The Hanging Club

22

I awoke near the end of the night, at that moment when deep, restorative sleep enters the dreaming shallows.

The first rays of sunrise were filling the big windows of the loft with a milky light. I heard Stan sigh and settle by my side and I reached out to stroke him, reassuring him it wasn’t time to get up yet.

But my phone was vibrating. It was DCI Whitestone.

Press conference –

West End Central –

0800 sharp.

I looked at the clock by the side of the bed. 04.45. I lay back with a sigh, my hand on fur that was smoother than silk. Stan’s huge round eyes were watching me in the half-light.

‘Nobody sleeps any more, Stan,’ I said.

Scout was spending a couple of nights at Mia’s, an extended sleepover that was only possible during her long summer break, so after I had walked and fed the dog I waited for Mrs Murphy to arrive and then headed off for work hours before I really needed to. There was no sound from Jackson’s room.

MIR-1 was empty when I arrived at West End Central carrying a triple espresso from the Bar Italia on Frith Street, Soho. As sometimes happened when I had not slept well, I could feel my old injuries coming back, reminders of ancient pain that my grandmother would have called ‘playing up’.

There was a three-inch scar on my stomach where a man who was now dead had stuck his knife.

There was the lower part of my ribcage on the right-hand side where I had torn my internal intercostal muscles – the muscles that let you breathe – when I had fallen through a table. And there were assorted knocks that I had picked up in the gym, trying to be a tough guy.

They all hurt today.

So I took off the jacket of the suit that I had got married in and got down on the floor of MIR-1 to do some stretching. It was the only thing that made all that old bone-deep pain go away. I had learned the moves watching Stan. He did them every time he got up.

I settled in a neutral position on my hands and knees and then curved my spine, raising my head as I pushed back my shoulders. Just like Stan. And then the other way round, arching my back and trying to make my chin touch my navel. Just like Stan. I breathed out, feeling better already, and settled for a moment on my hands and knees before straightening my arms and legs and pushing my butt into the air. And that is the position I was in when I saw Tara Jones watching me from the doorway of MIR-1.

‘You do yoga?’ she said. ‘I’m impressed.’

I got to my feet, my face burning. ‘What? Yoga? No! These are just some moves that Stan taught me.’

‘Stan’s your yoga teacher? He’s good.’

‘Stan’s my dog.’

She came into the room and went to her workstation.

‘Why are you in so early?’ I said, and when she turned to look at me we both realised that she had not heard me.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I forget.’

She was plugging her laptop into the workstation’s computer.

She looked at my face. ‘You forget I’m deaf?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no reason to remember. My condition doesn’t define me. It’s a difficulty not a disability. My parents were told, “Your baby girl can have a disability or a difficulty. It’s up to you.” They treated it as a difficulty rather than a disability. And so do I.’

‘I don’t mean to offend you.’

‘It’s fine that you forget. You don’t offend me.’

She waited for me to speak.

‘I just wondered why you are here so early.’

The hint of a smile. She pushed the hair out of her face.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb your yoga session, Detective.’

I laughed uneasily. ‘I don’t do yoga.’

‘Oh yes, you do,’ she insisted. ‘And so does your dog. Stan? Even if you don’t know it.’ She powered up her machine. ‘Two things. I’ve been running biometrics on the most recent film. The background sound is building work. I know, I know – all of London is a building site. But this is not the sound of someone having a loft conversion or a new conservatory put in. This is heavy machinery, a hundred and fifty feet below ground. That’s a major skyscraper going up. That narrows it down, doesn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘What’s the other thing?’

‘I did a review of your interviews with Mr Wilder and Mr Warboys. The interview with Mr Warboys has no biometrical anomalies. But I don’t think that Mr Wilder was telling you the whole truth.’

I remembered Barry Wilder in the interview room and my total conviction that he had been telling the truth. He had nothing to do with the lynching of Mahmud Irani.

‘I thought you said that voice biometrics was infallible?’

‘I never said infallible. I said that it was light years ahead of twentieth-century tech like the lie detector.’ She hit the keyboard and called up the interview tape. ‘Just watch, will you?’

I heard my voice.

‘Did you have contact with Mahmud Irani after he was released from prison?’

I heard Barry Wilder reply and saw a yellow line jump across Tara Jones’ screen like summer lightning.

‘Yes . . . I got a knife . . . I was planning to stick it in his heart.’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ I said.

‘Yes, but even when he’s telling the truth, his results show evidence of heart palpitations, raised blood pressure, shallow breathing. Initially I didn’t run tests on statements that we believed to be true. And I should have done.’

‘But he’s nervous,’ I said. ‘He’s in a police station. He’s admitting that he considered killing one of the men who abused his daughter.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s more than that. Far more. His blood pressure was a reading of systolic 190 over a diastolic 110 – that’s what doctors call a hypertensive crisis. Even when he was telling you the truth, his blood pressure was off the chart.’

‘Are you saying he lied to me?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m saying that you didn’t ask him the right questions.’

* * *

Whitestone froze.

She was staring out at the massed reporters, photographers and camera crews stuffed into the first-floor media room at West End Central and they were all staring back at her, waiting for something to happen.

But nothing did.

This small, bespectacled woman, the most experienced homicide detective at 27 Savile Row, looked as if she did not understand what she was doing here, or what was expected of her. There was a statement in her right hand. I saw her fingers tighten into a fist, crumpling the statement.

I was on one side of her and the Chief Super was on the other. I saw the Chief Super gently touch Whitestone’s back, encouraging her, urging her on. And still she did not move.

From the time Whitestone had arrived at MIR-1 today she had seemed distracted, tired, as though her mind was still with her son in the hospital. But I brought her some serious coffee from the Bar Italia and by the time our MIT had assembled, she was more like her old self. Now she had suddenly blanked.

‘I’ve got it,’ I whispered, and took the microphone. ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m DC Max Wolfe of West End Central and I’m going to make a brief statement about our ongoing investigations and then take a few questions.’

Scarlet Bush stood up.

‘I wanted to ask you about the victims of the Hanging Club,’ she said.

I prised Whitestone’s statement from her hand. She glanced at me for a moment and then quickly fled the room.

I looked down at the words she had written:

I’m going to make a brief statement.

Scarlet Bush was still talking. ‘A child molester. A hit-and-run driver. A drug addict who put an old war hero in a coma. And now a hate preacher, popularly – and some would say deservedly – known as the Mental Mullah.’

I held my temper.

‘What’s your question?’

‘How does it feel to be hunting men who millions consider to be heroes?

‘Vigilantes are not heroes,’ I said. ‘Murderers are not heroes. Not in the eyes of the law.’

They were shouting questions at me now.

‘The law is there to protect everyone,’ I said.

‘Even pedlars of hate like Abu Din?’

‘Everyone. We will pursue the individuals who attempted to abduct Mr Din as vigorously as we would anyone else. That’s the way it works, folks. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the only way it can ever work.’

They were all shouting their questions at me now and I could feel a nervous Media Liaison Officer urging me to wind it up. But I maintained eye contact with Scarlet Bush.

‘Murderers are not heroes,’ I said.

‘Depends who they murder,’ she said, and they all laughed.

Whitestone was waiting for me in MIR-1.

‘Max,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m happy to do it. I don’t care if they love me or not. I don’t care what they write. I’m beyond all that now.’

‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I saw him.’

I stared at her.

‘Who?’

‘Trey N’Dou. The Dog Town Boy who blinded my son. He lives a mile from us. Can you believe that? I saw him in the street. I will always see him. When my son comes home – he will be there.’

She started for the door.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you.’

It was the other Islington.

Not the Islington where politicians eat their organic chicken and plot world domination, not the Islington where you can’t even think about buying a house for less than two million, and not the Islington that is handy for a job in the City.

This was the other Islington, where the council estates stretch on forever, rolling all the way down from Angel to King’s Cross, where the people with nothing live next door to the people with everything, and they don’t enjoy it very much.

I parked up across the street from a kebab shop on the Holloway Road. A purple VW Golf was parked outside.

‘They live in these streets,’ Whitestone said. ‘The Dog Town Boys. They’re walking around. I will see them. And they will see me, Max. They will see me with my beautiful boy. The one whose eyes they stole. Trey N’Dou and his friends will see him and they will laugh at us, Max. I know it. I know it. I know it. I’ll do something. If they laugh at us, I’ll do something, Max, I swear to God I will.’

‘Listen to me, will you? If you’re inside, you’re no good to your boy, are you? So you’re not doing anything, all right? Stop talking like that, Pat.’

She jabbed a finger at the shabby street.

‘That’s him. That’s the Dog Town Boy who did it. That’s Trey N’Dou.’

A man-sized youth swaggered out of the kebab shop, eating with his mouth open.

‘He’s the one who did it? You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?’

Hot tears were streaming down her face.

‘How are we to live, Max?’ she said.

I stood at the windows of our loft and watched Jackson coming home from Fred’s gym. He was clutching a pair of my old worn fourteen-ounce Lonsdale gloves to his chest.

It was late in the evening, still very light, and the good weather meant the pubs all had crowds outside them. Directly below me, down on Charterhouse Street, there was a group of lads, maybe about a dozen strong, larking about right in front of the entrance to our loft. Jackson was heading straight towards them. Four storeys down, I heard the sound of breaking glass and laughter.

I watched Jackson.

I watched the lads.

I steeled myself to go down and help him.

But he didn’t need my help.

They parted to let him through. They didn’t look at him and he didn’t look at them. But there was something about him that made them step out of his way. At the sound of his key in the door Stan got up and padded off to greet him.

The dog was all over him.

‘Hello, little buddy,’ he said, scratching Stan behind his extravagant ears. Jackson looked at me and saw my face and waited for me to speak.

‘I need your help,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Fine. Have I got time for a shower?’

Not – Is it dangerous?

Not – What’s all this about, Max?

He just wanted to know if he had time for a shower. Just a calm acceptance that I needed him by my side tonight. I smiled to myself. He had never felt more like the closest thing I ever had to a brother. And I had never loved him more.

I looked out of the loft’s huge windows, the last of the summer day’s sunshine streaming in.

We wouldn’t have to make a move until after dark.

‘You’ve time for a shower,’ I told him.