Read Online Death Before Time by Andrew Puckett - Free Book Online

used freely at Wansborough because the drugs they used there tended to cause a dry mouth. Fraser showed him how to use it.
    “That’s better,” Carter said, moving his tongue around his mouth. He looked shrewdly at Fraser. “Your name’s Callan, isn’t it?”
    “That’s what it says here.” Fraser indicated his badge.
    “From Glasgow?”
    “Aye, can’t you tell?”
    “I knew a bloke in the war called Callan. Jamie Callan.”
    Fraser smiled. “My grandfather was called Jamie. Callan’s a common name, though. So’s Jamie.”
    “Yeah, it was probably two other blokes.” He yawned. “I think I’d like to rest now, if you don’t mind.”
    Fraser wondered briefly whether Carter could have known his grandfather, why he’d shut off so abruptly – then he was called to see another patient and forgot about it.
    But that evening, over his pint, he found himself thinking about Jamie, the grandfather he’d never met; whose death, he was sure, had ramifications in his own life.
    Fraser’s father, John, had been a restless man, never able to hold a job for long and had eventually become an alcoholic. Fraser couldn’t remember much about him, since he’d died when he was ten, but one thing he did remember was what he’d said at Grannie’s one afternoon. Fraser was eight at the time and had asked who the man in the photo on Grannie’s sideboard was.
    “That’s your Grandad, laddie. He was a hero. He flew in bombers in the war and got a medal for saving a man’s life.”
    “Can I see it?”
    Grannie had taken a row of medals out of a drawer and Dad had shown him.
    “Can I have them one day?”
    Dad laughed. “They ought to go to Rob, since he’s older than you.”
    “What happened to Grandad?”
    “He was killed in 1944. Shot down.” John’s eyes had slid away. “When I was the same age as you …”
    Which probably answered for a great deal, Fraser thought now. In the end, none of the brothers had got any of the medals because John sold them a couple of years later when Grannie died. He’d died himself shortly afterwards, run over by a bus while he was drunk.
    *
    “Got a few minutes, doc?” said Harold Carter the next day.
    He was looking better, Fraser thought, there was even a little colour in his face against the crisp white sheets. For several seconds, he didn’t say anything, then, abruptly, he looked up - his eyes were a washed-out brown, but fever bright.
    “The Jamie Callan I knew came from Rutherglen in Glasgow, he had a wife called Jeanie and was shot down over Germany in 1944. That’s your grandfather, isn’t it?”
    “It could be,” Fraser said slowly.
    “It is. I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday and it all fits.” He paused. “Not only that, but you look like him and sound like him.”
    Fraser sat down in the chair by the bed. “It’s a hell of a coincidence,” he said, trying to take it in. Then: “Did you know him well?”
    “Put it this way – he saved my life.”
    A machine bleeped and a phone rang somewhere. Fraser said at last, “I knew that he saved someone’s life, Mr Carter. He got a medal for it.”
    “Well, it was me he saved an’ he deserved it. We were in bombers, he was the dorsal gunner, I was the tail gunner.”
    “Lancasters?”
    “Halifaxes. Not so well known, but I preferred ‘em.”
    He looked at Fraser long and hard, weighing things up in his mind, then he said, “I don’t believe in coincidence, so I’m going to do something I should’ve done years ago and tell you exactly what happened to him.” Another pause while he took a breath, then:
    “We were coming back from Germany and got hit by flak. The skipper thought he could get us home, but he was wrong and we came down in the North Sea. The plane sank, but everyone got in the dinghy, everyone except me, that is. I’d been knocked out and was still in the tail. Jamie came back for me, even though the plane was sinking.”
    He chuckled.
    “They thought we were drowned, ‘cos