by Shaun Baines
She checked through her purse while she waited for an answer. It contained over two hundred pounds, her house keys and a condom.
“Monica? Is that you?” Sophie had been her closest friend at school. She’d been a small, mousey haired girl when they were kids, but judging by her profile on Facebook, she’d grown into a beautiful and determined looking woman. Monica had found her a few weeks ago and they’d been catching up via the message service. When Sophie passed on her phone number, Monica couldn’t resist giving her a call.
“Of course, it’s me. Are you all set for a night on the town?”
“I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and cradled the phone to her ear. “But you’re still coming out, aren’t you? You said it would be nice to catch up properly.”
“I know, I know, but we didn’t really firm anything up and Jeremy’s come down with a cold. With Ian working away, I - “
“Is Jeremy your kid?”
There was a pause from Sophie. “Yes. I told you that.”
“And your husband can’t look after him? Can you get a babysitter?”
“I’m sorry, Monica.”
She reached for the half empty bottle of vodka and sipped from the neck. “My husband works away a lot too.”
“I thought you said his businesses were based in Newcastle.”
Ed hadn’t called back. He wasn’t an attentive husband, but he had been markedly distant these past few weeks. Everyone had. There was an oppressive atmosphere at Five Oaks. Everyone seemed scared, as if her house was home to a ghoul that wandered the rooms after dark. It weighed upon her and she was desperate to lighten the load.
“Look, don’t worry about it,” Monica said.
“We’ll do it another night. I promise.”
“No, I mean, I can come to your house. We can have a girly night in. Talk about boys, like the old days.”
“No,” Sophie said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“It’ll be fun. I have money for pizza or a Chinese if you prefer. I’ll bring the booze.”
“Sounds like you’ve had enough already.”
“Fuck you then,” she said as she threw the phone to the other side of the room. If Sophie wasn’t available, Monica would throw a party of her own.
Taking the vodka, Monica wandered through the rooms of Five Oaks. The only sound came from her footsteps and the occasional clatter as she fell against the walls. She looked behind doors and around corners. The house was bereft.
She found herself at the gym and stood in the doorway. There were two treadmills, two exercise bikes and two cross-trainers. Monica had asked Ed to build it so they could train and keep in shape together. They’d once had sex here, watching their reflection in a wall made entirely of mirrors. Now there was her and a red eyed image reflected back to her a dozen times over. It was the most company she’d had in weeks.
Ed had been a surprise. Their love affair was passionate and filled with grand gestures; impromptu trips to the Seychelles in private jets, Michelin starred restaurants. They had even sat next to a member of the royal family at Ascot to watch the Coronation Stakes. Through it all, she knew such passion couldn’t last. Monica thought their relationship would fizzle out as quickly as it ignited. She had been right, but what made it more painful, was the daring hope she could be wrong.
Ed apologised profusely the first time he forgot an anniversary. He seemed less concerned the second time. It was no excuse for taking another lover, she thought, but it was a damn good reason.
She turned her back on her reflection and stumbled along the corridor to their bedroom. Catching her foot, she tripped and landed hard. Her first thought was for the vodka. The bottle slipped from her grasp, rolling along the floor. The clear liquid leaked from the open top, soaking into the carpet she’d chosen because it was the most expensive in the shop. She watched the last drops eke away and climbed precariously to her feet, holding onto the wall for balance.
What the hell was she doing? She was pregnant and she was drinking. A fall like that could have damaged its skull or something. She might turn it into a retard. Then Ed really would be pissed. Monica stifled a giggle, as if there was someone around to read her thoughts. If he didn’t want kids, he definitely wouldn’t want one with L-plates.
Easing along the corridor, she remembered a bottle of wine she’d hidden under her bed and picked up her pace.
Whatever happened, she’d have to tell him. The old bitch Liz was right. Not about the lovers she’d taken, but about the baby; the baby that was absolutely his and not anyone else’s. She’d grown surer of it as the night drew on.
***
Ed sat in his idling BMW as the gates to Five Oaks closed behind him. He couldn’t shake the notion his house had been corrupted. Whether it was by Fairbanks’ creeping influence or the betrayal of men he once trusted, Five Oaks didn’t feel like home, but his fear had faded enough to follow Liz’s advice. He’d talk to Monica and maybe she could help.
Waiting by the front door was another BMW. It was burgundy with rust on its wheel arches and dints in the bonnet. Ed eased his seventy-five thousand pound car into his usual parking space and got out. Gravel crunched under his feet, but it wasn’t loud enough to wake the rust bucket’s sleeping occupant.
He wrapped his knuckles on the window.
Bronson jumped, blinking the tiredness from his eyes. “Just catching forty winks, boss. Sorry.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Got my release papers half an hour ago. I was up half the night talking to some DI Dick. Credit where credit’s due. They might be on shit pay, but when it comes to getting a confession, they put the hours in.”
Ed picked a fleck of paint off the roof of Bronson’s car. “This your motor?”
“My Ferrari’s in the garage.” Bronson smiled and his cheek twitched. Ed doubted he’d even sat in a Ferrari, much less owned one.
He stared around the empty grounds. There were no lights, no guards, only long shadows cast by the moon. An urban fox cried out from the darkness. “Where is everyone else?”
Bronson shook his head. “Sorry, boss. I couldn’t persuade anyone to come with me. They were all pretty tired. I think they just went home.”
“But they’ll be here tomorrow?”
Bronson refused to meet his eye. Ed was the sinking ship and they were the rats. Noodles’ prophesy was coming true. He was being taken apart, bit by bit and only the loyal would remain.
He tapped the roof of Bronson’s car. “Why don’t you take off for the night, mate?”
“No. I better stay. Just in case.”
“Just in case, my arse. The minute I step inside, you’ll be asleep again. Fairbanks could write on your face with permanent marker and you wouldn’t wake up.”
“Are you sure? Will you be okay here on your own? I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
“Do you think I’m some sort of pansy?” Ed said, smiling. He handed over the ignition fob to his BMW. “Take my car. You’ll be lucky if this heap of shit makes it to the end of the driveway.”
The twitch in Bronson’s cheek stopped momentarily. “Your car?”
“It’s yours, mate and it’s long overdue,” he said, walking to the front door. “Now fuck off. That’s an order.”
It was cold inside Five Oaks, as if the heating had been switched off. He climbed the inner staircase, hoping to find Monica in their bedroom. Making time for her seemed like such a small thing considering everything else. Small, but important. Perhaps that’s why Liz was so insistent he spoke with her. This could be the end of Ed Dayton, but at least he’d have his wife by his side.
After Liz left, meeting Monica was a rebirth of sorts. It lent new energy to the Dayton empire. He courted influential contacts among the rich and powerful. He recruited young blood to harvest the potential of the internet. And he encouraged his two boys in criminal enterprises that saw them flourish as men.
Monica fuell
ed his success and he followed the power blindly, putting greater distance between them. She was the cause of her own downfall without sharing any of the blame. He had left her behind and it was time to make amends.
With his hand on the bedroom door handle, Ed paused. He heard Monica on the other side, humming a tune he remembered from his childhood. It was a nursery rhyme, conjuring a memory of his mother that made him uncomfortable, though he couldn’t say why. Gritting his teeth, he entered, but Monica didn’t turn to greet him as he expected she would. She was absorbed by her image in the mirror, a cushion tucked under her top.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Drunk and startled, Monica span at the sound of Ed’s voice. Teetering on high heel shoes, she fell to the ground with a giggle.
“Baby, you’re back. I knew you’d come back.”
He pulled her upright, turning his face away from the smell of the alcohol on her breath. He was still queasy from earlier in the day.
The cushion slipped from under her top. Ed watched it roll under the bed. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
Ed’s jaw tightened. “Let me get you some water,” he said.
She threw her arms around him, pressing wet kisses on his cheek. “I don’t want any water. I want you.”
Peeling the grip from his neck, he sat her down on the bed. She flopped to her side and closed her eyes. Ed bit back a sigh. He wanted to talk. He wanted to mend the gulf between them, but Monica was in no fit state to understand. It would have to wait.
He picked the cushion from the floor and felt Monica’s warmth on the fabric. Ed went to place it under his wife’s head and stopped.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What do you mean, ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’”
Monica mumbled something. He shook her shoulder, rousing her before she slipped into a drunken sleep. “Monica? What do you mean?”
Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked surprised to see him there.
“You’re back,” she whispered.
Whatever patience Ed possessed, it was spent. “Monica, are you fucking pregnant?”
The question woke her with a start. Ed saw she was trying to remember if she’d let anything slip, but it was too late and he felt hot, stinging tears rolling down his cheeks. He hated the fact he was crying, but he hated the woman before him even more.
He raised his hand and slapped her across the face. “How could you do this to me?”
“I didn’t do anything, Eddie. I promise.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me.”
Ed grabbed her slim ankle and dragged her off the bed like a rag doll. He pulled her around the room, searching for something to beat her with. Monica cried and kicked, but she couldn’t free herself from his grasp. At last, he found a tall porcelain lamp and tore it from the wall.
“Eddie, please. Don’t. Why are you doing this?”
The lamp swung toward her and Monica closed her eyes against the blow.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You’re not going to say anything to anyone, are you?” Daniel asked.
The postman stood in his underwear, shivering in the cold air. “No, sir.”
They were in an industrial estate by Newcastle Airport. Planes destined to cities all over the world flew overhead, their engines thundering, their taillights tracing arcs in the night sky. The estate was abandoned and the only witnesses to Daniel’s crime were hundreds of feet in the air.
“And what else did I tell you?” he asked, getting back into his van.
The postman cleared his throat. “Neighbourhood watch are a bunch of twats.”
By the time Daniel arrived at Five Oaks, his other prisoner had regained consciousness. He opened the door and Reaver stared at him, his eyes glazed and his cuts scabbing over. Daniel didn’t know if he was responsible for chopping Mosely to pieces. There’d be no point in asking him without the proper tools and those were inside. He wasn’t taking chances either way.
He found a rope he used for climbing trees and tied it tightly around Reaver’s neck, leading him out of his van like a dog. They crunched their way along the driveway.
But Daniel couldn’t resist testing himself one last time.
“Did you kill Mosely?” he asked, turning to him.
Reaver looked at him blankly. “No.”
“I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or not.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Reaver looked bored. This isn’t the first time he’s heard this, Daniel thought. “So you’re a liar, then? That’s your thing?”
“It’s the only thing I was ever good at. Fairbanks says it’s my gift.”
“But I can always tell if someone is lying. That’s my gift.”
They heard a scream from the house and they looked to an upstairs window. Reflections merged with shadows and obscured the view. It wasn’t clear, but it looked like two people grappling.
Daniel tugged on Reaver’s rope and they jogged through the doors of the house. There was no-one around. Raised voices, louder this time, came from his father’s bedroom. Daniel quickly tethered Reaver, his hands still bound behind his back, to the bottom of the staircase.
“When I’m done with this,” Daniel said,” I’m coming back for you and I will get the truth.”
Reaver shrugged and Daniel took the stairs two at a time. Following the noise, he threw the bedroom door wide open.
Monica was sprawled on the floor, her face red and blotchy, but there was no blood as far as he could tell. Her top was pulled up to her neck, exposing her stomach and a red bra. His father stood over her, pointing angrily. Pieces of a smashed porcelain were scattered across the room and their marital bed was broken in two.
Monica saw him from the corner of her eye. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she hid behind Daniel’s legs, peering through them like bars of a cage. “He’s going to kill me. He’s going to do it. He told me.”
His father shadowed her. “You know I can’t kill you. I’m not a monster, but I can hurt you. Hurt you badly.”
The tendons in his father’s neck stretched taught, like piano wire wound too tightly. Froth gathered at the corners of his mouth and his eyes blazed at Daniel. “And what are you going to do about it, eh? She’s a whore. I’m going to drop the bitch in the Tyne.”
Daniel tried to stay calm, but his father was manic. He had seen him like this once before, on the day he defied the last request his father made of him. The image had returned to him night after night as he lay in bed at his new home in Scotland. No matter how far he ran, the picture of his father’s insanity followed.
Ed’s wide eyes searched to the floor, resting on a shard on porcelain. He swooped upon it and waved it toward Monica. “I’ll cut it out of you. I’ll cut the little bastard out.”
“He’s gone crazy,” Monica said, scuttling backward.
Ed lunged at her. Daniel swatted his father with the back of his hand, spinning him on the spot. They wrestled and he grabbed his father’s wrist. Daniel was stronger, but his father was a powerful man and his anger made him feral. Blood wept from Ed’s hand where he gripped the porcelain too tightly.
Daniel bore down and with a quick twist, broke the bones in his father’s wrist. Ed cried out, dropping his shard. He withdrew a couple of steps, saliva hanging from bloodless lips, nursing a hand that flapped uselessly. “You’re against me too. You’re just like her. You betrayed me. I loved you both and you turned on me like vipers.”
Daniel turned to Monica for some sort of answer. He’d disobeyed his father and to a man like him, there was no greater offense, but he couldn’t imagine what Monica might have done. And then he remembered. Scott and Monica by the lake. The embrace. The hurried escape. He bit the inside of his cheek. No wonder his father was hysterical, he thought.
She half lay, half sat on the floor, her large eyes streaked black with running mascara. “I thought it would be okay. It’s just another baby. It’s a brother or siste
r for Scott and Daniel.”
“It’s not mine,” Ed shouted at her.
“It is. It is, Eddie. It’s yours. I would never betray you. I love you.”
“You’re a lying bitch.” His father dropped his broken wrist and reached out with his good hand, clasping and unclasping his fingers as if he already had her by the throat.
Daniel pushed him away. “How do you know it’s not yours?”
Ed smiled. It was cruel and knowing. “You ask her.”
“Don’t do this to me, Eddie.”
“Ask her, Daniel. You’ll see I’m right. If I’m wrong,” he said, shrugging, “well, we’ll patch things up and go about our days as if this never happened. But if I’m right, then maybe it’s time to visit the room downstairs.”
It was impossible for Daniel to imagine his brother and step-mother together like that. True he’d seen them by the lake, but he’d convinced himself it was a mistake, an honest misunderstanding. Turning around meant learning something he couldn’t unlearn. His family was fucked up enough as it was.
“You won’t do it, will you?” Ed asked. “You won’t look because you know she’s lying.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s true,” his father said, staggering toward him, “but we both know she betrayed me.”
“The question is how do you know?”
His father stood in front of Daniel, drawing himself to his full height, which was eight inches smaller than his son. He was diminished in Daniel’s eyes. He had commanded armies. He had destroyed enemies, but for all his talk of loyalty, he had betrayed his duty as a father a hundred times over. Looking at him now, it was as if all his sins had come home to roost in a single night.
“You hate me, don’t you?” Ed asked. “You hate your own father. Well that’s not something you need to worry about anymore. I can’t believe I ever called you my son.”
With a bowed head, his father wept. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin. It was undignified, but Daniel hid his embarrassment. It was the least he could do for a man who had lost so much.