Now – 6th March
I can’t stop staring at him, there on the floor, his legs bent like he’s flying, arms thrown out at his sides. And his head. His head tilted at a bad angle on the ugly marble-effect hearth, eyes open, mouth slack, staring right back at me.
If I keep looking, he’s going to blink and groan and roll on to his side and this problem will go away.
Ella is mumbling to herself, her face in her hands, and I think she might be praying. These are the situations where even the staunchest atheists turn to God.
There’s almost no blood on the green-veined tiles. Whatever happened, happened quick. I can see him falling, off balance, his skull striking the fireplace with a single hard crack; dead in an instant. Like those street fights that go from a scuffle to murder in a moment.
‘It was an accident,’ Ella says from behind her hands.
She keeps saying it.
‘I know.’
I don’t know. All I have are the bald facts of him and her in this room and the dizzying feeling of being shunted into someone else’s bad night.
‘Maybe he’s okay.’ Ella blinks above her fingertips, bloodshot eyes so hopeful I feel my heart clench. ‘He might just be unconscious.’
‘Haven’t you checked?’
‘I couldn’t.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
I’m sobering up by the second, adrenaline clearing my head, but I’m shaking as I walk across the room and I feel my stomach lurch when I squat next to him. I brace my arm against the fireplace and ride out a sudden swell of nausea that sends bile rushing up into my throat.
He’s going to flinch when I touch him. He’s going to snap to life and ask what the hell I think I’m doing.
Slowly, I reach out and press my fingertips into his neck. His skin is cool and rough with stubble as I look for a pulse I know I won’t find. I hold my breath and hear my own pulse beating in my ears, waiting for him to come ticking along with me.
And now I’m praying too, silently but fervently.
A weak flutter will do, faint as a moth’s wings.
‘Come on,’ I whisper.
I can smell the detergent from his clothes, mingling with the metallic scent of his blood. It’s matted in the weave of his grey beanie, drying already, and I wonder how long Ella has been in here with him. I wonder why she called me instead of an ambulance, but some part of me is glad that she did. I’m the first person she thought of, the one she trusts to get her through this.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she asks timidly.
I nod and she starts to cry, small sobs, becoming fuller.
‘Oh, God. What have I done?’ She covers her face with her hands and lets out a soft howl which cuts through me. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
My legs refuse to straighten but I reach for her hand as I sit awkwardly on the low hearth and she grabs it like a drowning woman thrown a rope. She squeezes my fingers so hard that my rings dig into my bones. I can feel her pulse beating too fast, how cold she is and how her skin slowly warms to the same temperature as mine as we sit there. Minutes pass and I try to say soothing things, but I don’t think she hears me.
She keeps apologising – to me or him, I’m not sure.
She keeps saying it was an accident, like that will stop it being real.
Like it will make it true.
I push the unwelcome thought aside. Of course it was an accident. Ella is a peaceful girl, too small and too smart for violence.
He’ll have had a fit or a stroke, the result of some obscure hidden condition, the kind that occasionally cuts down the young without warning. Or he’ll have taken something that got the better of his system.
Either way, a stumble, an unlucky fall against the tiles. An accident, just like Ella says.
‘Have you called anyone?’ I ask finally.
‘You,’ she says.
‘An ambulance?’ I suggest. ‘The police?’
‘No, not yet.’ Her fingers relax around mine slightly. ‘I needed a few minutes to calm down before I did that.’
It’s been more than a few minutes. Maybe fifteen since she called me. And a while before that too, judging by the lack of heat in his skin and the drying of his blood. I’m hardly an expert, but even I can see this scene isn’t exactly fresh. Why has she waited all this time? It could just be shock but if she didn’t know whether he was dead or alive why didn’t she call an ambulance? Come back up to the roof and shout for a doctor or someone with first-aid experience?
Why did she do nothing to save him?
Unease creeps up my spine.
‘Do you know who he is, Ella?’
‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘Was he at the party?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ She bites her lip. ‘Maybe he came with someone else. Did you see him up there?’
He looks like half a dozen different men I’ve spoken to tonight and I find it difficult to believe that he wasn’t one of them. We’ve had every kind of weirdo in the building since it began to empty out, the opportunists and the oddballs. But he doesn’t look that sort. His clothes are new and clean, and even with the heavy beard hiding much of his face, I can see he isn’t going hungry. I doubt he’s sleeping rough either.
He looks like a man who’ll be expected home tonight or at work tomorrow.
Right now his friends on the roof might be wondering where he’s got to. If he’s pulled.
‘What were you two doing in here?’ I ask.
Ella looks at me, stunned, like she’s forgotten I’m in the room.
‘He dragged me in here.’ She drops her gaze. ‘He was in the stairwell. I don’t know if he was waiting for me or if I was just the first person who came down.’
‘The first woman,’ I say, anger starting to beat through my bones. ‘Is that what you mean?’
Ella pushes her sleeve up to her elbow, showing me the marks his broad hands have left on her pale skin. ‘It all happened so fast.’
The room seems to shift around me as I reappraise his posture on the floor and her cowed body language. I read violence in the loose curl of his outflung fist and intent laced into his heavy leather boots.
I test my gut for softer feelings and find no sympathy for him there. Not any more.
Above us the sounds of the party continue. Almost midnight now and it will be winding down soon for all but the hardcore. Most of them need to be at work tomorrow morning. Early starts, demanding bosses, grinding commutes across and under the river. Tonight they can raise their fists in defiance but only for so long before the gravity of real life drops them.
Ella’s phone vibrates again and she ignores it.
People will be wondering where she is, too. Soon someone will come looking for her.
Suddenly I feel very exposed. I ease my hand from Ella’s grasp and go to draw the thin, unlined curtains that graze the flaking sill. I pause, looking at the windows of the new building, trying to work out if they can see into here as easily as I can see into there. The lit ones aren’t the problem. It’s the darkened ones that scare me . . . anyone could be watching; they would have a prime view of this messy drama.
Why would you turn your attention towards this crumbling eyesore, though, when the totalitarian bulk of Battersea Power Station glowers to the west and Millbank’s sparkling distractions draw you east? A party boat glides by, heading towards the glittering span of Chelsea Bridge, the people on deck small shimmering figures, the white of tuxedos standing out among all the little black dresses. That’s the London our neighbours are paying £1,500 per square foot to survey from their open-plan living areas, not this version.
But I still feel observed as I pull the curtains closed.
Ella has stopped crying and she sits with her head in her hands, an occasional tremor rocking her body.
A plan is forming at the back of my mind. I’m not sure if it’s the sober and logical part or the bit that’s still drunk and slightly stoned.
Good idea or bad idea?
Nobody could tell the difference at a time like this.
I’ll only know when it’s done. And not even then, because the thing is only the beginning. What comes afterwards will decide whether I’m right or not and I’m not sure of anything but the need to save us both. That I need to do something because Ella is falling apart and I’m not far behind her, just a few precious minutes that might make all the difference, but I’m squandering them in doubting myself. I can see her becoming smaller, giving up, and I know what she’ll want to do and that she’s wrong even if I’m wrong too, wanting to do the opposite.
The fear is surging along my spine now. It’s pooling at the point where bone joins brain so that my head sits disconnected and I’m looking at Ella and the dead man and weighing her life and mine against his unchangeable death.
‘What am I going to do?’ she asks.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I should call the police.’
She doesn’t move for her phone.
‘What are you going to tell them?’
‘That he attacked me, obviously.’
‘You don’t look like you were attacked. Few bruises on your arms. Anyone could have done that.’ Anger flashes behind her eyes and I press on, knowing I’m antagonising her, but she needs to understand how the police will treat her. ‘You get your arm pinched, he gets his head bashed in. You’re the aggressor here. The murderer.’
‘It was an accident, I told you,’ Ella says, her voice rising. Tears prick the corners of her eyes and she squeezes them shut. ‘All I did was defend myself.’
‘So, you’ll be charged with manslaughter rather than murder,’ I tell her, not mentioning how she’s already contradicted herself. ‘That’s five to eight years in prison rather than ten to life. Assuming the police and the CPS believe you acted in self-defence.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ she demands. ‘Do you think I’m lying?’
I sit down on the arm of the chair and hug her to my side. ‘All I care about right now is keeping you out of prison.’
Ella gives another low wail and stifles it with her fist.
‘I’ll explain,’ she says, but there’s no force to her words.
‘They won’t care.’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Since when did that matter?’ I ask, allowing myself a bitter moment’s drift back into memory as I brush her shoulder with my thumb. ‘He attacked you, Ella. A man like that isn’t worth ruining your life over.’
Something is scratching behind the wall, furious and desperate-sounding: rats scenting fresh meat. I imagine their sharp little claws and yellow eyes, trying to break through into this room. If we leave him here, how long before he’s discovered? How much of him will be left by then?
‘There’s a reason you called me and not the police.’ Ella’s shoulders stiffen and she pulls away from me, but we’re face to face now and I can see my own fear reflected back at me, along with a determination that gives me hope. ‘You know what needs to be done.’
She presses her mouth into a firm line, as if she’s holding in a response she isn’t sure of yet, and I know she’s going through the same process I did. Wondering if she can be that person, if she already is.
Almost nobody comes up to this floor now. Only one flat’s occupied and it’s at the far end of the landing. It could be weeks or months until the smell permeates through the rest of the building and, even then, it will just be another rank odour, to go with the damp and the mould and the reek of bathrooms left uncleaned when their owners left, the kitchens where food is slowly rotting in cupboards.
He might never be found.
Not until the breakers move in and begin the methodical work of dismantling this place room by room, level by level. And I doubt the developers will let it slow their progress. His body will be quietly disappeared. Just a homeless man, they’ll decide. Not worth the hassle of involving the police.
‘We can’t,’ Ella says finally, bowing her head.
I take her chin in my hand and turn her face up into mine.
‘We have to.’