My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller (24 page)

Friday morning, two days after Tommy had shown up on my doorstep, and I was strung out, my temper tinder dry.

I was upstairs, getting dressed, when Jason shouted up the stairs.

‘Have you done something with my keys?’

‘Sorry, no,’ I yelled back. I was running late and I didn’t want any distractions. If I failed to show up at the hotel on time then Tommy might come looking for me here.

There was a pause, and then I heard the banging and swearing that meant Jason was searching the kitchen drawers. This went on for about thirty seconds and then I heard him stomping back into the hall.

‘They’re not in the bowl where I always leave them.’

I tensed, ready for the line I knew was coming next.

‘Have you moved them?’

‘No.’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘Have you checked your jeans pocket?’

‘You must have,’ he shouted, and then, a little bit quieter, as though he didn’t want me to hear. ‘You’re always tidying my things.’

Fortified for the day ahead in my black suede stilettos with the polished metal heels, I came down to find him in the living room, busy upending every drawer in the sideboard. Bottle-openers, packs of cards and bits of string littered the carpet.

‘You’d better put all that away when you’re done.’

He thrust his hands down the back of the sofa.

‘I’m sick of never being able to find things when I need them.’ When the sofa proved fruitless, he moved on to the armchair, flinging the cushions onto the floor.

‘Maybe I didn’t move your bloody keys. Maybe you put them somewhere. Maybe you hid them.’ Once I got started, the words rushed out of their own accord. ‘Because, let’s face it, when it comes to hiding things you’ve got a bit of a track record.’ I wanted to stop, but still, I kept going. ‘Where in the house is your Vicky folder stashed now Jason? Under the floorboards? In the loft? A metal safe only you can access using the secret combination?’

‘Careful,’ warned Jason. He came in close to where I stood and pushed his face into mine. ‘There are some things that, once you say them, you can’t take back.’

Heeding his threat, I stopped. I was already ten minutes late for my meet-up with Tommy. Every extra minute I stayed was an extra minute in which he might bang on the door and make good on his threat to tell Jason everything. I wanted to go, but this exchange, this argument, seemed to have levered open a tiny chink in the dam. A gap through which, given half a chance, all things unsaid could escape. It felt like an opportunity.

‘Who is Danny?’

‘What?’ The change in topic threw him. His anger collapsed into confusion. But then half a second later I saw his eye twitch. Fear. His brain had yet to catch up with what his body already knew. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I heard you. The other night. You and Vicky. You were watching old videos together.’

He floundered, reaching for what he and Vicky might have said.

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing.’

‘You’re poking your nose into things you don’t understand,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘What is it she wants you two to come clean about? And to whom?’

He went to leave the room. Sick of his evasion tactics, I pushed in alongside him, making sure to get to the door first.

‘Stop bullshitting.’ I blocked his way. ‘Tell me – tell me right now.’ I pulled out the only threat in my arsenal. ‘Or I’ll go and ask Vicky myself.’

He took a step back, shocked.

‘You really want to do this? Then let’s do this.’ He looked to the floor, his bravado gone. ‘Vicky had an affair.’

‘She what?’ This I hadn’t expected.

‘A bloke I worked with. Danny.’ He said the man’s name through gritted teeth.

I was so lost for words I couldn’t even formulate a question, but he continued.

‘She realised she was pregnant the day Barney went missing.’ He shook his head, a reluctant surrender. ‘She drove over to Danny’s house that morning. She went to tell him it was over.’

I thought of all the times he’d recounted the events of that day. The idyllic scene with the dippy egg and soldiers in the kitchen. The way Barney had bounced on their bed, blowing raspberries.

‘Danny didn’t take it well.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘After she’d gone he kept calling her on this pay-as-you-go he’d given her. Flashy shit. Thought he was the bee’s knees. Still does. He has this ridiculous tattoo on his back. A tree. The branches go all the way up to his neck.’

‘Did you know about this right from the beginning?’

He paused and looked me in the eye. He seemed to be deciding which answer to give.

‘Vicky was scared to tell me about it at first, about the baby.’

‘And then?’

‘A week or so after Barney had gone, she broke down. By that point the press had turned their crosshairs on us. The police didn’t have a suspect, there was no body and so they were trying to make Vicky the story.’ He rubbed at the short undercut on the back of his head. ‘She wanted to go to the police but I knew that, if we did, it would be a disaster. Right from the start Martin had told us it was important to keep the press on side. You of all people know what it’s like. If people start thinking the parents did it then they’re much less likely to call in anything suspicious. If we’d come clean, it would have added nothing to the investigation and the story would have changed. They would have made it all about the affair, not finding Barney. Lose, lose.’

‘And you got her to agree?’

‘For a time, but she’s a good person. She’s still worried there might be some detail about that morning, that day …’ He faltered. Again, he seemed to be locked into some internal decision-making process about what he was or wasn’t going to tell me.

‘So that’s why you jacked in the steel?’

‘Welding is a small world.’ He shrugged. ‘You come across the same crowd of lads again and again. I couldn’t face the thought of bumping into him. Danny.’

He came forward and took my hands in his. He seemed to be telling the truth.

‘I’m sorry I never told you. I couldn’t.’ He brought his face in close to mine. When I refused to meet his eye, he reached for something else to assuage me. ‘Besides, it wouldn’t have been fair. If you knew any of this then you’d be implicated.’

I thought about the night I’d overheard them talking on the sofa. Vicky had mentioned something about an ultimatum.

‘What about the baby?’

At this he dropped my hands and moved away, towards the bay window.

‘She decided to terminate the pregnancy.’

He adjusted a framed picture of Barney on the windowsill so that it faced head-on, into the room.

‘Does Martin know?’

I was pretty sure I already knew the answer to this question, but I wanted to know if Jason had any inkling.

‘Martin? Of course not.’

I thought of Vicky and the detective that day outside the police station. The text-message exchange I’d read on her phone. Her distress. He knew. But Jason believed the secret he and Vicky shared was one between them and them alone. Secrets like that can keep you bound to a person. Connected. Until, I thought, the day you learn they shared your secret with someone else.

‘So that was why you split? Not because of Barney – because of her infidelity, her pregnancy?’

‘Yes and no.’ He rubbed again at the hair at the back of his scalp, his hand hard against the short undercut. ‘Vicky always swore the thing with Danny was a one-time occurrence, a mistake. I found out later it had been going on for months.’

I had a sudden and horrible realisation.

‘That’s what your file on Vicky was about?’ I didn’t know whether to feel stupid or jealous. ‘You were trying to work out whether or not she’d had an affair, or just a one-night stand?’

His subsequent silence told me everything I needed to know.

I realised I felt embarrassed – for him not me.

‘She didn’t want to get rid of the baby, did she?’

‘Enough.’ He threw his hands up in the air and collapsed back onto the sofa in defeat. ‘You wanted to know and now you know.’

It could have been the other guy’s child she was carrying. On the other hand, there was always a possibility …

I might not have said the words out loud but we’d both heard them. I’d already stayed longer than I should. Tommy was waiting for me. Grabbing my bag and coat, I headed for the front door.

The hotel was a grubby sixties block. Situated next to a dual carriageway, it had a pale, concrete exterior and tiny metal windows. Beneath each window were dark, damp stains from where rain had collected on the sill and drained out onto the concrete. The dripping was so consistent it looked deliberate; an eccentric pattern decided upon by the architect.

Sliding doors led into a maroon-coloured lobby. It was empty except for a plastic spider plant in the corner and a vending machine, chained and bolted to the floor. Light jazz muzakked from invisible speakers in the ceiling.

Tommy had said he would be in room 323 and so, after checking the wall signs, I headed for the tiny lift.

I’d spent the drive here replaying Jason’s revelations in my head. Now, as the lift climbed to the third floor, I continued to pick over the debris. He’d said that he’d lied to protect me, to ensure I wasn’t implicated. But the more I thought about it, the more I doubted whether this was actually the case. His priority had been to protect Vicky, to protect himself.

The doors dinged open and I tried to focus on the task at hand. Right now I had to deal with Tommy, to find a way of despatching him quickly and cleanly from my life.

Out of the lift, I counted my way down the corridor to his room, knocked and stood back to wait. The air smelt of mould and stale cigarette smoke.

There were footsteps. I heard the sound of the metal spy-hole cover on the other side of the door being slid open and made sure to stare, unsmiling, into the glass fish-eye. I wasn’t entirely sure why he’d asked me to meet him at a hotel and not his flat, but I suspected it was because he thought it more likely that it would lead to some kind of tryst. I crossed my arms. From the outset I needed him to know how things stood. Nothing was going to happen.

A minute or so passed and then finally the door opened a sliver and Tommy peered out. Without saying a word, he leant his head forward and scanned the corridor, like he was looking for somebody. Satisfied I was alone, he ushered me inside.

We stood facing each other in the long passage that led into what seemed to be the bedroom. To my left was a door, presumably the bathroom, and to my right was a fitted wardrobe. The wardrobe wasn’t shut properly and as I followed the line of the middle door to the floor, I saw that there were two large holdalls stashed in there, one on top of the other. Resting on top of the holdalls were two picture frames. I’d seen one of them before, in Tommy’s flat. A small bleached-out snap framed in silver, it showed Tommy and his brother and sister as kids, their arms wrapped around each other. The second picture was in shadow and more difficult to make out.

I realised Tommy was smiling shyly.

‘What’s so amusing?’

He shrugged, his smile goofing into a wide grin.

I needed to stay calm, but I felt like he was goading me.

‘OK, funny man,’ I said. ‘How about this for a joke? What the fuck were you thinking, coming to my house? Why did you think it was OK to follow me?’

‘Heidi.’ He shook his head as though I’d disappointed him. ‘You don’t mean that.’

This exchange felt like the one we’d had the other day. It was as though we were having a conversation about two very different things, as though he was alluding to something he thought I should know all about but didn’t.

‘I don’t like being blackmailed,’ I said, determined not to let his weirdness throw me off course. ‘Don’t come to my house again.’

‘Or what? You’ll tell your husband?’ He nudged me gently with his elbow. He seemed to think we were enjoying some shared joke. ‘You won’t tell him, same way he won’t tell you.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, sick of these insinuations that made no sense.

Silence.

‘Look,’ I said, softening my tone. ‘You’re a nice guy, but what happened between us, it didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry if I led you on.’

For a brief moment his grin disappeared. I’d hurt his feelings. He stopped to consider the veracity of my words. A beat, and then he shook his head, my protest dismissed, and the smile returned, wider than before.

‘What is it you want?’ I asked, unable to stop myself from escalating into a shout. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

Tired of his games, I took a step back and was about to leave when something in the wardrobe caught my eye. It was the light, catching on the silver framed snap of Tommy and his siblings. I stopped. From this spot I was granted a full view of the second frame lying next to it.

The air seemed to tighten and flex.

I had seen it once before: in the room at the back of the off-licence. Looking down through the tiny window, that day I’d only been able to make out that it was a shot of a larger man, the boy and another adult on some kind of a fishing boat. Now, up close, I saw that the larger man was indeed Keith. But I was also able to identify the third person. There, holding a fish aloft, his forearm tattoos brazen in the sunshine, was Tommy.

I looked back to where he stood now, in front of me. He offered a tentative smile. He seemed hopeful. Like he had just presented me with a surprise gift.

What was going on?

I heard the bathroom door handle push down. Someone had been in there the whole time. Keith? I felt a stab of fear. Had they brought me here to hurt me?

But then the door opened and the person in the bathroom stepped forward.

Wearing jeans and a hooded top, he looked from me to Tommy, his eyes wide.

‘Tommy, please can I come out now?’ he asked in a small voice.

I felt my knees go.

The boy.

I looked from the boy to Tommy, unable to process what was happening.

Tommy ruffled the boy’s hair and pointed at me.

‘You remember Heidi?’

The boy nodded.

I watched as he padded over to the far corner of the bedroom, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

‘What is he doing here?’ I pointed at the photograph. ‘Why are you in that picture?’

‘Shush,’ said Tommy, scooping me away from the door and putting his hand over my mouth.

I struggled to get free but his grip was too strong. Pulling my head back into his shoulders, he marched me into the bedroom.

‘If I take my hand away do you promise to remain calm?’ he asked. His tone was gentle, benevolent almost.

I nodded as best I could, his hold making it difficult to move my head even slightly. A few seconds later and he released me.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked between gulps of air. ‘What the fuck …’

‘Come, now,’ he said, pushing me onto the sofa. ‘We’ve done this dance long enough. Time to stop pretending.’

He sat down, put his arm around my shoulders and crushed me towards him. I tried to wriggle away, but he had me held firm. He leant in and kissed my ear and neck. His breath had a whisky tang. I looked at the boy. Absorbed in a cartoon, he seemed unaware of the drama going on behind him.

‘I asked you here because I thought it was time for us both to come clean. About him.’ He nodded at the boy. ‘And about us.’ He ran his hand up and down my leg.

Us? What was going on?

‘That first day, I knew you were there to snoop.’ His hand came to a stop at my knee. ‘We should have run.’ He lazed his finger back, along my inner thigh and zigzagged it up towards my knickers. ‘But I had this feeling. About you,’ he paused and looked me in the eye, his finger touching my crotch. ‘And later, about you and me.’ Panic leached its way into my lungs. ‘Turns out I was right.’

I looked at the boy, mortified this was happening in front of him. Thankfully, he hadn’t seen. Sitting cross-legged in front of the television, all his attention was focused on a brightly coloured superhero.

‘You’d been knocked over in the street. You were hurt and yet all you were worried about was that someone might call an ambulance. That was the first thing to give me pause. You didn’t want anyone to know you were there. Why? It didn’t make sense. I decided to take a gamble. When we got through the first twenty-four hours without incident, I knew. You hadn’t raised the alarm and you were never going to. You didn’t want him found.’

‘What?’ My fear temporarily replaced with pique, I turned to face him. ‘Jason took one look and said it wasn’t him,’ I explained. ‘No one would listen.’

My outburst surprised him. I remembered he was oblivious to the first time I’d laid eyes on the child, the day I’d insisted Jason come to look.

‘Then there was other stuff. Like say you appearing on my doorstep.’ He mimed the way my jersey dress had slipped from my shoulders. ‘That night at the fireworks I took a big risk letting you go off with Mikey. I needed to know we could trust you.’ He beamed with pride. ‘You brought him back.’

He presumed I knew all about his and Keith’s secret. Not only that, he believed I condoned it. But if that was the case, then why had he asked me here today, to this hotel? I ran through events in my head, and then it hit me. I had tried to break things off with him. Blocked his calls. Did he think I’d had second thoughts, that I was getting ready to report them to the police? Was I here now because he needed to make sure of my silence?

Dread corseted my ribcage. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going and it wasn’t like work were expecting me. Anything could happen and the only point at which Jason might clock something was up would be tonight, when he got home from work and noticed I wasn’t there. But then again … After the argument we’d had before I left the house this morning – after his confession – if I didn’t show up for dinner he’d no doubt put my absence down to nothing more than my anger at him and his lies.

My hands started to shake. Was Tommy going to hurt me? But no, he would never do that, not with the child here.

‘So,’ I said, trying to disguise the tremor in my voice, ‘you took Barney?’

Tommy recoiled, offended.

‘He’s called Mikey,’ he whispered, checking to make sure the boy hadn’t heard, ‘and no, I didn’t “take” him.’

‘Who did? Keith?’

‘No.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb as though he had a headache.

‘He should be with his dad,’ I ventured. ‘He should be with Jason.’

The mention of Jason’s name seemed to irritate him. He got up, went to the window and pulled the long net curtain to the side.

‘You say that,’ he said, looking down at the car park below. ‘You want everyone to think that.’

I thought about the strands of hair I’d taken. The Jiffy envelope was still somewhere at the bottom of my bag, ready to be sent off to the lab.

He turned to look at me, his face full of mischief. ‘If Jason were to get his kid back, how long do you think it would be until he realises you and he no longer have anything in common? One month? Two?’

‘He should be with his family,’ I persevered. ‘He has a mum and dad.’

Tommy laughed.

‘I didn’t think you were that naive.’

‘Naive?’

‘You don’t seriously think that if he comes home everything is going to be OK?’

‘There’ll be a period of readjustment, that’s only natural.’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘He’s not the same kid. He’s him but he’s not him,’ he tried to explain. ‘Don’t you understand? Five years is a long time. Especially at his age. It doesn’t matter how much you try, he’s never going to be able to think of those people as his parents. They’re strangers. It would be cruel.’ He’d been working up to a rant but he’d overreached and now his voice started to thicken. ‘We’re the ones he loves now. Me, Keith and Jenny. We raised him. We’re his family.’

‘Jenny,’ I said. The face from the photofit. ‘Keith’s sister?’

Tommy nodded.

I was right. I’d always been right. The one thing I’d been wrong about was Tommy. What was his involvement?

I looked at Barney, a new and horrible thought beginning to form in my head. I had assumed the child’s presence guaranteed my safety. But what if I’d got it wrong? What if Tommy had blackmailed me into coming because he intended to hurt both of us? To solve both problems at once. Was that what the two holdalls I’d seen in the wardrobe were for? Were they to transport my and Barney’s bodies out of here?

I assessed the layout of the hotel room. I was probably no more than six paces from the door. Tommy was strong, but if I was quick, I could probably make a run for it. The only thing was, I didn’t want to risk leaving him alone with Barney.

I gave him a minute or so to calm down, and when I next spoke, I made sure to do it in a low, soothing register.

‘Tell me what happened. Tell me why. Why did she take him?’ I said, trying to buy myself some time. I got up from the bed and moved close to where he stood. I needed to figure out a way to get myself and Barney out of there unhurt. ‘Please.’

After turning on a lamp, he poured himself a generous measure from an already half-empty bottle of Bell’s whisky. Then he grabbed a curtain in each hand and pulled them together with a swoosh, casting the room into darkness.