‘He reckons he’s going to make me crawl, Jackson,’ I said, and I was suddenly sick of being held.
I lifted my feet from the ground, dropped my body weight, and thrashed like a dying rat in a dog’s mouth until Jackson let me go.
He put his hand on my chest and looked at Tibbs.
‘Are you making threats to this man, Jesse?’ Jackson asked him.
Tibbs snorted. ‘Anything I want to say to him, he’ll know because I’ll be standing on his doorstep.’
Which was the wrong thing to say to me.
I am very fussy about who I have standing on the doorstep of my home where I live with my daughter and my dog.
It was another threat, and the worst kind of all.
‘Let’s have it then,’ I said. ‘I’ll shove that shotgun right up—’
Jackson pushed my chest, shoving me backwards. And he did it again, knocking me back another step. And then I stood there and I shook my head and it was just my oldest friend and me and I was not going to let him push me back any further.
‘Don’t,’ I said.
And he didn’t.
We stared at each other, our fists clenched by our sides.
I turned away, heading up the ramp for the exit, fresh air and daylight blazing ahead of me. It was going to be another beautiful day. I turned at the top of the ramp.
‘He didn’t do it,’ I told them. ‘George Halfpenny. They’re going to have to let him go. He was nowhere near Ahmed Khan when he was killed.’
‘So what?’ Tibbs shouted. ‘Nobody cares about that old Paki. Only you.’
But there was someone else who cared about Ahmed Khan.
I walked round to the front of the building and found Layla sitting outside under the big blue lamp that marks the main entrance to West End Central.
It was still ridiculously early. Uniformed coppers were still coming off the night shift. The bespoke tailors on Savile Row were all still closed. A few dead-keen office workers were carrying coffee to their offices in Mayfair but these were still the hours of cleaners doing their minimum-wage work before the day began.
‘Is that him inside?’ Layla said. ‘The murderer?’
‘What are you even doing here?’ I said.
‘Is that the man who killed my grandfather? The one you’ve got locked up?’
‘Did some journalist call you?’
‘Edie,’ she said. She glanced at the doors. ‘Edie sent me a text. Edie said you got him.’ Her eyes shone with tears. ‘She thought I’d be happy.’
I sighed and shook my head and sat down on the steps next to her. I was still wearing my stab-proof vest. I undid the straps and exhaled as though I hadn’t breathed all night.
‘Edie shouldn’t be calling you about this stuff.’
‘She’s trying to be kind.’
‘I know. She cares about you. She still shouldn’t be doing it.’
And then Edie was there.
‘Hey,’ she said softly, leaning over Layla and pushing back her long black hair from her face. There was a fading red scuffmark high up on one cheekbone where her grandmother had slapped her after we had brought her home from the park.
She sat down on the other side of the girl. Edie took her hands.
‘And is it him?’ Layla said.
Edie looked at me and I shook my head at all of it. Her sending text messages to this kid. The young man we had down in the cells. The wrong-headed certainty of Whitestone.
‘They think it’s him,’ Edie said carefully. ‘The SIO – Senior Investigating Officer – thinks it is him.’
Still holding hands with Edie, Layla studied my face.
‘And what? You don’t think it’s him? Why not?’
‘We’ll see, OK? The man they brought in, he is going to say that he was somewhere else when your grandfather died. And then we are going to see if it’s true or not.’
‘And if he didn’t do it, then we will keep looking until we find the man that really did murder your grandfather,’ Edie said. ‘I promise you, OK?’
‘OK, Edie.’
‘But go home now, Layla,’ I said. ‘Nothing is going to happen quickly today.’
‘It’s the man who was always outside our house, isn’t it?’ she said to Edie, and I saw how terrifying it must have been for this teenage girl to look out her window at the crowds that gathered every night on Borodino Street.
‘The one with the haircut,’ Layla said. ‘The one who was making the speeches every night until they cleared the flowers away. They put him on television and YouTube and all that, and then there were more of them.’
She let go of Edie’s hands and ran her fingers through her hair, the streaks of red dye reminding me of the face-painting of young children, it was as playfully inept as that, and that is when I saw the marks on her wrists, the thin white cuts that had healed and been opened again and again and again, the tell-tale bracelets of self-harm. And Edie saw them too.
She seized Layla’s hands and would not let her pull them away, dragging the sleeves of her cheap leather jacket halfway up her forearms.
‘This,’ Edie said, ‘is not what your grandfather would have wanted for you, Layla. To see you hurting yourself would have broken his heart. And you know that, don’t you?’
A big sergeant came out of 27 Savile Row, yawning widely in the bright new day. He glanced at the three of us sitting on the steps and then slowly walked away, ready for his bed. Layla Khan hung her head, the tears rolling down her face.
‘Did he really say my name at the end? Is that true?’
‘It’s true,’ I said.
‘You were the best thing in his life, Layla,’ Edie said. ‘His sons – your uncles, your dad – caused him nothing but misery and grief and pain. But you made him happy, Layla. So wipe your nose. You were the good thing in his life. OK?’
‘OK.’
They smiled at each other.
I looked at the red scuffmark on Layla’s face and I wondered what the hell was going to happen to this child.
23
I was home before Scout woke up.
The meat market was over for the night. The dancers at Fabric were all tucked up in bed. The first of the office workers were loading up with fuel in Smiths of Smithfield. And maybe it was my imagination, but among the locals I felt a palpable sense of excitement.
It was the last day of the school year.
I collected our mail – Boxing Monthly, Your Dog, offers of free pizza and an official-looking letter from a firm I had never heard of – and took the steps to our loft two at a time.
Mrs Murphy and Stan were foggy-eyed. The Cavalier stretched like a little furry four-legged lord and idly smacked his lips as Mrs Murphy prepared his breakfast.
‘Everything all right?’ she said. ‘Everybody still in one piece?’
I thought of the young bearded copper with a cracked skull. PC Sykes.
‘No fatalities,’ I said, and she was happy with that.
Scout was not up yet so, after Stan had wolfed down his Nature’s Menu breakfast, Mrs Murphy took him for his walk while I brewed myself a pot of strong black coffee.
Anthony Joshua was on the cover of Boxing Monthly.
‘The Misunderstood Staffie’ was on the cover of Your Dog.
And I confirmed that it was really my name and address on the envelope that said Butterfield, Hunt and West – Solicitors.
Scout bounded into the room, barefoot and still in her pyjamas, her long brown hair flying. She was grinning from ear to ear and suddenly I remembered exactly what the last day of the summer term felt like when I was that age.
‘So is today better than Christmas?’ I asked her, scooping her up, and smelling that Scout scent of sugar and shampoo.
She laughed. ‘It’s very close!’
She squirmed away from me and I gently put her down.
‘We’re all going to do our hair!’ she said. ‘Because it’s a special day! We’re going to do our hair like – you know – the Angry Princess.’