booksnew/source/Bane/Bane18.txt

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Paddy waited impatiently for me as I put on my treks and settled
for my old denim jacket. I slipped my penknife into the pocket of
my jeans, and on impulse I picked up the smooth old stone from
the dresser and shoved it into my jacket pocket. It was hard and
warm, a touchstone under my hand. At the door, I paused at the
old umbrella rack that had stood there since before I was born, and
I picked out the smooth, worn walking stick of my grandfather’s. I
plucked my ancient fishing hat from the top spike, a battered old
affair with a peak that was threadbare and bent out of shape, with a
couple of antique flies irretrievably embedded in the green cloth.
This I spun in the air and plunked down on Paddy’s head, fiicking
the peak up so I could see her eyes.
‘Right. Now we’re all set for the wilderness,’ I said. ‘Just watch
out for the bear, kid.’
I opened the front door and was just stepping through, still
looking down at Paddy’s grin, when I bumped smack into Jimmy
Allison whose fist was raised high, caught in mid flight on the first
knock.
‘Jimmy,’ I said. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’
His hand stayed in mid-air, big and gnarled, and swollen at the
joints where the corkscrew of arthritis was digging inexorably. His
eyes were bloodshot and wide. He stared at me for quite a while
and I could hear his breath rasp heavily in his throat. There was
something wrong with him.
‘Jimmy, are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Where is it?’
‘What?’
‘Where is it? You’ve got it.’ .
‘Where’s what?’ I asked.
‘My book, you damned thief. You’ve stolen my book. And I
want it back.’ His voice was hoarse and he seemed really wound
up, like the tension rope on an old frame saw. I just stood agape.
‘Give me it back, you bastard. Thought you’d get away with it,
did you? Thought you’d steal my book and have it published
yourself? After all I’ve done for you, you little bastard.’ He
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snarled , and I was standing close enough to feel a spray of spittle on
my face. Paddy’s hand, which had been holding mine, clenched
tight.
‘Wait a minute Jimmy. That’s no language in front of the
youngster,’ I said, nodding down towards Paddy, who was staring
up, her eyes flicking from me to him.
‘Don’t give me any of your excuses, you dirty thief. You’ve
stolen what’s mine, and I’ve come to get it back,’ he said, spitting
more flecks at me. Some of them had gathered at the corner of his
mouth and were working themselves into a revolting lather.
Before I could reply, Jimmy blundered past me in the hallway.
His big frame nearly filled the narrow space. For some reason, I
noticed that his shirt had been buttoned wrongly, and that this was
the first time I’d seen him outside his own house without a tie on.
He hadn’t shaved either, and the grey and white bristles on his
cheeks gave him an unkempt, trampish look. The weird expression
in his eyes was something else.
Jimmy lumbered into the living room and I followed him, pulling
Paddy along with me. She stuck right at my heels, keeping me
between herself and Jimmy. From the room I could hear things
being moved about and when I looked through the doorway Jimmy
was rummaging about, scattering books and papers on the floor.
‘Right, Jimmy, enough’s enough,’ I said. ‘It’s bad enough you
coming down here drunk and talking like that in front of a kid, but
you’ve gone too far.’ I walked towards him, leaving Paddy
standing at the doorway, and took Jimmy by the elbow. He swung
round and shoved me away and I skittered backwards in surprise
and landed in the easy chair. Behind me, I heard the girl give a little
cry of fear. I leapt up again quickly and faced him.
‘OK, Jimmy. I’m not going to argue with you. Tell me what it is
you want and you can have it. And I’ll see you when you’re sober
enough to apologise}
‘Give me my book. You took it away. I want it back. Now.
Now! ’ he shouted, his voice rising up the scale.
‘Oh, your history? Is that it? Well, you can have it back. Just
don’t touch anything else.’ He kept on rummaging, opening
drawers and turning out the contents on to the floor. The place was
a mess. I was torn between absolute fury at Jimmy’s behaviour,
and disgust at what I was witnessing. I had never, in all my life,
seen the old man like this. I would have been hard pressed to even
remember seeing him angry. I crossed over to the far side of the
room to where I’d put the box with all his papers and jottings down
in the corner beside the old dark dresser, and hefted it in my arms.
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‘Is this what you came for? The book? Well here it is.’
Jimmy turned and his red-rimmed eyes fastened on the box
greedily. He whipped it quickly out of my hands and clasped it hard
against his chest. There was still foam at the corners of his mouth,
and he grinned, and then he let out a little laugh that was more
chilling than any display of anger.
‘Take it and go, Jimmy. Just go now,’ I said. I was shaking a bit,
from anger or dismay, and I’m sure it showed in my voice. I’m also
sure he didn’t notice.
He giggled again, a sly, triumphant little laugh that was chilling,
and almost ran out of the room. Paddy shrank back into the
hallway as he went past, as if she was afraid he’d turn on her, or
maybe just knock her down and trample her. I was suddenly afraid
of that too, but Jimmy didn’t even notice her.
His mind was totally wrapped around the box and its contents, as
tightly as the arms that clutched it to his chest, and he blundered up
the hallway and out of the front door like a looter getting out
before he hears the sirens. I took Paddy’s hand and we went out
into the pathway and watched as the old man hurried up the middle
of the street, half walking, half running, his coat flapping behind
him.
That was the last time I saw Jimmy Allison alive.
I loved that old man, and I believe I’ve told you already what he
meant to me.
He scurried away and went home and some time later he was
found there, lying at the bottom of his stairs, in a crumpled heap.
His neck was broken, and nobody knew whether he had fallen or
had thrown himself down the narrow flight. He was still wearing his
coat and his shirt was done up wrongly, and I’m sorry now that I
was angry and disgusted with him that last time.
Paddy asked me what was wrong with the old man, and I told her
I didn’t know.
‘Isn’t he a friend of yours?’ she said. ‘He was with us at the
festival.’
‘That’s right, but I think he’s not very well today. I’m sorry you
were scared}
‘I’m not scared as long as you’re there}
‘We’ll thank you ma’am, for that big vote of coni‘idence,’ I said,
trying to raise the mood and shake off the bad taste that Jimmy’s
visit had left under my tongue.
I twirled the rough walking stick around like the fox in Pinocchio
and made a deep bow.
‘Care to walk out with me, ma’am?’ I said, smiling as widely and
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as genuinely as I could. She caught on and took my extended hand.
‘Why thank you sir, I’d love to,’ she said, and laughed her
momentary fear away. I flicked down the peak of the iishing cap
and she said ‘Hey, watch it, buster’, and we went down the path
and out through the gate. We went the opposite way from Jimmy
Allison.
As we got to the corner of the street and took a left that would
take us in a sweeping curve thro ugh Westbay and up on to the main
street, there was a wail of a siren up ahead starting in the east of
town and getting louder as it got level with us, then dopplering
down in ilat tones as it gained distance in the direction of
Levenford.
‘What’s that? A cop car?’ Paddy asked.
‘Don’t know, sunshine. Maybe an ambulance, or even a fire
engine.’
‘Pity we missed it. I ain’t seen a fire engine here.’
‘Haven’t seen,’ I corrected.
‘Right. Haven’t. Where’s it going anyhow?’
‘I don’t know. Probably out of town. Sometimes the Kirkland
brigade gets called out to help out at Levenford and vice versa.
Might not even be a fire engine anyway. It’ll be long gone by the
time we get up to the main street}
When we got up to the middle of the town and past the shops, the
place was fairly quiet, which was strange for a Monday morning.
There was hardly anybody about, and I could see at a glance that a
few of the shops hadn’t even opened yet, which was even more
strange. Mary Baker’s was still closed, and there was nobody in
Tom Muir’s butcher’s shop which normally had a queue at this time
in the morning. The red—faced shopkeeper was standing behind his
white marble counter and he tipped his white paper hat to us as we
passed, before going back to sharpening one of his big knives on
the long whet with the practised ease of long experience.
A woman passed us and we both said hello, but she didn’t
acknowledge, and Paddy and I looked at each other. There was a
clatter, and we both turned and the woman was still walking slowly
along, but she’d let go one of the handles of her shopping bag and a
can of fruit or beans had rolled out on to the pavement and
continued across to the kerb before toppling slowly into the street.
Paddy let go of my hand and skipped back and picked the can up
and caught up with the woman. When she got level, she handed it
to her and the woman took it. Paddy came back to me and I
watched as the woman looked at the can in her hand as if she didn’t
know how it had got there. She was still looking at it when I turned
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with a shrug and continued along the road. We had got a few
hundred yards along the main street when I turned back, and the
woman was still there and still staring, as far as I could see from that
distance, at the can Paddy had given her. Weird, I thought.
There was hardly anybody else about. It felt as if Paddy and I
were walking through a ghost town.
Out towards the Milligs it still looked as if Arden was having a
lie—in after the exertions of the harvest festival, but when we got to
the bridge that went across Strowan’s Water, just as I was going to
turn left and take the path that would lead us up the valley, I saw a
pall of smoke further ahead and caught, through the trees, the
sapphire-blue sparkle of a flashing police light.
‘What’s that?’ Paddy asked, pointing ahead.
‘I don’t know. Looks like a fire, or maybe an accident.’
Just as I said that my stomach did a slow, lazy flip, turned itself
over as if the ground had just disappeared from beneath my feet,
and suddenly I was shaken with a wave of certain dread. I
remembered the rumbling, thundery noise I had heard as we
motored down from Barbara’s place — a deep, growl that seemed to
shake the jeep. I had assumed it was thunder and I remember
thinking that Barbara should take it easy if we did get a sudden
rainstorm.
But it had come from the east of town. Suddenly I was sure of
that. And the clouds that were far out over the firth were still far in
the west. The thunder had come only five minutes or so after
Barbara had left us. A cold, knife—hard fear probed at the back of
my head and instantly I didn’t want to walk a step further.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We have to go quickly.’ And we ran towards
the flashing lights and that tower of smoke that was piling up high
into the sky. Paddy kept up with me easily and we got along past
the curve at Milligs and raced along the road to where I could see,
in the distance, a couple of police cars and an ambulance blocking
the road. There was a fire engine there too.
Even from several hundred yards away, and despite the trees
that hid most of the scene, I could hear that loud crashing roar that
sounded like a giant blowtorch, and above the trees there was a
sheet of flame that sent tongues of fire licking high. The smoke
billowed upwards in a huge cloud.
My heart started thudding heavily in my chest and I wished I had
felt fitter, but we covered the distance and got up to where the cars
were parked just at this side of the Kilmalid Bridge, the old stone
hump-back that spanned the stream that ran past the far edge of
the Milligs and down to the mudflats. There were a lot of men,
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police and firemen running about, and not much else to see, unless
you counted the thirty-foot wall of ilame that seemed to spout up
from the stream itself. The heat, from almost forty yards away, was
intense, and I felt a searing gust on my face. I stopped to look,
stunned by the white heat, and with my left arm I made sure Paddy
was behind me.
The Kilmalid Bridge had gone. There was nothing left to span
the stream, and there was a moraine of rocks and stone all round,
scattered across the street and on the verge. The air was shimmer-
ing and, through eyes that were already watering, I could see the
hulking shape of a lorry or tractor in the middle of the flames,
angled down towards the stream. Even without the heat haze, it
looked like a twisted mass that glowed white and red. And there
_ wasn’t that much of it.
One of the policemen turned round and saw us standing there,
and waved his hands at us. Over the roaring of the fire, his words
were lost, but there was no mistaking the gesture. He was a lot
closer to the ilames than we were — and it must have been damned
hot where he was, and he wanted us to stay well clear. I took the
hint.
I pushed Paddy ahead of me in the opposite direction from the
inferno, crossing at the same time to the north side of the road,
_ where there was some shelter in the trees. We got under the spread
of an oak, well out of the heat, and sat down.
‘What’s happened, Nicky?’
‘I’m not sure, Paddy. There’s been an accident, but I think we’d
better stay well away. It looks pretty hot out there.’
‘It is pretty hot,’ she said. ‘It’s like when mom opens up the
oven.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and again that sick feeling of dread stole in.
For some reason, I had to get across to the other side of the
demolished bridge and find out who was in that wreck.
We sat there until I got my breath back and Paddy stared at me
from under the peak of my hat. She looked solemn and a bit
scared. So was I. After a few minutes, I stood up and took her hand
again, and instead of going along the road I headed into the trees
and down the slope towards the burn, maybe sixty yards north of
the road. The stream was fairly full, despite the dry spell, but we
had no difficulty in crossing it, far from where the action was. t
When we were on the other side of the burn, we continued along a
well-worn path until we were a good distance from that dreadful
gusher of flame. Down on the main road — the Kilcreggan Road
again — we followed the hedgerow until I could see another fire
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engine on this side of the bridge. I told Paddy to wait there and she
sat down on a tussock of grass obediently and nodded when I told
her not to move. Her eyes were wide and glassy. She knew that
something had happened and she didn’t know what, but I knew
without being told that she had had that dreadful sinking feeling
that, whatever it was, it had something to do with her.
I stepped out from the hedge and sprinted towards the bridge.
There were two flre engines, obviously from Levenford, and two
teams of men in their yellow helmets were wrestling with thick
hoses, straining to aim their hard jets of water at the centre of the
flames. Out of the corner of my eye, in a small stand of trees and
sapplings, I saw a car that was angled off the road, on its side. My
heart did a dive and then it started thudding in my ears. It was
Barbara’s Volvo estate, crumpled in on the passenger side. The
front end had concertinaed and a wheel had sheared off. The
windscreen was gone, and even as I turned to look directly at it, I
saw the red mush that covered the white of the bent bonnet. I could
feel my breakfast make a bid for release and swallowed hard
against it. I turned back towards the flre and, as I did so, I saw
something, maybe a rag, fluttering limply in the fork of a sapling,
white and red among the green. It wasn’t until later that I realised
what it was.
There was another police car, parked well behind the fire
engines, and a uniformed officer standing well behind that. The
roar from the flames was enormous, and when I reached him I had
to shout to be heard.
He tried to tell me to get back, but I shook my head. I pointed
back to the wrecked Volvo and yelled in his ear.
‘What happened to the driver?’
‘Hospital. Ambulance has just gone,’ he shouted into my ear.
‘Alive?’ _
‘Dunno. Couldn’t tell. Looked pretty bad. Blood everywhere}
The left side of the policeman’s face was red from the heat of the
flames, giving him a two-toned look.
‘Which hospital?’ I asked, and again he shrugged.
‘Western Infirmary, most likely.’
‘What happened here‘?’
‘Petrol tanker came off and hit the gas pipe.’
That explained the flames. From where we stood we had to
shield our eyes against them, and I had to hand it to the firemen
who were a lot closer in than we were, still huddled over their
writhing snakes, jetting water into the heat.
‘Must have gone up like a bomb,’ the man said.
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The main gas pipe spanned the burn a couple of yards
downstream from the old bridge. It was an unofficial bridge that
kids from Arden had used since time immemorial, balancing on
the two—foot wide shiny black surface, teetering across its smooth
length, with a jam—jar full of sticklebacks or minnows. Now there
was nothing left of the pipe, a great hole where the bridge used to
be, and just a white—hot tangle of wreckage that used to be the cab
and the bowser of the petrol tanker.
I stood mesmerised by the giant blowtorch and I wished to God
somebody would go and turn the gas off. The firemen were never
going to be able to put out that fire, no matter how much water they
threw on it. I left the policeman at his post and went back to where
Paddy was still sitting quietly, and I didn’t even look at the
wreckage of Barbara’s estate car in the grove. If I had, I’m sure I
would have been sick. I didn’t want Paddy to see me throwing up. I
didn’t know what I was going to tell her.
She looked up at me from under the peak, still holding on to my
walking stick like a little shepherdess, with inquiry in her eyes. I sat
down and put my arm around her narrow shoulders, and two big
tears sprang up and rolled down her cheeks.
‘Is it my mommy?’ she asked. ‘Is she dead?’
I pushed myself back and looked down at her, wondering how
the hell she’d read my mind.
‘What makes you ask that?’ I asked, backing out of the question.
Paddy didn’t say anything. She just pointed past me, through a
gap in the hedge that looked on to a curve in the road. At the other
side of the curve, I could see clearly the battered and bent shell of
the Volvo. I had made Paddy sit here alone in the one place that
gave her a window on to the wreckage.
I fumbled for words, casting about blindly, and came up with
nothing. All I had was the truth.
‘It’s your mum’s car,’ I said. It sounded like a confession. ‘I don’t
know what happened, but they’ve taken her to hospita1.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘I think she’s hurt. I don’t know how bad. But we’re going to find
out right now.’
Tears were rolling in a steady chain down her cheeks and I felt
her give a little sob. But that was all. I gave her what I thought was
a reassuring hug and I felt I could have done with one myself.
‘Come on, let’s go and find out. We’d better go quickly, ’cause
your mum’ll need us right now.’
I helped Paddy to her feet and took her hand again and she just
came with me, her face blank, but the tears still rolling. I wished I
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hadn’t sat her on that tussock. I could have spun her a line, maybe,
delayed the moment, but I hadn’t and there was nothing I could do
about it. We crossed back through the trees and over the stream to
the far side, and by the time we got past the roaring of the fire
geyser I just picked her up and carried her. The fast walk back to
my place seemed to take for ever. Paddy just put her head into the
curve of my neck and soaked me with those big tears and I felt sick
for her.
Back at the house I tried to phone the ambulance service and the
police, but there was nothing but static on the line. I didn’t know
right then, but discovered soon after, that the explosion that had
wrecked the bridge had also burned away the telephone cable and
the main power line that serviced half of the town, in one neat
blast. All the time I was trying to get a line, Paddy kept looking at
me with hope and fear and misery fighting for pole position in her
eyes. I didn’t have the guts to look away.
Finally I gave up and decided that we just had to go. Getting out
to where we could find out what had happened to her was better
than sitting here fretting. In a couple of minutes I had Paddy
strapped in the jeep and we were heading towards Kirkland to
double across the moor road, taking the long way round. I was in a
panic the whole time. Paddy said very little.
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