The Fall - By Claire McGowan

Charlotte

Then suddenly, it was all coming to an end. After Dan had a seizure in court, there was an adjournment. There were meetings between the prosecution and defence. There were mutterings, rumours in the press. There’d be a mistrial. There was new evidence. No one had a clue what was going on. In the few days of adjournment, she waited. She tried to call Kylie, didn’t get through. She stayed inside and watched. Finally, there was a call from Hegarty.

All he said was, ‘There’s a new witness.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know, couldn’t find out. They’re still wrangling over it.’

‘Must be some new Forensics person.’ But what was the point? They’d already had so many, and it was just like chucking wet paper at the brick wall of the facts. The camera. The prints. The row. Even the door, it hadn’t been enough. There was a heavy weight in her stomach.

‘Aye. Most likely.’ His voice was very tired. ‘I’ll see you, Charlotte.’ He hadn’t called her by her name much. The sound of it made her sad. She didn’t know why.

The day before the trial started again, Charlotte woke up very early. She sat in her window watching the light come up pink and grey over Parliament Hill. Keisha hadn’t come home the night before, and Charlotte no longer knew where she was or what she was doing. The certainty she had, that the girl knew more than she’d said, it would probably never go away. It lodged in Charlotte’s chest like a ball of lead. She’d done her best for Dan, she’d given up everything she could. But maybe it just hadn’t been enough. Because whatever she did, those facts weren’t going away.

Then the doorbell was buzzing and, puzzled, she went to it and pressed the button. ‘Hello? Oh, hello. What are you – is everything all right? He’s not—?’ Her heart began to pound.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Edward Stockbridge stiffly over the intercom. ‘Elaine and I are downstairs. Could you come somewhere with us, please, dear?’

Charlotte sat nervously in the taxi as Dan’s father helped his wife out of the car and slowly onto the pavement. ‘I don’t think I should do this,’ she said.

‘We believe it’s necessary. It might be the last time.’

She looked up at the walls of the prison. ‘But he won’t – he doesn’t want to see me.’ A wave of shame hit her as she said it. The man she’d lived with for four years, been about to marry, and he didn’t even want her to visit.

She felt a soft pressure on her arm; Elaine Stockbridge was offering a laundered cotton hankie. Her face was kind, neutral.

‘Th-thank you.’ Charlotte mopped at her face. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just – I can’t believe he would want me to come.’

Elaine bit her lip, and Edward spoke. ‘He’s in a bad way. Very bad. We didn’t realise. The time he’s had . . .’

Charlotte didn’t say she’d tried to tell them. There was no point.

Elaine spoke in a wavering voice. ‘We feel it would be a good idea, Charlotte. Just to see him, before.’

She swallowed hard. Looked round her at the quiet morning streets. Every detail seemed to etch itself onto her, the shuttered shops, the smell of early-morning bin-bags, the clatter of trucks. London waking up. This might be the last time she ever saw the city with the same eyes. Tomorrow it could all change. She might have to leave, go somewhere she wouldn’t be known as the Banker Butcher’s missus. This might be the end of everything. Or the start.

‘All right,’ she said, and let herself be led into the dark solid building for the last time.

Oh God. Edward and Elaine had left her at the gate, gently urging her to go in alone. She was walking into the room, the same old dirty smell, and there he was, sitting at the table. Dan. It was all she could do to cross the floor and sit down and try not to cry, try to breathe. She took her seat, and looked up at him.

Neither of them said anything for several minutes. Dan in his grey tracksuit, thin and pale, eyes bloodshot, Charlotte in the expensive jeans she’d bought in her former life, nails bitten, hair falling over her face.

‘Why?’ she said simply, after a while.

He thought about it. ‘I just realised some things, I suppose. I found out – well, it doesn’t matter how – but I know how much you’ve been doing for me.’

She just looked at him.

‘Charlotte, when I – when I asked you to go away, I thought it was for the best, you know that?’

‘You don’t know what’s best for me.’

‘I suppose not.’ His voice was quiet. ‘Charlotte. I think I’m losing this case.’

She felt burning tears behind her eyes, but fought to hold them back. ‘It didn’t work, did it? What I did.’

He reached over the table and very slowly took her hand. ‘Don’t blame yourself. It was just bad luck, the worst – like falling, or something, like an accident. You were the only one who . . . Listen, I tried to say this before, but please listen to me now. You’re not even thirty. And you’re beautiful. I don’t know if you even realise that, how beautiful you are.’

‘Don’t—’

‘Let me. Please.’ He looked at her steadily. ‘Please don’t let this define your life, what happened here. If there’s a way you can move on, then you should take it.’

A long silence. She thought about how he’d fainted in court when Hegarty was being questioned, and she made herself meet Dan’s eyes. ‘You really mean that.’

Softly, he said, ‘I have to try. Do you remember when we met?’

Of course she did. Swimming against the current of London in her mid-twenties. Drowning, almost. And then, at a party of Jamie’s, there was Dan. Like a rock she could cling to. Someone so strong she was sure he could never crumble, or fall. Like finding a treasure in your back garden, there all the time. She heard herself say, ‘Did you ever love me, Dan?’

‘I loved you so much. If I didn’t always know how to say it, well – I’m sorry. I suppose when this happened, when I asked you to leave me, it had always been in my mind. That maybe you didn’t love me as much.’

‘You were wrong,’ she said. ‘I did. I really did.’ It was a relief, finally, to realise it. Everything she’d lost, everything she’d sacrificed, at least she knew that some things were real. For what it was worth, she had loved this man in front of her, broken, sick, defeated. ‘It wasn’t enough, was it?’ she said.

‘No.’ His voice was almost inaudible. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t think it was.’

When she got outside, Dan’s parents were still standing awkwardly on the pavement, Elaine clutching her alligator-skin handbag in front of her. They couldn’t have looked more out of place if they’d tried. They saw her coming and nudged each other.

Dan’s father cleared his throat. ‘We want to say, Charlotte, that whatever should happen tomorrow, we know you did your best for Daniel. And we hope – well, we hope you’ll come to us, should you ever need anything.’

‘He’s our only child,’ said Elaine Stockbridge, struggling to control herself. ‘Please consider yourself – part of that.’

‘Thank you.’ Charlotte was surprised, touched by their dignity. Maybe in some ways they’d be losing more than her. ‘My father asked me to go out to Singapore, you know. So – well. We’ll see.’

They were talking of what they’d do if he was convicted. As if they all knew there wasn’t much hope.

‘Let’s take you home then, dear.’ Dan’s father extended his arm, and Charlotte realised what was happening. In their own stiff way, they were trying to thank her.


Hegarty

Hegarty was drinking another cup of very bad coffee, this time from the courthouse coffee bar. He’d had to put one of those sachets of powdered milk in, and it had ripped and spilled all over his trousers. One day, he swore, he’d be drinking good coffee. If he got that promotion he’d buy a machine for his office, but it didn’t seem likely now, not with all the bad feeling from this case, not with him on record as fancying a suspect’s missus. He gulped down some of the dishwater liquid and grimaced. Either way, this wasn’t going to end well for him. A failed conviction, or possibly sending the wrong man to jail. As his father said, he would always wonder, if Daniel Stockbridge was put behind bars – did he mess up? Was it his fault?

The angry skinny girl was hovering by the door, he noticed. Keisha. He hadn’t seen her there before – had she come to hear it all wrapped up? ‘I hear your friend got a visitor the other day,’ he said, moving over to her with his cup of grainy coffee.

‘Eh?’

‘Your friend in Wormwood.’

‘You know people, do you?’ She hated him, he could tell. Nothing to do with him, just for what he did.

‘I do, as it happens. He wasn’t too pleased after this visit, I hear, our Chris. Chucked a chair through the window.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded bored but she was squeezing her hands together so that her bitten nails left crescents in the skin. ‘Will he get in trouble?’

‘Yep. He’s in solitary. Broke a guard’s nose – won’t go well for him in court, that.’

She raised her dark eyes to look at him. ‘Will he go down, then? For that assault?’

‘He’ll be gone a while, I’d say.’

‘Oh.’ She crossed her arms over herself and breathed in deeply. ‘Do we have that witness protection in this country?’

He was surprised. ‘We can take steps to help you stay anonymous, if that’s what you want.’

She laughed. ‘Bit bloody late for that, d’you not think? What about going away?’

‘You want to go away?’

‘I’m not asking for me. I’m just asking, like, what if.’

‘Hypothetical.’

She glared at him. ‘Whatever.’

‘I’d see what we can do. Why, you making a decision?’

‘None of your f*cking business. Officer.’

The door to the little room opened and Charlotte came in on her high ankle boots, that she wore with a grey shift dress and her hair pulled up again into a sort of bun. She looked them over, Keisha, who held so much between her bitten ragged hands, and him, who’d given evidence against her fiancé. Him, who she’d kissed like that, and you couldn’t do it like that unless you meant it, could you?

‘They’re going in,’ she said.

It had been a strange week. The day before, he’d been in the station after court, trying to keep up with his paperwork, when Susan came over. She had biscuit crumbs clinging to her shirt. ‘People to see you,’ she said, with one of her meaningful looks.

‘Who’s that, then?’ He was sorting through his post, hoping for no more of Susan’s church flyers – Prayer bbq, free soft drinks! That sort of thing.

‘You’d better take a look.’

In the waiting room sat a tall, broad, black man, with his arm round a crying, toffee-skinned girl. Without her make-up and afro it took Hegarty a few seconds to recognise Rachel Johnson, and when he did he realised that the other guy was the brother. The living brother, that was. Ronald, who’d avoided him at the club.

He held out his hand. ‘DC Hegarty. You must be Miss Johnson’s brother.’

Rachel made a snivelling noise. ‘You tell him, Ron. I can’t.’

Ronald stood up to his full height; Hegarty took a step back. Over six foot tall himself, he didn’t often have to look up to people. ‘Our Rachel’s got a few things she needs to straighten out.’

‘Her statement?’

The guy nodded. ‘Maybe a few things she got confused on, like.’

‘OK. Let’s go into the room, then.’

‘There’s another thing.’ Ronald was holding out his hand and in it was a small black box. It looked like a computer hard drive. ‘Seems our Anthony had a few secrets,’ said the dead man’s brother, and then Hegarty understood.

But now it was back to the trial. He’d submitted what he’d learned from Ronald Johnson, and his dead brother’s computer had been sent for analysis. Rachel Johnson’s statement had been retracted and Kylie was moving for a mistrial, but so far the CPS weren’t dropping it. They might have to wait for the appeal to present the new evidence, Kylie said, and that could take years.

There was an even bigger turn-out on that day, thanks to all the stories in the papers about the bank and the police mistakes. Hegarty could hardly get into court as the hearing began. He could see Anthony Johnson’s mother and Rachel, newly made-up, who shot him a look, taking her mother’s arm, and Ronald, looming over everyone. There were Stockbridge’s parents, talking to Charlotte. He could feel the strain coming off them and ducked back into the coffee-room to hide. Kylie was there now, he noticed, making notes on a messy pile of paper in the corner.

‘Hiya.’ She took off her glasses and rubbed her little eyes, nodded towards the door. ‘Oh dear, trouble?’

‘No.’

Kylie gave him a look; kind, level. ‘She was never really free, was she?’

‘I know.’ He stared at the door where Charlotte had been. ‘So. You’re ready?’

‘As I can be.’

In his heart, Hegarty just didn’t know. Either he was going to lose Charlotte for good, or he was going to send a possibly innocent man to jail. He’d f*cked up the one big case of his career. No promotion, now. Another year of busting warrants at three a.m., women throwing tins of beans at his head. ‘Well, you tried.’

Kylie gave him a tired smile. ‘Don’t give up yet, mate. I might just have something up the sleeve of these here robes.’

‘Eh? There’s nothing left to do, is there?’

‘Maybe.’ Kylie came up beside him, gathering her papers into her shabby leather bag. ‘Hey, when this is over, we won’t be working together any more.’

‘No.’

‘Thank God,’ she said, and laughed. He laughed too.

Then Kylie did something he wouldn’t have expected in a million years. She stepped right up on the tiptoes of her flat shoes and kissed him on the chin, as far as she could reach. It was a very gentle kiss, like maybe a sister would give. ‘Take it easy, Matty.’

‘What did you call me?’

‘Matty? Oh, that’s what I called my brother. Remember, his name was Matthew.’

She walked out, tipping him that annoying little wink of hers. Hegarty stood there. She’d smelled of some very fresh flower, like grass or daisies or something. Like innocence. In every way you could mean it.

‘Going in?’ The court officer, a wizened little man in uniform, was dangling his bunch of keys.

‘Yep.’ Hegarty gathered his thoughts and went in.

‘All rise,’ said the clerk, and the judge came out for the end of everything. He shuffled his papers and glanced round the courtroom. ‘I have received an application from the defence to allow one final witness. Despite objections by the prosecution, I have been convinced that this last-minute testimony will relate information crucial to the case, and therefore, following the adjournment, I have allowed it. Silence, please.’ He looked up irritably as the murmuring grew up again and died away.

Charlotte was so pale, Hegarty thought she might faint. Dan in the dock was looking around him, terrified. Who the hell was the last witness? Hegarty had no idea. Then, all at once, he did.

Keisha was sitting in front of him, and he saw her gripping the edge of her chair. Then Kylie said, ‘The defence calls Miss Keisha Collins,’ and she stood up. Charlotte made a little strangled noise. As Keisha walked up in her soft-soled shoes, Charlotte caught her hand. Hegarty saw Keisha look down at her, and squeeze it just for a second. Then she walked on.

She took her seat in the witness box, and the clerk came forward, and she took the affirmation, the non-religious one.

‘Could you state your name and address for the record?’

Keisha sat forward. For a second the strip-lighting laid shadows over her pale face. Then she cleared her throat and spoke. ‘My name’s Keisha Collins. Not got an address just now. But I’m gonna tell you what really happened.’