Adrian Anton Marriott lay stone-cold dead in a pine box at the New Testament Church of God just off Brixton Hill in south London. His lifeless body betrayed the length of time he had remained on ice in the morgue. He died on 9 June and the funeral service took place on 3 September. Once brown in complexion, he was now boot-polish black.

Three weeks off his 21st birthday, Adrian was executed in the still of the morning in a Brixton park, within gunshot hearing of the local police station. The ring of his mobile phone had awakened him that morning. The caller seduced him from his bed to the park and blew him into oblivion. For the public, he was simply an addition to the statistics, kept by the Metropolitan Police and its Operation Trident initiative, on those who are murdered in black-on-black gun crime. For those who congregated to pay their final respects, he was real. I knew Adrian because he was my god-daughter's first boyfriend. Relaxed in the presence of his elders, he spoke confidently, with a minimum of gesticulation. Early in our conversations, he struck me as having an agile mind.

As time passed, I learned that Adrian had moved swiftly into "crew" life. A "crew" is a gang of bad boys. His crew's major activity centred on robbing drug pushers at the petty end of the scale. A brick (kilo) or three of cocaine might have been his largest score. Exactly what role, if any, all this played in his death, we must wait to find out through the outcome of the trial of his alleged killer.

In an atmosphere of weeping and wailing, a young man at the funeral told of his brother who had been shot once but lived. He pleaded with the largely young and black congregation to change their ways because he had attended too many funerals. A mother told the mourners that, on her way there, she had spoken to two young men. She asked them: "When will this end?" One replied: "Never." But it was only bravado, she said. She could see in the man's eyes the exhaustion such deaths visit upon the living.

The falling numbers murdered in these gun crimes support her observation. Although the police have appropriated credit for the decline, I am certain the influence of mothers and sisters is the main cause. Times change, and so do men. Atheist though I am, hymns continue to move me. And I wept openly when the congregation sang: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,/Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in."