‘It was not my time for jannah,’ he said.
‘Jannah is paradise, right?’ I said.
He said nothing, unimpressed by my sketchy knowledge of Arabic. ‘London cops know fifty words in fifty languages,’ I said, smiling at him.
No response.
‘Mr Din, we are going to give you an Osman Warning,’ I said. ‘It’s an official warning that we believe your life is in mortal danger and we are offering you police protection.’
His thin-lipped mouth twisted into a smile.
‘Do you think I need the protection of unbelievers?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And we’ll talk again.’
We closed our notebooks.
Abu Din went off to address the followers who were gathering in the street. Edie and I went to the window and watched. It was the kind of shabby suburban street that looks grey and tired even in the middle of a blazing summer. But there was no mistaking the buzz of excitement that ran through it when Abu Din began to speak in Urdu.
‘Why didn’t they just do him straight away?’ I said.
‘Maybe their kill site was being used for a yoga class,’ Edie said. ‘Do you believe he didn’t see or hear anything, Max?’
I nodded. ‘If they knew enough to cover their registration plates, and if they knew enough to burn all forensics in the van, then they knew enough not to make all the usual dumb mistakes – like calling each other by their names or showing their faces in the presence of their victim.’
We walked out into the street.
Beyond the heads of the crowd of men listening to Abu Din – and they were all men – I could see the uniformed black cop who had been minding the street when the transit van bowled up. Beyond him, the young man in the wheelchair was back with the young woman who accompanied him. They still had their placard and the young man in the wheelchair held it up as Abu Din slipped from Urdu into English.
‘In the mighty fire much was revealed to me,’ he declared. ‘It was revealed that the black flag of Islam will fly above Buckingham Palace and it will also fly above Downing Street.’
‘Don’t hold your fucking breath,’ Edie said.
Skirting the crowd, we walked to the end of the street and introduced ourselves to the uniformed cop. Our people were still here, but not in great numbers and holding back. The SIO – DCI Whitestone, back where she belonged – the CSIs and the search teams had all been and gone on this grey street and now they were up at the London Gateway services on the M1, rummaging around the derelict container where Abu Din had been imprisoned.
We showed our warrant cards to the uniform. Up close he was far bigger than he had looked on CCTV and much younger. He couldn’t have been long out of Hendon. Rocastle, it said on his name tag. He was embarrassed he hadn’t done better when the transit van came barrelling down the road.
‘You did the right thing,’ I said. ‘You got out of the way. They wouldn’t have stopped for you or anyone else.’
‘Did you see their faces?’ Edie said. ‘Hear anything when they got out of the van?’
‘They had those masks on when I clocked them,’ he said. ‘The Albert Pierrepoint masks. There was a lot of screaming and hollering when they were getting Abu Din into the van, but I couldn’t tell who was shouting.’
‘If you catch them,’ said a woman’s voice, ‘give them a medal.’
She was standing behind the young man in a wheelchair. For the first time I saw that he was wearing what looked like the remains of a uniform. Green army-issue T-shirt, DPM desert camouflage trousers that hung loosely on prosthetic legs fitted into Asics trainers so unused they could have just come out of the box. As they looked at my warrant card I saw they shared the same brown-eyed, black-haired good looks and the kind of skin that tans easily.
‘DC Wolfe,’ I said. ‘But who are you?’
The woman laughed. At first I had thought they could be twins, but now she seemed to be a few years older than the young man in the wheelchair.
‘You people are unbelievable,’ she said, her mouth tight with bitterness. ‘Mr Din down there is talking about flying his flag over Downing Street and you really want to see our ID?’
Quite a few reporters and photographers were hanging around, most of them at Abu Din’s end of the street. But a couple of them stirred at the sound of the woman’s voice raised in amused disbelief. I gave Edie the nod and she headed them off before they could come our way.
‘This was a crime scene, ma’am,’ I told the woman. And then I waited. She gave me a driving licence.
Piper Maldini, twenty-nine years old.
‘I haven’t got anything,’ the man in the wheelchair said, panic in his voice. Piper Maldini soothed him with a touch of his shoulder. She fished an NHS card out of his rucksack. Philip Maldini, twenty-six.
‘She’s my sister,’ he said.
I gave them back the driving licence and the NHS card. Piper’s hand was still lightly resting on her brother’s shoulder.
‘You’re here every day?’ I said, as gently as I could.
Piper Maldini still took offence. ‘Is that a crime, too?’
I shook my head.
‘Was it the Hanging Club?’ Philip Maldini said, excitedly. He had none of the thin-skinned aggression of his sister. ‘Is that who took him?’
I could give them a bunch of flannel or I could tell them the truth.
‘We’re working on that assumption, although we haven’t ruled out that it could be a group of self-starters.’
‘And he got away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Better luck next time,’ Piper said.
‘Why do you come down here?’ I asked them.
‘To confront the people who would dance on our graves,’ Piper Maldini said. ‘Why do you come down here, Detective? To protect the likes of Abu Din?’
‘I’m just doing my job.’
‘Isn’t that what the guards said at the Nazi concentration camps?’
I stared at her. ‘I don’t think of myself as a concentration camp guard,’ I said. ‘Ma’am.’
‘What would happen to me if I spewed the kind of filth that comes out of his mouth?’ she said, gesturing to the man in robes droning away at the end of the street. ‘If I preached hatred, and if I mocked boys who died for their country, and if I saw gays and women and Jews as less than human – what would you do to me, Detective?’
I leaned forward to look at the young man in the wheelchair.
‘Thank you for your service,’ I said.
I began to walk away. I didn’t want to argue with her and I didn’t want to arrest them. And I was afraid if I stuck around much longer I would have to do both.
Piper Maldini shouted at my back. ‘Detective!’
I turned to look at her. She was gripping the side of her brother’s wheelchair with one hand and with the other she was pulling up the sleeve of her T-shirt to show me the tattoo on her bicep. I had seen the tattoo before. It was a British Army tattoo. Five red and black poppies under six words.
ALL GAVE SOME – SOME GAVE ALL
‘My brother wasn’t the only one who served,’ she said.
22
I awoke near the end of the night, at that moment when deep, restorative sleep enters the dreaming shallows.
The first rays of sunrise were filling the big windows of the loft with a milky light. I heard Stan sigh and settle by my side and I reached out to stroke him, reassuring him it wasn’t time to get up yet.
But my phone was vibrating. It was DCI Whitestone.
Press conference –
West End Central –
0800 sharp.
I looked at the clock by the side of the bed. 04.45. I lay back with a sigh, my hand on fur that was smoother than silk. Stan’s huge round eyes were watching me in the half-light.