The Fall - By Claire McGowan

Keisha

The week before the trial, things went a bit mad. Dan’s folks arrived, a posh couple with pokers up their arses. Keisha was staying well away. Then the article about Charlotte appeared on page five of her step-sister’s paper, in full colour and beside one about Cheryl Cole. In the picture Charlotte looked like she was about to cry, all cold and alone with her fella’s picture outside the prison. It started, Charlotte Miller should have been married by now. Instead she waits outside prison walls. Fiancé Daniel Stockbridge, 31, was a stockbroker with Haussmann’s Bank, recently besieged by rumours of dodgy deals and insider trading. In May, Daniel was arrested for the murder of nightclub owner . . .

She didn’t read the rest, it was lots of guff about Charlotte being ‘fragile and pretty’ and having to sell her engagement ring, blah, blah. Then all this about the stress people were under in the City, poor diddums getting paid millions to fiddle about with computers, and the ‘culture of aggressive bullying and old school tie’. Keisha wasn’t sure what that meant. Some guy called Gary had sent a big photo print, same as the one in the paper, only Charlotte was laughing in it at something. It was nice – she looked happy.

‘Look,’ said Charlotte, turning over the papers. ‘Dan’s in Private Eye.’ By the sound of her voice, that must be a big deal. ‘Dan hates Private Eye. Says it reminds him of his old school newssheet.’ Charlotte laughed. ‘Jesus, he’s going to be so pissed off.’

Keisha couldn’t figure out what was so funny about it.

After the article appeared, things started to happen quite fast. There were phone calls from other journalists – Keisha learned to tell, because they were always women and they started out so friendly. ‘Hi there! Is that Charlotte?’

Charlotte would take the call and ask quick, short questions: What page? How many words? Picture or not? What was their angle? And with Charlotte buying just about every paper there was, Keisha noticed lots of new stuff about bankers was appearing, this time a bit different. Seemed now everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of, ‘Hey, maybe they weren’t all bastards after all!’

Also calling were Charlotte’s mates, the ones who’d dissed her at that party and not answered her emails. When Keisha answered these – Gemma or Holly or whoever, calling ‘just to see if I can help, I saw the paper’ – she would mouth the name to Charlotte, and nearly every time Charlotte just shook her head. ‘Say I’m out. Wasn’t much help when I needed her, was she?’ On top of this, Charlotte was fielding offers on the flat. She’d priced it low so it was sure to go, even in that market, she said, as if she knew what she was talking about.

Keisha was sort of impressed with this new Charlotte. She’d hardly cried once since she came back from Singapore, and in among all the newspapers and legal stuff, Keisha’d seen other things – printouts about studying, course booklets, that sort of thing. She was different.

Charlotte wasn’t the only one moving forward. A few days before the trial, Keisha went back to London University. That was where Ian Stone would be on a panel about his pet peeve – the ‘erosion of civil liberties’. Keisha thought this was something to do with being able to stop people on the street to see if they had knives or whatever. She agreed vaguely this was bad – she didn’t want some policeman being able to stop her when she was just minding her own business.

She tried not to be too stupidly early, and ended up hemmed in at the back with all these eager student types taking notes and nodding madly every time Ian Stone said something about ‘construction of a surveillance state’ or ‘destruction of centuries of liberty’. The other people on the panel were some stuffy man with a red face, who was an MP, and a black woman they’d chucked on to say things like ‘As an ethnic female . . .’ What a load of balls.

She tried to follow it. It was strange to be in such a packed room, everyone hanging on the words of the panel, nodding or shaking their heads like they were angry. They really cared! To her shock, right in the middle of it, she heard a name she recognised.

Ian Stone was saying, ‘If you look at many current cases going through the courts, the rush to conviction is worrying. Many of you will have seen in the papers about the case against Daniel Stockbridge – one of the so-called “Banker Butchers”. Despite the mostly circumstantial evidence, this case is still being pushed through to trial. We must ask ourselves why this is.’

Afterwards she waited for bloody hours, it seemed, while Ian Stone was grabbed by all these left-wing students. ‘Do you agree Tony Blair should be tried as a war criminal?’ ‘Wouldn’t you say kettling violates the Human Rights Act?’ God, they were sucking up to him so much it was embarrassing. Listening to his answers, she thought maybe Ian Stone felt the same.

Finally she was left. He gave her an irritated glance, saying, ‘I really must go, I’m sorry.’

‘You mentioned that Stockbridge case.’

‘Yes?’ He was fiddling with his iPhone. He had a knitted waistcoat, little ponytail, grey hair. Good Christ.

‘I might be in that case. I’m a witness, like.’

‘Oh?’ That made him look up.

‘You think I should I do it – testify, like? If I know something?’

‘I don’t know, er – what’s your name?’

‘Keisha.’

‘Well, I don’t know, Keisha. Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Say I knew something, but if I told, someone else might get hurt. Someone important to me, like.’

His eyes were flicking from her to the door. ‘It’s an ethics question, really. I don’t have the time, I’m afraid—’

‘Can they arrest me, if I don’t want to do it? Are they allowed?’

‘I’m sure they won’t arrest you.’ F*ck, this wasn’t working. He was edging to the door, still poking at his phone.

‘Did you know someone called Mercy Collins years ago?’

‘What? No, I don’t think so. I must go. There’s drinks . . .’

‘She was my mum. You taught her.’

‘Well, I teach a lot of people.’

What could she do? What could she say to make him not walk out of that door? She scrabbled round in the embroidered bag – Mercy’s bag. ‘Look!’ Her voice was too loud. She shoved her birth certificate at him. ‘Look, is that you?’

He took it, frowning, in a hurry. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. He folded it up and passed it back to her, carefully, like a bomb. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

The place he took her to was up on a deserted floor of classrooms. It was some kind of staffroom, where he switched on the kettle and made her coffee with old powdery Nescafé. ‘There’s only instant, I’m afraid.’

‘S’OK,’ she said, as if she ever drank coffee, yuck.

‘So. This Mercy is your mother?’

‘She died.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He blinked as if he really hoped she wouldn’t start crying.

‘Do you remember her?’ For some reason she really wanted him to say yes.

‘Er . . . I’m not sure. It was a long time ago, and I have so many students, you see.’

‘You shag your students a lot, then?’ She took a gulp and burned her tongue – how in the hell did people pay three pounds fifty for this stuff?

Ian Stone looked miserable. ‘I, er, no. Of course not.’

‘But you did with my mum.’

‘I don’t know. The thing is, er, Keisha, I’ve had a vasectomy. So I don’t know if I can be . . . You know, that means . . .’

‘Jesus, I know what it means, I’m not thick. When?’

‘Oh. Maybe twenty years ago?’

She took a tiny sip. ‘Why’d you do it?’

‘I suppose I felt the world was full enough, and it would be a selfish act, reproducing.’

He was the selfish one, she thought. ‘Thing is, I’m twenty-five, aren’t I?’

‘Oh. Are you?’

‘Yep. So you’d have taught me mum in what – like, 1984?’

He looked so depressed. ‘I don’t know. She was black, I take it?’

‘Er, yeah.’ Duh!

‘But you’re not, are you? Not really?’

He was looking at her pale skin, her flat hair. ‘Not really.’ God, and this dude was a professor.

He fiddled with his mug. ‘Ah, Keisha, this is a bit of a shock to me. I never – well, I had a vasectomy, so you can see, I never wanted children.’

‘S’OK. Never wanted a dad neither.’ Miss Cheeky! Was it even true? Keisha, you bull-shitter.

‘Did you really want to ask me about this trial?’

‘Sorta. I dunno if I can do it or not. They’ll ask me questions, won’t they? What if I don’t know the answer? Or like what if they make it look like I’m lying? People’d get hurt for no reason.’ She sighed. ‘See, I had a plan. I was saving money. I was gonna go . . . well, I was gonna try again. But now it’s all different. This trial – I don’t know what to do.’ Chris was in prison. Ruby maybe lost for ever, if she didn’t get her soon. But she couldn’t explain any of this to Ian bloody Stone.

He paused. ‘Would you like me to help you? I could read your statement – you do have a statement? Sometimes I help people prepare for trials, if they aren’t . . . if they’re not exactly familiar with the legal system.’

‘Maybe.’ She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t need anything off him.

‘Are you a student here? You said you were twenty-five.’

‘Nah – finished already.’ Finished school at sixteen, that was, with three GCSEs. And her dad was a professor!

‘And are you – you have a boyfriend, or anything?’ It was painful, watching him stumble over the words.

‘Nah.’ She thought of Chris – bloody, awful, unforgettable Chris. ‘Got a little girl. Ruby.’

‘Oh! Goodness.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I could be – well, a grandfather, then. What’s she like?’

‘Ruby? She’s gorgeous. Lovely, special kid. And all she’s ever had is crap.’

It was too much. Her fat old mum dying on the kid, that violent bastard for a dad, this pony-tailed hippy for a possible grandad, and worst of all, half-and-half Miss Keisha Collins for a mum. Not black, not white. Too scared to go into court and tell the truth, even if an innocent man was banged up because of it. ‘Shit.’ She was crying. For the first time since everything, and in front of Ian bloody Stone. He’d not know she never cried, not even when her mum died, not even when she lost Ruby. He’d think she was one of those sappy girls like Charlotte, who cried at adverts for BT.

‘Oh, God.’ Ian Stone slumped. ‘I’m sorry, I’m no good at this. Please – don’t cry. I don’t mean to reject you . . . it’s just a lot to take in. How do I know if I really am . . . Oh, please.’

He sounded so scared that she took a huge breath in and willed her eyes to stop running. Do not f*cking cry, Keisha, you sap.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘I promise I’ll do what I can to help with this trial and – well, with whatever I can. But please don’t expect much. I don’t have it to give.’ He looked tired, in his silly waistcoat. A silly man, getting old.

‘I don’t never expect much,’ she said, wiping her face. ‘Only gets you disappointed, expecting.’

‘Wait – here.’ He hunted through his pockets for a bit of napkin. ‘You have a pen? This is my email and phone.’ He scribbled. ‘Will you contact me, please? At least with your trial. I could help with that.’

‘Dunno if I’ll do it or not yet.’ She didn’t want to tell him that she’d not even finished the statement she’d started writing. But she took the corner of napkin and folded it in the pocket of her denim jacket. On her way out of the empty building, past rooms with ghostly writing on the boards, lights and computers breathing like people sleeping, Keisha stopped in Reception and picked up a few course brochures. Because, you never knew, did you?

The next day she woke up and realised she’d decided something. Charlotte was up already and had been for a run; her trainers were lined up neatly by the door and her running clothes already spinning in the washing machine. Keisha could hear her on the phone.

Charlotte’s voice was low. ‘Can I come round?’ she was saying. Who’d she be talking to in that voice? Not any of her girl mates. No, it was a fella, and Keisha’d bet everything she had (not much) that it was a certain copper.

Chris had been arrested in a different part of London, over west, and so he was being held in Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Took bloody ages to get there on the crappy overland trains. She went up to the desk and said, ‘Chris Dean.’

He looked like shit. That was the first thing she thought. He looked like he’d been sleeping rough – maybe he had. His hair was grown out in patches, and his face you could hardly see under the fuzz of his gingery Irish beard. He looked so different that for a second she didn’t know him. For a minute she was going to say, ‘Is that you?’ But who else could it be?

He sat down, staring at her the whole time with his blue eyes. They hadn’t changed. ‘Didn’t think you’d come. Put your name down, just on the off-chance, like.’

‘Yeah, well.’ She broke the look, stared down at the chipped table.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah.’ Since you busted my face up, yeah, she thought. The last time she’d seen him, his fist was coming at her nose.

‘They got me on this assault thing,’ he said, licking his chapped lips. ‘Didn’t have no one to post bail.’

‘They want me for that Kingston Town trial,’ she blurted out. She saw his fingers were all raggedy and cut, like he’d been biting them.

‘Prosecution lot?’

‘Defence.’

He said nothing. They were just sitting there in that big hot room with only the small table between them. Might as well have been miles. ‘When we had that row,’ he began, and she stiffened.

‘You mean when you knocked me out, more like.’

He mumbled, ‘Never meant to hurt you.’

‘You gave me a f*cking black eye.’

‘Just got mad – I never meant to hurt you, Keesh.’

She’d seen him like this once before. After Ruby. After what he did to her. ‘They took her,’ she said. ‘You know that? Mum died, so they took Ruby away.’

His hands shook. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, thanks to you. My own little girl.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re a dickhead, do you know that?’ She was saying it just because he seemed so beaten, with his head bowed.

‘Yeah.’ He took it, like he might cry. Oh shit, she thought, don’t cry. Somehow she wouldn’t be able to sit there if he cried, not Chris Dean, not the boy she’d seen walking into the classroom that day years ago.

‘Keesh,’ he said quietly, looking up with those blue eyes. ‘You tell them anything about that night? At the club?’

‘Maybe I did.’

‘Listen.’ He leaned over the table. ‘They got me on this assault, babe. That’s two years, maybe. If you tell them the rest – I’m screwed, Keesh. I’ll be in here years. Ruby, she won’t know me. But if you just said we left at the same time, you and me . . .’

She wanted to say so many things, like, You deserve all this, you shit, or Why the f*ck would I help you? But there were his eyes in his pale face, and his thin shoulders under the sweatshirt that looked too big for him.

‘Time’s up,’ said the guard, two metres away.

She leaned over and whispered hard. ‘You went there to get the money, I know you did. For those guys – that gang. I know you know them. You went to get it off Anthony Johnson, didn’t ya?’

He mumbled. ‘I wasn’t gonna hurt him – it was just business!’

‘Sure. Business.’

‘I wouldn’t do nothing like that. You know I wouldn’t.’

‘But Ruby—’

‘That was an accident. Lost me temper. That kid means the world to me, you know it.’

‘What about your shoes? F*ck, I know it wasn’t ketchup.’

He met her gaze, blue and steady. ‘I went to help. Thought I oughta go back – but he was there all blood, and I stepped in it. I freaked, Keesh.’

She swallowed. ‘The back door. That’s how you got in?’

‘Yeah. But I never hurt him, Swear to God, Keesh. I just freaked. I thought, with my record, and blood all on my shoes . . . Never meant to hit you. Just got so freaked.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, but her voice was wavering. ‘Why’d you send Jonny after me, then?’

‘Just, just . . . I didn’t trust you. Thought you’d go against me. Tell the cops.’

‘I don’t trust you either.’

‘We gotta.’ He put his face close to hers. ‘We got to trust each other, babe. You’re the only one for me, you know? Since we was twelve or whatever. They might arrest you too, babe, the cops. If you saw stuff, and you never said. We could both go down. Then what’d happen to our girl?’ Chris grabbed her hand. It was hot in the room but his skin was cold. He gripped her. ‘I’ll make it up to you. Swear to God. We’ll get our girl back. We’ll get past this.’

How many times had she imagined him saying that before, when she still thought things could still work out OK, just maybe?

‘Come on.’ The guard was making him get up, but Chris didn’t take his blue eyes off her. ‘I’ll do it, babes. Just help me. Do it for me.’ He was led out, and she was the last woman left in the sweaty room. She couldn’t get up.

‘You’ll have to move, love,’ said the guard, locking the door to where they took the prisoners. Keisha tried to get up, gathering her jacket. Shit, she was thinking. What am I going to do now?


Hegarty

Hegarty was knocking off the night-shift when she called. It had been a crap night, busting into a series of awful flats to enforce arrest warrants. Men, nearly all men, young and middle-aged, fat and skinny, tattooed or hairy. There was one woman they lifted out of a squat at four a.m., on drug charges, bleary, tired, fighting like a cat; the arresting sergeant got a whack across the cheek with one long leopard-skin painted nail. ‘Mad cow,’ he muttered, making notes.

‘I didn’t f*cking do nothing,’ the woman was screaming as the WPC bundled her into the car. She reminded him of Charlotte’s mate, that grumpy Keisha.

Charlotte. He sighed, noting down the details – chair overturned, bong chucked at head of arresting officer – no need to search this place, it was riddled with drug stuff. Charlotte had been off with him since they got back from Singapore, since he left her on the pier. There was that awkward meeting at the station, then nothing. He didn’t text or call – she’d always come to him before, and somehow that was OK. But for him to call her – well, he was still on the Force. And then, a few days ago, the paper with her article. Someone had thoughtfully left it open on his desk. There she was, sad by the prison – beautiful. She was so bloody beautiful. Then his phone rang and it was the boss saying could they have a little chat, please? And he had to walk in there with all the officers sniggering behind their screens, to meet with the boss and the Risk Officer and the Press Head about ‘minimising the negative PR’.

So when he’d dragged himself home to his tiny flat, rattling with the noise of buses up and down Kentish Town Road, he wasn’t expecting to hear from her. He was damp all over with sweat and stripping off to go straight to the shower when his mobile rang and he looked at the name flashing up. Charlotte. Shit.

He held it for a long time, five or six rings, before stabbing the button. ‘Yeah?’

‘Oh, hi, Matthew?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’ You called me, of course it is. What the hell did she want now?

‘Are you busy?’

‘I just got off work.’

‘Oh!’ She was so hesitant. Then she said, in a rush, ‘I wanted to see you. I need to talk to you.’

‘Is this about the article?’

‘You saw it?’

‘Had a full team-briefing on it.’ During which some nasty mutters had come Hegarty’s way, and the boss made a number of pointed comments about keeping ourselves emotionally removed from cases, while looking straight at him with the same look his mam used to do when he kicked footballs into her washing. Matty, I’m disappointed in you.

Charlotte said, ‘I did ask her not to slate the police. But you know, they always have an agenda.’

‘I know now.’ He hadn’t realised how pissed off he was until he heard her voice.

‘So can I see you? Are you at home?’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

He heard her move. ‘I can be there in twenty. Kentish Town, right?’

‘But—’ Crap. ‘OK. I just got in, though.’ Then he had a mad dash round to clean up his bachelor’s shithole, jumping in the shower then throwing on jeans and his Man City shirt, kicking dirty kecks under the bed, shoving all the dishes in the sink and running hot water over them. There was a sort of cheesy unlived-in smell in the flat, so he opened the living-room windows, and the room filled with traffic noise, fumes coming in.

The doorbell buzzed when he was rubbing his hair with a towel – no time for wax. He’d look like one of the Jackson Five. She was standing there with her fair hair drawn up into some kind of twist, in the same smart trench-coat he recognised from the paper. High heels. Her legs were bare, since it was a warm, windy day.

‘You better come in, then.’

‘Thanks.’ She looked round his small living room and even smaller kitchen, the dust an inch thick on his Xbox and CDs, cups he’d missed clustered round the one armchair, an empty pizza box on the also-empty bookshelf. She said nothing.

‘It’s a bit of a tip – I’ve been working a lot.’

She ignored it. ‘I came to say I’m sorry about the paper. It wasn’t fair. I just needed to do something to stop all that Banker Butcher stuff.’

‘It was a good picture of you. You looked – good. Yeah.’

‘Oh! Thank you.’ She went a bit red. ‘I just thought it might help.’

He nodded. She fiddled with her twist of hair. ‘Kylie told me you took yourself off Dan’s case.’

He ducked his head. ‘Yeah. I thought, since Singapore . . . I had to, really.’

She said, calmly, ‘I’ve really f*cked things up for you, haven’t I?’

‘No. Well. Doesn’t matter.’ She had, but it wasn’t really her fault.

‘It was meant to be your big case, wasn’t it – catching him.’

‘I don’t want to make it on the back of a mistake. If I was wrong – if he gets out . . .’

‘You think he will? ’Cos I just don’t know any more. I thought he would, with everything we found, but now I don’t know. Kylie’s got all this stuff they’ll be throwing at me, twisting everything. And Keisha still won’t say if she’ll even testify. I think she went to see Chris the other day, too. She was crying.’

‘Oh.’

She paced a few steps. ‘You could arrest her. Couldn’t you?’

‘Is that really what you want?’

‘I don’t know! And I’m not even sure what happened now. All this evidence . . .’ She stood in the middle of his smelly living room, her bright hair falling down at the back. ‘Matt? What do you think?’ She never called him this.

‘I don’t know either.’

‘Then I start thinking, What if he does get off? You know I haven’t spoken to him in months. He still won’t see me. His parents, yeah, Kylie, yeah, but not me.’

What did she want from him? Did she think he’d be sad that Stockbridge wasn’t getting in touch? ‘Well, I dunno. That’s for you to work out.’

She laughed, breathing in quickly. ‘You say it like it’s nothing to do with you.’

He waited, listening to the noise of traffic from the open window. ‘It’s not.’

She took a step towards him; the room was very small. ‘You say that, but you took yourself off the case for a reason. Didn’t you?’

He said nothing.

‘Come on, Matt.’

‘Don’t make me say it.’

‘OK,’ she said, and she took the last two steps over to him and put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

It seemed to go on for a long time, but also be over in seconds. He’d imagined it as long as he’d known her, since he’d seen her that first morning half-asleep and scared, to feel her body against his as her coat fell open on her light summer dress, to hear her breath catch in her throat. When he kissed her neck, she tasted faintly of salt. Her mouth was soft. Her hands went into his damp hair and he felt her sag against him. ‘Oh.’

He pulled away, pushed her back, and they stared at each other. ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked, when he could speak.

‘I wanted to. For a long time. Didn’t you?’

He sighed: a deep, deep sigh. ‘We can’t. Not now.’

‘But I thought you—’

‘Christ, of course I do. Every minute, when I see you. But the trial’s next week. You don’t want to do this, not while he still needs you.’

‘He doesn’t seem to think he needs me,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘I mean, he doesn’t love me any more, does he? It’s pretty clear. He won’t even try. He won’t even say he didn’t do it.’ Her voice wobbled.

‘I know. But still. It’s not right.’

‘God, you’re obsessed with what’s right, aren’t you?’ She pulled her coat round her. ‘I really am sorry about your case, and you know, messing up everything for you.’

‘It’s OK.’ She’d never know how much she had messed things up, and exactly how little he would ever change, if it meant she was here, kissing him.

She turned at the door and kissed him again on the side of his mouth. It was a kiss that made offers, a kiss that was just millimetres from the truth. His hand crept round to the back of her neck as if it had a mind of its own. He pulled away. ‘Don’t. Come on.’

‘OK, OK. Jesus, what is it with men and not knowing what you want?’

As he listened to her clatter down his bare staircase in her high heels, he thought it wasn’t that at all. He knew exactly what he wanted. He also knew all the reasons why he couldn’t have it, not now. Maybe this was how that bastard Stockbridge felt, too.