The joists in front of Carrie’s room had burned away and suddenly the floor of Carrie’s room tilted down towards the roof. The little white bundle started to slide downwards across the tiles. MacLean rushed forward to catch her but it didn’t happen. The child’s nightdress caught in the guttering above him leaving her hanging there, unconscious and out of reach.
MacLean, singed and sweating but with adrenaline driving him on as never before, dragged over some of the debris from the fallen dormer and stood on it to stretch up. He was still half a metre short and cried out in frustration.
There was no time to build a proper platform. The flames had almost reached the child and the heat and smoke was threatening to overwhelm him. He bent his knees and prepared to leap upwards. It would be an all or nothing attempt. There would be no question of him landing on his feet to try again. The pile of debris he was standing on was too frail.
MacLean jumped and the woodpile gave him just enough purchase to bridge the gap. He grabbed Carrie and they both crashed backwards to the ground. MacLean held the child close to him and rolled over and over till they were away from the burning building. He didn’t stop until his cheek touched cold wet grass where he let go of Carrie as Tansy took her from him, searching anxiously for signs of life. Tansy was in shock; she cradled Carrie in her arms, gasping, ‘Oh God. Oh God, no.’
MacLean crawled over to Tansy and took Carrie from her. She was completely black from soot and the earth. He searched for a pulse and found one. ‘She’s alive,’ he said.
‘Thank God,’ gasped Tansy, ‘A hospital! We must get her to a hospital!’
Although it was difficult to do by firelight MacLean examined Carrie for injury and started to feel ill. The soot was obscuring some very real damage to Carrie’s face. What he initially thought was a smudge of carbon at the corner of her mouth was, in fact, a hole. The left side of Carrie’s face had been badly disfigured.’
There was no one to raise the alarm. The bungalow was too isolated. They were all on their own. Tansy was in deep shock and Carrie was badly injured. MacLean made the decisions. He left Carrie in her mother’s arms and found the corpse of the man he had shot. He rifled the pockets until he found the keys to the Ford. He emptied all the dead man’s pockets, removed a medallion from his neck and a signet ring from his finger.
MacLean put all the dead man’s belongings in his haversack and pulled the corpse by its heels towards the flames. He stopped when the heat became too intense. The body weighed around ten stones, not too heavy for what he had in mind. He grabbed hold of one arm and one ankle and lifted it off the ground to swing it round in an arc. After the third revolution he accelerated and gave a mighty heave before letting go. The effort knocked him off his feet but he saw the body sail into the holocaust.
Tansy was oblivious to what had been going on. She knelt on the grass with Carrie in her arms, rocking back and forward as if in a trance. The flames were reflected in her eyes. MacLean who felt numb inside saw that Tansy was sinking even deeper into shock. ‘Let’s go Tansy,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s get Carrie to a hospital.’
MacLean took Carrie from Tansy and cradled her in the crook of his left arm while he took Tansy’s hand with his right. They moved as fast as they could along the towpath, tripping and stumbling as they went, until they reached path up to the road and to where the black Ford was parked. MacLean drove to the hospital at breakneck speed and screeched to a halt outside Accident and Emergency. Leaping out, he burst through the swing doors and called out, There’s been an explosion. I need help out here!’
Two porters came running and helped MacLean get Carrie and Tansy out of the car while a third brought a trolley. They were joined moments later by a posse of nurses and a doctor.
‘The little girl is badly injured,’ said MacLean. ‘Her mother is suffering from shock and bruising.
The medical team, concentrating all their attention on Carrie and Tansy wheeled them inside, leaving MacLean alone in the car park with one of the porters.
‘Who are you?’ asked the man.
‘I was passing at the time,’ said MacLean. ‘I heard the explosion and saw the fire.’
‘You look as if you could do with some attention yourself.’ said the man. ‘You better come inside too.’
MacLean looked at him without expression and then said, ‘No, I’ll be all right.’ He got back into the car and drove off.
MacLean drove round in circles. Tansy was so deeply in shock that she did not know what was going on around her; he too was in shock but could still function, albeit like an automaton. He obeyed all the rules of the road, observed the speed limit, slowed at every GIVE WAY sign and came to an obedient halt at every STOP command. He had no idea where he was going or why.
When he eventually pulled into the side of the road and looked at his watch it was three in the morning. He put both hands over his face and started to weep.
EIGHT
MacLean’s breathing started to even out; he could think clearly again. The spectre of Carrie’s damaged face was still uppermost in his mind. Of all the hellish quirks of fate it had to be an innocent child who got hurt while he himself remained unscathed. Tansy would recover but Carrie? That was another matter. And even if she did, what would she look like?
It started to rain and MacLean switched on the wipers briefly to clear the screen. He had parked in a quiet street in a residential district on the south side of the city. He could not sit there much longer before unseen eyes behind lace curtains started to entertain notions of informing the police that an uninvited stranger was unpleasantly close to their possessions. He started the engine and moved off slowly, still trying to formulate a list of priorities.
With a bit of luck Der Amboss were going to think that Sean MacLean had died in the fire, at least until their own man failed to return. Even then it might take them long enough to work out what had really happened, provided, of course, that he himself remained out of sight. First he would have to get rid of the car, somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for a long time, preferably never. Next he would need somewhere to stay and that meant money.
MacLean stopped the car again and brought out his wallet. It contained thirty-five pounds. He would need more than that. He remembered the bill- fold he had removed from the pockets of the bomber and searched through his haversack to find it. It contained a hundred and sixty pounds in sterling and five hundred US dollars. That would do for the moment. He looked for ID in the back of the billfold but found none. There had been a leather key holder in the man’s pockets however. MacLean opened the zip and found two Yale type keys. The trademarks on them said that they were of French or maybe Swiss/French origin. There were no clues to identity. He wondered who would be waiting behind the door they opened. A wife? A girlfriend? They would be waiting for a man who would most definitely not be coming home.
MacLean headed out of the city. There were a number of secluded small lochs to the south of Edinburgh, which he knew well enough from the fishing trips of his youth. The plan was now to get rid of the car in one of them. He decided on one with a long track leading away from the road to the waters’ edge. He wanted to be out of sight of the main road in case stray headlights should pick him out.
Choosing this particular loch left MacLean with one major problem to overcome and that was the water-keepers cottage. To reach the loch he had to pass it. In his favour was the fact that the house nestled near the foot of a steep hill. He wouldn’t need to have the engine running to pass it. When he reached the top of the hill leading down to the cottage, he turned off the ignition and the lights and waited for a few moments to let his eyes become accustomed to the gloom then he started to free-wheel down slowly.