Alex Barclay - The Caller

He turned to Danny. ‘OK – has your life finished flashing before your eyes? Are you fit to work?’

Danny nodded and knocked back the last of his beer. They lasted an hour back at the office before they both went home.

Joe arrived at the house and went straight into the living room. He pulled off his jacket, threw it on the back of the sofa, sat down, turned on the television and put his feet up. He channel-hopped until the screen became a blur. Anna walked in.

‘What happened?’ she said, kneeling in front of him, putting her hand to his face.

He struggled up. ‘Sorry, I was drifting off,’ he said. ‘I’m OK. We went to check this house out, the guy had rigged it up-’

‘Rigged up? Like a bomb?’

‘Nah. It was nothing, something small. It just shook us up more than anything.’

‘I was so worried,’ she said. She wrapped her arms around him.

‘You never need to worry about me, honey, OK? You just take care of yourself. Of the two of you. And that big guy upstairs. That’s all that matters.’

She kissed him.

‘Honey?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. About everything… how could I have been such an asshole?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Anna.

‘It’s not,’ said Joe. ‘I was a total jerk. I hope you can forgive me. I haven’t been there for you.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘Me neither.’

‘Let’s start again,’ he said. ‘From right now. You, me, Shaun and

… little Giulio.’

They looked at each other and laughed.

Danny arrived home to a quiet house. The kids’ toys were all tidied away in boxes in the living room. Everywhere was neat. He went into the kitchen. He pressed play on the answer machine. It was his own voice, choked up and broken: Honey, if you get this, it’s me. I’ve been in an accident… it was terrible… a fire…’ His breath caught. ‘ Please, sweetheart. Change your mind. I… the kids need me… us.’ He didn’t care about how desperate he sounded. He just cared that she had heard this message and she had still gone. He listened to the last of it. ‘ I need you. I love you… we’re a team.’

He reached down and opened the drinks cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey.

‘You total asshole,’ said Gina, rushing over to him from the door. She whacked him across the shoulder. ‘You asshole. You scared the shit out of me.’ She hit him again. Then she hugged him tight. Tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘You asshole.’ She kissed him on the lips. He kissed her back.

‘Where are the kids?’ he said, looking behind her.

‘With my ma.’

‘You’re not going to leave me, are you?’ said Danny.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Now, get me a glass… you asshole.’

The following morning, Joe and Danny were back in the office at eight. Joe took out his notebook and found Sonja Ruehling’s number.

‘Mrs Ruehling, it’s Detective Joe Lucchesi. We were wondering if we could speak with you again as soon as possible.’

He nodded to Danny.

‘We just have some questions to clear up, that’s all,’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, OK. Sure. We’ll see you there.’

They drove to a coffee shop near Sonja Ruehling’s office on 43rd Street. She was waiting for them in a corner with three large coffees in front of her.

‘Thanks,’ said Joe. ‘OK, we need to know a little more about Alan Moder. We’re having problems tracking him down.’

‘Alan? OK. You mean what he looks like and stuff?’

‘Whatever you got,’ said Danny.

‘OK. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, long face… long body too, actually. A cyclist’s build, he cycles or, at least, he did. He was from Maplewood, New Jersey. He’s, well, he would be… I guess, thirty-three years old now.’

‘Actually,’ said Joe, glancing down at his notes, ‘he’s thirty-five.’

‘Ugh,’ she slapped the table. ‘The guy is, like, unbelievable.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Joe.

‘He’s such a liar,’ she said. ‘He’s thirty-five. I mean, that’s not what’s bothering me, but it’s like, even now, he is getting to me with his bullshit.’

‘He was a bullshitter,’ said Danny.

‘He was a pathological liar,’ said Sonja. ‘I know it’s one of those terms that’s thrown about out there, but he really was. He could not help himself.’

‘What do you mean exactly? What did he lie about?’

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘What time he got up in the morning, what he had for breakfast… like, you would come down in the morning and there would be a pan with bits of scrambled egg at the bottom and he would say, “I just grabbed a bagel.” Or I’d say, “where’d you get the shirt?” and he’d say one store, then I’d see the label and it would be from somewhere totally different.’

‘Men,’ said Danny.

‘It’s not that. It sounds like none of this was a big deal, but it was. I didn’t know where I stood with him. And I’d make excuses. If little things in his stories didn’t add up, I’d put it down to bad memory. A lot of guys have bad memories, right?’

‘I do,’ said Danny. ‘Drives my wife crazy.’

Sonja smiled. ‘And can you imagine how good a liar you can get by practising with all the little lies? How much easier it would be, then, to lie about the big things?’ She shook her head. ‘It makes me so mad. He would be there all the time defending himself. It would wear you out. And in the end, you start to feel like you’re the freak. That was the worst part.’

‘You said the other day that it ended badly,’ said Joe.

‘When I caught him cheating, I left. I had suspected, but I thought I was being paranoid, of course.’

‘Did you confront him there and then?’

‘No. That’s not my style. I turned and walked out. I left him a note. And I was gone.’

‘Did he try contacting you afterwards?’

‘For a few weeks after, once or twice, nothing too heavy. In the meantime-’

‘Was he ever violent?’

‘What?’ she said. ‘No.’ She looked at both of them. ‘You don’t think… ohmygod… you don’t think he had something to do with Dean do you?’

‘We’re just talking here,’ said Joe. ‘Sorting through some information.’

‘Well he was never violent. I mean, that time in the restaurant when he went nuts, but there was never anything physical…’ She slowed down as she realized she was probably saying something they had heard over and over from innocent people found sucked into homicide investigations.

‘Sorry, I interrupted you,’ said Joe. ‘What were you about to tell us?’

‘Just that for a while after we broke up, I was obsessed with finding out why Alan was like that, more to convince myself that I wasn’t crazy for going out with him, do you know what I mean?’

‘Makes sense,’ said Danny.

She nodded. ‘It turned out most of what he told me was bullshit. He said his father was a multimillionaire, they owned homes around the world, his mother worked in the United Nations as a translator. The detail he gave me was unbelievable-’

‘We see that all the time,’ said Joe. ‘Liars give way more detail than people who are just telling the truth.’

‘I mean, some parts of it were true,’ said Sonja. ‘His family did live in a huge house in a nice part of Maplewood, but they hadn’t a lot of money. His father had built the house – he had a construction company. Then it went bust, so they had the house but no money, even though they looked like they did and their parents seemed to encourage them not to say or act otherwise. So I think from very early on in Alan’s life, he was trained to lie. And I think it went from there. He had, like, six brothers and sisters, but was only close to this one sister. But she died. He wasn’t responsible, but he felt he was, because he covered for her the night she was going out. She and a group of friends were going to hang out by this quarry which, if her father had known, he would have forbidden her to go to, because it was unsafe, there had been major rain that week. Anyway, Alan covered for her and she fell while she was at the quarry, the ground gave way, whatever. And she died shortly afterwards.’