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A few days later, tired of Peter’s obsessive controlling and fed up not knowing what job he had planned, I took the Alfa Romeo for a drive up the coast to Blackpool. I arrived at the house in the late afternoon, pleased to see it deserted. After tucking the car up for the night in the garage, I ordered a pizza.
I was sat in the kitchen drinking a Coke and eating a takeaway pizza when I heard the crunch of a car crawling up the driveway. Through the kitchen window, I saw Peter step out of a taxi with a blonde bombshell on his arm.
She could only have been nineteen or twenty, with a petite figure, and a childlike face. She wore thick makeup and bright red lipstick. Her blonde hair was tied in a tight bun on top of her head, exposing a narrow neck with a diamond necklace.
He strode into the kitchen and slammed his black leather briefcase down on the worktop. The young woman beside him jumped.
“I’m sorry I startled you, Cindy. Just a bit careless with my bag.” He gave her an anaemic smile. “Can you go and wait in the sitting room while I chat to my little brother?”
Peter turned to me. “I see you’ve been driving my cars again. I watched the CCTV. Where the hell have you been today?”
There didn’t seem any point in lying. “I drove up the coast to get some fresh air. I didn’t do any harm.”
“Why do you keep disobeying me?” he yelled, his eyes practically popping out their sockets.
“You can’t keep me penned in here forever.”
“I can do whatever the hell I want when you’re doing a job for me. I’m the boss. I tell you what to do.”
“Piss off, Peter!”
He picked up what was left of my pizza and threw it at my face. The hot tomato sauce and spicy pepperoni stung my eyes.
The young woman yelped, covering her hand with her mouth. He turned sharply in her direction and tightened his jaw. “I told you to wait in the sitting room!”
“Now you see the true colours of Saint Peter, Cindy,” I said, wiping the sauce off my face. She stood motionless, like her four-inch heels were glued to the white tile floor.
“Your saintly image is faltering,” I taunted.
He raised a hand to hit me, but I backed away. “Don’t push me, John.” He turned to Cindy and raised his voice. “Cindy, do what I told you, NOW! Wait in the other room.”
She whimpered, picked up her jacket, and left. I heard the front door slam.
“Looks like you’ve inherited more of our father’s traits than I thought,” I said, moving to the other side of the island counter in the middle of the kitchen. “How many of her teeth will you knock out?”
With the speed of a gazelle, he jumped round the worktop and lunged at me. His eyes were black, and he trembled with the aggression of a fighting pit-bull. His fist hit my stomach like a hammer. As I doubled over, he crashed his right knee into my jaw. I crumpled onto the floor and balled into the foetal position to protect myself. Blood trickled out of my mouth. I closed my eyes waiting for the next blow, but it didn’t come.
“I don’t know why you made me do that to you,” he said, towering over my quivering body. “You made me angry. I’ve lost my date and my temper thanks to you.” I peered out from between my fingers. He walked away towards the door. “I’m going away for a few days tomorrow. Tidy yourself up, ice your bruises, and make yourself presentable. I need you to drive me to Aberystwyth next week.”
***
He was gone when I woke up the next day. I looked at my swollen jaw in the mirror and felt it gingerly. After opening and closing my mouth a few times, I decided it wasn’t broken. But my spirit was. This must have been how Mum felt, I thought to myself. She was stuck in an abusive relationship with no way out, the same as me. No money, no friends, and no freedom.
For the next three days, I didn’t leave the house.
I was chopping chicken for a stir fry when I heard the front door slam shut. My heart jumped and the hairs on my neck stood to attention in fearful anticipation. My brother stormed into the kitchen, raving about people letting him down. “Get me a beer from the fridge,” he barked, sitting at one of the bar stools which surrounded the island counter.
I put the knife down on the chopping board and did as he asked. The moment I picked up the knife, a dull thud hammered across the back of my head, jolting me forward. The bottle of lager had bounced off my skull and now smashed on the white floor tiles, spraying foam across the kitchen.
“That one’s too warm!”
My right hand gripped the knife so hard my fingers hurt, but I didn’t turn round immediately. I rubbed my head with my left hand and mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Forget it! I’ll just get one myself. Everyone lets me down, including you!” My brother pushed the stool backwards with a squeak and I heard the fridge opening and closing.
His beer hissed as he popped the cap off and it fell onto the tiled floor with a clink. He drunk half the bottle and plonked it down on the marble worktop.
“I’m surrounded by arseholes,” he said, fiddling with the gold-embossed fidget spinner he used to control his temper. “We’re going to Aberystwyth tomorrow to talk some sense into these clowns I’m working with.”
“OK, I’ll get the car ready in the morning and drive us down.”
“No, I’m going to drive this time. You’ll drive me home.” He stood up and held a black holdall. “There’s something in here we’ll need for tomorrow’s trip. I’ll put it at the front door. Make sure you remind me to pick it up tomorrow, got that?”
“OK.”
“Right now, I’m going to watch a movie. Bring my food through when it’s ready. And make sure it tastes perfect!”
***
When Peter crashed the car on the way to Aberystwyth, we smashed straight through a stone wall, and hurtled down an embankment. The seatbelt and airbag saved my life.
I woke with a splitting headache and shook my head to clear the stars from my vision. According to the clock, I’d only blacked out for a few seconds.
Looking around to get my bearings, I realised the car was at the bottom of a gully and I saw the road about ten metres up the hill. I could see the gap in the stone wall where we’d driven right through, and over the edge. We were hidden from view from the road, although it was still far too early for cars to be in this part of the national park.
I looked at Peter. Just before the crash, he had removed his seatbelt to reach behind and check the back seat for the holdall bag, giving him minimal protection. His head had smashed onto the steering wheel on impact. As the car rolled down the steep gulley, he’d been bounced around and knocked his head off the roof and sides. He was slumped, nearly doubled over with his head on the steering wheel. The pool of blood in the footwell was getting bigger. He was the colour of a bedsheet.
I felt his pulse. It was weak. He was in a bad way.
Groggily, I reached for my phone and started to dial the emergency services. Then I paused. I let my hand and phone drop onto my legs.
Why did I pause? It’s hard to put it into words, but something like an electric current coursed through me. I was a 35-year-old man with no money and no opportunities. I’d grown up with an abusive father. I was a recovering alcoholic. Tammy Hall in Glasgow wanted me dead. Peter, getting paler by the minute in the driver’s seat, made my life a nightmare every day. I had no future.
I stared at Peter. He was a pillar of Liverpool society and considered a saint because of his philanthropic activities. A millionaire and CEO of an investment bank. He lived in a mansion in the most affluent part of Liverpool and owned two supercars (although one of them was now a write-off).
He had it all. I had nothing.
Now, he lay dying beside me.
I glimpsed my bloodied face in the sun visor in the mirror. “We still look similar enough,” I said to myself. “He’s a bit more tanned and has shorter hair, but that’s easy to fix.” A plan formed in my head in that instant. I closed my phone over. “I could get away with this.”
I looked back at the mirror. “But am I really a killer?” I slammed the mirror closed and picked up my phone. I started to dial the emergency services again, but stopped before pressing the green dial button. “This is your one chance to leave your hellish existence behind you.” I squeezed my eyelids shut and pictured all the times Peter had bullied, abused, and manipulated me.
“Screw you, Peter!” I yelled. “You crashed the car. This is a lifetime of being a manipulating bastard finally catching up with you. This is fate.” I closed the phone over again and leaned back on the headrest.
After five minutes, I checked his pulse again. He was paler and his heart rate was fading. He never once moved. I fidgeted around the car, checking up to the road every few minutes, but no cars passed us.
I planned out my course of action. One of Tammy Hall’s side-line businesses was bare knuckle fighting. I hated watching it, but occasionally it was unavoidable. One thing I remembered was how little the contestants could recall after the fight. Tammy said the punches they took to the face gave them temporary amnesia. That knowledge, I decided, would make my plan a success.
Thirty minutes later, his pulse was non-existent. His cold grey-blue eyes looked like glass balls.
After listening for cars in the distance, I opened the car door and stepped out into the heather covered moor. From the back seat, I took Peter’s spare suit and changed into it. I searched his pockets to find his mobile and wallet and swapped them with mine.
Then I sat back in the passenger’s seat and called the emergency services from my brother’s mobile phone.