I nodded.
She didn't say anything else, but remained standing where she was, which I took to be a hint that it was time for me to go.
I stood up. Above me the rain continued to batter the skylight, harder now. 'Thanks for all your help,' I said.
She surprised me then by offering me a lift to wherever it was I was staying.
'Forget it,' I answered. 'You've done enough for me today.'
'You can't walk back in this. How far are you from here?'
'Not that far. Up near Paddington.'
'It's still too far to walk. Come on, I'll drive you there.' She didn't sound thrilled at the prospect, but acted as if she was performing some necessary duty. It must have been her breeding.
'You're not worried about them coming back?' I asked.
She shook her head. 'As you said, they wanted to scare me. They've succeeded there, so I'm probably safe for a bit now. Come on, let's go.'
There's no point looking a gift-horse in the mouth, as my mother would have said, so I followed her out of the room, thinking it was a pity she hadn't asked me to stay. We talked a little more about the case on the short drive to the hotel, and Emma seemed a lot calmer as she tried to put the evening's events behind her. She might have been closeted from some of the harsher things that life had to offer, but she was a tough girl underneath. For some reason I couldn't explain, I genuinely did trust her to keep her word and not reveal my true identity. I'm a cynic — made, not born — and throughout my adult life I've tended to see the worst in everyone. It's almost certainly why I've never married or had kids, and it's probably why I ended up circumventing the very law I was meant to have upheld in the first place, and why I graduated to putting bullets into villains in return for financial reward. But even taking all that into account, I still felt safe knowing that Emma knew who I was. In truth, I'd developed a real soft spot for her. Which was why I should have thought of her rather than myself, and not put her straight into the path of danger. But things always look simple with hindsight, don't they?
I got her to drop me off opposite Hyde Park on the Bayswater Road. She'd wanted to take me right to my door, but soft spot or not, I didn't want to give too much away.
'I'll be fine here, honestly,' I said. I got out of the car, thanked her, and said I'd speak to her the next day.
I watched as she pulled away from the kerb and drove off in the direction of Marble Arch, then turned and walked back to my hotel through the rain. And as I walked, something bugged me. Something I'd missed. I racked my brains all the way back, hardly noticing that I was getting soaked to the skin.
It was only when I was halfway up the stairs to my room that I realized what it was.
When I'd been in the cinema questioning Pope with my back to the door, and his face had broken into that irritating and ultimately futile smile just before he'd been shot, both Blondie and his friend had had ample opportunity to shoot me. It wasn't as if they weren't good at finding their target. Not one of their bullets had missed Pope. They could have taken me out if they'd wanted to. And yet they hadn't. They'd let me live, and had only tried to deal with me when I'd chased after them and they'd had no choice.
In the aftermath, that fact had slipped my mind. Now it was back there with a vengeance.
But what did it mean?
What did any of it mean?
I yawned, let myself into my room, and locked the door behind me. Whatever it was it could wait until tomorrow.
24
Jason Khan's brother, Jamie Delly, had never known his dad. I don't suppose his mum had, either. He was eight years old when he'd first been nicked, after making a valiant effort to burn down his primary school. Since the age of criminal responsibility in the UK is ten, he'd been let off with a warning, which when you're a kid like Delly is the same as a letter of encouragement, and over the next six years he'd been arrested on numerous occasions for offences which ranged from the minor, like shoplifting and possession of dope, to the potentially far more serious, like knife point muggings and aggravated burglary. He'd been fourteen when I'd left the force, and even then I hadn't seen him in close to a year. He'd be seventeen now, and doubtless making a mess of his life. Like his three brothers, he was a nasty little bastard, but I felt that he'd also be the easiest to talk to. He was the youngest and the smallest of the Delly boys, and he hadn't been the brightest of sparks either, with nothing like the animal cunning of, say, Jason. Or indeed Bryan or Kyle, the other two. If he knew something, I'd get it out of him. I also thought he'd be the least likely to recognize me. But I put my glasses back on, just in case.
On that Monday morning the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. My head still ached, but a lot less than it had done the previous day, and the lump from Saturday's blow in the cafe had shrunk considerably. I rose at eight o'clock, dressed in fresh clothes and got something to eat from the Italian place round the corner. I took the paper with me and was surprised to see that the shootings in Soho weren't the top story. In fact, they only got a small initial mention in the bottom left-hand corner of the front page, supplanted by another Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem, plus something about GM crops, and I had to turn to page three to get the full report. There was a photo of the street in which I'd gunned down the assassin. It had been sealed off with scene-of-crime tape and a uniformed copper was standing in the background. Aside from that there were a few sentences describing how three men had been shot dead in a gunfight, part of which had taken place in an adult cinema. None of them had so far been formally identified by the police.
And that, pretty much, was it. Twenty years ago, an incident like that would have been front-page news. Now it was just one more shooting. For a country with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, Britain has a remarkably high incidence of gun crime, and it always amazes me that by and large the police remain unarmed.
I'd finished breakfast and was on my way to collect my new business cards when Emma phoned. Our conversation was short and formal, but at least not awkward. Clearly, she was still prepared to work with me in the cold light of day. She gave me Jamie's last known address in Islington, on an estate east of the Essex Road, in the direction of Hoxton. I recognized it as a place I'd visited before on police business, and I told Emma I'd let her know how things went.
'Careful, Dennis,' she told me, and I felt mildly touched at the way she used my first name. No one had called me that for a long time.
'Don't worry about me,' I told her. 'I have a knack for surviving. How about you? You haven't had any more unwanted deliveries?'
'No, everything's fine. They're replacing the window this afternoon.'
'Well, you be careful too. We'll talk later.'
I hung up and looked at my watch. Nine thirty-five a.m. I didn't suppose a lazy no-hoper like Jamie would be out of bed yet, which made it the perfect time to visit. The estate he lived on consisted of a series of L-shaped grey-brick buildings five storeys high, arranged in a loose square, with each one connected to the other by a covered passageway built at the level of the third storey, giving the whole thing the appearance of a giant puzzle. As with most London council estates, there was a map at the entrance to give the visitor some idea how to find his way around. Jamie lived in Block D, which according to the map was on the left-hand side.
A twenty-yard-long tunnel carved out of the block in front of me led into the interior of the estate, and as I walked through it, I wondered what the designers of these places were thinking about when they made their plans. They were a criminal's paradise. Built like fortresses, they could be defended with ease by the local youths against the encroachments of the police during street disturbances, and the profusion of passageways offered all kinds of ambush sites and escape routes for even the slowest and noisiest of muggers.
One night in October 1985, when I was still a probationer in uniform, I'd been sent to a similar estate in Tottenham, along with hundreds of other Metropolitan Police officers, to deal with a bloody riot, during the course of which we were petrol-bombed, shot at, and bombarded with paving slabs by a mob who were able to defend their territory with terrifying effectiveness, thanks to its design. The estate was Broadwater Farm, a byword for infamy in
