by Tony Parsons
Paul Warboys got out of the back of the Bentley. He was wearing a polo shirt and chinos now, dressed for Essex rather than Spain. A little girl got out with him, perhaps a couple of years older than Scout, chatting excitedly as they came towards our building. The girl was holding a brand-new dog lead.
They rang the doorbell and we buzzed them up.
Bullseye headed straight for the little girl.
‘This is Pauline,’ Paul Warboys told me as we shook hands. ‘My daughter’s youngest girl.’
Scout and Pauline were all business. ‘You have to watch him when he’s off lead,’ my daughter told her. ‘He likes rolling in fox poo.’ Pauline frowned with concentration as Bullseye licked her hands, sealing the deal. ‘And if he does roll in fox poo,’ Scout said, ‘the best thing to get it out is tomato ketchup.’
‘Tomato ketchup,’ Pauline said. ‘We’ve got that.’
Bullseye didn’t have many belongings. His collar. A giant bone the meat porters at Smithfield had given him. And a chewed-up stuffed toy, a robin left over from Christmas, that he carried into Stan’s basket every night.
‘We’ve been giving him raw food,’ Scout said. ‘He was a little overweight.’
But Scout didn’t insist that Pauline stuck to his raw food diet. Bullseye was going to be somebody else’s dog now. Paul Warboys got down on his knees and expertly snapped on the dog lead.
‘Hello, Bullseye,’ he said. ‘Hello, old mate.’
He straightened up and smiled at me.
‘Thank you for looking after my friend’s dog,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘We’ve been happy to have him.’
And it was true. Bullseye had a talent for destruction that we were not used to with our chilled-out Cavalier, but over the last week we had grown very fond of that brutal face. Bullseye didn’t look back at us, of course, as they headed to the door. I saw Scout’s mouth tighten as she fought to control her emotions.
Paul Warboys touched Scout lightly on the shoulder.
‘I promise you that you’ll see this dog again,’ he said.
Scout nodded.
She believed him. And so did I.
Scout sat at the window and watched Bullseye being taken away in the big black Bentley, her fingers scratching behind Stan’s ears. I could hear my phone vibrating on the far side of the loft and when I found it I saw that I had a dozen missed calls.
There was one voicemail message from my colleague at West End Central, DC Edie Wren.
‘Max,’ she said. ‘Curtis died in the night.’
9
Goodbye to All This
It wasn’t really a wake.
When the news came through about Curtis, a few officers at the end of their shifts made their way to the pie room at the Windmill in Mill Street, the closest pub to West End Central, just around the corner from 27 Savile Row, and by early evening the place was full of our people.
It was not a wake, but word reached the other stations where Curtis had worked when he was in uniform – Lewisham after he got out of Hendon, Tottenham before he transferred to West End Central – and faces from those earlier days began making their way to the pie room at the Windmill.
When I arrived Edie Wren was on the street outside the pub, her face white with shock. She threw her arms around me and then broke quickly away, embarrassed at herself, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands.
‘I should have visited him more often,’ she said. ‘I knew him for years longer than you but I was never there.’
‘I don’t know that he wanted you to see him like that,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t easy for him. What happened?’
‘He just slipped away in the night. He wasn’t alone. His brother was there. Marvin?’
I nodded. ‘Father Marvin,’ I said. We both looked up at the pub. The Windmill is a famous pub – always winning prizes for its pies – but it was unusually crowded for this time of day.
‘We should join them,’ Edie said. ‘Whitestone is already in there.’ Pat Whitestone was the leader of our MIT and had known Curtis for longer than any of us.
‘I’ll see you in there later,’ I said. ‘There’s someone I need to tell.’
It was a short walk to Chinatown.
I knew something was wrong before I was halfway up the stairs to Sampaguita. With Ali still in the hospital with his jaw wired up, Ginger had locked the flimsy front door and now it hung off its hinges where somebody had kicked it open.
Oscar Burns, I thought. Big Muff.
Ginger Gonzalez was on the floor at the back of that small white room, huddled in a corner, trying to cover herself with what remained of the bright summer dress that they had torn off her back. Her hands were scrabbling on the floor, searching for something. Her glasses. I crouched by her side and gave them to her. One of the lenses was cracked. She put them on anyway. Her bare arms were scratched and there was blood on the six words that were tattooed from her elbows to her hands.
Never for money. Always for love.
I took off my leather jacket and put it around her shoulders.
‘Max,’ she said.
‘It’s okay now.’
‘They laughed and said that I had to choose one of them,’ she said, and I saw that her mouth was swollen where they had hurt her. ‘And when I wouldn’t choose … then they both …’
I kissed her on the top of her head, pulling the leather jacket more tightly around her shoulders so that she was covered.
I gave her a hug and she winced but I could not tell if it was from the pain from where they had used her or just the shock of being touched.
‘I’m calling a friend,’ I said. ‘Her name’s Edie and she is going to stay with you and make sure you’re all right.’
My phone was in my hand, hitting the speed dial for Edie Wren as I headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Ginger said.
‘I’m going to end all this,’ I said.
It was getting dark by the time I pulled up outside the Saucy Leper.
In the warm spring evening, the first hint of summer in the air, crowds had spilled out into the East End street, loud with laughter, happy with a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Because of its history, the Saucy Leper attracted its fair share of tourists, looking for a glimpse of old London gangland. But I could not see any tourists tonight – only young men, hard and thick, and women with heels higher than their IQs.
Perhaps they were all tourists.
Above the pub the lights were coming on in the Shadwell Amateur Boxing Club, the small boys in their claret-and-blue tops shadow boxing imaginary opponents. I shouldered through the crowds and into the pub. Oscar Burns and Big Muff were at the bar, with the same men who had been with them when they surrounded my car, and when I saw Oscar grin I suddenly knew that they had been expecting me.
And they wanted me to come.
Then someone hit me on the back of the head with what felt like a steering lock – a long and very heavy piece of metal that cracked hard across the bottom of my skull, across one shoulder and halfway down my back. I never did see who hit me or what they hit me with, but it was more than enough to put me on my knees and give the overwhelming sickness that comes with sudden, shocking pain.
The floor of the Saucy Leper was slick with beer spillage and bits of dropped food. I fought to control my breathing and master the pain and just when I was contemplating getting up, rough hands gripped me under my armpits and pulled me halfway there.
Oscar Burns and Big Muff were still grinning.
‘I smell pig,’ Big Muff said.
Oscar pushed his face into mine. ‘She was good,’ he said. ‘Your special friend. Did both of us at the same time.’
‘Spit roasting,’ Big Muff said.
‘Spit roasting,’ Oscar said. ‘Topped and tailed her we did. One at either end. Got photographs. Want to see?’
‘He laughed at you,’ I said. ‘Vic Masters. He was in the gym up there when you came in acting the hard men
. And he laughed at you!’
And then I laughed at them too – not much of a laugh, admittedly, hoarse and weak and full of the bile I could feel rising in my gut.
But it was enough to wipe the grins off their ugly faces.
Oscar whispered in my ear. ‘And now you’re going to get what that lippy old man got,’ he said.
They dragged me into a back room and dumped me on the floor. It was a cold stone room where the barrels of beer were stored. The mob left us. Then there were just the two of them, looking down at me.
Oscar Burns opened his backpack and pulled out a short, thick sword. He held it up, showing it to me, and the blade of the cutlass gleamed even in the darkness of that cold stone room.
‘You like a laugh?’ he said. ‘See how you like a laugh when your mouth is the same size as your pig head.’
I began to fight then, lashing out with feet and hands and elbows, but Big Muff fell on my chest, his knees slamming into me, his full weight coming down on me so hard I thought he must have cracked a couple of my ribs. Oscar knelt beside me and placed the blade of the cutlass across my face. I could feel the sharpened edge of metal settle in the corners of my mouth. My lips twitched away from it but he pushed down, very gently, and the blade cut into the soft tissue at the corner of my mouth. I tasted blood. Then I gagged on it as it trickled down my throat. And then we heard screaming out in the pub.
Oscar and Big Muff looked at each other. ‘He’s alone, right?’ Oscar said.
The door opened and a Somalian came into the room. He was tall and thin with a cleanly shaven head and when Big Muff got up and said, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the Somalian hit him in the chest, and I thought – ‘He’s punched him in the heart, that’s my move.’ – but Big Muff said, ‘Oh,’ and turned away, the blood already blooming on his tight grey suit, and I saw the knife in the Somalian’s hand as he turned to look back at the noises coming from inside the pub. And then, as Oscar Burns got to his feet, the sound of fighting receded and was replaced by women screaming. Three more Somalians came into the room. One of them was Ali’s brother. He looked at me with those blazing black eyes as I stood up, but it was as if we had never met in our lives.
Oscar and I stared at the Somalians and they stared back at us and then one of them – short, sturdy, built like a bull – took Oscar Burns by the collar and began to drag him away.
He meekly dropped his cutlass.
I looked down at Big Muff.
He was on his back, the blood all over his jacket, his hands fluttering weakly at his chest. I watched the black blood bubble out with his final breath. Then I wiped the blood seeping from the corners of my mouth on the back of my hand and walked from the room.
The Saucy Leper looked as though it had been hit by a whirlwind. Tables overturned, broken glass and puddles of blood on the floor, young men clutching broken heads as their girlfriends wept and raved.
A woman went for one of the Somalians – an older version of Ali, and I wondered if they were all his family – as they were dragging Oscar Burns from the pub. He held her off with a straight arm and did not slow his pace.
On the streets I joined the crowds and we all stared at Oscar Burns screaming for help – somebody help, anybody help me – as the Somalians pushed him into the back of their car, some cheap old French rust bucket, guiding him inside almost gently, everything going exactly to plan.
I glanced at the number plate and saw that it had been covered with duct tape. Simple but effective.
Oscar Burns sat in the back seat between two of the Somalians. He looked back once, his eyes wide with naked terror.
Nobody ever saw him again.
10
27 Savile Row
On a Sunday afternoon in April we climbed to the roof of 27 Savile Row, West End Central, to scatter the ashes of Detective Inspector Curtis Gane.
There was quite a crowd. Perhaps a hundred of his colleagues, old and new, including what was left of our Murder Investigation Team. Leading our procession to the roof was his brother, Father Marvin, wearing his clerical collar and a dark suit, and Mrs Gane fiercely clasping a solid brass urn to her heart as if offering her son some final protection.
I looked over the rooftops of London and, when you turned away from Soho in the east, London looked like a city made up almost entirely of parks.
To the south were St James’ Park and Green Park and to the west Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and they all went on forever. Among the green expanses of the royal parks, a host of Union Jacks fluttered crisply above the great buildings of the Mall and Whitehall and Westminster. Big Ben began to chime, as if telling us that it was time to say goodbye.
A hundred police officers watched in silence as Mrs Gane fumbled to open the lid of the urn. She tut-tutted to herself, and her remaining son stepped to her side, gently taking the urn from his mother and unscrewing the lid.
He handed it back to her and she smiled with such sweet sadness that I had to look away.
When I looked back she had stepped to the edge of the rooftop railing and was upending the urn.
The ashes of my dead friend came out as soft as sand and were immediately taken by the wind. The dust glittered briefly in the fading sunlight of that spring afternoon and then it was gone, taken by the wind. Then we hung our heads and silently remembered our lost friend.
Our MIT was back at work now so DCI Whitestone and DC Wren said goodbye to Mrs Gane and Father Marvin on the roof, and I walked them down to the street.
We had said all the words that we needed to say so Mrs Gane just smiled and hugged me and told me to take care of my beautiful daughter. I held her for a second longer than necessary and wondered if we would ever meet again.
Then I looked at Father Marvin.
I held out my right hand.
‘Thank you for loving my brother,’ he said, his voice only choking on the last word, taking my hand but wrapping his left arm around my shoulders, pulling me close for just a moment. But the moment was long enough to make my breath stop with shock.
Because I felt the power in that good man’s arms and as we came apart our eyes met with the secret knowledge that Father Marvin was a better man than I would ever be, a man with the strength to hold a pillow over the face of a soul in torment, and the love in his heart to do it.
‘Our brother is at peace now,’ he said.
Epilogue
Looking at the Turners
They found me looking at the Turners in the Tate.
I was sitting in front of a canvas that seemed to be painted in a thousand shades of red. ‘The Burning of the Houses of Parliament’, it said on the little brass plaque. ‘Joseph Mallord William Turner. c. 1834–5’.
In the painting the buildings all looked like phantoms, like the ghosts of buildings, or buildings glimpsed in a dream, and they were totally consumed by flames. Tiny figures huddled beneath the fire, jammed close together, and it looked like a vision of hell until you realised that there were rays of bright light aimed at the flames.
They were not starting the fire.
They were trying to put it out.
I snapped out of my reverie when DC Edie Wren kicked me, the toe of her trainer banging hard against the heel of my boot.
‘You don’t answer your phone?’ she said, and looked at DCI Whitestone with exasperation. ‘Jesus!’
Whitestone took off her glasses, giving her face a vulnerable, owlish look until she had cleaned them and put them back on. She still had the bookish air of a teacher or a librarian about her, but I knew there was not a more experienced homicide detective in the city.
‘We’ve got a call, Max,’ she said. ‘And we’re going right now. So if you’re coming, then you have to come now.’
I nodded.
‘There’s no end to it, is there?’ I said. ‘I think that’s what got to Curtis at the end. There’s no end to the wickedness, the cruelty, the evil. There’s only an end to us. We fight it – but it will outlive us.’
‘That
’s right, but we’re going now’ Whitestone said, smiling kindly, and she turned away and walked through the Sunday afternoon crowds.
Edie scowled at me once before following her.
I took one last look at the Turner. And then I found myself following the pair of them to the pool car parked outside, the engine running.
We drove north, to a street that was just a few blocks beyond a fashionable area, which was far enough away to make it look as though we could be in any suburb in the country.
Our people were already there. The blue lights swirling at either end of the road. The uniforms putting up yellow tape and a white tent. The CSIs in their white Tyvek suits and blue latex gloves, filming and photographing and dusting. There were some local detectives, clearly shaken up. It was a nice neighbourhood and they were not accustomed to murder.
The dead man was on his back, his body half in the street and half on the pavement. The tent was going up around him. There wasn’t much blood, which made it look like it had been some kind of blow to the head. He was perhaps forty years old, although the carpet slippers he was wearing gave him the appearance of a much older man.
‘He was in his home,’ the local detective told us, nodding to a house that looked just like all the others on the street. ‘There were some yobs in the street – kicking cars, swearing loud, the usual rubbish – and he came out to tell them to stop.’
‘And they killed him,’ Whitestone said.
‘Kicked him to death,’ the local detective said. ‘His wife and kids are inside. They’re in pieces.’
Whitestone nodded. ‘Get their statements,’ she told Wren and me, all business as she pulled on blue latex gloves.
Edie and I went into the house.
Our people were inside but beyond them there was what remained of the shattered little family. A woman around forty years old. A girl of about sixteen. A boy perhaps a year younger. The wife, the daughter and the son of the dead man in the road. Holding on to each other, all three of them sobbing uncontrollably, and trying to understand these new wounds that would never heal.
