Nobody moved.
We all waited.
‘Raymond?’ I said. ‘Ray? You prefer Ray or Raymond?’
He did not look at me. But I saw something inside him react as I said his name.
‘What’s your full name and rank, Officer?’ I said, my voice harder now.
‘Vann,’ he said. ‘SFO DC Raymond Vann, sir.’
The shots had been a blur of grey body armour, PASGT helmets and firepower. In my mind, they had been an inseparable, indivisible group. Even Jackson Rose, my oldest friend, had looked like just one part of a band of brothers and sisters. It was only now that I saw DS Stone had sought out this one man to make sure he was ready for what was coming.
You OK, Raymond?
But now DC Raymond Vann aimed his assault rifle at the man before him and he seemed totally on his own.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘DC Vann. Raymond. Ray. Don’t do it.’
But he did it.
One single shot.
So loud in the small subterranean room it felt like the last sound I would ever hear. The muzzle blast dazzling in the twilight of the basement as Adnan Khan was thrown backwards, the death wound in his chest already blooming.
Then I was stumbling back up the basement’s short flight of rickety steps and down the corridor piled high with boxes of drones and towards the front door. I bounced off the walls, keeping going, wanting to be far away from that basement. It was light outside now. The day had begun while we were inside the house.
The pain in my ears was so intense that I touched them and looked at my fingertips, expecting blood. But there was nothing there. It felt like there should be blood.
I staggered out of the house and into the dazzling light of the new day. Police tape was already going up at both ends of the street. The helicopter seemed much lower and louder. The second response team was piling out of the back of their van and pouring into the house where everyone was either dead or gone.
And paramedics were putting DS Alice Stone into a Human Remains Pouch. We don’t call them body bags and they are not black, like the movies. This one was white with a long black zip. They had cleaned up her face and it looked like her. The young always look like themselves when they die fifty years too soon. Two paramedics were easing her inside with the tenderness of parents putting a sleeping child to their rest.
I could hear radio chatter and someone sobbing.
Jackson sat dry-eyed in the open doors of the florist van, still holding his weapon. An exhibits officer was meant to take it from him, but it was still too soon and too chaotic for formal procedures to kick in. Right now there was only the numb disbelieving shock that follows action. I sat by his side. He pulled off his PASGT helmet and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Then he gently patted my back. We did not speak.
The Specialist Search Team had arrived and was waiting for the nod to tear the place apart. No grenades, I thought. Not yet. At the far end of the street I could see the CSIs getting into their white Tyvek suits and blue nitrile gloves. The gang’s all here, I thought.
Then a senior uniformed officer stood before Jackson and me, shouting and waving his arms. Jackson looked away and yawned. The officer was silver-haired, fifty-something and his shoulder badge showed the red-and-silver crown of a superintendent.
I stared at his lips. My hearing was still off but I could make out his question. I could understand what he was asking us. And he was asking it again and again and again.
‘What the hell happened here?’
I blinked at him and said nothing.
The image of the muzzle blast in the basement was burned black on the back of my eyes.
And now it would be there for ever.
4
By the time I got to West End Central an hour later, a crowd was gathering in Savile Row.
Under the big blue lamp outside number 27, a young uniformed officer was keeping a watchful eye. There was a sky-blue ribbon on his jacket pinned just above the patch that said METROPOLITAN POLICE. You were seeing these ribbons everywhere, in memory of those who had died when the helicopter came down. In normal times, any adornment to a Met uniform was strictly against all SOP regulations.
But these were not normal times.
The young copper nodded in recognition and stood aside to let me pass.
I turned back to look at the crowd. They were builders from construction sites and office workers passing by. In hard hats or sharp suits, they were mostly young men. The mood was subdued as they talked quietly among themselves, but their number seemed to be growing by the second.
‘What’s this lot want?’ I said to the young uniform.
He nodded to the glass doors of West End Central.
‘They’ve got one of the drone bastards locked up inside, sir.’
I stared at him.
‘But I just watched them die.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s what I heard, sir.’ He hesitated, and then indicated the crowd. ‘And I think they want to remember the forty-five dead,’ he said. ‘They want to mourn, they want to grieve, but they don’t know where to go. Lake Meadows is still a crime scene.’
‘There are forty-four dead,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘They found another one.’ His eyes flooded with tears and I watched him fight to regain control. ‘A little kid. So it’s forty-five now.’
I lightly touched his arm.
‘Are you all right out here on your lonesome?’
He grinned. ‘As long as they stay like this, sir.’
I rode the lift up to the top floor.
Edie Wren was alone in Major Incident Room One.
‘Hey,’ she said, and handed me a triple espresso from Bar Italia before turning back to the big HDTV.
They were showing Borodino Street, filmed from a news channel helicopter. The street was taped off at either end and the lights of the CSIs surrounded the house, brighter than daylight. The white-suited teams were everywhere.
In the left-hand corner of the screen there was another helicopter shot, a view of Lake Meadows that had become horribly familiar over the last seven days, the shopping centre a charred and blackened scar on the face of the shining city, closed to the public but crowded with bulldozers and cranes and white tents, at once a crime scene and a mass grave.
And in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, there was a blacked-out head and shoulders silhouette.
Edie turned to me. ‘They haven’t told her next of kin yet,’ she said. ‘That’s why they’re not showing her face. They must be trying to reach her husband.’ Edie pushed back her tangled mop of red hair and shook her head with disbelief. ‘I met her once. Alice. DS Alice Stone. When I was in uniform. She was a team leader even then. And she shone, Max. She was like the cool kid at school that everyone wants to be friends with. And she was nice. A decent human being and a real high-flyer.’ Edie looked back at the screen. ‘I think her team were all in love with her.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s her.’
I removed the lid from the Bar Italia carton and bolted down a triple espresso. ‘Thanks.’
‘Must be a bit cold by now but it’s the thought that counts,’ Edie said, holding out her arms. ‘Come here.’
She hugged me awkwardly. I hugged her back, equally awkwardly as she accidentally gave me a gentle headbutt, the embrace of colleagues who liked each other but were working out exactly what that might mean. As far as I knew, she was still seeing her married man. As far as I knew, the creep was still promising to leave his wife.
But it still felt good to hold her.
And I was suddenly bone-tired. I closed my eyes and I could have slept in her arms for somewhere between fifteen minutes and a lifetime. Then I felt her let go of me and step back. When I opened my eyes, Edie was watching me and waiting.
‘What happened on Borodino Street?’ she said.