All Your Fault: a gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing

by NJ Moss

  I laughed reflexively, a short puff of air. Benny flinched and let out a short chuckle. Both of us sounded sick, strangled, wrong. The laughter died as soon as it had arisen, confusing and messy.

  “He told me he hated me,” Benny said. “They were his last words. His biggest regret in life was making my mother pregnant. And then he fucking died.”

  He stopped pacing, staring at the floor, fists clenched, like Russ on the verge of throwing a tantrum.

  “I walked out into the hospital car park, lit a cigarette, looked at the stars and thought about you. You’d made me cold and distant, which is why Lacy left me. You’d made me kill that poor girl, poor innocent Hope, which was why my old man hated me. If Boxer had been alive through this, I don’t think we’d be here. That terror-terrier would’ve saved me.”

  He glanced at me, lips shivering, tears glistening in his eyes.

  “But Boxer was dead. It was time for you to pay.”

  47

  “I followed you.” Benny gazed at me. “Sometimes you went to a café to meet with Yasmin. It was easy to sit there and listen to you rant about your life. You’re quite a loud speaker and you’ve got a posh voice. It stands out.”

  My mind flitted over a thousand café scenes. I’d never considered the strangers surrounding me might have ulterior motives. I should’ve been more paranoid, like grandmother, questioning everything until there was nothing left but a length of rope and a straight razor.

  “I learned you were going to get a job when your son started school. I learned your husband was a writer and you’d had a schizophrenic grandmother, and this really stressed you out. I reckon that’s because deep down, Grace, you know your mind is a fucked-up place. So you worried about it more than most people would.”

  There it was again: his unnerving tendency to pick at my rawest parts. It was as though he’d crawled inside my mind. He was voicing all of my thoughts aloud.

  “I got an idea, and I’ll admit it was evil. But it was genius too. It’d help me execute two birds with one beautiful stone. Did I tell you Clive was the bastard Lacy had an affair with?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I work for him,” I said. Eighty-two days, Russ sang in my mind, willing me to stay strong, to keep gnawing at the duct tape like a stubborn rat. “I’ve seen him around people. He doesn’t respect anyone or anything. It’s probably why he’s so good at his job.”

  “She was wowed by his suit, his watch and his wallet,” Benny grunted. “This wasn’t just about you. I was going to make that motherfucker squirm, too. It was all starting to come together.”

  He looked hard at me, and I wondered if he knew me better than Troy: if eavesdropping on hundreds of conversations ranked over a few serious conversations a year. Perhaps Benny Evans was the person I was closest to, because we shared what nobody else could know.

  He stared as if to say, You know you fucking deserved this.

  Even as I fought it, I knew he was right.

  48

  “You know about Olivia’s mum, don’t you, the dementia?”

  “Yes.”

  Benny whistled. “Hell of a thing. She’s only sixty. Sometimes Olivia visited her and then went running the second she left. She wore her gear to the visit. She wanted to be ready to get as far away from that place as possible.”

  I nodded, waiting. He scowled at me, as though he was disappointed in my reaction. I wasn’t sure what he wanted. Praise?

  “We met during one of these runs. It wasn’t an accident, obviously. I needed her. I gave her a fake name, like I always do in these situations, picking the first name of one boxer and the surname of another. Sonny Liston and Ricky Hatton, two legends of the sport. Sonny Hatton.

  “I was quite aggressive and flirty with her, but she loved it. She was the one who texted me the next day. Don’t keep me waiting. I saw her. I played her. I listened and said all the right things.”

  I remembered how powerful I’d felt with Olivia pushed up against the wall, the certainty I’d experienced that I could break her in half. And then she’d brushed me away effortlessly.

  “Clive, the piece of shit, he spent most evenings at a bar. He was wasting the life I should’ve been living.”

  So while I was slaving away with those reports – Benny’s fucking reports, most likely – he was getting sloshed. What a lovely, charming man Clive Langdale was.

  “It was easy to find two escorts online who’d be up for what I was planning,” Benny went on. “I explained that my friend was getting married in a month and he wanted a good time, but he didn’t want them to tell him they were sex workers. He wanted to pretend it was real. He wanted cocaine too, I told them, and I’d be supplying it. They asked for more money, which was fair. This was different to their normal work. I had money saved up. I’ve always been a saver. I think that’s one of my redeeming qualities. Or maybe it’s just what happens when you grow up poor.”

  He stared expectantly. I worked my hand in the tape, and I forced myself to smile. “Saving money is important,” I said inanely.

  “I told them about the cameras. I want to make that clear. Clive was the only one recorded without his knowledge.”

  “He deserved it. They agreed to it.”

  “He comes across as so disgusting in that video. It’s like those women aren’t even there. It’s all about him, the sweating panting pig.”

  I nodded in agreement, keeping my eyes fixed on his face. That seemed to disarm him somewhat, as though it allowed him to see me as a real person, or made him contemplate what he’d have to do to get rid of me.

  “I followed Troy as well, Grace, I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sorry?” I asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, no, I don’t know. I was looking for any angle of attack I could find. I watched him for a few days, doing boring office stuff. I’d die if I had to work in a place like that.”

  “You were doing your research,” I noted.

  His eyes gleamed, like he suspected I was mocking him. He nodded. “I picked out his boss.”

  “You followed Vicky.”

  “It turns out she used to be an alcoholic and she goes to a support group in the city every week. I signed up for the group saying I had a drinking problem – and to be fair I was drinking more since Lacy and Boxer and Dad – and the next week, I introduced myself to her. Same routine with the fake name, two boxers’ names put together.”

  He’d slithered behind the scenes of my life, snaking his way deeper and deeper into the fabric of me. He’d targeted my fucking husband, and he wanted me to smile at him, to be his best friend.

  “I offered to walk her back to her car one night. She told me if I tried to kiss her she’d slam the car door on my balls. How can you not respect that sort of fire from a woman? I took it slow. I didn’t want to make her suspicious.”

  He was telling it so calmly, so reasonably, and even as my insides warped and I felt like I was going to be sick, I kept my expression non-judgmental. Tell me a nice long tale, Benny, so I can get my hand free.

  But what exactly could I do with a single hand?

  Fuck it. I’d find out.

  “I asked her about her work, waiting for her to mention Troy’s name. When she did, I asked her to say it again. I’d been practicing my reaction in the mirror. I made myself look confused, then angry, then nothing, wiping it all away, like I had something to hide.”

  “And then what did you say?” I pushed Troy’s face deep down in my gut: the way he smiled on our wedding day, still half a boy, but with a man in his eyes ready to protect our family. If I thought too much about my family, I’d melt in hopelessness.

  “I told her my sister had been going out with Troy a few years ago and he’d verbally abused her and controlled her for months.”

  A tremor passed through me, trying to contort my features into rage. I forced my lips still.

  I stared and I hated him. Troy didn’t deserve any of this.
He hadn’t killed Hope. I had—Benny had.

  “I said he’d cheated on you, but my sister didn’t want to tear your family apart. Vicky had been cheated on in two of her three marriages. I knew this from her Facebook comments.”

  “You picked out her weakness.”

  He nodded. “But what could she do? Fire him on my word? She couldn’t do anything openly. That was better as far as I was concerned. His boss would suddenly hate him and he’d have no clue why. It’d make him paranoid.”

  “It did make him paranoid,” I said, thinking about all those arguments, all those emails, all that headache. I couldn’t count the number of times Troy had ranted at me about work, about Vicky’s sudden change, and here was the reason. Twisted, wrong… clever. Evil.

  “It’d make him think about quitting his job. That was exactly what I needed.”

  “He’d wanted to quit for years.”

  “But this made it more urgent.”

  I coughed out a hollow laugh. “Yes, I’d say so.”

  “I waited.”

  “What for?”

  “September and Russ’s first year of Reception was getting closer. I knew you were nervous about it and I knew you were still looking for work.”

  My son’s name sounded wrong coming from his mouth, like a word from a language I'd never heard before.

  “The anniversary of your sister’s death was timed so well. Right when I needed it to be. You were like a trapped rodent, nowhere to go, no life to live beyond your little man. Even if I used it against you, I felt bad for you.”

  “I’m dedicated to my son,” I said, with Mother’s haughtiness. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve raised him well, Benny. Don’t challenge me about my son, please.”

  He held his hands up, like we’d bumped trolleys in the supermarket. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No problem.”

  I’m awake I’m asleep I’m awake I’m asleep—

  I wondered what the time was. Russ would be the most worried, shouting at Troy to find me, lying on his back and battering the floor in one of his rare temper tantrums.

  “I told Clive to email you the day before Russ was due to start Reception. I didn’t want to give you any time to think.”

  “You blackmailed Clive into giving me the job.”

  Benny strolled over to the stairs, bent down, and reached his hand under the step. I leaned back, cringing as he grunted and shifted around. I tugged at my wrist, but the loop was still too tight. I was perhaps halfway there, and that was being optimistic.

  “Benny, please.”

  “Relax.” He stood with a dusty pack of cigarettes in his hand. “Yeah, I blackmailed Clive. Like I said. Two birds with one stone.”

  49

  He lit and smoked, inhaling and closing his eyes in contentment.

  “Enjoying that?” I asked.

  He grinned with the cigarette between his teeth. “I hid them last time I quit. I forgot they were there until just now. I know they’ll kill me like they killed my old man, but goddamn, they’re sweet.”

  “Are you going to let me go, Benny?”

  “Just let me tell you what I did.”

  Sure, please tell me how you tortured me.

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “I met up with Clive after your interview.”

  “The interview for the fake job you’d blackmailed out of him.” I was unable to keep the acid from my voice. My hands trembled with the urge to lash out at him.

  “Yes,” Benny said, ignoring my anger. “I told him to mention to one of his employees, one of the chattier ones, that you and him’d had a sexual relationship in the past. I wanted to play up the idea you’d screwed him to get the job. I needed you to feel isolated. That was why he gave you the office too. The more alone you felt, the better.”

  I thought about Derrick and Zora, about their snide remarks. I’d doubted myself every step of the way, right down to thinking the confrontation with Derrick in the break room hadn’t happened.

  How weak was my mind, how fragile, how open to attack?

  “I gave Clive things for you to do. To mess with your head. I asked him what sort of mind-fucking things a boss could do to an employee, and he looked at me all funny, trying to work out how this would hurt him.”

  I worked at the duct tape, and I thought about Mia when she was four, proudly holding a clumsy sun painting over her head. Look, Mummy, look what I did. I’d swept her into my arms, cradling her, terrified I’d break her if I squeezed with all the love stowed up inside of me. And this bastard wanted to take it all away.

  “He gave you overtime hand-copying those reports, which is probably why he thought it was about him; he hated paying that. I went online and hired some freelancers to write the reports. I told them to include references to car crashes and hit-and-runs, but not to make it too obvious.

  “Honestly, Grace, I’m surprised you didn’t realise something was off with the phone call shit. Waiting for a phone to ring, getting paid for it? You’re an intelligent person.”

  “It isn’t so complicated,” I said, raw, raw, raw. The air felt like it was attacking me. All that self-doubt, questioning the reports, thinking I was mad, for nothing. I was mad, but not in the way I’d believed. “Money is a powerful motivator.”

  “And everybody kept telling you it was a perfect job, a setup lots of people’d be jealous of. You were getting paid to do nothing.”

  I stared silently. He averted his gaze, focusing on his cigarette, as though it could save him from what he’d done. I could feel the guilt inside of him, locked away in every gesture. It was simple for me to read; it was like looking at myself.

  “I’m really impressed with you, by the way,” he said. “Clive chucked you in at the deep end and you somehow didn’t drown. I think he was trying to get you to quit, offering no training, no guidance. But you smashed it. Maybe your time at university helped with the reports and stuff.”

  “I think it must have.”

  I wanted to puke, to keel over and let all this tension out of me. Did he have any idea how difficult it was for me not to scream?

  “You remember how you chased after me and those teenagers said they hadn’t seen anyone?”

  “Yes,” I said, far too eager. “That was you, wasn’t it? Those kids lied to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hat?” I demanded. “Both times you followed me – both times I saw you – you were wearing the same hat.”

  “Do you honestly not remember?” I shook my head and he sighed. “It was the hat I was wearing that evening. My old man missed it when he got rid of my clothes. I don’t know why I wore it.”

  I knew why: to fuck with me, to torture me. But it seemed Benny Evans didn’t like being confronted with his evil any more than I did.

  “I paid the kids to lie to you.”

  “But it was so fast,” I said, still doubting. There might be traps within the traps.

  “It was some quick thinking on my part,” he allowed. “I ran around the corner and I told the lad if you came asking for me, tell her nobody had come by and I’d give him fifty quid. They were keen and I hid in a doorway. I watched the whole thing.”

  I repressed a shiver. His eyes had stared from a shadowy doorway, like the eyes of a predator in the dark, a jungle cat silently appearing at the edge of a camp. But the camp was my life and he’d stalked through that instead.

  Fuck Benny, and fuck anybody who wasn’t called Mia or Troy or Russ.

  “It was a mistake,” he said. “Just like that damn phone call. I’d been drinking and I knew you were at the office. It was too tempting.”

  “You terrified me.” I didn’t have to work very hard to make my voice pitiful.

  “I know.” He tossed yet another butt to the floor.

  This had to end soon. We’d choke to death otherwise, both of us limp and decaying in this cellar.

  50

  “The thing holding all of this together was the pre-worko
ut Olivia was spiking your coffees with.”

  “What is pre-workout?” I asked.

  “Basically it’s caffeine powder. It gives you a huge jolt of energy before a workout. Some people say there’s the equivalent of twenty-five coffees in one scoop. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a lot of caffeine.”

  I felt the caffeine – or the lack of caffeine – setting me alight. It pumped around my body. I’d bite off the tip of my tongue for a single damn sip. It was pathetic.

  “I’ve heard you talk about your struggle to quit, and that was three or four coffees a day. This stuff would feel like rocket fuel to you.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. “It did.”

  “The hardest part of my plan was convincing Olivia to cross that line. She’s a good person. All I needed to do was get her to spike you once, because then it’d be easier. I’d hold it over her head.”

  I stared. He fidgeted. He cared about me, on some strange level, even as he related all he’d done. Or was I imagining that, hoping? Perhaps he’d cut me into tiny pieces when he was done.

  “I bullied her. I said some pretty unforgivable things to her. I’m not proud of the way I treated Olivia. She didn’t deserve it.”

  “You wanted to take away my sleep. Because it would make me more likely to go insane.”

  “Yes,” he said, reaching for another cigarette. I’d lost count of how many he’d smoked. “A day or so later, I went up to London to meet with this hacker I’d met on the Dark Web.”

  I snorted out a laugh, almost violent in its force. “A hacker?”

  Benny smirked as he lit the cigarette. “I know, right? Mad times. He told me for the right price, he could do it. That was fine. I could always milk some cash from Clive. I had the video of him and those escorts. He was terrified I’d show it to his clients.”