Forget Her Name: A gripping thriller with a twist you won't see coming

by Jane Holland

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Cash?’

  I nod to the office door, my expression nonchalant. ‘You know where to find me. Why not just invoice me?’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ he asks drily. ‘A fool?’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Bianca was there when you rang tonight,’ he continues, looking at me quizzically over his shoulder. ‘My sister? She said she doesn’t know any Joyce Wainwright, and she certainly never told any woman to phone me today. Then we checked the name and address on the Internet.’

  I hold my breath, thinking fast.

  ‘Okay, signorina. Time for the truth.’ Giacomo straightens and stares into my face, an aggressive look in his eyes. ‘I know you aren’t Joyce Wainwright. She died in August. And this guy, he’s dead too. So who are you, and why the hell are you trying to break into a dead man’s office?’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  I consider spinning another elaborate story like the one I used for gullible George. But it doesn’t seem like a good time for more lies. Especially given his threatening look.

  ‘My name is Rachel.’ I bend to slip my high heels back on, so that my face is slightly flushed when I straighten up again. ‘And I’m the one who killed Jason Wainwright. Probably.’

  ‘Probably?’ he repeats, frowning. ‘I read online that he killed himself. Threw himself under a train on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I may have thrown him under that train.’

  ‘You don’t know for sure?’

  ‘Nothing’s ever simple.’

  He gives me a direct look. ‘Killing a man is pretty simple, Rachel – or whatever your name is. Either you killed this guy Wainwright or you didn’t.’

  ‘I was next to him on the platform. There was a big crowd. Everyone was pushing. Including me.’ I take a deep breath, then continue. ‘He went under the train.’

  ‘Did you push him?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, after a brief pause, ‘I wouldn’t have told them.’ And he spits on the floor. ‘I’m no friend of the police.’

  ‘Me neither.’ I consider spitting too, but decide against it.

  ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘but why break into the man’s office? What’s he got on you?’

  I hesitate.

  ‘Please,’ he says, ‘no more lies.’

  ‘That’s another thing I don’t know for sure.’ I nod towards the door. ‘It’s why I’m here. To find out why Wainwright was following me.’

  ‘So he was investigating you.’

  ‘Yes, I just can’t figure out why.’

  ‘Huh.’ He looks me up and down again, more deliberately this time. ‘You married, Rachel?’

  ‘Very.’

  Giacomo spreads his hands wide in an expressive gesture. ‘Allora, there’s your explanation.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Your husband is the one who had you followed. This man Wainwright was a private detective, yes? Your husband doesn’t trust you, so he put Wainwright on your tail.’ His gaze lingers on my legs in the short skirt. ‘Such a nice tail too.’ He winks at me. ‘Can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘You think Dominic was behind this?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My husband.’ My head is hurting and I feel vaguely sick again. I push the thought away. ‘You’re suggesting Dominic had me followed? That doesn’t make any sense. He was with me that night. He was right next to me when Wainwright died.’

  Except he wasn’t, was he?

  I remember looking for him, and finding him just out of reach, standing on the edge of the platform beside Sally.

  The two of them chatting, their heads bent together, intimate.

  ‘Sally,’ I mutter.

  That husband-stealing bitch.

  Giacomo, rummaging once again through his toolbox, looks round at me in surprise. ‘Sally? Who’s Sally?’

  ‘My husband’s boss.’

  ‘Ah.’ He waves a hammer in the air. ‘Is he having an affair with her?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s always the boss. Late nights. Working all hours. Then one time she doesn’t bother coming home, and next thing you know . . .’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘Divorced. She went off with her boss. Guy made tapas for a living, for God’s sake. These fucking little dishes . . . It was so humiliating. Spanish, too. Not even Italian.’ He shakes his head, throwing the hammer back into the toolbox with a loud crack. ‘Now I’m on my own with three kids. Three kids, for God’s sake, I ask you. Bianca is looking after them tonight. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be able to cope.’ He smiles. ‘She’s a good sister.’

  The back of my neck prickles. ‘Keep it down, would you?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He stands up, grimacing, and weighs a crowbar speculatively in both hands. ‘Okay, no need to change the locks. So we make this look like a burglary, yes?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Once you’re in, I go home.’ He eyes the door. ‘The place may be alarmed. You should get ready to run, just in case.’

  I slip off my high heels.

  ‘Payment?’ He smiles, his dark gaze meeting mine. ‘Or we could come to a more interesting arrangement.’ He looks down at my bare feet, then up my legs, raising his eyebrows suggestively. ‘I expect this Wainwright has a good strong desk in his office. You like desks?’

  I smile too, but this is hardly the time.

  ‘Maybe another night.’ I grab a large handful of cash from my handbag – the remnants of my raid on Dad’s bank account – and thrust it towards him. ‘Will that do?’

  He doesn’t bother to count the notes, but stuffs them rapidly into his pockets.

  ‘It’s . . . acceptable.’

  ‘Right. Clock’s ticking. Time to do your thing.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’ He grins. ‘Boss.’

  I stand back, my heart thumping.

  Giacomo levers the crowbar into the crack between the lock and door frame, and with a quick jerk of his arm breaks the lock with a loud splintering sound.

  We both wait for a moment. No alarm.

  Nobody has come running to find out what the hell’s going on. The building seems to be empty. It occurs to me that even George may have gone home by now.

  Giacomo swiftly packs away his tools and salutes me.

  ‘Arrivederci.’

  ‘Goodbye, and thanks.’

  I watch him go down the stairs and then the silence is complete.

  I push my feet back into my high heels, and crunch over wood splinters into Wainwright’s outer office. Some kind of waiting room. Very posh. Leather armchairs. Potted plants. Even a miniature fake Christmas tree on a table, white with red baubles.

  I open the door into Wainwright’s office. It’s a spacious room with broad windows looking out over the street. I flick a switch. Spotlights come on overhead. My heels sink into the soft beige carpeting. Bloody beige. There’s some kind of geometric painting on the wall. Beside it is a huge map of Greater London, covered with pins and strings like something the police might put together for a crime scene analysis. And a free-standing whiteboard, wiped clean except for a date in the top right corner.

  24 December.

  The day Wainwright went under the train.

  The large desk near the window has elegantly turned legs and a green marbled leather top. It looks respectably strong.

  I consider calling Giacomo back.

  There’s a large computer on the desk. An Apple Mac.

  I sit down and turn it on.

  The password box lights up, cursor blinking ready.

  ‘Christ.’

  Undeterred, I check in the desk drawers. That’s what people do in films, and invariably find the password written down somewhere inside.

  But there are no helpful password hints in the drawers. No cryptic clues scribbled on scraps of paper, no primers or lists or an
agrams taped secretly to the underside of any of the drawers. Plenty of pens though, whiteboard markers, spare staples, bags of rubber bands, and dozens of torn chocolate-bar wrappers.

  Jason had a sweet tooth, I think, chucking them out onto the carpet in my search. Presumably Joyce disapproved. ‘No more choccies. You don’t want diabetes, do you?’ Otherwise the wrappers would be in the wastepaper bin standing behind the desk. She may be gone now, but he’d probably got used to hiding them.

  Exasperated, I try various passwords at random.

  WAINWRIGHT123

  123WAINWRIGHT

  HOTSEXWITHJOYCE69

  Nothing works.

  I didn’t really expect them to. I blame Daddy, of course. I never learnt much about computers as a kid, kept out of school for years and home-taught. Phones aren’t much hassle, but my hacking skills are non-existent.

  I stare at the blank screen of the Mac, wrestling with a burning desire to smash the computer to pieces with the leather swivel chair I’m sitting on.

  But I don’t want to make that much noise.

  Then I notice the filing cabinet, a few feet from the desk.

  I get up silently and stand in front of it. It’s a large metal cabinet with five drawers. A plant pot on top containing a decorative fern. Attractive and sturdy, rather like the desk and the Jag he drove. Jason Wainwright had expensive tastes. I expect he charged substantial fees for his services. So who hired him to follow me about, if that was what he was doing?

  I try the top drawer, holding my breath.

  It’s not locked.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  I have no idea how much time has passed before I hear the lift doors open and close, then footsteps coming along the corridor in my direction.

  I don’t move at first.

  My neck hurts from being hunched over, reading. Papers and documents from several folders I found in the filing cabinet are strewn over Wainwright’s desk. And my eyes are sore from crying.

  Damn you, Daddy.

  Fucking damn you to hell.

  Except I don’t believe in hell. I do, however, believe in revenge. How dare you hide all this from me? How dare you play God with my life?

  Someone enters the outer room of Wainwright’s offices, crunching over the wood splinters. Not a security guard. A security guard would have raised an alarm by now, on a radio or phone. A security guard would be unlikely to enter the scene of a break-in late at night without back-up. Nor would he approach Wainwright’s office so openly and without hesitation.

  I screw up the paper I’m reading and thrust it into my bag. Then I turn, leaning back against the big desk.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ I say.

  Only it’s not my father who enters Wainwright’s office.

  Anger is my first emotion. Then a sense of bitter hurt.

  That surprises me. I thought it was Cat who was in love with him, not me. But maybe strong emotions can bleed through from one persona to another.

  Dr Holbern would know.

  I don’t.

  ‘Hello, Rachel,’ he says, without a single quiver in his voice. ‘I thought I might find you here.’

  Dominic looks at me from the doorway, then I see his gaze move steadily past me to the leather-topped desk. The glossy black-and-white photographs everywhere. Papers scattered about. The drawer of the filing cabinet wide open. Folders spilt on the carpet. Everything in disarray, including my heart.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask, my smile false and brittle.

  ‘About Wainwright?’ Dominic shrugs. ‘I’ve known for some time. Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘Nothing here is obvious,’ I say savagely.

  ‘Right.’

  Dominic slides his hands into his jean pockets, and leans against the door frame. He’s making no attempt to come any further into the room, I notice. Doesn’t want to spook me, I suppose. In case I run again.

  Though I have no idea where I would go. Not after what I’ve just read.

  I recognise that look on his face. He’s hiding something. Something I haven’t found out yet among all this crap in Wainwright’s files. But what?

  ‘You’re angry,’ he says.

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  Without looking at them, I run my hand over the papers and photographs on the desk, then dash them furiously to the carpet.

  A photo lands almost equidistant between us, face up. Dominic and me – or rather Cat – walking arm in arm on our way home from a restaurant. I remember that night, the woollen dress, the icy weather. The pavements had been slippery and Dominic had held my arm to make sure I didn’t fall. It was about a fortnight before our wedding.

  I ask, ‘Okay, how long have you known?’

  ‘Known what, exactly?’

  He is studying my face. Probing to see what I know before he gives anything away.

  I need to be cautious, too.

  ‘That Wainwright was following us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say coldly, and correct myself. ‘How long have you known that Wainwright was following you?’

  ‘It was something Sally said.’

  My stomach churns with jealousy at that name, and I struggle to hide it, hating him more than ever.

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Sally didn’t know who Wainwright was, but she spotted him hanging round the casualty department day after day. Once she’d pointed him out to me, I kept seeing the same guy everywhere. In bars, in shops, once even on the Tube. He got off at the same tube station as me, then got out a map and tried to pretend he was lost when he realised I’d seen him. That was when I worked out he was watching me. Before that, I had no idea.’ He grimaces. ‘I know that sounds naive. But I was so focused on you, I couldn’t see what was going on around me.’

  ‘I killed him,’ I say, without really meaning to.

  He frowns. ‘Wainwright?’

  ‘I pushed him under the train.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Look, I know it was me,’ I say angrily. ‘He was right there one minute, the next he was dead.’

  Dominic smiles. ‘Is that guilt talking?’

  ‘No. I just thought you should know.’

  ‘Well, you can forget it. You didn’t kill him,’ he says dismissively. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘You seem very sure.’

  ‘That’s because he was standing closer to me and Sally that night than he was to you. If you’d pushed him under the train, I would have seen.’

  ‘Dominic,’ I say, trying to keep my fury under control, ‘are you having an affair with Sally?’

  He hesitates. ‘Define “affair”.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ His mouth twists. ‘A stray kiss here or there, what does it matter? Besides, you don’t care what I do. We’re hardly love’s great dream.’

  ‘So why marry me?’

  ‘I didn’t marry you,’ he points out.

  Something jolts inside me. It’s a blow but he’s right. I can’t deny it. To deny it would be to deny myself.

  He’s still watching me. ‘Who did I marry, Rachel?’

  ‘Cat,’ I whisper.

  ‘Speak up. I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Cat,’ I repeat, my voice raised in sudden fury. I hate the way he’s talking to me. ‘You married Catherine.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Rachel.’

  He nods, his whole body taut. ‘Cat’s not your alter ego though, is she? Not really. Deep down, she’s you.’

  ‘She’s not me,’ I say with cold emphasis.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop lying to yourself. This is bullshit. You are Cat, and Cat is you. There is no Rachel. There never was.’ His voice has hardened. ‘Rachel was the girl you invented to take the blame for all the appalling things you did as Cat.’

  ‘No!’

  He points to the files I’ve been reading, contempt in his voice. ‘You still haven’t faced the truth yet, have you?’ he says. ‘You�
�re a fake, Catherine. Everything about your life is false. And we all know it. You’re the only person who won’t admit it. And you’re a born liar.’

  I shake my head in instant denial. ‘No, you’re the liar. You’re the one in disguise.’ My voice sharpens. ‘And Wainwright knew it, didn’t he?’

  ‘You’re Cat,’ he says doggedly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. Admit it. Say your real name.’

  ‘No.’ I’m shouting now. ‘I’m Rachel.’ I run at him, claws out, determined to hurt him as much as he’s hurting me. ‘I’m Rachel, you fucking bastard. Cat is dead.’

  He catches me by the wrists and bears down violently, leaving my skin burning. Then he spins me round to face the desk, wrenching both arms behind my back. I fight, kicking backwards and catching his leg.

  ‘Stay still,’ he hisses in my ear, pushing me face down over Wainwright’s desk. ‘Or I’ll be forced to hurt you.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You can’t hurt me.’

  ‘Then why were you crying when I walked in?’

  ‘Fuck you, Dom.’

  He laughs, breathless, pressing hard against me. ‘Oh, such a tempting invitation. Only wish I had the time, darling. But we need to get out of here.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

  ‘Not willingly, maybe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  His weight keeping me pinned me to the desk, Dominic fumbles in his jacket pocket as though retrieving something, then clamps a hand awkwardly over my mouth.

  I struggle to breathe.

  He’s stifling me with some kind of sweet-scented cloth, his voice suddenly far away. ‘Hush, relax. You’ve been up for hours, poor darling. You must be exhausted.’

  ‘No,’ I try to say, but my tongue is so heavy. He’s drugged me, I realise with a shock. Finally, he releases his grip on me, and I stumble away, then fall to my hands and knees. ‘No.’

  As the room blurs, I stare up at my cheating husband’s melting face and think, Wainwright was on your tail all right, you lying bastard. And you killed him for it. But that’s not the whole story, is it?

  ‘Who . . . ?’

  My mind forms questions I can no longer ask, my eyes closing against my will.

  ‘Time to sleep, Rachel,’ he says softly. ‘Goodnight.’

  Chapter Fifty-Five