“Tu me manques, Dante,” she said, “please come home, I need you today. I need you everyday. I love you. Please, come home to me.”
“Not while he’s there. No.”
“He’s taken it badly too. He’s not here, but I called him…”
“You called him before you even called me?” he exploded, outraged.
“Please Dante, please–” She cried, but he hung up on her, too furious to see straight. How could she call Dick before she called him?
That monster…
Dante threw his phone at the wall without thought, watching as its innards spattered the wall and fell carelessly to the floor. He ran to the living room of his flat and trashed it.
Everything.
Smashing.
Red mist.
Clouding, red mist.
Kitchen next – trashed.
Bathroom mirror – punched.
Out of breath, he was surprised when he heard a pounding on his door. Knelt in the corner of the bathroom, he couldn’t bear to face whoever it was on the other side.
“Dante, it’s me mate. Are you okay?”
Teddy, who he’d wronged, had still turned up in his hour of need.
Dante said nothing – shame, anger and fear fuelling his muteness.
“I just heard you trashing the place! Open up… I heard the news! Please!”
Dante began rocking, refusing tears, because tears were weak, like his father once told him…
It was a hot day and the house they lived in, nestled in a neat village in deepest Surrey, was unbearably stuffy, so the brothers had escaped for a bike ride in the shaded, nearby forest.
As they rode along they were overwhelmed by the heady scent of combine harvesters going at it in the fields, eagerly reaping the crop before rain came. Dust and the pungent scent of corn clung to nostrils and it had been as they approached a gate on a farm track that some dust got into little Dante’s eyes and obscured the gate, until he knocked into it, chest first, winding and then tipping himself upside down, landing unhealthy on his thin knees. A slender boy, he didn’t have much to protect him.
“You’ve taken off loads of layers of skin,” his elder, more knowledgeable brother said. “What a mess. Come on, let’s go home.”
Dante cried as he and Daltrey pedalled home together, slowly, his knees screaming with every tug and pull as he rode. Bleeding still, Daltrey gave him a serious look and mumbled, “Don’t know but you might need stitches like I had that time.”
He cried harder, at the thought of stitches and the heat of the pain, blood still trickling down his legs. He knew it’d be no better if he walked and it would be quicker on his bicycle. The sooner he could get to his mum – the sooner he could be healed.
Arriving home with the dusty, thick scent of dry grass in their nostrils and on themselves, their mother casually asked, “Did you spy on the harvesters?”
Dante ran crying to his mother who scooped him up, bandaged him, hugged him, petted him, mollified and protected him.
“Now, now, isn’t that better?”
“Yep,” he said, “it hurt, Mummy.”
“Sometimes things do hurt us, baby. Mummy’s here to patch you up.”
His mother was attentive to him the rest of that day and it was something his father noticed when he got home from the City, where he worked long, endless hours, which the boys were glad of. In the summer however he seemed to work a little less and that day, he was home earlier than usual and was witness to the way Mummy had been spoiling Dante.
When Collette, their mother, went upstairs that night for her evening ritual of a long, hot bath à la gin and tonic, Dante and Daltrey watched TV together in Daltrey’s room.
Interrupting their peace, their father arrived, carrying a bottle of Scotch from which he was taking long pulls at regular intervals. “That mother of yours treats you like girls, you pair of poofters,” he drawled, drunk, “cry babies, the pair of you, big cry babies, desperate for attention. May as well still be suckling at your mother’s teat.”
“Ignore him,” Daltrey said.
“What did you just say?” Dick spat.
“I said, we are going to ignore you!” Daltrey squealed, with as much gusto as a boy of ten could squeal, his voice not broken yet.
Dick leapt across the room, smacked Daltrey round the head, and warned, “Let’s see if big boys don’t cry then?”
Daltrey stood his ground and didn’t look away. He trembled as he tried not to cry, but not a tear left his eyes. He succeeded in not crying.
When Dick finally slunk off from the room, possibly to find another bottle of liquor, Daltrey said to his brother, “It hurt, but I didn’t cry because he doesn’t deserve my tears. It’s okay to cry, Dante, it’s not being a girl when you cry, it’s just about feeling hurt. I didn’t cry then because he doesn’t deserve to win.”
Dante was just a child of seven but couldn’t help but start to think that his father was right – that only girls cried. Why would he say it otherwise? He should have listened to every word his brother said but his brother managed not to cry, so Dante could try to be as big and brave as his brother, and not cry too. In any case, he didn’t ever want his father to look at him the way he had looked at Daltrey that night – so full of hate. So from then onwards, Dante did whatever it took to not cry – to not encourage too many kisses and cuddles from Mummy – and to not do anything that might bring their father into either one of their rooms. Daddy always smelt funny and he was bad. They just knew, he was bad…
Suffering in the aftermath of the memory and the painful realisation his brother would never again save him from himself, Dante cried. He cried… and cried.
When he eventually stopped crying, he saw a note had been pushed under the door:
Here if you need me,
Ted
Dante couldn’t go asking his mate for help, not after behaving the way he had with Shay, who was just a user and hadn’t been worth the loss of his best friend. A friend who stuck by him even as he got kicked out of Eton, then private school after private school, until eventually the only schools which would have him were comprehensives that had no say. He’d been surrounded by all these good people while all he did was achieve fuck-up after fuck-up. Wasting away. Daltrey and Teddy had stood by him, no matter how much they looked disappointed, and it was sheer determination to do better that brought Dante to his feet again that day, after hearing he would never again see his brother.
Oh god, his brother…
Shame crippled Dante utterly and completely. For almost two years since he inherited Pernox and decided not to pursue postgraduate education, he had done absolutely nothing productive with his life while his brother trained as a doctor – saving lives.
Like a switch had flipped, Dante suddenly had motivation and a purpose, something to do… a case to solve.
Instead of seeking an ear, or a shoulder to cry on, Dante decided to pull on some clean clothes and go and see what some bastard had done to his brother…
…moreover… why.
Six
SINCE DANTE WAS TEN, WHEN he stumbled on Dick in bed with a strange woman (his penis moving in and out of a place Dante didn’t know accepted traffic the other way), Dante had suffered with rage. Through his teens he got it out with sports or masturbating but by the time he was eighteen, he was bored of sex already and Daltrey suggested he join him at his Krav Maga classes. A multi-discipline, it required brains as well as brawn and though Dante didn’t gain weight, he gained definition nobody else he knew possessed, not even his older brother who was naturally bulky. His anxiety (the rage was a part of it) wouldn’t be diagnosed properly until long after Daltrey’s death, when he got himself into big trouble in a bar brawl, during which he almost decapitated someone with a carving knife he stole from behind the bar. He was ordered by a judge to do community service and seek counselling – and that was when his anxiety relating to a fear of becoming just like his father was diagnosed.
SO even if n
obody else knew what was going on with him (on the day of Daltrey’s death), Dante knew in himself what was happening because it had happened plenty before. He would ride out the beast, sleep for days afterwards, and try to forget the feeling of utter despair as soon as possible. He didn’t know it was called anxiety and was manageable; he just knew it made him feel weak. His reactions were extreme because he didn’t have anyone there to soothe him. Nobody at all.
Leaving his trashed apartment behind, he chased to the hospital his brother had worked at, determined to see the body. It had to be there, right? As he drove London’s congested streets, he couldn’t see straight. A number of other vehicles honked their horns and cyclists cursed him. He felt acid swirl his guts and wanted to puke. At the same time he felt dizzy and panic-stricken. Sometimes he’d build up adrenalin to a point where the only way to get rid of it was to put himself into action in severe ways – like brawling or fucking for nights and days on end – although he hadn’t done much of the latter since Shay’d been in his life. Somehow she’d been enough of a distraction to make him forget about his problems.
Tearing through the hospital, he went from one department to another, making demands, getting sent elsewhere. Eventually he knocked past a man in the morgue and flew straight into a room where Daltrey’s body was.
The floor caught him, though he wished it hadn’t. He wanted the earth to soak him into it, suck him under, and never let him surface. Anything but the pain of grief.
So many memories assaulted him…
Daltrey being a goof. A dork. He was the biggest dork.
His big brother’s girlfriend Xenia, a Russian billionaire’s daughter, would no doubt be wondering where he was. Had she had the call yet? Did she know? Was she the reason why Daltrey now lay inert, a sheet covering him, almost as white as he. A scorched black contusion in the centre of the forehead told Dante it was a clean kill and his brother wouldn’t have known a thing. Yet still, who wanted him dead?
Dante couldn’t fathom it.
All he knew was that the remains of his brother were material and the spirit – the vibrancy of his elder sibling – was now lost to the ether, somewhere Dante didn’t ever think he would visit. If any sort of heaven or afterlife existed, Daltrey would be there, but Dante wouldn’t make it. He’d resigned himself already to Hell and that was it.
“Who are you?” The pathologist, or whoever they were, barked.
“His… brother,” Dante managed, and as his vision cleared, he noticed the man he was looking at was actually uniformed. Not overtly, but the starchiness of his clothing told Dante it was a cop.
“Dante Sinclair?” the guy asked, referring to a notebook.
He nodded.
“Where were you between the hours of five and six this morning?”
“Ummm,” he coughed, “sleeping! Am I a suspect?”
“May as well just get that detail out of the way, that’s all.” The copper let the awkwardness hang for barely a few seconds before walking over to shake Dante’s hand. “So…?”
“Asleep, at my place in Chelsea. I got home at around midnight last night. I scan myself into the building with this swipe card.” He showed the copper in plain clothes his card. Obviously the man was a detective. “And you are?”
“DC Kitchen,” the man said, flashing Dante his ID.
“Okay. Good. So as I said, the swipe card time stamps. You have to use it to get in and out. They… I mean, the building security, will demonstrate that I was at home during the–the–”
“Murder,” the copper said.
Dante spoke slowly, swallowing the thickness in his throat, last night’s excess threatening to rise out of his mouth. “So it was a real murder?”
“Yes.”
The policeman suggested they leave the room and they walked away, towards some blue plastic chairs out in the corridor. Dante didn’t want to get too close to the brutal truth of a shot to the head – no holding his brother’s corpse as he wept. Besides, Daltrey was already elsewhere – he felt it. Nothing remained of him, not here.
“So, do you know of anyone with a vendetta, or a grudge against your brother?”
“Absolutely, no. He wasn’t the sort of guy to go getting himself into trouble. You know? He was doing so great in his job. I’m sure he only had a few months left until he qualified properly.”
“Yes, I think he had six weeks left in fact.”
Dante took a deep breath and the corridor began to turn on an axis, like a bad fairground ride. He had to sit down.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem to have seen your brother a lot recently, otherwise you would know he was about to qualify.”
Dante nodded, head held up by his hands, keeping it upright. “You’re right. I was making some life choices he didn’t like. It seemed to have driven a wedge between us. Sort of like, the weekend meets got less and less until they became non-existent.”
“What choices?”
“My career for example,” Dante answered quickly, trying not to make himself a suspect. “I… dropped out of postgrad study and he thought I was a fool. Plus I was seeing this wild girl he didn’t like… but it was nothing, you know? Just brotherly stuff. If I’d known…”
If he’d known there was so little time left for them to spend together, he would have spent more time. He would have been there this morning. Dante would have pulled an all-nighter if he’d known, just so he could be there to take the bullet for Daltrey. Maybe it would have saved his soul, saving Daltrey?
“What car do you drive?” the cop asked.
“A BMW convertible, why?”
“Someone saw a Mazda of some kind leaving the scene of the murder. They’re with colleagues now, determining the model.”
Dante shook his head. “I don’t know anyone who drives a Mazda.”
“And you don’t know anyone who might want to harm your brother?” The cop stared, quizzing him. All Dante wanted was to be helpful, so they could catch the killer.
“Like you guessed, we haven’t been that close lately but maybe if you speak to my mother, she could tell you if he was having any sort of issues with anyone.”
“We talked to her already,” the cop said, “she could think of nobody. Also, she said he recently stopped seeing his girlfriend, so that rules her out. His last communication with her was several weeks ago.”
“Shows how out of touch I was…” Dante wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and shivered, the heat of his anxiety attack having worn off a little.
“I’ve got a lot of enquiries to make… all his colleagues to interview. I need to ascertain some patient didn’t get treated bad recently, or you know… well, I don’t know, but we have to follow all avenues.”
“I get it.” Dante held up his hand, desperately hoping the cop just buggered off. Just go. Save your pity. Save the rest of your impersonal enquiries for the colleagues. Dante knew how people could be when they felt wronged and if some patient had died on Daltrey’s watch, then perhaps there was some maniac out there who’d exacted a vendetta against Daltrey. Again, Dante thought this unlikely. He couldn’t imagine his brother ever failing and certainly not right before becoming qualified.
“Here’s my card if you think of anything.” DC Kitchen handed him a card and Dante stuffed it clumsily into his jeans pocket. Then the copper noticed Dante’s bloodied hands and remarked without judgement, “Go get them looked at, eh son?”
“Yep,” Dante promised, but with little honesty. He’d enjoy picking the glass out later as his body rejected it – like always.
When the copper was gone, Dante sat in the corridor for an hour or so, not ready to leave just yet. People came past once, twice… again. He stayed where he was.
Nobody sat with him, or questioned why he was there.
He was untroubled, and undisturbed, while he sat with no purpose and nowhere to go. Realising the money he’d paid to park his car would soon run out, he left the hospital unsteady on his feet, dreading going home to the
trashed house – and what came next.
As he got back behind the steering wheel, only seconds to spare before the lingering, power-mad parking warden gave him a ticket, he decided he really had to know about the conversation which had taken place between Daltrey and Shay that one night his brother invaded Pernox. Thinking about it now made him incensed. Something was said that night which could shed light on the murder, he thought.
He pulled away from the car park, cursing the much-too eager parking warden under his breath before slowly rolling down his window to say, “Proud, are you? Trolling my car. I fucking lost my brother today, you prick.”
The warden bowed his head and Dante didn’t think about the warden a second longer, but knew the warden would forever think of him.
He took his car towards Pernox, not caring about the time of day and that the dungeon was closed and the girls didn’t see men during the day.
He just had to speak with Shay.
Seven
DANTE ARRIVED AT THE SHUT gates preceding the spa, exhausted now he was finally here. Adrenalin wearing off, his limbs ached and his heart pounded still – but slower. He felt lethargic and heavy. He knew he could probably ram the gate but surprisingly, he didn’t have to. It opened without him having to force it.
Shay emerged from the house as he stumbled from the vehicle. He saw her through a blur and she asked, “What’s happened to you, Dante? What did you take? What did you do?”
“Don’t know–”
She led him inside the house, her hands holding him upright. Some of the girls were undressed as he walked with her through the reception hall, but with his head so heavy anyway, he kept his eyes to the floor.
Shay took him to her bedroom and he glanced around, seeing blurry outlines… and dots. It felt like he was dying.
She unbuckled his belt, removed his shoes and trousers, then put him in her bed. She made a telephone call and a few moments later, she was helping him drink tea and eat some toast.
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 7