This Is How It Ends

by Eva Dolan

  The old Ella Riordan was wiped away and replaced with someone more London-appropriate. The kind of girl who didn’t stand out for what she was wearing but for the force of her ideas.

  She turned on to Murray Street and almost sprinted up the front steps, rang the doorbell already smiling to herself.

  A man she’d never seen before answered and for a moment she thought she’d got the wrong address. She’d only been here a couple of times before and all the townhouses on this row were similar under the streetlights.

  ‘Is Dylan home?’ she asked.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  The man let her in, eyed her head to toe as he did it. No insinuation in the movement, only curiosity, she thought. The same as she felt about him. He was kind of rough around the edges, gym-toned and bearded, smelling freshly showered but with a trace of cigarettes too. He slid a heavy security chain on and double-locked the door. It wasn’t a rough area but Dylan had explained before that it was always best to be careful.

  ‘Not seen you here before,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t live here?’ she asked.

  ‘Just dropped in for a couple of days.’

  ‘Dylan’s Airbnb?’

  He smiled, crow’s feet cinching. ‘Warmest welcome in town.’

  Ella knew what he was, supposed she wasn’t fooling him either.

  ‘You’re a bit young, aren’t you?’ he asked, heading into the living room.

  Ella stopped in the doorway, saw another man waiting for him at a small, round dining table where a card game was in progress, just the two of them playing. The other man was younger, shaven- headed, dressed in boxers and a varsity T-shirt.

  ‘Is she joining us?’

  ‘She’s here for Dylan.’ There was the insinuation. ‘One of his “students”.’

  He threw the quote marks around the word with his fingers and the men shared knowing smiles, which made her feel suddenly uncomfortable.

  She went up to the attic, the men’s voices falling away behind her. The door to the attic flat was ajar, music playing low, something minimal and instrumental. It wasn’t what she expected him to like and it was different from what he played when they were together; it made her feel like she’d seen a part of him he usually kept hidden and she wondered what it meant.

  He opened the door wide, kissed her quickly on the cheek. ‘I thought I heard you. Are you coming in?’

  ‘Might as well.’ She smiled. ‘Since I’m here.’

  He hadn’t done anything more to the place since she was last there six weeks ago, despite the fact that they’d discussed him warming it up a bit, making it a little more homely. The walls were still bare, the sofa still didn’t have any cushions, and Ella would bet that when she looked in the fridge he’d have nothing but beer and jam and cartons of orange juice.

  She dropped her satchel on to the table, near his laptop, where the music was coming from, slightly tinny-sounding and distorted now she was close to it. He took her parka and hung it up on the coat hook on the door, making a point of looking at the small enamel badge she’d pinned to the collar.

  ‘Boycotting Israel now?’ he asked. ‘Is that what the cool kids on campus are into?’

  ‘I went to a couple of meetings,’ Ella said. ‘They got quite heated, actually. There’s a group of students who want to block visits from Israeli scholars. They’re talking about picketing more events, bookshops, galleries, that sort of thing.’

  She started to tell him about the various factions, which lecturers were involved, who was stirring up trouble for the sake of it and who seemed more ideologically driven, but he didn’t appear to be listening. He seemed more concerned with changing the music on his laptop and tidying away some paperwork into his bag.

  ‘There were some pretty scary individuals involved,’ she said, hoping that might pique his interest. ‘Incomers, you know? Not actually students.’

  ‘That’s common enough at unis these days. Lots of soft brains ready and willing to be manipulated.’ He smiled. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Have you got any beers in?’

  ‘I think there’s a couple left.’

  He fetched two bottles of Peroni from the fridge and Ella saw, across his shoulder, how empty the shelves were. He snapped the tops off, passed her one. ‘I shouldn’t be encouraging this, should I?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Ella said. ‘I’m a big girl, I can handle one beer.’

  ‘Do you need it?’ he asked, going over to the sofa.

  He had an unerring way of knowing when she was down, Ella had noticed. She’d come in here full of talk, but he’d seen through the excitement in a moment. It made her feel better about his apparent disinterest in what was happening on campus, knowing he cared about that, but he just cared about her more.

  ‘I didn’t think it’d be like this,’ she said, dropping down next to him.

  She curled up then changed her mind, kicked off her boots and stretched her legs out over his thighs.

  ‘How did you think it would be?’

  ‘Just . . . different, I suppose.’

  ‘More exciting?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Ella took a drink of her beer. ‘I didn’t think it would take this long to settle in. I’ve been here almost a year and I’ve done nothing. I hardly know anyone.’

  Dylan frowned, absent-mindedly rubbing her knee. ‘You’re making an effort, though, putting yourself out?’

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said, thinking of the people in her shared house she just hadn’t clicked with, the people she’d swapped numbers with who never called, all the groups she’d signed up to and meetings she’d attended, looking for a circle she could make her own. Somehow it had all come to nothing. ‘Do you think it’s my background?’

  ‘Being a northerner?’ he asked, and smiled. ‘There are plenty of you lot in London, Ella.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ He was going to make her say it. ‘Garton.’

  ‘I seriously doubt anyone you’re running into knows you started police training,’ Dylan said. ‘How would they?’

  ‘There are records, right?’

  ‘Records of why you left, yeah. And anyone who’s weird enough to background-check you will see what happened and realise how meaningless it is.’

  Ella wanted to believe him but couldn’t. Something was holding her back and she was sure it wasn’t anything she was doing.

  ‘It’s like, I’ve got this list of people I need to talk to for my PhD,’ she said. ‘Two dozen women, all involved with the miners’ strike, all active and easily accessible, very vocal women who take every opportunity they can get to keep the story alive. So, I reach out to them and almost every single one has ignored my emails. You tell me why that is?’

  He threw his hand up, half shrugged.

  This wasn’t what she expected from him. Dylan was supposed to be the wise, older head. Have all the answers, give the perfect advice at the perfect moment.

  ‘It takes time to settle into a new place,’ he said weakly.

  ‘I’ve given it time!’

  ‘You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. You’ve not even finished your first year, for Christ’s sake.’ He gestured at her with his beer bottle. ‘You’re a perfectionist and a control freak and you need to learn to let go. People can find that very intimidating.’

  ‘Nobody gets this far in life without being . . . ambitious and careful about their work, do they?’ She heard how snotty she sounded, tried to dial it down. ‘If I wasn’t, I’d be back in Durham working in some shitty office, staring at spreadsheets all day and looking forward to my one night out a week with the girls.’

  ‘Or you’d be walking a beat in Durham, picking up the girls when they fell down drunk in the street on their weekly night out.’ Dylan grinned at her and she felt her mood lighten, slightly.

  ‘I so wouldn’t be a uniform,’ she said, playing along. ‘Not a control freak like me.’

  ‘No, course not. You’d be a detective inspector by now.’

  She
laughed at the idea, imagining a boring, navy trouser suit and polyester blouse with sweat patches under the arms. Saw herself, so stupidly young and even younger-looking, walking into a crime scene, squatting down to peer at a dead body she would vow to get justice for.

  That was almost her life. The one her father wanted for her and the one she’d thought she wanted too. But it was always his dream and, within days of beginning her training, she realised just how badly he’d misled her about the profession. Deliberately or innocently, she’d never know, but the Garton he waxed lyrical about was not the one she found herself in. Not just the physical space, which had been redeveloped and renamed, although the old name still stuck, but the culture. The bad old days were over, he promised her. No more racism, no more homophobia or sexism; this was the modern police force she was entering.

  He failed to appreciate that modern sensibilities and attitudes hadn’t changed everywhere at the same pace and that only made it worse when you walked into a pocket of resistance.

  Dylan squeezed her leg. ‘It’s going to be fine, Ella. Trust me. You just need to be a little more patient and a lot more proactive.’

  She finished the rest of the beer, washing away the defence she wanted to mount. He knew how patient she’d been, exactly how hard she was trying. That was the unfairest advice he’d given her yet. But, if he thought that was the way to go, she’d do it. She would stun him with how wildly, dangerously proactive she could be.

  Molly

  Now – 27th March

  The police are here again.

  Lots of uniforms, forensics vans. It’s a search party. They’re looking for the place where he was murdered. Died. Whichever turns out to be true. Ella’s version or the one Carol believes? I’m still debating which I believe.

  Another day with no firm word from Quinn. A week since Carol first tried to make contact with his friends.

  It’s beginning to look inevitable that he’s the man I helped dispose of. That Ella has tied me up in a long string of untruths in order to protect herself.

  Not a stranger, not an attacker, not an accident.

  Sitting at my desk, scanning the internet for news reports, which all say nothing, and non-existent speculation on social media, I can hear the search team moving about around me. Heavy feet on the floor below, locked doors being smashed in with a battering ram, distant voices calling to one another as they move methodically through long-abandoned rooms, picking around in the dusty remnants of lives that have shifted to new suburbs and cities. I wonder if they can feel the loss that lingers in the furniture left behind, the half-stripped cupboards and the desiccated limbs of dead house plants.

  The building has been almost empty for so long that its bones complain at all of this fresh body weight disturbing its equilibrium. Without music or the television to mask the sounds I can hear every creak and crack, the stairwell doors opening and closing under heavy hands, curtains being shoved back on lengths of plastic tracking to let the sunlight in.

  They’re drawing nearer to me.

  Nearer to flat 402.

  If they don’t get that far today they’ll be back tomorrow and all I can do is hope they’ll be so bored of opening doors on to so many similar scenes by then that 402 receives only the briefest of searches.

  It doesn’t look like a murder site.

  I made sure of that. Scrubbed the hearth where he bled out. Wiped away every trace of violence I could see. Luckily there wasn’t much blood. It’s the scalp lacerations that make a mess, that much I do know from experience. Those wounds gush.

  Whatever killed him it was internal, the blows softened by his hair and the hat he was wearing when he fell.

  Thinking back, I’m not even sure where the blood I cleaned up came from. . .

  Maybe it was Ella’s.

  The thought is a twinge, an old injury playing up.

  His blood only gives them a murder scene. Her blood gives them a witness or a suspect. Eventually it gives them me too.

  I need to stop these thought spirals.

  The blood is gone. The flat will be one of the last they check in. The all-too-human desire to clock off and go to some bar or get home to the family will save us.

  Along the hall the stairwell door opens.

  If they go into 402 with Luminal we’re in trouble, though. I don’t think they will, but who’s to say? It’s been years since I had such up-close and personal contact with a police investigation and I don’t know how they operate now, only what I’ve seen in the crime shows I’ve watched with Callum. He likes the American ones, flashy and fake programmes, which I’d lie there scoffing at, thinking all the smart science was propaganda, designed to make any wannabe murderers in their audience too scared to actually commit a crime.

  In reality, I hope it’s going to be nothing more sensitive than the human eye sweeping over the worn and faded carpet and the green-veined tiles.

  I start as someone knocks on my door.

  It’s Derek, standing with a handful of mail.

  ‘Yours, love.’ He shoves the envelopes at me with an uncharacteristic roughness that makes me think there’s something from the developers among them, says, ‘Thought I’d best bring it up since. . .’

  ‘Since Callum’s not around to do it.’

  He nods, looks down at his trainers. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘He’ll find his way home when he’s ready,’ I say, and it doesn’t come out as lightly as I’d intended. It sounds just as sad and wounded as I feel. ‘I miss him.’

  Derek clears his throat, shuffles his feet.

  ‘He’s a good lad, Callum. Probably he just needs a bit of time to clear his head. Getting taken in by the coppers like that.’ He waves a hand as if it actually completes the thought, but all it does is give physical form to the illogic of what’s happening. ‘See they’re back again. Good, innit? Couldn’t get the bastards out here when we was overrun with junkies and every thieving little shit in a five-mile radius, could we?’

  ‘They only bother with people like us when they think they can make an arrest,’ I say, and try to smile, because nothing that comes out of my mouth sounds right just now and I need him to know it was a joke.

  ‘Tell you what, that dead bloke must be someone important for all this palaver,’ Derek says. ‘You see them putting these hours in if some poor homeless lad fell down the lift?’

  My stomach plunges. He’s right and I hadn’t even considered that. All these man-hours mean somebody, somewhere up in the police hierarchy, cares that this victim is avenged.

  ‘How’s Jenny doing?’ I ask.

  ‘Bit better. It was another stroke. Only a small one, the doctor says. She’s talking again.’ He smiles, relieved. ‘Should have made the most of the quiet while I had it, shouldn’t I?’

  Derek leaves and for a moment I stand in the corridor listening to the feet coming up the stairs as he goes down them. I slam the door shut and toss the mail aside.

  The police must have identified him. They haven’t released the name to the press yet but there are plenty of reasons not to do that immediately. Family to inform. Suspects they don’t want to spook into running before they can find enough evidence to arrest them.

  Quinn is a convicted arsonist and a political activist. The kind of man the police shouldn’t care about. One less piece of shit off the streets, they’d say.

  Except, if he’s been killed by one of his own and they can get that person for it, then it’s two pieces of shit off the streets. A potential provocateur removed from action, a whole movement cut off.

  Do they have their sights set on somebody at the party? If not Ella yet, then one of the other loose band of protestors it attracted? Carol knew him well, but I’m not sure the police know that. It depends if either of them were under surveillance. She picked him up from prison so there’s a chance she’s a suspect.

  For a moment I consider sharing this with her but decide against it. She’s already frantic about him and I’m not sure she’ll hold her silence fo
r much longer, even without that added provocation.

  I go to my picture wall and look at the image of Ella with the riot officer standing over her.

  That girl shouldn’t have got anywhere near someone like Ryan Quinn. She was a student protestor with no criminal record, no contacts beyond a few other people at her low level, the kind who went along to demonstrations so they’d have something different to post online, an interesting blog entry. The ones who called themselves activists but only at parties when they were trying to get laid.

  Quinn was – is – hardcore.

  Ella never explained how she talked him into taking her along on the Brighams incursion. I know Carol was involved, that it all started at that dinner we shared at her house, when Ella was working so hard to ingratiate herself.

  It was only when Ella arrived here, scared and breathless, hair and clothes reeking of smoke, that I realised how serious she was about stepping up. Quinn gave her the opportunity to prove herself and Ella, stupidly, took it. She narrowly avoided being caught at the scene. Begged me for an alibi I had no option but to give her. And that wouldn’t have kept her out of prison if it wasn’t for the other man involved taking a shine to her, swearing to the police and the court that it was just him and Quinn in the estate agent’s when it went up in flames. No matter what Quinn claimed.

  That boy protected her just like I’m doing.

  And now Quinn is missing and Ella is hiding from me and that boy is still locked up, for all I know, staring down the barrel of however many more years inside.

  Did it start as she lay on the hot tarmac, howling in pain, her arm broken, her head banged up? The good girl, the copper’s daughter, seeing what it felt like to be on the wrong side of her daddy’s tribe?

  Because something changed her.

  The moment after I took the photograph I ran over to her, saw the tears streaming down her face, the splintered bone sticking through her sunburned skin. I asked her name but she couldn’t speak. A policewoman pushed me back as a couple of her mates – including the big bastard who’d hit Ella – got her to her feet and hustled her into the back of a patrol car.