Over the Line

by Steve Howell

  Megan seemed numbed by it all. I squeezed her to me as the ambulance went by.

  Anderson appeared from the gym and started marching towards us.

  “Nasty wound, but he should be okay,” he said directly to Megan. “Do you want to go to the hospital?”

  Megan straightened up, pulling away from me. “Yes,” she said, “Yes I would.”

  “Inspector,” Anderson said. “Can you take her?”

  It didn’t sound like a question and Richards didn’t look enthusiastic.

  “Of course, sir,” he said.

  Megan turned to me.

  “I’ll see you back at the hotel,” I said.

  Richards smiled at me, and we held each other’s look. I sensed we were thinking the same thing: Megan’s loyalty to Will defied belief.

  23

  Night Birds

  The clues were everywhere. My watch told me it was 7.50pm. The hotel terrace was packed with people drinking. The sun was casting long shadows. And yet, as I turned the key to the door of my room, it could have been any time, any day. I’d lost track. Eight hours in the surreal bubble of a claustrophobic compound, watching Will’s siege unravel, had left me drained and disorientated.

  After Megan had gone to the hospital with Richards, I had waited around for Blake, who’d offered to take me back to The Priory. I texted Mimi to tell her I hadn’t been in the line of fire, saying I would phone from the hotel. I had watched the police dismantling the paraphernalia of their operation and allowing evacuated residents back into their homes.

  I saw them cordon-off the gym, securing it as a crime scene. I witnessed the arrival of a posse in white overalls, carrying their forensic toolkits. I laughed at the sight of the media not really knowing what to do next – whether to stay at the crime scene, chase the ambulance or go to the chief constable’s press conference.

  Several journalists milled around outside the gym for a while – filming, taking photographs and interviewing local residents. One young reporter, an earnest lad about Megan’s age, approached me enthusiastically asking if I’d been affected, wanting a ‘vox-pop’ from me. I told him I hadn’t seen much and suggested he try someone else.

  As I entered my hotel room, I felt an overwhelming urge to pack. I started gathering-up my stuff – T-shirts, a tracksuit, underwear, shorts, socks, jeans, trainers – throwing everything onto a bed neatly made while I was out, the normal routine carrying on reassuringly.

  I looked at the sorry pile – the wreckage of my week – and felt a sudden sense of euphoria at the prospect of getting out of here. I wanted to bundle everything up and head for the station straight away, but I had promised to go with Megan to see Richards the next morning – Sunday morning, I reminded myself – for what we hoped would be the final interview.

  I sat down in the armchair, exactly as I had two days earlier to listen to Megan confess she’d been there when Matt died. That seemed a minor transgression compared to blackmail and hostage-taking, but Richards had made it clear he was still not done with Megan. I doubted he thought Megan was guilty of anything beyond misplaced loyalty and spur-of-the-moment cowardice. I didn’t think he seriously believed she’d had a hand – even inadvertently – in Matt’s death, or had witnessed a fight or a push that would amount to manslaughter. But he wasn’t going to let her off the hook just yet. He was – as he kept saying – doing everything ‘by the book’, and that meant waiting for the new pathology report. Until then, as long as there was the slightest uncertainty about the cause of death, nothing could be ruled out and Megan would still be ‘helping the police with their inquiries’.

  The phone started vibrating, and Mimi’s name came up on the screen. I smiled and answered.

  “Hello, Mimi Jacobs.”

  “Liam McCarthy. You’re alive then?”

  “Yes, never in harm’s way, but running on empty emotionally.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

  “I knew I could depend on you.”

  We both giggled a little at this point. The relief of normal banter was making me slightly light-headed. The giggling turned, in my case, to laughter – uncontrollable, doubled-up, gasping for breath laughter.

  Mimi waited for me to finish.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Frigging awesome – never better,” I said, mimicking her unkindly.

  “Fuck off,” she said.

  I took some deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. Once I thought I could utter some words without laughing again, I started telling her what had happened, filling in the gaps in what she’d seen on TV or been told by the press officer. She knew already about the part Megan played in the freeing the hostages, but she hadn’t heard about the probe and she knew nothing about Gary turning the tables on Will.

  “Are you saying he meant to shoot him?” Mimi gasped.

  “I couldn’t really tell from what we were hearing,” I said. “There was a struggle, and then Evans says ‘You always were a fucking liability’. He didn’t know we could hear him. It sounded pretty threatening. Then we heard the shot.”

  “Oh my God, that sounds intentional to me. But why the fuck would he do that?”

  I visualised the two of them in the gym, Gary literally looking down the barrel of a gun for most of the day, and wondered if that would turn you so crazy you might do anything. Or was it more calculating than that? Was it deliberate?

  “Who knows? Maybe he was pissed-off he’d been tied up all day?” I said, intending irony but the silence from Mimi suggesting I hadn’t pulled it off. “Or maybe he’s violent by nature. Or perhaps he actually wants Will dead for some reason?”

  “You really think he shot to kill?”

  “The bullet hit him in the chest. That doesn’t seem like a warning shot to me. But Will could have been rushing him and the gun just went off.”

  We fell silent.

  “Wow,” Mimi said finally. “I never thought it would end like this.

  “End?”

  “Isn’t this…? I mean, surely Richards doesn’t still think Megan’s involved in some way in Matt’s death?”

  “I’ve no idea what he thinks, but he wants to see her tomorrow, and there’s still the question of the blackmail. As things stands, Meg’s a blackmail victim, a manslaughter suspect and a siege hero. Three in one. Not bad, is it?”

  Mimi sighed. “So when are you coming home?”

  The framing of the question took me by surprise. The word ‘home’ sounded so safe and seductive when she said it – even if she didn’t mean it that way.

  “The first train I can,” I said. “Nothing’s going to stop me. Once we’ve seen Richards, I’ll be on my way. Not even a siege would stop me.”

  “Ha, don’t tempt fate,” Mimi said. “Danny’s desperate to see you. I could bring him to Paddington to meet you.”

  “Really?” I said, taken aback again. I’d barely got my head round sharing a bed with Mimi, never mind talking like parents. Was this happening too fast? Or was it about time I was dragged from my emotional exile.

  “Of course, really, you twat!” Mimi said.

  I laughed. “Yes, that would be great. Really. Thanks.”

  We paused for another comfortable silence. I was exhausted, and Mimi seemed to be looking at everything with the fresh perspective that distance brings. I sensed her mind still churning the implications of the day’s events.

  “So what about the Olympics?” she said. “I can’t figure out if this changes things.”

  “Nor can I,” I said, struggling to think straight. “We’re still at the mercy of Richards and his pathology report. I don’t think he thinks Meg’s guilty of anything worse than bad judgement, but that doesn’t mean he’ll let her off lightly. And then there’s Meg herself. The fact she’s lost a week’s training at this time of year isn’t disastrous physically. The work’s already in her legs, so she’ll be fine if she can get to Bela Horizonte with the others. But I don’t know if she’s lost the plot mentally. You can
’t go to an Olympics with your head in a mess.”

  “Jackie’s resigned to it, to her pulling-out I mean,” Mimi said. “She’s already in damage limitation mode, talking about next year’s World Championships, and she thinks the sponsors will love the ‘Meg siege hero’ thing – that it’ll offset their disappointment about the Olympics. She’s testing the water with some of them this evening.”

  It seemed stranger than ever how these commercial calculations – deals worth millions – revolved around a 21-year-old whose life was in turmoil and her ability to get herself to a start line in Brazil for a race that would last just over 12 seconds.

  “I wouldn’t count on anything after today,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I really don’t know,” I said. “Who knows what affect all this will have on Meg? She’s not a machine. She seems to be re-evaluating everything. I could even see her giving it all up, and God knows what’s going to happen between her and Will.”

  “Nothing, after today, surely?” Mimi said.

  “Well, she’s sitting by his bedside now – as we speak.”

  “It’s bonkers. I don’t get it... But he has been shot, I suppose. Maybe it’s pity?”

  “Or she loves him in spite of everything.”

  Using the word ‘love’ made me feel unexpectedly awkward. I realised it begged questions about my feelings for Mimi that I had no idea how to answer. I hadn’t talked in such intimate terms with anyone for years, and I wanted to say that – to say something about how good it felt – but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Yep,” Mimi said with a laugh, letting me off the hook. “It’s amazing what a girl will do for love… I’ll see you tomorrow at Paddington.”

  I looked at the ‘Disconnected’ message on the screen, and then across at the pile of clothes on the bed. I really did want to go home.

  ***

  The mindlessness of packing was all I could manage and was such a relief from trying to work out the implications of everything that had happened. I took my time, giving some sort of order to the jumble and trying to fit it all into my bag. It was like everything was in slow motion – so slow that after a while all I could do was lie down, fully clothed, next to my packed bag and drift into sleep.

  It was well into the night when Megan woke me. If she’d tried knocking, I hadn’t responded, and she was standing over me now, looking down, saying, “Liam, are you okay?”

  I jerked into a sitting position, trying to focus on the room and get my bearings, my eyes half-closed to block out the brightness of the lights. I ran my hands through my hair and felt the stubble on my chin.

  “I saw the lights were on,” Megan said.

  Yes, they are on, I thought. That was a mistake. I squinted up at Megan and she sat down on the arm of one of the chairs. I manoeuvred myself into a half-sitting position.

  “He’s in a bad way,” she said. “In intensive care. They operated straight away. Stitched him up and gave him loads of morphine.”

  I nodded. I didn’t think it would be helpful to say, ‘I really didn’t give a shit right now and please can I go back to sleep’.

  “I haven’t spoken to him,” Megan continued. “I sat with him for a while, but his mother’s there now. Oh my God, she’s in a state.”

  His mother? I hadn’t really considered the idea of Will having a mother, never mind thought of her rushing to the hospital to sit by his bed.

  “So do they think he’s going to be okay?” I said, trying to muster a tone of concern for Meg’s benefit.

  “They think so,” she said, sliding off the arm into the chair and, alarmingly, making herself comfortable. “The bullet missed his heart, but they said his lung’s damaged.”

  “Good. I mean, good it wasn’t worse,” I said. “And what about you?”

  Megan looked at me like she didn’t know where to begin. What could she say? My boyfriend – if that’s what he was – went mad, held innocent hostages at gunpoint and got himself shot. I’m being investigated by the police, a suspect in a possible manslaughter case, and my Olympic ambitions are hanging by a thread.

  “I’m holding it together,” she said, and looked harder at me like a doctor examining a patient. “But you look a wreck.”

  “I’m not at my best,” I said.

  She continued, still studying me intently to a point where I was beginning to squirm.

  “Thank you, for everything,” she said earnestly.

  I smiled, really appreciating the sentiment, if not the timing. I checked my watch. It was just after three-thirty in the morning.

  “Thank me when it’s over,” I said. “We’ve got another session with Richards in a few hours.”

  “I know. More questions.”

  “Especially after today.”

  “I know, can you believe it?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what came over him. Gary must have been putting so much pressure on him…”

  I was too tired to start trying to analyse everything again. And most of what I wanted to say about Will would not have gone down very well.

  “I’ve got to go home tomorrow, after we’ve seen Richards,” I said. “I’ve promised Danny. But I can come back if you need me, and we’ll have to have a talk with Jackie about everything – about how this affects Rio. The team leaves on Thursday.”

  Megan waved a hand dismissively as if the Olympics was the last thing on her mind. “I still can’t think straight about that, Li. It’s too much, and I can’t see myself going anywhere until I know Will’s okay.”

  I cringed inwardly at that but decided that pushing Meg would be counter-productive. “Let’s see what tomorrow brings,” I said.

  “Well, it’ll bring my parents for a start,” she said. “They’re coming down from Cardigan tomorrow. You wouldn’t believe what a fuss they’re making about all this.”

  I raised my eyebrows, thinking of saying, ‘I wouldn’t believe it if they hadn’t’ but my attention was caught by the sound of a solitary bird singing, anticipating the dawn; repeating two notes over and over again. I’d heard the same birdsong at about the same time all through the week. I’d even become quite fond of it, but I was desperate now for a night without it.

  “You realise we’re seeing Richards in a few hours?” I reminded her. “Best get some sleep.”

  “Better had,” she said, springing to her feet with extraordinary plyometric bounce. The words of Poetry In Motion came to me again, and I thought what a shame it would be if the Olympics was deprived of her.

  24

  Devils And Details

  I arranged for us to have breakfast in my room. We had managed to avoid the media all week, and I wasn’t going to take any chances now.

  Megan had been for a workout, much to my surprise, of strides and sprints on the rugby field and wanted her training rations of porridge and fruit. I had the full Welsh – to hell with it, I would worry about my emerging paunch another day.

  Breakfast came with a set of Sunday papers, compliments of the owner, who was now a fellow conspirator, actively helping us keep our heads down and shrewd enough to know he’d have a great story to tell or sell later.

  The headlines made gratifying reading. It was as if Megan was another person, re-invented overnight. ‘Megan leaps to the rescue’ one paper said. Another called her ‘the gun siege heroine’. The chief constable said she was “calm and courageous” and played on the sporting connection in describing her as “a winner in a winning team”. The freed hostages were even quoted saying they owed their lives to Meg. In one paper, the woman who had been released said she had overheard her on the phone begging Will to release them. They headlined it with an almost Biblical: ‘For God’s sake, let those people go’.

  My involvement in the drama was mentioned by most of them, if only in passing. The chief constable said I had exercised “the calming influence of an experienced coach”. And a few papers carried photographs of me peering over the screens, like I was the command centre’
s lookout.

  ***

  Almost every report skated over the background to the siege, missing out the bits that didn’t fit their new ‘Meg hero’ angle. Only a few mentioned that Meg herself was still under investigation in a suspicious death. In some papers, it was almost as if she happened to be passing and stepped in like Wonder Woman to help the police because, by chance, she knew the man who’d gone mad.

  Their lurch from villain to heroin was laughable really, but we weren’t going to let that spoil our fun. We read the best extracts out to each other. We texted Mimi and Jackie and I took a photograph of a paper that had a picture of me and emailed it to Danny.

  “What are you doing?” Meg said.

  “Sending it to Danny,” I said as if that was obvious.

  “Danny, your son?” she said, leaving her mouth open in exaggerated surprise. “So how come I’ve never seen him?”

  The question hit my sore spot, reminding me how much catching up I had to do. “I think you’ll see a lot more of him from now on,” I replied, but Meg’s mind seemed to have moved on. Her eyes were fixed on a piece in one of the sports sections. All I could make out, reading upside down, was the headline saying: Make up your mind, Meg.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Meg silently passed the paper across with a grim look, her lips pursed like she was keeping herself in check. When I read the first sentence I realised why:

  The uncertainty surrounding the Olympic intentions of Britain’s golden girl Megan Tomos are causing growing concern within athletics, with some respected voices saying she is unfairly occupying a place that could go to someone else.