Free Thrown Down by David Menon

of them again. Apparently they came to see him at his office or they’d meet him in town. I always refused to be there’.
    ‘So members of his family had been visiting him at his office?’ asked Jeff as his mind started turning over certain facts in his head. There was no sign of a forced entry at Barry Murphy’s office and it had looked like Barry Murphy had been expecting his visitor. Could it have been a member of Murphy’s own family as his wife here had so delicately suggested?  
    ‘Isn’t that what I said?’
    ‘Of course it was’ said Jeff. ‘I was merely clarifying’.
    ‘Well, like I say’ said Tabatha. ‘I refused to let his family be part of ours and I’ve never met any of them. But they’re weird. I mean, it’s like this whole business about their mother. I mean, they really should be learning to let go and get over it now’.
    ‘Isn’t that a little harsh, Mrs. Murphy?’ asked Ollie. ‘Seeing their mother being dragged away from them must’ve had a terrible impact on them as children and those scars rarely heal’.
    ‘Perhaps’ said Tabatha through pursed lips. ‘But I don’t waste my time thinking about it. It’s their reality, their memory. It isn’t mine. My reality is what you see around me’.
    ‘So you didn’t feel you should support your husband in his search for the truth as to what happened to his mother?’
    ‘No’. 
    ‘Why was your husband estranged from his family in the first place?’ asked Jeff.
    ‘I’ve no idea’.
    ‘None at all?’
    ‘Look, he didn’t talk to me about it and I didn’t ask’.
    ‘Mrs. Murphy, aside from your late husband’s family, can you think of anyone else who might’ve wanted to kill him?’
    ‘Officer, I didn’t take any interest in my husband’s business’ Tabatha Murphy declared. ‘I knew he sold cars but that’s it. I know what you must be thinking but the fact is that Barry and I didn’t have the most conventional of marriages. We led separate lives mostly. I did my thing with my friends and he did whatever he did, I don’t know what that was because I wasn’t interested. I married him on the rebound from someone else and we only stayed together for the sake of our daughter Georgina who was a real Daddy’s girl. They adored each other. She’s absolutely distraught and heartbroken about Barry’s death in a way that I’m just not. Barry and I were friends and I’ll miss that, and of course I’m sorry he’s dead particularly in the circumstances in which it happened. I’m not a completely heartless bitch. But I wasn’t in love with him and although this is very sad, especially as I said for my daughter, it does give me the chance to get on with my life and I’m not sorry for putting it that way because it’s the truth’.  
    ‘I’ll take that as a no then’ said Jeff. ‘Mrs. Murphy, who will be taking over as the new head of your husband’s company?’
    ‘Well in name it’s my daughter Georgina’ said Tabatha. ‘It all passes to her but it’s held in a trust until she’s eighteen which is administered by me’.
    ‘Well we’ll need to speak to all of the employees’ said Jeff. ‘We’ll also need full access to all company and personnel records. I trust that neither of those things will be a problem?’
    ‘No’ said Tabatha, impatiently. ‘No, no, of course they won’t be’.
    Jeff thought she’d told a very pretty little story with such perfect poise and that’s why he didn’t believe she’d exactly been fulsome with the truth.  
    ‘Sorry, are we keeping you from something, Mrs. Murphy?’ asked Jeff.
    ‘Why do you ask that?’
    ‘You seem to be a little distracted’.
    ‘I’ve just lost my husband, officer’.
    ‘But is there anything else you want to tell us about?’
    ‘Like what exactly?’
    ‘I don’t know’ said Jeff. ‘That’s why I’m asking’.
    ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, officer’ said Tabatha through clenched teeth. ‘But now I need to be