The Doomed Oasis by Hammond; Innes Read Free Book Online

other before.”
    â€œIt’s not the sort of thing you want to share with anybody else,” I said.
    â€œToo right, it isn’t.” He suddenly beat his fist against the arm of the chair. “Christ! If I’d only known before.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t have helped you,” I told him.
    He thought about that for a moment and then he nodded. “No, I guess you’re right.” And he added: “I always wondered why the old man hated my guts.” He leaned suddenly forward, picked up the poker, and jabbed at the fire. “Guess I hated his guts, too,” he said viciously.
    â€œWell, he’s dead now,” I said. “Did you know that?”
    He nodded and let go of the poker so that it clattered into the grate. “Yep. They told me that. Croaked on the way to hospital, blast him.”
    His attitude to the man’s death shocked me. “For God’s sake!” I said. “Haven’t you any compassion for the man who was a father to you?”
    â€œHe wasn’t my father,” he cried. “I told you that before.”
    â€œHe was your father in the eyes of the law.”
    â€œThen the law ought to be changed, oughtn’t it? You can’t make chalk cheese by a legal declaration.”
    â€œHe supported you all the time you were growing up,” I reminded him.
    â€œAll right, he supported me. But he hated me all the same. I always knew that. When he took a strap to me, he enjoyed it. He hasn’t been able to do that for a long time now. But he’d other ways of getting at me, jeering at me because I read a lot, and at my Arab friends. Do you know what he’d done whilst I’d been in Borstal? I went up to my old room after you’d left. All my books on Arabia, every damn one of them, he’d pulled out and torn to pieces. The only books he hadn’t destroyed were the technical ones. I’d a lot of them on oil—geology, seismology, geophysics. He left me those because he didn’t think I cared about them.” He stared at me. “Now he’s dead, and I’m glad. Glad, do you hear?” His voice had risen, and suddenly the tears were welling up into his eyes and he began to cry. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” he sobbed. “Honest. I didn’t mean to.” He broke down completely then, sobbing like a child, and I went over to him and gripped his shoulder.
    â€œIt was an accident,” I said, trying to steady him.
    â€œThey don’t believe it.”
    â€œDid they prefer a charge?”
    â€œNo, but they think I killed him. I know they do.” And he burst out: “I haven’t a chance with them.”
    â€œYou certainly haven’t made it any better by making a break for it like that.” I was wondering whether I could persuade him to come with me to the police station and give himself up. I hesitated and then walked over to the phone, but he was on his feet immediately.
    â€œWhat you going to do? Ring the police?” There was panic in his voice.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I’m going to ring your home—get your mother down here, your sister, too.”
    â€œWhat for? What good’ll that do?”
    â€œIf your mother makes a statement, explaining exactly how it happened …”
    â€œIt’s no good,” he said. “She wouldn’t do it. She’d rather have me hanged.…”
    â€œOh, don’t be childish,” I said.
    â€œIt’s true,” he cried. “She told me so herself—after you’d gone.” He had followed me to the desk and his voice was intense, very serious. “She thinks I’m going to kill Whitaker if I ever lay my hands on him. And she loves him. After all these years, she still loves the man. I don’t understand it, but that’s how it is. You’d think after the swine had treated her like that, after he’d left her flat …” He pulled a