So much of his life had been like this: a single impulsive choice mapping out a course of action. Liquid always follows the path of least resistance and so George’s life had run away from him in just such a way.
He hunched over the steering wheel as he looked for a place to pull over for the night. He needed to stretch his legs. He had heard on the Scottish news and again on the national news that the police were looking for a tall dark man, wearing a dark suit and driving a dark-coloured car. He knew the police could have more information than they were sharing with the media, but he felt encouraged that the descriptions were so vague. He had brought a few changes of clothes with him.
He was tired and needed to wash, but felt that he couldn’t risk a hotel this evening. They were conspicuous: a man travelling alone with a young girl, and he could not yet count on Moll to behave herself. He strained into the dark looking for somewhere to stop for the night.
On the English side of the Cheviot Hills, he found a lay-by near a forest and pulled into it. He kept the car running for a few minutes for fear that the child would wake, but when he turned off the ignition she remained sound asleep. He ran his hands through his hair and then placed them over his mouth. He stared at himself in the rear-view mirror. He was finally away. He had done it.
It was five o’clock and the sky was only just starting to bruise, a pale early moon set high in the blue. He opened the door and closed it gently, and then shook a Benson and Hedges cigarette from its packet. It was the first he had had since he took Moll. The evening was cold and damp, but the air was fresh with the scent of pine needles. He checked that Moll was still asleep, stretched, then lit up, leaning on the roof of his car as he enjoyed the head rush of the welcome cigarette. Deep in the forest was the distant bark of foxes: their voices hoarse screams like the sound of a child in pain. George took another drag of his cigarette, thinking that the foxes reminded him of his childhood.
He was the black sheep in his family. Ever since he was small, he had wanted out of there, and now he dared to hope that he had made it. George had always dreamed of another life. It was partly why he had loved Kathleen. Her family were like the ones you saw on TV: sitting round the dinner table laughing and talking, church on Sundays and holidays in Rothesay. Kathleen’s father could do magic tricks and had a beautiful singing voice; George’s father only needed a bath to get away with murder and could knock someone out with a single punch. He had loved Kathleen and her family, or at least the idea of her family. Losing them all had been like losing his own skin. He had gone crazy for a few years after he split with Kathleen: drink and drugs and women, all of which his own family had tolerated, but George had felt lost.
Back then, Kathleen had been his only chance of escape. He had been stupid at school – could barely write his name. All he had ever wanted was a family of his own. Now Moll was with him and, at twenty-seven, he had his whole life ahead of him. He felt sure he could win her heart and make a life for them together.
He felt as if he had broken out of prison, only with a suitcase filled with one hundred thousand pounds. The police seemed to have no idea who had taken Moll; and the McLaughlins weren’t even looking for the money that George had taken because they thought it was at the bottom of the Clyde. For just a moment, George wondered if he had got the better of everyone. He felt frightened and excited at the same time. He was free at last. He could start a new life away from the garage, which still stank of his dead father’s bloody hands.
George remembered it had been a Thursday. He was in the garage with Tam, working on an old Rover. Tam had showed George how to replace a fan belt and give the car a basic service. The instructions from Peter had been to clean the car up and make it roadworthy. Tam had made sure he stayed under the bonnet, saying nothing to George except to ask for tools. The front right tyre had a puncture, and Tam asked George to check in the boot in case there was a spare.
George whistled nervously as he walked around to the back of the car, wiping the car grease on his hands on to his overalls. Cleaning cars was a job that George tried to avoid, but Peter had asked him directly, clasping his gloved hands. The body had been disposed of – weighted down and thrown into the Clyde – but there was still residue and other evidence in the car that needed to be removed. They would fix it up and sell it on. George’s jaw was tight as he approached the rear of the vehicle. It seemed as if, all his life, authority had compelled him to do things that he didn’t want to do. And after his father had gone, Peter had slipped on their father’s shoes without so much as a thought.
A chill sweat on his skin, George laid both hands on the boot and took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure what he was going to see, but he opened the boot and peered inside.
It was empty. The carpet lining was dark grey but appeared stained. George put a hand over his mouth. The iron scent of old blood was familiar to him and he took a step back. He was silent and, at the front of the car, Tam was silent also. George knew that Tam would not even speak to him until the boot was closed and the job was done.
He had planned on cleaning the boot with bleach, but the carpet material had soaked up too much blood and would have to be removed altogether and burned. George reached into the recesses of the boot, searching for the mechanism to release the base or at least find the edge of the fabric so that he could peel it back. As his fingers skirted the furthest corner of the boot he felt something soft and cold. When he leaned forward, he saw that it was a portion of a hand: two fingers and a thumb, pressed together, as if to signal ‘OK’ or as if they were about to snap the beat of a tune. At first George thought the fingers had been trapped, and there was another level of horror waiting for him below the fabric, but then he realised that they had been severed and forgotten in the far recesses of the boot. George scooped them into a plastic bag and then peeled back the fabric. Below, in the space where the spare tyre would have been, there was a black holdall. Again, George paused, fighting a wave of nausea. He knew that sometimes bodies were packed in such holdalls before they were weighted and thrown into the Clyde. Peter had always been threatening to test George’s loyalty, and his resolve. George wondered for a moment if this was the test that he had to complete. He took the handles of the bag and felt the weight of it. It seemed as heavy as a small man.
George’s fingers began to tremble.
The bag was padlocked, but he used his pocket knife to cut a small hole in the bag. When he pulled back the black material, he did not see what he had imagined: an eye frozen in a death stare, a torn mouth or beaten face. George saw that the bag was tightly packed with used banknotes.
George finished his cigarette, crushed it underfoot then tossed it out of sight into the forest. He saw that Moll had wakened and got into the car beside her. She was rubbing her eyes. The sleep and the tussle with him earlier had messed up her hair. Her ponytail was askew and some of the hair hung loose outside the hairband. George reached out to touch it, but she jerked her head away.
An idea came to him suddenly, and he realised the necessity of it, although he knew now that Moll would fight him. He decided to wait until later.
‘Are you hungry, sleepyhead? I’ve got some rolls, and some Irn Bru. Would you like some?’
George spread the travelling rug over the back seat and set a makeshift table with the bottle of Irn Bru in the middle. They ate, sitting at either side of the back seat, both of the doors open. Midges hung in clouds outside each door. He had ham salad sandwiches and egg rolls and also a sausage roll that he had not finished the evening before. He tore everything into halves and set it on a brown paper bag in front of her. She took the Irn Bru bottle in two hands and raised it to her lips. The glass sounded off her teeth and she put a hand over her mouth as if it had hurt, but then raised it to her lips again and gulped.
‘Take your time,’ said George, biting into one of the rolls. ‘Are you very thirsty?’
The bottle sounded as Moll removed it from her lips. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and
burped.
‘Pardon me,’ she said, hand over her mouth.
George grinned at her. ‘Eat some food. You need it.’
She ate quietly, but quickly, finishing an egg roll and also the sausage roll. George stopped eating, in case she needed more. He had not made any preparations for looking after a child. He took a swig of Irn Bru, thinking that he should have bought more food along the way: milk, a change of clothes for her, toys for her to play with – but he had only been thinking about evading the police. It occurred to him that he had never looked after anyone before, other than himself.
When she was finished she sat, turned from him, looking at the dark country road. They had been eating for nearly half an hour and not a single car had passed. It was dusk now and the sky was navy blue slashed with red from the sinking sun.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, her good eye fixed on him, her bad eye staring out into the night.
‘We’re in England.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘We’re so far away. I want to go home.’ She covered her face with her arms and cried and George felt her unhappiness as a sharp pang underneath his ribcage. He had spent his whole childhood crying, it seemed, and he hated to see her cry. When he had imagined running away with her, she had been happy, delighted that her father should return after so long. He hadn’t thought that the tall, wealthy old man she called ‘Dad’ would have won her affection.
How different it would have been, had Kathleen been with them. It seemed naive now, that he had imagined all three of them, happy on the road south, together after all this time.
He reached out and put a hand on her skinned knee. ‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered.
She did not cringe from his touch, but she continued to cry, fists to her eyes.
George didn’t know what to do. He was the youngest of four. He didn’t have any idea how to console a child, or entertain her. It would have been easier, he thought, had she been younger. Even though Moll was just seven years old, with her long limbs and assertiveness she seemed much older.
He took a deep breath as he considered what to do. She had a strength that reminded him of Kathleen. Even weeping, she seemed stronger than him – Big George had never felt so small. He only wanted her to stop crying.
‘Hey, hey,’ he said, ‘don’t do that. You’re so pretty and greetin’ like that’ll just get you all messed up.’
She took her hands away from her face, which was reddened after her tears. A single blue eye focused on him. ‘I’m not pretty,’ she said, wiping her face with the palms of her hands. ‘I’m ugly, so if I cry it doesn’t matter.’ Her voice was broken, spoken in gasps. ‘I just want to go home.’ She bit her lip and fat tears rolled silently down her face, dropping off her chin on to her school blouse.
George cleared the picnic space between them. He reached over and took her hand, which felt small and cold in his. ‘Sweetheart, don’t say that again. You’re a princess, I tell you. You’re my daughter and you’re the most beautiful thing that there is.’
Moll watched him. The lazy eye gave her a duality, so that she was at once a tearful seven-year-old missing her mother, and also a wise, detached older child scrutinising everything that was happening. George felt observed by Moll, even when she was looking away. It was as if he could no longer get away with anything.
‘I promise you, you’re beautiful and you can’t let anyone tell you different.’
Moll put her chin down to her chest. She was shivering and her breaths were unsteady. George was unsure if it was the cold or her tears that caused her to tremble, but nevertheless he dared to touch her again. He reached out and ran a hand through her hair.
‘C’m’ere.’
He put his arm out. While she did not pull away, neither did she fold into him, as he had hoped. She didn’t resist him, however, and he was able to shelter her under his arm and soothe her.
After a moment, she broke free of him.
‘I need the toilet.’
‘Have you ever peed outside?’
Moll nodded, her chin up.
George helped her out of the car and indicated towards the trees. The trees were tall pines and it would be dark beneath them. ‘There you go. Don’t go in too far or the foxes’ll bite your arse.’
Moll looked at him strangely, and he was not sure if she was afraid of the foxes or afraid of him.
‘I’ll wait here for you,’ he said, hands in his pockets.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and then disappeared behind the first fir tree. He took out his packet of Benson and Hedges and smoked again, counselling himself to relax, telling himself that it would all be fine. The wean would come round to him and they would be on the road and ready for their new life in no time.
He could glimpse the white of her face from behind the tree as she squatted. He heard again the scalded bark of the fox. They were unlikely to be discovered here, but George conceded that it was an eerie place to spend the night. The pines reached out to him, like limbs of the dead.
George took a drag of his cigarette and called into the forest. ‘You all right?’
There was no sound. George took another drag, wincing. ‘Moll?’ he shouted, exhaling. He waited, butt pinched between forefinger and thumb, then let it fall. ‘Moll?’ He raised his voice and a fox howled back.
George walked into the darkness of the forest. Sun-deprived, bleached pine needles broke under his feet.
‘Moll,’ he shouted again, beginning to panic.
There was no sound. He reached the tree which he had seen her crouch behind, but she was gone. He stared into the dark graveyard of trees, not knowing in which direction she had run.
George ran into the forest, calling for her, tasting the sharp tang of the pine trees at the back of his throat. It was like a nightmare, so that as he chased into the forest after her, he had the sensation that he too was being chased.
As a child, he had often dreamed that his father was chasing him, and then sometimes his father caught him and they would fight. It had always been bloody, violent retribution. Yet in real life George had never fought his father. He was the only McLaughlin boy not to have punched Brendan McLaughlin. His father had been dead ten years, yet still he dreamed of confronting him, fighting him man to man.
‘Moll-y,’ he screamed, with abandon, feeling the tendons in his neck.
After running a few hundred yards he stopped, exhausted, and bent over to put his hands on his knees. George knew that if he didn’t find her she would perish. The trees were expansive. There seemed to be no way out – even the sky and the moon were obscured. He began to run again but tripped three times on invisible roots.
The trees organised into a tunnel and George ran down it, looking to either side for Moll. He saw a flash of white on his right-hand side. It was her white school shirt illuminated in the moonless dark of the trees. She saw him too, glanced at him over her shoulder and then began to run harder, and George had to pick up his pace just to keep her in sight.
He was out of breath and felt the fatigue in his body, but he pushed himself, caught up and managed to grab her by the collar.
They both fell on to the soft bleached cushion of pine needles. She was sobbing, struggling, unable to breathe, kicking him away from her.
‘Stop,’ he whispered, taking both of her arms and pulling her tight into him, ‘You’re all right.’
‘I don’t like you,’ she was saying. ‘I want to go home.’
George pulled her tighter and held her, until she stopped wriggling. When she was still, he got up, pulling them both to their feet. Once again, she was hysterical with tears. He took her by the shoulders.
‘I don’t want… let me go… I don’t want… I want…’ she sobbed.
He just wanted her to stop.
He considered what to do. They were alone in the forest. There was no call for panic. No need for harsh control. It was just him and Moll.
Redemption Road Page 13
