by T. M. Logan
Again, there was nothing that looked suspicious on the face of it. No doubt Ben had picked up the tab for everything. He never missed an opportunity to remind everyone how wealthy he was. Probably Mel most of all. I remembered her words from yesterday.
He told me he was in love with me like he’d never loved anyone before. That he’d do anything for me, anything I wanted—leave Beth, leave Alice. Sell the company. Sell the house. Move away. Leave everything behind so we could be together.
Further searching turned up nothing of note in her other drawers and cupboards.
This is pointless. Do something practical, useful. Necessary.
Back in the kitchen, drinking a strong coffee, I hunted for an old copy of the Yellow Pages before remembering that Mel had thrown it out long ago. Who needs that cluttering the place up when you’ve got Google? she’d said. She was right, in a way, but it was still good to have something with pages, something you could hold in your hand. Google was fine, but you couldn’t turn down a corner and cross out entries that were no good. Even though I’d charged it yesterday, my phone was almost dead already, so I plugged it in and went upstairs to the PC in the study. The bigger screen was better for web browsing anyway.
The monitor flickered into life as the fan started up inside the base unit. The PC was nearing the end of its useful life and usually took a few minutes to boot up. It beeped and whirred and went through its usual start-up procedures. While I waited, I thought of what Naylor had told me an hour before, the proof-of-life inquiries to establish when Ben had last raised his head above the parapet. The computer beeped and displayed some incomprehensible message about BIOS and RAM and memory and various other stuff that I didn’t understand.
I hit Enter to get it moving.
The screen went blue, then black. The fan whirred slower, then kicked in again like an old Hoover on its last legs. Down and up. Typical. This is the moment the PC chooses to finally give up the ghost, in my hour of need. Just what I don’t need. The red light by the webcam came on, but the screen stayed black. Various chugging and whirring noises came from the base unit beneath the desk.
Still nothing on the monitor. A black screen.
“Just give me a break here,” I said, talking to the machine.
I was about to switch it off and go back downstairs when a message appeared in the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
White text on black.
Boot sequence interrupted_
A blinking cursor instead of a period. Our PC had been getting slower and slower, but I’d never seen that message before.
The words disappeared. A black, blank screen. Black.
Black.
Then two words.
Hello Joe_
34
For a few seconds, I just stared at the words, at the blinking cursor after my name, wondering whether this was part of the computer’s recovery sequence. A plunging sensation in the pit of my stomach told me it wasn’t.
The greeting disappeared and was replaced by a line of text.
I bet your wondering what the fucks going on?_
I couldn’t breathe. I was paralyzed, the breath trapped in my lungs. Again, the text disappeared. Again, it was replaced by another line of text.
Let me explain_
She said she still loves you and cant leave you because your a good man_
The BEST KINDEST man she has ever met_
She was everything to me but she destroyed what we had_ FOR YOU_
You worthless pathetic piece of shit_
The words began to scroll up the screen now, quicker, each line coming so fast I could barely read it before the next appeared.
Think you can beat me? That your better than me?_Im going to break you_
Your whole fucking life is about being the GOOD MAN. How about SUSPECTED MURDERER instead?_
Naylor’s words returned to me: a full “proof-of-life” inquiry.
I hit the Print Screen button three times and was greeted with a sullen beep. The printer was off. Damn. Get a picture. I patted my pockets for my cell phone. Not there. Shit. It was charging downstairs. I was torn between wanting to see the rest of the message and needing to photograph it as evidence. The message continued scrolling, lines of text disappearing as new ones appeared.
Im going to destroy your reputation_ Im going to destroy your marriage_ Then Im going to destroy you_
No one will believe you and that will make it all the sweeter_ This is going to be the best game yet_
Adios_
I ran downstairs to get my cell phone, grabbed it off the kitchen countertop charger and all, ran back upstairs, and crashed back into the study.
Just in time to see the last words on the monitor disappear.
I hit the Escape key. Back arrow. Return, Backspace, Delete. All the keys at once.
But it was gone. The webcam light had gone off too. I guessed Ben had seen everything that he wanted to see.
The computer beeped happily, and the normal login prompt appeared on the screen, alongside my regular background—a picture of me, William, and Mel.
Ben, you bastard.
The force of my fist slamming onto the desk was enough to make the mouse jump and land upside down with a clatter.
Think.
I got my cell phone out, got the camera ready, and restarted the PC. Same whine as the fan slowed then speeded up again, same beeping and whirring as it went through its booting-up process. This time there was no warning message from Ben. The screen filled with the same family picture and the normal login prompt. I shut it down again, waited for a minute, then turned it back on. It booted up normally.
The threatening message was a one-time deal, it seemed. I called Naylor and explained what had happened.
“Did you get a picture?” he said, his tone skeptical. “Or a printout?”
“Didn’t have time. It all happened too fast.”
“A screenshot?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Did he sign off with his name?”
“No, but this kind of computer stuff, hacking my PC to send me a message, this is pure 100 percent Ben Delaney. It’s him all over; it’s what he’s good at.”
I’m going to break you. Destroy you.
“OK,” Naylor said. “We may need to take your computer in at some point, Joe. Have our digital forensic guys look at it.”
He asked me to write down the text of the message, as best as I could remember, and email it to him.
Once I’d done that, I called up Google and typed in a new search.
This had gone far enough. It was time to get some legal advice.
35
Peter Larssen was a short, round man in his early forties, with sandy-blond hair and a firm handshake. He gestured toward the hallway and followed me up two flights of wide wooden stairs. His office, at the firm of lawyers that bore his name, was warm and tastefully furnished, one wall entirely covered by bookcases and a large desk by the window. The room smelled of fresh flowers and floor polish.
After dispensing with the pleasantries, he ran through the firm’s hourly rates and the terms on which they would represent me. Signing my name at the foot of an agreement, I wondered whether I was being premature in seeking legal advice.
“Better safe than sorry,” Larssen said in his crisp Home Counties accent. “So, Joe, tell me what brings you to us today.”
He took notes on a yellow pad as I ran through a potted version of the events of the last four days.
“So what can I do about Ben?” I said finally. “To keep him away from my family, away from my wife? Stop him sending threatening messages? And make sure the police don’t waste any more time on him?”
“I’m a fan of simple solutions, Joe. Have you tried talking to him?”
“We were going to meet this morning, but it didn’t quite happen.”
“Let’s give it a few more days, see if he calms down. Most people do. Meanwhile, I’ll make a few discreet inquiries about him, see
what I can find out.”
“Is that it?”
“For now. Our more pressing concern is your discussion with the police this morning. Were you cautioned, arrested, or advised of your rights in any way?”
“No. None of that.”
“Tell me exactly what you said to DCI Naylor, in as much detail as you can remember.”
I shrugged. “I told him everything.”
“Define everything.”
He took more notes and frowned as I described the conversation, wincing visibly at times as if he had indigestion.
“So you admitted to being in the hotel parking lot on Thursday evening?”
“Yes. I was there.”
“That’s for them to prove, not for us to serve up on a platter.”
Them and us.
“He asked me a direct question.”
“So?”
“I answered it.”
He put the pad on the table and capped his fountain pen with a snap.
“Mr. Lynch, this process is not about making polite conversation. Normal social niceties don’t apply when you’re talking to the police. They can ask what they want, but you’re not in any way obliged to answer—particularly when it’s a devious, underhanded little rat like Detective Chief Inspector Marcus Naylor.”
“He didn’t seem devious to me,” I said quietly.
“That’s half the problem with him. By the time you realize what he’s up to, your neck’s halfway into the noose. You did the right thing, coming to us.”
“You’ve dealt with Naylor before?”
“Enough times to know I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“Do you think he might say the same about you?”
Larssen sipped his tea and gave a curious little half smile. “Possibly. But the point is, we’re playing big boys’ rules now. Forget being a good citizen and respect for the boys in blue and answering every loaded question they throw at you. Forget helping the police with their inquiries, having a friendly chat at the station, all of that. That’s for people who want to end up getting convicted. From now on, you don’t say anything to the police without me being there, not even small talk about the weather or last night’s TV. Nothing at all. Are you able to do that?”
“Sounds like what a guilty person would do.”
“It’s what a smart person would do. A person who doesn’t want to end up in jail.”
“But I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You’re 100 percent sure about that, are you?”
I paused, wondering for the first time whether he believed my story. “I’m not a criminal.”
He nodded. “Well, all right, then. The good news is that you hadn’t been arrested and told of your rights to legal representation when you talked to them earlier. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I asked Naylor whether I should have a lawyer, but he said he couldn’t advise me.”
“Hmm,” said Larssen as if this were a highly unsatisfactory answer. “It’s more likely that he didn’t arrest you because he wanted to get your unguarded reaction.”
“Well, it worked.”
“But it also means he’ll struggle, on legal grounds, to use the answers you gave earlier to implicate you in any crime.”
“If we end up in court, you mean?”
“Yes. If we end up in court.”
“If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?”
“The altercation between you and Mr. Delaney on Thursday is … unfortunate.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Do you have any idea how his car came to be dumped and set on fire, or why there was blood found on the seat?”
“No, but I can make a pretty good educated guess.”
He nodded, made a note on his pad with the expensive fountain pen. “Let’s avoid guesswork, Joe. On the face of it, your wife’s relationship with Mr. Delaney is interesting to the police because it puts you and him on something of a collision course. It’s motive. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Can I ask you a question, Peter?”
“Certainly.”
“Do you believe me?”
“If you say you’re not guilty, that’s all I need to know.”
“But do you think I did this? That I hurt Ben?”
“I didn’t say that. You seem like a good chap to me, but we have to deal with the situation we face and study it piece by piece. Break it down piece by piece. That’s how we win cases, and it’s why most of our clients walk out of court with smiles on their faces. Everything else is a distraction.”
“You see that Ben’s trying to set me up, don’t you? I’ve taken Mel away from him, he’s in love with her, and he’s mad and egotistical and obsessed to the point that he can’t bear to lose her.” My hands were fists on the table between us, my heart thumping hard. “He’s trying everything to land me in it. Do you see?”
“He certainly sounds like a dangerous individual.”
“He’s nuts. Crazy. But he won’t break my family up. Never.”
Larssen handed me a business card with his numbers on it. “We’ve done what we can for now. To a certain extent, we have to see what the police do next, but the most important thing is that you do not, under any circumstances, speak to DCI Naylor again without me being present. Give me a call on the cell phone, and I will be there as quickly as I can. And let me know when Mr. Delaney contacts you next, whether by phone, email, social media, anything at all.”
“Everything’s just happened so fast, it’s a struggle to get my head around it.”
“Try not to worry too much. You’ve not been arrested. That’s a long way down the road and will probably never happen in any case. As likely as not, Mr. Delaney will turn up at his house sooner or later, a little bit calmer and hopefully a bit wiser too. And all of this will go away.”
It was a comforting thought. A good speech to wrap up our first meeting. But it wasn’t long before I found out how very badly wrong he was.
TUESDAY
36
No matter how many times they were told, and how many detentions they got, there were always boys who insisted on keeping their shirts untucked as they walked into school. Who felt like today was the day to push boundaries on the dress code. The only problem was, the boundaries at Haddon Park Academy had no flexibility. Every day, according to the assistant head teacher’s unyielding view of discipline, I was required to stop dress code offenders and tell them to report to the sports hall at the end of the day so they could spend an hour in general detention.
The assistant head was like that. There was no compromise in his world. The rules are all that stand between us and special measures, was one of his favorite clichés. So every morning, on my walk from my car to the staff room, there would be detention-bait crossing my path. And so it was today. Three pupils, in ninth grade and therefore old enough to know better, strolled toward me as I got out of my car. All three with untucked shirts flapping in the wind. I duly told them to report to general detention at 2:45 P.M. Most days they would simply accept defeat and report as instructed to take their punishment, but today, instead of shuffling away in the direction of their form rooms, they stayed where they were, right in front of me. I looked at the tallest boy, who was six feet plus with a shock of blond hair standing up off his head. There was a smirk on his face, something in his eyes that said he knew something I didn’t.
“You all right, sir?”
“Yes, fine. Thanks for your concern. Now you’d better get moving if you don’t want to be late for registration.”
He stayed standing in front of me, with the annoying teenage grin still plastered to his face.
“Just asking how you’re doing, sir.”
“Never better. Now tuck your shirts in. You know the rules.”
You little smart-ass, I added in my head.
All three of them sniggered as if my answer was hilarious. Some other boys drifted past, and the three of them joined onto the
larger group, tucking their shirts in as they went.
There was a strange atmosphere in the staff room. Subdued, as if someone had died. Or maybe it was because so much had happened to me since Friday that the staff room felt foreign—like it belonged to my nice, comfortable old life, not the dark and dented new one.
I turned my mug right side up and dropped a teabag into it. Flicked the kettle on.
“Anyone else want a brew?” I said.
I looked around at my colleagues in the room. Some standing, some sitting, some holding exercise books, or sheets of paper, or just a cup of tea.
All eyes were on me.
“What?” I said to the room in general.
Jenny Lucas, who taught French and German, caught my eye and spoke in a quiet voice.
“Joe, Darth Draper wants to see you.”
For all our mockery, Carl Draper was assistant head in charge of pastoral and disciplinary issues, and I couldn’t remember ever being called into his office before in the nine years I’d worked here. Maybe he’s heard about me and Mel and wants to offer me some time off to sort my head out.
Unlikely.
More likely was that someone had spotted me out and about yesterday, when I was supposed to be off sick, and he was going to give me a dressing-down for it. Draper was the head teacher’s hatchet man, who gave out reprimands on the head teacher’s behalf.
At that moment, I could not have been less bothered about getting on his bad side.
“What does he want to see me about?” I said.
“He didn’t say. He came in here first thing looking for you, then put his head around the door a second time just now. Seems keen to have a word before first period.”
“Right.” I flicked the kettle off.
“Are you OK?” Jenny said.
“Yes. Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m OK?”
She gave me a sad little smile as if she didn’t believe me. “Just asking, that’s all.”
“I’m fine.”
