by TM Logan
‘Past tense?’
‘He’s not a friend any more, no.’
‘But he was?’
‘Our wives went to school together. I’d met him at weddings, christenings, things like that over the years. But I’ve only got to know him more this past year, since he moved to London.’
‘More of an acquaintance, then.’
I shrugged.
‘Through Mel.’
‘How often do you see him and his wife?’
‘Maybe once every six weeks, couple of months, when Mel and Beth organise a get-together – dinner, barbecue or whatever.’
‘You go to the pub with Mr Delaney sometimes?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘We don’t have a hell of a lot in common, to be honest.’
That brought me up short. Except we do now. We definitely have something in common.
‘You mean you don’t have the same interests.’
‘He tried to get me to join his poker night a few months back. Mel wanted me to join in, show willing.’
‘Mr Delaney likes his poker, does he?’
I shrugged.
‘He’s good at it. He knows when to push his luck and when to fold. He’s very good at reading people and he’s got more money than the rest of the players put together. So yes, he likes his poker.’
‘How about you?’
‘I only went once, it wasn’t really my thing.’
‘You lost money?’
‘A bit. I’m not very good at bluffing.’
‘So what is your thing, then?’
‘My wife and I have a four-year-old son, William, he just started last month at St Hilda’s Primary. He gets a lot of my time. And sport – I used to play hockey at county level until I got injured. Now it’s squash once a week with my friend Adam, five-a-side football sometimes. And I’m an English teacher at Haddon Park Academy.’
‘So you’re not friends any more because of this thing he had for your wife?’
‘You’ve read Mel’s statement from Saturday?’
‘I’ve read all of them.’
From the brown manila file DS Redford produced printed forms that looked familiar from my first visit to this police station.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it turns out there was a bit more to it than that.’
He studied me across the table.
‘In my experience, Mr Lynch, there usually is.’
31
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
‘The truth is, since that weird run-in with Ben on Thursday night, some things have happened and . . . I’ve found out some other things that I didn’t know before.’
‘Such as?’ Naylor said.
It wasn’t something I wanted to say out loud in front of strangers: saying it made it real, official somehow, while it still felt very much to me like it was in the realm of the unreal. It would mean the story of Mel’s betrayal would be recorded on tape, maybe forever. The red light on Naylor’s Dictaphone blinked on-off-on-off.
‘What did you find out, Joe?’ Naylor repeated, sitting forward in his chair.
My hands were shaking. I clasped them in my lap.
‘Him and Mel. They were . . . involved.’
Naylor waited for a few seconds before he spoke again.
‘Involved in what way?’
‘An affair. He pursued her for ages and she finally gave in a few months ago. It’s been going on since the summer.’
‘And you discovered this on Thursday evening?’
‘No. Well, kind of. It was yesterday that I found out, but Thursday was the first sign I had that something strange was going on. That’s where it started.’
‘Tell me how it happened.’
I gestured to the forms that Redford had produced from her brown manila file.
‘It’s in there, in my statement. Most of it, anyway.’
‘Tell me in your own words.’
And so I told him. From Thursday night until today, how it had all gone down – including Beth Delaney’s revelation in the pub yesterday and her husband being on the loose with one of his shotguns. Naylor listened to the whole sorry tale, nodding from time to time, his face impassive as Redford made notes alongside the form I recognised from Saturday, the statement I’d made to PC Khan. I told them everything as quickly as possible, trying to get it over with, and when the story was finished he gave me a moment before continuing.
‘What we do with a missing persons case like this, Joe, is try to establish a timeline of a person’s movements and activities. We take the timeline as far as we can, and see where it stops. Along with other information, that gives us a framework of facts to work with. These are the notes taken by PC Khan when he interviewed you and Mrs Lynch on Saturday afternoon.’ He turned pages in his folder, found the one he was looking for. ‘So before this morning at the country park, Thursday was definitely the last time you saw Ben?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how exactly did you part company? On friendly terms?’
‘No.’
‘Explain.’
‘I reversed into his car. He wasn’t best pleased.’
Naylor tapped the page in front of him with a pencil.
‘Interesting.’
‘I’m not proud of it.’
‘Interesting, in that your wife said there was a bit more to it than that.’
A swooping, lurching sensation in my stomach.
Shit. The story we told Beth on Saturday.
‘Oh?’ was all I could manage.
‘She told PC Khan that there was an argument. That Mr Delaney ended up on the deck.’
‘Erm. Yeah.’ I could feel my face getting hot. ‘That’s what happened. I had to leave in a hurry to get my son’s inhaler because he was having an asthma attack. And when I went back to the hotel soon after, Ben had left.’
‘You had a fight.’
‘He hit me, I pushed him. It wasn’t really a fight.’
‘Why didn’t you tell PC Khan that, Joe?’
I felt like I was ten years old again, standing in the headmaster’s office. At the same time I was annoyed that Mel couldn’t have just stuck to the story we agreed.
‘I’m sorry, I should have. But Ben’s wife came over on Saturday and was asking about him, so Mel gave her the story about the car to cover my back, and then I said the same thing to your colleague so Beth wouldn’t find out she’d lied.’
‘I see,’ Naylor said.
‘All that’s by the by now, of course, after what happened yesterday.’ I held my hands up. ‘I’m sorry, it was stupid. Stupid.’
‘So she lied to Beth Delaney and then you lied to a police officer.’
‘She was trying to protect me, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Beth was upset, she was crying, I was going to tell her the truth but then Mel jumped in with this story about me reversing into his Porsche. I thought she’d say the same to the policeman. All we were trying to do was help find Ben.’
‘You thought she’d lie to the police for you?’
I could feel the sweat beneath my shirt.
‘No, that’s not what happened. She told the truth.’
‘Or maybe both of you are lying.’
‘I’m sorry, it was dumb. I’m a terrible liar, as you can probably tell.’
Naylor nodded.
‘Lying well is a lot harder than most people think. Things gets complicated, people lose track. “A liar should have a good memory”, so they say. Most people don’t, not for this kind of thing.’
‘So what are you saying? That you don’t believe me?’
‘I’m saying nothing – we’re just trying to track a man down. A prominent, successful, well-off businessman who seems to have disappeared. Do you know where he might be?’
‘No idea. But he hasn’t disappeared.’
Naylor frowned and cocked his head to one side slightly.
‘Hasn’t he?’
‘I told you: I saw him this morning.’
‘Is that another lie?’
‘No. I swear.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. Mel spoke to him on the phone yesterday, and he’s been texting me.’
Naylor made another note on his pad.
‘You can see why we’re concerned, though, right? We’re not talking about a drunk, or an addict, or a person with mental health issues, or a serial runaway. We’re talking about a highly successful businessman who might have trampled people, turned people over, on his way up the ladder.’
‘There’s no “might have” about it. Ben does exactly what he wants, and screw everyone else. He’s destroyed people. Have you heard of Alex Kolnik?’
‘We’re talking to him this afternoon.’
‘I doubt he’ll have many nice things to say about Ben.’
‘We’ll see.’ He drank from his ‘Property of the BOSS’ mug and then held a finger up as if he’d just remembered something.
‘What was this meeting at the country park all about, by the way?’
‘Ben texted last night and said he wanted to talk to me, in private.’
‘About what?’
‘He didn’t say. Just that it was important. Presumably it was about Mel.’
‘And he couldn’t just ring you up?’
‘He wanted to do it face-to-face.’
There was a muffled knock on the door of the interview room and Naylor called for the visitor to come in. A young officer leaned in, apologised for interrupting, and handed Naylor a folder with the words Forensic Support Unit in thick black letters on its front cover.
‘From the FSU, boss. Just came in.’
‘Much obliged, James.’
Naylor opened the file so I couldn’t see the contents. He scanned the two sheets briefly, grunted with something that was either satisfaction or disappointment – I couldn’t tell which – and passed it over to Redford.
‘You said you saw his car at the country park this morning?’
‘His Aston Martin was in the car park. Did you see it?’
Naylor shook his head.
‘Nope. Was Mr Delaney in the vehicle at the time?’
‘No. He got there before me.’
Naylor’s icy-blue eyes regarded me, studied me.
‘On the subject of cars, though, we have found something else. In circumstances that cause us concern.’
‘What?’
‘You asked me earlier why it wasn’t PC Khan who came out to meet you at the country park this morning.’
I nodded, and he continued.
‘A Porsche 4 x 4 registered to Mr Delaney was found on Friday, three days ago, in an alleyway next to some lock-up garages. This is about half a mile from the Premier Inn where you two had your falling out.’
‘The big white one, the Cheyenne or whatever it’s called?’
‘Cayenne. That’s the one.’
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘Someone had tried to burn it out. But they didn’t do a very good job.’
32
‘We cross-reference every vehicle-related fire against the national database of stolen vehicles and persons of interest,’ Naylor continued. ‘Of course it’s entirely possible that Mr Delaney’s car was stolen by joyriders in a completely unrelated incident, and then torched to destroy evidence. Happens every day somewhere in London. It’s possible that’s what happened with the Porsche – except for a couple of things. First: he hadn’t reported his car stolen. And second: because the fire didn’t take hold properly, a lot of the car escaped damage. Whoever tried to torch it was very much the amateur arsonist, didn’t know what they were doing. So even on a fairly cursory initial examination, we were able to recover forensic evidence from inside the vehicle. Including traces of blood on the front passenger seat.’
Naylor let that hang in the air for a minute.
‘Blood,’ I repeated, dumbly.
‘Traces, yes.’
‘Do you know whose it is?’
‘I’ll get to that in a minute. First, a bit of history.’ He took out another sheet from his folder. ‘Last year, Mr Delaney was involved in a minor traffic accident on the M6. No serious injuries – he was lucky – but when his vehicle was being repaired they found his brakes had been tampered with. Police investigators then found microscopic traces of blood on the damaged brake cables. As part of the investigation,’ Naylor continued, ‘they took a DNA sample from Mr Delaney so they could cross-reference it with the trace evidence and ensure he wasn’t the source.’
‘So did they get him?’
‘Who?’
‘They guy who did it.’
Naylor flipped a page in the green folder that had been handed to him a few minutes before.
‘No. A former employee of Mr Delaney’s was charged and went on trial but he was acquitted. Matthew Goring.’
‘That name rings a bell.’ Though I couldn’t remember where from.
‘Anyway, the long and the short of this little piece of history is this: Mr Delaney’s DNA information went into the database. And it turns out that his DNA is a match for the blood we found on the passenger seat of his car yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. But why are you telling me this?’
Naylor shrugged.
‘Just wondering if you can shed any light on it, that’s all.’
‘But I’ve told you everything.’
Naylor considered this for a moment.
‘Does it bother you that Ben Delaney’s a self-made millionaire and you’re a teacher?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Does it bother you that he has a six-bedroom pile in Hampstead and a fleet of flash cars to turn ladies’ heads?’
‘Honestly? No.’
‘And what did it feel like,’ Naylor said, leaning forward, ‘when you found out he’d been fucking your wife?’
He slid the swear word in quietly, almost gently, like a stiletto between my ribs.
I looked from one detective to the other.
‘You seriously expect me to answer that?’
‘But you were angry, right?’
‘Of course I was angry.’
‘You beat him up, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘You beat the shit out of him in that car park. You gave him what he deserved, didn’t you, Joe? I would have, in the same position.’
‘No, that isn’t what happened.’
‘But then you realised you’d gone too far.’
I shook my head, unease crawling through my veins like a toxin.
‘I didn’t even know about the affair then.’
‘He punched you, and you didn’t retaliate?’
‘I pushed him. That’s all.’
‘You punched him?’
‘No. I never hit him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s half my size.’
That was a stupid thing to say.
‘So would you say you’re a lot bigger, physically stronger and more powerful than this man who was shagging your wife and has now gone missing?’
I tried to stay calm, think about what I said next before it came out of my mouth.
‘He’s not missing, not in the way you’re talking about it.’
‘But you’re a lot taller and stronger than him.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You’re a big bloke, I bet you hit pretty hard.’
‘I told you, I didn’t hit him.’
‘But you left him there, on the ground? Weren’t you concerned about him?’
‘My son was having an asthma attack, a bad one. I thought he was going to die on me. I went back as soon I could to check Ben was OK, but he had already gone.’
Naylor frowned, lines bunching together across his forehead.
‘Gone where, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Just gone.’
‘So he was in a bad way when you left him, then?’
It occurred to me that I had already said too much. Proba
bly way too much.
‘Am I being arrested?’
Naylor smiled, the frown lines on his forehead disappearing.
‘Of course not. You can leave whenever you want.’
‘So I can leave now?’
‘Yup.’
‘I can just get up and walk out if I want to?’
‘That’s right.’
He paused, as if daring me to do just that. Now I knew I was free to leave, it seemed churlish to do it when I had nothing to hide. But I suddenly felt intensely claustrophobic, as if I might be stuck here forever if I didn’t get out now.
‘And what happens next?’
‘We continue to gather evidence. On the back of these blood results’ – he indicated the green file – ‘I’ll be requesting additional support to carry out a full proof-of-life inquiry over the next thirty-six hours, starting this morning.’
‘What’s a proof-of-life inquiry?’
‘We start from the premise that Mr Delaney is alive and well, and then try to confirm that using all the different avenues available to us: mobile phone data, banking records, social media, utility bill payments, DWP, tax, CCTV, you name it. Everything we can get our hands on, basically, to see if there is evidence that Mr Delaney is out there somewhere. It’s actually very difficult to live nowadays without leaving any trace at all.’
‘He’s already been on Facebook, and text, and on the phone to Mel yesterday.’
‘Yup,’ Naylor said, leaning back in his chair. ‘I’ve made a note of all of those. We’ll be looking at them along with everything else.’
‘And there might be CCTV at the Premier Inn? So you could see for yourselves what happened on Thursday.’
‘There’s a system there, but it’s pretty ancient and more for show than anything else. Four cameras, three of them out of order, the other one covering the reception desk.’
‘You’ve checked it already?’
‘Yup. The footage is not much use to us, I’m afraid.’
I sighed, my shoulders dropping.
‘So how long does the whole process take?’
‘We’ll be fast-tracking this one, for reasons I think I’ve outlined.’
It all sounded very formal, very official. Very serious.
‘Should I have a solicitor?’
‘Do you think you need one?’
‘I’ve no idea. This is all new to me, I’ve never had any real contact with the police before.’ I spread my hands. ‘What do you think I should do?’
