‘The offender put a new pay-as-you-go SIM card in it, and it popped up on Vodafone back in the spring.’
‘I don’t suppose—’
‘I know what calls were made? Come on, Murray, you know me better than that. You got a pen? Couple of mobiles, and a landline that might just give you a location for your man …’
Or woman, Murray thought. He wrote down the numbers, trying not to be distracted by Sarah, who was flapping her arms at him, demanding to know what had got him so excited. ‘Thanks Sean, I owe you one.’
‘You owe me more than one, mate.’
The call finished, and Murray grinned at Sarah, filling her in on what the High Tech Crime officer had told him. He spun his notebook around, until the list of phone numbers faced Sarah, and marked an asterisk beside the only landline.
‘Do you want to do the honours?’
Then it was Murray’s turn to wait, while Sarah spoke to an inaudible voice on the other end of the phone. When she’d finished, he held up his hands.
‘Well?’
Sarah put on a posh voice. ‘Our Lady’s Preparatory.’
‘A private school?’ What did a prep school have to do with Tom and Caroline Johnson? Murray wondered if they were heading up a blind alley. The fake witness call, allegedly from Diane Brent-Taylor, had been made last May, ten months before the mobile had been used again with a different SIM card. It could have passed through any number of hands in the meantime. ‘Where’s the school?’
‘Derbyshire.’
Murray thought for a moment. He turned over the diary in his hands, remembering the photos that had fallen out from between the pages when Anna Johnson had handed it to him: a youthful Caroline, on holiday with an old school friend.
Mum said they had the best time.
They had been in a pub garden, a wagon and horses on the sign above them.
About as far as you can get from the sea.
He opened Safari on his phone and Googled ‘wagon and horses pubs UK’. Christ, there were pages of them. He tried a different tack, looking up ‘furthest point in UK from the sea’.
Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire.
Murray had never heard of it. But a final Google search – ‘wagon and horses Derbyshire’ – gave him what he wanted. Tarted up since the photo, and with a new sign and hanging baskets, but undeniably the same pub that Caroline and her friend had visited all those years ago.
Luxury B&B … best breakfast in the Peak District … free Wi-Fi …
Murray looked at Sarah. ‘Fancy a holiday?’
FORTY-EIGHT
I grew up with sand in my socks and salt on my skin, and the knowledge that, when I was old enough to decide where I lived, it would be miles away from the ocean.
It was one of the few things we had in common.
‘I don’t understand why people obsess over living near the sea,’ you said, when I told you where I was from. ‘I’m a city-dweller, through and through.’
So was I. Escaped the first chance I had. I loved London. Busy, noisy, anonymous. Enough bars that being kicked out of one didn’t matter. Enough jobs that losing one meant finding another the next day. Enough beds that sliding out of one never left me lonely.
If I hadn’t met you, I’d still be there. Maybe you would be too.
If it hadn’t been for Anna we wouldn’t be together.
We’d have parted ways after a few weeks, on to pastures new. Different arms, different bars.
I remember the first morning at Oak View. You were still sleeping, your hair messed up and your lips a fraction apart. I lay on my back and I fought the urge to leave. To tiptoe down the stairs with my shoes in my hand and get the hell out of there.
Then I thought of our unborn child. Of the stomach I’d once run my fingers over and now couldn’t bear to even touch. Taut as a drum. Big as a beach ball. Anchoring me to this bed. To this life. To you.
Twenty-five years of marriage. It would be wrong to say I was unhappy for all that time; equally wrong to suggest that I was happy. We co-existed, both trapped in a marriage that convention wouldn’t let us leave.
We should have been braver. More honest with each other. If one of us had left, we both would have had the lives we wanted.
If one of us had left, no one would have blood on their hands.
FORTY-NINE
MURRAY
‘What will you do if we find her?’ Sarah was navigating, the sat nav on her phone sending them up the M40 past Oxford. She tapped the screen. ‘Off at junction three.’
‘Arrest her,’ Murray said, then remembered he wasn’t a warranted officer any more. He would have to call in reinforcements.
‘Even though you think she was forced into it?’
‘That might mitigate the offences, but it doesn’t negate them. She’s still committed fraud, not to mention wasting police time.’
‘Do you think they’re together?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
Before they’d set off, Murray had called the Wagon and Horses and made enquiries about Tom and Caroline Johnson. Their descriptions hadn’t rung any bells with the landlady, and so coming up themselves had felt like the only option. Would he have done the same, had he still been a detective? He might have wanted to – a jolly on the DCI’s budget was always a perk – but there would have been more efficient ways of finding out if the Johnsons were in Coton in the Elms. He would have put in a request to Derbyshire Constabulary; asked officers to make enquiries; checked their intelligence systems. All of which was possible when you were a warranted officer, and none of which could be easily achieved by a retired DC, who had already had his knuckles rapped by the superintendent.
‘It’s nice to get away,’ Sarah said. She was gazing out of the window as though she was seeing rolling hills or ocean views, not a motorway service station on the approach to Birmingham. She grinned at Murray. ‘Like Thelma and Louise, but with less hair.’
Murray rubbed a hand over his head. ‘Are you saying I’m going bald?’
‘Not at all. You’re just follicularly challenged. You need to stay in the left-hand lane here.’
‘Maybe we should do this more often.’
‘Track down dead people who aren’t really dead?’
Murray grinned. ‘Take road trips.’ Sarah was scared of flying, and in the forty years they had been together, they had only been abroad once, to France, where Sarah had had a panic attack on the ferry, hemmed in by cars waiting for their turn to drive off. ‘There are so many beautiful places to see in this country.’
‘I’d like that.’
Another reason to retire properly, Murray thought. If he was at home all the time they could take off whenever they wanted to. Whenever Sarah felt up to it. Maybe they could buy a motorhome, so she never had to worry about other people. Just the two of them, parked up in a pretty campsite somewhere. He would see this job through – he’d never yet given up on a case, and he wasn’t going to start now – and then he would hand in his notice. He was ready to go now, and for the first time in a long while he looked to the future without misgivings.
Coton in the Elms was a pretty village a few miles south of Burton upon Trent. According to the pile of pamphlets in their room – a nicely finished double on the first floor of the Wagon and Horses – there was plenty to do within a short drive, but little in the village itself. Murray couldn’t imagine it had been the most scintillating of destinations for two young women, although he supposed if you lived in inner-city London, the contrast of fresh air and beautiful countryside was a holiday in itself. In the photograph, Caroline and Alicia had looked as though they hadn’t had a care in the world.
In the recently refurbished bar, the landlady was putting up decorations for the following night’s New Year’s Eve party.
‘It was lucky you only wanted one night. We’re packed out tomorrow. Pass us that Blu Tack, will you, duck?’
Sarah obliged. ‘Are there many places to rent in the village?’
‘Holiday cottages, you mean?’
‘Something more permanent, really. Flats, perhaps. Cash in hand, no questions asked – that sort of thing.’