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

Billy was running away screaming with his coat on fire along the left shoulder and down his arm. He was making frantic efforts to get it off but he was still clinging to his gun and this made it impossible. I had to have the gun and would have fought for it, but as I went after him I saw him drop it and stagger on, tearing at his jacket buttons in panic and agony: and my spine and scalp shuddered at the terror I had escaped.

With weak knees I half stumbled, half ran for the place where the revolver had fallen. The light of the flames glinted on it in the grass, and I bent and took it into my hand, the bulbous silencer heavy on the barrel and the butt a good fit in my palm.

Billy had finally wrenched his jacket off and it lay on the ground ahead in a deserted smouldering heap. Billy himself was still on his feet and making for the hangar, running and staggering and yelling for Alf.

I went after him.

Alf wasn’t in the hangar. When I reached it Billy was standing with his back to me in the place where the car had been, rocking on his feet and still yelling. I stepped through the door and shut it behind me.

Billy swung round. The left sleeve of his shirt had burned into ribbons and his skin was red and glistening underneath. He stared unbelievingly at me and then at his gun in my hand. His mouth shut with a snap; and even then he could still raise a sneer.

‘You won’t do it,’ he said, panting. ‘Earl’s sons,’ I said, ‘learn to shoot.’

‘Only birds.’ He was contemptuous. ‘You haven’t the guts.[486]’

‘You’re wrong, Billy. You’ve been wrong about me from the start.’

I watched the doubt creep in and grow. I watched his eyes and then his head move from side to side as he looked for escape. I watched his muscles bunch to run for it. And when I saw that he finally realised in a moment of stark astonishment that I was going to, I shot him.

Chapter Seventeen

The Cessna had full tanks[487]. Hurriedly I pressed the master switch in the cockpit and watched the needles swing round the fuel gauges. All the instruments looked all right, the radio worked, and the latest date on the maintenance card was only three days old. As far as I could tell from a cursory check[488], the little aircraft was ready to fly. All the same.

Alf and Rous-Wheeler came bursting in together through the door, both of them startled and wild-looking and out of breath. Back from their little walks and alarmed by the bonfire. Alf gave an inarticulate cry and hurried over to Billy’s quiet body. Rous-Wheeler followed more slowly, not liking it.

‘It’s Billy,’ he said, as if stupefied. ‘Billy.’

Alf gave no sign of hearing. They stood looking down at Billy as he lay on his back. There was a small scarlet star just left of his breastbone, and he had died with his eyes wide open, staring sightlessly up to the roof. Alf and Rous-Wheeler looked lost and bewildered.

I climbed quickly and quietly out of the Cessna and walked round its tail. They turned after a moment or two and saw me standing there not six paces away, holding the gun. I wore black. I imagine my face was grim. I frightened them.

Alf backed away two steps, and Rous-Wheeler three. He pointed a shaking arm at Billy.

‘You… you killed him.’

‘Yes.’ My tone gave him no comfort. ‘And you too, if you don’t do exactly as I say.’

He had less difficulty in believing it than Billy. He made little protesting movements with his hands, and when I said, ‘Go outside. Take Alf,’ he complied without hesitation.

Just outside the door I touched Alf’s arm, pointed back at Billy and then down to where the grave was. The flames had burnt out.

‘Bury Billy,’ I shouted in his ear.

He heard me, and looked searchingly into my face. He too found no reassurance: and he was used to doing what I said[489]. Accepting the situation with only a shade more dumb resignation than usual he went slowly back across the concrete. I watched him shut the glazing eyes with rough humane fingers, and remembered the cup of coffee he’d given me when I badly needed it. He had nothing to fear from me as long as he stayed down by the grave. He picked Billy up, swung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and carried him out and away across the grass, a sturdy old horseman who should never have got caught up in this sort of thing[490]. Any more than I should.

I stretched an arm back into the hangar and pulled down the lever which controlled the runway lights. At each end of the long strip the four powerful beams sprang out, and in that glow Alf could see where he was going and what he was going to do.

That Cessna, I thought, glancing at it, probably had a range of about six or seven hundred miles.

‘You,’ I said abruptly to Rous-Wheeler. ‘Go and get into the plane we came in. Go up the forward steps, back through the galley, right back through the cabin, and sit down on those seats. Understand?’

‘What…?’ He began nervously.

‘Hurry up.’