A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  A

  WINDOW

  BREAKS

  C. M. EWAN

  Contents

  Sparkles in the …

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  The tree looms …

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  ‘Michael, watch out.’

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  ‘Michael, please.’

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  The haulage truck …

  31

  32

  The unlit road …

  33

  ‘Keep going.’

  34

  35

  ‘Drive.’

  36

  37

  38

  ‘Don’t move and …

  39

  Michael runs towards …

  40

  41

  42

  43

  Fiona is huddled …

  44

  45

  46

  47

  Michael’s parents’ house …

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Michael looks at …

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Michael is playing …

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  EPILOGUE

  A fortnight before …

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In memory of Colin Moore Ewan,

  my wonderful dad

  27 June 1942–19 August 2018

  Sparkles in the dark. They’re the last thing Michael remembers. The glitter-dazzle of tiny beads of windscreen glass flying towards him, stinging his face.

  And before that, a weightless sensation. Like he’s an astronaut tumbling through space. Like he’s somewhere – anywhere – other than this place. This reality.

  Then the jerk and bite of the seat belt. The savage, wrenching pull.

  Michael can feel himself pivoting forwards into the airbag – the insides of him still accelerating – as the belt strains to pull him back, impossibly, against the forces of gravity. Back, out of this moment. Back, to the world Michael knows with absolute certainty he is leaving. Back, to a place in which nobody goes this fast, or stops this abruptly, without everything stopping with them.

  1

  Driving scares me. I get nervous. Edgy. Itchy with guilt.

  It didn’t used to be this way. I can remember singing along, carefree, to classic rock tracks on the car stereo. Holding Rachel’s hand on romantic trips away. Or my weekend Dad Taxi Service, transporting the kids in happy chaos from soft plays to birthday parties, then later to the local cinema and teenage discos.

  But things change, and today, our family Volvo felt like a cage filled with my worst thoughts and fears. Thoughts about Michael. About Rachel and Holly. About what had happened to us in London and what lay ahead.

  The wipers beat side to side in the drizzle. Scotland was wild and blurred. The only noise was the whine of the engine and the hiss of tyres on wet asphalt. Silence crept out of the vents like a toxin.

  I squeezed the steering wheel in my hands and glanced again at Holly – that’s my thirteen-year-old daughter – in the rear-view mirror. A scorching hot needle pierced my heart. Four days since the attack and Holly looked like a grenade had gone off in her face.

  Her nose was swollen and discoloured, the bridge badly bruised beneath the strips of white sticking plaster that criss-crossed it, her nostrils rimed with dried blood. The puffy skin beneath her eyes was a deep mulberry colour, fading to yellowish gooseberry at the sides.

  Holly locked on to my gaze and held it with eyes like shattered marbles – trying to reassure me, I guessed – and something inside me ripped and came loose.

  My daughter has gymnastics training twice a week. She plays hockey on Saturday mornings. To watch her sprint across a field of AstroTurf is to see a warrior princess intent on scalping a sworn enemy. I’d always thought of her as fearless, but here she was, staring back at me, trying to appear strong when she was so clearly hurt and upset.

  My throat burned. It stung me to see Holly like this but it stung even more when she tried on a brave smile that didn’t fit her quite right, then immediately winced with pain.

  I blinked and my mind flashed on the alley.

  Hearing Holly’s fractured scream. Seeing the man in the hoodie lash out. Watching Holly fall backwards, knowing I couldn’t get to her in time.

  My lungs cramped. My eyes felt hot and scrubbed. My fingers knotted into fists on the wheel. In all the things I do know (not a lot) and don’t know (so much) about fatherhood, one thing I can tell you is that seeing your child in danger is about as horrendous as it gets. I had no way of knowing if Holly would ever fully get over the trauma, but I already knew it was something I would never forget.

  Next to me, Rachel stared forwards with a far-off expression – the one that told me she was really looking deep inside herself. She must have felt my eyes on her because she turned to me with a vague, distracted smile.

  My wife is beautiful. Always will be. But she’d lost too much weight over the past eight months and now, in the dreary, early afternoon light, she looked pale and drained, her normally lush brown hair limp and mussed. I could have kidded myself it was the 6 a.m. start, or the hours of driving the previous day, but I knew it was much more than that.

  ‘Did you say something?’ she asked me.

  ‘No. Just looking at you.’

  In the past, Rachel might have played along, flirted back, but now her brittle smile only emphasized how thin and hollowed out her face had become. ‘You always were easily distracted.’

  ‘It helps to have something worth being distracted by.’

  ‘Tom.’ She shook her head, sighed. ‘Don’t, OK?’

  ‘Too much?’

  She jutted her chin towards the world outside the windscreen. ‘I don’t like these conditions a whole lot.’

  ‘Early June in the Highlands. Just as well I packed my sunscreen.’

  Yeah, so I was trying too hard and we both knew it. But I needed to. With the way things had gone between us lately, it was better than not trying at all.

  ‘Do you want me to drive?’ Rachel asked. ‘Are you tired?’

  Rachel knows how I feel about driving. I know she feels the same way. So it meant a lot to me that she offered, even as I understood how relieved she was when I shook my head no.

  And yes, I was tired. Tired of asking myself questions I couldn’t answer. Tired of wondering for the hundredth time what Rachel was thinking and if it had been a mistake to come all this way.

  ‘We could take a break?’ My wife used to be the decisive one in our relationship. Or – to get a little colloquial here – she wore the trousers in our marriage. I was always fine with that. Now, though, I couldn’t help noticing how many of her statements were framed as questions, or how often she deferred to me or Holly. ‘Holly, would you like that?’

  ‘Mum, I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Are you sure? I can give you more codeine?’

  ‘When we get there, maybe. It’s not too bad at the moment.’

  Rachel hummed, unconvinced, and looked off into the spiralling drizzle. She touched a finger to her n
eck, tracing loops over her skin.

  Another flash on the alley.

  The hooded man yanking hard on Rachel’s hair. The knife blade at her throat. And that disabling look Rachel had given me. Pleading. Scared. Lost.

  Hot sweat broke across my shoulders and back. My hands almost slipped from the wheel. And I found myself – not for the first time – wishing I had the power or the strength of will to scrub disturbing images from my mind.

  A road sign blipped by. Our turning for the unnamed road towards Loch Lurgainn was coming up. I hit the indicator and negotiated the turn. The satnav predicted a journey time of thirty-nine minutes until we reached our destination on the west coast.

  I rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck. Normally Rachel hates it when I do that, but today she didn’t say anything and the quiet between us pressed out against the windows of the car like an expanding gas. I felt a pang as I thought about reaching out to her with the words she needed to hear. But it had been too long now since I’d known what those words were. For weeks, Rachel had been telling me we needed to talk, bugging me to make the time. I’d been dodging and evading her, feeling too weak and too scared to hear what she had to say. And now, maybe, it was too late.

  Behind us, Holly pulled some slack into her seat belt and leaned down to nestle her head on Buster, our chocolate Labrador. Buster is big and soppy, with a thick, lush coat and dopey brown eyes it’s impossible to resist. We brought him home from a rescue centre when the kids were small and there are still times when he acts like he’s afraid we’ll send him back. Maybe that’s why he’s the most loyal dog I’ve ever known.

  A white van hummed by, flinging spray across the windscreen. In the distance, jagged peaks cut into the gloomy sky like some dystopian terrain. We passed tan and green fields scattered with sheep, swathes of dewy woodland, remote coastal lochs.

  I was just reaching for the radio – anything to fill the silence – when the speakers buzzed and crackled as my mobile phone began chirping over the hands-free system. The number was unrecognized.

  I pressed a button on the steering wheel, waited for the call to connect.

  ‘Mr Sullivan? Constable Baker. I wanted to update you on some developments.’

  My heart lurched and I traded a worried look with Rachel. Should we do this on speaker?

  ‘It’s OK, Dad.’ Holly sat up and leaned forwards between our seats. ‘I keep telling you both I’m OK.’

  Rachel hitched her shoulders and gave me a cautious, yes-no tilt of her head, like she didn’t know what was best for sure, but maybe on balance it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for Holly to hear.

  I waited. The Volvo droned onwards. Finally, I cleared my throat. ‘Have you found the man who mugged us?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ve had some luck with CCTV. We have footage of a man who matches the description you gave us running away from the area. He’s seen carrying what could be your briefcase.’

  My phone buzzed and the audio cut out for an instant. A text message had come in, but I didn’t check it right now.

  ‘Can you track him?’

  ‘We lose sight of him near Leicester Square.’

  A cold stab of disappointment. I let the information sink in. It was odd picturing the man in the hoodie in such a public area. In my mind he was a figure from the shadows.

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘It’s not like on TV, Mr Sullivan. Footage doesn’t always link up. Some cameras we don’t have access to.’

  Rachel sighed and shook her head, arching an eyebrow with a cynical look that seemed to ask me, What did you expect?

  Truth is, I hadn’t expected much. Perhaps not even this call. As a family, we haven’t had the best of experiences with the police in the past – hence Rachel’s attitude. And I knew the Met were busy. I knew they had countless new incidents to deal with each day.

  An idea I’d had before nagged at me again. Maybe I should ask my boss, Lionel, to pull some strings with his contacts on the force. But what were the chances of anyone catching the mugger? Maybe it would be better to put it all behind us.

  I was still thinking it through when Baker resumed talking.

  ‘There is one thing we should have discussed, Mr Sullivan. You told me you didn’t recognize the man who attacked you.’

  That wasn’t what I’d said. Not exactly. I’d told him I couldn’t see the man clearly because of his hooded top and the pair of tan tights he’d been wearing over his face. But it was close enough.

  ‘Well, what I didn’t ask was if there could be anyone you know who might want to harm you or your family.’

  ‘You don’t think this was random?’

  ‘I’m asking, do you have any enemies at all, Mr Sullivan? Does your wife?’

  This was crazy. ‘No. No enemies. There’s nobody I can think of who might want to hurt me or my family. I’m just a lawyer. My wife’s a GP.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Sullivan. But there is the matter of your son.’

  Suddenly, an oncoming delivery truck seemed to hurtle towards us too fast.

  I veered into the side of the road. Stamped on the brakes.

  My heart slammed into my throat.

  ‘I understand he was killed in a road traffic incident,’ Baker pressed.

  The truck hammered by. I watched it wobble away in my side mirror. Our Volvo was stationary now and I didn’t make any effort to drive on.

  Silence again.

  Rachel gave my hand a quick squeeze and reached past me to flick on the hazard lights. The indicators flashed and clicked. She smiled weakly and leaned towards the speaker. When she spoke, I could hear the strain in her voice.

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she asked.

  ‘There was another victim, Mrs Sullivan. A young woman.’

  Without Holly in the car, I might have slumped forwards and banged my head against the steering wheel.

  That cage I mentioned? This was the one memory in particular I’d been trying not to think about.

  Eight months ago, our son, Michael, was killed driving my Audi in a wooded area several miles from our home. He was only sixteen. Not old enough to drive legally yet. He took my car joyriding. It was a wet night. The road was greasy. Michael went too fast, slewed off on a tight corner and hit a tree.

  The post-mortem revealed that he died instantly. So did Fiona Connor, his girlfriend. They’d been going out just over a year.

  There are still dark moments – many times each day – when the horror of what Michael did washes over me and tugs me down, like being pinned by a black wave. It was bad enough that he took my car without permission. That he drove without a licence. That he was reckless with his own life and the lives of the other motorists on the road that night.

  But to kill Fiona too. To snuff out the life of a fifteen-year-old girl with a loving family and her whole future ahead of her was much worse than that. It was unforgivable.

  This was where Rachel and I differed. This was the jagged fault line that ran beneath our marriage. Whenever I thought of Michael now, it was hard for me to do so without my memories being eclipsed by an overwhelming sense of shame.

  Rachel, though, refused to acknowledge the bad in our son. She remained convinced that Michael had simply been unlucky when his one, singular act of teenage rebellion resulted in such total devastation. It was a view that, in my mind, went beyond maternal loyalty to an act of wilful self-delusion.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Sullivan?’ Baker prompted.

  Somehow, I recovered the ability to speak. ‘That’s a totally separate matter. Fiona’s family know how sorry we are.’

  This time, my mind flashed on Fiona’s memorial service. I remembered how Fiona’s father had spun in his pew at the front of the church when we’d tried to slip in the back. How he’d stood, red-faced and stupefied, then shouted and raged, storming down the aisle to chase us out. Rachel and I had run back to our car and locked ourselves in. Rachel hadn’t stopped shaking for hours.

  Did that make him
an enemy? I didn’t think so. He was just someone else who’d been wrecked by that night.

  ‘I’m sorry to have brought it up,’ Baker said. ‘I hope you can understand. It’s just—’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘We’ve submitted the knife for forensic analysis. With any luck, we’ll get something from that.’

  Unlikely. Our attacker had been wearing gloves. The tights he’d had on over his head would have prevented him from shedding any hairs.

  I supposed there were other things I should be asking Baker but I couldn’t think what those things might be. And I didn’t want to cause Rachel or Holly any more distress.

  I thanked him for the update and ended the connection.

  Rachel turned to peer out her window, too late to hide the tears in her eyes. Holly laid down on Buster again and hugged him tight.

  The hazard lights flashed. The wipers thumped.

  In a daze, I picked up my phone and glanced at the screen. The text message was from Lionel.

  Don’t let your ego get in the way of fixing things with Rachel, Tom. Listen to what she has to say to you. Your marriage is too important. Take it from someone who knows.

  2

  We almost missed the turn-off for the lodge. Rachel was the one who spotted it. She pointed it out to me, then flattened her hand on the dash as I braked and the Volvo shimmied on loose dirt and damp.

  The entrance was mundane. Just a ragged gap in a knotted hedgerow opening on to a steep rock and gravel driveway. A bleached wooden sign read: WEBSTER. PRIVATE ROAD.

  I gunned the engine. The tyres slipped against the sudden loose gradient, then bit and clawed forwards, spitting soaked gravel out the back like it had been fed through a wood chipper.

  At the top, we caught a glimpse of torn grey ocean beneath low grey rain clouds, then the track dipped towards a tall, ugly gate set in a shallow compression.

  The gate was a surprise. It was formed of two slabs of green metal sheeting that had to be at least ten feet high. Extending from either side of it was a metal fence constructed from bevelled, green metal uprights. Lethal barbs ran along the top of the gate and the fence, splayed outwards and inwards. On the inner side of the fence, thick woodland trees pressed up against the perimeter. If I didn’t know better, I could have believed we’d arrived at a remote army barracks.