by Tony Parsons
She still looked like some kind of schoolteacher or academic, totally out of place on that street full of rabid reporters and armed police, all stoked with adrenaline and unsure what would happen next. But she had the calm authority of someone who knew she was in ultimate command.
She nodded to me politely and Flashman grinned.
‘Take the rest of the day off, Wolfe,’ he told me. ‘Buy yourself a frock. We’ve got it from here.’
Azza Khan came out of the house flanked by two female officers. Officers emerged behind her carrying desktop computers and laptops, already tagged and bagged. Azza Khan was eased into the back of one of the unmarked cars and driven away, destination the cells of Paddington Green police station, blues and twos turned all the way up.
I walked up to the woman who was running this show.
‘Mrs Khan is a person of interest to the intelligence services?’ I said.
‘She is now,’ she said.
‘Maybe you should have been watching her from the very start,’ I said. ‘No, don’t tell me – you can’t watch them all, right?’
‘The truth is far worse than that, DC Wolfe,’ the spook said. ‘The truth is that we can’t even watch most of them.’
My phone vibrated as I watched them drive away.
I Will Make You Crawl Soon
And suddenly a single red dot from an assault rifle’s gun scope appeared on my chest.
It hovered by my heart for a long sickening moment and then it was gone. I looked up at the windows of the house across the street. Jackson and Tibbs were no longer there.
‘They blew it for us,’ Whitestone said. ‘CTU and the spooks blew it for us. We might have had Bad Moses tonight.’ She cursed bitterly. ‘And now we have lost him forever,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, turning off my phone. ‘He’ll come again.’
Because I knew that next time he would be coming for me.
34
When there was no more that the vet could do for Stan, and time would heal him or it would not, I carried him back to the loft and made a kind of nest for him in every room of our home out of old, familiar blankets and some favourite well-gnawed toys.
He had one nest in the main area of the loft, and another in the bedroom, and another in the kitchen. A water bowl was placed near every nest, but they remained untouched. Edie and I tried to tempt him with morsels of cheese and chicken but Stan – a true foodie among dogs – was not interested.
He watched me from his bedroom basket as I called Scout for her goodnight poem. I had been putting it off for ages, but tonight I read her ‘The Power of the Dog’ by Rudyard Kipling.
‘There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.’
Silence on the other end of the phone.
‘What do you think old Kipling’s saying there, Scout?’
‘Old Kipling?’
‘Yes.’
She thought about it.
‘Don’t get a dog.’ A pause. ‘Don’t ever get a dog because it hurts too much when …’
She swallowed hard and left the rest of it unsaid.
Stan stared at me from his nest in a corner of the bedroom, bright eyes gleaming in the darkness. He was unmoving, unchanging and he was so unlike the dog we had known and lived with and loved for so long.
‘I think he’s saying the opposite,’ I said. ‘Old Kipling. I think he is saying that the way we feel now – when Stan is sick, when any dog is really sick – is the price we have to pay for all those good times we had with our beautiful boy. And Kipling is wondering if it’s worth it – all the pain you feel – as the price for all the laughs and fun and walks in all kinds of weather. And you know what, Scout? I think that Kipling thinks it is worth it.’
My daughter inhaled, then let it go. It was not quite a sigh. And I could see her face in my mind. A thoughtful, serious little girl, already too familiar with loss.
‘I have to brush my teeth,’ she said, and my heart ached for her. I wanted to put my arms around her and protect her, or to at least tell her that I understood how she felt tonight, but Scout was out of reach now, living in another family, not the one we shared, and living in another home, not my own.
‘Don’t forget the back,’ I said.
‘OK. Here’s Mummy.’
And then there was the customary pause while her mother took the phone but did not speak as she waited for Scout to make her way upstairs. When she came on the line, Anne’s voice was choked with emotion.
‘Did you read my email?’ she said.
‘What email?’
‘This is not a good time, Max. Since Oliver lost his job, it’s been so hard for me. I’ve done my best, I really have. You know I have. Nobody knows how hard it has been for me …’
I found my laptop.
There was an unopened email.
Dear Max,
I am sorry …
It went on for ages. Reams of all the stuff Anne was sorry about. Unbroken paragraphs of regret. She was sorry about everything. Sorry that her husband had lost his job. Sorry that this was a difficult time for Scout to come and live with her. And sorry for herself. That most of all.
I slammed the laptop and the email was gone. I did not need to read every word of it. I got the gist. And I didn’t care about her husband or his job or her.
All I cared about was my daughter.
‘Don’t cry, Anne,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
As I hung up the phone, Edie came into the bedroom wrapped in a towel and still damp from the shower. I pulled her to the bed. The towel slipped to the floor. I placed a kiss on her wet shoulders.
‘What’s happening?’ she said.
‘Scout’s coming home,’ I said.
We wrapped Stan in a blanket and carried him down to Smiths of Smithfield. A kindly Australian waitress put down a plate for him. He did not even sniff it. He sat on Edie’s lap, swathed in his blankets, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
Edie’s hair was still wet from the shower. Her hair was the burnished red that looks as though it has a touch of fire in it but the dampness made it darker. She pushed it back from her high forehead.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You mean your ex-wife has decided she can’t look after Scout?’
‘Anne – my ex-wife – has problems at home,’ I said. ‘Problems with her husband. Problems that have come up after he lost his job. And I was wrong – I thought that nothing bad ever happened on the kind of street where they live. But I guess they can happen anywhere.’
‘And what about us, Max? I’ve always been Scout’s friend. But I’m never going to be her mother, am I? What will we be? You, Scout and me?’
I felt the endorphins kicking in.
‘We’ll be a family,’ I said.
A family once more, I thought.
Is that really what we would be?
Yes, that is exactly what we would be. Perhaps not the kind of family that any of us was expecting. Perhaps not the kind of family you see in commercials. But a family all the same.
‘I almost forgot,’ I said. ‘I have something for you.’
Edie was looking wary. This was all moving very fast.
I reached into my pocket and took out a set of keys. Two Yale and one Chubb, all of them brand new and gleaming.
I talked her through them.
‘This one is for the front door on Charterhouse Street. These two are for the loft.’
She took the keys and held them in the palm of her hand, the lights of the soft summer evening catching the freshly cut metal.
‘Who else has keys to the loft?’
‘Me. Mrs Murphy. Jackson still has a set. And Scout, although she is too small to reach the lock. I give her another year.’
‘That’s exalted company.’
‘It just makes things easier, Edie. Coming and going. No big deal.’
‘I guess you must like me a little bit.’
‘You’re all right.’
‘Thanks.’
Finally we smiled at each other. She exhaled.
‘I might take Stan for a walk before we put him down for the night,’ she said.
‘But Edie – he can’t walk.’
‘Then I’ll carry him.’
She looked out of the big windows of Smiths of Smithfield at the meat market stirring into life.
‘You told me once that dogs live in a world of scent. So maybe all the smells of the neighbourhood will do him some good. And if it doesn’t make him better, then maybe it will make him happy. Isn’t it worth a try if it makes Stan feel happier?’
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘It’s worth it.’
So Edie took Stan in her arms and she held him close as she carried him off in the direction of West Smithfield, where Charles Dickens’ description of our neighbourhood is carved into the stone chairs.
I watched them until they disappeared and then I walked through the market’s great arch, past the line of old red telephone boxes and the plaque marking the spot where William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace was executed, and I kept walking until I came to the small strip of shops on the far side of Smithfield.
Music was drifting from the flat above the one I was heading to. I stopped to listen to it. An old country hit, heartfelt and ironic all at the same time. ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’ by Crystal Gayle. I looked at the shop but it was closed for the night.
MURPHY & SON
Domestic and Commercial Plumbing and Heating
‘Trustworthy’ and ‘Reliable’
I went round to the back of the shops and up a flight of stairs.
Mrs Murphy answered the door.
‘Guess what?’ I said and she stared at me for a moment before throwing her arms around me, and both of us were laughing, and Crystal Gayle was singing in the background.
‘My Scout’s coming home,’ Mrs Murphy said.
I stood outside our front door, scanning the street for a slightly built redhead carrying a small red Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in her arms.
I wanted to be home safe and sound with the pair of them.
But there was no sign of Edie and Stan.
Perhaps they had already come back. And now of course Edie had her own set of keys.
I had had a cup of tea with Mrs Murphy – ‘You will have a cup of tea,’ she had told me, as always making her invitation sound like a prophecy – and it was quite possible that Edie had given up on reviving Stan with the world of scent and the ten-kilo dog had started to feel heavy in her arms.
They’re already home, I thought, slipping my key into the lock.
I stepped inside, the building cool and dark after the summer night street.
The figure moved quickly from the shadows of the stairwell.
He raised the stubby yellow Taser and aimed it at my face.
And then he shot me.
35
I was slammed back against the door and collapsed on the welcome mat, writhing with the pain of 50,000 volts of power invading my central nervous system.
There was the immediate loss of motor skills and muscle control. I was writhing on my back and then my entire body stiffened and spasmed with a back-arching agony that made me groan and drool and cry out with pain. Five seconds lasted for a hundred years. A century of pure, incapacitated pain. And then the pain was in my eyes, and I saw a slowly shifting universe of tiny white stars. Tick-tick-tick went the thing in the dark figure’s right fist and every metallic-sounding tick was like being hit in the head with my guard down.
I gasped for the breath that would not come.
And I looked up and the first thing I saw was the haircut, the brutal Depression-era haircut, shaved at the back and the sides and shorn to a short crop on top, and I did not understand, because George Halfpenny was sitting in a jail cell.
And then my mind or vision cleared, and I was looking up at his brother, Richard Halfpenny, thick and fleshy and built like a small bull, his surly face staring at the Taser X3 in his hand and cursing it. The X3 model fires three shots and I realised with a sinking heart that he was planning to shoot me again. But I saw now that the Taser was wrapped in brown duct tape and that he must have picked it up during the riots rather than buying it from a reputable weapons dealer.
And it would not fire again.
He leaned over me, this strong, stocky man who stank of junk food, and he easily lifted me to my feet with his large calloused hands, and then those hands were inside my leather jacket, searching for the keys to my home. He found them.
And as he bundled me into the lift, half-carrying and half-dragging my limp body, my frazzled muscles still twitching with a damaged life of their own, I could imagine him slipping into the building when one of my neighbours had let themselves in.
And then I felt my stomach fall away.
Perhaps it wasn’t one of my neighbours who he came in with. Perhaps it was Edie.
He threw me into the lift and I bounced off the far side, sliding to the floor until he grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt and pulled me up.
I watched him press the button for the top floor.
He knew it was the top floor.
He smiled at me.
‘Time to play,’ he said.
We got out of the lift. He fumbled with the keys. The door of the loft flew open. And I was shouting as he bundled me inside.
‘Go! Get out! Go!’
But the loft was empty.
Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
Halfpenny left me crumpled on the floor of that vast open space and checked both the bedrooms. They must have been empty because I heard no sound. He saw me slowly trying to get to my feet as he came out of my bedroom. He had been heading for the bathroom but now he made a detour. I swayed uncertainly before him.
That’s the problem with any Taser. It disables the victim for just long enough for the arresting officer to apprehend, subdue and dominate. But even 50,000 volts wasn’t going to keep me on my back all night long.
So Richard Halfpenny swiped me backhanded across the face with the duct-taped Taser and I felt it make instant mush of my lip and cheek. I sank down on one knee, my nerve ends flaring with pain. I spat out a gob of blood.
‘You killed Ahmed Khan,’ I said. ‘You stuck that old Nazi knife in his neck. Whitestone was always looking at the wrong brother. Blut und Ehre.’
‘Blood and honour,’ he said proudly. ‘He deserved to die, raising those murdering bastard sons.’
‘And it was you who ran down Ludo Mount,’ I said.
‘I was aiming at you,’ he said. ‘But Sir bloody Ludo would have been no great loss. Because he protected them. He took their side against his own people.’
He kicked me in the ribs and I went down on both knees.
‘Just like you,’ he said.
Keep him talking, I thought. Buy time. Get stronger.
‘The Ten Commandments was a nice touch,’ I gasped. ‘I was looking forward to the one about coveting my neighbour’s donkey – or is it his ass? I can never remember.’
His face clouded.
‘Don’t make fun of the Bible,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t make fun of their religion, would you? So don’t make fun of ours.’
‘You never struck me as the religious kind, Richard. Can I call you Richard?’
His boorish face got an almost wistful look.
‘I want to believe,’ he said. ‘I really do. But I think that if God ever existed, then He must have died, or forgotten us, or just walked away disgusted with it all.’
Keep the moron talking, Max.
‘But why top the weapons dealer?’ I said. ‘He’s on your side, isn’t he? You believe in the same lost cause, don’t you? The Thousand-Year Reich and all that.’
But then I
saw it.
‘Because he sold you the knife that killed Ahmed Khan,’ I said, seeing it in my mind. The nickel-plated pommel, the grip of black Bakelite with the gold-etched black swastika on a red-and-white diamond. Blut und Ehre. ‘You bought the knife from your pal Peter Fenn. Ozymandias. And then he tried to blackmail you, didn’t he?’
‘He called it a loan. He needed a loan. He wanted to get back to Thailand. There was some girl who he met in a bar there.’ He shuddered at the weakness of human flesh. ‘Some little whore. And so he needed money to go back and see her.’
Richard Halfpenny sighed, and looked around the loft absent-mindedly as if he was thinking about making me an offer.
I started getting up. He aimed another kick at my ribs but I dug my elbows in and let my arms take the point of his shoe. It still hurt. But not as bad as a broken rib. But I was so tired that I could no longer stand. He watched me as I slid to the floor, his mouth twisting with disgust.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to coax my breath back now, the nerve ends still ringing in every part of my body.
‘But what about you, copper?’ he said. ‘Why do I want to see you crawl before I slot you? Any final thoughts before I cut your face off?’
I looked up at him, rubbing my ribs.
‘How did you even get my phone number?’
‘Because,’ he said, his face clouding with fury, ‘you gave it to my brother.’
And the mention of his brother George sent him into a frenzy of kicking and stomping and punching, and he beat me until I was crumbled in a heap, curled up and trying to protect my head and my balls and my ribs. He stood there panting for air.
‘My brother,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion, ‘could have been a great man. And you ruined it. You spoiled everything. You made sure he got put away. Because you always hated him, right from the first night. I’ll be watching you, you said. How dare you talk to a great man like that? How dare you, you stupid copper?’
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.