by Ben Cheetham
Charlotte was stretched out on the leather sofa, watching the oversized plasma television. It showed a helicopter’s bird’s eye shot of several figures in white plastic suits milling around a car at the muddy edge of a river. A warm breeze smelling of cigarette smoke wafted through the open French doors. Stephen looked past Jenny, who was smoking on the patio. He looked past the manicured lawns and flowerbeds. He looked past the patchwork quilt of brown moorland and green fields to the sprawling cityscape of Sheffield. A ripple disturbed his features. He knew the city as well as he knew anything. In his teens, he’d explored its every cranny and dark corner, and the things he’d found had destroyed and remade him in their own image. Those things had touched every part of his life, except Charlotte. She was the one pure passion of his existence, and he would never allow anything to change that.
‘What are you watching?’ Stephen asked, more for something to say than because he was interested.
Charlotte flinched, twisting towards him. ‘Dad! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
A slight frown marred Charlotte’s china-smooth skin. ‘Are you OK? You look really pale.’
Stephen tried to force a smile, but one wouldn’t come. ‘I’m fine, sweetie.’ He stared at Charlotte intensely, as if etching every detail of her features onto his mind.
She squirmed a little. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Because I love you. I love you more than anything.’
Charlotte turned on her best daddy’s girl smile. ‘More even than you love Mark?’
‘A thousand million times more. More even than I love my own life.’
‘So does that mean I can have a new iPhone?’
A tick so faint as to be scarcely visible pulled at Stephen’s mouth. ‘You can have whatever you want, sweetie. You know that.’
Charlotte jumped up to wrap her arms around Stephen. ‘Thanks, Dad. You’re the best!’
He hugged her back, briefly closing his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair. ‘Now go tell your mum to put the food out. There’s something I need to take care of in the garage. I should only be a couple of minutes.’
A smug smile playing at the corners of her lips, Charlotte headed for the patio. Stephen’s attention was drawn to the television by a voice saying, ‘…divers recovered the man’s body earlier today. Police have yet to formally identify the dead man, but they believe him to be Ryan Castle, a thirty-three-year-old local man whose car was found at a nearby nature reserve. They further believe that Castle, a known drug dealer with a history of violent crime, may have been the victim of a deal gone wrong. Castle was killed by gunshot wounds to the chest—’
Stephen picked up the remote-control and turned the television off. As he headed out the front door, the newsreader’s words echoed in his head. Killed by gunshot wounds to the chest. Killed by gunshot wounds to the chest.
‘Stephen.’
Flinching at the sound of his name, Stephen looked towards the wrought-iron gate that separated the long driveway from the quiet lane beyond. A man in a dark grey suit was standing beside a black Jag on the other side of it. The man was bald with a natural tonsure of salt-and-pepper hair and a slightly jowly, almost babyishly smooth face. A deep frown cut Stephen’s forehead. Edward Forester. That phoney bastard was the last person he felt like talking to. But he knew from experience how persistent Edward could be when he wanted something. Sucking in a tight breath, he approached him. Edward smiled, showing unnaturally white and even teeth. There was something about his smile – some quality of rigidity – that made it seem more a habitual reflex than a genuine expression of emotion.
‘Save your smile for the voters, Edward,’ said Stephen, his voice cold and hard. ‘What are you doing here?’
The smile disappeared like water from a tap being turned off. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you all week. Why haven’t you returned my calls?’
‘Because I’ve got nothing to say to you.’
‘I thought we were friends.’
‘Friends?’ A slight, humourless curl came to Stephen’s lips. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
A ripple crossed the smoothness of Edward’s face. ‘Christ, they’re true, aren’t they? The rumours I’ve been hearing.’
‘Goodbye, Edward,’ said Stephen, turning away from the gate.
‘Don’t turn your back on me,’ snapped Edward. ‘I’ve a right to know what’s going on.’
Ignoring him, Stephen headed towards the garage. Edward’s angry voice pursued him. ‘I’m warning you, Stephen. Don’t make a fool of me.’
Stephen lifted the garage door, revealing his Range Rover and his Aston Martin. He ran his hand lightly over the sports car’s sleek bodywork. Other than Charlotte, making money and one or two vices, there was nothing he loved more than opening up its throttle on the leafy lanes surrounding his property. The thought of someone else driving it and getting the same pleasure from it that he did was enough to make him feel nauseous. Shaking his head as if to say, No way, he took a couple of petrol canisters from a shelf. He unscrewed one and sluiced its contents over the vehicles. The sound of an engine starting up then receding into the distance, told him Edward had left. Lucky for him, he thought. He approached a tall, rectangular metal box, opened it with a key, and removed a double-barrelled shotgun and a cartridge belt. He strapped on the belt, broke open the shotgun, chambered two cartridges, and snapped the barrel shut. Holding the shotgun in one hand and the full canister in the other, he returned to the house.
As quietly as possible, Stephen set down the canister in the hallway and closed the front door. Shouldering the shotgun, he padded along the hallway. The sound of cutlery being laid came from beyond the half-open kitchen door. He peered through the gap.
Charlotte was sitting at the table with her back to him. That’s good, he thought. That way she won’t see what’s coming or have time to be afraid. His eyes lingered on her hair a moment, before shifting to Jenny, who was spooning pasta into bowls at the cooker. She was still a good-looking woman, even though she was carrying a little extra weight these days. Not that she’d ever really been his type. Did he love her? Probably not, but he needed her. She’d looked after him better than his own mother had. Without her steadying influence, he’d never have been able to build up the business to what it was – or rather, to what it had been a few years ago. And she’d given him Charlotte. In return, he’d given her a life beyond most people’s wildest expectations – holiday homes in Tuscany and Florida, a yacht, endless hours in beauty salons, a face-lift, a tit-lift, an arse-lift, a two-million-quid house. And now all of it was gone, or soon would be. Their whole world was about to come crashing down around them and there was nothing he could do about it. Well, not quite nothing.
Stephen took aim at Charlotte’s head, and without hesitation, pulled the trigger. The boom of the shotgun, amplified by the confined space, set his ears screaming. Charlotte was flung across the table as if she’d been hit by a charging bull. A millisecond later, she vanished in a cloud of smoke from the gun’s muzzle. Jenny’s almost unearthly screaming rose above that of Stephen’s eardrums. Mechanically, he advanced into the kitchen. Jenny staggered backwards, flinging her hands up in front of her terror-contorted face. Aiming for her chest, Stephen pulled the trigger at point-blank range. As if she was an empty sack, Jenny was punched into the air and thrown against the cupboards. She landed face down in a heap of quivering, twisted limbs. Blood instantly began to pool on the tiled floor. For a few seconds, she made a guttural rattling sound in her throat. Then there was silence, deep and terrible.
Stephen stooped over Jenny to check for a pulse in her wrist. He couldn’t find one. He started to turn towards Charlotte, but hesitated. He didn’t want to see her as she looked now. He wanted to remember her forever – even if forever wasn’t that long – as she’d looked in the lounge, her blue eyes and auburn hair shining in the evening sun. Besides, h
e told himself, no one could survive a wound such as she’d suffered.
Taking care not to look at Charlotte, Stephen sluiced petrol over his wife and daughter’s bloody bodies. He backed from the kitchen, dribbling a trail of petrol into the living room. After dousing the three-piece suite, he headed upstairs, emptying the last of the petrol over the landing.
Stephen entered the master bedroom, which was dominated by an ornate four-poster bed draped with crimson silk sheets. He shoved aside a rack of suits in the walk-in wardrobe, revealing a safe. He punched a combination into the electronic lock. Inside the safe there was a bundle of papers and a thick wad of fifty-quid notes. He retrieved an unmarked manila envelope. Carefully, almost fearfully, he opened the envelope and withdrew a similarly unmarked DVD. He inserted it into a slot on the side of the television at the end of the bed. A gloomily lit scene that had obviously been filmed on a handheld camera appeared on the screen. He stared at it with glimmering, heavy-lidded eyes. His tongue flicked out like a lizard tasting the air, as the camera swung around to focus on a group of shadowy figures.
3
As Mark drove through the city’s well-heeled south-western suburbs, one question kept repeating itself in his mind: What was going on? It had to be something bad. Why else would his dad phone him out of the blue? It wasn’t as though they had anything to say to each other. Not that they were on bad terms. There was just no connection between them – no love, no hate, merely a kind of emotional void. It had been like that as long as he could remember, which was OK with him – or at least he told himself it was – because, try as he had many times before, he just couldn’t bring himself to like his dad. There was something about him, though nothing he could point his finger at, that made his skin crawl. The rare occasions they touched, be it an awkward handshake or an accidental brush of arm or thigh, everything inside him would coil into a tight ball.
Charlotte and their dad’s relationship was the exact opposite. She always seemed to be hugging him, snuggling up on the sofa with him, or laughing at some joke only the two of them shared. For years it had eaten Mark up inside to see the two of them together. He’d agonised endlessly during therapy sessions over why things were so different between him and his dad. He used to think it was because there was something wrong with himself, that he was abnormal in some way. On the advice of his therapist, he’d tried to talk about his feelings with his parents. But the words had stuck in his throat like fishhooks when faced with his dad. And the most he’d ever got out of his mum was a dismissive, ‘There’s nothing wrong with either you or your father. You’re just very different, that’s all.’
Mark agreed with the second part of what she’d said. He and his dad were very different. Thank Christ. But as for the first part, well, that was another matter. The older he got, the less he saw himself as the ‘abnormal’ one. A view that had taken deeper root after he moved out of the house. Every time he returned home he noticed more and more how his dad struggled to meet his eye, and a suspicion started to grow in him that he was hiding something. Some secret. Recently, he’d even begun to wonder whether his dad really was his dad. He’d sat in front of a mirror with a photo of his dad, inspecting every angle and line of both their faces. And the more he scrutinised, the more differences he discovered. His dad had hazel-brown eyes, a hooked nose, thin lips and a sharp jaw. His mum had deep blue eyes, a blunt nose, small but full lips and a round fleshy jaw. Charlotte was a mixture of these features, whereas with his blue-grey eyes, button nose and dimpled chin, Mark’s only easily discernible resemblance was to his mum.
Mark suddenly found himself wondering whether this was the reason his dad had called him. Maybe he’d decided it was time to reveal that he wasn’t his real father. Mark hoped so. He hoped that somewhere out there, there was a man he could love in the way that sons are supposed to love their fathers. The thought brought a stab of guilt. Stephen might not have provided him with love, but he’d provided him with a beautiful house to grow up in, an expensive education and every other material thing he could want, including the flat he lived in and the car he was driving. What had this fantasy father figure provided him with? Nothing, that’s what. Unless he was ignorant of his child’s existence – which Mark couldn’t believe his mum would have allowed to happen – he’d chosen not to be a part of his life. Stephen might be distant and cold, and there might be something about him that wasn’t quite right, but whatever he was, he was there. That had to count for something. Didn’t it? Of course it did, and yet at some deep, almost subconscious level he couldn’t help but hope that there was a grain of truth in his suspicions.
Mark slammed a door on his thoughts, telling himself they were as absurd as they were destructive. In truth, he knew the most likely reason for his dad’s phone call was the business. Sure, he might be a bit of a daydreamer. And, sure, he might have been insulated from the everyday worries that affected other people. But he wasn’t completely detached from reality. He read the newspapers. He knew there was a recession on and that it had hit the manufacturing sector hard. Added to which, Charlotte had phoned him a few days ago to moan about their dad working late every night. At the time he’d been more irritated by her whining than concerned about the reasons behind it.
Mark passed the city limits and wound his way through a valley of fields enclosed by dry-stone walls, and scattered houses. He turned onto a lane that led to a tall gate set into an equally tall wall. He punched a code into the keypad. An electronic motor whirred to life and the gate slid aside.
It was twilight, but the downstairs windows were dark. That struck him as odd. His mum always liked to have the house brightly lit up. Unlike her children, she’d been raised in the inner city. And she remained a city girl at heart, easily spooked by the rural night.
Mark’s eyes were drawn to a flickering, bluish light in his parents’ bedroom window. A new thought came to him. Maybe there was something wrong with his mum. Maybe she was ill in bed. A familiar sense of choking anxiety rose inside him. His mum was the most important person in his life. Where his dad had given him material possessions, she’d given him love and the confidence to be who he was rather than who his dad expected him to be. When he’d told his parents he wanted to study art, his dad had scoffed at the idea, calling it a Mickey-Mouse degree. His mum had stuck up for him, defending his right to make his own decisions. Despite his dad’s contempt for his choice, he hadn’t protested it much. In fact, it seemed to Mark that he was relieved his son harboured no desire to work alongside him. Of course, it was different with Charlotte. Dad had been grooming her for years to follow in his footsteps, teaching her all the ins and outs of his business.
You’re doing it again, Mark reprimanded himself, concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply as his therapist had taught him. You have to stop torturing yourself like this. There’s nothing you can do about the way things are between you and Dad. And there’s nothing wrong with Mum – at least, nothing serious. If there was, you’d be at the hospital now, not here agonising over the same old shit.
The anxiety faded and Mark approached the front door. It wasn’t locked, but then it rarely was. There was no need out here, especially not with the high garden walls and CCTV cameras. The first thing he noticed on entering the hallway was the smell of petrol. Another smell lurked underneath it. His nostrils flared as he inhaled its acrid stink, which was vaguely reminiscent of burnt meat. The second thing he noticed was the noise from upstairs. It was a small, tremulous noise, like a child sobbing. Something about it made him shiver as if someone had stepped on his grave. His frowning gaze ascended to the lighted rectangle of his parents’ bedroom doorway.
‘Mum! Dad!’ he called. No reply. ‘Charlotte!’ Still no reply.
What the fuck’s going on here? Mark wondered. He reached for a light-switch, but hesitated as it occurred to him that maybe the lights were off for a reason. He didn’t have a clue as to what that reason might be. It didn’t sound like Charlotte crying up there. When she turned
on the waterworks it was loud enough to shatter glass. Maybe it was one of his parents’ friends’ kids. The thought reinforced his suspicion that this had something to do with the business – pretty much all of his parents’ friends were connected to the business in some way.
Prickles of unease creeping over his scalp, Mark climbed the stairs. Something’s very wrong here, his brain hissed at him. Why didn’t anyone answer you? A lurid picture flashed through his head of his parents and sister bound and gagged. You’re letting your imagination run away with you again, some other part of his brain retorted. Whatever’s going on, there’ll be some perfectly simple explanation for it. But still his body was tensed and ready for flight as he approached his parents’ bedroom. He peered around the doorframe, and what he saw threw his heart into wild palpitations. His dad was standing at the end of the bed, shotgun pressed to his shoulder, its barrel aimed at the doorway.
Instinctively, Mark jerked back. As he did so the muzzle flashed white, then orange. The boom of the shotgun rolled over him like thunder. A large section of the doorframe disintegrated, spraying him with a storm of splinters. A sledgehammer seemed to hit his right shoulder, punching the breath out of his lungs, spinning him like a top. He clutched at the bannister, barely managing to stop himself from pitching over it. Through hazy layers of fear and tears, he saw his dad emerge from the doorway. His face was bloodless and blank, his eyes as empty as black holes. With a strangely robotic movement, he swung the shotgun’s barrel towards his son.
For an instant, paralysis seized Mark. I’m going to fucking die, screamed his brain. Struggling for breath, he managed to gasp out, ‘No!’ His left hand darted out to grab the barrel and shove it away. Father and son strained against each other, limbs trembling, eyes bulging. Even if his right arm hadn’t dangled uselessly at his side, Mark’s strength would have been no match for his father’s. Slowly but surely, the barrel inched towards his face. With one last desperate effort, Mark threw his body against the gun, forcing it floorward. There was another eardrum-lacerating boom, and it felt to Mark as if someone was dragging a white-hot razor along his left shin. As he collapsed down the stairs, a whoosh of flames leapt up, enveloping his dad’s trousers. Tumbling head over heels, he glimpsed his dad slapping futilely at the flames on his legs.
