The Rat Stone Serenade

by Denzil Meyrick

  Ignatius More stood behind the huge doors of the ballroom. He’d managed to place the thick metal bar between the handles just before the screaming and gun fire had started.

  He was breathing heavily and, despite the cold of the night, could feel perspiration running down his nose.

  He hated being in this house, hated being anywhere near the Shannon family. Each time he saw a member of the family, he felt anew every one of the hundreds of lashes he’d had to endure over the years. They’d taken him from the orphanage where he’d been deposited as a little boy and sailed him across the world to be a slave on one of the huge farms Shannon Agricultural owned in the Northern Territory. He often wondered how many other children had suffered the same fate. Taken from the UK to a strange land, to be battered and cowed until they were broken, by brutal sheep farmers who cared more about their animals than the children under their care.

  He had loved his adoptive mother, though. He remembered seeing her for the last time, her face swollen and bruised where his father had battered her. He’d told the doctors she’d been in a road traffic accident. Whether they believed it or not made little difference. It was the seventies in the Northern Territory, where men were men and their word was their word. More had managed to escape, to build a new life, some months before. She hadn’t.

  He’d made it to her bedside just in time. As he held her hand the old woman whispered to him, ‘I love you, son.’

  She held on for a few more hours, but spoke no more.

  He saw to her funeral, which his adoptive father did not attend. Despite his better judgement, and even though he was free of the man who had brutalised him for so long, he made his way back to the farmhouse one final time.

  The old man was in the yard. He’d grown deaf over the years but he was still fit, a life on the farm leaving his shoulders broad and his forearms thick. He was bent over a piece of machinery as the boy he had beaten throughout his childhood crept up behind him and hit him over and over again with a heavy shovel.

  Then More walked back into the hell that had once been his home and looked at the bureau: Property of Shannon Agricultural (Australia) Ltd.

  He removed the tiny brass plate before setting fire to the old piece of furniture and then walked up to a nearby rise to watch the property blaze. He’d thrown what was left of the man he called his father into the house as the flames began to lick at the sides of the white wooden building.

  Now, More pulled the brass plate from his pocket. He’d carried it everywhere with him since that day, and it felt familiar in his hand as he rubbed it for the last time.

  He remembered the face of his wife – too young and too beautiful to die – and flung the brass plate on the ground. Picking up the first jerry can, he sloshed petrol down the long corridor outside the ballroom.

  Daley watched Brady. He couldn’t be sure he hadn’t played a direct role in any part of the horror he had faced at the Rat Stone, but for some reason he doubted it. Brady seemed too focused, too determined, to be part of the insane cult – yet here he was in robes, clearly at the heart of whatever was being perpetrated against the Shannons.

  ‘I want you all to listen!’ shouted Brady. ‘I was brought up in rural Ireland. Our life there was quiet, we lived on a small farm on the west coast. Big skies, green hills, rain. Hey, it was Ireland, right.’ He chuckled mirthlessly. ‘But I remember, every night I would wake up, my heart beating in my chest. I could never work out why.

  ‘One summer – oh, I’d have been about twelve years old – a man came to call. He was old. A big man, with broad shoulders and huge hands. He took me away from my folks to his cottage up in the hills. We fished, we hunted, we talked. He told me how he’d been watching over me for a long time, how he had plans for me. I was clever at school and he wanted me to be cleverer.’ Brady walked slowly down the room. Behind him, the guns of the remaining security guards were trained on Daley, Scott and Symington, who returned the compliment with the weapons they had recovered.

  ‘When I finished up in the village school, he came back. My folks packed my bags and said goodbye. I went with the big guy. First to Boston, where I went to high school, then to New York. I was a clever kid and he encouraged me to be the best at everything I did. I ended up at Harvard. And the rest, you know. Well, most of it.’

  Daley was listening carefully when he smelled something, a sharp, pungent smell. He turned towards the main group, still huddled around the door, now convinced he was smelling petrol. Quietly, he tried to attract Scott’s attention as Brady carried on with his story.

  ‘To cut a long story short, the old man was dying. He was over ninety. He asked me to go to his house. I was working on Wall Street at the time – still wet between the ears but I knew who was who. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into that room. There was my boss from the trading floor; an old college professor; the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the city; even a Senator. That was the night I became one of the brotherhood. That’s when I became a member of the Society of the Golden Bough.’

  ‘A druid. Well, well, such a surprise,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘It’s taken me a long way. I don’t concern myself with all that sacrifice bullshit. That’s in place as the opium of the stupid – the foot soldiers. Keeps them working hard, fighting for the cause.’

  ‘The cause? To kill, maim and commit all manner of perversion?’ shouted Symington. ‘Your followers nearly killed DCI Daley. We know what they’ve been responsible for in the last few days. There’s nothing noble or glamorous about a collection of deranged sadists.’

  ‘There’s nothing noble or glamorous about a company that kills and maims thousands, ruins our planet and everything that lives in it, motivated by pure greed. Someone needs to hold the corporate world to account. Someone needs to champion our world. It has been our duty, our privilege, for millennia.’

  ‘And leaping about in cloaks killing people in the most cruel and degrading way possible is championing the planet? I never had you down for a psychopath, Charles,’ said Ailsa, the disgust plain in her voice.

  ‘There are many things that even you don’t know about me, Mrs Shannon,’ replied Brady, with a smile.

  45

  Dunn scrabbled and slipped through the drifts, trying to stay off the cleared pathway, which was slick beneath a fresh layer of snow. She’d already fallen and grazed both knees. They ached as she pushed on, her chest burning as she gasped for breath in the cold air. She’d left Jock behind; despite being fit for his years, he couldn’t keep up. He had urged her to push on to the first cottage, where its occupant, Tom Fletcher, would raise the village in order to save the Shannons.

  As Dunn struggled on, she realised that she didn’t give a damn about the rich family or their clifftop mansion. She was doing it for one person only: Jim Daley. She’d nearly lost him to the Rat Stone, she wasn’t ever going to let that happen again. She repeated this to herself, whimpering, as she forced herself to push onwards as fast as she could.

  Up ahead, she saw a tiny light. She lengthened her stride and hurried towards the flickering candle flame.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ shouted Daley, interrupting Brady’s story.

  ‘You do, Mr Daley? Be my guest, we’ve got all night. Well, some of us have,’ he said, looking at his captives.

  ‘If you intend to set fire to the house, I’ll have to stop you. You must realise that.’

  ‘Who mentioned burning down the house? I’ve got a much better plan than that.’

  ‘Can’t you smell the petrol, Brady?’

  He sniffed the air and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sure, I can smell it. What do you intend to do about it? I tell you what, fix the problem, if there is one, and you can have Nadia.

  Don’t fix it, or fuck me about, and you can have her back with her throat cut. You got me?’

  Daley looked at Scott. ‘One wrong move, aim for him, Brian,’ he said, making sure Brady could hear. ‘As far as I know, there’s only one way down from here, and it’s thr
ough those doors.’

  ‘Don’t you think the bastard’s at it, Jimmy?’ asked Scott.

  ‘Who else would be trying tae torch the place?’

  ‘Oh, and if you’re not back in twenty minutes . . .’ Brady looked at Nadia and raised his gun to her temple.

  Daley took his machine gun and elbowed his way through the crowd of people. The closer he got to the huge doors, the stronger the smell of petrol became. He tugged at the large brass handle, but the doors wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Is this the only way out?’

  After a mumble amongst what remained of the Shannon AGM, an old woman spoke. ‘The only alternative is via the balcony terrace. There’s a service path. It was used to string lights along the front of the building. But you’d need a harness – in this weather you could never keep your feet. It’s only about six inches wide, tight up against the wall.’

  Daley tried the doors again. He considered trying to break them down with fire from his machine gun, almost instantly dismissing the idea for fear he ignited the fuel.

  ‘If you make it to the far end of the service pathway, there’s a window with a catch on the outside of the frame. I used to watch Percy laying the light cables along it when I was a boy. From there you can access the corridor,’ said another man, who looked like he could have been Bruce Shannon in another twenty years.

  ‘It’s a suicide mission,’ said another woman. ‘In this cold, in the dark, it’s impossible.’

  ‘Time’s ticking on, Daley,’ shouted Brady.

  He forced his way back to Scott’s side. ‘The doors are stuck fast – barricaded in some way. The only way past it is along a service pathway on the outer wall of the building . . .’

  Brady spoke before Daley could finish. ‘Be my guest. One way or another, I have no intention of being fried – certainly not in this company.’ He pointed to the French windows that led onto the balcony terrace.

  More had learned as a young man to do things properly or not at all. If he completed any task less than perfectly he would be punished with a beating. As he wound his way down the long corridor with the third can of petrol he knew that there was no escape for the family he despised. He pictured their death throes in the flames that would engulf them and their precious house. Die in the fire or jump. It had a symmetry that pleased him.

  He reached into his pocket for the big brass lighter that had belonged to his wife; he’d borrowed it to light candles in the Kirk during the power outage.

  He knew that the Shannons and their captors were now imprisoned in the ballroom, victims of their own security measures. In the nineties the old doors had been strengthened with steel plates; the ballroom was like a massive panic room, where the family could gather to wait for help. But he would make sure help was out of reach. To ensure success, he’d disabled the sprinkler system, controlled from a panel in the caretaker’s office in the basement. He wasn’t sure if would have worked considering the power cut but, with the emergency generators still running, he didn’t want to take the risk.

  Old Percy had been so keen to show him all round the house. He felt a pang of guilt about deceiving the old man; after all, he had wasted his life at the beck and call of the family. More had stepped over his lifeless body on he way into the mansion.

  The Shannons’ demise would be recompense; not just for the horrors he’d experienced as a child, not just for the death of his troubled wife, but for the thousands of others who had suffered at their hands.

  He thought of his adoptive mother, her frail attempts to protect him from the beatings, always in vain. He could see her smiling face, battered and bruised, trying to make him feel better as she tended the wounds on his back with cotton wool and the disinfectant that stung him so.

  He remembered the day the boss had come to call. He’d arrived in a big truck, the name Shannon Agricultural showing proudly on the side through a layer red dust.

  ‘Is the boy any good?’ asked the man who, if anything, looked even rougher and more unkind than the man he was forced to call Father.

  ‘Oh, you know, mate. Needs a kick up the arse every day to keep him right.’

  ‘Here, let me save you the job today.’ The stranger chased him around the truck then administered a kick to the young Ignatius More’s stomach. He could still feel the pain as he curled up in the dirt, the two men laughing at his agony. ‘That’ll teach the little bastard.’

  Eventually, the man drove off. Shannon Agricultural.

  More flicked his thumb across the wheel of the lighter.

  Daley was on the terrace. With his torch he could make out the service pathway – no more than a ledge, now covered with snow. About thirty feet along it, he could see a long window, with a catch showing proud of its frame. Along the wall were iron brackets, no doubt in place to string the harness and the lights he’d been told about.

  He looked down. Under the jut of the big balcony he could make out the lower floors, then nothing save the cliff and the luminous crash of the waves far below. His chest tightened – he had no head for heights.

  He walked back into the ballroom. At one end were Brady and his captives; at the other, Scott and Symington. He had his machine gun levelled at Brady, with his guards and the captive policemen, while Symington had hers pointed at the guards they had disarmed. The rest of the Shannon party were still crowded around the door.

  ‘I’ll have to go for it. There’s a ledge along the front of the building that leads to an window. I can’t see another way. If that fuel is ignited we’ll all have to jump for it, and trust me, that isn’t a pleasant prospect. Either way . . .’

  ‘Did you see anything? I mean, any sight o’ someone through they windows, Jimmy?’ said Scott, keeping his eyes trained on Brady.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Could it no’ just be some kind o’ leak or something? They’ve been using petrol generators.’

  ‘No, it’s coming from behind the door. We have to be quick.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Symington.

  ‘What?’ asked Daley and Scott in unison.

  ‘I’ll climb along this pathway. It makes sense.’

  ‘How so?’ said Scott. ‘I’m no’ intae throwing wee lassies off the side o’ tall buildings. I’ll have tae dae it. Eh, begging your pardon, ma’am.’

  ‘Are you a climber, DS Scott?’

  ‘No, I’ve climbed oot o’ a few scrapes in my time but no’ what you’d call actually real climbing. Something wrong wae the folk that dae that, if you ask me. I’ll gie it a try, though.’

  ‘I’ll go, and that’s final,’ said Daley.

  ‘May I remind you gentlemen of the command structure here. You’re not built for it, DCI Daley, and DS Scott shakes like a leaf most of the time. I’m a climber, it’s one of my hobbies. I’m doing it – end of discussion.’

  She walked forwards, the bruise on her face a horrible dark colour in the light of the ballroom. ‘I warn you, Mr Brady. My officers have orders to shoot you dead if they think any harm is about to come to any of your hostages. I’m going to stop us getting burned to death. Do you understand?’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Brady. ‘You’ll need it.’

  ‘You seem very calm, if you don’t mind me saying. You’ll burn with the rest of us.’

  ‘I have faith and my faith can move mountains,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’d get moving if I were you.’

  More cursed the lighter as he threw it down the passageway. No spark came from the flywheel when he had tried to ignite the flame. The flint was exhausted.

  He tried the doors, all of which seemed to be locked. Then he remembered; as he’d slipped in the back door over Percy’s body, he’d noticed a candle burning on a tall table. It was two floors below. He ran to the spiral staircase and began winding his way down to the lower floors of the building. Soon the Shannons and their magnificent mansion on the clifftop would be cinders and his soul would be at rest.

  Superintendent Carrie Symington looked over the stone wall that protec
ted the side of the balcony terrace. Sure enough, she could make out a little step onto a narrow ledge that ran all the way to the window, its catch protruding in the light of her torch. At about head height, iron bars jutted a few inches out from the wall. These had once been used to string lights along the wall, but would serve as decent hand holds.

  Her bare hands were already stiffening in the bitter cold, but she stepped up and over the thick stone parapet and tentatively placed her foot on the ledge.

  ‘Be careful, ma’am,’ said Daley. He was standing with his back to the parapet, holding a torch in one hand and his weapon in the other. He glanced at his Superintendent and then back in through the French windows to Brady, still inside the ballroom with his captives. He could see Scott from the corner of his eye, his gun trained on the erstwhile Shannon finance director.

  ‘Has she fallen yet?’ Brady shouted from inside the ballroom.

  Symington slid her foot along, pushing the snow from the ledge. It was difficult, but in a way it helped her. The snow had insulated the surface of the ledge from forming ice, so once she slid it from the next section, she could glide forwards, her body flat against the cold stone of Kersivay House.

  Daley looked down as the white snow displaced from the ledge tumbled into the darkness. There was one thing he now knew about his new boss – she had guts.

  More reached the bottom of the long spiral staircase, his knees aching with the effort. He turned left and headed down the passageway that led to the rear of the house. The corridors became narrower here, less well decorated, the carpeting thin and utilitarian in the places intended for the family’s lackeys.

  He leapt down a short flight of stone steps and into the small vestibule at the back door. Sure enough, the large candle was still flickering in its sconce on the table.

  Carefully, he pulled it free of the holder. At one point, the flame flickered alarmingly, forcing him to stop in his tracks until it steadied. Old houses were filled with drafts; he would have to be careful. Slowly, he made his way along the passageway, up the short set of steps and along a narrow corridor. He turned a corner and there before him, at the very end of the passage, he could see the first curl of the spiral staircase. He walked forwards, as quickly as he dared.