From the roof I could see that the man in the shadows was still down there, and he was still staring up at the loft. There was good cover for him in the Grand Avenue.
A convoy of refrigerated lorries and white vans lined the street. Men in white coats were everywhere, hauling their loads of meat into the market. An easy spot to get lost in the crowd.
I crossed to the back of the building and clanked down the old iron fire escape. The emergency exit door at the back of the building was never locked. It took me out on to Cowcross Street, one of those old winding backstreets in Smithfield. I walked down it quickly and paused at the start of Charterhouse Street.
He was still there. Of course he was still there.
I turned right, walking away from home, away from the main entrance where the dark figure was waiting, and I entered the Central Market from the far end.
The place was roaring with shouts and catcalls and threats and laughter. The meat market is long and narrow in here and I walked the full length of it, four hundred metres, and on either side of me there were the men in white coats in the stalls expertly working on huge slabs of bloody meat.
And everywhere there were potential weapons.
I walked quickly, never pausing, never looking from side to side, my eyes always straight ahead and fixed on the exit that would take me out on the Grand Avenue and the man waiting in the shadows.
And as I walked I selected a weapon.
I first picked up a five-inch narrow boning knife and then, a few stalls further on, put it down and picked up a ten-inch chef’s knife and carried on walking, my hands held loose at my side, the chef’s knife in my right hand.
And then, just before I emerged from the central aisle, I saw what I was really looking for.
A meat cleaver and cut gloves, the hand wraps that butchers use to avoid losing their fingers.
I put down the chef’s knife and scooped up the cleaver and cut gloves, pulled them on to my hands without breaking my stride, keeping the meat cleaver down by my right side and my gaze fixed ahead. The cut gloves were moist with the blood of fresh meat.
I stepped out into the night.
He was still there, looking up at the loft, but he sensed me behind him and turned just as I raised the meat cleaver to bring it down where the shoulder meets the neck.
‘Jackson!’ I said, slowly lowering the meat cleaver. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He did not answer and I did not need him to answer because I knew that he was doing exactly what he had been doing since we were children.
Jackson Rose was watching my back.
‘Someone’s coming for you,’ he said.
25
In the small hours before dawn we sat at my kitchen table with a pot of black coffee between us.
Jackson took a folded sheet of A4 paper from his jacket and spread it on the table. It was the digital front page of the Daily Post, the photograph taken outside the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road on the day I went to see the body of Ahmed Khan. It was a big close-up of my face, the moment I turned away from Scarlet Bush. Every murder is a hate crime, I had told her, and that is what they had used as their headline.
My eyes were missing in the photograph.
Because someone had shot them out.
I grinned at Jackson. ‘Is this what they’re using for target practice at the firing range now?’ I said.
Jackson was not smiling.
‘This was left inside my locker,’ he said. ‘My locked locker, Max. Some shot has got it in for you big time. And I don’t think you can laugh it off.’
‘Tibbs?’
Jackson shook his head. ‘It’s not Jesse’s style. He’s a hothead and a big mouth. But he will say it to your face. You’ve seen that. A lot of them up there resent you, Max.’ He hesitated. ‘They blame you for the death of Ray Vann. For not backing up his side of the story. For not going along with his version of events to IPCC.’
‘They blame me for not lying,’ I said.
He shrugged.
‘And how about you, Jackson?’
‘I’m on your side,’ he said. ‘Even when you’re a stubborn bastard who is in the wrong.’
‘Thanks for that. What I saw of Ray Vann, he was a decent but seriously damaged man. I’m sorry that he’s dead. But he made a mistake. He shot a man he should have handcuffed. He executed a man he should have arrested.’
Jackson winced. He was still wearing his sky-blue ribbon in memory of the dead at Lake Meadows. The colour was fading now.
‘Ray Vann shot a terrorist, Max. Adnan Khan might have been genuinely surrendering or he might have been bluffing. Either way, he was a mass murderer. Who knows what was in his tiny brain in that basement? But he was exactly the kind of murdering bully who, out there in the wicked world, is allowed to put a bullet in a little girl’s brain for the sin of wanting to go to school. Or who will use a drone to bring down a helicopter on the heads of people he has never met and who have done him no harm and might even worship the same god as him. So – whatever we do – let’s not get too sentimental about the scumbag he slotted. Ray Vann put down a rabid dog.’ Stan stirred between his feet and Jackson scratched him behind the ears. ‘No offence, Stan.’
I wasn’t going to argue with him.
‘You know why I wouldn’t lie for Ray, right?’ I said.
Jackson nodded.
‘I can guess. Because if you got caught in a lie then you would lose your job.’ He indicated the closed bedroom door. ‘And then you would probably lose Scout.’
And now maybe I was going to lose Scout anyway.
I pushed away the photograph of my face with the eyes shot out.
‘It’s too late to save Ray Vann,’ I said.
‘But it’s not too late to defend yourself.’
Jackson hefted his kitbag on to the table, unzipped it and took out a faded Lonsdale T-shirt that had once belonged to me. Wrapped inside the T-shirt was a handgun.
He placed it carefully on my kitchen table.
‘It’s a Glock 19,’ he said. ‘A 9 mm semi-automatic. Polymer-framed, short recoil. The Glock Safe Action Pistol.’
I said nothing.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not from the Met.’
I stared at the stubby black firearm.
‘That’s a relief, Jackson,’ I said. ‘Because for a moment there I thought you might be getting me into trouble. Is this a souvenir from your service days?’
He shrugged.
‘How much kit did you bring home with you?’ I said.
‘Nothing the British Army will miss.’ He nodded at the Glock. ‘You know how to use it, right?’
I didn’t touch it. I thought that if I ever touched it in my life, I would make sure I was wearing a brand-new pair of blue nitrile disposable gloves.
‘Is it traceable?’ I said.
‘Only if they catch you with it.’
We both looked at the Glock.
‘The serial number has been removed,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m going to show you how to clean it. Cleaning is simple but important. There are only four parts to your Glock. Frame and barrel and slide and recoil spring. That’s it. And the magazine, of course. Important safety tip to remember when cleaning your Glock – make sure you haven’t left one in the chamber. That’s how people die cleaning their weapon. They remove the magazine but they didn’t know there’s one still in the chamber. And that’s the one that kills them. You got all that, Max?’
I said nothing.
He looked towards the window. The sun was coming up. It was going to be another glorious day. He stretched and yawned.
‘I just don’t want you to die, Max.’
‘Me neither.’ I stared at the Glock on the table between us. ‘That’s not army-issue,’ I said. ‘You didn’t steal this from the army. You stole it from somewhere, but it wasn’t the army.’