The shots were moving into the flat, still shouting the commands, until they suddenly stopped and I heard someone mutter an appalled curse.
They had found Ozymandias.
The weapons dealer had been crucified.
He was naked and unmoving on the floor of the living room, pinned there by some kind of knives or short swords that had been driven into his hands and feet. Both his hands were pulled high above his head, in a gesture of surrender, and his feet had been placed on top of each other.
He looked as though he had put up a fight because there were perforations to his hands and arms after some unsuccessful early efforts to nail him to the floor. There was a lot of blood but most of it had come out of his right wrist where the sword – no, it was a bayonet – that held him to the floor must have nicked his radial artery.
‘No pulse,’ one of the shots said. ‘No heartbeat.’
Jackson got down on his hands and knees and began pumping the crucified man’s chest.
‘Max,’ Whitestone said, pulling on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
She was indicating the writing on the wall.
The letters were a foot high, daubed with the weapon dealer’s blood.
The blood had been drying for long enough to turn black.
Exodus 20:16
I looked at Joy Adams.
‘The Ninth Commandment,’ she said, pulling on white baggies over her shoes. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Someone thinks he was a grass.’
The shots were searching room to room, their blood still pumping.
‘Armed police! Stand still!’
‘Show me your hands!’
‘Stop! Armed police! Stand still!’
‘Stop! Armed—’
But there was only the dead man here now.
The room swam into focus. In contrast to the squalor of the Elphinstone Estate, the flat had an almost suburban cosiness to it. It had the mustiness of a place that had not been lived in for a while but the cushions on the leather sofas were almost prissily arranged. Peter Fenn aka Ozymandias had been proud of his home.
There were framed photographs on a desk with a large iMac. I stepped closer to look at them.
They were displayed like family portraits.
But they were not family portraits.
Boy scouts, long dead, in shorts and khaki shirts smiled for the camera. No, not boy scouts. Hitlerjugend (HJ) said the caption. Hitler youth.
The next photograph was of an unsmiling man in a black uniform.
Waffen Schutzstaffel der NSDAP (SS).
And finally, in the largest photograph, there was a sea of helmets for as far as the eye could see, staring at a distant stage.
Overview of the mass roll call of SA, SS and NSKK troops, Nuremberg, 9 November 1935.
I stepped back. I had wondered what kind of mindset you needed to make a career out of selling weapons.
And now I knew.
‘It’s a shrine,’ Whitestone said beside me, pulling off the PASGT helmet.
‘So Bad Moses killed Ozymandias,’ Adams said. ‘And Bad Moses killed Ahmed Khan and crippled Sir Ludo.’
Whitestone looked uncertain.
‘This could be the work of a fan of Bad Moses,’ she said. ‘The Ten Commandments are right on trend these days. Bad Moses never wrote on the wall in blood before.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This is not a copycat kill. It’s not just the Old Testament Bad Moses likes.’
I remembered Ahmed Khan dying in my arms, and the name of his granddaughter escaping with his final breath, and I remembered the knife that had been plunged into Ahmed Khan’s subclavian artery, and the motto on the blade.
‘Bad Moses likes knives,’ I said. ‘And he likes these kind of knives. Third Reich blades. The knife that killed Ahmed Khan was bought from Ozymandias. And whoever bought it believed that Ozymandias – Peter Fenn – had ratted him out.’
We stared at the naked man on the floor.
I got on my knees beside him and I saw the blades that had been driven through his hands and feet clearly now.
A long rusty bayonet had been thrust through his feet and the short sword that fixed his left palm to the floor looked medieval. But the dagger that pierced the palm of his right hand had a black wooden handle with a runic SS symbol and an eagle above a swastika. There were faded words on the blade.
‘My honour is loyalty,’ I said. ‘Motto of the Waffen-SS. Currently banned in all the European countries that still remember.’
The blades all looked as though they were from the same collection as the knife that killed Ahmed Khan, the Hitler Youth dagger with Blut und Ehre – Blood and honour – on the blade.
‘How long has he been dead?’ someone said.
Jackson shook his head, on his hands and knees, still pressing Fenn’s chest, but slowing now. Then he stopped and got to his feet.
For a long moment all you could hear was the chatter on the Airwave radios.
And then the crucified man screamed.
I bent by his side as they shouted for the paramedics on the radio.
‘Listen to me, Fenn,’ I said. ‘Listen to me. What happened to those two Croatian grenades? What happened to them?’
‘The brothers …’
‘It’s true? You sold them to the Khans?’
‘Help me.’
Jackson was dragging me away.
‘Christ, Max! Talk to him at the hospital!’
‘He’s not going to make it to any hospital!’
Jackson shoved my chest. His shots were on their knees, trying to get the blades out of Fenn’s hands and feet.
‘Get away from him, Max!’
I went into the bedroom, trying to control my breathing.
There were footsteps behind me.
Jesse Tibbs had followed me. He was still holding the shotgun.
‘So someone did this Fenn creature because he was an informer, right?’ he said. ‘Lesson for us all. What does it say in the Bible? Thou shalt not bear false witness.’
‘Someone did him because he was a scumbag who made a living selling weapons to other scumbags. That’s what happened. It’s not difficult, Tibbs. Even you should be able to grasp it.’
‘No,’ Tibbs insisted. ‘Fenn bore false witness against his friends.’ He leaned against the doorway, the Benelli shotgun cocked at that 45 degree angle. ‘Like you with Ray Vann.’
And suddenly I had had enough of him.
‘Is it always all talk with you, Jesse, or are you ever going to do something? You’re like one of these little boys on social media – all mouth and Apple mouse. Be a man, Jesse. If you are going to do it, then get it done.’
He smiled, and we both nodded, as if something had finally been decided.
He slowly raised his shotgun.
And then Jackson Rose was standing behind him.
Tibbs turned away.
‘Any weapons?’ Jackson said, addressing Tibbs but looking at me.
‘There’s enough firepower to start a small war under the floorboards in the kitchen,’ Tibbs said. ‘But no sign of any grenades. Croatian or anything else. Maybe the search team will dig them out.’
Jackson nodded and stood aside to let Tibbs leave the room.
‘You can talk to Fenn as soon as they’ve stabilised him at the hospital, Max.’
‘That’s going to be too late, Jackson.’
He shrugged.
‘Best I can do, Max,’ he said. ‘You can’t interview a man when he is being crucified.’
I barged past him. The paramedics were giving Fenn oxygen in the living room when I walked out. Edie Wren was waiting down in that fly-blown courtyard, sitting on the sofa that someone had set fire to. She was still wearing her PASGT helmet but she had pushed it on to the back of her head.
There was a can of fizzy drink in her hand. She had found the child’s parents, or at least she had found the one that was still around.