No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘You fucker!’ David’s tinny, disembodied voice filled the room as he hit him again, and again, holding the gun like a club. Finn stumbled away, disappearing and reappearing as he moved into the trees, and David strode after him.

  ‘Oh God,’ Kirsty breathed.

  ‘Oh God,’ a voice repeated. Max, on the video. ‘Grandad!’

  ‘Stay there, Max!’ came David’s voice.

  The two glowing shapes had now disappeared, and Max’s legs came into shot as Bertie turned to him.

  ‘Okay, Bertie, okay,’ Max whispered, bending over him. Then: ‘Grandad!’ he shouted again, and began to move off, the picture shaking as Bertie followed him.

  But now David was back, the alien infrared version of him, his heavy breathing audible on the soundtrack. ‘Bastard got away,’ he puffed, bending over to get his breath. In one hand he still held the gun. Then he straightened, and took hold of Max, and the shot became a close-up as Bertie moved in too, pushing his nose at them, ignored by them both.

  ‘You need to keep your mouth shut about this, right, lad? I’ve already got a suspended sentence for assault. If the law finds out about this, I’m going to jail.’

  ‘But he might go to the police. Whoever it was – He might accuse you of assault!’

  ‘No way. How would he explain how it happened? “That’s right, officer, I was off out terrorising the Hendriksens as usual…?” That bastard knows he’s got to keep his trap shut about this, and so must you. Okay, Max?’

  ‘Okay.’ Max sounded so young, so scared but so trusting. Bram wanted to reach into the screen and hug him. ‘Who was it? Who do you think it was?’

  ‘No idea. But that’s quite a whack I gave him. Anyone seen sporting a head wound in the next few days, we’ll have our man.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  Kirsty stopped the footage, and they stared at each other for a long moment. From the landing above, Phoebe called out: ‘Daaad? Where’s my blue and white top?’

  ‘In the drawer, Phoebe,’ he called back. ‘Second one down, I think.’

  He looked at the screen of his laptop, at David’s glowing image. ‘This explains why Finn was weaving around when I first saw him, that night. David had already hit him. Concussed him…’

  ‘It could have been the injuries Dad inflicted that were the fatal ones,’ Kirsty said numbly. ‘He hit him hard. You can see from the video that he hit him hard. Bram…’ She grabbed his arm. ‘You know what you’re like – you literally wouldn’t hurt a fly, normally. You thought you hit Finn’s head hard against that bracket, but you might not have! You might be exaggerating it, in your head. The real damage…’

  ‘… Could have been caused by David,’ Bram finished, looking back at the screen where the glowing shape of David was frozen, an arm slung across Max’s shoulders. He tapped ‘play’, and the two figures moved off across the grass, Bertie trotting after them.

  Kirsty jumped up from her chair. ‘For all he knows, he killed Finn. He probably did! And he’s letting Max take the rap?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we’re doing?’ Bram had to say, in fairness.

  ‘No, of course it isn’t! We know what happened, so we know there can’t be enough evidence against Max to charge him! But Dad doesn’t. For all Dad knows, Max went back out there once he and Fraser had gone, and found Finn’s body, and took it off in his car to dispose of it, leaving forensic evidence all over the car and Finn. For all he knows, Max is in this mess because of him, and he’s sitting on his hands doing nothing!’ She was sobbing hysterically.

  Bram put an arm around her. ‘In fairness, he’s getting him a lawyer.’

  ‘Oh, big deal!’ She turned her tear-stained face up to Bram. ‘He’s a monster! My dad’s a monster!’

  24

  After Phoebe had had breakfast, they sat her down and told her that Max had gone to the police station to answer some questions, but it was nothing to worry about.

  ‘What questions?’ she demanded, lower lip trembling.

  ‘Well, about what happened the night Finn disappeared,’ said Bram.

  ‘But Max didn’t kill him!’

  ‘No, no, of course not. They just have to ask people what they were doing that night.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  God. ‘Not sure, kleintje.’

  ‘Dad and I are going to the police station now to sort it all out,’ said Kirsty. They were? ‘How would you like to spend the day with the Millers?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Phoebe uncertainly.

  ‘I’ll give Mrs Miller a call while you get ready. Go and brush your teeth.’

  When Phoebe had disappeared off upstairs, Kirsty said, ‘We can stitch Dad up for this. All we need to do is take this footage to the police. Get Max to open up. With Dad’s record–’

  ‘Whoa! Kirsty! We can’t do that! I can’t believe you’re suggesting… I know he’s – I know he can be difficult, but he’s your dad! You love him! I know you do.’

  What the hell? Bram knew there was nothing as formidable as a mother protecting her child, but throwing David to the wolves… Did Kirsty really want to do that?

  ‘This is all Dad’s fault, and he should be the one who pays the price, not us and the kids.’

  ‘Okay, so he grappled with Finn and whacked him, but Finn walked away.’ He lowered his voice. ‘We’re kidding ourselves if we’re trying to find a version of events in which David killed him. I did it. I did it, Kirsty. Not David.’

  ‘Well, even if that’s true, he’s the reason you were out there in the first place. We were worried about what he’d get Max into on that stupid patrol, so you went after them. And he’s been in your head, hasn’t he, on and on at you to “man up”? So when you encountered Finn–’

  Bram shook his head, and went on shaking it. ‘The only person to blame for this is me.’

  ‘No!’ Kirsty almost shouted at him. ‘You have to stop thinking like that! It’s Dad. It’s always been Dad, at the bottom of every bad thing that happens in our lives!’

  Whoa. ‘Isn’t that… isn’t that going a bit far?’

  ‘I’m going to call Carrie Miller and ask if they can take Phoebe. If not, I suppose we’ll have to leave her with Mum and Dad. Then we can talk about it.’

  The Miller girls were super-excited, as their mum put it, to have Phoebe spend the whole day with them. Fortunately, their driveway wasn’t directly opposite Linda and David’s house, so Bram was hopeful they wouldn’t have been spotted dropping her off. They declined Carrie Miller’s offer of coffee and cake and headed out of Grantown on the A95 towards Aviemore.

  ‘You want to know the reason I hardly ever came back here, when we were at uni?’ Kirsty said after she’d negotiated the roundabout.

  Bram felt a shiver go up his spine. ‘Because of what happened to Owen. And – well, you were trying to be strong, weren’t you? Trying to make out to your family that you were fine, having a great time?’

  ‘No.’ She looked in the mirror, indicated, and pulled over into a lay-by. Then she turned to look at him. ‘It was because of Dad. It’s always been because of Dad, Bram.’

  Kirsty knew she shouldn’t sleep. She needed to get home. It was past two o’clock and she needed to get back to her bedroom window under the cover of darkness. But it was so cosy, lying here with Owen. In the daytime she didn’t really like being in his bedsit – it was horribly grotty and he was such a slob – but in the dark she could forget about the dirty sink and the piles of boxes and the festering plates and mugs and the discarded clothes and the overflowing laundry bag that stank of man.

  She was tucked into the crook of his arm, which meant more man smells, but she liked the smell of his sweat when it was fresh. Pheromones, she guessed. Designed to bring males and females together to propagate.

  Not that any propagation would be happening. They were careful.

  That was one of the many good things about going out with an older m
an. He was experienced. He wasn’t going to make stupid mistakes and let her get pregnant.

  She closed her eyes, drifting down into a dream in which she had a miniature baby Owen on her lap and was trying desperately to interest it in a Mars Bar.

  Then the door banged open, and light exploded from the bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling, and there were men everywhere.

  ‘Get him,’ barked one of them.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Get your clothes on and get home, Kirsty,’ Dad growled.

  ‘No!’ She grabbed at Fraser’s arm as he hauled Owen, naked, out of the bed. ‘What are you doing? Leave him alone!’

  There weren’t men everywhere, there were only two of them, Dad and Fraser, but they seemed to fill the room.

  ‘She’s fifteen!’ Dad roared into Owen’s face, and Owen, still half asleep, cowered away but Fraser had a hold of him, he was wrenching Owen’s arm up behind his back and Owen was howling in pain.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ Kirsty sobbed. ‘Don’t hurt him! Please, Dad, please!’

  ‘We’re not going to hurt him. Just teach him a well-earned lesson.’ Dad looked away from her. ‘Put on some clothes, for God’s sake, Kirsty!’

  As if that was important!

  And now they each had one of Owen’s arms, marching him across the room to the door. She ran at them, naked, like a mad woman, clutching at their clothes, at their hands, and then she put her arms around Owen’s waist and tried to pull him away from them, screaming at them, but still they hauled him towards the door.

  She jumped on Fraser’s back.

  She tugged at his hair.

  But Fraser shook her off as if she weighed nothing and she landed on her back on the floor, all the breath knocked out of her, and she couldn’t get a breath, all she could do was double up on the floor trying to heave air into her collapsed lungs.

  When she could stand, they were gone.

  She pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt and trainers and ran out of the room after them, ran down the stairs and out into the night, and she could see them, thank God, their van was parked across the street and they were bundling Owen inside. They had tied his wrists and ankles together behind his back.

  She was pulling open the gate but she was too late, they were jumping into the cab and the van was moving off…

  Her bike.

  She’d left it propped against the wall of the house.

  She jumped onto it and pedalled like mad up the street after the van’s tail lights. The van was swerving all over the road, and at one point did a three-sixty, wheels spinning as it turned in a tight circle, and she could hear them whooping, Dad and Fraser, in the cab, and oh Christ, Owen was in there, in the back of the van, being thrown about!

  But at least all the swerving around meant she was able to keep up on her bike.

  She was panting, though, by the time the van’s tail lights slowed, far in front of her, on the dead-end road through the woods that led to the Old Bridge of Spey. Why were they taking him here?

  Her thighs ached, her leg muscles screaming at her to stop, but she pushed on, sobbing with the effort, forcing the wheels of her bike to keep turning, standing on the pedals and then sitting and then standing.

  When she reached the bridge she could see them in the moonlight, Dad’s shaved head a pale disc, Owen’s naked body – Oh God, he was over the bridge! Dad was dangling him over the edge!

  ‘I shouted,’ Kirsty whispered. ‘I shouted his name. Owen’s name. Dad said I distracted him, that Owen suddenly wriggled when I shouted and Dad let go of his feet by accident. He said they were just putting the frighteners on him. He hadn’t meant to let him go. But I saw him, Bram. I saw him fling Owen away like he was something to be discarded, a piece of rubbish he was chucking in the river. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t.’

  Bram couldn’t find words. He just reached over and grabbed Kirsty’s hand and the two of them sat there together, staring out of the windscreen at the cars and lorries whizzing past.

  This was horrendous.

  But somehow he wasn’t having a hard time believing it. It certainly explained the rage against David that had been simmering in Kirsty, just under the surface, ever since they’d moved up here and she’d been forced to spend day after day in her father’s company. And then when Max had arrived and been pulled into David’s orbit… No wonder she had been freaking out. No wonder she had been so dead set against David taking action against whoever was harassing them. No wonder she didn’t want Max and Phoebe to live with her parents.

  ‘Why on earth did you want to move back?’

  She sighed. ‘For Mum’s sake, mainly. And this is my home, Bram, it’s always been my home – why should I be exiled from it because of what Dad did? And I thought… I thought I could get past it. Come to terms with it. Tell myself, as a parent, that he was only protecting his daughter from a sexual predator. I can see, now, how much of a shock it would have been for him to find out that this man, this twenty-three-year-old man, had seduced his fifteen-year-old daughter, or so he thought.’ She stared into Bram’s eyes. ‘But it wasn’t Owen. That’s the awful thing. It was me. I was the one who went after him. I was obsessed with him, I used to follow him about town–’

  ‘You were a child, and he was an adult. No matter how “obsessed” with him you were, he shouldn’t have had a relationship with you. A sexual relationship. Any sort of relationship.’

  ‘If I hadn’t pressured Owen to be my boyfriend, to have sex with me… I was a wild child back then, Bram. I first had sex when I was thirteen.’

  ‘With Scott?’

  She shook her head. ‘Other boys. I went after Owen. If I hadn’t – if I hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have died.’ She choked on a sob.

  No wonder Kirsty had been so broken at uni. No wonder she hadn’t wanted another relationship. There was the trauma of what her own father and brother had done to Owen, but also her own feelings of guilt.

  Bram took her in his arms. ‘You were only a child. None of it was your fault.’

  ‘I hated him so much,’ she wailed. ‘I hated Dad so much. The only thing that kept me going, after that night, through the years of school I had left, the years I had to stay here living in the same house as him, was the thought of escaping to university.’

  ‘Which was why you chose UCL. As far away from here as possible.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said, holding her against him.

  She hugged him back so tight it hurt. ‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. Dad made me promise not to tell Mum, and I never have – it would destroy her if she knew. And… Oh, Bram, I was so ashamed! It was my fault Dad did it!’

  ‘No,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘It was too hard,’ she choked. ‘Living with it, with what we’d done but also the lie, having to make out I had no idea how Owen had died. It was too hard, pretending, with Mum – I couldn’t do it. When I went to uni in London it was the perfect excuse to spend the minimum time possible at home – it was so far away, I could reasonably limit my trips home to a few times a year, and I pretended I was caught up in this mad social whirl and was busy with studying so couldn’t stay long when I did go back… But it was awful, Bram! Mum was so hurt. She thought I had… had left them behind, had more interesting people to spend time with. Then when you and I got together, I used that as an excuse too… I’ll never forget what Mum said to me when she first met you. She said, “I’m so glad you’ve found such a lovely boy to be happy with.” She knew I wasn’t happy at home. She knew something was wrong. But I couldn’t tell her, Bram. I couldn’t tell her it was nothing to do with her.’

  ‘So when I suggested you go freelance, and Phoebe ran with the idea of moving back here…’

  ‘I felt I had to try.’ She made a choked sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. ‘And look how well that’s turned out. For a while I thought it was maybe going to be okay, that I could cope with him, but then when Max joined us… The way
Dad got his claws into him… And Max being here seemed to make Dad turn on you, pressure you to be a man and set an example.’ She gulped. ‘He’s sick, Bram. He’s dangerous and I knew that but I didn’t do anything, I should have packed us all up and got us out of here when I saw what he was doing to Max, to you, but I didn’t. And now Max…’

  ‘Everything that’s happened – it’s not your fault.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I left that boy in the shed to die. All I could think of was how we were going to cover it up. I was – when Finn was lying there on the ground, all I could think about was Owen, and how Dad got away with it. It’s as if… as if he’s poisoned us all.’

  ‘We didn’t know Finn was still alive.’

  ‘But I should have checked him properly! We should have called an ambulance!’

  For a long time they just sat there, watching the traffic, a bird flitting about in the branches of a big conifer, the clouds scudding past.

  ‘Does Scott know?’ Bram said at last. ‘About Owen?’

  Kirsty sighed. ‘I’m pretty sure he suspects, but he’s never asked me about it. We don’t talk about Owen. Which is telling in itself, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m just thinking, when he sees the Bertie-cam footage…’

  ‘Oh, he’ll buy into the theory it was Dad. No question.’

  Another long silence, in which Bram just held her.

  ‘He isn’t sorry, you know,’ she said eventually. ‘For murdering Owen. He has no remorse about it. Owen got his just desserts, that’s what he thinks. And you can bet he has no remorse about Finn, either. You think he’s beating himself up about it, like we are? Oh no. No. For all he knows, he killed Finn, but he doesn’t give a toss, Bram.’ She took a big breath. ‘He’ll never face justice for Owen. And that’s my fault. I should have gone to the police and told them what happened, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it to my own dad! But I can now. He can face justice for what he did to Finn. To us. To all of us.’