Tom Johnson had been missing for fifteen hours when his wife, Caroline Johnson—at forty-eight, ten years Tom’s junior—called the police. She hadn’t seen Tom since they’d had what she called a “stupid spat” as they’d left work the previous day.
“He said he was going to the pub,” her statement read. “When he didn’t come home I thought he’d gone to his brother’s to sleep it off.” Their daughter, Anna, who lived at home with them, had been away at a conference in London with the children’s charity for which she had worked since leaving university.
Tom Johnson hadn’t turned up for work the next day.
Murray found the statement from Billy Johnson, Tom’s brother and business partner, who had been unconcerned by Tom’s absence.
“I assumed he had a hangover. He’s a partner. What was I supposed to do? Give him a final warning?” Even in the dry black and white of a witness statement, Billy Johnson came across as defensive. It was a natural reaction for many people; a way of defusing the guilt they felt at not seeming to have cared enough when it mattered.
The MISPER report had been completed by Uniform and graded as low risk. Murray looked at the officer’s name but didn’t recognize it. None of the information at that stage had suggested that Tom Johnson had been vulnerable, but that wouldn’t have stopped questions being asked when his suicide was reported; it wouldn’t have stopped that officer questioning their own judgment. Would grading Tom as high risk have changed anything? It was impossible to know. Nothing about Tom Johnson’s disappearance had given rise to concern. He was a successful businessman, well-known across the town. A family man with no history of depression.
The first text message had come at nine thirty A.M.
I’m sorry.
Ironically, Caroline Johnson had been relieved.
“I thought he was apologizing for the row we’d had,” she said in her statement. “He shouted at me—said a few things that had upset me. He had a temper, but he always said sorry afterward. When the text came, I thought at least he’s okay.”
He had a temper.
Murray underlined the words. How much of a temper had Tom Johnson had? Could he have argued with someone at the pub that night? Got into a fight? Inquiries at Tom’s usual haunts had drawn a blank. Wherever he’d gone to drown his sorrows the night before he died, it hadn’t been his local.
A request by the attending officer to trace Tom’s phone had been refused, as at that stage there had been no evidence of a threat to life. Murray winced on behalf of the senior officer who’d made that call. It was a decision that had swiftly been reversed when Caroline had received a second text from her husband.
“I think he’s going to kill himself . . .”
Murray listened to the recording of Caroline Johnson’s 999 call. He closed his eyes, feeling her distress pulse through him as though it were his own. He heard her read out the message she had received from her husband; noted the calm response from the operator as she asked Caroline what was her husband’s number and could she please keep that text message?
I can’t do this anymore. The world will be a better place without me in it.
He couldn’t do what?
It was the sort of heat-of-the-moment comment anyone might make. It could mean nothing, or it could mean everything.
I can’t do this anymore.
Stay married? Have an affair? Lie?
What had Tom Johnson been doing that had led to such an outpouring of guilt?
There had been no further texts. Tom Johnson’s mobile had rung out. Triangulation placed it near Beachy Head. ANPR cameras pinpointed the car he’d taken from work heading toward the same location and officers were dispatched. Even though Murray knew the outcome of the job, he felt a pounding in his chest as he read through the pages of the log, imagining how it would have felt for the police officers involved in the race to save a life.
A call from a member of the public—Diane Brent-Taylor—reported seeing a man put rocks into a rucksack. It had struck her as an odd activity for a man in a suit, and she stood and watched as he made his way to the edge of the cliff. Horrified, she saw him remove his wallet and phone from his pocket before taking a step forward and disappearing. Murray read the transcript of the call.
“The tide’s high. There’s nothing there. I can’t see him.”
Coastal Rescue was in the water within minutes, but it was already too late. There was no sign of Tom Johnson.
Murray took a steadying breath. He wondered how Ralph Metcalfe, the coroner, coped with hearing stories about the dead, day in, day out. He wondered whether he got used to it or whether he went home and sank into a bottle of something to numb the senses.
Officers had scoured the area where Mrs. Brent-Taylor had described seeing Tom go over the edge. They had found his wallet and his mobile phone, the screen still showing the frantic messages from his wife.
Where are you?
Don’t do this.
We need you . . .
Police had broken the news to Caroline Johnson in the kitchen of her home, where she had been surrounded by family. A photocopied pocket notebook entry from PC Woodward listed the names, occupations, and contact details of the friends and family who had gathered to support Caroline.
William (Billy) Johnson. Director at Johnson’s Cars. Brother-in-law.
Robert Drake. Consultant surgeon, Royal Sussex. Neighbor.
Laura Barnes. Receptionist at Hard as Nails. Goddaughter.
Anna Johnson’s details—Regional Coordinator for Save the Children. Daughter—had been recorded on a later page, suggesting she had arrived after PC Woodward had taken the initial roll call.
In the days following Tom Johnson’s death, numerous inquiries had been carried out as CID officers had put together a file for the coroner. The content of Tom’s smartphone had been extracted, including Web searches made in the early hours of 18 May for: Beachy Head suicide location and tide times Beachy Head. Murray noted that high tide had occurred at 10:04 A.M., Diane Brent-Taylor’s call coming in less than a minute later. The water would have been around six meters deep at that point. Easily deep enough to swallow a man weighed down with rocks, the undertow dragging him out past the tide line. If his body was ever recovered, what would be left of him, nineteen months on? Would there be anything to say whether Tom Johnson was alone on the edge of the cliffs that morning?
The witness, Diane Brent-Taylor, hadn’t seen anyone with Tom. She’d refused to give a statement or to attend an inquest. After several telephone conversations, during which Diane had been evasive to the point of obstruction, the police call handler had finally established that Diane had been on Beachy Head with a married man with whom she had been having an affair. The clandestine couple had been as anxious to keep their rendezvous a secret as the police were to take a statement, and nothing could persuade Diane to commit her name to paper.
The timeline in Murray’s notebook was complete. The investigation into Tom Johnson’s death had been concluded within a fortnight, the file submitted, and the CID officers assigned to other jobs. There had been a delay of several months while permission had been obtained to hold an inquest without a body, but as far as the investigation was concerned, the job was done. Suicide. Tragic, but not suspicious. End of story.
Except was it?
There were several CDs in the box file of CCTV footage seized during the immediate fear for Tom Johnson’s welfare. They didn’t appear to have been viewed, and Murray imagined the case had already reached its sad conclusion before the officers had had a chance to look at the hours of footage they potentially contained. Could the disks hold evidence of a crime so well hidden it was never even identified as one?
The brand-new Audi, taken by Tom from Johnson’s Cars on the day he disappeared, had been given a cursory search, but with everything pointing toward suicide, not murder, no budget was allocated for forensic testing. Like the CCTV, though, evidence had been secured, and Murray wondered if there was any point in submitting the swabs and stray hairs seized from the car.
But what would that prove? There was no suspect with whom to compare evidence seized, and the car was a forecourt special; who knew how many test-drives it had hosted?
More pertinently, how would Murray get a submission signed off when he wasn’t even supposed to be dealing with the job? So far nothing Murray had found suggested anything was amiss in the coroner’s verdict of suicide.
Perhaps Caroline Johnson’s file would yield more interest.
The police response to Anna Johnson’s 999 call had been swift and extensive. The family’s address was already flagged, and this time there was no question of grading Caroline Johnson as anything other than a high-risk vulnerable MISPER.
“My father’s death hit her hard,” Anna Johnson’s statement read. “I had started working from home so I could keep an eye on her—I was really worried. She didn’t eat, she was jumpy every time the phone rang, and some days she wouldn’t even get out of bed.”
So far, so normal, Murray thought. Grief hit everyone in a different way, and bereavement by suicide carried an extra burden. Guilt—however misplaced—weighed heavy on the soul.
On 21 December Caroline Johnson had told her daughter she needed some air.
“She’d been distracted all day,” Anna had said. “I kept catching her looking at me, and twice she told me she loved me. She was behaving oddly, but I put it down to the fact that we were both dreading our first Christmas without Dad.”
At lunchtime Caroline went to get milk.
“She took the car. I should have realized straightaway something was wrong—we always get milk from the shop at the end of the road. It’s quicker to walk. As soon as I noticed the car had gone, I knew something awful was going to happen.”
The police were called at three P.M. A response officer who knew the family’s history, and with too many Beachy Head jobs under his belt to be optimistic, had phoned the chaplaincy office. For years the charity had offered crisis intervention, proactive patrols, and search teams, all aimed at reducing Beachy Head’s annual death toll. An eager chaplain had confirmed that, yes, he had indeed seen a woman matching that description, but that the officer could rest easy; she hadn’t jumped.
Murray put down Anna Johnson’s statement and found the entry on the call log where the update from the attending officer, PC 956 Gray, had been posted:
Chaplain states he had a long conversation on edge of cliff with an IC1 female in her fifties. Subject was in a distressed state and carrying rucksack filled with stones. Subject stated her name was Caroline and that she had recently lost her husband to suicide.
The chaplain had talked Caroline back from the edge.
“I waited while she took the stones out of her rucksack,” his statement read. “We walked back to the car park. I told her God was always ready to listen. To forgive. That nothing was so bad God wouldn’t help us through it.”
Murray admired those whose faith gave them such immense peace of mind. He wished he felt that depth of belief when he went into a church, but there were too many terrible things in the world for him to accept that they were all part of God’s grand plan.
Had even the chaplain’s faith been shaken by what happened next? Had he sent up a prayer to help him come to terms with it?
Caroline’s photo had been circulated, additional patrols sent to Beachy Head. Coast guard rescue worked in conjunction with the police, with the chaplaincy, as they were so often required to do. Volunteers and salaried officers working side by side. Different backgrounds, different training, but the same aim. To find Caroline Johnson alive.
Caroline’s phone had been identified as being at or near Beachy Head, and just after five P.M., her handbag and mobile phone were found by a dog walker on the edge of the cliff. The tide had been at its highest at 4:33 P.M. that day.
A BMW, parked in the car park at Beachy Head with the keys in the ignition, was quickly traced back to Johnson’s Cars, where Billy Johnson confirmed that the description given by the chaplain matched that of his sister-in-law, Caroline Johnson, a fellow director of Johnson’s Cars, and the recent widow of Billy’s brother, Tom Johnson.
With the exception of the suicide texts—Caroline had sent none—it was a carbon copy of Tom Johnson’s suicide, seven months previous. How must Anna have felt, to answer the door to another policeman with his hat in his hands? To sit in the kitchen with the same friends and family gathered around? Another investigation, another funeral, another inquest.
Murray put down the file and let out a slow sigh. How many times had Sarah tried to take her own life?
Too many to count.
The first had come a few weeks into their relationship, when Murray had gone to play squash with a colleague instead of seeing Sarah. He had returned home to find seven messages on his answerphone, each more desperate than the one before.
Murray had panicked that time. And the next. Sometimes there were months between attempts; on other occasions Sarah would try several times a day to end her life. It would be these times that would prompt another stay at Highfield.
Gradually he had learned that what Sarah needed was for him to be calm. To be there. Not judging, not panicking. And so he would come home and hold her, and if she didn’t need to go to the hospital—as, more often than not, she didn’t—Murray would bathe her arms and gently wrap gauze across the cuts, and reassure her he wasn’t going anywhere. And only when Sarah was in bed—the lines on her forehead smoothed out by sleep—would Murray put his head in his hands and weep.
Murray rubbed his face. Focus. This job was supposed to fill some time. Distract him from thinking about Sarah, not send him down memory lanes he wished he’d never traveled.
He looked at his notebook, now filled with his neat handwriting. Nothing seemed out of place. So why would someone question Caroline’s death? To stir up trouble? To upset Anna?
Suicide? Think again.
Something transpired that day that wasn’t in the police file. Something the investigating officers hadn’t seen. It happened. Not often, but it happened. Sloppy detectives, or simply busy ones. Prioritizing other cases; filing the dead ends when perhaps—just perhaps—there were more questions to ask. More answers to find.
Murray picked up the final sheaf of paperwork: miscellaneous documents in no apparent order—a photograph of Caroline Johnson, a copy of the contact list from her phone, and a copy of Tom Johnson’s life insurance policy.
Murray looked at the latter. And looked again.
Tom Johnson had been worth a considerable amount of money.
Murray hadn’t seen Anna’s house, but he knew the street—a quiet, sought-after avenue with its own gated park—and properties there didn’t come cheap. Murray assumed the house would have been jointly owned by the Johnsons and would since have passed to their daughter, as would, he imagined, the payout from Tom’s hefty life insurance policy. And that was before you factored in the family business, of which Anna now had joint control.
Whichever way you looked at it, Anna Johnson was an extremely wealthy woman.