Let Me Lie(18)

‘Not according to Anna Johnson. Caroline Johnson had no history of depression prior to her husband’s death, and his suicide had come completely out of the blue.’

‘Interesting.’ There was a spark in Sarah’s eyes, and Murray felt warmth spread through him. When Sarah was unwell her world shrank. She lost interest in anything outside of her own life, displaying a selfishness that was far removed from the woman she really was. Her interest in the Johnson job was a good sign – a great sign – and Murray was doubly glad he had decided to take a look at the case.

It hadn’t troubled him that the subject matter might have been insensitive for a woman with a long history of self-harm; he had never tiptoed around Sarah in the way that so many of their friends had done.

They had been having coffee with a colleague of Murray’s one time, when a discussion had begun on Radio 4 about suicide rates among young people. Alan had lunged across his kitchen to turn off the radio, leaving Murray and Sarah exchanging amused glances.

‘I’m ill,’ Sarah had said gently, when Alan had taken his seat again, and the kitchen was quiet. ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about mental health issues, or suicide.’ Alan had looked to Murray for reassurance, and Murray had staunchly refused to make eye contact. Nothing was more likely to upset the tightrope on which Sarah lived than thinking she was being judged. Talked about.

‘If anything, it makes me more interested than your average lay-person,’ Sarah had continued. ‘And frankly,’ she had given Alan a wicked grin, ‘if anyone’s an expert on suicide around here, it’s me.’

People liked boxes, Murray had concluded. You were ill or you were well. Mad or sane. Sarah’s problem was that she climbed in and out of a box, and people didn’t know how to deal with that.

‘Have you got the files with you?’ Sarah looked around for his briefcase.

‘I haven’t looked at them myself yet.’

‘Bring them tomorrow?’

‘Sure.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go. Hope you get a bit more sleep tonight.’

She walked him to the door and hugged him goodbye, and Murray kept a smile on his face until he was safely out of sight. Sometimes it was easier to leave Sarah at Highfield when she was having a bad day. Easier to go home when she was curled up in a ball on her bed, because he knew she was in the best possible place. That she’d be safe; looked after. But when Sarah was calm – happy, even – every step away felt like a step in the wrong direction. How could Highfield, with its clinical smell and cell-like bedrooms, be better than their comfortable, cosy bungalow? How could Sarah feel safer in hospital than at home?

Later, when he’d cleared away his plate, and washed the pan he’d used for his omelette, Murray sat at the table and opened the Johnsons’ files. He read through the call logs, the witness statements and the police reports. He looked at photographs of exhibits – of Tom Johnson’s abandoned wallet, and his wife’s handbag – and read the text messages sent by each of them prior to their deaths. He scrutinised the summing-up from each inquest, and the coroner’s verdict of suicide.

Murray laid everything out on the kitchen table, along with the evidence bag containing the anonymous card sent to Anna Johnson, which he placed in the middle, between her parents’ files. After reading through the coroner’s reports one more time, he put them at the back of the table and snapped open a brand-new notebook: as symbolic as it was practical. If Anna’s mother had been murdered, Murray needed to approach this investigation as though it were fresh out of the box, and that meant starting from the beginning, with Tom Johnson’s suicide.

Murray had become a detective in 1989, when files had still been written longhand, and cracking a crime had meant legwork, not cyber sleuthing. By 2012, when Murray had retired, the job had changed beyond all recognition, and among the feelings of loss as he handed in his warrant card was a barely acknowledged streak of relief. He had found it increasingly hard to get to grips with technology, and still preferred to write his statements with the engraved fountain pen that had been Sarah’s present to him when he had won a place on CID.

For a second Murray felt his confidence waver. Who did he think he was, that he’d find something in these files that hadn’t been seen before? He was sixty. Retired from the force and now working as a civilian. He’d spent the last five years checking driving licences and taking reports of lost property.

He fiddled with the fountain pen in his hand. Ran his finger over the writing. DC Mackenzie. Pulling his sleeve over his hand he buffed the silver until it shone. He wished Sarah were there.

Remember that post office robbery? he imagined her saying. There were no leads. No forensics. No one had a clue. No one except you.

They’d been close to filing the job, but Murray hadn’t let it lie. He’d hit the streets, knocking on doors, shaking up the community. He’d tapped up his network of informants, and gradually a name had emerged. The lad had gone down for fourteen years.

That was a long time ago, a voice whispered in his head. Murray shook it away. He gripped his pen. The job might have changed, but criminals hadn’t. Murray had been a good detective. One of the best. That hadn’t changed.





NINE


Anna and Laura are picking through the life we left behind. I don’t like it. I want to intervene – to stop them opening drawers and holding up notebooks and books and boxes of photographs.