His face was glazed with tears, his mouth a grotesque O as first he pleaded for his life and, when it became clear that they would not listen to him, called for his mother. Stripped naked, he knelt in the grave they had already dug for him. The light of the torch Tony held caught the shiny skin of the scar on his lower abdomen where he’d had his appendix out, standing out against the lividity of the bruising he carried there, his phallus shrivelled amongst the dark of his pubis at the outer edges of the glare.
Tony had wanted to cover him up, give him his coat to offer him some dignity, but Hugh had refused. He was aware of Karen next to him, her breathing quick and shallow as she watched, the black plastic bag of Martin’s clothes, which they had stripped from him, twisted in her grip.
Martin held out his bound hands in supplication, looking from one face to the next. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘You’re a liar,’ Hugh spat.
‘I’m not,’ Martin sobbed. ‘I swear on me mother, I’m not.’
‘And you knew what would happen.’
It was then that Martin broke down, his body wracked with sobs that turned to retching. He vomited onto himself, half choking on it, the bile and saliva hanging in a lace from his chin to his chest. He made no effort to wipe it away.
‘Fuck this,’ Hugh said, moving forward, raising his pistol.
‘Tell me mother–’
The shot reverberated through the trees, which came instantly alive, cacophonous as a murder of crows took wing against the evening sky.
Martin twisted with the shot, his body thudding against the edge of the grave they had dug. Hugh moved across and, with his toe, pushed him down into the gaping space, before firing three more shots in quick succession, each one momentarily illuminating the still white body where it lay, the red wounds flowering as the blood unfurled with each shot.
‘Get those clothes burned,’ Hugh ordered, glancing at Karen. ‘You,’ he added, looking at Tony, ‘grab a spade and get shovelling.’
It took them twenty minutes to fill in the grave, Hugh and Tony quickly shifting into an alternating rhythm while, in the distance, through the uniform ranks of the spruce trees, they could see Karen, her face illuminated by the flickering flames, burning Martin’s clothes. The air, acrid with the smell of the fabric as it burnt, splintered with the crackle and hiss of the needles Karen had gathered up from the forest floor to kindle the blaze. When she was finished, they saw her dance on the embers, which sparked once more at her feet as she put the fire out and kicked a covering of leaves over the scorching.
In the distance, a low rumbling resolved itself into the roar of a plane taking off from Glasgow Airport and traversing the sky overhead, just above the clouds; the whine of its jet engines rising in pitch as the aircraft rose, building to a crescendo, before dissipating slowly into silence.
Tony wondered if any of those on board, glancing down, might see them about their business in the gloom. He felt his pulse throbbing in his ears, felt his own stomach twist and churn at the thought of what they had just done.
‘Are you sure–?’ he started, the first words either of them had spoken since taking up the shovels.
‘We never talk of this again,’ Hugh said. ‘We never come back here again.’
Tony motioned to protest, but Hugh raised the spade in front of him. ‘I’ll fucking cleave your head in two if you don’t stop. We did what we had to do. I’m no happier than you are about it, but he got what he deserved.’
As they gathered their stuff and left the clearing, Tony looked back once at the spot, the slight rise of the earth just visible, in the dying light of Hugh’s retreating torch beam, through the fork of an oak, twisted with ivy. It took them almost an hour to pick their way back to the car, the journey through the trees made in silence.
Only once, as they crossed a stream that ran down through the woodland, bridged by a fallen tree trunk, did Tony stop and reach out a hand for Karen to help her across. She took his hand in hers, squeezed it a little in reassurance, held it a second longer than necessary after she reached the other