Lies: The stunning new psychological thriller you won't be able to put down!

by TM Logan

  Gravel crunched beneath my feet as I walked up the driveway. The doorbell chimed with old-fashioned tones, echoing in the rooms beyond. I waited and was about to press it again when Beth opened the front door, her weary look quickly turning to surprise when she saw me on the doorstep. She looked beautiful – she pretty much always looked beautiful – but she wore no make-up to disguise the paleness of her face. She never wore make-up. Like she never did bright colours – always calm shades, soft tones.

  Beth Delaney had always believed in the fundamental goodness of people. But her expression suggested she’d just discovered a different truth, and it had tilted her world on its axis. I felt hugely sorry for her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Can I come in, Beth?’

  She hesitated, looking past me down the drive.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Ben.’

  She pushed the door almost shut and I heard the rattle and click of metal sliding into place. When the door reopened again a thick brass chain stretched across the gap.

  It wasn’t surprise on her face – it was fear.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ she said. ‘To our house?’

  ‘I thought it would be easier to talk face-to-face, rather than on the phone.’

  ‘The police were here again this morning,’ she said. ‘Asking about Ben and that woman.’

  ‘You mean Mel?’

  ‘She lied about you and Ben falling out on Thursday evening.’

  ‘She lied about a lot of things.’

  ‘The police said you had a fight with Ben, you hurt him.’

  ‘He’s trying to set me up, Beth.’

  She frowned and stared hard at me.

  ‘What do you mean? How?’

  ‘To get me in trouble with the police. At work. At home.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because of him and Mel. Listen – I’ve seen him. I’ve seen your husband.’

  Her face was suddenly brighter, her eyes wider, and it was clear how hard Ben’s disappearing act had hit her. He was the head of the household, the millionaire entrepreneur alpha male, and I guess she had grown used to living in his shadow. Without him she was lost.

  ‘Really? Honestly? Is he OK?’

  ‘I didn’t talk to him, but yes, he seemed OK.’

  She pursed her lips as if she was about to cry.

  ‘And he’s all right?’

  ‘He seemed all right.’

  ‘Thank God.’ She put a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. ‘Thank God. I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘Can I come in, Beth? We could talk more inside.’

  She stared at me for a moment longer, then pushed the heavy front door shut. I heard the door chain being taken off and she opened it again, still looking unsure whether I was safe to be around. The home phone was clutched in her other hand, and I realised with a jolt that she must have been ready to call the police.

  The Delaneys’ lounge was huge, handsomely furnished in cream and white, and dominated by a sixty-inch plasma TV on the far wall. The large dining table was piled high with paperwork, files and A4 ring binders. Bay windows looked out onto the extensive back garden, workmen camped in the middle of the lawn with their excavators and tarpaulins, digging out the open-air pool and summer house that were Ben’s latest projects. One entire side of the room was dominated by framed pictures of family scenes – weddings, christenings, birthday parties – and groups of friends arm-in-arm. The shot from the school play was there too, the one on Beth’s Facebook timeline, a row of smiling teenagers dressed to play Shakespeare.

  Beth gestured for me to sit down on the corner sofa at the far end of the room. She took a seat at the dining table, at least a dozen feet between us, nearer the door.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess, I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

  I gestured to the files and folders on the dining table.

  ‘What is all that?’

  ‘On Saturday I had this mad idea that Ben going off might be to do with his company, somehow. Maybe there was a problem and he hadn’t told me. So I was trying to find something, anything, that might be a clue to what’s going on. And then Sunday happened, and I just haven’t felt like clearing up since.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s about his company, Beth. I think it’s about his obsession with Mel. It’s about destroying a rival. It’s about winning.’

  She winced visibly.

  ‘He always has to win.’

  I told her the whole story about Ben and Mel’s relationship. His obsession with her. About the message that had appeared on my computer, and Ben’s mission to beat me by whatever means – fair or foul.

  ‘He’s been in contact with me today, on Messenger.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked hopeful at this. ‘What has he said? Can I see the messages?’

  I handed my phone to her and she scrolled through the messages, the look of hope slowly leaving her face.

  ‘Who’s David Bramley?’

  ‘A pseudonym. David B., Ben D., reverse the initials, do you see?’

  ‘He doesn’t mention me or Alice.’

  ‘No.’

  She handed the phone back.

  ‘He’s not asked you about me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me about when you saw him. How did he look?’

  She listened as I described our near-meeting at the country park. She asked again quietly, hopefully, whether Ben had looked OK. Then there was silence for a moment between us, each caught in the very personal pain of betrayal.

  ‘I wish I’d never found those damned pictures on his phone. Never found out about all the lies. Given the chance to turn the clock back to Sunday morning, I would just put that mobile back in his desk drawer, turn the key and never open it again.’

  ‘But you did see the photos.’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘And so here we are.’

  She looked as if she might cry.

  ‘Yes.’ It came out as a whisper.

  ‘Look, it’s done now,’ I said, surprised at how yesterday’s anger had deserted her. ‘Neither of us can put the genie back in the bottle. Maybe it’s better that way, better for everyone to move on.’

  ‘I just wish he’d call me. Wherever he is.’

  Something came back to me from the story in the Standard.

  ‘What about Alex Kolnik?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Ben drove him out of business a few months ago. Big guy, maybe six foot four, ponytail, goatee beard, trench coat. Brain the size of a planet, apparently, but looks like something out of Sons of Anarchy. His nickname is Kalashnikov because of his initials – A.K.’

  ‘Have you seen him recently?’

  ‘There was a chap like that, came to the house the other week. Him and a couple of others.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Ben answered the door and they talked for a bit, it got heated, there was shouting and swearing. Alex was threatening all kinds of things. Ben ended up getting one of his shotguns to make him leave, then slammed the door in his face. Alex reversed his Range Rover into my rose bushes when he left, spun his wheels so they went everywhere. Made a real mess.’

  Something about the story made a connection in my head, but it was just out of reach. Just beyond my sightline.

  ‘Did you tell the police about it?’

  She sighed.

  ‘Of course. But I don’t want to cause any trouble, all I want to know is that Ben’s OK. He doesn’t have to come home straight away, as long as I hear from him.’

  It would have been too cruel to say, but I couldn’t stop thinking it: Ben’s not coming home, because he’s in love with another woman.

  She put her head in her hands and began to cry. Her body shook with sobs, short breathless gasps mingling with the tears.

  ‘Beth?’ I said, as gently as I could manage.

&n
bsp; ‘I just want him back,’ she managed, through the sobs.

  I waited for the crying to subside. After a minute she took a deep breath and plucked a tissue from her sleeve.

  I said: ‘That phone you found, with the pictures of Mel on it – where exactly did you find it?’

  ‘In his study.’ She wiped her eyes and stood up. ‘I’ll show you.’

  42

  Ben’s study was large and deep-carpeted, with a pair of iMac computers side by side on the huge oak desk. There was also a fridge, a leather sofa and an antique Space Invaders arcade game that I recognised from the pubs of my youth. Against one wall were three floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, all open, half filled with black ring binders. Against the other wall were a dozen or so framed photographs of family, friends – and Ben.

  ‘It was in the top drawer of his desk,’ Beth said, pointing.

  ‘Unlocked?’

  ‘No, but I knew where the spare key was.’

  ‘You’ve looked for other stuff, I take it?’

  She nodded. ‘I went through everything I could find. His computers are password-protected but I made a start on his paper files, hence the mess downstairs. Although to be honest I can’t make head nor tail of most of it. And then I was looking through more of his things and I found that phone with the naked pictures of Mel on it, and of course Sunday happened, and . . .’

  ‘Yeah. Sunday.’

  ‘Not sure what came over me. I was just so . . . angry. It was like I was going to explode.’ Her voice cracked as she fought to hold the tears back. ‘This whole thing is so unfair. After everything I sacrificed for him, he just . . . leaves.’

  ‘I’m sorry too, Beth.’

  She nodded, biting her bottom lip.

  ‘You know what? I’m having a drink,’ she said. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Tea would be good, thanks.’

  ‘A proper drink, I mean.’

  It was half past one in the afternoon. Ordinarily Beth was the kind of woman who could make a single white wine spritzer last all night.

  ‘Tea’s fine.’

  ‘Well, I’m having one.’

  She turned and headed back downstairs.

  I walked a circle around Ben’s desk, not sure what I was looking for. It was neat and ordered: a pair of fountain pens, a printer and work trays alongside the two iMac desktop computers. Front and centre was a short Samurai dagger mounted on a rack with an inlaid brass plaque on the base that read: ‘The truth of the battle is whatever the victor deems it to be’ – Sun Tzu. Alongside it, a block of black marble with military insignia I didn’t recognise, and the words: ‘Two is one, one is none.’ I had no idea what that meant.

  I listened for any sound on the stairs, heard nothing, and quickly opened the top drawer of the desk. More pens, paper, a box of business cards, half a dozen silver memory sticks with stickers on them bearing handwritten notes – Financial, Property, Legal, Phone conversations, Email convs, and so on. A stack of multi-coloured Post-it notes with something written on the top sheet. I tore off the top few sheets and took a closer look, realising it wasn’t ink but the indentation of something that had been written before. I held it up to the light. Looked like one word and a question mark, but it was difficult to make out. The waste bin under his desk revealed the original square yellow note, scrunched up into a tight ball. I unfolded it. Four letters and a question mark.

  STEB?

  What was STEB? Or where – was it a place? I had no idea.

  I shoved the note in a pocket and resumed my search of the desk drawer: there were a handful of credit cards in a clear plastic wallet, a stack of books about business and a bottle of aftershave. A box of condoms, the cellophane wrapper open. I shut the drawer and moved away from the desk.

  The pictures on the wall seemed to be mostly of Ben’s family when he was younger: mum, dad, Ben and a younger girl I assumed was his sister. One showed them tanned and relaxed in a beachside restaurant, deep-blue sea behind them. Another of them arm-in-arm at Disneyland, all four of them grinning at the camera with the towers of the Magic Kingdom rising behind them. In another family shot, they were in Sydney with the Opera House as a backdrop. A school picture – larger than all the rest – showed Ben, big fringe and glasses and ‘Prefect’ badge on his lapel, accepting a framed certificate from a teacher at his school in front of an ancient-looking stone building. The teacher wore a black gown like something out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

  None of the pictures rang true.

  Ben had always maintained he was a tough comprehensive-school kid through and through. It was part of his backstory, part of his northern-lad-taking-on-southern-softies persona. But it seemed that this – along with much else that I had learned in the last few days – was another fiction. The truth was private school and prefect badges and expensive holidays all over the world.

  Beth returned to the study holding a glass of red wine and a china cup and saucer. She handed me the cup of tea and planted herself on the leather sofa, raising the glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said without a trace of mirth. ‘To marriage.’

  I took a sip of the tea and pointed to the pictures on the wall.

  ‘Is this Ben? I thought he went to the local comp?’

  ‘God, no,’ she said. ‘His parents sent him private from the age of five. His father was the MD of a big shipping company. Loaded.’

  ‘But he always said . . . you know, about being the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. He said he was the son of a shipyard worker, not that his dad was the boss.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘That’s Ben. It’s just his way. You stop noticing it after a while.’

  The fact that he had made stuff up about his working-class upbringing didn’t actually surprise me: it was becoming apparent that he was one of the biggest bullshitters I had ever met. It was disconcerting to be confronted with it face-to-face, but it also fitted with what I had learned since the weekend.

  The truth of the battle is whatever the victor deems it to be.

  That pretty much summed him up. Truth was changeable to Ben, malleable, to be shaped in whatever way he wanted. So he could get what he wanted.

  I pointed to a picture of Alice at the end of the row of frames.

  ‘How’s Alice doing, by the way?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘How much have you told her?’

  ‘I never need to tell her much, as far as her dad’s concerned. She picks up most of it on her own. She’s actually better than me now at picking up on his moods and his little jokes. They copy each other’s little phrases and habits, you know. The slang and the textspeak and abbreviations.’ She smiled, but it faded quickly. ‘Sometimes it’s scary how alike they are – Alice is very much her father’s daughter. I’ve just told her that her dad’s gone away for a few days.’

  ‘She must be missing him,’ I said.

  She paused, the glass frozen inches from her lips, her eyes fixed on mine.

  ‘I can assure you that Alice is quite innocent in all of this,’ she said slowly, carefully, her gaze steady. ‘Alice has nothing to do with it. Any of it.’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely. I didn’t mean to suggest anything else.’

  It would only strike me later, when I mulled over the conversation that evening, what a strange phrase this was. A strange response to a question that had not even been asked. I can assure you that Alice is quite innocent in all of this. As if blame should be apportioned in one way or another. Alice is quite innocent.

  ‘You know what, Beth?’ I said. ‘We’re the victims here: you and me. We’re the ones who have been let down, lied to, cheated.’

  She took another sip of wine and nodded, eventually.

  ‘But there must have been signs that it was coming,’ she said quietly. ‘I should have been a better wife, made him happy, made him content so he didn’t need anyone else. So he didn’t cheat on me with my best friend.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Don’t p
unish yourself.’

  ‘It’s just that he did his thing – and we live very well off it, thank you very much – and I did mine. I looked after Alice and took care of the house and the building projects, I had my hobbies, the gym and my am-dram and my work for the PTA. I kept myself busy and I thought everything was hunky-dory.’

  ‘That’s what I thought about me and Mel, too.’

  ‘I just want him back. Nothing else matters.’

  It occurred to me that not once had she said – not once – that she would kick Ben out. Not once had she suggested she would get the locks changed, cut up his favourite suits, put one of his cars on eBay with a reserve price of 99p. She had not said she would talk to a solicitor, or think about starting divorce proceedings. He had betrayed her, broken his marriage vows to her, humiliated her, but since her fury on Sunday all the fight seemed to have gone out of her.

  Of course I had not done any of those things either – but hers seemed an abject surrender, and it made me immensely sorry for her.

  I had never really been close to Beth before, never seen her as someone separate from her husband. She had always been in his shadow, always the calm perfection by his side. But now, at her lowest ebb, I saw her for what she really was: a kind, decent, forgiving woman who had never asked for much, and had certainly not asked for this.

  She was hurting, and lonely.

  ‘You’ll have Ben back, then? Back here?’

  She nodded. She had very clear, green eyes, I noticed for the first time. She was an attractive woman – beautiful, intelligent, kind – but there was much more to her than that. There was a vulnerability about her, an openness, a lack of cynicism, that was very appealing. I wanted to protect her, make sure she wasn’t hurt again.

  ‘I’m going to find him, Beth. And I’m going to send him back to you.’

  A flicker of hope crossed her face, then it was gone. It was heartbreaking to watch.

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to come back?’

  ‘What he wants or doesn’t want is irrelevant now. He’s not going to have a choice.’