No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  Part of the bridge had collapsed, taking the back of the Discovery with it, but as it was just a little bridge across a stream, the drop had only been four feet or so. Max hadn’t been able to open his door as the Discovery had listed slightly onto that side, but he had scrambled across to the driver’s door and they’d both got out that way.

  They were slightly bruised from their seat belts, but otherwise unharmed.

  Bram’s first thought had been that whoever was terrorising them had done this, but he realised now that that was unlikely. Kirsty’s panicked phone call to Scott and Amy had been unnecessary, and he felt bad about dragging them out this late at night. They’d had to park on the other side of the bridge and ford the stream, although Amy had made light of this, saying she’d felt like a kid again, getting a piggy-back ride on Scott’s back.

  Kirsty was banging about the kitchen putting away the contents of the dishwasher, not saying much, but Bram knew what she was thinking. Why hadn’t he checked that bridge? In their division of labour as a couple, anything home-related was Bram’s remit.

  ‘Your seat belt must have worked,’ Amy was saying to Max, examining the bruise across his chest. ‘So how come you hit your face off the dashboard?’

  Damn.

  Max grinned. ‘Well…’ And he exchanged a look with Bram, who grimaced and nodded to signal he should come clean. ‘That’s not exactly what happened.’

  Kirsty whipped round.

  At breakfast the next morning, Phoebe, sitting wide-eyed across the table from her brother, was more interested in the fight than the collapsed bridge, and Max was certainly not averse to telling and retelling the story. Phoebe offered him first jam and then marmalade and then lemon curd to go on his toast, as if setting out a feast for the conquering hero, while Max drank coffee and embroidered the tale.

  ‘Finn was trying to provoke me from the moment he arrived. I tried the strategy of treating him with lofty disdain, but he kept on, laughing about Bertie being shot and stuff.’

  ‘He thought you wouldn’t fight back!’ Phoebe crowed.

  ‘Indeed.’ Max gave her an indulgent half-smile.

  There was an indefinable change in Max since last night, Bram was concerned to note. He had – not a swagger, exactly, but a consciousness, a new confidence.

  Kirsty sat down next to Phoebe so she could look Max in the eye. ‘No matter the provocation, it’s always wrong to hit someone.’ The last two words wobbled a bit, and she took a breath. ‘I don’t know what else I can say to make you see that.’

  Max grimaced. ‘It’s okay, Mum, I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Max, and you know it!’ Kirsty’s chair legs scraped the floor as she got to her feet.

  Bram put his hands on her shoulders and gave Phoebe a reassuring smile. ‘I think we all know that what Max did was wrong. It’s not something to be proud of, punching someone and making their nose bleed.’

  ‘Hello?’ said Max, indicating his own face. ‘What was I supposed to do, stand there and take it like a human punchbag?’

  ‘You needed to walk away, Max.’

  ‘Pfff.’

  ‘Finn’s a bully,’ Phoebe said firmly. ‘He had it coming.’

  Kirsty’s phone buzzed, and she turned away to answer. After a brief conversation which consisted mostly of ‘Oh no!’ and ‘Okay,’ she ended the call and turned to Bram. ‘Scott. He needs us down at the bridge. He thinks it has been tampered with after all.’

  Max wanted to come too, but Bram and Kirsty insisted he stay inside with Phoebe. As he followed Kirsty outside, Bram realised that he wasn’t actually too surprised that the bridge collapse hadn’t been an accident. Maybe now the police would start taking the whole situation seriously.

  ‘Why?’ Kirsty said as they walked down the track. ‘Why is someone doing this to us?’ She grabbed Bram’s arm. ‘The bridge collapsing could have been really serious.’

  Bram grimaced. ‘It’s just a small bridge over a stream. We were never going to be seriously hurt, even if it had collapsed completely.’

  Kirsty stopped walking. ‘How can you be so calm about it?’

  ‘I’m not calm! I’m just–’

  ‘The glass is always half full with you, isn’t it?’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘I never thought I’d be saying that as a criticism. But your determination to always look on the bright side – sometimes it flies in the face of reason.’

  This echoed his own thoughts over the last few days. Bram took a breath, watching the morning light on the stretch of ground towards the wood, the shadows chasing across the grass as little white clouds moved over the sun and away. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do need to be less… less naïve, I guess.’

  She turned to face him. ‘Tell me the truth. Was it Dad’s doing?’

  ‘Uh – what?’

  ‘Max getting into that fight!’

  ‘No, no. It was as Max says – Finn was out to provoke him.’ There was no point upsetting Kirsty further by telling her the whole truth.

  At the bridge, the Discovery was still in situ in the ruins of the structure, its rear wheels in the stream, bonnet pointing skywards. Beyond it were several police cars, and a guy in forensic gear was taking photographs. There were dressed stones all tumbled about in the water, under and to either side of what remained of the bridge.

  Scott splashed into the stream and pointed at a large wedge-shaped stone lying in the water. ‘That’s one of the keystones – the stones that sit at the top of each course of stones in the arch, across its width, and keep everything in place. See the white marks all over it? Those are chisel marks – recent ones. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to chisel the keystones out.’ He indicated another stone – this one looked as if it had been newly split, with a sharp, light-coloured edge to it. ‘Looks like they must have removed maybe five or six of them last night. Hence the collapse when the Discovery came onto the bridge.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ breathed Kirsty.

  ‘Quite an undertaking. They probably muffled the chisel with cloth, but the sound of it hitting the mortar and the stone would probably have carried to the house. You didn’t hear anything?’

  Kirsty shook her head. ‘The double glazing would have cut out that kind of noise, presumably. At this distance, anyway.’ She was staring at the Discovery, and Bram knew she was thinking of Max, already battered and bruised from the fight, sitting in that passenger seat as the bridge collapsed.

  He touched her arm. ‘At the risk of coming across as a glass-half-full idiot, I have to reiterate that it was never going to cause a serious accident. Was it?’ he appealed to Scott.

  Scott shook his head. ‘Not unless something freakish happened – like the windscreen being broken and a stone hitting someone on the head or something. No. Whoever’s doing this, I would say they probably don’t want to actually hurt anyone, just put the fear of God into you.’

  ‘But who would want to do that?’ Kirsty was trembling.

  ‘That’s what we have to find out. At least this is the nail in the coffin of your Owen theory, Bram – there’s no way they could determine who would be in the next vehicle over the bridge.’

  Bram shook his head. ‘If they were watching the house, they’d have seen me leave, and would know that Kirsty was at home without a vehicle. So they knew I was likely to be the next person over the bridge.’

  ‘It could just as easily have been Max and David. If they were watching, they’d have seen them leave too. Anyway, I think it might be a good idea to take Linda and David up on their offer and go and stay with them for a few days. I don’t think you’re in any serious danger, but you can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Kirsty. ‘I really want to avoid that if at all possible. I want to keep Max out of Dad’s orbit, at least until he’s started school and has made some friends.’ She was looking at Scott, not Bram, and Scott nodded as something wordless passed between them.

  Were they thinking about Owen, who had a
lso, perhaps, been in David’s ‘orbit’ at the boxing club? Was that where the trouble had started?

  And now she did turn to Bram. ‘I know you’re covering for him. I know Max wouldn’t have got into that fight if Dad hadn’t been there.’

  Bram opened and closed his mouth.

  Kirsty, to his surprise, smiled. ‘My glass-half-full idiot,’ she whispered, and hugged him. ‘You’re probably spinning even that as a good thing, a bonding thing for Max and Dad. And you, in covering for them.’

  This was so spookily accurate that Bram could only gape at her.

  Scott was grinning at them like an indulgent uncle. ‘You could come and stay with us for a few days.’

  ‘And how would we explain that to Mum and Dad?’ Kirsty grimaced. ‘No – thanks, but we’ll be fine here.’

  ‘Will we?’ said Bram. ‘As the new glass-half-empty Bram, I feel obliged to point out that we’ve no water and now no access… And the borehole people won’t be able to get their drilling equipment here until the bridge has been repaired.’

  ‘We’re managing, though, aren’t we, without water? We can get Max’s car from the hotel and use that until the Discovery has been repaired – park it on the other side of the bridge and ford the stream. It’s not deep – we can set up stepping stones.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Bram, I really really don’t want to go back to Mum and Dad’s. If we keep the kids inside until this person is caught…’ She turned back to Scott. ‘Hopefully that won’t be too much longer? I know Max will go spare, but after last night, we should probably ground him anyway. He can’t complain.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Bram. ‘If you think it’s best. Let’s all stay put.’

  David dumped a holdall on the floor of the Walton Room and grinned at Phoebe, who ran at him, jumping into his arms. David held her close for a moment, eyes shut. And then Fraser appeared behind him with Bertie, and Phoebe squealed in delight. David released her, grinning. ‘Aye, I’m kidding myself if I’m thinking Grandad can compete with Bertie, eh, princess?’

  ‘I love you both the same,’ Phoebe assured him, her face pressed into a now cone-less Bertie’s neck, and David smiled down at her fondly.

  Bram was glad to see the two of them. He hadn’t been relishing spending the night here alone with Kirsty and the kids, at the mercy of whoever might be out there. It was a good feeling, knowing they had David and Fraser on their team.

  ‘Right, I’ve put you both in the twin guest room,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘We’re not going to need a room,’ said Fraser.

  ‘We’ll be on watch all night,’ added David. ‘Might do a bit of patrolling round the house too.’

  ‘Oh no, Dad!’ Kirsty turned and glared at him. ‘No!’

  David put an arm round her. ‘Relax, princess, I’m not going to touch the wee bugger, although no one could argue that he’s got it coming. We won’t confront him – or them. We’ll call the police if we see anything. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Bertie! Come on, Bertie!’ Phoebe danced up the stairs, Bertie’s nails clicking on the stairs as he followed her.

  Kirsty waited until Phoebe was out of earshot. ‘You’d better not confront them, Dad, or that could be you going straight to prison.’

  ‘Aye, I’m the problem here?’ David exchanged a look with Fraser. ‘Let’s bend over backwards to blame everyone but the perpetrator. You blame yourselves for hurting the wee snowflake’s feelings with those notices. You blame Max for defending himself. You blame me for wanting to catch the bugger. But don’t you worry. If we see anything, we’ll call the cops like responsible citizens, and the toe-rag will maybe get hauled into court and given a community service order. That make you happy, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, it would. When this person or persons are caught, they’ll have a restraining order slapped on them so they won’t be able to come anywhere near us. That’s what we want. That’s all we want. Okay?’

  David held up his hands in surrender.

  Bertie and Phoebe reappeared, and as David and Fraser pulled on gloves and hats in the Walton Room, Phoebe poured water into Bertie’s dish in the kitchen. ‘Just to make sure he’s hydrated,’ she told Bram, bending over him and fiddling with his collar. It was the petcam, Bram saw, which she was attaching. Unlike the representation in her drawing, it was so small it was barely noticeable.

  ‘Come on then, boy,’ said David, opening the door, and Bertie plodded obediently after him.

  16

  Kirsty and the kids had gone to bed, but, if he was to retain any shreds of self-respect, that wasn’t an option for Bram. What sort of a man snuggled up in bed and went to sleep, relying on his sixty-seven-year-old father-in-law to protect his family? David and Fraser were out there in the dark somewhere, ‘on patrol’ with Bertie. The least Bram could do was sit up and keep watch.

  He had the lights out in the Walton Room and the curtains pulled back so he could see the verandah, flooded in illumination from the security lighting David had insisted on installing despite Bram’s objections on the grounds of light pollution. The lighting had an industrial feel, with a cold blue tinge to it.

  It was a struggle to keep awake. The armchair was too comfortable.

  Bram stood, and stretched, and walked to the windows.

  And froze.

  There was someone out there! Just beyond the verandah, moving stealthily around the pools of illumination. Bram could only just see him, a shadowy moving shape…

  Police. He should call 999?

  But by the time they got here, he’d be long gone.

  Oh God! What should he do? Go out there? Try to get a photo?

  What if they tried to get into the house?

  He needed something to defend himself with. A knife from the kitchen?

  And then the figure moved into one of the pools of light, and Bram saw that it was David. It was David! He was barking with weak, hysterical laughter as he flung open the door and stumbled out onto the verandah.

  ‘God, David–’

  The laughter died as he saw who was with him.

  Max. In dark jeans and jacket, his eyes shining with excitement.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ Bram spluttered as Bertie plodded up the steps to greet him.

  ‘On patrol!’

  ‘I thought you were in bed!’

  ‘Yeah, I snuck out while you were asleep!’

  David smirked. ‘Sentry asleep at his post. Firing squad offence that, Bram.’

  Had he actually been asleep? He must have been. Damn.

  ‘Have you seen anything?’

  ‘Nope. All quiet on the Western Front!’ Max grinned. He seemed unusually hyper.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘A nip of whisky to keep off the chill,’ asserted David. ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  Bram grimaced. ‘Where’s Fraser?’

  ‘In the wood,’ said Max. ‘Bertie seemed to pick up a scent, but we think it was probably just a rabbit or something. He’s pretty hopeless as a patrol dog, to be honest!’

  ‘Okay, well, I think you’ve done your bit, Max. You can come inside now and help me stay awake.’

  ‘Uh, I think I’m more use out here, Dad.’

  David slapped Max’s back. ‘Course he is. You go back to beddie-byes, Bram. We’ll report back in a bit, make sure you’re not sleeping too soundly!’

  ‘Well…’ Bram grimaced. ‘As long as you stay with Grandad at all times, Max, and don’t go off on your own.’

  ‘Wilco!’ Max sketched a salute. ‘Come on, Bertie, let’s go!’

  Bram should insist that he come inside. But he was safe enough, surely, with David? Even so, Bram felt like the worst sort of coward as he watched the two of them melt back into the night.

  Rather than resume his seat and maybe fall asleep again, he spent the next hour pacing around the ground floor of the house in the dark, senses straining, adrenaline coursing, jumping at every little sound – ice cracking in the freezer, a gust
of wind in the chimney, a floorboard creaking under his feet. It was as if the house itself had turned against him, and was mocking his efforts to stand guard.

  Max.

  His son was out there.

  This wasn’t right. He needed to go and get Max.

  Kirsty wasn’t asleep. ‘What?’ she said at once when he came into the bedroom. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No, no. But Max – did you know Max is out there with your dad and Fraser?’

  ‘What?’ She swung her legs off the bed. ‘God, Bram!’

  ‘He’s fine. I spoke to them an hour or so ago, and–’

  ‘An hour! But anything could have happened since then!’

  ‘Okay. I know. I’m not happy about it either. I’m going to get him and make him come back inside.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No, you have to stay with Phoebe. Maybe you could sit up downstairs and keep watch? Apparently I’m not much of a sentry. Max got past me while I was asleep.’

  She didn’t smile. ‘Okay. Go and get him, Bram.’

  The night air was cool, and Bram was glad of his jacket. He’d taken a torch with him and he used it to light his way across the grass around the side of the house, but there was a moon high in the sky, almost a full one, and when he switched the torch off he found he could see well enough not to be stumbling about. And he felt horribly conspicuous carrying a light around for anyone to see.

  He stood for a moment, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dark. And that was when he saw him, a tall, slim figure in dark clothing moving erratically towards the shed.

  Max.

  How much whisky had David let him have?

  And where the hell was David?

  Bram strode after his son, rehearsing what he was going to say. He needed to impress on Max that when someone pressured you to drink alcohol, you weren’t being a man by giving in. Quite the opposite. He didn’t want to scare him by shouting so he just hurried after him, closing the distance between them.

  Max reached the shed and stopped, putting a hand against it to prop himself up.