Over the Line

by Steve Howell

  I looked up at Meg and every trace of sparkle had gone. She’d had only a few hours’ sleep and a brutal few days, and it showed now – there was nothing to laugh about.

  “Read the rest,” she said. “It doesn’t get any better.”

  After missing a crucial Diamond League race on Friday against her main Olympic rivals, the 100m hurdler was embroiled yesterday in a bizarre gun siege in Newport involving her former boyfriend Will Driscoll.

  Police say Tomos helped them negotiate the release of the hostages held at a local gym by Driscoll, who was banned from rugby for using steroids, but the drama has prompted calls from within athletics for Tomos to come clean about her Olympic plans.

  With only four days to go before the athletics team leaves for the Olympic holding camp at Belo Horizonte, leading coach Greg Bannister insists she should “make up her mind immediately”.

  “This is an event in which Britain has an abundance of riches,” he said. “We have five athletes with the Olympic qualifying standard, and Meg’s sitting on one of only three places. If she pulls out at the last minute, it will be too late for the athlete who replaces her to prepare themselves.”

  “It had to be Greg, didn’t it?” I said. “He’s been dying to put the boot into me since I said I couldn’t coach his niece. You can’t take this seriously, Meg – everyone knows what he’s like.”

  “In athletics maybe,” Meg said, “but not everyone. It makes me look selfish and irresponsible. Look. Read the next bit.”

  A fellow athlete who didn’t want to be named, added: “It’s unfair on the girls who’ve got the qualifying standard but weren’t selected. They don’t know where they stand. Meg’s messing everyone around.”

  A spokesperson for UK Athletics said: “We understand the concerns and are trying to contact Megan”.

  “Great! Nice to see them leaping to our defence,” I said with irony. “But there is a simple answer…”

  “Yep, fuck ‘em!” Meg said, not letting me finish. “Stuff Rio. I’m going to pull out. I’m sick of the whole sodding thing.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, but it’s not you who’s in the middle of all this. I can’t win. If I go to Rio with Will in intensive care and the Matt investigation still going on, everyone will say I’m selfish and heartless. It’ll be, ‘Look at her – she left Matt for dead and now she’s leaving Will on life support’. Great. That’s just the mental prep you need for an Olympics. And then I’ll blow it anyway – and they’ll say I should have let someone else go. I’m telling you, Li, it’s a lost cause, and we both know it.”

  “But it’s only one piece in one newspaper,” I said, mainly to Megan’s back as she headed for the door, slamming it as she went.

  I sat and stared at her empty chair for a few moments and then stood, collected up the newspapers that were scattered everywhere and dropped them in the bin.

  ***

  Megan had donned her baseball cap and dark glasses again to go to the police station. As a disguise, it didn’t make much sense when she was driving the flashiest car for miles, but at least it hid the sullen look that was tempting me to give her a mouthful about my feelings on the subject of going to Rio.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t have sympathy with her saying she would pull-out – the Olympics isn’t something you can tackle when in emotional turmoil – but I thought the decision warranted a bit more input from me.

  We arrived early. I’d promised Mimi I would aim for the London train at just after one o’clock, and I was hoping Richards would already be there and we could start right away. He wasn’t, and we were shown into the usual interview room to wait.

  As we sat down, Meg had a text from Will’s mother saying he hadn’t woken yet but the doctors were saying his condition was ‘stable’. She became even more sullen when that came through, staring at her phone like it was somehow plugged into Will’s pulse.

  “Are you going to try to see him today?” I said, attempting to empathise.

  Megan shrugged. “The trouble is, I don’t really get on with his mother. Another one who blames me for everything.”

  “But she texted you,” I said.

  “Yep, but only because she’s seen the papers and thinks she’ll be a celebrity too. Sad cow. She doesn’t actually give a shit about Will. That’s why he left home as soon as he had the chance.”

  Richards arrived at ten o’clock, prompt as ever, with Simmons in tow. Both had the careworn look of people for whom this wasn’t the first meeting of the day and wouldn’t be the last. Simmons had about half a dozen files under his arm this time, and he nearly spilled them all onto the floor as he manoeuvred into his seat.

  “I have to tell you it’s been a bit hectic,” Richards said, nodding at the files. “You could say we’ve had a busy night.”

  He looked across at Simmons, evidently self-satisfied but making a point of sharing the moment in a fatherly way with his young colleague.

  “Well, here we are again then,” he continued. “Let’s hope we don’t have any more interruptions. Where’s Mr Winters?”

  “On his way, I expect,” I said.

  “Have you both had a chance to recover from yesterday’s nonsense?”

  “Megan spent most of the night at the hospital,” I replied, sensing Megan next to me tightening with irritation at his slightly patronising tone.

  “Yes – how is Will?” Richards said.

  “I’m sure you’re more up to date than me,” Megan said, “but he’s stable, last I heard from his Mum.”

  “Good, yes – you’re right,” Richards said. “I have had a very recent report, and my understanding is he’s awake and they’re happy with his progress. We’re hoping to interview him later today.”

  I was conscious we hadn’t been through the ritual of the recorder and was about to point this out when a flustered Nigel barged in apologising for his lateness and saying he hoped we hadn’t started.

  Megan and I shuffled our chairs along to allow him to pull-up one for himself on our side of the table. He sat down and put this hands together on the table as if saying ‘I’ve arrived so get on with it’.

  Richards nodded to Simmons to press the record button and ran through the date, time and location and then asked all of us to state our names again.

  “Well, now we’re all here, let me start by bringing you up to date,” Richards said. “We’ve charged the owner of the gym, a Mr Michael Samuels, with trafficking illegal drugs. Do you know him?”

  Megan shook her head.

  “He owns a garage in Cwmbran and a couple of other businesses: a respectable pillar of the community by some accounts. Of course, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as they say, but there were enough syringes in that gym to supply the Royal Gwent for a month. Samuels is in custody and will go before a magistrate in the morning.”

  “That’s very interesting, inspector,” Nigel said, “but what exactly has it got to do with my client?”

  Richards looked at Nigel for a minute as if he was deciding whether to jump down his throat or to treat him like a child who was slow on the uptake. He went for the latter.

  “Nothing at all, Mr Winters, in terms of the Matt Davies case, nothing whatsoever,” Richards said, wearily, “but I thought as Miss Tomos had kindly been so helpful yesterday, she’d be interested to know how our enquiries had gone since.”

  Megan nodded but in an abrupt ‘cut-to-the-chase’ way.

  “So turning to the question of Sergeant Evans,” Richards said, “he’s been suspended of course. But we’ve also charged him with possession with intent to supply a Class C drug – anabolic steroids.”

  “Yeees!” Megan said, giving a half-punch in the air, and looking as if she wanted to start dancing round the room.

  Richards allowed Megan her moment, but he was smiling smugly, exuding a sense that there was more to come.

  “That’s for starters,” he said. “We have enough evidence from searching his house to cover that char
ge and keep him in custody, but as regards the more serious matter of the shooting, we can’t do much until we’ve interviewed Will and had reports from the pathologist and the ballistics people. We need to know how far that bullet travelled. At the moment Evans is saying the gun went off accidentally when they were struggling, but we’ll see if that stacks-up when we get the reports. This is all confidential in the meantime of course. You understand?”

  “Of course,” Nigel said, sounding contrite after his earlier surliness. “We appreciate your candour.”

  Richards knotted his brow and gave a sombre nod. I suspected what Nigel did or didn’t appreciate meant nothing to him.

  “Which brings us to the matter of Mr Driscoll himself,” he said, turning to Simmons. “Megan, we appreciate you’re worried and upset about Will, and of course we all hope he makes a full recovery, but we can’t allow the fact he’s been injured – serious though his condition is – to stand in the way of our enquiries.” He turned to Nigel, repeating his stern look. “And, yes, Mr Winters, for the record, this is relevant and necessary. Despite what happened yesterday, much as we appreciate the help Miss Tomos gave us, we still have to get to the bottom of what happened the night Matt Davies died, and we still need to clarify some matters concerning the relationship between Megan and Will Driscoll.”

  Nigel seemed about to interrupt, but Richards held up a hand. “DC Simmons,” he said, “you have a few questions for Megan.”

  Simmons cleared his throat and started rifling through the files in front of him until he found the one he wanted and took out a sheet of paper. He looked nervous at finding himself in the spotlight.

  “Right, Miss Tomos,” he began tentatively, glancing first at Megan and then studying the notes on the paper, which – from my angle – looked like a minute by minute countdown to Matt being declared dead. “Let’s start with Matt, on the night in question.”

  Megan wriggled, her euphoria over Gary being charged completely deflated now.

  “You said on Friday that you thought Matt arrived at Will’s flat between two- and two-thirty in the morning.”

  Megan nodded.

  “We know that a 999 call from Driscoll was logged at 4.10am and that the ambulance arrived at 4.34am. You also said Matt collapsed about half an hour after he’d arrived.”

  “If that,” Megan interrupted.

  “Thank you,” Simmons said, writing a note at the bottom of the sheet and then looking up earnestly at Megan. “And you left immediately afterwards, thinking Matt was dead?”

  “Yes,” Megan whispered, sounding embarrassed at having to confirm her callous desertion of Matt yet again.

  “You told us on Friday about Matt arriving and the state he was in,” Simmons said, business-like, no hint of sentiment, only occasionally looking up from the timeline in front of him. “And you said Will gave him a glass of water. You’re sure it was water?”

  Megan nodded.

  “Could you confirm please: you’re certain it was water?”

  Megan recoiled slightly and frowned in my direction. “Not certain…” she said, turning back to Simmons. “I suppose I assumed it was water.”

  “But you can’t remember seeing Driscoll pour the drink?” Simmons said.

  “No – well, I suppose he would have had his back to me, facing the sink, when he was pouring it.”

  “But were other drinks there, on the counter?”

  Megan took a moment, squinting slightly as if trying to remember.

  “Yes, there were a few bottles left from the party – vodka and stuff.”

  “So the drink Will offered Matt could have been something else – vodka, for all you knew?” Simmons said, allowing himself a self-satisfied smile.

  “It could, but why… why would...?”

  “I don’t know,” interrupted Simmons. “I want to be clear that’s all – about what you actually remember or know, not what you think happened.”

  Megan looked down at her hands, fingers splayed out flat on the table. It looked like she might be counting them, just to be sure.

  Simmons jotted something else on his timeline.

  “Okay, don’t worry. I’m not going to go over everything you told us on Friday again, but there’s one part of it I need to clarify: you said Matt grabbed his chest – and ‘suddenly crumpled’ were the words you used. You said that you reached out to try to stop him falling, but you couldn’t. Now, let’s leave aside how badly he bumped his head on the way down: I want to concentrate on what happened once he’d collapsed. There he was, laid out on the floor. Tell us exactly what happened next.”

  Megan was rigid next to me. Her back was straight. Her hands were still laid flat on the table. She was staring at Simmons but seemed to be looking through him.

  “What happened next?” she repeated. “What happened was…” Megan clenched her hands and closed her eyes... “I stepped towards him. I remember that, and I remember his face – his face had no colour. And I remember the vomit. He was on his side, and Will knelt down and tried to lift him up. But Matt was writhing around, and Will couldn’t…”

  “So he was still moving at that point?” Simmons persisted.

  Megan shook her head. “I think he’d stopped. Will let him drop so he could take his pulse.”

  Simmons pulled another piece of paper from the file and scanned it until his eyes settled about halfway down the hand written notes.

  “You have a clear memory of Will taking his pulse?” he said.

  Nigel and I both turned towards Megan at the same time, from either side of her, our eyes meeting. I had no idea what Nigel was thinking, but my sympathies at this point were with Simmons. His precision was as exacting as I tried to be when dissecting one of Megan’s races, only this was a matter of life and death.

  Simmons waited, his eyes fixed on Megan who was motionless, looking down at the file.

  “No,” she said finally. “To be honest, I don’t actually. It’s a blur. I think I was about to bend down and do it myself, and then Will suddenly stood up. He nearly knocked me over. He said, ‘He’s dead… you’ve got to get out of here.’ But…”

  “But what, Megan?” Simmons said.

  Megan’s eyes danced from Simmons to Richards and then, half-turning her torso, settled on me. “But I don’t actually remember seeing Will take his pulse,” she said, as if confiding in me. “I remember wanting to touch him, to see for myself how he was, but I didn’t. Will said I should go. And I did. I panicked.”

  “So you can’t be absolutely sure he was dead?” Richards interjected, sounding harsh and judgemental.

  “No. No, I can’t,” Megan said, “but why would Will say he was if he wasn’t?”

  Simmons shrugged. I thought I detected a smirk forming, but he turned serious and started rifling through his file for another piece of paper, this time retrieving a photocopy of a form headed with the name of a taxi company.

  “You left and went home by taxi?” Simmons said.

  Megan nodded.

  “You got a taxi from town?” Simmons said, his eyes directing Megan to the recorder.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The taxi records appear to confirm the timings you gave us,” Simmons said. “There’s a record of a taxi going from the rank at the railway station to your parents’ address, just after three. We’ve spoken to the driver, and the description he gives suggests it was you.”

  “Inspector,” Nigel said. “My client had a difficult day yesterday, to say the least. Where’s all this leading?”

  Simmons turned to Richards as if asking for permission to continue. “Mr Winters,” he said, taking the inspector’s silence as his cue. “We want to confirm – for the record – that, firstly, Miss Tomos can’t be sure Matt was dead when she left – she only has Driscoll’s word for it – and secondly, assuming it took Megan ten minutes to reach the taxi rank, and that’s admittedly less than we’d allow for a person of average fitness,” Simmons smiled as if to emphasise he was trying to pay Megan a c
ompliment, “there was more than an hour between Megan leaving the flat and Driscoll calling for help.”

  “I don’t believe it – that can’t be right!” Megan said.

  Richards raised his eyebrows. Involuntarily, and with my usual insensitivity, I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven. With the magnitude of Simmons’s statement hanging in the air, I began to wonder how much else was in those files and whether or not I would make the train I’d promised Mimi I’d catch at one o’clock.

  Megan and Nigel both seemed about to say something to break the silence, but Simmons was already plucking more papers from his file, eager to move on.

  “I’d like you to cast your mind back over the last couple of years,” he said, “and tell me how many times you’ve given Will Driscoll money, and what the reasons were? If you would.”

  Megan flinched and straightened her back again. Her breathing was level and calm, but she was as taut as she’d be at the start of a race. I sensed, beyond her, that Nigel was having a mini-panic and about to intervene again.

  Megan beat him to it. “What the fuck has that got to do with anything?” she said, looking antagonistically at Simmons across the table.

  “We’re not sure yet, Miss Tomos,” Richards said firmly before Simmons could reply, “but may I remind you, you’re still under caution. As I said earlier, your help yesterday was greatly appreciated, but it doesn’t give you any special privileges. We still have a job to do, and part of it is to deal with your allegation that Evans was blackmailing you.”

  “So why don’t you ask Evans about it?” Megan said.

  “Because there are things we want to clarify with you first,” Simmons replied, assertively, encouraged now by his boss’s tone.

  “Is there anything you want to discuss with me before continuing?” Nigel said to Megan, his concern obviously growing at the possibility of yet another Megan surprise. “I’m sure the inspector will allow us a break.”

  “No, it’s okay. I can answer the question, but I can’t see why it matters.”