by TL Dyer
‘Oh, wind your neck in, Shaun.’
I sigh with frustration and peel my eyes open. His head is dipped, lips pulled into that mark of frustration that bothers me so much, and I wonder if already he’s finding ways to make this his fault. That he didn’t protect me as an older brother should. That he couldn’t stop his little sister from falling prey to older men with shiny cars, flash smiles and wandering hands.
‘This is my problem, Shaun, not yours,’ I add, tiredness slurring my words. ‘It’s not for you to fix. There’s nothing to fix. It’s between me and Jake and his father. Jake’s the only thing that matters to me. No, I never wanted Darren in my life, but I realise now it’s not about me. I have to put Jake first. I have to make sure I do everything I can to give him the best chance. You understand that, right?’
He gets up from the chair, scratching his head, mock amusement pulling back his lips. ‘Not really.’
‘Not really? You don’t understand that I want the best for my son?’
He snorts a soft laugh as he swipes up his phone and slots it in his back pocket. But when he looks at me just before leaving the room, the sarcasm has already gone. ‘I don’t understand why you think Darren Isaacs is his best chance.’
With the click of the latch on the front door as he leaves, the air goes out of me and I sag into the sofa. My gaze drifts towards the photo above the mantelpiece the way it always does when I feel myself going under, and my eyes lose focus the longer I look to Mam and wonder what she’d make of the conversation that just took place. She loved Jake as much as she loved me and Shaun. So how would she feel to know that the father of her grandchild, the person who had unprotected sex with her daughter, was not only the same age as she herself was, but also a married man with a family of his own?
I’d spent nine months asking that same question while Darren’s son grew inside me. Mam had always been accommodating to my friends, and none more so than with Lauren and Craig, as pleasant to them as she was to their parents on the rare occasions their paths would cross. But while she didn’t say a bad word about Eliza and Darren, she didn’t share my admiration for them either, wary as she was of the family for reasons she never made clear and that would always irritate me. In the end, it was for that reason that I didn’t name Darren as the father. I couldn’t bear to have her tell me she’d known all along they weren’t as perfect as I’d made out. Nor could I handle the shame that if they weren’t perfect, then by extension of that, and in light of my actions that night, neither was I.
My phone buzzes an alert on the side table. Through stinging eyes, I stare at the message on the screen from John Russell.
Head’s up, mate. They’ve charged Smithy.
Chapter 24
Craig changed almost overnight. That’s how it felt, anyway. By an ironic twist of fate, after all the time I’d spent listening as he confided in me about his confused and conflicted thoughts, and coaxing him into being the person he really was instead of the one he was expected to be, I was the first one he turned his back on.
I had anticipated some degree of change, stepping back when his first boyfriend replaced me as his confidante, but I hadn’t counted on how cold his treatment of me would become and how quickly. He claimed to be accepting his sexuality and not hiding from it anymore, but at the same time he became hard and crass, flaunting a selfish side I didn’t know he possessed and a fuck-you attitude for anyone who didn’t fit with him any more. That included me.
The Craig I had known had been obsessed with music, loving everything from seventies rock, through to eighties synthesised pop and nineties hip hop, but all that was exchanged for bands with harsh riffs and sombre or screamed lyrics. He swapped t-shirts and joggers for black sweatshirts and torn jeans to match those of the boys he hung around with, boys who were pale-faced with greasy hair and sunken eyes and who looked wasted half the time. Lauren teased that they’d evaporate in strong sunlight, but I could only wonder why she wasn’t as concerned about her brother in the same way I was. While her rebellion had been the spoilt princess kind and years in the making, Craig’s seemed to be silent and sudden and slid in when no one was looking. He was nothing like the boy who wrapped his arm around my shoulders and who had kissed me with such gentle devotion not so long before.
Last August, when they found him, he’d lain dead in his own waste and vomit for weeks. He was only discovered then because the landlord of the flat below was concerned the illegal squatters were putting off his paying clientele. He couldn’t quite seem to hold on to them, and so the council sent in a team to board up the misused units until legal matters surrounding the current owner were concluded and the flats either used for their rightful purpose or sold.
He was alone when they found his body, but there was evidence in the squalid rooms that he hadn’t always been. Needles and other paraphernalia on the bathroom floor suggested someone had been there only days before, maybe hours. They had known Craig was there, dying or dead, and had been too lost to their own personal anguish to tell anyone about it.
He was twenty-five. He may or may not have seen death coming, may or may not have feared it, or cried, or wished he wasn’t alone. For heroin addicts at the stage Craig was at, there’s a thin line between life and death and often not one that matters when the next fix is of greater concern. I only hope that at the point of his dying he was too numb to care either way. To me, his death had started ten years before that. I can even pinpoint it as the moment he slammed his bedroom door in my face when I’d said I was worried about the people he was hanging out with. It was his way of saying I was shut out of his mind and out of his life, outgrown and no longer needed. The door never opened to me again. And that I never battered it down to reach him is my deepest regret.
Chapter 25
The three sharp thumps are made with a fist. My fingers land on Shaun’s old cricket bat before my feet have even hit the floor. 3:15, the digital clock reads, as the thumping starts up again. Snatching up my phone, I go to the window first, peer down through the gap in the curtains, but whoever it is, they’re too close to the house. I can’t make them out.
On the landing, Jake’s door creaks open in its hinges as I’m heading for the stairs. He appears, rubbing at his eyes, and I tell him in a hushed voice to go back to bed, that it’s alright, it’ll be Uncle Shaun forgetting something again. Once he’s tucked in, I pull his door and click it closed, then go downstairs with the bat clutched in my right fist and the phone in my left with the keypad open, ready to hit 999.
At the bottom of the stairs I flick on the hallway light. If this is trouble, I want the whole neighbourhood to see it. But my late night caller must notice my outline through the glass panel in the PVC, and when they say my name I know immediately who it is. I just don’t know what the hell he’s doing here.
Laying the bat against the wall, I unlock the door and open it a few inches until we’re eye to eye.
‘Jesus Christ.’
A battered and bruised Darren Isaacs leans against the door frame and almost falls through it. His left eye is red, both the eye itself and the surrounding skin. Dried blood is crusted beneath his nose, and there’s a slim but deep cut to his right temple that’s weeping fresh blood. He peers at me through eyelids that are struggling to stay open and, sensing my reluctance, hisses his words through gritted teeth. ‘If you don’t let me in, I’ll tell Jake who his dad is right now. I’ll scream it in the fucking street if I have to.’
Despite the state of him, there’s a hardness to his eyes that tells me he means it. He’s angry – drunk too, I can smell it from here – but if I resist he’ll do as he says. And there are a hundred reasons that’s not a good idea, none less than our son’s irrational fear of blood that Darren doesn’t know about yet. I check the stairs first to be sure Jake’s not come out of his room again, then pull the door open. Better to let him in and defuse the situation before it can escalate.
He steps through the doorway and I point him towards the kitchen before
closing the front door but leaving it unlocked. I glance at the bat, then leave it where it is. By the looks of him he’s been manhandled enough, and given the added factor of his inebriation I don’t think he’ll give me too many problems.
I find him at the kitchen sink, dabbing his eye with water from the tap.
‘Sit down,’ I tell him, nodding to the table, and pick up a tea towel that I hold under the water then wring out. He does as I ask, stumbling and kicking the chair before sitting in it.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbles, to the chair more than me. ‘It’s this eye. I can’t see a thing.’
I close the kitchen door just enough so Jake won’t hear us but I’ll still hear him if he comes downstairs. Then I indicate to Darren to lift his face. This close, the smell of spirits is strong and it doesn’t take much thought to piece together what might have happened. Darren’s blunt nature can be disconcerting even before he’s had a skinful, let alone after. But I couldn’t care less about that. I’m more concerned why he came here. Why he thought he could.
With the cut on his head clean, I refold the damp tea towel to brush the dried blood from his nose. I do it while avoiding his stare, which is sharp and edged with anger, despite the alcohol that’ll anaesthetize the pain until he sobers up. But there’s something else about the way he’s watching me, a feeling my cop senses pick up on and don’t like. It’s as if he sees something curious. To be sure, I put him straight. I don’t want him thinking this is the kind of thing he can do any time he gets done over.
‘Jake has a fear of blood,’ I say. ‘If he sees you like this, he’ll scream the house down.’
He tilts his head away from the towel and I’m forced to look at him. ‘My son has a fear?’
‘All children have fears. Here,’ I hold out the towel. ‘Put that on your temple, it’s still bleeding. And I would ask that you keep your voice down so he’s not disturbed.’
‘Hm. My son has a fear,’ he repeats to himself, while I pull out a chair opposite him, in line with the open door. If Jake comes downstairs, I want to get to him first. ‘I’ll have to do something about that,’ he adds, raising the towel to his head.
I grit my teeth. I need to keep the situation calm and get him out of here without making a wrong move. ‘What are you doing here, Darren? It’s half three in the morning. I have work tomorrow, Jake has school.’
‘That’s a great question,’ he says, with a gentle chuckle that’s so brief, the gaze he fixes me with as his eyes refocus is frightening. ‘Here’s the answer.’ He drops the tea towel from his head and shuffles himself and the chair closer to the table so that we’re face to face. ‘See this?’ He points to his left eye. ‘Who do you suppose did this?’
He laughs again, but it’s all a show. The anger’s still there. I can see it. Feel it. I realise I’ve never seen him drunk before, but if this is how it normally goes, I’d prefer the cold honesty he dishes out when he’s sober. At least I know what I’m getting then. No messing around
‘I’ll call you a taxi. You should go home.’
I move to get my phone from beside the sink where I left it, but Darren’s hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. Immediately I twist out of it, and it takes all the willpower I have not to return the favour and pin his arm to the table. I can’t predict how that would escalate and I have nothing to hand. No cuffs, no radio, no cricket bat. But Darren’s already backing off, holding up his hands, showing he’s no threat. All the same, I retrieve my phone from the counter and stand with my arms folded, waiting for him to either leave or get to the reason for his visit.
‘Please, Sacha,’ he says after a moment, and points to the chair I vacated. ‘I can’t talk to you like that. Like you’re going to arrest me or something. In your PJs.’
A small amused smile tugs at his lips, but I’m not liking this playfulness from him. I’m not buying it either. But I do want him to hurry up so he can go. I pull the chair out from the table to maintain some distance between us and sit. And this time it’s me who initiates the glare. Me who lets him know I’m angry. Lets him know that here under my roof I’m the one in charge.
He runs his tongue over his bottom lip and raises a finger to point at his face again. ‘Some big tough guy did this. I would say little prick, but I wouldn’t wish to offend. So let’s just call him a big tough guy. Goes by the name of Shaun.’
He’s lying, is my first thought. Or he’s got it wrong, is my second. Don’t react, is my third. But it’s this third where I fall down, because he sees something in my face that tells him I need further explanation.
‘Full name Shaun Sanderson. That’s right, Sacha. Except being the little prick… I mean, being the big tough guy he is, he didn’t come alone. Because alone I might have had a chance. He’d factored that, he’s smart for a tough guy. He wasn’t even sure that two of them would be a match for me. But three…’ He shakes his head in mock defeat. ‘I was pathetic against three, much to my frustration.’
‘Not my Shaun. It must have been someone else.’
‘No, sweetheart, it was most definitely your Shaun. I could pick him out of a line-up any day.’
‘Where was this?’
‘At my house. My own home. Unlike your Shaun, I don’t frequent the local drinking establishments, never have. They came to me after last orders, I’m guessing. I was the after-party, the post-show entertainment.’
‘But you’ve been drinking. You’re drunk.’
‘Tsk. I have a couple in the evening to unwind, same as everyone.’
‘You’ve had more than a couple.’
He raises his palm as if to slam it on the table. Stops himself. Gently taps it instead. ‘You’re missing the point, Sacha. Listen carefully. I’ll run through the exact timeline for you. That’s what you officers like, isn’t it? Facts and figures.’
‘Please keep your voice down,’ I say, with one eye on the hallway.
Darren blinks with eyes of lead and sighs through his nose, but then obliges, his voice a low rumble as he says, ‘I was having a few drinks at home. Long day, needing to unwind, nothing wrong with that. I’m just about to turn in, sometime around one thirty, when there’s a knock on my door. Three men push their way in, entirely unprovoked, and proceed to brutally beat me.’ His finger hovers near his eye. ‘This one was your Shaun. I’m a little fuzzy on the others. But I’m pretty sure this was Shaun too, or at least he contributed.’ He stands and pulls up his jacket and shirt. Broad scuff marks mottle his torso from his stomach around to his back when he turns, contusions made with a shoe or boot rather than fists.
I’m struggling to see how Shaun could have played any part in this, but the coincidence with him only just learning Darren is Jake’s father is too great. And it’s that which is making me uneasy.
‘You saw his face?’ I ask, and Darren tuts and shakes his head.
‘No, I didn’t. They were wearing balaclavas. Like I said, Shaun is smart for a big tough guy. But not as smart as I am.’ He reaches inside his jacket. I stiffen in the chair, my hand gripping the phone. ‘Do you have a laptop?’ he asks, bringing out a small black and white USB flash drive.
‘What’s on it?’ I say, refusing to be led by his games. Or at least wanting to be prepared first.
‘Before I turned in for the night, I’d been on the computer in the sitting room. When the knock came at the door, I switched the screen off but left the PC on. Nothing untoward on it, just out of instinct; if someone was coming in the house, I didn’t want them seeing everything I was doing. They got a few punches on me first, but then I remembered the webcam that activates and records by hitting a shortcut key. I only had to feign falling into the desk to turn it on. They were none the wiser. Too wrapped up in what they’d come round to do.’ He points again at the flash drive. ‘It captures all three of them. Masked, of course, and I don’t know the other two, but I’d know your brother anywhere. Though why don’t you take a look, Sacha? Because I can see you don’t believe me.’
‘Did they take anythin
g, or say anything?’
‘Oh, they didn’t want to take anything. They’re not thieves. But they had plenty to say. Flash fucker. Dirty fucking bastard. Lonely old pervert. May have been more, but you get the picture. Look at the flash drive, Sacha, listen to it for yourself. Or I tell you what, I’ll leave this one with you, I have my own copy. Maybe you can watch it with your brother when you’re trying to re-educate him on manners and how we do things in polite society. How we avoid jail time.’
He slides the drive over the table. And though my heart’s thundering in my chest, my thoughts spinning wildly, I at least try to maintain an illusion of control over this situation even while we both know damn well I don’t have it.
‘What do you want me to do, Darren? If you want to report this, you’ll need to do it at the station with someone other than me.’
‘What do I want you to do?’ He tents his hands on the table, the swelling over his left eye forcing it shut, his blue-grey eye drowning under a sea of broken blood vessels. ‘You already know. I want my son and I to start making up for lost time. I’ve done everything you’ve said, everything you’ve wanted. I’ve been very patient. Very patient, Sacha, for a man who’s been messed around and lied to.’ He points to his face. ‘Not any more. Do you understand? Not any more.’
‘And I said I’d tell him. I’ve promised you that.’
He laughs, a bitter laugh that closes his eyes and forces a line of blood to seep from the cut on his temple. ‘Because the Sandersons are a family you can trust.’
‘Yes.’
‘No, Sacha. No, you’re not. We know what you’ve done, how you’ve lied, so there’s no need to drag that one up again. And your brother…’ He reaches for the USB drive and spins it with his finger on the table. ‘Well, we all knew what he was capable of a long time ago. You’re not exactly the Partridge family, are you?’
‘Shaun went down for something he didn’t do. He was loyal to a bunch of idiots who never thanked him for it.’
