The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [173]
Keir’s going, Dad! And What shall I do, Indy? and Mum’s shouting, Get out of there, fast as you can, and peering in through what’s left of the windscreen is this man with thick red lips, and a tattoo on his neck, blue curling flames licking out of the top of his black T-shirt. Then Keir’s reaching for the key that Mick’s left in the ignition and I don’t know if this is a good idea or a bad idea but I know we have to get away somehow. Never occurs to me that Keir can’t drive the van, his feet don’t reach the pedals.
Keir turns the key and the engine coughs but the van doesn’t go forwards. It jumps backwards, and the wheels bump down hard. Something screams like air coming out through a tiny hole, a thin sharp needle of sound skewering through the thunder overhead, transmitted from the heart of the memory crystal.
And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done?
‘The other guy with the shotgun had been telling him to get up, and he couldn’t,’ says John. ‘When Mick took ketamine, his legs went. Mr Softeeland. He was at the back of the van, trying to remember what his feet were for when Keir started the engine. The van’d been left in reverse. It leaped back and stalled. Mick’s legs were under the back wheels. You didn’t see this, of course.’
‘I heard him,’ I say. ‘Oh, God, I heard him.’
‘The bastards had done what they came for, and more. They were already piling into one of the cars because the column of smoke from the burning van had attracted the attention of a military helicopter that was on exercise over the Marlborough Downs.’
The memory crystals are releasing more pictures. Billowing black smoke, leaves crinkling, trees on fire. Helicopter rotors fanning the flames. Sirens, men in dark blue jackets and yellow trousers and helmets, hissing snakes of water, the acrid stink of wet, charred plastic. Keir, white and terrified, clinging to my hand, thinking the dinosaur bird was coming for us. Mum’s face through the passenger window, shaking her head, her face hard.
She wouldn’t let us out until the helicopter had taken off again.
John rubs his hand over his face. ‘Meg lost it. She was out of her mind that she’d come so close to losing you, and she started yelling at you like it was your fault, the way people get angry when they’re frightened. You don’t remember that, I hope?’
What have you done, Indy? Who did you tell?
I shake my head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘The military chopper airlifted Mick to hospital, which saved his life–for the time being. Both legs were amputated, he couldn’t adapt to life in a chair, and managed, after a couple of wretched years, to overdose himself. I’d like to believe in cosmic justice, and tidy endings, and that, years later, the bastards who torched Meg’s van died in a fireball crash on the M4, or had their legs shot to blazes by a fourteen-year-old crack-addict, but I doubt it. Wyrd never works that way. The police didn’t catch them, but instead they had us, a group of good-for-nothing travellers, and a pile of drugs from the back of Mick’s van. When they realized there were two children involved, Social Services stepped in.’
‘Did Mum even try to get me back?’ I ask.
John stands up to light another cigarette from the Solstice candle. To my amazement, his hands are shaking. ‘Meg was never lucky,’ he says. ‘Her lawyer was useless, Frannie was furious with her for putting you in danger, and she was beating herself up so badly about what a crap mother she’d been to let it happen that all she wanted to do was run away. Took me long enough to crawl back into your grandmother’s good graces. Only reason I managed it was that I’d backed Frannie when she tried to talk Meg out of taking you to Tolemac that summer.’
My eyes meet John’s. ‘This is why I needed to come back to Avebury after the helicopter crash, isn’t it? Whoever my grandfather may have been isn’t the point, is it? I’ve been digging up the wrong past, chasing the wrong ghosts.’