by TM Logan
‘Do it for Ben, Alice,’ I said. ‘Do it for your dad.’
Alice thought for a moment, gave a tiny nod of her head, and pressed send just as I grabbed for the shotgun.
Three Months Later
85
The post-mortem found that Ben was asphyxiated while unconscious.
Fibres in his mouth and throat indicated that a blanket held over his face was used to kill him that Thursday night. Suffocated as he lay on the concrete floor of the car park. His body was wrapped in the same blanket – from the boot of Beth’s car – when they found it beneath the half-finished foundations of the summer house in his garden. The post-mortem also found that he had suffered a bump on the head sufficient to knock him unconscious for a few minutes, and a ruptured eardrum – but no fractured skull, no fatal injury from my encounter with him.
The knowledge that I didn’t kill him doesn’t ease the guilt that keeps me awake at night. I’m still responsible in a lot of ways. I don’t suppose the guilt will ever go away. Guilt that I ran, instead of staying to help Ben that night. If I’d stayed with him, waited for him to come round, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe it would have just postponed the inevitable. Maybe not. Maybe it was fate. Either way, the police opted not to charge me with assaulting Ben in the car park that night, in exchange for my full co-operation in building a case against my wife and her lover.
The police have since discovered a number of fairly elaborate plans – drawn up by Beth over the last year – to get rid of her husband. Mercury poisoning over a period of months. Tampering with the brakes of his car. Staging a botched burglary-turned-murder was another, in which Ben would end up killed in bed with one of his own shotguns. She also had a plan to spike his drink and push his unconscious body into the swimming pool. But she had never quite seen the right moment to turn any of those plans into reality – until I came along. Until the day William spotted his mother’s car in traffic and we followed her to a hotel. I provided the opportunity, by stumbling into the middle of something without any idea of what was really going on.
Alice saved me in the end. Even though she was the one with the most to lose. Both her parents gone. She’d tried in her own way to warn me of her suspicions that week – the emails from bret911 – but I hadn’t joined the dots. She’s living with her grandmother in Sunderland now, but I’m trying to stay in touch so that one day I can start trying to repay the debt I owe to her.
And me? I’m still in rehab for my leg. I don’t suppose I’ll ever run the hundred metres in twelve seconds again, but it’s been a long time since I could do that anyway.
Trusting people is hard. Especially when I can’t see them face-to-face, listen to their voices and look them in the eye. So it’s just me and William now, but we make a good team and I’ve been relearning the joy of just spending time with him, giving him all my attention, rather than feeling I should keep one eye on my phone all the time. I feel calmer, clearer, more focused on what’s important. I’ve avoided social media completely since it happened, gone cold turkey on my generation’s compulsion to share every event, every emotion, every success, every random thought, every half-funny conversation. Because it’s not the photographing and sharing and broadcasting that makes something what it is. It’s the doing. The being. The experience of it. The wonderfully unfunny joke your son tells you, or the smile of a stranger on the street, the day out, the blue-sky Saturday, the unexpected kindness, or one of a thousand other things that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning. That’s the truth. That’s what’s real.
I bought William a pet in the end, just like he wanted. Not a hamster – a hamster is a prey animal. Instead we got a cat from the rescue shelter. A big black tomcat named Shadow. Cats don’t need anyone, they can do fine on their own. They live in the moment and trust their eyes and ears, what they can see in front of them – I think we can all learn something from that.
William sometimes asks me when his Mummy’s coming home.
I haven’t told him about what happened between us, or about her and Beth. I tell him that she had to go away for a while, with work, and I’m not sure when she’s going to be coming back. I tell him that we’ll be all right for a bit, just me and him, and that Mummy will be back one day soon. Back home so it’s the three of us again, a family, just like before.
That’s one lie I’ll keep going as long as I can.
Read on for an exclusive letter from TM Logan and a chance to join his reader’s club . . .
A message from TM Logan…
If you enjoyed LIES – why not join TM LOGAN’S READER’S CLUB by visiting www.bit.ly/TMLogan.
Hello!
First of all, I want to thank to you for picking up LIES. I love this story and I think it will always be special to me as my debut novel. But I’m still amazed that so many people are reading it and I’m incredibly grateful that you’ve given me your time to follow the story of Joe, Mel, Beth and Ben. So, thank you – I appreciate it.
The germ of an idea that became LIES originated in a conversation with my wife, as we drove to Brittany for our summer holiday. We had been on the road since 2am, and were chatting to keep each other awake, when she related a story about some friends raising money for charity in memory of a colleague who had died. They had kept the colleague’s Facebook profile ‘alive’ to help publicise their efforts. That got me thinking: what if you did something similar to cover up a crime? To mislead the police? To frame an innocent man?
It was a lightbulb moment and I wrote a plot outline there and then. Six pages of notes later, I looked up and realised we had overshot our motorway junction by about 20 miles. I was so distracted by the idea that I’d completely lost track of where we were. My failings as navigator that afternoon added a couple of hours to the journey, as we went cross-country to pick up our route again, but Joe’s story was already taking shape.
I love the idea of a single spur-of-the-moment decision that has terrifying consequences. I also knew LIES would be about love, trust, obsession and betrayal – whether we can ever really know those closest to us, when technology has given us more ways to deceive each other than ever before. Don’t get me wrong, technology has also changed the way we live in lots of great ways, and helps us to have friendships that might never have happened a few years ago. But haven’t you ever secretly wondered who your nearest and dearest is really talking to, messaging, texting, tweeting, when they’re transfixed by their mobile phone? Of course you have…
My next thriller, EVERY GOOD DEED, is about a woman whose instinctive act of bravery leads to her receiving an unthinkable offer in return. A way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime chance that could turn her life around and make all her problems disappear. But who dares to make a deal with the devil? Because EVERY GOOD DEED must be balanced out with its opposite…
If you would like to hear more from me about EVERY GOOD DEED and my future books, you can visit www.bit.ly/TMLogan where you can become part of the TM Logan Reader’s Club. It only takes a few moments to sign up, there are no catches or costs, and new members will automatically receive an exclusive article from me that features a scene cut from the original draft of LIES – think of a novel version of a ‘DVD extra’, with a bit of author’s commentary. Your data will be kept totally private and confidential, and it will never be passed on to a third party. I won’t spam you with lots of emails, but will get in touch now and again with book news, and you can unsubscribe any time you want.
And if you would like to get involved in a wider conversation about my books, please do review LIES on Amazon, on GoodReads, on any other e-store, on your own blog and social media accounts, or talk about it with friends, family or reader’s groups! Sharing your thoughts helps other readers, and I always enjoy hearing about what people think about my stories.
Thanks again for your interest in LIES, and I hope you’ll return for EVERY GOOD DEED and what comes after...
Best wishes,
Tim
CLICK HERE TO JOIN
Acknowledgements
Many people have played a part in bringing this book into the world. My agent, Camilla Wray at Darley Anderson, took a chance on me and has been a wonderful source of advice, guidance and support ever since. I don’t think I’d be writing these words if it wasn’t for her. I’m very grateful to Celine Kelly for her perceptive editing and forensic eye for detail. Thanks too to Naomi Perry at DA, for getting it over the line (and sending my favourite ever email).
Joel Richardson’s skill, insight and enthusiasm improved this story in more ways than I can recount here. Huge thanks are due to Joel, plus all of the team at Bonnier Zaffre and Twenty7.
Thanks to Detective Superintendent Rob Griffin of Nottinghamshire Police, for his expertise and guidance on missing persons and other police matters. It goes without saying that any errors or omissions in this area are entirely down to me. Special thanks also to my friend and fellow author Paul Coffey, for putting us in touch.
I’d like to thank my brother Oli, for many lengthy plot discussions in Devon pubs. One or more of those late-night ideas may have ended up in these pages . . . although it’s hard to know for sure because I can never remember them the following morning (I should probably start making notes). To my mum and dad and my big brother Ralph, for encouragement and interest over a lot of years – thank you. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Jenny, Bernard, John and Sue, for babysitting above and beyond the call of duty and many other kindnesses that gave me time to write.
Last but definitely not least, thank you to the home team. To my amazing kids: Sophie, for helping me out with my questions about social media; and Tom, who gave me the first line of the first chapter. Most of all to my wife Sally, who was there at the birth of this story and helped bring it to life. Thank you for always believing. This one is for you.
About the Author
TM Logan is a former science reporter for the Daily Mail and is currently Deputy Director of External Relations at the University of Nottingham. He was born in Berkshire to an English father and German mother. He lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife and two children.
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Twenty7 Books
Twenty7 Books
80-81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.twenty7books.co.uk
Copyright © TM Logan, 2017
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of TM Logan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7857-7054-8
This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
Twenty7 Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre,
a Bonnier Publishing company
www.bonnierzaffre.co.uk
www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk