Liars: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Frances Vick

  1st March 2009 – Body of Man Identified.

  Police have identified a man who was found dead in the canal two weeks ago as missing person Marc Doyle.

  Officers were called to Carrington Street in the city centre two weeks ago after a body was found in the water. Following specialist forensic tests required to identify the deceased, officers have been able to confirm the man as 38-year-old Marc Doyle of St Ann’s.

  The death is being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner ahead of an inquest which will take place in due course.

  Marc? What in hell was David doing with a cutting about Jenny’s sort-of ex-stepfather?

  With shaking hands Freddie got out his phone, and took some careful pictures of the clipping, the strange numbers and letters, the train tickets. On the other side of the Post-it note was written:

  You mustn’t think bad of me because I’m writing quickly I am not writing quickly because I am not a nervous man. I like writing and I am not afraid of you because inside me lives god and my nerves are calming down a lot and I feel myself improving and how are you? It’s important you’re well and happy? I feel myself getting more well, and happier, and that means.

  He didn’t recognise the handwriting. David’s?

  He looked at the ‘TINKER’ photo again; there was something familiar about this nondescript patch of earth… he’d seen it before… Yes! That same cross was at the end of the garden, near to the scars the fire had left on the lawn. What did it mean? Why have a photograph of your cat’s grave?

  ‘Here?’ David’s voice sounded from the garden, just below the window. It made Freddie jump. ‘A full bed or a rockery?’

  ‘Maybe a bit further that way?’ Jenny said.

  ‘At the end, you mean?’ David asked doubtfully. ‘Isn’t that a bit too far from where the patio will be?’ His voice was moving away, while Jenny’s was still close, and a fraction too loud.

  ‘Well, if we extend further, we could move all the plants away from the front door?’ It was a strangely emphasised phrase.

  ‘D’you mean the patio door?’ David seemed to be coming back towards her.

  ‘Yes, sorry I meant that. Not the front door.’ Again, that emphasis. She was signalling to Freddie that he should leave now, safely, from the front, as David was being kept busy at the back. Clever girl!

  And so Freddie crawled to the bedroom door and put one cautious foot on the top step, paused, and trotted halfway down before he was stopped dead by a voice.

  ‘What is it?’ Catherine called from her room. ‘David?’

  Freddie remained rigid on the stairs, one toe on the next step, hand clutching the bannister.

  ‘David? Come and talk to me David!’ Freddie held his breath. ‘Holes. Holes! What about Tinker? Tell me. Tell me and I won’t tell.’

  Still Freddie didn’t move, barely breathed. The silence grew monstrous, pregnant. From the kitchen, he heard Jenny call to David in the garden: ‘Look, I have some pictures on my phone – stay there and I’ll get it!’ And a moment later she was at the bottom of the stairs, gesturing wildly towards the open front door. Freddie pointed towards Catherine’s room, and she pulled the door to, all the while waving him down the stairs.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Catherine asked nervously as he passed her door.

  ‘Just me,’ Jenny told her, and mouthed: ‘Go!’ at Freddie.

  ‘Who?’ Catherine was just behind her door now. Her voice was strong; it rang with authority. ‘I have a right to know!’

  Jenny made a telephone gesture with one hand and waved at the front door with the other. Her eyes pleaded with him to go, just go.

  ‘How could you do that to Tinker?’ Catherine shouted.

  Freddie ran then, down the drive.

  Back in the car, he allowed himself a few minutes of stillness, of calm, enough time to let the sweat that had run down his sides dry stickily, and his breathing to return to normal. As he turned the engine on he got a text from Jenny.

  I will explain EVERYTHING, promise but don’t call or text. Have to take Catherine to hospital for tests in the morning, so might get a chance to call you then? OK?

  Safely back home Freddie studied the photo of the scribbled numbers and letters. But when he googled ‘LGG’ all the results were for some kind of probiotic drink. And also… airports? LGG could be Liège Airport in Belgium. HHN turned out to be Frankfurt Hahn. EDI was Edinburgh. Why did David have all these written down? Could the numbers correspond to flight times? They had to. He looked up flight statistics, and let out a little yell of triumph. He was right!

  An hour later, he’d narrowed the flight times down to scheduled arrivals to their regional international airport. The only number that didn’t fit was ‘16’.

  A date?

  He typed ‘16’ and the name of the city. Nothing. ‘16 David Crane’. Nothing; 16 and the name of the county, nothing. As a last resort he tried the name of the village, and up popped a familiar local news article. Sal’s death. 16th January. The same news report that David had clipped and kept safe in ‘Precious Memories!’

  Freddie flopped back onto the sofa cushions. The cursor blinked insistently next to Sal’s name, and Freddie looked at that, looked at the date, looked at the flight times, struggling to get his fingers under what this might mean. David had flight times from the evening of Sal’s death. Well, David had been coming back from dropping Ryan off at the airport on that night. That was how he’d been able to see Jen walking through the village; that was how he’d been able to provide the police with her alibi. On the surface, it made sense, but why have the details of three separate flights written down? David hadn’t given a ride to three people taking three separate flights from the same airport at the same time, had he?

  Freddie fingered his phone nervously. No message from Jenny. He couldn’t call her because it might put her in danger; she’d more or less told him that. David might be monitoring her Facebook page, her emails, everything… scratch that, he must be. Controlling communication was the number-one weapon of choice for abusive partners. There was nothing Freddie could do, but worry, and wait until she was able to call him, confide in him. If she ever did. God, this was awful. This was everything the Controlling Relationship websites had warned him would happen. And people like David always had a history of this sort of thing. They don’t start being psychotic at the grand old age of – well, how old was David anyway? Twenty-five? Twenty-four? Even though he’d appeared out of nowhere: the perfect son, the doting boyfriend, he must have a past, and a dark one too? A person doesn’t end up in a psychiatric unit for years because they were a bit insecure. David must have done this sort of thing before.

  What about Ryan Needham?

  Freddie opened Facebook, went to David’s profile – the picture was now a sepia-tinted one of him and Jenny – and found Ryan, resplendent in snowboarding gear, in his friends list.

  OK. Deep breath. This isn’t about you. Do it for Jenny.

  Hi Ryan. It’s Freddie Lees-Hill. Turns out we have a friend in common, David Crane? Small world!

  He didn’t get a reply. He hadn’t really expected one. Small world? Who said small world anyway?

  To kill some time before, and if, Ryan messaged him back, Freddie did some research on Marc Doyle, and found the same newspaper item that David had already clipped out of the paper. Another search resulted in a grainy photo of a rough-looking man standing in front of a pub, wearing a baseball cap. It was part of a death notification in the Post, and it didn’t say anything about how he’d died, just that ‘he was taken from us too soon’.

  Freddie closed his eyes. Marc Doyle taken from us too soon; Sally Holloway found dead. I am not afraid of you because inside me lives god. Tinker. Holes! How could you do that to Tinker?

  When he tried to sleep, his tired brain pawed at Tinker. It meant something to David. Tinker meant enough to David that he still kept up her grave… Lots of people were sentimental about dead pets, but who takes a photo of the gr
ave and keeps it hidden in a wardrobe? Tinker was important. It meant something to Catherine too: How could you do that to Tinker?

  What had David done to Tinker?

  29

  Freddie called in sick again the next morning, and then spent the next few hours slouched in his car, keeping an eye on David’s drive. At eleven he saw the BMW turn onto the slip road, Jenny sitting with Catherine in the back, while David drove. He gave them a few minutes, and then made his way through the field to the boundary of David’s back garden, his newly bought spade and trowel clinking together. Just through the rustling conifers he could see Tinker’s grave. Holes, Catherine had said yesterday, and it had to mean something. David kept everything, he was obsessive, secretive, and whatever he’d buried by Tinker’s grave must be significant enough to keep, but too disturbing to keep in the house.

  It was cold, kneeling in the dirt, and a fine rain fell. Freddie’s hands slipped and jarred with the unfamiliar tools. Rain dripped down his back and pooled in his underwear. After half an hour of digging in the wet, resistant earth, he was almost ready to give up when his spade hit something solid with a dull twang, and he knelt, scraping the trowel around the edges of something metal, square, until he was able to thrust his fingers far enough into the soil to touch it, grip it, wiggle it looser.

  A tin box, about twelve inches long. The faded picture of playful kittens on the top was damaged, cracked; one of the kitten’s faces had warped in the time it had been in the ground, so that the metal bulged at its mouth, distorting its face into a sneer. It was creepy. As he levered and coaxed the box out of the hole, he felt… not vindication, but dread. His mind yammered no way back now. No way out of it now. And when the box was out, and sitting next to the mound of earth, it began to rain harder and Freddie, crouched still, the cold seeping into his bones, forced one unwilling hand to drag it a little closer to him, to open it.

  The first thing he saw inside was a large grey rock, squarish and broken. It looked like a bit of a paving slab, or a patio block. It rested on top of a plain white carrier bag. Freddie picked up the rock, lay it reverently on the ground, and then opened the bag. The crackling rustle merged with the sound of rain like a sinister whisper. Freddie reached inside and brought out a baseball cap – sweat stains around the headband, and mud stains on the side and the peak. Inside the cap was a knife, about four inches long, still sharp, the blade slightly bent at the very top, and it too was stained with mud. With mud?

  ‘Not mud. Blood,’ Freddie whispered to himself.

  Freddie sat dazed for a minute and then, quickly, took some photographs of the hat and the knife, and then put everything back in the bag in an approximation of how he found it, and pushed it away from himself, telling himself to bury it again, just bury it, get rid of it. This seemed imperative. But burying the box was harder than he thought – it seemed that it didn’t want to edge back gracefully into the grave it had inhabited for the last few years. Some of the soil had fallen back into the hole, and Freddie had to dig some more, scraping against tree roots with the trowel. He worked for a few minutes, sweating, until the trowel grazed against something – seemed to cut through something. Freddie took out his phone, and used the light to see what it was, and what he saw made him squeal and drop the phone.

  It took him a few minutes to recover, and he was still stiff with fear as he put one, unwilling hand into the hole… his index finger brushed against the loathsome thing and he resisted the urge to snatch his hand away, telling himself that it was just bones. Just an animal, long dead. And it had to be moved to make room for the box, it had to be. He put his phone on the ground, took a deep breath and gingerly pushed at the small, fragile skull that had something in it. An oblong of silver foil, carefully folded, pinched in at the ends. Not knowing why, Freddie carefully opened it. Inside, like tiny splinters, were the animal’s teeth, sellotaped into two neat rows.

  ‘So that’s what he did with Tinker,’ he half moaned.

  Gritting his teeth, avoiding looking, Freddie spent long, anxious minutes digging to the left of Tinker’s remains, making the hole big enough again so that the box might be easily buried again and then jammed it back into the muddy hole. Then he replaced the silver foil in the animal's mouth, and started filling everything up with earth, trying to remember exactly what the ground had looked like before he started digging – there hadn’t been that little slope, had there? Had there? Put some leaves on it, pat it down. He was faintly aware that he was crying a little now, and the sweat crawled cold on his skin.

  Freddie considered staying at his parents’ house that night. He felt cold, frightened, and he wanted to be looked after and reassured, but they were bound to notice his muddy clothes, his distraction, and he couldn’t trust himself not to tell them everything. He couldn’t do that, not before talking to Jenny. So he drove back to the city. The rippling waves of fever rose, and by the time he parked, negotiated the stairs and unlocked his door, he knew he was sick, but he had one more thing to do before he showered, had a well-needed drink and tried to sleep.

  He messaged Ryan.

  I’m not being stalkery I promise but I need to ask you some questions about David. Please!

  Instantly Ryan responded:

  Who?

  David Crane? He’s going out with one of my friends?

  There was a pause.

  Yes I know David.

  How do you know him?

  Download this.

  Ryan attached a link to an encryption app.

  Why?

  Ryan was silent for a long time.

  I’m only comfortable talking about D if you use this. Only way I can do it.

  Freddie did a quick check, but it seemed legitimate enough, so he downloaded it.

  I’m back. How do you know David?

  I went to school with him. Why?

  He says it was university.

  Both.

  Did he give you a lift to the airport last month?

  Yes. Vegas. Why?

  Freddie frowned at the screen. None of the flight codes were for Las Vegas. He doubted that their regional airport had any flights to America. As far as Freddie knew, you could only get to Europe and Scandinavia from there…

  Do you see a lot of him?

  Why?

  I’m sorry, it must be really strange me contacting out of the blue again and asking all these questions.

  Silence.

  Freddie’s fear billowed… this had been a mistake. What was he doing? What if Ryan told David about this? It’d make things worse for Jenny…

  Not spoken to D for a long time. Didn’t know he had a girlfriend.

  Then:

  What’s he done now?

  ‘What’s he done now’? That indicated that he’d done bad things before… Tread carefully here, Fred, tread carefully.

  I’m worried about my friend. I found some things?

  Long silence.

  What kind of things?

  Pictures of my friend as a child. And some other things he shouldn’t really have of hers.

  I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what kind of things. This has happened before you see.

  ‘Knew it!’ Freddie whispered to himself, texted back.

  You mean he’s done this with another girl before?

  Ryan said after a long pause:

  Can we meet up somewhere to talk about it? It’d be better than this I think.

  OK. Phone me, message me, but please don’t tell David about this conversation.

  I don’t have contact with D any more for various reasons. You know he was in hospital? And he didn’t have a stroke?

  Yes I worked that out. That’s sort of why I’m worried – what if he’s had a relapse?

  Long pause.

  No I don’t think it’s that. I don’t believe he was ever ill, he’s the sanest person I’ve ever met.

  Longer pause, and then Ryan said:

  I think I can help. I’ll call you tomorrow or the day after. Would you be ab
le to meet face-to-face?

  For sure.

  And Ryan left the conversation.

  A second later it disappeared completely.

  Freddie only semi-slept that night, sweating through the sheets and existing in a kind of half-world in which he knew he was sleeping, even while he shivered at the end of David’s garden, feeling the cold, wet earth on his hands. His flatmate found him wandering about the kitchen in his boxer shorts muttering about buried treasure. He persuaded Freddie back to bed, managed to make him drink some water and take aspirin, and then, at a loss as to what to do next, he called the only person in Freddie’s phone he knew the name of. Jenny said she’d be over within the hour.