‘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 footsteps 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
