The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe)

by Tony Parsons

  ‘No – I just . . .’

  ‘Not all members of the deaf community sign,’ she said, very patiently. ‘It’s a misconception that all deaf people sign. It’s very much a personal choice. I can speak and I can read lips. I don’t consider myself to be culturally deaf. That is, I don’t define myself by my lack of hearing.’ She zipped her messenger bag shut. Her desk was clear now. She smiled brightly. ‘OK?’

  I nodded. ‘Thank you. For everything.’

  I wanted to know more but there was no time.

  Edie Wren was standing in the door of MIR-1 and beyond her I could see Dr Joe Stephen, checking his messages.

  Tara Jones was ready to leave 27 Savile Row.

  And the dead were waiting for me.

  15

  The three dead men lay naked on their stainless steel beds in the Iain West Forensic Suite at the Westminster Public Mortuary, untroubled by the temperature that is forever kept just a degree or two above freezing point.

  The first thing you noticed about them were the large Y-shaped incisions on their torsos where Elsa Olsen, our forensic pathologist of choice, had chopped open their ribcages with exactly the kind of green-handled pruning shears you can buy in any gardening centre to trim your roses. And the next thing you noticed were the burn marks around their necks.

  ‘Cause of death was strangulation,’ Elsa said. ‘All three of them. Method of death was almost certainly some kind of wire noose.’

  ‘Not rope?’ I said.

  ‘Rope would probably leave trace evidence in their wounds,’ Elsa said. ‘And I couldn’t find any rope fibres. I suggest they used some other kind of material.’

  ‘And they know what they’re doing,’ I said.

  I stared at the cadavers. Mahmud Irani. Hector Welles. And Darren Donovan. Three men of wildly disparate ages, income and background. Irani had the soft spreading gut of a man who had spent a lifetime sitting down. Welles had been a confirmed fitness fanatic, spending hours pushing himself in parodies of manual labour. And Donovan had abused his body with Class A drugs since his early teens but still had the unearned slimness of youth.

  Even their crimes were very different.

  Irani had been one of a gang that abused vulnerable young girls for years. Welles, the heartless hit-and-run driver who was found wanting in a mad moment. And Donovan was a career junkie who regularly mugged elderly pensioners for his next shot of poison.

  They did not look so different now.

  Elsa considered the three of us shivering inside our blue scrubs and hairnets. On one side of me Edie Wren was impassive, her pale young face a mask of professional curiosity, but on the other side I could feel Dr Joe shaking with tension. It is never an easy thing to step inside the Iain West Forensic Suite for the first time.

  ‘So are you SIO on this investigation, Max?’ Elsa said.

  ‘Acting SIO,’ I said. ‘Until DCI Whitestone returns. Dr Joe’s with us looking for signatures, if that’s all right with you.’

  The tall Norwegian pathologist nodded, anxious that she should only have to say all this once. She slowly circled the dead men on their stainless steel tables.

  ‘Life flows through the neck,’ she said. ‘The fragile, essential neck. Blood is pumped from the heart to the brain. Oxygen flows to the lungs. Compress the neck hard enough, and all that abruptly stops. You see the marks on their necks?’

  On all three of them, the hanging mark angled diagonally across the neck, the highest point almost touching the left ear, where the noose’s knot had been. On all three men, the furrow of the hanging mark was far more shallow here. But it was pale yellow on Darren Donovan’s neck, a darker yellow on the raw skin of Hector Welles’ neck and a dark brown on Mahmud Irani, the earliest victim.

  I felt the thick bile of revulsion rise up inside me and I swallowed it down. Deep breath, Max, I told myself. It’s about to get worse.

  With a long thin stainless steel implement, Elsa gently prised open the mouth of Mahmud Irani. Then she did the same with Hector Welles, and finally Darren Donovan.

  ‘See that?’ Elsa said, her blue eyes bright. ‘When a man has been hanged, his tongue turns purple.’

  Dr Joe had begun to pant like a dog on a summer’s day.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘This is how strangulation by hanging works,’ Elsa continued. ‘Once the noose is around your neck and there is nothing to support you, you are killed by your own body weight. Strangulation compresses the carotid arteries in the neck, shutting off the supply of blood to the brain and causing the brain to swell so much that it plugs the top of the spinal column. This causes a reaction known as the vagal reflex, which stops the heart. The compression of the neck closes the trachea and aborts the supply of oxygen to the lungs. So – no blood to the brain and no air to the lungs. Bad news. The victim passes out due to suffocation. And then he dies.’

  ‘How long does it take, Elsa?’ I asked.

  ‘It depends. But it is not a quick way to die. Strangulation by hanging takes at least five minutes, but no more than twenty.’

  ‘Do we have any defensive wounds?’

  ‘There are no defensive wounds on Mahmud Irani or Darren Donovan, although there are signs of advanced intravenous drug use on Mr Donovan.’

  ‘What does advanced mean?’ Dr Joe asked.

  ‘The veins of his arms had collapsed and he was shooting up between his toes,’ Elsa said. ‘But Hector Welles is the only one of them with extensive defensive wounds.’

  I remembered Welles fighting for his life as the dark figures struggled to control him.

  He knew what they had done to Mahmud Irani.

  ‘There are contusions and welts on Mr Welles’ arms where he was restrained,’ Elsa said. ‘Some facial bruising where he was punched or kicked.’ She smiled sadly at me. ‘But unfortunately no skin tissue under his fingernails, Max. Apart from his own.’

  In the glare of the Iain West, the flayed neck of Hector Welles looked like the self-inflicted scars of some bizarre tribal ritual.

  ‘Hanging is of course a popular method of suicide. But Mr Irani and Mr Donovan both have burn marks on their wrists where their hands were secured behind their backs, precluding suicide. Mr Welles did not have his hands secured behind his back, making suicide a theoretical possibility – in fact, most suicide hangings look exactly like Mr Welles, as they change their mind when it is far too late and attempt to claw the noose from their neck. But the extent of his defensive wounds eliminates that.’

  ‘And three million hits on YouTube of the guy being hanged,’ Edie said.

  Elsa Olsen looked at her sharply.

  ‘I’m looking at the medical evidence and not what’s trending on YouTube, Detective.’

  ‘Of course,’ Edie said.

  Elsa nodded curtly. ‘And a suicide victim is unlikely to be cut down and dumped in the middle of Marble Arch. The dead don’t move themselves,’ she said. ‘In all three cases, the manner of death was murder.’

  ‘Anything you can give us about the knot?’ I said.

  The way a knot is tied and the type of knot used might have been a priceless lead, I thought, remembering Pat Whitestone’s words when we had found Mahmud Irani. But Elsa shook her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘For that I would need to see the rope or the wire or whatever it was. The neck markings are not enough to go on.’

  ‘We still don’t have a kill site, Elsa,’ I said. ‘How long had they been dead when we found them?’

  ‘They’re all different. As you know, rigor mortis sets in after approximately two hours and then the body gets progressively stiffer. And then we follow the twelve-twelve-twelve equation. Twelve hours to get stiff. Twelve hours to remain stiff. And twelve hours for the body to lose that stiffness as it begins to decay. Rigor mortis had just begun to set in on Mr Irani, suggesting he had been dead for around twelve hours when he was discovered. The second victim, Mr Welles, had advanced rigor mortis. He ha
d been dead for approximately twenty-four hours. And the body of the latest victim, young Mr Donovan, was losing the stiffness of rigor mortis. And you can see that his skin has a greenish hue around his head, shoulders and abdomen. There’s also a degree of bloating because of gases accumulating in the cavities. His internal organs had longer to break down.’

  ‘Because the bodies are becoming harder for us to find,’ I said.

  ‘And there’s lividity on the back of Mr Irani,’ Elsa said, nodding at Edie. ‘Would you be so kind, DC Wren?’

  Together the two women turned the cadaver of Mahmud Irani onto his front. The skin around his shoulder blades, back, buttocks and calf muscles was pale and surrounded by ugly purple blotches that looked like bruises. Dr Joe looked at me.

  ‘That’s the lividity,’ I said. ‘Those marks that look like bruises. Think of lividity as stagnant blood. When you die, your heart stops beating and your blood stops moving. Gravity does the rest. The blood settles. But you don’t get it where the body touches the ground. Lividity can help us determine how long someone has been dead and if the body has been moved.’

  ‘The technical name is livor mortis,’ Elsa said.

  ‘From the Latin,’ Dr Joe said. ‘Livor meaning bluish and mortis meaning of death.’

  Elsa and Edie heaved the dead man onto his back.

  ‘The lividity on Mr Irani strongly suggests that he lay undisturbed for most of the time between death and discovery,’ Elsa said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Dr Joe.

  ‘It means they didn’t move him very far,’ I said. ‘So the kill site has to be within – what? – one hour’s distance of Marble Arch and Vauxhall Bridge.’

  ‘That narrows it down to all of Greater London,’ Edie said.

  ‘I can also tell you they were all taken down minutes after death,’ Elsa said. ‘If they had been left hanging, the furrow of the neck wounds would be much deeper.’

  We stared in silence at the bodies. I felt myself shudder.

  It’s just the cold, I told myself. Just the bitter cold in here.

  ‘And there’s something else,’ Elsa said. ‘A professional hangman works on a system of variable drops. It was the method used by this country’s most famous executioner – Albert Pierrepoint. Saddam Hussein’s goons used the same method. How heavy the body is, how far it needs to fall to separate the second and third vertebrae in the neck and cause instant death. It’s called the hangman’s fracture. If the drop is too long, the victim is decapitated. These people – the Hanging Club – clearly don’t bother with variable drops. Despite the charade of hanging, they essentially strangle their victims.’

  She gave Edie Wren a severe look.

  ‘And I watch YouTube, too,’ Elsa said. ‘But what’s interesting is that the most recent victim appears to have died in less than half the time of the first two. Examining the damage to the carotid arteries and the spinal column, I estimate that Mr Irani took thirteen minutes to die, Mr Welles took ten and Mr Donovan took just five.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Dr Joe.

  ‘It means they’re getting good at it,’ I said.

  We were back in the changing room, taking off our scrubs, when Dr Joe began talking about signatures.

  ‘The three murders are more than ritualistic killings,’ he said, pulling off his hairnet. ‘Among the unknown subs there’s a clear hierarchical structure at work.’

  ‘Yes, it’s always the same one who asks the question,’ I said. ‘Do you know why you’ve been brought to this place of execution? He’s the leader.’

  ‘Everyone has their role to play and yet they are capable of acting in the interests of the group,’ Dr Joe said.

  Edie pulled off her hairnet and shook her hair out. ‘When Hector Welles tried to do a runner, they all jumped on him at once. Or at least, three of them did. And then they went back to their roles. And they all have a strict role to play, don’t they? Somebody to speak. Somebody to film. Somebody to watch. And somebody to be executioner.’

  ‘Judge, jury, witness and hangman,’ I said. ‘But what are the signatures, Dr Joe?’

  ‘A strong facility for organisation. An ability to be totally ruthless. A strict hierarchy that has room for individual endeavour before the hierarchy reasserts itself.’

  ‘You really think they’re cops?’ Edie said.

  ‘Not necessarily, although it’s a possibility. I think that at least one of them has some kind of specialist training in upholding social control. And I believe that probably more than one of them has experience of some kind of public service. Someone with experience of an institution that sanctions those who violate laws or harm the state. Someone who has been disappointed in the limits and failures and compromises of that institution. So a serving or ex-police officer is one possibility. But equally we could be looking at one or more unsubs who has experience in the prison service or some other branch of criminal justice.’

  As I watched Dr Joe thinking I knew what he was going to say next, and I had to stop myself from saying it out loud, from blurting it out, as into my mind leapt the image of my oldest friend and his gap-toothed grin.

  ‘Or even the military,’ Dr Joe said.

  My phone began to vibrate.

  The woman on the other end of the phone was crying and apologising all at once. It took me a moment to realise that it was Alice Goddard, the widow of Steve Goddard, kicked to death outside his own home.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you, Max, I didn’t know who else I could call . . .’

  ‘Slow down. Take a breath. What’s wrong?’ I said.

  But all she could do was to keep apologising and crying.

  In my line of work, we move on. There’s always the next case, there is always some fresh human misery coming down the line. But the victims of crime, they don’t move on. They can’t move on. They remain forever stuck in the moment that their life changed, the shock and the pain never diminishing with time. And beyond all the grief that never dies, there can be practical problems. When justice is done, there is usually someone out there raving about the injustice of it all.

  The three pieces of pond life who killed Steve Goddard all had friends and families. And sometimes, after pond life has been locked up, these friends and families feel they have a point to prove and a debt to settle.

  It can take the form of low-level harassment. It can be petrol poured through a letterbox. It can be anything in between. That’s why I had given Alice Goddard my card and told her that she could call me any time. If the friends and loved ones of the pond life came calling, then I wanted to know about it.

  But this was something else.

  ‘It’s my son,’ she said, her voice breaking.

  I parked outside the Goddard house and took a moment to adjust. The first time I had seen this quiet suburban street, the uniforms were putting up a tent and tape, the CSIs in their white Tyvek suits were dusting, filming and photographing. And Steve Goddard was lying dead, his body half on the pavement and half in the road.

  I remembered that there wasn’t much blood. And I remembered the devastated family who were inside: Steve Goddard’s wife and son and daughter, Alice and Steve Junior and Kitty, the three of them holding on to each other as this brutal new reality kicked in and they started to unravel.

  I blinked my eyes and the memory faded and it was just another suburban street on a summer evening. I took a few deep breaths and walked up the short garden path to the door of the Goddard family.

  Alice greeted me with a warm, embarrassed smile. Her eyes were red raw, but she had made a real effort to regain control.

  ‘It’s Steve Junior,’ she said. ‘He’s got a knife.’

  I found the kid in the local park.

  He was in the deserted playground, sitting on the swings, puffing on a cigarette.

  The last time I had seen Steve Junior was at the Old Bailey. What was he? Fifteen? Sixteen? He had looked like a young boy that day, overawed and baffled by his surroundings, his shirt t
oo big and wearing a tie that his mum had done up for him. Now, just weeks later, he looked like a bitter young man.

  ‘Steve? Remember me? DC Wolfe.’

  His eyes met mine and then slid away. There was some shouting in the distance and we both looked over to where it had come from. A group of boys and one girl were sprawled over a distant park bench.

  I sat down on the swing next to Steve Goddard Junior.

  ‘Is anyone bothering you?’ I said.

  He looked at me with disbelief. Then he laughed and shook his head.

  ‘Is anybody bothering me? Is that your question? My dad gets kicked to death and you ask me if anyone is bothering me?’

  ‘Since then, I mean. Is anyone getting on your case since the trial?’

  I watched his eyes fill with tears. ‘I’m going to be bothering them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘Is that what the knife is for?’

  Silence.

  ‘I understand why you want to get even,’ I said. ‘It’s natural. What happened to your dad – to your family – it’s not fair, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s not fucking fair. You got that right.’

  ‘So what you going to do? What’s the plan? Stick a knife in one of them when they get out? Stick your knife in all of them?’

  Two teenage girls went past arm in arm. They looked at me and Steve sitting on the swings and walked away consumed by mocking laughter.

  ‘Why are you even here?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want anything worse to happen to your family.’

  His mouth twisted.

  ‘What could possibly be any worse than my dad going outside to ask for a bit of peace and quiet, and then getting his head kicked in? What could be worse than that?’

  ‘You getting locked up in Feltham.’

  He frowned. I wondered if he had the knife on him. Then I saw the bulge in the pocket of his hoodie and I didn’t have to wonder any more.

  ‘What’s Feltham?’ he said.

  ‘Feltham Young Offenders Institution,’ I said. ‘It’s a prison for male juveniles near Hounslow. If you stick your blade in one of those creeps who killed your dad, that’s where they will send you. Because you’re under eighteen.’