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Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2019
Published in the UK as A Version of the Truth
Copyright © B.P. Walter 2019
Cover design © Patrick Kang, 2019
B.P. Walter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008309619
Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008328726
Version: 2018-11-26
To my parents
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading…
About the Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
Knightsbridge, London, 2018
I’m reaching for a Mulberry purse when I feel someone standing close behind me. Too close. I edge to the side and turn round to see a small, blonde-haired woman standing there.
‘Hello, Julianne,’ she says. She smiles at me warmly.
I glance around. There’s nobody else near us. She’s a bit younger than me, probably late thirties, and is wearing a big, fluffy, blue coat, even though it’s the height of summer outside. She starts to walk closer still and I take a step back.
‘Hi,’ I say, smiling back, worried she is someone I should know, although I don’t recognise her at all. ‘I’m so sorry, do I …?’ I feel her studying me, looking me up and down, almost like she’s sussing me out.
‘My name’s Myanna. I’m an investigative journalist for the TV production company Exploration Media UK. I was wondering if I could have a quick word with you?’
I stare at her. ‘How do you know my name? What’s this regarding?’ I’m still holding the purse and sense a shop assistant looking over at us. I feel like I’ve been caught in the act, doing something wrong.
‘It’s about your husband, James Knight. I need to talk to you. I was thinking we could go and get a coffee somewhere. Or maybe you could come into my office for a chat?’
My husband. Something about my husband. My mind is racing. Why does this woman know my name? And my husband’s name?
‘Please, Julianne. We really need to talk.’
The back of my neck is feeling hot and suddenly I want to get out of the shop, away from her.
‘This is all very strange,’ I say, and laugh a bit awkwardly. I take another look around to see if anyone else is listening, but we’re still very much alone, apart from the shop assistant, who is now tidying the centre clothes display.
‘Tell you what, take my card,’ the woman says, reaching into her bag and then holding her hand out towards me. ‘I don’t want to force you into anything, but I would really like us to meet. I think you might know what this is about. So, when you’re ready, just give me a call.’ Her voice softens. ‘And I’m sorry if I startled you. I’m on your side, Julianne.’
With that, she is gone, and I’m left standing in the Harrods accessories section, her card clasped between my fingers, wondering why it feels like the ground is moving beneath me.
Chapter 1
Julianne
Knightsbridge, London, 2019
I lay my hands on the kitchen work surface and let my head fall a bit, just enough so the strands of my hair stay clear of the water in the sink. The sense of exhaustion throbs through me. Christmas should be an enjoyable time, but this year it feels like a stress on the calendar. I do love it, I really do, all the lights on the trees and the cold, although it never gets as cold as my childhood in Chicago. I’ve always thought that when English people moan about the weather they should be transported to the Windy City in the middle of winter. Then they’d really feel cold. Some part of me misses it; the layering up as if you’re about to go on some huge expedition up a mountain when you’re actually just going to the library or the shops.
I hear movement behind me by the door of the kitchen. ‘Do you fancy a top-up of wine?’ I call out to my husband. ‘My mother will be arriving soon, so you’d better get in quickly before she drinks us out of house and home.’
I take a pan of vegetables off the AGA as I talk, the billowing steam coating my face in a sheen of moisture.
‘Mum?’
My son’s voice takes me by surprise. He’s looking at the floor and something about his face makes me stop. Has he been crying? His eyes look red. Not red enough for me to rush to him and ask him what’s wrong, but just slightly tinged at the corners. He may be approaching his eighteenth birthday, but it’s amazing what little details can wind back the years and remind you that, not so long ago, your tall man-in-training was just a small, frightened child. Maybe he’s unwell, or his hay fever has been flaring up again. Unlikely in December, though.
‘Oh, sorry, honey. I thought you were Dad. You can have some wine, too. One glass.’ I wink at him and smile. I’m well aware his classmates are probably knocking back beer, wine, vodka and God knows what else every night in the run-up to Christmas. Not my Stephen, though. He’s not one of those seventeen-year-olds.
‘I’m cool with a Coke.’ He walks to the fridge and gets himself a can. He pours it in silence and then turns back to face me.
‘Mum,’ he says again, then hesitates.
I keep my smile going, but feel a slight coldness in my stomach. That simple word can be said in a whole galaxy of different ways. With love when they say goodnight, with anger when you tell them they have to do their homework, with annoyance when you probe too far into their personal lives or ask about who they’re dating. And then there are the times when they say ‘Mum’ in a way that makes your blood freeze in your veins. It’s immediately clear: something is very wrong. My mind starts to run wild, offering me a slide show of different horror stories, each more dismaying than the last. Maybe he wants to drop out of doing his exams? Is he being bullied? Has he got himself mixed up in something awful or criminal?
‘Stephen, honey, what is it?’ I say. I want to go to him and hug him but have learnt from experience it’s best not to crowd a teenager when they are about to tell you a piece of information that’s clearly causing them concern. In their overtaxed brains, flight is often an attractive solution to dealing with a problem. It’s best to stand well clear until the danger of this has passed.
Stephen moves his head, looking at the floor, as if he’s trying to gather his words but failing to get them in order. I try to be patient but fail. ‘Is it to do with your exams after Christmas?’ I see his face tighten as a result and curse myself for starting the interrogation too soon.
‘It’s … it’s nothing to do with that.’ He shakes his head, like he’s trying to brush his own thoughts away. I continue to stare, trying to keep my imagination at bay and remain calm.
‘Boyfriend trouble? Is it a problem with Will, then? Have you two had a fight?’ He winces, though I’m not sure if this is because I’m wrong in my presumption or because of my use of the word ‘fight’. He’s always been quite brutal about my ‘Americanisms’, as he calls them.
‘No, nothing to do with him either. It’s about … it’s about … Dad.’
This catches me by surprise.
‘What do you mean?’ I say, letting out a small, odd-sounding laugh. ‘What’s Dad done? Has he upset you about something? I know he goes a bit crazy with the pressure and all his talk about Oxford, but that’s only because he wants the—’
‘The best for me, I know.’ He cuts me off. His eyes are staring somewhere above my shoulder, still not meeting my gaze. ‘I told you, it isn’t anything about exams.’
‘Then I don’t see what he’s done to upset you.’
‘It … it isn’t like that. Forget it. I’m sorry, it was stupid to bring it up now. Especially when you’re doing all this for tonight and have your dinner party on Monday …’
‘It’s only Grandma coming to dinner, not a CIA operation,’ I say, playing down my own stresses. ‘And “dinner party” might be a bit of an overstatement – it’s just Ally and Louise and Ernest.’ The mere thought of the three of them descending upon us for our usual Christmas gathering makes me feel instantly tired, but I don’t let it show. ‘Just tell me. I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t fix. Has he said something about me? Something I’ve done wrong? Have I upset him? God knows it can be easy to, sometimes.’
‘No, nothing like that.’
I feel myself getting exasperated. ‘Darling, you keep saying that but don’t actually say what it is about. How can I help if I don’t know what it is? Are you in trouble with the law? I’m going to keep guessing until you tell me.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m being stupid, it’s really nothing. Do you need any help with the plates and stuff?’ He gestures at the kitchen table.
‘No, it’s all under control,’ I say distractedly, wishing it were true and trying not to think how many more things need to be done before my mother arrives. Now he looks me in the eye and I see fear. It’s cold and stark and horrible, the look a mother hates to see in the eyes of her child. I move a few steps forward and take his shoulders in my hands, feel his warmth and the firm muscles beneath his Abercrombie sweater. ‘Tell me.’ I say it calmly but firmly and he opens his mouth to speak.
‘Could you … could you quickly come upstairs for a minute?’
My concerns about the unprepared food fall away quickly. ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Lead the way.’
As soon as we are upstairs, he leads me into his room and gestures at me to close the door. ‘Tell me now, what’s wrong.’ I walk to the other side of the room and sit down on his desk chair, facing him.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ he mutters. He keeps glancing at the door as if it’s going to burst open at any moment.
The sentence frustrates me. How can he expect me to accept that as an answer?
‘Honey, Dad can’t hear us. I’m fairly sure he’s downstairs in the library, avoiding me in case I give him a job to do. We’re alone. And I’m not leaving until you tell me.’ I’m talking firmly now. Firm, but kind.
He finally looks me in the eye, takes a deep breath, apparently trying to choose his words carefully, and says: ‘I found something. Something a bit strange.’
‘Found what?’ My mind starts diving wildly to various different things he could have found. What does his father keep secret? Does he have a gun? That possibility is so unlikely it almost makes me laugh. Maybe evidence of an affair. That one sends a cold chill crawling across my skin.
‘It’s … it’s a bit hard to explain. They’re files. Files I found on Dropbox. In his folder.’
This takes me by surprise. ‘What? What do you mean? Why were you looking through his Dropbox folder?’
He sighs and rubs his eyes. This is clearly torture for him. I just want to hug him, but I’m scared of interrupting his explanation, so I sit still.
‘It’s … I think it’s something bad. Like, really bad.’
That cold chill is back. I really don’t like where this is going. A dark, menacing mass is forming in my head, as if it’s been let out of a deep, sickening recess of my mind.
‘What kind of thing are we talking about here?’
He stares at me and, for the first time this evening, I see resolve in his eyes. He’s going to tell me everything.
‘I think I’d better just show you.’
I nod, preparing for the worst.
‘Okay. Let me see.’
Chapter 2
Julianne
Knightsbridge, London, 2019
I can feel myself getting colder, an ice cube making its way down my neck, across my back, burning its icy stain into my blood.
‘I really don’t want to rush you, but I don’t think we have much time.’ I try to sound kind, rather than impatient, but waiting for Stephen to snap into action is making me tenser by the second.
His eyes are starting to overspill and I reach out to put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Please, Stephen, I need you to show me. Right now. It may not be what you think it is. You may have got the wrong idea.’
He just shakes his head.
‘Is that a ‘no’ as in you won’t explain, or ‘no’ as in you won’t show me, or ‘no’ as in you haven’t got the wrong idea?’ My smooth tone is breaking at the seams, my impatience to discover if the worst is true tearing me apart inside.
‘No, as in I don’t know. I’m not sure. I just know it’s been eating me up for two days now and I need to talk to you about it.’ After a pause, he goes to a bag by his bed and takes the device out of its leather case. I sit down on his desk chair while he perches on the bed and starts tapping away on the tablet, his face bathed in the blue-white glow of the screen.
‘And you don’t think this could be anything to do with his work?’ I say, partly to fill the silence.
‘I don’t know, that’s why I wanted to show you.’
I nod and wait. Overall, James keeps his work to himself, a lot of it bound up in such rigorous confidentiality it’s hard for him sometimes to even vaguely explain what project he’s working on. My mother once joked that he was like a spy – a bit of a James Bond – but I assured her the job of a head analyst and coordinator at a data services company is one full of spreadsheets, desk work and boardroom meetings rather than anything very exciting.
Stephen is offering me the iPad. I take hold of it and glance at the screen, a mass of files in front of me. From the ends of the file names, I can see they’re PDF documents. There’s something in this that comforts me. At the back of my mind, I think there was a part of me that expected to see .mov or .mp4. But these aren’t videos. That’s a good thing, surely? I scan down the list and then turn towards Stephen.
‘And these were in his Dropbox file?’ I ask.
‘In our Dropbox. The family one. The one we use to transfer photos and things and where I used to put my homework back when you wanted to check it over before submission. It’s Dad’s section of it. I clicked on it by mistake.’
This makes me feel ever so slightly better. If James had anything to hide, surely he’d be a little more savvy about protecting it than to upload it all to the family Dropbox account, the place I store family holiday snaps and copies of dull household documents like the TV insurance details?
‘Tap on one of the files listed here.’ His voice sounds strained, as if he’s trying to calm himself.
I look over at him. ‘If you’re really that worried, I can look at these later? We don’t have to do this now.’ As I say this, though, I know there’s no chance of me happily going back downstairs to carry on with the cooking. I need to know what this is about.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he says, and moves to the edge of the bed, crouching forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He looks like he’s about to take a particularly gruelling exam.
I focus back on the iPad and, as instructed, tap on the first in the list of files. They’re all unnamed, save for a list of seemingly random numbers and the file type. A document appears on the screen and I turn the device to view it in portrait mode.
A company logo is the only thing on the page. Clover Shore Construction is all it says, with a small clover leaf at the end of it. Underneath, in all-caps Times New Roman font, it says: BUSINESS PROPOSAL.
I flick the page with my hand and it changes, this time bringing up what looks like some kind of CV or personal profile, with a photo at the top of the page, followed by a name, date of birth and separate categories filled with bullet points. I look at the photo. It’s of a young woman. She isn’t looking into the camera; her eyes seem vacant, staring off into the distance. There’s something about her expression that I find quietly alarming. It’s as though she’s drunk or stoned and doesn’t quite know she’s having her photo taken. Although it’s a colour photo, her skin is pallid and grey, her dark hair untidy and her face drawn in and gaunt-looking.
‘Who is this?’ I say out loud, though more to myself than to Stephen.
‘Read the information. It’s pretty specific.’
I take a look and see what he means.
Name: Ashley Brooks
Date of Birth: 12 March 1989
Occupation: Officially unemployed, ex-stripper, occasional sex worker
Area: Ilford, East London
Reference: Daffodil
‘I’ve never heard of an Ashley Brooks,’ I say. ‘This is … this is very strange.’
‘It gets more detailed as it goes on,’ Stephen says.
I continue to read.
Lifestyle details:
• Ashley is dependent on a variety of legal and illegal substances, including heroin and cocaine. Best knowledge indicates she’s been using since she was eighteen.
• She’s rarely seen out of her flat. When she is, it’s usually to buy alcohol from the independent off-licence near her council flat in Ilford. She has been seen shouting expletives at random passers-by and crying in public.
• She doesn’t own a car, nor has she been observed using public transport within the last six months.
• She lives alone. Occasionally young men are seen delivering packages to her door – believed to be illicit substances. Sometimes they go inside, but usually do the transactions on the doorstep.
Crime:
• She’s been twice observed having sex in public, once in the car park of the Billington Estate where she lives, and on another occasion was issued with a caution by police after being observed performing oral sex on a young man at a bus stop late at night.
• She was arrested and charged with possession of a Class B drug in April 2012. She did not serve prison time.
• She was arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour near her flat in September 2016. She was released without charge.
I look up from the iPad at Stephen. He’s still looking at the floor.
‘How would anyone know all this if it didn’t come from the police or lawyers or somewhere?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. That’s what makes it so strange.’
I look back down at the screen.
Support network:
• Best knowledge suggests Ms Brooks has not been in contact with her mother or father for many years. Her mother is currently serving time in HMP Bronzefield in Surrey for GBH and the attempted murder of a man she was previously living with. Her daughter has never visited her.
• It is not believed Ms Brooks has any close friends or acquaintances outside the group of men who deliver her drugs.
• She does not have a consistent romantic interest or sexual partner.
• She has no siblings.
Risk:
• Ms Brooks is considered a low-risk potential investment.
• Trial runs, completed by our staff, have been highly successful, embarked upon by men posing as tax officials, social services workers and gas-meter inspectors. These have been undertaken using both single and multiple participants. She has reported none of these incidents and her behaviour has not changed other than a potential increase in drug purchases. We believe it is highly unlikely any reports to police would be made after future appointments of this nature.
• During a trial run, a blood sample was taken. Ms Brooks tested negative for HIV or hepatitis as of August 2019. In spite of this, use of contraception is always strongly advised.
I finish the page and stare back at Stephen. ‘I really don’t know what to say about this,’ I tell him. It’s the truth. I’m completely baffled and appalled. This Ms Brooks seems to have had important information meticulously detailed. Everything gathered together, from her lifestyle and sex life to her criminal record. And all of it points to a very vulnerable, unwell young woman.
‘I don’t know what this is, but I think … I think we best …’
‘Best what?’ asks Stephen, looking up at me, moving his eyes, apparently reluctantly, away from the floor.
‘I don’t know. It just seems so likely this is part of your dad’s work. I know it’s not pretty, but maybe they gather information for the police or some law enforcement agency …’
‘I don’t think he’s allowed to bring it home.’
He’s got me there. But then again, what do I know? Neither of us knows that much about the way James works in his current position at data-gathering company Varvello Analytics. The thing nagging at me, quietly but firmly at the back of my head, is that this is in our personal Dropbox. Not his work account. Not even his own personal account. If they were work documents, surely he would have had to transfer the files and password-protect them?
There’s another thing troubling me. ‘When you said to me that it was something bad … I sort of expected … I don’t know … something involving porn … or maybe … God, this sounds ridiculous … evidence of an affair …’
‘I’m sorry.’
I touch his arm, ‘No, no, it’s okay,’ I say, trying to sound comforting. ‘How many of these have you looked at?’
‘All of them.’
‘And they’re all like this? The same sort of thing?’
He nods.
I don’t know what to say to this at first. Then something falls into my head – a strange sensation, almost like déjà vu. That we’ve been here before. ‘You know a few years back, when you had all that stuff on your computer. All those images of naked women that kept opening every time you clicked on something …’