The Fall (3 page)

‘Put on the purple dress,’ he said, leaning on the doorframe. When they went out like this, aftershave rolling off him, his tie tight to his raw shaved throat, his eyes so cool, so blue – well, she was proud. She always hoped they’d bump into someone she knew, one of those bitches from school who looked down on her for being not white, not black.
Look, it’s my fella
, she’d want to say.
He’s sexy. He’s mine
.

‘Wear heels with it.’

‘But I’m too tall! And they’re so sore.’ Keisha was five-ten, and the heels made her taller than him, but he wanted her like those other girls, plucked and tweezed and squished. So long as it wasn’t comfy it would do. Had he always been this way, wanting her squeezed into things, so other men could see? Or was it the gangs, the clubs, the scabby men and tarty women he hung out with? She’d rather wear her jeans and trainers, but she took out the untouched box from the bottom of the wardrobe and limped into the stupid high shoes, like he wanted.

Secretly, Charlotte had always fancied Dan more when he was in a bad mood. His eyes would go flinty, his mouth set firm. When she saw him so shocked, so beaten, she felt the weakness in her, that her world was built all around him like a fragile plant on a trellis, and if he pulled away it would tear her up. Let’s go somewhere, he’d said, rifling through their untouched copy of
Time Out
, and even though she was so tired and she wanted to watch a DVD, she knew she would say yes, just because of that look on his face.

‘I suppose we could. Is anything on?’

‘What about this? Kingston Town – a Jamaican club. That’d be good, wouldn’t it, get us in the mood for the honeymoon?’

She’d never been anywhere like that in her life. ‘Where is it?’

‘Just down the road. Camden.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t say it, but Camden on a Friday night . . . Well, Dan would keep her safe if anything happened. ‘Are you sure . . . Do you think we’ll like that sort of thing?’

‘I don’t know. I just want to try something new. Don’t you?’ Restlessly, he got up and came to stand in the bedroom doorway. ‘You should wear that thingy. You know, that lacy thing.’

He didn’t know much about clothes, but liked her to have expensive ones. Charlotte earned enough at the PR company, more than lots of people, she knew that, but it was Dan’s money that had floated them up to this level, like boats in a lock.

‘What thing?’ Charlotte’s French Connection wrap dress puddled on the bedroom floor, and she was glad she’d put on vaguely matching underwear that morning.

He pointed. ‘That one.’

She looked at it doubtfully, a slip dress he had once brought back from Hong Kong for her. She would never normally have worn it, never had before, but her body was winnowed out with the wedding diet – she would be her thinnest when she walked down that aisle if it killed her.

‘I’ve got something for you.’ Dan had something in his hand, a small plastic baggy. ‘Guess what Alex wanted out of his desk in a hurry?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Charlie, Charlotte. It’s Charlie.’ He laughed, sounding not like himself, and she understood what it was, and that he had already taken some.

‘Oh. But you know I’ve never . . .’

‘Come on, sweetheart. I really need something. My head’s fucked. Everyone there’ll be on something, I bet.’

‘But – is it safe?’ She hesitated as he chopped the powder up on the dresser and held out a tenner. He put up his hand, stroked her face. She was still in her underwear.

‘You’re so sweet, you know that? The only person I know still just saying no. Was it
Grange Hill
that did it?’

She pushed him gently; so strong, so solid. If she could lean on him, things would be OK. ‘As long as you look after me.’ She bent and inhaled and felt it fizz up her nose. ‘I don’t feel anything. Is it working?’

‘It’ll work. Take some more.’

Keisha was pissed off. He’d made her walk all the way down from Swiss Cottage to Camden, too tight to pay two pounds for the bus, so when they got to the club her ankles were red-raw. It was May, but she was still fucking freezing in just her denim jacket. He spoke to the doorman in that annoying cool-dude way of his, and they breezed in past the queue of people. Some white guy standing with his girlfriend shouted out in a posh voice, ‘Oi, mate! We were here first!’

That felt good, she’d admit. But now they’d been in the club ages and he was still ‘doing business’ in the VIP section – two crappy roped-off booths. Chris was acting like P bloody Diddy or someone. That was when she spotted the girl, the blonde one from the queue coming in, saying loudly to her boyfriend that she wanted a
mo-hi-to
, saying it with an annoying accent. She’d a lovely dress on, all silk and lace, not like the cheap knock-offs Keisha could afford to buy. Some people got all the luck.

The two other girls in the VIP bit were getting right on her tits, too. This ho with the ’fro, the tall pretty bitch in the silver dress, was flirting with Chris so blatantly, even touching his arm. He bought her a Bacardi Breezer, green colour, the twat. The other girl – shorter, skankier – had an over-relaxed ‘do’ and no self-respect, you could tell. When the owner of the club came out he squeezed the shorter girl’s arse, and gave Keisha a look-over. Probably thinking she could do with a boob job and a hair weave. She thought somehow this boss was pissed off with Chris being there, though he was all smiles. The two men pulled their chairs away from the girls, and talked, leaning in close. Anthony, they’d called the owner. The girls didn’t talk to her and the stupid shoes hurt, so Keisha was already in a pretty bad mood when the white guy from the queue came over shouting at Anthony about something. When it started getting loud she decided to go to the loo. Stay out of trouble, that was the way. She had to if she wanted Ruby back.

The drug was definitely working by the time they got on the tube at Belsize Park. She giggled, clutching at the yellow pole in the carriage, wobbling on the Louboutin shoes he’d bought her for her birthday. They were so high, it was lucky she couldn’t feel her feet any more. ‘It’s working,’ she’d said, too loudly. ‘This must be why people do it.’

‘
Shh
, you cokehead.’ He stroked the metallic blusher from her cheek and kissed her hard. Charlotte felt dizzy, his muscles solid against her. How long since he last kissed her this way? Everyone was watching. The carriage was packed with people struggling home, dead-eyed with exhaustion like Dan usually was on a Friday. The cocaine, the fright of earlier, the unexpected night out, it cast a glow over everything, transforming the trundling tube, littered with free papers, into something magical.

Charlotte was feeling the effects even more now they were in the Kingston Town club. It had crept up like a fine mist over her brain, like one minute you felt the same, wondering what all the fuss was about, and then suddenly, pow! Your brain moved at light speed, and your voice was loud and fast; it was like you could do anything.
Warp speed
, she thought, reaching out for him, but although he was dancing close to her, the drug was making them all alone in the haze. The music was fast and loud, ringing with steel drums, and she thought about the honeymoon they’d be on soon, the warm sand under her feet, looking at him through the dark of the sea. She motioned to him, as if already underwater. ‘Just going . . . ladies’.’ She wasn’t sure he noticed.

Charlotte stumbled to the toilets, feeling clumsier than ever. She hadn’t noticed it before, but this was a very
black
club, a mostly West Indian crowd. Probably that was why they called it Kingston Town. Maybe they thought she shouldn’t be here, with her blonde hair. Charlotte felt inside the first stab of bad feeling.
Paranoia
, she said to herself, running water over her hands. It was why she didn’t normally take drugs.

There was no soap or paper towels – dirty and wet underfoot as the toilets were, there was an attendant. Christ, they made her feel awkward. The woman had probably hidden the soap so she could scrape up more wet coins for herself.

‘Fuck off,’ someone was saying. ‘I’m not paying to wash my bloody hands, you dirty cow. This is London, not fucking Nigeria or wherever you’ve come from.’

Charlotte was about to be virtuously shocked by the racism, but as the face of the speaker wavered in and out, she saw the girl was black too, or at least half-black or something. Her skin was pale but you could tell from her eyes, the shape of her face. ‘It’s fucking disgusting,’ the girl was saying.

Privately, Charlotte agreed – it
was
disgusting, but still feeling the sharp chafing of panic, she scrabbled in her Radley purse for money. Crap, she only had notes.

The girl turned on her. ‘What’re
you
looking at?’

‘Oh. Nothing.’ Charlotte was swaying so much she could hardly get the money out. ‘It’s kind of a pain, I know, I agree, but yeah – bet it’s not much fun, is it, sitting here? No – right?’ She gave a slightly dazed smile to the angry girl and the blank-faced toilet attendant, and crumpled a fiver down in the dish, embarrassed. ‘Anyway, thanks.’ She wobbled out.

The bitch! The fucking bitch! She’d been trying to make a point – it
was
fucking horrible to steal all the soap and charge people a pound for it. It was like begging, it was shameful, sitting there with your cheap market perfumes and sad little lollies. Who’d want a lolly when there was wee all over the floor? She hated clubs like this, tired black women in the toilets, your drink on a little napkin so you had to leave the change just for pouring it.

Keisha liked to know the price of things, pounds and pence, not tips and VAT and all that shit. Just a haircut, a drink, a fucking
piss
, for Christ’s sake. She hated it when Chris hid tenners in his hand and palmed them to doormen and waitresses.
There you go, mate, darling, love
. Since she had Ruby she could only see those tenners as nappies that weren’t going on her baby, shoes not on her kid’s feet.

And then this rich bitch from the queue, chucking down her fiver, making Keisha look like a tight-arse. She would get what was coming to her, this one. You couldn’t walk around for ever with lovely wavy hair and loads of money in your purse that was real designer and not off a market stall. Keisha was sure of it – things had to come back around again sometime.

She was so annoyed she went in and sat on the toilet seat for a while, just to calm down. She wondered was the white guy still going off on one outside. She had to watch herself. Chris was in a funny mood, she was in a funny mood. It was times like this that things happened, and not good things. She knew that now.

The first Charlotte knew anything was wrong was when the music stopped. She stood in the middle of the dance floor, like someone caught out in musical chairs –
quick, run
– dazzled by the lights.

It was Dan who was shouting. When they’d first met he never shouted, not even when shares dipped and he lost millions of pounds at work, or when she drove his Alfa Romeo into the gatepost.

‘It’s not fucking cancelled,’ he was yelling – bellowing. ‘That’s a twenty-grand expense account,
mate
. Your machines are buggered up.’

Dan was over in the so-called VIP section of the club, not much to look at, and having an argument with a short dapper black man in a shiny suit, diamonds winking in his ears. Or diamanté, at least. There was another white guy there too, walking quickly away from the group, his back to them, and a short girl with flat fake hair and fake boobs was screaming in Dan’s face, ‘Don’t you fucking speak to him like that!’ Another girl with an afro and a silver dress, a tall pretty girl, was crying.

Dan shouted again – she couldn’t hear what the black guy was saying to him. ‘Just run it through again! There’s thousands on there.’

She remembered it suddenly. Dan two months ago, in that restaurant. The long wait, the waiter rude, the food cold. Then the crash, the broken glass. Afterwards, Dan looked surprised more than anything, like he didn’t understand what had happened.
It slipped
. It must have slipped.

‘Maybe they stopped the card,’ she said out loud, but no one would have understood her thickened voice, and anyway, she was too far away. Dan had a company credit card, but half the time he used it for himself to get the air miles that built up, and it got taken back from his salary. He was holding a beer in his hand, which she guessed he’d been trying to pay for.

Across the stilled dance floor, where people were starting to murmur and stare, Charlotte saw the black man smile. It was as if he said, ‘Let’s step into my office and sort this out.’ That was more or less what he did say, she would later learn. When everything that happened in the next ten minutes would be repeated and endlessly rehashed in court.

She saw Dan sag, as if ashamed of what he’d said, and walk off with the man to a little door by the bar. They disappeared through it, and the music started up again.

DC Matthew Hegarty still, on balance, preferred London to the heaving metropolis of Barrow-in-Furness, where he’d grown up. For all its mountainous beauty, the Lake District was one of the most deprived areas in the country, and London had shops, theatres, and beautiful sexy women you hadn’t gone to school with since you were four.

But it had other things too, like Jamaican men lying in sticky pools of blood, and shrieking girls in upmarket flats.

‘You need to calm down, miss,’ he said, unsticking his shoe from the cream carpet. Ah, crap. There was a bit of blood on the sole. The crime scene had been full of blood, awash with it as if someone had tipped out a bucket of the stuff. Footprints tracked all over it where people had tried to help. He’d burst in when he got the call, and tramped all through the blood himself, but it had been clear to see the guy was already dead. No one could lose that much blood and survive.

Remembering that, he hardened his heart against the hysterical blonde girl who was spilling out of her little silk nightie. ‘Miss, we’re here to arrest him,’ he tried again, raising his voice over her sobs. ‘He left his credit card, easy to trace. We have to detain him.’