Girl On Fire

by Tony Parsons

  And then I went inside the house.

  The light immediately went out in the narrow hallway and I could hear SFOs screaming in the dark. I banged my bad knee against a box and winced with pain. I realised the hallway had one of those lights that go out automatically, the kind they have in cheap property where someone who doesn’t live there is worried about the energy bills. I fumbled on the wall, found the round switch and hit it. The musty yellow light came back on and I could not understand what I was looking at.

  There were boxes all the way down the dingy hallway.

  Drones.

  Dozens of them. Some of them unopened. Some of them scuffed with dirt and grass, the metal scarred from repeated crash landings.

  The SFOs seemed to be above me now, on the first and second floors.

  I walked to the end of the corridor and opened the kitchen door.

  A child screamed.

  Shrill, high-pitched, full of terror.

  No, not quite a child. But not yet fully grown. A teenage girl of about sixteen was cowering on the floor by the oven with a woman and a man around sixty. The woman and girl were in their pyjamas. The man, his hair grey and thinning, was in a London Transport uniform.

  They were, I realised, Ahmed ‘Arnold’ and Azza Khan, the parents of the brothers, and Layla, their granddaughter, the daughter of their third son who had died in Aleppo.

  ‘Papa-Papa!’ Layla cried, and at first I fought she was calling for her dead father. ‘Papa-Papa! Papa-Papa!’

  But she turned her terrified face to her grandfather and I saw that she was talking to him.

  ‘Don’t kill us!’ Mrs Khan begged me as she clung to her granddaughter and they both closed their eyes.

  At their feet there was a pink and purple rucksack with The Angry Princess on the side. It was exactly the same as the one I had been sent to the shopping centre to replace.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now. But you must go – go immediately.’ I helped them to their feet. ‘And when you come out of the front door – this is very important – hold your hands above your head with the palms showing.’ I demonstrated. ‘Like this. It’s very important that they can see the palms of your hands, OK? Then nobody will hurt you.’

  They copied me. The woman snatched up her granddaughter’s Angry Princess rucksack and threw it over her shoulder.

  And then they ran, their hands in the air before they were out of the kitchen, palms forward as I had shown them.

  I walked from the kitchen, my balance off from what the gunfire had done to my inner ear, and I noticed for the first time that there was a basement door facing the entrance to the kitchen. From the bottom of the stairs, a dim light was shining.

  I went down the stairs, shouting my name and rank.

  In the basement there was an SFO with his assault rifle at his shoulder. It was the shot who DS Stone had addressed in the back of the van.

  You OK, Raymond?

  And before him there was a man on his knees.

  It was the other brother, the youngest one. Adnan Khan, with his hands in the air. I looked at his palms expecting to see hand grenades but his hands were empty. The SFO glanced at me and then back at the brother on his knees. Adnan Khan was surrendering.

  Nobody moved.

  We all waited.

  ‘Raymond?’ I said. ‘Ray? You prefer Ray or Raymond?’

  He did not look at me. But I saw something inside him react as I said his name.

  ‘What’s your full name and rank, Officer?’ I said, my voice harder now.

  ‘Vann,’ he said. ‘SFO DC Raymond Vann, sir.’

  The shots had been a blur of grey body armour, PASGT helmets and firepower. In my mind, they had been an inseparable, indivisible group. Even Jackson Rose, my oldest friend, had looked like just one part of a band of brothers and sisters. It was only now that I saw DS Stone had sought out this one man to make sure he was ready for what was coming.

  You OK, Raymond?

  But now DC Raymond Vann aimed his assault rifle at the man before him and he seemed totally on his own.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘DC Vann. Raymond. Ray. Don’t do it.’

  But he did it.

  One single shot.

  So loud in the small subterranean room it felt like the last sound I would ever hear. The muzzle blast dazzling in the twilight of the basement as Adnan Khan was thrown backwards, the death wound in his chest already blooming.

  Then I was stumbling back up the basement’s short flight of rickety steps and down the corridor piled high with boxes of drones and towards the front door. I bounced off the walls, keeping going, wanting to be far away from that basement. It was light outside now. The day had begun while we were inside the house.

  The pain in my ears was so intense that I touched them and looked at my fingertips, expecting blood. But there was nothing there. It felt like there should be blood.

  I staggered out of the house and into the dazzling light of the new day. Police tape was already going up at both ends of the street. The helicopter seemed much lower and louder. The second response team was piling out of the back of their van and pouring into the house where everyone was either dead or gone.

  And paramedics were putting DS Alice Stone into a Human Remains Pouch. We don’t call them body bags and they are not black, like the movies. This one was white with a long black zip. They had cleaned up her face and it looked like her. The young always look like themselves when they die fifty years too soon. Two paramedics were easing her inside with the tenderness of parents putting a sleeping child to their rest.

  I could hear radio chatter and someone sobbing.

  Jackson sat dry-eyed in the open doors of the florist van, still holding his weapon. An exhibits officer was meant to take it from him, but it was still too soon and too chaotic for formal procedures to kick in. Right now there was only the numb disbelieving shock that follows action. I sat by his side. He pulled off his PASGT helmet and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Then he gently patted my back. We did not speak.

  The Specialist Search Team had arrived and was waiting for the nod to tear the place apart. No grenades, I thought. Not yet. At the far end of the street I could see the CSIs getting into their white Tyvek suits and blue nitrile gloves. The gang’s all here, I thought.

  Then a senior uniformed officer stood before Jackson and me, shouting and waving his arms. Jackson looked away and yawned. The officer was silver-haired, fifty-something and his shoulder badge showed the red-and-silver crown of a superintendent.

  I stared at his lips. My hearing was still off but I could make out his question. I could understand what he was asking us. And he was asking it again and again and again.

  ‘What the hell happened here?’

  I blinked at him and said nothing.

  The image of the muzzle blast in the basement was burned black on the back of my eyes.

  And now it would be there for ever.

  4

  By the time I got to West End Central an hour later, a crowd was gathering in Savile Row.

  Under the big blue lamp outside number 27, a young uniformed officer was keeping a watchful eye. There was a sky-blue ribbon on his jacket pinned just above the patch that said METROPOLITAN POLICE. You were seeing these ribbons everywhere, in memory of those who had died when the helicopter came down. In normal times, any adornment to a Met uniform was strictly against all SOP regulations.

  But these were not normal times.

  The young copper nodded in recognition and stood aside to let me pass.

  I turned back to look at the crowd. They were builders from construction sites and office workers passing by. In hard hats or sharp suits, they were mostly young men. The mood was subdued as they talked quietly among themselves, but their number seemed to be growing by the second.

  ‘What’s this lot want?’ I said to the young uniform.

  He nodded to the glass doors of West End Central.

  ‘They’ve got one of the
drone bastards locked up inside, sir.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘But I just watched them die.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s what I heard, sir.’ He hesitated, and then indicated the crowd. ‘And I think they want to remember the forty-five dead,’ he said. ‘They want to mourn, they want to grieve, but they don’t know where to go. Lake Meadows is still a crime scene.’

  ‘There are forty-four dead,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘They found another one.’ His eyes flooded with tears and I watched him fight to regain control. ‘A little kid. So it’s forty-five now.’

  I lightly touched his arm.

  ‘Are you all right out here on your lonesome?’

  He grinned. ‘As long as they stay like this, sir.’

  I rode the lift up to the top floor.

  Edie Wren was alone in Major Incident Room One.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, and handed me a triple espresso from Bar Italia before turning back to the big HDTV.

  They were showing Borodino Street, filmed from a news channel helicopter. The street was taped off at either end and the lights of the CSIs surrounded the house, brighter than daylight. The white-suited teams were everywhere.

  In the left-hand corner of the screen there was another helicopter shot, a view of Lake Meadows that had become horribly familiar over the last seven days, the shopping centre a charred and blackened scar on the face of the shining city, closed to the public but crowded with bulldozers and cranes and white tents, at once a crime scene and a mass grave.

  And in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, there was a blacked-out head and shoulders silhouette.

  Edie turned to me. ‘They haven’t told her next of kin yet,’ she said. ‘That’s why they’re not showing her face. They must be trying to reach her husband.’ Edie pushed back her tangled mop of red hair and shook her head with disbelief. ‘I met her once. Alice. DS Alice Stone. When I was in uniform. She was a team leader even then. And she shone, Max. She was like the cool kid at school that everyone wants to be friends with. And she was nice. A decent human being and a real high-flyer.’ Edie looked back at the screen. ‘I think her team were all in love with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s her.’

  I removed the lid from the Bar Italia carton and bolted down a triple espresso. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Must be a bit cold by now but it’s the thought that counts,’ Edie said, holding out her arms. ‘Come here.’

  She hugged me awkwardly. I hugged her back, equally awkwardly as she accidentally gave me a gentle headbutt, the embrace of colleagues who liked each other but were working out exactly what that might mean. As far as I knew, she was still seeing her married man. As far as I knew, the creep was still promising to leave his wife.

  But it still felt good to hold her.

  And I was suddenly bone-tired. I closed my eyes and I could have slept in her arms for somewhere between fifteen minutes and a lifetime. Then I felt her let go of me and step back. When I opened my eyes, Edie was watching me and waiting.

  ‘What happened on Borodino Street?’ she said.

  ‘It went wrong from the go,’ I said. ‘From the moment the jump-off van pulled up outside.’

  I told her almost everything. I told her about the figure in the niqab coming out of the house and Asad Khan opening fire before we had even got started. I told her what happened on the street. I told her about Alice Stone and Asad Khan dying within seconds of each other. I told her about telling Mr and Mrs Khan and their granddaughter Layla to raise their hands and run.

  But I did not tell her about the basement and Adnan Khan on his knees and DC Ray Vann looking at him through the sights of his assault rifle. I didn’t tell her about the single shot in the basement that was still ringing in my ears, or the muzzle blast that was still burned on the back of my retina.

  The sounds of the crowd down in Savile Row drifted up through the open windows. I looked at Edie, still not understanding what they were doing here.

  ‘It’s probably because we’ve got the Khan family, or what’s left of them,’ Edie said. ‘They were brought here after the op. The father and the mother and the girl, Layla, the daughter of the brother who got slotted in Syria. Mrs Khan and the girl are on the second floor with the FLO.’

  Family Liaison Officer.

  ‘And what about Mr Khan?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s down in the custody suite.’

  ‘Why have they got him locked up?’ I said.

  ‘Waiting for CTC,’ Edie said. ‘Then they’re shipping him over to Paddington. That’s why there’s a bit of a mob outside – because we have the old man. It is all very civilised so far, but I think they would quite like to see him hanging from a lamppost. He had three sons and all of them were terrorists. It’s not a good look, is it?’

  CTC is Counter Terrorism Command and Paddington is Paddington Green Police Station where almost all terrorists are interrogated. When the news reports that a terrorist suspect is in ‘a central London location’ it means that they are inside Paddington Green. IRA headbangers, failed suicide bombers and graduates from Guantanamo Bay have all graced the cells and interview rooms of Paddington Green. It looks like a budget hotel, if you can imagine a budget hotel with two-inch-thick steel doors.

  I thought of the Khans cowering with terror on the floor of the kitchen. I remembered the old man, the old woman and the teenage girl fleeing with their hands in the air. It had not crossed my mind that the old man, Ahmed Khan, was ready to die for jihad.

  ‘They looked like victims to me, Edie,’ I said. ‘They looked like they’d had innocent contact. They didn’t look like terrorists.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘But the old man must have known, right? Maybe the old lady and the kid had innocent contact. But the father? I mean – he must have known about his sons, Max. I hear the place on Borodino Street was full of drones. Not even hidden. What did he think they were doing with them? Innocent contact means he knew nothing. And how could he have known nothing, Max?’

  Maybe she was right. I rubbed my eyes as we rode the lift down to the second floor.

  We heard Mrs Khan before we saw her. She was shouting in Urdu and crying her eyes out.

  ‘Translator?’ I said.

  ‘On his way,’ said the FLO. ‘Stuck in traffic.’

  The FLO was struggling to calm Mrs Khan while the girl, Layla, sat hunched at a desk letting her long black hair fall over her face. Uniformed officers watched the woman and the girl with wary reserve. It is never easy to deal with the relatives of the wicked. They are always tainted by the sins of their family. They are always suspected.

  But Edie Wren sat down next to Layla Khan and gently took her hands. The teenage girl gasped with shock at her touch and tried to pull her hands away.

  But Edie smiled gently and would not let go.

  ‘I like your nails,’ Edie said. ‘Layla, is it? I’m Edie. I work here.’ She studied the girl’s nails, which were a garish shade of green. ‘So where did you get them done? They’re really pretty.’

  The girl swept her mane of long black hair from her face.

  ‘I did them myself, didn’t I?’ Layla Khan said, and even as her grandmother continued to shout in Urdu, there was nothing in her voice but the streets of London.

  She blinked at Edie with huge brown eyes, as if amazed that small acts of human kindness still existed in the world.

  5

  I took the lift down to the custody suite.

  The custody sergeant on the desk signed me in.

  ‘You were in Borodino Street?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘I heard about that young shot they killed,’ he said, his eyes shining with emotion. ‘That’s all anybody is talking in here. It’s so senseless. Forty-four dead in that shopping centre and now this bloody mess.’

  ‘Forty-five,’ I said. ‘Apparently they just found a child’s body.’

  ‘Forty-five? Those animals.’ He shook his head. �
�And that young DS. Alice Stone. Where does it end, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know if it does,’ I said. ‘Not in our lifetime.’

  ‘Are you going to have a word with this scumbag?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I waited until the sergeant gave me eye contact. ‘But we got them,’ I said. ‘Both of them. As far as we know, this man is just a relative.’

  The custody sergeant did not look convinced. I followed him into the observation room and we looked in at Ahmed Khan. He sat unmoving in his cell, perched on the edge of a bed that had not been disturbed, a gaunt, hollow-cheeked man, as thin as his wife was stout. They were built like one of those married couples in an old seaside postcard, I thought, the husband a slight, unassuming figure who wouldn’t hurt a fly and his wife a loud, big-boned creature who would swat anything that got in her way. For the first time I noticed that he too was wearing a sky-blue ribbon on his London Transport uniform. And I wondered if I was kidding myself. I wondered if I was being played.

  ‘You want an audio feed on this?’ the custody sergeant asked me.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s not a formal interview. I just need to talk to him before the heavy mob get here.’

  The custody sergeant nodded but I could see he didn’t like it. Too bad. I had earned the right to talk to Ahmed Khan. The sergeant unlocked the door of the custody suite. I went inside and heard the door slam shut and lock behind me.

  Ahmed Khan did not look up at me from where he sat on the edge of the custody suite’s low single bed. The events of the last few hours had left him catatonic with shock.

  ‘Remember me?’ I said.

  His eyes slid towards me.

  His head jerked sideways. That was a negative.

  I held up my hands, palms facing outwards.

  ‘How about now?’ I said.

  Then there was recognition on that skull-like face.

  ‘You told us to run. You were very kind. And we ran. And we held up our hands but I was still afraid they would shoot us. I saw my dead son. In the street. My Asad. And I saw the dead policewoman. Everyone was shouting …’