Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (34 page)

‘Fuck.’

‘Try again, you’re gettin’ there.’

‘Okay.’

After a few more minutes of Wee Murph playing the spider to his Robert the Bruce, Lexy gave up while he still had ten fingers.

‘It’s nae use. It’s stuck solid.’

Wee Murph inevitably had a few goes himself before coming to the same depressing conclusion.

‘Tight as a camel’s arse in a sandstorm,’ was how he put it, giving Lexy a much needed giggle.

‘Right enough,’ Lexy reflected, ‘if they were leavin’ aw this gear lyin’ aboot in the back ay a lorry, they’d make gey sure it was well locked up.’

‘The padlock’s probably the size ay a binlid.’

‘Shite, man, whit we gaunny dae?’

‘Whit aboot the guns?’ Murph asked. ‘They still there?’

‘I’d doubt it. There was that much comin’ an’ goin’ yesterday.’

‘Aye, but they were loadin’ stuff, no’ takin’ it away. C’mon.’

Murph made for the other end of the truck, pointing his torch at the draped blankets covering the lattice. He stuck his head behind the sheets, Lexy only able to see the end of the beam dancing against the inside of the cloth.

‘Are the two of them still there?’ he asked.

‘Aye. I ’hink they were a breedin’ pair, but.’

Lexy came closer as Murph pulled up the blankets, the torchlight revealing more metal than Margaret Gebbie’s smile.

‘Fuck me.’

There were six machine guns and six shotguns, all lashed tightly to the lattice using Velcro‐
fastening straps.

‘D’ye want to try shootin’ the padlock off?’ Murph asked gleefully.

‘Naw. That only works in the films. If you fired wan o’ thae ’hings at solid metal, it could ricochet roon here an’ blaw your heid off. That’s if it didnae set off aw the explosives.’

To Lexy’s surprise and relief, Murph seemed to take this on board without a fight.

‘Somethin’ very bad’s goin’ doon, innit, Lexy?’

‘Aye.’

‘I wonder who they are. The IRA or somebody. The UHF, wan o’ them lot.’

‘They didnae sound Irish.’

‘Well, mebbe they’re thae muslin mentalists ye keep hearin’ aboot.’

‘Could be,’ Lexy agreed. ‘We never got a look at them. Sounded English, but.’

‘Whit’s that got tae dae wi’ it? Hauf the Soothside o’ Glesca’s muslins.’

‘Bad bastards, whoever they are. Aw these guns. Aw this gear.’ Lexy sighed, the enormity of it weighing upon him, and with it a realisation that added to his burden: ‘We’ve got tae dae somethin’.’

‘Aboot whit?’

‘Tae stop them, I mean. Whitever they’re plannin’, folk are gaunny get kill’t. That’s what I’m bettin’, anyway.’

‘Whit can we dae? We’re stuck in here.’

‘Aye, but we’re stuck in here wi’ aw the gear they need. I ’hink it’s time we began actin’ oor age.’

Wee Murph grinned. ‘Ye mean start vandalisin’ stuff?’

‘You read my mind, Murph.’

They agreed that it would be in the best interests of remaining lead‐
free if they made the damage inconspicuous. Neither of them fancied messing about with the explosives, and even if they had known any way of disabling the stuff, the fact that half the packets were now swimming in pish was a further disincentive. Instead, they set to work on the drill rigs. The machines themselves were formidably sturdy beasts, but Murph identified the point of least resistance as being the control panel. Lexy balanced his torch on one of the lattice strats while Murph removed the cover panel from around the joystick and keypad, using a screwdriver from a small toolkit he’d found in the same crate as the torches. He ripped out all the wiring, stabbed some holes in the circuit board, then screwed the cover back in place.

‘Totally Donalded,’ he declared, before repeating the procedure on the next one. Lexy, meanwhile, pulled back the blanket from what they had assumed was a third drill, but which was in fact a mobile electricity generator for powering the other two.

‘Better be careful wi’ this,’ Lexy warned.

‘Ach, bollocks tae it,’ Murph disagreed, flipping open the cover and setting to work inside with one of the drill‐
heads. ‘Hand us that other drill hingmy,’ he requested. Lexy complied. Murph bent over the contraption once more. Neither of the drillheads returned, but he did emerge with a rubber fanbelt and a clutch of loose components, which he chucked into the wooden crate at the front that he had first used as a toilet.

Murph then made for the weapons cache, pulling a machine gun from the lattice and holding it at waist height.

‘Whit ye daein’?’

‘Check it out, man. “Come an’ meet my leetle friend.” Gerrit?’

‘Christ’s sake, don’t fuck aboot wi’ thae ’hings.’

‘It’s awright, they’re no’ loaded. Aw the ammo’s in the crates. Hey, check this. Daow naow naow naow.’

Murph was now pretending the weapon was a guitar, and started singing a song, something about bikini girls with machine guns.

‘You’re off your heid.’

‘Heh, imagine you made a guitar oot a machine gun. It would be mental.’

‘No’ wide enough.’

‘An electric wan – wouldnae need a soundboard.’

‘It would need a neck wide enough for six strings,’ Lexy pointed out.

‘It would look cool but, wouldn’t it?’

‘No’ really. Guitars are ancient, man. My da listens tae bands wi’ guitars. The Manic Street Preachers an’ aw that geriatric stuff. Pure Arran sweater music, man.’

‘Aye. I heard you got a free pipe an’ slippers wi’ their last CD. Ma auld man’s worse. He listens tae this band The Clash, fae aboot a hunner year ago. Tooooommy guuuun,’ he sang. ‘That’s wan o’ theirs. Gerrit? Tommy gun.’

‘Speakin’ of which,’ Lexy said, nodding towards the wall‐
mounted arsenal.

‘Aye, right enough.’

‘Where’s the ammo again?’

‘That crate there, or the wan next tae it,’ Murph advised.

‘Right.’

‘Whit?’

‘I’ve got an idea for gettin’ oot o’ here.’

Lexy took a magazine from the ammo crate and handed another to Lexy, then removed a machine gun of his own from the wall. Murph slammed his clip into the empty breach like he had seen in the films, then bent down to pick it up when it fell out on to the floor.

‘Wrang way roon, Murph. The bullets come oot pointy‐
end first.’

‘Cheeky bastart. It’s dark in here, remember. Whit’s the plan?’

‘Gie’s a hand an’ I’ll show you.’

Each pocketing one more magazine for good measure, they resealed the lid on the ammunition crate – the first place they reckoned the bad guys would look – then set about moving the contents of two crates of explosives to their own former refuge beneath the blankets. Not an ingenious hiding place, Lexy knew, but the purpose was to create confusion and buy them time: the plan was to run, not fight.

‘But where are we supposed to hide when they come back?’ Murph protested.

‘Ever heard the story of the Trojan horse?’

‘Naw.’

‘What aboot The Hobbit?’ Lexy tried, thinking of Bilbo’s unseen escape in a barrel. Both of their English classes had done it in First Year.

‘Naw.’

Lexy sighed. ‘Forget it. When you hear somebody comin’, just jump intae a crate, awright?’

‘Sound.’

‘And in the meantime …’

Ray looked at himself again in the sunshade mirror. He could use a shower and a shave, but at least he no longer looked like a vagrant. Whether that was desirable under his current fugitive status remained to be seen, what with the police not likely to be putting out any APBs in search of a piss‐
smelling bin‐
raker.

He felt better, that was for sure. He’d managed to give his face a good scrub and shake most of the dust from his hair, but really wished he could do something about the stubble. On TV, people always had a five o’clock shadow when they got huckled, so he felt dressed for arrest. The innocent and unsuspected members of society were always crisp‐
collared and clean‐
shaven, and that was what he wanted to look like right then.

The car would help. Step out of a top‐
of‐
the‐
range number like that with jeans, T-shirt and a bit of growth and you looked like a pop star or an Internet millionaire. Same get‐
up coming out of, say, a fucked black Polo, and you looked like precisely the dubious sort likely to abduct thirteen‐
year‐
old schoolboys.

Anyway, he knew that being recognised was among the least of his worries. Scrubbed, manky, shaven or not, he looked nothing like the photo in the paper, and even if he did, who was likely to notice the match? He’d seen wanted pictures and Photofits a hundred times, and forgotten the face as soon as he turned the page and saw some actress falling out of her dress at a movie premiere. The only people actively looking for him were the cops, the armed psychos and the bampots who’d gathered outside his house. The bampots weren’t going to find him here, and would most probably be at the Special Brew by now; while the cops weren’t going to spot him inside a big, posh motor that belonged to someone else. That said, he couldn’t hide out in a supermarket car park forever, not least because the armed psychos did know what registration to be scoping for.

Kate had been strong, one of the few things he had to be grateful for over the last forty‐
eight hours. If she had gone to pieces, he’d probably have followed. He knew that the second he started feeling sorry for himself was the second he’d remember he was just an ordinary shmo with a job, mortgage, wife and kid, and thus utterly inequipped to cope with all of this.

There was a strong urge to just go home. The police and the bampots would have to be faced, but he felt sure he could deal with both once he’d had time to hold Kate and Martin again. What he couldn’t deal with was that his abductors knew where he lived, and the last thing he wanted was to lead them back home. Admittedly, they could be waiting for him there already, but right now so were the cops, meaning Kate and Martin would be safe as long as he remained on the run.

To protect his family, he had to stay away from them: it was just the latest absurdity in this through‐
the‐
looking‐
glass world he’d been dropped into. He’d been shot at, kidnapped, mock‐
executed, interrogated, imprisoned and then finally escaped in time to find he was suspected of abducting two teenagers. In the case of this last, once the shock had passed, his initial reaction was that it was a coincidence of the type that could only happen when your luck was already in minus figures. Two boys from his school had gone missing and so had he. That was the only connection. He had a damn good alibi, but unfortunately the witnesses concerned might be a little reluctant to come forward, nor was he in a big hurry to ask them.

However, as he sat in the Rover and wondered emptily what his next move should be, he found some smoking embers of logic in his frazzled brain questioning whether so many wacked‐
out occurrences could really be unrelated. If he had disappeared from work without telling anybody – say because Martin became ill and they ended up at the hospital overnight – on the same day as two boys from the school went missing, then that would be a coincidence. Disappearing from work without telling anybody – say because two pricks put a gun to his head and stuck him in an abandoned farmhouse overnight – on the same day as two boys from the school went missing, was almost certainly not.

The boys’ disappearance had to be linked to his, just as his disappearance was now definitely linked to the two gunmen taking pops at him on the Cart bridge. And if probability dictated that these bizarre events could not be coincidental, then what did that imply for the most bizarre event of all, particularly given that it had been the first of the sequence? It was absurd but true that two strangers had turned up with silenced automatics and tried to shoot him en route to picking up a chicken passanda and a lamb jalfrezi. It was absurd but true that two more numpties had kidnapped him halfway through the Second Years’ morning double period, then wheeched him and his car away in a juggernaut. It was absurd but true that there were now protestors outside his home accusing him of being a paedophile and possibly a child‐
killer.

He had seen Simon Darcourt walking out of Domestic Arrivals at Glasgow Airport. That was also absurd. But …

It took about three hours to drive north from Crieff, keeping within the speed limit at all times, this being the worst day of his life to get stopped by the boys in blue. He had to fill up on the outskirts of Aberdeen, which added some time too. With most of his cash spent at the supermarket, he was left with the options of lifting more from the machine on the forecourt or paying by card, both of which would record his location and time of transaction. However, if the cops were going to those lengths to track him down, they’d catch up with him soon enough anyway, and it wouldn’t tilt the odds in his favour any if he had no petrol.

One plus point of the pit stop was that he noticed the northern edition of the Recorder wasn’t carrying his story. This shouldn’t really have been a surprise, it being the city where the local paper legendarily led on the Titanic disaster with the headline ‘North‐
East Man Lost at Sea’, but it was a relief nonetheless.

Ray made it to the estate around four. There was every chance she wouldn’t still be there, but if so, maybe there’d be a forwarding address. It wasn’t like he was spoilt for alternative options.

He recognised the place from after the memorial service, and remembered the route from the church as flagged by roundabouts and supermarkets. He didn’t know the number or even the name of the street, but he recalled the house’s position opposite a T-junction and the fact that it was a darker shade of red brick than its neighbours either side. At the time, Ray remembered thinking how it was so not Simon, and wondered how he could possibly have fitted in. His snobbery was bound to have been viciously double‐
edged: it wasn’t just that the estate was decidedly un‐
rock’n’roll and thus erred unforgivably on the side of respectability, but Simon, having grown up in a Victorian‐
built sandstone villa in Giffnock and spoken often about the importance of living somewhere with a sense of individuality, would have considered it vulgar as well as bourgeois.