The House: The brilliantly tense and terrifying thriller with a shocking twist - whose story do you believe?

by Simon Lelic

  ‘Her motive? Jesus Christ.’ I’m shaking my head now. It’s possible I might even be smiling.

  ‘That was half the problem when Syd was younger, right? There was never enough evidence of what her father did to her. No one helped her, no one intervened. But this time the evidence was already established. All Syd had to do was come up with a way of using it.’

  ‘But … where’s this coming from? What is it that’s got you thinking like this in the first place?’

  The inspector adjusts the way she’s sitting, hooks one suited leg across the other. ‘The thing that convinced me, in the end, was the knife wound. The position of it, for one. Also, the doctors refusing to rule out the possibility that Syd’s wound was actually self-inflicted.’

  ‘Wait. They said it was self-inflicted? Or that it could have been?’

  ‘They said they couldn’t be certain either way.’

  ‘But that’s … I mean … that doesn’t prove anything. Did you check it for prints? The knife handle.’

  The inspector shows her amusement, presumably at the fact I’m trying to tell her how to do her job.

  ‘There were no prints on the knife whatsoever. But she could have wiped them off, or wrapped her sleeve over the handle before she used it, and anyway, even if her prints were on the knife she could have claimed she’d grabbed it when her father came at her.’

  ‘What about her father’s prints? Did you check for those?’

  ‘There were no prints whatsoever, Jack. Although …’

  I frown at the inspector’s hesitation. ‘Although … what?’

  ‘Although we found some leather gloves in the alleyway behind the house, near where Syd’s father was apprehended.’

  ‘So he tried to ditch them. Right? So there you go then! He was in the house, running away from it, and the whole time he was wearing gloves. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t sound to me like he’d stopped by for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘He was there, yes. But in my opinion only because Syd wanted him there. Because that’s another thing: there was no sign of forced entry. There was a set of keys on the floor in the bedroom, but none fit any of the doors. They match another set we found in the house, so maybe they were the keys Syd’s father used before you installed new locks, but this time if he wanted to come in Syd must have let him.’

  ‘Or maybe she just forgot to lock up. Did it occur to you she might just have forgotten to lock up?’

  Inspector Leigh looks at me like we both know the likelihood of that. ‘Frankly, Jack, I’ve had my doubts about that girlfriend of yours for quite some time now. Don’t get me wrong: I think she’s played her role brilliantly. Like when the two of you came to see me with that statement. She was just the right amount of angry. Afraid, but not so afraid that we would offer her protection, because that would have ballsed things up for her nicely. And the tone she used in what she wrote, the fact that she wrote everything down in the first place …’

  ‘But that was my idea! To write things down.’

  ‘Maybe it was. Maybe you only think it was. But either way it doesn’t matter. It suited Syd in the end either way. And besides, think about why writing things down felt so important to you. Because you didn’t believe Syd’s father was responsible. That’s the impression I got. Was I wrong?’

  ‘No, but … just because I had my doubts at first doesn’t mean I have them now. And what about the fact he doesn’t have an alibi? You said Syd’s mother retracted her statement. Right? So that just proves it. She was lying before because Syd’s father made her and now that she’s safe she feels free to tell the truth.’

  ‘I agree that’s how it looks,’ the inspector says. ‘On the other hand, put yourself for a moment in Syd’s mother’s shoes. If you’d failed to protect your daughter the way she failed, wouldn’t you do anything you could to make amends? Offer anything your daughter needed. Do anything – everything – she asked?’

  ‘You’re claiming Syd told her to change her story?’

  ‘I am. Probably she wouldn’t have even needed to explain why. A promise would have been enough: that afterwards her ex-husband would be out of both their lives for ever. As for the evidence we found in Syd’s father’s belongings, the blood traces on his shoe: Syd could have planted it without her mother even knowing.’

  I open my mouth, but there’s nothing I can say. I’ve been standing all this time and all of a sudden I’ve never felt so exhausted. I move the chair I was in before and drop into it.

  ‘Jack …’

  ‘Look, I … I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t know what it is you expect me to do.’

  ‘Just what’s right, Jack. That’s all.’

  ‘What do you mean, what’s right? Nothing about what you’re saying is right!’

  ‘Listen, Jack. Syd’s father: he’s likely to go to prison for a very long time. He’s fifty-seven now, which means it’s unlikely if he’s convicted that he’ll ever get out. And I’m not expecting your sympathy. As I said to you, I agree the man’s a scumbag. But he didn’t do this, Jack. He didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘But even if that’s true – and I’m not saying it is – but even if it’s true, what I’m asking is what you expect me to do about it?’

  ‘You’re the person best placed to refute Syd’s story, possibly even to convince her to come clean. Maybe we can put some pressure on her mother, but even if she cooperates, I doubt very much her testimony will be enough. But you … you’ve seen it all, witnessed it all. And you’ve got a chance to do what’s right. To put things right. That’s what I need from you, Jack. That’s why I’m here.’

  Inspector Leigh gives me time to think. Time to recall all the doubts I’ve ever had about this person she’s convinced is responsible for the death of another human being.

  ‘She gave you up, Jack,’ the inspector says. ‘Syd’s the one who planted your driver’s licence. She’s the reason you got sent to prison. And let’s not forget, if things hadn’t worked out the way she wanted them to, you would have been the one to take the fall. She’s dangerous, Jack. And I’m sorry to be blunt, but she doesn’t love you. If she did she wouldn’t have put you through this.’

  Again she lets that hang in the air between us. And I can see that: I can see how to Inspector Leigh it must look. In fact she isn’t saying anything I haven’t already told myself.

  ‘I spoke to your parents,’ she tells me, changing tack.

  I look up. Until she spoke again I’d been staring at the carpet.

  ‘Not about this,’ the inspector goes on. ‘Just to try and get a sense of who you are. Of your values. And I can tell your parents mean the world to you.’ She allows a pause. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Jack? That your parents mean the world to you?’

  Slowly, like a reflex, I nod.

  ‘So think about them. Think about what you helping me will mean to them. After this. After seeing you in here. Think about how proud they’d be of you for finally doing the right thing.’

  It’s true what I’ve often thought about Inspector Leigh. She can read people better than anyone I’ve ever met. The way she’s speaking to me now, for example: there’s nothing in the world she could say or offer that would be more likely to persuade me to agree.

  I take a moment to check around the room. Not an interview room, I remind myself. Not a cell. And the inspector: she’s sitting there across the table from me without any of her usual props. No notepad, no tape recorder, nothing. And there’s no one else on her side of the table. Like me, she’s in here all alone.

  ‘You’re the only one who thinks this way,’ I say to her, ‘aren’t you?’

  The inspector, at that, can only frown.

  ‘None of your colleagues believe you. Even DC Granger. He’s not on board with this either, is he? Would you get in trouble if your bosses knew you were even speaking to me?’

  Inspector Leigh, for the first time since I met her, appears suddenly unsure of herself. ‘I don’t see –’


  But she doesn’t get the chance to finish her sentence. There’s a commotion in the corridor and then a knock, which is cut short when the door swings wide.

  ‘… an outrage,’ the man who enters is saying, whether to the guard behind him or the room ahead of him it’s not clear. ‘I should have been informed about this hours ago, the moment it was authorized.’ The man looks at me. ‘Up you get, young man. We’re leaving.’

  Inspector Leigh inserts herself between us. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  The man straightens his shoulders. Appears to anyway, because his tie is squint and his overcoat is crooked, so that it’s hard to tell whether any part of him is actually level. Even so he manages to grow another inch, so that his crown reaches the height of Inspector Leigh’s scowl.

  ‘My name is Mr Marsh and the man you appear to be interrogating is my client. Jack: on your feet, lad. Let’s go.’

  ‘Your client?’ The inspector turns towards me. ‘But I thought Mr Dalton was your solicitor. That’s what your parents said.’

  ‘He was going to be,’ I tell her. ‘But I changed my mind. Mr Marsh here has been representing me from the beginning.’ Carefully – apologetically – I tuck my chair beneath the table.

  ‘Jack? What’s going on here? Your father, he was adamant you …’

  Slowly the inspector begins to smile. She drops her weight on to the edge of the table.

  ‘You already knew,’ she says, ‘didn’t you? You worked it out. Everything I’ve just been explaining.’

  I know better than to answer. And anyway I’m not sure what I would say. Did I know? Not where this was heading, the lengths to which Syd in the end would go. If I did I would have put a stop to it. Somehow. There’s no way I would have let her risk what she did.

  But it’s true I knew more than I’ve been pretending. Or maybe that’s too strong a word. I suspected, rather. I’ve had a lot of time to think these past ten days, a lot of time to reflect on how I got to the position I was in. Even so, it was only really on that night when I was in my prison cell, the day before I was due to meet the man my parents had decided should represent me, that I began to realize what it was I’d missed.

  Faith, Mr Dalton talked about – and there I was ready to put my faith in him in a way I’d never fully offered it to Syd. I should have known that if I was in here there’d be a good reason. I should have realized Syd would have had a plan to get me out. Because it was like Inspector Leigh said. It was all there in Syd’s statement. I always assumed Syd was writing for the same person I was – for Inspector Leigh, ironically, or someone like her – but so much of what Syd wrote was really addressed to me. She couldn’t tell me what she’d done, but she was at least able to explain why. And trust me, she told me, so many times I lost count. Believe in me, she said: the way I always believed in you. It took me a while to finally hear her, but I did, in the end. I do.

  ‘Jack? You understand this makes you an accessory, don’t you? If – when – Syd gets caught for what she’s done, you’ll end up in the dock right beside her.’

  My solicitor puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Ignore her, Jack. You don’t have to answer.’

  I look at Inspector Leigh and I realize he’s right. I don’t have to answer, because I can see exactly what she’s thinking. I can read her, finally, the way she was always able to read me. Syd isn’t going to be arrested for this. Not now, not in the future. This, talking to me: just so long as Syd and I remain strong, it’s as close as Inspector Leigh will ever get.

  Sydney

  It’s late December. Christmas, almost. A time for family, so they say. I can’t decide whether that’s appropriate or ironic. Maybe it’s neither. It feels meaningful but maybe that’s just in my head. Like family itself. The concept. Maybe that doesn’t have any real meaning either and is instead as open to interpretation as we allow it to be. There’s so much in life that is, it strikes me. What’s right, for example. What’s wrong. And what’s normal – that’s what I’ve been puzzling over most of late. Are things back to normal? What does normal, for me, even look like?

  What I think – what I’ve decided – is that it looks like us. That’s my baseline, the foundation on which everything else is built. Me and Jack. Side by side. Together. So long as we’re OK it doesn’t matter what’s happening all around us.

  It’s not been easy. For Jack in particular, none of this has been in the slightest bit easy. He says he understands why I did what I did and I hope and pray that he genuinely does. Sean Payne … I honestly never meant for it to happen. And everything that followed afterwards – between me and Jack, between me and my father, between Jack and the police – only did because I was so desperate to find us a way out.

  I was standing in the kitchen when I heard the noise. It was late, around one in the morning, and Jack was fast asleep upstairs. I myself had barely closed my eyes since the day my father had revealed himself in my mother’s hallway. Even lying in bed made me feel vulnerable, so I’d taken to pacing the house downstairs. I had no purpose. I was thinking, I suppose, but thinking implies concentrating on a particular subject when my mind was a mess of whirling thoughts. I was afraid but I was also angry. Furious in fact, above all that I felt so utterly exposed. I thought I’d found the perfect place to hide and yet all at once the monster I’d been fleeing had come from nowhere and torn my refuge down. And there was nothing I could do. I knew what the police would have said if I’d gone to them. Their reaction when we took them our statement proves they would only have acted when it was already too late. And of course there was Elsie. There was no solution I could think of for me and Jack that wouldn’t also have meant abandoning her.

  The noise, when it came, was like a hand upon my shoulder. I was standing with the lights off beside the sink and until that point it had been so quiet both in the house and in the darkness outside that I felt like I was the only person in the entire neighbourhood who wasn’t in bed. But the sound proved otherwise. It was a careless sound – the knock of a gate? – followed by what I was convinced was the slip of footsteps in our back garden. I tensed and stared out into the night. Was it him? My father. Was he here, now?

  My first thought was of waking Jack. But as the silence spread I began to question what I’d heard and Jack, I knew, was exhausted. When I’d risen after lying for an hour close beside him he’d been fast asleep: one hour into the maybe three- or four-hour stretch he’d been managing to get each night himself. If I woke him it might be for no good reason and anyway what was stopping me from checking out the noise on my own? I was Sydney Baker, not Maggie Robinson: not a little girl who flinches at things that go bump in the night. I was bigger than that, better than that, and if there was someone out there – if it was my father out there – I would show him … just as I would prove it to myself.

  I checked the silence and again heard nothing, so started towards the back door. I slid the key into the lock, turned it and gently levered down the handle. Here I paused – and as an afterthought reached for one of the knives in the knife block. Just in case, I told myself. Even if it was my father out there, I had no intention of actually using it. It would be like a ward. Something to scare him with for a change.

  I opened the door swiftly, as though I was ripping off a plaster, but the back garden was empty. The parts I could see, at least. I checked around me, above me, even behind me, even though I was still standing in the doorway, and then padded towards the end of the side return – the only place within the boundary of our plot that my father, or anyone, might have been hiding. But before I got there I heard another noise. It had come from the alleyway, I realized – and if anything it had sounded puzzlingly like a moan.

  I checked the shadows in our garden nevertheless, then crept towards our back gate. The latch was old and the gate was loose, which explained how it might have knocked against the fence post. But the night air was thick, languid, with not the slightest breeze to disturb it, meaning that if the gate had moved something must have knocked it.r />
  I opened the gate, peered through the gap and tentatively stepped into the alleyway. And that’s when I saw him. Not my father. Elsie’s.

  He was slumped against one of the panels of our garden fence. He’d fallen, I judged from the way he was sprawled, which was presumably what had caused our gate to shift. As for the sound I’d thought I’d heard of someone moving: presumably that was Sean Payne trying – and failing – to stagger to his feet.

  My first reaction, I remember clearly, was disgust. Even from several feet away I could tell he was drunk. His eyes were closed but there was a smile on his lips and quietly, beneath his breath, he seemed to be … singing? Trying to, anyway. It was like … I don’t know. Like Jack said before. Like he’d been out celebrating. Like it was just another Friday night for him and his daughter wasn’t lying alone in a hospital bed. Like he hadn’t been the one to put her there.

  I drifted towards him, not really thinking, and barely registering I was still carrying the knife. Even over the smell of the rubbish in the nearby bins, I could detect the alcohol fumes venting on Sean Payne’s breath. Except it was around this point I noticed that the noise he’d been making had stopped, and I wondered whether he was actually breathing any more at all. Maybe he’d hit his head when he’d fallen. Maybe he’d had a heart attack or something and that moaning I’d heard, rather than singing, was a last, pitiful plea for help.

  Against my better instincts I bent towards him – and that’s when his eyes flicked open. I recoiled, might have stumbled, but from out of nowhere his hand closed around my leg. You, he said – or at least I think he did. The more I try to recall what really happened the more I wonder whether I just imagined it, just as it’s possible I imagined the hatred in his eyes. I panicked, I know that. I thought … I don’t know. That he’d tricked me, that he wanted to hurt me, to pay me back for having taken away his daughter. And it was in my desperation to get away, to free myself from his grip, that the knife somehow found its way home.