I looked at the rucksack and a memory of Borodino Street stirred.
On that first day.
The man and the woman and the girl on the floor of the kitchen, terrified for their lives. I remembered telling them they were safe, but they had to go, they had to go immediately. And I told them – it was very important – to have their hands raised and palms showing as they came out of the house so they were not shot.
I remembered them running, Ahmed and Azza and Layla Khan, running as people only run when they think that this is probably the minute they might die, grabbing a pink and purple Angry Princess rucksack just like this Angry Princess rucksack, and fleeing for their lives with their hands in the air as I had showed them. From the moment we met them, I thought, we had done all we could to protect that family.
‘And what about Scout?’ Edie said. ‘What happens when Scout visits and finds me here? How does she feel then?’
I took Edie in my arms again, pushing Borodino Street from my mind, sick of thinking about that place, and I kept holding her.
I needed to stay close to her now that I had found her.
‘Then Scout will be happy,’ I said.
Leman Street Police Station, Whitechapel.
Jackson Rose clearly felt like this was a long shot. His smile always got bigger the more mortal danger he felt in the air. But as he briefed his team of shots, his face was impassive. The SFOs were in mufti today, T-shirts and jeans and Asics trainers.
‘One last ride to Borodino Street,’ Jackson said. ‘Another officer and myself will set up on the other side of the road with our colleagues from West End Central, directly across the street from the Khan residence. The rest of you stay in the jump-off van two streets back. And then we wait. Questions?’
Tibbs raised his hand.
‘What exactly are we waiting for, Skipper?’
‘All hell to break loose – or teatime,’ Jackson said, and now he gave them the famous grin. ‘Whatever comes first.’
Scarlet Bush stirred in the seat beside me as her phone emitted a discreet ping.
‘My piece just went live,’ she said.
Her laptop was opened on the home page of the Daily Post website. A photograph of Azza Khan leaving her home was displayed.
And Scarlet’s story filled the screen.
WORLD EXCLUSIVE:
THE GODMOTHER OF TERROR?
By Scarlet Bush
Crime correspondent
The
Daily Post
has learned of an extraordinary connection that links the mother of the so-called drone terrorists who brought down an Air Ambulance helicopter on Lake Meadows shopping centre to one of the founders of international terror. It is a story that stretches across decades and links the Lake Meadows atrocity with the mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The
Daily Post
wishes to make clear that Azza Khan has not committed any crime. But her dead sons and the older brother she hero-worshipped have created
untold human misery over the last forty years – and the connection places a respectable 65-year-old British housewife at the centre of a web of evil.
Phones began to ring, beep and vibrate all around the briefing room.
‘Social media is having hysterics,’ Edie murmured. ‘How often do you see that happen?’
‘Yes!’ Scarlet hissed. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
‘Bad Moses,’ Jackson told the room. ‘He is the reason we are going to Borodino Street. Because our colleagues at West End Central believe the man responsible for killing Ahmed Khan and Ozymandias, as well as crippling Sir Ludo Mount, may – just may – show his ugly mug when Mrs Azza Khan is revealed to be possibly something other than an innocent bystander to all this blood and mayhem that we have been wading through this summer.’ Jackson nodded curtly. ‘Gun up and let’s go to work.’
He stopped me as the shots were getting into the jump-off van.
‘You really think Bad Moses will show when the world’s media are going to be camped on that doorstep?’
‘I don’t know if he can stop himself,’ I said.
In the end, Scarlet Bush did not get her ringside seat.
She stayed with Whitestone and Edie and the shots in the jump-off van a block away from Borodino Street. She would have had a closer view of what happened if she had joined the media vans and reporters who thronged Borodino Street, waiting for something to happen, kept back from the front door by a Police Support Unit of uniformed officers. The officers were relaxed. Scarlet’s story had pushed the right button with the world’s media but the public had not returned to Borodino Street. So the feet on the street were relaxed, anticipating an easy shift.
I was in the front bedroom of the house across the street from the Khan residence with Jackson, Tibbs and Joy Adams. The room had the musty, locked-up smell of a place that had not been lived in for some time. The residents of Borodino Street were moving on, happy to take the developers’ money, happy to put this place behind them.
Now only the Khan family remained.
Jackson and Tibbs checked their kit as Joy scanned the street with a compact pair of binoculars.
‘So you’re not going to nick the old girl?’ Jackson said.
‘As far as I know, she hasn’t done anything,’ I said. ‘Nothing happening, Joy?’
‘It’s just reporters,’ she said.
And then her body stiffened.
‘Wait,’ she said.
She turned to look at me, her face falling.
I took the binoculars from her.
‘The end of the street, sir.’
I saw him immediately. The tall, powerful black man walking slowly through the throng of reporters. Most of the uniformed officers that were scattered along Borodino Street never gave him a glance. But I saw one young officer give him a respectful nod.
Father Marvin Gane.
‘Sir, he’s not doing anything, sir!’ Adams said.
Jackson and Tibbs were already at the window.
‘Big black dude in the dog collar,’ Jackson said, shouldering his G36 Heckler & Koch. The short barrel of the weapon poked out of the open window. ‘Heading towards the Khan residence.’
‘Copy that, skipper,’ Tibbs said, already at the adjacent window, nestling his body into the assault rifle.
The pair of them watched Father Gane through the telescopic sights of their weapons, and two red dots from their gun scopes appeared on the big man’s torso.
‘Sir, that’s not our man, sir!’ Adams shouted.
‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’ I said. I called to Jackson and Tibbs as I headed for the door. ‘Don’t shoot until we know he is a credible threat.’
Tibbs snorted.
‘That’s sort of what we do,’ Jackson said, not taking his eye from the lens of the assault rifle’s scope.
I ran down the stairs two at a time, calling in Whitestone on the Airwave radio. Nothing. Just the crackle and crack of digital white noise. I pulled out my iPhone and tried again.
‘Max,’ Whitestone said.
‘This could be our man. North end of the street. IC3.’
IC codes – identity codes, also known as Phoenix Codes – are codes used by the British police to denote ethnicity of a suspect. IC3 is black.
‘On our way,’ Whitestone said.
But when I stepped outside, Father Gane had dropped to his knees. He had made no attempt to approach the Khan house. He had stopped just beyond the scrum of media.
And he was praying.
I stared at him on his knees and then up at the sky, at the helicopter that suddenly hovered just above the rooftops of Borodino Street. And then Whitestone and Edie were there, the SFOs with them, the shots fanning around the praying man, uncertain what to do.
Whitestone and Edie both looked up at the helicopter, the sky full of its metallic roar.
‘But we didn’t bring a helicopter,’ Whitestone said. And then it was all done very quickly. Another team of shots was piling out of a jump-off van and blowing off the front door of Borodino Street with a Benelli shotgun. Jackson’s team stared at each other, and turned their heads towards the radios on their shoulders, seeking instructions from their team leader. Layla appeared at the upper-floor window, pulling a swathe of black cloth across her face as she watched the street.