The Deadly Truth

by Valerie Keogh

  ‘Of course it’s me, you muppet, open the door before I drown.’

  Relief vied with confusion as she unhooked the chain, turned the latch and pulled open the door. ‘Caitlin, thank goodness it’s you.’ Melanie stood back to let her inside. ‘You scared me, why didn’t you ring to tell me you were coming. Anyway,’ she said, her forehead creasing in puzzlement, ‘how did you know I’d be here?’

  Caitlin walked over to the landline. ‘I have been ringing. I tried your mobile and there was no answer so I tried your landline and it was dead.’ She picked up the handset and set it back onto its cradle firmly. ‘It wasn’t in place; the battery’s gone flat.’

  Melanie hadn’t heard her mobile ring but the bar had been noisy and although she’d checked for emails, she hadn’t thought to check for missed calls. ‘Sorry,’ she said, with a shake of her head, ‘it’s been one of those days.’

  Caitlin flopped onto the sofa. ‘I rang your office and Rona said you’d come home so I thought I’d call and see how you were.’

  Melanie frowned briefly, then shook her head on a sigh. ‘I was tired so decided to give myself the afternoon off.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, you’ve had a tough time of it recently.’ Caitlin stood and went to Melanie, putting her arm around her shoulder and pulling her into a quick hug. ‘I’m glad you’re okay, I was worried about you.’

  It was comforting to have someone to care, Melanie stayed there for a few seconds, wishing life was always this simple. She felt her friend’s warm breath on her cheek, felt soothed by the strength of her touch. Not for the first time, she wished she could tell her the truth, wished she could be sure that their friendship would survive it. She pulled away. ‘I have some bad news.’

  Caitlin frowned and moved backward to sit on the edge of the sofa. ‘Tell me?’

  Melanie could leave out the bit about Eric Thomas and tell her everything else. ‘I think Quinn might be involved in Hugo’s murder.’

  ‘Liam Quinn? Seriously?’ Caitlin’s eyes widened. ‘Of course, he did work for Masters too. He must have heard about the merger and decided to make some money. So, what was it? A falling out of thieves?’

  Melanie stopped her jaw dropping open with effort. She had been so fixated on the idea of Quinn as a vigilante, she’d not given a thought to him being involved in the insider trading. Money, it was always at the bottom of things. ‘It looks like it,’ she said, unwilling to admit she’d not given that idea consideration.

  ‘Hugo and now Quinn. You’ve not had much luck recently,’ Caitlin said. ‘Do you think Quinn was responsible for sending the emails to you too?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Melanie stood abruptly. ‘It’s all coming together at last. How about I make us a cup of tea?’ She moved towards the doorway. ‘Sit and relax, I’ll only be a minute.’

  Melanie willed her feet to carry her forward without stumbling. Keeping the smile in place with difficulty, she edged from the room and into the kitchen where she noisily filled the kettle and switched it on before looking around for her phone. Her handbag was hanging from a chairback. ‘Just be a minute,’ she sang out, hurrying to grab it, her fingers rummaging inside for her phone, afraid to take her eyes off the doorway.

  ‘Okay?’ Caitlin suddenly appeared, a strange look on her face.

  ‘Yes, I thought I heard my phone ring,’ Melanie said with an attempt at a laugh. ‘There’s so much junk in my bag, it’s hard to find anything inside.’

  ‘Let me,’ Caitlin said, snatching the bag from her hand. She pulled the phone out and threw it across the room. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned the damn emails, should I?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘And I was being so careful.’

  Melanie pulled a chair out and sat heavily, her head spinning. The thoughts that were running through her head were impossible. Caitlin was her friend, she trusted her completely. Melanie looked up at her, saw the hard look in her eyes, the twist of her mouth. ‘You also shouldn’t have said Rona told you I’d come home. I hadn’t told her where I was going.’

  29

  ‘Tut, tut, I’m really off my game today.’ Caitlin leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, waiting.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Melanie shook her head, a lump in her throat. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You really are the stupidest, most gullible person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.’

  ‘We were friends!’

  A sneer cocked one edge of Caitlin’s mouth. ‘No, we were never friends. I know who you are, Anne Edwards.’

  Melanie felt her world shatter.

  Caitlin’s sneer grew uglier. ‘Eric had kept an eye on you from the time you left Wethersham, knew you’d changed your name, even knew where you worked. It wasn’t hard after that. I saw your photo on the Masters website and attended a few boring conferences before going to the right one and there you were – ripe for plucking.

  ‘Do you know how difficult it’s been pretending to be interested in your wittering for all these months. Putting up with your inane chat, your pathetic gratitude for my friendship. I was waiting for the right moment to destroy you, and it came. Your precious partnership, was the perfect time to strike.’

  ‘You sent the emails?’

  ‘Woohoo, give the girl a medal, she’s copped on at last. Yes, you stupid cow, I sent the emails. They were the backup plan though.’

  ‘Backup plan?’ Melanie tried to clear a space in the fog. Oh God. Hugo. ‘Hugo… you set that up?’

  ‘It was a brilliant plan and would have worked but for two things: I hadn’t taken Richard Masters’ damn reasonableness into account and I never expected you to confess. You’d always spoken of him as a stiff, sanctimonious bastard. I assumed he’d chuck you on the scrapheap as soon as he discovered you’d messed up but no, of course not, you come out of it smelling of fucking roses.’

  ‘Hardly.’ It was all Melanie could think to say, her head reeling as she tried to come to terms with this new, shocking reality. ‘You left the note here?’

  Caitlin laughed. ‘I was sorry I wasn’t here to see your reaction. I bet it was priceless.’

  ‘You picked the lock?’

  ‘Even if I could do that, which I can’t by the way, why would I? I have a key.’ Caitlin laughed at Melanie’s surprise. ‘Remember when I went out to get food, and took your keys so I wouldn’t disturb you? I had a copy made then.’

  Melanie’s head was throbbing, she held a hand up and rested it on her forehead before wiping away tears that were trickling down her cheeks. This was all too much. ‘You were responsible for destroying Cherry too?’ Expecting her to agree, Melanie blinked in confusion when Caitlin shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘There’s no reason for me to lie anymore,’ Caitlin said with a shrug. ‘We divided the job, you see. I got you; Eric got Cherry.’

  Feeling like a hornet’s nest had exploded over her, Melanie shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. ‘No, now I know you’re lying, he said he wasn’t involved–’

  ‘He wasn’t, you fool,’ Caitlin said coldly. ‘Not in sending the emails to you. We had a good laugh about that when he told me. He sent the tweets about Cherry and painted some of the graffiti that appeared in the town. An added touch he was proud of.’ Caitlin stopped and frowned. ‘Surprisingly, he was upset at the outcome. He expected her to lose her job, but never expected her to take her own life. That’s where we differed, you see, for me that was the perfect outcome.’ Pushing away from the counter, she loomed over Melanie for a moment, smirking as she cringed, before pulling out a chair and sitting. ‘It would have been so much easier if you’d followed suit, you know?’

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Melanie gulped. ‘It was you Eric warned me not to trust.’

  ‘Did he really?’ Caitlin seemed surprised.

  ‘Yes, he wrote to me, told me to be careful who I trusted. I thought he was referring to Quinn.’

  Caitlin’s peal of laughter rang around the room, a sound that carried wi
th it something nasty and foul and sent a shiver down Melanie’s back. She looked at this woman she had called a friend and wondered how she’d been so badly fooled.

  ‘That was so funny,’ Caitlin said. ‘You obviously fancied the guy so it was the icing on the cake to make you suspect him. And it hardly needed any prompting on my part, you were so confused after Hugo it was easy to make you second guess yourself.’

  ‘You lied to me?’

  ‘Of course I lied, you silly bitch.’

  ‘But he took a key from my desk!’ Or had he? Melanie had rummaged in her desk drawer, desperate to find evidence that Quinn was behind everything and had seen the missing key as proof. It was probably still there, wedged in a corner of the drawer. It was hard to believe that she’d been so wrong, that Caitlin was to blame for everything.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Caitlin said, frowning.

  Melanie shook her head. ‘I made a mistake, forget it. You lied about Quinn being from Leeds?’ It didn’t matter, she just needed to keep Caitlin talking. The clock on the wall was ticking towards seven, any moment now, the doorbell would ring, announcing the estate agent’s arrival. She had to be ready to scream for help.

  ‘He’s from Sussex if I remember rightly.’ Caitlin laughed. ‘You should have heard your gasp when I mentioned Leeds, it was really so funny.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Melanie said quietly, seeing the fanatical light in the woman’s eyes. How had she never seen it before; how could Caitlin have disguised it for so long?

  ‘Perhaps,’ Caitlin said with a dismissive shrug.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why? I assume you knew Matthew Thomas.’

  Caitlin’s expression changed, becoming twisted and ugly. ‘Yes, I knew him.’ She stood suddenly, pulling a knife from the magnetic holder. ‘Not as big as I’d like but I suppose I can make do.’ She sat back and folded her arms, the knife tucked into the crook of her elbow. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ she said in a sing-song voice. ‘A long time ago, when I was sixteen, I attacked a classmate with a knife. He didn’t die but my parents and the teachers, they said I wasn’t…’ She pulled one hand out, lifted her index finger and crooked it twice, ‘… quite right.’ A smile hovered. ‘I was lucky, it was an exclusive private school and they didn’t want police involved. Instead, I spent a month in a psychiatric unit outside Manchester, and that’s where I met Matthew.’

  Caitlin’s tone of voice changed from a dull monotone to high-pitched excitement. ‘I’d been there a week when he arrived. He was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen and I was instantly and completely smitten. There were older girls who flirted with him but he wasn’t very communicative with them, he seemed to prefer my more childlike attention and spent most of his time there with me.’ Her voice trailed away and her eyes lost focus, drifting to the past, her face softening with the memories. ‘Within a few days, we’d become lovers.’

  Caitlin unfolded her arms and tapped the knife against the palm of her hand, the slap-slap a regular beat that didn’t change as the sharp blade drew a fine red line across her palm; it didn’t stop as tiny beads of blood went flying from the knife with each subsequent tap. ‘I told him I’d find him when I was free, and the day after I left the clinic I hopped on a train and a bus and finally hitched a lift to Wethersham.’ She looked at Melanie with hate-filled eyes. ‘But when I found him, he didn’t want to know.’ The slap-slapping stopped, the silence filled with expectation. ‘I was devastated and couldn’t understand what I’d done so wrong, why he’d changed. But he wouldn’t explain.’ She looked at the knife, at the blood that was smeared across her palm and spattered across the table.

  ‘Several months ago, we were investigating a gang who were exporting stolen cars and I called to Edgware Motors to speak to the manager there. I didn’t recognise Eric, but obviously I haven’t changed much over the years because he recognised me straight away.’ Caitlin shrugged. ‘He seemed to want to talk so I met him for a drink in the pub oppo–’

  ‘The Londoner,’ Melanie interrupted, grasping onto something in this conversation that she was sure of.

  Tapping the blade of the knife against her hand, Caitlin shook her head. ‘After all the years, Eric still hated you and that teacher, what’s her name–’

  ‘Cherry.’ Melanie swallowed the dart of anger.

  ‘Cherry, yes, her.’ Caitlin drew a heavy breath. ‘It wasn’t until Eric explained what the two of you had done that I realised what… or should I say who… had changed my beautiful boy, and a red wave of anger and hatred for you both almost consumed me. It was you, Anne Edwards. You and your stupid fucking whispers that destroyed him.’

  The knife tapping started again. Melanie watched blood spatter the table and tried to find the right words. ‘I never meant things to go that far… I tried to stop it.’ A psychiatric unit? Matthew had mental health problems. How could she have known he was so fragile, so vulnerable? No wonder her malicious lies had pushed him over the edge. If only she’d known… she liked to think she’d have been kinder, wouldn’t have done what she’d done. Hindsight, it was such a slippery road.

  ‘Nobody knew he had mental health issues,’ she said. ‘Maybe if we had–’

  ‘Now, wouldn’t that make it so much easier for you,’ Caitlin interrupted her. ‘Wouldn’t that lift the burden of guilt from your pathetic shoulders. But I’m going to have to burst that particular comfy bubble, my dear friend. Matthew wasn’t a patient, you fool, he was a volunteer. There was a group from a local school who came in to help the sickos like me to connect to the outside world. That’s where Eric knew me from, he volunteered too. They moved to Wethersham a week before I was discharged. No, there’s no help for you there, my dear, dear friend.’

  She pointed the knife at Melanie. ‘You changed my beautiful boy, you and your stupid whispers.’

  30

  Melanie’s eyes were fixed on the knife as Caitlin spoke. All the years she’d struggled, was this the way it was going to end?

  ‘It was your promotion to partner and Cherry’s to school principal that sparked Eric’s desire for revenge after all these years,’ Caitlin said. ‘I sat in that pub for an hour listening to him moan about how unfair it was that you were both so successful while poor Matthew never had the chance. He was obviously envious, drinking pints with whisky chasers and feeling sorry for himself. It wasn’t hard to get him around to the idea of revenge.’

  ‘It was your idea!’

  Caitlin waved the knife. ‘Let’s say I encouraged his thinking. He was so drunk at that stage he was happy to agree to anything. It was definitely my idea to split the work. His role was to destroy Cherry and mine was to destroy you.’ She pointed the knife at Melanie and grinned.

  ‘That fool, Eric, hadn’t realised he’d done such a good job until you told him Cherry had killed herself. I thought it was perfect, he was horrified and wanted to call a halt to it all.’

  Melanie remembered the detective, Burke, saying that a woman could easily stab a man. ‘You killed Eric.’ It wasn’t a question; Melanie knew suddenly with absolute conviction that she had.

  ‘The fool was becoming a nuisance,’ Caitlin said. ‘Would you believe it, he said that Matthew’s death had been avenged by Cherry’s, that we’d done enough.’ She uncrossed her arms and sliced the air with the knife. ‘Enough talking.’ She pulled a packet of pills from her pocket. ‘You should have done a Cherry on it, of course, and taken your own life. That would have been the perfect outcome. But never mind, you can swallow these. You’ve been sounding more and more paranoid, nobody will be surprised when they find you.’ Her smile chilled Melanie’s blood. ‘Not that it matters much anymore if it doesn’t look like suicide. There are things happening that you don’t know about so if you won’t take them, I’ll happily kill you slowly and very, very painfully.’

  Melanie looked at the packet. Temazepam. She wondered how many it would take to kill her. She watched as Caitlin slid the foils from the packet and pressed the tab
lets out onto the table. There was no real reason to count, but Melanie did anyway. Twenty-eight tablets. She guessed that was more than enough to do the job.

  ‘I’ll take them,’ she said, drawing cold eyes to her. ‘I’m not good with pain, I’ll take the damn tablets. But first, tell me, why?’

  There was tense silence as Caitlin stared at her. ‘Because, Anne Edwards, my whole fucking life is falling apart and it’s all your fault. Or perhaps I should blame Hugo, but he’s not here and you are.’ Her laugh rang out again, making Melanie cringe. ‘Of course, you don’t know that part of the story either, do you? Hugo and I were old mates. He paid me well for information over the years and when I told him about my new friendship with you, you should have seen his eyes light up. I passed him the odd nugget of information that you dropped in conversation – did you never stop to ask why I was so interested in hearing about your boring job? God, you were so easy! Then, there was that merger. That really caught his fancy.’

  ‘He was working for you.’ Melanie wondered if her heart could really break.

  Caitlin laughed, the sound sneering and nasty. ‘Seriously, did you really think someone like Hugo would be interested in the likes of you?’

  Melanie hadn’t, she’d hoped, and for a moment, she’d believed. It was hard trying to understand that everything had been a lie. She remembered seeing Caitlin’s reflection in the window. She thought she’d imagined the sneer; how could she have ever understood that was her real face? A horrific thought hit her. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’

  Caitlin shrugged dismissively. ‘I’d only met him once, years ago. After that we communicated by phone. He didn’t know who I was and it would have stayed like that.’ She slammed her hand on the table, making Melanie jump and give a squeal of fright. ‘Your fault again… everything your fault, Anne Edwards. Hugo insisted he needed more information than I could provide and worked out the plan to seduce you.’ She sneered. ‘Not that it took much, you were as he so elegantly put it gagging for it from day one.