Light Errant Read online

  I think we all nodded. We all knew. Jon perhaps better than the rest of us, he’d probably had personal experience, but Jamie and I had grown up knowing how this town worked.

  “Well, they kept us in for the night, ’cos they know I hate that. It’s stupid, they lose as much as I do, but you can’t tell them. They think it keeps me sweet. Or that’s what they say. Anyway, come the morning, they got me to carry breakfast to the other cells, and they had five or six women locked up there. They never said a word, the custody sergeant was with me and they were dead scared of him, you could see; but it looked like they’d been in a while. And I dunno who they were exactly, but they were your blood,” looking away from the river now, looking at me and Jamie. “They had your faces, you know?”

  “Jesus wept,” Jamie whispered. “The police? I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t you?” I did. Who better, to take and hide hostages? They had the organisation and the facilities both, they had the temperament and the cause; oh, they’d love the chance to hit back at the family that had kept them down so long. Nor would they have any qualms about killing, some of them, if they only saw an excuse.

  “Yeah,” Jamie conceded, back on track with the way my thoughts were trekking. “All right. But—fuck, Ben, the girls...!”

  Laura and Janice, gone to ask questions. I’ve got friends at court, Janice had said; but her friends might not prove so friendly, once they understood where the questions were leading.

  “I’ve got to find a phone,” Jamie said, and I could see him sweating in the sunlight, could feel the cold prickle of the same sweat on my skin.

  “Here.” Charlie had a mobile in his pocket: a tool of the trade, no doubt. “Just don’t say my name, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Jamie took it, turned it on, punched his own phone’s number with fevered fingers. And stood listening, the embodiment of stillness; and then slowly, too slowly took the phone from his ear, gazed blankly down at it, said, “There’s no answer, it’s been switched off.”

  I guess we all blanked for a moment, just like Jamie; then leapt to awful conclusions, just as Jamie so clearly had; and then some of us at least tried to scramble back from there, tried to find any other reason that would at least go halfway to making sense.

  Jon did best, he almost sounded convincing. “Last time I was in a hospital,” he said hesitantly, “there was a sign by the door asking people to turn their phones off. The frequencies interfered with some of the equipment, it said. Could be the same at a police station, couldn’t it? All those computers and radios and stuff, it’s bound to be a problem.”

  Can’t speak for everyone, but I at least watched Jamie and held my breath, waiting for Charlie to say yes, he’d seen a notice just like that, seen it often on his arrested evenings.

  He let us down, though, he didn’t say a word until Jamie asked him a question. And then actually it wasn’t a word, it was a number the kid clearly carried graven into his skull; and Jamie pressed the buttons though I didn’t think it was a very good idea at all, and when his call was answered he said,

  “Hullo, could I have the desk sergeant, please? ... Right, hi. I’m just trying to find some people, a couple of girls who said they’d be calling by the station to see someone there... No, I don’t know who. The girls’ names are Laura Grainger and Janice, Janice...?”

  “Mackay,” said Jon.

  “Janice Mackay, she’s a law student... Oh. You’re sure? ... Yes, of course. No, never mind. Thank you...”

  And he switched the phone off and handed it back to Charlie, who took it gingerly, as though it were suddenly hot; and I thought it might be, if the police had a machine to tell them what number a mobile call was coming from. Most likely they did, and Charlie would pay a penalty for this. I could see him flinching already, in anticipation.

  “He said the girls haven’t been there,” Jamie told us, though he really didn’t need to. “Never heard of them, he said, no civilian visitors this day. And could he take my name, please? He was very keen on that. I think he was lying through his teeth, I think they’ve got them.”

  Of course he was lying, of course they’d got the girls. Two more hostages they’d got, and one who mattered more than any, to two of us; and us the most puissant perhaps of their opposition, and totally stymied now. Jamie needn’t have withheld his name, they’d know it by now in any case. The least threat against Laura in her pregnancy, it was a safe bet that Janice would tell all. No point holding back small information against great risks.

  At least I hoped, I prayed she’d see it like that, I prayed we’d been betrayed already.

  Jamie was looking up, checking out the sky on my behalf, as he’d spent half a lifetime checking it out on his own. No danger of its clouding up, only fluffy little white things that couldn’t block me for more than a few seconds; my turn to track him, I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “We’re going round there. We’re going to get her, them, back. You can do that for us, Ben.”

  “No, I can’t,” I said. “Don’t be thick, bro. Not a lot of windows, I bet, on the way down to the cells, are there, Charlie?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “No. So we can’t just run in, blast the doors off all the cells, find the girls and run out again. It’d have to be a demolition job, from outside. Take us a long time to find them, that way. Plenty of time for the cops to arrange another death in the family, and why the hell wouldn’t they?”

  Jamie glared at me for my good sense, then muttered, “If we, if we took hostages too, we could swap ’em...”

  “I doubt it. Why would they? We couldn’t kill ours without reprisals, we couldn’t risk that, and a hostage you can’t damage is no hostage at all.” Besides, I’d had my fill of killing helpless policemen, I didn’t want to do it any more.

  “Well, what, then? What are you saying, that we just leave it? So next time your fucking father loses his rag, when we’re all waiting to see who floats up on the tide this time, you and me are going to be down there beachcombing just in case it’s Laura? One in six chance, I don’t like the odds, Ben.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. We need to be clever, is what I’m saying. Subtle. We know who they are,” and they know who we are, “so we can outthink them. What we don’t do is get into a fight, we’re not the big battalions any more. Let’s find a pub,” always my prescription, a universal sedative, “have a drink and talk it through, okay?”

  Wrap my hands around a pint glass so no one could see how they were sweating, hide in a shady corner not to have lights gleaming off my skin, cut myself off from dangerous sunlight like a man in terror locking up his weapons, for fear he should use them to his own destruction...

  Eight: How To Get Ahead

  Actually it was maybe not such a good idea in retrospect, in view of what fell out.

  Finding a pub was no problem, there were several to choose from; a shady corner was easy also, and we dropped into it. Sent Jon to the bar, not to have any difficulties with the landlord peering beneath my cap or Jamie’s, and soon we had the requisite pints in our hands and all the afternoon ahead of us to drink them.

  But.

  Pubs make good hiding-places and alcohol’s a fine substitute for action, but.

  But this was lunch, this bitter-sweet liquid; and Jamie and I, we couldn’t get enough of it. Not enough, at least, to stop our minds from running on parallel tracks. Laura’s a prisoner, and she’s pregnant. She’s a hostage, and she’s pregnant, and I love her.

  Every time our eyes met and I saw my pale face reflected in his, my harsh and jagged thoughts, fears, anticipations burn in his mind as brightly as my own; every time either one of us, any one of the four of us tried to talk sensibly about the thing; every time we all of us fell silent at the enormity, the impossibility of talking while the thing held true. Each and every moment we were in there, is what it came down to, Jamie and I were gripped and torn and tortured by that single universal fact, that one more g
irl had been added to the list of the taken and this time we weren’t just angry, or just afraid. We were crushed, overwhelmed, all but obliterated. Never mind that Janice had been taken too, never mind what I had minded so much before, that members of my family were taken. Laura—pregnant Laura, beloved Laura—eclipsed them all.

  My life, both our lives seemed too light to offer in exchange, they didn’t make the weight; but if we couldn’t fight and we couldn’t rescue then we had nothing else, no other response to give. If we’d believed that the girls, that only one of the girls would walk free as a consequence, I think Jamie and I would both have not walked but run to the police station right then; we’d have given ourselves over quite willingly to death or torture or long years of hostagery, we’d have turned Judas and betrayed every relative we had, we’d have led them all into a trap and laughed to do it, if only Laura could have her liberty in return.

  And of course we had the right intermediary. Charlie was there with his contacts and his mobile phone, he’d set the deal up for us. Without a qualm, I thought. But no, we didn’t trust the police, we didn’t even need to discuss it. Just as well, given how mute we were, how despairing, how far from rational discussion.

  We drank to fill the silence, to fill our bellies and our heads. Alcohol of course is a depressant, though we didn’t need that; but it’s also a relaxant and there at least it could help us and it did, working against what was drawing muscle-tissues and tendons so tight they might have snapped independently, like piano-strings in a sudden summer frost.

  And maybe it relaxed something in our heads also, some early-warning system that might have bleated caution at us, danger ahead. There must be something of that, a gland of foretelling that science can’t recognise. Why else does instinct still rise up against rationality, prickling the scalp and the spine, being right too often for coincidence? If it is there and if it had done its job that day it might even have been listened to, we were so frightened for Laura; but alcohol suppressed it or incoherence overrode it or else it doesn’t exist after all, because I felt nothing but anxious excitement when Jon said, out of the blue, “There might be a way to get at them, Ben. To get the girls out of there.”

  “Yeah? How?” I demanded, meaning I don’t believe it, let’s hear it, you keep setting ’em up and I’ll keep knocking ’em down, theories like pints, let’s be having ’em.

  “Start a fire,” he said. “In the station. Up on the top floors, nowhere near the cells, but they’d have to evacuate anyway, and once they bring everyone outside...”

  I shook my head; it was Jamie who did the dashing with cold water. “We can’t risk that, Jonathan. You know that, for Christ’s sake, we can’t risk anything.”

  “What’s the risk?”

  “They’d know it was us. Of course they would. We track ’em down and suddenly the station catches fire? Just like that? They’re not stupid.”

  Neither stupid nor generous; they’d make us pay. Leave the girls in the cells, perhaps, let them smell the smoke; let them roast if the fire got that far. Or roast one of them as a warning, drag her up to the burning floors and set her alight, push her out of the window so that she fell like a signal flare, this is stupid, boys...

  And it might be any one of the girls, the women; and it might very well be Laura.

  Jon wasn’t giving up, though, he was still talking. I tuned in again from the hissing, the crackling and roaring, the screaming in my head; and heard him say, “In daylight, though. It’s different, if it happens in daylight.”

  “How?” Jamie demanded.

  “The police may not be stupid, but they are conditioned. Like everyone in this town, you lot included. If the station catches fire before sunset, no one’s going to think Macallan. Are they? Your magic only works at night, everyone knows that.”

  I took a breath and wondered, felt Jamie doing the same at my side. Was it true, was it still true, who knew about me? I couldn’t answer that, neither could he; we glanced at Charlie, who was scowling.

  “So how are you going to do that, then? Set it on fire in daylight?”

  That was an answer, of sorts. If the word wasn’t on the streets yet, neither two years after I’d first used my talent nor a full day after I’d most recently used it, then pretty much nobody knew. The police might, just might be an exception; but they were a leaky crew, what went in usually came out again. Usually via agents like Charlie, who would pick up gossip alongside their bruises.

  “It’s a talent,” I said to him; and to Jamie, “I think I could make it look like a regular fire, too.”

  “You’d have to.” Macallans traditionally have their own patent flame, that burns cold and destroys without consuming. Like any true magic, it runs utterly counter to everything my physics teacher ever taught me. But in this as in everything, my own talent seemed to run counter on its own account. My dayfire was at least hot and it would set other things alight, though not itself go out when they turned their extinguishers on it.

  Jamie was looking hopeful, tell me you can do this, say it again, say it louder; so I did. “I can. I’m sure I can.”

  It was the alcohol talking, maybe, as much as poor timorous Ben, false fleeting perjured Benedict; but it spoke well and convincingly, it caught us all, it led us hopefully through what was left in our glasses and so out of the pub.

  Where Charlie stopped dead in the lead, turned to look at the three of us and said, “I’m not coming with you, mind.”

  “No, sure.” No reason why he should; nothing he could do, no need to endanger civilians and friends. I wanted Jon absent too, though I didn’t think I’d get that.

  “I’m going back to my room,” he said a little belligerently, “I’m packing my gear and I’m getting out. Moving on. If you’re starting a war with the filth...”

  “They started it,” Jamie said; but Charlie was right, he was wise. He’d be best out of town.

  “Where will you go?” I asked, good manners mixed with guilt, that we were driving him off an established patch and wrecking a lifestyle he seemed to have pretty well sussed, despite the bruises.

  He shrugged. “North, south. Depends on the trains.” Either he didn’t know or he wasn’t telling, which was fair either way; but he wasn’t leaving us either, not immediately, he was still standing there, waiting for something.

  I’m slow sometimes, but not that slow. Jon’s face said he’d made Charlie a promise, they’ll see you right, for the information. Charlie’s face said it had all suddenly got more expensive.

  I didn’t even sigh, I just took out my purse and fished for what notes I had left. Jamie saw, clicked, produced his wallet; between the two of us, I think we made Charlie as happy as he could be in the circumstances. We covered the cost of his ticket at least, whichever way he went, however far.

  o0o

  Then he did leave us, after we’d said goodbye and thank you and good luck, after Jon had hugged him hard and kissed him sweetly on the cheek that wasn’t marked; and we three headed off up the steps again and up the hill to where the police station stood like a monument to Sixties graft, an edifice in concrete topped by a radio mast whose supporting wires were a roost for a thousand starlings.

  o0o

  It was those wires, I guess, that focused my idea. A place like that, humming with power, crackling with static—it’s really not going to be a surprise if they have an electric fire. And all right, circumstances were unusual, the timing might be suspicious; but a place like that, humming with corruption, where every hand wore a knuckleduster and had fresh shit under its nails—they had so many enemies, any timing was going to be suspicious. There’d always be someone keen to set a little heat under their feet. My family would be prime suspect, to be sure, by definition; but as Jon had said, with any luck at all my family would be discounted, if we struck before the sun went down.

  So I looked, saw the starlings cloud and wheel, saw the wires that ran from the warm air to the cold guts of this building, this grey machine; and I thought ligh
tning, wondered if I could imitate nature at her finest, making like the hand of God.

  But no clouds, no prospect of storm, and that I couldn’t summon up. No Prospero, me, despite the convenient aerial. Lightning without storm would bespeak Macallan despite the light; I couldn’t chance it.

  For a couple of minutes I just stood in the street there, looking. Birds, wires; concrete, glass.

  Eventually Jamie nudged me, murmured, “Better move, Ben. We’re going to look conspicuous, else.”

  True enough. Lads hanging on street corners were not exactly an uncommon sight, but to a suspicious mind all people perhaps appear suspicious. And the police had reason enough to be watchful, and if they were watching we were a touch too old to be utterly convincing, minute by minute our caps would look less fashion and more disguise, my concentration too intense.

  So we drifted down a side-street, trying to amble although I was still looking, still thinking birds and wires, concrete and glass.

  Around the back of the station, a high wall with sheet-metal gates concealed and contained their motor pool. The gates were open, but that was no better a place to stand and stare. Cameras watched us like birds on steel poles, in steel boxes with steel spikes arrayed below, a new institution and all unpainted. Cheap and utilitarian, perhaps, but the effect went way beyond the budget. Whether they’d budgeted for that I couldn’t guess, but those angular, galvanic structures encouraged an Orwellian paranoia, at least in me: the sense of someone watching and not trying to hide it, faceless but ever-present and wanting you to know it. Me, I thought that was hubris on the part of the police, unless it was an essential stroke to their much-damaged egos. Couldn’t be easy being smart but not smart enough, strong but not strong enough, always second best. Salieri meets Mozart, I thought, and maybe he really had murdered the little bastard. Maybe murder was the only possible resolution, in the end.