Lies Read online

  She nodded. “I went through everything I could find. His computers are password-protected, but I made a start on his paper files, hence the mess downstairs. Although to be honest, I can’t make head nor tail of most of it. And then I was looking through more of his things and I found that phone with the naked pictures of Mel on it, and of course Sunday happened, and…”

  “Yeah. Sunday.”

  “Not sure what came over me. I was just so … angry. It was like I was going to explode.” Her voice cracked as she fought to hold the tears back. “This whole thing is so unfair. After everything I sacrificed for him, he just … leaves.”

  “I’m sorry too, Beth.”

  She nodded, biting her bottom lip.

  “You know what? I’m having a drink,” she said. “Do you want one?”

  “Tea would be good, thanks.”

  “A proper drink, I mean.”

  It was half past one in the afternoon. Ordinarily, Beth was the kind of woman who could make a single white wine spritzer last all night.

  “Tea’s fine.”

  “Well, I’m having one.”

  She turned and headed back downstairs.

  I walked a circle around Ben’s desk, not sure what I was looking for. It was neat and ordered: a pair of fountain pens, a printer, and work trays alongside the two computers. Front and center was a short samurai dagger mounted on a rack with an inlaid brass plaque on the base that read: “The truth of the battle is whatever the victor deems it to be”—Sun Tzu. Alongside it, a block of black marble with military insignia I didn’t recognize, and the words: Two is one, one is none. I had no idea what that meant.

  I listened for any sound on the stairs, heard nothing, and quickly opened the top drawer of the desk. More pens, paper, a box of business cards, half a dozen silver memory sticks with stickers on them bearing handwritten notes—phone convs 2017, phone convs 2016, and so on. A stack of multicolored Post-it notes with something written on the top sheet. I tore off the top few sheets and took a closer look, realizing it wasn’t ink but the indentation of something that had been written before. I held it up to the light. Looked like one word and a question mark, but it was difficult to make out. The wastebin under his desk revealed the original square yellow note, scrunched up into a tight ball. I unfolded it. Four letters and a question mark.

  STEB?

  What was STEB? Or where—was it a place? I had no idea.

  I shoved the note in a pocket and resumed my search of the desk drawer: a handful of credit cards in a clear plastic wallet, a stack of books about business, and a bottle of aftershave. A box of condoms, the cellophane wrapper open. I shut the drawer and moved away from the desk.

  The pictures on the wall seemed to be mostly of Ben’s family when he was younger: mum, dad, Ben, and a younger girl I assumed was his sister. One showed them tanned and relaxed in a beachside restaurant, deep-blue sea behind them. Another of them arm in arm at Disneyland, all four of them grinning at the camera with the towers of the Magic Kingdom rising behind them. In another family shot, they were in Sydney with the opera house as a backdrop. A school picture—larger than all the rest—showed Ben, big fringe and glasses and “Prefect” badge on his lapel, accepting a framed certificate from a teacher at his school in front of an ancient-looking stone building. The teacher wore a black gown like something out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

  None of the pictures rang true.

  Ben had always maintained he was a tough comprehensive-school kid through and through. It was part of his backstory, part of his northern-lad-taking-on-southern-softies persona. But it seemed that this—along with much else that I had learned in the last few days—was another fiction. The truth was private school and prefect badges and expensive holidays all over the world.

  Beth returned to the study holding a glass of red wine and a china cup and saucer. She handed me the cup of tea and planted herself on the leather sofa, raising the glass.

  “Cheers,” she said without a trace of mirth. “To marriage.”

  I took a sip of the tea and pointed to the pictures on the wall. “Is this Ben? I thought he went to the local public school?”

  “God, no,” she said. “His parents sent him private from the age of five. His father was the MD of a big shipping company. Loaded.”

  “But he always said … you know, about being the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. He said he was the son of a shipyard worker, not that his dad was the boss.”

  She shrugged. “That’s Ben. It’s just his way. You stop noticing it after a while.”

  The fact that he had made stuff up about his working-class upbringing didn’t actually surprise me: it was becoming apparent that he was one of the biggest bullshitters I had ever met. It was disconcerting to be confronted with it face-to-face, but it also fitted with what I had learned since the weekend.

  The truth of the battle is whatever the victor deems it to be.

  That pretty much summed him up. Truth was changeable to Ben, malleable, to be shaped in whatever way he wanted. So he could get what he wanted.

  I pointed to a picture of Alice at the end of the row of frames. “How’s Alice doing, by the way?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “How much have you told her?”

  “I never need to tell her much, as far as her dad’s concerned. She picks up most of it on her own. She’s actually better than I am now at picking up on his moods and his little jokes. They copy each other’s little phrases and habits, you know. The slang and the textspeak and abbreviations.” She smiled, but it faded quickly. “Sometimes it’s scary how alike they are—Alice is very much her father’s daughter. I’ve just told her that her dad’s gone away for a few days.”

  “She must be missing him,” I said.

  She paused, the glass frozen inches from her lips, her eyes fixed on mine.

  “I can assure you that Alice is quite innocent in all of this,” she said slowly, carefully, her gaze steady. “Alice has nothing to do with it. Any of it.”

  “Of course. Absolutely. I didn’t mean to suggest anything else.”

  It would only strike me later, when I mulled over the conversation that evening, what a strange phrase this was. A strange response to a question that had not even been asked. I can assure you that Alice is quite innocent in all of this. As if blame should be apportioned in one way or another. Alice is quite innocent.

  “You know what, Beth?” I said. “We’re the victims here: you and me. We’re the ones who have been let down, lied to, cheated.”

  She took another sip of wine and nodded eventually.

  “But there must have been signs that it was coming,” she said quietly. “I should have been a better wife, made him happy, made him content so he didn’t need anyone else. So he didn’t cheat on me with my best friend.”

  “It’s not your fault. Don’t punish yourself.”

  “It’s just that he did his thing—and we live very well off it, thank you very much—and I did mine. I looked after Alice and took care of the house and the building projects, I had my hobbies, the gym and my community theater and my work for the PTA. I kept myself busy, and I thought everything was hunky-dory.”

  “That’s what I thought about me and Mel too.”

  “I just want him back. Nothing else matters.”

  It occurred to me that not once had she said—not once—that she would kick Ben out. Not once had she suggested she would get the locks changed, cut up his favorite suits, put one of his cars on eBay with a reserve price of a penny. She had not said she would talk to a lawyer or think about starting divorce proceedings. He had betrayed her, broken his marriage vows to her, humiliated her, but since her fury on Sunday, all the fight seemed to have gone out of her.

  Of course, I had not done any of those things either—but hers seemed an abject surrender, and it made me immensely sorry for her.

  I had never really been close to Beth before, never seen her as someone separate from her husband. She had always been in h
is shadow, always the calm perfection by his side. But now, at her lowest ebb, I saw her for what she really was: a kind, decent, forgiving woman who had never asked for much and had certainly not asked for this.

  She was hurting, and lonely.

  “You’ll have Ben back, then? Back here?”

  She nodded. She had very clear, green eyes, I noticed for the first time. She was an attractive woman—beautiful, intelligent, kind—but there was much more to her than that. There was a vulnerability about her, an openness, a lack of cynicism, that was very appealing. I wanted to protect her, make sure she wasn’t hurt again.

  “I’m going to find him, Beth. And I’m going to send him back to you.”

  A flicker of hope crossed her face, then it was gone. It was heartbreaking to watch.

  “What if he doesn’t want to come back?”

  “What he wants or doesn’t want is irrelevant now. He’s not going to have a choice.”

  As she showed me out, I remembered why the mention of Alex Kolnik’s visit to her house had fired a connection in my brain. The parking lot of the Premier Inn, Thursday night. A black Range Rover came down the ramp just as I was leaving.

  “One other thing, Beth. The Range Rover that Kolnik came to your house in. What color was it?”

  She thought for a moment. “Black. Jet black.”

  I pondered this last piece of information as I walked back down her driveway. If Kolnik had finally caught up with him, maybe that was why Ben was lying low? Had their dispute boiled over into violence?

  Was Kolnik involved too?

  43

  As soon as I stepped through the front door of my house, something felt wrong. At first, I thought it was just because it was weird to be coming home at 2:00 P.M.: last period on a Tuesday was 8C, currently reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I liked 8C. They were a good bunch.

  But then my skin registered a breeze coming through the house from the kitchen. I stopped, listened, and eased the front door shut very, very slowly. Taking care not to let the lock click into place.

  Someone had been here. Maybe they were still here. And then only one thought. Only one possible culprit. Ben.

  I stood still again, listening for any sound. The house was quiet. Weapon? There were a couple of umbrellas in a stand by the front door, a paperweight on the dresser, a vase on the windowsill. None of them great, especially if he was armed with a shotgun. I grabbed the paperweight, a snow globe of New York City, and crept through into the kitchen. Stopped again by the sink, listened, heard nothing. An artery in my neck pulsed hard, and I swallowed against the sensation, putting down the snow globe and picking up the rolling pin from the drying rack. The smooth wood had a decent heft to it. I moved through into the conservatory.

  The back door stood slightly ajar. Its top half had nine square glass panels—the one nearest the handle was smashed. Jagged pieces of glass were scattered on the floor, the key nowhere to be seen.

  I looked around trying to see what had been stolen.

  A pair of speakers was still on the end table, a pot half-full of coins on the windowsill. Nothing seemed to be out of place in the kitchen either. The family iPad was still there. Then the living room, where the TV and DVD player were still in their proper places. I went upstairs. Mel’s PC was in the study, untouched, and nothing else looked like it had been disturbed. In the bedroom drawers, and Mel’s jewelry box, everything seemed to be in its proper place. There was no mess anywhere.

  I stood on the landing, trying to work it out. What was Ben looking for? Perhaps he’d been disturbed. Perhaps he had still been here until a few minutes ago and had bolted when he heard my car. Or perhaps he hadn’t gone at all.

  Perhaps he was still in the house.

  Gripping the rolling pin tighter, my heart thumping, I stood very still and listened for any noise, any creak of the floorboards that might give him away. Silence. Behind the silence, in the distance, the ever-present dull hum of traffic on the North Circular. My house suddenly spooked me. Ben. Just in case he was hiding, I went from room to room, quickly pulling open wardrobes, looking under beds and behind doors. A full sweep of the upstairs, followed by the same in every downstairs room.

  There was no one. I finally began to relax and went back into the kitchen to return the rolling pin. That was when I saw it on the kitchen counter, next to the kettle.

  A shotgun cartridge.

  It was pink, standing upright, with a brass base and lettering up the side. Eley Hi-Power #00 Large Game. It was thick and heavy, and I wondered suddenly what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of the lead shot inside.

  I didn’t own a shotgun and only knew one person who did.

  There was a note underneath the cartridge, letterhead from Ben’s company, Zero One Zero. He had once told me what his company name meant, something arcane and techie to do with programming language or binary code or something similar. I couldn’t remember exactly. On the paper were just five words, written with a thick black marker.

  STAY AWAY FROM MY WIFE.

  I stared at the paper for a minute, my pulse thrumming in my ears. Until now this had felt like some stupid game where I didn’t quite get the rules, but for the first time, I was genuinely worried, frightened. What if William had been here? What if Ben came back tonight, in the middle of the night? What do you do if you wake up and a man is standing over you with a shotgun? It didn’t bear thinking about. But the fact was that he was out there, armed and dangerous, and able to break into my house.

  I called the police and reported the break-in. The operator spent five minutes going through my personal details, then asked me to describe what I thought had been stolen.

  “Nothing’s been taken. At least not that I’ve found so far.”

  “There are no items missing from the property?” she said, a skeptical tone in her voice.

  “Don’t think so. But he left a shotgun cartridge.”

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “A shotgun cartridge and a note, a warning, were left in my kitchen.”

  Her tone changed. She gave me a crime number and said an officer would come over this afternoon to collect the evidence, telling me not to touch anything that might have fingerprints on it. I hung up and stood in the middle of my kitchen, unable to take my eyes off the white sheet of paper with five black words scrawled across it.

  STAY AWAY FROM MY WIFE.

  I was too worried to really appreciate it, but the irony was so thick you could cut it with a knife. This man, who was breaking up my family and had tried to take my wife away from me, was warning me off further contact with his wife. It sounds naïve, but it was only then—at that moment—that I realized what a sick bastard he really was. He actually meant all of this. I thought of Beth and what she’d told me earlier. Ben must have driven by his house this afternoon, seen my car outside, and it had spooked him. Was this payback for getting closer to finding him?

  Mel would be here in a couple of hours. I thought about calling her but decided against it—better to tell her face-to-face. Instead I found the spare key for the back door, nudged it shut with the toe of my shoe, and locked it again—taking care not to put my fingerprints on anything else.

  The phone still in my hand, I added a new message to the conversation with David Bramley.

  Stay away from my house, Ben.

  The reply came back within a minute.

  STAY AWAY FROM MY WIFE

  I shook my head in disbelief. Irony klaxon going off here. Another message followed almost instantly.

  You shd get better security on your back door BTW big fella never know who might b waiting 4 you one of these days

  I typed a reply, deleted it. Took a breath and typed it again—without the swear words this time.

  You come to my house again, you’ll be leaving feetfirst. That’s a promise.

  As before, his reply came back quickly.

  Wd love to see your face today bet its an absolute picture!!!

  I slamme
d my fist on the kitchen table, making cups and plates jump. Calm down.

  A minute, two minutes, five minutes. Nothing more. It looked as if he might have gone offline. I wonder if he’s with Mel right now?

  No, that’s a stupid idea.

  Is it?

  There was the familiar dull ache in my chest that I got when I thought about my wife now. Like I wanted to shout until my throat was raw. Wanted to be with her, wrap my arms around her, and hold her close, tell her she was forgiven. Tell her we could start again. Maybe all those things at the same time.

  I texted her. Told her that I would be able to pick William up from after-school club today. Then made a cup of tea to calm my nerves and had drunk most of it before she replied.

  OK. Love you. xxx

  3:23 P.M. Mel cell

  Staring at that text, feeling the lump in my throat, I knew that despite nine years of marriage, I really had no idea whether she meant it or not.

  I grabbed my car keys and headed back out.

  44

  William was embroiled in a complicated game of toy cars with his friend Lucas at after-school club, the two of them lining up all the cars they could find around the edge of the room until it stretched around in a long line, bumper to bumper. I signed him out in the carers’ register and fetched his coat and book bag, watched him for a minute while the two of them finished creating their miniature traffic jam. There was something wonderful about the simplicity of my son’s routine, his games, the patterns of his life. For a few moments, watching him, I was able to forget the madness of the last few days.

  But then it all came crashing in again, Naylor’s words ringing in my ears, and it felt like everything was spinning away from me once more. Things were happening too fast. My family, my life, my world—everything that mattered—was about to go over a cliff.

  It was up to me to stop us falling.

  Back home in the kitchen, I put gloves on to move the note and shotgun cartridge that Ben had left, dropping them into a Ziploc bag. Maybe the police would be able to find fingerprints. With my phone in one hand and a spatula in the other as I made William’s dinner, I looked again at the last message Ben had sent.