Country of the Blind (31 page)

"I mean, who could have pulled that kind of thing off?" Paul continued, ignoring him.

"The same buggers that set us up to rob Craigurquhart in the first place,"

Tam replied. "The MM, and his chinas. This Voss character - we're talkin'

aboot
bloody
powerful people here. Powerful friends, powerful enemies. Christ knows what kinna cairry-on there is among these billionaire bastarts. The wee games they play wi' each other. But whoever was organised enough to have him killed in the first place and set us up to take the blame - that level, that kinna calibre - who could say
what
they're capable of? If they can kill a man as rich, influential and protected as that, then I'm sure organisin' a wee road accident wouldnae have stretched their resources.

"We're just the Lee Harvey Oswalds here. Just the fuckin' mugs. It could have been anybody, but it was us. They kill their man, serve us up as scapegoats, then spring us so we can be hunted doon. Once we're deid, naebody's gaunny start lookin' into what happened in Perthshire. It's end of story."

Paul felt full of questions, as if by picking holes in the credibility of what was going on he could render it untrue. "But once we were on the run, how could they be sure we wouldnae just be captured? How could they be sure that the polis or whoever would go ahead an'. . . an'. . . " He couldn't say it. 175

"It's a government conspiracy."

"Fuck's sake, shut up, Spammy," Paul hissed, wanting to burst a lung screaming in frustration, but now even more aware of the need for quiet.

"I wasnae bein' facetious, Paul," Spammy stated evenly. "It
is
a government conspiracy."

"How could it. . . ?"

"Naebody else could manage this. Aye, sure, some - I don't know - billionaire or gangster or 'criminal mastermind' could get somebody into that mansion gaffe an' top Voss. Could mibbe even set us up wi' the blackmail an'

the photies an' that. And they could have found oot we were gaunny be on that bus - bent polis contacts, inside information or whatever. But what they couldnae have done was put that wee shite on board. That was, like, official. And the whole point of him was so's we'd run. So's we'd believe it was him that was bein' sprung. We might have been a wee bit suspicious if they had just stopped the bus in the middle o'naewhere an' says, 'Right, oot yous get. We're it. Yous've got fifty to get away. Nae keys.'

"Plus, as you said, how would they know we wouldnae just get rounded up again? Well, they'd know if they were givin' the fuckin' orders. Armed fugitives. Shoot on sight. Shoot to kill. But don't shoot them in the back because we have to make oot they were a danger. Tell me I'm wrang."

Paul stared furiously at Spammy, hating him for what he was saying. Shooting the messenger.

"But if it was the government," he groped, looking for the absurdity, the piece that wouldn't fit and could therefore work like a talisman to ward off the truth of what was being outlined, "if it was the government, why go to all this bother? Why not just get us convicted, send us doon and then everyone forgets aboot it?"

"Because they willnae want another Guildford Four or Birmingham Six or Carl Bridgewater case. Even if we're in jail forever, the story willnae go away. Somebody's gaunny believe us. That lawyer lassie, for instance. Aw the wee inconsistencies would gradually come oot, an' eventually folk would be startin'

to demand to know what really happened at Craigurquhart Hoose. But if we're deid, who
gives
a fuck?"

"But why kill us up here?" Paul couldn't believe he was discussing what he was discussing, but at this conjectural level it seemed comfortingly removed. Like he was talking about someone else. His dad was staring blankly into the trees once more, saying nothing. Tam wasn't seeing events on a conjectural level, and he knew who they were talking about. He had seen one of the men they were talking about die on a roadside with a bullet in his head.

"The government could have us. . . you know, in jail or somethin'," Paul argued. "They wouldnae need to do it away up. . . "

176

"Aye they would. If the four blokes accused of - but persistently denying -

the murder of Voss all snuffed it in jail or in some other mysterious circumstances, that would just advertise the fact that somethin' dodgy was goin' on,"

Spammy said. "This way, we've practically signed a confession before they get us. We kill't the guards and ran away. We were guilty. Naebody starts shoutin'

aboot miscarriages of justice - we got what we deserved. You saw that fuckin'

newspaper the polis were windin' us up with. What did it say?"

Paul refused to reply, staring away from Spammy.

"What did it say?" he demanded again. "It said 'scum four must die'. What would it be sayin' noo? Wan doon, three to go, mibbe?"

"But. . . why would the government kill Voss?" Paul asked, the strain of fighting off this growing, dawning truth telling in his broken voice as he found one last stick to beat it with. "Voss was the biggest Tory bastard in the world. The government fuckin' loved him."

"I don't know," Spammy spat, an unfamiliar anger in his eyes. "But fuck's sake, does it matter?"

Paul's own silence told him that it did not.

He had persisted with the argument despite knowing he was losing it, because the consequences of its conclusions wouldn't have to be faced until it was over. It was like you were seven-nil down with five minutes left, but you weren't out of the cup until the final whistle blew. In his head he tried to outline alternative scenarios, explanations that might save them. There was some other reason they had shot Bob, something Tam couldn't have seen from his distant vantage point. It couldn't be some huge conspiracy, that was daft. You couldn't just order polismen and soldiers to shoot men who were giving themselves up. How could you be sure they would go through with it? How could you be sure one of them wouldn't blab? It was totally implausible. It made no sense.

But, like why the government would kill their own benefactor and propagandist, it didn't matter. Billionaires, gangsters, conspiracies. That stuff didn't matter either. It didn't make a difference whose finger was on the trigger. What mattered was that
they
were in the cross-hairs. The rules had changed. They were no longer running from capture. They were running from death.

He looked at his father, drained and pale, and saw that Tam had understood this the moment Bob was murdered. What Spammy understood was normally a matter of extremely futile speculation, but right then Paul appreciated the source of the anger in his friend's eyes. It had been a rebuke, an impatience with Paul's self-indulgent, self-deluding procrastination, saying the sooner he grew up and accepted the situation, the sooner they could try and do something about it. 177

Paul felt a fear unlike any he had ever experienced, and Christ knew he had made acquaintance with a wide variety in recent weeks. It was a hollow, desolate, paralysing fear; not the nerve-stretching terror of horrible possibilities, but an enveloping hopeless dread of an approaching inevitability. There had been shock, fright, terror, anger, horror, revulsion and pain. But apart from those eardrum-bursting, vicious moments as the bus turned over, he had not been in fear for his life. What set the pulse racing and the stomach tightening - the stake, if you like - until now had been freedom, or the danger of losing it. Getting away with it. Or just getting away. The risk to life had always been around somewhere - the threat of falling from the building, of being shot during or after the break-in, of violence by the police, of violence in prison, of falling over a bloody cliff as they scrambled around in these dark forests - but either it seemed unlikely, undefined and remote, or he had simply expelled it to get himself through.

Now it was survival that seemed remote, a scenario both undefined and unlikely. They had been running because they didn't know what else to do, knowing capture was inevitable, but ready to savour the liberty of each moment they could postpone it. Now these moments were the last of their lives, not of their freedom. Death was here, on this hillside. A brutal death, slaughtered like some beast of the forest. No-one was going to save him. No-one was going to pull the rifle away from the sniper's shoulder and say, "Stop! That young man is innocent! It's all right, kid, we know the truth. We've sussed the plot and Jean-Claude is kicking fuck out the bad guys even as we speak." No-one was going to know the truth. He was going to be shot dead on a mountain and forgotten. He looked to his father again. Somewhere inside, a wee boy was wanting his daddy to stand up and tell him it was going to be okay. Tell him Daddy would look after him. Daddy wouldn't let any bad men or big dugs hurt him. But Tam was still slumped, as if the life, the energy had gone from his body, drained away by exhaustion and resignation. Then he turned and looked at Paul, tears forming in his eyes, and behind the beads of water a look of. . . apology.

He looked broken and defeated, the way he had looked, Christ, the way he had looked in that horrible visiting room all those years ago. Broken, defeated and. . .
weak
. Sorry for his own weakness. Sorry for failing his son. And Paul had hated him so much. Hated that image of him, that version of him. Hated him for being that man and not the man he had grown up with. He had blamed his dad for what he did back then, back when he was a kid with so many ideals and hopes and expectations, and fair enough. But Paul knew he had managed his own fair share of fuckups since then, and there comes a time when you realise that you can't trace all your own failures back 178

to someone else's Big Mistake.

He hadn't really been looking to his dad to save him, to rescue him. It was just another way of wishing someone else would come along and sort it all out for him. But now it was growing-up time.

He knew his dad wasn't weak when no amount of strength could have fought off the forces that assaulted them, and he hated whoever had made Tam see himself that way. Back then, back in that visiting room, with the fagburnt, moulded orange seats and the peeling-plastic tables, he had hated the man who took away someone he loved, admired and respected and turned him into a sorrowful, apologetic wreck. In recent months, maybe even years, he had grown to understand that he still loved his father, and over these insane weeks, he had once more added admiration and respect. Now someone had taken that man away again, and Paul hated whoever it was with a far greater rage.

He drew on the hatred, sucked it in, let it fill him. Let it invigorate him, stimulate him, chase the cold shadows of dread from within. The despair had been at his own loss; his, Tam and Spammy's loss. Defeat, and the unseen but inexorable approach of death. The hatred refocused Paul's vision. Liberty was written off. Escape was written off. They had regarded their own survival as the final thing they could hope for, the final thing they could want, and therefore the final thing they had to lose. They needed something to win.

"Fuck them."

Paul stood up, brushing the needles and moss from the backs of his legs, both Tam and Spammy suddenly looking on in surprise at his unexpected deliberateness.

"We're lookin' at this all wrong," he said. "If they want us deid so much, then what they really fuckin'
don't
want is us back in custody, alive and talkin'. We know we cannae give oorsels up to the polis or the soldiers oot here in the hills. But if we can make it to civilisation, that's a different story."

Tam looked at Paul with a mixture of confusion and anticipation, and maybe even a splinter of hope.

"Now, we've managed to evade capture so far, so who's to say we cannae show up in the nearest town or village - anywhere there's civilian witnesses

- wi' oor hauns in the air. We're seen surrenderin'. Unarmed. Alive. They cannae shoot us then."

"We do go to jail, though," Spammy added.

"Aye, but what aboot all those reasons they want us deid and the case closed? If what you were sayin' is true, then us makin' it to court is their worst fuckin' nightmare."

179

Tam stood up, seeming to grow and expand as he rose to his full standing height. He nodded his head, a look of powerful determination on his face.

"You're right, son. Fuck them."

Spammy untangled his limbs, like one of HR Giger's aliens uncurling from slumber, and somehow assembled himself into a sedentary position.

"Well," he said, "I suppose it's that or leadin' a pastoral existence, livin' aff the fruits an' berries of the forest. An' I don't fancy that, to be honest. Sooner or later we'd aw get terrible diarrhoea."

Would it have been different, Paul wondered, feet padding softly along the forest floor, eyes scanning the periphery, ears searching beyond their footfalls and breathing for the sounds that might herald the end. Could it have been different? If Spammy had slept in, as usual, that morning. If he hadn't risen at the unaccustomed hour of, well, daylight, bringing the post into the kitchen and slapping it down on the table as Paul devoured the reheated remains of last night's take-away curry.

If the big yin hadn't been there when he opened the envelope and the contents spilled on to the table, on top of the
Daily Ranger
and Spammy's
TAG
. Grainy, blurry, poorly lit black-and-white pictures, date and time in a cheesy digital read-out on the bottom right-hand corner of each frame. Shapes that could be desks, computers, tills, melting into the background due to the low contrast of the image. But recognisable, unmistakable, in every shot, his dad's face atop the figure that had been captured by the security camera. On the back of each picture was the name and address of the premises, and a list of articles, presumably those stolen.

"It's your da," Spammy had said, as Paul looked on, too stunned to speak. Paul reached into the envelope and dislodged the last of its contents, a sheet of paper.

"Dear Paul," it read, halfway down the page in very small type, one tiny line of print. "Stay by the telephone."

They sat in silence, staring at the photographs, Paul speechless and Spammy just Spammy.