The Lies He Told: a gripping psychological suspense thriller

by Valerie Keogh

  47

  Gwen

  Perhaps Gwen had always known it would come to this. She’d been so stupid. Doubly so, she should never have fallen for Toby’s charms.

  A heavy sigh seemed to deflate her in the chair. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’ She shuffled as if to make herself comfortable for the story she was about to relate. She’d have liked to ask for coffee but didn’t want to delay. ‘The day before he died, Toby rang me and asked if I’d call to the house on Myrtle Road and pick up a couple of boxes. I did as he asked. When I arrived, I rang his mobile and he came out and put them into the boot of my car.’

  ‘You didn’t see Misty Eastwood?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know about her. Toby had told me he was living with his sister.’ Gwen sniffed. ‘I was a gullible idiot. Anyway, I brought the boxes back, carried them one by one into my apartment. Then, because I wanted to make Toby feel at home when he arrived, I decided to surprise him by unpacking.’ Once again she wondered what would have happened if she’d not done so, if she’d never found that phone number and discovered what an idiot she’d been.

  ‘I found a piece of paper screwed up in one of his pockets with a name and phone number written on it.’ Gwen shrugged. ‘Maybe deep down, I knew I was being a fool so, anyway, I rang it and discovered that not only was Toby incredibly sexy, charismatic and charming but he was also married and a compulsive liar.’

  She thought back to that moment of clarity… the stinging pain of realising she’d been made a fool of again, that she’d fallen for another George. That old adage had come slamming into her with force. Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me.

  With anger fizzing through her veins, she’d pulled all his clothes from the hangers where she’d carefully hung them, from the drawers and cupboards where they’d been lovingly placed and she’d rammed them higgledy-piggledy back into the two boxes.

  She would have liked to have been dramatic, tear them into strips and fling them from the balcony, stand waiting till he arrived then lean over and spit in his eye.

  It was tempting, but if she had stooped that low she’d have had to put up with the neighbours’ quizzical looks and raised eyebrows for weeks, and some of them knew people who came to her gallery. The word would spread faster than mould on week-old bread.

  Instead, she sealed the boxes up and left them on the bedroom floor. But having no outlet, the anger still fizzed. It was that that had made her decide to go to Myrtle Road. A decision she would have lots of time to regret.

  ‘May I have a glass of water, or better, a coffee,’ she said. She’d need one or the other. It was a long story.

  A few minutes later, her hands were wrapped around a disposable cup of murky coffee. She took a sip. They hadn’t asked how she wanted it, and it was sickly sweet. She put it down and sighed. ‘Okay.’

  Gwen would have smiled at the suddenly intent expressions on the two detectives if there had been anything amusing in her situation. Instead, she took another mouthful of the sweet coffee. ‘Let me tell you a crazy story.’

  48

  Gwen

  When Gwen had discovered Toby’s deceit, she had waited until her anger had faded to a low simmer before deciding what to do. It was self-directed anger. How could she have been so stupid… again!

  At first, she was going to wait until Toby arrived but quickly dismissed the idea. He was too charming, too cunning, she might succumb to his lies. And there was the deep-seated fear that if Toby came to the apartment… where they’d made love in every room and on the balcony as rain peppered their naked bodies with every cold drop on overheated skin an erotic charge… she might, probably would have, forgiven him. Because she was a fool when it came to men. Sam, George, Toby and a host of others.

  Better that she should stop him before he left the house in Hanwell. Whoever he was living with… not a sister.… she could keep him.

  Too agitated to drive, at first she tried for a taxi but was told it would be thirty minutes. ‘No, that’s okay,’ she said, hanging up. Determined on immediate action and fuelled with anger, she changed into flat shoes and took a Tube.

  It took longer than she expected and she was afraid she might have missed Toby but when she got to Myrtle Road, she saw him up ahead coming out of the house, a bag in each hand. She hurried along to meet him, mentally rehearsing the words she was going to say.

  ‘Gwen, how lovely,’ he said, reaching forward to plant a kiss on her cheek. ‘I didn’t know you were coming to pick me up.’ He looked behind her. ‘Where’s your car?’ He was smiling, his eyes soft and appreciative as they looked at her and she’d found herself weakening.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said. ‘Can we go inside?’

  For the first time she saw him look shifty. ‘It’s not a good idea.’ He dropped the bags at his feet, reached out and gripped her shoulders. Then he looked straight into her eyes and with a sincerity that was unbelievably convincing, said, ‘My sister was a little upset at my leaving.’

  ‘Your sister.’ Gwen threw her head back and laughed, cackling loudly when she saw his look of total confusion. Toby, she guessed, wasn’t used to his plans going awry.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, reaching for her arm, grabbing hold as she tried to pull away. ‘Come over here and we’ll talk.’

  The end-of-terrace house had a side passage that led to the back garden. With the house on one side and a high wall on the other, it was a narrow, dank area with a wooden gateway at the garden end.

  Toby kept hold of her arm and pulled her round the edge of the house, down toward the end of the passage where the shimmering glow from the street lights made little impact. ‘What’s the problem, you getting cold feet?’

  Gwen looked at him. Words churning in her head were desperate to get out and tell this conniving, deceiving bastard exactly what she thought of him. She’d opened her mouth ready for the words to spill forth in all their justified glory when suddenly, like a domino, Toby fell backwards.

  Gwen struggled to understand what had happened. The thud as Toby hit the ground was loud. She knew him to be a liar, but surely even he couldn’t lie this well.

  ‘Toby?’ She nudged his body with the toe of her shoe. When there was no answer, she bent to look closer, moving her hands up his body, feeling the warmth of him with a quick erotic charge. Was this what he wanted? Dangerous sex in an almost public place. She laughed, feeling her way to his face. ‘You’re crazy!’

  But there was no answer, no mutual exploration. She felt his face, ran her fingers over his lips, tapped his cheek, gently at first, then with more force. ‘Toby… Toby!’

  It was a minute before she faced the truth.

  He was dead.

  49

  Gwen

  Gwen straddled Toby’s body, her hand on his face. What was she going to do? Stunned, she got to her feet. She jerked around when she heard footsteps approaching to see a figure thrown into silhouette by the street lights. Still in shock, she said the first thing that came to her. ‘I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Dead!’ The woman hurried forward, pushed her out of her way and bent over Toby.

  ‘I was speaking to him, next thing he keeled over. I didn’t do anything, I swear!’

  ‘A heart attack or stroke or something, I suppose,’ the woman said.

  ‘You’re Misty?’ Gwen took the silence as confirmation. ‘He told me you were his sister and I believed him. He was supposed to be moving in with me tonight but I discovered his lie.’

  The woman lifted Toby’s hand, pushed back his sleeve and felt for a pulse.

  She looked as if she knew what she was doing and Gwen held her breath. Maybe she was wrong and he’d only fainted. She let her breath out in ragged sobs as Misty put her hand on his chest and reached to lay a hand against his neck.

  ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’ Gwen asked.

  Misty’s fingers were pressed to Toby’s neck. Instead of answering, she asked, ‘He was moving in with you?’

  ‘Yes. H
e said he loved me and that you were his sister. But you’re not, are you?’

  ‘No, I was his girlfriend, his lover. I thought we’d be together forever. Toby, unfortunately, had a problem with fidelity and the truth.’

  Gwen heard the sorrow in the other woman’s voice but she’d none to share. The double shock of Toby’s treachery and death had left her numb. She hovered uncertainly, then asked again, ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’

  Misty pushed to her feet. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he is.’

  ‘I’d better ring the police.’

  ‘The police? I think we should get him into the garden in case someone passes by and sees us. We’ll be able to decide what to do then.’

  ‘What?’ Gwen twisted her hands together. ‘Shouldn’t we leave him where he is?’

  The sound of the gate latch being lifted was loud. ‘No. Grab him under an arm. Let’s get him inside.’

  Gwen looked at Toby’s body, horrified. ‘Grab him?’

  ‘I can’t do it by myself, come on.’

  Perhaps it was shock that made Gwen move forward and when Misty grabbed Toby under one arm, Gwen took the other. Between them they dragged the dead weight of the body through the gate, Toby’s heels dragging on the ground.

  A wave of nausea hit Gwen. She dropped the arm and backed away.

  ‘Come on, we have to move further in, we need to get the gate shut.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Gwen took another step away, she couldn’t touch his body again.

  ‘You have to. I know you’re distressed but I can’t do this alone. Come on, one more move.’

  When it didn’t appear she had any choice, Gwen moved back and slid her hand under Toby’s arm again. Another heave, and he was in the garden bracketed by the two women.

  ‘My name’s Gwen.’ She looked at the woman who was staring into the garden behind. ‘I’m sorry, Misty. I foolishly believed him.’

  ‘Toby treated truth like an optional extra.’

  The remark brought a brief smile to Gwen’s face. ‘I didn’t know him long enough, I suppose. Two weeks,’ she added before there was a need to ask.

  ‘Two weeks. Quick work. I didn’t realise he was in such a hurry to move on.’

  Gwen heard the bitterness in the voice and shuffled nervously. ‘So now what? We should ring the police, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘There’ll be questions asked. Like why you were talking to him in the side passage of a house neither of you own. The police and the press will put their own spin on it, of course. It’ll probably involve seedy, scurrilous headlines.’

  Gwen’s hand crept over her mouth. Of course they would, and they would dig into her past.

  ‘The post-mortem will show how he died, but that will take a few days. So as long as you can ride out the gossip and the poking into every corner of your life until then, you’ll be okay.’

  Gwen saw a slight smile appear on Misty’s face as if she knew that Gwen had things to hide, things she didn’t want the police poking into.

  ‘Nobody saw what happened. I think we should get rid of him.’

  Gwen looked at her and laughed uncertainly. ‘We’re not talking about a bad smell!’

  Misty shut the gate, then stepped back into the darkness of the garden behind. ‘Wait here.’

  Gwen could see an indistinct solid shape at the end of the garden. A shed, she guessed. A moment later she heard the squeak of a door being opened. Perhaps she should go and help Misty do whatever it was she was doing, but instead, she stayed, staring down at the body of a man she’d laid naked with only two days before. She looked up as Misty returned holding a spade that she swung almost carelessly.

  ‘Right, do you have your mobile?’

  Gwen tapped her pocket. ‘Yes.’

  Misty pointed to a raised flower bed. ‘Bring up the torch and direct it there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going to bury him.’

  50

  Gwen

  Gwen’s heart hammered painfully as the words hit home. They were going to bury Toby? Her mouth was hanging open, she shut it with a painful snap and shook her head. ‘This is crazy.’

  ‘What’s crazy is that Toby is lying there dead and two women he’d been sleeping with, two women that he’d lied to, are standing over his body worrying about doing the wrong thing.’

  ‘But…’ Gwen stepped over the body and peered into the garden. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness and now she could see the two raised brick beds that bordered an area of grass. They were both planted with small shrubs. ‘It looks as if it’s been recently done.’

  ‘It has, only a couple of weeks ago. It’s designed to be low maintenance. The brick beds are filled with soil. We can take the plants out of one, remove the soil, put the body in the bottom and fill it back in. Any extra soil, we can scatter over the wild flower bed or put it in the compost heap behind the shed. It won’t be noticed. Nobody will ever know.’

  ‘We’ll know.’ Gwen gasped when fingers tightened painfully on her arm.

  ‘We’ll do this,’ Misty said, ‘and never speak of it again. Ever. Not a word, not a hint. We’ll never acknowledge what we’ve done, never tell a soul. Eventually, it will fade as if all of this had been a dream.

  A dream? A nightmare. Was that it? Was this all a horrible nightmare, Gwen would wake up any moment and be stunned at how real it all felt. The fingers pressing into her arm told her otherwise. ‘It won’t work. Anyway, what if they find out, it’ll make it all so much worse, won’t it, if they find we’ve buried him.’

  ‘There’s no reason they should find out if we’re careful. We get rid of all the evidence. Carry on as if this night had never happened.’ She lifted the spade she’d taken from the shed. ‘We’re lucky, the soil will be soft and easy to dig. It won’t take long and nobody will ever know.’

  ‘And we’ll never speak of it?’ Was Gwen really going to agree to this? But the alternative… the police looking into her life… the press digging and speculating. Her beloved art gallery would suffer. Artists mightn’t be too concerned at her involvement with Toby’s death, but they wouldn’t want their work to be associated with the sordid, scurrilous slant the press would put on his death and the pathetic truth that Toby had been a gigolo.

  They’d laugh. And withdraw their work.

  She glanced back to where Toby’s body lay. It would already be starting to decay cell by cell. No longer the charming, charismatic man who had obsessed her. He was dead; nothing she could do now was going to change that. ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Right.’ The spade was dug into the soil. ‘No time to waste.’

  Gwen looked up to the houses on either side. Both were in darkness. ‘What about the neighbours? Won’t they hear and come out to investigate what we’re up to?’

  ‘No. There’s a very deaf couple on one side, and the family on the other side is away.’

  Gwen shivered. The stage was theirs to perform their creepy play. ‘Come on. Switch on your phone’s torch. I need light.’

  There seemed to be no reason to delay. Gwen reached for her mobile, switched on the torch app and shone it over the top of the nearest raised bed, holding it steady as Misty dug out the first of the shrubs. Soon they were piled up together.

  Misty climbed up onto the flat edging stone of the bed. ‘It’ll be easier to dig it out from here.’ She began to move the soft soil out, dropping it to the grassy area in front, the mound quickly growing.

  Despite the cool night air, and Gwen’s easy role in simply focusing the light on the surface of the soil, perspiration ran in a rivulet between her breasts and dampened under her arms. The scent of fear came from her in wafts.

  She was impressed with Misty’s steady work: she only stopped now and then to wipe her sweat-slippery hands on her belly. As the level of the soil inside lowered, it was harder work to lift the spade up and empty it over the side. ‘Almost done,’ she said after ten minutes.

  Gwen shone the torch inside. ‘No, it needs to be down to
the bottom.’ She was committed to this now. It needed to be foolproof.

  ‘Then you get down here and dig for a change.’

  ‘This was your idea, don’t forget! I wanted to call the police from the very beginning.’ Gwen should have done. She still could. Her mobile was in her hand. Wouldn’t it be better?

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll go a bit deeper. God forbid you should wreck your precious nails.’

  Gwen swallowed the retort she wanted to make and held the mobile’s torch light steady.

  Five minutes later, the spade was thrown to one side. ‘That’s it.’ Misty climbed out and stood looking down. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Gwen joined her. ‘Yes, I think so.’ She looked at Toby’s body. ‘What a sad end.’

  ‘Yes, he’d have preferred something much more elegant and expensive than a raised flower bed in the garden of a former lover.’

  Gwen was staring into the brick coffin. Could she do it? She gritted her teeth. Yes. It was the best way. She turned, shone the light over the body and saw Misty’s form hunkered over it. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Checking for a pulse, to make sure, but there’s nothing.’ She dropped the wrist she was holding and got to her feet. ‘Okay, this isn’t going to be easy. It’ll take both of us. Put your phone down somewhere where it will give us a bit of light.’

  There was a plant pot outside the back door. Gwen balanced her phone on it. It gave enough light. ‘It’s not going to last very long though.’

  ‘Right, well let’s get on with it. I’ll take him under the arms and step backwards, you grab him under his knees. And watch your step.’

  Gwen left the phone and hurried over to slide her arms under Toby’s knees. Grunting, they half-dragged, half-carried his body across to the raised bed. The soil Misty had removed made the surface uneven and Gwen stumbled as she stepped back, windmilling her arms to keep her balance.