I turned back to Jack. He had recovered some of his composure, but not much of his breath, as he stared up at me. "Where do we go from here?" he gasped at last.
"You don't," I told him. "You stay here." I nodded sideways, at his grave.
"You're crazy," he whispered.
"That's a laugh coming from you."
"You'll never get away with it," he protested. "I'll be missed."
"By whom?" I asked him. "Natalie? I think not; she knows what you are now. Duncan Kendall? He'll be so busy fighting off Law Society complaints that he won't have time to think about you. Wylie Smith?
I've got news for you. Wylie had a chat with my friend Greg the other day. It could lead to him joining McPhillips and Company as a partner, but even if that doesn't happen, he wants no more to do with you and Duncan, and that is for sure. How about your old message boy, the First Minister? No, Jack; I reckon if he was here right now, he'd be holding my jacket."
A desperate, crafty look crept on to Gantry's face. "Aye, but what about Kevin and Mark? They'll be looking out for me."
I laughed at that. "I've just bunged Kevin and Mark ten grand for nothing. And what have they got with you gone? Glasgow between them, that's what." I took a step to the side, leaned over and picked up Manolito's head by the ears; even in death, his face was unblemished. I held it for Jack to see, and watched as he cringed away from it. Then I heaved it into the bog. "Anyway," I said to him, as it vanished, 'do you seriously think that I'm afraid of those two guys?"
As he sat there, staring up at me, I knew that finally he was convinced. "Okay," he croaked. "I'll do it. I'll adopt Susie, legally and everything. She can keep the company. She'll inherit all the rest too."
"If she lived long enough," I retorted. "No, Jack," I told him.
"That's not going to happen, because if it did, that would make you my father-in-law. The model that Susie's got is bad enough, but there's no way that I'd have you."
I leaned over, picked him up by the lapels of his blue blazer, and hauled him upright. "But above all that, there's something else.
Whatever you say about your boys exceeding their brief, the ones you sent into our home, you did send them, and you were responsible for the death of my Jan, and the kid she had in her. You, My Lord Provost, first and foremost."
I looked into his eyes. They weren't scary any more, just scared.
"You were their murderer, and in doing that you turned me into what I am now. I may not have realised it until a couple of days ago, but I've always been waiting to kill you for it, Jack, ever since then."
I turned half round and I lifted him up, clear off his feet. "So all actors are Jessies, are they?" I whispered, as I pitched him, up and out. He hit the bog feet first, and was chest deep in a second. He squealed, and I smiled. "Some of Glasgow's grimier citizens, you said?
They'll look spotless beside you."
I waved him goodbye as his head went under. A few seconds later, a last loud bubble burst on the surface. "Like a fart in the bath," I said, then walked away.
I took the shotgun back to the house and dropped it into the half-filled foundation of the tree-house, 'for gardens that don't have trees'. I turned on the cement mixer, went looking for the hose, and half an hour later, it was buried for ever.
Forty-Four.
I was back in St. Andrews for seven thirty, keeping my promise to my sister that I'd be there for dinner. Jonathan was still quiet, but once or twice during the meal our eyes met, and I knew that he'd be all right. He will too: I've promised him that.
Ellen knew that something had happened between my father and me. We had been a trio for so long that it couldn't be otherwise. But she chose not to ask me and she never has since. I have seen my father since then, of course, even if at first it was only because I care for Mary. We speak cordially again, and once or twice we've even laughed together, yet there will always be a certain distance between us. The police never did come calling on him, but I am fairly certain that he has never plucked up the courage to tell Mary, or Ellen, of his surrender to his weakness. No, I am completely certain, because my sister still speaks fondly of him.
I know also that he has said nothing to Jonathan. I know that because I've made him swear he never will. The one thing that worries me about my nephew is his reaction were he ever to find out the truth about his grandfather, and the real reason for his blackmail. By the same token I've kept the truth about the Neiportes' deaths from him, for I know that he would be unable to live with it, and although I rebelled against the fact at first, he's still my father. However much we'd like to on occasion, we can't change the genes that built us.
Jay joined us for dinner at Ellie's that night. If, when we returned to the estate, he was surprised to find that work on the tree-house 'for gardens that don't have trees' had progressed in his absence, he said nothing about it. However, as it turned out he had indeed found himself a nice coed on that Saturday night in St. Andrews, the daughter of a US senator. He left me to join her in the States a few months later, and has since found a job with the American Secret Service, which is, of course, not secret at all.
Life for me has gone on as what passes for normal ever since. Mathew's Tale was completed, and I'm told will win me a BAFTA. I may have to come back from Australia to get it, though, for that's where I'm heading now, with Susie, Ethel, Janet and her new brother, wee Jonathan. The Gantry Group is in the capable hands of Phil Culshaw, still acting chief executive, and Wylie Smith is taking the chair in my absence. Natalie Morgan has renewed her relationship with Ewan Capperauld, who's always been a sucker for olive-skinned women with big eyes. Duncan Kendall? He's in jail. I'm not sure why.
I still remember that time at Ellie's. When the evening was over, and Susie and I had retired to our room, I was undressing when she said to me, "You know, Oz, one of the things I love about you?"
I grinned at her, over my shoulder, as I do. "Whassat?"
"You get things done. I have to say, in that respect, there's a bit of the Jack Gantry in you."
I looked into the mirror, smiling that all-gathering smile of mine, into bright eyes that deep down, I saw, were as hard as the stone that builds a city, and I said to her, "Nobody's perfect. Still, I've always thought of myself as a nice guy at heart."
I have come to believe that we are all governed by the spirits that live within us. Some, like my nephew Jonathan's, my wife Susie's, and, I hope, my children's, are pure and good. Some, like my poor old father's, are fundamentally weak, and have within them the inevitable downfall of their bearer. Some, like Jack Gantry's, are wholly and irredeemably evil from the start.
Mine? The jury's still out on that.