White Lies: A gripping psychological thriller with an absolutely brilliant twist, page 24
Dismissed, I turned to leave the room.
‘Rob?’
I looked back over my shoulder.
‘I wasn’t having a go, then. I really was just telling you what happened. I actually want to say thank you for your support – practical and emotional. I wouldn’t be doing this without you.’ She realised what she’d said and coloured instantly, ‘I mean—’
‘I know what you mean, it’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘And you’re welcome.’
Gary Day had been to our house and spoken to my wife. I was furious with myself for putting her at risk and actually I was glad that David had been here too. The thought of her being alone in the house and answering the door to that opportunistic, nasty piece of work made me feel as frightened as he’d intended.
* * *
‘Don’t slip on those leaves,’ I nodded, walking back from opening the gate, as she picked her way over to the Qashqai an hour later. ‘I need to sweep them all up later when it’s dried out a bit.’
She breathed the air deeply. ‘I love the way it smells in the forest when it’s been raining like this; pine cones and bracken, all cleansed. It reminds me of walks with Mum and Dad when I was little. They’d make up stories about fairies living in the tree trunks, then we’d go home to tea in front of the fire and watch The Muppets. Maybe that’s why this place appealed to me so much.’ She nodded at the cottage. ‘I’ve never thought about that before.’
We got into the car and I started the engine. ‘I think people are subconsciously drawn to architectural styles of houses that they were happiest in as a child,’ I said, pulling away. ‘Which is what sold it for me here – rather than just the setting.’
‘Hmmm,’ she pondered. ‘Maybe. I have always had a weird thing about townhouses – people being either side of you. You might be right. Anyway, do you want me to close the gate?’
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘Saves a job on the way back. I checked and there’s no report of traffic problems, so we’ll just go the usual way, I think.’
We carried on up the road, falling into a companionable silence, then turned the bend. Immediately on my right I saw the police cars from earlier, parked up in the Forestry Commission clearing. The place was swarming with uniformed officers and people in high visibility jackets, while a silver Golf was being placed onto some sort of recovery truck.
‘Shit!’ I exclaimed, and as we passed I saw an officer look up from talking to a man with a dog on a lead before noting something down. I slowed instinctively and glanced back briefly to see, within the trees, the flash of a large white tent.
‘Oh my god!’ Alex said next to me.
‘I know,’ I said carrying on. ‘It looks like they’ve found a body. That’s why they put up tents like that, isn’t it?’
We turned the corner again and the circus disappeared from sight.
‘Do you think we ought to go back?’ I said. ‘They’ll only come knocking on the door later, won’t they? Ask if we saw anything?’
‘No!’ Alex said so quickly that I glanced at her. She had gone utterly rigid in her seat and was staring dead ahead.
‘Are you all right?’ I glanced at her again. ‘Do you need me to stop the car?’
‘Please, just keep going!’ she begged. Then she began to whisper: ‘No, no, no…’ under her breath.
Worried, I opened my mouth to ask her what on earth was—
‘That was his car!’ she blurted. ‘That silver Golf.’
A cold, greasy fear engulfed me. ‘Jonathan’s, you mean?’
She nodded, terrified. ‘I recognise it. I almost drove into it the day I was trying to get away from their house, when his mother offered me that job and I argued with them.’
‘You’re sure?’ I said.
‘Yes. I am. He’s got a wanky personalised plate. J05THN.’ She was starting to breath faster as we pulled up at the busy crossroads, traffic thundering past us, left and right. ‘What’s happened? What’s he done now? He was blogging, or vlogging, whatever you call it, left, right and centre. He was enjoying this too much to have done something stupid.’
I put my hand out on her lap. ‘Try to calm down.’ I looked up and noticed in the rear-view mirror that one of the police cars was there. ‘Look, I’ve got to concentrate for a minute: they’re behind us. Let me get across the road, I’ll pull over, and we’ll talk.’
‘What do you mean, “they’re behind us”? A police car?’ She whipped round in panic. ‘Do you think they’re following us?’
‘Of course not! Please, just be quiet a minute so I can do this?’ I looked both ways and pulled out over both lines of traffic to turn right.
‘Are they still there?’ Alex asked as we continued up the road.
I looked. ‘No, they’ve gone.’
She exhaled so deeply it was as if she’d just finished a race and placed a hand on her stomach.
‘Are you having another panic attack?’ I looked at her. ‘What do I do? Do you need me to stop? Shall we pull over and get you some water at the garage?’
‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘Yes, please.’
I put my foot down and pulled in sharply onto the busy forecourt, dumping the car by one of the pumps. I climbed out and ran into the shop, grabbing a bottle of still water. By the time I’d almost reached the front of the queue, the jobsworth fifty-something assistant was already on the tannoy.
‘Lady in the Qashqai, can you please stop using your mobile phone and wait until you’re off the forecourt, as per the warning on the pump right next to you? Thank you.’ She clicked it off and said pissily to the bloke she was serving. ‘They always think the rules don’t apply to them – and it’s always a “really important call”.’
‘That’s my wife, thanks!’ I called out furiously. ‘And phones don’t actually spark fires on forecourts. Only a moron would still think that.’
Everyone turned to look at me for a moment, and the assistant shouted back warningly: ‘I don’t make the rules, Sir, but it’s my job to enforce them. We also don’t tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour against staff? So I’ll thank you to lower your tone and not insult me?’
I stared at her in disbelief as she gave me a smug, fat smile and everyone went back to waiting. When it was my turn, I fixed her with a fierce glare the whole way through, arms crossed, but said nothing. I knew she’d be desperate to have any excuse to refuse to serve me from behind her crappy plastic screen. She stared at me when she handed back my card, and I almost said something, but changed my mind, hurrying back out to Alex instead. There were more important things at hand.
I passed her the bottle, put my seatbelt on and pulled away. ‘Who were you phoning?’
‘David, to see if he knows anything – if the police have contacted him yet. They haven’t.’
‘Why would they contact him?’
‘To get Jonathan’s medical records.’
‘If it’s even him?’ I looked at her sideways again. ‘I really think you need to try and relax. We don’t know anything for sure, Alex. There are a lot of silver Golfs.’
‘Not with that number plate. It’s him. I know it is. And like you said, they only put up tents like that when they’re protecting forensic evidence. Don’t you see what this means? They’re going to think I had something to do with this.’
I swerved slightly. ‘Why on earth would they think that?’
‘Because it’s happened on our doorstep! Because he publicly accused me of harassing him. Because everyone knows we had a relationship and now he’s dead!’
‘You don’t know that!’ I raised my voice.
‘I was at home alone last night. I took a sleeping pill and went to bed – no one is going to believe that if something really bad has happened to him. I’ve just asked David to say he stayed with me until just before 9 p.m. because I was in a bit of a state after Gary Day’s unpleasant visit, which isn’t a total lie. In fact, it’s good that he saw David. It proves David was there.’
‘But why are you going to say he was there longer than he actually was?’
‘Because I need an alibi.’
My mouth fell open. ‘You’re not serious? An alibi for what?’
‘Whatever Jonathan’s done in the woods. Don’t worry, I’ve been very careful about it. David doesn’t live anywhere with CCTV on the roads, his mother was out until half nine and you were home by, what, 9 p.m?’
‘I went straight back out for a takeaway though.’ I struggled to think. ‘I was back home by half nine too? Maybe a tiny bit later. I’m not exactly sure. I’d be on the takeaway security camera though; but Alex, this is crazy. What do you think you need to?—’
‘OK, so I was “alone” for, at most, ten minutes in between David leaving and you coming home,’ she interrupted impatiently, ‘and then for another separate half an hour while you were getting your food. That’s not enough time to do anything.’
‘Do what?’ I was genuinely confused.
‘Kill him.’
I swung round in shock.
‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ she said.
I did as I was told and blinked several times while I tried to think what to say next. ‘You’re worried the police are going to think you’ve killed Jonathan?’ I managed eventually.
‘People don’t just die in the woods,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever he’s done, they are going to consider foul play and I have to be prepared. Rob, I know I talked about killing him yesterday. I even said: “if I could do it and not get caught, I would”. But please know that I have got nothing to do with this. I would be caught, that’s the whole point. They would lock me away from Maisie and Tilly forever. I would never risk that. Although the real point here is, of course, I couldn’t kill anyone.’
‘I’ve never said you could.’
‘I know, but you didn’t actually see me when you got back, did you? You just saw a note on the door that said I’d taken a pill and could you sleep in the spare room?’
God – she was right. I realised I had caught my breath.
‘Obviously I was there,’ she said carefully, watching me, ‘but that second of doubt you just had? Everyone is going to have that multiplied by a million, because they’re not my husband who loves me and knows I would never do that – and that’s why I need an alibi.’
I pulled over suddenly, making the car behind us break heavily and lean on the horn as they passed.
‘Do you know what has happened?’ I asked. ‘Are you just pretending to guess like this?’
‘No. I’m not. But I’m telling you that’s his car – and they only put up tents like that if they are shielding a body.’
‘Swear on our daughters’ lives – you know nothing about this at all?’
‘NO!’ she shouted, putting both of her hands on the side of her head. ‘How can you even ask me that? This is insane, absolutely insane! I took a sleeping pill and I went to bed!’ She started shaking, but I couldn’t tell if it was with anger, or fear.
‘You’re not hiding anything from me?’
She hesitated and, horrified, I shrank back away from her.
‘I told a lie in my statement to the GMC,’ she confessed. ‘When I woke up next to Jonathan in the hotel room, I realised then who he was and I did remember treating him in June. Partly because of the note he left me on the car. No, Rob, Wait!’ She raised her voice as I exclaimed aloud in disbelief. ‘At Pacha, I was blind drunk. I wouldn’t have known my own name. I didn’t sleep with Jonathan because I knew him,’ she changed position again to look at me, ‘I did it because I was pissed. I swear to you, I DID NOT KNOW who he was when I went to bed with him.’ She paused and took a breath, before continuing. ‘But how could I tell the truth about realising who he was when I woke up? It would have muddied the waters. The second I admitted to it, they’d have concluded that everything Jonathan said in his version of events is the truth, and it isn’t. I did not message him on his phone – no doctor would ever be that stupid. I categorically did not have a three-month relationship with him. I didn’t plan to be in Ibiza at the same time as him – it was just coincidence – and that whole sexual fantasy thing he said I constructed about us being “strangers” was utter fabrication. I need everything to stay completely black and white. You can see that, surely?’
I exhaled and leant my head back on the rest behind me. So she hadn’t been entirely truthful with me.
‘Everything else I have told you and the GMC is one hundred per cent true. It was a tiny lie, Rob. It doesn’t change the fundamental elements of what actually happened, but it does illustrate why I also need David to cover for me now, and why I need you to say that you said hi to me when you got back from your parents and that I was reading in bed when you came home with the food. As far as anyone else is concerned, there has to be no mention of sleeping pills. I’ve just agreed that with David too.’ She paused. ‘You have to decide what you’re going to say when the police come to the door – if you’re going to support me like David is – because, while I know you think this is crazy, they are going to come. I can promise you that.’
* * *
I lay in bed that night in the spare room, the door open, listening to the sound of my daughters breathing in their bedrooms. Alex had taken the last sleeping pill. I was the only one awake.
We had ended up staying at Mum and Dad’s for the day. Neither of us wanted to come home, plus Mum had taken one look at Alex and insisted on settling her on the sofa with a blanket and a cup of tea. All of Al’s earlier resolutions seemed to have crumbled already and she meekly did as she was told. The girls ran around happily gathering fallen leaves from the garden to make an autumn picture, and I constructed a smouldery bonfire that Dad just about managed to get going. We sat down to bangers and mash, followed by the promised apple pie, then drove the long way home to avoid the girls seeing anything disturbing in the woods and asking questions.
I waited all evening for the knock that Alex said we should expect, but it never came. In the end it was less stressful just to go to bed. I stared up at the ceiling and wondered if they were all still up the road, scurrying around under floodlights, gathering information. Perhaps this really was nothing to do with Jonathan after all. Alex had become pretty obsessive. Wouldn’t this just transpire to be nothing to do with us at all, bar being distressingly close to our house?
But she had seemed so sure that she recognised the car.
If only I had gone and checked on Alex, like I was going to when I came back with the curry and panicked that the BMW was missing
Suppose she was right, and questions were going to be asked, what was I going to say? Was I going to lie for my wife? Obviously, I couldn’t believe for a second that she would hurt someone. Not Alex. She is committed to preserving life, not taking it. You know a person when you’ve been married as long as we have. You understand what they could and couldn’t do; what the bare bones of that other person are when the daily stresses and strains have been stripped away. Yes, Day was single-handedly destroying her life with his lies, and campaigns like that can change people, and yes, she’d said she could kill him, but saying it is not the same as doing it. Not for a moment.
Feeling panicked, I got out my phone and scanned the news headlines, but there was nothing. I wanted very badly to do a search through Jonathan’s social media: check the last time he had posted, but I was too scared, in case I might be asked to explain why I’d looked through the accounts the night after he died, in addition to why I had visited his school earlier that same day. If Alex was right and it was Jonathan lying in that tent, I was going to have questions of my own to answer. Instead, I did a search on Alex’s name, and a new Saturday paper ‘comment’ piece popped up.
You must make sure that your conduct justifies your patient’s trust in you and the public’s trust in the profession. This is one of the fundamental tenets of medical practice. Yes of course there are rare cases where a doctor falls in love with a patient; it’s mutual, consensual – they marry, have a family and contribute to society. Dr Alex Inglis herself demonstrated this is possible when she married Robert Inglis eight years ago – still her husband and the first patient she admitted to having a relationship with. But the fresh allegations Dr Inglis now faces are very different. Dr Inglis maintains she was unaware that a man with whom she had sexual relations in Ibiza on a ‘girls’ weekend’ was in fact seventeen and a current patient of hers. The teenager in question, however, paints a rather different picture, alleging that they had an affair conducted over a three-month period beginning after Dr Inglis treated him for an injury to his leg. He admits he initiated their relationship and that it was consensual. He’s young, but above the age of consent, nothing illegal has happened – in spite of the Weinstein allegations stunning both sides of the Atlantic, sexual harassment remains legal, if not acceptable – so why has this small-town case attracted quite so much attention given the size of the Hollywood fish currently on the slab?
It’s rare for a female doctor to face allegations of this nature, that’s true – but this isn’t just because Dr Inglis is a woman and a mother. We’ve moved beyond that argument – a male doctor would be quite rightly facing the same backlash for having a relationship with a female seventeen-year-old patient. It is because the doctor and patient relationship can only be based on trust. By definition, one party is vulnerable and requiring care. No doubt Dr Inglis does not regard herself as exploitative, but the fact remains that power in the doctor-patient relationship is always inherently unequal and abuse of this position of trust is always unethical. It’s well known that doctors are more likely to cross boundaries while facing problems in their personal life, and Dr Inglis has admitted to experiencing marital difficulties immediately prior to when the alleged affair began. Yes, doctors are human – but it’s simply unacceptable to use your patient roster as some kind of dating service, as demonstrated by the warning she received after her relationship with her now husband came to light.
And while the judgement of some doctors may well become impaired under such circumstances, there is of course also another type of doctor altogether who commits sexual abuse of patients simply because they are rapacious.
