Routes of Redemption

Chapter One Glenorchy

It came to him, standing there alone among the graves, that he might well be dead himself before tomorrow night. The tiny seed of doubt planted two weeks ago when Roy had called him from prison and announced that, after thirty years, he was being freed early "for good behaviour" had germinated.

Moss toyed with the idea as he picked his way between the headstones. Presumably, it meant Roy hadn't killed or maimed anyone recently. He must have found that difficult, he mused while looking at the gravestones on either side. Many ancient, with worn inscriptions and markings. Familiar surnames, some of them his ancestors, provided him with a strange sense of comfort. This place had been a burial ground for over a thousand years.

He had wondered how such a long incarceration might have affected Roy, but now he was under no illusions. It was the same old Roy, worse even. They slipped into the old, uneasy familiarity, as if continuing yesterday's conversation.

"It's me," Roy announced in his flat, emotionless voice. "I'm out in two weeks."

"Roy!" Moss couldn't believe it. "What..."

"That gives ye plenty of time to get organized," Roy interrupted him. The years had worn the sharp edges of his Glaswegian accent and added a transatlantic patina. What do you expect after thirty years in a Yank prison?

"No problem. I'll set up a party, welcome you back in style."

"Just get the details to my brief," Roy meant his lawyer in Glasgow. "Make it somewhere in Scotland, near home. Don't want a party, just have the books ready." That was it: no small talk, no reproach. Just the unspoken assumption that he, Roy, was still the boss. That irritated Moss more than he was willing to admit.

The sudden contact from Roy, and his apparent ease in reaching him, despite all his precautions, unsettled Moss. The lawyer was their sole point of connection, and Moss, who never used his actual address, funnelled money to Roy's prison commissary account while diligently concealing his location.

It would be fitting. A quiet funeral, a modest headstone in a corner of the churchyard. Maybe even inscribed with his real name, it wouldn't matter anymore; no one would remember after all this time. He reached his mother's grave and halted, setting down the flowers he brought. The lack of a receptacle meant they lay at the foot of the headstone, a sad little offering.

Her name was the last on a long list carved into the face of a massive, shoulder-high slab of dark brown granite. He'd had it added himself after returning as a young man to find her buried in a family plot and that no one had bothered to have her name added. Moss closed his eyes and tried to picture her as he had last seen her over forty years before, calling to him from the street, not half a mile from this very spot. Listening, almost hoping to hear her voice again, feeling the heat of the late afternoon sun and a low breeze on his sweating face. But the only sound was the muted roar of the river flowing under the bridge down beside the churchyard, hidden from view behind a low wall of old stone.

He was a big man and muscular, six feet tall with a rugby player's physique - a little overweight. His features were bland and open, neither handsome nor ugly, his hair light brown and somewhat unkempt. Casually dressed in blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt, he habitually wore clothes that were slightly too big for him and had learned to move and hold himself in a self-effacing way, so that he often went unnoticed in public. He looked younger than his fifty-three years. Only the eyes sometimes betrayed him, by taking on a hardness that reflected his principal quality and character flaw—a mule-like stubbornness, or 'quiet determination' as he liked to think of it.

He took in the picture-postcard little white church, the ancient graveyard, the trees, and the mountains behind and felt at peace. The die was cast, and there could be no going back. He savoured the moment, knowing it would be all too short.

Glenorchy Kirk was set apart from the main part of the village, divided from it by the A85, the Oban to Tyndrum road. It stood alone, surrounded by fields and a stand of trees, accessible by a winding single-track road that crossed an ancient stone bridge spanning the River Orchy. Inside, it was all wood panelling with a stained-glass window depicting a biblical scene high behind the altar.

The only other building nearby was the dilapidated manse, abandoned since the last resident minister had moved away years ago. A grubby, painted sign showed it was for sale.

It was going to be bad. Roy would take pleasure in hurting them, but he wasn't complaining. He'd had it good for over thirty years, was modestly rich, and had even known a few moments of genuine contentment. But now Roy was free and would come for him, not just for his share of the money but also for revenge. There would be no reasoning with him.

Moss wouldn't stand a chance by himself, but he would not be by himself, would he? He'd made sure the syndicate knew. They would send someone to get their money back with interest. It could be Livio again. Now that would be a grudge match: the Glaswegian bulldog against the Italian-American pit-bull. Moss wondered if Livio's crime family, one of the most prominent in New York, was still looking for him. Not actively after all this time, but he was sure they hadn't forgotten. He would have to be circumspect.

Cat too. She would be there with her latest toy boy, no doubt. She'd have to protect her interests and make sure that certain information didn't get out.

Moss reviewed the situation again. He'd made all the arrangements he could think of, and Emile would be there to tie up any loose ends if things went wrong.

Emile was his business partner and frontman in Brussels. Moss had given him a share in each of his businesses: the nightclub, the garage, and the real estate portfolio. An ex-mercenary, Moss had hired him as an enforcer. Still, he soon proved his worth, becoming Moss's right-hand man and accomplice in many of his less conventional enterprises. Over the years, Émile had become his closest and most trusted friend, but even he knew only part of the story. Moss followed a strict need to know policy, and his criteria were very exacting. His life and liberty depended on it.

Glancing at his watch, he saw it was nearly five o'clock. Time to go. He wanted to be there when Cat arrived at the hotel. They had to get their story straight before Roy got here.

He eased behind the wheel of the white Mercedes and started the engine. He often drove a white Mercedes; it was a kind of trademark, a little gesture of defiance against the clandestine life he felt obliged to lead. This one was a new E320 with fewer than 100 miles on the clock when he'd rented it at Heathrow. He had preferred the long drive north through England, then the Borders, into Scotland, Glasgow, and the Highlands. It had given him time to think, to make plans while basking in the nostalgia of many similar journeys.

He'd done the five-hundred-mile trip in one go, stopping for naps when he tired, buying sandwiches at service stations, fumbling his way toward a resolution, or at least a conclusion. He had stopped at the church on a whim, picked up flowers at a service station, and then used them for his mother's grave instead of giving them to Cat. It was as if he needed to commune with her spirit, to drink in the peace and beauty of the location and recharge his soul.

He pulled out of the churchyard and then turned right onto the A85 heading west. He squinted into the afternoon sun and put on his sunglasses against the glare. It was the end of May, and already hot. By the time he arrived in Oban and checked into the Royal Hotel, a plan was clear in his mind.

#

Refined and old-fashioned, the Royal Hotel had seen better days. The rooms were small but adequate, featuring lots of tartan. Moss had chosen it because it was discreet and familiar from the old days. He liked the slightly run-down air; it made him feel comfortable.

Cat was already there, checking in. At fifty-two, she was almost the same age as Moss but looked much younger. Her long, dark hair, combed straight down from a central parting, framed her high cheekbones and long nose. A powerful face, beautiful but not quite pretty. A scarlet salopette over a tight bodice clad her five feet eight inches, accentuating her hourglass figure. She spotted him right away; her peripheral vision was excellent.

"Well, I hope you've a good reason for dragging me all this way," she said without preamble.

"Hi, babe, nice to see you too."
It was then that he noticed the hard-faced young man at her elbow. He had a compact physique and moved with tight but fluid gestures that hinted at years of martial arts training. He had short-cropped blond hair and wore a dark blue silk shirt and black leather trousers. Moss had often wondered where she recruited them from, amusing himself by imagining they all came from a private assassins' school in the Swiss Alps. He would ask her later. They were on quite friendly terms these days. She had forgiven him years ago.

She laughed at him and turned back to the receptionist to finish checking in while he browsed through the postcards on a display stand nearby.

"It's Roy, isn't it? Is that why we're here?" She joined him two minutes later.

"Yes," replied Moss. "He'll be here tomorrow."

She paused for a moment, examining him as if searching for a sign that it was another of his bad jokes, then relaxed, accepting the inevitable.

"Let's have dinner in the hotel. We can talk then." She turned away and made for the broad staircase, followed by leather trousers and a hotel porter carrying their luggage.

Chapter Two A Family

The dinner went well, and they slipped back into their customary easy familiarity. She had changed into a light blue dress that revealed just enough cleavage to distract him from the main business of the evening. For a while, they made small talk, enjoying the simple pleasure of each other's company. She had given Anton, her chauffeur/bodyguard, the night off. He had gone to Glasgow and was to be back by noon the following day.

"You shouldn't have done that," said Moss. "What if Roy arrives early?"

"He won't. He wants us to be waiting for him, worrying about it."

"We can't be sure of that. He's back in Glasgow today. They deported him back to the UK, drove him straight to Laguardia and put him on a plane to Edinburgh. Livio should be here soon, too." Moss had made sure Livio would be told.

"Livio? I haven't seen him in years. What's he been up to?"

"He's a big wheel now, runs a casino. Something like that."

She examined him across the table.

"You haven't changed much. Still not married?"

"No, just that one time. It was enough for me." They had been married for a couple of years, just after the job. He took care of her, nursing her back to health. He often thought she accepted his proposal as a reward, to thank him. It was glorious for a while. The sheer optimism of it, when they could still pretend it might be possible to lead normal lives.

But he'd always known, deep down, that it wouldn't last. There was Roy's prior claim. She had always been his girlfriend first. Then there was Cat herself—she had granted him a few months of her time, but she would never have consented to a permanent relationship. No man would ever own her; it had been that way since childhood.

"What are we going to tell him, about the money?"

"I'll make him an offer," he replied. "You'll have to contribute too."

"How much?"

"A million, maybe more."

They ate in silence for a while as she thought about this.

"It's more than I thought," she said. "His share was three hundred and fifty thousand."

"That was thirty years ago. It was supposed to have been invested, he'll be expecting a lot more than that."

"Okay, I can live with that." She smiled her crooked little smile.

"So sell some real estate, or borrow against it. You should be able to come through."

"I'm not that rich, things haven't gone as well as I'd hoped. And I have a lot of expenses."

"Is that what you're going to tell Roy?"

She didn't answer, and the conversation moved on. By common consent, they never asked each other personal questions. The information would be volunteered at the right time or not at all. Moss liked it that way; it removed the need to lie.

"Why here?" she asked.

"Well, it's home ground, a little out of the way, but accessible, not too many people." He didn't mention the other reasons, like the nearness of old friends who could be called upon if things turned nasty.

"Oh dear," she stifled a yawn, "I think I should go up now. A girl has to think of her beauty sleep. Thanks for the dinner."

"Pleasure." He signalled to the waiter and signed the bill while she fiddled with her handbag.

They rose from the table and mounted the winding staircase together. They said nothing more, but she did not seem surprised when he followed her into her room and began unbuttoning her dress even as the door closed behind them.

#

He'd always liked her body immensely: the long legs, the narrow waist, the small, firm breasts. It had changed little over the years. Now, in close-up, he could detect a few subtle signs of ageing, fine lines around her eyes and on her hands. She seemed more muscular, firmer. She'd been working out. Cat wasn't the woman to deprive herself of the benefits of cosmetic surgery and other 'benefits of civilization' as she called them. At least she had been discreet; there were no signs Moss could see. No detectable scars. All he noticed in the course of his very detailed examination were the old ones: the bullet wound under her right arm and the fine line around the base of her neck.

Their lovemaking was accomplished from long practice, yet adventurous, too. He always tried to come up with something to surprise or amuse her. This time, it was the tension generated by Roy's imminent return that fuelled their passion. A hit of that most potent aphrodisiac of all: the nearness of danger.

"Oh, Cat," he breathed into her ear as they approached climax. This was always the moment he was liable to let his guard slip.

"I know, I know." She did too. It was her way of acknowledging his pain, the loss of the life they might have shared if things had been different.

They sat on the edge of the bed, she on his lap, facing him, in control, rocking back and forth with him inside her. He busied himself with her shoulders, neck, and breasts, pausing to kiss her deeply from time to time. His right hand was on her hip, helping her movements, while his left ran lightly over her skin. After a time, sensing that she was ready, he pivoted to his left and deposited her gently onto her back. Then he moved above her, entwined his fingers in the hair at the back of her head, and with regular, powerful strokes delivered them both to a shuddering conclusion that left them like shipwrecked mariners washed up on the shore after a storm.

They met and made love, perhaps once or twice a year. Just enough to assuage their need and maintain the bond forged in the emotional catastrophe of their youth. It was as if their passion burned away the everyday carapace until, at last, they could say, 'Look, this is me as I am now.' Then, without waiting for approval or reproach, reversion—actors resuming their roles in the long-running soap opera of their everyday lives.

Moss found her intensely stimulating. It wasn't just her physical beauty and her sharp mind, though that was a killer combination as far as he was concerned. It was the shared secrets, the familiarity tinged with strangeness, and, yes, the danger. She was dangerous. The deep confidence they shared in no way implied trust in everyday matters such as money, business, or sexual fidelity. He knew she would do anything he wanted in bed, but almost nothing outside it.

She had been eleven years old the first time he met her. It was his first day at the orphanage. A group of older kids had been giving him a hard time, poking fun at his sing-song Highland accent, kicking him when the adults weren't looking. He was still in a daze, unable to accept the death of his mother or the changes in his life, and easy prey for bullies. Two of the older boys had cornered him in the backyard, out of sight from the main house, and relieved him of the pocket money the lawyer had given him the day before. He was picking himself up and trying to choke back the tears when he spotted a scrawny, dark-haired girl looking down at him from the branches of a nearby horse-chestnut tree.

"What are you looking at?" he blurted, the shame rising to his cheeks in a crimson tide.

"You've got to face them down," she said. "Don't let them see you're hurting." She jumped down from the tree and stuck out her right hand. "My name's Catriona," she said, helping him to his feet.

She was right. She had learned the hard way before her friend had taken her under his protection. A boy Moss's age with a shock of bright ginger hair. 'Red' they called him, 'Red Roy'. It wasn't long before Roy and Cat accepted Moss into their little band, and the three of them became inseparable, a kind of family.

He was immediately taken with her eyes; they were hazel with green flecks and seemed too large for her face, giving her a doll-like appearance. Her voice, too, had a lilting quality that he never tired of listening to. Later, he would learn that it came from her mother, a farm girl from Mooncoin, near Waterford, Ireland.

When the time came, Cat duly initiated Moss into the mysteries of sex, just as she had done for Roy a few weeks before. It happened naturally, a gift of friendship. It changed nothing between them, and they never questioned it, not until much later.

Roy was the undisputed leader of their little band right from the start. His parents, a merchant seaman, and his alcoholic wife, had given him up for adoption at four years old, unable to cope with yet another turbulent child. An implacable hatred for his parents that became his principal motivation, powering him to extremes of daring and violence that earned him both admiration and fear from the other children, possessed Roy.

Moss took to him immediately, fascinated by the streak of wildness that threatened to transform any situation. He quickly learned how to handle Roy. You had to stand up to him and be ready to challenge him at any moment. Roy despised cowards and would pounce on any hint of weakness. The worst crime was to embarrass him in public, meaning in front of anyone else except Cat, but that changed as they got older.

So they grew up together, foiling all attempts to break up the band for adoption or fostering. When Moss did well at school, Roy was proud of him and began calling him 'professor'. As Moss grew bigger and stronger, he played rugby at a local club. Roy, a fanatical Glasgow Celtic supporter who had never shown the slightest interest in any other sport, suddenly became his biggest fan—often dragging Cat along to watch him play on cold, wet Sunday afternoons.

Cat had grown smoothly and gracefully into the role of sister and substitute mother. Though she never spoke of it directly, Moss gradually learned that she had been sexually abused from a young age by her father, and other men, with the tacit complicity of her mother. She had been placed in the orphanage for her own protection, only to suffer more abuse from older boys. Until Roy took her under his wing, beating one of her tormentors so severely that he permanently lost sight in one eye.

They slipped slowly but surely into a life of petty crime. Roy would organize shoplifting expeditions in which two of them would create a diversion while the other took clothing, electrical goods, and sometimes even jewellery and cash. Then, in their mid-teens, things became more serious, and they graduated to burglary and joined Glasgow's burgeoning criminal subculture.

They started with modest urban houses, learning as they went and honing their technique before moving on to the more lucrative targets in the leafy suburbs. Small businesses, too. Moss became quite good at disabling alarms and breaking in quietly and discreetly—skills that would serve him well in later life.

It was during one of these raids that Roy had killed for the first time. A night-watchman caught them inside a warehouse full of boomboxes and video recorders. He surprised them as they were loading boxes into the back of Roy's old Volkswagen Combi van. Cat spotted him lurking in the shadows, and he lunged at her, grabbing her around the neck. He was trying to drag her backward into his little cubicle of an office when Roy launched himself at him.

It was over in seconds, and then the portly, grey-haired figure lay in a widening pool of his own blood, the hilt of Roy's knife protruding from the side of his neck. He was on his back, gasping like a beached fish; his eyes searched out Cat and followed her around the room for a while in silent pleading before finally glazing over.

In panic, they cleaned up as best they could and left quickly without the goods. Moss moved in a daze, running on automatic pilot, while Cat appeared deeply shocked—they'd had to take her by the arms and frogmarch her out. Roy was different, though; he seemed elated, as if energized by the experience. During the weeks that followed, they hunkered down and went through the motions. Moss ruthlessly suppressed his conscience and concentrated on trying to save the only family he knew. The affair was in the newspapers for a few days, but the police never bothered them.

But Roy had changed. His violent nature was always closer to the surface after that, quick to emerge at the slightest provocation. He felt a profound peacefulness, as if he had reached a final, unchangeable decision that societal norms no longer bound him. And they never could persuade him to get rid of that knife. He hoarded it like a trophy and still carried it when he was arrested a few years later.

"He's afraid of you," said Cat, breaking into his reverie. "You do know that, don't you?" They lay entwined on the bed, her head on his shoulder, the bedclothes pushed back almost to the foot of the bed, revealing their naked bodies.

"It's not quite that simple," he replied, reluctant to think about it.

"Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't. There are things you don't understand."

"Oh, pardon me," she mocked, "it's a man thing, is it?" She laughed. He didn't reply. "Believe me, he's scared of you. It was obvious, right from the start. He always believed you could have beaten him if you had wanted to."

"At what?"

"Everything that he considered important." Silence reigned while they both thought about this.

"But I'm not at all like him," protested Moss finally. "Am I?" This was his own private nightmare.

"If you say so."

"I'll bet he's pissed off about us anyway," said Moss finally. He disentangled himself, got to his feet, and made for the bathroom.

"That too," she murmured.

"What?" At the bathroom door, he stopped and turned. "Shower?" The mischief was back in his eye. She looked at him in surprise, then dropped her gaze to his returning tumescence. She laughed, got out of bed, and sidled over.

"You taking something, or what?" Without waiting for a reply, she linked her arm through his and pulled him inside.

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