Conor had never hit anyone in his life but in that moment he was damn near to breaking Patrick Cameron’s neck for him. He breathed hard out through his nose. Then he turned decisively away and walked towards the workbench that ran along the left wall of the outhouse. He could feel Patrick watching him as he spooled a length of electric flex off its wheel.
‘What’re you doing, Con?’
‘See the furnace?’ Conor gestured without turning round. The black furnace stood in the opposite corner. ‘See the size of it? It’s four foot across, three foot deep.’
Patrick didn’t answer. Conor heard him swallow and shuffle his feet. He tried to concentrate on unwinding the flex.
‘What would you say Colm was, Patrick? Six-three, six-four?’ He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so angry. He cursed himself: it was a brutal anger, a stupid anger – but still. Colm Murphy was dead and Conor wanted Patrick to pay. ‘Death,’ he said, turning round at last, ‘hasn’t made him any smaller.’ He leaned across the bench and slotted the plug of a powerpack into the plug socket in the wall.
Patrick’s mouth was hanging open.
‘There’s plenty of time.’ Conor gestured again at the furnace. ‘The thing takes a while to get hot enough.’
‘You mean we have to—’
‘Not we,’ said Conor, hating himself even as he said it, even as he reached under the bench to draw out the powersaw they used for heavy ops, bull bones, horse bones. ‘Not me. You, Patrick. You.’
He flicked the switch on the plug socket from white to red. The powersaw began to sing.
Within two minutes their green veterinary overalls were soaked through. His hands and forearms were a brazen blood red – Patrick’s a deeper red even than that.
At first, Conor could hear the kid whimpering as they worked – and it was work, this, with the heaviness of the saw, the stubborn bulk of flesh and bone, and the mounting heat from the thrumming furnace. Conor helped where he could: now redirecting the swaying saw-blade – ‘Not there; here, here the cut’ll be cleaner’ – now wiping Patrick’s face with his cuff when the sweat and tears and blood ran into his eyes and made him blind. And Conor was kidding himself if he thought the wetness on his own face, the salty taste on his own lips, was nothing but sweat.
They’d lifted Murphy’s body onto the table to do their work. Just a piece of meat, Conor insisted to himself, just another dead thing to dispose of – but all the same they kept Murphy’s face covered with the tarp.
When they got near the end, Conor noticed that Patrick was no longer crying. He could no longer hear his sobbing over the whine of the powersaw. He looked at the kid’s face, and wished he hadn’t. Patrick was still bone-white – but now his jaw was set and his eyes were clear – and, when he glanced up to meet Conor’s eyes, you could almost have said there was a smile on his skinny face.
‘You saved my life tonight, Con,’ Conor heard him say. He said it while he pushed down on the saw, while the sawblade dug into the flesh of Murphy’s shoulder – said it over the pattering of the spurting blood and the thick sound of the blade’s edge meeting bone, and biting. ‘I’ll remember it, you know. I came to you when I had nowhere else to go. And there you were.’ He glanced up again – there, again, the sickly, cold, crooked smile. ‘I’ll remember this,’ he said again.
All at once he threw the lever to kill the powersaw and the song of the whirring blade subsided to a deathly silence. Blood dripped in a syncopated rhythm from the tabletop and in between the tiles on the floor. They were both breathing hard; they both looked down at the tabletop, at what they’d done – at what’d once been Colm Murphy.
The furnace topped twelve hundred degrees when it was fully heated. It was fully heated now: its breath stung Conor’s raw eyes as he drew open the heavy doors.
‘In he goes?’ Patrick paused, panting.
‘In he goes.’
The legs went in first, heavier than they looked, like the foundations of a Colossus. Next they fed the arms, the elbow joints stiff already. The Catholic church didn’t burn bodies. No, they’d rather you waited till you got to Hell for that, Conor thought grimly. And now here were the mortal remains of Colm Murphy – not buried, not blessed – no, just burned, without a prayer said, without a candle lit. The torso went next.
‘Ashes to ashes,’ Conor murmured as he fastened the doors closed. The words felt empty. Conor looked at Patrick, his hair black with sweat. It was a scared, stupid kid who walked in here two hours since, Conor thought, as he began peeling off his overalls. Patrick followed suit. Not a kid any more. Then what? A man? Not yet.
In the bleak electric light the two of them silently stripped. Their bloodied clothes, their shoes, their overalls, the drenched tarp: all followed Murphy into the furnace. Last of all, the head – bagged up, the features pressing through thick plastic. Conor worked over the table and floor with a jet hose and the last of the Colm Murphy’s earthly remains was washed down the drain. Patrick, meanwhile, dug out fresh boots and overalls from the storeroom.
Then, outside in the first grey glow of dawn, they stood and watched the cold stars fade. Conor breathed deep, told himself that the air was clear here, that each new breath was making him better, cleaner, more innocent.
Patrick sucked on a cigarette and said through the smoke, ‘What now?’
Conor thought fast.
‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Clean the car. Not too clean, though – don’t draw attention. Find a backlot somewhere, do it there. Throw a blanket or something over the back seat – those bloodstains won’t come out easy.’ He looked hard at Patrick. ‘Don’t talk to anyone; not about this, and not about anything. Go to bed and stay there. Lay low. Forget everything.’
Patrick nodded slowly, then ground out his cigarette with his heel.
‘Right you are,’ he said. He squinted up at Conor. ‘I’m sorry about, y’know’ – a vague wave of one arm – ‘all that with the gun.’
‘Good.’
‘Suppose I was out of order.’ Patrick nodded again, thoughtfully. ‘You saved my life tonight, Con.’
‘Yeah. You said.’
‘I mean it.’ Patrick put out a hand. ‘I won’t forget this.’
Conor paused – he thought of Colm, and he thought of Christine, and he thought of what they’d just been through, him and Patrick, and he thought of how fucking tired he was – and he shook Patrick’s hand.
‘But forgetting this,’ he said warningly, ‘is exactly what you’ve got to do.’
An hour later Conor stood in the shower letting the scalding water rinse the sweat and blood from his skin. He didn’t cry. He felt like he was empty of everything except memories. He heard Christine banging on the bathroom door. It must’ve gone six; she’d be wanting to get ready for work. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the streaming hot water.
But closing his eyes didn’t help – all he saw was Colm Murphy’s face.
‘Ten years old – that’s a grand old age.’ A younger Murphy, this – even stronger, even louder, even bolder. His eyes sparkling. His arm round Conor’s shoulders. ‘Where’d’you play, Con? Right wing, is it?’
‘Aye.’
‘A wee Jinky Johnstone, are you, then?’
‘No,’ brave Conor said. ‘I’m Davie Provan.’
‘Davie who?’ Murphy laughed. ‘God, I’m behind the times. I can’t keep up. Well, Davie Provan, happy birthday to you – and I s’pose you’ll be needing this.’ And with a flourish Colm wrapped him in a thick cotton shirt – a shirt in