The Fall (29 page)

He said nothing for a while. ‘This is very dangerous, what you’re doing. You and your friend.’

‘She’s not my friend – I mean, she’s involved. She came to me. It’s her life too, you see. He killed her mum, you know that?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t know that, not at all.’ He folded up his wallet with maddening calm. ‘I’m telling you, it’s very dangerous to sniff around men like Chris Dean.’

‘But we’re not. Keisha just works at the club. She’s allowed to
work
there.’

Again he stayed so calm, as she was becoming increasingly petulant.

‘Of course. But please, both of you, be careful. If it’s like you say, he’s very violent, this man.’

‘I told you what he did to their little girl?’

‘Yes. So you see, you need to be careful.’

‘You believe me then? You’ll look into it?’

He was quiet for a long time. ‘I put him away – Dan. It was my case.’

‘So? You want him in jail even if he’s innocent?’ Something burst up in her, anger, terrible fear, and she stood up to go.

‘Wait!’ He held up his hands. ‘That’s not what I meant. I can’t use anything you got by deceit or trespassing.’

‘She works there! There’s this guy, Ronald, he’s the brother of the man who died.’ She still couldn’t say
who was killed
. ‘Ronald will give you a statement, I’m sure of it. So – anyway . . . You should call him.’ She fumbled in her bag for Ronald’s business card, swiped by Keisha off his desk. ‘Please, just ask if he’s found out anything. He won’t come forward, it’d be like betraying his community. You see?’

‘You don’t wear your ring any more,’ he said, catching up her hand, the cuticles ragged from biting.

Immediately she was angry. ‘It’s none of your business. You’re the police, aren’t you? I’m asking you to look at new evidence, real evidence, and you just – I don’t know why I pay taxes.’

He almost laughed at this, as she threw on her raincoat and jangled furiously out of the door.

‘Wait, Charlotte – come back!’

Charlotte marched to the bus stop, ears ringing with anger. How dare he – how incredibly rude. After a few steps she realised it wasn’t just chill rain running over her face – she was crying. Screw him. Screw them all, as Keisha would say. Fuck ’em.

‘Wait! Charlotte!’ She turned. The candy colours of the traffic-lights were shiny with rain, the gutters rushing with it, and DC Matthew Hegarty was chasing her down the street in Camden, in just his shirt. ‘Please wait.’ He caught her sleeve, breathless. He smelled of strong mint, and schoolboy aftershave, the heavy drenched smell of the rain.

He was so different from Dan, this policeman. He looked so young, with his Adam’s apple working over his collar and eyes so intense, as if they couldn’t look at anything but her. His hand was still holding the arm of her raincoat and his shirt was getting soaked in the rain, a cheap shirt, his thin body showing pink underneath. How long was it since someone had run after her down the street, since someone had looked at her like this? Years. Maybe never.

‘Wait,’ he said again. She put her hand to his chilled face, cold as bone, and he shivered. She was so very cold, she realised, and so very lonely, so very tired.

All the way on the plane from Australia, Hegarty couldn’t settle. He kept thinking everyone knew what he was up to, that it was only his second time flying, like that stewardess with all the make-up who kept smiling at him. ‘Everything all right, sir?’

‘Grand.’ In fact, he couldn’t sit still. The cramped seat wasn’t kind on his six-foot-one frame; he felt like a piece of paper stuck in a too-small envelope. He ate all the foil-packaged meal they brought on a tray, beads of moisture clinging to the butter, joggling his bony elbows into the fat bloke on the other side. Then he put on the eyemask and the socks and blew up his travel pillow and tried to sleep, but his body didn’t understand what time it was, and anyway he was too excited about it all, his first proper foreign holiday, Tom’s wedding behind him, and then as if that wasn’t enough – Singapore. Singapore and her. He must have slept then because he was woken up some time later by the shades going up on a harshly pure light, and the stewardess handing him another foiled-wrapped tray of almost identical food; breakfast.

Staggering off the plane, Hegarty breathed in new air that was free of recycled farts. There was a smell that was nothing like England, a hot and wet frying smell like the end of a sizzling day. He was here, and so was she.

After the night of the rain, he’d known he had to tell someone. It was against regulations, it must be, and if there was anything he was good at, it was sticking to regulations. He wasn’t Maverick Mike, doing it old-school, sharing cigs and punches with suspects on the way to the station.

As discreetly as he could, he looked into it. Was there anything in the rules about not meeting up with a girl in an exotic foreign country, if it just so happened you’d booked her fella a few months back for murder? If chances were you’d have to testify against him come the trial, was there any guidance on it being OK to take his missus out for dinner and then chase her down the street in the rain like something out of fucking
Notting Hill?
And he would have kissed her then, he knew it, if she hadn’t pulled away.

He couldn’t find anything specific. Maybe because no officer’d even been so stupid before. He was sure they all knew, too. The lads in the station stopping a laugh just when he walked up to make himself a drink. Of maybe he was paranoid. He tried asking the boss during their ‘chats’ if there’d been any talk about the daft DC and the killer’s missus, but the boss, missing the point, just told him earnestly what a ‘valued member of the team’ he was. Hegarty couldn’t think how else to bring it up.

There were other worries on his mind, too, especially after what Charlotte had said. ‘Sir? You ever have any doubts on this Kingston Town case?’

The boss looked worried. ‘Why? Have the press been about?’

‘No, not that.’ As if the press were the worst thing that could happen. ‘You know, there was that other case, same MO. And you know the other witness from Kingston Town?’

The Inspector looked like he was struggling to remember. ‘The white fella?’

‘Yeah. I, er, might have some intell on him. Off the record.’ He couldn’t meet the boss’s eyes.

‘The name?’

‘Christopher Dean.’ He felt like he was betraying Charlotte, saying it.

‘Hmm. Can you get it on record?’

‘Dunno. Maybe.’

‘You’re doing a great job, Matthew,’ said the boss heartily. ‘Carry on.’

‘You like Stockbridge for it, then?’

Bill Barton hadn’t risen so far without choosing his words carefully. ‘That’s who we’ve got, isn’t it? You made a case.’

Yes, he’d made it. That was the problem. Hegarty cleared his throat. ‘OK, sir. Getting nowhere on that second stabbing. The victim’s recovering though, so we could try him again with E-fit. You know I’m off on Friday.’

‘Oh, yes. The Land of Oz. Well, chuck some steaks on the barbie for us, eh?’

‘Yessir.’ The guy had no idea. Sometimes Hegarty was jealous of that.

Now here he was again, at the end of a week of barbies and crocodile watching and whatever else Tom’s new missus had set up. He’d barely slept, spaced-out with jet lag and drinking. His second wedding in less than a month and what was he doing? There’d been girls at the wedding, of course, a never-ending stream of them chucked out by Lizzy and Tom. On the way to the airport they’d even said, ‘So, nobody catch your eye then?’

‘Thanks, I’m sorted,’ he heard himself say. And that was the truth of it. He wasn’t interested in any of these Marys or Kellys or whoever, because there was just no room left. That position had already been filled.

Hegarty put up with the slowness of the passport queue and the trundle-trundle of the baggage wheel. He nearly grabbed his passport back off the immigration man, and then finally he was out into the big glassy airport, and there was a girl waiting by the fountain. She was standing with her back to him, wearing a denim dress, red belt. Sunglasses on top of her fair head, curls damp on her neck.

Hegarty’d never understood it when people said that their heart skipped a beat or that their heart stood still or any of that crap. But when he walked into Singapore airport arrivals hall, sweaty and crumpled in his shorts and Burton T-shirt, and he saw Charlotte waiting for him, he sort of got it. God, it was sad.

‘That’s the Raffles Hotel. Stephanie took me there the other day. We’ll go for a Singapore Sling, it’s the best.’ Charlotte was so different. She talked all the way in the taxi she made him get – ‘Honest, the bus takes forever.’ Not a hint of tears or that sad, strung-out look she’d had in London.

‘You look well,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Got a good colour.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ She examined her rosy arms. ‘There’s a pool at Dad’s apartment block.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘There’s the zoo, if you have time. Can you really only stay one night?’

Christ, she wanted him to stay. ‘Depends.’ He was running out of cash, truth be told. He’d had to pay in the end to stop over in Singapore. But she didn’t need to know that.

She paid for the taxi with a big wad of notes. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’ They were getting out at the harbour area, the sea shiny. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’

‘Glad you came over, then?’ He felt different too, out of his depth. He’d no badge here, no notebook, no authority. She seemed to fit right in, leading him through the hot streets to an outdoor market where you bought satay chicken on sticks and ate at plastic tables in the spicy air.

‘Hmm? Oh yeah, really I wish I’d come sooner. Daddy and Stephanie are so good to me – well, she is. He’s working as usual. But she’s really nice! She really understands about everything. And it’s been so good to get away.’ She leaned back, sucking hard on some kind of pink drink she’d made him get from a vendor. It tasted like sugared roses, so sweet it made him gag. It was so different from the last time he saw her, in the chilly rain of London. They were both acting as if that night had never happened. ‘You know, I was so unhappy before. I was, wasn’t I? I was a wreck. I can only see it now I’m away.’

‘Found a lawyer yet?’

She nodded, slurping. ‘Stephanie’s got a meeting set up with some Australian barrister. Supposed to be very good at this kind of case. I’m sure she’ll be nice, if she’s friends with Stephanie.’

‘Well – that’s good then, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ A pause, and she looked up at him, and turned away. Was she thinking of the same thing as him, of the rain, and him running after her down the street?

He made a face, and she noticed. ‘What is it, the pink stuff? Too girly?’

‘A bit, yeah.’

‘I’ll get you a
chai
– it’s spicy tea, you’ll like it.’

He watched her go to the stall, ducking between the tables in her wedge heels. Everything was different here, the air, the smells, her, him. In London he was the copper who followed the evidence and arrested her man. She was the witness looking for a way out, probably pointless, the whole thing. But here? Who were they?

Charlotte was coming back with a steaming plastic cup. She was smiling as she came towards him and he was smiling back, couldn’t help it.

‘Here.’

He gulped it down – like over-sweet PG Tips with curry powder in.

‘Nice?’

‘Yeah,’ he lied. ‘Grand.’

Charlotte was unstoppable. The creeping tropical heat felt to him like carrying a wet blanket round your shoulders; he could hardly move. But she was fine, apart from the curly wildness the humidity brought to her blonde hair.

The day was packed, the Indian quarter, the sea-front and shops, lunch, on to the Changi Prison museum. Here Hegarty went silent before the displays. His grandfather, Big Mick, had been a prisoner in Burma, and although he came home, he never spoke a word of what happened out there. Sort of put it all in perspective, the worries he had in London.

A fan was whispering overhead, stirring the heavy air. Charlotte came back from the bookshop, springing on her cork shoes. ‘All right?’ She pulled her hair away from her neck, fanning her flushed face with the visitors’ guide.

No, he wasn’t all right. He was all at sea.

As the day went on, he noticed once or twice how she would brush against him when they walked along, or stand so close when reading a display that he could smell the clean sweat of her forehead. In the Botanical Gardens she asked a woman to take their picture, and put her arm over his shoulder. For the ten seconds it took to snap the picture, Hegarty was dizzy with the heat and flowers and her.

Then, over lunch, she pulled her chair in close to his as they ate fried noodles in a cheap canteen, and he felt her bare feet scuff over his legs. The hairs stood on end.

‘Sorry,’ she said, pulling them away. ‘My feet were too hot. Here, want to try mine?’ She held out a chopstick-full of noodles.

Finally it was dusk. The taxi was idling through the crowded streets of the Indian quarter, music and light spilling out from the shops, as they went to drop Hegarty at his hotel.

‘So, what for dinner?’ Still she was full of energy, while he felt like a wrung-out sponge.

‘My flight’s at eight a.m, you know. Maybe I should get an early night.’ He had the money ready in his hand in case she tried to pay again. It felt greasy to the touch, different to UK money.

She fiddled with her hair, drawing it up in her hand. ‘I was going to say we could get Dim Sum. It’s sort of like Chinese tapas.’

‘I know,’ he said, even though he didn’t. ‘You want me to stay out then? You think there’s stuff in Singapore still to do?’

She met his eyes. ‘Maybe.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, it’s a big place.’ She looked out of the window and he thought she was blushing. ‘Look, we’re here.’

He opened the door. ‘Meet you in the same place at seven?’

She smiled; it lit up her face. ‘Brilliant.’

Hegarty got into his windowless cupboard of a room and had a shower, washing off all the tropical sweat of the day. He couldn’t help smiling at himself in the steamed-up mirror. She wanted him to stay. And right that minute she was probably in the shower too, getting ready to come and see him, picking out a dress, combing out her wet hair over her bare shoulders.