Let Me Lie(72)

‘I’ll just be through here, then. If you need anything.’

There was no sign that Sarah had heard him.

Murray brought in an empty recycling box from the garden. Methodically, he opened each drawer in the kitchen, removing the sharp knives, the scissors, the blades from the food processor. He took the kitchen foil from the cupboard and carefully pulled out the strip of serrated metal from its cardboard housing. He collected the caustic cleaning products from under the sink and the over-the-counter medicines from the dresser drawer. It had been a while since he had felt the need to do this, and he didn’t want to think about why it felt necessary now. Instead he mentally walked through his visit to Diane Brent-Taylor, in the hope he would remember what it was that had caught his eye on her noticeboard.

The front door had been white UPVC, the external doormat a mix of coir and rubber. Inside, the hall floor was laminate, and deep red walls had made the already gloomy downstairs even darker. The noticeboard had been on the left, above a shelf with a motley collection of items. What had been there? A hair-brush. A postcard. Keys. He visualised each section of the shelf until the items took shape, a grown-up version of the memory game he had played as a child.

Murray put everything in the recycling box and took it down to the bottom of the garden. He opened the shed and began burying the box beneath dusty decorating sheets.

As he did so, his thoughts returned to the board. What was on it? More postcards – at least three. One with Table Mountain on it (he remembered it because Cape Town was on his list of dream destinations). A leaflet for a beauty salon. A list of telephone numbers. Had he recognised a name on that list? Was that what had been nagging him?

‘What are you doing?’

Murray hadn’t seen Sarah come into the garden, and the voice directly behind him made him clumsy. He collected himself before turning around. Sarah was shivering, her lips tinged blue after just a few seconds out of the warmth. Her feet were bare and her arms wrapped around herself, each hand tucked beneath the sleeve of the opposite arm. Her fingers moved rhythmically, and Murray knew she was scratching at skin already red raw from the same action.

He touched his hands on both of her upper arms, and the movement ceased.

‘I am hungry.’

‘I’ll make you something.’

Murray led her back up the garden, found her slippers and sat her in the kitchen. Sarah said nothing as he made her a sandwich with a blunt knife that tore at the bread, but she ate ravenously, and Murray counted that as a win.

‘I’ve been working on the Johnson job.’ He searched for a spark of interest in Sarah’s eyes, but found none. Murray’s heart sank. She had taken his litmus test, and the results reinforced what Murray already knew: that Sarah was heading into another difficult period. He felt as though he was flailing in deep water, halfway across the channel with no support boat. ‘Not that there’s much point now,’ he added, and he couldn’t have said whether he was talking about Anna’s change of heart, or the fact that the investigation was no longer the lifeline it had seemed to be for him and for Sarah.

Sarah stopped eating. Deep lines furrowed her forehead as she looked at him.

‘Anna Johnson doesn’t want an investigation,’ Murray said slowly, pretending he hadn’t seen her react; pretending he was talking to himself. He stared at a spot just to the right of Sarah’s plate. ‘So I don’t see why I should spend my spare time—’

‘Why doesn’t she want an investigation?’

‘I don’t know. She told me to drop it. She was angry. She hung up.’

‘Angry? Or scared?’

Murray looked at Sarah.

‘Because if she’s scared it might sound like she’s angry. Like she doesn’t want you to carry on.’

‘She was certainly very clear about that,’ Murray said, remembering the way Anna had slammed down the phone. ‘She doesn’t want my help.’

Sarah was thoughtful. ‘She might not want it.’ She picked at her sandwich, then pushed it away and looked at Murray. ‘But maybe she needs it.’





FORTY-ONE


ANNA


The phone echoes in the hall. It rarely rings – we both use our mobiles – and when it does it is usually a double-glazing cold call or a PPI phishing trip. Mark makes to stand up, but I leap to my feet. It’s been two days since I put the phone down on Murray Mackenzie, and I’ve been on edge ever since, waiting for him to call back.

‘I’ll get it.’ I haven’t told Mark about it. What could I say? Having dismissed the anniversary card as nothing more than a sick practical joke, the brick through the window was a threat he couldn’t ignore. Every day he’s been on the phone to the investigating officers.

‘Apparently they’re “doing everything they can”,’ he said, after the last time. ‘Which doesn’t seem to be a lot.’

‘Can they get fingerprints?’ The police have my parents’ DNA and prints. They took them from personal effects at home and at work, in the hope that – if a body surfaced – they would be able to identify them. I wondered if Dad knew that, if he’d have been careless with his mark. What will happen if they find his prints? They’ll know he’s not dead; they’ll realise Mum isn’t, either. The two of them are inextricably bound; if one goes to prison, the other surely will, too.