My eager craft through footless halls of air.’
‘Wow,’ said Scout.
‘Scout?’ shouted her mother from another room.
But I went on.
‘Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod,
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand … and touched the face of God.’
Scout sighed. ‘That’s a good one,’ she said. ‘What happened to John the poet?’
‘John died in the war, angel. Just after finishing that poem.’
She thought about it.
And then she was tired of thinking about it.
‘I need to brush my teeth now.’
‘You go and do that and I’ll call you again tomorrow.’
‘How’s Stan?’
This was going to be hard.
This was going to be the hardest thing of all.
‘Stan’s sleeping now. He’s resting.’
‘Good. Here’s Mummy.’
I heard my ex-wife take the phone and felt her waiting until Scout had scampered up the stairs to brush her teeth. I could hear noises in the background. Family noises. Children getting ready for bed, music coming from somewhere. Some kind of late-night, chilled-out cocktail jazz that was not a perfect fit in a house full of young children.
These domestic noises fascinated me. I had never thought about my ex-wife’s home life. And now that Scout was living with her, I thought about it all the time.
Then Anne was on the line. ‘Do you have to read her a poem every night?’ she said.
I was dumbstruck.
‘Well, it’s our bedtime poem,’ I said, as if that explained everything. ‘Scout always has a poem before she sleeps.’ I thought about it, struggling to find a compromise. ‘I could buy Scout her own phone so that we don’t—’
But the total stranger at the other end of the line sighed with infinite weariness and slowly hung up.
I stared at the phone for a bit and then got down on the floor and did twenty-five quick press-ups. Then I did another twenty-five, thinking about my form, cranking them out more slowly. Out in the main room of our loft I could hear Mrs Murphy, totally lost without Scout and Stan to take care of. I flexed my right knee. It felt almost as good as the other knee. Fred’s intensive rehab had worked wonders on the injury from Lake Meadows and the gaps between the flare-ups of pain were getting longer. And then I did a third set of twenty-five press-ups, the lactic acid building up nicely in my arms and shoulders now, making them burn with an aching kind of pain. And then I caught my breath and slowly pumped out the final twenty-five, pushing myself to go on when I wanted to stop and rest.
Then I checked my gun.
I stood on the bed and pushed back a panel in the ceiling, the only place in the loft where Mrs Murphy never cleaned. I pulled down Jackson’s old kitbag and unzipped it, smelling the gun oil. I unwrapped the T-shirt inside and stared at the glint of the Glock 17 in the night-time. Then I wrapped it in the T-shirt, put it back in Jackson’s kitbag and stored it again in the ceiling.
Mrs Murphy looked up at me as I came out of my room carrying my own kitbag.
‘Off to the gym?’
‘Yes.’ I was going to leave it there but I didn’t like to deceive her.
‘But not Fred’s gym,’ I said. ‘I’m going to a different gym tonight.’
‘And how are they?’ she said. ‘How’s my Scout?’ she said. ‘And how’s my Stan?’
‘No real change,’ I said, hoping that would cover it.
She nodded.
‘They lead such accelerated lives, don’t they? Their lives just rush past us.’
‘Dogs or children?’
‘Both,’ she said sadly.
It was a busy night at the Muhammad Ali Youth & Leisure Centre.
Teenage boys and girls were shadow-boxing, banging the bags and doing sit-ups, press-ups and planks. There was a small boxing ring with sagging ropes and Father Marvin Gane stood in the middle of it with a pair of battered Lonsdale pads on his hands. A line of children of assorted age and size queued up to throw three-punch combinations at the pads.
He saw me and nodded.
It was the first time I had seen him in the gym. Even in his clerical gear, he looked like a giant of a man. But in a sweat-stained T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, shouting instructions – ‘Double Jab! Right cross! Don’t let that right hand fade away! Get it back to your chin!’ – he looked like something else.
Father Marvin Gane looked like a fighter tonight.
I found an empty bench and kept out of the way until he was ready for me. After the children in the ring had all thrown their combinations, he slipped between the ropes.
‘Shadow-box!’ he told them. ‘Three three-minute rounds! Ten burpies and ten press-ups between rounds! Keep it neat! Think about your form! Hard work and dedication! Defend yourself at all times!’
The children began bouncing about in the ring, their faces dead serious, dancing around their imaginary opponents.
Father Gane shook my hand and eased his large body on to the bench beside me, his handsome black face gleaming with sweat. Someone had once told him he looked a bit like Marvin Gaye on the cover of ‘What’s Going On?’ and he had grown a neat beard to encourage the comparison.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to your mother’s funeral,’ I said. ‘She was a lovely woman.’
He nodded briskly, a gesture that suggested we skip the small talk. ‘How can I help you, Detective?’
‘Sir Ludo Mount was hit by a truck in Borodino Street last night,’ I said. ‘He is going to live but he’s never going to walk again.’
‘I saw the news,’ Father Marvin said. ‘Very sad for his family. But I imagine he had many enemies.’
‘I was there when it happened. There was another message – a Biblical reference. This one was sprayed on the side of a cop car. Exodus chapter 20, verse 13: Thou shalt not kill. The Sixth Commandment.’
‘Yes, I’m familiar with it.’
He stared at me, waiting.
‘I know you had an interest in Borodino Street,’ I said. ‘Because I saw you down there a few times.’
And now I waited.
He looked out at his gym. ‘I’m interested in anyone who has been separated from God,’ he said. ‘I prayed for the Khan family.’ He looked at me levelly. ‘Are you asking me for my theological opinion on the killer’s use of the Commandments?’
‘I’m trying to work out if it’s a false lead,’ I said. ‘If the use of the Ten Commandments is designed to send our investigation down a dead end.’
‘I see – you’re wondering if you should be looking for a religious maniac or if the use of the Commandments is just a con?’
‘Exactly.’
‘The Ten Commandments are the basis of God’s law and establish timeless, universal and unequivocal standards of right and wrong,’ he said, watching the children as they stopped shadow-boxing and began their burpies. ‘But they’re not, as many believe, specific to Christianity. Ethical principles exist in every religion. You’ll find something like the Ten Commandments – we call them the Decalogue in the trade, from the Greek for “ten words” – in Islam and Judaism. As a Christian, I believe that what’s unique about the Ten Commandments is that only they were written with the finger of God.’
He stared at me, unsmiling.
‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ he said.
A tall, gangling youth had entered the Muhammad Ali Youth & Leisure Centre with a small kitbag in his hand and a large spliff dangling from his mouth. He was pulling out a pair of worn red Cleto Reyes gloves when Father Gane turned him around and slapped him hard across the face.
The spliff fell to the floor.
Father Gane crushed it underfoot.