The Hanging Club

5

‘So that’s the plan?’ said Edie Wren early the next morning. ‘We work our way through the list of everyone who hated Mahmud Irani because of his conviction for grooming? That’s our MLOE?’

Major Line of Enquiry.

I nodded. She whistled.

‘Long list,’ she said.

‘Then we better get started,’ I said.

I had parked the BMW X5 in a courtyard of a low-rise block of flats on the hill that slowly rises from King’s Cross all the way to the Angel. We were in Islington, but this was not the Islington of cool cafés and million-pound studio flats. This was the other Islington, where the council houses stretched as far as the eye could see. Even this early in the day, the heat was building.

‘We run the TIE process on everyone who had good cause to hate the victim,’ I said.

Trace, Interview and Eliminate.

‘We’re doing this in the absence of the kill site,’ I said. ‘And in the absence of any other suspects, clues or leads.’ I looked up at the bleak block of flats. ‘Sofi Wilder was eleven years old when she met Mahmud Irani.’

‘Jesus,’ Edie murmured.

‘Now she’s eighteen. Sofi was one of the gang’s first victims, and has had a lot of physical and mental problems. Apparently she doesn’t leave her home.’

‘Why are we looking at this poor kid? Max, this is a total waste of time.’

‘Not Sofi,’ I said. ‘We’re looking at her father – Barry Wilder. Threats were made in the courtroom on the day of sentencing.’ I read from my notes: ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to hunt you down and fucking kill you. And there’s something else. The dad – this Barry Wilder – he’s been away.’

‘What for?’

‘Assault. Football violence. Twenty years ago.’

Edie looked doubtful.

‘Lynching a man is a bit different from giving the away supporters a good hiding,’ she said.

I shrugged.

‘Look what they did to his daughter,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

We got out of the car and found the flat.

Barry Wilder opened the door. He had a shaved head and a short-sleeved Ben Sherman shirt with fading tattoos on arms that had been built up by manual work rather than a gym. THE JAM, said one tattoo. MADNESS said another. He was a forty-something skinhead but he looked as though life had kicked all the aggression out of him. He glanced at our warrant cards but seemed too shy to make eye contact.

‘Mr Wilder? I’m DC Wolfe and this is DC Wren. We would like to ask you some questions about Mahmud Irani.’

He nodded. ‘All right. You don’t need to talk to our Sofi, do you?’

‘It’s you we’re interested in,’ Edie said, and he seemed relieved.

He let us into the flat.

A large, heavy-set blonde was sitting by the window, furiously smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out into the warm summer day. Unfiltered Camels. Her mouth flexed with loathing at the sight of us.

Jean Wilder. Sofi’s mother.

‘Ma’am,’ I said, and my greeting was ignored, and she continued to smoke her cigarette as though she hated it.

Edie and I sat on the sofa, Barry Wilder in the armchair opposite us. I got a closer look at the body art on those thick arms. There were some ancient football tattoos, as faded as Egyptian runes. You couldn’t even tell if he was Tottenham or Arsenal.

‘You’re aware that Mahmud Irani has been murdered?’ I said.

I heard a door open, glimpsed the face of a young woman, frightened and pale, and watched the door silently close.

Sofi.

‘Mr Wilder, I hope you understand that we have to talk to you because of the relationship between Mahmud Irani and your daughter.’

The woman at the window exhaled.

‘They didn’t have a relationship,’ Mrs Wilder said quietly. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘What do you think? They were boyfriend and girlfriend? Relationship! Why don’t you ever do your job? It’s not much to expect, is it?’

‘Ma’am,’ Edie said. ‘Please.’

‘You’re in my home,’ Mrs Wilder said, totally calm. ‘And you’re talking about my daughter.’

Edie looked at me and let it go.

‘I need to ask you about threats that you made on Mahmud Irani’s life,’ I said to the father.

Mrs Wilder stubbed out her cigarette with something like fury. But the big man in front of us nodded mildly, his hands rubbing together as if he was washing them.

I tried to make my voice as neutral as possible.

‘This is what you were heard to say in court, OK?’

‘OK.’

I read from my notes. ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to hunt you down and fucking kill you.’ I looked at the man. ‘Did you make those threats?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Wilder came across the room. She had tried to cover the smell of cigarettes with smells that I knew – Jimmy Choo and Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

‘Do you have children?’ she asked me.

‘This is not about me, ma’am.’

‘Why are you scared to tell me the truth?’

‘I have a daughter,’ I said.

‘How old?’

‘She’s five.’

‘She’ll grow up,’ Jean Wilder said. ‘They always do. You can’t imagine it now but she’ll grow up so fast that it will make your head spin. And you should get down on your knees and pray to God that she – your daughter, who I am sure you love like you love nothing else in this world – never has a man like Mahmud Irani and his friends catch her scent. Because what we have been through in this family is worse than hell and it is worse than death and it could happen to anyone with a daughter in this country today. And the people who are meant to protect children? The policemen and the social workers and all the professional do-gooders? They look the other way when children are tortured and raped.’ A breath escaped her mouth, and she shook her head in wonder. ‘They look the other way.’

‘I do appreciate how much you’ve suffered,’ I said. ‘But this is a murder investigation and we are obliged to make enquiries.’

I turned to her husband.

‘Did you have any contact with Mahmud Irani after he was sentenced?’ I said.

But Jean Wilder spoke for him.

‘Barry didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘When was it? He was here. He’s here every night. We all are. The three of us. Where would we go? Why would we want the neighbours and people we don’t even know staring at us – pointing at us – looking at Sofi as if she was less than human. Yes, my husband said those things. Screamed those things at the top of his voice. No doubt he meant it at the time. Because when they were in the dock, they were laughing at us. Those stinking Paki bastards who wrecked our lives.’

‘Please,’ I said.

But she would not let it go.

‘You say you have a daughter,’ she said, as if there was the possibility that I might be lying. ‘What would you say if they treated your daughter like a sex toy and then they laughed at you?’

She was very close to me now. I could smell the unfiltered Camels and the Jimmy Choo and the Juicy Fruit.

‘I’ve had no contact with the man,’ Barry Wilder said quietly. No doubt he had been a violent youth when he was running riot at the football, but I could see no violence in the man now, only a bottomless sadness, and a grief that was never-ending.

He looked at the floor and washed his hands with each other.

‘I said those things, yes, I did say them, I don’t deny it, but I didn’t see the man since the trial, not until they showed that film on the Internet.’ At last he looked me in the eyes. ‘The film of him being hung,’ he said.

We stared at each other in silence.

And then I thanked him and stood up.

Jean Wilder followed us to the door.

‘You useless bastards!’ she said. ‘You tiptoe around these gangs because you’re terrified of looking racist.’

I turned to look at her.

‘Mrs Wilder, I don’t tiptoe around anyone,’ I said quietly. ‘I was not a part of the investigation into Mahmud Irani and the Hackney grooming gang that abused your daughter and neither was DC Wren here. Those men were criminals and they got what they deserved.’

She pushed her face close to mine. Too many cigarettes, I thought. And too much Jimmy Choo.

‘She could have loved someone,’ she said. ‘My Sofi. And she could have gone to college and she could have had a normal life, but that’s all gone now.’

I opened the door. Jean Wilder reached across me and closed it. She had not finished with us yet.

‘Do you know what they did to her?’ she said ‘To all those girls? You think you know – because you skimmed some report or you caught it on the news. But you don’t know. They flattered these children, and gave them attention, then filled them with booze and drugs and took them to rooms where men were waiting. Dozens of the leering, stinking bastards. They gang-raped these children. They filmed them. They invited their friends round. All their stinking Paki cousins and Paki brothers. They branded them.’ A rage and grief swelled up inside her and it was no different from vomit. She choked it back down. ‘They put cigarettes out on their bodies and laughed about it. They fucking laughed. My daughter – my little girl – my baby – has cigarette burns on her breasts and buttocks—’

Barry Wilder roared.

‘ENOUGH!’

Jean Wilder’s eyes were shining as she watched her husband lumber towards us. She placed a hand on her husband’s arm, and patted it once.

‘He had nothing to do with it,’ she said, suddenly very tired. ‘But you know what? I wish he did!’

I gently opened the door.

And this time she let me.

‘And what would you do, Detective?’ she said, laughing at my eagerness to get out of that broken-hearted home. ‘If it was your daughter – in those rooms – with those men – what would you do about it?’

I said nothing.

I couldn’t look at her.

She followed us to the door.

‘You catch them?’ she said. ‘The men that hanged Mahmud Irani? Give them a medal.’

We were walking to the car when I looked up and saw the face of the girl at the window. Sofi. The curtain closed and she was gone. Edie and I didn’t speak until we were back in the car.

‘You didn’t answer her question,’ Edie said. ‘What would you do if it was Scout, Max?’

‘Oh, give me a break, Edie.’

We both knew what I would do.