Free Too Good to Be True by Ann Cleeves

1
The Call for Help
    Jimmy Perez stood at the gate. There was a solid house at the end of the path, with a big garden and trees behind it. This would be a good place for kids to grow up, he
thought. It was just getting dark and there was a light on in the kitchen. He could see the table was laid for supper with a pretty cloth and matching napkins. It all looked very perfect. His
ex-wife Sarah had always liked things to be perfect. He felt a stab of envy. His ex-wife had a lovely house, money and a family. The love of his life had recently died, and the child he was raising
wasn’t his.
    But he had travelled all the way from Shetland to the Scottish Borders because Sarah had said that she needed his help. It was too late to turn back now. Perez opened the gate and walked up the
path. Sarah must have been looking out for him because the door opened before he knocked. She looked older than he’d expected. Stressed. Not so perfect after all.
    ‘Come in. We can talk. Tom’s still at work.’ Tom was her husband now, a doctor.
    Perez had only met him once and found him nice enough. A bit boring. Tom had a famous brother who was an MP, so perhaps the brother was the exciting one in the family. Then Perez remembered that
he’d always found Sarah a bit boring too, so maybe his ex-wife and Tom were well matched.
    ‘What is this about?’ he said. ‘Why all the drama?’ They were standing in the hall. Close enough for him to smell Sarah’s hair; the shampoo was the same she had
always used.
    ‘A woman in the village died. They’re blaming Tom.’
    ‘The police are blaming him? Or the medical authorities?’
    ‘No!’ She seemed cross that he hadn’t understood. ‘People in the village. There’s gossip. Everywhere we go people are talking about it. Even people we thought were
our friends.’
    Perez wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed he had been dragged away from his home just because Sarah’s friends were talking behind her back. He wanted to leave this perfect house and
drive straight back to Aberdeen and the ferry to the Shetland Islands. To his job as a police inspector, to his stepdaughter Cassie and their untidy house by the water.
    ‘I don’t see how I can help,’ he said.
    ‘If you can find out what really happened we might be left in peace,’ Sarah said. He could see she was almost crying. ‘It’s not just me and Tom. It’s getting to the
children too. One of the kids in their school asked if their dad was a killer.’
    ‘Are the police involved at all?’ he asked.
    ‘They were called but they decided it was suicide. Or a terrible accident. The case is closed.’
    ‘So just give it time,’ he said. ‘It’ll blow over. People will soon find something else to talk about.’ He was already planning his trip home.
    ‘I can’t stand it. Please, Jimmy.’
    A door swung open and he saw that two children had cleared a space at the kitchen table. There was a girl who looked like Sarah and had her head stuck in a book. A boy was playing with a huge
box of Lego.
    ‘Two days,’ he said. ‘I can’t give you more time than that.’ He paused. ‘Tell me about the woman who died.’ Jimmy Perez could never turn down a plea for
help. It was almost an illness with him.
    Sarah led him through to a living room at the back of the house, where two sofas sat close to the fire. Again, everything was tasteful and tidy. She drew the curtains. ‘The dead woman was
called Anna Blackwell and she was a teacher at the village school. In her twenties. A single mum. In a place like this,
that
caused gossip enough.’
    ‘How did she die?’
    ‘An overdose. Antidepressants.’
    ‘And Tom was her doctor? He prescribed the medicine?’
    Sarah nodded.
    ‘It’s a long jump from that to saying he was a killer. Was anything else going on?’
    The room was quiet. Outside in the dark an owl hooted in the trees behind the house.
    ‘They’re saying he was having an affair with her.’ She spoke quickly, as if she