Smokeheads (12 page)

‘How the fuck did you get here so quick?’ said Roddy.

Joe pulled car keys out of his pocket and dangled them.

‘After sending you that wee signal with the torch, I cut inland back to the road. I knew you’d think I’d follow you across the cliffs. I also knew you’d come back here. Actually, I hoped I might get here first, but no matter.’

Adam looked at Joe. His cheeks were red and there was a watery sparkle in his eyes. He looked like he was having the best time of his life.

‘Don’t kill us,’ pleaded Adam.

‘Succinct and no-nonsense,’ said Joe. ‘But completely pointless. Of course I’m going to kill you, why do you think I’ve just fucking chased you halfway around the Oa in the snow at night? To give you a pat on the back? Dickhead.’

Radio static jumped out at them.

Joe kept his eye and gun on them as he reached for the radio on his belt.

‘Yeah?’ he said into it.

The voice on the other end spoke, but they couldn’t make out what was said.

‘Half an hour’s cool,’ said Joe, winking at them. ‘I’ll have everything ready for you then.’

He put the radio back in his belt.

‘How are you going to explain all this to your mates on the radio?’ said Molly, waving an arm around the scene behind them.

Joe put a finger to the corner of his mouth. ‘They never need to know about you three fuckwits, or laughing boy over there.’ He waved the gun at Luke’s body.

He turned to look at Grant. ‘And let me tell you, no one is going to miss that arsehole, least of all the people I work with. Grantie was a liability, and we all knew it. As for the still, well that can always be fixed. There’s enough money being coined in here to make it worth our while.’

‘But how are you going to explain away our deaths?’ said Adam.

Joe sighed. ‘You really have no fucking clue, do you? I won’t have to explain anything, there won’t be any bodies. I’ll get rid of the evidence in the still furnace over there. No bodies, no crime. You cunts came to the island, then you left and took Molly with you.’

‘People will come looking for us,’ said Roddy.

‘You think so?’ said Joe. ‘You’ve got a pretty high opinion of your own importance. Even if someone does come, I just put on the friendly policeman face, say I’ll look into it, and everyone buggers off thinking I’ve got it in hand.’

Molly gave it one last go. ‘No one from the island is going to believe I just upped and left with four guys from the mainland, without a word to anyone.’

‘Then you’ll just have to be a missing person.’ Joe shrugged. ‘What else can I do?’

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ said Molly. ‘Let us go. Don’t make it any worse than it already is. There’s still a way out of this for all of us.’

Joe snorted a sickly, desperate laugh. ‘Look around you, darling.’ He waved his gun around the room. ‘Does it look like there’s a way out for me now? Does it?’

‘You have to stop all this,’ said Molly calmly.

Joe shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘I can’t stop, Molly. That’s just it. Can’t you see? I can’t stop. This is what I do now. This is who I am.’

He looked at her for a moment then suddenly snapped back into focus, raising his voice. ‘Now, I can’t believe you fucking pains in the arse are still standing here talking and not dead.’

He lifted the gun and pointed it straight at Adam.

‘You first, I think,’ he said to Adam, then nodded at Roddy. ‘Bigmouth next.’ He turned to look at Molly. ‘Then it has to be you, love. Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.’

‘You’re not sorry in the slightest,’ said Molly.

Adam stared at the gun barrel pointing at him and felt faint. All the blood in his body seemed to pump into his head, which felt like it was about to explode. A raging gush filled his ears as he stood, unable to move. He watched Joe’s finger begin to squeeze the trigger. It seemed to be happening excruciatingly slowly. Then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. To begin with his brain couldn’t work out what it was.

Suddenly a flood of clear liquid was spraying all over Joe and the gun, soaking him and making him screw up his eyes. He clawed at his eyeballs and the gun went off, the bullet close enough to Adam’s head that he felt the wobble of air past his ear.

Adam heard a voice screaming at him and turned to see Roddy shouting, but couldn’t work out what he was saying. Roddy was pointing at Adam’s hands. He looked down and saw he was still holding the blowtorch. Roddy waved the moonshine canister at him, showing him it was empty. That’s what he’d thrown in Joe’s face. Seventy per cent alcohol right in his eyes.

Adam’s fingers fumbled as he tried to turn the gas nozzle of the blowtorch, eventually hearing the hiss. He looked at Joe, who was righting himself and opening his eyes, red raw and tear-stained. Adam clicked the ignition and heard the soft whoosh of blue flame in his hands. He lifted the blowtorch over his head and hurled it at Joe, whose eyes just had time to focus on the swirling blue flicker heading straight towards his doused head.

Joe ducked but it was too late, the body of the blowtorch hitting him on the cheek, the flame igniting his head in a sucking whump of sound, his whole upper body engulfed in flicking blue and orange heat that Adam could feel on his own face from a few yards away.

Adam stepped back as Joe staggered screaming towards them, gun waving around. The gun went off and they all scattered, then it went off again and again as Joe stumbled into the table, knocking chairs flying and clawing at the burning flesh of his face. The fire spread downwards until his whole body was bathed in persistent, consuming flames, the rancid smell of it making Adam retch.

The gun went off two more times as Joe staggered desperately towards the door, collapsing onto his knees and dropping the gun, his arms still flailing around. He slumped sideways onto the ground and began rolling backwards and forwards but the flames kept hold, turning his clothes and skin to a charred and bloody mess. Eventually he stopped rolling, and his arms fell to his side, but the flame kept burning, reluctant to give up such a willing host.

The three of them watched as Joe burned. Molly ran up and kicked the gun away from the body. She backed off and they stood, unable to speak, wary in case something insane happened like Joe suddenly springing back to life. It took five minutes for the fire to burn itself out, during which the three of them stared intensely at the flames, the blackened lump of flesh and exposed bone beneath. They covered their noses from the sickening stench.

Eventually Roddy spoke. ‘Fuck me.’

‘Is he definitely dead?’ said Adam.

Molly walked over and looked impassively at the burnt-out corpse. She lifted a boot and kicked him hard in the face, bits of crispy, charred flesh flying free.

‘He’s dead, all right.’

Adam stood over Joe’s body, pointing the gun at the blackened and deformed face. His hand was shaking. He gripped the gun in both hands but it still trembled.

‘This is for Luke, you fucking cunt.’

‘Stop!’ shouted Molly, knocking his arm as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet ricocheted off the concrete floor and zipped past Roddy, who flinched.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ said Roddy. ‘Watch it, for fuck’s sake.’

Adam looked at Molly, confused, the gun limp at his side.

‘I just wanted to …’

Molly shook her head.

‘I thought you’d understand,’ said Adam. ‘After what he did to you.’

Molly frowned at him. ‘We have to think clearly. We don’t want to leave any evidence.’

‘Evidence of what?’ said Roddy, tooting more charlie from his case.

‘That we were here.’

Roddy laughed and looked round at the carnage. ‘It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?’

‘Not necessarily. If we leave a bullet in Joe’s body, then it’s obviously murder. If he just burned to death, it could be an accident. We have to think about the situation we’re in here.’

‘What situation?’ said Roddy, sniffing. ‘We take the police car and fuck off out of here sharp.’

‘And go where?’

‘Fucking anywhere.’

‘It’s a police car.’

‘So?’

‘So how do we explain that we’re driving a police car?’

‘What does it fucking matter?’ Roddy swayed and sat down on the floor, clutching at his shoulder.

‘We have two dead policemen on our hands. We can’t be seen just driving their car around the island.’

Adam shook his head. ‘But Grant was an accident and Joe was self-defence.’

‘You think people are going to believe that if they catch us joyriding their squad car?’

‘OK,’ said Roddy. ‘So we take the car and go see that old guy Eric you talked about. Tell him what’s happened, let him sort it out.’

Molly considered this for a moment. ‘Just because he’s not involved, doesn’t mean he’ll be able to make this go away.’

‘All right, then,’ said Roddy. ‘We take the car and drive to the outskirts of Port Ellen, then dump it and walk into town.’

Molly narrowed her eyes as she thought about this, then walked over to Joe’s smouldering corpse. Thin trails of acrid smoke drifted from the body. She knelt down and tentatively touched his melted jacket pocket with the back of her hand. She held the pocket open with fingertips and moved her hand in carefully. She found something and snatched it out, muttering under her breath at the burning sensation in her hands. She dropped the item on the floor, shaking her hand. It was Joe’s car key, the plastic moulding melted all over the metal ridge of the key.

‘That’s that,’ she said.

She went over to Grant’s body and searched through his pockets.

‘Nothing.’ She looked at Adam and Roddy. ‘Either of you two geniuses know how to hot-wire a car?’

‘I skipped that class at uni,’ said Roddy.

Adam just shook his head.

Molly got off her haunches with a sigh. ‘Well, it looks like taking the car is a non-starter.’

She walked over to them. ‘OK, let’s think about this.’ She seemed to be talking to herself more than them. ‘We’re in an illegal still with two dead policemen. We know other cops are involved in this operation, but we don’t know whether they’re from the island or the mainland. We have no idea how far this reaches. There are others coming soon to pick up a delivery in a boat.’ She looked over at Joe’s corpse, at the radio on his belt. ‘We can’t use the police radio, even if it wasn’t melted, because they’ll almost certainly be listening in.’

Silence for a moment, just the quiet thrum of machinery.

‘So what do we do?’ said Adam.

Molly gave a tight smile.

‘I think there’s a way out of this.’

Adam looked around. ‘How? When they find this unholy mess, they’ll come after us.’

Molly looked at him. ‘Not if they don’t know we ever existed.’

He was numb and exhausted, his brain frozen mush, but Adam began to see what she was getting at.

‘Joe didn’t mention us to them, did he?’ he said.

‘Not as far as we know.’

‘So …’ His mind stalled. ‘So what are you saying, exactly?’

Molly took a deep breath. ‘OK, here’s how I see it. We have two dead cops, both burnt to death. So far, no bullet wounds.’ She looked at the gun in Adam’s hand. ‘We have more dodgy cops on the way who probably don’t know about us. So, we remove all trace of ourselves, set fire to the whole place, then when they arrive, all they find is a tragic accident, one they won’t report because it involves implicating themselves in an illegal operation. A dangerous illegal operation, making the accidental fire all the more plausible.’

‘But won’t they see our tracks in the snow?’ said Adam.

‘Not if we don’t give them reason to look for tracks,’ said Molly. ‘And if we’re careful.’

‘So how do we get back to civilisation?’ said Roddy.

Molly considered this for a moment. ‘We have to go back to the Audi and wait to be found.’

‘What?’ said Adam.

‘It’s the only way,’ said Molly. ‘And we have to take Luke’s body with us.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Roddy. ‘Apart from the logistics of carting a dead body miles around the coast at night, he’s got a bullet in his head and half his skull missing where Joe took a hammer to it. How do we explain that?’

Molly shrugged. ‘We have to take him with us. He can’t be found here, otherwise the whole thing is a bust.’

‘OK,’ said Roddy, ‘we have to take him, but what about his head?’

Adam glimpsed over at Luke and felt sick. ‘The skull damage could’ve happened if he was thrown from the car. It doesn’t look too different to what happened to Ethan.’

‘And the bullet?’

Adam rubbed his forehead. ‘We could set fire to the Audi with his body inside, maybe?’

‘Come on,’ said Roddy. ‘You guys have seen
CSI
, right?’

‘That’s a television programme, Roddy, this is real fucking life here.’

Molly nodded to herself. ‘Roddy’s right, we have to get the bullet out.’

‘What?’ said Adam. ‘How?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ said Molly, looking at her watch. ‘First, we have to get on with torching this place before those dodgy bastards arrive.’

She surveyed the scene. Roddy sat panting on the floor, washed-out and ill-looking.

‘You up to trekking back to the car?’ she asked.

‘You saying I’m some kind of poof?’ he grinned. ‘Course I’m up to it. Think a tiny wee nick like this is going to bother me?’ He looked at his injured shoulder and rocked a little.

Molly and Adam stared at him. He didn’t look at all well, his forehead a sheen of sweat, face deathly grey, hands trembling.

Molly turned to Adam. ‘You get Luke out of here, I’ll start emptying those whisky casks all over the place. That should get a nice wee fire going. Reckon you could give me a hand, Roddy?’

He smiled thinly. ‘Anything for a lady.’

Molly pointed at the floor next to the casks, where the contents of their pockets were still strewn across the ground. ‘And we’ll need to take all our stuff with us, obviously.’

Molly helped Roddy up and the three of them walked over and stuffed their belongings back in their pockets. Molly and Roddy then began pulling out the barrel plugs and tipping the hogsheads and butts over. Moonshine glugged and splashed out everywhere, and they rolled the casks around, spreading the liquid which spilled and pooled, filling the air with the sharp smack of alcohol.

Adam went over to Luke. He rubbed his hands up and down his face, wishing the image in front of him would disappear, but Luke was still lying there when he opened his eyes again.

‘Fuck it,’ he said under his breath, then grabbed Luke’s ankles. He began pulling the body across the floor, but it was incredibly hard work, much tougher than he’d expected. Dead bodies weighed a fucking ton. He had to stop every few steps to get his breath back, feeling his aching muscles and stretching sinews. He slowly dragged Luke along in fits and starts, leaving a smeared, viscous trail of blood slewing through the spreading pools of whisky on the ground.

In the doorway, Molly was shaking a small cask so that moonshine splashed out onto the door and the floor.

‘I hate to tell you this,’ said Adam, ‘but it’s going to be murder carrying Luke’s body back to the crash site. I can hardly move him.’

Molly took Luke’s ankles and yanked, budging the body a few inches.

‘Jesus, I see what you mean.’ She looked outside. ‘But we’ve got to get him out of here, and we can’t have blood trails in the snow. Take his arms, we’ll carry him together up the lane where the car tracks have flattened the snow, so we don’t leave any footprints, then cut off to the right, back behind those rocks over there.’

They took the weight between them and stumbled and trudged uncertainly up the lane. It was hard work and they almost dropped him twice, only just catching a leg in time. They stayed on the lane as far as possible, until they were some distance from the barn, then staggered off behind an outcrop of rocks a couple of hundred yards away. They dumped the body with grunts and sighs, then got their breath back. Pale-faced in the moonlight and lying in a snowdrift, Luke seemed so comfortable. Adam felt tears come to his eyes and wiped them away.

‘There’s no bloody way we can carry him all the way back to the Audi,’ said Adam.

‘You’re right.’

Adam looked at her in the moonlight, clear-eyed and bright. Their breaths were billowing around their heads.

‘So what do we do?’

Molly looked back at the barn. ‘I have an idea, leave it to me. Now, let’s get that barn burned.’

They walked back down the lane and into the barn, then each rolled a cask outside, pushing them round the building, their open plugholes spilling whisky all over the walls.

When they’d finished, Molly rolled her empty cask back inside the still as Roddy came out. Adam went to copy her, but Molly stopped him. She went inside and came back out carrying the blowtorch and the claw hammer. She stuck the hammer in the plughole of the empty cask and yanked as hard as she could until the whole lid popped out with a creak of splintering wood. She threw the lid and the hammer back in through the open door and picked up the blowtorch.

Roddy looked confused. ‘What do we need an empty barrel for?’

‘You’ll see,’ said Molly.

Adam realised what she had in mind and shook his head in grim amazement.

She smiled at him. ‘It’ll work, trust me.’

‘What will?’ said Roddy.

‘Never mind,’ said Molly, lifting the blowtorch. ‘Who wants to do the honours?’

They both shrugged, so she lit the torch, stepped forward and pointed it at the bottom of the entrance. The doors immediately erupted into flames, flickering tongues licking skywards. They all took a couple of steps back. The fire quickly spread round the oak walls of the barn and inside the door, they could already feel a fierce heat coming from it. Molly looked back at them for a moment, then turned and tossed the blowtorch far into the middle of the barn, where it instantly ignited into ferocious waves of flames. They felt air being sucked past them into the barn to fuel the inferno, as the noises of crackling fire and blistering wood rose in their ears.

They stood watching for a few moments as the fire spread through the barn, flames raging around the stills and the dead bodies, rolling over the barrels and casks, smoke swirling and billowing up towards the ceiling.

Molly examined the ground around them. It was a mess of slushy snow. Hopefully Joe and Grant’s comings and goings, the police car’s turning tracks and their own endeavours amounted to a slop of indistinguishable confusion.

‘Come on,’ said Molly, turning to Adam and slapping the empty barrel. ‘Help me carry this up the lane, and make sure to keep your feet in the flattened car tracks.’

They lugged the barrel up the lane, Roddy close behind, the fire crackling loudly at their backs.