“Can we go inside now?”
Murray squeezed Sarah’s hand. “Let’s do one more.” They were walking around Highfield, close enough for Sarah to trail a hand along the brickwork, anchoring herself to the building.
“Okay.”
Murray heard her breath quicken. She tried to speed up—to get it over with—but he kept the measured pace they had followed for the previous two laps of the building. He did his best to distract her.
“Tom Johnson’s will left the house to his wife, along with his share of the business, and all his assets except for a hundred grand, which he left to Anna. His life insurance payout went to Caroline.”
“Even though it was suicide?”
“Even though.” Murray now knew far more about life insurance and suicide than he had ever needed to know. Most companies had a “suicide clause” in their policies that meant no payout if the policy had been taken out within twelve months of the policyholder’s suicide. It was to stop people committing suicide to escape debt, the helpful woman from Aviva had explained to Murray when he’d rung. Tom Johnson’s policy had been in place for years, the payout to his wife made as soon as the death certificate had been issued.
“What about Caroline’s will?”
Sarah’s trailing hand still followed the line of the wall, but now Murray saw air between her fingers and the brickwork. He kept talking. “A small sum to her goddaughter, a ten-grand legacy to a Cypriot animal rescue charity, and the rest to Anna.”
“So Anna ended up with the lot. You’re sure she didn’t bump them both off?” Her hand dropped to her side.
“And send herself an anonymous note?”
Sarah was thinking. “Maybe the card was from someone who knows she killed them. Anna panics, brings the card to the police station because that’s what a normal, non-murderous person would do. It’s a double bluff.”
Murray grinned. Sarah was far more creative than any detective he’d ever worked with.
“Any fingerprints?”
“Several. Nish is working her way through them now.” Tom Johnson’s car had been dusted for prints after his death, and elimination sets taken from his daughter and the staff at Johnson’s Cars. The anonymous card carried full prints from both Anna Johnson and her uncle, Billy, who had ripped it into pieces before Anna could stop him, and several partials that could have come from anywhere—including the shop where the card had been bought. None of the prints had triggered a hit on the Police National Computer.
At the mention of their friend’s name, Sarah had brightened. Her hand relaxed a little in Murray’s. “How is Nish?”
“She’s well. She asked after you. Suggested we have dinner together, when you’re up to it.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe was okay. Maybe was better than no. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and Sarah’s consultant, Mr. Chaudhury, had decided Sarah should be discharged. Sarah had other ideas.
“I’m not well,” she’d said, worrying at her frayed sleeves.
People who proclaimed themselves to be champions of mental health issues were fond of comparing them to physical ailments.
“If Sarah had broken her leg we’d all understand that it needed fixing,” Murray’s line manager had said when Murray had apologized for taking time off to support his wife. The diversity box had been duly ticked.
Only it wasn’t like a broken bloody leg. A broken leg could be fixed. X-rays, a plaster cast, perhaps a metal splint. A few weeks on crutches. Resting, physio. And then—what? The odd twinge, perhaps, but fixed. Better. Sure, it might break more easily next time you came off a bike, or took the stairs awkwardly and tripped, but it wouldn’t snap spontaneously. It wouldn’t freeze in horror at the prospect of answering the door, or crumble into pieces if someone whispered out of earshot.
Borderline personality disorder was nothing like a broken leg.
No, Sarah wasn’t well. But she never would be.
“Sarah, borderline personality disorder is not something we are going to cure.” Chaudhury’s Oxbridge accent was undercut by a Birmingham twang. “You know that. You know more about your condition than anyone. But you are managing it well, and you will continue to do that at home.”
“I want to stay here.” Sarah’s face had creased into tears. She looked more like a homesick child than a fifty-eight-year-old woman. “I don’t like it at home. I’m safe here.”
Murray had pasted a smile on his face to hide the right hook he’d felt to his stomach. Mr. Chaudhury had been firm.
“You’ll be safe at home. Because for the last few days it hasn’t been us keeping you safe.” He had paused and leaned forward, pointing templed fingers toward Sarah. “It’s been you. You’ll continue with daily sessions; then we’ll move toward weekly visits. Small steps. The main priority is to get you back home with your husband.”
Murray had waited for the left hook. But Sarah nodded meekly and reluctantly agreed that tomorrow she would go home. And then she had surprised Murray by agreeing to go for a walk.
Murray stopped. “There. That’s three.”
Sarah looked taken aback to see the main door again, their three laps of the building complete.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning. Okay?”
She frowned. “It’s group in the morning.”
“Lunchtime, then.”
“Okay.”
Murray kissed her and began walking down the path to the car park. Halfway down he turned to wave, but she’d already scuttled inside.
Murray spent the next hour tidying the already spotless house, in preparation for Sarah’s homecoming. He changed the sheets in their bedroom and made up the spare bed, too, putting fresh flowers in both rooms, just in case she wanted to be alone. When the place was pristine, he got in his car and drove in to work.
The fact that Diane Brent-Taylor—the witness who had called the police to report Tom’s suicide—had not attended the inquest was troubling Murray. Brent-Taylor had claimed she had been on Beachy Head that morning with a lover and that she couldn’t take the risk of her husband finding out where she’d been. CID had tried several times to persuade her, but to no avail. They had no address details for her—just a mobile phone number—and when that had been disconnected, they had given up. This was a suicide investigation, after all. Not a murder. Not then.
Murray wasn’t going to give up.
There were plenty of Taylors and lots of Brents on the Police National Computer and the electoral register, but no Diane Brent-Taylors. Neither did Murray have any joy on open-source systems—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn—although he would be the first to admit he was hardly an expert in the field. His expertise lay in lateral thinking. He drummed his fingers on the desk and then started his search again, this time putting a fresh sheet of paper to the side of his keyboard. There was, no doubt, a system that would do this job for him in a fraction of the time, but pen and paper had never failed Murray yet. Besides, taking this to Force Intelligence would prompt questions he didn’t yet want to answer.
On the left-hand side of his paper he jotted down the home addresses of everyone with the surname Brent in a twenty-five-mile radius of Eastbourne. If he had to widen the search, he would, but for now he was working on the basis that the witness had been local. Next, Murray began a new list, of all the addresses occupied by people with the surname Taylor.
It was half an hour before he got a match.
Bingo.
Twenty-four Burlington Close, Newhaven. Occupied by a Mr. Gareth Taylor and a Mrs. Diane Brent.
Murray looked up with a broad smile on his face. The only person around to see it was John, Murray’s dour colleague who had been confused to see Murray arrive at work an hour previously.
“I thought you were on leave till the New Year?”
“I’ve got a few bits to fill in on my PDR.”
John’s confusion had grown. No one voluntarily worked on their personal development record unless they were going for a new job or prepping for promotion boards. As for doing it on your own time . . .
Now John looked at Murray with complete bafflement. “I’ve never seen anyone look so happy to do their PDR.”
“Just taking pride in my work, John.” Murray whistled as he made his way out of the station.
Twenty-four Burlington Close was a quiet cul-de-sac off Southwich Avenue in Newhaven, halfway between Eastbourne and Brighton. Murray waited a moment before ringing the doorbell, taking in the carefully tended flowerpots around the front door and the No Cold Callers sign in the frosted window. A shadow moved toward him as he reached for the white plastic button, and he realized Mrs. Brent-Taylor must have seen him pull up on the drive and been waiting in the hall. She opened the door before the chime had died away. A dog barked from somewhere in the house.
Murray introduced himself. “I’m investigating a case I think you might have had some involvement in. May I come in?”
Mrs. Brent-Taylor narrowed her eyes. “I have to pack for my daughter’s. It’s her turn to do Christmas.”
“It won’t take long.”
She stepped back from the open door. “I can only give you half an hour.”
As welcomes went, Murray had had worse. He smiled and thrust out his hand in a way that made it impossible for Mrs. Brent-Taylor not to take it. She glanced around as if the neighbors might already be passing judgment.
“You’d better come in.”
The hall was dark and narrow. There were an umbrella stand and two pairs of shoes on the floor, and an organized bulletin board on which Murray could see a variety of leaflets and reminders. Something caught his eye as he passed the board, but he was ushered on into the depths of the house.
He was momentarily confused to be directed up a flight of stairs, but his bearings became clear as he reached the top to find a large open-plan living space and floor-to-ceiling windows with a stunning view of the sea.
“Wow.”
Diane Brent-Taylor appeared at the top of the stairs a full minute after Murray. She seemed mollified by his compliment, the corners of her mouth curling slightly in what seemed to pass for a smile. “I’m very fortunate.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“It’ll be twenty years in March. If I move now it’ll be into a bungalow.” She gestured to a mustard-colored sofa and took the chair next to it. She sank into it with an audible exhalation.
Murray hesitated. He had finessed his line of questioning on the way here, starting with the identity of Mrs. Brent-Taylor’s lover. After all, it was entirely possible that Brent-Taylor had refused to give a statement not just to hide her extramarital activity, but because she—or her lover—had been involved in Tom Johnson’s death. Could Diane Brent-Taylor have been protecting someone?
But now he felt entirely wrong-footed.
Mrs. Brent-Taylor was in her late seventies. Possibly even in her eighties. She wore the sort of trousers his mother would have described as “slacks,” teamed with a busily patterned blouse in colors significantly more cheerful than its wearer. Her blue-tinged hair was set in rigid waves, close to her head, and her nails were painted a pale coral.
It was, of course, possible that Mrs. Brent-Taylor had a lover. But given the time it had taken her to climb the stairs, and the walking stick he had glimpsed propped up behind her armchair, Murray felt it was unlikely she had been gallivanting around Beachy Head with him.
“Um, is your husband home?”
“I’m widowed.”
“I’m so sorry. Was it recent?”
“Five years last September. May I ask what this is about?”
It was becoming increasingly clear that either Murray had the wrong house or . . . There was only one way to find out. “Mrs. Brent-Taylor, do the names Tom and Caroline Johnson mean anything to you?”
She frowned. “Should they?”
“Tom Johnson died at Beachy Head on the eighteenth of May last year. His wife, Caroline, died in the same spot on the twenty-first of December.”
“Suicide?” She took Murray’s silence as agreement. “How dreadful.”
“Tom Johnson’s death was reported to police by a witness giving your name.”
“Giving my name?”
“Diane Brent-Taylor.”
“Well, it wasn’t me. I mean, I’ve been to Beachy Head, obviously—I’ve lived in or around the area all my life—but I’ve never seen anyone jump off. Thank God.” She muttered this last to herself.
What were the chances of there being two Diane Brent-Taylors in the Eastbourne area?
“It’s an unusual name.”
“It isn’t properly double-barreled, you know,” Mrs. Brent-Taylor said defensively, as though this exonerated her. “My husband liked the sound of them together. He thought it went down well on the golf course.”
“Right.” Murray steeled himself. It was already clear that today’s excursion had been a wild-goose chase, but he wouldn’t be doing his job properly if he didn’t cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. “So, just to clarify, you definitely didn’t call 999 on the eighteenth of May 2016 to report seeing a man throw himself off the cliffs at Beachy Head.”
Mrs. Brent-Taylor narrowed her eyes. “I may be getting on a bit, young man, but I still have my full faculties.” Murray just managed to stop himself thanking her for the misplaced compliment.
“One final thing—and I apologize if this seems a little impertinent—is it at all possible that on the eighteenth of May last year you might have been on Beachy Head with someone else’s husband?”
Within seconds Murray found himself standing outside 24 Burlington Close, with the door slammed firmly in his face. Really, he thought, Diane Brent-Taylor moved quite quickly when she wanted to.