When MacTavish had been younger, in the summer after his father died, Uncle Murdo had taken it upon himself to break him out from the stifling, grief-laden fug that permeated the house, and had dragged him, whinging and protesting at the unwanted exertion, to the top of Ben Rinnes. Their sweat-soaked backs against the summit's rocky tor, the sky an endless blue bowl upturned above them, he'd marveled at the sun-soaked hills beneath, the patchwork of fields stretching out as far as he could see, and heard his uncle say "There. Was that not a good thing worth doing?"
As he sat in the quiet darkness of the Rileys' kitchen, nursing his bruised knuckles and recalling the moment his fist had connected with Sundance's face, he felt that same sense of satisfaction he had all those years ago: some things were good things worth doing indeed.
"Did you see his face when I hit him?"
Riley groaned, the sound muffled under the bag of frozen peas he held pressed against his face, and said "I'll take your word for it."
"I told you not to start something in your state."
Riley shrugged, grunting as he shifted position, and MacTavish saw the hint of a smile peek out from beneath the peas. "Worth it though. He's not going to bother us again."
"I hope you're sure about that." MacTavish replied. It had played on his mind since they had driven away, and Riley's words only served to increase his anxiety. "Nothing stopping him saying worse, and folks believing it."
"I doubt it." Riley propped himself up on his elbow with a grunt and stared at MacTavish with his good eye. "I didn't see anyone rushing to help him. He's finished."
MacTavish considered this. Sundance had been hanging on the edge of a group of smokers, all of them Regiment boys MacTavish could put a name to, even if he didn't count them as friends. None of them had been concerned to see Riley purposefully marching up the path towards the pub's entrance and when he had pressed Sundance back into the wall with a sharp shove, they'd turned to stare with bland, bovine indifference.
"I heard you got something to say about me?" Riley had growled.
He glared down at Sundance from an imposing advantage in height and even running some twenty pounds short of his usual bulk, he cut a formidable figure. The dirty yellow light spilling from the pub windows formed dark shadows across his still gaunt face, casting a skull-like mask onto his pale skin.
One of the watchers piped up "You want a hand, Si?"
The fractional jerk of his head to glance at the man who'd spoken, when he took his eyes off the target for a millisecond, gave him the opening he needed. It also saved Riley's nose. Sundance jerked forward, smashing his forehead into Riley's face, catching a stunning blow that sent him stumbling back with a yelp of pain.
He leapt for Riley's throat, clearly intending to get him to the ground with sheer, desperate, rage-fuelled momentum. Mid-air MacTavish's fist had hit him square in the face, and then gravity had finished him off.
He lashed out with his foot. Sundance made a noise between a grunt and a scream as the breath was knocked from him, but despite the pain, he managed to scrabble to his hands and knees, rolling with the momentum of MacTavish's kick. If he hadn't backed into the pub wall, he might have managed to make it to his feet, but, infuriated, MacTavish stamped his foot down onto his back, driving him down into the dirt.
"I watched Gaz die." he spat "I'm not going to stand back and see you drag my reputation and the good name of the people he loved into the dirt."
Sundance groaned, and something about his pathetic attempts to rise made MacTavish's rage boil over. He drew back to deliver another furious kick when Riley bent down, reached past him and grabbed the collar of Sundance's shirt, wrenching him half-upright with a grunt.
A blade flashed. Sundance squealed in blind panic, and then he got himself under control. Inches apart, the air between them thick with barely constrained fury, they glared at each other. A thin trickle of blood, almost black in the dim light spilling from the pub window, dripped from Riley's split brow.
In a low, furious whisper, he snarled "You bring my little girl into your nasty little web of lies again, I'll sew your fucking mouth shut."
"Fuck you!"
Riley jerked his arm, the movement just enough to make the blade bite and Sundance panicked, his legs and arms flailing, all his training gone to shit. For a moment, Riley just watched disgusted as he squealed, then jerked his arm back and with his fist clenched around the knife hilt, broke his nose instead.
They'd left him there, curled up against the pub wall, groaning and bleeding into the dirt. The other men watched, bored and indifferent to his suffering until he stumbled to his feet, and bracing himself against the wall for support, staggered off into the night. Then they stubbed out their cigarettes and meandered back inside, as if nothing had happened.
The message of the silent witnesses could not have been clearer: Sundance was on his own.
"It's one thing to trade on embarrassing campfire stories" said Riley "It's another pitting your squadmates against each other just because you get a rise out of it, making shit up. Who's going to trust him now?"
MacTavish grunted his agreement. He knew Riley was right, and those that called the shots would know it soon enough, if they didn't already. Sundance was finished, no matter how much shit he spread about either of them.
"What the hell's going on?"
They both jumped at the sound, and he winced as the room suddenly filled with light. He blinked, his vision a confusing wall of neon flashes, until it cleared enough to see the figure of Donna Riley filling the kitchen doorway.
For a moment, she stared at them, mouth agape, and then her expression darkened like a gathering storm "Have you been fighting?" she demanded.
MacTavish opened his mouth, but under the ferocity of her accusing stare, and the frank evidence of their injuries, he couldn't think of a convincing enough lie.
Riley spoke, his tone defiant "I was defending the honour of my family, if that's what you mean."
He stared back at her, a stoney expression on the visible part of his face an advisory notice against further argument. She ignored it.
"You were fighting! In your condition!"
Riley made an amused snort. "In my condition." He repeated, mockingly. He pushed his chair back from the table, and winced at the ear-splitting shriek as it dragged across the floor. Turning away from his mother, he stretched and sauntered over to the kitchen sink, insouciantly ignoring her as he filled a glass of water from the tap.
Clearly, this wasn't the response she'd wanted. Practically vibrating with rage, she turned her furious glare on MacTavish.
"And what have you got to say for yourself? She demanded. He suddenly remembered how it felt to be five years old, caught with his hand in the forbidden reaches of the biscuit tin. "You're supposed to be looking after him!"
Riley paused, the glass halfway to his lips and regarded him with a raised eyebrow "Are you, indeed?"
"What?" he spluttered, "I just said I'd help put up a shed!"
"What's your excuse then?"
"He was putting it about that he was shacking up with the Duchess." Riley explained.
The ferocious intensity of her stare seemed to double, and he actually had to fight the urge to shrink back. "Are you?" she demanded
This was too much, and indignation at her accusation overcame him. "Of course I'm not!" he snapped. It came out louder than he had anticipated, the unconscious defensiveness kicking in. He heard her then, laughing at the back of his mind, the sound as sudden and unsettling as distant gunfire. He shook himself back into the present, where Donna Riley was having none of it.
"Why's he saying it then?" She accused.
"Because I gave him shit for laughing at her." he shot back "Laughing at her going to her husband's grave. Fuck that noise! I'm not having it."
An uneasy silence descended over the three of them. MacTavish felt the pain in his hand for the first time and realised that he was clenching his injured fist. He forced himself to relax, wincing as the bruised knuckles moved.
"He can't take being told, so he starts spreading shit. He got what was coming to him."
"That satisfy you?" said Riley, jettisoning the peas he'd been pressing to his face into the kitchen sink.
Despite their efforts at first aid, his face was a mess: his left eye swollen shut beneath a livid bruise and now that the bleeding had stopped, MacTavish could see an inch long gash neatly bisecting his eyebrow where Sundance's headbutt had connected.
His mother deflated instantly.
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Simon!" She exclaimed, in a despairing wail. "You're a mess!"
She advanced across the kitchen. For a horrible moment, MacTavish thought he'd push her away, and he'd be forced to step in trying to de-escalate a full-blown domestic brawl. Instead, he let her reach up and take his face in her hands, tilting his head to assess the damage.
"Jesus Christ!" she sighed.
He flinched as she touched the wound on his brow, and jerked his head back, out of her reach.
"I'll be fine!" he protested.
"It needs stitching!"
He shrugged. "I'll jump the fence. Get Royce to see to it"
"Jump the fence? You should be going to the hospital!"
"Hospitals ask questions!" he snapped "Royce don't."
She made a disgusted noise. "And what are you going to tell Jade?"
He rolled his eyes "I'm guessing you won't be satisfied with the truth?"
She tensed, and MacTavish braced himself to watch her give him the slap he would have agreed he deserved, but she caught herself and simply glared at him instead, as if she could beat him into submission with the brunt of her disappointed stare.
Riley was made of sterner stuff than she gave him credit for. He pushed himself off the counter against the full force of her furious expression and glared back at her.
"The world's full of arseholes, Mum. Better she knows that some folks only learn if you give them a good kicking. You're not doing her any favours pretending it ain't like that and I'm not going to have someone take advantage of my little girl because she don't know when to slap shit out of someone."
She opened her mouth to speak, but he carried on regardless.
"If some bloke has in for me, and thinks he can tell everyone I'm some kind of nonce 'cause he thinks the worst of driving Jade and her mates around, he's going to get what's coming to him. All right?"
"I-"
"And before you start any of that keeping up appearances shit, I can tell you it don't matter. You can get a nice car, have your kid in a good school, whatever. None of it fucking matters! People still see us as pikey scum, and that ain't going to change no matter what you do."
He snatched his jacket from the chair, turned and wrenched open the back door.
"What's the fucking point of getting shit on coming and going?" he spat. "What's the point? Might as well go down fighting like they think I should"
He stared at her for a second, waiting for her answer, but she just glared back wordlessly, her mouth a flat, defiant line in the face of his anguished fury until finally, he turned away, and stalked out, into the night.