Girl On Fire: (DC Max Wolfe-5)

6

It was the end of the long day and Fred’s gym was almost empty now.

Down on a yoga mat, a woman in her fifties who looked maybe thirty silently moved and breathed her way through Surya Namaskara, the Sun Salutation, bending and unfolding and stretching her body so that the series of graceful asanas looked like just one long fluid movement. One of Fred’s shaven-headed regulars in a frayed London Marathon T-shirt wearily banged the heavy bag with eighteen-ounce Lonsdale gloves. Someone turned off the treadmill, caught their breath and headed for the showers. And Fred stood before me, his long silver hair pulled up in a topknot, looking like a pirate who was about to go for a serious run.

Toots and the Maytals were on the sound system singing of young Trenchtown rude boys fifty years in the grave and up on the giant TV screen the first fight between Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti was playing with the sound turned off.

Fred counted out the reps of ten as I rose from a bench on one leg, held it, and sat down again still using the same leg. We did it until my quad muscles were burning.

With my knee still healing, my exercise regime at Fred’s was all about my quads – squats, lunges, step-ups and, most of all, the torture of standing up and sitting down using just one leg. Whenever I felt like I couldn’t go on, when my leg muscles were stiff with lactic acid, when my quads were alive with pain, I looked up at Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti knocking lumps out of each other.

And I carried on.

And then Jackson Rose walked into the gym.

He nodded at us as Fred strapped some ankle weights on me and counted out five reps of ten as I forced out fifty burpies.

The regular in the London Marathon T-shirt walked off to the lockers and Jackson stood before the heavy bag, contemplating it for a moment before stepping back, bending his body so that his torso was at right angles to the ground and then kicking it where the head of a very tall man would be.

He did it gently at first, finding his range, and then he did it much harder. And then he did it harder still, twice, the kicks coming so close together that the sound of his instep repeatedly striking the bag seemed to become one unbroken sound, like hailstones. Then he stood back, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet, his hands loose at his side, a thin film of sweat on his face.

Fred and I were grinning at him.

‘Oy, Conor McGregor,’ Fred said. ‘You training or dancing?’

Jackson showed us his gap-tooth grin.

‘Got some spare kit?’ he said.

So Jackson and I trained together on one of Fred’s famous circuits. A dozen three-minute rounds on the speed ball, the uppercut bag, the heavy bag and the super heavyweight bag, that long two-metre slab of hard leather that drained every ounce of energy out of you, a one-minute break between rounds filled with ten burpies and ten press-ups. Forty-eight minutes with no breaks. Recover while you work.

‘You’ll sleep well tonight,’ Fred said as the final buzzer went after the last press-up, when we were on our hands and knees and the tank was empty for both of us. Jackson smiled at me and I saw that he was full of that exhausted happiness that only comes on the far side of hard exercise.

After we were showered and dressed, Jackson said we should get a beer in one of the many pubs around Smithfield that cater to all manner of night owls, including the club kids at Fabric on Charterhouse Street and the night shifters from the meat market that has stood on this spot for a thousand years.

He could tell I was not keen.

‘I know you want to get back to Scout. But have just one beer, Max. It’s been a long day for all of us.’

I waited for the real reason.

‘We need to get our story straight,’ he said.

We sat at a corner table of one of those legendary Smithfield boozers that roar while the city sleeps, and we were the only men in there who were not wearing white coats, the only men in there who were not splattered with blood. I watched Jackson sip his San Pellegrino. It took some nerve ordering a sparkling mineral water in here, but Jackson Rose had never lacked nerve.

‘Are you in trouble, Jackson?’

‘Me? Trouble? No. I’m suspended, of course. Automatic suspension pending the Standard Operating Procedures enquiry because I fired two rounds from my weapon. And because I killed Asad Khan. But I’m not going to be in trouble. I followed SOP to the letter. I shouted a warning at the armed man who had just murdered DS Stone and who would have murdered again if he had the chance. I did what I’m trained to do. I even did my best to avoid over-penetration.’

He smiled at me, happy to be beyond the reach of those who would prosecute policemen for murder.

‘Over-penetration is when a bullet goes into someone and straight out the other side,’ he explained. ‘Best way to avoid over-penetration is to shoot the target when they’re flat on the ground. And that’s what I did with my second shot. And that’s what I told them. And that’s what everyone saw – including you, right?’

I nodded. ‘That’s what I saw,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m glad you’re in the clear, Jackson.’

‘I fired two shots – a double tap – and then I stopped,’ he said. ‘SFOs need to know two things – when to start firing and when to stop. So I’m not in trouble, Max. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m all right. It’s the other part of the story we have to get straight.’

I looked around the pub.

Many of the men had plastic bags at their feet, full of pork chops, beef ribs, legs of lamb. And I saw now that though the men all wore white coats, and they were all smeared with blood, they were all smeared with different measures of blood.

Some of their coats were almost pristine white, flecked with a few discreet little Jackson Pollock flourishes. These were the wholesalers. And some of the men had been cutting up pigs, which are carved while hanging up, reducing the blood splatter. These had only modest amounts of blood on their coats. And then there were the men whose white coats were stained deep red with blood. They had been cutting lamb – meaning they had been cutting towards themselves, as lambs are cut on blocks. So they were all marked with different kinds of blood.

But every one of them wore a sky-blue ribbon on his white coat, as they remembered the forty-five innocent souls who had died when that helicopter came down.

I looked back at Jackson. He had not stopped staring at me.

‘They will ask you about when DS Stone was murdered, but we don’t have to worry about that,’ he said. ‘What we have to work out is what you tell them about what happened in the basement.’

‘We don’t have to work it out, Jackson. There’s nothing to work out.’ I leaned closer to him. ‘You talk to your friend DC Vann?’

‘I wouldn’t call him a friend, Max. But he doesn’t need to be my friend. Ray Vann’s part of our mob. And this mob, Max, they remind me of the mob I was with in Afghanistan. You know what we fought for in Afghanistan? It wasn’t freedom. It wasn’t democracy. It wasn’t Queen and country. It was each other. And it’s the same here. We fight for each other.’

‘Did Vann ask you to come and see me?’

‘He didn’t have to.’

‘Why did Stone speak to him?’

‘When?’

‘In the jump-off van on our way to Borodino Street. Vann was the only member of the team that Alice Stone spoke to. “You OK, Raymond?” As if she was worried about him. As if she was concerned about – I don’t know – his mental state, his stability. She didn’t speak to anyone else. Why did she speak to Vann?’

Jackson sipped his sparkling mineral water, looking away.

‘I didn’t clock it. Must have been checking my kit. Getting in the zone.’

‘What’s Vann’s background?’

‘Shots tend to come from two places, as you know. You’ve got the country boys – and girls – who grew up with guns, shooting clay pigeons, pheasants and peasants. All those rural pursuits. And then you’ve got the ex-servicemen. The ones who got their training in the military. In a different sort of field from the ones they shoot pheasants in. And that was Ray Vann. He was in Iraq. Did well under fire, apparently.’

‘So he was highly trained and he knew what he was doing?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes slipped away from mine again. ‘But to be honest, you never know.’

‘What does that mean, Jackson?’

‘The ones that grew up with guns – like Alice Stone, for starters – have not had the same life experiences as the ones who served. Ex-servicemen – we’re like rescue dogs, Max. You never know exactly what we have been through. And what it did to us.’

We were silent for a while.

‘What happened in that basement, Max?’

‘What does Ray Vann say happened?’

‘The target went for his weapon.’

‘Is that Vann’s story?’

‘That’s what he told us at the hot debriefing in the immediate aftermath. And that’s what he is going to tell the IPCC.’

The IPCC is the Independent Police Complaints Commission. They have the authority to decide if a firearms officer who discharges his weapon should get a medal or be prosecuted for murder.

And now Jackson looked at me.

‘What are you going to tell them, Max?’

‘Did the Search Team find a weapon in that basement?’

‘No. There were no weapons found on the premises in Borodino Road beyond the assault rifle used for the murder of DS Stone.’

‘Then how did Adnan Khan reach for a weapon if there was no weapon found in the basement?’

‘Vann thought that a known terrorist was reaching for his weapon, OK? You know – one of the bastards who murdered – what is it now? Forty-five? – innocent men, women and children. Don’t forget the children, Max. Vann had to make that judgement in a fraction of a split second to save his own life and the lives of many more.’

‘CTU say that the only weapon on the premise was the AK47 that killed Alice Stone. No grenades. No other weapons.’

I watched my friend’s spine stiffen as something flared up inside him.

‘Can we please all stop saying that Alice was killed? Or that she died? She was murdered, OK?’ he said, as if I had disputed the fact. He took a breath. ‘Down in the basement the last of the Khan brothers went for what DC Vann thought was a weapon, OK? Khan made a sudden, violent movement and so Vann shot him. That’s what he is going to tell the IPCC when he talks to them first thing tomorrow.’

I sipped my beer and said nothing.

‘They will talk to you, too, Max. You know they will! There were only three men in that basement. One of them is dead. The IPCC will have a chat with you and Vann. And you have the power to corroborate his version or tell a different story.’

He raised his mineral water in salute.

I stared at him and said nothing. I drank my beer. The pub was very loud.

‘I know you’re solid, Max.’

I held up a hand for silence.

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ I said.

‘I know that, Max. Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘I’m not going to rat him out.’

I looked at my beer. I wanted to get home. I wanted to see my daughter sleeping. I wanted this long hard day to be behind me.

‘But I’m not going to lie for him,’ I said.

Jackson’s face hardened.

‘What’s that, Max? Like some kind of personal code of honour or something?’

I shrugged.

‘Call it what you like. I’m not going to rat him out, but I’m not going to lie for him.’

‘They finally reached Alice Stone’s husband,’ Jackson said, the anger mounting.

‘I know.’

‘Her husband’s a copper. New Scotland Yard. Got two little kids under the age of five. A boy and a girl. When they grow up, they’re not even going to remember her, are they? They’re not even going to remember their mum, Max! Because they were too little when their mother was murdered.’

‘I’m not going to rat him out, but I’m not going to lie for him,’ I repeated for the third and final time, just making sure we were clear here.

I bolted the remains of my beer and stood up.

‘Come back soon, Jackson. Train with me at Fred’s. Come and see Scout. Cook for us again. Walk Stan. I miss you. I do. You’re the only brother I ever had.’

He was waiting for the rest of it.

‘But don’t you ever lean on me again,’ I told him.