‘And you didn’t have time for a friend with no money. A friend who didn’t speak like your new friends did; who didn’t drink champagne and drive a posh car.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ But her head drops and I feel a wave of sadness for Alicia, because I think it was. I think it was like that. And, just like the way she treated Dad, she’s seen it too late. I make a sound – not quite a cry, not quite a word. Mum looks at me, and everything I’m thinking must be written in my eyes because her face crumples and she’s begging silently for forgiveness. ‘Anna and Ella should go. They’ve got nothing to do with this.’
Laura gives a humourless laugh. ‘They’ve got everything to do with it!’ She folds her arms across her chest. ‘They’ve got the money.’
‘How much do you want?’ I don’t mess around. Whatever she wants, she can have.
‘No.’
I look at Mum.
‘That money’s for your future. Ella’s future. Why do you think I ran away? Laura would have taken it all. Maybe I deserved that, but you didn’t.’
‘I don’t care about the money. She can take it. I’ll transfer it all to whatever account she wants.’
‘It’s simpler than that.’ Laura’s smiling.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up, a prickling sensation creeping down my spine.
‘If you give me all your money, people will ask questions: Billy, Mark, the bloody tax man. I’d have to trust you to keep quiet, and if I’ve learned one thing from this,’ she glances at Mum, ‘it’s that you can’t trust anyone.’
‘Laura, no.’
I look at Mum. She’s shaking her head, one step ahead of me.
‘As far as anyone else is concerned, I came here to save you and Ella,’ Laura says. ‘Mark helpfully told me where you’d be when he cancelled the party, and my sixth sense told me you were in terrible danger.’ She widens her eyes as she acts out her pantomime, hands raised, fingers splayed on the hand not wrapped round the gun. ‘But when I arrived, I was too late. Caroline had already shot you both and killed herself.’ She pushes the corners of her mouth downwards in mock dismay, then turns to me. ‘You’ve seen Caroline’s will. You were there when it was read. To my daughter, Anna Johnson, I leave all financial and material assets, to include all property in my name at the time of my death.’ She quotes verbatim from Mum’s will, spitting out the words.
‘Mum left you money, too.’ Not a fortune, but a healthy inheritance that honoured Mum’s long-standing friendship with Alicia; her duty to Laura as godmother.
Laura continues as if I haven’t spoken. ‘In the event that Anna has passed away before the execution of this will, I leave all financial and material assets to my goddaughter, Laura Barnes.’
‘It’s too late,’ Mum says. ‘The will’s been read – Anna’s already inherited.’
‘Ah, but you’re not dead, are you?’ Laura smiles. ‘Not yet. The money still belongs to you.’ She raises the gun; points it at me.
My blood freezes.
‘If Anna and Ella die before you, I inherit the lot.’
SIXTY-SEVEN
MURRAY
Hard as Nails.
Sarah would have got it sooner. She’d have noticed the name in a way that Murray hadn’t; would have stopped to read it out. To talk about it.
What a terrible name for a salon.
He imagined her jabbing a finger at the pocket notebook entry that meticulously noted the names of those present when police broke the news that Caroline’s husband had killed himself.
Laura Barnes. Receptionist at Hard as Nails.
I hate it when businesses try to be funny … Murray could hear Sarah’s voice as clearly as if she were sitting in the car with him. You may as well call it No More Nails, just because it’s catchy, and it has ‘nails’ in it, and that would be a ridiculous name, too … Murray laughed out loud.
He caught himself. If talking to oneself was the first sign of madness, where did holding imaginary conversations rank?
Still, Sarah would have remembered the name. And if she had talked to Murray about it, he would have remembered it too. And then, when he’d left Diane Brent-Taylor’s house, wondering who had stolen her name, the flyer on her noticeboard would have leaped out at him, and he would immediately have made the association between Laura Barnes and her former place of work.
In Murray’s experience, inventing an alias was surprisingly difficult. He used to laugh at the green kids from the estates, looking like rabbits in headlights as they tried to come up with something convincing. Invariably they’d use a middle name, the name of a kid at school, the name of their street.
Laura had panicked. Hadn’t bargained on having to give a name at all, perhaps; thought she’d just ring on the nines and report a suicide, and that would be that.
‘What’s your name?’
Murray could picture the call-taker, headset in place, fingers hovering over keys. He could picture Laura, too: out on the cliffs, the wind whipping the words from her mouth. Her mind a blank. Not Laura – she wasn’t Laura. She was …
A customer. Picked at random.
Diane Brent-Taylor.
It had almost been perfect.
When Murray pulled into his street, it was half past eleven. Just enough time to find his slippers, pop the champagne, and sink onto the sofa with Sarah in front of Jools Holland and his hootenanny guests. And at midnight, as they welcomed in the New Year, he would tell Sarah that he wouldn’t be going back to work; that he was retiring again, and properly this time. He remembered an old detective inspector, who worked his thirty years then worked another ten. Married to the job, people used to say, although he had a wife at home. Murray had gone to his retirement party – when he’d eventually had one – had heard all the DI’s plans to travel the world, learn a language, take up golf. Then he’d died. Just like that. A week after he’d turned in his ticket.
Life was too short. Murray wanted to make the most of it while he was still young enough to enjoy it. A fortnight ago he had been feeling every bit deserving of his bus pass; today – even at this late hour, and after the day he’d had – he felt as spritely as the day he’d joined the job.
Someone in the next street was letting off fireworks, and for a second the sky was lit up with blues and purples and pinks. Murray watched the sparks burst outwards, and then fade to black. The cul-de-sac split into two at the end, and Murray slowed down before he turned left into his section of the road. His neighbours were mostly elderly, and unlikely to be celebrating New Year’s Eve by dancing in the street, but you never knew.
There were more fireworks as he turned the corner, the sky glowing blue and—
No. Not fireworks.
Murray felt ice in his stomach.
There were no fireworks.
It was a light, revolving silently; bathing the houses, the trees, the people who stood outside their houses, in soft blue.
‘No, no, no, no …’ Murray heard someone talking; didn’t realise it was him. He was too intent on the scene unfolding in front of him: the ambulance, the medics, the open front door.
His front door.
SIXTY-EIGHT
ANNA
‘You wouldn’t.’
Laura raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a brave challenge for someone on the wrong side of a gun.’ She screws up her face. ‘Can’t you stop her crying?’
I rock my arms from side to side, but Ella’s too fractious and I’m too on edge to make the movement smooth, and it only serves to make her cry harder. I lay her horizontally across my body and lift my top to feed her. The room goes mercifully quiet.
‘She’s just a baby.’ I try to appeal to Laura’s maternal side, although to my knowledge she’s never wanted children. ‘Whatever you do to me, please don’t hurt Ella.’
‘But don’t you see? That’s the only way it works. You and Ella have to die first. Caroline has to kill you.’
Somewhere in the depths of the building I hear a dull thud.