I showed him the little spare room at the far end of the loft and he said that he might have a nap for a bit and I told him that was a good idea.

‘I’m glad to see you, Max,’ he said, and I knew that I would never have a friend like him again.

‘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.