by SP Edwards
Maybe, the voice in his head replied, but it wasn’t.
Murder-suicides, especially ones like this, were incredibly rare. Even when they did occur, it was nearly always jealous partners rather than friends. A husband kills his wife because he thinks she’s cheating on him, and then realises she wasn’t. Suicide is easier to many people than having the world see them for what they are.
But that’s not what this was.
Marr decided he needed to talk to Caroline’s parents.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
By the time she left Gregor Stanic with the duty sergeant, Sam felt a bit tired. She decided to head to the station’s gym. A few heavy reps would help get her through the evening.
The clock read half-past ten. Late enough for the place to be more or less deserted. A WPC was on the treadmill, and gave Sam a smile. The weights area was empty, which was the way Sam preferred it. It wasn’t that she felt insecure; it was just that it was hard to have a good workout when the spandex brigade were taking up all the benches and staring at themselves in the mirror.
She picked up a heavy-ish pair of dumbells – 20kg – and moved onto a flat bench. Moving the weights up parallel with her body, she pressed upward, then brought the weight slowly back down. Back up for the second rep, she was feeling the extra pressure. She could get two more out, she was sure.
The last rep was a struggle, taking her nine or ten seconds to get the weight up. Once she reached the top, she let the dumbells fall back to the mat.
When she sat up, she looked into the mirror, the light above reflecting the beads of sweat on her forehead. Her arm was shaking, and she could already feel her chest tightening up.
There was nothing, nothing like lifting weights. As far as Sam was concerned, zumba could go swing from a rope. She didn’t understand why so many women she knew feared heavy lifting. It was mostly the fear of losing feminity. More fool them: Sam lifted heavier than most of the men at the station, and could easily slot into her size 10 jeans.
The weights kept her strong, but also affected her mood and her focus. It was no secret that sometimes the job could be a drag; there was no better anti-depressant in the world than lifting the iron off the floor.
At home, she’d cut out a little piece of an essay she’d been sent by an ex-boyfriend.
‘There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength.’
The line might have been a little bit cheesy, but that didn’t stop it being true.
Her phone buzzed, it was Marr.
Are you still at the station?
Sam laid back down onto the bench, and raised the weights above her head once more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Marr gave it fifteen minutes before deciding that no reply was coming. He drank the last of the coffee, and made his way back out to the car.
The roads were nearly empty as he drove down Remembrance Avenue. There was the odd taxi, taking couples and parties to the centre. One girl – clearly already drunk – leaned out of the window and waved at him as he passed. Marr smiled. He was glad he didn’t have to deal with that anymore: one of the nicest things about meeting Lizzie was being able to leave the party lifestyle behind. He’d lost track of the amount of times that he’d done his shift hung-over: when he was still in uniform, anyway. It was just part of the culture. The force wasn’t quite the lad’s culture it had been, but that didn’t stop it being a drinking culture.
Smiling slightly to himself, Marr realised that actually, he really did fancy a drink. He parked on the high street, and walked through to the Black Buoy, checking his watch as he did so. 10.45. It would be tight, but thought that Louise the manager would probably serve him.
He was correct.
‘Skin of your teeth, Steve’ she said, before smiling. ‘Guinness, is it?’
Marr nodded.
‘Thanks, Lou.’
‘Lizzie was in here earlier with a friend of hers. Congratulations, by the way.’
Marr smiled.
‘Thanks, we’re very happy.’ he said.
‘I should think so, too. Do you know if it’s a boy or girl yet?’
‘No; we’re going to wait and see. More fun that way.’
Louise smiled.
‘Amen to that. Ben was all for finding out, but I talked him out of it.’
She handed over his drink, and took the money.
Marr sat at a table by the window, though it was too dark to see anything through it. There was a copy of The Guardian on the seat opposite him, so he picked it up and opened to the sport pages. United were still spending aimlessly on attackers when they really needed a good defender. England’s One Day side was still stuck in the mid-nineties. Usual rubbish.
He flicked around to the music pages, where sat a full page feature on the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s In Utero album.
Christ, that was 20 years ago? Marr remembered heading into town to buy it, picking it up from the old branch of Virgin Records. He’d stuck it on his old CD player, and listened to the grind of Scentless Apprentice, Kurt’s voice a renewed howl a world away from Something in the Way. The sound of a man desperate to be a nobody again. Then, a few months later, it was all over: his burden gone the way of a shotgun.
Marr thought of Caroline Marcus, dead in the bath, her burden gone too; if it had even been hers, that is. Was she so fearful that a bathtub and a razorblade had been the only alternative?
And if it hadn’t been her choice, whose choice had it been?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Thomas Coulthard laid back in the tub, smiling to himself. He thought of Anna, of how beautiful she would have looked in her wedding dress, walking down the aisle. Then he thought of him standing in the aisle, the groom in place of that trained chimp Stanic.
Then, he imagined Stanic sat in one of the rows of seats, furious that he’d been beaten by the better man.
He imagined how Anna must have looked on the morning the cops found her. The blue and green of the bruising, her skin – so pale now, maybe even lined with goose bumps – the blood rushing to the base of the body.
She’d still have been wet from the lake. Maybe her eyes had opened, or maybe they’d closed due to the water. She’d been lying there, her clothes pinned to her body. Her shirt maybe, clinging to her stomach. Thomas remembered the way her body had looked at one of her birthday parties. She’d been wearing a top cut away above her belly button, and her tight stomach had been showing: not a six pack, as such, but slight lines that became more visible when the light hit them in the right way.
Back then, he’d imagined what it must be like to kiss up…no, kiss down that patch of skin, and to rest his head between her legs. Once, he’d heard her and the chimp together in their room; she’d managed to keep quiet every time before, but this one single time, she couldn’t. Thomas could still remember the guttural moan – just the one – that had seeped through the wall to where he’d been crashed out on the sofa.
The sound of that one voice echoed around his head, as he thought again of the dead body at the beach, and what it would have been like to watch her eyes as the light left them.
Then the party, the moaning.
Then the body again.
The two images began to cycle rapidly, becoming as one. Thomas’ hand slowly moving downwards to below the water as he closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Marr arrived home a little after half past eleven, having been the last person out of the Buoy. ‘You’d best not be thinking of driving, Stever’ Louise had warned him. Knowing better than to cross her, he decided to walk it and pick up the car tomorrow.
When he arrived at the house, he was surprised to see the light still on in the living room. He walked through, and involuntarily jumped.
Sam was sat on the sofa. On the adjacent sofa sat Lizzy, who smiled at him when he walked in.
‘Cup of tea for the father to be, then? Assuming you’ve got space after your drinking.’
‘I’ll make it,�
�� Sam said, standing up and walking past Marr to the kitchen.
‘Guinness?’ Lizzie she asked.
Marr nodded.
‘Yeah, just a quick one at the Buoy. Long day.’
‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it; the days of simply enjoying yourself will soon be done, you know.’
Lizzie was smiling again. She looked tired, but there was no denying that she looked as stunning as Marr had ever seen her. He hated when people described mums-to-be as glowing – they weren’t toxic waste – but, right now, it really was the best way of describing how his wife looked.
‘You look beautiful’ he said, truthfully. She leaned forward and kissed him, wrapping her arms around him again. And now he was kissing her back, and kissing her like he did when they’d first met, like he did at that stupid party ten years ago because it was only her and him and it was only ever her and nothing else really mattered.
And then there was a cough, and Sam appeared, holding a mug of tea.
‘Why are you here?’ Marr asked, the question – and the sharp tone of voice - out before he could stop himself.
Lizzie punched him on the arm.
‘Don’t be such a grumpy bastard, I asked her over.’
‘Oh, right,’ Marr said, feeling like a complete arsehole. And a stupid one at that. ‘Sorry’.
Sam’s eyes had gone cold, but she seemed to calm a bit at the apology.
‘It’s OK sir, I’m due to go anyway.’
She said goodbye to Lizzie and left, not looking at Marr as she did so.
‘That was weird’, Lizzie said, when they were lying in bed later, sweating and exhausted.
‘What was?’ Marr asked, taking a sip of the water he kept at the side of the bed.
‘Sam. She’s not normally like that. She seemed a bit snappy.’
Marr shrugged, trying not to think of the look Sam had given him earlier.
‘I didn’t really notice. She had to talk to a suspect earlier today; a real slime ball. Enough to annoy anybody.’
‘Sexist?’
‘Sexist, racist, probably a pervert. The perfect man.’
Lizzie snorted.
‘Sounds it. Might have to ditch you, get him to raise the kid.’
Marr kissed her again, and then harder. She kissed him back. Lizzie rolled him over onto his back, and then began to kiss down his chest. Marr tried – tried hard – not to think of Sam as Lizzie took him into her mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mel and Simon Marcus were already at the station when Marr arrived the next morning. Having made his apologies, he led them through to the office. On his way in, he saw no sign of Sam, and felt annoyed at himself for feeling glad about that fact.
There was no question that Caroline took after her father – the same hair colour, the same narrow face. Marr knew that Simon Marcus was an electrician who ran his own small firm. As far as he knew, Melanie didn’t currently work.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Marr began, ‘I don’t even pretend to know how you feel at the moment. Losing your daughter…’
‘Why are we here?’ Melanie asked. Simon looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing.
‘Well, I’d just like to talk to you about Caroline. I never spoke to her personally, and now she’s more…’
‘Important?’ again, it was Melanie who interrupted him.
‘Mel…’ Simon said, sounding exhausted. His wife looked down at the floor. There was something admirable about the way long-term partners communicated. They knew each other to the extent that one word was enough.
‘I appreciate that you must be shocked,’ Marr said, ‘First hearing about Anna, and then this.’
‘Shocked is bloody right,’ replied Simon. ‘Losing Cally was the worst, and then we’re told she might have killed someone? That’s my daughter they’re talking about.’
‘Do you believe it?’ Marr asked.
Mel said nothing, but Marr noticed the expression on her face. It was…different. There was no anger: the anger that parents always displayed, even the ones who knew their sons and daughters were guilty.
Simon’s face, meanwhile, was already reddening, but it looked more like stress than rage.
‘Didn’t want to believe it, no,’ he said. ‘Why the hell would anyone? Parents and kids don’t…’
He took a deep breath before continuing.
‘I know that you don’t always know everything about your kids. I don’t want to know what Cally smoked at college or what she drank or who she groped or any of that. But, you still feel like you know them a bit. This, though…this feels like something I should at least have thought about. Even if it was just once.’
‘If you didn’t have an inkling, what makes you think it’s possible now?’ Marr asked.
‘Who said I did?’ Simon spat back.
Marr smiled, trying to look understanding.
‘Experience, unfortunately. I’ve seen hundreds of people who’ve been told their relatives or spouses have killed someone. They all get angry. Some of them threaten violence. One of my officers had a chair thrown at him. It’s an insult: and as personal as insults get. You don’t seem insulted.’
Simon smiled weakly.
‘I suppose that makes sense.’
‘Caroline was on medication,’ Mel said, gazing past Marr and to the window behind him. ‘Anti-depressants, mostly, mood-stabilisers.’
‘For how long?’ Marr asked, attempting to seem surprised, or at least look like he didn’t already know.
‘Since she was in her mid-teens. She never spoke about it much. The side effects were bad initially, but they died down, and eventually the pills seemed to make a difference.’
‘How bad was her depression?’
‘Quite extreme. The doctor said it was strange, in a way, that more people don’t develop it during their teen years. Or that maybe they do, but it just gets lost in the shuffle: teens are so up and down anyway.’
Marr nodded. He remembered being younger and his dad insisting that school would be ‘the best years of his life’. Utter bullshit, as even his dad had admitted to later on.
‘Yeah, it sucks being a teenager, Steve. But any way to get you to bugger on through it.’
‘Did she ever come off the medication?’ Marr asked, receiving a shake of the head from Simon.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Barring the odd moment here or there when she forgot to order new ones. She was pretty religious about it; why wouldn’t she be? The drugs worked.’
‘Do you think that her depression could have been linked to…well, to Anna’s death?’
Simon looked at him.
‘Not in the way you think. Depression doesn’t mean crazy.’
Marr was about to defend himself, when he realised there was no real point. Simon Marcus would have heard it all thousands of times. And if Marr really hadn’t meant that, just what had he meant?
‘Caroline just really, really struggled to see the upside of things. I guess she found herself just unable to believe things would get better.’
‘Did either of you know much about her affair with Gregor Stanic?’ Marr asked.
Mel nodded, though to Marr’s surprise, Simon didn’t. He merely raised his eyebrows and turned to his wife, who gave him a sympathetic smile before replying.
‘My daughter might have been pretty good at burying some things, but I could always tell when a boy was getting to her. She’d go out ‘to work’ or ‘to the pub with friends’ and she’d come back with a glow, a smile that hadn’t been there before. I didn’t know who it was, but then we bumped into Gregor and Anna at the pub and…well, I could just tell. She was smiling like a schoolgirl for half an hour afterwards. The love of a good man can be a wonderful thing, and I suppose that’s just as much the case if he’s not a good man, but you like him just the same.’
Simon shook his head.
‘No. I mean, Mel mentioned that she thought Cally might have been seeing someone, but I didn’t
have a clue that it was him. I didn’t even notice. I suppose I should have, but it’s hard sometimes. Have you got any daughters?’
‘Baby on the way, but no.’
‘Congratulations. Boss of mine always said it was the best and worst thing you’ll ever do.’
He paused, and let out a sob. Harsh, dry, choked out despite his attempts to block it. Silencing it was never as easy as people thought.
Marr handed over a tissue.
‘Did Caroline ever date anyone else? Any long-term boyfriends, I mean?’
They both shook their heads.
‘She had boyfriends here and there,’ Mel said, ‘but no-one ever lasted. I always got the impression that Greg was something different to her, and the other blokes never measured up in her mind.’
‘Did either of you ever consider telling Anna about the affair? I mean, you’d known her for years.’
Mel sighed.
‘Well, I did come close a couple of times. But, well, family first you know? I really liked Anna, she was a lovely girl, but Greg seemed to keep Caroline happy, and that was much more important to me in the end. I didn’t want to give Caroline the grief. It felt like she’d been through enough already.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
When Marr reached the main incident room, he was greeted with an unexpected sight. Brooke, sat by the coffee machine, staring blankly at it.
‘Struggling, sir?’
The Chief Inspector turned to face him.
‘Bloody thing’s run out of milk.’
‘Americano, then?’
‘Very funny. How were the Marcuses?’
‘As well as can be expected.’
‘What do you think? Did she do it?’
‘She’d been depressed. She was on medication from a pretty young age.’
