“I found my mother’s datebook from last year.” Anna handed him a thick A4 appointment book. “I thought it might help piece together her movements.” They were sitting in the kitchenette behind the front desk at Lower Meads Police Station, where Murray had first spoken to Anna Johnson. Anna’s partner, Mark, was with her, and together they had reported one of the strangest occurrences Murray had ever been asked to investigate.
Mark Hemmings had thick dark hair and glasses that were currently pushed up on his forehead. He was sitting back in his chair with one ankle on the knee of his other leg. His right arm rested on the back of Anna’s chair.
Anna Johnson took up half the space of her partner. She sat on the edge of her seat, leaning forward with her legs crossed and her hands clasped together as though she were in church.
There were various leaflets and business cards filed within the pages of the datebook, and as Murray opened the front cover, a photograph fell out.
Anna reached for it. “Sorry, I put it there so it didn’t get creased. I was going to get it framed.”
“Your mother?”
“There, in the yellow dress. And that’s her friend Alicia. She died of an asthma attack when she was thirty-three. Her daughter, Laura, is Mum’s goddaughter.”
Murray remembered the pocket notebook entry from the attending officer. Laura Barnes. Goddaughter. The women—girls, really—in the photo were laughing outside a pub, their arms entangled so they looked like extensions of each other. In the background of the photo was a table of young men, one of whom was looking across at Alicia and Caroline admiringly. Murray could make out a wagon and horses on the swinging sign outside the building behind them.
“Funny place for a holiday—about as far as you can get from the sea—but Mum said they had the best time.”
“Lovely photo. You never met Anna’s parents, Mr. Hemmings?”
“Sadly not. They’d both passed away before we met. In fact, it was because of them we met at all.” Instinctively both Mark and Anna looked at their daughter, who, Murray supposed, would not have existed without the tragedy that had befallen the family.
“I’ll speak to a crime scene investigator about the rabbit, but without examining it—”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t think.” Anna shot a look at her partner.
“I’ll just leave it there next time, shall I?” Mark said. He spoke mildly, but with an undertone that suggested this was a conversation already had at least once. “Let the flies have a really good go at it?”
“It can’t be helped. I’ve submitted the anniversary card to forensics. They’ll check for fingerprints and DNA and try to enhance the postmark so we have a better idea of where it came from. And I’ll take a look through this datebook, thank you.” Murray passed the photo back to Anna, but she didn’t put it in her bag. She held it in both hands, staring at the image as though she could bring it to life.
“I keep thinking I see her.” She looked up. Mark moved his arm from the back of her chair to her shoulders. His lips were pressed tightly together as Anna tried to explain. “At least . . . not see her exactly. But feel her. I think . . . I think she might be trying to tell me something. Does that sound mad?”
Mark spoke softly, as much to Murray as to Anna. “It’s very common for people who are grieving to imagine they see their loved ones. It’s a manifestation of emotion; you want to see them so badly you think—”
“What if I’m not imagining it?”
There was an awkward pause. Murray felt as though he were intruding and wondered if he should fabricate a reason to leave the couple alone. Before he could move, Anna turned to him.
“What do you think? Do you believe in ghosts? In an afterlife?”
Police officers were, by nature, a cynical breed. Throughout his service Murray had kept his thoughts on ghosts to himself, avoiding the ribbing that would inevitably have ensued. Even now, he didn’t commit. One’s belief or otherwise in the supernatural was a personal matter—like religion or politics—and not one to be debated in a side room of a police station.
“I’m open to it.” There were more things in heaven and earth, Shakespeare had said, than anyone could ever imagine, but that didn’t make Murray’s job any easier. He couldn’t go to CID with a report that Anna Johnson was being haunted by a murdered relative. He leaned forward. “Do you get a sense of what she might be trying to tell you?” Murray ignored the almost tangible disparagement that was emanating from Mark Hemmings.
“I’m sorry. It’s just a . . . feeling.”
It was going to take more than a feeling to convince CID that Tom and Caroline Johnson had been murdered.
Nisha Kaur had been a crime scene investigator back when they were called scenes of crime officers.
“Same shit, different job title,” she’d say cheerfully. “Give it another ten years and some bright spark upstairs will be rebranding us all SOCOs again.”
Not that Nish would be there in ten years’ time. She had been new in the post when Murray was a young detective; she joined the force with a diploma in photography, a strong stomach, and the enviable ability to get on with everyone. Thirty years later she was principal CSI, responsible for the force forensic team, and counting down to her own retirement.
“Pet photography,” she said, when Murray asked her plans. She laughed at the surprise on his face. “The uniform’s better, there’s less blood, and have you tried being depressed when there’s a kitten in the room? I can pick and choose my jobs—no more arsey customers for me—and work my own hours. All very low-key. More of a hobby than a job.” They were sitting in the closed canteen, where a triptych of vending machines served the weekend workers.
“Sounds like a good plan.” Privately Murray doubted Nish could do anything on a low-key basis. Within eighteen months of retirement she’d be working flat out again. “What are you doing over Christmas?”
“On call. You?”
“Nothing special. Quiet one. You know.”
“Is Sarah . . . ?” Nish didn’t do the head tilt.
“At Highfield. Voluntarily, this time. She’s fine.” It sounded insincere, even to Murray. You’d have thought he would have found Sarah’s admissions easier as time went by, but the last few occasions had drained him more than ever before. He was getting older, he supposed, finding stress harder to handle.
“What did you want to see me about?” Nish, perceptive as ever, changing tack.
“How much blood is there in a rabbit?”
It was a measure of the variety of Nish’s job, and the breadth of her experience, that the question provoked no surprise.
“A couple of hundred milliliters, if that. A small glassful,” she added, seeing Murray’s blank look.
“Enough to cover three steps?”
Nish scratched her chin. “You’re going to have to give me a bit more to go on.”
Murray didn’t mention the suicides at first. He recounted the report that Anna and Mark had made and how Anna had been convinced the rabbit hadn’t been placed there by an animal.
“I’d say she could be right.”
Murray leaned forward in anticipation, and Nish held up a warning finger. “This is totally off the record and entirely hypothetical, understood? Without photos, and without examining the scene, it’s impossible for me to make a professional judgment.”
“But?”
Nish laughed. “Blood—in the quantity we’re talking about—doesn’t pour out of a prone rabbit. It seeps. And it coagulates. So, although a hundred and fifty mill tipped on the floor would make a hell of a mess—ever dropped a glass of wine?—the same amount oozing from a rabbit would congeal long before it dripped onto the step below. Most of it would be caught in the fur.”
“Right. So someone deliberately tipped blood on the other steps to make a more impressive crime scene?”
“Sounds like it. The bigger question is, why?” Nish eyed Murray, her head tilted slightly to one side. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there.”
It wasn’t a question.
“There were two suicides at Beachy Head last year. Tom and Caroline Johnson—they owned the car showroom on the corner of Main Street.”
Nish snapped her fingers. “Left a black Audi in the car park, right? Rocks in his rucksack.”
“You’re good. That was Tom Johnson. His wife, Caroline, died seven months later—exactly a year ago. Same place, identical method. Anna Johnson is their daughter.” He passed Nish a plastic evidence bag containing the anonymous anniversary card, together with a photograph of the pieced-together card.
“Suicide?” Nish read aloud. “Think again.” She looked up. “Very dramatic. The suggestion being that she was murdered?”
“That’s certainly how Anna Johnson interpreted it. This morning she opened the door to find the rabbit smeared across their top step.”
“Beats dog shit through the letterbox.”
“What do you think?”
“Other than the fact that it’s a waste of a nice rabbit pie? I think it’s fishy. What do CID say?”
“Not a lot.”
Nish had known Murray a long time. “Oh, Murray . . .”
“I’m doing the background work, that’s all. You know what CID are like nowadays. Stretched to buggery. I’ll package it up for the DI as soon as there’s something concrete to go on. Fingerprints, for example.” He gave Nish a winning smile and pushed the exhibit bag closer to her.
Nish pushed it back. “Not without a budget code, I’m afraid.”
“Couldn’t you put it through on the original job?”
“You know I’m not supposed to do that.”
“She lost both her parents, Nish. She’s a new mother, desperately trying to hold it all together without mum there to give her moral support.”
“You’re going soft in your old age.”
“Whereas you’re still hard as nails, of course. What was it you were saying about kittens?” He pushed the evidence bag back across the table.
This time, she took it.