Smokeheads (10 page)

Adam screwed his eyes tight, but the awful sounds kept coming to him. He’d known Luke the longest of all, met him at the union in Freshers’ Week first year; four hours later they were steaming drunk best friends. Now Luke was lying in a spreading pool of his own blood, his head being caved in by a fucking lunatic.

Adam opened his eyes and glanced at the mess of Luke’s head, the blood and brains, skull and hair. He felt a rush of fury swell up inside him. His stomach spasmed and he vomited acrid liquid down his front. He spat and tried to wipe his mouth on his shoulder.

Joe turned, wiping blood and sweat away from his forehead and breathing heavily.

‘Looks like we’ve got a squeamish one,’ he said, taking a swig of peatreek from the canister.

‘You’re not going to get away with this,’ said Adam.

‘You going to stop me?’ Joe let out a melodramatic laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’ He shook his head as he got his breath back. ‘It wasn’t my fault, I only did it to prove a point. Hedge Cunt here said I didn’t have the bollocks to kill someone, so I had to show him. If anything, it’s his fault your bumchum is dead.’

‘Fuck you,’ said Roddy.

Joe tapped out a line of coke and snorted, then threw the case to Grant who did likewise.

Molly stared at Joe. ‘I knew you had turned into an evil bastard, but I never thought you were capable of this.’

‘Just shows you, doesn’t it?’ Joe smiled. ‘You’re married to someone for years, you think you know them, but they turn out to have hidden depths.’

‘You need help,’ said Molly. ‘Psychiatric help.’

Joe laughed. ‘Fuck that, I’m not mad, just bad. And certainly dangerous to know. You of all people should appreciate that.’

‘I don’t know how you ended up this way, Joe, but it has nothing to do with me. Or the miscarriages, if that’s what you’re blaming.’

Joe strode towards her. He grabbed her jaw and turned her face towards him.

‘I never said any of this was to do with you, did I?’ he hissed. ‘Why don’t you just shut up with the psychoanalysing bullshit for once, eh?’

‘I’m just trying to understand,’ said Molly.

‘Well don’t.’ He was still holding her face by the chin. He smiled and moved closer till he was inches from her. ‘Remember all the fun times we had in that marital bed?’

‘Joe …’

He turned to Adam. ‘Did she tell you she likes a bit of rough stuff?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Adam.

‘The odd slap or punch gets the juices flowing,’ Joe said, turning to Molly. ‘Doesn’t it, dear?’

Molly looked him in the eye. Adam tried to imagine what the hell it had been like between them. Joe must’ve been a completely different person, that’s all he could think. He looked at Luke’s body and wanted to stick a gun in Joe’s face, watch him suffer the way he’d made them all suffer.

‘In fact, just talking about it is getting me horny,’ said Joe.

Molly’s eyes widened.

‘Joe,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Don’t.’

He grabbed her and dragged her to her feet.

‘Leave her alone!’ Adam shouted as Molly struggled to break free. Joe had a tight hold as he kicked over the whisky cask she’d been leaning on and forced her to lie across it face down.

‘Get those scissors, will you?’ he said to Grant, who fetched them from the table.

Molly was struggling, so Joe smashed her head off the barrel to subdue her.

‘Fucking leave her,’ said Adam. He got up, then stopped as Grant pointed the shotgun at him. Grant handed over the scissors then stepped backwards, keeping the gun trained on Adam and Roddy.

Joe reached down and cut the restraints from Molly’s ankles.

‘Got to get those legs spread, haven’t we?’ he said with a grim laugh.

He pulled her jeans down and Molly screamed.

Adam looked away. The noise in the barn got louder, a crescendo of machine buzz flooding his ears. He focused on the growing sound, which slowly changed and grew to a deafening hiss and shriek. Suddenly he felt himself knocked backwards as a blinding flash of incendiary light exploded in his peripheral vision.

He looked up to see Grant waving his arms around cartoonishly, his body engulfed in flames. The side of the nearest still had exploded down its riveted join, a ragged hole in the copper spewing clear liquid and blue flame everywhere.

‘Jesus fuck,’ said Joe. He was on the ground next to Molly, where they’d been knocked over by the blast. He scrambled towards Grant and the still, but was pushed back by the heat. He ran to the table, picked up a fire extinguisher and pointed it at the inferno.

Adam felt something hit his foot. It was the scissors. He looked up and saw Molly slumped on the floor, jeans round her ankles, looking at him, then the scissors. He shuffled round, picked them up with his tied hands, knelt with his feet behind him and clumsily cut his ankle ties. He looked at Joe, who had his back to them, pointing the extinguisher at the still, then at Grant, who was rolling frantically around on the ground.

Adam ran over to Molly with the scissors in his hands still tied behind him, turned his back to her then spoke over his shoulder.

‘Put your wrist ties in the scissors. Careful, I can’t see what I’m doing.’

‘OK,’ she said, then after a moment: ‘Cut.’

He forced the scissor arms together and felt something give under the pressure. She took the scissors from his hands and cut his ties. They both looked at Joe, who was still blasting the extinguisher at Grant. The noise and heat from the fire were ferocious. Molly pulled her jeans up and ran over to Roddy, who was watching them with wide eyes. She cut his ties and helped him up.

Adam kept an eye on Joe. The shotgun was on the ground next to Grant, both of them still aflame. Grant had stopped rolling. Adam could see the handgun in Joe’s trousers. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see Molly indicating the barn door. Behind her Roddy was reaching for the coke tin discarded on the floor. They both ran past him towards the door. He turned to look at Luke’s corpse then followed them, stopping briefly at the table to pick up a torch.

‘Hey!’

Adam turned to see Joe coming towards them, dropping the fire extinguisher and pulling the gun from his waistband.

‘I don’t fucking think so.’

Molly and Roddy were at the door and heading into the night as Adam bolted after them. He heard a sharp crack and felt a bullet whiz past his head.

He got to the door, ran outside and slammed it behind him. There was a latch on the outside, which he threw over. The door shuddered as Joe crashed into it, but held.

‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ said Joe through the door, followed by two explosions as bullets ripped through the wood and fizzed into the snow.

Joe began to kick the door from the inside as Adam turned. Molly and Roddy were heading round the side of the barn and he ran to catch up. Around the other side they found a police car, but it was locked.

‘What do we do now?’ said Adam, breathless.

They heard a crash from the other side of the barn.

‘Run,’ said Molly.

Joe appeared round the corner and spotted them. They ran behind the car and found a narrow lane leading uphill. Shots rang out and they all ducked.

There was the sound of another explosion from inside the barn.

Joe looked in their direction, then back at the barn. ‘Fuck!’ he shouted, then ran inside, leaving the three of them hurtling up the lane into the freezing, snowy blackness.

They ran for a few hundred yards, stumbling in the darkness, Roddy supported between the other two. Adam’s lungs burned, his chest heaved and his legs ached. At the brow of a hill he looked back and could just make out the silhouette of the barn below. It wasn’t in flames. Maybe Joe had the fire under control.

‘We need to work out a plan,’ said Molly.

‘What plan?’ said Roddy, gasping. ‘We just keep fucking running.’

Molly shook her head. ‘We need to think.’

‘Maybe he’s busy with the fire,’ said Adam. ‘Maybe he won’t come after us.’

Even as the words came out of his mouth, Adam knew they were bullshit.

‘He’ll come after us,’ said Molly. ‘He can’t let us live now, even if he wanted to before, which he didn’t.’

‘This is a total clusterfuck situation,’ said Roddy.

‘Quite,’ said Molly.

‘I can’t believe he killed Luke,’ said Adam, shaking his head and staring at his feet.

‘I know,’ said Molly. ‘But we can’t think about that now, we have to concentrate on getting out of this in one piece.’

‘What do you suggest?’ said Adam.

Molly looked back at the barn, getting her breath back. ‘Once he gets the fire sorted he’ll come after us. He’ll have guns and he’ll use the car. Which means we have to get off this path, it’s too exposed. He can find us too easily.’

Adam turned the torch on and swept it around them. There was just snowy heath and moorland in every direction.

‘And we can’t use the torch,’ said Molly, ‘except in emergencies. It’ll only flag up our position.’

Adam switched the torch off.

‘It would be good if we could find some trees,’ said Molly, scuffing her feet in the snow. ‘We’re leaving tracks.’

‘We’re fucking dead,’ said Roddy.

‘Don’t say that,’ said Adam.

‘We are,’ said Roddy. ‘We can’t move fast, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, we’re leaving tracks in the snow, it’s pitch black and freezing, I’m bleeding to fuck, and we have no idea which way to go to get help.’

‘Not entirely true,’ said Molly. ‘Remember, I said there was a farmhouse near the American Monument, at Upper Killeyan? I’m pretty sure it’s that way.’

She waved off to the left in an unconvincing gesture.

‘If we make it there, we can get help. If there’s no one in the place, we can use the phone.’

‘Shit,’ said Adam. ‘We should’ve taken the police radio from the table, shouldn’t we? Used that to get help.’

Molly shook her head. ‘We can’t use a police radio, we’ve no idea who’s listening in, whether they’re on Joe and Grant’s side or not. Joe used the radio to contact his pick-up guys, remember?’

‘So if there’s no one at this farmhouse and the phone works, who do we call?’ said Roddy.

‘Ash.’

‘Ash?’ Roddy sounded incredulous. ‘She’s our big escape hope?’

‘Screw you,’ said Molly. ‘She’s my sister, and if I call asking for help, she’ll come get us.’

‘What about that cop you mentioned to Joe?’ said Adam.

‘Eric?’ Molly thought for a moment. ‘I know he won’t be messed up in any of this, but he’s only one old guy, I don’t know how much he can do. He could maybe come get us, but I wouldn’t want him taking on Joe.’

‘Is there any chance of a mobile reception anywhere out here?’ said Adam. ‘Should we have got our phones from the barn?’

‘No point,’ said Molly. ‘We’re further from Port Ellen than we were at the crash site, so if we couldn’t get anything there, there’s no chance out here.’

She looked into the darkness in the direction of the American Monument.

‘The only problem with getting to this farmhouse is that there are loads of sea cliffs over that way as well.’

‘Fucking great,’ said Roddy.

‘But if we’re careful, we’ll avoid them.’

‘In the dark without the torch? Great plan.’

Molly stared at him in the gloom. ‘You got a better one?’

Roddy glared at her for a long time then lowered his head. ‘No.’

‘Right. How are we all doing?’

Adam nodded. ‘Good to go, I think.’

Roddy sighed. ‘Fucked, but no more than when I woke up with half a fucking Audi in my shoulder.’

‘You can move OK, yeah?’ said Molly.

Roddy snorted sarcastically. ‘Think so.’

Adam looked at Molly. ‘And how are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘I mean, after … you know. Back there.’

‘I said I’m fine.’

‘What a fucking cunt,’ said Roddy.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Molly.

They heard a noise and looked down the path. The snow was falling thicker now, but they could see a spread of light splaying out from the barn as the door opened. There was the metallic click and clunk of a car door opening and closing, followed by a pair of headlights suddenly blazing, beaming across the moor. The engine revved.

‘Time to move,’ said Molly. ‘Any questions before we get going?’

‘Yeah,’ said Roddy, ‘how the fuck did we get into this mess?’

They staggered frantically across the peat moors as best they could in the darkness, torn between watching where their feet were going and looking nervously behind them. After a couple of minutes they saw the sweep of the police car’s headlights emerge over the hill, fingers of light reaching across the landscape. They flattened themselves into a small snowy crevice in the heather, freezing and soaking their stomachs, Roddy stifling a cry of pain.

The car crawled along the path, the beam of a torch coming from the driver’s seat, spraying this way and that as Joe hunted for them. The car seemed to take forever to drive on, but eventually it crawled further along the path, heading inland, the headlights and torch beam arcing further away.

‘Come on,’ said Molly, picking herself up and trying to brush the wet snow off. ‘This way.’ She pointed uphill.

‘Why that way?’ said Roddy.

She helped him to his feet. ‘Because it’s the opposite direction from Joe. Good enough?’

‘That’ll do for me.’

They walked on, almost getting used to the rough terrain, the spongy feel of the heather under their feet, the snow smothering everything, the faint whiff of peat crystallising in the frozen air. The snow seemed to muffle all noise except for the squeak and scrunch of their footfalls in the white wilderness.

‘Think he’s lost us,’ said Adam eventually, looking back. It had been quite a few minutes since they’d seen the lights from Joe’s car.

‘Fucking idiot,’ said Roddy, as faint headlights appeared again on the horizon. ‘Don’t you know anything about tempting fate?’

‘Remind me to kill you when we get out of here,’ said Adam.

‘Get down you morons,’ hissed Molly, hitting the deck.

They did likewise as the car beams played over the hill they were on. They were more exposed than before, Adam suddenly regretting his dark jacket, an easy target against the white blanket covering everything.

The headlights passed over them. Adam looked up to see where the car was, just as the thinner beam from the torch pointed right in his face.

‘Stay down,’ said Molly, but it was too late.

The sound of a shot cracked the heavy silence, making them all jump.

‘Shit,’ said Molly.

She hauled Roddy up and started running, the three of them tumbling over rocks and holes, running for their lives. They darted from side to side, zigzagging as best they could.

The car headlights disappeared, but the beam of torchlight occasionally found them, causing them to scatter like panicked deer.

‘Stay together,’ shouted Molly over her shoulder. ‘Or we’re screwed.’

Adam grabbed Roddy and dragged him towards Molly, all of them trying to dodge the torchlight. His heart pounded in his ribcage and his head throbbed with the effort of trudging and slipping across the moors. This couldn’t go on forever, something had to give one way or the other. He had a flicker of memory, sitting in front of a log fire in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith with the others, single-cask Laphroaigs in hand, Islay map laid out in front of them, getting psyched about the trip. It was a different universe.

The sound of a shot startled him, and he pulled Roddy on.

‘Easy there, fuckface,’ said Roddy.

‘Shut up and run.’

‘I’d run better if you stopped fucking pulling me.’

‘Fine.’ Adam let go. ‘Suit yourself.’

He darted sideways and stumbled, lumbering forwards then pitching face first into the snow. He jumped back up and ran towards Roddy and Molly just ahead. Another shot rang out as the torch beam arced over them.

Joe couldn’t be that close behind or he would’ve hit one of them by now. All Adam could hear was the rush of adrenalin and blood in his ears and his wheezing breath as he reached the top of a rise and dived over the other side. He began sliding downwards in the snow, caught a jumbled glimpse of Molly and Roddy doing the same a few yards ahead. He was picking up speed and so were they, all three of them out of control in the deepening snowdrifts. His feet sank deep into the white, pitching him over onto his stomach, then tumbling onto his back, out of control, sending a spray of snow up into his face as he keeled over, his momentum driving him down the slope, further and further, no idea which way was up and which was down, whether he was falling to safety or over a cliff edge. He panicked as he tried to regain his footing, felt a sharp smack as his arse hit a rock, throwing him over again, a weight of snow thrust down on top of him as he slid backwards for a few more yards before thumping into something soft.

‘Fuck.’

It was Roddy beneath him, Molly a couple of yards to the side. Adam rolled over and looked back up the slope.

A blaze of burning light exploded into the air, making him flinch and close his eyes. He shook his head and opened them again. The snow all around was bathed in luminous violet light, giving everything an eerie, nightmarish look. Standing at the top of the hill was Joe holding a huge flare spewing out smoke and light. In his other hand was a gun. He was scanning the whiteout, looking in the other direction, so he hadn’t yet spotted them half buried under a mini-avalanche.

‘Fuck,’ said Roddy as Joe turned towards them.

Adam looked beyond Roddy. In the distance he could see the American Monument, its lighthouse shape penetrating the purple edge of sky. Between here and there was an oddly flat expanse, the white sheen covered in thousands of small dark shapes.

‘What the hell is that?’ said Adam.

Joe’s gaze finally rested on the three of them, far enough away that they were still a tricky shot from the top of the hill.

Molly got up and started running. ‘Our salvation,’ she said over her shoulder, as Adam and Roddy picked themselves up and pitched after her.