Lie to Me: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Jess Ryder

  ‘You cannot be serious!’ he said when she told him, reminding her fleetingly of John McEnroe. If he hadn’t been in such an agitated state – charging around the room like a caged animal, growling and pulling at his hair – she would have said so and tried to lighten the argument. It was mid-afternoon and the hot sunshine was streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows; it was like a bloody sauna in there and she was sweating. A bedraggled bunch of flowers was lying on the coffee table next to an unopened bottle of cava – Jay had brought them home as a peace offering, but she’d not even let him begin to apologise. It was way too late for that.

  ‘I am serious,’ she replied instead, keeping her voice calm and her tone cold. She’d been practising all day, as if it was an audition piece. ‘I’ve packed your rucksack. If you could give me the keys to the house and Bertha—’

  ‘You can’t do this. I won’t let you.’

  ‘Jay, stop pacing around, for God’s sake, and calm down!’

  ‘I’m not going,’ he said, thumping his fist on the back wall. ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘You’re only here because I invited you,’ she said, remembering that he’d actually invited himself. ‘In fact, you’re actually banned, remember? Isobel said—’

  Jay rounded on her. ‘I see, been speaking to that bitch, have you? Oh Isobel, I’m so sorry, it wasn’t my fault, Jay made me do it.’ He jumped into a vicious mockery of Isobel’s accent. ‘Oh darling, how positively dreadful, you must get rid of him at once!’ He shook Cara by the shoulders. ‘Did she tell you to dump me? Did she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She must have – you’d never have the guts to do it by yourself.’

  ‘This isn’t helping,’ she said. Calm, cold, decisive.

  He released his hands and lunged for the bottle of cava, flinging it against the back wall. Pieces of wet glass flew everywhere and foamy bubbles dribbled down the pine panelling. ‘How about that?’ he shouted. ‘Did that help?’ He flung himself into the bamboo armchair and sobbed into the cushion like an angry, hurt child.

  She edged slowly forward, trying to avoid the broken glass. ‘Jay… please… It doesn’t have to end like this.’

  ‘Fuck off, bitch,’ he muttered from behind his fingers.

  That was it. Cara straightened to her full height. ‘Your rucksack’s in the front room. Please take it and go. Now. Or I will contact the police and tell them what you’ve done.’

  He sat up, pointing with a trembling, jabbing finger. ‘You’ll pay for this, you know that? Somehow I’m going to make you pay.’ She didn’t reply, just kept her eyes on him as he left the room. The front door clicked open and slammed shut. She held her breath for a few seconds, then let out a long, exhausted sigh. Jay was gone and it was over.

  It was only hours later, after she’d cleared up the mess and put the poor flowers in water, that she realised he hadn’t left his key.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Me

  ‘What’s happening? Have they caught the bastard?’ asks Amy, peering over my shoulder at the computer screen.

  I start guiltily. ‘Not yet.’ I click off the news feed and return to the blog I’m supposed to be writing about effective content marketing. But it’s impossible to concentrate and two minutes later I’m back on the news again, fixated. Live-at-the-scene journalist Sally French has been standing outside Archway College all morning, ready to bring us developments, but all that’s playing is a montage of shots on a loop – students weeping high-octane tears, sobbing into each other’s hair and laying flowers on the pavement, close-ups of notes attached to teddies, cross-fades of plastic windmills spinning in the breeze.

  I thought I’d feel better if I came to work. ‘Say nothing, do nothing, just act normal,’ was Isobel’s advice, but it’s not working. Everyone in the office is talking about the murder, and although they think it’s outrageous that someone could film a real stabbing and put it on YouTube, they’ve all watched it. They’re speculating in that gossipy, salacious way people do about why it happened – I’ve done it myself in the past so I can’t blame them – but it’s making me feel physically sick.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Isobel said last night, but I know she was shocked when I told her. ‘He killed the girl, not you. Hold on to that fact.’

  I click back to the news site. Every few minutes we are shown the same photo of Santianna Makepeace, angelic and big-busted in a white jumper embroidered with a silver sequinned rose. The journalist, chirpy in a bright yellow raincoat, keeps reminding us about the poetic irony of her surname. Now it’s the turn of the college principal, who looks as if he’s been up all night, to give his ‘our hearts go out to the victim’s family’ speech. He clams up when he’s asked if the college knew that Christopher Jay had anger-management issues. Apparently he’d only just gone back to work after two weeks off following a bad row with the victim – somebody leaked that helpful information via social media in the middle of the night. In the absence of the murderer himself, everyone is looking to cast the scapegoat. ‘Was this a tragedy that could have been avoided?’ Sally French says rhetorically to camera, pulling her collar up against the rain.

  Yes, Sally, it could have been avoided. If Jay hadn’t been passed fit, he wouldn’t have been at the college and I wouldn’t have found him so easily. How was I to know he was mentally ill? Hold on to that fact.

  Now we’ve switched to the local police station and another journalist is telling us that a ‘massive manhunt’ is under way – parks, wasteland and derelict buildings within a wide radius are being searched by teams of specially trained armed officers. There have been numerous reported sightings from as far away as Devon and Newcastle, which detectives are following up, although we are told that he’s probably somewhere close by. The SIO is interviewed and says that a man answering Christopher Jay’s description bought a new set of clothes from a charity shop on the Camden Road and soon they’ll release an updated e-fit. She urges the public to be alert, but not to confront the suspect as he could be dangerous.

  I take out my earphones and sigh loudly. Why on earth did I confront him? How stupid was that?

  ‘You okay, Meri?’ asks Amy from her desk. She’s been giving me strange looks all morning, even commented on the dark shadows beneath my eyes. ‘Is it a migraine?’

  As much as I’d like an excuse to go home, I can’t keep lying to my friends. ‘No, just tired, that’s all. Not sleeping too well.’

  ‘You should try meditation,’ she says, and proceeds to tell me about this course she’s thinking of doing – not actually doing – on mindfulness. I try to listen but my eyes keep returning to the laptop screen. They’re showing a photo of Christopher Jay now – the one that’s on the college website – and I remember the picture of him that was used during the trial. How long will it be, I wonder, before the media make the connection?

  Amy insists that we get some fresh air, so we buy sandwiches and sit heroically on a bench in Soho Square, where we’re pestered by fat pigeons and emaciated drug addicts. The sun may be shining but summer it isn’t, and before long I’ve lost the sensation in my fingertips. I know she wants me to open up, and part of me is tempted, but I know I mustn’t. ‘Tell nobody,’ Isobel said. ‘In times like this, you can’t trust a living soul.’

  Amy removes her second sandwich from its packet. ‘Are you still feeling depressed over Eliot? Perhaps you should go back to the doctor, get some more happy pills.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I retort, shooing away a group of sparrows waiting eagerly for crumbs.

  She chews on her crayfish and rocket and then says, ‘You sure? Only you’ve been acting a bit weird lately. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We don’t want you ending up in hospital with a bag on your head.’ She laughs, and I join in her unwittingly tactless joke, as if the idea is unthinkable. Amy doesn’t know about Becca or the dodgy genes she passed on. She doesn’t know there’s a 12 per cent chance that I will become schizophrenic. I must banish these absurd ide
as and start taking preventative measures instead. I must take comfort in the laws of probability – the 88 per cent chance that I won’t end up with nets in the stairwell and plastic windows, a woman knitting at the end of my bed. Thinking about it positively, those are pretty good odds.

  We finish our sandwiches in silence. The grass is patchy and tired of waiting for new growth. I look up at the thin blue sky – clouds like tufts of wool caught on invisible hedges – and try to imagine a future in which all this is over and life is ordinary again. I shiver. It’s too early in the year for picnics; my toes are cold and the tip of my nose feels like an ice cube. Amy, sensing that I’ve had enough, holds out the brown paper carrier bag and I drop my waste in.

  ‘Are you absolutely, positively sure you’re okay, Meri?’

  ‘Just some family stuff going on, that’s all,’ I say. Vague, but true.

  She looks unconvinced. ‘Well, you know where I am if you need to talk.’

  We go back to the office and I take up my usual position in front of my computer screen. I rewrite the opening paragraph of my blog – not making it any better or worse, just different – and then make everyone in my section a cup of tea. I even attempt a bit of idle chit-chat as I hand round the mugs. Preventative measures. The saner I act, the saner I’ll be. I just wish the internet would go down so I can’t check for the latest news on Christopher Jay every five minutes. But the afternoon reports are simply reruns of the morning, and eventually I get bored. I finish the blog and post it on the company’s website, then make an excuse for leaving early and go home.

  The evening passes slowly. Fay and Lizzie are chatting in the kitchen over a bottle of wine. They offer me a glass but I tell them I’ve got a headache and go up to my room. I lie on my bed, fiddling with my phone and watching the news feed. I’m addicted to it, even though it’s making me feel worse with every minute. Floral tributes have been arriving all day and the pavement is overflowing. Right now, there’s a candlelit vigil outside the college – several hundred people have turned up and a Baptist choir is singing hymns. Rather beautifully, too. So far, all is peaceful, but there is an increased police presence in the area and dark warnings on Twitter. #Santianna is full of complaints about the lack of justice for young black victims, and we’re told that if the police don’t find Jay soon it could be the Tottenham riots all over again.

  I exchange a few texts with Isobel, who’s banking on Jay killing himself because ‘that’s what they usually do’. It’s supposed to be comforting, but it just makes me panic. If he dies, his secrets will die with him and I’ll never know what happened to Becca.

  How’s the manhunt progressing? I wonder. The word makes me think of cavemen in animal skins, brandishing spears. Maybe the police have some leads but aren’t divulging them to the public. I think about calling Eliot – he might know what’s really going on – but I don’t trust myself not to blurt out the truth. I haven’t responded to the message he left yesterday, which he’ll think is odd, but not so odd that he’s called again. Maybe he’s just too busy. Dad hasn’t been in touch either, which is less surprising. He must have heard about the murder but obviously doesn’t want to talk about it; probably thinks it’s nothing to do with us. I wish.

  I crawl into bed and lie in the darkness, trying to put the house of my mind in order – a place for everything and everything in its place. Only then, I think, will I be able to sleep. But the task is impossible. The past-life regression session won’t leave my brain. Christopher Jay, Isobel, Cara, Becca – alive, dead or somewhere in-between – take it in turns to wreck my efforts, demanding my attention like spoilt children. Their faces zoom forward, jostling for centre stage, then recede and linger in the background, muttering half-phrases that play over and over again in my brain like bits of annoying pop songs. They won’t let me go, tugging at my sleeve, grabbing my hand, trying to pull me in and give me a part in their drama. But I’m not interested; I don’t want to know who did what or when and why and how. I’m the innocent bystander, the four-year-old with wispy golden hair, sitting on a plastic chair. All I want is an ice lolly, a strawberry one. I’m Meredith Banks and I live in the here and now. Meredith Banks, do you all understand? Go away and leave me be. I cry out for my father, but he doesn’t come. He’s busy in the garden, burning the past.

  I wake before the alarm goes off. No idea how much sleep I managed in the end; a couple of hours perhaps. I feel worn out, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now. Got to get up and face the day. I shower and dress, put on my make-up, eat a bowl of cereal, walk to the tube, stand for the whole journey and arrive at the office ten minutes early. Amazing what you can do when you try. Act normal, I tell myself, as I take the lift to the second floor. Act normal.

  But it’s so hard. Everyone in the office is still talking about the murder. There’s a protest march planned for 11 a.m., I’m told, starting at the college and processing down the main road to the police station. Santianna Makepeace’s mother has made an appeal for calm, but according to Twitter, the local community is on a knife-edge. It’s an unfortunate metaphor. Thousands are expected to join the protest and reinforcements are being brought in from other boroughs. If the police behave as if they’re expecting trouble, does it make it more or less likely? Discuss. Why haven’t they caught Christopher Jay yet – is it laziness, incompetence or both? Now my colleagues are swapping ‘chilling’ memories of the Tottenham riots, by which they mean evenings glued to their laptops watching young men with scarves over their faces hurl beer bottles at policemen, and people running out of shops with tellies like it was the January sales. Those awful ‘other’ people, destroying their own communities to provide real-life entertainment for the rest of us. I can’t stand the way they talk about it, as if it was the latest episode of Hollyoaks. If I was really acting normally I’d be right in there, saying my piece, but not today. Today I’m keeping my head down, saying nothing and pretending to be absorbed in my work.

  The internal line rings. I pick up and say, ‘Hi, Meredith here,’ in the brightest tone I can manage. It’s the receptionist, her voice wet with excitement, telling me that Detective Sergeant Myles is here again, insisting that he talks to me. I suddenly feel exhausted, my bones heavy, muscles weak. It takes an enormous effort just to stand up, and as I walk out of our section to the lift, my knees almost give way beneath me.

  Eliot’s right there, standing in front of the lifts on the ground floor, waiting for me. He doesn’t say hello, or give the customary peck, just pulls me roughly to one side and whispers, ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’

  ‘Why? What’s up? Can’t we just go to the pub?’ I bluff, but he shakes his head. ‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’

  I enquire at the front desk and am told the Burgundy Suite is free for the next fifteen minutes. Eliot says that should be enough. Enough for what? Is he planning to torture me? We get into the lift, standing in awkward silence as we ascend to the third floor. I look at our reflections in the large mirror that takes up most of the back wall and remember the skip of happiness I used to feel when I caught sight of us in a shop window – small and tall, white and brown, physical opposites and yet somehow the perfect pair. And then the happiness twists and we look like two strangers vaguely annoyed with each other.

  Eliot glances doubtfully at the glass cube plonked in the middle of the room, surrounded by busy workstations. ‘This is the Burgundy Suite? Bit of a goldfish bowl,’ he says, and, on cue, a few people turn away from their screens to look at us curiously. The room has already been prepared for a meeting – cups and saucers, large flasks of coffee and tea, a plate of chocolate biscuits, a bowl of fruit. I tear off a banana, peel back the skin and take a large bite.

  ‘Breakfast,’ I tell him, taking a seat. Act normal.

  Eliot sits down opposite me, clasping his hands together as if in prayer, chewing at his thumbs. Thinking.

  ‘You went to see Christopher Jay, didn’t you?’ The last bite of banana sticks to the roof
of my mouth. ‘The security guy mentioned that somebody asked for him at reception, and the barman in the Star and Garter remembers you too. Said the two of you were arguing.’

  ‘What makes you think it was me?’ I say, swallowing.

  ‘Let’s not play games. You’re there, clear as day, on the CCTV footage. That was about half an hour before he stabbed Santianna Makepeace.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘I know, Meri,’ he replies quickly. ‘I know. I should have said something to my boss yesterday but I bottled it. I was awake all night trying to decide what to do. I even tried to kid myself that I was wrong, that it wasn’t you at all, just someone who looked identical to you. I so wanted to be wrong.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  His brown eyes are blazing at me. ‘You should’ve told me straight up. You’ve put me in an impossible position.’ He shifts angrily in his seat, like he’s trying to stop himself from punching me in the face.

  ‘You’re working on the murder case then?’

  ‘Yes. I interviewed Jay, so my name came up on HOLMES. They called me down to help with background and profiling.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. You should have contacted the police anyway.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that bullshit. Why did you go and see him? What did you say to him?’

  ‘I showed him the tape.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I wasn’t to know he was going to walk straight back into class and do that! I didn’t kill her, it wasn’t my fault!’

  ‘I’m not saying it was!’

  Our raised voices bounce off the glass, making the guys at the nearest desks look up.

  ‘Look,’ I say more quietly. ‘Nobody else has to know, do they?’

  ‘They already do. I went in this morning and told my boss I’d suddenly had a feeling it could possibly be you. Not sure she bought it, but she let me come and pick you up.’