No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘All right, but – on reflection, I don’t think this was kids. Someone tried to kill us, Bram!’ Andrew looked at him. ‘You don’t think there could be a connection with – with what happened, back in the nineties?’

  ‘What connection could there be?’ Bram said weakly.

  Andrew just continued to stare at him.

  Bram headed across the Walton Room to the kitchen, awful thoughts chasing each other round his head.

  ‘Okay, thanks, Mr Hendriksen,’ said the DC. ‘We’ll take Mr Taylor’s statement then someone will run him home.’

  By that time Scott had arrived, and put on the kettle while Bram gave his statement to DC Gemma. Bram had just finished it when the door from the verandah crashed open and David stormed in.

  ‘Is everyone okay?’ David rapped out. ‘Where’s Kirsty? Where are the kids?’

  Bram stood. ‘In the TV room. David–’

  ‘How did you get past the uniforms at the track entrance?’ Scott wanted to know.

  David waved this minor detail aside. ‘There’s a bloody maniac out there with a firearm shooting at people! Christ! He could shoot through the windows, he could–’

  Scott got to his feet. ‘Let’s not panic here, okay?’

  ‘I’m not panicking, I’m trying to keep my family safe because it seems no one else is bothering their arse!’

  ‘They’re in the TV room with the curtains closed,’ said Bram, feeling himself bridle. ‘And the windows are all toughened glass.’ Even the ones that didn’t need to be to comply with building regulations – David himself had persuaded them to go for that. Thank God. There was something to be said, it turned out, for David’s jaundiced view of the world when it came to security.

  ‘Aye, for general safety, not to stop a bullet! Are you a man or a mouse, Bram? You should be out there–’

  ‘Sit down, David.’ Scott gestured to a chair, indicating to Gemma with a tilt of the head that she should take herself off and give them some privacy.

  The next couple of hours passed in a blur. After Scott had talked David down, David went off to ‘protect’ the family in the TV room. Scott downloaded the photographs of the gunman from Bram’s phone, and then went outside, only to return to ask Bram to accompany him and the SOCO team to show them the spot where he and Andrew had been fired on.

  Bram knew he was safe now – the gunman was hardly going to have stuck around with this massive police presence – but still he hesitated at the front door, reluctant to step out onto the verandah.

  Scott looked back at him. ‘Okay there?’

  ‘Yes, right. Yes.’

  Bram showed them the spot, and the tree the bullet had hit, and then Scott escorted him back to the house, where he sat with the others in the TV room watching cartoons until Scott appeared in the doorway and asked to speak to Bram, Kirsty and David in the kitchen. When they were all seated at the table, he smiled round at them.

  ‘You’ll be glad to hear that the “bullets” Bram described have been found by the SOCO team, and aren’t in fact bullets at all. They’re not even airgun pellets. They’re airsoft BBs.’

  Bram frowned. ‘They’re what?’

  ‘BBs. Little plastic pellets kids use in BB guns for target practice and play battles? Same idea as paintballing. If one of those hits you, it might sting a bit, but it won’t penetrate the skin. You can relax.’ The smile widened. ‘I won’t repeat what the leader of the armed response unit said when he was told.’

  ‘But a BB gun is still a gun!’ Kirsty exclaimed.

  Scott shook his head. ‘It’s not classed as a firearm. BB guns carry a vanishingly small risk of serious injury at anything other than point-blank range – and this joker was keeping his distance. At that range, the worst that could have happened was an eye injury, or bruising from a pellet impact. It’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘What about Bertie? What about the crows?’

  ‘That must have been an airgun. Or in the case of the crows, maybe a shotgun.’

  ‘Right.’ David glared across the table at Scott. ‘So the “joker” has access to a shotgun.’

  ‘Obviously what’s going on in that wood is cause for concern.’ Scott stood. ‘Whoever shot at Bram and Andrew, even though it was just with a BB gun, was committing an offence by behaving in a such a way as to cause “fear or alarm”, as the law puts it.’

  Bram went with Scott to the door and out onto the verandah. It was another glorious day, the new gravel of the parking area and the roofs of all the police vehicles searingly bright in the sun.

  ‘Scott,’ said Bram, as the other man started down the steps. ‘This wasn’t just some kid messing with a BB gun who decided to have some innocent fun at our expense. There was… evil intent. He was wearing a mask, for God’s sake.’

  Scott came back up the steps. ‘How sure are you about that? He was some distance away, you’ve said, and moving away from you at speed.’

  ‘He turned – he looked back at one point, and I saw it. One of those Hallowe’en masks, a werewolf, I think…’ He swallowed. ‘This is all pretty disturbing stuff, Scott.’

  ‘The chances are it’s just the same kids who’ve been messing with the Taylors.’

  Bram nodded. His face was still tingling; his senses super-alert for any movement on the track, in the grass, over by the trees. It was as if his brain knew he wasn’t in danger any more, but the signals hadn’t yet reached his body. He rubbed the skin under his eyes, his cheeks.

  A radio in one of the cars crackled, and Bram saw there was someone in there, a female cop talking into the radio. Now she was getting out of the car and coming to the bottom of the verandah steps. ‘Delivery driver at the track end,’ she reported. ‘Okay if one of the officers there signs for it, Mr Hendriksen? I can go down and get it?’

  Bram froze. Was this someone trying to get past the police by pretending to be a delivery driver?

  Then he remembered the cameras. They were due to be delivered today.

  He nodded. ‘Thanks. Thanks very much.’

  When the light began to go, they pulled the curtains over all the windows, including the long expanse of glass in the Room with a View. There was something oppressive, he was beginning to think, about the emptiness of the landscape out there, the wild, uninhabited acres all around them.

  ‘It’s a room without a view now,’ Max said, flopping down on a sofa.

  Bram picked up the instruction booklet for the cameras and read the same paragraph for the third time, but he still couldn’t make head nor tail of it. The arrival of the cameras had lifted his mood instantly. Finally, he felt they were doing something. When the little bastards were caught on camera, the police could take action.

  Unless they were wearing masks.

  He pushed the thought away.

  Phoebe was curled up with Kirsty in the big armchair, already in her pyjamas. They were watching Babe: Pig in the City on the TV, Phoebe’s eyelids heavy as she rested her head on Kirsty’s chest.

  Bram should probably ask Max to work out how to set up the cameras, but after the day they’d had, he felt the kids didn’t need to see their dad at a loss when it came to the security measures they were installing. He was already feeling pretty chastened by the fact that, on learning that there could be a homicidal maniac out there, the first thing Max had done was summon David.

  There was bound to be a YouTube video explaining it all. Bram fetched his laptop, but instead of looking at YouTube, he couldn’t help himself opening his blog. He’d added a post about the day’s events, and the photo, in the vain hope that someone might recognise a blurry arm and leg.

  Lots of comments from worried friends and family.

  And another from ManOnAMission:

  What actually happened was that you saw someone on the right of way through your wood and called the cops on them! That wood has been used by locals for centuries and now you’re trying to exclude us? That’s illegal.

  God almighty! Bram knew it was probably a mistake to
engage, but he couldn’t let that go. He quickly typed:

  We have no problem with people using the wood. What we have a problem with is being shot at, because that’s what actually happened. My neighbour and I were shot at by a masked man. Excuse me for finding that unacceptable.

  An hour later, there were eighteen replies to that, most of them from trolls – ManOnAMission and Red, but also some others.

  You’ve had too many magic mushrooms, pal!

  Oooh, a dangerous ‘masked man’ with a BB gun!!! :-)

  What were you and your neighbour doing together in the woods in the first place?!! Oo-er!!

  But it was Red’s comment that made his blood run cold:

  You’re bringing this on yourself, Bram. Why don’t you piss off back to London?

  8

  The next morning, Bram, Kirsty and Max positioned the cameras in the wood, hiding them carefully in the trees. They were motion-activated, but only by large moving objects that gave off an infrared signal. Large creatures, basically. Anything from a fox up to a human. In daylight the pictures would be in the normal spectrum, but at night the cameras would switch to infrared imaging.

  They removed all the notices, Kirsty agreeing with Bram that they could be seen as antagonistic, given the history the Taylors had with local youths. Then they gathered chanterelles for the risotto Bram was planning on making that night.

  ‘It was just a BB gun,’ Kirsty kept saying. ‘If they’d really meant you harm, they wouldn’t have used a BB gun.’

  ‘No, of course they wouldn’t.’

  In the afternoon, David and Linda came over, and Max eagerly took David to check out the cameras. The two of them came back in high spirits, Max bounding onto the terrace where Kirsty and Bram were sitting. ‘Grandad didn’t spot a single one!’

  He was obviously basking in the unaccustomed warmth of David’s approval. David came onto the terrace behind him and turned to glare back at the wood with his feet apart, hands on hips, in the belligerent mode that always made Bram think of Henry VIII. Then he turned and smiled at Bram, and came over to literally pat him on the back. ‘Good man. Good man. Now we’ll get the bastards.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Max enthused.

  Bram nodded, finding himself in complete sympathy, for once, with David.

  But Kirsty looked from Max to her father and said, ‘No one’s getting anyone, Dad.’

  ‘I’m sure David only means “get” as in “bring to book”.’

  Kirsty shot Bram a disappointed look.

  ‘Those bloody Taylors, eh, Bram?’ David muttered when Kirsty had gone back inside. ‘Those bastards. They’re to all intents and purposes at war with the local yobs, and they never saw fit to tell you?’

  ‘I know. It was pretty unfair of them.’

  ‘Unfair? Unfair?’ David whistled. ‘I know you like to try and see the good in everyone, Bram, but come on!’

  ‘Yep, you’re actually right, David.’ And Sylvia had seemed so nice, too. But she’d lied to their faces, insisting that they hadn’t had much trouble recently with yobs in the woods.

  Max and Phoebe fitted Bertie with the petcam – not easy as he was still wearing the plastic cone – and they spent a hilarious hour or so watching the first bits of footage from it, Max and Phoebe describing to Linda what they were seeing as Bertie stuck his nose into every crevice in the kitchen that could conceivably harbour crumbs. The sound effects were particularly funny. ‘You’d think the cone would stop him getting his head in there,’ Max chuckled, ‘but it seems not.’

  David chuckled too. ‘Oh aye, you’d have to put a hazmat suit on him to keep Bertie and crumbs apart.’

  ‘Imagine Bertie in a hazmat suit!’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘How cute would that be?’ And father and daughter exchanged smiles.

  Phoebe was delighted with Bertie-cam, and seemed to be reassured by the whole camera strategy in general. ‘They can’t do anything now, can they, Dad?’

  ‘If they try, they’ll soon be caught, kleintje.’

  Then Kirsty had to leave for a meeting with a client, and Bram found himself pressing David and Linda to stay to dinner, but David wanted to ‘swing by’ a building site before dark on their way home.

  So it was just Bram and the kids, but he was making a big pan of the risotto, as Kirsty would want some when she got back and Max would probably have at least two helpings. It smelt amazing, garlicky and savoury, and Bram’s salivary glands were already going into overdrive. He’d carefully cleaned the chanterelle and left them to dry on tea towels, and sent a couple of photos to Willie to check that he wasn’t about to give his family the gripes. Willie had been typically reassuring. Not.

  Looks like you’re good to go, but don’t sue me if it all goes literally to shit.

  But Bram had slit each mushroom to check that it was pale inside, which seemed to be a foolproof way of telling chanterelles from anything that would give you the runs. And at least there was nothing you could mistake for chanterelles that was really dangerous. He’d googled this just to confirm it.

  So: chanterelle risotto with truffle oil and Parmigiano Reggiano. Mmmm! He’d added half the chanterelles at the start of the cooking process, after he’d fried the onions and garlic and added the rice and the first splash of vegetable stock, to lend their flavour to the rice. The other half he’d add later, so those pieces would retain their texture better.

  It had been a much better day, Bram reflected as he stood at the stove stirring the risotto. He had all the lamps on in the Walton Room and the halogens over the worktops, and it felt cosy and safe in here. He’d closed all the curtains and rigged up a makeshift cover for the panes in the door with a piece of cardboard and tacks, and he and Phoebe had drawn a mandala on the cardboard to match the one they’d painted on the wall of the downstairs loo, using a compass and her felt-tip pens.

  It was very soothing, standing there stirring as the fat Carnaroli rice grains absorbed the liquid. He had Chilean cueca music playing on a loop on his iPod in the docking station, and found himself swaying in time and humming along.

  ‘Da-aad?’ called Phoebe from the Room with a View. ‘Come and see this! It’s so cute!’

  ‘Okay, Phoebs.’

  He turned down the heat under the risotto, added another splash of stock, and walked across the slate floor to the open door to the other room. Max and Phoebe were chilling on the sofas, one each, Max staring at his phone, Phoebe watching YouTube videos on the TV. The screen was filled by a freeze-frame image of an animal. Surprise, surprise.

  ‘Hold on.’ Phoebe frowned at the remote. ‘I’ll go back to the start.’

  ‘Sixth time,’ Max muttered.

  ‘I’m going to watch it a hundred times!’ Phoebe gurgled. ‘A thousand! Max is trying to pretend he doesn’t think it’s cute. He’s trying to be cool. Keep trying, Max!’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Max, grinning.

  Phoebe zapped the remote at the TV. A white rat was sitting on a fluffy pink blanket. Slowly, his eyes closed and his head dropped until his nose touched the blanket and he jerked awake again, only for the process to be repeated. The third time, when his nose hit the blanket it stayed there, little snuffling snoring sounds coming from the soundtrack.

  ‘How cute is that?’ Phoebe demanded.

  ‘Super-cute, Phoebs.’

  ‘Do you want to see it again?’

  ‘In a bit. I’d better get back to the risotto. Hope you two are hungry – there’s a tonne of it.’

  Walking back out to the kitchen, he smiled to himself. Everything was getting back to normal. For maybe the first time, the house felt like a proper home. He shimmied across the kitchen in time to the cueca. Yep. It was –

  Oh Christ!

  Almost filling the pan of risotto was a big hunk of raw meat.

  It was the shape of a massive strawberry, purplish-red with white fatty bits and stubby white tubes poking out of the top –

  It was a heart.

  A raw heart, oozing blood into the risotto.

>   And on the worktop next to the stove was scrawled in blood:

  Your next

  Someone was in the house!

  His head snapped up as he scanned the open-plan space between the kitchen and the door. He backed up, and then he turned and ran, he ran back into the Room with a View and slammed the door behind him, pressing his back against it.

  ‘Max, call the police.’

  Both kids looked up at him.

  ‘Just do it! Now!’

  ‘Why, what’s happening? Okay, okay.’ Max tapped at his phone and put it to his ear, then came to stand next to Bram. ‘Police, please,’ he said into the phone, and then: ‘What do I tell them? What’s happening?’

  ‘There’s someone in the house. Okay, okay, Phoebs, we’re safe in here. I’m going to pull the sofa across the door. Max, stand here with your back against it while I – Phoebe, check that the sliding door is locked.’

  Phoebe jumped off the sofa and ran over to the door, then stopped, her hand on the curtain. ‘What if they’re right there?’ she said, her voice wobbling.

  Bram hauled the sofa in front of the door and then went to Phoebe, pulling her into a quick hug and then putting her aside gently to twitch the curtain open and check that the door was locked. He removed the key and pocketed it.

  ‘Who’s in the house?’ Phoebe said in a small voice, clinging to him.

  He pulled the curtain back in place. ‘I don’t know. Probably just – just one of the naughty boys. The police will be here soon to sort it out.’

  He hugged her close, watching Max as he talked to the 999 operator, marvelling that the boy was able to keep his voice steady. His kids. His precious, precious kids. Someone had come into their house, into their home, was out there now, maybe, standing on the other side of that door –

  The fear, the terror for them seemed to expand until it had nowhere to go, until, like a chemical reaction gone nuclear, it turned in on itself and changed, transmuted into pure, white-hot rage.

  But he just stood, holding Phoebe, the rage coursing through him – useless, useless rage, because it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough to make him open that door and get out there and confront whoever was doing this.