At the sight of her, the photographers went into a feeding frenzy. Reporters surged towards the shattered front door.
And then two unmarked Jaguars pulled into Borodino Street, blues and twos turned up to ten, arrowing in to the space in front of the Khan house, taking over. Armed Response Vehicles were suddenly waiting at either end of the street.
Everyone had forgotten about Father Gane. I stared down at him. He was still on his knees with his eyes closed, still praying for the redemption of those who have been separated from God.
Then Flashman of Counter Terrorism Command was easing his big rugby player’s bulk out of one of the unmarked cars and the woman I had last seen outside the holding cells of West End Central got out of the other unmarked Jag.
She still looked like some kind of schoolteacher or academic, totally out of place on that street full of rabid reporters and armed police, all stoked with adrenaline and unsure what would happen next. But she had the calm authority of someone who knew she was in ultimate command.
She nodded to me politely and Flashman grinned.
‘Take the rest of the day off, Wolfe,’ he told me. ‘Buy yourself a frock. We’ve got it from here.’
Azza Khan came out of the house flanked by two female officers. Officers emerged behind her carrying desktop computers and laptops, already tagged and bagged. Azza Khan was eased into the back of one of the unmarked cars and driven away, destination the cells of Paddington Green police station, blues and twos turned all the way up.
I walked up to the woman who was running this show.
‘Mrs Khan is a person of interest to the intelligence services?’ I said.
‘She is now,’ she said.
‘Maybe you should have been watching her from the very start,’ I said. ‘No, don’t tell me – you can’t watch them all, right?’
‘The truth is far worse than that, DC Wolfe,’ the spook said. ‘The truth is that we can’t even watch most of them.’
My phone vibrated as I watched them drive away.
I Will Make You Crawl Soon
And suddenly a single red dot from an assault rifle’s gun scope appeared on my chest.
It hovered by my heart for a long sickening moment and then it was gone. I looked up at the windows of the house across the street. Jackson and Tibbs were no longer there.
‘They blew it for us,’ Whitestone said. ‘CTU and the spooks blew it for us. We might have had Bad Moses tonight.’ She cursed bitterly. ‘And now we have lost him forever,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, turning off my phone. ‘He’ll come again.’
Because I knew that next time he would be coming for me.
34
When there was no more that the vet could do for Stan, and time would heal him or it would not, I carried him back to the loft and made a kind of nest for him in every room of our home out of old, familiar blankets and some favourite well-gnawed toys.
He had one nest in the main area of the loft, and another in the bedroom, and another in the kitchen. A water bowl was placed near every nest, but they remained untouched. Edie and I tried to tempt him with morsels of cheese and chicken but Stan – a true foodie among dogs – was not interested.
He watched me from his bedroom basket as I called Scout for her goodnight poem. I had been putting it off for ages, but tonight I read her ‘The Power of the Dog’ by Rudyard Kipling.
‘There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.’
Silence on the other end of the phone.
‘What do you think old Kipling’s saying there, Scout?’
‘Old Kipling?’
‘Yes.’
She thought about it.
‘Don’t get a dog.’ A pause. ‘Don’t ever get a dog because it hurts too much when …’
She swallowed hard and left the rest of it unsaid.
Stan stared at me from his nest in a corner of the bedroom, bright eyes gleaming in the darkness. He was unmoving, unchanging and he was so unlike the dog we had known and lived with and loved for so long.
‘I think he’s saying the opposite,’ I said. ‘Old Kipling. I think he is saying that the way we feel now – when Stan is sick, when any dog is really sick – is the price we have to pay for all those good times we had with our beautiful boy. And Kipling is wondering if it’s worth it – all the pain you feel – as the price for all the laughs and fun and walks in all kinds of weather. And you know what, Scout? I think that Kipling thinks it is worth it.’
My daughter inhaled, then let it go. It was not quite a sigh. And I could see her face in my mind. A thoughtful, serious little girl, already too familiar with loss.
‘I have to brush my teeth,’ she said, and my heart ached for her. I wanted to put my arms around her and protect her, or to at least tell her that I understood how she felt tonight, but Scout was out of reach now, living in another family, not the one we shared, and living in another home, not my own.
‘Don’t forget the back,’ I said.
‘OK. Here’s Mummy.’
And then there was the customary pause while her mother took the phone but did not speak as she waited for Scout to make her way upstairs. When she came on the line, Anne’s voice was choked with emotion.
‘Did you read my email?’ she said.
‘What email?’
‘This is not a good time, Max. Since Oliver lost his job, it’s been so hard for me. I’ve done my best, I really have. You know I have. Nobody knows how hard it has been for me …’
I found my laptop.
There was an unopened email.
Dear Max,
I am sorry …
It went on for ages. Reams of all the stuff Anne was sorry about. Unbroken paragraphs of regret. She was sorry about everything. Sorry that her husband had lost his job. Sorry that this was a difficult time for Scout to come and live with her. And sorry for herself. That most of all.
I slammed the laptop and the email was gone. I did not need to read every word of it. I got the gist. And I didn’t care about her husband or his job or her.
All I cared about was my daughter.
‘Don’t cry, Anne,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
As I hung up the phone, Edie came into the bedroom wrapped in a towel and still damp from the shower. I pulled her to the bed. The towel slipped to the floor. I placed a kiss on her wet shoulders.
‘What’s happening?’ she said.
‘Scout’s coming home,’ I said.
We wrapped Stan in a blanket and carried him down to Smiths of Smithfield. A kindly Australian waitress put down a plate for him. He did not even sniff it. He sat on Edie’s lap, swathed in his blankets, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
Edie’s hair was still wet from the shower. Her hair was the burnished red that looks as though it has a touch of fire in it but the dampness made it darker. She pushed it back from her high forehead.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You mean your ex-wife has decided she can’t look after Scout?’
‘Anne – my ex-wife – has problems at home,’ I said. ‘Problems with her husband. Problems that have come up after he lost his job. And I was wrong – I thought that nothing bad ever happened on the kind of street where they live. But I guess they can happen anywhere.’
‘And what about us, Max? I’ve always been Scout’s friend. But I’m never going to be her mother, am I? What will we be? You, Scout and me?’