Detective Constable Jerry Pardoe had paused by the front desk of Tooting police station to chat to PC Susan Lawrence when his iPhone rang. It was DS Bristow.
‘Where are you, Pardoe? Have you taken yourself off home yet?’
‘I’m on the verge, sarge.’
‘That’s all right then. I’m going to need you to do a spot of overtime. There’s been a stabbing outside that karate club on Streatham Road, the one over Tesco. There’s two squad cars and an ambulance on the way there now. Mallett can go with you.’
‘Oh, shit. What is it, fatal?’
‘Don’t know yet. Two blokes having a barney over some bird, apparently.’
‘Hope she was worth it. Okay. You can tell Mallett that I’ll meet him out the back, in the car park.’
He turned to PC Lawrence and pulled a face. He had fancied her ever since she had been posted to Tooting, three weeks ago. She had high cheekbones and feline eyes and short-cropped light brown hair, and her white uniform blouse only emphasised her very large breasts. He had said to his friend Tony at the garage that she had the face of a TV weather girl and the figure of a Playboy model. He had been just about to ask her if she fancied a Thai at the Kaosarn restaurant in the High Street when she finished her shift, but now it looked as if he was going to be spending the rest of the evening trying to get some sense out of bloodstained teenagers out of their brains on dizz.
‘Oh well, duty calls,’ he told her. ‘You don’t happen to be free tomorrow night, do you?’
‘Tomorrow? No. It’s my partner’s day off. We’re going ice-skating.’
‘Won’t catch me doing that, I’m afraid. Last time I tried I spent most of the time sliding around on my arse.’
‘I’m not that good either. But my partner – she’s brilliant.’
‘Oh. Been together long, have you, you and your… ah, partner?’
‘Nearly a year now.’
‘Oh. Well, have a good time.’
Jerry went out of the back door of the police station and across the car park to his silver Ford Mondeo. Just my bleeding luck, he thought, as he sat behind the wheel. The tastiest-looking bit of crumpet that’s turned up at Tooting nick ever since I’ve been here and it turns out she’s the L bit of LGBTQ.
DC Bobby Mallett came hurrying out, trying to zip up his windcheater while holding on to a half-eaten cheese-and-tomato roll. He was short and tubby, with prickly black hair and bulging brown eyes and a blob of a nose. Everybody at the station called him ’Edge’og.
He climbed into the passenger seat and twisted around to find his seat belt.
‘I hope you’re not going to be dropping crumbs all over the shop,’ said Jerry, as he started the engine. ‘I just spent a tenner having this motor valeted.’
‘Bloody kids stabbing each other,’ said DC Mallett. ‘What’s that? About the fourth one this week? They don’t get it, do they? All carrying knives and machetes around and threatening each other. They don’t seem to understand that when you’ve snuffed it, that’s it. You don’t wake up the next morning and say, “Cor, that was horrible, that was, being splashed like that.”’
‘That kid yesterday afternoon, that one who was stabbed outside Chicks; he snuffed it last night.’
‘Yes, I heard. What was he? Only about fifteen?’
‘Fifteen last week,’ said Jerry. ‘And the kid who stabbed him’s only seventeen.’ He put on his drill rap voice. ‘“He was trapping round my ends and it was peak. No way man was going to stand for that.”’
‘What a pillock.’
‘It’s your Generation Z, ’Edge,’ said Jerry, as he turned down Links Road toward Streatham. ‘They might be tech savvy, but when it comes to anything else, they don’t know their arse from their elbow.’
It took them less than five minutes to reach the crime scene. Two squad cars were already parked outside Tesco’s supermarket, with their blue lights flashing, and an ambulance was parked outside the Polski Sklep grocery store. A small crowd had gathered, but they were already being held back by police tape. Jerry pulled up behind the ambulance and he and Mallett climbed out. It was a chilly evening, and their breath smoked so that they looked like old-fashioned coppers in a black-and-white 1950s’ crime film.
The victim of the stabbing was lying in the bus shelter outside S. Ayngaran’s Asian and Caribbean food shop, which was only five metres away from the entrance to the karate club. He was a young Asian with a pompadour fade hairstyle and a sharply trimmed beard. He was wearing a white Fresh Ego Kid tracksuit which was drenched in blood, so it looked as if he had been knifed in the stomach and the chest at least eight or nine times, maybe more. His eyes were open, and he was staring sightlessly at the boots of the bulky police constable in a high-vis jacket who was standing over him.
‘Evening all,’ said Jerry. ‘What’s the SP?’
‘Bit of an altercation, apparently,’ said the constable, sniffing and tugging out his notebook. ‘Victim’s name is Attaf Hiraj, twenty-one years old. Suspect’s name is Rusul Goraya, twenty-three. He’s inside, in the changing room. They’re both members of the Kun’iku Karate Club. According to their instructor, there seemed to be bad blood between them this evening. In his own words, they were kicking the living shit out of each other.’
‘I see. Did he have any idea what the beef was about?’
The constable shook his head. ‘He thought it was over some girl that they’d both been going out with, but he couldn’t be sure, because the only thing they were saying to each other was “you’re clapped” and “you’re a wasteman”, apart from a fair amount of effing and blinding.’
‘Forensics on their way?’
‘Should be here in ten minutes or so.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘That lot over there. Five of them altogether. They all saw the suspect stabbing the victim. A couple of them tried to stop him while he was doing it, but he threatened to stab them as well. It was only when he started to leave the scene that one of them ran after him and brought him down with a karate kick in the bollocks. Then the rest of them jumped on top of him and took the blade off of him.’
‘All right, thanks,’ said Jerry. ‘We’ll have a word with them in a minute. First of all, I think we need to have a bit of a chat with our stabber. ’Edge? You coming?’
Mallett was prodding at his iPhone. ‘Oh? What? Sure. Yes. Just telling Margot that I’m going to be late.’
They went in through the door to the karate club and up two steep flights of stairs. Jerry could smell Tiger Balm muscle rub even before they reached the changing room – camphor and menthol – which helped to mask the underlying mustiness of stale sweat.
The changing room was long and narrow, with dank karate kimonos and JD sports bags hanging along both sides. The suspect was sitting at the far end, handcuffed, two uniformed constables standing beside him, their arms folded, looking monumentally bored. When they saw Jerry and Mallett enter the changing room, one of them took hold of the suspect’s elbow and pulled him up onto his feet.
‘Evening, lads,’ said Jerry. He didn’t have to introduce himself. They were both based at Tooting too. ‘This is Mack the Knife, is it? What’s your name, mate?’
The suspect was only about five feet eight inches, but very muscular, with the thick corded neck and bulging biceps of somebody who visits the gym every day. His hair was braided into cornrows, and he wore a large silver hoop in each ear. Jerry thought that he was spectacularly ugly, as if his face were being pressed flat against a window. He was still wearing his white gi, and it was splattered on the left-hand side with a Jackson Pollock action painting of dried blood. His breath smelled fruity and sweet, which told Jerry that he was probably dosed up with lean, a mixture of cough syrup and codeine. Some of the kids drank three or four bottles a week, or more if they could afford it.
‘’E deserve it,’ he said, defiantly cocking his head up.
‘That’s your name, is it, mate? “Eedy Zervit”?’
‘No, bruv. Man’s name is Rusul. I was just sayin’, like, Attaf was askin’ to be shanked.’
‘Rusul what?’ asked Jerry, in his flattest job-interview voice. ‘How old are you, Rusul? And what’s your address?’
‘Rusul Goraya. Man’s twenty-three. Man lives at 79 Sumner House.’
‘On your own or with your parents?’
‘Wiv ’is ’rents, bruv. Man ain’t got no job now. Man can’t afford a gaff of ’is own.’
‘What are you, Gujarati?’
‘That’s right.’
Jerry didn’t have to ask Rusul why – as a Pakistani – he was speaking in slang that was mostly Jamaican. All the kids around London spoke like that. There was even a poster pinned up in the squad room at Tooting with a list of young people’s slang, and it was constantly being updated. Even if Rusul had been ‘making gains’ – building up muscle – he was still ‘butters’ or a ‘two’, meaning that he was ugly – only two out of ten.
‘So you’re admitting that you stabbed Attaf?’
‘Like I say, ’e deserve it. ’E was guilty of murder, so man was only givin’ ’im justice like the court would’ve done, so it’s not that deep. Best believe a court would ’ave only banged ’im up, like.’
‘Attaf killed someone?’
‘’E only murdered ’is kid, didn’t ’e?’
‘Whose kid?’
Rusul was about to speak, but then his mouth tightened and his chest rose and fell as he took several deep breaths. Jerry could see that his defiance was abruptly collapsing, and his expression was changing to one of inconsolable anguish. He clasped his manacled hands together and shook them and tears burst out of his eyes.
‘My kid, bruv! My kid!’
‘Attaf murdered your kid? How? When? Why didn’t you tell the police?’
‘’Cause the pigs would’ve done nothin’, that’s why!’
‘And why not?’
‘’Cause they don’t pull you in for abortions, that’s why! Me and Joya we was goin’ together for nearly a year and then this Attaf shows up and takes ’er off me. But Joya finds out after she and me break up that she’s expectin’ my baby. It ’as to be mine, because she’s six weeks gone and she and Attaf ’ave only been together for a mumf.’
‘So she arranged for a termination, is that it?’
‘Attaf knew this woman doctor in Brockley, and she give Joya the pills. But that’s the same as murder, innit? Like, if you fix it for somebody to kill somebody else, even if you didn’t do it yourself, like, you’re still guilty, innit?’
‘And that was your justification for stabbing Attaf? You considered him to be a murderer, and therefore you thought you’d get away with killing him?’
‘Perhaps you thought you’d even get a medal,’ put in Mallett, ‘or a year’s free happy meals at McDonald’s. I don’t know. You melt.’
Jerry looked at the two uniformed constables and shook his head. Then he said, ‘Rusul Goraya, I’m arresting you for the murder of Attaf Hiraj. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.
‘Take him down the nick, lads.’
*
Jerry and Mallett talked briefly to all the five witnesses, who included Ken the karate instructor, a former SAS officer who had served in Iraq. They all had the same story to tell. Rusul and Attaf had been pacing around each other all evening like angry pumas, trading insults, and when they had fought together, they had been hitting each other so viciously that Ken had pulled them apart and stopped them before one or both of them suffered a serious injury. Then just after Attaf had walked out of the club’s front door, Rusul had come running down the stairs after him with a long kitchen knife, rammed him hard against the side of the bus shelter and started furiously stabbing him in the chest and stomach.
‘And this was all over this girl Joya, so far as you know?’ asked Jerry.
‘That’s right,’ Ken told him. ‘She used to come to the club with Attaf every now and then. Pretty girl, if that’s what you go for. Don’t know what she saw in Rusul, though. He’s built, I’ll give you that, but you know – face like a bag of spanners.’
‘Don’t happen to know where she lives, this Joya? Don’t worry if you don’t. We should be able to get in touch with her through Attaf’s phone.’
‘Or by waterboarding Rusul,’ put in Mallett.
‘I think she lives in Streatham. Not sure where.’
‘Her dad runs a halal grocer’s shop on Streatham High Road,’ said one of the young men who had witnessed Attaf’s stabbing.
‘Well, that narrows it down to the nearest two dozen,’ said Jerry. ‘Thanks.’
They took down the names and contact details of all the witnesses, and by now, the forensic technicians had arrived and were waddling around in their blue Tyvek suits, taking flash photographs of Attaf’s body and the sticky bloodstains on the surrounding pavement. Jerry and Mallett waited around until they had completed their initial examination and Attaf’s body had been lifted onto a stretcher by two paramedics.
Mallett smoked half a cigarette, but then he started coughing so much he had to punch himself repeatedly on the chest, and flicked the rest of it into the gutter.
‘You want to try them e-cigarettes,’ said Jerry.
‘What? And go around smelling like a poof? Leave it out.’
The ambulance drove away. No siren, no lights.
‘Fancy a pint before we go back to the nick?’ asked Jerry.
Mallett stared at him. ‘What are you? Some kind of mind reader?’