Brainfire (46 page)

Authors: Campbell Armstrong

BOOK: Brainfire

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“Just like you said, John. We were going to have the roses. The beach. The past at our backs. Just as you phrased it. A different kind of life away from a world we were both sick of.”

Was he expected to make a noise of sympathy now? A murmur of consolation?

“You must have known,” he said. “You must have known he was playing footsie with the other side.”

She didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, “Whatever he did, it was for me. One side, the other sideâhe didn't care. I didn't care. It must be very hard for you to understand that, John. Both sides are the same. There isn't a difference.”

“How much more did you know?” he asked.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” she said quietly.

“I want to hear it anyhow.” Both sides the same, he thought. No differences. A world of perfectly balanced darknesses. How could he accept that?

She broke down, covering her face with her hands, inclining her head slightly, reaching out to support herself against a low stone wallâand in spite of himself he felt pity. He wanted to touch her, even if such a contact would bring her no comfort. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked away. The afternoon was darkening now. Maybe it was another piece of playacting, this sorrow; another put-on in what was a long and presumably distinguished career for her. He didn't want to know. He felt immensely sad, not for her, not for himself, but for some amorphous thing that defeated definition. Humanity? The abuses that linked people together as much as love did? The small daily assassinations of the heart, he thought. He watched her raise her face and look at him. Her eyes were red, her beauty suddenly a wrecked thing.

“I didn't know anything,” she said. “I don't expect you to believe that.”

He shrugged. One way or another, it was of no importance.

“So far as I knew, Richard committed suicide,” she said. Her voice had become strange, different, as if it came from a source other than herself. “All I ever knew was what George wanted to tell me. I was to stick with you, I was to help you find a safe place to keep you away from your old friends, I was to try and prevent you going to the stadium. That's all I ever knew. The restâyour old woman, the Mallory thingâI never knew any more than you did.”

“You didn't stop to ask? You didn't stop to ask yourself what the fuck was going on?”

She shook her head. “Five years is a long time to wait for something you want, John.”

“And now you don't have it,” he said.

She tried to smile, an odd distorted expression. “You're a pretty determined character. I couldn't keep you away from that stadium. I tried. I
did
try. I even thought of using the gun on you at one point.”

“I die laughing,” Rayner said. Love, he thought. That blind unquestioning place beyond conflict: was that love? Was that how Richard had loved this woman? There was a loneliness, a sense of some indefinable loss, working through him now. It was finished: it was all over, a body that would have to be interred in the very near future. He gazed across the rain. Then he was aware of lights in all the windows of the hospital, white lights that were like a series of blank, blinded eyes. He thought of the kid now and began to move away from Isobel, back toward the hospital entrance. She called out to him, a phrase he didn't catch, something he didn't want anyhow. She was something to be walked away from, like an unfinished picture that would never be more than hollow and cold and numb.

Inside the hospital he approached a nurse at the reception desk and asked for the kid's room number. The nurse, with her pallid officious face, told him that the child wasn't to be disturbed.
Sedated, needs rest, no visitors
. Rayner reached across the desk and seized the record sheet from the woman's hand, stared at the room number, threw the sheet down, and walked along a corridor. He could hear the woman harping and whining at his back, but what the hell did that matter? Soon enough she would be on the intercom system, bellowing about an unauthorized visitor. You travel through the shit, he thought; what difference does a little more make?

He found the room and paused a moment outside the door, thinking of Isobel in the rain. Dismiss it, let it slide, let her make what she can of her life. He pushed the door open and stepped inside the room. The kid lay propped up against a pile of pillows, her eyes closed, her face tilted to one side. He drew a chair close to the bed and sat down, holding her hand lightly. It was strange how in sleep the plain face had assumed something akin to beauty; one day, after the chrysalis of adolescence, she might be a real heart-breaker. He laid the palm of his hand against her forehead and she slowly opened her eyes, blank at first as if she were trying to bring him into focus. For a long time there was silence, something awkward, uncomfortable; and Rayner wondered what he could say, whether he could apologize, make amends, some form of restitution for what he had put her through. Watching her, he said nothing.

When she spoke, her voice was dry and hoarse. “She's dead.”

Rayner moved his head slightly. He thought: Between you and me, kid, we've got a story to tell if anybody wants to listen and believe.

The girl turned her face away, gazing at the rainy window. “I knew she was dead,” she said.

“Rest,” Rayner said. “Rest. Take it easy.”

He took his hand from her brow, remembering how cold she had been when he had last touched her. She twisted around to look at him. Her eyes, glazed from whatever medication had been injected into her blood, still seemed capable of penetration.

“Where's Isobel?” she asked.

Rayner watched her eyelids flicker. She was drifting away again, floating out on some soporific cloud. He waited until he was certain that she had fallen asleep and then he rose from his chair, looking down at her, watching her, thankful that he hadn't had to answer her last sleepy question.

The door of the room opened and an angry orderly came in.

“I was just leaving,” Rayner said.

He went out into the corridor and walked toward the exit. Outside, a chill wind had begun to blow the rain in a series of whiplike gusts. Isobel had gone. He stared across the parking lot. There would be explanations to be made, reasons to be given, loose ends to be tied together. A whole tidy package to be delivered.

He was tired. It could wait for another day, a better day.

About the Author

Campbell Armstrong (1944â2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these,
White Rage
and
Butcher
, were nominated for France's Prix du Polar. Armstrong's novels
Assassins & Victims
and
The Punctual Rape
won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.

Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Angela Goddard

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0416-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com