A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  Then there was a sharp, searing, buckling noise that made me almost let go and fall back, followed by a sudden brash snap and a metallic clatter and some loud, aggressive swearing from outside the door.

  I guessed the jack handle had come loose or sheared clean away. I didn’t want to turn and look, but when I did I could see the metal fascia of the door had crinkled very slightly in the middle. It was as if there was a tiny vertical crease low down on the panel. But worse – much worse – was the crack of light now visible beneath the door. It was maybe five centimetres long. A few millimetres high.

  Staring at it, I felt like a little kid hiding under my bed, just waiting for the bogey man to lift up the covers and shout ‘boo’.

  Muffled sounds carried through the crack. I could hear the men stomping and talking on the other side.

  Then I heard something different. A hollow, guttural sloshing that made my intestines quiver and contract. It was followed by a splash and a glug and a spatter.

  A finger of dark, oily liquid seeped under the door. I felt like someone was pouring iced water down my neck.

  Rachel climbed the steps very slowly. She touched a fingertip to the liquid and raised it to her nose. Then she sniffed and I watched her face fall.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry. It’s petrol.’

  ‘Drive.’

  Michael’s sweaty palm slips on the gear lever. His leg feels heavy and dull as he presses down on the clutch. He tries to control his panic as he looks around him at the street where he’s parked. Badly, as it happens, with one wheel mounted on the kerb. But the only witnesses are three teens in tatty hoodies, one of them on a BMX, likely stolen, who have their hands in their pockets so as to conceal the drugs they’re dealing, and the peaks of their baseball caps tilted down to hide their faces. He could blast his horn, only . . .

  ‘I said, drive.’

  . . . there’s that hot itch on the back of his neck from where the gun is jabbing into him. And what are the chances of anyone responding here, in this place; a shabby backstreet next to a dismal multistorey car park and an empty council office building?

  ‘Michael,’ Fiona says. ‘Just do it. Hurry.’

  So he does. Too abruptly. The Audi bunny hops forwards and thumps off the kerb.

  ‘Take it easy.’

  And maybe Michael would. But tonight is the first time he’s driven on real roads and without his dad alongside him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Doesn’t want to risk getting into any more trouble than he’s already in. Maybe it’s a good thing he can pass off his inexperience as panic.

  ‘Where to?’ he asks now, his voice wavering as he snatches second gear.

  ‘Take a right at the end here. Head back to the train station.’

  His eyes flick to the rear-view mirror. ‘And then?’

  Behind them, Michael sees a silver Vauxhall swoop down the exit ramp at the front of the parking structure. Three men are sitting inside, dressed in dark clothes.

  36

  The fuel spread and probed and branched off in oily rivulets. It drained down over the top step and crept towards the next. Rachel moved backwards into the cellar, her arms out at her sides to keep Holly behind her.

  ‘Use the towels,’ I said. ‘From Buster. Don’t let that petrol get any further.’

  I could smell the fumes now. They perfumed the chilled cellar air, as if we were standing on the forecourt of a filling station in the dead of night.

  ‘They’re just trying to scare us,’ I said.

  But it was working. If they set fire to the cellar, we’d be trapped.

  Rachel and Holly hurried to unwrap Buster. I watched as Rachel rolled the towels up and packed them against the base of the door before backing away again. A temporary solution but not a perfect one. The towels would soak up the fuel like a sponge. If the men set light to them, they’d ignite like a torch.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ Holly yelled, suddenly.

  She clamped her hand to her mouth, like she couldn’t believe she’d said it, and we looked at one another in the brittle silence that followed.

  The men had to be able to hear us now they’d raised the door. For just a second, I couldn’t tell what would be worse: a response, or no response at all.

  ‘Bullshit,’ one of them yelled back. ‘Open this door or we’ll torch you.’

  Holly cried behind her hand and leaned into Rachel. I felt my knees begin to flex.

  Death by burning, or death by gunshot if we opened the door. Not a choice we could make. And not a choice I wanted Holly to be confronted with.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I whispered to her. ‘It’s not going to come to that.’

  I waited until she raised her head from behind Rachel and then I pointed to the ceiling, where two small sprinklers were located. I didn’t know if they’d offer us any real protection from a petrol fire, but I wanted her to see them. I wanted her to have something to believe in. She swallowed and nodded at me.

  ‘I’m going to get us out of here,’ I whispered. ‘I am.’

  Rachel turned to me with her good arm around Holly. Her skin was white and bloodless, her lips pulled back over her teeth. ‘Hurry.’

  I returned my attention to the final screw, concentrating everything I had on transmitting all my strength down into the scalpel blade.

  Still nothing.

  Still nothing.

  And then . . .

  The screw budged.

  I felt a humming in my temples. It only moved by a minuscule amount but that was all it took to get it started.

  I redoubled my efforts and kept working with the scalpel, kept grunting and hanging my tongue out of the side of my mouth, until I had the screw loosened enough to use my fingers. My pulse throbbed in my fingertips. I could hear my breathing, loud and fast.

  Over by the door, the towels were yellowing. Petrol was slowly oozing beneath them and spreading across the concrete, trickling down to the lower steps.

  I tugged the screw free, plunged my fingers into the vents on the front of the cooling unit and pulled hard. The front panel clunked, then wrenched free with a faint metal-on-metal screech, trailing dust and cobwebs from behind.

  I froze and looked over to the door, my heart hammering in my throat.

  No response. At least not as far as I could tell.

  A musty smell wafted out from the cooling unit. The interior was filled with component parts that were furred with dust and grime. I passed the front panel down to Rachel, fitted my hand inside the unit and heaved.

  The metal edges were sharp and unfinished. They cut into my fingers. I didn’t care. The unit screeched outwards a fraction and again I stopped and checked the door for any response from the men. Nothing obvious. I thought there was a good chance they couldn’t hear inside clearly, especially with the towels packed against the door.

  No sense doing this slowly now.

  Fitting both hands inside the unit, I walked my feet up the shelving racks until I was bent at the waist with my knees up by my chest, like I was about to surge backwards from the end of a swimming pool.

  I pushed with my toes. Heaved with my arms. Felt the burning strain in my lower back.

  The unit scraped towards me, scraped again, then came free and plunged a short, sharp distance until I was hanging from it with the back end of the unit butted up against the top of the wall cavity that had been carved out for it.

  ‘A little help.’

  Rachel and Holly rushed over and took hold of my legs and waist. Rachel used one foot to scoop a wooden wine box closer. I placed my toes on it and Rachel climbed onto the box next to me so that we could work together to wrestle the unit free.

  She wailed and ducked down on one side. Her shoulder wasn’t up to the task.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got this.’

  The unit was heavy and cumbersome, but now that I was standing on the wine box I was able to ease it out the rest of the way and bear its weight as I lowered it to the ground. It wouldn’t
come all the way because of an electrical cable trailing out the back, but the cable gave just enough slack for me to be able to balance the unit on the ground on its front edge.

  I wiped the dust and muck from my lips and eyes, then stood on the back of the unit and peered into the cavity.

  It was a rectangular ventilation tunnel faced in metal sheeting. I could see for three or four metres but then the cramped tunnel disintegrated into gloom. I felt a tingling in my scalp. How far did it go on for? Its dimensions were much tighter than I’d anticipated. A small child could crawl through unhindered, but me?

  I swallowed.

  ‘Pass me your phone.’

  Rachel pulled her phone out of her back pocket and handed it to me. I pressed the home button. The lock screen lit up with that same picture of Michael and Holly fooling around. My heart clenched when I saw it. Michael. I missed him.

  I shook the thought from my mind and thrust my arm down the tunnel, the glare of the phone screen bouncing and reflecting off the metal sheeting with a bluish gleam. In a strange way, it felt like Michael was guiding me out. I could see a little further but not all the way. Surely the shaft couldn’t go on that far?

  ‘I have to get a closer look,’ I said. ‘Keep an eye on the door. Watch Buster. Shout me if anything changes.’

  And then, bracing my forearms just inside the opening, I sprang off from my toes and squirmed up and in.

  I banged my knee. The sides of the tunnel compressed my shoulders, chest and hips. I knocked the back of my head off the top. The polished sheeting deformed and deflected under my weight. The dimensions were so tight I couldn’t crawl forwards. All I could do was squirm and wriggle. Holly and Rachel grabbed at my legs and pushed on my feet. I squirmed some more, until my toes tapped against the metal sheeting. Then I made the mistake of thinking of all the earth that was probably piled on top of the shaft. The shaft wasn’t designed for people to slither along. What would happen if the tunnel collapsed?

  My lungs emptied of air. Pressure built inside my chest. Rachel’s phone screen dimmed, then powered off, plunging me into darkness.

  Don’t panic.

  I hit the home button. Blue light shimmered around me. Michael and Holly, showing me the way.

  Breathe.

  I felt the vaguest flutter of cool air against my face. It smelled of the night forest and the taint of rain.

  I pulled my chin down and scrambled on, digging in with my elbows, scraping my hips and knees, thrusting from my toes, until, eventually, I saw a reflective glimmer from what had to be the end of the tunnel, no more than a metre ahead.

  I should have been relieved to see it but right then I experienced a sudden shortening of my breath, like someone had clamped a hand over my mouth and jabbed an elbow into the back of my neck. It looked like a dead end.

  Until I got there. Until I craned my neck and looked up.

  A half-metre above me was a slatted metal grill. Dark shapes swayed and shifted above it. I felt a small flutter of relief as I realized I was looking up at the canopy of pines.

  I thrashed and fought to turn myself around with the metal banging and deflecting underneath me until I was lying flat on my back and I could stretch my hand up towards the grill.

  I couldn’t reach.

  Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes, then raised my head slightly and looked back down the tunnel past my toes. The lights of the cellar shone brightly. I could see Holly’s face in the opening. She was peering in at me, her hair tangled, chewing her lip.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I whispered to her. ‘Are you and Mum all right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Buster too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  My lungs felt like they were shrivelling. Cool air pressed down on me, but still I sweated badly.

  Carefully now, I balanced Rachel’s phone on my chest, the blued dazzle reflecting back off the metal, then flattened my hands on the sides of the tunnel and shunted myself back even further. My neck was contorted. The back of my head and shoulders were mashed up against the end of the shaft.

  I had to scrape my elbows and squeeze in my shoulders until I was able to thrust both my arms up past my ears. I stretched and jammed the heels of my hands against the grill.

  Grainy detritus showered my face. Seed pods and pine needles. I blinked and spat them away.

  I was anticipating stubborn resistance from the grill, because nothing so far had been easy. Maybe it was screwed down from the outside. Maybe it was packed down beneath a dense seam of wet earth. But to my surprise the panel flipped outwards, trailing threads of rubber sealant and sprinkling more dirt on my face.

  For a terrible second, I had a vision of a gun muzzle appearing in the opening, pointed down at me, with one of the masked men on the other end of it. The scenario seemed so plausible I was almost reluctant to move.

  I swallowed my fear, fitted my hands around the wet earth at the opening, sucked in my stomach and heaved myself into a sitting position. My arms and shoulders shook and trembled. The top of my head emerged from among the forest floor.

  There was nobody around.

  The trees shook and swayed. Wind ruffled my hair. I was roughly ten metres away from the lodge.

  I tipped my head right back, letting go of a long breath, and took a big gulp of the sweet woodland air. Then I tensed the muscles in my stomach and shuffled down inside the narrow shaft again, bending my neck, pressing my chin against my chest, flattening my palms against the metal sheeting and wriggling and clunking my way back towards the cellar and the heady stink of petrol.

  37

  We got Holly out first. It wasn’t easy. The pain from her side was manageable until she stretched or caught herself, but when that happened she had to stop and lay still inside the ventilation tunnel until the aching passed. Rachel was worried about her aggravating her wound and making the bleeding worse. But what were our options? We couldn’t stay where we were. Not with the men pouring petrol in under the door. They were taunting us. Shouting at us to open up. We didn’t reply. Not once. I thought it was better that way. Because what if we started up a dialogue and then the men got suspicious about why we’d gone quiet?

  I stared down the ventilation shaft, wincing each time Holly hurt herself, whispering encouraging words to get her to move on. When her head was finally free and only her feet were left in the tunnel, I lifted Rachel up and into the hole and she scrambled after Holly with the backpack, pushing herself along with her good arm and her feet.

  The hardest part was moving Buster. He was heavy and floppy and his weight sagged against me as I heaved him towards the shaft. I propped his head inside, then braced my shoulder under him and checked behind me. The petrol had soaked through the towels completely. My breath quickened. The fuel was pooling over by the door, draining down the steps. The scent of it was heavy on the air and I knew it would take just the smallest spark to ignite it.

  I shoved Buster forwards. His wet fur left damp streaks on the metal sheeting. His front legs got snarled and tangled up. I reached in past him and freed them, then put on my coat in a hurry, clambered in behind him and shoved him on.

  I was out of breath and sweating hard by the time I got him to the end of the shaft. I paused to gather my strength while Rachel reached down for the scruff of Buster’s coat. It took an enormous effort to lift him from the angle I was on and Rachel was compromised because of her shoulder. Holly had to help.

  Once he was finally out, I lay back, spent and breathless, peering down the shaft past my toes. I couldn’t see any flames but I wasn’t about to hang around.

  Thrusting my hands up, I pulled with my arms, kicked with my feet and wriggled my hips until my head was free of the opening. Finally, I used my elbows to prise myself out onto the forest floor like a man climbing from the cockpit of a crashed aeroplane.

  I rolled onto my side and ground my face into the earth. I’d been woken up in the middle of the night and shot at. Chased through the woods. Driven into the sea. I’d fallen
from a balcony. Crawled through a tunnel. All I wanted to say right then was, Enough.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ Rachel asked.

  I groaned and reached out to Buster. The ground between us was wet with damp, even under the trees. I kept expecting to hear a whoosh of flames from the wine cellar. I could imagine a waft of sudden heat escaping the ventilation shaft and smoke billowing out into the night.

  Buster was still out cold. When I rested my hand on him, the matted fur of his chest rose and fell in time with his laboured breathing. I looked past him towards the lodge. The tall, thin window at the end of the corridor that linked the cinema room with the reading nook was lit yellow in the gloom. Neither of the men were visible through it. I knew what I had to say next, and even I didn’t like it.

  ‘I have to take a look in through that window.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because we need to know they’re both still in the library, Rachel. I don’t want us to go running into one of them.’

  ‘We should get away from here while we still can.’

  ‘Yeah? Where to?’

  She didn’t answer. She just knelt in the darkness, her bunched fists pressing down into the wetness, her lank hair hiding her face. I didn’t know how to feel about Rachel right now. My thoughts and emotions were totally scrambled. I knew she’d lied to me and Holly. I knew she’d placed us at enormous risk. And yes, I was furious about that. Especially when I thought of how we’d made love just hours ago now. How I’d laid there afterwards, thinking this was the start of a new beginning for us both. But at the same time, I also understood that Rachel had acted out of love for Michael. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to protect my family. Rachel – however misguided – had been trying to fix us.

  She raised her head and looked at me. ‘Maybe if we follow the fence, we’ll find a spot where my phone will work?’

  ‘Brodie told me there was no signal anywhere around here.’

  Unless Brodie was working with these men. Unless he wanted us to think that.

  I closed my eyes, pushing the thought from my mind. For so much of our marriage I’d trusted Rachel’s judgement. We’d made so many decisions together over the years that had seemed vital at the time. Decisions about what house to buy and which mortgage to take out. Choices about which school to send the kids to, what holidays we should go on, how to handle delicate situations with colleagues or friends. But, in reality, none of those decisions had mattered in anything like the same way the choices we made tonight would count. And at the same time, I had the gnawing suspicion that Rachel hadn’t told me everything yet. Was she keeping more from me and, if so, what?