Anna Johnson bought the phone used to make the witness call confirming her father’s suicide.
Murray was getting more and more confused. Nothing about this case added up.
Had Tom Johnson borrowed his daughter’s phone for some reason? Sean’s digging had confirmed that the fake witness call purporting to be from Diane Brent-Taylor was the first time the handset had been used. Was it credible that Anna had bought the phone for an innocent reason, and that Tom had taken it that same day, hours before his death?
Murray walked back to his car, oblivious to the crowds now.
If Tom Johnson didn’t go to Beachy Head to commit suicide, why did he go there? To meet someone? Someone who was secretly planning to kill him?
Murray played out scenarios in his head as he drove home. A clandestine affair uncovered by a jealous husband; a struggle that resulted in Tom going over the cliff edge. Had the killer used the phone Tom had borrowed from his daughter to make false calls to the police? The lover? Why choose Diane Brent-Taylor as an alias?
Murray shook his head impatiently. The killer wouldn’t have had a spare SIM card unless Tom’s murder was pre-meditated. And if it was pre-meditated, the murderer would have acquired their own burner phone, not happened upon a spare one in his victim’s pocket. None of it made sense. It was all so … Murray struggled to pinpoint the word.
Staged. That was it.
It didn’t feel real.
If he took the witness call out of the equation, what did he have? A missing person. A suicidal text from Tom’s phone, which anyone could have written. Hardly evidence of murder.
Hardly evidence of suicide …
And Caroline’s death: was that any more substantial? Everything pointed towards suicide, but no one had seen her. The chaplain – poor man – had guided her back to safety. Who was to say she hadn’t stayed there? A dog walker had found her bag and phone on the cliff edge, conveniently in the spot where the chaplain had found a distressed Caroline. Circumstantial evidence, sure, but hardly conclusive. And like her husband’s disappearance, somehow too staged. Real deaths were messy. There were loose ends, pieces that didn’t fit. The Johnson suicides were far too tidy.
By the time Murray pulled up on his driveway, he was certain.
There was no witness to Tom’s death. There was no murder. There were no suicides.
Tom and Caroline Johnson were still alive.
And Anna Johnson knew it.
FORTY-FOUR
ANNA
It is strange to see Mum back in Oak View. Strange and wonderful. She’s nervous, but whether it’s due to fear of detection by Mark or by Dad, I couldn’t say. Either way, she jumps at the slightest sound from outside, and offers little contribution to the conversation unless asked directly. Rita shadows her wherever she goes, and I wonder how she will be affected when Mum leaves again.
Because that’s the deal. Three more days as a family – albeit a family filled with secrets – and then it’s over.
‘You don’t have to go.’ We’re in the garden, my words turning to mist as they leave my mouth. It’s dry today, but so cold it hurts my face. Ella is in her bouncy chair in the kitchen, facing the window so I can keep an eye on her.
‘I do.’ Mum begged to come out into her beloved garden. It’s overlooked only on one side – the high hedges on the other two sides protecting us from curious glances – but even so my heart is in my mouth. Mum’s tackling her roses – not the expert pruning that will need doing in spring, but cutting them by a third, so the winter winds don’t snap the stems. I have neglected the garden – Mum’s pride and joy – and the roses are leggy and unbalanced. ‘Someone will see me, if I stay. It’s too big a risk.’
She glances continually at Robert’s house, the only place from which we can be seen, despite the fact we saw him drive away this morning, loaded with late Christmas presents for relatives up north. Mum is wearing Mark’s gardening coat, a woolly hat pulled low over her ears.
‘You should have cut these buddleias back last month. And the bay tree needs fleecing.’ She shakes her head at the fence between our garden and Robert’s, at the climbing roses and the sprawl of clematis I should have cut back after it flowered.
It’s looking better already, although I hear Mum tut from time to time, and suspect my lack of attention has left some plants too far gone to save.
‘There’s a book in the kitchen – it tells you what needs doing each month.’
‘I’ll look at it, I promise.’ A lump forms in my throat. She’s serious about leaving. About not coming back.
I read somewhere that the first year of loss is the hardest. The first Christmas, the first anniversary. A full set of seasons to endure alone, before a new year brings fresh hope. It’s true it was hard. I wanted to tell my parents about Ella, to share pregnancy stories with my mother and send Mark and my dad to the pub to wet the baby’s head. I wanted to cry for no reason, while Mum folded tiny babygros and told me everyone got the baby blues.
The first year was hard, but I know there are harder times ahead. The finality of death is unarguable, but my parents are not dead. How will I come to terms with that? My mother will leave me of her own free will, because she is too scared to be here where my father will find her; too scared to be where she may be recognised, and her crimes exposed. I will no longer be an orphan, yet I will still be without parents, and the grief that I feel is every bit as raw as if I were truly bereaved.
‘Robert’s paying for the garden to be landscaped, once his building work has been done. Will the plants against the fence survive being moved?’ Too late, I realise I shouldn’t have mentioned the extension.
‘Have you lodged an objection? You must. It’ll make the kitchen incredibly dark, and you’ll have no privacy on the patio.’ She begins to list the reasons why Robert’s extension is a travesty, her voice an octave higher than it was, and I want to ask why she cares when she has made it clear she won’t come back here again. But then I think of the way she is carefully tending roses she won’t see bloom. We are programmed to care long after we need to.
I make vaguely supportive noises and don’t mention the money Mark negotiated in compensation for the inconvenience of building works.
‘Help me move this.’ Mum has finished fleecing the bay tree. It stands in a vast terracotta pot on top of a manhole cover. ‘It needs to be somewhere more sheltered.’ She tugs at the pot, but it doesn’t even shift an inch. I walk over to help her. Robert’s builders will move it when they dig up the sewers for his foundations, but I don’t want to set Mum off again. Together, we drag the pot across the patio to the opposite side of the garden.
‘There. That’s a good morning’s work.’
I tuck my arm through Mum’s and she squeezes hard, locking me in place.
‘Don’t go.’ I have managed without crying, up to now, but my voice cracks and I know it’s a losing battle.
‘I have to.’
‘Can we come and see you? Ella and me? If you won’t come here, can we visit you?’
A moment of silence tells me the answer isn’t one I want to hear.
‘It wouldn’t be safe.’
‘I wouldn’t tell a soul.’
‘You’d slip up.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ I pull my arm away, hot tears of frustration stinging my eyes.
Mum looks at me and sighs. ‘If the police find out Tom and I are really alive, and that you knew it – that you concealed our crimes, harboured me – you’ll be arrested. You could go to prison.’
‘I don’t care!’
Mum speaks slowly and quietly, her gaze locked on mine. ‘Tom isn’t going to let this lie, Anna. In his mind, I’ve double-crossed him. Made a fool of him. He won’t rest until he knows where I am, and it’s you he’ll use to find me.’ She waits, letting her words sink in.
The tears come, falling silently down cheeks numb with cold. For as long as I know where Mum is, I’m at risk. Mark and Ella, too. I look back at the house, to where Ella has fallen asleep in her bouncy chair. I can’t let her suffer.