The Hanging Club- Max Wolfe 03

28

I was jolted from sleep when my phone began vibrating on the small bedside table, moving in jerky little circles as if it had a life of its own. I swung my legs out of bed. Six a.m. and the sky was still almost black. The days were getting shorter.

A woman was crying at the other end of the line. It took me a moment to realise that she was Alice Goddard.

‘They are going to let one of them out! They are going to let him off! Max, he’s going to get away with killing my husband!’

‘Slow down, Alice. What’s happening?’

She got it out. One of the gang who had killed Steve Goddard was trying to get his verdict declared unsound.

‘Which one?’ I said, although I could already guess.

‘The one who filmed it on his phone. Jed Blake. Do you remember him? He’s saying – he’s saying he didn’t take part, that it was nothing to do with him . . .’

I remembered all three of them. The coward. The weakling. And the bully. They had been cocky enough in Court Number One of the Old Bailey but far less impressive when I had first encountered them in Interview Room 2 at West End Central.

I had seen the bully blank-faced with callous indifference, too stupid to realise the enormity of what he had done. And I saw the weakling wet himself at the prospect of a prison sentence.

And I saw the coward – Jed Blake – crying for his mother, head in his hands as if he could not bear to look at the interview room, repeating over and over again that he had not laid a fist or a boot on Mr Goddard, that he had just pointed his phone and pressed record.

‘Listen to me, Alice. It sounds like this Jed Blake creep is seeking permission to appeal. The judge at their trial decided that they were all in it together. But Blake’s lawyer is probably going to argue that his conviction was unsound because they were not all in it together.’ The words stuck in my mouth, but I had to spell it out to her. ‘Because Blake was only filming what happened and not taking part in the beating.’

I heard her crying into the phone. Quietly now, knowing this was no nightmare. This was her life.

Her voice was very small. ‘But what does it all mean? He’s not really going to get out, is he?’

‘Alice – if it goes to appeal, I can’t tell you what way it’s going to go. I’m not a criminal lawyer. And even if I was, I still couldn’t call it. But if Blake seeks permission to appeal, he has to file what they call a Form NG – Notice and Grounds of Appeal, setting out what his lawyer says was wrong with his conviction. If the Form NG is granted by the judge, then it goes to the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. And if the judge there decides it’s an unsafe conviction, he could walk. I’m really sorry.’

Sorry this world will not leave you alone. Sorry I can’t do anything to make it better. Sorry your husband got kicked to death for defending his family.

‘I’ll be there with you,’ I promised. ‘You don’t have to go through this alone. I’ll be right by your side in the courtroom.’

But by then she had hung up.

I walked into the loft and stood by the large windows, watching the sun come up over the rooftops of Smithfield and the Barbican, first light shimmering on the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and, even closer, the bronze statue on top of the Old Bailey, blindfolded Lady Justice, her outstretched arms perfectly balanced between the scales in her left hand and the sword in her right.

And although the blindfold Lady Justice wears was meant to make all her judgements seem impartial and wise, today it just made her justice seem random and mindless and cruel.

Stan watched me carefully from his basket and when I went to the door and began putting my boots on, he padded over, his round eyes shining and his tail wagging with delight. We went downstairs and into the street, the Cavalier so relaxed by my side, his old leather lead so loose, that it felt as though we didn’t need it at all. We were walking past Smiths of Smithfield when out of nowhere he tried to dash out into the traffic.

The lead snapped tight and a black cab flew past, inches from his head, its horn blaring.

I crouched down to look into my dog’s face. Those great black marbles of eyes were wild and his tongue – as pink as Duchy of Cornwall organic ham – lolled out of his panting mouth. He sniffed the morning air, savouring some perfume that only he could detect.

‘What’s wrong with you, Stan? Christ almighty, you could have been killed!’

And then I saw the woman with her white miniature poodle on the other side of Charterhouse Street. I looked at Stan. He panted some more, and he wouldn’t meet my eye. I shook my head with disbelief.

‘That’s why you would get yourself killed?’ I said. ‘Just for a sniff of some girl dog?’ I pushed my face close to his and he licked my nose, trying to make amends. ‘Listen to me. Don’t make me do it. I don’t want to take you to the vet’s, OK? I don’t want to have you . . . done. But I will if you keep throwing yourself into traffic.’

I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the walk. But as he did his morning business in West Smithfield and I read the inscriptions from Oliver Twist that cover all the benches, the passage about Bill Sykes dragging Oliver through Smithfield meat market, Stan kept stealing glances at me.

As if I, of all people, should understand.

Scout was up when we got back.

She was still in her pyjamas and was on a step stool in the kitchen, standing on tiptoes to rifle through the cupboards.

‘I’m making you breakfast,’ she said. ‘Jackson taught me to cook.’

‘What you making, Scout?’

‘Toasted jam sandwich.’

‘Sounds good. Don’t put your fingers in the toaster.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Duh.’

‘Need some help, angel?’

‘No.’

‘Looking forward to going back to school and seeing all your friends?’

‘I really need to concentrate now.’

‘Sorry.’

So Scout prepared our breakfast and Stan curled up in his dog basket and I got out plastic bags full of brand-new school clothes, and the iron, and long spools of name tags that ran on and on like all the days of my daughter’s childhood. Scout Wolfe, they said. Scout Wolfe, Scout Wolfe, Scout Wolfe.

And my eyes suddenly blurred over as I stood there with the iron and the name tags and the new school clothes, watching Scout liberally slapping strawberry jam over a slice of thick brown bread. Stan got up and padded into the kitchen, smacking his lips and correctly guessing that there would soon be stray pieces of bread falling from the sky.

I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand and I stared dumbly at the name tags in my hand. Scout Wolfe, they said. Scout Wolfe.

And with all my heart I ached for a real family for Scout and for me, a mended family, a restored family, a family that looked like all the other families in the world, a family with nobody missing and nobody gone and nobody wandered off, and I longed for that new family as only a man who has lost his old family ever can.

Then Mrs Murphy came into the loft wearing her green winter coat, wishing everyone good morning, Scout and me and Stan, and saying that this was the first day that she’d felt the chill of autumn in the air, and she gently took the iron and the Scout Wolfe name tags from my hand.

‘Here,’ said Mrs Murphy.

‘I’m no good at it,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Mrs Murphy told me. ‘Your daughter will love you for your heart, not your housework.’