‘How would you know?’
This is what I knew.
This is what I remembered from when we were two boys who were closer than brothers.
My friend Jackson Rose was a thief.
When we were kids, I had seen his thieving – a compulsive shoplifting, as likely to happen in a local newsagent as a giant department store in the West End – as a symptom of his wildness.
And for the first time I realised that a thief never grows out of the habit.
‘Who did you steal it from, Jackson?’
‘Someone who doesn’t need it any more,’ he said.
I believed him.
But still I did not pick up the gun.
George Halfpenny sat with his head bowed in an interview room at West End Central.
The career criminal slips into the zone when they are in an interview room, the tape running, their bored lawyer by their side. An almost Zen-like calm descends upon the professional villain. They know that we are in there to build the foundations of their prison walls. They know it takes time. They know they need patience and guile.
George Halfpenny was not like that.
He seemed like a man who had already been broken.
‘You intended to inflict serious physical harm on PC Sykes,’ Whitestone told him. ‘Look at me when I’m addressing you, will you?’
Halfpenny’s eyes slid to Whitestone’s face. But he could not look at her for more than a moment. He knew that she wanted to see him locked up for life.
She nodded at the file before me and I pushed it across to her. She picked it up, began flipping through it.
‘Before your job as a rickshaw driver, you were in the Territorial Army for five years. Apparently you took your training seriously. Good grades for unarmed combat, it says here. A big strong boy who lost his temper – is that what you are, George?’
Halfpenny finally looked at her, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse and cracked.
‘It all happened so fast. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I am not a violent man.’
‘You hated the officer you put in a coma,’ she said. ‘Just like you hate all cops.’
‘I don’t hate anyone.’
‘Come on, George,’ Whitestone said, laughing easily. ‘You don’t hate anyone? Really? We have hours of footage of you preaching outside Ahmed Khan’s house on Borodino Street. Whipping the crowds up. Night after night after night. You’re the man who single-handedly turned that peace rally in Victoria Park into a riot. You’re full of hatred. You’re full of rage.’
‘I hated Ahmed Khan’s sons – no, even that’s not right. I hated their acts. I hated what they did to the people in that helicopter. And the people who were on the ground when it came down. And I hated what they did to Alice Stone.’
Whitestone erupted. ‘Don’t you mention her name to me, you piece of filth! Not after what you did to PC Sykes!’
His lawyer perked up.
‘My client—’
Whitestone waved him away.
‘Your client is going to say he never meant to hurt anyone. Yeah, I can guess. And I am sure that will be a great comfort to PC Sykes’ two-year-old daughter and his pregnant wife. It was all a dreadful accident. So what? So what? So fucking what?’ She shook her head at George Halfpenny. ‘And don’t think you’re off the hook for the killing of Ahmed Khan.’ She tapped the file before her. ‘I see that when you were in the Territorial Army you took Advanced First Aid. So you know enough about human anatomy to know exactly where to stick a knife if you want a man to die.’
Halfpenny looked at me.
‘You know I was nowhere near Ahmed Khan on the day he died,’ he said. ‘You saw my phone. You know I was swimming with my brother.’
‘Our tech guys don’t buy it,’ I said.
I addressed his lawyer. ‘Colin Cho of PCeU – the Police Central e-crime Unit – maintains that time and date stamps are extremely easy to fake. They’re running tests right now. PCeU will tell us if it’s genuine or not.’
‘But you believe me?’ George pleaded.
‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ I said.
Whitestone stood up. ‘Even if it’s not a phony time and date stamp, and even if I don’t charge you with the murder of Ahmed Khan, you’re still looking at life for putting my young officer in a coma. And a lot of rough jail sex.’
‘I really must object,’ the lawyer said.
‘Your client assaulted a young police officer who now has a blood clot on his brain,’ Whitestone said, suddenly calm. ‘That’s a hard thing to bounce back from. Your client has ruined the life of one of our own. The judge and jury can calculate intent. But – some advice that you would do well to take – save your professional outrage for someone who gives a damn.’
Whitestone and I rode the lift to the top floor.
‘You know he didn’t kill Ahmed Khan,’ I said.
‘I want him put away for life, Max,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what label they stick on it.’
I did not argue with her. Because whatever we charged George Halfpenny with, and whatever conclusion a judge and jury one day arrived at, Whitestone was right.
Sykes’ young daughter had been robbed of the father she had known and his wife had been robbed of the man she married. I had seen injuries like the one afflicting that young copper. And I knew they always changed more than one life.
A young woman with a small baby got into the lift. You don’t see many babies in West End Central and Whitestone and I both grinned goofily at it – a fat little baldy thing of about six months – and we remembered when our own children were that age.
The woman was dressed for the gym but with a milk stain down the front of her Sweaty Betty top, a good-looking woman who was trying to stay in shape but clearly run ragged by the demands of her life.
She got out on our floor, the baby falling asleep in her arms, gently rocking it and looking around as we edged past her. She eventually started following us down the corridor to MIR-1. I thought she must be lost. But it turned out she knew exactly where she was going.
Edie Wren and Joy Adams looked up from their workstations as we walked into the room.
And suddenly the blood drained from Edie’s face.
The woman with the baby was staring at her, shaking so badly that the baby was waking.
‘Stay away from my husband, you fucking whore!’ the woman shouted.
She hovered in the doorway, her baby crying now, her face clenched tight with fury and grief, her eyes shining.
‘He is a married man. You are wrecking our home. Just stay away from him, can’t you!’
And then she was gone.
Edie turned towards her workstation. She seemed to have stopped breathing. She hung her head. One teardrop fell on her keyboard. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close. I wanted to get her out of this room. But I made no move to touch her.
Apart from the rolling news on the big TV, there was total silence in the room.
‘Joy?’ Whitestone said.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Try to get a statement from Halfpenny’s Commanding Officer from his time in the Territorial Army. I want something on the record about any obsession with knives, blades, and bayonets. Anything on an unhealthy interest in weapons is good, but we are looking for a sick interest in sharp objects. If that date and time stamp on his phone turns out to be fake, we are going to be charging him with murder.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Adams said, reaching for the phone.
‘Edie?’
Edie turned towards her. Her pale Irish face had red blotches on her cheeks as if she had been slapped.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Nobody cares about your broken heart, Edie,’ Whitestone said quietly. ‘I need you to save the tragedy for outside the office. Have a broken heart on your own time. OK?’
Edie nodded and wiped at her face with the back of her hand.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Whitestone turned to give me some instruction but I was no longer listening.