‘On the night in question we drove in a stolen Mazda to Bexley, and transferred into a stolen Volvo for the trip to Ronald Grafton’s hideaway. We had to wait until he was released after his trial, which we knew he’d win. It was supposed to be a beating and a robbery, because we knew Ron had some rainy-day money stashed. And we were going to drop a piece of jewellery that would make Grafton suspect Ramirez. We went in the back way, through the kitchen. Just sneaked in, three guys in black. I had a knife, Mick had a handgun, and Dave carried a shotgun. We heard voices and laughter. I think they were a little bit drunk. In the living room, there they were: Grafton, and two other people I didn’t know. We knew you were upstairs, Liz, when we heard you shout down. Everyone was drinking and talking. Grafton was standing in front of the sofa, while the other two sat there. Laughing and having a great time when we burst in…’

Brad was giving up their secrets for the world on the video that had made its way onto YouTube after some bobby had leaked it from the station. It was the very last thing Mick had expected in a wild week of newspaper headlines. He could hardly believe what his eyes were seeing. But amid the shock… joy. He hadn’t thought much about the events prior to Grafton’s death, but Brad’s words sent his mind sailing back.

He had led the way into the hideaway cottage, handgun pointing ahead. They’d stopped at the living room doorway, listening. Grafton had been centre stage, talking some horseshit or other, and his wife had shouted down. Something Mick couldn’t remember, but it had made Grafton groan with embarrassment and the others laugh. That was when Mick had made his move. It was the height of their fun, as laughter echoed. Fast into the living room, behind pointing guns and bellowing voices, for maximum shock – that had been the plan. But he saw a sweeter vision float behind his eyes.

He slipped in, quiet as a mouse, and managed to get right up behind Grafton before his guests even noticed. He jabbed the barrel of the pistol against the back of his neck and actually sighed. A beautiful moment, long, long awaited.

‘You forgot our party invites, arsehole,’ he said.

The unknown man and woman started moaning, but Dave cocked his shotgun and ended all that. Grafton, hands up, didn’t even try to turn around.

‘Brad, get his wife,’ Mick said.

Brad scuttled past and through a doorway and up the stairs.

Grafton turned. His hands were up but his eyes held no fear, even after they recognised Dave and Mick. In fact, the man had relaxed somewhat, as if he thought he was going to be okay because this was a cop holding a gun on him, not a rival. Cops had to toe a line. Another trial he could walk away from.

He jabbed Grafton in the chin with the gun barrel, knocking him onto the sofa. ‘Take a seat.’

All three captives were in a line on the sofa, two of them terrified, but one of them smiling. Especially when Mick took off his mask. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Grafton announced, ‘meet Detective Chief Inspector Michael McDevitt, Metropolitan Police, on his last night as an employed man.’

He was grinning like a man who thought he was in control. Dave was looking nervous: out of the corner of his eye Mick could see the shotgun barrel shivering. Mick had unmasked himself, and there was a chance Grafton could work out who his accomplices were. The comeback would be swift, deadly.

Except it wouldn’t. Mick had removed his mask in order to give himself that extra push. Now that Grafton knew who he was, this could no longer be just a scare move. Mick had planned it that way all along.

Nobody moved for a second or two. A frozen scene, neither side wanting to make the next move. Then there was a crash from upstairs, and a shout – ‘NO YOU DON’T, YOU BITCH!’ – and Grafton tried to stand. Mick pushed him back down with a hand. And then the woman leaned forward, and Mick shifted his aim and fired. Just like that. She sat back nice and neat after that.

Dave grabbed Mick’s arm, shouted something like ‘STOP’, and Mick staggered back. That was the cue for Grafton to shift. Not to do what you might expect of a violent career criminal and fight his attacker, and not to do the doting husband thing and try to help his wife. No, Grafton’s purpose and concern was all Ronald Grafton. He was up and running, and the other guy was right behind him, both headed for the back door.

Mick grabbed the shotgun from Dave and followed, fast, calling back: ‘Find Brad, kill the wife.’ At the living room door, he lifted the shotgun and aimed. The hallway was narrow, and Grafton and the other guy were belting along single file.

He pulled the trigger, still running.

Seconds later he was past the dead body on the floor and through the hallway where he stopped at the kitchen door. Grafton had slipped while trying to turn and now he got up slowly, facing Mick, eyeing the shotgun. The back door was to his left, but he backed off, hands up, until he nudged a wine rack on the wall. Mick stopped just feet away. Grafton’s eyes told it all: he knew he wasn’t walking away from this.

‘I have money,’ he pleaded. ‘Here. All yours. And I forget about tonight.’

Raising the shotgun to Grafton’s face, Mick smiled.

And now, he smiled again as he remembered his final words to his long-time enemy. Good memories. In front of him, on the old coffee table in this grimy flat where he was hiding from the world, was a collection of newspapers he had picked out of bins last night. The story was in every single one. He’d heard it told a dozen ways already, but he was still eager to find out what some of the people connected to him had to say. His good old dad had defended him:

Brad’s partner had done the same for his lover:

But that was because they had been blind to the truth. No so with Dave’s wife. Mick hadn’t realised that Dave had told his wife everything. Her outlook had made for surprising reading:

She had incriminated herself with this talk, and who knows what she faced now. She was just a regular woman, not part of the criminal underworld, not bound by their code of ethics, the them and us attitude to law enforcement. Nikos Avramidis, though, was a criminal who should have known better, but when journalists started offering cash for scoops, he oozed out from under a rock with his mouth far from nailed shut. The reporters had quickly offered him up to his hunters, but not before they got something juicy and damning:

And now the story was everywhere. Not much ink for Brad because he was a former underworld enforcer, and guys like that did things like this all the time, so nothing new there. But the newspapers had gone to town on Michael McDevitt, Scotland Yard DCI, believed to be responsible for numerous deaths, and assumed to have fled the country. His life and crimes were offered to the world beneath eye-catching headlines, from ‘DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE’, to ‘ROGUE COP ON KILLING SPREE’ and ‘OFFICER OF DEATH LOOSE ON STREETS’. Every little threat he’d ever made to another officer or a criminal painted him as evil incarnate. Ramirez, now back on the streets, had been quoted heavily. All of his previous investigations were going under the microscope in a search for injustice.

Thinking about Gondal made his lip tremble. He wished he’d let the man live. Gondal had been a good man, a man dedicated to crime fighting, just like he’d been. He should have respected that common bond. However, it wasn’t the fact that Gondal was dead that irked him. He could have tied him up to get him out of the way for a couple of hours – that he hadn’t thought of doing such, that he’d acted rashly… it was his own fuzzy thinking that upset him. He was supposed to be better than that.

Strangely, there was no mention of the two goons that he’d sent Brad off with, which meant they were either dead and buried, or alive and keeping silent. He was betting they were gone for ever.

He’d expected people in his orbit to tell the journalists all sorts of daftness, of course. What he hadn’t counted on was how many people from his past would jump on the bandwagon. Someone from his school had called a paper to talk about ‘Killer Cop’s Evil Streak’, without, of course, mentioning that all he’d ever done was flushed his head down a toilet for ruining Mick’s pencil case. ‘Killer Cop’s ex-girlfriend suffered years of Rape and Abuse’, apparently, which must have happened while he was sleepwalking and she’d chosen never to bring it up. Most infuriating of all, though, some midwife now seventy years old had claimed that she knew ‘Killer Cop Was Evil Baby’ just from the look in his eyes in his mother’s arms.

That shallow bullshit was worthy of headlines but where was his highlight reel? Where were the supercop stories? They had him for ‘Respected Solicitor Murdered’, but there was no ink allocated to the post office robbery he’d single-handedly thwarted while off-duty as a uniformed constable. ‘Evil Detective Slaughters Disabled Man in Cold Blood’ was more headline-worthy than his record of twenty-six killers and eighty-five armed robbers behind bars. Instead of ‘philanthropist’ because he’d organised a ‘cops vs criminals’ charity football match last year, they called him ‘racist’ because the fellow cop he’d killed had been of Pakistani origin!

Worse than all of that, though, Alize had found out. She hadn’t replied to any of his messages in which he’d said he’d be with her soon. He’d agreed to meet her near Berlin where he’d told her he was meeting a guy from the German State Criminal Police Office to discuss a joint venture. Then, three days ago, long after his name had spread across the world, she’d messaged back, right out of the blue.

That question had speared his heart.

Eight months of texting since he’d met her online, a hundred phone calls, swapped presents, and then this! They would have had a great holiday, and then he would have told her he was staying on in Berlin, and before long he would have moved in with her, and together they would have enjoyed the sweet life, but instead she fucking did this! The bitch hadn’t even tried to get his version of the story; she had swallowed every word in the papers and run to the police. They were clearly controlling her social media accounts and using her to lead him into a trap.

The only consolation, if it even qualified as one, was that his be with you soon claim had his hunters looking overseas. Let them waste manpower hiding in bushes around her home, and let her have sleepless nights as she worried that every noise was the infamous DCI Mick McDevitt, PSYCHO SLEUTH, coming down the fucking chimney.

He was angry, but there was also cause for relief. One vital aspect was missing from every newspaper. The crucial component: the spark that had ignited everything. The event that had instigated his becoming a ‘Murderous Top Detective’ was in there among a plethora of assumptions, but the newshounds and amateur psychologists had missed their chance to solve the case. He was surprised, and a little proud, that Brad hadn’t spilled the beans, especially given the prime opportunity he’d had before the video camera.

In other news: in Slade Green, a package had been posted to the parents of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been raped eighteen months ago. Her CitizenCard had been taken by the rapist as a trophy. When it fell through their letterbox, the parents thought the rapist was taunting them, and they handed the card to the police. Scientists quickly found DNA matching a known sexual offender, and yesterday he had been apprehended while sleeping rough with his brother. When Brad’s street gossipers had first provided the culprit’s name, Seamus Hunt, Mick had been loath to use the man, but over the months the offender had provided the location of three meets at which eight paedophiles had been arrested. Mick had destroyed every other piece of evidence in the Loyalty Box, but he had been unable to allow a child molester to walk free.

Seamus Hunt had so far chosen not to mention ‘SLAYbian of the Yard’s’ name, so the world didn’t know about his involvement in those embarrassing cases. Good.

Finally, he turned his attention to what really mattered.

He typed Karl’s name, but got nothing. Liz’s name brought up the triple murder and some offshoot stories. Nothing about their involvement in the past few days’ activities. Clearly this meant they had not been charged and that their names had been kept out of the papers. Certainly they would have had their lives scrutinised by detectives because they were integral performers in this production: statements checked, pasts unearthed, every coincidence put under the microscope. But, in the end, they had walked through this thing unscathed. Mick burned with anger at that notion: Karl and Liz out there, right now, probably fucking each other and laughing and living their lives as normal, and not giving Detective Chief Inspector Michael McDevitt a second thought.

But gossip wasn’t his reason for scouring the newspapers for Liz Grafton. He was after a specific piece of information, and when he found it, it made him sit back in the battered, puke-smelling armchair in shock.

He remembered taking the piss out of Brad for believing that he and his gay lover were destined to be together, but since then a number of occurrences had eaten away at his cynicism. That story in the newspaper finally pushed him from sceptic to believer.

Now he knew why the bitch had escaped his wrath every single time he had her within his grasp. Fate. It was meant to be.