by T. M. Logan
“You want proof? I’ll get it for you. I’ll get it myself.”
40
I sat in my car, sweating and shaking, in a side street behind the police station. The plan had been to convince Naylor that I was being framed, and that had blown up in my face in spectacular fashion. Larssen had told me to go home, stay home, and take it easy—but that was easier said than done when your life was disintegrating before your eyes.
I looked again at my last exchange with David Bramley on Messenger.
Let’s meet up. Properly this time
And his response:
Lol
But you wouldn’t be laughing if I were standing in front of you right now, mate.
He might be shouting, or arguing, or maybe even telling me how much he loved my wife and how I was to blame for everything—but I was pretty damn certain he wouldn’t be laughing out loud.
Standing in front of him was exactly where I needed to be. Face-to-face. No social media, no gadgets, no emails, no direct messages, no screens, no internet. No bullshit. Just two guys having a conversation. An actual, real conversation.
He had been close on Sunday evening—close enough to my house to fool Naylor with the phone data. And again on Monday, at the park—watching me, stalking me, coming close then disappearing like a shadow. Because he knew the police would interrogate the phone logs, and he knew what they would show. There had been no one else there by the lake. No one but Ben.
I turned the ignition and sat for a moment, listening to the purr of the engine. Turned it off again. I couldn’t go home, not yet.
Proof of life.
The clues were there; I just had to find them.
I got my cell phone out. Ben had 389 friends on Facebook, and we had a couple of dozen in common, but most of his were not familiar to me. So I sent friend requests to the twenty or so people who regularly left comments in Ben’s feed. Some would ignore me, but others who were less discerning—who just wanted to boost their virtual popularity—would accept, and then I could start going through their profiles too, looking for that one nugget of information that would help me put an end to Ben’s campaign. Mel commented quite regularly on his Facebook posts, but nothing that aroused suspicion. A scroll down her timeline yielded pictures of William, selfies of Mel, pictures of the two of them together.
A picture from March—more than six months ago—made me stop and scroll back. A flash of recognition. Mel had shared a link to a gallery of pictures posted to celebrate twenty years since her GCSEs, entitled: “Good times at Claremont Comprehensive.” The title image was from some sort of drama production, a lineup of teenagers in medieval dress, swords, and gowns to go with their nineties haircuts. Four men—or, rather, sixteen-year-old boys—and four young women, arm in arm, full of smiles, receiving the applause of the audience at the end of a show.
The picture was familiar, but not from March. Much more recently. It was one of the pictures that Beth and Ben had on the wall of their living room. And there Beth was, in the center of the shot, beaming at the audience and looking like it was the best day of her life. She looked so happy, with her long hair, huge smile, cheeks flushed with the buzz of a great performance. She looked ready to take on the world. A smiling sixteen-year-old Mel was there too, at the other end of the row. Both girls looked like innocents, untroubled and unguarded, with no idea of the loathing and jealousy and destruction that one of them would unleash on the other with her infidelity twenty years later, or how many lives would be ruined. How friendship would turn to hate.
My chest ached with the feeling of something lost.
I stared at the picture until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then scrolled down to the comments just to get it off the screen.
* * *
Jo Knightley
March 29
Great days xxx
Martin Coffey
March 29
Had forgotten about this! How young do u look Beth Delaney?
Ian Howard
March 29
Love this. Remember when Charlotte Lowe cracked up on stage when she was supposed to be dying? x
Charlotte Lowe
March 29
Least I didn’t forget my lines Ian Howard! ☺
Claire Grimble
March 29
Nice hair Mark Ruddington xx
Mark Ruddington
March 29
The after-show party sticks in my memory for some reason, Melissa Lynch ;-)
* * *
And so it went on, more than fifty comments and eighty likes on that post alone. The cryptic comment about the after-show party was intriguing. Mel had not responded to it, which was a bit weird—she’d shared the link to the pictures but not responded to a comment directed at her. The guy who’d posted the gallery in the first place—Mark Ruddington—was not a name that was familiar.
I tapped on his profile picture to take a closer look at him, then double-tapped on the school picture to zoom in on the smiling group of young actors. I was 95 percent sure that the black-clad teenager with his arm around Mel was Mark Ruddington. There was a certain facial similarity between him and Ben. Both dark-haired, both about the same height, same build. I remembered again the drunken game of “stand up if you’ve ever” and Mel’s single infidelity—which she’d said was at school and therefore didn’t count.
Perhaps Mark Ruddington had been that first time she had been unfaithful. She had never told me who at the time—she had just pulled me close and given me a drunken kiss—but the more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be a kind of weird logic to it, a parallel. That she had cheated twice in her life, twenty years apart, with men who bore an uncanny resemblance to each other. First this Mark Ruddington guy, then Ben. Maybe that was just the type she went for, when she got bored.
The after-show party sticks in my memory for some reason, Melissa Lynch ;-)
Mark Ruddington was married and living in Enfield. He had an open Facebook profile, so I spent ten minutes stalking through everything he’d posted this year. It seemed more important than ever to find out about my wife, to find out who she really was. To know about the experiences that had made her, the teenage infidelity that she had admitted to under the influence of house party tequila. It seemed that lots of people knew her better than I did. I sent him a friend request. Maybe a chat on Messenger would get a bit more out of him.
Staring at the phone’s small screen was making my eyes ache—an hour had passed with no sign of Ben. It was time to try something else.
The Delaneys’ home phone rang six times then went to voice mail, Ben’s brief-and-to-the-point message carrying just the faintest trace of his Sunderland accent. A while ago he’d explained to me the difference between Sunderland and Newcastle accents, but I still couldn’t really tell them apart. The second time it went to voice mail again. I hung up without leaving a message. It occurred to me that I could do better than calling Beth up for a chat. I was a teacher with no one to teach, no homework to mark, no lesson plans to prepare.
Thirty-five minutes later, I was parking on a wide, tree-lined street in Hampstead, a slow-curving avenue of high walls and immaculate driveways. It looked exactly like what it was: a street full of multimillionaires. Immediately opposite me was an imposing Edwardian house that had been tastefully extended several times. Like its widely spaced neighbors, it was elevated slightly from the street at the end of a sloping driveway so that its considerable size was exaggerated even further to the casual passerby.
Ben’s house.
He probably wouldn’t be very pleased with me visiting his wife, alone and unannounced, in the middle of the day. Just dropping in out of the blue, asking a few probing questions about our mutually cheating spouses. He wouldn’t be pleased at all. In fact, knowing Ben, he’d probably be mightily pissed off.
Good, I thought. Let him be on the back foot for once. See how he likes it.
41
Ben’s house sat at the end of a gently sloping gravel d
riveway, bordered by immaculate shrubs and fruit trees. An ornate ivory-painted birdhouse stood on a tall pole halfway up the drive. There were two cars: Beth’s silver Mercedes Estate, and another of Ben’s cars, a white convertible Audi TT. All his cars were white. The house itself was huge, a three-story Edwardian family home built when six kids was the norm and servants lived on the top floor. Additions over the last century had included a tennis court, game room, and a conservatory big enough to seat twenty. As was the way of things, even as family sizes had grown smaller the house grew bigger still: the Delaneys—who had just one child—had owned it barely a year and were already busy with plans to extend it further.
Watching from the street, I saw the front door open. Beth emerged, slowly, holding something in both hands out in front of her—an upturned pint glass, facedown on a postcard. She knelt by the flowerbed beneath the bay window, lifted the pint glass, and tapped the postcard gently. A spider. She knelt for a moment longer, then stood up and went back inside the house.
Gravel crunched beneath my feet as I walked up the driveway. The doorbell chimed with old-fashioned tones, echoing in the rooms beyond. I waited and was about to press it again when Beth opened the front door, her weary look quickly turning to surprise when she saw me on the doorstep. She looked beautiful—she pretty much always looked beautiful—but she wore no makeup to disguise the paleness of her face. She never wore makeup. Like she never did bright colors—always calm shades, soft tones.
Beth Delaney had always believed in the fundamental goodness of people. But her expression suggested she’d just discovered a different truth, and it had tilted her world on its axis. I felt hugely sorry for her.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “It’s you.”
“Can I come in, Beth?”
She hesitated, looking past me down the drive. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“About?”
“Ben.”
She pushed the door almost shut, and I heard the rattle and click of metal sliding into place. When the door reopened again, a thick brass chain stretched across the gap.
It wasn’t surprise on her face—it was fear.
“Why did you come here?” she said. “To our house?”
“I thought it would be easier to talk face-to-face, rather than on the phone.”
“The police were here again this morning,” she said. “Asking about Ben and that woman.”
“You mean Mel?”
“She lied about you and Ben falling out on Thursday evening.”
“She lied about a lot of things.”
“The police said you had a fight with Ben. You hurt him.”
“He’s trying to set me up, Beth.”
And maybe he’s not working alone, I thought.
She frowned and stared hard at me. “What do you mean? How?”
“He’s trying to get me in trouble with the police. At work. At home.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because of him and Mel. Listen—I’ve seen him. I’ve seen your husband.”
Her face was suddenly brighter, her eyes wider, and it was clear how hard Ben’s disappearing act had hit her. He was the head of the household, the millionaire entrepreneur alpha male, and I guess she had grown used to living in his shadow. Without him she was lost.
“Really? Honestly? Is he OK?”
“I didn’t talk to him, but yes, he seemed OK.”
She pursed her lips as if she were about to cry. “And he’s all right?”
“He seemed all right.”
“Thank God.” She put a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. “Thank God. I’ve been so worried.”
“Can I come in, Beth? We could talk more inside.”
She stared at me for a moment longer, then pushed the heavy front door shut. I heard the door chain being taken off, and she opened it again, still looking unsure whether I was safe to be around. The home phone was clutched in her other hand, and I realized with a jolt that she must have been ready to call the police.
The Delaneys’ living room was huge, handsomely furnished in cream and white, and dominated by a sixty-inch plasma TV on the far wall. The large dining table was piled high with paperwork, files, and ring binders. Bay windows looked out onto the extensive back garden, workers camped in the middle of the lawn with their excavators and tarpaulins, digging out the open-air pool and summerhouse that were Ben’s latest projects. One entire side of the room was dominated by framed pictures of family scenes—weddings, christenings, birthday parties—and groups of friends arm in arm. The shot from the school play was there too, the one on Mel’s Facebook timeline, a row of smiling teenagers dressed to play Shakespeare.
Beth gestured for me to sit down on the corner sofa at the far end of the room. She took a seat at the dining table, at least a dozen feet between us, nearer the door.
“It’s a bit of a mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
I gestured to the files and folders on the dining table. “What is all that?”
“On Saturday, I had this mad idea that Ben going off might be to do with his company, somehow. Maybe there was a problem and he hadn’t told me. So I was trying to find something, any kind of small clue about what’s going on. And then Sunday happened, and I just haven’t felt like clearing up since.”
“I don’t think it’s about his company, Beth. I think it’s about his obsession with Mel. It’s about destroying a rival. It’s about winning.”
She winced visibly. “He always has to win.”
I told her the whole story about Ben and Mel’s relationship. His obsession with her. About the message that had appeared on my computer and Ben’s mission to beat me by whatever means—fair or foul. I left out the part about my latest suspicion: that Mel wasn’t necessarily on my side either. I didn’t even want to say it out loud. Not yet.
“He’s been in contact with me today, on Messenger.”
“Really?” She looked hopeful at this. “What has he said? Can I see the messages?”
I handed my phone to her, and she scrolled through the messages, the look of hope slowly leaving her face.
“Who’s David Bramley?”
“Ben’s set up a fake account so he can taunt me. They’re his initials, but reversed, do you see? DB instead of BD. Just close enough for me to know who it is.”
“He doesn’t mention me or Alice.”
“No.”
She handed the phone back. “He’s not asked you about me?”
“No.”
“Tell me about when you saw him. How did he look?”
She listened as I described our near meeting at the country park. She asked again quietly, hopefully, whether Ben had looked OK. Then there was silence for a moment between us, each caught in the very personal pain of betrayal.
“I wish I’d never found those damned pictures on his phone. Never found out about all the lies. Given the chance to turn the clock back to Sunday morning, I would just put that cell phone back in his desk drawer, turn the key, and never open it again.”
“But you did see the photos.”
“Yes. I did.”
“And so here we are.”
She looked as if she might cry. “Yes.” It came out as a whisper.
“Look, it’s done now,” I said, surprised at how Sunday’s anger had deserted her. “Neither of us can put the genie back in the bottle. Maybe it’s better that way, better for everyone to move on.”
“I just wish he’d call me. Wherever he is.”
Something came back to me from the story in the Standard. “What about Alex Kolnik?”
“What about him?”
“Ben drove him out of business a few months ago. Big guy, maybe six foot four, ponytail, goatee beard, trench coat. Brain the size of a planet, apparently, but looks like something out of Sons of Anarchy. His nickname is Kalashnikov because of his initials—AK. Have you seen him recently?”
“There was a chap like that, came to the house the other
week. Him and a couple of others.”
“What happened?”
“Ben answered the door, and they talked for a bit; it got heated, there was shouting and swearing. Alex was threatening all kinds of things. Ben ended up getting one of his shotguns to make him leave, then slammed the door in his face. Alex reversed his Range Rover into my rosebushes when he left, spun his wheels so they went everywhere. Made a real mess.”
Something about the story made a connection in my head, but it was just out of reach. Just beyond my sight line.
“Did you tell the police about it?”
She sighed. “Of course. But I don’t want to cause any trouble; all I want to know is that Ben’s OK. He doesn’t have to come home straight away, as long as I hear from him.”
It would have been too cruel to say, but I couldn’t stop thinking it: Ben’s not coming home, because he’s in love with another woman.
She put her head in her hands and began to cry. Her body shook with sobs, short breathless gasps mingling with the tears.
“Beth?” I said as gently as I could manage.
“I just want him back,” she managed through the sobs.
I waited for the crying to subside. After a minute, she took a deep breath and plucked a tissue from her sleeve.
I said, “That phone you found, with the pictures of Mel on it—where exactly did you find it?”
“In his study.” She wiped her eyes and stood up. “I’ll show you.”
42
Ben’s study was large and deep-carpeted, with a pair of iMac computers side by side on the huge oak desk. There was also a fridge, a leather sofa, and an antique Space Invaders arcade game that I recognized from the pubs of my youth. Against one wall were three floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, all open, half-filled with black ring binders. Against the other wall were a dozen or so framed photographs of family, friends—and Ben.
“It was in the top drawer of his desk,” Beth said, pointing.
“Unlocked?”
“No, but I knew where the spare key was.”
“You’ve looked for other stuff, I take it?”