Girl On Fire

by Tony Parsons

  It was Jackson Rose.

  Jackson was the nearest thing I ever had to a brother but, like a lot of childhood friends, there was now an unknowable distance between us. I had no idea that he had even joined the Metropolitan Police. The last I heard he had ended up where so many ex-servicemen find themselves – sleeping on the streets. He had lived with me for a while but it had not worked out. He did not look at me now but stared straight ahead at the faces of the Khan brothers behind me.

  I hit the laptop again.

  A man’s face appeared, the blank-eyed image taken from his driving licence.

  ‘Ahmed – known as Arnold – is the father of Asad and Adnan Khan. Mr Khan is the long-term tenant at the Borodino Street address. He raised his family there. Fifty-nine years old. Looks older. All our surveillance and intelligence suggests that Mr Khan is not a person of interest.’ I turned and looked at his image. ‘He’s been a bus driver for more than thirty years. Also in the property are his wife, Mrs Azza Khan, sixty, and Layla, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a third brother, Aakil, who was the eldest and died fighting in Aleppo.’ Two more faces appeared next to the image of the old man – a stout, unsmiling woman in a hijab headscarf and a grinning teenage girl in a school portrait. ‘Like Mr Khan, Mrs Khan and Layla Khan are not persons of interest. They have had what the security services call innocent contact with our targets. Layla’s mother – Aakil’s wife – died of cancer ten years ago. We understand that Layla has been brought up by her grandparents.’

  The room stirred uneasily. Our job is always more complicated when the guilty are under the same roof as the innocent.

  DS Stone stepped to my side.

  ‘Questions?’ she said.

  A few hands went up. Stone nodded at one of them.

  ‘If there are more civilians than villains in there,’ one of the SFOs said, ‘then why are we going in so hard, boss?’

  ‘It’s the call of the DSO,’ DS Stone said. ‘And in my opinion, it’s the only call she can make.’

  The DSO was the Designated Senior Officer, the senior police officer taking ultimate responsibility for today’s operational decisions. This morning it was DCS Elizabeth Swire, who would be in contact from the main control room of New Scotland Yard.

  ‘Asad and Adnan Khan are unlikely to leave room for negotiations,’ Stone said.

  She looked at me.

  ‘Now for the bad news,’ she said, not smiling now.

  I hit the laptop and two hand grenades appeared on screen.

  They looked like death – black, lattice-faced spheres with a gold-coloured handle and ring pull, identical to a key ring. You could clearly read the name of the manufacturer on the side. Cetinka, it said.

  ‘This make of Croatian hand grenade was believed to have been decommissioned twenty years ago at the end of the Balkans wars,’ I said. ‘But these were photographed in the evidence room of West End Central two days ago.’

  I let that sink in for a moment.

  ‘Because an unknown number of these hand grenades – as is frequently the case with decommissioned ordnance – were never destroyed but stolen, stashed and sold. Some of them have found their way across from the Balkans to our streets. Three days ago a Criminal Informant told detectives from Homicide and Serious Crime Command at West End Central that a known weapons dealer had sold two of these grenades to two brothers in East London. And from the description of the men and CCTV images, we believe they were Asad and Adnan Khan.’

  The room was totally silent now.

  ‘So we go in hard,’ DS Stone said. ‘And we dig them out. We subdue and control before they know what’s hit them. And then we go for the most important meal of the day. And the only thing you need to worry about is your cholesterol level.’

  They grinned at her again.

  Jackson Rose was grinning, too, and I saw that gap between his two front teeth that I knew so well. And now he looked at me and nodded.

  ‘If there are no more questions, then we will get cracking,’ DS Stone said. ‘I will be leading the entry team. We shall be making just one pass,’ she said, meaning that the lead vehicle would drive past the target address once before entry. ‘DC Wolfe will be riding with us for TI,’ she said, meaning target identification. ‘Let’s take care of each other out there,’ she said.

  They applauded her. They loved her.

  Jackson approached me as I came off the stage.

  ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’ he said. ‘You’re walking all funny.’

  ‘I banged it,’ I said. ‘You join the Met and forget to tell me?’

  I was aware that we sounded like an old married couple.

  ‘I was planning to,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk at breakfast.’

  He briefly hugged me, Kevlar banging against Kevlar, and then followed his fellow SFOs to the weapons’ room where they signed out their firearms, scribbling their names on receipts as their kit was passed to them from the massive steel-mesh cage that enclosed the armoury.

  They all had Glock 17 handguns, Sig Sauer MCX assault rifles – the Black Mamba, short and superlight, perfect for close quarter ops – and M26 Tasers.

  And one of them signed out a shotgun – the Benelli M3 Super 90 that would be our front-door key. The SFO who checked it out was attempting to grow a wispy beard to cover the traces of acne that still clung to his youthful face. He stared at me without smiling.

  ‘Let’s go, Jesse,’ Jackson told him.

  DS Stone signed out her weapons and we walked down to the basement car park where a convoy of Armed Response Vehicles and unmarked vans were all waiting with their engines running.

  ‘This is us,’ she said, indicating a white florist’s van. Jackson Rose and the young man with the attempted beard and the shotgun were among those climbing into the back. There was a faded slogan on the side of the van.

  ‘BEAUTIFUL’ BLOOMS OF BARKING

  DS Stone laughed. She really was unnaturally calm.

  She held two PASGT helmets in one hand. She handed one to me. I strapped it on.

  ‘I love those inverted commas around “beautiful”, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Why do they do that?’

  Then she saw that I was not laughing.

  ‘What’s the problem, Detective?’ she said.

  I nodded as I put on the PASGT, tightening the strap of the combat helmet.

  ‘We’re using a florist’s delivery van for the entry team?’ I shook my head. ‘As I understand it, Borodino Street is in a very devout and poor neighbourhood. I wonder how many fancy bouquets of flowers get delivered to this neck of the woods.’ I indicated the van. ‘From Beautiful Blooms of Barking or anyone else.’

  The car park was in the basement of Leman Street Police Station but you could see the first light of a beautiful summer’s day creeping into the entrance.

  DS Stone was not laughing now. I watched her put on her PASGT helmet. She shrugged her shoulders, getting comfortable in the body armour as she held her assault rifle at a 45-degree angle, the business end pointing at the floor. The car park was filling with the fumes of all those engines. Then she smiled at me and it made me think that maybe I would like to sit next to her at breakfast.

  ‘We will be in and out before anyone gets a chance to wonder where the roses are,’ she said. ‘OK, Max?’

  But it didn’t go down like that.

  3

  The back of the florist’s van smelled of old sweat and fresh gun oil.

  The SFOs crammed inside were at home inside the restricted space. We call them a Tactical Support Team. They call themselves shots. I suspected that this wasn’t the first time these shots had used this van.

  DS Alice Stone stood at the back doors, deftly shifting her weight to remain standing as we sped through the empty streets. The other nine SFOs in her team sat opposite each other on low benches, most of them giving their kit and weapons one final check. Jackson Rose sat there almost meditative, staring at nothing. The boy with the wispy beard – Jesse Tibbs, it said on his na
me tag – adjusted the position of the shotgun between his legs. He glared when he saw me watching him. In the front of the van were a driver and a radio dispatcher in the passenger’s seat, both in plain clothes.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the driver called over his shoulder.

  DS Stone spoke into the radio attached to her left lapel.

  ‘All calls, this is Red One – ETA for entry team is five minutes,’ she said, raising her voice above the engine, but still professionally calm.

  It was two miles from Leman Street Police Station to the target address on Borodino Street, a quiet residential road not far from Victoria Park.

  Close to the back doors I crouched by a monitor relaying live images from the camera hidden in the roof of the van. The screen was black-and-white and split into the nine live CCTV images giving a 360-degree view of the outside. There were also two spyholes drilled into either side of the van.

  It was not quite 5 a.m. Still one hour to sunrise. The city still washed in that half-light that precedes true dawn.

  The streets looked empty. But the constant radio traffic coming from the front of the van told a different story.

  These streets were teeming with our people.

  The radio dispatcher in the passenger seat kept up a constant stream of communication. On the monitor I saw a line of Armed Response Vehicles parked just beyond Leman Street and as we got closer to the target address I saw vans of uniformed officers in riot gear, their stacks of ballistic shields by the vehicle making them look like a medieval army, parked up next to smaller vans of dog handlers with firearms and explosives search dogs.

  And ambulances. We passed an entire convoy of ambulances in a derelict petrol station, waiting for disaster.

  As we got closer to Borodino Street, there were undercover surveillance officers in observation posts, scattered across the neighbourhood – I saw a British Gas tent and two Thames Water vans that had nothing to do with gas and water.

  There was a second response team on standby, a back-up Tactical Support Team of shots parked up a block away from the target address. Just one street away, an armoured Land Rover was double-parked, its big diesel engine idling. A helicopter whirred in the milky sky of early morning.

  On Borodino Street itself, there were dark shadows on the rooftops – the snipers in their elevated close containment positions, the Heckler & Koch G36 carbines black matchsticks against the slowly shifting sky.

  ‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus out there this morning!’ Stone smiled, and her team laughed with wild relief.

  We were an army.

  But someone has to go in.

  ‘You OK, Raymond?’ DS Stone said.

  She was addressing the shot who was sitting between Jackson Rose and Jesse Tibbs with his shotgun. This Raymond nodded, too quickly, his face shining with sweat as he again checked his weapon. He looked supremely fit but older than the other shots, as though he had lived some other life before this one. Maybe another ex-serviceman, I thought.

  ‘One pass,’ DS Stone called to the driver.

  ‘Copy that, ma’am,’ he called back.

  We turned into Borodino Street.

  DS Stone crouched by my side, steadying herself with a hand on my shoulder as she stared at the monitor.

  The florist’s van passed the house without slowing down.

  One screen out of nine showed the front of the house.

  There was no sign of movement.

  I could feel Stone’s wound-tight anticipation as she stood up and leaned against the back doors. She quickly checked the spyhole.

  A female voice came from the radio on her lapel. It was DCS Elizabeth Swire, the Designated Senior Officer running the show from New Scotland Yard. All other radio chatter was suddenly silenced.

  ‘Red One, can we have your sit-rep, please?’ DCS Swire said.

  ‘No movement at the target address, ma’am,’ replied Stone. ‘Red One requesting permission for attack run.’

  A pause. We waited. All of the shots stared at their leader.

  ‘Red One awaiting instructions,’ DS Stone said calmly.

  ‘Permission granted,’ came the response. ‘Proceed with attack run.’

  Stone gave her team the nod.

  ‘We’re going in,’ she said calmly. ‘Standby.’

  The van had turned right at the end of the street, and now it made another right and then turned right again.

  No one was checking their kit now. They all waited, their eyes on their team leader as Stone picked up her Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle. I stared at the monitor, aware that I had stopped blinking. The monitor told me nothing.

  ‘All calls, entry team is in final assault position,’ DS Stone said above me.

  All eyes were on her. The van slowed but did not quite stop.

  ‘Remember your training, look after each other and watch out for those grenades,’ she said.

  She hefted her assault rifle.

  ‘On my command,’ she said.

  There was a moment when we did not breathe.

  ‘Go!’ Stone said. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  The front door was opening.

  It was happening very slowly.

  Whoever was leaving the house was taking their time.

  DS Stone was kneeling by my side.

  ‘Someone’s coming out,’ she said into her radio.

  A beat.

  Our van was crawling now.

  ‘Establish ID and hold,’ said DCS Swire.

  A large woman in a black niqab was shuffling from the house. She adjusted her headscarf as she turned to the street, only her eyes showing above the veil.

  ‘Is that Mrs Khan?’ DS Stone said.

  I stared hard at the monitor. The photographs I had seen of Mrs Azza Khan revealed a sturdy, fierce-faced woman. I could not see the face of the person leaving the house but they had feet like landing craft. And those feet were wearing Doctor Martens boots.

  ‘That’s a man,’ I said.

  Then DS Stone kicked the back doors open and she was jumping out the back of the van.

  ‘Stop! Armed police! Stand still! Show me your hands!’

  The figure in the niqab brought his hands out from inside the billowing niqab. He was holding some kind of assault rifle.

  And he shot DS Alice Stone in the head.

  The SFOs were all screaming the same thing as they piled from the van.

  ‘Shots fired! Officer down!’

  ‘Shots fired! Officer down!’

  ‘Shots fired! Officer down!’

  The burst of automatic gunfire seemed to crack the day wide open.

  All of the firearms used by the Metropolitan Police are configured to not fire on semi-automatic, meaning every single trigger pull fires only one single shot and later that shot has to be justified to people who never heard a shot fired in anger in their life, except possibly on the grouse moor.

  So that unbroken burst of automatic gunfire from the figure wearing the niqab was not merely deafening.

  It froze the blood and scrambled the senses.

  Because police gunfire never sounds like that.

  Only enemy gunfire sounds like that.

  Then the last of the shots were barging past me as I climbed from the back of the van.

  ‘Stop! Armed police! Stand still!’

  ‘Stop! Armed—’

  One of the shots banged into me so hard that I tumbled from the pavement to the gutter and almost fell. Then I looked up. The veil had fallen away and I was staring at the bearded face of Asad Khan, the older of the two brothers.

  I watched him raise his assault rifle, a fifty-year-old Heckler & Koch G3. He pointed it at the nearest SFO and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He stared at his elderly weapon. People were screaming. I looked down and saw the lifeless body of DS Alice Stone crumpled half on the pavement and half in the road. A halo of blood was growing around her PASGT helmet.

  Khan fired again.

  And this time the sou
nd split the sky, made your ears ring, and promised death. The burst of gunfire made a ferocious tattoo on the side of our van. I looked at it and saw the holes punched in the metal all along the legend ‘Beautiful’ Blooms of Barking.

  ‘Armed police!’ Jackson was shouting. ‘Drop the weapon and show me your hands!’

  I looked up and watched Jackson Rose aim his Heckler & Koch at Asad Khan.

  The gunman’s rifle was held almost casually at his side, as if he had injured his arm or was in a state of disbelief at what was happening.

  He started to raise his G3 and Jackson shot him.

  SFOs are trained to aim at the centre of mass – the largest part of the body, the torso, the centre of the chest, the largest target. They are not trained to kill. They are trained to hit the target. Jackson’s single shot threw its target backwards, the muzzle blast flashing yellow.

  The old assault rifle clattered in the gutter next to Asad Khan.

  ‘Suspect down!’ somebody screamed.

  Two SFOs were on their knees by the side of DS Stone. Her blood soaked the grey leggings of their body armour.

  Jackson took two paces forward and leaned over Asad Khan.

  I called his name. ‘Jackson!’

  And then Jackson shot him again.

  Another muzzle flare.

  He looked at me calmly.

  The front door was open and SFOs were pouring inside.

  ‘Armed police!’

  ‘Armed police!’

  ‘Armed police!’

  Then Jackson barged past me, his mouth twisted with rage.

  ‘Let them stick that in their report,’ he said.

  An ambulance was already hurtling down the street, blue lights blazing and siren howling.

  A female SFO was crouched by the body of Asad Khan, attempting to stop the blood pouring from his chest. They try to kill and then we shoot them, but after that we try to save their lives. This is what we do, I thought.

  This is who we are.

  I looked at the face of DS Alice Stone and I felt my throat close tight.

  The two SFOs with DS Stone were talking to her but I realised with a jolt of shock that they were administering to the dead.