The Fall (15 page)

‘Wait! You can’t just go! You can’t leave me . . .
Dan!
’

He half-turned. ‘Listen. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Really I am. But don’t come again.’

The woman with the badly bleached hair ground her fag out under her trainer, and Hegarty sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Horton. Let me ask again. When did you last see your neighbour?’ The address he had for Keisha Collins, the grumpy girl at the court, was locked up, empty. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there anyway. Tidying up loose ends? Following a hunch?

Her neighbour wasn’t giving him an inch. ‘Why d’you want to know? She’s all right, that girl. Had a rough deal.’

‘Can you think of anywhere Keisha might have gone?’

Jacinta Horton shrugged. ‘He chucked her out, is all I know. Battered her a bit, I shouldn’t wonder. Then he went himself and next thing they’re in changing the locks.’

‘And her boyfriend’s name is Chris Dean?’ She’d already identified Dean from the blurry photos printed off Rachel Johnson’s phone. At least he had a name now, an identity for the mystery white man.

‘That’s the one. He’s a bad lot. That’s why the kiddy’s in care, you know.’

Hegarty was making notes fast. Luckily the woman was happy to spill about Chris Dean, natural distrust of the police giving way to disgust at the man. ‘The child’s name is Ruby Dean, yes?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Lovely little thing, big dark eyes. In care with Keisha’s mam, and she lives down Gospel Oak way, s’far as I know.’

‘You don’t happen to know her name?’

Jacinta screwed up her eyes. ‘Met her one time when she came round. Loves kiddies, she does. Mercy, that was it. Mercy Collins, I s’pose she’d be.’

Hegarty shut his notebook. How easy would it be to find a Mercy Collins living in Gospel Oak? He wasn’t even supposed to be looking. The case was solved – wasn’t it? He rubbed his face wearily. ‘Thanks. You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Horton.’

She bent to adjust the hood on her child’s buggy. ‘Maybe you’ll actually come next time we ring up about them gangs. Always in the park, they are, on their bikes. Can’t take the kiddies near it.’

‘We’ll do our best.’ It was all you could ever say, and increasingly, his best was nothing at all.

Keisha closed the door on her mother’s house and put down the frayed embroidered bag. Into it she had shoved Mercy’s glasses, her Bible and, worst of all, the cross they’d taken off her neck when she went down the corridor for surgery. Went down and never came back.

The house was quiet, the panes gently rattling with the constant sound of buses on the high street. Keisha walked into the living room, her trainers making no sound on the grubby old carpet. The fridge started up, making her jump. ‘Fuck,’ she said, to the still air.

It was so fucking stuffy in this house! Mercy hadn’t opened the windows for about twenty years. She thought air was generally bad for you, and maybe in the case of Gospel Oak she was right. But she wasn’t here now.

Keisha humped the bag into the kitchen and put it on Mercy’s little chipped table. She took out her mum’s glasses on the string and put them on absently. Everything blurred away behind the thick lenses. In a way it sort of made her feel better, not being able to see the kitchen clearly, as if she saw it in her head remembered from when she was little. Mercy huffing slowly round the tiny space, thick with frying oil. But no, she wasn’t seven, she was twenty-fucking-five and Mercy wasn’t here.

Fuck. FUCK. How had this happened? This morning her mum had been grumbling and groaning and spilling tea down her horrible brown wool cardie. Now she was – where? Not in the hospital, not really. Where had she gone? Pastor Samuel from the church would say he knew. Mercy herself thought she knew. Maybe that was why she wasn’t afraid of the first heart attack, because she felt for sure her God was waiting for her in a blaze of light up some staircase, a bit like in
Stars in Their Eyes
when they went behind the screen with all the smoke. But Keisha, she didn’t know a fucking thing.

‘Mum,’ she said out loud to the empty kitchen. That felt mental. Inside her head she continued,
What the f— what should I do now? The council said they were taking the house back next week, for a new tenant. They said I had to clean it all out before then. They said Ruby was with a foster family. They said I could talk about getting her back when I had a stable home. I don’t have any home at all now. And fucking Chris – sorry, Mum, language – he’s out there, somewhere
. . .
And I don’t know what to do. Mum. What should I do?

But there was no way Mercy could help on this one, could she? Because they said she’d died. She was dead. The second heart attack was always likely, they said. Massive cholesterol, they said. There was nothing they could do.

Keisha took off the glasses, but even without them, the world was never going to look right again.

Something had woken her. The flat was quiet, only the sound of the fridge humming and the clock ticking. Dan’s side of the bed was cold.

That noise. It had woken her. Voices outside. She sat up in bed, heart racing. Clutching Dan’s jumper round her, she went to the window. At first she couldn’t see anything in the orange glow of the streetlight. Then one of the shadows moved – people, dressed in black. Kids. She flinched back from the window as the first stone hit the house.

Oh God, oh no.

They were laughing. They knew she was there, cowering like a frightened mouse. Another stone, rattling off the window this time.
Oh God, don’t let them break it
.

Then relief – Mike from downstairs was shouting out through the letter box. ‘I’m calling the police if you don’t leave right this minute.’

He didn’t open the door, Mike wasn’t that brave. Gradually the kids started peeling away, doing wheelies on their bikes. One shouted out something about
racist fuckers
. Charlotte saw Mike open the front door, the streetlight glinting off his scalp. She saw him look around and straight up at her window.

Quivering with fear and loneliness, she scrabbled for her phone and dialled her friend Holly’s number. It was late, and Monday tomorrow, but it was an emergency. The number rang and rang, then went to voicemail – her friend’s voice chirping,
Hi, this is Holly, can’t get to the phone
. . .

Charlotte imagined her friend waking up, looking at the phone, seeing who was calling, and ignoring it. She gripped the phone and scrolled through the names. Who else was there? John, Chloe, Tom . . . No. There were dozens of reasons why she couldn’t call any of them. There really was no one.

Where had her friends been all weekend, when her phone hadn’t rung once? Round at Holly’s, or Gemma’s, all talking about how awful Charlotte was and how they never wanted to see her again now she was engaged to a racist killer? As the wedding got close she had noticed pictures appearing on Facebook of nights out she hadn’t known about – but she’d told herself they knew she was busy with the wedding plans and she did like to spend time with Dan at weekends. He worked eighty-hour weeks, for God’s sake. She barely saw him.

But now she was alone and the silence of the flat was all about her, creeping under her skin and nails, filling her up. She went back to bed and another memory surfaced up from the depths. Dan, weeks ago, waking her up, shouting in his sleep. Frightened, she’d switched on the light and he was clammy, his fists clenched and eyes open and staring.

‘Dan! Sweetie, what’s wrong?’ She’d shaken him awake. When his eyes focused on her she felt a thrill of panic, because for a moment, it was as if he didn’t even know who she was.

‘Bad dream,’ he’d said, and then because it was five a.m., he got up to do some work.

Within two days Mercy was buried and gone. The Holy Hopers took it all in hand; all Keisha had to do was get dressed and turn up, sit in a room full of people who all believed that Mercy was in heaven now as surely as they believed they’d switch on the telly in the morning and GMTV’d be on.

In the meantime Keisha tried to breathe deep and hard, stand up at the right places, keep going. Pastor Samuel had arranged everything, and Keisha just stood in a daze while a whole line of black ladies came up and hugged her. Anthony Johnson’s mother was there, trailing the sulky bitch of a sister, who flicked her eyes away from Keisha as if she didn’t want to remember what happened in the toilets with the blonde girl on the floor, holding her own tooth up in her hand all covered in blood.

Mrs Johnson hugged Keisha again. ‘Ah, darlin’, your poor mother. She’s up there now, I tell her to keep an eye on my boy.’ She smelled just like Mercy, of skin cream and cooking, and Keisha pulled away. Just focus on each person in front of you, each step you had to take, each next thing to do. Maybe sometime in days or weeks or months she might be able to actually think about what had happened. But not now.

At the graveyard she spotted Sandra the social worker, blinking behind her glasses, in this massive hairy cardigan, even though it was hot.

‘Hello, Keisha.’ Sandra blew her nose on a tissue – hay fever, Keisha thought. If you were a social worker you probably couldn’t cry every time someone you worked with died, or you’d be keeping Kleenex in business for a long time.

‘Does Ruby know?’ She nodded her head towards Mercy’s new grave, where the church mourners were doing some chanty hand-clapping thing. Keisha had hung back; she couldn’t face it.

‘It’s been explained to her in appropriate terms.’ Sandra paused. ‘You should really come and see her, you know. It’s important to keep up contact, if you want to regain custody in future.’

‘What, sit in some McDonald’s with the bloody social worker at the next table?
Oh, how’s your Happy Meal, Rubes?
How’s that fair? She’s my bloody kid.’ Anyway, how did she know he wasn’t still following her, looking for her? She’d lead him right to Ruby.

‘I always get the feeling you think you’re being punished. But it’s just what’s best for Ruby, until you’re settled.’

‘But I’m not allowed her, am I? You said.’ She scuffed her shoes in the gravel.

Sandra put on her social worker voice – had she any other one? ‘I know you’ve tried very hard to turn your life around, but until we can be sure Ruby will have a safe stable home – well, you understand, I’m sure.’ She spoke so gently it made Keisha want to whack her.

‘I’m trying. I dunno what you want me to do.’ For a moment she thought to tell Sandra that she’d left Chris, but why should she? Things were even worse now he was after her, and she’d nowhere to live once her mum’s tenancy ran out. She was sure Sandra could tell she’d a black eye under all the make-up she’d slapped on.

‘You know what to do,’ Sandra said in her annoying way. ‘A safe and stable place for Ruby. In the meantime, you must keep up contact – or there’s a very serious risk you could lose custody permanently. You know what that means, Keisha? It means someone can adopt Ruby. For good.’

Keisha stared hard at the ground. As if it was so easy, to make a safe and stable home. No. She wasn’t going to ask for Ruby back until she could take her home, to somewhere good. Easier for now to think of the kid somewhere far away, some place nice, happy, safe. ‘Is she OK, like?’ Her voice sounded as if it was tangled up. She wasn’t going to cry. Not here.

‘She’s in a nice home,’ Sandra said kindly. ‘A lovely couple, their own family grown up.’

‘Are they black?’

Sandra looked shocked, because you were supposed to pretend race didn’t matter, weren’t you. ‘Well, I don’t—’

‘Please.’

Sandra nodded tightly. ‘We try to place children in their own ethnic groups, yes.’

So that was it, official – Ruby was black. But what did that make Keisha? No one seemed to know, and she sure as hell hadn’t a baldy.

Sandra threw her fat arms around Keisha, who flinched. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Keisha! She was a lovely lady, your mum. Please remember I’m always here for you. Any way I can help.’

Great, that was all she needed – Sandra on tap.

Mrs Suntharalingam came up on the arm of one of her doctor sons, neat and weedy in a black suit and tie. ‘How I will miss her. Who will move in now, some refugees with ten children? Ah, I will miss her.’

‘Me too.’ They stared at each other, old enemies mourning the same loss. But Mrs S had children, nieces, grandkids, a whole Tamil family. Who did Keisha have? Chris was gone, Ruby was gone. The old lady grasped her hand in one dry claw and moved on.

Charlotte woke up on Monday morning with a shock, the alarm shrilling. The flat was so quiet without Dan on the phone already, shaving in the bathroom. In the beginning he used to sing in the shower, pop songs in an off-key baritone that made her laugh. But now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard him singing for ages, not for months, that she could remember. Funny how you didn’t notice these things until something made you think.

Today she was supposed to go back to work, and she was moving so slowly she’d be late. She stood with her hand under the shower for five minutes until she realised she’d have to put the immersion on to heat it up. Dan always put it on, because he was always up first. He always left her tea bag in the cup, and her bread in the toaster. She just had to breathe, breathe, keep going, put one foot in front of the other. Remember to go the good way to work, not the bad way. Avoid that street. Then it would all be fine.

As she stood waiting for the kettle to boil (a good two minutes before realising she’d unplugged it), she heard the downstairs front door slam and she jumped, knocking the teaspoon off the counter and onto her bare foot. ‘Shit! Ow!’

She had to calm down, it was only the postman, of course. Edging open her door, Charlotte hobbled downstairs to intercept it before the other occupants could see. It could be anything. More hate mail? Brochures from the travel company they were supposed to be on their honeymoon with? She was managing to crush out the thought that she was supposed to be in the Caribbean right that second, not standing in her kitchen with her feet on cold tiles.