The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe)

by Tony Parsons

  Then the others were all on me, aiming wild, random punches that caught me on the ear and in the shoulder and did nothing, but one of them knew how to kick because I felt the air whoosh out of me as the toe of a shoe caught me just below the lowest rib and then in the soft spot low on my temple.

  It was enough to put me on my knees.

  The big man fell on me and grasped me in a headlock, cursing me, his breath sour against my face. The red light had fallen away. They were not filming me now.

  ‘Fucking pig! Fucking bastard!’

  It was a good headlock. I could not move my arms or my legs or my feet. So I pressed my mouth against his face and sank my teeth into his cheek, biting through the Nomex face mask and into his flesh.

  He howled and tried to stand up as I held on like a dog with a dying rat. But I was weakened and breathless and sickened by those two kicks and the others pulled me off him.

  I felt the noose drop over my head.

  They lifted me up, not bothering with the handcuffs now, as they half-dragged and half-pushed me onto the stool, planning to do me as they had done Hector Welles, and I could see him before me now, his unsecured hands still tearing the flesh from his throat with his dying breath, clawing so hard that his fingernails were torn out and buried in his neck.

  I screamed with rage and terror.

  But I was exhausted.

  Then I was standing on the kitchen step stool and my fingers were ripping at the rope around my neck. I looked up and saw that one of them had passed the rope over an ancient pipe that crossed the stained ceiling of that forgotten room. The masked faces were all looking at me, the big figure touching the torn Nomex face mask where it was stained with his blood.

  Someone was trying to kick the stool away.

  Two of them were shouting at each other.

  ‘Do you know why—’

  ‘Just do it!’

  The stool flew away and suddenly there was nothing beneath my feet and the rope around my neck was strangling me. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and my fingers tore at the tightening rope for a second that seemed to last for a thousand years. In that never-ending moment I felt my head tip grotesquely to one side as the rope angled towards the knot and I could feel my body weight killing me.

  The blood stopped flowing to my brain.

  The air stopped flowing to my lungs.

  I knew that I was dying.

  I saw nothing.

  I stared at the ceiling and I didn’t see it.

  I looked up at the rope and I didn’t see it.

  There was only the sensation of strangulation as my hands tore at the rope around my neck.

  My hands fell away from my throat. My legs kicked and flayed, and I had nothing in me to stop them, and I felt myself on the very edge of the blackness that lasts forever, and it felt as sweet and welcome as home.

  But then I reached behind me, my fingers scrambling under the back of my polo shirt, clawing at the base of my spine.

  And I felt the plastic grip of the Glock 17.

  Then it was in my right hand and I was pointing it at the ceiling, pulling the trigger, the crack of gunfire deafening in that confined place, then pulling the trigger again as fast as I could. I was aware of their screams and shouts but I kept pulling the trigger, trying to break the rope that was killing me, and then the sounds seemed to be coming from underwater and then I heard nothing, nothing at all, just an unbroken ringing in my ears as my heart surged with desperation when I realised that it had not worked.

  I was still hanging.

  The secret room turned red.

  The blood flow to my brain had stopped and that blocked dam of blood seemed to be filling the room.

  I closed my eyes.

  My hand fell to my side. My fingers were opening, my friend’s gun was slipping from my hand and the unbroken blackness was all I wanted now. I felt the full kilo of polymer and steel in my hand. Someone was trying to prise it from my grasp. I lashed out at them with my foot.

  Then something happened in my ears.

  I could hear them shouting again.

  Scream. Shouts. Cursing.

  They were on me, pulling on my legs, and I couldn’t understand, then I saw they were trying to drag me down and get it done, finally get it done, get me over with forever.

  And it revived me enough to kick out at their masked faces.

  And I raised my right hand one last time.

  Because I saw what I had been doing wrong. The range had to be point-blank. Nothing else would work. Everything else was useless. Point-blank or nothing. Point-blank or death.

  I felt the barrel of Jackson’s Glock 17 press against the rope, press so hard that I could feel the impossible tightness around my neck become even tighter.

  Then I pulled the trigger.

  I was aware of the crack of gunfire, a sound that seemed to rip the air apart, and then I was falling, my feet and elbows connecting with human flesh and bone.

  I hit the ground hard, the gun still in my hand.

  My vision was blurred with what felt like blood and tears. But I could see they were running towards a broken gap in the wall. I pointed at the back of the big man as he squeezed through the gap and screamed a hoarse curse as I pulled the trigger, my eyes streaming.

  I heard the metallic click of an empty magazine.

  I pulled it again and again, even after the last of them had disappeared through the hole in the wall. White noise filled my head.

  I got up, spitting out a bloody scrap of synthetic material that must have come from a Nomex tactical face mask.

  I stuffed the Glock down the back of my jeans, hearing a mocking voice deep inside my head.

  You’re not going to shoot yourself in the arse, are you?

  I took a painful breath.

  And then I went after them.

  I was sick to my stomach with pain and exhaustion but the rage inside was bigger than both of them. I went through the crack in the wall, stepping over scraps of rotted wood, and down the low-ceilinged tunnel until I found a stone staircase, going down even deeper into the ground. I went down the stairs slowly, moving in total blackness, afraid of falling, afraid they were waiting for me, smelling what seemed to be soot and sewers.

  From somewhere I could hear the sound of heavy machinery but it became fainter as I went lower. Down and down until I reached an open space where a series of corridors met, the meeting point of a labyrinth of tunnels.

  I stopped and thought I could hear voices in one of them. Then I went on, the ground always sinking beneath me. And just when I thought about turning back, when I thought I could sense the men waiting for me silently in the darkness, the stairs ended.

  Ahead there were four identical tunnels, each with a rounded arch, wide but not high, built to process large numbers of people at once. They felt like they were all heading in the same direction. I carried on more carefully now, treading lightly, straining for sound.

  But all I could hear was my own breathing.

  And then I stepped into what looked like the train station at the end of the world.

  There were two platforms facing each other across ancient tracks. It was a tube station, but nothing like one I had ever seen. The platforms were made of wood and I could see the remains of what had once been advertising posters on the black-and-white tiles of the walls. They had rotted away a lifetime ago. It reminded me of photographs I had seen of Londoners seeking safety underground during the Blitz. On a large red circle, the name of the station was written in black letters on a white background.

  B L O O M S B U R Y

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  There is no tube station in London by that name.

  I stared at the ghost station and knew I could wait for a hundred years and there would be no passengers and no trains passing through this place.

  I felt a shudder of pure terror and wondered if I had died in the room with the tiles stained green by time.

  Then I touched the livid w
eal that had been burned into the flesh around my neck and I flinched with the pain.

  I was not dead yet.

  I heard sounds coming from deep inside the tunnel.

  I walked to the edge of the platform and stared into the blackness but I could see nothing. But the sound was real. It wasn’t just in my head. I looked down at the tracks. There were four lines, two of them with insulators. I thought about that for a while.

  The station was dead but that didn’t mean that the lines were dead.

  I was aware that in a working tube station the lines with insulators are live and will kill you instantly, and that the trains run on the other lines. But I also knew it was a myth that no electricity runs through the non-insulated train tracks – they carry enough voltage to power the signals. The fact is that making contact with any tube rail is likely to ruin your whole day.

  I steadied myself on the edge of the platform, took a breath, and jumped down between the nearest two tracks.

  And that was when I heard the train coming.

  I quickly scrambled back up onto the platform, feeling the Glock scrape against my spine as it slipped from my jeans. I looked down at it, just about visible on the tracks, as a rat the size of a neutered tom cat skittered across it. Then the train was much closer. Lights blazed deep in the tunnel, twisting towards me and then away as the train snaked through the bowels of the city. I stood drenched in cold sweat on the platform as the train hurtled towards me like an avalanche.

  It never reached the station.

  At the last moment it veered into the darkness and away from me, a blur of speed and steel, a silver train with red doors and blue trim and a driver who caught a glimpse of me for a fraction of a section.

  And stared as if I had been raised from the dead.

  The driver must have called it in immediately.

  I knew that any 999 call from the public about a possible armed or terrorist incident would be forwarded instantly to the Tactical Firearms Command desk where someone with the rank of inspector or above would assess the information to see if it fit the criteria for armed officers to respond. And I did.

  By the time I climbed the tube station’s long and winding staircase up to the street, they were waiting for me.

  Armed officers from SC&O19.

  They didn’t think I was a ghost.

  They thought I was a terrorist.

  As I stepped out into the warm summer night, they started screaming at me. I could not tell where the voices were coming from but I could feel the adrenaline in the air. Then I saw their raised weapons. The Glock pistols. The Heckler and Koch submachine guns.

  ‘Hands in the air and get down on your knees!’

  ‘I am DC Wolfe of West End Central and I am complying with your command,’ I said, as calm and clear as I could make it.

  ‘Do it now! Do it now!’

  I raised my hands and got down on my knees, the pavement surprisingly cold in the warm summer night.

  Then I saw them.

  Edging towards me, fingers on the triggers.

  ‘There’s a wallet in my right pocket which contains my warrant card,’ I said, still as calm and clear as I could make it, but finding it harder to sound like the voice of reason with my face pressed against the pavement.

  Someone pushed a boot heel against the back of my neck. A pair of hands patted me down and another pair of hands went through my pockets. I lifted my lower body very slightly so they could remove my wallet.

  ‘Don’t move! Don’t move!’

  I felt the barrel of a Glock screw itself into my ear.

  I held my breath. I did not move.

  But even after they saw my warrant card they kept my face pressed to the pavement and my limbs spread wide. Even after they clocked my photo ID they kept me face down on the ground with a size-12 boot heel pressed firmly against the back of my neck.

  And they kept me there for a long time.

  It was as if nobody could be trusted any more, as if the world had gone insane, as if you never knew who might want to dance on your grave.

  PART THREE

  ApparatuS of DEath

  26

  The view from the top of New Scotland Yard is spectacular.

  When you are up there on the eighth floor you realise that the big modern office block located at 8–10 Broadway, Victoria, so self-consciously anonymous, sits at the heart of British power.

  From the window of the room where I waited in my old Paul Smith wedding suit I checked my watch against two of Big Ben’s faces as they struck noon and then looked across at the spires of Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster and, stretching off to the north, the rooftops of Whitehall and Downing Street.

  It took my breath away.

  A portrait of the Queen smiled at me. Her Majesty was young in the picture, and the painting had those saturated Sixties colours where everything was slightly more vivid than real life. She looked like a nice lady who was happy that England had just won the World Cup. Apart from the portrait of the Queen, there was nothing on the walls of that waiting room but posters proclaiming the values of the Metropolitan Police. They all said the same thing.

  THE MET VALUES:

  PROFESSIONALISM – INTEGRITY – COURAGE – COMPASSION

  But on each wall the poster had a definition of a different value. PROFESSIONALISM was highlighted on one wall, INTEGRITY on another, COURAGE on another and COMPASSION on the last, the one with the portrait of the Queen. I had no time to read about the different values because a civilian PA put her head around the door.

  ‘They’ll see you now,’ she said.

  I followed her inside where DCS Swire and DCI Whitestone were waiting for me in a top-floor corner room, the Chief Super at the head of a long boardroom table and Pat Whitestone at her right-hand side. Far below, the Thames shimmered like molten gold in the last of the summer sunshine.

  ‘Max,’ the Chief Super said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, ma’am, thank you. Nothing broken.’

  The truth is my neck felt as though someone had tried to remove my head and I was so bone-tired that only a constant stream of triple espressos from the Bar Italia was keeping my eyes open. It had been a long night.

  When the armed officers had allowed me to remove my face from the pavement I had been taken to West End Central where Edie Wren, roused from her bed in the early hours, had conducted what we call a hot debriefing – an interview conducted at the earliest opportunity to obtain as much information as possible in the aftermath of a serious incident. The Senior Investigating Officer almost always conducts a hot debriefing, but DCI Whitestone had been staying with her son at the hospital, and was unavailable. After the hot debrief I had gone home, slept for a few hours, parked Scout at Mrs Murphy’s, then shaved, showered, got suited and booted and come straight to New Scotland Yard.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to do the hot debrief myself,’ Whitestone said. ‘Just had some complications with one of his eyes and – well. I’m sorry.’

  I shook my head. ‘No problem, ma’am.’ But I wondered how long Pat Whitestone could be the SIO of a major murder investigation when her personal life was taking up so much of her time.

  ‘But DC Wren has done a thorough job,’ the Chief Super said.

  They both had a set of Edie’s notes in front of them.

  ‘So the assumption we’re making is that they targeted you because you were effectively the public face of this investigation?’ Swire continued.

  I saw Pat Whitestone flush with embarrassment as she stared down at Edie’s notes.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

  ‘What do we know about them, Max?’ the Chief Super said.

  I wasn’t surprised to be asked the same questions that Edie had asked me at the hot debriefing. That’s the way we work. You ask a question again and again and again. Then you ask it again. And then you see if the answer is always the same.

  ‘There were four of them,’ I said. ‘There seems to have
been one missing when they attempted to abduct Abu Din. But last night – with me – they were at full strength. And they are highly organised, highly motivated and at least a couple of them appear to have received some kind of training. One of them does the heavy lifting. Another one had close combat experience.’ I shrugged. ‘They’re tough, resourceful and barking mad.’

  ‘Edie’s notes say that one of them spoke to you,’ said Whitestone.

  I felt myself begin to tremble. I took a deep breath, held it and let it out slowly. I wasn’t going to fall to pieces in this room.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I nodded at the notes. ‘He told me that the white transit van that distracted the ARV was driven by what he called friends.’

  Whitestone turned to the Chief Super.

  ‘We found it burned out in a car park in Notting Hill,’ she said. ‘We’re looking for prints.’

  The Chief Super laughed bitterly. ‘Good luck with that.’

  I didn’t understand.

  ‘Wait – our ARV lost the decoy van? How does an Armed Response Vehicle with two highly trained firearms officers lose a transit van on the North Circular?’

  ‘The white van was driven by a wheelman,’ Whitestone said. ‘He wasn’t some boy racer. He knew his stuff. He could drive and I mean, really drive. Like a pro. Like a professional wheelman. And he lost our ARV almost immediately because he entered the North Circular against the flow of the traffic.’

  ‘He drove against the traffic?’

  She nodded. ‘And the ARV couldn’t follow. Too dangerous. They’re trained to shoot straight, not drive like Lewis Hamilton. They phoned ahead and by the time we found the white van – twenty minutes later – it was on fire.’

  The Chief Super’s mouth twisted with annoyance. ‘They took you to the kill site, Max. Any thoughts on where it could be?’

  I thought of the square room with the decaying tiles, turned green by a century of neglect, and the corridor they had led me down, where the walls and the ceiling were always closing in on me. Had I imagined that? In the bright light of the morning, I wasn’t sure how much of the night had been real and how much the fevered imaginings of pure terror. There was a smell – wasn’t there? It was sweet and rotten, like dead flowers, or sugar in a sewer. A rank sweetness that I knew from somewhere – or was that just in my head?