by Louise Welsh
Magnus stopped his horse. ‘That could be it.’ They had left the shelter of the forest and emerged onto a ridge at the top of a steep gorge. There was a gap in the clouds and sunlight glinted against a river below; a gush of deep water surging over a rocky bed. High beyond the far bank a turret rose above the treetops. Magnus pointed at it. ‘A grand place for a fortress.’
Stevie shielded her eyes from the sudden sunlight.
‘Rees and Lucy hide out in shipping containers, these guys live in a castle. They don’t care who knows they’re doing well.’
‘They’ve got front.’ Magnus turned his horse away from the ridge, back onto the path that would take them down the valley towards the river. ‘Bjarne had front too. Look where it got him.’
Stevie disliked the bitter edge to his voice. She pressed her knees against her horse’s sides and followed. The path led them back into the shade of the forest. They moved at walking pace, mindful of tangled roots and fallen branches.
‘We don’t know why Bjarne was killed.’ She bent forward to avoid a low hanging branch. Her cheek touched her horse’s neck and she smelt its clean, animal scent: warm and peppery. ‘I didn’t like him any more than you did, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’
Magnus looked back at her. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, was it you?’
The light in the forest was dim and faintly green, the smell of new growth and old rot heavy on the senses. Sunshine after rain had brought out the midges. Stevie flapped them away from her eyes.
‘If you really thought I’d murdered Bjarne you would have accused me before now.’
‘I didn’t accuse you, I asked. It’s not the same thing.’ Magnus kept his back to her and Stevie had to strain to hear his words. ‘You had a strong motive. There was a good chance Bjarne might take your place as president.’
‘A slim chance.’ Stevie was surprised to discover she was more irritated by the suggestion that Bjarne could have won the election, than the suspicion that she had murdered him. ‘I would have won and even if I hadn’t, the presidency isn’t worth killing for.’ She batted at some persistent midges. ‘Why ask now?’
Magnus glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘There was something about the way you held the gun to that child’s head that made me think you had it in you.’
Stevie brushed her hair away from her face, looking at Magnus full on. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt her.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ The forest’s dim light cast shadows over the Orcadian’s features. For a moment his face looked like a tribal mask. ‘Once you point a gun at someone’s head you’re only a trigger away from killing them.’
The conviction in her voice as she threatened Lucy still frightened Stevie. During the chaos of the Sweats she had killed to stay alive, but she had thought she had left her talent for violence behind.
‘Save your sermons for your son, when you find him. He’s the one who’s on the run. I didn’t kill Bjarne but if I had I wouldn’t flee the consequences.’
‘Shug had nothing to do with Bjarne’s death. The boy doesn’t have murder in him.’ Magnus’s voice was fierce. ‘Even if he’d wanted to, he was too hurt from the beating Bjarne gave him. The bloody bastard battered the boy black and blue.’
He turned his back to her and they went on in silence. Neither of them mentioned Shug’s quick recovery or that he had been well enough to leave the island with Willow and his friends, taking Evie with them.
There was a flash of movement in the bushes ahead. Stevie caught a quick glimpse of a nut-brown face fringed by greenery. She pulled her horse up, but the figure was gone, absorbed once again by the forest. She called to Magnus, but he was further up the trail and her words were drowned by the sound of the wind in the trees.
Twenty-Five
The Petrol Brothers’ house was an ancient castle keep, high-walled and sharp-cornered, backed so closely by cliffs that it looked as if it had been hewn from the rock. The place was fronted by an ill-tended lawn, overgrown and pitted with bald patches. The only approach was across open ground or up the sheer cliff-side. There were no cars parked in the driveway, no chink of light in the arrow-slit windows. The heavy wooden door had FUCK U scored in tall, wobbly letters across its surface. It was shut and presumably bolted. The only sign of life came from a few hens, pecking their way across the grass.
Magnus and Stevie stood, hidden behind gorse bushes at the edge of the forest, and stared across the clearing at the fortification. They had tethered their horses some way back and come the rest of the way on foot. Their disagreement was a presence between them, unfinished business.
‘We won’t catch up with the kids if we stick to horseback and that hound of yours isn’t going to last the pace,’ Magnus said.
They had lost Pistol somewhere in the woods. Stevie knew the dog would track her, but Magnus was right, the speed of the journey was too fast, the distance too long, for him to keep up. She blamed Magnus for Pistol’s presence. She would have turned back on the quayside at Stromness and put the dog ashore, had it not been for the Orcadian.
Magnus looked again at the map Rees had drawn. ‘This is definitely it.’ He sounded unsure.
Stevie crouched low and stared through a gap in the bushes.
‘Looks like they’re not universally loved. How do we get in?’
Magnus crouched beside her. ‘Through the front door. These guys are traders. They need customers and we need what they’re selling.’
‘You’re forgetting we have nothing to trade.’
‘We’ve got a pair of borrowed horses, a couple of second-rate rifles and a heart-warming mission.’ Magnus wished he felt as confident as he sounded. ‘Maybe they’ll have some kids you can threaten.’
‘Drop it—’ Stevie was interrupted by a creaking sound. A slim young woman slipped through a modest wooden door, set into the unwieldy, brass-studded castle entrance. Her hair was pinned in coils on either side of her head. She was dressed in a long evening gown made of a silvery, sparkling fabric that caught the light as she walked. A sequinned evening bag dangled from one hand and a red plastic bucket from the other. The effect was outer space and medieval, as if the Knights of the Round Table had imposed their tastes on a future race. The hens bustled towards the girl and she started to fan scatterings of corn across the lawn. Now and then she dipped to pick something out of the long grass which she wrapped in a cloth and placed gently in her evening bag.
Stevie whispered, ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go. She’s collecting eggs.’
Magnus gestured at the castle with his gun. ‘She left the door open. Think we can get inside without her raising the alarm?’
Stevie shook her head. ‘Not unless we silence her.’ Magnus’s face flushed and she said, ‘For fuck’s sake, Magnus, I meant put a hand over her mouth, not kill her.’
The girl’s attention had been on the busy flurry of hens at her feet. Perhaps the wind carried a breath of Stevie’s impatience to her because she looked up and stared in their direction, revealing a pale, round face, dark eyes and a rosebud mouth, too small for the rest of her features.
‘Moon?’ Stevie got to her feet and stepped from the bushes. Magnus grabbed the hem of her jacket but she pulled free, knocking him into the gorse. ‘Moon?’ Stevie ran across the grass towards the girl who reached into her red bucket, took out a gun and aimed it at her.
Magnus was on his feet too. He saw the gun, saw Stevie running towards it and hurtled after her. The girl was not distracted by the sight of a second pursuer. She had chosen her target and calmly settled her aim, sure as a seasoned hunter.
Stevie shouted, ‘Moon, it’s me.’ And the girl pulled the trigger.
Pistol seemed to come from nowhere. The hens scattered and the dog leapt at the girl, knocking her to the ground, sending her shot wild. He sank his teeth into her arm and she screamed. Stevie had thrown herself onto the lawn when she saw Moon aim the gun, but she was on her feet in an instant, ordering the dog from her and pocketing the gun.
Pistol sank to his haunches, wagging his tail, desperate to be reassured he had done the right thing. ‘Good dog.’ Stevie rubbed his ears. He licked her hand, the girl’s blood still on his teeth. ‘Good dog.’
Magnus dragged the girl to her feet by her undamaged arm. ‘Moon, what the fuck were you thinking?’ The gorse had scratched his face and a bloody tear ran down his cheek. ‘You could have killed her.’
‘Pistol bit me.’ The girl was crying. ‘I was aiming into the bushes, not at Stevie.’
Magnus held Moon by the shoulders. The urge to shake her was almost overwhelming. ‘I was in the fucking bushes.’
‘I just wanted the old bitch to go away and leave me alone.’ Moon tried to break free of his grip. ‘I’m not going back.’
‘Good dog.’ Stevie had her face in Pistol’s fur. She rubbed his sides with her hands.
A man was striding across the lawn towards them. His shotgun hung harmless and broken over his arm. ‘In the old days we used to put down dogs that bit people,’ he said. He was in his late twenties, dressed in a Barbour jacket, mustard corduroys and green wellington boots. ‘Are you okay, Moonbeam?’ His accent suggested the scent of leather armchairs and lingering cigar smoke. A couple of spaniels completed the country squire look. They ran barking towards Pistol and then dropped low, wiggling their rears, ready to play. The stranger shook his head at them. ‘Typical bitches, suckers for a bad boy, bloody tarts.’
Magnus let go of Moon. ‘The dog was only doing what he was trained to do.’
The girl dried her face on the extravagant gown and went to the stranger’s side. She held her bloody arm out for his inspection. ‘It bit me.’
Stevie said, ‘You’re lucky he didn’t rip your throat out.’
The newcomer raised his eyebrows at Stevie. ‘I’d be careful if I were you.’ He gave Moon’s wound a bleary inspection, and plucked at the soiled stuff of her gown. ‘Good job Mother’s in the family vault. She loved that Schiaparelli more than she loved me.’ He took a hip flask from his pocket, knocked back a nip and passed it to Moon. ‘Have some medicine. It’ll take the sting out of things.’
The girl drank, spluttered and drank again. Raw egg dripped, yellow-viscous, from the sequinned bag still hanging from her good arm.
Magnus made a grab for the flask. ‘For fuck’s sake, she’s only fourteen.’
Moon sidestepped him and took another swig. ‘You don’t know how old I am. No one does. Harry and Laura found me in Berwick and took me to that crappy island. Moon isn’t even my real name.’
‘It’s a lovely name,’ the young man murmured gallantly. He relieved the girl of the hip flask and offered it to Magnus who shook his head.
The girl’s voice was aggrieved. ‘My real name’s Jennifer. There was a harvest moon the night they found me. They nicknamed me Moon and it stuck.’
Stevie muttered, ‘I always thought it was because of your fat face.’
The hens were back, pecking at the scatterings of corn at their feet.
Magnus said, ‘Surely to God you didn’t run away because no one calls you Jennifer?’
‘I didn’t run away. I’m not a baby. I left.’
It started to rain, a soft shower that brought out the scent of grass and chicken shit.
Stevie pushed a damp strand of hair away from her face. ‘And took Evie with you? She is a baby.’
For the first time Moon looked shamefaced. ‘That was Willow’s idea.’
The stranger had been watching them with interest. He took another nip from his flask. ‘This is better than a play, but I for one am feeling the chill. Shall we continue indoors?’
Magnus glanced at the castle. A moment ago they had been keen to get inside, but its strong walls and heavy door would be good for keeping people in, as well as out.
‘We can talk here.’
‘Up to you.’ The man took the ruined evening bag from Moon and flung it tumbling across the clearing. He put an arm around the girl. ‘We’re going inside to disinfect that bite.’ He glanced to where Pistol was playing with the spaniels. ‘I was serious. You should shoot that dog.’
Stevie took a step towards him. Her voice was dangerously calm. ‘He was protecting me from your little Moonbeam. She took a shot at me.’
‘Bad Moonbeam.’ The man rubbed the girl’s shoulder affectionately, his eyes still on Stevie. ‘Doesn’t matter whose fault it was. You should still kill it. Once a dog’s bitten a human it loses track of its place in the pack. They begin to get a taste for it.’ He kissed the back of Moon’s neck. ‘You know how it is with bad habits, they’re hard to shake.’
He led Moon into the keep and after a moment Stevie and Magnus followed.
Twenty-Six
The man’s name was Ramsey Fergusson. His father had been a lord, which he supposed made him one, ‘… not that any of that matters any more’. He laughed when Magnus asked if he was one of the Petrol Brothers and said he supposed he was, ‘which proves that the blood of my robber baron ancestors runs through my veins’. He thought ‘little Moonbeam’ ‘delightful’ and was ‘quite frankly, incandescent’ that she had been hurt. He told them all of this in smooth, unhurried tones as he tended to Moon’s bite. Pistol had caught the fleshy part of her arm. His teeth had drawn blood, but the girl’s bones and tendons appeared undamaged. Lord Ramsey finished bandaging the wound, made the girl swallow an antibiotic and said again, ‘You really must have that dog shot.’
Moon was sitting on Lord Ramsey’s knee at the large, oak table in the castle’s kitchen. Stevie and Magnus had both refused a seat and leant instead against granite worktops. A large picture window, double-glazed and incongruous, showed a view of sea and sky. The sun reappeared from behind the clouds and the waves shimmered; flashes of white foam against grey-green-aqua-water. The sun caught the sequins on Moon’s dress, sending tiny glimmers of mirror-ball light around the room. The kitchen would have seemed a convivial place, were it not for the age of the girl, the shotguns propped in easy reach.
‘You should find someone closer to your own age.’ Stevie pulled herself up onto a worktop. Her muddy boots dangled a few inches from the tiled floor. ‘For Christ’s sake, Moon, get off his knee.’
Lord Ramsey’s smile was amused. ‘Beautiful Moonbeam is the new Lady Fergusson of Eden Glen. She’s kindly promised to help me continue the ancient family line, if she doesn’t die first of septicaemia.’
Moon’s face clouded. The silver dress clung to her boyish, heroin-chic contours.
‘What’s septicaemia?’
Magnus said, ‘I’ll tell you when we’re back on the road.’
Lord Ramsey laughed and Moon snapped, ‘I told you. I’m staying here. Joe married us yesterday, with a Bible.’
Stevie swung her feet to and fro; specks of mud flicked onto the clean floor. ‘Your parents will be delighted to know it’s official.’
The girl nestled against Lord Ramsey’s chest, her eyes trained on Stevie, defying her to interfere. ‘My parents are dead.’
Stevie said, ‘Harry and Laura are worried sick.’
Moon fiddled with the sequins on her dress. ‘They both got over their own kids dying. They’ll get over me too.’
Somewhere a door slammed and footsteps sounded in the interior of the keep.
Lord Ramsey looked towards the passageway. ‘Here’s the Reverend Joe.’
The newcomer ducked to avoid the kitchen doorway’s low lintel. His eyes slid over Magnus and Stevie. He ignored them and touched Moon on the shoulder. ‘Hello, Planet. Are you being a good little wifey?’
Joe was tall and skinny, dressed in black jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket. He had a knitted watch cap pulled low over his brow and the type of Scottish accent that had once attracted subtitles in documentaries about drug abuse and gang culture.
Moon’s defiance was gone. ‘I think so.’
She glanced at Lord Ramsey who pushed her gently from his knee. He looked self-conscious, as if caught in the act of doing something silly.
<
br /> ‘She’s behaving with perfect decorum, despite being savaged by a wild dog.’
Lord Ramsey held a hand out to the newcomer who pressed it briefly to his cheek before kissing its palm.
‘Wild dogs are a menace, right enough. Did you shoot it?’
Lord Ramsey grinned. ‘Not yet.’
Stevie braced the soles of her boots against the cupboards below her perch, leaving two muddy footprints on the doors. ‘Pistol was protecting me. No one is going to shoot him.’
‘Who are these?’ Joe gestured towards Stevie and Magnus. He pulled his cap off and his hair fell to his shoulders.
Lord Ramsey’s smile had a new edge to it, as if the alcohol that had previously mellowed him was beginning to sour his stomach. ‘They’ve come to break up the happy home.’
An Alsatian trotted into the room, fur damp, tongue lolling. It surveyed the company, sniffing each of them in turn. Moon put an arm around its neck and buried her face in its thick ruff of fur. ‘I’m not going with them.’ The dog nosed her face and pulled free. It flopped onto the kitchen floor and closed its eyes.
Joe looked at Magnus. ‘What’s the kid to you?’
Stevie said, ‘She was brought up in our community. She and some other teenagers disappeared suddenly with a baby that didn’t belong to them. We’ve come to take them home.’
Joe glanced at Stevie, but directed his question to Magnus. ‘Is the baby hers?’
Magnus shook his head and Joe said, ‘Yours?’
‘No, but one of the boys is my son.’
Stevie said, ‘The baby’s name is Evie. We promised her mother we would bring her home.’
Joe turned to Moon. ‘You never told us the baby was stolen.’
Moon was standing awkwardly by Ramsey’s side. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Willow.’
Lord Ramsey took a bottle of whisky from one of the kitchen cabinets. He unscrewed the cap, tossed it across the room in the ancient gesture that signalled the bottle was for emptying and poured himself a dram. ‘Willow was the dark one, wasn’t she? I liked Willow. She was fun.’
The lord pushed the bottle along the table. Joe ignored it. He drew out a chair and pulled off his boots. ‘Willow was trouble.’ Joe looked at Moon. ‘Why did she take the baby?’