Bright Spark

  Bright Spark

  by

  Gavin Smith

  Text copyright © 2012 Gavin Smith

  All rights reserved

  Table of Contents

  Bright Spark

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PROLOGUE

  1977

  The sky was yellow and grainy like old newsprint. Every few minutes, an airliner would cross it, drawing an arc of noise and grime all the way from Torremolinos to Ringway. The whining would swell into a pressure that flattened the world and receded as slowly as the day’s heat. There was no room for simple heroism in these skies, no silk scarves and goggles, no delirious vapour trails as heroes in Spitfires and Hurricanes slashed across a blue and better sky to fend off the evil Hun.

  The blonde boy screamed a throaty, twelve-piston roar as the Spitfire in his hand banked and rolled in pursuit of Matty Henderson’s Messerschmitt. Matty flung the yellow-nosed craft into an inverted loop but the pilot’s efforts were in vain when Matty’s toe hit a stone and he crashed to his knees. He rolled onto his backside, knees glistening with blood and ribbed with peeled skin, the 109 still held heroically aloft. The silence thickened and Matty’s eyes glistened as he considered whether or not to cry.

  “Gerrup, you puff,” said the blonde boy. Matty nodded at him, sniffed and stood. Eight year olds didn’t cry. “I’ll give you a head start.”

  “Oi, Pyro, why am I being chased all the time?”

  “’Cause you’re the Jerry. Good guys win. We won, stupid. Anyway, don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? That’s what my dad calls you. I’m not supposed to play with you ‘cause you’re a dangerous pyroniac.”

  “Why not? ‘Cause I’ll give you a dead-arm times ten, that’s why not.”

  “Oh, ok. Anyway, why am I always the Jerry?”

  “My aeroplanes. My rules. Look out, achtung, Spitfire out of the sun.” The blonde boy brought the plastic killing machine in a high arc down towards Matty’s head.

  “Catch me first.” Matty ran, one leg stiff at the knee and smeared red. The blonde boy followed, machine-gun noises and flecks of spit flying from his mouth.

  A Maxi was labouring and spluttering up the track towards them at crawling speed, windows open, radio belting out some nonsense about a brand new combine harvester. Tethered to the wing mirror an old greyhound lurched along, no more than bones and gristle held together by overstretched skin. The boys knew the old man at the wheel would have something to shout about because he always did. They could already see his lips working soundlessly beneath that nose, wide and blooming with reds and purples.

  Matty took a leap into the weeds, kicked another stone out of the farmer’s wall as he half fell across it and set off through the nettles towards the field thick with yellow stubble and the barn beyond. The blonde boy followed, pausing when he was safely over the wall to flick two fingers at the old man. The dog yelped as the car’s brakes dug in and its lead was jerked to a stop. Whatever the old man shouted was lost as another airliner churned the air into noise and grime.

  “My plane is faster in a straight line, you divvy,” shouted Matty as he sprinted across the field, stubble crackling under his Dunlops, once white and now grey like old chewing gum. The blonde boy pelted after him, knowing his gangly legs would close the distance quickly. The familiar throbbing in his temples had returned.

  They both slid to a stop as they found the corrugated cement of the farmyard. The barn doors were open, a safe darkness lay within and it wasn’t overlooked. The air carried the sweetness of hay and the tang of ammonia, a distant rumble of generators, the lowing of cattle nearby.

  “It says not to trespass over there,” whispered Matty, Battle of Britain forgotten.

  “Been here lots of times. That barn’s haunted or something. No-one ever comes. You scared?”

  Matty shook off the question as though it were an inquisitive wasp.

  “Right then.” The blonde boy sprinted towards the barn. “Last one in loses the dogfight.”

  Shadow embraced them as they lurched inside, Matty trailing yards behind. This shadow should have felt cool but it nursed towers of baled hay, reeking of heat and cut grass. Stalks and cut twine were strewn on the floor and the corrugated roof and wooden beams ticked and groaned above them.

  “You lost the dogfight.”

  “Not fair. You didn’t say go.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Shot you down in flames.”

  Matty dangled the plane by its tail and let it pirouette to the floor with a rising howl followed by a phlegm-filled explosion. He laid it down gently without even bending a propeller blade. “Let’s go back; it’s nearly time for my tea.”

  “Not yet. I shot you down in flames so that plane needs to burn.”

  “It did. I made an explosion and everything.”

  “No, I mean for real.”

  “But you made this one.”

  “I’m a bit sick of it. Anyway, I’m getting a Focke-Wulf at the weekend.” The blonde boy handed Matty his Spitfire and pulled a plastic lighter from his hip pocket.

  “You are tapped.”

  “What you afraid of? A few cows? Just watch this Nazi burn.” With a practised motion, he struck a flame and held it to the plane’s tail. Both boys watched goggle-eyed as the fuselage blackened then drooped and refused to catch light.

  “Thought you knew all about fires then?”

  “Not my fault. I thought all that glue would burn. Just give us a minute.” The blonde boy picked some long stalks from the floor and wrapped them around the plane with a length protruding from the tail. He flicked the lighter again and the taper embraced the flame.

  “Watch him crash and burn now then.” He tossed the plane earthwards, trailing gouts of flame and smoke. The moment it left his hand and moved beyond his reach, a new knowledge moiled in his guts. Even before it fell to earth, he saw in a flash of flame and destruction and heartache what he might have done, and knew he no longer wanted to be the fool who did these stupid things.

  The plastic plane crashed and splintered onto the hard floor and slid into a bale, no longer aflame but blackened. Matty’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. For a second, the blonde boy breathed again. Then the parched straw found the heat and let out a grateful gasp of white smoke.

  “What did you do that for? What do we do now?” Matty was shifting from one foot to another, still holding the precious Spitfire.

  The blonde boy pinched his eyes shut and slapped himself once then twice. “Can’t have this again. Go get water.” Matty’s eyes were beading and his lower lip trembled. “Go on. Just get water.”

  Matty ran, his Dunlops slapping the concrete hard. The blonde boy stood and watched, willing the bale to stop. The sweet grassy air was turning into something hot and bitter, something that tickled the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes. He grabbed the smoking bale and tried to move it, but it must have weighed as much as he did. He felt it crackle and breathe heat at him, dropped it and stood back, trembling.

  He shouted for Matty and the water and slapped himself again, harder. Minutes passed, or seconds, and Matty didn’t come. He couldn’t see the roof and the high beams were re
ceding from view, shadows dissolving in gauzy heat. Cackling imps of flame were leaping from more bales as though they’d been waiting there all summer for this chance to escape. He plucked the lighter from his pocket, swore at it, dropped it and stamped it until it smashed.

  Then he ran, the way Matty must have done. Lungs working like bellows, drawing the smuts and the smoke and the taste of his own wicked stupidity deep into his lungs, he reached the tree-line, hunkered down in the weeds and turned and watched. Help must come. Farmers had hoses and water. Only the old man had seen him near here. What would happen? Would his life end? Would he go to jail?

  Tiny compared with the stocky farming lads he wanted to see, Matty staggered into view, lop-sided with an enormous grey bucket in one hand, and vanished into the smoking maw of the barn. He didn’t come out until after the beams crashed in, after the farmer in his blue overalls had tried and failed to defy the flames, after the fire men had hosed it all down. Then the ambulance men turned up with a stretcher and a red blanket to bundle up something the size of Matty.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The present

  A bitter heat followed the house martins back from Namibia to their cool and verdant summer residence. It had been dragged across vast skies by the sucking chill of the outgoing winter, nourished by the equatorial sun and laden with quartz by Saharan dust-storms. Now, long after dark on a lazy bank holiday evening, it hung over a world of privet hedges and tamed horizons, letting the air thicken into a promise of stormy weather.

  For a while longer, the heat warmed house martin chicks as it bled from the brickwork of 13 Marne Close. Weeks earlier, flitting through cooler skies, their quick eyes had found this dream home in suburbia. With its sheltered eaves, solid brickwork and ready supply of mud, grass and wind-blown insects, it was a desirable residence for any young family.

  It hardly mattered to their bird brains that the neighbours on the other side of the brickwork had a language harsher and louder than theirs, and didn’t cease their screeching, senseless racket until long after dark. Nor did they appreciate the new guttering, the re-pointed mortar or the UPVC double-glazing. It was enough that they could remain comfortably aloft, far from the dirt and tarmac and the lumbering creatures who had to make do with walking and crawling.

  It was therefore an untroubled roost, save for the unceasing demands of the chicks. So feathers were ruffled and a black eye glistened when long after sundown the gravel shifted on the driveway beneath. The moment stretched, a movement held mid-step. The bird had almost settled into sleep when the gravel moved again, this time rhythmically, starting at the garden gate and ending at the front door. The bird peeped but her challenge went unanswered. The chicks began to clamour under her half-spread wings, her alertness a sign that some wriggling morsel might be forthcoming.

  Thirty feet below, the crunching of gravel ceased and was replaced by a sequence of sounds that were unintelligible and therefore meant danger. A faint wheezing, as of lungs barely able to choke down the air. A sloshing of liquid in a container, a flat note when it struck gravel suggesting fullness. The spattering of liquid poured onto a hard surface, punctuated by the glugging of air replacing it in the container. A rattle, a scrape and a small crackling burst. Gravel shifting as footsteps moved away, their direction lost in a hungry purring.

  Tendrils of smoke carried danger to the nest, the first predator to do so. The bird cast herself from the nest and scoured the air, finding no enemy she could understand. The chicks peeped with dumb desperation, their need for succour renewed. A monster had enveloped the house in its orange tendrils, and it crackled, spat and belched black smoke at the bird.

  Flames slashed at windows behind which human forms danced in imitation. The frames shook as fists were pounded against their panes, and held firm. The bird shrieked her alarm but the predator was not dissuaded and no help came. She flew in tight helpless figures of eight around the nest, finding no vector of escape. Her lungs were raw with inhaled poisons and she could smell her feathers singeing. Instinct had to be obeyed, first, last and always. She pirouetted in black air, folded her wings and dropped into the nest. Alarm and pain consumed her senses and there was nothing to do but shelter her brood from the beast.

  She didn’t hear and wouldn’t have understood the voices of pleading and terror outside, the sirens, diesel engines and pumped water. As the shrivelled nest fell to ground under the first high-pressure blast, the weather changed. The heat shrivelled as cooler air swept in and fat raindrops fell on the conflagration, red with sand from a cruel emptiness far away.

  Harkness staggered under the weight of whisky sloshing around in his forebrain. Not the good stuff either; this didn’t seduce or lull, it bludgeoned. His pulse struck up a macarena in his temples and his stomach agreed to join it on the dance-floor. Heat chafed him everywhere save between his toes where he’d found grass dampened by beer. A fugue of gossiping voices underscored by his least favourite eighties compilation encircled him.

  So much to think about. But he had a job to do, if only he could focus. His forearms prickled, a plastic bottle crumpled in his hand and thick fluid arced from its nozzle. A wall of light became a blaze of pain. His feet let him stagger back.

  “Jesus wept, Rob.” A familiar voice separated itself from the fugue. “Look what you’ve done to my sausage.”

  The bottle was torn from his hand by Slowey’s familiar shape, reduced to a jumble of impressions; pink limbs, too short shorts, an Iron Maiden t-shirt, a goatee making up for what a bald-patch lacked. The barbeque was now crackling again.

  “Earth to Rob.” Slowey wafted a hand in front of his face. He found himself staring into the ruby eyes of Eddie, the trademark skeletal ghoul plastered across Slowey’s pert beer gut. At least Eddie was amused. Another shape arrived, unmistakably Hayley, hands held fidgeting at her hips as she resisted the temptation to fold her arms and sigh. He imagined a dozen other faces looking at anything but him.

  “What?” he demanded, more loudly than he’d intended. Important to stay in charge of the situation. Better to be drunk and in charge of something than to sit in a corner waiting for something to take charge of you. Who were they to take charge of this highly charged situation when he was so good at charging in and making the charge stick? If he didn’t take charge, he might be dishonourably discharged. He twitched his head, hoping to jumble more sense from his inner monologue. He knew he was drunk when he couldn’t walk or think in a straight line. His face smelled of burned meat.

  “Bring him inside, Slow,” said Hayley as she moved towards the patio doors. Someone had turned off the music and glances were being flicked at watches. He hadn’t noticed the darkness falling on them, as hot and black as ash. This didn’t feel like the kind of night that would bring relief from the day; it would only thicken the heat and poach them in their beds.

  “Water, Slow. Why won’t it rain? Have a word, would you? Someone should grip it. Too hot.”

  “I hope you weren’t too attached to your eyebrows, matey. And you’ll have a tan like a Scotsman.”

  “What?”

  “About two minutes ago, you flame-grilled your face. More accelerant and enthusiasm than my cold sausage dilemma warranted. And you’re absolutely shitfaced. And you’re on call.”

  “Balls. Big balls of fire.” His forehead crumpled into a frown which showed him exactly where it hurt. “Need first aid kit. Need fluids.”

  In the time it took Slowey to catch a sympathetic eye through the dissipating smoke and open his mouth to speak, Harkness had crossed the patio in a headlong lunge, ripped the lid from a water butt and plunged his head into its mossy depths. The plastic resonated as Harkness screamed into water.

  He withdrew his head, glistening and red, and grinned.

  “Better! Again.”

  There was a new noise, a good noise. Something from above was prickling his face, running over his eyes. He looked up, a bubble shifted and sloshed in his head, he slumped against the wall, belching, and was enraptured
by the fat drops of water being hurled towards him.

  The workaday world evaporated and he was being propelled through some cool and beautiful space where onrushing droplets captured the light, kindled it into crystalline marvels, and then vanished into the void again. He marvelled at his own power to command the weather and allowed himself to smile while he hummed and swayed and cooled.

  A phone was ringing somewhere in the house, a million miles away. He detached himself from the wall.

  “Damn those bells. Hang on, might be a shout. Pew, Pew, Barney, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub. See, knew ‘em all, can’t be too pissed. No fire here though. Just as well, they’re probably all out on the town, looking at skirt and chewing on kebabs.”

  Nobody was laughing. Nobody was outside any more. Slowey was talking to someone in the living room, sober and glib. Harkness couldn’t hear the words but he knew the tune; good old Harkers, top bloke, smart, little bit wild but basically sound as the proverbial, just lost his off-switch tonight, he’s had a tough time, just as well we didn’t invite the vicar for tea and cake. He shook water from his hair, speckling the windows with a thousand new sparks. He felt his eyebrows crumple and ache with the wonder of it all.

  Hayley appeared, breathing slow and hard, chewing her bottom lip, her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder. Her left hand rested on her hip; her right cradled the phone, weighing it, mouthpiece uncovered, call-centre chatter leaking from the earpiece.

  He drank in the fine intelligence of her face. Her green eyes always fizzing with passion or glossy with resentment these days, her lips parted to savour some bitter notion or other. He wanted to trace with his eyes and fingers and tongue the amber necklace he’d bought her, over the delicate notches of her collarbone, the sweet salt of her bronzed skin, between her breasts, then down to her belly; her hips, her thighs. But the necklace was missing, the trail cold.

  “A call for Detective Sergeant Harkness,” she said. “He is on call, apparently. Might the nice lady from the control room speak with him? Is he at home, waiting dutifully by the phone in his jimjams? Or is he waist-deep in some adolescent orgy of binge-drinking and self-flagellation?”