Secrets and Lies: Harry's Secret

By R L Stephens

Everybody has secret and everybody tells lie, but in case of Harry Wright these are both bigger than he had originally intended. What started out as a bit of fun, a distraction from his otherwise boring life that could come back and bite him on the ass if he isn’t careful. If being found isn’t enough there are other worries for Harry.

First there's the disappearance of Emily Baxter a woman who seems to have no connection to Harry Wright, except that he's got the keys to her house. Then there's the mystery of why Harry is getting cheques from an insurance company that are intended for Emily Baxter. Has he done her in for the money or has he squirreled her away somewhere so that he can force more money out of her?

Detective Inspector Peters certainly thinks that Harry Wright has killed Emily Baxter and is now fraudulently cashing her cheques. But if he has done so there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a body, or even of a struggle at her house that seems to be as tidy and pristine as when she left. If she isn’t dead then where is she? And what has Harry Wright done with her?

Revelations of Harry Wrights true identity could lead to the unlocking of this mystery, but will it lead to his downfall or to his imprisonment?

• Language: English
• Publisher: R L Stephens
• Release date: Jun 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301997657

R L Stephens

I'm a freelance layabout, or at least I'd like to be. I'm just not very good at it having been mainly employed full time for a good number of years. I have though always wanted to write and like the process in of writing and world building etc.I am not limited to any particular genre, but tend to write what is in my heart and my head at the time. This can be awkward as I have number of ideas, half ideas or even quarter ideas. I'm hoping to knock out a few over the next couple of years.I'm also in the process of setting up my blog and looking into setting up a side hustle.I can be contacted at [e-mail]

Book preview

Secrets and Lies

Part 1

Harry’s Secret

By R L Stephens

14 June 2013

Published by R L Stephens at Smashwords.

Copyright Smashwords 2013

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgment – book cover image imagerymajestic FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

This is a work of speculative fiction that based around a ‘what if’ scenario. While the author does acknowledge that the contents of this e-book may offend some people, this is not the author’s intention, nor does he condone some of the actions portrayed. While certain events are portrayed in graphic detail, the author contends that these are a necessary for the full rendering of the events portrayed. If readers have any complains to issues with this they should take these up with

Chapter 1

I think that’s all we need for now Mr. Wright, the man said looking down at his notes. You certainly seem to have excellent credentials, he added taking another look at the resume that was sticking out from under his notepad.

Thank you, Mr. Wright said nervously rubbing the palm of his right hand with the fingers of his left hand. Oh and please call me Harry, said having always had a dislike for such formalities and wanting to feel more ease with the situation. It wasn’t that he always felt so nervous at job interviews it was just that this was the first one he’d had in a very long time and really wanted to come and work for this particular bank.

Well then Mr. Wright, I mean Harry, I think we can say that unless there is anything else you wish to add then we are done here, the man said looking at the woman sitting to his right, who nodded the required confirmation the man was looking for. She had been more or less silent during most of the interview, but she introduced the two of them and then had let the man take the lead through most of the interview. During the introductions Harry thought she had said her name was Amy Ellis or something like that, but Harry hadn’t really been paying much attention at that point. He also thought that she had said she was from the Human Resources department and that Richard Scott, the man who was sitting almost directly in front of Harry as the head of the department that Harry would be working was going to lead the interview.

Despite being really quite anxious at the start Harry had soon found himself settling down and relaxing enough to be able to be able to answer Richard’s questions as articulating as possible. Even though he found that he hesitated his way through answers far more than he would have liked, and hoped that he didn’t come across as some kind of gibbering idiot. But he did think that he was coherent enough in his answer to get his main point across.

Just one last thing, Richard said as he replaced the top on his pen and slid it neatly into his top shirt button. May I ask how old you are? He then asked as he organized his pile of papers and notes in a tidy pile and slipped them into the hard back notebook he had brought with him. Harry could see that there were several other loose bits of paper hanging out untidily from the edges of the notebook.

That’s not part of the interview, but I was just wondering, Richard then added as he pushed his chair to back from the table so that he could stand up and seeing the look on Harry’s face must have appeared to be a mixture of both surprise that the question was asked and suspicion as to why the question was being asked, after all companies weren’t supposed to discriminate on the grounds of age.

Oh 29, Harry said as casually as he could manage in the circumstances. But I'm a good few years older than that, but that’s not the only thing that I'm hoping you don’t find out about, thought to himself behind the guise of an awkward smile as he too rose to leave.

Ah I thought that was the case, Richard said as he offered out his hand for Harry to shake and he could feel the soft smoothness of Harry’s hand that seemed to be quite a bit smaller than his own. Harry on the other hand could feel the roughness that came with age of the older man who must have been at least in his late forties.

With the pleasantries completed Harry strode as confidently as he could, trying to leave one last impression on the two people he left behind him. Hoping that he had done enough to persuade them that he was the man for the job, and that if they did they wouldn’t dig too deeply into his past as they may not have liked what they found.

What do you think? Richard asked turning to face Amy Ellis as the door to the meeting closed behind Harry.

I don’t know, he seems to be more than suitable, she said as she straightened her skirt that was just a little bit too tight around her amply proportioned thighs and hips.

Yes I know, Richard replied, that was my impression too.

You sound doubtful, she replied her voice sounding higher in tone than you might have thought given her size.

There's just something, I don’t know, like he's hiding something, Richard said his face twisted as if he were trying to figure what it was that he couldn’t quite out his finger on. That one thing about the young man who had just left that seemed to elude him at the moment and continued to do so regardless of how hard he tried.

Whatever it is, she said in her surprisingly high pitched voice that seemed to ring with glee at the thought of unraveling this duplicitous young man, it’ll come out in our usually pre-employment checks.

Yes just like that guy last year who embezzled almost a million pounds from and it turned he’d done it before at his previous employer, Richard said skeptically as if he doubted the thoroughness of such queries.

He came back clean, Amy said a little defensively as she turned to leave the room.

We’ll see, Richard said more to her back.

***

So far so good, Harry thought to himself as he settled down in a booth in the nearest pub to where the interview had taken place, with a cold pit of lager sitting invitingly on the table in front of him. He then took a long drink from the glass and winched a little at the taste of it was there something about it that he had never been able to quite get used to. Despite this he had found that he had been able to drink four to six pints of it in a night and while this wasn’t a huge amount by most men’s standards Harry had found that it was just enough to keep up appearances.

Where he was sitting just nicely out of the way so that he could maintain a certain level of anonymity, but that he could still watch the goings on in the bar, which at this time of day wasn’t much. It was almost 3pm and the lunchtime rush had long since passed, but people hadn’t started to filter in after work and Harry thought he would have at least an hour before things started to get busy. And that would be more than enough for him get a couple of pints in before he headed back to his hotel for the night.

Harry had been looking for work for almost 18 months now, since he had been made redundant from his last employer, through no real fault of his own. The money he had received, along some savings he’d manage to build up over the years, had been enough to keep him going so far, but he was starting to run low on funds. As such he had stepped up his job applications over the last three months or and had even bought a couple of new suits for job interviews.

If you're tired of the same old results, he’d once heard some motivational speaking eulogize, stop doing the same old things. That was one motivation for buying a new suit at the time, but that didn’t help him getting to the interview stage, so he then tweaked his resume here and there and eventually about a week ago heard that he’d been selected for interview for a an office manager job at bank, the only problem was that it was based in London and he was living in Manchester. In principle that didn’t really both Harry, except that he would have fund the move himself. That may be a problem, but Harry had always been one of those people who