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 towards the same location and officers were despatched. 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 were 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 address, 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. Neighbour.
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 enquiries 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 only a minute later. The water would have been around six metres deep at that point. Easily deep enough to swallow a man weighed down with rocks, the undertow dragging him out past the tideline. 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 discs 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 towards 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 realised straight away 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 3 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 they were all part of God’s grand plan.