‘Wake up.’

Adam shook Roddy, gently at first, then harder when he didn’t respond.

‘Wake up.’

He felt Roddy’s neck. For a moment, all Adam could feel was his frozen fingers pressing against warm flesh, then he thought he detected something. A faint pulse, slowing and speeding up haphazardly, leaping all over the place.

‘Roddy!’

He removed Ethan’s jacket from him and grabbed the front of Roddy’s coat, lifting him up and shaking him.

‘Fucking Jesus,’ said Roddy, his eyes snapping open, his hand reaching for his shoulder. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

Adam let go, not realising Roddy wasn’t supporting himself. Roddy slumped to the ground with a thud.

‘Fucking hell, Strachan, you trying to kill me?’

‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘I panicked. I thought you were dying.’

Roddy smiled and winced. ‘Wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.’

‘Don’t be a dickhead all your life,’ said Adam.

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ said Roddy as Molly appeared. ‘I’m in need of some TLC here. Fancy it?’

His voice was weak and croaky, despite the bullshit.

Molly gave him a withering glare. ‘We need to get our stories straight.’ She looked around. ‘When we get rescued.’

‘If we get rescued, you mean,’ said Adam.

Molly looked at him. ‘I mean when. I’m not going through all this shit just to die here.’

Roddy struggled on his good elbow to sit up. ‘Someone give me a fucking hand, eh?’

Adam lifted him to a sitting position and sat next to him. Molly stood over them, scanning the horizon. The sea was black glass.

Roddy tried to get something out of his jacket, grimacing.

‘Help me out here,’ he said, pointing at his pocket.

Adam delved in and pulled out the coke case. He looked at it.

‘I can’t believe you’re still taking this shit,’ he said.

Roddy grabbed it from him and opened it one-handed with practised skill. He lifted a mound out on his finger and snorted it, wiping the leftovers on his gums.

‘Purely medicinal,’ he said, licking his teeth and snorting again.

‘Does coke even have any painkilling properties?’

Roddy stared at him. ‘When you’ve got a fucking gaping wound in your shoulder with a piece of fucking metal sticking out of it, feel free to come back and ask me about pain relief, OK?’

He looked around.

‘Where’s Luke?’

Adam and Molly exchanged a glance.

‘In the sea,’ said Adam.

‘Want to tell me why?’ Roddy seemed immediately bolstered by the coke.

‘We thought it was best,’ said Molly.

‘Why?’

‘Adam got the bullet out, but …’

‘Wait,’ Roddy turned to Adam. ‘You got the bullet out?’

Adam looked down. ‘Yeah.’

‘How?’

Adam stared at his hands, then lifted them and showed them to Roddy, waggling his fingers solemnly.

‘Jesus,’ said Roddy.

‘Yeah.’

Molly cut in. ‘Anyway, we didn’t know if they could still tell it was a gunshot wound, so we dumped him in the sea, from that ledge over there.’

Roddy followed her finger.

‘Couldn’t we have just done that miles back, instead of rolling him all the way here in that thing?’ He pointed at the barrel.

Molly looked out to sea again. ‘We needed to get away from the still fast, didn’t we? And we had to get the bullet out, remember. Anyway, it’s better that we threw him in here, maybe some smart police bastard knows the tides in this area. If we’d thrown him in along the coast, he might have washed up somewhere that conflicts with our story. All we have to say now is that we have no idea where Luke is. He must’ve been thrown clear in the crash, all the way into the water. That could’ve happened.’

Roddy and Adam looked at each other.

‘It could’ve,’ insisted Molly.

‘You sound like you’ve got it all worked out,’ said Roddy.

‘Not really,’ said Molly. ‘I’m just trying to think logically.’

‘So what’s the rest of our story?’ said Roddy.

‘Simple,’ said Molly. ‘We tell the truth about Ethan. We moved his body, but so what? And we just say that we’ve been here by the wreckage the whole time.’

Roddy shook his head. ‘Why the fuck would we just sit here and do nothing all that time?’

‘We just did, OK?’ said Molly. ‘When we came to, we searched around this area for Luke for a while, then we thought it best to stay with the vehicle and wait to be rescued. Maybe we thought it wasn’t safe for you to move with your injury, you weren’t up to it, and we didn’t want anyone going off and looking for help alone.’

Roddy nodded. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’ He looked around. ‘So how do we actually get rescued, then?’

Molly looked at the car. The tide was going out, the undercarriage and half the chassis now exposed.

‘We need to start a fire, get some attention.’

She walked down to the car. The boot was above the waterline, so she leaned in and flipped the catch. It popped open downwards and a gush of seawater poured out along with a handful of bits and bobs which floated around in the gently lapping tide. She lifted a petrol canister from the debris in the water, then pushed herself away from the car. She turned to them, opened the canister and sniffed.

‘Bingo. If we pour this over the undercarriage and tyres, strike a match, should make a pretty big smoke signal.’

Roddy pulled a lighter out of his pocket with a groan of pain.

‘Go on then,’ he said offering it. ‘I could do with getting saved. I’m in fucking agony here.’

‘Not so fast,’ said Molly. ‘We have to get rid of the barrel, the gun and the torch first.’

Roddy looked out to sea. ‘Shouldn’t we keep the gun in case those bastards in the speedboat come back?’

Molly put the canister down and searched the horizon. The sky was light in the east now, high feathering clouds striping the sky.

‘They won’t come back,’ she said. ‘It was hours ago we saw them, they can’t still be out on the water. Besides, it’s almost daylight, they wouldn’t risk it. They were probably just checking along the coastline until they ran short of fuel, then headed back to wherever the hell they came from.’ She pulled the gun out from the back of her trousers. ‘And we have to get rid of this, it is a murder weapon, after all.’

She put the gun back, picked up the torch and put it in her pocket, then stood next to the barrel and looked at Adam.

‘Come on then, give me a hand with this thing.’

They headed off in the opposite direction to the one they’d taken Luke’s body, rolling the barrel for several hundred yards until they reached a large rocky outcrop. Molly wiped the handles of the torch and the gun then hurled them both as hard as she could into the sea. They splashed into the surface with the quiet thunks of metal in water.

She turned to look at Adam.

‘So we just roll this into the sea?’ he said, looking at the barrel.

‘I guess so.’

‘It’ll float.’

Molly shrugged. ‘There are no markings on it, there’s nothing to tie it to us or the still.’

‘Won’t there be some of Luke’s blood in there?’

‘The sea will take care of that.’

‘You think?’

‘I honestly have no idea, but it’s our only option.’

They counted to three then heaved the barrel and watched as it tipped into the water below them, landing with a soft splash and bobbing around, bumping into the rocky coastline and slowly filling with water.

Adam rubbed his face and sighed, then looked at Molly. ‘You really think this can work?’

Molly nodded. ‘It can if we stick together.’

They walked back to the car, Adam feeling utterly empty, a lost soul.

Roddy lifted his head slowly as they approached.

‘Sorted?’

They both nodded wearily.

‘I’ve got another question,’ he said. ‘How do we explain that we didn’t light a fire until now?’

Molly considered this for a moment. ‘Who’s to say we didn’t? Maybe we started it last night, but no one was around to see it. We couldn’t send up an inferno because we only had one little petrol canister, we had to ration it because we didn’t know when we were going to be found.’

‘And what makes you think someone is going to see the smoke now and come to the rescue?’

‘Look, I never said the plan was perfect, did I?’ said Molly, running a hand through her hair and down her neck. ‘Do you want to try and get out of here alive or don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well stop being the smart bastard picking holes in everything and start being helpful for once in your sorry little life.’

Roddy smiled at her. ‘OK, take it easy. I’m just asking the questions the police are going to ask.’

Adam looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

Roddy smiled at him. ‘This all stinks to high fucking heaven. You think they’re not going to give us a grilling?’

‘But we’re just innocent victims of a car crash, right?’ said Adam.

‘Who just happen to be stranded a few walkable miles along the coast from two dead cops and a burnt-out illegal still. In the middle of fucking nowhere. You think they’re going to buy that it’s a coincidence?’

‘But they might not even find the still or the bodies,’ said Adam weakly.

Roddy shook his head. ‘They’ll find them. Or at least we have to assume they will.’

‘Roddy’s right,’ said Molly. ‘We have to presume the worst, be prepared to get interrogated.’

‘The interesting bit,’ said Roddy, ‘is gonna be whether the cops who interview us are in on the bootlegging operation or not.’

Adam put his head in his hands. ‘Jesus Christ, this is never going to end, is it?’

Roddy coughed then smiled as he lay back down on the ground, cradling his shoulder in his hand.

‘It’ll end eventually,’ said Molly. ‘One way or the other.’