The Hanging Club

10

I was packing my kit bag for the gym. Scout was off for a sleepover with her friend Mia, and down on the street the meat market’s night was just beginning. After the day I had spent at Marble Arch, I knew that sleep would be a struggle for me if I did not exhaust myself at Fred’s.

Then Edie called with what felt like our first breakthrough.

‘The good news is we’ve got prints,’ she said. ‘All our forensics are back for Mahmud Irani and Hector Welles and the same print is on both of the victims’ clothes.’ I could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘It’s a glove print, Max, but really sharp. A thumb. A left thumbprint on both of the dead men.’

Most criminals believe that gloves hide fingerprints. But it is not true, especially with more modern gloves made of latex or something similar. The thinner the glove, the more likely the telltale ridges, whorls, arches and loops are to be left behind.

‘And what’s the bad news?’ I said.

‘None of it rings any bells on IDENT1.’

IDENT1 is the country’s major database for storing fingerprints and contains the fingerprints of knocking on for ten million people. That only leaves about fifty million people who are not on there – the part of the population who have never come into contact with the police.

‘And both of our potential suspects are on IDENT1,’ I said. ‘Because both Paul Warboys and Barry Wilder have criminal records.’

‘Wilder for his youthful indiscretions at the football, and Warboys because crime was what he did for a living,’ Edie said.

‘Are we sure it’s not them?’

Fingerprint analysis is not the exact science that it is always cracked up to be in the movies. Fingerprint officers have been known to get it wrong. Until 2001, a sixteen-point standard existed for fingerprint matches – meaning there were sixteen identical points required on a latent print to legally match it to a suspect. The system was scrapped because it didn’t work.

‘It’s not even close, Max.’

‘But we still don’t have the kill site, so we don’t have prints on surfaces, do we?’ I argued. ‘Paul Warboys or Barry Wilder could have glove prints, fingerprints, footprints and DNA all over the kill site. This one print found doesn’t mean either Barry Wilder and Paul Warboys – or both of them – weren’t there. It doesn’t mean they had nothing to do with it.’

‘It makes it a lot less likely though, doesn’t it?’

I had to give her that. ‘Yes.’

Jackson came into the loft, soaked in sweat from his evening run. Stan got off the sofa and padded across to greet him. The pair of them stared at me talking on the phone.

‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ Edie said.

‘There’s a very strong possibility that these guys don’t have criminal records.’

‘Clean skins,’ Edie said. ‘I bloody hate clean skins. I’ll see you in the morning, Max.’

‘This is the thing on the news,’ Jackson said, his fingers scratching the back of Stan’s neck. ‘The Hanging Club.’

I nodded.

‘So what are they?’ Jackson said. ‘Some kind of vigilante group?’

‘We have a psychologist who works with us,’ I said. ‘Dr Joe. American. His theory is that they think of what they’re doing as capital punishment. They don’t think they’re committing murder. They don’t see it like that. They believe they are carrying out a death sentence.’

‘But they’re only killing scumbags, right? A child groomer and a hit-and-run driver.’

I smiled. ‘They’re not allowed to kill anyone, Jackson. It’s against the law.’

He looked thoughtful.

‘Still – it can’t feel good having to go after them. For you, I mean, Max. Like you’re a lawyer or something.’

I shouldered my kit bag.

‘Did they give you any choice about going to Afghanistan, Jackson? Did they ask you if there was somewhere you would prefer to go?’

He shook his head.

‘You went where you were sent,’ I said. ‘Same here. We just do our job. That’s all we do. The law’s not just there for nice people. I’m off to the gym.’

‘Bit late to be training,’ Jackson said.

‘I need to work off the day,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll never get any sleep.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘You just had a run.’

He laughed. ‘Another hour of cardio won’t kill me.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’m just saying – what they’re doing is illegal. But does that make it wrong?’

‘You talk like you admire them.’

‘And you talk like you don’t. A child groomer, Max. A hit-and-run driver. No great loss.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘The point is – who made them God? Who elected them judge, jury and executioner? They’re not the law.’

‘I forgot,’ he smiled. ‘You are.’

‘I was at the Old Bailey,’ I said. ‘Some boys kicked a man to death. His name was Steve Goddard and he was forty years old. They got off too lightly and it made me mad. I was going to go for them. I wanted to wipe the smiles off their faces. I wanted to hurt them, to punish them in a way that the court had not punished them. I wanted to give them what they deserved. Stupid, right? I’ve got Scout to raise. I’m no good for her sitting in a jail cell. But it was a moment. Then one of the court ushers got in my face and the moment passed.’

‘That’s you, Max. For some people, the moment doesn’t pass.’ He paused. ‘But the hanging’s weird. A funny way to do it, I mean. You ever see anything like this before?’

I shook my head. ‘Never.’

‘Even if you hate these bastards, why would you go to all the trouble of stringing them up?’

I smiled at him. ‘What would you do? Beat them to death with your spatula?’

He didn’t smile back. His dark eyes slid away from me.

‘If I wanted to kill someone that deserved to die, I wouldn’t hang them.’

‘What would you do, Jackson?’

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put a rope around his neck.’

‘But what would you do? Put a bullet in their brains from half a mile away?’

‘I’m no sniper, Max. I’m a chef. But I’d get close enough to smell what they had for breakfast.’ He stared at the open palms of his hands as though noticing them for the first time. ‘Then one in the head,’ he said. ‘And one in the heart.’

We were silent. Then he gave me his gap-toothed grin and the moment was broken. He gestured at my bag.

Fourteen-ounce gloves. Shirt. Shorts. Trainers. Gum shield.

‘Can you lend me some kit?’ said my friend.

We banged the bags at Smithfield ABC.

One of Fred’s famous circuits – ten three-minute rounds on the bags, alternating the heavy bag and the speedball, with one minute between rounds for ten burpies and ten press-ups. No rest for your heart. Recover while you work.

‘You’re so lucky to be training!’ Fred shouted at us. ‘If it was easy, everybody would do it! Pain is just weakness leaving the body!’

Halfway through I stood back from the speedball, trying to catch my breath, reaching for that second wind while Jackson whaled away at the heavy bag, the dull thud of leather against leather. He had on one of my long-sleeved T-shirts that was a size too big for him.

He laughed at my exhaustion.

‘I was always tougher than you!’ he shouted.

It wasn’t true. I was always tougher.

But he was wilder.

There was a crowd of drunks in Charterhouse Street.

More than anywhere in the city, Smithfield was the neighbourhood that never slept. The meat market worked all night. The clubs on Charterhouse Street had them dancing till dawn. Pubs had licensing laws that saw the clubbers and meat porters having a pint at first light. Drunks were no big deal in this part of town.

But the men in front of us now were the ugly kind of drunks. They were standing outside one of the clubs, being refused entry. Politely but firmly. Jackson and I stepped into the road to walk around them as they argued with the men on the door.

‘I smell pig,’ one of them said. The smallest one. The runt. They are often the mouthiest. Napoleons in polo shirts.

We kept walking.

I saw Jackson glance over his shoulder and then look at me.

‘Keep walking,’ I said.

‘That might not be an option,’ he said.

They were following us. I looked over my shoulder. Five of them. Polo shirts in the warm summer night. Kebab stains down the front. Three of them were holding bottles. One of the bottles exploded between my feet.

Glass and beer everywhere. Then they were in front of us.

‘Where you off to, pig?’ one of them said, stepping forward, right in my face. I could smell cigarettes and beer and junk food. Working himself up into a frenzy, the way they always do before the violence starts. ‘I think you know my mate, pig. I think you helped to send him down.’

I took a long step back, giving myself enough room, and I aimed a big right hand at his heart. That always slows them down and shuts them up. A hard punch in the heart. Nobody is expecting a big punch in the heart.

And I missed.

He swivelled to address his friends just as I threw the punch and I caught him high on his shoulder, a skimming shot that spun him around and kicked it all off.

Suddenly there were punches in my face, wild punches that scuffed against my ear, my forehead and high on my cheekbone. Nothing punches. Then one caught me flush on the jaw and the next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees. A foot slammed into my ribs. And another, the other side this time. I could not get up.

And then, through their legs as they continued to kick me, I saw Jackson.

The runt who had screamed in my face went down first. Jackson aimed one low, hard kick at his knee, the side of his foot connecting with bone and ligament, ripping them apart, sending him down with a scream that turned them all around.

Jackson wasted nothing.

These were not the same as the kicks that were pounding into me. These were expert, economical movements, shocking in their violence, his foot raising and turning and aimed at knees. And connecting. Another one hit the deck, his face twisted with agony. Two of them went for Jackson at once. He stepped forward, lifted his hands and inserted both his thumbs into their eye sockets. As they whirled away, howling, their hands clutching their faces, he kicked their knees. It wasn’t the kind of fighting you learn in a boxing gym. There was nothing fair about it. There was no respect for his opponent. He destroyed them. I wondered if they would ever walk again.

One man was left standing. Jackson moved swiftly towards him and swung his body, his right elbow connecting with the man’s mouth, showering front teeth across the pavement. He kicked both of the man’s knees before he hit the pavement.

Then he was helping me to my feet and we were running.

We did not speak when we were running. And we did not speak as we cleaned ourselves up and I dressed the wound that he had on his elbow, his flesh torn away by the front teeth of the last man.

And then we looked at each other.

‘What kind of chef were you?’ I said.