Girl On Fire

by Tony Parsons

  And the priest who had come to the hospital to visit his brother Detective Inspector Curtis Gane in the final days of his life.

  He was Father Marvin Gane of St Anthony’s Church, Brixton.

  He stared at me now as that great crush of humanity moved deeper into the park, but if he recognised me as the colleague of his dead brother, he gave no sign.

  And I saw that Father Marvin Gane, the priest of Borodino Street, was no longer praying.

  He was waiting.

  The crowd had stopped at the bandstand. The rickshaw was parked beside it. There was meant to be a series of speakers for Peace in the Park but I saw only one.

  George Halfpenny had already ascended the short flight of steps and was staring out at the crowds. As his brother Richard stood just behind him, as motionless as a postcard of a Rottweiler, George Halfpenny began to speak.

  ‘Before the other speakers arrive and give you the usual meaningless, virtue-signalling platitudes about how united we all are and how easily medieval religion fits into a twenty-first-century democracy, I would like us to remember a police officer called Raymond Vann,’ he said.

  Somewhere out in the darkness, someone shouted an obscenity. Heads turned towards the harsh sound, and then back to the young man on the bandstand.

  ‘Raymond Vann was let down by the police, let down by the legal system, and let down by the leaders of this country – all those tenth-rate men with first-class educations.’

  ‘Go back to Soho!’ shouted one London voice in the darkness.

  ‘When you go back to Pakistan!’ shouted another.

  Laughter. Applause. Jeers. Obscenities and heads were turning, ready to take it to the next level. I could feel peace receding into the darkness and looked around for the tousled red hair of Edie Wren.

  I could not see her.

  But I saw that the heckling was coming from the right of the bandstand. The gang of local youth we had seen at the gates had swollen in number. There were twenty or thirty of them now. Layla Khan was still at the centre of them, a big grin on her face.

  ‘Those leaders did not understand Raymond Vann and they do not understand you,’ George Halfpenny said. He looked out at the crowd. ‘You are the heirs of a thousand years of freedom, a freedom that has been won by men like Raymond Vann. You—’

  And then there was another kind of light in the darkness.

  The sudden flare of fire as a rag soaked in petrol was lit.

  In the brief flash of light I saw laughing young faces, their eyes shining with hatred, and then suddenly the flaming bottle was arcing through the night. It hit the metal fence that surrounds the bandstand and exploded with a whoosh of air and fire.

  George Halfpenny fell backwards.

  Richard stared at him, dumbfounded.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  ‘Kill the bastards!’ someone shouted. ‘Kill the lot of them!’

  And suddenly the air was full of missiles. The crowd were throwing anything they could find in the vague direction of the gang of locals. Bottles, rocks, cans of drink. Most of it fell well short. But in the sudden flare of light from the fire, I saw Layla in the middle of the locals. She was not laughing now.

  ‘Layla!’ Edie shouted.

  And I saw that Edie was ahead of me, closer to the bandstand, trying to push her way through to Layla.

  ‘Edie!’ I shouted, then something hard and metallic smacked against my neck and sent an ice-cold spray down my back, and when I looked up I had lost sight of her.

  There were screams and curses and punches wildly thrown as people struggled to get away from the violence or into the thick of it. Young men with Halfpenny haircuts, their faces twisted with fury, were already lashing out with boots and fists at the local youth. Heavily outnumbered, the locals fought back. Layla stood just behind the frontline, edging away from the violence while sticking up two fingers at the crowd with all the venom of an English archer at Agincourt.

  Police in riot gear were shoving their way towards the trouble but they had hung back too far at the start of the evening.

  I looked for Edie but I could not see her and cursed.

  Then I saw something strike Layla Khan and I saw her go down. I forced my way through the crowd, who were mostly anxious to go in exactly the opposite direction. When I found Layla she was on her hands and knees in the middle of the violence.

  I scooped her up in my arms. Then Edie was by my side. She placed her hand high on Layla’s forehead and her fingertips came away wet with blood.

  ‘Let’s get her out of here,’ she said.

  One of the locals, a tall youth with a failed beard and last season’s Arsenal shirt put his hands on me. Still holding Layla against me, I crisply bounced my forehead off the bridge of his nose. Edie kicked his legs from underneath him and he went down hard.

  We joined the crowd trying to get away from the trouble and we did not look back.

  Layla twisted in my arms and stared at me bleary-eyed.

  ‘Do you want to get yourself killed?’ Edie shouted at her. ‘Why the hell are you here?’

  ‘Because you –’ Layla shouted back, taking in the police, the crowds and everyone with a George Halfpenny jarhead haircut – ‘are down here.’

  As the crowd thinned, Edie brushed Layla’s hair from her face and winced at the sight of the egg-sized lump on her head, just where the hairline began.

  ‘Hospital,’ Edie told me.

  ‘No,’ Layla said. ‘Not hospital.’ She struggled from my arms and swayed unsteadily on her feet. ‘Take me home,’ she said. And suddenly she was a child again. ‘Please, Edie.’

  So with Layla holding on to Edie for support we left the park and began walking towards Borodino Street.

  ‘I’m sorry about your grandfather, Layla,’ I said. ‘He was a decent man.’

  She watched me impassively, waiting.

  ‘I held him when he died and I will never forget it,’ I said. ‘And what I will remember is that he died saying your name. He was worried about you, and full of love for you.’

  Her mouth flinched. She looked at the ground, letting that long black hair fall over her face. Edie patted her back.

  ‘And I know that your grandfather wouldn’t want this for you, Layla,’ I said. ‘Whatever you think you are doing tonight. Whatever you’re drinking. Whatever you’re smoking. Whoever those boys were. Your grandfather would want something better for you.’

  It was a nice speech. I was quite proud of myself.

  But Layla Khan just laughed.

  ‘My Papa-Papa wanted me to be a part of this country,’ she said. ‘His generation wanted to integrate.’ She said it like it was a dirty word. ‘Smoking, drinking, fucking.’

  ‘Hey,’ Edie said, looking affronted. ‘Your mouth, young lady.’

  ‘How do we integrate when you wouldn’t want to live next door to us?’ Layla asked me, and I had no answer for her.

  And then Edie chuckled.

  ‘What have you done to your hair, girl?’ she said, stroking Layla’s head. Layla tugged at her fringe and now I saw that her jet-black hair was tinged a garish shade of crimson.

  ‘It’s Boots own-brand Neon Red,’ Layla said. ‘That’s what it said on the bottle. Don’t you like it?’

  Edie grinned at her. ‘You always look pretty,’ she said. ‘Neon Red or no Neon Red.’

  We were standing outside the house now, the front garden still stacked high with the debris of the search teams. I stood on the pavement and watched as Edie walked Layla to the front door. Layla still clung to Edie, and it was as if she was reluctant to let her go.

  Her grandmother opened the door. Behind Azza Khan, I could see that the floorboards and parts of the ceiling were still torn open.

  ‘Layla was in the park,’ Edie said. ‘There was trouble there tonight. You should keep her home until it passes.’

  Edie paused, and I realised that she had never heard the woman speak a word of English.

  ‘Mrs Khan,’ Edie said
. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Azza Khan looked evenly at her granddaughter.

  And then she took the girl’s pretty face in one rough hand.

  At first I thought the old woman was examining the girl’s injury.

  But then I saw that she was looking at the trace of lipstick on Layla’s mouth, and the cheap red streaks in her sleek black hair and that she was smelling whatever the girl had been drinking or smoking.

  ‘I understand very well,’ Azza Khan told Edie.

  And then the old woman’s open palm cracked hard against Layla’s face.

  ‘Whore,’ she said. ‘Just like all the little teenage whores in this country.’

  Layla’s tears came immediately, and they were the hot and bitter tears that come not from pain but humiliation. She fled sobbing up the staircase.

  Edie made a movement to follow her but Azza Khan moved to block her way. The old woman shouted after her granddaughter.

  ‘Remember who you are!’ she called up the darkened staircase. ‘Remember your father! Remember your uncles! Remember your family! Remember where you belong, Layla!’

  Then she looked at Edie and smiled apologetically, almost embarrassed by her perfect English.

  20

  The season was turning.

  The days were growing longer and school was winding down for the long summer break. They were watching films in class and clearing their desks. These were the sunny days when Scout came home with sheaves of paintings, poems and stories – ‘My work this year,’ she would say, dumping it into my arms – carried proudly inside her plain black Kipling City Pack, size small. A big girl’s bag.

  Scout’s school uniform, the blue-and-white gingham dress the girls wore from Easter, still fit her but now it was stained with smudges of paint and grass and ketchup and Cornetto and almost ready to be retired. She would need a new, bigger dress for next year.

  And when I took her to school and we stood at the gates, working out the day’s schedule with Stan jumping up between us, frantic with farewells, I was struck by the same sweet summer’s thought.

  We made it through another year.

  ‘What’s the plan for the day?’ I said, knowing she had it committed to memory.

  ‘Mrs Murphy’s picking me up with Stan after school,’ she said. ‘I can’t go home with Mia today but I can at the weekend. You’re going to be late from work but not too late.’ She looked at me with her solemn brown eyes. ‘After dinner but before bedtime, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’ll read me Poems for Eight-Year-Olds?’

  I spread my hands. ‘But I don’t know any eight-year-olds, Scout.’

  She was outraged. ‘Nearly!’

  I leaned down and she lightly pressed her mouth on the side of my face.

  All those parents saying goodbye to their children, and all of those kids wanting to grow up fast, all wishing their childhood away, and yet my daughter would still give me a goodbye peck. I knew that would change one day. But not for a while, I hoped.

  I watched Scout until she disappeared into school. Parents dressed for the office and the gym drifted back to their cars. A bell rang from deep inside the school building, and that was when I saw her.

  Anne was sitting across from the school gates in something large and expensive. A new model Range Rover. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses but the curve of her face could not belong to anyone else on the planet, with the exception of our daughter.

  If Anne saw me she gave no sign.

  If she felt any emotion, then it did not show.

  But as I watched Anne gun the Range Rover and drive away, a touch too fast in those streets full of children, I knew with all my heart that I had been wrong about why my ex-wife wanted Scout back in her life.

  It is more than guilt, I thought.

  It is much more than guilt.

  A crime reporter of my acquaintance was waiting at the gates of the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road.

  ‘Max,’ she said. ‘Scarlet Bush of the Daily Post. Long time no see. Long time no quote. Maybe not long enough for you, ha ha.’

  An unkempt young man was with her. He had a camera slung around his neck. I frowned at him as he took my picture.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said.

  He did it again. I stared at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, lowering his camera.

  ‘Hello, Scarlet,’ I said. ‘The Daily Post? I thought that rag had closed down.’

  She stiffened with professional pride.

  ‘The Post is digital only these days, Max. There’s no print edition, but you can still find us online. These are difficult times for the newspaper industry. Advertising revenue has fallen off a cliff. So I need you to help me out. I’m writing a piece into what’s happened in this city this summer. All of it. The drone bringing down that Air Ambulance on Lake Meadows. The raid on Borodino Street. The death of the Khan brothers and Alice Stone. Now the murder of the father – the old bus driver. Where’s it going to end?’

  Give it five hundred years or so, I thought.

  ‘This Special Firearms Officer who died in Leman Street – Raymond Vann? Was Vann’s death a suicide or accident?’

  ‘We have to wait for the coroner’s report.’

  ‘Throw me a bone here, Max. I heard you had become friends with the father of the Borodino Street brothers – is that true?’

  ‘Ahmed Khan was an innocent man. He was as much a victim of his sons as anybody else.’

  Scarlet almost smiled. That was good. She liked that.

  She was jotting away in a notebook, strange squiggly hieroglyphics that must have been shorthand. Scarlet Bush had all these old-fashioned skills that were slipping into the mists of history. And I saw that being a journalist in the twenty-first century was like being a blacksmith as the first Model-T Ford came over the horizon.

  ‘You don’t think that Ahmed Khan bears some responsibility for what his sons did?’ Scarlet said, and now I saw that she was wearing a sky-blue ribbon. ‘You don’t think he shares the blame for Lake Meadows? For Alice Stone’s death on Borodino Street?’ She looked up from her notebook. ‘And for the suicide of Raymond Vann?’

  ‘I blame his sons,’ I said. ‘And I blame the generations of politicians who allowed ghettos to flourish. And I blame the Internet companies – the ones that are taking your newspaper’s advertising revenue – who serve up beheadings of aid workers as if it was family entertainment. And I blame the hate preachers who fill feeble minds with poison. I blame all of them. But Ahmed Khan? I don’t blame him. Arnold was a good man.’

  ‘Arnold? You called him Arnold? Wow. You really were friends, weren’t you? Can I quote you on all this?’

  ‘Do what you like,’ I said. ‘Stick it in your digital edition. Nobody’s going to read it.’

  She called out to me as I walked through the gates.

  ‘What about this Bad Moses character? He’s all over social media claiming to have killed your old pal – Arnold. Are you taking Bad Moses seriously? Or is he just another social media nutjob?’

  I remembered the Fourth Commandment stained on a floorboard outside the house on Borodino Street, and I thought of the Twitter account that Edie had showed me in the safe house, featuring Charlton Heston as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.

  But I kept walking.

  ‘Help me out here, Max! For old times’ sake! Was the murder of Ahmed Khan a hate crime, Max?’

  I turned to look at her from the top of the steps.

  ‘Every murder is a hate crime,’ I said.

  And then I went inside to look at the dead.

  ‘The dead talk to us,’ Elsa Olsen said. ‘But they don’t tell us everything.

  We were in the Iain West Forensic Suite, Pat Whitestone and Edie Wren and I, shivering in our blue scrubs and hairnets, for it is always just a shade above freezing point in this place of the dead.

  Ahmed Khan lay on a stainless steel table. />
  There was a livid Y-shaped incision on his scrawny torso where Elsa had opened him up with the green-handled gardening shears she favoured for her work.

  And there was a dark stab wound at the base of his neck.

  Elsa, one of those tall, dark-haired Norwegians who defied national stereotypes, like the woman who wasn’t the blonde one in Abba, indicated the dead man’s legs with a long stainless steel instrument like a conductor’s baton.

  We waited for our favourite forensic pathologist to reveal what Ahmed Khan had told her after his sudden death.

  ‘There was rigor in the legs but only in the legs,’ she said. ‘What that means is there was strenuous muscular activity in the legs immediately before he was killed.’ She paused. ‘Mr Khan was running.’

  I thought of the CCTV images of Khan’s last moments.

  He had bolted from the tube train but I had taken his urgency to be the impatience of a workingman who was keen to get home after a long shift on a Sunday.

  But Elsa was telling us it was more than that.

  ‘He was running for his life,’ I said. ‘He was terrified.’

  ‘Khan must have seen someone in that tube carriage,’ Whitestone said. ‘Someone he knew was a threat to his life.’

  ‘But we’ve got witness statements from a dozen people who were in that tube train,’ Edie said. ‘None of them heard Ahmed Khan being threatened. Nobody saw any threat of violence.’

  ‘Then it was someone he knew,’ I said. ‘Someone who did not need to say a word because just the sight of him made Ahmed Khan terrified.’

  ‘No defensive wounds?’ Whitestone said.

  Elsa shook her head. ‘When the end came, it came very quickly. He never had time to fight back.’

  ‘So he saw his killer on the train,’ I said. ‘He ran for his life. The killer caught up with him – my guess is somewhere near the top of the escalators – and stuck the knife in his neck.’

  Elsa’s stainless steel rod indicated the mark at the base of Ahmed Khan’s neck.

  ‘Cause of death was a single wound to the subclavian artery, which as you know is the artery that pumps blood to the arms and neck. If an artery of that size is torn then it’s possible that it can contract and stem the bleeding. But a clean cut of the subclavian artery with a blade that has a razor-sharp stabbing point and good cutting edges will kill you in, oh, five minutes.’