Girl On Fire_DC Max Wolfe

by Tony Parsons

  I crossed to the back of the building and clanked down the old iron fire escape. The emergency exit door at the back of the building was never locked. It took me out on to Cowcross Street, one of those old winding backstreets in Smithfield. I walked down it quickly and paused at the start of Charterhouse Street.

  He was still there. Of course he was still there.

  I turned right, walking away from home, away from the main entrance where the dark figure was waiting, and I entered the Central Market from the far end.

  The place was roaring with shouts and catcalls and threats and laughter. The meat market is long and narrow in here and I walked the full length of it, four hundred metres, and on either side of me there were the men in white coats in the stalls expertly working on huge slabs of bloody meat.

  And everywhere there were potential weapons.

  I walked quickly, never pausing, never looking from side to side, my eyes always straight ahead and fixed on the exit that would take me out on the Grand Avenue and the man waiting in the shadows.

  And as I walked I selected a weapon.

  I first picked up a five-inch narrow boning knife and then, a few stalls further on, put it down and picked up a ten-inch chef’s knife and carried on walking, my hands held loose at my side, the chef’s knife in my right hand.

  And then, just before I emerged from the central aisle, I saw what I was really looking for.

  A meat cleaver and cut gloves, the hand wraps that butchers use to avoid losing their fingers.

  I put down the chef’s knife and scooped up the cleaver and cut gloves, pulled them on to my hands without breaking my stride, keeping the meat cleaver down by my right side and my gaze fixed ahead. The cut gloves were moist with the blood of fresh meat.

  I stepped out into the night.

  He was still there, looking up at the loft, but he sensed me behind him and turned just as I raised the meat cleaver to bring it down where the shoulder meets the neck.

  ‘Jackson!’ I said, slowly lowering the meat cleaver. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  He did not answer and I did not need him to answer because I knew that he was doing exactly what he had been doing since we were children.

  Jackson Rose was watching my back.

  ‘Someone’s coming for you,’ he said.

  25

  In the small hours before dawn we sat at my kitchen table with a pot of black coffee between us.

  Jackson took a folded sheet of A4 paper from his jacket and spread it on the table. It was the digital front page of the Daily Post, the photograph taken outside the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road on the day I went to see the body of Ahmed Khan. It was a big close-up of my face, the moment I turned away from Scarlet Bush. Every murder is a hate crime, I had told her, and that is what they had used as their headline.

  My eyes were missing in the photograph.

  Because someone had shot them out.

  I grinned at Jackson. ‘Is this what they’re using for target practice at the firing range now?’ I said.

  Jackson was not smiling.

  ‘This was left inside my locker,’ he said. ‘My locked locker, Max. Some shot has got it in for you big time. And I don’t think you can laugh it off.’

  ‘Tibbs?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘It’s not Jesse’s style. He’s a hothead and a big mouth. But he will say it to your face. You’ve seen that. A lot of them up there resent you, Max.’ He hesitated. ‘They blame you for the death of Ray Vann. For not backing up his side of the story. For not going along with his version of events to IPCC.’

  ‘They blame me for not lying,’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘And how about you, Jackson?’

  ‘I’m on your side,’ he said. ‘Even when you’re a stubborn bastard who is in the wrong.’

  ‘Thanks for that. What I saw of Ray Vann, he was a decent but seriously damaged man. I’m sorry that he’s dead. But he made a mistake. He shot a man he should have handcuffed. He executed a man he should have arrested.’

  Jackson winced. He was still wearing his sky-blue ribbon in memory of the dead at Lake Meadows. The colour was fading now.

  ‘Ray Vann shot a terrorist, Max. Adnan Khan might have been genuinely surrendering or he might have been bluffing. Either way, he was a mass murderer. Who knows what was in his tiny brain in that basement? But he was exactly the kind of murdering bully who, out there in the wicked world, is allowed to put a bullet in a little girl’s brain for the sin of wanting to go to school. Or who will use a drone to bring down a helicopter on the heads of people he has never met and who have done him no harm and might even worship the same god as him. So – whatever we do – let’s not get too sentimental about the scumbag he slotted. Ray Vann put down a rabid dog.’ Stan stirred between his feet and Jackson scratched him behind the ears. ‘No offence, Stan.’

  I wasn’t going to argue with him.

  ‘You know why I wouldn’t lie for Ray, right?’ I said.

  Jackson nodded.

  ‘I can guess. Because if you got caught in a lie then you would lose your job.’ He indicated the closed bedroom door. ‘And then you would probably lose Scout.’

  And now maybe I was going to lose Scout anyway.

  I pushed away the photograph of my face with the eyes shot out.

  ‘It’s too late to save Ray Vann,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s not too late to defend yourself.’

  Jackson hefted his kitbag on to the table, unzipped it and took out a faded Lonsdale T-shirt that had once belonged to me. Wrapped inside the T-shirt was a handgun.

  He placed it carefully on my kitchen table.

  ‘It’s a Glock 19,’ he said. ‘A 9 mm semi-automatic. Polymer-framed, short recoil. The Glock Safe Action Pistol.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not from the Met.’

  I stared at the stubby black firearm.

  ‘That’s a relief, Jackson,’ I said. ‘Because for a moment there I thought you might be getting me into trouble. Is this a souvenir from your service days?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘How much kit did you bring home with you?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing the British Army will miss.’ He nodded at the Glock. ‘You know how to use it, right?’

  I didn’t touch it. I thought that if I ever touched it in my life, I would make sure I was wearing a brand-new pair of blue nitrile disposable gloves.

  ‘Is it traceable?’ I said.

  ‘Only if they catch you with it.’

  We both looked at the Glock.

  ‘The serial number has been removed,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m going to show you how to clean it. Cleaning is simple but important. There are only four parts to your Glock. Frame and barrel and slide and recoil spring. That’s it. And the magazine, of course. Important safety tip to remember when cleaning your Glock – make sure you haven’t left one in the chamber. That’s how people die cleaning their weapon. They remove the magazine but they didn’t know there’s one still in the chamber. And that’s the one that kills them. You got all that, Max?’

  I said nothing.

  He looked towards the window. The sun was coming up. It was going to be another glorious day. He stretched and yawned.

  ‘I just don’t want you to die, Max.’

  ‘Me neither.’ I stared at the Glock on the table between us. ‘That’s not army-issue,’ I said. ‘You didn’t steal this from the army. You stole it from somewhere, but it wasn’t the army.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  This is what I knew.

  This is what I remembered from when we were two boys who were closer than brothers.

  My friend Jackson Rose was a thief.

  When we were kids, I had seen his thieving – a compulsive shoplifting, as likely to happen in a local newsagent as a giant department store in the West End – as a symptom of his wildness.

  And for the first time I realised that a thie
f never grows out of the habit.

  ‘Who did you steal it from, Jackson?’

  ‘Someone who doesn’t need it any more,’ he said.

  I believed him.

  But still I did not pick up the gun.

  George Halfpenny sat with his head bowed in an interview room at West End Central.

  The career criminal slips into the zone when they are in an interview room, the tape running, their bored lawyer by their side. An almost Zen-like calm descends upon the professional villain. They know that we are in there to build the foundations of their prison walls. They know it takes time. They know they need patience and guile.

  George Halfpenny was not like that.

  He seemed like a man who had already been broken.

  ‘You intended to inflict serious physical harm on PC Sykes,’ Whitestone told him. ‘Look at me when I’m addressing you, will you?’

  Halfpenny’s eyes slid to Whitestone’s face. But he could not look at her for more than a moment. He knew that she wanted to see him locked up for life.

  She nodded at the file before me and I pushed it across to her. She picked it up, began flipping through it.

  ‘Before your job as a rickshaw driver, you were in the Territorial Army for five years. Apparently you took your training seriously. Good grades for unarmed combat, it says here. A big strong boy who lost his temper – is that what you are, George?’

  Halfpenny finally looked at her, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse and cracked.

  ‘It all happened so fast. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I am not a violent man.’

  ‘You hated the officer you put in a coma,’ she said. ‘Just like you hate all cops.’

  ‘I don’t hate anyone.’

  ‘Come on, George,’ Whitestone said, laughing easily. ‘You don’t hate anyone? Really? We have hours of footage of you preaching outside Ahmed Khan’s house on Borodino Street. Whipping the crowds up. Night after night after night. You’re the man who single-handedly turned that peace rally in Victoria Park into a riot. You’re full of hatred. You’re full of rage.’

  ‘I hated Ahmed Khan’s sons – no, even that’s not right. I hated their acts. I hated what they did to the people in that helicopter. And the people who were on the ground when it came down. And I hated what they did to Alice Stone.’

  Whitestone erupted. ‘Don’t you mention her name to me, you piece of filth! Not after what you did to PC Sykes!’

  His lawyer perked up.

  ‘My client—’

  Whitestone waved him away.

  ‘Your client is going to say he never meant to hurt anyone. Yeah, I can guess. And I am sure that will be a great comfort to PC Sykes’ two-year-old daughter and his pregnant wife. It was all a dreadful accident. So what? So what? So fucking what?’ She shook her head at George Halfpenny. ‘And don’t think you’re off the hook for the killing of Ahmed Khan.’ She tapped the file before her. ‘I see that when you were in the Territorial Army you took Advanced First Aid. So you know enough about human anatomy to know exactly where to stick a knife if you want a man to die.’

  Halfpenny looked at me.

  ‘You know I was nowhere near Ahmed Khan on the day he died,’ he said. ‘You saw my phone. You know I was swimming with my brother.’

  ‘Our tech guys don’t buy it,’ I said.

  I addressed his lawyer. ‘Colin Cho of PCeU – the Police Central e-crime Unit – maintains that time and date stamps are extremely easy to fake. They’re running tests right now. PCeU will tell us if it’s genuine or not.’

  ‘But you believe me?’ George pleaded.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ I said.

  Whitestone stood up. ‘Even if it’s not a phony time and date stamp, and even if I don’t charge you with the murder of Ahmed Khan, you’re still looking at life for putting my young officer in a coma. And a lot of rough jail sex.’

  ‘I really must object,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘Your client assaulted a young police officer who now has a blood clot on his brain,’ Whitestone said, suddenly calm. ‘That’s a hard thing to bounce back from. Your client has ruined the life of one of our own. The judge and jury can calculate intent. But – some advice that you would do well to take – save your professional outrage for someone who gives a damn.’

  Whitestone and I rode the lift to the top floor.

  ‘You know he didn’t kill Ahmed Khan,’ I said.

  ‘I want him put away for life, Max,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what label they stick on it.’

  I did not argue with her. Because whatever we charged George Halfpenny with, and whatever conclusion a judge and jury one day arrived at, Whitestone was right.

  Sykes’ young daughter had been robbed of the father she had known and his wife had been robbed of the man she married. I had seen injuries like the one afflicting that young copper. And I knew they always changed more than one life.

  A young woman with a small baby got into the lift. You don’t see many babies in West End Central and Whitestone and I both grinned goofily at it – a fat little baldy thing of about six months – and we remembered when our own children were that age.

  The woman was dressed for the gym but with a milk stain down the front of her Sweaty Betty top, a good-looking woman who was trying to stay in shape but clearly run ragged by the demands of her life.

  She got out on our floor, the baby falling asleep in her arms, gently rocking it and looking around as we edged past her. She eventually started following us down the corridor to MIR-1. I thought she must be lost. But it turned out she knew exactly where she was going.

  Edie Wren and Joy Adams looked up from their workstations as we walked into the room.

  And suddenly the blood drained from Edie’s face.

  The woman with the baby was staring at her, shaking so badly that the baby was waking.

  ‘Stay away from my husband, you fucking whore!’ the woman shouted.

  She hovered in the doorway, her baby crying now, her face clenched tight with fury and grief, her eyes shining.

  ‘He is a married man. You are wrecking our home. Just stay away from him, can’t you!’

  And then she was gone.

  Edie turned towards her workstation. She seemed to have stopped breathing. She hung her head. One teardrop fell on her keyboard. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close. I wanted to get her out of this room. But I made no move to touch her.

  Apart from the rolling news on the big TV, there was total silence in the room.

  ‘Joy?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Try to get a statement from Halfpenny’s Commanding Officer from his time in the Territorial Army. I want something on the record about any obsession with knives, blades, and bayonets. Anything on an unhealthy interest in weapons is good, but we are looking for a sick interest in sharp objects. If that date and time stamp on his phone turns out to be fake, we are going to be charging him with murder.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Adams said, reaching for the phone.

  ‘Edie?’

  Edie turned towards her. Her pale Irish face had red blotches on her cheeks as if she had been slapped.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Nobody cares about your broken heart, Edie,’ Whitestone said quietly. ‘I need you to save the tragedy for outside the office. Have a broken heart on your own time. OK?’

  Edie nodded and wiped at her face with the back of her hand.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Whitestone turned to give me some instruction but I was no longer listening.

  I was watching the breaking news on the big screen.

  ‘Look,’ I said.

  The house on Borodino Street was burning.

  26

  It was the kind of fire you see when an accelerant like petroleum distillate, like kerosene, gasoline or diesel fuel is poured or sprayed through a letterbox and then torched.

  The kind of fire the police see all the time.

  Th
e call to the emergency services must have been made quickly because the blaze was fierce but confined to the ground floor. Flames spumed from the collapsing front door and the nearest ground-floor windows, wreathing the house on Borodino Street in billowing black clouds of noxious fumes.

  Half a dozen fire engines lined the street by the time we got there.

  Layla Khan was with her grandmother and a young female lawyer from Ludo Mount’s chambers. They stood in silence as they watched their home burn. It was the first time that I had ever seen Azza Khan seem subdued. The stout old woman stood there tugging at her headscarf, and if she heard the mocking cheers of the crowd who were being kept behind police tape at the end of the street, then she gave no indication.

  ‘If it had happened at night,’ Whitestone said, ‘they would have burned in their beds.’

  Fire Officer Mark Truman stood with Whitestone and me watching the men from the giant six-wheel rigs directing snaking hoses a hundred metres long and unloading thousands of litres of water.

  ‘Any chance it was accidental?’ I said. ‘A faulty boiler? Dodgy wiring? A frying pan left on the stove?’

  Truman smiled grimly.

  ‘Always a chance,’ he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Not my call to make.’

  There were already small groups of specialists whose job it would be to make the call. A senior fire officer from the Fire Investigation Team had arrived and CSIs were getting suited and booted, including a chemist who would take the lead identifying samples of fire debris for analysis in the lab. But all of them would have to wait until Mike Truman and his men had put out the fire.

  The flames were at their most ferocious around what remained of the front door. As we watched, the burning door peeled from its hinges and seemed to melt away to nothing.

  ‘There’s the seat of the fire,’ Whitestone said.

  Mike nodded. ‘We will have to wait for the FIT’s report, but the front door certainly looks like the point of origin.’

  ‘And fires don’t start accidentally on the welcome mat,’ I said.