Out of Promises (8 page)

FOUR YEARS AGO.  MICHAEL

i

Freddie stuffed food into his mouth like it was his last.

‘Oh wow,’ he said. ‘This duck is delicious,’

‘Good,’ said Lucy, taking a sip of wine.  ‘It feels like forever since we spent quality time together.’

‘Yeah, I know.  Sorry.’

‘It’s fine.  You won’t be working the garage forever right?’  She smiled and looked around.  ‘I’ve always liked this place.  Look at the artwork on the walls.  It’s so relaxing.  The music just soothes the soul.’

Freddie followed her gaze.  He had to admit, the place had a classy feel to it with a lonely dance floor centring the room.  ‘Yeah, it’s a nice place.’

‘What’s on your mind?  You seem distant tonight.’

‘Nothing.  Just thinking how lucky I am to have you and the kids.’

‘You are lucky aren’t you?’  She took another sip of wine and held the glass, watching him.

Just The Way You Are by Billy Joel warmed the speakers.

Lucy smiled.

Freddie didn’t.  He knew what was coming.

‘You remember this song?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm, it was the first song we danced to.’  She stood up and held out her hand.  ‘Come on, dance with me.’

Unwillingly, he got to his feet, taking her hand and leading her to the dance floor, wrapping his arms around her long white dress, holding her close and resting her head on his shoulder, swaying left to right in rhythm to the tune, the only pair on the dance floor.  Lucy was happy, feeling like nothing could go wrong.

Freddie was embarrassed.

‘I do love you, Freddie.’

‘I love you, too.’  He kissed her cheek.

When the song finished, they went back to their seat and Freddie poured them both some wine.

‘What do you plan on doing to me tonight?’ she asked.  ‘All this wine.  Could go to a girl’s head you know.’

‘Ask me again when we get home.’

ii

After paying the bill, they skipped the taxi, preferring to walk in each other’s arms through People’s Park on that summer evening.

The grass had been freshly mowed and the flowers had bloomed in the day’s beaming sunlight.  A monumental obelisk remembering the lost over the years of violence pointed up to the heavens in the centre of a pond.

They walked around it, dodging the joggers and dog walkers taking advantage of the cool twilight air.

Lucy said, ‘I hope Michelle can handle the twins.’

‘She’ll be fine, she’s a good babysitter.  How hard can they be?  They’re only one.’

‘Well as you’re always at that garage you wouldn’t know would you?’ she said jokingly, but they both knew the underlying reality was: she was right.

‘Hey, come on.  I work to pay the bills while you take care of the kids.  It’s how it should be.’

‘OK, Mr Sarcasm, I’ll find a job instead and you take care of the kids.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Their house was up ahead.  The street was nice and quiet with trees growing on either side and the large homes bordered clean roads, perfect for bringing up children.

‘We’ve never spoken about marriage really, have we?’ he said.

‘I didn’t think you wanted it.’

‘I do.’

‘That a proposal?’

‘No.  Do you want it to be?’

She said no more and opened the door, waiting in the doorway.  ‘It was nice tonight.  It’s not often I get to spend time with my man like that.’  She kissed him on the cheek.  ‘Let’s get Michelle out of the house shall we?  Get a drink and go to bed, what you think?’

He smiled broadly, nodded and eagerly followed her inside.

There was no sound in the house; no kids crying and no Michelle to greet them.

‘Strange,’ said Lucy.  ‘Usually Michelle can’t wait to leave with her money. Michelle?’

No answer.

‘Freddie, I have a bad feeling.’

‘Stay calm and I’ll look around.  She probably fell asleep or something.’

Leaving Lucy at the entrance, he checked in the living room.

No sign of Michelle or the children.

If she’s taken my children, I’ll kill her.

A scream came from upstairs.

‘Lucy?’ he yelled, running up to find her standing in the hallway staring into the children’s bedroom.  ‘What is it?’ he asked and looked inside.  ‘Michelle?’

She was on the floor, naked and covered in blood.  Bruises scattered her body and her throat was cut.

Lucy almost fainted when she saw a lump under the sheets.  ‘Oh no, please no,’ she yelled, running passed Michelle to the bed.

Pulling back the sheets, she found Michael’s body.  Broken and bruised, he looked like he’d been thrown around the room.  His face had been crushed and he was barely recognizable.

Freddie checked Michelle’s pulse.  Nothing.  He covered her with his jacket.

Standing with Lucy, he looked over her shoulder at his son.

She started crying and screaming hysterically, almost falling onto the bed holding Michael’s body in her arms.

Freddie said, ‘Where’s Chloe?’  She wasn’t in the room.

He ran to her bedroom, but she wasn’t there either.  At his feet he found a bottle of chloroform and could smell it in the air.

Fuck. Where is she?

His eyes were watering.

Then came a little girl’s scream from the garden.

He darted downstairs.

iii

The pitch black of the night made it almost impossible to see anything, just the shadows of some rustling trees as they eerily danced against the backdrop of the neighbouring houses and garden lights.  Anxious, he studied everything for a sign any of unnatural movement, squinting his eyes to make out anything he could.

Then the scream came again, this time from the path just beyond the garden fence.  Peering over, he saw the outline of someone running, child in hand.  Chloe’s screams were loud in the silent night causing dogs to bark and outside lights to be impatiently being switched on.

He bolted after her.

The main road was brighter under the street lights and he found the kidnapper hobbling along at a slow pace with Chloe in his arms as if disorientated, swaying like a drunk on a heavy night out until, with a thud, he fell over.

‘I’ll kill you, you piece of shit,’ said Freddie before snapping the kidnapper’s nose with his foot.

He lifted Chloe from his grip and kicked him again for good measure.  The guy was completely out.

Before someone called the cops, Freddie picked him up over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, carrying Chloe in his free arm back to the house.

The dogs were still barking, but nobody came out.  Instead, people shouted at them to shut up.

He dumped the man’s body over the fence into his garden and climbed over carefully with Chloe in his arms, taking her back to the house and leaving the kidnapper where he was.

Chloe was still crying when he gently laid her on the sofa in the living room, but she was OK.

‘Lucy?’ he yelled from the foot of the stairs, her sobs audible down here.

‘Chloe is safe.  She’s in the living room on the sofa.’

No reply.

‘Luce?’

He wanted to be with her, but knew he couldn’t deal with that right now.  He grabbed his baseball bat from the cupboard under the stairs and ran back outside.

I’ll kill him.

The man was regaining consciousness. Freddie swung the bat into his ribs and kicked him again, sending him back to sleep.

With a tight grip on the man’s arm, he dragged him into the garage through the side entrance and sat him in a chair using a rope to tie his hands behind his back.

Standing in front of him, he gazed at the man’s rough, scarred, bloody face, barely breathing through his battered nose.

Adrenaline flowed through Freddie’s body, manifesting itself in an overwhelming amount of anger.  He paced back and forth, confused, wondering how and when this sick bastard managed to get his address and what connection he had to him, knowing it must have had something to do with his work.

He slapped him to try and wake him up, but his head just rocked on his shoulders.  He thought about burying a screwdriver through his temple and ending it here and now, instead biting his lip and slapping him again, harder this time.

The man stirred.

Freddie stood over him and asked, ‘Who are you?’

Groggy, the man said, ‘Where am I?’

‘Who are you?  I won’t ask you again.’

‘What, what is this place?’

Clenching his fist, Freddie hit him again.  It didn’t matter how much it hurt, he would punch him to hell if he had to.  ‘Answer me or this will get a lot messier.’

The man spat a mouthful of blood at him, laughing.  ‘You’ll just have to kill me.’

Would Chloe have been sold?  Murdered?  Or raped?  All these possibilities went through his mind making the thought of burying something in the guy’s head more enticing.

The realism that his son was dead hadn’t quite sunk in yet.

‘Oh, I’ll kill you,’ he said.  ‘I’ll just do it extremely painfully and slow.’  Moving to within inches of the man’s face, he said in a low, assertive tone, ‘Nobody touches my children.’  He took a step back. ‘Nobody!’  Grabbing a screwdriver from the shelf, he jammed it as hard as he could into the man’s thigh until it touched bone, twisting it.

The scream was almost deafening.

He pulled it out and the guy writhed in pain, laughing at the same time.  ‘I know who you are, Freddie.’

‘What?’

‘Tell Matherson that his precious business is going down.  Everyone there is basically dead already.  They’ve all got targets on the back of their heads.  And as for your friend, Valerie is it?  Well let’s just say she’ll get it anyway we can give it to her.’

‘Valerie?  What’s she got to do with this?’

He smiled showing yellow, bloody teeth.  ‘One day, you’ll find out.’

Freddie squeezed the man’s thigh,, hard, pushing a finger into the wound.

He screamed again.

‘Everyone has a breaking point you fucking piece of shit.  Why did you come here?’

‘You’re all going to die.  I won’t say when, but that organization will crumble.  You and all your kind will be begging for your lives when we’ve finished with you.’  He took in a deep breath. ‘I know everything about you, Freddie.  Everything.  I know that you lie to Lucy.  I know when you’re together and when you’re not.  I know she knows nothing about you and Matherson.  What will happen if she finds out you’re really a murderous thug.  She is a fine looking woman for sure, would be a shame to lose her.  Don’t you agree?’

Well that was it, Freddie lost all control, letting go of the thigh and picking up the baseball bat.  ‘She won’t find out, now shut the fuck up.’  He swung at his face like he was hitting a home run, splattering blood against the wall.

The lifeless body flopped in the chair.

Lucy said from the door, ‘What are you doing?  Who the hell is that?  Freddie, our son is dead,’ she cried, running back to the house.

He followed.  ‘Lucy, wait a sec.’

In the kitchen, Lucy cradled Chloe close to her chest, pacing up and down.  ‘You lying son of a bitch, how could you?  You killed our son.’

‘Lucy, I can explain.’

‘Freddie, our son is dead.  Michelle is dead.  Thank God for Chloe.  And it’s all on you for bringing this shit into our house.’  She stopped pacing and looked at him.  ‘Tell me the truth.’

He said nothing.

She slapped him with her free hand.

Sirens screamed in the background.  ‘I called an ambulance, and the police.’

‘What?’

She sat on the floor still holding Chloe against her chest and started rocking back and forth.  ‘How could you leave me in that bedroom alone?  I needed you.’

‘That man in the garage is responsible, Lucy.  That’s why I left you.  Please, you have to understand.’

‘Don’t you dare.  Don’t you fucking dare.’

‘Are you listening to me?’ he shouted.  ‘That man is the murderer.’

‘Is he?  Or are you?’

The sirens closing in.

He left her, running back to the garage, finding the chair empty with a trail of blood leading outside and fading away over the garden grass.

Fuck.

A note left on the chair said:

SEE YOU AGAIN SOON, FREDDIE!!

He put the note in his pocket and quickly tried to hide any evidence, putting the chair back and wiping the walls and his clothes as much as he could.

He returned to the house.

Then it hit him.

What have I done?

In the kitchen doorway, Lucy watched him, still crying.

He didn’t know what to say.

She slapped him again, harder this time and walked out to the front of the house with Chloe in silence to greet the emergency services.

After the ambulance had left, the police stayed to take statements and offered them a place to stay.

They refused.

At the end of the driveway, Lucy stood with Freddie.

‘I’m taking Chloe to my parent’s house,’ she said.  ‘Please don’t call.’  With her packed bag, she walked away from him towards a police officer standing by.  She hadn’t mentioned the man in the garage or Chloe being taken.  Not for Freddie’s sake, but for Chloe’s.

‘Lucy, please,’ he begged.

‘Don’t you dare, Freddie.’  And with that, she left.

Watching her leave felt like his life was leaving him.  He fell on the ground leaning his back against the wall, cradling his face.

What have I done?

Taking out his cell, he called the only person he had left.

‘Freddie?  What’s wrong?’

‘Valerie,’ he cried.  ‘I need your help.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Michael.’

‘What about him?’

‘Valerie, please, can you just come and get me.  I’m at my home.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘Valerie.’

‘I’m on my way.’