The Rubicon

by Andrew Heasman

  As she listened to her daughter playing somewhere upstairs, she heard the distinctive sound of a key sliding into the front door lock. It opened with a squeak. I must put some oil on those hinges, she thought to herself. There was a cheerful, “Helloooo, where is everybody?” followed by a loud bang as the door was firmly closed into its frame, the cold air prevented from entering.

  Adam strolled into the open-plan kitchen/diner, threw his van keys into the glass bowl on the table, and removed his winter jacket to reveal a fleece emblazoned with the words, ‘Greenwood Locks,’ and the company logo. He hung it over the back of a wooden dining chair before turning to face Sarah.

  “You’re early. How was your day?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know, so-so. I fitted a couple of new locks for a home owner who’d just moved in, some numpty managed to lock himself out of his own house...” Adam raised his eyes in mock dismay. “...and I got a call to a man who’d locked his dog in the car while he went shopping, then managed to drop the key down a drain grate. You couldn’t make this stuff up, could you?” They both laughed. “So, pretty busy really.”

  “Sounds like fun – Not!” Sarah smiled at her husband. “Fancy a hot drink? It looks bitter out there.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great. Where’s Jen?”

  “Upstairs, playing on her tablet again.” She tutted her disapproval.

  “No homework, then?”

  “Not today. She gets her list of spellings tomorrow, though.”

  Sarah poured the hot water from the kettle into another mug and stirred the contents before handing it to Adam.

  “Thanks – I need that.”

  “Have you heard anything from the police recently?” Sarah continued her dinner preparations, turning to face the worktop again.

  “No. There have been no call-outs today, but I’m rostered for tonight.”

  As part of Adam’s self-employed locksmith business, he had managed to pull a few strings, spoken to a few former colleagues, and been added to the police approved contractor list. As such, he was rostered two or three nights each week to be on-call during unsociable hours to open, repair, or replace locks, or to board up damaged doors and windows until they could be permanently fixed. Tonight was one of those nights.

  “No, not about your job, about all the trouble the other week.” They both laughed over the misunderstanding.

  “Nah, I’ll probably not hear from them ‘til the week before it goes to court, judging by past experience.” Adam frowned.

  “Why all the sarcasm? Why are you so bitter? I thought you loved it in the police?”

  Adam’s eyes narrowed and a serious expression came over him. “It’s nothing. It was all a long time ago. Having got involved the other night, and having to now go through the whole court process, well, I guess it’s just brought it all back to me.”

  “Oh! You never really talk about back then. Was it really so bad?”

  “No, not really. Well, bits were, maybe.” He paused, debating whether or not to elaborate. “It was way before we met. I’d been a copper for years and at the start it was great, everything I’d imagined it would be - I loved the job. But it changed. Or I changed. It used to be fun, exciting, and there was always a good team spirit. We had freedom to actually do the job properly without having our hands tied. But over the years, everything changed; new laws, more red tape, and accountability for every decision, action, or thought. People started leaving and those that were left were so pissed off that it became depressing to go to work. I’d had enough, so I left. I got out before it had too detrimental an effect on me.” He paused again. “That’s about the same time that we met in Phuket. I’d just left the police and gone out to Thailand.” He smiled at Sarah, remembering the good times before they had become chained to a more conventional lifestyle back in the UK. “Thing was, before I left, I felt it my duty to let them know the reasons why I was going. I was quite critical of the whole system, and most people knew that what I’d said was right. But a select few, my inspector included, took it all personally. They thought I was critical of them, like I was having a pop at ‘em. There was a bit of bad feeling.”

  “But, like you say, that was years ago, things move on, things change. It might not be so bad nowadays.”

  Adam laughed. “When I was down the station two weeks ago, I bumped into Bream, my old boss. I thought the same, but he made it pretty clear that he still held a grudge. Talking to my old mate, Lloyd, it seems that the force, as a whole, is no better now than it was, in fact, it’s probably worse. But, hey, it’s not my life anymore. I moved on. It’ll soon be over. Once the court case is finished, everything will return to normal. I don’t intend losing any sleep over the likes of Chief Inspector Clive Bream.”

  Sarah put down her knife and gave her husband a big hug. Enough had been said on the matter.

  Chapter 8

  18:00 – Thursday 18th October.

  17 Carlton Road was a semi-detached council house.

  Located in the centre of Barrington-on-Sea’s notorious Glebe Estate, it had three bedrooms, a small but functional kitchen, and an open-plan lounge/diner. It was home to Aaron Turner, his partner, Kelly Jackson, and their six year old son, Kyle.

  Although Kelly did her best to keep the place neat and tidy, she was fighting a losing battle. The house was not their own, it was rented, paid for by benefits, and as such, was neglected and uncared for. It had threadbare carpets and the furniture was old and tired. However, the immaculate top-of-the-range TV and music system were testimony to Aaron’s insistence on only the best in boy’s toys. Although it was vacuumed regularly, maintaining its cleanliness was difficult with a Staffie puppy freely roaming the downstairs and an open door policy for Aaron’s friends who often popped in without warning. Aaron was no help either, littering the lounge with piles of his boxing magazines and empty beer cans – it was Kelly’s responsibility to tidy up after him – at least, as far as he was concerned.

  Upstairs, their shared bedroom was equally messy with an unkempt duvet, clothes littered across the floor, and the distinctive aroma of stale sweat. In total contrast, Kyle’s bedroom was in pristine condition. It was clean, smelt fresh, and all of his toys were neatly stored in their respective cubbyholes. Kelly’s devotion to duty, ensuring that her son had a healthy environment to live in, was clear. The third bedroom was something of a dumping ground, piled high with electrical goods that Aaron had acquired from his numerous dodgy contacts around the estate. It was an area that Kelly was not permitted to enter. It was Aaron’s private room and off limits to everyone but himself.

  BANG!

  The heavily fortified front door slammed shut as Aaron strode into the hallway. He was alone for once, his mates having gone in search of food. A smile crept onto his face and his eyes lit up at the squeal of excitement coming from the kitchen.

  “Yay, Daddy’s home,” called Kyle as he ran towards his father, hugging his legs in a vice-like grip.

  “What you been up to, li’l man?” Aaron asked, as he crouched down to eye level. “How was school?”

  “OK, I suppose. The teacher put me in the RED zone again!”

  The school ran a behaviour grading system – GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE were for those attaining a good level of conduct, AMBER and RED for those who had been disruptive, or worse.

  “Did she...?” Aaron was not best pleased. “What did you do this time, Kyle?” It was not an uncommon occurrence for him to be dropped into the red zone.

  “He was caught fighting,” said a quiet, timid voice from the doorway. Kelly looked down nervously, avoiding eye contact with Aaron, as she realised that it was not her place to speak for her son.

  “Shut the fuck up! Did I ask you? I asked the boy.” Aaron exploded in a fit of temper.

  Kelly knew only too well that Aaron suffered with a split personality. To Kyle, he was all sweetness and light, but to her, he was the exact opposite; angry, aggressive, and abusive. It had always been there, but the differences had become
more apparent following his failed attempt to join the army.

  Aaron also recognised that there was a distinct difference between how he treated his son and how he treated Kelly. He could not fathom the reason as to why it happened (much to his own frustration), but it had certainly been getting worse recently. He found that he could barely bring himself to look at her. She annoyed him simply by being in the same room as him, and he had increasingly turned to violence to vent his frustrations. Why they stayed together, he did not know. And yet, subconsciously, he knew only too well – they were both trapped in a toxic relationship and the only thing keeping them together was Kyle. She would never abandon her son, and if she dared to take him away from his father, he knew that he would hunt her down. God knows what he would do when he found her, but it would not be pleasant.

  Calming his voice, Aaron said, “Don’t worry, son, I’ll sort it. I’ll have a word with your teacher tomorrow.”

  “Err, Daddy?” There was a hesitant tone to Kyle’s words. “Please don’t scare her this time.” He was smiling as he spoke, but the tremor in his voice indicated his underlying fear of what his Dad might do, or say.

  “Who, me?” Aaron made light of the matter, but he was determined to put the teacher in her place. He relished having power over others.

  Just then, the back door flew open, ricocheting off the worktop counter with a resounding bang. Aaron’s gang members had arrived, each carrying a polystyrene tray of chips, the smell of salt and malt vinegar infusing the air. The five of them were laughing and joking, their words vulgar and abusive and certainly not what a six year old boy ought to be hearing. Unfortunately, Kyle had become accustomed to it. Aaron looked at Kelly with hatred in his eyes.

  “You...take the boy upstairs,” he ordered.

  She said nothing, but ushered Kyle out of the room to a chorus of laughter from the lads, one adding a condescending, “Run along now, Kelly,” as she left.

  Aaron opened the fridge and removed a tin of beer. “Help yourself, boys,” he murmured, as they greedily attacked his store of alcohol.

  These were Aaron’s most trusted cohorts: Jared Brown, Archie Smith, Mark Danson, Callum Cliff, and Sam Barr. Visually, they each resembled one another – 18 to 25 years of age, Barrington-on-Sea born and bred, and each dressed in dark clothing; joggers, puffer jackets, and hooded tops. They dressed according to the fashion of the day. A few years earlier they may have been referred to as chavs, but gone were the tracksuits and fancy baseball caps, only to be replaced with hoodies, and a dangerously menacing attitude. Having never ventured beyond the town’s boundaries, they looked up to Aaron like a God. After all, he was ex-army; he had escaped the draw of the estate, if only for a short while. He was their leader.

  As the alcohol was absorbed into their bodies, and as they smoked a little weed, so the banter got bawdier. There were jokes and minor arguments amongst the pack, but this was their life, this was what they did, this was how things were on the estate. The conversation turned to Josh and what had happened to him two weeks earlier. They knew the details as most of them had been there to witness his arrest on the night.

  “How’s Josh doing in the nick?” asked Archie. “Does he need us to go visit him?”

  “He’s coping – just! A visit from some of you lot might help,” Aaron replied. “We gotta get him off that bloody assault-on-police charge. If he goes down for that, he’s looking at years inside. He’ll never survive.”

  Sam gave a dismissive shrug of the shoulders. “No chance. I’ve seen it on the news. They wanna make an example of him. He’ll never get off that one.”

  Aaron glared at him. “We gotta stop it happening,” he said with steely determination.

  “But how?”

  “We need to persuade that bloke - the one that interfered, the one that stopped him escaping – to withdraw his evidence.”

  “W...what if he says no?” asked Jared in a timid voice.

  “I wasn’t planning on ASKING him; I was gonna TELL him.” Aaron was in no mood to play games. “Who is he anyway?”

  Jared put his hand in his pocket and withdrew his mobile phone. After flicking through a few screens, he held it out to Aaron, turning it sideways to give a landscape view.

  “This is him. I filmed it on the night.”

  Everyone watched the footage carefully.

  “Yeah, that’s the bastard.”

  As the video played, it panned to the left to show a woman with shoulder-length brown hair peeking around a large transit van. She looked angry as she pulled her dressing gown tightly around her waist, pointing and shouting at the group of men surrounding her husband.

  “That’s his wife,” added Jared.

  “Yeah, I guessed that.”

  Some of the group giggled quietly and made a few crude comments about her. Aaron hit the pause button, freezing the image. He zoomed in and adjusted the centring.

  “Look there, on the wall of the house, what number can you see?”

  “Looks like a 75,” said Callum.

  “Exactly, so we now know his address. And look here...” Aaron moved the focus of the image. “What does it say on the side of that van?”

  “Greenwood Locks and some phone numbers.”

  “So, we’ve got his name and phone numbers too. God, I should ‘ave been a bloody copper, shouldn’t I?” He chuckled to himself.

  “Like they’d have taken you,” somebody countered.

  Aaron handed the phone back to Jared. He looked deadly serious, the humour from moments earlier, long gone.

  “Right, I want his house watched by you lot. Make it obvious. Be loud. Make him worry before we go and have a quiet word in his shell. Understand? But don’t do anything stupid, we’ve got enough trouble from the police as it is.”

  “Yes, boss,” came the reply, each gang member nodding as they looked towards their leader.

  “Ask around - find out what his missus does, where she goes, her routines. Let’s look for their weaknesses. There must be something that we can use to get at him with.” There were a few concerned glances. “I want him to suffer before we talk. He’ll regret ever getting involved with my brother and the Turner family.”

  Chapter 9

  22:00 – Friday 19th October.

  The sound of Big Ben chimed from the television set.

  BONG, BONG, BONG.

  Adam woke with a jolt, the noise startling him, his neck stiff from the awkward angle at which he had fallen asleep in the armchair. He looked around the room, confused as to where he was. Sarah smiled at him from the sofa.

  “You nodded off, love. Why don’t you go to bed?”

  Taking a moment to gather his senses, he stared at the Ten O’clock News program. “Yeah, I will in a minute. I’ll just watch a bit of the news. Have I missed anything?”

  Sarah shook her head slowly as she listened to the headlines.

  A few moments later, there was a loud noise from the street outside – glass being smashed, followed by voices and laughter.

  “Sounds like someone’s having fun. Bet it’s some drunks on the way home from the pub,” Adam said, as he levered himself out of his cushioned chair to take a look.

  He went to the bay window and opened the curtains a fraction to peer into the darkness.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” he said to nobody in particular.

  Outside, he saw a group of young men congregating in the street. They were dressed in black, hoods covering their features, drinking from bottles, smoking, and eating kebabs from plastic containers. Some stood in the carriageway itself, others on the pavement or on the grass verge. A couple were circling on their pushbikes, whilst another two were shoving each other back and forth in a mock fight. To Adam, it was not an unfamiliar sight, one that he had witnessed many a time as he had watched inebriated merrymakers spill from a nightclub at kicking-out-time or rowdily queue near the taxi rank on a weekend as they awaited their ride home. He remembered how his fellow police officers, bored with waiting for
the drunks to disperse, used to make jokes at their expense. But this was different. This was not outside a club. This was outside his own home and he was not impressed.

  As he watched through the crack in the curtains, one of the noisy group turned towards the house. He smiled as if confirming that his actions were being monitored and then nodded towards Adam’s silhouette, speaking to his friends. In the glow of the streetlamp, Adam recognised him as the same person that had filmed his intervention to protect the police officer a few weeks earlier. Was that incident somehow connected to this current disturbance? Or was it just a coincidence? He turned to look at Sarah.

  “You’re not gonna believe what’s going on outside now.”

  “What do you mean? It’s just some drunks, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, but one of them is the same lad that filmed the incident out there the other night.”

  “You’re kidding! He hasn’t come back to cause more trouble, has he?”

  Adam shrugged his shoulders. He turned to look outside again, his mind trying desperately to connect the dots. Had they come specifically to annoy him because he detained one of their mates? He could feel a touch of anger brewing, but also a faint pang of concern. What did they want - to get their own back on him? He was starting to feel a little intimidated, not for himself, but on behalf of his family.

  Having spotted Adam curtain-twitching, one of the gang gave an exaggerated wave while another blew kisses at him. One of the taller members slowly walked towards Adam’s van. He caressed the wing mirror lovingly and then flicked a speck of dirt from its paintwork. He grinned at the onlooking Adam and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Were they taunting him, intimidating him, threatening to damage his vehicle? Their menacing behaviour was certainly having an effect; Adam was getting riled.

  “That does it. They’re taking the piss now!” Adam threw the curtains against the window and stormed towards the lounge door, his temper getting the better of him.

  “Adam, calm down.” Sarah jumped to her feet, placing herself between him and the door. She was concerned that he might do something silly if allowed to go outside to confront them. “I’ve never seen you like this before. Let it go.” She put both palms against his chest as he tried to pass her.