Read Online The Exiled by William Meikle - Free Book Online Page A

then winced in pain when he tried to sit up.
    “Take it easy, big man,” Alan said. “They saved the arm, but you won’t be using it much for a while.”
    John prodded at the thick bandaging around his chest and left shoulder, wincing again at fresh pain where he touched.
    “I didn’t dream it, did I?” he said quietly. “Simpson’s dead?”
    Alan nodded.
    “And you’re the only one that knows what happened. It’s going to get busy for you for a while, now that you’re awake. Do you want me to hold off telling anybody for a bit?”
    John pushed himself into a sitting position with his good hand and legs, and all the color left his cheeks as the pain hit hard. He pushed away Alan’s attempted ministrations.
    “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t try to mother me.”
    Alan laughed.
    “That’s my line, remember?”
    John had played big brother and sole parent for more years than Alan cared to remember. After Mum died they only had each other, and John took his responsibilities seriously—too seriously for Alan’s liking on some occasions.
    John laughed, then grimaced.
    “No jokes please—I’m wearing clean underwear.”
    “I’ll get a doctor,” Alan said, and turned to leave, but John called him back.
    “Give me twenty minutes. You and I need to get our story straight first.”
    Alan laughed bitterly.
    “My side is easy. I went in. It was dark. Somebody smacked me on the head. I woke up in the morning. The end.”
    John looked him in the eye.
    “That’s it? That’s all you remember?”
    “Yep. I was hoping you could fill in the blanks?”
    “Maybe,” John said. “But it’s nothing I’m going to be able to tell to anybody but you—it got a bit weird back there.”
    “Weird how?” Alan asked, and knew immediately that this was something to do with the vision—the sea cliffs, the stone buildings and the black birds.
    Do I really want to know?
    “We don’t have time to get into it now,” John said. “Let’s keep it simple. You’ve told them your side already?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then my side is nearly as simple. You phoned me with a tip-off, I took D.I. Simpson and went to check it out. I sent Simpson round the back, I went in the front—and got jumped.”
    “There’s more to it than that though, isn’t there?” Alan said.
    John nodded.
    “But as I said—nothing they’ll believe. It’s going to be just you and me against the world on this one, wee brother.”
    Alan took John’s free hand and held it tight.
    “It’s never been anything else.”
    * * *
    He’d been right about it getting busy.
    Twenty minutes after Alan told the nurses that John was awake, and after a doctor had arrived to make sure he was fit to be questioned, John’s superiors arrived—D.C.I. Cranston, and the superintendent, faces like thunder. Alan watched from the corridor. He couldn’t hear a word of it, but he saw that the calmer John kept, the more irate the other two men became. Cranston in particular seemed to have worked himself into a frothing, red-faced rage.
    The visit lasted half an hour, and by the end of it the D.C.I. was almost apoplectic. As they left, the superintendent opened the door before turning back for a last word, and Alan finally heard some of the conversation—only snatches, but enough to make out the gist. Early retirement, pension, stay away—it was pretty clear what was going on.
    So he was surprised to go back into John’s room and find his brother sitting up and almost smiling.
    “You’re out?” Alan asked.
    “Yes—kicked in the nuts and told to bugger off to my pipe and slippers by the fireplace. I told them where they could stick their job. You don’t know how often I’ve wanted to tell that bloody bureaucrat to stuff it.”
    “So what now—I mean, after you get out of here?” Alan knew the answer to that one already.
    “We go after Galloway. He killed Simpson, and he did for those four wee lassies. I’m going to get him.”
    “The girls are dead?” Alan