by Shaun Baines
Laughing, Fairbanks shook his head. “The process involves turning the ashes into a glass-like substance. It’s expensive. I was ten at the time. I didn’t have the money. When I was a little older, I cut off a Labrador’s head and used that instead. This is a reminder.”
Daniel removed the last of the material around Fairbank’s arms, exposing his bony elbows. “Jesus, and they say I’m sick.”
“So how do you feel knowing you’re not the man they said you were? Somewhat adrift, I shouldn’t wonder. Maybe relieved. It’s like having your identity wiped clean, isn’t it? How could you possibly know who you are when it’s all been a lie?”
“Be quiet,” Daniel said.
The knots were tight. The elbows were secure against the chair and wouldn’t move, even when Fairbanks bucked and writhed against the pain. He tried to focus. Monica must have raised the alarm by now. His father’s men, what remained of them, could charge into Five Oaks at any time. He didn’t want that. He needed this time with Fairbanks. Finish it and avenge your daughter, his heart told him. It’s the only way to exorcise the demons threatening to swallow you whole.
Daniel stood in front of Fairbanks, his arms folded over his thick chest.
“Are we starting?” Fairbanks asked.
The vein in Fairbanks’ neck pulsed rapidly, but otherwise he appeared relaxed. He fixed his eyes on Daniel and didn’t blink.
“I always tell my men to give up all they know when they’re in situations like this. It would come out eventually. At least, they might save themselves some pain. I never tell them everything anyway so I’m quite safe, but it’s different with me. I have all the answers. I’d still like to save myself some pain, though.”
The tool Daniel needed was in the utility room, not in the wine cellar. His father had various tools for various jobs around the house. He never used them, of course. He paid someone to do the maintenance work at Five Oaks, but occasionally he’d use some of them for situations like this.
“What I’m saying, Daniel, is that you can ask me what you want. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Your father was the key to getting my money. Killing himself was the best way to protect it. It was quite a clever, noble thing to do. Your father - “
Fairbanks stopped himself. His eyes went blank and he cocked his head to one side. “Should I keep calling him your father? Because he wasn’t, was he? Should I call him Ed?”
The blood crept up his neck and into his jaw muscles. If he got angry, it would be over too soon. He calmed himself and managed a smile. “I’m going to ask you a question, then I’m going to torture you, then I’m going to ask you again.”
“What if I answer you the first time?”
Daniel shook his head.
“I see. This isn’t just about getting me to talk, is it? So why are you doing it? To avenge a man who wasn’t your father? Someone you clearly hated? I don’t understand.”
A sigh escaped Fairbanks’ lips. It wasn’t one of fear, Daniel realised, but of exasperation. He watched as Fairbanks searched inwardly for an answer. He wasn’t afraid of the oncoming pain. He was frustrated because he didn’t know why it was being inflicted.
“Are you venting your anger?” Fairbanks asked. “I think so, but it’s more than that. The guilt of being an orphan? The pain of being rejected?”
Daniel double checked his bindings and left, hurrying down the stairs. He paused briefly to look at the ruination of his father before continuing to the utility room. Searching the shelves, he pulled away boxes and old jars filled with nails. They bounced and broke on the floor. He found screwdrivers, pick handles and a brand new claw hammer with the price tag still attached. They fell away until the refuse on the floor was almost a foot deep. And then he found what he was looking for and held it up to the light.
A four inch, two hundred and forty Watt belt sander.
He ran his fingers over the sand paper. It was new and rough. Sanding off the skin on Fairbanks’ elbows would cause a lot of blood spray and he regretted not having a change of clothes. Once he’d got down to bone, he’d travel the sander over the fleshy parts of his arm to his shoulder blades. The room would be a right off, but it needed redecorating anyhow.
Whistling as he climbed the stairs, he wondered what colour he’d get when he mixed the blue of his old carpet with the red of Fairbanks’ blood. It would be like being back at school, he thought with a smile.
But standing in the doorway of his bedroom, the smile dropped from his face. The sander slipped from his fingers. “What the fuck?”
The room was empty. Fairbanks was gone and so was Reaver.
The rope used to hold Fairbanks was in a neat coil on the floor, like a resting snake. The bed was back in its rightful place, the sheets folded neatly on top. The chair was pushed back under the desk. There was no avoiding the blood stains, but they were minimal in comparison to what he had planned. He turned on the spot over and over, expecting them to magically appear. When they didn’t, he ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it in anger until a clump came away in his fingers. The pain focused his attention and he scanned the room for clues.
A blood trail in the carpet led out of the room. Just as Reaver had tricked him over Mosely’s whereabouts, he had fooled Daniel into thinking he was dead, but Fairbanks had known. He fired the shot, after all. No wonder he had been so calm. A superficial wounding, painful, but not life threatening and Reaver the liar instinctively knew to play along. They waited for Daniel’s stupidity to lend them their means of escape.
He ran to the window and saw them climbing into his van. Fairbanks helped an injured Reaver into the passenger seat and jogged to the driver’s door, the sleeves of his shirt and jacket in ribbons. He looked up to the window, his eyebrows arching in surprise when he saw Daniel staring down at him. He waved and got into the van.
Daniel bolted from the room, almost tumbling down the stairs in his haste. Flinging the front doors open, he was in time to see his van speeding down the driveway. He shielded his face with an arm as gravel sprayed like buckshot from the back tyres.
His iPhone trilled. It was a phone number he didn’t recognise and Daniel answered distractedly.
“What was the question?”
His heart beat quickly. “Fairbanks?”
“Don’t ask me how I got your number. Somethings I won’t share, but I was being honest when I told you I’d answer your questions.”
“How did you escape?”
“I shot Reaver in the shoulder. Same place, both times. Easy enough to recover from with medical attention. He freed me when you left the room. Not bad for a dead man.”
Daniel looked over his father’s man-made lake. Bodies under the surface. Bodies on the island. What had been his intentions in building something like that? To create a beauty spot or a graveyard?
“You beat us again,” he said.
“‘Us?’ Are you an ‘us’? Take it from a fellow orphan, Daniel. You need to decide if you’re a Dayton or someone else. You can’t be both. It’ll rip you apart.”
“Why are you calling?” he asked, kicking gravel at a shitty, burgundy BMW.
“Firstly, I’ll be firebombing your van when I’m done, but I also want to know what your question was. When you stood in front of me with your arms crossed? What was your question?”
Daniel watched a fox appear from the laurel bush he had hidden under as a boy. It was a tatty thing with matted hair, but with green eyes constantly on alert for danger and a nose twitching for the scent of prey. It was gathering information, deciding what it needed to survive. The fox faced him, lifting its nose in the air. They watched each other through the darkness of the night before it took a dump on the driveway and trotted out of sight.
“I’m not going to feed you information you can turn against me, Fairbanks,” he said.
The voice on the other side of the line chuckled. “You’re beginning to understand who I am. Good for you.”
“I’ll say this. There are n
o questions. I have nothing for you,” Daniel said. “You put my daughter in a coma. I want to hurt you for it.”
He heard whispering, but couldn’t make out the words.
“Was your question – why did I put your daughter in a coma?”
Daniel breathed slowly and stayed silent.
“If you don’t have a question for me then let me ask you one,” Fairbanks said. “You were out of the picture, right? Living God knows where, doing God knows what, but very definitely not working for your father.”
The gravel crunched loudly as Daniel paced along the driveway, waiting for Fairbanks to continue.
“My question is this – why would I want you back?”
“Because you…” Daniel stopped walking and looked down at his boots. There were scuff marks down one side and blood spatter from somewhere else. They were the boots of another man. Not his. Not the man he had intended to become.
Fairbanks laughed. “Who would benefit from your return? Me or your adopted family?”
Fairbanks cut the connection and Daniel stared open mouthed at his phone. He had been moving in the wrong direction, using those boots to stomp through his opposition. Fairbanks was right. Why would he want Daniel hunting him? He had assumed Fairbanks was behind his daughter’s attack only because it seemed obvious, but nothing was that clear. What if his father had been lying? What if it been him all along? He had almost admitted as much when Daniel confronted him in his office. Putting Eisha in a coma wasn’t Fairbanks’ style, but there could be no greater motivation for Daniel if he was needed as a weapon.
He heard a crack from the phone’s casing and eased his grip. Threatened and desperate, had his father hurt his own granddaughter to involve Daniel in a war?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The grey house on Rosebush Avenue looked empty. Curtains were missing from the windows and junk mail choked the letterbox. The front lawn was over grown. Piles of litter lay trapped and sun bleached under the privet hedge. Despite that, it was a busy street with plenty of vehicles. Daniel parked his stolen transit van among them without arousing suspicion.
He rubbed his tired face and closed his eyes. Sleep seemed like a memory. He’d spent the night leaning against the railing his father had jumped from and replaying his conversation with Fairbanks. His father had questioned Eisha’s role in this and Daniel had been wrong to dismiss him, like he’d been wrong about a lot of things. When the sun rose, turning the great hall from black to orange, Bronson arrived, rushing to his father’s side as he entered. Daniel plodded down the staircase, startling him as he turned. “He jumped,” he said and left to chase the only concrete lead he had.
On the other side of Rosebush Avenue was the entrance to Thornly Caravan and Leisure Parade. The site was surrounded by panelled fencing painted green and gold. Beyond it was grassy pasture land for touring caravans and tents. A group of boys no older than sixteen staggered out of the site carrying plastic bags filled with bottles of cider. They wore tracksuit bottoms, but had removed their tops in the midday sun. Their skin was pink with sunburn. Shouting and laughing, mothers and fathers crossed the street to avoid them.
“I remember when you were a kid like that,” Scalper said from the passenger seat.
He looked healthier out of the hospital, though his recovery would continue to be a marathon battle. Scalper winced as he moved and it occurred to Daniel he was holding himself together by sheer force of will.
“I had more class than that, Scalp.”
“‘Course, you did. Remember when you tried to get into the Glitterball? Oh, you kicked off, alright. I had to call your Dad to pick you up. He tanned your hide right in front of everyone.”
Daniel shifted uncomfortably, as if he could still feel the beating he took. “He was a real sweetheart about it.”
Scalper slid his body around to face him. “He did it for your own good. Might not have seemed like it at the time, but that’s the burden of being a parent. You have to be a bad guy every now and again.”
Daniel opened the glove compartment and shut it again, not sure what he was looking for. “Do you think he could harm a child? A young child?”
A look of alarm passed over Scalper’s face. “A kid? Your Dad?”
“I’m not saying for no reason. I mean if it, I don’t know, furthered his goals or something.”
Winding down the window, Scalper closed his eyes against a warm breeze. “I’m going to miss your Dad. I don’t like you talking about him like that.”
“But do you think it’s possible?”
Scalper didn’t answer. The breeze carried the smoke of someone’s barbeque and it reminded Daniel of his family holidays in Marbella. Every evening, his father would cook dinner on a barbeque made from an old oil drum. It was the only second hand item he ever owned. His mother would have fish while the rest of them ate their weight in red meat.
The memory didn’t make him hungry. It made him ill and he was glad to put it out of his mind. “Do you remember the plan?”
Scalper nodded. “Are you sure this Reaver guy was telling the truth?”
“It’s a lot harder to lie when you’re getting the shit kicked out of you.” Daniel rubbed his ribs, easing the pain that lingered there. He turned to Scalper. “You’re the only one who can help, but I don’t want you to do it if you think you can’t manage it.”
Scalper grimaced as he grabbed his walking stick. “I’ll put that down to nerves, boy. I’ve never backed out of a fight in my life. It’s the reason I’ve got to use this fucking thing in the first place and now it’s time for payback.”
He opened the door and carefully placed his feet on the pavement, wobbling slightly as he got his balance. Daniel reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope he’d retrieved from Mosely’s body. With one hand on his walking stick, Scalper ripped it open with his free hand and teeth. He looked up at Daniel when he finished reading.
“We can check on her later,” he said.
Scalper smiled and nodded. “I guess he wasn’t a complete twat after all.”
He crushed the letter into his back pocket and hobbled into the caravan park while Daniel followed in the van. The site was busy. Adults reclined in stripy deckchairs, their eyes closed against the sun, listening to radios. Children ran after cheap, yellow footballs or chased each other with water pistols. In the centre of the park was the barbeque he’d smelled earlier. A young man with a goatee was in the process of impressing a gaggle of young women by cremating chicken and giving them salmonella.
Moving down a row of white caravans, Scalper took a deep breath and started screaming, waving his walking stick around like a broad sword, smashing caravan windows and braying on doors. The crowd stopped what they were doing and watched in horror.
“I know you’re here. Come out and face me like men.”
The children were ushered inside by frantic parents. Doors slammed shut. Tents were zipped closed. The man at the barbeque ran for the nearest exit, leaving the women to fend for themselves. Christ, they’d have to be quick, thought Daniel. All around the park mobile phones were connecting to the emergency services.
He watched the windows of the caravans and waited.
“Come and finish the job, you bastards. Fairbanks isn’t here to protect you now.”
The curtains of a secluded caravan twitched. Daniel saw it. Scalper saw it too and staggered forward.
“Come on, you bastards. Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” He swung the crook of his walking stick into the caravan. Several dints appeared in quick succession.
Three men rushed outside. One of them punched Scalper in the face. He used his waking stick to defend himself, but Scalper was knocked to the ground. The other two grabbed him and dragged him inside the caravan. The door slammed shut and the caravan park was silent in seconds.
Daniel gunned the engine, skidding to a halt outside their door. Jumping from the van, he burst inside to find Scalper lying on the floor, cradling a broken nose. His skin was grey
and slick with sweat, and there was a tremor in his left hand Daniel hadn’t noticed before.
Scalper gave him a weak smile, but he read the urgency in his eyes.
Launching at the three men, the caravan rocked on its axle as Daniel rained down heavy fists from above. Two men were rendered unconscious immediately, but the last man remained standing. He swayed on his feet and beckoned Daniel toward him. Daniel ran forward, raising his elbow high, intending to bring it down on the bridge of his opponent’s nose. The man swung a defensive right hook, connecting heavily with Daniel’s already damaged ribs and he dropped to the floor, flaying against kicks aimed at his face. Scalper was on his feet and threw himself at the man. Too weak to fight, his weight was enough to bring them down in a heap. Arms and legs thrashed wildly as three grown men grappled within the tiny confines of a caravan floor. Daniel broke free and dragged Scalper to the kitchen.
Daniel searched frantically for a weapon. The other man lumbered closer, wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Daniel ducked under a blow to the head, finding a carving knife in a drawer with his free hand. He held it in front of him. The man stopped mid-fight, his eyes fearful. Daniel used the distraction to kick him between the legs. He lifted an inch off the floor and fell back with a groan.
Daniel pocketed the knife and went to Scalper’s side. The police had probably been alerted by now. Their time was almost gone.
“Scalper? Can you hear me?”
A ghost of a smile passed over his face.
“I need to get you to a hospital. I’m going to carry you to the van. Just hold on, mate.”
Daniel swung him onto his shoulder, ignoring the pain in his ribs. He nudged open the caravan door and checked the police weren’t waiting outside. It was all clear and Daniel bolted. He strapped Scalper into the passenger seat and went to the rear of the van. He opened the doors and returned to the caravan. One by one, Daniel dumped the three men inside the van, tying them to hooks secured to the interior walls. He locked the doors shut, closed the caravan and jumped into the driver’s seat.
