The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  ‘That’s good. I’m sure you won’t need to come to the rescue. They haven’t even been back since they first questioned him. If they were going to charge him they would have done it by now, wouldn’t they?’ Soothed by his own compelling logic, Gav stops drumming and his mouth sets in a weak smile.

  ‘Would he be pissed off to see me if I came back to the cottage with you?’

  ‘I don’t know but . . .’ But he would be. But none of us wants Gav around. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the next few days will be the time for making new secrets and repairing the cracks in the old ones. Just us four.

  ‘Gav, the woman who died . . .’

  Gav frowns. The drumming starts up again, this time to the rhythm of ‘Greensleeves’. He’s not aware of doing it, but the effect is faintly comical, a middle-aged man with death on his mind bashing out a rhythm to an ice cream van’s cheery jingle.

  ‘Did I say she died? Perhaps I did. The police dragged her out of the water. No ID, nothing. I don’t know how police identified her. I suppose they have ways of doing that. Of course, Dex is very upset, not that he’d let you see—’

  A phone beeps. Gav fumbles in his jacket pocket and glances at the screen. ‘My sister. She wants to know where I am. I’d better give her a call.’ Something in his mood has changed. He’s facing forward once more. Patting my thigh to signal an end to our conversation, he says, ‘Don’t say a word to Dex about this, will you? He’ll think I’m fussing, which . . .’ He tails off. The smile resettles on his face. ‘You know,’ he says, looking up at me with the eyes of a supplicant, ‘you’ve always been my favourite, Cassie. Sometimes, I wonder if Dex might have been better off staying with you. He loves you, you know that, don’t you?’

  11

  Dex

  1.15 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping

  Dex is making his way back towards the main bar thinking how much Gav would have hated tonight. The noise, the music, the general chaos.

  For years now, Dex has obligingly kept up the pretence of being highbrow to please his husband. Modernist opera, Godawful experimental dance, all the stuff Gav seems genuinely to like and Dex secretly considers to be a crock of shit. Still, most couples rely on at least one of them pretending. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t love Gav.

  He peers in to the bar tent and sees the long queue for service. He’s remembering there’s another bar over by the chill-out tent, though that probably won’t be any better, then remembers his VIP pass but can’t recall any more where the VIP tent is. At some point, he supposes, he’s going to have to start drinking less. But that point is definitely not tonight. It’s probably just easier to stand in line here. As he’s waiting his phone buzzes with a call. He is pulling his phone from his pocket when he becomes aware of a guy in the queue a few metres ahead of him. Cute, spring-action body, nice buzz cut and beard combo. Giving him the eye. A couple of years ago he would probably have returned the come-on, left the line and allowed himself to be led somewhere more private. Back then he was more anxious to make up for lost time. These days he’s pickier about the set-up. Plus, didn’t he already have sex earlier that evening? He thinks back. It’s as if his mind is a packet of mixed nuts and amidst all the cashews and the peanuts he’s trying to locate a single hazelnut. Oh yeah. The French guy. Shit, he thinks, I must be really wasted not to remember that. Pulling the phone from his pocket, he checks the screen, thinks about shutting it down then realises it’s too late. Since it didn’t go to voicemail immediately, Gav will know it’s switched on and powered up.

  What’s up now? Either Gav is pissed and feeling insecure again or he’s just had a horrendous time with his sister in Exeter and is keen to vent. Whichever, Dex really doesn’t want to deal with it. He struggles to relate to Gav when he’s being needy. Besides which, it’s too noisy for a phone conversation here and he doesn’t want to leave his place in the queue. He slips his phone back into his pocket and becomes aware that the cute guy hasn’t stopped looking at him. His eyes flit toward his admirer who returns the look, raises a finger in the air and swipes right. Dex’s groin twinges. Why not have some fun while he can? He winks at his admirer then remembers why he’s at the festival in the first place. Cassie’s birthday. Everyone expecting him to buy a round. The guy is just a guy but – Gav would hate him saying this – the Group is his life.

  He returns to staring ahead, doing his best to blank his admirer, but the guy is remarkably persistent. From the corner of his eye Dex can seeing him smiling and winking. But no. With what he hopes is a regretful smile, he turns to face the guy and with his finger in the air swipes left. The guy raises his middle finger in an unmistakable gesture and in that moment the phone buzzes again. This time, Dex decides, it’s a well-timed distraction, the perfect excuse to leave the queue and the now hostile ex-admirer behind.

  ‘Hey, babe, ’s’up?’ he says, finding a relatively quiet spot round the back of the beer tent.

  ‘Babe?’ Gav doesn’t sound panicked or even drunk. It’s not a happy voice though. Definitely not that.

  ‘You back home?’ Dex asks, checking the time on his phone, and thinks, shit, Gav’s just going to bed and he’s found something of Fabien’s in their bedroom. Please God, don’t let it be a condom. Anything else, Dex reckons, can be finessed, but there’s really no smoothing over a rubber bag of someone else’s junk juice when the rule – pretty much the only rule he’s expected to follow – is that he doesn’t bring other guys into their home.

  ‘Did you take the money in the console table drawer?’

  ‘What? No!’ With a jolt to the brain he remembers he has actually dipped in to the roll in the drawer. Maybe a grand or two’s worth, but not all of it. Not even half. A small loan. Anyway, whatever. They’re married. It’s all their money, isn’t it? He stops in his tracks, takes a deep breath and tries to think through the fog in his brain.

  ‘Why, is it gone?’ he says, stalling for time. Dex fishes in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and failing to find one, jams his hand in his pocket.

  ‘Yeah, the whole lot.’

  ‘Everything?’ Doesn’t he remember seeing what remained of the cash roll in the drawer when he went for the keys to let in the pizza delivery woman? And why is Gav checking now?

  ‘Anyone been in the house while I’ve been away?’

  ‘No,’ he lies. A possible get-out clause comes to his mind, which he feels bad about but not bad enough to stop himself. ‘Well, obviously, there’s Sandra.’

  No response. Evidently Gav doesn’t believe the cleaner is the thief. Obviously Dex doesn’t believe it. Sandra has been with them for years and in all that time has shown herself to be completely trustworthy. Something terrible would have had to have happened for her to have resorted to thieving and if it had, Dex and Gav would have been the first to have found out about it. So who did take the money? Dex’s mind works back to the encounter with Fabien. He recalls coming down the stairs and going to answer the door, then remembering that he’d locked it and asking the pizza delivery woman to wait. He went back to the console table, opened the drawer and took out the house key. He distinctly remembers the slight, dark woman in the porch. After that it’s less clear. He’s pretty sure Fabien called him about finding a towel in the bathroom. Did he ask the pizza delivery woman to wait a moment for her money while he went upstairs and dealt with his date? Did he close the console table drawer? He can’t recall. What he does remember is the irritation he felt at the sound of Fabien’s voice. In any case, he must have turned his back for a moment or two. Long enough for the pizza delivery woman to have taken the cash? Or had Fabien grabbed it on his way down from the bathroom? Didn’t Dex open the drawer again when he let Fabien out of the house? Or was the door still unlocked from the pizza delivery? What if he just tells Gav he got a takeaway pizza? But no, because then Gav will want to investigate the delivery woman and it’ll come out that he actually bought two pizzas. And anyway, Gav might check on the CCTV and see the pizzas being delivered. Worse still, he
might see Fabien’s departure. Dex is kicking himself for not having access to the CCTV camera. That’s always been Gav’s department.

  He feels himself stumble a little and his head begins to swim. He’s too drunk to be having this conversation right now.

  ‘Let’s sort it in the morning, sweetheart,’ he says.

  There’s a pause. Gav’s not going to be deflected that easily.

  ‘If you took it, you need to tell me right now, Dex.’

  Gav’s hectoring, faintly parental tone really gets up Dex’s nose. He’s using it more and more even though Dex has told him how much he dislikes it. He only skimmed a few hundred pounds off the roll here and there because he assumed Gav had forgotten it. He’s become very flaky over the past few months.

  ‘How long has it been since you checked it?’ he ventures. He knows Gav can’t have looked at the money in a while because, if he had, he would have noticed that it wasn’t all there.

  ‘I haven’t spent it, if that’s what you’re suggesting,’ Gav says, irritably.

  Some music starts up nearby. Dex doesn’t want to be in this situation, being snapped at on the phone in the middle of the night when he should be enjoying himself.

  His finger hovers over his phone screen.

  ‘Sorry, hon, it’s just too noisy here, talk tomorrow,’ he says, tapping the red phone icon and dropping the phone back in his pocket.

  A wave of relief crashes over him. He takes a deep breath and tries to get his vibe back on, but it doesn’t quite work. Damn, Gav has spoiled his night. What I need right now is a jaegerbomb, or a jelly shot, take the edge off, he thinks. He looks about, spots a bar tent and makes his way towards it, diving around groups of extravagantly costumed revellers and sparkly girls in couples. He wonders why he takes part in hook-up culture, really. It’s actually not about the sex. He’s always had a low libido. Could it be that he’s still rebelling against his dad? Shit, that would be sad, but not beyond the realms of possibility. He had hoped he was out on the other side of all of that now. God knows he’d tried to conform. That whole period with Cassie, playing the happy straight guy, telling himself that the circle jerks and mutual masturbation seshes at boarding school were just growing up stuff. If only his parents hadn’t been such bigots he could have avoided all of that. Saved him – and Cassie – a lot of heartache. He thinks about them with hatred, the way they tried to shoehorn him into living exactly the same dreary, conventional, brain-dead life in the suburbs that they themselves were leading. He thinks, who does that to their kid? No wonder he doesn’t see them any more. No wonder he rebelled.

  A drunk guy crashes into him and slaloms away. Something about it sets him off. He suddenly feels quite murderous. Mate, calm down, he says to himself. Get yourself a shot, feel better, go back to the others, dance, have fun. He’s approaching the bar tent when he sees her. At first he’s not sure. She’s wearing a red outfit now. Before, she was in cycle gear. But the closer he gets, the surer he becomes that the figure standing unsteadily beside the chill-out tent, smoking a cigarette, is the pizza delivery girl.

  12

  Cassie

  8.00 a.m., Friday 30 September, Isle of Portland

  Tapping the words ‘Marika’ and ‘Lapska’ and then the word ‘Thames’ into Google brings up links to two articles in the Standard and a small mention in the Southwark Sentinel. The first article is dated 17 August, two days after Marika Lapska’s body was dragged out of the river. There’s nothing in it I don’t already know. At that stage the police would not be drawn as to whether this was a suspected suicide or the result of foul play. They say they’re making further enquiries. It must be these enquiries which led to the call for witnesses in the second article. There’s no mention in either piece of evidence of rape or sexual assault or of drugs or alcohol. The piece in the Southwark Sentinel fleshes out the bones a little. It notes that you were twenty-four years old, Marika, and that you lived on the North Peckham Estate. It says you arrived in London from Lithuania three years ago. Lithuania. I’ve ever been there or know very much about, though from somewhere in the great heap of geekery in my mind I’m able to pick out Vilnius as the capital. My fingers peck at letters on the screen. Lithuania. The Wikipedia entry starts:

  Officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in the Baltic region of northern-eastern Europe. One of the three Baltic states, it is situated along the south-eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden and Denmark. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Kaliningrad Oblast (a Russian exclave) to the south-west. Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.8 million people, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. Lithuanians are a Baltic people. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.

  The article in the Sentinel goes on to note that for the last year you worked for a food delivery company – it doesn’t specify which one – and that your family back home have been informed of your death. I can barely bring myself to imagine how that conversation went. Parents do not expect their healthy twenty-four-year-old daughters to die.

  But none of that tells me anything about how you lived. Did you come to London drawn to adventure or the prospect of a better life? In the three years you were in the city did you get what you wanted? What did you want, I wonder? Either way, you paid a huge price for the move.

  Tapping the name into Google only brings up those three short articles. No social media accounts or tagged photographs in your name. Is that in itself a clue?

  I read somewhere that a body turns up every week in the Thames and if every one of the drowned appeared in the news there would be stories all the time. All the same, it hardly seems possible that a young woman can exit this twenty-first-century world without leaving any virtual ghost of her former self. Yet it seems that’s what happened to you, Marika Lapska.

  None of us slept well last night. I heard doors open and close and the sound of the loo flushing at all hours. The owl kept me awake too. And the rush of the sea on the shingle. And the spirit of restlessness in the cottage. But mostly the owl. Even with earplugs jammed deep into my ears I was unable to shut it out completely. On and on it went.

  If I tapped owl into Google right now, I’d no doubt be told that the owl is associated with wisdom and with death. I already know that. Twit twoo, what did you do?

  Let’s just establish what we did or didn’t do, shall we, owl? Then perhaps you won’t have to keep asking. We did nothing to help you. Nada, zip, nowt.

  Are we clear now, owl?

  Because another thing I already know is that the owl is you, Marika. Maybe not literally, or even spiritually. Maybe not in the sense that you inhabit the owl or that you and the owl are one. But in some other way which doesn’t require definition.

  Revenant. That’s Bo’s word.

  So why don’t you tell us what happened? Tell us what was going on in the alley that night? Were you drugged then raped by someone you knew or by a stranger? It’s usually someone the woman knows, isn’t it? Someone she trusts or someone she does not trust but cannot get away from. We could have got you away from him, Marika, couldn’t we? If we’d tried. Did you see us, looking on, doing nothing? Was the shame of having your rape witnessed very terrible? Do you hate us for it? Do you blame us as much as you blame your attacker? What happened after we ran away, leaving you slumped in the alley, Marika? Did you come to yourself and stumble from the churchyard to the river’s edge? Did you throw yourself into the water? Or did your attacker put you there?

  Let me tell you something, Marika. I don’t expect forgiveness but it might help you to understand. The window in my room in the flat I share (and which, I’m guessing, isn’t so different from the flat you probably shared), gives out over Tottenham bus station. I can spend hours, sometimes whole weekends, staring out of that window, witnessing the pull and drift of lives I kno
w nothing about. In the couple of years I’ve lived there, I’ve seen acts of extraordinary kindness – an elderly woman giving money to a junkie, a man stopping a bus with his hand to allow a handicapped person to board, a teen holding back a stranger’s hair while she is sick. And I’ve seen acts of terrible brutality. A teen stabbing another, a gang setting on a drag queen, a homeless guy beating his dog. In the city a stranger is always looking. And at Tottenham bus station that stranger is very often me.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve never once intervened, never spoken up or called out, never phoned the police or posted anything on social media. Never done anything, in fact. I’ve watched my own life go by as if through that window too. I’m someone who doesn’t intervene. Someone passive. A person psychologists would call the ultimate bystander. In general I drift from one thing to another. I let things happen. I do not fight for anything and I do not fight against anything. I’m just someone who floats along in the current and tries not to feel much. It’s easier that way. It’s also probably why I have reached the age I am without making many friends or much money or any real progress in life. I’m a keeper of secrets, an introvert, or, as a therapist once informed me, I have the classic profile of a child of alcoholic parents. A gift for tying myself up in knots in order to ignore their hidden surfaces. Expert at turning a blind eye.

  The one time I might have intervened, in the churchyard, what I’d done earlier that evening meant I couldn’t get involved. Couldn’t call the police. Couldn’t do anything.

  Or perhaps not couldn’t, exactly. More like chose not to.

  As I lay sleepless in bed at the top of the house, I felt the presence of the Group below me but, far from being comforting, their restless energy felt like a hand pressing on my heart. I’ve been ignoring what I saw in the churchyard for weeks and most of me wants it to stay that way, but the Standard article has made that a whole lot harder. Until I read it just now, there were only a few observations and a few facts about what happened that night. Now there are the same number of observations but many more facts. I have always gathered facts, and among the facts now apparent is your name, Marika Lapska. Another fact is that Dex was captured on CCTV at the festival talking to a woman who was most probably you earlier the same evening. Which is why police have questioned Dex about the incident. But the most important new fact is that you died that night in as yet unknown circumstances and that your body was pulled out of the Thames. Did you drown, Marika? What does that feel like? I wonder. Is there only panic or also pain? What happens to the brain in the instant the water first enters the lungs? How do the lungs fill? Gradually or in one great rush? Does the chest compress, the diaphragm billow and protest? What do the eyes see as they dim back into the darkness?