The Fall Read Online Free Page B

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.

Two days earlier – Saturday
Hegarty
    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.’
    ‘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