‘Hello, little buddy,’ he said, scratching Stan behind his extravagant ears. Jackson looked at me and saw my face and waited for me to speak.

‘I need your help,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Fine. Have I got time for a shower?’

Not – Is it dangerous?

Not – What’s all this about, Max?

He just wanted to know if he had time for a shower. Just a calm acceptance that I needed him by my side tonight. I smiled to myself. He had never felt more like the closest thing I ever had to a brother. And I had never loved him more.

I looked out of the loft’s huge windows, the last of the summer day’s sunshine streaming in.

We wouldn’t have to make a move until after dark.

‘You’ve time for a shower,’ I told him.

23

It was knocking on for midnight when we drove north.

The traffic was light but there were still plenty of people on the streets, squeezing the last juice out of the hot summer night, rolling home from pubs and bars dressed for the beach. But on the Farringdon Road the postal workers were filing into Mount Pleasant, the Royal Mail sorting centre, for the graveyard shift and the sight of them going to work made it feel as if summer was nearly over. Jackson stared out at them as I told him the story.

‘A boy was blinded,’ I said. ‘Sixteen years old. Somebody put a broken bottle across his eyes. Over nothing. No reason. No witnesses. Nobody arrested. Nobody punished. His name is Justin Whitestone and he’s the son of my boss.’ I swallowed down something hard and bitter. ‘And the doctors have told his mother that he is never going to see again.’

Jackson nodded. ‘Who did it?’ he said quietly.

‘There’s a little mob called the Dog Town Boys,’ I said. ‘They’re on the estates between King’s Cross and Upper Street. The closest thing they’ve got to a leader is this Trey N’Dou. A reliable witness pointed a finger at him before she was frightened off.’

Jackson looked at me.

‘And you want to even the score?’

I shook my head.

‘I just want this Trey gone. I want him out of town. He’s never going to go down – all the people who saw him blind that boy are too scared to talk. So what I want is to make him go away so that my friend never has to look at his ugly grinning face when she is out with her son.’

‘And what do I do?’

‘You watch my back.’

We were driving past King’s Cross station. I turned onto the Pentonville Road. Ahead and above us we could see night lights of the Angel.

‘I can do that,’ Jackson said.

We were in a car park off the Liverpool Road.