The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

‘Saison?’

  Will pours a finger of beer into the glass, invites me to try it.

  ‘Tell me what you can taste.’

  ‘Spicy and sort of tangy? Maybe a bit fruity?’

  He raises his eyebrows and tips me a wink. I like Will.

  A couple arrives and he moves across the bar to serve them. In snatched conversation between customers, Will suggests we meet up tomorrow afternoon and I say absolutely, yes, and we’re swapping phone numbers when a group of anglers comes in and Will is suddenly preoccupied. I’m finishing up my beer and thinking about getting back to Fossil Cottage and forcing a conversation about the drowned woman, when in walks the policewoman from this morning, dressed in jeans and a Fair Isle sweater. Spotting me at the bar, she comes over, winks at Will.

  ‘So he’s got you on the Mer-Chicken already.’ She takes the bar stool beside me. Her eyes dart between me and Will. ‘Come across any more fossils?’

  ‘A couple, down at West Weare, not counting the couple in the pub here.’

  She smiles politely at my bad joke, waits till the anglers have been served then catching Will’s eye orders a pint of Golden Glory and another bottle of the Mer-Chicken for me.

  ‘You two know one another?’ asks Will.

  ‘We do now.’ Julie raises her glass. ‘To new friends.’ Once Will is out of earshot she adds in a soft voice, ‘You could do a lot worse.’

  ‘Speaking from experience?’ Julie shrugs. ‘It’s a small island. Everyone dates everyone eventually. It was a long time ago.’ She rolls a simple wedding band between the fingers of her right hand. ‘Six years next July. Kev. Works at the station at Weymouth West. I’m with the Port Police. Coppers end up marrying coppers. Saves the moaning about shift patterns.’

  ‘Anything juicy happen since I last saw you?’

  ‘Like I said up at the café, it’s mostly petty stuff. The Port Police generally handle boats going missing, insurance fraud, smuggling, that kind of thing. We get accidents on the cliffs and the quarries, the occasional tourist mishap. Domestics. Couple of those in the early hours. It’s always worse at this end of the week.’

  A tic starts up in my eye. ‘There must be drownings.’

  Julie shrugs, takes a swig, nods at my beer. ‘You should try the Golden. Proper beer.’ A short, balding man walks by, lays a hand on her shoulder. A greeting is exchanged followed by a single peck on the cheek.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you two girls to gossip,’ the short man says.

  Right.

  ‘So, drownings then?’ It has taken me some courage to work up to this and I’m keen not to leave it. ‘So if you find someone in the water, like a body, how do you know if it’s a suicide or an accident, or something worse?’

  Julie thinks for a moment. ‘Obviously, if there’s stab wounds or something like that. Otherwise, there might be a history of mental illness, or previous suicide attempts. They might have left a note. But basically you don’t, not always.’

  ‘How far would the police investigate?’

  She rubs a hand over her chin, feeling for the contours of the jaw. ‘So far as we can, but sometimes there’s not a lot to go on. It’ll go to the coroner, but if there’s no real evidence one way or another the coroner usually returns an open verdict.’ She finishes her beer.

  ‘Get you another?’

  ‘Why not? If you’re offering.’

  Will has been joined by an older man behind the bar. The older man chin flicks to Julie and salutes. I order a pint of Golden for Julie, a half for me.

  ‘She’s trying to get you drunk, Julie,’ the older man says, winking.

  ‘She’s bloody welcome to try, Trev.’ She lifts her beer and thanks me. ‘Your good health.’ Takes a long draught, puts the glass down and begins picking the cuticle of her left index finger with her right thumbnail. Trev is off at the other end of the bar now, serving a customer. ‘Why do you want to know about drownings?’

  ‘Oh, a neighbour, is all. I was just curious to know what happened to her.’

  ‘Have you searched for press reports? Failing that, if the case went to the coroner, the inquest lists are all online these days. If you know where the inquest was held you can apply to look at the coroner’s report. So long as you’ve got a name.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘But you said she was a neighbour, right?’

  ‘Yes, a neighbour.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ She meets my eye. There’s an angle to her jaw that suggests puzzlement. The eyes deepen. Then she reaches for her beer and whatever notion is in her head is gone. ‘We’re being a bit bloody morbid for a Friday afternoon, aren’t we?’

  17

  Cassie

  11.45 p.m., Saturday 13 August, Wapping

  God only knows why I did it. For all her faults, my mum never left me in the dark about the difference between right and wrong. Stealing’s wrong, love. Don’t ever be a tealeaf. An honest day’s drinking for an honest day’s benefit payments, that’s the way. Mum’s mantra, that was. Yeah, and maybe I should have listened.

  But, of course, I didn’t. At ten you don’t know much but what you do know is that your parents, and people like your parents, aren’t the people adults are referring to when they talk about good role models. In fact I used to steal from Mum all the time, skimming her benefits before she had a chance to drop most of it on cheap vodka. If you can call that stealing. Which, officially, I suppose, you can.

  The point is, nothing is straightforward. People do stuff, terrible stuff sometimes, without the faintest idea why. Who can say they know why they do all the things they do? Maybe some of us know why we do some of the things. Maybe that’s the best human beings can manage.

  Sylvette are due to play the headliner set at midnight on the main stage, and the audience is gearing up, getting their drinks and snacks, using the loos. The usual insane queues. Still sober enough to use my head, I decide to venture to the periphery of the festival site, the part of the venue furthest from the river on the boundary with Tench Street, see what I can find away from the crowds. And there, under a row of London plane trees, sits the thing I’m after, a clean-looking toilet trailer with no apparent queue outside.

  Of the six cubicles three are busy and two appear to be out of order. One cubicle is free. A woman is at the sink, hands hovering and swooping around the terrible bird’s nest that is her hair. The face in the mirror is thin and anxious and part obscured by the hands, which rove around and above it like a troupe of spiders.

  ‘Are you next in line?’

  No response. I repeat the question and am shocked when the woman turns to see how rough she looks. Or not rough, necessarily, but haunted and very possibly ill.

  ‘Are you OK?’ She returns my expression of concern with a glazed slow blink which does not invite conversation.

  I want you to know now that I have no clue as to what I’m about to do. Until an instant ago I was thinking only of relieving myself and getting back to the stage in time for the next set. Now, the idea floats in my head that I should try to get the thin woman to the first aid station or at least into the care of friends because she’s in no fit state to be on her own. ‘You really don’t look well. There’s a first aid place outside. I’ll walk with you.’

  A vacant stare. No one at home.

  Still nothing, but when I make a move towards her, her body turns away. It takes her a second or two to reach the empty cubicle and shut the door behind her. The lock clicks.

  What to do?

  I tell myself that maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. She just needs to throw up. I decide to wait, turning back to the bank of sinks to check I haven’t got bag lady hair. There, lying abandoned on the shelf beside the basins, is a small tote, in green fake leather with a zip top. Beside the bag sits a comb.

  Most likely this belongs to the skinny woman. She’s too out of it to have remembered. I should go over to the cubicle and let her know. I should pick up the bag and knock on the door of her cubicle and pass it underneath. The gap’s big enough. If I be
nd I can see her shoes. Cheap shoes with ill-fitting straps. She’s sitting on the toilet seat, with her face to the door. Not being sick, evidently.

  I reach out for the bag and swing it into my chest. The zipper is undone and one side sags a little under its weight, partially exposing the contents. In among the usual bag flotsam – a phone, a purse, some tampons, a lipstick – is something else. For an instant I feel myself pull back, shocked.

  The person whose profile I see in the mirror as my hand dips into the soft interior of the bag is someone who looks like me but does not inhabit the same body. My heart is quickening but I’m not listening to my heart. In some other life, if it had contained something other than it does, perhaps I would have stood by guarding the bag until its owner reappeared. This would have been more like me. But none of this is what I do. Instead, my mind begins to stitch together an excuse in case I’m caught.

  London, bomb threats, can’t be too careful.

  Some part of my crocodile brain, the deep reward centre, the one scientists trigger in rats until the rats forget to eat and starve themselves, that part is firing like mad. There is a woman who is both playing me and at the same time is me. Not an imposter exactly, but another version. But both women are telling the same tale. They’re saying they need this, that money, this money, can change everything. A fragment of a moment later it is decided. After that, adrenaline takes over and in the blink of an eye it’s done.

  I have just become a criminal.

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that would never happen to me. But believe me, it might. Because nothing is straightforward, least of all the human heart. At some point or other, we all become mysteries to ourselves.

  I am at the door when one of the toilets flushes, the cubicle at the end opens and a young, lank-bodied woman emerges and heads for the sinks. The bag is where I first noticed it, jammed up against the mirror behind the sinks. It looks the same as it did before, though, of course, it’s not.

  I am half in and half out of the door now, my face and body obscured by the dark, and from that half-hidden place I watch as the woman spots the bag, checks back at the other cubicles and glances up at the ceiling in search of CCTV and begins to empty it of what remains of the valuables. Before she notices there is a witness to the crime, I’m out, weaving around the crowd and only stopping once I’m clear of the food stalls to catch my breath. In the pocket of my jacket, taking up all the space, sits a roll of fifty-pound notes. And a voice in my head is saying, who brings so much money to a festival? As if chastising myself for my carelessness, some part of me already making that my problem, as if it is me who has been careless and I have only myself to blame for it being stolen, because, who does bring so much money to a festival unless they are up to something really immoral, like ticket touting or drug dealing? It’s the work of an instant to make that money illegitimate, up for grabs, belonging, almost, to anyone.

  Even me.

  18

  Cassie

  Afternoon, Friday 30 September, Isle of Portland

  Julie doesn’t know anything about the farmer’s market mentioned in the handbook at the cottage. The only market she is aware of is on Saturdays in Weymouth. The small supermarket in the high street keeps long hours but is almost entirely stocked with ready-meals and bags of crisps. She offers to show me the greengrocer, the only place, she says, I’m likely to get decent veg for our evening meal. Taking my leave of Will, I follow Julie out into the high street and down a cobbled alleyway to the side of the church, to a general store, which sometimes sells farm produce but often closes early on Friday afternoons. And randomly at other times too. The owner is a sculptor. He once showed Julie a vulva he’d carved, complete with inner labia and a deep vagina. He’d painted it in pink and purple hues and invited her to touch it.

  ‘I told him, what you have in mind for that thing, the paint job will rub off in weeks, plus you might hurt yourself. Sad really. Harmless though,’ she says, adding cheerily, ‘There’s lots like that on Portland.’

  Once we get to the greengrocer’s front door, Julie points to a man in a brown jerkin who is smiling and waving. ‘Name’s Joe. If he offers to show you his sculptures, remind him you’ve just popped in for a bit of rhubarb. Though, maybe not rhubarb. Maybe potatoes. Yeah, potatoes. He probably won’t though, because you’re not from round here and you look like you can handle yourself.’ She holds out a hand. ‘And good luck.’

  ‘Oh, I can handle the Joes of this world,’ I say, taking the hand. Her palm is dry and papery but the grip as firm as you’d expect from a copper. I want to believe that the pervs and creeps haven’t a prayer with me, but it’s not true, is it? I saw what I saw in the alley and I ran away.

  ‘I meant, with Will,’ Julie says, laughing, and for an instant I’m taken aback, afraid that I might have just said what I said out loud. My eyes flit to Julie who seems unperturbed.

  ‘If we don’t see each other again, thanks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The beer, the advice, for telling me what fossils are.’

  ‘Did I tell you that?’

  ‘Yeah, you said they were fool’s gold.’

  She throws back her head and lets out a bark. ‘Oh, I did, did I? Well, we’re all fools for something, aren’t we? By the way, that neighbour you mentioned. She got a name?’

  ‘Marika Lapska, why?’ The words tumble out without my properly thinking them through.

  ‘I could do a bit of digging around if you like?’

  ‘Oh no, no. I mean, that’s really kind, but no.’

  And with that Julie reaches out a hand, pats my shoulder and turns on her heel back up the cobbled path beside the church.

  I watch her go, pause for a moment before entering the shop and think of texting Anna, who is the weekend’s chief meal planner, then remember that there’s no signal in Fossil Cottage. I’ve just walked across the threshold into the shop when my phone buzzes with a text. Gav: At sister’s. Soz abt this a.m. All a bit weird. Pls don’t tell Dex.

  Glad, I tap out in reply, Fine re Dex.

  Receiving a quick x back from Gav, I’m about to slide the phone back into my pocket when the screen lights up. This time it’s Anna on a voice call. Anna has never been very good at solitude, which leaves her with no one to boss or fuss over or control. Anna doesn’t mind what company she keeps so long as it’s never her own.

  ‘I thought you’d be at the cottage. Bo isn’t back yet and Dex is still asleep. I’ve had to go halfway down the hill into town to get a signal.’

  I explain I’m buying stuff for supper.

  ‘Oh, Cassie, how sweet of you. I was going to make Bo drive us into Weymouth when he got back from his hook-up. You’d think supermarkets in these places would stock all kinds of lovely local produce but they never do. All they ever sell is cheap booze, massive bars of chocolate and fifty shades of Doritos. But if you can find some nice stuff locally . . . Listen, since I’m already halfway into town, why don’t I come and help you carry the shopping up the hill?’

  I’ve been hoping to have some time to sit on the bench at the church by myself and search the coroner’s records, try to find out whether Marika’s death was suicide or foul play. Do police turn out for suicides? I suppose they must. But perhaps if I whizz through the shopping there will be a few minutes before Anna arrives.

  ‘Meet me in the churchyard?’ I check the time on my phone, add a half hour and turn my attentions to the piles of vegetables in plastic trays.

  ‘Hi,’ a man’s voice says. ‘Holidaying here?’

  ‘Hi. Actually, I just came in for potatoes.’

  Fifteen minutes later I’m sitting on a bench in the churchyard plugging ‘Tower Hamlets coroner’s court’ into my phone then tapping ‘Marika Lapska’ into the search box.

  Nothing.

  Is it too soon? Do all records go automatically online or only some? If it was a suicide would the coroner’s report still be in the public domain? I realise I should have asked
Julie a few more questions. There must be some record of Marika’s body being pulled from the Thames. It’s not possible that a young woman drowns in the Thames in the twenty-first century and there is nothing at all about it on the internet. It’s simply a matter of finding out where to find it.

  ‘There you are.’

  Anna appears, from behind the war memorial, looking a little flustered. ‘What did you get?’

  ‘Potatoes.’

  Reaching for the bag on the bench beside me, she peers inside. ‘I thought you’d be in the pub making a play for Will.’

  ‘I think the Spar has broccoli.’

  ‘Seriously? The greengrocer had literally nothing green?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Anna gives me a good long stare. ‘Don’t tell me you were too distracted.’ A smile breaks out. ‘You were. How completely brilliant. Sooo, tell all.’

  ‘We’re meeting tomorrow afternoon. He’s working till then.’

  ‘God, how delicious! I miss my single days. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never have sex again. When you’re a mother . . .’ She looks at me with a condescending air, then pats my arm. ‘You’ll understand one day.’

  I shoulder my rucksack. Anna picks up the bag of shopping. The pavings around the war memorial are set at odd angles, making Anna look a good foot taller than me. We set off.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to put this one in the Big Black Book.’

  Anna stops and offers up a wintry smile. ‘Cassie, darling, don’t be such a spoilsport. Me and Dex are dying to see what he looks like in the buff.’

  ‘It seems, I don’t know, a bit shitty. It’s not like we met on some hook-up app.’

  ‘Well, maybe, but let’s be real, that’s all this is ever going to be, isn’t it? He lives here and delivers milk for a living.’

  ‘Which means what, exactly?’ It’s rare I get irritated with Anna, or, rather, it’s rare I actually express it. Because I know what Anna’s like and I still remember her when she was happy and those two things together break my heart.