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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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