The Guilty Wife

by Elle Croft

  Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table.

  ‘So I guess it’s partly a way to drown our sorrows, partly a way to celebrate Calum’s life. Something of a wake, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s happening at the office?’

  ‘Well, it’s business as usual in some ways,’ Mark piped up. ‘The board’s already appointed a new CEO, although we’re not allowed to say anything more until it’s been officially announced. But at the same time it’s totally different. It’s definitely not the same without Calum.’

  ‘He brought the place to life, didn’t he?’

  Vincent snorted, almost choking on his beer, and I turned to him to see if he was all right. He dismissed my worry with a wave.

  ‘I guess you could say that,’ Mark said, before Vincent could recover. ‘Some days were great. I think he showed his best side when you guys were all around, but he could be an arsehole too, you know.’

  ‘Like that time when he bought us all doughnuts?’ I asked, surprised by Mark’s response. I’d always thought he and his boss got along really well. They seemed to be close. Friends, even.

  I tried to keep my expression neutral, but suddenly I wondered what else I didn’t know about Mark. It was a throwaway comment, and I knew that everyone got frustrated by their boss sometimes. Fran was probably out with her friends right now, telling them what a bitch I had been to her that very morning. But something about Mark’s tone tingled at the base of my skull.

  ‘Yeah, like that,’ Vincent agreed, snapping me out of my thoughts. ‘Only none of us would ever stand up to him like you did, so we never got the doughnuts.’

  Smatters of laughter from his colleagues. It was weird to me that men like Mark and Vincent would be scared of confronting Calum, but I supposed everything was different when your job was on the line. I wasn’t Calum’s employee, and my livelihood hadn’t been at stake when I’d called him out on his childishness.

  Silence, then. The awkward kind, as we all looked down and shuffled our drinks and feet. Laurie continued the incessant tapping of her screen.

  Tracey cleared her throat.

  ‘So what about you, Bethany? Are you meeting someone?’

  I felt my face growing warm as I tried to come up with something that didn’t make me sound as pathetic as I actually was.

  ‘No,’ I said, too loudly. No one would mistake that for confidence. I tried again. ‘No, I just had a meeting close by. I thought I’d grab a bite before heading home. It’s one of my favourite restaurants.’

  ‘This place was actually recommended to me by Calum,’ said Mark. ‘So you obviously share his good taste.’

  I felt a flicker of betrayal, even though I had no right to. Our dinner choice wasn’t a secret. Calum’s staff knew where he ordered his meals from, and this was one of his new regulars. There was no reason for him not to recommend it, and yet it still made me uncomfortable.

  I managed a tight smile. ‘Huh. I didn’t know that.’

  To spare myself further attention I sat back and pretended to be interested in Laurie’s unsubtle whispers. They were directed at Tracey, but the whole table could hear.

  ‘They have nothing,’ she hissed. ‘So they’re calling me day in and day out trying to get a quote. They’re just making things up now, hoping I’ll give some kind of comment so they can print it. Hacks, the lot of them.’

  ‘Can you sue?’

  ‘The legal team’s on it. But we’d have to take action against half of London’s press, which isn’t going to happen.’

  I tried to focus, but Laurie’s words worried me. The press still had nothing to report. I told myself that it meant nothing, that the police were simply conducting their investigation without telling the world what they were up to. There had to be a suspect by now. Someone couldn’t commit a murder so brutal without leaving evidence.

  They’d been interviewing all of Calum’s employees and film crew, I knew that much. So did that mean they were gathering evidence on someone who was sitting around the table with me? Did they also think that Mark needed a closer look? I glanced around nervously, trying to read the team’s faces, hoping to catch a clue in something they said, in a movement they made.

  A shot glass was pressed into my hand and I looked down to see a salt cellar and plate of lime wedges being passed around. Oh, God. Tequila. This was not going to end well. The last thing I wanted was to get wasted in front of this lot; I had too many secrets to risk spilling them over some shots. I didn’t want another barely cryptic tweet to show up in my feed. But I couldn’t refuse. This round was in Calum’s honour, Vincent announced.

  When we were all ready, we raised our glasses and clinked them together.

  ‘To Calum,’ said Vincent, and we all repeated the toast in unison.

  I licked the back of my hand and threw my head back, forcing the tequila down. I shuddered, liquid rushing down my throat, and screwed up my face as I bit into the lime. Opening my eyes, I saw Vincent smirking at me, amused by my discomfort. I’ve never enjoyed shots, especially not tequila, and was teased all through university for my exaggerated reaction to the drink. The liquor landed with a sickening churn. I regretted the food I’d ordered and left uneaten, and immediately wanted to get out, to breathe fresh air, to be alone.

  ‘I have to get going,’ I announced to no one specific.

  ‘No, we’re just getting started, Bethany,’ Tracey pleaded.

  ‘I don’t want to intrude any more than I already have,’ I said. Vincent began to protest, but I stopped him.

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine. I need to head off anyway, I have to be home soon.’

  I wanted to climb over the table, shove them all aside. Escape.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mark asked, his hand on my arm, eyes locked on mine. A moustache of sweat was tickling my top lip and my head was swirling.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I said firmly, trying to slow my pulse.

  Pressing a few notes from my wallet onto the table, I squeezed past Mark, shrugging away his concern.

  I waved generally at the table and strode out of the restaurant to gulp the fresh, cool evening air, chastising myself for being stupid enough to choose this restaurant in the first place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When I heard Jason leave, I ran to the front door and completed my new safety ritual, which included double and triple-checking the locks, and inspecting all of the windows. Grabbing a knife from the kitchen, I slunk through the house, peeking behind the shower curtain and in wardrobes. After two thorough searches I concluded that I was the only person in my house.

  I didn’t have the energy for another day in the office. To alleviate my fear I tried to convince myself that if the note-sender really wanted to harm me, they’d have had plenty of opportunity by now. It seemed that they just wanted to scare me.

  Well, mission accomplished.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being monitored, that whoever had sent the note was lurking outside the front door or peering through my window. I closed all the curtains just in case.

  I called Fran to check in and make sure she had enough work to do. As a kind of apology, I gave her a small client to manage. I wasn’t sure if it counted as forgiveness for my snappiness, but she seemed excited to be given a project of her own. When I hired Fran I told her that she’d have to put in the hard yards before I gave her a chance to do any real photography, and she’d jumped at the opportunity, soon proving herself to be the perfect employee. She never had a bad attitude, even when I did.

  As far as I was concerned, Fran was a worthy mentee, so I’d handed over some small tasks, like setting up for shoots, scouting locations or editing smaller clients’ work. So far I’d been impressed with her abilities, and I gave myself a pat on the back for selecting such a good assistant. In a few years, she’d probably be overtaking me with her skills, hopefully still under the umbrella of my business. In the end, I needed to treat her well if I wanted that to happen.

  Satisfi
ed that she wasn’t feeling abandoned, and promising to come into the office to check in with her soon, I opened my to-do list for the day.

  It took a full twenty minutes of agonising to decide whether to play loud music to drown out my thoughts and stop me from analysing every sound, or whether I wanted to hear each noise to know if something was happening. In the end, I compromised and put a Coldplay album on shuffle at a low volume. It didn’t help.

  My phone rang, and I knew Constable Clayton’s voice before she identified herself. Knowing who it was didn’t stop my stomach wringing itself like a sodden rag when she said her name.

  This was it. The call I’d been waiting for, and yet suddenly felt grossly unprepared for.

  ‘Mrs Reston, I’ve called your assistant and your husband to confirm your whereabouts on the night of Mr Bradley’s murder,’ she began.

  Bloody hell, Jason. Thanks for telling me.

  ‘We’ve spoken to your assistant, Miss Briscoe, and she confirmed that she left the office at six, and that she thinks you left at about ten thirty. Is that correct?’

  I ransacked my memories, frantic. What had I told Fran? What had I told the police in my interview? I crossed my fingers.

  ‘Yeah, I think that sounds about right,’ I said, hoping she couldn’t smell fear through the phone line.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘And Mr Reston said that he arrived home shortly before midnight, and that you were asleep by that time. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, more confident this time.

  ‘I see. And there’s no one else who can confirm your whereabouts on the night of Mr Bradley’s murder?’

  ‘Well … no,’ I stammered. ‘I was at work and then I went home. Like I said already. Am I, I mean, are you … do you have a suspect?’

  ‘We can’t talk about the investigation, I’m afraid, Mrs Reston. I’m just tying up some loose ends here. I’m sure you can understand that we’re looking thoroughly at every detail we possibly can to establish Mr Bradley’s movements before the murder. We’ll be in touch if we need any more information from you, and if you think of anything in the meantime, please do call me.’

  I hung up the phone and sat completely still as I processed what had just happened. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. So they didn’t know it was me on the video. Or if they suspected, they weren’t certain. One thing was for sure – my fake alibi for the night obviously wasn’t convincing them that I was in the clear.

  It was frustrating to watch the police homing in on details they didn’t even know were irrelevant. Like me.

  They needed to stop obsessing over the video footage, and start looking at who had actually murdered Calum. There must be other evidence, different lines of investigation besides a grainy CCTV clip that revealed nothing.

  I fumbled around in my desk drawers to find a notepad and pen. If the police weren’t going to consider alternative suspects, then I would have to. The person who killed Calum was getting away with it, all because the investigation was pointing my way.

  I was a red herring, but I couldn’t tell them that. I had no idea what the note-sender was capable of doing if I didn’t follow their orders, and I wasn’t willing to take that risk by talking to the cops.

  At the top of the page I wrote Random Attack? and then crossed it out again. Calum’s wallet had still been on him, stuffed with a wad of twenty-pound notes. Whoever killed him did it because they wanted him dead, not because they wanted cash.

  On the next line I wrote Drugs? Revenge? Deal gone bad?

  These theories had all been floated in the media in lieu of any fresh news. None of them had any credibility, but they weren’t completely out of the question, either. Calum had secrets. I was one of them. I couldn’t be so naive as to rule anything out, far-fetched as it may seem. But there was no evidence to suggest that any of these options could be correct, so I moved on.

  A crazy fan.

  This seemed plausible enough, although, once again, unlikely. Most of Calum’s fans were fiercely protective of him, not intent on hurting him. I pulled out my phone to Google Kitty’s attacker. Reports confirmed that she’d been found on the same day she’d done it, after boasting in the pub about her successful mission. She was still in prison, due to serve another ten years.

  There could be more like her, although I had to assume that the security team would have given the cops any information on stalkers – current and prior – as part of the investigation. It would have been one of the first things they’d checked, if they were at all competent.

  I moved on.

  Security team.

  They knew his comings and goings and they had the skills and the strength required to commit a murder. But for those exact reasons, they’d already been scrutinised heavily since the day Calum was found. The police had even issued a statement to the press announcing that the security team had been cleared. I didn’t know Ben or the other guys well, but I knew Vincent, and I knew how seriously he took his responsibility. Wherever Calum went, Vincent was right behind him, his threatening looks enough to put off any potential attacker. No one would guess that behind all that muscle was the kind of man who would catch the new girl as she stumbled into a boardroom. I was glad the police had eliminated him so I didn’t have to question our friendship.

  Claire.

  As much as I wanted it to be her, I already knew that she had an airtight alibi. She’d been photographed multiple times throughout the night at a charity event. Time stamps on tweets meant she couldn’t have slipped away to kill her husband. I wrote Hitman? next to her name, just to cover all possible options. That would be one way to get around the alibi issue – and she could certainly afford to hire a professional – although I still couldn’t think of a plausible motive.

  Mark.

  I liked Mark a lot. I would never have suspected he’d be capable of killing his boss, but someone had done it, and there was no reason why it couldn’t be Mark. He was privy to a lot of Calum’s private business matters, and he knew where his boss was at all times. Learning that he wasn’t Calum’s biggest fan had been eye-opening for me. I’d been surprised, but maybe there was bad blood between them. And that could mean a motive. I underlined Mark’s name.

  I tapped the pen on my chin, trying to think of anyone else who could have had reason and opportunity to kill Calum.

  Kitty?

  She’d always maintained that she didn’t hate Calum, but she didn’t want anything to do with him, either. I couldn’t blame her. After all, she was the one who’d had to deal with the consequences of their affair. Sure, he’d had to rebuild his reputation, but that was nothing compared to the price she’d paid. But why would she get revenge now? It had been years since the attack. The timing didn’t make sense.

  My phone rang. I shrieked.

  ‘Mark, hi.’

  I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep my voice steady.

  ‘Are you OK, Bethany? Is this a bad time?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m fine, I’m fine.’

  I looked at Mark’s name, underlined on the page in front of me, and I realised I could use this moment to learn whether he should remain on my list.

  ‘I just … well, I thought you were the police. They keep calling and asking what I was doing last Wednesday night and it’s got me a bit shaken, to be honest. I mean, I was at work.’

  ‘Oh, I know exactly how you feel,’ he said. ‘Same for me. I was at home alone, no one can vouch for me, which means they keep asking.’

  Bingo.

  I circled his name three times.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bethany. No one actually thinks it was either of us, they’re just doing their jobs.’

  I mumbled something non-committal in response.

  ‘Anyway, other than that, are you feeling all right? You left so suddenly last night, I wanted to make sure.’

  I tried to laugh lightly. It came out like a wheeze.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘I seriously just can’t do tequila.’


  ‘Why did you drink it, then?’ he asked. It was a good question.

  ‘Peer pressure, I guess.’ This time my laugh was real.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re all right. I actually have a couple of things I need to chat to you about. I didn’t want to bring them up last night or I probably would have ruined your evening even more than the alcohol did.’

  My organs felt like they were being clamped. There couldn’t possibly be more bad news. I stayed silent, waiting for Mark to go on.

  ‘I hate to do this to you, but the producers have decided to cash in on this whole, uh, situation … by airing the show in the next few weeks.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘But … Mark, it’s only been, it’s not even been a week. They can’t.’

  ‘They can,’ he said. ‘And apparently they will. They know that ratings will go through the roof if they show the series now, while the story’s so hot. And they want all your images. They’re launching the book a few weeks after the show.’

  I was stunned. Calum would be livid if he knew they were capitalising on his death. He hated the whole idea of this stupid show and now they were going to use it to sensationalise his murder. I felt a ball of fury, confusion and sadness rising from somewhere deep within, and forced myself to swallow it down. This was work, after all.

  ‘So what do they need? And by when?’

  ‘Thanks, Bethany, I hate this, too. They’re bastards, the lot of them, but it is what it is. We’ve got your stills up to episode four, but we need the rest by Tuesday next week. Think you can do it?’

  I sighed and mentally waved farewell to my free time.

  ‘Yeah, it’s tight, but I’ll get it done.’

  ‘Thanks. And listen, I, uh … they’ve picked a date for the funeral. It’s happening this Friday. But, well … they’re um, they’re trying to shield it from the press, so they’ve asked me to keep it, you know, small. Family and … and closest friends. I tried to add a few more colleagues to the list, but they’re barely letting me in.’

  The anger I’d just swallowed raced back up my chest, threatening to spill out as a volley of curses. Closest friends. I was only the photographer. Of course I didn’t get an invite. My breath rattled as I forced out the words.