‘I can hear it,’ Justin replied, frowning with irritation.
Whitestone and I sat on the bench. We watched her son and our dogs.
‘You can do it in fifteen days but we’re taking three weeks,’ Whitestone said. ‘We had a rest day in Oxford, we’re taking another one here and then one more in Windsor.’
‘Legoland,’ I said. ‘I’ve been to Windsor with Scout.’
‘Justin’s Legoland days are over,’ Whitestone said. ‘How are you, Max?’
We had only briefly spoken on the phone after Lake Meadows, my boss checking in with me from her holiday to let me know – without ever actually saying the words – that she was glad I was alive.
‘The knee’s healing well,’ I said.
Whitestone waited for more.
‘I think about the people I saw after the helicopter came down,’ I said, watching the river. ‘There was a security guard who lost an arm. There was an old lady and her husband lying on the ground. And there was a man – a man in a suit and tie, some kind of executive – carrying a bag from the Apple store and he was covered in this grey dust. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them and I wonder if they made it out alive. And I wonder if they are awake in the middle of the night, too.’
She nodded with understanding. But there was nothing she could tell me.
‘And was it a bigger network than just the brothers?’
‘It doesn’t look like it. Counter Terrorism haven’t arrested anyone else and they are not charging Ahmed Khan.’
‘The father?’
I nodded. ‘Flashman’s got him banged up in Paddington Green but they’re going to release him in a few days. They’re waiting for a safe house. Apparently there’s a long waiting list for safe houses. And they’re handing him to West End Central.’
‘To us? Why??’
‘To make sure nobody tops him.’
‘You want me to come back early?’
I shook my head.
‘Enjoy your holiday. Finish your walk. I can handle it. But Ahmed Khan doesn’t want to go to a safe house. He wants to go home to Borodino Street.’
‘And Borodino Street is still a crime scene.’
‘But not for much longer. I don’t know how long we can keep him in a safe house if he doesn’t want to be there. The search teams and the CSIs have torn that house apart and there’s still no sign of those two Croatian hand grenades that were meant to be on the premises. There’s nothing left to bag, dust or photograph. There’s nowhere left to search. And there’s nobody standing trial for the murder of Alice Stone because the man who killed her is dead.’
Whitestone thought about it.
‘The old man knew nothing about his sons? Really?’
Like Edie, she was struggling to believe it was a case of innocent contact.
‘He’s a bus driver,’ I said. ‘I know it sounds unlikely that someone could have a terrorist cell on the other side of the breakfast table and know nothing about it. But I believe that’s what happened.’
‘And the old man wants to go back to normal life,’ Whitestone said, shaking her head. She took off her shades. They were prescription sunglasses, and her blue myopic eyes had a vulnerable look as she squinted in the dazzling early morning sunshine. ‘He might find that normal life isn’t there any more,’ she said. ‘Who’s going to be in the safe house with him?’
‘His wife and their granddaughter, if social services haven’t got their claws into the kid. And I need to know what the drill is for the Khan family going home when their house is no longer a crime scene.’
Whitestone shook her head.
‘There is no drill,’ she said. ‘It’s always different with former crime scenes. People die in one place and it gets razed to the ground. Someone gets their head bashed in at some other place and life carries on as if nothing much happened. It all depends if someone wants to live there. Dennis Nilsen’s flat is still in Muswell Hill but Fred and Rose West’s house was bought by the local council and demolished. John Christie’s house at 10 Rillington Place is a garden now but the house where Lord Lucan allegedly topped the nanny is still there in Belgravia. Property value has a lot to do with it. And the body count. Borodino Street in the East End? I don’t know.’
‘Three people died there.’
‘Two of them don’t count. Terrorists – even alleged terrorists – don’t count. But Alice Stone died there, and she has struck a nerve in this country because she gave her life fighting the bastards who were responsible for Lake Meadows.’ Whitestone shrugged. ‘I can’t honestly see how the Khans can go home. Their house is a memorial now. But if Ahmed Khan is not going to be charged with anything, and if the property is in his name, then I don’t see how we can stop him.’
‘Should we give him an Osman warning?’
An Osman warning is a notice issued by a police force to officially warn someone that their life is in danger but that we do not have sufficient evidence to arrest a possible offender.
‘Has anyone made a threat on Khan’s life?’
‘Not that I am aware of, no.’
‘Then the Osman warning can wait until someone threatens to kill the old boy.’
‘I don’t think we’ll have to wait long,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen the crowds on Borodino Street. You’ve seen the strength of feeling about the death of Alice Stone.’
Whitestone nodded.
‘And I share those feelings. When we’re back in town, the first thing I am going to do is take some flowers to Borodino Street.’ She paused, as if trying to understand her need to place some flowers with all those other flowers. ‘Alice was the best of us,’ she said.
We watched the dogs and the boy sitting down at the river’s edge. Another rowing scull went past, seeming to glide on the surface of the river, the tiny coxswain in the stern urging the crew on. Justin raised his head at the sound of their calls.
‘We heard from Scout’s mother,’ I said.
‘What does she want?’ Whitestone said. ‘Don’t tell me. She wants Scout back in her life.’
‘How did you guess?’
‘Guilt,’ Whitestone said. ‘I had the same with Justin’s dad. It hits them every now and again. The absent parent. Terrible guilt. But they get over it remarkably well.’
‘Is that all it is?’ I said. ‘Guilt?’
‘What else would it be?’ Whitestone said.
We stared at the river in silence, two single parents reflecting on the fecklessness of the absent parent and in that moment the fact that we were a man and a woman mattered a lot less than the fact that we were both single parents.
‘Who’s the kid preaching to the crowds in Borodino Street?’ Whitestone said.
So she had seen him too. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
‘Then you better find out,’ my boss said. ‘And keep looking for those grenades.’
‘We’ve been doing nothing else, boss,’ I said.
Knocking on for midnight on Friday in Camden Town, and the creatures of the night were coming out to play.
Some of them were coming out to play for the very first time – the wide-eyed rich kids from the big houses who were just the other side of their exams – and others had been coming out to play in these loud, dark places for ten, twenty or forty years. The man I sought was one of the forty-year men.
Nils looked like a diseased crow.
Thin, beaky, with a spiked-up hairdo that was a tribute to the young Keith Richards. That elaborate hair had stood in proud homage to Keith for four decades, thinned only slightly by time, it was now kept jet black with bottles of After Midnight dye from Boots the Chemist.
Nils strolled on to the stage of a semi-legendary club by the canal and turned his back to the audience, revealing several inches of butt crack as he bent over the electric guitars that waited in their stands.
A few of the audience – that motley Camden Town crew of hungry fresh young faces and drug-raddled party people – smirked and giggled at the bottom reveal as Nils fussed with the tuning of a battered Fender Telecaster.