It turned out to be a beautiful day. The loch was alive with sunlight as Mungo helped Gallowgate drag the dead man back to their campsite. They kept dropping him and St Christopher’s bony body rolled away and disappeared beneath the horsetail ferns. Each time they picked him up again, Gallowgate took care to brush the muck from the sallow skin. There was real grief etched on Gallowgate’s face as they dragged his friend across the carpet of pearlwort moss. Mungo couldn’t look at the body. He wished the dead man would shut his eyes.
They laid St Christopher inside the two-man tent; Gallowgate had insisted on the decency of it. They couldn’t get him all the way in because his soaked tweeds stuck to the damp floor and he wouldn’t budge any further without bringing the structure down upon himself. So he lay there, his legs sticking out from the kneecap down, as Gallowgate gathered clumps of purple heather and sprinkled them on his chest.
Mungo searched for dry wood to start a fire with, while Gallowgate sank three lager cans, one after the other, without speaking. There was no dry wood and it was a pitiful fire, smoky and slow to catch, but it burned well enough for Mungo to place two tins of ravioli into the flames. He sat across the firepit and watched Gallowgate sink into the drink, finishing the lagers and swilling the spirit bottles for the last dregs.
“He looked after us in the jail.” Gallowgate spoke into the fire. “He shared his commissary. Always gave us a few of his smoked douts when he knew ah was short.”
It seemed like no great charity to Mungo to receive the blunted leftovers of someone’s cigarette. But Gallowgate looked moved by what he was saying.
“Naebody in the jail would talk to me at first – neabody but auld Chrissy. From day one, he was ma pal.”
“Was it bad inside? Was it hellish?” Mungo wanted to know. He tried not to look at the dead man’s feet.
“Ah dunno, it was jail, win’t it? It could be good and bad. It was overcrowded, two men to a single cell and you had to eat yer meals on yer bed. They kept us all in the same wing. All the guys that were inside for sex crimes. The governor had taken a notion to try and rehabilitate us. He let us organize activities, gave us a yellow tea kettle. I think they were studying us.”
“They don’t keep you apart?” It didn’t seem right to Mungo. How could it punish someone to surround them with people who liked the same things they did? Mungo thought about the first-year boys at school. How every autumn they would lose their minds for football stickers. They would huddle in concentration as they bartered for what they wanted, and moved as one large, writhing mass.
“No. They lump you the gether. There were some right monsters in there. Men that chopped up wee lassies in their Easter dresses. Other men that wouldnae leave me alone at night.” He emptied the last of the whisky down his throat. Gallowgate buried his chin into the neck of his bomber jacket. He was staring at the man’s protruding feet. “Auld Chrissy was different, though. His father used to own a famous butcher’s out on the Paisley Road. They saved up for years and bought a second shop further down in Govan. Chrissy was to run it by himself.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He did, for a while, and it did really guid. He’d learnt the skills of the trade from his father, and wi’ two shops the quality of meat was better and the prices were just that wee bit lower. It was goin’ great guns.”
“How come he looked like a pure jakey, then?”
Gallowgate glowered at Mungo. “Watch yer mouth.”
No apology would cross Mungo’s lips. He went back to picking at his midge bites. “So? What happened with the butcher’s?”
Gallowgate shrugged. “He got done for a Saturday boy. He had taken a shine to an eleven-year-old that used to scrub the trays at the end of the week. His father used to work for auld Chrissy and the boy would come in for a few hours and make deliveries and stuff like that. Chrissy thought the boy was fond of him. Chrissy couldnae help himself.”
Mungo found he could look at the feet now. The fear he had felt pushed to the back of his mind and suddenly he didn’t feel that bad. It was like the shuffling of cards, remorse sliding to the back, and on top lay something like relief. St Christopher was a very bad man.
“Do you think it hurts to drown?” Mungo had to know.
“How the fuck would ah know? He looked like he cracked his face in. Ah cannae tell if he did that afore or after he went in the watter.”
Mungo felt the knuckles in his spine relax, and he breathed in fully for the first time since they had found the body. He saw now the uneven wear on St Christopher’s shoes; the leather soles were worn away on the inside of each arch; the saint was pigeon-toed. “So, like, you don’t know how he died?”
Gallowgate shook his head. “Naw. The only person that’d be able to tell for sure is the coroner. They’ll cut him open and look.”
Mungo nodded, although he barely understood. “After that do you think it’ll be okay? He was just an old man who drowned, right? We could just leave him here. Why would they bother looking for us?”
“Naw.” Gallowgate stared at him for a long time and then he snorted at the boy’s naivety. He had forgotten he was talking to a child. “It doesnae work like that. As soon as they find out they’ve got a dead sex offender out in the middle of nowhere they’ll look into it.”
“How?” It made no sense to Mungo – surely a dead bogeyman would be a blessing.
“Because when one of us shows up dead they want to know who we were wi’ last. Or more importantly, who was unlucky enough to be wi’ us.” Gallowgate was becoming jumpy. “Ah don’t want to go back to the jail.”