The Fall by Claire McGowan Page A

windows but the yellow police tape was gone. Were they opening again, then, this place where so many lives had been ruined? The back of a restaurant, flats up above with people’s plants and posters; a dry-cleaner’s. Not much to the street where Anthony Johnson had breathed his last, choking on his own blood.
    It was hard to believe this was the same place where Hegarty had come across that scene of horror, the blood spreading over the floor under the fluorescent light, realising he was standing in it and that it was all over his shoes, the dull shine drying in sticky pools. He noticed the yellow sign on the dry-cleaner’s opposite – CCTV in operation here – and he tried to remember if they’d requested it. Surely they would have? How long did it take?
    He pushed in, noting the flutter of an old bit of police tape. ‘The boss here?’ he called. Anthony Johnson’s brother was back, apparently, and had taken over the place.
    The skinny black guy behind the counter squared up to him. ‘You the police again? You not catch the guy who did it?’
    ‘Is he here, please? Ronald Johnson – he’s in charge now?’
    The man was slowly polishing a glass. ‘Sorry. He’s out.’
    ‘Really?’
    He shrugged. ‘Not here.’
    ‘Right. Can you ask him to ring me, please?’ Hegarty placed his card on the bar, in a puddle of beer.
    ‘I’ll ask,’ the man said, but it was clear from his tone that Hegarty shouldn’t expect a call anytime soon.
    On his way out Hegarty paused and saw someone open the back office door and peer out, a tall black man. The door quickly shut again and the guy at the counter said loudly, ‘See ya, Officer.’
    So Ronald Johnson didn’t want to talk to the police who were trying to find his brother’s killer. Interesting.
    Checking no one was around, Hegarty walked along the wall of the club, the windows blind with shutters. By the side of it was a small alley, easy to miss, blocked up with bins. He slipped into it. It was only a few metres long, and so narrow he couldn’t hold his arms out wide in it, but there, set in the brick wall, was the outline of a metal door. Alarm in use , it warned. He looked at it for a long time, wondering, and then turned to walk to his home in Kentish Town.
Keisha
    She didn’t know what she was doing.
    She was on her old street, walking towards what was still partly her flat. She paid the bloody rent, didn’t she? But when she passed the burger shop and turned into the concrete building, after that she had no clue. Maybe he’d be at home. Of course she wouldn’t go in if he was there – would she?
    The last time they met he’d beaten her up, yes. She knew that. She wasn’t one of these stupid women they always had on episodes of The Bill , and they’re all like, ‘oh no, I walked into a door’. He’d hit her. Yes. But it wasn’t that bad. She didn’t need to go to hospital or anything. They’d just got pissed off with each other – who didn’t? Sometimes she’d have liked to slap him round the face, too.
    What was she doing? There was no sound in the concrete stairwell, so maybe he wasn’t home. Unless he was asleep. She’d just go in and get her clothes, look for more cash, eat something – it was her fucking stuff, after all. Then she’d go – somewhere. Do something. Deffo.
    She reached her door, or her old door, feeling like a burglar. She breathed in all the air she could get, cold and smoke-smelling on the draughty stairs, and she knocked. If you pressed your ear up to the door you’d hardly have heard it, so no surprise no one came. She knocked a little bit louder: nothing.
    She reached up on her tiptoes and felt along the dusty doorsill for the key she’d stuck up there. After Ruby got taken away, Keisha’d had a run of losing hers when she went out, pissed, trying to forget. But the key wouldn’t go in. She was just standing there like a retard, pushing at the door. He’d fucking changed the locks. She was so shocked by this