Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘Keep both hands on the spade,’ he said. ‘You try and untie the bicycle chain, and you’ve had it[482].’

He watched me dig, standing safely out of reach of any slash I might make with the spade and snapping his lighter on and off. The smell of petrol rose sharply into my nostrils as it oozed drop by drop through the leaking cap and soaked into the ground I stood on. The earth was soft and loamy, not too heavy to move, but Billy hadn’t chosen this task without careful malice aforethought. Try as I might, I found I could scarcely shift a single spadeful without in some way knocking or rubbing my arm against my side. Jersey and shirt were inadequate buffers, and every scoop took its toll[483]. The soreness increased like a geometrical progression.

Billy watched and waited. The hole grew slowly deeper. I told myself severely that a lot of other people had had to face far worse than this, that others before me had dug what they knew to be their own graves, that others had gone up in flames for a principle… that it was possible, even if not jolly.

Billy began to get impatient[484]. A‘sk’, he said. I threw a spadeful of earth at him in reply and very nearly ended things there and then. The gun barrel jerked up fiercely at my head, and then slowly subsided. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said angrily. ‘You’ll have to go down on your bloody knees.’

When I was sure my feet must be below his line of sight I tugged my foot as far away from the petrol can as the chain would allow, and jammed the spade down hard on the six inches of links between the knots. It made less noise than I’d feared on the soft earth. I did it again and again with every spadeful, which apart from being slightly rough on my ankle produced no noticeable results.

‘Hurry up,’ Billy said crossly. He flicked the lighter. ‘Hurry it up.’

Excellent advice. Time was fast running out and Yardman would be back. I jammed the spade fiercely down and with a surge of long dead hope felt the battered links begin to split. It wasn’t enough. Even if I got free of the petrol can I was still waist deep in a hole, and Billy still had his revolver: but even a little hope was better than none at all. The next slice of the spade split the chain further. The one after that severed it: but I had hit it with such force that when it broke I fell over, sprawling on hands and knees.

‘Stand up,’ Billy said sharply. ‘Or I’ll…’

I wasn’t listening to him. I was acknowledging with speechless horror that the grave which was big enough for Patrick and Mike and Bob as well as myself was already occupied. My right hand had closed on a piece of cloth which flapped up through the soil. I ran my fingers along it, burrowing, and stabbed them into something sharp. I felt, and knew. A row of pins.

I stood up slowly and stared at Billy. He advanced nearly to the edge of the hole, looked briefly down, and back at me.

‘Simon,’ I said lifelessly. ‘It’s… Simon.’

Billy smiled. A cold, terrible, satisfied smile.

There was no more time. Time was only the distance from his gun to my head, from his gas lighter to my petrol-soaked shoes and the leaking can at my feet. He’d only been waiting for me to find Simon. His hunger was almost assuaged.

‘Well,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Ask. It’s your last chance.’

I said nothing.

‘Ask,’ he repeated furiously. ‘You must.’

I shook my head. A fool, I thought. I’m a bloody fool. I must be mad.

‘All right,’ he said, raging. ‘If I had more time you’d ask. But if you won’t…’ His voice died, and he seemed suddenly almost as afraid as I was at what he was going to do. He hesitated, half lifting the gun instead: but the moment passed and his nerve came back, renewed and pitiless.

He flicked the lighter. The flame shot up, sharp and blazing against the night sky. He poised it just for a second so as to be sure to toss it where I couldn’t catch it on the way: and in that second I bent down, picked up the petrol can, and flung it at him. The loose cap unexpectedly came right off on the way up, and the petrol splayed out in a great glittering volatile stream, curving round to meet the flame.

A split second for evasion before the world caught fire.

The flying petrol burnt in the air with a great rushing noise and fell like a fountain over both the spots where Billy and I had just been standing. The can exploded with a gust of heat. The grave was a square blazing pit and flames flickered over the mound of dug out soil like brandy on an outsize plum pudding. Five gallons made dandy pyrotechnics.[485]

I rolled out on my back over the lip of the grave with nothing to spare before it became a crematorium, and by some blessed miracle my feet escaped becoming part of the general holocaust. More than I had hoped.