‘Is there any way of finding out where the handset is now?’
‘Not unless your witness – or whoever has it now – turns it on.’ An over-enthusiastic twirl sent the pen flying across the room, where it skittered under a filing cabinet. Absentmindedly, Sean reached for another pen and began the same well-practised movement. Murray wondered how many pens there were under the cabinet. ‘Now, what we could do is extract the call data and find the IMEI—’
‘In English?’
Sean grinned. ‘Every device has a fifteen-digit unique number: the IMEI. It’s like a fingerprint for mobiles. If we can trace your witness call back to the handset, we can work back from that to the point of purchase.’
And from that, Murray thought, he might stand a chance of tracing the caller, particularly if they used a bank card to make the transaction. ‘How soon could you get me a result?’
‘You know I’m always happy to do a mate a favour, but …’ Sean looked at the rammed storage boxes in front of them and rubbed his face, forgetting his bruise and wincing at the oversight. ‘What’s the big deal with this job, anyway?’
‘No big deal.’ Murray spoke more casually than he felt. ‘The daughter came in to report some concerns over the verdict, and I’m looking into it for her.’
‘In your own time? I hope she appreciates it.’
Murray looked at the desk. He was trying not to dwell on his phone call to Anna. He had caught her at a bad time, that was all. It was bound to be distressing; it was only natural she’d have doubts. Once he had hard evidence that something suspicious had happened to her parents, she’d be grateful he had pressed on regardless. Nevertheless, the sharp click as she hung up the phone still echoed in his ears.
Sean sighed, mistaking Murray’s expression for disappointment in him. ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I appreciate it.’
‘More importantly, get your diary out, and let’s get that beer sorted. You know it’ll never happen otherwise.’ Sean opened a calendar on his laptop, firing off dates then instantly realising they were already booked. Murray patiently turned the pages of his National Trust pocket diary until Sean found a window, then he borrowed a pen and wrote on the pristine page.
He hummed along to the radio as he drove away from the industrial unit, the winter sun low in his eyes. With any luck, Sean would get back to him later today. The holidays were providing a legitimate reason for Murray’s delay in writing up the job for CID, and if he could get a result on the phone before he did so, he might be able to hand it over with a suspect attached.
Besides getting the phone looked into, there was something nagging him about his visit to Diane Brent-Taylor’s house. It wasn’t Diane herself – Murray prided himself on being a good judge of character, and if the twin-set-and-pearls pensioner was a murderer, he’d eat his trilby.
But there was definitely something.
Something he’d seen on the noticeboard by the front door. A leaflet? A card? It was infuriating not being able to remember, and as Diane had been packing to go away the day Murray had visited her, there was nothing he could do to jog his memory.
At home, he paused with his key in the lock, feeling the familiar anxiety fill his chest. The pause represented the last few seconds where life was under control; where he knew which way was up. On the other side of the door anything could be waiting. Over the years Murray had perfected a neutral greeting while he waited to see how Sarah was – what she expected from him – but he had never stopped needing those three seconds between the two halves of his world.
‘I’m home.’
She was downstairs, which was an improvement. The curtains were still drawn, and as Murray pulled them open, Sarah winced and covered her eyes with her hands.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tired.’
Sarah had slept for twelve hours, but she looked as though she’d pulled an all-nighter. Heavy circles ringed her eyes, and her skin was grey and dull.
‘I’ll make you something to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Cup of tea?’
‘I don’t want one.’
Gently, Murray tried to take the duvet to shake it out, but Sarah clung on to it and buried herself deeper into the sofa. The television was on mute, playing a kids’ cartoon featuring animals in a zoo.
Murray stood for a while. Should he make something anyway? Sarah sometimes changed her mind once the food was actually in front of her. Just as often, though, she didn’t. Just as often, Murray ate it, or tipped it away, or covered it with cling film in the hope she might fancy something later. Murray looked at the pile of duvet, at his wife, who had manoeuvred herself as far from him as it was possible to get without actually leaving the sofa.
‘I’ll just be through here, then. If you need anything.’
There was no sign that Sarah had heard him.
Murray brought in an empty recycling box from the garden. Methodically, he opened each drawer in the kitchen, removing the sharp knives, the scissors, the blades from the food processor. He took the kitchen foil from the cupboard and carefully pulled out the strip of serrated metal from its cardboard housing. He collected the caustic cleaning products from under the sink and the over-the-counter medicines from the dresser drawer. It had been a while since he had felt the need to do this, and he didn’t want to think about why it felt necessary now. Instead he mentally walked through his visit to Diane Brent-Taylor, in the hope he would remember what it was that had caught his eye on her noticeboard.
The front door had been white UPVC, the external doormat a mix of coir and rubber. Inside, the hall floor was laminate, and deep red walls had made the already gloomy downstairs even darker. The noticeboard had been on the left, above a shelf with a motley collection of items. What had been there? A hair-brush. A postcard. Keys. He visualised each section of the shelf until the items took shape, a grown-up version of the memory game he had played as a child.
Murray put everything in the recycling box and took it down to the bottom of the garden. He opened the shed and began burying the box beneath dusty decorating sheets.
As he did so, his thoughts returned to the board. What was on it? More postcards – at least three. One with Table Mountain on it (he remembered it because Cape Town was on his list of dream destinations). A leaflet for a beauty salon. A list of telephone numbers. Had he recognised a name on that list? Was that what had been nagging him?
‘What are you doing?’
Murray hadn’t seen Sarah come into the garden, and the voice directly behind him made him clumsy. He collected himself before turning around. Sarah was shivering, her lips tinged blue after just a few seconds out of the warmth. Her feet were bare and her arms wrapped around herself, each hand tucked beneath the sleeve of the opposite arm. Her fingers moved rhythmically, and Murray knew she was scratching at skin already red raw from the same action.
He touched his hands on both of her upper arms, and the movement ceased.
‘I am hungry.’
‘I’ll make you something.’
Murray led her back up the garden, found her slippers and sat her in the kitchen. Sarah said nothing as he made her a sandwich with a blunt knife that tore at the bread, but she ate ravenously, and Murray counted that as a win.
‘I’ve been working on the Johnson job.’ He searched for a spark of interest in Sarah’s eyes, but found none. Murray’s heart sank. She had taken his litmus test, and the results reinforced what Murray already knew: that Sarah was heading into another difficult period. He felt as though he was flailing in deep water, halfway across the channel with no support boat. ‘Not that there’s much point now,’ he added, and he couldn’t have said whether he was talking about Anna’s change of heart, or the fact that the investigation was no longer the lifeline it had seemed to be for him and for Sarah.