They all started shouting again.

There were hands on me, and my hands were shoving them away, and Bob was looking at me with the knife in his hand. He essayed a slashing movement in slow motion.

‘I cut them.’

I stepped forward.

‘You lying piece of shit,’ I said.

I took his wrist in one fist and punched his bicep with the other. The knife fell to the table.

‘Wolfe,’ Whitestone said. ‘Max, please listen to me.’

‘He didn’t kill those men,’ I said. ‘Hugo Buck. Adam Jones. Guy Philips. I’m telling you, he doesn’t know how. It’s not him.’

Then I saw the tears in Whitestone’s eyes.

‘We’re arresting him for the murder of DCI Mallory,’ she said. ‘He bled out on the way to the hospital.’

The duty sergeant was holding me now.

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Whitestone said. ‘The boss didn’t make it.’

MIR-1 was deserted apart from Wren.

She looked up as I walked in.

‘You have to see this, Wolfe.’

I walked to the window and stared down at Savile Row.

I thought of Margaret Mallory and how she had told me that Scout and I were a family when it felt like the entire world wanted to tell us something else, that we were not a real family at all, and the tears came then, blurring the traffic on the street far below and twisting my mouth into a rictus of raw, hopeless grief.

They would have told her by now, I thought; she would know that her husband was never coming home again by now; she would be alone in the small house in Pimlico with her dog and her photographs and her memories and her smashed heart. The knowledge choked up my throat and clawed at my insides and made my useless tears feel as though they were without end.

‘Max?’ Wren said.

I looked out across the rooftops of Savile Row. I wiped my eyes with the palm of my hands. I didn’t turn around.

‘DCI Mallory died,’ I said, and my voice sounded strange to me, as if I was somebody else now. ‘Stab wound in the neck. Dead before they could get him to the hospital.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘He was the kindest man I ever met. And the best copper. But you really need to see this. It’s Bob’s last post online. Before we went in and got him. Are you listening to me?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not listening to you, Edie. I don’t care. Whatever it is, I really don’t care. I don’t want to see it. I don’t care what he said.’

‘You need to, Max. Because the killer is still out there. Because a world full of vicious little creeps is still out there. Will you please look at me?’

Silence.

Then Wren was suddenly by my side, dragging me to her workstation.