Now – 31st March
I offer Sinclair my sofa for the night, but he says he needs to get home, drink a lot of coffee and fire up his laptop. So I call him a taxi and, from my balcony, I watch him drunkenly try and fail to open the door twice before he falls into the back of the waiting vehicle. The bottle he brought is empty now, and I’m not sober but not drunk either. I’m in that odd halfway place where you achieve a specific kind of clarity you wouldn’t find anywhere else but in the mix of neat spirits and a sudden and complete removal of certainties.
It’s almost midnight.
Tomorrow, Sinclair is going to run a story about police infiltration of the anti-gentrification movement. No names, just ‘sources close to x’ and ‘sources within the police say’. He’ll mention a murder suspect being whisked away from the interrogation room of a south London station in a blacked-out Range Rover and a family who are already finding their fight for justice stymied by back-room deals.
Because the Pearce family know something is amiss; they’re a police family, one generation removed, and their unthinking trust in the force is fast being eroded. They’re ready to talk to every media outlet that will listen, about their dead boy who they know in their hearts was murdered but who the police are now suggesting might have died ‘by misadventure’.
Sinclair’s source called again with that fresh detail while we were staring at each other across the table and trying to find a reason for Ella’s get-out-of-jail-free card that doesn’t rely on her being an undercover officer.
We couldn’t think of one and once we knew the narrative was being changed, there was no more space for hope or denial.
Ella Riordan, who I trusted and admired and, yes, loved like my own blood – my Ella, is an undercover police officer.
And now I know, I wonder how I ever trusted her.
The assistant chief constable’s daughter. Durham, Trinity, Garton. The girl who dropped out of training because she’d been attacked by a fellow recruit and couldn’t stand the culture of bullying and the system that had tried to silence her when she reported it.
How perfect was that cover?
Maybe that’s why Pearce came after her. Because a decision was made to sacrifice his career to establish her legend. It’s not a new tactic. In fact, it’s so old school that I thought they’d moved on to more high-tech approaches. Hacking us, monitoring our phones. Why did the police need Ella when ninety-nine per cent of the people she made contact with shared everything they were doing on social media anyway?
For the other one per cent, I suppose.
The Quinns of the movement and the Carols. And me, maybe.
I’m the one she got closest to; that had to mean something. Am I their target? Do the police think I’ve been a naughty girl? Naughtier than I really have? They’re about ten years too late. As much as it pains me to admit it. I’ve not taken part in any serious direct action since I learned my lesson at Greenham Common.
The first bona fide crime I’ve committed in years was helping Ella dump a murdered man’s body. Which, I guess, given her job, means I’m the victim of entrapment.
And Sinclair the victim of a honey trap.
He’s arguably the biggest scalp of all. I can imagine Ella’s paymasters salivating at the prospect of placing her close to him and his Europe-wide circle of contacts. A whole network of activists and intellectuals opens up to them through Sinclair, from boys throwing Molotov cocktails at the police on the streets of Athens to Whitehall’s twenty-first-century Kim Philbys leaking information to the press rather than foreign governments.
Perhaps it was always about Sinclair. When I think back to their first meeting and how quickly she fixed on him, it makes sense.
Ella should have known better. Her handlers should have taught her better.
Never cross a hack.
The silly girl. If she wasn’t so young and inexperienced she might have known that. A man like Sinclair will be as loyal as a dog, until you give him reason not to be; then he’ll turn around and tear your throat out.
I’m glad he’s going to do it.
I don’t know if I have revenge in me. Even though every bone and sinew and muscle in my body is screaming out for it. I want to slap her, pull her hair and choke her. I want to drop her down the lift shaft and listen to her body break at the bottom, leave her there to rot. But it wouldn’t come close to matching the pain she’s put me through.
The last few weeks have been torture, but now, sitting here staring at the empty glasses on the table, I realise that pain was merely a warning rumble, a twinge, in comparison to how I feel, knowing the absolute depth of Ella’s betrayal. It feels like everything has been scooped out of me, my body scraped away from skull to womb, leaving me an empty, nothing person.
If I smashed one of those glasses and cut myself I’m not even sure I’d bleed.
I know I wouldn’t feel the cut. I can’t feel anything.
And I hope this never goes away because I’m scared what the return of full sensation will bring with it. How much fury will ride in on that wave?
I’m not a calm or forgiving person. I know I can be dangerous.
I’ve hurt people badly for less than what Ella has done to me.
She’s used me.
She’s insinuated her way into my life, playing on my sympathy, exploiting my beliefs. The things that have driven my life for longer than she’s been alive, my version of religion and family and vocation. She burrowed in like a tick and drained me for useful information.
Now I’m thinking of every protest and demonstration we went to and the friends who were arrested. Did she do that? Did she provide lists of agitators beforehand, brief someone with photographs and extensive details on their alliances and weaknesses and pet projects? Was that why some quiet people were nicked and some loud ones left behind? Because Ella said so?
Nobody’s safe any more.
Tomorrow, when Sinclair’s piece runs, they’ll know that.
And they’re going to hate me for bringing this poison into our group. Throwing my thirty years’ standing behind someone I trusted too easily.
I’ll be cast out just as surely as Ella will. Except there’s no real life for me to return to. No back-up or safety net. Not even Callum any more, who might have been a fresh start away from all this if he hadn’t been hiding too.
A tentative knock at my door and I know it’s her before I hear her voice.
I open up to find her staring at the floor, her hair sticking greasily to her head, her clothes ripe with body odour and not warm enough for her to have come across London in them, not even on public transport.
She wasn’t on public transport, I realise, as I step back to let her in. If she’s been released from custody then her handler will have taken over and there’s a high probability that he brought her here. The fact that she came without washing or changing first makes me think she’s scared.
But can I take any of this at face value? None of her is real or true and I need to stay mindful of that.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks, sitting down on the sofa and noticing the glasses. ‘You’ve had company.’
‘Just Derek.’ I gather the bottle and glasses and dump them in the kitchen. ‘He was worried about Jenny, so I got him drunk. He’ll sleep at least, the poor old bugger. Do you want coffee?’
‘No, I’ve had quite a lot today already.’
Which might be why she’s so jittery or it might be a lie to excuse those jitters.
‘Please, will you just sit down and let me say this?’
I stand over her for a moment, enjoying her discomfort. ‘Are you finally going to come clean?’
Ella blinks rapidly and I take a seat before she reads too much into the question. She’s still coiled and volatile-looking, sitting with the cuffs of her jumper drawn down over her knuckles.
‘I do need to come clean with you. I should have been honest with you right from the start, but. . .’ A helpless look flashes across her face. ‘I don’t know, I thought the more you knew, the more trouble you’d be in if it all came out.’
She’s looking to me for a cue and I have to give her it.
‘Was it Quinn?’
‘No, of course it wasn’t,’ she says, grinding her fists together. ‘Adam Pearce – I told you about him. We were at Garton together. He was the reason I left.’
‘The bloke who beat you up.’
She nods, swallows so hard it looks like it hurts. This pain might be genuine. It might be the only moment of honesty I’ll see from Ella tonight and I feel for her, despite myself. An old impulse, I remind myself, is rooted in lies.
‘At first I thought he was here because he wanted to have a go at me. He got chucked out of training – my fault, right? I shat all over his dreams of becoming a detective.’ She sniffs. ‘I thought he was going to beat the crap out of me. Worse. I was terrified when I saw him waiting for me in the stairwell. But I couldn’t run.’ A slow blink as she shakes her head. ‘It was just like last time: I froze. He dragged me into the flat and I thought, this is it, I’m dead. But he was smiling, like genuinely happy. And he goes, “Bet you didn’t expect to see me again.”’
Some of this must be lies and some of it true, but I don’t know where the line is and I’m not even sure it matters. Because these are just details. I know what she is and what she did and I’m not even sure why I’m playing along, except out of a sick sense of fascination and the thrill of having the upper hand over her, finally.
Now I’m the one with the secret.
‘Molly, he tried to recruit me.’
‘For what?’
‘He never left training,’ she says incredulously. ‘Can you believe that? They told me they’d booted him off the force, but he just went off to some other facility and got trained up as an undercover officer. He’d been on drug gangs but they brought him out to start looking into us because they thought we were dangerous.’
I laugh at her performance, but she thinks it’s at the idea of our inflated status and I’m happy to have this moment’s relief.
She’s got it all worked out.
If I hadn’t spoken to Sinclair I might have believed her. She understands me enough to formulate a story I’d buy, under usual circumstances, and that makes me wonder how many other times she’s done this. Am I going to spend the rest of my life endlessly unpicking half-remembered conversations, trying to decide what was true and what were lies?
‘The weird thing is, he never tried to talk me around. I thought they were supposed to charm you.’ The irony makes my head pound. ‘But Pearce just went straight to the threats. He said he had information about Brighams that could induce the CPS to look at the attack again and maybe they’d decide to prosecute me.’
‘That wasn’t much to threaten you with,’ I say. ‘The case hadn’t changed. They wouldn’t have had enough evidence to reopen it.’
‘Quinn spilled,’ she says, her nostrils flaring. ‘He’d been keeping back records of our conversations so he could strike a deal if he ever needed to. That’s how he got released early. He grassed on me and God knows who else.’
I almost want to applaud.
Stand up and give her the ovation this performance deserves.
‘Pearce said I’d have to pass full information back to him. He was talking about building up a complete network of players in the anti-gentrification movement.’ She brushes her hair out of her eyes. ‘I told him to go fuck himself. Obviously.’
‘That was brave.’
‘I was drunk.’ She smiles, sadly. ‘Then he said I wouldn’t be the only one going away for Brighams. You gave me a false alibi, so you’d be looking at a stretch too. He said he’d make sure they put you somewhere rough.’
Ella shakes her head and are those the beginnings of tears in her eyes?
‘I couldn’t have lived with myself if that happened,’ she says. ‘Me? Okay. I made a stupid, egotistical decision. But you were only trying to help keep me safe.’
Now I’m supposed to look grateful. I reach across the table and hold her hand for a few seconds, squeezing her fingers before I settle back.
‘Were you tempted?’ I ask.
‘No. I was furious.’ She twists into a new and more defensive shape on the sofa. ‘Shit. Maybe I should have just done what he wanted. I could have controlled him, couldn’t I? Fed him rubbish.’
‘You wouldn’t have got away with that,’ I tell her. ‘Undercovers cost money; they have to take results back to their bosses or they get moved on.’
Ella purses her lips and I wonder if I’ve hit close to home.
‘It would have got him off my back, anyway,’ she says. ‘He’d still be alive and none of this would – have – happened—’
The tears come freely and loud; she grips the back of the sofa, white-knuckle tight. Reluctantly, I go over to her again, because that’s what I would do, and I stroke her shoulders and brush her hair behind her ears when it sticks to her wet face. This is real. These tears. But they’re not for this moment.
She must be terrified. The police have caught up with her and maybe the department that runs her doesn’t have enough clout to make a murder charge go away. Not for somebody as inconsequential as her. It isn’t like she’s stopping terror attacks or telling them where hundreds of millions of pounds of cocaine’s coming into the country.
She’s small fry.
And I bet she hates that.
‘I can’t live with this, Molly,’ she sobs, finding my hand and gripping it tight. ‘I hate myself so much. I keep thinking about it. I’m never not thinking about it.’
‘But it was an accident, right?’
Ella springs off the sofa and walks a few steps away, arms folded. ‘No. It wasn’t. I’m sorry. I lied about that too. I wanted him dead. I knew exactly what kind of man he was and I couldn’t stand the idea of him having power over me. He was going to abuse that power. He made that perfectly clear.’
She’s standing in front of the photo wall now. Blocking out the image of herself hanging there.
‘I know I was right,’ she says wildly. ‘But I can’t live like this any more.’
‘It gets easier,’ I tell her.
Something glimmers in her shining wet eyes. Something sly and out of place.
‘You don’t know that,’ she says. ‘You’re just trying to make me feel better.’
‘I do know.’
There it is again. Hope.
‘No, you feel guilty about helping me,’ she says. ‘But you don’t have his death on your conscience. I nearly ended it today. I had the pills lined up on the table but I couldn’t do it. My mum called and we talked for about half an hour and she didn’t suspect a thing. Can you believe it? I was sitting there listening to her and I was crying but she didn’t ask. I don’t even think she noticed. How can that be right? A mother not realising?’
‘Not all women have a maternal instinct.’
‘You’re right, she was never any better. You’ve been more of a mother to me than she has.’
The feeling of a slim blade cutting into my heart; actual, physical pain. I’d wanted to hear those words for so long, and some small part of me, the weakest, most needy part, almost believes them even though the rest of me knows better.
I need to stay hard.
She’s lying. She spent the day in police custody. She hasn’t spoken to her mother. She hasn’t sat in front of a line of pills.
Ella has manoeuvred us to this point. She wants something, but I don’t know what.
If I wait, maybe she’ll show me. I can see the desperation on her, how she flexes her toes inside her trainers and chews the inside of her cheek.
Is she just trying to ingratiate herself again?
Does she honestly believe this situation is recoverable?
Or is it me? Does she want to take me down with her?
It can’t be the murder because this has been one long confession on her part.
She turns her back on me, peers at the photograph hanging next to her own; Greenham Common, three police officers carrying a woman away, her small child torn from her grasp and dumped on the ground, left crying for her.
‘I always wonder where this kid is now,’ Ella says, glancing over her shoulder. ‘Do you know what happened to her?’