Over the Line

by Steve Howell

  She was standing with her back to me, folding clothes into a small suitcase, wearing a wine coloured top, an off-one-shoulder thing that fell on one side to show a delicate shoulder blade moving in tempo with her packing. I ran a hand across her smooth copper skin until it reached the back of her head. She turned into me, pressing her head sideways against my chest, her arms around my waist. She didn’t say anything.

  “All being well,” I said softly “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Mimi leaned back and kissed my neck and my chin and then settled her parted lips on mine. Our tongues circled and touched, our bodies rocking gently. We stayed like that for a long moment. Then we stopped and looked at each other in silence. I wondered now if what had happened between us was merely comfort in a crisis, and I had no idea what Mimi thought. There were no clues as she stoically went back to her packing.

  ***

  Megan was waiting for us in the hotel car park, the doors of her Audi 4 open already. She looked composed now in smart jeans and a sky-blue silk blouse, her hair organised in its normal spiky arrangement.

  The sun was already high in the sky, and a haze shimmered over the field next to the hotel, making it look as if the two horses trying to find some edible tufts of grass were ankle deep in water. There was no sign of the hot weather breaking.

  Megan laughed as we approached holding hands. “When’s the wedding?” she said.

  “Ha ha,” I said, knowing the teasing was mainly directed at me.

  I threw Mimi’s case onto the back seat and climbed in after it. Mimi sat in the front with Megan. It took barely five minutes to reach the university where we found the car park nearly empty and only a few people coming and going from the university buildings. There was no sign of the BBC camera crew or Hannah, but we didn’t want to hang around any longer than necessary.

  Megan pulled-up next to Mimi’s car, and in seconds Mimi was setting off for London with a little wave through the windscreen. I felt a quiver of sadness in my chest, but I was trying hard to follow my own advice to Megan and stay focused on the job in hand.

  Megan swung her car round, and we drove off towards Newport through Caerleon’s one-way system, over the old stone bridge and along a road following the river into the city centre.

  Megan seemed pensive and said nothing until we reached the small parking area near Graeme’s flat.

  “I’ll park by there,” she said, nodding towards a tight space.

  I realised she meant I needed to get out straight away, as the space wouldn’t be wide enough for the doors to open on both sides. I jumped out and watched her park with absolute precision. As she switched the ignition off, I could see her shoulders rise and fall with a long sigh.

  We walked over to the flats and repeated the ritual of pressing the bell and waiting for Graeme to release the door.

  “Okay?” I said as we stood there.

  She nodded without looking at me.

  The buzzer went and she pushed in and practically ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Graeme was at the door but this time there were no beaming smiles or warm embraces. It was hard to imagine what Graeme was thinking after all the nastiness in the media over the last two days, but he hadn’t hesitated when I’d phoned to say Megan wanted to see him again. He’d been subdued but not hostile.

  Graeme let us go into the flat first, patting my back as he ushered us through. I felt a kinship with him, though I can’t put my finger on why.

  “Well, Meg,” he said. “I don’t see you for years and now it’s twice in a week. What’s that they say about London buses?”

  He meant it in fun, but I sensed Megan tightening at the implication of a criticism.

  “Now then,” he continued. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  Megan shook her head and I held a hand up to pass. I didn’t want to rush him – this couldn’t be rushed – but we had no time to waste on refreshments and small talk with the police clock ticking.

  Megan sat in one of the armchairs and I pulled-up the chair from the balcony. Graeme took the other armchair.

  “So Meg,” Graeme said in a kindly way, like he was counselling one of his pupils. “What have you come to say that you didn’t say the first time around?”

  Megan was looking at her hands, exactly as she’d done on Wednesday.

  “Grae,” she said, still not able to look him in the eye. “When I said I was sorry, you know, about running away, I meant… I was trying to say…”

  Graeme didn’t wait long to see how Megan would finish the sentence. “I know exactly what you meant, Meg,” he said, leaning forward as if to emphasise their closeness.

  Megan lifted her head slowly.

  “You ran away that night,” Graeme continued. “Of course I know – well, I suppose, strictly speaking, I guessed. It seemed likely. I thought that all along.”

  “But why didn’t you say?”

  Graeme shrugged. “What’s to say?”

  The room fell silent. My discomfort had evaporated. I knew now that Graeme was in control here, and felt confident whatever he had in mind to tell Megan would probably contain more wisdom than the rest of us had mustered in the last few days.

  “I suppose,” he said, sounding like he was reflecting and correcting himself, “I suppose I wanted to hear you say it first. I wanted you to tell me.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself. “And you have. And I knew you would – but I suppose, if I’m honest, I hoped you’d do it sooner.”

  Megan flushed and fidgeted at this gentle reprimand.

  “Look, Meg,” he said. “I interpreted what you said on Wednesday as an apology for running away. I know that was what was on your mind, and why you came to me before you went to the police. I know you well enough to believe that of you.”

  I could only see part of Megan’s face, but it was obvious the tears were welling-up. She had her hands clasped together now as if trying to keep her composure. Graeme didn’t make any move to comfort her, but he looked across at me, and I sensed he thought that was my job. I reached out and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Look, my lovely,” he continued, “I’ve had a long time to think about all this; about what might have happened that night, and I have a pretty good idea how things were with Matt. How, well, how lost he was... But he wasn’t a child anymore, and I was helpless. I could see him sinking, sliding deeper into a kind of quagmire. I had nightmares about it, about trying to grab him and pull him out, and not being able to reach him.” Graeme fastened his gaze on the posed professional photograph of Matt, as if remembering something. “Julie wanted me to do more, of course,” he said. “We argued about it, but what could I do? You can’t lock a 19 year-old boy up. And I couldn’t talk to him. Every time I tried it went wrong, and anyway, he needed professional help. It’s like anorexia, you know? Anorexia for boys – that’s what they say.”

  Megan looked baffled, and I wasn’t sure what he meant either, but it was obvious he hadn’t finished.

  “I think I can guess what that night must have been like – how he was when he turned-up. I’d seen him in a bad way so many times myself. I know you’d tried to help him and stay his friend, Meg. I guessed he was as bad with you as he was with me – pushing us away.”

  Megan was shaking her head now, and Graeme stopped.

  “But you’re wrong,” she said. “It was me that pushed him away. I had no patience with him. If I’m honest…” she seemed to be choking on the words, “if I’m honest,” she tried again, “I think I’d, well, written him off. And I’m ashamed of myself for it. It’s not so much that I ran away that night, I’m ashamed about how I’d treated him for a long time before that.”

  Graeme thought about this. It obviously wasn’t in his script for the meeting, but he didn’t seem surprised either.

  “But Meg,” he said finally, “we’re all in the same boat here. We all have regrets; thinking we should have done this or that, but it won’t make any difference, will it? We can’t help him now.”


  Megan looked back at him, seeming to realise how generous he was being and the fondness he was displaying towards her - and I wondered if somehow she was, for him, the link to the better memories of Matt. He would forgive almost anything to keep that connection.

  Megan broke the silence abruptly. “I think the police are gunning for Will,” she said.

  Graeme straightened his back, as if reeling at the mention of Will’s name.

  “I don’t know why you care what happens to him,” he said.

  Megan looked confused. “But why not? You don’t agree with Julie, do you?”

  Graeme was shaking his head.

  “Matt collapsed,” Megan said. “Will didn’t touch him… I was there, Graeme. I saw it happen.”

  “I know, Meg, and I believe you. I’m not saying Will killed him – not in that way – but he may as well have done. Matt was impressionable, weak. Will knew that, and made the most of it.”

  Megan bristled at that. “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Oh, come on, Meg,” Graeme replied. “You don’t believe all this rubbish Will’s been peddling about using steroids as a one-off? He’d been at it for years.”

  Megan looked at me as if wanting me to say it wasn’t true – but what did I know? I was going on what Megan herself had told me, and the only back up for it was Terry – who’d betrayed me. Will had peddled the story that he’d used steroids only to recover from injury, and people assumed Matt was his supplier. But I had no reason to believe Will. Why couldn’t it have been the other way round?

  “I didn’t see any change in him,” Megan said, echoing my thoughts about her. “I would have noticed something if he’d started earlier.”

  “It depends how early, Meg,” Graeme said. “Will’s been at it since he was 15 or 16, well before you started dating. Why would he go to that gym for all those years? Apparently everyone knew what went on there. All the boys were doing it. A whole gang of them from school. For Matt and boys like him, it was a social thing. It was a fashion or a fad, call it what you will. Everyone wanting to man-up and have big shoulders and a six-pack. Only a few of them were doing it for sport – a few of the rugby boys, maybe the boxers. And don’t kid me that Will wasn’t part of it. He was going there every day. If anything he was the ring leader, the one everyone looked-up to – Matt included.”

  Megan was subdued, staring at Graeme in a daze. She stood up and walked past me out onto the balcony, grabbing the rail with both hands and looking across the river towards the city centre.

  “But why didn’t he get caught earlier?” I asked. “Wasn’t he tested before?”

  Graeme smiled. “He was good at it, that’s why,” he said. “Look, what people say – and I believe them – is he only did it for short periods of the year, when he was training intensively. A lot of them do that: an ‘on cycle’ and an ‘off cycle’ they call it. So Will got away with it because they don’t test very often at the lower levels, but then he was injured, and he took a risk, just as he was rising through the ranks and likely to be tested more often. He used them too close to the start of the season, and he got caught and blew everything.”

  Megan turned around to look back into the room. “So you blame Will?” she said.

  Graeme thought about it. “Like I say, not directly,” he said. “Not in the way Julie does, thinking there was a fight or Will pushed Matt, wanting him charged with manslaughter. But I do blame him in the sense that… in that he led Matt on. Why didn’t he look out for Matt instead of making him think he could be something…? Matt could never compete with Will, or any of the rugby boys. He was out of his depth. The only way he could make himself stand out was by being more extreme, more daring with the drugs, taking more risks to show off, be the big guy.”

  I looked across at Graeme and realised suddenly how much this was taking out of him. He looked exhausted. His ruddy face was ashen and lifeless now. He had been talking about Will in a matter of fact way, sounding resigned rather than malicious. It was inconceivable that he didn’t believe every word he was saying. Why would he lie? But it was possible this version of events had the power of truth for him not because it was true necessarily, but because it made Matt’s death less painful.

  I didn’t care about Will, one way or the other, but I did worry about the effect this was having on Megan when she was about to face the police. She was also looking drained and anxious. I realised now that she hadn’t come back to Newport to see Will – or not only to see him. She did seem to have an affection for Will and enough faith in him – at least until the last few minutes – to want to help him prove he didn’t directly cause Matt’s death. But she had come back mainly to make her peace with Graeme and, through him, with herself.

  I looked at my watch. The solicitor Jackie had arranged was waiting for us at Celtic Manor. We were supposed to be there by midday.

  “Graeme, I’m sorry, but we have to go,” I said. “We’re due to see a lawyer in ten minutes.”

  Megan looked at me as if I’d said something outrageous. She seemed to be lost in thought, probably somewhere deep in the past, trying to see Will through this new prism; trying to reconcile Graeme’s interpretation of events with her own.

  Graeme stood up and went over to her. “You know what Shakespeare says?” he said. “Truth is truth until the end of reckoning.”

  Megan smiled as if she’d heard him say that before.

  “You will have to find the truth for yourself, Meg,” he said, “and hang on to it when you do.”

  19

  By The Book

  Megan pulled the car out of the space with the same precision as she’d parked it, but I doubted her look of grim determination had anything to do with driving. She unlocked the passenger door to let me jump in.

  I was eager to usher Megan into the right frame of mind for meeting the police. She had to be calm and clear-headed – her chances of going to Rio hinged on this interview, on the police believing her story. But from my sideways glances at her as she drove, it was hard to tell her state of mind or which episode in these bewildering events she might be dwelling on.

  “Li, you can stop looking at me like that,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You do?” I laughed. “That’s good, because I’ve no idea what I think about anything right now.”

  That brought a flicker of a smile to her face.

  “I know what you mean,” she said.

  “So what do you think I’m thinking?”

  “You think I’m naïve, and that Will has lied all along about the steroids, and that I’m dumb for still having anything to do with him.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Megan was negotiating a junction that took us onto a dual carriageway that seemed vaguely familiar from an earlier visit to Newport.

  “The track’s on the right by there,” she said, pointing ahead of us.

  The main stand came into view across a car park, and Megan kept glancing over to it.

  “Will used to pick me up from training, every Tuesday and Thursday, without fail,” she said. “He was never late, and we’d go to get something to eat together and talk about stuff; how training had gone, our ups and downs. You know what it’s like. One minute you’re on top of the world thinking you can win anything, and the next you feel you’re going nowhere: training’s hard, you can’t see any progress, and it feels like there’s no point...”

  Megan gave me a sideways glance now. “That was us,” she continued. “We shared that. We helped each other through it. If I believe Graeme, I’d have to believe that was nothing – that it was all meaningless: that Will was conning me and playing me along.”

  “And you don’t?” I asked.

  Megan’s eyes had returned to the road ahead, and Celtic Manor was looming on the horizon.

  “Li, we went out for nearly two years,” she said. “We practically lived together for God’s sake. And we talked for hours. No. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m that gullible...�
� She threw me another look and sighed. “But maybe I am.”

  I smiled, and we fell silent. I didn’t want to press her any harder.

  The dual carriageway had reached a roundabout where we turned onto a road that led to the entrance to Celtic Manor, just as Mimi and I had done in what seemed like another life.

  “But I am beginning to think about things in a different light,” Megan said as we reached the hotel’s over-sized portico. “I always wondered why Will gave Gary the time of day. I never could stand him, even before I knew he was bent. But Gary seemed to have a hold…”

  The men in red and gold plus-fours were rushing towards us, but this time there seemed to be an air of panic about them. I heard someone shout, “There she is”. People seemed to appear from all directions. Megan reacted quickly – a little too quickly. She crunched the car into gear and accelerated with such force we were thrown back in our seats. Photographers were leaping out of the way, snapping pictures as they went. We were clear.

  I looked back. There were about twenty of them, some dusting themselves off, others still trying to snap ‘Britain’s Olympic golden girl’ fleeing like a runaway bride.

  “Wankers!” Megan said, looking in the mirror.

  I felt sick – my hotel ‘breakfast’ consisting of two biscuits was rattling around inside me – and the sudden acceleration jolted my still-sore ribs. We were soon down the hill, joining the road into Newport. Megan stopped in a lay-by, pulled on the hand brake and banged her head theatrically against the steering wheel.

  “What now?” she said.

  “I’ll call Richards. We may as well go to the police station.”

  I pulled his card out of my wallet and dialled the mobile number.

  “Richards,” he barked.

  “It’s Liam McCarthy, inspector. We were due to see our lawyer at Celtic Manor but the place is crawling with media. We’re thinking of coming straight to you. The solicitor can join us there.”

  “No,” Richards said firmly. “There’s the same problem here too. It’s like a circus on the green across the road: vans, satellite dishes, TV cameras everywhere.”