You Can Trust Me: A Novel

by Sophie McKenzie

  As I always have.

  And always will.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Shannon’s flat is nothing like I’d expected. From the short time I spent with her at Aces High, plus my long-held prejudice against Torquay, I’d imagined her home would be tacky, but now that I’m here, I feel ashamed of my snobbery. Because Shannon’s flat is beautiful. It’s small, but every piece of furniture is simple and stylish. Not High Street style either, but expensive designer pieces—at least I’m assuming they are. Damian, clearly more knowledgeable than I about such things, is openmouthed as he wanders around the living room.

  “Oh my God, that’s a Flap Diamond sofa,” he says in hushed tones. “And an Eames chair.”

  I stand in the middle of the room, struggling to pull on the latex gloves he gave me. Damian yanked his on with a snap in about two seconds. Surely only a doctor or a thief would find it that easy? Frowning, I head to the cupboards below a row of shelves elegantly decorated with simple glass ornaments. The flat is as uncluttered as it is beautiful. There aren’t many storage places.

  “How would a honey trap agent be able to afford all this?” I ask.

  “Maybe she had a second job,” Damian says, bending over the glass table in front of the sofa.

  “Or a sugar daddy,” I mutter, opening the first of the two cupboards. Inside is a row of glass vases and a neat pile of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. I check the second, which is virtually empty, then head over to the balcony, turn the key that’s in the lock and step outside. There’s a great view over the communal gardens. A tiny patch of blue sea sparkles above the distant rooftops.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything useful anywhere else,” Damian suggests.

  We start combing the flat. There’s not much to go on. The kitchen merely yields an impressive collection of high-quality appliances, mostly unused, a cupboard full of deli specials like pickled okra and wasabi mushrooms with only a block of Parmigiano-Reggiano in the fridge and three bottles of flavored vodka in the freezer. Damian is rifling through the cutlery drawer at top speed, making surprisingly little noise as he rummages through the forks and the spoons.

  “You broke in here like a pro,” I say, peering into a cupboard full of tumblers.

  Damian shrugs, shutting the drawer.

  “What’s the deal with the lock-picking?” I ask. “I mean, where did you learn how to do that?”

  “Just something I picked up at college,” Damian says, not meeting my gaze.

  “But—”

  “Livy, this isn’t the time.… We shouldn’t stay here any longer than we have to.”

  “Okay,” I agree reluctantly. Part of me wants to push him further but he’s right—the sooner we get out of here, the better.

  We head into Shannon’s bedroom, where Damian studies the contents of the wardrobe, running his gloved fingers over the long row of tops and dresses. “She’s got everything,” he says in an awed voice. “Prada, Westwood, Versace…”

  I think back to the way Shannon was dressed when I met her—and in the pic on the Aces High Web site. Her clothes were tight, but never slutty, in contrast to the look of most of the other girls. I glance down at the shoes at the bottom of the huge wardrobe. There are three long rows. I spot at least five with Louboutin’s distinctive red soles.

  “Wow,” I say. “All this stuff must be worth thousands.”

  Damian nods. “Maybe she got money from blackmailing someone? Maybe if Julia told her about your husband, she was trying to get money off him?”

  I stare at him. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes shining.

  “No.” I insist, angry at Damian’s eagerness to make everything fit his theory that Will is the murderer. After all, what does that say about his opinion of me, for choosing Will as my husband? “Anyway, Will and I … we don’t have that sort of money.”

  “Right,” Damian says, his face falling.

  I bite my lip, reminding myself Damian’s desperation is simply a consequence of his desire to find out who killed Julia.

  Which, in turn, is a consequence of how badly he is hurting.

  “Maybe Shannon is just good at making money,” I suggest. “For all we know, she could be a financial trader or a talented amateur at predicting the stock markets. Come on, let’s look for a laptop or a phone, something that might tell us where she is now.”

  “Doesn’t feel like anyone’s been in here for days,” Damian murmurs as he ransacks the top drawer of the dressing table, empty save a few old copies of Heat magazine.

  I shake my head, remembering the last time I explored a bedroom: Julia’s flat, even after Joanie’s removal of the more expensive items, had been bursting with personal bits and pieces.

  “Or else she never really lived here.”

  Damian throws back the silky bedcover. The sheets beneath are rumpled. He presses his face into one of the pillows.

  “Perfume,” he says, looking up. “I think she lived here.”

  “So where did she go?” I gaze down at the dressing table in the corner. The surface is clear, apart from a few half-empty body lotions, some tea light holders, and a row of glass perfume bottles. There’s a box that looks like it might have contained jewelry, but all that’s left inside is a single hoop earring.

  I sink into the chair in front of the dressing table with a sigh and pull open the top drawer. Two tubes of hand creams, a pack of tarot cards, a cigarette lighter, and a handful of change meet my eyes. I reach to the back of the drawer and find a pack of tea lights. I glance over at Damian. He is holding up a silk nightgown. It is long, black, and made for someone far smaller than I am. Despite the lace over the bust area and thin spaghetti straps, it manages to look sexy rather than trampy.

  “Beautiful,” I murmur.

  “Stella McCartney,” Damian says reverentially. He places the nightgown back inside the covers and remakes the bed.

  “You’re well brought up,” I say with a smile.

  He grins back. “Fierce mum and two older sisters.”

  I glance out the window—a dull view over the street at the front of the building.

  “So what have we found?” Damian asks.

  I take stock. “We know she’s neat and clean. There’s no dust to speak of, so she can’t have been gone long, but she still cleared out her fridge before she left.”

  “Or she left instructions for someone else to.”

  “You mean you think she might be in league with someone else?”

  “Actually, I meant that she might have a cleaner,” Damian says with a wry smile. He looks around. “What’s missing, that you’d expect to find in someone’s home, a girl’s home?”

  I follow his gaze. “No photos, no jewelry, nothing personal,” I say.

  “Exactly.” He nods. “It’s like she’s packed up all the most important stuff and just left.”

  I look down at the bedside table beside me. It’s made of cherrywood to match the one on the other side of the bed and sports a simple glass lamp and a notepad with a chunky black pen to the side.

  I pick up the notepad and switch on the lamp. The imprint of a single word is visible under the light.

  “Look.” I tilt the notepad so the indentation falls into shadow.

  “What does it say?” Damian asks.

  “Magalan,” I read.

  Damian wrinkles his nose. “What does that mean? Is it a name?”

  I frown. The word sounds familiar, but I can’t quite recall from where. I close my eyes, trying to remember. It’s something Julia once said. I’m certain of it.

  From the other end of the flat, the front door creaks open. A footstep sounds in the hall.

  I spring up, off the bed. Damian stiffens as the footsteps move toward us. I drop the notepad on the floor. There’s no time to run, nowhere to hide.

  A split second later, the bedroom door opens.

  A young man in glasses and a grubby sweater stands in the doorway. He’s holding an document envelope in his hands.

&n
bsp; “Er, Livy Jackson?” he says.

  I stare at him, the surrealism of the situation hitting me like a fist. “How do you know my name?” I stammer.

  He gives an awkward, lopsided shrug. “A man asked me to give you this,” he says, holding up the envelope.

  Damian strides over. “What man?” he says, grabbing the messenger by the arm. “How did he know Livy would be here?”

  The messenger backs away, his eyes widening. “I didn’t see him,” he says quickly. “The guy just called me, said he was a mate of a mate.”

  “Which mate?” I ask.

  The man shrugs, then offers me the envelope again. I take it. There’s something solid and ridged inside it. My name is printed on the front in large, black type.

  “What exactly did this man tell you to do?” Damian asks.

  “He said I was to go to the trash can outside this apartment, pick up an envelope, come here, and give it to you—then when I went back down, there’d be fifty quid under the same barrel, waiting for me.”

  The messenger turns away.

  “Wait.” As Damian speaks, I tear open the envelope. Inside is a sheet of white paper to which four large colored wooden letters from a child’s puzzle have been stuck. They spell out a single word: S T O P

  What does that mean?

  I meet Damian’s eye as the horrifying truth dawns on me. If whoever sent this knew I was here, they must also know why, which means this has to be a message from Julia’s killer, an order to stop investigating her death.

  “How did he know I was here?” The thought slips out of me as a whisper.

  Damian shakes his head.

  I sit down on the bed, my legs like jelly. I peer more closely at the colored wooden letters. They look familiar. The S is decorated with a snake; the O is an orange with a red felt-tip mark across the top.

  With a jolt, I realize they are pieces from an old puzzle of Hannah and Zack’s.

  “Hey!” Damian is striding across the room after the messenger, who is disappearing out the door. “Come back.”

  The two men vanish along the corridor.

  I sit, staring at the letters. Whoever delivered these to me has almost certainly been in my house. He knows who I am and where I live and where my children’s old jigsaw puzzles are stored. My heart thuds, hard and painful, in my chest.

  Shouts sound outside. I can hear Damian yelling and swearing. I rush to the window. Damian is on the street. There’s no sign of the messenger. I look straight down, and the yard three floors below seems to rear up at me. I experience a single sickening moment of vertigo; then I’m aware of Damian stomping back to the house.

  My skin prickles with fear as I hurry along the corridor and out of Shannon’s flat. I pull the front door shut behind me and head for the stairs.

  The killer knows who I am. He knows where I live. He has been near my children.

  These terrifying thoughts tumble over each other inside my head as I hurry down the stairs. I meet Damian on the second-floor landing.

  As we speed down to the ground floor, he talks at me, his voice rushed and breathless. “There was fifty pounds under the bin, just like the guy said. I asked him again about … about the man … how he knew him, whether he had an accent. But the guy just ran off.”

  I nod. My legs still feel shaky and I can’t concentrate properly on what he’s saying. I can barely breathe, I’m so scared. I hold up the paper with the STOP letters.

  “These are from an old puzzle of Zack’s,” I explain.

  “Jesus.” Damian grabs my arm and pulls me toward his car. “Listen, Livy, I’m betting the fifty pounds was put under that bin after the messenger found the envelope and brought it in to us.”

  I stare at him in horror. “You mean whoever left the message and the money was here. Could still be here, watching us.”

  “Yes,” Damian says tersely. “Come on.”

  He unlocks the car as we approach. I fumble with the door as he rushes around and leaps in the other side. I slam the door shut and look up and down the street. There’s no sign of anyone outside, just a couple of kids playing by a front gate. Their cheerful yells somehow make the horror in my own head even worse.

  Damian revs the engine. A moment later we’re zooming away. Damian’s hands grip the steering wheel; his shoulders hunch forward. I glance at the speedometer. We’re already doing almost sixty.

  Damian takes the first turnoff without signaling. A car honks at him.

  “Slow down,” I say. I twist around, looking behind us. The road is empty.

  Damian drives on, possessed.

  “Slow down, there’s no one following us,” I insist, my hand on his arm.

  With a shudder, Damian releases his tight hold on the wheel and slows the car. He signals for the next intersection, and slows further to take the corner. I sit back. I realize I’m holding my breath and take in a deep lungful of air. My whole body trembles as Damian drives on. Neither of us speaks for several minutes.

  At last Damian pulls over. He removes a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lights up. “Oh my God.” He takes a long, full drag on the cigarette. “Who the hell sent that guy?”

  “Whoever it was knows me,” I say, the full weight of what that means dawning. “He killed Julia and he wants me to back off and if I don’t, he will come after me and … and…” I point to the piece of paper with the colored wooden letters, unable to put into words my fear that this man may hurt not only me but also my children.

  “Okay.” Damian blows out his breath. “Okay, let’s think rationally about this.” He pauses. “Do you have any idea who could have sent that, who he is?”

  “No, of course not,” I say.

  Damian meets my gaze. “Do you think—? Is there any chance it could have been Will?”

  “No.” I stare at him. “No way.”

  “How can you be so sure? He has more access to your kids’ things than anyone else.”

  I press my hands together, trying to find the words to explain. “Will might have had an affair—a whole string of them,” I say slowly, “but he couldn’t have killed Julia. Or anyone. And he would never hurt me.”

  Damian looks at me. I can see the questions my denial leaves unanswered tumbling through his head:

  What about finding Julia’s stolen ring in Will’s toolbox?

  What about Shannon Walker being hired by Julia to entrap him?

  What about all Will’s lies?

  There’s a long pause. The air around us is suddenly stifling.

  “It wasn’t Will,” I insist stubbornly.

  Damian still looks skeptical.

  “Seriously,” I go on.

  “Okay, so what do we do now?” Damian asks.

  I look around, my skin crawling with fear. Are we in danger right now? On this quiet, leafy street, that seems impossible. Thank goodness the kids are at Mum’s.

  I hold up the piece of paper with the STOP letters. “Being sent this means we must be getting close to the truth about Julia’s death, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” Damian takes a deep breath. “So, like I said, what do you want to do?”

  “We could tell the police,” I say.

  Damian frowns. “What? That someone sent you a few pieces from an old jigsaw puzzle?”

  “A puzzle from my own house.”

  “It doesn’t mean whoever sent it killed Julia.” Damian pauses. “What we really need is to find Shannon. She’s the key to all this.… She can tell us what Julia found out … why Will’s name was on the Honey Hearts form … give us something more concrete…”

  “We have only one clue,” I say. “That word she wrote down by her bed: Magalan.”

  “Have you remembered where you heard it before?”

  “It was something Julia said. I can’t remember exactly what.…” I hesitate, unsure.

  “Maybe it’s a surname?” Damian suggests. “How about an ex-lover? Or … Christ, d’you think it could be the name of the person who killed her?”
His eyes are strained and anxious. He’s clutching at straws. Again.

  “I don’t know.” I run my mind over the names I’m aware of from Julia’s past: the two exes at the funeral—Charlie Framley and Tom Harrison—then further back to the men I only ever heard about. There was a Simon, a Marty, two Sams, and a Jonny, plus Alan Rutherford the policeman … Alan.

  I close my eyes, feeling the full heat of the sun against my eyelids. I feel faint. I can hear Julia’s voice in my head.

  So he only left me the bloody thing in his will, she’d said. Even though it’s named after himself and his wife.

  My eyes snap open, and for a second, the sunlight blinds me.

  “Magalan is the name of her place in Lympstone. The one the police guy left her, Alan Rutherford.”

  “Magalan is a house?”

  “Yes. The name’s a mix of his and his late wife’s names: Maggie and Alan.”

  Damian makes a face. “Really?”

  “Yeah, Julia thought that was weird too.” I smile, remembering Julia’s bewilderment at why a pair of grown-ups would choose to name their home in this way. I thought it was sweet, but then that was the year before Will’s affair, when I was heavily into my pregnancy with Zack and blissfully happy with my handsome, loving husband and my sweet-natured, affectionate little girl.

  “Livy?”

  I turn to Damian. “What?”

  “I was asking if you’ve ever been there, this Magalan place?”

  I nod. “Once or twice years ago, but then Julia decided to rent it out to make some extra cash.”

  Damian nods. “She mentioned it to me too, but we never went there.”

  “So why would Shannon be writing down the name of the house?”

  “Julia must have told her about it,” Damian says. “D’you know where it is, exactly?”

  “Yes.” I check my watch. It’s only just after eleven. We can easily drive to Lympstone and then back to Exeter before I make my return journey to Mum and the kids.