by TM Logan
‘Not yet, Wills. Did I wake you up?’
He yawned and shook his head.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yes, Wills?’ I pulled out a chair for him at the kitchen table next to me.
‘Erm,’ he yawned again and seemed to forget what it was he was going to say.
‘What is it, matey?’
‘Do you love Mummy?’
Out of the mouths of babes, indeed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘More than anything.’
‘More than me?’
‘Except you, big man.’
‘And does Mummy love you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pouring him a glass of apple juice.
He thought for a moment, rolling a toy car along the kitchen table.
‘What happens if one of you doesn’t any more?’
‘Doesn’t what, matey?’
‘Love the other one.’
I wondered what he’d seen, or overheard, or picked up from the adults around him. He was a smart boy and picked up lots of things, without necessarily letting on at the time. Often he’d ask about things right out of the blue, days or weeks after he’d first heard them.
‘Well,’ I said slowly, a painful lump in my throat, ‘then they both have to be really nice and kind to the other one, and remember how they got married because they were in love, and try really, really hard until they love each other again.’
‘So are you going to be nice and kind to Mummy?’
A new thought struck me. In all of this mess that had been created, I’d thought Beth and me were the biggest victims, with the most to lose. But that wasn’t true: William would be the biggest victim, if things weren’t put right. He was not even five years old and stood to lose more than all of us.
‘Yes, Wills. I’m going to try as hard as I can to be nice and kind.’
He picked another of the cars scattered around under the kitchen table and rolled it absently back and forth, back and forth.
‘Can I have Golden Nuggets for breakfast?’ he asked.
If Mel realised that I’d discovered the secret mobile phone in her handbag, she gave no sign of it. She got ready for work as usual, kissed me and asked me twice if I was all right or whether she should take a lieu day and stay home with me.
‘I’m worried about you, Joe.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll be all right. You go, I can do the school drop-off.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure.’
I took our son to school, stood with him as he lined up with his class and watched him trot happily into his classroom. His teacher, Mrs Ashmore, gave me a smile. I smiled back.
Then I drove home and hacked my wife’s email account.
Gmail would give me three chances at the password before it locked me out. But I had a suspicion that all of Mel’s passwords were the same, or variations on a theme. The PIN to unlock her mobile was William’s birthday. Maybe he was the key to her password here as well. Not long ago she had told me her Apple password when William had wanted to download an app onto her iPad – another iteration of Angry Birds. Like me, Mel had lots of passwords for lots and lots of sites, and I suspected that – like me – many of them were the same to make them easier to remember.
I typed in WilliamLuke3.
Red text appeared below the box: Error – wrong username or password.
One wrong try, two left. I tried to think when she had told me her password. June, maybe July. She was pretty conscientious about changing her password every six months or so. And what was the easiest way to do that? There was a chance that she had simply gone for the obvious solution.
My fingers typed: WilliamLuke4
An egg timer appeared on screen, then it went blank for a moment.
Bingo.
Her inbox appeared. My guess was right.
I scanned the list of emails. Forbidden territory. A strange, voyeuristic feeling like you get when looking over someone’s shoulder on the Tube, reading their Kindle. In the last few months I had caught glimpses of Mel’s inbox, but only for a second or two before she minimised the screen or shut her laptop or dragged another tab over the top of it to hide its contents. The reason for that secrecy was no longer a mystery.
There were only eighteen unread messages in the inbox, which was about one per cent of the contents of mine. Emails in the last few days from Amazon, a recruitment agency, Boots, offers from our local cinema. An email from a couple of days ago from her uni friend Sally in Worcester, most of it concerning the incompetence of Sally’s boss and the achievements of her two young sons in the swimming pool. No cryptic questions about another man, or mentions of me or our marriage. I came out of the email and marked it as unread, then started going through the subfolders one by one, looking for anything that looked like it might relate to Ben. Most of the titles looked pretty innocuous. Apple, Amazon, Car, Financial, Holidays, Insurance, iTunes, Jobs, Mobile, and so on. I looked in them anyway, scrolling up and down the list of archived emails. All routine. Nothing, as far as I could tell, from Ben. Next I went through the sent items, slowly at first, checking the sender, subject line and first line of every message that she had sent from her Gmail account in the last three months.
Nothing. Maybe there was nothing to find? She had obviously been good at covering her tracks while the fling with Ben was going on, but now she had promised the affair was over. After all, we were going to start again. Start afresh. It made sense. That was why she had deleted everything.
Or almost everything.
There were seventy-two emails in her deleted items – she was ruthless with her inbox and never liked to have more than she could see on the screen at one time. Delegate, deal with, diary or delete, that was her mantra with both work and personal email accounts. Most of the deleted emails were from the last few days. Special offers, circulars, marketing stuff, companies trying to sell product.
There was a liquid feeling in my stomach as I saw a message from an account named [email protected].
Received Monday evening, two days ago. The subject line was blank.
BD: Ben Delaney.
I clicked on it, a painful lump in my throat.
I need you. Don’t let him do this. You know we are meant to be together. Please let’s just talk one more time. Need to see an old mate at home on Thurs but then back. 10 a.m. Sat, usual place? Begging you, beautiful girl.
Will dream of you tonight, like every night.
B xxx
I read it once, then again, then a third time, feeling a vein pounding in my forehead.
On the pad beside me I wrote: Meeting: 10 o’clock Saturday. B+M. And underlined twice: Where? At 10 a.m. on Saturdays I was at the swimming pool with William for his regular weekend lesson – we would be out of the house between 9.30 and 11 a.m. Maybe he was coming right here to our house, then. Maybe I’ll arrange a play date for William and make a surprise appearance at home.
There was no maybe about it. I would be there, it was just a case of finding out where.
In my heart, I still loved her. There was no doubt. But where it had always brought me joy in my past life, now the love brought sadness with it.
Can we find our way back to where we were before?
Yes. There has to be a way.
I checked the sent items again, but there was no response to this plea from Ben. Either she had deleted her reply, or she had not replied at all and simply deleted his email.
She didn’t reply, because it’s finished between them. It has to be the latter. Has to be.
I forwarded the email to my Hotmail account – copying in Peter Larssen with the short message ‘From Ben – can we discuss?’ – then deleted it from her sent items so she wouldn’t know what I’d done.
The message was interesting for another reason.
Need to see an old mate at home on Thurs.
Home. It was the only mention that I could find of Ben saying he was going somewhere, a definite indication of where he might be found. But where was home fo
r Ben? His home in Hampstead, where his wife was slowly falling to pieces in his absence?
Or home as in where he came from, where he was born?
51
At 10 a.m. I called Larssen to fill him in on our close encounter at the mall and the text exchanges between Mel and Ben. He listened, asked a few questions, and said he would inquire about CCTV footage.
‘The email you just forwarded to me,’ he said. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In Mel’s Gmail account.’
‘With her knowledge and permission?’
I paused.
‘No. She doesn’t know.’
‘Hmm. Any indication that she replied to this message?’
‘Not that I could find.’
‘OK.’ He paused, as if he was writing something. ‘I was about to call you actually.’
‘About?’
‘Good news and bad news.’
‘Well that’s better than just plain bad news, I suppose. What’s the good news?’
‘It isn’t really good news, to be honest.’
‘Great.’ A feeling of dread was rising up from my stomach.
‘They found your mobile phone. The one you lost on Thursday night.’
‘And the bad news?’
‘They found it at Fryent Country Park.’
‘Where? How?’
‘It was in a patch of woodland, half hidden in a pile of leaves. In the area they’ve been searching.’
‘But . . . that doesn’t make sense.’
‘The police are tearing the woods up now, looking for a body. Using ground-penetrating radar, scent dogs, the full house of forensic kit. They also have divers in the lake, looking for weapons and anything else that might have ended up in there. They’re treating it as their secondary crime scene.’
I sat down slowly at the kitchen table.
‘Say that again.’
He repeated it, word for word. It felt like I was floating above myself, disembodied; as if this conversation was happening to someone else and I was just a spectator.
‘How can they be sure it’s my phone?’
‘The IMEI number is registered to you. Plus your fingerprints, numbers, photos and various other bits and pieces. It’s your phone, Joe. There’s no doubt about that.’
My mind was racing. A million possibilities, but only one that made sense.
‘Somebody planted it there.’
‘Somebody?’
‘Ben. Ben planted it there, it’s part of his plan to set me up. Convince the police that he’s been done in.’
‘Right,’ Larssen said, stretching the syllable to breaking point.
‘He convinces the police, they finish the job of tearing my family to pieces.’
Larssen sighed audibly.
‘Joe, you need to keep your mind focused on this. Just this, nothing else.’ He couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. ‘Forget about other theories, other ideas. That’s not your job. And the fact that you’re persisting with it is making my job harder.’
‘I’m persisting with it because I’m fighting for my family.’
‘Your mobile phone has just been linked to a potential crime scene, and you don’t seem to have an explanation. I expect DCI Naylor is feeling pretty pleased with himself at this moment.’
‘All I can tell you for certain is that phone didn’t end up there because of anything I did. That’s the truth.’
‘Of course,’ he said, in a tone that sounded like it was reserved for guilty clients. ‘It’s a rather unfortunate truth though, isn’t it?’
When Larssen hung up I called Beth at home, wondering whether she would remember anything of our conversation last night. Alice picked up, and I was momentarily thrown by the sound of her voice.
‘Is your mum there?’ I asked.
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Is she OK? She wasn’t really herself yesterday.’
‘That was the pills. She’s not, like, come down yet this morning.’
‘How come you’re not at school, Alice?’
There was silence for a moment at the other end of the line.
‘Felt a bit like, sick, this morning.’ She said it without any conviction and I was almost certain that she was lying. ‘And mum needed looking after.’
‘I need a favour from you.’
More silence.
Then: ‘What favour?’
‘Your granny’s address in Sunderland. Do you have an address book handy?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just something I need to know.’
‘Why can’t you tell me?’
‘It’s . . . delicate.’
‘Don’t treat me like I’m just a kid.’
But you are a kid, I thought.
Instead I said: ‘OK. I think your dad might be heading up there. Today.’
‘Why would he do that?’ She sounded surprised at the suggestion.
‘Not sure yet, but I’ve got a hunch that’s where he’s going.’
‘A hunch?’
‘An educated guess.’
‘I don’t think he’d go there.’
‘Really? What makes you say that?’
She paused before answering.
‘He’s like, always slagging it off and telling me how rough Sunderland is compared to where we live now. I speak to Gran more often than he does.’
‘I’m sure your gran will want him found too. Want to hear that he’s safe.’
‘S’pose so.’
‘Is there anything else you can think of that might help me find your dad? Anything at all?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘Everything will be better,’ I said, ‘once we know your dad’s OK. That’s all I want.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Alice, are you there?’ I said.
‘It’s what I want, too,’ she said in a small voice.
‘So help me. To find him.’
There was a muffled click on the other end of the line, as if she had closed a door.
‘Are you going to sort everything out? Find my dad and bring him back?’
‘Alice, I’m going to do everything I possibly can to bring him back. I promise.’
‘I miss him,’ she said quietly.
Then she gave me the address.
52
I couldn’t call from an identifiable mobile or from our home phone – it had to be from a number Ben couldn’t link to me. A number that was anonymous. But technology didn’t like anonymity. It liked to know where you were twenty-four hours a day, who you were calling, what you were buying, what websites you liked and who your friends were. Technology didn’t like secrecy, or discretion, or privacy. So how did you make a call nowadays that didn’t leave an electronic footprint on their phone, or yours, or on some computer server a thousand miles away?
There were still a couple of phone boxes on the High Street. Most of them had been swept away by the popularity of mobile phones, but a few remained. One of the two was out of order. I went into the other one, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and dialled the first landline number, designated in Mel’s phone as ‘BW’. The phone booth was grimy and cigarette-burned and stank of stale piss, but I didn’t mind too much; in a strange sort of way it was almost reassuring to find that some things hadn’t changed since my youth. The number rang three times before a female voice picked up.
‘Hello, CEO’s office, how can I help you?’
‘Oh, sorry, think I might have the wrong number, who have I called?’
‘Zero One Zero Limited, sir. Can I help you?’
I hung up. Ben’s company.
The next number in the list was marked ‘W’. Mel’s secretary, Gavin, picked up after one ring.
‘W’ was her work number, her direct line. That seemed a bit weird – why would you have your work number on an illicit mobile phone? I hung up without a word. Stared at the phone for a second, then redialled. Gavin answered a
gain, giving the exact same greeting.
‘Hi,’ I said, trying to raise my voice half an octave. ‘Could you put me through to Melissa Lynch, please?’
‘Who’s calling?’
I looked across the street. A Burger King.
‘Mr King.’
‘Will she know what it’s concerning?’
‘Yes, I’m sure she will.’
He put me on hold and came back half a minute later.
‘I’m afraid Mrs Lynch is out seeing clients this morning, Mr King. She should be back about 3 p.m. Can I take a message?’
I hung up. It struck me again how little I knew about her day-to-day work, her movements and who she was with at any given time. And in that context, the work number also made sense – because it would allow her to co-ordinate absences from the office, make excuses, call in with a bogus appointment here and a fictitious client conference there when she had an opportunity to spend time with Ben. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together: this was how you used new technology to conceal the oldest of sins.
It wasn’t warm in the booth, but sweat was already making my shirt stick to my back. The next number rang three times before a young female voice answered. Home Counties accent, confident, posh.
‘Good afternoon, Pollard and Clarke, how may I help you?’
‘Hi, sorry, who have I called?’
‘Pollard and Clarke, sir. How can I help?’
‘Oh. What exactly do you do?’
‘We offer a range of legal services, sir, what’s your particular requirement?’
For the third time in five minutes, I hung up. A Google search on my mobile told me Pollard and Clarke was a law firm based in Holland Park, just round the corner from Mel’s office.
They specialised in family law and divorce.
I felt winded, like I’d been punched in the stomach. Mel had been unfaithful, she had deceived me – but to have lawyers involved gave a ring of finality to it. I leaned against the side of the booth, my head on the glass, a hard pain in my chest. How was I going to tell William what was going on? How was it possible for a four-year-old to understand that his parents were –
There was a metallic tapping on the side of the phone booth. A pasty-faced teenager was knocking on the glass with the edge of a pound coin.