Pay Off (27 page)

Clouds passed over the moon but they were thin and wispy, no heavier than a veil across a bride's face, so I didn't need the goggles as I unpacked the canvas bag, tipped out the deflated boat and unwrapped it on the beach. I connected up the plastic foot pump and it took four or five minutes to inflate the boat, my legs ached and I was breathing heavily by the time it lay on the stones, rocking in the wind. The plastic oars were each in two halves and I screwed them together and pushed them through the rowlocks.

I pulled the boat half into the water and weighed it down with one of the lengths of chain while I hauled the parcel that was Laing along the beach and heaved it in, knocking one of the oars out as the inflatable distorted and bent with the added weight. I pushed it into deeper water and climbed in, my legs soaking from the struggle.

I rowed slowly but powerfully through the choppy water until I was about a hundred yards from the shore. Making certain the oars were secure, I tied the chain around the body and rolled it over the side. It cut cleanly through the water and disappeared without a sound leaving the inflatable bouncing up and down, freed of its heavy load. A few seconds later a small stream of bubbles trickled to the surface and then they too were gone.

The journey back to the shore was easier than the hard slog out, but the wind pushed me to one side and rather than exhaust myself pulling against it I went along with it, beached the boat some fifty yards further along from my setting off point and carried it back to where Maggie and James lay side by side.

By now the adrenaline was flowing and the pain in my ribs had been replaced by a dull ache so I dragged James to the boat with little difficulty.

The black plastic around his feet tore on the rocky beach as his shoes scraped along the ground, and as I pulled him through the shallow water one fell off and I had to go back for it. I pitched him into the boat and then ran back for the 218 chain that would hold him on the bottom of the loch until he rotted.

Water flooded into the inflatable as I pulled myself in and lay for a few moments gasping for breath, my head resting on his stomach, before I rowed out into the middle of the loch for the second time and pushed him overboard.

Back on the shore, I carried Maggie in my arms and placed her in the boat as it bucked and rolled in the water like a floundering porpoise. The chain, and the shotgun I'd used to kill her, I put by her side.

I thought of her confession as I rowed out into the loch for the third and final time, of the things she'd done in her short life, the people she'd killed and the way she'd killed them.

She had killed for money, she'd killed for her beliefs and she'd killed for information. There had been no regrets during her confession, just a baring of her tarnished soul before she went to meet her Maker. She'd died without apologizing and with the name James on her lips.

I sat with her as the boat drifted in the wind, oars at rest. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I would turn time back if I could, that I was sorry that she'd died, sorry I'd killed her, that revenge wasn't sweet, it was poisonous and bitter, a taste not to be savoured and enjoyed but to be spat out in disgust.

I needed to tell her what I'd done, to bare my soul the way she had to me before she died. So I spoke to Maggie for the best part of an hour as we tossed in the loch, in a quiet voice that she couldn't have heard even if she'd been alive, the wind taking my words and dispersing them over the water like dead leaves scattering down from autumn trees. I didn't feel any better, I didn't feel any easier. I'd confessed, but confessions to the dead don't count.

After wrapping the chain around her and tying the bloodstained jacket to her legs I tried to drop her over the side as close to James as possible, but there were no reference 219 points to guide me and it was impossible to judge distances in the dark. Still, I tried. It was important, to me if not to them.

With a grunt I rolled her over into the loch, but unlike James and Laing she floated, spinning slowly in the dark water until I prodded and pushed with one of the oars and the air trapped in the bags belched out and she sank slowly beneath the waves.

As the black shrouded parcel went under I remembered her pale green eyes, her pert nose and her mischievous smile. Then I blotted her out of my mind though I knew she would surface eventually, like a corpse rising from a hastily-dug shallow grave.

Now I was alone in the boat except for the sawn-off shotgun. I picked it up by the shortened barrels and caressed it, the metal ice-cold but the polished wood smooth and warm to the touch.

'I'm sorry, Dad,' I said. 'It wasn't worth it.'

I threw it high and far, and as it spun through the air the breech opened and the gun formed a 'v' like an unwieldly boomerang. It bounced along the water with a splash of spray and then was gone.

My brain registered movement at the periphery of my vision and I turned to watch a hunting owl swoop down and land in a clump of heather, wings outstretched and talons open.

Then, with a flurry and a flapping it was up again, climbing into the night sky and crossing the moon as it flew silently over my head towards the far side of the loch. In its claws a brown fieldmouse twitched once and was still. I gripped the oars tightly and pulled for the shore.