Someone Is Lying
Page 8
‘Gosh, yes, sorry, Peter. I’m sure nothing like that has happened and that she’ll be found ali— perfectly well, soon. Sorry, this must be so upsetting for you and the children.’
And where are your children, Peter? Why have you shipped them off as soon as Mary-Beth is out of the picture? And why is Felicity’s hand still on your arm?
‘Of course, I’m sorry, Miranda. You’re just trying to help, and I’m so grateful. It’s just—’
But none of them would find out what it was ‘just’ . . . because at that moment Peter’s phone began to ring in his pocket.
‘I’d better get that, it might be news or the kids.’ He manoeuvred his way through the people on the floor and disappeared into the dining room.
Miranda heard the back door slam.
It was as if a spell had been lifted. Without Peter’s presence, the residents of Severn Oaks all had their questions ready.
‘Did anyone see her on the day she left?’ Kelsey from number four asked, looking around at the shaking heads. ‘Do we know she’s only been missing since Monday evening?’
‘Peter did,’ Felicity answered, an impatient tone clear in her voice. ‘And I don’t really think that kind of—’
‘Is it true that Erica Spencer was murdered, do you think? The timing is very suspicious, what with that podcast saying Mary-Beth and Peter were involved.’ Larry Gorman from the far corner – three-bed, barely any driveway – asked. His trainers were filthy, Miranda had noted, as she’d requested they de-shoe at the door.
‘It also said that Marcus and I were involved,’ Karla spoke up sternly. ‘So I’d be really careful about what you say about that bloody podcast.’
‘Yes, but you’re still here, aren’t you?’ Larry wasn’t backing down. ‘You stayed to face the music. The only one who has run scared is—’
His words died on his lips as Peter appeared back at the door, his mobile phone hanging limply by his side. ‘That was the police. They’ve found Mary-Beth’s car. By the River Dee.’
20
High risk. Suspected suicide. Prepare for the worst.
The words swirled around in Peter King’s head, smashing into other thoughts, thoughts he’d been trying to shove aside. That was until the call from the police to say Mary-Beth’s car had been found next to the river. This was good news, wasn’t it? He knew the car would be found. This was what he wanted. So why did he feel so sick?
Peter knew what everyone else thought of his wife. She was the quiet one, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, never stood up for herself. That’s why they all took advantage of her. Oh, Mary-Beth, you couldn’t be a sweetheart and take Emily to the ballet tonight, could you? How do you make that soda bread taste so beautiful? You’ll have to give me the recipe. I put your name down for costumes for the school play – that’s okay, isn’t it?
And she would smile, and say, of course, it was fine, she’d love to. She didn’t complain when the play turned out to be The Little Mermaid , and she had to sew individually handcrafted scales onto a tail for Miranda’s little darling Charity, or when her Great Aunty Helen’s soda bread recipe turned up on Karla Kaplan’s website described as a ‘family tradition’.
‘Well, technically it is,’ she’d said when Peter had expressed his frustration.
‘Yes, but your family, not hers.’
Mary-Beth had shrugged. ‘What does it matter? One recipe isn’t going to turn me into Karla Kaplan. It’s more use to her anyway.’
Peter pressed balled fists into his eyes to stop himself from crying at the memory of her. Her soft voice, her small mischievous smile. What would happen to them now? What would happen to the children?
As soon as he’d received the call he’d left Miranda’s fake concern meeting and headed straight to the station. The kids were staying with Mary’s mum until he could figure out what was going on. Of course they couldn’t stay away indefinitely. But hopefully, she wouldn’t be away indefinitely.
‘Mr King, through here, please.’
He’d run into DC Allan as soon as he’d arrived. The constable had looked temporarily blind-sided, and Peter wondered if they hadn’t told him the whole story over the phone.
‘They said on the phone they’d found Mary’s car?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ DC Allan nodded. ‘Look, I should probably get the family liaison officer, I’ve already alerted DS Harvey, he’s on his way down and—’
‘Family liaison officer? Why do I need one of those? Have they found something?’
DC Allan shook his head furiously and looked like he was royally screwing things up. ‘No, no, Mr King, they haven’t found Mrs King. We still don’t know where she is. It’s just . . .’
The door opened, and Peter had never seen anyone look so relieved in his life.
DC Allan jumped up. ‘DS Harvey, I was just asking Mr King if he wanted a drink.’
‘And I was just saying I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Mr King, thanks for coming in. How are you doing?’
‘What kind of a question is that? My wife is missing and you won’t tell me what’s going on. How do you think I’m doing?’
DS Harvey sat down at the table and gestured for Peter to do the same. He placed a brown cardboard file on the table between them, and all of a sudden everything seemed to be getting more serious.
‘As my colleague told you on the phone, Mary-Beth’s car was found next to the River Dee earlier this evening.’
‘Whereabouts?’ Peter asked, picturing the scene in his head, the engine running, the door flung open and abandoned in a fit of spontaneity.
‘Pretty close to the weir there, Mary-Beth’s car was parked up on the left.’
‘But that’s miles away. Why would she drive all that way just to abandon the car?’
‘The car was found close to the bridge.’
DS Harvey looked down, waiting for Peter to understand.
‘So you definitely think she jumped?’ Even saying the words hurt his chest. Had they given up on her just like that? And if so, why allocate a detective to the case if they already thought she was dead?
‘Other than the car at the bridge there’s nothing to suggest Mary-Beth is in the water. It’s a pretty busy bridge, and no one has reported seeing your wife climb the rails or jump in. In fact, she hasn’t been sighted at all. After finding the car where we have, we’ve escalated Mary’s disappearance to high risk.’
‘What, so she wasn’t high risk before? What does that even mean?’
DS Harvey sighed, and Peter could tell he was grappling to find a way of saying what he wanted to say without sending him into a fury or spiralling down into depression. Why couldn’t he just be open with him?
Because you’re a suspect now. It’s always the husband. Unless it’s the lover.
‘Mr King, I’m going to be candid.’ Harvey laid both hands on the table, as if he’d read Peter’s mind. ‘When your wife first went missing there was nothing to suggest she hadn’t left of her own accord. Wait—’ He held up a hand. ‘I know you’re about to say she wouldn’t do that, she has children, you’re happy together, but you wouldn’t believe how many times we hear that, only to find out later that the wife – or husband – has been holed up in a hotel trying to make a point, or has left with someone else. The truth is that your wife made sure your children were safe and well looked after before she disappeared. People who have been kidnapped usually don’t do that. And as much as we are all influenced by the media, the majority of missing person cases aren’t kidnappings or stranger murders. Most people don’t have a dark past that comes back to haunt them. And if they do, it doesn’t happen out of the blue. The general public doesn’t know this, but the police usually have a good idea of who has committed murder within a few hours – a dispute or a domestic, witnesses, some form of evidence. So until we found Mary-Beth’s car, we had no reason to treat her as high risk.’
Peter sighed. ‘Okay, so now she’s high risk. What does that mean? Where do we go from he
re?’
DS Harvey nodded, glad of the response, and opened the folder in front of him. ‘Now we have a team allocated to finding your wife. There are officers out now walking the edges of the River Dee—’
‘But you said—’
‘I know I said that there was no evidence Mary-Beth has committed suicide, but we still have to look. Quite frankly, the location of the car is the only lead we have. So I’m here to ask you to go over every inch of your life, give me every conceivable person Mary-Beth could be staying with, and every single person who might have wanted to hurt your wife. None of this means we think she has committed suicide, run away or been hurt. What it means is that we are keeping an open mind and looking at every single angle. And we can only do that with your co-operation. Is that okay?’
‘Of course.’ Peter looked down at his hands and discovered he was twisting his wedding ring, over and over. Felicity’s words from the other night came back to him, ringing in his ears as if she was standing in the room next to him.
They’re going to think you killed her. They’re going to think you killed Erica, and Mary-Beth found out, so you killed her too. And they’re going to think I was in on it. They’re going to think we killed them both and we’re going to go to prison.
‘She wouldn’t kill herself,’ he said, trying to sound confident. And I didn’t kill her either , he wanted to add, but he didn’t want those words out there, he didn’t want them free to embed themselves in the detective’s mind, a seed to take root. ‘But there are some things you should know.’
21
‘You told them.’ Felicity knew she was breaking one of their rules by calling Peter on his mobile, but it wasn’t like Mary-Beth was about to overhear them, was it? She was hardly screening his calls these days.
Callous, Fliss , she reprimanded herself. What if something really awful has happened to her? Like Erica?
She couldn’t help it. Peter made her feel like a petulant schoolgirl, stamping her feet and having a tantrum. She knew all the reasons they had to be so secretive but it was beginning to grate. She had been about to give him an ultimatum when Mary-Beth disappeared – in fact, her disappearance seemed to have been timed to perfection. No one could question her about the night of the party, about what she’d done to her best friend. And once again she was back in first place with Peter, number one, with Felicity relegated to second best.
She’d heard every excuse in the book. Think of the children, how awkward is it going to be with you living next door . . .? Okay, so it wasn’t ideal – the kids would be furious about their father’s affair, but in time they would forgive him and accept Felicity. Maybe even be a family. She’d been waiting for the secret to come out in a way she couldn’t be held responsible for, for so long, and now it had happened and she was stunned.
‘I had to. If they’re going to find Mary-Beth they need to know the truth, however difficult.’
‘Do they know who I am?’
‘If they do, it’s not from me. I just told them I’d fathered children by someone else and it was possible Mary had found out. They aren’t exactly about to go spreading the gossip all over the street, are they? DS Harvey said they would be discreet.’
Felicity sighed. How had this all gone so terribly wrong? She’d settled down here, found Peter . . . was an easy life too much to ask? She had a sudden urge to speak to someone outside these godawful gates – gates that had made her feel so safe and secure, but now made her feel like a prisoner.
‘Have they asked you about the podcast? About Halloween?’
‘He asked if there was any way Mary-Beth was involved in what happened to Erica, if that’s why she might have disappeared on the very day the Facebook post about the podcast appeared.’
‘And you said . . .?’
‘I said that Erica fell out of the bloody tree house.’ Peter sounded irritated now.
Felicity flinched. She knew she had to tread carefully – if this became too difficult for him, he could just cut her out of his life completely. ‘So of course she didn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘And you didn’t mention anything that happened before she fell?’
‘What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?’
Felicity sighed. ‘I just need to know what to say if they ask me, Peter. The worst thing in the world is that we mix up our stories now and get caught lying. How will that make us look?’
‘Guilty,’ Peter muttered. ‘But then neither of us are exactly innocent, are we?’
22
This is The Truth About Erica and you’re listening to me, Andy Noon.
As promised, tonight I’m going to read an extract from Erica’s diary – or her ‘burn book’ as it’s been referred to within the walls this last week. This diary came into my possession – no, I can’t tell you how – just a few weeks after Erica’s murder, and although some of it was written in shorthand, and some using initials and references known only to Erica, I’ve managed to make sense of almost all of it. If you want to see the whole thing I’ll be releasing extracts every week on my new blog, www.thetruthabouterica.com .
Here’s what Erica wrote on the first of March 2018. Let’s see if you can guess who she’s talking about.
‘It’s ironic, really, that she has made a fortune from being the perfect specimen of womanhood when I’ve never seen her so much as make a lasagne. Had an interesting conversation with Jess a few months ago who questioned if K had even read her own books. Marcus is always stressed – back on the cigs, and Sterling Dual stubs follow his path like breadcrumbs. As for improving relationships with family – after what he did, I’m surprised half her family isn’t in prison.’
I think we can safely assume that the K referred to in Erica’s diary is Karla Kaplan and that Jess refers to a person Karla would deny even exists. As investigators, we can dismiss the somewhat disingenuous and slightly spiteful claim that Karla hasn’t so much as made a lasagne – as much as Erica knew about her neighbours, she couldn’t be there for every family meal. So what was it that Erica knew about the person she only refers to as ‘he’? And was it enough to get her killed?
‘Karla and Marcus are gaining momentum in the celebrity world faster than Posh and Becks did.’
What you’re hearing now is an interview with one of Karla Kaplan’s fans, a young woman in her late twenties who I approached when I saw her buying a copy of Entertain and Be Entertaining by Mrs Kaplan herself.
‘She’s just got her shit together, you know? She isn’t just Marcus Kaplan’s wife – even though she doesn’t need to work – she’s got her own brand. She’s an inspiration.’
Ah yes, Karla Kaplan’s brand. Karla has a range of books and products dedicated to helping others live their Level Ten Life. Managed by her good friend Felicity Goldman, over the course of four books Karla helps us poor mortals improve relationships with our family, friends and children, helps us reorganise our lives, achieve financial success and, of course, ‘Entertain and Be Entertaining’.
So did a death at one of Karla’s parties affect her brand?
‘Of course not,’ the fan tells me conclusively. ‘It was an accident. Even the most professional party planner can’t stop someone falling out of a tree house.’
So, if the Kaplans have made their fame and fortune on the back of Karla being the perfect mother and hostess, how far would she go to protect that image?
Karla Kaplan mentioned in her statement to the police that she had seen Mrs Spencer on the landing of the house at ‘somewhere around midnight’ when she said she was just going to pop out for a cigarette. Yet did anyone else see Erica smoking that night? No, they didn’t. Because Erica Spencer had quit smoking four weeks previously. Of course everyone has the odd relapse – especially when they are drinking. Possibly. Although Erica wasn’t drinking that night either, despite what our six ‘witnesses’ will tell you. And yet she was found with cigarettes in her pocket – Sterling Dual, as a matter of fact – and alcohol in her blood stream.
Goodnight, listeners . . . and until next week, stay honest.
23
‘I don’t give a shit how busy he is, I want him round here within the next hour, or I’ll find a lawyer who is available when I call.’
Marcus slammed the receiver back into the cradle, and Karla winced. Her husband didn’t get this angry unless he was really rattled.
They had barely said a word to one another since the podcast had played into the kitchen half an hour ago. Zachary had been banned from listening in the first place and, as the final bars of the end tune played, Brandon had silently picked up his phone and gone up to his room. Karla didn’t have the energy to follow him.
A mixture of relief and dread peaked in her chest as the doorbell rang. The police already?
‘It’s Felicity.’ Marcus came back into the kitchen. ‘I’m not letting her in. I’ve closed up the front of the house and locked everywhere. Let everyone get their gossip somewhere else.’
‘Doesn’t that make us look guilty?’ Karla picked up her mobile and put it back down again without reading any of the six messages. ‘Add that to our lawyer turning up, and we may as well get “I killed Erica Spencer” T-shirts printed.’
‘See, that’s what I love about you.’ Despite how irritated he’d seemed on the phone, Marcus grinned. ‘You see a difficult situation and immediately think, “How can I monetise this?”’