Let Me Lie(31)

‘I see Owen Healey’s still outstanding?’

James put two mugs of tea on the desk, the bags still bobbing about in them. Murray fished his out and dropped it in the bin by his feet.

‘He always used to run with the Matthews lads when they were kids – lived on the estate behind Wood Green. They’re still thick as the proverbial.’

There was an awkward pause. ‘Oh. Ha! Right. We’d better check that out, then. Good job you swung by!’ James clapped Murray on the shoulder with enforced joviality, and Murray wished he hadn’t said anything. He might be retired but he still worked for the police. He still heard things; still knew things. He didn’t need to be humoured. People always did, though. Not only because he was old, but because—

‘How’s Sarah?’

There it was. The head, cocked to one side. The ‘thank God it’s you and not me’ look in his eyes. James’s wife was at home, looking after their two children. She wasn’t in a mental health unit for the hundredth time. James wouldn’t be rushing home from work because his wife was kneeling in the kitchen with her head in the oven. Murray checked himself. No one knew what went on behind closed doors.

‘She’s fine. Should be home soon.’

Murray had no idea if that was true. He had long given up asking, instead seeing Sarah’s frequent stays at Highfield – whether voluntary or not – as a chance for him to gather his strength to have her back home. Respite.

‘Actually, while I’m here, I was going to ask you about a job.’

James looked relieved to be back on more familiar territory. ‘All ears, mate.’

‘Your team dealt with a couple of suicides at Beachy Head in May and December last year. Tom and Caroline Johnson. Husband and wife. She killed herself at the same spot he did.’

James stared at his desk, drumming his fingers as he tried to place the job. ‘Johnson’s Cars, right?’

‘That’s it. Do you remember much about them?’

‘They were identical. Copycat suicides. In fact, we were a bit worried it might spark a load more – the papers really went to town on it – but, touch wood, it’s been quiet on that front. The last jumper was a couple of weeks ago. Got blown into the cliffs on his way down.’ James winced.

‘Anything else strike you as odd?’ Murray was keen to stay on track.

‘About the Johnsons? In what way? People topping themselves at Beachy Head is hardly unusual. I seem to remember the coroner’s reports being fairly cut and dried.’

‘They were. I just thought … You know how you have a feeling about a job, sometimes? Something not right – as though the truth is hiding in plain sight, but you can’t quite get hold of it.’

‘Sure.’ James was nodding politely, but there was no spark of recognition. His generation of detectives didn’t work on feelings. They worked on facts. Forensics. It wasn’t their fault – the courts didn’t go a bundle on intuition, either. Murray did. In his experience, if something smelled like a fish and tasted like a fish, it was almost certainly a fish. Even if it didn’t look like one.

‘But you didn’t feel like that about these jobs?’

‘Pretty standard stuff, mate. They were in and out of the office within a couple of weeks each time.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice, even though there was no one else in the office. ‘Not exactly taxing stuff for CID, am I right?’

Murray smiled politely. He supposed an open-and-shut suicide didn’t present much of a challenge to a team of hungry detectives with an array of rapes and robberies on their desks. It had been different for Murray. His motivation had been people, not crimes. Victims, witnesses, even offenders – they’d all fascinated him. He had felt – still felt – compelled to investigate the mysteries in their lives. How he wished he had been sitting at James’s desk when the Johnson suicides had come in.

Murray stirred himself. ‘I’d better get off.’

‘Things to do, people to see, right?’ James clapped him on the shoulder again. ‘Why the interest in the Johnsons?’

That was the point at which Murray should show him Anna Johnson’s anonymous card. The point at which he should officially hand over the job to CID and go back to his front desk job.

Murray looked at the list of jobs on the whiteboard, at the piles of ongoing files on each detective’s desk. Would James prioritise this one? A job with no clear answers, handed to him by a retired cop?

‘No reason,’ Murray said, before he’d properly thought it through. ‘Idle curiosity. I saw the name on an old briefing sheet. I bought a car from them a few years ago.’

‘Right. Cool.’ James’s eyes flicked to his screen.

‘I’ll let you get on. Have a good Christmas.’

Anna Johnson was vulnerable. In a little over a year she’d lost both her parents and had a baby. She felt threatened and confused, and if this job was going to be investigated then it needed to be done properly, not given a cursory glance before being filed again.

‘Great to see you, mate. Keep up the good work!’ James half stood as Murray left the office. He was back in his seat before the older man had reached the door, the Johnson case already forgotten.

Murray would quietly investigate Caroline Johnson’s death, and the moment he had concrete evidence of foul play, he’d come back to DS Kennedy.