Then – 26th November
A mobile phone trilled into the quiet of the Reading Room and Ella looked up in annoyance, along with two-thirds of the people there, towards a young man several desks over who fumbled to get the phone out of his pocket. He apologised, his face flushing, the ringing continuing, echoing around the cavernous space and bouncing off the glass that protected the collection of books and manuscripts. Finally, just as he brought the phone out, it stopped ringing.
There were huffs and sighs and a woman with a cut-glass accent muttered, ‘About bloody time.’
Ella was the only one still looking at the guy and she gave him a reassuring smile, because she’d done the same thing herself the first time she came into the British Library’s holy of holies. Was sure she’d switched her phone to silent, only to have it blast out a plunging, polyphonic ringtone at full volume a couple of minutes after she sat down.
Quickly the room settled back into its habitual near-silence.
This was what she needed. Somewhere to sit quietly for a few hours, no laptop, her phone definitely off, just a pen and paper and the latest draft of her thesis to read through. Except she couldn’t hold more than a few words in her head before she found her mind drifting.
This morning she’d woken to a text message from Ryan Quinn.
‘They’re coming for you, bitch.’
Dylan was still asleep next to her, radiating more body heat than any man she’d ever slept with, like he somehow generated his own microclimate. She was glad he hadn’t seen the message or her reaction. She had no intention of enduring another lecture from him. Somehow she’d managed to get out from under his proprietorial arm, dressed quickly while he slept, and left the flat, heard him call her name as she closed the door.
She stuck the pen in her mouth, bit down on the plastic and felt it begin to give between her back teeth, stopped before it shattered.
‘Ella Riordan?’
A woman stood behind her, dark-suited and severe-faced with her blonde hair scraped into a ponytail. Nearby stood a young man who might have been an estate agent if not for his stillness and attention and the other half-dozen small tells that said ‘copper’.
‘Am I under arrest?’ Ella asked.
At the surrounding desks all work had ceased.
‘We’d like you to come with us, Ms Riordan.’ The woman spoke in a monotone. ‘We can arrest you if you’re not prepared to come along voluntarily.’
‘I have a right to know why I’m being hounded.’
The woman leaned in. ‘We’re not bit players in your publicity campaign, Ella. Collect your things and stand up.’
Ella was aware of the room’s attention on them as she packed her papers into her satchel. ‘This is what happens to people who peacefully protest in Britain now, is it?’ she asked. ‘You come to where we’re studying and drag us out like criminals.’
‘Save it for your blog,’ the young guy muttered.
They escorted her out of the Reading Room and Ella held her head up high. As they passed through the main doors, into the grim morning, the woman took hold of her elbow and turned her on to Ossulston Street, where a car was waiting for them.
It was an unobtrusive gunmetal saloon with another man driving, old and bald, and he didn’t move as the woman palmed the top of Ella’s head and shoved her in the back, came around and got in next to her. It suddenly occurred to Ella that they might not be police at all. How many people had she pissed off? How much money had she cost developers with her stunts? All those accusations she’d made about bribes and corruption and money laundering – was this how they would come for her? No, she told herself, as she felt her breath growing short.
No, she knew exactly what this was about. Quinn had been kind enough to warn her with his message this morning.
Woolwich: that was why they’d come for her and where they were heading.
It was an ugly 1960s police station in need of overhauling, the reception area battered, the reinforced glass protecting the desk sergeant peppered and crazed like it had taken a shotgun blast. She was walked to a claustrophobic lift and then up through white corridors that smelled faintly of damp and singed wiring and gave on to a row of interview rooms.
A bolt of remembered discomfort hit Ella’s stomach as she was taken inside and told to sit down. It looked just the same as the one she’d been taken to after the Camden demonstration, her first time being cautioned.
Now she was expecting the caution and she waited until the policewoman, DS Conway, had finished before she said, ‘I’d like my solicitor to be present. I won’t speak without him here.’
Conway sighed. ‘If you want legal counsel you’ll have to go down to the cells and wait for him to arrive. He might be tied up in court all day. You don’t want to spend the night here, do you, Ella?’ She attempted a concerned face, wholly unconvincing. ‘We’ve only got a few questions.’
‘Patrick Milton,’ Ella said, then recited the number she’d memorised almost two years ago, when Molly gave her it, saying he was one of the good ones. ‘I’m perfectly happy to wait.’
In the custody suite they stripped her of her belongings and put her in a cell where the padded bench was still warm from its previous occupant, and she did what everyone said you shouldn’t in this situation, laid down with her back to the door and tried to have a nap.
Coppers put out the line that only a guilty person could sleep in a cell because the last thing they wanted was to question you fresh and rested. Her father had told her that. Chuckled when he said it.
Last night she’d discussed this with Dylan. Spilled everything she could about Quinn and what he’d done and they worked out the best way to handle it. He was furious with her, disappointed and hurt that she’d not trusted him until she was so terrified she had to tell someone. But he calmed down eventually, after she’d stroked and placated him and explained that he was the only person who was smart enough to help her through this.
‘You haven’t done anything, Ella,’ he’d said. ‘That’s all that matters here. Whatever they accuse you of, whatever they threaten you with, just hold on to that and they can’t touch you.’
She closed her eyes and drifted off, the sounds of the people in the other cells always at the edge of her consciousness, calling out for bathroom breaks and food, a woman crying as they locked her up. Gradually those noises faded and she slept properly, dreaming for the first time in months of riot shields and angry eyes distorted by helmets, of the crush of the crowd and freedom beyond the cordon and how for a moment it had felt like she was flying, before her legs were taken from under her and the ground came racing up to her face.
The cell door opened with a clang and she started awake, turning over to see the woman who’d brought her down.
‘Solicitor’s here.’
Patrick Milton was waiting for her in the interview room with a bottle of mineral water and a chocolate bar ready on the table. Ella smiled at his dishevelled brown suit and the knitted tie hanging askew over a mismatched checked shirt.
‘Do we need a few minutes?’ he asked Ella.
She was aware of DS Conway waiting for the answer too, ready to draw her own conclusions from it.
‘I don’t even know why I’m here,’ she told him.
‘Let’s see what they have to say for themselves, then.’ Patrick pulled out a chair for her, ever the old gent, then sat down with his hands clasped loosely on the table. Ella noticed a slight tremble running through them, saw Conway notice it too and hoped it would make the woman underestimate him.
Conway watched Ella in silence as her constable set up the tapes and Ella forced herself to hold the woman’s gaze, noting every line around her unusually blue eyes and how red her lower lids were, as if she had allergies. It would be easy to write her off, scruffy and dull-looking as she was, but she knew that these were the most dangerous coppers, the kind you never saw coming.
Conway opened a file and removed a series of photographs, lying them out methodically in front of Ella, her face in a disapproving pout.
They showed a line of protestors outside an estate agent’s office in Woolwich, its interior new, pristine white, and several figures in dark suits looking out angrily at the people keeping their customers from the door on their first day of trading. Ella was among them, alongside Carol, whose face was half hidden by a scarf and sunglasses. Many of the others had covered up too but Ella knew their names, remembered the police cordon and the officer filming from behind them.
‘Can you tell us what was going on here?’ Conway asked.
‘Your people were there,’ Ella said. ‘I’m sure you know what we were doing.’
‘You were protesting against the opening of this business.’
‘Peacefully protesting, yes. As we have every right to.’
‘It didn’t remain peaceful very long.’ Conway cocked her head. ‘Did it?’
‘We weren’t the ones who instigated the escalation,’ Ella told her, throwing her chin up in defiance, back there in the moment. ‘Have you charged any of the people responsible yet?’
‘I can’t comment on that. It’s a separate investigation,’ Conway said. ‘How do you feel about what happened there?’
‘It’s a separate investigation.’ Ella gave her the merest hint of a smile. ‘I shouldn’t comment.’
Conway glanced at her constable, a brief eye-roll. ‘Oh, but they intersect, Ms Riordan. How long had you been campaigning against the opening of that estate agent’s office?’
‘Since the summer, when they forced out the charity that was based in the building. They were using the upper floor; we wanted the owners to allow them to stay on while they rented out the ground floor to Brighams.’
‘The owners have a right to do what they want with their property, surely?’ Conway shrugged. ‘Who are you to tell them otherwise?’
‘We didn’t tell them, we asked them to consider the option.’
‘And when they decided against it, you tried to block the legitimate business occupying the building.’ Conway shook her head. ‘Those are the tactics of a protection racket.’
Ella turned to the constable, who had said nothing more since he’d set the recording equipment up.
‘Do you live here in Woolwich?’ she asked.
‘That’s none of your business,’ he said.
‘I’m going to hazard a guess that you can’t afford to live where you work. Unless you’re renting a room in a shared house. Forget renting somewhere by yourself, forget buying.’ Ella’s voice rose slightly. ‘Brighams are why hundreds of thousands of people like you and me will never be able to own our own homes. They move into an area, inflate prices, aggressively pursue buy-to-let landlords and socially cleanse entire boroughs.’ Ella stabbed the table with her finger. ‘That’s what we were protesting.’
The constable gave her a dead-eyed look. ‘But you didn’t stop them, did you?’
‘Not that day, they didn’t,’ Conway said.
Ella stiffened in her seat as another photograph came out of the file: Quinn’s mugshot.
He looked proud of himself as he stood in front of the height marker and stared down the camera lens, amusement and contempt shaping his features. Ella had stood there herself and she’d felt fear, despite her anger and indignation. Quinn looked as if this was the culmination of a life’s ambition.
‘Do you know this man?’ Conway asked.
‘Yes, that’s Ryan Quinn.’
‘And how do you know him?’
‘Quinn’s an anti-gentrification activist,’ Ella said, letting some of her disgust for him come through. ‘I’ve run into him at events.’
‘He’s an ally of yours, then.’
‘I don’t think either of us would say that. Quinn believes I’m a fraud because I refuse to engage in direct action and prefer to use peaceful forms of protest and try, wherever I can, to foster dialogue and open lines of negotiation.’
Conway made no comment, only rearranged the photos so the one of the protest lay on top. ‘Is Quinn in these photos?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Ella said, looking at the images for a moment. ‘He was there that day. I remember him trying to stir things up. He was spoiling for a fight.’ She reached for the bottle of water. ‘Ironically, when it did kick off, he was nowhere to be seen.’
‘Did you speak to him after the protest?’
‘No.’
It was a lie and Ella saw that Conway suspected as much, but doubted she could prove it. Her only contact with Quinn from that point had been via a ghost phone she’d since dumped in Regent’s Canal and she knew Quinn would have been even more careful with communications at his end. He’d boasted of how his computer system was programmed to self-destruct unless he keyed in a code twice a day, putting it beyond the reach of the Met’s tech department.
Ella took a drink of water, watching Conway tidy the photos away, saw there were still more of them.
‘Can you tell us your whereabouts between midnight on November twenty-third and five a.m. November twenty-fourth?’
‘I was at my friend Molly’s flat in Nine Elms,’ Ella said. ‘I went around in the evening to talk about a book we’re working on and stayed the night on her sofa.’
‘We need her details.’
Ella gave them, knowing the first thing they would do was check Molly’s record. It would make for a fun read.
‘Assuming you were in Nine Elms all night,’ Conway said, ‘can you explain how we have an eyewitness who places you on Powis Street, Woolwich, at that time?’
‘Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, as you well know, Sergeant Conway,’ Milton said in a kindly tone. ‘Perhaps if you were to offer up CCTV footage. . .’
‘This eyewitness is very reliable,’ she said smugly. ‘He was inside Brighams’ offices with you, Ms Riordan.’
‘I’ve never been inside Brighams,’ Ella told her, making her voice firm enough to brook no argument. ‘Not since they took over, anyway.’
The last few photographs came out of the file. The previously pristine office interior burned black, its plate-glass window blown out, everything drenched with fire-stained water, which was running out of the shattered front door on to the pavement, carrying scraps of charred paper into the gutter. The Perspex desks had buckled and melted and the computers sitting on them had sunk into their surfaces.
Ella looked at Conway, hoping the detective didn’t see the unexpected mix of satisfaction and fear she felt. She touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth, making her face hard before she dared speak.
‘You think Quinn did this?’
‘Quinn and you,’ Conway said.
‘This had nothing to do with me.’ Ella placed her fingertips on the nearest photo. ‘I’m a campaigner, not an arsonist. This kind of action damages the work I do. I’ve always been very clear that peaceful protest is the way forward.’
Conway smirked at her. ‘I’m sure you do say that, publicly. But we know you were there, Ella. This attack was your idea. You conceived it after your “peaceful protest” failed and you recruited Quinn to help you make it happen.’
‘Do you have any evidence to support this claim, Sergeant Conway?’ Milton asked, picking a photograph up to squint at it through his wire-rimmed glasses.
‘Your accomplice has given you up,’ she said, ignoring his question.
‘Ryan Quinn is not my anything,’ Ella told her. ‘He loathes me and now he’s using you to try and damage my reputation.’
‘I believe you’ve already charged two people for this crime,’ Milton said.
‘You’ve been following the case?’ Conway nodded to herself. ‘Almost as if you expected your client to be brought in.’
‘Does your second suspect place my client at the scene?’
Ella saw annoyance darken Conway’s face.
‘He won’t protect you for ever, Ella,’ she said.
‘You haven’t managed to induce him to collude in this lie, you mean?’
Conway straightened in her chair, colour rising in her pale and sunken cheeks. ‘You should be very careful where you say things like that. Accusing the police of corruption is a very serious business.’
‘I’m well aware of how you operate,’ Ella said fiercely. ‘I’ve had first-hand experience of your tactics. As I’m sure you already know. And I won’t be bullied by you now.’
Next to Conway her constable blew out a slow breath, like he was bracing himself for her to erupt. She seemed the type to throw her weight around, Ella thought. She’d seen enough of these people to spot the worst of them.
‘You don’t appear to have any valid reason to charge Ms Riordan,’ Milton said.
Conway conceded that with the barest inclination of her head. ‘But I think we’ll keep Ms Riordan here until we’ve had a chance to check her alibi.’