The Going Down of the Sun (29 page)

I froze rigid. He meant it. After everything that had happened, all we'd been through, he still meant to kill me. A voice I didn't recognise as mine whispered, “Why?”

“Why?” he echoed, a hoot of derision in the word. He couldn't believe I really didn't know. “You have ruined me,” he said then, and his eyes were indignant and unforgiving. “McAllister needed me. I'd have gone places in his organisation. You set about making a fool of me the first day we met. Damn you. You had no right.”

“William,” I said, and if it sounded like a plea I was past caring, “I never did anything to you that you didn't force on me.”

“Oh aye? I had it worked out. My uncle wanted him.” He jerked the gun at Alex but his eyes still blazed at me. “I'd have found him, but I knew fine well you'd find him first. So I followed you. You didn't even know, did you? I'd have brought him back and McAllister'd have been grateful, but what happened?”

“You beat Duncan Galbraith so badly you couldn't afford to take any of us back,” growled Alex.

Mackey blinked. I think he'd forgotten that. He skipped quickly to his next grievance. “She tried to kill me! She brought the boat in here knowing it would turn over. She didn't care who she killed if she got my gun away from me. But you won't get this one.” Quite slowly his frail young body, absurdly—even pathetically—clad in its reindeer cardigan and bent into a bow by the weight of his intensity, swivelled towards me, bringing the weapon with it.

Alex said sharply, “It's me McAllister wants. He won't thank you for killing her.”

Mackey's eyes snapped back at him. “He doesn't have to. I'm not doing it for him. He can have you, but I'm having her.” And he shot me.

If I'd thought he was ready to do it I'd have made some effort to escape. Got up or rolled aside or something. I'm sure I would: I'd nothing to lose. He not only wanted me dead, he needed me dead, as he always had since the moment of his attack on Duncan. He trusted McAllister to dispose of the other witness, but he had to deal with me himself.

I thought he'd talk about it longer. He was visibly angry, but he wasn't in the towering rage that makes taking a human life possible. I thought he'd have to work himself up to that point, that unless one of us did something to precipitate the crisis it would take him a little time to reach it. In a little time anything could happen.

But he needed no time at all. He didn't need to psych himself up, to gloat over me or humiliate or frighten me. He needed me dead, and since he'd been this close before and been cheated—by me or by events—he wanted it done quickly.

So he looked at me, sitting on my damp backside among the stones, propped up by a hand on either side, and what I saw was a triangular formation of three black eyes, all unwinking, and there was no more life or pity in Mackey's two than in the one below them that was the muzzle of his gun. At the precise moment that I realised he was going to shoot me, now, without any further discussion, he did.

He was a terrible shot. I'd guessed as much aboard
Flag
, and here was the confirmation. He couldn't have been more than six or seven yards away, and with the slope of the shore in his favour, and I didn't move a muscle and neither did Alex. Still the closest he could get to a
coup de grâce
was a nasty burning graze three inches long across the top of my left arm.

I yelled, as much with surprise as with pain—I've had worse rope-burns—and dived one way; Alex dived the other, sweeping Mackey's legs from under him, and they collapsed in a rolling, straggling heap from which issued the occasional knee or elbow, curse, threat or grunt of pain. Once the gun came out, locked in two hands, and waved wildly for a moment before disappearing again between their twisting bodies.

Alex should have had the advantage, the gun notwithstanding, being both longer and stronger. But Mackey had two good arms to fight with and Alex was both handicapped and hindered by his injury. It might have been more ladylike to leave it to them but I wasn't confident enough of the outcome. Stung by my own wound just enough to be mean, I weighed in on top of them, stamping and kneeing and gouging any piece of anatomy I didn't recognise as Alex, taking a particular toll of those bloody reindeer.

I didn't escape scot-free myself. I got knelt on, I got a fist in the midriff, and at one point a hand emerged out of the scrum, fixed a grip in my hair and yanked until I thought I'd lose it. From the way he let go when I squealed, I think it was Alex.

I didn't care. I could take a little punishment—scalp, midriff, booted ribs, bullet crease and all—if this was going to be the end of it. I was scared of the gun going off again, because in the knot of bodies there was no knowing what damage it would do and to whom, but the fear got subliminated in the sheer physical aggression of what I was doing. As long as I was strong enough to beat the crap out of those reindeer, the gun wouldn't go off.

The gun went off. At least,
a
gun went off. It sounded more like a howitzer than a hand-gun, and the shock of the blast effectively separated we stragglers on the grass. We rolled apart and for a moment none of us moved. I knew I wasn't hurt, wasn't sure about the other two.

None of us was hurt. It wasn't Mackey's gun that had gone off. At the top of the bank above us Frazer McAllister's stocky figure was planted immobile against the sky, feet apart, the long double-barrelled gun in one hand pointing up. The sun shining on his crinkly grey hair gave him a most improbable halo. He was in his shirt-sleeves—so the reindeer cardigan was his—and green wellies with some rather ancient corduroys stuffed into the tops, and he looked a little like an avenging angel and a little like an elderly Che Guevara.

I didn't know what his being here meant. I hadn't realised he was on the helicopter in person, couldn't decide what significance to ascribe to that. It hung on whether he accepted yet that Alex was not to blame for his wife's death, and now didn't seem the moment to ask him.

His voice was gravelly, the accent prominent. “Get away from that gun.”

I was nowhere near it. It had fallen on the grass between Alex and Mackey, and either could have reached it with one good lunge. Alex was mostly on his back, clearly in pain from his damaged arm, and he raised his head just long enough to recognise the new arrival, then turned his face away, sick with disappointment and defeat. He had no doubt what McAllister's presence meant.

Mackey had ended up mostly on his knees. He straightened with a grin of pure malicious triumph. “Nice timing, uncle,” he crowed. His nose was bleeding again and he wiped it on his sleeve.

“You found them, then.” McAllister was standing quite still, his head lowered like a bull's, looking at Alex. His expression was unfathomable.

After a moment Alex grew aware of his scrutiny. Pride wouldn't let him bear it prone. As stubborn in his own way as the old tyrant himself, he struggled with hurt and weariness to pick himself up. I wasn't near enough the gun on the ground to threaten anyone, so I got up and went to him and quietly helped Alex to his feet. We stood together then and waited.

McAllister's gaze slid over to me. His voice was level, uninfected. “Dr. Marsh. How are you?”

I wasn't sure if it was a greeting or an inquiry. I wasn't even sure how I was. I'd been kicked, thumped, shot, half drowned and totally terrified. My clothes were still damp, gritty inside and out, and perforated in places. I was trying hard not to think how I must look. “I'm fine. Thank you.”

“Mr. Galbraith?”

“Duncan Galbraith is dead.”

“How?”

I indicated William. “He fractured his skull. I turned the boat over and drowned him.”

I caught the movement out of the comer of my eye as Alex turned his head to look at me. “That wasn't your fault. If it was anyone's it was mine.” Saying it altered nothing, and now it was too late to matter, but I appreciated the gesture.

Mackey said, “I was bringing them to you. They started a fight.”

McAllister looked at me. “Is that true?”

“Approximately.”

“How did you get here?”

“After what he did to Duncan he couldn't afford to have witnesses left over. He was taking us somewhere quiet to kill us. Corryvreckan was our only chance, so I told him this was the way through. Only I wasn't as good a sailor as I thought.” I squared my shoulders at him. “But we'd have made it, if Harry had got here ahead of you. You realise he's looking for us too?”

McAllister nodded slowly. “I suppose.” He let the barrels of the shotgun, which had been pointing at the sky, swing over and down and point roughly at our feet He still held it in one hand. Something about the way he held it suggested that one hand was all he needed.

Mackey bent down and picked up the hand-gun on the grass. “Small chance,” he grinned bloodily. “Uncle, you take Curragh. I'll deal with her.”

“Reckon you can this time?” I demanded, burying the icy spot of horror under a show of bravado, and Alex grunted, “Only if you'll promise to stand still and not too far away.”

McAllister said quietly, “Why?” I wasn't sure which of us he was asking but he was looking at William.

Mackey looked surprised. Then he answered reasonably, “Because you owe him for Aunt Alison, and I owe her.” He'd assumed the question meant why do it that way rather than why do it at all.

McAllister looked at me. For the briefest moment I thought I saw a little sorrow and a little warmth through the basilisk inscrutability. Then he looked at Alex, and I wasn't sure what I saw in his ruined face then.

My mind churning in the search for hope, it occurred to me to wonder what I would do if I was invited to buy my life with silence—about Duncan's death and about Alex's. I hoped to God I wouldn't jump at the chance.

McAllister said, “Put the gun down.”

Mackey stared at him. He genuinely thought he had misheard. “What?”

“Put the gun down. You're not killing anyone.”

Mackey's eyes flickered between the gun and me, between distress and a soul-deep anger. He couldn't believe he was about to be thwarted. “You cannot leave her alive,” he shouted. “She's a witness against me. If you kill Curragh, she'll be a witness against you too.”

“I don't intend to kill Curragh,” said McAllister.

Mackey turned on him, shrieking hysterically, his body arched over the gun in his hand. “Damn you, you can't do this to me! Everything I did, I did for you. You're not throwing me to the wolves now.”

The less damaged side of McAllister's lip curled. “Wee son, you never in your life did anything for anybody but yourself. If you think I'm going to kill two people to keep you out of prison, you have another think coming.”

“But he killed Auntie Alison,” screamed Mackey. His face was suffused with blood and rage. “He fucked her and then he killed her. You're going to let him off with that? You'll be a laughing stock!”

“Ach Willie, Willie,” sighed McAllister. “That's not what happened. What actually happened between them you'll never understand if you live to be a hundred, but he didn't kill her. Did you, son?”

Alex shook his head fractionally. “I thought you did.”

I found I was breathing again. Shallowly, through my mouth, but breathing.

“Then who the hell did kill her?” demanded William, exasperated beyond bearing.

McAllister looked at me. Then he looked up at the sky; there was nothing there, so it may have been to stop his eyes watering. “No-one killed Alison. It was her choice. She had an illness that wasn't going to get better, and she decided not to hang round while it got worse. She put her affairs in order and then she ended her own life. I only hope she doesn't know the trouble that's come of it.”

“Trouble?” It was William. If his voice went any higher he'd need surgical intervention to recover it. “Two men are dead. I'm going to be blamed for that. You said you wanted Curragh, and I got him for you. You owe me. These people are nothing to you. I'm your nephew, and I need them dead. You owe me that!”

He might have done better not reminding McAllister of the blood-tie that could only be an embarrassment to him. The basilisk eyes went cold. “I owe you nothing, wee son. You've been trouble from the first day I saw you. Out of consideration for your mother, nothing more, I'll put my hand in my pocket once more and buy you the second-best lawyer in Scotland. I'm saving the best for myself. Thanks to you I'm likely to need him. I told you to put that gun down.”

Mackey stared wild-eyed at the weapon in his hand, much as a man overboard might regard a lifeline someone was threatening to snatch away. Then he looked at McAllister's shotgun. “Why did you bring that if you don't want anyone shot?”

“Because right after you left the helicopter, Starrett realised you'd got his Beretta,” McAllister retorted grimly. “He keeps that there for my protection. You'd no damn business taking it.”

“Your protection? What about my protection?”

“Put the gun down.”

“What about me?” screamed William Mackey.

“You're going to prison,” McAllister said frankly. “But we'll plead diminished responsibility and you could be out before we've missed you. No more than five or six years, maybe.”

William was in no mood for humour, not even coming from his employer. He was in no mood to listen to reason. Events of the last thirty-six hours had driven him steadily up the scale of violence, from stalking a man to smashing a man's hand to smashing his head to plotting cold-blooded murder. It was almost no distance to committing murder, and all his mental reserves were pledged to his own safety. Backing down now, taking the consequences of what he had already done, would have involved an emotional about-turn that was possible, just about, but wasn't going to happen. Jimmy Cagney wouldn't have settled for prison when one bold move could put him beyond its grasp, and William Mackey wasn't going to.