He was pathetically passive as he was helped up onto the kitchen stool. He meekly inclined his head as the noose was placed around his neck. The only sign of his abject terror was the way he could not stop shaking.

And then there was a noise.

A single sound just before they kicked the stool away.

I looked at Tara Jones. And I saw the screen before her, with the sudden spike at that single sound.

‘What was that, Pat?’ I said. ‘A name? Did somebody say a name?’

Whitestone gave no sign she had heard me.

I looked at Tara Jones.

‘I don’t know,’ the voice analyst said. ‘But I can work with it.’

And then they hanged him.

‘Dear God,’ Dr Joe said, and he turned his face away.

But the rest of us in MIR-1 watched as the stool flew away and Darren Donovan’s legs kicked out at eternity, his tongue lolling, his eyes bulging in his head and the dark stain spreading on the crotch of his ragged jeans.

And when the life had been strangled out of him, the camera cut away to the smiling face of a young soldier who was off to storm the beaches of Normandy.

I looked at Whitestone as she stared at the screen, her face a mask of indifference, watching it all with a terrible calm, as if some people deserve to die.

13

Mrs Murphy was dozing on the sofa with Stan on her lap when I got home.

Our loft was silent because Mrs Murphy always watched TV with the sound turned down when Scout was sleeping. As I kicked off my shoes and padded to Scout’s room, Stan half-opened his eyes, yawned widely and snuggled back down.

It was another night when the heat would not quit and Scout had kicked off the single sheet that covered her. She stirred as I pulled it back up.

‘Daddy?’

‘Sleep now, angel, it’s late.’

‘But Jackson went to work.’

‘They have to work at night in the market.’

‘Mmm.’

She buried her sleepy face in the pillow and it made me smile.

‘You enjoying your summer holiday?’

‘It lasts forever.’

I laughed.

‘It feels that way when you’re little. The bigger you get, the faster the time goes. Sleep now, angel.’

‘And you too.’

‘I will.’

But after Mrs Murphy had gone home, I sat in the window, looking at the blaze of Smithfield meat market. Dozens of white-coated porters were unloading vans and trucks, but I couldn’t see Jackson.

At midnight the five-ton clock bell of St Paul’s Cathedral – Great Tom, they call it – struck the hour and I called Edie. SO15 had sent a dozen surveillance officers to Marble Arch.

‘I can’t see the others,’ Edie said. ‘But then I guess that’s the point.’ I could feel her frustration. ‘Do you really think they’re going to leave a third body here, Max?’