On this warm summer evening Jackson Rose stood at the back of a white van with a few other volunteers and spooned heaps of Phad Thai noodles on paper plates for men and women of all ages, all races, although many of them wore the rags of what had once been military uniforms.

I waited by the side of the white van, declining a nice old posh lady’s offer of a cup of tea and ‘some of Jackson’s wonderful noodles’. He was trying to serve everyone, but new people kept arriving so in the end he handed over to the nice old posh lady and we walked beyond the arches until the noise of the trains receded and conversation was possible.

‘You quit your job at Smithfield,’ I said. It wasn’t a question.

‘This is more fulfilling,’ he said. ‘You still get your rent money, don’t you?’

‘You think I give a toss about rent money?’

He nodded at the men and women waiting in line for his noodles.

‘A lot of them served. Iraq. Afghanistan. And Northern Ireland and the Falklands, some of the older ones.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you visited Bert Page?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because you know exactly what I’m investigating. You know Darren Donovan put Bert in that coma. You know I’m out there looking for whoever topped Darren Donovan.’

Jackson glanced back at the van where the queue for noodles was growing.

‘Ah, the late Darren Donovan. You seem more concerned about this dead junkie than you do about the old man he ruined.’

‘Look – I can understand why you’d be moved by Bert Page.’

He shook his head. ‘Moved? Is that what you think I am, Max? Moved?’

‘Call it what you want. I understand why you would care, OK? What I don’t understand is why you wouldn’t think to tell me.’

‘Why should I? You already look at me sideways.’

‘I don’t mean to look at you sideways, Jackson.’

He laughed. ‘Do you think I’m involved in any of this, Max? These vigilantes – the Hanging Club – you think I’m mixed up in it in some way?’

I remembered the Show History list on my laptop. And I remembered how he single-handedly demolished the men who attacked us on Charterhouse Street. And I remembered what he said.

One in the head and one in the heart.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’re involved. But I think you’re on their side.’

‘Yeah, me and sixty million other people!’

I remembered the wild kid he had been. And I knew that wildness was in him still and that it would be there forever.

‘I don’t want you to get into trouble,’ I said. ‘I care about you, all right? I just don’t know you, Jackson.’

He showed me his famous smile.