Next of Kin

by Welfare, Sue

  ‘You’re smiling, Josh.’

  ‘Sorry. It was just really good to see her, I’d missed her. I was going to hug her, kiss her – I’m not sure really, but as I stepped towards her she stepped away and said, “You can’t be here. I don’t know what Woody would do if he found you here”. She sounded genuinely nervous. She told me that I ought to leave. And I told her that I thought he would be a while.

  ‘“How can you know that?” she said. She told me that she never knew when he was coming back, and I wasn’t sure what to tell her.’

  ‘About the girl you had seen him with?’

  ‘That’s right. I mean, it would have been easy to say something but I wasn’t sure how she would take it. I said it would be better if I came inside, but she was reluctant.’

  ‘Okay, so did you force your way in, Josh?’

  ‘No, of course not. No, but I wasn’t going to talk to her on the doorstep.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  For a moment neither of them said a word, Josh just stood there in the doorway looking at her. It was Sarah who finally spoke, her voice thick with tears. ‘I have missed you so much,’ she murmured.

  Josh swallowed hard.

  ‘What the hell is going on, Sarah?’ he said, though his voice was soft.

  He held out his arms and she stepped into them. She felt like dry kindling, barely more than skin over bones. He was worried about hugging her too tight in case she broke.

  When Sarah finally pulled away she had tears trickling down her face. ‘You can’t come in. And you can’t stay here,’ she said, looking past him into the road.’ I don’t know what Woody will do if he finds you here.’

  Ignoring her, Josh pushed the door to behind him. ‘It’s all right. He won’t be back for a while yet.’

  ‘How can you know that? He could be back any minute,’ Sarah whispered, peering out of the tiny window by the door. ‘He does that. He comes back when I’m not expecting him.’

  ‘I saw him a little while ago and I’m pretty certain he will be gone for a while.’ He hesitated. ‘I followed him back to a house in Kirby Road.’

  Sarah stared at him. ‘You followed him. Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Josh stopped, wondering how much to tell her. ‘Because I wanted to know what’s going on with you two. I wanted to talk to you and I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t here so we could sort this out.’

  Her gaze moved back over his shoulder towards the door. ‘Kirby Road is not that far away.’

  ‘I know.’ Josh nodded. ‘But it’ll be okay. I promise.’

  ‘Kirby Road is where Woody used to live before he moved in here. I think he goes there sometimes to check for post and play chess with his old landlord. But you can’t stay,’ she said, getting increasingly upset. ‘You really can’t.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Josh said, holding tight onto the top of her arms. ‘What are you afraid of? This is crazy, just tell me what is going on? There’s nothing we can’t sort out, Sarah. Nothing. I promise you. Do you understand? ’

  ‘I’m married,’ she said.

  Josh nodded. ‘I know.’

  Sarah’s eyes widened.

  ‘Anessa told me. I’ve been round to the nursery this morning. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘It’s not how it looks. I hadn’t got any choice,’ Sarah said. ‘I wanted to tell you. You have to believe me.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m not with you. What do you mean, no choice?’ Josh said.

  Sarah bit her lip, evidently considering her reply and what to tell him and then she shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘You have to trust me that this wasn’t what I wanted.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  Sarah hesitated. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. Hadn’t Woody impressed on her that she wasn’t to tell anyone? Especially not Josh? She remembered the implied threat, subtle but there all the same. She stared up into his eyes. She loved him, and there was no way she wanted Josh hurt the way Ryan had been hurt. She couldn’t save Ryan but she could save Josh. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You have to believe me.’

  Sarah

  ‘Did you think if you told Josh he would go to the police?’

  ‘Maybe, I knew that he would try to do something about it and I was worried what might happen if he did.’

  ‘You thought Woody might hurt him?’

  ‘No, not Woody, Farouk. Woody had already told me that if we were picked up by the police Farouk would know it was me who had told someone. Woody wasn’t going to say anything.’

  ‘And you think that meant he would go after Josh?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what he was capable of. Woody knew that I loved Josh. But there were other people too, even if Josh could look after himself, there’s Anessa, Mrs Howard – I couldn’t risk telling anyone.’

  ‘So you were frightened of what might happen?’

  ‘Terrified.’

  Josh

  ‘Sarah wouldn’t tell me anything and was getting more and more upset, so in the end I didn’t push it. I suppose I wanted to know where we went from there, but it wasn’t the right time to ask and I’m not sure that she could have told me. I just felt relieved that I had finally seen her. I know we hadn’t got anything straight but it felt like we had made a start. I wanted to help. Then she told me that Woody had taken her phone, and that the house phone was broken, so I gave her my mobile.’

  ‘Wasn’t that inconvenient?’

  ‘No, not really. I’ve got two, one for work and one for personal calls. I just wanted her to know that she wasn’t on her own and that she could contact me if she wanted to.’

  ‘And then you left Sarah at the house?’

  ‘You make it sound like it was easy. To be honest I didn’t want to leave her at all. I tried to persuade her to come with me but she said that she couldn’t leave. It was her home and there were things she needed to do. But she was walking on eggshells, looking out of the window, panicky that Woody might come back at any moment. I could hardly tell her he was more than likely in bed with a blonde barely out of high school, could I? But I thought if I left her the phone at least she could call me.’

  ‘And so you were there, what, ten minutes?’

  ‘If that. At the door she told me that she loved me, and I believed her.’

  ‘Even though she was married to someone else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sarah

  ‘As soon as Josh had left I called the numbers that were on the piece of paper I’d found in Ryan’s pocket.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They were both for firms of solicitors. They refused to tell me if Woody was a client of theirs. I wondered if maybe it was something to do with his right to remain application, but they wouldn’t tell me. And then I went online on Josh’s phone and looked for the website. It’s a site called Willsonline where you can write your will and then download a printed version for people to sign and witness and then you scan it in and upload it to their site for safe keeping. Once I knew what it was I opened up my laptop. I couldn’t get online on the laptop but I was able to get into the history and see if the site was on there too.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘Yes. Someone had been on there several times over the previous few weeks.’

  ‘And you believed that that was significant?’

  ‘It’s my laptop. As far as I knew until then, nobody else had used it except me. I copied the link down from my laptop and put it into Josh’s phone. I wanted to see what they had done on the site. It’s all password protected but it was obvious from what came up that someone had set up an account with Willsonline on there. So I then filled in the thing on the login screen where it said, “Have you lost your password”. I put my email address in and waited to see what happened.’

  ‘And what did happen?’

  ‘Nothing. The site said they had no record of that email address but to check to make sure that I hadn’t made a mistake and signed up using another.’

  ‘So what d
id you do?’

  ‘On my laptop, in the history someone had been onto Hotmail and Yahoo Mail several times, over weeks. But I couldn’t get into either of them.’

  ‘You keep saying someone, Sarah. Do you mean Woody?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got no proof it was him. There was a chance it could have been Ryan.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘He could easily have used my computer. I mean, it was the kind of thing he would have done if he hadn’t got his with him. Ryan always used to write his passwords down in a diary he kept in the kitchen. So I went downstairs to his flat. If he’d used my laptop to access those accounts with his passwords then I’d be able to open them too.

  ‘The door of his flat was unlocked and it looked like someone else had already been through it.’

  ‘What do you mean, been through it? Searched?’

  ‘Yes. The drawers were open in the kitchen and the bedroom, and the cupboards too. There were things all over the place. Someone had definitely been searching for something. The police had said they wouldn’t touch anything and they hadn’t been down there long enough to have searched it like that. It had to have been Woody. And by the look of it, it hadn’t been the first time. If he had found the place in a mess like that and it hadn’t been him who had done it, surely he would have said something?

  ‘There was a roll of rubbish bags on the kitchen table and another rubbish bag half full of what looked like the contents of Ryan’s fridge on the kitchen floor, so – if you didn’t know – it might look like someone had been clearing the place out.’

  ‘And Woody had already told you he had been down there?’

  ‘Yes, yes he had.’

  ‘So did you look too?’

  ‘Yes. I found his diary and got his passwords but I couldn’t work out what else Woody would have been searching for. There was nothing obvious. So in the end I went back to the house and tried to log on with Ryan’s passwords, but none of them worked. And then I went back up to the attic.’

  ‘To Woody’s room?’

  ‘Yes. Josh had said he looked like he would be a while. I wanted to try and find out what it was he had had signed and witnessed. I went through the rest of the box files and there was nothing much in any of them until I got to the last one.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarah opened the file on the end of the shelf. It looked exactly the same as the others and appeared to be full of notes on the European Union and the Euro, but then, as she ruffled through the papers with her fingers she realised that there was a piece of card cut to the same size as the box sitting under the papers, not stuck in, just pressed home so that it formed a hidden compartment, obscured by the dry dusty notes on monetary union.

  Very carefully, with an ear towards the door, Sarah lifted the papers out and pressed the card down along the side so it lifted along the other edge. Underneath were what looked like a cache of official documents, a couple of bankbooks, a chequebook, and a registered letter still in its envelope, all addressed to Woody. Inside the envelope, along with a letter confirming Woody’s place on the MBA, was a passport. Sarah scanned the letter. It was from the college. It congratulated him on being awarded his place and thanked him for his passport, which, they assured him, had been returned along with his letter of acceptance. A second sheet of paper, folded up along with the first, was from the bank assuring him that he would be able to withdraw and manage his funds on the production of a suitable form of identification, and suggested he bring along a current passport or a photo driving license.

  Sarah opened the passport. The photograph inside was of a good-looking Asian man with bright humorous eyes who bore more than a passing resemblance to Woody. But it wasn’t Woody.

  Sarah stared at the picture for a moment or two and let the thought sink it. It wasn’t Woody. As she flicked through the pages a laminated card slipped out onto the floor. It was a photo ID, a student union card, with the same man’s photo on it and underneath was his name. Woody’s name.

  Sarah turned the pages again just in case there was some possibility that she was mistaken, but she knew that she wasn’t. And if this was the real Woody’s passport and ID card then who was it she was married to? And what did he want?

  Sarah sat very still, taking a moment or two to take stock, trying to piece it together, trying to work out what it all meant. Until now she had been terrified of what might happen if she went to the police, terrified of the consequences, but this was something else, bigger than anything she had imagined. Whatever it was that was going on, what was obvious was that she needed to tell someone.

  There was nothing else in the box file that caught her eye; the other documents were written in a language she couldn’t read, and though they might have told her much more about Woody or whoever it was who was masquerading as Woody, currently their secrets were locked tight. But someone else would no doubt be able to translate them. She looked over the things on the floor, trying to work out what to do next. Did she take them with her or leave them there, so that if Woody came home he wouldn’t know that she had discovered his secret? If she left them she could choose her moment, catch him off guard. Maybe that was best, maybe, but she still needed proof of what she’d found.

  Taking out Josh’s phone Sarah took photographs of the letters, the passport, and the ID card.

  Tucking everything back where she had found it Sarah started to search the room with renewed energy. She wanted to know everything, find everything. The bedside tables revealed nothing, the desk, the remaining things on the bookshelf; nothing gave her any more than she already knew. Finally, on her hands and knees, she peered under the bed.

  Tucked up by the head of the bed was a biscuit tin. She slid it out. It was the one she usually kept in her bedroom. Sarah prised open the lid.

  Sarah

  ‘It’s where I keep all my important documents. Mum always used to do it to keep them safe and all together. You know that question people ask about what you’d grab if there were a fire? For my mum it would have been her precious biscuit tin. I hadn’t even noticed that it was gone.’

  ‘And what was inside?’

  ‘All sorts of things. There was the marriage certificate, my birth certificate, my driving license, and passport. Old bank statements that he must have got out of my bedroom drawer. Photos, letters from friends. My whole life. And then there were other things that I hadn’t put in there. A photo of Woody and me together at the wedding. One Ryan had taken of us in the garden, standing side by side near the barbeque. Having them in there made it look like they were special. Like I was treasuring them.

  ‘I felt sick, imagining him going through my things, searching through everything to find what he wanted. I kept wondering what else he had stolen.

  And then I found a sheet of paper folded up, tucked down the side; it was like the one I had found in Ryan’s coat pocket, except that it had my signature written over and over again down both sides of the page.’

  ‘Are you saying you’d written it?’

  ‘No. Woody hadn’t just been practising his signature, he had been practising mine too. And it was good, anyone would think it was mine. Anyone.’

  ‘Do you want to take a break, Sarah? I can see you’re upset. We’ve been going for quite a while. If you just want to stop for a few minutes…’

  ‘No, no I’m fine. Really. I took photos of the page with the signatures and then, in an envelope I found out why he needed to forge it. There were applications for credit cards and a loan. And there was a repeat prescription and a bottle of pills with my name on them.’

  ‘Pills?’

  ‘After Mum died I was finding it really hard to cope. I’d left college, more or less given up on my own life really so that I could take care of her. Ryan was playing up and I’d spent months nursing her, trying to keep her going, keep her pain-free. Not that I regret that but – anyway – after Mum died her doctor suggested anti-depressants for a little while till I got myself back together.’
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  ‘And did you have a repeat prescription?’

  ‘I think I probably must have had one somewhere.’

  ‘And was there anything else in the tin?’

  ‘Yes, there was a copy of my will.’

  ‘Your will?’

  ‘Printed off from the website I was telling you about. Witnessed by Mrs Howard and someone I’d never heard of. It must have been what she signed the day that Woody told her that he was in a hurry.’

  ‘You believe Woody wrote it?’

  ‘I know he did. I don’t have a will. I’ve never written a will.’

  ‘And you read it?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a break, Sarah. We can stop if you like?’

  ‘No. I need to tell you what he had done. I need you to understand. It was all totally legal looking, all very efficient, all signed and sealed, all so plausible. The will – my will – left Woody everything. It said: To my loving husband – my loving husband. The house, my car, all my possessions, everything. Every last thing.’

  ‘No mention of Ryan?’

  ‘Yes, he was in there. It said in the event of Ryan predeceasing me that Woody would inherit it all. If I died first, under the terms of the trust my mum left for us, Ryan would get the house.’

  ‘So it was convenient for Woody that your brother was dead?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I took photos of everything that was in there.’

  ‘Did you take the biscuit tin?’

  ‘No, I didn’t want Woody to know that I’d been in his room. The only thing I did take was the page of signatures. It was the one thing that I thought would prove that he was committing fraud, maybe worse.’