by T. J. Lebbon
He heard a metallic clunk! as the gun dropped to the floor. Risking a glance to the right he saw Emma and Daisy crouched against the sinks, watching him, glancing to their right, back again. There was no sign of Andy, but shadows fought beyond the open bathroom door.
The man punched him in the gut.
Dom gasped, winded, and saw the cruel serrated blade swinging in for his stomach. He slammed his arm down and the blade kissed across his forearm, parting skin and flesh.
They grappled. Dom turned sideways and pressed against the man, using both hands now to grasp at his knife hand. His hands were slick with blood. The man drove a fist into his back, a shockingly painful impact against his kidneys, again and again.
Three rapid gunshots came from elsewhere, beyond the bathroom.
Andy! Dom thought, and he slipped. Blood or water, he didn’t know, but his feet went from under him and he half-fell, hanging onto his enemy and pulling him down.
The man swung the knife around as he came. Face a mask of blood, nose torn and tattered, Dom had never been so afraid of anyone in his life.
He was ready to shoot my daughter, he thought, and past the man’s bloody visage, past the arcing knife, he saw his wife appear in the cubicle doorway, the dropped gun held out in both hands.
Dom caught the man’s wrist as the knife’s blade was a hand’s width from his face. He winced, pushed up as hard as he could, while the man lifted himself ready to drop all his weight through his left arm.
Emma’s hands were shaking.
Dom felt around and found a chunk of the shattered toilet pan. He grasped it and slammed it into the side of the man’s head, twice, three times. It was only as he struck the fourth time that he realised it was more of a shard than a chunk.
The man’s right eye flooded red. He looked surprised, and then confused. His strength seemed to bleed away as blood flowed from the puncture wounds in his temple.
Dom heaved him aside and stood shakily. Emma helped him up, still clasping the gun in her left hand, lowered now and aimed towards the man.
He was moving slowly in the cubicle, legs pushing through blood and water, right hand touching the ruined mess at the side of his head. His hair was clotted and wet, and blood and a clearer fluid pulsed from the wound. His mouth opened and closed, but only a quiet clicking noise emerged.
‘Dad!’ Daisy said, and she ran to him, embraced him, turning him away from the sight of the man he might have just killed and smothering his bloody face with kisses.
A shape shadowed the bathroom doorway. Emma span around and raised the gun, but Andy held up his hands. He also carried a pistol. He looked from Emma, to Dom and Daisy, then down at the man’s feet protruding from the toilet cubicle.
Dom could not read his expression.
‘What happened?’ Dom asked. ‘Is this Lip?’
Andy looked past him. ‘No. There were two of them. I don’t know them, Sonja must have called in freelancers. You okay?’
Dom nodded, then actually smiled at the surreality of the moment. No, he wasn’t okay. He glanced back and the man had mostly stopped moving, only his mouth opening and closing, that clicking sound quieter and quieter. No, he wasn’t okay at all.
‘They killed the security guy,’ Andy said.
‘Brian?’ Emma asked, one hand going to her mouth.
‘Cut his throat. I grappled with the other guy, he dropped his gun, ran.’
‘We heard shots,’ Dom said.
‘I missed. Chased, lost him, then came back, I thought I might be able to …’ He nodded past Dom.
‘What, help?’
They stood silently for a moment, none of them knowing what to say. Dom felt sick. But he thought it was from the pain more than shock of what he had done. His right forearm was bleeding badly and the wound looked horrific.
He looked down at the dying man and felt nothing.
‘I couldn’t let him …’ he said.
‘You saved Daisy,’ Emma whispered into his ear, and she gently touched his cheek and turned his face to hers. ‘You were brave.’
In the stink of blood, consumed by pain, slick with sweat, those words meant the world.
They left the bathroom with Emma on one side of him and Daisy on the other. Daisy was shaking as if cold, though her skin felt hot. He was worried for her; she had seen everything. But now was not the time.
Andy went ahead. He hefted the gun he’d taken from the other man, shoved the one Emma gave him into his pocket. There was no discussion, no plan. Simply an unspoken urgency to leave as quickly as possible.
Andy did not have to hot-wire Brian’s white van. He simply took the keys from the dead man’s pocket.
‘I killed a man,’ Dom said. He was in the back of the small van on a rough wooden bench, Emma beside him, Daisy huddled into his other side. Contact was very important to him right then. He hoped all his family felt the same way. Emma clasped a sock around the wound in his arm. It needed stitching.
Andy drove, alone in the front. He carried injuries but did not mention them.
‘You stabbed him with a toilet,’ Daisy said.
Emma snorted laughter. She shook next to him, shoulders moving. She laughed out loud, and then Dom joined in. Daisy looked back in surprise, also smiling.
We need this, Dom thought. Despite his wounds and how much they hurt, despite the cold, stark truth of what he had done, he found himself laughing. He knew it was a form of hysteria, loss of control, but that did nothing to quieten them or lessen the need.
Also in the van’s dark interior was the plastic bag they’d retrieved from Dom’s wrecked car. Andy had stood guard, all of them nervous that the other attacker would be hiding in the darkness with another weapon. But they’d escaped undisturbed. Inside the bag were wads of money. He hadn’t even wanted to look at it. Its allure was long gone. Now it was purely a way to help them out of this mess.
But nothing could ever be the same again. Behind the laughter his thoughts were serious and leaden. He hugged Daisy tight, wondering how her young mind could process what she had seen and how much damage had already been done. She was quiet and seemed in control. Shouldn’t she be crying? Shouldn’t she be more afraid? Emma leaned into him, her own laughter fresh in his ear, her breath an endless kiss.
Dom had always sworn to Emma that he would be able to kill someone threatening his family. She had always agreed that she could, too. It was never a heavy conversation, more of a matter-of-fact statement from both of them. It almost went without saying.
But the truth could never be so simple. He had started the chain of events leading to this. He was responsible, and guilty.
Their manic laughter soon subsided, and Andy steered them onto the main road leading towards Abergavenny. The phone in his lap lit up and chimed, and he glanced at the screen.
‘She’s an hour away,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we should wait for her. We need to keep moving. I’ll arrange somewhere to meet.’
None of them replied. Maybe Jane Smith is already too late, Dom thought. Maybe I’m beyond saving.
‘I killed a man,’ he said. This time there was no laughter, and his words hung in the dark silence.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gone
When Emma’s mother had died several years before, the world went away for a while. She’d had her family around her offering support. Dom held her and loved her, she and her father gave each other strength, and Daisy was a dancing fairy of concern for her sad mummy.
But for just a few days reality had fallen heavy and full, its awful truth smothering most of what she had once deemed essential. Small concerns faded to nothing. Routine continued – sleeping, cleaning of teeth, drinking of coffee, fending of phone calls – but her life, and grief, became very focussed on the staggering hole her mother’s death had left behind.
Nothing else had seemed to matter. For a while, not even love. Death had washed across her like a tsunami, and in its wake it had taken her some time to retrieve everything t
hat made her feel alive.
She felt like that now. Watching through the van’s windscreen as the headlights lit the empty road, she tried to make sense of things. But she felt brain dead. Everything she knew, all that she had taken for granted for years, had been ripped away.
I saw Dom murder a man, brutally, bloodily.
Daisy is adrift, and I don’t know if we’re the islands she’s hanging onto, or if it’s the other way around.
Andy is a stranger who might mean us harm.
Her mind flashed back to that moment in their en-suite bathroom, their nakedness, Andy’s arousal. If that moment had continued differently, would they be less strangers now? She thought not. The idea of not stepping away from him had used to make her feel guilty. But guilt had no place in this new, awful reality. Guilt was for the blessed, not the cursed.
She was lost in the darkness, and boredom now felt like heaven.
Emma understood that every effort to extricate themselves from this mess was only digging them deeper. Perhaps that was human nature. It was always the next moment that would make things better, the next action that would turn things around. As the situation worsened, the certainty that they should have gone to the police straight away grew.
But even then, things might not have ended. Andy knew more about these people, his gang, his family, than he was letting on. She was sure of it.
Now they had left the scene of a double murder. Dom’s blood was mixed with the dead guy’s on the toilet floor of her place of work. They had stolen Brian’s van, Dom’s and Andy’s blood no doubt speckling its interior. Poor Brian, who used to talk to anyone who’d listen about his pet dog, Lady, and who’d never once denied the fact that he often slept on his job. No one seemed to mind. Brian was like that. A sweet old guy, whiling away the years to retirement in a safe, quiet job.
Emma had not wanted to approach his body, but she couldn’t avoid seeing. They’d cut his throat and then pushed him to the floor, hidden behind the reception desk so that he wasn’t visible from outside the building’s main doors. The pool of blood was huge. Against the pale porcelain floor tiles, it was black.
Neither attacker had been Lip, the beast who had chased her and Daisy through Usk. She’d seen him clearly, his cold and detached expression. He’d reminded her of a shark or a crocodile, those dark expressionless eyes, that determination when he was on their trail. Even when she’d seen him from—
‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered. Her voice was loud in the silent van.
‘What?’ Daisy said. ‘Mum?’
‘Mandy,’ Emma said. ‘Lip found us at her place. Maybe he went back.’ She caught Andy’s eyes in the rear-view mirror as she said this. She didn’t like his expression.
Emma dug out her phone and checked for texts or calls. There was nothing.
‘Emma, maybe you shouldn’t,’ Andy said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. She thought of adding, You know nothing about friends. But by then she’d tapped Mandy’s contact, and Andy had no say in this at all.
The phone rang and then went to voicemail. It was almost two in the morning, so that was hardly a surprise. She almost left a message, then hung up. She texted instead: Hi Mandy, all OK there? Sorry we had to leave in a rush. Catch up soon. It felt strange trying to sound so matter-of-fact, but she didn’t want to panic Mandy.
All OK there?
What if everything wasn’t all okay? What if Lip had gone to visit and added Mandy and Paul to his monstrous tally?
Her blood ran cold. She felt dizzy.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Dom said.
‘You can’t say that. What a stupid thing to say! After all this, Dom? Really?’
He touched her leg, tried to offer comfort. She could see his own pain, both physical and psychological.
She dialled Mandy’s landline. It rang, and rang, and then it almost shocked her when it was picked up. Please let me recognise this voice, she thought, closing her eyes.
‘Yeah?’ A man’s voice. Paul.
‘Paul? Hi, it’s Emma. I was just wondering—’
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Emma heard a fumbling sound and muted voices, then the line crackled. Someone breathed.
‘Emma,’ Mandy said.
‘Mandy. Hi, I was … I just called to see …’
‘I can’t talk to you,’ Mandy said. ‘Someone came—’
‘Who?’
‘A man. A terrible man.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No, no, he’s gone. But we can’t talk. Emma, sorry. I hope you’re okay. Paul wanted to call the police but I said no.’
‘No police,’ Emma said. ‘I’m in a mess, Mandy. But please, whatever you hear, you have to know it’s all about protecting my family.’
‘What am I going to hear?’
More fumbling sounds, and then Paul came on again. His voice sounded strange.
‘Look after yourself, Emma,’ he said. Then he disconnected.
‘They’re okay?’ Andy asked.
‘He’s been and gone.’ The implications were obvious. Been, gone, and they were still alive. But he must have warned them off calling the police, and talking with Emma. At least now she knew how those two guys had known to go to the college.
Emma started shaking. She’d feared her friend was dead.
I’ve got to pull myself together, she thought. Got to feel strong, carry on. The idea was like a revelation. She’d hauled herself from the pits of despair over her mother’s death due to something the sick woman had said to her days before she’d died. She could do the same now.
Her mother had known she was going and had been very brave about it. One day when they were on their own in her parents’ house, her mother in bed, Emma sitting in the chair beside her, her mother surprised her by talking of death.
‘I’ll be gone soon,’ she said. ‘And I know you’ll be sad. I’m lucky enough to love my family, and to be loved in return. But promise me that you’ll get on with things. At the same time you’re grieving, you’ll remember that you have a good man in Dominic, and a beautiful little angel in Daisy. Your life goes on. That’s the best thing I’m leaving behind.’
Life goes on, Emma thought. She felt the heat of Dom’s body next to her on the wooden bench, saw Daisy on his other side. The people she loved were with her, and she would do anything to protect them.
Dom already had.
‘We’ll be fine,’ she said, more to herself than anyone else. But they all heard, and though they did not reply, the atmosphere in the van seemed to lift.
They entered Abergavenny through a back road and parked on a small wooded rise above a building site. A new housing estate was being constructed, and for now the area was a fenced-off wasteland of trenches, drainage pits, storage compound, and office units. There were lights on across the site and a couple of the units were lit. Security guards watched against vandals or those out to steal materials.
But for their purposes, the site was perfect.
Emma and Andy left the van. Dom and Daisy remained behind, outside the van and sitting under the cover of nearby trees. Andy left one of the guns with Dom, after giving him a brief lesson in how to keep it safe, and also how to shoot. Emma watched, feeling a swell of pride in her husband. After what he’d just been through he seemed attentive and alert. The gun troubled him, but he didn’t for a minute consider not keeping it.
They moved quickly, down through the woods and past the eastern extreme of the building site. Andy did not speak, and Emma was grateful for his silence. She had plenty to say to him, but none of it was good, and none of it for now.
The site was surrounded by a high timber hoarding, and they hugged its shadows until they reached one of the main roads leading into town. Here they could not avoid the intermittent glare of street lamps. Emma tied her hair in a bun, Andy made sure the gun was tucked into his belt and hidden by his loose shirt. And though it made her skin crawl, she saw the sense when
he took her hand. They headed into town like carefree lovers walking home way past midnight.
After crossing a river bridge they approached the small apartment building where Andy lived. It was a grand old place, and had once been a hotel. Now it was home to six apartments occupied by a mix of young professional couples and single people, a small parking area at the back, a shared landscaped garden at the front and side.
They stopped at the edge of the park opposite, shadowed by trees looming out over the pavement.
‘Car’s around the back,’ Andy said.
‘You got the keys?’
‘No. I’ll have to go inside.’
‘Great.’
‘I think you should stay here.’
He sounded sincere. Nervous. She could not bring herself to trust a thing he did or said, but right now they had the same aims.
‘I’ll wait,’ she said. ‘But after five minutes I’m heading back to the van.’
‘Plenty of time.’ He smiled. She did not smile back. She was painfully aware of how close they were, and that he carried the other gun. Even though she did not trust him, she had put herself at his mercy.
Andy crossed the road and approached the gate.
There were a couple of lights on in the large building, and occasional cars passed by. But Emma saw no signs of movement elsewhere, and no indication that the apartment was being watched. If there was someone keeping watch, would they we waiting inside? She thought it likely. If they did know where Andy lived, they might think it so unlikely that he’d come back that they’d want to wait in comfort.
She’d find out soon.
Another car came. She held her breath. It swept past her, past Andy, and kept going. He glanced back towards her, waving. She did not wave back. He wouldn’t have been able to see her anyway.
He entered the old hotel’s front garden and used his entry card to open the main doors.
Emma looked at her watch, ready to give him five minutes. For every one of those five minutes, she wondered what she and her family would do if they had to leave Andy behind. He was the main cause of the terrible mess they were in, but he also appeared to be their best chance to get out of it.
