Complicity

"What a load of old nonsense," Yvo

"Two," William said. "Yes, probably."

"Oh, I don't know," Andy said, shaking his head. "Sounds pretty spooky to me. One, please. Thanks."

"Sounds like fucking ti

"Dealer takes two," William said. He whistled. "Oh, baby; look at these cards…"

I take the old bell up and let it ring once; a flat, hollow, appropriately funereal sound. I set it carefully back down on the stone altar and look round the walled oblong of hill, mountain, loch and cloud.

Silence: no birds, no wind in the trees, nobody talking. I turn slowly, right round, watching the clouds. I think this is the most peaceful place I have ever been.

I walk out, among the cold, carved little stones, to find Yvo

Andy strolls up, drinking from his flask, gri

"What?" Yvo

"Here?" I say. "On a graveyard? Is he mad? Hasn't he read Stephen King?"

Yvo

"Tried to persuade the local authority with a really good deal on a bunch of computers," Andy says, chuckling. "But they wouldn't play. For the moment he's had to settle for being allowed to get buried here."

Yvo

Hard rain on a soft day; it falls from the leaden overcast, continual and drenching, creating a huge rustling in all the grass, bushes and trees around us.

William's body is laid to rest in the thick peaty soil of the dark isle. According to the pathologist's report, he was clubbed unconscious and then suffocated.

Yvo

The minister keeps the service short because of the rain, and then it's over and we're queuing at the slip while the little rowing boats ferry us four at a time back to the mainland, and Yvo

It's been a fu

Meanwhile I've been to the doc, and been sent for various tests at the Royal Infirmary. Nobody's mentioned the C-word yet but I feel suddenly vulnerable and mortal and even old. I've given up smoking. (Well, Al and I had a pipe or two of dope the other night, just for old time's sake, but there was no tobacco involved.)

Anyway, I'm still coughing a lot and I get a sick feeling now and again, but there's been no more blood since that afternoon we found William.

I shake Yvo

Through the trees on the mainland, I can see and hear the cars reversing and manoeuvring and bumping away back down the track to the village and the hotel. The tradition is that Yvo

"You all right?" she asks me, eyes narrowed, her sharp, evaluating gaze flitting over my face.

"Surviving. And you?"

"The same," she says. She looks cold again, and small. I want so much to take her in my arms and hug her. I feel tears prick behind my eyes. "I'm selling the house," she tells me, looking briefly down, long black lashes flickering. "The company's opening a Euro office in Frankfurt; I'm going to be part of the team."

"Ah." I nod, not sure what to say.

"I'll drop you a line with my new address, once I'm settled."

"Right; good, okay." I nod. There's a splashing, swirling sound behind me, and a soft, hollow bumping noise. "Well," I say, "any time you're in Edinburgh…"

She shakes her head and looks away, then smiles gallantly for me and tips her head, indicating. "That's your boat, Cameron."

I just stand there, nodding like an idiot, wanting to say the one right thing that must exist for me to change all of this, make it good, make it all better, make it eventually happen happily for us, but knowing that that thing just doesn't exist and there's no point looking for it, and so just stand there nodding dumbly with my lips trapped compressed between my teeth, looking down, not able to look her in the eyes and knowing that's it, the end, goodbye… until after those moments she puts me out of my misery and puts out her hand and gently says, "Goodbye, Cameron."

And I nod and shake her hand and after a while I get my mouth to work and it says, "Goodbye."

I hold her hand one last time, just for a moment.

The hotel at that end of the loch is full of dead stuffed fish in glass cages and mangy-looking taxidermised otters, wild cats and eagles. I don't know many people and I think Yvo

The rain is still torrential; I have my wipers on quick-time but even so they're hardly coping. The moisture coming off my brolly and coat lying puddling on the back seat is fighting a pretty equal battle with the heater and blower to mist up the glass on the inside.

I get about fifteen miles on the single-track road round the mountains when the engine starts to misfire. I glance at the instruments; half a tank of fuel, no warning lights.

"Oh, no," I groan. "Come on, baby, come on, don't let me down; come on, come on." I tap the car's dashboard gently, encouragingly. "Come on now, come on…"

I'm heading up a slight hill into a stretch of road through a Forestry Commission plantation when the engine does a passable impression of me in the morning, coughing and spluttering and not quite firing on all cylinders. Then it dies completely.