‘I just get told.’

‘That’s right, you get told, like you’re some fucking ninth-grader. Tell them to go fuck themselves, Leo.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re taking this shit because some asshole told you to do something you didn’t choose yourself. I tell you, I bet if you’d done it yourself you wouldn’t have got caught, either.’

‘No damn way.’

‘Let’s get ticking,’ said Harper. ‘Then you can go focus all that energy on something worthwhile. Make something of yourself while you can. You’re still young.’

Leo Lukanov’s head nodded a little. Harper looked at him. Lukanov was listening. Harper was trying to feed him a story, a way to understand his behavior, then he wanted to give him a door. The door would come later; first, you had to prime people. He continued, ‘We all get angry, Leo, but you don’t want to spend your life in jail. It’s a shit place to be. You don’t want that. So here we go.’

Harper spent ten minutes going through all the information he already knew. Age, date of birth, conviction records, alias, known associates. Leo just agreed as things progressed.

‘Okay, next question. What’s the name of the other guys you were with?’

‘I’m not giving no names.’

‘Shit, Leo, I’m trying to get you off here. I’ve got the fucking names written right here. Look!’ Harper showed Leo the three names. ‘I got all this information. We’re just signing it off to please the Captain.’

‘Okay.’

‘So again, who were the three guys you were with in the alleyway?’

‘Ray Hicks, Tommy Ocks, Paddy Ellery.’

‘Right, we’ve finished another page. Well done. We’re nearly there. Okay, now this bit is tough. We need to know how to explain the barbed wire, or else you’re going to go down for the murder of David Capske.’

‘I didn’t kill David Capske.’

‘I know that — you know that — but my guys upstairs want to pin it on you. Your guys out there are pinning it on you. They’re all just looking out for themselves.’

‘No, they’re not,’ he said. ‘Not my guys.’

Harper opened the file. ‘Oh no, big man? Well, in that case, they didn’t tell us that it was you who received the black card for the Denise Levene attack. Yeah, Leo, that’s what they said. That’s how the operation works. Your so-called buddies told us. The lead guy gives out a black card with a name on and you do the person on the card. Is that right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Leo.

‘So, as far as this goes, I got to say here who was the lead. At the moment it was you. As far as your guys are concerned, it was you. If you’re the lead, Leo, then this looks ten times worse. If you’re the lead on this operation and it’s premeditated, that’s a very serious fucking crime. The lead is responsible. So, Leo, let’s check this box. You weren’t the lead, were you?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I wasn’t the lead.’

‘That’s right, Leo, you weren’t the lead. Smart boy.’

Lukanov swiveled in his seat and dragged on the cigarette.

‘Next up, who’s the lead?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘If it’s not you, it’s got to be someone. Just give a name, Leo. The name of the guy.’

‘There is no guy. I got the card. The card just comes.’

‘Fuck that. No one goes and fucks people over for a card through the mail.’

Lukanov breathed deeply. Harper shifted in his chair. ‘I just need to get this signed off. The thing is, Lukanov, I’m in a hurry.’

‘I got all the time in the world.’

‘You do?’

‘I got nothing on.’

‘Eddie, give me an update.’

‘She’s already been found. The media are all over her.’

‘You need to go home, son,’ said Harper.

‘What do you mean?’ said Leo. ‘Who’s been found?’

‘Media got your name, Leo. We tried to keep it quiet, but the Capske thing is fucking major. I mean, everyone wants to know. So now your name’s out there. They’ve got your home address, Leo. And now they’ve found your mom’s address.’

‘What the hell does this have to do with her?’

‘The press don’t give a flying fuck for you or your mom.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘They’ll be hounding her, raking through her trash, searching records, speaking to neighbors, work colleagues, phoning, knocking, hour after hour. She’ll be a prisoner too, Leo. All on her own, I understand.’

Leo rose; the handcuffs clinked taut. ‘Let me go.’

‘Give me the name, Leo.’

‘No.’

‘Be a fucking man, you coward. Be a fucking man, for once. Look after your family, right? Your mom. Look after her, not some lowlife who set you up.’

‘What do you mean, set me up?’

Harper tried his trump card. ‘I think this scumbag set you up. How the hell do you think we got to that alleyway? He set you off, then called us. He probably wants you to go down for the Capske murder.’

‘He fucking called you?’

‘He killed David Capske but he wants you to burn for it. He chose the barbed wire because you bought it.’

Leo bent over and hit his head on the table. ‘I need to go see my mom.’

‘Leo, be smart. You let this asshole put this Capske killing on you and you’re the number one hate figure. Even if the evidence doesn’t stack up, by then, your mom’s life will be fucked to pieces. Her life is hell. They’re going to hunt her in packs until she tells them something. Then they’re going to hunt down your ex-girl friends, friends, brothers, sisters, until they’re painting ugly pictures of you all over. Fair trial? Not a chance. Unless you act smart and speak, you’re going down for stuff you didn’t even do, Leo. And in prison, they’re going to smash up a poor white racist like you.’

Leo stared at Harper. He was breathing heavily. ‘You’ll let me go?’

‘I’ll do my absolute best. We’ll try to spring you and you can walk free, go see your mom. You’ve got to trust me, Leo. I don’t want you locked up in here, but you bought that barbed wire and that barbed wire killed David Capske.’

‘I give you a name, I walk?’

‘You give us what we need to nail Capske’s killer, and we make sure you’ve got a way out.’

Leo paused. ‘I didn’t kill no one. We were building fences. That’s what the barbed wire was for.’

‘What fences?’

‘Upstate. At the compound.’

‘What compound?’

‘He bought five acres.’

‘Who bought it, Leo? They’re going to come in here in ten minutes, bag you up, shove you in a truck and send you off to the state penitentiary. They want someone for this, Leo. They don’t care who it is, they just want someone.’

‘We were fencing off our land.’

‘What land?’

‘We just want a place we can call our own. A white homeland.’

‘I want that name.’

Leo Lukanov looked up. His eyes wide and open. ‘I get off? That’s for real?’

‘You get off the Capske murder. You walk.’

Leo Lukanov stared at Harper. ‘What about protection?’

‘From whom?’

‘I just need to know. If he finds out, I need to know.’

‘Who, Leo? Give me his name and we’ll look after you.’

Leo Lukanov twisted his hands into a hard knot. The fear was visible in his eyes. ‘Heming,’ said Leo. ‘Martin Heming.’

North Manhattan Homicide

March 9, 9.09 p.m.

Harper sent out word to the team. They were hunting a man who went by the name of Martin Heming. He called Jack Carney with the same information. An hour later, Jack Carney turned up at North Manhattan Homicide carrying a box.

‘Jack,’ said Harper. ‘I didn’t expect a personal call.’

‘I needed to come, there’s so much shit on Heming.’

‘What have we got? Is he someone?’

‘We’ve got a pretty substantial file on him,’ said Carney. He dumped the box on Harper’s desk. ‘He’s a long-time agitator. A neo-Nazi. He’s got his own set-up — website, blog, pamphlets and publications. He even self-published a book called The Desire of the Will.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Evolution, social science, politics, history. But in a nutshell, it’s about how bad the Jews are and why it’s true that they really are trying to destroy America.’