Brutal Revenge (9 page)

From
the top of the hill they could see no sign of the boat and they assumed she had
been dragged out to sea on receding waves or sucked under after smashing her
hull on the side of the jetty. But then they saw that the cruiser was actually
riding the waves not fifty yards out, rearing up on every breaking swell like a
frightened mare at barbed wire.

She
was going to hit those half submerged rocks. They could all see it coming. And
there wasn't a damn thing any of them could do to stop it happening.

The
wind howled, cursed, screamed.

Four
helpless figures stood staring forlornly into the night. The sea, bursting
against the jetty, soaked their clothes, their hair, their faces.

Ca-rash.

The
sound of the hull being torn on the jagged rocks. Rising above the wind. A
sound like a house being crushed under a giant's foot.

Grrrrraaagh.

Bits
of white scattered the gloom. The bow shot upwards, turned full circle, came
down to shatter on rock only a few inches below the surface.

A
second later the boat was upended, pointing accusingly at the sky, and then,
slowly, it began to disappear in a swirling cloud of foam and spray.

And
that was it.

The
four men stood staring at the water. Hypnotised. Soaking wet and not caring.

A
long time passed before anyone spoke. It was Parker, and his words were barely
discernible.

“That's
our fucking lot,” he said.

Stewart
was aghast. His head swivelled towards Parker, his face dripping, and his mouth
fell open. He didn't say anything. But then what could he say that needed to be
said? That one short sentence spelled out the hopeless situation facing them.
With the boat gone they were without a means of escape.

Parker’s
mind recoiled from the shock and he was suddenly aware that they were marooned.
Short of swimming all those miles to the mainland, there was no way off the
island.

He
and Maclean stood with their backs against the side of the van, faces glum.
Hodge was in front of them and Stewart sat cross-legged on the damp ground, his
face buried in his hands.

They
remained like that for several minutes, then Hodge lunged forward suddenly,
grabbing Maclean by the front of his anorak.

“You
fucking idiot,” he yelled into his face. “This is all your fault. You must have
left the knots loose. Now we've all had it.”

Maclean
made no attempt to push Hodge away. It was as if he had been drained of all energy
and emotion. He just stood there, blank-faced, allowing Hodge to shake and
threaten him like a madman.

Finally,
Parker felt constrained to intervene and broke them apart.

“Now,
hold on,” he yelled. “Fighting's not going to get us anywhere.”

Hodge,
his face suffused with anger, stepped back and thrust a finger at Maclean, who
was watching him through vacant eyes.

“Because
of that silly bleeder, we haven't got a prayer. A bloody van full of treasure
and we can't go anywhere with it.”

Parker
could well understand Hodge's anger, and indeed he shared it, but he couldn't
see that rubbing it in Maclean's face would serve any useful purpose now.

“We
need to keep it together,” Parker said. “And then work up a way to get out of
this.”

“
So what have you got in mind?”
Hodge spat the words.
“They've got us by the cobblers and you know it.”

“What
about those boats we saw?” Parker said. “Maybe we can rig one up with an
outboard motor and get to Mull,
even in these
conditions. If not, at least we'll have it handy for when the weather improves.”

“And what if there is
no outboard engine?” Hodge
growled.

Parker shrugged. “Then we'll just have to give the
treasure back
and try to talk the islanders out of going to the police. I don't see what else
we can do.”

“And supposing they
don't take it so lightly? Supposing
they don't let us leave?”

“We still have the
shotguns,” Parker reminded him.
“We'll
just have to hang around until we can fix up a
boat or until the ferry
comes across from the mainland. Don’t forget they still won’t want the
authorities to know about the treasure.”

There was a
heavy silence between them which lasted several seconds. Then Stewart got to
his feet and said,
“There's no way these
people are going to let us leave
here without paying for what we've
done.”

“Oh, come off it,” Parker said. “They can
live with it.
Granted, we had to clobber the
goon at the house, but
he'll survive.”

“I'm not thinking about
him,” Stewart said, switching
his irate gaze to Hodge. “I'm thinking
about the girl.”

Hodge flew at Stewart, grabbing him by the throat,
and yelling
for him to keep his mouth shut. It took both
the
others to pull him off. As they held onto him he continued to stare at
Stewart, his eyes cold and fanatical
.

“Go on,” Parker
said. “Tell us about the girl.”

*

“Then she's dead,” Parker said
incredulously, after hearing what Stewart had to say. “You've fucking murdered
her!”

Stewart poked a rigid finger at Hodge.

“He murdered her. Not me. I tell you I've
never seen anything like it. The man's a ruddy psycho.”

As Hodge tried to
struggle free Parker let go of his arm and smacked a fist into his face.

Hodge reeled backwards, lost his footing,
and fell sprawling to the ground.

He was quick to recover, though, and came
back at Parker with a tiger's speed. But Parker had already re
trieved the shotgun and as Hodge got to within
arm's
length he let fly with the
barrel, which landed with a
heavy thud on the other's chest.

Hodge was still
gasping for breath as Parker sent the butt crashing
into his
stomach. This time Hodge went down and was in no hurry to get up. He turned on
his back, clutching his stomach, and looked up.

Parker stood over him, panting, trying hard
to contain his rage.
“Until this is over I'll
put up with you,” he seethed. “But afterwards
you’d better watch
your back, because
the first chance I get I'm going to
make you regret ever having been
born.”

Parker braced himself for an attack which didn't come.

Hodge stayed where he was, started to reply and
thought better
of it. He
let his eyes carry the message
that told Parker, in no uncertain terms, that he, too, had better watch his
back from now on.

Parker took a deep breath and turned away from him.

“For now we'll forget about what's happened
and con
centrate on getting off the island. I
suggest we go down to
the village right now and see if we can find an
outboard
engine or something. If there
aren't any, maybe we can
get one of the fishing boats going.”

Stewart shook his
head. “No way. We'd need all the
parts for that, and they're in the sea.”

“Then we'll just have to go down and get
them, won't we?” Parker said irritably. “Because if we don't get away from this
place before morning, we'll never get away.”

TWELVE

There was a
blackness in front of his eyes that began to
slowly break up like a jig-saw being dismantled piece by
piece. At first, light just trickled
through in small doses,
revealing blurred images of an assortment of
objects
around him. Gradually these
objects came into focus. The
stout, glossy legs of a highly polished
table, a stone fire
place and a threadbare rug on the floor with its
ends
curling inwards.

Eventually his vision widened enough to embrace
an
entire
room that seemed to be lying on its side. He realized
it was
his room, the familiar belongings of a lifetime
about him. And suddenly he remembered with startling
clarity
what had happened and why it wasn't the right
way up.

Ross Mor pushed himself
up on one elbow and winced
at the
explosion of pain inside his head. He clamped his
eyes shut and touched his forehead with a surgeon's
gentleness. There was a nasty bump and an
open wound
that wet the tips of his fingers
with blood. His first instinc
tive thought was to go into the bathroom
and apply a
dressing to it, but he
decided there were more important
things to
do first. Like finding out what the hell was going
on.

It took all his strength to raise himself
to his feet. He
staggered into the bedroom like a drunk trying to
find his
way around a strange
house.

He hadn't expected the treasure to be there in the back room
, so he wasn't surprised to see that it was gone. The bastards who had
stormed his house had taken it. They were robbers, looters, wild beasts.

He leaned against the
door frame and rubbed his
knuckles into
his eyes to eradicate the pain behind them.
But
it did no good. He turned back into the living room
and dropped into his worn-out armchair by the fire. The
smell of burning peat filled the room and
his nostrils. He
glanced over his
shoulder at the door. At least they'd had
the
decency to close it behind them, he thought.

He laid his head back and stared
bleary-eyed at the
ceiling. There was no point trying to apply
careful
thought to the situation at this moment. He wasn't
up to
it. His mind was in no
fit state to grapple with anything
but the very basic questions like who they were
and
where had they gone? Any attempt to examine the facts
in
closer detail only caused his head to hurt even more
and he had no wish to inflict further
punishment upon
himself.

Even so,
several things were obvious. There had been
two men — or at least he had seen two men — and
they
had been strangers. He
was certain of that even though
they
had worn masks and had hardly spoken. You don't
live in a small island community all your life and not get
to know everyone as well as you know your
own family.

The mantelpiece
clock told him he had only been un
conscious
for about half an hour. Perhaps there was still
time to stop them leaving the island, which would
obviously be their intention.

He picked up
his phone to raise the alarm, only to find that he had no dialing tone. Shit.
What now?

He got up, pulled on
his overcoat and boots, and
hurried out of the cottage. He decided not to cut across
the moors as they were probably
waterlogged, which
would slow him down, so he began running down the
road, the wind blasting his face.
He stumbled twice in the
dark, but otherwise was making fairly good time all things
considered.

He came to the tiny
automatic telephone exchange and pulled
up sharply when he saw that the wind was whipping the
door
back and forth on its squeaky hinges. He left the
road to investigate, though in his mind he had an idea
what
to expect. If the door was open then somebody must
have forced it.

And he was right. The
inside was a shambles. Torn out
wires were
strewn across the floor and the flimsy metal
that encased the expensive looking machinery had been
battered into unrecognisable heaps of
junk. Unquestion
ably the gangsters
had planned their raid well. They had
been
very efficient and, yes, clever. He wondered fleet
ingly how they had found out about the treasure and
Andrew Maclean immediately sprang to mind.

Perhaps he had passed the informa
tion on to one of his mainland contacts
and the wrong people
had got to know
of it. He was certain
that Maclean himself
would not have been involved. After all, he was an island lad, and therefore
completely
trustworthy. And besides, he hadn't even known where
the treasure was hidden.

On the other hand, it was also possible that one of the islanders
had
unwittingly given the information to some ras
cal
in Oban, who had got a group of lads together and
hired a boat. The possibilities as to how these men had
found out about the treasure were too
numerous to pon
der right now, so he shut the door and trudged back
to
the road.