The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe)

by Tony Parsons

  ‘There was a girl,’ Whitestone said. ‘His fiancée. From a different faith. Wozniak was a Catholic and the girl’s family violently objected. Kicked her out of the house. Disowned her. Called her a whore for falling in love. Priti – that was her name. Nobody ever went down for it, but she was the victim of an acid attack. A relative walked up to her as she was coming home from work and threw acid in her face.’

  ‘Christ Almighty.’

  ‘And apparently Priti couldn’t live with it. None of it. Not the separation from her family, not what a family member did to ruin her face. Maybe she couldn’t bear to see the look in Andrej Wozniak’s eyes. The pity. The sadness. The rage. Maybe Dr Joe can explain it to you. I wouldn’t know where to begin. You know what the biggest lie in the world is?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘That everything happens for a reason. It’s not true. Some things are totally without reason. Some things – the things that hurt the most – are totally meaningless. Some things make no sense and will never make sense.’

  I felt like she was talking about herself and her son as much as Andrej Wozniak and his fiancée. I was silent, hearing her breathe in the darkness. Then she adjusted her glasses and went on with her story.

  ‘Wozniak came home to their flat one night and Priti had hanged herself. He was on compassionate leave for six months. He came back to work at the start of the summer, just before they picked up and hanged Mahmud Irani. Did you know that Irani had a daughter?’

  I didn’t have to think about it.

  ‘Wozniak’s fiancée,’ I said. ‘Priti.’

  Whitestone nodded. ‘And nobody was ever punished for the acid attack on Priti. At least, not until Wozniak came back from compassionate leave. I suppose someone has been punished now. But where did he find the rest of them?’

  I thought about it.

  ‘He found them among the ranks of people who were just like him,’ I said. ‘Let down by the system. Humiliated by slick lawyers. Sickened by watching evil bastards get away with murder.’

  The lights were coming closer.

  They were white and blinding and you could feel their heat.

  We saw the sweating, haunted faces of the men and women who carried their terrible cargo in a collection of body bags.

  ‘He found them at the Old Bailey,’ I said.

  34

  I watched Tara Jones cross MIR-1. I watched her every step of the way. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I thought she might have said something about my new suit. I thought she might give me some secret smile. But she just placed a thick file on my desk.

  ‘You might need this,’ she said.

  It was the original voice biometric analysis of the interviews with Paul Warboys and Barry Wilder. She returned to her desk with her shoulders slumped and her hair hanging in her face, as if something precious had already been lost. But I couldn’t work out what.

  ‘Check it out, Max,’ Edie said.

  She was running the kidnap of Abu Din for Dr Joe up on the big HD TV screen. The black-and-white CCTV footage showed scores of men kneeling in the drab Wembley street as Abu Din faced them in his long grey robes, flanked by a couple of heavies, his index fingers pointing to the heavens, as if predicting rain.

  ‘Do you want me to fast-forward to the van, Dr Joe?’ Edie said.

  ‘Just let it run at normal speed, please,’ said the forensic psychologist. We were all looking now. Edie and Billy Greene. DCI Whitestone and me. And Tara, her chin lifted as her eyes flitted from the screen to Dr Joe’s lips.

  ‘What exactly are we looking for, Dr Joe?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘We’re looking for what they don’t want us to see,’ he said.

  At the back of the crowd I could see PC Rocastle, his heavyweight’s bulk standing directly in front of Philip Maldini in his wheelchair, his sister Piper behind him, her hands resting on her brother’s shoulders as he held up his placard.

  My Country – Love It or Leave It.

  And then it all kicked off.

  PC Rocastle began to run, desperately shouting into the radio attached to his shoulder. Philip Maldini’s wheelchair lurched onto the pavement and his sister seemed to place herself between the young man and what was coming down the street. And then the crowd was getting off their knees.

  Pointing. Shouting. Running for their lives.

  The black transit van came into frame and seemed to aim itself at the crowd, suddenly mounting the pavement to avoid the Maldinis.

  The transit van came to a halt.

  The crowd was gone.

  Abu Din was wagging a finger at the black van.

  ‘You can’t park that there, mate,’ Edie said, and we all laughed.

  And then we stopped laughing as Albert Pierrepoint got out of the van. And another Albert Pierrepoint. The masked faces scanned the street. At the top of the screen I could see PC Rocastle, flat on his belly, calling it in. When he turned his head to check the street, you could see a third Albert Pierrepoint at the wheel of the transit van, gunning the engine.

  ‘Stop,’ Dr Joe said.

  Edie hit a button and froze the frame.

  In total silence we stared at the three Albert Pierrepoint masks on the screen.

  Then Dr Joe spoke.

  ‘Those Albert Pierrepoint masks serve a dual purpose,’ he said. ‘They’re more than symbolic. Yes, the Hanging Club see themselves as justice incarnate. Yes, they see themselves as meting out punishment to the wicked. Yes, they believe they are the heirs of Pierrepoint. All of that is true. But those masks also serve a practical purpose – we focus on them. We look at the masks. They distract our eye. They sidetrack our senses. They’re a diversion.’

  Professor Hitchens walked into MIR-1. He placed his motorbike helmet on his workstation and waddled off to the coffee machine. I walked to his workstation, picked up his motorbike helmet and threw it at him as hard as I could. It hit him high and hard and sent a fountain of cappuccino all over him.

  ‘You fucking maniac, Max!’

  Then I was in his face.

  ‘You knew,’ I said. ‘You knew that it was Newgate, Professor. That little farce you played in here. And you knew. You knew from the start!’

  He was backing away from me with sudden fear in his eyes.

  ‘No,’ Hitchens said. ‘No!’

  Edie Wren and Billy Greene were grabbing my arms. I shrugged them off.

  ‘Come on, Hitch,’ I said. ‘Newgate! The human zoo. Chamber of horrors. Monument to the cruelty of this great city. “Abominable sink of beastliness and corruption.” Come on! You’re one of this city’s leading historians! You’re telling me you didn’t know that Newgate was still down there, buried alive under the Old Bailey? I don’t believe you, Professor.’

  ‘You knew?’ Whitestone said to him, her voice hard and cold. ‘Is this true?’

  He ran his hands down his coffee-stained shirt.

  ‘No,’ he said. Then he hesitated. ‘Not immediately . . .’

  Whitestone exploded. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘It seemed so unbelievable at first,’ he said. ‘That they could possibly be so bold. But – as a place of execution – Tyburn was followed by Newgate, and so it made perfect sense.’

  ‘When did you know?’ Whitestone said, white-faced with controlled fury.

  ‘From the start,’ I said. ‘He knew from the start.’

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘Not from the start!’

  ‘You obstructed this investigation,’ Whitestone told him. Her voice was not much more than a whisper but I had never seen her so angry. ‘You nearly got one of my team killed. Do you know what that means, Professor? You’ve obstructed a murder investigation. You’ve perverted the course of justice. You’ve concealed evidence. Do you think you could do three years’ hard time, Professor Hitchens? I’m not sure you would make it.’

  There was true terror in his eyes now. Not the fear that I might give him a slap across the cakehole. The fear that he could end up in jail.

  ‘I
didn’t know from the start, I swear it,’ he insisted. ‘It was only from the time they took Abu Din. When he got away and they showed pictures of the Sangin Six on those walls . . . the walls of . . .’

  ‘Newgate,’ I said for him. I shook my head. ‘What’s in it for you? Why keep it a secret? Who are you to let these creeps deal out death and judgement?’

  I saw the anger flare in his eyes.

  ‘And who are you to deny it? Look at the filth they hanged, Max. Mahmud Irani – a child groomer who disfigured his own daughter! Hector Welles – a rich banker who killed a child in his sports car! Darren Donovan – a junkie who ended the life of a war veteran!’

  I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

  He flinched away from me.

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he whimpered. ‘I never lied to you! I never wanted anything bad to happen to you, Max!’

  I was struggling to control my rage. I had him by the lapels and I would not let him go. He held up his hands to protect his face. I could see his fingers, stained dark yellow with nicotine. But I was not going to hit him. And he knew it.

  The knowledge emboldened him.

  ‘You think it stops here?’ he said. ‘After you catch them? It will go on. They’ve lit a fire that will never go out until we have burned this nation clean.’

  And suddenly I realised that I could smell him. The lifetime of cigarettes, and the cheap cologne he used to cover it. And it reminded me of another smell, of unfiltered Camels and Jimmy Choo perfume and Juicy Fruit chewing gum. And I suddenly laughed out loud.

  ‘There was a smell in the back of the van,’ I said to Whitestone. ‘It was a sickly-sweet smell. Like dead flowers. Like rotting fruit. Something foul that had been sugar-coated with something sweet.’ I stared at her. ‘And I know where it came from.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Whitestone said.

  I had let go of Professor Hitchens. I had forgotten all about him. But his smell – his stinking roll-ups and the buckets of cologne – had unlocked a door that had been closed to me. There was a rank smell of cigarettes, perfume and chewing gum behind that door.

  I slapped my hand on the thick folder that Tara had given me.

  ‘Bring them in,’ I said. ‘Paul Warboys. Barry Wilder. And Philip Maldini.’

  Whitestone and Edie exchanged a look.

  ‘The kid in the wheelchair?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘The three of them. And do it now. I’m not asking you to arrest them. I want them to come in voluntarily. But if they refuse, I want us to have the power to bring them in.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘I want you to designate the three of them as significant witnesses. Warboys. Wilder. And Maldini. That would work, wouldn’t it?’

  Whitestone shook her head, although it was doubt rather than denial. It was the responsibility of the SIO to identify significant witnesses, to record her decision in the investigations policy file and be prepared to justify why a witness was given SW status in court. If any or all of this blew up in someone’s face, it would not be my face. It would be the Senior Investigating Officer’s face.

  ‘Pat,’ I said. ‘I need you to trust me on this one.’

  DCI Whitestone stared at me for a moment and then she nodded. ‘OK.’

  Edie indicated Professor Hitchens. ‘What do we do with him, ma’am?’ she said.

  ‘Get him out of my sight,’ DCI Whitestone said.

  An hour later the four members of our MIT were in the CCTV bunker of West End Central.

  It was a darkened room where one large screen showed a grid revealing nine live CCTV images. Together they surrounded the block around 27 Savile Row. One camera showed West End Central’s underground car park. One camera looked north on Boyle Street. One camera looked south on Clifford Street. Three cameras looked out on Burlington Gardens. And three cameras surveyed Savile Row – looking north, looking south and looking directly down on the steps below the big blue lamp.

  ‘Here they come,’ Greene said.

  We watched Barry and Jean Wilder arrive outside West End Central. They waited under the big blue lamp, Jean Wilder smoking furiously. ‘What are we looking for?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Watch,’ I said.

  A black cab pulled up. The driver helped Piper Maldini manoeuvre her brother’s wheelchair out of the taxi. Philip Maldini settled in his wheelchair, nodding briefly to Barry Wilder.

  ‘Do Barry Wilder and Philip Maldini seem like friends to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s because they have never met before,’ I said. ‘Now look at Jean Wilder and Piper Maldini.’

  The two women were conferring like old friends.

  Jean Wilder threw a cigarette in the gutter and immediately pulled out another. Piper Maldini held a match for her. Jean Wilder lightly touched the younger woman on her arm.

  ‘Do they look like strangers to you?’ I asked.

  Whitestone was staring at me.

  ‘What are you saying, Max?’

  ‘The discrepancies on Tara’s voice analysis were not because Barry Wilder and Paul Warboys were guilty,’ I said. ‘It was not even because they were lying. It was because neither Paul Warboys or Barry Wilder were telling us the whole truth.’

  They were all looking at me now.

  ‘That smell in the back of the van was cigarette smoke covered by perfume and chewing gum,’ I said. ‘Lots of unfiltered Camels masked with a good spray of Jimmy Choo perfume and plenty of Juicy Fruit. Dr Joe said we were being distracted by the masks and he was right. It made us miss the most obvious thing about the Hanging Club.’

  On the CCTV outside 27 Savile Row, Piper Maldini and Jean Wilder suddenly stared up at the camera watching them.

  ‘Three of them are women,’ I said.

  35

  The four of them were waiting outside the interview rooms.

  Jean Wilder’s jaws moved furiously as she watched us coming down the corridor. In the confined space outside the row of interview rooms, the smell of unfiltered Camels, Jimmy Choo and Juicy Fruit almost made me gag.

  She looked me in the eye and she saw that I knew.

  ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ I said.

  Jean Wilder laughed bitterly. ‘I think there are a lot of things you don’t understand!’

  I glanced at Piper Maldini. And I watched her mouth tighten as she saw that it was over now. Perhaps it had been over from the moment Andrej Wozniak disappeared under the steel wheels of a tube train. Or perhaps they would have kept going until there was not one of them left. We would never know.

  ‘Why Darren Donovan?’ I asked Jean Wilder. ‘You had a good reason to hate Mahmud Irani and so did Andrej Wozniak. The Warboys had a good reason to hate Hector Welles for killing their grandson.’ I nodded at the Maldinis and their dark good looks seemed to drain under the lights of West End Central. ‘And I understand why you would hate a man like Abu Din,’ I said quietly. Then I stared into Jean Wilder’s furious face. ‘I can even understand why you would hate me for getting in your way and for coming after you.’

  Jean Wilder shook her head.

  ‘You really don’t understand. Believe me.’

  ‘Jean,’ her husband said. ‘Don’t say anything.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she told him. ‘We don’t hate you because you came after us. We hate you because you’re always on the side of the filth. You protect the men who rape our daughters because you care more about their human rights than you do about our children. It’s a fact. You don’t care. You don’t get it. You truly don’t understand. And that’s why we hate you.’

  I looked at Piper Maldini.

  ‘There were only three of you when Abu Din was abducted,’ I said. ‘At first I thought it was because you, Piper, were seen day after day on that street in Wembley and one of the faithful might recognise you – even behind an Albert Pierrepoint mask. But that wasn’t it, was it?’

  Piper Maldini still had not spoken. Her brother twisted in
his wheelchair to look at her.

  He didn’t know, I thought.

  He didn’t know until now.

  ‘You were driving the white van,’ I said to her. ‘You were not usually the driver. But driving was your role that night, wasn’t it? And you did it well.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to need one,’ Whitestone said.

  Jean Wilder was laughing as she took out a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘There’s no smoking in here,’ Edie said.

  Jean Wilder ignored her.

  She lit up, sucked hungrily on her cigarette and considered me, her eyes narrowing through the rising smoke.

  ‘You actually have to ask why we did that stinking junkie,’ she said, shaking her head with wonder. ‘Because your little cop-like brain can’t understand why anyone would want to remove someone like that – a drug addict who robbed and as good as killed an elderly war veteran for his pension money. You don’t get it, do you? You don’t understand that this country is better off without him, do you? Darren Donovan died because he deserved to die. Because your laws are too weak to deal with someone like that. Because your courts are too full, and the lawyers too slick, and the police too overworked – the poor little lambs.’ She was enjoying her cigarette. ‘Somebody had to do him,’ she said. ‘And it fell to us. He deserved to hang. Isn’t that reason enough?’

  ‘How did it work?’ I said. I looked at Barry Wilder. ‘Did Andrej Wozniak make contact with you when Mahmud Irani was on trial at the Old Bailey?’

  ‘My husband had nothing to do with it,’ Jean Wilder said. ‘Leave him out of it, will you?’

  ‘Leave him out of it?’ I said. ‘Nobody gets left out of it. Do you know the sentence for conspiracy to murder in this country? Life imprisonment.’

  ‘It was the women,’ Piper Maldini said quickly, one hand on her brother’s wheelchair. ‘It was only the women. Right from the start it was the women. Andrej contacted Jean. Jean approached me . . .’

  ‘And Wozniak brought in Doll Warboys,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’