Girl On Fire

by Tony Parsons

  Then he headed backstage with the girl. I followed them.

  The changing room was a windowless cube that was stained with the inane graffiti of half a century. Nils and the girl in the cowboy hat were sitting on a couple of boxes as he chopped out lines of white powder on a cracked CD.

  ‘Police,’ I told the girl, showing her my warrant card. ‘Time for bed.’

  She was gone in a moment, getting out of there so fast she almost lost her cowboy hat.

  I stared hard at Nils.

  ‘How old was she?’ I said.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, his voice coarsened by half a century of cigarettes, spliffs and goodness knows what. ‘She’s on a gap year, Max. Consenting adults and all that.’ He stared wistfully at the door. ‘Great veins,’ he sighed. ‘The plump blue veins of extreme youth.’

  ‘You’re not still shooting up, are you?’

  ‘I stopped,’ he said emphatically. ‘No more needles.’

  But I saw that he missed it. They always missed it.

  ‘Just this now,’ he said, indicating the white lines on the CD. ‘And strictly up the hooter.’

  ‘And you’re still a roadie,’ I said.

  ‘Guitar technician. Roadie sounds so derogatory.’

  ‘We’re looking for that weapons dealer, Nils. Ozymandias.’

  ‘I thought you might be. Ozymandias is not in his flat on the Elphinstone Estate. Hasn’t been seen for weeks.’

  The Elphinstone Estate is the closest my city has to a no-go zone for the law. A semi-derelict collection of flats that were built in the Sixties, property developers had been trying to pull it down for years but some of the residents steadfastly refuse to move out. So do all of the gangs that run their small businesses from the Elphinstone Estate. Nils had been a regular at the Elphinstone’s shooting galleries for decades. He still scored his white powders and puff there, and knew all of the dealers and their clients, which was what made him one of my most valuable Criminal Informants.

  ‘Yes, Nils. We know Ozymandias is not home. We looked.’

  ‘Of course you did. Sorry.’

  ‘And we know his real name. It’s not Ozymandias, is it?’

  ‘Probably not.’ He indicated the white lines. There was a rolled-up fiver in his hands. He licked his lips. ‘Do you mind if I … ?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I mind,’ I said, picking up the CD case, being careful not to spill the white lines. ‘But we don’t know where he’s gone. And we don’t know if he really sold two Cetinka hand grenades to the Khan brothers. And if he did, we don’t know what happened to them. So we urgently need him to help with our enquiries, Nils. Where the hell is he?’

  ‘Who knows? He could be fermenting civil war in the Crimea or he could be doing Spice in Ibiza. Ozymandias comes and goes. A free spirit.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘Look – I told you what I heard. One of the little boys on the estate – some pound store gangster who wants to go out in a blaze of glory, just like a rap song – was talking about buying a couple of hand grenades from Ozymandias. Grenades up the ante, right? Better than a gun. Big status in the gangs. He bought a couple – they were the two you dug up from that park. Lucky it was you that found them and not some little kiddy who just wanted a ride on the swings and roundabouts, right? What does this do, Mummy? And someone asked the little pound store gangster who else was serious enough to be in the market for grenades and he said he heard they were bound for a couple of brothers just back from their jihad holiday in Syria. And my hot tip led you to the Khans, didn’t it?’

  ‘But not to the grenades, Nils.’

  ‘That’s not my fault! Look, in the past Ozymandias has gone out east when it got too hot at home.’

  ‘Essex?’

  ‘Bangkok. Pattaya. Manila. Saigon. But he’ll be back when he runs out of money. Probably. And I’m sure those grenades are going to turn up, Max.’

  I gave him back his drugs.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

  Saturday afternoon was party time.

  I had been careful with my driving, making sure that I arrived on the wide, tree-lined street exactly five minutes after the assigned pick-up time, just late enough to not have to wait around outside.

  It was one of those rich suburbs that make the city seem light years away, a neighbourhood where it was impossible to believe that anything bad could ever happen.

  There were balloons on the door of the house where my ex-wife lived with her new family. Not so new now, I reminded myself.

  I left Stan in the passenger seat, whimpering in protest at the outrage of being abandoned alone in the car in this weird-smelling place with its mown lawns and clean pavements.

  But my ex-wife really hates dogs.

  I took a breath and rang the bell, steeling myself for the sight of Scout unhappy and isolated and tearful surrounded by children half her size, ready to scoop her up and run for home.

  But the door was opened by the new guy – how many decades would have to go by before I stopped thinking of him as the new guy? – and I immediately saw that Scout was having a good time.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor, laughing and happy, a slightly torn paper party hat on her head, while four-year-old boys and girls milled around her in all their jelly-smeared, sugar-crazed anarchy, waiting to be taught some complicated hand-clapping game that only this big girl knew.

  At seven Scout was a few years older than the birthday boy – I realised I should try to remember his name – and his little pals, but just one look told me that all my fears had been unfounded. Scout had enjoyed the party. More than this, thanks to her sweet nature and kind heart, she had been the star.

  Anne stepped away from a group of parents drinking something bubbly and approached me. She was still a stunning woman – tall, dark, with an understated exotic look that made you think she could come from anywhere in the world. She had once been a model but it had not worked out. It’s a hard old game, looking good for a living.

  ‘Max,’ she said.

  How many nights had we slept side by side? More than a thousand. And now we did not know each other at all. Now she had this other life and I had my own life too. Once she had been closer to me than anyone in the world and now she was this beautiful stranger. I would never get used to the distance between us. It would never seem normal to me.

  ‘Scout’s been so great with the little ones,’ she said. ‘It’s been hilarious.’

  So great, I thought. It’s not enough being simply great. It has to be so great. And why was it hilarious?

  Who was this woman?

  We exchanged pleasantries and platitudes and I forgot what they were the moment they were out of my mouth. A group of adoring sprogs trailed Scout to the door.

  My daughter was smiling – a broad, open beautiful smile.

  Stan was still having a moan in the car.

  But then nothing upset him like the thought of our pack falling apart.

  10

  On Monday morning, TDC Joy Adams and I drove to Borodino Street. She had brought flowers.

  ‘Is it all right?’ she asked me, nervously cradling the bouquet in the passenger seat of the X5.

  I nodded. ‘It’s fine. But better get your warrant card out.’

  The flowers for Alice Stone now filled the road. From one end of Borodino Street to the other, every centimetre of tarmac had been covered. The public had also been leaving their flowers around the Lake Meadows shopping centre but the affected area was so vast, a huge ruined swathe of the city that was still sealed off from the public, and the sprawling crime scene was surrounded by countless small pop-up shrines around street signs and lampposts.

  Borodino Street, in contrast, was one unbroken sea of flowers.

  We had taped off the pavements on either side of the road so that the public could pay their respects, say a prayer, leave their bouquets, take a photo on their phones or simply stand and stare at the outpouring o
f emotion, but there was a cordon of uniformed police officers at either end of the street to restrict the numbers allowed in at any one time.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ I told Adams.

  Adams approached a female uniformed officer at the cordon – we don’t have WPCs in the Met any more – and when the young Trainee Detective showed her warrant card, she was allowed to jump the queue waiting to be allowed on Borodino Street. But Adams was not the only person to be allowed special access.

  There was a priest staring thoughtfully at the flowers, and I wondered if he was the same priest that I had seen on TV, praying to a dwindling congregation.

  I could not see his face, but he was clearly a large black man, built more like a retired middleweight boxer than a man of God. Adams exchanged a few words with him and then they stood silently side by side at the edge of that great tide of flowers.

  I realised they were praying and I looked away.

  When Adams returned I nodded to the far end of the street where perhaps two hundred people were listening to a young man speak.

  ‘The guy we want is over there,’ I said.

  The young man who addressed the crowd was tall and long-limbed, his face somewhere between hungry and starved, a boy made of bones. You could see him clearly because the soapbox he stood on raised him head and shoulders above his audience. He looked as though he had stepped out of a photograph from between the wars. He was perhaps twenty-one and his hair was shaved at the back and sides and cropped short on top. I could not tell if the hair was a fashion statement or just poverty.

  We stood at the back of the crowd. They were all ages, and most watched him without expression, as if he was part of the great spectacle of Borodino Street. Closer to the front, there were cheers and applause and shouts of agreement.

  ‘You fought their wars and you paid your taxes and you worked in their factories,’ he said. ‘You – and your parents and your grandparents – did everything they asked you to do. And your reward is their contempt. Your reward is changes to your country that you never asked for, changes that you were never consulted about and changes that you never wanted. You – and those who came before you – have given everything for this country. And your reward is a country that you no longer recognise. Your reward is leaders who despise you. Your reward is the murder of the brightest and the best of us.’ He paused to scrape his fingers through his Depression-era haircut. ‘Your reward is Borodino Street.’

  He had one of those very old London accents, the kind that sounds almost Australian, untouched by affectation or higher education or moving out to the suburbs. He was not trying to be anything other than what he had always been, and what his family had been for generations. You no longer heard many accents like that.

  He jabbed a finger towards the house on Borodino Street.

  ‘You know, there is a part of me that admires the Khan family,’ he said.

  Murmurs of dissent in the crowd. Someone shouted an obscenity.

  ‘And I will tell you why,’ he said. ‘Because they have a strong culture, a proud culture, a culture that does not apologise for existing. I don’t blame them for settling in the weak, tired, overfed west where we are too feeble, too unsure of ourselves, to say – this country and all its values are worth preserving. And if we lack the courage to state that fact, my friends, then tomorrow belongs to them.’

  When he was finished there was a smattering of wild applause among those closest to him but most of the crowd simply turned away, as if they would think it all over, or possibly forget about it immediately, as they were drawn back to the street full of flowers and the house that was still illuminated by police lights, even in broad daylight. As the crowd drifted away Adams and I pushed our way towards the young man.

  I thought that someone who drew this kind of audience might have some kind of entourage. But he was alone apart from one short, broad-shouldered helper with exactly the same Buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime? haircut, a younger man with the aspect of a weightlifter or a baby bull. He was carefully placing the speaker’s soapbox on to the passenger seat of one of those rickshaws that ferry around foreign tourists and local drunks – three skinny wheels, the back two set wide apart to ferry the fatties and the worse for wear, a plastic canopy over the plastic seat as protection against the English summer. And I saw that it was not a soapbox at all. It was a crate for Indian beer.

  Kingfisher, it said on the side, the King of Beers.

  I showed my warrant card to the one who had spoken. Adams hovered at my shoulder, doing the same, still getting the hang of showing someone her warrant card.

  ‘I’m DC Wolfe. This is TDC Adams. Who are you?’

  He smiled pleasantly.

  ‘George Halfpenny,’ he said. ‘Have I done something wrong? The other officers told me that as long as I didn’t obstruct their crowd control, then I was free to talk to the people.’

  ‘You’re free to talk until the mad cows come home,’ I said. ‘As long as you don’t whip up any trouble. As long as you stay on the right side of the law. As long as you don’t incite violence. As long as you keep the party polite. Understood?’

  ‘Understood. I have no intention of inspiring hatred or breaking the law. I just want to talk.’ There was the glitter of passion in his eyes. ‘I just have some things that have to be said.’

  I nodded. ‘But why are you here, George? Why are you here night after night after night?’

  ‘We came down here – my brother Richard and I’ – he indicated the fridge-shaped young man with him, and now I saw they were brothers, that they shared more than the brutal jarhead haircut – ‘to pay our respects to Alice.’

  Something inside me flinched at the unearned intimacy of using only her first name. But then I knew the entire country felt the same way. DS Stone was Alice to everyone now.

  ‘Three people died at the same address,’ Halfpenny said, staring at the house. ‘One was a police officer – dedicated, selfless, brave. The other two were fanatics, murderers, men who believed they pleased their god with slaughter. I think we have a duty to remember Alice, don’t you? We all have a duty to keep coming back.’

  ‘Tell him,’ his brother Richard said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ George said quietly, soothing him.

  The baby bull pushed himself forward.

  ‘We are the Sons of Saxons,’ he said.

  I heard TDC Adams chuckle behind me.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said. ‘A band?’

  ‘The Sons of Saxons are a cultural preservation society,’ George Halfpenny said, untroubled by the possibility of mockery. ‘We believe that the cultural identity of this country is worth preserving. We believe that one thousand years without being invaded has produced a country that is unique in the world.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of rabbit,’ Adams observed.

  She meant that he talked a lot. And it was true.

  But George Halfpenny ignored her.

  ‘The Sons of Saxons are not a band, Detective,’ he told me. ‘It’s an idea. The jihadists taught us that, didn’t they?’ He indicated the floodlit house. ‘Men like the Khan brothers. An idea is the most powerful thing in the world. But I promise you, there is nothing sinister about our motives.’ His eyes were shining but his expression remained pleasant, his words reasonable. ‘Honest, tolerant patriots have been sneered at for too long. We have been despised for loving our country, for believing that our traditions and culture are worthy of love and worthy of protecting. It’s not about hating anyone. We’re not sieg-heiling skinheads, Detective. It’s about love. Love for our country, love for ourselves. But they sneer at the likes of us.’

  ‘But who are they, George?’ I asked.

  He smiled gently. ‘We both know who they are. The big shots. The elite. The educated, the rich, the ones in the big houses. You know who they are, DC Wolfe. They hate the people who built everything in these islands. We get called bigots, racists and simpletons for daring to love our country, for believing it is worth preserving,
for feeling pride in the past, for not quietly slipping into the mists of history. The Sons of Saxons believe it is time to stop apologising for who we are and who we have been for a thousand years. May I go home now?’

  ‘Where’s home, George?’

  ‘Camden Town.’

  ‘Is this your rickshaw?’ I said.

  ‘It would be kind of stupid to steal someone else’s rickshaw in front of two detectives from the Metropolitan Police,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t get smart,’ Adams snapped, and I saw the steel in her.

  George Halfpenny laughed.

  ‘I’m a rickshaw driver,’ he said. ‘That’s what I do for a living.’ He grinned at me, and I saw that nobody in his life had ever given a thought to his teeth. ‘We are coolies in our own land now, Detective,’ he said. ‘This is the gig economy. We are men who work with our hands in a land where nothing gets made any more. We are men with strong backs with nothing to carry, a warrior race with brave hearts and nobody to fight. We are factory workers after all the factories have closed down.’

  Adams was right.

  He really did love to hear the sound of his own voice.

  ‘Save the speech for the next performance,’ I said. ‘Listen, son, as long as you don’t break the law you can do what you like. But I’ll be watching you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘He called you son,’ said his brother, shocked.

  ‘It’s all right, Richard,’ George Halfpenny murmured.

  He looked at the tide of flowers on the street.

  ‘It’s fitting we are here,’ he said. ‘It feels fated. Borodino Street. I wonder how many people know this street is named after a great battlefield.’

  I felt a schoolboy memory stir.

  ‘War and Peace,’ I said. ‘Tolstoy. Borodino was the battle in War and Peace.’ I remembered that the raid when we lost Alice Stone was codenamed Operation Tolstoy. ‘I knew it rang a bell.’