inside it. Penicillin
maybe."</p>
<p>"Let's see," Doug said, snatching it back. He ripped the foil
and pulled out the pink shape. The little nipple flopped outwards.
"Couldn't even get Tom's little willy into that," he said and they
all hooted, even Tom, who took no offence at all.</p>
<p>"Naw. I've seen used ones down at the sewer pipe," Billy said.
"They're bigger than that."</p>
<p>Doug worked at it until the end began to unravel. He held it up,
pale and translucent, stretching it between his hands. "It's a
balloon," he said. "Who's stick their dick in a balloon?"</p>
<p>"Daft Phil would," Billy said and they all had a laugh at that.
Doug brought the rubber up to his lips and blew into the thing. It
inflated immediately, even quicker than the bewildered frog had
done. He drew breath and blew in again until the rubber was the
size of a football.</p>
<p>"That would fit me now," Tom said and this time Doug almost
choked. The rubber slipped from his hands and flipped away on a
bubbling fart of expelled air. It landed in the bush, just out of
reach, dangling from the thorns like a thin skin. By this time they
were all convulsed with laughter and Billy was actually rolling on
the ground, holding his belly. Corky was rubbing tears from his
eyes.</p>
<p>Eventually the laughter faded. Doug stuck the other condom into
the pocket of his jeans and they cleared a space to erect the tent,
spreading the guy lines out on either side under Corky's directions
and getting the stout centre pole straight. The original cords had
long since frayed and now the boys used a roll of rough and hairy
baling twine that was coiled round a baton of wood. Another length
of fine wire that they'd found last summer on a fence post at
Cargill Farm stretched from the back pole to one of the trees
behind, to keep everything steady. The ballpeen hammer came in
handy for getting the tent-pegs hammered into the hard ground. In
half an hour, much longer than it would have taken the boys in the
scout troop, the old green tent was fixed up, a little swaybacked
and with side closest to the stream flapping loosely, but it would
take them all at a squeeze come nightfall.</p>
<p>Doug brewed some tea in the blackened milk-can and slung in a
small sliver of wood which he said would help draw the fire-ash to
the surface. They drank it in their old chipped mugs and while they
had no milk, they were in the great outdoors, miles away from the
town, miles away from the pressures of home and it tasted just
fine.</p>
<p>"Does Phil really break in to places?" Tom asked.</p>
<p>Corky shrugged. "I wouldn't put it past him, but I wouldn't ask
him neither, if I was you." He winked and then spiralled a finger
around his own temple. "He's not so hot in the brains department,
not like his handsome, intelligent kid brother."</p>
<p>"Ugly and thick brother," Billy responded automatically.</p>
<p>"Oh, the big chief hunter of flies has spoken," Corky said and
gave Billy two fingers. "Up yours Harrison. Up to the elbow." It
was all said without rancour, almost like an automatic litany of
responses. He turned back to Tom.</p>
<p>"But he'll be mad as a wet hen when he finds out what
<em>we've</em> found out. I'll have to think of something. Like
tell him we didn't use the tent."</p>
<p>"Maybe we should go back and he'll never know we found it,"
Danny ventured. It was the first time the thought had entered his
mind. It just came up from nowhere and he'd simply uttered it. He
didn't feel right about that heron. It had disturbed him, taken the
shine off the day, put a shadow on the adventure. This morning Phil
Corcoran had thrown a knife at him and his luck had saved him, let
him off with a small bruise on the side of his head. Now he felt as
if that luck wouldn't hold. He couldn't, if asked, have coherently
explained why. Tom looked up at him, blew the steam off the surface
of his tea. He nodded. "Maybe we should go back."</p>
<p>Corky shook his head. "Nah, not since we've come this far. That
tent weighs a ton, and I'm not carrying it back. Phil can wait
until we get home."</p>
<p>"Can't stop now," Doug agreed. "We must be at least half way
there."</p>
<p>"Yeah we want to find the Dummy Village," Billy backed him up,
the threat of disease forgotten and his face now animated. "We'll
be the first. There might be guns left behind. Maybe even machine
guns." He had dragged the flopped body of the heron away to the
side and was pulling the broad flight feathers from the ends of the
wings, each of them coming out reluctantly.</p>
<p>Danny looked at Tom. The feeling of apprehension was still
there, but they had come this far. Tom was still unnerved from the
gorse-fire. He'd had a real scare, and Danny could tell he really
did want to go home, but that he didn't want to be the first to
back out.</p>
<p>"Come on Danny boy," Billy said. "We can play commandos. It'll
be just like in the war." He held up a bunch of the wide grey
feathers. "Or even cowboys and injuns." He took a length of the
baling twine and tied it around his head, then jammed some of the
feathers through it, making them stand upright. The head-dress made
him look even more like a young brave. He grinned proudly, waving
the rest of them in his hands and doing a little shuffling
dance.</p>
<p>Danny shrugged, and that committed Tom. Corky winked at him and
slung an arm around Tom's neck, giving him a quick and friendly
headlock. "The famous five ride again, amigos," he said.</p>
<p>When they finished their tea Corky loaded the air pistol and
they spent a half an hour firing at the empty tin of corned beef
which they set up on a stone on the far side. The steep sides of
the deep gully spat the pistol-cracks back at them, but only Billy
managed to hit the tin and even then, the spring on the old gun was
so weak that it hardly made a dent. Finally Doug put a stone in his
catapult and winged it at the can, hitting it dead centre and
sending it tumbling into the air. The sun was high, edging over the
east side of the valley to shine directly into the stream. The
light spangled up from the ripples below the low falls.</p>
<p>"I vote we go and look for it now," Billy said. He'd taken off
his feathers which were now looped over the tent-pole and he was
now lying on his belly on the short grass, soaking up the sun,
while Doug gently touched his skin with a stalk of grass. Every now
and again Billy would bat away what he thought was a horse-fly.
Doug grinned mischievously and kept up the nuisance.</p>
<p>"Too late now," Danny said. "If we start early tomorrow we'll
have all day."</p>
<p>"How about exploring the stream?" Corky said. He pointed to the
fork ahead where the two canyons met, joining from separate
tributaries at a narrow angle. "I've never been up there."</p>
<p>"I was up once, catching trout last winter," Danny said. "Me and
Al Crombie. There's a good bit like a wall right across the gully
and the water comes out in big arch. You can get right behind the
waterfall."</p>
<p>"I read that in a book," Corky said. "Hawkeye. Him and his pal
Chingachgook were hiding under the falls. It was like a cave." He
hauled himself to his feet. "Let's go see."</p>
<p>He bent quickly and slapped Billy hard on the reddening skin of
his back just where Doug was mischievously trailing the ear of
grass. Billy yelped.</p>
<p>"Big horsefly," Corky said. "Biggest I ever saw. Had to smack it
off before it got you."</p>
<p>Billy glared at him, unsure of whether Corky was taking the
mickey or not.</p>
<p>"Would I lie to you Billy-O?" Corky asked, knuckling the bigger
lad on the shoulder. "I just saved your life, didn't I?"</p>
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<h1>16</h1>
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p>"The trail had gone cold by the time we really started looking,"
Angus McNicol explained. "By God, it was difficult then and the
whole town was in a panic. People were sending their kids away,
rather than have them around here, and nobody could blame them.</p>
<p>"What threw us was the fact that the Rankine boy had fallen off
the quarry and at first it looked just like an accident. There were
always boys coming off the Castle ramparts or the Langmuir Crags,
risking life and limb for the sake of birds eggs. You'll have done
the same eh?"</p>
<p>His face broke into a knowing smile before he cocked an eye at
the spinning reel in the Dictaphone and started talking again.</p>
<p>"We didn't start the search for young Whalen until night and we
got the floodlights set up. It was well after midnight by the time
the frogmen came. The dogs had scoured the whole of the quarry and
there was no sign of the boy, but that didn't mean he wasn't there.
Then there was the business with that boot and the severed foot
which gave that frogman a right old scare.</p>
<p>"Anyhow, it was back down to the station in the early hours of
the morning. We were coming round to the notion that the other boy
hadn't fallen and maybe he'd had such a scare when his friend
tumbled that he'd taken off in a panic. So, at that moment, we had
a missing boy who had probably made himself missing. He'd be out at
some friend's place, or hiding in a gang hut and he'd come home
when he got hungry and even more scared..</p>
<p>"Then Hector Kelso came in now that the boy had been gone for
well over twelve hours.</p>
<p>"Hector got a brief from the inspector. I remember he listened
with a straight face. He asked where the boy's bag was, and said
that if young Rankine had been dodging off school, then he'd likely
have his bag with him unless he'd stashed it someplace. We did
another search of the place and that took us the rest of the day. I
could see Hector Kelso was getting worried, for Whalen never turned
up on the second night and I spent a bit of time with the boy's
mother. That's not a pleasant job, I can tell you. As every minute
ticked away, you could see her nerves getting wound up tighter and
tighter. There was something in her eyes that I'll never forget,
and I swear to you that it was beginning to dawn on her, long
before it dawned on anybody else with the exception maybe of Kelso,
that she would never see the boy again. Not alive, that is.</p>
<p>"Then Crawford Rankine came round in the hospital. "The boy had
a fractured skull and for a while they thought his brains would be
like porridge in there, but he was pretty clear about what had
happened. He told us about the railway wagon and how he'd been
chased and had gone running. He remembered the man all right.</p>
<p>"I recall thinking the boy had a stammer. He was saying
<em>twi-twi-twi</em> like a sparrow with a stutter. Took me a
second to work out he was trying to say <em>Twitchy Eyes</em>..
He'd known who was chasing him.</p>
<p>"We got back to the hill behind the school and down that track
between the pigeon shacks, Kelso, myself, big John Fallon and a
couple of others. I remember a big beast of a terrier trying to get
at us through the fence and later Fallon had it put down, for there
was a big septic ulcer on its nose where it had been pushing
through the wire. We went down to the hut and inside we saw the
blood handprint and all of us knew then that the killer had taken
young Whalen away. The boy was gone and the next week was murder I
can tell you, in more ways than one. By the next morning there was
a team of pressmen camped outside the station and you couldn't move
for flashguns popping in front of your eyes.</p>
<p>"That was in June, fairly close to the beginning of the month.
Three dead, including young Whalen, all of them in the space of a
couple of months or so. We had a pretty good so we had a fair idea
of what the bastard looked like. The fingerprints matched the other
sites and again there were pages of the bible crumpled about and
not to clean either. Hector Kelso never liked the notion of anybody
wiping his arse on the good book."</p>
<p>Angus raised his eyebrows. "Some folk seemed to think that made
it even worse, but as far as I was concerned it was only paper, and
it was a clue. Anything was a clue, but despite that, the trail
went cold very soon and Bryce, the criminal psychologist started
talking about <em>burn-out</em>, saying that the killer could be so
filled with remorse that he'd killed himself. Hector Kelso didn't
put much stock in that, and neither did I, as I've said before. He
said Bryce was talking through a hole in his backside. But the
killings <em>did</em> stop. For the next month or so there was
nothing, at least as far as we knew, and even Kelso could have been
forgiven for relaxing a little at the end of July.</p>
<p>"Then, sometime in August, just before the schools went back,
Johnson McKay went up Blackwood Farm to find out why Ian McColl
hadn't been picking up his mail from the box and the solids really
hit the <em>punkah</em>, as the Commander used to say. What a
mess."</p>
<p>Angus stopped talking and rubbed his chin. He dunked a biscuit
in his coffee, took a bite, washed it down with a mouthful and
started talking again.</p>
<p>"By this time, of course, we knew what happened to Whalen and we
knew about the girl, and that took us by surprise. It must have
been ten days later, less than a fortnight after the boy went
missing. Once I've looked out my old papers from up in the loft
I'll be able to tell you exactly.</p>
<p>"We knew nothing about the girl until we found her, for she'd
never been posted missing. "Sandra Walters, her name was. She was
nineteen and came from Lochend, as you'll probably remember. By the
time we found her, she'd been dead about two weeks, which means she
was killed sometime in May, near the end of the month, and that
figured with the story we got from the family. Some big argument
with her father and she walked out. Now I was in on it when we
questioned them, in a tenement flat about a hundred yards down from
the railway station, I recall. Donald Walters, I remember thinking
there was something funny about him. It was only after the body was
found that the mother came to us to say she was missing and it was
the dental records that finally confirmed who it was, for the face
was pretty much eaten away by the flies and the rats.</p>
<p>"Walters said she'd stormed out, but there was more to it than
that. I got to know the look the more I worked on the force. There
were three girls, two of them still in the house, about fifteen and
thirteen, and the wife, she had the look of a mouse caught in a
corner. The girls never looked at anybody, just sat there, heads
down, scared to move, it seemed. Waters was cocky enough, a fast
talking, skinny little runt of a fellow, and he was adamant the
girl was a whore who'd been putting it about and he for one wasn't
having any of that.</p>
<p>"Now when the post mortem was done, there was plenty of evidence
to show that the girl was no virgin. Dr Bell found old scarring on
the walls of the uterus which he said was classic evidence of
unlubricated sex, or forced entry as he described it unofficially.
We couldn't put anything down to Donald Walters at the time and it
was pretty clear he hadn't killed his daughter, but Hector Kelso
was pretty suspicious. The other girls said nothing and the wife,
well she would have backed up everything he said. He hung himself
from the rafters nine months afterwards, and I had a notion Kelso
had been leaning on the little bastard and I can't blame him for
that. There was something queer about Walters. After that the
family moved away.</p>
<p>"Young Sandra, she'd been hirt bad. Awful. It didn't affect me
as much as little Lucy Sunders broken and torn under the bridge,
but this was bad. You'll get the details in the archives, and the
pictures too, if you've the stomach for them. She's been terribly
damage, and she had lasted a long time. Dr Bell showed us the marks
around her ankles and wrists and the scarring on her throat where
she'd pulled against a ligature. She broke the fuckin' rope. Pardon
me for that, but after all this time I still don't like rememebring
that."</p>
<p>Angus paused again, his eyes inflamed with the recollection of
the dreadful damage. He absently took another swallow of coffee and
swirled it around in his mouth as if it would take away the
taste.</p>
<p>"Now there was another thing we knew about <em>Twitchy
Eyes.</em> He was crazy and he was evil and he liked to cause pain.
But he also waited around with the bodies, sitting vigil with them,
for at least three days, probably more. By then, they'd be pretty
well blown and that didn't seem to bother him.</p>
<p>"He waited until the maggots had hatched. He stayed until they
were covered in flies."</p>
<hr />
<p><em>June:</em></p>
<p>A match flared in the dark, blinding bright, cut a flaming arc
in the blackness and stopped. Don Whalen watched it waver through a
film of tears as his eyes watered. They trickled hot down his
cheeks and ran cold onto his neck. The light floated and a
candle-flame swelled slowly to life, hardly flickering at all. He
blinked away the tears, trying to stay still, wishing his heart
would stop thudding against his chest. His shoulder shrieked with
every movement he made and his throat was on fire.</p>
<p>He had listened to the sirens, huddled against the wall of the
boxcar. The man had been there, a silent presence in the gloom, his
breathing low and slow and unhurried. The sound of it carried
infinite menace. Don tried to call out, tried to say something, but
the pain in his throat burned in a caustic rasp and all he could
manage was a hoarse whisper. It felt as if something was broken in
there where the hand had squeezed him. The longer the silence went
on, the more frightened Don Whalen became. He couldn't understand
any of this. But the deadly silence was somehow even more
frightening than the pain.</p>
<p>The sirens had wailed in the distance, howling urgency and
emergency. They'd stopped for a while and then they'd started up
again, rising to a crescendo as they passed along Lochend Road,
before fading as they got to the old bridge. The silence had
descended then, broken only by the fluttering of pigeon flocks as
they took off from the nearby huts, and by the savage rumbling
growl of the pit bull terrier, like a leopard in a bush. Much
later, the bell had rung and there had been shouts and calls and
the sounds of school spilling out. A crowd of boys came down the
track, made the terrier snarl and pound the fence, and then they
went on their way. The man had gone out, opening the door quickly
and rolling it closed. When he came back, some time later, the said
nothing at all. He roughly grabbed Don about the waist, dumped him
on the flat of the wagon and quickly wrapped him up tight in a roll
of something that might have been an old carpet. He felt himself
being picked up and slung over a broad back and carried away. The
material covered his eyes and he couldn't tell whether it was day
or night. Don could hear the twigs crackle underfoot and he knew he
was in trees. There was some traffic noise close by and he figured
he was being taken along Lochend Road, but through the belt of
trees that bordered the winding route to the west side of the town.
Out of the trees, he sensed the clamber over rough ground and then
the descent down a flight of stairs. A door squealed open and Don
Whalen was lowered to the flat surface.</p>
<p>He was still wrapped tight in a rough bundle of thick material,
slanted across a flat surface against a wall. Strong hands unrolled
it. He felt his clothes ripped away from him until the cool air
told him he was naked. The hands pushed him down onto a chair and
then very quickly bound his hands behind him and tied his feet to
upright posts that felt like chair legs. The smell in the air was
dreadful, sickening and thick. The pain in his throat stopped him
from retching.</p>
<p>The match flared and a dark shape moved out of the light, and a
faint humming sound rose stronger. Black stars floated in front of
his eyes and for a moment he thought he was going to pass out
before he realised they were not stars, but flies hundreds of them
wheeling in the air, disturbed by the light. He turned his head,
just a little, trying to see the man, scared to let his eyes light
upon him, deadly afraid of him taking him unawares again. His eyes
swept round.</p>
<p>The thing on the table screamed silently at him.</p>
<p>For a second his mind refused to accept what it had seen. His
eyes continued their sweep and then jerked back at the shape on the
table. A catastrophic fright exploded inside him and his heart
kicked violently behind his ribs, one solid <em>thump</em> that was
so powerful his body spasmed sideways.</p>
<p>The head was twisted at the end of a scrawny neck and the mouth
was open so wide it looked inhuman. An arm, grey in the dim light
and bruise-mottled was stuck out straight, the fingers clawed.</p>
<p>Absolute terror rocketed through him. He was trembling
violently, shuddering as uncontrollable fear rampaged through him,
making his head tap against the wall in a rapid staccato. The eyes
were crawling with flies. The skin shimmered and rippled with a
life of its own.</p>
<p>The dead body's silent scream went on and on and on and the
flies crawled over the skin. Don bucked against the string binding
his wrists as the realisation hit him. He had been brought here by
the man who had done that. His muscles convulsed in a violent
contortion powerful enough to drive the thick twine into the skin
of his wrists and open up two abraded lacerations.</p>
<p>He heard himself gibbering uncontrollably, incomprehensibly,
though hardly a sound escaped his throat. In his mind he called out
for his mother and his father and he prayed to God to get him out
of this and all of the time he knew there was no way out.</p>
<p>The horror on the table screamed on and on and on and Don Whalen
echoed that scream in his own mind. After a while the overload of
terror and dread was too much and he passed out in a dead faint,
banging his head against the wall, to leave yet another clue for
Superintendent Hector Kelso.</p>
<p>When he came round he was lying on the table and the man was
leaning down towards him. The eyes were blinking rapidly and Don
Whalen dimly realised this was something he should remember.</p>
<p>He felt rough hands on him and tried fruitlessly to squirm away,
His legs were spread-eagled and he knew his ankles were tied to the
legs of the table and he felt a huge scream building up inside him.
He twisted his head and saw the other scream, frozen and fly-blown,
only a yard away, slanted against the back of the chair. The flies
hummed busily and Don Whalen's pain began.</p>
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<h1>18</h1>
<p><em>July:</em></p>
<p>The stranger came knocking at the door in the early afternoon.
Jean McColl didn't hear him at first, engrossed as she was in the
delicate task of removing honeycombs from the hives at the back end
of the vegetable garden where the bewildered and angry bees buzzed
in clouds. The terriers heard him, as they heard everything and had
set up a racket, insistently barking their high-pitched temper and
eventually she had to lay down the smoke funnel and go round
through the gate to the front yard to check.</p>
<p>"Looking for work, " the man said. He was tall and angular,
though broad shouldered and his dark hair hung down over his eyes.
In the warmth of the summer afternoon, he was wearing a log coat
with a belt hanging loose, the kind they used to wear back in the
fifties and it had seen better days. Over his shoulder, an old army
tote bag showed the stains of many miles.</p>
<p>"Saw the sign, did you?" Jean was still wearing her broad straw
hat with the muslin tucked into the neck of a man's chambray shirt.
On her hands, a pair of her husband's protective gloves made her
look almost comic, like a child dressed in adult's clothes. She
unrolled the fine cloth and peered out from under the brim. "The
sign on the gate?"</p>
<p>"I did," he said, nodding to affirm. He was standing with both
feet planted apart. One boot's sole was peeling from the upper.</p>
<p>"Can you dig potatoes?"</p>
<p>"Sure I can. All day too." He hadn't shaved in a couple of days
and he looked as if he needed a bath. In the angle of the sun, she
couldn't see his eyes, but there was no particular need. Maybe the
country was changing after the austerity of the years after the
war, but there were still plenty wanderers who couldn't settle, men
with no fixed abode and an itch in their feet, looking for seasonal
work.</p>
<p>"Well, you look big enough," Jean said. She was fifty six years
old, ten years younger than her husband Ian, and where he was wide
and blocky, she was bird-like and quick. Her hair was pure white
and her skin was clear despite a lifetime of helping to run the
hill farm, out in all weathers. She squinted up at the big man.</p>
<p>"The labourer is always worthy of his hire," the man said. His
voice was deep and slightly rasped, like he'd beeen breathing in
the cornstalk dust. She couldn't place his accent.</p>
<p>"Amen to that," she said, picking up the context. He was a
religious man. Good. "Blackwood should be back in a half hour or so
and he'll tell you what's needed. But there's work to be done so
he'll no doubt take you on." She turned and pointed round by the
corner of the byre where a half dozen heavy red chickens were
scratching in the straw, jerking their heads in nervous tics.
"There's a space in the bothy where you can put your kit. Running
water's from the tap on the wall."</p>
<p>"What's he paying?"</p>
<p>"Same as anybody else. A pound a ton and then he'll see how fast
you go. You get bed and board, and if he takes a shine to you, well
maybe there's some walling needs done for the winter, but that'll
be up to him."</p>
<p>The big man said nothing for a moment, but remained standing
there, almost in silhouette. The sun limned the edge of his hair,
making it gleam blue black, like a red Indian's hair. He looked as
if he'd been sleeping rough for the past few days. Maybe he was
hungry.</p>
<p>"I suppose you could have a bite and a cup of tea while you're
waiting. Give me ten minutes to finish with the bees and I'll put
the kettle on."</p>
<p>"I'd appreciate that, ma'am," he said, nodding again. He hadn't
said much at all but that wasn't unusual either. Many of the men on
the roads just came out of nowhere and worked a few weeks,
sometimes a full harvest season and disappeared again with hardly a
word. It was possible, Jean knew, that one or two of them might
have been running from trouble, with the police or the army, but as
long as they could work, that was nobody's business but theirs. She
came from old farming stock and farmers in this neck of the woods
liked to preserve their own privacy. They respected the need in
others.</p>
<p>Round at the home garden, she unshipped the last dripping slab
of honeycomb while a few bees which had been out of the hive when
she used the smoker came buzzing angrily around her head. The rich,
thick honey dripped into the pan, sending up a luscious, exotically
sweet scent that reminded Jean of every summer she'd spent on the
farm. She smiled to herself, thinking of all those seasons that
made up most of her life.</p>
<p>She was in the kitchen when the man came back, now stripped of
his heavy coat. The sleeves of his shirt, a faded blue
working-man's cotton, were rolled up to his elbows, showing a pair
of long, muscular arms covered in a matt of black hair. He'd
obviously bent to get his head under the hosepipe tap for his hair
was now slicked back from heavy eyebrows and beads of water
trickled down his cheek like sweat.</p>
<p>"Here, I made you a sandwich," she said, indicating the table.
"Set yourself down while the tea's brewing."</p>
<p>Off in the distance, a low rumble told her the tractor was
heading back up the rutted track. The stranger sat up straight,
head cocked to one side. An odd, indecipherable look flicked across
his face. He blinked a couple of times.</p>
<p>"That'll be Blackwood coming back," she said. It was a tradition
in these parts, still is, for farmers to take the name of their
spreads. Ian McColl farmed the highest land on the north side of
the town, a mix of poor arable and high moorland where the bracken
made further creeping inroads every year. They'd some cows which
were pastured down on the edge of the barwoods and three hundred
sheep and a small herd of shaggy highland cattle up on the heath
and scrub of Blackwood hill and beyond. On the south facing fields
below the trees where he'd spent three backbreaking years stripping
out the thick gorse, there was a fair crop of early potatoes and a
handy field of swedes, most of which would feed the beasts in the
winter. It was a hard life up on the hill, both of them knew that,
but for Jean, it was the only life, often rewarded by the late,
dropping sun catching the rocks of Langcraig Hill in the distance,
or gleaming up from the river estuary in the height of summer. The
winters could be bad at this height, but then she'd see a spider's
web hoar-frosted and glittering, or a white stoat go scampering
across the rocks, and in the depth of January, she'd hear the first
bleating sounds of the new life as the sheep dropped their lambs.
It was no easy life, but there was a beauty and a symmetry and
sometimes a magic in it all, as she would write in her neat hand in
her diary.</p>
<p>She brought two big mugs to the table and filled them both. "The
ham's my own. Smoked only last week, and the bread's fresh from the
oven this morning."</p>
<p>Jean never tired of telling folk, even strangers looking for
casual labour, about her bacon or her bread. She'd a store out the
back with rough cheeses wrapped in muslin and maturing away in
wooden rounds and a half a dozen demi-jons sealed up with last
years vintage of elderberry wine. All of it, every fermentation,
every batch of cheese was carefully noted in her book. Every new
year she'd go down to the town, as long as the snows hadn't blocked
the track, and buy a new diary. They were her pride and her record
of thirty years up on Blackwood Farm. On winter nights, when the
wind howled around the red-leaded struts of the haybarn, she would
bring a book down from the loft and travel back in time to the days
when she was young and dark haired; to when Ian McColl would take
time off from the scything of the hay and chase her through the
long grass and sometimes catch her.</p>
<p>Outside in the yard the tractor shuddered to a halt. The engine
barked twice and Jean knew there would be a plume of blue exhaust
smoke trailing away from its rear end. The stranger started back at
the sound and his eyes blinked several times as if grit had got in
under his eyelids.</p>
<p>"Och, it's only a backfire," she told him "You'll get used to
that soon enough if you're here awhile."</p>
<p>The man looked at her, still blinking, as if he couldn't really
see her and Jean wondered if he was all right. Just then her
husband came in, wide shouldered and with a day's silver growth of
beard ragged on his cheeks. He took off his hat and wiped a
handkerchief over the red crown of his head.</p>
<p>"The heat would melt you out there," he avowed, and slung the
hat onto the hook. He turned and saw the other man. "Looking for
work I suppose?"</p>
<p>The big man nodded again. "Yes sir, I am that."</p>
<p>"Sound like an army man, eh?"</p>
<p>Another nod.</p>
<p>"So you'll not be scared of a bit of hard graft?" McColl said
cheerfully. "Usual start rate's a pound a ton, and maybe a bit more
on the up-slope when we reach it. There's a good two weeks work
there on the early crop if you want it."</p>
<p>Jean McColl brought the tea across and Ian sat down, his scalp
fiery and beaded with sweat. He still hadn't set eyes on his wife,
but when she laid the cup and a plate of sandwiches down in front
of him he took her fingers in his calloused hand and gave them a
gentle squeeze that conveyed a whole sonnet of feeling. "Good lass.
Saved a life."</p>
<p>The other fellow reached forward for his cup and as he did so
his sleeve rose up close to his shoulder, just enough to expose a
small tattoo on the outside of his arm below the shoulder.</p>
<p>"That your name? Lesley?" Ian asked, pointing at the blue
scrolled word on the skin. Jean was over at th stove and missed the
tattoo. The man had taken a drink of tea and he inclined his head
forward. The farmer took it as confirmation.</p>
<p>"Right Les, if you want the work, then it's yours. You look as
if you've got a strong back and I need the crop in by the end of
the month for getting it down to the co-operative. On and after
that, I've got some walling up on the moor that I'll need a hand
with, so if you work out all right with the tatties, then you'll be
welcome to stay."</p>
<p>"The labourer is worthy of his hire," the new hand repeated,
almost whispering.</p>
<p>Ian eyed him up. "I'll be the judge of that, you can bet."</p>
<p>Jean came to the table with her own cup, a delicate fluted piece
of china which looked like a part from a doll's tea set next to her
husband's chipped pint mug. The men finished their snack and Ian
McColl took the new man through the back to show him the potato
field. The stalks were already tall and drying to yellow, bent
eastwards by the gentle breeze of the past few days which had died
down now to a sultry summer's day.</p>
<p>"The bothy's fine and dry and the missus is a good cook so
you'll not want for a square meal or a place to sleep. You want
anything from the town though, it's a bit of a hike. More'n five
miles by the track. I don't manage down there myself much except
for a delivery or for the auctions. You from around these
parts?"</p>
<p>"Long time ago," the fellow said. "Long time. Before, you
know?"</p>
<p>Ian McColl nodded. Some folk didn't give much away and he wasn't
the one to push either, though it would have been good if the new
hand was more of a talker. It was good to chew the fat across the
table when the talk of farming was done and the work was finished
for the day. From back in the kitchen, the sound of dishes being
washed and stacked came back to them. Jean said something which
neither heard clearly enough to make out, but from the tone was
unmistakable. The terriers came scrambling out of the kitchen as if
devils were chasing them. The door slammed shut.</p>
<p>"Never did like her kitchen getting messed up," Ian said.</p>
<p>The other man blinked again as if the sun was in his eyes.
McColl moved off towards the tractor and got it started. He
beckoned the stranger across and waited until the man hitched
himself up behind the seat.</p>
<p>"Might as well get started," he said brightly, slinging his cap
back on his head and shoving the peak up the way farmers do. The
tractor coughed bronchially, spat smoke from its stack and lurched
round by the byre.</p>
<p>Jean McColl watched from the window, thinking. Help was hard to
come by this far up and almost anybody who came through the gate at
harvest time got a job for the asking. But there was something
about the stranger with the nervous blinking eyes that didn't
settle with her. She tried to think what it was but couldn't get a
finger on it. There was something about his face, gaunt and angled,
that should have been expressive but wasn't quite, as if everything
was being held down inside.</p>
<p>There was something about the man and his deep set, coal black
eyes and his slicked back gypsy hair and the smell of woodsmoke on
his clothes. Up around these parts, the tinkers, the travelling
folk, were MacFees and MacFettridges, descendants of the refugees
kicked off the land in the highland clearances. The new man had a
travelling look about him, but he didn't look like a tinker.</p>
<p>Later that night, after the men had come home and eaten a heroic
meal, she and Ian had sat at the table while he worked on the model
ship he was building out of matchsticks, a labour of love that
promised to keep him occupied right through the long dark nights
until the end of winter when the ground would be soft enough to
work. Jean was writing in her book.</p>
<p><em>New man started today. Big as a Clydesdale ploughhorse and
with the looks of an Italian or maybe a Polish soldier. Says his
name is Leslie, Leslie Joyce. Says he's from around these parts
from way back. Looks strong enough for carting the potatoes and
that should give Ian a fair hand and good for his back too. He
won't go down to the doctor about it no matter how much I go on
about it. Made five pounds of butter today and got six full jars of
honey. Best collection yet, and not one sting this time. As ever, I
couldn't help licking my fingers for the taste of heather.</em></p>
<p>She looked over at her husband, swinging her eyes from the one
black-bound book to the next one, opened beside it. "You're a week
early with the potatoes this year compared to last." she told her
husband who was gingerly gluing a spar to a curved rib of the
old-fashioned ketch. "And I'm a week ahead with the honey too."</p>
<p>"It's the heat since the start of summer. It's lasted a while.
After the good rains in the late spring. Always gets things of to a
fine start. A lucky year for us."</p>
<p><em>Ian says it's a lucky year,</em> she wrote down. <em>We've
had our share of them, in between the bad ones.</em></p>
<p>She smiled at him though he never saw it, his red dome bent to
the delicate task, thick gnarled farmer's fingers surprisingly
agile, delicately gentle and Jean knew just how gentle he could be.
It was safe enough to write some things down in her diaries. Now
and again, she'd read him a piece out loud, an entry from previous
years, making him grin with the accounts of young Ian's first
tottering steps, or bringing the hint of a lump to his throat when
she showed the dried wild rose she'd pressed between the pages, a
small gift brought back from a foray down the valley to the
Barwoods to round up the strays. But he would never read her diary,
never go looking in her private place. That was hers.</p>
<p>Outside in the yard, the terriers barked. The bothy door closed
with a dull thud and the dogs went silent again. Leslie Joyce (if
that was his name) must have got up and gone to the outhouse.</p>
<p>The noise interrupted her train of thought. Where had she
been?</p>
<p>Back ten years ago to the day she had pressed the rose in the
book, a delicate pink with a powerful wild fragrance, a token,
plucked in the passing, but a treasure for he'd brought it home for
her. Another lucky year, just like this one. She wrote that thought
down, savouring it and the memory it brought back, wondering what
she'd think in ten years time, God sparing.</p>
<p>Out in the bothy, the free-standing stone shelter that served as
a bunkhouse for the labourers, the man with the tattoos and the
black eyes lay stretched out on the bed. The dogs had surprised him
when he'd walked silently across the yard and leaned in at the
corner to peer in the kitchen window, but no-one had come to the
door. In the house the old woman was writing in a book and the
farmer was bending over something on the table. The tall man turned
away when the dogs started their yapping, high pitched chiding and
he'd stared down at them. Without a word he moved soundlessly
across the dry earth and cobbles of the yard and let the door
spring back. It took forty steps from the window to the bothy and
he counted them all, just in case he needed to know the paces.
Overhead, the moon showed a sliver of silver in a velvet sky. In
the dark of the bunkhouse he lay down on the straw mattress and put
his hands behind his head, staring into the dark.</p>
<p>The dogs stopped barking and settled down at the front door.</p>
<p>The man with the tattoos lay silent but inside his mind, the
thoughts were hot and dark and filled with memories.</p>
<p>After a while, in his thoughts, he heard the high-pitched voice
and the steady drone and he knew it would not be long
before....</p>
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<h1>19</h1>
<p><em>July: Blackwood Farm.</em></p>
<p>Ian's gone and twisted his back again but he won't go to the
doctor while there's a field yet to be cleared.</p>
<p>Jean McColl's script was clean and rounded and she had an
artistic swoop on the tails of letters below the feint lines.
Thirty years and more had aged the ink from a dark to a faded blue,
but they had not diluted the fresh quality of the farmer's wife's
account:</p>
<p>"He'll come in for his tea with a hand behind his back and his
neck all red from bending away from it, just like last year and
he'll say it's just stiff from sitting up on the tractor. God love
him. He doesn't want me to worry and yet he'll never take a word of
advice. I know where young Ian gets his stubborn streak. The new
hand, Joyce, is working well enough though he hardly says a word
and doesn't come in for his dinner, but takes it to the shed. They
moved nearly ten tons of early Pentlands from of south field,
though Ian thinks there's a chance of wireworm in the late crop
since it's just been turned this year from old pasture.</p>
<p>Two tinkers have a tent down by the road and they're to get
staying for a day or so while they sharpen the scythes and do a bit
of fencing, but Ian says they look a bit shifty for his liking and
that's why they're not staying in the outhouse with the new man.
Must get the shutter fixed. I thought I saw something moving in the
yard and it could have been my imagination but the labourer's a bit
of an odd one, though he can dig potatoes. A letter from young Ian
today, saying his barley harvest will keep him busy for the next
few weeks, but he says he'll be coming to visit at the end of
August. I wish he'd bring me news of a different kind of crop, but
I'm supposed to be patient.</p>
<p>The cats have laid out four rats in a row behind the hayrick, as
if they expect applause for doing their job. The owl in the barn
took a weasel right on the path and that's one less to be in after
the chickens. Morag's been lying in the sun behind the byre. I
don't see her making another winter, poor old soul, so we'd better
start training another collie soon for next year's rounding.</p>
<p>Picked peas today and shelled them all afternoon. I'll be seeing
them in my sleep. There was a Flanders poppy growing in amongst
them, a big scarlet flower standing above the pods. Inside it was
the most delicate purple. Shame to pick it, but they only last a
day. I wore a dress that shade of purple to the harvest dance the
year I got engaged. Ian Blackwood looked me up and down as if I was
royalty. I could have cried when I picked it, but it was lovely
just remembering. Better look out the liniment for his back.</p>
<p>The Flanders poppy, each petal wide and veined like a
butterfly's wings, was pressed flat between the leaves of the book.
The red had turned to a deep brown. Beside it, just below the
script, done in pencil, was a small sketch of a barn own, wings
raised, legs outstretched beyond the heart-shaped head, talons
spread wide. The weasel was in the act of turning, a slender and
sinuous shape on a stony farm track. Both had been drawn by a deft
and confident hand, a thumbnail etching of a small death at
Blackwood Farm on a summer's day. All of the years since it was
drawn had not diminished the action or the finality of the
swoop.</p>
<hr />
<p>He had watched the woman. She had looked at him with her
bird-quick eyes, and the pounding had started again in his
head.</p>
<p>It had been hard work, trailing behind the rake spines of the
tractor, hooking the potatoes out of the ground with the wide-blade
fork, bending and lifting, exposing the white, almost skinless crop
like lizard's eggs, to the light of day. It had been hot and
sweaty, just him and the farmer out in the field, bending and
lifting, then stacking the sacks on the trailer. They'd had a break
at mid-morning, just enough time for a cup of tea from the flask,
then back to work. Just after noon, they'd stopped again. Blackwood
had turned the tractor around and they'd come trundling back to the
farm to stack the sacks.</p>
<p>He had been here for three days, and he'd been watching them.
The light stayed in the sky until late, darkening it down to a
gloaming purple that hid movement. Through the narrow window, she'd
be writing in her book and he would be hunched over his model boat,
both of them, hardly saying a word, as if they knew that the shadow
of death was upon them.</p>
<p>He could stand still, motionless so that the dogs stayed quiet
and didn't start up their racketing as they had the first night. In
the dark, he'd be invisible. The light inside would reflect back
from the glass, making out opaque. He could stand here and he could
watch and wait.</p>
<p>The shadow was on them. <em>The shadow of the valley...</em></p>
<p>When they came back from the field, the woman had left his meal
on the barrel out by the door of the outhouse, a tray covered by a
white linen cloth to keep the flies away. She had invited him
inside to eat with them, but he wanted to eat alone, so she just
left it for him. Strong cheese, light crusted bread and translucent
strips of cured ham. A side dish of lettuce and spring onions and
green tomato chutney. A ploughman's lunch.</p>
<p>He ate in silence, chewing carefully and washing every mouthful
down with a drink of thick, warm milk from the jug. The light
slanted through the old shutters of the shed where he sat on the
low bunk. It formed brilliant chevrons against the wall.</p>
<p>He blinked against the glare, chewing. The light was in his eyes
and he felt the pressure build.</p>
<p>She came out of the kitchen and into the yard lugging a steaming
kettle which she placed on the ground beside a tin basin. The
farmer followed her, patting his belly and then arching his back as
if he wanted to stretch the kinks and knots away. From the shadow
in the bunkhouse he saw them caught in the light. Their shadows
puddled on the cobbles where two cats snoozed. Around them, he
could see the dark aura that told him the shadow of death was on
them. It was close at hand. He could sense it pressing in. The time
was nearing.</p>
<p>The farmer went towards his tractor, heavy boots crunching on
the slabs. The woman moved to the chicken coop. He could hear the
rattle of the wire-mesh door and the cluck and flutter of the hens
as she went among them. The smells of the farm came thick on the
air. Beyond the coop, the manure heap, enclosed by walls of stone,
angled away from the small byre, empty for now, but crowded with
the half-dozen milking cows at four o'clock when they'd come
shambling in from the pasture. Swallows came flicking in and out,
red and blue streaks on the summer air. Overhead, squadrons of
swifts wheeled and squealed. A mouse, or maybe a rat, rustled and
scurried in the next-door tack room where the old bridles and
harnesses lay in a heap or hung from rusted nails.</p>
<p>She came back, walking quickly, almost bird-like, holding a
white chicken by the feet. It fluttered and flapped in a panic as
she crossed the yard to the block. Without any hesitation she laid
the chicken across it, pressing down so that it's head was over the
edge of the block. She jiggled the hand-axe until the blade popped
free of the wood, swung it up and then down. The chicken's wings
whirred in a sudden spasm as blood spurted from the neck. The head
spun away to land close to the door of the outhouse. Its yellow eye
stared up into the dark of the doorway.</p>
<p>The smell of hot blood came wafting up.</p>
<p>The sunlight glared from the whitewashed walls of the kitchen.
The light was in his eyes and he could see the shadow on the woman.
He could hear the approach of the wings. There was a buzzing as
flies circled the chicken's severed head. His eyes started to
blink.</p>
<hr />
<p>It was as she expected. Ian had come in with a hand pressed to
the small of his back but it hadn't dented his appetite. He'd left
only one slice of the ham and two thick wads of bread, wolfing the
rest with relish. She'd had some soup and a cup of tea and little
else, not wanting to spoil her own appetite for dinner. Ian had
been pleased about the crop which would be in at the end of the
week and down to the co-op store. She said she'd kill a chicken for
dinner and he'd nodded cheerfully.</p>
<p>"Make it a big one," he'd said, giving her a squeeze as she
passed him on the way out with the freshly boiled kettle. "We'll be
starving when we get back."</p>
<p>The chicken's head flew away and after the flurry of spastic
wingbeats, the bird went still but for the slow clenching of the
scaly feet into right talon-fists. Ian was over at the tractor,
while she poured the boiling water over the carcass to loosen the
feathers and damp them down. As she stood up, she had the strange
sensation of being watched, but when she raised her eyes there was
no-one there. Against the whitewash glare, the outhouse door was a
black oval, like a bottomless hole.</p>
<p>Jeannie McColl plucked the chicken with deft, sure twists of her
nimble hands, working from tail to neck. The axe lopped off the
ends of the wings and within minutes the bird was bare and pimpled,
steaming slightly as it gave up its heat. She slung the sodden
feathers onto the dung-heap and took the chicken back to the
kitchen. At the sink, she ran the water and opened the bird,
watching the drain darken in a spiral as the blood flowed away.</p>
<p>She bent to the task. Already the leeks and carrots were lined
up waiting to be cleaned and chopped and if she got the bird into
the oven early, letting it cook in its own juices for a few hours,
she'd manage to get the washing out and dried. It was still soaking
in the stone tub in the washhouse where a trickle of smoke curled
out of the boiler chimney.</p>
<p>The man they'd accepted as Les Joyce came walking out through
the black hole of the doorway. The movement caught her eye and she
looked up. He took two steps out and stopped, with his head cocked
to one side. His eyebrows went up as if he was considering
something. She saw his lips move and then the eyes blinked, twice,
three times, very fast, screwed all the way closed as if he'd
bitten into a bitter gooseberry.</p>
<p>Outside the cockerel crowed again and its rival challenged from
the other side of the yard.</p>
<p>The man stopped and blinked some more, then he bent slowly and
picked up the chicken head. He held it up, turning it in his hands
as if he'd found something of great interest. A drop of blood fell
to the cobble, leaving a stain that looked black on the stone.</p>
<p>Ian called from across the way, but the man seemed not to have
heard. He had taken off his shirt and she could see the tattoo high
on his arm, dark against smooth, lightly tanned skin. His lower
arms were matted with hair. He stood up straight, tall and spare,
his hair glistening so black it was almost blue. Ian called out
again. The man turned and went back to the doorway. He raised the
chicken head up to head height, holding the door steady with one
hand while he scraped the severed neck across the paint-peeled
wood.</p>
<p>Jean leaned forward, perplexed, leaving her own bloody
hand-print on the window-sill.</p>
<p>The man repeated the motion twice and then he daubed the
bloodied neck on the doorposts and on the wooden lintel above it.
When he finished, he casually threw the chicken head over his
shoulder. It bounced and skittered against an old trough.
Immediately a twisting whirl of flies danced over it. The door of
the outhouse closed and she saw what he'd done.</p>
<p>A dark red cross was slashed on the wood. Some of the blood was
running in small dribbles, but the cross itself was plain enough.
On either side and above it, splashes stained the grey wood.</p>
<p>The man with the tattoos turned slowly and walked in front of
the byre. He reached the chopping block and stood there as if
listening for something, head twisted, straining to hear. His hand
reached out and worked the axe out of the wood again.</p>
<p>A cold sensation twisted in the pit of her stomach. She raised
her hand further and pulled back the net curtain, leaving another
stain. She leaned towards the window, craning to the left. Ian
walked into view. He was saying something and wiping at his head
with his handkerchief.</p>
<p>The man swayed backwards and his eyes twitched again. Ian leaned
towards him. The axe came free. Ian turned towards the motion and
the sucking sound of metal pulling from wood.</p>
<p>Jean called out, no words, just an inarticulate cry. Fear
suddenly pulsed within her.</p>
<p>The man spun quickly, bringing the axe up and then down in a
fast arc. Ian jerked away from it. The blade came down and caught
him hard on the left shoulder.</p>
<p>"Oh," he said. He sagged to the left, head following the motion.
His handkerchief fluttered to the ground.</p>
<p>The tall man stood blinking, face expressionless. Her husband
spun away and went down on one knee. For an instant she thought the
blade had missed him, that the man had only hit him with the wooden
haft of the kindling axe. Ian turned and she saw the look of
surprise on his face. His hat rolled from his bib pocket and down
onto the cobbles. His arm was twisted at a strange angle and the
fingers were twitching with a life of their own.</p>
<p>The big man took a step forward, flattening the white flutter of
cloth into the muck. Ian lifted his head up and his mouth formed a
perfect circle. The blood seemed to drain away from his red face.
Joyce looked at him, bending forward from the waist, like a
gardener inspecting a rose.</p>
<p>In the kitchen, Jean tried to call out again but the words
wouldn't come. Over on the far side, against the wall of the byre,
the cat sensed violence and slunk away. Ian let out a moan or a
groan, loud enough to carry over to the kitchen. It was a dreadful
sound of shock and gathering pain.</p>
<p>Joyce straightened up, twisted again and brought the hatchet
down on Ian's other shoulder. Her husband cried out, a horrible
animal bellow. Blood did not spurt. It simply washed down the front
of his shirt in an instant flood, turning the blue chambray to a
silky black.</p>
<p>A wave of sick dizziness engulfed her and she felt herself sag
back from the window. The net curtain ripped at the corner under
her weight. The dizziness passed over her. Her eyes opened and
without warning she was sick. It came blurting up, hot and acid,
only tea and the crumbs of a scone, some barley soup. It spat onto
the surface beside the sink.</p>
<p>Ian was down on the ground. He toppled forward and one hand went
out to stop himself falling, but there was no strength in the arm
and it gave way under him. He twisted and fell hard, rolling over
on to his back. He groaned, like an animal. His momentum carried
him round and he got slowly to one knee, moving as if through
treacle. The back of his shirt was soaked right down to where it
was tucked into his bib-overalls. His head was angled to the side
and she could see the sun glisten silver on the stubble of his
cheek. The left arm was still jittering as if it wanted to fly
away, but his shoulder was impossibly slumped and the stream of
blood was right down the length of his sleeve to where it was
rolled up at the elbow. Dark drops went splashing off to the
ground. Ian got one foot under him, managed to push himself up onto
one knee. Joyce took three steps back and watched him, blinking
fast. Ian looked up, his face twisted in agony and shock, eyes wide
and unbelieving.</p>
<p>Jean's sick paralysis broke. She turned away from the window,
hauling for breath. Outside the cockerel crowed again. She went
round in a complete circle, banged her hip against the heavy table.
For a second she did not know what she was doing, and then her eyes
lit on the blackened poker leaning against the oven. She bent and
grabbed it, got her other hand to the warm metal handle and ran for
the door.</p>
<p>Out in the sunlight the air was thick with the metallic scent of
blood, but it smelled different from the thin chicken's blood on
the worn stones. This was human blood, her husband's blood.</p>
<p>"<em>No Jean</em>," she heard him cry, though the words were
hardly intelligible. They came out in a slobber and she saw a
bubble of blood froth up. Joyce waded back in again and hit him on
the jaw. For some reason the blade twisted and the axe hit flat-on
with a hard clank.</p>
<p>This time Ian screamed. There was no other way to describe it.
There were no words, just a high bleat of sound, like the pigs in
the slaughter pen. His jaw fell to the side and another bubble of
blood burst between his wide open sagging lips.</p>
<p>The dizziness threatened to come and carry her away, a dreadful
rolling dark wave that made her knees want to buckle. She staggered
forward and raised the poker. Ian's eyes opened wide. She could see
the enormous chasms the axe had ploughed on either side of his
neck, making both shoulders slump downwards. The blood pulsed up
and out at the turned-down collar of his shirt. She went stumbling
forward, gathering all of her strength.</p>
<p>A black and white streak flicked in front of her. She had heard
it first, although in her horror and fear the sound had not managed
to get through to her consciousness.</p>
<p>Morag leapt up, growling in fury. Her jaws opened and snapped
shut on the man's upraised arm. Joyce was a big man and Morag, ten
years old that summer, was an old dog, but he was taken by surprise
and the weight of her charge throw him off balance. The collie
snarled and sank her teeth in. Joyce grunted, but it was a grunt of
effort, not of pain. He dropped the axe.</p>
<p>Jean did not stop, she ran straight in and swung the poker at
the man's head. It missed but it slammed against his shoulder with
enough force to send such a jarring vibration up her arm that the
metal rod flew out of her hands and landed with a clatter in the
yard. Joyce didn't so much as look at her. He turned again, grabbed
the collie by the neck and dragged it off his arm.</p>
<p>Morag snarled. He didn't seem to notice. He pivoted on his foot
and threw the dog down. Jean bent to pick up the axe, got her
fingers around it and spun round. She swung it, even harder than
she had swung the poker. Trying to crash the blade right into
Joyce's blinking eyes.</p>
<p>The man's hand reached up and stopped the axe in mid thrust.
With a simple twist of his wrist, he snatched it from her.</p>
<p>"The gun, Jeannie," Ian managed to blurt. "For pity's sake, get
the gun. Save yourself.</p>
<p>Morag came streaking in again, lips drawn back in a ferocious
snarl. Joyce whipped the axe down and split her skull. The old dog
dropped like a stone and flopped to the cobbles.</p>
<p>"Oh," Ian said again, in a sick expulsion of air.</p>
<p>Joyce walked towards him and Ian's eyes widened. Blood dripped
from the hatchet. Jean tried to cry out but no sound came.</p>
<p>"Gun," her husband muttered, still thinking of her, even in the
extremity.</p>
<p>She turned, apron flapping, skittered into the kitchen. She
bolted through, feet pattering on the hard slate floor and into the
hallway. The gun-rack stood against the door. She opened it and
grabbed the double-barrelled twelve-bore, pulled it away from the
wood panel at the back of the rack. She stopped dead.</p>
<p>The chain pulled taut on the trigger guard. The gun was
padlocked in the rack beside its neighbour, an ancient Spanish
birdgun that Ian had inherited from his father. He'd always kept it
locked, since their son had been small, just in case of accidents,
just in case young Ian wanted to play with the guns. It had become
a habit.</p>
<p>The nausea came looping again. A slimy spittle coughed form her
mouth and stained the wood. The chain rattled but it would not come
loose.</p>
<p><em>Find the key. Find the key</em>. It was on Ian's chain. It
would be in his pocket!</p>
<p>Jacket or trousers? She scampered back to the kitchen. His
jacket was on the back of the chair. She grabbed it, shaking it for
the sound of jangling keys. A boiled mint sweet rolled out and onto
the floor. The keys were not there.</p>
<p><em>Must be in his overalls</em>. The realisation came in a
shiver of cold.</p>
<p>She groped her way to the window again and brushed the curtain
back slowly, suddenly absolutely terrified for her own life. She
might yet get the keys. She could get them and get the gun and
shoot him and get Ian on to the tractor and down to the hospital at
Lochend. She stood on tiptoe and peered out.</p>
<p>Joyce was walking towards the byre, his whole body leaning
forward. If she could get the gun, she'd shoot him in the back. He
wouldn't even see her.</p>
<p>Joyce walked further, coming fully into view. He was dragging
Ian by the foot. Her husband's shoe had come off and his sock had
rolled down. The friction of the ground had pulled his overalls
back and several inches of white leg showed. The man was dragging
him along, leaving a slick trail of blood on the cobbles. Two of
the terriers who had been exploring at the rabbit warren down by
the coppice came snuffling into the yard. They reached the trail of
blood and bent to sniff it. They whined, confused. Joyce did not
stop. He dragged Ian McColl into the byre. Jean watched, listening
to the dreadful scrape of wet material against the ground. Her
husband's head bumped against the low step and he made a low
sound.</p>
<p>He was still alive.</p>
<p>His red head disappeared into the shadow and that was the last
she saw of him.</p>
<p>Jean stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had happened. The
dizziness rolled inside her again and her vision faded once more.
She held tight to the sink, gasping for breath and in a moment her
lungs were pistoning uncontrollably in a sudden spasm of
hyperventilation. She fell over the old sink, feeling the edge
press against her chest, and the spasm passed.</p>
<p>The gun. She could get it now. Joyce was in the byre. She forced
herself to move, got away from the sink and made it to the door.
The axe was lying in the middle of the yard. She darted out into
the bright day, bent and snatched it up. Her husband's blood
trickled down the handle. Her feet were in a puddle of it but she
couldn't think about that now. She knew he was alive. He'd be in
dreadful pain, and he had lost so much blood, but he could still
make it. She could still make him live if she could get the
gun.</p>
<p>The scraping, dragging sound echoed out from the byre. She
squirmed from it and backed into the kitchen, following her route
again. She got to the gun cabinet and saw the black barrels of the
twelve-bore leaning outwards. Without hesitation she chopped at the
chain, trying to hit it against the heavy oak shelf. Wood
splintered. Twice the axe bit into the base of the rack and she had
to jack it back and forth, making it squeal to release it again.
She swung hard, managing to bite down on the chain, but there was
no effect. The force of the blow merely pressed the steel links
into the wood.</p>
<p>Sobbing sore, she tried again and again, swinging the hatchet
down as hard as she could.</p>
<p>Out in the yard, the terriers set up a frenzied yapping. Jean
stopped swinging the axe and looked out through the front door.
Joyce was walking fast, coming diagonally from the barn to the
house, heading straight for her. In his hands he swung the old
chopping axe, the one Ian used for the winter logs. Even in the
height of her terror and desperation she realised she would have no
chance against it. Instinctively she slammed the door and hit the
deadlock snib. Both shotguns were now leaning out from the rack,
black and deadly and completely useless. She ran down the hall,
went through to the living room, changed her mind and came back
again. A shadow loomed at the door, wavering at the other side of
the frosted glass and then the whole pane crashed inwards. The
man's hand came through, reaching for the Yale handle and found it
snibbed shut. She didn't wait, but dashed back to the kitchen,
right through to the back room and straight up the wooden
stairs.</p>
<p>A ferocious crash followed her, followed by the hard slam of the
front door against the wall. Jean didn't stop. She got through the
bedroom and into her work room, where her ironing board and sewing
machine were laid out almost side by side, close to the old radio
beside the rocking chair where she used to sit and crochet while
listening to the evening plays. The door had a heavy iron latch
which she clicked home. In here, with the shutters closed, it was
dark and warm. A chink of bright sunlight knifed through a crack in
the old wood and slipped a blade of silver across the room. Dust
motes danced in the light.</p>
<p>The muffled thud of the axe came pounding up from the hallway
and she shivered. He would kill her. He had killed her husband
without a thought, chopped him down like an animal. Her jittering
mind screened a picture of Ian trying to get to his feet with both
shoulders horribly slumped away from his neck and the sheen of
blood silken on his shirt.</p>
<p>Down there, beyond the workroom door, beyond the bedroom and
down the stairs, the crashing noise came again. Once, twice, then
another two thuds. There was a silence that stretched for a long
time. She cold hear her heart beating fast against her ribs and
both her hands fluttered uncontrollably. She moved unsteadily to
the window, trying to slow her breathing, to make it be quiet. On
the dresser, sliced by the blade of light, her diary lay angled
towards her.</p>
<p>She moved towards it and right at that moment a thunderous roar
shook the walls. Joyce had the guns. He had got them out of the
cabinet.</p>
<p>In that moment, she knew she was dead. He was going to kill her.
She could not get away.</p>
<p>Jean McColl slowly reached for the book and slid it towards her.
Out in the byre, Ian let out a loud and shuddering cry and her
heart almost broke in two.</p>
<p>Down in the hallway, she could hear Joyce walking about, his
feet crunching on the glass where the window had caved in. He would
come looking for her, that she knew. There was no escape for her.
Ian groaned again and she tried not to listen to it. She prayed
with all her heart for it to be quick and then she sat in the
corner and made her hand be steady.</p>
<p>She began to write quickly in her book.</p>
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<h1>20</h1>
<p><em>August 2. 11.30am.</em></p>
<p>"It's like the moon," Tom whispered. The breeze over the high
ridge of the moor snatched his awe-struck words and carried them
away. The others stood on the long edge of tussock grass looking
down at the wide and barren basin of the heathland that seemed to
stretch to the horizon. It was pock-marked and pitted with craters
that really did give it a blasted lunar aspect. The black water in
the depressions, each one ringed by a tumulus of heaved-up earth,
made the craters seem like bottomless pits.</p>
<p>"Christ on a bike," Billy said, his voice reduced to a
marvelling whisper. He stood up on a thick mound of peat and
scanned left and right. "It goes on forever."</p>
<p>It was the eeriest, most spectacular sight any of them had ever
seen. The basin of the moor swept down from where they stood on the
rim. Fifty yards away, a rusted chain-link fence suspended betwen
concrete posts that angled over, listing like wounded sentries,
caught the wind and made it moan, adding to the sense of desolation
and old destruction.</p>
<p>Far across the moor, maybe a mile off, but probably more, only
the roofs of a clutter of shacks and shanties were visible beyond a
lower ridge.</p>
<p>It had been further than they had thought, at least five miles
up into the hills from the camp. They'd walked since early morning
after a breakfast of cornflakes and slices of bread toasted black
over the flames. Doug had woken first and had disturbed them all in
his scramble to get out of the tent, twanging the guy ropes and
almost collapsing the canvas on top of the others.</p>
<p>The fire had still been smouldering and it only took a handful
of dry bracken and twigs to get the flames flickering and in no
time at all the pinewood was crackling hot. They huddled around the
campfire in the cool of the morning, drawing the heat into
themselves and watching the magic transformation as the rising sun
began to burn a fine valley mist away.</p>
<p>"We heard something last night," Corky said. "Sounded like
somebody walking."</p>
<p>"It was like the sound you get if you walk over a racine rat's
burrow," Danny confirmed although he hadn't actually heard that.
Billy grinned.</p>
<p>"Oh, I'm really scared. Terrified even. You should have woke me
up so I could have trembled all night."</p>
<p>"You were scared enough in the dark," Doug derided.</p>
<p>"It's true." Corky insisted. "Probably a cow, though. Just as
long as it doesn't barge intp the tent when we're sleeping. We'd be
flat as pancakes in the morning."</p>
<p>"Maybe it wasn't a cow," Tom said, still shivering in the cool
of the morning. "I told you I saw a man when we were collecting
firewood. I think there was somebody watching us."</p>
<p>"Bunch of pussies," Billy said. He went down to the stream with
his mug and threw the dregs of his tea out into the stream. He
turned and was about to come back up to the campfire when he
stopped so suddenly that Doug and Danny noticed immediately. They
asked him what was wrong. Billy crouched down and the others came
sauntering over to the stream, expecting some silly joke.</p>
<p>"Was this here last night?" Billy asked. He was hunkered on the
gravel, inspecting a wide footprint impressed deep into the
surface. They could see the clear zigzag of heavy duty cleats. Doug
bent down beside him.</p>
<p>"I don't think so. I think we would have noticed."</p>
<p>"Somebody's playing silly baskits," Billy said. He stood up and
then stamped his foot down beside the print. His own baseball boot
made only a slight indentation, hardly two thirds the size of the
original print.</p>
<p>"Can't be us," Corky said. "You've got the biggest feet. And
it's nowhere near that size."</p>
<p>"Did you draw this?" Billy asked Danny. "Did you fool around
here and make this look like a footprint?"</p>
<p>"Don't be daft. It's the real thing." Danny came down the bank
and got down on his knees. "But it looks old to me. Nobody's been
up here in a long time, and it hasn't rained in a while. It's
probably been there for weeks. Your boot hardly made a mark and
this one's pretty deep. It must have been here before we came."</p>
<p>Danny wasn't sure of that, but he preferred to believe it, and
the shale was hard-packed and fairly dry. The print could have been
there a long time, since the last time it rained, sometime back in
July. He didn't want to think of anybody passing through their camp
in the middle of the night. He remembered Corky poking his head out
of the flap. There had been a sound, a hollow thud.</p>
<p>And then a branch had snapped.</p>
<p>If it had been somebody, they wouldn't have made so much noise,
Danny told himself, rationalising it out. It must have been a cow
wandering among the trees.</p>
<p>"Yea, that's days old," he said, now near enough convinced.
"Weeks even. There's nobody around here. Nobody daft enough to come
all this way up the hill."</p>
<p>But Tom and Doug seemed less convinced. They were looking round
warily, scanning the trees. Nothing moved. Far off in the distance,
way down the valley where they knew Blackwood Farm was, a cockerel
welcomed the day. Danny flapped his elbows and did a little strut,
coaxing a grin from Doug and they all sat down again. They waited
by the fire, toasting more bread on the ends of their sticks while
they finished their tea, and then they started off on the trek.
They followed the Blackwood Stream ever upwards, over narrow falls
and through narrower gorges, up onto the high moor where the water
cut its way through deep peat deposits and sometimes disappeared
altogether under the thick cover of purple heather. Up at this
height, the air was colder and a wind blew in from the west so that
when they stopped walking, it dried their sweat on their backs and
despite the power of the sun in a clear blue sky, it made them
shiver.</p>
<p>The stream had become a rivulet, dwindled to a trickle and then
they were beyond it, right at the source, into the damp bog
draining the high moor where the clumps of sphagnum moss sank under
their feet in soft sponges of marsh. Clusters of papery reed-moths
flew up with every step and marshy gas bubbles gurgled and burst in
stenchy little explosions. It had been slow going here, crossing
the boggy land, sometimes sinking up to their knees and sometimes
further than that in the stagnant pools where the mud was oozing
and liquid. Corky told them he'd read in National Geographic, of a
man's body found in a bog, preserved by the peat for thousands of
years, still with the hair on his head and the leather tunic on his
back.</p>
<p>"That's what the smell is," Billy said. "It would make you
puke."</p>
<p>"You think there's bodies here?" Doug asked. Corky nodded.</p>
<p>"Sure. Dozens of them. They used to have battles up here.
William Wallace and Rob Roy McGregor. All the clans in their kilts
and claymores.</p>
<p>"Isn't that a land mine?" Billy wanted to know. "A
claymore?"</p>
<p>"No, it's a sword," Corky explained patiently. "Used to hack
each other to pieces. We're probably walking over the skeletons
right now. They'll be lying down there all rotted and grunged up
like something out of the Twilight Zone." He twisted his face into
an approximation of a skeleton and curled his fingers into hooks.
It looked not unlike Dougie's imitation of the creature from the
Black Lagoon on the day they'd first thought of the expedition to
find the Dummy Village.</p>
<p>Tom hauled himself out of a sinking hole and clambered onto a
grassy mound that could take his weight. He had taken off his
canvas shoes and had them hanging by the laces round his neck.
"That's horrible," he said. "What if we stand on one?"</p>
<p>"It'll probably bite your toe off." Corky said matter of factly.
Tom stayed up on the tussock, wobbling for balance, arms
outstretched.</p>
<p>"Then spit it out again when it finds out its your stinky ol'
foot," Doug chipped in, grinning his big-toothed smile, but careful
to avoid placing his own feet in the muddy holes. They seemed to go
down forever and up at this height, they probably sank for thirty
feet.</p>
<p>Tom leapt from the mound to another, nimbly landing and swaying
for balance as it shuddered under his feet. He jumped to the next,
lost his footing and fell to the third one, landing on his belly.
Billy dipped, quick as a cat, snatched a wet handful of moss and
mud in his hand, then grabbed Tom's ankle. The small boy felt the
cold, clammy grip and let out a howl of fright. He kicked
backwards, landing his foot in the pit of Billy's belly. Billy
gasped and stumbled backwards, stepped into a dip and his foot went
right through the mossy covering into a slick swampy hole. His foot
snagged on a buried root and for a moment he imagined bony fingers
clawing on to <em>his</em> ankle. Without any hesitation at all, he
heaved himself right out again before he fell on his face.</p>
<p>"I'll get you for that," he bawled hoarsely at Tom who had
rolled over the mound and reached a thin strip of firmer
ground.</p>
<p>"You and whose army?" Tom called back. Billy lumbered after him
but for once the small boy had the weight advantage. Billy's feet
kept sinking below the surface matting and all around him the
floating marsh wobbled and shivered in his wake. The legs of his
jeans were black with peaty mud.</p>
<p>"The creature from the black lagoon," Doug jeered. "Except
uglier. And fatter."</p>
<p>"Piss off Nicol," Billy rasped. He clambered awkwardly over a
mound of moss. "I'll get that little shit." He reached under his
tee-shirt and pulled the pistol from his waist band.</p>
<p>Tom had made it to the solid ground and was fifty yards away
while Billy was still floundering. The rest of them laughed at the
blundering pursuit, and that only made Billy angrier. He struggled
out of the marsh, breathing heavily and stopped to get his wind.
Tom was half-way up the slope towards the ridge jumping up and
down, taunting. His high voice carried down the hill. Billy raised
the airgun and cocked the spring. He took aim.</p>
<p>"Christ Billy, don't..." Doug started to protest. Billy fired
but Tom was too far away and the pellet travelled only forty yards
before hitting the ground. Tom jumped up and down, jeering, and the
others laughed raucously. By the time they reached the top of the
ridge, Billy's quick anger had evaporated and his jeans were almost
dry, though now caked with the black mud.</p>
<p>They stopped there, and below them the heathery lip of the wide
depression, the pocked moonscape stretched out towards the low
horizon in a swathe of broken landscape.</p>
<p>"We found it," Corky said. He pointed across the wide basin.
"The Dummy Village." The way he said it gave the words capitals. "I
never really believed it was there. I thought it was just a story
somebody made up."</p>
<p>"I <em>always</em> knew," Billy said.</p>
<p>"You always <em>would</em>," Doug observed drily.</p>
<p>The craters dotted the whole of the plain, some of them solitary
and isolated and others so closely packed that their embankments
merged and gave them different shapes. The larger ones were deep
and dark while those on the slope nearest them seemed shallower, as
if the earth itself hadn't been deep enough. These were fringed in
dark green reeds and choked with duckweed and algae. They stretched
northward as far as the eye could see.</p>
<p>"The plan must have worked," Billy said. "Look at all those bomb
holes. Must have dropped thousands of them up here. Millions. Bet
the old Jerries were sick as pigs when they heard they'd all missed
their targets." He put two fingers across his lip and made a mock
nazi salute. "<em>Shweinhund dirty Brittischers</em>" he screeched
in a commando comic German accent, making them all laugh.</p>
<p>He held his stick up like a rifle and aimed it at the sky,
making hawking sounds at the back of his throat as if he was firing
a machine gun. "They should have had anti-aircraft guns up here to
blast them when came. That would have been great fun. You couldn't
have missed from up here."</p>
<p>"I wouldn't like to have been here when they were dropping all
that," Doug said. "You'd have been blown to pieces."</p>
<p>"I didn't think it really existed," Corky said, wonderingly.
"Honestly I didn't. Not <em>really</em>. I thought it was just a
story." Danny nodded in agreement and wonderment. He hadn't truly
believed in the Dummy Village, but he'd <em>wanted</em> to believe.
It was part of the schoolyard legends, like old Miss Dorrian who'd
died of a stroke in Castlebank Primary school and now walked the
empty corridors at night. It was like the tales of Cairn House, the
oldest building in town, where a girl had once seen a white and
bloodless face floating outside the window twenty feet above the
ground, and where Mole Hopkirk had been found with the nails still
growing on his dead fingers. The Dummy Village had as much
substance as the three little girls who'd been playing skipping
ropes and were killed down on Crossburn Street before the war when
a cart horse had bolted and the overturned flatbed had crushed them
against the wall. People said that when the mist came off the
swampy lowland of the Rough Drain on Halloween night, you could
hear them chanting their schoolyard rhymes as they skipped on
through the night.</p>
<p>The Dummy Village, the decoy target for the wartime bombers had
not been truly real, though it <em>should</em> have been. Now it
was indeed real. They had trudged up the length of the Blackwood
Stream, right up to its marshy source and clambered through the
swamp of the bog and in the heat of the sun they'd slogged up the
hill to a ridge miles from the town where the air was clear and
there was no sound but the mewling of lapwings and the warbling
song of lark rising into the blue.</p>
<p>It was here. A dilapidated <em>Shangri-la</em> on the far side
of the low ridge in a wild moonscape.</p>
<p>"And we're the first," Danny said. " Nobody's ever been here
before. Maybe not since the war."</p>
<p>Far overhead, a buzzard wheeled on broad wings, circling on the
clear air. Its plaintive cry came down from the height.</p>
<p>And the boys started walking down the hill, towards the craters
and the clutter of buildings.</p>
<p>Before the first of the pot-holes, the chain-link fence, red
with rust at the places where the concrete stanchions stood upright
caught the wind and moaned muted protest. At other places, the
poles had sunk or listed into the peat and the wire was ripped and
jagged, some of it flat on the ground with thick grass stalks
growing through. On the periphery, tangles of stinging nettles
swayed in the breeze. A square metal signpost with its sign
obliterated by rust hung from a pillar, pock-marked with bullet
holes that Billy claimed was from a soldier's Lee Enfield but which
looked just like straight .22 shot to the others. Further along,
once they had clambered through the defunct barrier, Tom found
another sign, this one angled into the ground. Wind and rain had
peeled back the paint on the side which had braved the elements,
while a triangle of dirty red corrosion showed where it had been
angled under the turf. The red mark eliminated the first letter of
the warning.</p>
<p><em>ANGER!</em></p>
<p>the rest of the word warned. For some reason it seemed apt up
here in this forgotten monument to the fury. Danny felt that shiver
of foreboding again, although they could all fill in the missing
letter.</p>
<p>"What do you think the danger is?" Tom asked.</p>
<p>"It's been up here since the war," Billy said. "It was the bombs
coming down. It was to let everybody to know that if they stayed
here they'd get bombed to pieces. Simple."</p>
<p>"I think it's the craters, telling people to stay away from
them," Doug said. "Some of them must be pretty deep. If you fell in
there they'd never find you again."</p>
<p>Tom let the ragged sheet of metal drop. It stuck back in the
peaty turf again. They went on down, past the first of two shallow
craters where dragonflies helicoptered out from the choking reeds.
Beyond that, a large single hole, almost perfectly round, was bare
of weeds. The water inside was black and there was a shimmering
dirty iridescence of oil on the surface close to where the boys
passed, giving it a poisonous, somehow evil aspect. They couldn't
tell how deep it was.</p>
<p>At the next one, an oval pool caused by the close detonation of
two wartime bombs, Doug spotted a boot lying upside down in a patch
of reeds, its sole peeled away from the upper like an opening jaw.
Billy stretched with his stick to haul it out of the thick
growth.</p>
<p>"What if there's a foot in it?" Doug asked, with a snort of
laughter. "Like the one in the quarry?"</p>
<p>Billy ignored him and brought the old boot to the edge. He
up-ended it and they watched a sludge of water and algae gurgle
out. Something black and many-legged wriggled in the flow and made
it to the pool before Billy could hit it with his stave.</p>
<p>"If there was a foot in it, you'd have filled your pants," Doug
said. Billy didn't bother to deny it. If there had been a foot in
it, they'd all have run, yelling in fear, down the hill and back to
camp.</p>
<p>Corky and Danny had moved on together, in a hurry to get to the
huddle of buildings. They were half-way down the basin, though for
some reason, the shanty town seemed no nearer. The others caught up
with them and they trudged over the ridges and heaped earth where
the old explosions had thrown up peat and boulders. Billy kept up a
running commentary about the kind of planes that would have flown
overhead and the bombs that would have rained down and the noise
and the thunder and the excitement of it all.</p>
<p>They skirted another crater where Doug probed with his ash
sapling and got a foetid and oily bubble of marsh gas for his
pains. Here, another boot, identical to the first, was jammed
against a plank of wood.</p>
<p>"Maybe somebody fell in," Tom suggested.</p>
<p>"Maybe it was somebody got bombed," Corky said. "Like a poacher.
Or a shepherd up here all alone at night just minding his own
business. Stuck here on his own in bad weather and he sees the
Dummy Village and thinks 'there's a good place to shelter'. Maybe
he sneaked inside and thought he was safe out of the rain and the
snow. Probably a thunderstorm, with lightning all over the place
and thunder. He was probably glad of the shelter and he's sitting
there trying to stay warm and then <em>WHUMP....</em> before he
knows it he's been blown right out of his boots."</p>
<p>"You really think that's what happened?" Billy asked, his face
alight. "You reckon it blew him right out of them."</p>
<p>"No," Corky said. "Look at it. The sole's got a big hole in it.
Somebody just threw them away."</p>
<p>Billy's excited expression collapsed into disappointment.</p>
<p>"But it was a good story," Corky said, and they all laughed. But
as they moved away, Tom looked nervously over his shoulder just in
case it <em>hadn't</em> been an old boot.</p>
<p>They got over the next small ridge and into the wide depression.
There was another perimeter fence here, most of it rusted to pieces
and there were sections where rolls of barbed wire, the kind Billy
insisted had been used to snag prisoners of war, had been laid in
long tangled cylinders. They followed it for fifty yards to find an
opening, testing the rolls for breaks. In one of the tangles, a
dead fox, its fur and most of the flesh rotted away, had been
snared by the coils. Its frozen snarl of clenched teeth was still
ferocious. Further on they came across the whitened skull of a ram
which had suffered the same fate. The rest of the carcass was long
gone, picked cleaned scattered by scavengers. The skull was pure
bone and it bore a massive ridged pair of curled horns. Billy
hooked it out of the wire and tried to set it up on his stick like
a trophy. When they found a way through the fence he led them like
a standard bearer with the skull held aloft as they finally strode
in to the Dummy Village.</p>
<p>A flock of rooks watched them, huddled together like black
vultures on a roof down the centre way. The five boys walked warily
between the first of the buildings and the birds sat silent, all
their heads turned to watch the approach. There was more than a
dozen of them, squat and shiny black and somehow dangerous. Doug
raised his stick and made <em>ack-ack</em> noises and the birds
flew off in a clatter of wings and a protest of cawing. They
swooped low, close to the tangled moor-grass and then rose over the
nearby roof, gaining height until they reached a thick wire that
bellied in a curve between two canted poles. They alighted on the
wire in a flutter and settled down to observe the intrusion like
wary guards in black uniforms.</p>
<p>"That's really creepy," Doug muttered, keeping his voice low.
They had wandered through the gap between two buildings and could
see down the centre way. For some reason the dereliction and
isolation of the place hushed them to near silence. "Just like
<em>The Birds</em>."</p>
<p>"You're too young to get in to see that," Billy argued.</p>
<p>"Me and Danny sneaked in at the intermission, didn't we Dan?</p>
<p>Danny nodded agreement. He was looking at the line of crows,
black in colour, but now even blacker, silhouetted against the sky.
He couldn't see their eyes and that made them seem as if they were
blind, but he could sense their gaze. They huddled like judges
deliberating on a sentence and he recalled the heron's fall and its
broken, graceless ending.</p>
<p>"Scared the bejeesus out of me, I don't mind tellin' you," Doug
said. "They were all sitting just like that, waiting to come down
and peck people's eyes out." Danny agreed with that. The film had
been disturbing, nature inverted and distorted and out of control.
That night, as he lay in the dark he had wished he hadn't sneaked
in to the old Regal picture house.</p>
<p>Corky found a rusted bolt in a pile of broken slabs. He lobbed
it at the crows and they took off again, winging to the far end of
the compound, settled on a roof and sat to wait once more.</p>
<p>The place was eerie. For a moment, when the crows had settled
there was a pause of silence where nothing seemed to move and the
wind dropped to a sudden stillness. They were in a ghost town. It
was the only way to describe it. They stood there, five small
gunslingers at the end of the derelict main street where the couch
grass and rough reeds poked their way up from a gravel-bed road.
The line of wooden shacks, grey with age and sagging under the
weight of neglect angled in a straight line, dwindling in dismal
perspective for several hundred yards. The corrugated iron roofs,
intact on only a handful of them, were red with rust and peppered
with holes where blasted stones had punched through. Others leaned
into deep depressions where the ground had subsided, still others
were tumbled and crumpled as if a giant hand had smashed them
flat.</p>
<p>The place was eerie, a dead and decaying village, broken and
picked clean like the ram's skull. It was creepy and shadowed. But
it was magnificent in its desolation. They stood there abreast,
Danny leaning on his stick, Doug in his string vest, his slingshot
loose in his hand, Billy hip-shot in his mud-caked jeans, Corky
with a thumb hooked on his belt, a casual arm around Tom's thin
shoulders.</p>
<p>"Magic," Billy said, and for once he was right.</p>
<p>Just at that moment, the wind picked up and moaned through the
wire. A metal tin clanked against a post like a tuneless bell and a
piece of twisted galvanised sheet creaked in protest. The Dummy
Village came alive again. Two swallows came darting in on
flickering wings and swooped under a mouldering lintel. The faint
twitter of squalling fledglings came from inside. A stream of gold
wasps flew busily between two spars to a massive globe of papery
nest suspended under a sagging grey eave.</p>
<p>"I never thought it would be so big," Doug said. "It's like a
Dummy flaming <em>city.</em>" They started walking down the
overgrown street until they reached an intact building with a
gaping doorway. They went inside. The place smelled of oil and rust
and of age. The floorboards creaked threateningly under their
weight and the whole building seemed to shudder as the five of them
crept inside. An old cobwebbed box lay in a corner and immediately
Billy bent down to try the lid.</p>
<p>"It's an ammo box. Just like in the war," he said. The lid
hauled up surprisingly easily. Inside, among a tatter of shredded
wood, a vole squeaked and darted out through a gaping hole in the
bottom. Billy tried to catch it but it disappeared under the
sagging floorboards. Tom and Danny went outside and crossed the
road to go into another shack. From the front, it looked almost
intact, but once inside they could see that the whole of the back
had fallen away into a pile of grey, rotting wood. Even the
floorboards had disintegrated. Beyond the walls another row of
buildings stood gaunt and crumpled. There was a space where a bomb
had blasted a hole in the ground and the neighbouring shacks were
smothered under the debris of turf and rocks.</p>
<p>The others joined them.</p>
<p>"Must have been really great," Billy said. He pulled the airgun
out and aimed it at the sky the way he had done with his stick.
"They must have come in low, over the top of the hills. You could
have picked them off one by one. My old man was a gunner during the
war." He cocked the gun, fired it and they watched the pellet climb
into the air, hardly faster than a thrown rock. He re-loaded.</p>
<p>"Your old man must have been John flippin' Wayne," Doug snorted.
"He was in everything except the town's brass band."</p>
<p>"What't that supposed to mean?" Billy demanded, rounding on
Doug. "And what did your Dad do? Eh? Tell me that
<em>Bugs</em>!"</p>
<p>"Jeez, would you grow up?" Doug said. "All we ever get is your
old man and how he won the flippin' war." He turned away.</p>
<p>"Just what does that mean? " Billy bawled at Doug's back. "Come
on! Buck-toothed <em>baskit</em>."</p>
<p>Doug spun round. He jabbed his hand up to his temple and tapped
hard. "Think about it."</p>
<p>"Come on Doug. Leave it." Corky tried to defuse them.</p>
<p>"Leave what?" Billy wanted to know. Danny looked at Tom who
looked back, trying to keep his face non committal. "What's Bugs
bloody Bunny talking about?"</p>
<p>"Nothing," Doug said. He turned away again, feigning disinterest
though the others could see the stiffness in his bony
shoulders.</p>
<p>"No. It's not <em>nothing</em>. You're having a go at me, taking
the mick." Billy's face was reddening. Corky tried again.</p>
<p>"Give it a break you guys," he said, cajoling. "We never came up
here to fight. Come on." He looked from one to the other. "How
about it?"</p>
<p>Doug shrugged. "Well tell him not to call me Bugs."</p>
<p>"Don't call him Bugs," Corky said to Billy, putting a laugh into
his voice. Danny caught it and giggled.</p>
<p>"Or <em>Lugs</em>," Dougie insisted.</p>
<p>"Or Lugs then," Billy said. The tension drained away.</p>
<p>"Or Bugsylugs."</p>
<p>"That as well," Billy conceded. He grinned and the tension
evaporated. Billy stuck his hand out and Doug shook it, both of
them looking sheepish, simple as that, and it was over. Tom and
Danny ambled away. They went down the street. Tom went through one
of the decrepit shacks and out to the far side where the peat was
ridges and grooved in gaping black slashes where the land had
subsided. Danny found another swallow's nest, just a little cup of
hard mud set against a beam. He got up onto an old oil drum to peer
in and saw the gaping yellow beaks of the baby birds as they
demanded food. Corky was in the hut opposite. He came out with an
old beer-bottle. He set it up on a piece of angled iron and
searched about for stones to pitch at it. Doug leaned in through
the window of the next shack down, his skinny backside poking out.
Corky couldn't resist it. He drew back the elastic and let fly. The
small pebble spanged off Doug's buttock. He jerked, let out a yell,
and toppled inside with a crash of splintering wood.</p>
<p>They heard him yell some more, while Corky and Billy rolled
about, unable to control their laughter, and when he came out he
was grey with dust.</p>
<p>"Who did that?" he demanded truculently. "Put me through the
flamin' floor."</p>
<p>Corky tried to stand up, failed and sank to his knees in
uncontrollable laughter.</p>
<p>"Was that you, Harrison?" Doug wanted to know.</p>
<p>Billy shook his head. "Honest, I never did a thing. Swear
to...." his eyes opened wide. Danny and Tom were coming round the
side of the building with something big and heavy weighed in their
hands. "<em>Jeeesus kee-flamin'-rist</em> where did you get
that?"</p>
<p>The two boys grunted as they lifted up the long brown, rusted
thing, straining to get it to waist height. The four metal flight
flanges stuck up like black fins where the end narrowed. A hex nut
protruded from the blunt front end.</p>
<p>"It's a bomb," Tom said proudly. "We found it. And there's more
of them."</p>
<p>Doug forgot the sting in his backside. Danny and Tom laid the
bomb down gently on the turf. There was no mistake. It really
<em>was</em> a bomb. It was more than two feet long and heavy
enough to indent the ground. The flight blades at the tail were
pitted with rust but there was a dark, wet patch close to the nose
that still had a skin of paint on it. Some light-coloured letters
in stencil form were barely visible.</p>
<p>"Is it a Jerry bomb? Or a Jap?" Billy asked, a-jitter with
sudden excitement. War and the tools of war were a constant
fascination to him. Proximity to a bomb from the war was just about
the biggest thing that had happened to him so far. "Will it still
work?"</p>
<p>They all stood around the thing. It was old and rusted at the
back but it still looked somehow deadly, like a drowsy adder in the
grass that should best be left undisturbed.</p>
<p>"It's probably worth a fortune," Doug said. "Maybe we could sell
it."</p>
<p>"There's more of them," Tom said again. "They're stuck into the
ground out there." He gestured with his arm. "The peat must have
fallen away." Corky nudged the thing with his foot, trying to turn
it over. It rolled slowly.</p>
<p>"Imagine that. Must have been a dud," Billy said.</p>
<p>"Might not be," Doug countered. "Remember that one up in the
reservoir? Broke all the windows at the top end of Corrieside? That
just hadn't gone off. It was still <em>alive</em>. Blew a rock
right through McFarlane's barn roof, so it did."</p>
<p>"Maybe this one could go off," Billy said. He kicked the side of
the thing and gave a loud yell like an explosion. Everybody jumped
as if they'd been stung.</p>
<p>"Hells bells Billy," Corky said. "You scared the life out of
me."</p>
<p>"Smell it? He's standing in it," Billy said knuckling Corky on
the shoulder. "You're losing your nerve pal." Corky just grinned,
not taking offence.</p>
<p>They followed Tom and Danny round the side of the building to
where the land sloped away in a profusion of trenches and craters.
All of the ground here seemed to be fissured and turned over. A
jagged crack a hundred yards long in the peat showed where the
summer's lack of rainfall had made it shrink and split, ten feet
deep in places and just as wide. It was here that the bombs showed,
sticking out from the soft earth of the sides of the small chasm.
There were three of them, each maybe forty feet apart, all at the
same angle. They had obviously gone into the ground, punching
through the soft deposit when the surface had been wet and boggy.
Further along, all that remained of another two bombs were their
tail-flights. Doug hooked them out of the pit with his stick and
tied them to the wood like a trophy. The others hauled the
remaining bombs out.</p>
<p>"Can we take them back?" Billy asked. "A couple of them?"</p>
<p>"Sure. It's a long way," Danny said, "but we can strap them to a
plank and take shots each at carrying them."</p>
<p>"Let's do it," Billy said. "We can make them work. We could blow
half the valley to smithereens."</p>
<p>They spent the whole afternoon exploring the ruins. Tom found
another sign with some lettering that was indecipherable but might
have said that the land was a target area and that led to another
discussion which led to another argument over whether it was a
decoy site or merely a bombing range. They all preferred the decoy
version and Tom slung the sign away, ending the argument with
stunning logic. They searched every shack for more bombs or
bullets. Billy was convinced there might be a gun left behind under
floorboards, but all he managed to find was a brass buckle from an
old Sam Browne web belt and an ancient zippo lighter that was
clogged with muck and rust.</p>
<p>The sun was beginning to sink towards the west when they decided
to head back to the camp. Danny got some wire and managed to secure
three of the bombs to a long piece of wooden planking which he and
Corky slung on their shoulders. Billy got his stick with the
sheep's skull pinioned on its end and led the way out of the dummy
village and up to the ridge. Behind them, the crows watched and
waited and when the boys were far enough away, they flew down one
by one to whatever dead thing they had been pecking at in the
shallow depression dug out by a wartime bomb.</p>
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<h1>21</h1>
<p><em>Interlude....</em></p>
<p>"We thought he'd gone away." Angus McNicol's voice, gruff with
the years conveyed the regret that had hung about him since
then.</p>
<p>"We all did, even the Commander and Dr Bryce who was a
psychologist from the university. He was a new-fankled kind of
expert, trying to get inside the man's head. My boss, Hector Kelso
who was head of CID, he never put too much faith in Bryce and to
tell you the truth, neither did I.</p>
<p>"You see, nothing had happened since the middle of June, a few
weeks before the school broke up for the holidays and Bryce said
that gave us two choices. He had either moved on, in which case we
would have had more murders somewhere else, or he would have burned
out and killed himself.</p>
<p>"Nobody really considered the truth. The killer just took a
break between June and the end of July or he had killed somebody
else who hadn't been reported missing. We never found a body, so
probably he just took time off. Hell, everybody needs a holiday,
don't they? Where he had been, nobody knows and I reckon John
Fallon must have been the closest to guessing the truth when he
said the man was probably ex-army, and used to living rough."</p>
<p>The former detective, now silver haired and only slightly
stooped, looked up and his eyes were filled with remembering.</p>
<p>"Then Johnson McKay the postman got a bit concerned when the
mail hadn't been collected from the box at the bottom of McColl's
farm road and he took a stroll up there just to check. If it hadn't
been for him being curious, then it could have taken another few
weeks, maybe a month before anybody would have found out.</p>
<p>"I'll never forget his face and I'll never forget what we found
there and down at the side of the trees alongside Blackwood Stream,
not as long as I live. It was a slaughterhouse, a
<em>shambles.</em></p>
<p>"I followed Hector Kelso around the whole day, and that man was
damned good. Taught me everything I know. The only detective I ever
saw who was any better was John Fallon's boy Jack, and it's a damn
shame he's left the force after that trouble a year or so back, but
that's another story. Anyway, Hector went round the place and gave
me a running commentary, like a professor teaching a student. That
was exactly how it was." Angus looked at the little machine on the
table. The cassette spindle turned slowly. "I wrote everything down
because we never had tape recorders then, and they'd have been a
godsend to us, believe me. The boss was a hell of a lot better than
the psychologist because he could follow a sequence right to its
end and that's how he was able to tell me what had happened. He was
a genius."</p>
<p>Angus closed his eyes, frowning with concentration.</p>
<p>"It was the blood on the curtain. Threw him for a bit, and for a
while he thought the wife might have done it, despite the fact that
she was a tiny wee thing. But then he figured it out quickly
enough.</p>
<p>" 'Gus,' he says to me. 'Go stand out there on the other side of
that patch on the ground.' I knew it was blood, we all did, and it
had dried there to a crust on the cobbles. I stood there and the
boss bent down, getting himself to about the same hight as Jean
McColl. He leaned forward and took a hold of the curtain, pulling
it to the side, then brought his other hand up and laid it on the
sill.</p>
<p>"From then on, he just walked his way through it, as if it was
some kind of a slow dance. He had that kind of mind. He could
choreograph it all in his head.</p>
<p>"The chicken was still in the sink, crawling with flies and
maggots and Hector realised she had been cleaning the bird when it
happened. She must have had a ringside view from that window. She'd
seen it happening, seen her man die right there in the middle of
the yard."</p>
<p>The policeman had almost totakl recall of how the CID boss had
worked it out, from Jean McColl seeing her husband cut down with
the axe. He knew the killer had used the chicken head to mark the
bothy doorposts and he could tell by the slant of the crossses how
tall the killer was. "Hector talked it right through and he walked
it right through, never stopping for a moment. He told us where
McColl had fallen like a sack and how his wife had fought and how
the collie had attacked the stranger. It was all written there in
the clues, in the sequence, if you had the experience to look.
Hector Kelso had the experience, and the way he told it, never
showing any emotion until later, made it unravel like a
nightmare.</p>
<p>"I can still remember Hector going through the motions, over six
foot tall and built like a wrestler, trying to keep low, the same
height as the wee woman. He runs into the farmhouse, through to the
kitchen and then to the hall and he showed how the killer had
broken the hasp the get at the shotguns</p>
<p>"I can tell you straight, we were all pretty damn concerned when
we realised he had the guns. He'd shot a couple of holes in the
ceiling, maybe just to make sure the gun worked and then gone
looking for Mrs McColl. He'd about two weeks of a start on us, give
or take a day or so.</p>
<p>"Dr Bryce, he said he was very close to the edge and it was
likely he'd turned the gun around and blown his head off, but while
we lived in hope, there was no evidence of that whatsoever. Kelso
dismised it as so much hog wash.</p>
<p>"He asked the psychologist about the chicken's blood smeared on
the door. Bryce said the scent of blood had probably enraged him,
or maybe it had dredged up some childhood trauma, but he hadn't
seen the other places where the man had done his killing. I reckon
John Fallon got it right.</p>
<p>" 'Read the bible,' John suggested to me when we were standing
there in the sun with all the flies buzzing around that crust of
blood in the yard. He was never a smartarse was John, but despite
his build, he was pretty clever. ' He wants the angel of death to
pass over.'</p>
<p>"I reckon that was fair comment, from the pages of the bible he
left lying around and all the other signs he left, most of them
covered in shit. The press, they got the story about the Twitchy
Eyes, and that's how the name stuck, but in the squad, over that
summer when we were hunting for him, waiting for him to make his
next move, we started calling him The Angel.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>July:</em></p>
<p>She wrote fast, almost tearing the page in her hurry, crabbing
the letters together in a slant across the page. Her clear and
rounded handwriting changed to a spidery scrawl, almost illegible.
The wavering strokes showed how badly her hand was shaking.</p>
<p><em>He's killed Ian. God save me. Cut him down in the yard.
Lesley Joyce. He hit him and took him into the byre. Got the guns.
He's mad. Killed my man with axe. Cut down. Lesley Joyce.</em></p>
<p>The words began to repeat on the page, just as they were
repeating inside her head, ricocheting around almost out of
control.</p>
<p>Out beyond the workroom, beyond the bedroom and down the stairs,
she could hear the heavy tread of the man's boots. The shotgun had
blasted like a thunderclap and she had felt the whole house shake
with the concussion. Her heart had almost stopped dead in her
chest. She tried to write more, to put down in words what she had
seen, but the fingers of her hand seized up in a tight clenched
fist and the words wouldn't come. All she could see was the picture
of Ian going down in the yard, making that awful deadly sound.</p>
<p>Nausea rolled and surged inside her and a trickle drooled from
her open mouth as she tried to gulp it back, tried to clear that
image from her head so she could think.</p>
<p>Downstairs she could hear the man muttering, at least that's
what it sounded like in the distance, through the closed doors, but
she knew he had to be talking aloud. It sounded like chanting.</p>
<p>Ian's bewildered face swam in front of hers refusing to vanish.
His hat had rolled away on the stones and he had tried to crawl
away, his eyes wide and blank, like a bewildered animal in pain. He
had tried to crawl away, dripping blood onto the cobbles. He'd
crawled away from where she was, even then attempting to draw him
away, despite the pain and the shock and the sudden awful fear.</p>
<p>And even then he'd tried to warn her. She jerked, found she
could still write:</p>
<p><em>Couldn't get the gun. Ian said to get the gun and shoot but
it was locked. He has the guns and he's shooting.</em></p>
<p>Somehow her mind unhitched itself from the crazy ricochet of
images and she managed to scribble more. She had slammed the book
open, not pausing to flip the pages to the correct day and date.
She'd found a blank page and started writing fast, knowing there
was little time. No time at all.</p>
<p>The little window on the thick wall was slightly ajar. In the
high summer, it let in the perfumed scent of sweet peas from the
garden and the lazy humming of the busy bees, and in the mornings
she got a slant of golden sunlight across the old dresser she used
as a desk and a work station. She put the book down and laid the
pen on the surface. It rattled from her shaking fingers. Outside
she could hear the whine of the terriers and the lowing of the cows
in the far side of the byre. They could smell the blood and the
instinctive fear of the predator had spread among them. The
terriers had sniffed at the pool of blood and they were confused
and panicky, their tempers now stilled. Downstairs the man's
hobnailed boots <em>crumped</em> on the slate floor.</p>
<p><em>Aaah</em>.</p>
<p>Ian's groan came drifting on the pollen scented air. A bee flew
in the window, turning lazily by the latch.</p>
<p>Jean snatched up the pen again.</p>
<p><em>Still alive. He's alive now. Please save him God.</em></p>
<p>Footsteps came thudding up the narrow stair.</p>
<p><em>Coming now. Gun.</em></p>
<p>The bedroom door kicked open. She could hear the latch spring
and the wood splinter and the slam of the heavy panel against the
wall. It sounded loud as gunfire. Almost.</p>
<p>She dropped the book on the bed. The workroom, on the east gable
of the house, was a low, square space with slanted walls that
followed the pitch of the roof. Just above the dresser, a small
trapdoor, barely two foot square, led to a crawlspace under the
joists.</p>
<p>She could hear the man's breathing. He had kicked the bedroom
door open and he was standing there. She could visualise his dark
and blinking mad eyes.</p>
<p>Jean McColl clambered silently onto the dresser, pushed the
hatch upwards, and despite her age and her freezing terror, she
managed to haul herself up into the dusty space. She lowered the
door closed again as silently as she could and began to crawl over
the beams, careful not to slip and fall through the plaster of the
ceiling until she got out of the narrow roof space above the
work-room and into the loft proper. She crabbed her way though the
narrow gap in the stone, onto the bare planks. Ahead of her
something squeaked in the dark and she couldn't tell whether it was
a rat or a mouse. Underneath her the workroom door blasted open and
crashed against the wall, just as the bedroom door had done.</p>
<p>Footsteps, even louder now, thudded on the boards where the rug
didn't cover. The tinkling of glass. A vase? The window? She
couldn't wait. In her mind she kept seeing Ian trying to crawl
away, mortally hurt, with the shadow of death reflected in his
wide, stunned eyes. She heard again the dreadful animal groan.</p>
<p>Below her, the man called out, and whether there were any words
or whether it was simply a bellowing cry of rage or anger or
madness, she couldn't tell. She crawled further into the roof-space
until there was enough room to let her gingerly get to her
feet.</p>
<p>Thunder roared.</p>
<p>In the confines of the loft, that's what it seemed like. It was
as if the world had exploded under her feet in one enormous
blast.</p>
<p>Splinters of lath-wood and pellets of dry plaster erupted
upwards from the floor just behind her. She tripped, rolled on the
boards and the thunder crashed again, even closer. Instantly a hole
maybe six inches wide appeared in the floor just beyond the limit
of the planking. Dust and splinters blew out in a fountain and
rapped against the slanted sarking-planks under the slates. Jean
reeled back and hit her head on a jagged nail showing through the
wood. It caught her behind the ear and an instant trickle of blood
flowed. She spun round and saw the column of light, like a blazing
pillar, reaching from the hole in the floor to the slant of the
roof.</p>
<p>He could hear her moving. He could hear her moving and he was
trying to follow the sound and blast her to death with the
shotgun.</p>
<p>His footsteps clumped almost directly underneath her and sudden
terror unfroze her legs. She whirled, using the light coming
through the gaping blast-hole and ran for the corner, pushed
through the second hatch to the space over the main part of the
farmhouse and clambered over the trunks and boxes that had been
stored there since before she was married. Beyond the clutter a
dusty skylight showed a dull rectangle of light. Behind her the
shotgun roared again, a vast and deafening sound in the close
confines of the loft, but for the moment there was no danger of the
blast coming through the old boxes of crockery and pre-war
clothing. Dust billowed chokingly, making her fast breath rasp in
her throat. At the far end of the attic there was a narrow wooden
stairway that would lead down to the store-room where Ian stacked
the potatoes and turnips and the clamps of carrots. She thought
about reaching the stairs and following them down, but that would
put her out into the closed yard where he could shoot her from
almost any position.</p>
<p>She had to get away, get help. Against a man with a gun, against
the crazy blinking man who had smashed Ian to the ground, there
would be little chance, hardly a chance at all, but she had to try.
If she could make it to the far wall without being seen she could
use the hedge as cover and get down the track, escape to the
Lochside Road only three miles down, heading west. If she could get
to the road then she could make it and call the police and an
ambulance.</p>
<p>Through the blast-hole, she heard the man's voice, rough and
ragged and dreadfully angry. The shotgun's metallic clash came up
to her over the growling rumble, a deadly and cold sound in itself.
He was re-loading.</p>
<p>It snapped closed again and she knew there were two more shells
in the chambers</p>
<p>Jean got past the collection of boxes and reached the skylight.
The glass was festooned with cobwebs that had gathered so much dust
they made the window almost opaque. She twisted the catch, got it
free in a couple of seconds, and swung the heavy frame upwards. It
squeaked alarmingly and then stopped when it was almost upright.
Thankful that it hadn't crashed down onto the slates, she crawled
out onto the slope of the slates. The shotgun boomed again,
dreadfully loud, but not so deafening now that she was out. A puff
of dust rolled out of the skylight like flour in the kitchen when
she baked her bread. It smelled of lime and burning.</p>
<p>She managed to get a grip on the iron lip and swung herself up,
moving gingerly lest she slip on the moss-covered shingles, reached
the ridge of the roof and got to the downslope. From here she was
hidden from the yard. The roof fell away to the pasture side, a
long slide of black slate warmed by the sun. She negotiated it,
trying to keep her feet flat on the surface to give her as much
friction grip as possible, reached the far end where the farmhouse
proper merged with the old barn. Here there was an old door at the
corner, set high in the wall where Ian used to mount a block and
tackle for hauling sacks of feed and bales of straw up to the high
store. She got there and pushed at the door but it was locked.</p>
<p>Inside the house, the man was talking to himself. From where she
perched it was just a low rumble. Ian had fallen silent and in a
way that was better than the awful groaning. She wondered if he was
dead and a part of her prayed, despite the devastation of that
loss, that he was not suffering any more. Footsteps sounded below
her and she turned away from the door, climbed back over the ridge
to the end of the barn and let herself slide down to the level of
the gutter. She managed to grab a hold of it and lower herself down
to the window ledge and let herself in through the old shutters.
Here, in the old swaybacked store-room, old tack lay in heaps,
mouldering bridles from the days they'd kept Clydesdale horses for
pulling the plough, giant horseshoes dusted with rust, a set of
twisted and cracked traces hanging from nails. Rats scuttled and
scurried in the shadows, alarmed at her passing, while down in the
yard, the terriers had set up a strange, frightened howling. The
tack balcony led to the space above the byre. She had to push aside
a pile of old sacks, sending a family of mice squealing and running
for cover and then she was through to the ledge overlooking the
tiled butchering shed that was tacked on to the byre.</p>
<p>A shape moved close to the far door. Her heart lurched, thinking
the man had discovered her and then it kicked hard in her chest and
seemed to stop beating altogether.</p>
<p>It was Ian. He was hanging down from the hooks, head close to
the ground. A spreading scarlet puddle caught the light beneath
him. A sluggardly ripple showed that fresh blood was still
dripping.</p>
<p>There was no sign of life. Jean leaned on the metal railing,
breath locked in her throat. One of Ian's shoes was down there in
the trough along with his blood and she could see where the
butcher's hook had spiked through his heel. He'd been hung up like
a carcass, spiked by the Achilles tendon, the way farmers hung pigs
to let them bleed.</p>
<p>She started for the steps, knowing they would take her down to
the yard when outside, right then, the shotgun thundered again. She
flinched, expecting the blast to knock her off her feet, but
immediately a screaming sound, like a stone saw cutting into
granite, cut through the air. The dogs started up a frenzied
yapping and the gun fired again and they went silent. A moment
later, a shadow appeared at the butchery door and the man came
backing through, dragging a heavy weight just as he'd pulled her
bleeding husband over the step at the door. The cause of the sound
was clear enough. He'd shot one of the yearling pigs. It was still
alive, still screeching but there was a gaping hole in its side. He
pulled it past Ian, put the gun down, hoisted the pink, shivering
animal up to a hook and let it twist there. He picked up the gun
and reached behind him for the knife he'd stuck down his belt. She
watched as he leaned forward and slit the pig's throat. It kicked
into a spasm, sending blood spurting all over the floor and all
over her husband. She groaned aloud, an involuntary blurt of shock
and fear.</p>
<p>The man whirled round. His eyes had stopped blinking. He looked
up and those eyes were like pits, black and mad. She pulled away,
went back the way she had come, heart bucking inside her. His feet
clattered on the stone stairs. She got back through the window,
tried to climb on the gutter, slipped back and her blouse snagged a
rusted bracket which caught right through the material. Her feet
scrabbled for purchase, slid off the stone wall and she slipped
forward before being brought up sharp by the hook of metal. She was
left hanging there.</p>
<p>The man reached out massive hand and gripped her arm. Without
ceremony and with no hesitation at all, he pulled her back in over
the window sill, ripping her blouse from collar to waist and
leaving a white rag flapping on the bracket. He dragged her across
the tack-room and down the steps to the byre. She tried to pull
away but he clamped his hand on her neck, fingers and thumb almost
toughting, and walked her past her dangling husband. Her feet
splashed in Ian's blood. She tried to look to see if he was still
breathing, but the hand held her tight, made her face straight in
front. She felt as light as a feather as he propelled her across
the yard, past the bodies of the three dogs and the dark patch
where her husband had fallen, through the front door and into the
farmhouse.</p>
<p>She awoke when it was dark and when she tried to walk she could
not move. Dull and heavy pain throbbed inside her and stayed with
her until the sun came up in the early morning. The light flickered
in the sky, just visible through the open shutter and the bantam
cocks were the first to greet the dawn. It seemed to take forever
for the early light to creep round the corner of the byre and
brighten the wall of the little slaughtering pen where Ian was
dead.</p>
<p>She knew now that he was gone. There had been no sound, except
for the grunts made by the insane man when he had finally left her
alone and had gone out to the byre, swinging the big blade of the
knife. He muttered to himself constantly and it seemed as if he was
talking to someone standing beside him. She couldn't make out the
words, but the tone of it sounded like conversation. The man would
ask a question, cock his head as if awaiting a reply, and then he'd
nod, or he'd shake his head in answer. He had gone out to the byre,
swinging the knife and she'd heard him grunt with effort. There had
been a dull crack, like the sound of a stone dropping on another,
and then the man had gone walking away, muttering to himself.</p>
<p>Now she was huddled on the floor, something angled and hard
pressed against her ribs but unable to do anything about that. A
dark tide of despair welled up in her heart. Way off in the
distance, the blast of the quarry rumbled like an approaching
storm. It reminded her of the sound of the shotgun.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes, squeezing away a tear that was mingled with
blood from a burst vessel at the edge of her eye.</p>
<p>And she prayed that he would come with the gun and stop the
pain.</p>
<hr />
<p>In the night he had taken the head and put it on the top of the
manure heap, waiting for the sun to come up. Every now and again he
would hear the voice whisper to him, faint for the moment, and he
would try to catch the words.</p>
<p>The smell of blood was still hot and thick and he remembered how
the woman had stared at him, paralysed with fear, her whole body
trembling uncontrollably. The owl hooted back in the barn and he
waited under the moon, not cold and not hungry. The sun began to
rise and when there was enough light in the sky he could see the
flies crawling over the pale round face.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly...</em></p>
<p>Like Conboy. The eyes crawled with flies. Like the boy in the
back room of the old house. Like the girl under the bridge. Like
the boy who had come in through the door of the old wagon he'd
taken over as his bivouac.</p>
<p>The flies buzzed and danced and as the day lightened and the
morning mist trailed away, there were more of them, flying in from
the trees, round the coppice at the far end of the pasture. Already
the pool of blood in the yard was a crawling mass of them, coming
to feed and coming to breed. He cocked his head to the side,
listening to the small voice, one of the many that tugged for his
attention whispering softly by the light of day. At night they'd
maybe talk louder. After a while, he slowly got to his feet and
went back into the house, leaving the farmer's crawling eyes
staring at the sunrise.</p>
<p>The woman did not move. Her eyes followed him, devoid of all
expression. He considered lifting her back up onto the table, but
after another while, eyes blinking hard, he turned and went back
outside. He picked up the gun and crossed the yard, climbed the
fence and into the pasture.</p>
<p>Three of the cows were moaning, and two of the others were down
on the grass twitching. Their udders were swollen like the bellies
of dead children. He considered putting them out of their misery
but then he blinked some more and went striding sunwards along by
the wall and down towards the trees. A half a mile down he could
still hear the crowing cock. The land sloped towards the stream, a
densely wooded valley here, downsteam from the high moorland
pasture, thick with oak and beech trees. He'd been here before, in
the lush valley that reminded him of that other gorge, long
before....</p>
<p>Up at the farm, the old man had glared at him, just as Conboy
had done, through the crawl of flies that festered in his mouth and
under his brows. The tongue protruded between grey lips, blackened
and torn where the blow with the flat of the axe had sent the teeth
snapping together, biting right through the flesh. There were
thousands of them now, all laying their eggs, breeding fast on the
glut. The head stared at him and he waited for it to speak but it
stayed silent for the moment. He could wait. He sat there, in the
sun, contemplating the thing on the dung heap, listening to the
drone of flies, and then he went back to the house, to the kitchen.
Here the smell was thick and heavy and the buzzing was loud in the
confines. The woman was crumpled on the floor, her arms twisted
awry, and her thighs stained black in streaks and dribbles. There
were biscuits in the barrel and a joint of smoked ham up in the
cold store. He cut a slice, not at all put off by the cloy,
familiar scent of rotting flesh. He ate slowly, sitting on the
table, then drank some tepid water from the tap.</p>
<p>He finished eating and laid the chewed ham bone down on the
table then went back out to sit by the side of the dung heap to
wait for a while. He could sit as still as stone.</p>
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<h1>22</h1>
<p><em>August 2. 4pm:</em></p>
<p>Billy raised the air pistol from seven yards away, sighted down
the barrel. He squeezed the trigger and the gun coughed a sound
like a thin branch breaking. The slug smacked Doug in the left
buttock and he let out a howl, more of surprise than pain.</p>
<p>"Great shot from dead-eye Harrison" Billy bragged. "Runs in the
family." They'd been firing at the can again, trying to knock it
off the rock, taking shots each while the potatoes and carrots
boiled in the blackened pot. Billy and Doug had been niggling each
other as usual and when the can tumbled from the stone, moved by a
chance eddy of wind and not by any sharp shooting, Doug bent to
re-set it. Billy aimed and fired at his skinny buttocks then
laughed like a donkey while Doug did a skittery little dance.</p>
<p>"Christ sake," Doug said angrily. "Would you get a grip of
yourself, you crazy fucker." He was rubbing the patched seat of his
old jeans. "Swear to god, you should be in special school for
<em>retardos</em>, you loony."</p>
<p>"First kill to the Commandos," Billy crowed. Corky looked at him
sideways. Billy was jumping up and down, the airgun heavy, black
and sharp-edged like a German Luger clenched in his hand. Even with
the spring slack and useless, he should never have fired the gun at
anybody, they all knew that. It was one of the rules.</p>
<p>"That's enough," Corky said. "Give me that before you put
somebody's eye out." He held out his hand towards Billy.</p>
<p>"It's not yours."</p>
<p>"No, it's my brother's, and that makes it mine for now."</p>
<p>"And he stole it from somebody, didn't he?" Billy's voice was
rising. "So it's not his."</p>
<p>Doug picked up a stone and lobbed it at Billy with a quick
overarm flick. It hit him on the knee with a resounding crack.
Billy dropped the gun and started hopping around on one foot,
holding his knee with both hands and howling loudly. Corky snatched
the pistol up from the ground and jammed the barrel into his
pocket.</p>
<p>"Serves you right, fatso" Doug jeered. "That's the brave
commando wounded. <em>Hopping</em> wounded, and crying like a
baby."</p>
<p>"I'll get you for that," Billy bellowed, trying gingerly to put
his foot down.</p>
<p>"You and your old man, eh? The big <em>war</em> hero?"</p>
<p>"You leave him out of it <em>Bugsylugs</em>." Billy said through
clenched teeth and the pair of them were off again. "He did more
than your old man, that's for sure. Fought the Japs <em>and</em>
Jerries."</p>
<p>"So how come mine's got medals?" Doug demanded, grinning
toothily. "Real medals." His ears had gone bright red again which
was a sure indicator of his excitement and anger.</p>
<p>"My Dad won dozens of them," Billy retorted, still rubbing his
knee, his face now as red as Doug's ears. "That's what my Mam says
and you better not be calling her a liar if you know what's good
for you. My Dad was a hero in the war."</p>
<p>"That's where you're wrong," Doug countered, his lip curling now
into a sneer. "A hundred percent dead wrong on that."</p>
<p>Danny came wandering up from the stream, only half listening to
the bickering voices. Doug and Billy were always at it, rubbing
each other's fur up the wrong way. Next minute they'd usually have
their arms round each other's shoulders, just like last time,
digging each other in the ribs. They both had short fuses, but
generally, as compensation they had even shorter spans of
concentration.</p>
<p>"What are they on about now?" he asked innocently.</p>
<p>"Just telling this fat bastard his old man couldn't have died in
the war," Doug snorted.</p>
<p>Everybody froze.</p>
<p>"Come on, Doug...." Corky broke in. His voice trailed away.</p>
<p>"What do you mean?" Billy finally asked. His voice had gone
cold.</p>
<p>"Think about it, stupid-features. Can't you count?"</p>
<p>" 'course I can count. And multiply and subtract. Better than
you any day of the week, <em>Bugs.</em>"</p>
<p>"That should make it easy for you, then." Doug's face was red
and his lips drawn back from his big rabbit teeth in an angry
snarl. Danny had never seen him look so much out of control and
suddenly he knew with absolute certainty that Doug was going to let
it slip; say what everybody except Billy himself knew as a
fact.</p>
<p>"Okay. Try this one," Doug's voice was all tight and grating.
"See if you can do it in that thick skull of yours. Mental
arithmetic, if you <em>can</em> that is." Doug stopped. Corky took
a step forward, trying to get in between them. Both Billy and Doug
each held up a forestalling hand, telling him to keep out of it,
that this was between the two of them, something they could sort
out without interference. Corky looked at Danny, eyebrows raised in
question, but there was nothing Danny could say. Everybody teetered
on the sharp edge of the moment.</p>
<p>"When were you born," Doug demanded. "What year?"</p>
<p>"Nineteen fifty two. Same as you, why? You forget?"</p>
<p>"And when did the war end?" Doug kept it going.</p>
<p>"Nineteen forty five. Everybody knows that."</p>
<p>"And your old man died in the war! Seven years before you were
born? Has nobody told you the facts of life?"</p>
<p>"Stone the crows," Corky whispered, shaking his head.</p>
<p>Billy stood there, fists clenched, lips just forming around his
reply. His mouth tried to work, but no sound came out. Danny and
Corky held their breath. Doug stood stock still, eyes wide, hands
trembling. They could see Billy's mind, not especially fast at the
best of times, but he wasn't stupid either, seizing the problem and
working it over.</p>
<p>The silence stretched a few seconds longer. Finally Billy
spoke.</p>
<p>"That doesn't mean..." he floundered to a stop, tried again.
"Just because he...." The three of them on the sidelines could see
that Billy had never really considered this glaring anomaly, or if
he had, he had slung it to the back of his mind. Everybody in
Corrieside knew that Maggie Harrison had got pregnant to a big
American sailor from the NATO Base at Dunoon, from whom Billy had
inherited his thick blue-black hair and his height. The Yank had
finished his tour of duty and gone back to Arkansas and never
written once.</p>
<p>Billy backed away from them and almost knocked Tom over.</p>
<p>"That's pure <em>shite</em>. It's all a load of crap." Real
distress twisted his face. "I mean he was in the Commandos..." His
voice sounded as if it was cracking. "And he fought the Japs and
all."</p>
<p>Doug stood facing him, anger still suffusing his face. "Did he
hell."</p>
<p>"That's enough Doug," Corky said quietly. "Quit it
<em>now.</em>"</p>
<p>"Well he shouldn't have called me that. He's always going on and
on and he shouldn't have shot me either. It's about time he wizened
up. Somebody should wring his bloody neck. He's always bumming and
bragging as if he's better than the rest of us. He thinks he's a
big shot."</p>
<p>"Bigger than you are, you ragged bag of bones. And better."
Billy was obviously still trying to digest the enormous truth of
it, but his temper was still up and fighting. "At least my mother
feeds me. Not like yours."</p>
<p>"Stop them Corky," Danny said, almost pleading. "This isn't any
good." He could see it coming, rushing towards them like the great
truth express, nobody at the brake. There were no real secrets in
the street in Corrieside where they all lived.</p>
<p>"And at least my mother buys me decent clothes," Billy snarled.
"Not rags like you get to wear all the time. You're like a tinker.
She dresses me proper."</p>
<p>"From the money your <em>uncles</em> give her? Some uncles.
Uncles my <em>arse!</em>"</p>
<p>"Jeez Doug, quit it." Danny begged in a futile attempt to
prevent the head-on crash.</p>
<p>"Don't you start on my mother, Doug Nicol. Don't you bloody
dare." Billy took two steps forward and raised his fist. Doug
flinched back. The anger and fear was evident in his eyes and in
the tightness of his voice and the taught hunch of his
shoulders.</p>
<p>"Well it's true," he insisted. "You've got more uncles than I've
had hot dinners."</p>
<p>"And what about your mother? Eh? Tell me that?"</p>
<p>Danny put his head in his hands. Corky stood transfixed. He held
both of his hands up, like a referee in a boxing ring trying to
keep the protagonists apart. But they were like fighting cocks now,
angry roosters. They didn't even seem to notice his presence.</p>
<p>"Why is your old man in Toronto? And how come your wee brother's
got ginger hair and freckles? Everybody else knows why."</p>
<p>"What are you trying to say?"</p>
<p>"Because he isn't your brother at all. Everybody knows about
your Mam and that tallyman from the Housemarket Company, the one
that used to come round for the money on a Friday. That's why your
Da's gone to Canada. He's too ashamed to show his face in the
town."</p>
<p>Billy's words hit like blows, worse than blows. Doug reeled
back. The others could see his mind working the way Billy's had
done. His big teeth were clenched together hard enough to crack. A
spittle dribbled from his lip.</p>
<p>"That's not true," he finally gabbled, spitting the words out
like bullets. "You're a fuckin' liar. You're just a big fuckin'
<em>bastard.</em></p>
<p>But they could all see the dawning realisation on his face. The
signs that he'd missed. His father's withdrawn silence, the raised
voices in the living room late at night. The sounds of crying in
the dark. And little Terry, red-haired and freckled, a dozen years
his junior.</p>
<p>His mouth opened and closed, much as Billy's had done.</p>
<p>Corky moved right between them.</p>
<p>"That's enough," he said flatly.</p>
<p>"Piss off, Corcoran," Billy snarled. He tried to shove past him.
"I'm not finished with that <em>bugsy</em> bastard."</p>
<p>"Yes you are " Corky told him in a soft voice that had suddenly
gone very cold. He was a head shorter than Billy, but he stood with
his feet planted apart and his back straight, body all set. Danny
could sense that Corky knew he should have stepped in before, but
hadn't known how. The moment had gone too quickly. Now Corky looked
Billy straight in the eye, his own green-brown eyes bright and
unblinking.</p>
<p>"It's finished." Danny could sense the quiet threat there. Billy
was too far gone to hear it. He pushed at Corky's shoulder and the
other boy simply held himself tight, not letting himself be moved.
Doug's skinny chest was heaving with anger.</p>
<p>"It's over," Corky said. "I mean it." He took a hold of Billy's
hand and dragged it down from his shoulder. He stared into the
bigger boy's eyes for a long moment, forcing him to back down.
Corky had that ability. He held the gaze until Billy dropped his
and for a while before Billy conceded Danny thought he might even
try to have a go at Corky. Finally he took a step backwards and
Corky then turned to Doug.</p>
<p>"What are we trying to do? Kill ourselves? Haven't we all got
enough problems?"</p>
<hr />
<p>The man watched them coming back to the camp. The boys stopped
up on the narrow gully side where a rivulet had cut the ground into
a deep and narrow chasm. They were out of sight round a dog-leg
bend, but he could hear them yelling gleefully, the way they had
when they had swum in the backed-up pool. Every now and again, one
of them would yell <em>bombs away</em> and the rest of them would
whoop and cheer. He could hear the heavy thuds of something falling
on to the shale. After a while, they came on down the shoulder of
the hill where the two streams met, carefully negotiating the
narrow rocky point to descend into the valley. The biggest boy was
in the lead, holding his long stick over his head. The bones of the
ram's skull were stark white against the grey of the rock. He sat
quietly, stock still, in the shadow of the hollow where the setting
sun could not pick him out. One of the boys stopped dead and looked
across the valley, seeming to look right into his eyes. He held the
pose for ten seconds, maybe more, raised his hand over his brow to
cut out the light. The man leaned further back into the shadows.
The boy shook his head and continued down the ridge.</p>
<p>They arrived at the tent and the dark haired boy clambered into
the natural amphitheatre below the steep face and spent several
minutes fixing the sheep's skull into the hawthorn branches beside
the deer's head and the pointed heron's beak. This done, he did a
little Indian dance, and his whooping shouts echoed from the valley
sides. The man watched, interest quickened. The flies erupted from
the stag's face in a visible cloud, disturbed by the death
dance.</p>
<p>The others lit the fire and the thin one balanced the blackened
pot on the stones surrounding the flames. The sky was clear except
for some long, pink clouds way out to the west, far beyond
Blackwood Farm. The moon would be full tonight, pale and yawning.
He watched them for a while more until he was satisfied that they
would be here for the night and then, very slowly, he eased back
into the bracken and silently followed the sheep track back up the
hill.</p>
<p>At Blackwood Farm he ate some more of the dry meat and finished
the hard bread. There were some jars in the pantry with fruit in
syrup and there were eggs in the coop. He ate them in silence,
listening to the buzzing of the flies as they whirled around the
woman. The smell was thick and choking, but he was used to that. He
had <em>got</em> used to that. When he finished eating, he went out
to the manure heap and talked to the head. It buzzed back at him
incomprehensibly. After a while, the moon rose and Conboy whispered
to him from a velvet sky.</p>
<hr />
<p>It had been a magical day right up until the fight and then the
magic had snuffed right out.</p>
<p>They had borne the bombs back to the camp on the plank litter,
carrying three of them, taking turns as pall-bearers and Billy
trying to avoid his share of the work by claiming to be standard
bearer. It took them two hours to get back, though the going,
downstream when they got past the smelly and stagnant bog, was much
easier than the trip up to the Dummy Village. They had been elated
and excited with their find, their own discovery of the fabled
place. The fact that it was dilapidated and derelict had done
nothing to diminish their sense of discovery and achievement, or
detract from its fabled status. On the way back to the camp, they
had agreed to start out as early as they could the next morning so
they could explore the whole of it, right to the far end of the
blasted moorland. Tom had said he'd rather go home, but again he
was outvoted and he went along with it. It was a long walk back
home and he didn't want to travel over the hill and down the other
valley on his own, and besides, if he arrived without them, his
mother would know he hadn't been with the scouts and he'd have hell
to pay. Tom's mother was living on the edge of her own grief. She
could not use any more. Apart from that consideration for his
mother, and it was a real one in Tom's mind, the trees were thick
and crowded and anybody could get lost on their own if they didn't
know the place so well.</p>
<p>They followed the lip of the valley where sheep had worn a
beaten track through the turf, staying up on the far side until
they came level with the camp on the ridge which separated the
stream from the tributary. Doug and Corky let down the plank with
the three bombs and rubbed the stiffness out of their hands. Billy
stuck his stave in the turf, letting the ram's skull gaze out over
the gully.</p>
<p>"Let's try them now," he said.</p>
<p>"They won't work," Doug said. "If they'd have worked, they'd
have gone off when they fell."</p>
<p>"You don't know that," Billy countered. "We could at least try
one, and if it works, we could sell the others for a fortune."</p>
<p>"Who'd buy bombs?" Danny asked.</p>
<p>"The army, for one," Billy avowed. "Their bomb disposal squad
take them away and defuses them. And gangsters. They could use them
to blow up bank safes."</p>
<p>Doug laughed derisively at the notion, but Billy ignored him. He
bent down and unwound the rusty wire which had strapped the nearest
bomb to the plank. He worked at it, twisting the thin metal back
and forth until it weakened and broke. The bomb slid free and began
to roll down into the chasm. Billy lunged and stopped it with his
foot. He grabbed the tail fin and hauled it back up, managed to
lift it from the ground and raised it above his head. For a moment
he looked as if he was making an offering to an unseen god on
high.</p>
<p>"What if it does go off?" Danny asked.</p>
<p>"It'll go bang," Doug said. Danny looked at him. There was a
moment's silence while Billy still stood with the bomb held over
his head and then everybody just fell about laughing.</p>
<p>"Of course it'll go bang," Danny said when he got his breath
back. Billy was trying to keep the heavy weight up, but the
laughter had taken all the strength from his arms. He was giggling
uncontrollably.</p>
<p>"But won't it be dangerous?"</p>
<p>They had all seen bombs explode in films. They went off like
enormous firecrackers. People threw their hands up and somersaulted
into the air. There was always a flash and a lot of dust thrown up
in a black cloud. In Billy's Commando comics, the bombed Nazis
cried <em>Himmel</em> and <em>Donner Und Blitzen</em>. They put
their hands up in the air and were marched off as prisoners of
war.</p>
<p>"No," Doug assured him. "It'll be great."</p>
<p>"I think we should move back a bit."</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>By now Billy's arms were sagging. He tried to hold the weight,
but failed. The bomb tumbled out. Doug tried to grab it but only
succeeded pushing it to the left. It thudded against Billy's thigh.
Billy howled like a banshee. The bomb tumbled, hit the ground right
at the edge of the ridge, landing tail first. For a second it
seemed to balance on its own, like a miniature space rocket,
teetering on the edge, and then it slipped over. Billy was still
bawling and cursing Doug who was trying to explain that it was an
accident. The others watched the bomb roll down the steep few feet
of shale where the edge had eroded away. Below that there was a
ledge of mudstone which stuck out two or three feet and overhung
the much steeper drop to the trickling rivulet meandering through
tumble of water-smoothed boulders below. It skidded down the shale,
rolled on the ledge and paused again as if considering the next
move.</p>
<p>"I'll get you for that," Billy was promising Doug.</p>
<p>"It's going," Corky said, voice rising.</p>
<p>"I think we better get back up," Tom advised, now apprehensive.
The bomb flipped over and then it dropped. Billy caught the motion
out of the corner of his eye and his cursing stopped. Everybody
turned to watch. The black shape fell. It rolled several feet and
then seemed to flip up and out. The tail fins wobbled and then the
thing plummeted straight down.</p>
<p>"I'm getting out of here," Tom yelled. He turned and headed up
the slope of the ridge, but his eyes were still glued to the bomb.
His heels treaded at the slope, digging the shale away in small
grooves, going nowhere.</p>
<p>Nobody else moved or said a word. They watched as the bomb went
plummeting. Its fall took only a few seconds and for an instant,
from up on the edge, it looked as if it would slam straight onto
the rocks below. It missed by a good twenty feet and thumped onto
the soft gravel with an almost silent thud. A cloud of dry dust and
sand spewed up, leaving a small, shallow crater from which the
bomb's tail stuck up straight in the centre.</p>
<p>"Damn and blast," Doug said.</p>
<p>"Damn and no blast," Billy corrected. "It didn't even go off.
Must be a dud."</p>
<p>Tom breathed out slowly, relief written all over his thin,
freckled face.</p>
<hr />
<p>"There's somebody here," Danny said later when they were heating
the can of soup on the fire. "I'm sure of it. I thought I saw
somebody in the bushes from up on the side when we were coming back
from the village."</p>
<p>"Me too," Tom agreed. "Honest. When we were collecting
wood."</p>
<p>"That's just your imagination," Billy said dismissively. His
face was still tight with emotion.</p>
<p>"What if it's a guard?" Doug said. "Somebody from the Dummy
Village. Maybe he saw us taking the bombs. We could get into big
trouble."</p>
<p>"If there had been a guard he'd have kicked our arses and chased
us," Corky said. "But there was nobody up there, unless there was a
tinker sleeping rough. Can't see anybody staying up here, though,
can you?"</p>
<p>"I still think there's somebody here," Danny said. "It gives me
the creeps."</p>
<p>They had all calmed down to an uneasy truce after Billy and
Doug's dreadful confrontation. That had been hours ago and still
neither of them would look each other in the eye. The whole
campsite was tense with the undercurrent of conflict. It had not
gone away. It pulled and tugged at them with its own gravity. Billy
and Doug needed to get away from each other, to get away from
everybody. They had momentous things to consider. But it had been
too late. Corky had used the force of his personality to cap it
all, but it had been too late. The sizzling, almost palpable
tension sparked from one to another.</p>
<p>They were all round the fire and Tom had stoked it up with pine
logs so that it burned bright enough to force them all to sit on
one side. Corky had used a long stick to get the soup on to the
heat and then he'd poured it out onto the tin plates. The bread was
hard and stale, but dipped in the thick broth, it tasted just fine.
Even Billy ate hungrily. Doug stayed at the far side, looking down
into his plate and eating steadily.</p>
<p>"We can explode them tomorrow," Danny ventured, trying to do
something to remove the pressure. If they could get back to where
they'd been in the morning, that would do fine with him. Nothing
was perfect. Billy was changing and Danny did not know that this
was a normal thing. Billy had hair on his balls and the beginning
of bum-fluff turning dark on his top lip and he was becoming
increasingly aggressive. He'd grown a head or more taller than
everybody except Doug who had always been lanky and thin, and he
was pretty powerful now, even if much of it was spare baggage.
Danny did not know how long it would be before Billy put out a real
challenge to Corky. He hoped that would not happen, though if Corky
was aware of it, he didn't show it and seemed not to be concerned.
It wasn't as if he'd put up a case for being the natural leader.
That was just the way of it. He had nothing to prove.</p>
<p>"Yeah, we could maybe rig up a catapult up there on one of the
trees, just like the Vikings," Tom came in, speaking fast, as if he
too had the same notion.</p>
<p>"That was the Romans. The Vikings used a battering ram."</p>
<p>"Was that Kirk Douglas?"</p>
<p>"Who cares," Doug said from the edge. His head was still down.
Above them, the moon was just peering over the top of the hill, as
close to full as possible. It reflected on the burbling stream and
gave everything a magical limning that only Danny and Corky
noticed. The rest of them were wrapped up in their own thoughts.
"Who gives a damn? Eh? It was just a film. Just make up."</p>
<p>"It was a good movie," Tom said. "I liked it. Especially at the
end when him and Tony Curtis had the big fight."</p>
<p>"And remember them skipping along on the oars?" Danny came in.
"That was a hoot."</p>
<p>Doug sniffed and slung his plate down to the grass. "Want some
more?" Corky offered. Doug sniffed again and shook his head. Billy
sat on the other edge, half turned away. He was looking at the
ram's skull in the corner where the bush butted against the rock.
The moonlight and firelight combined to light it up, making it seem
to float ghostly in the dark, eye sockets staring out at them. The
flies were humming still.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't waste it on the likes of him," Billy said sneeringly
and Corky finally exploded.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell," he spat and even Danny jumped. "Look at the pair
of you, would you? Just a couple of bloody morons, a couple of
selfish, bloody <em>bastards</em>."</p>
<p>Tom and Danny looked at each other. Corky was tough as old
boots, but despite his background he hardly ever swore. When he
did, it was a real serious matter. Danny recalled him saying that
to get on, you had to speak with a gobstopper in your mouth. Corky
made an effort not to sound like his crazy brother Phil who would
end up in Drumbain Prison for sure, or like Paddy Corcoran who was
pretty guttural at the best of times. When Corky said
<em>bastard</em> he was up and running, firing on all four.</p>
<p>He suddenly jumped to his feet and slammed his plate down on the
stone at the edge of the fire. The thick soup gouted out and
sizzled on the hot rock with a vicious cat-hiss. Everybody jerked
back. Billy spun round, startled and Doug twisted in alarm.</p>
<p>"You keep your mouth shut, just for once," Corky said, his
finger right up against Billy's face. Billy's mouth snapped closed.
"<em>And you</em>," Corky rounded on Doug. His back was to the fire
and they could all see the red in his face, made ruddier by the
heat and the reflection of the flames.</p>
<p>"Don't you ever think?" he said, almost snarling, finger tapping
his temple for emphasis. Danny heard the catch in his voice.</p>
<p>"Don't any of you ever think? <em>Jees</em>." He reached out
both hands and held them up, palms open almost in supplication, and
exasperation too. Danny put his plate down on the grass. Right at
that moment, the air in the valley seemed suddenly even more
charged than before. Corky took two steps forward, away from the
fire, up onto the small grassy lip and walked out beyond them all
before he turned. The flames danced on his face.</p>
<p>When he started speaking, his voice could hardly be heard over
the cackle and hiss of the pinewood fire, but they never missed a
word.</p>
<p>"Look at us," he said and in that moment he sounded achingly
desolate. "Just look at us."</p>
<p>"You'd think it was tough enough, but no. Somebody's got to go
and rip it all up and tear it all, and spoil it."</p>
<p>"But I didn't..." Billy spluttered. Corky turned his eyes on
him, blazing in the red flamelight and Billy shut up. Doug thought
better of whatever he was about to interject.</p>
<p>"It's not just you. Or Doug neither." Corky said.
"<em>Listen!</em>. This is the first time we've been out for
months. Really out. The whole summer, we've been stuck in, while
they all shit themselves. Sometimes I think I'm going to get bored
crazy. The whole summer! So we come up here for some fun and find
the village and it should be great. But what happens? We start
ripping it apart.</p>
<p>He held his hands up again. "This is all we've got. It's the
only adventure some of us are going to get, <em>ever</em>."</p>
<p>He turned to Billy. "You think you've got it bad? Maybe. Tough.
Same as me and Danny and Doug and Tom. We're all screwed. All of
us. We've got damn all, we've got nothin'. If we all chipped
together we couldn't buy a packet of smokes and Billy's the only
one without a patch on the arse of his pants.</p>
<p>"We're jiggered."</p>
<p>They could hear the crack in his voice, ready to break. Corky's
chest hitched and the fire blazed in his eyes as if he was burning
up inside. He came walking slowly back towards the fire so they
were all turned to face him.</p>
<p>"We're all up the same creek, aren't we? So there's no need to
go picking each other off. That crazy shit's done enough of that
with Mole Hopkirk and Don Whalen and that wee kid. If we can't back
each other up, what the hell's the point?" He paused just enough
for a breath and ploughed on.</p>
<p>"So who's got it bad?" He turned quickly, swinging to face
Billy. "You Billy-O? Doug? Look at Tom. Shit, if I'd a wee sister
and she died, I'd be half crazy, that's for sure. I'd be pure
mental."</p>
<p>Tom flinched back as if stung. Corky had reached down into the
taboo, Tom's private thing, and touched it. It was as if he'd
scraped on raw flesh and Corky realised that immediately. He looked
over at Tom, and gave him a look of such compassion, such fierce
and honest sorrow, that Danny felt a dry lump swell hard his own
throat.</p>
<p>"Sorry Tommy, just trying to say, okay?"</p>
<p>Tom had no words, not then, Corky turned away. "I know he must
be all screwed up about it, really ripped open. So us, we got to
give him a hand, give him back-up, because he's our pal, isn't he?
Our mate. So we got to back him up. Us."</p>
<p>He stopped and then added for emphasis: "<em>All</em> of
us."</p>
<p>Billy nodded guiltily, remembering how he'd chased Tom across
the bog.</p>
<p>"And you Billy. So what? Your engine's all seized because your
old man wasn't a great hero, or whatever he was who the hell knows?
I'm sorry. We're all sorry, even Doug with his big mouth, he's
sorry too. Sure youb are Doug?"</p>
<p>Doug looked up, opened his big mouth then thought better of it.
He did look sorry. He looked wretched, blinking shiny eyes.</p>
<p>"You'll get over it. Believe me, fathers aren't all they're
cracked up to be. We know that, don't we Dan? Look at me. My old
man's up for swiping the pigeon club money. I've got to live with
that, and so's my Ma. You can have a Da like mine if you really
want. When he gets out he'll knock me arse for tit. You got
worries? Shite on a bike, we've <em>all</em> got worries! Every one
of us."</p>
<p>Corky was up now, going hell for leather, unable to pull back on
the reins.</p>
<p>"You want to be like Tom, or me? How about Danny-boy? Jesus, he
can't even open his mouth in his own house. Prayers all the
time."</p>
<p>Danny cringed, feeling the other faces on him. He was suddenly
exposed.</p>
<p>"You ever think about what that's like? Jesus <em>bloody-</em>H.
Every time Dan farts they've got the priest round to him, that
creep Father Fingers. Dan hardly ever gets out and when he's in,
his old man's got him doing schoolwork all the time non-stop."</p>
<p>Corky's voice was tight with the pressure now and there was no
stopping him. "We're all jiggered. Okay Doug, it's rough on you,
but wee Terry's still your brother you've got nothing to be ashamed
of. You'll be away in Toronto. At least you're getting to go
someplace new where nobody knows you or where you're from. And Tom
going to Australia. That's a chance. That's a real big chance."</p>
<p>He paused once more, and his voice went quiet, as if he was
suddenly scared it would catch and stumble and throw him; as if he
had come galloping along the edge to where it fell in a long sheer
drop and he had to pull back hard.</p>
<p>"We won't get that chance, me and Dan and Billy, so we got to
stay here and get on with it. But that's just it." His hands were
right out in front of him, balled into fists. He looked as if he
wanted to punch. "It's bad enough as it is without giving ourselves
a bad time. So why should we be fighting over what we can't
help?"</p>
<p>He paused and looked at them all, his eyes fixing each in
turn.</p>
<p>"But up here, we're away from it all, just for a couple of days.
It could be the last time. Probably is, and I don't want to
remember it because we all blew apart. That's going to happen
anyway, no matter what we do, so at least, just for now, we can
stick together. It's us against the flamin' world, know what I
mean? We're all in the shit."</p>
<p>He turned towards the fire, head down, shoulders shaking.</p>
<p>"After this summer, it's all going to break up. I want to
remember this time. We came up here for a last chance and we found
the Dummy Village and that's special. It's what I want to remember,
because we don't have enough good things to remember. None of
us."</p>
<p>He stopped talking and his shoulders slackened as if the tendons
had been cut. The four of them sat there in silence, looking at
Corky, stunned by the force of what he had said. He had touched
them all, right inside of them. He'd been aware of everything,
known all the dark secrets and until now he'd never said anything,
not a word.</p>
<p>Danny looked from Billy to Doug to Tom. They were all sitting
there on the short grass while the flames sent colour flickering on
their faces. All of them were looking at John Corcoran, if waiting
for him to say something else. None of them seemed capable of
speech.. He had stunned them all.</p>
<p>Corky's shoulders heaved and his head went down into his hands
and Danny felt a powerful ripple of shock. Corky was crying,
standing in front of them all and he was crying, and that was
something that had never happened before. He wanted to reach out
and touch him.</p>
<p>Yet it was Tom Tannahill who stood up and walked forward, closer
to the fire.</p>
<p>"Don't," he said. He reached up and put a hand on Corky's
shoulder. "Please Corky."</p>
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<h1>**#**</h1>
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p>"Hector Kelso agreed with John Fallon." Angus McNicol said. "Our
man had put the blood on the doorposts to ward off the angel of
death, and that made him some kind of psycho. We knew that already,
but Kelso disagreed with the shrink who still thought he'd put the
gun barrel in his mouth. Hector said the killer thought he was
possessed, and none of us on the investigation disagreed with that.
He'd a devil in him.</p>
<p>"Old Jean McFall, she'd been a gutsy old lady. Kelso showed how
she clambered through the attic and where he'd tried to shoot her
through the lath and plaster of the ceiling. That must have been a
nightmare chase and it took guts to stop and write in her diary. It
wasn't until next day that we found what she'd written and that
gave us better description of him, and maybe a name.</p>
<p>Angus McNicol's eyes were focussed far back in the past and the
tape turned slowly, picking up his gruff voice and not missing the
crackling emotion behind the words as he recalled the savage
butchery at Blackwood Farm.</p>
<p>"Remember that song? <em>A nice wee lass, a fine wee lass, is
bonny wee Jeannie McColl?</em> I saw the photographs on the
mantelpiece and it could have been written for her. She'd been a
looker in her day, fine bones, a lovely smile. When we found her
against the wall she hardly even looked human.</p>
<p>"We found the back of her blouse on a piece of metal up there.
He dragged her inside and down the stairs again, put her on the
table and put it into her. He broke her arms, high up, close to the
shoulder, and he tore all the ligaments and cartilage on her
elbows. Doctor Bell and Hector Kelso agreed that he just
spread-eagled her and put his weight down. But that didn't kill
her. Looking at the bruising and the internal damage, Bell thought
she probably didn't die until at least the next day. Can you
imagine it? The team called him the Angel, but he was the devil
incarnate, believe you me."</p>
<p>"He raped her, and then he used the logging axe to cut off Ian
McColl's head and he stuck it on the dung heap. Whatever Bryce
thought, this wasn't a man with any remorse. He waited for the
flies to come."</p>
<p>We checked every lead, but the name we had never meant a thing.
We must have pulled out the files on everybody called Leslie Joyce.
Birth, army lists, even church congregations, hospital patients,
and there were quite a few Les Joyces who got a visit. We even
tried the Joyce Lesley's too, just to try to get a hook on this
nutcase, but after Blackwood Farm, the man just disappeared and
Bryce was crowing that he'd been right all along.</p>
<p>"But I never thought that bastard committed suicide. Not then
and not <em>ever</em>. Maybe whatever was frying inside his brains
finally burst and he fell down dead and if that's what happened,
then it was an end he never deserved. But it was better for me and
for all of us to think of him dead than to believe he would turn up
again and see it start all over.</p>
<p>"We waited a long time, right through until the following year,
past the next summer. The Angel, the one you lot called <em>Twitchy
Eyes</em>, he simply vanished. Really I hoped he'd gone up onto the
moor and got stuck in a bog and took days to die while the crows
picked out his eyes."</p>
<p>"No matter what, the killer disappeared and the killings
stopped. Nobody ever knew why."</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Interruption:</em></p>
<p>I could tell that Angus McNicol had spent a lot of time thinking
about the killer. A lot of it had come back to me since I saw those
eyes on the street, those flat and empty eyes that showed no spark
and no recognition. There was a lot I'd buried down in the depths
along with plenty more unwanted baggage from way back then. They
say if you remember the sixties you weren't there, and that's the
biggest crock of crap anybody ever made up. We were there. We were
kids, but we knew, like Mick Jagger told us, this could be the last
time, and it was, of course, because the world was changing and
everything was blasting apart.</p>
<p>Up in a valley barely four miles from Blackwood Farm where a
twitchy-eyed killer mutilated the farmer and his wife and sat until
the flies ate their eyes out, a boy several months short of
fourteen told his friends a truth about themselves.</p>
<p>Everything was changing, some of it for the better and a lot for
the worse.</p>
<p>When The Who were the wild men of Rock n' Roll, Roger Daltry
sang that he hoped he died before he got old, and of course, he
didn't follow through. He just got rich. There were a few that
summer who had the life taken from them and they weren't singing
about it. It was a summer like none other. It would be another year
at least before Jimmy Hendrix made the hairs on the back of my neck
stand up when he played <em>Purple Haze,</em> and my mother had
looked at him as if he was old Twitchy himself, acting the way
mothers do when it comes to music, as if it could steal their
children away and bury them in a cellar and damn their souls
forever. Clapton and Bruce and Baker were about to put sounds
together the way we'd never heard them before, but the flower power
hadn't touched this little pocket of the world. We did not have a
love-in, it was not groovy.</p>
<p>There were five boys just on the wrong side of innocence up
there in the valley that day when.....</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 3. Morning:</em></p>
<p>The man stepped out from the bushes and cast a shadow across the
water of the stream.</p>
<p>It had been a fitful night in the aftermath of John Corcoran's
soliloquy. The long silence after he finished speaking and stood
with his head down and his shoulders jerking, stretched on and on
while the flames of the fire dopplered down in a slow diminish from
yellow to red and then to glowing embers that pulsed with a life of
their own in the merest breath of warm night air. Corky stood
there, staring into the flicker of light and Tom hovered beside
him, a hand still to the shoulder, just a couple of silhouettes
from Danny Gillan's viewpoint. Over to the side, Doug sniffed again
a couple of times and Danny couldn't tell whether he was crying or
not. Billy had his head in his hands, eyes fixed on the fire, like
a big Apache, for once silent.</p>
<p>After a while, after what seemed a long time, Corky turned round
and went to the tent. He came out with that old army blanket his
old man had swiped from the territorials hall when he and Deek
Galt, Pony's old man, had heisted a box of grenades for poaching
the salmon up at the Witches Pots on the Corrie River where a
generation later some folk would go hunting something else and burn
the whole forest down to charred stumps.</p>
<p>"I'm going to sleep out here," he said, wrapping the blanket
around his shoulders and lowering himself to the grass about six
feet away from the fire. Everybody stood there, shaken, with the
red of the fire on their faces, making them look wild and bleak and
somehow feral, like young warriors, like young braves.</p>
<p>"Me too," Billy finally said in a soft voice that was unlike
him. He and Tom crossed to the tent and got their own blankets.
After a while, Danny and Doug did the same. The tent stood dark and
empty while they all hunkered around the fire, huddled around their
thoughts while the flames faded and slowed and turned the logs to
mere glowing embers. Up on the moor a poor curlew bleated soulfully
and the dented moon rose over the high sides to shine down into the
open valley.</p>
<p>Some time in the night, Billy cried out and then subsided into a
snuffled sob. The noise woke them all, but none of them could tell
whether Billy was awake or asleep. Sometime in the night, Danny
Gillan thought he heard footsteps downstream and woke up with a
start, breathing quickly, nerves suddenly tight and alert. The fire
had sunk down now to barely a glimmer which gave off some heat but
not much. As he fetched some thick pine logs from the pile he and
Tom had collected, he scanned the darkness down in the valley where
the trees crowded blackly, holding their inky shadows. He could
sense eyes upon him and he shivered in the cold night air. A
trickle of apprehension rippled down his spine and he hurried back
to the circle of the campfire where the others were dark huddled
shapes on the ground. The logs quickly caught fire and sent the
heat blazing out, but the cold trickle inside Danny took a long
time to diminish.</p>
<p>In the morning, when he awoke, he was still tense and his hands
were clenched into fists. His fingernails had dug red crescents
into the skin of his palms.</p>
<p>Tom and Doug used the last of the sausages in the old pan,
frying them up in their own sparking fat while the tin of beans
with its saw-blade top angling up in a jagged halo sat at the edge
of the fire, bubbling away in the heat. Billy took a while to rouse
but as soon as the sausages, burned almost black, were on the
plate, the smell brought him round as if he'd been slapped. Tom
handed him his breakfast. Billy nodded his thanks, keeping his eyes
down. Normally he'd be full of talk and blether in the mornings
while everybody else was yawning and scratching and just trying to
find their bearings, but now he was silent and for the moment there
wasn't much to say.</p>
<p>They ate quickly and licked the plates clean. Danny said they'd
have to set some more snares for rabbits and catch some trout in
the stream if they planned to stay much longer. Doug had the notion
he could find a pheasant's nest down in the trees and get some
eggs, but at this late stage in the summer that idea was voted down
with some derision. Most of the eggs would be hatched and the
others would be addled with half formed chicks. Doug then
remembered Mole Hopkirk clambering down from the railway arches
with the pigeon's egg burst in his mouth, and the rousing derision
when he'd puked it all up. It got a laugh, feeble in the light of
what had happened to ol' Mole, and in the aftershock of the fight.
They were all talking now, all except Billy who seemed still
cocooned inside the happenings of the night before. When Dan went
down to the stream to use the fine sand to wash the plates clean,
Corky followed.</p>
<p>"You stick with Billy, right?" he said. "He'll be okay in a
while."</p>
<p>"You reckon? He was pretty cheezed off last night. We all
were."</p>
<p>"Yeah," Corky conceded, somehow sadly. "It had to be said though
Dan. They'd have been at each others throats in a minute and then
we'd all have been hooking and jabbing. That's the way it goes.
Billy's a bit crazy these days. You know that. Not bad, just
cracked."</p>
<p>Danny nodded down at the water where the rippling water broke
his reflection into wavering patches of shadow. Up by the fire,
Billy was trying to pick up some music on his radio, but all he got
now was static. Tom and Doug were already half-way up the side of
the valley heading for the heights where they'd left the bombs from
the Dummy Village.</p>
<p>"He's always been a bit flaky, but now he can be pretty mean
with it. I don't think he can help it, and what Doug said didn't
help, did it? Jeez. It's like it's been building up though and I
had to say it last night because if Billy explodes..."</p>
<p>"We'll all be covered in blood and guts and shite," Danny
finished for him, wanting to keep it light now after the dismay of
the night before. What Corky had said had got under his own skin,
making him realise even more strongly than before, the limits of
his own world and the constraints upon himself. The <em>Bad
Fire,</em> his own nightmare. <em>Hell and damnation in the
fire.</em> Corky had known without saying until last night, when it
all came out. Corky had Crazy Phil on his back all of the time and
would have his old man back out of Drumbain Jail soon and Corky
would have to handle the regular knock on the head or the belt
buckle. But was that really worse than the constant and inexorable
weight of pressure and the never-ending litany of prayer and piety?
Danny Gillan wanted out from under just as much as Corky needed to
escape.</p>
<p>"Too true. And guts and hot air." Corky said and he laughed
aloud, jerking Danny back to the moment. "Blood, guts and gallons
of lard. The size of him, he'd cover the whole campsite."</p>
<p>They used the thick fishing line to make more snares which Danny
set in the runs he'd found by the bushes further up the valley
where they'd already seen some rabbits when they arrived. The line,
Danny assured him, was better than the fencing wire because the
rabbits wouldn't see it. When they'd finished, Corky went up the
track to join Doug and Tom. The sun was rising fast and the heat
was gaining on the day, bringing out the bees and damsels and the
big dragonflies whirring in squadrons over the pools. Down in the
trees, pigeons murmured sleepily and the slow water muttered, like
conversations almost fathomed.</p>
<p>Billy and Danny went upstream to catch trout in the shallow
pools and under the rocks where the water tumbled. Up on the
plateau, close to where the natural dam had backed up the steam to
form the long twist of Lonesome Lake, the others were whooping
excitedly, the cares of the night forgotten, or at least banished
under the heat of the sun.</p>
<p>"Bombs awaaaay." Tom's high voice came wavering down. There was
silence, then more whoops and gales of laughter. Danny couldn't
help but smile.</p>
<p>"You think they'll explode?"</p>
<p>"Hope so," Billy said. He'd his head down, hair trailing the
burbling surface of the clear water, both hands jammed under a flat
stone, eyes fixed with concentration. "Big one in here." He
twisted, pushed further. Danny could see his shoulders working as
he tried to get a hold of the trout. Finally he slowly withdrew his
hand from under the rock, keeping his balance, brought out a thick
spotted fish that twisted and torqued powerfully in his big
hands.</p>
<p>"Beauty," he said through gritted teeth. "Bet that's nearly a
pound." He held it tight in his left and hooked a forefinger into
the trout's mouth while it bucked for freedom, pulled on the upper
jaw until he mouth gaped and the head drew right back. There was a
watery squelch and then a small crack. The fish shivered and then
flopped to limp stillness, its neck broken. Danny watched
dispassionately. They'd been catching trout since they were no size
at all. It was different with fish. It was <em>normal.</em></p>
<p>Behind and above them, in the narrow chasm leading off the main
valley, Doug and Corky were balancing the bombs on the branches of
a twisted hawthorn tree that leaned out over the side of the drop.
They were using some of the hay-baling twine from the roll that
served as guy ropes for the old tent, and despite the straining
effort, they'd managed to pull one branch right back until it
touched the ground. Tom had snagged the twine around the tree's own
root and he plucked it, making it sing like a deep guitar
string.</p>
<p>"Try it now," Doug said. Tom got his old army knife with the
spike for taking things out of horses hooves, opened the sharp
blade. Gingerly he hacked at the hairy string, covering his eyes in
case it whipped back and blinded him. The blade bit through before
he expected it to and the branch uncoiled with a whiplash crack.
The bomb went straight up in the air, maybe ten feet or more. Tom
went sprawling back.</p>
<p>"Bombs away," he yelled, scrabbling for balance before he
tumbled over the edge.</p>
<p>"Watch out," Corky bawled. Doug shrieked with laughter. The bomb
went straight up and came straight back down again, tail first, but
already beginning its turn. It hit the very spot where Tom had been
only a second before, landing with an earth-shuddering thump on its
side and then it toppled over the edge as the one had done the
previous night to slide down the shale slope and come grinding to a
silent halt.</p>
<p>They all burst out laughing together.</p>
<p>Danny and Billy, stripped to the waist and with their sloppy-joe
sweat-shirts tied by the arms around their waists, had taken six
fish in the first hundred yards, none of the rest as big as the one
Billy had tickled from under the stone and now they were threading
twine through the gills to carry them back to the camp.</p>
<p>"Did <em>you</em> know?" Billy had asked and Danny hadn't
bothered, hadn't needed to ask what he was talking about. He'd been
waiting for the question, uncomfortable in its proximity and unsure
of what he would say when it came.</p>
<p>"Yeah," he finally said. "I knew. Stood to reason, didn't it?
Doesn't matter though. None of us is bothered about it. We don't
care."</p>
<p>"I never thought about it. Honest to God."</p>
<p>"We knew that, Billy."</p>
<p>"But my Ma's been lying to me all these years."</p>
<p>"Everybody's mother lies. She just wants you to feel good."</p>
<p>"But I <em>don't</em> feel good. She said he was a hero."</p>
<p>"And he could have been. Might have been. Who the hell knows?
Look at Corky's old man, he's no hero, that's for sure. Nor mine.
Corky was right. It's not worth fighting about. We've all got
troubles."</p>
<p>"Yeah, but <em>Jeez,</em> I never thought. How stupid can you
get? I could have belted Doug last night. I could have really
gubbed him. I still could, you know? Because of what he said."</p>
<p>Danny saw Billy's shoulders twitch again, this time with the
internal pressure of a held-back punch and he was immediately
reminded of Corky's analogy. He did look as if he could explode.
The twitch was like a small seismic shiver, but the body language
so eloquent. In his mind, Billy was lashing out to land a fist on
Doug's nose. Dany was glad it was still held in tight, glad it
hadn't come to it. What Corky had done, what he had said had
touched them all. He'd stopped it.</p>
<p>Billy bent to threading the string through the gills. Up on the
hill, another cheer went up into the still air followed by yet
another gaggle of laughter. Danny thought it would be a good idea
if they dumped the fish down at the camp and went up the hill to
join in. Once they got Billy laughing again, it would be okay
(<em>until the next time</em>). He was just about to turn and
suggest this to Billy when across the stream, where the hazel
bushes crowded together, a trickle of gravel went hissing down the
slope. Danny looked up.</p>
<p>And the man stepped out from the bushes.</p>
<p>Danny jerked back in surprise, his breath drawn in quickly in a
hiss. Billy hadn't noticed. He was still crouched down,
concentrating on the task of inserting the thick, fibrous twine
inside the gill and out through the gaping, bloodied mouth.</p>
<p>The man stood there silently on the far side of the stream. He
was tall, very tall and his hair was black as Billy's, though uncut
and greasy. His eyebrows shadowed his eyes and he stood stock still
in a long shabby coat that came down below his knees and looked too
warm for the summer's day. He was wearing a pair of scuffed black
boots laced up to the top with pieces of twine. One of the soles
was peeling away from the upper.</p>
<p>"Bill," Danny whispered.</p>
<p>"Shouldn't have said it anyway," Billy muttered tightly still
replaying the scene. "He was just having a go at me."</p>
<p>Danny nudged him and for a moment Billy just continued his
self-bound conversation. Finally Danny reached and clamped his hand
round the other boy's meaty wrist.</p>
<p>"What?" Billy said, turning his head. He saw Danny's eyes, fixed
and unblinking, staring across the tumbling water. He slowly
turned, caught a glimpse of the figure standing on the far bank.
His head jerked up and his own eyes widened. His whole body started
back in surprise.</p>
<p>The man stood there for a long moment, still as rock. Behind him
the little shiver of shale trickled down the steep slope, possibly
where his coat had brushed the dry surface. It sounded like a slow
breath. In Danny's hand, one of the fish bucked, even though he'd
been sure the blow on the head had killed it dead. It shuddered and
then went limp. The man stared at them, though they couldn't see
his eyes under the beetling brows. His face was craggy and angular,
and his hair, thick and dark, hung down lank and turned up at his
collar. It was spiked near the crown, as if he'd cut it himself and
on either side of his mouth, deep furrows formed black, angry
brackets.</p>
<p>The moment of contact stretched on. Neither of the boys knew
what to do. Up on the hill they could hear the excited yelling of
the others, but they couldn't call out to them while the man was
staring at them. Was he a farmer? A gamekeeper?</p>
<p>Both of them knew he was neither. He was ragged and dirty and
unwashed and unshaven. His work trousers were torn at the knee and
covered in dark stains. His mouth was curved downwards. Danny
touched Billy's arm again and moved backwards, still crouched on
the grass by the bank. The fish on his string slithered towards him
with the movement, its eye blinkless and dead, mouth agape. Billy
scrambled back with him.</p>
<p>"Who is he?" he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.</p>
<p>"Don't know."</p>
<p>The sunlight on the moving water sent spangled reflections onto
the steep slope behind the silent figure and dappled shimmering
light on his threadbare coat. It flashed into his eyes and he
blinked several times, very rapidly. He turned away from the light,
quite slowly, as if it hurt his eyes, until his face was in
profile, then he jerked once and seemed to galvanise into motion.
He took a heavy step forward, crunching on the gravel and small
stones by the side of the stream, took another step which put his
foot right into the water with a loud splash. There were enough
stones to allow him to step across and stay dry at this time of the
year when it hadn't rained for more than three weeks and the water
was low, but he ignored them. The dark brows had come down again to
shutter the eyes, but they knew he was staring right at them, so
intently he did not even seem to notice his boots were under
water.</p>
<p>Danny and Billy cringed backwards. They got to their feet,
hearts suddenly thumping. Behind and above, Tom and the others were
hooting with laughter again.</p>
<p>"Mister we..." Billy started. "we're just catching some fish for
our dinner. Honest."</p>
<p>Neither of them knew who the man was, or what power, civil or
official he might wield but Billy was already working on
mitigation.</p>
<p>"Fish."</p>
<p>The word came out in a soft hiss of breath, almost dreamily.
"Fishes."</p>
<p>The man crossed the stream and came up the bank, mounting to the
flat in two or three big strides. When he reached the turf where
they'd been threading the trout he stood up straight, towering over
them.</p>
<p>"I will make you fishers of men," he whispered, his voice
slightly hoarse, as if he'd been shouting. The boys drew back a
step, standing closer together now. The whispering voice made no
sense, though Danny had heard the words before. The man was still
staring at them, his face completely impassive, as if there was no
emotion in him, as if he was looking both at them and right through
them.</p>
<p>"What do you want?" Danny asked and both he and Billy heard the
apprehensive little tremble in his voice. The man was just standing
there and that was scary enough. They'd been chased by gamekeepers
and bawled at by irate farmers and that was the way of things with
boys. But this big scarecrow of a man had just whispered, not
raised his voice, and that was somehow very unnerving.</p>
<p>"They said, <em>Lord, here is a boy with a few fishes</em>." The
whispering became a grating rumble, coming up from deep inside the
stranger. "A <em>few</em> fishes."</p>
<p>He took several steps forward, alarmingly quickly. Danny and
Billy flinched yet again. The man reached and picked up the biggest
of the fish, the one Billy had been trying to loop on to the
string. He held it up to them. The still-wet scales threw back the
light in iridescent sparkles. Without hesitation the man brought
the limp trout up to his face, opened his mouth and bit down on its
head.</p>
<p>Danny's heart seemed to drop like a stone.</p>
<p>"Jeez," Billy gasped, backing into the smaller boy and almost
knocking him sideways. Danny had to grab his arm, to keep from
falling.</p>
<p>The teeth came down on the head and they both heard it crunch
wetly, almost with the sound of a boiled egg being cut open with a
blunt knife. The fish flapped twice, the way the other trout had
done, showing it was still, even if barely, alive. Danny could not
believe his eyes. His throat clenched and he felt as if he was
going to vomit. Close by, he heard the sound of Billy gulping for
air.</p>
<p>The teeth clenched tight and they stood fascinated, mesmerised,
unable to draw their eyes away. The head crunched and the man's
head pulled back. A piece of flesh flipped out from between the
teeth and then the rest of trout pulled away. They could see that
the wide, grey head had been bitten clean through to just behind
the eye. Black blood welled from the small braincase. Dark blood
trickled down on the man's clenched teeth. He swung his head, in an
animal motion, the way a dog does, and chewed hard. The sound of
the fish head crunching, an innocuous little sound in itself, was
suddenly appalling in the still air of the day. It was nothing and
yet it was immense, of great importance; of earth shuddering
consequence. Of a sudden, both of them, standing elbow to elbow,
with the sun hot on their shoulders, felt completely and
terrifyingly defenceless.</p>
<p>The man stared into them from the shadows under his brows and he
chewed slowly and deliberately, letting them hear every disgusting,
sickening sound. Then he swallowed and the lot went down his throat
with not a shiver or a tremor.</p>
<p>Danny tried to turn to run but for some reason he was frozen to
the spot, Billy was jammed up against him and he could smell his
sweat, feel the peculiar shiver in the face of this craziness.</p>
<p>The man stepped forward and held the torn trout out. "Take this
and eat it," he said to Billy, pinioning him with black eyes, now
visible this close. He cocked his head to the side, a strangely
dog-like gesture. "He took it and gave it to his disciples." Danny
had also heard those words before, heard them many a time, read out
in the nightly family prayers around the empty grate of the fire.
Words form the bible, from the new testament. <em>This is the word
of the Lord</em>.</p>
<p>For a moment he heard his own father's voice transposed on the
raggedy man's low rumble.</p>
<p>Billy was backing away. The man stepped forward, jabbing the
bloodied end of the fish at the taller boy. "Take this and eat it,"
he repeated. The eyes were completely devoid of colour, like holes
under the shelves of the brows. Billy whimpered.</p>
<p>"I don't like..." he started to say.</p>
<p>"Eat. Eat." The voice rumbled. The torn end, showing the curve
where the eye had been ripped from the socket, rubbed against
Billy's lips. He gagged, shaking his head in disgust.</p>
<p>"Come on Billy," Danny said, voice rising. He grabbed his friend
by the arm and pulled him backwards. "Let's go."</p>
<p>Danny hauled hard enough to spin Billy round. The big boy
turned, eyes wide in fright. A slick of blood and fish slime coated
his mouth like a smeared, viscid lipstick and his normally sallow
skin had turned fish-belly pale. Danny felt his heart flip
helplessly like the jerking twitch of the dying fish. The sense of
danger simply inflated inside him. He pulled again. Billy blinked
once, twice.</p>
<p>"Come <em>on!</em>" Danny urged, pulling him. Billy seemed to
lurch out of a dream. His muscles seemed to unlock. He jerked and
then he was moving. Danny leapt down the slope to the next
downstream level with Billy in front of him. All the while he could
sense the man reaching for him, a big gnarled hand with fingers
outspread to grab him by the skin of the neck. He could imagine the
man's breath. He thought he could hear his big boots pounding after
them.</p>
<p>Billy was moving, only a couple of feet ahead, his blue and
white tee-shirt flapping like an apache breechcloth. His big, meaty
arms were swinging and Danny could hear the panicked tremble in his
breathing. His own breath was coming fast; short, gasped pants for
air and it felt as if his heart had raised itself up about six
inches to block his windpipe. The track beside the stream narrowed
between two large boulders at the turn where Billy had caught the
big one and they both went through the gap like startled rabbits.
Off in the bushes a blackbird went clattering away in a scold of
alarm. They smashed through, where before they had gingerly angled
avoiding scratches from thistles, now crunching and crushing the
hogweed and wild rhubarb. Billy was like a tank, heedless of any
obstruction.</p>
<p>They came out of the shadow at the bend and into the sunlight.
The other boys were high up on the edge, further up the gully of
the tributary, oblivious for the moment to the drama down below.
Billy ran as fast as he could, tasting the blood and raw slime from
the fish, suddenly more afraid than ever before. It had happened so
fast and it was so inexplicable it was truly terrifying. The fact
that the man had bitten into the living head of the fish had been
scary enough, <em>wrong</em> enough to be dreadfully shocking, but
then he had forced the thing at Billy's mouth and if a man would do
that, he had to be crazy for sure. He had just stared at them and
then spoken in a harsh, creepy whisper. His eyes had blinked under
the brows and Billy had thought.</p>
<p>Billy had thought there was something...</p>
<p>Billy thought</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>He had never been quick on the uptake, but as soon as the fish
had jammed into his mouth and he had caught the reflection of the
light on the man's black eyes, seen the rapid fire blink, like some
flickering morse, the image had come smacking into his head and his
knees had almost given way.</p>
<p><em>Oh holy Jesus please-us</em> a childish voice had yelled
inside his head and Billy had instantly felt very small and
dreadfully vulnerable. Danny had been pulling at him and he'd
frozen just for the moment, not able to make his feet work, while
the smell of fish was thick in his nose and the back of his throat.
And then he and Danny were running, him first, down the track and
he knew if they could get to the next corner and down to the camp
they'd get away because the man would see the others and he'd know
he couldn't get away with anything if there were witnesses and
everything would be...</p>
<p>They came scuttering round the corner, angling their bodies to
take the bend. They made it past the clump of stinging nettles,
past the cluster of dockens waving in no breeze the way dockens do
in the summer. A hunting swallow flew right in front of them,
jinking at the last moment in a flare of gunmetal blue-black.</p>
<p>Then Billy's foot stepped into a cowpat that wasn't old enough
to be caked and dry. The top surface slid across the wet and greasy
inside and his foot slipped with it.</p>
<p>It all went wrong just as quickly as that.</p>
<p>He put his foot down, still running at an angle, reaching with
his left hand towards the stand of hazel saplings to get enough
purchase to swing his weight around and next thing he was up in the
air. His foot skidded out from under him and the other foot
couldn't come back down quickly enough to regain his balance. He
hit the ground with such a thud that his teeth gnashed together
with a jar of sudden pain. Another pain jolted up from his backside
to the top of his head as all his weight compressed the bones in
his back. His breath came out on one loud whooping expulsion.</p>
<p>Danny was only three feet behind. He saw Billy go down, tumble
and bounce and then he was flying over Billy's head. Both knees hit
against the other boy's shoulder and his own momentum flipped him
up and over. He landed with a numbing crash right at the edge of
the track where the bank dropped about six feet to a shallow pool.
It was only the fact that his torn jeans snagged a protruding hazel
root that prevented him from plunging forward head first onto the
rocks below.</p>
<p>Up above, on the rim, startled voices came rolling down.</p>
<p>"Hey, what's up? You OK?" Danny vaguely heard the drumming of
feet as Corky and the rest came haring down the hardpack sheep
track. Billy groaned, grunted, turned himself over, got to his
knees. Danny eased himself to his feet, aware that he should be
doing something, but momentarily dazed by the shock of the
fall.</p>
<p>"Hey Dan!" Doug bawled.</p>
<p>The man came round the corner just as Danny got to his feet.
Billy was still on his knees, facing downstream. He saw Danny's
face go slack and his eyes raise themselves upwards, higher than
Billy's own. Behind him, something brushed against fabric and then
a cold, hard edge pressed against the curve of his jawline.</p>
<p>"Oh Billy," Danny said, but there was no need for explanation.
Billy knew it was a gun.</p>
<p>"And again a little while and you <em>shall</em> see me," the
man said and there was a hint of shivery laughter, a kind of cold
glee in his rumbling voice.</p>
<p>Doug and the others came hurtling round the bottom bend. From up
on the rim they had seen both boys tumble, but the track had curved
down behind one shoulder of the slope and they had not seen the
stranger pushing through the foliage.</p>
<p>They all skidded to a halt when they rounded the crumbling
corner of the dog-leg of the valley, Doug first, Corky hard on his
heels and Tom only a few feet behind.</p>
<p>Everything stopped dead still.</p>
<p>A lone cuckoo sang out downstream where the forest crowded down
to the water, a lazy, somnolent summer sound, almost smoky in the
warm air. Two black and gold dragonflies chased each other between
the two frozen groups, for a long, extruded moment the only
movement in that part of the valley. Three boys stood there in
attitudes of sudden stop, hands out, bodies twisted, as if they'd
been photographed at the beginning, or the end of a race. All of
them were open mouthed, wide eyed.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan was further up the track, half turned, eyes fixed
on Billy who was still down on his knees, his black hair in awful
contrast to the now pure white of his skin. His own dark eyes
looked like pits. The long, shining barrels of the shotgun had him
just behind his ear, their gaping mouths a dark and infinite figure
of eight laid on its side.</p>
<p>Billy's eyes were blinking fast, blinking almost in time to the
tic in the gaunt man's own eyes. Everything was frozen in a tableau
except for the eyes and the dragonflies whirring past about their
own business, oblivious to the drama.</p>
<p>For a long, stretched moment of time there was no sound at all
except the murmuring of the stream and the robber bird down in the
trees.</p>
<p>"And so he came amongst them," the ragged man finally said, "and
they got down upon their knees."</p>
<p>This time he laughed. It was the first time the other three had
seen him, the first time they had heard his voice. John Corcoran
felt a deadly cold chill trickle upwards on his spine and he knew
instantly they were in the most appalling danger. For that long
moment, he was frozen, yet on many levels he was aware of
everything, even the far-off cuckoo and the mindless chattering of
the stream. He gauged the distance back to the curve around the
little knoll of rock on the shoulder, out of the line of fire of
those long black barrels. Would the man shoot Billy? For a second
he considered running, turning on his heel, thinking the same
thought Danny had already considered, that the man would not dare
shoot if there were witnesses free to point the finger.</p>
<p>In the man's other hand, he saw the dead trout, saw a trickle
ooze down to the ground, wondered where it had come from. Billy's
eyes were wide and pleading, not fixed on anything, but jittering
left right, up and down, beseeching the very air. He looked as if
he expected his own brains to come blasting out onto the grass.
Danny was standing, hands shaking now, his whole body aquiver with
tension, his back to the rest of them. He looked slight and fragile
against the tall stranger whose shadow blocked the path.</p>
<p>"Oh shit, Corky," Doug said in a tremorous whisper. "He'll kill
him."</p>
<p>The man stood stock still, the way he had on the far side of the
stream when he'd come across Danny and Billy. Everything was
frozen, a tableau of exquisite tension. Corky took in the whole
scene, the gun close to Billy's neck, the look of absolute fear on
his face, the shadows under the craggy brows on that gaunt face. In
that split second he knew he could not run. They had come
scampering down the hill and into madness on a summer's day. All
the odds, all the distances, all the estimates of speed and flight
evaporated. The man with the gun stood there, blinking in the
bright light of the sun. There was no flight now, Corky knew with
complete and instinctive certainty. The gun would simply blow Billy
Harrison's head from his shoulders, and then it would talk to Danny
and then....</p>
<p>The man leaned forward and put the dead, ungutted fish against
Billy's mouth. The entrails were squeezing out of the hole where
the mouth should be, little slithery green strings. The stranger
leaned over and whispered something that none of them heard.
Billy's belly muscles seemed to shiver. His head moved from side to
side, but his mouth opened and his teeth came down on the trout and
he bit into the gill covers. Purple blood splashed onto his
cheeks.</p>
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<h1>24</h1>
<p>Billy was sick.</p>
<p>He had taken two mouthfuls of the trout, skin, gills, bones and
slick, cold entrails. They all heard the slush-crackle as he
chewed, jaws working in a crazy stammer. He swallowed, eyes closing
tight, mouth twisted in utter revulsion. The gulping sound he made
turned Danny's stomach and for an instant he thought he would vomit
the sausages he'd eaten for breakfast.</p>
<p>Billy beat him to it. He swallowed a second time and then his
mouth opened and all of it came back up again in a projectile gush
which propelled the glutinous mass out onto the grass.</p>
<p>The man laughed again, this time a fast, almost girlish giggle
of sound as if he found the whole display completely hilarious and
that laugh was just as chilling to Danny as the very fact that he
had made Billy eat the slimy fish or jammed the gun against his
friend's head. The whole day had flipped, in the space of a few
seconds, into a surreal and terrifying kind of nightmare.</p>
<p>The man's next move surprised them all. He reached forward and
took Billy by the hair and hauled him to his feet. Billy yelled in
pain and fright. Danny took an instinctive step forward and the man
speared him with a fathomless look, froze him to the spot.</p>
<p>"Don't mister," Billy yelped. "Ah, that's sore. Please. Let me
g....."</p>
<p>He was up on his toes now, head back and eyes screwed up, both
hands raised above his head, wanting to take the fingers out of his
hair, afraid to touch them. He arched upwards trying to slacken the
grip and take the dragging pain out of his scalp.</p>
<p>"Leave him alone," Corky bawled, body bent forward, needing to
do something. "Get off him."</p>
<p>The man ignored him. Instead, he let Billy get both feet flat on
the turf and pushed him, still gripping his hair in his left hand,
making his head nod rapidly with the force of the sudden shove.
Billy almost fell forward, got his balance, and the man walked him
along the track. He raised the gun and pointed it at straight
Danny's belly. The hollow black figure of infinity, the horizontal
ebony eight at the gaping ends of the barrels loomed suddenly
vicious. Danny's sphincter puckered into a tight little nub and he
still felt everything might just let go. One squeeze on either
trigger and that black mouth would roar and it would blow a
plate-sized hole from front to back and kill him in a flash of
light and noise.</p>
<p>"Come on, boy," the man said, very gently, almost sadly. "Let's
all go down together."</p>
<p>Danny turned, his legs almost unable to bear his weight and led
the way, all the time aware of the gun. The skin on his back
puckered in dreadful expectation. His heart thudded with such
sudden pressure that twin pains pulsed in his temples and his
vision swam.</p>
<p>"You three," the man said, his voice louder, raising his face to
Corky and the others on the higher track. "At the double."</p>
<p>Danny thought of Billy. That's what he had said after he'd
crushed the dragonfly larva and thrown the bloated frog back into
the crater.</p>
<p><em>Come on you lot. At the double.</em></p>
<p>That nowseemed like a long time ago. Now Billy was on his
tip-toes, face contorted in pain. The tableau on the slope froze
for an instant of dreadful indecision, then began to move again.
Corky said nothing more.</p>
<p>They came down the hill, just ahead of Danny and they all went
down together.</p>
<p>There was no sound but the burbling water and the thud of their
footfalls on the short turf where the highland cattle and the
black-faced sheep had cropped the grass to a short matte. But for
that half-wild hill cow, and its half-baked cowpat, they could have
been down stream and gone.</p>
<p>Behind him, Danny heard Billy grunt in pain or exertion, but he
was too numbed to look round. He had seen the madness in the man's
eyes. The fervour had reached out and touched him. The eyes were as
black as the barrels of the twelve-bore shotgun, but their black
was deeper, like holes in the world, as if there was a space behind
them that went on forever and never stopped. It was only the
rapid-fire blinking, as if they were burning with their own black
intensity, that briefly cut off the pull of their awesome
gravity.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy...</em></p>
<p>It had come to Danny as it had come to Billy, that epiphany, the
sudden and apocalyptic recognition.</p>
<p><em>We know he's a tall man,</em> big John Fallon had said as he
stood in front of the class with Sister Julia standing beside him,
each in different versions of black and white uniform. She had
looked up at him, half his size, a third his weight. They had all
looked at him. <em>Maybe as tall as me,</em> the big sergeant had
told them and they'd listened. <em>He's got black hair and he
blinks as if he's got something wrong with his eyes.</em></p>
<p>John Fallon had been right. This man was big. God he was
<em>huge</em>.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes</em></p>
<p>Billy Harrison had looked up from where he was threading the
thong through the fish gills and the man had filled his entire
vision. Now he filled his whole consciousness, his entire world.
The hand gripping his hair held tighter, keeping his head pulled
back, and the pain screwed into his scalp, making his eyes
water.</p>
<p>Danny Gillan felt the skin on his back pucker and ripple all the
way down his spine,. His whole consciousness was filled with the
knowledge of the barrels upon him. One slip. One small tug of the
finger, a squeeze, a stroke, and the gun would cut him in half. He
could feel a whimper, a little animal sound that was born of pure
fear, try to ripple up from his throat and push its way out of his
mouth and he was afraid that if he made a sound the man</p>
<p>- <em>twitchy eyes -</em></p>
<p>would react just the way a cat does, jerk at the least sound and
then...<em>oh then...</em></p>
<p>Behind him Billy grunted.</p>
<p><em>No Billy!</em> Danny silently pleaded.</p>
<p>Billy made a deeper animal sound. The man still had him by the
hair. Without turning, Danny knew Billy's head was still hauled
back in that merciless grip, his face white and open and slack.
Ahead of him he could see Corky's shoulders, all tensed up, the way
they got when he was angry. Danny could not remember Corky ever
being really scared. He wasn't big, but he was strong enough and he
had a profound depth of resources within him. He'd taken his licks,
taken his beatings. He'd been turned over right royally on occasion
by a couple of real experts and come bouncing back when the wounds
healed and the bruises faded or so he let everybody know. Now he
knew Corky was scared and angry all at the same time. He could read
that in his tight posture.</p>
<p><em>Don't do anything stupid...please.</em> Danny heard the
small and whimpering voice inside his head and he was too stunned
and afraid to feel ashamed at the tremor in it.</p>
<p>Ahead of Corky, Doug was walking fast, head slowly swinging from
side to side although he was trying to hide the motion.</p>
<p><em>Don't do it.</em></p>
<p>They were just coming to the edge of the bend where the stream
took a dog-leg to the left beside the small cascade into the gravel
pool. Here, another small tributary fed in through a narrow defile.
Tom approached first, walking with his head down and his arms not
swinging as they normally would. His shoulders were moving up and
down and he might have been crying. Danny was more worried about
Doug. He was thin and rangy, with long, stick-like legs, but he was
also fast. Whenever they ran from trouble, from big John Fallon
whenever a lucky - or unlucky - slingshot might crack the bowl of a
street-light; from the big boys down on the Rough Drain when they
decided it was their territory, when Doug ran from trouble there
was never a chance of him getting caught. He could cover the ground
like a startled deer. He was all limbs and angles, knuckles and
knees when he walked, but when he ran, all of those angles smoothed
and merged into a fluid grace, an effortless glide that was as
sure-footed as it was fleet. Danny saw his head swing slowly as he
reached the corner. Up that runnel, he could be hidden from view
for four, maybe five seconds. That might be enough to get him most
of the way up, even on the slope, to get to the rocks at the far
end and the trees beyond. It was just a small and narrow gully and
there would be some cover.</p>
<p><em>"Don't."</em></p>
<p>Danny clearly heard Corky's urgent whisper, over the sound of
their footsteps and Billy's panicked grunts. Doug's head pulled
back, just a fraction. Behind Billy, the man with the gun made a
sound, maybe as if he was clearing his throat. Tom went past the
mouth of the gully.</p>
<p>Corky had read the signs in Doug, as clearly as Danny had done.
Doug's head swing again. His eyes glanced up the runnel, gauging
the distance, knowing his own speed.</p>
<p><em>No</em>! Danny's mental plea came at exactly the same time
as Corky's urgent hiss.</p>
<p>Doug might have been fast, but it was uphill all the way, over
boulders and rocks, and a slick patch where the water flowed over a
flat, smooth ledge of rock strata that was covered in slick algae.
He might have been fast, but he only had seconds, and fast wasn't
fast enough. He could run, but he couldn't outrun a gunshot. Danny
knew that, with good reason. Down at the Whale's Back, the big spit
of tidal sand at low tide on the Firth out from the gunbarrel sewer
pipe beside Ardmhor Rock at Arden, Danny has seen what shotguns
could do. His Uncle Mick has taken him down there on cold winter
mornings to get the duck as they hit in, flying in rapid wedges,
wings pumping hard, flickering on the surface. Uncle Mick would
wait until they were level and then he'd haul up on his feet. The
chevrons of duck would see the motion and then veer away, croaking
alarm. They were fast, wings whistling as they scooped air, necks
outstretched. Mick always took them on the back, once they were
past, doing maybe fifty, maybe sixty. He said it was best to take
them under the feathers rather than head-on, which might just wound
the birds. The gun would roar like a thunderclap and the report
would go reverberating in a harsh and strangely hollow ripple of
noise across the flat of the tidal sand and up there in the sky the
feathers would fly and the birds would tumble through the air, over
and over and over until they hit the ground in hard thumps, ripped
through by the lead shot.</p>
<p>Doug was fast, but not as fast as a fleeting widgeon, or a big
sheldrake. He couldn't do fifty or sixty on the flat, never mind
uphill, over rocks, over slick stones, over the moss at the top.
The gully was a funnel. Anybody firing up there, with the spread
pattern a twelve-bore had, would hit anything. For forty yards
there was no cover at all.</p>
<p><em>No</em>! Corky hissed. <em>No!</em> Danny's mind bleated,
already seeing Doug getting halfway to the trees before the twin
barrels and their black infinity swung up the runnel (<em>and a
small and shameful part of him wanted Doug to suddenly swivel and
take off like a mountain hare because that would take the glare of
those barrels off his back</em>) and the trigger pull back and the
barrels spit thunder.</p>
<p>Corky reached and touched Doug. Danny's heart nearly stopped
dead. Something like a giant hand gripped all the muscles in his
belly and squeezed hard. Corky reached and touched Doug and Doug
jerked as if he'd been stung. Any moment Danny expected to heard
the apocalyptic roar.</p>
<p>Nothing happened. Doug's high, tight shoulders sagged to
slackness and defeat. He continued walking, on past the mouth of
the gully, following Tom's short, fearful steps, splashing across
the inch-deep trickle of tributary water. In five strides he was
past the chance of escape, and away from the certainty of
retribution. Corky nodded, an involuntary motion that spoke
eloquently of his relief and in that motion Danny read that Corky
could not try anything either. His friend's back was still rigid
with anger and tension and fear, but Corky was not going to dive
into the bushes, or pick up a smooth rock and try to take this
stranger's eye out. He had gauged all the chances and come up with
a zero. At least for now.</p>
<p>In that glassy moment, the exquisite conjunction of reality and
unreality, each of them were wholly and completely alive as they
had never been before. A powerful survival instinct had kicked into
them all, raising them up to heights of perception where every
motion, every sound, was imbued with amazing clarity.</p>
<p>Corky had read Doug's posture too. Everything seemed to go in
slow motion. The somnolent murmur of the water deepened to a low
rumble. The lone cuckoo way down there in the trees hummed its
diphthong, stretched-out and hollow, the sound trailing on and on
as it faded to eventual silence. The dragonflies, twin pairs,
striking in black and gold, came gliding over the water. On the
side of the valley, a small stone, dislodged from the steep gravel
rolled down to a ledge and then fell off, tumbling in the air to
land with a bass thud of sound in the pile of soft shale close to
the bank.</p>
<p>Corky's thoughts were flicker-fast, sharp as glass, clear as
ice. <em>Not now.</em> He has thought. <em>Not now.</em> As if he
could beam the words at Doug.</p>
<p>"You three, at the double." He had sounded like a soldier, like
the sergeant down at the drill hall where his Da had hiked the
grenades. The gun was gun jammed against Billy's neck, just under
the jawline where his blue-black Indian hair curled thick and they
had seen the man's stance and the sunlight had frozen on a summer's
day.</p>
<p>Crazy, Corky thought. Anybody who would put a shotgun up against
a boy's neck had to be loony-tunes. Anybody who would force him to
eat a dead trout, straight out of the stream, with the blood and
guts hanging out, they had to be non-<em>compost</em>-mentis as
Billy would say. It stood to reason. A farmer might rant and rave a
little, convinced you were worrying the sheep or stealing eggs. He
might put the toe of his boot up your backside, the way big John
Fallon might do if he caught you swiping stuff out of Woolworth's
down on River Street. That was an accepted level of violence, the
<em>quid pro quo</em>. A boy could take that, come and go, roll
with it and blink back smarting tears before anybody noticed.</p>
<p>This was different. The whole texture of the day had cracked and
splintered and then frozen over. The man had laughed that odd sound
and his eyes had blinked in the sunlight and Corky had known.
Anybody who stuck the barrels under Billy's chin would be crazy
enough to shoot, because the very fact of it could get you thrown
in Drumbain for a stretch.</p>
<p><em>Not now.</em></p>
<p>Corky had done his own calculation, his brain suddenly up there
in the high levels of clarity where cold clear winds blew. He could
see the big picture, the lines of contact, interconnecting them all
in a lacy weave; Tom to Danny, Doug to Billy, to the crazy man with
the blinking eyes</p>
<p><em>TwitchyEyes</em></p>
<p>and to Corky himself. If there was a time to move, it was not
now. The wrong move would get that gun talking, sure as hell it
would. There might be another chance.</p>
<p><em>And then again there might not,</em> a nasty little voice
whispered. He shied away from it, though it seemed to echo
persistently...<em>then again...then again</em></p>
<p>There might be another chance, once they'd all gone down
together to the camp. Maybe they would go further, down into the
trees.</p>
<p><em>Make it the camp,</em> Corky prayed. <em>Stop there.</em> Up
here in the valley, they were still in the open, with only scrubby
hawthorns and hazels clustered in the rocks and some thick ferns
that came up to shoulder height or even higher, further up the
slopes, but here it was mostly open to the sun. It was far up from
the town, but there was something about it being open that instead
of making him feel more vulnerable, seemed to convey a thin coating
of protective cover.</p>
<p>Out in the open, you could be seen.</p>
<p>Down beyond the camp, there the trees began, there was dark and
shadow under the spreading pines and the broad beech and oak trees.
Nobody could see what was done down there. If he</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes</em></p>
<p>took them down there beyond the line of the trees where even the
water of the stream was deep and dark at the spate-carved pot-holes
then he would do whatever he wanted.</p>
<p>They would die.</p>
<p>A shiver ran up and down Corky's back, hard enough to make him
feel as if his Sloppy Joe shirt was visibly rippling and he tried
to force the feeling away. He could not let them, Billy and Danny
see he was scared. He could not let them know how scared, because
if they knew, they'd panic and that would make him panic and if he
did that he'd have no say at all, no choice and no chance</p>
<p>The big man with the gun was an all out shrieking screwball.
Corky had seen it in the stuttering blink and the odd, head-cocked
posture and the way he'd said, quite softly, that they'd all go
down together. Corky did not want that man to see the ripple that
he felt must be visibly writhing under the fabric for he'd know how
scared he was and that would be a bad thing. You never let a dog
see the fear. Not a <em>Mad Dog</em>.</p>
<p>Because then it would react. Then it would attack.</p>
<p>Say a prayer Danny Boy, an oddly cool third voice said, almost
languidly, over the cold sparkle of his thoughts. <em>Now's the
time to collect on the Hail Mary's and Glory-Be's round the
fireplace.</em></p>
<p>A mental image came unbidden, of Danny going up with a slip to
the window in the confessional like a punter collecting on a line
from Harvey Bracknell's betting shop, trading it in for some saving
grace. A little shivery giggle tried to bubble up inside him, like
a pocket of poisonous gas in the bog. He swallowed it down hard, in
case it rolled up to the surface and burst out. He didn't want to
hear the sound he might make. It might sound a little high and
shaky. A little hysterical and maybe mad.</p>
<p>Billy could see Corky only when his head happened to chance in
that direction. The pain in his scalp, where the man had his hair
in a vicious grasp felt like fire, like a bad Chinese rope burn
that went from one ear to the other. Tears had already sparked then
spilled and were cold on his cheek and his thoughts too were high
and sparking. He was floating in a bubble of fright and pain and he
could hear the blood pound in his ears with the same double beat
rhythm of an old Zodiac engine with its big-ends gone.</p>
<p>The man was muttering something under his breath, but Billy
couldn't make out the words. The taste of fish slime and blood, the
texture of the fresh skin and hard gill-case, that had been awful,
but not as shuddering awful as the plummet of pure fear when the
gunbarrel had nudged cold under his chin. He had wanted to be a
hero, all his life, as far as he could remember, knowing he had the
stuff, had the guts to brave the worst. In the films, in all the
war movies, he'd seen men shot and killed. They died like they did
in the westerns, bravely, with honour, no fuss and with very little
blood.</p>
<p>Now he knew. In an instant of clarity when his mind had come
suddenly fully awake from the daydream that was his normal state of
mentation, and now when it was as clear as glass, he realised it
had all been a lie.</p>
<p><em>No hero no hero no hero.</em></p>
<p>His father had been <em>nobody</em> and in another ice-sparkle
of clarity Billy Harrison knew that he had known that all the time.
It had been an unwanted knowledge, lurking out there in the
shadows, to be kept at arm's length. He had wanted a father maybe,
needed one perhaps, and the one he wanted was not like Corky's Da,
rolling drunk on Friday nights, blagging the pigeon club money for
booze. Not like Danny's Dad either, ramrod straight behind the
family in their Sunday best and a look of disdain for the boys
smoking stolen cigarettes at the corner of the street. His father
would have been a hero, <em>should</em> have been, like his mother
said he was.</p>
<p>It was a lie. All of it. The films lied. Men didn't smile
bravely when they were shot, and fall into comfortable positions
and look tragically valiant. He had felt the barrels under his
jawline and suddenly the real truth fell upon him like an enormous
weight. The gun could blow his head clean off his shoulders in a
splatter of blood and slime. It would leave him like the fish,
shivering and headless and dead for ever.</p>
<p>Behind him the man spoke again, a muted, almost breathless
mutter that was incomprehensible. The voice was low and rumbling,
not the high and scary titter of a laugh.</p>
<p><em>Dumb fry</em> it sounded like.</p>
<p>Up ahead, Tom Tannahill was walking, head down on the track,
keeping his body curved in as if by making himself even smaller, he
could become invisible. He felt suddenly exhausted as if the fright
had drained everything out of him. His legs were shaking so badly
there was a real danger that they'd give way or that he'd lose his
step and the man with the gun would think he was trying to run away
and....He did not want to think of that.</p>
<p>It was enough just to concentrate on putting one foot in front
of the other and keep walking. He felt light-headed and trickles of
sweat were beading just under his hairline to spill down his
temples. Every couple of seconds, a flush of heat swept through
him, as if he was blushing madly, but it was worse than that
because when that happened, there was a roaring noise in his head
and the sounds of their footsteps faded away while little white
sparkles appeared to dance in the corner of his vision.</p>
<p>Tom took a breath and heard it flutter as his chest hitched, the
way it did after he'd been crying for a long time and that
sensation made him think of Maureen and how he'd cried then, for
days at a time, trying to get to grips with that appalling,
incomprehensible loss.</p>
<p>Billy whimpered, just a shiver of inarticulate sound and Tom
felt his lungs hitch again. His bladder wanted to let go. The
pressure built up suddenly, fierce and urgent and he clamped his
hand down on his crotch, pressing hard until the feeling subsided
from a burning pain to a warm pulse. A deadly weight of
hopelessness dragged down on him and he wished Corky would do
something, anything, to get them out of this.</p>
<p>The man with the gun said something, a mutter of sound, barely
audible, and Tom almost stopped, fearing an order had been issued
and he'd missed it, but even more fearful right at that moment to
make any mistake at all. Some instinct made him keep moving and he
walked, legs boneless and trembling, sweat dripping down the sides
of his face and the nagging pressure to piss rising to a twisting
burn. He screwed up his eyes, the way Billy had done when the man
grabbed his hair and forced himself to concentrate. He did not want
to piss himself.</p>
<p>The thought of that, of the damp, hot stain spreading on his
jeans, was unendurable.</p>
<p>"Convoy."</p>
<p>The sudden sound startled Tom so badly he almost slipped off the
track and down the shallowing bank. Doug reached to help and the
motion twisted him over on his ankle with a twisting snap of pain
that flared like a match and made him gasp through gritted teeth.
The pain flashed high and then faded. Doug bit back tears and
limped after Tom. There was no sound at all from the others, not
even a whimper from Billy. Their senses were wound up to a pitch of
tension. All of them listening for what would come next.</p>
<p>The man did not repeat himself. Not then.</p>
<p>Convoy? It had sounded like that even to Danny who was nearest
to him except for Billy held captive at arm's length. Did he mean
we were all in line?</p>
<p>They all went down together in their convoy, past the slope of
the turn at the white quartz rocks framing the head of the pool
where Billy had first jumped into the water to clean the red silt
off his jeans and stained the water in streaks of blood red. The
water was cool and dark and clear now, the surface dimpled with the
small swirls of turbulence. A brilliant blue damselfly wove
silently over the moving surface, a silent line of coruscating
light. They filed past the turn to where the canyon of the valley
widened to the swathe of green where the tent stood, a little
lop-sided, close to the shade of the rowan trees. A thin, blue line
of smoke rose perpendicular from the embers of the morning's fire
where the thick pine log was still smouldering lazily. Further
down, a highland cow, russet and hairy but with a spread of horns
like cattle on any western ranch turned slowly and watched with
impassive black eyes while its calf nosed in at the udders.
Eventually the animals moved off into the high ferns at the edge of
a clearing, barging through the undergrowth with a crackling sound
that reminded Danny of the noise down in the dark of the trees when
they'd sat round the campfire talking about old Mole Hopkirk and
the flies. Had that been a cow? In the dark, he had sensed eyes
watching them, but that could have been imagination. Could have
been.</p>
<p>But the doom-doom-<em>DOOM</em> sound that had woken him out of
sleep, that had been no cow. He knew that for certain now. The man
with the gun had been watching them from the cover and the shade
while they had laughed and had fought. He'd probably heard Corky's
tale about the rats under the bank, the <em>Racine rats</em> that
came out and ate lonesome travellers beside the water. In the
hypernatural clarity of the moment, Danny understood now about the
footprint in the shingle and the booming sound coming up from the
hollow bank downstream. The man had been announcing his presence,
trying to scare them. He had been telling them he was here.</p>
<p>And now he <em>was</em> here.</p>
<p>They walked into the clearing and the man's footsteps boomed
suddenly loud behind them and Danny knew that was his imagination.
Everything about the moment was magnified, from the crackling
blunder of the cow and calf to the shimmering streak of the
damselfly and the smell of the pine smoke.</p>
<p>"Yeah tho' I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death."</p>
<p>The voice spoke out, clear and boomingly succinct, a deep
contrast to the snicker of the laugh up at the high pool.</p>
<p>"I will fear no evil."</p>
<p>Billy's foot slipped on a dried ball of sheep dung and he almost
fell forward. The stranger's had pulled him back with a strong
twist and another yelp escaped the boy. Pain flared in his scalp
and tears sparked again in his eyes. If the man had let him go just
at that moment he would have fallen forward right on to his
face.</p>
<p>"Nearly there Convoy." This time the voice was almost a growl.
Corky assumed he was talking to them. "Can you hear me?"</p>
<p>Corky nodded, risking a turn towards the man, letting him know
he had heard and understood, but the stranger was turned away, his
head cocked to the side, as if in conversation with someone
else.</p>
<p>"You listening Conboy?"</p>
<p>Not convoy. Corky heard it clearly. <em>Conboy.</em></p>
<p>"He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside
quiet waters. He restores my soul."</p>
<p>Danny heard the words and recognised them too, from long
repetition. For some reason his heart sank even further, it felt as
if it shrivelled inside him.</p>
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<h1>25</h1>
<p>Billy fell headlong when the man released the tight grip on his
hair. He went sprawling past Danny, arms pinwheeling in a fruitless
attempt to regain his balance. He made a little croaking noise and
the fingers of his left hand caught at Doug's shirt, almost managed
to grab it, but only skimmed the fabric. He fell with a thump that
knocked his breath out in a whoosh, rolled and fetched up face down
on the turf next to the stones around the fire. Another foot and
he'd have caved his skull in on the smooth rock. Another two and
he'd be face down in the hot embers of the fire. Doug instinctively
moved to help him and then froze, half bent with his arms
outreached. Very slowly he drew them back to his sides again and
pulled himself back. He turned round even more slowly. Danny did
not move.</p>
<p>"Ahah," the man said and none of them knew whether he was just
clearing his throat, though it sounded like the confirmation of
preconceived suspicion.</p>
<p>Corky broke the stillness. He walked past Doug and bent to get a
hand under Billy's armpit. Tom took two steps back and helped him.
Billy gasped for breath as he got to his feet, both hands clamped
to his belly and his face slack with the effort and hurt. A streak
of ash had glued itself to the tears on his cheek and smudged
there, making him look as if he'd a black eye. On the other side,
two straight lines of soot had striped the skin, like Indian brave
war-paint. But at that moment looked less Indian and less brave
than ever.</p>
<p>"Well, well," the stranger said. Danny looked up a him and
quickly looked away. Corky completely ignored the sound.</p>
<p>"You okay Billy-O?" he asked quickly, voice hushed. He had one
hand on Billy's shoulder, an unconscious and eloquent gesture of
solidarity and support. His other was under Bill's elbow, steadying
him. Billy swayed a little.</p>
<p>"Yeah," he finally said in between gasps. "<em>Jeez.</em> That
hurts."</p>
<p>Tom, on the other side, equally unconsciously and quite
unceremoniously brushed some dried bracken off Billy's shirt.</p>
<p>"Thought you were diving into the fire there," Corky told him.
"You were nearly a goner."</p>
<p>Danny could only stand amazed at how calm Corky sounded. It was
as if they'd just been wrestling on the short grass and somebody
had got winded. Danny could sense the man's eyes taking in the
whole scene.</p>
<p><em>Yeah tho' I walk through the valley......</em></p>
<p>Psalm 23, verse two. Danny knew it off by heart. He'd heard it a
thousand times, one of his father's favourites, one of the many
engraved on Danny's brain through endless repetition, like the Hail
Mary's and Glory Be's of the tedious rosaries. And acts of
contrition.</p>
<p><em>I will fear no evil.</em></p>
<p>They had stopped in the valley. The sun was shining and the lark
was rising on a pillar of song in the warm air but there was a
shadow now here beside the stream.</p>
<p><em>Shadow of death....</em></p>
<p>Danny felt it clearly. He had looked up at the man and seen his
eyes, not twitching, not then, but taking in the scene, flat and
soul-less as the eyes of a dead trout, as if they stared into
infinity. All down the path, he had felt the bore of the gun aimed
on his spine, all the time expecting it to blast out and break him.
It hadn't happened, but Danny could sense the proximity of death
and the casual mindlessness of the violence inside the man.</p>
<p><em>I will fear no evil.</em></p>
<p>He feared evil. Oh sweet Jesus! He very much feared it. An evil
indifference radiated from the man who stood there, his shadow
between Danny and the sun, long and black, the gun now held in
folded arms, cradled as if it were a baby. He was indifferent for
now, but how long that last before he switched back his attention,
Danny could not guess. But it would change and then he'd focus on
them.</p>
<p><em>He makes me lie down in green pastures.</em></p>
<p>He had made Billy lie down on the green, thrown him flat with a
move of his hand. Billy stood there waiting for the next move. They
all did.</p>
<p>The man slowly swept his eyes round the clearing beside the
stream.</p>
<p><em>Dumb fry.</em></p>
<p>It came out as a murmur, half strangled. They all heard it. It
meant nothing, made no sense. He jerked his head to the side,
cocked it again as if listening for something. Corky watched,
keeping his expression flat, giving no cause for action or
retribution. He'd taken a risk going to help Billy, but that had
happened almost instinctively. A friend was down and hurt. He had
moved without thinking. It was only now, afterwards, that he
realised the man could have acted just as reflexively.</p>
<p>The intruder was talking to himself. A bad sign. Billy was
breathing heavily as if he couldn't control it and beside him, Tom
looked tiny and fragile, one hand pressed against his crotch.</p>
<p>"What do you want?" Corky finally said, hardly able to contain
his own surprise that he'd found the nerve to speak.</p>
<p>The man seemed not to have heard at all.</p>
<p>"Mister?" Corky risked another venture.</p>
<p>The man turned, not towards Corky, but towards the stream. The
sun was shining over the lip of the valley, up high where the
mudstone strata poked out under the line of the high moorland turf.
The light beamed from the water in coruscating flashes.</p>
<p>"<em>Dumb fry.</em> That right Conboy? <em>Only words they
understand.</em> No souls. No damned souls."</p>
<p>He stared at the water and they all stared at him, wondering
what would come next. Doug's narrow chest was rising up and down
and his ears were redly translucent in the sunlight. Danny watched
the man and the gun, fearful that he'd simply turn from the stream
and shoot. There was a tension in the air, a sense of unbalanced
and brittle craziness. The man blinked and muttered to himself as
if he'd completely forgotten them.</p>
<p>Tom could wait no longer. The pressure was spreading over the
top of his thighs and he thought again he's piss his pants and that
was enough for him. He unzipped with a quick rasp, turned half
around and let flow a stream. They all heard his instant sigh of
sudden relief and then, just as instantly, the hiss of steam as the
arc of bright water struck the hot rock. The stone steamed and a
bubbling spot of urine sizzled on the stone sending up a sour hot
billow. Tom stepped back, head jerking around to see if the noise
had attracted the man's attention. In doing so, his body
half-swivelled and he was still emptying his bladder. The motion
caused him to spray a line right across Billy's scuffed shoe and
under any other circumstances, such a lapse of judgement or aim
would have merited him a rough knuckle on the scalp, or a head-lock
or even a dead leg. Billy did not notice. His eyes were fixed on
the man who stood with the gun cradled in his arms and his gaze
looking down at the flashes on the surface of the water.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>Billy's mouth formed the words, though he made no sound, but
they all heard him as if he'd shouted them at the top of his voice;
all except Tom who was desperately trying to finish quickly to take
any possible attention away from himself, yet found he had huge
liquid reserves that kept coming and coming. The grass turned dark
green with damp and then a puddle formed. For such a small person,
he seemed to have a limitless supply. Everybody waited and finally
Tom finished. He sighed audibly once again, zipped himself up and
raised his eyes to look at the man.</p>
<p>The stranger blinked rapidly, and as he did so his whole face
contorted. Deep lines formed round his eyes and Danny could see it
wasn't so much a blink. It was more like a rapid tic. A twitch.</p>
<p>"What's he going to do?"</p>
<p>Doug's whisper could barely be heard above the burbling of the
steam but all of them caught it. Danny shrugged, hardly a movement
at all, just there merest hitch of his shoulders.</p>
<p>None of them knew what the man was going to do, but all of them
knew they were in trouble.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes</em>, Billy mouthed once more, and this time
Tom read the message. Billy was not telling them, merely talking to
himself, snagged on his awful comprehension. He had one had on his
scalp, gingerly rubbing at the tender place which still felt as if
his hair was being pulled out. His face was slack and dreadfully
scared. His eyes were not fixed on the man at all, but focused
somewhere in the distance. Corky nodded and so did Danny. Tom's
eyebrows went up in question and then the recognition dawned in his
eyes too.</p>
<p>Beside the flashing water, the man's head was still twisted to
the side. His coat was long and heavy, despite the heat of the day,
and torn under the armpit and at the pocket as if too much weight
had been put there. The hem hung right down to his calf, caked with
dirt or mud and his boots were old and worn. One of them had a
shark-mouth split where the sole was peeling away from the uppers
and looked just like the boot they'd found up at the crater on the
day they'd walked over the ridge and seen the devastation on the
moor surrounding the ghost-shacks of the dummy village.</p>
<p>"What if there's a foot in it?" Doug had asked, giggling. He
wasn't giggling now. He remembered telling Billy if there was a
foot in it he'd have shit himself. Billy hadn't denied it then. He
looked now as if he couldn't force the air out hard enough to make
a sound. There was an association here that had sparked yet
another. The divers had found a boot in the pool down by the quarry
and there had been a foot inside it. That had been when Crawford
Rankine had been thrown off the quarry and cracked his skull on the
rock.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes...</em></p>
<p>This man had done it. Doug felt a sudden swoop of panic shudder
through him and his breath back up in his skinny chest until his
lungs couldn't hold any more.</p>
<p>He'd done it. Thrown Craw Rankine down from the ledge onto the
flat rock and then he'd gone back and got Don Whalen and taken him
away...<em>Oh Jeez...</em>suddenly Doug's lungs did want to work,
tried to draw in more air and there was no more room. Everybody had
heard what he did to Craw. He could feel his chest moving up and
down while a heat of cramping pain started swelling under his
armpits and he was making a sound like a distressed dog on a
sweltering day.</p>
<p>The man turned round, away from the water, but his eyes were
still blinking hard, still <em>twitching,</em> though they were
looking well over their heads and not directly at the five boys.
Doug tried to stop panting, but his muscles would not obey. His
chest heaved even faster, small, shallow and violent breaths that
shook his body, made his shoulders jerk up and down. His face was
deathly pale, the way Billy's had been and even his ears had lost
their red glow. Corky heard the noise get louder and stared at him,
shaking his head very slightly but firmly, keeping his eyes locked
on Doug's. He did not have to say it, the way he had spoken on the
way down the valley. If anything was going to happen, it could be
now. They all sensed it. But the more Doug tried, the faster the
panting got. The lines of rock striations on the valley sides began
to waver as a loop of dizziness brought on by the hyperventilation
swept through him. A dry heat built up in his arid throat. In the
corner of his eye, shadows flickered and he felt as if he was going
to faint.</p>
<p>To his great surprise, Tom Tannahill stepped up beside him and
grabbed him through his old vest, his small hand surprisingly
strong. Tom gripped the fabric and a handful of skin and clutched
so tight he felt something would rip. He just wanted Doug to stop
panting.</p>
<p>A stab of pain lanced across Doug's ribs, sore enough to
momentarily divert his attention, A cry built up way down inside
him and he clamped his gaping mouth shut to keep it in. He grunted
softly.</p>
<p>The man kept his eyes firmly on the distance, maybe on the sky
or on the high valley sides where the scrub-alder and hazel mixed
with the thick ferns. The gun gleamed, blue-black and shiny clean,
a complete contrast to the raggedy stranger with his greasy hair
and his gaping boot and the thick, sour smell from his coat. The
real difference was that the gun could be put down on its butt end
and it would hurt nobody by itself. This crazy man had a depth of
hurt inside him, bursting to get out.</p>
<p><em>Should have run</em>, Doug thought, <em>while I had the
chance.</em> His lungs still hurt but the panic panting was over
and the dark shadows had faded away from his peripheral vision. His
ankle pulsed painfully yet and he new he could not run now if he
wanted to. Billy was still mouthing the same two words over and
over again as if the sudden comprehension had engraved themselves
on his consciousness. Corky looked like a cat, all tensed up, ready
to jump one way or another. Tom had his hand still gripped to
Doug's vest, but not clenched into his skin, when the man finally
lifted his hand and pointed at Billy.</p>
<p>"You boy," he said, not yet looking down. "come over here to
me."</p>
<p>Billy looked as if he would faint on the spot. His mouth opened,
closed, opened again. Everybody heard the dry click of his
throat.</p>
<p>"Mister..." Corky started in. The man turned his head towards
him, eyes still fixed on the far distance, as if watching something
happening elsewhere, maybe as if seeing visions. His hand was still
raised up, fist tight and showing white knuckles. One long, thick
finger was pointed straight at Billy's face.</p>
<p>"I said, come here." The voice was low and rumbling, with a
slight accent, maybe from the east coast, but it could have easily
been from the north. It was not a local accent, no glottal stop, no
truncation of the endings.</p>
<p>Billy's mouth kept opening and closing as if he had strength
enough to clench his teeth but not enough to hold his jaw tight.
Doug started panting again and Tom gripped his skin once more until
he subsided. Corky looked as if he might speak again, but the man's
face was still towards him and he dared not risk it. Billy's feet
moved him closer and Danny thought he looked like a rabbit faced
with a stoat. He and Corky had seen that happening up on the
moorland to Langcraig Hill, a stoat in autumn colours, dark and
long with a jet black tip to its tail and eyes like beads of coal,
weaving sinuous in front of a mesmerised rabbit which looked as if
it had stopped breathing. The deadly predator swayed, up on its
hind legs, body like a cobra, while the rabbit simply waited for
the bite on the back of its skull, unable to escape. Billy was
unable to escape. He took one slow step and the man's head turned
and the black eyes fixed on him and in that moment Danny saw the
stoat inside the man. His eyes had the same depths, and the same
animal intensity. They bored into Billy and there was nothing the
boy could do. He took another step, then another, walked across the
turf from the edge of the fire to the edge of the stream. He got to
within arm's reach and the man's arm simply dropped down and
clapped on his shoulder with a soft thud. Billy did not faint,
though Doug felt the strange nauseous wavering inside himself.</p>
<p>Billy stood rigid, face up.</p>
<p>They were fixed for maybe a minute in silence, joined by the
man's reach.</p>
<p>"You hear it boy?"</p>
<p>"Hear....hear?"</p>
<p>"You hear it, don't you?"</p>
<p>"I don't know mister. I don't hear..."</p>
<p>"Oh, you will then," the man said. He starred straight into
Billy's eyes for another long moment and then turned his head,
ignoring the others, until he faced the hollow by the gnarled
hawthorn.</p>
<p>"You'll see it too," he said, raising his hand off Billy's
shoulder and holding it above his head before dropping it slowly,
almost gently, to the dark hair. He patted first and then stroked
down.</p>
<p>"Hurt you boy?"</p>
<p>Billy couldn't help but nod.</p>
<p>"Part of the process. All part of it. No need to fret." His
voice dropped almost to a whisper, but they could all hear it.</p>
<p>"You see it boy. I know you do." He indicated to the hollow
where the dead deer skull gnashed its teeth in a fixed and silent
grind. The eye sockets were crawling with flies, masses of them,
like a moving mat. The wasted nostrils, pulled back in flaps,
showed a sliver of bone and a hollow dark space alongside the
flaccid skin which moved with the abundance of maggots under the
surface. The clogged eyes seemed to stare out of the shaded place.
Above it, the imperious white skull of the ram on the pole was a
stark ivory sculpture, white against the dark of the green, its
eyes gaping and haunted and bracketed by the heavy ridged double
curve of horns. Below them, the heron's severed head stared out,
the delicate spear of the beak now shut, a useless and blunted
weapon. Below it, the ragged neck had attracted its own swarm, but
the yellow eye gazed blinklessly.</p>
<p>The eye caught Danny's own and a feeling of guilt swamped him.
He hadn't meant to kill the thing but it had died anyway, neck
broken, graceless and flapping before the final shiver of severed
nerves.</p>
<p><em>It</em> did <em>bring bad luck,</em> he thought, aghast.
Billy had cut off the head and the yellow eye had fixed itself
accusingly on Danny, bright and glittering while the droplets of
blood had sprinkled out onto the grass and onto Billy's skin. Danny
had killed it and a cloud had shadowed the valley right then and it
had felt completely wrong. Now the eye still stared, flat and
lifeless and it felt worse now. The shadow was back in the valley
in broad daylight, in the sultry burn of the noonday sun. They had
fought last night, Billy and Doug telling each other terrible
truths that should be better left unsaid and Corky telling truths
that they all had to hear. More bad luck.</p>
<p>And now the man had started to move and was walking Billy out
beyond the camp to the hollow where he'd set up his trophies. The
gun was casually slung over his free shoulder, barrels pointing at
the sky. He ignored the other four as if they did not exist. They
stood frozen while the man and boy moved out along the second trail
made by Billy's feet trampling down the short ferns there at the
edge of the clearing. The flies were faintly audible, a soft murmur
of sound, like someone moaning softly in the hollow. It was no more
than thirty yards away, far enough for the smell not to carry down
to the campsite.</p>
<p>The man led Billy ahead of him, the hand still laid on his head,
but not twisting the hair now. He looked like a priest with an
acolyte, with an altar boy. They got half way to the hollow when
Corky slowly turned to Danny and whispered.</p>
<p>"We've got to get out of here."</p>
<p>"How?" Doug asked. "I've hurt my foot. Twisted my ankle."</p>
<p>"What about Billy?" Tom wanted to know. "What's he going to do
to him?"</p>
<p>"It's that crazy guy, isn't it?" Danny said. He felt his own
breath back up, as if his body didn't want to respond, to say those
words. He compromised. "Him."</p>
<p>"Twitchy Eyes," Doug hissed. Corky nodded.</p>
<p>"Has to be him. That's why we've got to get out. Get help."</p>
<p>"But he's got a gun."</p>
<p>"Yeah, but he's not going to do anything right away, is he now?"
Corky said. He waited until they had all digested that. "Not to all
of us."</p>
<p>Danny was astonished at Corky's grasp of this situation. Like
he'd done the night before, he had cut to the heart of it, through
the gristle and connective tissue and laid it all bare. What was
worse? Reality brought its own added terrors. They had all heard
the stories that had run around the playground, brushfires of truth
and surmise, but mostly truth. A town like Levenford could hold no
secret for long. Every detail of what the man with the twitchy eyes
had done had been gone over and been picked at, by men in the bars;
by women over teacups; by boys braving it down on the edges of
Rough Drain warily listening for the passage of strangers; by
little kids scaring each other in school. The starkness of what
Corky said, spoken in just a whisper that would not have carried
for four yards, had the impact of a scream.</p>
<p>Mole Hopkirk had lain for a long time before he'd died, hurt and
bleeding and alone and unable to call for help. Don Whalen had been
carried away to the old bomb shelter in the scrub land where the
old glue works had once stood down near the Highcross Road. The
shelter had not been a place of refuge for him. The man had taken
him down there and hurt him until he died beside the open-mouthed
corpse of that girl from Lochend. And the killer had taken his time
with Sandra Walters.</p>
<p>Corky was right. He would not do anything to them right away,
not to all of them, not <em>right now</em>. But he would do
something terrible if they didn't get away from here. The knowledge
of who he was and what he had done was laid right on them by the
bleak simplicity of Corky's statement.</p>
<p>Tom thought of the little kid under the bridge and was reminded
of the story he'd read to his sister in the last days, <em>Billy
Goats Gruff</em> with the nightmare hiding in ambush under the dark
arch. He felt his bladder complain again and he concentrated until
the protest faded. This man had killed the little girl under the
bridge.</p>
<p>There was no doubt in any of their minds. They had seen the
twitch. The man was big and - <em>oh jeesus please-us hug and
squeeze us -</em> it was him all right and he was here. Tom felt a
ripple of intense fear shudder through him and he thought about
death again, not for the first time. He did not want to die like
that girl under the bridge. He didn't want to die in his own
piss.</p>
<p><em>My fault,</em> Danny thought, with the image of the heron
crashing to the ground, broken and twisted, one wing carrying it
round in stupid circles. He'd brought the bad luck. Everything had
started to go wrong for them after that.</p>
<p><em>And Billy had hung the head up.</em></p>
<p>Now Billy was paying the price. He had stained himself with the
blood which had splashed from the ragged neck</p>
<p><em>And they marked the lintels with the blood so that the angel
of death would pass over</em>. The line from the bible came back to
him, unbidden. He'd thought of that when Billy had cut the head off
the bird, a <em>biblical</em> quotation. And the angel had not
passed over. He'd come as if summoned and he was quoting the bible,
a grotesque parody of Danny's own father. Danny shied away from the
connection. His head was buzzing under the pressure of sudden
overload. Corky's voice pulled him away and back to the here and
now.</p>
<p>"What's he doing?"</p>
<p>"Talking to Billy," Doug said. He was up on tip toes, using Tom
as a leaning post. The stranger was half hidden behind the first
low clump of scrub. He leaned and put the gun against a flat face
of rock, butt down on the grass. For the first time, hope
swelled.</p>
<p>Over by the hollow, the man was talking, not very loud at first,
but the words amplified by the hollow curve of the stone face. They
could just make out what he was saying. Billy could feel himself
shaking all through, as if he'd become a tuning fork. For some
reason his stomach kept twisting all of its own and that made him
belch constantly, little pockets of air bursting at the back of his
dry throat.</p>
<p>"Hear them, eh?"</p>
<p>"What?" Billy managed to blurt.</p>
<p>"The flies boy. Children of Be-elzebub, purifiers of the dead.
In the midst of death, they are life. You hear them? They talk to
us all, those voices. You just need ears to hear."</p>
<p>The man brought his head down until his cheek was against
Billy's ear. He could smell his breath, flat and cloying and
rotten; he could smell his sour sweat. The man's beard bristles
rasped against the side of his face and Billy had no strength to
pull away.</p>
<p>"Got to go down into the valley and out the other side. Come
through trials and tribulations to reach the great truth. You want
to make that journey boy? You want to listen to the voice of the
dead?"</p>
<p>"Crazy," Doug whispered. "He's off his flamin' head." Tom nodded
slowly.</p>
<p>"We have to get out of here first chance," Corky said. "Soon as
we can."</p>
<p>"Can you get help?" Doug wanted to know. "I can't run. I twisted
my ankle." The bitter disappointment was etched on his face. If
anybody could have gone for help, gone quickly, it would always
have been him. That little stumble as he reached out to help Tom
had cost him his speed. Cost them all.</p>
<p>"I <em>have</em> to get help," Corky said. His eyes were fixed
on the enactment in the hollow by the old hawthorn. The man was
leaning over Billy now and for a moment, they could have been
father and son, both of them tall, though the stranger towered over
the boy, and both dark-haired and sallow of skin. Not the father
Billy would have wanted, not the hero.</p>
<p>"Watched you set this up, boy." The voice came, chilling in its
casual matter-of-fact flatness. Billy couldn't speak. The stranger
took the hand off his head and reached towards the deer's skull.
Immediately a cloud of black flies peeled off and into the air in
an angry little tornado. One of them landed on Billy's cheek, a big
fat blue thing. It edged down towards his mouth and he got a whiff
of the dead meat it had fed on.</p>
<p>"<em>Dung Fly,"</em> the man said. This time they all heard it.
"Conboy knew. He knew what they meant, Godless heathens. Am I
right?"</p>
<p>Billy nodded in quick response, though he hadn't a clue. None of
them had. Corky looked straight at Danny, his mouth set in a grim
line. They had both climbed up on the roof behind the old surgery
at Cairn House and had seen the flies patter like rain against the
window. They hadn't known then. They knew now.</p>
<p>"When?" Danny asked. Corky was about to say something when a
high-pitched squeal pierced the air, startling them all. The
stranger's head snapped up and he seemed to some out of that
dreamy, far-off state.</p>
<p>"What's that?" he asked sharply. Billy looked up at him, face
blank and open a picture of miserable bewilderment.</p>
<p>"I dunno," he finally managed.</p>
<p>Down at the bottom end of the clearing, where the low hazels
crowded together with some tangled blackthorns, the cry came again,
a squeal of pain or panic. The man moved backwards from the hollow,
leaving Billy on his own. He turned and walked not towards the
waiting group, but cut round the edge of the flat ground, head
cocked, the way it had been before, but this time obviously
listening for the noise. He reached the tent and skirted behind it.
The sound came again and this time Corky recognised it.</p>
<p>"It's a rabbit," he said. "Maybe one of the snares worked."</p>
<p>The man seemed to have forgotten about them for the moment. He
moved into the clump of blackthorn then beyond a thick hazel and
disappeared from sight. They all stood stock still. The gun was up
there at the rock, only yards from where Billy stood.</p>
<p>"Get it," Corky said between his teeth. He wanted to shout but
couldn't risk it. The man had gone into the scrub about thirty
yards away, but he was still closer to the gun than they were, or
so it seemed. Billy was only a few feet from it. He had half turned
towards them, but his whole attention was fixed on where the
stranger had gone.</p>
<p>"Billy!" Corky hissed. Doug turned round and did the same,
waving his hands for emphasis. None of them had the nerve to run to
the hollow, just in case that's what the man was waiting for. Down
in the cover the rabbit squeaked again, weaker now. They knew the
noose would be caught on its cheeks and it would be trying to force
itself free, drawing the fishing line snare tighter with every
move. If it had been round its neck, the pressure would have
strangled the sound.</p>
<p>"Billy," Danny gesticulated too. "Get it. Get the gun!" His
uncle Mick had let him fire a few shots down on the whale's back
sandbank on the estuary. They didn't even have to fire it at all,
just threaten. Twitchy Eyes might be crazy, but he couldn't be so
crazy he would ignore a gun threat.</p>
<p><em>But too crazy for Billy to risk going for the
gun...</em></p>
<p>Danny's legs twitched, as if they wanted to get started, get
moving, as if he was already running for it. Something inside of
him wanted to see the barrel pressed up against the man's throat,
to get revenge for the dreadful sensation of fear that had swamped
himself when he had felt them aimed at his spine, ready to cut him
in half.</p>
<p>The noise cut off. For a moment there was silence.</p>
<p>"Billy!" Tom hissed. Billy's attention was still fixed on the
spot where the man had gone into the rough. Once again he looked
like the rabbit mesmerised by the stoat. Off in the cover the other
trapped rabbit had stopped crying.</p>
<p>Corky took two steps back. His head swung left and right,
gauging the distance to the gun, to the stream. His hands balled
into thick, tense fists and of a sudden his eyes glinted like
emeralds.</p>
<p>"Wha..." Doug started to ask. Corky forestalled him.</p>
<p>"I got a chance," was all he said. He swivelled round to
estimate the climb to the top of the rim, shook his head, crouched
like a runner waiting for the gun, hands spread for balance. It was
a high steep slope and the loose, shifting gravel would slow him.
Both Danny and Doug could see that. The agony of indecision
stretched out for what seemed like a long time, but must have been
only seconds. He shook his head again, making the decision.</p>
<p>"I'll come back," he sad. "Honest. Try to..." he did not finish.
Out in the scrub beyond the campsite, a low thudding sound punched
out. Because of the dense foliage of fern and alder, none of them
could say from what direction it came. It was enough, however, to
galvanise Corky. He gambled on a downstream run. Despite his
previous misgivings about being taken down into the trees - and
they had been real fears - he worked out the best option. It was a
downhill sprint, following the cow-track beside the stream, that
would give him the advantage of speed. It was on the other side of
the campsite from where the gun was, so even in if the man came
blundering back and reached for it, he could easily be two turns of
the stream ahead and out of the line of fire. If he reached the
trees, they would give extra cover. He could hide in the shadow,
use the shade and cover to get up to the edge of the valley and get
down to the town. It was a <em>chance</em>. There was a good chance
that the man would come after him and that would give the others
the opportunity to scatter and the more of them that got away, that
would give anybody else a better hope. Corky was only thirteen
years old, but he had a bright instinct for odds and chances,
honed, possibly by the years of sliding between his violent father
and his loony brother.</p>
<p>He spun, leapt over the smouldering fire and hit the ground on
the other side. He went down the slope like a hare, arms flashing,
feet thrumming, racing along the bank.</p>
<p>Doom-doom-<em>doom.</em> Corky passed the overhang where the
stream had dug under the edge and the noise of his passing echoed
back to them. Hope leapt in Danny's chest. His heart did the same,
beating so fast he could actually feel its pressure high up under
his throat.</p>
<p>"Run for it, Corky," Doug muttered to himself, to the three of
them. "<em>Go on, man</em>."</p>
<p>Corky made it down to the next pool. He skittered across the
stones where the stream narrowed at the tight bend and then ran
back across the shallows beyond, sending up a fine spray that
caught the sun and made a series of brilliant rainbows. He reached
the turn, grabbed on to the upright trunk of a slender sapling to
propel himself round the corner.</p>
<p>The man came right out of the bushes at the side of the
clearing.</p>
<p>For an instant Danny thought the big charging shape was a
highland cow that had been startled by the sudden motion until he
recognised the size and shape. The man came streaking out, almost
silent but for a couple of twigs that crackled underfoot.</p>
<p>"Oh fuck," Doug said emptily.</p>
<p>The man had been further downstream that they had realised. They
could have got to the gun if they'd known.</p>
<p>Corky caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. They all
saw that. The black shape came streaking out of the bushes. Corky's
face turned and one hand went up in a reflex protective action. He
swerved to the side, too late, for he was hemmed in now by the
steep valley side and had no room for manoeuvre. He tried to run
faster, reached the flat turf at the edge of the stream, got one
foot onto the shingle at the bottom end of the pool and the man
lashed out with his foot and caught him a savage blow right on the
hip.</p>
<p>They all heard the dreadful smacking sound as the toe of the
boot connected. It sounded exactly like the noise they'd made when
they swung the thick logs on the stones to break them into
firewood. Corky made a sound that did not sound exactly human. The
force of the blow knocked him right up into the air, legs twisting
from under him. He flew in a low arc and landed on the shingle with
another loud thud, scattering small stones as he ploughed into
them.</p>
<p>"Jesus," Doug said.</p>
<p>Down by the pool Corky tried to get to his feet. They could see
his left leg dig in at the shingle in a desperate attempt to raise
himself up again and propel himself further down the valley, but
his right leg was not moving at the same speed. A cry of pain or
desperation or bitter defeat escaped him and came echoing up to
where they stood. He got to the edge of the water, his left hand
scattering shingle into the pool. The man took a step forward and
kicked his backside. The blow wasn't as violent as the first one
had been, and obviously wasn't even intended to be.</p>
<p>Corky lurched forward, off balance. His hand skidded out from
under, making his body flop at the edge of the shallows. The
stranger took another step and put his boot on the small of Corky's
back.</p>
<p>"Jesus," Doug mouthed again. They had all moved forward, all
except Billy, unable to stop themselves, getting to the lip at the
edge of the slope, unable to draw their eyes away from what was
happening further down the valley. The man leaned forward and
Corky's arms thrashed in the water.</p>
<p>"He'll drown," Tom said in a shivery little bleat of panic.</p>
<p>Corky's head went under the water. It wasn't deep, maybe three
of four inches, but with the weight of the man himself pressing
down on him, driving him into the shale, it was deep enough. He
raised his head up from the water, but hands splashing furiously,
waving to get some purchase and once again sending up coruscating
prism colours. He tried to pull himself from under but there was
nothing to hold on to. His head flopped down and they all heard him
gasp and splutter under the water.</p>
<p>"He's killing him," Tom said, almost in a whimper.</p>
<p>Corky yelled frantically as he exhaled, managing to lift his
mouth and nose clear for an instant, just enough to haul in a
breath. It was an inarticulate sound of no words but the
desperation in it was clear and stabbed them all.</p>
<p>Danny was moving. He did not remember starting to move, or even
deciding to do it. The animal sound Corky had made simply released
something in him and before he knew it he was down the slope and
belting along the track. Somebody shouted behind him and the sound
seemed to draw itself out like warm toffee. It might have been Doug
or Tom for Billy was probably still paralysed up by the altar of
the skulls. Danny ran over the stones, travelling in a straight
line the way Corky had done, then across the shallows at the first
pool before he even realised what was happening and by that time
everything was moving too fast including himself. Corky's head was
down again and all of his limbs were thrashing about. The stranger
was laughing or saying something. Unbelievably, he had a rabbit in
his hand, about half grown, still alive and kicking, trying to
squirm away much as Corky was doing. Danny was too far committed
now, moving too quickly to turn round and tell Doug to get the gun.
He would have cursed to himself if there had been time, because he
should have got the gun and come down and shot the man but all he'd
heard was that animal sound, a deadly noise of a drowning boy and
inside Danny something had clicked like a thrown switch; like a
pulled trigger. He'd got a vision of Paulie Degman rolling over in
the water and the sick feeling of proximity to death came welling
up in him and all of a sudden, he had no choice at all.</p>
<p>He splashed across the shallows of the upper pool, down the
slope to the second, across the narrow part of the falls and landed
with a thump on the shingle, scattering an arc of stones much as
Corky had done when he fell. His momentum carried him forward, feet
pattering through the few inches of water. Behind him somebody was
screaming and he couldn't tell who it was. He skidded forward,
barked against the man's right leg and almost fell. Despite the
speed of the collision, the man hadn't even moved. Danny felt as if
he'd run smack into a tree. He bounced, body twisting, feet
skidding, but did not stop. He simply grabbed Corky's ankle, got
his other hand to it, felt the powerful and desperate kick as his
friend fought for air, fought for life, and dragged backwards. For
a fraction of a second, nothing happened and then Corky jerked
back, only a few inches, but enough to get his head clear of the
water. His face scraped across the shingles, still pressed down on
the ground. He hauled for breath, a great whoop of suction, coughed
violently, retched, then whooped again. The man took his foot off
his back and Danny's weight pulled Corky even further back from the
water.</p>
<p>Danny fell on his backside, suddenly numbed by the enormity of
what had happened. A loop of nausea bubbled up inside him, burning
the back of his throat, then subsided without any conscious
assistance. He started to get to his feet when the man's shadow
fell on him.</p>
<p>"The earth trembled and it quaked," he said, very slowly and
clearly, almost dreamily. "They trembled because he was angry."</p>
<p>A hand reached down and took Danny by the neck, lifting him to
his feet in one swift, smooth motion. He felt something creak in
under the grip and a twist of pain shot from one side to the other
at the back of his skull. His feet came almost clear of the ground,
the way Billy's had done when the man grabbed his hair. The fingers
squeezed, not monstrously but enough to get the impression of great
and irresistible strength. Danny remembered thinking he should
shout to Doug or Tom to get the gun, but he was too scared to even
open his mouth.</p>
<p>"Suffer little children to come unto me," the man said. He
twisted Danny around and forced his head back so that he could look
right into his eyes. He bent forward, blotting out the blue of the
sky and locked on to Danny. The black eyes in that dark and seamed
face seemed to expand by some alchemy. They fixed on Danny, black
as night and held him tight. They were so dark that no pupil could
be seen, only the depth of blackness, like holes. He leaned in
close and the sour, unwashed smell enveloped Danny. The man was
dirty and he was mad. The eyes held him, completely expressionless,
not angry, not even mad-looking and that was creepiest of all.
Danny was up on his tip-toes, while this man stared right into his
soul with those black searchlights, leaning forward like a hungry
animal.</p>
<p>"He's going to eat me..." a panicked and jittery thought bubbled
up. <em>He bites people. Oh man he eats people...."</em></p>
<p>"Don't hurt him," Corky pleaded. He'd been coughing the water
out of his throat when the man had turned and grabbed Danny. He
lurched to his feet, biting down on the augur of pain that drilled
right high on his hip where the blow had almost dislocated the
joint. His leg was numb and stiff, like the worst dead-leg he'd
ever had and everything from mid-thigh down was jittering and
jiving of its own volition. He hauled himself upright and now he
could see his friend caught by the neck and the raggedy man was
bending over him. Corky pushed in, trying to get himself between
Danny and the intruder. He was scared, dreadfully scared but he
knew Danny had come for him and he had to go for Danny.</p>
<p>"Let him go, mister," he bawled, reaching up to grab the arm
that had Danny by the neck. Danny was making little croaking sounds
while the black, and for once blinkless eyes, seared into him.
Corky dragged downwards, trying at least to get Danny's feet flat
on the ground, just in case the man shook him and broke his neck.
For some reason, the motion broke the connection. The man blinked
once, as if coming awake, swivelled his head to look at Corky.</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"I said let him go," Corky said.</p>
<p>Without a word the man held up the rabbit by its hind legs. It
jiggled there, trapped in his grip, making little reflexive running
motions. Its brown eyes rolled in the sockets. A tiny pink tongue,
like that of a new-born baby lolled softly.</p>
<p>Without warning the man jerked his hand. The animal swung in a
brief arc and came down with whipping force. Its head connected
with Corky's cow's-lick hairline at the top of his brow. There was
a wet crunch. A metallic smell misted the air. A red stain pulped
across Corky's head. He fell to the ground, landing on his backside
with such a force that his teeth snapped together hard enough for
Danny to hear. The man had lowered Danny's feet to the grass and
the grip on his neck eased considerably. He twisted just enough to
see what was happening. Corky was slipping backwards, eyes open,
but with a wide bloodied mark right across his head. He grunted and
it was the most deadly sound Danny had ever heard. It was an animal
sound, mindless and helpless. It was the kind of sound the Aberdeen
Angus bullocks made down in the slaughterhouse pens when the
malletmen fired the bolt into their brains and they dropped,
stumbling to the tiles with a grunt of expelled air, dead before
they fell.</p>
<p>Corky made that awful animal noise.</p>
<p>Both his hands were on the ground. He rolled slowly and lay
flat.</p>
<p><em>He's killed him. Oh!</em></p>
<p>Horror and shock wheeled right through Danny.</p>
<p>It had happened with such brutal force, such unexpected speed. A
whip and a crack and Corky was down. The enormity of it was still
trying to impinge itself on Danny's mind when Corky suddenly moved.
He jerked, much as the man had done, as if coming awake. Both hands
flew up to his head and dabbed gingerly. He blinked several times
and then he moaned, not loud, but the way someone does when they've
bumped their head or barked their shin. He winced as he did so. His
hands came away bloodied and Danny expected him to find bits of
skull and bone there too, at that part where his skull had been
caved in.</p>
<p>Corky face twisted into an expression of disgust and he rubbed
gingerly again at his scalp. Danny turned back, completely
bewildered and saw the rabbit swinging in the man's hand. Its head
was a red ruin. The little animal's skull was flattened and pulped
and a trail of blood dribbled from the nose that had been twitching
only seconds before. It was stone dead.</p>
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<h1>26</h1>
<p><em>August 3. Night.</em></p>
<p>The moon rose over the high edge on the east side of the valley,
a slow, bright dome, just a shave short of full. Doug had watched
it from where he sat, up against the pole of the tent close to the
open flap, seeing the coarse grass fringe limned in silver, then
silhouetted against the light. The others, Danny, Tom and Corky who
were at the back, could only see the effect on the valley and the
water of the stream over by the falls where Billy had stuck the
feathers.</p>
<p>The upstream curve of the valley gradually lightened as the moon
rose higher, sending ink-blot shadows contracting slowly on the
westward slides of the rocks and trees. The water at the falls was
a flow of rippling quicksilver and even the small cascade itself
seemed to be imbued by a kind of magic, softening its sound down to
barely a whisper. The four feathers of the dead heron were narrow
curved blades sticking up from the rocks. Danny turned his head
from the silver stream, drawing his eyes down the bend to the edge
of the campsite. The change in the light was perceptible over the
distance, graduating from an ethereal moondew out in the basin of
the valley, to a baleful red glow by the fire where the pine sticks
crackled and spat and sparks rose up into the blackness above. The
stranger sat hunched on the far side, close enough to the flames
for them to reflect on the smooth gun-barrel. If he had not been
there, the light would not have looked so hellish, merely warm. His
presence changed everything and took the magic out of the
moonlight.</p>
<p>Billy's face was a pale blur close to the man, flickering in the
dance of the flames. He was huddled on the log he'd hauled himself
as his camp bench. His old rusty Sheffield steel knife was still
embedded into the grain at the end furthest from the fire. It
wouldn't have done him any good even if he'd been able to reach
it.</p>
<p>The man was silent for now.</p>
<p>He was only a yard or so from Billy, but he looked as if he was
completely alone within himself. He sat still, solid as the rocks
at the falls. Four Feather Falls, Billy had called it and they'd
all recalled the little puppet show with the hero whose magic guns
would swivel in their holsters and fire at the bad guys, mainly the
Indians. The idea of a gun going off by itself was now a
nightmare.</p>
<p>Billy huddled motionless. They could all see the red glint on
the fire-side edge of the long barrel and the silver streak at the
top where the moonlight reflected. Those parallel lines of
flickering red and silver followed up from the stock to the far end
which was jammed under Billy's jawline.</p>
<p>"We will all sit vigil," the man had said. "Pray that you will
not fall into temptation."</p>
<p>Danny knew, from long experience what he was talking about. The
image of the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane came to him.
<em>Pray!</em> Corky hadn't had the same indoctrination, but he
instinctively picked up the sense of it. Billy's eyes were red in
the firelight, wide and scared. The man had sat him down and took
some of the baling twine which he wrapped quickly round the ends of
the barrels and then looped around Billy's neck to tie it back on
the gunmetal again. The noose was not tight enough to strangle, or
even cause serious physical discomfort, but the agony of
anticipation should have been enough to make Billy sweat blood.</p>
<p>The business ends were right under his chin and the butt dragged
on the ground. The trailing edge of the baling twine went under
Billy's knees and the man quickly bound his hands there, once
again, not savagely, just enough to make it difficult for Billy to
move much. With the gun jammed against his neck, pointing straight
up under his chin, Billy was too scared to move at all.</p>
<p>"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the
hour," the man told them and the crazy emptiness was back in his
eyes once more. They all shrank back from it.</p>
<p>He had made them build up the fire until it was a hot roar of
heat. Doug and Corky had broken the logs which Danny and Tom had
dragged down from the fallen spruce tree close to where the Corky
had struggled for breath in the shallows of the pool. There was no
escaping now, not while Billy's head was wired to the gun. The man
knew it. He had them in his grip now an there was nothing they
could do.</p>
<p>Corky wondered when he would start hurting them. He did not even
consider that they had been hurt yet, despite what they'd been
through. The rabbit's dried blood was smudged on his forehead and
the bruise there throbbed warmly but not very painfully. The side
of his face was swollen and angry and his shoulder and thigh hurt
like all hell. It was possible that the shock had anaesthetised
him. He leaned back, drawing his eyes from the outside to the dark
of the tent. Danny's gaze was fixed on the man, half of his face
pinked by the reflection of the fire, the other half in moonshadow.
Tom was just a pale blur. Dougie's breathing was light, but
shallow. They were still alive.</p>
<p>For a bad moment after his escape attempt, Corky had thought the
man would kill them all. With the natural insight of one who had
lived cheeck to jowl with a natural level of violence, he knew it
had been close.</p>
<p>"What's he waiting for?" he wondered, not realising that he had
whispered the words aloud.</p>
<p>"I dunno," Danny said. His stomach was rumbling emptily,
although he did not feel hungry. He was thinking about Billy
sweating blood and he wondered about the gun, whether it would go
off if Billy slumped forward during the night. He wished the man
would untie it. Danny's Uncle Mick who was his mother's brother and
the black sheep of the family, his gun had a filed-down trigger
lever that made it fire, so he said, if anybody looked at it the
wrong way. If Billy fell, or even jerked to the side, would the gun
go off? No wonder he was sitting there like a carved Indian statue.
He looked as if he was scared even to breathe. The safety catch was
off. <em>Now</em> it was off. Too late.</p>
<p>The man had hit Corky with the rabbit and Corky had dropped like
a sack. The move had been so unexpected, so unnatural, that it had
taken them all by surprise and Danny had thought Corky was dead.
The enormity of that sudden loss was matched only by the fear that
he himself would be next. For a moment everything went completely
and utterly still. Then Corky had jerked as if coming awake and had
rubbed at the red splash and they had both realised at the same
time that it was only rabbit blood.</p>
<p>Corky had got to his feet, very slowly, as if he too was still
surprised to be alive. The man had stepped forward and grabbed him
by the neck the way he had seized Danny only seconds before.
Without hesitation he propelled Corky back up the slope and across
the stream, ignoring the stepping stones. His boots splashed in the
water and Corky's splashed beside him, more dragged than stepping.
He made no sound. Danny followed on, unable to do anything else.
The man ignored him, as if he had forgotten all about him, but
Danny knew that was not so. If he ran, the man would turn and catch
him and this time he might not use the pulped rabbit to fell him.
He might pick up one of the smooth stones by the river and smash
him down with it and keep on smashing.</p>
<p>They got to the edge of the camp. Dougie was standing to the
side of the fire, shoulders dropped in defeat, his ears red and
translucent, his vest torn and sagging. Billy was over by the
hollow, down on his hands and knees as if he had suddenly gone
blind. His face was upturned and his eyes open, but they looked as
if they were fixed, the way the stranger's had been, on the far
distance. Tom was moving forward from the low rock wall. Danny
hadn't noticed him at first. For a second he thought he might have
run up stream and got away, gone for help before it was too late,
but then he saw him moving forward and his heart lurched.</p>
<p>Tom had the big gun in his hands.</p>
<p>He had raised it up to his shoulder and the end of the barrel
was waving around as if he was conducting a slow piece of music.
The muzzle ends, the black infinity shape, swung round to Danny who
winced in fright until it moved back to point at the man who was
pushing Corky in front of him.</p>
<p>"Stop!" Tom's voice was high and thin, almost a bleat.</p>
<p>The weight of the gun looked too much for Tom's small frame. The
end dropped slowly, rose, sagged again. His hands were shaking.
Danny saw his finger on the front trigger. The muzzle wavered down
again.</p>
<p><em>"No Tom,"</em> Danny tried to say but the words wouldn't
come. His mental shout was just a clamour inside his head. If Tom
fired, he'd surely hit Corky who was now being shoved up the
incline to the campsite.</p>
<p>The man did not hesitate. He pushed Corky ahead, walking
quickly, his boots thudding the turf and then without warning flung
the boy ahead of him with a violent push. Tom's eyes followed his
friend's progress, pulling his attention away from the real threat.
The man strode forward and took the end of the gun in his hand with
almost casual swiftness. Danny saw Tom's finger tighten reflexively
on the trigger, but nothing happened. The end of the barrel was
pointing straight at the man's head, <em>but nothing happened</em>.
The gun did not roar, did not spit fire and lead shot. The big,
dirty hand clamped on the end and drew it away from Tom. The man's
other hand reached out and took the small boy by the face, thumb on
one side, fingers on the other. The fingers flexed, squeezed hard
until the ingrained knuckles showed white.</p>
<p>Tom made a small <em>oomph</em> sound as his face contorted,
lips forming a vertical, squashed violin-shaped slash. A flick of
spittle whirled out. The man squeezed harder and Tom's eyes bulged.
He moaned in pain, face drawn upwards by the grip. Both his hands
were shaking furiously and his feet did a jittery little dance.
Over by the hollow, Billy was turning his head as if he'd just
realised they were there.</p>
<p>Corky got to his feet, shook his head to clear it, saw what was
happening and said something. It was just one word.</p>
<p>"Don't..."</p>
<p>That was as far as he got, but it was enough to save Tom's face
from being crushed and broken.</p>
<p>The man let go, simple as that. Tom fell to the ground, both
shivering hands immediately flying to his face which bore the full
imprint of thumb on the left cheek and four fingers on the right.
There was a vivid red mark just under the curve of the jaw where
the man's smallest finger had dug into the skin, the dirty nail
slicing through the surface. Tom let out a long drawn cry of pain
and his eyes were closed tight, concentrating on the hurt the way
boys do, so he did not see what happened next. Corky said his one
word and the man dropped Tom, as if he'd just flicked something off
his hand. He spun and to Danny it seemed as if it happened quite
slowly, but hewas riding high on that ridge of fear and dread in
which everything seemed to happen at a different speed from normal.
Corky was suffering no such time distortion. Despite his wealth of
experience in such matters, he never even saw the blow coming. The
man spun and his hand swung with him, splayed open, palm first. It
was the hand that had gripped Tom's cheek to the point of crushing
his jaw, which was fortunate enough. The other hand was gripping
the barrel of the gun and if he'd swung that, it would have taken
Corky's head off at the neck.</p>
<p>Corky saw the blow coming, just like Pony's roundhouse punch,
and he instinctively went with it, so that it sounded loud enough,
but caused no damage. He did a little somersault and landed on his
hands and feet and scuttled off out of reach. The man did not
pursue him further. Danny heard Doug's breath catch. The man swept
his eyes across them.</p>
<p>"Again a little time and you <em>shall</em> see me."</p>
<p>Corky looked up warily. They all held their breaths now,
thinking now that this was it. The gun was up now in the crook of
the man's arm, pointing at the sky.</p>
<p>"Could you not wait one hour with me?"</p>
<p>Danny heard the reference to the garden. None of it made sense.
He waited for the barrels to dip once again, but again nothing
happened. The man stared down at Corky who gazed up, unblinking, as
if caught in the headlights. His eyes focused, locked on the man's
own almost in challenge. Danny and Doug watched the exchange and
later they thought it was the bravest thing they had ever seen, but
at that moment, both of them were silently begging Corky to look
away, to deflect the heat. The pair of them, man and boy stayed
like that or several seconds, Corky's chest heaving up and down in
rapid hitches, the man still as stone, looking as if he did not
need anything as banal as air to exist. Finally he turned his head
to the side, like a teacher who has decided to be lenient this
time.</p>
<p>"Don't run again, boy," he said. "We have things to do. Wonders
to perform." He turned away and Corky's eyes closed slowly as if he
was suddenly exhausted. The side of his head was red and angry and
swelling fast.</p>
<p>The man moved towards the fire and picked up the body of the
rabbit and it was only then that Danny noticed the safety catch of
the shotgun was pushed forward. Tom hadn't known about that. His
fingers had definitely tensed on the trigger and nothing had
happened because it had been locked. But Tom had pulled, whether by
accident or design. He had a chance to get them out of it and the
chance was gone. Yet deep inside Danny there was a sneaking
suspicion that even if the gun had roared, the big ragged stranger
<em>-Twitchy Eyes-</em> would still be standing there by the fire,
holding the rabbit up by the ankles. There was something so
depthlessly evil about him that he seemed to be indestructible.
Corky had been right.</p>
<p>"He's not going to do anything right away, is he now?" he'd
said. "Not to all of us."</p>
<p>But it was starting now and they were caught here, miles from
the town. Beyond the man, the four feathers on the falls fluttered
in a waft of breeze and Danny's stomach clenched.</p>
<p><em>Bad luck!</em> He'd brought this on them, hadn't he? He'd
killed it and the shadow had come across the valley. <em>The valley
of the shadow of death!</em> The luck had blown and flown. Tom had
pulled the trigger and nothing had happened. Corky had run and the
man had anticipated it. He'd stepped on his back while he sprawled
in the water and Corky would have died.</p>
<p>Now it was night and the moon was over the edge and beaming down
into the valley and the sparks from the spruce and pine were flying
up on the updraught. Beyond the flames, they had heard the man gnaw
hungrily at the rabbit, making animal feeding sounds. He'd made
them gather the wood and break the logs on the stones, each smash
sounding just like the sound of the rabbit's skull on Corky's
forehead. <em>Twitchy Eyes</em>, there was now no doubt in any of
their minds that this was the man who had done the dreadful things
to the little girl under the bridge and to Donny Whalen and the
others.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes</em>. He had gutted the rabbit and thrown the
entrails onto the fire, watching them sizzle and shrink, like some
crazed warlock casting an augury. The intestines and lungs
shrivelled to charred lumps while he very quickly stripped off the
skin, peeling it like a tight coat. He severed the head with one
quick, frightening twist of his hands and put it to the side,
looking over at the corner where the three other skulls hung in the
hawthorn. Doug saw the look and knew the rabbit's head would end up
there.</p>
<p><em>And whose else?</em></p>
<p>He shivered visibly. Oh <em>Jesus please us, chill and
freeze-us</em>. His lips moved in the gloom but no sound came out.
On the other side of the fire, limned by the flames, the man held
up the skinned rabbit. Its limbs dangled and it looked like a
new-born baby. The stranger looked like a red-eyed devil, hunched
on the edge of the pit. He took one of the branches and skewered
the little animal, stabbing it through the rectum and up to the
gaping hole at the throat. Very expertly and without fuss, he fixed
up two other branches on either side of the fire and put the meat
across the edge beside the flames and above a hot section of
glowing embers. In a matter of minutes the smell of cooking meat
billowed out. Doug's mouth watered, but he was not at all
hungry.</p>
<p>"What's he waiting for?" Corky had whispered a long time later
and Danny hadn't known the answer. The moon had risen, only a
couple of nights short of full, lighting the canvas of the tent
enough for their night vision to let them see each other, however
dimly. Corky's face was swollen on the right side as if he'd the
mumps.</p>
<p>"We'll have to get out of here," Doug said.</p>
<p>"I tried, really I did. If you hadn't hurt your leg, maybe you'd
have made it, but <em>Jeez</em> he was dead fast." Corky swivelled
and tried to get his hands to the edge of his hip where the man's
boot had caught him and knocked him flying. The baling twine
whipped around his hands made any motion difficult. The bonds,
roughly pulled tight, were connected to another loop around their
necks. If they tried to squirm free, it choked them. It was very
effective.</p>
<p>"I thought my leg was broken."</p>
<p>Despite what he'd been through, he sounded remarkably composed.
Danny could see the dim light reflect in his eyes, could make out
the concentration there. The sparking crackle of the fire was
enough to cover their whispering.</p>
<p>"I thought he'd killed you," Danny said flatly.</p>
<p>"<em>You</em> thought? I never expected him to banjo me with a
rabbit. Swear to God it was hard as a rock."</p>
<p>"Not as hard as your head though," Tom said, and for some
reason, Corky started to giggle, not out loud, but in a whispery,
suddenly uncontrollable heaving of his shoulders. The motion caused
him to fall slightly to the left, against Danny and that in turn
tightened the twine which was looped around his neck and fixed in
turn to the tent-pole. The laugh cut off in a strangled gulp which
they all heard. Corky raised himself back, tears running down his
cheeks and a shadowed smile still stretched across his face.</p>
<p>"What are you laughing at?" Doug wanted to know and Danny felt
the hysteria bubble up inside himself. He bit that down because he
did not know if he could keep it quiet and he did not know that if
it started, he'd be able to stop, or if it would be laughter for
long. It might change into blubbering, snivelling tears. He felt
close enough to them already.</p>
<p>"Not as hard as my head." Corky said, still grinning and in the
light coming through the flap, he looked just a little mad. "No
kidding. I heard that poor wee thing crack like a nut, and I
thought it was my head caving in. Next think all I could see were
sparkly stars right in front of my eyes."</p>
<p>"I saw the blood," Danny finally said. "I thought it was..."</p>
<p>"But it wasn't," Corky interjected, forestalling him. The look
on his face had changed, the crazy grin gone in a wink. "It was
just a slap. It was nothing. I've had worse from my old man. I'll
look like old Quasimodo in the morning."</p>
<p>"But he nearly drowned you," Tom hissed, his voice as tremulous
as Danny felt.</p>
<p>"But he didn't, did he?" Corky said sharply, and Doug's eyes
flicked to the figure beyond the flames to see if he'd heard.
Danny's memory brought him back a picture of his friend helpless,
wriggling and fighting for breath. The hysteria tried to bubble
upwards in a sudden release.</p>
<p>"He didn't. 'Cos Danny came and gave me a hand," Corky said and
now they could all see the faint glint in his eyes. Doug looked
down, all ears and teeth, not moving, but a picture of shame and
embarrassment. Corky inclined his head as far as it could go
without cutting off his breath again. Even in the dimness they
could read his posture.</p>
<p>"Doug," he said, "I never meant you should have done anything.
You'd have run if you could, but you couldn't, so don't worry about
it. Sure it was me that stopped you on the way down, wasn't it? You
were going to go up the side like a ferret up a drainpipe. Even
with him and his gun at your back. That took guts. Plenty of
them."</p>
<p>He nodded his head again. "Wee Tom here. <em>Jeez-o!</em> I
thought he was going to shoot me. Bad enough Old Twitch knocking
the feet from me, but Tom? Our pal?"</p>
<p>Corky grinned again, this time a quick flash and Danny
understood, with a flash of desolate sadness, what he was doing. He
was thirteen years old and he'd told them all great and terrible
truths about themselves to hold them together and now he was doing
the same thing. Holding them together with his own special
power.</p>
<p><em>Old Twitch.</em></p>
<p>The man out there beyond the flicker of the fire, hunched only a
hard away from where Billy sat motionless, the man who'd stalked
ther town and done his killing.</p>
<p>Old Twitch.</p>
<p>"I couldn't get it to fire," Tom said.</p>
<p>"Safety catch was on," Danny explained.</p>
<p>"Just as well for me," Corky said, almost speaking aloud but
checking himself quickly. "The way that gun was jiggling about, I'd
have been a goner for sure. Try explaining that when you get home.
Sorry Mrs Corcoran. I never knew the safety catch was on. That's as
bad as 'I never knew the gun was loaded.' "</p>
<p>Beyond the fire, perched on his log, Billy sat still as stone
while the man devoured the rabbit. He had thought he was going to
die when the gun had been tied tight to his neck, either from the
blast when it went off, or from the pounding of his heart which was
so powerful, and so stuttering, that it felt like an engine firing
on three cylinders. It felt as if it could burst inside of him and
for a long moment, he was so scared to breathe that his peripheral
vision took on the hue of the splash of dried blood still smeared
on Corky's forehead.</p>
<p>He hadn't been able to move. Not then, not before even when the
man had put his head down close to his cheek and spoken directly to
him.</p>
<p><em>They talk to us all, those voices. You just need ears to
hear.</em></p>
<p>The man brought his head down until his chin was against Billy's
ear. He could smell his breath, flat and cloying and rotten; he
could smell his sour sweat. The man's beard bristles rasped against
the side of his face and Billy had no strength to pull away, no
strength at all.</p>
<p><em>Got to go down into the valley and out the other side. You
want to make that journey boy? You want to listen to the voice of
the dead?</em></p>
<p>And he'd bent further and taken the soft skin at Billy's neck
between his teeth, gently enough, but Billy had been waiting for
dreadful pain of the bite.</p>
<p><em>Oh Jeez! Oh mammy! He'll eat me.</em></p>
<p>Like he'd eaten the fish, heedless of the head and eye and raw
guts. Like he'd bitten the kid from school, bitten pieces out of
him. Billy had felt his legs begin to buckle when the small screech
had startled the man back. After that, everything had been a blur.
One of them, had it been Danny? Corky? had run off, but Billy
couldn't get his eyes to focus. Somebody had called his name, as if
from a long distance, something about a gun, but by now his legs
had given way and the world was just a haze in the pounding of his
heart and the shudder of absolute fear. It had happened so fast and
he was moving so slow and it was all jumbled up.</p>
<p>Parts of it came back to him, jerky little pictures, little
flashes, blurred and fast, almost like half remembered dreams; Tom
raising the gun; Danny yelling something down by the stream; Corky
falling sideways and making a long low sound that seemed to go on
and on.</p>
<p>Now he was beside the fire, eyes fixed on the flames. He could
think now, but it was a slow process, as if his brain had become
fogged with the same numbness that had slowed him during the day
when the man had bent to his neck and promised him....</p>
<p>Over in the tent the others were together and he was alone,
singled out again, the way he had been singled out when the man had
stepped over the stream and forced the fish into his mouth, and
when he'd led him to the hollow to watch the flies crawling over
the dead skulls. Every now and again he imagined he could hear the
others talking, over the whispering hiss of resin bubbling from the
end of the spruce logs and the flutter of the flames. He imagined
he could hear them whisper but he hoped they were all asleep.</p>
<p>Talk was dangerous. He knew that, even in his dull state of
shock. If they were talking, they could be planning to escape, and
if they tried that, there was a gun at his neck and even Billy knew
that was a warning to them all. One wrong move, and the man
would</p>
<p><em>bite!</em></p>
<p>reach for the gun and squeeze the trigger. He would make Billy
come through trials and tribulations to reach that great truth.</p>
<p><em>You want to make that journey boy? You want to listen to the
voice of the dead?</em> In his mind he could hear those words,
played over and over again, the way his mother used to play those
Western tunes on the old Dansette, like the song from High Noon. Do
not forsake me. Oh my.</p>
<p>He'd been singled out, kept apart from the others.
<em>Forsaken.</em> And that meant the raggedy man planned something
for him, something different. He had wanted to plead and cry and
beg for mercy and fall on his knees, but that hadn't happened, not
until the man had followed the rabbit's squeal and walked away and
then he'd been left on his own, forsaken again, with nothing to
cling to. He'd been singled out and the man had told him what would
happen. Not how, but what.</p>
<p>Want to hear the voice of the dead? They had all heard the
stories of Don Whalen in the bomb shelter, stories told in graphic
detail, because nothing stayed secret for long, even the secrets of
policemen. They'd found him dead and stiff and fly-blown with his
head twisted to the side, facing the screaming mouth of the
girl.</p>
<p>When the man had asked him the question, that was the image that
had flashed into his mind: Don Whalen listening to the dead scream
of the dead girl. The <em>Voice of the dead</em>. And Don had made
the journey, down in that squirming shelter, tied to an old table.
Hadn't he?</p>
<p>On the fire, one of the logs rolled over and crashed into the
ashes, startling him enough to make him jerk, but only for an inch.
The weight of the gun stopped him, along with the sudden freezing
that came with the knowledge of those barrels pressed against his
flesh. A shower of sparks shimmered upwards on the hot draught of
air.</p>
<p>Billy hauled for a difficult breath, wondering when it would
happen. Beside him, the man gnawed at the rabbit, making little
snuffling and gobbling noises as he did so, sounding like a pig in
a sty. Every now and again he'd flick a bone into the red embers
and listen to it crack and warp. The rabbit's head was off to the
side, but too close to the heat to have attracted any flies.</p>
<p>After a while, the fire died a little and Billy's numbness slid
into a kind of exhausted torpor. His eyes closed and his head
drooped just a little, finally coming to rest against the muzzle of
the shotgun.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>"Slitty eyed vermin!".</em></p>
<p>The man's sudden utterance woke Billy with such a start that he
almost fell backwards off the log. Over in the tent, Danny and
Corky, sitting side by side and both connected to the upright pole
as well as to each other, banged heads.</p>
<p>"Wassamatter?" Tom asked dopily. Danny, just coming awake,
hazily remembered Corky winding Billy up about the disease he could
have caught from Phil's stash of pictures.</p>
<p>"Wassermatter reaction," he mumbled, beginning to smile, then he
came fully awake as the loop of twine rasped against his neck and
brought him right back to reality.</p>
<p>"Hush it," Corky hissed.</p>
<p>"<em>Am I right, Conboy</em>?" The voice was low, but jerky,
like a sleep-walker's disjointed diction. "You can see them. See
everything you do. Got a third eye now, eh? See all!"</p>
<p>"What's he saying?" Tom asked, a disembodied whisper in the dark
corner furthest from the flap. The fire was still glowing, but not
aflame now. The moon was almost directly overhead, sending its wan
light through the thin stretched canvas of the old tent, and
forming almost solid shafts of silver through the few puncture
holes in the slant roof where they caught the motes of old
dust.</p>
<p>"Dunno," Corky said. "Listen." He had not been quite asleep, but
he'd been dozing fitfully, as had the other three, tired and
drained from the events of the day but still in a state of fearful
apprehension that precluded the possibility of deep sleep. The very
fact that the man had started talking, after such a long silence
worried him badly. Was it the start? He couldn't guess, despite the
guessing he'd tried ever since the man had marched them all down
together. Good or bad? He did not know. Bad probably, though the
fact that Billy was still tied to the gun was good, depending on
the standpoint. Corky had figured that as long as Billy was tied,
he was a hostage for their good behaviour. The warning was clear.
It was in all the best and worst of western movies.</p>
<p>One wrong move and the boy gets it.</p>
<p>Good for them. Bad for Billy. But the man was talking now and he
was a crazy lunatic and the normal rules, if there could any normal
rules in this tortured craziness, would not apply. Would it start
now?</p>
<p>Danny was aware of Corky's tension. He could feel it through the
twine that coupled them and he hoped Corky was all right. If Corky
caved in then that was it. None of them would make it. Danny held
his breath tight and tried to figure out, the way Corky had done,
whether it was all going to start now.</p>
<p>"Not talking now, Conboy? Eh?" The voice rumbled over the murmur
of the stream. "What's the matter? Flies got your tongue?"</p>
<p>The man laughed, not high this time, but almost as low as the
voice itself, a kind of derisory, guttural sound.</p>
<p>"I know you can hear me. I know. Not long now Conboy. They'll
come back soon, slitty eyed yellow scum. <em>Dung Fly</em>! We'll
wait for them. Just you and me and we'll finish them all. Wipe them
all out! Dung Fly. Only word they know."</p>
<p>There was a moment's silence, then the voice was back, a little
louder, a little more jerky. "Only word. Hear what I'm telling you
Conboy? You have to stay awake. Keep an eye out. Ha. An eye."</p>
<p>In the tent, Corky and Danny, side by side, shared the same
posture, sitting with their heads back, cocked and listening. Over
on the other side, Doug sniffed.</p>
<p>"Who's he talking to?"</p>
<p>"Who knows?"</p>
<p>"Is Billy okay?" Tom wanted to know, typical of him. Danny
remembered him from the night before, even after Corky had reached
and touched a finger in the jagged wound of Tom's loss, how Tom had
reached to touch Corky and offer his support.</p>
<p>Doug leaned back, squinting through the flap. He moved slowly,
held his position for some time, then turned back. "Still there.
Can't see if he's asleep or not. The gun's still there."</p>
<p>"What about <em>him?</em>"</p>
<p>"Same place. He's finished the rabbit. Still sitting. Can't see
his face. Maybe he's turned round."</p>
<p>"What do you think he'll do?"</p>
<p>Corky shrugged. So did Danny. Neither of them wanted to say what
they thought.</p>
<p>Outside, the man's voice lowered a little and maybe he had
turned round, for the words were hard to make out, and they'd a
double-toned quality to them, as if they were echoing back from the
steep sides across the steam. The tone had changed too, not quite
so vehement. Danny strained to listen. It sounded as if a
conversation was going on, almost furtively. It continued for some
time, rising a little, falling some more and finally, after a long
time, it slowed and stopped. The fire continued to glow.</p>
<p>Down in the forest, an own screeched like a banshee moorland
ghost and its cry tapered away to a hollow moan. Later on, with the
moon now crossing to the far side of the valley, something small
squealed and died. The glow of the fire lessened.</p>
<p>It was much later, with the embers now a pink circle of light in
the boundary of hot stones, that Danny woke up with a start. Corky
had moved, perhaps, shifted enough to wake Danny.</p>
<p>He came swimming up, panicking, out of a fitful dream where he
was alone in the valley and the night was coming down dark and
heavy and all of the scrub alders and hazels had turned into
gnarled thorn bushes with black spikes, all twisted into circlets,
into crowns of thorns dripping blood. The sides of the valley
soared up into the sky, steep and gravelly and seeming to curve in
threateningly at the top, as if the edges would cave in and bury
him under their weight.</p>
<p>An unseen voice was asking if he could not wait up an hour to
pray and he did not know if it was his father talking to him or God
or someone else, some other awful presence who was now striding
like a giant down the valley of the shadow of death with a
doom-doom-<em>doom</em> tread and a terrible blank and crazy look
in his black eyes.</p>
<p>"Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me," the
voice rolled out, echoing from the walls and the heron flew past
him on ponderous wings and though he now tried to haul back, the
staff in his hand whirled through the air and hit it in the neck.
It floated to the ground, broken, its yellow eyes speared on him
accusingly. The beak opened and instead of the harsh <em>kaark</em>
call, it spoke to him in a voice he recognised.</p>
<p>"Done it now, Danny boy. You killed one of God's creatures and
it's the <em>Bad Fire</em> for you. You're going to burn, boy. Burn
<em>forever</em>."</p>
<p>He turned away form the searing eye and found himself clambering
through the boiling liquid on the old linoleum floor, scrabbling
for purchase and finding none while the heat ravened all the way
down his back and he could feel his skin blister and sizzle while
behind him Father Dower, smiling that wide toothy grin of his, was
reaching to touch him and instead of hauling him out of the
dreadful, scalding fire, he just rubbed his hands slowly over
Danny's bare skin and chuckled softly.</p>
<p>Danny came out of sleep hauling for air as if he was drowning.
Corky nudged him with an elbow, keeping it pressed in hard against
his ribs, enough of a contact to let Danny know where he was.</p>
<p>"You okay?" he asked. Danny was still shivering as if he was
cold, although despite the night, it was warm inside the tent. He
blinked rapidly, almost the way the man had done, shaking away the
remnants of the dream until he was just about free of it. The odd
and hungry grin hovered in the near distance before it
fragmented.</p>
<p>"Yeah. Suppose so," Danny whispered back. On the other side of
the tent, Doug and Tom were leaning against each other, both
asleep, their breathing shallow. Doug muttered something
unintelligible and Tom stirred but not enough to wake
completely.</p>
<p>"We have to get out of here."</p>
<p>Danny nodded in agreement. "You nearly made it. If that rabbit
had got caught in the top snare you'd have had a good start and
you'd have made it. It was just rotten bad luck."</p>
<p>"Yeah. Bad luck. It's always bad luck." Danny could hear the
bitterness underlying Corky's whisper.</p>
<p>"It was my fault."</p>
<p>"Don't be daft. It's nobody's fault. Just that crazy nutcase out
there. It's his fault."</p>
<p>"No," Danny insisted. "I knew when I killed the bird. The Heron?
Remember?"</p>
<p>"Course I do. Great shot."</p>
<p>"I knew right then I shouldn't have done it. I knew something
bad was going to happen, and it did. We all started fighting and
then he...<em>him...</em>he turned up."</p>
<p>"Aye, and if you believe that, you believe in Santa Claus,"
Corky said. His head was only inches away from Danny's and the
sarcasm was thick in the sound of his voice. "No kidding Dan, you
should listen to yourself. Ol' loony-tunes didn't need you to magic
him up here. This must be where he's been hiding all this time. The
bird was nothing to do with it. <em>Jeez.</em> I've lost count of
the number of street-scrag pigeon chicks I've had to wring. And
trout. And remember that time we got a half dollar for wringing the
chickens at Boghead farm? It was just a bird."</p>
<p>"But it was..."Danny paused, tried to thing, remembering the
slow whoosh of wings. The image of the dream came back, that yellow
eye spearing him. "I dunno. It was special."</p>
<p>"Special my arse," Corky said. "No kidding Danny. It's got
nothing to do with you.</p>
<p>"What do you think he'll do?"</p>
<p>"Christ knows. We can't hang around for it anyway. He's waiting
for something."</p>
<p>"You think there might be two of them?"</p>
<p>Corky shrugged. "Up here there could be a whole army of them.
Maybe he's been up here since the war. Shell-shocked or something.
You know, with the bombs and stuff. Whatever it is, he's as mad as
a wet hen. Honest to god, I thought I was a goner today when he
stepped on me. I thought I was drowned for sure."</p>
<p>Danny recalled that Corky had veered off that subject when Tom
had said the same thing earlier, when the man was eating by the
fire. He recognised that this was for him only.</p>
<p>"One of us will have to get out. You reckon you can make
it?"</p>
<p>"I'm not as fast as Doug."</p>
<p>"Nobody's as fast as him. He's built like a starved greyhound. I
don't know what he'll be like in the morning. Maybe his ankle will
have stiffened up."</p>
<p>"Maybe it'll have loosened off" Danny said, more in hope that it
wouldn't have to be himself who took the risk.</p>
<p>"Aye. Maybe. But I don't know if this time he'll just freeze. He
would have run this morning and if he'd done that..." Corky left it
hanging for half a second, then changed tack. "Just in case. You
think you can take off if we get the chance? Tom hasn't a hope, and
my leg's going to be black and blue in the morning."</p>
<p>"Is it sore?"</p>
<p>"Only when I laugh, arseface." Corky said and turned to grin
again. Danny knew he'd ask again and forestalled him.</p>
<p>"If I get the chance, I'll run. Maybe I could get into the
bushes and up to the ferns. If I could get that far he'll have a
job finding me. So long as he doesn't keep firing, 'cos that gun
could fire through bushes no bother at all."</p>
<p>"He's not got enough cartridges I don't think. I had a look at
him. He's got no bag with him and his pockets don't seem that full.
I think he's just got a few. If you get to the edge of the woods,
you could be up and away. That's where I was heading for."</p>
<p>"It'd be quicker to go up the top and down the moor. Quicker to
get home."</p>
<p>"Sure, as long as you weren't out in the open for too long. If I
had the chance, that's the way I'd go, so long as he didn't have
the gun, and as long as he leaves us alone for a while. He'll have
to take a piss sometime, or go for a shit. I was hoping that fish
would give him food poisoning."</p>
<p>"I'm just glad he didn't make us eat the rabbit. Raw trout guts
would be bad enough." Danny felt Corky twitch with spontaneous
laughter and a bubble of hysteria swelled in his belly. He
swallowed down on it.</p>
<p>There was a silence for a moment then Corky whispered: "Dan, I
don't think we'll get a lot of chances. I don't know what's going
to happen tomorrow. I think we're all right for the night, or he
wouldn't have tied Billy up like that. He's got to sleep sometime
too. But whatever he's waiting for, he's not going to wait long. If
one of us gets home, he'll run because he'll know they're after
him."</p>
<p>"He'll kill us," Danny said flatly and he was amazed when the
words came out just like that. The enormity of it. The end of his
life, contemplated and made concrete in three small words.</p>
<p>"Don't think that way," Corky hissed urgently, digging hard
enough to hurt with his elbow. "Danny. Listen. He's crazy, for
sure. It's the guy they've been looking for." Danny noticed he
didn't spell it out, but he didn't have to. They all knew the list
of names. Corky's voice had gone very cold and earnest and of a
sudden he sounded all grown up. "We can't think about what might
happen. If I did that all my life I'd be a nervous wreck by now.
Billy's no use. You can see it in his face. He's thinking ahead and
that's why he can't move. You see that in the fights at the back of
the school when somebody doesn't want to. He's all seized up."</p>
<p>Corky dropped his voice even lower, so that there was no chance
anybody but Danny could hear it. "I think maybe Tom and Doug might
freeze as well. Honest, if my leg's okay I'll do it, but it might
not be. I think that nutter nearly broke it."</p>
<p>He twisted round as far as he could, so he could just get a look
at Danny.</p>
<p>"If we get a chance, Danny boy, we have to take it."</p>
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<h1>27</h1>
<p><em>August 4. 7am.</em></p>
<p>Danny came awake again, swimming up to the surface, this time
pursued by no dreams that he could remember. It felt as if he
hadn't slept at all. The tent was cold and his mouth was gummy and
bitter. Corky was sitting upright, eyes closed and in the thin
light, Danny couldn't tell whether he was awake or not. On the
other side, Doug and Tom were huddled together.</p>
<p>The tent flap was still open on the left side. Danny squirmed,
pulling against the loose loop of baling twine as it rasped against
the skin of his throat, until he could see outside. For a moment he
thought he was looking through a white veil, all colour leached
from the early morning.</p>
<p>The world was dead still.</p>
<p>A ground mist, thick and pearlescent, had crept up from the
stream to the campsite, dense enough to make the striations on the
far side of the valley blurred and indistinct. Danny could see,
through the small triangular space, the edge of the bank and the
thick end of the log Billy had dragged up from the trees. The knife
was still stabbed into the grain and the tendrils of mist grasped
around it like ghostly fingers, creeping almost imperceptibly. The
fire had almost completely burned itself out. In the circle of
stones, the ash was grey and light, showing that the heat had
lasted all night. The smooth boulders themselves would still be
blistering hot, warm enough to cook on, but the embers had died
down and there was now no smoke.</p>
<p>The valley, what he could see of it, had taken on an eerie and
insubstantial quality, as if seen in a dream. Danny knew he was
awake. The tent smelled of sweat, old and new, and mildew from long
unaired days rolled up hiding Phil's stash of tools and stolen
gear. Tom twitched, Doug's nasal breathing snuffled near the
entrance. Corky was completely still.</p>
<p>There was no wind. The day was light, but it was early, in the
shallows of the morning and the sun had not yet risen. It would be
hours yet before it soared, the way the moon had done, over the
eastern lip of the valley. For the moment, viewed through that
triangle flap, the section of the valley looked like something from
a fairy scene. Danny could not see the man, and from where he sat,
Billy too was hidden from view. For all he knew, the man could have
gone, vanished into the shadows of the night. Even as he thought it
he knew that was not true. The crazy stranger would still be
there.</p>
<p>But for the moment, in the strange solitude of the early
morning, the mist smoothed the outlines and harsh edges, making it
a soft and peaceful morning. It brought to mind the story he'd read
in the book they'd swiped from the treasure chest at Overbuck
House. Corky had shown him it on the first day they'd arrived here
(and that seemed a million years ago) the passage about the
legendary battle of the hero Cuchullain at the ford in the
stream.</p>
<p>"Give me a song for a soft morning," he'd told his friends on
the night before he bravely went down to single combat, a real
hero, heedless of personal danger. Danny wished he could be the
same, but the fear that had settled on them all had stayed with
him, even during the fitful and uncomfortable sleep and it clung to
him now.</p>
<p>This stolen minute, however, gave a semblance of tranquillity.
The mist smothered the burbling tumble of the stream, fading it
down to a distant murmur. No birds sang, not even the far-off
cockerel, the little red rooster down at Blackwood farm whose early
morning call sometimes drifted up to this height on the westerly
breeze. Now there was no breeze, hardly a stirring of the air and
for the moment, Danny Gillan was alone. The day seemed to hold its
breath before wakening.</p>
<p>He wished the world would stay asleep. He did not want to think
of the whispered, urgent conversation in the dark</p>
<p><em>You reckon you can make it?</em></p>
<p>I don't know. I don't know.</p>
<p><em>I don't want to.....</em></p>
<p>He didn't want to think about it. The man had come streaking out
of the bushes and kicked Corky and nearly broke his leg. That had
been without the gun. Danny stretched to see if Billy was still
tethered to the barrels, but the string dug into his windpipe and
he had to lean back under the tension before he choked and woke
everybody.</p>
<p><em>If we get a chance, Danny boy...</em></p>
<p>He knew that. He tried not to think about his muscles freezing,
like some kid who didn't want to fight in the yard. In his mind's
eye, in the fitful pictures that had unreeled in his mind last
night, despite how he'd tried to shake them away, he saw himself in
the dreamscape sequences where his limbs locked in a strange and
terrified paralysis, or where no matter how he run and jinked,
every path, every sheep track through the ferns, somehow led him
back to the camp and that black infinity at the end of the
shotgun's muzzle. In the slow light of the morning, he shucked
those images away and tried to breathe easy.</p>
<p>All the could-have-beens and might-have-dones. If. <em>If.</em>
Billy Harrison was fond of the phrase: <em>If</em> is a very small
word with a very big meaning.</p>
<p>Big consequences.</p>
<p>If they hadn't been gathered on the fallen elm tree that day. If
Paulie Degman hadn't fallen into the river in the spring while the
silver sparkle of light flashed from the back of Cairn House into
Danny Gillan's eyes. If they hadn't been talking about the
explosion in the quarry bringing the body to the surface. If they
hadn't argued about the bomb the waterworks men found in the
reservoir up on the Overbuck estate, they wouldn't have talked
about the Dummy Village and if they hadn't conjured up that old
legend they wouldn't be here.</p>
<p><em>If.</em> Might-have-beens and should-have-dones.</p>
<p>"I bet you wouldn't come down here at night," Billy had said and
Tom had agreed with that.</p>
<p>"Not when the mist comes off the river," he'd said vehemently,
because Tom was living with his own ghost. "You never know what's
in there. It creeps like it's alive."</p>
<p>"<em>Gives</em> you the creeps," Billy had said, laughing. Now
he was out there with the man with the gun and he was not laughing.
The mist was crawling like it did own at the river, the one Corky
said hid the ghost of lonesome Paulie Degman.</p>
<p>Danny closed his eyes, half hoping that when he opened them
again he'd wake up from a dream and find that he'd imagined it all.
When he opened them again, the triangle of grey pearly light was
still there at the front of the tent and thin tendrils of mist were
inching around the wooden pole. He was still here.</p>
<p>And <em>he</em> was still <em>there.</em></p>
<p>The brooding presence of the man with the black and twitching
eyes, unseen, but somehow sensed, was still there on the other side
of the circle of stones. All was silent until Doug snorted softly.
Danny turned his head towards the sound, slowly swung back to look
through the entrance.</p>
<p>A red squirrel stood four square on the short grass. Its stubby
little legs were planted far apart on its four corners and its tail
curled right over its back like a rich feather plume. Its head was
up, nose sniffing the air in little twitches. At his movement in
the shadow of the tent, its coal eye fastened on Danny's. It moved
in rapid little jerks, halting to sniff then twisting in a flick of
russet to examine something on the grass. It picked up something
that looked like a baked bean, tested it quickly, then sat up on
its hunkers, tail still curled in a cloak against the cool of the
morning, and quickly ate it in a series of tiny, gnawing bites.
Danny watched the whole process, unable to move in case he scared
it. For a brief heartbeat, his fear was forgotten. The little
squirrel, half the size of the big greys which ruled in the beeches
and oaks further down the valley, searched around for more morsels,
constantly on edge, alert for danger. It froze, spun in a blur at
some motion beyond the camp and then disappeared in a silent, red
russet streak.</p>
<p>Danny's heart kicked. Had the man moved? Was he awake now and
coming for them?</p>
<p>He stretched against the loop, heedless of the pressure on his
throat, trying to see what was happening out there. The mist was
just beginning to lessen, thinning a little as the dawn slowly
changed into a still day.</p>
<p>Something moved and his heart lurched again and that was when he
saw it. He'd been staring right at it, unaware because it had been
still as a statue, but when it moved, just at the edge of vision,
stalking through the mist which was thicker down there at the
water, he recognised the heron. It took one step, slow and graceful
and silent, the head motionless at first and then slowly getting
into position, its eye a piercing bright yellow, the only colour
for the moment in the grey and white of the morning. It stepped
again on its long, elegant leg, dipping the toes into the water
with not a splash of sound. It stopped still, and for an instant,
Danny thought the eye was looking straight at him, the way the
squirrel had done, the way the dead eye up at Billy's altar of
skulls had done before the flies settled upon it. The eye was round
and almost fierce, full of life. The head came forward, very
slowly. The tall, grey bird froze. The beak pointed at the water,
then lanced down, quick as a blink, still with no sound, and came
rising back up with a small trout flapping uselessly. The bird
jerked, opening its beak so the fish was head-on, swallowed it with
a second twitch and the beak closed with a soft <em>snick</em>.</p>
<p>"Move on," Danny urged silently. The bird would be the female
whose lonely call had echoed down the valley from the dark in the
night. It was the mate of the one he'd brought down. Now it crept
upstream, hunting alone, only yards from the man with the shotgun.
"Go," he mouthed. "Get out of here."</p>
<p>He wanted to see it gone, to get some of the luck back. No
matter what Corky said, he could still feel the weight of
prescience. The motion, no matter how stealthy, could catch the
man's attention. He'd blast it out of the air in a puff of feathers
and there would be no more herons on the stream. They only hunted
in pairs in the summer and it would be a long time before a new
pair of the fishing birds would come hunting on the Blackwood
Burn.</p>
<p>"Go on," he whispered. "Skedaddle."</p>
<p>"What's that?" Doug said, not quite aloud, not quite awake. The
bird turned round, cocking its head to the side, the eye now fixed
on the tent. Danny nudged Doug with his foot. The bird watched for
a drawn-out moment, then satisfied itself there was no danger. It
took two more elegant and silent steps, a grey ghost in a white
mist, and then was gone from view. Doug had come fully awake and
watched it from where he sat, closer to the flap and with more of a
view.</p>
<p>"It's the other one," he mouthed. Danny nodded slowly. He jerked
his head, raising his eyebrows in question and Doug leaned as far
as he could, eyes wide. Danny saw the recognition and sudden defeat
in his posture. The man was still there. Doug's nod was
redundant.</p>
<p>"Billy?" Danny asked. The other boy nodded.</p>
<p>"Still tied," he whispered. Tom stirred, blearily opened his
eyes and looked around timidly then closed them again as if he
would rather not stay.</p>
<p>"Is he sleeping?" Corky asked softly, surprising Danny who'd
been completely unaware he had been awake all this time.
"<em>Him.</em>"</p>
<p>Doug leaned again, pilling on the twine that connected him to
Tom. He inclined his head. "I think so. I can't see his eyes. Looks
like it. Wait a minute."</p>
<p>Very slowly, big teeth clenched on his bottom lip for
concentration, he reached with his foot and raised the flap up
further, letting more light into the tent, widening the opening.
The swirl of air that came in was damp and morning cold. Both Danny
and Corky stretched as far as they could. Tom huddled closer to
Doug, his head twisted to see.</p>
<p>The man was still hunched on the little ridge of turf close to
the fire. He was like a black scarecrow against the white of the
<em>haar</em> mist and the light grey of the tall gravel bank on
the far side. He'd draped a blanket around his shoulders, Tom's old
red tartan one which had been left out since the previous night
when they'd all slept around the fire after the big fight. For a
moment, despite what Doug had said, Tom thought Billy had gone,
escaped. He was no longer sitting on the pine log. His heart
flipped in hope, a flutter against his ribs, and then dropped like
a stone into the pit of his belly when he saw Billy huddled against
the man's bulk. The gun was still looped against his neck, but it
had loosened somehow, so that the barrels were pointing not under
the chin, but past it. Billy's dark hair was tousled and his face
pressed up against the man's chest. His eyes were closed. The
stranger's arm was clamped around his shoulder, holding him close.
In any other scene, they could have been taken for father and son.
The heavy blanket was draped around them both.</p>
<p>Danny remembered the biblical quotations of the day before and
shuddered. He'd made Billy sit vigil with him holding him close,
like an affectionate parent protecting a child, like a shepherd
with his sheep. Like Abraham with his son before the sacrifice of
the morning.</p>
<p><em>Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the
hour.</em></p>
<p>Dougie brought him back to the here and now with a tap of his
foot. His other long leg was still holding the flap up and he
motioned outside. They all leaned as far as they could again.
Nothing had changed. The heron was gone and Danny hadn't heard the
whoop of its wings in the air, so it must have stalked off upstream
and around the corner.</p>
<p>"What is it?" Corky wanted to know.</p>
<p>"The gun," Doug whispered. His eyes were wide and suddenly
bright. "Look at it."</p>
<p>They looked. Corky started to ask again, then Danny stopped him
with a dig of his elbow. He had seen it and his heart leapt in a
surge of sudden and fearful excitement. The gun was broken open. He
could see the dark curves at the stock-end of the barrels where it
hadn't been closed properly. He strained to see, wishing now there
was more light. He focused as hard as he could, trying to see if
the shells had been taken out of the chambers. Sometime during the
night the man, <em>Twitchy Eyes,</em> had moved Billy closer to
him, taken him under his arm. He must have moved the gun, opened it
to make sure it didn't go off accidentally and blow his hostage to
kingdom come. Even with the safety on, that could be knocked out by
a nudge.</p>
<p>Were the shells still in there? Could he simply snap the gun
closed and fire the thing? Danny's heart was pounding furiously,
somewhere up near his throat. He was now completely awake, and he
could feel himself, his consciousness, begin to drift higher into
those slow motion chilly heights of the adrenaline surge.</p>
<p><em>If we get a chance, Danny boy, we have to take it.</em></p>
<p>A chance. A possibility. He turned to Corky, eyebrows raised and
Corky misread the question. He shrugged leaving it up to him. What
Danny wanted to know, to his shame, in is fear, was whether Corky's
leg was good enough this morning. He was about to ask, bit it back
in a dry gulp.</p>
<p>"Look," Doug hissed again. He nodded once more and they all
looked, the motion of the four of them making the tent poles
quiver. The hunched figure was completely motionless. The gun was
laid across the man's knee, with a big, horny hand resting on the
stock. In at his side, Billy's face was pale and bloodless. "On the
rock," Doug said insistently. Danny's eyes trailed away from the
gun to the flat stone close to the ridge where the man sat. One
shotgun cartridge sat in a small dip in its surface. The other one
had rolled to the grass below and lay there, bright red against the
grey green of the dew-damp grass.</p>
<p>Danny recognised it immediately. It was twelve-bore birdshot,
going by the colour. Even from here he could read the lettering on
the side. <em>Hy-max</em>. He couldn't make out the number, but he
didn't have to. The colour was enough. His Uncle Mick, his mother's
brother whom his father disliked because he cursed now and again
and drank whisky, he used them all and the bright red ones were
ideal for pigeons or woodcock. It was packed with light shot with a
good spread for fast moving birds, not the heavy-grain for shelduck
on the firth tidal banks or the ball-shot which could knock a
Greylag goose out of the air, or put a hole through a mountain hare
or even a roebuck. Birdshot would scatter wide, useless for big
animals, great for fast birds. Up close though, you couldn't miss
with that kind of filling. Up close it could easily cut a grown man
in half.</p>
<p>Danny's heart was up there, bobbing and hopping, filling his
throat and making it hard to breathe.</p>
<p>Corky swivelled to look at him and Danny knew Corky's leg was
still hurting pretty bad. He gulped, made a little clicking noise
that sounded like the heron's beak closing, managed to nod and saw
the acceptance and maybe even a glint of admiration in Corky's
eye.</p>
<p>"Can you get loose?"</p>
<p>Danny shook his head. "Who's got a knife?"</p>
<p>"What are you going to..." Tom started to say but stopped when
Danny nudged him.</p>
<p>"Where's your knife?"</p>
<p>"In my pocket."</p>
<p>"Can you reach?" All of this in dry little shivery whispers. Tom
shook his head. Corky looked at Doug.</p>
<p>Doug nodded that he'd try. He dropped his foot and let the flap
fall, suddenly making the inside of the tent much darker despite
the lightening of the sky over the valley. Somewhere beyond them,
close to the place where Billy had hung the skulls, something
rustled and Danny hoped it was the squirrel and not one of the big
hill cattle lumbering down to drink from the stream. He wished it
to silence, wished it away from here in case the sound woke up the
gaunt man.</p>
<p>Doug was squirming to the left and Tom was stretching to the
right, both of their hands wound round with the hairy baling twine.
Tom lifted his skinny backside off the flattened grass and Doug's
fingers found the lip of his front pocket, groped inside. Tom
grunted with the effort of holding the position while the string
tightened on his neck. They could see his arms quivering with the
strain. Doug's eyes were closed and he was biting down on his lip
again, his head across Tom's thin shoulder. He fumbled in the tight
pocket, twisting his wrists hard enough to make the binding dig
into the skin, then tensed. He torqued back and the knife came
flipping right out, a black whirling shape. It landed with a dull
little thump close to the door flap.</p>
<p>Everybody froze.</p>
<p>Doug's mouth was open, lips curled back from his big teeth, a
picture of tension and dismay. Tom was still leaning back, holding
his balance. The knife lay there by the edge while the all
listened, wondering if the noise had woken the man. From out there,
no sound came except the muted burbling of the stream. After a
moment, Tom eased himself back up to a sitting position. Doug
stretched his foot outwards, his old black and scuffed baseball
boot missing one of its rubber ankle-guards. He tried to hook the
army knife back towards him, almost got purchase by pressing it
down into the ground to get his boot beyond it, but succeeded only
in pushing it further away.</p>
<p>Danny's heart flipped again, in hope and in dismay, each tugging
from a different direction.</p>
<p>"Careful," Corky snapped, more loudly than he meant. Doug shot
him a look, tried for the heavy knife again, sent it another inch
closer to the flap. Tom's breath let out in a long sigh. The knife
sat there, almost out of reach.</p>
<p>"Anybody got another knife?" Corky demanded, eyes blazing.
Billy's blade was still stuck in the grain of the log. Doug had
lost his sometime between the day at the river and now.</p>
<p>"Hold it," he said, managing a quick grin. He drew his foot
back, pulled his other up and shoved the heel with his toe. The
tattered baseball boot squeaked and the old laces groaned as he
stretched them. He pushed harder and they all watched the boot
loosen off, pulling down past his heel. Doug applied more pressure,
shoving really hard now and suddenly his boot came flipping off
with a hollow sucking sound. Triumphantly he held his foot up
again. His grey sock had a wide hole at the end, through which
poked three skinny white toes.</p>
<p>"Watch this," he told them, stretched forward to his fullest
extent, twisted to the side, and his two largest toes spread like
fingers. He dipped them down on to the knife, curled them tightly
and gripped it. Danny felt the bubble of hysteria ripple up again
and he swallowed it down. A part of him was hoping Doug might drop
it out of reach and that would mean he'd have no burden to bear.
Corky was unconsciously easing his leg up and down, as if trying to
loosen a cramp in his thigh. It was clear his injured leg had
stiffened badly in the night.</p>
<p>Doug's prehensile toes gripped the knife, like a miniature
grab-crane, swung it over and flipped it, with surprising
expertise, towards the other two. It landed at Danny's side only
inches from his fingers. He found it and worked it closer until he
could grip it tight with one hand while his fingers worked on the
awkwardly tight blade until he eased it open, almost splitting his
thumbnail in the process. The big blade next to the spike for
taking things out of horses hooves snapped back with a metallic
click that was muffled between them. He managed to twist it
upwards, felt the sharp edge against the skin of his wrist,
manoeuvred it back and sawed it against the binding twine.</p>
<p>"Got it?" Corky wanted to know. Danny concentrated. Everybody
waited.</p>
<p>The string snapped with the sound of a bowshot, not loud, but
definite. Doug heaved a long sigh and managed a grin. Tom just
looked worried. The blade cut quickly through the rest of the
twine, each one parting with the same little tug and in less than a
minute, Danny's hands were free. His wrists looked as if he wore
scarlet bangles and the little ridges where the bonds had bit
immediately started to itch. He rubbed them briskly, chafing the
blood back, trying to loosen the stiff numbness from his wrists</p>
<p>"Good man," Corky said under his breath. He motioned to Doug,
using head and eyebrows. Doug lifted the flap just a little, leaned
to peer out, came back and winked an affirmative.</p>
<p><em>Okay.</em></p>
<p>Danny's heart was now tripping fast. He brought his hands
forward and changed position, crawled forward just a bit, only to
be brought up by the loop at his neck. With an almost vicious
swipe, more in panic than in anger, he raised the knife and sliced
the noose. Without hesitation he turned and cut Corky free, quick
as he was able. Corky took the knife and started to move towards
Tom and Doug, wincing hard as he did so. Danny read it. Corky
looked at him and his expression did not change.</p>
<p><em>You reckon you can make it?</em></p>
<p>Danny felt a sweat trickle down his back, remembered the new
testament quotation from the Garden of Gethsemane. He could have
used an extract of his own, from the many that had been diligently
and religiously drummed in.</p>
<p><em>Let this chalice pass.</em></p>
<p>The knife cut the others free. Danny moved to the front, peering
out from the shadow. The man was motionless, his eyes closed. The
gun hadn't moved, but some of the mist had thinned. The cartridge
on the stone was still there, and the other one a few inches away
on the grass. The air was now clearer and he could see the empty
chambers of the barrels. The gun was not loaded. He breathed out
slowly.</p>
<p>"What's happening?" Tom asked. Corky put a finger up to his
lips. Danny moved to the back of the tent, into the shadows where
their old haversacks were stored in a pile. At the far side,
opposite to where they'd set the fire, opposite the man who held
Billy close, he gripped the bottom edge of the tent with both hands
and pulled hard. Nothing happened. He tried again, but the base
stayed pegged and he remembered how they'd used the ballpeen hammer
to set the old wooden pegs. They were driven down a foot into
hardpack. It would take more than a few tugs to pull them out.</p>
<p>"Cut it," Doug whispered, realising what the problem was. He
leaned out to make sure the man was still asleep, or at least, not
rousing. He held his hand up, thumb perpendicular.
<em>Okay.</em></p>
<p>The canvas slit straight down, parting with a soft scraping
buzz, leaving a gash two feet long and dead straight. The tension
of the fabric pulled the edges apart, letting in more daylight. An
earwig fell through the hole and scuttled for shelter.</p>
<p>Doug's thumb was still up. Danny couldn't speak. His heart now
felt as if it was kicking somewhere up around his ears, drowning
out all other sound. He was convinced the whole valley must be able
to hear it. He imagined flocks of woodpigeons clattering from the
trees in alarm, crows rising in accusing squadrons, attracting
attention, disturbed by the sudden noise. He swallowed hard, was
distantly surprised that he was able to.</p>
<p>"Go," Corky whispered, feather soft. "Best of....."</p>
<p>Danny's head was outside, through the gap, and he did not hear
Corky's blessing. Immediately the green, clean smell of morning
suffused him. In the open, the sound of the stream was louder than
it had seemed from inside the tent. There was still some mist,
quite a lot of it pooled in the hollows and runnels further
downstream. For a moment he was almost frozen with fear and
apprehension. He turned back, eyes searching them all, and they
were all fixed on him, none of them seeming to breathe. The moment
stretched out, brittle as glass. A nerve in the back of his leg
started to twitch and the sinews on is arms felt as tense as
bowstrings. Corky's green eyes, now grey in this dim light, were on
him, sharp and hard and full of anger and full of life. Danny
locked with them and it did not make his fear go away, but it gave
him enough impetus to swivel round without a word.</p>
<p>He crawled out, carefully lifting one knee then the other over
the splintered tent-peg, making sure he didn't catch his feet on
the shredded canvas. He turned his head, just able to make out the
edge of the forest way downstream. There the mist was still thick
and opaque, an almost solid wall, rising half way up the tall
trunks. Down there would be shelter, but that was where the man was
facing. There was little or no cover down to the second bend where
Corky had been felled. Danny sat still, telling himself to calm
down, forcing his brain to function.</p>
<p><em>It'd be quicker to go up the top and down the moor. Quicker
to get home.</em></p>
<p>He felt that slow-motion treacle-time sensation begin to
overtake him again, the almost dreamy clarity of unbearably high
tension. Corky had put his finger on it. Over the top and down the
hill, if he could get to the canyon lip without being seen. Danny
knew he could walk quietly when he had to. Now he really had to. He
swallowed down again on the pounding of his heart, found it was
going slower than he thought, found he could make his legs move. He
went round the back of the tent, keeping low, crawling silently on
all fours, making sure he missed all the guy ropes which would have
thrummed like bass-strings if he tripped over any of them. Beyond
the farthest peg, still out of view from the ridge at the fire
there were some low ferns close to a small clump of cow-parsley. He
reached that, staying low now, until he got close to the wall where
Billy had hung his skulls. The flies were slow and lethargic,
waiting for the heat of the day, but they still clustered thickly,
and this close to the deer's head, the smell was pretty fierce.
Danny did not look up to see if the dead heron's eye was still
fixed on him, He had seen its mate, fishing alone, its eye gleaming
with bright life. He imagined he could feel the black twitching
eyes of the mad stranger on his back, told himself he <em>was</em>
imagining it before a tide of panic swamped him. Just beyond edge
of the hollow, where there was a narrow cleft between two boulders
that led up slope to the next level of the stream, he stood on a
dead twig which snapped underfoot, loud in his ears as a
cannon-shot. He froze, turned round slowly, every hair standing to
attention on the back of his neck.</p>
<p>The stranger did not move. Danny could just make him out,
hunched beside the ring of stones, like some Indian shaman, like a
scarecrow waiting for the day. Billy was hugged in tight, both of
his legs flopped lifelessly, jutting out in front of him. Danny got
a sudden chill suspicion that Billy might be dead, that the man
with the twitchy eyes had strangled him in the night. A sick
feeling of nausea welled up and he choked it down, for he couldn't
afford the noise of retching. After a moment, he unfroze, managed
to get his limbs moving, and made it through the crevice.</p>
<p>For the next three or four yards, he was hidden from view, but
to his left, another stone face, maybe a dozen feet high, stretched
on towards a clump of moraine boulders that had been rolled down
here by some distant spring flood. He couldn't scale it quietly,
even though there were a few scraggly rowan roots hanging downwards
to offer handholds. He kept low, still scuttering like a spider,
trying to avoid the dried twigs and hollow saxifrage stems closer
to the stream. He got to the end of the slope cover, came to the
edge of the water, held his breath and raised his head slowly as he
was able. Finally his eyes were above the low stone ridge. Down
there, back where he'd come from, he could see the slit in the side
of the tent. None of the others had followed, which was as well,
because that would only increase the risk of attracting attention.
He slowly swivelled his eyes until he could see the man sitting
there, still as a rock. He looked ghostly and ghastly and even his
motionless posture radiated awesome threat. Billy's arm hung down
to the short grass, as if he was caught in a killer head-lock. From
where he peered, Danny could not see the gun.</p>
<p>At this part of the stream, just up from the four feathers on
the low falls which dropped down into deep the pool at the camp,
there was a shallower pool which was maybe ten feet wide. It had
some large quartz rocks in its centre, white as the morning mist,
but no fish. Danny crawled down to the edge, to a margin of small
flat stones, and began to cross, taking one step at a time,
breathing shallowly as possible, mouth wide open so he couldn't
snuffle and cough. There was some summer algae on the smooth bottom
where a lip of mudstone protruded, and it was slick as spilled oil.
Danny stayed on all fours, even when the water came up to his chin,
to prevent himself from falling, and made it to the other side. He
got to the bank and made his way upstream for about twenty yards
before he realised that there was no cover for the next hundred.
From where he sat, the man could see down to the second bend, and
upstream along a relatively straight section of the valley to the
runnel where Doug had almost made the decision to run. There was no
cover and Danny was not sure he'd be able to get as far as that
along the shingle and shale without making some sort of sound.</p>
<p>Corky's words came back. It would be quicker to go up the
top.</p>
<p>Danny paused, feet squelching quietly. His jeans were wringing
wet. For a few breaths he waited, unable to take his eyes off the
figure sitting by the ring of stones. Up to his left, a shoulder of
the ridge that separated the two narrow tributaries, shaped like
the upside down prow of a ship, came down at a steep angle. The
upstream tributary was the larger of the two and led to the natural
dam which had plugged the basalt crevice at Lonesome Lake. The
right side was shallower, but got steep a hundred feet back.
Between them, on the ridge of the shoulder, there was a worn path
where sheep had come down to drink at the stream. They'd used this
before when they'd found the backed up lake, and again when they'd
gone to find the Dummy Village. There was no choice now. Danny's
legs locked for a panicked moment and then he started to climb.
When he reached the top, he'd be out of sight, and then he'd have a
run down the moor, just a few miles to the barwoods, down past the
pylons, through the blackened gorse and down to the town and help
from Sergeant Fallon.</p>
<p><em>And I'm never coming back here again,</em> he swore to
himself.</p>
<p>He went up the path, hand over hand, moving as quickly as
possible, as silently as he could and the more he climbed, the more
muted came the sound of the stream below. The daylight was
brightening fast and the mist seemed to be sneaking away from the
light, oozing into the shadows of the edge of the trees which
crowded further down the valley. Danny moved upwards, trying not to
pant, but it was hard going, twenty feet, forty, fifty. The hill
seemed to go on forever, up a compacted shale incline, over a ledge
of mudstone, round to the bare face to miss out a steeper climb
where he could slip. A couple of times he did slide backwards,
losing two yards, but he gained them back fast as he could.</p>
<p>He got to the first level of the shoulder. From here it got
steeper, maybe seventy feet up from the floor, no more than that.
He risked a glance down and it looked further. The tent was a dark
green oblong against the lighter green. The circle of smooth stones
was as clear as a clock face, with the dark shadow of the man
sitting at eight o'clock. Danny's breath started to thump. He was
getting there, getting close to the high edge. Once over he had one
feeder valley to traverse, a slide down and a scramble up and then
he'd be away, well out of sight, running hell for leather down to
safety.</p>
<p>He was getting there, only forty feet or so from the top. He
edged round the corner away from a thin layer of white mudstone,
edging into the second tributary, when something moved, caught in
peripheral vision. Danny's head whipped round in a panicked jerk
just in time to see the grey heron take of, as the first one had
done, in a powerful sweep of wings. The sudden motion itself had
made him take a step back.</p>
<p><em>Kaark!</em> The bird called out loudly, and its cry was
funnelled by the tight confines of the narrow chasm and amplified
in a hollow and accusing double echo.</p>
<p>"Oh, no," Danny said aloud, still moving, trying foolishly to
get the bird to hush. Its head was drawn back, beak pointed to the
sky, its left wing close enough to the gully side to sweep of some
fine grains of shale. Danny's foot slid on a piece of stone,
lifted, shuffled for balance, and found a ledge. He reached to grab
a firmer handhold when the flat ledge he'd stepped on crumbled
under his foot. There was a muffled click, like wet wood breaking,
and the piece of mudstone simply sprung away, a piece about a foot
square. Danny quickly grabbed for it, got half a grip, but the fine
dust on the smooth surface slipped through his fingers and the rock
rolled out, slid down the soft shale slope for five feet or so and
hit the other line of rock with a harsh clunk.</p>
<p>"Hell!" Danny huissed. His foot was still slipping from lack of
purchase and for a moment he had to ignore the fallen stone. The
heron was a blur to his right now, pinioning its way into the sky.
Danny got a grip, pushed himself upwards onto the steeper part of
the slope, moving round the spur to the steep gravelly slope they'd
slid down when they first came over the rise and down into the
valley. Below him the tumbling rock hit another, bounced out into
the air. He turned, saw that it had dislodged the other stone. The
two of them bounded, whirling together out from the slope, landed
one after the other on the soft shale like dull footsteps, digging
twin furrows, rebounded again over a ledge and fell twenty feet in
tandem. Danny watched them go, unable to move. His whole attention
was focused on the tumbling rocks as they hurtled down the side.
Way down at the bottom, in the curve of the stream there was a
mound of soft sediment which had trickled down the steep side of
the valley and piled up in a hollow. If the stones landed there,
they might stop with hardly a sound. Danny knew he should keep
going, but the stones held his attention and would not let him
go.</p>
<p>Some distance up from the valley floor, the mudstone boulders
flipped out over the shale, now spinning in the air. They seemed to
fall in slow motion. For a moment Danny thought they were dropping
straight for the soft gravel pile, but from where he clung to the
spur, the angle was deceptive. The rocks plunged down and smashed
on to a hard stone ledge with two harsh cracks. The sound was like
gunfire in the valley.</p>
<p>The hammer blows ricocheted from one side to the other, so loud
that Danny almost lost his grip. He twisted to look down at the
camp. For a brief moment there was complete stillness.</p>
<p>Then the man moved. His head turned towards where the rocks had
smashed on the ledge, while the echoes of the impact were still
reverberating along the curves of the canyon. The rocks had smashed
on the harder stone and scattered like shrapnel on the smooth
surface of the shallow pool he'd crawled across. For a second, no
more, he looked at the water, then his head angled up. Danny saw
the pale oval of the man's face as it turned towards him.</p>
<p>They stared at each other across the distance, one looking up,
the other staring down.</p>
<p>Then the man was moving. Danny turned, panicking, started
scrambling up the scree. He reached the next level, feet slipping
and sliding on the crumbly surface, whimpering in fear and
desperation, and clawed for the top up the almost vertical incline.
He got to the nearest level of strata, managed to get over it,
feeling as if his whole body was shivering violently enough to
throw him backwards, but miraculously keeping his grip.</p>
<p>Down below somebody screamed and somebody else shouted. The
man's hoarse voice bawled out and Danny could not prevent him head
from turning, even as his feet tried to find purchase on the
crumbling shale.</p>
<p>Down at the camp, the man was on his feet, standing dead still.
Beside him, on the short cropped grass beside the ring of stones,
Billy was on his knees, body arched back. somebody else was
sprawled and motionless on the grass. Close by two of the others
were waving their hands and yelling frantically. Danny turned back,
managed to get another two feet higher, stopped, swung back again
as his brain registered what his eyes had seen.</p>
<p>The man had the gun in his hands. It was swinging round towards
the slope.</p>
<p>Hot panic exploded inside him. Danny scrabbled at the slope,
nails digging into the surface. He had only a dozen feet to go
before he reached the top edge and safety. Only a dozen feet. It
could have been so many miles. He sobbed in sudden fury and fear
and bitter disappointment, eyes fixed on the skyline above.</p>
<p>Up and over. <em>Up and over.</em> His internal voice was
bleating it out, a jittery litany. Behind him, other voices were
screaming, high and urgent and fearful.</p>
<p>"Go Danny! <em>Go</em>!"</p>
<p>He sensed the gun swinging upwards, his back completely exposed.
A dreadful cold shudder rippled down his spine. And he forced
himself another step, another.</p>
<p><em>Up and over. Oh please.</em></p>
<p>Ahead of him, in the morning sky, the heron was just a distant
shadow.</p>
<hr />
<p>Doug and Corky had been watching for him from the dark inside
the tent, knowing that he would not try a downstream run this time.
Danny had slipped out through the slit and although he'd moved as
silently as he could, they could hear the occasional rustle and
scuffle as he made his way towards the hollow and the cleft between
the stones that would take him up to the next level. Doug was
holding his breath, listening for more sound, but once Danny had
gone through the cleft, there was nothing more to be heard, except
for the muttering of the water. They slowly crawled to the front of
the tent again, while Tom held back in the shadows trying to calm
his breathing. The day was already lightening perceptibly, though
it was still early and the smell of the dew was thick and damp. The
mist was thinning quickly.</p>
<p>Doug caught the motion first, on the far side, just up from the
low falls. Danny was on the sheep track, heading up the spur. He
seemed very small against the grey mass of the jutting ridge. Doug
pointed and Corky peered out.</p>
<p>"I see him," he whispered. "Go man, go."</p>
<p>Tom came up alongside them but did not look out. He just hoped
Danny would make it out. That left only four of them and there was
no guarantee that when the stranger discovered one of them had
escaped, that he would not go into a frenzy and hurt them all.</p>
<p><em>Or worse.</em></p>
<p>But there was nothing else to do. If they all tried to make a
run for it now, they couldn't stay silent and that would wake the
man up and then all hell would erupt.</p>
<p>The other two followed Danny's progress, higher and higher.
Doug's eyes kept flicking to the dark hunched shape by the
fireside, watching for signs of stirring. If Danny moved fast, he
could be down in the town in an hour, and have help up here before
the sun had really risen. There was a chance that he'd be back
before the crazy man woke up. A chance.</p>
<p>Then the heron had sent out its shrill cry and Danny had
dislodged the rock. The pair of them had stared up, unable to
believe the bad luck of it. The stone had knocked the other out and
they'd both come bounding downwards and the double crack of thunder
when they hit was deafening in the morning silence.</p>
<p>"Oh fuck," Doug said, stupidly.</p>
<p>By the fire, the man jerked awake. Twisting left then right,
trying to get a bearing on the sound which echoed back now from all
the sides and curves of the slopes. He spun to the pool where the
shards of broken stone were falling like hailstones and then he
looked up.</p>
<p>Danny was pinioned to the steep slope, hands spread wide for
purchase, his head almost turned round completely. He seemed only a
short distance from the valley edge.</p>
<p><em>Go man go!</em> Corky silently urged.</p>
<p>The man roared wordlessly. He jerked to his feet, snatching the
gun up as he did so. Billy squawked, only half awake. The noose
tightened around his neck as the stranger hauled at the gun,
forgetting how he'd tied it the night before. Billy was hauled to
his feet, flipped like a rat caught by an angry terrier, but hands
up at his neck. A strangled sound blurted out.</p>
<p>"He'll kill him," Corky bawled, aghast. Without thinking about
it, he pushed his way out of the tent, Doug was right behind him.
Over on the short grass, Billy had stumbled to the ground, his
hands still trying to force themselves between the twine and the
skin of his neck where the loop had tightened ferociously. He had
fallen over the log where he'd sat for some of the night, his
backside landing with an audible thump.</p>
<p>The stranger growled savagely, jerking at the gun. Billy
flopped, hauled this way and that, and the man seemed not to be
aware of his presence except as a weight hindering his use of the
gun. The boy gagged, making a strange and somehow deadly rattling
sound in the back of his throat, but the man ignored that. Without
any hesitation he brought his foot down onto Billy's shoulder,
pressed hard, while he dried to drag the gun away.</p>
<p>"Leave him alone," Corky bawled, trying to overcome the
stiffness in his thigh and get to his feet. He tripped over a guy
rope, rolled and crawled for two yards. Doug was jabbering
incoherently just behind him.</p>
<p>Billy's breath was cut off completely and his face suddenly went
purple. The man pulled again and for a moment, Corky was convinced
the twine would cut right through his neck like a cheese wire. In
his mind's eye he saw Billy's head come tumbling off his shoulders
to roll on the grass.</p>
<p>Then the man saw the old knife jammed into the grain of the log.
He dropped Billy to the ground, reached for the sheath knife and
pulled it from the wood with one quick wrench. He twisted it and
swung the blade in against Billy's neck. The string parted and
Billy went rolling away, still making those deathly sounds in his
throat. Corky was bawling at the stranger but Doug was crawling
past him, trying to get to his feet, stumbling towards the flat
stone. The man was just turning away from where Billy writhed. He
raised the gun up the slope. Doug reached the stone and grabbed the
red cartridge which sat in the little hollow on its surface. He
swung round and threw it, hard as he could, away from them. It
whirled in the air, like a miniature red stick of dynamite and
plopped into the pool below the feathers on the falls. He was
turning for the other one which had fallen onto the grass when the
man spun, realising the gun was unloaded, saw what the boy had done
and crossed the flat in a few strides, he lifted the shotgun and in
a smooth and brutal jabbing motion, smashed the butt end against
Doug's head. It made a sound like wood on stone.</p>
<p>Doug stumbled away. Corky was crossing the flat towards him. Tom
veered across to where Billy was rolling about, face purple, hands
scrabbling at the string still twisted around his throat. Doug took
two faltering steps to the left, as if he'd lost all sense of
direction. He fell down on his backside, got a hand to the ground,
raised himself up, head turning, and halfway to his feet again. The
man had hit and walked past him, now slotting the one cartridge
into the chamber. The barrels snapped closed with metallic
finality. He was raising the gun.</p>
<p>At the edge of the campsite Doug got halfway to his feet, tied
to say something, then pitched forward heavily onto his face. Tom
snatched up the knife and was straddling Billy, trying to get him
to stay still while Billy, almost twice his weight, bucked in blind
and desperate panic, almost throwing the small boy off. Tom got the
blade under the twine and worked it back and forth. The sharp tip
scored two small punctures in Billy's neck, not deep, but bleeding
freely. The string parted with a twang and Billy's breath instantly
howled inward. Corky was running towards the man, yelling
frantically. He hadn't even thought about it. All he saw was the
gun swinging up towards Danny who was pinioned on the steep slope,
completely exposed. He was moving past Doug who lay spread-eagled
on the grass, beyond Tom and Billy, running to try to snatch the
gun, to give Danny one chance.</p>
<p>The gun thundered.</p>
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<h1>28</h1>
<p><em>August 4. 9am</em></p>
<p>White hot fire seared across Danny Gillan's back.</p>
<p>The excruciating pain was like a splash of molten metal, an
incandescent surge of agony. He was slammed by a giant hand against
the steep shale slope only yards from the top and freedom. His face
drove in against the soft surface with stunning force before he
could even scream.</p>
<p>He had just been reaching for the next handhold when all the
world turned to flame.</p>
<p>Somewhere in the distance, a clap of dreadful thunder shook the
valley in a cannonade of shattering sound, following on the searing
pain that ripped across Danny's shoulders and on his spine. His
nose drove into the gravel, burst like a tomato with a wet sound,
but he was soaring so high on the surge of the other unbelievable
hurt that he felt nothing of that.</p>
<p>His whole body jerked even as his hands tried to dig into the
surface. The noise went on and on and on, rolling up and down the
valley, reverberating from the chasm walls and Danny was surrounded
by nose and pain, completely encased in it for what seemed like an
eternity.</p>
<p>He was burning. He was on fire.</p>
<p><em>Oh God don't let me...</em></p>
<p>It had all happened in the blink of an eye. The man had turned,
raising the gun. Corky had been screaming something unintelligible
but utterly clear in its meaning. He had been bawling at Danny to
move, to climb, to get up and over. And the gun was swinging up
wards and the hot, sour panic had erupted and the shudder of
anticipation had shaken him from the bottom of his spine to the top
of his head. He'd scrambled desperately for that top ridge, feet
sending out avalanches of shale, fingers clawing at the incline,
knowing the black barrels were swinging up on him.</p>
<p>The pain had hit before the sound had swallowed him and he had
been batted against the slope by an enormous force and he was on
<em>fire</em>.</p>
<p>That first instant seemed to stretch on and on, trapping him
inside a vast and implacable bubble of pain. His vision went black
and he knew he was dead. Dead and gone. There was just the pain and
the noise and he was burning. Dead and judged.</p>
<p>The fire consumed him. He was being burned away, cauterised,
scorched, scalded. All down his back a molten river was eating into
him, corroding the skin and muscle. Inside the bubble of time and
pain, he was catapulted back ten years, crawling on that slick
linoleum and the boiling liquid which hate into his hands and the
tender surface of his knees while on his back the skin was peeling
and bubbling like tar. Around him, through the thunder, he could
hear again his sister's scream mingling with his own and his limbs
jerked.</p>
<p>He was dead and this was the bad fire. This was the burning. He
was searing and shrivelling, skin warped and contorting. The noise
went on and on and on and somebody was screaming and it wasn't his
sister Agnes who was making the noise. It was John Corcoran,
somewhere far below screeching like a banshee while Danny was
burning up.</p>
<p>And he was falling.</p>
<p>The pain did not diminish, but the strange, timeless bubble that
had encapsulated him suddenly burst and he was not dead at all.
Fire raced across his back, huge gouts of it, but he was not dead.
He coughed and gravel and blood spat out. His hands were clawing
away, working on their own, trying to get a grip, but he was
falling. He felt himself peel away from the slope while his hands
clawed at the air and the thick taste of metal was clogged in the
back of his throat. He dropped, almost in slow motion, to the
gravelly surface, ploughed a boy-wide furrow, tumbling head over
heels. He landed on his feet, twisted, came down on his shoulder,
still somersaulting as he dropped from the high ridge.</p>
<p>All the time, despite the dizzy spinning of the world the
enormous burning consumed him and noise went on and on. His
shoulder hit a spur of mudstone and he flipped on and out into the
air, arms wheeling, legs kicking. There was sky and then green,
grey of the slope and then blue sky again. Everything whirled as he
spun out into the air. No sound escaped him. There was no time. His
hands were still trying to grab at the shale slant way above him.
He fell the way the stones had fallen, bouncing, tumbling and then
out into the air and he realised that the pain would end.</p>
<p>He was falling to the rocks below and it would all end here and
there would be no more fear.</p>
<p>Corky was screaming his name and he wanted to close the pain off
for a moment to tell him not to worry, but there was no time for
anything at all. The ground leapt up at him, the canyon walls
whipping by in flickering striations if grey and white, like candy
stripes. He fell.</p>
<p>The belly flop into the deep pool knocked all the breath from
him. The force of the flat impact was like hitting a wall. His nose
took another blow and both his knees drove right into the sediment
at the bottom of the pool..</p>
<p>Danny was so stunned he did not even know he'd landed in the
water. Everything went black and for a wonderful moment all pain
was snuffed out for the second time he believed he was dead but now
he simply welcomed the cessation of hurt.</p>
<p><em>And he fell for forty days and forty nights.</em> His
father's voice came to him from a long distance. <em>Forty days and
forty nights without stopping, cast out to the exterior
darkness.</em></p>
<p>He'd been falling, burning up in the fire and he'd hit and it
had been easy. He'd hit and the pain had gone and he floated in the
dark, slowly turning. Paulie Degman's face floated beside him.</p>
<p>"<em>All right, Dan</em>?"</p>
<p>He tried to answer but he couldn't say anything because he had
no mouth. Paulie opened his own mouth and a bubble, silvered and
wavering, rolled up to the far surface.</p>
<p>"<em>Are you in a state of grace, Danny boy</em>?" Paulie wanted
to know, all white and bloodless and twisting in the current. His
voice sounded like the noise water made when it tumbled down under
the heather runnels, cold and hollow. There was a buzzing behind
the words and Danny knew it was the flies, sent by Be-elzebub, the
Lord of the Flies, one of those who had fallen forty days and forty
nights with the searing incandescence of Lucifer falling with
them.</p>
<p><em>And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,</em> Paulie
was saying, in Danny's father's voice and the buzzing got louder he
did not want the flies to come and lay their eggs in him when he
was dead and he did not want his hair and nails to grow, the way
Mole Hopkirk's nails and hair had grown in that room at the back of
Cairn house.</p>
<p><em>Danny!</em></p>
<p>Paulie was calling to him, calling him down into the mud. The
pain was starting up again in his back and there was a new pain in
his face and the taste of blood in his mouth and that was funny
because except for the fire, you weren't supposed to feel pain at
all when you were dead.</p>
<p><em>Danny!</em> The voice called him and he tried to turn away
form it and the buzzing had changed into a hissing sound, like
millions of bubbles bursting on a shingle beach, then a muffled
roar that sounded just like water cascading and his hand was
snagged on something. He couldn't do anything about it. He tried to
breathe and an awful cold flooded his throat and he suddenly
choked. In that instant his consciousness surged back to him and
his slack muscles instantly galvanised. Somebody was pulling him by
the arm while the pain still rippled and burned across his back,
now heating back up again after a brief cool respite.</p>
<p><em>Danny!</em> Not dead Paulie, but John Corcoran. Corky was
bawling his name at the top of his voice, dragging him up from
where Paulie's face was wavering into the dark.</p>
<hr />
<p>The gun had roared. A sudden punch of sound that slammed into
Corky's head. He was only feet away, reaching for the barrels that
were raised up towards the far wall. Everything had suddenly gone
mad. The butt had taken Doug on the side of the head, a swift and
vicious jab and he had stumbled away, got up then drifted sideways
before falling down to the ground, and Tom was over with Billy who
was writhing and choking and the man was raising the gun. Corky had
watched amazed as the first cartridge had gone flickering through
the air to land with a quick plop in the pool, amazed at Doug's
sudden comprehension and his dash to get them away from the crazy
man. He had almost made it. Danny, high up on the side where the
slope got steeper before the fringe of couch grass at the edge of
the moor, he had almost made it. He only had yards to go.</p>
<p>But then Doug was down and out and Billy was rolling on the
ground and the barrels went up and Corky tried to get them down
again. He was diving, hands outstretched, bawling at Danny to get a
move on, to get up and over the top and out of the way and then the
gun had roared and a noise like thunder hit him so hard he heard
only the first explosion followed by a repeated clapping sound and
a high pitched ringing inside his head. Even in the brightening
morning he saw the flash of fire at the end of the muzzle and then
sudden belch of smoke just a shade darker than the fading mist. His
head had swung upwards and Danny's arms had suddenly shot out just
as a hundred small eruptions of gravel for two yards on either side
of him where the spread of lead peppered the steep slope. Danny
seemed to shove himself forward right onto the shale face with both
arms out on either side as if he'd been kicked hard right between
his shoulderblades. The hands were scrabbling at the face, trying
to catch a grip as he slid for thirty feet down the steep shale,
then he simply peeled away and began to tumble backwards. It all
happened in the space of a split second.</p>
<p>There was no sound but the strange internal crackling inside his
head and the reverberating thump that could have been his heartbeat
or his mind's echo of the devastating blast. He was trying to shout
Danny's name, over and over, but he could not hear his own voice.
He moved past the man, head up, oblivious to the danger.</p>
<p>Danny fell away from the high side of the spur, flipping right
over in a complete somersault. He landed twenty feet down, on his
feet but now facing outwards, much like a ski-jumper. His momentum
drove a wide furrow in the soft gritty marl, sending up a bow wave
of powdery rock and then he tumbled over again, arms pinwheeling,
face just a white blur. His shoulder glanced off the ledge twenty
feet up and then he was falling straight down. Corky froze. His
friend was coming down, twisting in the air, heading straight for
the quartz rocks at the head of the pool where the four feathers
still stood. Despite the silence, he knew there would be a
deafening, deadly thud then Danny hit and then nothing, no cry, no
moan. Nothing.</p>
<p>Danny missed the rocks by scant inches and hit the water with a
smack that sent up a wide, curving splash.</p>
<p>He disappeared under the foaming surface, right in at the deep
basin where Billy had jumped in on the first day to clean the mud
from his jeans. Corky's legs got him to the edge. The wave of
Danny's entry had splashed right up onto the stones on either side
and sent a little roller curving up over the shingle at the shallow
end. Danny's tee-shirt was a red blur down in the depths, his hands
pale fish. For a second Corky though the dye was coming out of the
shirt in a thin cloud, the way the red grime had come washing off
Billy. He reached the edge, jumped in across the shingle, up to his
knees, kept moving, up to his waist. The basin sloped away and he
was under the water, bawling Danny's name, now hearing the words,
but as if they were far off. He ducked down, got a hand to one of
Danny's and started hauling him up to the surface. The hand was
slack and lifeless. Under the water Danny's head turned round and
in the blur Corky could see the red smoke billowing out from the
front of his face and knew it was blood.</p>
<p>Had he been shot in the head?</p>
<p><em>Oh my god Danny oh my god</em></p>
<p>For an instant he panicked, thinking that Danny's head must have
hit the rocks, must have caved in on the sharp quartz edges, or
maybe the shot had blasted through from front to back. He felt his
heart buck wildly and very quickly, out of control. Everything
seemed to shrivel in the pit of his belly. He pulled, got a foot to
the shallows and a hand to one of the edging rocks, dragged his
lifeless friend upwards, away from the dark at the bottom of the
pool while the blood trailed out and faded in the moving current.
He made it to the near side, knowing it didn't matter which side,
got Danny's head out of the water. For a long count Danny was
completely still. Blood was pouring quite freely from mouth and
nostrils as he hung, slumped over the stones close to the shallows,
and then, by a miracle, his shoulders hitched violently. A gout of
water came sneezing out, coloured by blood and snot. He coughed,
tried to turn, raise himself up, much as Doug had tried to do,
managed to get to his knees.</p>
<p>He raised his hand towards Corky, his streaming eyes wide open
and blind, mouth gaping. He gasped, coughed, gasped again and then
he let out the most pitiful whimper of pain Corky had ever heard.
Danny started to fall forward and Corky waded back behind him to
get a hand round his shoulder and help him up. But as soon as he
touched his back, high up close to the neck, Danny squealed like an
animal and sank to his knees. The blood, what was left of it,
drained out of his face and he looked as if he would faint. Corky
ducked, managed to get his own shoulder under Danny's belly,
grabbed him behind the knees and with a monstrous effort, got to
his own feet, carrying his friend on his shoulder. He waded
backwards out of the pool, gasping now for a breath of his own,
oblivious of the man who stood there watching the whole thing,
motionless and silent.</p>
<p>The noise was still reverberating in Corky's ears. Water sloshed
in his boots. Over by the ring of stones Billy was sitting, legs
spread, hands at his throat, coughing uncontrollably. Tom was now
tending to Doug, gently raising his head up. Doug was grinning or
grimacing, his big front teeth pressed against his bottom lip. His
hands were shaking like fluttering birds trying to take
flight..</p>
<p>Corky put Danny down, gently as he could despite the weight, in
the lee of the slope at the cleft where he'd crawled through on his
failed escape attempt. Danny's eyes were dazed, focused far off,
not quite aware of what was happening. Corky was amazed that he was
still alive.</p>
<p>"The heron," Danny mumbled dreamily. "I saw the heron."</p>
<p>"Very good Dan," Corky said. He sat him down. Twin trickles of
blood were running down from each nostril and dropping onto the
tee-short, making hardly a stain against the deep red of the
fabric. Danny sat back but as soon as his shoulder touched the soft
moss he yelled aloud and twisted violently to the side.</p>
<p>"He shot me, Corky," he managed to squeeze out. "Bloody shot
me."</p>
<p>Over by the side of the stream the man still stood motionless,
watching them all curiously. After a while he turned and slowly
walked back to the ridge where he'd been sitting and eased himself
down again, in exactly the same spot, holding the gun the same way,
across his knees. It was somehow animal, somehow mindless, the way
he moved back to the same place, as if nothing much had happened.
He hunched there, seemingly oblivious to them all now, waiting.</p>
<p>The stillness of him was somehow even more scary.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 4. 10am.</em></p>
<p>Danny was crying. Tears were steaming down his face and he
twitched violently while Tom held his hand tightly. Billy watched
with strange, glazed eyes, while Doug held his own head in his
hands and sat quite still as if any movement would bring pain. This
was true. The back of his head felt as if it was coming apart.
There was no blood, but the thumping pain was almost enough to
bring tears to his eyes and his neck ached abominably. The only
thing he could do for the moment was sit still and keep his eyes
closed until it faded. He'd felt sick for a while, but that had
passed. The pain was lessening beat by beat, but still each beat
was a pounder.</p>
<p>Danny had lain for a long time, trying not to move, lying more
on his front than on his side, head twisted to the right to keep
his aching nose off the soft moss. It was tender and bloody but
that was the least of his concerns. The pain was burning into his
back, a sheet of relentless heat like a blowtorch flame on his
skin. He imagined he could smell himself burning. Corky risked
crossing from to the stream fill the can with water and give first
him and then Doug a cool drink.</p>
<p>"Shot me," Danny bleated again. His tee shirt was already drying
in the sun. It was plastered to his back and Corky could see no
bullet wounds and he wondered where the damage was.</p>
<p>"I'll have to have a look," he said. "Where does it hurt." He
was speaking in a muffled murmur again, not wishing to attract the
attention of the gaunt man who sat like a crow beside the dead
fire.</p>
<p>"My back. Oh, <em>shit</em> Corky. It's really bloody sore."</p>
<p>"Hold still and I'll have a look," Corky whispered, hushing him
as best he could.</p>
<p>Tom held Danny's hand, clasping his fingers with surprising
strength. Corky started to raise the tee-shirt, peeling it away
until he had exposed the middle of Danny's back. That's where the
bruise started. There were a few puckered little dents in the
fabric up between Danny's shoulderblades and three smaller holes.
He eased the cloth upwards, and heard Tom's sharp intake of breath
at the dreadful discoloration of the puffy skin which had swollen
under the tight cloth. Further up he peeled it away, with Danny
wincing and sobbing all the while. Finally, up high on the back, he
had to pull gently but firmly where the weave formed the small
pitted dents. It was only then that he realised what had
happened.</p>
<p>The birdshot, tiny lead pellets had slammed into Danny's
sweat-laced shirt, hard enough to drive him against the face, but
from far enough away not to kill him. The spread-out pattern had
lost enough force and his damp shirt had acted as a buffer. Even
so, some of the shot had driven the fabric right into the skin,
causing those small dents in the swollen flesh. Corky had to ease
each of the slugs out one by one, pulling gently but firmly, and as
each of them came out of their embedding craters in the unbroken
skin, Danny howled in agony and the tears ran freely down his
face.</p>
<p>"Easy Dan," Corky tried to say, but by this time, he was crying
too and Tom's face was a picture of silent misery. Tears were
trickling in the dust down his cheeks and dripping slowly from his
chin. He held Danny's hand tight as he could, for both their sakes.
When it was finished, Corky managed to ease the whole shirt off and
he rolled it up to jam it under Danny's face as a pillow. They let
him lie there until the sobbing stopped. The bruises on his back
were violet and risen, like bursts of thunder on the white of his
skin. Between the shoulderblades were three small dark spots which
did not bleed. They looked like ink-marks. Corky realised that some
of the little pellets had driven through the skin. There was
nothing he could do about that.</p>
<p>Tom filled the canteen again and brought it over, again braving
the attention, but ignored by the man who sat still as stone, as if
waiting for something to happen. He gently poured it on to Danny's
back while Corky held his quivering wrists.</p>
<p>The cold was at first a terrible explosion of pain, and Danny
stiffened as if a bolt of high tension power had arced through him,
but then it settled into a gentle, soothing coolness which helped
take the burn out of his back. Tom kept it up, letting the cool
stream water trickle over the hurt to help the swelling go down and
after a while the heat began to fade a little.</p>
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<h1>29</h1>
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p>Angus McNicol eased himself back, put the bottle down on the
table and unscrewed the top.</p>
<p>"Put some of this in it," he said. "The sun's well past the
yardarm now. Coffee'll keep me up all night unless I take it with
my medicine." The big old policeman grinned, just a burst of white
before it was closed off again in his remembering. He poured two
hefty shots of whisky into the half-cups of coffee, put the bottle
down, raised a cup and clunked it against the other. He took a
manful swallow, savoured it, swallowed, then let out the gruff sigh
of someone who's appreciated a drop of scotch for half a
century.</p>
<p>"Takes the bad taste out of the mouth as well." Another quick
flash of teeth and then his eyes changed and it was obvious he was
looking a long way back into the past once more. Once he'd started,
he'd been able to talk for a long time.</p>
<p>"I thought it was all dead and buried and gone, you know. Should
be, too. Oh, I still recall it sometimes, even now, but I have to
tell you now son, it's not the kind of thing I like to dredge
up."</p>
<p>He looked over the table, over the rim of the cup and drew his
brows together.</p>
<p>"Why the interest now? There's better stories to tell about this
town. Not many worse, except that business with John Fallon's boy
few years back. He got himself hurt pretty sore when he went after
that fellow O'Day. That was the year I quit the force, on doctor's
orders. To tell you the truth, I was glad in a way. You don't know
you've had enough until it's over and then you realise you never
ever want to see another mother's face when you tell her a child's
dead and gone."</p>
<p><em>Dead and Gone.</em> Angus McNicol had used that phrase
twice, each in a different context. It should have been all dead
and gone. Should have been, but the world's full of what should
have been and never was. It should have been gone, but it kept on
coming back, like the bad penny; certainly in the bad dreams. I had
managed to bury most of it, deliberately so, because it was
something I never wanted to remember and dwell on, not as long as I
lived, and then once I had kids of my own, it was something I
wanted to keep down there under lock and key. You just can't begin
to think that history might repeat itself and that one of your own
might ever be touched by a madman. Can you?</p>
<p>I'd managed pretty well until I saw those dulled eyes swivel in
my direction down on River Street and then pass on with hardly a
flicker or blink and some of it all came back in such a rush I felt
my belly drop a hundred feet, or so it seemed, and there was the
smell of raw fish in the air and the scent of pine smoke and dead
meat and a crazy man's sour sweat; in my ears I heard the old, lazy
buzzing of busy flies and the murmuring of slow water in a stream
and I was instantly back <em>then</em>.</p>
<p>It doesn't take much to trigger those switches. Some things
don't stay buried; some things don't stay dead.</p>
<p>Yet I <em>had</em> managed to bury it all for a while, shoved it
down there in the depths where it was kept bound and gagged to stop
it clawing its way up and eating at me. Then, on the sunny morning
on River Street, with the light reflecting from the skylights on
the roof of the old boatyard down at Keelyard Road where a bunch of
boys had talked of a drowned boy in the river and had first planned
to take a trip to the mythical Dummy Village, I looked into the
empty depths of a pair of eyes and it all broke free, like some
beast in a cellar.</p>
<p>No matter what I did, I could not put this old thing back in a
box. It was out and growling and it was pawing and clawing and the
only thing for it was to meet it face to face, to go right back to
the start and take it from there.</p>
<p>I had to know.</p>
<p>Crazy? Possibly, but I'd <em>seen</em> crazy. I'd looked into
its blinking, twitching eyes. I had to know.</p>
<p>I had no real answer for Angus McNicol. I said I was researching
a book, and there was a sliver of truth in that. He looked at me
over the top of the cup and he took another sip, swallowed, and
began to talk again. Who knows, maybe the old policeman had his own
ghosts to bury.</p>
<p>"Dead and gone. Too many people over the years, I can tell you,"
he said. The tape was running again. "But not dead and gone in
here." He raised his free hand and tapped the side of his head.</p>
<p>"The one thing Hector Kelso drilled into me when I had
transferred over to plain clothes, was to remember everything.
Remember everything and keep your own records forever, he always
said. He used to stand there and never move a muscle except in his
eyes. He never wanted anybody to touch anything, not a thing, until
he'd been there and seen the lie of the land. If you did that, you
got a picture in your head that had everything in it, even the
sounds and the smells. I can still close my eyes and conjure up old
Ian McColl's head on that dung-heap and I can remember that it was
mostly cow dung, but there was a dead chicken there as well. It's
got a different smell. I can still taste the dust in the tack room
where old Jean McColl was dragged down the stairs.</p>
<p>"I remember thinking that the man, your <em>Twitchy Eyes</em>,
was probably ex-army. We found a place down at the east end of the
Rough Drain, the place that's still all overgrown with. It was a
bivouac. We knew it was him from the pages of the bible. He'd used
them to wipe his backside."</p>
<p>Hector drained his cup and put it down, eyes still focused
back.</p>
<p>"We worked round the clock, going through every army record, but
at that time, there were thousands of boys and men just out of
national service. There were more thousands who'd been in the war
and trained to kill and were still young enough to have been this
beast. It was a broad field we were ploughing up. We turned up
Scots soldiers who'd been to Aden and done some terrible things
themselves. There were a few people who'd survived the Jap death
railway and a few of them were as crazy as all get out, but there
was nothing we could pin on this devil.</p>
<p>"We really wanted to nail him. We went through parish records
but we still drew blanks. I was beginning to think he had just come
out of nowhere. Maybe he did. Maybe he just did. Maybe he was a
devil. Remember the Whalen boy? He was snatched on June sixth,
sixty six. All the sixes. Some of us thought that was some kind of
ritual thing. Who knows? Maybe it was.</p>
<p>"There was claim and counter-claim over what drove him on, but I
thought it was just sheer and utter badness. He was evil. I think
it was just depravity. The man had a taste for killing and hurting.
If Charlie Saunders had caught him, he'd have ripped him apart with
his two hands for what he did to that wee girl of his. Big John
Fallon, he was just as worried as anybody about his boy and girl
and if he came on this Twitchy Eyes first, there was a good chance
it would never get to the High Court.</p>
<p>"But we never did get him. We rounded up a few ex-soldiers and
anybody with any record at all for flashing or peeping through
bedroom windows or stealing underwear off the washing lines. We had
a couple of identity parades and all for nothing. The man came out
of nowhere. He always seemed to be one jump ahead. We sweated out
the whole summer wondering where it would happen next. It was a
while before Johnson McKay came careening down that farm track in
his old post van.</p>
<p>"All we had to go on then was a description from the girls he'd
tried to pick up the first time and a name from Jean McColl's
diary. She said his name was Leslie Joyce, though the spelling
changed to the female version, but that was when he was stalking
her. There was every chance he'd just made it up, but we had to
check that too. We turned up half a dozen of them, spelled
whichever way, and four of them had been in the army. One was a
woman who'd been a sergeant in the WRAC's. Two were old men and one
was in a wheelchair. The fifth was a Free Kirk minister from up by
Creggan and I can tell you he got the fright of his life when me
and a couple of the CID boys grabbed him in his greenhouse when he
was watering his tomatoes. He'd been an army chaplain in the war.
He was five foot tall and he'd a withered arm from childhood polio.
He couldn't have punched his way out of a wet paper bag. The sixth
one had been banged up in Drumbain for five years for a smash and
grab. That was the way of it.</p>
<p>"Our killer, he could have been anybody. Anybody at all. But he
wasn't any of the people we found called Leslie Joyce. We never got
close, though we even did a trawl in the local parish year books to
see if anyone of that name had been baptised, but still we got no
closer."</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 4....7pm.</em></p>
<p>"Unless a man be born again, and cleansed of sin." The man's
voice was clear and rumbling. He was standing at the edge of the
stream, both feet in the water. The gun was five yards away. Billy
was standing beside him, his skin pale in the dimming light. Danny
wondered if he could reach the gun. Corky wondered the same thing.
Tom and Doug watched the scene at the water, each of them wondering
what would happen.</p>
<p>It had been a long day since the gun had spoken, since their
talk in the shade of the line of low hawthorns that led to the
hollow.</p>
<p>"You okay, Dan?" Corky had asked.</p>
<p>He spoke low, but not in a whisper. Danny twisted and that cost
him a wrench of pain between his shoulderblades, but if he moved
slowly, it wasn't too bad. Occasionally the light breeze would
feather across his skin and trail a sensation like pins and
needles, but for the most part, the bruises, swollen and risen
though they were, stayed numb. The fire had damped well down, but
Danny could still remember the awesome burn of it.</p>
<p>"He <em>shot</em> me!" the enormity of that hovered over him and
weighed him down. Over and over he saw the world spin and saw the
white quartz of the rocks rushing up towards him. His nose ached
for the moment, where he had driven it into the shale. It pulsed
more fiercely than did the bruises on his back. Another throb of
pain beat out from his shoulder, where it had hit the outcropping
of mudstone that had probably saved his life by twisting him just a
little downstream so that he fell straight into the deepest part of
the pool and missed the rocks where the heron feathers stood.</p>
<p>"Thought you were a goner," Corky said again. Beside him, Tom
silently agreed. His face still bore the faint imprint of the man's
fingers and he had a dark bruise on his jawline. Every now and
again he opened his mouth and moved the jaw to the side, as if
testing for fractures. It helped take the stiffness out of it.</p>
<p>"Thought <em>I</em> was a goner," Doug said. He drew his fingers
down the side of his head, just behind his right ear, rubbing
slowly. "I think I still am."</p>
<p>"But you got the cartridge away. Honest to god, Doug, that was
brilliant. And it really took a lot of guts an'all."</p>
<p>"Thought I was going to <em>puke</em> my guts," Doug said, and
he gave a strangely fearful grin. His big protruding teeth made him
look gawky. His sting vest was torn now under his armpit and hung
on him like a tattered net.</p>
<p>"But if you hadn't pitched it in the pool, Danny would have got
the both barrels for sure. You should have seen him, Danny
boy."</p>
<p>Billy said nothing. He was sitting just to the side, closer to
the hollow where he'd hung the stag's head on the thorn branches.
He was absently massaging the skin of his throat. It was raw and
inflamed. He had that faraway, lost look in his eyes that Danny
found somehow scary. It reminded him again of the rabbit and the
stoat, as if Billy had somehow accepted all of this, as if he knew
what would happen and was just dumbly waiting for the inevitable.
Tom glanced over at him. He'd panicked for an instant, suddenly
more frightened than he'd even been in his life, even more so than
when the man had grabbed his face and squeezed.</p>
<p>Billy had been down on the ground, making gagging, hissing
sounds in his throat, the kind of sound the heron had made when its
neck had been broken and for that instant, Tom had thought he was
dead, even though his heels were drumming into the turf. Doug had
been down too.</p>
<p>Danny was falling in the air towards the rocks. Corky was
running towards the man and Tom was certain the stranger would turn
and swing the gun on him. At that range he'd cut him in half and
Tom would be left alone. It had all happened so unbelievably
fast.</p>
<p>In his mind's eye they were all dead, all except him, up here in
the valley with the man with the twitchy eyes. The knowledge froze
his insides to slush and for an instant his vision wavered.</p>
<p>Then reality, even colder than the fear, cut through the fear
like a shard of ice. Billy had both hands up at his neck and he was
breathing raggedly. Tom found his hand reaching for the knife and
in a few seconds of bewildering violence as Billy blindly fought
him, he had cut the noose and Billy was hauling for breath. All of
this unreeled again as they whispered together.</p>
<p>"And Tom," Corky said, recalling it at the same instant. "He cut
Billy free. He would have strangled otherwise. Did good there,
Tom-Tom."</p>
<p>Danny was amazed at how calm Corky sounded. Even Doug, with his
big stupid grin, sounded close to normal. Just a few hours ago,
they'd been crying, and dying. Danny knew that Corky was trying to
keep them all calm, waiting for the next chance, if they could
<em>get</em> a chance. If it came, Danny did not know if he'd be
able to move, and that scared him badly, as much as Billy's scary
far-distance stare. Doug might have made it downstream if he hadn't
twisted his ankle. Corky might have made it up the slope if he
hadn't been hurt making his first run. Danny could have got to the
top but for the heron flying out of the gully. Tom wasn't fast
enough and Billy just couldn't move.</p>
<p>If the chance came, what chance would they have?</p>
<p>Danny shook his head, sending a wave of dull pain across his
back, over his shoulder and another wet pulse into his tender nose.
He couldn't think like that, no matter how hopeless it seemed. He
didn't want to be like Billy, sunk so deep in the swamp of his own
fear that he couldn't move. If he worked at it, he could keep the
fear battened down, and try to keep at a distance the recollection
of the gun barrels raising up towards him.</p>
<p>"Where's the knife?" Corky was asking, this time in a whisper.
Tom used his eyes to indicate the curve of root just beside him.
The bone handle was barely visible. Very surreptitiously, Corky
eased his way towards it, reached even more slowly, and then drew
the knife towards him.</p>
<p>"I don't think that'll do any good," Tom said. Corky shrugged.
His eyes had that thoughtful look again. No matter what happened,
Corky wasn't going to wait for it. Standing straight, he barely
came up to the man's chest, but he was still thinking of how to get
them out of this.</p>
<p>The man had opened one of the corned beef tin cans, the last
they'd swiped from the self-service shop round on Braeside. Corky's
stomach was twisting savagely and he could smell the meat on the
air. They'd only drunk some water Tom had brought up from the
stream in the canteen. None of them wanted to risk attracting
attention yet by trying to get some food.</p>
<p>Over by the little ridge, the man sat still. He'd eaten the
block of beef, gnawing into it just the way he'd eaten the rabbit,
making little snuffling noises. Corky's mouth had watered and he'd
actually dribbled. The stranger had ignored them. Occasionally he'd
cock his head and then mutter something, always speaking over his
left shoulder, to whoever he saw there.</p>
<p>"Unless a man be born again, of water," the man said now that it
was late and the sky was beginning to darken. The moon was not yet
up and Corky had an idea that it might be full tonight and he
thought maybe that was what the man was waiting for.</p>
<p>He had surprised them all when he'd stood up and taken his coat
off, letting it slip, almost theatrically, to the grass. He'd
turned then, just as dramatically and they all looked in his
direction, suddenly scared again. He stood looking at them for some
time, as if pondering his next move. Danny felt his heart beat
faster. Billy stayed frozen. Finally the man came walking towards
them.</p>
<p>"You hear them?" he asked, quite softly. He was standing with
his back to the fading light and his eyes looked like holes in his
head. He inclined his head towards the hollow. The flies were
humming busily. He angled his head and stared down at Billy.</p>
<p>"Listen to them, boy. They're talking to you and me." He crossed
to the fire and picked up the rabbit's head by one flopped ear. A
trail of flies whirled upwards and headed for the hollow. "Another
trophy? You now what to do with it, don't you?" Billy took it
without a word, crossed to the hollow where the heron's eye was now
a seething mass of insects, and put the head in the nearest fork.
They could see him look around, left and right, as if seeking a way
of escaping, but he did not seem to have the wherewithal to risk
it. He came back to the tent and sat down again. The man reached
down and took him by the edge of his tee-shirt. Billy whimpered, a
little animal sound, but when the man pulled him upwards, he went
with the motion without a word and got to his feet.</p>
<p>"Those voices. You just need ears to hear." Billy gave a little
shiver.</p>
<p>The man bent down as he had done before, when he'd walked Billy
towards the gaunt skull suspended in the branches.</p>
<p>"Must go down into the valley and through to the other side.
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and then the great
truth. You know it boy. You want to walk down the valley with me?
Conboy knows the truth, he sees it with his magic eye. Wait 'til
you see all the things he can show you. Beelzebub's millions; the
Lord's minions."</p>
<p>Billy stood completely motionless but his whole body seemed to
be vibrating with tension. His mouth was open and for a moment his
breathing stopped completely. The man held him with his eyes.
Billy's breath caught and then he was hauling in fast, panting like
a panicked animal.</p>
<p>"In the midst of death, they are life. I saw you build the
altar. Watched you. I choose you now."</p>
<p>He bent down and put the gun butt first on the turf with the
barrels resting on the ridge by the stream bank. He clapped Billy's
shoulder. "So now prepare ye the way. Make straight the path. "</p>
<p>Very gently he reached and took the bottom edge of Billy's
tee-shirt and raised it up. It was like a parent with a child,
Billy dumbly raised his hands and the man slid the shirt up then
let it fall silently to the grass. He unbuckled Indian-bead belt,
pulled his jeans down. It all had the slow quality of a ritual.
Billy stepped out of his baggy underpants leaving them white on the
grass. The man put his hand on the boy's back, then slid it over
his shoulder, almost tenderly, drawing him close beside him.</p>
<p>Danny felt Tom shiver beside him. His own heart was clattering
away inside him, almost out of control. Corky's teeth were
grinding, quite audibly. Doug was totally silent.</p>
<p>Billy was led down to the water.</p>
<p>"Unless a man be born again, of water, he may not pass through."
The man's deep voice echoed from the far side. Danny recognised the
mix of quotations. It was a distortion of all that he had learned
from the countless Sundays. The man dropped his hand from Billy's
shoulder and took his shirt off and unlaced his own boots. They all
watched, fascinated, wondering what would happen next. Only Danny
had any idea.</p>
<p>Billy's skin was pale in the dimming light. Beside him the man
was almost completely naked. He had a line of dark hair running
down between his shoulderblades, and a pair of black tattoos up on
the tops of his arms, one on each arm. From where they sat, Corky
and Danny could read one name: Lesley. The evening was far from
dark, but the sun was down beyond the western rim of the valley and
the long shadows of the trees downstream had crept up to the edge
of their camp. The quartz rocks at the falls seemed to glow against
the grey shade of the far bank.</p>
<p>The man waded into the shallows. He held Billy by the arm and
forced him ahead of them. The ripples spread out to the far side
shingle. Up on the moor the poor curlew bleated again and some
slight breeze drifting between the hawthorn spikes sent a cloud of
flies buzzing upwards in a furious little whirlwind. The strange
pair in the stream were further out, into deeper water. It was up
to Billy's waist, then up to his navel, up to his chest, just in so
many steps. The man guided him further.</p>
<p>They heard Billy gasp for breath as the cold of the stream
curled around his ribs. They saw him shiver, not in the
high-tension way that Tom's body was vibrating, but a deep shudder
of cold and fear. His breath was coming in harsh spikes and the man
was mumbling something, speaking into his ear. None of the others
could hear what was said, not then. Billy stumbled and the water
lapped his chin. He got to his feet again, gasping harder, a
jittery, panicked sound.</p>
<p>"What's he doing?" Doug asked, out loud. They were all still
sitting, almost paralysed with apprehension over beside the wall of
rocks where the scrubby roots looped and twisted into the small
crevices. They hadn't moved.</p>
<p>In the stream the man waded forward and now the water really was
up to Billy's chin, rippling around the stranger's broad back at
chest level. He looked like some old water god, something out of
the adventures Danny and Corky had read from the book they'd found
at Overbuck stables.</p>
<p>"Prepare ye the way," the man said, now speaking aloud. He
raised his head and looked up at the darkening sky. Billy's head
was just a dark shape on the surface, at the centre of the ring of
ripples, the man had his hand on the crown. He leaned forward and
pushed Billy's head under the water. Billy panicked. His hands flew
upwards and thrashed wildly as he tried to lever himself up for
air.</p>
<p>"He's killing him," Tom cried. Corky scrambled to his feet. Both
his hands were balled into fists. Danny felt a great urge to jump
up and run down to the stream and grab the man's arm, but an even
greater urge to keep himself away from the crazy stranger
overwhelmed it completely. Doug was jabbering something
unintelligible. Down at the steam, Billy was struggling
frantically.</p>
<p>"Unless a man be born again, of water," Twitchy Eyes was
bellowing. "He shall not cross over."</p>
<p>Billy lunged upwards, spluttering and gasping, his mouth a wide,
dark circle. Water sprayed out from his nose. The man simply forced
him down again. The four of them were on their feet now, Corky
closest to the water. They could see Billy's pale shape under the
surface, arms flailing, body heaving, but the man was too strong.
He held him there. A big bubble of air rose up and burst on the
surface carrying with it the hollow bellow of Billy's terrified
cry.</p>
<p>"Leave him alone...you loony <em>bastard!</em>"</p>
<p>Corky's yell echoed back and forth from the sides, repeating his
last word over and over in a diminishing sequence.</p>
<p>"He's killing him," Doug wailed.</p>
<p>Corky turned to face them all, eyes blazing. "We have to do
something," he raged.</p>
<p>"What?" Doug asked. The gun was over by the downward edge of the
pool, beside the ride. They would have to circle the pool to reach
it. The man was only five steps away from it.</p>
<p>Danny's hands were trembling with the need to act. He turned
away from the stream, just at the same time as Corky did, both of
them heading in opposite directions. Danny picked up a smooth
stone, turned and threw it with all his strength, right at the
man's head. The motion sent a searing, white hot pain across his
back as his skin stretched under the torsion of his muscles. The
white stone, a piece of stream-rounded quartz flashed across the
distance and, like the stick that had killed the heron, would have
connected with the back of the man's head if the stranger had not
bent down to force Billy further under the water. The stone whirred
past, missing him by a mere inch. The man twitched, as if buzzed by
a wasp. The stone carried on, smacked against the boulders at the
head of the pool where the falls tumbled, smashed into half a dozen
fragments with a loud crack. A splinter knocked the nearest heron
feather out of its crevice and into the air. The man began to turn.
Both of Billy's hands came out of the water, waving
desperately.</p>
<p>"Let him go, you big dirty crazy <em>bastard!</em>"</p>
<p>Corky had crossed almost to the edge of the stream yelling at
the top of his voice, even louder than before. When the stranger
had stopped, Danny's heart felt as if it had stopped as well. He
had thrown the stone on impulse, on instinct, the way he had thrown
at the bird and with his usual accuracy. But when the man froze and
then began to turn, he realised that he had made himself the next
target for punishment. Then Corky had butted in, diverting
attention once again, and Danny felt a shameful surge of relief
once more.</p>
<p>"Come on then," Corky bawled, his voice cracking with the
effort. Danny swivelled and saw he had Billy's knife in his hand.
The old rusty blade was held out in front of him, knife-fighter
style. Corky's legs were spread, and despite the fact he was half
the man's size, he looked suddenly ferocious. He looked like a
young warrior.</p>
<p>The man finished turning and stopped dead. His eyes swept across
Danny, past Doug and Tom, lighted on Corky. The eyes started to
blink rapidly. Billy came spluttering up to the surface, coughing
and gagging, unaware of what was happening.</p>
<p>"Yeah, you big fuckin' creep," Corky was screaming now. "Come
on. Let's see what you've got." His left hand made a come-on
gesture, a man-to-man invitation.</p>
<p>The man smiled slowly. He took a step forward then another,
pushing a bow wave in front of him. Danny could see the name on the
other tattoo now. For some reason it held his eyes. He did not want
to see the feral grin on the man's face. Just below the blue
lettering, a series of rips had been chewed into the skin, like
saw-teeth cuts, the scars still dark and fresh. Tom and Doug shrank
back. Billy was stumbling to the other side of the pool, towards
the shallows, sending out great splashes of water to the shale
bank. The eyes were blinking like dark strobes now.</p>
<p>"What's this, Sergeant Conboy? See this?" he cocked his head,
still grinning, still twitching.</p>
<p>Corky held his ground and the man came up the bank. His shorts
had slipped, dragged by the weight of water. His penis,
unshrivelled by the cold water pushed out to the side, like a dark,
thick, club. Coarse hairs ran up to his belly and down his thighs.
He looked like a savage giant. He came out of the water, went
straight towards Corky who stood his ground until the man was a
yard away, then backed off, still holding the knife up. There was
no contest. The man reached. Corky swiped with the knife in a low
arc and the man's left hand came up and hit him on the side of the
head. Corky reeled to the side and the man simply reached again,
grabbed his wrist, bent his hand downwards with a violent jab and
the knife went tumbling out, spinning in the air, towards the clump
of roots where Corky had picked it up in the first place.</p>
<p>He did not hit Corky again. Instead, he turned, still dripping,
towards the ridge. Corky was breathing fast and the others on this
side of the stream swung their gaze from him to the stranger.</p>
<p>Twitchy Eyes picked up the gun.</p>
<p>Nobody moved. He picked it up, turned, quite purposefully and
with none of the dramatic, ritual slowness he'd displayed as he led
Billy down to the water. He walked back over the gravel from the
low turf ridge, swinging the butt upwards, one hand to the barrel.
His fingers locked on the stock. Danny stood there, breathing hard,
chin up defiantly. The rest of them were scared speechless.</p>
<p>"And again he defied him," Twitchy Eyes growled. "For a second
time."</p>
<p><em>Denied him.</em> Danny mentally corrected. He was back up in
those realms of icy clarity brought on by yet another burst of
extreme fear. <em>Not</em> defied <em>it's denied</em>! He almost
expected the cockerel down at Blackwood farm to crow again, in some
parody of punctuation for the biblical quotation, and if it did,
Doug might burst into his red rooster strut just to complete the
picture of unearthly craziness.</p>
<p>"Don't," Doug breathed. He was not strutting now. Tom's spastic
dry swallow was just a series of throaty clicks. Even Billy was
silent now. The man turned his head towards Danny and speared him
with those black, jittering eyes.</p>
<p>"Let he who is without sin throw the first stone," he rumbled.
"Are you without sin, boy?"</p>
<p>Danny couldn't speak. It was as if his own throat were bunged
full of dry paper.</p>
<p>"Are you in a state to meet eternity?"</p>
<p>He stared on for a long, drawn out moment, the eyes screwed up,
hardly twitching at all now, then he turned away from them. Tom
groaned like someone in pain. The eyes swung back to Corky and
transfixed him.</p>
<p>"And again he defied him." The voice was rising now, getting
back up to that creepy, dreamy level. "For the second time."</p>
<p>He bent closer. "You afraid boy? You scared?"</p>
<p>Corky said nothing. His teeth were still clenched together and
his lips drawn back as if he was holding himself all together with
a tremendous effort. His chin was still up.</p>
<p>"You will cross over boy. You will know what waits on the other
side. Prepare ye the way."</p>
<p>The gun came up, barrel pointing at the sky then swung down. The
man was less than six feet from where Corky stood with his arms
held out to the side, like a miniature wrestler who didn't know yet
which way to swivel. The man slowly stepped forward and brought the
muzzle right up against Corky's cheek.</p>
<p>There was no movement. They all watched that barrel maw as if it
was a poisonous snake completely mesmerised. It rose up, a
centimetre, an inch. It was directly over Corky's eye. Danny could
see the other eye, looking up, unblinking, still somehow defiant.
He could not quite believe what was happening.</p>
<p>The man's finger tightened on the trigger. "If thine eye offends
me."</p>
<p><em>NO!</em></p>
<p>The scream rang inside his head, high and desperate and echoing
on and on, but his mouth could not form the word. His lungs
couldn't force the air out. He was caught in the ice of freezing
terror.</p>
<p>The fingers squeezed. The voice almost wheedled now. "Pluck it
out."</p>
<p>Silence fell. The trigger pulled back. The silence stretched
out.</p>
<p>A loud metallic snap cracked the silence. The shotgun's hammer
pin slammed down onto an empty chamber with a sound that was
suddenly deafening.</p>
<p>John Corcoran swayed backwards. Very slowly his legs buckled
under him. He slumped to the ground and his eyes rolled up so far
only the whites were visible.</p>
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<h1>**#**</h1>
<p><em>August 4. Night.</em></p>
<p>The moon rose high in a cloudless sky, now almost completely
full.</p>
<p>The night was full of noises. Far down in the dark of the
valley, a pheasant hawked in alarm, sounding like a tin can scrape
on rough stone. Far up on the heathery moor a grouse croaked. Up on
the slope-side, some small thing, maybe a weasel, dislodged a small
stone and sent a trickle of gravel down in a whispery hiss. The
stream murmured. The fire, now hot and red, crackled and
sparked.</p>
<p>Billy Harrison sobbed. The pitiful sound of it, hardly muffled
at all by the canvas of the tent, tore at them. It was the sound of
utter despair and dejection and it was the sound of pain.</p>
<p>Corky sat silent, staring at the flames of the fire his eyes
glinting and reflecting the flickering red. He had not said a word
for hours. He had the same faraway look that Billy had in his own
eyes earlier that day, the mesmerised glazed stare of someone who
has recognised the closeness of his own end. They had all seen
Corky's end when their captor had squeezed on the trigger, but the
gun hadn't roared and bucked. The gun's firing pin had slammed down
on the empty chamber with a solid crack. Corky had fallen to the
ground as if all the nerves in his body had failed, as if all his
sinews had been cut.</p>
<p>Now it was night and the moon was up and the sounds of the
valley were overlaid with the sound of a boy's crying.</p>
<p>The knife was over in the gloom beside the boulders where it had
landed. It would do them no good now anyway.</p>
<p>Corky had lain there, still as death, arms spread-eagled for
nearly a minute and they had all stood there immobile, just looking
at him. None of them had been brave enough to move to help him.</p>
<p>"It's empty," Doug was thinking. Despite the fact that Corky was
down on the ground, he knew he wasn't dead. All he could think
about was the fact that the gun had been empty all this time. Since
the morning when Danny had gone clambering up the slope and he
himself had managed to get a hand to the second cartridge and send
it flipping into the pool, he could not remember the man reloading.
He'd assumed the lunatic had jammed another two shells into the
breech, but he must have forgotten. If he'd done that, then Corky
would still be lying there, but the rocks behind them would be
painted red with the insides of his head. Sudden relief made his
legs feel boneless.</p>
<p>The man had slowly lowered the gun and looked down at Corky,
almost curiously, as if surprised that the gun hadn't fired, as if
only mildly astonished that the boy's head hadn't been blown right
off his shoulders. The mad anger that had been in his eyes was now
replaced by a mad incredulity. He had stood there, possibly
contemplating his next move and the three of them had stood around
him, all of them wanting to run, none of them daring to, even
though they knew the gun wasn't loaded. Water dripped down the
man's legs. The word <em>Joyce</em> stood out clearly on the side
of his brawny biceps. Finally he turned his head and gave a little
shrug, as if that was this scene over and his interest in it was
done. He crossed to the stream, went down to the shallow part where
Billy was crouched on low, flat stone, pale and shivering, and took
him by the hand.</p>
<p>Corky's eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled down so that the
white crescents disappeared. He gave a little start, like somebody
just coming awake and raised his head dopily, as if unaware of his
surroundings. He shook himself, making his eyes focus, remembered
where he was and jerked up, spinning as he did, to get to his
knees.</p>
<p>"Take it easy," Danny hissed at him, getting a hand to his arm.
Tom stepped forward to help him to his feet. Corky's face was slack
and pale. He turned to Tom, as if he didn't recognise him either,
swung round to Danny, but he didn't look at him., he looked
<em>through</em> him, his gaze fixed on something in the faraway
distance.</p>
<p>"Corky?" Danny asked. Tom was slapping his friend's knuckles,
the way people were supposed to do with folk who'd fainted. Corky
didn't seem to notice.</p>
<p>"You okay? Hey?"</p>
<p>Very slowly, Corky nodded, but it was almost automatic. Billy
came up, led by the hand, his height and robust build still slight
by comparison to the man. He was shivering visibly and droplets of
water dripped from his elbows and from his chin. His hair was sleek
and plastered to his head and goosebumps had risen all over his
skin. He seemed entirely unaware that he was completely naked. The
man pointed at Doug and Danny, then flicked his hand to include the
other two.</p>
<p>"Fire," he said. "Get it going." He pulled Billy over to the
where his clothes were lying and told him to get dressed. Billy did
so without a word. He did not look at any of them, not then. It was
as if he had become isolated, by the depths of his fear, by the
fact that somehow the man had singled him out specially, no matter
what he'd done to the others. The man pulled on his shirt and
denims, jammed his feet in the old boots and then slung his coat
around Billy and made him sit down.</p>
<p>The others had backed off, Tom pulling Corky as they went, down
to the pile of logs they'd dragged up the previous day and began
hauling them up to the circle of stones. Corky moved slowly, as if
he'd not come entirely awake. The embers had cooled to grey ash,
but Phil Corcoran's stolen Ronson lighter was still in the burlap
bag and they used that to light the bundles of dry bracken to get
the fire started. The twigs caught quickly and soon the flames had
spread to the thicker branches, wavering bright, casting a glow
around the clearing and once again sending trails of sparks into
the sky. They dragged more logs up from the pile while the man
heated the last tin of oxtail soup.</p>
<p>By this time, Doug was faint with hunger and it may have been
that which made him go to his own rucksack and take out the bag of
potatoes they'd swiped from the field. There were still a few left.
He risked close proximity to the crazy man, edging close to the
fire, holding one arm across his face to shield it from the heat of
the blaze, while he stuffed the big early potatoes in to the ashes
by the side of the stones. The man finished his soup in silence,
dipping the now-stale bread into it and wolfing it down like an
animal. He offered some to Billy, but got no response at all. The
others sat down, closer to the tent, waiting for what would happen
next and the valley got darker as night begam to fall. After a
while, half an hour, maybe a bit more, the stranger stood up and
used one of the branches to scrape the potatoes from the fire. He
rolled the largest one clear of the others and trundled it closer
to where he sat. Doug didn't wait. He took that as tacit permission
and used a twig to get the rest free, leaving little trails of ash
as he manoeuvred them back from the heat. They had to wait a while
until they were cold enough to handle. They were black and
carbonised on the outside. They were still a bit solid and uncooked
in the centres, but to Dougie and Danny and Tom, those three baked
potatoes were the best food they could remember. Corky ate his
slowly and in complete silence. He was still distant, his mind far
away, or so it seemed. Danny wondered if maybe he'd cracked, and he
knew that if the crazy stranger had pointed the gun up to his eye
and pulled the trigger, he'd have shit himself, pissed his pants
and <em>then</em> cracked. The pain of the birdshot at more than a
hundred yards had been bad enough.</p>
<p>They ate and despite everything, they felt better for it. There
were three potatoes left in the trail of ashes and the man took the
other two. He thrust one at Billy, told him to eat, and finally
Billy took it. The others watched him slowly consume it, black skin
and all, until it was done.</p>
<p>An another half hour of silence stretched on while the shadows
lengthened up towards them and finally darkened everything except
for the circle around the fire. Eventually the man stood up and
stretched, yawned loudly and looked up at the sky. The moon was
still unrisen. Over by the corner of the tent was the roll of
fencing wire and the twine that had been used to loop them together
the previous night. Now the man took the thin wire and began to
unravel it.</p>
<p>"You're welcome to stay the night," he said to Doug, and his
voice sounded so normal, so ordinary, that it startled them.</p>
<p>Danny almost blurted out the instant reply that sprung to his
lips: "<em>No, it's okay. We'd better be going now.</em>"</p>
<p>He said nothing because the man simply took a hold of Doug's
shoulder and pushed him backwards, herding them all across to the
wall where they'd sat in the heat of the day after Danny's failed
escape attempt. He made them sit down again then fastened a loop of
wire around a thick root that coiled from a crevice in the rock.
Very quickly and expertly he slipped another around Doug's neck,
quickly twisting it until it was tight, then braided it before he
repeated the motion with Tom, then Danny and finally a silent and
slow-moving Corky. The loose end he whipped around the trunk of
another gnarled hawthorn stump, leaving them hobbled together,
separated only by braided strands of wire. The nooses were tight
enough to prevent real movement, but not biting like the garrotte
that had almost taken Billy's head off earlier in the day. The
knife was well out of reach and even if they could have got to it,
the old blade couldn't have cut through the metal wire. They were
caught, like rabbits in a snare. If they moved, they'd choke and
strangle.</p>
<p>After more of a while, the moon finally rose over the high edge.
The man with the twitchy eyes was facing it this time, sitting on
the tent-side of the fire, on one of the flat stones. Billy was
close by, like a pet, but unleashed. There was no need of a tether
when the man had some sort of mental noose that had already roped
him and bound him.</p>
<p>"Almost there, Conboy," he said. "Down in the valley again."</p>
<p>They all listened, because there was nothing else to do.</p>
<p>"What's that? Oh yes. You can sit there smiling if you like, but
they'll be back again. Yellow godless vermin. Not long now, but
we'll be waiting. Nowhere else to go."</p>
<p>He laughed again and Doug shuddered because the laugh just
sounded mad. "Flies got you Conboy, but you still smile on through,
because you know, don't you? You can see through."</p>
<p>He giggled and Danny felt a cough tickle in his throat and he
tried to breathe with his mouth wide open to prevent it. The
stranger was gone again, gone to wherever Conboy was, and he did
out want to attract attention. The moonlight glinted off the gun
barrels again.</p>
<p>"Dung fly. <em>Dung fly!</em> Conboy. I hear them again." He
raised the gun up in an expectant, protective way, peering into the
far on the far side of the stream. The conversation went on like
that for a long time while the moon crossed the stretch of sky that
hung over the valley. Every now and again, they'd hear the strange
cry: <em>Dung fly.</em> None of them knew what it meant. Danny
expected the man to fire into the shadows, because he knew he
couldn't have many shells left and if they had any chance at all,
they'd have to take it. It was just the second day since the man
had stepped across the stream while he and Billy were fishing, but
he knew now, with a desperate certainly, that there would not be a
third night. He was not sure they'd even survive this one, though
despite everything, the wire holding nooses around their necks were
actually a good sign, but they'd be dead by the time the full moon
climbed into the sky.</p>
<p>The man's rumbling voice tailed off into a guttural,
incomprehensible jabber which became a muttering and then a silence
for a while. Doug had dozed off and Tom snuggled against Danny for
warmth. Corky's eyes were open. Danny could see them if he squirmed
round to look. They reflected the firelight and hardly blinked at
all and Danny quailed at the thought that Corky might have lost his
marbles and be unable to think, unable to act when they had to.
Corky was the one who could think on his feet and the one who could
lead them when they needed to be led.</p>
<p>"You okay?" he asked very quietly, nudging his friend. Corky
never blinked, but he did nod slowly. Finally, after what seemed
like a long time, he turned round, taking his eyes off the man.</p>
<p>"Don't you worry about me, Danny boy. Get some sleep if you
can." Relief surged. Corky hadn't gone crazy. He'd looked death
straight in the eye, the bravest thing any of them had ever seen
and by rights he should be dead. He'd maybe just taken a while to
come to grips with that idea.</p>
<p>A half an hour passed and the flames were beginning to die down
a little. Doug was snoring very softly, his big buck teeth catching
the light. Tom was still jammed against Danny's side when the man
got up and without ceremony, lifted Billy by the collar. Billy, who
was almost asleep, whimpered in sudden fright, but the man ignored
it. He hefted the gun in his other hand and crossed over to the
tent, dragging Billy behind him through the ashes beside the
stones. With not a word, he bent and went into the tent, pulled the
boy behind him. The flap slipped down and closed.</p>
<p>"What's he doing?" Tom asked. He had woken with a start, digging
an elbow into Danny's back and the sudden flare of pain had almost
brought a blurting yell that was only just swallowed back.</p>
<p>Billy whimpered again. The tent was just along dark oblong
against the deeper dark of the hollow. Only the front was visible.
There was a knock and a vibration as something jarred against the
upright pole. The man said something low, and Billy wailed. It was
just a soft sound, but it was a wail. None of them had heard him
make that sound before.</p>
<p>"What is it?" Tom wanted to know. He was pulling against the
wire and it gave his voice a strange, tight quality that would
otherwise have been funny and now just sounded strangled.</p>
<p>"Just take it off," the man said, now quite clear.</p>
<p>"Dirty bastard," Doug hissed. "He's touching him."</p>
<p>They couldn't know that for sure. Billy made that little
childlike noise again, the way a kid will when it's forced to do
something it doesn't want to do. It reminded Tom of his little
sister Maureen. She hadn't liked the taste of the medicine and
she'd shaken her head, moaning like that, trying to let it dribble
out of her mouth. He jerked against the wire, suddenly tense and
shaking.</p>
<p>"He's touching him," Doug repeated. He's a dirty
<em>bastard!</em>" In the light of the fire his face was twisted
into a snarl that managed to convey disgust, anger and horror. They
all knew that anyway, from what had happened to Mole Hopkirk, from
the awful damage whispered in the classrooms and street corners,
not quite fully understood by boys just on the cusp of
comprehension.</p>
<p>The man said something else, almost in a whisper, almost
wheedling and Billy began to cry. It was soft enough, but it was a
desolate sound. Doug made a little growling sound in the back of
his throat, probably unaware that he made any noise at all. There
was nothing any of them could do. The wire held them by their
necks, like tethered animals.</p>
<p>"What for?" Danny asked stupidly. He knew, albeit vaguely, about
queers, the kind of people who wanted to touch boys and stick their
dicks in their backsides although he didn't quite understand why
they would want to do so.</p>
<p>"Because he's a fuckin' dirty homeo <em>bastard</em>," Doug
grated.</p>
<p>Over in the tent the sounds stopped and Doug froze. Corky had
his head cocked to the side, just listening, sitting completely
motionless. Tom was trembling quite violently now, though the night
wasn't cold. Danny's back was throbbing again and the skin felt
tight and strained, as if it might suddenly split into cracks and
fissures.</p>
<p>"No," Billy said in a small, pleading voice, not at all like his
robust, bragging cockiness that aggravated all of them most of the
time.</p>
<p>"It's all right." Soothing, strangely more frightening than
ever.</p>
<p>"No but..." Billy's voice rising in panic.</p>
<p>"Shut up boy." There was a thud which could have been a fist on
a face, or a head hitting turf. Billy grunted, much the same way
Doug had done when he'd been knocked to the ground by the gun butt
He cried out and the man snarled something incomprehensible. Fabric
ripped. At first Danny thought it was the scrape of a zip
unfastened violently, then he saw the pale hand gripping the fabric
of the tent at the ragged edge where he'd cut the canvas to crawl
through. The canvas ripped further and the opening yawned blackly
before the hand was suddenly whipped away and the two edges sprung
back together again.</p>
<p>Billy screamed. Corky jerked forward and was pulled back,
gasping, hands up to protect his neck.</p>
<p>"Jesus," he gasped.</p>
<p>The man grunted, a sound like a beast in the dark and Billy
screamed again, high and girlish and sharp as glass, a dreadful
sound that cut into the still air. The man grunted again, deep and
hoarse, a guttural wordless groan of effort.</p>
<p>"He's killing him," Tom cried, voice on the verge of cracking
into tears.</p>
<p>"Bastard," Doug said. He was quivering like a bowstring, his
long arms out in front of him, hands curled into impotent, bony
fists.</p>
<p>Billy could cry all he wanted. He could scream for help and
screech and howl, but nobody would hear him. Up here, this far from
town, nothing could be heard. Here in the cleft of the valley so
far up beyond the Barwoods, the clatter of the trains, or the
clanking of the steam hammer down at Castlebank shipyard, or the
screech of hot metal in the old forge, none of the noises of town
penetrated this far. The screams of a hurt boy wouldn't carry much
into the dark of the trees before it was smothered by the shadows
and the leaves. From a few hundred yards down in the forest, it
would just sound like an injured fox.</p>
<p>The sounds he made were dreadful, harsh and frantic, cutting
right into the others, punctuated only by the mindless sounds of
the man in the shadow of the tent.</p>
<p>"Stop it!" Tom whinnied. "Stop it stop it <em>stop it!</em>" he
had his eyes tight closed and his hands up at his ears, knuckled
right into them to cut out the awful sounds. Gentle Tom who hadn't
wanted this adventure, who had wanted to stay at home and try to
get by, and find some accommodation with his aching loss. He'd
stood and put his hand on Corky's shoulder on the night everything
was blowing apart and had somehow managed to keep the bonds from
breaking, but he could not cope with any more of this. Tears were
squeezing out between screwed up lids and catching the red of the
fire and the white of the moon. For that moment, he had lost his
fear for himself. He just wanted Billy to stop crying and to stop
hurting.</p>
<p>The grunting sound was coming faster and Danny could visualise
the old boar at McFall's farm, a great heavy brute with mean eyes
and slanted teeth that could cut through an ash sapling in one
snap. Other farmers would put it to their sows and half the time it
would try to hook them with its tusks, gouging thin slashes up
their flanks. Then it would mount them quickly and it would grunt
and snort, dribbling snot from it's snout and saliva from its oddly
grinning jaws. Danny had seen it get ready, with its long spiral
dick punching in and out, twisting like a vicious corkscrew. In his
mind's eye, he imagined the crazy man on top of Billy, just like
the pig and despite having seen the crazy stranger's penis swing
like a club, he imagined the corkscrew boring in to flesh and
blood, ripping and rending. He shivered and his own sphincter
puckered and tightened of its own volition.</p>
<p>Billy screamed again and the grunts and porcine snorts were
coming faster. The noise was getting louder too. Danny wanted to
shut it out and began to raise his own hands up when he felt a tug
on the wire, hard enough to pull it firmly against the skin of his
neck. He twisted round, wincing against the sudden flare between
his shoulderblades and stopped dead.</p>
<p>Corky had arched his neck out of the loop, pushing so far
forward that the fencing wire was biting into the skin just inside
the collar of his shirt. Danny could see the white line where the
wire was dug right in. Corky's body was twisted and his hands were
pulling at the wire to let him get his jaw down to the braided
piece that connected him to Danny. His face was screwed up into a
grimace of concentration that looked like pain and <em>was</em>
pain as far as Danny could tell. His teeth were flashing in the
moonlight.</p>
<p>The tug came again, a metallic thrumming sound that sent a
vibration across the wire to Danny's own neck. Danny had to twist
almost as uncomfortably to see what was going on and even then it
took several seconds for it to dawn on him.</p>
<p>Corky was trying to gnaw through the wire.</p>
<p>Danny could hear the grind of teeth on metal, a dreadful
scraping sound that was like fingernails on a blackboard, chalk on
glass. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in
unison. Corky's eyes were closed and his teeth were gritted on the
wire and he was working the metal back and forth, desperately
trying to chew his way through the tough steel. The sight of it
made Danny quail. It was as much animal as the grunting pig sounds
from inside the tent, and the awful mindless screech of pain from
Billy.</p>
<p>It was like a rabbit caught in a snare, or a fox caught in a gin
trap. They could gnaw their way through their own foot, biting
through fur and skin and gristle and bone to get free, no matter
what the cost. Danny could hear the thrumming of the wire every
time Corky's teeth slipped off the thin brain and the jarring clash
of his teeth as they ground together.</p>
<p>If Corky was desperate enough to try to gnaw his way through the
wire, then he must be really frantic, Danny realised. The thought
of such desperation brought a sudden surge of black fear that
swamped him to numbed stillness.</p>
<p>Tom was shuddering now, making little jerky movements while he
cried silently. Doug was snuffling and rocking back and forth to
the extent that the wire noose would let him. Danny sat still and
thought about what Corky was doing and what the man was doing and
he wished he could close his eyes and make it all go away. A
deadly, lethargic tiredness was dragging over him, brought on by
the brutal attack of freezing terror. For a moment the sounds faded
down to hardly anything and the light of the fire diminished. All
he could feel, for a while, was the thrumming of the wire as Corky
tried to bite his way free.</p>
<p>After a while all the sounds stopped. Corky slumped back,
exhausted with the effort. His neck audibly creaked and he moved
his shoulders up and down to get the cramp out of them.</p>
<p>Billy started to sob. The loud and frenzied pain-scream had
faded now to a shuddering, liquid moan inside the tent, a desolate,
lost sob of profound despair and hurt that was as bad as the shrill
cry of pain. The man spoke, now soothing again, that creepy, oily
sound they'd heard before the dreadful grunting. Doug was still
rocking, like an animal in a cage, needing to move.</p>
<p>The tent rustled. Some scuffling sounds followed and the man
came out again and went towards the fire. He was naked from the
waist up. His skin glowed red in the firelight and he looked up,
like some primitive savage, at the moon now half-way across the
black sky. Danny expected him to howl at it, but he said nothing at
all. He looked at the moon for a long while, then ambled across to
the lower rocks, opened his trousers and sent out a crescent of
piss that glittered in the moonlight. After a while he came back
towards the tent. He stopped close by and looked over at them.</p>
<p>"Peaceful night," he said, quite solemnly, with no hint of a
grin or a mad smile. He bent down and went back into the tent.</p>
<p>Billy was sobbing softly. The night noises, silenced by his
screams, had started up again in the trees and on the moor where
the curlew piped its lonely notes. The night wore on and the fire
began to fade as Billy's snuffling tapered to silence. The moon
crossed further and the fire-glare died to a warm glow, dopplering
down through the levels of red while the logs settled as they
turned to ash.</p>
<p>After a while Tom snuggled back into Danny's side again and Doug
crouched with his head rested in his hands, dozing lightly. Corky
arched his neck again, pulling at the wire, and started to gnaw
once more.</p>
<p>"You'll never get through it," Danny whispered.</p>
<p>"No such thing as never," Corky pulled back from the wire,
breathing heavily with the effort. His opened and closed his mouth
several times, easing the straining muscles.</p>
<p>"Not in one night," Danny said. "You'll need a week. Can't you
reach the knife."</p>
<p>Corky shook his head. "No. It's too far. And we don't have a
week. We've got to get out of here. He's hurt us all, but I think
he'll get worse. He's waiting for something."</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"Christ knows," Corky said. "Full moon or something. He's a
bloody vampire or a werewolf. He's off his head."</p>
<p>"But you'll never get through that tonight," Danny said,
unhelpfully.</p>
<p>"You got a better idea?" Corky's hiss sounded hard and
angry.</p>
<p>Danny shook his head. Corky's eyes gleamed, almost ferociously.
"Me neither. Wish I had. I should have stabbed him today. I could
have. I could maybe have hit him with it. Stuck it in his throat if
I'd thrown it."</p>
<p>"You can't throw for peanuts," Danny said and a strange, panicky
little laugh tried to bubble up inside him. "You're as bad as
Phil."</p>
<p>"Thought you were a goner today Dan, honest to God." Corky
changed the subject, giving Danny a quick and almost desperate
grin. "Scared me to death when you came off that slope. Thought you
were dead for sure. I couldn't believe it when you hit the water,
and then I couldn't believe it even more when you weren't plugged
full of lead."</p>
<p>"Me too," Danny agreed. In his mind the world still whirled as
he fell. On his back, the pain pulsed, not hot, but steady and
warm.</p>
<p>"And I thought <em>I</em> was dead today. Jesus, I really
did."</p>
<p>"Me too," Danny repeated. "Scared the shite out of me."</p>
<p>"I never knew it wasn't loaded. It was all happening. He was
drowning Billy and I just got angry and I couldn't stop myself and
then when he pointed the gun at me, I don't know what happened. I
just stayed angry and I wasn't going to let him know I was
scared."</p>
<p>"Weren't you? I was really shitting myself."</p>
<p>"Honest to god Danny, I don't remember. I was looking him in his
eye and right up the end of that gun with the other and I heard it
go off. Like <em>boom.</em> It hit eyebone and I thought it had
fired and that was it. I just fell down dead. I couldn't believe it
when I opened my eyes and saw Doug's over there. The sun was
shining through his ears and it was kind of funny looking. I must
have fainted I suppose. I never fainted before. It's not all that
bad."</p>
<p>He paused for a moment, looked up at the moon, then turned to
Danny.</p>
<p>"It was Doug that saved me. If it wasn't for him, I'd be a
goner, or you would be. If he hadn't got that other cartridge and
slung it in the water, you'd have had both barrels, or I'd have had
it in the head. That took guts, real guts."</p>
<p>Danny was picturing Corky snatching up the knife to challenge
the crazy man, sweeping it in front of him as he approached, not
flinching at all. He was thinking about the look in his eye as the
gun barrel trailed up to the other one, unblinking, not giving an
inch.</p>
<p>"Not as much as you," he said vehemently. "I hope I never see
anything like that as long as I live. I couldn't even speak, I was
so scared. Weren't you frightened?"</p>
<p>"Course I was, but it was really weird. I thought that was it
for me. I really did, and I went all sort of cold, like numb, you
know? Everything was really slow. His eyes were twitching away, and
I thought, 'This is it Corky' and you'll never believe it, but you
know Cuchullain. The hero? I thought about him and what he'd do,
and I thought I'm not going to let him see I'm feart."</p>
<p>"You really thought that?"</p>
<p>"I think so. But maybe I dreamed it when I fell down. I just
remember looking into his eye and everything was frozen cold. But I
know something now."</p>
<p>"What's that?"</p>
<p>"If I get out of here, I'm never going to be scared of anything
again in my life. Not Phil, not my old man. Nobody and nothing. If
I can beat him, I can beat <em>anything</em>."</p>
<p>"Hells flaming bells, Corky," Danny said, feeling the mad ripple
of laughter trying to erupt again, "I never thought you were scared
of anybody anyway."</p>
<p>"Shows you what a good actor I am, don't it?"</p>
<p>He smiled quickly, suddenly boyish for that one moment, then he
arched his neck to get his teeth to the wire. He started to gnaw
again, making that awful grinding sound. After a while he had to
lean back and take a break from the exertion.</p>
<p>"Dan," he said, easing his jaw once more, and panting heavily.
"I didn't mean just me. Getting out of here, that is. We'll make
it, honest we will. Bet you any money. You and me, we got a
miracle, so we did. We're still alive when the both of us should be
dead, so I know for sure we'll get another chance."</p>
<p>He looked over again, and any boyish grin was gone. "But it has
to be tonight, because he won't give us another chance after
this."</p>
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<h1>31</h1>
<p><em>Interlude:</em></p>
<p>"We called him Gideon," the old soldier said.</p>
<p>The name gave me a shiver. It somehow fit. He was remembering
and so was I. It had taken me a while to track him down, an old
trooper from one of the old Highland regiments. I had an advantage
now over Angus McNicol, for by this time I'd listened over and over
to his gruff voice on the tapes, and I'd looked through a bunch of
papers I'd managed to turn up along with the ones he gave me. Old
Jean McColl's wild poppy petal was still pressed between the pages
of her diary, a distant memory captured. The pages of Doc Bell's
pathology reports on Jean and Little Lucy Saunders and the others,
those pages were yellow now with age. The words on them, however
were still stark and somehow still deadly. The catalogue of ruin
carried out at the hands of a true madman, was appalling. Forgive
me if I don't list them here. You don't want to know.</p>
<p>I spent some time taking notes and asking questions, because I
had to know. I was driven along. There were clues I knew, clues I
hadn't thought about in a long time, but now, in hindsight, they
stood out like beacons. Those tattoos, for instance. <em>Lesley
Joyce</em>. Old man McColl had read them wrong first time. Jean had
seen them on the day she died and that's why she'd underlined them
in her frantic message. Poor doomed woman had been trying to tell
them.</p>
<p>Lesley and Joyce. Probably old girlfriends from way before the
madness.</p>
<p>And Sergeant Conboy, the name the man kept muttering, twitching
his head every time he called it out. Another clue. McNicol had
thought the man was army and I put two and two together. A
newspaperman can talk to anybody. For the price of a few beers,
most folk will talk their heads off. I knew it had to be a soldier,
somebody who had served abroad. It took a while to find the old
army lists and some time longer to search them all. There were four
Sergeant Conboys way back in the fifties, and I travelled a bit to
find some of the men who had served with them.</p>
<p>Finally I found the man I wanted to talk to.</p>
<p>"Gideon. He always had his nose stuck in the bible and he was
always quoting tracts. The name just stuck. I'm telling you, he was
one scary nutter. He thought the locals were animals, less than
beasts. We were with the Gordons, but most of us were on national
service, just two-year men. It was two years I could have done
without."</p>
<p>Albert McAulay was a barrel of a man with a full head of
iron-grey hair cut in an old fashioned crew-cut, the kind you see
on German colonels in old war movies. He drank pints of Guinness
slowly and steadily, sitting in the corner of the Horseshoe Bar up
in the city. At first he was a bit hazy, saying he couldn't
remember that much, but it was clear he just hadn't thought about
it for a long time, or maybe didn't want to. When he did start
talking, once he got into gear, he couldn't stop.</p>
<p>"I real lunatic. I remember that Vietnam stuff, you know, that
My-Lai carry-on where the Yanks shot up a village? When that
happened I thought it must be more common than you'd think. A lot
of bad things happen in wars.</p>
<p>"Gideon, he went really crazy some time in the second year, when
we were jungle-bashing in Malaya. We were somewhere in south
Selangor, on patrol, hunting the CT's, what we called the communist
terrorists, and you never knew who was who. They all looked the
same and they all spoke the same. Some of our boys called them the
Dung Fly people, because that's what they said all the time. It
meant something like "we're friends" or "don't shoot". Nobody knew
what. Or cared. It was hot and sticky and we were scared shitless
most of the time. You couldn't see a yard in front of your face
until you got to a clearing and then you had to watch for grenades
or crossfire. It was murder."</p>
<p>Albert wiped his florid face and took a deep pull on his
beer.</p>
<p>"<em>Non tare roger</em>. That's what the signals man said on
the radio. Nothing to report. And sometimes there <em>was</em>
something to report. We were to deny food and comfort to the enemy.
We rounded up villagers and put them in trucks and took them fifty
miles down the road. That was to drive the bandits deep into the
jungle, but that was bad for us who had to go in and get them, us
and the Iban scouts who could scent a trail like dogs. They were
nothing much more than animals.</p>
<p>"So one time we came across this place, deep in at
<em>Ipoh</em>, a village at the bottom of a steep valley. Me and
Sergeant Conboy and crazy old Gideon, we took the right flank, and
all of a sudden, there was gunfire and the shit was hitting the fan
and everybody was yelling. Smoke from a couple of flares, and a lot
of confusion. The village was pretty big - pigs and kids an running
about, screaming like banshees. Gideon he came out from the side
and let rip. Me and Conboy saw him. He just raked a whole group of
kids and I remember the grin on is face. Conboy pulled him back,
trying to shout over all the noise and despite that, yon mental
bastard turns round and grins.</p>
<p>"Heathens," he says and I heard it clear as day. "Worse than
animals."</p>
<p>"He just turned back with his gun. Two women were running for
cover and he shot them both, laughing all the while. Just then, two
of the locals came out with parangs, big machetes, and came running
for us. There were shots behind them and we thought it had to be
bandits, so we opened fire and put the men down. By this time the
bible thumper had vanished and we were in the middle of it. It
wasn't until later that we found him round the back of a burning
hut with a girl. He'd been giving her one, just a little kid of ten
or eleven, and he had cut her. Swear on a stack of bibles, he had
cut her little tits off and slit her mouth from ear to ear. She was
still moving."</p>
<p>Albert drank deep, remembering now.</p>
<p>"I'm telling you, it gave me the shivers. I was still fired up,
still all going from the excitement, and it didn't shock me the way
it normally would, but I still had the shivers. Conboy pulled him
away. God, he nearly hit him with his rifle, and the big fellow, he
just turned round, grinning, as if he'd just told a good joke.</p>
<p>"After that, we had to keep an eye on him, until we got back to
the platoon base. Nobody said anything, but Conboy had been called
back to operations and Major Cantley told him to take Gideon with
him, just to get him out. In those days, out in the jungle, what
happened was left there. Things didn't leak out the way they would
now. Official secrets and all that. Anyway, Conboy's in the truck
and they head off an that's the last anybody hears of them for
three weeks. They sent search parties out, but it was needle in a
haystack stuff over there. We heard the RAF, lost a flight of five
transports just forty miles from HQ, and one of them were ever seen
again. That jungle was thick, man.</p>
<p>"The Suffolks in the south, they got word. Some tribesmen came
out and said two or three of their boys had been killed by a
soldier. They checked it out and sure enough, they found your man
and Conboy in the truck. It had gone off the road and rolled down
to the edge of a river and Conboy, he was as dead as a dodo. He'd
been shot in the head and his brains were all gone. The Suffolks
told us there was nothing left of him. The flies and the ants there
are pretty fierce and they keep themselves busy. Gideon, if he was
crazy before, he was really gone now. He'd kept himself alive by
catching the little fish and eels in the water that came right up
to his waist in the rains and he'd blown a couple of the natives to
kingdom come when they came to investigate. I remember the brass
were pretty suspicious, because Conboy's head injury looked like a
close-up shot, but by that time an investigation would have been a
waste of time. Gideon was round the twist. Completely barmy.</p>
<p>"After that he was shipped home, mad as a fuckin' hatter. Last I
heard, he was in Chessington, where they take all the army head
injuries. After that, I dunno. Maybe it was Broadmoor or some other
loony bin.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 4. Midnight:</em></p>
<p>"None of your damned business, Conboy. You just sit there
watching, that's all you have to do. Flies in your eyes."</p>
<p>The voice boomed out from the hollow. The stranger was just a
black shadow, hunkered down now in front of the stag's head. The
flies were silent in the ark. A breeze of wind in the cooling night
air carried the scent of carrion past the man and over to the line
of boys looped together beside the low wall of rock. It was greasy
and foul, the stench of corruption.</p>
<p>"They crossed over too, dirty heathens. Dirty. <em>Dung
Fly!</em> You can see them. Shouldn't have tried to stop me
neither, should you? <em>Non Tare Roger</em>. Got another eye to
see with now."</p>
<p>He had been talking for a while now, over in the dark where his
shape was just a shadow in the rest of the shadows. His voice rose
and fell. One minute he would quote a passage from the bible, and
the next he'd be talking to his imaginary listener. None of it made
any sense.</p>
<p>None of the tethered boys risked talking. Over in the tent,
Billy's whimpering had slowed down and stopped. Corky's efforts on
the wire had ceased for the moment. He was leaning back as far as
the noose would let him, with the side of his head against a
tussock. Doug was still sitting with his head resting in his hands.
He was breathing shallowly.</p>
<p>After a while the man's hoarse babbling died away and there was
silence for a while, broken only by the night noises and the
tumbling water of the stream at the falls where now only three
heron feathers stood. After more of while, the man's shape appeared
quite suddenly, his face caught by the moonlight as he walked
silently from the hollow. He was quite naked, like a primitive
warrior, his broad frame glistening with sweat despite the cool of
the night. He stood looking at them for a moment, as if considering
what to do, or maybe just checking that they were still there and
that the wore would hold them until morning, then went back inside
the tent. The moon slipped down beyond the west side of the valley,
casting their glade into deep darkness that was alleviated only by
the silver light in the sky and the dying embers of the fire.</p>
<p>Danny dreamed.</p>
<p>He was falling. He was tumbling over and over with the fire
searing and burning across his back while his skin shrivelled and
melted.</p>
<p>"Defied me thrice. <em>Thrice!</em>" It was the voice of the
twitchy eyed stranger, yet at the same time, impossibly, it was his
father's voice, echoing down from on high, forbidding and
reproving. "Forty days and forty nights did they fall to the
exterior darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of
teeth."</p>
<p>Up where the moonlight rippled on the surface, he could hear the
boom of the cannons on the ramparts of the old castle, fired to
bring the bodies to the surface. Dead Paulie Degman's face swam in
front of him.</p>
<p>"<em>Yeah</em>, we are in the valley of death, Danny, and
<em>yeah</em>, we fear evil. Prepare ye the way. Make good the
path, for he comes when you do not expect him and he will
cut..."</p>
<p>No! Danny tried to scream. It was all wrong. In his ears, the
beat of his heart was like a drum and he struggled for breath,
panicked, flailed to get away from Paulie. The dead boy's eyes were
pale in the dark, pale and blind and the lips were flapping in the
flow of the river water.</p>
<p>"Defied me thrice, defied me thrice," another voice was rasping
out and Danny closed his ears to it, because if he defied thrice
something would happen and that would mean it was.....</p>
<p>He woke with a start and a scream half blurted on dried lips.
The wire was pulling right into his neck and he gasped aloud,
hauling for a painful breath. He had slipped down and his back was
scraping on the old twigs and thorns that had fallen from the
hawthorn tree, setting his swollen bruises aflame.</p>
<p>"You OK Danny?" Tom asked softly.</p>
<p>For a moment Danny was unfocussed, disoriented. The moon was
gone and the fire nearly dead. He realised he was still alive and
not drowning and not falling and that ghostly Paulie had only been
in his dream. He turned round quickly, rasping his neck and back in
the process, to check Corky, still able to see his wasted face
floating in front of him, grinning sadly.</p>
<p>"I think so," he whispered back, very shakily.</p>
<p>"He took Billy out. I saw him. Billy needed the bathroom and he
let him out. They went down to the stream and he washed him down
with water." Tom's voice was thin and shivery. The night had gone
cold. "What's he going to do to us?"</p>
<p>"I dunno," Danny said. Even at this stage, after all that had
happened, it was still hard to believe that the man would really
kill them. All the evidence to the contrary was there. He had shot
at Danny and would have killed Corky as he had done to Mole Degman
and the others, but even then the flare of hope and disbelief was
in them. They were just boys.</p>
<p>"What's Corky doing?"</p>
<p>"He's asleep I think."</p>
<p>"Can he get through the wire?"</p>
<p>Danny shook his head, sending a negative vibration to Tom.
"Nobody can."</p>
<p>Tom squirmed, a little shudder that Danny picked up by return.
"What's the matter?"</p>
<p>"I need....I have to have a pee."</p>
<p>"Well go."</p>
<p>"I can't," Tom said. "Not here."</p>
<p>"Sure you can, Danny whispered. "our hands aren't tied."</p>
<p>"But I can't here. There's nowhere for it to go. I'll be in it.
Sitting in it."</p>
<p>"That's the least of your worries," Danny whispered tightly. He
didn't understand what Tom's problem was.</p>
<p>"No. I can't," Tom insisted. His voice was rising above a
whisper.</p>
<p>"Why the hell not?"</p>
<p>There was a silence. Tom gulped hard. Both of his hands were
forced down on his crotch again, the way he'd been when they had
all come down the valley at gunpoint.</p>
<p>"It's Maureen," Tom said and this time his voice did crack again
into a half sob. "My wee sister." Danny nodded, remembering the
thin little girl with thin arms and skin like quartz underlain with
dull, cloudy bruises. Tom pushed his hand into his crotch, like a
toddler holding in the need. He let out a little moan.</p>
<p>"When she...." he started. "I mean. I was <em>there</em>."</p>
<p>Danny didn't have to say anything. Everybody knew Tom had been
there. His old man had been working up at Lochend on the new road,
digging drains with the team of navvies and Tom's mother, a small,
spare woman with the same pale freckles Tom had and the same washed
out curly hair, she'd had to go out to the shops. Tom had been left
in with Maureen and that was something he never minded at all,
because she was his kid sister and she was sick and she liked him
to read stories to her. Danny had been with him when he'd swiped
the book from the library in the winter, stolen it so he wouldn't
have to give it back, and he remembered it had been Billy Goats
Gruff, the one about the troll under the bridge. He recalled Tom
getting badly upset when somebody mentioned little Lucy Saunders
under the bridge at Ladyburn Stream near the outlet at the Rough
Drain.</p>
<p>"I was there, just me on my own," Tom said. "Mo, our Maureen,
she was pretty sick. She'd been up in the night, but my mum had to
go down town to get something. I think it was the cough mixture for
Mo because the thing she had, it made her cough all the time and
she had a sore throat."</p>
<p>Tom raised one hand to wipe away a tear. "I was in with her,
playing with my dinky toys on the floor and she asked me to read
the story again. Remember that book I nicked? She loved that one.
She always said it made her go all squirmy and every time I read
it, she squealed like she was scared but she wasn't really. She
loves the bit where the thing says: '<em>Who's trip tap tapping on
my bridge</em>.' "</p>
<p>Danny picked up the slip of tenses. <em>She loves.</em> Little
Mo had died before Christmas. Danny had experience of death, the
whole town had by now, but it was all second hand and at a
distance, even counting Paulie down by the river. He had not lost
anybody he loved. Not like a sister or anything.</p>
<p>"And I said OK, I'll read a bit. I never minded, 'cos she really
liked it and it made her laugh. She was all right, and that's why
my Ma went out. She had to get things and it wasn't her fault she
wasn't there. But I didn't know what to do." Tom choked up a little
and Danny sat silent. Tom sniffed and started again.</p>
<p>"I was reading and she was all scrunched up in the pillows, and
I was just getting to the good bit when she said she had to go to
the bathroom. It was dead quiet the way she said it and I said hold
on a minute and I'll just finish this bit and she looked up at me.
She had these big dark bits under her eyes, like a panda, you know,
like somebody had skelped her a couple of good ones. She said it
was film-star's make up and she was going to be like Audrey Hepburn
when she grew up, except she said Audie Hebum 'cause she couldn't
speak right with her front teeth out and I said it would be Audie
Murphy and she never knew what I was talking about. Only she wasn't
going to grow up, was she?"</p>
<p>Danny heard the bitterness of loss and bleak hopelessness in
Tom's voice.</p>
<p>"So I said, wait until I've finished the page and she looked up
at me and said: '<em>I have to go to the bathroom, can you help me
Tommy?</em>'"</p>
<p>"It was just like that. She was kind of smiling and kind of
frowning, like she was thinking hard and her eyes were open and I
got up to get the pot from the corner. She could only use the pot
because she was too sore to get to the bathroom, you know? I went
to get the pot and she was still staring like that. I never even
knew. Honest to god Danny, I never knew. I thought maybe if I
hadn't finished the end of the page, maybe I could have....."</p>
<p>The tears were catching the last of the dying fireglow.</p>
<p>"I lifted her up, and she had wet the bed. She was lying in her
own pee. I could smell it and I never even knew then. She was still
staring at me, that funny way, dead still and I was trying to lift
her up. There was a puddle underneath her and it made a noise and I
never even knew. Oh shit Danny. She said she needed to go, but
she'd already done it and she was lying in it. My wee sister.
Maureen."</p>
<p>Now Danny realised why Tom hadn't wanted to hear about little
Lucy Saunders. She had died under the bridge, in the muck in the
hollow of the concrete chamber, in a puddle of her own piss. The
story had gone round the school like a brush-fire, the first
killing, so far as was known at the time, at the hands of this
twitchy-eyed killer who was now in the dark of the tent with Billy
Harrison.</p>
<p>"I couldn't do anything," Tom was saying. "I never knew."</p>
<p>He began to sob softly. Hand still pressed in hard. "And I can't
do it here. I don't want to sit in it. Not here. I don't want to
die in my own piss."</p>
<p>"Jees, Tom, I never knew that's what happened." Doug's voice was
low, coming from his shadow on the far side. They hadn't realised
he was awake. "You should have said."</p>
<p>"I couldn't say. Nobody should die in their own pee, nobody,
especially a wee kid like Maureen. I told my Ma I would die to
bring her back. She was screaming blue murder and she hit me, but
there was nothing I could do. I <em>would</em> have died to bring
her back, you know. Honest I would. I can still hear her talking.
Every night when I go to bed, I can hear her asking for that story
and then I can hear her telling me she needs to go to the bathroom.
And now I can't do it. Not here."</p>
<p>"That's okay Tommy," Doug whispered. They heard him fumble in
his pocket and then, a few moments later, the snick of something
tearing. Danny smelled a peculiar odour on the air. Doug fumbled
some more, then reached out. Something thin and floppy dangled from
his hand.</p>
<p>"Piss into this," he said. Danny stretched to see. Doug's teeth
were glinting in the light. In his hand, Phil Corcoran's second
condom dangled. Tom looked at it for several seconds before he
realised what it was. He slowly reached his free hand and took it,
unzipped his jeans. They all watched, though in the dark there was
nothing to see. They heard a hiss of water spurting. The condom
expanded very quickly and they smelled its odd scent mixed with the
hot smell of urine. After about a minute, Tom let out a long sigh.
He lifted the ballooning rubber by the neck. It wobbled a little.
Very quickly he tied the neck to seal it, reached out beyond the
little hollow and put it on the ground. It rolled several feet
until it got half-way to the tent. There it hit something sharp and
burst without a sound except for the sudden gurgle of water which
drained into the dry grass.</p>
<p>"Thanks Doug."</p>
<p>"Don't mention it," Doug said. "I wasn't going to use it anyway.
It's too bloody big."</p>
<p>He was silent for a while and all three of them sat still while
they listened to the night noises, the rustlings and the occasional
distant cry of a wild bird far off in the gloom of the trees.
Finally Doug spoke up again.</p>
<p>"You think he's all right? Billy, I mean."</p>
<p>They knew who he meant. "I think so," Danny said, more in hope
than in any certainty. They had listened to Billy's heartbreaking
sobs for a long time after his squeals of pain had diminished. The
man, <em>Twitchy Eyes,</em> he didn't seem to notice the noise, or
if he did, it didn't bother him. Billy had been snuffling when the
man had come out to hunker by the skulls and speak to a man who
wasn't there.</p>
<p>"I never meant this to happen to him," Doug said. "I wished I
never said he should have his neck wrung. I was just pissed off,
know what I mean?"</p>
<p>They all knew what he meant. It had been a dreadful, brittle and
dangerous moment.</p>
<p>"Christ a'mighty, I should never have told him about his old
man. But he was always having a go at me. All the time. But honest
to God, I never wanted this to happen to him. I mean, it was just
because I was angry when he said that about Terry. That was a
really rotten thing to say."</p>
<p>"Yeah. And you were rotten to him," Tom said. "But it's
finished. It doesn't matter."</p>
<p>"I'd take it back if I could. No kidding. I don't want Billy to
get hurt again. Not from that dirty bastard. If I could take it
back I really would. It doesn't matter about Terry. He's my
brother, isn't he? What difference does it make? Nothing! I still
love the little creep, no matter what. And my Mum and Dad, they'll
be okay, won't they? In Toronto?"</p>
<p>Danny and Tom could hear Doug was laying it out like a grid,
wishing it to happen.</p>
<p>"Maybe they'll stop arguing all the time. It scares me
sometimes. It used to be okay, but now it's not. I always knew
there was something wrong, but it's not Terry's fault. He's a great
kid. He always gives me a kiss every night when he goes to bed.
Every night. I don't mind telling you that."</p>
<p>He went silent for a while, then spoke again. "Corky was right.
We have to stick together while we can. It doesn't matter, does it?
All the things that happen and we can't do anything about it? They
don't matter. Corky was right sure enough. See the way he looked in
that bastard's eyes? I never saw anything like that in my life. If
I get the chance, I want to be as brave as that.</p>
<p>"And when I get home, I'm going to hug my mum. Don't mind
telling you that. I'm going to give her a hug and tell her I love
her and my old man both."</p>
<p>Tom sniffed in sympathy. Danny sat very silently, aware of pangs
of loss inside him that he could not explain at all, even to
himself. <em>Hugging</em> and <em>loving.</em></p>
<p>The earth turned and the night got darker and colder, though it
was still summer. Sometime in the night, Corky woke up from his
exhausted slumber and started working on the wire again, making
that awful grinding noise with his teeth on the metal. Tom cried
out in his sleep, just a wordless whimper that startled them all
awake. Billy was silent the whole time through the long night.</p>
<p>Danny fell in and out of sleep, trying to keep awake, hoping
against hope that Corky would make it through the wire. He was
deadly afraid of what the morning would bring and in his mind,
Corky's words kept getting mixed up with Mick Jagger's strutting
rasp.</p>
<p><em>This could be the last time....maybe...maybe...maybe...I
don't know.</em></p>
<p>Again, sometime later, Danny dreamed of his father and heard him
read from the prayer book and he imagined himself crawling through
pools of scalding custard while his father talked about the bad
fire that would go on forever. He saw John Corcoran's wasted face,
one eye glaring at him and the other a red ruin. The wire was tight
on Corky's neck and when he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth
were all chipped and broken.</p>
<p>"I tried, Danny-boy. I tried, honest to god. But there's no way
out, even if you <em>can</em> talk posh."</p>
<p>Somewhere in the shadows, a deep and echoing voice rumbled out:
"Defied me thrice. Defied me <em>thrice.</em>"</p>
<p>And Danny knew he was waiting in the dark in the Garden of
Gethsemane in an agony of fearful expectation of a dreadful thing
about to happen.</p>
<p>"Denied." He insisted. "It's not defied, it's
<em>denied.</em>"</p>
<p>As soon as he said it a cold sensation of doom flowed into him.
Before the cock crows twice...it was written in the testament. It
couldn't be thrice, because that would mean the cock would crow and
it would be.....</p>
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<h1>32</h1>
<p><em>.....morning.</em></p>
<p>Day was dawning and it was early morning. Danny Gillan jerked
awake to the distant sound of the cockerel crowing far off down the
slope of the moor in the direction of Blackwood farm.</p>
<p>"Whassamatter?" Tom snuffled, almost incoherent, cringing in
against Danny for warmth. Corky was slumped the other way, against
the damp mound where the hawthorn roots twisted their way into the
moss. The wire was across this throat, but not digging in the way
it had in the dream. His eyes were closed and he was breathing
shallowly.</p>
<p>The cock crowed, distant but still audible, a strange, fierce
and challenging cry coming out of the mist which had gathered in
the dark for the second time and now shrouded the world in a fuzzy
blanket which blunted all the sharp edges which would be later
homed by the rising sun..</p>
<p>"...<em>And the cock crew...</em>" The well-learned words were
ringing in Danny's head, in the shivery aftermath of the dream,
fading now, but still powerful and ominous. Day was dawning but it
was still dark and the mist was almost solid downstream where the
valley formed a scooped cup before the thick tangle of the forest.
The trees were just a dark and impenetrable wall. It was still dark
enough, but it was not night any more, and they had survived
another one. They were still alive. Four of them anyway. Across in
the tent, there was no sound yet. Danny shivered again. Feeling the
damp of morning cold steal through him. His legs were stiff and his
backside numb and wet from sitting hunkered in the moss and
grass.</p>
<p>They had survived a second night, but what Corky had said
sneaked in on him while he was trying to shake off the disabling
drag of the dream. <em>It has to be tonight, because he won't give
us another chance after this.</em></p>
<p>And Corky had fallen asleep, tired and hurt and exhausted like
the rest of them and they'd missed their chance. Night had come and
gone and they were still here, braided together with the
fence-mending wire. Danny huddled still, trying to keep the instant
panic down. For a moment, despite the closeness of the other three,
his solitude was vast. Nothing moved in the valley except the near
tendrils of mist which rose, wraith-like from the pool in small,
translucent columns to condense into the thick billows against the
far wall, then flowed like some magical ectoplasm around the roots
of the alders and hawthorns, crept into the hollows behind the
boulders and the narrow ravines which fed the tributaries into the
main valley.</p>
<p>Far up on the moor, an early lark was singing into the morning
sky. High up on the east, there was a tinge of opalescent pink to
break up the grey, a promise of another hot summer day. Here in the
valley, it was still shadowed, but bright enough see the carpet of
dew on the grass, like a frost. The air was clean and earthy,
redolent of moss and heather roots and nearby uncurling ferns.</p>
<p>A soft morning.</p>
<p>Danny slowly raised his head to the far rim, on the west side
where the bracken grew almost to the rim, fringed by tussocks. For
a moment his eye was transfixed by the exotic fringe of glowing
silk which undulated in the merest breeze, trailing like a white
and lustrous flag across the edge of the canyon. He stared at it,
puzzled, for a while longer and the sight of it, ethereal and
magical on this cool and shrouded morning, helped damp down the
rising tide of black fear.</p>
<p>The gossamer of a million tiny spiders, their gliding threads of
silkweb, waved in the slow air, picking up the reflection of the
roseate flush of dawn in the early sky. Danny gazed, mesmerised in
a moment of rare beauty. The whole west rim of the valley, from the
trees right on up past the hollow of rock, was limned with the
slowly undulating silken tide. It was as if the world had been
bedded in the cotton wool of mist and then wrapped in a cocoon of
silk. The threads, rippling in glimmering sheets, seemed to bring a
hush to the morning, giving an illusion of peace and harmony. As he
watched, the top filaments caught the first sparkle of sun and up
on the east edge, the sky flared in a spectacular flash of green
and then pink, like an aurora, heralding the beginning of true
day.</p>
<p>Way off, down at Blackwood, the cock crowed faint and far off
again, to cut through the gossamer wrapping and the moment of magic
died as Corky's warning came suddenly back on the biblical echo of
the dream.</p>
<p><em>He won't give us another chance after this</em>.</p>
<p>Danny swivelled, nudging Tom who gave a little shiver and tried
to squeeze further in under his armpit, reluctant to come awake. He
forced himself round towards Corky and sought the wire where he had
tried to break through. A line of indentations roughened the metal
about six inches from the loop around Corky's neck. In some places,
the dull patina had been scraped away far enough to show the bright
silver of metal underneath, showing how hard, how desperately Corky
had worked and struggled in the dark of the night. Only the gouges
and the shiny metal and the memory of the dreadful creaking sound
remained.</p>
<p>Danny sighed slowly. Over to the right, the condom that Tom had
filled was lying limp, like a shiny piece of intestine ripped from
the raw fish. Doug still sat frozen, head still cupped in his
hands, elbows braced on his knees.</p>
<p>"I tried, Danny," Corky's whispered voice jarred into the
silence. For an awful moment Danny thought he was still dreaming.
He jerked back, almost strangled himself on the wire, suddenly
terrified in case Corky's teeth would be cracked stumps in bleeding
gums.</p>
<p>"Couldn't get through," he said. His face was pale, with his
freckles standing out like sepia ink-spots. His eyes seemed grey in
the light, and they looked bitterly forlorn. "We're stuffed," he
added.</p>
<p>Danny shook his head. "Don't say that," he insisted.</p>
<p>"Say what?" Tom mumbled, coming awake. He shivered violently,
strangled down a cough. Doug was blinking dopily. He sniffed and a
thin trickle on his lip disappeared.</p>
<p>"Is Billy okay?" he asked. Danny shrugged.</p>
<p>"I think so. I haven't heard anything."</p>
<p>"Doug, can you reach the end of the wire," Corky asked. He
couldn't see past Tom and Danny.</p>
<p>"No. I tried last night." Doug's voice was just sift hiss,
barely above a whisper. In the silence of the valley, it sounded
loud, too loud. "It's out of reach."</p>
<p>"Give it another go," Corky said. He was stretching to see if
his fingers could reach the root where the end of the baling twine
was tied. His hand got to within six inches, but no amount of
straining would expand the wire the way they'd been able to stretch
the twine. It had been looped, right over left, then left over
right, so even if they had risked trying to spin to unravel it, the
turns around their necks would only have tightened with every turn.
Doug tried once more, but couldn't get close. He was pulled away to
the right, arm stretched out, face twisted into a toothy grimace.
His outreaching fingers flexed in the air as he pulled as far as
possible, reaching the very limit of give in the wire. He pulled
further and his leg slipped on the wet grass, shooting right out in
front of him. His toe hit the canvas back which slid away with a
tinny clank. Doug slipped back with a sudden, surprised gulp,
pulling them all downwards with the drag on the wire. Tom gasped
and tried to ease the stricture at his neck and Doug scrambled
backwards to get to a sitting position before his air was cut off
completely.</p>
<p>"Doug," Danny hissed. "Don't move." This came out in a harsh
rasp and despite the discomfort, Doug immediately froze.</p>
<p>"What is it?" he managed to get out.</p>
<p>"Look." Danny said urgently. "At your feet." Doug got to his
elbows and looked down at his outstretched foot. The old torn bag
was only a foot or so from his toe.</p>
<p>"Can't see," Corky said, straining to edge past Danny who leaned
back just an inch or two, as much as he could. His breathing was
now coming fast, excited.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell. It's been there all night," Corky almost snarled
in an anger that boiled up on a sudden swell of hope.</p>
<p>"Can you get it,?" Danny asked, hardly daring to speak, hardly
daring to hope at all. Doug looked up at him, brows puckered up in
a puzzled from of incomprehension. Danny nodded at the bag.</p>
<p>"The tools!"</p>
<p>Light dawned. Doug's brows shot right up to disappear under his
fringe of blond hair and his mouth dropped open. Tom started to
shake again and suddenly the air was charged with that enormous,
unbearable and brittle tension. Danny sensed time beginning to
stretch out again on the surge of adrenaline and he felt all of his
senses crystallise to glassy sharpness.</p>
<p>Doug lowered himself back down to the grass again and stretched
his foot outwards. His toe touched the bag and he grinned
hugely.</p>
<p>"Easy," Corky hissed. Doug stretched and the bag moved.</p>
<p>"Can you hook it?" Danny asked, now feeling the panic rise up
once more. Doug nodded, grunted, stretched until the wire was
pulling right under his chin, digging in so far it was just a black
line, as if his head had been cut off and stuck back again. A white
bubble appeared from his nose, burst silently, and a lick of
spittle flecked his lip where his teeth bit in tight. He
concentrated in pushing and on ignoring the sudden hot strangle on
his neck. They all watched in an agony of needing, each of them
focused on that outstretched scuffed canvas boot that had seen
plenty of better days. The toe got to the edge of the bag, barely
to the corner. Doug made a low grunting sound that was all effort
and concentration. The bag moved two inches, turning on the wet
grass as it did so. Doug's foot slipped on the corner, came
whipping across the side and the bag slid away. Doug fell back
heavily. They all heard the creak of the wire. Tom, still shaking
with the wound-up tension, reached quickly and eased him up before
he really did choke.</p>
<p>Danny's heart sank like a stone. The bag had pushed out of
reach, beyond Doug's ability to get his toe around it again and
ease it backwards towards them.</p>
<p>"Shit," Danny blurted. Corky said nothing. He was suddenly
desperate to get the bag, to get a last chance, because he knew
with complete conviction that this <em>would</em> be the last time,
and that the crazy man with the twitchy eyes would do something
terrible today. Today would be the end.</p>
<p>Just then, right at that moment, a movement downstream caught
Danny's eye. He his head and, and the others caught the sudden
motion.</p>
<p>The heron came flapping down into the valley. It skirted the
tall trees and swooped along the rim, stirring the silken gossamer
spiderwebs with its passing. They sparkled and gleamed in the
slanted rays of the rising sun, like filamented jewels. The big
grey bird swerved, banked, then swooped low, over the top of the
pooling mist close by the trees, then beat its wings slowly as it
came flying upstream towards them.</p>
<p>"No," Danny hushed. The heron followed the line of the stream,
curving round at an angle at the point where Corky had been felled
at the shallows of the lower pool. They all sat like stone and all
Danny could think about was that harsh alarm call. If it cried out
it would wake the man, wake Twitchy Eyes and they wouldn't have a
chance.</p>
<p>The bird came flapping onwards. They could see the yellow of its
eye, fixed and unblinking, and heard the low whoosh of its broad,
slow wings. Danny waited, more acutely aware of the danger than the
others. The heron had startled him and made him stumble up there on
the high slope. His back still flared with the burn of the swollen
skin.</p>
<p>"Shhhh." He hushed at it, as if speaking to a child, as if he
could will it to silence.</p>
<p>It came level with them, twisted in the air, as if suddenly
aware of their presence, though none of them had moved a muscle. It
veered sharply, pounding hard to gain height. Danny knew it would
call out: <em>Kaark-kaaark,</em> knew that his bad luck would be
back again, and final too.</p>
<p>But it did not call out. The sweep of its wings trembled the
three feathers of its dead mate in the mist at the waterfall,
making them flutter like flags and then it was gone, beyond their
line of vision, beyond the low ridge where they sat under the
roots. Corky breathed out.</p>
<p>"Try again," he almost snarled. "Go again Doug." All he could
think about was the big pair of insulated pliers that Phil had
jammed in with the rest of his stash. They could cut through mild
steel. They could cut through baling twine, no bother at all.</p>
<p>Doug tried again. He lowered himself back down again until he
was lying almost flat, hands out to the side to brace himself. His
foot went out to its full extent. He closed his eyes and gritted
those teeth again. Me made a little squeaking sound of effort and
his long, bony frame seemed to elongate even further. Tom's eyes
flicked from his foot to the wire around his neck, wondering how
much more pressure Doug could take. Doug's face went red, then
almost purple, shading down by degrees. He hooked his toe again,
got it to the bag. Jerked. It slipped again.</p>
<p>Tom sighed in dismay. Corky said something under his breath that
sounded like a curse. Doug did not give up. He stretched even
further, now making a gurgling sound in the back of his throat. His
foot snicked the side of the bag and the old canvas handle flopped
right down from the top side to land on top of his toe. Danny's
heart was fluttering like a bird's, all out of control. He could
feel the need to pant for breath, countered by the equally powerful
compulsion to hold it in. Doug concentrated so hard his face was
twisted as if it had been mashed. He eased his foot back and up.
The loop of the handle followed, drew upwards tight. Tom could see
the wet canvas slipping over the rubber toe of the old baseball
boot. Doug must have felt it and made a momentous decision. He
kicked upwards. Something in the bag clunked again, muffled under
the canvas and the bag itself came right up off the ground.</p>
<p>For a heartbeat, it looked as if it would go tumbling off and
land on top of the tent. Tom almost wailed in dismay. But at the
very last moment, Doug managed to get enough purchase to flick it
backwards. It took all of his strength and as soon as that
manoeuvre was finished, he flopped back, gasping for breath, Tom
got his hands to the wire and slid his fingers between the metal
and Doug's neck. Doug's face was suffused and swollen.</p>
<p>The bag came flipping backwards and hit Corky square on his
chest with a heavy thud, hard enough to jar him backwards. Despite
the sudden punch on his ribs, the joyful expression on Corky's face
was incandescent. He raised his knees, almost reflexively, to
prevent the bag from falling back, managing to cup it on his lap.
He got a hand to the catch, loosened it with two blurring
movements, dived his hand inside. For a scary split second, his
mouth dropped open blankly as he fumbled inside, then lit up again.
He drew his hand out, gripping the thick red pliers like a
weapon.</p>
<p>Danny breathed out, sucked air back in again. "You flippin'
beauty," he managed to mouth. He lifted the bag from Corky's lap
and opened it out. A few tent pegs remained, along with the
ballpeen hammer they'd used to stick them into the turf. Doug's
catapult lay in the bottom, along with Phil's old airgun. He took
them out and laid them on the grass, searching for something else
to cut the wire. There was nothing.</p>
<p>Corky raised the pliers up to the braid, gritting his teeth.</p>
<p>Before he even got a chance to squeezes, something shook the
tent. A dull knocking sound came from inside, muffled by the
fabric. The man snorted, as if just coming awake.</p>
<p>They all froze, nerves suddenly jangling, wound up tight as
banjo strings.</p>
<p>The man's deep voice rolled out, though they couldn't make out
the words. Corky's expression was suddenly stony and desolate, he
was still sitting with both hands cocked up, gripping the inside
jaws of the pliers against the twist of wire.</p>
<p><em>Bad luck,</em> Danny thought, almost saying the words aloud.
The heron had woken the man, somehow warning him of their escape
attempt. Without thinking, he twisted his head round to look at the
other heron's skull hanging in Billy's collection, what the man
called his altar, half expecting the yellow eyes to be glaring at
him mockingly. A flicker of white caught his eye. For an instant he
couldn't make it out, then saw what it was. Pages of a book had
been stuck to the spread of stag horns. Each page had been pierced
with a sharp tine and left there like flags.</p>
<p>In that moment Danny realised it was the pages of the bible,
pinned by horn and in the same moment he realised that Corky would
indeed be proved right. The man had torn pages of the bible and
left them when he had killed people. He must have torn them last
night in the dark, over by the skulls where he spoke to the
shadows, talking to a man who wasn't there. If he'd torn the pages
out, then he must be going to really do it.</p>
<p>"Oh Jeez," he muttered. Corky looked at him. Tom was cringing in
again for heat or comfort or protection and Danny felt he had none
left to give. An emptiness yawned. Doug just stared at the tent,
like that rabbit with the stoat.</p>
<p>Another rumble came out, very low. Billy said something. It
sounded like a question. The man repeated whatever he said and
Billy whimpered. Doug's teeth ground together like glass beads. A
segment at the side of the tent bulged slowly and the whole thing
shivered. The slit opened, expanding like a cat's eye and something
white flashed in the interior darkness.</p>
<p><em>There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth...</em>the words
came back to Danny and he tried to shuck them away.</p>
<p>Doug jerked so hard that the wire creaked. Inside Danny the huge
tidal wave of panic and utter dread was swelling to an enormous
pressure. Both temples were pounding to the twisting beat of his
heart. Tom was shaking once more, a human tuning fork.</p>
<p>Corky put the pliers down onto the grass and for a moment the
others wondered what he was doing. Very quickly he reached down,
gripped the bottom of his shirt and hauled it up and over his head.
A small green button flew off to the side and landed silently in
the grass. Corky, working blind, placed the shirt up and over the
braid of wire. He reached for the pliers, got them in under the
bundled garment, wrapped the whole fabric tight around it so that
both hands were hidden from view. The realisation struck Danny and
his surge of panic subsided under the fierce blast of admiration
for Corky's practical thinking.</p>
<p>Corky closed his eyes, as if in prayer. His stocky shoulders
flexed, tanned and muscular. Up under his shirt, a metallic click
jarred out, very loud in their ears, too loud. As soon as the jaws
of the pliers cut the wire and met, all Corky heard was the sound
of the shotgun's firing pin slamming down on the empty chamber. The
sounds were almost identical. A flare of anger suddenly seared
inside him. Without any hesitation, he unrolled the shirt, put the
pliers down and got his fingers to the braid of wire, working at
the twists to unravel them. They jangled musically, but in only a
few seconds, he had reached the braid at his neck, spun the wires
and was free. The thin strands dropped away with a slight
vibration.</p>
<p>There was no hesitation now. Danny was jittering, feet moving up
and down on the turf in a frantic little dance that was close to
hysteria. Corky got to his knees, twisted, brought his shirt up
again. Danny could see he had two bruises on his ribs, the size of
fists, where he had fallen when the man kicked him. His eyes were
alight and alive and suddenly glittering with determination and
anger. He insulated the pliers again in the roll of shirt, squeezed
hard. The metal snicked again, more quietly than before, right in
against Danny's neck. He felt all the braids part in a snap. One of
the edges stuck into the skin of his neck with a needle burn, but
there was no pain and no blood.</p>
<p>Over in the tent, the man snored or snorted again, like a pig in
a thicket.</p>
<p>Quickly yet very deliberately, Corky moved past Danny, did the
same for Tom, moved on and snapped the cutting jaws down to free
Doug who raised his hands up to his neck. The bite of the metal had
left a thin, fierce red mark, exactly as if his head had been stuck
back on again.</p>
<p>The tent vibrated. Maybe the man had rolled his weight against
the nearest pole.</p>
<p>"What about Billy?" Tom asked in a tight little whisper.</p>
<p><em>Leave him!</em> Danny's first, dreadful thought bubbled up
before he had time to get a hold of it and stuff it back down.
<em>We could get away!</em> Corky looked at them all, his eyes now
more green than grey, his chest heaving. He put his cord shirt back
on, pulling it fast over his head. Sweat was dripping from his brow
and soaking his cows-lick hair into little spikes.</p>
<p>"We have to get him," Doug said, and it was probably the
bravest, the most selfless thing, that any of them had ever heard.
Billy and Doug had always been at loggerheads, were forever sniping
at each other. On the last night before the twitchy-eyed stranger
had appeared, they had savaged one another, stripping each of a
protective coat, using a dreadful and devastating knowledge as
weapons. Now, in one short phrase, Doug Nicol redeemed anything he
had said in a display of the most selfless and courageous
altruism.</p>
<p>Danny bit down on the shameless little voice of unreasoning
fear.</p>
<p>Corky raised a finger to his lips, quite superfluously
demonstrating the need for silence. He moved like an Indian, feet
making no sound, away from the little ridge where they'd sat all
night, first towards the corner where Billy's old sheath knife had
been thrown. He picked it up, jammed it into his belt, and then
came half-way back again. The mist by the stream was almost gone,
trailing its way downstream as the sun rose. Danny got a flash of
iridescence from up on the east ridge where the gossamer sparkled
in sunlight that was risen over on the moor. The morning grey was
already melting to blue.</p>
<p>Without any hesitation, Corky moved, deliberately but stealthily
towards the pile of logs they'd hauled up from the trees.</p>
<p>Over in the tent, the noise came louder. A bulky shape of a
shoulder pushed against the wall of the tent. The man was awake. Or
he was waking.</p>
<p>Tom was still shaking, looking around them in confusion and
fear, wondering what to do.</p>
<p>Corky lifted a thick spruce branch that had been pulled out from
the trunk and had a heavy knot at the thick end. Most of the
branches were that shape, because the limbs always split away like
that when a tall conifer falls. He hefted it like a club, which
indeed it was. Danny realised what he intended and hurried across,
denying and defying the creepy little voice that ordered him to
run, to get up that slope and over the top and away home. He
reached the firewood pile, selected a thick branch a yard long,
pulled it out. The rest of the branches tumbled to the side in a
scuffle of wood. Everybody froze yet again. Over in the tent, there
was a silence, only for a few seconds. The man snorted again. A
round shape, up from the shoulder, bulged the canvas, moving in
slow rhythm</p>
<p>Corky crept up again, holding the branch like a twisted baseball
bat. He got to the side where the slit opened and close to the
pushing of the shape inside. He bent down, suddenly tense, like a
squat hunter facing a leery, spooked and dangerous beast that could
charge out from a thicket. Inside, in the shadows, he saw movement.
There was the red of Billy's tee-shirt and beyond that the curve of
a thick elbow. The one tattooed word stood out clearly, even in the
shadow.</p>
<p>He stood up, turned to them. He nodded very solemnly across the
short distance, and they saw his eyes were set like polished
stones, glaring with a light of their own. His mouth drew back at
the edges until his gritted teeth could be clearly seen. He eased
the branch forward, head nodding a little to some beat only he
could hear. Danny realised he was timing it with the motion inside
the tent.</p>
<p>"Fucking bastard," he grated in a low, hoarse voice, swinging
the heavy branch up and then down in a fast arc, putting all of his
strength into it. The heavy knot of wood at the club-end slammed
against the rounded curve which pushed out against the fabric.</p>
<p>A noise like a pistol shot cracked out, a sharp shock in the
charged air. Corky's club splintered and the thick end broke off
and went spinning away towards the undergrowth, making a whirring
sound, like dragonflies wings, as it flew. On the other side of the
canvas, a deep, somehow mindless groan rumbled out. The rounded
hump in the fabric slid down towards the ground. Billy whimpered,
high and quivering. Danny stepped past Corky who was standing there
with only the shaft of his stick in his hands. He raised his own
club, slammed it down on the shape. It was not as loud as the first
whiplash crack, but duller, somehow deadly. Another groan, more a
whoosh of expelled air, followed. Danny felt his club strike
something hard which moved only a little with the blow. Again he
remembered the sound of the bullocks down in the slaughterhouse
chamber when the malletmen fired the bolt into their brains.</p>
<p>The tent quivered. A violent blow rocked it and then there was a
thud and the sound of splintering wood. Something snapped the far
upright and the whole thing tilted, caving in at one side,
billowing at the side where Danny had cut the escape slit. Billy's
hand reached out, palm down, then withdrew. He cried out. Two of
the ropes snapped with sudden high, almost musical notes and a
tent-peg came shooting out of the ground to spin right over the
tent and land by the circle of stones round the cold fire. The
canvas pulled away from the groundsheet. The butt of the shotgun
lay half exposed.</p>
<p>Tom grabbed the gun. He stood there for strange a moment,
baffled and undecided. The tent collapsed with a sudden snap of
more ropes. The man was groaning now, <em>really groaning</em>,
like an animal. The sound was deadly and awful, even more mindless
than before. A large hand appeared under the frame of the bottom
edge, fingers spread wide. A shape slumped against the billowing
side. Billy's legs, feet still in his baseball boots, were sticking
out on the front side, knees scrabbling for purchase. Tom spun the
gun around, so that it was butt first and ran in, now moving
quickly and smoothly. He raised it up, swung it hard. The edge
slammed the head-shape.</p>
<p>And the gun roared.</p>
<p>The noise was like sudden, catastrophic thunder, this close in
and in the confines between the tent and the hollow. Tom felt an
enormous punch jar though his arm. He felt the sear of fire from
the end of the barrel as the shot belched scant inches away from
his side. By a sheer miracle, when the butt connected, both barrels
in his hands had not been pointing directly at him. The shot would
have cut him in half. The gun jumped out of his hands.</p>
<p>Less than twenty yards away, the rotten deer's skull and its
decoration of bible pages, exploded into fragments as the spread of
shot knocked it straight out of the hawthorn branches. The white
sheep's head tumbled down and cracked against a hard rock,
splitting into two halves. The heron's pointed head disappeared,
along with half the foliage from the tree. The altar, in one
cataclysmic blast, was gone.</p>
<p>The roar of the gun echoed on and on, as it had the first time,
crackling in their ears. In the ruins of the tent, the twitchy eyed
stranger slumped down to the ground. Tom stood transfixed, face now
white as the quartz. Corky ran in, grabbed the gun, turned it
around and put the barrel down to the hidden head, jamming it right
against where the ear would be.</p>
<p>Billy came out of the fallen tent, crawling fast. Danny saw his
face. It was blank and awful. There was a streak of dark on his
leg.</p>
<p>"See how you like it, you crazy fucking <em>bastard!</em>" Corky
grated, not screaming, but low and straight and somehow deadly.
When he swore, he really meant it. He held steady, squeezed the
trigger. All of them, except Billy who was still stumbling to his
feet, now dumbly trying to get into his jeans, braced themselves
for the close blast.</p>
<p>Nothing happened. The hammer clicked again on the empty chamber.
The metallic sound was not as loud as it had seemed the first time.
The man was groaning loudly now, and rocking about under the
canvas, blundering his way around. Corky looked at the gun as if
he'd been betrayed, standing stock still for several seconds. Then
he moved, broke it open, looked into the empty chambers.</p>
<p>"Only had one shell," he said. Danny felt a sudden seethe of
resentment against Tom for wasting the last one, but it died
instantly. Corky dropped the gun. The man groaned again, this time
much louder and his head nodded up and down, jammed in against the
corner. A stain of blood spread on the canvas. Danny could smell
it. Billy was on his feet.</p>
<p>"Kill him," he said in a shivery voice. "Kill him, somebody.
<em>Please</em>."</p>
<p>The tent rolled to the side and the man's feet could be seen
now, pushing against the trampled grass and ferns, scraping to get
a purchase. He was struggling to get out, groaning and moaning
wordlessly the whole time, like a wounded bull, trying to get free
of the constraint. Doug ran to the fire, picked up a smooth rock in
both hands, came striding back, straight towards the commotion
inside the tent. He raised it up high, using his whole body,
brought it down, crouching as he did. The rock hit something which
snapped like a branch. This time the man roared, like a mad bull.
His legs kicked out. One foot caught Doug on the shin and almost
felled him. The stone rolled away.</p>
<p>"Kill him," Billy quavered, very softly, but as powerful as any
shriek. "<em>Kill him</em>."</p>
<p>Doug backed off to stand beside Tom who was holding on to Danny.
Corky ran forward, tugging at the knife at his belt, leapt upon the
humping shape. They could see his elbow jerk back. Once, twice,
three times, each movement followed by a forward punch and a
sudden, thudding sound. The canvas blossomed a flower of dark, wet
sheen.</p>
<p>The man's roar stopped dead. He led out a long wavering moan
that tailed away.</p>
<p>"Jesus, oh fuckin' Jesus God." This from Doug who stood there,
mouth agape. Corky backed of. Everything stopped for several
seconds. The man's feet went still. His shape, rolled up in the
bundle of canvas lay long and prone. The blood formed a patch a
handspan wide at the far end. Halfway down, an even wider patch
glistened and spread very quickly.</p>
<p>"Is he dead? Is he dead?" Billy was asking. He'd pulled his
jeans up, but Danny could still smell the blood on him, and the
cold, stale sweat of the stranger. His face was strangely slack, as
if all the nerves had gone to sleep, but his eyes were dark and
feral, almost the way the twitchy man's had been when he looked at
the brightness in the water.</p>
<p>He spun, crossed to the bag, grabbed up the ballpeen hammer that
lay on the grass and ran towards the prone man. He raised it up and
slammed it down, not aiming, just hitting. It made meaty thuds
where it landed. Billy's arm raised up and plunged down half a
dozen times, before he stumbled back, panting very hard. He stood
up, eyes fixed at first on the still shape.</p>
<p>Everybody turned to look at Billy. For a moment, he was fixed on
the prostrate form, as if he wanted to continue, to keep on hitting
with the hammer. A trickle of saliva drooled from his mouth and in
that moment, he looked completely mad. After a moment, he dropped
the hammer. He backed off, and then realised they were all looking
at him. An odd flicker crossed his face. Danny recognised it as
deep and devastating shame and his heart went out to him. Corky put
a hand out and touched him on the shoulder, the way Tom had done to
himself on the night of the big argument. It was just a touch, but
it said a huge amount. In his other hand, Corky held the knife.
Despite what he had done with it, the blade was surprisingly
clean.</p>
<p>There was a silence for a long moment.</p>
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<h1>33</h1>
<p>Corky stuck the knife back in the loop of his belt. His chest
was heaving up and down with the huge effort. They were all panting
like wolves after a long chase and a desperate fight. They were
stunned to immobility at the enormity of what they had done. The
stain spread on the canvas. Some blood pooled where the grass had
been flattened by the groundsheet. It was surprisingly dark.</p>
<p>"Jesus God," Doug finally murmured, awe-struck.</p>
<p>"Is he dead?" Billy whispered. His face was still white and
bloodless. His hands were now trembling, fluttering like birds.
Tom's mouth opened, closed, opened again. No sound came out.</p>
<p>"Hope so," Corky said, with awful grim finality. "Come on. We'd
better get out of here."</p>
<p>"What about him?" Danny asked. "We can't just leave him, can
we?"</p>
<p>"Why not?" Doug said. "He's going nowhere." He went to the bag
and picked up his slingshot and the gun. He handed the pistol to
Tom who took it soundlessly and let it dangle from his hand.</p>
<p>"We should burn him," Billy said and they all stopped. "We
should make a fire and burn him. Nobody would ever know." Danny
looked at him and recognised the bleak and terrible shame at what
the man had done to him in the tent.</p>
<p>"What do you think, Corky?" Doug asked, deferring now. They had
all hit, all of them. But Corky had been the first, and then he'd
gone in with the knife to make sure, right up close, <em>man to
man</em>, where he could actually touch the twitchy eyed madman,
stabbing through the canvas sheet.</p>
<p>Corky turned and his face was still hard and set, bleaker even
than Billy's. He was considering the best option. His eyes stared
into the far distance, his mouth drawn down. After a while he
nodded.</p>
<p>"That might be the best idea," he said. "Get all the gear
together."</p>
<p>Without hesitation, no arguing now, they starred collecting
their haversacks, trying not to look at the collapsed tent and the
butterfly bloodstain on the fabric, but unable to keep their
glances from straying. It pulled them like a magnet. Doug put the
hammer back in the bag. "What about the tent?"</p>
<p>"It stays. Burn it all. Phil can swipe another," Corky said. His
voice was distant and somehow coldly implacable. They'd never use
the tent again.</p>
<p>Tom stuck the gun in his own belt-loop and gingerly approached
the rumple of canvas where the pole had broken and speared right
through the top. His own bag was lying half concealed by the old
groundsheet, tucked on the grass that had been blanched by the four
days without sunlight. He reached, got a hand to the strap, pulled,
but the bag stayed where it was. He lifted a torn flap, found the
strap was looped round the bottom of the broken spar and reached to
free it when the whole tent suddenly bucked. Tom's feet were pulled
from under him and he fell on top of the pile.</p>
<p>A hellish roar boomed out, the huge bellow of a wild beast. Tom
squawked in alarm and Billy got such a shock he stumbled backwards
and tripped over the rock Doug had used as a weapon.</p>
<p>The man screamed, in anger or in pain, none of them could tell.
A hand clawed out, clamped itself on the first thing it touched. It
was Tom's leg. The fingers gripped like a vice and Tom yelled out
in real pain and awful fright. His left leg kicked out at the
wrist, trying to break free.</p>
<p>Corky ran forward on the far side, grabbed the gun, raised it up
quickly and slammed it down on the bucking shape. He couldn't reach
the hand that was holding Tom, otherwise the blow would easily have
broken a wrist. The harsh and ragged roar cut off instantly and the
fingers snapped open. The shape under the canvas rolled and Tom had
to scramble out of the way. Both feet were now out from the
encumbrance, digging into the ground as the man tried to force
himself up to his knees. Despite the blood, he was twisting and
turning with incredible strength.</p>
<p>He bellowed, a howl of fury, clawed his way out of the far end
until his head pushed through the rent in the fabric. One eye was
horribly <em>slumped</em> as if the whole eyebrow and half the
cheekbone had caved in. It made him seem to look in two different
directions. Blood was streaming from both nostrils and his mouth
was dripping both blood and saliva. He was snarling now, jerking
from side to side to free himself from the restraint and he fixed
his good eye on Corky, who backed away fast.</p>
<p>Doug and Tom had backed further and faster, right to the edge of
the stream. Danny was helping Billy to his feet, scared almost
witless, but still able to feel the jittery vibration that was
making Billy's whole body quiver like a bowstring.</p>
<p>There were no words now, just the guttural, feral snarl of the
man they'd thought was dead. The fact that he had come alive again,
was even more frightening. It made him, despite the appalling dent
in his head and the pooling of the blood on the hard ground,
somehow invincible and indestructible. He was fighting his way out,
now halfway to his feet, one hand and arm completely free. He
pushed violently and the canvas ripped with a high whine. Doug
backed into Tom who almost fell into the stream. The man pointed at
Corky, still grunting and snarling, pointed straight at him. The
threat was shockingly eloquent.</p>
<p>The other hand came up now, and in it was a large knife they had
not seen before. Corky saw it flash in the morning light. It looked
like a butcher's knife. The blade came down and slashed at the
canvas, slitting it like paper.</p>
<p>Corky turned, pushed at Danny and Billy. "Run," he bawled. Tom
and Dog needed no urging. They went pattering across the stream,
sending up spray. Danny and Billy followed, moving fast, crossed
the water in four strides and got up the low bank on the far side.
Behind them, the man was screeching now, his mad fury echoing from
the high sides in a stuttering reverberation of noise.</p>
<p>Up the bank and along the low path on the far side, they
scrambled, now panicked into flight. The crazy man had the knife
now and no matter what had happened, they were still just boys.
Danny pushed at Billy who was whimpering now. A dark stain had
appeared on the seat of Billy's jeans and Danny realised it was
blood. He urged him on, and behind him, Corky was trying to get
them to go faster. He shoved him in the back, sending a howl of
pain down the length of Danny's spine.</p>
<p>They got to the track that led up the narrow gully. Doug reached
the broad part first, and despite his fear, he risked a look back.
The man was right out of the ruined tent now, half naked, with his
dirty jeans pooled around his feet. He hauled them up, still
snarling, and somehow managed to fasten them without dropping the
knife. As soon as he finished that motion, he was moving, running
across the turf, over the ridge where he'd sat with Billy roped to
the shotgun, down the shallow bank and started across the stream.
They all heard the splashing of his progress and Tom yelped in
panic.</p>
<p>"Move!" Corky bawled. "Come on. We can go faster than him."</p>
<p>Whether he believed that was another matter, but he urged them
all on, up the slope. He knew that if they couldn't kill the a man
with the hammer and the clubs and the stone while he was rolled up
and trapped in the tent, or if he wouldn't die with a knife blade
stabbed three times into him, they had no chance when he was on his
feet and crazier still with pain and anger. He sounded like a
wounded tiger and Corky had read all the stories about wounded
animals. He looked up at the top of the ridge, estimated the sounds
of splashing behind him, gauged the distance.</p>
<p>They might make it. They just <em>might</em>.</p>
<p>Doug, followed by Tom, were on the broad turn into the gully
where they'd discovered the backed up lake behind the narrow cleft.
Here the slope was very steep and the track narrowed to six inches,
the kind of groove sheep make when they climb to the high pasture,
or down to the stream for a drink. The grit was dry and powdery,
occasionally broken by a line of pale hard mudstone which gave
firmer footing, but the surface still kept slipping from under
their feet.</p>
<p>Billy made the flat and got to the track, Danny pushing him all
the way, with Corky right on their heels. The man was about forty
yards behind them, now snarling words which were all jammed
together until they were totally incomprehensible. None of the
fleeing boys mistook their content.</p>
<p>They scampered across the steepening slope, traversing it,
moving like startled roe-deer. Even Billy was going at a rate. He
was sobbing now, in fear and despair, and if Danny hadn't been at
his back, goading him like a mule-driver, he could have collapsed
in terror and waited for the end.</p>
<p>The gully took a turn here, allowing them a downhill run first
of all to scutter across the shallow rivulet and up the far side
which was steeper than this one. They all went down in a tight
line, panting for breath, using the momentum to get as far up the
other side as they could. Shale and grit slid out from under them.
Tom slid back two yards and Doug stopped in his flight, leaned
back, bracing his foot on a stone slab, to haul him back again.</p>
<p>The man came lumbering round the bend. Danny glanced back, saw
the red stain on his side, just under the curve of ribs. Blood was
soaking the waistband of the jeans. The caved-in face looked even
more insane, like a monstrous gargoyle, but the man was still
coming after them. Danny's heart tried to leap into his mouth and
an awful pounding started up in his temples again. His foot slipped
and he lost some height. Corky blocked him, preventing him sliding
further and pushed hard, getting him back up again.</p>
<p>They clambered up the slope, now so steep that one wrong step
would tumble them down. The whole face was slipping and sliding
with the vibration of their passage. Tiny avalanches of shale
hissed and whispered, dislodged to trickle down towards the
rivulet. By sheer luck and sheer determination, they got closer to
the top. Beyond the fringe of bracken at the edge, there was a
grassy corrie that went back for several yards to a hollow
rock-filled basin before another much steeper climb up onto the
moor.</p>
<p>Doug made it to the lip, clambered over, turned, hauled Tom up
with one brutal and surprisingly strong heave that flipped him
right up from the slope to land on his belly. Billy reached up.
Doug clasped the hand in his own in a desperate handshake. He
braced himself for Billy's weight, leaned back, grunted, and
dragged the heavy boy up to the flat. Corky pushed Danny up and
Danny then turned, offered his hand. Corky took both it and Doug's.
Together they heaved him over. Down the slope, just crossing the
rivulet, the man came blundering on, still ranting at the top of
his voice.</p>
<p>Corky quickly spun round, searched the flat turf. Over by the
next steep wall he found a hand-sized piece of mudstone which he
grabbed and hefted. Danny picked up a thick stick that had fallen
from one of the trees that had managed to find root on the almost
sheer face. He turned. Corky braced himself, pivoted on one foot on
a movement just like a baseball pitcher, and lobbed the stone. It
whirred audibly in the air, spinning at it flew.</p>
<p>It missed by a good yard and the man ignored it. Corky turned
away, pushed Doug. "Come on," he yelled. Tom had crossed the flat
and down into a little dip of a hollow at the base of the corrie
and was just beginning to go up the slope. Small stones rolled out
from under his feet. Danny crossed to the edge. The man was only
thirty yards behind them now, almost vertically below them. He
swung the curved branch in an easy loop and winged it downwards. It
spun like a boomerang, spun like the stick that had dropped the
heron out of the sky.</p>
<p>It took the man right on the side of the head, where his eyebrow
and cheekbones were caved in and knocked him backwards. The man's
hands shot out and the knife spun away. He peeled away from the
shale face the way Danny had done, but he only fell backwards onto
the soft scree of the lower slope, his shoulders digging into the
gravel. Particles of shale dropped on top of him and glued
themselves to the slick trail of blood on his side and on the top
of his jeans.</p>
<p>"Great shot," Corky gasped. He favoured Danny with a look of
rueful admiration, gave him a quick, desperate grin. "Come on now.
Let's go." Danny backed away from the edge, still hoping that the
man might had broken his back in the fall, but even before Corky
hauled him back, across the level area of the little corrie towards
the far face and the last climb, he saw the man shake himself and
roll over, stumbling to his knees, to his feet. He scraped away the
shale where the knife had landed, uncovered it, snarled even more
ferally and came on, pushing his way up the slope. Danny had gained
them maybe twenty yards.</p>
<p>The final climb was a killer, but it was the only way to the
top. Here the slope was powdery soft, up at the height where there
was no drain-water to bind it. Pieces of mudstone flipped out and
went rolling down under their feet, but there was no other way to
go. This part of the climb narrowed in at an angle to the place
where they'd played before. The rock on each side of the angle were
sheer and offered no handholds save the gnarled and dead roots of
old hawthorn trees that hadn't survived the impossibly precarious
hold, but they were too far apart, and would probably pull out of
the anchorages at the first tug. The only way up was on the steep
gravel slope where they could dig their feet in for purchase and
push and haul at each other.</p>
<p>It was hard going. The first climb had tired them all out, and
the fear and panic inside them was even more exhausting. Tom,
smallest, weakest of them all, was beginning to flag. His knees
were shaking so violently he was convinced he'd simply pitch off
the side and go tumbling down to the scattered scree rocks in the
corrie. He was breathing hard and fast, hauling for air. Behind him
Doug sounded like the old pair of bellows in the organ in the
church hall. Some thick saliva had stuck at the back of his throat
and was making a little musical monotone. He kept pushing at Tom,
forcing him on, getting him higher.</p>
<p>Billy was struggling now because his heavier weight crushed the
shale footholds to powder and made it easier for him to slip
backwards but Danny and Corky shoved at him, holding him up. Danny
could smell the blood on him. Billy was whimpering in between
breaths, loud and blubbery.</p>
<p><em>Up and over. Up and over.</em> The litany was going through
Danny's head, the way it had done when he tried to climb the last
time, before the heron startled him and sent the rock crashing down
to wake the man and wake the gun. His back was burning now, rasping
with the scrape of his tee-shirt across the skin, but it was only
hot, not agony. He and Corky were almost level, clambering up as
best they could while goading Billy on.</p>
<p>Tom got to the top. This time he made it over the high edge with
a desperate shove from Doug. He turned to help Doug over, stopped
and pointed straight down.</p>
<p>"Come on, Danny. <em>Move!</em>" His high-pitched cry was urgent
and fearful. Danny couldn't risk looking back. He could hear the
man's growling, not speaking any more, but just making savage
snarling sounds in the back of his throat. If Tom could see him,
that meant he was over the corrie edge and heading for the slope.
Danny felt the unbearable urge to stop and look, just in case the
man was <em>on</em> the slope. His muscles wanted to freeze solid.
He felt like the rabbit hunted by the stoat.</p>
<p>"Move it, Danny boy," Corky said through gritted teeth. "We can
make it."</p>
<p>Up at the top, Tom and Doug were bawling, jumping up and down,
so close to the edge that one stumble would tumble them down to the
corrie again, to land them right at the man's feet. They were
yelling desperate encouragement. Billy was ten yards from the lip,
almost completely exhausted. It was getting harder for the others
to push him.</p>
<p>The sneaky little coward's voice tried to over-ride the litany
inside Danny's head.</p>
<p><em>Leave him! We can make it!</em></p>
<p>He tried to ignore it despite the huge surge of fear at the
knowledge that <em>Twitchy Eyes</em> was right behind him with that
big butcher's knife in his hand, ready to cut and slice the way
he'd cut and sliced Don Whalen and that girl in the dark of the
bomb shelter. And underneath it all was the paralysing dread that
the man was unstoppable; that he would not tire, that he'd keep on
coming. Danny recalled the almighty crack of the club on the man's
head, a devastating blow that should have felled anybody, and yet
despite the caved in bone and the <em>slump</em> of his head, he
was still after them, like a monster from some terrible myth.</p>
<p><em>Up and over.</em> The top edge was ten yards away. <em>Leave
him. We can make it.</em> He pushed on, felt Corky's hand on his
back. <em>Up and over.</em> <em>Jesus please us, oil and grease
us.</em> Nine yards, eight. Corky slid back and Danny got him by
the waist band. The knife wobbled in its makeshift holder, but
stayed put. Danny pushed him hard and Corky gained a yard. The edge
loomed. Behind him, the growling was getting louder as the man saw,
with his one good eye, that they would reach it before he caught
them. Tom and Doug could see him about a hundred feet behind. He
had taken a run at the slope, slipped, fallen several feet and
started up from a standstill just above the little scoop of the
hollow.</p>
<p>Billy got to the top. Both boys dragged him over, with the other
two pushing from behind. He got over, flopped and lay still, his
feet sticking out over the drop. Danny made it, helped Corky up,
crawled forward through the couch grass, fingers snatching at the
tussocks to pull himself along. His chest ached with the shale dust
that had rasped his windpipe and lungs. He was panting like an
animal. Corky fell beside him, retched violently, but brought
nothing up.</p>
<p>"Come on," Doug begged. "Corky. Danny. Come <em>on</em>
now."</p>
<p>"Get up Billy," Tom was cajoling on the other side. Billy was
gabbling, unable to speak, arms flapped out on each side, as if all
of this strength had gone. He looked finished. Tom hauled his
exposed feet over the edge and onto the grass, Billy twisted,
turning his face up to the sky.</p>
<p>The morning sun was just rising into the blue over the slope of
the high moor and the whole sky was ablaze with light.</p>
<p>Corky got to his feet, pushing himself with his last reserves.
He went back to the ledge and peered down. The man was less than
seventy feet below them, coming on with dreadful doggedness. He
seemed to have huge reserves and they had drained theirs. Corky
looked back at the long slope of the moor ahead. It was not a huge
climb, but it was still a height and uphill all the way to the
shoulder before the long run down to the barwoods and the old bomb
craters and then down to the edge of town. If he kept on coming, he
could catch them, one or two of them, before the brow.</p>
<p>"Why doesn't he stop?" he gasped.</p>
<p>Doug whipped out his catapult and loaded a small stone, pulled,
fired, and hit <em>Twitchy Eyes</em> a glancing blow on the
shoulder. He completely ignored it. Danny dragged Billy to his feet
and pulled his arm round his own shoulder, doing his best to
silence the creepy little voice in his head which told him Billy
wasn't worth it. They staggered along the path towards the tree
whose roots overhung the steep ravine where they'd played
before.</p>
<p>Below them, the man was snarling again, forcing his way upwards.
Doug could see that his eyes, at least the one eye that looked up
at them, was flickering away with its madness. Fear and fury made
Doug hawk and spit, but nothing came out of his dry mouth. They
were going past the tree, moving as fast as they could, all in a
line, with Danny still helping Billy when Corky suddenly shouted at
them to hold up.</p>
<p>"We'll never get away, not up there," he said, pointing at the
remorseless rise of the moor. "He'll catch us for certain unless we
stop him."</p>
<p>"How can we stop him?" Doug wanted to know. "He's got the
knife."</p>
<p>"What about this?" Tom said, pulling the gun from his waistband.
It had stayed fixed there the whole time they'd climbed, despite
slips and falls.</p>
<p>Doug grabbed it, pulled the lever which opened it. There was one
slug in the slot, despite the fact that he couldn't remember
anybody loading it since the time Billy had fired one at his
backside and sparked off the big argument. He turned on his heel,
with Corky beside him and went back to the edge. The man had
gained, clambering sideways to traverse the flat, steep face of the
slope, getting right underneath them, the good eye still twitching
madly.</p>
<p>"Let me," Corky said.</p>
<p>"You couldn't hit a barn if you were inside it," Doug said,
biting down on his bottom lip. The low morning sun caught his big
cupped ears and made them redly translucent. He closed one eye,
took aim and fired.</p>
<p>A small crack, like a thin whip, and the gun bucked. The lead
slug, slowed by the weak spring, flicked in the sunlight, just a
blur but it hit the man in the grotesque, damaged eye and he
screeched, clawing up with his free hand. The noise of his bellow
echoed out from the cup of the corrie and right along the valley.
He slid back five yards, and despite whatever pain the pellet had
caused, he still dug in at the shale with the knife to brake his
fall. He bellowed again, turned, and began traversing once
more.</p>
<p>"Good shot, Doug," Corky said. The gun was empty and there were
no more slugs.</p>
<p>"We could make it up there," Doug said.</p>
<p>"You and me and Dan," Corky admitted. "But not Billy or wee Tom.
He'd cut them to bits."</p>
<p>"Maybe he'll stop."</p>
<p>"No," Corky said, dreadfully convinced. "This one won't ever
stop. He's a fuckin' devil."</p>
<p>He pulled back from the edge and went along the track, casting
about for rocks to roll down, but here, the thick turf of the
moorland grass covered everything. There were no rocks here. The
others were at the tree now, where they'd been playing, the three
of them, when the man had stepped across the stream and made Billy
eat the fish. They scurried past, urging the others on, when Danny
held up his hand and stopped them.</p>
<p>"What's that?" he asked, pointing at the tree.</p>
<p>The two black weights sat on the thick branches that had been
pulled back from the forked double trunk and tied to the curving
roots.</p>
<p>"It's the bombs," Tom said. "Come on. Come on."</p>
<p>"Hells bells," Doug said. Corky moved forward.</p>
<p>"We can use them," he said. "Brain the bastard." The baling
twine was looped round the branch that had been pulled back so far
that it almost formed a complete circle, and several thick strands
had been needed to lash it to the root. It was four inches thick
and it had taken all their muscle to pull it back to the root.
Corky drew the sheath knife from his belt and started hacking at
the string.</p>
<p>"You go on," he said, turning to Tom and Billy. The two of them
turned away, but as soon as Corky started sawing at the thick
twine, they stopped. Corky hacked and cut and all the while, over
the edge, they could hear the grunting breath of the man's
progress. Danny could visualise him, covered in blood and shale
dust, his caved eye looking down at his cheek, the knife glinting
in the early morning sun. He could visualise him trailing after
them up the moor, slashing and cutting, hacking away at them,
snarling like a beast all the while.</p>
<p>"Come on!" he begged Corky, itching to be away, to be off and
running.</p>
<p>Three strands parted with a machine-gun stutter and the branch
uncoiled by about six inches. Corky cut again, got a fourth string
to break, a fifth. The bomb rolled out of the fork where it had
lain and tumbled to the ground. It started to roll down the
gradient towards the edge.</p>
<p>"Get it, quick!" Corky yelled. Doug dived, got both hands to the
rolling shape. It slipped, rolled more and he caught it again,
managing to stop it before it flipped uselessly over the side. He
gasped with effort, heaved it back and Corky went to help him.
Together they lifted the heavy, deadly shape into their arms and
together they carried it to the edge. Corky peered down.</p>
<p>"Where is he?" Doug tried to shrug, but with the weight in his
arms, he failed in the attempt.</p>
<p>Just at that moment, the sixth and seventh strings broke with a
sudden, unexpected crack and the bent back branch lashed forward,
so violently it smacked against another, thicker bough and the
whole tree shuddered to its roots. Several stones dislodged by the
vibration shot out from under the overhand and went tumbling down
the face. Just then the stranger appeared in to view, round the
little jutting point that had hidden him from up above. He looked
up, saw the small avalanche, pulled back and waited until it was
gone. He was crossing this part of the face, right under the tree,
over the basin of the little corrie, maybe forty feet below
them.</p>
<p>"I'll tell you when," Corky said. This time Doug nodded. "One
two three and go?"</p>
<p>Another nod. Doug sniffed. Tom and Billy stood watching, unable
to move.</p>
<p>The man was crossing the curve now. Corky gauged the distance,
counted it out to himself, then looked at Doug. He counted it aloud
this time, each number accompanied by a swing forward, each swing
greater than the last.</p>
<p>"Go," Corky bawled. They both grunted with the effort and the
heavy bomb sailed out, fins back. It turned in the air, fins up,
dropped straight down.</p>
<p>The man looked up, saw the black shape plummet towards him. He
jerked backwards and the bomb missed him by less than a foot. Had
it connected, it would have slammed him right off the slope to
tumble to the rocks below. It might even have killed him.</p>
<p>But it missed. The man spun, and began to slide slowly
downwards, trying to grab for a hold, but gathering speed, losing
almost all of the height he had gained. He came to rest in a little
pile of accumulated shale, digging into its soft surface.</p>
<p>Corky said nothing. His disappointment was almost overwhelming.
He spun away from the edge, hands balled into tight fists.</p>
<p>"Nothing's going to stop him," he grated through teeth that were
clenched into a straight line.</p>
<p>"Going to get you," the man bellowed up. "Going to get you all.
The flies are going to get every one of you." He laughed, high and
manic, as insane as ever. Doug felt another shiver travel up and
down his spine. Corky ignored the noise. He stormed over to the
tree, raised a hand and slammed it against Billy's chest.</p>
<p>"I thought I told you to move?" he bawled. Billy took a step
back. "You want him to catch you? Get a bloody move on!"</p>
<p>Once again, Billy moved back. Corky looked at him, made a little
motion of his head to let Billy know it was just the anger and the
hurt and the madness of it all. He turned back to the tree. The
second bomb was on its own branch which was lashed the same way, to
the thick loop of roots.</p>
<p>"The next one might work," Corky said. "Want to try it?"</p>
<p>Danny and Doug both nodded. The beast had slipped down the
slope. They had gained yards. They had gained moments.</p>
<p>Corky took the knife and cut at the twine as before, sawing back
and forth, peering down between the roots. Below him he could see
the top of the man's head. He was moving on all fours, even more
animal now than before, gabbling non-stop.</p>
<p><em>Kill you. Kill all of you. Nothing left. Not a
thing.</em></p>
<p>He was right below the tree, gaining some height, close to the
bottom of the slope. The other bomb was about twenty yards to the
right, beyond the lip of the little corrie, lying on its side, two
fins dug into the shale. It looked like a small beched submarine.
Corky sawed and again, three strands stuttered apart. The jerk as
the branch jerked straighter by two inches shook the tree once
more. This time, little stones bulleted out from underneath the
overhang in a series of punchy little flicks. Corky cut again,
reaching out over the drop. As he did so, his foot slipped, just
enough to throw him off balance. Danny reached to grab him by the
collar and stop him falling over the edge.</p>
<p>The motion altered Corky's swipe with the knife. It swung round
in an arc and caught the pieces binding the branch to the root,
slashing through more than half of them. There was another fast
series of snaps, one after the other, as the thick twine parted in
staccato, ripping sequence. Corky reached out for the bomb which
sat on the branch, thinking he could pull it free.</p>
<p>Below them <em>Twitchy Eyes</em> was coming, grunting and
yammering. The tree creaked. They could see the branch, arm-thick
and torqued, try to unbend in a slow-motion flex.</p>
<p>"Corky," Danny bawled. "Watch out. The whole thing's going
...<em>it's going to....</em></p>
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<h1>34</h1>
<p>....<em>It's going to.....</em></p>
<p>The bindings parted with a savage crack. All of them gave at the
same time and the thick branch whipped up, swiping through the air
in a vicious whoop. It unleashed in a blur, uncoiling as all the
latent tension punched upwards, like the arm of a siege catapult.
The sudden violent motion threw Corky backwards.</p>
<p>"....<em>Go!</em>"</p>
<p>Danny blurted the word just as Corky slammed into him. Both of
them landed beside Doug on the short, tough grass only inches from
the drop-off. Danny instinctively grabbed a thick tuft to stop the
pair of them rolling over the edge and tumbling down the scree</p>
<p>The forked branch carried the bomb up, reached the end of its
travel, slammed against the cross-trunk and once again the whole
tree shook from the roots upwards in a seizmic shudder. A
scattering of leaves exploded outwards. The branch hit the trunk,
rebounded, slammed in again and stopped dead, but the bomb simply
kept on travelling, almost straight up into the air, thrown off its
cradle with the huge and sudden acceleration.</p>
<p>It went on up, a black and heavy shape, soaring into the sky,
wobbling just a little on its tail. The fins were clearly outlined
against the cloudless blue of the morning.</p>
<p>"Christ on a bike, I thought it got you," Doug gasped, but only
Danny heard him, and that very faintly. His attention was fixed on
the rising black bomb. Corky was lying athwart him, face up, mouth
agape. Over on the far side, beyond the tree, Billy and Doug stood,
eyes wide, stunned by the catapult crack that had sounded so much
like a pistol-shot, sounded too much like the sound of a club
against a skull.</p>
<p>The bomb was travelling upwards, thick and massive, a solid
black zeppelin, defying gravity. Its ascension transfixed them
all.</p>
<p>Danny's breathing stopped and the whole world seemed to freeze
into a sludgy, slow motion. The bomb rose up and up.</p>
<p><em>"It's going to...it's going to..."</em> His own words were
still ringing in his ears, along with the air-shattering crack of
the branch slamming the cross-trunk, and Doug's blurt, all of them
jangled together, encapsulated in the focus of that single moment
of time.</p>
<p>Billy Harrison saw the thing soar, unable for the moment to
comprehend what had happened. Tom's body was in the act of turning,
as if flinching from the whiplash of the tree. A deep vibration
shivered in the ground, almost able to be heard in a thrumming
tremor. Hawthorn leaves floated in a wide slow halo of green around
the tree and pieces of old bark scattered like shrapnel from the
trunk. The bomb soared upwards and it snared Billy's eyes, a black
and powerful silhouette, shark fins jutting out from the tail.</p>
<p><em>"What's happening?"</em> he heard his own voice ask, inside
his head. The moment was somehow charged with a inexplicable and
powerful energy. His heart was beating, still fast, squeezing
inside his chest, but he felt it like a slow pulse and the harsh
whiplash of the tree seemed to stretch out and develop a bass thrum
which matched the deep vibration under his feet.</p>
<p>"<em>Want to cross over? Eh boy?"</em></p>
<p>The monster had dragged him into the tent and broken him.</p>
<p><em>Tried to kill him!</em> He had lashed out with the ballpeen
hammer, feeling it hit in meaty thuds, wanting to break and shatter
and destroy.</p>
<p>The mad man had taken him down to the water he had gone down
into the valley, into the shadow, and death had been hovering
nearby. Pain throbbed up from the tender, torn skin and the bomb
was going up and up, expanding, rather than diminishing in his
consciousness, powerful and mesmerising. Billy stood slack-jawed,
watching it, as if his life depended on it; unable to look away,
despite the need to be up on the moor and gone.</p>
<p>Tom Tannahill was half turned and his face tilted to the sky.
The panic and exhaustion had squeezed at him so tightly that a
little dribble of urine had spurted out to stain the front of his
jeans. The bomb rose up.....</p>
<p><em>"Sorry Tommy, just trying to say, okay</em>?"</p>
<p>Corky had looked over at him with eyes like fine glass, so
fragile they could break and shatter and they focused on him with
such powerful regret and sorrow that it had reached and soothed a
cooling balm into the raw open wound of his hurt.</p>
<p><em>Read me the story Tom, would you?</em> Little Maureen's slow
voice and the bruises under her eyes and the paunchy, sick swelling
of her skin. <em>I need to go to the bathroom Tom. I need to
go.</em> And she had gone and everything in his life burst
asunder.</p>
<p>Now the bomb was going up and it held him, held everything that
he was, in that one brittle fragment of time. He held on to it, the
fear magically numbed away.</p>
<p>Doug Nicol was on the grass, braced for balance, behind Danny
and Corky. <em>Hells bells!</em> It was going up, heavy and
thunderous, rising like a black stone.</p>
<p>The rock had gone up, raised high in his two hands and then it
had come slamming down and something had snapped with the sound of
a branch cracking, like the sound of the string breaking, the noise
of the hawthorn limb smashing upwards against the trunk. The bomb
was up.</p>
<p>The first one had missed and they could have got him this time,
but the knife had sliced wrong and their last weapon was gone. They
could have used it like the campfire stone, just a weight to crush
and break.. Now the bomb was up, on its own course, not theirs,
dragging his eyes with it.</p>
<p><em>Bugsylugs, Bugsylugs,</em> Billy's voice taunted in the
background of his mind and he ignored it. That had been then,
before this <em>now</em>. The taunt was meaningless, its power
gone.</p>
<p>There was a red pain across his neck, where the wire had bit
into him. It had been worth it.</p>
<p><em>Did my best, honest to God.</em> He had done his best.
Together they had almost beaten him. Almost. Nearly. The bomb rose
up and up, for that strange and unreal moment filling the entire
sky.</p>
<p>John Corcoran watched it, sharp black against the light blue,
black as the gaping barrel of the shotgun up against his eye. The
crack of the branch had been like the crash of the pin against the
empty chamber; world shattering, devastating. Numbing.</p>
<p><em>Nothing happened. Nothing happened!</em></p>
<p>The air had whooped when the bough had uncoiled like the strike
of some knotted brown snake. He watched the bomb float up and away,
heavy and blunt and somehow mindlessly vicious.</p>
<p><em>See how you like it, you crazy fucking</em> bastard!</p>
<p>The pin had come down on an empty space again. <em>Nothing
happened</em>.</p>
<p>"<em>Kill him</em>." Somebody had said from far away. Under his
back, the earth shuddered violentlyThe crack of the parting string
and the crack of the shotgun's firing pin resounded inside him,
with the jar of his teeth on wire, on and on and on, a mental
ricochet that seemed as if it might go on forever.</p>
<p>"<em>Kill him!"</em> Somebody had demanded and he had not
hesitated, because the voice had really been his own and this could
be the last time, this <em>would</em> be the last time and Corky
felt the quivering violence and he'd punched forward, felt the thud
and then the fruity slide as the blade went in and the blood came
out to make a butterfly pattern on the tent.</p>
<p>He'd done it again, twice, thrice.</p>
<p><em>And again he defied him.</em> The voice had been mad and
dreamy, black and rising, like the bomb soaring into the air.</p>
<p><em>You afraid boy? You scared?</em> Not of you, you creepy mad
cunt! But he was afraid. Really and truly. He could feel it in the
grind of his teeth.</p>
<p><em>If thine eye offends me. Pluck it....</em>And the black
rising shape held him now.</p>
<p>The bomb went up and Danny Gillan watched it, black as the
valley of the shadow of death. Danny soared with it, numbed. <em>Up
and over, up and over,</em> the litany that had kept him going up
the slope while exhaustion and pain dragged at him and fear tried
to paralyse him.</p>
<p><em>Denied me thrice.</em> The night had been filled with the
sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth on a hard steel wire.
<em>Bad luck, Danny Boy.</em> He had knocked the heron out of the
air and brought bad luck down upon them all.</p>
<p>The bomb was floating there, huge in the sky above them.
<em>Dung fly!</em></p>
<p>What did <em>that</em> mean? <em>What....?</em></p>
<p>The bomb found the reach of its trajectory, slowing down at the
apex, the tail now beginning to rise up. It wobbled, seemed to stop
still in the air, then, just as slowly, tilted, turned, began to
drop.</p>
<p>The strange little bubble of time that had held them, it burst
silently, threw them clear.</p>
<p>"Watch out," Doug found his voice. A spittle of saliva spat out
with the words. "It's going to..."</p>
<p>He flinched back. The bomb fell straight down, all of two yards
out from the edge. It had seemed to go straight up, but the
uncoiling branch had thrown it forward too. It dropped like a
stone, still wobbling a little, blunt end down. They turned to
follow its progress. Down below, something pale fluttered, it was
the man's face twisting upwards towards the sky and the black
shape.</p>
<p>The bomb plummeted towards him. His mouth opened and he yelled
something, jumped backwards with both arms outstretched, his skin
white against the grey of the shale, streaked scarlet with blood.
He missed his footing, rolled and skittered halfway down.</p>
<p>The bomb hit the soft slope, dug in a little, but its momentum
ploughed it forward and it bounced out, somersaulting once, heading
for the ledge of mudstone rubble twenty yards from where the first
one had landed, but close to where the third bomb from the previous
attempts had rolled in the shale. It hit the mudstone, tail first.
A piece of tailfin flicked off and it too spun, whirling, straight
for the soft shale bank.</p>
<p>The man bellowed in lunatic triumph, despite the fact that he'd
slid down the incline almost as far as the basin of the corrie.</p>
<p>The bomb bounced fast straight towards where the other stubby
black shape lay. They watched it, all five of them, high on the
side of the gorge, unable to draw their eyes away.</p>
<p>It hit.</p>
<p>The whole world turned a brilliant, searing, blinding white.</p>
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<h1>35</h1>
<p><em>The whole world exploded</em>.</p>
<p>The detonation was so vast, so colossal, that there was no
sound, not at first. The narrow gorge erupted in a sea of blinding
light that turned everything white and burned dark and cracking
lines into the backs of their eyes. The very air slammed up at
them, turned solid by the enormity of the explosion, catching them
in a stunning body blow that threw them right off their feet and
into the air.</p>
<p>It was worse than they had imagined, more apocalyptic than
anything they <em>could</em> have imagined. The whole earth leapt
upwards under their feet at the same time as the searing, hardened
air came punching up from downslope.</p>
<p>In the first split second, there was no noise at all because the
quality of the very air had changed in the instant of the
explosion. The earth came up at them, shucked them off and the
blast carried them away. A monstrous hand reached up and snatched
at Doug who was lower down the slope, nearer the sharp edge toward
which the man had been climbing. The hot hand grabbed at him,
pressing against every inch of his skin and squeezed so hard he
felt his eyes popping outwards. The hand lifted and threw him and
he went sailing through the blinding sky, arms and legs
flailing.</p>
<p>Danny and Corky, lying in a tangle beside the tree were thrown
up, along with the ledge of turf on which they sprawled, in a
sudden reverse of gravity. They went rolling straight up the hill
one over the other in a tangle. Tom was slammed against Billy so
hard that his nose burst against Billy's ribs and the two of them
were punched over the low rise and dumped onto the thick
heather.</p>
<p>The noise came then.</p>
<p>It was louder than anything they'd heard, louder than the
explosions up in Drumbeck Quarry, or close thunder in a summer
storm beating its way up the firth. It made the shotgun blast pale
to a whisper. It was louder than anything in the world. It blasted
into their heads in a sudden, excruciating blare that drove out all
thought in a stunning, catastrophic concussion.</p>
<p>It was nothing like the movies at all. It was no fireworks. The
earth itself simply exploded.</p>
<p>The blast wave drove under the roots of the hawthorn tree which
had catapulted the bomb into the air and ripped it, roots and all,
from where it clung to the edge of the gorge, lifted it straight
into the air. Corky was tumbling upwards, landing on his shoulder,
crashing onto his backside. His teeth crunched together and up at
the back, one of them cracked in a soundless, painless crunch. The
sky was white and the noise was crackling inside his head now, for
he had gone deaf once more. All he could hear was the concussion
and the glassy crackle inside the bones of his skull. There was no
time to breathe, no time to yell and every nerve in his body was
slammed numb. He saw the hawthorn tree fly upwards like a jagged
rocket, tumbling as it flew, the one trunk ripping away from the
other, scattering leaves and twigs. He landed on the heather with a
thud which might have knocked his breath out, but he couldn't tell.
Danny landed half on top of him, on his backside. His eyes were
wide and unblinking and his pupils seemed to have disappeared so
that only blue showed.</p>
<p>The blast went on and on, rocking through them, while the earth
danced and jumped as if it was alive and it seemed as if the
explosion would never end. Corky managed to turn, found his breath,
sucked in air that was hot and burning. The world smelt as if it
was on fire.</p>
<p>Doug had landed over to the left, feet up, head down, flipped by
the explosion up to the same level, but out from the protection of
the heathery gradient. He was rolling back, trying to get a grip on
the shale surface, sliding downwards as he did so, slipping
straight towards the sheer drop.</p>
<p>"Doug!" Corky bellowed, but no sound at all came out, although
he knew he had shouted. Doug didn't hear him. Danny was rolling
over now, eyes trying to focus, a trickle of blood dripping from a
burst lip. He saw Doug start to slide, saw the shale crumble under
him. The lip was now closer than it had been before. Beyond it was
the drop to the corrie below and the cauldron of white where the
bomb had cracked the world.</p>
<p>Corky crawled over, forcing his numbed limbs to move. Danny
scrambled past, mouth working violently as if he too was
screeching. Danny got a hand to Doug's ankle. Corky grabbed his
other leg and Doug stopped slipping. He rolled quickly, grabbed
Danny's shoulder and spun onto the relative safety of the turf.</p>
<p>All of this happened in bare seconds. The noise was still
ripping inside their heads, and they were entirely unaware that
each of them was bawling. Up the slope, Tom and Billy, further away
from the blast and less concussed, had landed together on the low
rise at the highest vantage over the main valley and all the
runnels which fed it. They were both winded and numb.</p>
<p>The tree went sailing upwards, even higher than where they
sprawled. It was spinning and twirling and scattering its confetti
of leaves and pieces of thorn in a spectacular ballet into the
white.</p>
<p>Rocks and pieces of mudstone blasted upwards, some of them
trailing dust or smoke, up and out, in a spectacular eruption,
mixed in with red-hot pieces of metal which burned through the sky
like meteors in reverse. The rocks went up in a fountain and came
back down as black hail.</p>
<p>Below the edge of the gorge, the face they had crawled up in
panic, where Danny had slung the curved stick to knock the man off
his feet, the whole slope shivered, shuddered, then all of it
peeled away in an avalanche of rock and shale. The edge where Danny
and Corky had sprawled slowly slipped away with a huge roar and Tom
was surprised that he could hear it. It was not as loud as the
percussion of the bomb, but the earth shivered even more violently.
Corky and Danny held on to Doug as the ground began to slide from
under them. They could feel the rumble of it moving, the bucking
dance of ground in motion. Doug turned, crawled upwards, making his
feet move faster than the sliding surface. Corky hauled on his
collar.</p>
<p>From their vantage point, Tom and Billy could see the narrow
ridge shatter and crack on the far side, the thin shoulder that
separated this gorge from the next, where they had discovered the
backed-up lake. The whole top end, a hump of volcanic basalt rock
maybe some twelve feet high and six wide, was pushed outward by the
enormity of the blast.</p>
<p>The three others scrabbled desperately to avoid being dragged
down in the avalanche into the corrie below them. They got to solid
earth, pushed themselves up onto the bracken, kept coming. Tom
could hear them yelling frantically, but his eyes were fixed on the
far side. Beside him Billy stood like stone, legs braced, eyes
wide, mouth even wider.</p>
<p>Corky reached them, his face grey with shale dust. He had Doug
still by the collar as if he was unable to let it go. Blood was
trickling from Danny's mouth. Tom's burst nose gave him no pain
yet.</p>
<p>They all turned.</p>
<p>Down below, where the lip had started to slip and side, the
whole side of this gorge bulged outwards, undercut by the blast.
The ringing in Corky's ears stopped suddenly. He saw Danny push his
palms against his own ears as if trying to clear the pressure. For
an instant there was an absolute silence and then something popped
and Corky heard the bass rumbling thunder.</p>
<p>The slope bulged, swelled as if a gigantic bubble were inflating
underneath the ground. The lip where they'd been sliding just
dropped from sight. Jagged, horizontal cracks, more or less
parallel, appeared in steps above that and almost instantly, in a
jagged succession, they fell away in slices. The ground bucked
again , almost hard enough to throw them off their feet.</p>
<p>"Back!" Tom bleated and everybody heard him this time except
Doug, but Corky still had a hand to his collar and he simply
dragged him further up into the heather.</p>
<p>Over on the far side of the defile, another series of horizontal
cracks appeared, broken by vertical fissures that suddenly raced up
the opposite face towards the ridge. The great boulder at the top
shuddered and then rocked, not slowly, but surprisingly fast,
twisting as it did.</p>
<p>Streamers of debris and shrapnel were falling down around them
and there was no cover. The hawthorn tree was tumbling through the
air, both trunks in pirouette around each other. Rocks hit all
around them. Further up the slope, behind them so they did not see
it yet, a blazing piece of metal had set the dry summer couch grass
alight. It would eventually burn eastwards and blacken miles of the
moorland. The five of them stood there, transfixed once more. Tom
pulled a numb Billy down beside him. By a miracle, the outsplash
hit none of then, though all around them it was rapping and
thudding on the grass in a deadly hail, like shot from the gun.</p>
<p>On the far side, the rock shoulder slumped. A series of mudstone
boulders shot out like squeezed pips in a cannonade powerful enough
to spit them across the gorge to smack into the other side which
was now a full-blown avalanche. The noise of grinding, rolling rock
was unbelievable.</p>
<p>The ridge twisted under its own weight, then fell away, slowly
at first, then falling into the next gully. Sharp cracks of broken
stone came out like grenades and then the ridge just fell from
sight.</p>
<p>"<em>Christ on a bike!</em>," Doug bawled, and his words were
almost strangled by the death grip Corky had on his collar. Danny
was speechless.</p>
<p>Below them the rockface slumped down into the corrie with a huge
grinding. Over on the opposite side, the rock ridge toppled out of
sight and slammed against something with such force that they felt
the shock of it tremble under their feet from almost eighty yards
away.</p>
<p>The shiver caused more of the ground on this side to slip. Danny
pulled Corky who dragged Doug without any ceremony. Tom and Billy
followed on. They scurried, stiff, sore and numb, but miraculously
alive, along the edge of the heather, gaining height on the curve
of land which connected the twin, narrow gorges. From that distance
they could turn and see what was happening.</p>
<p>"Look at that," Danny yelled. Corky held a hand up to his
ear.</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>Danny pointed and everybody looked. The side of the valley, the
one they had scrambled up in panic and fear, was sliding down in
one huge sheet of shale and mudstone. Small pieces of rock were
shooting out to tumble down to the little rivulet beyond the basin
of the corrie.</p>
<p>Over on the other side of the ravine, they could now see from
the vantage point of the high ground, the great rock on the ridge
shoulder had rolled down to crash against the basalt walls which
virtually bisected the valley. Behind them, Lonesome Lake stretched
blackly, pocked by falling pieces of stone and twigs. The immense
block of stone had rolled close to the top end of the wall where it
bedded into the side of the valley, and now it was rocking
massively back and forth.</p>
<p>"It's going to.....," Corky bawled.</p>
<p>The huge stone swung forward, back, teetered and then seemed to
reach a point of equilibrium. Underneath its weight, the layer of
mudstone began to crumble. Shards spat outwards on puffs of
pulverised dust. The rock jarred, swung and then rolled. It all
seemed to go in ponderous slow motion, but it took only a couple of
seconds for it to tumble down the steep slope.</p>
<p>It hit the wall where the trees and twigs and muddy peat had
formed the natural dam, hit it with such a colossal jarring blow
that the basalt dyke shivered under the impact. One side of it, a
foot back from the water-worn crevice that had been cut by
thousands of years of tumbling water, cracked and splintered,
sending fissures growing up it like instant black branches. A
squirt of fine water hosed out from the blockage, maybe ten feet up
from the base. Lower down, where the new cracks spiderwebbed the
rock wall a fine spray hissed, almost invisible. Another spurted
out, black and dirty, arcing out into the narrow gully. The edge of
the wall bulged the way the side of the face had done. It seemed to
breathe, stop, breath again. Behind it millions of gallons pushed
with irresistible pressure. The cracks on the weakened wall close
to the plug of twigs and branches, feathered out, flaked. There was
a heartbeat of a pause when nothing happened.</p>
<p>Then the dam burst.</p>
<p>It exploded outwards, taking the barrier of logs and everything
else with it. The thick trunk that had formed the main blockage
went tumbling out like a caber, end over end. It smacked into a
rock fifty feet down the gorge and snapped like a dead twig.</p>
<p>The water came out behind it in a roar that sounded somehow
alive and ferocious. The wall of water came pushing out in a
foaming cascade, taking rocks and sticks and everything with it. It
shot straight out, hit the right hand bend in the gully where it
turned to empty into the valley, and the bounding debris simply
carved its own way through. Pieces of quartz and old red sandstone
rolled along in blocks six feet high, carried by the enormous bore
of water. The noise was cataclysmic.</p>
<p>The five of them watched, stunned once more to silence as the
dam burst and the huge front of water went rushing down the defile.
The two halves of the jagged trunk which had blasted out were
picked up again and thrown into the air, tumbling again. One thick
section speared the shale on the far side, embedded into the ground
before the water caught it again, plucked it free, and dragged it
down onto the valley. The avalanche of water, stone and silty mud
came crashing out into the main valley of Blackwood Glen in a vast
torrent that unleashed all the pent-up weight and power that had
been the deeps of Lonesome Lake. Down there, they could see the
little ridge where the hawthorn trees grew in a line, the place
where the four of them had sat out the long night while Corky
gnawed grimly at the wire. The front hit the hawthorns and simply
swept them sway. They could see the branches and the roots wave
violently as they tumbled before it, then tumbled inside it. The
next second, the flood swept over the campsite, a wall of brown and
white that was ten feet deep, surging with foam, the colour of mud.
The tent flipped up. An enamel plate spun into their air like a
frisbee. In a split second the campsite was gone. The circle of
stones was scattered like billiard balls. The torrent smacked
against the alders and hawthorns on the far side, splintering
trunks and uprooting the ferns. A whole section of turf simply slid
down, undercut by the sharp stones which were dragged and scraped
along like a rasp-file.</p>
<p>The rampart of water reached the turn where Corky has been
ambushed by the raggedy man, flinging stones ahead of it to embed
themselves in the opposite slope, then the flood hit the trees,
snapping the first ones like matchwood, great spruce trees, tall
and straight, that had stood a hundred years and more, sending up a
fusillade of gunshot over the roar of the devastation. The gully
they had followed to reach the dam which held the backed up lake
was changed forever, two of the turns, left and right, had simply
been ground away to form a straight gash.</p>
<p>The camp site was gone, taking with it the ruined tent and their
old haversacks and the deer's rotted head, the gun, every shred of
evidence that they had ever been there.</p>
<p>Over on the gorge to the left, where they had climbed the face,
pursued by the madman, the geography had utterly changed.</p>
<p>The steep slope was no longer there. It had peeled and slid,
taking with it the lip where the hawthorn tree had clung, and where
Doug and Danny and Corky had fallen and tumbled before clambering
for their lives after the blast. There was no slope, only a new,
sheer face where the lines of mudstone sandwiched the thicker
layers of gravel from the last ice age. It dropped almost a hundred
feet into what once had been the little basin of the corrie that
they'd reached after the scrambling, desperate climb up the shale
slope.</p>
<p>The corrie was gone.</p>
<p>In its place, a huge mound of rubble and stone and gravel
remained, hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of rock, still steaming
and smoking and billowing dust. Trickles of rocks and stones ran
down the flanks in miniature avalanches as the slip shuddered and
settled under its own weight.</p>
<p>Above them, a vast cloud of smoke was roiling in the once blue,
once white sky, turning it black, shrouding them in its shadow.</p>
<p>Below them, where the corrie basin had been, was a vast spoil
heap of rock and shale, altered forever from what it had been in
the nightmare chase, the panicked, desperate dash for freedom.</p>
<p>The man with the twitchy eyes was underneath it. He was buried
under this new hill.</p>
<p>For a long time they stood there, listening to the crackling in
their ears, listening to the scouring roar of Lonesome Lake as it
drained away, scraping the valley clean of everything that had been
there, alive or dead, carrying it all down in a cataclysmic swathe
of destruction through the forest downstream. In the distance, they
could see the tops of the trees whipping back and forth as the
torrent shook them to their roots.</p>
<p>After a while, the noise began to subside and the flow began to
lessen. They still stood there, frozen, numb, rooted, hardly able
to breathe, while around them the dust billowed and the smell of
burning was hot on the air.</p>
<p>The grey, bare mound that now covered the corrie drew their eyes
towards it like a magnet. They had buried him.</p>
<p>Far off, way down the slope on the other side, in the direction
of Blackwood farm, a cock crew. Closer in, but still some distance
away, a big grey bird flapped into the sky above the trees, gaining
height, obviously startled by the rushing torrent of water. Danny
Gillan thought he could hear the hoarse cry of a heron.</p>
<p>Down in the depths, where the campsite had been, there was
nothing to show that anybody had been there, neither boys nor
madman.</p>
<p>After a long time, as one, the boys of them turned to head for
home. For an even longer time, nobody said a word.</p>
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<h1>36</h1>
<p><em>Reminiscence:</em></p>
<p>For a long time, as we trudged up the moor, beyond the burning
grass and heather which trailed white smoke into the now still air,
nobody said a word. Nobody could. We breasted the hill and headed
down the slope towards the distant Barwoods which formed the first
barrier between the moor and the high farmland. Over the east, the
sun had now risen well up beyond Langmuir Crags, soaring bright
into a clear blue sky. Behind us, as we could see, every time we
turned around (and none of us could resist doing that) the pall of
smoke had risen up in a huge column that flattened out at the top.
We had seen clouds like that before, in newsreels in the old Regal
Cinema.</p>
<p>We had gone down into the valley five days before, and we had
come out again, and life would never be the same again, not for any
of us. Every now and again, one would turn back to look at the
rising pillar of smoke, the black and transient marker of what had
happened, but mostly we looked over our shoulders just in case the
raggedy, bloodied and somehow unstoppable monster with was
clambering up the moor after us, waving that butcher's knife and
repeating his own mad mantra.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly...dung fly....</em></p>
<p>We were all hurt and we were all bruised, both inside and out.
Whatever <em>Twitchy Eyes</em> had done he had reached inside each
of us in one way and another and left his mark on our souls.
<em>Jesus</em>, we were only thirteen years old.</p>
<p>Nobody said a word for a long time and that's how it stayed. We
never, despite what happened after that, we never spoke about it to
anybody else. Not ever. During that hot, crazy summer and the
strangely bitter, unstable aftermath of the autumn which followed,
we lived in the shadow of the man with the twitchy eyes. A few
mothers in our town lived in this shadow too, and sisters and
brothers and devastated families, but we had <em>seen</em> him.
<em>We</em> had heard the sound of his voice, felt his touch.</p>
<p>We had looked into those eyes.</p>
<p>Back down the hill after those five days, carrying less in our
hands than we had taken there, and weighed by so much more in our
souls. We couldn't go home, not right away, so we stayed, huddled
together for comfort in the heat of the afternoon, down in the damp
shade of Rough Drain, waiting until the old bus came back with the
rest of the scouts, and mostly waiting until we could face another
human being who was not one of us. Nobody knew.</p>
<p>Strange, isn't it? Nobody knew. Nobody suspected. Boys get away
with murder, near enough. You come in with the knees torn out of
your jeans and your furious Ma wants to know where she'll get the
money for another pair, never mind torn skin. She asks what you've
been doing and you tell her you fell and that's fine. You could
have fallen off a cliff, but all she can see are holes in the
jeans.</p>
<p>You get a scrape or a cut and you say you fell. A bloody nose?
Fell. Mothers just don't look and most times they don't ask, and
fathers don't notice at all unless it concerns other business. You
get a scrape or bruise every other day. A torn shirt or ragged
denims can hide a multitude of sins and plenty of damage. They can
hide what Billy needed to hide. They can cover forever the flaring
then dying splashes of a shotgun blast. A kick from a madman's
boot.</p>
<p>Scrapes and cuts are a boys lot. Nobody really cares that much.
Nobody sees. Boys hide it all, because that's the way boys are, and
mostly that's the way men are too. We came back with the scouts and
we took our knocks for damaged clothes and we hid our damaged
souls.</p>
<p>The killings that had begun in the spring with the slaying of
daft Mole Hopkirk, who would never, despite his stated ambition,
have become The Greatest Cat Burglar in the History of Crime, those
killings stopped. Some people, it seems, had their own theories as
to why.</p>
<p>Little Lucy Saunders was long buried, laid to rest in a dry
coffin, cleaned of the mud and her own mess. Don Whalen's mother
spent two years in Barlane mental hospital, racked by the image of
her son's gaping face and its covering of flies. Jeff McGuire, who
found Mole's mutilated body, he was in and out of Barlane like a
yo-yo, a strange and affected youth with an odd, distant look in
his eyes.</p>
<p>Up at Blackwood Farm, where the cock had crowed, master of all
it surveyed for two weeks one far-off summer, they cleared up the
pieces that had been Ian McColl and his tiny, brave wife.</p>
<p>The killings stopped. After a while, the town tried to get back
to normal, still looking over its collective shoulder, the way we
had done on the strange, numbed trail down from the high moor that
we'd climbed to get out from under, to find the Dummy Village of
legend. Just in case. <em>Just in case.</em></p>
<p>Nobody could really believe he was gone, but <em>we</em> knew.
We knew why, and we never told a soul because we couldn't. Simple
as that. There were five boys whose lives had been altered,
infected by the touch of the man with the twitchy eyes. We tried to
put it away, tuck it into a dark corner, but if you're reading
this, you'll know that things that lurk in dark corners come out,
and they always go for the throat. We could not tell anyone what
had happened to Billy Harrison. We could all remember the
deathliness in his voice when he stood there beside the crumpled
tent.</p>
<p><em>Kill him!</em></p>
<p>We couldn't tell, not then. It's hard enough even now, after all
this time.</p>
<p>Doug Nicol's father came home in the autumn, and a fortnight
later, they had emptied the house along Braeside Street and gone
off to Toronto. The last I saw of Doug, he was standing, blinking
tears from his eyes, holding on to little Terry's hand, sniffing
hard so that his big teeth showed. The sun was turning his ears
pink. My throat was dry. He reached out and touched me on the
shoulder and I put a hand on his and I still remember that touch. I
always will.</p>
<p>I remembered him, remember still, how he had turned to the rest
of us, when we could all have got away clean, while the man was
still grunting like an animal in the tent, and I can recall the
words he said in that deadly low whisper.</p>
<p><em>We have to help him.</em></p>
<p>Skin-and bone, thirteen years old, and he would have laid down
his life for his friend. Greater love has nobody, than that.</p>
<p>I remember Doug Nicol when he stretched out, choked by the wire,
to get his foot to the bag, nearly killing himself for us all. He
had run forward to snatch the shells away before the madman could
load the shotgun. Then he had strode forward, raising that smooth
stone up, to slam it down again. Doug Nicol. I never saw him again
after he left town, never heard from him again, but I'll never
forget him as long as I live. I hope he is happy. I really hope to
God he is.</p>
<p>Billy Harrison's mother, who'd doted on her boy and filled his
head with heroic tales of derring-do, myths of a hero father who
did not exist, she met another sailor, not an American one, and
moved to Portsmouth, met yet another, came back up north again and
stayed, dragging Billy with her. They settled in Kirkland, a few
miles along the Creggan Road and she took to drink and died
sometime in the late seventies. Billy was never the same after that
week in the valley. God, none of us were, for sure. Many years ago,
I saw him coming out of a bar, in another place, another city, with
another guy who was tall and black haired, taller than Billy
himself, and for a moment, my heart just stopped. Billy had a dog
chain around his neck and the other man held the free end. Years
after that, I hadn't heard but I found out later, he got a five
year stretch after a police raid on a child porn ring. There was
talk that some of the videos weren't just sex, but nothing of that
was ever proved in court. Billy went down to Drumbain Jail. He
hanged himself in his cell.</p>
<p>I only found this out after I'd come back myself, for my own
personal reasons, and by then I'd seen what sparked all this off
again, uncovering the memories I'd tried to bury down deep. I later
discovered, from the records of the inquiry, that he'd hung himself
with a tightening loop-noose made from baling twine from the prison
farm's harvester.</p>
<p>I remember Billy Harrison on the ground, while the man hauled at
him, trying to get the gun, a prostrate shape, flopped and
flapping. I remember his heartrending cries of desperate terror in
the dark of the night. I recall his triumphant return from the
Dummy Village far up on that bleak moor with the ram's skull
paraded on top of his stave, like a Roman standard. I remember the
wet patch spreading on his jeans as he climbed up the hill. I can
still see the dreadful lost and barren look in his eyes down in the
valley when he realised he had been singled out as the first
special victim.</p>
<p>Whatever drove him on after all that, the man with the twitchy
eyes was behind it, and for that alone, I hope he is burning in the
everlasting fire. Billy Harrison was maybe a crazy kid, big in the
mouth, tough in the talk, but he was never a bad one, just a bit
<em>troubled</em>. Whatever else the man with the Twitchy Eyes had
done, he'd touched Billy Harrison and passed on some of the
infection of his own appalling sickness.</p>
<p>A year after Billy Harrison died, I met Tom Tannahill, by sheer
coincidence. He was still small, still thin, and his curly hair was
getting thinner still, but he was wiry and there was a toughness
about him that was quiet and strong and it was good. He had been
working in a hospital in Rwanda, right in the middle of the
madness, all that killing. He had led a party of kids out, through
the bush, through the wilds, past the marauding bands of bandits
with machine guns and Kalashikovs and machetes, got them out to
Zaire and to safety. He'd adopted one of them, a little girl,
barely three years old, a girl he called Maureen. When he told me
that, he looked me in the eye and something passed between us and
that was enough. The next month he went back to Rwanda, where
thousands were dying every day, and he was never heard of
again.</p>
<p>Tom. Tiny Tom with his high voice and his shaking hands.</p>
<p>I remember him in the night, trying not to piss his pants
because he did not want to die in his own mess. <em>Jesus</em>. He
was thirteen, same age as me. I remember him swiping that book from
the library so he could read a story to the little sister who was
dying. Billy Goats Gruff. I recall, like it was yesterday, how he
swung the gun by the barrel and I can still hear the thunder as the
shot missed him by barely an inch. I remember him turning, despite
his terror, at the top of the ledge, to reach down and help Billy
up. Fixed in my memory is the picture of him facing up to the
Twitchy Eyed madman, raising the gun in his hands, trying to
protect the rest of us.</p>
<p>Greater love hath no man than this.</p>
<p>And John Corcoran. Corky to his friends.</p>
<p>His old man, Paddy Corcoran, came out of jail even more crooked
and a whole lot meaner and within a year he was back in for a
two-year stretch for an assault on Corky's mother. One prophesy
came true. Corky's shoulder was dislocated again and the court
heard that had happened when he squared up to Paddy Corcoran, a
big, blundering man with fists like hams who had thrown him around
the room the way a terrier throws a rat. Corky told me about it
later, grinning that slow, hard way of his, telling me it was worth
it, because he'd got out from under. His mother was in hospital for
a little while and when she got out, she left Paddy and abandoned
Phil who was just as much out of control. She and Corky and his
aunt moved to a house up on Cargill Farm Road, only a couple along
from the bungalow where big John Fallon lived with his son and
daughter.</p>
<p>Corky stayed on at school for an extra year to get the maths
qualification he needed to become an engineer. He'd given up on the
idea of making movies, though he was the natural, the one with all
the imagination. When I walk by the canal at Barloan Harbour, I can
still hear the <em>doom-doom-</em>doom echo up from the tunnels dug
by those Racine rats. Corky never got make movies, but he hauled
himself out from under. And he was never going to be scared of
anybody ever again.</p>
<p>The words <em>up and over</em> somehow repeat themselves and
maybe they're more appropriate. Corky got up and over. Big John,
the police sergeant, gave him a solid recommendation to the
shipyard at Barloan Harbour and he started his apprenticeship. He
hauled himself up by the bootstraps, slogging away at night
classes, determined to make something of himself. He got a good
engineering degree, and he never bothered to learn to talk proper,
the way the <em>toffs</em> did. Cargill Farm Road wasn't too far
away and Corky and I stayed close in our teens. After a while,
after the first few months, we never talked about what happened up
in the valley, but it was something that held us together,
something we had. Something private. We saved it for later.</p>
<p>A couple of years back, before my walk down on River Street, the
first I'd taken in this town for a long time, a <em>wheen of
years,</em> as we used to say, John Corcoran was the chief engineer
on a big gas rig out in the North Sea. You'll recall it went up
like a bomb, and remember, I know about bombs.</p>
<p>Corky stayed back, no surprise, getting men onto the lifeboats,
waiting until the last minute, until the rest were safe. All of
this is documented. It was in the middle of the night and a gale
was blowing. The fireball had swept through the turnhouse and the
sleeping quarters and Corky had been the one who got them out of
there so that only four men, the ones caught in the blast, were
killed.</p>
<p>A young Norwegian, one of the cooks, he was coming across the
gantry, while behind him, the metal of the walls was buckling and
twisting in the heat. The rungs had started to pop out and the boy
was slipping, hanging over a hundred foot drop. Corky turned away
from the boat and crawled over the framework, risking his own life,
grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him back. Just then a
stanchion higher up gave way and the whole side of the rig
collapsed, taking John Corcoran and the boy with it, tangled in the
safety rope. It slid down the leg and crumpled like a child's toy,
dragging both men under the water. The young Norwegian says John
Corcoran somehow got his knife out and cut the rope, still under
the water, and pushed him to freedom. The lifeboat got to the scene
a few minutes later, but it took them too long to shift the twist
of metal and free John Corcoran, trapped just under the surface.
When they brought him up, he was still alive, but lack of oxygen
had caused dreadful and irreparable brain damage.</p>
<p>Those thirty long minutes under the freezing waters of the north
sea, they burned out the flash and the fire and the brave
determination that was our Corky.</p>
<p>Greater love hath no man than this. That he lay down his
life.</p>
<p>I remember those eyes flashing with fear and anger, damned
righteous anger, feet spread, knife out, challenging the crazy,
twisted killer who was baptising Billy in the pool in Blackwood
Stream, preparing him for sacrifice. I remember him looking into
that infinity of death and not flinching. I remember the awful
grind of his teeth on the wire as he tried to free us all. I can
still see his elbow jerking back twice, three times, to put the
knife into the twitchy-eyed beast. In my mind I hear his soothing
whisper as he pulled the damp tee-shirt away from the searing skin
of my back, taking the embedded pellets with it one by one.</p>
<p>John Corcoran. Corky to his friends. He had laid down his life
many a time in that one summer.</p>
<p>I saw him, picking up litter on River Street and his eyes looked
into mine, through mine, with not a flicker of recognition, and of
all the losses, that was the most painful of all. I could feel
tears stinging in the back of my eyes and suddenly I could not
swallow.</p>
<p><em>Hey arse-face. How's it hanging?</em> The words stuck to the
back of my throat and they still do. I remember those eyes flashing
and I think of the dreadful waste of it all. The unfairness.</p>
<p>Some memories don't fade, no matter how you try to diminish them
and push them down into tight little boxes with heavy lids. The
memories have their own way of breaking free, beasts in the night,
struggling to come back, because memories have a life of their own.
I can still see the looks on their faces the day the man came
clawing is way up the hill after us, roaring like a mad beast,
madness in his eyes and murder in his mind.</p>
<p>For many years, I kept the memory right down and let it slumber
fitfully, shying away from it, maybe hoping it would fragment and
wither for lack of attention. For a while I succeeded, because
you're supposed to go on, to grow up, to overcome. But then
something would happen, a chance meeting, a record from those days,
<em>Red Rooster</em> or <em>My Generation</em>, played on good old
Radio Clyde, a cutting from an old newspaper, even an old movie
like <em>Deliverance</em>.</p>
<p>Or something like the eyes of John Corcoran who sweeps the
streets and doesn't now have the brains he was born with. Something
like that would happen and in a second, in the twitch of an eye, I
would be a thirteen-year-old boy again, with a faded sloppy-joe and
torn jeans and scuffed canvas shoes. Memories come back.</p>
<p>Angus McNicol, the old policeman, he poured me a couple of
whiskies and talked into the recorder, and probably exorcised a few
of his own ghosts in the process. He asked me why I was asking all
the questions, and while I spun him a yarn, by then I really
thought I knew why.</p>
<p>I needed to know who he was, the gaunt man who had come across
the stream while we were guddling for trout.</p>
<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
<p>On River Street, where the first killing had happened, the
murder of Mole Hopkirk in the back room of Old Cairn House, it had
all come back, all of it in a rush, a crazy torrent like the one
that had scoured the valley on the day the bombs exploded and burst
the dam at Lonesome Lake. It came back clear as day, so powerful
that I could smell the heather bloom and the sweat and the pine
smoke from the fire. I could hear the flies buzzing over in the
hollow where Billy had made his altar and the far-off crowing of
the cock was still shrill. I could feel the searing burn of the
pellets embedded in the swollen skin, the cold of the water, and I
could see the parliament of crows judging me from the old swaying
wire up in a deserted ghost village. It came back so powerfully I
could feel panic rise in my chest and a hand squeeze in my belly
and I had to know, to put a name to it. Now I have got a name, or
at least I'm sure I do.</p>
<p>It hasn't made a blind bit of difference, knowing that. I know
<em>who</em>, but I don't know <em>why</em>. Who the hell knows
what madness is? Maybe we all have a little bit of it inside of
us.</p>
<p>I know that I saw madness, absolute insanity in a killer's eyes
and I lived to tell the tale. Who knows how life would have been if
we hadn't gone up there to find the Dummy Village. Or if the
twitchy-eyed monster had picked another town to work his evil.</p>
<p>Late at night, or maybe in the dark and cold shallows of the
morning when the light is murky, the colour of river water down at
the old quayside, I wake up, heart pounding, from a dream, from
<em>the</em> dream, the one where I see that grey and rotting hand
come crawling like a diseased spider out of a bank of shale. Little
trickles of gravel whisper down the steep slope and the fingers
flex with a life of their own. The sifting granules are calling out
to me.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly...dung fly..</em>.in the dream I understand what
that whispering hiss means.</p>
<p>In the dream, my legs won't move and my feet won't climb and I
can't move. I am nailed by my own dreadful fear.</p>
<p>On top of the ridge, a lone grey heron stands and fixes me with
its staring, yellow eye.</p>
<p><strong>THE END</strong></p>
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<h3>About the author</h3>
<p>Joe Donnelly was born in Glasgow, in Scotland, close to the
River Clyde, but at a very young age he came to live in Dumbarton,
which is some miles from the city and close to Loch Lomond, Ben
Lomond and the Scottish Highlands.</p>
<p>At the age of 18, he decided to become a journalist and found a
job in the Helensburgh Advertiser, a local paper in a neighbouring
town where he learned the first essential of writing: how to type.
Quickly.</p>
<p>A few years later, at the age of 22, he became editor of his
local newspaper, the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton, before moving to
the Evening Times and then the Sunday mail in Glasgow where he
became an investigative journalist.</p>
<p>During his career he won several awards for newspaper work
including Reporter of the Year, Campaigning Journalist and Consumer
Journalist.</p>
<p>It was while working in newspapers that he wrote his first
novel, <em>Bane</em>, an adult chiller, which was followed by eight
other novels, mostly set in and around the West of Scotland and
loosely based on Celtic Mythology.</p>
<p>This was followed by <em>Stone</em>, <em>The Shee</em>,
<em>Shrike</em>, <em>Still Life</em>, <em>Havock Junction</em>,
<em>Incubus</em> and <em>Dark Valley</em>.</p>
<p>Recently he decided to write for children, although he says his
books are aimed at "young people of all ages, those with some
adventure in their soul."</p>
<p>The <em>Jack Flint Trilogy</em> is his first venture at telling
stories for the young at heart.</p>
<p>Joe is now working on two novels: A chiller for adults, and
another rollicking adventure for young people, based on Nordic
mythology.</p>
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strain. And five young friends need to get out from under. They
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<p><a href="http://j.mp/RgVy9h">Full Proof</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/TjevrC'>Shrike</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/lTrdOF'>Incubus</a></p>
<p><a href='http://j.mp/darkvalley'>Dark Valley</a></p>
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<li><a href="incubus02.xhtml">Chapter 2</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus03.xhtml">Chapter 3</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus04.xhtml">Chapter 4</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus05.xhtml">Chapter 5</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus06.xhtml">Chapter 6</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus07.xhtml">Chapter 7</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus08.xhtml">Chapter 8</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus09.xhtml">Chapter 9</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus10.xhtml">Chapter 10</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus11.xhtml">Chapter 11</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus12.xhtml">Chapter 12</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus13.xhtml">Chapter 13</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus14.xhtml">Chapter 14</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus15.xhtml">Chapter 15</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus16.xhtml">Chapter 16</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus17.xhtml">Chapter 17</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus18.xhtml">Chapter 18</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus19.xhtml">Chapter 19</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus20.xhtml">Chapter 20</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus21.xhtml">Chapter 21</a></li>
<li><a href="incubus22.xhtml">Chapter 22</a></li>
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<li><a href="incubus31.xhtml">Chapter 31</a></li>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>Shrike</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href="page-template.xpgt"/>
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<div id="header"><img src="logo.jpg" alt="Impera Media Limited logo"/></div>
<div id="heading">
<div id="title">
<h1>Incubus</h1>
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<div id="author">
<h4>Joe Donnelly</h4>
</div>
<div id="uri"><a href="http://www.impera-media.com">http://www.impera-media.com</a></div>
<div id="e">books@impera-media.com</div>
<p id="timestamp">2011-04-11</p>
<p id="version">1.02 - 2015-07-15</p>
<p id="version">1.01 - 2012-10-29</p>
<div id="copyright">Copyright (c) 2011, Joe Donnelly.
<p>All rights reserved</p>
<p>The moral right of the author has been asserted</p>
<p>This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser</p>
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content=
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<title>Dedication</title>
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<h3>About the author</h3>
<p>Joe Donnelly was born in Glasgow, in Scotland, close to the
River Clyde, but at a very young age he came to live in Dumbarton,
which is some miles from the city and close to Loch Lomond, Ben
Lomond and the Scottish Highlands.</p>
<p>At the age of 18, he decided to become a journalist and found a
job in the Helensburgh Advertiser, a local paper in a neighbouring
town where he learned the first essential of writing: how to type.
Quickly.</p>
<p>A few years later, at the age of 22, he became editor of his
local newspaper, the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton, before moving to
the Evening Times and then the Sunday mail in Glasgow where he
became an investigative journalist.</p>
<p>During his career he won several awards for newspaper work
including Reporter of the Year, Campaigning Journalist and Consumer
Journalist.</p>
<p>It was while working in newspapers that he wrote his first
novel, <em>Bane</em>, an adult chiller, which was followed by eight
other novels, mostly set in and around the West of Scotland and
loosely based on Celtic Mythology.</p>
<p>This was followed by <em>Stone</em>, <em>The Shee</em>,
<em>Shrike</em>, <em>Still Life</em>, <em>Havock Junction</em>,
<em>Incubus</em> and <em>Dark Valley</em>.</p>
<p>Recently he decided to write for children, although he says his
books are aimed at "young people of all ages, those with some
adventure in their soul."</p>
<p>The <em>Jack Flint Trilogy</em> is his first venture at telling
stories for the young at heart.</p>
<p>Joe is now working on two novels: A chiller for adults, and
another rollicking adventure for young people, based on Nordic
mythology.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
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<h3>INCUBUS</h3>
<p>It begins as two separate investigations. An elderly woman
collapses, dying in a shopping mall, screaming for her baby. A
young girl disappears on the same day. For detectives David Harper
and Helen Lamont the two cases seem to have no link.</p>
<p>Except for the baby.</p>
<p>The baby that the missing girl seemed to be carrying.</p>
<p>A very demanding baby.</p>
<p>And the question isn't: What sort of woman would steal a
baby.</p>
<p>It is: <em>What sort of baby would steal a mother?</em></p>
<p>The kind of baby no woman ever wants to meet.</p>
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