Now – 20th March
Carol comes to mine straight from work, still wearing her forest-green Waitrose fleece under her quilted winter coat, and it prompts a moment of dislocation when I answer the door; my most radical friend’s face above that symbol of gentrification. I’ve never seen her in her work gear before and she catches my look.
‘Don’t say a word.’
‘It’s just weird.’
‘It’s bloody warm,’ she says, shrugging off her coat. ‘I wouldn’t have it on otherwise.’
‘Good camouflage too.’ I smile. ‘Nobody would ever think a manager at Waitrose was plotting to bring down the system.’
She’s brought a bottle of gin and cans of tonic, a couple of ready meals from the reduced section. If she knew why I needed to talk to her so urgently I doubt she’d have been so concerned about food.
‘Have you got any weed?’
‘Just some resin,’ I say, pointing her towards the mother-of-pearl box on the coffee table.
Carol starts on a joint while I go into the kitchen and make us stiff gin and tonics. I pick up one of the fat lemons Ella brought earlier this afternoon. I almost put it back in the fruit bowl, feeling like it’s tainted by association, then decide I’m being stupid and cut a couple of slices and drop them into our drinks.
I gulp down half of my own and top it up again before going into the living room.
‘This takes me back,’ Carol says, her voice constricted from holding down the smoke. She exhales. ‘My guy never has it, he reckons there’s no call any more.’
‘Mine must have an older client base.’ I hand over her drink, take a quick hit before giving her back the joint. ‘Callum’s been arrested.’
‘The murder?’
I nod. ‘Have the police talked to you yet?’
‘Couple of them came to the store. Didn’t go down well with management, that.’ She kicks her shoes off. ‘They know what I’m into but that’s the first time it’s got too obvious to ignore.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ She curls up on the end of the sofa. ‘Fuck ’em, anyway. They don’t have a right to dictate what I do in my own time.’
She looks relaxed already and I wish I felt the same. I realise how infrequently we’ve done this during the last year, got together for drinks and food and idle chat. The only times I’ve seen her recently have been driven by Ella. Wanting to interview Carol, wanting to get involved with her campaigning.
Now, with my blinkers off, I can see what she was doing. Using me to ingratiate herself with Carol, because she’s well connected and influential, far more so than I am. If Ella’s always had long-term career goals beyond crowdfunding books and flash mobs, then Carol would be the perfect target for her tactical admiration.
Except . . . that isn’t what she used Carol for, is it? She used her to get to more serious players, the dedicated hardcore. Quinn.
‘I’m sure your Callum’ll be alright,’ she says. ‘He didn’t actually kill that bloke, did he?’
Here’s where I should come clean.
I’ve been trying to think of the right way to broach the subject since I called her this afternoon and she’s gifting me an opening, but I can’t bring myself to take it. I want to stay in this little bubble for a while longer yet, where we are still friends and allies and I have nothing to be ashamed of.
‘Callum’s not that sort of man.’ I sip my drink, notice I’m almost through it. ‘What did the police ask you? Do they think it’s murder?’
She shrugs. ‘The one who did all the talking didn’t seem too sharp. He only asked me if I saw anything suspicious. As if I’d have told him anything.’
‘Did they show you a photo of the dead man?’
‘No.’
‘That’s weird.’
‘Maybe they already know who he is,’ she suggests. ‘Not many people walking about without ID on them these days and if he wasn’t robbed it’s all there.’
‘But they didn’t give you a name?’
‘Nope.’ She rearranges herself on the sofa, puts a cushion behind her back. It’s been bad for years, something with a disc her doctor can’t fix. ‘Didn’t they ask you all this stuff too?’
‘Yeah, but I talked to them days ago. I wondered if they knew anything more.’
Carol eyes me through a plume of smoke. ‘You think you know who it is. Someone from the party? Is it someone I know?’
There’s an unmistakable thrill in her voice and I’m surprised by it, because she isn’t usually one for gossip, far too moral for that. This is murder, though, and I’m realising it brings out the ghoul in the best of us.
Now’s the time. No more avoidance.
I’ve known this woman for half of my lifetime, we’ve been through things so serious neither of us have ever spoken of them, knowing that to voice them would be to let out a demon best kept bottled. But this is different. This is about Ella, who she hates, and Quinn, who she is besotted by in a strange fashion halfway between maternal fervour and girlish lust.
She’s going to be furious with me.
But I need to know.
‘Did you know Quinn got early release?’ I ask, trying to sound casual, like this is me changing the subject away from something unpalatable.
‘Yes,’ she says slowly. ‘I picked him up from Wandsworth myself. Why?’
‘How come they let him out early?’
She’s leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, a posture I know well. Eagerness and suspicion, readying for an argument.
‘He did a deal. Got some information out of his cellmate and they released him.’
‘He grassed?’
‘The code of silence is for our allies,’ she says coldly. ‘It doesn’t extend to scoutmasters who murder little boys and refuse to give up where the bodies are buried.’
That sits me back. ‘Quinn got that out of him. How?’
‘Ryan knows how people tick.’ Pride in her voice and a hint of threat, I think. ‘If he’d had a better education he’d have made a good barrister.’
‘You need a refill.’
I snatch the empty glass out of her hand, go back into the kitchen and take my time mixing two more drinks, making hers stronger. For a moment I stand with my hands braced against the worktop, staring at my own reflection in the window. I look like a guilty person.
‘Why the sudden concern for Quinn?’ Carol asks when I give her the fresh G&T. ‘You didn’t give a shit before he got sent away.’
‘Carol, we’ve been through this.’ I lower myself on to the sofa. ‘I was just protecting Ella. You’d have done the same for him.’
‘He’s different,’ she says quietly.
‘The police caught him at the scene, covered in accelerant, for Christ’s sake. He was never going to walk away from that. What was the point of Ella going down as well?’
She doesn’t answer and I’m relieved she doesn’t have the stomach to go through this conversation again. We’ve each said our piece half a dozen times and I thought when she agreed to come to the party that it was a sign of maybe not forgiveness, but at least understanding.
These things happen when you take part in direct action. Some people get arrested, others are luckier and make their escape. And it isn’t like he was blameless. Quinn led Ella and that boy into a situation neither of them were prepared for, changed the game with no warning and expected full and total support. Carol has always insisted they knew the score, but she’s blind to Quinn’s failings.
Just like I’m blind to Ella’s, she’d say.
And she would have been right a few days ago.
‘Would she do the same for you?’ Carol asks gravely. ‘Put herself on the line like that? Lie to the filth to protect you?’
I give no answer and she nods.
‘That girl is no fucking good, Mol.’
‘I know.’ It’s almost a whisper and I press my fingers to my mouth as soon as I’ve spoken, feeling tears welling up, all these days and sleepless nights catching up on me in a rush. I take a deep breath and then a long drink. ‘Where’s Quinn now?’
‘Spain,’ she says. ‘He’s gone to Barcelona to meet up with some friends.’
‘When did he leave?’
Carol’s brow furrows. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Please, Carol. When did you see him last?’
‘The day he got out, I went to meet him, took him for a drink and something to eat. He was pale as a ghost – good thing he’s gone abroad, he needs some sun on him.’
‘When was this?’ I ask, sick of dancing around the big question, wanting to just say it but still not ready.
She checks her phone. ‘He got out Wednesday, March the first. He was taking the Eurostar on the Friday morning. We found him a cheap ticket while we were in the pub. Alright?’
Meaning he was in London the night of the party and planning to leave the very next morning. If he was going to repay Ella for getting him sent down, then the party would have been the perfect time to do it, leaving almost no chance for his crime to be reported before he was gone.
‘Did he know you were coming to Ella’s party?’ I ask.
Carol stands up sharply. ‘What the hell’s all this about, Mol?’
‘Please, sit down,’ I say, immediately infected by her tension. ‘Carol, please. This isn’t easy for me to tell you but you have to promise to stay calm and hear me out.’
She stares at me, eyes wide, caught between confusion and anger. Slowly she sits again and even that small gesture feels like a success in this atmosphere.
‘Have you spoken to Quinn since he got to Barcelona?’
‘No.’ She spreads her hands wide. ‘Why?’
‘Have you got a photo of him on your phone?’
For a moment she looks incredulous and then, finally, mercifully, she catches on and I don’t have to say it.
‘You think Quinn’s the bloke they pulled out of the lift shaft?’
I hesitate.
For a second I think she’s going to lash out. But she doesn’t. Her hands curl into fists, knuckles white, all the energy running into them.
‘Ella did that,’ she says. ‘Did she tell you?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Did she tell you she killed him?’ Carol says, each word hard and deliberate.
‘Please—’
‘I knew it. I knew there was more to the Brighams action than Quinn was telling me. It was Ella, wasn’t it? He was going to tell everyone she was there and she had to stop him.’ Carol snatches up her phone. ‘She’s not going to get away with it.’
‘Wait.’
Carol reaches into her bag, starts rummaging through it but can’t find what she wants. She turns it out on to the sofa.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Calling the police.’
‘We don’t grass,’ I say desperately.
‘She killed Quinn,’ Carol snarls. ‘This isn’t grassing, it’s justice.’
The room is spinning around me as I get to my feet. I grab her by the shoulders and turn her to face me. It takes all my strength.
‘It was an accident.’ My voice is weak, my heart is hammering. I’ve never seen this much hate in Carol’s eyes before, but I keep babbling. ‘He attacked her and she pushed him away and he fell. He just fell, Carol. It wasn’t Ella’s fault. It was just bad luck.’
‘You knew?’
Her eyes are popping. She shoves me back so brutally I almost go over. I see her twitch, that instinct to help too deep to fully contain, but she stays where she is.
‘Why am I surprised? Of course you’ve been covering for her. Christ, Molly, she isn’t your kid, okay? Do you get that? She’s just some little rich girl on the make. She’s used all of us. You more than anyone. You need to stop protecting her.’
‘I’m protecting me,’ I shout.
Carol’s face goes slack. She looks like another person, someone I don’t know, who I’ve never known. Thirty years and here we are, made strangers by this moment.
‘What did you do?’ she asks, her voice low and toneless, and when I don’t answer fast enough, she grabs my arm, squeezes hard. ‘Molly?’
‘I didn’t know it was him. She called me and said some bloke had attacked her. She could barely string a sentence together she was that scared. She needed someone to help her.’
‘And still it’s all about Ella,’ Carol sneers.
‘I would have done the same thing for you,’ I tell her. ‘He was already dead, there was no saving him.’
‘You could have called the police. Turned her in.’
‘Is that what you’d have done?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Not to a friend. You never did.’ I hold her furious gaze until it begins to soften. The thirty long years close around us again, all the cold nights protesting out under the stars, huddled inside tents and, when they were ripped away from us, inside the back of police vans. Always together and stronger for it. ‘Carol, I’m really scared. I think Ella’s going to put this all on me.’
My voice cracks.
I’m shaking, swaying on my feet. I feel like I’ve been standing here forever arguing with her, and before her Ella, and before that lying to Callum and the police before him. I’m all punched out, voiceless and empty.
When I open my mouth to apologise to her no sound comes.
Carol draws me into a hug, a distant and perfunctory one. Still, I feel better for having finally told someone. She steps back with a new determination on her face.
‘You understand that if it is Quinn, then Ella’s lied to you about it being an accident?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘If it was anyone else, I’d agree with you,’ she says. ‘But this is Ella and Quinn we’re talking about. Their kind of history is a motive, right?’
Reluctantly, I nod.
‘If she killed him, she did it to stop him exposing her involvement at the Brighams attack.’
Again, I nod. I don’t agree but Carol is beginning to cool down and I can’t risk making her flare up by challenging her right now.
‘And if you think there’s a way she can put it all on you, then there’s going to be a way you can put it all on her.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s not how it works and you know it. Her father was a high-ranking police officer. He’s got decades of favours to call in. The only way I stay out of jail is if she does.’
A sour look crosses Carol’s face.
‘We need to find out if it was Quinn,’ I tell her, knowing he’s her main concern and that her position will change if it isn’t him. ‘Have you got a photo of him? The only one I could find online was his mugshot.’
‘Quinn’s always scrupulous about not being photographed. And obviously we don’t take each other’s photos,’ Carol says. ‘Come on, this is basic. If I get arrested and his photo’s on my phone then the filth know we know each other.’
He is good, I realise. To be his age now and do what he does, without creating any kind of easily searchable online footprint. That takes guile and dedication far beyond the norm.
‘Can you get in touch with him?’ I ask.
‘If he’s still alive, you mean.’ She rubs her temple. ‘He’s gone dark for a few weeks. No mobile or anything. He messaged the people he was going to meet on my phone before he left London. I can contact them and see if he’s arrived. Assuming they’ll tell me.’
‘Why wouldn’t they tell you?’
‘They’re an anarchist collective, Mol. They don’t trust anyone.’ She points a finger at me. ‘You could learn from them.’
As she taps out the text, I stand at my photo wall, looking at the image of Ella laid out in the road with a police baton poised to strike her. I think of how far she’s come since that afternoon and wonder how much of her progress is accident and how much she’s achieved by design. What, ultimately, does she want? To be an agent of progress or the kind of loud and persistent agitator who eventually gets drawn into the establishment because she’s too troublesome to be left outside it?
I wonder how far she’s prepared to go to get what she wants and to keep herself safe. Who she’d sacrifice. Who she’d silence. Whether there’s a line in the sand she thinks she’ll never cross or if she’s already gone over it.
I wonder if Quinn is the only enemy she’s made.