Girl On Fire

14

The next day the bulldozers and the skips went in to Borodino Street before first light and behind them a parameter was set up to keep members of the public a mile away from the clean-up operation. Early rising residents were free to come and go but when the first members of the public started arriving, they were politely stopped at the perimeter by uniformed officers and gently relieved of their flowers.

Borodino Street was cleared of flowers with as much respect and dignity as we could muster. Our press office released a statement saying that dying flowers would be used as fertiliser while fresh bouquets would be donated to local hospitals. Condolence cards, poems and letters were all carefully collected for the bereaved family of Alice Stone, should they wish to see them, while teddy bears and other toys would be donated to children’s charities.

But it was over.

In the roads surrounding Borodino Street, white vans full of police in riot gear waited for crowd trouble that never came. Their mood was joyful, almost euphoric, coppers who were happy and relieved to learn that they were not going to have anything thrown at their heads in the next few hours. Always a good feeling.

Members of the public were still arriving to pay their respects, and to lay their flowers, and to witness the great festival of mourning, but they did not protest or seem surprised when they were denied access to Borodino Street, and they were grateful when their flowers were taken from them by young uniformed policemen and women with real and unforced tenderness.

There were no photographers around when the bulldozers were filling the skips with their loads of rotting bouquets. By the time the sun was over the rooftops, the first convoy of lorries was already driving away, the battered yellow skips piled high with dead flowers, acres of cellophane flashing in the sunshine. Wary residents woke up and peered from their windows, as if not quite believing what they were seeing. Borodino Street was returning to something approaching normal.

The Met are good at this kind of thing. From Princess Diana to suddenly dead rock and pop stars, we have had a lot of practice. But there comes a point where a city street has to stop being a shrine.

‘How can anyone live here now?’ Edie said. ‘This is no place for a teenage girl to be growing.’

We were standing outside the Khan family home. The place was a ruin. The search teams had torn up the floorboards, ripped open the walls and collapsed the ceilings, dumping the debris in the front garden.

‘You saved Layla from care,’ I said. ‘But you can’t save her from her home.’

I suggested we get some breakfast inside us. It was going to be a long day.

Because in the afternoon they were burying Alice Stone.

The police had their own wake that evening.

The Fighting Temeraire is an old-fashioned pub round the back of Victoria, close enough to New Scotland Yard to be annexed by the Met for important occasions.

When I arrived with Edie and Joy at just after six the place was already heaving. One hundred hungry, beer-bleary eyes turned on the two women.

‘Or I might just go home,’ Adams said.

Edie laughed and took her by the hand.

‘We’re not scared of this lot,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ They pushed their way into the mob and were lost to me.

The Fighting Temeraire is one of those pubs that prides itself on being untouched by the modern world. There was no music, no dining area, no frills, although it does have giant TV screens for sport.

But tonight they were not showing any sport.

The entire pub looked up as they showed a clip from Alice Stone’s funeral, the same clip that they had been showing at every news bulletin for the last few hours.

Alice’s husband was standing by his wife’s coffin, his face a map of a man enduring the unendurable, one small child in his arms and the other holding his hand, the mourners behind them totally silent. Then the clip was gone and the noise level rose. I saw Edie and Joy at the bar. Two young DIs from New Scotland Yard were on either side of them, trying their luck. And I saw that Edie was not interested in this man and, all at once, I understood that TDC Joy Adams was not interested in any man, not in that way.

Edie caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back.

And then a shoulder slammed into me.

I stared into the face of the pale young man with the wispy beard who had carried a shotgun he never used to Borodino Street. I was about to apologise. Then I saw Jesse Tibbs didn’t want my apology.

‘You’ve been sucking up to the IPCC,’ he said. ‘You grassed on Ray Vann. If he goes down for unlawful killing, I will make you crawl, Wolfe.’

I turned to his friends, a silent invitation to intervene before it was too late.

‘Leave it, Jesse,’ one of them said without much enthusiasm. And that was it. They were letting him off his leash.

‘I don’t suck up to anyone,’ I told Tibbs. ‘Why don’t you go and have another drink? Not that you need one.’

I made to move past him but he put his free hand on my chest. The other hand held a beer bottle by the neck.

‘I heard your mob has been babysitting that murdering Paki bastard,’ he said.

I stared at his friends again but they were not going to do me any favours here.

Then Ray Vann was there, staring at me as if we had never met.

I thought I recognised some of the others from the jump-off van but it was difficult to tell now they were not in PASGT helmets and Kevlar.

‘Ahmed Khan didn’t murder anyone,’ I said deliberately.

‘Come on, Jesse, have a drink,’ said one of his companions. They eyeballed me evenly. It did not feel like we were on the same side tonight.

Tibbs’ gaze slid away from me as his mouth twisted with fury.

‘Hey,’ I said, getting his attention again. ‘Did you hear me, pal? That old man didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t kill the people who died when the helicopter came down and he didn’t kill Alice Stone. So don’t waste your feelings on him. Save it for someone who deserves it.’

Tibbs’ friends were putting their hands on him.

He furiously shrugged them off.

He tapped his beer bottle against my chest.

‘I’m warning you,’ he slurred, and I suddenly saw just how drunk he was. ‘You tell me where that safe house is – you tell me where West End Central are babysitting this scumbag – because I’m going round there tonight …’

‘Tibbs,’ Jackson said, appearing by his side. ‘Jesse. Shut it.’

‘Why do you always have to watch his back?’ Tibbs demanded.

I shook my head. ‘Why do you hate that old man?’

‘Are you fucking shitting me?’ Tibbs screamed. ‘Because he raised those evil bastards! Why do you give a toss about him?’

‘Because he’s an innocent man.’

‘Innocent? You really believe that?’

‘His sons were poison. He drives buses.’

I pushed past him. His friends half-heartedly tried to restrain him but Tibbs came after me, shouting abuse.

I was not going to do anything unless he put his hands on me.

And that was what he did, his palms slick with sweat and lager on my shoulders, one of them still holding that bottle as he pulled at my T-shirt.

And that was all a bit silly.

He should have just hit me from behind with his bottle.

With his hands on my shoulders, Tibbs was wide open. I half-turned and hit him with a short left hook to the ribcage and he sank down on one knee like someone who had never felt a body shot before.

A wave of sickness and sadness washed over me.

I did not want to fight this man but I knew I might not have a choice. I waited to see if he wanted to take it further.

But he just rubbed his aching ribs as he slowly got to his feet.

‘Next time,’ he said.

‘Next time you better bring your gun,’ I said.

I walked back to West End Central.

There were tourists at the end of Savile Row, photographing the outside of number 3, where the Beatles played their last ever gig on the rooftop in 1969, grinning and making peace signs and excited at the proximity of the ghosts of John, Paul, George and Ringo.

I watched one of the tourists pay their rickshaw driver.

George Halfpenny thanked them in Mandarin.

‘I heard that you closed down Borodino Street,’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘We opened it up,’ I said. ‘We opened it up for the people who live there. Your adoring fans are going to have to catch you at some other venue.’

‘I don’t have fans. Just some people who listen to what I have to say. Why does that bother you so much?’

‘I’m afraid some of them haven’t read as many books as you have, George.’ I indicated his rickshaw. ‘Are you free?’

‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘No.’

He looked at the Chinese tourists.

‘Where you going?’

‘Bar Italia,’ I said. ‘It’s on Frith Street.’

‘I know where the Bar Italia is,’ he said.

I eased myself into the back of his rickshaw.

George Halfpenny stood up on his bike and put some beef into it, transporting me to Soho with real professional pride, as if he wanted to show me that he was far more than a rickshaw driver, far more than a coolie for tourists, as if he wanted to prove that his muscle and sinew and animal strength had been built up over the course of a thousand years.