Over the Line

by Steve Howell

  “Well, you are still number one,” I said, making an effort to smile and sound cheery. “Natasha Sholokhova won, but her time was nothing special, in the conditions.”

  Megan was still distracted by her phone.

  “I’ve been getting some really strange texts off Will, and I’ve tried to phone him but he’s not answering,” she said.

  “What sort of strange?” I asked.

  “Like last night, except worse. The media’s getting to him and he’s saying stuff about Gary.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  She looked down at her phone. “About him being a back-stabbing bastard.”

  I shrugged. I felt like saying: ‘So what do you want me to do about it, the two bastards deserve each other?’ But I didn’t.

  Megan sat down and jumped up again almost in one movement. “I’m going over there,” she said.

  I groaned, feeling weighed down by a long day and too many chips, but I knew I had no choice.

  “Not on your own you’re not,” I said.

  ***

  By the time we reached Will’s flat, the sun had gone, and it took me a while to get my bearings. We had passed the footbridge where I’d met Megan earlier in the week, and I realised we were on the same stretch of river as Graeme’s flat but the opposite side.

  Megan was becoming increasingly agitated. She had tried the bell and was pacing up and down looking at the black windows of a flat two floors above, seemingly trying to find an angle to see if there was some movement inside.

  I stood by the car peering into the amber gloom at the dark shapes across the river, wondering which one was Graeme’s building and imagining him sitting there, alone and brooding. It occurred to me suddenly, with a morbid jolt, that he may have consciously chosen a flat with a view of the place where his son died.

  Megan had disappeared around the corner, but she was soon back, shaking her head, looking like she was ready to scream. We stood there for a few more minutes, Megan checking her phone and texting more messages until I suggested, tentatively, that this might be a lost cause.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said.

  “But it’s not like him,” said Meg. “Not replying. Not replying to me.”

  “Maybe his battery’s gone,” I said, though I really thought it was more likely he was in a pub or a club somewhere and couldn’t hear his phone or was too drunk to face a conversation with Meg.

  Megan threw me a look as if to say I was a moron for not appreciating just how out of character it was for Will not to be responding instantly to her.

  “Let’s wait a bit longer,” she said getting back into the car.

  And so we sat there for a good thirty minutes, Megan in sullen silence and me trying to suppress my growing irritation.

  “Look,” I said, my last reserves of patience now nearly exhausted. “This is a complete waste of time.”

  She ignored me.

  “And anyway, I don’t get why you’re so worried?”

  Still no reply.

  “For God sake, Meg, what is it?”

  She looked across at me, her hands gripping the steering wheel like she was clinging to it for support.

  “It’s just that I think there’s something going on between Will and Gary,” she said.

  “Meg, so the fuck what?” I said. “Why is it any worry of yours?”

  Megan had let go of the steering wheel but she was now chewing her lower lip and looking at me like she had something to say and couldn’t decide if she dared say it. I waited but with my eyebrows raised as if stay say ‘get on with it’.

  She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “The thing is, Liam,” she said, “there’s something I haven’t told you.”

  “Something else?” I said, incredulous. “You mean something else you haven’t told me?”

  Megan was sitting upright, turned towards me but with her back pressed against the driver’s door. It was as if she wanted to be out of reach in case my reaction was violent.

  “Gary was blackmailing me,” she said.

  It took me more than a few seconds to process that one. I let the words hang in the clammy air and played them back to myself a couple of times.

  “He was blackmailing you…” I repeated, almost in a whisper. “What the fuck do you mean, blackmailing you?”

  “Gary found out about the blood sample. He knew it had been overlooked and said to Will that it was a ‘smoking gun’ and he could use it to make trouble for us – unless we paid him a lot of money.”

  “How much is ‘a lot’?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “You’re kidding! Ten thousand pounds. And you paid it?”

  Megan nodded, cringing at the same time at the force of my reaction.

  “When was this?”

  “Last year, just after the World Championships. He must have seen all the stuff about me being the highest paid female athlete, so he went to Will, and told him he could be done for manslaughter and I could be done for perverting the course of justice… and I panicked. I was worried sick. I couldn’t bear the thought, Li, the thought of people knowing I’d left Matt like that…”

  “So you coughed-up ten grand?” I said. “For God’s sake, what were you thinking? It only makes matters worse.”

  Megan fell silent, and we sat there for a few moments listening to our own breathing, Megan fiddling with her fingers.

  “The money seemed like nothing – I suddenly had so much of it,” she said, still looking down at her hands. “But then he came back for more, a few weeks ago. Another ten thousand.”

  “Shit!” I said, beyond exasperation, beyond words, even beyond anger.

  I threw the door open, got out and paced around in a circle, unable to gather any coherent thoughts. I was tempted to walk away, to just get the next train to London. But before I could think anything through, Megan had pressed the ignition and was shouting, “Li, Li,” through the open window and gesturing for me to get in.

  I looked at her, and she held my look like she was clinging to her last hope.

  I got in.

  She drove back to the hotel recklessly as if she was past caring what happened to her – or me for that matter – taking speed bumps like we were riding rodeo. I gripped my seat and closed my eyes, trying to think straight, wrestling with the implications of Megan’s latest bombshell.

  Why hadn’t she come to me for help? How could she have carried on as if everything was normal? Okay, I could appreciate the shame she felt about running away when Matt died: how hard that would be to admit, and the effect it could have on her career, and the bloody sponsors. But, once it had degenerated into blackmail… why hadn’t she realised she was out of her depth?

  The answer to all of it could only be Will. She seemed so blind in her loyalty him, naïve beyond belief. It was as if they were locked into a suicide pact by the events of that night.

  When we reached the hotel, I was ready to give Megan a no-holds-barred grilling. I was determined to get to the bottom of everything before we had to face Richards again in the morning.

  But Megan was too quick for me. She threw the door open and started to get out. I tried to pull her back, grabbing her nearest arm.

  “We need to talk, Meg.”

  “Fuck it, Liam,” she said, shaking me off. “I know I’ve been stupid, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Let Will go down for something he didn’t do?”

  I was about to say ‘Yes!’ but, before I could answer, she’d tossed the car keys at me and broken into a run, heading for her room.

  My adrenalin was pumping so hard I could hardly breathe. I looked at my watch. It was nearly one in the morning. I wanted to phone Mimi and I fumbled for my phone, but I didn’t even have it on me. It was too late anyway.

  In the distance there were faint rumblings of thunder. The air seemed alive with electricity. A few drops of rain landed on the windscreen. I sat there watching them multiply.

  21

  In Harm’s Way
r />   The air felt lighter now, having been relieved of its humidity by the overnight rain, and there was a cool breeze on my face. I was sitting on a stone overlooking the amphitheatre, watching the sun emerging from behind a hill above Caerleon. The yellow grass around me was saturated from the overnight storm and the dusty earth had turned dark brown. Everything seemed in sharper focus: birds picking at the damp soil, a plane overhead, a church tower nestling in a cluster of houses on the hill. Everything except Megan.

  I had hardly slept. I’d phoned Mimi at 5.30, waking her. She was grisly – not at all pleased about being woken up, and even less so when I told her why. Neither of us could make much sense of this new revelation nor understand why Meg hadn’t told us or why we’d failed to spot anything odd in Megan’s behaviour.

  Had we been blinded by our own ambition, treating her like a machine, only interested in our stake in her success? Or had all our endeavour been honest but betrayed by Meg’s lack of openness?

  “I can understand Meg being terrified of admitting she left Matt for dead,” Mimi had said, echoing the thoughts I’d been wrestling with all night. “My God, poor thing – keeping that bottled up. But Will? What is it with Will?”

  I had no answers to offer and after we’d picked at the wounds for twenty minutes or so, I suggested we save the post mortem for later, not least because I had a worry of my own.

  “I’m supposed to be seeing Danny tomorrow,” I’d said, “but I can see Richards spending all day grilling Megan. He likes to take his time and, well, it’s hard to say how it’s all going to go. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get back this evening, but I don’t want to let Danny down.”

  Mimi had anticipated this. “I’ll sort it, even if it means driving him to Newport myself,” she‘d said, adding, “As long as you don’t mind me talking to Kelli.”

  For a second, I’d felt uncomfortable at the thought of a conversation between Mimi and my ex-wife, but Mimi’s eagerness to help me raise my parental game was touching.

  “Thanks,” I’d said, slightly choked.

  It was gone seven now and some early Saturday joggers and bikers had appeared. I pushed myself up from the damp grass and walked slowly back to the hotel, past the path where I’d been beaten-up and along the gravel drive to the rear entrance. Breakfast was being served. I decided to make the most of it.

  ***

  We arrived at the police station at the same time as Nigel. Megan was subdued driving there, but she did say, ‘Sorry, Liam’ in a hushed way, like a child nervously showing remorse for being in so much trouble. I touched her arm to show we were okay. I could see she’d probably had as little sleep as me.

  “How are we today?” Nigel said with such jollity I almost laughed out loud. Little did he know what was coming.

  We were ushered by the receptionist into the small interview room and sat down, Nigel facing us, where Richards had sat.

  “I think we’d better start with what Megan told me last night,” I said, not wanting to waste a second of the time we had before Richards arrived.

  Nigel gave me an unflappable, ‘go-on-then’ look, like he thought nothing could surprise him or spoil his day.

  “Gary has been blackmailing me,” Megan said flatly.

  Nigel looked at her sceptically. “I’m sorry – what?”

  “Nearly a year ago, he told Will he’d found out about a blood sample that had been overlooked and said he’d make trouble for us unless I paid him ten thousand pounds.”

  “Ten thousand pounds – you paid him ten grand?” Nigel said, disbelievingly, sounding like someone was strangling him.

  Megan nodded. Nigel lifted his leather bag from the floor wearily, rested it on his lap and pulled a notebook out. “Okay, you’d better tell me the whole thing,” he said.

  Megan went through what she had told me, adding a few details under Nigel’s probing. She said it first happened the previous September, a few weeks after the Beijing World Championships. She was all over the media, and they were reporting she was being paid twenty thousand pounds a race, and that she had signed a sportswear deal worth nearly half a million pounds. Gary seized his chance.

  “I suppose I thought I could buy my way out of trouble,” Meg said, sheepishly. “Suddenly I had all this money, and ten thousand seemed like nothing to make it go away. I thought, even if I went to the police and confessed to what I’d done, where would that leave Will? It might have made things worse. I suppose I could have told them he didn’t do anything – been a witness for him – but who would have believed me after I’d lied in the first place?”

  Megan looked pleadingly from Nigel to me as if hoping one of us would agree with her and make it all seem better.

  “Okay,” Nigel said, putting his pen down, all jollity long gone.

  “And there was a second time,” I said, not letting Megan off the hook.

  Nigel rolled his eyes and waited for Megan to explain.

  “He demanded another ten grand, a few weeks ago,” she said, “and I paid that too.”

  Nigel smiled as if tragedy had now descended into farce in his mind.

  “Right. Well, I suppose we’d better tell the inspector,” he said.

  ***

  Richards arrived with Simmons promptly at ten o’clock. They were also in relaxed mode, breezing in wearing weekend clothes like they were ready for a walk in the park.

  Simmons dropped the file and a notepad on the table. Nigel moved to his place alongside Megan and gave Richards a mischievous smile.

  Richards looked at his watch. “Interview resumed at 10.01,” he said, before cautioning Megan again and insisting on everyone identifying themselves.

  “Well, inspector,” Nigel said when the ritual was over. “Miss Tomos is full of surprises. We need to bring another, separate matter to your attention relating to Gary Evans, the police officer my client mentioned yesterday.”

  “Okay, best get on with it, then,” Richards said.

  Nigel gave him a version of the blackmail story peppered with legal jargon and caveats – it is alleged, things ‘apparently’ happened. Simmons took notes. Richards kept glancing at Megan, checking her reaction to Nigel’s account.

  “Miss Tomos,” Richards said, “can you confirm what your solicitor, what Mr Winters, has been telling us?”

  Megan started to answer but her voice was drowned-out by the sound of a police car outside firing-up its siren. We sat in deafened silence while the car pulled away. And, as the noise of its siren faded, others could be heard in the distance, possibly half a dozen, not quite in rhythm or harmony.

  A female uniformed officer half-opened the door and peered in looking flustered.

  “Sir?” she said, and Simmons stood up and left the room with her.

  Richards’ eyes followed them and then he turned back to Megan and nodded towards the recording machine to remind her to confirm Nigel’s statement.

  “Yes, what my solicitor said is correct,” she said.

  “And how exactly did Evans communicate with you?” Richards asked.

  Megan seemed surprised by the question. “Well, I didn’t speak to him or anything, if that’s what you mean?” she said.

  “A letter, an email?” Richards suggested.

  “Nothing like that. It was all done through Will.”

  “I see,” the inspector said, letting the words hang in the air, sounding sceptical, acting-out an interview technique honed, no doubt, on tougher subjects than Megan. “So you don’t have any physical evidence?”

  “Physical? No – well apart from transferring the money,” Megan said.

  “And how did you do that?”

  “Online,” Megan replied, looking puzzled, like she thought Richards was asking the obvious.

  “Online into what account?”

  Simmons came in looking flustered. “There’s an incident, sir,” he said.

  But Richards ignored him. He was still looking at Megan.

  “Into Will’s account, of course,” sh
e said. But Richards seemed to be waiting for something else. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with Gary.”

  “Sir,” Simmons persisted. “It seems the incident is at Grange Road, at the gym. They say Driscoll’s involved.”

  Richards and Megan both stood up instantly and started for the door, but Simmons held a hand up in Megan’s direction.

  “It’s a potential hostage situation, sir,” he said. “Firearms are on their way. I’ve arranged transport.”

  Richards ran his eyes from Megan to me and then Nigel, looking at us like we were kids who would have to be babysat.

  “I need to find out what this is all about,” he said, “The three of you can follow with Simmons, but you’re to stay in the vehicle until I say otherwise. Your presence could escalate things. Understood?”

  He started to leave but stopped halfway through the door and turned back to emphasise his point: “You won’t be doing yourselves any favours if this turns into a media circus.”

  As soon as Richards had gone, Simmons gathered up the file and notebook and told us to follow him. Our silent, stunned procession went through a door in the reception area into a drab and cluttered office and then along a dark corridor to the rear of the building. Simmons led and a female uniformed officer appeared from nowhere to take up the rear.

  Outside, another officer, a man even younger-looking than Simmons, was holding open the front passenger door of a gleaming black Range Rover with tinted windows. Simmons reached past him to pull the rear door open, and threw his head sideways to indicate that we should get in.

  “Inspector Richards?” the officer holding the door asked, as Megan climbed in followed by me and then Nigel.

  “He’s gone on ahead,” Simmons replied. “We’re to keep our distance for now.”

  It took us less than five minutes to reach Grange Road. The young driver had weaved his way through Newport like a boy racer, the siren sending cars scattering at random angles, creating an exhilarating but unsettling sense of power.

  Megan grabbed my hand. I looked down at her fingers threaded through mine, struggling to remember if that had happened before. To my left, Nigel was keying combinations of words like ‘gun’, ‘siege’ and ‘Newport’ into his phone, searching for some reference to what was happening online.