Girl On Fire

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Azza Khan is the widow of a London bus driver. I knew the man. The crimes of his sons had nothing to do with their father. Why should they have anything to do with their mother?’

  ‘Because Azza Khan is the sister of a mujahid who fought the Russians in Afghanistan. And she is the mother of the terrorists who brought down that Air Ambulance over Lake Meadows. The mother of the men who killed Alice Stone. It might not be a crime to be that sister, to be that mother, but forgive me – at the very least, it’s a great story. And do you know what I think, Max? That it wasn’t the Internet that radicalised them. And it wasn’t some hate preacher that filled them with poison. It was their mother. Azza Khan is jihadi royalty. And she passed the torch to her sons.’

  Suddenly Whitestone was standing in the doorway of MIR-1.

  ‘This woman shouldn’t be in this room,’ she said.

  ‘You need to hear this,’ I said.

  DCI Whitestone listened to the story in silence.

  ‘What happened to Hamid Jat?’ she said.

  ‘When the Soviets finally pulled out in 1989, the mujahideen started slaughtering each other. Hamid Jat slips off the radar for a while but we know he survived the civil wars and in the Nineties he joined the 055 Brigade, also known as the 55th Arab Brigade. They were the elite of al-Qaeda – one hundred of them were bin Laden’s personal bodyguards. They fled to the Tora Bora caves in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan that the Americans built in the Eighties and then bombed in 2001. Hamid Jat died in the battle of Tora Bora.’

  ‘And do you have proof that Azza Khan’s family name was Jat before she was married?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘I’ve had every intern on my paper digging into it for weeks. I have a copy of the marriage certificate. I have immigration and naturalisation records from the Home Office. I have a copy of Azza Khan’s British and Pakistani passports. And I have a source that I can’t disclose.’

  ‘And is the source you can’t disclose in the police or the intelligence community?’ Whitestone asked.

  ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Maybe you’re being played by someone, Miss Bush. Did that ever occur to you?’

  ‘My story all checks out. Even my paper’s lawyers are happy.’

  ‘But maybe Azza Khan was just some woman who got caught up in the tides of history,’ Whitestone said. ‘A woman who happened to live her life at a time when the men in her family were in a nihilistic death cult. How about that for a theory?’

  ‘It’s a stretch, isn’t it?’ Scarlet said. ‘Look at her brother. Look at her sons.’

  I looked at Edie and I could see she felt it too.

  We believed her.

  Whitestone sighed. ‘But so what?’ she said. ‘Whatever her beliefs, whatever her brother or her sons have done, Azza Khan hasn’t committed any crime. We’re not the thought police. It’s still a free country. You can believe whatever you like – no matter how crazy. We can’t lock someone up because they dream of black flags flying over Buckingham Palace and Downing Street.’ Whitestone gestured at the ancient photograph. ‘This is not enough to charge her with anything,’ she said.

  Scarlet Bush looked surprised.

  ‘I’m not suggesting you charge her with anything,’ she said. ‘But what do you think will happen when I run my story?’

  ‘Bad Moses will stir,’ I said. ‘Bad Moses will look at Azza Khan and he will see the enemy.’ I looked at my boss. ‘And he will come for her.’

  ‘You’re asking me to use an innocent woman as live bait to apprehend a murderer?’ Whitestone said. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  Scarlet’s face hardened.

  ‘I’m not asking you for a damn thing,’ she said. ‘Apart from this one small favour as a courtesy for bringing you this information: I want to be embedded with your officers when my story goes live.’

  ‘But maybe Bad Moses will stay away,’ Whitestone said. ‘Maybe he’ll smell a rat trap. Maybe he’s had his fill of blood.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think he’ll come after her.’

  ‘Can’t you see the significance of this?’ Scarlet Bush said, as if we had still failed to grasp her central point. ‘The poison is not from some raving Iman. And it’s not from the dark corners of the Internet. The Khan brothers didn’t need any of that stuff.’

  She tapped the old photograph and Hamid Jat smiled at us across the years, proudly cradling his Russian AK-74.

  ‘They had it all at home,’ Scarlet said.

  There is a small supermarket near Victoria Park and most of its façade is covered in the satellite dishes of the flats above. Groceries – Fruit & Veg – Money Transfer says the worn blue awning.

  Layla Khan was sitting at the shop’s cash register. The hijab she wore covered her hair and revealed her face. There was a raw red scuff mark near one eye. It was new.

  She wore no make-up. Her make-up days were done.

  She stared wearily at Edie and me when we walked in.

  ‘What now?’ she said.

  ‘We wanted to warn you,’ Edie said. ‘There might be some trouble on Borodino Street.’

  Layla laughed bitterly.

  ‘Taking care of me now, are you? Watching out for me? It’s a bit late for all that. You sent me back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Edie began, but I cut across her.

  ‘We’re not social workers, Layla,’ I said. ‘And we’re not your parents. We sent you back because we had no choice. The options were to put you into care or send you back to your family.’

  ‘But I thought you were my friend,’ she said to Edie, and I felt her flinch. ‘You should have been there for me. You shouldn’t have sent me back to that house.’

  ‘Layla,’ Edie said. ‘Please. We just want you to be careful. We just want to warn you – it’s not over yet. Is there somewhere you can go?’

  Layla laughed bitterly. ‘Look at me,’ she said.

  The doorbell dinged and Edie and I turned. The fat young man with the hair slicked across his bald spot came into the store carrying a box of fizzy drink.

  ‘Unloading van,’ he said.

  We watched him stagger to the back of the store.

  ‘Look at me,’ Layla repeated.

  We looked at her and I saw it at last. Something in her eyes had already died. They had beaten her in every way imaginable. And we had done nothing to help her. She still had her East End accent. But the rest of her old life was gone.

  ‘I go where my husband tells me to go,’ she said.

  33

  Near the end of the night, in one of those moments when the first of the sunlight is creeping into the room and you are not sure if you are asleep or awake, I felt Edie slip from the bed, then pause and briefly place her mouth on my forehead.

  ‘Sleep more,’ she whispered. ‘Busy day.’

  I stretched, I turned and I reached for her, wanting to hold her again. But she left the bedroom and I must have slept because when I reached out for her again there was full sunrise streaming through the skylight.

  It was still very early. When I got up Edie was in the main space of the loft, sitting on the window ledge in just her T-shirt and pants, her legs tucked up beneath her, clutching something to her chest. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched her for a while, enjoying watching her, that pale face lost in its own thoughts, the red hair that was never entirely tamed and the slim, muscled limbs of Edie Wren.

  She is the woman I see, I thought. And she is the only woman I will ever see.

  I went to her at the window. Our mouths still fit. They would always fit. I felt like the world had suddenly thrown its arms around me. It was a good feeling.

  Outside, the market was winding up for the night. The sunlight was dazzling and Edie shielded her eyes.

  ‘Everybody let her down,’ she said, and I saw that it was thoughts of Layla that had disturbed her dreams. ‘The authorities. Her family. And me.’

  I
placed a hand on her shoulder, still warm from our bed.

  ‘You didn’t let her down,’ I said.

  ‘Have you seen her wrists, Max? Have you seen what she does to herself?’

  ‘I’ve seen them.’

  ‘And now she’s in a marriage to some creep she can’t stand. And now she has to cover her pretty hair …’

  I took her in my arms. There was nothing I could tell her. Edie had done nothing wrong apart perhaps from believing that she could rescue Layla from the culture she came from.

  And now I saw what she was holding. The Angry Princess rucksack that I had been replacing on the day the plane came down, that old, outgrown rucksack stained with paint and ice cream and who knew what else?

  She laughed and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Don’t you love a good office romance?’ she said.

  ‘It’s my favourite,’ I said.

  ‘Are we really going to take a chance on each other, Max?’

  I smiled. Because there was not a cloud in the sky above our city, because we had got here in the end, and because I had waited so long for this woman.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What else would make any sense?

  I looked at the rucksack and a memory of Borodino Street stirred.

  On that first day.

  The man and the woman and the girl on the floor of the kitchen, terrified for their lives. I remembered telling them they were safe, but they had to go, they had to go immediately. And I told them – it was very important – to have their hands raised and palms showing as they came out of the house so they were not shot.

  I remembered them running, Ahmed and Azza and Layla Khan, running as people only run when they think that this is probably the minute they might die, grabbing a pink and purple Angry Princess rucksack just like this Angry Princess rucksack, and fleeing for their lives with their hands in the air as I had showed them. From the moment we met them, I thought, we had done all we could to protect that family.

  ‘And what about Scout?’ Edie said. ‘What happens when Scout visits and finds me here? How does she feel then?’

  I took Edie in my arms again, pushing Borodino Street from my mind, sick of thinking about that place, and I kept holding her.

  I needed to stay close to her now that I had found her.

  ‘Then Scout will be happy,’ I said.

  Leman Street Police Station, Whitechapel.

  Jackson Rose clearly felt like this was a long shot. His smile always got bigger the more mortal danger he felt in the air. But as he briefed his team of shots, his face was impassive. The SFOs were in mufti today, T-shirts and jeans and Asics trainers.

  ‘One last ride to Borodino Street,’ Jackson said. ‘Another officer and myself will set up on the other side of the road with our colleagues from West End Central, directly across the street from the Khan residence. The rest of you stay in the jump-off van two streets back. And then we wait. Questions?’

  Tibbs raised his hand.

  ‘What exactly are we waiting for, Skipper?’

  ‘All hell to break loose – or teatime,’ Jackson said, and now he gave them the famous grin. ‘Whatever comes first.’

  Scarlet Bush stirred in the seat beside me as her phone emitted a discreet ping.

  ‘My piece just went live,’ she said.

  Her laptop was opened on the home page of the Daily Post website. A photograph of Azza Khan leaving her home was displayed.

  And Scarlet’s story filled the screen.

  WORLD EXCLUSIVE:

  THE GODMOTHER OF TERROR?

  By Scarlet Bush

  Crime correspondent

  The Daily Post has learned of an extraordinary connection that links the mother of the so-called drone terrorists who brought down an Air Ambulance helicopter on Lake Meadows shopping centre to one of the founders of international terror. It is a story that stretches across decades and links the Lake Meadows atrocity with the mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Daily Post wishes to make clear that Azza Khan has not committed any crime. But her dead sons and the older brother she hero-worshipped have created untold human misery over the last forty years – and the connection places a respectable 65-year-old British housewife at the centre of a web of evil.

  Phones began to ring, beep and vibrate all around the briefing room.

  ‘Social media is having hysterics,’ Edie murmured. ‘How often do you see that happen?’

  ‘Yes!’ Scarlet hissed. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  ‘Bad Moses,’ Jackson told the room. ‘He is the reason we are going to Borodino Street. Because our colleagues at West End Central believe the man responsible for killing Ahmed Khan and Ozymandias, as well as crippling Sir Ludo Mount, may – just may – show his ugly mug when Mrs Azza Khan is revealed to be possibly something other than an innocent bystander to all this blood and mayhem that we have been wading through this summer.’ Jackson nodded curtly. ‘Gun up and let’s go to work.’

  He stopped me as the shots were getting into the jump-off van.

  ‘You really think Bad Moses will show when the world’s media are going to be camped on that doorstep?’

  ‘I don’t know if he can stop himself,’ I said.

  In the end, Scarlet Bush did not get her ringside seat.

  She stayed with Whitestone and Edie and the shots in the jump-off van a block away from Borodino Street. She would have had a closer view of what happened if she had joined the media vans and reporters who thronged Borodino Street, waiting for something to happen, kept back from the front door by a Police Support Unit of uniformed officers. The officers were relaxed. Scarlet’s story had pushed the right button with the world’s media but the public had not returned to Borodino Street. So the feet on the street were relaxed, anticipating an easy shift.

  I was in the front bedroom of the house across the street from the Khan residence with Jackson, Tibbs and Joy Adams. The room had the musty, locked-up smell of a place that had not been lived in for some time. The residents of Borodino Street were moving on, happy to take the developers’ money, happy to put this place behind them.

  Now only the Khan family remained.

  Jackson and Tibbs checked their kit as Joy scanned the street with a compact pair of binoculars.

  ‘So you’re not going to nick the old girl?’ Jackson said.

  ‘As far as I know, she hasn’t done anything,’ I said. ‘Nothing happening, Joy?’

  ‘It’s just reporters,’ she said.

  And then her body stiffened.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  She turned to look at me, her face falling.

  I took the binoculars from her.

  ‘The end of the street, sir.’

  I saw him immediately. The tall, powerful black man walking slowly through the throng of reporters. Most of the uniformed officers that were scattered along Borodino Street never gave him a glance. But I saw one young officer give him a respectful nod.

  Father Marvin Gane.

  ‘Sir, he’s not doing anything, sir!’ Adams said.

  Jackson and Tibbs were already at the window.

  ‘Big black dude in the dog collar,’ Jackson said, shouldering his G36 Heckler & Koch. The short barrel of the weapon poked out of the open window. ‘Heading towards the Khan residence.’

  ‘Copy that, skipper,’ Tibbs said, already at the adjacent window, nestling his body into the assault rifle.

  The pair of them watched Father Gane through the telescopic sights of their weapons, and two red dots from their gun scopes appeared on the big man’s torso.

  ‘Sir, that’s not our man, sir!’ Adams shouted.

  ‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’ I said. I called to Jackson and Tibbs as I headed for the door. ‘Don’t shoot until we know he is a credible threat.’

  Tibbs snorted.

  ‘That’s sort of what we do,’ Jackson said, not taking his eye from the lens of the assault rifle’s scope.

  I ran down the stairs two at a time, calling in Whitest
one on the Airwave radio. Nothing. Just the crackle and crack of digital white noise. I pulled out my iPhone and tried again.

  ‘Max,’ Whitestone said.

  ‘This could be our man. North end of the street. IC3.’

  IC codes – identity codes, also known as Phoenix Codes – are codes used by the British police to denote ethnicity of a suspect. IC3 is black.

  ‘On our way,’ Whitestone said.

  But when I stepped outside, Father Gane had dropped to his knees. He had made no attempt to approach the Khan house. He had stopped just beyond the scrum of media.

  And he was praying.

  I stared at him on his knees and then up at the sky, at the helicopter that suddenly hovered just above the rooftops of Borodino Street. And then Whitestone and Edie were there, the SFOs with them, the shots fanning around the praying man, uncertain what to do.

  Whitestone and Edie both looked up at the helicopter, the sky full of its metallic roar.

  ‘But we didn’t bring a helicopter,’ Whitestone said. And then it was all done very quickly. Another team of shots was piling out of a jump-off van and blowing off the front door of Borodino Street with a Benelli shotgun. Jackson’s team stared at each other, and turned their heads towards the radios on their shoulders, seeking instructions from their team leader. Layla appeared at the upper-floor window, pulling a swathe of black cloth across her face as she watched the street.

  At the sight of her, the photographers went into a feeding frenzy. Reporters surged towards the shattered front door.

  And then two unmarked Jaguars pulled into Borodino Street, blues and twos turned up to ten, arrowing in to the space in front of the Khan house, taking over. Armed Response Vehicles were suddenly waiting at either end of the street.

  Everyone had forgotten about Father Gane. I stared down at him. He was still on his knees with his eyes closed, still praying for the redemption of those who have been separated from God.

  Then Flashman of Counter Terrorism Command was easing his big rugby player’s bulk out of one of the unmarked cars and the woman I had last seen outside the holding cells of West End Central got out of the other unmarked Jag.