Lie to Me: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Jess Ryder

  ‘If you think that hurts…’ he says. Isobel bows her head, defeated.

  He’s moving the furniture now, rolling up the woollen rug and dragging the dining table into the centre of the room. It screeches across the flagstones, setting my teeth on edge. He draws the heavy velvet curtains. Then he takes a dining chair and places it behind the table, transforming it into a giant desk.

  ‘Right. Time to get started.’

  I watch him straighten up, tuck in his shirt, smooth his hair, bend at the knees a couple of times and balance his posture. A sort of limbering-up procedure; he’s an actor standing in the wings, preparing to make his entrance onto the stage. Then I realise. I know why he’s emptied the room and rearranged the furniture. The dining table isn’t a desk, it’s a judge’s bench. This is a trial, and Isobel’s in the dock.

  Jay walks into the centre of the room and clears his throat. ‘Isobel Dalliday, you are charged with the murder of Cara Jane Travers. How do you plead?’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jay

  After all those years of dreaming and planning, the moment has finally arrived and it feels incredible. Waves of power surge through his veins, pumping up his muscles. There can be no stopping him now. He has her under his control and justice will be done.

  ‘Please, I’m begging you,’ Isobel says. ‘Please let us go!’

  ‘Silence!’ He lets his voice echo around the makeshift courtroom. ‘The defendant must only answer “guilty” or “not guilty”.’

  ‘Let’s just talk it through like adults. This is rid—’ He slaps her hard across the face, stinging his palm, and she cries out. ‘Okay, I’m sorry… I’m sorry. Whatever you… you go ahead. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’ll start again,’ he hisses, slipping briefly out of character. ‘And this time, you’ll do as I fucking well tell you.’

  He takes a breath, taking himself back in time. He looks around at the denuded room and tries to transpose Court Number One on its features. Remembers the cheap blue suit his mother had bought and given him to wear. The white shirt, straight out of its packet, the crease lines bisecting his chest as a butcher might mark up meat – his body ready to be hung, drawn and quartered. They brought him up the narrow staircase to the dock, where he stood while the charge was read out.

  It had taken four months to bring the case to trial, four nightmare months he’d had to spend in Winson Green, on remand. He’d already resolved to find a way to top himself if they found him guilty – even his brief seemed pretty convinced that they would. ‘If you change your plea, the judge will take it into consideration when sentencing,’ she’d advised the day before, and when Jay had thumped the table and repeated that he hadn’t done it and what use was a defence lawyer if they didn’t believe their client, she’d simply shrugged and tidied her papers.

  The prosecutor put forward the case and the plot sounded so logical and so convincing that, for a moment, even Jay wondered if he’d killed Cara in a psychotic rage, and buried it deep in his subconscious. Nobody was interested in his opinion, or his theories. To him, Isobel was the obvious suspect, but it was never mentioned that she’d been in love with Cara, a love – crucially – that had been unrequited. Everyone believed Isobel’s version of events, when there were no marks or bruises on Cara’s body to support it. Even Toby turned against him, said Jay had been lurking around outside the house, that Cara was terrified to go out because she thought he was going to attack her. All fabricated to divert attention from Isobel and put him in the frame.

  He glances across at his prisoner – her cheek smarting red from his slap – and takes a few seconds to enjoy her terror. When she took the witness stand all those years ago, she looked calm and poised. Wore purple, of course, with black stockings and a pillbox hat trimmed with a black net veil. ‘Forget Cara’s parents,’ that veil said. ‘I, the one and only Isobel Dalliday, am the chief mourner here.’ It was a bold disguise, he thought – hiding in plain sight. She lifted the veil from her face and looked directly at the jury, as if to say, ‘Out of everyone here, I’m the one you can trust the most.’ Cocky bitch.

  She’s not looking cocky today. Far from it. She looks scared and defeated, and old. Seeing her like this seems to give him strength, as if all her energy has magically transferred to his body.

  He steps back, straightening to his full height again, closing his eyes as he conjures up his costume. He digs his thumbs into the sides of his chest, imagining the sharp edges of a black barrister’s gown. Dark suit, white silk cravat, forbidding grey wig. Queen’s Counsel for the prosecution. A searing intelligence, a sharp wit. Feared by the guilty, admired by his peers. He looks around, nodding as Isobel’s sobs subside and the courtroom falls silent.

  He clears his throat. ‘Isobel Dalliday, I must ask you once again. How do you plead?’

  Isobel hesitates, and Jay, sidestepping for a moment into the role of judge, barks at her, ‘The court is waiting, Miss Dalliday.’

  ‘Not… guilty,’ she stammers.

  Jay raises his eyebrows theatrically. ‘I see. So you want a full trial. You want to go through every little detail. That’s brave of you, Miss Dalliday. Very brave, considering.’

  Becca’s daughter (what is her name?), who’s been staring at him defiantly all this time, starts to struggle in her chair. He walks up to her and lifts a reprimanding finger. Their eyes meet. She looks so much like her mother, it makes the centre of his heart soften. He won’t harm the girl, not unless he has to. For Becca’s sake. He tugs on his imaginary gown and swings away to face Isobel again.

  ‘Miss Dalliday, you must have thanked your lucky stars the day Christopher Jay was charged,’ he says. ‘Mr Jay was a sitting duck. The jealous boyfriend who wouldn’t take no for an answer, who smoked pot and stole antiques to fund his habit. All you had to do was embroider your evidence, make up a few stories, give him a motive and the character assassination was complete. Did the police help you? Did DC Brian Durley make a few suggestions?’

  ‘No… Jay, please…’

  ‘Yes, I think he probably did. Because they had no concrete evidence against Mr Jay. It was pure supposition.’ He moves closer to Isobel, shoving his face in hers. ‘Christopher Jay had an alibi – and I mean a proper, honest alibi, not one cooked up with a lesbian lover girl… Ah yes, you’re blushing and looking away.’ He grabs her by the chin and forces her to meet his gaze. ‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Miss Dalliday. I want to backtrack a little, to the beginning. We must set the story straight.’

  He takes a deep, dramatic breath and fills his lungs, as if preparing to dive. This is what he should have said in his defence thirty years ago, but his brief advised him against it. ‘Miss Dalliday isn’t on trial here,’ she’d reminded him, ‘you are. Your job is to convince the jury of your innocence, not her guilt.’

  ‘I used Cara,’ he says, abandoning the barrister persona. ‘I admit that, and it was wrong. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was a sweet girl, but too bland for me; if I’m honest, she didn’t excite me much. I mean, no bloke’s going to turn down a bit of sex if it’s on offer, but there was never that spark, you know? I got with Cara to spite you. You thought you owned her, like you owned the house, the van, the company, the show…’

  ‘I didn’t own her – we were best—’

  ‘Shut up!’ He lurches forward and slaps her again, harder this time. ‘It’s not your turn to speak yet.’ He turns away and stands with his back to the women, placing his fingers on his temples. Got to refocus, put himself back into the role. Needs to remember his lines. He’s been preparing this speech for years and he doesn’t want to miss out a single word.

  ‘Gina – remember her? – she got wise to you straight off; that’s why you gave her the sack. Toby knew what you were about too. We all hated you. Me the most, though. All that creative energy pouring forth like an erupting volcano, so bloody tiring. And the fake generosity, pretending you couldn’t care less about money when you were actually buyin
g us, to make us dependent on you. It was how you kept control.’ Isobel opens her mouth to protest, then decides against it.

  Jay carries on, getting into his stride. ‘I didn’t like Cara much either at first; she was your little sidekick, afraid to express an opinion in case it didn’t agree with yours. She did her best to be your clone, but it was never a very convincing performance. If you scraped away at the surface, you saw a different person. Quite dull really. Not my type. But you were madly in love with her. And why? Because you made her in your image and you were madly in love with yourself. Your vanity was your weak spot… That was where I could strike.

  ‘Cara was desperate to keep our thing a secret. I pretended I was too, but it was always my plan that you’d find out. I wanted you to catch us at it, but she was scared, refused to have sex in her room with you sleeping right above, so I took her down to the pool. That night, when we had the row, I deliberately shouted so it would wake you up. And… well, you know what happened next.

  ‘I couldn’t believe how easily you caved in. You went totally to pieces, packed your bags and left us to it. But it didn’t make me happy; it made me angry. There was my mum, living in a grotty council house with mould growing up the walls, and you had so much money you could just take off to London and rent somewhere else. How fucking decadent was that? That house meant nothing to you; you thought you could just come back when you felt like it and it would all still be there. That’s why I started selling the antiques, to teach you a lesson. Some of the stuff was really valuable, much more than poor Cara realised. We kept a bit of the cash, but most of it I gave to my mum. Cara was getting in a right old state over it, terrified of what you’d do when you came back. She finished with me and chucked me out. I was okay about it. I’d done what I’d set out to do – done a pretty brilliant job, in fact.’

  Isobel is staring into her lap, large tears rolling down her bedraggled face, and Becca’s girl is looking from one to the other of them. She knows I’m telling the truth, he thinks. She knows it.

  He turns back to Isobel. ‘That Saturday afternoon, the day she died, I went round to the house to pick up the last of my stuff and leave the key. Cara was in a different sort of mood. She told me she’d realised she loved you after all; she was expecting you later that evening for a big romantic reunion. She showed me the postcard you’d sent her. Some Pre-Raphaelite picture, remember?’ Isobel nods slightly. ‘Yet it never turned up in the exhibits. Did DC Durley magic it away, or did you destroy it?’ He allows himself a small, gloating smile. ‘That’s how I worked out it was you, see. So, what happened when you got to Darkwater Terrace? Did you make a pass? Did silly little Cara get cold feet? Maybe you saw all the antiques had gone and hit the roof. I don’t know, but there was a fight and you stabbed her. Then you let her run down to the pool and bleed to death.’

  He glares at Isobel. Her mouth parts, and when she speaks her voice is soft and wavering.

  ‘Oh, Jay…’ she says, sighing. ‘Have you lied for so long that you believe this fantasy yourself? You can’t rewrite the story and make us magically swap places – you famous and successful, me in prison serving a life sentence. You did a wicked thing and you weren’t properly punished. Imagine how that’s made me feel all these years. It could have eaten away at me, but I turned it into a positive. Everything I’ve done, all my successes, has been for her sake. Cara’s death has inspired my life.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. Fucking bullshit!’ His body is tensing with anger, every muscle clenched as tight as his fists. ‘Do you have any idea how I’ve suffered because of you?’ he shouts. ‘Any idea what it’s like when strangers spit on you in the street and old friends refuse to answer your calls? When you’re no longer welcome at Christmas, when your mother dies and you pay for the coffin and the sausage rolls at the pub afterwards, and nobody in the family so much as says they’re sorry for your loss? I may have been acquitted, but I’ve served a life sentence!’

  He sweeps his gaze around to take in Becca’s girl. She’s looking at him with pity in her eyes, silent tears pouring down her cheeks. He knows she believes him, just as his mother believed him all those years ago. He didn’t plan for her to be here, but it’s fitting, in a theatrical kind of way.

  He walks slowly back behind the table, trying to get into character, searching for the stern, authoritative voice of the judge.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he says to Becca’s daughter, ‘you’ve heard the evidence. Is Isobel Dalliday guilty or not guilty? You decide.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Me

  I look from one to the other. This is absurd. Impossible. He can’t make me do this.

  ‘Come on, play the game,’ says Jay. ‘Imagine you’re in Court Number One.’ He embraces the room with a sweep of his arm, summoning up the grandeur. ‘After weeks of evidence, it’s the final day of the trial – the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Everyone’s assembled – barristers, clerks, detectives… Cara’s family in the public gallery, clutching each other, perched on the edge of their seats.’ He looks upwards, conjuring them forth. Then he swings his head back to Isobel. ‘Here’s the defendant in the witness box… Just look at her, trembling like a rabbit. Playing the part so well.’

  He adjusts his invisible wig and twitches his gown. ‘The scene is set. We’ve waited six hours for the jury to return with the verdict, and now they’re back. The atmosphere is electric – the journalists’ pencils are poised. Cara’s family can hardly breathe. The judge enters and takes her seat. All eyes are on the jury. Everyone’s waiting to hear those words – guilty or not guilty. The tension in the room is as tight as a drawn bow.’ He takes an excited breath and turns to me. ‘This is your big moment.’

  The seconds pass. Silence looms over us like a dark cloud. I know what he wants me to say, but I can’t say it… Because it can’t be true. Isobel loved Cara, she’s spent her whole life mourning her death. And yet… why would Jay go to these extraordinary lengths if he was guilty himself? Unless he’s insane and has blocked it out, his mind warped and twisted with jealousy. Maybe he’s been innocent all along and this is his final chance to take revenge on the woman who got away with murder and ruined his life.

  One of them is lying to me. But who?

  ‘Come on!’ Jay stands in front of me, gripping my shoulders with his stubby fingers. ‘Is she guilty or what?’

  I’m just an innocent bystander here, in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I pronounce Isobel guilty, I’m handing out a death sentence. Because he will kill her – his eyes are staring like a madman, his whole body itching with desire. Nothing I say is going to stop him. But if I insist she’s innocent, that puts my life in danger too.

  I can’t let him kill Isobel. I have to stop him, have to act smarter than I’ve ever done in my life. Somehow I have to get us both out of here alive. Think, Meri, think.

  Jay looms over me. ‘I’m warning you…’

  ‘Okay, I’ll play the game,’ I say as steadily as I can, trying to keep my eyes from flickering towards the knife that Jay has left on the sofa.

  ‘Good. That’s better,’ he says, stepping back.

  ‘Yes, let’s make it like it should have been thirty years ago. Isobel Dalliday on trial for the murder of her best friend… You’re right, Jay. It’s about time justice was done. For Cara’s sake, for her family. Because that’s what’s really important, isn’t it? That after all this time, and all this pain, all this suffering, finally everyone’s going to know the truth.’

  ‘I don’t need a fucking speech,’ Jay says. ‘Just give your verdict.’

  ‘I know, I’m going to, but I can’t do it like this.’ I gesture with my head at the straps tying me to the chair. ‘That’s not how it’s done in a real court, is it? The jury can’t make a proper decision if they’re tied up like a prisoner. I need to be free, I need to be able to stand… Don’t you see? If you don’t release me, it won’t be right, you won’t be able to trust what I say.’

&nbs
p; Isobel lets out a small cry of hope. Please don’t say anything, I think. Don’t spoil it. I keep my gaze fixed on Jay, my heart pounding so strongly I can almost hear it.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he says grudgingly, ‘but one false move and you’ll both get it.’ He goes behind me, crouching down and unfastening the luggage straps, then he picks up the knife and saws away at the bonds around my ankles and wrists. I try to keep still, but the urge to break free and attack him is growing stronger by the second. Got to stay calm, make him believe I’m on his side. Then, when he’s off guard…

  He walks back behind the table and stands there imperiously, raising his voice as he addresses the room. ‘Will the foreman of the jury please rise and deliver her verdict.’

  I bring my sore wrists to my sides, pushing down on the seat as I heave myself slowly to my feet. My knees have turned to jelly; I can hardly support my weight. But I mustn’t let him see that I’m scared. I lean the backs of my legs against the chair and lift my head. Slowly I start to open my mouth, still unsure of what’s going to come out.

  Guilty or not guilty? I don’t know what to say.

  A rumbling noise pierces the silence. We all hear it, simultaneously catching our breath and looking towards the drawn curtains. The sound is coming from outside, growing louder as it gets closer. Unmistakable now. Tyres on gravel, the slam of a car door. Somebody’s here. Somebody’s come to save us!

  Jay’s eyes dart from side to side and our gazes meet for a fraction of a second as we both think the same thought. Who is it? The police? No. It can’t be the police; they don’t know we’re here. Footsteps are approaching. A key’s turning in the lock.

  ‘Alice!’ gasps Isobel.

  ‘Fuck!’ Jay picks up the knife and edges his way to the door of the room, pushing it closed and hiding behind it. ‘Don’t move!’ he hisses at me. ‘Nobody say a word!’ I hold my breath, my heart beating out of my chest.