‘I just need a bit of background to start with,’ said Emma. ‘You both live here with Mrs Bailey and two younger brothers. Any sisters?’

We planned to ask about all the boys’ families in order to identify any young women. Back at the office, I’d put faces to names and see if any of the gang’s relatives were likely candidates for my woman in black. It took a while, because all the men really wanted to do was complain about police ignorance, and the Paki git who’d shopped them when they’d been nowhere near the effing park. After a bit of prompting, though, we found out that between them the gang had four sisters. I wrote down their names and ages.

‘I understand that young white women in this area receive a lot of unwanted attention from Asian men,’ said Emma, who was sticking to her script perfectly. ‘That they can be seen as easy targets.’

With an impressive number of expletives, Robert Bailey agreed that young white women were often seen as easy pickings by men from Asia and the Middle East.

‘What about Aamir Chowdhury?’ asked Emma. ‘Did any of the women you know mention that he’d made a particular nuisance of himself?’

For the first time, the men seemed less sure of themselves. The Bailey brothers looked at each other. Fisher dropped his eyes to the carpet.

‘Did he bother any of your sisters?’ I asked, unable to keep quiet any longer. All three looked directly at me. Fisher’s eyes narrowed.

‘Never had no hassle like that with him,’ said Robert Bailey, after a moment.

‘He filed several complaints against the five of you,’ said Emma. ‘For bothering him at home and for harassment of Mr Karim. And he was a witness in a shoplifting incident that you were involved in about a year ago.’

‘Fucking fix,’ muttered Fisher.

‘Just a bit of banter, innit?’ said Paul. ‘Never meant nuffink by it.’

According to the reports, the ‘bit of banter’ had included threatening and abusive racial taunts, obscene graffiti on property and broken windows. Aamir’s car tyres had been slashed several times and the paintwork of his car scratched.

But you heard of similar problems all over London. They rarely ended in the extreme violence that Aamir had suffered.

‘We’ve heard a rumour that Aamir was seeing a white girl,’ I said. ‘Possibly even a married woman, and that that was the reason behind the attack. Did you ever hear anything like that?’

Fisher and the younger Bailey stared at me. Robert shook his head.

‘Any of you married?’ I asked, although I knew that none of the five were. ‘What about long-term girlfriends? Might he have been bothering one of them?’

‘I seen you somewhere before?’ asked Fisher, and at my side I saw Emma give a tiny, nervous start.

I looked up and met Fisher’s eyes. They were dark, like his hair. His skin was sallow and his features thin and angular. ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘I don’t live too far away. Very close to the park, actually.’

He nodded and seemed to lose interest.

‘Can you think of any reason why Aamir Chowdhury would have been attacked in the way he was?’ asked Emma. It was the last question we’d planned. We would leave after this.

‘He was a black twat,’ said Fisher. ‘Got what he deserved. But the filth won’t pin it on us. ’Cos we weren’t there.’

We got up to leave, not without handing over cash, and Robert Bailey came with us to the door – more, I think, to make sure we left than out of politeness. Emma went first, I followed, and, approaching from the opposite direction, I saw what had been hidden from view as we had come in. A dark-blue coat, hanging amidst others from hooks on the wall. With a triangular fluorescent patch on the shoulder.

13

‘FLINT, WHAT HAVE you been up to?’

Trouble. When DI Tulloch called me Flint, it meant she was seriously pissed off. I switched my mobile on to hands-free.

I was stuck in traffic on Holland Park Avenue, having dropped Emma off at her Shepherd’s Bush flat a few minutes ago. It’s a glitzy part of London, Holland Park, and if you stare for long enough at its houses, cars and gilded, gift-wrapped shops, you might forget that the presents in the windows are just empty boxes, and that for everyone who can afford to live and shop here, there will be someone else huddled in the cold, for whom Christmas is nothing more than an aching reminder of a broken life.

In the meantime, Tulloch was still waiting for me to tell her how I’d spent the last few hours.

‘It’s my day off, Ma’am,’ I tried. ‘I met a friend for a drink. Just dropped her off.’

‘And, earlier, you hung around Amelia Chowdhury’s school, waiting for her to come out,’ said Tulloch as the traffic lights changed and I pulled forward again. ‘The family have filed a complaint against you.’

‘For what, exactly?’ I asked, as a rather soggy Santa Claus ran out in front of the car and raised his hand to thank me for not turning him into road pizza.

‘For questioning a vulnerable juvenile without the permission of her parents,’ said Tulloch. ‘Of course, had I let slip you were doing it without the authorization of the Met, you really would be in trouble.’

‘Siblings often know more than parents,’ I replied. ‘If Amelia knows something about Aamir that’s important, she’s far more likely to tell us when the parents aren’t around.’

‘Flint, can I remind you that the Chowdhury family are the victims here? The last thing we need right now are accusations flying around that we are not investigating this case properly and that we’re trying to suggest Aamir contributed to his own death.’

‘No disrespect, Ma’am, but the Chowdhury family aren’t the victims,’ I said. ‘Aamir was the victim and you are the last person I’d expect to shy away from questions that need to be asked just because they’re insensitive.’

Tulloch was silent.

‘I apologize,’ I said. ‘That was uncalled for.’

‘No, you’re quite right. Where are you?’

‘Just coming up to Notting Hill Gate.’

‘You can be with me in twenty minutes,’ she said, and gave me an address I recognized. It was the flat where Aamir Chowdhury had lived.

I drove forward a few yards, wondering whether I’d confess about my other unauthorized interview that day. Knowing what I’d done would put Tulloch in a difficult position and for no real gain. OK, Daniel Fisher had seemed to recognize me, but he and I both lived within a mile of each other. True, there’d been a jacket in the hallway just like the one the mysterious man in my street had been wearing, but there were plenty others like it in London. Both facts validated the prime-suspect status of the gang, but neither took us anywhere closer to proving their guilt.

I stopped again outside a chocolate shop festooned with gold Venetian masks. They were rich, gorgeous creations, lavish with feathers, ribbons and diamanté, but each one had eyes that were black and empty. I sat there, waiting for the lights to change, thinking that my woman in black was the exact opposite of these elaborate masks. She was nothing but eyes. And then I remembered the other masks I’d seen recently, the ones worn by Aamir’s killers, and wondered if I’d ever be able to look at a mask again without shuddering.

I fixed my eyes straight ahead on the traffic, the lights, the people scurrying along the pavement, and thought that their pre-Christmas stress was almost visible, hovering above them like warm breath in cold air.

I don’t do Christmas. With no family and little in the way of friends, it’s a bit tricky. If I’m not working, I stock up on DVDs and library books and batten down the hatches. This year, though, I had leave booked. This year I planned to spend the day with someone who by then would be serving a life sentence for multiple murder.