‘Yes,’ said Hashim. ‘And his uncle, two brothers and a cousin. His father was the wolf.’

The city started to wake up and still we sat talking, huddled under a duvet in my shed. After seeing the attack on Aamir, Hashim had been living rough, using a stolen burka to move around unrecognized, foraging food wherever he could, knowing that the men of Aamir’s family were still looking for him, that they were watching his mother’s house constantly. He hadn’t dared go back there, as much out of concern for his family’s safety as his own.

As the blackness of the sky started to fade, I broached the subject of Hashim making a statement.

‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he told me.

‘We’ll protect you,’ I said, wondering if we could.

‘You’ll never prove anything,’ he said. ‘Any number of people from the community will give them alibis, stand up for them. You think that man, Shahid Karim, really saw five white men running from the park that night? They will all lie.’

‘What about Aamir’s mother?’ I said. ‘His sisters? Surely—’

‘The last time Aamir saw his mother, she disowned him,’ Hashim said. ‘Even if she and his sisters know, they won’t go against the men. The same thing would happen to them.’

I remembered the atmosphere in the Chowdhury household. The polite hostility, the edginess, the eyes that couldn’t quite meet mine.

‘You’ll never bring charges,’ said Hashim. ‘You’ll have to let them go, and when that happens, they’ll come for me. Or my family.’

Round and round we went, in endless circles. I tried to point out that forensic evidence would convict them, no matter what alibis family members came up with. I told him about the footprint found in my garden just hours earlier. I told him there were places we could hide him, until it was all over.

‘Even if you manage to put one or two of them away,’ he said, ‘these families stretch out for ever. So many cousins. I’ll never be free. Not while they know I’m alive. And what happens when they decide to threaten my sisters? Or my mother?’

‘I get that they’re determined,’ I said. ‘But so are the police. They tried to kill a police officer tonight. Every officer in the Metropolitan Police wants a conviction now. Me more than anyone. They want to kill me as well as you.’

As an attempt at solidarity it failed. ‘They didn’t come here for you,’ he told me. ‘They know better than to attack a copper. They were looking for me. I heard them talking about what you said to Amelia. If they’d bothered to check the shed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

Hashim got to his feet and, on legs that felt stiff and heavy, I did the same. He opened the shed door and stepped out into the cold air of a December morning. The sun was on its way up and somewhere, on the rooftops of London, it would be possible to see the most wonderful sunrise imaginable. I knew that because the last of the night sky shone a rich petrol blue, the light in the east was just starting to turn gold and the heavy clouds above us were the colour of blood.

‘What do you want to do?’ I asked him as we walked the length of my garden.

‘I won’t come back here,’ he told me. ‘They’ll be watching this place. I won’t bring trouble on you again.’

‘Do you have money? A passport?’

‘At home,’ he said. ‘I can’t go there.’

‘Hashim, what will you do?’

He put a hand to his neck, where the nylon rope had burned a thick red welt into his skin, and shrugged. ‘I’ll go to the river,’ he said. ‘No second chances that way.’ He walked to the gate and pulled back the bolt.

I caught up with him. ‘The river?’ I thought of swirling, icy-black, merciless water. He wouldn’t last five minutes if he went into the river in December. ‘Hashim, do you really want to die?’

‘They won’t rest while I’m alive. If they can’t get me they’ll come for my family until I give myself up. I can’t watch someone else that I love die.’

His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, they shone with the misery of a life built on secrets and shame. ‘Thank you, Lacey,’ he said. ‘Assalamu Alaikom.’

He turned from me, would be gone in less than a second. If he went in the river, he would die for sure. It would be over. I took hold of his arm and made him look at me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I told him. ‘But you’re right. There’s no other way. You have to die.’

21

EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT evening was the time we’d agreed upon. Still plenty of folk around, but most would be mushy with Christmas cheer. The chances of our being noticed by the wrong people were slim.

As a nearby church clock struck the hour, I left the flat via the back door and walked to the shed. I was wearing gym clothes; the officers at Scotland Yard watching me on CCTV would think I was going to the shed for exercise, as I’d already informed them I often did.

I closed the door, switched on the light and got my breath. The punchbag had gone. So had the duvet and pillow that Hashim had used. There was no trace of him, other than the black robes hanging from the hook where he’d almost hanged himself, and he wouldn’t be needing those any more. I pulled the burka over my head and let it fall to my feet. It was long on me. The headdress was next. I’d already researched how to wear and tie it.

I hadn’t expected the feeling of claustrophobia that would overwhelm me when my world was reduced to an inch of vision and the suffocating warmth of my own breath, but I’d no time to waste getting used to it. I left the shed, careful to avoid the lines of the camera, and then, much less elegantly than Hashim, I climbed the wall.

On the other side, I let my robes fall into place, pulled the eye-slit straight and set off through the snow. Now I was the woman in black.

I saw the men before they saw me. Two of them in a green saloon car parked close to the corner of the street, huddled in padded jackets, one of them with fluorescent triangles on the shoulder. That one I recognized now as Aamir’s younger brother; the other man I’d never seen before. They watched me make for the main road. I didn’t look their way, but walked as quickly as I could through brown slush and over patches of ice. The car engine started up as I passed them.

The other men watching my flat, those in the unmarked police car, had no interest in the heavily veiled Muslim woman who’d appeared from the back of the row of houses. They stayed where they were.

I crossed the Wandworth Road and saw a bus heading my way. That was the first bit of luck, because I really didn’t want to spend too long hanging about at a bus stop. In the shop window ahead of me I could see the green car waiting to pull out of my road. They’d want to be sure of where I was going before committing themselves. I reached the bus stop. The bus was twenty yards away. It arrived, I stepped on board and saw the green car pull out into the path of oncoming traffic. Horns sounded. Someone yelled out of a car window and the bus pulled away. I didn’t look back.

Two stops later I pressed the bell to get off. Not far now, but this was the tricky bit. On the street again, I moved as fast as I could. They believed themselves to be following a strong and agile young male, they’d expect him to be nimble. I hadn’t far to walk, but along pavements that alternated slush with ice, past tipsy crowds who saw no irony in wishing a Muslim woman a Merry Christmas, and with the ever-growing awareness of the hunters getting closer.

For a hundred yards or so, the traffic kept pace with me. Then it cleared, the saloon drew level and moved ahead. I was yards away from the entrance to Vauxhall Underground Station. The car pulled into the kerb and Aamir’s brother got out of the passenger side. They were expecting me to head down the steps into the station, to try to lose them on the Tube, and one of them was set to follow me on foot.