Page 46 of The Therapist

THIRTY-THREE

Lana

Detective Grafton stares at me, a frown on his face.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he says and I shrug.

‘Maybe but…we just needed to know the truth, Mike and I, we needed to know.’ What I don’t say is how humiliated I felt.

My intelligence is the one thing that I have been able to hold onto throughout my life, especially in high school, and now it had proved lacking, because I had been fooled.

And I had been made a fool of by those I considered to be less intelligent than I am.

It infuriated me and I wanted to be the one to solve the problem.

I didn’t want the police to do it for me so that I remained the victim.

‘Explain it again,’ he says.

I finish the last of my cold, bitter coffee, grateful that Oliver has Iggy and even grateful to Oliver for his one lapse that signalled the end of our marriage, the lapse that led me to find William.

‘I once used a private detective named William Owens a few years ago when I believed my husband was cheating on me, which he was. When Ben gave me the gun recently, his explanation sounded right but I’m not an idiot.

He told me the gun was filled with blanks, that it was only to scare Mike. But when I opened it…’

I see myself now, just yesterday, googling how to check the bullets in the gun Ben had given me.

Once I had worked out how to check the bullets, I poured them onto my desk, taking a picture and googling that.

I think what I felt most was profound shock. I toyed with the idea that Ben had made a mistake, that he had somehow mixed up the bullets, but I dismissed that quickly. Ben would not have made a mistake. Blank bullets look very different to real bullets. I looked at as many pictures as I could find.

‘He put real bullets in the gun,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ agrees the detective, nodding his head so I will go on.

I wanted it to not be true. I wanted it to be a mistake but then I began to go over everything that had happened since Ben asked me to take on Sandy as a patient. And I began to get a shadow of an understanding, but I didn’t know what the whole picture was, not yet.

‘I didn’t know who to talk to or who to ask. Detective Franks thought I was the problem because Sandy had called him, saying that I was bothering her. So I called the only person who I knew could help me. William.’

I swallow after I have said the words because I remember the feeling of humiliation that washed over me as I asked him to look into Ben and into Sandy and Mike.

I sent him images of the gun and the bullets, and the picture I had taken of Ben talking to Kirsty – something that I did without understanding why I was doing it.

I had no other pictures of Ben, and when I googled him, as I should have done when he started working for me, his image didn’t come up anywhere at all.

My own stupidity had amazed me. Why hadn’t I googled him the first time I met him?

I had taken his résumé and simply accepted it as the truth.

‘I asked him to look into Ben. I showed him the gun and the bullets and he did some research and then he was able to confirm what I was beginning to suspect.’

‘And that was…?’ says Detective Grafton.

‘May I?’ I hold out my hand so he can give me back my phone, and when he does, I search out the article that William sent me after only a few hours of searching, and hand it to the detective to read.

I think I must have read it ten times that evening as I waited for Ben to arrive.

I was unable to believe what I was reading and embarrassed for myself because I had believed everything Ben had told me.

It made me question every single instinct I thought I had as a therapist and as a woman.

UK police are searching for a man named Simon Black for fraud. Mr Black masqueraded as a therapist for over a year, befriending a woman named Carla Swan. Ms Swan was a widow and was encouraged by Mr Black to lend him money, support his practice and invest in shares with him.

‘I’m a complete idiot,’ Ms Swan told this reporter. ‘I thought he loved me and all along he was simply using me for my money. Once he had access to my accounts, he emptied them almost overnight and I have been left with nothing.

‘I have tried to contact him and I currently have a private detective looking for him. I will not let him get away with this.’

Mr Black, pictured below, is thought to have left the country. Police have been unable to trace him.

‘And this is Ben?’ asks the detective.

I take my phone back and pull up the image of Ben and Kirsty together. Ben didn’t delete it because he didn’t know it was there. ‘It’s Ben,’ I say, showing the detectives.

‘Sandy told me about the insurance policy that Mike took out on her but William found out about a second one she took out on Mike.’

‘Second one?’

‘For two million dollars,’ I say.

‘You have proof of this, of course,’ says the detective.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t have proof of the policy but William must have it. I can give you his number. I also asked him if he had access to blank bullets and he did. He dropped some off for me.’

‘Just like that?’

‘No,’ I say with a shake of my head, ‘not just like that. William was pretty upset about my plan but I convinced him that it was all under control.’ I don’t know if I did manage to convince William or not but while I was still at work, he did leave three blank bullets in my mailbox in exchange for the six real bullets I found in the gun.

I felt like a spy collecting them and then loading the gun, making sure that there was one in the chamber so that it would fire if I needed it to.

I still thought I wasn’t going to have to use it, that it was for show, that when Ben and I went to the house, Mike and I would somehow get a confession out of Ben after we confronted him with all our evidence. That was the plan.

Ben thought he could frame me and Mike. But we were going to tell Ben that we knew everything and get him to call Sandy. We were going to record everything for the police. It seemed simple enough.

But we never got to that part because Sandy screamed and everything was derailed.

‘We’re going to have to verify this story with Mike,’ says Detective Grafton.

‘You can also speak to William. Hopefully, he’s connected with the private detective in the UK by now.

The woman that Ben—I mean Simon stole from hired her own detective to find him.

’ I remember the message sent by Carla to Ben, sent by a woman who had been conned and abandoned: You don’t get to abandon me and survive it.

You just don’t. I’ve found your number now and soon, I’ll know where you work and then I’ll know where you live.

Ben led me to believe she was a crazed stalker who had ruined his life and relationship but instead, she was a woman struggling to find the man who had destroyed her life.

I feel deeply sorry for her. I understand why she feels like an idiot for trusting Ben; I feel like a complete idiot as well.

‘Wait here,’ says Detective Grafton and he stands.

‘Is Mike okay?’ I ask him because I need to know. ‘There was something in the garden, maybe a kid’s toy, and he hit his head against it, but that’s all that happened.’

‘I’ll check,’ he says. Both detectives leave me with my empty coffee cup and a phone that’s on two per cent battery. I need to save the battery in case Oliver needs me.

I watch the clock on the wall as I wait and it ticks towards 3 a.m. I am wired and exhausted and I can’t see a time when this will be over.

Twenty minutes later, Detective Grafton returns alone.

‘We have spoken to Mr Owens and we will be interviewing Mr Burkhart tomorrow. He’s in a stable condition and being kept in for observation overnight.’

‘Thank God.’ I sigh, unable to conceal a yawn.

‘It’s fine for you to go but please be available to speak to us and do not, under any circumstance, leave town.’

I stand up, everything aching. ‘Can I get a lift home?’ I ask.

‘A constable will help you with that. They have your bag at the front.’

I am grateful to leave, grateful to be able to go home to my own bed. I think about Mike’s children, who have an awful mother and a father in the hospital. I hope they are being taken care of.

Detective Grafton walks with me to the counter where a policewoman is waiting with my bag.

I am about to leave when a thought occurs to me.

‘Detective,’ I say because he has walked away from me. He stops and turns around.

‘I think that Sandy is not going to take it lightly that Mike isn’t dead. That was the plan. I think she was going to make sure it happened and then appear again to mourn her husband and collect the money.’

‘We’ll check in on him,’ he says.

‘Tonight, or now,’ I say, because it’s the next day. ‘Don’t leave it, check in on him now.’

Detective Grafton must be able to feel my sense of urgency because he bites down on his lip and his phone goes to his ear.

‘Yeah, mate,’ I hear him say to someone. ‘We need to get to the hospital.’

Relief warms my blood as I follow the constable out to a police car. They believe me and they will check on Mike. I’ve done everything I can.

I hope they’re not too late.