Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  “You enjoying that, Fred?” Jasper asked.

  The boy grudgingly moved his eyes from the sandwich to the man seated opposite. “My name’s Billy,” he said. “You called it me before.”

  “Aye, but now I look at you a little closer I ain’t so sure. Kinda looks like a Fred, don’t he, Ally? Or a Francis.”

  Alison slapped his arm. “Stop teasing the poor lad,” she said. “He’s too young to understand your foolishness. He’s a Billy through and through, aren’t you, kiddo?”

  Billy nodded and returned his attention to the bacon sandwich. But he glanced shyly at Jasper and grinned.

  Kate, seated beside her son in the booth, watched the entire exchange without a word, feeling close to exhaustion. Jasper seemed to have a talent for keeping things gently ticking over without any undue fuss and she was immensely grateful for it. He made it look effortless, but she suspected he was as troubled by the night’s events as she was. Maybe more so; he was in an awkward position, committed to helping them yet surely looking anxiously over his shoulder for a way out. How he remained so calm she had no idea. Neither could she imagine how he found it within himself to fool around with Billy after all that had happened; could only watch and admire the facility with which he put the boy at ease.

  “How you feeling, sweetheart?” Alison asked her, sipping at a cup of tepid tea.

  “Tired,” she said. “You?”

  “I’ll manage. I suspect we all will, won’t we?”

  Kate nodded. “I still don’t know how he found us,” she said quietly. She looked down at her son, but Billy had reengaged with his breakfast and was too preoccupied to be tuning in to grown-up talk.

  “Guess there weren’t that many obvious destinations,” Jasper said. “Mad bugger just took a chance and got lucky.”

  Kate wasn’t so sure, but she kept her reservations to herself. Jimmy had located them awfully quickly. Too quickly, in truth. There was a link that she couldn’t quite see, but she’d be damned if she’d waste another second of her time trying to view the world through Jimmy Hopewell’s fucked-up eye.

  “What do you think that woman’s done to him?” Alison said. “When Jasper and I were in the barn with her, she didn’t look quite right.”

  Kate was disinclined to argue. Sally looked like she’d spun into some nameless void, her eyes bright with paranoia and hate. But whatever she’d done, or was doing, to Jimmy, Kate was convinced that every single minute of it was deserved. Quite why Sally had become so emotionally involved she was less able to define; but in the greater scheme of things it didn’t matter one iota to Kate who did for Jimmy in the end, just as long as he and Billy remained apart. She wouldn’t risk her son’s life again. This she knew implicitly. After such a traumatic night, she had decided that she would do whatever it took—even if that might initially seem unthinkable—to prevent Jimmy from coming anywhere near her son.

  “It might be best not to think about it,” Kate said. “Needless to say, the pair of them seem a perfect fit.”

  Jasper nodded his head, casting his mind back to the unreadable expression on Sally’s face as she bound Jimmy to the wooden beam with the rope. He played back their troubled journey, the sour resonance of it already ringing in his head like a faint echo of something half-remembered and remote. The exact trail of how they had ended up here was increasingly elusive, and he cursed his deficient memory, which seemed to fall apart each time a new terror took shape. How this delicate child and his fearful mother might survive the night he couldn’t even bring himself to predict.

  “Seems like we need a new itinerary,” he said, taking a slug of the black coffee he’d ordered from the waitress. “Perhaps something a little easier on the boy.”

  Kate stared across the table at him, her eyes weary, the mind behind them shorn of ideas.

  “I don’t know what’s for the best anymore,” she said. “I’m willing to listen to anything.”

  Jasper smiled at Billy as he finished his bacon sandwich.

  “How about the coast?” he said. “We can spend a few days in a B&B and Billy can walk along the beach and paddle in the sea. It might do us all good after the night we’ve had.”

  Kate nodded, feeling weak with relief that Jasper was on hand to guide them. She pictured Billy paddling happily in the sea, his tiny footprints leaving a faint impression in the sand. She sensed it was the right thing to do. A way to finally escape the fear that had begun to haunt her, like a second heartbeat that fluttered in the dark beneath her own.

  CHAPTER 14: THE SQUEEZE

  Haft walked up the path of the house and knocked on the front door. He settled into the silence with convincing authority, like a man accustomed to training others to bend to his will. The idea that he might fail in his undertaking never even entered his head. It wasn’t a feature of his thinking, and never had been. He knew that, one way or another, he’d find what he was after. He always did. It was invariably just a matter of time.

  He stood on the doorstep and waited. He knew the man was inside. He’d followed him home through a network of winding country lanes. The man had spent several hours with the local constabulary, but Haft suspected that such an enterprise was pointless. He knew only a handful of policemen who were any good, and every single one of them was bent. Most coppers were useless. They never seemed to ask the right question; seemed unfamiliar with, or unprepared to force the pressure points that might yield a result. Haft, on the other hand, was less delicate. He always seemed to know which buttons to press; was drawn to a man’s weakness with uncanny precision, and was more than happy to exploit whatever frailty he found.

  Beyond the door, Haft heard a refrigerator judder into action in a distant room. There was the heavy plod of footsteps on a wooden floor, the sound of a dead bolt being disengaged. The door opened and Haft stared into the disinterested face of a tired, middle-aged man.

  “Mr. Langden?”

  “Yes? What’s the problem?”

  “No problem, sir. I’m Inspector Andrews.” Haft pulled out an authentic-looking ID and handed it to Langden. To the man’s untrained eye it would appear genuine; it would be sufficient to get Haft inside the house.

  “I’d just like to ask you a few questions,” he continued, “in relation to the incident involving the Rymer boy. I believe you might be able to help.”

  Langden looked at Haft in disbelief. “Good God,” he said. “I’ve just spent over two hours with you lot. There’s nothing more to tell.”

  Haft squared his shoulders and set his jaw, his eyes blinking slowly; Langden took an involuntary step back.

  “I beg to disagree,” Haft said. “I think there’s a little more to the story than you’re letting on.”

  There was a moment of strained silence where the two men stared hard at each other. There was always a flickering instant in which the other man briefly considered the logic of challenging Haft’s authority. On this occasion, Haft wondered whether he’d be forced to drive Langden’s face through the glass panel in the front door, before the man sighed, lowered his head, and invited him into the house. They walked into the front room and Langden sat on a large leather sofa. Haft took up a seat in an adjacent armchair and dragged it across the carpet so that it invaded Langden’s personal space.

  “I don’t have long,” he said, attempting to notch up a cheap victory at Haft’s expense. “I’m due to tee off at three.”

  “This shan’t take a moment, sir,” Haft assured him. “You’ll be on the course in no time. We just want to tie up a few loose ends.”

  “Like what? I already told them everything I know at the station. There are no loose ends as far as I’m concerned.”

  Haft leaned towards him and smiled. “Isn’t that interesting,” he said. “That you and I should differ on such a fundamental issue so early in our conversation. Almost makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Mr. Langden?”

  The atmosphere had grown tense; Langden suddenly looked uncomfortable in his own home.

  “About
what?”

  “About exactly what those loose ends might be, for instance. And how desperate I am to have them resolved.”

  There was a lengthy pause and Langden’s face paled in the dim light.

  “Are you threatening me, Inspector?”

  Haft stared out of the bay window and saw two birds soaring across the darkening canvas of the sky. He imagined sitting there for hours, sketching from memory what he’d just seen, the fleeting nature of it acting as a soporific on his tired mind. He closed his eyes briefly and said: “Does it sound like I’m threatening you, sir?”

  Langden sat unmoving on the sofa, unable to look away from the large man with the angular face and lidded eyes. He wondered if Inspector Andrews had fallen asleep. The man was utterly still, so obviously benign that Langden felt himself growing increasingly anxious. It was this unsettling inertia that momentarily seemed the most tangible threat.

  Langden watched him closely. Andrews didn’t look like a policeman and he certainly didn’t behave like one. Not even close. Langden had just spent the best part of three hours observing coppers plodding through their uninspired routines. Not a single one of them transmitted a sense of controlled intensity quite like this.

  Haft opened his eyes and offered up another smile. It rested inelegantly on his face, like a smear of lipstick on a freshly autopsied corpse. Langden wanted to terminate the interview, but was disinclined to suggest doing so. He valued his own face too much; could easily imagine Inspector Andrews breaking his nose with a singular swipe of his bearlike fist.

  “Tell me again about the boy,” Haft said.

  Langden sighed and rubbed at his brow. “I saw the kid at the side of the road, running through the rain. He fit the description that was on the news. Blond hair, tall for his age, wearing a blue Avatar T-shirt, soaked to the skin.”

  “Why do you think he was running?”

  Langden shrugged. “Was it because he knew you were looking for him?”

  Haft grinned and gazed out the window again, allowing the comment to settle in the room.

  “Were there any other cars on the road besides yours?”

  Langden frowned. “I told them all this down at the station. What’s the point of going over it again? You already have everything I know.”

  “Humor me,” Haft said. “Let’s pretend you’re telling the story to a buddy in the pub. If it helps, assume for the next few minutes that I’m not even a cop.” Another languid smile.

  Langden shifted uncomfortably on the sofa; his mouth felt dry and his pulse had begun to race.

  “It was pouring with rain,” he said slowly, “but there were a few other cars passing by. After I spotted the kid, I began to wonder what the hell he was doing running along the verge like that. That was when I checked my mirror and saw a car maybe a hundred yards back pull over on to the side of the road.”

  “What kind of car was it?” Haft was more alert now and was leaning forward in the chair.

  “A Volvo, I think.”

  Haft stared at him. “Be more exact.”

  “It was a Volvo, okay. It had that shitty boxy look that people hate. Unmistakable.”

  “What color?”

  “I’m not sure. Dark. Possibly blue or black.”

  “Did you get a look at the plate?”

  Langden laughed, surprised to discover that Haft was serious. “Are you kidding? It was pissing down with rain and I was looking at it in the rearview mirror. It was pure luck that I glimpsed it at all.”

  Haft nodded. “Do you wear glasses?” he asked.

  “No, but—”

  “And could you see the front of the car?”

  “I suppose—”

  Haft eased himself another inch forward. “Then you must have seen the number plate, Mr. Langden. Mustn’t you?”

  Langden pulled a face, unconvinced by Haft’s logic. “Perhaps, but it was a hundred yards away. And I certainly don’t remember the details. Who the hell would?”

  Haft raised his finger and tapped his left temple. “If you saw it,” he said, “then it’s locked away somewhere in here. All you need is an incentive to retrieve it.”

  “Honestly,” Langden insisted. “I couldn’t see it clearly enough. If I could remember it, I’d tell you. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Haft ignored him. Instead he reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed a small item, the significance of which Langden initially failed to grasp. Haft threw it onto a stained coffee table in the middle of the room.

  “Do you see that clearly?” he asked.

  Langden nodded.

  “Would you mind describing it for me?”

  “It’s a child’s shoe,” Langden said, and with the naming of the item came the cold realization of exactly what it was. He felt his chest tighten and registered a band of pressure around his heart.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “God, please, no…” He could barely pull enough air into his lungs to speak. What came out was more like a personal prayer or an incantation, a softly spoken adjuration that might somehow spin the world back on its axis and return him to a time before the sinister Inspector Andrews had been invited into the house.

  He glanced down at the single shoe on the coffee table. It belonged to his daughter, Emily. It was pink with a Velcro strap across the top and had a small red rose stitched into the leather. He had seen it lying around the house a hundred times; had regularly picked it up after Emily had gone to bed and set it with its mate ready for the following day’s adventure. Now, here it was, perched in isolation on the coffee table, returned to him by a man he didn’t know, a man whose dispassionate gaze filled him with dread.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off the shoe. It seemed so small. Without Emily’s white-socked foot to cradle, it seemed purposeless and empty. He felt almost physically sick just looking at it; couldn’t remember how the situation had become so twisted. How a conversation about a missing kid had so abruptly led to this: a moment of perfectly preserved terror.

  He considered the implications and thought for a moment that he might lose consciousness. This man, who looked and acted like a detective, was clearly anything but; Langden didn’t know what he was, or who he was, only that he had invaded his home and threatened the one thing he had misguidedly taken for granted: his own family. His mind was flooded with horrifying images of his daughter in Andrews’s custody; those wide, unblinking eyes of his staring at his little girl, violating her with their piercing stillness.

  “Please,” he said, looking now at Haft and choking back a sob. “Don’t hurt her. She’s all I have.”

  The entreaty seemed to melt into nothing as Haft watched, emotionless, unmoved. He ran his finger across his lower lip and let the man quietly weep for his child. It was during this moment of realization and shock that the man’s senses would become heightened. Adrenaline would be coursing through his veins.

  Haft reached out and gripped Langden’s arm. “I need the registration,” he said softly. “Close your eyes and tell me what you see.”

  Langden did as he was instructed. “It’s raining,” he said. “The boy’s running by the side of the road. I look in my mirror and see a car in the distance. It pulls onto the verge and stops.”

  “Now look at the number plate,” Haft said, still gripping his arm. “Tell me what you see.”

  Langden frowned, his eyes still closed; sweat was beginning to form in fine beads along his brow. “I can’t make it out,” he said. “It’s too blurry. It’s pouring with rain.”

  Haft squeezed his arm. “Look again. Harder.”

  There was a moment of complete silence. The two men were motionless, caught in a strange tableau of concentrated energy.

  Langden’s face suddenly cleared and he looked surprised. “I think I can see it,” he said. “Some of it anyway.”

  “What is it?”

  Another frustrating pause and Haft applied more pressure to Langden’s arm.

  “B652,” Langden said. “Or it might be B852. I’m not sure
.”

  “And the rest?”

  Langden opened his eyes. “That’s all I can see. He’s pulled in at an angle. There’s not enough light.”

  Haft released his arm and rose from the armchair, reminding Langden of his enormous size.

  “If your information proves inaccurate,” he said, “I’ll send you the other shoe. Your daughter’s foot will be inside.”

  Langden’s face went white. He dropped his head into his hands and began to sob.

  Haft was unimpressed. Langden had only retrieved half the registration details but he suspected it would be enough. The threat was an empty one, just as the shoe on the coffee table had been. A mere contrivance to focus Langden’s attention. Haft had stolen the shoe earlier that morning from the child’s school when the kid had been doing PE. It had been ludicrously easy. He had smiled at three teachers as he left and not one of them had bothered to ask who he was.

  “Please,” Langden said, as Haft turned to go. “My daughter…”

  “Cute as a button,” Haft said, walking towards the door. “Let’s just hope she grows up needing shoes.”

  * * *

  “I need a favor,” Haft said into the phone. “Usual stuff.”

  “Who’s paying?”

  “The client.”

  “Then it’s double.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Haft said.

  “Good. Then fire away.”

  Haft thought for a moment, then said: “Twenty-mile radius. Dark Volvo, blue or black. Registration Y652 or Y852.”