The man flushed. “Ya dirty wee bastard.” He bit the boy’s neck. “Ah knew what you were like the first time ah saw ye.”
Mungo’s jumper hung over his knuckles, he blew warm air up his sleeve. “Let’s just go. We can catch those rabbits another time.”
Gallowgate thought about it for a moment. “Awright then. Do ye promise?”
Mungo nodded.
Gallowgate let go of the boy and turned towards the red tent. “Let’s get this auld bastard on his feet and we can get going then.”
Mungo caught the man’s pinkie with his own. “Do we have to? I mean, can’t we just leave him here. He’ll find his own way home.”
“That’s a laugh.”
“I can’t be his friend and your friend. I can’t.”
The man pulled Mungo under his armpit and hugged his head hard, twisted it like all the bullies he had ever known. “Don’t worry about that. Ye’re ma special pal now. But ah cannae leave him here. That tent belongs to a fella at ma work. Ah’ll be out sixty poun’ if ah don’t return it to him. He’s gonnae ask me for money anyhows, cos auld stinky baws has been fartin’ away all night in it.”
All that lying, all that forced tenderness had been for nothing. Mungo’s stomach lurched as Gallowgate kicked the guy line. The last of the air blew out and the red tent collapsed with a defeated sigh. There was the faint hummock of a sleeping bag, but it seemed impossible that the tent could hold the body of St Christopher, no matter how rotted and hollowed out the man was. Gallowgate stepped on the sleeping bag. Then he tramped up and down the length of the collapsed shelter. “Where the fuck is he?”
Mungo was bone-tired. He was so plain-spoken and honest that guile exhausted him. It was sapping the last of his energy to pretend he felt anything but hatred for this man. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s gone fishing?”
Gallowgate stumbled along the waterfront, his shrivelled cock bouncing comically. He peered up and down the banks of the loch. “At this hour? Where’d ye see him last?”
Mungo didn’t know what to say. He spread his sleeping bag. He threw it open like a pair of quilted wings and revealed his thin body. It lay in the centre like some knock-kneed offering.
Gallowgate shook his head. “Naw. C’mon. There’s nae time for that. We have to find him.”
Mungo wrapped himself up again. He lied as best he could. He told a half-truth about the day before, how St Christopher had been a terrible fisherman and so he had taken him to a spot where the fish seemed lazy and easy to catch. Then he told Gallowgate how he had lost all of his little sprats and grown frustrated even there. The saint had bloodied feet when he came back to the campsite, and scratching for a drink and finding none, he had sealed himself into the tent in a huff. That was the last the boy had heard from him before Gallowgate had returned in the gloaming. “Maybe he’s gone home?”
“Naw. He must’ve had the bad shakes.” Gallowgate was pulling on his rain-soaked clothes. It was a sick relief when he covered the eyes on his shoulder blades.
“He was definitely tremblin’. It looked somethin’ awful.”
“Then we need to find the auld arsehole. Ah cannae leave him here and expect to show ma face up at the probation office.” With that, Gallowgate trudged towards the trees.
Mungo wrapped the sleeping bag tight around himself, certain now that the chill was coming from inside him. He wanted to cast it off and run the other direction. He could bound over the rocks and boulders and make for the other treeline. He was sure he could run faster than Gallowgate; Mungo had seen the damage the drink had done to the man. But where would he run to? What way was home? The man stopped; he snapped his fingers and whistled as though the boy was a terrier. Mungo nodded and followed him into the understorey.
Everything was dripping wet underneath the trees. Soon the sleeping bag was sodden. It grew heavy and Mungo was tired, so he laid it over a fallen tree and shivered in his shorts and cagoule. The way Gallowgate was creeping through the undergrowth unnerved him. It was like he didn’t want to wake the spirits that slept there. He tried not to picture St Christopher waking from his place below the birch tree, pointing a bony finger in his direction, the right side of his sallow skull caved in.
In the distance, on the far side of the river, a roe buck browsed a low clump of goosegrass. It stopped Mungo in his tracks. He held his breath as the deer raised its head and looked in their direction. Its eyes were as dark and wet as two peeled plums. The deer flicked its ears, scanning the forest for any unfamiliar sounds. On its head was a small set of underdeveloped antlers, and it made Mungo wonder where the deer’s mother was. Gallowgate crept nearly to the riverbank before the young buck startled and disappeared with a flick of its tail. As suddenly as it had appeared it was gone again. Gallowgate was beaming with delight. “Now, ye have to tell Maureen about that. Ah get a bonus point for that, don’t ah?”
The river was higher than it had been yesterday, and it looked more violent than Mungo had remembered it. Gallowgate was scanning the riverbank for a sign of his crony but Mungo’s eyes were fixed on the rushing water. He stood near the point where he had bludgeoned St Christopher, and imagined he saw a glint of silver sovereign lying on the riverbed.
“Over here,” said Gallowgate as he bent by the riverbank. He had the tweed bunnet in his hand. It had washed on to a boulder and the wet wool had stuck it there. It was a drab, dull grey and Mungo had missed it in his panic. Gallowgate was turning it in his hands, he held the sweated label out to Mungo. Christopher Milligan. The man was no saint. Mungo was sure he would remember that name forever.