by TM Logan
Ben. It was him to an absolute tee. A way of using technology to get what he wanted, and proving how clever he was into the bargain.
The File Manager showed one audio file, just fourteen seconds long.
Two voices, one of them mine.
‘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 –’
And then it cut out. Almost as if it had been a test. Or a mistake.
I remembered the conversation: it had been at the park with Beth on Thursday morning. Ben had been eavesdropping on us the whole time. The recording meant he knew Beth and I were working together. He knew I’d ignored his various warnings to stay away from her.
It also meant Beth was in even more danger from him.
I deleted the SysAdminTrack app and sat back in my seat. The bruises on my face had started a slow, constant throb, a steady pain that flared higher whenever I touched a fingertip to my jaw or eye socket. I stared out of the window for a few minutes before remembering the call I’d rejected earlier, at Ruth Delaney’s house, before she’d gone crazy with the knife. The number was stored in Received Calls, probably an automated message on how to make a PPI claim. My finger hovered over the delete option.
I called it instead.
A male voice answered.
‘Hi Joe, how are you doing?’
‘Uh, OK thanks. Who’s this?’
‘Mark. Mark Ruddington.’ From the background noise it sounded like he was driving. ‘You messaged me on Facebook, remember?’
‘Oh – sorry, of course. Thanks for getting back to me.’
‘So you’re Melissa’s other half?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool, cool. How’s she doing? She all right?’
‘She’s good, thanks.’
‘Cool. This is so weird, you know? She was like my first proper girlfriend at school. And now here you are, her husband, messaging me on the Book of Face twenty years later, and it’s like, wow, you know? One of those connections you never expect to make.’
‘A blast from the past.’
‘Exactly. A blast from the past.’
I had a feeling this might go on for some time before it got to the point.
‘So I was writing this speech for our tenth wedding anniversary party,’ I said, ‘and I thought I’d try to get some funny stories from her schooldays. You mentioned something in a Facebook post a while back that sounded interesting. About a production of Macbeth in your GCSE year?’
‘Oh. That.’ The tone of his voice changed.
‘The after-show party?’
He paused, and I thought I heard him take a deep breath.
‘Melissa hasn’t told you about that, then?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not really a funny story,’ he said, his voice suddenly serious. ‘At least it wasn’t at the time.’
‘Why not?’
He paused again.
‘Are you sure you want to know? Don’t think it’ll work very well in a party speech.’
‘I’m just gathering everything I can find, Mark, then I’m going to use the best bits and edit out the rest. Any embarrassing stuff I’ll just leave out.’
‘You’ll probably want to leave this out.’
‘No problem. It’s just useful to know, for background.’
‘Just for background?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK then. It’s your party.’
And then he told me.
76
The pull of London was strong, like a gravitational force that was impossible to resist. It was the centre of everything. My family. My home. My fate. Exhaustion caught up to me and I dozed for twenty minutes as we neared the capital, strange half dreams flickering behind my eyelids. Images and faces. Just fragments. William in his school uniform. Beth passed out on her couch. Ben snarling, sneering in my face, fist raised. Mel in our kitchen, topless, one arm under her breasts, smiling for a selfie –
I jerked awake as the train rattled over points coming into King’s Cross, my whole body jumping like I’d touched a live wire. An elderly man across the carriage looked away nervously. Mel. A picture in our kitchen. A topless selfie for the other man in her life.
Suddenly I knew why the picture had bothered me.
The iPhone vibrated in my hand: a text from a number I didn’t recognise.
Hi Joe, here’s your repeat booking www.vipescortservices/33605 or you and your wife might like to meet www.vipescortservices/33699 or www.vipescortservices/33681. Let me know. We have someone for everyone Lorna xx
2.08 p.m.
Lorna from VIP Escort Services. I had spoken to her after finding the number in Mel’s secret mobile phone. I clicked on the first link and waited as the phone switched to the internet browser. It seemed to take an age for the page to load.
The train slowed and finally pulled to a halt. Still the screen was blank, the loading icon whirring at the top of the screen. I waited a moment, expecting it to appear, then got off the train and started walking up the platform amongst a stream of passengers, head down, keeping one eye on the phone as I headed for the ticket barrier. Fumbling in my pocket for my ticket, I passed through the barrier and onto the main concourse, the latticework atrium arching high overhead. Still a blank screen on my phone. It was early afternoon on Friday, before the main commuter rush hour, but the station was already busy with workers getting off early and visitors arriving for the weekend.
The page finally loaded: a head-and-shoulders picture of the escort that Mel had booked previously with VIP. The repeat booking.
I stared at the picture.
Stopped walking.
The guy behind me walked straight into me, muttering an apology as he carried on past. I stood staring, blinking fast, my mouth slightly open, the platform alive with movement around me. I scrolled down to the name and description, scrolled back up to stare at the picture again. I could feel a vein pulsing hard in my temple, the noise and bustle of King’s Cross station retreating until it felt like I was standing alone in a bubble of silence.
A single horrible thought crawled out from somewhere dark.
It was so twisted I didn’t want to look at it head-on, didn’t want to shine a light on it for too long in case it became real. In case it refused to crawl back to the dark place in my head that it had come from. What do you know? What do you actually know for sure? What does everything add up to? The thought wouldn’t go away.
But it couldn’t be.
Could it?
I had been wrong about so much these last nine days, it was time to find out if I had finally got something right.
It was time for answers.
Time for the truth.
Time to lay it all out for Larssen and Naylor, piece by piece, and let them decide.
The phone chimed as another text message dropped in. A picture of a black Range Rover with tinted windows on the driveway of Beth’s house. The shot had been taken from an upstairs window, by the look of it. Beneath it were just two words:
Please help us
My phone didn’t recognise the sender’s number. Not Beth – I had her number stored. So who could it be from?
Alice.
It had to be. Kolnik had gone back to their house, making threats, looking for revenge, and she was frightened. She was the innocent caught in the middle of all this.
Larssen and Naylor would have to wait.
I fired back a quick reply.
On my way. Call the police
2.13 p.m. Me
I switched out of the browser and texted Larssen:
Can we push our meeting back to 4 p.m?
2.14 p.m. Me
His reply was almost instant:
OK. Why?
2.15 p.
m. Peter L
Somewhere I need to go first
2.15 p.m. Me
I shoved the phone in my pocket and ran for the taxi rank.
77
The black Range Rover was parked at an angle at the top of Ben’s drive, blocking Beth’s Mercedes in. I approached it at a run, put my hands up to the tinted glass to peer in. Empty. I went to the front door, ringing the bell and hammering on the door, calling Alice’s name, but there was no answer. I crossed over onto the lawn and looked through the window into the lounge, then walked around the right side of the house, through the gate to the garden and around the back. The builders weren’t working today, the new summer house still little more than foundations. Treading softly, I walked to the big windows onto the sunroom to see if I could see anything from there. A doorway into the lounge gave me the same view from the other side. I moved on.
The door to the conservatory stood slightly ajar, a panel of glass shattered and lying in pieces on the thick carpet.
Shit. Maybe I was already too late.
I pushed the door open more fully and stepped inside. Listened. Heard nothing.
‘Alice?’ I said in a loud voice. ‘Beth? Are you there?’
No answer. I walked further into the room, moving quietly.
‘Alice?’
Nothing. The house was silent.
I took out my mobile and called the unrecognised number. No answer. Strained to hear a ringtone somewhere in the house.
There was a thud upstairs.
I froze. They were here.
Another one. Thud.
A female voice. Indistinct.
I took a step towards the hallway and hesitated. Another thud, louder this time.
Whatever was happening upstairs, it didn’t sound good. Somebody was in trouble. I went quietly into the hall, across to the staircase, craning my head up to the first-floor landing.
The female voice came again, high and frightened, the words still muffled.
I moved quickly up the stairs, trying to be as quiet as I could.
A crash and the sound of breaking glass. A scream.
Beth?
The main landing had five doors, all of them open. I opted for the second flight of stairs instead, taking them two at a time. Her voice came again, clearer now.
‘Please! I promise I didn’t tell him anything! Don’t hurt me!’
The master bedroom at the end of the hallway. The door was closed.
‘PLEASE, NO!’
A huge booming gunshot, muffled through the door but still horribly loud in the enclosed space.
I ran the length of the hallway and charged into the door with my shoulder. Wood splintered from the frame and then I was standing in the open doorway of the master bedroom, breathing hard, adrenalin coursing through me, everything else forgotten.
There was a body sprawled on the floor by the side of the bed.
Oh, no. I was too late.
78
A woman, my brain registered. She was lying on her front, in a dark blue dressing gown that had ridden up to reveal pale bare legs, feet splayed. One fluffy slipper on, one off. Seeing no one else, I ran to the bed and knelt by the body. She was face down in the thick carpet. Dark hair, tied back. Glasses next to her on the floor, one plastic arm snapped off.
‘Beth?’ I said, touching her shoulder.
No response. I looked for blood and shook her very gently, the smell of gun smoke hanging in the air.
‘Beth?’ I said again, keeping my voice low. As my fingers touched her throat, searching for a pulse, her eyes flickered open.
‘Joe.’
‘Are you OK?’ I whispered. ‘What happened?’
She turned onto her side, blinking slowly.
‘Ben?’
‘It’s me. Joe.’
She tried to focus on me, eyes wide.
‘He’s here,’ she whispered, gripping my arm.
‘Who? Alex Kolnik?’
‘What?’ She looked confused. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind. Where’s Alice? Is she OK?’
‘Locked herself in her bathroom.’
‘Are you hurt, Beth?’
She shook her head once, quickly, her bottom lip wobbling.
I was dizzy, disoriented, like I’d stepped off a carousel and everything was still spinning around me. No time to think. I looked around the room, searching for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. The room was a mess, with chairs turned over, clothes and framed pictures scattered across the floor. A large mirror next to the walk-in wardrobe was smashed in three places, spiderwebbed with cracks from top to bottom. Next to it was a pattern of black marks scored out of the wall which I assumed was from the shotgun blast I’d heard moments before I broke the door down.
‘Is there a gun up here?’ I said. ‘One of Ben’s shotguns?’
‘No. They’re all in the gun safe, in the dining room.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Downstairs,’ she gestured towards an open door at the far end of the bedroom. ‘That door is the study, and the workroom, and then the back stairs all the way down to the pantry. He went for more cartridges.’
‘For the shotgun?’
‘Yes.’
Shit. I went to the dressing table, looking for scissors, a knife, anything that I could use as a weapon. Nothing doing. My eyes moved to the big department-store sized mirror again, cracked from top to bottom. Using my elbow I hit it hard, three times, until pieces started breaking off and falling to the floor. I grabbed a T-shirt from the floor, wrapped it around the biggest piece – a six-inch shard curving to a wicked point – and gripped the makeshift dagger tight.
Law of the jungle.
Beth grabbed my arm.
‘Listen,’ she whispered hoarsely in the silence.
I listened.
Someone was coming up the back stairs.
The wooden steps creaked, one by one by one. Click. Not fast, not slow. Click. Click. Steady, measured, even steps getting nearer and nearer. Hard shoes on old wood, like the ticking of some huge clock.
‘Hide,’ I whispered to Beth, but she was already disappearing around the other side of the super-king-sized double bed.
I went towards the footsteps, taking up a position to one side of the door into the study.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The footsteps reached the top of the staircase and I tightened my grip on the jagged shard in my hand. Silence. Then more steps, muffled by thick carpet now, getting closer. Closer.
I raised the makeshift dagger. This was where the madness was going to stop. Right here, right now. I would do what I had to do, to protect what was mine.
The footsteps were in the study, calm and even, just a few feet away . . .
A figure appeared in the doorway.
79
‘Hello, Joe,’ my wife said.
Mel.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Indicating the weapon gripped in my right hand, she said: ‘You’re not going to stab me with that, are you?’
I lowered the piece of broken mirror, still staring at her. Everything coming together, all at once. Here is my wife. Not Alex Kolnik. Not Ben. My wife.
Mel held her hands up, to demonstrate she wasn’t armed. There was no weapon, just a mobile. A white iPhone I’d never seen before.
‘You,’ I said at last.
‘Me,’ she said, lowering her hands.
I took a step towards her.
Beth’s voice from behind me: ‘Don’t go any closer, Joe.’
I turned and saw that she had come out from behind the bed, and was on her feet. All the fear had gone from her face. She wasn’t wide-eyed or near to tears now. Instead, she looked energised, jubilant, like the female lead about to take a bow at the end of a show.
She was pointing a shotgun at me. The gun was long and black, its two barrels like twin black holes sucking all the
light from the room.
‘Drop the broken glass.’ She thumbed back the hammers on the shotgun with a loud click-clack. She looked thoroughly at ease with the weapon, as if she was used to handling it.
I dropped the broken piece of mirror at my feet and noticed, for the first time, how different Beth looked today. Calm and in control. I remembered, with a sudden clarity, what she had studied at university. Another piece of the jigsaw slotting into place.
‘Your phone,’ she said. ‘Put it on the dressing table.’
I did as I was told.
‘Sit down in the chair,’ she said, gesturing with the gun towards an armchair by the side of the dressing table. ‘Put your hands on the arms of the chair.’
The barrels of the shotgun followed me as I sat down.
Mel picked up my phone and switched it off, then slipped the back off it and took the battery out, putting it into her pocket. She went to stand next to Beth, giving her a handful of pink shotgun cartridges before kissing her on the cheek.
I stared at them. Knowing, finally.
I’d got so spun around these last eight days it had taken me all that time to work out the truth. To arrive at the only conclusion that made sense. But I still didn’t want to believe the evidence of my own eyes.
‘You and her,’ I said to Mel. ‘The two of you, all this time?’
She nodded, a tiny movement.
‘All this time.’
80
Icy sweat traced a line down my ribcage.
I was the rat and this was the trap. I had followed the bait, all the way in, and now the trap was about to close.
Beth said: ‘Do you know what misdirection is, Joe?’
‘It’s what a magician does.’
‘Exactly. The magician’s flourish with his right hand – while his left hand is flipping open the secret compartment. Misdirection. You keep the audience looking at the wrong thing. We made sure you kept looking in the wrong place while we stacked the deck against you, and made sure the police kept looking in the wrong place too: looking at you. We pushed your buttons and off you went, swallowing everything we sent your way. Everything.’