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.
7
The next day was Saturday and I breathed out.
I woke up to sunlight pouring through the bedroom skylight and the best sound in the world.
Stan was snoring on the pillow next to me, his left ear a silky curtain falling across his eyes. As I sat up he stirred in his sleep, smacked his lips, but did not wake. I stared at his face, noting how the black smudge under his nose extended across his mouth to his chin before giving way to the smudge of white on his chest, like a tiny tuxedo shirt. Everything else about his fur was a shade of red, from the strawberry blond feathers of his tail and legs to the deep russet of his coat and ears and head.
I once looked at a sleeping woman in this much adoring detail.
But now it was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
It had been a long march for Stan to reach that pillow. At first he had been kept in his cage at night. Then he was allowed to roam the loft after lights out. And now he had made it all the way to my bed.
He shrugged with irritation in his sleep as I threw back the duvet, got down on the floor and pumped out a brisk twenty-five press-ups. When I stood up to flex my leg, feeling how time and Fred were slowly but surely healing it, Stan opened his large round eyes and considered me impassively.
He did not move as he watched me stretch and then do another twenty-five press-ups – slower this time, thinking about form now, the pain in my knee a steady but distant throb. Then I stretched again, and as I did the third set of twenty-five press-ups Stan closed his eyes, sighing contently as he slipped back into deep sleep.
By the time I did the final set of twenty-five press-ups – the hard set, the one where the lactic acid burns in shoulders and arms, the set that actually does you some real good – the dog was snoring loudly once more.
I went into the main room and turned on the TV to see what was happening in Borodino Street.
And there was the by-now familiar vantage point of the street viewed from a news helicopter, but where the road should have been there was nothing but flowers. It was early Saturday morning, and the crowds, kept on the pavement by two long lines of uniformed officers were already out in force.
The picture cut to a close-up of the crowd. A small child, a girl, was being led by the hand as she laid her bouquet with all the rest. The camera pulled in tighter on one of the photographs placed among the flowers.
DS Alice Stone was smiling for all eternity. The image had become one of the favourite shots of Alice, taken on holiday in Italy just after the birth of her first child. She looked giddy with happiness. And now the crowds came to mourn her.
I understood their grief because I felt it too. But the outpouring of emotion for Alice Stone was still bewildering. This was one woman who was being mourned by people who had never met her in a way that the forty-five victims of Lake Meadows were not mourned by total strangers. Perhaps the loss of all those people was simply too much to comprehend, I thought. All those lives stolen in a moment. All those lost fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives. All those families torn apart, all that grief that would echo through generations. It was too terrible to grasp.
But we all understood what had been lost in Alice Stone. The death of this one police officer who had lost her life because she sought justice for what happened at Lake Meadows – this tough, smart and beautiful woman, a wife, a mother and a daughter – had come to represent all the innocent victims of the summer. The loss of Alice Stone was like an ache in the heart of the nation.
When the camera cut back to the helicopter’s eye to take it all in – the sea of flowers, the grim-faced crowds, the house hidden behind huge white screens where the CSIs and search teams were finishing their work – I saw him for the first time.
He was at the end of the street, just beyond the police perimeter, a lean, long-limbed young man in a suit and a bow tie who appeared to be standing on some kind of small box. He was addressing a section of the crowd and I noticed them because they had their backs turned to the flowers, and the house and the spectacle of Borodino Street.