Jack Larkham

Adam reaches for the cigarettes he used to keep in his shirt pocket, remembers he quit, and goes back to chewing his fingernails.

Marcus is leaning forward, elbows on the dashboard. It’s cold even with the engine running. But it’s getting dark, and they’ll be ready to go soon.

“Are we going to kill him?” Marcus asks. He’s been watching an old woman and her dog down on the beach. She’s standing in the water now, up to her ankles, but there’s no sign of the dog.

“No,” Adam says. “We’re not going to kill him.” He winds the window down and spits. The wind blows some of it back into the van, into his face. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand, and thinks things would be so much better if he could have a smoke, just one smoke.

Marcus grunts, inches forward. He’s concerned about the dog. He doesn’t have a dog, doesn’t even like dogs, but he knows what the tides are like down there, round the other side of the bay. The swells, the undercurrents. How quickly things can change: one minute you’re just messing around and everything’s fine, the next you’re sinking, sucked under and swept away.

“Are you even listening?” Adam says.

“Maybe we should go and help.”

“What?”

“The dog.”

“What dog? What—”

“The dog, down there. A Lab, I think. Big black thing. The woman was chucking a tennis ball for it and the dog went into the water to fetch it, but—”

Adam clips him round the ear. Marcus ducks, too late, and looks the other way, towards the lighthouse.

“A fucking dog?” Adam says. “Really? After everything he did to Kayley, to your sister, you’re worried about a stupid fucking dog?”

“Dad, I was just saying.”

“That’s the problem,” Adam says. “You just saying things. Dumb fucking things like that.”

He kills the engine, and they wait. Adam reaches for another cigarette. It’s only been two weeks and it should be getting easier now. He looks out, can see the caravan park on the other side of the dunes, then looks down, at the wreckage of his gnawed fingernails. “There’s a claw hammer in the back there,” he says. “Go get it. We’re ready.”

***

Kayley denied it at first. Said she’d tripped at work, slipped on something behind the bar. Just a few bumps and bruises, maybe a sprained wrist. But when they saw the bite marks further up her arm, around her neck, she told them everything.

“He said he’d kill me if I told anyone,” she said, “if I went to the police.”

Adam took her hand. Nineteen now and all grown-up. But she was still his little girl, and he was still her dad.

“You did the right thing,” he said. “Telling us.”

He stopped at the door on his way out.

“But don’t worry, we’re not going to the police.”

***

Marcus grips the rubberised handle. The hammer is heavy, reassuringly meaty, and he likes the swooshing sound it makes as it cuts through the air.

“You know how to use that?” Adam says, coming up behind him.

“It’s a hammer,” Marcus says. “It’s not complicated, is it?”

Adam climbs into the back of the van, and rummages through the clutter. He grabs a thick roll of scrim tape and a pair of combination pliers. Slips them into his coat pocket and says, “Come on, before you hurt someone with that fucking thing.”

***

They come in through the dunes, their heads down, staying close to the hedgerow. They’re careful, but there is no one around, not in a place like this. Kayley said Craig had been holed up here for the past couple of weeks, since he’d been kicked out of his flat. Under different circumstances Adam might have felt some sympathy for him, for any poor bastard having to endure in a dump like this.

Craig’s caravan is at the far end of the park, next to the toilet block. It’s barely a caravan at all: ancient and diseased, riddled with rust and grease. They circle round the back, through the nettles and weeds, and stop outside the door. Marcus hears a dog barking somewhere in the distance, towards the village. Something small, he thinks. Yappy. Not the big black Lab. He wonders if the old woman is still down there, in the cold water, waiting.

***

Adam kicks the plastic door clean off its hinges. He stumbles and falls into the caravan, slipping on the greasy linoleum.

Craig’s slumped in an old armchair, lost in it, like it’s in the process of swallowing him up. He’s staring, dead-eyed, at a broken TV in the corner. He flicks cigarette ash onto his lap, and half-heartedly tries to brush it away with the back of his hand.

Adam looks around the caravan, at the half-eaten pizzas and crushed beer cans.

“Nice,” he says. He runs his finger over the cracked TV screen, and stops next to the armchair.

“The cigarette,” he says, holding his hand out.

Craig cocks his head and grins, showing his teeth.

Adam takes the cigarette. Rolls it between his fingers and holds it up to his nose. Closes his eyes and breathes it in.

“Two fucking weeks,” he says. “Two fucking weeks since I had a smoke. You know what that does to you? How it makes you feel?”

“Look,” Craig says, sitting up, trying to extricate himself from the chair. “Kayley said you’d come, she—”

“You bit her?” Adam says, his voice cracking. “You fucking bit her?”

He takes the roll of tape out of his pocket. He hasn’t decided yet what he’s going to do — remove each one of Craig’s teeth individually with the pliers, or let Marcus ruin them with the hammer.

                                              End