The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  ‘Okay, give me a few hours. Hold tight. And I mean it: refuse to answer any questions alone.’

  ‘Done.’

  And then we’d hung up.

  As I was escorted back to my holding cell, I imagined her pulling up outside my childhood home in an Uber. Dad would look out the window, peering from behind a light yellow curtain, the way he always did when he heard someone pull up, and announce to Mum that it was Tess. After multiple offers of cups of tea were politely declined and Tess finally got that envelope in her hands, when she opened it and flicked through the pages, what would she find?

  12.13 pm

  I was halfway through a really suspect, white bread sandwich when I heard the door unbolt. Kowalski. My pulse sped up: that meant one thing. Tess was back. Or Vince had arrived. And whoever it was probably had the envelope with them. I dropped my sandwich, blinking hard. What was in their envelope?

  Please be something.

  ‘DCI Holland wanted to ask a few more questions, Charlie,’ he said. When I stood up I felt dizzy. I must have moved too fast or hadn’t eaten enough or the last week was finally taking its toll. I leaned against the wall until it passed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kowalski asked.

  I nodded. I just wanted this over with. I’d been preparing myself up until I finally fell asleep, getting ready to answer questions about Annabella Harth when her emails finally landed on Holland’s desk.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, following him through the open door and hearing it close satisfyingly behind us. It was good to be on this side of it. We moved down the hallway, through a couple of doors and another hallway, eventually arriving back at the same room I’d been questioned in.

  DCI Holland was already sitting at the same table with a notepad and a couple of printouts on the table in front of her. Next to her lay my phone. But no Tess. No Vince. No orange envelope.

  Shit.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said. I sat down across from her and Kowalski returned to his place beside her. We were back to the exact formation we’d been in the day before. She flicked the switch on the device beside her, ran through the obligatory script – day, time (12.22) and who was present – and I just sat there, thinking: Tess told me not to talk to them without her guy but what if they’ve got the emails. It’ll look bad if I refuse to say anything. I just won’t say anything incriminating …

  ‘Charlie,’ Holland began, reaching for the papers in front of her, her eyes on mine.

  That was when the fear hit: what if that’s a report from their tech-team? What if they’ve gone through my phone and know that I went back to Brooke’s place? What if they’ve found my deleted dating app somehow, and know I was Annabella Harth? If that happens, I’ll tell them I won’t continue without my lawyer.

  ‘I trust you feel OK to continue?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, staring at my phone.

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. All business. ‘Charlie, after we spoke yesterday, we got in touch with Brooke Shaw.’ I couldn’t read her eyes. What had Brooke told her? Shit, shit, shit.

  But I did my best to control my expression. ‘Great. Was she helpful?’

  DCI Holland shifted in her chair and leaned forward.

  ‘Have you ever heard the name Annabella Harth?’

  Uh-oh. There it was.

  This was either very good or very, very bad. I didn’t know what those papers were in front of her. My next lie could go one of two ways. Should I stop?

  ‘Who?’ I asked, my throat tight.

  ‘Annabella Harth,’ she repeated, her eyes narrowed. ‘Think hard, Charlie. Now’s not the time to lie.’

  I frowned at her. ‘I’m not lying, not about any of it. I have no idea who she is.’

  The seconds lagged as I waited for the next instalment. But she wasn’t talking. Neither was Kowalski. They were hoping I’d crack and fill the silence with truth. Fuck that.

  I could play the silent game too.

  But it was Holland who cracked first.

  ‘We’ve received some information from her. Information about Oliver’s death.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, pausing for a moment. ‘Well, what did she say?’

  ‘I’d like you to take a look at something.’ She slid her phone across the table and I glanced down at the screen. ‘Tell me what you see in these pictures?’

  It was Brooke’s Instagram account.

  Fucking finally.

  This was good. She, or someone else at the police, had followed the breadcrumbs and seen it. But even though it was good news, my stomach clenched as I stared down at Brooke’s profile picture – big sunhat, staring off into the distance. The one I’d ruminated over back when I thought Oliver was cheating.

  ‘Well,’ I said, frowning like I wasn’t sure why she was asking me. ‘That’s Brooke.’ I shrugged, pointing to her face. My eyes scanned down through the other pictures, the ones with her sister.

  ‘Wait, that’s Alyssa, Oliver’s ex-girlfriend.’ I looked up at Holland with one of the ingénue looks that always got me the role. ‘Wh-What’s going on?’

  Holland shifted in her seat. ‘How well did you know Brooke?’

  I frowned again. ‘Not that well. I met her a couple of months ago, at Pilates.’

  ‘And did she ever meet Oliver?’

  I paused, as if to think. ‘No. Why? Look, my husband is dead. Please just tell me what this Annabelle woman said.’

  ‘Annabella,’ she corrected me. She was watching me, frowning. Everything that had been so crystal clear just 24 hours before – her gleaming prime suspect with motive and lots of evidence – was now murky. I almost felt for her. It’s shit when that happens. When the quicksand you’ve been building on gives way.

  ‘The information she sent through implicated Brooke.’

  ‘Brooke?’ I asked, sitting dead still.

  ‘We brought her in this morning and have been questioning her.’ She trailed off at the end.

  I was shaking my head as though I just couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Charlie, we found other concerning correspondence in Oliver’s work emails. Brooke had been trying to get his company to look into … something.’

  ‘Into what? They’d never even bloody met,’ I said.

  She let out a big breath. ‘Brooke had met Oliver.’ She spoke slowly, as though aware of the weight of her words. Of the fact that I might need time to take it all in. ‘She was Alyssa’s sister. And—’

  ‘What!?’ I stared at her, trying to look a bit stunned, waiting for her to finish.

  ‘Brooke claims that Oliver borrowed a large sum of money from her family under the guise of an investment. Did Oliver ever mention anything about that?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t do something like that.’

  ‘And that Alyssa killed herself as a result.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, guilt swelling in my veins. ‘That’s awful.’

  Beat.

  ‘Brooke confessed to killing Oliver an hour ago,’ Holland said.

  I let the words wash over me, tears of relief burning in my eyes. To DCI Holland, I would have appeared in shock.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, a hot tear rolling down my cheek.

  ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ Holland continued, all business. ‘You’re free to go.’ She stood up. ‘But we might need you to come in and answer some more questions.’

  I looked up at her. ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Then she slid my phone across to me. ‘You can have this back.’

  I nodded, took it and slid it into my pocket, relief pulsing through me. They hadn’t checked it; not properly at least. I mean they might have gone through my texts and emails, but they clearly hadn’t delved into cross-referencing the exact time I finally left Brooke’s house with her account of our morning – unless of course putting it on airplane mode and turning it off actually worked.

  Officer Kowalski ushered me out. I followed him to the door and then down the hallway to collect my things.
<
br />   12.43 pm

  The cab pulled away from the kerb and I dialled Tess. I needed to tell her I was okay.

  ‘Charlie?’ she answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘where are you?’

  ‘I’m still in the Uber. Vince can get there in about an hour. Wait. You’re calling from your mobile. Did they let you go?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They did.’

  ‘Well, praise fucking be,’ she said. I was so stressed.

  My head felt hazy as I tried to focus on the buildings moving past the window outside. I was trying to find the words to tell her that it was Brooke. To tell her why. But she spoke before I had a chance.

  ‘So you were right,’ she said. ‘There were things in that envelope.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘There’s this company document for Lucamore Enterprises – remember the one I asked you about? It wasn’t just Oliver who owned that, it was Justin too. And, babe, it looks like they were being very naughty boys.’

  ‘What were they doing?’ I asked, my stomach filled with cement.

  I expected her to say something about Alyssa. That they’d done similar things to other people. That they were essentially defrauding people out of their savings. One of those things you see on current affairs shows where everyone talks about how charming each of the perpetrators were and how they ‘never saw it coming’. But instead she said: ‘There were taking some pretty large payments through that company, hon. A company that you, his wife, didn’t even know existed. I’m not really sure what’s going on here, but it doesn’t look legit at all.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my mind recalibrating to take in this new information.

  ‘And there’s more. It looks like they were paying someone off through that company too.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Someone called J. N. Machado.’

  I thought of the way Oliver’s face had always turned the colour of tin every time Machado’s name came up. What did he have over Oliver and Justin that would make them pay him off? Or what was he doing for them?

  Then I thought back to Justin. Were these the documents he was looking for? No wonder he was so insistent. If they fell into the wrong hands, it sounded like he’d go to prison.

  ‘Since when?’ I asked. Had it started during our marriage or was it already happening when I met him? How had I slept beside Oliver for all those months and never known so much about him?

  ‘November 2016,’ she said. ‘So a while.’

  I let out a small gasp and the cab driver’s eyes darted to the rear view mirror, like he was worried I might puke in his cab. I caught his gaze and he quickly looked away. But all I could think about in that moment was the email from Alyssa in Brooke’s inbox in that same month begging Oliver to give her parents back their money. That was dated November too.

  I’d been right. Oliver hadn’t lost her money in a bad investment. He hadn’t lost it at all. Because he’d never invested it.

  No, he needed it to pay off Machado.

  But Justin was just as much a part of it as Oliver. Why hadn’t Brooke targeted him too? Why just us?

  ‘I’ll be home in about an hour,’ Tess said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘We can look at it together then.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, a bit dazed.

  ‘Oh, and your mum and dad didn’t know anything, hon, so I left it. But you should probably call them.’

  A pang of guilt. ‘Thanks, I will. See you soon.’

  And then we hung up.

  1.27 pm

  Forty minutes later I arrived at Tess’s flat. My limbs felt like lead and I just wanted to go to bed.

  My reflection was distorted in the metal doors of the lift. I looked a bit like those images in crazy mirrors at a fun fair. It was apt because that’s exactly how I felt right at that moment. Like everything was distorted, my entire life was built on quicksand and it was hard to tell reality from illusion.

  The doors closed, I pressed the number 5 for her floor, and watched as each number lit up. In that moment, I could see Oliver there, his green eyes smiling back at me from the pillow. I could still smell the ylang-ylang scent that always lingered on his skin. I still loved him. But I realised now that I never knew him. Not really. He was so many different people all at once.

  The lift doors pinged and slid open. As I approached Tess’s door I was thinking about how I’d have a shower and then put myself to bed. I slid the key into the lock and the door swung open. Suddenly the little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and my breath caught in my throat.

  I stood there paralysed, taking in the chaos. Everything was everywhere. The sofa cushions had been torn apart, the stuffing removed. The contents of Tess’s bookshelf and drawers were all over the floor. And through the bedroom door I could see that her closets had been emptied onto the floor. My ears roared with blood. What was happening? Tess certainly hadn’t mentioned a break-in so it must have happened that morning.

  What if they were still inside?

  I held my breath and tiptoed back out into the hallway, closed the door quietly behind me and pressed the down button on the lift. I needed to get far away from here. Now.

  How did they get in?

  The lift came and I leapt inside. My hairline was damp from sweat and I was breathing hard. The doors closed and it started to move. This was the second break-in I’d been confronted with. It was highly unlikely they were unrelated.

  It couldn’t have been Brooke – she was in custody.

  Whoever it was knew about Tess. They knew we were close and I’d been there recently. And they knew where she lived.

  And from the state of her apartment they were desperate to find something, probably the same documents they were looking for when they broke into our flat after Oliver died. The same sort of evidence they wiped from Oliver’s hard drive. The same evidence that Tess had found with Oliver’s will.

  It had to be Justin.

  Or Machado. Or both of them.

  It had to be someone who was worried that Oliver had left loose ends and their little business might be exposed.

  What if Tess had been there? What if they’d hurt her?

  I would never have forgiven myself.

  Ping.

  As the elevator doors opened I pressed the big green exit button and rushed outside onto the main road. Witnesses. If anything happened, I wanted witnesses.

  I pulled up my Uber app and ordered a car back to Charing Cross. Not the police station, mind you. I’m not stupid – no driver would choose to pick up that ride. The train station. I’d walk the final leg.

  And then I called Tess to tell her not to go home.

  2.33pm

  I was back in DCI Holland’s office, her on one side of the desk and me on the other. It was messy: papers, three coffee cups – one read: Not my monkeys, not my circus – and a screen that had fallen into sleep mode. The orange envelope was lying on her desk and she was working her way through its contents.

  I could see her frowning down at the Lucamore company document. There were two signatures: Oliver Buchanan and Justin Langley. Next she laid three pages of transactions down in front of her, tracing through them with her pointer finger and pausing at each yellow line.

  Every few lines was one highlighted in yellow.

  Those were transfers to a certain Machado.

  The others were suspect hefty deposits into the account, not out.

  I knew all this because I’d had time to inspect those same documents with Tess in the waiting room.

  ‘Hon, the scariest thing is that he left these for you to find, that he’d risk that. Like he wanted there to be some trail. Some proof of what had been going on. Something you’d only find if you opened his will. Was he scared of someone?’ Tess said.

  I thought back to last Easter. Oliver in that mustard jumper I’d picked out for him. The way he squeezed my hand at my parents’ front door on the day we dropped off that envelope. Him promising me it would be okay, t
hat he was there with me.

  Tess was right of course: Oliver was scared of someone.

  I wasn’t sure if it was Justin or Machado, or both, but the only way Justin knew those documents existed, the only reason he was so keen to find them before someone else did, was because Oliver had told him they existed. And the only reason he’d have done that was to keep us safe.

  It was a warning: if anything happens to me, you’ll be going down too. I thought back to the way Oliver had always changed in Justin’s presence: how he always pandered to him. His hand squeezing my shoulder, signalling to me not to make trouble. It all made so much sense now. He was scared. He was protecting me. Us.

  And that made me scared too. Even more so after seeing what had happened to Tess’s flat. I didn’t have any evidence but there were only two people still alive with something to lose via the contents of that envelope so it was one, or both, of them.

  ‘Do you know who this is? – J. N. Machado?’ DCI Holland asked, her finger still on his name.

  I nodded. ‘It’s someone Oliver did business with. He used to get pretty stressed every time his name came up. Was Machado blackmailing them?’

  ‘It’s hard to say for certain,’ she said. ‘But it does appear so. And these other transactions do paint a rather damning picture of their business, Charlie. This is a lot of money to be flowing into a company that doesn’t actually do anything. Especially this quickly. Do you know why Oliver would have left this for you to find?’

  I thought of Tess’s words. ‘I think he was scared and he was trying to protect himself. If they knew those documents were out there somewhere and might get found if something happened to Oliver, it was less likely that they’d harm him, right?’

  She looked up from the page, her hazel eyes meeting mine. She nodded.

  But I wasn’t there to surmise. I was there to get Justin and Machado arrested so they couldn’t hurt me or Tess. That was why I’d handed that envelope over to DCI Holland and not tried to negotiate with Justin myself.

  But DCI Holland was taking a really long time to make whatever call she needed to make that happen, and it was making my blood pump too fast.

  ‘It all makes sense now, right? It was Justin or Machado who broke into our flat after Oliver died. They were searching for those,’ I said, nodding again at the pages in front of her.