He was stripping the heads of some bluebells when he heard St Christopher enter the river. The man let out a prayer as the frigid water knocked the breath out of him. Mungo allowed himself a smile for the man’s discomfort. He was intent on macerating the blue petals into a thick paste as he listened to St Christopher push against the current, moaning “Jesus Joanie, Jesus Joanie,” over and over. The man was almost at the far shore when the incantation stopped.
St Christopher had found the loose boulder. His leather brogues slipped on the mossy riverbed. The water was only waist-high, but he landed face first into the river and let go of the rod and the bag of fishing supplies. Mungo watched his wool bunnet float away as the man shrieked in fear and pain.
Mungo feared he might drown, and without thinking, he leapt into the water and waded out to him. The man flailed and swallowed a bellyful of water as he struggled to find his damaged footing. “Ma ankle!” Mungo reached out and hooked him by his lapel. There was no weight to him, he was a sack of marrowless bone. Mungo steadied him in the eddy and using all his strength he hoisted the saint upright.
St Christopher was hacking water, his lungs were weak from years of smoking and sitting and smoking some more. Mungo hauled the man towards him and with his one good foot, St Christopher found his footing, and wrapped his fingers around Mungo’s forearms.
There were so many details to consider: the graceless man, how the spears of cold rain made the river feel almost warm, the ruined fishing supplies, so many things to capture Mungo’s attention that it was a funny, insignificant detail to fixate on. But Mungo stared. He found himself glowering at the man’s hands and the way the long fingers wrapped around his forearms. These fingers that ended in nicotine-yellow pads, with grooved, bark-coloured fingernails; with black hair that sprouted above the knuckles and each knuckle that was as gnarled as a grafted sapling. These were the same fingers that had bound him the night before. The same dirt-caked nails that had pierced the skin at his wrists as the man had stuck his stinking, fetid cock into the warm space between his thighs.
There was a trick Ha-Ha had taught him once. It was a very clever trick. He called it the “Cheerful Friend”; a trick meant to disarm any wide-o or bully who sallied up to him looking to start a fight. Ha-Ha had shown him how he must look at the person square in the eye, with no twitching or signs of aggression in the centre of his brows. Ha-Ha had taught him to look at the person and smile with his mouth and his eyes, his widest, brightest smile. It had to be full and generous, the way you would look at a basket of puppies or a sky full of fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night. Then, when the wide-o was wondering why you were smiling like an imbecile, you hooked your right leg behind both their ankles and you pushed as hard as you could into their chest. Then – if you were carrying （and you should always be carrying） – you knifed them.
Water was dripping from the tip of the man’s pitted nose. Mungo smiled. It brightened the dimming day.
Mungo hooked St Christopher’s good leg, and with his hands on his lapel, he shoved the man backwards under the water. St Christopher let go of his wrists, his arms flayed out, searching for solid ground where there was only water. Mungo held him there and counted to five.
Despite Ha-Ha’s lessons, Mungo was a deep well of goodness. He counted to ten and then he hauled the Saint by his lapels again and tugged him from the water. He had only wanted to scare him. He had only wanted him to take his hands off of his body.
St Christopher erupted like a geyser. His lungs burst with river water and he coughed and spat it in Mungo’s face. His dull eyes were roving wildly in his head. He was desperate and panicked. Good, Mungo thought, let him be feart.
The boy opened his mouth to warn him, but St Christopher swung a loose fist at his face and connected with the tender skin under Mungo’s bruised eye. The boy let go. He felt the riverbank under his torn backside, and as he spun under the water, the world dropped from view.
When he found his footing, he had a rock in his fist. It was a small rock, only about the size of a Christmas satsuma, but when he swung it, it cracked off St Christopher’s temple and the man fell backwards into the water.
Mungo gripped his collar again. He put his knee on the man’s chest and pushed with all his might. He shoved until he felt the man come to rest on the riverbed. Then he stood on him. The saint’s fingers grabbed for the heavens, but Mungo denied them to him. After that, it didn’t take long to drown St Christopher.
FIFTEEN
Gallowgate was quicker without the boy trailing behind him. On the far side of the loch, the clouds hung around the hills as though they were trapped and couldn’t find a way out. The loch appeared restless, angry, as the wind hurried down the hillside and raised its hackles. The rain began to fall in sheets and by the time he reached the little shop he was soaked to the bone.
The teuchter woman watched him closely as he dripped up and down the only aisle, filling his arms with tinned ravioli and fruit cocktail. Her limited selection of alcohol made for a poor man’s pantry. He was forced to choose a fine whisky that was too expensive for necking and a nooseful of lagers that had a thick coat of stour on the top.
“How much for a smile?” he asked, stalling for time. But the shopkeeper was immune to his charm. She sent him out into the pouring rain and locked the door behind him.
Gallowgate sheltered in the red phone box and squelched down upon the wooden chair. The rain rattled against the glass, but it was mostly dry inside. Taking the phone book, he laid his cigarettes out on the cover like little wounded soldiers. He tried to save them, and he burst the tobacco from the ones that were beyond repair and piled the loose baccy in his pocket. Blowing the stour from the top of a can of lager he took a long, grateful pull.
The sky had come low. The clouds closed completely and the last shafts of sunlight were gone. It would take a long time to stop raining. Gallowgate read the phone book. There were very few names here and what surnames there were repeated over and over. People tended not to move far in this part of the world. He chose a name at random and turned a coin in his hand. There wasn’t much money left; they had gotten through more alcohol than he had budgeted for and when he counted his change, he realized he didn’t have enough to get them all safely back to Glasgow on the bus. He thought about Mungo and wondered if that was a good idea anyway, to take the boy back to the city where he could tell his side of the story.
It happened all the time. Young boys from the city drowning in lochs, the water deeper and murkier than any chlorinated swimming pool. The evening paper was full of stories of inexperienced young men freezing to death on hillsides or caving their heads in on a steep Munro. It would be believable. It happened all the time.
Gallowgate pushed the coin into the slot. He dialled the number and waited. He was about to ring off when a faint voice answered at the far end.
“Hallo, is that Mrs E. Beaton?”
The woman sounded winded, like she had travelled a long way to reach the telephone. Perhaps it was another phone box that sat in the middle of a cluster of cottages, perhaps she had been in a hot bath. “It’s Dokter Procter from the hospital. Ye know, the big hospital.”
“What hospital, Doctor? I’ve never even been to any hospital.”