Our House by Louise Candlish (21)

22

Bram, Word document

That Saturday afternoon, the doorbell rang and from the hallway I saw two tall darkly-dressed figures through the stained glass. This is it, I thought, and fear tore through me so violently I lost my balance as I put out my hand to open the door, landing heavily against the frame. I wasn’t ready to explain, to understand, to atone. I was a mess.

‘Bram, look at your face! Who were you expecting? A Mafia hitman?’ Alison and Roger cackled at my expression. ‘We wondered if you and the boys wanted to come to the dog show in the park?’

Incapacitated with relief, I was slow to respond. ‘Oh, right, is that today?’

‘It is. Rocky’s in the Handsomest Hound category. Come on, it’s not to be missed.’

Previously, the prospect of watching the Osbornes’ arthritic Lab stagger around the ring and retreat, unplaced, into the arms of a flock of howling kids would not have floated my boat, but on this occasion I accepted gratefully and told Leo and Harry to put their jackets and trainers on. Did the police even make calls at the weekend? Well, if they did, I’d be out, buying myself one more day, one more night, with my boys.

In the street, I had to turn my face away and consciously recalibrate before engaging with my companions. Next to their carefree state of being, their simple joy in dogs, I was a Martian.

‘Everything all right your end?’ Alison said as we walked, the kids scampering ahead. ‘You look a bit stressed.’

‘I’m fine. Just a bit worried about work,’ I said.

‘Well, don’t think about it. This is le weekend – and the prettiest bitches in Alder Rise await us.’

A throng worthy of Glastonbury awaited too. A well-known actor had moved to the area, Alison said, and was one of the judges. Rog had got talking to him at the vet’s and now she had hopes of socializing together. I couldn’t spot him through the crush, though everyone else I’d ever met was in view: the whole of Trinity Avenue, familiar faces from the boys’ school, the pub, even the station platform. It was unseasonally warm again, the air a sickening soup of dog breath and the deep-fat frying of a pop-up churros stall. In the ring, puppies were being paraded and as the audience surged forwards I hung back slightly, Harry’s hand in mine, as if I’d developed a phobia of crowds. I felt the pain of a need for a drink like appendicitis.

‘Hello, Bram,’ said a voice behind me.

I didn’t recognize it. Expecting another neighbourhood face, I prepared myself for the teasing and backslapping required of a local dad and yet even as I turned my body responded differently. Skin, muscles, internal organs: they all shrank as if to protect themselves from violent attack.

It was him. The guy in the Toyota. At the time, I’d seen him only in profile glimpses, but there was no doubt about it, I recognized the angular bones of his skull, the jutting nose and flat-set ears, the hair shorn close to the scalp. His eyes were some indeterminate colour and yet the energy in his gaze was keen, almost rapacious.

‘How do you know my name?’ I said.

He pushed out his lower lip, a facial shrug. ‘I hear you’ve had a visit from a mutual friend?’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘Daddy? I can’t see!’ Over the bellow of the MC, Harry was clamouring for me to press closer to the ring. I’d lost sight of Leo.

‘Wait . . . will you?’ I held up an index finger to Skullface – one minute – and steered Harry closer to the Osbornes. Checking that Leo was within range, I asked Alison to keep an eye on them for five minutes.

‘This way.’ I led Skullface around the tattered edge of the crowd towards the café building, coming to a halt by the rear doors for the toilets.

He rolled his eyes at the ‘Gents’ sign. ‘Bit of cottaging, Bram? Wouldn’t have thought you were the type.’

He was every bit as loathsome as I’d imagined, as I’d prayed I’d never have to discover.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘How did you find me?’

He shrugged, impatient with my questions. ‘I was talking about your visitor. Tuesday night, wasn’t it?’

‘If you mean Wendy, then yes, our paths crossed.’

You have no idea, do you?

Don’t be like that . . .

‘She told you she saw what went down?’ There was a note of relish in his voice. He was enjoying this, the sadistic bastard, the power of intercepting me on my home turf, where I’d thought I was safe. How had he known I lived in Alder Rise? Presumably from Wendy. Had he kept watch on my street or just turned up at the station and followed the crowd?

I glared at him. ‘Clearly, and since she can’t have tailed both of us that night, she must have made a note of our registrations. Don’t ask me how she managed to get our personal details from them because I have no idea.’

‘Easy enough if you’re willing to spend the money,’ he said, dismissively. ‘You can pay for that sort of information online.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Never heard of the dark web, Bram? I would have thought it could be quite useful to you at this difficult time.’

A baby’s cry started up, echoing from the back walls of the houses on Alder Rise Road, building in that commanding way that was so out of scale with its tiny form. Harry’s had been like that, swelling with fury if Fi or I failed to materialize fast enough.

‘She obviously wants money,’ I said, keeping my voice low as a café customer passed by, eyeing us. ‘More than £10,000, I think.’ It was an absurd sum, now that I said it out loud. This whole situation couldn’t be real. ‘I told her where to go and I suggest you do the same.’ I was aware that I was talking more and more roughly, blurring my consonants as if in response to his brutish manner.

Whether unimpressed by the content or the delivery, he listened with open mockery. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. In fact, I’ve taken a more collaborative position.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘She’s not going away, Bram, and the sooner you face up to that the better. We’re better off sticking together.’

A warning pulse started up in my neck. ‘I’m not sticking with anyone,’ I said. ‘You can do whatever you like to stop her from going to the police, but I’m not getting involved.’

‘I’m not sure it’s that straightforward.’ There was a pause, a snapping of teeth, a bitter stare. Applause from the distant showring rose and fell, and then he said, in the lull, ‘We know about the ban.’

‘What?’

‘Your driving ban. You were only seven months into a twelve-month ban that day, weren’t you? A bit too eager to get back on the road, eh?’

‘But how . . .?’ I sucked air, unable to complete the question. How could he possibly know the status of my driver’s licence? Did he work for the DVLA? Or the police? Or was it as he had said, you could find out anything online if you were prepared to pay? ‘Forget it. I’m not interested in discussing it,’ I said. ‘I need to get back.’

He actually rolled his eyes then. ‘You know what? I haven’t got time for this denial act. You need to get a bit more real about the trouble you’re in.’ As the announcement of a winner and an outbreak of cheering split the air, he dug into his pocket and withdrew a phone. ‘When you’re on your own, take a look at this and get in touch. Don’t use your regular mobile, all right?’

‘Wrong. I’m not taking a look at anything.’ But trying to reject his offering, a smeared old Samsung, proved difficult without getting into a scuffle and drawing attention to us and in the end I pocketed it, glaring at him as I did.

‘Don’t bin it,’ he said, reading my thoughts. ‘What’s on there, I guarantee you’ll want to see.’

‘I have to go,’ I said, trying to edge past him.

He stepped aside. ‘Of course. Better get back to your kids. You never know what kind of scumbags might be lurking about the place.’

‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:25:19

When Alison phoned, she had little to report in her assessment of Bram’s mental health.

‘He was a bit quiet, but nothing weird. Oh, he did disappear for a while early on, but it was total chaos, dogs and kids all over the place, so he might have just lost us.’

I frowned. ‘Disappeared?’ Impossible not to flash back to the empty house, the open wine bottle, the steamed-up windows of the playhouse.

‘It wasn’t a big deal. Leo and Harry were with me the whole time.’

I raised my eyebrows and pictured Alison doing the same: there was not a father in Alder Rise who would refuse a woman’s offer to keep an eye on his charges while he checked his email or gamed or simply stared into space. Merle once said, ‘Why do men find it so easy to accept help and women so hard? We need to reverse that.’

We certainly did. ‘How long was he gone?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe? The puppies had finished and the Best Tricks were on. All collies, obviously. I started to think he must have gone home, but then he reappeared and bought all the kids churros, which was sweet of him.’

‘Probably nipped to the pub for a pint,’ I tutted. ‘Did he smell of booze? Oh, don’t answer that, it’s none of my business. I’m sorry, Al, I don’t mean to use you like a private detective.’

‘Use away. I enjoy it.’

‘How did Rocky get on? Was he in the Waggiest Tail again?’

‘Handsomest Hound. And I can’t believe I haven’t told you the news: he came third! It was the last category of the day and our new local celeb presented the rosette!’

‘Well done, Rocky. Congratulations!’

‘Seriously, it’s the most exciting thing to happen in this house all year,’ Alison said. ‘We’re having champagne tonight, maybe even marital relations.’

Forgetting Bram, I laughed out loud.

Oh, my old friend laughter, I miss you.

Bram, Word document

I waited until the boys were in bed before turning on the phone. Not a model I was used to, it was clearly several years’ old and, though fully charged, took an age to get through its welcome sequence and display the main screen.

There was a single text message waiting for me from a number I neither knew nor was in a position to give a name to, and it contained a link to a newspaper article:

The thump of my heart filled my ribcage, my lungs tender as they struggled to inflate. Just as I finished reading, the picture arrived. It was a shot of my black Audi, my blurred head behind the windscreen. The number plate was not quite legible at maximum zoom but obviously decipherable enough on whatever device Wendy had used. With the benefit of enhancing software, police forensics would have no trouble identifying it, or the place it had been captured. What was not in dispute was when: the date and time were stamped on the image.

It was hardly surprising, now I was presented with it. Like the rest of the world, Wendy had had her phone in her hand, ready to capture something interesting. And what she had captured she had shared with Skullface.

Though common sense told me not to engage, just as I had not when she had texted, some survival mechanism – or was it suicidal urge? – prompted my fingers to work a response:

No reply.

That’ll rattle him, I thought, until his next text came:

Nausea began to surge through my gullet.

Four years, I thought. And that was just the beginning – this bastard didn’t know the half of it.

But the police would certainly know.

Would Fi bring the boys to visit? Would she ever let them see me again?

Four years! I couldn’t survive four days.