Never Go Back (26 page)

The launch hove to. There was movement on deck as it wallowed in the swell, but the cabin doors stayed shut. No-one dared say a word now the engine’s roar had faded to a gentle tick-over. Then they heard the squeak of a fender and knew Harry had been right: there was a second boat. A moment later came a sound that made them jump even though they had been waiting for it: the sharp snapping back of a bolt.

One, but only one, of the cabin doors swung open. Daylight flooded in, drowning the sallow glow of the overhead lamp. They saw Frank crouched in the companionway, gazing down at them, the gun cradled in his hand. ‘I see you two Boy Scouts let the lady go. But that’s fine. Just fine.’

‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked, injecting as much firmness into his voice as he could.

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Let’s have you on deck. One by one. We’ll start with you, Harry, since you’re so curious. Step this way.’

The glance Harry exchanged with his two fellow captives was laced with despair. Their plan, such as it was, seemed to be falling apart around them. Perhaps Frank had taken account of their numerical advantage. If so, he would give them no chance to exploit it.

‘Get moving, Harry. Now.’

Reluctantly, Harry obeyed. Frank retreated onto the deck as he struggled out of the cabin through the narrow single doorway. He could see Mark towards the stern, pulling in a rope. The fire extinguisher should be within reach if Chipchase was right about its location, though whether—

Harry froze in mid-stride. The bracket above the cockpit entrance was exactly where Chipchase had said it was. But it was empty.

‘Looking for this?’ Frank stretched down to his left and lifted an object into view: the extinguisher. ‘We noticed Barry eyeballing it when you came aboard. I don’t know what he thought you could do with it, but…’ He tossed it over the side without taking his eye off Harry. ‘Back to business. Close the cabin door behind you and bolt it.’

‘But—’

‘Just do it.’

Harry sighed. The game was up before it had begun. He turned and saw Chipchase mouthing a silent obscenity. With a shrug, he closed the door in his friend’s face. He jerked the bolt into place with a clunk, then, hoping his body was blocking Frank’s view, eased it back until it was barely holding. Frank said nothing. Harry took what encouragement he could from the success of the manoeuvre. He turned back to Frank.

‘Step out here.’

Harry moved slowly out onto the deck. Away to his left was a broad bay of white sand enclosed by rolling green hills: the island of Haskurlay, it had to be. Given long enough, he could probably have made out the ruins of the village beyond the dunes rimming the beach, maybe even the infamous burial mound on the lower slope of the hill at the northern end of the bay. But he had no time for sightseeing. He had very little time of any kind.

The second boat was smaller than the launch — an open-decked inflatable with an outboard motor. Mark was tying it fast against the starboard side, ready, it seemed clear, for the transfer to shore. As Harry watched, he tightened the rope, turned to Frank and nodded. ‘We’re all set.’

‘Good.’ Frank leaned back against the stern rail and smiled at Harry. ‘Sit down.’

Harry lowered himself onto the bench behind him. ‘Why have you brought us here?’ he asked, as if for all the world he did not know the answer.

‘Thought you ought to see the island… at least once, as you and Barry have never been here before. Though that, of course, will have to be our secret. Actually, you aren’t going to Haskurlay even today. This is as close as we get.’

‘What?’

‘Banking on a landing, were you? No, no. That would be far too risky. From our point of view, I mean. A little too… unpredictable. So, the trip ends here. For you and Barry. And Ailsa.’

‘Who are you working for?’

‘That would be telling.’

‘Whatever you intend to do to us, you won’t get away with it, you know.’

‘Oh, I think we will. We’ve been lucky with the weather. And you played along beautifully. But now it’s going to become messy. And I have to consider how it is going to look. That’s why I have to do this… out of sequence.’

‘Sequence?’

‘I mean the order of the killings.’ Frank pushed himself away from the rail and advanced slowly towards him. ‘We’ll make it look like you killed Ailsa first, then Barry, because you couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, then… yourself, because you were suddenly overwhelmed by the horror of your actions, or… whatever. Anyway, the other killings are straightforward, but suicide needs precision. You can’t shoot yourself from six feet away, can you?’

‘We should move him first,’ cut in Mark.

‘Should we?’ Frank responded, his gaze still fixed on Harry.

‘They have to be found in the inflatable. I can be linked to hiring this boat.’

‘You don’t need to worry about that.’

The next second, and the few seconds that followed, billowed into minutes in Harry’s mind. Frank swung round, raising the pistol as he did so. Harry guessed what he was going to do before the possibility of treachery even entered Mark’s thoughts. Mark was just another fall guy. He had been seen with Harry and Barry in Castlebay and on the way there. He had been seen altogether too often. His place in Frank’s plan for how things were going to look was pre-ordained.

The gun went off with a loud crack. Mark’s head jerked back. His mouth fell open, shaping an unspoken ‘Oh’ of futile surprise as blood trickled from a neat round hole between his eyebrows. He staggered back against the gunwale, then slowly toppled over. Harry did not see him hit the water. But he heard the splash. And sprang up at the sound.

It was his only chance. That thought — that instinct — overrode everything else. He threw himself at Frank, head lowered, arms outstretched. If rugby had been played at Commonweal School in his day, he might have made a better job of it. As it was, he was aided by a sudden pitching of the launch caused by Mark’s fall. His charge caught Frank off-balance. They tumbled to the deck. The gun was jolted from Frank’s hand. It slid away out of his reach. Harry tried to pin him down and for a moment they were staring into each other’s eyes, their faces no more than a few inches apart. Then Frank’s relative youth and fitness told. He pushed Harry off, kneeing him violently in the groin as he did so.

Harry rolled to one side, pain sucking what strength he had clean out of him. He heard, as if from a great distance, several thumps, followed by a splintering of wood. Chipchase must have broken out of the cabin, alarmed by the gunshot on deck. There came a shout. ‘Harry!’ Then another noise he could not identify.

Chipchase had called his name. But he was nowhere to be seen. Only Frank appeared in Harry’s sky-dominated field of vision, looming above him, the gun retrieved and pointing directly at him, the barrel rock-steady and drawing closer as Frank stooped towards him. You can’t shoot yourself from six feet away, can you? The question drifted into Harry’s mind. He aimed a kick at Frank’s leading foot. But Frank dodged it with ease, smiling in satisfaction at his own nimbleness. He crunched his knee into the crook of Harry’s left elbow and closed a crushing hand round his right forearm, flattening him against the deck.

Frank brought the gun down in a slow, careful arc, judging to a nicety the ballistics of the suicide Harry’s death was meant to be. Harry swivelled his head to either side, but could not escape. When he looked up, the black hole of the gun barrel was waiting and growing, ready to swallow his world.

There was a roar. For a fraction of a second Harry assumed the sudden noise and heat were the last sensations of his life. But no. The gun was gone. Frank was screaming. He had let go of Harry and raised his hands to his face, his features obscured by a searing plume of flame. Ailsa was beside him. She had hold of something. It was wedged in Frank’s jaws. His screams were sculpted by a mouthful of fire. He fell on his side, some sparking, sputtering object separating itself from him as he did so. But his screams did not cease.

Harry saw Ailsa bending to grab something from the deck: the gun. Then she was above Frank, standing over him, aiming the weapon. Harry propped himself up on one elbow. He knew what Ailsa was about to do. There was a moment when he could have shouted at her to stop. But he did not.

She fired three times. Bang; bang; bang. Neither fast nor slow. Deliberate. Conclusive. Without margin for error.

The screaming stopped. Dead.

Harry struggled to his feet and sat down on the starboard bench. He looked across at Ailsa, who was sitting on the other side of the boat. The gun was still in her hands. Between them Frank lay sprawled across the deck like some great black fish they had just landed, blood oozing from beneath him and lapping first towards Ailsa, then towards Harry, with the pitch of the vessel.

‘What did you… attack him with?’ Harry asked numbly.

‘A safety flare,’ Ailsa replied, pointing to a scorched red and yellow metal tube lying in the stern. ‘I found it in a locker under the wheel. It was… the obvious place to look and… the only thing I could think of.’

‘Thank God you knew how to set it off.’

‘Thank growing up on a small island for that and all the messing about in boats that goes with it.’ She glanced down at the gun. ‘Do you know… how to unload this?’

‘The magazine’s in the handle, I think. There’ll be a catch somewhere to release it. Barry might—’ Harry broke off, bemused by Chipchase’s absence — and the fact that it had not yet occurred to him to question it. ‘Where is Barry?’

‘He knocked himself out on the lintel of the cabin doorway.’

‘He did what?’

‘I’m sorry. We should… see how he is. But… I think he’s all right.’

Harry hurried into the wheelhouse and down into the cabin. Chipchase was slumped on the floor, with his back against one of the table legs and his feet spread out before him. He was blinking like a man hoping his vision would soon clear and rubbing a nasty-looking wound on his forehead that was already forming a lump with a livid bruise purpling around it.

‘He was so worried about you he forgot to stoop,’ Ailsa called from the deck. ‘He’s going to have quite a headache.’

‘Barry?’ Harry crouched beside his friend and grasped him by the shoulders. ‘Barry?’

‘There you are, Harry.’ Chipchase opened his eyes wide, which seemed to bring his vision into focus. ‘What’s… going on?’

‘Don’t worry. We’ve, er, dealt with Frank and Mark.’

‘You have?’

‘Terminally.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Not pretty. That’s a fact.’

‘So…’

‘Everything’s OK.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Well… didn’t I tell you it would be?’ Chipchase grinned. ‘With me in charge.’

—«»—«»—«»—

Chipchase did not ask for any details of what had occurred during his brief period of unconsciousness. His lack of curiosity might have worried Harry had he not been so grateful for it. He had no wish to relive the events any time soon. Nor, clearly, had Ailsa. The shock of what had happened and the almost greater shock of surviving it had reduced their range of thought and action to the needs of the moment.

Chipchase turned out to be no more familiar with the design of a Browning pistol than Harry was. In the event, it was Harry who removed the ammunition, rendering the weapon safe. He also found a tarpaulin folded away under one of the benches, which he draped over Frank’s body. Mark’s was a dark shape in the water, drifting slowly in towards the shore of Haskurlay. There was no way they could retrieve it. Someone else would have to do that. The police, presumably.

The launch had a VHF radio, which they could have used to summon help there and then. But Ailsa was confident she could handle the controls and favoured heading for Castlebay to raise the alarm. ‘If we radio from here, they’ll tell us to stay put,’ she reasoned. ‘I don’t want to sit out here waiting for them. Do you?’

Harry did not. And Chipchase expressed no preference, much of his initial chirpiness on regaining consciousness having deserted him. Ailsa washed his wound as best she could and dressed it with a bandage she found in the first-aid kit. Barry decided a cigarette would aid his recovery and sat out on deck smoking it as they accelerated away from Haskurlay, towing the inflatable behind them.

Harry watched the island recede slowly into the distance, doubting he would ever set foot there now. Ailsa did not look back. She stayed at the wheel, gaze fixed on the northern horizon. Harry wondered if she too had seen her last of the island. It was easy to believe she might never want to return.

But the future was as difficult to predict as the past was to fence off. The one was always infecting the other. And the past that had lured them to Haskurlay was not finished with them yet.

—«»—«»—«»—

‘The police will find out who hired Frank,’ Harry said to Ailsa, standing beside her in the cockpit as the launch sped towards Barra.

‘I don’t care if they do or not,’ she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear her above the roar of the engine. ‘I only ever wanted to know the truth about how Father and Andrew died. Well, we know now, don’t we?’

‘We do, Ailsa, yes. But I’m not sure the powers that be will want the public to learn what Operation Clean Sheet was all about. They’ll organize some kind of cover-up.’

‘Let them. I don’t care about that either. I have a husband and children I love. The kids have no idea what’s been happening. I want to go back to my life with them. I want to bury Murdo next to his mother and father and brother and then…’ She looked away, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying.’

‘Don’t worry about it. What were you going to say? “And then…”?’

‘Oh.’ Ailsa sighed. ‘I was going to say: forget all this.’

‘That won’t be easy.’

‘No. But it may be possible. In time.’

‘The police will ask a lot of questions.’

‘I’m sure they will.’

‘I’ll make it very clear you had no choice about shooting Frank. It was kill or be killed.’

‘Just tell them everything, Harry.’ She smiled grimly at him. ‘That’s all we can do.’

‘Yes. I suppose it is.’

‘I’m all right. Really. Go and talk to Barry. I… can’t say any more. Not just now.’

Harry nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

—«»—«»—«»—

Chipchase was bending over the side of the vessel, spitting out the last of a mouthful of vomit, when Harry reached him. He was white-faced, breathing fast but shallowly. What with that and the bandage round his head, through which blood was still seeping, he looked far from well.

‘Maybe you should go below, Barry,’ Harry suggested. ‘You didn’t seem to feel seasick down in the cabin.’

‘I didn’t… did I?’ Chipchase swivelled round on the bench to face Harry. ‘You… could be right.’

‘Want a hand?’

‘No, no. I can still… walk down a flight of steps, y’know.’ Chipchase struggled to his feet. ‘I’m not a… bloody inva—’ He winced and bowed his head. ‘Jesus. That—’

He fell like a toppling tree. Fortunately, Harry was in his path of descent. He caught Chipchase and lowered him gently the last few feet to the deck, kneeling with him as he went.

‘Barry? Are you all right?’ There was no answer. Harry repeated the question. But still there was no answer.