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

by TM Logan

  I decided to ignore Larssen’s advice – showing the police Ben was alive would mean I’d get my life back too, so I texted and emailed Adam again, in case he’d seen or heard anything, or had any ideas on what else I should do. Either I way I could really do with talking to my friend again, to get his view on things. He’d been behaving strangely these last few days – almost as if he was keeping me at arm’s length, like he was worried the contagion of my problems would infect his own marriage. There was no denying that he’d been ignoring me.

  But even if my closest male friend didn’t return my messages or calls, I would still be OK, as long as I had Mel. In truth, she was my best friend – had been for ten years. She was all I needed. She and I and William were a unit, an exclusive club that no one else could join. Sport had been everything to me for fifteen years growing up, and then that had been taken away and my family had filled the void. More than filled it, in ways I’d never expected.

  I didn’t need a lot of best friends, I only needed one.

  And nobody was going to bust up our exclusive club.

  62

  My car was gone, taken away by the police. The only alternative was Mel’s old moped, propped in the corner of the garage for a year or so, gathering dust since her short-lived attempt to avoid the Underground on her daily commute. It turned out that riding into central London every day had proved just too hazardous, even for my daredevil wife. I found her old helmet on a shelf and set off, taking it slowly.

  Fifteen minutes later I sat down next to Beth on a bench at Golders Hill Park, halfway between my house and hers. We watched a small boy, perhaps three or four years old, clamber up the steps of the slide and sit down at the top. He didn’t move for a moment, then shuffled forward on his bottom once, twice, three times, until gravity took him and he slid slowly to the bottom, a look of intense concentration on his face.

  ‘I can hardly remember when Alice was that age,’ Beth said, wrapped up in a cream cashmere overcoat against the October chill. ‘It’s all a bit of a blur when they’re young, isn’t it? Up in the morning, breakfast, school run, play, story time, bedtime. Sometimes I wish I’d stopped to appreciate her a bit more when she was small, but at the time you don’t realise it. You just think it will last forever.’

  ‘We all do what we have to do. Alice is a good kid, you should be proud of her.’

  ‘Oh, I am proud. More than I can put into words. I just wish sometimes I could turn the clock back to when she was little, things seemed so much less complicated then.’

  We both watched as the small boy ran round to the steps at the foot of the slide and began climbing again.

  ‘How are you holding up, Beth?’ I said.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Oh, you know. Not terribly well, if I’m honest.’

  She listened in silence as I told her about the solicitor’s letter, then about my close encounter with Ben at Kingsway Mall, and my previous night’s interview with the police. There was uncertainty in her eyes. Not fear – I think we were past that – but maybe she was still trying to decide whether I could be completely trusted.

  ‘The police seem to be focusing a lot of their energies on you,’ she said.

  ‘Your husband’s got them dancing to his tune.’

  ‘It seems impossible to think that he could carry this on for so long.’

  ‘He’s only ever really cared about himself, though, hasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘Not always. He was very sweet when we first met, when Alice was born.’

  ‘The last few years, though?’

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she looked away from me and started to cry, helpless tears rolling down her cheeks. She was utterly unguarded about it and I thought about how far she had fallen, and how fast.

  ‘It’s going to be OK, Beth,’ I said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Together.’

  She produced a wadded tissue from her sleeve and wiped away her tears.

  ‘It’s stupid,’ she sniffed. ‘My spirituality has always taught me that everything turns out OK in the end, that things work their way back to a kind of equilibrium. Ying and yang. But I don’t know if that’s true any more. I think sometimes things go wrong and they just stay wrong, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.’

  ‘I don’t believe that, Beth.’

  She gave a sad little laugh.

  ‘That’s a bit like saying you don’t believe in gravity, Joe – it doesn’t change the fact that it exists.’

  ‘You know, we could be a team, me and you.’

  ‘A team?’

  ‘We need to work together to stop this. To bring Ben to his senses.’

  ‘Makes it sound like it’s us versus him.’

  ‘Well Beth, I hate to be brutal about this. But that’s the way it is now.’

  ‘Does it have to be? Can’t it just be about bringing him back? Not even back to me – I mean, it doesn’t have to be. Bringing him back so that Alice knows he’s OK, nothing more. There doesn’t have to be anything else. Just that.’

  ‘That’s what I want, too.’

  ‘Ben will be so angry if he finds out.’

  ‘We have a better chance if we work together.’

  She seemed to think for a moment, searching my face. Struggling towards a decision.

  ‘OK,’ she said finally in a small voice. ‘But just until he comes back.’

  ‘Deal,’ I said.

  We shook hands quickly, awkwardly, her soft hand in mine for just a second before she withdrew it. She seemed to hesitate again, as if mulling something over.

  ‘If we’re a team, then you should probably know about this. It arrived today.’

  She put a hand in the pocket of her overcoat and took out an envelope that had been torn open. It was addressed to Ben.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Have a look. I’ve been opening all his mail, hoping I might find something. Anything.’

  At first I thought it was a credit card. There was a letter with something the size of a credit card attached to it, like you get from the bank. But when I opened the envelope it was a platinum membership card, from somewhere called the Mirage Casino.

  Dear Mr Delaney,

  Thank you for your email of 5 October. We are delighted to welcome you back to the exclusive membership of our Platinum Members’ Lounge at the Mirage . . .

  ‘The Mirage was his favourite casino in Sunderland,’ she said as I read. ‘He used to go there a few years ago to see his old friends from home.’

  ‘And he emailed them to renew his membership last week.’ The day before the car park.

  The letter listed some of the exclusive benefits of platinum membership. Something about the name of the place rang a bell but I couldn’t remember why.

  Beth added: ‘I don’t really know why I brought it with me. It just seemed really weird – I couldn’t understand why he would have renewed his membership there with everything else that’s going on. Feels like indulging in a bit of home-town nostalgia should be bottom of his priority list at the moment.’

  There was a second sheet promoting an upcoming poker game called the ‘Las Vegas Platinum Tournament’: the buy-in was £1,000 per player and the minimum guaranteed first prize was £35,000. The sheet showed an attractive young blonde dealer in a low-cut top, leaning over a poker table where stacked bundles of ten pound notes were piled up. She was flanked on either side by hard-eyed bouncers in tuxedos, protecting the money.

  Beth said: ‘Surely he’s not going back home to play poker at a time like this?’

  ‘Your husband’s a very good player. Calm, sharp, great instincts. He reads people brilliantly.’ Including me. I looked at the picture for a long moment before handing the letter back to her. ‘But no, I don’t think he’s gone back to play poker.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I took out my wallet and unfolded the Post-it note from Ben’s study.

  STEB?

  Only it wa
sn’t one word. Now that I looked at it again, more closely, the space between the third and fourth letters was slightly larger than the rest.

  STE B?

  Not one word. A first name and an initial.

  The world froze for a second as I made the connection.

  Two is one, one is none.

  An old story in the Sunderland Echo.

  ‘This guy,’ I tapped the picture of the larger bouncer in the picture, Celtic tattoos climbing up his neck, ‘is called Steven Beecham. Ben knew him of old, from when he went back to the Mirage Casino in Sunderland to play in his old home town. Beecham was charged with GBH a few years ago – he was paid to beat some bloke half to death with an iron bar – but got off on a technicality. Ben’s name came up in court because Beecham had his number in his phone, and Ben admitted to a reporter that he knew him.’

  Beth looked confused.

  ‘So he is going to play poker?’

  ‘You know that piece of black marble he’s got on the desk in his study?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Its inscription says, ‘Two is one, one is none’. I googled it after I saw it on his desk: it’s a saying they have in the US special forces. It means having just one plan is not enough, it’s as good as having no plan at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Joe. I don’t follow.’

  ‘I think Steven Beecham is Ben’s back up plan. In case plan A – to frame me – doesn’t work out. He’s going to Sunderland to make Beecham an offer: to teach me a lesson I’ll never forget.’

  Knees, ankles and elbows, all shattered with an iron bar. That was what Beecham had been accused of.

  ‘Ben wouldn’t do that,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘No, Ben wouldn’t. He’d pay someone else to do it for him.’

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘I know he’s going back home, and I know when.’ I pointed to the letter. ‘Now I know why.’

  ‘This is getting worse and worse with every day.’

  ‘Has Ben had any other interesting mail?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ She took a bundle of envelopes from her handbag held together with an elastic band. She pulled the band off and began to leaf through them. ‘Do you want to see them?’

  I held a hand up, not wanting to intrude any more than I already had. She put the envelopes back in her handbag and we sat in silence for a moment, Beth sniffing gently and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. The playground wasn’t busy. Six kids and five adults. Four women, one man, none of whom looked the thug-for-hire type. A man walking a dog near the car park.

  ‘There’s something else, actually,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What else can you remember about Alex Kolnik’s visit to your house last week?’

  She seemed thrown by the abrupt change of tack.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alex Kolnik. The man who worked for Ben, then set up on his own and went bust. He came to your house with a couple of his mates last week. Did you remember anything else about him?’

  ‘No, not much, they weren’t there very long. They talked to Ben on the doorstep for a minute or so, there was some shouting, then they were gone.’

  ‘What did Ben say about it?’

  ‘That if they effing came back again he’d effing shoot them.’

  ‘And what about their car?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘A Range Rover.’

  ‘With tinted windows?’

  She looked at me, frowning.

  ‘Dark windows, yes. How did you know that?’

  I felt a buzz like electric current snapping through my veins.

  ‘Beth, don’t turn around when I tell you this, OK?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘There’s a black Range Rover with tinted windows in the car park right now.’

  63

  She started to turn in her seat and I put a hand on her arm to stop her.

  ‘Beth?’

  She stopped, turned back to look at me, fear slackening her face.

  ‘What now?’ she breathed.

  ‘They pulled in a few minutes ago. Let’s not spook them, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, her eyes wide. Her hands were clenched into tight fists on her knees ‘Can you see the driver?’

  I squinted over her shoulder, not moving my head. I assumed they were watching through a camera or binoculars. The Range Rover was parked at a diagonal to us, almost side-on, perhaps thirty metres away. It sat like a huge black beetle on the asphalt, solid and unmoving.

  ‘The glass is too dark.’

  She stared rigidly forward, unwilling to chance a look to her right towards the Range Rover.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Let’s just wait a minute. I don’t think they’ll stay.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re looking for Ben, maybe they think you arranged to meet him here. When he doesn’t show up, they’ll leave.’

  Beth said nothing.

  I said: ‘Ben’s not going to show up, is he?’

  ‘Who knows? What if . . .’ she started, before the words caught in her throat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if they’ve given up on Ben? What if they’re not looking for him any more, if they’re looking for me instead?’

  ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

  She covered her mouth with her hand.

  ‘I’m frightened, Joe.’

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ I said, my hand on her arm. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘What if they come to the house again? If Alice is there?’

  ‘I’ll follow you home, if it comes to that.’

  ‘But what about tomorrow?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘And the next day, and the day after that? What then? Who’s going to look after us then?’

  ‘Beth, listen to me. I’m not going to let them hurt you, OK? We’re in a public place here, they’re not going to do anything.’

  ‘I can’t take this,’ she whispered, her voice cracking. ‘Not on my own. Not without Ben.’

  There was a sudden flare of anger in my chest. Anger at these men, at their intimidation of a decent woman whose only fault was her choice of husband. Anger at Ben, architect of the insanity that surrounded me at every turn. Beth was frightened. I was frightened.

  I was tired of being frightened.

  Get proof. Something you can show to Naylor.

  I found a pen in my jacket and wrote the registration on the back of my hand. Holding my phone low in my lap I took three pictures of the car, trying to get it in good sharp focus, then switched to video.

  The Range Rover backed out smoothly and drove away.

  Beth asked me to follow her home, and so I did, parking the moped at the bottom of her drive and walking her to the front door of the big house on Devonshire Avenue. There was no further sign of the black Range Rover but she was still pretty shaken up.

  ‘You sure you’re going to be OK?’ I asked as she stood in the doorway.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Joe.’

  ‘Call me if you think of anything else, OK? Or if Alex Kolnik turns up here again.’

  ‘I will. We’re a team, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  She gave a flicker of a smile.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Goodbye, Joe.’

  She pushed the big door slowly shut and I heard two locks click home, followed by the metallic slide of a door chain being slotted into place.

  I didn’t want to go home again to my empty, messed-up house. Not yet. I was restless and wanted to keep moving. So instead I emailed the images of the Range Rover to Larssen – with a message asking if the police could run the registration plate through their computers – and rode the moped to Edgware Road.

  The mobile rang as I was taking off my helmet. It was Larssen, on speakerphone. It sounded like he was driving.

&
nbsp; ‘Joe, where are you?’ There was an urgent tone to his voice.

  ‘Cricklewood, I’ve been –’

  ‘I was on my way to your house, but can I meet you where you are instead?’

  ‘OK. What’s up?’

  ‘There’s a wine bar on Cricklewood Broadway called the Monkey Tree, do you know it?’

  ‘It’s just down the road from here. What’s going on, Peter?

  ‘I’ll tell you when we meet. Should be there in ten.’

  The Monkey Tree was smart and bright and had lots of mirrors on the walls. Not really my kind of place – I preferred a good honest pub with decent beer on draught and logs crackling in the fireplace. I ordered a black coffee and sat at a corner table with one eye on the door. The local lunchtime news was on a large plasma TV high up in the corner of the bar.

  A police search at Fryent Country Park was the top story.

  There was footage of the search shot from some distance away – presumably the police were preventing the media from getting too close – showing two white police tents set up in the woods near the lake, and maybe half a dozen white-suited forensic officers at the scene, carrying boxes, crouching, digging, photographing, pointing, like so many worker ants around the nest. I knew it was happening but felt a jolt of recognition all the same: the lake, the open-air theatre, the bridge. I had been there two days ago to meet Ben. There was a hollow feeling in my stomach, a feeling of impending doom, like something very bad was just around the corner and I had no choice but to keep pressing on until it hit me right between the eyes.

  The TV was muted but the subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  Police are tonight searching a park in north-west London as part of a murder investigation, the subtitles said. Forensic teams have been at the scene, at Fryent Country Park in Kingsbury, for more than twenty-four hours as they look for evidence following a tip-off from a member of the public.