The post mortem on the victim was carried out. He’d died from suffocation after his soot-blackened airway had swollen and closed. Had the paramedics got to him sooner, they might have been able to insert a tube and keep him breathing. Might. There were third-degree burns over some 70 per cent of his body. At 80 per cent, it’s nearly always fatal.

We heard that Mr Karim, who’d been walking on the far side of the recreation ground and had seen the five men fleeing, had gone into the station and had correctly identified the photographs of the five suspects. The park was still sealed off and being combed by crime-scene officers, as was the wider recreation ground. The sticks I’d described hadn’t turned up. The door-to-door enquiries went on, in the hope that someone other than Mr Karim and I had seen something, or of finding the person who’d reported the attack. The recording of the anonymous voice was listened to many times before the team concluded that the reporter was female and probably Asian. CCTV footage was gathered and watched. Still we waited for the announcement of Tulloch’s latest triumph.

We waited in vain. And all the time there was that nagging voice at the back of my head. Something was wrong. Something even more wrong than a brutal and unprovoked racist attack. There was something I was missing.

4

‘WE COULD TRY hypnosis,’ someone suggested.

‘We cannot go to court relying on a statement acquired under hypnosis,’ snapped Tulloch. ‘Look, I’m as frustrated as anyone, but it really doesn’t look like Lacey has any more to tell us.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

We were at Lewisham police station, where the Major Investigation Teams were based. The frustration around me, almost solid enough to cut through, stemmed from my inability to describe in any useful detail the clothes the five perpetrators had been wearing in the park the previous night. I’d done my best, but other than a general impression of dark casual jackets, hooded sweatshirts and dark trousers, there had been nothing. Normally, I’m very good at noticing and remembering details, but either the five men had deliberately dressed to be as inconspicuous as possible, or I’d been too shocked to take much notice.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. This should not be a difficult case. Suspects had been named and apprehended within an hour of the crime. Witness statements would be fresh and reliable. There would have been no time for alibis to be fabricated. There should barely be enough sterile plastic bags to contain the physical evidence.

The others looked at each other. ‘This doesn’t leave this room,’ warned Tulloch.

‘Of course,’ I agreed.

She threw her hands up into air. ‘We have nothing,’ she said.

‘Bugger all,’ added Anderson, in case Tulloch hadn’t been sufficiently clear.

‘They’re denying being anywhere near the park?’ I said.

‘Naturally,’ said Anderson, ‘but we expected that. What we didn’t expect was that two of them would have pretty solid alibis.’

‘Is that all?’ I asked. Alibis were tricky, but not insurmountable. They often came down to one person’s word. Yes, my brother was at home all evening, we watched television together.

‘No evidence at all,’ said Tulloch. ‘We seized every pair of shoes in every residence, but none match prints left at the scene or show any traces of mud from the park or grass from their supposed run across the field. No smell or trace of petrol on any of the clothes. No petrol found in any of the houses. You stank like a furnace last night, Lacey, no offence. They didn’t.’

‘I thought somebody picked them out of the Identikit photos?’ I said.

‘Yeah, this Karim bloke,’ said Barrett. ‘Trouble is, he knows them all anyway. He’s had run-ins with them before. They hang around his shop, apparently, making a nuisance of themselves. Bit of petty shoplifting. Any defence worth his salt will just claim he picked out five blokes he knew who’d pissed him off.’

I was starting to see their problem. ‘Well, maybe it wasn’t them.’

‘On the other hand, guess who intervened one time when they were threatening Karim?’ Barrett continued. ‘Chowdhury himself, the victim. He had some balls, that guy. Stood up to them, wouldn’t let them leave until the police arrived. There’s no doubt they had a grudge against him.’

I sighed. A cast-iron case that couldn’t be proven. ‘No other witness accounts at all?’

‘Not one,’ said Tulloch. ‘Only the street you live on is close enough to see anything and everyone had their curtains drawn and their TVs turned up.’

‘We did find the masks,’ said Stenning. ‘Just as you described.’

‘Where?’

‘Waste bin at the end of the road where one of them lives.’

‘Well, then …’

‘Smells bad,’ said Anderson. ‘Karim is on record as making no mention of the gang running across the field wearing masks. On the contrary, he talked about five white men, but how would he know they were white if they’d been wearing masks? It means if he did see what he claims he saw, they must have ditched the masks before they reached him.’

‘Or they just took them off,’ I said.

‘So if they all took them off and hung on to them, what are the chances of them all ending up in one bin, at the end of the road where only one of them lives and which three of them do not have to go anywhere near to get home?’

‘Well, not good,’ I admitted. ‘Unless they went to that house first, maybe to agree stories.’

‘There wasn’t a lot of time for that,’ said Tulloch. ‘We picked them up pretty quickly. And how likely is it that they got rid of every other bit of physical evidence, but the masks got dumped in a bin where they should have known we’d find them?’

‘You think the masks were planted there?’ I said. ‘That it’s a set-up?’

No reply.

I shook my head. ‘No, come on, it’s still too soon. You can’t have had the forensic reports back yet. Or the full post-mortem findings. There could be any number of hairs and fibres that weren’t obvious to the naked eye.’

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ said Tulloch. ‘In the meantime, given the mood on the streets, I’m going to have to keep this lot locked up for the maximum time for their own safety.’

I stopped to think about that. An inability on the part of the police to get justice for an aggrieved minority was the time-honoured path towards mass anger and civil unrest.

‘Thank God it’s cold enough outside to freeze a witch’s tits off,’ said Anderson, and we all said a silent Amen. Riots happened in summer, when it was warm enough to hang around on street corners and stir each other up to throwing the first stone. In winter, when the rain came down from the heavens, the mist from the Thames and the wind from the North Sea, even the most aggrieved campaigner for racial justice was more inclined to turn up the radiator than stoke up rebellion.

‘You think we’ve got enough to get the full ninety-six hours?’ asked Mizon. Even in murder cases, suspects could normally only be held for a maximum of thirty-six hours without charge. But the police could apply to the courts for an extension of up to ninety-six hours.

‘If there’s any argument, we just say the two magic words,’ said Tulloch.

‘Those being?’

‘Stephen Lawrence.’

Nods of agreement around the room. We all lived in fear of a repeat of the murder in 1993 that precipitated what is generally considered to be the Met’s darkest hour. Eighteen-year-old student Stephen Lawrence had been on his way home when he was set upon and beaten to death by a gang of white youths. People had known who the white kids were. Names had been given to the Lawrence family, the police, the media, within hours of the teenager’s death. A racially motivated hate crime with tragic consequences, it had seemed an open-and-shut case.