A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  ‘Buster is with her. He’s more alert now.’

  ‘That wasn’t the plan, Rachel.’

  ‘The plan changed when we heard the gunshot.’ She stared at me and her mouth began to tremble. I thought she might cry. ‘You have no idea how scared we were. The only way I could stop her from running in here was if I came instead.’

  I could believe that. I could imagine Holly running in here in much the same way she’d dived out of the dinghy to get to Buster. I was glad she hadn’t. But the idea of her alone in the woods, running scared, not knowing if we were coming for her . . .

  ‘I can’t believe we killed him.’

  Rachel was quiet a moment. ‘He would have killed you if we hadn’t.’

  Would he? Hadn’t there been a window when we could have subdued him?

  ‘These men came here to murder us, Tom. You know that. You know what they did to Michael too.’

  Did I? I gazed at the dead man, feeling an enormous weight pressing down on me. His cheeks were mottled and berry-coloured above his mask, his throat grossly swollen around the climbing rope that circled his neck. I took a halting breath, then reached out tentatively and tugged down his mask. I pinched the top of his hood and peeled it backwards over his sweaty hair.

  A shudder passed through me. Rachel had been right. I recognized the man from the speed camera images.

  ‘He was in the car that was following Michael,’ I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else. ‘He was the front passenger.’

  Rachel looked at the man without saying anything. Something flashed across her eyes, but I wasn’t sure what. Not guilt, exactly. Maybe sadness?

  ‘I didn’t know what to do when Brodie showed up,’ she whispered. ‘You’d put so much doubt in my mind about him, Tom.’

  ‘I was wrong about that. He saw me in here. He didn’t tell them.’

  She paused. ‘They shot him?’

  ‘His leg.’

  She closed her eyes, like she didn’t want to imagine that right now. ‘What about the phone?’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘The gate?’

  ‘Brodie showed up before I could try. He said we’d triggered a silent alarm. In the wine cellar.’

  Something else crossed her face. Again, I wasn’t sure what exactly. It bothered me. What more did she know that I didn’t?

  As I thought about that, I also thought about Brodie’s Land Cruiser. The gate had already opened for it once. Maybe we could try and get out in it. But at least one of us would have to go into the woods to find Holly. By the time we got back, the smaller man would be looking for his partner. Once he found him dead, he’d be looking for us. There was no way we could leave Brodie behind after what he’d done for us, but I couldn’t see how we could take him with us, either. We couldn’t lift him. I doubted he could walk. We had to try something else and we had to do it soon.

  ‘Go to Brodie,’ I said. ‘Take a look at his leg.’

  ‘What about the other man?’

  I swallowed. ‘I’m working on that.’

  46

  By the time I stepped out of the pantry, Rachel had loosened Brodie’s arms and was cutting open his jeans with the scissors from her backpack. She’d slipped on a pair of blue rubber gloves and she was applying pressure to his bloodied leg with another sterile pad. Brodie sucked air through his teeth, then made a grab for Rachel’s wrist. She stilled and gradually looked up at him, and I felt a sudden painful squeezing in my chest.

  The way Brodie stared at my wife – I’d looked at Rachel too many times like that myself. And sure, I’d begun to suspect Brodie had a thing for her, but this seemed like something more than just a crush. And maybe – though I really didn’t want to have to acknowledge this right now – it wasn’t entirely one way.

  ‘Listen, Rachel, I—’

  My foot scuffed the floor and Rachel jumped and turned, lifting the scissors above her shoulder like a dagger.

  ‘Easy,’ I told her. ‘It’s me.’

  She thrust her face forwards, her body stiffening, and I patted the air with my hand until she lowered the scissors in degrees. Her face became slack. She shook her head slowly. Then she seemed to become conscious of the way Brodie was holding her wrist and she pushed his hand away.

  ‘No, Tom,’ she said. ‘No way.’

  I looked between them, my mind still buzzing from what I’d witnessed. Was Rachel the real reason Brodie had come back to the lodge? What had he been about to say to her?

  ‘That’s a really . . . bad idea,’ he panted.

  Probably Brodie was right. Probably it was a bad idea. And it’s possible I was being churlish, but I didn’t feel all that inclined to listen to his advice right now. Besides, it was the only idea I had.

  I looked down at the outfit I had on. I was wearing the dead man’s white plastic coveralls, his surgical mask, his blue rubber boots. It had been tricky to undress him in a hurry inside the pantry. Space was tight. His body was heavy. The cheap coveralls were designed to be disposable and I’d torn a gash in the seam behind my right shoulder.

  Also, the coveralls were too big. To try and compensate, I’d put them on over my outdoor jacket. The dead man’s boots fitted me like clown’s shoes. And I only had on one glove, not two. The blue nitrile glove on the man’s right hand had been torn and shredded around his broken fingers, gummed up with tape.

  ‘Hey! What’s the hold-up?’

  My scalp prickled. My heart squeezed painfully again. I turned. It was the smaller man, yelling at me from the end of the corridor. I stared at him from over the mask I had on. Sweat broke across my face.

  Would this work? Could it work?

  Very carefully, I eased my bare hand behind my back. I was trembling. From the angle the smaller man was on, he couldn’t see Brodie or Rachel.

  My throat had gone dry. Every instinct told me to grab Rachel and run. To get away to Holly.

  No. Wait. Be strong.

  The smaller man folded his arms and shook his head, like he was weary and weighed down by his crushing disappointment with the bigger man. I waited for him to see me. Really see me. To notice how my pulse was throbbing in my neck. How my fingers were twitching. How my breathing was too shallow, too fast. But all he saw was my outfit from a distance. All he saw was the bigger man he’d expected to see.

  Slowly, jerkily, I raised the box of kitchen matches in my gloved hand. I felt like I was holding a mirror up to my face.

  I waited.

  ‘Finally!’ he shouted. ‘Then stop stalling and get back here. Now!’

  He beckoned me with a dismissive sweep of his arm and headed back to the wine cellar. I watched him go, my heart flip-flopping in my chest. Once he was gone I hunched forwards, and grabbed my stomach like I had a bad cramp. I felt limp and weightless. I wasn’t getting enough air through the mask.

  ‘Give me a glove from your bag,’ I said to Rachel.

  ‘Tom, no.’

  ‘He’ll kill you,’ Brodie warned.

  I looked down at him, still bound to the chair, his battered face pressed against the floor, his beard speckled with blood. The white of his left eye was stained red. His swollen right eye looked like a baseball mitt.

  I swallowed and tried to keep my shakes under control. ‘Are the police on their way?’

  Brodie hung his head. ‘No.’

  I didn’t move for a second. I’d been hoping for a different response. There was no question in my mind that I had to do something. For Holly. For us.

  ‘Give me a glove, Rachel. Please.’

  ‘You’re being crazy.’

  ‘This whole night has been crazy. Why should now be any different?’

  My wife turned to Brodie again, her jaw clenched, her eyes wide, as if she was urging him to intervene. But Brodie just peered at me for a long moment without saying anything until I broke the pause by moving forwards and reaching into Rachel’s backpack for a glove. I stretched it over my fingers. The glove was a shade darker than the on
e on my left hand. Nothing I could do about that.

  ‘How’s his leg?’

  Rachel considered the wound again and shook her head, like she didn’t know or couldn’t tell. As a GP from a practice in a wealthy residential area of London, I was pretty sure she’d never had to deal with a gunshot wound before.

  ‘I think the bullet went right through. Maybe. I can pack the wound. Try to stem the bleeding. If we’re lucky then—’

  ‘OK.’ I nodded and snapped the glove against my wrist, releasing a puff of talcum. I kept my face down, not looking at either of them directly because I was afraid of what my eyes would reveal.

  Then I turned to the corridor, squared my shoulders and took a series of fast breaths, like I was psyching myself up to run head first into a wall.

  ‘Tom?’

  Rachel reached up for my hand. I was aware of Brodie watching us closely but I tried to block that out as I stared into my wife’s beautiful brown eyes. I was so very, very afraid, but I wanted to be brave for Rachel. I wanted to be the man she needed me to be.

  ‘It’s OK, Rachel. Everything is going to be OK.’ My throat burned. Tears pressed against my eyes. ‘We’ll go and get Holly soon. We have to protect her, right?’

  I tried smiling through my fear. Rachel couldn’t see my smile from behind my mask, but part of me hoped she’d know it was there anyway.

  Then I stepped into the corridor. It seemed to stretch ahead of me for miles and miles.

  47

  I’d had this nightmare before. The corridor that never ends.

  My breath washed back at me, hot and humid from the mask. My ear stung and throbbed. The hood muffled my hearing. My steps felt clumsy and exaggerated inside the bigger man’s boots. All things considered, I felt a lot like a diver wearing deep-sea apparatus, wading along the ocean floor.

  I tramped on down the corridor, aware that every step was taking me further and further from Rachel. Aware that I was leaving her on her own with Brodie. It seemed to take far too long and no time at all until I reached the reading nook.

  Be brave.

  Protect Holly.

  I snatched a fast, airless breath and stepped inside.

  A spasm tore through me. I almost dropped the matchbox. The smaller man was on his hands and knees, with one eye pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door to the wine cellar.

  Could I attack him now?

  ‘They made their choice,’ he said. ‘They’re not coming out.’

  I didn’t respond. Terror and rage pounded in my head. This man was ruthless. He was planning to burn my family alive, and now he was trying to justify it to me.

  The car jack was pinned under the metal door. The door had been wrenched forwards from its lowest hinge. A smashed green circuit board hung from the middle of it on a strand of electrical wire.

  Next to the red plastic bucket with the petrol in it was the claw hammer. Next to that was the sledgehammer. The man’s handgun and Brodie’s pistol were close by his right hand. The shotgun was resting by its stock against a bookshelf to the side of the metal door.

  I stared at the shotgun. My vision throbbed. Could I get to it? It would take three, maybe four strides into the room. A lunge. A grab. And then? Turn with one finger on the trigger, the other supporting the stock? And . . . boom?

  Maybe. But maybe it wasn’t as simple as pulling the trigger. Maybe I had to pump the action first. That awful crunch-crack. Was there some kind of safety to disengage? I didn’t know. I’d never fired a shotgun before. Same thing with the handguns.

  So the sledgehammer? I wavered. It was long and heavy. If I went for it and the smaller man noticed, he might shoot me before I could swing down at him.

  The claw hammer, then? Possibly. But it was an extra stride away. And even now – even with all that was at stake – I didn’t know if I could bring myself to club him with it. I was a dad and a husband, not a savage.

  I stood there. Sweating. Trembling. Trying to think. Trying to be certain. But every move seemed to contain its own pitfalls.

  Do something.

  The smaller man stayed on his hands and knees, squinting, straining. I was just about to move when he yelled under the door.

  ‘Listen up. Last chance. Let us in now or you’re going to burn.’

  I shuffled half a step forwards. My legs shook. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and then, just as I was about to take another step, the smaller man backed up from the crack and glanced around at me.

  My blood turned to ice.

  It was a fast, sweeping movement of his head and neck. And his gaze was mostly on my torso and legs. Partly because of his positioning, but also partly because his attitude towards me was still dismissive. As if the bigger man’s performance had been so poor he couldn’t bring himself to look at him fully.

  I stood there, quaking. An impostor. The box of matches shook in my left hand. My right hand was tucked behind my back.

  My legs trembled. I was levering myself slightly up off my heels. Trying to make myself appear taller. And I was pulling back my shoulders. Trying to make myself appear broader.

  But there was no need. It seemed like I was little more than a blurred set of white plastic coveralls to the smaller man. His glance swept one way, fast. Then back the other way, equally fast. Then he put his ear back to the crack under the door again.

  ‘I can’t hear a thing in there,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t see them. They’ve pushed something up against the gap here. Clothing, maybe.’

  Again, I didn’t respond.

  ‘OK. Hand me the matches. Enough of this bullshit.’

  He beckoned to me. A curling of his fingers. Still not prepared to look at me directly.

  Now what?

  Did I cross towards him? Get closer?

  I got closer.

  Three steps. I was near to his side now, by his waist, a little behind him. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him.

  I shivered.

  From the angle he was on, it would be awkward for him to turn and look up at my face. But I still couldn’t risk that happening. So I stretched out my arm and waggled the box of matches at his side. I waited. He reached up over his shoulder for them in an overhand, backwards grab. His fingers brushed my fingers. Could he feel my shakes?

  My eyes slid to the hammer. It was so close now. Near my foot. And, with the matches in his right hand, going for a gun would take the man fractionally longer. First, he’d have to drop the matchbox. Then go for the gun. A two-step process, instead of a one-step process. Did that matter? It did to me.

  My knees flexed. I clenched my teeth and started to dip. To go for the hammer.

  Closer . . . Closer . . .

  The smaller man removed a match from inside the box.

  ‘Remember, they asked for this.’

  I faltered.

  He scrubbed the match head against the strike. There was a spark. A flame. It guttered in a slight, imperceptible breeze creeping under the door of the wine cellar, squeezing by the packed and soaked towels, probably originating from all the way down the ventilation shaft we’d opened up into the woods outside.

  The smaller man cupped his gloved hand around the flame. The light danced and peaked, casting ghoulish shadows across his masked and hooded face.

  Remember, they asked for this.

  This man.

  Hot rage crackled in my mind.

  He’d caused my son’s death. He’d terrorized us tonight. And now he was casually planning to set fire to the rest of my family and burn us alive.

  I stopped bending for the claw hammer. Because that was going to involve a slight, improvised, two-step process of my own. And instead I whipped my right hand around from behind my back. With the aerosol can of cooking fat in it.

  I aimed the nozzle at the flame and sprayed.

  Michael’s parents’ house recedes in the rear-view mirror. The night-time road feels too narrow. His dad’s Audi too wide. The headlamps don’t seem to give him enough light to see by and
he wonders if he should switch to full beam. But he remembers you probably shouldn’t do that in a residential area. And Michael can’t afford to draw attention to himself. Besides, in the darkness of the car, all the controls feel alien to him. It’s overwhelming. He’s suddenly sure he’ll crash.

  He can picture himself clipping every wing mirror of the long line of cars parked ahead of him. The vision is almost enough to make him stop.

  Hands jittery on the steering wheel, Michael glances down at the screen of his phone. No more messages from Fiona. Not yet. He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or afraid.

  In the deepest folds of his heart, he knows this can’t be a trick. Fiona wouldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t ask him to take his dad’s car and risk getting caught like this. But part of him wishes it was a trick – a part of him that wants it so badly he begins to weave a narrative for himself where he can tell Fiona he was so convinced it was a prank he didn’t come. A narrative where he turns back and she forgives him for letting her down. Where everything works out OK. Where she understands.

  A sudden huge thump. The steering wheel jumps from Michael’s hands and the Audi’s headlamps strafe the trees overhead.

  It takes him a second to realize he’s taken a speed bump too hard.

  He grips the wheel, lets off on the accelerator, stares intently at the road leading into town.

  Come quickly.

  That’s what Fiona’s most recent message said.

  And before that: Please. I’m begging you.

  And before that: So scared.

  48

  There was a motif on the reverse of the spray can of a black and yellow flame inside a yellow triangle. Beneath the motif were two words: HIGHLY FLAMMABLE.

  The misted spray condensed around the match flame and ignited in a gaseous flash. The flame mushroomed, smoked and expanded. The heat bundled back towards me in a wobbling, roaring jet.

  Dread surged inside me. I flinched and covered my face with my forearm. But I continued to spray, dousing the man and his plastic coveralls, painting the air with dancing flames that twitched blue and yellow and orange and white.