This Is How It Ends

by Eva Dolan

  Ella grins at Molly, who reads it as amusement rather than the relief it really is and starts to laugh, keeps laughing so hard that her eyes began to water. When she finally stops, she wipes her face dry, smearing her kohl liner across her temples, like warpaint.

  It doesn’t feel how Ella expected.

  There’s no elation but no guilt either. She guesses this numbness is a defence mechanism her body has triggered to keep her going until she’s away from Molly. She knows that later she’ll be a mess, because despite everything, she and Molly have been close. Molly has been like a mother to her in some ways. It’s not a lie. She’ll miss her when she’s locked up.

  And that’s going to happen. The deal she’s struck depends on it.

  Kelman gets his closure and in return he lets her stay out in the field.

  Initially there was some resistance over the feasibility of her plan but Ella had the angles all worked out. This recording she’s making, via a pin-sized microphone inside her collar, will never go into evidence. Molly can never be charged with Kelman’s attempted murder because that would compromise Ella’s position.

  But the Pearce family need closure too: a trial and a guilty party, and that will be Molly. While Ella’s samples will become corrupted in a private forensics lab with a notoriously bad track record, Molly’s will be found to match DNA on his body. The distinctive red fibres from the coat she wore to the party recovered from his clothing and hair.

  And Molly will take the fall because the alternative is both of them being sent down, and she won’t let that happen. Molly won’t grass or cut a deal to get her own sentence reduced. It’s not in her nature. She wants to save people. Do the right thing by her friends, even if it means throwing herself to the wolves.

  Ella watches her struggling to get another cigarette lit in the swirling wind blowing up off the site and reaches out to cup her hands around the flame.

  Prison won’t be too hard on Molly, she thinks. She’s used to being among other women; she prefers their company, especially the damaged sort she’ll find in there. It will be the family Ella’s sure she’s always craved, the unconventional kind, thrown together in adversity and bonded in defiance.

  And she’ll make sure Molly is as comfortable as possible. Visit her whenever she can, take in books and magazines, give her money so she can buy whatever perks are on offer inside. It might even be better for her than what’s coming on the outside: losing her home, being forced out of the city into some dreary suburb far beyond the M25. Molly has told her often enough that she’d rather be dead than leave London and Ella believes her.

  Molly is looking at her, squinting through the heat rising off her cigarette as she inhales.

  ‘Kelman’s in charge of Special Operations now, isn’t he?’

  A sensation like plunging into icy water.

  ‘That’s what Sinclair told me, anyway.’ Molly turns to face her full on, wearing a smile of grim satisfaction. ‘Which would make him your boss, right?’

  She can’t speak.

  ‘Are you recording this conversation?’ Molly asks, moving in close, bringing her mouth towards Ella’s collar. ‘Is he listening right now?’

  ‘This is mad,’ Ella forces the words out, hearing how weak they sound. ‘Molly, I know you’ve been under a lot of stress the last few weeks but this is pure insanity.’

  ‘I thought so too. But Sinclair worked the whole thing out. You should never, ever, fuck with a hack, Ella. They have vindictive natures and the best sources. He knew you were an undercover copper way back, but he’s been biding his time, gathering the evidence.’

  Molly jabs her fingers in Ella’s face and she recoils from the tip of the cigarette.

  ‘It’s all going to come out and there’s no lie big enough or smart enough to get you out from under this.’

  Ella can’t stay standing much longer. She wants to drop into a protective crouch, curl up and hide. But Molly keeps coming towards her, one determined step after another.

  ‘I trusted you.’

  It’s over.

  ‘I vouched for you.’

  She’s lost.

  ‘I helped cover up a murder to keep you safe.’

  The wind is rising, battering her face. She thinks of Dylan, listening to this, and wonders if he’s happy that she’s failed or if he feels sorry for her. Did he ever feel anything for her? Armstrong’s going to be furious. Kelman even more so. They’ve given her a chance none of them thought she deserved and she’s blown it.

  She isn’t the best. No more top of the class. No more sharp operator.

  Adam Pearce has got his revenge on her, finally. Dead as he is, he’s won.

  ‘Was it always about this?’ Molly asks, swollen with fury, taller and more menacing than Ella has ever seen her. ‘Did Kelman put you in the field to get close to me so I’d confess?’

  There are no more moves left.

  ‘After all these fucking years, he still wanted to get me.’

  Maybe one.

  One last desperate play.

  Ella cocks her head, leans towards Molly. ‘You really do have an overinflated opinion of yourself, don’t you?’

  Molly bares her teeth, like an animal.

  ‘We were never interested in you. You’re a nobody, a hanger- on.’ Ella sees the hurt begin to shrivel her. ‘We wanted Carol. She was my target right from the start. You were just somebody who could get me to her.’

  ‘Then you failed,’ Molly snaps. ‘Because she never trusted you.’

  They’re toe to toe, breathing in each other’s exhalations and the smell of fear coming off one another’s bodies. Ella shifts her weight, plants her feet firmly, trying to ignore the weakness in her knees.

  ‘Maybe not, but you trusted me, Mol.’ She shakes her head. ‘How the hell did you last so long being such a sucker?’

  Molly lashes out and Ella grabs her as the slap connects with her cheek, not painful enough to break her momentum. She slams Molly into the waist-high wall and hears all the air rush out of her lungs. She buckles, groaning. Her full weight falls against Ella and she grits her teeth as she shoves Molly against the wall again. Molly tries to brace herself. She knows what’s coming.

  ‘Are you going to kill me, Ella?’ Desperation in her voice.

  Ella ignores her, keeps shoving and hoisting, trying to find the extra power she needs to send her over the edge. Molly’s boots scrape frantically against the brickwork. She kicks out but Ella holds on to her.

  ‘Getting rid of me changes nothing,’ Molly says, her hands closing around Ella’s wrists, nails digging in, rings grinding against bone. ‘You won’t be able to live with it. I know you. You will never have a moment’s peace again if you do this.’

  She’s babbling. But she’s right. There’s no coming back from this. No stopping the inevitable reckoning. Sinclair’s article will still run. The truth will still be revealed.

  Ella loosens her grip a fraction, thinking of her parents and how crushed they’ll be by this. Then Molly strikes out at her. Snarling, she grabs Ella under the arms and lifts her off her feet with a terrible and furious force.

  The sky fills Ella’s vision, pink and starless as Molly shoves her over the parapet. She feels the solidness of the wall under her hips and air under her shoulders. Nothing between the back of her head and the ground three storeys below. She throws her arm around Molly’s neck, trying to anchor herself.

  ‘You don’t get to walk away from this.’ Molly’s face is tight with rage and contempt. ‘You don’t get to wreck people’s lives and just restart yours like nothing happened.’

  Ella twists and wriggles but Molly has her solidly pinned across the wall. The bricks are cutting through her jumper, sawing at her skin as she tries to get free.

  ‘Just think, your copper mates can hear all this but they’ve not come to help you,’ Molly says. ‘They’re letting this play out, hoping I make their problem go away. That’s how important you are to them.’

  Ella tries to claw at
her face but can’t reach. The fight is draining out of her.

  This is it.

  ‘You picked the wrong side, sweetheart.’

  Molly leans over her, so close that Ella can see every feather mark in her kohl liner and every fleck of gold in her dark-brown eyes. She reaches up and twists her fingers into Molly’s hair, turns and knots it around her fist, and she sees the realisation slacken Molly’s mouth and feels her stiffen a split second too late.

  And they’re falling.

  Molly

  I can’t feel anything.

  That’s a bad sign, right?

  I hear the shouts coming along the road and the heavy feet and I can hear Ella still, somehow, breathing next to me, a wheeze on the inhale that tells me one of her ribs has punctured one of her lungs.

  Oh.

  No.

  That’s me.

  That’s me wheezing.

  I’m going to drown in my own blood.

  Soon, I guess.

  A three-storey drop shouldn’t be enough to kill you, but from down here on the concrete, my flat looks a long, long, long way away. I never thought she had that in her. Strangely proud, I am. Her mother never taught her that trick; she’s learned something from me and I shouldn’t be proud because look at what she is. Look at what I let in.

  My peroxide changeling. A little blue cuckoo.

  The voices are shouting and the feet are skidding to a stop and when I turn my head it’s like a boulder falling, so weighty and solid, but I see them crowding around her. A man and a woman and I don’t think it’s her parents, but that woman is old and I know her from somewhere and I’ve seen him before too, the one who’s got her blood on his hands now, kissing her forehead as he reaches around under her badly mashed skull and comes up with a blacker red on his fingers.

  He’s from the hospital. I never forget a face.

  The boyfriend, is he?

  No.

  No, a boyfriend wouldn’t be here now.

  He’s her handler. Him or the woman but both cops, because I can smell it on them. That happens when your ribs have cut through your lungs, your other senses become heightened. Yeah, I know what you are, son.

  I see you.

  Should have smelled it on him way back when I saw him coming from her hospital bed. All that swagger and the furtiveness of a criminal without the jagged edges.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ the woman lies.

  Neither of us will be fine again.

  And that’s okay.

  I want Ella to die here with me. I hope the ambulance gets stuck in traffic. She doesn’t deserve another chance, she doesn’t deserve to leave this place she used for her own ends and where she killed Pearce and killed me.

  There’s blood coming out the back of her head.

  He didn’t bleed that much and he died.

  The man is talking to her. He keeps saying her name like it can bring her to life again. And he keeps apologising, like she didn’t do this to herself. But he doesn’t know that. They think I did it and I’m happy to let them. Not the legacy I would have chosen, but the right way to round out my stupid existence. Balance my account with the universal.

  Kelman I wanted dead, but he survived, and Ella died even though. . .

  The man is crying. Quietly. Crouched next to her.

  Callum.

  He’d cry for me if he was here, right? He’d hold his hand on my heart and hold his breath as he waited for each new slow beat, hoping it wouldn’t be the last. Like this man is doing. Like he loved her.

  Like I did.

  Like a daughter.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First and foremost thanks to my brilliant editor Alison Hennessey for encouraging me to write this book when it was nothing but a fire burning in my belly. It takes a very special editor to allow writers to follow their convictions and I’m eternally grateful to Alison for her belief in me, as well as for her unstinting support, guidance and wisdom.

  Gushing thanks as well to the whole team at Bloomsbury for the warm welcome and all the hard work they’ve done to take This Is How It Ends from manuscript to book. Special mentions to Ros, Janet, Marigold and Callum. And to Emma Ewbank for creating the perfect jacket for the book to wear as it entered the world. I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier lot to work with.

  To my indefatigable agent, Phil Patterson, who, among his other virtues, has the admirable knack of always finding a decent boozer in the middle of the day, thanks for everything.

  Thanks, as always, to Jay Stringer, Luca Veste and Nick Quantrill, for distraction, advice and an excellent punchline rate.

  Special thanks to the wonderful Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books for being a great champion and the most fun on the festival circuit.

  The writing life is largely spent in isolation, so the chance to let rip at events is incredibly important and I owe a big thank you to the organisers of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival, Bloody Scotland, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Noirwich, Granite Noir, Newcastle Noir and Hull Noir, for letting me back in their midsts. These events are so important as an author and a book lover and have provided some of the most memorable and pleasurable nights of the year.

  As is often said, the crime scene is unfailingly generous and supportive and contains too many fabulous people to thank by name, but the writing life would be much tougher without that special group of deviants who can always be relied upon for support and filthy laughs.

  Thanks to all of the marvellous bloggers who have got behind my work and helped bring the books to a wider audience with their thoughtful and perceptive reviews. You do an amazing job. (And cost me a fortune with all your recommendations.)

  Finally, to my family, who are there from the earliest germ of an idea to the final, frazzled read-through, with good advice and ideas so stupid they often turn out to be bona fide genius, long lunches and afternoon teas and emergency bottles of dark rum; I could not have done any of this without you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You totally rule.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Eva Dolan was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger for unpublished authors when only a teenager. The four novels in her Zigic and Ferreira series have been published to widespread critical acclaim: Tell No Tales and After You Die were shortlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Award and After You Die was also longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. She lives in Cambridge.

  @eva_dolan

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  © Eva Dolan, 2018

  Eva Dolan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

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  ISBN 978 1 4088 8665 6

  eISBN 978 1 4088 8662 5

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