Prime Deception Read online

  ‘I don’t care anymore. I’m too tired. I’m happy to let someone else hold the reigns for a while.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Elaine screamed, rising to her feet. ‘This is what we have worked for our entire life, and now you just want to throw it away?’

  ‘I’m not throwing anything away!’ Charles reasoned. ‘We achieved what we set out to do, we don’t need to keep holding on to it.’

  The reality was that Charles longed for a life with some degree of anonymity. He didn’t enjoy his every move being scrutinized and he yearned for the freedom to be able to do as pleased. Elaine felt quite differently. Being the Deputy Prime Minister’s wife gave her life a much-needed purpose. Without that security, that title, she feared that she would inevitably flounder.

  ‘I don’t even know you are anymore,’ Elaine said bitterly. ‘You were ambitious once.’

  ‘I still am!’ Charles protested. ‘But there is nothing left. Can’t we just sit back and enjoy it all?’ Without realising, Charles had broken their unspoken rule and raised the taboo issue. His job, his career, allowed them to be together, as it gave their marriage distance – without that, all they had was a carcass of a relationship which had once been good but never great. The great relationships don’t decay, only the good ones.

  ‘What’s to enjoy? Our children? Our grandchildren?’ Tears began to streak the make-up Elaine had so carefully put on earlier that day.

  ‘Shhh, Elaine, don’t cry.’ Charles let his wife fall in to his arms, and unlike Laurie, she was grateful to release her tears upon his strong chest. Charles had to admit that it felt good to be needed, even though it was a hollow sensation as the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

  ‘What about all those cruise ships you wanted to go on?’ he said as he tried to raise her mood.

  ‘But you hate the ocean!’ Elaine wailed, her voice muffled.

  ‘Yes, but you always go on about how you barely notice that you are at sea as the ships are like floating cities, so I’m sure I would be fine.’

  Elaine pulled herself free from her husband’s embrace and looked him straight in the eye. She now resembled a sad clown, as her make-up had run and left great black streaks down her face.

  ‘I’ll never be enough for you though, will I?’ Charles thought he heard something accusatory in Elaine’s tone but he dismissed it.

  ‘Of course you will,’ he lied, when the truth was that Elaine had never been enough.

  Charles kissed his wife on the forehead and she smiled at him but there was no warmth in her smile.

  ‘Everything will be okay,’ he reassured her.

  ‘I know, I’ll make sure it is.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Waiting for the resurrection

  It was the midnight hour and the city of London still throbbed with life. Cars meandered through the neon metropolis of the city-centre, drunken revellers began to embark on their staggered journey home and theatre-goers exited auditoriums zealously adulating about their brush with culture. As they walked along the streets, people turned a blind eye to the less fortunate, cowered in shop doorways and huddling down into cardboard boxes which would be their bed for the night.

  In the midst of this contrast between the sordid, the sublime and the suffering, Laurie Thomas lay awake on the bed in the apartment she would never regard as home. The apartment which had once belonged to her sister. She felt Lorna’s ghost in every corner of the place.

  Sleep was, as ever, evading her. Her mind was a tangled web of a thousand questions which refused to weave together and form any sort of coherence.

  The main topic of her thoughts was Lorna. Whilst her twin was no longer a physical entity, to Laurie she continued to exist in part in the memories she had carefully logged over their two decades together. Laurie replayed these memories as often as she could in an attempt to preserve them. She knew that if she stopped, if she let them fall to the back of her mind, then in time she would forget. Currently, it was easy to remember Lorna as she was, Laurie need only look in the mirror. But time would inevitably distort her beauty and Lorna would fade away completely, remaining only in the memories.

  One of Laurie’s fondest memories was when the two girls would camp outside in the garden, much to their mother’s disapproval who found the whole thing ‘dangerous and unnecessary’. It was Laurie who pushed for these mini-adventures, longing to go camping far beyond the realms of their own property, but settling, for now, with the landscape of their ample back garden. Lorna was originally reluctant to participate.

  ‘I don’t want to go outside,’ an eight-year-old Lorna had protested, hands placed firmly on hips, chin jutting out in defiance.

  ‘It will be fun! I promise.’ Laurie had smiled and then listed all the wonderful things they could do outside which they couldn’t do indoors. It was a testament to the trust which existed between the twins even then that Lorna eventually agreed. She didn’t like the thought of camping one bit, but Laurie insisting it would be fun was all the convincing she required.

  After their first initial night out in the tent, snuggled up in sleeping bags like little worms, the twins had so much fun that it soon became a weekly ritual. The camping game fell away as they entered into their awkward teenage years and found more enthralling ways to occupy a Friday night. But looking back, those few years when they would lie side by side, a thin sheet of plastic separating them from the stars, were a magical time. A time which Laurie cherished.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Lorna turned, wide-eyed, to her twin sister who she could barely make out in the failing light.

  ‘It’s only the dog next door,’ Laurie replied sleepily.

  ‘Are you sure? What if it’s a murderer?’ Lorna asked. Cocooned within her bright pink polka-dot sleeping bag, she awkwardly shifted closer to her sister.

  ‘It won’t be a murderer,’ Laurie stated authoritively, although she sounded more awake as if the notion of a killer stalking them amongst the hydrangeas had troubled her also.

  ‘But it could be.’

  ‘No. Killers don’t come to places like this. They attack people in big cities, not houses out in the country.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Lorna answered after a moment’s pause.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘More people are murdered in cities, everyone knows that.’

  ‘But that’s just because there are more people, it doesn’t mean that killers aren’t in other places too,’ Lorna answered, surprising Laurie with her uncharacteristically insightful response.

  ‘Well, whatever, it was the dog you heard.’ Laurie said, wanting to get off the topic of crazed serial killers and go to sleep.

  For a while the tent fell silent as both twins internally contemplated what they had just discussed.

  ‘It would be just awful though, to be killed by someone,’ Lorna said, as much to herself as to Laurie.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Laurie agreed with a slightly sarcastic tone, as though Lorna had just pointed out how the sky was blue.

  ‘It’s scary to think that someone could come along and kill just one or both of us,’ Lorna continued, despair rather than fear creeping in to her voice.

  ‘But they won’t.’ Laurie said flatly; weary from the day’s earlier excursions at school and the current conversation.

  ‘But if they did,’ Lorna chose to ignore her sister’s tone. ‘I’d rather they killed us both.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Like, I know it would suck for Mom and Dad, but I wouldn’t want to be without you or you without me.’

  ‘Well, since there is no killer in the garden, I think it’s okay to say that we will always be together, but not if you keep stopping me from going to sleep!’

  ‘Y you get so grumpy when you are tired!’ Lorna teased.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘A little … I guess.’

  Lorna curled herself into a ball, bunching her sleeping bag up around her pre-pubescent limbs. She cou
ld hear Laurie’s breathing begin to slow as her sister began to drift off to sleep.

  ‘I love you, Lolly,’ she said fondly, releasing one arm from her nest to drape it over her sister’s cushioned form. It had been a long time since she had used the nickname, arguably not since the twins entered into double digits just over a year before. Perhaps it was the fear of separation which had rekindled the affectionate label, Lorna wasn’t even sure herself, but it had slipped out and it had felt natural.

  ‘Mmm,’ Laurie gave a contented, sleepy mumble in response and Lorna felt her own eyelids growing heavy.

  ‘I’ll never leave you,’ she pledged to her sister, before falling away to sleep, the talk of murderers soon forgotten.

  A million miles away from the tent, Laurie at last fell asleep upon the double bed which she inhabited alone. Her eyes closed and darkness overwhelmed her mind, drowning out her thoughts, and granting her the respite she so dearly needed. For the first time in a long time, she felt safe. Her muscles relaxed and she sprawled herself out, rather than sleeping in the frightened huddle which had become her default position.

  As she lay on the cusp of sleep, Laurie was certain that she felt a weight fall against her, like that of an arm. But by this point, she was too tired to be troubled by it. A sense of calm washed over her as the city around her faded away.

  The sun was struggling to penetrate through the grey clouds which promised rain later that day as Laurie walked along the bustling pavement towards work. People shoved against her in their haste to reach their destination and didn’t even turn back to offer an apologetic glance. The air tasted of car fumes and decay with an undercurrent of takeaway food which always made Laurie want to heave. She missed the clean air of home, the scent of fresh woodland flowers which would be carried along on the breeze. She knew in her heart that her time in London would soon draw to a close, regardless of what she uncovered about Lorna. She simply could not take anymore. Lorna had loved the city of London dearly but Laurie was identical to her twin in looks alone.

  ‘Good morning,’ Laurie offered Faye her warmest smile as she came in and began unbuttoning her coat. The Deputy Prime Minister’s assistant was already sat at her computer working diligently and looked like she had been there for some time.

  ‘Morning,’ Faye said dryly, not turning away from her monitor, her fingers still weaving across the keyboard, compiling an email.

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ Laurie said, her mood further soured by the less than warm reception Faye had given her.

  ‘He told me to send you in when you arrived; I’ve only just taken his papers and coffee in so give it a minute.’

  Both women knew who the ‘he’ to whom Faye referred was. So disillusioned was she by her employer that she struggled to even speak his name now.

  Laurie spent ten minutes glancing at her emails with no desire to respond to or action any of them. She felt detached from her current situation to the point where it no longer mattered if her façade of interest fell away. She would soon be home, away from all of this, locked in the security of the familiar.

  ‘He doesn’t like to be kept waiting,’ Faye said sharply after a further few minutes had elapsed, more for her sake than Laurie’s. She knew it would fall on her unfavourably if Charles came out of his office and saw Laurie there after expressly requesting her immediate presence in his office pending her arrival.

  Reluctantly Laurie raised herself out of her chair and headed towards the Deputy Prime Minister’s office.

  It pleased Charles to see Laurie despite her rebuff the last time they met. He loved the way she moved her slight frame; so graceful were her steps she almost danced across the floor. Without the towering heels which Lorna adored, Laurie looked even more small and delicate. She was like a rare, wild flower – beautiful and exotic yet frail and vulnerable; the slightest breeze could uproot her.

  ‘Good morning,’ Charles smiled fondly. ‘How are you?’

  Laurie scowled angrily. She didn’t like this pretence of care which Charles seemed intent on keeping up. They were investigating Lorna’s death, nothing more; her wellbeing should be of no concern to him. If anything, his concern was merely masking his guilt over Lorna’s death.

  ‘I’m okay but I shan’t be staying here much longer,’ Laurie’s words were barbed and hostile.

  ‘Oh?’ Charles queried, taken aback by her anger. It was as if she was once more the young woman who had originally entered his office as a ghost and asked for his help. The time they had spent together, the moments they had shared, seemed to have evaporated away, leaving them as strangers once more.

  ‘I plan on returning home indefinitely as soon as possible,’ Laurie explained. ‘I hate it here.’

  Then, as she sat there the anger faded away slightly to reveal the frightened, lonely girl hiding behind it.

  ‘Hopefully we will have some answers soon,’ Charles said gently, trying to placate her.

  ‘Even if we don’t, I want to go home.’

  ‘I know it must be hard for you to be here, but if you can just be a little more patient we will get answers. We will find out what happened to Lorna.’

  Laurie’s shoulders trembled slightly as she suppressed a sob. Charles immediately dashed from behind his desk and came and knelt beside her. Raising one hand, he gently stroked her cheek and this time she did not knock him away.

  ‘It won’t change anything,’ Laurie’s voice was small as she spoke. ‘The truth won’t bring Lorna back.’

  ‘I know it won’t,’ Charles cupped her face with his hands, her skin cool to the touch. ‘But if we can prove that Lorna did not kill herself, won’t that help you and your family find closure and then you can start living your own life?’

  ‘I don’t think it will change anything for my parents. Besides, if Lorna didn’t kill herself, someone else did. Closing one door will just open another and my parents will hate me for that.’ Laurie turned away, releasing herself from Charles’ grip, but she did not recoil, instead remaining within his grasp. ‘They hate me so much, I can tell. Nothing will change that.’

  ‘They don’t hate you Laurie, they are just hurting.’

  ‘Why don’t you hate me?’ Charles frowned at the absurdity of the question. ‘I mean, you loved Lorna,’ Laurie explained. ‘And yet you don’t see her when you look at me, you see me. And when you do look at me, you don’t look like you’ve just had your heart ripped out and then smashed on the floor, you look pleased.’

  ‘That’s because I am pleased,’ Charles was so close to Laurie, knelt beside her still, that he could smell the gentle citrus fragrance of her perfume which floated on the air between them and intoxicated his senses.

  ‘You are very kind. I can see why Lorna was so fond of you,’ Laurie smiled whilst the voice at the back of her mind screamed in protest, reminding her how he may well have been responsible for her sister’s death. But for the moment Laurie chose to ignore her internal warnings. Charles was her only ally in London, and if she had to remain there for a few more days, she didn’t want to have completely alienated everyone. ‘But what does it all mean?’ Why would someone take evidence from Lorna’s case file?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ Charles rose to his feet, his knees creaking angrily at the unfamiliar movement of kneeling, and returned to behind his desk. Being in such close proximity to Laurie was clouding his thoughts and the temptation to reach out and kiss her had been almost too much to bear. He needed some physical distance to regain some clarity.

  ‘Have you contacted the police? Asked them where the missing file is?’ Laurie asked demandingly.

  ‘I’m doing everything I can,’ Charles sighed. ‘But I can’t exactly call up the station personally, and nor can you. We need to be more subtle in our movements. If someone is hiding something then we don’t want them to realise that we are looking.’

  ‘But I don’t understand who would do that!’

  ‘Well, that’s what we are hoping to figure out.’
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  Laurie shook her golden hair in frustration and crossed her arms across her chest in a stubborn gesture.

  ‘I hate all this waiting around,’ she protested.

  ‘I know,’ Charles agreed, and then, lowering his tone he asked, ‘Do you know anyone who would want to harm your sister?’

  ‘Only you!’ Laurie wanted to blurt out, but instead she looked at him incredulously.

  ‘No, no-one. Everyone loved Lorna; she was like this ray of sunshine that everyone wanted to bask in.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charles mused in agreement. It occurred to him again how very different the Thomas twins were. Lorna was self-assured and vibrant, whilst Laurie appeared wracked with insecurities and inner turmoil. One twin could be a pop star, the other the troubled lead singer for an indie band. They were the antithesis of one another yet Charles had felt equally drawn to both twins.

  ‘Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m here and she’s not,’ Laurie confided.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Lorna’s the one everyone loved; I was just the sidekick.’

  Charles tried to think of the right words to console Laurie as she glanced sadly around the room, her arms still wrapped around her, now offering comfort rather than forming a barrier.

  ‘If things were the other way around,’ Charles queried. ‘Do you think she would come here and investigate things as you have?’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ Laurie answered without hesitation.

  ‘I think that going back home right now is a bad idea.’ Charles said the words even though he didn’t truly believe them. It was obvious how unhappy being in the capital made Laurie, she would undoubtedly benefit from returning to familiar surroundings. But Charles didn’t want her to leave again. He was willing to say or do anything to keep her close to him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Laurie shook her head uncertainly. ‘I just don’t think that I’m strong enough to see any of this through.’

  ‘But you are!’ Charles encouraged. ‘Look how far you have come, all the progress you have made. Once we know where the missing file went, we will all but have our answer.’