by T. M. Logan
Beth said, “Surely he’s not going back home to play poker at a time like this?”
“Your husband’s a very good player. Calm, sharp, great instincts. He reads people brilliantly.” Including me. I looked at the picture for a long moment before handing the letter back to her. “But no, I don’t think he’s gone back to play poker.”
“What do you mean?”
I took out my wallet and unfolded the Post-it note from Ben’s study.
STEB?
Only it wasn’t one word. Now that I looked at it again, more closely, the space between the third and fourth letters was slightly larger than the rest.
STE B?
Not one word. A first name and an initial. A person.
The world froze for a second as I made the connection.
Two is one, one is none.
It had been in an old story in Ben’s hometown local newspaper. I took out my phone and googled “Sunderland Echo Ben Delaney.” The news story was the fourth search result. I clicked on it and studied the picture.
There he was: Steven Beecham. Or STE B for short.
“This guy”—I tapped the picture of the larger bouncer in the picture, Celtic tattoos climbing up his neck—“is called Steven Beecham. Ben knew him from when he went back to the Mirage Casino in Sunderland to play in his old hometown. Beecham was charged with GBH a few years ago—he was paid to beat some guy half to death with an iron bar—but got off on a technicality. Ben’s name came up in court because Beecham had his number in his phone, and Ben admitted to a reporter that he knew him.”
Beth looked confused. “So he is going to play poker?”
“You know that piece of black marble he’s got on the desk in his study?”
“Vaguely.”
“Its inscription says, ‘Two is one, one is none.’ I googled it after I saw it on his desk: it’s a saying they have in the U.S. Special Forces. It means having just one plan is not enough; it’s as good as having no plan at all.”
“I’m sorry, Joe. I don’t follow.”
“I think Steven Beecham is Ben’s backup plan. In case plan A—to frame me—doesn’t work out. He’s going to Sunderland to make Beecham an offer: to teach me a lesson I’ll never forget.”
Knees, ankles, and elbows, all shattered with an iron bar. That was what Beecham had been accused of.
“Ben wouldn’t do that,” she said quietly.
“No, Ben wouldn’t. He’d pay someone else to do it for him.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
“I know he’s going back home, and I know when.” I pointed to the letter. “Now I know why.”
“This is getting worse and worse with every day.”
“Has Ben had any other interesting mail?”
“Not particularly.” She took a bundle of envelopes from her handbag held together with an elastic band. She pulled the band off and began to leaf through them. “Do you want to see them?”
I held a hand up, not wanting to intrude any more than I already had. She put the envelopes back in her handbag, and we sat in silence for a moment, Beth sniffing gently and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. The playground wasn’t busy. Six kids and five adults. Four women, one man, none of whom looked the thug-for-hire type. A man walking a dog near the parking lot.
“There’s something else, actually,” I said.
“Yes?”
“What else can you remember about Alex Kolnik’s visit to your house last week?”
She seemed thrown by the abrupt change of tack. “Who?”
“Alex Kolnik. The man who worked for Ben, then set up on his own and went bust. He came to your house with a couple of his mates last week. Did you remember anything else about him?”
“No, not much. They weren’t there very long. They talked to Ben on the doorstep for a minute or so, there was some shouting, then they were gone.”
“What did Ben say about it?”
“That if they effing came back again, he’d effing shoot them.”
“And what about their car?”
She shrugged. “A Range Rover.”
“With tinted windows?”
She looked at me, frowning. “Dark windows, yes. How did you know that?”
I felt a buzz like electric current snapping through my veins. “Beth, don’t turn around when I tell you this, OK?”
“Tell me what?”
“There’s a black Range Rover with tinted windows in the parking lot right now.”
62
She started to turn in her seat, and I put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Beth?”
She stopped, turned back to look at me, fear slackening her face.
“What now?” she breathed.
“They pulled in a few minutes ago. Let’s not spook them, OK?”
“OK,” she said, her eyes wide. Her hands were clenched into tight fists on her knees. “Can you see the driver?”
I squinted over her shoulder, not moving my head. I assumed they were watching through a camera or binoculars. The Range Rover was parked at a diagonal to us, almost sideways, perhaps thirty meters away. It sat like a huge black beetle on the asphalt, solid and unmoving.
“The glass is too dark.”
She stared rigidly forward, unwilling to chance a look to her right toward the Range Rover. “What do we do now?”
“Let’s just wait a minute. I don’t think they’ll stay.”
“Why not?”
“They’re looking for Ben. Maybe they think you arranged to meet him here. When he doesn’t show up, they’ll leave.”
Beth said nothing.
I said, “Ben’s not going to show up, is he?”
“Who knows? What if…” she started, before the words caught in her throat.
“What?”
“What if they’ve given up on Ben? What if they’re not looking for him anymore, if they’re looking for me instead?”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m frightened, Joe.”
“It’ll be OK,” I said, my hand on her arm. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“What if they come to the house again? If Alice is there?”
“I’ll follow you home, if it comes to that.”
“But what about tomorrow?” she said, her voice rising. “And the next day, and the day after that? What then? Who’s going to look after us then?”
“Beth, listen to me. I’m not going to let them hurt you, OK? We’re in a public place here. They’re not going to do anything.”
“I can’t take this,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Not on my own. Not without Ben.”
There was a sudden flare of anger in my chest. Anger at these men, at their intimidation of a decent woman whose only fault was her choice of husband. Anger at Ben, architect of the insanity that surrounded me at every turn. Beth was frightened. I was frightened.
I was tired of being frightened.
Get proof. Something you can show to Naylor.
I found a pen in my jacket and wrote the registration on the back of my hand. Holding my phone low in my lap I took three pictures of the car, trying to get it in good sharp focus, then switched to video.
The Range Rover backed out smoothly and drove away.
* * *
Beth asked me to follow her home, and so I did, parking the moped at the bottom of her drive and walking her to the front door of the big house on Devonshire Avenue. There was no further sign of the black Range Rover, but she was still pretty shaken up.
“You sure you’re going to be OK?” I asked as she stood in the doorway.
“Yes. Thank you, Joe.”
“Call me if you think of anything else, OK? Or if Alex Kolnik turns up here again.”
“I will. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are.”
She gave a flicker of a smile. “I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
&
nbsp; “Goodbye, Joe.”
She pushed the big door slowly shut, and I heard two locks click home, followed by the metallic slide of a door chain being slotted into place.
I didn’t want to go home again to my empty, messed-up house. Not yet. I was restless and wanted to keep moving. So instead I emailed the images of the Range Rover to Larssen—with a message asking if the police could run the registration plate through their computers—and rode the moped to Edgware Road.
The cell phone rang as I was taking off my helmet. It was Larssen, on speakerphone. It sounded like he was driving.
“Joe, where are you?” There was an urgent tone to his voice.
“Cricklewood, I’ve been—”
“I was on my way to your house, but can I meet you where you are instead?”
“OK. What’s up?”
“There’s a wine bar on Cricklewood Broadway called the Monkey Tree. Do you know it?”
“It’s just down the road from here. What’s going on, Peter?”
“I’ll tell you when we meet. Should be there in ten.”
The Monkey Tree was smart and bright and had lots of mirrors on the walls. Not really my kind of place—I preferred a good honest pub with decent beer on draft and logs crackling in the fireplace. I ordered a black coffee and sat at a corner table, with one eye on the door. The local lunchtime news was on a large plasma TV high up in the corner of the bar.
A police search at Fryent Country Park was the top story. There was footage of the search shot from some distance away—presumably the police were preventing the media from getting too close—showing two white police tents set up in the woods near the lake, and maybe half a dozen white-suited forensic officers at the scene, carrying boxes, crouching, digging, photographing, pointing, like so many worker ants around the nest. I knew it was happening but felt a jolt of recognition all the same: the lake, the open-air theater, the bridge. I had been there three days ago to meet Ben. There was a hollow feeling in my stomach, a feeling of impending doom, like something very bad was just around the corner and I had no choice but to keep pressing on until it hit me right between the eyes.
The TV was muted, but the subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Police are tonight searching a park in northwest London as part of a murder investigation, the subtitles said. Forensics teams have been at the scene, at Fryent Country Park in Kingsbury, for more than twenty-four hours as they look for evidence following a tip-off from a member of the public.
Larssen came in, breathing heavily, his cheeks red. He saw me, hurried over, and sat down. While he got his breath back and extracted his iPad from his briefcase, I told him what I’d been doing and detailed my latest discoveries. He cut me off.
“We don’t have much time,” he said, “so I’ll be as quick as I can.”
63
“Two developments,” Larssen said. “The police took various possessions of yours from your house earlier this week, correct?”
“Yes, loads of our stuff.”
“Your last cell phone as well?”
I nodded and took a drink of black coffee. It was strong and hot, an instant caffeine hit on an empty stomach. The caffeine would give me a headache—it always did when I was wound up—but it was the only way to fight the exhaustion of too many nights with too little sleep.
“Only had that one four days. It was almost brand new.”
“The Met’s forensic data people have been looking at it.”
“Forensic data?”
“The team that analyzes phone and computer evidence, the digital footprint a suspect leaves behind. Ten years ago, they were focused on child abuse cases, pedophiles, white-collar crime, that kind of thing. But they’re now routinely used in every investigation of serious crime, cell phone data being so ubiquitous.”
I tried to remember who I might have called or texted on my phone. Ben. Mel. Our home number. A few others maybe. Nothing too suspicious.
“OK,” I said.
“It seems the forensic data chaps are particularly interested in some internet searches they found on your phone.”
A stab of concern in my stomach.
“What searches? I only got it on Saturday, and they took it away last night. Don’t remember using the browser once.”
“So you never did a Google search on the legal difference between murder and manslaughter?”
“No.”
“The definition in law of a crime of passion and how a sentence might be reduced for that?”
“No.”
“How much blood or saliva is needed to make a DNA comparison? The location of the nearest landfill sites to your house?”
I shook my head, incredulous. “They found all these on my phone?”
“So it seems.”
“I didn’t do those searches. There was no reason for me to do them.”
“Someone did.”
Mel?
But she didn’t know the passcode to unlock my phone. She’d never asked, and I’d never told her. In any case, I’d only had the bloody thing for a few days. The alternative? It had been hacked, by someone who knew computers inside out, someone who lived and breathed computers, someone who knew all the tricks and could bypass the usual security.
Someone like Ben.
“What about the message that appeared on my home PC on Monday—the threat from Ben? Have they found it?”
Larssen shrugged. “Indications are it’s a Trojan virus that was either downloaded intentionally, sent in an email, or installed at source. They can’t tell which yet, but it’s recent. There were other viruses on your machine that would have given a remote user the ability to take it over and use it as a ‘slave’ device. It’s not that uncommon.”
“Can they trace it back to Ben?”
“Unlikely. They actually think it’s more likely you put it on there yourself, to reinforce your story of being the victim.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Outside on the street, a bus rolled up, stopped, disgorged a dozen passengers onto Cricklewood Broadway, and moved off again. People shopping, taking a late lunch, meeting friends, going for a swift half at the pub. Living their lives, quite happily, as mine disintegrated at increasing speed.
Larssen said, “Who else has had access to your phone in the last four days?”
“No one. I don’t know. My wife, I suppose, but she doesn’t know my passcode.”
“Perhaps she guessed it,” he said, picking up his coffee.
It was a fair point. You hacked her phone. Why couldn’t she have done the same to you?
“What does it mean that they found these searches?”
He took a sip of his latte. “It’s another piece of the puzzle as far as Naylor is concerned. Circumstantial, but telling all the same, in the eyes of a jury.”
“A jury?”
“Yes.”
“As in court, trial, prosecution?”
“Yes, Joe. We need to start being prepared for that.”
“A few days ago, you were saying it would probably fizzle out long before it came to this.”
“A few days ago, the police didn’t have the evidence they have now. They weren’t digging holes in the park looking for a body.”
“Christ.” I rubbed my face with my hands. “What a mess.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke, and I could hear the muted sounds of traffic in the street outside. I was hungry and exhausted and suddenly wanted all of this to be over.
Larssen said gently, almost apologetically, “That’s not all, Joe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid … that’s not the worst of it.”
My coffee cup was still half-full, but I couldn’t face it. I was starting to feel sick.
“Go on,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
“When they took your cell phone, they took away your car too?”
“That’s right.”
He lowered his voice still further, making me lean closer so I could hear
him.
“Their forensics people have been doing various tests as part of the investigation, as you can probably imagine.” He paused, checking over his shoulder to ensure there was no one coming out of the toilets behind him. “And I have it on very good authority, from a highly reliable source, that they have found blood and hair in the trunk of your car.”
“Blood?” I repeated.
“From two different individuals. Small amounts.”
I shivered involuntarily. Someone walking over my grave. “It’s possible I cut myself taking things to the dump, something like that.”
Larssen stirred his latte, put the spoon delicately back on the saucer, and leaned in a little closer. The noise of the wine bar seemed to recede, everything else sliding into the background apart from me and my lawyer opposite. A fluttering in my stomach. Fear.
Larssen said, “One sample’s been matched to you. The other one to Ben Delaney.”
64
For a moment, I couldn’t speak and just stared at his face, a numb feeling spreading out from my chest into my arms and legs.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Joe? Both blood and hair samples have been DNA-matched to Ben Delaney.”
“Ben.”
“Yes. In the trunk of your car.”
“How much blood?”
“Enough to make a match. They don’t need much—microscopic traces are enough.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“He’s never been in my car, for one thing.”
Larssen shook his head. “You’re missing the point, Joe. This is not him traveling as a passenger or as the driver. They found blood in the trunk.”
I stared at him, blinking fast. My caffeine headache was getting worse, a rigid band of pain across my temple.
“How do you know all this?” I said. “Who’s your source?”
“Don’t ask.”