Beyond the station wall the street went residential, or ex-residential. The houses here were a lot bigger than the average, heavy semis with three or four storeys and large gardens, a Victorian comfort-zone. For ‘comfort’ a hundred years on, read ‘expense’: some, many, most were too costly now for most families to afford. Or say rather that the families who could afford them would pay double or else settle for a home half the size, sooner than live this side of town.
A few had been in the same families’ hands for generations, and still were; the majority though had been taken over by small business or charities, any company that was prepared to pay once for the property and once or twice more to keep the police sweet and my family smiling upon them.
Immediately behind the police station was one of the very few exceptions, neither the one thing nor the other, neither old money nor new. Theirs nor ours. Big big house, entirely surrounded by garden which was surrounded in its turn by its own high wall: a notice by the ever-open gates, The Sidings Project, was uninformative unless you were in the know already, unnecessary if you were.
The Shunt we’d always called it, no doubt kids called it still. Both names worked off the same pun, that here the tracks parted, here you left the main line. What it was, it was a church-sponsored halfway house for druggies, addicts who’d been through a rehab programme but still bore watching, still needed more support than they’d get in the moral dead zone that was this city. Getting skulled was just too tempting here, if you were young and not called Macallan: what the hell was there else to do? You left one way, or you left another; and leaving by virtue of pill or needle was easier. You didn’t need to pack. Tickets of course were mostly return, that was a disadvantage; but you could always go again in a day or two, no sweat. Never any shortage of gear.
Father Hamish ran the Shunt, which was why the place paid nothing to us or to anyone. On the contrary, my family actively supported it, visible charitable works were a speciality of the house; and what we backed no one else was going to bully. Hamish probably took his collecting-tin to the police station also, he had chutzpah enough and to spare.
Though whether he’d be doing so well now, I suddenly doubted. High-profile collaborators tend to suffer once they lose their protection. I thought of Hamish chained to a lamppost, stripped naked, tarred and feathered; and felt nothing, no sympathy, no regret.
It wouldn’t happen, though. He was too careful. He’d be holing up with my uncle by daylight, cowering in the priest-hole and celebrating Mass by candlelight only, and only when Macallans turned up for surety.
Too bad, I thought, and here came that regret. I guess I really, really didn’t like Father Hamish.
o0o
Not a worry, three young men walking into the grounds of the Shunt. People came and went all the time, looking seedier and shiftier than we did. Anyone watching, accidentally or otherwise, they weren’t going to think twice.
Jamie and I had been regular visitors here, familiar faces when we were teens, we knew our way around. We hadn’t come for rehab, of course, nor to help Hamish; we only came to score. Someone would always have grass or dope to sell, usually acid or speed if we wanted that, and this was so much easier than finding it on the street. It was also easier to persuade people here that we were not going to pay street prices for our gear.
So—treading memories as much as paths, the soft stuff of happening tramped down into hardcore—we circled the house by way of the dense shrubbery in the garden, pushing between rhododendron and holly, making gestures towards being discreet.
Around the back was what we were looking for, the way to vantage: the fire escape, a classic staircase of iron winding back and forth from one floor’s window to the next. We led Jon up it fast, our feet shimmying on gridwork, our eyes never glancing in for fear of finding someone glancing out; and so past the last window and on up to where the roof was flat between peaks and not overlooked by any of the dormers.
This used to be the smoking-spot, where we’d sit with skinny kids and pass joints around, take more than our fair share and feel nothing more than smug as we watched them shiver and rub their arms and elbows, feeling the burn, the constant prick of no needles.
Nice people we’d been once, Jamie and I. Whether we were so much improved even now, I wasn’t certain.
Used to be the smoking-spot? Still was, judging by the dog-ends and the roaches. Did Hamish know, I wondered? Probably. I thought him more wicked than my family in many ways, weaker and more craven but not stupid, never that. Did he care? Probably not. Demonstrably not, if he knew. He’d never tried to stop us, and wasn’t stopping them still.
o0o
Still, we were not here to smoke, but to smoke out. If we could, if I could...
From up here, high, we could see easily over the police station’s concealing wall. We could see the cars and vans parked neatly white in rows—and I could set them all to burn, one touch of my mind, and mustn’t—and we could see the kennels, the pens of wire mesh with restless dogs contained.
For a moment then I could see nothing but Cousin Josie, with her face and hands and throat all bitten out. I wondered if it was one of these dogs did that, if the police had them trained that hard; or if it had been a confiscation, say, a pit bull from an unlawful fight that they’d decided to hang on to in case of need. Or simply for pleasure or profit, of course, perhaps they ran dogfights themselves. Perhaps they regularly threw a girl to the dogs, to keep them hot and ready.
But no, there’d been nothing regular about what they did to Josie. That was special, that was red-letter treatment for the message of it. Could still’ve been one of these dogs, though, or if not it could still have been here that the thing was done. Screams coming from the pigpen, no one was going to ask questions. Then wrap the body and dump it in a van, run it down to the river; the police had a boatyard down there, no doubt they had a Zodiac or two. In fact I’d seen them, one day they were dredging the river for a body. Fellow-student that had been, love-affair turned bad and he vanished between one day’s lectures and the next. Parents came up from down south, the police had to make at least a visible effort. They never found the body, as far as I remembered—halfway to Norway the boy’s bones would be, most likely, unless he hadn’t gone in the river at all—but the divers had operated from a couple of Zodiacs, that I remembered for sure.
And I wanted to burn all the dogs, just in case they’d tasted Josie; and it was harder to say no to that one, harder to keep a grip. Remember Laura. And remember Janice, and remember the others too, all your pale helpless cousins...
I remembered, and I set no fire to burn among those kennels; but later, I thought, there’s got to be a later. There’s got to be a when-all-this-is-over; and when it is, oh, when it is...
When it was, I thought, chances were there’d have been too much blood already, whichever way it fell out. I didn’t honestly think I’d be hunting for dogs. But for now, I could pretend that was a promise; and however pretended, it was the promise that moved my eyes onward and upward.
Up the walls, the concrete layers of this multi-decker sandwich with its glass fillings; up to the top—to the mast, to the birds—and back down a slice or two. Not too far. The cells were below, I knew that even before Charlie told us, and heat rises; I wasn’t putting a fire anywhere near the girls.
If I could put a fire anywhere at all. In the pub I’d thought I could, I’d said so; now I was starting to doubt. But I looked in through the windows and saw men and women working at desks, working at computers; and I thought about power running through cables, thought about cables breaking, sparks flying...
Closed my eyes to think better, to see more clearly; and felt my mind reach out across the breeze, felt it drift through immaterial concrete to find those cables that I knew were there.
And found them, or seemed to, like bright strings in the haze; and saw how the power flowed and burned within them, felt my own power rising to match it as the sun burned on the back of my neck. Reached out
with my mind’s fingers, thinking I could pluck them and play them like a musician, or break them like a thug—
And faltered, thinking this was only in my head, just a fantasy, what I wanted and not what I could. My eyes opened, and I lost it altogether; but when I glanced round—thinking that I’d find Jon ignorant and confident of me, Jamie knowing too much and deeply doubtful, thinking that I’d have to confess, I can’t do this, sorry—they were both gazing at me with the same expression, a sort of baffled expectation.
“What?” I demanded, glad of the excuse to say something, anything except I can’t do it.
“You sort of—went away,” Jon whispered.
I looked to Jamie for something more sensible, and all he said was, “I’ve never seen anything like it, Ben. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, barely better than I can’t. “What d’you think I did?”
“I thought your soul went walkies. I’ve seen, I’ve seen dead people,” I know you have, I thought, your brother, I was there... “and it was like that, you know, how the face is just the same only it’s empty, they aren’t there any more? That’s what happened to you, just for a couple of seconds. You were gone, bro. And I don’t know what that is, but it ain’t any talent I’ve seen before. No one shuts their fucking eyes, for God’s sake, to use talent...”
True, they didn’t. Talent came with light and we were all of us utterly in the dark without it; no one would willingly close themselves off from its most sensitive touch, on their eyeballs.
But I shook my head, said, “I don’t have anything else. I just reckon we haven’t found half what we can do yet, if we try. That’s the trouble with this family, it’s been floundering around for generations, grabbing what was easy and thinking that was all. Even Uncle Allan,” whom I loved, whom God preserve in hell, “I don’t think he got close to seeing what we really had. Now shut up, and let me concentrate.”
And I turned back towards the police station with confidence, certain of myself only because I truly knew nothing of what I did; and closed my eyes and reached again, found the insubstantial shadow that was the concrete wall and the vivid fiery strings that were the cables. I followed their bright pathways, tracked them to a node where many came together in a flaring matrix. I gripped that with a hand I didn’t have; squeezed hard with too many fingers, one for each separate cable; and sent my own current flowing, racing, flooding into them like the sea at high tide floods its feeding rivers. Except that I was only a conduit, what I had I sucked from the sun and passed on, bringing light to dark places I thought and almost snickered at it.
The sun was inexhaustible, at least by me; but I was not, and I was trembling, sweating, close to falling when my knees folded. Close to falling a long way, close as I stood to the roof’s edge; but someone’s arms—Jamie’s arms, I thought—caught me from behind, held me against a panting, straining chest. Nice one, bro.
But he couldn’t hold me for long, though he’d swear that he could; I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, nor should I need to. If it worked, it should be working now. One last touch: I yanked at all those luminescent strings and broke them, just like a thug. And saw their fire go out, or most of them, but saw how the matrix flowered into light too sharp, too cruel even for me with my eyes closed...
There was a bang came with that, back in the solid world. I turned my head away swiftly into Jamie’s shoulder, into his hug. Hugged him back as strong as I could manage, which was not strong; opened my eyes and focused blurrily on his face, where he was staring back across my shoulder.
“What, what’s happening?”
“Half their computers blew up,” he said, “and the lights went out. Top three floors. Looks like you’ve got the fire too, middle floor. Big explosion there. Just perfect, man.”
Briefly, something shadowed the sun. I glanced up, saw a black mass of birds eddy and split and join again on the wind.
“Are you okay, Ben?”
That was Jon asking; Jamie was too engrossed. I nodded slowly, carefully, my head not feeling any too secure on my shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks. Let me see, Jamie...”
He loosened his grip and I turned round, though I couldn’t see a thing till I had rubbed at wet eyes with a wet hand, then dried it on my jeans and tried again.
Darkened windows, figures rushing to and fro; a couple of floors down the opposite of darkness, windows that flickered and danced with a hard light. No use their fire extinguishers on that. I could tell, I could feel it still inside me, it pulsed to my own heartbeat and I knew. A proper fire it was, real flame eating real oxygen, eating anything else it could find; but I was tied to it none the less, I knew its heat and its speed and its hunger. They’d not get near it, they’d never touch its core.
“You fit then, Ben?”
That was Jamie; I looked at him, puzzled. Just then I didn’t think I fitted anything.
“We’ve got to get down there,” he said patiently, his feet dancing in the dog-ends to counterpoint his voice. “Stage two, yes? Rescuing the girls?”
Oh. Right. That was my job too, of course, no one else to do it. The question not did I fit, but was I fit; and the answer no, demonstrably I was not. My joints had rubberised, my bones felt like pasta cooked a long way past al dente; despite the light I thought I’d have a job lighting anything hotter than a cigarette for the rest of the day, and for that I’d need a match.
But.
The job was mine to do, and Laura’s freedom, Laura’s safety lay at the other end of it. Laura’s and the others’, all of them, Janice and my cousins too; but Laura’s of course was paramount, how could it be anything else?
I was first to the fire-escape, despite Jonathan’s gesture of protest—what are you going to do, catch me should I fall? I don’t think so, Jon-boy—and first to ground also; first of us to join the swelling crowd in the street, Shunt residents and men in suits and kids with baby-buggies all gathering to watch the pigsty burn.
These people would know our faces, but no one was looking at them. Caps low and heads bowed we burrowed in from the edge, to where we’d be safe from any suspicious watchful Uncle Bob; and then we looked not at the fire but at the big gates and the motor pool beyond. If, no, when they brought their prisoners out, as they would have to, that’s the way they’d come. Into a Black Maria—no longer black, of course, but the name still held: like steam-rollers, half a century on from the death of steam—and then into the street, under escort naturally and heading for the nearest jail at a guess. Didn’t matter where they were heading, how many escorts in Escorts they had. Once they were out in the open, I could open them out; I could peel any van like a satsuma, winkle out the prisoners within. Be as obvious as I liked in my talent then, it wouldn’t matter any more.
Police and civilian workers massed in the gateway, so that I couldn’t see what was happening behind them. Someone called a list of names, started ticking them off; then the blare of sirens overrode his voice, as fire engines came racing up the hill.
There were three of them. Two parked on the main road, one came down towards us; and Jamie nudged me urgently, nodding to where a couple of police were heading over to herd our crowd away with the usual patent lies, there’s nothing to see, come on, move along now. We slithered to the back but that wouldn’t do it, it wouldn’t guarantee our anonymity as the others dispersed. The kids from the Shunt were in a group, and as the police waved them off they trotted back across the road to where they’d come from, where they’d be on private property and immune to interference. None of us said a word, we didn’t need to; we just tagged on behind them, faces averted.
In the garden were many trees, offering an easy route onto the wall that overlooked the station. The kids swarmed up and sat in a happy, chattering line; and again we followed, taking a necessary chance. We had to be able to see what happened.
For a while there was chaos down in the yard, police and firemen milling around, talking, shouting, giving contrad
ictory orders. The firemen wanted to bring their tender in, but there wasn’t room until some of the cars were driven out; I sat coughing in the swirling smoke, squinting to see, watching always for women being shepherded out of the station and into one of the vans.
Watching for it and not seeing it, seeing only strangers. Seeing men, a few men and teenage boys brought out in handcuffs or else simply gripped by the elbow, and yes, they were pushed into the back of a windowless van; but no, no women at all.
o0o
Time passed. Windows shattered, flames roared upward; retaining wires snapped in the heat, and the radio mast fell with a crash onto the flat roof. Firemen went into the smoke-filled building with breathing apparatus heavy on their backs, their faces masked; the tender was at last brought into the yard and hoses were connected up to follow the men inside; no one else came out.
At last, “They must have moved them,” Jamie muttered beside me, once it was painfully, cruelly, obviously true. “They must have done it before, as soon as they knew we had them sussed.”
As soon as he made that phone-call, most likely. He knew that, so did I. Neither of us said it. They’d taken the girls away, all our girls and women; and again we had no idea where, and again their lives were forfeit and we could only pray that no one would guess who had started this fire.
We thought, we hoped they’d be too busy, too distracted to pay any attention to the shadowed faces of the shadowed kids watching from the wall of the Shunt. At any rate—at whatever risk—we had to be certain; so we stayed until the last of the vehicles was gone from the yard, and definitely only the one had had any prisoners in it when it left. Then we slid down the wall and slipped away.
“Where now, then?” Jon asked, meaning what now, what can we do, how can we get them back?
“My place,” Jamie said, with certainty.
Light Errant Page 17