The Hanging Club- Max Wolfe 03

31

As I waited for Alice Goddard inside the Central Criminal Court I stared up at a large shard of broken glass embedded in the wall at the base of the main staircase.

The jagged chunk of glass was as big as a dinner plate. It glinted with the golden light of an early autumn morning as the traffic of the Old Bailey bustled beneath it. The QCs in their wigs and gowns, the lawyers in black carrying cardboard boxes of evidence, judges, jurors, witnesses and – mostly younger, poorer and blacker than everyone else – the defendants in their best suits or newly laundered sportswear.

At least, I thought it was a chunk of glass. It looked like a chunk of broken glass. But I couldn’t understand how it got up there. Perhaps I was seeing things. Security at the Central Criminal Court is tighter than any public building in the country. No mobile phones, no bags and no food and drinks are allowed. So how did a random hunk of broken glass get stuck in the wall?

‘It’s from the IRA car bomb in 1973,’ said a voice beside me.

I looked at him. He was a large man with the beginnings of a beard. There was a name card on his dark suit.

ANDREJ WOZNIAK, it said. BAILIFF.

And now I knew him.

He was the court bailiff who had stood in front of me and blocked my path when Steve Goddard’s killers had got away with murder.

He was the big man who had prevented me from doing something stupid.

I held out my hand and he shook it.

‘Before my time,’ he said. ‘But I understand the IRA made a bit of a mess. One dead and two hundred injured that day.’ He nodded at the broken glass embedded in the wall, almost smiling now. ‘We keep it as a souvenir.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t fall on some judge’s wig,’ I said.

Wozniak laughed.

‘It’s buried quite deep,’ he said. ‘I think we’re safe.’

Wozniak had a reassuring presence. Although the Central Criminal Court is the venue for some of the highest profile cases in the land, a large part of its daily life is devoted to cases concerning gangs. Far more than the average policeman, the bailiffs of the Old Bailey have to be physically capable men with skill sets somewhere between diplomats and bouncers.

Over Wozniak’s shoulder I could see Alice Goddard coming through the main doors. Her children, Stephen and Kitty, followed her. Now I saw the entire family looked much older than the night I met them. The children on the edge of maturity, and Mrs Goddard worn down by stress, growing old before her time. She waved to me. The big bailiff was still looking up at the chunk of broken glass buried deep into the wall of the Old Bailey.

‘All this time,’ he said. ‘Just think.’

The gang of three had been reduced to one.

Jed Blake, in his best suit. Looking nervous. Sitting in the dock and scanning the public gallery for familiar faces. They had been a gang the night that Steve Goddard died. When they had been arrested, and when they were questioned, and when they were charged, they had been a gang.

Different kinds of creeps, certainly. The coward. The weakling. And the bully. But undoubtedly a gang. They had felt like a gang when we brought them in and separated them in different interview rooms. They had felt like a gang when we charged them. And when they had gone down for involuntary manslaughter, they had felt like a gang. But now Jed Blake sat in the dock alone, anxious to abdicate from the gang, as his wigged and robed lawyer argued in an expensively educated accent that there had been a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Because they were never really a gang, he insisted.

‘My Lord, there was no joint enterprise,’ the lawyer said. ‘My client was under the impression that he was joining his friends for a game of soccer in the local park. He took no part in the involuntary manslaughter of the deceased. He is a young man of impeccable character, My Lord. The suggestion that there was joint enterprise was predicated on the fact that my client filmed the assault.’

The judge frowned over his reading glasses at the trembling youth in the dock. There was a kiss tattoo on Jed Blake’s neck. I had never seen one of those before. I don’t think they will catch on. It’s going to look silly when he’s sixty.

‘Do you understand the premise being suggested by your legal representative?’ the judge said.

Jed Blake snapped from his reverie. ‘Sorry, sir? What, sir?’

Irritation flickered across the claret-faced features of the judge.

‘Young man, all judges sitting at the Central Criminal Court are referred to as “My Lord” or “My Lady” regardless as to whether they are High Court judges, Circuit judges or recorders – do you understand?’

‘Yes . . . My Lord.’

‘Good. Your Mr Gilkes here argues that you had no intention of causing any physical harm to the late Mr Goddard. In common law legal doctrine there is something called common purpose – also known as joint criminal enterprise or common design. It imputes criminal liability for all participants in a criminal enterprise from all that results of that enterprise. Under the doctrine of common purpose, if a gang murders a man then all members of that gang are responsible for his death, regardless of who dealt the fatal blow.’

Jed Blake’s mouth lolled open. He was trying to keep up.

The judge continued.

‘You are here today to request leave to appeal against the verdict of involuntary manslaughter on the premise that you were never part of the gang that committed involuntary manslaughter. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Please, My Lord,’ the boy said, and burst into a fit of snotty sobbing. For a minute the only sound in the court was his weeping.

The judge cleared his throat.

‘Do you need a glass of water?’ he asked.

‘No, My Lord.’

‘Do you need a fifteen-minute break?’

‘No, My Lord. Thank you very much for asking, My Lord. It’s very kind of you, My Lord.’

Blake wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He smiled bravely. The judge frowned at him over his reading glasses.

‘What were you doing outside Mr Goddard’s property?’

‘I thought we were, like, going to play football, My Lord.’ Blake’s rat-like features pinched with cunning. ‘The only reason I filmed it was because I was messing about with my phone when he – the man – came out of his house. I was scared of him, My Lord. I could see he had lost his rag – that he was angry, My Lord. My mates – they had the bundle, My Lord. We were just mucking about, My Lord. It was just a laugh! A bit of a laugh, My Lord! I don’t know how it happened. The altercation, My Lord. I just froze. I didn’t touch him. It wasn’t me. It was my mates, My Lord. It’s completely wrong that I got done.’

The judge thought about it for a moment.

‘Leave to appeal . . . granted,’ he said.

I looked up at the public gallery. Heavy-set women with tattoos were celebrating as though they were at a football match. Blake’s mother, sisters, perhaps a girlfriend.

The lawyer was puffed up with pride.

‘It’s not fair, is it, Max?’ Mrs Goddard said quietly.

I looked at the stony face of her son, Steve Junior, and the quiet tears of her daughter, Kitty. And then I looked at Alice.

It clawed at my heart that she felt the need, even now, to keep her voice down.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair.’

* * *

I stood at the base of the main staircase and stared up at the broken shard of glass from an IRA car bomb buried deep in the wall.

All that time. Just think.

The crowds at the Old Bailey were thinning out now.

But I lingered, staring up at the detritus of an old war, troubled by a thought that I could not name.

Just think.

Then I began to move, walking up the main staircase of the Old Bailey, unsure what I was looking for.

I went through a door and into a long, lavish dining room. It was set for dinner. Perhaps fifty places. A signed portrait of the Prince of Wales smiled at me.

And then I saw it. A heavy black iron doorknocker attached to a square of hard wood, ancient but unmarked, the wood dark brown with time.

The doorknocker of Newgate Prison. It was as black as the grave. And I could see where the old saying comes from. As black as Newgate’s knocker. And as I stared at it I could understand – really understand for the first time – that Newgate Prison had once stood on this same ground.

All that time.

Just think.

I went out of the door as some kind of manservant was coming in. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said, but I was already past him, going back down the main staircase and through the marble halls of the Old Bailey.

STAFF ONLY, said a door, and I went through it. It was a long corridor with offices on one side. I walked past the offices, looking in, seeing that they were quite small, glimpsing screen savers on computers and the remains of café-bought lunches eaten at the desk, seeing the faces of all those office workers weary with mid-afternoon torpor. Everyone ignored me. There was an unmarked door at the end of the offices. It was unlocked so I went through that, too, and down a staircase, deep into the bowels of the building. I could hear machinery rumbling and wheezing, like the engine room of some old ocean liner. I came to an ancient boiler room.

This basement area was bathed in a weary green light. There was an unmarked door at the end of the corridor. It was locked.

‘Are you all right?’

I turned to face Andrej Wozniak.

‘I just want to check something out,’ I told the bailiff. ‘Do you have a key for this door?’

‘I can find you one.’

‘Thanks.’

He was back within minutes. I stood aside as he unlocked the door for me and I went through, descending another flight of stairs. There was no light now apart from what seeped down from the boiler room. It was colder down here, and getting darker by the second as I continued down the stairs, and I could feel the weight of the city was pressing down on me. Wozniak’s footsteps were right behind me.

I stepped into a room that was abandoned years ago.

‘What’s down here?’ I said.

‘Storage rooms,’ said Wozniak. ‘But there’s a lot of damp so we can’t keep papers down here. They rot.’

I walked on. There was empty room after empty room, the damp showing through the cracked and peeling plaster.

And then I opened a rotten wooden door and finally there was a room that I recognised.

A room with white tiles that had turned green with time.

A room that was shaped like a cube.

You could smell the decay.

‘You having any luck?’ Wozniak said.

I thought he was talking about Mrs Goddard.

‘They gave the boy leave to appeal his conviction,’ I said. ‘They said it wasn’t joint enterprise.’

‘I meant the other thing,’ he said. ‘Your murder investigation. Any luck with that?’

It was like a room that I had seen in a dream. Everything felt slightly changed from what it should be. There was no kitchen step stool. The stool where they had stood Mahmud Irani. And Hector Welles. And Darren Donovan. And me.

It was not dark. A green light ebbed into the room from the boiler room a floor above. My eyes scanned the floor.

There was no gun.

And there was no rope hanging from the ceiling.

And so I was wrong. This could not be the place.

I was overthinking it. I was trying too hard.

‘The other thing,’ Wozniak repeated. ‘The Hanging Club.’

‘We’ll find them,’ I said. ‘You can’t go around helping yourself to revenge.’

He chuckled. ‘But it’s not revenge, is it? It’s a signal. It’s saying, “This is still our country. You can’t do what you like here. We’re not going to let you.”’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

And then I saw it. The dull gleam of a single casing.

I picked it up and looked at it.

Spent brass, I thought.

This was the place.

I held it in my hand, and I turned to smile at Wozniak.

And then I saw something that his beard could not quite hide.

The teeth marks that I had left on his face.