‘And Eva?’ she said. Donald smiled unpleasantly.
‘I was shagging her, she found out what was happening. She was a terrible swimmer. We threw her into the Corryvreckan.’ He shrugged.
So, not Big Jim, she thought. Hanlon’s lip curled in disgust. He took another step closer and Hanlon shuffled back a step. She was nearly over the edge now. Donald could see that; he smiled. Nothing could go wrong; he held all the aces. Keep the idiot woman talking while she walked backwards until her foot met air…
‘And Franca, why kill her? I know Kai didn’t give her all that coke that was in her system.’
‘She’d turned up at Kai’s to beg for coke, but got the wrong cottage. I was bagging up half a kilo when she burst in. We partied hard, she was a good fuck, and I called Catriona. She was waiting for her when she returned back to the Lorelei.’ Hanlon nodded, remembering the expensive yacht from Portsmouth. ‘Couldnae risk her blabbing, loose lips sink ships, ye ken the saying.’
‘And Kai?’ She felt the ground sink again. She pretended to slip, easily done on the wet, treacherous, boggy ground. One knee thudded down heavily on the black peat. A nice hard blow to further weaken the overhanging turf. Any second now it had to give. They were practically standing on thin air. All that there was between them and space was about three or four centimetres of soil. It had to give.
Must keep him talking, just a little longer… The hammer blow of her knee had done it!
Seen by Hanlon, unseen by Donald, a fault-line crack had appeared on the soil just in front of his feet. He gestured at her, oblivious of the fragile nature of the ground, with the shotgun and jerked his head at the gorge.
‘Stand up, Hanlon,’ he ordered. ‘You look undignified grovelling down there.’
With pleasure, she thought. She stood up, pushing down hard with her bent knee as she did so; the crack widened and spread beneath his feet. Yes! she thought. We’re so close…
‘Jump,’ he said, his voice hardening. She looked over her shoulder at the huge drop, the stream and its rocks far below. She tried to look terrified; it wasn’t hard. ‘Or I’ll pull the trigger – you know what that’ll do, don’t you?’
She did indeed. From the waist up she’d be mince.
‘Tell me about Kai first…’ he frowned ‘… please,’ she begged, playing for time, praying that the insecure ground would hurry up and give way. ‘Then I’ll jump, I promise…’
Donald sighed, humouring her. ‘I don’t know how he found out about the shipments, I didn’t even know he knew, not till you told Catriona. I just thought until then that he was a barman with a shady past who sold a bit of coke on the side. You tipped us off. She went to kill him, found Big Jim passed out by the side of the road… made it look the way it looked.’
‘Now—’ he waved the gun ‘—jump.’
‘Make me,’ she said defiantly. She was banking on him not wanting to shoot. On his desire to make her death look accidental. Hanlon dead from a fall, natural causes; Hanlon blown to pieces by a shotgun, murder. He shook his head irritably, the shotgun held in one hand, not wavering, and picked up a tree branch from the ground. Bits of old timber were strewn about everywhere under the tree canopy. He hefted it in his muscular right arm, the gun in his left now pointed to the ground. He was obviously intending to push her into the gorge.
‘Move!’ he ordered.
Hanlon stood there pushing down as hard as she could with her feet. Surely the overhang couldn’t take much more. He took a step towards her. He was now well over the fault line. The critical point. She could see the crack zigzag wider as his weight pressed on the fracture. NOW! she thought.
Hanlon stamped her right foot down as hard as she could.
Donald for a nanosecond didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe he thought it was a show of pointless defiance on her part. He raised the heavy branch ready to push her backwards into the gorge to be smashed on the rocks below.
The ground shifted downwards, tilting alarmingly. Donald had no idea he was standing on a kind of platform made of soil held by tree roots and about to give way. He looked puzzled, thinking it was his balance that was at fault, not the ground itself. He slipped slightly and jabbed the stick hard down to keep his balance, shotgun in one hand, branch in the other, causing the overhang to accelerate its movement downwards. Now, too late, he realised what was happening, that the ground was giving way beneath his feet. His body swayed and his arms flailed as he tried to regain his footing and move back to safety.
Eighteen stone of pressure pushing down hard. The crack yawned wide and Hanlon leapt upwards, the force of her leap adding to the pressure on the ground, her hands grasping the bough of the tree that had scraped her hair earlier as the overhang gave way silently.
About four metres of the overhang disappeared into the depths below and Donald fell with it down into the gorge, his arms windmilling once, his voice bellowing wordlessly before he crashed onto the boulders beneath.
Then silence.
35
Hanlon hung for a very long moment from the tree, staring down at what had been ground beneath her feet and was now a drop of thirty metres down to the burn. Her grip was strong, she felt exultant, she was alive! She could see the pieces of black turf far below her. She swung herself hand on hand back along the branch until she reached the body of the tree and clambered down the trunk.
She stood by the side of the ravine, one arm
