Let Me Lie(104)

In Murray’s experience, inventing an alias was surprisingly difficult. He used to laugh at the green kids from the estates, looking like rabbits in headlights as they tried to come up with something convincing. Invariably they’d use a middle name, the name of a kid at school, the name of their street.

Laura had panicked. Hadn’t bargained on having to give a name at all, perhaps; thought she’d just ring on the nines and report a suicide, and that would be that.

‘What’s your name?’

Murray could picture the call-taker, headset in place, fingers hovering over keys. He could picture Laura, too: out on the cliffs, the wind whipping the words from her mouth. Her mind a blank. Not Laura – she wasn’t Laura. She was …

A customer. Picked at random.

Diane Brent-Taylor.

It had almost been perfect.

When Murray pulled into his street, it was half past eleven. Just enough time to find his slippers, pop the champagne, and sink onto the sofa with Sarah in front of Jools Holland and his hootenanny guests. And at midnight, as they welcomed in the New Year, he would tell Sarah that he wouldn’t be going back to work; that he was retiring again, and properly this time. He remembered an old detective inspector, who worked his thirty years then worked another ten. Married to the job, people used to say, although he had a wife at home. Murray had gone to his retirement party – when he’d eventually had one – had heard all the DI’s plans to travel the world, learn a language, take up golf. Then he’d died. Just like that. A week after he’d turned in his ticket.

Life was too short. Murray wanted to make the most of it while he was still young enough to enjoy it. A fortnight ago he had been feeling every bit deserving of his bus pass; today – even at this late hour, and after the day he’d had – he felt as spritely as the day he’d joined the job.

Someone in the next street was letting off fireworks, and for a second the sky was lit up with blues and purples and pinks. Murray watched the sparks burst outwards, and then fade to black. The cul-de-sac split into two at the end, and Murray slowed down before he turned left into his section of the road. His neighbours were mostly elderly, and unlikely to be celebrating New Year’s Eve by dancing in the street, but you never knew.

There were more fireworks as he turned the corner, the sky glowing blue and—

No. Not fireworks.

Murray felt ice in his stomach.

There were no fireworks.

It was a light, revolving silently; bathing the houses, the trees, the people who stood outside their houses, in soft blue.

‘No, no, no, no …’ Murray heard someone talking; didn’t realise it was him. He was too intent on the scene unfolding in front of him: the ambulance, the medics, the open front door.

His front door.





SIXTY-EIGHT


ANNA


‘You wouldn’t.’

Laura raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a brave challenge for someone on the wrong side of a gun.’ She screws up her face. ‘Can’t you stop her crying?’

I rock my arms from side to side, but Ella’s too fractious and I’m too on edge to make the movement smooth, and it only serves to make her cry harder. I lay her horizontally across my body and lift my top to feed her. The room goes mercifully quiet.

‘She’s just a baby.’ I try to appeal to Laura’s maternal side, although to my knowledge she’s never wanted children. ‘Whatever you do to me, please don’t hurt Ella.’

‘But don’t you see? That’s the only way it works. You and Ella have to die first. Caroline has to kill you.’

Somewhere in the depths of the building I hear a dull thud.

‘No!’ Mum’s been quiet until now, and the sudden shout makes Ella start. ‘I won’t.’ She looks at me. ‘I won’t. She can’t make me.’

‘I don’t have to make you. I’ve got the gun.’ Laura holds it aloft, the fabric of her shimmery top still wrapped around her fingers. ‘It’s got your prints on it.’ Slowly, she walks towards Mum, the gun pointing directly at her. I look at the door; wonder if I’d make it. ‘No one will ever know it wasn’t in your hand the whole time.’

‘You won’t get away with this.’

She raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’

There’s a roaring in my ears. Ella feeds hungrily.

‘As it happens, I have an insurance policy of my own.’ She smiles. ‘Should the police be suspicious, I just have to point them in the right direction. I’ll remember that I overheard you both talking about Tom’s life assurance policy; that you clammed up when you saw me coming. The two of you were in it together from the start.’

‘They’ll never believe that.’ There’s more noise from somewhere inside the building. I listen for the ‘ping’ of the lift, but this is something different. Something rhythmic.

‘And when they dig a little deeper, they’ll discover that the phone used to report Tom’s suicide was bought in Brighton …’ she pauses for effect, ‘by none other than Anna Johnson.’

The rhythmic sound grows louder. Faster. I stall for time. ‘I always saw us as family.’ I move slowly across the flat until I’m standing next to my mother. Facing Laura.