by Ese McGowan
‘So no, as I’m sure you’re going to ask me, I didn’t think about Erin much and what I forgot to mention was that we only locked the door for all of fifteen minutes max and she’ll make out like it was days. She lies all the time. You’ll get used to it.’
‘Do you lie Adam?’ asks Miriam.
His voice quivers, gets a little hoarse. ‘Sorry, what do you mean?’
‘Your friend Andreas and some other neighbours have evidenced that you were having an affair with Alicia long before she moved in next door.’
‘That’s bollocks,’ he shouts as if Miriam’s comments are audacious.
They aren’t. Everyone saw all the women you slept with when I wasn’t around. Should’ve pushed you off the roof top. If I pushed anyone of course.
‘Adam, I have something else I need to take care of. I will call you back later. Will you be at home all day?’
‘Er, mostly. I have to go out to pick something up later but I’m not sure when.’
‘Something or someone?’ asks Miriam.
Oh God, I think she’s inferring he’ll collect Alicia from her parents and I think she’s right. I don’t want her in my house.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Shit there’s someone at the door. I’ll talk to you later,’ and he ends the call.
Yes, it’s definitely to do with Alicia.
16
Jason Bartlett, Number 17, Shakespeare Street. Not another neighbour?
‘Our family back onto their houses, the street behind,’ he tells Miriam. ‘You get a clear view of their kitchens from upstairs. I didn’t see Erin that day. But that isn’t unusual. She’s a little like a phantom, there sometimes and then she disappears. Whether she goes out or not I don’t know really. Anyway some kids turned up. Whether they were relatives or their kids, Alicia and Joel’s, I don’t know. I guess they must have been.
‘The whole thing was weird. Adam was having what looked to be a strange chat in the garden with Joel. I wasn’t sure if they were arguing or not. And I want to say, before I forget to say this that those two had known each other for a long time. And I’m certain of that. He’ll pretend that’s not true, given what happened but it is. I’m not the only one who thought that.’
‘Which two, Adam and Joel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ok, carry on.’
‘Where was I?’
‘The wall,’ aides Miriam.
‘Right. Yes. Adam was doing something to the wall. It looked like he was trying to knock it down but that didn’t make any sense. Joel was standing over him. There was a definite tension between them, you could feel it, see it.
‘My wife is convinced she saw them together having sex in the kitchen the night of the party. We didn’t go by the way. We weren’t invited. Oh I mean Adam and Alicia not Adam and Joel although I’m pretty sure that happened too. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.’
‘Alicia Mason mentioned your names as people who did go to her house for the party,’ advises Miriam.
‘Yeah, that’s so not true. We definitely didn’t go to the party. There were a few of them, didn’t anyone say? We went over there but that was only to tell them to pack it up and stop the noise. But there was more than one party,’ continues Jason.
‘Yes, that has been mentioned by a couple of witnesses now,’ confirms Miriam.
‘Yes, the last was on the night Joel fell off the roof and then two days before, on the Wednesday night and maybe Sunday night, I can’t remember exactly.’
‘And you went to the last one?’ asked Miriam.
‘No, not exactly. As I said, we went round there to plead with them to stop and if she tells it any other way, she’s a liar. I had a row with Adam about it. He can’t control his temper. He likes to give the impression he’s laid back but he isn’t.
‘And Joel and Alicia, we knew of them, everyone did, but we didn’t know them. They were all very loud, the whole lot of them, Alicia and Joel, and Adam and Erin. Erin was screaming at one point. You couldn’t see her but she was screaming.’
‘How do you know it was Erin screaming and not someone else?’
‘We hear her scream a lot. I think Adam gives her a bit of a kicking from time to time. It was definitely Erin.’
‘Did it sound like the screaming was coming from the roof?’
‘No definitely not. It was inside the house. Not outside and I’m sure of that. My wife was anxious that what they were doing was wrong, selfish. She said there’d be an outbreak of coronavirus in the street after what they all did and then she was horrified when those kids turned up. Super spreaders we call them.’
‘Did you see the children on the night of the last party?’ asked Miriam.
‘I saw some kids being taken across the road, some woman was with them, Dana or something, but I don’t know if they were Alicia’s kids. I can’t say for sure.
‘And I’ve no idea what happened to Erin. We saw her climb over the wall from Joel’s garden, sometime around midnight, then I went to bed but the loud music kept my wife, Abi, awake. She said she was watching from the window, our bedroom window out the back and she swears she saw Alicia and Adam, Erin’s boyfriend having sex on the kitchen table.’
‘Which party was this? Which night?’ enquires Miriam.
‘They did that both nights but I’m talking about last night, when Joel died.
‘Did you see Joel fall from the roof or see anyone in the garden at the time?’
‘No, by that time we had both put ear plugs in and closed the windows. We weren’t asleep, we still couldn’t sleep because of the loud base but it dampened the noise.’
‘You didn’t hear a thud, tiles crashing to the ground?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just the bass. You know my wife gets very stressed and has slept barely at all since the outbreak. It terrifies her but she does get confused sometimes with everything. I said to her that she probably saw either Erin and Adam having sex or Joel and Alicia but she swears blind it was the blonde woman with the tall man, with the big nose and jet-black hair in Erin’s kitchen having sex. The big nose, that had to be Adam. And whether Erin knew what they were doing in there or not, if she found them or not, is quite horrifying to think of and if that’s why she climbed back over the wall I don’t know but we haven’t seen her since and we didn’t see her do anything.’
‘Hang on,’ interrupts Miriam. ‘So you see Erin climb over the wall from Joel’s garden at around midnight?
‘Yes.’
‘You see her go into her house?’
‘No.’
‘And then you see her climb back over the wall into Joel and Alicia’s garden later, in the early hours?’
‘Well Abi thinks it was her. It was dark. It could have been anyone I suppose. I think she must have left the party in the early hours though. Apparently, we heard that she and Adam split up over this Alicia woman, maybe because she did actually catch them at it and left but Abi said no one was rowing, not that she definitely saw or heard anything clearly over the loud music. Who knows? But we haven’t seen Erin since.
‘I don’t think Joel could have known what they were up to or maybe he suspected something because, if you remember I said him and Adam were in the backyard for what seemed like ages talking or rather staring and not much talking and I was so enthralled by it all. I thought they were going to start punching each other, fighting over Alicia.
‘I don’t know,’ he pauses. ‘All this isolation stuff sends you mad doesn’t it? I question my wife over what’s reality and what she thinks she sees and now I find myself doing the same. I can’t say anything for sure. Only that two kids turned up. Was it one of them that got run over?’
‘No.’
‘Well, anyway, there was tension between Adam and Joel definitely and maybe he has something to do with Joel falling off the roof. They were sparring for a fight. Anyone could see that.’
‘OK, thanks Mr Bartlett. If you or your wife recall anything else would you please get back in touch?’
It seems, suggests Miriam to her officer, that Adam and Alicia may have repeated the behaviour of their sexual encounter in Erin’s kitchen precisely to confuse any witness and to dispute Erin’s story, whatever they think she might have reported. Whatever has happened here, it has been contrived to look like anything else but Adam and Alicia’s fault.
She definitely thinks I’m already in the cell. Some idiot will get a lynching for not moving me.
17
Mabel.
‘She said they took her phone from her? Well that isn’t true. She called me.’
‘From her mobile?’
‘Yes from her mobile!’ exclaims Mabel, like there is no other telephone I have access to. Did she check the number and write down exactly when I called to the second?
‘Do you remember what night or day she did so?’
Well?
‘Well not exactly.’
Thought so.
‘But she had her phone. No one took her phone. She must have forgotten that lie,’ stutters Mabel, lies Mabel.
‘And you have your call list that we can check to see which day that was?’ asks Miriam.
‘Er, yeah, wait— actually I deleted my history this morning, er, when I updated the phone. It does that for some reason, does yours?’
Nope.
‘No.’ An awkward pause ensues. Mabel’s face will be contorted and red. She loathes being caught in a lie. She thinks she’s good at them. She has an arrogance that has no learning curve. Ever.
‘Yeah, about that phone call, she said they had locked her in, the night of the party, not before but during or something, later that night, early hours.’
‘Sorry, which party were you at? Last night, Wednesday night? So many parties now even I’m confused,’ cajoles Miriam, enticing her to the trap because no one seems to be aligning with each other. They’ll all stab each other in the back before long, hopefully. ‘Remind me,’ says Miriam.
‘Look, it didn’t happen, whichever party she’s referring to. She’s making it up. She’s saying she was locked up when Joel died. That’s a lie. She was there and everyone knows she was. I told you that before. She’s lying. They all are.’
Including you Mabel. You sleep with Adam too?
‘Why do you think that Mabel?’ asks Miriam.
‘Who knows? But Erin sounded high when she called me.’
‘High? Does she use drugs?’
‘Yeah, I mean, she sounded high.’
‘And you’re sure about that? She wasn’t drunk, or drowsy?’
‘No not drunk, definitely high. God knows what she had taken. There was always something. I mean, she was probably drunk as well but she was wasted, slurring her words, she said she had passed out but that’s not unusual for her and she invariably feigns all memory of anything bad she might have done. She’s always saying she has passed out. Everyone will tell you that.’
‘Ok.’
‘Ok?’ Mabel is becoming tetchy. She doesn’t like it when people resist digesting her words as gospel and Miriam is delivering a tone that suggests, no infers, doubt.
Mabel clears her throat and sips on her drink. You have to keep your mouth oiled when you are lying and she’ll probably want to note down the lies she tells so that she remembers them. More now than ever, I’m convinced that she either has a friendship with Alicia that existed before I met her or that she is one of those people who can only be friends with the popular girl and dumps the disenfranchised whenever necessary. This will never be something she grows out of but one day she may be yanked out of it when the entire crowd demolish her when her disloyalty is plastered over the greasy pavements.
‘One thing I noticed which was probably the start of all of this, if Alicia’s affair with Adam wasn’t the start – actually I have no idea where or when it all started, this feud, but I remember Erin was locked in conversation with Joel for most of the night, when she wasn’t latching onto Adam. I know I said before that she only had eyes for Adam but I remember now, that wasn’t exactly how it was.’
‘And you didn’t recall this when we spoke a few hours ago?’
‘No. Funnily enough, I’ve only just this minute remembered that I had gone into the kitchen to get another drink, in Alicia’s house, when the party was going on. You know the one Erin claims not to have been at.
‘Not sure she has exactly said that yet,’ remarks Miriam.
‘Oh well I assumed she had – would. Have you interviewed her yet?’
‘Mabel, please continue and don’t concern yourself with whether I have interviewed Erin or not ok? Or anyone else for that matter and I suggest you don’t converse with anyone who also attended the party at Alicia Mason’s house last night either.’
‘Fine,’ she says snippily. This will not endear her to anyone. ‘The music was really loud in the front room and there were so many people there you could barely move. I needed a breather. And in the hall, there’s a small bathroom and the door was ajar.’ She doesn’t take a breath. She’s on fire. She wants to get this out there before Miriam breaks her vocal flow once more. ‘I walked passed, not thinking anything of it, thinking it was a couple “getting it on” in there when I clocked the voice, Erin’s voice, and she sounded very distressed. I couldn’t eavesdrop exactly as the door was open, ajar, like I said, which was annoying because whoever she was talking to I couldn’t make out, but it wasn’t Adam. It was a guy but not Adam and besides, he was doing some crazy dirty dancing with Alicia, Adam I mean, in the front room and not to anything sultry, to house music – all attention seeking crap. That’s her thing, Alicia, she isn’t happy unless everyone in the room is watching her, ogling her or feeling intimidated by her. She’s actually a lot like Erin when I think about it.’
Maybe they aren’t friends. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Mabel can’t be friends with a woman.
‘I poured myself a drink, in the kitchen, some of this awful punch they had made and boy it was strong, not that it fogged up my memory or anything. I wasn’t that drunk. I’d had enough of it all to be honest and called a cab. Eventually I called one but that was after I’d seen who came out of the bathroom.
‘You still there?’
‘Yes. I’m listening.’
‘Oh, you went quiet so I thought the line had gone dead.’
‘No.’
‘Ok, so she walks out, Erin, looking all flustered and her clothes are all over the place, her blouse hanging off her shoulder and her buttons undone, that kind of thing, and she looked like she’d been intimate with this guy although there was no way that was happening. It was more like a muffled row, an argument so I reckon he became a bit physical with her. So, she walks out, like I was saying, and sees me standing leaning against the kitchen worktop sipping my drink and no one else was in there with me – people had spilled out into the garden, smoking and messing around. But she looked directly at me, scowled and then disappeared upstairs, in Alicia’s house. Because that’s important that you know I mean Alicia’s house, not her house, like she owned the place. A few minutes later, Joel came out of the bathroom and there is no way he went in after her, or that she was on the phone on loud speaker to someone. She was definitely in there with Joel. They knew each other well, you could tell, you could see from that and I’m certain no one else knew that. That’s what it looked like. They kept it pretty quiet. They made out in front of people like they were strangers but I saw it all. They absolutely were not strangers to each other and that’s a fact.
‘That’s why it’s so weird that she lied about calling me but even more that she did actually call me. I thought it was to check if I had seen them together or not.’
‘How did you not remember this before?’ asks Miriam rather stupefied. Mabel breathes but doesn’t answer. ‘Ok. Did you tell her you saw them? Did you ask her about it?’ asked Miriam
‘No. You’ve only just told me about this right now Mabel.’
‘Did
she ask you if I saw her? Going up the stairs, because she looked directly at me. Right into my eyes. Gave me a dirty look.’
‘As I said, Mabel,’ responds Miriam, ‘you are telling me about this for the first time now.’
‘No? Well she knew I did see. She had to. She knew I saw her, them, her and Joel. Together. Going up to the roof.’
‘How do you know it was the roof?’
‘Must have been— I heard the footsteps and the door. That door up there to the roof creaks.’
‘You heard the creak even over the loud music?’
‘Yeah. Seriously, Erin always likes to make out that she was too drunk to remember anything but it’s never true. It’s her get out clause but I know her. I have known her for years and that’s a damn lie. She remembers everything.’
She’s lying. She doesn’t know me at all. No one does.
‘I told Adam I saw her with Joel. I told him that night, later that evening.’
‘Hang on, the night after she had called you to say they had locked her in the room?’
‘No, the night Joel was killed and seriously, she wasn’t locked in any room on any night. I heard her in the background yelling at him about the garden wall or something, when we were on the phone, me and Adam, that day. She was kicking off about it. She didn’t know he was talking to me but I’ll bet she checked his phone later. She is deeply manipulative. You should know that about her.’
‘How is that possible? The police were called about the noise and turned up coincidentally when Joel Mason fell to his death from the rooftop. So when precisely did you witness this happening Mabel?’
‘No. I left. I told you. I called a taxi, left and then called Adam and told him what Erin had done with Joel. I wasn’t there when you lot turned up.’