I pull out the bottom drawer of the desk and retrieve the bottle of vodka. It’s empty. Most of them are. They’re everywhere. At the back of the wardrobe; in the toilet cistern; wrapped in a towel in the depths of the airing cupboard. I find them, I pour away the contents, and I push the glass to the bottom of the recycling bin.
If there were bottles before I went to university, they were better hidden. Or I didn’t notice them. I returned home to a life that had altered in my absence. Were my parents drinking more, or had I had my eyes opened to a world beyond the narrow scope of my childhood? After I found the first bottle there seemed to be hundreds – like learning a word and then seeing it everywhere.
An involuntary shiver tickles my spine. Someone walking over your grave, Mum used to say. It’s dark outside. I catch a glimpse of something moving in the garden. My heart thumps, but when I look properly, it’s my own pale face staring back at me, distorted by the old glass.
A noise outside makes me jump. Pull yourself together, Anna.
It’s this room. It’s full of memories, not all of them good. It’s making me jumpy. I’m imagining things. A ghostly figure in the window, footsteps outside.
But wait: I do hear footsteps …
Slow and deliberate, as though the owner were trying not to be heard. A soft crunch of gravel underfoot.
There’s someone outside.
There are no lights on upstairs, and none down here, save for the desk light in the study. From the outside the house will be in near darkness.
Could it be a burglar? This street is filled with high-value properties, crammed with antiques and paintings bought as much for investment as for show. As the business grew, my parents spent their money on beautiful things, many of which could be easily seen through the downstairs windows. Perhaps someone came by earlier, when Ella and I were at the police station, and decided to return under cover of darkness. Maybe – a hard knot of fear forms in my throat – maybe they’ve been observing for a while. All day I’ve been unable to lose the feeling I’m being watched, and now I wonder if my instincts have been correct.
As a child, I knew the code for the burglar alarm long before I could memorise our telephone number, but it hasn’t been set since Mark moved in. He wasn’t used to living in a house with an alarm. He’d set it off every time he came home, cursing in frustration as he fumbled with the keypad.
‘Rita’s enough of a deterrent, surely?’ he said, after telling the alarm company that yes, it was another false alarm. I’d fallen out of the habit of setting it myself, and now that I was home all day with Ella, we had stopped using it entirely.
I consider setting it now, but I know I won’t be able to fathom how to zone it in the dark, and the thought of being there, by the front door, as a burglar tries to get in, brings goosebumps to my arms.
I should take Ella upstairs. I can pull the chest of drawers in her room across the door. They can take what they want from down here – it doesn’t matter. I assess the sitting room with an objective eye, wondering what they’re after. The television, I suppose, and the obvious things like the silver punchbowl that once belonged to my great grandmother, and now holds African violets. On the mantelpiece are two porcelain birds I bought for my parents on their anniversary. They aren’t valuable, but they look as though they could be. Should I take them with me? If I take the birds, what else should I take? So many memories in this house; so much I would grieve over. Impossible to take it all.
It’s hard to work out exactly where the footsteps are. The quiet crunch of gravel gets louder, as though the prowler walked first to one side of the house, and is now returning to the other. I take up my mobile, lying next to the baby monitor. Should I call the police? A neighbour?
I pick up my mobile phone and scroll through the numbers until I find Robert Drake’s. I hesitate, not wanting to call him, but knowing it makes sense to do so. He’s a surgeon, he’ll be good in an emergency, and if he’s still at home next door he can come out and take a look, or just turn on the outside lights and scare off whoever’s out there …
His phone is switched off.
The crunch of footsteps on gravel gets louder, competing with the rush of blood singing in my ears. I hear a dragging noise. A ladder?
To the side of the house, between the gravelled front drive and the landscaped back garden, is a narrow strip of land with a shed and a log store. I hear a dull bang that could be the shed door. My heart accelerates. I think of the anonymous card, of my haste to take it to the police. Did I do the wrong thing? Was the card meant as a warning – that whatever happened to Mum could happen to me, too?
Maybe it isn’t burglars outside.
Maybe whoever killed my mother wants me dead, too.
ELEVEN
MURRAY
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 whom 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 diffusing 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 recognise 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 judgement. 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 9.30 a.m.
I’m sorry.
Ironically, Caroline Johnson had been relieved.
‘I thought he was apologising 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 afterwards. 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? Enquiries 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 any more. 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 any more.
Stay married? Have an affair? Lie?