Trace, Interview, Eliminate.
Whitestone was thinking aloud now. ‘Media appeal for witnesses. Get some uniforms from downstairs to help with the H-2-H.’ House to house enquiries. ‘Interview Mr Khan’s colleagues at Victoria Bus Station, Joy, see if he spoke of any direct threats,’ she said. ‘Edie, make enquiries with local taxi firms to see if any of their drivers had a fare late Sunday with blood on his hands.’ She took off her glasses and cleaned them, giving her face that suddenly vulnerable look she got without her specs. Then she put them back on and she was once again the most experienced homicide cop in West End Central.
She looked at me.
‘And they never found the two Cetinka hand grenades that were meant to be in that house?’
‘They either never existed or they were removed from the premises before we went in,’ I said.
‘And we still haven’t interviewed Ahmed Khan’s wife yet?’ she said.
‘We are waiting for the OK from the doctor,’ Edie said. ‘Mrs Khan has been too heavily sedated since the murder.’
Adams cleared her throat. She almost raised her hand. ‘Ma’am?’
‘Go ahead, Joy,’ Whitestone said.
‘It’s a long shot, but there could be images of who was with the victim on that train,’ she said. ‘There are a lot of websites, Twitter accounts and photo galleries dedicated to fellow passengers.’
We were all staring at her.
We did not understand. Under her ebony skin, Adams blushed.
‘People take photographs of other passengers,’ she said, spelling it out for us. ‘Tubecrush and sites like that.’
‘But why would they do that?’ Whitestone said.
Adams blushed even more deeply. Edie laughed.
‘Because they fancy them, right?’ she said, and Adams nodded, grinning shyly.
‘Nobody is going to take a picture of a knackered old bus driver,’ Whitestone said.
‘No,’ Adams agreed. ‘But someone might have taken a picture of his killer.’
Whitestone’s personal phone rang. She listened for a while. ‘He’s busy,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘He’s working.’ Then her smile faded. ‘Can it wait?’ A beat. ‘Understood.’ When she hung up, she nodded at me. ‘IPCC are back,’ she said. ‘And they want you downstairs now.’
The same police Federation rep was waiting at the lift on the third floor, that teak-hard old cockney who cared about his clothes.
This time he looked worried.
‘New information about the raid on Borodino Street,’ he said. ‘That’s all I know. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to give you a heads-up.’
The same two IPCC investigators were waiting for me, the young blonde and the crumpled old man. We shook hands without warmth or enthusiasm. This time it was the old boy who took the lead.
‘I’m Gordon Hunt of the Independent Police Complaints Commission,’ he told the tape. ‘Also present is my colleague Marilyn Flynn of the IPCC and DC Wolfe of West End Central. DC Wolfe, could you please confirm that you have the appropriate police Federation representation?’
‘I do.’
Hunt opened his file.
‘This is a follow-up investigation into the two firing officers on Operation Tolstoy on Borodino Street. DC Wolfe – is there anything about your previous statement that you would like to amend, adjust or retract?’
Silence in the room.
I felt my rep shift uneasily beside me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘That’s your final answer?’
I stared at him. What was this? A game show?
‘I have answered your question, sir.’
‘I will remind you, DC Wolfe, that you informed Ms Flynn and I that you were not in the basement and therefore you did not see Adnan Khan make a sudden movement for a weapon and did not see C3 – SFO DC Raymond Vann – discharge his firearm.’
I am not going to rat him out.
But I am not going to lie for him.
‘Correct.’
‘And you’re sticking with that story, are you?’ the woman said.
My rep placed a hand on my arm.
Don’t lose your rag.
‘DC Wolfe has answered your question,’ he said.
‘As you know, C3 – Specialist Firearms Officer DC Vann – originally testified that you were in the basement and saw him discharge his weapon when Adnan Khan made a movement for a weapon,’ Hunt said.
Originally? What did he mean originally?
The word hung in the air between us.
You OK, Raymond? You OK?
‘Vann has changed his mind,’ Hunt said, stripping him all at once of his Special Firearms Officer status, and his rank in the Met, and even his code in this IPCC investigation.
‘Vann confessed,’ Flynn said. ‘He told us the truth.’
‘Vann now says that he executed Adnan Khan,’ Hunt said. ‘Mr Khan was on his knees.’
‘Surrendering,’ Flynn said.
We stared at each other, letting the weight of this revelation settle between us.
But I was still not changing my story for these people. Even if Ray Vann had ratted himself out, I wasn’t going to join in.
These bastards already had enough to put him away for life.
‘This of course explains the trajectory of the fatal gunshot wound that killed Mr Khan,’ Hunt said, almost smiling, clearly enjoying himself enormously. ‘Mr Khan was on his knees. Vann shot him. He is no longer offering any excuses. He does not claim that Mr Khan was reaching for a firearm. He does not even suggest that he was angry about the death of SFO DS Alice Stone.’
‘Raymond Vann now says that he killed that man in cold blood,’ Flynn said. ‘Everything about his version of events has changed.’
‘Apart from one thing,’ Hunt said. ‘He still puts you in that basement.’
18
I came out of the meeting with the IPCC and drove to the East End.
There was a small shrine to Alice Stone under the blue lamp above the entrance to Leman Street Police Station, Whitechapel. The great tide of flowers that had washed up on Borodino Street was a fading memory now but here, at her place of work, they would never forget.
There were cards of condolences, addressed to her husband, on a neat pile of bouquets, some of them dying inside their cellophane, some fresh that morning, and cut from a newspaper there was one of the photographs that had been harvested from the happiest moments of her life.
Alice was on a hotel tennis court somewhere sunny, a baby under one arm. The baby was clearly teething, pressing its pink gums into the tennis ball it was clutching as Alice laughed with joy in her life and delight at her luck.
‘People feel they know her,’ Jackson Rose said. ‘People who never met her. And I suppose they do.’ He must have come out of the station but I had not been aware of his presence until he spoke. There were three new sergeant stripes on the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Is Ray Vann inside?’ I said.
Jackson nodded, his eyes still on the photograph of Alice Stone.
‘What happened to him?’ I said.
Now he looked at me. ‘Ray came clean,’ he said.
‘And why the hell did he do that, Jackson?’
He shrugged.
‘You better ask him yourself.’
We got the lift down to the shooting range in the basement. Jackson swiped us in with his card. The whiplash crack of live ammunition filled the air.
There was an armoury desk to the right where weapons were checked in and out and, to the left, a line of firing booths, all of them occupied by officers wearing headphones and eyeglasses, squeezing off shots at paper targets that were as far away as twenty-five metres and as close as ten.
Ray Vann was in the far booth, his firing arm steady as a pool cue as he blew out the bullseye of a paper target of an armed man, his shots placed so perfectly together that the hole in the target could have been put there by a shotgun. There was someone with him in the booth.
Jesse Tibbs.