Girl On Fire_DC Max Wolfe

by Tony Parsons

  NO CALLER ID, it said.

  And then the promise.

  I will make you crawl

  And at that moment the headlights of a scaffolding lorry came on at the end of the street.

  ‘We’ve been set up,’ I said as the scaffolding lorry’s engine fired up.

  It was coming towards us, moving rapidly down the deserted street, gaining speed with every second, the headlights dazzling, the big diesel engine roaring.

  Sir Ludo Mount was standing by the side of his flipped-over Porsche, looking at his phone.

  The scaffolding lorry struck him a glancing blow, catching him low on the back, and it was enough to spin him around and toss him screaming into the air, his hands clawing at his broken spine before he even hit the ground.

  And it just kept coming.

  ‘Go,’ I said, but Edie did not move. And for a long sickening moment, neither did I.

  Then I shoulder-charged her off the pavement and over a low, scrubby bush into a neighbour’s garden that had long ago exchanged its grass for concrete. And when I saw her feet in the air and I knew she was out of harm’s way, I ran. I ran for my life.

  And I ran for my car, that big Bavarian tank, as if it was my only hope of walking away. The scaffolding lorry was gaining on me, the driver leaning on the horn, one long scream of blue murder, but I threw myself behind my old BMW and then it was tearing past me and gone, hurtling out of Borodino Street.

  I slowly got up off my knees, the smell of diesel in the back of my throat.

  All at once the street was full of vehicles and people. The world had filled with blue lights. Edie was climbing out of the bush and numbly staring at Sir Ludo Mount.

  At first I thought he was roadkill. But then Edie was on her knees, pumping his chest, pushing out the thirty compressions before lifting his chin and tilting his forehead and pressing her mouth against his mouth as she blew air into his lungs.

  The fire had burned itself out in the police van. Most of its white paint had curled and dissolved, revealing the steel beneath. But you could still just about read the message.

  EXODUS 20:13

  ‘What does it mean?’ a woman’s voice said beside me.

  I turned to look at Scarlet Bush.

  ‘It’s the Sixth Commandment,’ I told the reporter. I knew them all by heart now. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

  Then Edie was there. Paramedics were all around Sir Ludo Mount, lifting him on to a gurney and loading him into the back of an ambulance.

  She hugged me. I looked at her face. Her fabulous face.

  We broke away from each other.

  Scarlet Bush had approached the back of the ambulance and started taking photographs of Mount’s mangled body being secured for transportation to hospital. One of the paramedics furiously cursed her and she backed off, checking her phone to see what she had.

  ‘Get any good shots?’ Edie said, her voice ripe with contempt.

  ‘A few,’ Scarlet said. She lowered her phone and looked at us. ‘Sir Ludo was really hated, wasn’t he? Because he stood up for the Khan family after the brothers killed all those innocent people. Because he went after the Met after Alice Stone died.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sir Ludo Mount was hated.’

  She held her phone nearer to me. There was a little red light that told me she was recording.

  ‘And would you say he was the most hated man in England?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s your story, Scarlet,’ I said, and she hurried off to write it.

  Edie was staring at me. ‘But they weren’t trying to kill Mount, were they?’ she said. ‘They were trying to kill you. He just got in the way. Exodus 20:13. Who do they think you killed, Max?’

  Ray Vann, I thought. Someone thinks I have to answer for Ray Vann.

  But I said nothing.

  ‘Look,’ Edie said, and we stared up at the house on Borodino Street.

  Mrs Khan and the man who called himself husband were watching the street from the top floor.

  And from an unlit window at the other end of the house, Layla Khan also looked down at the street. I hardly recognised her because the girl’s head and face were now covered by a hijab. And I understood that the bald young man from Islamabad was not here to marry Mrs Khan.

  He was here to marry Layla.

  Then Layla Khan turned her head, as if someone was calling her name, and she stepped away from the window and Edie Wren and I saw her no more.

  29

  It was high summer now, the blazing days of August, and Stan and I were on Hampstead Heath, making our way up Parliament Hill, ascending the steep climb to one of the highest points in the city when all you can see ahead of you is hill and sky, and there’s a tingle in your blood because you know that the moment you reach the top all of London will suddenly be displayed below you.

  And then I realised that Stan was no longer by my side.

  I jogged back down the hill to the wood, calling his name, waving a pack of Nature’s Menu treats, and feeling a sense of rising panic. And then deep inside all the bright greens of summer, I saw a smudge of ruby-coloured dog concealed in the bushes and then those shining black eyes.

  But my smile fell away as I went deeper into the bushes.

  Stan was not moving.

  I got out some treats, still calling his name, but the most food-motivated dog in the world did not budge. He was not interested in food.

  ‘Anaphylactic shock,’ a passing dog walker said as his elderly Retriever gambolled on Parliament Hill. ‘Something stung her or bit her.’

  Strangers always thought that Stan was female. There was something about the extravagant curls of his ears that made him look like a girl. I retrieved him from the bushes and held him to my chest. He was a dead weight in my arms. The dog walker looked at me impatiently.

  ‘Get her to a vet,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  I stumbled from the bushes with Stan in my arms.

  And then I ran.

  Christian, our vet, confirmed the dog walker’s diagnosis.

  ‘But anaphylactic shock covers a lot of ground,’ he said as Stan closed his eyes and curled up on his examination table, wanting only to sleep, wanting only for the world to go away. ‘He’s certainly had some kind of extreme and rapid allergic reaction.’ Christian’s hands searched the red fur for clues. ‘I’m guessing it’s a sting from a bee or a wasp.’

  I clutched Stan’s worn old leather lead like it was a set of rosary beads.

  ‘Anaphylaxis is as serious in dogs as it is in humans,’ Christian said. ‘Leave him with us for forty-eight hours. We’ll give him epinephrine to get his heart rate up, antibiotics to prevent infection and some fluids to kick-start his blood pressure.’

  Stan looked at us with mournful eyes. They were not completely black, I saw, but etched with a thin ring of deepest brown. And those eyes were round as marbles and as huge as the eyes of a hero in a Japanese comic. I felt my own eyes flood with tears and lightly touched his red fur.

  There was nothing to say.

  ‘He’s a fit young dog with a thin layer of fat,’ Christian said. Then he looked at me with a kind of clear-eyed compassion. ‘But as you know, they’re a delicate breed,’ he said.

  I nodded. Stan was not moving. There was nothing more I could do. I left him with Christian. And this dog who hated to see anyone he cared for walk away did not even look up.

  As I walked to the door of the examination room, he was as still as when I found him hiding in the bushes on that hill between the city and the sky, like a creature who had all at once had enough, like an animal who had crawled away to die.

  I called Scout at nine o’clock sharp.

  She answered the phone herself. I was relieved that I did not have to talk to anyone else. And no doubt everyone else was happy that they didn’t have to talk to me.

  ‘Ready to rock and roll?’ I asked her.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘I’m sitting on
the stairs by the landline.’

  ‘Then I’ll begin. ‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee. He was a pilot in the war.’

  ‘Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

  And danced the skies of laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of – Wheeled and soared and swung

  High in the sunlit silence …’

  And nothing but silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘Are you all right, Scout?’

  ‘I’m listening very carefully.’

  So I continued.

  ‘Hovering there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of air.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Scout.

  ‘Scout?’ shouted her mother from another room.

  But I went on.

  ‘Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

  I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

  Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –

  And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod,

  The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand … and touched the face of God.’

  Scout sighed. ‘That’s a good one,’ she said. ‘What happened to John the poet?’

  ‘John died in the war, angel. Just after finishing that poem.’

  She thought about it.

  And then she was tired of thinking about it.

  ‘I need to brush my teeth now.’

  ‘You go and do that and I’ll call you again tomorrow.’

  ‘How’s Stan?’

  This was going to be hard.

  This was going to be the hardest thing of all.

  ‘Stan’s sleeping now. He’s resting.’

  ‘Good. Here’s Mummy.’

  I heard my ex-wife take the phone and felt her waiting until Scout had scampered up the stairs to brush her teeth. I could hear noises in the background. Family noises. Children getting ready for bed, music coming from somewhere. Some kind of late-night, chilled-out cocktail jazz that was not a perfect fit in a house full of young children.

  These domestic noises fascinated me. I had never thought about my ex-wife’s home life. And now that Scout was living with her, I thought about it all the time.

  Then Anne was on the line. ‘Do you have to read her a poem every night?’ she said.

  I was dumbstruck.

  ‘Well, it’s our bedtime poem,’ I said, as if that explained everything. ‘Scout always has a poem before she sleeps.’ I thought about it, struggling to find a compromise. ‘I could buy Scout her own phone so that we don’t—’

  But the total stranger at the other end of the line sighed with infinite weariness and slowly hung up.

  I stared at the phone for a bit and then got down on the floor and did twenty-five quick press-ups. Then I did another twenty-five, thinking about my form, cranking them out more slowly. Out in the main room of our loft I could hear Mrs Murphy, totally lost without Scout and Stan to take care of. I flexed my right knee. It felt almost as good as the other knee. Fred’s intensive rehab had worked wonders on the injury from Lake Meadows and the gaps between the flare-ups of pain were getting longer. And then I did a third set of twenty-five press-ups, the lactic acid building up nicely in my arms and shoulders now, making them burn with an aching kind of pain. And then I caught my breath and slowly pumped out the final twenty-five, pushing myself to go on when I wanted to stop and rest.

  Then I checked my gun.

  I stood on the bed and pushed back a panel in the ceiling, the only place in the loft where Mrs Murphy never cleaned. I pulled down Jackson’s old kitbag and unzipped it, smelling the gun oil. I unwrapped the T-shirt inside and stared at the glint of the Glock 17 in the night-time. Then I wrapped it in the T-shirt, put it back in Jackson’s kitbag and stored it again in the ceiling.

  Mrs Murphy looked up at me as I came out of my room carrying my own kitbag.

  ‘Off to the gym?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was going to leave it there but I didn’t like to deceive her.

  ‘But not Fred’s gym,’ I said. ‘I’m going to a different gym tonight.’

  ‘And how are they?’ she said. ‘How’s my Scout?’ she said. ‘And how’s my Stan?’

  ‘No real change,’ I said, hoping that would cover it.

  She nodded.

  ‘They lead such accelerated lives, don’t they? Their lives just rush past us.’

  ‘Dogs or children?’

  ‘Both,’ she said sadly.

  It was a busy night at the Muhammad Ali Youth & Leisure Centre.

  Teenage boys and girls were shadow-boxing, banging the bags and doing sit-ups, press-ups and planks. There was a small boxing ring with sagging ropes and Father Marvin Gane stood in the middle of it with a pair of battered Lonsdale pads on his hands. A line of children of assorted age and size queued up to throw three-punch combinations at the pads.

  He saw me and nodded.

  It was the first time I had seen him in the gym. Even in his clerical gear, he looked like a giant of a man. But in a sweat-stained T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, shouting instructions – ‘Double Jab! Right cross! Don’t let that right hand fade away! Get it back to your chin!’ – he looked like something else.

  Father Marvin Gane looked like a fighter tonight.

  I found an empty bench and kept out of the way until he was ready for me. After the children in the ring had all thrown their combinations, he slipped between the ropes.

  ‘Shadow-box!’ he told them. ‘Three three-minute rounds! Ten burpies and ten press-ups between rounds! Keep it neat! Think about your form! Hard work and dedication! Defend yourself at all times!’

  The children began bouncing about in the ring, their faces dead serious, dancing around their imaginary opponents.

  Father Gane shook my hand and eased his large body on to the bench beside me, his handsome black face gleaming with sweat. Someone had once told him he looked a bit like Marvin Gaye on the cover of ‘What’s Going On?’ and he had grown a neat beard to encourage the comparison.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to your mother’s funeral,’ I said. ‘She was a lovely woman.’

  He nodded briskly, a gesture that suggested we skip the small talk. ‘How can I help you, Detective?’

  ‘Sir Ludo Mount was hit by a truck in Borodino Street last night,’ I said. ‘He is going to live but he’s never going to walk again.’

  ‘I saw the news,’ Father Marvin said. ‘Very sad for his family. But I imagine he had many enemies.’

  ‘I was there when it happened. There was another message – a Biblical reference. This one was sprayed on the side of a cop car. Exodus chapter 20, verse 13: Thou shalt not kill. The Sixth Commandment.’

  ‘Yes, I’m familiar with it.’

  He stared at me, waiting.

  ‘I know you had an interest in Borodino Street,’ I said. ‘Because I saw you down there a few times.’

  And now I waited.

  He looked out at his gym. ‘I’m interested in anyone who has been separated from God,’ he said. ‘I prayed for the Khan family.’ He looked at me levelly. ‘Are you asking me for my theological opinion on the killer’s use of the Commandments?’

  ‘I’m trying to work out if it’s a false lead,’ I said. ‘If the use of the Ten Commandments is designed to send our investigation down a dead end.’

  ‘I see – you’re wondering if you should be looking for a religious maniac or if the use of the Commandments is just a con?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘The Ten Commandments are the basis of God’s law and establish timeless, universal and unequivocal standards of right and wrong,’ he said, watching the children as they stopped shadow-boxing and began their burpies. ‘But they’re not, as many believe, specific to Christianity. Ethical principles exist in every religion.
You’ll find something like the Ten Commandments – we call them the Decalogue in the trade, from the Greek for “ten words” – in Islam and Judaism. As a Christian, I believe that what’s unique about the Ten Commandments is that only they were written with the finger of God.’

  He stared at me, unsmiling.

  ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ he said.

  A tall, gangling youth had entered the Muhammad Ali Youth & Leisure Centre with a small kitbag in his hand and a large spliff dangling from his mouth. He was pulling out a pair of worn red Cleto Reyes gloves when Father Gane turned him around and slapped him hard across the face.

  The spliff fell to the floor.

  Father Gane crushed it underfoot.

  ‘Pick it up,’ he told the youth.

  The youth meekly picked it up.

  ‘Now get out of my gym. And that garbage with you.’

  The youth did not move and in a flash Gane had him by the scruff of his neck and he was carrying the boy to the exit door.

  Not dragging but carrying.

  The youth’s feet did not touch the ground.

  ‘Come back when you’re sober,’ Father Gane said, and tossed him into the night as if he was a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out of it.

  Gane came back to the bench, as every child in there watched him out of the corner of their eye.

  He clapped his hands.

  ‘Keep working!’

  He sat down beside me as if nothing had happened.

  ‘But I thought you had arrested this – what do they call him? – Bad Moses?’ he said.

  ‘My boss thought so too,’ I said. ‘My SIO – you remember DCI Pat Whitestone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Whitestone and his brother Curtis had both been DIs when I started in Homicide at West End Central.

  ‘She liked this George Halfpenny for the murder of Ahmed Khan,’ I said. ‘Maybe you saw him on Borodino Street.’

  ‘I saw him talking but I wasn’t listening,’ he said. ‘Because I was praying. Our paths did not cross.’

  ‘But – between you and me – it was wishful thinking that Halfpenny was Bad Moses. He seriously injured a policeman when he was resisting arrest so there was a desire to see him go down. Many of my colleagues wanted George Halfpenny to be Bad Moses, including my boss. But Halfpenny was locked up in HMP Belmarsh when Ludo Mount got crippled. And I have spoken to George Halfpenny. The man’s an atheist.’