I thought of the CCTV images of Khan’s last moments.
He had bolted from the tube train but I had taken his urgency to be the impatience of a workingman who was keen to get home after a long shift on a Sunday.
But Elsa was telling us it was more than that.
‘He was running for his life,’ I said. ‘He was terrified.’
‘Khan must have seen someone in that tube carriage,’ Whitestone said. ‘Someone he knew was a threat to his life.’
‘But we’ve got witness statements from a dozen people who were in that tube train,’ Edie said. ‘None of them heard Ahmed Khan being threatened. Nobody saw any threat of violence.’
‘Then it was someone he knew,’ I said. ‘Someone who did not need to say a word because just the sight of him made Ahmed Khan terrified.’
‘No defensive wounds?’ Whitestone said.
Elsa shook her head. ‘When the end came, it came very quickly. He never had time to fight back.’
‘So he saw his killer on the train,’ I said. ‘He ran for his life. The killer caught up with him – my guess is somewhere near the top of the escalators – and stuck the knife in his neck.’
Elsa’s stainless steel rod indicated the mark at the base of Ahmed Khan’s neck.
‘Cause of death was a single wound to the subclavian artery, which as you know is the artery that pumps blood to the arms and neck. If an artery of that size is torn then it’s possible that it can contract and stem the bleeding. But a clean cut of the subclavian artery with a blade that has a razor-sharp stabbing point and good cutting edges will kill you in, oh, five minutes.’
The old scar on my stomach throbbed with pain that may have been psychosomatic but felt real enough to me.
‘I understand you recovered a newly sharpened 26.6-centimetre knife from the crime scene,’ Elsa said. ‘That would do the job.’
‘The fact that it was sticking out of his neck gave us a clue,’ Edie said.
Whitestone shot her a withering look, then turned to me.
‘Someone knew what they were doing,’ she said.
‘Maybe they just got lucky,’ I said.
‘No,’ Whitestone said. ‘They knew exactly what they were doing. You don’t stick a knife in the subclavian artery by accident. Someone wanted him dead.’
‘Time of death you know because he died in your arms, Max,’ Elsa went on. She stared thoughtfully at Ahmed Khan and then, almost as an afterthought. ‘Manner of death was murder,’ she said.
But there were other, ancient scars on Ahmed Khan’s body. What looked like a shallow stab wound on his arm. The mottled scarring of broken glass on his shoulder. Dark tissue on his arms where bones had been broken and never properly healed.
‘He had a lot of old scars,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Elsa said. ‘When did Mr Khan come to this country from Pakistan?’
‘I believe it was the Seventies,’ I said.
Elsa nodded.
‘Souvenirs of a hard life,’ she said.
It was a short walk from the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road to West End Central at 27 Savile Row. We cut across St James’s Park, glorious in the summer sunshine.
TDC Joy Adams was alone in MIR-1.
She looked apologetic.
‘I don’t know if this is anything,’ she said.
‘Show me,’ Whitestone said.
‘It might be nothing,’ she said. ‘Just social media drivel.’
Whitestone stared at her hard and Joy Adams stopped apologising.
‘I found something on Tubecrush,’ she said.
We gathered around her workstation as she scrolled through dozens of images of young men, riding the London underground but dressed for the beach.
‘Look,’ Adams said.
The young man wore cargo shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. He was turned away from the camera but you could see the strength in his body. The broad back, the pumped-up arms, the thick muscles of the legs. His hair was totally shaved at the side and back, but grew out in a tufty crop on top of his head. In the background, in a half-empty carriage, most of his fellow passengers stared at their phones.
But one man slept.
He wore the uniform of a London bus driver.
It was Ahmed Khan, going home, exhausted by the heat, worn out by the day, on a journey to the home that he would never reach.
‘Good work, Joy,’ Whitestone said. ‘This places Ahmed Khan and George Halfpenny in the same tube carriage just before he was murdered.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are we sure? The sleeping man is Ahmed Khan, all right. But the young guy with his back to the camera? I don’t know if that’s George Halfpenny or some kid with the same haircut. A lot of people have got a haircut like that this summer. Edie?’
‘I don’t know, Max. It could be him.’
‘It fits,’ Whitestone said. ‘Ahmed Khan ran for his life when he saw George Halfpenny following him. Why? Because Khan had seen him on TV. And he knew how much he was hated.’
‘Five million journeys on the underground every day,’ I said. ‘On five hundred trains. And we are going to arrest someone for murder because of a haircut?’
But Whitestone had made up her mind.
And I saw how much she wanted it to be true.
21
‘I lie belly-up in the sunshine, happier than you will ever be,’ I read. ‘Today I sniffed many dog butts – I celebrate by kissing your face.’
Scout sat up in bed, smoothing down her duvet and smiling secretly to herself as I read. She liked this one.
‘Another dog poem,’ she observed.
‘I sound the alarm!
Paperboy – come to kill us all –
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!
I sound the alarm!
Garbage man – come to kill us all –
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!’
She watched Stan, asleep at her feet, as if he might possibly enjoy a poem about a dog. And of course I watched her. My daughter at seven – pink-faced from her bath, her hair smelling of shampoo, sitting up straight for the ritual of the bedtime read.
‘Look in my eyes and deny it,’ I read.
Scout grinned at me, waiting for the punchline.
I closed the book and recited the last line from memory.
‘No human could love you as much as I do.’
‘Who wrote that one, Daddy?’
‘That’s by Anonymous, angel.’
‘He’s written some good stuff,’ Scout said. ‘Old Anonymous.’
I kissed the top of her head and took Stan with me when I turned out the light. Scout’s eyes were already closing as she snuggled down. But I knew that sleep would not come that easily for me tonight.
I spread an exercise mat on the floor of the living room and cranked out one hundred press-ups and then one hundred sit-ups in four sets of twenty-five. But although my body was weary my head was still full. I was nowhere near sleep. So I went to one of the big windows of the loft and watched the men at the meat market and the young dancers filing happily into Fabric.
As the time drifted past midnight, and the moon crossed the sky behind the great gleaming dome of St Paul’s, the streets below our window seemed to get busier. Smithfield is the insomniac’s neighbourhood.
The summer night passed slowly. In the small hours, I lay on my bed for a while but my head was still too full for sleep. So I got up, showered and shaved, and brewed a pot of black coffee. At 4 a.m. sharp Mrs Murphy arrived, bleary from sleep, shivering in the chill of the hour before dawn.
‘You’ll want your coat on out there,’ she told me.
I nodded, and checked in on my sleeping daughter and stroked my snoring dog.
And then I went to work.