The Fall (37 page)

His head swivelled frantically. ‘Er, I’m not sure—’

‘He had stuff on you, right?’

‘Charlotte!’ he hissed. ‘Stop this.’

She spoke quietly. ‘I’ll keep my voice down if you help him.’

‘But how? I can’t . . .’

‘In there.’ She nodded at the boardroom. ‘I know you can influence it. Don’t you think Dan deserves something, since you all hung him out to dry?’

‘I—’

‘He told me what goes on here,’ she risked. Her heart was pounding. ‘I’ve got his documents and everything. I can tell the police, you know.’

‘I’ve no idea what you mean. Of course it’s against our terms of employment to take confidential papers from the office . . .’

‘Good job you already fired him, then.’

The man’s mouth twisted. There was a film of oil over his forehead. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Charlotte, I can see you’re upset.’

‘Of course I’m bloody upset!’ Her whisper was vicious. ‘You set him up. You leaked all that stuff to the papers, that racism stuff. I know you did.’

He dipped his eyes, professional cool coming down like a curtain. ‘Of course we want to help Dan. We’ll do what we can – of course we will. But you must see we’re under no obligation.’

Charlotte stood looking at this corporate man, his rumpled pink shirt, his face sagging. It was like looking at what Dan might have been in five years, if he hadn’t fallen so far. It was a long way down from the top floor. A long way to fall.

As she turned to go back to the boardroom, she wondered if DC Hegarty might like to take a look at the papers she’d found hidden in Dan’s desk.

The judge looked sternly down on the courtroom. ‘It is unfortunate that I must once again remind members of the press to remember their obligations in reporting this case. If this carries on, it would not be the first time I have held one of your members in contempt.’

Then there was a lot of chat with the jury about whether they’d heard some TV report the day before. Hegarty shifted in his seat. It was a warm and muggy day, and already the atmosphere in the courtroom was like Golden Syrup.

They were still bogged down in a long array of Forensics witnesses. Today’s was an Asian woman (deliberate, of course), who wore a short skirt that got the male members of the jury paying attention. Dr Amit gave evidence about the death of Anthony Johnson, which had been quick but perhaps not quick enough. She had a handy PowerPoint diagram and a laser-pointer. ‘The bottle penetrated here, severing the carotid artery. That’s the artery carrying blood and oxygen to the brain. It pumps at a very high pressure, and so if severed it’s extremely messy.’ She shook back her glossy hair, eyeing the jury. ‘You can see from these crime-scene photos that the splashback was considerable.’

As the pictures flashed up, several people groaned and turned away. Hegarty himself closed his eyes slightly. He’d seen it first-hand, after all, the spatters up the walls and door and the dark pool oozing over the floor. Dr Amit then concisely outlined how they’d found a broken bottle, matched it to the shards in Anthony Johnson’s neck, and identified Daniel Stockbridge’s prints. ‘We can also tell,’ she said with a flourish, ‘that the direction of the wounds suggest the attacker was some inches taller than the victim, perhaps six feet tall or more.’ All eyes swivelled to Stockbridge, who even with his head bowed in the dock clearly fitted this description.

During this testimony Adam Hunt said little, nodding with a tiny smile on his face. When Kylie got up Hegarty could almost hear her take a deep breath. This wouldn’t be easy to recover from.

‘Dr Amit,’ she began. ‘Your lab analysed the clothes Mr Stockbridge wore that night, is that correct? Did you find blood on them?’

‘Just a small drop on his sleeve.’

Kylie eyeballed the jury as she asked, ‘But in your model a large amount of blood came from the victim?’

But Dr Amit had her own theories on why Daniel Stockbridge could have got away without being splashed in blood. ‘In one scenario, the victim was left with a shard in his neck, effectively plugging the wound. This would have given the defendant time to leave the room. The victim then most likely attempted to remove the shard – and tragically, this would have been what killed him. We see evidence of this kind of “plugging” in many trauma cases . . .’

Kylie did her best, but it was clear this round was lost.

As the court adjourned, Hegarty was about to race off, late for his night-shift. Then he saw Charlotte standing in the lobby, pale as milk. They hadn’t spoken in weeks, not since that day at his house. ‘Hiya.’

She looked at her shoes. ‘Hi.’

‘I . . . er, I went to see that Alex Carter, like you said. Bit of a twat, eh?’

‘I never liked him. He tried to grope me once. Never told Dan.’ She still didn’t look at him. Hegarty waited to see would she say anything else, about the kiss, about him. Anything. She rubbed at her bare arms in the evening air. Nothing.

‘So anyway, I’ve passed the papers on to the Fraud Squad for now, to look into.’

‘Thanks.’

‘See you, then,’ he said.

‘See you.’

He watched her walk away.

After the night-shift – the usual round of drunks and fights and screaming women – Hegarty went round the corner to the pub that opened at six, catering for those dregs of humanity who couldn’t wait till lunchtime for a drink. Them, and off-duty policemen. Because what did you do when you were so full of doubts you could hardly think? Drowned them, to start off with.

The morning rain washed vomit off the pavements as Hegarty sat hunched by the bar, hoping the other sad-eyed punters also wanted to get drunk alone.

‘You’re a hard man to find.’ Kylie was standing in the door, shaking drops off her umbrella. There was rain in her hair, curled damply on the shoulders of her coat.

‘That’s the idea.’ He took a sip. Whisky wasn’t really his drink.

‘Liquid breakfast, huh? Not a good sign, Officer.’

‘It’s evening to me.’ He looked solidly ahead; maybe if he ignored her she’d go away.

In the bar mirror he saw her struggle on to the high stool. Her feet didn’t touch the floor. ‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ she said to the barman.

Hegarty looked at her in the mirror, curious despite himself. Who was this strange woman, tiny as a child, drinking whisky at seven a.m.?

She gulped hers without grimacing. ‘So, how come you’re hiding out in this dive?’

He looked round him, the harsh wet light showing up the shabby seats, dirty carpet, fruit machines. ‘Not hiding.’

‘Still upset about the papers getting into you? I’m sure Charlie didn’t mean it to turn out like that. You know the press.’ She met his eyes in the mirror. ‘She’ll call you, I’d put money on it. After all this is over.’

He shrugged. ‘You came to tell me that?’

‘No.’ She put down her glass. ‘Hate to say it, but I need your help.’

‘Really.’

‘Yep. Look, I know you’re not exactly my biggest fan—’

‘You could say that.’

‘But I got to tell you, I’m getting worried.’

He turned to her, surprised. He’d never heard her be anything but annoyingly upbeat about Dan’s case. ‘You think he’ll go down?’

‘All the evidence, it sounds pretty bad when they read it out. And he’s a banker . . . he sounds posh. No one likes a banker right now. I need our Keisha to testify, really. But so far, she won’t. And if you arrested her, say, she’d probably lie, let’s be honest.’

He sighed. It wasn’t his problem. He just brought them in. Didn’t he?

Kylie was watching him very closely. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something I’m missing. I know you didn’t check the CCTV across the street in time – it’s wiped now. I know you couldn’t find the taxi that took Chris Dean home – if it ever existed. What else?’

He drank more whisky. ‘Should you not be – well, looking more closely at the evidence in favour of your client?’

‘You got a problem with this approach?’

‘Yes, actually. Seems you’re going for police incompetence instead of acquittal.’

She took a gulp of her drink, smiling that annoying smile. ‘That, diminished responsibility due to blackout – I’ll try what I can.’

‘But I thought your case was that he didn’t do it.’

She scraped back her wet hair. ‘You believe in the truth, Officer?’

‘Dunno what you mean.’

‘I mean, I see one thing, you see another. You know that story about the elephant in the dark? One person says it’s a wall, one says it’s a snake. Our Charlie, she thinks he didn’t do it. Why? ’Cos he’s her man. I believe her, or I wouldn’t be here. But you and me and the judge and jury, we’ll never know for sure, will we? So, I have to go down every road that might be the right one. That’s my job. It’s the jury who have to decide, not us, yeah?’

He remembered what his dad had said:
You just bring ’em in, lad
. Not his job to decide on what really happened. He sighed. Wished for a moment he’d never had to meet this annoying Australian, never stepped into that office full of blood, never set eyes on Charlotte Miller.

‘Hegarty – come on! Did you do anything wrong? If you did, now’s the time to admit it – before it’s too late.’

Hegarty took another mouthful of whisky and pushed it away; he wasn’t going to finish it. ‘It’s my career, you know.’

‘I know. I know it is, but . . .’

He thought of Charlotte in his flat, stepping up to him, the smell of her hair. His mouth on the warmth of her throat. He said, ‘There was a back door.’

‘Hmm?’ He’d spoken so quietly, she hadn’t heard.

He said it louder. ‘There’s a back door to the club. It’s in an alley behind the place. We never checked if it was locked that night.’

‘So you’re saying someone could have got in that way?’

‘I dunno. If it was open, maybe.’

Kylie seized her bag, grabbing tissues and mints and lip balm as they fell out. ‘You’re a life-saver, you know that?’ She saw his face and paused. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s the right thing. You know it is.’

She went, and Hegarty was left alone with his whisky, and his own eyes in the bar mirror that he couldn’t quite meet.

Keisha took a very deep breath as the door to the Wormwood Scrubs visitors’ centre buzzed open. A clanging sound. Very final.
Breathe, breathe
, she reminded herself, walking across the floor.
You aren’t arrested. You can leave any time you want
.

When she woke up that morning, she had known what to do. A peaceful feeling. A way out of all this shit, these months of being frightened, hiding, turning things over and over in her head till she didn’t even know what she’d seen or what she knew any more. In the early dawn, she had quietly opened Charlotte’s desk and taken out stamps and paper – her stash from all those letters sent to Dan, wasted, never read most likely. Then she’d reached into the bottom of her bag and taken out the pages of the statement she’d started. Started and never finished.

It took her an hour to complete it. She’d never been much good with words, but she put down what she knew, what she remembered. What she needed to say. Then she folded it up, wrote an unfamiliar address on the front. Letting herself out of the flat before Charlotte stirred, she put on her shoes in the corridor, shut the front door quietly behind her, and went down the stairs.

Now here she was again at the prison, and there he was too. She almost turned and ran when she saw his face. Hopeful. He hadn’t looked at her like that for a long time.

‘Wasn’t sure you’d come back.’ He tried to take her hand across the table but she put it in her lap.

‘You OK?’ He was looking at her closely. ‘You don’t look so good, Keesh. You all right?’

She almost laughed at that. He was in jail and her kid was in care and she could be arrested any second, and he asked was she all right? ‘You don’t look too good either.’ And he didn’t. His skin was sort of grey, eyes bloodshot. She saw his knuckles were torn.

Chris saw her looking and folded his arms. ‘I’m not good. Need you to help me. You think any more about it?’

‘I thought about it, yeah. Didn’t think about much else.’

‘So?’

She sighed. ‘So, maybe I’ll help you. You’re Ruby’s dad. And you and me – well.’ She shrugged to indicate all their long history, more than half her life in love with him. ‘But I need you to tell me something first.’

‘Anything, babe.’ His hand was snaking across the table again, reaching for hers. She let him take it and she leaned in close.

‘Did you?’ She whispered it. He knew what she was asking; of course he did. ‘Just tell me. That’s all I ask. Tell me if you did it.’

There was a long silence between them, stretching out as if for years, and in it she could see all their time together, all the good, all the bad.

After a while he said, ‘He was a bit of a wanker, Anthony Johnson, did you know that?’

She waited.

‘He disrespected me. Said I could fuck off back to the little boys. He was a man now, he’d left all that behind. Said to tell them they could go and piss for their money.’

She was surprised by how calm her voice was. ‘It was them, then, that Gospel Oak lot? They sent you?’ A stupid gang of overgrown teenagers, trying to frighten Anthony Johnson into paying back the money with a visit from Chris. He nodded.

‘And you went back, after you left me. You picked up the bottle he dropped, is that it? The banker. And then you . . .’

Another nod. Slow.

‘So – just ’cos he
laughed
at you?’

Chris rubbed at his knuckles. ‘I never meant it. He aggravated me.’

She was trying to take it in. ‘And so . . . you’d let this other fella do time for it?’

‘He punched him, that Stockbridge guy, didn’t he? He was just lucky. Could have hurt him more, couldn’t he? I never meant it. Just lost my temper.’

She heard herself say, ‘That’s what you said before. When Ruby – after what you did. You “lost your temper”.’

He hissed, ‘Keesh! It was an accident, both times were! I never meant it, then he was – all blood everywhere, and he was like choking in it and I just panicked. I ran and . . . and these guys, the Parky Boys, they don’t fuck about. They said if I went to the cops they’d go after everyone – me, you, the kid.’