Between the Lies

by Michelle Adams

  He chews on his lip, still flicking one thumb against the other. ‘It’s not my job to believe him or not, Chloe. It’s my job to collect and collate the evidence as I find it. The courts will decide if he is guilty.’

  ‘But if he’s innocent and is telling the truth, he’d be desperate, right? He’d try anything to get me to help him.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Like finding a way to talk to me.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Legally he cannot approach you.’

  ‘What about illegally?’

  He sits forward in his seat, rests an elbow on the desk, his chin in his hand. He chews on an already bitten nail. ‘Are you telling me he’s tried to approach you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It’s possible that he came to my parents’ house.’

  He thinks about that for a moment, rubs his face with his hand. ‘That’s a very serious allegation, Chloe. Were you able to identify him clearly?’

  ‘Somebody was in the graveyard next door. I was walking in my garden. When my parents arrived, he ran, drove away.’

  ‘But did you see his face?’

  ‘I heard a man’s voice.’ I think back to that moment, the blur of red light disappearing into the fog. If only I’d seen his face. I realise that I can’t truthfully testify that he was there. I look up, find DS Gray waiting on my answer. I shake my head. He stands, sits on the edge of his desk and folds his arms, his backside edging piles of papers out of the way. I feel hot, sweaty, pull at the neckline of my jumper. I can’t breathe in here.

  ‘Chloe, here’s the thing. What you’ve just told me doesn’t make much sense. Besides the fact that you can’t identify Damien Treadstone visually, only a feeling you had that it was him, why would he call you as a witness and then try to approach you? He would know it would be detrimental to his case.’

  ‘I didn’t say it made sense.’

  He lifts piles of papers until he finds a pack of Nicorette gum, flicks a tablet into his mouth. I am hit by a sudden urge to smoke. Was I a smoker in my previous life?

  ‘I know you’ve been going through a difficult time,’ he says as he chews, an off-mint smell drifting through the air. ‘Especially with the loss you have suffered. But you’re smart, I think, Chloe. I know you used to be a lawyer.’ There it is again, the implication that my previous life is over. Used to be. Was. Done. ‘But while Damien Treadstone might be desperate, he is most definitely not stupid.’

  He leans over and opens a drawer, pulling out a file. From it he takes a picture and passes it to me. It’s Damien with a woman I assume is his wife. Between them the little boy who has facelessly plagued my thoughts since I decided to come here and try to do the right thing. She looks nice, his wife. Smiley and neat. His son is plump, happy. It’s one of those pictures people get done professionally when they first have children. White backgrounds and happy smiles. Do I have these kinds of pictures? I feel sure I must have. Somewhere.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ I say, tossing the photo down onto the desk.

  ‘Chloe, Damien Treadstone is a twenty-eight-year-old married man, and the father of the boy you see there. He works for Meditec as a rep, supplying catheters and lithotripsy equipment to various hospitals in the south-east. He has no criminal record, and an excellent reputation in his work and private life. He’s an active member of his local church, and two years ago he spent six months as a missionary working in Uganda. No matter where I dig, I can’t find anything to discredit him. He’s like a goddamned saint.’

  A bead of sweat trails down my back. ‘So you don’t believe me when I say he came to the house.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I want you to see the bigger picture, and what we are up against.’ He chews hard on his gum. ‘Like I’ve told you before, Damien Treadstone claims that he wasn’t even in the car at the time. That it was stolen prior to the accident.’

  I feel desperately out of my depth, kicking about in the open ocean with no sign of the shore in sight. Like I am drowning. Like the boy in my dream. ‘Is there any evidence to support that?’

  ‘Well, he has no alibi. He claims to have been in Kemp Town at the time of the accident, drinking in a bar after finding that his keys and his car had been stolen. But we can’t place him on CCTV, and nobody who was working in the bar that night can remember him. His car was found at the scene, keys in the ignition. We checked for prints, came up with nothing. Interestingly, not even Damien’s. But when we picked him up, he was inebriated, his trousers were covered in mud and he had a cut on his forehead. We also found evidence of paint transfer from his car to yours on the rear wing, driver’s side, which would support the theory of a collision prior to you leaving the road.’

  ‘Well surely that all goes against him?’

  ‘Right, yet still he insists that he wasn’t there, and he hasn’t deviated from his statement once. Plus, in addition to your amnesia and inability to place him at the scene of the crash, there is other evidence that his defence team will be focusing on. For example, your injury pattern.’

  I pull my coat around me, try to cover my right leg, DS Gray’s eyes instantly slide towards it. He knows what marks lie beneath my clothes.

  ‘For a start, there’s your position in the vehicle upon discovery. You were found in the driver’s seat with your seat belt fastened. You seemed to have careened off the road and travelled almost fifty feet down an embankment before hitting a tree. Logically, you must have been wearing your seat belt otherwise you would have been thrown from the car like Joshua.’ He pauses briefly, and I am grateful that he feels awkward about bringing up my dead son. ‘Yet when you were admitted to hospital, you were found to have sustained no trauma consistent with a seat-belt injury. No skin abrasions, no broken ribs. Not even any bruising to the chest.’

  And in that moment I can picture myself in the car, trying to unclip my belt, fumbling about in an attempt to escape. I was definitely wearing my belt when I first woke up, just like DS Gray tells me.

  ‘Then there’s your direction of travel. You claim to have no memory of what happened after you left your father’s house, but when the crash occurred, you were travelling towards your father’s house. You had been in Brighton, it would seem. But what had you been doing? Who had you been with?’

  He shakes his head, flicks another tablet of gum into his mouth. ‘There are inconsistencies, Chloe, and such discrepancies cast doubt on Damien Treadstone’s guilt, which is the very reason his defence wants to call you as a witness. It’s not what you can tell them, it’s what you can’t.’ He reaches down for a mug of what looks like cold coffee and knocks it back with a wince. ‘To be quite honest with you, nothing you’ve told us makes much sense. But it’s not just that.’ He pauses, his fingers tapping at the desk. ‘There is one other thing that none of us can yet explain. We were rather hoping you would be able to help us, but you claim to have no memory of what happened that night.’

  ‘What is it?’ I ask. When he doesn’t answer, I stand up. ‘Please, DS Gray, just tell me.’

  He takes a long breath, and the sickly scent of coffee mixed with mint wafts over me. He swallows hard. ‘The dress you were wearing on the night of the accident was covered in blood.’

  ‘Well it would be, wouldn’t it? I hit my head. My leg was cut.’ But I stop talking when I realise that he is staring right at me, his face expressionless. My anxiety level shoots up.

  ‘When we look at blood in forensics,’ he says slowly, ‘we look at the kind of pattern it leaves. If it was your blood, running like you suggest from your facial injuries, then it would create what we call a passive stain. What we found on your dress was a pattern of staining consistent with blood transfer by direct contact.’ He gives me a moment to take that in. ‘But Chloe, it wasn’t just the pattern of staining. It was the blood itself. It didn’t belong to you. I’m sorry, but I have to tell you that the blood we found on your clothing belonged to Joshua.’

  TWENTY

  For a long time
I can’t find any words. DS Gray helps me back into my chair, and I sit still with only the background bustle of the police station to break the silence. At some point DC Barclay comes in and DS Gray shoos her away. I can’t stop thinking about all those tears I’ve cried, lamenting the fact that my son died alone, that I failed to comfort him while he was in pain. Now DS Gray is telling me that he may have died in my arms.

  The blood we found belonged to Joshua.

  ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ I hear him ask. He moves awkwardly at my side, shuffling left to right in the minuscule space. I hear the sound of water behind me, the chink of glass against glass. He turns to face me with a small beaker, pushes it into my right hand before edging it towards my lips.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, and he sits down on the edge of the desk again, closer to me than he was before. He takes out a handkerchief from his pocket and gives it to me.

  ‘You see, that’s why it doesn’t make sense to us, Chloe. There are inconsistencies in both stories, yours and Treadstone’s, and the facts, as much as they are facts, don’t help us to draw a logical conclusion. What I would like to do is—’

  ‘DS Gray, I remember what happened.’

  He stops mid-sentence, his mouth open as if somebody has paused him. He leans forward, and I see his eyes widen in anticipation.

  ‘You remember?’

  I take a breath, tuck my hands between my knees. I shift in my seat and try to sort what I know into some logical order before I speak.

  ‘Well, sort of. Not everything, but something. Something I haven’t told you yet.’

  He stands up, moves back to his chair and opens a drawer. He takes out a sheet of paper and picks up a pen from his desk.

  ‘I remember being in the woods, seeing my car. I was trying to get to Joshua. I thought at first it was just a dream, but now I’m sure that what I’m seeing is a memory. I can see Joshua on the ground, I’m trying to reach him.’

  He picks up the file and roots through it. He pulls one sheet out, sets it before me. It’s a photograph of my car crushed against a tree. What else must be in that file? I want to know, to see. Does the truth lie in there? Can it tell me if I intended to kill myself and my child?

  ‘I know this must be difficult for you,’ he says, ‘but can you tell me where Joshua is lying in your memory? Where do you expect us to have found him?’

  I look down at the image in front of me. DS Gray glances away, perhaps as a mark of respect. My memories are coming back to me drip by drip, like the rain on that cold, dark night. I point to a small clearing alongside a rocky outcrop. ‘Here,’ I tell him, moving my finger along the ground that I know Joshua died upon. ‘With his feet pointing towards that tree.’

  He nods, looks embarrassed as he places the picture back in the file. ‘Well, I think you can be confident that your memory is real. That is indeed where he was found.’ He writes something on the sheet of paper, draws a line underneath it. I can’t read what he has written, his handwriting little more than a scrawl. Perhaps that’s intentional. ‘What else? Do you remember getting out of the car? How you ended up back in it?’

  ‘No. I only remember running, trying to find Joshua. It was raining, getting dark. I remember falling down an embankment, cutting my leg. That’s why I came here today, to tell you these things. I wanted to tell you that at some point I was outside my car that night, and I don’t remember seeing Damien Treadstone. I can’t be sure he was there.’

  He nods, takes a breath. ‘I appreciate your honesty, Chloe. Every detail is vital if we are to understand what happened.’ He covers his mouth with his hands, rubs at his face again. ‘Tell me—and again, I’m sorry if this is difficult, Chloe—what was your relationship with your husband like before the accident?’

  I sigh. How can I answer with any confidence, especially in light of what Ben just said, the implication that there was something between us? All I know is what my parents have told me. ‘Complicated, I think. My family tell me he was a drinker, that I’d left him. That I’d taken Joshua to live with my parents.’

  ‘That is my understanding of the situation too.’ He writes something else, nibbles the end of the pen. ‘Do you think he was angry with you for leaving the marriage?’

  ‘Maybe. More likely upset, from what my father tells me.’ It’s hard to admit to knowing that Andrew might have killed himself because I left. ‘I think he probably didn’t want to lose me.’

  ‘And yet he had lost you, hadn’t he?’

  My cheeks grow hot, my head light. I feel like DS Gray is blaming me, that he too believes my leaving is the thing that pushed him over the edge. ‘My father told me that things with Andrew were making it too difficult for me to stay.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you were at fault, Chloe.’ He smiles. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’ He glances down at his notes. ‘Everything about the scene of the accident—the way the ground was disturbed, the presence of the second car—supports the theory that another person was there. But what if it wasn’t Damien Treadstone? What if it was somebody else, somebody who had a motive to be there? Somebody who was angry with you? Your husband, perhaps. It could explain a lot of things.’ He sets his pen down.

  My mind flickers to Ben. ‘The gardener at my parents’ house. Ben … I think his last name’s Riley.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. It’s almost as if he wants me to believe there was something between us.’

  He raises his eyebrows, surprised. ‘Do you think it’s possible that there was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He nods his head almost as if he expected nothing less. ‘Well it’s best you stay away from him. He’s not exactly what you’d call unknown to the police.’

  ‘He has a record?’

  He rubs at his face, pondering whether or not to tell me. ‘Petty theft, fighting.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Assault against a previous girlfriend. I did speak to him about the night of the crash, and he claims to have an alibi, that he was with his mother. Might be worth having another word with him.’ He repositions himself, seems uncomfortable. ‘But I was more thinking about your husband. He was sure as hell angry with you, especially if what you just said about the gardener is true.’ I hate the implication that I could have done something behind my husband’s back. It doesn’t feel like me, doesn’t feel possible, even though I’m not really sure about the person I used to be. ‘And if Andrew was there it could explain a lot of things.’ He sets his pen down.

  I shake my head. ‘But that’s impossible.’

  ‘Why? Like I say, he had a motive to follow you. You said yourself he could never let you go. I know he tells us that he has an alibi, but we still haven’t been able to corroborate it as yet. That means that it’s questionable.’

  ‘Questionable? How can it be questionable?’

  ‘Every alibi is questionable, Miss Daniels.’

  I sit forward, one of my hands on the desk. ‘But my husband is dead, DS Gray.’

  He rocks back in the chair, the legs complaining under the weight. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Andrew,’ I say, almost shouting. ‘He died a week before the accident. That’s why I was so upset that night. I blamed myself.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘My father.’

  DS Gray is shaking his head. ‘Chloe, I spoke to Andrew Jameson only two weeks ago.’ I sit back, open-mouthed, waiting for him to speak, to fill in the blanks I can’t hope to complete myself. ‘Mr Jameson claims that on the night of the accident you were supposed to be meeting him, only you never showed up. So if it turns out that Damien Treadstone is telling the truth, I know who my next suspect would be.’

  What did you think? A few little lies and it would all go away? That I would go away? Chloe, you have no idea.

  But what I’m not sure about is to whom you’ve been lying the most. Me, or yourself? When we’re together, I feel your presence, the way your eyes flicker when I get close, when my hands touch yo
ur body. And that last time, when you rolled over in bed, looked into my eyes and asked me one simple question: how can we be together? It cut through me, hearing those words. I thought you already knew the answer, but even so, I bit my tongue and answered with a smile. I told you the simple truth: easily. I knew you didn’t believe me.

  But what I didn’t expect was for you to tell me it was over. Over, you said, like it was nothing. That you were leaving, going to live with your parents, and that I wasn’t to contact you. How could you bring yourself to do it, end everything we had together? I could have been there for you, Chloe. Joshua too. I just wish you could have seen that I could have been a good father. I’ve made you so many promises, but still you don’t understand. All I needed was one more chance, but you wouldn’t let me show you just how good I could have been. Somehow you still think you’re better on your own.

  But without you, Chloe, I can’t survive. Without you I might as well be dead.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Andrew is alive. Andrew is alive and he is a suspect. I sit on the wall outside the station. I’m shaking, can’t catch my breath. I blink as I try to work out what I think has happened. But for a while I can’t get past my first thought: how can he be alive when my family told me he was dead? And more to the point, where the hell is he? Why isn’t he looking for me? Rain beats down, and at one point a woman under a large umbrella stops in front of me.

  ‘Excuse me, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell her, and she moves away looking doubtful. I look around; more people are close. I have to move, leave this place.

  I stand up, pace the pavement in tight circles, try to piece together what I know about the day of the crash. Realising I need to find some sort of shelter from the persistent rain, I find a bus stop next to the station, perch on the edge of a wet bench. Suddenly a vague memory comes to me of being in a park, sitting on a bench. Was it the night of the crash? I feel as if I was waiting for somebody, but who? Could it have been Andrew? Could it have been Ben? Then the memory shifts and I see myself driving in the rain. Running through the woods. Searching for my son. The trees, the dark. Joshua, lying on the ground. But what the hell happened next? How did I end up back in my car?