by Wonny Lea
One Saturday night Tina was persuaded to join the men and he remembered how she had sat down at the kitchen table and opened a tin of tobacco. He had never seen a woman roll her own cigarettes and he was fascinated to see her slim fingers produce a perfect roll-up. Even then she was a heavy smoker and that night she matched him one for one with cans of cider and cigarettes.
It was obvious that she was getting drunk and sending out blatant signals that she was more than a little interested in her father’s friend. For some reason her father had found the situation amusing and had taken himself off to bed.
The inevitable happened but it had been very different from anything that Dan had ever experienced before. He was not short of sexual experience but it soon became clear that Tina was a novice and as he kissed the top of her head and let himself out of his mate’s house he realised that he had just robbed Mike’s daughter of her virginity.
He hadn’t known what to think about the situation and ranged from congratulating himself for achieving such a conquest at his age to wondering if he would be locked up if she decided to cry rape. Not that it had been rape but with his mind in such turmoil anything was easy to contemplate. It was hard to believe that at the beginning of the twenty-first century there were still twenty-three-year-old virgins around, and Dan wished he had been sober enough to have enjoyed the experience.
Dan’s Saturday evening sessions at his friend’s house came to an abrupt end, and Mike accused his daughter of scaring off his best mate by putting him in an impossible position and almost begging for it. In reality Tina and her father had always had a strained relationship and he would have turned his daughter out years before were it not for the income she provided. Tina had stepped into her mother’s shoes when she had died two days before her daughter’s seventeenth birthday, and as well as doing the cooking and cleaning she held down two jobs. It was little wonder that she hadn’t experienced sex, as she rarely went anywhere other than to work, and it was not surprising that her contact with her father’s friend had become the highlight of her week and she actually believed that she was in love with him. She became depressed when her father told her that they were bored with beans on toast and chose instead to visit the local curry house on Saturday nights.
Tina knew that the real reason for their change of plans was that Dan was scared to face her and may have been expecting repercussions. After all, he had a wife and family, and one of his daughters had been in school with Tina and was pregnant with her third child.
It was months after her first experience with a man that Tina told her father that she was pregnant. She knew what his reaction would be and it had been for that reason that she had kept her secret until the pregnancy was past the point of legal termination. In spite of that Mike had tried to persuade his daughter to get rid of the baby, but had been surprised by Tina’s new-found strength and determination to do what she wanted to do.
They parted following a heated argument during which her father accused her of having sex with the man who lived next door and was mentally retarded. He said her baby would be thick as shit and that it would be better to put it down before it was born. Although she was sickened by his words Tina was grateful to realise that at no time had her father considered that his mate Dan could actually be the father of his grandchild.
For years Tina had no contact with her father and although she still lived in the area, before Jason started school, she only once saw Dan when she was buying tobacco at a local supermarket. She realised then that her son was the living image of his father and she would do everything possible to ensure they didn’t meet. Dan’s ginger hair was getting more and more streaked with grey and this was making a match less obvious; in time the possibility of people linking the man with the boy would not be an issue.
Tina’s plans were confounded when for the first time ever when Jason was five. Dan brought Megan, one of his granddaughters, to school and she made a beeline towards Jason in the playground. Dan followed her and spoke to her little friend, just as Tina appeared to say goodbye to her son. No words were spoken but as Dan looked from Tina to her son his stomach turned over and he rushed off and was through the school gates within seconds.
That evening Dan had fished out some photographs of himself as a boy and was totally convinced that Jason was his. He couldn’t believe it. They had only had sex once and he had been pretty drunk at the time – and why hadn’t Tina told him, and at the very least made him pay maintenance?
Dan remembered how he had agonised over what he should do. He had always wanted a son but had three daughters and between them they had given him four granddaughters. Thinking of the pros and cons of confronting Tina he had decided to let sleeping dogs lie and pushed it all to the back of his mind.
For about two years Dan said or did nothing, and then he heard of Tina’s lottery win. His marriage had broken up when the last of his three daughters had left home and he had moved in with Susan Evans, who was the same age as his eldest daughter and was proving to be something of a handful. Susan wanted much more than he could afford to give her and she drank far too much, but she offered sexual favours that were beyond his wildest imagination. He desperately wanted those to continue, but she had other offers and was about to take up one of them when he told her about Jason.
He regretted it almost immediately but she had been like a dog with a bone and pointed out to Dan that he was the father of a boy who had access to millions of pounds. She had fantasised about what they could do with that sort of money and with her own special means of persuasion she convinced him to hatch a plan for getting his hands on some of it.
Their first thoughts had been to confront Tina with the fact that they knew who had fathered her child and would make it public knowledge unless she agreed to parting with some of her winnings. There were obvious flaws to this plan, and it was Susan who said that if she was in Tina’s position she would not pay up.
Dan remembered her exact words were ‘The stupid cow would be chuffed to let the world know that you’re Jason’s dad. Rumour had it when she was pregnant that she’d been stuffed by the retard who lived next door and she’s never denied it.
‘If she tells us to go ahead and tell the world we’re done for and she wouldn’t give us a penny. True, you’d be recognised as the kid’s father and perhaps that’s what you want, is it? Want to go and play happy families with Tina and Jason, do you?’
Susan had screamed the words at Dan and it had taken him some time to convince her that Jason’s mother was the original Miss Frosty Knickers and there was no way he wanted anything from her other than her money.
It had been Susan who hit on the idea of kidnapping Jason and holding out for a big ransom.
‘It’s the one thing that the skinny bitch will pay up for.’
The planning over the next couple of weeks had been what had led them to their current position, but it was proving to be more traumatic than either of them had envisaged.
The caravan to which they had brought Jason was not what Susan had anticipated but she would put up with the conditions for a few days if it meant getting her hands on a fortune. For now the most important thing was that nobody knew it even existed as the building work for which it had been positioned had been abandoned almost four years ago. Dan had been involved in digging the foundations for what was going to be a luxurious single-storey dwelling with views overlooking a little-known part of the South Wales coastline. Difficulties with planning regulations, a serious matrimonial dispute, and a downturn in the economy had initially put the project on hold and then resulted in the various partners pulling the plug on the whole thing. Dan had been back to the site a few times since the work had finished and had taken away anything that could be sold on, so he knew that the caravan was still on site and that the fenced-off area was deserted.
It had been easy for him to reconnect the water and electricity supply and fix up a series of gas bottles for cooking. He had stocked up with food and drink, although the plan wa
s to be there for just a few days and for the two of them to be flying from Heathrow to Mexico City on Thursday. Dan felt a pang of regret that he probably wouldn’t see his family again, but he soon put it out of his mind as he thought of the money and the long, luxurious days in the sun with Susan at his side – and in his bed.
They already had their tickets and Dan had taken out a loan to book business class seats that had cost him over three thousand pounds. He told Susan that by the time they set foot on the plane they would be millionaires and so should have tickets that reflected their standing. Once they got to Mexico they would disappear with a cool million in their pockets. In order to avoid suspicion they had return flights booked, but would not be using part two of their tickets and would certainly not be repaying the loan.
At no time had either of them considered the possibility of Tina not paying the ransom and all they had to do now was put in place the plans they had agreed. Persuading Jason to hide in the recently purchased cricket bag had been easy, as Jason had recognised him as Megan’s granddad and was up for a bit of fun. The school trip to St Fagans had been a golden opportunity, and Dan had bought the cricket gear as he thought he would blend in, because there was a cricket club very near to the museum. He watched the coaches pull into the car park as he adjusted the strap of his Slazenger Ultimate V180 Holdall and made pretend strokes with an unfamiliar cricket bat.
He thought it unlikely that Tina would pair up with any of the other parents and he was proven to be correct. All he had to do was to wait for an opportunity to get Jason on his own and it came much sooner than he had anticipated. Dressed in white trousers and a white V-neck sweater, and sporting a white floppy cotton hat and sunglasses, Dan believed that he was a perfect representation of the cricketer images they had Googled.
At first he had stood back and watched at a distance and saw a great opportunity when Jason seemed to be standing on his own outside the ladies toilets. He moved in quickly but had been forced to walk away as suddenly Jason was talking to a woman that Dan recognised as one of the teachers from the school.
Initially he had cursed the woman but then inwardly thanked her for preventing him from taking the risk of picking up Jason in an area where there would always be comings and goings. He prayed that Tina would not go into the play area and his prayers were answered as she seemed to change her mind at the last minute and dragged her son away. Keeping a safe distance Dan followed behind and was pleased to see that everyone else from the school had either gone to the park or had stopped at the red farmhouse.
Dan wondered how he was going to separate the mother and son and once again his prayers were answered as they appeared to be having an argument and Tina was walking off leaving her Jason on the grass verge.
He grasped his chance immediately, and taking off his sunglasses so that the boy would recognise him he sat down next to Jason. There was no time for preliminary banter and so Dan gave Jason his biggest smile and suggesting they play a trick on his mummy persuaded him to hop into the cricket bag and hide.
Jason caught on immediately and grinned from ear to ear as he snuggled down inside the bag and drank the very sweet apple juice that Dan had given him. It was effortless for Dan to pick up the bag and walk back in the direction he had come and with his head down and his sunglasses back on he passed several people he knew from the school without a glimmer of recognition from any one of them.
It was warm and dark inside the bag and even before they reached the car park Jason had started to wriggle about and Dan whispered to him to be quiet, telling him that his mother was coming and they would soon surprise her.
Dan zapped the remote of a silver-coloured Ford Focus and placed his cricket bag containing a now frightened little boy into the boot. The car didn’t belong to Dan; with Susan’s help he had borrowed it, without asking, from her sister. At that moment Diane, the real owner, was tucked up in bed having done a night shift stacking shelves at the Asda supermarket, and would never know to what evil use her car had been put whilst she slept.
Fear, the warmth, and the dark had overcome Jason and with the help of the sleeping tablets dissolved with lots of extra sugar in the apple juice he was now fast asleep.
Just a few miles away from the museum Dan had pulled into a layby and changed from his cricket gear back into the black jeans and sweater he had brought with him.
There was no sound from the boot and Dan was almost physically sick as he thought that maybe the boy was dead. He had persuaded Susan to crush up fewer tablets than she had originally intended but had they still exceeded the dose needed to kill such a young boy?
His fear caused him to be careless and he had pulled out from the layby almost into the path of a police vehicle. They were about to pull him over when some boy racers zoomed past and became the new object of their attention.
Even as he thought back over the incident Dan’s blood ran cold and he visualised the police opening the boot of his car and possibly finding a dead body in his cricket bag. He shook his head. It hadn’t happened and the rest of the plan had gone like clockwork, as Jason was transferred into Dan’s car and he drove Susan and their captive to the caravan that was to be their base for a few days.
To Dan’s relief Jason was not dead and he was amazed to realise that as he opened up the cricket bag and carried the boy into the caravan his relief was much more than he would have expected. Looking at the boy’s face was just like looking at photographs of himself when he was Jason’s age and he found himself wishing he had not agreed to Susan’s suggestion of kidnapping.
It was too late now to turn back and as he started to lay Jason on the bed Susan had stopped him.
‘I feel like celebrating,’ she had said. ‘Put the kid on the seat by the table and we can make good use of the bed.’
She poured them both a hefty measure of gin and drank hers even before he had put Jason down. Gin was not his tipple and he offered her the second glass and she finished it in two gulps.
Susan didn’t need gin to relieve her of her inhibitions – she didn’t have any in the first place, and for the next hour she reminded Dan of why he wanted to be with her and why his kid could have no place in their lives.
It was the sound of Jason trying to stand up that brought Dan back to reality and once again he surprised himself as he pulled on his jeans and threw a sheet over Susan’s naked body to avoid the boy any embarrassment.
Jason looked dreadful, with eyes that were still puffy from previous tears and that were staring around in complete terror. Dan tried to reassure him and offered him a drink but Jason had memories of the last drink he had been given and shook his head violently. He started to cry and his wailing woke Susan – and instantly World War Three broke out between the two of them.
For hours Dan listened to Jason sobbing and the scantily clad Susan screaming at him, and the moment at which Jason kicked the leg of the fold-down table and upset her gin was a turning point. Although he had rescued the situation Dan was getting concerned about leaving Jason with Susan and he would have to be doing that the next morning if their plans were to have any chance of working.
Although he had asked her to stop drinking Susan defiantly lifted another glass of gin to her lips and seeing red Dan knocked it out of her hands. She lashed out at him and her red nails clawed at his face and he retaliated by striking her across the face with the back of his hand. Instead of stopping her, his actions prompted a vicious reaction of her own and she picked up the bottle of gin and smashed it on the side of his head.
He reeled backwards and then with a rage he didn’t even know he was capable of he grabbed hold of her neck with both hands and shook her and shook her so that her movements resembled those of a rag doll.
Jason had been screaming and now he was quiet.
Susan had been swearing and now she was quiet.
As if the quiet had suddenly registered Dan released his hands and Susan dropped like a stone, landing in a crumpled heap at his feet.
He co
uldn’t move, being paralysed with fear and knowing with absolute certainty that the woman at his feet was dead. He had strangled her and his first reaction was to lose control, and to add insult to injury he was sick all over her.
Jason had found his voice and started to call for his mother but one look from Dan soon silenced him. He hadn’t liked Susan when she was shouting at him and he certainly didn’t like the look of her now.
In a robotic fashion Dan picked Susan up and was in danger of triggering another bout of vomiting as his hands slipped on what had previously been the contents of his stomach. He swallowed hard and was surprised that Susan was so heavy as he awkwardly moved her from the floor and onto the bed where she had just a few hours ago been extremely active.
Dan had only seen three dead bodies in his life, and all of them had been very old and had died peacefully of natural causes. Susan was not old and had certainly not died of natural causes. He had killed her and the thing that was now uppermost in his mind was the fact that Jason had witnessed the whole thing.
He could not bring himself to look at the boy and slammed the bedroom door before turning the cold-water tap on full and putting the whole of his head under the feeble stream that came from the pipes. The shock of the cold water was just what he needed and he rubbed it all over his short hair and massaged it into his face and scalp.
There was no sound from Jason but he was watching what looked like some sort of ritual and his little body was trembling as he wondered what was going to happen next. He had liked Megan’s granddad and couldn’t understand what was happening. Although he was only seven he had made some sense of the conversations between Dan and Susan and realised that they were planning on giving him back to his mother if she gave them some of her lottery winnings.
Jason wasn’t worried on that score and he knew that his mother would gladly give them all her money, as she often told him he was more important to her than anything. He had never seen grown-ups fight before but had heard stories from some of his classmates and now he believed them. It had been the most terrifying experience of his life and as he thought about it tears ran down his cheeks and he wondered if he would be killed next. Jason knew nothing about death and dying but he was sure that Susan was dead and wouldn’t pop back up again like some of the characters in the cartoons he liked to watch.
