Who killed them?
CHAPTER
EIGHT
MURRAY
The archivist, Dennis Thompson, had been bordering on the large side when he and Murray had been on shift together. Now Dennis was as wide as he was tall, with a shiny pate and two sets of glasses perched above his eyebrows.
“Can’t get on with varifocals.” He retrieved the reading pair and popped them on the bridge of his nose, peered at the lids of the two box files he had found for Murray. “Tom Johnson. Caroline Johnson.”
The fact that the anonymous card had been delivered on the anniversary of Caroline Johnson’s death suggested that was where suspicion lay, but since her death had been so inextricably linked with her husband’s, Murray intended to start at the beginning.
“Those are the ones. Thanks.”
Dennis pushed an A4 book across the counter. On each page were neat columns recording signatures against every file removed from the archive, along with the date it was returned. Murray picked up the pen, then hesitated. He looked at his old crewmate.
“I don’t suppose . . .”
“On the QT?”
“Please. I’ll get them back before you know it.”
Sometimes, Murray concluded as he left the archive room with the files, there were advantages to having been around as long as he had.
* * *
• • •
He wanted to look through the files again on the bus home, but there were two response officers—their ties and epaulets hidden beneath North Face fleeces—sitting directly behind him. They hadn’t noticed him (it was funny how invisible you became once you’d retired) but Murray wasn’t about to advertise his presence with illicitly obtained police files. Instead he looked out the window and wondered what Sarah would think about the Johnson case.
For most of his career Murray had taken his work home. In the early years of their marriage Sarah had struggled through a number of low-paying jobs. Each had required levels of punctuality, politeness, and positivity that had proved impossible for Sarah to sustain, and all had triggered long periods of depression when they had ended prematurely. Eventually Sarah had given in to what Murray had suggested from the start: that she stay home and he bring home the bacon. It had been a relief for them both.
Murray had begun sharing snippets of his day with Sarah. He had been conscious of the confidentiality boundaries within which he worked, but he was mindful, too, that on days when Sarah felt unable to leave the house, this insight into the wider world was as important to her as it was interesting. To his surprise, he grew to rely on these exchanges as much as Sarah did, reaping the benefits of a fresh perspective, untarnished by police prejudice. He looked forward to telling her about Tom and Caroline Johnson.
The bus stopped at the end of Murray’s street, a cul-de-sac of chalet bungalows built in the sixties and occupied by a mix of first-timers, families, and pensioners. Several of the bungalows had been extended so much they were now rather grand two-story detached houses, their back gardens decked for summer barbecues. With the exception of new carpets and a lick of paint every few years, Murray’s house looked exactly the way it had looked when he and Sarah bought it in 1984, the year he finished his probationary period and was confirmed as a police officer.
Murray didn’t get off the bus. Instead, he stayed on for another five stops, then thanked the driver and walked the short distance to Highfield. Once a rather grand country home, the early-nineteenth century building had belonged to the NHS since 1950 and had somehow managed to escape being sold off ever since. Though it was surrounded by lovely gardens, the historic effect was marred somewhat by the surrounding portable huts and cheap, flat-roofed constructions installed to house the growing department that was needed to support its patients. Patients like Sarah.
Murray was familiar with most parts of Highfield. There was a well-attended drop-in center, with craft activities, a patient-run café, and a peer support group. There were outpatient clinics, counseling services, and cookery classes for patients with eating disorders. There were wards for patients with various mental health problems, requiring varying levels of support, including a high-security ward on which Sarah had spent ten days in 2007, and which Murray could no longer pass without remembering the awful day he had pleaded with the doctors to section his wife.
Sarah had been up front about her diagnosis the first time she and Murray had met, at the buffet lunch laid on after Murray’s passing-out parade. Her older brother Karl had been part of the same intake, and although the two men hadn’t been friends, Murray had been drawn to the vivacious girl standing with Karl’s family. He’d wondered if she was Karl’s girlfriend; had been relieved to discover she wasn’t.
“You know I’m mental, right?” Sarah had thrown it down like a challenge. She’d been wearing enormous silver hoop earrings that swung when she laughed, and a luminous pink batwing jumper that hurt his eyes.
Murray hadn’t laughed. Partly because political correctness had been part of his makeup long before it had become part of police vocabulary, but mainly because he couldn’t reconcile the term with the woman opposite him. She had so much energy she couldn’t stay still, and her eyes sparkled as though they saw joy in everything. There was nothing “mental” about Sarah.
“Borderline personality disorder.” She’d smiled that big smile again. “It sounds worse than it is, I promise.”
BPD. Those three letters had bookended their relationship ever since. Murray had swiftly realized the sparkle appeared only on Sarah’s better days, and that betweentimes the pain and fear in those slate gray eyes would be unbearable.
Currently Sarah was a voluntary patient on a ward where Murray knew everyone by name. Visiting hours were restricted, but staff were understanding about Murray’s shift patterns, and he signed his name in the book and waited in the family room while someone fetched Sarah.
Family rooms were different in every hospital and clinic. Sometimes you’d feel you were in a prison visiting center, with stark walls and a uniformed member of staff watching over you. In other places they were more relaxed, with sofas and a TV, and staff dressed so casually you’d have to check for a name badge to make sure they weren’t patients.
The family room at Highfield fell somewhere in between. It was divided into two sections. In the first, an arts and crafts table boasted colored paper and pots of felt-tip pens. Fiddly sticky pads were provided for children and their parents to embellish their homemade cards, without the safety risks presented by stolen rolls of Scotch tape. The scissors were plastic-coated with rounded ends. In the second part of the room, where Murray took a seat, were sofas and low coffee tables scattered with magazines several months out of date.
Sarah put her arms around him and hugged him hard.
“How are you feeling?”
Sarah wrinkled her nose. “There’s a new girl in the room next to me who bangs her head against the wall when she’s stressed.” She paused. “She’s stressed a lot.”
“Hard to sleep?”
Sarah nodded.
“Be quieter at home . . .” Murray saw the flicker of anxiety across Sarah’s face. He didn’t push it. It had been three weeks since Sarah had cut herself so badly she’d needed stitches in both wrists. A cry for help, the A&E sister had said, when it was discovered that Sarah had already called an ambulance; a bag in the hall containing the few things she’d need at Highfield.
“I could feel it happening again,” she’d said to Murray, when he’d broken every speed limit to get to the hospital.
It. An indefinable, overwhelming presence in their lives. It stopped Sarah going out. It meant she found it hard to make friends and even harder to keep them. It lay beneath the surface of Murray’s and Sarah’s lives. Always there, always waiting.
“Why didn’t you phone Mr. Chaudhury?” Murray had said.
“He wouldn’t admit
me.”
Murray had held her, trying to empathize but finding it impossible to relate to a logic that saw self-harming as the only route into a place of safety.
“I had an interesting day,” he said now.
Sarah’s eyes lit up. She sat on the sofa cross-legged, with her back against the arm. Murray had never seen his wife sit properly on a sofa. She would lie on the floor, or sprawl with her head dangling off the edge of the seat and her legs stretched up so her toes touched the wall. Today Sarah was wearing a long gray linen dress, teamed with a bright orange hoodie with sleeves that she’d pulled over her hands so often they now stayed there of their own accord.
“A woman came in to report that her parents’ suicides were, in fact, murders.”
“Do you believe her?” As usual, Sarah cut straight to the chase.
Murray hesitated. Did he? “I honestly don’t know.” He told Sarah about Tom and Caroline Johnson: about their rucksacks filled with rocks, the witness reports, the chaplain’s intervention. Finally, he told her about the anonymous anniversary card, and Anna Johnson’s insistence that he reopen the investigations into her parents’ deaths.
“Were either of the parents suicidal?”
“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 be disagreeable 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 layperson,” 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 good-bye, 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, cozy bungalow? How could Sarah feel safer in the hospital than at home?
* * *
• • •
Later, when he’d cleared away his plate and washed the pan he’d used for his omelet, 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 scrutinized 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 cybersleuthing. 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 in the department.
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 drivers’ licenses and taking reports of lost property.
He fiddled with the fountain pen in his hand. Ran his finger over the engraving. 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.
CHAPTER
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.
The aftermath of a death is an unwanted gift to our loved ones. It is our children, our spouses, our friends, who must tie up the loose ends and clear away the remnants of a sudden departure. I did it for my parents, at their house in Essex; you did the same for yours, here in Eastbourne. Now Anna’s doing it for me. For the two of us.
I watch Laura pick up a ceramic pot that once held a succulent—dried earth clinging to the inside—and discard it. Two distinct piles are emerging on either side of the desk, and I wonder who is driving this efficiency. Anna? Or Laura? Did she make Anna sort through our belongings today? Is Laura pushing her unwittingly toward danger?
They’re talking. Too distant for me to make out the words. My glimpse into this scene is narrow, obscured. It frustrates me because unless I know what’s happening now, how can I influence what happens next?
Our granddaughter lies on a padded mat, beneath an arch from which hang brightly colored animals. She kicks her legs and Anna smiles at her, and my breath catches for a second as I imagine being a mother who could walk through the door as though she’d never been away. A mother who hadn’t missed a year of one life; the birth of a whole new one.
There are no decorations up, no twinkling lights on the banister or wreat
h on the door. It is four days until Christmas, and I wonder if they are waiting until Christmas Eve—forming new traditions as a family—or whether the absence of festive cheer is intentional. Whether Anna can’t face the sight of tinsel and tawdry baubles.
Laura is looking through my datebook. I see Anna glance at her; bite her bottom lip as if to stop herself from commenting. I know what she’s thinking.
We’d been at Oak View for a year when the burglary happened. They didn’t take a lot—there wasn’t a lot to take—but they rifled through the whole house, leaving destruction in their wake. A messy search, the police called it. It was weeks before the house was back to normal, and months before I felt at ease again. There was nothing secret about our lives—not back then—but still I felt angry that someone knew so much about me, when I knew nothing about them.
That same feeling of anger returns as I watch Laura flick through the pages of my appointment book. There’s nothing of consequence in there, but the intrusion is unbearable. Stop it, I want to shout. Stop looking through my things! Get out of my house!
Only it isn’t my house anymore. It’s Anna’s. And she laughs at something Laura says, and smiles a sad smile when Laura points something out that I’m not permitted to see. I am excluded. But Anna’s laugh is short. Polite. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She doesn’t want to be doing this.
Laura looks like her mother. I was at school with Alicia; the only person she told when, a week before her sixteenth birthday, she discovered she was pregnant. Skinny as a rake, she was showing before she was eight weeks gone, and out on her ear not long after, when the baggy jumpers she’d adopted did nothing to fool her mum.
When I left school two years later, my PA job just about covering an apartment with a lift and communal laundry, with enough left over for weekend chips and wine, Alicia was living on benefits in a high-rise in Battersea.