The Family Man

by T. J. Lebbon

  ‘We’re going to be fine,’ Dom said. ‘I’d do anything to protect you and Daisy.’

  ‘Including going to jail?’

  ‘It won’t come to that. Listen, I’ve made a stupid mistake, but I’m going to put things right. Just hang in there a while longer and I’ll be there. I love you, Em.’ He looked into the woods and imagined those same words mingling in there from years before, bouncing from tree to tree and never likely to completely fade away.

  ‘You too. Be careful.’ She hung up.

  Dom turned back to Andy, who was at the car’s open boot.

  ‘That was Sonja Scott,’ Andy said, dropping the shovel inside and slamming the boot. He kept the bag over his shoulder. ‘Gang’s leader. Evil old bitch.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘She must be … seventy-four now.’

  ‘A seventy-four year old woman leads a gang of bank robbers?’

  ‘They don’t all play bowls and go to afternoon tea, you know,’ Andy said, smiling.

  Dom didn’t smile back.

  ‘Look, Dom, it wasn’t always bank robbery, I left when—’

  ‘Who’s Lip?’

  ‘Philip Beck. He’s the reason I left. Nasty piece of work.’

  ‘The one who’s been following my wife?’

  Andy nodded.

  ‘You think you can handle all this, don’t you?’ Dom asked. ‘There’s nothing at stake here for you. You can’t understand the threat, the danger my family is in.’

  ‘I understand,’ Andy said quietly. ‘Now let me call the old bitch and we can put an end to it.’ Andy dialled.

  Dom moved closer to listen. He heard the phone picked up after two rings and Andy said, ‘It’s me.’

  The old woman’s voice was distorted, but the evening air was still, hot and heavy, no breath of sound from elsewhere. Dom heard her reply just fine.

  ‘Hello, son,’ she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Little Things

  By eight o’clock that evening, Rose knew that she was leaving France and returning to the UK. It was the little things that had finally made up her mind. Small mistakes on Holt’s part, combining to make her worry and be concerned about his well-being. But mainly it was because of her sense of duty.

  She didn’t have much, but she owed Holt everything. She quickly brushed aside the thought that he’d deliberately left without her, because it didn’t matter. They were as close to each other as either of them had been to anyone in years, but their relationship was complex, deep, and probably as dysfunctional as they came. She didn’t even know his given name, only his surname. He’d told her that the last person to call him by his first name had been his wife.

  It could have been that he had left her behind for her own safety. Or perhaps it was because this was such a personal journey to him – it had taken him far back, shedding everything he had done in the past decade, the people that he’d met.

  After all, Holt had been waiting for almost ten years to kill the man who’d murdered his sister in such a brutal manner.

  Either way, three things made up Rose’s mind to follow.

  First, he’d left his laptop behind unlocked and with search histories not wiped, both of which should have been as habitual as breathing. The history showed the browsing he’d done over the past twenty-four hours, including news sites, local town websites, and transport routes and ticketing information. Everything was connected to the murders at the South Wales post office. That he had forgotten to delete the search meant that his mind was clouded and elsewhere, not in the now. He’d told her so many times that living in the moment was the best way of ensuring you made it to the next one. Holt had let his mind drift, and that had already sown seeds of danger on his journey.

  The second mistake was the identity he’d used to book a ferry crossing for his car. It was the same name and passport information he’d used fourteen months before, when the two of them had travelled to Spain to help a farmer and his family being threatened by a local gang. She was surprised that he hadn’t discarded and destroyed the identity, and even more surprised that he’d dared use it again. They each had at least two unused names and sets of documents for emergency travel.

  But the third fact that convinced her to follow was what he’d taken with him. She knew several places around the caravan and its field where he hid weapons, and there were probably as many again that she didn’t know. Every place she knew was empty. He’d also taken what he called his box of tricks. Old mobile phones, GPS units, circuit boards, microphones, listening devices and trackers; Holt often spent time experimenting and refining gadgetry that could help him track, follow and kill a target.

  The caravan felt empty of him and his things, and she wondered whether he’d ever planned on returning. But she doubted he was even thinking that far ahead.

  Rose quickly erased Holt’s history on the computer, going in deep to make sure there was nothing left to find. She performed a sweep of the caravan, ensuring there were no other signs that might point the way. No notepads, scribbled scraps of paper, maps, anything else that might put someone on their track. Taking one last look around, she wondered whether she’d see this place again. There was no nostalgia or sadness to her thoughts. Just a knowledge that their brief time at rest was probably over, and that their lives were shifting once again.

  It didn’t matter. It would have happened sooner or later, and part of her felt a quickening at the prospect. She didn’t like feeling too comfortable, calm, or even experiencing a shred of being at peace. It felt like a betrayal of her murdered family.

  She cycled home quickly, pushing herself hard and feeling the burn. By the time she arrived back at the gîte she was streaming with sweat, throat burning and lungs heaving. It felt good. It felt like being alive.

  She hurried inside, stripped her kit and stepped into the shower. After drying and dressing she made her travel arrangements, reading her name from the new passport just to make sure she was letter-perfect. Then she started packing a bag.

  There wasn’t much to take. All the clothes she owned, washing and personal hygiene stuff, a couple of books left behind by tourists in the local cafe, training kit, they all fit into the same big holdall. Her whole life in one bag, and when she zipped it closed she was hidden away from the world once more.

  Rose liked it that way. It was easy to move, and easier still to leave everything else behind.

  She scoured the gîte for half an hour, making sure she’d left no sign of ever having been there. Gathering all the weapons in the kitchen, she felt a pang of regret at having to lose most of them. She kept only the Glock, five spare magazines, the combat knife and the grenade. Wrapping them in oil cloth, she hid the package in her car, tucked into a space beside the catalytic converter.

  The last time she’d left for a couple of days she had hidden the weapons in the septic tank. But now she felt certain that she would not be returning. It took fifteen minutes to walk down to the lake, where she opened the rucksack and threw the remaining hardware as far out as she could. The ripples of each heavy splash merged and then quickly faded away.

  Ready to leave at last, Rose made a strong coffee and sat out on the lawn. The countryside around her was mostly quiet, only the sound of distant farm equipment serenading the silence.

  Molly runs onto the lawn from another woodland far away and a long time ago, waving a handful of dandelions and trailing seeds behind her like mid-summer snows.

  Rose drank her coffee. The sun beat down on the back of her neck. A bird of prey circled on thermals high above.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Windy Miller

  Andy had never frightened him. He had a confidence which Dom sometimes lacked, a self-assured swagger that stopped short of arrogance, a natural grace, and fitness easily maintained. He seemed to be once of life’s champions, while Dom worked hard for everything he had, and struggled to maintain it.

  But now for the first time, Andy actually scared him.

  Do
m had a stranger in his car. Andy’s voice was still the same, but his presence and bearing had changed. Maybe it was only in Dom’s perception, knowing what he knew.

  The gang was Andy’s family! Family, with a capital “F”. Dom shouldn’t have been surprised, really. And he supposed it didn’t really make much difference.

  ‘So your mother’s a murderous crime lord and bank robber,’ Dom said. ‘Who else should I know about? Uncle Corleone in Sicily? Grandfather Capone?’

  ‘I guess you should know, if we’re going to meet them,’ Andy said.

  ‘Yeah, why don’t you fill me in on who’s likely to stab me or bury me in a motorway parapet.’

  ‘They’re not like …’ Andy started to protest, but he trailed off, glancing across at Dom. ‘They weren’t, anyway. Until he came.’

  ‘Lip. So who’s he, long lost brother?’

  ‘No. He’s seeing my half-sister, Mary. Sonja had her after Dad died. Heart attack while he was fishing. He was a good guy. I was nine. Mum went off the rails a bit after that, booze and drugs and a string of boyfriends, then she got pregnant. Mary and I never really hit it off. She didn’t know her father. Me neither; he ran off before she was even born. She’s ten years younger than me and she’s always had a violent streak. When Lip appeared on the scene she changed, became even more brutal. He influenced everyone but me. He’s weird. I wouldn’t call him charismatic, but … powerful.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Frank, a cousin from my dad’s side who was always close to Sonja. We were like friends, really. He’s a big guy, steroid junkie, body building, all that. A rough sort, but he’s bright with it.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Sonja, Frank, Mary. And Lip.’

  ‘And you,’ Dom said.

  ‘I told you, not any more.’

  ‘But old habits die hard.’

  They’d be there in five minutes. Sonja had told Andy to meet them out at the old windmill. It was known locally as Windy Miller’s, although Dom was sure Andy’s estranged family wouldn’t know the name. That simple fact made him feel a little more confident. This was his place, his town, and he knew it like the back of his hand. They were the invaders, outsiders come here to steal and ending up committing murder. Soon they would be gone.

  When that happened there was so much more he’d have to go through. Secrets he’d have to keep, live with, sleep with if he could. A deep injustice in the murderers of an old woman and a teenage girl still walking free, while he knew who they were. Also the chasm that he’d already felt opening between him and Emma and Daisy. That gap could be bridged, he was confident, but it would always be there, a dangerous drop into dark knowledge and violent history that might doom him at any moment. He’d always have to walk that bridge carefully.

  The ragged sails of Windy Miller’s appeared in the distance.

  ‘Let me do the talking,’ Andy said. ‘I’m the one they’ll be interested in.’

  ‘This is a bad idea,’ Dom said. He eased back on the gas and the car slowed. Cruising it to a halt in a field gateway, the top of the windmill was just visible half a mile away. ‘Four of them, and they have guns. What’s to stop them just shooting us and running? That place is abandoned and deserted. We’ll lie there dead for weeks.’ His stomach felt low and heavy, filled with dread. His limbs were lead. His hands on the steering wheel felt like someone else’s.

  ‘They won’t all be here,’ Andy said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well …’ Andy frowned uncomfortably. ‘One of them, maybe Lip, will be looking for Emma and Daisy.’

  ‘But they’re safe!’

  ‘They are, don’t worry. He won’t find them at Mandy’s. And Sonja will likely be holed up somewhere, guiding things. Probably not that close.’

  ‘I should warn Emma,’ Dom said, but he had no idea what to say.

  ‘And say what? Dom, she’ll be safe. They don’t know everything. They got your address, names and Em’s phone number from your car registration, but they don’t have a clue about your friends, or where Mandy lives. Come on. No point in being late, that’ll only antagonise them more.’

  Dom drove to the narrow turning leading towards the windmill. There had been talk for years about developing the old mill and associated land into business units, and one time a famous footballer was rumoured to have bought it intending to turn it into a luxury home. He sold it on again, and year by year it had become more dilapidated. Dom had cycled out there with Daisy the year before, parking their bikes against the fence surrounding the mill and going exploring. They’d looked for a way in but the lower doorways and windows were closed up with steel sheeting, the two upper balconies out of reach. The sails were skeletal and locked, never moving even in the highest winds.

  There was talk of ghosts, of course. Dom quite liked that. It gave the sad old building a new character after losing its old purpose.

  They bounced along the dry, rutted track, raising a cloud of dust behind them. As they approached the windmill it looked as still and silent as ever, and just as lifeless. It was the corpse of something once alive, a rotten thing whose life had been shed, leaving behind a hollow shell.

  ‘No cars,’ Dom said.

  ‘They’ll have parked out of sight.’

  Dom looked in the rear-view mirror and saw almost nothing because of the dust. They were hardly keeping their presence a secret.

  ‘This is going to be fine, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  Dom wanted to speak with Emma, hug Daisy. He didn’t want to be here. But this was facing up to what he and Andy had done. Not quite making things right, but putting things behind them.

  He parked and turned off the engine. With their windows down the sudden, complete silence was disconcerting. Dom could not even hear birdsong. Perhaps the sound of the engine had startled them silent, or maybe it was the potential violence in the air.

  ‘Remember, I do the talking,’ Andy said. ‘You okay, mate?’

  ‘Fucking dandy.’ Dom opened the door and jumped out. After the air-conditioned car, the evening heat took his breath away. Dust drifted slowly across the unsurfaced area around the mill’s base. A pair of buzzards circled high up.

  Attached to one side of the circular mill was a small single-storey building. Just past that, Dom could see the nose of a blue car.

  The metal sheeting over the entrance door in the mill’s wall had been prised aside. The triangular gap was dark.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ a woman’s voice said. Dom shielded his eyes and looked up. The windmill had two external balconies, the first ten feet above the ground, the second fifteen feet higher. The woman stood on the highest balcony.

  ‘You haven’t,’ Andy said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Mary, his half-sister said. ‘You don’t write, you don’t call, and the first thing you do after not seeing me for three years is call me fat.’

  She didn’t look fat to Dom. Tall, slim, dark-skinned, her long hair was tied in two plaits, which hung over each shoulder as she leaned on the balustrade. She looked striking, wearing khaki shorts and a white vest. The sun was low now, sinking to their right, interrupting his vision. But he thought that Mary was smiling.

  ‘How’s that charming boyfriend of yours?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Still my boyfriend.’

  ‘Wow. I thought you’d have tied the knot by now, nice guy like that.’

  ‘Just because you want to be best man.’

  ‘Nah, not when you’ve got Frank. Hey, Frank, you still got bigger tits than Mary?’

  Dom glanced at Andy. What the hell was he doing? They’d come here to hand over the bag and settle things, not antagonise. But he was starting to realise very quickly that the complexities of family must stand in the way of this being anything approaching easy.

  No one answered. If Frank was here, he was keeping quiet and out of sight.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask after your mother?’ Mary asked.

 
‘No.’

  She seemed to shrug. Or maybe she just stood up straight. Dom couldn’t quite tell, the sun was hurting his eyes.

  ‘Come on up,’ Mary said. ‘Both of you. Bring the bag.’ Then she disappeared inside the windmill.

  Dom took a step closer to Andy. ‘So where’s Frank?’

  ‘Keeping an eye on us, I expect,’ Andy said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘You’re just going in there?’

  ‘No choice,’ Andy said. ‘They’ve got the upper hand here.’

  ‘Let me call Emma, see if—’

  ‘We just need to get this finished with,’ Andy said. ‘Trust me.’

  Dom raised his eyebrows, but Andy was already walking towards the windmill. He could only follow.

  They squeezed through the gap between steel door and wall.

  Inside it smelled of age. Damp and musty, but also a tinge of neglect, as if the building, untouched and unloved, was slowly going to rot. The air was as heavy and warm as outside, laden with disturbed dust and narrow spears of low sunlight filtered through openings in the walls. Lower windows were roughly covered with timber boarding, some of those further up left open and bearing the dust and bird shit of decades. It was surprisingly bright, mainly because much of the internal structure had been stripped away. There were thick, heavy beams spanning the space above them, but floor boarding and ceilings were largely missing.

  Sunlight touched upon loose piles of timber, bags of cement gone solid over time, and the workings of the old mill still in place. Big cogs, wheels and axles were rusted a dark, common colour. The massive grinding stones on the ground floor were honeycombed with bolt holes, edges worn down from past decades of constant use.

  Daisy would love this, Dom thought.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. He shoved past Andy and headed up the timber staircase. The first flight followed the wall a half-circle before reaching the first floor level. A doorway led to the balcony outside. It was closed, bolted and padlocked. He stepped across exposed joists and started up the second, longer flight of stairs. The tower was narrowing, the stairs becoming steeper and not quite as wide.