‘Do you have to help them, Daddy?’ Scout said.
We were having a late breakfast in Smiths of Smithfield, sitting in one of the window seats, Scout focusing on her drawing while I let my porridge get cold as I watched the action across the street.
Smithfield meat market was the scene of a murder investigation.
The mortuary van had come and gone before first light but now the gang was all here. Where there were usually giant freezer trucks and white vans there were a dozen Rapid Response Vehicles, a couple of Specialist Search Team vans and the unmarked cars of detectives from Homicide and Serious Crime Command.
White-suited SOCOs wearing blue latex gloves moved in and out of the tent that had been erected in front of the main entrance. Uniformed officers stamped their feet to keep warm as they patrolled the taped DO NOT CROSS perimeter that ran right down the middle of Charterhouse Street, up Grand Avenue, round Smithfield Long Lane at the back and looped down East Poultry. It had stopped snowing before dawn and Boxing Day was bright and cold, the memory of that unbroken white blanket in the early hours already fading like a dream.
And at the heart of it all were four detectives – a Murder Investigation Team out of New Scotland Yard. One of them, a young DI, had interviewed me before I rushed up the stairs to our loft to find that Scout and Stan had slept through it all.
I could feel my blood boiling that this had happened outside our home.
‘Daddy?’
‘Sorry, angel,’ I said. ‘I think they might need my help.’
I admired Scout’s drawing of a German Shepherd. On either side of the taped perimeter there were handler teams from the DSU – Dog Support Unit – and my daughter had drawn one of their beautiful dogs.
The nice Australian waitress brought me another triple espresso. There was a brand new red bicycle propped up against the window and the waitress nodded at it.
‘Is that what Father Christmas brought you?’ she asked Scout.
A brief shake of the head. ‘No, my daddy bought it online.’
‘And do you like riding it?’
‘I like looking at it.’
Scout and I smiled at each other. To both of us her new bike – Red Arrow – seemed like a giant leap forward from the little blue kids’ bike she had wobbled about on for the last few years.
‘And what did you buy your daddy?’ the waitress asked.
‘I bought him Nighthawks by Edward Hopper,’ Scout said. ‘That’s his favourite painting.’
‘Wow,’ said the nice Australian waitress, dead impressed.
A large man with a mop of white-blond hair emerged from the SOCO tent wearing plastic baggies on his shoes, latex gloves on his hands, and a white face mask. He pulled the mask up on his forehead and conferred with the DI who had interviewed me. Then he started across Charterhouse Street towards Smiths. When one of the uniformed officers lifted the tape for him to pass under, I knew he had to be the Senior Investigating Officer. This was his investigation. He came into the cafe and made straight for our table. Stan stirred at Scout’s feet.
‘Hello, young lady,’ the detective said to Scout. ‘Is this your dog?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Doesn’t he have lovely big eyes?’
‘Bulbous eyes are a typical feature of the breed,’ Scout told him, standing up. ‘Toilet,’ she told me.
‘Are you all right with that lock?’ I said.
‘It’s an easy lock,’ she reassured me, and headed upstairs.
‘DC Wolfe?’ the detective said. ‘DCI Flashman of New Scotland Yard.’
‘Sir,’ I said, standing up to shake his hand and then having to wait until he took off the blue latex gloves he was still wearing. He took his time. He was young for an SIO, early thirties, with the lazy cockiness that came with men who are both very large and very fit.
‘You should have waited, Wolfe,’ he told me. ‘If you’d have waited for back-up, we would have nicked them.’
‘I’ve thought about that a lot, sir,’ I said. ‘But a man’s life was in danger.’
DCI Flashman was unimpressed. ‘And you were never going to save him,’ he said. ‘I read your statement, Wolfe. It’s a bit thin.’
‘A bit thin, sir?’
‘You can’t identify the men who took the victim from the van.’
‘They were wearing ski masks.’
‘And you can’t identify the man you claim was impersonating a police officer.’
I took a breath.
‘I’m not claiming it,’ I said. ‘Sir. That’s what happened. He had the kit on – or enough of it to fool me in the split second I looked at him. Apart from the truncheon. It was like some old wooden Victorian number rather than a modern baton.’
DCI Flashman sighed. A big man sighing with immense disappointment. It felt like it lasted quite a while.
‘And that didn’t give you a clue that he might be less than the real thing?’
‘It did. But I didn’t have much time for reflection before he smacked me.’
‘How’s the head?’
‘No stitches. No black stars.’
‘You cocked it up for us, Wolfe.’
‘I called it in, sir. Then I tried to stop a murder. They were going to run the vic through that mincing machine. They were going to disappear him.’
He shook his head.
‘You want another Queen’s Police Medal for that?’ he said, and nodded at my look of surprise. ‘Yes, I know who you are, Wolfe. I know you’re not the local Neighbourhood Watch. I know you’re part of the MIT from West End Central who took down Bob the Butcher. You lost your skipper, right?’
I nodded. ‘DCI Mallory,’ I said, hearing my voice shake with a grief that was still raw.
But I didn’t want to talk about any of that.
‘Did you run the plates, sir?’ I said.
‘A stolen rental,’ he said, dismissing it. ‘Found it burned out in White City.’
‘What about the victim? Did you ID him yet? Dental records? Prints?’
‘I don’t have to ID the victim, because I recognise him.’ DCI Flashman raised his eyebrows, almost smiling. ‘Didn’t you, Detective Wolfe?’
I shook my head.
‘That was Lenny Lane,’ said DCI Flashman. ‘White male. Forty years old. Or he would have been in January if someone hadn’t cut his head off.’
‘Lenny Lane…’
‘Drug dealer. Big time. Ecstasy, mostly. That’s what his business was built on. MDMA. X. Whatever you want to call it. Methylenedioxy-methamphetamine. Ebeneezer Goode and all that. XTC. Coke more recently, before he did five years in Belmarsh for distribution. But he only diversified into cocaine when his core business started going wrong. The Lenny Lane empire started with an E.’
‘The Man Who Made Ibiza Dance,’ I remembered.
‘That’s him,’ Flashman said. ‘The Man Who Made Ibiza Dance. Which makes him sound like a DJ. But Lenny Lane effectively invented the drug industry in this country. Started out dealing from a toilet in a pub called Faces on the Goldhawk Road. Ended up buying the place. More than anyone, dead or alive, Lenny Lane turned recreational drugs into big business. Before Lenny it was just students, musicians and middle-class bohemians who took drugs. And after Lenny Lane, it was everybody.’
‘Who wanted him dead?’ I asked.
DCI Flashman shrugged. ‘Some other little scumbag drug dealer, is my guess.’
‘This looks like a gangland hit to you?’
‘Why not?’
‘The weapon. The MO. The fact that there were at least three of them and they had planned to turn him into sausage meat. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look like a gangland hit. Where’s the body gone? The Iain West Forensic Suite?’
DCI Flashman narrowed his blue eyes. He had seemed deeply irritated with me from the moment we met. But for the first time he seemed angry.
‘What? You upset because you got a little knock on the head?’ he said. ‘It’s Boxing Day. Go home. Have a mince pie. Get out the Wii. This is not your investigation, detective.’
Scout was returning from the toilet. Stan got up to meet her, padding across the floor of Smiths of Smithfield, his feathery tail wagging at the sight of her.
‘It’s not my investigation, sir,’ I said. ‘But it’s my neighbourhood.’