Let Me Lie(81)

Murray walked her to the door, joining her outside as she found her car keys in the depths of her bag.

‘Sarah seems to be doing well.’

‘You know what it’s like: two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes the other way around. But yes, today’s a good day.’

He watched Nish drive away, raising a hand as she turned the corner.

Back inside, Sarah had spread out Caroline Johnson’s bank statements. They had been examined at the time of Caroline’s apparent suicide, a summary note on file concluding they held nothing of interest. There had been no large payments or transfers immediately prior to Caroline’s apparent suicide, no activity abroad that might hint at a pre-planned hideaway. Sarah moved her finger down the rows of figures, and Murray settled on the sofa with Caroline’s diary.

He marked with Post-it notes the period in the diary between Tom’s disappearance and Caroline’s. Did the pair meet up? Make arrangements? Murray scoured the pages for coded reminders, but found only appointments, lists of things to do, and scribbled reminders to buy milk or call solicitor.

‘A hundred quid’s a lot to take out of a cashpoint, don’t you think?’

Murray looked up. Sarah was running a neon pink highlighter across a statement. She lifted the pen, moved it a couple of inches lower, and carefully highlighted a second line.

‘Not for some people.’

‘Every week, though.’

Interesting. ‘Housekeeping money?’ It was a bit old-fashioned, but some people still budgeted that way, Murray supposed.

‘Her spending’s more erratic than that. Look, she uses her card all the time – Sainsbury’s, Co-op, the petrol station – and takes out cash with no obvious pattern. Twenty quid here, thirty quid there. But on top of that, every seven days in August, she took out a hundred quid.’

Murray’s pulse quickened. It could be nothing. Then again, it could be something …

‘What about the next month?’

Sarah found September’s statement. There, too, among ad hoc cash withdrawals and card payments, were weekly withdrawals – this time for a hundred and fifty pounds.

‘How about October?’

‘A hundred and fifty again … No, wait – it goes up halfway through the month. Two hundred quid.’ Sarah rifled through the papers in front of her. ‘And now three hundred. From mid-November, right up to the day before she disappeared.’ She dragged the nib of the highlighter across the last few lines, and handed the sheaf of statements to Murray. ‘She was paying someone.’

‘Or paying them off.’

‘Anna?’

Murray shook his head. He was thinking about the 999 calls that had been made from Oak View; the pocket notebook entry describing Caroline Johnson as ‘emotional’, following the report of a domestic from the next-door neighbour, Robert Drake.

The Johnson’s marriage had been a tempestuous one. Possibly even a violent one.

Ever since Murray had realised the Johnsons had faked their deaths, he had been looking at Caroline as a suspect. But was she also a victim?

‘I think Caroline was being blackmailed.’

‘By Tom? Because she’d cashed in his life assurance?’

Murray didn’t answer. He was still trying to work through the possibilities. If Tom had been blackmailing Caroline, and she had been paying up, that meant she’d been scared.

Scared enough to fake her own death to get away?

Murray picked up her diary. He had already been through it several times, but back then he had been looking for leads on why Caroline had been at Beachy Head, not where she’d gone afterwards. He scoured the leaflets and scraps of paper tucked into the back, hoping he’d find a receipt, a train timetable, a scribbled note with an address. There was nothing.

‘Where would you go, if you wanted to disappear?’

Sarah thought. ‘Somewhere I knew, but where no one knew me. Somewhere I felt safe. Maybe a place I knew from way back.’

Murray’s mobile rang.

‘Hi, Sean. What can I do for you?’

‘It’s more what I can do for you. I’ve had the results back on a reverse IMEI search on that handset of yours.’

‘Which tells us what, exactly?’

Sean laughed. ‘When you brought me the job, I checked the networks to see what handset that SIM card had been used in, right?’

‘Right. And you traced it back to Fones4All, in Brighton.’

‘Okay, so the same thing can happen in reverse, it just takes a bit longer. I asked the networks to tell me if that handset has appeared on their systems at any point since the witness call from Beachy Head.’ He paused. ‘And it has.’

Murray felt a surge of excitement.

‘What is it?’ Sarah mouthed, but he couldn’t answer – he was listening to Sean.

‘The offender put a new pay-as-you-go SIM card in it, and it popped up on Vodafone back in the spring.’

‘I don’t suppose—’

‘I know what calls were made? Come on, Murray, you know me better than that. You got a pen? Couple of mobiles, and a landline that might just give you a location for your man …’

Or woman, Murray thought. He wrote down the numbers, trying not to be distracted by Sarah, who was flapping her arms at him, demanding to know what had got him so excited. ‘Thanks Sean, I owe you one.’