Country of the Blind

by Brookmyre, Christopher

  Jenny started to get up. “You’re out of your fucking mind, this time,” she said.

  “They’re seen to kill Voss, they’re seen to kill the policemen . . .”

  “You’ve got a personal involvement, Jack. Your pal died. Your judgment’s doo-lally.”

  “. . . they go on the run, a danger to the public, they’re hunted down and killed, there’s an inquiry but no real investigation . . .”

  “You’re losing it, Jack. Take a holiday. Get Sarah to prescribe you something.”

  “. . . and the bad guys live happily ever after.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Jenny was still fizzing as she got into her car and drove off. He was insane. This time he was totally, eye-bogglingly, twisty-head bonkers. His friend had died, and that was upsetting, but he was over the edge, in a way that perhaps only Parlabane could be.

  She sped out of Broughton Street and across Queen Street, cutting off some toss in a Probe, which was either the most or least self-consciously named car in automotive history; she could never decide which.

  No wonder she had walked out. It was ludicrous. If Parlabane’s mind was usually like a Gary Larson cartoon, then today it must look like the one with all the cows, dinosaurs, snakes and horn-rim-bespectacled matrons piled shamblingly on top of one another in the cluttered frame, the words “Out of order” tacked across the picture.

  Then the thought began, and she wanted to scream and shout it down; it was something she wanted to blot out, pretend she hadn’t heard, but inside, in the place of painful honesty and self-knowledge, she knew it was like a cancer whose development was inexorable once it had started. And it had started. She could fight it, but somehow fighting it always became a stimulant part of the process of its growth.

  She had walked out on him, something she had never done. But then he had never come out with something quite so outrageous – it was a time for new precedents.

  So why didn’t she argue the case? Why didn’t she laugh him down or agree to disagree? Why did she up and leave, and why so suddenly? Because his case was too irrational to argue against. Because he had equally suddenly postulated an idea that was insulting to her intelligence and her sense of reality. Or something.

  But did she walk out . . .

  shut up shut up shut up shut up

  . . . or was she running away?

  Was the reason she had reacted so dismissively to Parlabane’s theory – to the extent of leaving so that she didn’t have to listen to it any more (like a big wean holding her ears and shouting) – not because she didn’t think it could be true, but because she didn’t think she could handle it if it was? That if he was right, she would have to deal with it? That she was part of it?

  She thought of the atmosphere around the station this week, the suspicion, the secrecy, the feelings of impotence and imposition. The suits, the spooks. The contradictions. The rumours. The inconsistencies. The fear. So if Parlabane was right, then her world was suddenly a very scary place.

  But still. How could he be right? Maybe these four guys didn’t kill Voss, and maybe whoever did would have a reason to try and kill the lawyers because it would ruin their frame-up. But Lafferty? Murdered rather than suicide, in the station, in HQ? And the bus crash? Christ, how high would this thing have to go for them to pull off what he was suggesting? It would be ludicrous, ridiculous, it would be . . .

  Terrifying.

  She thought of the dead-eyed bastard, MI5 big-noise that was calling the shots. Knight was his name. Bomber, the cops in the station had nicknamed him. Whose call was the prisoner transfer, Parlabane had asked.

  His.

  What was it Callaghan heard from Crammond? Two suits, English, unknown to anyone local. Very hush-hush. No-one knew where they had come from or who the prisoner was, or where he was being taken. And no-one was supposed to ask. Didn’t come inside, just waited for the bus in their big black car.

  MI5. ID, authority . . . documentation.

  Christ.

  She had to take a deep breath before walking back into the station, fearing that her mind could be read, hoping she didn’t look too pale or that God forbid she was trembling. But when she got to her desk, there was a comfort and security about the familiarity of it all, and her own chair would be a more stable position from which to put what she had heard – and thought – into perspective.

  Then Callaghan came over and told her that Robert Hannah had been shot dead by detectives late this morning, having come at them with a pistol.

  It took less than ten minutes for the phone to ring.

  “You know who this is.”

  “Cunt.”

  “I take it you’ve heard, then.”

  “You know, one day you’re going to be wrong, Scoop, and I’m going to enjoy it so much.”

  “Who killed my friend, Jenny?”

  “Working on it.”

  NINE

  Tam sniffed back tears and catarrh, sighed and took another drink from the receptacle proffered patiently by Spammy. Spammy had found the Irn-Bru can lying discarded at the bottom of a wide tree-stump, which jutted out of the ground to a height of about three feet, and had either been used as a stool or a table by the vessel’s previous owner. He had explained to Paul that the small metal item had profound ideological significance.

  Oh Christ, Paul had thought.

  It was proof, Spammy said, that those bobble-hatted rambler wankers aren’t quite as self-righteously green and eco-friendly when they’re halfway up a mountain and nobody can see them. To Paul’s immense relief, he left it at that and went off in search of a burn so that he could fill it.

  Paul heard his dad’s approach before he saw him. They had found a spot high on the ridge, as instructed, which afforded a good view of all approach routes, but he hadn’t been on the look-out at the time, not really expecting Tam to have made it this far yet. He heard a panting – heaving, hurried breaths – and the regular but rapid thud of running feet. Crouching low behind a tree, he looked down the slope and saw Tam clambering towards him, driving forward desperately, erratically, the protest of his exhaustion seemingly silenced by the need to keep moving.

  Paul saw the tears as his dad drew closer, thinking at first that they were the drawings of the crisp, cool breeze from wide, uncovered eyes.

  Tam now sat on Spammy’s tree-stump, holding Spammy’s ideologically significant can. When he had finally stopped running, the cumulative anger of his abused limbs had dropped him to his knees, and then to prostration, gasping and moaning, lacking the breath to voice what was wrong.

  Tam handed Spammy back the can and stared at the ground. No-one had spoken since his staccato splutterings, the horrifying facts delivered in wheezy, one-word issues. Neither Paul nor Spammy seemed to know whether they should say anything before Tam broke his own silence, if they could actually find anything to say.

  It was the bleakest, coldest silence Paul had ever known, leaving each of them alone with the torment of their thoughts and imaginings.

  “He started to run,” Tam eventually said, eyes gazing forward, into the shadows and the trees. His voice was low and slightly questioning, as if he was having difficulty understanding his own words. “He couldnae run, no really. That’s what was even queerer. He was walkin’ towards them, givin’ himself up, then he started to run. Hauf-bouncin’ on that big pole he had. Why did he run?”

  “Mibbe he saw they had guns,” Paul offered.

  Tam grimaced, shaking his head. “Mibbe, But I never saw them pull a gun until the last minute. Besides, he’d have been expectin’ guns – he’d have known they suspect we might have guns fae the bus, unless they’ve found that wee shite an’ his pal. Ach, fuck knows. Whatever, he saw somethin’ that scared the hell oot him, an’ . . .”

  He shook his head, wiped at his bloodshot eyes again. Tam clamped his lips together, and though he said nothing, Paul knew he was thinking about Bob dying in fear. Right now he could imagine no worse way to go.

  “So the
y just shot him in the back?” Paul asked, maybe wanting to think Bob was spared . . . he didn’t know, something.

  “No. They ran after him. They went ahead of him, turned around and . . .”

  “Sick bastards,” Paul said.

  “Smart bastards,” Spammy interjected.

  “Whit?” Paul demanded, angry and confused.

  “Cannae shoot him in the back. Too much explainin’ to do. If they shoot him head-on, they can say he was attackin’ them or somethin’. Probably put a gun in his hand once he was down.”

  Paul looked to Tam for a reaction to Spammy’s words, fearing he might, in his distressed state, finally flip out at the insensitivity of this matter-of-fact theorising.

  “He’s right enough,” Tam said quietly. “After they . . . after they . . .” He swallowed. “I knew I had to run. I knew I had to get away, get up here, warn yous. But I was frozen for a few seconds. Ma brain was screarnin’ ‘run, run’, but rna body, well, ma eyes, couldnae leave. I was stunned. I couldnae look away. Mibbe it was because I couldnae believe what I’d seen, but . . . They bent ower Bob, while he was . . . lyin’ there. They might well have been puttin’ somethin’ in his hand, I couldnae make it oot fae that distance.

  “Aw Christ,” he said mournfully, his shoulders slumping as if some weight had been burdened upon them, or some power inside him extinguished. “Aw Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Spammy’s right. Jesus Christ, Spammy’s right.”

  “What do you mean?” Paul asked, but that wasn’t what he wanted to be told. He knew exactly what his dad meant. What he was asking was to be told it wasn’t so, to deny it for a last moment of hope, a last second of options and possibilities before he faced this unmerciful truth.

  “They’re gaunny kill us all,” Tam said, his voice descending into the dry, barren tones of a frightened whisper. It was as if the words imparted their meaning to Tam only as he heard them from his own lips, as if the thought that formed them had required this translation to be understood. Or maybe just accepted.

  “That’s what the crash was for,” Tam continued. “We were supposed to escape. The crash wasnae aboot springin’ that wee shite, it was aboot springin’ us. Now we’re dangerous men on the run. Kill’t that Voss wan, and his wife. Kill’t the polisman an’ the driver. Then we aw get shot tryin’ to fight off whoever tries to, whatchamacallit, apprehend us. We cannae even give oorsels up. Bob walked oot wi’ his hauns in the air.”

  “How could they spring us?” Paul pleaded. “How could anyone know we were on that bus, or where it was headed?”

  “It’s a government conspiracy,” said Spammy.

  Paul wasn’t sure if this over-familiar Spammy joke was his attempt to lighten the atmosphere or just another instance of his bizarre penchant for amusing himself with deeply inappropriate humour. “It’s a government conspiracy” was Spammy’s stock explanation for any kind of anomaly that someone was imprudent enough to point out in his company, from the over-complication of the bus route between Meiklewood and Paisley Gilmour Street to the fact that you never saw white eggs any more, only brown. Roughly translated, it was Spam-speak for “please stop talking about this, you’re boring the arse off me”.

  “I mean, who could have pulled that kind of thing off?” Paul continued, ignoring him.

  “The same buggers that set us up to rob Craigurquhart in the first place,” Tam replied. “The MM, and his chinas. This Voss character – we’re talkin’ aboot bloody powerful people here. Powerful friends, powerful enemies. Christ knows what kinna cairry-on there is among these billionaire bastarts. The wee games they play wi’ each other. But whoever was organised enough to have him killed in the first place and set us up to take the blame – that level, that kinna calibre – who could say what they’re capable of? If they can kill a man as rich, influential and protected as that, then I’m sure organisin’ a wee road accident wouldnae have stretched their resources.

  “We’re just the Lee Harvey Oswalds here. Just the fuckin’ mugs. It could have been anybody, but it was us. They kill their man, serve us up as scapegoats, then spring us so we can be hunted doon. Once we’re deid, naebody’s gaunny start lookin’ into what happened in Perthshire. It’s end of story.”

  Paul felt full of questions, as if by picking holes in the credibility of what was going on he could render it untrue. “But once we were on the run, how could they be sure we wouldnae just be captured? How could they be sure that the polis or whoever would go ahead an’ . . . an’ . . .” He couldn’t say it.

  “It’s a government conspiracy.”

  “Fuck’s sake, shut up, Spammy,” Paul hissed, wanting to burst a lung screaming in frustration, but now even more aware of the need for quiet.

  “I wasnae bein’ facetious, Paul,” Spammy stated evenly. “It is a government conspiracy.”

  “How could it . . .?”

  “Naebody else could manage this. Aye, sure, some – I don’t know – billionaire or gangster or ‘criminal mastermind’ could get somebody into that mansion gaffe an’ top Voss. Could mibbe even set us up wi’ the blackmail an’ the photies an’ that. And they could have found oot we were gaunny be on that bus – bent polis contacts, inside information or whatever. But what they couldnae have done was put that wee shite on board. That was, like, official. And the whole point of him was so’s we’d run. So’s we’d believe it was him that was bein’ sprung. We might have been a wee bit suspicious if they had just stopped the bus in the middle o’ nae-where an’ says, ‘Right, oot yous get. We’re it. Yous’ve got fifty to get away. Nae keys.’

  “Plus, as you said, how would they know we wouldnae just get rounded up again? Well, they’d know if they were givin’ the fuckin’ orders. Armed fugitives. Shoot on sight. Shoot to kill. But don’t shoot them in the back because we have to make oot they were a danger. Tell me I’m wrang.”

  Paul stared furiously at Spammy, hating him for what he was saying. Shooting the messenger.

  “But if it was the government,” he groped, looking for the absurdity, the piece that wouldn’t fit and could therefore work like a talisman to ward off the truth of what was being outlined, “if it was the government, why go to all this bother? Why not just get us convicted, send us doon and then everyone forgets aboot it?”

  “Because they willnae want another Guildford Four or Birmingham Six or Carl Bridgewater case. Even if we’re in jail forever, the story willnae go away. Somebody’s gaunny believe us. That lawyer lassie, for instance. Aw the wee inconsistencies would gradually come oot, an’ eventually folk would be startin’ to demand to know what really happened at Craigurquhart Hoose. But if we’re deid, who gives a fuck?”

  “But why kill us up here?” Paul couldn’t believe he was discussing what he was discussing, but at this conjectural level it seemed comfortingly removed. Like he was talking about someone else. His dad was staring blankly into the trees once more, saying nothing. Tam wasn’t seeing events on a conjectural level, and he knew who they were talking about. He had seen one of the men they were talking about die on a roadside with a bullet in his head.

  “The government could have us . . . you know, in jailor somethin’ ,” Paul argued. “They wouldnae need to do it away up . . .”

  “Aye they would. If the four blokes accused of – but persistently denying – the murder of Voss all snuffed it in jail or in some other mysterious circumstances, that would just advertise the fact that somethin’ dodgy was goin’ on,” Spammy said. “This way, we’ve practically signed a confession before they get us. We kill’t the guards and ran away. We were guilty. Naebody starts shoutin’ aboot miscarriages ofjustice – we got what we deserved. You saw that fuckin’ newspaper the polis were windin’ us up with. What did it say?”

  Paul refused to reply, staring away from Spammy.

  “What did it say?” he demanded again. “It said ‘scum four must die’. What would it be sayin’ noo? Wan doon, three to go, mibbe?”

  “But . . . why would the government kill Voss?” Paul asked, the
strain of fighting off this growing, dawning truth telling in his broken voice as he found one last stick to beat it with. “Voss was the biggest Tory bastard in the world. The government fuckin’ loved him.”

  “I don’t know,” Spammy spat, an unfamiliar anger in his eyes. “But fuck’s sake, does it matter?”

  Paul’s own silence told him that it did not.

  He had persisted with the argument despite knowing he was losing it, because the consequences of its conclusions wouldn’t have to be faced until it was over. It was like you were seven-nil down with five minutes left, but you weren’t out of the cup until the final whistle blew. In his head he tried to outline alternative scenarios, explanations that might save them. There was some other reason they had shot Bob, something Tam couldn’t have seen from his distant vantage point. It couldn’t be some huge conspiracy, that was daft. You couldn’t just order polismen and soldiers to shoot men who were giving themselves up. How could you be sure they would go through with it? How could you be sure one of them wouldn’t blab? It was totally implausible. It made no sense.

  But, like why the government would kill their own benefactor and propagandist, it didn’t matter.

  Billionaires, gangsters, conspiracies. That stuff didn’t matter either. It didn’t make a difference whose finger was on the trigger. What mattered was that they were in the cross-hairs. The rules had changed. They were no longer running from capture. They were running from death.

  He looked at his father, drained and pale, and saw that Tam had understood this the moment Bob was murdered. What Spammy understood was normally a matter of extremely futile speculation, but right then Paul appreciated the source of the anger in his friend’s eyes. It had been a rebuke, an impatience with Paul’s self-indulgent, self-deluding procrastination, saying the sooner he grew up and accepted the situation, the sooner they could try and do something about it.

  Paul felt a fear unlike any he had ever experienced, and Christ knew he had made acquaintance with a wide variety in recent weeks. It was a hollow, desolate, paralysing fear; not the nerve-stretching terror of horrible possibilities, but an enveloping hopeless dread of an approaching inevitability.