Free Light Errant by Chaz Brenchley Page B

out, and wrecked the garage where he kept his ladders and stuff.”
    â€œJesus, Jon, I’m sorry,” and I was; though I’d spent a lifetime being sorry for what my family did, I still felt it fresh every time. “What happened after, what did he do?”
    â€œWell, he really couldn’t pay them then, could he? He tried to find a job, but there just weren’t any; so him and my mam, they left in the end. Went to Liverpool, he’s working for a garage over there, doing resprays.”
    Yeah, right. That was an old story, often retold; people ran into the brick wall that was the Macallans’ inflexible greed, they packed their bags and departed. A desert of dreams, this city could be, under my family’s rule. They never used to bother before with the really small beer, but the principle was painfully familiar.
    â€œYou stayed, though,” I said, looking to find some good in the dreary waste of lives, some hint of a silver lining.
    He smiled. “That was Tim. He said I could move in with him, only I had to stop dossing around and try for college. I did a year’s foundation course, and they let me in to do art. It’s brilliant,” the smile stretching to a grin now, an expression of absolute content. “Even with Tim gone, even with all the shit that’s going on, it’s still brilliant.”
    â€œSo tell me about the shit,” I said, sighing inside. “My uncle got heavy, okay, that’s not a surprise. He never did have any sense of proportion. There’s more than that, though. Isn’t there?”
    â€œWell, yes. People stood it for a while, but in the end it got too much. There were so many businesses going under, a lot worse than my dad. They had meetings in the town hall, they talked a lot, but no one thought anything would happen...”
    No. Again, this was nothing new. Uncle James wouldn’t have been worried by a few town meetings, he thought he was invulnerable, him and all his kind. He probably wouldn’t even bother to send spies along. “But?”
    â€œBut there must have been some group having meetings in secret too, making plans. Don’t know who, I don’t think anyone does know; only one day, about a month ago this was, the last week of term, we all got sent home from college and told to keep our heads down, not to go out that night. There were all kinds of rumours, no one knew anything for sure, only that it was something to do with Macallans and they were going to be out for trouble. It was dead scary. We locked the doors and turned all the lights off, went to bed and listened to local radio all night, didn’t we?”
    He glanced at Janice, she nodded; I pictured them huddled together for comfort, in the dark with the curtains pulled against any stray intrusion of starlight. But he was doing that deliberately, I thought, giving me pictures to avoid giving me the truth.
    â€œWhat was the radio saying?” I asked, thinking myself ready for anything; expecting news of another cousin murdered, some futile rebellion.
    â€œMore than usual,” he said. “You know what it’s like, Macallans aren’t news usually, the station doesn’t dare; but this time it did. They’d taken hostages, it said,” he said, and I wasn’t anything like ready for that, and he knew it. “Half a dozen, women and girls. They’d snatched them all from their homes, all at the same time, all over the city. It was really organised...”
    â€œHang on. Macallan women?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œOh, Christ.” That was clever, it was wickedly clever. Except for my freaky twin sister—my freaky dead sister, culled by my late Uncle Allan—the family talent had never run down the distaff side. Macallan women would be no threat to their kidnappers. “Who?”
    â€œWives and sisters,” Janice said.
    Jonathan nodded. “Sorry, Ben, I don’t know their names. I