The Family Man

by T. J. Lebbon

  She could not distract herself with that now. She had to focus.

  She opened the back door.

  ‘Over there,’ she said, pointing to the bottom left corner of the garden. It wasn’t a huge plot, but it was enclosed, its only gate leading onto the driveway. Mandy had built a barbecue out of breeze blocks and bricks, and it would provide an easy way over the fence. ‘Go.’

  She made sure that Daisy ran before her, climbing onto the barbecue and leaning across, lifting her right leg over the fence, balancing for a moment, then dropping down the other side. Emma did the same, pausing on the fence to check out Mandy’s house. There was no one in the windows, no movement, no sign that he was inside.

  As she let herself slip into the neighbour’s garden, the side gate opened and Lip appeared.

  He looked right at her.

  She landed in a flower bed. Daisy was standing on the lawn, shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘He saw me,’ Emma whispered. ‘There, quick.’ This house also had an enclosed garden, but there was a side entrance leading towards the front. She took one step that way, then changed her mind. ‘No. This way.’ She dashed across the lawn to the rear fence, rose bushes pricking at her legs, jumping at the same time as Daisy, swinging a leg over, dropping into another garden. If he followed them, he’d assume they’d take the easiest route. Or maybe he’d double back and be waiting for them out on the road.

  ‘Mum,’ Daisy said, pointing.

  A family was sitting on their patio eating tea. A half-empty bottle of wine rested on the table, surrounded by salad bowl, bread board, and a plate of meats and olives. The man and woman stared open-mouthed, while two young children pointed and giggled.

  ‘Please,’ Emma whispered, pressing her finger to her lips.

  The man’s attention shifted to their feet, and Emma looked down.

  ‘Get off my veg!’ he said, not quite shouting, but loud enough.

  Emma grabbed Daisy’s hand and ran for the side of the house. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said as they passed within six feet of the shocked family. The woman had said nothing, the kids were now huddled together. Emma pulled a face and they laughed again.

  Down the side of the house was a tall gate, bolted, and as they approached she so hoped it was not locked. There was a padlock, but it hung free. She worked at the bolt. It was stiff, squealing as it slid halfway back, then from behind them she heard a shout.

  ‘Hey, get out of my garden! What the hell do you—’ A heavy, meaty thud ended the man’s protestations, and then the bolt slid back and she tugged the gate open, hauling Daisy after her as they emerged into the end of the cul-de-sac next to Mandy’s road.

  Emma knew these streets. She had to hold onto that, use her knowledge to help them escape.

  ‘He’s close!’ Daisy said, voice high, and Emma squeezed her hand and saved her breath.

  They ran, passing three houses on their left and right before turning right. There was a snaking path leading from this new estate to one a little older. Kids called it the cutting, adults knew it as dog-shit alley. If they could exit its far end before Lip, there’d be a larger choice of escape routes.

  They darted between houses and into the cutting. Garages on either side shaded it from the evening heat, but the air hung still and humid, redolent with the smell of cut grass and old dog shit. They ran fast. Emma felt the scratch of brambles and the kiss of nettles across her legs, but she did her best to ignore them. The path was so narrow that she had to let go of Daisy’s hand, but she was pleased to hear her daughter’s footsteps close behind, her breathing fast and deep.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Me too. But we can run fast.’

  As the path jigged to the right she risked a glance behind them. Lip was standing back in the street, and at that moment he caught sight of them and started running.

  They turned the corner. Emma figured they had about twenty seconds’ head start. They passed though the old kissing gate left over from when the site of the new estate had been overgrown fields, and she grabbed a long, heavy stick leaning against the gate’s far side.

  ‘Go!’ she said, and Daisy ran on. She was silently counting in her head.

  Five … six … seven …

  She rammed the stick behind the metal upright and wedged it against the framed wooden gate.

  Nine … ten … eleven.

  Daisy was ahead, but only jogging now. Emma sprinted to catch up. Garden fences and hedgerows hemmed them in, and with every step she looked for somewhere to squeeze through. But unless an easy opening presented itself, she knew they’d be better making it out the other end.

  Fifteen … sixteen … seventeen.

  They turned another corner and she risked a glance back. There was no sign of Lip at the kissing gate.

  A few seconds later they emerged onto a road. Right took them towards home, left led eventually to Usk’s main street. They went left.

  An old couple she knew from her visits to the local butcher were working in their front garden, and Emma raised a hand in greeting. It would have felt ridiculous if she wasn’t so scared.

  What will he do if he catches us? The idea plagued her. But if he did somehow draw close, they were surrounded by houses, and soon they’d be on the main street with shops, pubs, restaurants. They should have been safe, even now.

  ‘Mum, this way to Castle Woods,’ Daisy said, pointing.

  ‘I was thinking the main street.’

  ‘This way’s quicker. And as long as he doesn’t see us take the path …’

  Emma nodded. Daisy was right. With a quick glance back the way they’d come, they headed along the narrow lane. There was no sign of Lip. With every road they took, every turning, they lost him some more.

  Castle Woods was maybe half a mile away. But once there, what then? She tried not to worry about that.

  Tried not to stress about how much their present had been fractured, their future made more uncertain than ever before.

  Hello, police? My husband and his friend are murderers.

  The lane curved slightly uphill and to the left. It passed between old houses, the original buildings around which much of the small town had been built. One even had a blue plaque on the wall. She’d read it once, taking a walk with Dom and Daisy in her pushchair. She could no longer remember which literary or famous figure it celebrated.

  Just a mother and daughter out for a jog, she thought. She wore summery sandals. Daisy was slapping the ground in flip-flops.

  They passed a couple out with their three young kids, and Emma coveted their normality. She knew the woman vaguely from a keep-fit class she attended through the winter. They nodded a greeting and the woman said, ‘Keeping it up I see, Emma.’

  ‘You didn’t see us,’ Emma said, surprised at her own breathlessness. ‘Hide and seek.’ The woman’s expression slipped and then they were past, following a lane lined with blooming rose bushes and rhododendron spilling over garden fences. They saw no one else, and a couple of minutes later they reached the lane’s far end.

  They were on the edge of Usk now, and across the road and up a steep hill sat the remains of an old, small castle. It was privately owned, not monopolised for tourism like many other castles in the area. An occasional wedding was held there, and those in the know sometimes picnicked in its open grounds if they wanted somewhere quiet and atmospheric to spend their time.

  It was perfect.

  ‘Go!’ Emma said. Daisy crossed the road; she followed. They could not rest. They had to get out of sight, up through the small castle grounds and beyond, into the woods where it would now be dusk beneath the trees.

  She was sweating. She needed a drink, water or something stronger.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. Me too.’

  Holding hands again, Emma and her daughter ran towards Usk’s oldest building and the shadowy woodland beyond.

  Chapter Seventeen

 
Jane Smith

  ‘We have to go!’ Dom said.

  ‘I winged her. I know I did!’ Andy was standing beyond the windmill staring out across the fields, shotgun hanging from his right hand.

  ‘And now you want to chase her down to finish the job.’ Dom was finding it difficult to speak. Not when there was a dead man close by. He tried not to look at the fallen Frank, but a sick fascination drew his attention again and again. Blood was pooling in the gravel from his broken head making islands of stone, a map of red and grey.

  Andy came back to Dom. His left arm was slashed, a four inch cut pouting wetly across his forearm. He held his fingers splayed, dripping blood. Dom hadn’t noticed before, or perhaps the wound simply had not registered.

  Andy didn’t raise the gun, but that didn’t make Dom any less afraid of him. I’m a witness. I’ve seen what he’s done. I’m part of it. He took one step back.

  Andy froze, held out his bloody hand. ‘Woah, Dom. Mate. You don’t have to be afraid of me.’

  ‘You just threw your cousin from a windmill and killed him.’

  ‘He tried to kill you!’

  ‘You’re not bothered by what you did.’

  Andy looked down at the body lying between them. His expression barely changed, but he glanced aside and blinked quickly, as if to clear dust from his eye or an image from his mind.

  ‘You brought a gun!’

  ‘Piece of shit didn’t work.’

  ‘You took it out even before Frank was on us.’

  ‘I was going to threaten Mary. Insurance.’

  ‘Just threaten her, Andy?’

  ‘We don’t have time for this!’ Andy snapped. ‘Mary’s gone. We have to meet your family. That phone call was probably Sonja checking in, or maybe Lip. Either way, they’ll know what’s happened. Mary would have told them by now.’

  ‘Maybe if you’d blown her head off, we’d still have more time.’

  ‘It is what it is, Dom.’ Andy stepped around the cooling corpse and approached his friend.

  This time Dom did not step back. ‘You’ve made it what it is. What would have happened if this had gone better and they’d opened the bag?’

  ‘It didn’t go better.’

  ‘But if it had?’

  ‘Then I’d have started negotiating.’

  ‘For what? Forty grand? Seriously?’

  Andy didn’t reply. He grabbed Dom’s hand and pulled him towards their car.

  ‘If my family …’ But Dom could not finish the sentence or thought. Its implications were too horrendous, and contemplating them would cloud his mind. He needed to be clear-headed.

  They reached the car, Andy checking behind them frequently, as if expecting Mary to return.

  ‘What about him?’ Dom asked, nodding at Frank’s corpse.

  ‘Broke in, trespassed, fell.’ Andy slapped his hand on the car’s roof. ‘Dom! Keys.’

  Dom opened the car and dropped into the driver’s seat. If he’d been quicker, perhaps he could have locked the doors and left Andy behind. But he was already in the car, shotgun resting across his lap.

  It was an oven. The windows had closed automatically when Dom locked the car. As he grabbed the wheel his hands started to shake. He held on hard, took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Glancing sideways, he saw that Andy’s hand was shaking too. He held onto the shotgun but his injured arm quivered.

  ‘Never killed anyone,’ Andy muttered, almost to himself.

  ‘Life’s full of these little milestones,’ Dom said. He started the car and spun it around, heading back towards the road into town.

  It was almost 8.30. He nursed Andy’s phone in his lap, willing Emma to call and tell him that everything was all right. But it remained silent.

  It was a ten-minute drive to Castle Woods.

  ‘It’s all getting worse,’ Dom said. His shock persisted, but behind it was a dawning realisation about what had happened. ‘It was supposed to be settled, but now it’s even worse than it was before. We’re murderers.’

  ‘You didn’t do a thing.’

  ‘But I was there.’

  Andy gasped. He was inspecting the cut on his arm, and one quick look made Dom feel sick. He could see the flesh, the insides of Andy’s arm as he tried to squeeze the wound together.

  ‘First-aid kit in the glove compartment,’ Dom said.

  ‘Needs stitching.’

  ‘Want to walk to hospital?’

  Andy shook his head and reached for the first-aid kit. He wound a small bandage around his wound, pulling tight and groaning. The bandage was nowhere near up to the task, and quickly soaked through with blood. But it was all they had got.

  ‘Emma knows some first aid,’ Dom said. She’d once put butterfly stitches onto a cut on his finger. He’d fallen in the garden. They’d been out late, lying on Daisy’s trampoline and drinking wine in the darkness, watching the Perseid meteor shower and sharing each other’s warmth. ‘She’ll fix you.’

  If Lip hasn’t already got to them.

  He felt sick with shock and fear, but suddenly focussed and sharp, his senses keen. He could smell Andy’s blood and the rich odour of his own sweat. He could hear the evening song of birds in the hedgerows they sped past. He saw the shadows and shades of dusk splayed across the low hillsides above Usk, a full palette of fiery colours that should bode well for the next day. He only hoped that old rhyme held some truth today.

  ‘So what now?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘What now for my family, Andy? They’ve killed our dog, is it us next?’

  ‘Of course not. No. Not if I can help it.’

  ‘And can you?’

  Andy leaned back in his seat, head against headrest. He looked pale and vulnerable. ‘One shell left,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  They passed the big houses on the edge of town, following the river that led eventually to the large stone bridge. Dom turned left before then, taking a lane that led to the car park just up the wooded hillside from the ruined castle. They were close. It was growing dark. He had to switch on his headlights, and he imagined Emma and Daisy hiding somewhere beneath the trees, listening to every sound, every flutter of leaves in the evening breeze, and wondering if it was someone coming to hurt them.

  ‘What now?’ he asked again. ‘Do we contact them? Negotiate?’

  ‘After this, people like that won’t negotiate.’ Andy was agitated, fingers drumming against the shotgun’s stock, knee lifting and falling as he tapped his foot. He did not look at all like a man in control. His gaze was distant, as if fighting with a decision. Any suspicion Dom had that Andy had engineered events to this stage took a hit. But his friend became more of a stranger with every moment that passed.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ Andy said softly. ‘But I know someone who might help.’

  ‘Who? What’s his name?’

  ‘It’s a her. And her name’s Jane Smith.’

  Jane Smith met John Williams on the ferry at Cherbourg. He was sitting on the open deck at the huge boat’s stern, in an area where several other smokers had congregated. A gentle sea breeze carried their smoke away from the ferry, but even so other travellers kept away from them, as if they were diseased rather than people who enjoyed a cigarette. Even if she hadn’t seen him, Rose would have been able to smell his rank brand of tobacco from a distance.

  Families and couples milled on deck. Children scampered back and forth, tanned from their recent holiday, wearing “I(heart)France” T-shirts and exuding excitement. Parents stood at the handrail, tired and eager to reach home. Rose watched these happy families for a while, trying not to be too obvious in her observations, smiling even though it was the last thing she felt like doing. Tears would make her stand out in the crowd.

  ‘You must have driven quickly,’ he said when she pulled up a plastic chair and sat next to him.

  ‘You must have driven slowly.’

  ‘Speeding attracts attention.’

  ‘
You really smoke those shitty-smelling things in public?’

  Holt took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Don’t need your help here, Jane,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not offering it. Really, did you have to leave without telling me?’

  ‘It was a snap decision,’ he said.

  ‘Bullshit. You never make snap decisions.’

  He glanced at her, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, smoke caressing his face before the breeze snatched it away. ‘Normally true. But in this case, I did. A decision of the heart.’

  She wasn’t sure what to say to that. There was so much to Holt that she did not know, and so much of what she did know, she did not understand. He had a past rich in blood, so deep that its histories and origins seemed lost. She knew little about him before his life of violence, and there were also sorrows that he rarely spoke about. She didn’t think it was because he did not trust her, but because they had grown too close. Such sorrows might solidify between them and drive them apart. Her own were enough for both of them.

  At least, that was what she suspected. Holt rarely revealed anything that might make her sure, or otherwise.

  All she knew was how Holt’s sister had died.

  He had told her soon after the Trail hunt in Wales had ended and they spent a couple of months moving around some of the smaller Greek islands. Rose had been nursing her wounds, both physical and mental, trying to perceive just how much revenge might have helped her.

  Holt had helped her through this period as he had through her alcoholism, though at the time she hadn’t realised what he was doing. She had believed herself to be the stronger one then, able to look back and define her revenge, embrace it, welcome it into her life. She still hadn’t realised how it would only serve to complicate things even more.

  One evening, they’d sat on the beach and built a fire, cooking fish on the hot rocks surrounding the flames. He drank water; she drank coffee. Smoke hung in the air, from the fire and his cigarettes. She berated him for smoking. He agreed with a rare smile that it was bad for his health. And later that evening, something Rose still did not understand prompted Holt to open up.