You Let Him In Read online

  ‘Please let me get to my son,’ Jenny pleads with me. ‘He is scared. Let him go.’

  ‘I’ve drugged him,’ I reply, holding the knife at a reasonable distance to her neck. ‘He’s been out for the count all night in the back of the van. Sat there among the bodies of his grandparents. He isn’t scared. He’s too sleepy to be scared. Plus it keeps him quiet and still.’

  ‘Why?’ Jenny screeches. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘Because I want to destroy everything that is associated with Michael!’ I shout at her. ‘Did you not fucking listen? Your husband fucked my wife. She was my bookkeeper; he was my accountant. He manipulated her into bed. He took advantage, and after she left me, after the divorce, I got sick. I couldn’t see things clearly then because I was too traumatised, but I see everything clearly now. He caused all of this. I blame him for my demons.’

  ‘What are your demons?’ Jenny asks. ‘You’re lying to me, please let us go. You’re not well. I trusted you!’

  ‘After the divorce I developed pains, some constant sickness and migraines that weren’t going away,’ I say, holding the knife out towards her. ‘I have a tumour eating away at me. Attacking my brain. It’s terminal and I’m dying.’

  I watch every muscle of her face, hoping to see a glimmer of concern, but nothing.

  ‘I’ve only got a few months left to live, if that,’ I state. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do for me now. I’ve lost everything and I’m going to die. I’ve got nothing left to lose.’

  Jenny moves slowly forward. It’s not enough to move me off track but I wonder in that split-second if she’s going to try anything stupid.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I say, firm and forceful. ‘Stay exactly where you are, or I will kill him.’

  Jenny nods her head and stands up, letting go of the kitchen side.

  ‘This has nothing to do with Daniel,’ she replies, wiping her eyes. ‘Please, I am begging you to let my son go free. He might need a doctor. Look at him, he’s not well. I can see it. He needs medical help.’

  ‘Every time I look at him, I still see Michael,’ I reply to inject more fear into her. ‘You should be thanking me that he’s still alive. He wasn’t meant to be here. He watched everything.’

  After I cleaned up the blood and went through the house with a fine-tooth comb to ensure it looked like everyone had gone out, I found the sleeping tablets in the bathroom. I crushed some into Daniel’s juice and waited patiently until he fell asleep. When he was out for the count, I drove their car to a nearby street and walked back to the house. I parked my van on the driveway and bundled their bodies into the back in the dead of night. I had three large boxes ready for each of them. I struggled to drag them one by one while taking breaks, and was lucky that no one saw me. I threw in all their luggage, closed the lid on Donna’s box, shut Peter’s box, and placed Daniel inside his own box with the lid open. I drove away and it was that easy.

  I’ve not slept all night. The adrenaline is keeping me awake. I checked on Daniel a few times in the night to allow more air into the back of the van. He was sleeping on his side but the smell of urine was overpowering. He’s dehydrated.

  ‘I’m so sorry that you have cancer,’ Jenny says, keeping her voice calm. ‘I don’t see how Michael could have caused all this?’

  I know what she is trying to do, but it won’t work. I can tell she is trying to manipulate me. How dare she? I’m not an idiot. She’s not getting me side-tracked into any other conversations. To think that I’d be that stupid to fall for a trick like that. Sorry that I have cancer – like she’s stood on the back of my heel or something.

  I’m raging. I thought we could have been friends if she had made an effort to get to know me better. I didn’t want my last few months to be a lonely existence with no one to turn to. Every person I cared about has left me; my own cheating wife abandoned me.

  ‘I never wanted to kill you at first,’ I say. ‘I thought we had a connection when I first met you. You opened up to me, it felt special. I thought we could have been friends. I thought you were different.’

  She’s looking at me in disgust. It hurts, this rejection all over again. Just like my wife. I can’t go back – not now that I’ve started this, now that I am a killer. I can’t stop here.

  ‘You never once ask me how I am, how I am feeling,’ I snap, while she looks at me in shock. ‘I thought smelling like Michael, dressing like Michael, you might have paid me more attention. I wanted to get your attention. All you want to talk about is Michael, the wedding ring and the same old crap over and over again.’

  ‘We barely know each other, I’m grieving for my husband,’ Jenny sobs. ‘You were there when he died. I wanted you to talk to me about his last moments. It made up for me not being there with him when it mattered. You helped me understand what he might have been going through. I thought we could have been friends, in time, but…’

  ‘The stress,’ I reply, short sharp, and ready to unleash my annoyance. ‘My diagnosis came after the divorce. I have a brain tumour and I’ve had to accept that my life is over. I blame it all on the stress. My demons. I’m grieving too.’

  Jenny’s body language is tense. She remains silent but shakes her head at me as a sign of disappointment. I don’t know how she could still love that man after everything he has done to her. Everything he has done to me.

  ‘What started as a constant cough, something I thought might have been asthma, has now evolved into my death sentence,’ I continue, riling myself up. ‘All of it, I blame on the stress. My demons. Demons put there by your filthy, cheating fucking husband.’

  Jenny moves a little bit closer.

  ‘Don’t you dare come near me,’ I shout, waving the knife. ‘Do you want me to kill you before you’ve even heard the rest of it? More secrets about your loving husband?’

  Jenny stops dead in her tracks, and her body stiffens. Her eyes are bright red from the teary state she is in– but she still doesn’t even know the half of it.

  ‘Michael had a gambling habit,’ I announce, ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘I know about the debts,’ Jenny replies, ‘on his credit cards and—’

  ‘He borrowed a lot of money from me. Thousands, in fact. He was meant to be paying me back but failed to deliver,’ I interrupt her, knowing that she hasn’t got a clue. ‘I promised to keep his dirty little fucking secret while my marriage was breaking down, my wife fleeing the area, but I put the debt up after I found out about the affair. He had no choice but to continually struggle to pay me if he never wanted anyone to find out. He paid me to keep my mouth shut – if he ever wanted to keep his family. I thought it was fair to make him pay.’

  I watch the torment, the confusion, and the look on her face as this news starts to sink in.

  ‘How long had it been going on?’ she asks me, sobbing. ‘How much money did he owe you?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds or thereabouts at last count,’ I reply. ‘It doesn’t matter now though. He came begging to me months ago. Practically on his hands and knees when he was suspended from his job on suspicion of fraud.’

  This next bombshell should be another stab to her feeble emotional state.

  ‘Who do you think organised calling his office, providing them with the doubt? Showing them hints of evidence that Michael was taking some of their business for himself?’ I continue. ‘I lost him his job knowing full well that he’d come running to me for more money. By then I had already planned his death sentence. He worked for me now. All I had to do was witness it, to make sure the job was done.’

  ‘Why?’ Jenny screeches in an attempt to scream at me. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  It’s time for the truth.

  ‘When I accepted my prognosis, all I wanted was payback on Michael. He knew I ran a dodgy car lot. He knew I ran a bent car hire firm. He helped me save thousands in tax bills for a few back-handers here and there. He also knew about the drug runs. All he had to do was deliver the right package to the right addr
ess. Sometimes pick up the odd envelope full of cash.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Jenny asks, glancing towards Daniel. ‘You made him deliver drugs for you?’

  ‘He should have kept his filthy hands off my wife, then all of this wouldn’t have been necessary.’ I reply. ‘All this stress on me, he is to blame. Not me.’

  For a few seconds, Jenny doesn’t do anything other than look at me. I see her eyes glancing in the direction of the knife, and then back to my face. I take a quick look out of the kitchen window and can see we are still alone.

  ‘I still don’t understand what this has to do with Daniel and me,’ Jenny says, the panic in her voice clear as day. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘Because you’re both a part of him,’ I snap at her. ‘Because piece by piece and bit by bit I’ve wanted to watch Michael’s life be destroyed and everything that was part of him. Just as mine is coming to an end. Call it my dying wish. It’s all been for payback.’

  Jenny starts to cry again. I’ve trapped her in a corner with no way out. She has to listen to me and I want her to understand my pain. Michael destroyed my happiness. I would have expected more of a fight. I have her son bound and sprawled on a sofa but if she runs towards me, I will jab the knife into her. Daniel can sit there and watch his mother die – if he can keep his eyes open. I doubt I’ve given him a lethal dose, but he doesn’t look well.

  ‘Daniel watched both of his grandparents die, and soon he will watch his mother die,’ I say calmly. ‘I get more satisfaction now at the thought of him growing up with no parents, traumatised by the memories he may have of this day and knowing that he has no parents in his life because his dad caused all of this mess.’

  ‘I thought you were my friend,’ Jenny replies. ‘You watched my husband die. You even held his hand. You came to our home and talked to me. I told you how I was feeling. I believed you. I thought you were traumatised by his death.’

  ‘I really thought we could have been friends, but we’re not, are we?’ I say. ‘I took off his wedding ring that night purposely to show that his marriage was worthless. The flowers I gave you too, those carnations, were from the scene of his death, left by some work colleague who probably didn’t give a toss about him. The aftershave I am wearing is Michael’s and look – it’s his fucking suit I am wearing too. I also managed to make damn sure that even his own family didn’t turn up to his funeral.’

  Just saying it all out loud gave me some satisfaction. The truth was told. Jenny should understand now that I am also a victim of Michael’s lies. I wasn’t bothered when he died. I watched and wished for it to happen. I set the whole fucking thing up. I wanted that man dead the minute my own death sentence was confirmed by my doctors. I am not dying with the man who caused all of my problems still out there living his own life. I’ve achieved what I set out to do. Destroy his and his family’s lives.

  ‘I’ll tell you what else you didn’t know about your precious Michael,’ I shout. ‘His own mother fucking knew about his debts. Donna lent him some money to help pay me off. He told me that he asked her, that he had to go begging to his mother and that she knew. It was their little secret.’

  ‘No, no, you’re lying,’ Jenny snaps, tension in her voice. I see the anger brewing. ‘You’re lying. Michael was a good man. Whatever it was he was doing was to provide for his family. He loved us.’

  From my pocket, I whip out the photograph of my wife and Michael kissing each other. I want to rub it in her face but I hold it out clearly for her to see. I’m not sure if Michael’s mother knew about the affair, or even about me. She didn’t recognise me at the door but I know she knew more than Jenny realised. She lied for him and would have done anything for him.

  ‘Look at them,’ I tell her. ‘Look at this picture of Michael kissing my wife. Do you not recognise the hotel in the background? Take a real good hard look at it?’

  Jenny puts her hands to her face and cries more. I know there’s no coming back from this. She has to know the truth.

  ‘That’s the Taverton Estate Hotel. Look at it, go on,’ I say. ‘That’s the hotel where the private investigator I hired watched them kiss. The first picture I saw of them both together and the last place that I stood over him and watched him die. He slept with my wife at that very hotel – paid for, no doubt, with my money, the money that she took from me.’

  Jenny should start to see the penny drop. I want her to realise. I want her to tell me what is going on in her head. I want her to be angry. I want her to react. I organised the death of her husband. He is dead because of me, and soon the penny will drop.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident, was it? All this time, and it was you?’ Jenny asks. ‘Did you kill Michael?’

  I nod in agreement, smiling. I took great pleasure in killing that bastard.

  ‘I arranged his urgent meeting. Dropped little hints that I knew would get to him. I implied it was big money, a big job with a certain accountant needed. A dodgy bent one,’ I explain. ‘I knew that he was so desperate for money it would get the better of him. It was no accident, and that junkie who mowed him down owed me money too. All he had to do was to wait until I gave the signal. He was off his fucking head, desperate to clear his own drug debts. They both were.’

  ‘But he’s dead too,’ Jenny says, breathing heavily and with an irate tone. ‘He died in the stream. Sharon explained to me that he drowned after he ran away from the scene.’

  ‘I pushed his dirty fucking head under the water until he silently started to float a little,’ I respond, and she moves a hand to her mouth in horror. ‘Collateral damage. It all looked like the perfect accident in a quiet little village on the outskirts of Westbridge. No one even suspected a thing. He ran exactly to the spot where I arranged our meet, out of sight of the cameras. So many drugs in his system that the police could only have assumed that was the cause.’

  I take a look at her while she is digesting all the information, before throwing one more revelation at her. I visited the hotel a few times before organising everything. I found the quietest day, the best time and the position of the cameras. I wanted nothing more than to be there, stood over him as he died. The last face he saw was mine.

  ‘I even supplied the vehicle that killed him.’ I watch her squirming with fear. ‘Everything was planned right down to his last fucking breath. If the car hadn’t hit him hard enough, I’d have strangled him with my own bare hands that night. You should have heard the last words I spoke to him.’

  Throughout the short investigation into Michael’s death, I was surprised that the police didn’t ask more questions. They were too blindsided by me being a witness to a terrible accident, believing I was there for a dinner date. The links between us were not known to the police and my well-established lifestyle of luxury and businesses, I assumed, made them believe that someone like me couldn’t do something like that. That junkie thought he was repaying his debts. Michael thought his life was going to get a whole lot easier with a new contract.

  ‘This is your fault, Michael,’ I said, while his eyes blinked and his bloodied body shook as I gripped his hand. ‘You fucking asked for all of it.’

  I see the wedding ring on the floor where Jenny dropped it. I had slipped it on the pillow when she went to the site reception. I found the lodge keys on the hook by the door of Michael’s parents and knew it was a great distraction to get Jenny away from the funeral service. My instincts were right. She did focus on Daniel and his wellbeing. As any mother would in the same position. She was trusting and misguided and I was confident I could manipulate her out of calling the police.

  ‘Help me!’ Jenny screams at the top of her voice. ‘He’s got my son, he has a knife, help, help.’

  I look out of the kitchen window and see the workman standing there. He’s staring at me with the knife in my hands. He looks confused, but now he knows what he has seen. Me, holding up the knife. I don’t have time to capture him. That loudmouth bitch has ruined everything. Why couldn’t she have just kept her mouth
shut?

  I turn towards Jenny and run at her as if for a rugby tackle. I’ve got limited time before he possibly comes back with backup, or the police. She falls to the ground and I’m trying to stick the knife in. I’m stabbing her, I can feel that I have pushed it with ease into her side as she pushes her arms to try and force me off her. I see blood on the kitchen floor but I’ve no idea how bad she is. I hope she feels the pain as I hear her scream for help.

  I’m a dying man with nothing to lose.

  Thirty-Four

  Jenny

  The stab from the knife didn’t hurt at the exact moment it penetrated my side. I didn’t feel it at first – but now there is a pulsating stabbing pain with an ache as the blood comes out of me. I can see it smeared on the kitchen floor. I see the wedding ring beside me as I lie here in my struggles. It glistens in the sunlight that is coming in from the kitchen window. I can’t die, not here, not today. Not in front of my son. I have to protect him even if it means dying to save him.

  The smell of Gary’s breath hits my nose as he is forcing himself on me. I have one hand on his chest and another behind his back as I am trying to push him off me. I’m using what little strength I have to try and roll on to my side. I know the man at the window saw me and I can hear him banging on the door. I need him to call the police or get help. He must have seen the knife.