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Alfie, did you know that? You think this all just started because they had their bloody memoirs out? Do you have a motive for your suspects?’
    He had me there. Oscar Burns and Big Muff were several generations after Vic Masters. They were from a different century. As far as I knew, there was no connection between them.
    ‘Not yet, sir.’
    ‘Nothing at all that connects your Chinatown villains to Vic Masters? No reason at all they might want to open his face up and leave him dead in a ditch?’
    One of the DIs snickered. I could feel my face getting red.
    ‘They’re trying to make a name for themselves,’ I said.
    ‘So they follow an old face on Hampstead Heath? I don’t see the logic in that, Wolfe. But how about this for a motive? Your motive.’
    ‘Sir?’
    Behind his broad back, Flashman’s MIT were all grinning at me.
    ‘You want them off your back, Wolfe,’ Flashman said. ‘That’s a credible motive. The two little herberts you slapped around in Chinatown. You want them gone.’
    I must have looked speechless.
    Flashman shook his head. ‘What – you think you can slap a couple of little villains around on my patch and I don’t hear about it? Despite what you might think in West End Central, nothing happens in town without it reaching New Scotland Yard.’
    ‘I think you should look at them, sir.’
    ‘Why? Because you want them off the back of your friend – the whore.’
    Never for money. Always for love.
    ‘She’s not a whore, sir.’
    He stepped in close. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you and that whore and I don’t want to know, Wolfe. But do you want to get slung out on your ear? Do you want to spend the next thirty years as a security guard in Selfridges? You need to take a big step back. And you need to take a very deep breath. Because the way you are carrying on, you’re going to end up in the same cell as those little villains. You keep up the Dirty Harry impersonation and you’re going to get done for GBH, detective. And by God you better watch your step around my murder investigation.’ He moved away, nodded briskly at his team. They visibly snapped to attention. ‘Those little villains – they’re nothing. Petty criminals. Young offenders. Not my problem. Not part of this investigation. Now we’re going to visit Mad Alfie Bloom.’
    I shook my head with disbelief. ‘You’re seriously taking this enquiry into a care home?’ I said. ‘Sir?’
    ‘It’s a retirement community. And I tell you this, my friend – Mad Alfie might be knocking on, but you’ve not seen some of the faces who still bring him grapes. We might be looking at some old con with a beef of his own. Yes, that’s shut you up, hasn’t it?’
    But I was looking back at the viewing room.
    On his stainless steel bed, Vic Masters had kept right on grinning.

7
The Last Gangster
    Thirty minutes later I was waiting in the car park of the Leafy Lane Retirement Community on the Finchley Road.
    DCI Flashman and his Murder Investigation Team arrived in a silver BMW X5 exactly like the one I was sitting in and went inside. They came back out again after just a few minutes, looking deeply unhappy. I waited until they had pulled out of the car park, heading south for New Scotland Yard, and then I went inside.
    The lights were bright and the air was thick with the smell of food. It was a warm spring night but inside the temperature was sub-tropical. In a communal living room, some of the residents, all of them elderly women, were sitting in front of the evening news. A white-coated care worker with West African tribal scars on her face approached me.
    ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘Mr Bloom?’
    ‘First floor. Last room.’ There was a flash of real sympathy in her face. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she said.
    A pair of paramedics brushed past me and I saw their ambulance outside, blue lights pulsing. I stared at the carer for a moment as it sank in. There had been a recent bereavement at Leafy