The Fall by Claire McGowan Read Free Book Online

kebab, yeah?’
    ‘That’s what you said. But—’ She stopped herself. She knew the difference between blood and ketchup, but maybe he had his reasons. She’d given up trying to understand. ‘Look, babe, it’s fine. I’ll clean ’em again if you want.’
    He let go. ‘Just leave them. Leave them, OK?’
    ‘OK.’ She started moving to the door.
    ‘Er, where the fuck are you going?’
    She turned to look at him, in his dirty T-shirt, his face like he hadn’t slept at all. ‘I’m going to work. It’s Sunday. I have to work.’ She held her breath – maybe he’d take that as a dig, that she was saying he didn’t have a job. But he just nodded slowly, looking confused. He raked his hands over the skin of his eyes. ‘All right. All right. What time are you back?’
    ‘Usual. Five-ish. Will you . . . you’ll be in?’
    ‘Yeah,’ he said, but she didn’t think he was listening at all.
Hegarty
    Yawning, Hegarty finished his dry Danish pastry and brushed the crumbs off his tie. He’d been worried about yesterday’s ID parade, he had to admit. The sister, Rachel Johnson, and the other girl, Melanie Taylor, had been a problem from the start. They didn’t want to go to the station, didn’t want to do the ID parade, didn’t want to look at the other men paid to appear alongside Daniel Stockbridge.
    ‘What if I’m not sure, like?’ asked the Mel one.
    ‘That’s the idea,’ he’d explained as patiently as he could. ‘It’s just another way to see if we got the right guy.’
    ‘How comes I can’t do it with Rach?’ She annoyed him, her narrow suspicious face smeared in last night’s make-up. Both girls had come in wearing their club clothes, cheap and shiny. He didn’t like the holes in their stories either.
    ‘He was saying racist shit,’ Mel maintained. ‘That posh guy.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘You nigger. That sort of thing.’
    He’d written it down, wondering if her over-confident tone meant she remembered or she was making it up. The other girl, Rachel, seemed less certain.
    ‘Just, like, racist stuff.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Dunno.’ She’d picked at her silver nail polish, matched to her dress. Her eyes were red and he reminded himself that her brother was dead. Both girls seemed anxious he’d caught ‘that racist fucker’.
    ‘They should hang ’em, bastards like him,’ was Mel’s opinion.
    ‘Well, we don’t actually have capital punishment in the UK.’
    ‘Eh?’
    Rachel, tall and beautiful, had used up tissue after tissue in her interview. ‘Why’d he kill our Anthony? He’d never done nothing to no one, never hurt a fly.’
    Hegarty, who’d been looking up Anthony Johnson’s long and dodgy gang-related record, wasn’t so sure. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
    Pain twisted up her pretty face. ‘Mum’s devastated. Heart-broke. Doctor had to sedate her, and Tanika, that’s our Anthony’s missus, her and the kids are just sort of, like, in shock. Won’t even remember their dad, will they.’
    A wife, then – that was interesting, given the discussion Hegarty’d just had with Mel about her relationship with the deceased. ‘Is there any other family to inform?’
    She dabbed her eyes. ‘Our Ronald’s still in Jamaica. Not sure when he’ll make it back. Don’t even know when we’ll get Anthony home – his body.’ She was crying again, clear tears rolling out of her dark eyes. She hardly seemed to notice.
    ‘I’ll make sure the Family Liaison Officer keeps you up to date,’ Hegarty said. He felt as usual how pathetic those words were – the only comfort he could offer to the raped and knifed and bereaved. All he could do was try his best to catch the bad guy, so they could at least see who was responsible. Justice, some people called it. And if he was right, and he hoped he was, he’d got the guy for this one sweating in the cells.
    Rachel sniffed loudly. ‘You not got any balm tissues? My nose’s getting chapped.’
    ‘Sorry. Can’t get the public