The Guilty Party: A new gripping thriller from the 2018 bestselling author Mel McGrath
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A cloud crosses Anna’s face then her eyes widen and her expression softens. ‘Oh, it’ll be to do with the fighting Dex got caught up in. I don’t think it’s anything serious.’
‘Gav seemed to think it was.’
Anna sits with this a moment before dismissing it with a wave of her hand. ‘You know how he exaggerates everything. And anyway, he’s not really thinking straight. Poor Dex.’ Observing the look on my face, she goes on, ‘He’s been thinking of leaving Gav for years. He hasn’t done it because he likes the money and now he’s trapped, at least until Gav dies.’ She passes me the joint then, looking away, towards the moon, holds up a finger and begins moving it to and fro as if trying to wipe out the stars. ‘He never told you, did he? I suppose he couldn’t bring himself to, in the circumstances. I think he loves Gav but they lead separate lives.’ Her eyes cut to me. ‘You can’t have him back, you know, once Gav goes. It would never work.’
At the dark edges of the sky, where the moonlight does not penetrate, there are stars visible, intense pinpoints of light bringing proof of life, messages that are old and redundant before we can even read them. Every one of those stars is dead now, little more than a collection of debris or a black hole.
Anna’s hands are in her lap, the fingers of her right hand idly twirling the ring around her left ring finger. ‘You’re so much more real than any of us, Cassie. So much less complicated.’ She looks up. ‘Maybe you think I’m being condescending but I’m really not. When you say things, you mean them. You have no idea how rare that is in the world I come from. I feel safe when I’m with you.’ She signals for the joint, takes a deep inhale and blows out rings across the sky. ‘I suppose that’s what also makes you such a bad liar.’
‘Which means?’
‘I know where you got the money to buy those clothes you’re wearing and it wasn’t a promotion, was it?’ She drops the joint and extinguishes it under her foot. ‘The thing is, everyone’s got a secret they think no one else knows, but most of the time someone else does. I saw what was in your bag that night in Wapping. When it fell open. Funny that Gav loses a wad of cash from his hallway and a wad of cash turns up in your bag.’
‘I didn’t take Gav’s money.’
‘Well, then, maybe all the more reason for not drawing the attention of the cops,’ says Anna, and, hugging her chest, in a breezy tone adds, ‘It’s suddenly got awfully cold. Shall we go in?’
While we’ve been gone, Bo has filled our glasses, Dex has brought out a plate of wonderful cheeses and a box of silky, expensive chocolates and with night staring in from the French windows and the flickering shadows of candles on the thick, enveloping walls of Fossil Cottage it is almost possible to believe, even now, that everything is normal. But our world is anything but normal. Even the word will not hold, as it runs along tracks made wet with wine, heading towards an as yet unnamed catastrophe. The not-normalness. I know then that by going back to what I’d seen, to what we all witnessed, will be to risk not only being cast out but something more, some permanent injury which will be impossible ever to put right. If I could I would stop the train and head off the crash but I do not know how. A family like ours, tied not by blood or birth but by love and secrets, is so much more delicately but also more complicatedly bound, the contract between kin willingly entered into and habitually renewed, but at the same time so exquisitely fragile, so will-o’-the-wispish, that it might at any moment crack and splinter like dropped glass. It’s hard to lose your blood family. I know that to be the case. Something of them remains inside you. But your family of choice can be taken from you in a blink. If that happened to me, what – after the years of emotional investment, of love and shared history – would be left? A going nowhere job and a dingy room in a rented flat overlooking a bus station.
Dex brings out the Scrabble board and for the next hour or two we make our way through another bottle or two of wine and attempt to fill the board with words, too drunk by now to play with any skill.
Game finished, cheese and chocolates polished off, Bo says, ‘So, who’s for a nightcap? There’s some ridiculously pricey cognac somewhere,’ and without waiting for an answer pulls back his chair and makes his way unsteadily towards the kitchen. Then just as suddenly he stops in his tracks and turning to face us with a grin, he says, ‘That bloody word, it’s finally come to me!’ He’d stumbled during our earlier game and lost points. ‘Revenant!’
‘Is that a word?’ Anna says.
‘Don’t you remember, there was a film out a while ago, Leonardo di Caprio doing battle with a man in a bear costume,’ Bo says.
‘I missed that one. What a shame.’
‘Anyway, it means a dead soul who comes back into the world of the living bringing a message. Damn, if only I’d remembered! It would have been millions of points. More than enough to win.’
‘But mate, you didn’t. Remember or win,’ says Dex.
Anna lets out an extravagant yawn. ‘It’s time for my bed.’ And with a flirtatious little wave, she gets up and wafts towards the staircase.
I bump into her a few minutes later in the upstairs hallway. I’m coming out of the loo, and she’s waiting to go in.
‘Goodnight, darling,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek. Everything else goes unsaid. Now I know Anna knows my secret. And I, in turn, know hers. If one of us spills, we both go down. That makes us quits.
A little while later, when one of the candles gutters on the kitchen table, and Dex licks his thumb and stubs out the flame, I read it as a sign to remain in the dark. Stay in the shadows. Don’t try to find out what you don’t want to know.
But still, the feeling of shock and betrayal doesn’t go away. All night in the Urchin room, turning in the bed, the owls outside the window hooting, You did nothing. You did nothing.
At some point, when it’s still dark outside, I get up and take a shower, soothed by the warm water, the steamy atmosphere inside the cubicle through which I can neither see out nor be seen. I’ve become such an expert at cover-up and pretence I’m no longer sure what’s me and what’s a version of me. Am I Cassie 1.0 or Cassie 2.3? Who is left to ask? I am the sole child of dead parents. My only friends in real life are the other members of the Group. I don’t really speak to my flatmates and the only relationship I’ve ever had was with Dex. I sometimes wonder if I have made myself up from fragments of other people’s online avatars. I only ever feel like a proper person when I’m with the Group as we were a few hours ago now, sitting round the table, drinking Bo’s posh wine. It’s then that I’m able to persuade myself that I could really be someone, an actual person and not just a collection of borrowed algorithms and virtual characteristics. Perhaps that makes me sound more complicated than I really am. What I really am is pretty simple, like Anna said. I am unsure. I am both the keeper of secrets and secretly a lost soul.
If the world knew what I had seen, I wondered as the water poured down, what would it ask of me? What would Marika Lapska ask? Would she come out of the world of the dead to speak to me? Would she say that, because I saw what was happening and did not intervene, I owe her? Would she consider me responsible? Do I owe her? If so, what and how much? Enough to risk my career, my friendships, even my liberty?
I am unsure of all of this. The only thing I am sure of now is that for the next four days I am going to be the Cassie who has friends who are real and funny and who give every sign of wanting to be with me. I am going to be the Cassie who belongs.
9
Bo
1.25 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
As Bo walks by the burger bar he spots Dex standing at a three-quarter turn away from him, in the patch of ground between the food trucks and the chill-out tent.
Ah, so that’s where the old tosser went. Bo lifts an arm to wave then stills himself, aware, suddenly, that his friend is staring intently at something, or someone. He can’t get a clear view of what Dex is glaring at, but his stance seems wired, almost predatory. Could Dex be on the pull? Oh, now, this is interesting. An opportunity to see his friend in the wild.
Naturally, Bo’s had gay men making the moves on him for years, the way he looks, but Dex has never once tried it on. Mind you, though, Bo isn’t really Dex’s type. He already knows from Dex’s entries in the Big Black Book that he likes tough-looking guys with shaven heads and aggression rippling not far under the surface. The polar-opposite of Gav, in fact. Poor bastard, trapped by domesticity. Though at least he gets to play away, so he has it easier than Anna. Though women like that domestic shit, don’t they? Funny, it all seems to have happened while his eye was off the ball, his friends settling down, becoming that tiny bit more boring. He doesn’t envy any of it. Why would he? Look what life has laid at his door. A fabulous river-view apartment, a great set of wheels, friends who love him, stimulating, highly paid work, all the booze and drugs he could ever want, the best bloody pizzas in London courtesy of the Big Fat Pizza company (hats off to Dex for that recommendation), and access to a city full of women at the swipe of a screen. Wey-Aye, Man. Literally living the dream.
He’s jolted out of his reverie by movement. Dex is heading towards something or someone. Actually it’s more like a pounce. Like a cat, almost. Bloody hell, he hasn’t seen Dex move like that since they were both teenagers trying out for varsity football.
What’s this? A girl is standing by the chill-out tent with her back to them and Dex is tapping her on the shoulder. Thin girl, petite, dark hair, red dress. Hot, so far as you can tell from looking at the back. Hot, if you like that sort of thing. Which, as it happens, Bo does. But Dex? What possible business could Dex have with her? Plus she seems shaky on her pegs.
She’s turning round now. Dex has moved to one side and turned somewhat too, so his face is now partially visible. Whoa, Bo thinks, finally getting a purchase on that facial expression, stay well clear. It takes a lot to make Dex angry but that’s exactly how he looks at this moment with his eyes flaring and his mouth opening into a shout. Something odd about this. An unstable energy. For an instant he considers intervening to calm the situation. But that would mean getting involved in whatever shit Dex has got himself into. Bo positions himself behind a sign to avoid being spotted and peers at the scene.
The wiser part of him thinks he should just leave now. Better all round to be able to say truthfully that he didn’t see anything. Yes, that’s what he’ll do, he thinks. Walk away and go and get a burger. Maybe buy the girls a burger. Make himself popular. So far as he can recall none of them has eaten since they arrived several hours ago. And there were those lines he snorted, earlier, before the pizza. And the Viagra to get him in the mood. And the jellies maybe? Shit, he can’t actually remember. Plus he never actually ate that pizza, did he? In any case, all the food and drugs seem to have worn off now. Yeah, he thinks, trying to convince himself, I am actually hungry. He makes a move towards the bar and in that instant remembers: Dex spotted him as he was leaving the portaloos. Couldn’t have been more than a minute or two ago. More than that, they’d exchanged words. Bloody hell, what am I doing to my brain that I didn’t even remember that till now? He lets out a weird little laugh. What was that about? Anyway, he does actually recall Dex looking intense even then. Maybe even angry. Bo had watched him go and wondered what was going on.
Dex isn’t a man to lose his temper easily. In fact, Bo can’t remember the last time he saw Dex crack. Maybe when Dex’s dad refused to come to his wedding to Gav? But even then it wasn’t rage as such, just more like a kind of growl. But there’s some weird shit going down here.
Bo turns back to Dex. He’s already forgotten about pretending to be hungry. He watches, rapt, as his friend reaches out a hand and grips the girl’s upper arm in an attempt to spin her round. Bo has never seen a performance like it. Has anyone else noticed? He turns his head this way and that. Nope. It’s dark after all. Darkish anyway, despite all the lights. Why has Dex taken such a firm grip on her arm? Is he trying to help her? No, no, he’s definitely not trying to help her. In fact he’s tugging on her and she’s shaking her head and doing all she can to back away from him.
As she does so, Bo catches a glimpse of her cheek and the shape of her nose and a hint of the outline of her lips. Shit. Is it? No, how can that possibly be? The woman has turned a hundred and eighty degrees now and at this new angle her face is more fully visible. He blinks, takes a moment to compose himself, then blinks again. The sight before him remains. Can it really be the pizza delivery girl from earlier? It looks remarkably like her. What was her name? Bo searches his memory and comes up with nothing.
If it’s not her then it’s a dead ringer. He peers more closely, his mouth open with shock. He’d bet any money it’s her. What the hell’s she doing here? And what business does Dex have with her? Hang on, don’t they use the same takeaway pizza company? He wishes his head weren’t so fuzzy and thumps his knuckles against his forehead in the vain hope of forcing himself to think more clearly. Think, you stupid bastard. He hears his father’s voice saying, ‘Number one, number one.’ Why is that bloody worthless turdmonger still taking up Bo’s head?
Before him an increasingly hectic scene is playing out. Dex is shaking the woman now. What on earth is happening? Could she have sold him some dud grass? A few pills? No, hang on, Dex isn’t a pill head. Grass is more his speed. Bo smiles internally, amused by his pun. Speed. Ha ha. But the momentary hilarity is soon superseded by a rising wave of panic.
Didn’t the pizza woman say she was going on shift? He checks his watch. That was hours ago. Maybe she just came off. Was she wearing that red dress earlier? Bo thinks not. What can she have done to arouse such rage in Dex? Nicked something from him? Pretty girls think they can get away with stuff like that.
Bo is transfixed now. Dex is suddenly right in the woman’s face, one hand on her shoulder, doing his best to yank off her bag strap. To be honest, this looks really bad. Some random pissed cockwomble aggressing a woman at a festie. What the fuck is Dex up to? If he doesn’t back off right now, Bo will have to go over and sort it.
But no, shit, of course, he can’t do that because it’s her, and she might recognise him, put two and two together and then – boom! And even if she doesn’t, supposing some have-a-go hero pitches in? Dex isn’t in any fit state to fight back. Bo would have no choice but to intervene then.
So far no one has got involved, though Bo can see that others have noticed what’s going on. Not surprising in the circumstances, because Dex has grabbed the girl’s bag now, breaking one of the straps, and is peering inside. With his left hand he’s holding the bag while the right scoops around. The girl is literally crying, her hands in a tight knot.
Bo is working out his next move when a bloke built like a Viking steps from the chill-out tent. Bo watches as the Viking’s eyes flit from the girl to Dex and back again, sees the guy’s prey instinct kick in and feels himself freeze. This isn’t going to end well for Dex. A pressure ridge builds up at the back of Bo’s skull. Fight or flight? He has no idea. His head is such a jangle of clips and samples and dubbed-over noise. Any case, it’s not good. It is the very opposite of good, whatever the fuck that might be. He thinks for a moment but nothing comes. Words are the absolute least of all his worries right now. Oh crap. The Viking has swivelled on his heels and he’s striding over to Dex and the girl. What follows is a moment of intense conversation, if you can call it that. Dex is waving his hands and the woman is shouting and the Viking’s body language suggests he isn’t having any of it. This thing is ready to blow.
Bo’s fighting spirit, if that’s what it was, has suddenly drained out of him, the pressure in the skull replaced by a whorl of bees and a dry swelling in his throat. That guy is an Alp. Bo watches him move in and give Dex a shove, thinking, strike that, this guy isn’t any old Alp, he’s the Matterhorn, he’s Mont Fucking Blanc. He watches as if in slow-mo as Dex stumbles backwards but then gets his bearings and begins to come at the big bloke with a raised fist. The situation is beyond finessing. No way is Bo going to take on some Nordic gorilla just because his friend has decided to be a shite monkey. Did Dex seen him? Bo doesn’t think so. He could just slip away and no one will be any the wiser. Sorry, mate, but you know, you did bring this on yourself. Plausible deniability. Been doing a lot of that lately. Not great but a whole lot better than the alternative. Angling his body away from Dex, he lowers his head, digs his hands in his pockets and strolls casually away, taking the roundabout route back to the girls, shaking his head and muttering to himself. For fucketty fuck’s fucking fuck-sake.
10
Cassie
6.50 a.m., Friday 30 September, Isle of Portland
Dawn breaks and I am awake in bed, unable to drift back off to sleep for the unsettling feeling of being watched. Who knew the countryside could be so disturbing? The night has been a racket of howling and hooting. Mostly hooting, from some bloody owl in the trees right outside my room.
Twit twoo.
What did you do?
Is that what the owl would say if it could speak? Owls are supposed to be wise. The owl might say, doing nothing doesn’t make you innocent. But what does an owl know? An owl is just a bird. Shut up. Leave me in peace
A new, blue light pushes in from behind threadbare curtains and makes its way past my hangover to the more sentient parts of my brain. Yes, I remember now, this weekend is supposed to be fun. Sorry, Marika Lapska. Dex says I can’t mention your name again till after the fun is all over and done. Well, then.
I rinse off the night’s rime in the shower, pull on new underwear, new clothes. Fix my hair. Head still fuzzy from last night. As I leave the room I’m thinking about some strong coffee but the moment I reach the top floor landing a strong sense of being observed overcomes me. Above the door the fossil urchin sits immobile, as if watching. How odd to feel overlooked by something so inanimate, so very long dead.
Revenant. Bo’s word. I don’t believe in afterlives or hauntings. You have your time on earth and then you are gone. This is how nature works.
I need that coffee.
The house is as still as a cliff. In the kitchen the mess from last night’s bacchanal is scattered over the countertop. The living room’s worse. There’s a smell of sour wine and stale grass everywhere. Plates and cheese rind. I pick up a mug and some escaped crisps skitter across the floor. This is too much. I’ll do it once I’ve come to. For now, though, there’s nothing for it but to retreat back to the kitchen.
A glass containing a few dregs of some nondescript brew stands on the draining board. Without bothering to empty it first, I fill it to the brim from the tap, drink and repeat. After a bit I’m feeling human enough to locate an espresso pot in the cupboard above the kettle, fill it with ground coffee and put it on the stove to brew while I get to work clearing up, stacking the dishwasher with plates and hand washing the glasses. Judging by the mess something not-human has been at the chicken carcass. I don’t like to think too hard about what. The remains can go outside. I take it to the French doors and hurl it as far from the house as I can. The foxes can have it, or the Mer-Chickens or giant dogs or whatever other freaks of nature apparently lurk on this island. A fine rain is falling though splashes of blue visible through the clouds. I pluck my phone from the pocket of my trackies to check the weather, remember there’s no phone signal, go back inside and scope about for a Wi-Fi router or a house book and finding neither, remember the coffee which is both strong and bitter.
Marika. I happen to know that the name derives from the Hebrew for bitterness, though it can also mean star of the sea. The fossil hanging above Anna’s door could be a Marika. Brittle star. Bitter star.
How I know this I’m not sure. I’m good at collecting obscure facts and better still at hanging on to them. Maybe someone told me. The night creatures singing and screaming and carrying on in the garden.
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