There he was again, closer now, pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, intent on catching up with Tom. Tom glanced at Morag, realising that she was in danger as long as she stayed with him.
‘Morag, listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go a different way to you. I want you to carry on to the market.’
She stared at him. ‘Why, Tom? Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘It’s nothing, Morag, just . . . go, please, just do this for me.’ He tried to branch left, away from her, but she came after him, clutching at his sleeve.
‘Tom, what’s wrong? Is it that bad man?’ She was scanning the crowd herself now and he was terrified that something might happen to her.
‘Morag, listen to me.’ He crouched down and pulled her close. ‘I have to go now, please try and understand. You can’t be with me, now, you just can’t. Now get going to that market, please!’
She stood there, staring at him, trying to fathom what the problem was, and then they both looked up at the sound of iron-capped boots, ringing on the cobbles.
McSweeny stood before them, a cold smile on his face. ‘Tom,’ he purred. ‘Fancy meeting you here. I was just on my way to that orphanage of yours but now you’ve saved me the trouble.’
Tom got slowly back to his feet. He looked helplessly around at the crowds of people milling all around them. ‘What are you doing here?’ he murmured. ‘I thought the constables . . .’
McSweeny laughed. ‘You think constables are above temptation?’ he smirked. ‘I had fifty shillings in my purse. In this place, that’s enough to bribe your way out of hell. They’ve given me twenty-four hours to get out of Edinburgh. But I thought to myself, I couldn’t go without saying goodbye.’
‘You . . . you can’t do anything here,’ said Tom. ‘There are witnesses.’
McSweeny looked quickly around. ‘You think they’ll see anything?’ He shook his head. ‘Life is cheap on Mary King’s Close,’ he said. ‘And most people prefer not to get involved.’ He reached into his cloak and pulled out a long-bladed knife. ‘I nearly took the constable’s advice. I was all ready to get out of Edinburgh but then I thought to myself, what about young Tom? What about the little sneak who shopped me to the constables? Why not just come here first and kill you? It won’t take long and it will make me feel so much better.’
Tom felt as though he was frozen to the spot. He glanced at Morag. ‘Get away from here,’ he whispered.
But she stood her ground, staring at McSweeny in disgust. ‘You’re a horrible man,’ she said. ‘I don’t like you.’
McSweeny looked down at her, amused. ‘Friend of yours?’ he asked.
‘She’s nothing to do with this,’ said Tom. ‘Just let her go.’
‘And why should I do that?’ asked McSweeny, taking another step forward. ‘Because that’s what you want? At the moment, the thought of inflicting more pain on you seems very enticing.’
Tom reached out a hand to try and ease Morag behind him but she had ideas of her own. She broke away from his grasp and ran straight at McSweeny, swinging the straw basket like a weapon.
‘Run, Tom!’ she cried.
‘Morag, no!’ yelled Tom, horrified, but it was already too late. She flung herself at McSweeny and his right hand rose to meet her, the knife blade flashing dangerously, while his left arm encircled her waist and pulled her up close, as though for a hug. Morag’s body flinched and stiffened and a gasp escaped from her lips. She went limp, like a puppet with severed strings, and slipped from McSweeny’s grasp, collapsing onto the cobbles, her eyes wide and staring, a pool of dark red spreading across her apron.
‘Tom,’ she gasped, with what he somehow knew was the last breath she would ever take. ‘Run!’
For Tom, the world seemed to stop turning. For an instant, everything was frozen in time: the Close, its inhabitants, McSweeny’s cloaked figure and Morag’s sprawled body. In that instant it occurred to him why he had first seen a ghost wandering in the corridors of Mary King’s Close. It wasn’t Annie whose presence haunted that room. It was Morag. She’d even been carrying the same straw basket she used to shop for vegetables.
Then everything slipped back into gear and McSweeny was stepping over the girl’s body and coming for Tom. The knife in his hand was red with her blood.
‘They arrested my mother,’ he said as he approached. ‘Did you know that, Tom? They took my poor seventy-one-year-old mother and threw her in a stinking prison, because she didn’t have any money to bribe them with.’
He was close now, dangerously close. Suddenly, a switch in Tom’s head seemed to snap on and he turned and ran into the heaving, pressing mass of the Close, pushing his way frantically through the sea of humanity, intent now only on escape. Behind him, he heard a voice yelling, ‘Stop, thief!’ and then people in the surrounding crowd were reaching out to grab at him, to hold him there until McSweeny could catch up. Somehow, he tore himself free and, spotting a ramshackle wooden door to his left, he veered towards it and shoved at it with both hands. It flew open and as he ran into the hallway beyond, his feet thudding on the bare floorboards, it struck him, in the midst of his panic, that he knew this place, this long, straight corridor, its plaster walls hung with dusty oil paintings he’d seen somewhere before . . . but not in this world.
Then it occurred to him. Timeslyp, the game he’d played so often on his phone. This was Level Six, the level he couldn’t ever seem to get past and he knew that masked assassins were waiting for him in every shadow along this long, straight run. But he couldn’t think about that now because he heard a thud behind him and, glancing back, he saw McSweeny had just come through the door in pursuit, his knife raised. There was no option but to run, to go down that hallway and try and make it to the next exit, impossibly distant at the far end of the corridor. Tom put his head down and launched himself forward.
Almost instantly, the first attacker came bursting through a painting to his right, a cloaked figure wearing a blank, smiling mask, a deadly, curved sickle clutched in one gloved hand. The man swung the sickle and Tom ducked instinctively, felt the razor-sharp blade skim the air inches above his head. He bobbed up again and struck the attacker full in his masked face, knocking him to the ground. He ran on, trying to remember where the next attack would come from and, even as he thought it, the assassin started to ooze up from below the floorboards: a flapping spectre wrapped in a black cloak, his upraised arms seeking to grab Tom’s legs, his hands vaporous but quickly solidifying into flesh. Tom launched himself into the air, just evading the man’s grasp and came down on the far side of him, his feet thudding as they struck wood. Behind him, he was aware of McSweeny’s footsteps coming in pursuit.
He tried not to panic, telling himself that there were still three more attackers to evade before he reached the next door, and you never really knew the direction from which they would come. A man leapt from out of a painting to his left and he veered to one side and fended him away with one hand, slamming him down onto his face. In the same instant, a second man dived headlong from a painting on the right and Tom reacted instinctively, performing an agile forward roll beneath the flying figure, passing underneath him. Tom sprang to his feet and steeled himself for the final attack, knowing that this was the one he always misjudged. A sudden conviction seized him and he stopped dead in his tracks. The third attacker came hurtling down from above, sickle swinging. He struck the floor hard, with a gasp of exhaled air and Tom jumped onto his back and launched himself forward again, covering the last few yards to the door.
A sense of exaltation flashed through him. He’d done it. He’d reached the next level! His hands hit the door and it flew open.
He was in a room, a small empty room. Ahead of him was an open window, admitting the warm summer air. He could hear the sound of voices in the street outside. Tom ran to the window and looked out. To his right was the open street, crowded with people. His first instinct was to head that way, to lose himself in the crowd, but then a man in a tricorn hat saw him and
shouted ‘There! There’s the thief!’ and scores of angry faces turned to gaze at him.
Tom looked desperately to the left, saw a rickety wooden staircase leading up the side of the building and realised it was now his only avenue of escape. He heard McSweeny coming through the door behind him and knew he had no other choice. He climbed quickly out of the window, dropped to the ground and started up the stairs, three steps at a time. He was dimly aware of McSweeny struggling through the open window behind him.
‘What’s your hurry, Tom?’ McSweeny cried as he clambered out and laboured up the stairs in pursuit. ‘Come and see the nice surprise I’ve got for you!’
Tom kept going. A couple of women with painted faces were coming down the stairs arm-in-arm. He barged his way between them and gained the first landing. He went on up to the next level, his heart thudding like a mallet in his chest. He climbed the next flight, and the next, gazing up at the strip of bright blue sky far above him, wondering what he was supposed to do when he reached the very top. He glanced back and saw that McSweeny was still in hot pursuit, the knife held out in front of him, his leather cloak flapping behind him like the wings of a giant bat. Tom lunged around another flight and bumped into a portly man who was smoking a pipe on the staircase, sending him sprawling. Tom managed to scramble his way clear and went on, up to the fourth or fifth floor, he couldn’t tell which. There were loud curses behind him as McSweeny also slammed into the fallen man.
‘Get out of my way, you idiot!’ he yelled and the thudding of those heavy boots continued. ‘Tom!’ he bellowed. ‘What’s the point of this? You know I’ll get you in the end, why don’t you accept your fate like a brave boy? That wee girl had more guts than you!’
Brave! thought Tom. That was a rich one. He thought of Morag lying dead on the cobbles and he wanted more than anything to turn and fight, but he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against a powerful man armed with a knife. He glanced desperately over the stair rail and saw a sea of heads swarming below him, a few faces upturned to look at what was going on far above them. He wondered about jumping. If he did that, would there be enough people down there to break his fall?
Tom pounded up to the next level, realising as he did so that this was just about as far as he could go. He reached the top of the stairs and stood there, gasping for breath. He looked to his left and saw a stretch of flat roof ahead of him, a patchwork quilt of rain-rotted timber and cracked tiles and crumbling chimney stacks.
McSweeny was coming up the last flight, a smile of triumph on his thin lips, while his eyes glittered with dark malevolence. ‘Oh, dear, Tom,’ he panted. ‘That seems to be . . . as far as you can go. If I were you, I’d . . . make my peace with the world; you’re not much longer for it.’
Tom took a deep breath and stepped carefully off the top of the stairs onto the nearest stretch of roof. Ancient timbers creaked as they sagged beneath his weight but he kept going, trying to spot the stronger sections. If he could reach the far side, there might be another staircase leading down. McSweeny paused at the top of the stairs and leaned on the rail, getting his breath back.
‘Don’t you understand, Tom? This is how it’s all meant to end. You and me. It’s destiny. The first time I laid eyes on you, I knew. I somehow just knew it would end like this. There are people you meet and you somehow know that one day you’ll end up killing them.’
He took a cautious step out onto the roof, judging the creaking of the wood beneath him. He seemed satisfied. He began to walk forward and Tom cautiously backed away.
‘Look,’ said Tom. ‘This is crazy. How is killing me going to help anything?’
‘Well, it’ll make me feel happier, for one thing. It’s nothing personal, Tom. It’s just the way of the world. You’ve dealt me a bad hand of cards and that can’t be ignored . . .’
‘I dealt you the cards?’ Tom snorted in disbelief. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong! You . . . you came to the orphanage, you took me, you . . . you stole the pills from me, and then you got caught for doing something bad. How is any of that supposed to be my fault?’
McSweeny edged closer, the blade held out in front of him. ‘You let me down,’ he said. ‘I chose you as my accomplice and you should have been honoured. But no, you threw it in my face . . . and then you went sneaking around behind my back, telling your wee stories, turning everyone against me . . .’
Tom edged backwards a little more and realised that behind him there was a wide expanse of dirty glass, many of the panes cracked and discoloured. A skylight. He didn’t dare try to put his weight on that. He began to edge to his left instead.
‘What’s the matter, Tom?’ murmured McSweeny. ‘Gone as far as you can go? Realise you’ve reached the end of the road?’ His knife arm came back a little, as though seeking a target. ‘Well, you tried, boy, but you can’t evade your destiny forever. There comes a time when you have to account for what you’ve done . . . and that time is at hand.’
And then he lunged, thrusting his right arm forward with all the power he could muster. Tom leaned back, balanced precariously on the edge of the skylight as the blade swung a deadly arc, just inches from his throat. He felt himself falling and instinctively grabbed hold of McSweeny’s outstretched arm, pulling him off-balance too. For a moment, they swayed like dancers on the edge of disaster. Tom threw up his left arm and wrapped it around McSweeny’s neck, telling himself that, if he was going to fall, he wasn’t going to do it alone. McSweeny swore under his breath as the weight of Tom’s body twisted him around, and then they were turning as they fell towards the glass.
McSweeny hit it first and Tom came down on top of him. For a moment, the surface held and they lay there unsure of what to do – then there was a shattering sound and the glass broke up beneath them and they were plunging into darkness; dust and debris raining around them.
They seemed to fall for a very long time before McSweeny slammed against a hard unyielding surface. Tom felt the man’s body spasm beneath him and a warm wetness pulsed over his hand. Tom realised that in the struggle, the knife had somehow gone into McSweeny’s chest. He was staring up at Tom, an expression of surprise, on his ghastly white face.
‘You!’ he hissed. ‘You’ve . . . killed me . . .’
Tom tried to struggle off McSweeny but the body beneath him had no substance, it was collapsing beneath him like a deflated balloon, it was dissolving, fading, until it was completely gone and there was nothing between him and the debris-covered floor.
He got himself onto his knees and tried to stand, but he felt sick and dizzy and the empty room began to swoop and spin around him like a great, dusty carousel, moving faster and faster. He tried to take a step but his foot seemed to sink into the dirt floor beneath him and a great white light blossomed like fire at the back of his skull and spread throughout him, until it obliterated everything.
Then the world turned black.
Twenty-Two
Tom opened his eyes and, for a moment, was dazzled by a glare of lights. He blinked violently and became aware of a series of blurred shapes around him that gradually swam into focus. He was lying in bed, his head propped up by thick, clean-smelling pillows. A dark blur to his left slowly became something solid and he saw that a man was sitting beside the bed, reading a newspaper.
‘Dad?’
Tom’s voice emerged as a kind of strangled croak and Dad dropped the paper as though he’d been electrocuted.
‘Tom!’ He leaned closer to the bed. ‘You’re awake! Thank God. We’ve all been so worried about you.’
Tom blinked again, trying to put it together. He moved his head from one side to the other, taking in the scene. He was in a small hospital room. Beside him, machinery beeped and chugged rhythmically. Various wires led from him to the machines but he couldn’t work out exactly how he was attached to them.
‘What . . . what’s happened?’ he croaked.
‘Just a moment.’ Dad got up from the chair and pressed a button on a length of wire. Then he picked up a plastic
tumbler of water from the bedside locker. He lifted it to Tom’s mouth and let him take a couple of small sips from it. ‘Not too much,’ he advised. ‘Got to take it slowly.’ He set the tumbler back down on the locker. A door opened and a young nurse looked into the room. ‘He’s awake,’ Dad told her.
‘I’ll get Doctor Wilson,’ she said and closed the door again.
Dad slipped back into his seat and smiled at Tom. ‘How much do you remember?’ he asked.
Tom shook his head and then wished he hadn’t, because it made him feel dizzy. ‘I was . . . I think . . . I went to Mary King’s Close,’ he said. ‘A school trip. Yes. We went this morning.’
Dad shook his head. ‘No, Tom. That happened three days ago,’ he said. ‘You’ve been unconscious since then.’
‘Three . . . three days?’ Now Tom became aware of a dull ache at the top of his head. He lifted a hand to find that it was covered by a thick layer of bandages.
‘Better not touch that, son,’ said Dad. ‘Let’s wait until the doctor gets here.’
‘The Doctor?’ Tom looked at Dad in alarm. ‘I don’t want to see The Doctor!’ He tried to sit up but Dad placed a hand gently against his chest and eased him back against his pillows.
‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘Of course you have to see him. He’s got to check that everything’s OK.’ He looked at Tom. ‘So that’s all you remember?’ he asked. ‘Going on the school trip?’
‘I . . . well, I remember going into this room and then, the floor gave way . . .’
Dad was shaking his head. ‘That’s not what they told me!’ he protested. ‘They said you tried to go into a room with a low lintel and you bashed your head on it. It wasn’t even part of the tour; nobody can work out what you were doing there.’
Crow Boy Page 16
