The Fall (7 page)

Charlotte had dressed carefully for the hearing. Somehow she was expecting it to be like courtroom dramas she’d seen on TV, with a judge and jury and a last-minute bit of evidence to change the whole thing.

The rain had let up overnight, leaving the sky washed-out, the colour of nothing. She’d carefully checked the route to the court, terrified of being late, and taken the Northern Line to Euston, changing on to the Victoria to get there.

She sat in the third row of the public gallery, boxed in by windowless walls and veneer benches. She was the only person there who wasn’t a reporter, by the looks of it. It had come at the perfect time for them, a banker lashing out at a black man. Most were middle-aged women, slightly harried. One even had M&S shopping bags under the bench. Then, just as it was about to start, a group of people came in late and noisy – all black. ‘
Where’s the bastard?
’ she heard someone hiss. She didn’t look round.

Charlotte looked straight ahead, twisting the band of her engagement ring. She wouldn’t meet their eyes. It would all be over soon. The court doors opened and then everything was moving. There were three judges, not one – magistrates, was what Mr Crusty, as she called the duty solicitor, had tried to explain. There was Mr Crusty and some prosecution lawyer, a young woman with glasses and a sharp nose. Then there was Dan, dragged out by officers, pale and blinking, unshaven. She suddenly couldn’t look at him and stared hard at her feet. Around her, the reporters were scribbling so fast she thought their notebooks might catch fire.

It all seemed to be over so quickly.

First the clerk read out something to Dan, and he mumbled back, ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t hear what was going on, the CPS woman spoke so quietly. ‘Your worships, we are here to consider bail in the matter of Regina versus Daniel Stockbridge. Mr Stockbridge was arrested on Saturday morning for the murder of Anthony Johnson, owner of the Kingston Town nightclub in Camden. The arresting officer, DC Matthew Hegarty, is present and willing to answer questions on the evidence if the court requires.’

She paused, adjusting her glasses, which gleamed in the dull strip-lighting. Charlotte found she was squeezing her hands together so tightly it was cutting off the blood. There was more murmuring. ‘The court calls DC Matthew Hegarty.’

Then the policeman was leaping up to the stand. He couldn’t have slept much at the weekend either, but he seemed perky as could be, whereas Charlotte felt like she’d been hit by a truck.

He took the affirmation with loud northern tones and the lawyer said, ‘Officer Hegarty, can you connect the defendant with this case?’

The officer smiled, leaned forward. ‘We believe so, yes.’

‘Will you be recommending bail in this case?’

The policeman leaned forward further. ‘Your worships, this is a serious case of brutal and possibly racially motivated murder. The defendant has shown signs of violent and unstable behaviour, which may pose a risk to the public.’ He paused to take a breath. Murmurs went round the courtroom; Charlotte tried to block her ears. She wanted to turn to them, shout, say,
I’m sorry he’s dead, but Dan didn’t do it! You’ve got the wrong person!

‘Furthermore, the defendant has access to considerable resources, and therefore, represents a high likelihood of absconding. There has also been a large degree of public interest in the case, and as such, bail could represent a danger to the defendant’s own safety.’ The policeman smiled. So he was saying Dan had to be in prison for his
wellbeing?
Charlotte gaped.

More chat, and the lawyer sat down, rearranging her papers neatly. The three magistrates, a woman in the middle and two men on either side – one Asian, one white – scribbled furiously.

Dan’s lawyer, Mr Crusty, got slowly to his feet and at this point Charlotte got lost in his wavering tones, interrupted by loud sneezes into his cotton hankie. He asked various questions of the policeman. Had Dan said he was innocent? Did he deny the charges? Did he waive his right to have a lawyer present? Was it true Dan did not fully remember the incident? The policeman answered them all with the same confident smile.

It dragged on. Mr Crusty was citing point after point of procedure and kept saying, ‘Your worships, the evidence is highly circumstantial.’ He didn’t even bring up what Charlotte thought was the most obvious point, that Dan had no blood on him when they’d left the club that night. Wouldn’t he have blood on him, if he’d stabbed someone?

After a while, Charlotte stopped listening. Her knuckles were white from gripping her hands together, trying not to leap up and shout how stupid it all was. Of course Dan didn’t do it. He was a banker, for God’s sake. He bought his ties on Savile Row. In a few years he’d be softening in the middle and losing his hair. He didn’t go around getting in bar fights over declined credit cards.

The facts were like a crossword puzzle she couldn’t make fit. The club. The row. The arrest. Even with the drugs, which had seemed to change them both, she knew Dan just wouldn’t do this. No. No. He wouldn’t. It was like some awful dream, like one of those nightmares where she forgot her bouquet or no one turned up at the wedding. But even if it took a while to explain all these damning facts, he’d still go home on bail, still be able to marry her. Wouldn’t he? Maybe he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country, maybe they’d lose the honeymoon. Would travel insurance cover it? But still, even if they couldn’t go to Jamaica, she would try to be good and brave about it. She would rise to the occasion, so long as he could come out from behind that screen and grip her hand in his strong one, so long as she could breathe his smell over the varnish and lino reek of this place. She tried to shut her ears to the calls and whistles. ‘
Ra-cist! Ra-cist
!’ The guards made half-hearted attempts to shush the gallery. She sat there with her head down and in the dock Dan did the same.

They were coming to an end, the judges and lawyers talking in low voices. One of the reporters coughed loudly. Dan had a strange look on his face, as if he was about to cry.

‘
Fucking send him down! Bastard!
’

Dan was trying to speak. Again the courtroom exploded with murmurs and she heard herself say out loud, ‘What? What?’

‘Order, please.’ The lead judge was irritable. ‘Mr Stockbridge? Do you have a statement to make? Please be aware that anything you say now may be admissible in your later trial.’

Dan stood up slowly, his height filling the dock. The metal on the jacket he wore rattled against the glass walls. He stared right ahead, looking anywhere but at Charlotte, it seemed. His throat moved.

‘Mr Stockbridge? Please proceed. Could the guards please silence the gallery?’

‘
Ra-cist! Fuck him!
’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dan said, over the din. ‘God, I’m so sorry. I just don’t remember. I don’t remember what happened.’ And then he burst into tears, sobs rasping like sandpaper. He tried to put his hands over his face but the guard held his arm, so he hung his head, tears running unchecked to the floor.

Charlotte’s mouth fell open among the racket. What the
fuck?
Did he have some kind of plan?

Mr Crusty was talking over the noise. ‘Mr Stockbridge has been provoked, your worships, and so anything he has said cannot be taken as an admissible confession of guilt . . .’

A woman was screaming, ‘Racist! Fucking racist!’ Charlotte couldn’t see who it was. A volley of murmurs swelled and rose. ‘
Send him down! Send him down!
’

The head judge called out over it: ‘Order, order, please! Bail is denied in the case of Regina versus Stockbridge. Case committed to the Crown Court for trial. Please remand the defendant into custody.’

Charlotte was going to be sick.

Over the chaos of the judge calling order, and the bailiffs trying to quieten the screaming woman, she ran out, hands over her mouth, searching for the ladies’ sign. She leaned over a basin, her stomach heaving, and choked up a small bit of bile. There was nothing else in her stomach to throw up. That was when she saw the faces in the mirror, blurred through a lens of tears.

The first kick came as such a shock she couldn’t even cry out. She might have even said,
oh sorry
, assuming they’d bumped into her by accident. It took her a few seconds to understand that people were behind her, hitting. Girls, two girls, with the heels of their shoes and points of their nails, a smell of hairspray in the air. Black girls, she could see, through her tears. One had a purple scarf over her face. The blows were coming from all over. A kick to her legs. A scratch at her face.
Fucking bitch
, one said.

She felt one tug at her bag as the other pulled her hair. Her things clattered onto the plastic floor; her head jerked back.

Then the door opened, and someone was saying,
For fuck’s sake, leave it
. And then something hit her, heavy and swinging, her own bag maybe, and she stumbled and the sink was coming at her teeth, and then the endless blue of the lino and she just had time to think of Jamaica in the turquoise sea, that they would never get there now, and then she was going under. This was it. This was rock bottom, she knew it for sure.

Hegarty had been seated near the back of the courtroom when Daniel Stockbridge was remanded into custody, and saw the girl slip out past him, hands over her mouth like she was going to throw up. He was just checking his watch to see if he could make it back to the station for the weekly meeting, when he heard all the shouting and, like everyone else, spilled out to see what was happening. In the crowd he saw a face he thought he recognised. A white man, with a shaved head. But there was no time to stop, and in that second the face was gone.

From the door of the ladies’ toilets came a sound like an animal wailing, and then two black girls burst out, one tall and one shorter, sprinting past the security guards and into the street. ‘Leave off, Grandpa,’ one shouted back. They’d pulled scarves over their faces and by the time he’d followed outside they were long gone, slipped into one of the side streets and vanished. The only witness left was a third girl, the skinny mixed-race one who’d run out of the toilets shouting for someone to call an ambulance. A female security guard went in and led out Charlotte Miller, her mouth and eye streaming with blood. Her hand was clutched in front of her and when it leaked blood all over the guard’s white shirt it was found to be her own tooth she held, knocked out when the girls had attacked her.

Hegarty took control of the situation – it was his job. He gave Charlotte Miller some basic first aid, and through the gushing blood his clean hankie failed to stem, she recognised him. ‘Offisher.’

‘Don’t try to talk, miss.’

When the victim was carted off to hospital – yet more blood leaking all over Hegarty – it was left to him to interview the witness. ‘Your name?’

The skinny girl folded her arms. ‘I didn’t do nothing. I just went in and they was hitting her.’

‘Who were the girls?’

‘How’m I meant to know?’

‘Do you know the victim at all?’

‘Who, the blondie? Nah.’

‘Well, what are you doing at court, then?’ He tapped his pen off the notebook cover and she narrowed her eyes.

‘Anyone can come in court, can’t they? S’a free country.’

He sighed. ‘So, you’re just an innocent bystander.’ They always were.

‘Eh? I just went in, s’all. Them two girls was hitting her, and I must of scared them off, so they scarpered.’

He unpeeled the printout of Rachel Johnson’s phone picture from his pocket. ‘You know who this is? The white guy?’

She looked at it just a bit too long. ‘Course not.’

‘Was he here today?’

‘Dunno, OK? I got nothing to do with it. I don’t even know what the case is.’

‘I’ll still need your name, miss. And your address too.’

‘How come?’

He was losing patience. ‘You want me to arrest you?’

‘Fine.’ She scowled. ‘Keisha Collins. Live up in Swiss Cottage – here, I’ll write it. There. Can I go now?’

As she stormed out he followed her to the door and saw her walk off to the bus stop. Hegarty had very good eyesight. He saw a white man emerge from behind the sign and leave with the girl, both of them waving their arms like they were having a fight. What were the chances this was the white guy from Rachel Johnson’s phone, and that the fleeing girls were Rachel herself and her mate Mel, taking out their grief on the girlfriend of the accused? He sighed and put his notebook away. What were the chances he’d ever be able to prove it?

By the time Keisha and Chris left the court it was past lunchtime and she was starving. She was also raging mad.

Chris got into the flat and switched on the TV, which was showing reels of Daniel Stockbridge being led away to a police van. He fiddled with the remote and turned on Sky Sports. He didn’t look at her. He’d barely spoken all the way home. Now, still without looking at her, he said, ‘Get us some lunch, will you.’

She was still furious as she went into the kitchen. Weird enough to be woken and made to go down there, but that had been nothing compared with seeing Chris nod to Rachel and Mel as they went into the court coffee bar. What were they doing there, the girls from the club? For a moment she’d seen white with anger – was that slut Rachel out to get her claws into Chris?

Chris had spoken to them. ‘After,’ he’d said. ‘In the bogs, if she goes, or outside. Get the purse, remember?’

They’d nodded, all grim, and when Keisha said, ‘What’s going on?’ they’d just looked at each other like they were Charlie’s fucking Angels, and no one was telling her a thing. They’d waited in the lobby while the hearing went on, and when the blonde girl from the club came rushing out all crying and choking, Rachel and Mel followed her to the loos.

Chris had nudged Keisha. ‘You. Go in the court, see what they said.’

‘What? What’re you on about?’ She couldn’t understand why they were all here, the posh blonde girl from the club, Rachel and Mel, her and Chris . . .

He shoved her, quite hard. ‘Just fucking go. I wanna know did he get sent down.’