A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  I let go of a small breath. I waited. My heart banged against my ribs. Slowly, I crept across the room towards the blinking red light, still afraid the door might crash open any second.

  ‘I told you,’ Rachel said, exhaling hard. ‘They can’t get in here. They don’t have the code.’

  But just then, I was more interested in the control panel to the right of the door.

  ‘Do you know how to use this?’ I asked.

  The control panel featured a keypad like the one outside the door, except there were several additional buttons and an inbuilt speaker. One of the buttons was marked GATE OPEN. It looked similar to the intercom in the kitchen.

  Rachel didn’t answer. I asked her again.

  ‘Rachel, can we open the main gate from in here?’

  A beat. ‘In theory, yes.’

  ‘Why only in theory?’

  She moved up alongside me. My skin prickled.

  ‘The unit also doubles as a telephone.’

  ‘Then let’s call the police.’

  ‘But that’s just it, Tom. I don’t think we can.’

  I looked at her and thought again of how she’d pulled me to one side in the woods. When Rachel had asked me what I’d tell the police if we got hold of them, she’d made it seem as if she’d suspected me of doing something illegal that had led these men to attack us. But now I wondered: had she been afraid of contacting the police for another reason? And if so, what could that reason be?

  A clammy coldness seeped across the back of my neck, like someone had pressed a wet flannel to my skin.

  ‘Rachel? The sooner we call the police, the sooner we get out of here. The sooner we get Holly to a hospital.’

  ‘I know that. Don’t you think I don’t know that?’

  ‘Then help me.’

  ‘It’s not working.’ She tapped a couple of buttons on the control panel, shaking her head. ‘No dial tone. They must have cut the line. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Probably why there was no Wi-Fi, either,’ I muttered.

  ‘Maybe. But this is a separate system. A backup.’

  And the men had known about it. They’d known how to cut the wires. The cold sensation at the base of my neck spread down my shoulders and across my back as I thought again of how much they appeared to know. My doubts about Brodie were resurfacing in a big way.

  Then a new, more horrid thought crashed over me. Lionel knew all those things too. And he was the one who’d pushed for us to come here . . .

  ‘What about the screens?’ I pointed to the wall. ‘This is more than just a wine cellar, isn’t it?’

  Alongside the panel was a bank of nine flat-screen monitors laid out in a three-by-three grid. They were greyed and unlit.

  Again, Rachel didn’t answer right away and I had to press her. ‘Rachel?’

  ‘They’re linked to security cameras,’ she said quietly.

  ‘At the gate?’

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Rachel? What about the rest?’

  ‘They’re hidden throughout the lodge, Tom, OK? Everything here is recorded.’

  I stared at her, reeling now.

  ‘Mum! That is so messed up.’

  Everything was recorded? Why? And why hadn’t we been told?

  ‘Switch them on.’ I pointed again. ‘Now.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Rachel, switch them on! We might be able to see what’s going on out there.’

  ‘They should be on already, Tom. That’s why I thought something was wrong with the phone line and the gate controls. It looks like everything’s been disabled. Look, let me try my mobile. It’s in my bag.’

  She moved behind me and unzipped a pocket on the backpack I was wearing. I felt her fumble around inside it as I stared at the banks of unlit monitors. My skin itched. Had we been filmed here? Had our conversations been recorded? What about when we’d had sex?

  I heard a crinkling noise and turned to see Rachel removing her mobile phone from inside a clear plastic bag. She must have slipped it inside the bag as a precaution against the heavy rain when I’d left her with the backpack on my quest to recover the Volvo’s number plate. I watched her power on her phone and enter her passcode. Her new passcode, I reminded myself, with a jab of resentment.

  ‘No signal,’ she said.

  She paced the cellar, lifting her phone high, checking all four corners of the room. I watched her like I’d never seen her before. Once she was done, she returned to me and shook her head, her lips pressed together.

  I slipped the backpack off my shoulders and pulled out my own phone. But when I raised it in my hand, my head fell. The screen was cracked and a film of water was trapped beneath it. I tried turning it on. It was dead.

  ‘Anything?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Not right now, sweetheart.’ I slipped my phone away before she could see. ‘We can try again later.’

  ‘Brilliant. So now what?’

  She had to ask.

  From out of the silence, we heard another beep on the other side of the door.

  The men were trying to get in again.

  32

  They tried twice more. Each time, we listened to the same six shrill beeps. Each time, there was the same terrible pause before the control panel emitted its grating, discordant buzzing. When they failed to get in on their third attempt, I slowly put down my wine bottle and stepped closer to Rachel.

  ‘Six digits,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They punched in six digits. Whoever is out there knows this door is locked by a six-digit code.’

  She shook her head, like she was stunned by the idea. ‘I don’t think so. I think they punched in random numbers and the system cut them off at six digits. Lionel changes the code all the time.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘He texted me the new code before we came up here. He said we should help ourselves if we wanted wine. Just not the really rare stuff.’

  Generous of him. Maybe Lionel thought it was a fair exchange for helping to get us into this mess.

  I closed my eyes. Tried not to let the bitterness cloud my thinking. Lionel couldn’t be behind this, I thought, because he would have given the men the correct code. But, still, it was difficult not to let the anger consume me. On top of everything else, I hated the idea that Lionel had invited Rachel here in secret. Bad enough to be betrayed by my wife. But I’d also been lied to by the man I’d confided in most during the past year.

  Take a breath. Think.

  Holly had told me at the charity gala that Lionel had been dropping by the house to check in on her and Rachel. But was there more to it than that?

  I looked at the phone in Rachel’s hand, wondering what secrets it contained. Wondering if I could stand to know them.

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Shh.’

  She raised her finger, like she’d heard something on the other side of the door. She climbed the steps and pressed an ear to it.

  I looked back at Holly. Her face was angled down inside her hood and she was listing to one side. Buster was breathing deeply in what could have been a gentle snore. Holly’s breathing, on the other hand, was fast and shallow. There was a shimmer of sweat on her skin.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I whispered to her.

  ‘I’m OK, Dad. It just hurts a bit.’

  ‘You’ll let us know if that changes?’

  She nodded. ‘What is it, Mum?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m trying to—’

  Rachel stopped talking and frowned. Then her eyes widened and she beckoned me closer. I climbed the steps and pressed my ear against the metal beside her. To begin with, the only sound I could pick up was the echo of my own pulse, like listening to distant sonar.

  ‘Do you hear that?’

  A cold trickling in my stomach. I nodded. There was a faint scraping, scratching kind of sound, like somebody was scoring the paintwork on the outside of the door with the blad
e of a knife.

  ‘What is it?’ Rachel asked.

  Nothing good, I thought.

  ‘They can’t get in,’ she said again.

  Then a brittle snapping sound made us both rear back. I stared at Rachel, her eyes blinking rapidly, her face stained red by the blinking diode. I felt my heart drop.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that was the keypad,’ I told her carefully. ‘I think they prised it away. Maybe they think they can short the wiring.’

  ‘Can they?’ Holly asked.

  ‘No.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘No way.’

  Holly hugged her arms around herself, rocking forwards with her chin propped on her knees. In her big outdoor coat and hiking boots, she looked like she’d found her way into a storm shelter in the middle of a tornado.

  ‘This room is a safe space,’ Rachel said. ‘Lionel had it designed after what happened to Jennifer. He told me the system that protects it is state of the art.’

  So state of the art that the men had been able to disable the emergency phone line and the security monitors. So state of the art that the only thing that stood between us and them was a thick metal door.

  A slow minute tripped by. Then another.

  My pulse slowed way down. My body was flushed with sweat, tensed all over. The back of my tongue still tasted of sea salt and I felt like I was burning up under my coat. It was probably only my imagination, but I was starting to think the cellar air had a slight taint to it. I wondered how much oxygen the room contained and how quickly the three of us could burn through it.

  There were no more sounds from the other side of the door. The door didn’t budge. But the silence and the stillness were a strange kind of torment. I found myself wishing we were out in the woods again. Under the trees, it had felt like the danger was everywhere, but at least we’d had the darkness to run into. At least we had fresh air to breathe.

  Another minute tripped by.

  I leaned towards Rachel. ‘Nobody is coming here for four days.’

  She looked down without meeting my eye but she understood my meaning. We were in the middle of nowhere. We had no way of signalling for help. The only person we’d seen since getting here was Brodie and, supposing he wasn’t conspiring with the two men who were terrorizing us, he wasn’t planning on returning until Saturday when we were scheduled to leave the lodge.

  That meant the men had four days to get into the wine cellar. If they wanted to, they could dismantle the walls brick by brick by then.

  ‘How is she really?’ I whispered, tilting my head towards Holly.

  Rachel’s eyes went big, her skin pulled taut. ‘At the moment, I think she’s OK. But let me check her again.’

  She moved down the steps and knelt beside Holly, touching her hand to her forehead. She pulled aside her coat, lifted Holly’s top and checked the dressing. Blood squirmed under the plastic coating, thick and purple.

  ‘Holly, sweetheart, when you keep pressure on, it has to be like this.’ Rachel took Holly’s hand and pressed it to her flank. Holly whined and scrunched up her face in pain. Rachel took Holly’s other wrist and felt for her pulse, timing it against the clock on her phone.

  My heart beat slower and slower.

  I watched them both, feeling weak and unsteady. I hated that we were stuck here. I really didn’t like that Holly was bleeding so much. I thought again about what the smaller man had shouted just before we’d gone into the water. We can let the girl go. I hadn’t believed it then, but maybe – maybe – there was a chance they meant it. Perhaps, if it came to it, we could bargain with them.

  ‘Rachel.’ I waited until she looked up at me. ‘You have to tell us what’s going on. We need to know what you know.’

  She raised her hand in a give-me-a-second gesture.

  ‘Rachel,’ I said again, harder this time.

  ‘I heard you, Tom.’ She cupped a hand to Holly’s cheek. Then she rocked back on her heels, pressed her palms against her thighs and took a deep breath. ‘But first, I need you both to understand something. These past eight months. Since Michael died. I’ve been a mess. I know that. Sometimes I feel like I lost my mind. I’ve done things I wouldn’t normally do. Things I regret.’ She paused and wafted a hand in front of her eyes to stop her tears. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and high. ‘And not just because we lost Michael but mostly because of how we lost him. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t believe what he’d done. What we were told he’d done. It just went against everything I knew and understood about my son.’

  I swallowed. I knew all this. Or thought I did, anyway. Now I watched as she turned to me with a look that was sadder than anything I’d seen in a long while.

  ‘And that’s what I found so hard. That’s what I couldn’t begin to adjust to. Because I knew Michael, and if he did what we were being told he did, then that wasn’t the case. It couldn’t be the case. And if I didn’t truly know my own son . . .’ It was her turn to swallow. ‘If I didn’t know him, then what kind of mother was I?’

  ‘We’ve been through this, Rachel. The coroner’s hearing—’

  ‘The coroner’s hearing was a sham.’ Her anger flared and she lost control of the pitch of her voice for a second. She raised her hand. Started again. ‘The coroner’s court didn’t have access to all the information they should have had. They didn’t know the full truth.’

  I felt myself teeter. For a moment I thought Rachel was talking about Michael’s personality again. I thought she was saying that if only the coroner had known Michael in the way she had, then he would never have passed a verdict of unlawful killing. He would never have determined that our son was responsible for his own death and for killing Fiona.

  And, as I thought about that, I found myself wondering for the first time if Rachel had begun to lose grip of her sanity. I was thinking I might have to stop her from saying too much more in front of Holly.

  ‘I knew you didn’t feel that way, Tom. And I understand why. I do. But yesterday I asked you to think about how it would feel to forgive Michael. To believe in him again. Do you remember?’

  I glanced at Holly. She stared back from behind the bruising to her face. Her eyes were red, her gaze a little vague but, somehow, I had the feeling she was staring deep inside my heart.

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘And how did it feel?’

  This time I shook my head. Not because I had nothing to say but because I knew my voice wouldn’t work right if I tried. I could feel my throat closing up. The shakes starting to come.

  ‘I did this for you,’ Rachel said again. ‘Lionel and Brodie helped me.’

  ‘Helped you with what, Rachel?’

  ‘Getting to the truth. Tom, you can believe in Michael again. He didn’t kill himself joyriding. Those men out there – the monsters who’ve been chasing us – I think they killed our son.’

  The unlit road is a fast unspooling ribbon of tarmac. White lines and cat’s eyes zip by under the front tyre as the Audi drifts left, into the oncoming carriageway.

  Michael squints and covers the rear-view mirror with his hand. His heart leaps into his throat. The headlights from behind are blinding. Switched to full beam, they illuminate the cabin of the Audi and the bare autumn trees stretching over the road ahead.

  Michael squeezes down on the accelerator. If he can put enough distance between himself and the car behind then maybe he can see more clearly. Maybe he will spot a place to turn.

  But the bright lights stay with him, blaring closer. He glances down at the lit dials on the dash, his vision blurring.

  Sixty-eight miles an hour and the speed limit here is sixty.

  Fiona turns in her seat to peer out through the rear window, her face stripped white by the glare.

  Michael makes a decision then. He pushes down harder on the accelerator.

  The needle creeps higher.

  Seventy.

  Seventy-one.

  And flash. He’
s blinded by the stutter of another fierce light.

  33

  People sometimes talk about the power of words. But honestly, I don’t think I’d ever come close to understanding the true meaning of that phrase until Rachel said those words to me. I felt like she’d placed both her hands on my chest and shoved me across the room.

  ‘This is what I was going to talk to you about, Tom. This is what I needed to discuss with you. I never imagined it would happen like this. I thought we’d have time. That I could build up to it gently.’

  ‘Gently? Do you even hear yourself? Do you have any idea what you’re saying right now?’

  ‘I do. Believe me, I do.’

  ‘Mum, if this is some kind of sick joke . . .’

  ‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘No. Holly I would never—’

  ‘Then who are they? What makes you think they killed Michael?’

  ‘It’s better if I show you.’ She lifted her phone, looking sheepish now. ‘Tom, come over here by Holly. You both need to see this.’

  Maybe. But I didn’t feel ready for it. Perhaps I never could be. Even if I didn’t believe it right then, the enormity of what Rachel was suggesting was too huge.

  Somehow, though, I found myself moving forwards, almost against my will, until I was crouched by Holly’s side with my back against the racks of wine bottles and my hands hanging between my thighs. Seen from above, a stranger might have thought we were about to share a sweet family moment. Maybe we were going to look at old videos on Rachel’s phone, or FaceTime an elderly relative.

  I felt breathless, scared, my emotions unravelling. I was terrified about the men getting into the cellar with us. I kept thinking about the wound to Holly’s side and how bad it might get. And I was angry with Rachel. She’d lied to me. Betrayed me. Put us all at risk. And now here she was, getting ready to show me something that scared me almost as much as the men who’d come here tonight.

  Tom, you can believe in Michael again. He didn’t kill himself joyriding. Those men out there – the monsters who’ve been chasing us – I think they killed our son.

  Could that really be true? Did I want it to be? Because if there was any truth to it whatsoever, then what kind of father was I? How badly had I failed my son?