by T. M. Logan
“What are you talking about, sweetie?”
“Did you think you’re the only one who can buy an app and install it on someone else’s phone? Did you think I’d never find it when you put it on my phone, to spy on me? You think you’re the only one who can listen in to a private conversation? Have you checked your phones recently, either of you?”
Mel picked up Beth’s phone from the dressing table, unlocked it, scrolled through a list.
“SysAdminTrack,” she said in a small voice. “It’s on here.”
Alice said, “Check the recordings.”
“What have you done, Alice?” Beth said, her voice rising with anger. “What have you done, girl?”
“I didn’t believe you, Mum. I didn’t believe Dad would just leave. I didn’t believe that he’d only send texts and not just call me. I’ve seen the way you used to look at him when you thought I wasn’t looking. Like you wished he was…” She dissolved into a fresh bout of tears.
“Bee?” Mel said, urgency in her voice.
“What?”
“There’s a nine-minute recording on my phone, from just now.”
“Delete it,” Beth said.
“Doesn’t matter if you do,” Alice said, holding out her cell phone. “I’ve already emailed the file to my phone.”
“Delete it,” Beth said again. “Delete it from both.”
“No!” Alice shouted back, her voice cracking again. “I’m going to forward it to the police instead.”
Beth turned toward her daughter, the shotgun swinging around all the way this time.
“Don’t do that, sweetie. You’ll regret it. We’ll all regret it.”
“People need to know what you did to Dad.”
“I won’t ask you again.”
“I’m sending it to the policeman, Mum; I found his card in your handbag, with his email address on it. DCI Marcus Naylor.” She held the phone up, her thumb poised over the screen. “The email is right here, ready to go.”
Beth took a step toward her daughter, still training the gun on her. I felt a stab of fear at the thought of Alice getting hurt. She was just a child. Smart, loyal, brave, resourceful, for sure—but still a child.
“Put your phone down now, Alice!” Beth shouted. “Right now!”
“What are you going to do, Mum?” Alice screamed back. “Shoot me? Kill me like you killed Dad?”
Beth stopped for a moment. Turned the shotgun back toward me.
“No. But I will shoot Joe unless you do what you’re told.” Beth walked back over to where I was sprawled on the floor, stood over me, the barrels of the shotgun a foot from my head.
Alice lowered the phone but didn’t put it down.
I stared up at the twin black barrels. This close, they looked huge. The fear was still raw and strong, but now there was something else, something more powerful, pushing against it: this had to end, and there was only one way the truth could come out. I had failed Ben, failed an innocent man, but I would not fail my son.
Only one way to make sure William didn’t grow up under a murderer’s roof.
Only one thing to be done.
Protect the boy.
“Do it, Alice,” I said. “Send it.”
Alice looked from her mum, to me, to her mum again. “I don’t want…”
Beth pressed the muzzles of the shotgun to my forehead, hard steel biting into the skin. “Joe’s death will be on your hands, sweetie.”
“Mum, don’t hurt him.”
“I’ll shoot him. I swear it.”
I said, “She’s bluffing. Send it.”
“I’m going to count to three,” Beth said. “If you don’t put the phone down—”
“Do it for Ben, Alice,” I said. “Do it for your dad.”
Alice thought for a moment, gave a tiny nod, and pressed Send just as I grabbed for the shotgun.
THREE MONTHS LATER
84
The postmortem found that Ben was asphyxiated while unconscious.
Fibers in his mouth and throat indicated that a blanket held over his face was used to kill him that Thursday night. Suffocated as he lay on the concrete floor of the parking lot. His body was wrapped in the same blanket—from the trunk of Beth’s car—when they found it beneath the half-finished foundations of the summerhouse in his garden. The postmortem also found that he had suffered a bump on the head sufficient to knock him unconscious for a few minutes, and a ruptured eardrum—but no fractured skull, no fatal injury from my encounter with him.
The knowledge that I didn’t kill him doesn’t ease the guilt that keeps me awake at night. I’m still responsible in a lot of ways. I don’t suppose the guilt will ever go away. Guilt that I ran, instead of staying to help Ben that night. If I’d stayed with him, waited for him to come around, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe it would have just postponed the inevitable. Maybe not. Maybe it was fate. Either way, the police opted not to charge me with assaulting Ben in the parking lot that night, in exchange for my full cooperation in building a case against my wife and her lover.
The police have since discovered a number of fairly elaborate plans—drawn up by Beth over the last year—to get rid of her husband. Mercury poisoning over a period of months. Tampering with the brakes of his car. Staging a botched burglary-turned-murder was another, in which Ben would end up killed in bed with one of his own shotguns. She also had a plan to spike his drink and push his unconscious body into the swimming pool. But she had never quite seen the right moment to turn any of those plans into reality—until I came along. Until the day William spotted his mother’s car in traffic and we followed her to a hotel. I provided the opportunity by stumbling into the middle of something without any idea of what was really going on.
Alice saved me in the end. Even though she was the one with the most to lose. Both her parents gone. She’d tried in her own way to warn me of her suspicions that week—the emails from bret911—but I hadn’t joined the dots. She’s living with her grandmother in Sunderland now, but I’m trying to stay in touch so that one day I can start trying to repay the debt I owe to her. And me? I’m still in rehab for my leg. I don’t suppose I’ll ever run the hundred meters in twelve seconds again, but it’s been a long time since I could do that anyway.
Trusting people is hard. Especially when I can’t see them face-to-face, listen to their voices, and look them in the eye. So it’s just me and William now, but we make a good team, and I’ve been relearning the joy of just spending time with him, giving him all my attention, rather than feeling I should keep one eye on my phone all the time. I feel calmer, clearer, more focused on what’s important. I’ve avoided social media completely since it happened, gone cold turkey on my generation’s compulsion to share every event, every emotion, every success, every random thought, every half-funny conversation. Because it’s not the photographing and sharing and broadcasting that makes something what it is. It’s the doing. The being. The experience of it. The wonderfully unfunny joke your son tells you, or the smile of a stranger on the street, the day out, the blue-sky Saturday, the unexpected kindness, or one of a thousand other things that makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning. That’s the truth. That’s what’s real.
I bought William a pet in the end, just like he wanted. Not a hamster—a hamster is a prey animal. Instead we got a cat from the rescue shelter. A big black tomcat named Shadow. Cats don’t need anyone; they can do fine on their own. They live in the moment and trust their eyes and ears, what they can see in front of them—I think we can all learn something from that.
William sometimes asks me when Mummy’s coming home.
I haven’t told him about what happened between us, or about her and Beth. I tell him that she had to go away for a while, with work, and I’m not sure when she’s going to be coming back. I tell him that we’ll be all right for a bit, just me and him, and that Mummy will be back one day soon. Back home so it’s the three of us again, a family, just like before.
That’s one lie I’ll k
eep going as long as I can.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have played a part in bringing this book into the world. My agent, Camilla Wray at Darley Anderson, took a chance on me and has been a wonderful source of advice, guidance, and support ever since. I don’t think I’d be writing these words were it not for her. I’m very grateful to Celine Kelly for her perceptive editing and forensic eye for detail. Thanks too to Naomi Perry at DA for getting it over the line (and sending my favorite-ever email).
Joel Richardson’s skill, insight, and enthusiasm improved this story in more ways than I can recount here. Huge thanks are due to Joel, plus all the team at Bonnier Zaffre and Twenty7.
Thanks to Detective Superintendent Rob Griffin of Nottinghamshire Police for his expertise and guidance on missing persons and other police matters. It goes without saying that any errors or omissions in this area are entirely down to me. Special thanks also to my friend and fellow author Paul Coffey for putting us in touch.
I’d like to thank my brother Oli for many lengthy plot discussions in Devon pubs. One or more of those late-night ideas may have ended up in these pages … although it’s hard to know for sure, because I can never remember them the following morning (I should probably start making notes). To my mum and dad and my big brother Ralph for encouragement and interest over a lot of years—thank you. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Jenny, Bernard, John, and Sue for babysitting above and beyond the call of duty and many other kindnesses that gave me time to write.
Last but definitely not least, thank you to the home team. To my amazing kids: Sophie, for helping me out with my questions about social media; and Tom, who gave me the first line of the first chapter. Most of all to my wife, Sally, who was there at the birth of this story and helped bring it to life. Thank you for always believing. This one is for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. M. LOGAN was born in Berkshire to an English father and a German mother. He studied at Queen Mary and Cardiff universities before becoming a national newspaper journalist. He currently works in communications and lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife and two children. Lies is his first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Prologue
Thursday
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Friday
Chapter 11
Saturday
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Sunday
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Monday
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Tuesday
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Wednesday
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Thursday
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Friday
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Three Months Later
Chapter 84
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LIES. Copyright © 2017 by T. M. Logan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: figures © olesiabilkei / Deposit Photos; steps © Evannovostro / Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Logan, T. M., author.
Title: Lies / T. M. Logan.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018013471 | ISBN 9781250182265 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250182289 (ebook) | 9781250202673 (international)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6112.O3375 L54 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013471
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Twenty7
First U.S. Edition: September 2018