The Fall (4 page)

‘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.

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.

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 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?’