Tyler and Olivia.
I stare at it, chasing the rough shape of the links with my fingers. It’s real, precisely as Olivia described to the police. Her birthday present to her boyfriend.
Tyler’s dog tag.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I did it. I killed Tyler.
I must have done. There was blood on my car, blood in the garage. Something happened that perhaps Stephen can help me remember. Or, maybe, he’s part of what happened for a reason I don’t yet understand.
Unless I didn’t do it.
Someone paid for Stephen to spend time with me that night – and the same person did something to Tyler. I’m being set up.
Unless I did do it.
Tyler was in my car. I don’t understand how or why – but he was. There was a struggle and he was run over. His blood ended up on the car and, consequently, the garage.
Unless I didn’t do it…
I have no idea what to think and there are far too many gaps in my memory to know much of anything. Could Tyler have been a hundred miles from home at the same hotel as me? Or could Dan, Jason or someone else have planted the dog tag in my glovebox? Or did Tyler break into the house and somehow leave it in my car himself?
I’ve thought this whole time that Tyler had either run off, or got himself into trouble with someone he shouldn’t. But perhaps it’s not about him at all? Perhaps it’s about me? Jason, Dan or someone else has done something to him to get to me.
Or that’s all ego and narcissism because of course it’s nothing to do with me.
The truth is that I have no idea. Everything is a mess.
I’ve not been in the glovebox all week, so the chain could have been in there for days. Equally, it might have been placed in there more recently. Today? Yesterday? It’s chilling to think that the police have been in the house. If they’d asked to search the garage and my car, I’d have said it was fine. If they’d found Tyler’s necklace, I would’ve had no way to explain it. The blood was pooled under where my car would be parked. I’d be prime suspect. It’s only through luck that I’m not.
I’m riddled with that ambivalence as I drive home. There are moments in which I’m convinced this is all down to me; others where I’m convinced that I’m a victim.
It’s early evening when I pull into the garage and, instead of returning Tyler’s dog tag to the glovebox, I bury it at the bottom of my bag. The house is empty anyway; Olivia at work or with friends; Dan is who knows where. I certainly have no idea. I’ve not received any texts and there are no notes on the kitchen counter or fridge.
With the house to myself, I figure I should hide the chain somewhere safer than my bag. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the police might want to search here at some point, so indoors is out of the question. I have visions of digging in parks or throwing it in a pond – but it’s too much. I’m already out of my comfort zone, doing things I’d never have pictured myself doing.
There’s an all-weather plastic storage crate at the back of the house secured with a padlock. The lawnmower is inside, along with a selection of scuffed tools. Neither Dan nor I have ever been much for gardening. It all seems like hard work, especially as the grass, weeds and everything else always grows back so quickly. There have been times when it’s like Dan and I are playing a game of chicken with one another. I don’t want to mow the grass and neither does he, so we wait until it’s so long it can’t be ignored. One of us will eventually crack, huffing and puffing about having to do it.
The trowel is caked with dried mud, the tip rounded and blunt. I peep through the back door to make sure nobody has returned home and then carefully tread my way around the edge of the lawn until I’m at the flower bed that runs the length of the fence. It’s scruffy and untended, with wiry shoots of green mixing in among the actual plants. There are two small wooden crosses, one with the name ‘Bertie’ scratched into the wood. He was Olivia’s hamster when she was eight or nine but only survived for eighteen months before she came down to feed him one morning and found him dead in his cage. She cried for an entire weekend and it was her first experience of death. I cried, too – not for Bertie, more for her. Something like that closes the door on youthful innocence and it can never be opened again. Olivia had lost more than a hamster.
The second cross is for Lizzie, a lizard that Olivia kept for a couple of years after Bertie died. She did everything right, with the heat lamps and other expensive equipment – but Lizzie succumbed to nature in much the same way that Bertie did. Olivia didn’t cry that time. She buried the creature herself and then asked if we could get rid of the vivarium. She didn’t want a replacement and that was the last pet we owned.
I kneel and dig in the spot where Lizzie is buried, carefully mounding the dirt at the side. It’s not long until I hit the plastic ice cream tub in which the lizard was laid to rest. As coffins go, a square of plastic with ‘Wall’s Neapolitan’ isn’t the most dignified way to end up. The tub hasn’t degraded at all, though the white is imprinted with a brown sludge. I don’t bother removing the lid, placing the tub on the side as I continue to dig the hole underneath.
My upper arms are burning, my fingers rigid like an old arthritic’s when I decide I’ve gone deep enough. If the garden was to be excavated in its entirety, the dog tag will be found – but the chances seem slim.
I drop the necklace to the bottom of the pit and then start to refill the hole. There is a thick layer of mud, then the ice cream tub – and then I carefully pat down the final mounds, being as careful as I can to keep the surface in a similar style to the rest of the flower bed. I do the final few bits with my hands, rearranging the green shoots into clumps until it’s impossible to tell by eye that anything has moved. I clean much of the mud from the trowel, leaving just enough so that it’s not obvious it’s been used recently, and then return it to the storage locker.
It’s only when I’m about to step back into the house when it hits me what I’ve done. If washing the car was tampering with evidence, then this is literally burying it. I didn’t outright lie to the police but I kept at least one important detail back. This is what guilty people do; hiding and obfuscating.
The only justification I have is that I’m scared of what I might have done. I’m frightened by the gaps in my memory, of the thoughts that I might not be able to trust those around me.
Who am I?
When I get inside, I wash my hands and arms, then clean my shoes. I dry the soles with a towel and put them on the rack near the front door. I might be a guilty hit-and-runner, an evidence tamperer and liar – but at least I don’t have dirty shoes in the house. After that I scrub the filth out from under my fingernails and finally take a spot on the sofa with the laptop, as if nothing has happened.
Natasha’s Saturday was spent walking her dog/rat, then she had her nails done, ate some leaves for lunch and she is currently #chilling with her ‘babez’, who I assume is her boyfriend. I wish I could stop checking up on her but I’m too far gone. The first thing I do when I go online. I scoff at her life but mine is worse. I pull myself away from the gloom and look at the Find Tyler page. There haven’t been any posts in a day.
I’m busy fiddling around on the internet, achieving nothing, learning nothing, when I realise that spending hundreds of pounds on a male escort will leave a paper trail somewhere. Dan and I share a bank account, which is also linked to a pair of credit cards. I suspect this won’t last much longer – but, for now, our salaries each drop into the same place.
It takes me a good ten minutes to find the security gadget needed to log on and another couple more to remember my password. It’s not exactly a forensic money trail created by some boffin at revenue and customs but I click through the login screens until I’m looking at our credit card balance.
And there it is – a £1,000 debit paid to DBA Enterprises last Sunday. I stare at the line, clicking back and then forward again, wondering if I’ve somehow misread it. There are the regular debits – home insu
rance, a couple of bills – and then, completely out of step with everything else is a payment for a thousand pounds.
The payment is linked to Dan’s card but he hasn’t once mentioned spending so much money on one thing. Even during the times at which we’ve been at one another’s throats, we’ve never done anything like this. We’ve bought furniture, cars and holidays – but always as joint decisions.
I search the internet for DBA Enterprises but there’s almost nothing – and then I remember the woman on the phone from the agency telling me I could book on a card and it would ‘appear as something discreet on your statement’. The company name is certainly inconspicuous and it’s only the amount that’s noticeable.
Did Dan pay for Stephen to seduce me?
If he did, then using our joint credit card seems so stupid, so simplistic. Except that I never check the accounts. It took me long enough to find the log on device and then I could barely remember my password. We don’t get paper statements and I’d have no reason to check unless I was suspicious. He knows this because it’s always him who questions small things on statements.
I return to the escort website and it’s right there on the price list. Two hours costs £500 but five hours is £1,000. I suppose that’s close to the length of time we were with each other at the hotel.
Did Dan set me up so that the impending divorce would be about infidelity rather than a breakdown to the relationship? Would that get him a better deal? More sympathy from Olivia and our friends?
I stare at the figure on the screen with no idea what to think. If it was Dan who booked Stephen, then what about everything else? The car, the field, the blood? Tyler? The stun gun? Even the smaller things like missing keys? Is this an elaborate plot to frame me? Or to confuse me to the point of questioning my own sanity?
If it’s that, then he’s really pulling off a masterstroke.
I log out of internet banking, snap the laptop lid closed and head upstairs to the spare room. I don’t trust Dan but I barely trust myself. The only thing I can hope is that I get some answers from Stephen.
Chapter Forty
Sunday
Dan never bothered me in the spare room when he got in last night. He didn’t even check I was there. It was only Olivia who knocked quietly and then entered. I told her I had a headache and she perched on the end of the bed asking if I wanted painkillers or water. I told her I was okay and then she replied that work had been fine but that she was going to bed early as well. It looked like she’d been crying but there wasn’t much I could say to help. I didn’t trust myself to say much of anything, not when it came to Tyler in any case.
The next morning, I head downstairs to the living room before Dan is up. I check the banking website once more but nothing has changed. When he comes downstairs, Dan is already dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.
‘No gym today?’ I ask.
He heads to the fridge but grimaces slightly, annoyed at my apparent intrusion. ‘No.’
‘What are you up to?’
It’s innocuous enough but not really the type of thing we go out of our way to ask one another nowadays.
‘Car boot sale,’ he replies. ‘I’m going to look for a few things for the new apartment.’
It sounds suspiciously like nonsense. We went to a few Sunday morning car boot sales when we were younger and not as well off – but that would be more than a decade ago. Dan said his apartment was furnished and, for the few things he might need, why buy second-hand?
As with all the other things, I don’t question him.
He says he’s having breakfast first and I reply that I’m going to pop to Ellie’s for a while. Dan barely acknowledges this and certainly doesn’t ask if I want to go with him.
I check on Olivia, but she’s out of it, head buried under a pillow, her body rising and falling gently as she sleeps. After that, I put on some warmer clothes and a coat and then half-jog along the street until I’m outside Ellie’s. I phone her from outside, rather than knocking on the door, not wanting Jason to answer.
Ellie is in a dressing gown and slippers when she answers the door. She yawns twice and asks what I’m doing up at this time on a Sunday.
‘I need to borrow your car,’ I reply.
‘It was banged up, remember. The insurance company took it.’
‘But you have a rental…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I borrow that?’
‘Why?’
I want to tell her about the credit card statement and Dan’s obvious made-up story about the car boot sale but don’t have time. I don’t feel like sharing at this time, either.
‘I can’t say,’ I reply. ‘Please trust me.’
Ellie fights back another yawn but then she breaks into a smile. I feel it, too. There’s that hint of the old days, of mischief and mayhem. She nips back into the house for a moment and then returns with a key and fob, before pointing to a maroon Ford on the opposite side of the road.
‘That one,’ she says. ‘Please don’t crash it.’
‘I won’t.’
It takes me a moment or two to figure out where everything is. I bunny-hop away from the kerb but, once I’ve got it, the car turns out to be a smooth drive. I glide along the road, across the junction, and then slot into a spot next to the postbox at the end of our road. I dig into my coat pocket and retrieve the beanie hat, bundling up my hair and pulling the hat down over my ears. I’ve got a view of the entire street and so sit and wait.
Barely two minutes have passed when Dan’s BMW cruises from our driveway. It’s so big considering he’s the only one who uses it. I doubt the back seats have ever had anything on them other than the odd bag or file.
I try to remember what I’ve seen and heard about following someone else in a car. It’s something like keeping two cars in between – except there is no other traffic. All I can do is maintain a distance and hope he doesn’t stare into his rear-view mirror too closely.
One thing that’s certainly true of my husband is that he’s a good driver. He’s predictable, maintaining a steady speed within the limit and signalling his turns early. Even though I don’t know what I’m doing in terms of following him, his competence as a driver makes it easy.
I trail him out of the town, following the main road to the dual carriageway where there is a little more traffic. It’s easier to keep a distance yet still see him, and so I sit in a couple of hundred metres behind and wait for him to make a move.
I’m not quite sure why I’m following him, other than that his car boot story seemed so obviously a lie. I suppose it feels like I’m doing something – and something is better than nothing. This is proactive.
It’s only another ten minutes or so until Dan signals to leave the dual carriageway. I do the same and by the time I’m pulling up to a roundabout he’s already taking a left. The lack of traffic lights makes it easy to maintain a distance without making things too obvious.
I’m feeling like a right smart-arse until I see the sign for the GIANT boot sale. The first sign says two miles, then one, then half. Dan continues on the same route until he slows, indicates and takes the turn into a field.
He was telling the truth.
It’s too late for me to do anything other than continue. A line of cars is following one another into the field, stopping at the gate to pass two quid for parking into the hand of some lad who looks about fourteen. I end up delaying the queue by delving through my bag and purse until I find a fiver. The teenager sighs as only teenagers can, as if me giving him a note has ruined his entire day. He scrabbles around in a money belt and passes me back four fifty pence pieces and five twenties. The stroppy little sod.
I follow the line of traffic as a pair of bored lads in wellies point me towards a second field as if they’re directing a plane in to land. There are three cars between mine and Dan’s and only one way to go. Another pair of lads directs Dan into a parking spot halfway along a long row of cars. I grin to myself as he holds up the line by stoppi
ng to reverse in, rather than going head-first like everyone else. It’s such a Dan thing to do. The instructions are simple enough as I copy the other drivers, parking parallel to Dan with the same three cars between us.
People are clambering out of the vehicles but I slide down, staring through the lined-up windows to where Dan remains in the driver’s seat of his car. He’s on his phone, texting or using the internet, seemingly oblivious to everyone around him.
I was so certain he was lying about coming here that it’s hard not to wonder what else I’m wrong about.
The couples and families from the cars between have long since disappeared off to the main part of the boot sale when Dan finally opens his door. I scrunch down in the driver’s seat of Ellie’s rental car, giving myself the merest slit through which to watch him. My husband is grinning to himself about something, phone still in hand as he strides off towards the main gate.
I gently open the door, slithering out like a snake – albeit an older one with a dodgy back. I might have been wrong about Dan coming here – but I’m not ready to let things go quite yet. I crouch on my heels, watching through the windows of strangers’ cars, until I’m sure my husband is far enough ahead that he won’t look back. With that, I lock the car, pull my hat down low, and then set off after him.
If I’d known I was actually coming to a car boot sale, I would have worn better shoes. The ground is soft, though not quite a full-on mud pit. I’m in flats but they’re thin and I’ve only gone a few steps when there’s a squelch and the earth oozes over the top of my feet, into the shoe itself.
As I pass through the main gate, the smell of barbeque drifts across from a burger van where a line has already formed. There’s an enormous bouncy castle in the distance, with an attached inflatable slide. On the other side of the gate is the traditional meat man, bellowing on about how he’s not going to sell a dozen steaks together. Oh, no. This bloke wangs fifteen into a plain white carrier bag and asks for twenty quid with a thump of the gavel. The punters are lapping it up, practically charging the van with their wallets aloft.
Last Night Page 24
