The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  ‘But Julie . . .’

  ‘You have to go down to the police station and tell them you know for certain Dex was here last night.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell them?’

  She shakes her head. ‘This is your problem. You took that money from the woman at the festival and that was why she couldn’t get a cab. If you hadn’t taken her money she would have gone home and she’d probably still be alive.’

  ‘You refused to help her out!’ I sound like a petulant kid and I hate myself for it.

  ‘You know, I really do think you have a screw loose sometimes. I’ve always thought it. Who goes to a festival with that kind of money in their purse? You think it was some giant coincidence that Gav loses three grand and it turns up in her purse and then in yours? Where do you think she got the money from? She took it from their house. Gav got home early. He went to the drawer and saw it was missing. He texted Dex to ask if he knew where the money was. Marika had delivered a pizza to the house. Dex saw her at the festival earlier in the evening and she was odd with him. So he went looking for her. He confronted her, but she denied it and Dex didn’t find any money on her because you took it.’

  ‘He told the police he didn’t know Marika.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Cassie. What happened to your brain? Why do you think Dex tried to pass it off on Gav’s poor memory? That’s what they were fighting about when you arrived. Dex had tried to persuade Gav that he’d spent the money and just forgotten about it but Gav was insisting the cleaner must have taken it and was threatening to sack her. Dex felt bad.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just say it must have been the pizza delivery woman?’

  ‘He didn’t want Gav or the cops to check the home CCTV because that bloke he hooked up with, the French one or whatever, came round to the house.’ She flops onto the sofa, defeated, and putting her head in her hands, begins to sob. ‘Oh God, this is all such a mess.’

  ‘I’ll give him the money back.’ She shakes her head, sadly, and in her eyes is all the sorrow of years spent in the desperate striving for unachievable order. ‘The money is so beside the point for Dex now.’ She stops and, cocking her head, as if the thought had only just occurred to her, says, ‘Your friend the policewoman would be very interested to hear about that, though. You know, if someone told her.’

  37

  Cassie

  Afternoon, Sunday 2 October, Isle of Portland

  The police constable guarding the Port gate can’t or won’t tell me when PC Julie Blythe is back on shift and once it is established that the information I wish to give isn’t port business, loses interest, suggesting I head over the spit into Weymouth and report whatever it is I have to say to the police station there. The news that I’d rather wait for PC Blythe is met with a thin-lipped acknowledgement. The constable waves me inside and points me in the direction of the front office where I repeat my request over again and am instructed to wait until someone can see me. Which takes an hour during which time there’s no sign of Julie. Eventually a woman in a wraparound dress bustles by, stops, walks back a couple of paces and says, ‘Cassandra Levitt?’

  We shake hands and the woman introduces herself as DC Kathy Taylor from the Weymouth station. Forties. Rotund in a welcoming way and with a calm reassuring manner. Routine. She swipes me through a set of swinging doors then swipes me again into a side office and offers me a seat in a grey plastic chair beside a Formica table, waits for me to take it before commanding the seat opposite, sweeping her dress flat underneath her as she goes. Opens a reporter’s notebook. Plays see-saw with a pen between the fingers of her right hand.

  ‘So? What’s brought you here today?’ Done this a thousand times. Ready for anything.

  ‘You’ve got my friend, Dexter Walbrook, in for questioning.’

  Her face remains inexpressive. She says nothing and waits for me to go on.

  ‘We’re renting the cottage just off the path up above Fortuneswell. Fossil Cottage?’

  ‘Yes. It’s pretty up there, isn’t it? Lovely view over Chesil,’ she says, in an effort to put me at my ease. ‘You asked to speak to my colleague, PC Blythe.’

  ‘She came to see us at the cottage.’ I tell DC Taylor how Julie and I met, leaving out the connection to Will. She listens politely but I can tell from her glazed expression that it’s something she already knows. ‘I wanted to come in because I know Dex wasn’t involved.’

  ‘I see.’

  I tell her about the lead-up to the evening, how I wasn’t with the others when they had a drink in The Quarryman, how they left just after midnight and walked back up the path together and how, when I came in a bit later, everyone was in bed asleep. How I’d had a bit to drink and crashed out on the sofa in the living room.

  ‘So you checked on your friends in their bedrooms before you went to sleep on the sofa?’

  ‘Well, not exactly, but you can sense it if there’s people asleep in a house, can’t you?’

  ‘But you didn’t check.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘So you don’t actually know if they were all in their rooms?’

  So far this conversation isn’t getting either of us any further on than our discussion with Julie. It’s time for the new information, a modified version of the truth.

  ‘Actually, I do.’

  She looks up from her pad, interested now. In the modified version of the truth I wake to the sound of someone trying to get in through the French windows. I scream and then Dex comes down and the rest follows on from what really happened. More or less. I do not mention that the intruder came into the house because it will make the initial lie seem larger and I want DC Taylor to think I am capable of telling the truth. When I’m done talking DC Taylor repeats the story back to me.

  ‘Is that it?’ she says, finally. She folds her hands over the desk and interlinks the fingers. Dresses her face in a bland, non-committal smile. ‘Can you tell me why you didn’t say anything about this man to PC Blythe?’

  ‘We’re only here for the weekend. We didn’t want to get sucked into anything.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So, can you tell me when you’ll be letting Dex leave? Now that I can vouch for him?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, but you’ve been very helpful, thank you,’ she says, rising to leave. The same gesture with the arm, this time in the direction of the door.

  ‘There’s something else . . .’

  DC Taylor looks at me for a moment, unblinking, and as if frozen. Then the corners of her mouth lift and she sets her shoulders back and she approaches the table once more.

  A line must be drawn and the burden of drawing it has fallen to me. I should have done it before, but I didn’t. Start at the beginning and leave nothing out. Let’s get this over as quickly and clearly as possible. If I’m the one who has to kill the beast, if it falls to me to twist the knife, then at least be sure the blade is razor sharp.

  So I begin with the money and what Dex was doing talking to Marika, then what happened at the churchyard and how all of us witnessed the attack. And how we did nothing. It takes longer than I had imagined it would. I leave out a few details. No need to mention the drugs in Bo’s daypack or the Big Black Book or Lucy with the pink hair or the fact that the only one of the Group I did not see that night after we left the Crab Shack was Bo. Anna is right. I do owe Dex. And I owe Marika. And in an indirect way I owe Rachel, though I’m not ready to tell that part now. There is a story to tell and it is lively in me but not all of it is yet clear. I could have prevented some of this. I could have made the difference, but I put love, or what I thought was love, on a higher plane than truth. That was my big mistake, and it wasn’t just a bad call. It was a moral error. And so I will tell. I’ll tell the whole thing, because it is time for all of this to stop.

  38

  Cassie

  Early evening, Sunday 2 October, Isle of Portland

  Two hours after I left Fossil Cottage to go down to the Port police, I’m back, standing in the porch
, beside the Mer-Chicken, waiting for Anna to let me in. All around, the falcons are rising and the ravens are attacking them but the Mer-Chicken is as still as a stone. A harbinger of death, Bo says. What if that death is my own? I have kept an ammonite under my pillow and dreamed of my future and now I am afraid but I am also ready. There was a time, before Wapping, when I would have given my life for the Group. There may come a time when I might still have to. Anna, Bo and Dex are not my future. I know that now. Already Anna has said she wants nothing to do with me. The others will fall into line, just as they always have. I’ve become a snitch, a tattle-tale, a gossip. I’ve kicked love and loyalty in the teeth and set myself on another path. I have irrevocably broken the bonds of friendship. I have turned my back on the only family I have.

  ‘So? Did you tell them?’ Anna is standing on the threshold, knuckles straining, gripping the jamb and blocking the entrance. Her eyes are wilder than I’ve ever seen them and she’s rolling her bottom lip over her front teeth. A tiny bead of blood rises to the surface. There’s something panicky in her voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything they needed to know.’

  ‘So what did they say?’ A test question. If I pass, I will be allowed back into the cottage. If I fail, the door will slam in my face and that will be the last I will ever see of Anna.

  ‘They said thank you and they’d consider it.’

  She closes her eyes for an instant, pressing her fingertips against the lids in an attempt to relieve some inner turmoil. My response is not what she hoped for but as much as she knew she could expect. Gradually, the little pulse ticking in her clavicle slows. Collecting herself, she flashes a brief, unlovely smile, and in a brusque manner says, ‘Yes, fine, come in.’

  And I’m back, readmitted to the inner sanctum of the Group. Look how well I’ve done. What I’ve achieved.

  If only Anna knew.

  We walk down the passageway and into the living room. How could we ever have found Fossil Cottage anything but bleak?

  Anna sits in the armchair by the unlit wood stove, limbs restless, hands working. Before her on the table is a half empty cafetière and a mug. It’s time to tell the truth, to come clean, to say everything I know and take the consequences.

  ‘We need to find Bo, Anna.’

  Anna whips round, her legs now pointed straight at me, like javelins.

  ‘You’re sounding hysterical.’

  ‘Let’s stop pretending. Bo deleted the Big Black Book because he’s drugging those women. He drugged Rachel, I think he probably drugged Marika and he may even have drugged me. We need to find him, or he’ll do it again.’

  ‘Do what? Where is all this coming from?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think you do.’

  I slide my fingers around the back of the sofa cushion where I’d pushed the pills, but nothing comes up. I’m standing now, with my back to Anna, peeling away the cushions, scrambling for the evidence. Suddenly, Anna’s hands are on me. She is trembling but her grip is firm enough to spin me around and force me back into the seat. She’s crouching beside me, her eyes lit with some terrible, gorgon energy, her hands clutching my shoulders, shaking me so violently I am afraid of her.

  ‘Cassie, look at me!’

  Despite myself, I do. Because she’s Anna and because I still love her. ‘Even if you’re right, those women willingly hooked up with Bo. They knew what they were getting into.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘Everyone has their dark place, Cassie, including you. You think those women were so innocent? They swiped right for a casual hook-up with a cute guy they’d never met. Those women wanted to feel lost. They wanted to be annihilated, wiped out by the act of sex. It was part of the fantasy.’ Her fingers are drumming on her forehead like a blackbird summoning worms to the surface. ‘There’s no accounting for how dark sex can be. Anyway, if what Bo did was that bad, why did no one go to the police and complain?’

  ‘Christ, Anna, this isn’t sex. I don’t know what this is. What Bo did was so bad precisely because he made sure no one was able to complain.’

  We meet each other’s eye and in that small instant a world of truth passes between us.

  Suddenly, it’s clear. All of it. Anna holding me back that night in the alleyway. Anna convincing Dex not to go to the police after the break-in. Anna always there, making sure that none of us knew too much or let anything of what we did know slip. Her debt to Bo, her love for him the shield she held around him.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends what you mean by “known”.’

  For someone like Anna there is always a swerve, some charming euphemism or get-out clause. It’s how women like Anna are raised. Honesty would crack the glossy veneer. Then God knows what might come seeping out.

  ‘I saw you both down by the path. I saw you hit him.’

  ‘Oh.’ For a moment she seems flustered. Then she reaches out a hand and strokes my face. ‘Darling Cassie, you always were so much nicer than me. You were so free of all that snobbery and bullshit the rest of us grew up with. You were the fresh beginning we were looking for. But over the last fifteen years we’ve grown up and you haven’t.’ I push the hand away. Anna steps back. Her voice is frosty now. ‘All those principles you drag around behind you, all that virtue signalling. It’s so childish. It’s unattractive.’

  ‘I’m going up to the car park to get a phone signal. Then I’m going to call Bo and tell him to come back. We can go to the police together, but we’re going to the police.’

  ‘He won’t answer. He won’t come. You’ll never convince Bo he’s done anything wrong. God knows I’ve tried.’

  ‘They’ll find out.’

  ‘What will they find out exactly, Cassie? Whatever you told them, it’s not proof of anything. None of those women would be able to identify Bo. It would all just be vague guesses and incoherent impressions. He’s good, Cassie, he’s careful. He knows exactly what he’s doing.’

  ‘There’s bound to be CCTV somewhere.’

  ‘So what if there is? That’s evidence of nothing. Besides which, I am absolutely sure he didn’t have anything to do with the attack last night.’ There’s a pause while a memory surfaces. ‘That walk we took through the pebbles on Chesil Beach? You remember how the pebbles moved to cover our tracks? Bo is the expert at leaving no trace. Bo’s profile on the apps he’s used, the Big Black Book, it’ll all be gone, erased. I’ll bet he’s already home cleaning up his hard drive or whatever it is you have to do. It’s best this way. The police will soon realise Dex didn’t have anything to do with what happened last night and we can go back to being us.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

  She blinks, surprised by my tone and in a delicate sweep of her hands, pulls away and moves to the other side of the room. With her back to me, in a chilly voice, she says, ‘Stop trying to fix what you did, Cassie. What you didn’t do.’

  As she’s speaking I can feel her words drifting away. They say that regret dries up the soul. What they don’t say is that the soul can drown in it.

  ‘I can’t just leave this, Anna. I’m calling Bo. We’re going to confront him.’

  ‘The truth matters, of course it does, but you people, the Group, Bo, are the only truth I know. You should know by now, Cassie, that I will protect all of you. I will say and do whatever’s necessary.’

  I’ve heard enough. ‘Stop, Anna, just stop.’ And for a moment she does. Then her head snaps up and her hair tumbles around her shoulders. She’s laughing now in tiny, bitter peals. This is even more confusing.

  ‘Oh Cassie, you really don’t understand, do you? You’re putting yourself in a great deal of danger.’

  39

  Cassie

  Early evening, Sunday 2 October, Isle of Portland.

  I’m on the road leading from Fossil Cottage up the hill to the quarry and the cliffs, one eye on the way ahead, the other on my phone’s recept
ion bars. Bringing up the rear a few paces behind me is Anna. She’s calling my name but I’m not listening. I’m driven by some internal energy, possessed by terrible thoughts. I want Bo to tell me that none of them are true. I want him to say that when it comes to sex, women lie. We make things up. We’re confused. We wilfully misinterpret, we say ‘yes’ when we mean ‘I don’t know’. I want him to say that we are strangers to our sexual selves and so we let things happen to us that only afterwards feel wrong, that the woman with the pink hair did not wake up because she was a drug addict on a bender, that Rachel smoked too much weed. I want him to tell me that and that the hours before and after the fall from the horse are hazy because I was ill. I want to be able to disregard all of that and tell myself another story even though I know that story will be a lie.

  Marika has been trying to tell me the truth all along. And I haven’t been listening.

  The sun is low and red. The falcons are out hunting. Soon the last of the day-trippers will drive back along the spit to the mainland and the Mer-Chicken and the Green Man and the Black Dog and the sprites and imps and goblins in the quarries will begin to stir and stretch their limbs. Soon the young offenders in the YOI on the cliff top will be released from lock-down and the refugees locked in the Citadel will be returning from their evening meal to their cells. Will is due to start serving the Sunday evening crowd at The Mermaid and Julie will be going on shift again at the Port Police. Soon the police will come to understand that Dex had nothing to do with the attack last night and let him go.

  Now is the time to look forward not back. Behind me come Anna’s footsteps and the sound of her breath quickening. For a long time I thought this story was about Marika but I’m now realising how much of it is about Anna. Spoiled, sad, dangerous Anna. The woman who had everything except the one thing she most wanted: for the father of her child to love her as he did when we were young. I have waited too long for Anna but that’s over now. It is time to leave Anna behind. Time, finally, to let go.