Instead Murray took his belt from the floor, where he had dropped it. He used the chair as a step and climbed up onto the table, hoping it would take his weight. The belt had been his father’s. It was a good one, made from Spanish leather. Originally it had boasted a buckle in the shape of a Native American chief in full headdress. Jack had replaced it with a plain silvered one and given it to Murray. He’d given him the old buckle too, wrapped in an envelope he’d marked Cowboy Chic. It was an old joke from when they were teenagers. A long time ago.
Murray slid the belt’s tongue through its buckle, not bothering to fasten it. He’d never got round to getting it shortened to fit his waist and he reckoned it would be long enough.
It was better to decide your exit for yourself. You could be a long-legged, wisecracking urban cowboy, good for a laugh or a wise word, and then, quicker than you could credit, an old man unable to recognise the people you held most dear.
The people you had held most dear.
Murray wiped his eyes. He tied the belt around the hook, gripped the collar he’d made and swung on it for a moment. The knot above tightened, the buckle crushed against his hand, a painful flaw in his design.
It would have to do.
Murray stepped back down onto the floor, the cardboard gritty against his bare feet. He dragged the table a little to the left, climbed back up and fitted the makeshift collar around his neck.
It was still dark outside. Somewhere a bird crowed. He thought of the rook pacing the path beside Christie’s body, and drew a hand across his face; a moment’s courage and then peace.
Soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Murray stepped from the table, seeing Archie’s face at the window as he fell. His legs kicked and the noose tightened, belt buckle biting into his neck as he’d known it would. There was a rushing in his ears, an ocean’s weight coming towards him, and above it another sound.
Someone — Archie? — grabbed his legs and raised him shoulder-high, taking his weight. Murray could feel his assailant’s face against his hip, their arms around his knees swinging him back to the table’s raft.
‘You stupid fucking bastard!’
The voice was loud and frightened and instantly recognisable.
The belt was still around his throat. Murray clawed at his neck, but the noose stayed tight. Jack leapt up on the table beside him and pushed his hands away, trying to ease the buckle loose. Murray could hear him panting and smell the alcohol on his breath. At last he got it free and Murray managed to take one deep whooping lungful of air and then another.
His brother pressed his head against Murray’s chest. After a moment Jack pulled away and managed to untie the belt from its hook. He said, ‘You better be trying to kill yourself, Minty, because if this is some fucking sex thing, I’ll bloody swing for you myself.’
Murray grabbed his brother in a hug. He’d all but lost his voice, but he managed to croak, ‘We let him down, Jack. We promised he’d die at home and he didn’t. He died on his own in that fucking place.’
‘I know he did.’ His brother was holding him tight. ‘But they’d told us there were days, weeks maybe. Dad knew we were doing our best. He was proud of you, Murray. He loved you. He wouldn’t want you to do anything like this. You know that. He’d be fucking furious. Now, come on. Let’s get down from here and get you dressed.’
Murray sat at the table, wrapped in his brother’s coat. He whispered, ‘Are you back with Lyn?’
‘No.’ Jack went through to the other room and there was a sound of rummaging. He came back and flung a pair of trousers and a jumper at Murray. ‘You were right. I was a stupid cunt. Like the song says, you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.’ He looked at Murray anxiously as if trying to weigh up his state of mind. ‘There’s good news, though. You’re going to be an uncle.’
‘Cressida’s pregnant?’
‘Christ, I hope not. That’s why I came to see you. Lyn’s going to have a baby, our baby, and now she won’t have anything to do with me.’ He raised his brown eyes to Murray’s. ‘I came to see you because I was fucking depressed.’
Murray thought of the blazing cottage on the moor side, Christie and her child together in the red Cherokee and Fergus’s Saab abandoned by the desecrated grave up by the limekilns. He said, ‘Jack, I think I might be going to jail.’
Postscript. Glasgow
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘I’VE GOT TWO boys, terrific wee fellas. Six and eleven, they are.’ Murray was alone in the dark, watching the expression on his father’s face switch from eager to anxious. ‘I’ve no seen them in a long while. They telt me they were fine, but how do they know? Have you seen them, son?’
Jack’s voice was warm and reassuring.
‘I’ve seen them, they’re absolutely fine. .’
‘Aye, well, that’s good.’ Their dad regained his happy aspect. ‘On their holidays, aren’t they?’
‘That’s right.’ Murray heard the smile in his brother’s voice. ‘Away with the BBs.’
Murray leant forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on his clasped hands.
Jack was asking his father if he recognised him and the mischief was back in the old man’s face. ‘If you don’t know, I doubt that I can help you out.’
Up on screen the two men laughed together.
‘No idea at all?’
Their father’s stare was intense.
‘I don’t think I know you, son.’ He hesitated and a ghost of something that might have been recognition flitted across his face, bringing a smile in its wake. ‘Are you yon boy that reads the news?’
Jack said, ‘You’ve rumbled me.’ And the old man slapped his knee in glee.
Murray got to his feet. He pushed through the black curtains and out into the brightness of the white-painted gallery. Jack was standing where he had left him, his face anxious.
Murray gave him a sad smile.
‘Maybe you can let me have a copy.’
His brother reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a DVD. Murray took it from him and shook his hand.
Murray wasn’t sure how he had got through his first police interview. Jack’s roll-neck had covered the marks of the ligature and Murray had blamed the croak in his voice on a cold combined with a night on the batter, but he couldn’t imagine that his faltering performance had been convincing. Perhaps it helped that the Oban police were too overwhelmed by the clues they already had to want any more.
The morning had uncovered empty petrol cans in the boot of a distinguished professor’s recently abandoned Saab. The professor himself was suspected to be somewhere in the depths of a newly breached sinkhole. There also seemed a probable link between him and the razed cottage no one had seen burn down, and from it to the cottage’s owner, dead in her car with a vial of poison at her feet and a baby’s disarticulated skeleton beneath the blanket covering her lap.
Murray’s story that Christie hadn’t answered her door, despite his appointment, appeared to be believed, and his connection with Fergus picked over, but not unkindly. Eventually two detectives from Strathclyde police had called at his Glasgow flat to thank Murray for his cooperation.
If they were surprised by the boxes of Jack’s possessions piled in the hallway, or the unmade bed-settee in the sitting room, the officers managed to hide it. The four of them gathered in the small kitchenette. The policemen seemed to occupy twice the space the brothers did, and it was a squeeze. Jack, canny as ever, had stationed himself in the open doorway, leaving the detectives and Murray to squeeze together in the little galley with their backs against the kitchen units.