Like Father

by Nick Gifford

  They had always thought it something of a miracle that such a frail old thing could achieve so much, but no-one had objected, or queried how she did it. After the trouble with Danny’s father she had just thrown herself into looking after what remained of her family and they had all accepted it gratefully.

  Danny thought of all the times he had heard that familiar sound late at night. The high-pitched humming of ancient German folk tunes. How often had it been Oma, he wondered, and how often might he have listened to Hodeken humming as he worked?

  Oma had the answers, but he did not know if he would be able to persuade her to share them with him.

  Back at the flat, Val told him that Oma was still unwell with a bad headache. He slipped into her darkened room and was reminded of how she had been before, when Eva had been the one who fussed over people and Oma had been poorly and bed-ridden for much of the time.

  She was an old woman, and she had suffered a lot over recent years. Danny swallowed, and tried to stop himself from thinking along such gloomy lines.

  Just then, her eyes glinted in the low light and she looked at him. “Anthony?” she said weakly. “Bist du es, Anthony? Have you come back to your mother? My boy... is good, ja?

  Danny backed out of the room, saying nothing. As he eased the door shut he saw that she had closed her eyes again, and appeared to be asleep.

  ~

  Later, while Val prepared lunch from left-overs from the Open Day catering, the phone went and Danny answered.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes...? Dad? Is that you?” Danny had been expecting his father to call at some point, as they hadn’t spoken since the visit, last weekend. But he didn’t usually call on a Sunday.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” He had sounded odd, even in that single word, but then he had been odd last weekend. Losing it again.

  “Danny. How are things?”

  “Okay,” said Danny, sinking into the sofa in the front room. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, Danny.”

  Danny still couldn’t put a finger on what it was that seemed so peculiar. “Mr Peters called a couple of days ago,” he said. “He told us about the appeal. That they didn’t have enough to support it.”

  “Never mind,” said his father. “Never mind about that. It’s all water under the bridge, eh?”

  He was talking in a slow, measured way and suddenly Danny realised what it was that was odd: the cool, lazy way he was speaking. He had been losing it last weekend, and Mr Peters had mentioned his erratic behaviour. They were sedating him, Danny guessed. Calming him down with injections or pills.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine, Danny. I’m cool. I’ve been dreaming, Danny. We could have another try, couldn’t we, Danny? You’re a good lad, aren’t you? We can be okay...”

  “Sure, Dad. Take it easy.”

  “I will, Danny. We’re cool, aren’t we, Danny?”

  “Yes, Dad. We’re cool.”

  A click, a buzz, and his father had gone.

  ~

  “How would you feel if people here knew about ... about our past?”

  Danny had known something was coming. His mother had put Josh through to play in the front room once he had finished his lunch and for the last few minutes she had sat, toying with her food, barely eating a thing.

  “I don’t know,” said Danny. “It’d be tough. But it’d be a relief, too, in some ways. Why?”

  “We can’t hide it away forever,” she said. “If the appeal had gone through it would have been in the papers again. Someone would have made the connection. I think ... well, it’s bound to happen at some stage.”

  He cracked open one of the rolls, and pulled at its soft insides. “That might be a good thing,” he said. He wasn’t as sure as he sounded. The thought of what he had been through before! But they couldn’t keep running and hiding forever.

  “There’s a chance it might come out soon,” Val told him. She was talking slowly, as if choosing her words with great care. “Someone knows already.”

  “Rick?”

  She looked up at him, sharply. “How...?”

  “He told me,” said Danny. “I assumed you must have told him.”

  “He was being inquisitive, pushy. I thought I was being clever. I wanted to put him off, so I said your father was a violent man, a jealous man. I thought that might scare Rick off.”

  “Scare him off? You mean...” Danny wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “Rick’s very single-minded,” said Val. “He isn’t easily put off. He went away and dug up our past, and now he’s threatening me. I don’t want to lose what we have, Danny. I don’t know what to do.”

  “How’s he threatening you? Why?”

  “Because he loves me, he claims. He’s convinced that he’s going to win me over, and that anything is forgiveable in the long run. I should feel flattered, I suppose. You read about people like him: people so fixated that they can’t see how things really are. For some people it’s some kind of medical condition – an illness. And now he’s casually mentioning how awful life would be for you if word got out about our past. How difficult it would be at school. He keeps telling me how he’s in a position where he can protect you. But by putting it like that he’s also making it absolutely clear that he can make life hell for you, too.”

  She was crying now, and Danny sat silently for a time. “He said that to me, too,” he said finally.

  She looked up, surprised.

  “He said he could make life hell for you, too, if I didn’t keep out of it. He’s been threatening both of us, Mum.”

  Another drawn out silence.

  “Do you want to be rid of him?” Danny asked softly.

  He remembered the lump of rock in his hand, that night he had followed them.

  And the knife, flying through the air, burying itself in the soft ground.

  He knew what Hodeken would have him do to get Rick out of the way...

  Val nodded. “There’s nothing I’d like more,” she said.

  “Then tell him to go,” Danny said. “Tell him to leave us all alone.”

  Before anything worse happens.

  ~

  But by that stage, things were out of Danny’s control.

  Early that afternoon, he took Josh down to the lawn by the lake.

  “Where’s the tent?” said the little boy, wandering round in circles where the marquee had been. “I want the big tent.”

  “You’re in it,” said Danny. “Can’t you see it?”

  Josh stopped and looked all around, and then at Danny. “Liar,” he said. “Pants on fire, liar.”

  He trotted off towards the water, where bees hummed over the clover and, out over the lake, swallows darted and skimmed, low across the surface. “Don’t go too near the edge,” said Danny, hurrying after him.

  He wondered how Val was getting on. She had gone to find Rick. To reason with him, she said. To convince him that he was wasting his time.

  The sunny weather had shifted slightly. The air was muggy, thick. It felt as if it was pressing in on Danny. There was sweat on his forehead, even though he had only been walking slowly. Over in the west, the sky’s blue butted up against a thick grey wall of cloud. A storm was coming.

  He thought of Cassie, as he realised he often thought of her. She had asked him to call her, tell her he was okay.

  He reached into his pocket for the phone, then stopped. He could always call her later. Right now, Josh had headed off on the trail through the willows, and Danny hurried to catch up with him.

  Later, they came up through the orchard.

  When he spotted Rick working among the trees, Danny considered turning back, but it was too late. Rick waved, wiping his forehead with a small white cloth. He seemed relaxed, as if nothing had happened. Maybe Val hadn’t found him after all.

  “Danny, Josh,” he said, as they approached. He was standing by a neat stack of logs, all cut to a length of about thirty centimetres and split ne
atly into quarters. Where he had been working, there was another log, standing on end, with a small hand-axe embedded in it, and a mallet and wooden wedges arranged nearby.

  Josh ran up to him and started making buzzing noises as he ran in tight circles around the teacher’s legs. “Hey there!” cried Rick. He lifted Josh with a hand under each armpit and spun him round in the air.

  After a short time, he put the boy down and laughed at him while he staggered around trying to regain his balance.

  Then he looked sideways at Danny. “I spoke to Val,” he said.

  Danny looked at him, but couldn’t work out his expression.

  “She seemed confused,” Rick continued. “Over-emotional, I’d say. Has she been okay lately?”

  This was man-to-man stuff. Consulting Danny about woman trouble.

  “Some of the things she was saying, Danny. As I say: very confused. I think I see your hand in that. Would I be right?” Still smiling, still talking casually, good mates having a chat. “Don’t you remember our little conversation, Danny? I thought we understood each other.”

  He took out his cloth again, unfolded it, and dabbed at his brow, then folded it and put it away again. He stooped, took the axe in one hand and the mallet in the other. He tapped at the small log and it fell from the axe’s blade.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Danny,” Rick continued. “You know what I’d like? I have this ... I suppose you’d call it a vision, a daydream. What I’d like is, when Val and I are together, I’d like to be able to treat you and Josh, here, like my own sons. We’d do things together. You’d have a father figure to look up to. How about that?”

  He swung the axe down, and it stuck deep in the log. He hammered it deeper with the mallet until the log split in two.

  “I don’t want us to be enemies, Danny.” He took one half of the log, turned it through ninety degrees and swung the axe down again to split it.

  “And I don’t think you’d want that, either, would you?”

  ~

  They followed the path around the corner of the Hall. Danny carried Josh, the little boy tired and cross with the sticky heat.

  Danny was nervous. He wondered what state Val might be in now. She had quite clearly failed to get through to Rick.

  They emerged in a gap between an ancient yew tree and the corner of the main building. As usual, for a weekend, the car park was pretty much full with the hostas’ cars. HoST was running fewer residential courses this weekend because of the Open Day, but there were still at least three groups that Danny was aware of.

  There was a car pulled up across the drive, though, as if the driver had tried to park, found no spaces and just pulled up where he could.

  Standing by the car, in the shade of the lime trees, was a policeman.

  Danny’s heart rushed, suddenly. For him, the sight of that uniform would always be an alarming thing.

  He turned, and there was Val, talking to a man and a woman by the door to the flat. They were clearly police, even though they were not in uniform. There was something about them, something Danny had learnt to spot.

  Josh squirmed in his arms, and Danny relaxed his grip, allowing the little boy to slide down, wriggle free and run across the gravel to his mother.

  Danny followed, more slowly.

  He studied her face as she spoke, paused, glanced across at him, and then carried on speaking.

  She was pale, her movements jerky, nervous.

  Josh reached her and threw his arms around her legs. He knew when things weren’t right.

  “...but how?” she insisted, as Danny drew near. “How could he?” She turned to Danny, and explained, “It’s your father, Danny. They say ... they say he’s got out.”

  She was speaking very slowly, as if she still couldn’t believe what she had been told. “Somehow,” she said, “he just managed to walk out of there.”

  Danny looked at the two police officers. One, a dark-haired woman in her thirties carefully avoided his look. The older one, a man with a bristly grey moustache and a weary look in his eye, said, “He didn’t just walk out, Mrs Smith. It’s not quite clear how it happened. Nothing like it has ever happened there before. There was a lot of confusion. Somehow he managed to talk his way through to the outer gates before anyone challenged him. That guard is in intensive care now.” The officer looked away. He looked embarrassed.

  His colleague spoke up now. “As I was saying, Mrs Smith. Have you or your family had any contact with your husband since Danny and his grandmother visited last Saturday?”

  “He called,” said Danny. They all looked at him. “Today. At lunchtime – about one-ish. He seemed odd. Spaced out. When did he escape?”

  The two officers were staring at him.

  “He broke out this morning, shortly after eleven,” said the man. “What did he say? Did he tell you where he was?”

  Danny shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “He wasn’t on the phone for long. He asked how we were. Said he’d been dreaming.”

  “Did he mention anyone else?”

  Danny looked at the officer, confused. “Who?” he asked. “Why would he mention anyone else?”

  “There were reports from the prison,” said the officer. “That when he escaped there may have been another individual involved. A small man. Very old. Wearing an odd hat.”

  Hodeken.

  No wonder Danny’s head had been relatively quiet today. His tormentor had been busy elsewhere.

  22 A dark and stormy night

  They all sat in the living room. The TV was on. Celebrities doing something dumb for Bank Holiday entertainment. Danny wasn’t really following it.

  Val sat on the sofa, her feet tucked up under her, a gin and tonic cradled in both hands. Josh sat on the floor, scribbling in a colouring-in book. He hadn’t quite grasped the idea of colouring in the right places yet. He should have been in bed by now, but Val seemed content to let him play.

  By the window, Oma Schmidt stood, as she had stood for the past two hours. She stared out through the glass, peering into the gathering dusk.

  Waiting.

  What had Hodeken told her, Danny wondered.

  There was a clatter of crockery from the kitchen. No household sprite, this was Detective Constable Fox making herself useful and keeping herself out of the way.

  “We have no reason to expect him to come here,” Fox’s superior, Detective Inspector Lever had assured Val earlier. “It’s far more likely with cases like this – “ not that there were cases like this “ – that the absconder would return to somewhere familiar. His childhood haunts in Eastbourne, maybe, or back to your old home in Loughton, or maybe to where ... to the scene of his crimes. No, there’s nothing to indicate that he would want to come here.”

  Nothing, that is, apart from the phone call he had made at lunchtime, two hours after he had escaped. That, and Oma Schmidt standing by the window, watching and waiting.

  The other possibility, Lever had told them, was that Danny’s father might just try to vanish, sleeping rough, living in homeless shelters where no-one need know who he was. That was a possibility they might have to learn to live with: the knowledge that he may be out there, somewhere, hiding. No-one would know where he was. No-one would know when he might, finally, decide to pay them a visit...

  ~

  Rain blasted the window in a sudden, furious flurry. Still, Oma stood there, watching.

  The room was lit by a tall lamp standing in the corner, and the flickering, dancing colours of the television. Danny stood, and went over to turn on the main light.

  “Daddy,” said Josh, looking up.

  Danny, standing in the doorway, turned sharply.

  The landing was empty. Josh hadn’t seen anything. He might just have said “Danny”, after all.

  “No,” said Danny, walking over to him and squatting by the boy. “Your daddy is dead, Josh. Your daddy died three years ago.”

  He was killed by my Daddy in a jealous rage, fuelled by the taunting voices that f
illed his head.

  He looked up at Val. She hadn’t reacted. She wasn’t going to deny it. It was the first time this unspoken truth had been brought out into the open. Josh was Chris Waller’s son, from the affair Val had been having with the man who was her husband’s best friend.

  Josh was scribbling again. He had been on that page for hours.

  “Have you got homework, Danny?” asked Val.

  “I’ll look.” He had no idea. School seemed so far away, right now. He went out to the landing, went to peer down into the stairwell. The door at the bottom was locked now, and there were policemen in a car out in the car park.

  He went to his bedroom and switched on the light. The room was empty.

  He kneeled by the bed and pulled the box out. He emptied the envelope onto his duvet. The photos, the newspaper cuttings.

  He stared at them without picking them up.

  He didn’t need reminding of anything.

  He gathered them up and stuffed them into the envelope, which he then folded in two and twisted tightly. He dropped it in his bin.

  He went back into the living room and stood by Oma.

  It was dark now, and the window was streaked with rain. Lightning flickered and rumbled in the distance. There was a light in one of the cars, the faint orange glow of a cigarette. It flared bright as its owner inhaled, and then faded. A few seconds later it glowed bright again.

  “Is he out there, Oma?” asked Danny.

  She looked at him. “How should I know?” she asked him. “I am only an old woman. All I see is rain and the dark.”

  But she was smiling as she spoke.

  ~

  The phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the small screen. He had a message.

  U sed youd call but hvnt. WHY?! RU OK? ...C

  What to tell her? His psychopathic father had nearly killed a guard, escaped from prison and might just be outside now. Oh yes, and he has the help of a mad, obsessive creature from German legend.

  No. Best to keep it simple, he thought.

  Sorry. Forgot. All ok. You ok? DS

  Just then, there was a crackle of someone’s voice from DC Fox’s radio in the kitchen. Danny stood, and arched his back, to get rid of some of the stiffness.