The Family Man

by T. J. Lebbon

  ‘You!’ she said to Mary. ‘Hide it.’

  Mary exchanged a glance with Sonja. She seemed to slump, tension leaving her shoulders, and slid the gun into her belt, dropping her vest over the handle.

  ‘Good,’ Rose said. She withdrew the knife from Sonja’s neck, tugging quickly. The older woman hissed and tensed, but did not cry out. Rose took a quick look. She’d been pretty careful about where she’d stabbed, and the knife had only entered half an inch.

  ‘You’ll live,’ she said to Sonja, before starting to back away. She kept her left hand close to her pocket.

  ‘You won’t,’ Sonja said, hand pressed to her neck as she turned to glare at Rose.

  Emma held her daughter’s hand and ushered Dom ahead of her, heading across the pub towards the main doors. Andy came to Rose, but she shook her head.

  ‘But—’

  ‘We need to move.’

  ‘They’re all there, together,’ Andy said.

  ‘You really want to start shooting in here?’ Rose asked. He’d succeeded in surprising her, and she didn’t like that. She usually assessed her jobs carefully, learning about the client before taking them on. Andy had fooled her. Three years ago, it had never been about escaping his family gang’s growing brutality. It had been about fleeing the results of his own.

  He hesitated. But only for a moment.

  ‘I won’t let innocents get hurt,’ Rose said, ‘and you’re far from innocent. Out.’

  Andy followed Dom and his family towards the door.

  Rose edged across the pub after them. She knew that this was the most dangerous moment. She had nothing on them now, no knife against a throat, and if they decided to start the fight here, they would.

  Close up, she could often judge a person’s intentions by their eyes. But she was now too far away to see clearly.

  Sonja stood slowly, hand on her neck. Though wounded she looked furious. She said something. Lip and Mary both turned to her.

  It was Mary who moved first. She stepped out from behind Lip, hand at her belt, and before Rose even had a chance to see what the woman was going to do, she had to make a split decision.

  ‘Over there!’ She pointed directly at Mary, Lip and Sonja, pausing for a second for people to turn and see. Then she shouted, ‘She’s got a gun!’

  For a second, all conversation and noise ceased.

  Mary’s eyes opened wide. Rose realised that she was looking past her. She half-turned, saw Andy crouched in a shooting stance, then he fired, two shots in quick successions. One struck the trellis where they’d been sitting, plant leaves scattering. The second hit the mirrored pillar, shattering the mirror and smashing a dozen empty glasses across the floor.

  Mary and the others had dropped. If Mary had been about to open fire she should have followed through with it, but now she was momentarily confused, crouching in the open, scrutinised by a hundred startled people. She held the pistol down by her leg.

  Someone shouted. Someone else screamed. A glass arced through the air, spilling its contents and smashing at Mary’s feet. From elsewhere a tray flipped end over end, connecting with Lip’s upper arm.

  Rose ran in a crouch and shouldered Andy in the stomach. He fell back into the doors and she drove with her feet, falling on him and both of them sliding across the tiled lobby floor. She pressed the knife against his neck and grabbed his hand, both of them making fists around the hot gun.

  ‘Are you fucking stupid?’ she hissed into his face.

  ‘Are you? They’re there, all three of them—’

  ‘Up! Out!’ She stood and pulled him up.

  Inside, people were shouting and screaming. Glancing back she saw Mary and Sonja walking towards the bar, Mary holding her mother’s arm. There would be a back way out through the kitchens.

  But Lip was heading for Rose.

  I could drop him now. One shot and he’ll be down. She knew she could do it. Holt’s tutelage had made her proficient with a gun, and with continuing practice she had become a crack shot. But there was a chance that Holt was still alive, wounded and bleeding. If she killed Lip now she might be wasting her one chance of finding him.

  Besides, Holt had come here to kill Lip. She could not yet take that away from him. Shoving Andy ahead of her, they burst out from the air-conditioned pub into the humid summer day. The air closed in, oppressive and heavy.

  They were waiting for her.

  ‘Over there,’ she said, pointing across the car park. She’d parked close to the exit, and now wished she hadn’t. It was a long way to run whilst waiting for a bullet in the back.

  ‘Their cars?’ Dom asked.

  ‘Taken care of.’ She’d knifed the Jeep’s tyres, but had not revealed its bloody interior like she’d said. She’d busted the vehicle open, then slammed the rear tailgate on the sight of more of Holt’s spilled blood.

  She hadn’t known what Sonja was driving, but had taken a gamble and slashed tyres on the vehicles parked either side of the Jeep.

  They ran. Rose made sure Andy was ahead of her.

  ‘The Megane straight ahead,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get the money from—’ Andy began.

  ‘Forget it, just get in!’ They piled into the vehicle, Rose in the driver’s seat, Andy beside her, the family in the back. She risked a look back the way they’d come. People were pouring from the building, using several entrances and fire escapes.

  Rose pressed her knife against Andy’s gut. He gasped. ‘Gun.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me the gun. Slowly.’

  ‘Hand it over, Andy,’ Emma said from the back seat. She didn’t sound scared. Rose was glad, and hoped it was because Emma knew what was good for her. Andy was the loose cannon here.

  ‘One last chance,’ Rose said.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  She shifted the blade from his gut to his crotch, pressing hard. ‘Two seconds and I’ll castrate you.’

  Maybe it was her voice. She didn’t sound angry, but she meant what she said.

  ‘One …’

  Andy dropped the gun in her lap.

  Rose tucked it between her thighs and dropped the knife into the door pocket.

  ‘We can’t just run!’ Andy said. ‘They’re all there. We have them! You and me together could—’

  ‘I didn’t come to help you kill your family,’ she said.

  ‘Then why did you come?’

  ‘I was following a friend.’

  Andy slammed the dashboard, then sat back, staring straight ahead.

  Turning onto the main road, Rose knew that there must have been many sets of eyes watching them go. This was a marked car.

  ‘So what now?’ Dom asked. ‘Thanks, but … you know.’

  ‘Now we take a minute,’ Rose said. ‘Things have changed. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Armed Response

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Lip said. ‘Let me drive. There’s someone waiting for me.’

  ‘They haven’t gone!’ Sonja said.

  ‘You won’t find them again. Whoever she was, she knew what she was doing.’

  ‘Yeah, she was smart,’ Sonja said. She chuckled.

  Right now, Lip didn’t really care about Andy and the family he’d hooked up with. Since the moment he’d left Holt behind he had been itching to return. Spend some time with him. That was unfinished business and he needed to finish the job, slowly, in comfort. Andy would always be there, and so long as he remained embroiled with the family, they’d be easy to track down. Their trail would not grow cold for some time. Blood could wait.

  ‘I’m going to fucking kill him,’ Mary said.

  ‘If you don’t get yourself killed,’ Lip said.

  ‘You really sound like you care.’

  He said nothing. The silence was heavier than the heat inside the car.

  Lip’s Jeep’s tyres had been slashed, and soon it would be crawling with SOC officers. He suspected they would have no records of Holt’s blood
on their database. If he’d sliced off Holt’s finger and left that, a perfect clue, they’d probably have no fingerprint match either. He and Holt were shadows. But it seemed that unlike him, someone would miss Holt when he died.

  He didn’t kid himself with Mary and Sonja, and neither did he care. He was a convenience for them. Mary might have been besotted, but he wasn’t sure there was anything like love between them.

  They still had Sonja’s BMW. The woman had disabled the cars either side of his Jeep, but they had not been foolish enough to park close together.

  They’d left the pub with everyone else. At first people had run from them, but by the time they’d reached the car park they had been part of the spreading panic, not its cause. Confusion had disguised their escape, and perhaps they were even lucky enough to have avoided direct views from the CCTV cameras.

  Now they were back on the road again. Every minute that passed delayed Lip’s final moments with Holt, and took them closer to a confrontation with the law. It was inevitable. Someone would have seen them get into the car, taken a note of its make and colour, and armed response units would be here soon.

  Lip had to be finished and away before that happened, because the woman had been right. He never wanted this to end.

  He glanced sidelong at Sonja in the driver’s seat. He could kill her with his bare hands, and it would take only seconds.

  But Mary was behind them, and she was still armed.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ Lip said.

  ‘We’re simply letting time catch up with us,’ Sonja said.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘A bit of patience. Trust me.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone,’ Lip said.

  Sonja chuckled again.

  He looked at her. Two hands, one quick twist, he thought. He’d considered killing her many times. Most people he met found their way into his murderous fantasies, at one time or another.

  This was the first time the idea felt serious.

  Huddled in the back of the Megane with his wife and daughter, Dom could not help thinking that events were still being driven by anyone but them. The mysterious new woman, Jane Smith, had appeared on the scene just in time, defusing what might have been a violent end to their day.

  Sonja had terrified Dom more than anyone. Lip looked like a psycho, and Mary had a wild look in her eyes … hunger for the kill. But Sonja could have been anyone’s grandmother. Smart, fit, sharp, the truth behind her facade was horrifying.

  She’d given them a glimpse, and then Jane Smith had taken over.

  Dom had heard the gunshots and believed that the shooting had begun. But no more shots followed, and Jane Smith soon joined them outside, pushing Andy ahead of her and a panicking stream of people. He’d seen her determination then, and the cool calmness that hinted she was used to such situations. He could only wonder at her history.

  She wore a T-shirt, her upper right arm displaying an ugly scar. There were scars on her face too, speckled around her right cheek and jawline like sugar from a cake. She walked with a slight limp, carried a gun, used a knife with confidence.

  The more he wondered, the less he wanted to know.

  Andy’s betrayal burned. Dom felt like such a fool. He had been lied to ever since the first time he and Andy had met. Yet he could not believe that every aspect of their friendship had been a sham. There was little that Andy could gain by befriending someone like him, other than friendship in return. He’d used him to rob the post office, yes, coercing him into crime to suit his own ends. But the couple of years before had been trouble-free. Fun days on the bike, pleasant evenings in the pub or at home—

  Andy had tried to fuck Emma. That was the kind of man he was. Dom also had to wonder why Emma had never told him about that.

  As Rose drove, she googled on her phone with her left hand. Dom tried to see what she was looking for, but the screens changed too quickly. She seemed calm and in control. Even Andy appeared subdued now, his initial anger having dissipated to the hot air.

  ‘This might do,’ Jane Smith said.

  Dom leaned forward between the seats. ‘What?’

  ‘Somewhere to stop.’

  ‘Already? But we have to get away! What if they’re following us?’

  ‘Listen, Dom. That’s your name? Or are you a Dominic?’

  ‘Only Emma calls me Dominic, and only when she’s really pissed at me.’

  ‘Then hopefully if you listen to me, and trust me, you’ll always be Dom. And I’m Rose. Jane Smith works online, but face to face I like to have a name.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Rose.’

  ‘No offence, but it really isn’t. I’m here because you’re in the shit up to your neck. I helped your friend here a while ago, I expect he’s told you. Helped him break away from his family, establish himself on his own, invisible and untraceable. Although it seems he lied, to me as well as you, I guess. We’ll get to that. But I came back partly because he asked for my help, said his family had found him and were closing in for the kill.’

  ‘He lied about that, too.’

  Andy was listening stony-faced. He didn’t even look at them.

  ‘In my line of work I don’t like liars. They make things dangerous. I like a landscape I can see, not one filled with hidden places. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Lucky for him I was on my way here anyway, with a friend. Lip has taken that friend.’

  Rose trailed off for a moment, taking them around a roundabout and heading up a narrow road. As the road crested a hill and twisted down the other side, the sea appeared in the distance.

  Dom felt a relaxing of his heart. He had always loved the sea, and connected it with family holidays, long hot days, fun.

  ‘I had a family once,’ Rose said. ‘They died.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dom said. He didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘You’re the innocents in this,’ Rose said. ‘I help people like you, those who can’t help themselves. So I’ll do as much as I can.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dom said. ‘We … we had money. Left it in the car.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the money.’

  ‘So where is your friend?’

  ‘Don’t know. But listen, all of you. Even you, Andy. You’re in the same shit as Dom here, but yours is even deeper. Because now you’re on my shit list, too.’

  ‘Listening,’ Andy said, still without looking.

  ‘I am in charge. You trust my decisions. I know what I’m doing here. And right now, we’re getting off the roads. Our little meeting back there will attract all the security forces in the area. Guns were involved, so anti-terror squads will be on the way, too. Armed response units, helicopters, maybe even Special Forces. The worst place we can be right now is on the road. And as beggars can’t be choosers, the best place we can be …’

  The car turned a bend and descended a steep slope, and at the bottom Rose turned into a gateway. The gate was closed and padlocked. A sign read ‘Sandy Hills Holiday Park’.

  ‘But it’s all locked up,’ Dom said. ‘Even though it’s summer.’

  ‘Yep. Wait here.’ She left the car running, rummaged in the boot, and emerged with a tyre iron. A few twists and the chain around the gatepost snapped.

  Dom and the others sat silently, watching. There was too much he wanted to say to Andy to even begin now. Tension hung heavy. He glanced at Emma, and for the first time in a while he saw something he liked in her eyes. Rose had put it there. He prayed that her hope mirrored his own.

  They drove into the park and Rose closed the gate behind them, draping the chain back around the post so that it appeared unbroken. She walked back past the car and looked around for a while. Dom guessed she was checking for CCTV cameras or perhaps signs of a caretaker. But the park seemed to be deserted.

  It was a baking early September day, the tail end of a long, hot summer. Sandy Hills must have been closed for refurbishment, but today the site was quiet. It looked tatty and run-
down. With the help of modern technology, Rose might just have found them the perfect place to hide.

  It was less a holiday park, more a forest. The road led past a small reception building that was little more than a large garden shed. It then curved around to the left and twisted into a wooded, hilly area. Dom could see the first couple of holiday lodges, but trees and folds in the land hid what might lie beyond.

  Beside the reception shed was a noticeboard bearing a faded map of the park behind dusty glass. Dom squinted, tried to make it out.

  ‘Looks like a dozen buildings,’ Andy said. He’d lowered his front window and was close enough to see. ‘The place is wooded, lodges are set back from the single road. Very secluded.’

  ‘Very rundown,’ Dom said.

  ‘Ideal. No one else here.’

  To their right a field sloped down towards the sea, ending in an overgrown hedge beyond which would be a sharp drop to the beach. The West Wales coast was invariably comprised of long sandy beaches and cliffs leading to the land above. It was rugged and harsh, and a favoured haunt of holidaymakers looking for a little more than sun, sand and ice cream. There were a few seating areas scattered around the field, and a sad children’s play area a hundred metres away, with a rusted swing and see-saw apparatus and some tired-looking timber climbing frames. The grass in the field was long and sun-scorched. Wild flowers speckled a palette of colours, and beyond the hedge the sea was wide, grey and majestic. It was really rather beautiful.

  ‘Will there be anything to eat or drink?’ Daisy asked.

  Rose jumped back into the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s find a place and get settled first,’ she said. ‘We’ll worry about food and drink afterwards.’

  It was cooler amongst the trees. It was also just the sort of place Dom and Emma loved to visit on holiday. Quiet, secluded, peaceful, each lodge was well shielded from the others, with outdoor seating areas and a few with hot tubs. Daisy was just getting to the age when she wanted more lively holidays, but ever since she was born they’d had at least one holiday each year to somewhere similar to Sandy Hills. Dom and Emma sometimes admitted that it was more for them than Daisy, but they always made sure she had a great time.