The Fall - By Claire McGowan

Two days earlier – Saturday

Hegarty

DC Matthew Hegarty still, on balance, preferred London to the heaving metropolis of Barrow-in-Furness, where he’d grown up. For all its mountainous beauty, the Lake District was one of the most deprived areas in the country, and London had shops, theatres, and beautiful sexy women you hadn’t gone to school with since you were four.

But it had other things too, like Jamaican men lying in sticky pools of blood, and shrieking girls in upmarket flats.

‘You need to calm down, miss,’ he said, unsticking his shoe from the cream carpet. Ah, crap. There was a bit of blood on the sole. The crime scene had been full of blood, awash with it as if someone had tipped out a bucket of the stuff. Footprints tracked all over it where people had tried to help. He’d burst in when he got the call, and tramped all through the blood himself, but it had been clear to see the guy was already dead. No one could lose that much blood and survive.

Remembering that, he hardened his heart against the hysterical blonde girl who was spilling out of her little silk nightie. ‘Miss, we’re here to arrest him,’ he tried again, raising his voice over her sobs. ‘He left his credit card, easy to trace. We have to detain him.’

‘But everyone does it,’ she was babbling. ‘I don’t even do drugs. It was the first time, I swear.’

Hegarty raised an eyebrow at DC Jones, the partnering officer, and made a note in his book. ‘I’m not sure you’ve understood, miss. It’s nothing to do with drugs.’ Although he would certainly put that in his report, the silly bint.

The boyfriend, by contrast, hadn’t said a word. He’d been naked when they came to the door, the bedroom a tumble of sheets, a thick hungover fug in the air.

The girl was all legs and curves straining out of silk. She looked like that actress, what was her name? Scarlett What’s-her-name. Her full mouth was hanging open. ‘But – you can’t do this! You can’t just arrest him!’

‘Afraid we can, miss, according to the PACE codes – a reasonable belief that the suspect has been involved in a serious crime. Don’t need a warrant.’ He placed a card on the table. ‘We’ll be wanting to talk to you too, miss, if you can present yourself at the station. It’s not far – Mornington Crescent. You can attend voluntarily for now. You aren’t under arrest.’

Still she just stood there, staring. Her nightie was hanging very low over her breasts.

‘Miss? Do you understand? You might want to get dressed, there’s a search team on its way.’

She swelled with anger, which made the nightie droop even lower. ‘I know you need a warrant to search the flat, for God’s sake!’

‘No, not if a suspect’s been arrested – PACE codes again. And he will be in about two seconds.’

The boyfriend had dressed now, methodically, in jeans and a leather coat, sheepskin-lined. He looked expectantly at Hegarty. ‘Well, I’m ready.’

‘Daniel Stockbridge, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of one Anthony Johnson at the Kingston Town nightclub, Camden, in the early hours of May tenth this year. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence.’ He rattled through it; Matthew Hegarty knew the PACE codes inside out and upside down. ‘Do you understand the caution?’

The man gritted his teeth.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Of course I bloody understand.’

The girl could hardly speak. ‘Who the hell is Anthony Johnson?’

The boyfriend said, ‘The guy from the club. That’s who it is.’

Hegarty made another note. It would be quite significant later that Stockbridge knew this, that he wasn’t even surprised. Fatalistically calm was how Hegarty would put it in his report, causing great amusement down at the station.

The man turned to the girl, who seemed to be rooted to the spot, tears coursing over her face, and he kissed her hard on her full mouth. Hegarty saw DC Susan Jones turn her eyes away.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Stockbridge said to the girlfriend. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

Hegarty, with the dead man’s blood drying on his shoes, wasn’t so sure.


Charlotte

As Dan was being bundled down the stairs, Charlotte stood still in the middle of the living room until she realised she was shivering. She had on her skimpiest nightie, and the policeman had probably seen the side of her breasts. She didn’t even remember putting it on. Snapping out of her frozen calm, she went to the bedroom for a jumper.

The woman officer was at the door. ‘Miss? You have to stay still. We’ll be doing a search.’

She could hardly speak for a moment. ‘But . . . can I at least get a jumper?’

The woman watched her like a hawk as she pulled on Dan’s old college sweater, drawing the hood tight about her face. Then Charlotte went through to sit on the sofa in her tiny nightdress. It was all a mistake, of course, it had to be. Maybe they’d sue and be able to upgrade to the private villa in Jamaica.

What did she even remember about last night? They were in the club, and everything was fuzzy and light, and she was laughing and talking very fast. There was that girl in the toilets, that angry girl, and she’d put down the fiver, too much, but she had no change, and she was embarrassed and she’d wobbled out and there was Dan, and he was shouting at that man in the shiny suit. Was that who they meant? Anthony Johnson – was he the club owner? She couldn’t think. Her head felt huge, like a planet turning slowly in orbit, as if it was getting bigger and bigger until it would bounce off the ceiling like a balloon.

But Dan hadn’t been gone that long with the Johnson man, she was sure. She’d been standing outside in the street; somehow she’d got the coats and was waiting with her bare legs, and she wanted to go home. She was there, how long? A few minutes? And then someone pushed past her – was that right? She couldn’t remember anything, just the push and a smell of something sweet, a muttered curse. Had that happened? When was it – in the club, or outside?

Christ, if only she remembered! There must have been a taxi, there usually was. She’d fallen asleep, or more likely passed out, until the insistent hammering on the door, and the police, the woman very plain with a Birmingham accent, the man nervy, wiry, and they’d said, Daniel Stockbridge? And then, well, then Dan had gone. Her mouth still stung from his last hard kiss. She stood listening to the quiet of the Saturday-morning flat, the hum of the fridge and the tick of the retro Happy Days clock they’d bought in Spitalfields Market. What was she supposed to do now?

That was when she heard the voices and heavy feet on the stairs, and thought, Crap. Mrs Busybody downstairs would have a fit about all this noise.


Hegarty

Back at the station, Hegarty leaned on the front desk to do his notes while Daniel Stockbridge cooled his heels in the interview room. It was a little trick he’d learned from his dad, a forty-year Force man – leaving them just long enough that they’d get angry and talk more. ‘What’s he said then?’ He was busy noting down the blood he’d walked in. That was going to be a right nightmare to explain away, but at least they had Stockbridge in custody.

‘It’s weird, right?’ Susan Jones had a thick Brummie accent. ‘He’s confessed straight up, says he did it, but not a word about the bottle.’

‘Did it all get recorded?’

‘Yeah – well, most.’

‘Most?’

‘He just started talking. All calm, like.’

Hegarty had noticed the calm, too. ‘Let me speak to him, before you go traipsing all over the case.’ My case, was what he wanted to say. This was the one, he could feel it. He’d be a DS, running his own teams. He already had his Part 1, aced the Q&A, and now this. He could almost taste it. ‘You coming in for the interview?’

Susan seemed a bit more interested in the Double Decker she’d just bought out of the vending machine. ‘You’re doing it?’ She sprayed chocolate over the case-notes she was carrying.

Hegarty winced. ‘No one else here, is there? Come on.’

‘I didn’t mean to hurt him.’ Daniel Stockbridge did seem almost robotically calm. His clothes looked too good for the grimy interview room, expensive leather, things Hegarty only saw on the pages of Esquire.

He started his tape recorder, saying, ‘Interview with Daniel Stockbridge, DC Matthew Hegarty and DC Susan Jones. Daniel Stockbridge, you have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Anthony Johnson. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence. Do you understand the caution?’

‘You already asked me that.’

‘Do you have anything to say to the charge?’

The man looked away. ‘This is ridiculous.’

Hegarty continued. ‘You understand you have a right to legal counsel?’

‘Look, just get on with it. I want to go home.’

Hegarty glanced at Susan. ‘OK. Can you repeat what you said just before, sir, for the tape?’

Stockbridge flexed his hand. ‘I hit him. Look, my knuckles are cracked. But it wasn’t that hard. I missed the first time.’

‘You went for him twice?’

‘But not hard. He seemed OK.’

‘What do you mean by “OK”?’

‘I mean, he staggered back. Didn’t fall over.’ Stockbridge frowned, as if struggling to remember. ‘Then, well, I left. I was ashamed – it’s not like me.’

‘And why did you hit him?’

‘I was annoyed.’

Hegarty raised his eyebrows. ‘Annoyed?’

‘Angry.’ Stockbridge folded his bruised hands on the chipboard table. ‘He said my card was stopped, but I’m not— I mean, that would never happen.’

‘Ah yes, your card.’ The platinum Haussmann’s Mastercard, abandoned in the blood-stained office, had easily led them to Stockbridge. The bank had been more than willing to give out their employee’s address. Strangely willing. ‘But it had been cancelled, as it happens. Your employer blocked all expense accounts over the weekend. To stop abuse, I gather.’

For the first time Stockbridge showed some emotion. ‘It’s not like that, for Christ’s sake. I use it all the time. It’s interchangeable with my personal account.’

‘Interchangeable.’

‘Yes.’

Hegarty had to get a full receipt in triplicate if he bought so much as a packet of Hob-Nobs out of petty cash. ‘But not working. Maybe that’s why you were so annoyed, as you put it.’

The man was granite. ‘Maybe. There was also the fact that my bank was collapsing.’

‘Hmm. Do you know why you’re here, Mr Stockbridge?’ Remind the cool bastard that he’d spilled someone’s blood all over the floor just hours before.

Stockbridge put his head in his hands. ‘You said he’s dead. And I don’t know, that’s terrible . . . But I’m telling you, he was fine when I left.’

‘When you were arrested, you said . . . Can you remind us, DC Jones?’

Susan read out in her flat Midlands tones, ‘ “It’s the guy from the club.” ’

‘Right. Now how did you know that, Mr Stockbridge?’

‘I saw his name on his desk, when he took me to the office. He had one of those silly little plaques.’

‘You remembered that?’

‘I have a good memory, it goes with the job.’

‘But you said earlier, when your prints were taken . . . DC Jones?’

‘ “I think I just hit him. I don’t know.” ’

Stockbridge shrugged. ‘Yeah – well, OK, it’s a bit hazy. I’d been drinking. But I remember the name.’

‘I see.’ Hegarty leaned back in his chair. ‘And what about your ladyfriend – she was there?’ Ladyfriend. It was a mystery why these old-fashioned phrases came out during interviews.

‘Charlotte? Yes, she was there.’ Stockbridge’s eyes narrowed.

Hegarty tried not to look like he was picturing the curve of the girl’s breast. ‘Your wife?’

‘Fiancée. The wedding’s next week.’

I wouldn’t be too sure about that, thought Hegarty, with a certain satisfaction.


Keisha

Keisha would never forget the first time she saw Chris Dean. She still had the scar to remind her, after all, the little raised lump on the side of her knee.

It was her first day in big school, the posh school she’d got into after doing the exam in that funny echoey room up in Hampstead, and her mum had cried and cried, she was so happy. ‘Just like me, an A student. I was top of my class in Jamaica. Everyone said, That girl will go far.’ Until she’d had Keisha, of course, and gone no further than wiping arses in the nursing home. Still, Mercy thought education was right up there with God Himself.

So it was Keisha’s first day, the navy uniform cutting into her, stiff and new, and there were Asian kids and white kids and black kids, but she was the only one nobody was sure of. What was she? She was crouching her head down to the desk, her History book open to a picture of a Norman castle, when the door opened.

‘Well, thanks for joining us. Christopher, is it?’ The teacher, Mrs Allen, had that special sarky voice they all did. She was a fat woman who spilled over the sides of her chair.

‘No worries,’ he said, in the half-Irish, half-London voice, and she looked up, and as she saw him she did something spastic with her leg so it banged into the desk and started to bleed.

‘Shit!’ she’d shouted before she could stop herself, and laughter spread out round her like a Mexican wave. Mrs Allen said, ‘Watch your language, and do try not to break the school on your first day.’

Keisha had looked up at the boy, too cool to laugh. His eyes were the kind of blue she didn’t think eyes could be in real life, a blue like the sirens on police cars. He had a pierced ear, unlit cig in his mouth – in school! He was Irish-white, pale as milk, and at thirteen, a year older than her. And that was it for her, sort of like Game Over. Even when they both got kicked out of the school the year after and her mum wouldn’t speak to her for weeks, Keisha didn’t care ’cos Chris was with her. It was her and him against the lot of them. Like Romeo and Juliet. Or at least, she thought so. She’d been too busy snogging him behind the bike sheds to actually pay attention in English. Course, things hadn’t turned out so great for Romeo and Juliet, as it happened. So why should they for Chris and Keisha? She’d been daft to ever expect it.

After the club on Friday night, Keisha couldn’t believe he’d left without her. The bastard. What a twat he was, really. When she came out of the toilets he was gone. Eventually she got fed up and took the smelly night bus home, only to find him there already, in bed.

‘You left me!’

He’d mumbled under the covers, a hump in the darkness. ‘Felt sick.’

‘How did you— You got a cab, didn’t you?’ It was the only way he could have got back so soon. She couldn’t believe it – that was twenty quid down the drain.

‘Give over.’

‘Fine, whatever.’ She went to pee, easing off the shoes of death, and saw that the floor was wet from the shower. Weirder than that, there was a tied-up plastic bag in the corridor, with what looked like clothes in it. Maybe he’d been sick. Or pissed himself. She almost laughed, then stopped herself. He went mental when she laughed at him.

Keisha squinted at the old pink bath mat – soaked of course, silly bugger. And there was something on it. Pulling up her knickers, she leaned over. It looked like he’d vomited up a Jägerbomb, like she had a few months back (bad memory). Dampening a bit of toilet paper, she dabbed at the stain. She went back into the hall and there were his new Adidas Classics, standing on a sheet of newspaper, red stains round the bottom. She went into the room. ‘What happened to your shoes?’

‘Stepped in a kebab. Now leave it.’ He was buried in the duvet.

Exhausted, nerves jangling, she’d fitted herself into bed so she wasn’t touching him, and went to sleep.

Chris had always been it for her. Back in 1997 when they’d met in school, Keisha knew for sure she would never look at another boy, not ever in a million years. That nothing could ever come between them. And this was nearly true, until what he did to Ruby, of course.


Hegarty

When Hegarty went back to the interview room, Stockbridge was looking less cool, rumpled and tired. The remains of a soggy ham sandwich sat on the table, along with the dregs of the worst cup of coffee the police station could summon up – and that was pretty bad. ‘What now?’

Hegarty threw the pictures down on the table. ‘Look.’

The man’s face only tightened a fraction. Cold bastard. ‘Why are you showing me these?’

‘So you can see what you did.’ See if this would break the guy’s calm.

The man frowned. ‘I’m confused here. Is this that Johnson guy?’

‘Why don’t you tell us?’

He looked away impatiently. ‘I wouldn’t be asking if I knew.’ He pushed the pictures from him – a crumpled body, a foot sprawling in a blood-soaked office. ‘And you think it was me, because I – I hit him. But I told you, Christ, it was just a light punch. He laughed at me.’ Stockbridge ran his hands through his hair. ‘He said something like, “Look, Mr Banker, your card ain’t working. Just like the rest of us tossers now, eh?” And I was so – I was out of it. You know that. So I swung at him – I didn’t even hit him the first time. His nose was bleeding. But he just kept laughing. That’s what I’m telling you. He was fine. I swear he was fine.’

Anthony Johnson’s nose had been lightly contused, true. But that wasn’t exactly the end of it. ‘Then what?’

‘I went home. Charlotte will confirm that.’

‘Were you carrying anything when you went into his office?’

Stockbridge looked confused. ‘I don’t remember. I had a drink, I think.’

‘A drink in a glass, or in a bottle?’

‘Does it matter? A bottle, probably. Beer. I don’t drink spirits.’

Hegarty pushed another picture across the table. ‘Anthony Johnson’s throat was slashed with a broken beer bottle. Bled to death in three minutes, they tell me.’

All the blood drained from Stockbridge’s face, too.


Charlotte

They came in the open door, a team of three men in boiler-suits. The woman officer conferred with them in low mutters, pointing out something on the carpet that Charlotte was sure hadn’t been there before. Or had it? One immediately started taking photos and Charlotte backed away, arms over her chest.

‘Morning, miss,’ said one, the bald one. ‘Gotta search the place. You’ll have to stay in the hall.’

‘But I need to get dressed.’ Crap, the first policeman had been right.

The officers exchanged looks. ‘All right. You’ll have to leave the door open.’

This was mad. This was just too much. With one policeman watching her, Charlotte got some clothes from her dresser, then waited while the other two rifled through her bathroom in plastic gloves. At least it was clean in there.

They had questions. Had Dan showered since last night? What was he wearing? Where were his shoes? They lifted strange things – the towel, Dan’s toothbrush, the soap dispenser from the sink. She was asked to witness each one being bagged up, and soon there were gaps in the room like missing teeth, and she was allowed to dress with the door ajar. She did it very, very quickly, tying back her smelly hair, and when she came out it was so strange, like having a plumber round. Should she offer them tea?

‘Er – what do I do now? They said go to the station.’

The bald one was turning over her sofa cushions with gloved hands. ‘We’ll give you a lift, love, if you hang about.’

So polite! The other two were in the messy bedroom, and she saw the Asian one pick up her discarded nightie and put it in a plastic bag.

‘That’s mine!’

He turned patiently. ‘We need to take anything he might have touched, miss. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry, miss, you’ll get it back.’

What could she say? ‘Er – OK. Thanks.’

When they’d finished they took her down to Camden, to the station. Baldy thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they waited in traffic on Chalk Farm Road. ‘God love us, traffic’s bloody murder round here on weekends now.’

The little one eyed Charlotte almost flirtatiously. ‘Ever been in a police car, miss? See, in the West End on a weekend, mobbed by ladies, we are. Them hen dos, they all want to get inside. Like firemen, innit?’

‘Sometimes we let them in right enough – if they’re puking on the pavement or decking each other with stilettos.’ Baldy chuckled.

Charlotte stared out of the window at the clean, gleaming morning. It was still only 10 a.m. ‘That happens?’

‘Just as much as you like, love. You’d be shocked.’

Baldy was being kind, assuming Charlotte would never puke or fight in public, but seeing as she had only the haziest of memories of the night before, she kept quiet until they pulled up near Mornington Crescent.

‘That’s the station, love. Out you get.’

What were they going to do to her in there? Suddenly she felt like throwing up too, and bent over, taking deep breaths until she felt she could go in.

‘But I don’t understand,’ Charlotte said later, for the hundredth time that day. ‘Wouldn’t he get, like, released on bail?’ It was surreal to hear those words tripping off her own tongue.

The duty lawyer from the police station was about ninety years old. Bits of the skin round his nose were white and flaky; Charlotte couldn’t stop staring. He explained the procedure to her over and over from tatty laminated handouts, but she couldn’t seem to understand. ‘I’m sorry, dear. It’s unusual to get bail in murder cases, you see.’

‘So he’s here till Monday? Is that allowed?’

‘Yes, dear. They need to take him before a judge. But as I said, it’s unlikely bail will be granted.’

Her mind was like wood; nothing went in. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he must stay in custody until there’s a trial, I’m afraid.’

‘Custody?’

‘Prison,’ he explained, shuffling his papers together.

Charlotte’s brain was moving with the speed of geology. ‘So, even though he didn’t do it, he can’t come home?’ She said it hopefully. As if it would make the lawyer laugh and say, ‘Of course not, dear. You can’t send someone to jail when they didn’t do anything. This is England!’

But instead he said, ‘Until there’s a trial, no. That could be a while.’

‘A while? What – like, weeks?’ Oh, Christ, she thought. The wedding. But surely not.

‘Oh no, dear.’

Thank God. She smiled in relief.

‘We could hope for maybe five, six months, if it was fast.’

She gaped at him. ‘Six months? But – but people are always out on bail on TV.’

‘Well.’ He blew his nose with an old-man honk. ‘I’m afraid the television-makers aren’t always accurate. And, my dear, the evidence at this stage does look rather compelling. Your barrister may advise a guilty plea.’

Charlotte looked at her huge, flashy engagement ring. ‘We’re getting married next week,’ she heard herself say. ‘It’s all planned.’

The lawyer looked alarmed. ‘Oh. I hope you took out insurance?’

Only the glacial speed of her mind stopped Charlotte from slapping him across his flaky face with the splinter of rock on her hand.





One day earlier – Sunday

Keisha

The weekend had been f*cked up. When she woke up on Saturday after the club he was gone, the bed empty and cold. The bag of clothes in the hall had disappeared – weird – and he’d even tried cleaning his trainers. The kitchen bin was full of red-stained kitchen roll; he’d used the whole roll up, so she’d have to buy more. She went into the bathroom and saw again the red drop on the pink mat.

Keisha wasn’t thick, even if she’d got kicked out of the posh school. She’d washed blood off the bathroom floor before from his dripping nose or knuckles. But he’d hardly had time to get in a fight the night before, and why would he lie to her if he had? Usually he was proud when he’d ‘sorted people out’.

He hadn’t done a good job of cleaning the shoes, despite the whole roll of paper, so she filled a basin and let them stand. She shoved the bath mat into a bag, yet another thing to drag down the laundrette. There was still only frozen food and no microwave, so she ate a few handfuls of Choco Pops without milk. They were for Ruby really, if she was ever allowed home again.

Work at the old folk’s home, two miles up Finchley Road, was the usual crap. Mr Smith, a big fat man who ate everything put near him, filled the commode up so high it touched his old white bum, and he just sat on top of it smiling away, ignored by the nurses. The bastard owner Barry called in all the night staff at the end of her shift and bitched about food costs. No special diets, he said, even if someone was literally wasting away. Keisha wasn’t about to fight with him – like all the girls she was off the books and grateful for work.

She walked home as it got light, passing the shut-up shops, the O2 centre, still and empty, no one up. As she drew near home she started to wonder. Would he be there? The sick feeling was back, that kind of anxiety about unlocking your own front door. He could be gone days, it’d happened before.

He wasn’t there. She turned on the telly for a while and it was playing weird religious stuff, Sunday-morning programmes, but somehow she couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking. The shoes. The mat. Where the hell was he? Where had he gone when he’d left her at the club?

She must have slept a while, because she woke up when the door slammed. Her face was creased from the nubbly sofa. ‘You back?’

She heard him moving about in the hall, and then suddenly he was in the room. ‘Where’s the f*cking bath mat?’

‘Eh?’ She dug her fists into her eyes. ‘Oh, I was gonna wash it. It was dirty.’

There was something wrong with his face. His eyes were too wide.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Don’t f*cking touch my stuff, OK? What else did you move?’

‘Nothing!’ She felt it rising up in her, so tired, so pissed off. God, she was sick of this. ‘All I did was clean up some of that mess you left. You ruined your shoes.’

He froze. His blue eyes fixed her across the room. ‘What did you do with them?’ His voice was very soft.

She started to get up; she could tell from the light it was late afternoon. ‘I didn’t do nothing, they’re in the kitchen. Don’t walk that mess over the carpet.’

‘You cleaned them.’ He hadn’t moved.

‘Well, yeah. They was dirty, yeah? I mean . . . you said, you said you stepped in a keba—’

Suddenly Chris was across the room and holding her round the waist. His face was very close, like he might kiss her. He smelled like he’d slept out all night – cold, greasy. ‘That’s right. I stepped in a kebab, yeah?’

‘That’s what you said. But—’ She stopped herself. She knew the difference between blood and ketchup, but maybe he had his reasons. She’d given up trying to understand. ‘Look, babe, it’s fine. I’ll clean ’em again if you want.’

He let go. ‘Just leave them. Leave them, OK?’

‘OK.’ She started moving to the door.

‘Er, where the f*ck are you going?’

She turned to look at him, in his dirty T-shirt, his face like he hadn’t slept at all. ‘I’m going to work. It’s Sunday. I have to work.’ She held her breath – maybe he’d take that as a dig, that she was saying he didn’t have a job. But he just nodded slowly, looking confused. He raked his hands over the skin of his eyes. ‘All right. All right. What time are you back?’

‘Usual. Five-ish. Will you . . . you’ll be in?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, but she didn’t think he was listening at all.


Hegarty

Yawning, Hegarty finished his dry Danish pastry and brushed the crumbs off his tie. He’d been worried about yesterday’s ID parade, he had to admit. The sister, Rachel Johnson, and the other girl, Melanie Taylor, had been a problem from the start. They didn’t want to go to the station, didn’t want to do the ID parade, didn’t want to look at the other men paid to appear alongside Daniel Stockbridge.

‘What if I’m not sure, like?’ asked the Mel one.

‘That’s the idea,’ he’d explained as patiently as he could. ‘It’s just another way to see if we got the right guy.’

‘How comes I can’t do it with Rach?’ She annoyed him, her narrow suspicious face smeared in last night’s make-up. Both girls had come in wearing their club clothes, cheap and shiny. He didn’t like the holes in their stories either.

‘He was saying racist shit,’ Mel maintained. ‘That posh guy.’

‘Like what?’

‘You nigger. That sort of thing.’

He’d written it down, wondering if her over-confident tone meant she remembered or she was making it up. The other girl, Rachel, seemed less certain.

‘Just, like, racist stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno.’ She’d picked at her silver nail polish, matched to her dress. Her eyes were red and he reminded himself that her brother was dead. Both girls seemed anxious he’d caught ‘that racist f*cker’.

‘They should hang ’em, bastards like him,’ was Mel’s opinion.

‘Well, we don’t actually have capital punishment in the UK.’

‘Eh?’

Rachel, tall and beautiful, had used up tissue after tissue in her interview. ‘Why’d he kill our Anthony? He’d never done nothing to no one, never hurt a fly.’

Hegarty, who’d been looking up Anthony Johnson’s long and dodgy gang-related record, wasn’t so sure. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

Pain twisted up her pretty face. ‘Mum’s devastated. Heart-broke. Doctor had to sedate her, and Tanika, that’s our Anthony’s missus, her and the kids are just sort of, like, in shock. Won’t even remember their dad, will they.’

A wife, then – that was interesting, given the discussion Hegarty’d just had with Mel about her relationship with the deceased. ‘Is there any other family to inform?’

She dabbed her eyes. ‘Our Ronald’s still in Jamaica. Not sure when he’ll make it back. Don’t even know when we’ll get Anthony home – his body.’ She was crying again, clear tears rolling out of her dark eyes. She hardly seemed to notice.

‘I’ll make sure the Family Liaison Officer keeps you up to date,’ Hegarty said. He felt as usual how pathetic those words were – the only comfort he could offer to the raped and knifed and bereaved. All he could do was try his best to catch the bad guy, so they could at least see who was responsible. Justice, some people called it. And if he was right, and he hoped he was, he’d got the guy for this one sweating in the cells.

Rachel sniffed loudly. ‘You not got any balm tissues? My nose’s getting chapped.’

‘Sorry. Can’t get the public to pay for them.’

‘I got a picture of him,’ she said suddenly. ‘On my phone. I was doing a pic of me and Mel when he come over.’ She’d whipped out her Nokia and shown him a blurred shot of the two girls in the foreground, and in the background a white man approaching. Could have been Stockbridge.

‘Can I?’ A phone picture wouldn’t be much use in court, but he took it and flipped through. The picture before was of Rachel with a different white man, adopting a cool gun-finger gangster pose. ‘This guy with the shaved head – who’s that?’

She went cagey. ‘Dunno. Some fella at the club.’

‘Would he have seen anything?’

‘Dunno. Dunno who he was.’

Rachel Johnson was pretty, yes, but he was fairly sure she wasn’t telling him the truth. In the end, though, both girls identified Stockbridge at once in the parade. In the past, Hegarty’d seen white witnesses fail to identify black suspects, since ‘they all look the same, don’t they?’ But both black girls knew Stockbridge at once.

‘That’s him,’ Mel had said, giving the man the finger through the reflective glass. ‘That’s the bastard. Hope he rots.’

Heading down to the interview room, Hegarty spotted one of the search guys he’d sent round to Stockbridge’s flat yesterday. ‘You get the shoes?’ The bald guy nodded. It was all round the station that whoever knocked off Anthony Johnson had also stamped on his hand, breaking the fingers. It was the kind of thing that made the officers really want to nail someone for the crime. They’d have blood all over them for sure, the shoes of whoever did it. If there was still any doubt about that.


Charlotte

Eventually, on that endless Saturday, Charlotte had fallen asleep across the orange plastic chairs. When she woke she had no idea what time it was, but they had definitely missed Britain’s Got Talent. The strip-lighting fractured on her tired eyes.

There were voices in the corridor, behind the shatter-proof glass with the posters about legal aid and benefit fraud and not slapping your wife about. Charlotte sat up, feeling sweat under her armpits.

‘Leave off, I can walk meself.’ A woman’s voice, and in the corridor, a girl walking tall and proud, her hair like a gold and bronze halo about her face. Charlotte recognised the girls from the club, the one with the afro, still in her shimmering silver dress from the night before. Her legs went on about a mile, and behind her, slinking against the wall, was the shorter one who’d shouted at Dan, her hair flat with over-straightening. That girl looked like she’d been crying. It was what Charlotte’s own face looked like in the yellowing glass, ravaged, screwed up like a dam against the tears inside. Their eyes met, and the other girl looked away.

Charlotte tried to put her thoughts in order. The guy at the club was dead. Murder, the policeman had said. God, it was so hard to remember – everything was slipping out of her head soapy-slick. So, what – Dan got in a fight with him? But he’d been away such a short time, just a few minutes. And he was fine, wasn’t he? No bruises, no blood. Wouldn’t she have known if Dan had been in a fight?

She had another memory. Dan, a few weeks ago, shouting at her: I don’t give a f*ck what kind of flowers we have!

He’d been at the table surrounded by spreadsheets, working on a Saturday again. She was trying to get him to finalise the wedding details, take an interest in it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said, after two hours of her hurt silence.

‘It’s our wedding. Excuse me if I thought you might care.’

Running hands through his hair, his face haggard. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes I just feel like there’s no way out.’

The waiting-room TV, set on news, scrolled on and on as the hours dragged forward. Eventually she slept again across the hard chairs, the ridges digging into her spine, woken by the noise of people coming in as much as by her own creeping, rising panic. It would be OK. Of course it would. But why were they still here, hours later?

All night long people had been brought in, drunks with blood streaming from their heads, women shrieking, sirens going. The TV was showing BBC news, and on it a rolling story about Haussmann’s Bank. Bailed out by government loan, it said. Then in the scrolling ticker she saw: Man arrested over London club death. The irony of it didn’t escape her, that the very catastrophe which had sent Dan falling into this mess hadn’t even happened in the end. Instead he’d made his own private disaster, now joining the bank on the news. But it would be OK. It had to be.

‘Miss Miller?’ It was the flat-shoed Brummie woman. A thin morning light was coming in the high windows.

Charlotte’s mouth tasted dry and sour, her eyes felt gritty. All she’d eaten was half a disgusting corner-shop sandwich, washed down with the worst cup of coffee she’d ever tasted, so bad she’d almost spat it back out into the polystyrene cup. But there was nothing else, so she drank it, and afterwards she had sat and picked the cup to pieces with nerves.

She stood up, dizzy, sure that what she was about to be told was going to change everything in a way she didn’t yet see. She had an urge to squeeze her eyes shut and hope it would all go away.

‘Can you come with me, miss?’

‘Sorry. Coming.’