A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  But maybe there was something I could do.

  I peered forwards again, pushing aside branches and leaves to see clearly out into the driving rain. The bigger man appeared to be striding on into the trees. The light of his torch was visible as a lurid greenish haze moving away from us deep into the woods. The smaller man was approaching the top of the driveway gradient and the faint light of his torch was dipping over the humped rise at the summit.

  If there was any window of opportunity, this might be it.

  ‘Are they going to keep looking until they find us?’ Holly asked.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I told her.

  ‘You don’t know that, Dad.’

  ‘I won’t allow it.’

  I don’t know if Holly believed me. I barely believed it myself. But I did know one thing. The smaller man wouldn’t stay at the gate for long. He’d probably check it and make sure we weren’t there and then he’d come back again. And when he did, we needed to be able to get to the gate and get out.

  I looked at Rachel. ‘Tell me how to fix your shoulder,’ I said.

  21

  Rachel told me. The procedure sounded equal parts daunting and sickening. I’m not like Rachel. As a doctor, she’s pretty much immune to gore. I remember when, aged six, Michael fell off his skateboard one Sunday in front of our house and ripped open his knee. The cut was so deep you could see the bone. When I heard his screams and went out to check on him, I didn’t know if I was going to throw up or faint. Rachel, though, had been eerily calm. She’d scooped Michael into her arms, his blood leaking over her clothes, and had carried him inside to the kitchen, where she’d hummed along to an ABBA song on the radio as she cleaned and stitched the wound like it was a minor everyday chore.

  I tried to channel some of her strength now as I sat next to her on the matted ground, lifted her bad arm carefully by the wrist (she wailed, I apologized) and slipped my foot underneath. I told Holly to go around the other side of Rachel to support her head in her lap. I had to tell her twice before she lowered her hands with jerky terror and finally started to move. I knew she was scared but I thought that maybe giving her something to do might help.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ Rachel reminded me, through gritted teeth. ‘We don’t want to do this twice.’

  I grimaced and tried not to look away as I nestled my toes deeper in her armpit, squeezing her wrist between my hands as her breathing hitched and modulated and she began to whine. I was about to get to the next stage and start pulling when she stopped me.

  ‘Wait.’ She felt around in the undergrowth and grabbed a gnarled stick that she held crossways in front of her mouth. ‘OK?’

  Not really.

  ‘OK,’ I told her.

  ‘Go.’

  She placed the stick between her teeth and bit down hard. I started pulling, raising her arm towards me, aware of my face twisting and contorting in a similar way to Rachel’s. She’d told me to apply constant pressure with no sudden yanks. Which sounded fine, in theory, but somehow witnessing her slow agony was so much worse in practice.

  She grimaced and made a high, choked gargle in the back of her throat, biting down on the stick so hard it started to splinter and snap. I leaned back, used my foot for leverage and pulled even harder. Holly caught her breath and turned away.

  For a horrible moment, I didn’t think it was going to work. I didn’t think Rachel’s arm would move any further. But then her shoulder suddenly extended, the joint slipped, popped, clunked, and Rachel groaned.

  I let go and sprawled backwards in the soggy earth, an uneasy sensation flickering across my back. Rachel twisted sideways, pressing her face into Holly’s lap. Holly cradled her head, biting her lip.

  For several seconds, Rachel didn’t move. Then, gradually, she seemed to relax, her body sagged, and she pivoted up into a sitting position, spitting out fragments of stick.

  ‘Is that . . . better?’ I asked her.

  ‘So much. Thank you. Pass me my bag?’

  She let go of a long breath, unzipped her bag when I handed it to her and removed some pills in a foil pack. She dry swallowed them, and meanwhile I patted the ground around me until I located the toolbox in the saturated undergrowth.

  I undid the plastic catches on the front and flipped back the lid. It was only a small toolbox with a limited selection of tools. I keep it in the Volvo in case a minor mechanical problem crops up. Maybe a windscreen wiper comes loose. Maybe a bulb needs replacing.

  Or, I don’t know, maybe I need to get out through a high security gate.

  I felt around in the uppermost tray until my hands settled on a crosshead screwdriver. I held it in my right fist with the wheel wrench in my left. Then, very slowly, I crawled forwards on my hands and knees towards the driveway.

  I pushed aside a fern and looked out. Rain rattled against the roof of the carport and blew in violent shimmies through the outdoor lights shining around the lodge. Nobody around.

  ‘Tom?’

  I heard a gurgling in front of me. When I patted the ground, my fingers came away wet. A drainage gully. It was flooded now.

  ‘Tom, what are you doing? Come back here.’

  ‘We have to be able to open the gate, Rachel.’ I glanced to my left, towards the broken window in the side of the lodge. ‘There’s a button on the intercom in the kitchen. Holly used it for me yesterday evening. But I don’t think it will help us. The gate only stayed open for a minute and then it closed again. We wouldn’t get to the gate in time.’

  ‘So?’ Holly whispered.

  ‘There’s a camera on the inside of the gate. It’s pointed inwards. I saw it. I think it’ll recognize our number plate like the camera on the outside did.’

  Silence.

  ‘We can’t drive the car, Dad.’

  But I wasn’t planning to. The gully was filled with leaves and brackish water. I slid forwards into it. The water oozed beneath me, foul and icy cold.

  ‘Tom,’ Rachel whispered. ‘Please. It’s not safe.’

  I looked back over my shoulder. I’d only gone a short distance but it was already nearly impossible to see Rachel or Holly in the dark.

  I knew there was a good chance Rachel was right. This probably was a bad idea. But two things made me want to go ahead anyway. One, the two men were still searching for us. And two, it was the only idea I had. I’d failed Rachel and Holly in that alleyway. I had no intention of failing them now.

  I pushed up out of my prone position – my legs heavy with nerves – and broke across the yard, running at a stoop. I zigzagged and jumped between puddles. The rain drilled into my bare shoulders and arms.

  I’m pretty sure Rachel did a kind of shout-whisper thing to me, telling me to come back, but it was too late.

  The distance wasn’t far. Maybe forty metres, at most.

  It felt like running forty miles.

  My legs gave out as I neared the carport. Too much fear. An overload of adrenaline. My ankle buckled and I skinned my knees and fell just short of the front number plate on the Volvo.

  It was smeared with mud and dead flies. Filmed with rain.

  Two screws held it in place, concealed behind white plastic plugs. I put the wheel wrench down and tore my thumbnail unsnapping the first of the plugs, then freed the second with shaking fingers.

  I got busy with the screwdriver. It wasn’t easy getting it lined up with the first screw because my hands and arms were convulsing with the heavy beating of my heart. I had to force myself to clamp down on my fear and really concentrate to get the screwdriver to fit. At every moment I expected the men to shout and rush in at me.

  It took over a minute to get both screws undone. The aluminium bolts on the back fell and jangled softly on the concrete plinth, bouncing and rolling into the darkness under the car. The number plate came loose in my hands.

  I was just turning to get up out of my crouch and sprint back across the driveway when a pale wash of torchlight arced and tilted against the trees in front of me. It w
as coming from behind the carport.

  The bigger man was on his way back.

  My body shutdown then. My brain just stalled. I knew I was stranded. I knew I couldn’t risk running back to Rachel and Holly because I didn’t know how long it would be until the bigger man emerged from the woods and I had no way of telling what his view of the driveway was like right now. But I couldn’t stay where I was.

  Hide. Do it now.

  The passenger doors were still open on the left of the Volvo. I darted around them, then doubled back for the wheel wrench I’d left on the ground, looked in at the seats, changed my mind about hiding inside the car and dived under it instead.

  I squirmed forwards on my elbows and belly, into the stink of cold rubber and engine oil, the chassis pressing down on my head. It was a tight squeeze because the car was slumped so low on its alloy wheels.

  Something jabbed into the back of my neck. Something else jelly-like and greasy smeared the side of my cheek. I lay there, my heart jolting me up off the ground, every nerve end twitching and alive, waiting for the bigger man to come.

  His torchlight got brighter. Nearer. Then I heard the clomp and splash of his rubber boots on the gravel close by. He paused in front of the Volvo. I could see the toes of his boots and the elasticated hems at the ankles of his white plastic coveralls.

  I waited for him to cast his light my way and notice that the number plate was missing.

  His feet didn’t move.

  Very carefully, I slid back a fraction and, too late, noticed that one of the tiny bolts from the screws was nestled by the front left tyre, just ready to sparkle in the glimmer of his torchlight.

  But the torch didn’t swing my way.

  The bigger man was moving forwards across the driveway.

  Towards where Rachel and Holly were hidden.

  22

  The bigger man must have decided there were only four broad directions we could have gone in. Into the trees behind the carport, where he’d already checked. Up the driveway towards the gate, where the smaller man had headed. Back to the lodge, which he’d returned to not long before. Or into the trees on the other side of the gravel yard.

  Fear crawled up my spine. I lay there, not moving, not making a sound, when all I wanted to do was yell at him to stop.

  Do something.

  But what?

  I slid backwards on my belly, squeezed out from under the Volvo’s exhaust and pushed up into a squat. Again, I moved painfully slowly. Trying not to make any sound. Trying to disturb the air around me as little as possible. I leaned to one side – knees wobbling – and peeked out from behind the rear of the car.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  The bigger man was facing away from me with his hood up. The rain and wind were blasting against him, riffling his coveralls. And suddenly, I was seized by a horrible dread that he would somehow sense my presence, spin, dazzle me with his torch and go for his gun.

  But he didn’t turn. He advanced on across the driveway instead.

  I wiped the grease from my cheek – like that was a concern right now – and stalked out from behind the car.

  My bare feet were so numbed from the mud and rain it felt like I was walking on two frozen turkeys. I edged sideways across the rippled concrete, slipping the screwdriver into my left pocket, holding the number plate by my thigh and raising the wheel wrench in my right hand.

  The bigger man was perhaps ten careful steps ahead of me. Or four quick strides. If I could sneak up on him I could club him over the head. I could strike him again and again and again.

  Two problems with that.

  One, he looked like an absolute giant standing out in the open. He was tall and broad with wide shoulders, a thick neck and big wrists and hands. In the movies, if the hero hits a bad guy with something heavy from behind, the bad guy drops instantly. He doesn’t fight back. But what if I hit the bigger man with everything I had and it wasn’t enough? What if he simply absorbed the blow and then shot me?

  And two, those ten slow steps or four quick strides would be across saturated gravel. I was barefoot but it would still be noisy.

  And he had a gun.

  I hesitated. I could feel those invisible hands again. Only this time they weren’t slipping around my neck. They were pawing at my clothes, yanking me back, trying to save me from myself. Was not attacking the man an act of cowardice or the sensible move?

  He strode on.

  I stood there, gripped by indecision, the fierce wind tugging at the wheel wrench in my hand like a nagging doubt.

  Think.

  I looked over at the lodge, shining brightly in the windswept gloom, the shattered kitchen window glittering with a blued dazzle. Then I crabbed away to my right, very fast now. Foot over foot. Towards the far side of the carport.

  I took two steps out onto the gravel, then two steps back and around the side until I was standing up to my ankles in soaked nettles, in the darkness under the trees, using the wall of the carport as a blind.

  My breath rattled in my lungs. I looked at the lodge again. From the angle I was on I could only see a slim wedge of the decking at the front. It was lit starkly by the powerful outdoor lights, like an empty stage.

  The bigger man paced relentlessly on. He was only two or three steps from the trees on the far side of the driveway. All he’d have to do was cross the gully, push through the foliage and then . . .

  I blocked the thought from my mind, weighing the wheel wrench in my hand. My arm trembled. If this was a mistake . . .

  Drawing my arm way back, I stuck my other arm out for balance and threw the wrench with all my might.

  It arced through the air, turning over and over, slicing through the rain, buzzing in the black. The wrench struck the top corner of the lodge with a loud thud, pinwheeled on across the roof, then clattered and clanged and dropped, unseen, onto the decking with a heavy clump.

  I didn’t wait to see how the bigger man reacted because I was already streaking into the trees behind the carport, tramping through nettles and ferns. I hurried to the far side of the structure and peered out. The bigger man was at the edge of the gravel yard, close to the decking. He looked long to his right, as if sensing someone was watching him. Then he leaped onto the deck and ran towards the front of the lodge.

  The second he was gone, I sprinted across the driveway with the number plate. I didn’t slow up for the gully. I didn’t slow up at all. I just leaped into the woods.

  23

  ‘Don’t you ever do anything that stupid again.’

  Rachel thumped me. We were creeping uphill through the darkness under the trees, trying to keep parallel to the driveway. I was carrying Holly in my arms, stumbling under her weight. My feet were cut. I could feel blood between my toes.

  Rachel walked alongside me with her left elbow cradled in her right hand, cursing whenever she got tagged by an unseen branch or slipped on the uneven terrain. It was so black under the trees I could only see a few metres in front of us and what I could see was blurred and shadowed. The men could have been standing under the trees a short distance away, watching us, and we wouldn’t have known.

  ‘Do you have any idea how close he was to finding you?’ Rachel hissed.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Seriously, Tom. We had to watch it.’

  And I had to live it. And if I hadn’t, he would have found you, I thought.

  But I didn’t say that. I told Rachel I was sorry instead. And the truth is I was sorry I’d taken such a gamble. But, even so, I couldn’t deny the slight buzz of exhilaration that was humming in my veins now it was over. The number plate dangled from Holly’s hands and tapped against the backpack I was wearing – a constant reminder that gave me hope.

  ‘This is going to work,’ I said. ‘We’re going to get out of here.’

  It was Rachel’s turn not to say anything. Maybe she wasn’t prepared to allow herself to believe it. Or maybe – after what had happened in the alley – she didn’t full
y believe in me.

  I boosted Holly in my arms, trying not to let that thought twist in my mind. Holly was clinging to my neck, her legs dangling at my side. Fathers and daughters. I know it’s a cliché, but Holly would always be my little princess. Carrying her like this reminded me of all the years I’d carried her when she was younger. The way her hair grazed my face. The way she hung her chin over my neck.

  ‘OK, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’m worried about Buster.’

  That got me. I’d been trying not to think about Buster, or what had been done to him, and I didn’t want my upset to show. Rachel shot me a quick, conflicted look.

  ‘We’re all worried about him,’ she said.

  ‘I want to find him.’

  ‘We know.’

  ‘Do you think he just ran off somewhere? Maybe he’ll find us.’

  How to answer that? I didn’t know what was worse. The fact Buster hadn’t been moving the last time I’d seen him, or that the bigger man had been dragging him across the floor by his back legs like he was a piece of rubbish to be flung outside.

  Then a new thought hit me. The sea was so close to the lodge.

  Oh God.

  ‘We’ll keep an eye out,’ I said, and tried to block the harrowing images that were filling my mind. ‘If we don’t find him before we get to the gate, we’ll call the police the second we’re out of here. They’ll send people back to find him. OK?’

  Yes, I felt terrible for lying to my daughter, but in my defence I knew what the truth would do to her because it was already gnawing at me. I loved Buster. He was a big, affectionate, dopey lump. He’d snoozed on my feet when I watched Sunday football on the TV. He’d always been the first to greet me when I came downstairs in the morning or when I got home from work. I’d loved walking him to the pub, sneaking him treats.

  But most of all I loved him for the complete and unconditional love he’d shown my children. I couldn’t begin to imagine what life was going to be like without him, or how I would explain to Holly that he was gone. I guess that’s my way of saying why, for the time being at least, I didn’t try.