A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  Then there were the firearms the men had come here with. The tranquilizer gun they’d used on Buster. Even their disposable forensics suits. It was all equipment that could be available to police officers. It also explained how Adams had been able to get hold of a uniform to carry out his impersonation of PC Baker.

  ‘They were part of a specialist drugs task force,’ Lionel said. ‘Their unit has secured a lot of high-profile arrests in recent years. Lots of success.’

  Drugs. Police.

  I was finding it difficult to breathe.

  Was the secret room close to where we were sitting? Had the man inside it been held prisoner here the entire time we’d been in the lodge? I guessed so. Brodie must have brought him here before we’d arrived. Just the idea of it freaked me out. To think of him trapped on the other side of one of these walls . . .

  I shuddered.

  How powerful a figure did you have to be to have three police detectives prepared to do what these men had done tonight? Lionel had mentioned drugs. Had Adams, Kenny and Nayler been on the take? Was the man in that room some kind of crime lord or drug baron?

  Then there was one more question – the one I knew I had to ask, even though it scared me the most.

  ‘What was their connection to Michael?’

  ‘Wait.’

  Brodie levered himself up off the sofa with a grimace and hobbled over to the sliding glass door. He scanned the terrain outside. Goosebumps prickled across the back of my neck. I felt my breath shorten. Daylight was blooming over a green-grey sea.

  ‘False alarm.’ He shook his head and limped back to the sofa, baring his teeth the entire time. ‘He’s unarmed. I don’t think he’ll be back.’

  His one good eye was trained on Rachel as he talked, like he was willing her to look up at him. I think she knew that. She kept her head down.

  Lionel cleared his throat. ‘To answer your question, Tom, they were attempting to infiltrate a major east London drugs network.’

  ‘Michael didn’t have anything to do with drugs,’ Holly said. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, but she glared at Lionel without backing down. My fierce, brave girl. She knew as well as I did that we were no longer simply guests here, but she was still there for her brother. I felt a swell of pride. ‘Neither did Fiona.’

  Brodie spoke up. When he talked, I could hear a background wheeze that made me wonder how much internal damage he’d sustained. ‘They didn’t. The man in the car park was going to be the unit’s way in to the network. They had plans for him to become a confidential informer. They’d been trying to cultivate him for some time. Completely off the books.’

  The man in the car park who – according to the account Brodie and Lionel had laid out for us when we’d first settled around the dining table – had taken a three-storey dive to his death. I glanced at Rachel. She wouldn’t look up at me either. That worried me. What else was she hiding?

  ‘So what are you saying? He didn’t want to talk?’

  ‘You have to understand how this unit operated.’ Brodie’s dismissive tone suggested I didn’t know the first thing about the world he inhabited. That I didn’t know much of anything, really. ‘They needed this man’s help and they were prepared to do whatever it took to get it. They had a lot of evidence against him. If he refused to cooperate, they would have threatened to prosecute him. Then they would have told him word could get around that he was feeding them information for a reduced sentence. With the kind of professional drug gangs we’re talking about here, it would have been as good as giving him a death sentence. He would have gone into custody with a price on his head. There would have been no safe space for him.’

  ‘So he just jumped off the roof?’

  ‘Or walked off it.’

  I felt a sudden chill sweep inside the room.

  ‘Fiona saw everything,’ Rachel muttered.

  And contacted Michael.

  I closed my eyes as I thought about his phone call to me. The one I hadn’t answered. Those few seconds of breathing on the line.

  ‘Without Brodie we wouldn’t have found out any of this, Tom.’

  I ignored that. I wanted to know more about the man who’d fallen to his death. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Lionel asked.

  My anger flared. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Lionel. Some low-life drug dealer jumps off a roof and our son is killed because of it. These men came here tonight because of it. So, yes, on balance, I’d say it’s a pretty big deal.’

  Lionel waited a beat. He hitched an eyebrow. ‘Rachel?’

  Finally, she lifted her face just a fraction. Her eyes were red and trembling. She glanced from Lionel to Brodie, then back down again.

  ‘Just . . . let’s take them to the room. They should see for themselves.’

  58

  ‘Take a seat. All of you.’

  Lionel gestured at the tiered seating in the cinema room as he stalked towards the big screen at the front. I wavered just inside the doorway, feeling as if a physical force was pushing me back. Holly squirmed by me and collapsed into a chair. She looked exhausted; her face speckled with sweat.

  In any other circumstance, I would have insisted on her staying behind so she didn’t have to bear witness to this. But I was afraid that Adams might try to sneak into the lodge, and although we’d told Buster to stay put and keep watch it was safer to keep Holly close.

  Rachel shuffled into the room with her face down, looking dazed and anxious. Brodie followed her in. I’d heard him whispering harshly to her in the corridor, though I had no idea what had been said and wasn’t sure I cared to know. He propped the shotgun against the doorway behind him and held the pistol in his right fist down by his thigh. My eyes wandered to the shotgun. There was no easy way of getting to it. Brodie flatted his back against the wall with a grunt, then tilted his head and considered me with a slight, dismissive smirk, as if my predicament right now was nothing more than I deserved.

  ‘Not sitting, Tom?’ Lionel asked.

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  Lionel nodded, as if he understood completely. It maddened me. I didn’t need or want Lionel’s understanding or his compassion right now.

  There was a remote control in his hand. He pressed a button on it and the wall sconces glowed dimly. Then he pressed another button and a low electric humming started up above our heads. Holly flinched and looked up, and I watched with a growing sense of dread as the cinema screen began to shuffle up into a recessed slot in the ceiling.

  My knees flexed. Hidden behind the screen was a large panel of thickened glass with a greyish tint. Beyond it was deep gloom. Lionel rapped on the glass with his knuckle.

  ‘Heavily reinforced. Fully soundproofed.’

  My family had watched a film in here. They’d eaten snacks in here.

  I swallowed against the rising surge of bile in my throat and tried to brace myself for what had to come next. Lionel was poised to press another button on the remote when Rachel blurted out, ‘Wait!’

  She turned to me, reaching for my hand. I hesitated a moment before taking it and allowing her to pull me to one side. I was aware of Brodie watching us. It was obvious he didn’t like what he was seeing. I didn’t care. Rachel lowered her eyes as she gathered her nerves, but when she finally looked up at me and saw my expression, her face fell. My heart fell with it.

  Everything that has happened here tonight is because of how much I love you.

  The strangest thing – maybe the hardest thing – was that I think Rachel really meant that.

  ‘He was twenty-eight years old, Tom. He had a young daughter.’ She tugged on my hand. ‘It wasn’t just his life on the line when he jumped off that roof. He didn’t have a choice. These drug gangs don’t mess around.’ Rachel paused and looked off to her side. ‘Brodie can tell you a lot more about that.’

  I felt a deadening thud in my heart. It was another reminder that it was Brodie who’d found Rachel the answers nobody else could. It was Brodie who’d absolved our son. Wh
atever had happened here tonight, whatever he’d pushed us towards, I sensed that Rachel would always be grateful to him for that.

  ‘He would have known they’d come for his daughter, Tom. He stepped off that roof to save her.’

  I felt a heaviness in my chest. A father’s overwhelming love for his child. That was something I could relate to. And look at Rachel. Look at what she’d gone along with out of love for our son.

  I thought about what that man had done. Would I have been brave enough to do the same? Could I have coolly, calmly, stepped off a ledge to save Holly from harm?

  ‘What was his name, Rachel?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘James Finch,’ she said quietly, barely a whisper.

  I felt a cold tingling where our hands touched. That name. I could tell from the way she said it that it meant something to Rachel. That it should mean something to me.

  I grappled in my mind, thinking back.

  A spasm tore through me as I made the connection.

  Rachel’s speech at the gala function. James Finch had been the name of the repeat offender who’d committed suicide on the same day Michael had died. But Rachel must have known by then it wasn’t a simple suicide. She’d known his death was connected to Michael’s.

  She looked up and watched me connect the dots. I saw the fear and the shame in her eyes.

  ‘That wasn’t just a speech you gave, was it?’ I felt hollowed out, undone. ‘Someone at that function knew the truth. Just like you knew the truth. It wasn’t a speech. It was a taunt.’

  She shook her head desperately. ‘It was a test, Tom. Just a test. I was still trying to make up my mind. About all of this. About . . .’

  ‘You told me you wanted this,’ Brodie growled. ‘You still do.’

  She closed her eyes, as if stung. I stared at her, not quite believing what I was about to say.

  ‘It triggered the mugging, didn’t it? They came for us because you dropped that name. They came for us because you made it clear you knew.’

  ‘Mum,’ Holly whispered, and with that one word she communicated enough hurt and betrayal to make Rachel’s legs go from under her.

  ‘You have to believe me. I never imagined for one minute that any of this . . .’

  She collapsed, sobbing, and I held her up, feeling the most enormous weight dragging down on my heart. My throat burned. Tears blurred my sight. I turned and looked over at Lionel, feeling like I was drowning with no idea if he would throw me a rope or watch me sink.

  He smiled thinly with that same infuriating look of compassion, then clicked another button on the remote.

  Spotlights blazed into the space behind the glass.

  The room was mostly bare. A metal toilet bowl with no seat was bolted to one wall. The cement floor angled and sloped towards a drainage grill in the middle. The walls were painted a shiny, white gloss.

  My lungs stopped working. My heart banged against my ribs.

  The figure on the floor woke with a start and immediately curled into a foetal position, then slowly looked up.

  I’d made another mistake. Another crucial misunderstanding.

  It was a woman.

  59

  She was hunched up and cowed, her eyes squinted against the fierce light in the room. I watched her peer towards the glass with a faraway gaze and felt the ground fall away beneath me. The short hair. The long limbs. The striking features.

  ‘One-way glass,’ Lionel said, though by now his words sounded oddly distorted to me. ‘And yes, Tom. You’ve met before too.’

  At the charity gala. Lionel had introduced us. Rachel hadn’t been looking at me when she’d been standing on that dais making her speech, I now realized. Not exclusively. She’d also been looking at this woman.

  In her dress uniform.

  DCI Kate Ryan.

  I felt winded and there was a sudden intense swarming noise inside my head, growing louder, more crazed.

  The same thing must have been true of Brodie, I thought. He hadn’t been looking at me or at Lionel from across that room. He’d been studying Ryan’s reaction when Rachel dropped James Finch’s name.

  An enormous swell of suppressed rage expanded in my chest. Ryan had been the blurred figure sitting behind Michael and Fiona in the speed camera image of my car. She’d held a gun on my son. She’d scared Michael so badly he’d driven into a tree. She hadn’t pulled the trigger, but she may as well have. Without that, my son would still be here.

  And yet, at the same time, I also knew that whatever this was, it wasn’t right.

  ‘This is so messed up,’ Holly said.

  I stared at Lionel, feeling an overwhelming sense of waste and despair. ‘You can’t force a confession out of someone like this and use it in court. You must know you can’t.’

  Tiny frown lines appeared on Lionel’s forehead.

  ‘Why do we need a confession, Tom? We have all the facts of the case. Who said anything about court?’

  The swarming inside my head grew even fiercer as I stared at Ryan. A hero cop. A rising star of the Met. She placed her quaking hands flat against the glass and stared blankly out. Bewildered. Terrified.

  ‘JFA, Tom,’ Lionel said carefully. ‘Did Rachel tell you I invited her to join the board in an executive capacity?’

  I turned to look at Rachel again. She stumbled away from me, backing into the wall. My heart contracted.

  ‘You know how the board is currently structured,’ Lionel continued.

  I did, even if I didn’t want to think about it right now. There were eleven members on the board of Justice For All. Seven of them, if you included Lionel as chairman, were executive members. I knew this because I’d helped to draw up the governing documents for the charity. I’d handled the board minutes and other administrative work on a pro bono basis.

  I also knew that, in practical terms, it was the seven executive members who took all the key operational decisions behind JFA. And they all had one thing in common that had led them to become involved in the first place. Each of them had been the victim of an unsolved crime. Some had suffered directly. For others, a family member had been harmed. Appalling rapes. Tragic hit and runs. Murder. Grievous assault. Stalking.

  While the details of their own individual stories differed, they’d all experienced some of the anguish Lionel had known. It was a similar torment, I now knew, to the agony Rachel, Holly and I had experienced at the hands of Kate Ryan and her fellow officers. Then there was Brodie. Hadn’t he been haunted by whatever unknown horror had been visited upon his sister?

  ‘I take extreme care when I appoint any new executive director, Tom. There’s a rigorous vetting process. To get a seat on the board I have to know that a candidate is suitably driven. That we share the same world view, I suppose.’

  I snatched a breath. It felt like I was inhaling dry ice. What was that world view exactly? I was beginning to sense it wasn’t simply that all seven existing directors had been victims of unsolved crimes. It had to be something more than that. And even more worrying, it was a world view that my wife – hurt and broken as she was – had apparently come to share.

  Lionel raised the remote and clicked another button. Rachel startled and swung away from the wall. Behind where she’d been standing, a concealed panel had slid away to reveal a hidden recess.

  I stared into it. I had the feeling I was staring into the darkest, most damaged corners of Lionel’s mind.

  You think Lionel needs therapy, much?

  I’m just saying, after what happened to his wife . . .

  I actually shivered. The bronzed gleam. The elegant lines. Inside the recess was a statuette of a dancing ballerina. I had an awful suspicion it was the lost Degas that had been stolen from Lionel’s home on the night Jennifer was murdered.

  Oh no. No. Not this. No.

  It felt in that moment as if one door had slammed shut in my mind and another had flown open on to a yawning, black hole. I had the sensation I was toppli
ng. That I was about to plummet so far and so fast that I’d never climb out again.

  The remote location. The isolated room. The fences. The gate. Didn’t that sound a lot like a prison?

  Seven executive board members. Seven families let down by a justice system that had failed to punish those responsible for causing terrible harm.

  The swarming in my head became a dizzying roar.

  The room behind the glass wasn’t a holding cell. And this was something far more sinister than a home theatre.

  ‘Tony Bryant never made it to Spain, Tom. He was the first.’

  I reached out to steady myself as the room around me began to dip and swirl.

  Oh God, no. Please no.

  This was a viewing gallery.

  The secret room was an execution chamber.

  60

  I looked at Rachel. It felt as if someone had ripped out my heart. She was so fragile. So wretched. I wanted to go to her. I wanted to keep my distance. I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t agree to this,’ I said. ‘Please tell me you didn’t.’

  Tears spilled from her eyes. ‘I wanted answers, Tom. I needed them. You did too, if you’re honest.’

  ‘Not like this I didn’t.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’ Her voice cracked. ‘It’s not like there was another option. I wanted to fix us.’

  ‘By killing someone?’

  ‘Maybe. I thought if I had all the pieces I could put us together again. As a family. Maybe this would give us closure.’

  Closure.

  I didn’t say anything. I just shook my head and took a step back. I felt weightless. Untethered. Like I was having a strange, out-of-body experience.

  ‘And it’s not as if I’d made up my mind. I was still trying to decide. I wanted to talk to you about it. We were going to talk about it, remember?’

  Halting sobs took hold of her then. Her shoulders trembled. She reached out a hand to me but I took another step back.

  ‘She killed our son, Tom.’

  I felt my throat close up. There it was. That part I got.