Girl On Fire_DC Max Wolfe

by Tony Parsons

  I looked towards the door, torn between wanting Edie to arrive before the end, and hoping that she came back too late. I held up my hands.

  ‘Nothing to do with me, Your Honour,’ I said. ‘Your brother George seriously injured a policeman and that’s why he will do hard time. And it’s not true that I always hated your brother. I liked him. It was you I couldn’t stand, you freak.’

  He came toward me, planning to kick me to death but I held up my hands higher.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘Please. Listen, Richard. You need to understand something. Your brother George is a smart guy. But he was never going to be a great man. Wrong parents, wrong schools, wrong accent. Fifty years ago, maybe, he might have had a shot at greatness. But not now. The fix is in at birth. The attention your brother got on Borodino Street was going to be the high point of his life. Can’t you see, you dumb, ugly bastard? Your brother – and everyone just like him – is beat before they begin. George was going to push that rickshaw until the day it killed him.’

  ‘I told you,’ Richard Halfpenny said. ‘I told you again and again. You’re going to crawl.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, getting unsteadily to my feet. I wasn’t going on the floor again unless he killed me. ‘I don’t crawl for anyone.’

  He took a knife from his jacket.

  ‘Waffen-SS dress dagger with totenkopf – literally, dead head – on the handle,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I’d ask for my money back,’ I said, squinting at the knife. ‘Looks like a fake.’

  I saw the six-inch double-sided blade, with the eagle and the swastika on the hilt, and the skull and bones on the black grip, and I saw the same bleak dreams of world domination that have been ending in the nightmare of tears and misery and ruined cities for a hundred years.

  It looked very old. It didn’t look like a fake. I was just pulling his leg.

  It must have been from his collection.

  And I knew he had been saving it for me.

  ‘Crawl for me,’ he said. ‘Or I will start cutting bits off you that will make you beg to crawl.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Crawl.’

  ‘Just get it done, you fat bastard.’

  And then the toilet flushed.

  We both stared at the bathroom door.

  A slow smile crept across Richard Halfpenny’s bloated face.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘She’s home! The lady of the house. That hot little redhead. Hiding in the smallest room. Even better.’

  ‘I am going to kill you,’ I said.

  He kicked me in the stomach. The air came out of me with a sickening ooof ! And I doubled up.

  ‘Unlikely,’ he said. I watched him move across the loft and try the handle of the bathroom door. It was locked.

  He pressed his shoulder to the bathroom door.

  He took his stance and braced himself to smash it down.

  He grinned back at me and winked.

  ‘She’s playing too hard to get,’ he said. ‘I love that shit. I do hope you are going to enjoy watching me with her.’

  I took a step towards him as he turned his face to the door and in that sliver of a second the air tore apart with the sound of a 9 mm handgun being fired from inside a confined space.

  A single shot from inside the bathroom.

  Richard Halfpenny was thrown backwards and I was watching him die at my feet before the sound of the air being split wide open had faded away.

  The gunshot wound was in his chest.

  Centre of mass. The way the experts learn to shoot.

  Black blood bubbled from the corner of Richard Halfpenny’s mouth.

  And I saw the shot was perhaps one inch to the left side of the medial line, the midline of a human body where the core of human life is located directly to the left or right – the heart, the lungs, the spine, the liver.

  So just off the medial line. But still a bullseye, still the work of a highly skilled operative who was aiming for the middle of his target.

  My bathroom door now had a hole in it the size of an espresso saucer at the Bar Italia. I heard the lock slide back.

  Jesse Tibbs walked out, not looking at me, standing over the man on the floor, the Glock that Jackson had given me still aimed at his centre of mass.

  Because Tibbs had been taught that one shot is not always enough.

  But it was enough for Richard Halfpenny. It was enough for Bad Moses.

  Tibbs lowered his Glock 19, released the magazine, stuck the gun and the clip in separate pockets.

  I sat on the floor, rubbing my ribs, my ears ringing.

  ‘I wanted my gun back,’ he said, kneeling by Halfpenny’s side, checking his pulse. ‘Very clever, hiding it in the ceiling. It was the second place I looked. What was wrong with under the mattress of your bed?’

  Jackson the thief, I thought.

  ‘Your friend thought he would take my private shooter from my locker and arm you at the same time,’ Tibbs said. ‘Two birds and one stone, right?

  He made no attempt to help me to my feet.

  ‘Once or twice I even thought he was tailing me,’ he said. ‘But Jackson had me wrong. I always hated you but I was never going to slot you. I’m not that dumb. I thought we could take it to the ring or a car park. Anywhere you wanted it. But I thought we might settle our differences like men.’ He looked at the body between us. ‘I guess we did.’

  ‘Tibbs,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s what I do.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t need a bloody shotgun.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Ray Vann,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about your friend. I know you blame me. And I’m sorry you hate my guts.’

  He shrugged as if it was all behind us now.

  He stared thoughtfully at the dead man on the floor.

  ‘I just think you get it wrong, Wolfe. You and the rest of the world. You think it’s a job.’ He looked at me now. ‘And it’s a war, pal. It’s a war.’

  He moved towards the big loft windows, pulled wide open for the last of the summer’s heat.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘My war’s over, I guess.’

  ‘Tibbs,’ I said. ‘We can sort this out. Richard Halfpenny was a serial killer. He was going to kill me. You’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m done. I might get away with topping Bad Moses here. But it’s the Glock with the serial number gone, you see. I can’t explain that. I will never be able to explain that. And that’s jail time. And I can’t be locked up, Wolfe. Maybe Jackson was trying to do me a favour.’ Jesse Tibbs smiled at me for the first time. ‘Maybe he was trying to save both of us.’

  Jesse Tibbs stood at one of the big open windows and looked down on the street four storeys below. I could not understand what he was doing. And then suddenly I got it. Checking for pedestrians, I saw, checking for innocent passers-by. And I felt the panic and sadness rise up in me as I got to my feet and staggered across the loft towards him, seeing him slide his right arm between his belt and his jeans, and then the left arm.

  The jumper’s insurance policy. Hands and arms locked inside the belt. So the fall cannot be broken. So that the hands can’t be held out at the final moment of life.

  So that there is no final chance to change your mind.

  And then, with his arms pinned to his sides by his belt, Tibbs sat himself on to the window ledge and I was weak from the serious beating that Richard Halfpenny had given me and I knew that I did not have it in me to stop him.

  Then we both stared at the door of the loft as it quietly clicked open.

  ‘You all right, Jesse?’ Jackson Rose said easily. ‘I knew I would find you here.’

  As he crossed the great open space of our loft, Jackson took it all in. The dead body of Richard Halfpenny, the good hiding I had taken, and the last plans of Jesse Tibbs.

  Without rushing but without breaking step, Jackson walked calmly to the window and gently pulled Jesse’s arm
s out from inside his belt. And then Jackson held him tight, the pair of them sitting on the window ledge as if they had all the time in the world, as if it was still a beautiful night, and Jesse Tibbs buried his face in Jackson’s chest so that we could not see him sobbing.

  ‘You’re all right,’ Jackson told him. ‘And we’re going to take care of you now.’

  36

  Anne was looking good.

  My ex-wife still carried herself like she was late for a photo-shoot at Vogue and was really miffed about it. She still turned heads and kept them turned when she walked – no, she strode – into the small café where we met in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral. She still had the model’s strange magic – that alchemy of height, bones and skin – of appearing to be slightly different to the rest of the human race.

  An adorable alien, then, running late.

  She waved to me from the door and she had checked her phone twice before she reached the corner table. Here was a woman who was moving on, ready for whatever was coming next, fitting me into a very small window.

  ‘Thanks for meeting me,’ she said.

  ‘No problem,’ I said.

  Oh, the excruciating formality of former partners.

  ‘You must be very busy,’ she said. ‘Are they sure that was Bad Moses? The man who got shot?’

  I nodded. She shuddered with theatrical horror.

  ‘But that’s all done and dusted,’ I said. ‘So it’s a slow day at the office.’

  She nodded briskly, checked her phone again, placed it face down on the table so that she would not be tempted to peek, and signalled for the waiter. A nice young Australian came running.

  ‘Did you order?’ she asked me.

  ‘I was waiting for you.’

  We both insisted that the other order first.

  We got it done eventually and I reflected that we were never this polite to each other when we were living together. We were never this polite when we loved each other madly.

  But we were total strangers now.

  Those people we had been were gone forever – the young uniformed cop with no living relations craving a family immediately with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and the stunning young model whose career was not panning out quite as spectacularly as planned, predicted or expected – for it turned out there were many, many beautiful girls in the world, and some of them were taller, thinner and younger than Anne, even back then.

  We were a different man and woman now. I guess we both grew up. It was as simple, as everyday, as that. All we shared now was our past.

  And our seven-year-old daughter.

  ‘Scout,’ she said. ‘She’s such a doll. And she’s been so good at our place. I have just loved the time we have had together. She’s so smart and lovely,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and I saw Anne meant it, and I felt some ice inside me – the ice that had been frozen so hard and so unforgiving against my ex-wife for so long – begin to melt.

  She tapped the table with her elaborate fingernails and I remembered that she had been a smoker. She wanted a cigarette now.

  ‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out,’ I said. ‘I know you wanted to make it work. I know that – in your heart – you want to be a good mother to Scout.’

  The waiter brought our coffee.

  I sipped my triple espresso and waited for him to leave.

  Anne blew on her skinny soymilk latte.

  ‘Since Oliver lost his job, things have not been so brilliant at home,’ she said. ‘There’s the mortgage—’

  I held up my hand. ‘It’s none of my business, Anne.’

  A flash of defiance.

  ‘I love her just as much as you do,’ she said. ‘Whatever you may think.’

  ‘I have to believe it,’ I said. ‘Because I can’t stand the thought of Scout not being loved by you. It’s unbearable to me, that possibility. And I do know you love her, in your own way. But you love yourself more. Please – let me finish. And I think that when you have a child, you either put that child before everything else in the world – everything – or you don’t. Plenty of men don’t – can’t – put a kid before themselves. They think their happiness comes first. Or their fulfilment or destiny or sex life or whatever they want to call it, and however they want to rationalise it. But it happens with women, too. And the children – these children who get left – they get hurt. Of course they do. But the people who do the leaving – those men and women – they get hurt even more. And you have hurt yourself more than you could ever hurt Scout.’

  ‘Good old Max,’ she said, attempting a laugh. ‘Never knowingly off the high moral ground.’

  She looked towards the door, chewed her bottom lip, and I could see that she was giving serious thought to leaving right now. Then she sighed, and I saw her eyes shining with the emotion that she was holding back.

  And when I felt my heart go out to her, I thought it was some kind of sentimental feeling for what we had once shared. But then I saw it was something new.

  I felt sorry for her.

  ‘You don’t know what’s going on in my life,’ she said bitterly. ‘The sleepless nights. The rows about money. Not knowing where the next six-figure salary is going to come from – or if it is going to come at all. Do you really want Scout in the middle of all that?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Scout can come back to me. With pleasure, with joy. Of course she can come back to me. My door is open to her and it will be open to her on the last day of my life. She has the key. Nothing in the world is more important to me than my daughter.’

  ‘Saint Max!’

  ‘Nowhere near it. I’m just trying to be the best father I can be, Anne. I don’t even think I’m very good at it. Work gets in the way. I’m not as selfless as I should be. But I’m trying.’

  ‘I tried,’ she said. ‘Bad time. That’s all.’

  I felt like touching her hand, just to show her that I got it. She had not seen this coming and those are always the hardest blows.

  ‘I thought that nothing bad ever happened on the street where you live,’ I said. ‘I thought you had it all worked out. And I thought that you were certain to stay with Oliver forever.’

  ‘Well, probably we will,’ she said. ‘But things change.’

  She glanced at her watch, and I wondered for a moment if there was already someone else, and then I realised that I didn’t give a damn any more. It’s a thin line between love and total indifference.

  All I felt for Anne now was a memory of feelings that had long gone, and the acute awareness of this new feeling. She was a woman with a restless heart, and it was unlikely to make her happy.

  There wasn’t much more to discuss.

  Scout’s room in London was exactly how she had left it. Miss Davies, her beloved teacher from New Zealand, had ensured that there was a place reserved for Scout when school resumed in September.

  ‘I’ll get her a pet to cheer her up,’ Anne said, raising her eyebrows at this brainwave. ‘How about a hamster? Hamsters are good because they’re low maintenance and they don’t live long. I had one when I was a little girl. Squeaky.’

  ‘But why would Scout want a hamster?’

  You couldn’t take a hamster for a walk on Hampstead Heath. The porters who worked on the night shift at Smithfield meat market would never learn the name of a hamster. Squeaky and his kind were never going to love you like we all want to be loved.

  ‘Scout’s dog died, didn’t he?’ Anne said. ‘I know he was very ill. Sam, right? Or was it Sid?’

  ‘Stan,’ I said, and then I could not stop grinning.

  Because Edie’s treatment had worked.

  Carrying Stan around a neighbourhood where meat had been sold for five hundred years had revived his spirit. Somewhere in that juicy universe of scent, Stan had recovered his appetite, and then his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel energy, and finally his old food-motivated self, his small heart open to the world, eager for friendship and fun with anyone on four leg
s or two.

  ‘Stan’s going to be fine,’ I said, as my ex-wife frowned at her phone.

  She bolted her frothy coffee. She was keen to get on.

  ‘So are we finished?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re done here.’

  On the top floor at West End Central, DCI Flashman of Counter Terrorism Command had parked his enormous bulk on my workstation. As I walked into MIR-1 he wiped his fringe of white-blond hair from his forehead and smiled lopsidedly as though he was still bloody gorgeous.

  ‘So you got your man, Wolfe,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘SFO Jesse Tibbs got Bad Moses. Not me. Richard Halfpenny gave me a kicking until Tibbs took him out with an unregistered firearm that Halfpenny had purchased from the late Peter Fenn, the weapons dealer also known as Ozymandias.’

  That was our story. And we – Jackson, Tibbs and me – would all be sticking to it.

  ‘No medal this time then?’ Flashman said. ‘Shame. But another one bites the dust. And his brother will do hard time for crocking that young uniform, even if the judge is an old softy. How’s he doing, by the way?’

  ‘PC Sykes is out of his coma but rehab is going to be long and hard,’ Whitestone said. ‘Sykes is a tough kid. I think he’ll walk again.’

  Flashman clapped his large hands once. ‘So another couple of scumbags are off the streets and we can all sleep safe and sound tonight, thanks – in part at least – to London’s favourite detective, DC Wolfe.’

  I stared at Flashman’s belligerent grin.

  He had not come to 27 Savile Row to offer his congratulations on nailing Bad Moses.

  ‘Courtesy call,’ he explained, reading my mind.

  The rest of my mob was facing him. Whitestone. Joy Adams. And Edie.

  She looked at me and in less than an instant something passed between us with the secret telepathy of lovers.

  How did it go with the ex?

  Scout’s coming home.

  Edie smiled.

  Whitestone and Joy were still staring at Flashman, their arms crossed, unimpressed.

  ‘CTU are releasing Mrs Azza Khan without charges,’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Because – as I was explaining before you joined us, Wolfe – there’s not enough evidence to prosecute her under any of the existing terrorism laws,’ Flashman said. ‘It wasn’t Azza Khan who brought down that Air Ambulance helicopter on Lake Meadows and it wasn’t her who killed Alice Stone – it was her sons. Listen, I’ve spent hours with the woman – she’s your standard deluded, self-pitying, not-very-bright religious maniac who was allowed to settle in a country when she feels not a shred of love, affection, gratitude or loyalty towards this country. Just the opposite, in fact, between you and me and the garden gate. But then whose fault is that – hers or ours?’