The Family Man

by T. J. Lebbon

  Dom glanced around as he climbed, keeping tight to the wall. Andy followed close behind. The stairs had a timber balustrade, but it looked weak and old, and the drop back down to the first floor almost seemed to lure him close. He wasn’t afraid of heights, but he had a healthy respect for them.

  He passed two windows as he climbed, squinting in the sunlight. The glass was dusty, but looked to have been recently wiped in several places. Might be fingerprints there, he thought. And on the metal doors downstairs, the bolts. He was already thinking ahead, even though the present was still uncertain and promising danger.

  An anonymous call, a few names, a place where the killers had hidden … Maybe there was a way to bring justice, without the law also falling onto his shoulders.

  Dom reached the second floor level, Andy right behind him. The tower had narrowed considerably, the space only about twelve feet across. The flooring was more complete up here, and scattered with the pale grey bodies of dead pigeons. Bird shit speckled the dusty timber like old acne. The smell was worse, as if the stench of neglect rose with time.

  The door to the higher balcony was open.

  ‘Nice views out here,’ Mary said. ‘Come on out.’

  Dom and Andy exchanged a look between them. Andy looked calm and confident, and he nodded, mouthing, It’s all fine.

  Dom believed him. Just for a few seconds, he actually believed what the man who’d been his friend said. Then they stepped outside onto the balcony, Andy holding Dom back so that he could go first.

  As Andy went, he pulled something from his pocket.

  Mary stood to the right, one hand on the railing, the other resting on her hip, ankles crossed. She nodded Andy a greeting.

  Her eyes switched to Dom, and then over his shoulder and along the balcony past the doorway.

  The sun was behind him, and Dom saw the shadow cast past his feet. A huge shadow that moved, flowed, as it pointed something their way.

  ‘Andy!’ he shouted. An instinct fed by tension and fear took hold. Without turning, he folded his knees and fell back through the doorway.

  A loud blast followed him. Someone screamed. Dom realised it was him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Splinters

  Emma’s friend kept such a clean house that Emma was almost afraid to sit.

  Childless, Mandy’s place could almost have been a show-home for the new estate she lived on. Cream carpets, a cream leather suite, shelving without a speck of dust, and a kitchen that gleamed like new, Emma often took the piss out of her.

  Mandy would shrug and smile, content in her own existence. Most of the time Emma wondered if Mandy really wanted kids and a husband as she professed. But just occasionally, she felt a pang of irrational jealousy.

  Now she was pacing the house, carrying her fourth cup of coffee and checking that doors were locked, wooden blinds half-closed, and that her phone had a signal anywhere inside.

  In contrast to how she lived, Mandy was absent-minded and just a bit mad. As Emma and Daisy had arrived she’d been dashing around the house readying to leave. She was late for a date with her boyfriend, and she hated being late, though somehow her frantic dashing seemed to leave no messy wake. She’d thought nothing of Emma asking if she and Daisy could spend a couple of hours there. Her expression had said, Argument with Dom?, and Emma had done nothing to disabuse her of the notion.

  ‘How long do we have to stay here?’ Daisy asked again.

  ‘Until Dad gets here. He’s bringing a Chinese.’

  Daisy was sprawled on the sofa, phone glued to her hand. Dom and Emma had debated their daughter having a smartphone at almost eleven years old, but the ‘all my friends have got one’ argument had trumped any concerns either of them had. She had a good set of friends and they were constantly in touch, Snapchatting or tweeting or whatever the hell-ing else kids did nowadays.

  ‘So what do you think he’s really done, Mum?’

  Emma paused in her slow pacing, leaning against the living room door frame. Daisy had connected her phone to the sound system and Mumford & Sons pounded and strummed, volume low.

  ‘Something stupid,’ Emma said.

  ‘We’ll look after each other. I know karate.’

  ‘You do,’ Emma said, smiling. Her daughter was a purple belt, and she’d seen her put a teenaged girl heavier and harder than her onto the floor in five seconds flat. Daisy was a sweet kid, but she could pack a punch.

  ‘I miss Jazz,’ she said. Tears fell.

  Emma went to her and sat beside her, reaching out and grasping her hand.

  ‘We all do, sweetie.’

  ‘I still think …’ Daisy said, holding up her phone.

  ‘No!’ Emma said. ‘I told you, don’t tell even your friends where we are, honey. Just for now we’ll be here on our own. Only Dom and us know where we are, not the rest of the world.’

  ‘Like a secret?’

  ‘A secret.’

  ‘Johnny English secret?’

  ‘But not so much face-pulling.’

  Emma kept thinking of the police. She lived a normal, mostly conventional life, and such a reaction to current events was automatic. But the assurances given her by Dom and, through him, Andy, echoed in her mind. That, and the threats from the old woman.

  She’d found Emma’s number. The freak in the Jeep knew where they lived. It was terrifying, and one thing Emma and Dom shared was their fear of bad people. Unreasonableness. Violence. It was what made them such a good team looking after Daisy and themselves, any other differences aside. Now that she knew Andy was embroiled deeper in this than she really understood, her love for Dom, and her concern for him, had grown.

  Not just yet, she thought. But the minute something else goes wrong, that’ll be the time to call them.

  With Daisy slumped on the sofa, Emma padded across the hallway to the dining room. It opened onto the kitchen at the back of the house, but the front windows looked out over the main road running east out of Usk.

  She sipped her coffee and watched the world go by. It was gone eight o’clock, and though growing dim inside, she didn’t want to turn on any lights. The timber blinds would keep her shielded from view.

  Emma blinked and experienced a sudden memory of Andy standing naked in their en suite. The rush of emotion she now felt was hatred, not lust. He was a bastard. ‘What the fuck have you got my husband into?’ she muttered.

  A white Jeep passed slowly along the main road.

  Emma held her breath. Squinted. She almost parted the blinds to get a better view, then held back. It was moving on. White, dirtied, tinted windows, it looked so familiar. As it moved away she sighed heavily, not even realising that she’d been holding her breath.

  Its brake lights flashed red.

  Several cars slowed, overtook, then the Jeep reversed back along the road until it was directly opposite the entrance to Mandy’s short driveway.

  I parked the car in the driveway, she thought. Bloody idiot!

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Stay back and keep still.’

  ‘Is that him?’ Daisy appeared beside her, staring through the blinds. She raised her phone and touched the screen, then started snapping pictures.

  ‘Just keep still!’ Emma said.

  The Jeep’s driver’s window powered down. He stared at the house. A van passed between them, then a heavier lorry from the other direction. The man’s focus and expression did not change.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ Daisy said. ‘He’s spooky.’

  He’s worse than that, Emma thought.

  Daisy took more pictures. ‘If he killed Jazz, I want the police to be able to catch him.’

  The vehicle reversed a little, mounting the kerb slightly and coming to a halt. The window remained lowered, and the man sat back in his seat as if getting himself comfortable.

  Emma backed away from the window but didn’t take her eyes off the Jeep.

  Daisy took one last snap. ‘Got him,’ she said. ‘Wanted, for crimes against hairstyles.’
She was joking, but Emma could hear the fear underlying her daughter’s quips.

  She picked up her own phone and dialled Dom.

  Dom fell back through the open door into the windmill, splinters peppering his exposed left arm and neck. Landing on his hands he kicked forward, diving for the head of the staircase, knowing he should stand but fearing that to pause would doom him. He rolled instead, tipping over the first stair and clasping his arms around his head, turning onto his back and drawing his knees in to his stomach, catching one quick glimpse behind him before he bounced from one timber tread to the next.

  The doorway was empty, but shadows flitted back and forth across it.

  Dom was winded. He tried to stretch out his legs to arrest his fall, but one foot snagged between balusters, twisted, then flipped free with a soft wooden snap. He hoped the snap was the bannister, not his ankle.

  He rolled twice more then struck a joist, feeling himself starting to drop through the floor. He panicked, stretching out his arms and legs. One arm curled over a joist and his legs, held straight, bridged him over the gap. He looked down. Dust drifted below him, and a shard of broken timber bounced from the floor below. His phone slipped from his pocket and fell, case cracking, battery bouncing free.

  Another gunshot blasted from above.

  Dom rolled onto his back and stood shakily, stepping sideways and tight against the wall, feet planted firmly on joists.

  Someone shouted. A male voice, a roar. The roar turned into a shout, startled and high. A pause, during which the silence seemed to stretch forever. Disturbed dust danced in the air. Pain sang in from his leg, his arm, his neck and scalp.

  From outside and below Dom heard a heavy, sickening impact. A wet crack. He knew immediately that someone had fallen from above, and that he was now in the vicinity of death.

  A shape appeared in the doorway above and swung around. It was Mary, running so quickly down the stairs that she almost stumbled the whole way, left hand hugging the post office bag to her hip, right hand clasped around the handle of a knife. Both hand and blade were red with blood.

  Dom pressed himself back against the wall, breath held. He froze. He could have run, he could have kicked out to keep her away from him. He might even have been able to scream for help. But for the seconds it took for Mary to pass him by with hardly a glance, he was like a butterfly pinned to the wall, waiting to die.

  He watched her descend to the ground floor and then slip outside. Her scream was short and wretched, filled with grief.

  From above came another blast, and he heard Mary grunt. Then fast, light footsteps.

  ‘Dom, stop her!’

  Oh, God, oh, God, it wasn’t Andy, was all Dom could think.

  Andy pounded down the stairs. He was holding a short-barrelled shotgun in his right hand. ‘You okay?’ Dom nodded. Andy ran on, leaping down the stairs to the ground floor then out through the boarded up doorway.

  Dom followed on shaky legs. Emerging into evening sunlight, his life changed.

  He’d only ever seen two dead bodies. His mother dead in a hospital bed, then his father at the undertaker’s seven years before. Neither of them had looked anything like this. The one he saw now, its state, its mess, was testament to the fragility of the human form.

  Frank was twisted on the gravel, a big shape made small by death. His head was misshapen and leaking blood and a thicker, darker fluid into the gravel. His limbs were askew, one leg turned beneath his body, one arm almost vertical from elbow to hand and pointing an accusing finger to the sky.

  Dom felt sick.

  ‘We’ve got to stop her!’ Andy said. ‘Where is she? Which way did she go?’

  ‘You killed him,’ Dom said.

  ‘I think I winged her, but from a distance. This thing …’ He hefted the shotgun. It was shorter than others Dom had seen, pump-action.

  Dom looked from Andy to the body, back again. ‘You killed him.’

  ‘He was trying to kill us! Come on, help me, if we don’t find her quickly—’

  ‘We’re killing people.’

  ‘She’ll skirt around the building and run directly away from the other side. We’ll run faster.’ Andy darted across the forecourt, shielding his eyes and peering across the fields.

  ‘But it’s over,’ Dom said. Confusion fogged his brain. He stared down at the splinters stuck in his arm, planted in bubbles of blood. Sweat stuck his T-shirt to his back.

  ‘Not when she opens the bag,’ Andy said. And he actually laughed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I left the money buried. She’s got a load of those rotting clothes from the pillbox.’

  Dom tried to work out what this meant, how Andy had assumed this meeting would work, even if his cousin Frank hadn’t started shooting. His brain was sluggish with pain and the sight of a dead man.

  ‘That was your knife she was carrying.’

  ‘No, that was hers. This is what I was going to use.’ He pulled a small handgun from his pocket.

  ‘What the fuck were you going to do with that?’

  ‘What the fuck do you think?’ He pointed at the sky and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. ‘Piece of shit.’

  ‘You’re the piece of—’

  A phone rang. Dom reached for his pocket, but remembered that his phone had tumbled to the floor, broken.

  Andy looked down at the body. ‘Paging Frank,’ he muttered.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Andy frowned at the body. Then he glared at Dom. ‘Call Emma. Now!’

  ‘My phone’s screwed.’

  Andy pulled out his, and even before the dead man’s phone had stopped ringing he had dialled and was handing it to Dom. ‘She’ll listen more if it comes from you.’

  ‘If what comes from me?’

  ‘Tell her to run.’

  Just as Emma was about to try Dom’s number again, her phone rang. Andy’s face popped up on the screen.

  ‘Is that Dad?’ Daisy asked.

  Emma shook her head and accepted the call. A cold flush went through her. Something wrong.

  ‘Em, it’s me.’

  ‘Dom?’

  ‘My phone’s broken, I’m on Andy’s.’

  ‘What’s happening? Is it all sorted?’

  Dom did not reply for a moment or two, and she heard his breathing, fast and sharp. A voice in the background. Andy.

  ‘Dom?’

  ‘You’re still at Mandy’s?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Em, you’ve got to get away from there. Get in the car, you and Daisy, and meet us … I don’t know. But just leave.’

  ‘You’re scaring me,’ she said. Daisy glanced up from her phone, eyes wide. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Something went wrong,’ Dom said, and his voice sounded ready to break.

  ‘The Jeep’s here,’ she said. ‘Parked out front. He cruised by slowly fifteen minutes ago, then braked and backed up. Must have been looking for my car … so stupid leaving it in the driveway like that. Now he’s just watching the house.’

  ‘He’s on his phone again,’ Daisy said. She had moved closer to the blinds, still far enough back to avoid being seen.

  Emma frowned, hearing a ringing from somewhere remote. She had her phone, Daisy held hers. Mandy’s landline was on the coffee table, silent and unlit.

  ‘Lip’s there,’ she heard Dom say, and she heard the ringing in the background below his voice. There was muffled movement, a brief exchange she couldn’t hear, and then Andy came on the line.

  ‘Emma, you and Daisy need to get out of there.’

  ‘Hairy man’s getting out of the car,’ Daisy said.

  ‘I heard that,’ Andy said. ‘Emma, you need to—’

  ‘You should be here!’ she said. ‘You, not us. This is all your fault!’

  ‘Fault doesn’t matter right now,’ Andy said. ‘Listen, Emma. This guy, Lip, he’s dangerous. A really nasty piece of work.’

  Emma moved closer to the window beside Daisy and looked th
rough the blinds. Lip was standing outside the Jeep, driver’s door still open. He had his phone pressed to his ear and was talking, all his attention on the house. Tall, thin, he wore jeans and a black T-shirt, arms landscaped with muscles and blurred tattoos.

  ‘You can’t let Lip near you. You can’t let him catch you.’

  ‘Mum, he’s crossing the road,’ Daisy whispered.

  ‘He’s coming,’ Emma said.

  ‘Out the back way,’ Andy said. ‘You know the town, get away on foot. Where shall we meet you?’

  ‘Castle Woods,’ she said.

  Andy repeated the name, and Dom must have nodded. ‘Right. Go.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ she said. She hung up before Andy had a chance to reply. ‘Daisy. We need to leave, now.’ The fear must have come out in her voice. She could not remember the last time she’d seen Daisy so scared.

  She took one more glance through the dining room window. Lip was standing at the end of the driveway, half-hidden behind the high hedge that bordered next door’s garden. His wild hair and beard seemed almost to blend in. But whatever was causing him to hesitate would not last long. He’d seen her car, he knew they were there, and he was coming for them.

  ‘Mum …’ her daughter said, not needing to say any more.

  ‘We’ll be fine, honey. Just follow me. Quickly and quietly. We’re going to meet Dad.’

  A rush of possibilities flickered in her mind, each of them considered and discounted in the blink of an eye. Leave the back door unlocked, wait until he’s in, then run out the front door. Hide under the stairs and rush out when he’s looking elsewhere. Sneak out the back door and try to get in the car before he sees them or reaches them. But every idea depended on Lip taking a certain action or route, and she knew she could only rely on herself. Requiring him to do something specific to enable them to run would doom their escape. This was all down to them.

  She rushed through the kitchen to the back door, glancing at the knife block as she went. But she would not arm herself. The very idea felt foolish, almost melodramatic. But what the hell have they done? she thought, thinking of Andy and Dom. She was more convinced than ever that the post office murders were connected to current events. But that way lay horrific thoughts about her husband.