Complicity

I gave McDu

The names worked even better than I expected. I can see a way out now. I feel like Judas, but there's a way out; not with any honour, perhaps, but I've looked at myself pretty closely over the last few days and I've had to admit to myself that I'm not quite as wonderful a guy as I liked to think I was.

I've imagined myself in situations like this, made up speeches in my head, speeches about truth and freedom and protection of sources, speeches I imagined delivering from the witness box just before the judge sentenced me to ninety days or six months or whatever for contempt of court, but I was kidding myself. Even if it's true that I would have gone to prison to protect somebody else or make some dubious point about the freedom of the press, I know I'd only have been doing it to make myself look good. I'm just like everybody else: selfish. I can see a way out and I'm taking it, and the fact it's a kind of betrayal doesn't really matter.

Besides, I'm paying for the betrayal by telling them about the body. By itself it doesn't prove a thing, but it's my way of getting them to take me to Strathspeld for the funeral; I can look McDu

And, perhaps, with this act of treachery I can finally buy my freedom from the burden of buried horror that bound me to Andy twenty years ago, so that — dispossessed of that trespass — I'm left free to betray him again, now.

McDu

"They've both disappeared," McDu

"Halziel and Lingary," he says, staring at me, and he looks really concerned, worried and harried and tired for the first time; yes, it's all change here in Paddington Green. "They've both disappeared," the DI tells me, sounding shaken. "Lingary just yesterday, Doctor Halziel three days ago."

He pulls the seat back and sits in it. "Cameron," he says. "What body?"

I shake my head. "Take me there."

McDu

I just sit there. I feel in control at last. I suppose in theory I could be lying through my teeth and have some other reason for wanting to go to Strathspeld — maybe I'm just getting homesick for Scotland — but I'm certain he knows that I'm not lying and that there is a body; I think he can see it in my eyes.

McDu

I nod. "Yes, it's Andy."

McDu

There will be," I tell him. "Guy called Howie… I can't remember his second name; begins with a G. He was supposed to leave for Aberdeen the day I left, to start some job on the rigs. Anyway, a few of us had a drink in the hotel that night, and apparently there was a fight; this was after I got drunk and got put to bed. Andy told me Howie and another two locals jumped a couple of travellers who'd been at the party as well. The local cop was called and he was looking for Howie." I hold my hands out. "I mean, this is all stuff that Andy told me, so it could be just a story, but I'd bet that up to that point it's all true. I think Andy offered to let Howie hole up in the hotel while the cops were looking for him, and everybody else up there just assumes Howie's offshore at the moment." I tap my fingers on the table and look at McDu

There's a terrible sick, empty feeling in my guts. My hands are shaking again and I put them between my legs. I give a small laugh. "I even saw the local cop outside the dentist's, day of the party. I just assumed he was there to get a tooth filled or something, but Andy must have broken in and switched the records then."

"We're checking the dental records of the body from the hotel with the Army's records," McDu

I tell the DI why; I tell him about two more betrayals; about the commanding officer who had let men die to cover up his own inadequacy (or at least Andy believed he had, which was all that mattered), and I tell him about the locum doctor who couldn't be bothered to attend a patient and then, when he eventually did pay a visit, just assumed her pain was something trivial.

McDu

McDu

There's a pause while a young constable comes in with some tea; the man at the door gets his cup, and McDu

McDu

I trip on something in the ferns, twisting in mid-air as my ankle gives underneath me and I slam backwards into the ground, winding myself. I lie there, gulping for air, terrified of the man coming to get me while I lie there helpless; then I hear a scream.

I get to my feet.

I look down at what I tripped over; a fallen branch, about the size of a man's arm. I stare at it, thinking down the depth of years to that frozen day by the river.

Get a branch.

The scream again.

Get a branch.

I'm still staring at the branch; it's like my brain's screaming at me inside my own head and I don't know what else it is that's listening, except it isn't listening; my brain's screaming Run! Run! at me but the message isn't getting through, there's something else in the way, something else pulling me back, back to Andy and back to that frozen river bank; I hear Andy crying out and I can still see him reaching towards me and he's about to slip away from me again and I can't do anything… but I can, this time I can; I can do something and I will.