by Roberta Kray
‘The next few days were the hardest. I didn’t know many people – the students I’d come with had gone back to Paris – but there was always the danger of running into an acquaintance or one of Jack’s friends. I had no idea if the police would release my name to the newspapers or if anyone would link that name to me, so I holed up in the flat as much as I could and didn’t go out unless I had to.
‘Eventually, the results of the post-mortem came through – accidental death – and the inquiry came to an end. Shortly after that, I was free to leave. Through the embassy, I made arrangements for Jack be buried in Kerepesi cemetery.’ Tom’s hands balled into two tight fists. ‘I wouldn’t have gone through with it, Eden, if he’d had any family, anyone close, but he’d always said there was no one. I packed up everything, including all his stuff – it wasn’t much, he travelled light – and got out of Hungary as fast as I could.’
Eden had a hundred questions she wanted to ask and didn’t know where to start. She still wasn’t happy, far from it, about being kept in the dark, but was beginning to see how this confession could eventually lead to his release. Surely the trial couldn’t proceed once the facts were known about Tom’s real identity. ‘So when you say you took Jack’s stuff, does that include the bracelet?’
Tom nodded. ‘Another big mistake, but I didn’t want to leave anything behind in the flat and didn’t know what else to do. I had no idea it had come from a robbery. Back in England, I couldn’t bring myself to sell the bracelet – it was Jack’s, not mine – and so I just put it away and forgot about it.’
‘God, Tom,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police all this before they charged you?’
Tom pulled a face. His shoulders lifted and fell. ‘I kept on hoping I could prove I wasn’t Jack Minter. I was sure I could find a way. Or that Castor could. And then I thought… I thought if it all came out, you’d walk away, you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me.’
‘Jesus, you just did something stupid, a spur-of-the-moment thing. You made a mistake; you didn’t kill anyone. I’m pissed off that you kept it a secret, it makes me feel you can’t trust me, but… I mean, how could you think that risking prison was a better move than telling the truth?’
‘What I did was illegal. I stole another man’s identity.’
‘But you didn’t rob a bank. You didn’t leave Paddy Lynch to die. They might charge you with something but it can’t be anything like as bad as that.’ Eden felt buoyed by relief. The truth, now it had emerged, was startling, unpleasant even, but not grotesque. She had feared the worst and instead, suddenly, there was a faint light at the end of the tunnel. Another comforting thought occurred to her. ‘There was a bundle of letters in your safe from Ann-Marie. She was Jack’s girlfriend, wasn’t she, not yours?’
‘What made you think… Oh, right, of course, they’re addressed to Tom. Yes, the two of them were together for a while, a few years, I think. But they’d already split up before I got to know Jack. I never met her. I don’t even know what she looks like. I took the letters with the rest of his belongings – something else I didn’t know what to do with once I was back home. It didn’t feel right to throw them away so —’
‘Max Tamer paid me a visit.’
‘Who?’
‘Max Tamer. Her husband. He came to see you too, didn’t he, at the studio? A couple of years ago.’
‘Was that his name? I don’t remember. I lied to him, though. I presume he told you that.’ Tom leaned back his head, closed his eyes for a few seconds and then looked at her again. ‘Another moment of sheer panic. He stormed in like a man possessed. He was sure I was the Tom Chase, his wife’s ex-boyfriend. At least until we came face to face and then he seemed to get confused. I think Ann-Marie must have kept some photographs and when he realised I wasn’t the man in the pictures, he didn’t know what to do next.’
‘What did you say?’
‘What could I say? All I could do was politely deny it, claim I’d never heard of her and tell him I’d never been to Budapest. He calmed down and left. I spent the next few weeks convinced he’d come back but that was the last I ever heard of him.’
‘Until now.’
Tom gazed at her, his eyes full of concern. ‘He didn’t threaten you, did you? He didn’t —’
Eden shook her head. ‘No, not exactly, but he’s kind of weird. And he knows you lied to him. He’s put two and two together and come up with five.’
‘Like Annabelle,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, she saw the state of him when he arrived. One angry man. And no one gets that worked up unless it’s something personal and something important. I dare say she was trying to listen in at the door and caught a few words here and there, the most interesting being “my wife”. After he left, she came in and asked, “What was all that about?” I told her it was nothing, a misunderstanding, but she’d already jumped to her own conclusions. She thought I was seeing some other guy’s wife.’
‘So? What difference did it make to her?’
‘I was dating one of her friends at the time, nothing serious but… I suppose she thought I was screwing around behind her mate’s back.’
Eden understood now why Annabelle had said what she had about Tom being a liar and a cheat. ‘And you’d rather she believed that than start to wonder what Tamer’s visit had really been about.’
‘Got it in one.’
Eden stared up at the rain-spattered window, a small square of grey. Then she looked back at her husband. Larry Hewitt. He’d kept his secret well. Mistaking his reticence for a natural reserve, she’d never suspected a thing. ‘Weren’t you always afraid of the truth coming out? Always looking over your shoulder?’
‘Only at the beginning. After a while, you stop thinking about it. You’d go mad if you didn’t.’
Eden sighed. Despite everything, he was still the man she loved. So he’d messed up, done something stupid, reckless, but it didn’t change the way she felt about him. There would be some bridges to build, but they could get through it.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t try and justify my actions to yourself. You think you can forgive me but you can’t.’
Eden frowned. ‘Isn’t that up to me to decide?’
‘You haven’t heard the whole story yet. You don’t know the half of it.’
Eden’s heart sank. She saw how pale his face was, how his eyes refused to meet hers. What was coming next? She wanted to put her hands over her ears, to refuse to listen. A moment ago she’d had hope, but now it was starting to crumble.
‘You’d better tell me, then.’
48
Tom stood up and paced around the room for a while, as if trying to get his thoughts in order. He put his hands in his pockets, took them out, put them back in. Eventually, he spoke again. ‘What you have to understand is that I never intended to keep on being Tom Chase once I came back to London. The minute I was back on British soil, I thought I could put it all behind me. I’d return to being Larry Hewitt, normal service resumed. It took me a few days to figure out it wouldn’t be that easy. How was I going to get a new passport, for starters? If I applied for one in my real name, it could be on record that Larry Hewitt had died in Hungary. I presumed the embassy would pass on that kind of information. And then there was tax and national insurance – if I was flagged as dead, how was I going to explain my miraculous resurrection? I could see a whole lot of trouble coming my way.’
Eden watched him as he paced, following him with her eyes. Back and forth from one side of the room to the other. There was a heaviness centred in her chest, a dread of what was coming next. ‘And so you decided to make the change more permanent.’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said. ‘There was nothing else I could do.’
‘But weren’t there people in London who knew you as Larry Hewitt?’
‘A few, but they were acquaintances rather than fri
ends – other photographers mainly. I didn’t see it as a major problem. People often change their names for professional reasons – actors, singers and the like, so why not photographers? I reckoned I could get away with it. And if someone started asking too many questions, I could always leave, move to another city or go abroad. As it happened, no one ever did ask. I doubt if anyone cared. I opened the studio and work gradually began coming in.’
As he mentioned the studio, Eden was reminded of DI Vic Banner and what he’d implied about the way it had been financed. And the truth suddenly dawned on her. ‘There was no loan, was there? No Lukas Albrecht. The money belonged to Jack.’
Tom gave a wry smile. ‘Although, strictly speaking, it didn’t belong to him either.’
‘But you took it from his bank account?’
Tom shrugged again. ‘I had no idea he had money – not that kind of money – until I started sorting through the things I’d brought back from Budapest. Along with the letters and bracelet, there was a Munich bank book and a couple of statements. I found the pass code in the back of his address book.’
‘So you just opened a bank account over here and transferred the money.’
‘Not immediately,’ he said. ‘I thought about it for a while. But yes, eventually.’
‘Isn’t that theft?’
‘Is it?’ he asked, frowning. ‘I mean, who was I actually stealing from? Jack had no family. The money was just going to sit in the bank for ever – or until someone figured out he was no longer alive. It seemed to me that it didn’t really belong to anyone so I may as well use it myself.’
Eden could see there was a twisted kind of logic to the argument, but it still didn’t sit well with her. Taking money from the dead was neither decent nor moral. It was one thing to take a man’s identity, quite another to empty his bank account. There was something cold and greedy about it.
‘You’re shocked,’ Tom said, standing over her.
Eden looked up at him. She couldn’t deny it and so she said nothing.
Tom shifted from one foot to the other, raised his hand and pulled at his right ear. ‘But I never set out to take his name or his money. None of it was planned. One thing led to another and…’
‘Here we are,’ she said.
‘Yes, here we are.’
It was only now that Eden thought to ask the question she should have asked much earlier. ‘What about Jackie? How did you explain all this to her?’
Tom flinched, screwed up his face and looked away.
‘Tom?’
‘It was as much for her sake as mine. We were both trapped, stuck in a loveless marriage we couldn’t escape from. Good Catholic girls don’t get divorced. She couldn’t move on and neither could I.’
‘What are you saying?’
Tom let out a breath, a long hissing sound like a tyre deflating. His eyes still refused to meet hers. ‘I sent a letter from Tom Chase informing her of Larry’s accidental death in Budapest – and a copy of the death certificate. It was for the best. I set her free. She could get married again, go on and have the family she really wanted.’
Eden gasped. She shifted forward, clutching her stomach, his words like an unexpected thump to her guts. ‘You told her you were dead?’
‘Why not? To all intents and purposes, Larry Hewitt was dead. Once she’d got over the initial shock, it was probably a relief to her. We hadn’t lived together in years. It was a marriage only in name; she didn’t love me any more than I loved her. I was a millstone round her neck.’
Eden’s eyes grew wide. ‘How did you think you’d get away with it? What if Jackie or someone she knew came to London and saw you?’
‘It was a risk, but a slim one. Jackie hates London. And most of her friends never stray further than Manchester.’ He flapped a hand dismissively. ‘They’re small-town people with small ambitions.’
‘And your family,’ she croaked. ‘What about them?’
‘What about them? We never got on. I doubt they did much grieving.’
Eden swallowed hard, barely able to look at him. ‘Has anything you’ve told me about your life been true? Is your mother even dead?’
‘She is to me.’
Who was this man? He looked like Tom, spoke in his voice, but underneath the familiar wrapping was someone Eden had never met before. And then, suddenly, the full meaning of what he was saying sank in. Her jaw dropped open. ‘Christ, we’re not even legally married, are we?’
Tom inclined his head, his mouth twisting at the question. ‘I never meant to hurt you. You have to believe it. That day in Budapest, the morning those police officers came to the door – if I could go back and change what I said to them, I would.’
But Eden didn’t believe a word of it. Being Tom Chase had, until now, worked out pretty well for him. He’d managed to dump an unwanted wife, get a new one, grab a large amount of cash and build a successful business. His only regret, she suspected, was that it was all coming to an end. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The walls were closing in on her. She leapt to her feet, panic rising in her chest. ‘I have to get out of here. How do I get out?’
‘The door’s open. You can leave any time you want.’
Eden walked quickly across the room and pulled open the door. Outside, in the corridor, two prison officers were waiting. ‘I want to go,’ she said. ‘I want to go now.’ She glanced back over her shoulder, one last look at the man she had loved.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was never meant to end like this.’
Eden couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed up. A bitter, cold despair swept over her. She turned away, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes. So this is it, she thought: the last goodbye. It took every ounce of her willpower just to keep it all together as she was escorted across the courtyard and out of the prison.
Eden walked slowly along the street, got into the car and leaned over the wheel. A low moan escaped from her lips. There was nothing left. All her hopes and dreams were in tatters. Everything she’d thought real was just an illusion. Tom Chase wasn’t her husband. She wasn’t a wife. Nothing about her life was real. Even her name was fake. She felt lost, bereft, empty, as though her very soul had shrivelled up and died. She closed her eyes and wept.
49
Jimmy Letts was climbing the walls with frustration. He’d been sitting on the story since Thursday and it was now Monday afternoon. But he couldn’t do anything until he found Eden Chase. Where the hell was she? On Thursday, Maurie Post had followed her from the prison, to Tammy’s place and then on to a block of flats in Finchley, but no one was answering the bell to number four. He was starting to wonder if the little shit had given him the right address or if he’d even gone to HMP Thornley Heath.
Jimmy had camped outside the flats for most of the weekend, but to no avail. There wasn’t a sign of Eden’s car on the forecourt reserved for residents or in the surrounding streets. He’d had a good scout round, checking everywhere within reasonable walking distance. The flat was definitely empty; no one came or went and the lights remained out when it got dark.
It had been too late for him to come round after he’d got back from Norwich on Thursday evening. Then, on the Friday, he’d got a bollocking from his editor, Lipton, who was less than pleased about him going AWOL and had sent him out on as many menial jobs as he could think of. It had been four o’clock before Jimmy had finally managed to escape to Finchley. Of course he could have told Lipton about the Tom Chase exclusive, but he didn’t trust him. The old sod wasn’t beyond passing it on to a senior reporter, someone with more experience who’d then take all the bloody credit. No, he was going to keep it under his belt until he’d got Eden’s response.
Jimmy glanced at his watch. It was ten past one and he couldn’t hang around any longer. He was supposed to be on the Mansfield estate – there’d been more trouble there last night – and he couldn’t afford to piss off Lipton any more than he already had. He’d have to come back later and try again.
The rai
n had cleared, but the sky remained ominous. As he drove towards east London, Jimmy glanced towards the heavens, sending up a silent prayer that no one would get to Eden before he did. He was looking forward to breaking the news – and wiping that supercilious look off her face. Unless she already knew. Was that possible? He didn’t think so.
Jimmy had guessed he was on to something big as soon as he’d set eyes on Mrs Andrea Chase. And her story was a heart-rending one. Her son wasn’t a full-grown man, a forty-one-year-old photographer currently languishing at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. No, of course he wasn’t. Her son, little Tom Chase, had tragically died at the age of two from diphtheria. The man Eden Chase was married to was a faker, a deceiver, a lowlife who had stolen a dead child’s identity.
