Closure - Tony Blair in the Wilderness by politicalpop on Blogster

...it's a stand off on the runway...Breeze McKong has been arrested for the abduction of Mrs Francis-Prior...

Mrs. Harris, putting her hand over her mouth, swooned. Freeman and Mr. Ferguson picked up their jackets, and brushed them, shaking their heads. McKong stood alone on the runway. The man from CID took his hands out of his pockets and started playing an invisible piano.

“I hear you like Che Faro, McKong? You hummed it for Tony in the truck. You could only have heard Che Faro in Mrs. Harris’s hallway when Mrs. Francis-Prior was playing piano with Tony. You heard it because you were waiting to follow her to the beach. You were the last person to see her on Saturday evening October 12th. Connie Delaney saw you on the beach on the night of her disappearance. Let me show you a photograph to jog your memory.”

The man from CID held out a photograph. McKong snatched it, glowering at me. A plane’s bright lights flashed across his jolly rugged and angry face. He looked down at the photograph.

Mr. Ferguson coughed and put his jacket on, still brushing cement dust off it, and shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, McKong. We both knew it was coming sooner or later. We will help you with all the defence and counselling you need, and we’ll make sure you get the best prison care. I understand the pressure of this job more than anyone, and it’s taken its toll on you mentally. Not to mention the constant fight to maintain profitability, to save money, to cut corners, to make this site into the profit-making unit it is. It’s admirable work, McKong, but you have to know when to stop for your own good.”

Mrs. Harris jabbed the air.

“For everyone’s good. It’s all in here, in God’s eye, do you hear, McKong? Nothing is hidden from God.”

“You can’t go getting arrested now, and I’m not just thinking of the good name of Colonel William O’McCreedie.”

But McKong dropped the photograph into the brazier. The man from CID reached to retrieve it, but the photo curled, and shrivelled, and was consumed. McKong looked up and he wasn’t playing softball.

“It wasn’t the only way I could have heard Che Faro. Eighteen years ago, I saw Mrs. Francis-Prior…Jenny, on her travels, for the first time.”

The silence had travelled thousands of miles to be there at that moment. Not even a jet dared break the silence.

“Jenny made me believe in myself. I could do anything. I thought I could find a way out of here, and now eighteen years on she wants something from me. She wants to take Billy away from me, and I have to stop it happening. She wants her son.”

Mrs. Harris snivelled.

“Lord knows, Billy is better off with his mother.”

“She has no right to take him away from me.”

“Billy is eighteen. Can’t you stop fighting over your son? Can’t you stop bullying him into a life of misery in that caravan and a life of danger on this site working for McCreedie? He knows his own mind. He can make his own decisions, McKong.”

“And Billy will be happier with her.”

“Billy’s happy with me, his father.”

“But Billy is waiting with Connie and his mother, Mrs. Francis-Prior, in the terminal. He’s decided, McKong.”

“Connie is hardly the best judge.”

“Billy told her he wanted to go. If you really love your son, McKong, you’d let him make his own decisions.”

“Jenny doesn’t love him. She just wants anybody. Anyone will do. If Tony hadn’t been looking too closely into what didn’t concern him, he wouldn’t have gone into hiding in the first place, and he’d be with me.”

McKong was looking at me.

Mrs. Harris was looking at me.

Everyone was looking at me, the chosen one, and snow was falling, covering my tracks.

“Look. Hey fellas! The world’s a safer place through my actions. I did the right thing, the only thing, the sensible thing any righteous politician desperate to make a name for himself would do. Billy can look after himself. He’s not scared of anybody. And with regular elections, a taste for freedom, and a MacDonald’s inside of him, he’ll be voting for me, so watch you don’t curb his freedoms in any way, or I’ll be onto you like a ton of semtex.”

But another voice came out of the shadow.

“But he hid because you saw him with Connie in the graveyard, Tony.”

Mrs. Francis-Prior walked into the fringe of light.

Freeman tapped the British Standard book.

“And quite rightly, my dear, Tony told me Billy was plotting to escape.”

“That’s right, dudes. Without Billy, nothing was going to be finished. The runway was my priority.”

“Absolutely. Tony is a hero. Chris North was no replacement for Jim. Chris was only one hundred and twenty batches a day.”

McKong picked up the heavy pinch bar.

“And what was Jim, Freeman?”

“Jim was two batches a day extra.”

I stepped back.

“Jim could make something out of nothing.”

“On the contrary, Jim Baird could only make nothing, because Jim Baird was nothing. He made a runway with no cement.”

I looked at Mrs. Francis-Prior.

“Like a boy without a mother.”

McKong glared at me.

Mrs. Harris picked up the apple pie, brushing snow off it.

“That’s very good banter, Tony, but do you remember my warning on the train? Remember I was returning from visiting Jenny, and I said Ardrossan is a very small place but not so small you can’t lose yourself? Well you nearly destroyed everything when you interrupted Billy with Connie.”

“You know what, honey, I think the damage was already done.”

“There was no damage, Tony. We had Billy’s confidence and you nearly destroyed it with your intervention, but now he’s safe with Connie and my sister and Jenny. We’re all safe. We’re all going to sort things out together, to make things better for everyone without meddling politicians messing things up.”

“Hey! Listen up, everyone. What about Jim? No one searched for Jim like they searched for Mrs. Francis-Prior.”

But McKong lifted the heavy pinch bar, and let it slip through his hands, striking the runway.

...to be continued...