Daniel Dayton Box Set Read online

  "Your heart always beats fast. Is that normal?"

  "Not really, no," he said, worrying at his lower lip. "Can I ask you a question, Eisha?"

  "I told you. The door was unlocked."

  "But I lock it every night."

  "Well, you must have forgot."

  Bracing himself against the wooden headboard, a carving of a unicorn jabbed him in the back. He tried to get comfortable, but everywhere he moved, something rose to irk him.

  Eisha laid a hand on his thick chest. "Your heart is going faster now."

  "Did you touch my gun?" he asked.

  "I'm getting very tired of this, Daddy," Eisha said, brushing hair from her face in an angry swipe. "I heard you screaming in your sleep and I was scared, okay? I came in to help."

  She threw herself into her pillows. "We shouldn't be alone like this."

  "What do you mean?"

  Eisha held onto her bedsheets, her knuckles turning white. "Where's Granda? Or Granny?"

  "You know where they are. They're gone."

  Daniel couldn’t see her face, but he imagined the lines around her mouth and the blaze in her eyes. He looked the same whenever he was angry.

  "But why have they gone? It's not fair."

  Tucking the duvet under her chin, Daniel patted it into place. He let his hand linger, hoping she might take it. When she didn't, he went to turn off the bedside lamp. The shelf above Eisha's toy chest caught his attention and his finger paused at the switch.

  "Turn the light off now, Daddy."

  Daniel left it on.

  Eisha kept her dolls on the shelf – plastic ones, woollen ones, anything he could order over the Internet to make her happy. They sat in a row, presenting their backs to the room. All except one.

  It was a fairy princess dressed in a glittery gown, but it was not as he remembered. The gown was in tatters. The doll's synthetic blonde hair was missing, torn out at the roots. The bottom half of the face was daubed in red ink, like Scott's face in his nightmare, but it was the eyes that chilled Daniel the most.

  They were missing, too.

  Eisha pulled the duvet from her face. "She's my favourite. Just like you, Daddy."

  Her head nestled into the pillow and she closed her eyes. He waited until her breathing slowed and he was sure she was asleep. How many times had his daughter watched him sleep in the same way he was watching her now? And how had she got into his bedroom? With a second glance at the doll, Daniel walked out of the room, down the oak stairs to the main hall.

  It was the first room visitors to Five Oaks encountered, designed as an ode to the splendour of the Dayton empire. The split-level staircase had been carved from an oak tree killed and blackened by a lightning strike. A vast chandelier hung like a crystal teardrop from the ceiling and the walls were decorated with oil paintings in golden frames.

  Daniel shuffled through the hall, careful to avoid the dirt tracks on the parquet flooring. The silver thread of a house spider brushed against his face. He batted it away and continued to a painting he had removed from the wall in the early days of his occupancy.

  The frame was gilded with roses and vines studded with thorns. Ed and Liz Dayton stood in the centre holding hands. At either side of them were Daniel and Scott. They were in their teens and already taller than their adoptive parents. Where Ed and Liz wore their finest clothes, Daniel and his brother wore awkward smiles.

  The painting leaned against a wall and Daniel folded his arms as his shadow fell among its inhabitants. He was there and not there, part of the family and not. Eisha had not been born when the painting was commissioned and he felt her absence.

  There was one other person in the painting, inserted later after a family spat. Ma Dayton was his grandmother on his father's side. She sat on a chair, her legs too old to support her for long, or so she'd claimed.

  Ma Dayton was what remained of his family. The others had moved on, whether in this world or to the next. They had been scattered by desperate winds, a fleet of ragged boats separated by a tornado with no map to bring them home.

  Daniel inched backwards, better anchoring his shadow to the painting, his monochrome self slotting behind a family that wasn't his.

  Chapter Four

  "It smells of wee in here, Daddy."

  The woman behind the desk glanced up from her computer and gave Eisha a stare. Her name tag read 'Sharon' and she looked to be around twenty. A grey cardigan fell over her green tunic.

  "That's what old people's homes smell like," Daniel said to his daughter. "Try to be polite."

  Sharon tapped on her keyboard harder than necessary. "Silver Linings is a retirement village, not an old people's home, Mr Dayton."

  Daniel looked around the reception area. It was well-ordered and pleasantly decorated. The walls were painted white. The carpet was a hard-wearing synthetic and recently vacuumed. On the reception desk were leaflets for bingo nights, canasta evenings and even a Zumba class. It didn't seem like an old people's home, but the scent of urine was everywhere. Sometimes a rose by any other name didn't always smell as sweet.

  A side door opened and a man in orange overalls appeared. He looked at Daniel and stopped, his mouth dropping open. He was in his late forties, balding with a round stomach that spoke of too much beer. Next to his right eye was a tattoo of a small, grimacing skull.

  Daniel pulled Eisha behind him.

  "Mrs Audrey Dayton?" Sharon asked.

  The tattooed man pressed a single button on his mobile phone and raised it to his mouth. He spoke in hushed tones, his eyes never leaving Daniel's face.

  "Mr Dayton?" Sharon asked with another strike of the keyboard. She followed Daniel's gaze and her eyes tightened. "Fred, you're not in the exercise yard now. Go do something important." She shook her head and turned back to Daniel. "Now, Mr Dayton, you're here to see your grandmother?"

  "What?" Daniel looked at her. "Yes. Ma Dayton. Get her here."

  There was the click of a closing door. When Daniel returned his attention to Fred, he was gone.

  "Well, usually, appointments are made in advance," Sharon said. "This isn't a drop-in facility."

  Daniel chewed the inside of his mouth. "Yes, I know. It's a retirement village."

  "But our residents get so few visitors, we find it hard to refuse."

  "Do you know who that guy was?"

  Sharon raised her eyebrows.

  "The bloke in the orange overalls?" Daniel asked. "You called him Fred."

  Getting to her feet, Sharon leaned over the desk, making a show of searching the empty reception area. "It's just us, Mr Dayton. Would you like a cup of tea and a nice sit down, perhaps?"

  The vertebrae in Daniel's spine cracked as he straightened to his full height. "I'm not one of your old codgers, love."

  Sharon smiled. It was practised and without charm. "Then maybe you'd like to visit your grandmother for the first time? This is your first visit, isn't it?"

  Eisha tugged on Daniel's trouser leg and pointed down a corridor. "I think it's down there, Daddy. That's where the smell is strongest."

  He looked to Sharon for confirmation.

  "Room Eight," she said with a nod. "Enjoy."

  The deeper they walked into the retirement village, the warmer it got. Daniel tugged his shirt from sweating skin. Televisions on different channels blared through closed doors. Radio songs clashed, mixing fifties swing with seventies rock. The Rolling Stones duetted with Conway Twitty. There were voices everywhere, some in conversation, some in monologues of their own.

  By the time they reached Ma Dayton's room, Daniel was dizzy. Like the other doors, hers was closed, but with the addition of a sign reading 'Keep Out,' as if she was a moody teenager.

  "Can I do it, Daddy?"

  He nodded and Eisha knocked on the door. Inside was a woman known as the Dayton Dragon, the last of the clan. She was all Daniel and Eisha had left, but the idea of forming a cosy family unit was laughable. Still, he was here and couldn't dispel the flicker of hope in his chest.


  Eisha knocked again and looked up at him. No-one was answering.

  He tried the handle, finding it unlocked. Daniel searched the corridor, stiffening when he saw Fred watching them from afar. Eisha yanked the door open and squeezed through the gap. Daniel barrelled in afterwards, quickly closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, his brow knitted into a frown, staring at an empty room where his grandmother should have been.

  "Look at these," Eisha said. She stood next to a chest of drawers made of oak. The top was studded with photographs in silver frames. None of them featured Ma Dayton.

  Daniel came forward for a closer look. There was one of Ed as a schoolboy, another of his wedding day with Liz by his side. Ma Dayton had a rare photo of another wedding, Scott and Lily on the stone steps of the registrar office. Scott was dour and Lily looked uncertain.

  Daniel's heart raced at the sight of her.

  Standing on her tiptoes, Eisha reached for the photo closest to her and presented it to Daniel. "Is that me?"

  Eisha had been three months old when it was taken. Daniel hadn't seen the photo in years. She was sleeping, wrapped in a coddling blanket knitted by Ma Dayton herself.

  He ran a finger over the chest of drawers. There was no dust. The photographs were polished regularly.

  The rest of the room was bare. There was a wooden wardrobe, a well-made bed and a single chair facing the window. Next to it was an ashtray and an empty packet of cigarettes.

  He replaced the photograph and took Eisha's hand. "We better go. She isn't here."

  "We can wait, though."

  "We'll invite her to Five Oaks. Get a take-out," Daniel said, casting a last glance at the photographs. "Maybe she can explain…all of this."

  Eisha dug her heels into the carpet. "I want to wait, Daddy."

  "We'll see Ma Dayton soon."

  "No."

  He dragged Eisha to the door, opening it with his free hand. Fred was standing outside, swinging a monkey wrench. Instinct kicked in and Daniel's hand shot forward, fingers digging into the flesh of the other man's throat. With a jerk, he heaved Fred into the room. The wrench dropped from Fred's hand, bouncing off the floor. Eisha scrambled out of Fred's way as he fell against the bed, his nose connecting with the bedpost. Red sprayed over the sheets. Daniel wrapped the duvet over the man's head and punched him repeatedly to the same rhythm his daughter had used to knock on the door.

  "Daddy, stop," Eisha pleaded.

  His fist paused mid-air and Fred slewed the duvet from his face.

  Eisha ran forward, swinging her baby picture toward the man's jaw. "My turn."

  Daniel deflected the blow, knocking the frame from her hands. It broke against a wall. Eisha's baby face shined through the splintered glass.

  "Not today," Daniel shouted.

  But Eisha came again, weaponless, her tiny hands bunched into fists. Daniel held her off, one hand on her chest, the other holding Fred by the throat.

  "Stop it," Daniel said.

  The low cadence of his voice woke Eisha from her fury. She blinked and stared around the room.

  "Okay, Daddy," she said, retreating to the chest of drawers.

  Fred's eyes flitted between them, his lips wet with bloody saliva.

  "What do you want?" Daniel asked.

  "The toilet," Fred said, spitting bloody saliva onto the bed.

  "You want to go to the toilet?"

  Fred shook his head. "I'm here to fix it."

  Reaching into his mouth, Fred retrieved a loose tooth. "I'm the handyman. I unblock sinks and there's a leak in the cistern I need to look at." He flicked the tooth toward an opening door. It pinged off Sharon's leg as she came to a halt in front of them.

  "What is going on here?" she asked. "Fred? Are you okay?"

  The handyman looked at her, wiping the blood from his face. "I'm fine."

  "You're not fine," Sharon answered. "I'm calling the police."

  "It's just a misunderstanding," he said.

  Daniel's eyes focused on the skull tattoo by Fred's eye. "Who are you? Why were you following me?"

  "I wasn't following you." Fred eased himself further onto the bed, rubbing his swollen face. "I work here."

  There was a hollowness to Fred's cheeks. A rawness to his skin. It reminded Daniel of junkyard dogs surviving alone, trapped in the smallest of worlds. They never left their confines. They experienced the world at the end of a chain, captured forever.

  "How much time did you do?" Daniel asked him.

  Sharon straightened her name tag. "Fred's been here since he served his sentence." She looked at her shoes. They were scuffed and well worn. "I'm sure men like him do little jobs on the side, if that's what you're here about, Mr Dayton, but I don't want to know about it. It's not my fault he's on half pay. Some crimes shouldn't be forgiven."

  Raising his finger, Daniel pressed it into Fred's tattoo. The skin went white under the pressure. "Who did you work for?"

  "He works for us," Sharon said. "No matter what he did in the past."

  Fred swatted Daniel's finger from his face. "I worked for the wrong people, but I'm straight now. You look like him, that's all. Your brother."

  The ground shifted beneath Daniel's feet. "Scott was here?"

  "More than you."

  With a breath, Daniel zoned in on Fred's derelict face. Downcast eyes. Clenched hands. Slumped shoulders. Exposed neck. The truth leaked out of him.

  "My brother was here?" Daniel asked again. "He was visiting Ma Dayton?"

  "Haven't seen him for a while, though."

  "Mr Dayton, it's time you left," Sharon said, scratching at a stain on her name tag. "And you won't be welcomed back."

  The fact Scott had been visiting Ma Dayton was surprise enough. It revealed a side to him Daniel hadn't known existed. He tried to reconcile the cold-hearted brother he knew with the doting grandson, but the images didn't fit, like overlapping photographs of different people.

  "Where's Ma Dayton?" Daniel asked Sharon. "You said she'd be here."

  Her eyes narrowed as she took in the room. "Despite Fred's presence, this isn't a prison, Mr Dayton and I'm not the warden."

  "So, you don't know?" Daniel turned to Fred and folded his arms. "You're wrong about Scott. My brother never came here."

  "You don't look like him, but you carry yourself in the same way." Fred got to his feet, bracing his hands on his knees. "What happened to him? Where did he go?"

  A phone rang from the folds of Fred's overalls. He panicked, answering it with a whisper, turning away from Daniel's suspicious gaze.

  There was an impatient cough from the doorway and Daniel grabbed Eisha's hand, leaving under a cloud.

  "Scott's dead," he said, stepping around Sharon. "Scott's dead."

  Chapter Five

  The room was on the fourth floor of a high-rise known locally as The Devil's Playground. Scott Dayton lay on a soiled mattress, his arms manacled to a bedpost above his head. The walls were daubed in red and the carpet had once been orange. Warped plywood was nailed to the window, the knots in its surface looking like the demons of his sleep. The sun hit them in the morning and he woke to their blazing faces every day.

  The door to his room finally creaked open and with it came the wailing of The Playground inmates. Scott blinked into the light, catching the silhouette of Clive Hawk standing in the doorway. Clive's hair was spiked into horns, his veined skin stretched tight over a skeletal face. He wore faded denim shorts and a Hawaiian shirt; a dress code at odds with his satanic appearance. He carried with him the smell of heroin cooked on a spoon. It was a sulphurous odour, making Scott's heart quicken in anticipation.

  Clive waved a set of bolt cutters and set them by the door. "Medication time," he said, perching on the side of the bed. "Do you remember how we do this? Are you going to be good this time?"

  Before waking in the Playground, Scott had worked with Clive on a couple of projects. The first was a simple heroin sale. Clive was king rat, dealing to a high-rise of addicts. Sco
tt had supplied the goods. Money was exchanged and they had parted company. The second was more ambitious, involving single shot syringes embellished with cartoon characters.

  "Start them early," Clive had said through his rotten teeth.

  Scott had almost been seduced by the potential return on his investment, but there were lines even he would not cross. Clive lost money and was enjoying his new role as jailer. It was revenge, something Scott understood.

  But Clive wasn't the reason Scott had been imprisoned.

  "We'll have a little taste first," Clive said, running his bony hand up the man's thigh. "Then we can have some fun."

  Scott knew the type of fun that was in store for him; the kind where Clive showed him a set of bolt cutters and placed them out of reach, taunting him with the prospect of freedom.

  Clive dropped the rock into a spoon and heated it with a lighter. Scott watched with wide eyes, his skin burning as the liquid bubbled. He'd been sick this morning, bringing up bile, scarring his dry lips. His stomach churned and his bowels were loose, but what made him ill made him better.

  Picking a used syringe from the floor, Clive drew brown liquid through the needle. "Do you want it, baby?"

  Scott, the rightful heir to the Dayton empire, nodded like an eager child.

  The chain around one of his wrists was released. His forearm was mottled with puncture wounds, but Scott offered it up immediately.

  "Me first, silly." Clive slipped off a frayed moccasin and found the least infected gap between his toes.

  Scott rattled the headboard in protest. His body was weak, but his urgency was strong.

  "You'll get the big hit later," Clive said, sliding in the needle. "This is just to take the edge off."

  Clive threw back his head with a gasp. The heroin squirrelled through his veins. His face went slack, his eyelids drooped and ropes of saliva fell from his bottom lip.

  "I've given myself too much," he said, the words heavy in his mouth. Clive swayed and Scott grabbed him by his shirt, yanking him further onto the bed before he fell. The drug dealer was oblivious, his body as responsive as a sack of wet sand. Straining, Scott reached for the syringe sticking from Clive's foot like a sixth toe. His bed sores burst open, but he pulled as far as his chain allowed. His fingers grazed the plunger. The bedpost groaned, giving a fraction of an inch, enough for him to tease out the syringe.