by C. M. Ewan
‘I give you my word.’
Silence.
‘You’re full of crap.’
‘I don’t think you believe that. You still have time to listen to good advice.’
For the briefest second, I saw Adams falter, and I wondered: is he actually considering it? Could Lionel really talk us out of this mess?
But no, Adams shook his head, refitted his mask, pulled his hood up and pointed towards the woods with his gun.
‘Move. All of you.’
Nobody budged so he lifted the shotgun and pumped the action. That awful crunch-crack again. It seemed to echo in the trees. Holly gasped and clung to me even tighter. Rachel shuddered and looked at me. She seemed desperate. Helpless.
‘Come on,’ I said to her roughly. ‘We should just go.’
I turned and tramped forwards in my drenched socks, cradling Holly. After a few seconds, Rachel and Lionel fell into step behind us.
‘Where’s Buster?’ Holly whispered, into my ear.
I shook my head. I’d been wondering the same thing, but I didn’t know the answer to her question and I wasn’t going to lie to her this time. He hadn’t been outside when we’d come out of the pod. I thought maybe he’d run back to the lodge ahead of us. Or maybe he was wandering around, dazed and scared silly in the trees.
‘Are we going to die?’
‘No, Holly. We’re not going to die.’
A lie? Maybe, because I had no way of knowing how things would turn out. But there was one thing I was aware of – something I was pretty sure everyone else had missed. Before we’d left the pod, I’d snatched one final look at the bank of monitors. The camera sequence had cycled back to the video from the swimming pool. It still featured the smaller man’s body bobbing under the surface. But Brodie was no longer there.
56
I thought about a lot of things as we walked into those woods. I thought about Rachel and Brodie, and what he’d done for her and why. Then, when I felt the need to shy away from thinking about that, I thought about Holly and how much I loved her and wanted to protect her, and how sorry I was for all the ways we’d let her down. Rachel and I had been so focused on our own problems, on missing Michael. As parents we like to tell ourselves our kids always come first. But that hadn’t been the case with Holly, and still she’d leaped up off that sofa to try to save me, even as, I feared, blood was seeping out of the puncture wound to her side. She’d had a shotgun pointed at her. She’d placed her life on the line for me.
It made me wonder again: what kind of father was I to deserve a child like that? What kind of husband? What kind of man?
My son was dead. I hadn’t been there for Michael at the end and – perhaps even worse than that – I hadn’t defended him afterwards. Rachel had been so sure Michael couldn’t have done what he’d been accused of and she’d been right. Why hadn’t I believed in him in that way? I knew my son as well as Rachel did. I knew that he loved playing Xbox, that he could do a backwards flip from a standing start, that he was failing geography but acing maths, that he never picked up his towel after a shower, that he was in love with Fiona, that he had dreams of taking a year out and travelling when his A levels were done. I knew all that and so much more, and deep in my heart I also knew that I should have believed in him and forgiven him, the same way Rachel had asked me to, the same way she instinctively had.
Rachel had gone so far – too far – to find out the truth about Michael’s death and to give me back my love of my son. I thought about how much I missed him. How much I missed my family. And yes, I asked myself if we were going to die out here among these trees. If these were the last moments I would spend with Rachel and Holly. If these were the last sights, smells, feelings any of us would ever have. Because if the man whom Adams and his two partners had come here looking for was really imprisoned inside the lodge, then what was to stop Adams from killing us and going in search of him for himself? Or maybe he’d just shoot Rachel and Holly and me, then force Lionel to tell him the truth.
We entered the clearing with the remains of the campfire in it. I felt watched. And not just by Adams. Foolish, maybe, but in that moment I swear I could feel Michael’s presence. It was almost as if he was here with us, and for those few brief seconds I almost let go of my fear. I don’t know if I believe in heaven or God or any of those things. But I do know that I believed in Michael again and – as I stopped and inhaled the damp forest scent – a small part of me took solace from the thought that if this really was going to be it, then maybe, somehow, I would get to see him once more.
‘What have you stopped for?’ Adams shouted. ‘Keep moving.’
I could hear the tension in his voice and I realized, with a sinking dread, that this was a moment of intense pressure for him. He was so close to getting what he’d come here for, even after two men had died. But if we were going to make a move, he had to know that our best chance would be in the dawn gloom under the trees.
I peered forwards, to where the lights blazing inside and outside the lodge were visible in fractured patterns through the pine needles and leaves. Was Brodie making his way to us, planning some kind of ambush? He’d saved our lives at least once tonight but he’d also knocked Lionel out, abducted the man in the secret room, drawn these men towards us like moths to a flame. How unpredictable was he? How far would he go?
‘Holly, sweetheart, I’m going to need you to walk for a bit.’
I set her down gently. She swayed, then got her balance. Once she was steady, I undid her coat and quickly checked the dressing on her side. A film of blood was trapped under the plastic coating, thick and dark. It squirmed under my fingers. The gauze pad was soaked through but there was no real leakage. Maybe the bleeding had slowed or begun to clot.
‘That hurts, Dad.’
‘Sorry.’
I replaced her coat and took her hand, then turned and reached out for Rachel. She seemed surprised by my move. I think I was too. So much had gone wrong between us. I guess I was still trying to cling to what had always been right.
Lionel hung back by a metre or so, his tufted hair and unkempt appearance making him look bleary and hungover.
Adams crabbed round to our left. His coveralls flashed white in the dim morning light. I had a sudden urge to push Holly and Rachel away and yell at them to run as fast and as far as they could. Maybe I could dive back and tackle Adams more successfully this time. Block a shot. Do something – anything – to get them away from this.
‘Start moving or I start shooting.’
Fear quivered at the base of my spine. Holly tugged on my hand. I resisted a second more, but there was no way out that I could see. I tramped after her, pulling on Rachel’s hand in turn. I heard the crunch of Lionel’s footfall. Then Adams’s.
The trees began to shrink in around us, becoming densely clustered, tightly knotted. Soon, Rachel, Holly and I were forced to bunch close together to fit between them. We could have let go of each other’s hands but I didn’t want to, and I sensed that they didn’t either.
‘I love you,’ I whispered.
They squeezed my hands. Holly snivelled. When I looked back at Rachel, her mouth fell open soundlessly and she shook her head, like there were no words for her to explain.
A tree with a wide trunk blocked our path. There were thick brambles to the left of it. Holly veered to the right, into a trench filled with knee-high ferns. In the middle of the trench, the trunk of a long-ago-toppled pine was lying slantways a few feet off the ground. Stunted branches poked out from it. A huge clod of earth and roots had been torn up at one end.
Holly paused, as if to turn back, but I jabbed her wrist forwards. Keep going.
She glanced back at me, uncertain. Her face was drawn, her pupils wildly dilated from behind the swelling around her eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ I whispered, and even though I knew she didn’t believe me and I could tell how scared she was, my heart still clenched when she nodded and hoisted her front leg over the log, as Rachel bumped into me from behind.
‘What’s the hold-up?’ Adams called.
‘There’s a tree on the ground.’
I faced forwards and scanned the trees in the dewy gloom. Still no sign of Brodie. Was that a good thing or bad? I didn’t know how far he could walk or how much blood he’d lost from the wound to his calf. Too much, maybe.
Holly lifted her second leg over the trunk and I tracked her move. Ahead and to our right was a thick screen of brambles and bushes. To our left was another undulating trench and more deep thickets of ferns. Diamonds of blue-white light shone through the trees from the lights around the lodge. Rachel straddled the tree after me, then Lionel.
We swished on through the ferns. I heard dark muttering from behind as Adams planted one foot on the trunk and jumped down to the other side.
An owl – I kid you not – hooted from somewhere far off in the trees. As its whooping call repeated and faded away, I heard a faint rustle of foliage from the thicket of brambles and bushes to our right. Was it a woodland animal responding to the call the owl had made? One of the hares Brodie had told me about, maybe? Or was it Brodie himself?
‘What the—?’
I turned and looked past Lionel to see Adams suspended in mid-movement, his body locked in an unnatural pose. His elbows were high above him, the shotgun held sideways over his head, like he was wading waist-deep in a muggy bog and trying to keep the shotgun dry. He was leaning forwards from his hips with all his weight on his lead foot, his masked face twisted and turned, looking back at his trailing foot, which was a short distance up in the air, his toe pointed down.
I watched him yank his trailing leg forwards but it wouldn’t come. Something was holding it back.
A snare.
It was looped around his ankle.
My heart seized. Was this our chance?
That sound in the foliage again. It was louder now. Snapping and cracking, off to our right. The foliage shook and swayed and—
‘Nobody moves!’ Adams yelled. ‘Don’t any of you move!’
—I heard two familiar yips as Buster tore through the brambles. His barks ricocheted around the tight woodland space. He bounded forwards in a chocolate-brown blur, jaws parted, teeth bared in a primal snarl.
Adams yanked on his trapped leg again. When it still wouldn’t come he hopped round on his front foot to face Buster. He lowered his shotgun.
My body shut down. I went numb all over and stared as Holly screamed in terror and something heavy and dark buzzed by my face.
Like I told you before, Holly plays hockey on Saturday mornings. To watch her go sprinting across a field of AstroTurf is to see a warrior princess intent on scalping a sworn enemy.
She’d picked up a branch and swung it hard at Adams’s temple with an explosion of bark. He teetered backwards. A brilliant white flash stung my eyes. The shotgun boomed. Branches shattered above our heads. Adams fell backwards over the log as the shotgun sprang out of his hands and Buster slammed into his chest and spun away. The snare ripped clean out of the ground.
I still couldn’t move. I just stared, gripped by horror as Adams lay still for a split-second, winded maybe, and Buster barked and growled in his face. Then Adams batted Buster away, twisted onto his knees, felt around for the shotgun.
Too late.
Lionel was ahead of him, leaping through the ferns like a much younger man. Adams saw it and scrambled to his feet. He turned and broke into a lurching run with one hand pressed to his head, the snare trailing from his ankle and Buster barking after him.
Lionel kicked and fumbled around in the tall ferns, turning in circles. Adams flitted away between the trees.
Then Brodie hobbled out through a tangle of brambles and foliage, using a branch as a crutch. There was a pistol in his hand. He aimed it at Lionel’s chest and motioned with it until Lionel backed up and Brodie was able to duck awkwardly for the shotgun.
‘Well, you can bloody well stop pointing that thing at me,’ Lionel told him. ‘Tom, Rachel, Holly, why don’t we go back to the lodge?’
Michael is playing FIFA on his Xbox when his phone buzzes. His bedroom has grown dark around him. The TV flickers in the gloom.
He hits pause on his controller. It’s been half an hour now since Mum and Holly went out. He remembers Mum shouted something about a pizza that was ready for him to put in the oven. When he grabs up his phone he sees that Fi has sent him a message on Snapchat.
Fiona: Hi?
Michael: Hey.
Fiona: Something has happened.
Fiona: Something bad.
Michael: U OK?
Fiona: No. I’m in trouble.
Fiona: Seriously. You have to help me.
Michael: Where are u? What’s happening?
Fiona: The car park.
Fiona: I’m hiding.
Michael: From what? I told you not to go there without me.
Michael: You promised.
There’s no response for close to a minute. Michael sits there, cradling his phone, looking blindly at his football game frozen on screen. Around him all is darkness. The dark is inside his bedroom and outside on the street. As he waits, Michael has the creepy feeling that the darkness is sneaking inside his lungs.
He’s seen people dealing in that car park. He knows there are homeless people who sleep there.
He should put on a light. Then he’ll call her.
Fiona: Don’t call me.
Michael: Why not?
Fiona: Because they’re looking for me. They’ll hear.
Michael: Who is looking for you?
Michael: What happened?
Michael: Seriously. R U OK?
Michael: Is this a joke?
Michael gets up from the floor. He paces the room. His heart flutters like a bird is trapped in his chest.
Fiona: I need you to come and get me.
Fiona: Please.
Michael: You know I’m not supposed to go out tonight.
Fiona: MICHAEL! I NEED YOU!
Michael scrubs his palm over his face. He’s never known Fiona to lie or fool around. Not like this. Part of him wishes he had.
Michael: What about your parents?
Fiona: Are you kidding? Help me!
Fiona: Michael?
Michael: OK.
Michael: Let me get my bike out.
Fiona: No. You have to get here fast.
Fiona: Like now.
Fiona: Can you bring your dad’s car?
Again, Michael looks up from his screen. He has a terrible feeling about this. What she’s asking him is impossible. And yet . . .
Michael: Why are you hiding?
This time, the wait is longer. Michael is aware of a slow ticking in his blood.
Fiona: They killed someone.
Fiona: I saw them.
Michael: WHAT?
Fiona: They were crowding this man.
Fiona: They forced him off the roof. From the top level.
Michael: For real?
Fiona: Yes. I was taking photos of that car. I hid behind it when they came up.
Michael’s heart thumps harder, like the bird is desperate to get out. He knows the car she’s talking about. There’s a waist-high brick wall on the top level of the car park, overlooking a three-storey drop to a parking level below. Two days ago, Fiona took photos of Michael running along that ledge and vaulting over an estate car that’s been abandoned for weeks now.
Fiona: Please help me.
Fiona: PLEASE.
Michael: Call the police.
Fiona: No.
Michael: You have to.
Fiona: I can’t.
Michael: Why not?
57
‘You’re telling me these men are police detectives?’
Everything around me stilled. Police. I’d thought of the men who’d come here tonight as thugs. As criminals.
My temples throbbed. I couldn’t control the jitters in my hands. We were sitting around the glass dining table in the lodge. Lionel was facing me. Rachel was
to my left, Holly to my right. Buster was on the floor by Holly’s chair.
Brodie adjusted his position behind us. He was braced against the back of the nearest sofa, wincing as he eased the weight off his bloodied leg. The shotgun was resting next to him. The pistol was in his right hand. He’d used a tea towel to smear some of the blood from his face and chest. On the surface, at least, he was keeping watch for Adams, but there was no doubt in my mind he was also guarding us.
I watched as Lionel glared over at him again. They were monitoring each other furtively, but they seemed to have reached an unspoken truce. I didn’t understand why quite yet, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it when I did.
Holly gripped my leg under the table. She was frighteningly pale. Rachel had checked her vitals and her dressing. She’d told Holly everything looked fine, but I didn’t know how worried we should be. Rachel had been reluctant to unpeel the dressing to take a closer look in case Holly’s bleeding worsened.
Now Rachel was leaning forwards with her head in her hands. I thought again of that moment when she’d drawn me to one side in the woods. If she’d known these men were really police detectives, it probably explained her reluctance to call the police for help.
‘DC Adams you know,’ Lionel said carefully. ‘DC Kenny is the one in the pantry. DS Nayler is the one in the pool.’
I felt my skin cool. ‘So by coming here tonight . . .?’
‘They were acting out of pure self-interest. They didn’t come in any official capacity. Not by a long way.’
Police. All three of them. I tried again to adjust to that. It still wouldn’t stick. Based on what Rachel had told me, they’d hounded Michael to his death. They’d come here tonight to silence my family. The thought was sickening and disorientating, and it made me just about as angry as I’d ever been in my life. But at the same time, it did explain some things.
Such as why Rachel had gone along with Lionel’s plan to let Brodie investigate what had really happened, because they’d probably convinced her it was the only sure way to prevent an ongoing cover-up. And that fit, didn’t it? The images from the speed cameras had been half scrubbed from the public records, and I guessed that was something police detectives could be capable of.