The Hanging Club

33

What remained of Newgate Prison was a crime scene now.

Deep in the bowels of the Old Bailey, our people waited at the perimeter that Whitestone had decided should begin at the boiler room. CSIs, photographers, forensic scientists, geo-forensic specialists were all struggling into their white Tyvek suits, overshoes and masks, waiting for the go-ahead from the Senior Investigating Officer. TDC Billy Greene was helping a young uniformed officer put up the barrier tape, a major incident scene log form in his hand, ready to sign them in and out.

Inside the square room with the rotting tiles, Whitestone and I stood on forensic stepping plates. Above her face mask, the eyes behind her glasses roamed the room.

‘So this was the holding cell,’ she said. ‘Where they kept the condemned before they took them outside to hang them.’ She took off her glasses and polished them. She was thinking about the perimeter of our crime scene. ‘I know where it begins,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know where it should end.’

A figure in a white Tyvek suit squeezed through the gap in the wall that led into Dead Man’s Walk. A stray strand of red hair fell across Edie Wren’s forehead. She pushed it away.

‘The tunnel at the end leads from here – Newgate – to St Sepulchre’s church across the way. It dates from 1807. Hangings were massive crowd-pullers – twenty-eight people died when a pie stall overturned – so they built the tunnel to allow the priest to minister to the condemned man without having to force his way through the crush.’

‘There’s at least one staircase leading off the tunnel,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been down there. It goes on forever.’

Whitestone thought about it for a moment.

‘Establish the other side of our perimeter at the far end of the tunnel,’ she told Edie.

‘Ma’am,’ Edie said, and disappeared back inside Dead Man’s Walk.

‘Shall I tell the Crime Scene Manager to send them in?’ I said.

‘Give me a minute,’ Whitestone said.

I knew that every SIO valued this first look. For all our stepping plates and bunny suits and blue gloves, once we started work, this place would never look the same again.

‘So nobody knows this place is down here?’ she said. ‘That’s hard to believe.’

‘It’s not preserved,’ I said. ‘It’s just here – the holding cell, Dead Man’s Walk. Like the cells in the pub across the street. There’s no conservation order on it. There’s no blue plaque outside. It has just survived, by some fluke of history. It’s not open to tourists. It’s not open to anyone. I doubt if more than 1 per cent of the staff of the Central Criminal Court have ever been down here, or even know it exists. One day they’ll replace that boiler room outside and it will all be swept away with no fuss and no ceremony. And nobody will be sorry to see it go because nobody was ever proud of Newgate. Not now. Not ever. Just the opposite. From the time Charles Dickens came to Newgate in 1836, it was a source of national shame.’

‘It’s the perfect kill site. You can smell death in the air. How many hanged at Newgate?’

‘One thousand, one hundred and sixty-nine – not including Mahmud Irani, Hector Welles and Darren Donovan.’

‘Do we know how Wozniak accessed this place from the street?’

‘I’ve asked the search teams to work their way through all the underground car parks of the surrounding office blocks. It might take a while, but they’ll find it.’

‘You’ve carried this investigation, Max,’ she said.

She was staring down at a smear of blood on the floor. It was next to a scrap of torn wedding suit.

‘You’ve had a lot on your plate,’ I said. ‘How’s he doing? How’s Just?’

‘He’s coming out of hospital soon,’ she said. ‘He’s coming home.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ I said, wanting to do something for the pair of them, wanting to make it right, and knowing that I never could. I felt my face burning because it seemed like a pathetically inadequate thing to offer, to drive Whitestone and her son from one end of the Holloway Road to the other.

But she shot me a grateful smile.

‘That would be a big help, Max,’ she said. Then she nodded at the door, and the perimeter beyond, suddenly all business. ‘Let them in,’ DCI Whitestone said.

We went deeper into the city.

Lit by the torches of our phones, Whitestone and I passed through Dead Man’s Walk and into the underground tunnel that links Newgate to St Sepulchre’s church, descending the stone staircase and carefully picking our way through the blackness until we reached the four identical tunnels with the rounded arch, and passed through them to the two wooden platforms of the abandoned British Museum tube station.

Deep inside the tunnel we could see the lights of the emergency services, retrieving the remains of Andrej Wozniak.

‘Who was he?’ I said. ‘What do they say up at the Central Criminal Court?’

‘Apparently he was very good at his job,’ Whitestone said. ‘A master of decorum who you wouldn’t want to mess with.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He stopped me once. After the verdict at the Goddard trial. When I might have done something stupid. Something that I would have lived to regret.’

‘From what they tell me, he was a typical Old Bailey sheriff. You know what they’re like. They are actually a great bunch of guys. Staying calm and collected in the face of every scumbag that passes through their doors.’

‘He told me we were on the same side. Just before he tried to cut out my eyeball.’

‘He was single, never married, no children, thirty-nine years old. Third-generation Anglo-Polish. His grandfather came over here to fly Hurricanes for the RAF in 1939.’

‘The Polish Air Force. There were twenty-five thousand of them. They were the largest non-British contribution to the Battle of Britain.’

Deep in the tunnel we could see the lights of the emergency services, hear the calls of the men, see a silver glint of the tube train that had claimed Andrej Wozniak.

‘What happened to him?’ I said. ‘How did he make the leap from Old Bailey bailiff to the Hanging Club? It has to be something more than staring at the daily parade of scumbags.’

‘There was a girl,’ Whitestone said. ‘His fiancée. From a different faith. Wozniak was a Catholic and the girl’s family violently objected. Kicked her out of the house. Disowned her. Called her a whore for falling in love. Priti – that was her name. Nobody ever went down for it, but she was the victim of an acid attack. A relative walked up to her as she was coming home from work and threw acid in her face.’

‘Christ Almighty.’

‘And apparently Priti couldn’t live with it. None of it. Not the separation from her family, not what a family member did to ruin her face. Maybe she couldn’t bear to see the look in Andrej Wozniak’s eyes. The pity. The sadness. The rage. Maybe Dr Joe can explain it to you. I wouldn’t know where to begin. You know what the biggest lie in the world is?’

‘Tell me.’

‘That everything happens for a reason. It’s not true. Some things are totally without reason. Some things – the things that hurt the most – are totally meaningless. Some things make no sense and will never make sense.’

I felt like she was talking about herself and her son as much as Andrej Wozniak and his fiancée. I was silent, hearing her breathe in the darkness. Then she adjusted her glasses and went on with her story.

‘Wozniak came home to their flat one night and Priti had hanged herself. He was on compassionate leave for six months. He came back to work at the start of the summer, just before they picked up and hanged Mahmud Irani. Did you know that Irani had a daughter?’

I didn’t have to think about it.

‘Wozniak’s fiancée,’ I said. ‘Priti.’

Whitestone nodded. ‘And nobody was ever punished for the acid attack on Priti. At least, not until Wozniak came back from compassionate leave. I suppose someone has been punished now. But where did he find the rest of them?’

I thought about it.

‘He found them among the ranks of people who were just like him,’ I said. ‘Let down by the system. Humiliated by slick lawyers. Sickened by watching evil bastards get away with murder.’

The lights were coming closer.

They were white and blinding and you could feel their heat.

We saw the sweating, haunted faces of the men and women who carried their terrible cargo in a collection of body bags.

‘He found them at the Old Bailey,’ I said.