The Family Man

by T. J. Lebbon

  ‘Jane Smith will help,’ Andy said. He drew in a breath, knocked down the sun visor and opened the little mirror. He groaned as he opened his eye and tried to examine it.

  ‘You need a hospital,’ Emma said. ‘So does Dom.’

  ‘Jane knows people,’ Andy said. ‘By the end of today we’ll be fine, and we’ll get stitched up.’

  ‘Then what?’ Dom asked. ‘Everything back to normal?’

  ‘What, you enjoyed normal?’ Andy’s voice was almost mocking. Dom felt like punching him. But he stretched back in his seat instead, trying to shake the aches and pains.

  ‘Normal is a wife and daughter who love me, and who I’d die protecting,’ Dom said. ‘So yes, I like it.’

  Andy fell silent. In the back seat Daisy was doing the nodding dog, but Emma stared ahead, catching Dom’s eye in the mirror now and then. Events had reduced them to their basic selves. Whosever fault it had been, however much blame Dom had to shoulder, this was purely about survival. He and his family were in terrible danger. Andy might have put them there, and Dom had started to suspect he might even be keeping them there. But they had to do whatever was necessary to extricate themselves as much as they could from this mess.

  Once the Scott family were no longer hunting them, then that might mean giving himself up to the police.

  As he drove, Dom scraped flakes of drying blood from the creases on his knuckles.

  The radio told them it was going to be the hottest day of the year.

  By eight o’clock the sun was glaring and the outside temperature was already twenty-three degrees. It was set to reach thirty by two that afternoon.

  They travelled in the clothes they’d fled in. Dom’s shorts and T-shirt were stained with dried blood, and the over-shirt he’d slung into the back seat was torn and similarly stained. He smelled of stale sweat. He wasn’t used to stinking like that, even when exercising he was fastidious about his cleanliness, and his sweat was usually an honest smell. This was the odour of fear and guilt.

  Daisy’s long hair was knotted. Andy stank worse than Dom. To make matters worse, the car they’d stolen had no functioning air conditioning. They drove with the windows down, even when they eventually hit the motorway, and that comforted Dom. It ensured that he remained awake even though exhaustion was threatening to smother him. And it meant that they could not talk.

  There were only bad things to say.

  Dom realised he was hungry. At the thought of food, his stomach rumbled and his vision blurred. When was the last time he’d eaten? More important, when was the last time he’d even had a drink?

  ‘Anyone got money?’ he asked, shouting against the noise from the open windows.

  ‘Really?’ Emma asked.

  Dom laughed. It was a wretched sound. Thinking of the cash hidden in the bag in the boot brought everything back into sharp focus.

  Five people are dead, he thought. Maybe six, if the guy in the car bought it. Andy killed one of them. And I killed one. Stabbed him in the head with a shard of a smashed toilet. Destroyed his brain. Wiped out all his memories, his story, everything he’d been and done ended at that moment, by my hand.

  But curiously, his guilt did not stretch as far as the murder he had perpetrated. He viewed it dispassionately, like an observer watching a movie, or someone reading an account of the event. Considering it objectively was not a pleasant process, but neither did it make him want to vomit. He had ended a man’s life because that man was threatening to murder his family. In everything that had happened, with all the complexities and coincidences he was still trying to fathom, that was the simplest equation of all.

  ‘Food and drink,’ Andy said.

  Dom used the master window control to raise the windows so they could talk.

  ‘And clothes, for you two especially,’ Emma said. ‘If we’re ever going to be seen in public again, that is.’ She’d meant it as a quip, but there was no humour there.

  ‘We’ll stop at the next services,’ Dom said.

  ‘No,’ Andy said. ‘Quick pit stop, that’s all. We don’t know how close they are behind us.’

  ‘We’ve changed cars!’ Emma said.

  ‘More reason not to stop,’ Andy replied. ‘There are cameras everywhere nowadays. Petrol stations are dripping with them. Police will be looking for us, and this stolen car. We’ll find a local shop and stock up.’

  ‘How long to your place from here?’ Dom asked. They’d left the motorway behind and were negotiating A roads, busy with rush hour at this time of the morning.

  ‘Lots of slow winding roads now,’ Andy said. ‘Another couple of hours.’

  ‘And we’ll meet Jane Smith there?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Yes, I sent her a map.’

  ‘What then?’ Daisy asked. ‘I should be in school. Miss was going to test us on long division today, but instead I’ve been in a car crash and I’ve got blood on me.’

  Dom glanced back, surprised that she was awake and listening. He’d hoped she might have a rest, retreat from this madness for a while into dreams. She looked tired and heavy-eyed.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dom said. ‘What then?’

  ‘Then she helps us out of this mess.’

  ‘How?’ Daisy asked. ‘I don’t want us to be like you. I don’t want her to give us a new life and new names, so we spend our lives lying. I want to go home.’

  ‘That’ll all depend,’ Andy said.

  ‘On your family,’ Emma said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And how reasonable they can be?’ Emma asked.

  Andy did not reply to that. He sighed heavily, reclined his seat a little and leaned back. ‘Just keep driving,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you directions.’

  Dom drove. Daisy leaned into Emma again, eyes closed. Emma seemed alert, even twitchy, and Dom could not blame her. He searched the mirrors for pursuing police cars, and he knew that if they were pulled over, that was it. He was driving now. There would be no more car wrecks, no shunting police vehicles over the sides of mountains. He didn’t want to be caught, but if it happened, they could only tell their story.

  Emma and Daisy were innocent. His guilt hardly mattered at all.

  The roads grew quieter, and soon they were crossing the Carmarthenshire countryside. It was hilly and beautiful, heavily farmed but with frequent patches of woodland swathed across the hillsides. Evidence of the scorching summer was everywhere, and Dom didn’t think he’d ever seen the British landscape looking so parched.

  Emma appeared between the front seats, resting her hand softly on Dom’s arm. In the mirror, he saw her pressing a finger to her lips.

  Andy had nodded off, head resting on the window frame. She reached down into his lap and picked up his phone.

  What? Dom mouthed.

  Keep driving.

  Emma sat back down. Daisy grumbled and rested her head on her shoulder again. This felt bad. However angry she was at Andy, whatever she suspected him of, it was invasion of privacy. But he had invaded their privacy, entering their lives and turning them upside down.

  She opened his phone, relieved to see the screen had not yet locked. The background image was of wild countryside on the top of a local mountain, and she recognised Abergavenny nestled down in the wide valley. She touched the “Messages” button and a list of his text messages appeared.

  Dom was there, and JS which must have been Jane Smith. There were a few threads to Claudette, the nurse he was seeing. But the most recent message was to neither of these.

  It was to someone called Bitch.

  Emma held her breath, glanced at Andy, saw that he had not moved. Dom’s eyes were flickering back and forth to her in the mirror. She frowned at him.

  One touch opened the “Bitch” message thread. She read the latest message. It said, I look forward to it.

  She scrolled up. With two movements of her thumb and a quick read, she realised that her vague suspicions had been true.

  Emma closed her eyes and gripped the phone.

  Maybe I can
change things, she thought. Perhaps seeing this gives my family an edge.

  When she opened her eyes again, Dom shrugged and mouthed, What? to her.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she mouthed back. And she started typing.

  This is Emma. Dom’s wife. I assume by “Bitch” Andy means Sonja, his mother? If that’s the case, you have to know that he’s lied to us all along. He’s led us on. Even my husband, Dom, was coerced by your son. This is nothing to do with us. She thought for a while, wondering what this Sonja was like. What sort of mother was she if she wanted her son dead? Emma continued writing. This isn’t our world. You’re not the sort of people we know. I don’t care about Andy, but please let my family walk. Nothing will be said, no fingers pointed.

  She hovered her thumb over the “send” button, agonising, wondering whether she was doing the right thing. Was begging the way to go? Would Andy’s mother empathise at all?

  Then the car hit a pothole in the rural road, her thumb brushed the screen, and fate carried her message away.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Emma whispered.

  ‘What is it?’ Dom said.

  Andy stirred, shifted position, and groaned a little in his sleep. The groan of someone finding a moment of comfort.

  ‘Him,’ she said. ‘That bastard. He’s been leading them along all the time. He gave them three places to look, and the college was one of them. And he’s taunting them now. Making sure they follow.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he’s sick. And we’re nothing to him, Dom. Nothing. He’ll see us dead and hardly break pace. You see that, don’t you? Stop, kick him out, and then we’ll figure out what to do.’ She looked down at the phone as a plan began to form. ‘We’ll give him to them.’

  ‘We can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not?’ She was almost shouting. Daisy woke. Andy stirred again, then sat upright in his seat, looking around at their surroundings. He searched for his phone, quickly becoming frantic. He glared across at Dom.

  ‘Looking for this?’ Emma asked. As she held up the phone, it buzzed as a message arrived.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Andy said.

  ‘Fuck you, Andy,’ Emma said mildly. ‘Bitch is replying to my message.’

  ‘What? Emma, you have no idea—’

  ‘Hang on.’ Emma read the message. The breath was punched from her.

  Be seeing you soon.

  ‘Give me the phone,’ Andy said again, turning in his seat and reaching back for her.

  ‘Or what?’ Emma shouted. ‘You’ll kill me?’

  ‘Mum,’ Daisy said, hunkering back against the door.

  Dom pulled into a field gateway.

  Emma slammed the phone against Andy’s hand, knocking it aside, leaning forward and smacking it against his face, aiming for the bloodied area around his eye. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed, and she was amazed at his strength.

  ‘Fuck you!’ she shouted into his face.

  ‘Yeah, you nearly did,’ he said. He spoke softly, but his words stilled the car’s interior, defused the violence. He prised the phone from her hand and turned forwards again, swiping the screen to read what she had written.

  ‘What did you say?’ Dom asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Andy said. ‘Why are we stopping? We can’t afford to stop.’

  Dom turned off the engine and pocketed the keys.

  ‘Have you been leading your family to us?’ he asked.

  ‘Dom—’

  ‘Simple question. One word answer.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dom nodded. He was sweating. His forehead was beaded, and a drop ran down his temple. He grabbed the door catch and shoved it open, leaping from the car, rushing around the front and meeting Andy as he did the same.

  ‘Dom,’ Emma said.

  ‘Mum, what’s Dad doing?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Something stupid.’ She opened her own door as she heard the sound of the first punch.

  This was Dom’s second fight of the day. The first one had ended with a man dead. Before that, he guessed his last scrap was when he was in his early teens. He had never been a fighter.

  And he had never realised that punching someone in the face could feel so satisfying.

  His fist caught Andy on the cheek as he was standing from the car. He fell back against the door pillar and Dom pushed forward, the door between them, shoving it so that it pinned Andy against the vehicle. He swung again, catching him a glancing blow across the forehead.

  ‘Dom, you don’t want to do this!’ Andy shouted.

  Dom punched again, and this time Andy ducked the blow, reaching up and grabbing Dom’s wrist with his left hand, standing, shoving his arm high and punching him in the face with his right.

  Pain flared in Dom’s injured nose and ignited behind his eyes. He staggered back a few paces. His heels hit a mud-hardened tractor track and he stumbled, reaching back to break his fall. Nettles brushed his bare arms and they immediately began to tingle.

  Andy stood before him, blocking out the sun. He reached down for Dom.

  Dom took his hand, using his weight to stand on unsteady legs. The pain was so intense that he gasped, trying to spit it out, but it had settled like fire into his skull. He could barely see. When he fell against Andy and started punching again, he relied on blind luck.

  His fists connected and Andy fell back, unsteadied by the assault. They went down with Dom on top, but he was too close in now, unable to punch.

  ‘Bastard!’ he hissed.

  Andy head-butted him in the face.

  Dom was vaguely aware of being rolled aside and someone holding his head, making sure it didn’t hit the ground. He reached for his face but didn’t quite touch it, afraid that to do so would only hurt more.

  ‘Stop it, Dom,’ Emma said, and he thought she might be crying.

  Fuck you! she’d shouted at Andy.

  Yeah, you nearly did.

  ‘What happened?’ Dom asked of the pain, never expecting it to reply.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ Emma said. ‘He’ll hurt you more, Dom. That’s the sort of person he is. He’s lied to us all along.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Andy said from somewhere, but Dom didn’t care about him now. Emma helped him sit up, then he leaned forward with his head between his knees. He felt more hands on his arm and Daisy was there. She’d seen more than any girl her age should ever see, and his prime motivation now should be to make her safe.

  But not like this. This wasn’t safe.

  ‘You can get lost,’ he said. He looked up at Andy, shielding his eyes against the sun. ‘Take the car. Go. Play with your family, kill and get killed, I don’t care. Just leave us out of it.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, mate,’ Andy said.

  ‘Don’t ever call me “mate” again. And yes, it really is. I killed a man today, Andy.’ Dom snorted, blood and snot running from his damaged nose. ‘If I see you again, I’ll do that to you, too.’

  ‘You can try,’ Andy muttered.

  ‘What? Seriously?’

  Andy shook his head and kicked at the dusty ground. ‘You’ll never be safe again,’ he said. ‘Not from them. If we follow my plan, maybe you will. But are you willing to risk that?’

  ‘Risk what?’

  ‘Being out there on your own when they find you?’

  Dom stood. He leaned into Emma, his rock, his support, even after all he’d done.

  ‘Jane Smith is your only hope as much as she is mine,’ Andy said. ‘Stay with me, meet her, and you’ve got a chance of getting your life back.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Andy shrugged. He touched his damaged eye, wincing as his fingertips brushed the bruised eyelid. ‘You’re hurt as bad as me. Think you can help your family protect itself?’ He nodded at Daisy. ‘Will she shoot the gun for you?’

  ‘This is so messed up,’ Dom whispered.

  ‘So don’t mess it up any more.’

  ‘You’ve been luring them in.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  �
��What, to kill them all?’

  Andy looked away.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos of what they did to me.’

  ‘And what was that? Stole some cash?’

  ‘No,’ Andy said, looking down at Dom’s feet but seeing something more distant. ‘That’s not all.’

  Dom turned to Emma, and she pressed her face against his. ‘Maybe we should listen,’ she said into his ear.

  ‘In the car, what did he mean?’ Dom asked.

  Emma blinked at him, unable to speak.

  ‘Maybe that’s for later,’ Dom muttered.

  ‘We should move,’ Andy said.

  ‘You need to tell us what’s happening,’ Dom said. ‘Your reasons. I don’t trust you, and never will. But I want to know why you’re doing this to us.’

  ‘When we’re on the move,’ Andy said. ‘I’ll tell you everything. But we need to go.’

  Dom nodded slowly. Where else do we have to go? he thought. What else can I do? But he felt stronger. The pain was fading a little, and he thought perhaps it was because he’d tried to take control. He’d asserted himself.

  They got back into the car. Emma drove. Dom sat in the back seat behind Andy. He nursed the gun between his thighs.

  He spotted Daisy looking down at what he was doing. He felt an initial rush of pride, and then a growing sense of disgust in himself when he saw her approval.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One More Scar

  Rose drove the stolen Megane far quicker than was safe. But it was not her safety she was worried about now. It was Holt’s. She’d found his car abandoned by the roadside, engine still running. There was a crashed car further down the hill with a dead man inside. There was blood on the road, sticky in the morning heat.

  Holt had been taken or killed, and now her job was many times harder.

  She’d snatched the box of tricks and weapons from his car’s boot, noticing that the pistol was absent, then turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. Remaining there any longer than necessary was a big risk, but she’d paused anyway, examining the scene again and trying to make sense of what had happened. The bloodstains were thirty feet along the road from his car. Maybe there’d been another vehicle there.