Winter sun filtered through the bedroom curtains as Murray got dressed. He tucked the duvet underneath the pillows and smoothed out the wrinkles before arranging the cushions the way Sarah liked. Opening the curtains, he noted the thick gray clouds rolling in from the north and put a V-neck sweater over his shirt.
Later, once the dishwasher was on and he’d pushed the Hoover around, and the first load of laundry was hanging on the line, Murray sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. It was half past nine. The hours stretched out in front of him. He remembered a time when a morning off was full of promise, full of expectation.
He drummed his fingers on the table. He would go and see Sarah. Spend the morning with her—perhaps he could persuade her to go to the café or to take a walk around the grounds—and go on to work from there.
He was buzzed in by Jo Dawkins, Sarah’s caseworker, who had worked at Highfield for the last ten years.
“I’m sorry, love. She’s having a bad day.”
A bad day meant Sarah didn’t want to see him. Ordinarily, Murray would go straight home, accepting that everyone had times when they wanted to be alone. Today he felt different. He missed Sarah. He wanted to talk about the Johnson job.
“Would you try again? Tell her I won’t stay long.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Jo left him in reception, the hall of the original country house. It had been clumsily converted, long before listed buildings had become something to protect. Thick fire doors, all with key-code access, led off to wards and offices, and ugly wood-chip paper covered both walls and ceiling.
When Jo returned, it was clear from her face nothing had changed.
“Did she give any reason?”
BPD. That was the reason.
Jo hesitated. “Um, not really.”
“She did, didn’t she? Come on, Jo—you know I can take it.”
The nurse looked him square on, assessing him. “Okay. She thinks you should be”—she lifted her hands and made repeated quote marks in the air, disassociating herself from what was to follow—“‘fucking other people and not wasting your life loving a loony.’”
Murray blushed. His wife ordering him to leave her (and then attempting suicide at the prospect) had been a common theme throughout their marriage, but that didn’t make it any less awkward to hear via a third party.
“Would you tell her”—he raised his hands to mirror Jo’s quote marks—“that ‘loving a loony’ is exactly what I like best?”
Murray sat in the car park of Highfield, leaning back against the headrest. He should have known better than to try to surprise Sarah. She was unpredictable at the best of times, but predictably so in the mornings. He would try again on his way home from work.
So, now what?
He had two hours before his shift started, and no desire to go back to an empty house and watch the minutes tick by. The fridge was full, the garden tidy, and the house clean. Murray considered his options.
“Yes,” he said aloud, as he was inclined to do. “Why not?” His time was his own; he could do what he wanted with it.
He headed out of town across the Downs, pressing his foot hard against the floor for a burst of speed you never got on buses. A shortage of parking at the police station meant buses were often more convenient for work, but Murray enjoyed driving, and he put on the radio and hummed along to a track he only half knew. The threatened rain hadn’t yet materialized, but the clouds hung low above the hills, and when the sea hove into view it was flecked with angry white tips.
The car park was nearly empty, save a half dozen cars, and Murray found eighty pence among the loose change he kept in the otherwise redundant ashtray and popped the ticket on the dash. A large sign next to the pay-and-display machine gave the contact number for the Samaritans, and as Murray walked toward the coastal path he passed a series of further signs.
It helps to talk.
You are not alone.
Could a sign make a difference? Might a person hell-bent on suicide stop to take in a message meant for them?
You are not alone.
For every person who fell to their death off Beachy Head, there were a dozen more who didn’t. A dozen more who lost their nerve, had a change of heart, encountered one of the volunteers who patrolled the cliffs and reluctantly agreed to join them for a cup of tea instead of carrying out their plan.
It didn’t end there, though, did it? An intervention was a comma, not a full stop. All the tea, all the conversation, all the support in the world, might not change what happened the next day. Or the day after that.
Murray thought of the poor chaplain who’d found Caroline Johnson on the cliff edge, her rucksack weighed down with stones. How must he have felt to learn that the woman he’d talked down from suicide had gone straight back to the same spot and jumped anyway?
Had she been with someone that day? Had the chaplain been so focused on saving Caroline’s life that he had neglected to see a figure in the shadows, keeping well back?
Was Anna’s mother pushed? Perhaps not physically, but could someone have pushed Caroline into taking her own life?
The headland rose above Murray, each stride taking him higher above sea level. Local folklore suggested malignant ley lines converged at Beachy Head, drawing those susceptible to such things to their death. Murray held no truck with magic and mystery, but it was hard to ignore the power of the place. The expanse of grass ended abruptly in bright white cliffs, the contrast muted by the mist that swirled around the lighthouse below. As the clouds shifted, Murray caught glimpses of gray sea, and he felt a rush of vertigo, stepping backward even though he was twelve feet or more from the crumbling edges.
Caroline had come here to die. That much was clear from the chaplain’s testimony. Yet the implication in the anonymous anniversary card was clear: her suicide was not as it seemed.
Murray pictured Caroline Johnson standing where he now stood. Had she wanted to die? Or been willing to die? There was a subtle, but important, distinction. Willing to die so that someone else would be spared? Her daughter? Perhaps Anna herself was the key to all this. Could Caroline Johnson have taken her own life because someone threatened to hurt her daughter if she didn’t?
Far from clearing his head, Beachy Head was sending him around in circles.
In the center of a well-trodden patch of grass was a stone plinth topped with a slate slab. Murray read the engraving, his lips moving silently.
Mightier than the thunders of many waters,
mightier than the waves of the sea,
the Lord on high is mighty!
Beneath the psalm, a final reminder: God is always greater than all of our troubles.
Murray felt something well up inside him. He turned abruptly from the plinth, looked one last time at where the cliffs gave way to oblivion, and then marched back toward the car park, angry he had let it get to him. He had come for research purposes, he told himself, not to get maudlin. He had come to see where Anna Johnson’s parents had died. To fix the scene in his mind, thinking it might have changed since he was last there.
It hadn’t.
It had been one of the patrol volunteers who had found Sarah. She’d been sitting on the edge of the cliff, her feet dangling into oblivion. She hadn’t wanted to kill herself, she’d told the chaplain; she just didn’t want to be in the world anymore. There was a difference, she’d insisted. Murray had understood that. He wouldn’t change his wife for the world, but he wished so much he could change the world for his wife.
Murray had picked up the call, left work, and driven to the pub at Beachy Head, where Sarah was sitting with a woman whose dog collar was all but hidden beneath her waterproofs. The landlord was a quiet, thoughtful man, experienced in the difference between a stiff drink and Dutch courage, quick to call the police if the latter looked as though it would end badly. He had retired discreetly to the other end of the pub, while Sarah had cried on Murray’s shoulder.
Beachy Head hadn’t changed. It never would. It was—would always be—a beautiful, haunting, agonizing place. At once uplifting and destroying.
Murray parked the car on the street behind the police station, checked the time, and took out his access card. A pair of response officers were jogging down the corridor, nodding their thanks as Murray swung open the door for them, before getting into a marked car parked in the backyard. Within seconds they were out of the gate, wheels spinning as they rounded the corner. Murray stood until the sound of the siren had all but disappeared, a barely there smile on his face. There was nothing like a blue-light run for getting the blood pumping.
The Criminal Investigation Department—or CID—was at the end of a long corridor. In Murray’s day, there had been five or six small offices on each side, but by the time he’d retired, most of the internal walls had been demolished to create open-plan work spaces. Officers were expected to “hot-desk” now, Murray knew, and he was grateful the concept hadn’t been mooted while he was still in the department. How could you solve a jigsaw puzzle when you had to keep packing away the pieces?
Detective Sergeant James Kennedy looked up as Murray entered, his face showing genuine warmth. He shook Murray’s hand vigorously. “How the devil are you? Still on the front desk? Lower Meads nick, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one.”
“Rather you than me.” James shuddered. “Soon as I get my pension I’m out of here. You won’t catch me back under the cosh. Working Christmas, instead of watching the kids open their stockings? It’s a mug’s game, right?”
James Kennedy was in his early thirties. He’d arrived at CID two months before Murray’s retirement party, and now there he was: leading a team, and no doubt one of the most experienced detectives in the office. He might think his retirement—still years in the future—would never involve a uniform, but wait till he got there, Murray thought. Thirty years left a gap that was hard to fill.
James took in Murray’s civvies. “In early? You’re keen.”
“I was just passing. Thought I’d pop in and see how things were.”
There was a moment’s hesitation while the stark reality of Murray’s empty life hung in the air between them, before James rallied.
“Well, I’m glad you did; it’s good to see you. I’ll put the kettle on.”
As James clattered about in the corner of the office, where a kettle and tea tray on top of a fridge formed a makeshift kitchen, Murray looked at the ongoing cases on the whiteboard.
“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 trash can 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 humored. People always did humor him, 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 have shown him Anna Johnson’s anonymous card. The point at which he should have officially handed over the job to CID and gone 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 prioritize 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.
Until then, he was on his own.