‘Don’t worry,’ Creed said. ‘It isn’t locked.’
Jed got out of the car and opened the gate. He thought of the children buried alive at the bottom of the mineshafts. He heard the click of small bones.
The track beyond the gate was all potholes and ruts. He nursed the car along in low gear. After half a mile Creed told him to stop. He switched the lights and engine off. Wind pushed at the car with spread fingers, whispered across the hood.
Creed inserted his voice gently into the silence. ‘Get him out of the car.’
They walked Gorelli across the stones to the edge of a gravel pit. The moon dipped out of a cloud, and Jed shuddered. The walls of the pit were almost sheer, falling fifty feet to smooth, dull water that was jagged at the edges, like the top of a tin can. He looked into Gorelli’s face, the face he’d never seen, the face he’d only heard, and so many years ago. Gorelli was standing with his arms by his sides. He was looking at the ground, he seemed to be concentrating; he might’ve been trying to remember something. Then the moon went and Jed’s vision shut down. Then Creed’s voice:
‘Give him the gun.’
McGowan handed the gun to Jed. A sliver of white that must’ve been teeth. McGowan grinning.
‘I can’t see,’ Jed said.
Creed’s voice again: ‘Wait for the moon.’
He waited. The night slowed down. Time like a clock with its hands tied. He felt the water in the pit rise up to meet him. Rise up all silver, spill across the land. Into the hands of the dead, the clawing hands and shifting bones. Into their hands and never to return. The moon came on. He raised the gun and fired twice. So loud suddenly, so bright. A choir in his ears, a furnace in his eyes. When he looked again he saw a black shape on the ground, another black shape crouching over it.
He heard McGowan’s voice: ‘He’s dead.’ Then Creed’s: ‘Get the stuff.’
Jed lowered his arm.
McGowan walked to the car and returned with the long canvas bag and the cardboard box. He unzipped the bag and lifted out a chainsaw. A glimmer of silver as moonlight snagged on the serrated blade. Like holly, Jed thought. In two weeks it’d be Christmas.
When the motor started, distant and ragged, Jed looked away. The wind blew soft across his face. He was shivering. He’d never in his life felt colder. It wasn’t until Creed took his arm and he looked into those black eyes that he remembered where he was.
‘Throw the gun,’ Creed said.
He stared into those eyes.
‘The gun,’ Creed said. ‘Throw it.’
He pulled his arm back and hurled the gun towards the pit. He saw it drop out of sight below the lip. He didn’t hear it land. Creed held a tiny bottle under his nose and the world turned white. He gasped and shook his head.
‘Can you drive?’ Creed asked him.
Jed nodded. ‘I think so.’
When he climbed into the driver’s seat he saw that McGowan was already sitting in the back. The cardboard box sat next to him. Everything seemed so bland and ordinary now.
‘Where’s the rest?’ Jed said.
‘In the gravel pit,’ McGowan said. ‘With stones to hold it down.’
The clawing hands, the shifting bones.
Jed turned to Creed for solid ground. ‘Where now?’
‘The paper warehouse. Change cars.’
When they reached the warehouse, he opened the door for Creed and McGowan as usual. They climbed out and stood still. He moved towards the Mercedes, and then stopped and looked round. Creed and McGowan hadn’t moved. The canvas bag and the cardboard box stood on the concrete by their feet. He could see the blood on McGowan’s clothes.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘You’re not coming with us,’ Creed said.
‘I don’t understand.’ The words echoed. He wished he hadn’t said that. But it was too late.
‘You killed someone,’ McGowan said. ‘You best leave town.’
Creed walked towards him and handed him an envelope. ‘It’s the going rate.’
The going rate. Jed stared at the envelope.
‘But,’ how could he put this? ‘I thought we —’
‘We did,’ Creed said, ‘but it’s over.’
McGowan was smirking.
Jed walked to the door of the warehouse. He stared up into the sky, his vision pulsing. The stars floated free like buoys cut loose on a dark sea. No markings any more, no guidelines. Adrift.
He saw the streetlights again. It seemed as if they were laughing now. Rows and rows of streetlights shaking with laughter. It’s funny, he thought, it’s just funny, and he thought it hard to keep the fear and rage away.
A hand on his shoulder. A glove. ‘I’m asking you to do something for me. It’s the hardest thing I could ask you to do.’ A slight pressure from the hand. ‘I think you can do it.’
McGowan still smirking.
Lies. Not even clever. Not even beautiful. He felt the veins swell in his head. And cried, ‘Why me?’
That soothing voice again. ‘There was nobody else. Nobody we could trust. Nobody,’ a pause, ‘close enough.’
‘What about,’ and Jed turned and pointed at McGowan, ‘what about him?’
A sad smile on Creed’s face.
‘You used me,’ Jed said.
The same sad smile. ‘You’d better leave now.’
‘You, me, and the chairman.’ Jed’s lip curled. ‘Like fuck.’
McGowan took a step forwards.
‘You do this all the time, don’t you?’ Jed said. ‘Pick people up and throw them away.’
He drew his arm back and hurled the envelope at Creed. Money showered through the yellow air. One note paused on Creed’s shoulder, then launched itself again, one long swoop sideways, a flip, and it was lying on the ground.
McGowan positioned himself between Jed and Creed. ‘You better get going.’
Creed stood with his gloved hands clasped behind his back. There was no warmth left in his face. He could switch it on and off like central heating.
‘And don’t come back,’ McGowan said, ‘not ever.’
‘What if I do?’
McGowan took Jed by the arm and led him over to the cardboard box. He opened the flaps and reached inside. He pulled out a transparent bag and held it up in front of Jed’s eyes. Gorelli’s face stared at Jed through the bloodstained plastic.
Jed pushed past him. He got into his car and switched the ignition on. Without glancing at the two men, he drove out of the warehouse, through the metal gates and back on to the street. He drove very calmly, the way he drove when he was working. He even indicated. He stopped at the Palace to collect a few things. It took about twenty minutes. By the time he left the apartment, it was raining. That soft sound on the rooftops and the grass, someone putting a finger to their lips.
Instead of driving west, towards the expressway, he doubled back, crossed the bridge again, and cut down into Baker Park. He passed a police car on the bridge. It was parked in the safety zone with its headlamps off. His heart surged. The murder was still so fresh in his head, he felt that anyone could smell it. Some cop’s lucky night. But the police car shrank in his rear-view mirror, and the lights stayed off.
He reached Sharon’s house and then he wasn’t sure. He drove past once, then he drove past again, going the other way. The last time he’d seen her she’d been drunk, they’d had a fight, he’d left her sprawling on the carpet. There was too much to explain to her, and nothing he could say. As he pulled away, the leaves on the trees shuddered and the rain began to fall so hard that it jumped back off the tarmac, turned to mist. He had to hunch over the wheel to see anything. It was almost three. He felt he had to speak to someone before he left for good. He thought of Mitch. Mitch was often awake till dawn. Mending his clocks and drinking beer. He couldn’t sleep when it was dark. Something to do with what he’d been through in some war.