A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  ‘What about the stargazing pod?’ Holly asked.

  Silence.

  Wind shuttled through the trees overhead. I found myself looking past the lodge in the direction of the pod, thinking it through. Would the men know about it? Would they find it? Maybe if Brodie had briefed them . . .

  ‘Dad, come on, we could totally go there.’

  ‘The door was locked, Holly.’

  ‘We can try and break in. There might be stuff inside we could use. Maybe even a phone.’

  I looked at Rachel. She could see the question in my eyes.

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ she told me. ‘I didn’t know it was there. Honestly. But if you’re asking me what I think, I think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘If we can get in.’

  But even as I cast doubt on it, my thoughts turned to the practicalities of accessing the pod. The door had looked too substantial to barge or kick our way through. But perhaps there was another way.

  ‘Your toolbox.’ Rachel sprang to her feet. ‘We left it next to the driveway, didn’t we?’

  Holly got up alongside her, wiping the dirt from her palms and slipping one hand under her coat to hold against her side. It was difficult to tell if she was deteriorating at all. Even without her injury she’d be pale and exhausted right now. But it was another reminder that we needed to keep a watch on her.

  ‘Wait,’ I told them.

  ‘Tom, there must be something in your toolbox we can use. There has to be.’

  Maybe. Maybe not. Most of the tools I carried were pretty small. There was nothing that could be relied on to force a door open.

  ‘Dad, come on. Let’s at least check it out.’

  ‘Just . . . let me see where they are first, OK?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘One minute, Rachel. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll run over and be back as soon as I’ve seen where they are. Then we go.’

  Rachel winced and looked off through the trees towards the driveway, then back at me.

  ‘OK, but hurry.’

  I got up from my crouch and moved forwards at a stoop, stepping out from under the trees onto the raised grassy bank that butted up against the fieldstone base of the lodge. On the opposite side of the wall, I now knew, was the wine cellar. And next to it the reading nook where I hoped both men still were.

  I crabbed sideways towards the window, the nylon of my outdoor jacket rasping against the brickwork. When I got there, I stopped and looked back. Rachel and Holly were holding hands and watching me. I counted to five in my head, then rocked to my right and took a quick peek inside.

  The corridor leading to the cinema room was empty.

  I rocked back and waited a few seconds more. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I took one long stride past the window.

  My skin crawled. Beneath the trees, Holly was covering her eyes with her hand, afraid to watch. Rachel stared at me, her mouth hanging open, the wind tugging at her hair. I nodded to her like everything was OK – who was I kidding? – and turned to look in through the glass.

  My heart raced. I could see a segment of the shelves of books, a vertical portion of the closed metal door and the buckled car jack that had been wedged beneath it. And I could see the smaller man in his white plastic coveralls.

  A surge of white-hot anger lit up my spine.

  He was down on one knee with his back to me and his hood up. His gloved hands were flat against the floor, shoulder-width apart, and he was pressing his face to the crack under the door. Next to him was a red household bucket. It looked like the bucket the mop had been standing in inside the laundry room. I guessed it contained the fuel the men had been pouring under the door.

  A small part of my brain said: If it was really fuel. But why would Rachel lie? And no, I’d smelt the petrol myself. I was letting paranoia get the better of me.

  There was no sign of the bigger man.

  If only I was in there now, I could whack the smaller man over the back of the head. I could strike him again and again and . . .

  I snatched my head back and flattened myself against the wall. My chest heaved. I shut my eyes.

  Where was the bigger man?

  Please tell me he isn’t outside already.

  I lifted my right hand in the air and motioned for Rachel and Holly to duck low in case he was close by. They crouched instantly. In the dark under the trees, they were hard to spot.

  Better.

  I motioned to them again, this time spreading my fingers in a gesture that was designed to say: Stay put. Bear with me.

  Rachel fixed her jaw and shook her head resolutely. Holly mouthed the word ‘No’ and beckoned me back by waving her hand.

  I showed them my palm again. Spread my fingers again.

  Stay put. Bear with me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I mouthed, and wondered who exactly I was trying to convince. If I ran into the bigger man right now, I’d likely collapse to my knees.

  No. Don’t think like that.

  I pressed my cheek to the wall and crept towards the southerly corner of the lodge. There were two more panels of rectangular glazing ahead of me. No yellow light was shining through them. There was just a kind of gaseous, turquoise glow shimmering against the glass.

  The windows looked in on the pool room. I paused by the first panel and sneaked a glance. The only movement was from the swimming pool waters, lit vivid green against the black.

  I let go of a breath and crept on towards the second panel. I saw the exact same thing when I snuck a look inside.

  Three more cautious paces took me to the corner of the lodge. I placed my hands and face against the brickwork and inched my head around.

  An icy judder coursed through me.

  It was the bigger man. He was standing outside the shattered side door to the pool room, looking off through the trees in the direction of the stargazing pod.

  38

  His back was to me, his hood was up, his blue rubber boots were planted in the saturated dirt. The wind rippled against his plastic coveralls with a fast, abrasive droning.

  He had the big industrial torch in his hand. As I watched, he turned – my muscles tensed – and swept the beam over the waves towards the side of the timber deck. He played the beam casually over the dark waters.

  At the area where their dinghy had been.

  I saw him stiffen and lean closer, then sweep the torch beam around in a widening arc. I could almost imagine the thought process running through his head: Our dinghy has gone? Where has it gone?

  My heart was pumping so wildly I clamped a hand over my chest for fear he might hear it. I watched the bigger man edge forwards, away from the lodge. He crouched and played the torch beam down under the deck.

  I snatched my head back, rested a moment against the brickwork, then scurried up the grassy bank through the trees to Rachel and Holly.

  ‘What is it?’ Rachel asked me.

  I stood there, hunched over, panting. ‘The smaller one is still in the library. But the bigger one is outside. He’s just over that way.’

  Holly reared back. ‘Is he looking for us?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I explained about the missing boat. ‘But, Holly, sweetheart, I don’t think we should try and get to the pod just now. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just that we shouldn’t head in that direction while he’s out here.’

  I lifted Rachel’s backpack from the floor and fed my arms through the straps. I didn’t look at Holly. I didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face.

  I tugged back the sleeve of my coat. The time on my wristwatch said it was approaching 4 a.m. Almost two hours had passed since the men had broken in. It felt like so much longer. I was drained. My head was fuzzy. I was breathless and strung out from all the adrenaline that had been coursing through my system.

  How long now until it got light? I didn’t know. An hour? Maybe an hour and a half? And then? Hard to tell. But I knew we’d be easier to spot if the men worked out we were no longer in the wine
cellar and they came looking for us in daylight.

  ‘Let’s go and find the toolbox, OK?’

  ‘OK, Dad.’

  I bent down and scooped up Buster, then tramped through the trees towards the gravel yard, keeping close to the lodge. My skin tightened across my back. I was terrified that the bigger man would come round the corner and see us. I followed along beneath the balcony. The skylight pole was still dangling high up in the wind.

  I paused and adjusted Buster’s weight. I was trying to orientate myself. Holly must have picked up on that.

  ‘It’s this way,’ she whispered. ‘We were near that tree with the split branch on the side.’

  She led us across the yard, between some trees and through waist-high bracken and ferns. It looked like the right spot. When I crouched and peered towards the carport, I recognized the angle of the view.

  But no matter where we looked or how desperately we felt around us with our hands and feet, we couldn’t find the toolbox. It was gone.

  ‘They must have taken it.’

  My heart sunk. We hadn’t just lost a set of tools. We’d also lost a stash of potential weapons.

  Rachel and Holly were silent. They were probably thinking, like me, that our chances of getting into the stargazing pod were even slimmer now. First, the bigger man was in our way. Second, the door was locked and we didn’t have any tools to attack it with.

  ‘Let’s keep moving,’ I said.

  Because if the men had found this spot before, they could find it again. And also – thinking about it now – because the toolbox wasn’t the only stash of weapons I’d seen tonight.

  ‘We can’t go back, Tom. Not if you saw one of them over there.’

  ‘We’re not going to. Come on. This way.’

  My biceps were aching from holding Buster for so long. I hoisted him again, until his face and forepaws were up by my right shoulder, my hands on his soggy rump. I’d have to lay him down soon. I had a pretty good idea where.

  I stalked forwards through the drainage gully, branches tearing at my hands and legs. Rachel and Holly joined me and then, on the count of three, we bolted across the yard, streaking through the halo of blue light shining around the perimeter of the lodge and passing in front of the carport.

  I glanced at our Volvo as we ran. The paintwork shone darkly in the wash of the security lighting and I noticed, with a stab of anger, that the fuel cap was open and a length of plastic piping was curled out of it, dripping fuel on the ground. The two men hadn’t only threatened to burn us. They’d planned to do it with the fuel from our family car.

  I lumbered into the trees behind Holly and crashed to the ground with Buster weighing down on top of me. Branches and foliage cracked and snapped. Rachel got down on her haunches by my side.

  We had a pretty clear view across the gravel yard towards a corner of the deck. The timber looked bleached and scrubbed in the hard glare of the outdoor lighting. The black seawater dipped and surged.

  We couldn’t see the bigger man from the angle we were on and I wondered if by now he’d found the dinghy. Or could he have gone back inside to tell the smaller man their boat was missing?

  Buster’s head drooped over the crook of my arm. I hugged him to me, staring intently at the portion of the deck I could see. I thought about the open sliding door at the front of the lodge. Then I glanced sideways at the shattered kitchen window and the luminous, jagged shards sticking out of the frame.

  Could I get in there? Should I go in there?

  My scalp tingled.

  There were some plusses to the move. There was the phone in the kitchen, for one. If it was working, I could call for help. There was also the control unit for the gate. Again, if it was functioning and I could find a way to keep the gate open, we’d have a way of getting away from here. And lastly, there were the weapons and tools the men had brought with them, laid out on the plastic sheet in the middle of the living room. If I could get to them, I could arm myself.

  And the cons?

  Well, those would be the two men I might run into who wanted me and my family dead.

  But, honestly? In some ways, a tiny part of me wondered if that was even a con.

  Does that sound crazy? I guess it does. But based on what Rachel had told me and the images she’d shown me, I believed these men were somehow responsible for killing Michael and Fiona. They’d lied about it. They’d concealed the truth. They’d allowed the world – and me – to believe that Michael was to blame. And then, when they were in danger of being exposed, they’d come here and hunted down my family. They’d terrorized my daughter and my wife. They’d hurt my dog.

  And no, it wasn’t rational. It wasn’t wise. And truthfully, I knew I was mostly kidding myself when I thought about confronting them. Because what were the chances I’d come out on top?

  But here’s the thing: I was angry. No, scratch that, I was furious. I wanted to save my family. That was priority one. But I also realized something else: I might think of myself as a coward, but for eight months these men had hidden in the shadows. Tonight, they’d hidden behind hoods and masks. So, yes, there was a part of me – a more primitive, hot-headed version of myself – that wanted to go after these men. To attack them. To make them pay for what they’d done.

  ‘Tom?’

  Rachel reached up to the nape of my hair and rubbed the skin at the base of my neck with her thumb. It was something she’d done a lot during our marriage when I’d been stressed or tired. She’d done the same thing last night after we’d made love. Right now, I didn’t know whether to lean into it or pull away. I settled for not showing any reaction at all.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  Where to begin? Because in truth, I was thinking of a lot of things. For example, I was trying to decide if it would be possible for me to climb in through the kitchen window without injuring myself or making any noise. I was wondering how long it would take me to try the phone and the gate controls. How long to grab a weapon from the men’s stash? How long to get back?

  And suppose I didn’t come back? What if I snatched up a weapon, crept into the library and bludgeoned the smaller man while the bigger man was outside?

  But what if the smaller man saw me coming? What if he shot me? Or what if the bigger man spotted me running into the lodge, and so knew we’d escaped from the wine cellar and came looking for Rachel and Holly while I was gone?

  But mostly, truthfully, I was thinking about Rachel rubbing my neck. About how angry I was with her for the danger she’d placed us in tonight and for the secrets she’d kept. And, mixed in with that, I was thinking about Michael and my own particular burden of guilt. Because it wasn’t only Rachel who’d kept secrets. It wasn’t only Rachel who’d made mistakes.

  My mind kept looping on how terrified Michael had looked in the image captured by the speed camera. And I wondered: had he been thinking then about his phone call to me?

  Because the truth is Michael had called me just over an hour before the time the coroner had ruled as his official time of death. Just under thirty minutes before the time stamped on that speed camera image. It was a phone call I’d never told anyone about. Not Rachel. Not anyone.

  Why?

  Because I hadn’t answered my son’s call. I’d seen it flash up on my mobile and I’d diverted him to voicemail. I was in my office, in the middle of writing an email to the lead lawyer on the other side of the deal Lionel was pushing to close. I didn’t want to be interrupted.

  I know, I know. But if you think that makes me a terrible person, it’s nothing to what I think of myself.

  Later, when I was flaked out in the back of a cab home – little more than half an hour before the two police officers turned up to tell us Michael was dead – I’d remembered his call and checked my messages. Three short seconds of my son’s breathing on the end of the line. That was all there was. That was all he’d left me.

  In the time that had passed since Michael’s death – and, just possibly, to ease my guilt �
� I’d assumed he’d been calling me to try to get a read on when I’d be coming home from the office that night. I’d thought he’d been trying to figure out whether he had a clear window of time to drive his girlfriend somewhere in my car with the idea of fooling around with her before I got home and before Rachel brought Holly back from gym practice.

  But now I had to ask myself if he’d been calling for another reason. If he’d needed my help. If he’d known he was in trouble. If he’d waited those three precious seconds, debating whether to say something to me, and had ultimately decided it wasn’t something he could say in a voicemail.

  I was wondering if I could have saved my son’s life.

  ‘Don’t move and don’t speak.’

  ‘Please,’ Fiona begs. ‘Don’t hurt him.’

  ‘That includes you. Keep quiet.’

  The gun muzzle drills into the back of Michael’s skull. His head is forced forwards against the steering wheel. Michael keeps very still as hands reach around him from behind and pat him down.

  ‘Where’s your phone?’

  ‘It fell out back there.’

  The gun is jabbed harder against his head.

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Silence for several seconds. Then, ‘Unlock this.’

  Fiona’s phone is tossed into her lap. She raises it to her face with shaking hands. The facial recognition software unlocks the phone.

  ‘Show me the call log.’

  She hesitates, then does.

  ‘Messages.’