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.’
30
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.’
