Beautiful Liars_a gripping thriller about friendship, dark secrets and bitter betrayal

by Isabel Ashdown

  ‘Or you could try appealing to her as a friend,’ Finn suggests. ‘Old loyalties die hard. Why else d’you think I’m here, love?’

  Martha smiles at him and opens up her work book, placing two newspaper articles on the table between them. She points to the first, a national press cutting from March 2000, stating that the police had called off their search for Juliet. ‘OK. So, as you know I’ve been investigating Juliet Sherman’s disappearance from 2000, with the prime suspect being David Crown, who disappeared the next day. Obviously, at the time, the police wrote it off as the pair having run away together, but we – I – believe that has to be wrong. I’m certain Juliet was killed – and I’m pretty sure David Crown is still out there.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I had anything to do with the case, and you know I was never directly involved. You say he’s never been heard of since? No bank account activity, no passport renewals, no traffic offences and so on?’ Finn bites into his pastry, moving his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Obviously we can’t rule out the possibility that he’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, but people change their identities all the time, don’t they? I mean, how hard would it have been for him to set up a life elsewhere with a new name and back story? Especially with fifty grand in his back pocket?’

  ‘Not that hard,’ Finn agrees. ‘I double-checked the file notes for you, and that was a strong theory when the investigation was closed – when it was decided that Juliet might have left willingly with David Crown.’

  ‘I can’t believe they’d write off a seventeen-year-old girl so easily. None of us, not a single one of her friends or family had previously suspected Juliet was having a relationship with David. So why did the police jump to the conclusion so quickly?’

  ‘There was an anonymous tip-off,’ Finn says. ‘A phone call. My guy’s only just spotted it in the files – for some reason it had become separated from the rest of the case notes.’

  ‘What? What did the caller say?’

  ‘It was a female caller, claiming to have seen Juliet and David Crown together in the Square Wheels hut a week or two earlier. Kissing.’

  Martha is shaking her head now, trying to bring this piece of information into some kind of order. Juliet and David Crown? Kissing?

  ‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘Not Juliet. I don’t believe it.’

  Finn gives a small shrug of his shoulders. ‘As I say, it was anonymous, and as such would have been treated with some caution. The caller didn’t say she knew Juliet, just that the girl she saw matched the pictures of Juliet released by the press at the time. I think the phone call, along with the love letter found in Juliet’s bin – and the fact that David Crown had withdrawn his life savings before disappearing – would have presented a pretty persuasive argument to believe Juliet had left with David Crown under her own steam.’

  ‘But she was seventeen! Shouldn’t they have been trying to find her, whether or not they were having some kind of relationship?’ Martha is incensed, both at the police’s relaxed attitude to a young girl’s safety, but even more at herself, as she realises she’s beginning to consider whether this might actually be true. Could Juliet have run off with David Crown? Even now, with this new body of evidence, she can’t bring herself to fully believe it. ‘Jesus, Finn,’ she says. ‘What the hell were the police thinking?’

  He folds his heavy arms on the table, his mouth tugging down at the corners. ‘Things have changed a lot since my day, love,’ Finn says. ‘And I’m certain Juliet’s case wouldn’t have been closed down so quickly if it happened now. I’m ashamed to say it, but in an overstretched police force some officers would look to move caseloads from their desk with as much speed as possible. And if that meant shutting down a few as “unsolved” – well, I think it’s fair to say, every now and then the wrong ones were passed over.’

  Martha knows the police aren’t infallible, but despite her dad’s less than unblemished final years with them, she has always believed they are there to protect and safeguard. The thought of them treating crimes in this way is too much. Would her dad have been one of those lazy officers, quick to extinguish an investigation for the sake of a quiet life?

  ‘She was just a teenager. Would you have passed over a case like this, Finn?’

  ‘No,’ he replies. ‘I wouldn’t. And before you ask, neither would your dad. I don’t need to remind you, love, but when Juliet Sherman went missing, Eric had already taken early retirement. But I remember how much the case upset him, what with you girls being so close, and he was spitting feathers when he heard they’d scaled back the investigation. Like you, he thought it unbelievable to suggest she’d run off with David Crown.’

  ‘But Dad barely knew what I was doing or where I was going from one day to the next. He was so wrapped up in his own stuff I’m surprised he even knew I had a best friend called Juliet …’ Martha trails off, focusing on bringing down the accelerating thud of her heart, inwardly berating herself for letting him get to her, even now.

  ‘Your dad was more interested in you than you think, love,’ Finn says, chucking her beneath the chin to force her to meet his gaze. ‘I remember he had me run a check on that lad you got hitched to, when you first brought him home.’

  ‘Denny? He had Den checked out?’ She can hardly get the words out. ‘The sly bastard. What did he find out – that Denny was a useless waste of space?’ Martha’s making light of this, but really, she wonders, how on earth didn’t Dad spot that in him? Looking back, it seems so obvious to Martha that Den was a lost cause, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing.

  Finn laughs, the sound wholesome and warm. ‘No, he thought he was a good lad. He was so happy for you when you got married, and heartbroken when it all fell apart. I was sorry to hear about you and Denny, love. Sorry it didn’t work out.’

  Martha stirs her drink unnecessarily. ‘He was a big mistake, Finn. God knows how I managed it, but I went straight out of the frying pan and into the fire. I guess I was in such a rush to get away from Dad and his drinking that I would have said yes to anyone who offered to take me in. Anyway, by the time I left Denny four years later, things weren’t so good.’

  ‘Did he hit you?’ Finn asks, straight to the point.

  Martha replies with a dismissive jerk of her chin. She’s never told anyone about the extent of Den’s problems, and it feels like a relief to let it out to someone like Finn, someone who understands.

  ‘Christ, you poor kid,’ Finn says, shaking his head sadly. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘My own fault. I knew, really, but didn’t want to see the signs. I’m just thankful I got away from it all when I did.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Finn tells her, softly patting her hand. There’s a silence between them, but it’s not uncomfortable. Eventually Finn breaks the pause. ‘I tried to keep in touch with your dad for a long time, Martha. Until he got so bad that he hardly knew it was me … Well, you know, don’t you, love? The last time I saw him was when he was admitted to hospital, and the man I knew was all but gone. But it was always clear to me just how much he loved you.’ It seems this is something Finn has wanted to get off his chest for a long time, and that he too has carried the guilt of failing to cure the self-destructive Eric Benn.

  Martha sighs. Why couldn’t her father have been one of those dads who communicated in simple terms, spending weekends with his family and telling them he was proud. Why couldn’t he have loved her as much as he loved Friday nights at the Anchor?

  ‘I know,’ she replies, for Finn’s benefit alone. Even hearing it from Finn Palin, her father’s oldest and most loyal friend, the one who had stuck by him through thick and thin, she still can’t quite believe it to be true. She’s not sure if her father ever truly loved anyone.

  Inwardly, Martha shakes off all maudlin thoughts and channels her mind on to the subject at hand. David Crown. She rearranges the newspaper cuttings on the tabletop, and Finn pushes his shirt sleeves back, leaning in.

  ‘Go on,’ he says.

 
‘So, we’re agreed that it’s possible Juliet didn’t run off with David Crown. We’re also agreed that David Crown could be alive and well, living under an assumed identity.’

  ‘Agreed. In theory.’

  ‘However, we then have the problem that everyone we’ve spoken to tells us that David Crown was the model citizen. Everyone we’ve interviewed recently concurs: David Crown was a great teacher, a loving husband, a selfless charity worker, a pillar of the community. There was that Vicky Duke allegation, but even that was retracted – so on paper, he looks like a bloody saint.’

  ‘And you don’t believe that?’

  ‘Something smells off,’ Martha says. ‘I was starting to think I might be chasing the wrong lead, until we visited David Crown’s home town of Castledale this weekend – in Derbyshire – and met a few of the locals who’d known him as a teenager.’

  Now she brings a finger down on the second article, entitled: Hunt Continues for Murderer of Local Tilly.

  ‘This girl, Tilly Jones, was murdered just weeks before David Crown left Castledale for good – and, according to some of the villagers who knew him at the time, he was the unofficial prime suspect in the case. But he was never charged, never named in the papers, and ultimately the general verdict was that Tilly was killed by a random stranger, a stranger who was never brought to justice.’

  ‘Why was David a suspect? He wouldn’t have been much more than a kid himself at the time.’

  ‘He was seventeen – arguably old enough and strong enough to kill a young woman. He was also the last person to see her that afternoon. She wasn’t a girlfriend, just a family friend – my source said David had walked her home from the cinema as a favour to her parents, and said goodbye to her at the edge of the copse where she was found. But no charges were ever brought, because his girlfriend at the time provided him with an alibi. She said she’d met him and Tilly before walking to the copse, and they’d waved off Tilly together before the two of them headed back into the village. It sounds pretty watertight. But you know young love – what if he’d persuaded his girlfriend to lie for him? It would be great to track that girlfriend down – Hattie Brown – and talk to her now.’

  Finn slips on his reading glasses and takes a closer look, turning his attention from one article to the other.

  ‘Notice anything interesting?’ asks Martha, tapping her forefingers beside the separate images of Tilly Jones and Juliet Sherman.

  Finn looks up over his spectacles, fixing her with his steady pale eyes. ‘They could be sisters,’ he says.

  ‘Exactly,’ Martha replies. ‘I think our David Crown has a type.’

  On her way home, Martha has a strong urge to stop off at her old school. It’s late, and as she stands in darkness at the wire-fenced perimeter it’s hard to make out the grassed area that served as their playing field. A fox streaks along the playground, setting off a security lamp and casting light over the portion of the field that leads to the Garden of Reflection. A jolt of recollection passes through her. There was a weekend in the summer of 1998 when several of them did some paid work for David Crown as he started preparing to landscape the new gardens. The gardens were to be developed on the site of the old swimming pool, a mildewed old construction that smelled of moss and stone, a relic from the 1950s that had been condemned long before Martha started at the school.

  Now, the details of that weekend become clearer: it’s a Saturday and the sun is shining. More than that, it’s scorching. Juliet’s the only one who thought to bring sun lotion and she’s handing it around, offering to rub it into the back of Martha’s and Liv’s shoulders, telling shirtless Tom he’s an idiot when he declines because ‘lotion is for girls’. Martha recalls his skin shedding like a snake’s in the days that followed, and the laughs they’d had at his expense when he had to sit in the shade while his tender back recovered. It’s not just them in this scene, there’s David Crown leading the group and Mrs Tomlinson from school and a few other youngsters. She doesn’t know their names, but they are a similar age, maybe a bit older; other volunteers from David’s Square Wheels team. Martha tries to train in on their faces, but she can’t see their features, not like with her friends, who she can see as clearly as if it were yesterday. David has them each focused on particular jobs, working in twos, just like at Square Wheels, and Martha is with Liv on shifting duties. They each have a wheelbarrow, which they’re filling with tiles and rubble from the pool, which Tom and another boy are busy breaking up, before wheeling it across the barge boards and up the ramp into a skip on the edge of the playground. Martha’s hands are moist inside thick builder’s gloves and she feels the sweat from her hairline trickling beneath her vest, into the waistband of her running shorts. The teams working on digging over what will become the flower borders are in flip-flops or sandals, but David insisted Liv and Martha cover their toes if they’re working with hardcore. They’ve been lugging debris for several hours now and Martha’s starting to get hot and tired, the shoe rule growing in size as the final injustice.

  David is nearby, marking out the ground where the new Garden of Reflection will be. Juliet works with him, following his instructions, holding the end of the tape measure, running back and forth to make chalk marks and stand still when he says to stand still. It’s a piss-easy job, and Martha, grubby and damp with sweat, is irritated to note that Juliet looks as fresh as she did when they arrived four hours earlier.

  ‘Can I swap with someone else after lunch?’ Martha shouts over.

  ‘If you like,’ David replies absently, jotting on his notepad. But he doesn’t look in her direction. He’s still talking earnestly with Juliet, their heads close together.

  Martha is at once furious. ‘Maybe Juliet can take over from me?’

  Juliet’s eyes shoot towards Liv then, a fleeting glance. ‘No, I know what I’m doing now – David won’t want to explain it all over again to someone new.’

  Someone new. The bloody nerve.

  ‘Liv must be tired too. Maybe you two could swap out with the other team?’ David says with his customary tact, and before she has a chance to argue, the tinny sounds of ‘Greensleeves’ announces the arrival of the ice cream van on the asphalt, and David claps his hands together, indicating that it’s time for a break.

  He’s arranged it, of course, asked for Antonio’s to make a special visit on his usual rounds that day. The workers all gather at the brightly painted van as David Crown and Mrs Tomlinson order ’99s through the serving hatch and hand them back to each of the parched labourers. There’s a party atmosphere in the air, and momentarily Martha forgets her bad mood, joining in with the others, laughing at herself and the filthy mess she’s got into. One of the Square Wheels lads is flirting with her, telling her she’d look good whatever state she’s in. The girl beside him grimaces at Martha in sympathy and says, ‘Alright, Romeo,’ making a puking motion with her finger, and Martha knows the heat in her cheeks isn’t just from the sun. Tom’s skin is already turning pink, and Liv is running in circles, squealing and flapping her arms because Mrs Tomlinson just pointed out that she has a slug attached to her bare shoulder. Liv is screaming for someone to get it off her, but everyone’s laughing too much to offer any help, and they’re all looking in that direction, so that Martha almost misses what happens next. Juliet has to see this, is the thought that pops into her head, and she turns towards Antonio’s van at the very moment David Crown passes Juliet her ice cream, cheekily daubing the end of her nose as she reaches to take it. Juliet smirks and sticks out her tongue, and attempts to lick away the mess he made. It’s a playful, intimate moment, and Martha is the only one who sees.

  The rest of the memory evaporates before Martha can close in on it. But that last clear moment between Juliet and David Crown – it feels so heavy with significance that Martha is left reeling, trying to comprehend how it’s taken her until now to recall it. She anchors her eyes on the shadowy path towards the Garden of Reflection, plunged back into darkness as the security lamp shuts off. Does
she now believe Juliet and David did have a thing going? Is that what’s bothering her so much? Perhaps, but that’s not what unsettles her the most.

  What’s disturbing her is the raw emotion she conjured as she relived that memory, unmistakable in its meaning. In the midst of her amusement, as Martha turned away from Liv’s comedy to share it with her friend, she had witnessed that small, daft moment with the ice cream, and she had been jealous. Martha had felt jealous of Juliet.

  14. Casey

  I woke up this morning in turmoil after a short email arrived from Martha late last night, pressing me for a time and date to meet up. As a result, I’ve been tossing and turning since the early hours, and in the cold light of day I understand that guilt is at the heart of my anxiety.

  Martha’s message read as though she’d typed it in haste:

  We think David Crown may have killed before. He was linked to a murdered girl in Derbyshire back in 1970 but never charged, and if you ask me it’s one coincidence too many. Also, you know that Square Wheels photograph? We’ve found out the name of one of the other volunteers is Jo Clement – did you ever come across her? We’re trying to trace her, as well as the other girl, to see if they recall anything about DC or about that night. Listen, Liv, when can we meet up? You’re the only other person who knows what it was like during that awful time, and even if you don’t want to talk about Juliet and the case, I’d love to see you. Please? I could really do with a friend right now.

  I’m frightened that I’m in too deep. This latest revelation about the murdered girl is horrifying to me, and I don’t want to believe it, not after I’ve gone to lengths making out that I – in my guise as Liv – think David Crown couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Juliet’s disappearance. I’m scared that I’m making things worse for everyone and, with Martha’s constant insistence that we need to meet, I’m scared of being exposed. Mostly, though, I’m scared of losing Martha. I could really do with a friend right now, she’d said. How can I let her down at a time like this? I butter my toast as I go over these things in my head, and I know all I really want is to be left alone.