Skyfire

by Sam Galliford

  "‘Pick him up,’ ordered Frank.

  "Billy lifted me bodily to my feet and then threw me against the closed office door, managing a sharp jab into my injured ribs in the process. I slid down the door. I couldn’t help it. I was sweating with pain. I looked up and focussed as far as I was able to. Frank was standing with my bottle of whisky in his hand and was examining the label.

  "‘Dr Brinsley,’ he said, addressing my bottle. ‘Glen Cona scotch. You are a man of taste as well as of education.’

  "He turned to my slumped heap on the floor.

  "‘All I can say,’ he continued, ‘is that it would be terrible waste of all the effort you went to in getting that taste and education if circumstances subsequently conspired against you in such a way as you were not able to use them for the benefit of yourself and mankind.’

  "He paused for dramatic effect.

  "‘I need a drink,’ I groaned.

  "‘No, you do not,’ he answered sharply and bent down on the floor close to my face. ‘You need to sober up. You need to forget about what happened to your wife and anything and everything you think you might know, but in fact do not know, about my two brothers. You need to get back to being the insignificant little university lecturer you have always been and leave us alone. That is what you need, Dr Brinsley. Do I make myself clear?’

  "I nodded drunkenly and he stood up.

  "‘So, to that end,’ he continued more reasonably, ‘we are going to drink your health, Dr Brinsley. Glasses, George.’

  "George stared puzzled at his brother, then chuckled, beginning to see the beginnings of a joke. He pulled four crystal tumblers from the bar unit and placed them on the desk. He grinned broadly as Frank poured out a generous measure of my Glen Cona whisky into each one.

  "‘We are going to drink to your health, Dr Brinsley, to a man of taste and education,’ Frank continued. ‘We are going to raise a glass in the certainty that, one way or another, your future will know only quietness and peace.’

  "‘Yeah, cheers,’ echoed Billy, also grinning widely. ‘Your health, drunk with your own sodding whisky, you heap of…’

  "‘That’s enough Billy,’ warned Frank.

  "‘Yeah, cheers,’ echoed George belligerently.

  "Billy and George sculled their drinks in one and burst into fits of laughter. Frank swallowed half of his and savoured it before swallowing the rest. He nodded with approval. The glass placed in front of the old man remained untouched on the desk.

  "They all watched my despair at seeing my whisky going down their throats and not being able to do anything about it. Billy, then George, put out their glasses for another measure but Frank recorked the bottle.

  "‘Yes, Dr Brinsley, we all hope you remain quiet and healthy from now on, don’t we Billy, don’t we, George?’ he continued. ‘And we don’t want to hear any more slander against our good family name. Your wife was killed, it was a terrible tragedy, but the law has very clearly stated that we had nothing to do with it. Remember that, Dr Brinsley. We had nothing to do with it. Understand? Pick him up, Billy.’

  "Billy picked me up by my overcoat and held me against the office door again, managing to give me another short jab under the heart as he did so. Frank then approached to finish off.

  "‘As I said, you are an educated man, Dr Brinsley,’ he said quietly into my face. ‘If you are as wise as your education has taught you to be, you will leave here and on your way home find yourself a ditch. You will then crawl into it and freeze to death overnight so that you will be found stiff and cold in the morning. If you are not that wise then you will find your way home and never, ever come here or anywhere else near my family or our establishments ever again. Do you understand me?’

  "I nodded as best I could.

  "‘And if you are not even that wise,’ he continued, ‘well, you really don’t want to know about that, do you?’

  "It was not really a question, and I shook my head as far as it didn’t hurt me to do so.

  "‘Now get yourself out of here,’ he ended. He rammed my broached bottle of Glen Cona back into my overcoat pocket and signalled to Billy. I was pulled away from the door with another short jab to the kidneys. It was agony. The door opened. The two heavy minders were still there.

  "‘This is Dr Brinsley’s last visit to us,’ Frank instructed them mildly. ‘It is always a shame when we have to say farewell to such a valued customer, so please, with our compliments, see he gets a drink on the way out.’

  “I could hear George giggling in the background as Billy threw me to the heavies, then the office door closed and my interview was over. It could not have taken much more than five minutes but it was the most sinister five minutes of my life.”

  Chapter 50

  “Mark stopped talking at that point and poured himself yet another brandy from what was left in the bottle on the table between us,” Gerard sighed. "I thought that might be the end of his account, except that he didn’t sound finished. I was puzzled. His interview with the Craters sounded quite dismal and absolutely terrifying but it could hardly be said to have achieved anything. He certainly didn’t get his ‘sorry’ out of them. But he sat there with a grin on his face as if he was pleased with the outcome. He seemed to be teasing me into asking him to continue.

  "‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  "He shook his head, sloshing the brandy over his teeth. He swallowed it and smiled.

  "‘Not quite,’ he replied. ’The heavies frogmarched me back downstairs to the bar where one held me immobile against it.

  "‘Pour Dr Brinsley a whisky,’ he ordered the barman. ‘A triple, on the house.’

  "The drink was poured and put in front of me so I drank it, thinking that was it.

  "‘Another,’ ordered the minder.

  "I hesitated this time, but it was clear I was not going to be allowed to argue so I downed that one too.

  "‘And another.’

  "‘I had to object this time, but some excruciating pressure in my back pushing my liver up against the edge of the bar cut my protest short. I drank it, if only to anaesthetise the pain I was getting. Without another word I was again frogmarched, this time out the back door and into the alleyway where they keep the rubbish skips. I thought for one moment that this was the end of me for sure and that I was going to be dumped in one of them to freeze and suffocate overnight. With nine whiskies aboard, plus the three I had earlier on in the evening, I would have been helpless for hours. Instead I was pushed into the back of a car and driven around while I got more and more drunk, and finally I was thrown out on some grass not too far from where you live. I don’t know how long it took me to stand up but I wandered around and was awfully grateful eventually to recognise the end of your street. I could only have been pickled to the eyeballs when you opened your door. I know I was just about on the point of collapse. But that was it, the end of my bender.’

  "He lapsed into silence and gazed into his again empty brandy glass. He said nothing, but tired though I was I sensed he was still waiting for me to prompt him. It took me a while to get to it but there was one detail that niggled at me and wouldn’t let go.

  "‘One thing that puzzles me, Mark,’ I asked. ‘You said that when you left the Craters they gave you back your bottle of whisky. You didn’t have it on you when you collapsed through our front door. I presume it dropped out of your pocket or you lost it in your drunken meanderings around the neighbourhood.’

  "‘I most definitely did lose it,’ he answered triumphantly. ‘I couldn’t leave it lying around. It was far too dangerous. As soon as I could I pulled the cork on it, poured what was left in it over the ground and smashed the bottle in a litter bin so that no destitute alcoholic could find any dregs in it. It was far too dangerous to do anything else.’

  "A cold sweat came out all over me and it took me a few seconds to find enough breath to ask my next question.

  "‘What do you mean by dangerous, Mark?’ I asked. ‘What was in the whisky?’

  "He looked up
at me and smiled, then enunciated very slowly and clearly, ‘PNA’.

  "Aunt Gwendoline, I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t know what to say, I choked, I almost passed out.

  "‘What?’ I shouted at him. ‘You mean that horrendous, nasty, cancer causing chemical you told me about earlier on this evening?’

  "‘The self-same,’ he replied, still nodding and smiling.

  "I was almost sick.

  "‘Mark, that’s monstrous. That’s evil. It’s beyond words. To spike someone’s drink with something that will make them mildly sick is bad enough, but to deliberately feed them that lethal, evil, cancer generating poison, no. It’s beyond all that anyone could ever think of. Mark you are talking murder and it’s a particularly horrible way for someone to die. You are talking of killing someone with cancer.’

  "‘But Gerry,’ he replied. ‘That’s what PNA was designed for.’

  “I couldn’t believe he had said that.”

  Aunt Gwendoline was not listening. She had almost passed out too. Rani was on her feet turning round frantically in fast little circles, jumping up and putting her paws on her mistress and barking. Aunt Gwendoline heard none of it. All she could hear was the roaring of the skyfire that was an inferno in front of her. It was exploding with the gas inside it, the heat of it so intense it was blistering her skin. Its frame was buckling and bending past the point of fracture until it folded and creased then tore itself apart in an agony of flame. And from its gondola three stars fell. Three shining, bright, five pointed stars that shrieked out in pain as they plummeted earthwards, the wind of their fall fanning their incandescence until all that they were made of was totally consumed, and then in a final shriek they blinked into blackness and continued unseen to oblivion a hundred feet below. Three men. Three brothers.

  “They’re rotten ones, my bairn. Rotten devils.”

  “But they are men,” she tried to cry.

  “They’re rotten beggars, but they’ll not come here to bother us again.”

  In desperation she looked upwards to the skyfire. It was still writhing in its death throes and as it did so the last two stars flew from it. Two stars, not so bright and falling more slowly, began their descent. She reached out her hand to them.

  Chapter 51

  “Aunt Gwendoline. Aunt Gwendoline, are you all right?”

  She blinked her eyes open and looked up into Gerard’s anxious face.

  “Yes, quite all right, thank you,” she replied gently. “My dear boy, would you get me a glass of water?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He shot off to the kitchen while she tried to make herself breathe more deeply and evenly. She heard the glass rattle under the tap, and then his pounding footfalls as he returned.

  “Here you are.”

  “Thank you, dear boy.”

  She took the glass and breathed between sips.

  “Hush, Rani. Hush. It’s all right. I just had one of my little turns, that is all. I’m sorry, Gerard. Did I frighten you? It’s not a problem you know. I have always had low blood pressure.”

  She swallowed some more of the water and quietly began to stabilise her thoughts. Three stars, three men, the three Crater brothers Frank, Billy and George. It had to be so.

  “That’s better,” she smiled weakly to her grand-nephew. “And poor Rani, I gave you a bit of a fright too, didn’t I? I can see you were anxious, weren’t you? You are a good dog. Thank you very much for letting me know.”

  She put the glass on the table between them, forcing herself to relax and not quite controlling the shaking in her hand.

  “I’m sorry, Gerard,” she continued, “My little turn interrupted your story. You were saying that Dr Brinsley said he had spiked a bottle of whisky with a nasty chemical.”

  “Yes, I was saying that. But Aunt Gwendoline, do you think we ought to talk anymore? It is such an appalling thought, so evil, so indescribable. Cancer of all things. I still feel sick just thinking about it, and I can see it upset you.”

  “Not at all,” she contradicted him. “You must finish telling me what happened. We cannot leave your friend’s little joke unfinished, can we?”

  “You think it was a joke then?” he asked.

  “Of course I do,” she replied. “The story is so outrageous it could not possibly be true. The poor man’s mind was clearly unbalanced by the murder of his wife and by the justice system not calling her killers to account, so his imagination went wild. Impotent rage is a right of us all, but a sense of humour is a very positive sign of recovery.”

  She tried to sound confidant.

  “I’m not so sure it was a joke,” he replied with equal firmness.

  “You’re not? And why is that?”

  “Because the story isn’t finished yet,” he answered flatly.

  Aunt Gwendoline said nothing. She clasped her hands together so that their trembling should not be so obvious. She knew the story was not finished. There were still two stars to fall. Six stars had initially been thrown from the dying skyfire. One was for Janet Brinsley and three were for the three Crater brothers. That left two to fall. Of those one had to be for Gerard. And the other? There was only Mark Brinsley. Gerard and Mark, the two friends, with some sort of aura reaching out to engulf them both. Would she be able to catch them? She did not know.

  “I was utterly shocked when Mark told me what he had done, or at least what he said he had done,” Gerard resumed hesitantly. "I really don’t believe that one human being could do such a thing to another. If someone has been hurt enough and is angry enough I can imagine them shooting or stabbing someone in a moment of rage, but not doing what Mark said. It was so cold-blooded, so calculated, so inhumane, and not at all like the friend I thought I knew. I wanted it very much to be a fabrication, a bizarrely imaginative story that came out of his grief, but his gaze never faltered and he didn’t flinch for an instant as he spoke. I can’t be convinced it was all a joke. I asked him how he got hold of the PNA chemical.

  "‘I made it,’ he answered. ‘As I said earlier, it’s a simple molecule. Its synthesis offers no challenge to a chemist of my experience. The only thing you have to watch is that you don’t accidentally touch it or breathe its fumes.’

  "He then went on to describe how during those three weeks after the aborted trial, when we all thought he was throwing himself into his work as a distraction to his grief, he set about making it.

  "‘I had to work at night when nobody else was around,’ he explained. ‘I couldn’t risk any of the students coming into contact with it. It would have killed them on piece. So, after they had gone home, which was usually by about eleven o’clock, I set to work. I scrubbed a work area thoroughly to make sure it was chemically clean, set my reactions going, and then had everything put away and the whole place cleaned up again by the time they arrived for work next morning. That way the only person at risk from it was me.’

  "He had all the details, and from his reputation I can’t doubt that he has the ability make it.

  "‘But the whole proposal is so monstrous, so hideous,’ I told him. ‘I cannot imagine that the Mark I know could ever even think of doing such a thing. If what you told me is correct then we are talking about the most murderous, cancer inducing chemical ever to come out of a weapons research laboratory. That’s how you described it. A cancer causing chemical, for God’s sake. I don’t know how anybody, even in the Ministry of Defence, could even think about using such a thing.’

  "‘Don’t you believe me, Gerry?’ he asked.

  "‘No, I don’t,’ I shouted at him. ‘Tell me it’s a joke. Tell me it’s your warped sense of humour affected by half a bottle of brandy and the fact that we have talked all night and it is nearly dawn. Tell me this is all a sick, sick story, Mark.’

  "My horror must have shown clearly on my face as I pleaded with him across the table, but he didn’t tell me he was joking. He went very quiet for a few seconds, the stood up and looked straight at me.

  "‘I thought you of all the peop
le would have understood,’ he answered.

  "He spoke haltingly as if trying to realign his thinking to a new set of circumstances.

  "‘You of all people, Gerry,’ he continued, looking so puzzled at me. ‘My friend, my best friend, the one who stood by me and helped me through it all. Why did you do that if you didn’t believe me? Why didn’t you just drop me like all the others? But you didn’t do that. You stayed with me, because you were my friend. You believed in me. I thought you would understand.’

  "He took a couple of unsteady steps away from the table then turned angrily back towards me.

  "‘I didn’t do it for me,’ he cried. ‘I did it for Janet and our baby. No one else was going to do a damned thing for them. They were there and then they were murdered. You knew her, Gerry. You knew what Janet was like, all laughter and life and sunshine and love. Somebody had to acknowledge she was all of that. But nobody was going to. The Crater brothers did it. They raped and killed her. I saw what they did to her and nobody in this whole sodding society of ours was going to do anything about it. The Crater brothers had no case to answer. That was the verdict of our great and glorious criminal justice system. I couldn’t let that happen, Gerry, not to my Janet. She mattered, Gerry, she existed. She should not have been killed like that, not without at least someone saying it was wrong. I thought you of all people, Gerry, my friend, my best friend, you would understand that.’

  "I had no response for him. I was exhausted, it was dawn, and I didn’t think there wasn’t anything left to say.

  "‘Thanks for the dinner,’ he mumbled as he turned away.

  “I heard him shuffle a bit in the hallway as he put on his coat and then he let himself out. I remained sitting amongst the ruins of my dinner party not knowing what to think and wondering whether or not I was ever going to be fit for work ever again, much less in a couple of hours’ time.”

  Chapter 52

  Aunt Gwendoline saw the exhaustion recreate itself in Gerard and he fell into a tired silence.