‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Do you need anything?’
He smiled shyly and I cursed my stupidity.
Jackson needed everything.
When I came back with clean clothes, towels and toothbrush, he was standing by the window, staring down at the meat market. He had pulled off his boots, socks and T-shirt, and I saw that his entire torso – his back, his chest, and his shoulders – was one mass of scar tissue. The skin looked as though it had been torn off and then carelessly pulled back together. It was livid, corrugated, discoloured, and it made my throat constrict with shock.
‘What happened?’ I said, echoing his question to me.
‘I served my country,’ smiled Jackson Rose.
5
‘So that’s the plan?’ said Edie Wren early the next morning. ‘We work our way through the list of everyone who hated Mahmud Irani because of his conviction for grooming? That’s our MLOE?’
Major Line of Enquiry.
I nodded. She whistled.
‘Long list,’ she said.
‘Then we better get started,’ I said.
I had parked the BMW X5 in a courtyard of a low-rise block of flats on the hill that slowly rises from King’s Cross all the way to the Angel. We were in Islington, but this was not the Islington of cool cafés and million-pound studio flats. This was the other Islington, where the council houses stretched as far as the eye could see. Even this early in the day, the heat was building.
‘We run the TIE process on everyone who had good cause to hate the victim,’ I said.
Trace, Interview and Eliminate.
‘We’re doing this in the absence of the kill site,’ I said. ‘And in the absence of any other suspects, clues or leads.’ I looked up at the bleak block of flats. ‘Sofi Wilder was eleven years old when she met Mahmud Irani.’
‘Jesus,’ Edie murmured.
‘Now she’s eighteen. Sofi was one of the gang’s first victims, and has had a lot of physical and mental problems. Apparently she doesn’t leave her home.’
‘Why are we looking at this poor kid? Max, this is a total waste of time.’
‘Not Sofi,’ I said. ‘We’re looking at her father – Barry Wilder. Threats were made in the courtroom on the day of sentencing.’ I read from my notes: ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to hunt you down and fucking kill you. And there’s something else. The dad – this Barry Wilder – he’s been away.’
‘What for?’
‘Assault. Football violence. Twenty years ago.’
Edie looked doubtful.
‘Lynching a man is a bit different from giving the away supporters a good hiding,’ she said.
I shrugged.
‘Look what they did to his daughter,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
We got out of the car and found the flat.
Barry Wilder opened the door. He had a shaved head and a short-sleeved Ben Sherman shirt with fading tattoos on arms that had been built up by manual work rather than a gym. THE JAM, said one tattoo. MADNESS said another. He was a forty-something skinhead but he looked as though life had kicked all the aggression out of him. He glanced at our warrant cards but seemed too shy to make eye contact.
‘Mr Wilder? I’m DC Wolfe and this is DC Wren. We would like to ask you some questions about Mahmud Irani.’
He nodded. ‘All right. You don’t need to talk to our Sofi, do you?’
‘It’s you we’re interested in,’ Edie said, and he seemed relieved.
He let us into the flat.
A large, heavy-set blonde was sitting by the window, furiously smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out into the warm summer day. Unfiltered Camels. Her mouth flexed with loathing at the sight of us.
Jean Wilder. Sofi’s mother.
‘Ma’am,’ I said, and my greeting was ignored, and she continued to smoke her cigarette as though she hated it.
Edie and I sat on the sofa, Barry Wilder in the armchair opposite us. I got a closer look at the body art on those thick arms. There were some ancient football tattoos, as faded as Egyptian runes. You couldn’t even tell if he was Tottenham or Arsenal.
‘You’re aware that Mahmud Irani has been murdered?’ I said.
I heard a door open, glimpsed the face of a young woman, frightened and pale, and watched the door silently close.
Sofi.
‘Mr Wilder, I hope you understand that we have to talk to you because of the relationship between Mahmud Irani and your daughter.’
The woman at the window exhaled.
‘They didn’t have a relationship,’ Mrs Wilder said quietly. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘What do you think? They were boyfriend and girlfriend? Relationship! Why don’t you ever do your job? It’s not much to expect, is it?’
‘Ma’am,’ Edie said. ‘Please.’
‘You’re in my home,’ Mrs Wilder said, totally calm. ‘And you’re talking about my daughter.’
Edie looked at me and let it go.
‘I need to ask you about threats that you made on Mahmud Irani’s life,’ I said to the father.
Mrs Wilder stubbed out her cigarette with something like fury. But the big man in front of us nodded mildly, his hands rubbing together as if he was washing them.
I tried to make my voice as neutral as possible.
‘This is what you were heard to say in court, OK?’
‘OK.’
I read from my notes. ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to hunt you down and fucking kill you.’ I looked at the man. ‘Did you make those threats?’
‘Yes.’
Mrs Wilder came across the room. She had tried to cover the smell of cigarettes with smells that I knew – Jimmy Choo and Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked me.
‘This is not about me, ma’am.’
‘Why are you scared to tell me the truth?’
‘I have a daughter,’ I said.
‘How old?’
‘She’s five.’
‘She’ll grow up,’ Jean Wilder said. ‘They always do. You can’t imagine it now but she’ll grow up so fast that it will make your head spin. And you should get down on your knees and pray to God that she – your daughter, who I am sure you love like you love nothing else in this world – never has a man like Mahmud Irani and his friends catch her scent. Because what we have been through in this family is worse than hell and it is worse than death and it could happen to anyone with a daughter in this country today. And the people who are meant to protect children? The policemen and the social workers and all the professional do-gooders? They look the other way when children are tortured and raped.’ A breath escaped her mouth, and she shook her head in wonder. ‘They look the other way.’
‘I do appreciate how much you’ve suffered,’ I said. ‘But this is a murder investigation and we are obliged to make enquiries.’
I turned to her husband.
‘Did you have any contact with Mahmud Irani after he was sentenced?’ I said.
But Jean Wilder spoke for him.
‘Barry didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘When was it? He was here. He’s here every night. We all are. The three of us. Where would we go? Why would we want the neighbours and people we don’t even know staring at us – pointing at us – looking at Sofi as if she was less than human. Yes, my husband said those things. Screamed those things at the top of his voice. No doubt he meant it at the time. Because when they were in the dock, they were laughing at us. Those stinking Paki bastards who wrecked our lives.’
‘Please,’ I said.
But she would not let it go.
‘You say you have a daughter,’ she said, as if there was the possibility that I might be lying. ‘What would you say if they treated your daughter like a sex toy and then they laughed at you?’
She was very close to me now. I could smell the unfiltered Camels and the Jimmy Choo and the Juicy Fruit.
‘I’ve had no contact with the man,’ Barry Wilder said quietly. No doubt he had been a violent youth when he was running riot at the football, but I could see no violence in the man now, only a bottomless sadness, and a grief that was never-ending.