Andy shrugs. "It was just a coincidence that I knew him, but I don't think there was any doubt William was going to turn into a man like the others I killed."
He rolls the bullet around in his palm, eyes lowered. "However, for what it's worth, if killing him screwed up things between you and Yvonne, I'm sorry."
"Oh," I say, "that makes it all right, then." It's meant to sound sarcastic, but it just sounds dumb.
He nods, not looking at me. "He was a very charming but actually quite an evil man, Cameron."
I stare at him for a while; he rubs the bullet between his fingers. Finally I say, "Yes, but you're not God, Andy."
"No, I'm not," he agrees. "Nobody is." He grins. "So what?"
I close my eyes, unable to bear the relaxed, merely mischievous expression on his face. I open them again and look out through the empty doorway, at the water and the land and the ceaseless, wheeling birds. "Yeah. I see. Well," I say, "I don't think there's any point in trying to argue with you, is there, Andy?"
"No, you're probably right," Andy says, suddenly all cheery decisiveness. He slaps both knees and jumps up. He lifts the gun and sticks it down the back of his cords. He hoists the rucksack up and puts it over one shoulder. He nods down at the cellphone lying on the concrete floor.
"Here's your choice," he tells me. "Phone and turn me in, or not."
He waits for a reaction from me, so I raise my eyebrows.
He shrugs. "I'm heading down to the boat now; put the kit bag aboard." He grins down at me. Take your time. I'll be back in ten, fifteen minutes."
I stare at the phone on the littered floor.
"It's working," he reassures me. "Your choice." He laughs. "I'll be all right, whatever. Leave me be, and… I don't know; I might retire now, while I'm ahead. But on the other hand there are still a lot of bastards out there. Mrs T, for one, if that piques your interest, Cameron." He smiles. "Or there's always America; land of opportunities. On the other hand, if I end up in jail… Well, there are people in there I'd really like to meet, too; the Yorkshire Ripper, for example, if it's possible to get to him. I'd need just a small blade, and about five minutes." He shrugs again. "Whatever. See you in a bit."
He skips out into the sunlight and the swirling wind, taking the steps two at a time down to a walkway between two concrete blockhouses. I lean back as he disappears, whistling.
I squat on my taped-together feet and lift the cellphone. It looks charged and connected. I dial the number of my mum and dad's old house in Strathspeld village; I get an answer-machine; a man's voice, gruff and curt.
I switch the phone off.
It takes a minute to get the tape off my ankles. I lift my Drizabone from the floor and dust it down, then put it on.
The coat-tails flap round my legs as I stand in the doorway, Fife to my right, the trees of Dalmeny Park and Mons Hill to my left and the two bridges ahead upstream; one tensed, webbed-red and the other straight-curved, battleship grey.
The firth is ruffled blue-grey, the waves marching away, wind blowing from behind, out of the east. Two minesweepers are heading upstream under the bridge towards Rosyth; a huge tanker sits tall and unladen at the Hound Point oil terminal, attended by a pair of tugs; two huge crane-barges float nearby, where they've been most of this year, installing a second terminal pier. A small tanker is almost level with the island, heading out to sea, low in the water with some product from the Grangemouth refinery. North, beyond Inchcolm, a red-hulled LPG tanker sits at Braefoot Bay, loading from the pipelines connected to the Mossmorran plant a few kilometres inland, position marked by white plumes of steam. I watch all this maritime activity, surprised at how industrial, how continuingly mercantile the old river is.
Above and around, the seagulls bank and ride, hanging in the air, bills open, crying to the wind. The concrete blockhouses, towers, barracks and gun emplacements on the small island are all covered in seagull-shit; white and black, yellow and green.
I rub the back of my head, wincing as I touch the bump. I look at the phone in my hand, breathe in the sharp, sea air, and cough.
The cough goes on for a while, then it goes away.
So, what to do? One more betrayal, even if it is one that Andy seems half to want? Or become, in effect, his accomplice and leave him free to murder and maim God knows who else, a free radical in our systemic corruption?
What is to be done?
Shake head, Colley; look round this concrete dereliction and survey this breezily industrious river, and try to find an inspiration, a hint, a sign. Or just something to take your mind off a decision you're sure to regret, one way or another.
I punch the number into the phone.
Various tones and beeps sound in my ear as I watch the clouds all moving away overhead. Then the connection's made.
"Yes, hello," I say. "Doctor Girson please. Cameron Colley." I look around, trying to see Andy, but there's no sign of him. "Yes. Cameron. That's right. I was just wondering if you have the results through yet… So you have… Well, if you could just give me them now, that'd be… Well, over the phone, why not?… Well, I do. I think it is. Well, it's my body, isn't it, doctor? … I want to know now… Look, let me ask you a direct question, doctor: have I got lung cancer? Doctor… Doctor… No, Doctor… Look, I'd really like a straight answer, if you don't mind. No, I don't think… Please, doctor; have I got cancer? No, I'm not trying to… No, I'm just… I'm just… Look; have I got cancer? … Have I got cancer? Have I got cancer? Have I got cancer?"
The doctor loses his temper eventually and does the smart thing and hangs up.
"See you tomorrow, Doc," I sigh.
I switch the phone off and sit down on the step, looking out to the water and the two long bridges under a blue and cloud-strewn sky. A seal pops its head out of the water about fifty metres out into the waves. It bobs there for a while, looking at the island and maybe at me, then it disappears back into the rolling grey water.
I look at the key pad of the cellphone and put my finger on the 9 button.
For all I know Andy is going to come back, cheerfully say, "Hi," and then blow my brains out, just on general principles.
I don't know.
My finger hovers over the button, then retreats.
No, I don't know.
I sit there for a while, in the wind and the sunlight, coughing now and again and looking out and holding the phone tightly in both hands.
CHAPTER 13 — SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD
At the heart of the grand grey elegance of this festive city there is a literal darkness, an old void of disease, despair and death. Beneath the eighteenth-century high-rise of the City Chambers, slotted into the steep hillside between the banked S of Cockburn Street and the cobbled width of High Street opposite the Cathedral of St Giles, there is a section of the old city which was walled up four hundred years ago.
Mary King's Close was abandoned and covered over in the sixteenth century, left just as it was, untouched, because so many people had died of the plague in that part of the old town's swarming tenement-warrens. The bodies consigned to the shared grave that their homes had become were simply left to rot, and the bones only removed much later.
So, in the glacier-scoured debris east of the castle-crag's volcanic plug, deep underneath the civic core of this dormant capital, that old, cold utter darkness sits to this day.