Those Who Lie: the gripping new thriller you won’t be able to stop talking about. Diane Jeffrey
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accident – that it was no one’s fault. But Josephine doesn’t say anything else. Does she blame me for Greg’s death? Am I to blame? Emily feels her shoulders tense. Is there any chance he’s still alive?
Emily cries for ages while her mother keeps patting her back to soothe her.
‘I’ll sleep now,’ Emily says at length, sniffing. ‘Will you call me when the police come?’
Josephine hands Emily a tissue and promises to tell her as soon as Sergeant Campbell and PC Constable arrive. She leaves the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
But Emily still has no intention of sleeping. She blows her nose, and then flips open the lid of her laptop and enters her password. Next, she logs in to her Facebook account. Many people have posted their condolences on her wall in response to her obituary. The first comment is from Will Huxtable. She hasn’t seen him for years – she hasn’t even spoken or written to him since that memorable day when he came to visit her. But they are virtual friends on Facebook. As she begins to read through his reply, the notification sound alerts her to a new message.
This time she checks the time and sender. There is no doubt. The sender is Gregory Klein and the message was sent at 14:17. About three minutes ago. Emily is aware her breathing has become shallow.
She reads the message twice. It doesn’t make any more sense to her than the first message Greg sent. And yet some intangible memory of a recent event seems to be materialising at the back of her mind. Before Emily can put her finger on what it is, she hears the buzzer. Seconds later, Josephine appears at the bedroom door to announce that the police officers have arrived. Emily closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She snaps the lid of her laptop shut, gets up slowly and makes her way downstairs.
~
‘Good afternoon,’ PC Constable says, as Emily sinks into the armchair she vacated just an hour earlier.
Again, Emily can’t get comfortable. She tries sitting forwards, but she’s afraid of appearing too nervous, so she sits back but she thinks she must look too nonchalant. ‘Good afternoon,’ she says. She can hear her mother in the kitchen and realises she’s making yet more weak tea. Emily resigns herself to having to drink a lot of weak tea while her mother is staying.
‘Mrs Klein, we’ve come to ask you a few questions,’ Campbell says in her Glaswegian brogue by way of a greeting. ‘We have taken a statement from a member of the public who witnessed your car crash.’
Here, Campbell pauses. Emily wonders if she should say something, but Campbell hasn’t asked a question yet. The police officer runs her hand through her spiky red hair. Without taking her eyes off Emily, she unbuttons her breast pocket and slides out her notebook. Then, squinting at something written in it, she clicks her ballpoint pen on and off repeatedly. Emily remembers this habit of hers from the hospital. She wonders if it’s an OCD ritual or if she pen clicks absent-mindedly. Either way, it’s irritating.
Looking at her pad, Campbell continues: ‘This witness was walking his dog, a chocolate Labrador, along a cycle path near the Marston Ferry Road on August the first at approximately fifteen hundred hours. He saw you lose control of your vehicle, a blue Mini soft-top.’
‘Nice car. Lightning Blue Metallic?’ So it’s Constable who has asked the first question. Emily nods. ‘Great choice of car and colour. Good taste.’
Emily thinks that if Matt were here, he’d consider Constable to be playing the role of good cop. Campbell is clearly more suitable for the part of bad cop.
‘My husband bought me the car for my birthday last year,’ Emily tells Constable.
‘According to the dog walker,’ Campbell resumes, ‘you drove your car, for no apparent reason, off the link road at considerable speed straight into a tree at the side of the road. It was this man who rang for the ambulance.’
‘Mrs Klein, can you tell us how you came to lose control of your car?’ Again, the question has come from Constable, which surprises Emily.
‘I honestly don’t remember,’ she replies. ‘I know I was driving. That’s all I can tell you about the accident.’
‘So you can’t tell us if you swerved to avoid someone or something, or if there was a mechanical failure with your car, the brakes, for example?’
‘No, I really don’t know,’ Emily says.
‘Do you sometimes lose consciousness?’ Constable asks.
‘I pass out sometimes,’ Emily replies, not immediately understanding the point of his question. ‘If my blood pressure is low, or I feel dizzy, or if I have a shock, for example.’ Emily almost mentions that she fainted just the previous day, but she checks herself in time. That would mean having to tell the police about the Facebook messages. She definitely doesn’t want to do that. ‘It doesn’t happen often,’ she adds quickly.
‘Could you have fainted in the car?’
‘It’s possible,’ Emily says. ‘But I don’t think so. I wasn’t feeling ill.’
She does remember, however, having a shock. Something Greg said had shaken her to the core. Some sort of revelation. What was it? It’s somehow connected to the message he sent just a short time ago.
Sergeant Campbell’s first question is so unexpected and so extraneous to her introductory comments that it physically winds Emily.
‘Mrs Klein, have you been interviewed by the police before?’
Emily doesn’t know how to answer that. Is it a trick question? Of course she has been interviewed by the police before. She was interrogated as a teenager when she admitted to killing her father. Is that what Campbell wants to hear? Could Campbell possibly already know that? If she’s aware of this, there’s no point in Emily denying that she has been questioned by the police in the past.
Emily struggles to recover from Campbell’s blow. Her mother helps her unwittingly. With impeccable timing, Josephine enters the living room with her tray of tea and biscuits. When she has gone, Emily takes a deep breath.
‘I helped police with their inquiries when my father died,’ she says. She realises that the euphemism she has just used probably makes her seem as guilty as if she’d just confessed to the crime all over again.
‘How old were you when your father was killed?’
So Campbell does know.
‘I’d just turned fifteen,’ Emily says in a voice that is barely audible.
‘Let’s talk about your family,’ says the sergeant. ‘How many brothers and sisters have you got?’
It strikes Emily that Campbell’s questions are probably deliberately haphazard to try and unnerve her. It is working.
‘I have a sister, Amanda, who is two and a half years older than me. And a half-brother, Matt, who is seventeen years old.’
‘And Matt shares the same biological mother as you?’ Campbell’s intonation suggests a question, but she’s looking down at her notes and Emily isn’t sure that an answer is required. It occurs to her that Matt would probably reply: ‘Duh!’
Campbell continues: ‘Your mother’s the lady who just brought us in the cup of tea. Is that correct?’ Emily nods as the sergeant bores her emerald eyes into her. ‘The other day in the hospital, you mentioned that your mother had been unwell. Could you tell me about her illness?’
Emily glances uncomfortably towards the kitchen door. ‘Is this relevant to the car accident?’ she asks.
‘Mrs Klein, if it’s all right with you, I’m the one who usually asks the questions,’ Campbell says a little brusquely.
‘We’re just establishing background,’ Constable says, smiling his slanted grin.
‘My mother was an alcoholic for several years,’ Emily says. ‘She had treatment in a rehab