Falling Glass Read online

  She turned off the nightlight and stared through the lace curtains at the caravan park. A green phosphorescence was playing on the TV aerial of Big Dave’s caravan. She’d seen it before and she watched while it fizzed there for a moment – if fizzed was the right word – before dissipating into the black air. Most everyone was asleep now. Dave was on earlies and the football match appeared to have finished. Stu and that girl of his were probably the only ones still up, amped out of their minds or cooking blue belly to sell in Derry, or to her.

  She finished the smoke, climbed under the sheets.

  Darkness.

  And when the traffic on the A2 died away, quiet.

  She couldn’t sleep. Yes, the methamphetamine was still in her system but she hadn’t pulled an eight for years.

  She was lucky these days to get four.

  He wasn’t the problem. She no longer thought about Richard or that Sunday morning…No, the problem wasn’t the past but the present. Money, Claire, truant inspectors, Sue, lawyers, private detectives, the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Drugs.

  Rachel tugged the sheet over her face.

  Wind.

  Rain.

  And, finally, at around two, a few hours of erased existence…

  Photons from a different star.

  Prayers seeping through the bedroom wall.

  She stirred. The room was heady, the smell: eucalypt, pine, seaweed. She lifted the sheet from her face. Rubbed her eyes. Her fingertips were soft. Uncalloused. Unworked. She noted this with neither satisfaction nor regret. Work was for workers.

  She lowered her legs to the floor. She looked for her watch but remembered that it had fallen off her wrist in town. Always sly, the Rolex had seized its chance to keep forever its knowledge of date and time, second and minute. Perhaps it was even a bold attempt on the watch’s part to set her free of such notions. She smiled, she liked that, but it wasn’t true – the watch was a present from Richard, it was his ally not hers. And it wasn’t even funny. She could have hocked it for five hundred quid in Coleraine.

  She yawned, pulled back the curtain.

  Blue van, red van, van so old it had lost all its colour, VW Beetle.

  She pushed the window open. A cold wind from the Atlantic. She shivered.

  The prayers from the Jehovah’s Witnesses next door continued. Seven of them crammed into a caravan same size as hers.

  She grabbed the dressing gown from the back of her chair and put it on. She opened the window a little wider and listened to the babble. The chanting was neither a pitch for the Lord’s intervention nor even His understanding, but rather a simple plea that the Almighty hear them. That’s all they wanted. Just hear us, Jesus, know that we exist.

  “Well, I can certainly hear you,” she said, getting off the bed.

  She slid open her bedroom door and checked on the girls.

  Claire was reading Little House on the Prairie at the kitchen table; Sue was still out for the count.

  “Morning,” she whispered.

  Claire didn’t look up.

  “Morning,” she repeated.

  “What?” Claire said.

  “When someone says ‘good morning’ to you, it’s customary to respond,” she said.

  “Sue’s sleeping, I didn’t want to wake her,” Claire muttered.

  Rachel nodded. Always with the answer, that one, but she quickly saw another line of attack. Claire was sipping from a glass of orange juice. There were ice cubes in it.

  “I thought I told you never to go in the freezer,” she said.

  “Mum, please, I’m trying to read,” Claire snapped.

  Rachel walked the length of the caravan and sat down opposite her daughter. There were two ways to go here: get angry and give her a punishment or ignore it.

  She thought for a minute and then picked the latter.

  “What’s happening in your book?” she asked with a benign smile.

  Claire looked up. “They just got Jack back, okay?”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  “Their dog, they thought he was drowned – please, Mum.”

  “Fine,” Rachel muttered and walked to the front door, ruffling Claire’s hair a little roughly as she went past. She undid the locks, opened the door, looked between the branches of the Scot’s spruce. A sky like irises, low clouds, vapour trails.

  The sun had not yet cleared the trees to the east.

  Dave’s paper was lying on his porch and his car was still there. He was, apparently, sleeping late.

  She felt lonely.

  Now there weren’t even stars. She rubbed her chin, scuffed her flip-flop on and off, on and off. She peered through the line of caravans to catch a glimpse of the ocean but there was only a gluey sea mist down there today.

  She sat down in the door opening. At her feet an empty vodka bottle, a half-smoked cigarillo, a wine glass containing rain water and several watermelon rinds now covered with hundreds of black ants.

  The prayers to her right suddenly stopped and after a minute the whole clan came out and began manoeuvering their way into the Volvo 240. Four boys, two girls. Eldest nine. Dad run off to England.

  Rachel waved. Anna waved back.

  “Rachel honey, after I leave the weans off, I’m swinging past the Spar. Need anything?” Anna asked sweetly.

  She had a good heart, Anna. Rachel couldn’t bring herself to really like her but she had a good heart.

  “Nah, I’m okay… Wait, no, I need some fags.”

  “Sure. Usual?”

  “Usual.”

  The Volvo backed out, wove through the caravans and down the dirt track. A new Toyota Hilux was half blocking the way out, so Anna had to swerve over almost into the ditch.

  “Some people, no consideration at all,” Rachel said to herself. Probably yuppie scum here to buy blue belly from Stu.

  Rachel got up and transferred herself to the deckchair next to her house. She lifted one of last night’s wine glasses, plucked out a dead fly and drank.

  Perhaps she dozed a little.

  She woke with a start. The sun was higher, the mist had burned off. It was March 17 so it was never going to be warm but it was shaping up to be a—

  Something was wrong.

  “Claire?” she said.

  No answer.

  She stood. “Claire?”

  “What is it?” Claire demanded from inside the caravan.

  “Is your sister awake?”

  “She’s in the bathroom,” Claire said with the verbal equivalent of an eye roll.

  Rachel nodded to herself but it still didn’t feel quite…Something Claire had said, something about a dog.

  She turned and looked at Dave’s house. The newspaper. The truck. Wasn’t Dave supposed to be on earlies?

  She walked back to her own caravan. Looked in. Toilet flushing. Claire reading.

  “Claire, darling, could you do me a favour and tell me what time it is?” she asked.

  “Mother, please!” Claire said.

  “What time is it?” Rachel asked more firmly.

  “It’s eight, okay? Now can I read?”

  Eight o’clock. Dave should have left an hour ago. She stared at the new Toyota down the trail. No one in the cab. The thing just sitting there.

  And what about Thresher? Where was he?

  “Thresher?” she called. “Thresher, boy.”

  She waited.

  Nothing.

  “I’ve got a treat for you. Thresher? Thresher!”

  No barking, no running.

  “Thresher!”

  A chill along her vertebrae.

  She dropped the wine glass, tied the robe about her and ran back inside the caravan. She took the book from Claire’s hands.

  “Mum!” Claire screamed.

  She grabbed Claire’s wrist, squeezed.

  “Mum, you’re hurting me.”

  “Get dressed. Pack a bag. Everything you need. Grab my stuff too and get your sister dressed. Now!”

  “What’s the matt
er?” Claire asked. She looked frightened.

  “Get dressed, do it now! Tell your sister.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t argue with me. Go!”

  Rachel went to the freezer, took out the Heckler and Koch P30, flipped off the safeties. “Mum, Claire says I have to get dressed,” Sue whined.

  “Do as your sister says! Do it! Get dressed and pack a bag,” Rachel ordered with cold authority. She took a deep breath and exited the trailer. She held the P30 two-handed in front of her, finger next to but not on the trigger. She couldn’t shoot a cop. It was twenty-five years minimum if you killed a peeler.

  Her flip-flops were onomatopoeing so she kicked them off. She walked barefoot to Dave’s, looked in. Blinds down. TV dead. She tried the door. Locked. She crouched down and pushed open the dog flap. She peered inside but she couldn’t see anything.

  “Dave?”

  No answer, but most nights he slept with earplugs.

  She walked round the back of the caravan. Here the clayey dirt became sand and the sand showed a russet-coloured blood trail that went off into the woods.

  “Jesus,” she whispered.

  She knelt down and touched it. Dry but not caked.

  Swallowing hard she followed it into the trees.

  “Thresher?” she tried quietly.

  And then she thought of a worse scenario: “Dave?”

  She looked back at her caravan. Everything seemed okay.

  She stepped over a fallen tree and there, about fifteen yards into the big firs, was Thresher covered in ants with a puncture wound in his head.

  She bent down. Cold to the touch. Died a few hours ago. He’d gone after whoever had come and they’d killed him.

  “Good boy,” she whispered. “You did well. Good boy.”

  She was surprised to see that the blood trail did not abruptly end at Thresher’s body but instead went deeper into the wood.

  She followed it easily over the dense layer of pine needles on the forest floor. Even if she hadn’t been schooled by her scoutmaster da she still could have tracked this guy.

  Heavy footprints, a couple of coins, blood, one leg dragging behind the other.

  At one point he’d fallen and it had taken him a while to get back up again.

  He was crawling now, not walking.

  She found him barely a hundred yards from the caravan park.

  Thresher had torn him up pretty well. He was about thirty-five, wearing a leather jacket, black jeans, white sneakers. He had two gold earrings, a pale pock-marked face, a thin moustache and a Mafiya teardrop under his left eye. Lovely.

  He was covered in sweat and he’d contrived to break his leg.

  In his left hand was a mobile phone, in the right a handgun.

  He was definitely not an Irish cop nor Interpol nor Special Branch.

  His eyes were closed but he looked up when she approached.

  “Spacaba,” he said.

  Rachel approached carefully. She stepped on his wrist, leaned down and took the gun out of his hand. She threw it into the forest.

  “Spacaba,” the man repeated.

  She stepped on his other wrist and picked up the mobile.

  “Cigarette,” he said.

  She scanned the recent calls. Four of them to London.

  “Cigarette.”

  “When are the others coming?” she asked.

  “Cigarette, please.”

  “Are they coming from London?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She pointed the P30 at his face. “London or Dublin or Belfast? Tell me!”

  “London,” he said.

  Keeping the gun on him she searched him and found car keys and a wallet. She took a step back.

  “You tell your boss…You tell your boss…” she began. She didn’t want him to tell Richard anything. She threw away the keys and kept the wallet. She ran back to the caravan park and banged on Big Dave’s door until he appeared bleary eyed, confused.

  “Rachel, what…what time is it? Jesus, what time is it? Thresher gets me at six, it must be nearly—”

  “Dave, I need the Subaru, Richard’s found me. His goons are flying in from over the water.”

  Dave was pushing sixty five and first thing in the morning he looked a lot older than that. His face was greyer than his hair and his eyes seemed far away.

  “Dave,” she said, looking at him, squeezing his shoulder through his denim shirt.

  “What? Oh. The Subaru?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded, went inside the caravan, brought the car keys and a roll of money.

  “I don’t need it,” she said.

  “Take it.”

  “No.”

  “For god’s sake, take it, get the girls something.”

  She put the roll in her pocket. She kissed him on the cheek. “It wasn’t peelers, Dave, he sent muscle, bloody Russians or something, they killed Thresher,” she said.

  Dave staggered a little, recovered, shook his head.

  “Guy’s a nutcase.”

  “I know. I better go. I’m sorry about Thresh. He was a good dog.”

  She kissed him again and ran back to her caravan.

  “Girls, are you ready?” Rachel called as she vaulted the cinder block steps.

  “Sue won’t get dressed,” Claire said.

  Rachel looked in.

  Claire was ready. Standing there with a stuffed suitcase, wearing three shirts and two jackets. Sue was naked.

  “Jesus Christ, Sue, you’re not even dressed!” Rachel said..

  The goon’s mobile rang in her hand. She pressed the green button.

  “Misha, we’re here, where are you?” a voice said in a cockney accent.

  She put her finger to her lips so the girls wouldn’t speak.

  “Misha, where are you? We made it, we’re here.”

  She hung up and looked outside. At the bottom of the dirt road behind the Toyota there was now a black Range Rover. Two men inside, maybe more in the rear.

  “Claire, go to Dave’s car, get in the back, put your seatbelt on,” Rachel said, fighting the panic.

  “What’s wrong with our car?”

  “They might know our car. We’re just going to try and drive past them.”

  “Mum they’ll see us.”

  “Do as I say, Claire, get in Dave’s car and put your seatbelt on,” Rachel said calmly. It wasn’t hard for Claire to see the fear in her mother’s eyes. There was only one way in and out of the caravan park and unless they made a desperate run through the woods they were going to have to risk it. Rachel gave her the emergency bag which was always packed with underwear, money, Snickers bars and the laptop, Richard’s laptop – the only insurance they had.

  “Go!” Rachel said.

  Claire ran out and Rachel wiped the tears so Sue wouldn’t freak out.

  Sue wasn’t paying attention anyway, standing there sucking her thumb looking at Dora the Explorer on the TV set.

  Rachel knew there was no time to do the usual minefield walk with her. She went to the bathroom, grabbed a beach towel and wrapped Sue in it. “Come on, honey,” she said. “You can get changed into some of your sister’s clothes.”

  “Wait a minute, where are we going?” Sue asked.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t want to go!” Sue insisted.

  “Honey, it’ll be fun, now come on,” Rachel said.

  “I’ve got no clothes on!”

  “You can wear your sister’s.”

  “I don’t want to wear her clothes, they won’t fit me!” Sue said, wriggling from her mother’s grip and falling to the floor.

  Rachel could feel a scream welling up inside her. She ran to the door jam. The men had parked and were coming up the dirt path on foot. Two of them, both in T-shirts and aviator sunglasses which definitely meant private muscle not coppers.

  Sue had picked up the TV flipper and put on SpongeBob.

  Rachel grabbed the beach towel from the floo
r and wrapped it tight around her.

  “No!” Sue yelled.

  Rachel picked her up and ran outside.

  “Mum! Stop it! This is a good one!”

  Sue didn’t weigh much but she fought all the way, wriggling, scratching, biting.

  Rachel opened the rear door of Dave’s Subaru Outback and threw her inside.

  “Get Sue’s seat belt on,” she ordered Claire.

  Sue was screaming “Noooo!” at the top of her voice.

  “Would you just shut up!” Rachel said.

  “You better get moving,” Dave said. He had pulled on a dressing gown and he was carrying a long-barrelled shotgun.

  She nodded, got in the car, put the key in the ignition.

  Stick shift, Jesus, Richard had always bought automatics, how did these things work again? Clutch and brake. She turned the key, stalled the car.

  Ahead the men coming up the path identified her.

  They pulled something out of their pockets and began running.

  “I see them,” Dave said.

  She turned the key, let the clutch out easy. Sue leaned over, grabbed a chunk of her hair and tugged hard. Rachel screamed and the car stalled again.

  “Stop it!” Rachel shouted. “Claire, hold her down!”

  The two men were close, twenty yards, less. They were wearing medallions round their necks and the black T-shirts said “Licenced Bounty Hunter” in yellow letters across their chests – which of course counted for absolutely nothing in Northern Ireland.

  “I don’t want to go!” Sue yelled.

  “Mum, I’m scared,” Claire said.

  “Come on girl,” Rachel told herself. She turned the key. “Clutch out slow, petrol in slow,” she muttered. The engine caught. She drove forward. The men were here. Big white guys, moustaches, salt and pepper hair on the first, the second younger, meaner.

  The younger one jumped on the bonnet, smashed the driver’s side window, leaned in through the broken glass and sprayed her with Mace.

  Her retinas burned.

  “Aaaahhh!” she yelled.

  She slammed down hard on the accelerator. The Subaru leapt forward.

  She heard the shotgun tear the air.

  She couldn’t see.

  Thumping on the windscreen.

  The kids yelling.

  She tried to open her eyes but they were flooded with tears.

  She heard Dave shouting.

  She grabbed the steering wheel.