‘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.
31
They headed up the path as far as Luke’s body and turned to stare at the inferno. Flames were already licking the roof, flicking through huge clouds of acrid smoke pummelling up into the moonlit sky. One of the walls looked close to collapsing, and parts of the wooden roof were beginning to crack and fall into the raging fire beneath.
As they watched, a noise rose above the whoosh and crackle of the flaming barn, the nasal whine of an engine. Suddenly a large speedboat with police insignia spurted round the headland in a spray of water.
‘Shit,’ Molly hissed, ‘help me with this.’
Adam took the opposite end of the barrel from Molly and they scurried behind the outcrop of rocks, Roddy slumping down next to Luke’s body. They sat there for a while before Adam crept up to peek over the top.
The speedboat had docked in the tiny bay below the headland, and half a dozen men in dark uniform were scrambling up towards the barn in a fluster. Adam instinctively lowered his head, but they were a long way from the barn in the dark. There was no way they’d see him, surely.
The men reached the barn and were instantly rebuffed by the flames and heat bursting out the entrance. One of them did a quick circuit of the building while another bustled over to the police car, peered through the window then checked the driver’s door, which was locked.
Adam saw a third man, arm held in front of his face as he stood looking at the collapsed entrance to the burning still. He lifted a police radio out of his belt and spoke into it. After a moment he looked at the radio as if it was malfunctioning. The other three men started a slow, methodical sweep around the immediate vicinity of the barn, searching with torches. One walked past the police car and began up the path towards them, making Adam duck back down next to Molly and Roddy.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘They’re searching the area.’
They sat with their hearts thumping, not daring to move, Adam suddenly aware of the sound of his lungs pumping air. The cop was close enough now that they could hear the scrunch of his footste
ps on the path and his laboured breathing as he headed up the slope. They were hidden from the lower part of the road, but they could tell from the noise that he’d stopped almost level with them. If he kept up the slope a few more yards and looked right, they’d be in plain view. They saw a torch beam sweep over the snow beyond them and held their breaths. In the torchlight, Adam was relieved to see the police car’s tracks had flattened the snow cover enough that they hadn’t left footprints. He felt a wash of relief that they’d carried Luke’s body, and that they’d lifted the barrel up the path and behind the rocks – Molly had made the right decision every time.
He looked at her now and she stared back at him, eyes wide. She moved her shoulders a fraction, a signal he couldn’t decode. Then his gaze fell on her hands, and he realised she was holding Joe’s pistol. He frowned at her and she frowned back, giving a kind of desperate shrug. They sat like that for what seemed an eternity as the beam from the torch played over the surrounding snowscape.
Eventually they heard footsteps again, this time moving back down the hill, getting quieter with every footfall until finally they were out of earshot.
Molly peered round the side of the rock. She didn’t move or speak for a long time. After a while she turned round.
‘He’s back down with the others,’ she said.
‘You were going to shoot him?’ said Adam.
‘I don’t know what the hell I was going to do, OK?’ Molly glared at him. ‘I’m just trying to stay alive here.’
‘Sorry.’
Adam closed his eyes and tried to get his pulse to slow down. He opened his eyes again and looked at Roddy, whose gaze seemed to be going in and out of focus.
‘You OK?’
Roddy blinked and smiled. ‘Fucking dandy. What’s the latest?’
Adam poked his head back up.
The men were standing arguing next to the burning building. There was a lot of gesticulating, towards the barn, then the police car, then the boat. Adam tried to second-guess what they might do, but didn’t know where to start. The conversation went on for several minutes, lots of shaking heads and hand gestures, then eventually they seemed to take a vote, four of the six men putting their hands up.
They headed towards the police car. The man in front pulled out his baton and nonchalantly smashed in the driver’s window, then opened the door and leaned in while the others started pushing. The car began to crawl down the gentle slope, gradually picking up speed as it passed the barn, the men jogging alongside or still shoving from behind. It was heading for the edge of a short drop, the tiny natural harbour of the bay below, the speedboat anchored safely off to one side.
As they approached the edge the man guiding the steering wheel let go and moved out of the way, the rest of them giving up on pushing as the car gently freewheeled over the edge and bounced boot over bonnet into the water with a resigned splash.
The men stood at the edge of the bay, gazing at the water as the car slipped under the surface. It must be deeper than it looked because soon all trace of the car was gone, just a spreading moonlit ripple on the inky surface of the sea.
The men turned back to look at the barn, which was shapeless now, a giant funeral pyre raging into the night sky. As they watched there was an almighty explosion from within it, making them and Adam jump as pieces of burning wreckage shot outwards and upwards from the inferno, flames stretching up with the force of the blast.
‘What the fuck was that?’ hissed Roddy from behind the rock.
Adam turned and shrugged. ‘Explosion.’
‘Probably the second still going,’ said Molly. ‘I turned all the dials on it full up before we left. Figured it wouldn’t hurt.’
Adam smiled and looked at the gang of coppers, who were now heading back to the speedboat, eager to get the hell out of there and away from the incriminating evidence.
Another small explosion made them all flinch, then stop and stare, before scurrying and clambering into the boat which lurched round and away from the bay in a flurry of white surf and revs.
Molly joined Adam to watch as the boat sped round the headland and out of sight. They stood looking at the burning still and the undulating water for a while.
Adam turned to her. ‘You know, I didn’t even know Scottish police had speedboats.’
Molly smiled. ‘Just like Miami Vice, huh?’
‘What now?’ he said.
Molly looked behind them at Luke’s body and the empty barrel. Roddy was sat next to it, eyes closed, his face set in a grimace, clutching at his bloody shoulder. She walked over to the barrel and stood it on its end.
‘Help me get him inside, then,’ she said, indicating Luke.
Adam sighed then joined her, taking Luke’s legs as she heaved under his armpits.
Roddy’s eyes flickered open. ‘What the fuck are you two doing?’
Adam lugged the legs up and over the rim of the cask and began sliding them in, moving his hands up Luke’s body to help Molly lift the other end high enough. ‘Isn’t it bloody obvious?’
‘OK, but why?’
Molly gave a grunt of exertion as she got her body weight under Luke’s back. ‘He’s too heavy to carry, and we have to take him with us.’
She and Adam were slowly shuffling the corpse into the barrel in fits and starts.
‘In a fucking barrel?’ said Roddy.
‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘In a barrel.’
The body slumped over the edge and fell into the cask. They tucked his arms in and Molly gently eased his shoulders and neck until his head was completely inside.
‘It’s a snug fit,’ said Adam, getting his breath back.
‘Probably just as well, don’t want him rattling around in there, or falling out.’
Roddy looked at them breathing heavily next to the barrel. ‘You two are priceless.’
Adam just stared at him as his breath returned to normal.
‘Right,’ said Molly, rubbing her hands together to warm them up. ‘Time to head back to the car and get ourselves saved.’
32
It was incredibly slow going. They had to stop every fifty yards so that Roddy could rest and try to get some energy back. Each time he would take a hit of coke, fuelling him with bullshit strength to carry on for a few minutes more. Molly and Adam were glad of each rest stop anyway. They were rolling the barrel along together, and although it was ten times easier than carrying the body had been, it was still a hard slog. The terrain was the biggest problem. When they had some semblance of a path it was fine, but they frequently had to negotiate rocks, scrub and deep shingle, where they would have to lift or jostle the barrel over or around the obstacle before ploughing grimly on.
It was dark again, the moon crowded out by gangs of clouds. Roddy was in front with the torch, splaying the beam over the land and trying to find the best way to take the barrel. The torch and Joe’s handgun were the only things they’d brought with them from the still apart from the barrel. The plan was to throw all three items into the sea once they got to the car. The last thing they needed was to have police paraphernalia or anything linked to the still on them when they were rescued.
Roddy staggered across the land, getting slower and slower. They were stopping more frequently now, every few yards, exhausted from the trek and everything that had gone before. Adam felt the cold settling into his bones again after the heat of the still, his soaking feet numb, his hands stiffening. The adrenalin from escaping Joe had dissipated and he was left with a miserable empty feeling, exacerbated by catching occasional glimpses of the crown of Luke’s head bobbing at the open end of the cask. He resorted to putting one foot in front of the other like a machine, trying not to think of anything except getting out of this situation in one piece.
Suddenly they heard a nasal whine. It grew louder, encroached on the thick silence of the night around them. They stopped and looked at each other.
‘Torch,’ Molly hissed, glaring at Roddy.
He flicked it off just as the po
lice speedboat from earlier fizzed round the headland, close to the shore. It had a large searchlight mounted on the front, sweeping its beam along the coastline, back and forth over rocks and cliffs. The three of them stood for a second, frozen, then darted behind the cask. Adam was confused – had they had that searchlight before, just not used it? He couldn’t remember seeing it, but that didn’t mean anything, his mind was worn out with it all.
The three of them and the barrel were quite far inland, a spread of jagged boulders between them and the sea, maybe far enough away that they wouldn’t be spotted. The searchlight arced past them higher up the slope, then swept back lower down, rippling over the rocks below, then moving further on. Adam could hear himself breathe heavily as the sound of the boat’s engine receded, then it was gone past the next headland.
‘Why are they looking for us?’ said Adam. ‘I thought we’d left no trace.’
‘Calm down,’ said Molly. ‘We don’t know they’re looking for us specifically, do we?’
‘Then what the fuck are they searching the coast for?’ said Roddy.
‘Maybe just making sure,’ said Molly. ‘If you were a cop and you were running a big bootlegging operation that went tits up, wouldn’t you want to make sure there were no potential witnesses in the area?’
‘But why would they think there were any witnesses?’ said Adam.
‘I don’t know, OK?’ Molly snapped. ‘Like I just said, maybe they don’t know anything. One thing’s for sure, if they see us we’re screwed, so let’s just be extra careful from now on.’
They trudged on, nervy and exhausted, Adam swithering between numb desolation and flurried panic attacks, unable to stop his mind churning over events, everything that had happened, all the potential pitfalls that still waited for them round every corner.
Finally, drained of all emotion and energy, they reached the headland before the crashed car. They scuffed round in silence, Molly and Adam still heaving the cask in front of them with worn-out shoves, Roddy staggering uncertainly with every step. They stopped when they caught sight of the Audi. It was almost submerged in water, just the wheels and undercarriage poking up through the waves.
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