The Liar's House: An absolutely gripping thriller with a fantastic twist (Detective Gina Harte Book 4)

by Carla Kovach

Mum, I thought you were going to come and visit soon. I haven’t heard from you for a couple of weeks and Gracie keeps asking about you. Please don’t let her down. Hannah.

  She buried her head in her hands, she’d forgotten completely. She had promised to call the previous weekend but with all that was happening, it had slipped her mind. Again, she’d failed in her motherly duties. Since Hannah had moved, she’d missed her granddaughter more than she ever thought she would. As soon as the case was over, she was going to visit. She quickly replied, telling her daughter she’d call her soon.

  An email pinged up.

  Hi Gina,

  It’s not something we like doing but I don’t like the thought that someone has used my service to harass you. I like that flowers and chocolate make people happy, not cause them anguish. I took the liberty of taking a screenshot when I looked for their details. I was curious myself, curious to know if my CCTV system was up to standard. I’ve attached a photo of Trevor for you. Be warned, it’s not clear at all. It’s grainy and a little blurred but if you know this person anyway, that might not matter.

  Hayley – Blossom’s Bouquets.

  Her finger trembled as she clicked on the file. How dare he? Through the grain and blur, there was no mistaking who was sending her these gifts. She grabbed her half-eaten sandwich and threw it across the room, lettuce escaping everywhere. She called Briggs. ‘I know who sent me the flowers and chocolates.’

  Fifty-Three

  The abyss – Aimee was climbing and clawing her way up and out. But where was she going? She squinted but however hard she tried to focus, all she could see was black. As she turned, her shoulder wedged into a cold wall. Dampness seeped through her top, she shivered. Cold, so cold. Through chattering teeth she let out a small squeak. Why couldn’t she say what she wanted to say? She wanted to call out for help.

  Nothing to grab onto, nowhere to go, nothing to see. Breathing laboured and shallow. She reached out, grabbing for anything but there was nothing to grab. Was she still asleep?

  A memory filled her thoughts. ‘Hello,’ Aimee called. ‘Rhys? What happened?’ She was at home. Nicole, had she left for work? Her house, there was someone outside. The dog was barking but then she remembered someone knocking at the door.

  Her pounding head, arid mouth and growling stomach sickened her. It felt like she’d been drinking. But she didn’t really drink, it wasn’t a part of her clean eating routine. She fought to lift her hand to her sore head. Wet and stinging. She flinched. Senses returning, she tried to grab, hit. It was as if she was in a box, a tiny stone box. She shuffled slightly and punched the wall behind her, nothing except her own cracked knuckle. Above her – when she tapped, the sound was different, like wood. Hyperventilating, she began to scream and yell. ‘Get me out.’ Breathe, she couldn’t breathe. Buried, she was in a hole, in a wall, in a grave. Oxygen, no oxygen. Fighting with everything she had, in all directions was fruitless.

  Breathe, breathe. Her head was awhirl with no sense of space or time, nothing to see. Cold but hot. Clammy but parched. Nothing, the abyss, her grave—

  She closed her eyes, focusing on the patterns forming in her confused mind. She slipped down, like a feather floating from a bird perched in a tree, swaying from side to side and upside down through tempestuous wind pockets, finding freedom in the night skies. No stars and no moon, just floating in empty space. ‘I can’t breathe—’ she spluttered. That’s when the loud, rhythmic clunking monster began to take chase. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Don’t look back. Never look back. She closed her eyes.

  Fifty-Four

  Diane lay on the settee as she stared at the paracetamol next to the toast she’d made several hours ago. Water glistened in the glass as a ray of sun emerged through the cloud, shining through the dirt on the lounge window. She listened to the children as they laughed and played on their bikes outside her house.

  She’d stared at the phone all day but still the caller hadn’t tried to make contact again. There was no way Samantha would ever remain out of her life for this long if she were alive. So many years had gone by and she’d lived in hope that one day, the woman she thought of as her daughter would walk through the door. A tear slipped down her cheek, landing on the arm of the settee.

  The back door rattled and was followed by a loud knock. She forced her head off the damp patch, almost screaming out as she un-wrangled her stiff body. She snatched the painkillers and threw them in her magazine rack, hiding them out of the way. No one could know of her plan, they’d have her committed and that would spell the end of her, or worse, they’d try to stop her.

  Hobbling through the house, she spotted her brother staring through the window, raising his eyebrows and pointing to his watch. Always in a hurry, nothing had changed there.

  As she turned the key, she caught sight of herself in the window. That bedraggled image was soon replaced with her brother’s angry face. On unlocking the door, he shoved his way in with a small bag of groceries.

  ‘God it stinks in here. I don’t know how you can live like this. No wonder you’re always miserable and depressed.’

  She sighed and fell into a chair at the kitchen table. She was depressed because of the pain, because of Samantha. A few dirty dishes and a pile of clutter were the least of her problems. ‘If you’re going to go on at me, bro, you may as well just walk back out that door now. I’m not in the mood.’

  He ignored her and placed a casserole dish on the side. ‘Stew, not your favourite I know, but it’s what we had for dinner last night and I don’t expect you to be grateful anyway.’

  ‘I don’t ask you for this. I don’t ask you to come here, make me feel like shit and leave food I don’t like. You make me miserable. You! I’m sick of it.’

  ‘Why don’t you just hurry up and die, for heaven’s sake. You’re such a moaning cow. After all that I do for you. How would you live if you didn’t have me? Think about that one. I’m the only person who visits you, the only one who helps you and this is how you speak to me. Do you think I want to be here all the time, coming back and forth? I should be enjoying my life now but no, I’m stuck looking after you all the time.’ The veins on his neck protruded through his tight skin. How could he be so cruel? She remembered the sweet little brother he’d once been.

  ‘You know something, you ungrateful sod, I should have been enjoying my teen years but no, I was bringing you up after Mum died.’ Had she just said that to him? Her bottom lip quivered as she waited for his comeback.

  He sucked in a deep breath and fixed his wide-eyed stare on her as he sat on the chair next to her. ‘Is that what you call it? Bringing me up. Whoring around is what I call it. Just like your friend Samantha, you were both a pair of whores. I can spot people like you a mile off now, that I thank you for, but the rest…’

  Tears filled Diane’s eyes. ‘I had no choice. I did it all for you. We needed to eat and all the jobs I had, they weren’t enough. I made sure you had shoes for school, days out with your friends—’

  ‘And I had to listen to how you earned all that money through our thin bedroom walls, every single night. Those men – to them you were nothing more than a piece of meat. You get what you ask for and that’s what you deserved.’

  She brought back her swollen wrist, revealing her old scar and slapped him across the face. Her breathing quickened and her eyes welled up. ‘How dare you!’

  He dropped to his knees in front of her and grabbed her hair. ‘You know something, Samantha was just like you were back then. I know, she practically flung herself at me. I didn’t want to but I thought why not? Let’s get to know her better, work out why she was the way she was. You know something, I sort of hate myself for getting close to her. She used me, you know. Just wanted to make that stupid married man jealous. I wasn’t the only man she used either.’

  ‘If you’ve hurt her, I’ll—’

  ‘What? Stupid, frail, little Diane. What makes you think I hurt her?’

  Her mind flashed back to the phone call. ‘Did
you leave the card and break into my house? Did… did… you call me yesterday?’

  A grin spread across his face. ‘Someone’s been calling you. Who knows? Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m screwing with you, after all, you screwed me over all those years ago. Maybe I’m not screwing with you and it was one of your old clients hoping for one last shag before you fall apart.’ He laughed, his glassy-eyed gaze fixing on hers.

  ‘It can’t be.’ No one knew who she was any more. She remembered a particular client who became more violent than the others, the one who burned a circle in her brother’s buttock with his cigarette, the one who dragged him out of the house in just his underpants and left him crying in the snow, humiliating him and holding her hostage for three hours. Her heart broke as she thought about what they’d been through but they’d needed the money. Her heartbeat sped up another notch as she realised she could have at least tried to prevent all the bad things that they had both gone through.

  Her past was finally catching up with her through her brother’s anger. He’d always kept his distance but now he was letting it all out. They were just kids at the time and she acted in the only way she knew how following the death of their mother. ‘What are you trying to tell me? I can’t work you out. That call wasn’t to do with the past. It was to do with Samantha, I know it.’

  ‘You’re assuming it was me! Always going against me like you always did. How do you know it wasn’t to do with the past? We’re in a different age now, we have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Anyone can find anyone now. You’re there for all to see. It’s impossible to hide and you know what, if your past comes back for you, it takes me with it. Whose fault is that? Or maybe, just maybe, the past needs to come out.’

  Head in hands, tears dripped into her lap, soaking her dressing gown. ‘I’m sorry I let you down. I wasn’t much more than a child and we were both grieving for Mum.’

  ‘All those bad things happened to me and it was all because of you. That arsehole who used to make you cry like a baby for a lousy few quid, he didn’t stop at you. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? When you were out, he’d come over and threaten to tell everyone about you and I had no choice. I wish it was only his cigarette that had damaged me. You were too busy thinking about yourself though. Did you wonder why I was so quiet and shy, no friends, always on the outside of everything? Did you ever wonder why I used to scratch until I bled? No, it was always about you and how you suffered to make me happy. When we lost Mum, I needed you to be there but you went off the rails with your drinking and whoring. Look at you now, pathetic. We reap what we sow and look at what you’re reaping now. When I look at you, all I see is the past. You allowed them to hurt me and you need to pay.’

  He was right. She’d done everything wrong. He’d never opened up like this. Resentment spilled from his mouth. She had no idea things were so bad for him or that he’d suffered so much. She sobbed and yelled as she thought about what her little kid brother had been through. ‘I’m so sorry, please forgive me. I need you to forgive me.’

  ‘I. Will. Never. Forgive. You.’

  ‘I need to know, did you hurt Samantha? Did you call yesterday? Was it you?’

  He leaned forward, his nose touching hers. A faint smell of weed on his clothes. This was a smell she’d never detected on him before. He was mad, paranoid. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. That’s your problem. She wasn’t family, I’m your family. I’ve just told you how hurt I was and all you do is ask about her. If only you’d cared about me as much as you did her. I was just a child! I was nothing to you. I’ve given you chance after chance to make it up but all you do is suck the lifeblood out of me with all your problems. All I wanted was for you to love me and care about me, the way you cared about Samantha.’

  She exhaled as he pulled back from her, stood and kicked the kitchen cupboard. He paced back and forth as he wiped his nose and gasped. She knew he wanted to cry, she’d seen him act up like this as a little boy, only now his behaviour all made sense. He wouldn’t cry though, he’d always get angry and destroy something in the house. She remembered that little mousy-haired boy, a bit scruffy, always getting beaten up after school. He’d loved their mother so much, more than anything. She should have thought more about him and his feelings as their mother was dying before his very eyes. Instead she’d gone off the rails and expected him to fend for himself. That was her way of coping but she didn’t expect him to understand that. What happened next, that had been about survival in order to stay in their house and not lose her brother to the care system. She had promised her mother she’d never let him go, just before the heavy doses of morphine finally lured her into her final sleep.

  ‘I was never as good as Samantha. You’re a class act, aren’t you? Look at you now, pathetic, and it’s all your doing.’

  ‘Did you hurt her? Just tell me.’

  He grinned as he grabbed the door handle and thrust it open. She watched it bouncing on its hinges as he hurried down the path. He was right. She was nothing. If her past came back and her community knew who she really was, who knows how they would react. The woman who slept with strangers for money while her little brother was in the next room. The woman who let her little brother suffer at the hands of those men. Her little brother who was no longer the kid she knew and loved before their lovely mother died. Tears poured into her lap. She’d done everything wrong. Her mother would have been so disappointed.

  She shuffled out of the chair, back into the living room, slumping on the settee. Thoughts of him being hurt by that man, the one she’d allowed into their home, thoughts of Samantha and her past, and the fact that all this was connected, filled her mind. It should have seemed clearer now but all that she had were muddied thoughts. Her past was already back, her brother was making sure of it.

  She reached for DI Gina Harte’s card. She should tell her about the phone call, even tell her that Samantha could have been having a relationship with her brother. Dropping the card, she realised she couldn’t. He’d be arrested and he’d hate her more. She couldn’t do that to him after all he’d been through. It would be the last straw. She’d already done enough damage by ruining his life.

  Screaming, she reached into the magazine rack and pulled out the paracetamol, emptying them out on to the little table, one by one with her clumsy fingers. She didn’t want to struggle any more. She didn’t want to be in pain every day and she didn’t want to think about her unthinkable past, carrying such a heavy burden. She couldn’t tell anyone what she thought her brother had done. It was all her fault and she had to pay the price. Maybe then he would finally forgive her.

  A memory flashed through her mind of her brother, pre growth spurt. The signs had been there but she’d been so wrapped up in her own misery – the bedwetting, the anxiety, the inability to mix easily with his peers. She was guilty of not only ruining her life, but his. It was all her fault, her brother’s pain and Samantha’s disappearance. Hurry up and die – his words were loud and clear. She stared at the tablets through teary eyes. If only she was brave enough to take them.

  Fifty-Five

  Gina tapped her fingers on the desk as she watched Jacob and Wyre re-interviewing Dawn. The woman suddenly seemed keen to talk, claiming that she’d failed to mention something in her previous interview.

  Steven had long gone, leaving Dawn alone in the station. She glanced at Briggs. He was never going to leave her alone during this case, always with her like she needed to be constantly monitored. She silently ground her teeth as she thought back to the photo that Hayley of Blossom Bouquets had sent to her. He wasn’t going to get away with continuing where his brother had left off. She’d told Briggs that Steven was playing with her and they agreed to keep what they knew separate from the case. He spoke to the team, telling them of her position in the case, making her feel like an open book, something she hadn’t really felt during her career to date.

  ‘Dawn, just go over what you said about the evening,’ Wyre said.

  S
he wiped her nose with the crumpled tissue. ‘He was disappointed that nothing had happened for him that night; that he hadn’t slept with anyone. I knew from looking at the invite online that it wasn’t going to be a swapping party, it was more about meet and greet, getting to know new people in the area that had these same interests.’ She ruffled the tissue and pieces of it broke away and fell to the floor. ‘He kept poking me in the ribs saying he was still going to bag a shag as he called it and that I had to try, that it would turn him on. That’s when Sophie’s husband smiled at me. I’m not sure if it was the wine or if I really liked him but before I knew it, I was in his car and we’d left Steven talking to his wife.’

  ‘And?’ Wyre leaned forward, head slightly tilted as she tried to put Dawn at ease.

  Gina shook her head. ‘Dawn wasn’t at the party when this happened. She can’t tell us anything.’

  ‘I know but we need to know what she was lying about,’ Briggs replied.

  ‘I know, I know. Sorry, sir. Thank you for letting me be here.’ Thank you for letting me be here. It was like some sort of a joke, as if she were the one being investigated.

  Dawn continued and Gina’s attention moved from her own frustration to what was happening in the interview room. ‘We drove to a grassy area over in Bidford, right by the river and we just talked. I tried to please Steven, I showed this man, Ralph, that I was game but he could tell I wasn’t. I don’t know what came over me then, I poured my heart out to this stranger in a car and he was such a gentleman, everything I’d love in a man that Steven wasn’t. After a while I realised I liked him but he pushed me away. I think I scared him off with my ridiculously overemotional state. I couldn’t face Steven after that. I didn’t want to go back and see that he was with Sophie or any other woman at the party. Anyway, Ralph drove me home to Cleevesford. When we arrived, he saw that he had messages and missed calls from his wife so he rushed off, said he needed to hurry back to pick her up.’