The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe) (13 page)

‘Anything you can give us about the knot?’ I said.

The way a knot is tied and the type of knot used might have been a priceless lead, I thought, remembering Pat Whitestone’s words when we had found Mahmud Irani. But Elsa shook her head.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘For that I would need to see the rope or the wire or whatever it was. The neck markings are not enough to go on.’

‘We still don’t have a kill site, Elsa,’ I said. ‘How long had they been dead when we found them?’

‘They’re all different. As you know, rigor mortis sets in after approximately two hours and then the body gets progressively stiffer. And then we follow the twelve-twelve-twelve equation. Twelve hours to get stiff. Twelve hours to remain stiff. And twelve hours for the body to lose that stiffness as it begins to decay. Rigor mortis had just begun to set in on Mr Irani, suggesting he had been dead for around twelve hours when he was discovered. The second victim, Mr Welles, had advanced rigor mortis. He had been dead for approximately twenty-four hours. And the body of the latest victim, young Mr Donovan, was losing the stiffness of rigor mortis. And you can see that his skin has a greenish hue around his head, shoulders and abdomen. There’s also a degree of bloating because of gases accumulating in the cavities. His internal organs had longer to break down.’

‘Because the bodies are becoming harder for us to find,’ I said.

‘And there’s lividity on the back of Mr Irani,’ Elsa said, nodding at Edie. ‘Would you be so kind, DC Wren?’

Together the two women turned the cadaver of Mahmud Irani onto his front. The skin around his shoulder blades, back, buttocks and calf muscles was pale and surrounded by ugly purple blotches that looked like bruises. Dr Joe looked at me.

‘That’s the lividity,’ I said. ‘Those marks that look like bruises. Think of lividity as stagnant blood. When you die, your heart stops beating and your blood stops moving. Gravity does the rest. The blood settles. But you don’t get it where the body touches the ground. Lividity can help us determine how long someone has been dead and if the body has been moved.’

‘The technical name is
livor mortis
,’ Elsa said.

‘From the Latin,’ Dr Joe said. ‘
Livor
meaning
bluish
and
mortis
meaning
of death
.’

Elsa and Edie heaved the dead man onto his back.

‘The lividity on Mr Irani strongly suggests that he lay undisturbed for most of the time between death and discovery,’ Elsa said.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Dr Joe.

‘It means they didn’t move him very far,’ I said. ‘So the kill site has to be within – what? – one hour’s distance of Marble Arch and Vauxhall Bridge.’

‘That narrows it down to all of Greater London,’ Edie said.

‘I can also tell you they were all taken down minutes after death,’ Elsa said. ‘If they had been left hanging, the furrow of the neck wounds would be much deeper.’

We stared in silence at the bodies. I felt myself shudder.

It’s just the cold, I told myself. Just the bitter cold in here.

‘And there’s something else,’ Elsa said. ‘A professional hangman works on a system of variable drops. It was the method used by this country’s most famous executioner – Albert Pierrepoint. Saddam Hussein’s goons used the same method. How heavy the body is, how far it needs to fall to separate the second and third vertebrae in the neck and cause instant death. It’s called the hangman’s fracture. If the drop is too long, the victim is decapitated. These people – the Hanging Club – clearly don’t bother with variable drops. Despite the charade of hanging, they essentially strangle their victims.’

She gave Edie Wren a severe look.

‘And I watch YouTube, too,’ Elsa said. ‘But what’s interesting is that the most recent victim appears to have died in less than half the time of the first two. Examining the damage to the carotid arteries and the spinal column, I estimate that Mr Irani took thirteen minutes to die, Mr Welles took ten and Mr Donovan took just five.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Dr Joe.

‘It means they’re getting good at it,’ I said.

We were back in the changing room, taking off our scrubs, when Dr Joe began talking about signatures.

‘The three murders are more than ritualistic killings,’ he said, pulling off his hairnet. ‘Among the unknown subs there’s a clear hierarchical structure at work.’

‘Yes, it’s always the same one who asks the question,’ I said. ‘
Do you know why you’ve been brought to this place of execution?
He’s the leader.’

‘Everyone has their role to play and yet they are capable of acting in the interests of the group,’ Dr Joe said.

Edie pulled off her hairnet and shook her hair out. ‘When Hector Welles tried to do a runner, they all jumped on him at once. Or at least, three of them did. And then they went back to their roles. And they all have a strict role to play, don’t they? Somebody to speak. Somebody to film. Somebody to watch. And somebody to be executioner.’

‘Judge, jury, witness and hangman,’ I said. ‘But what are the signatures, Dr Joe?’

‘A strong facility for organisation. An ability to be totally ruthless. A strict hierarchy that has room for individual endeavour before the hierarchy reasserts itself.’

‘You really think they’re cops?’ Edie said.

‘Not necessarily, although it’s a possibility. I think that at least one of them has some kind of specialist training in upholding social control. And I believe that probably more than one of them has experience of some kind of public service. Someone with experience of an institution that sanctions those who violate laws or harm the state. Someone who has been disappointed in the limits and failures and compromises of that institution. So a serving or ex-police officer is one possibility. But equally we could be looking at one or more unsubs who has experience in the prison service or some other branch of criminal justice.’

As I watched Dr Joe thinking I knew what he was going to say next, and I had to stop myself from saying it out loud, from blurting it out, as into my mind leapt the image of my oldest friend and his gap-toothed grin.

‘Or even the military,’ Dr Joe said.

My phone began to vibrate.

The woman on the other end of the phone was crying and apologising all at once. It took me a moment to realise that it was Alice Goddard, the widow of Steve Goddard, kicked to death outside his own home.

‘I’m sorry to call you, Max, I didn’t know who else I could call . . .’

‘Slow down. Take a breath. What’s wrong?’ I said.

But all she could do was to keep apologising and crying.

In my line of work, we move on. There’s always the next case, there is always some fresh human misery coming down the line. But the victims of crime, they don’t move on. They can’t move on. They remain forever stuck in the moment that their life changed, the shock and the pain never diminishing with time. And beyond all the grief that never dies, there can be practical problems. When justice is done, there is usually someone out there raving about the injustice of it all.

The three pieces of pond life who killed Steve Goddard all had friends and families. And sometimes, after pond life has been locked up, these friends and families feel they have a point to prove and a debt to settle.

It can take the form of low-level harassment. It can be petrol poured through a letterbox. It can be anything in between. That’s why I had given Alice Goddard my card and told her that she could call me any time. If the friends and loved ones of the pond life came calling, then I wanted to know about it.

But this was something else.

‘It’s my son,’ she said, her voice breaking.

I parked outside the Goddard house and took a moment to adjust. The first time I had seen this quiet suburban street, the uniforms were putting up a tent and tape, the CSIs in their white Tyvek suits were dusting, filming and photographing. And Steve Goddard was
lying dead, his body half on the pavement and half in the road.

I remembered that there wasn’t much blood. And I remembered the devastated family who were inside: Steve Goddard’s wife and son and daughter, Alice and Steve Junior and Kitty, the three of them holding on to each other as this brutal new reality kicked in and they started to unravel.

I blinked my eyes and the memory faded and it was just another suburban street on a summer evening. I took a few deep breaths and walked up the short garden path to the door of the Goddard family.

Alice greeted me with a warm, embarrassed smile. Her eyes were red raw, but she had made a real effort to regain control.

‘It’s Steve Junior,’ she said. ‘He’s got a knife.’

I found the kid in the local park.

He was in the deserted playground, sitting on the swings, puffing on a cigarette.

The last time I had seen Steve Junior was at the Old Bailey. What was he? Fifteen? Sixteen? He had looked like a young boy that day, overawed and baffled by his surroundings, his shirt too big and wearing a tie that his mum had done up for him. Now, just weeks later, he looked like a bitter young man.

‘Steve? Remember me? DC Wolfe.’

His eyes met mine and then slid away. There was some shouting in the distance and we both looked over to where it had come from. A group of boys and one girl were sprawled over a distant park bench.

I sat down on the swing next to Steve Goddard Junior.

‘Is anyone bothering you?’ I said.

He looked at me with disbelief. Then he laughed and shook his head.

‘Is anybody
bothering
me? Is that your question? My dad gets kicked to death and you ask me if anyone is
bothering
me?’

‘Since then, I mean. Is anyone getting on your case since the trial?’

I watched his eyes fill with tears. ‘I’m going to be bothering them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

‘Is that what the knife is for?’

Silence.

‘I understand why you want to get even,’ I said. ‘It’s natural. What happened to your dad – to your family – it’s not fair, is it?’

‘No. It’s not fucking fair. You got that right.’

‘So what you going to do? What’s the plan? Stick a knife in one of them when they get out? Stick your knife in all of them?’

Two teenage girls went past arm in arm. They looked at me and Steve sitting on the swings and walked away consumed by mocking laughter.

‘Why are you even here?’ he said.

‘I don’t want anything worse to happen to your family.’

His mouth twisted.

‘What could possibly be any worse than my dad going outside to ask for a bit of peace and quiet, and then getting his head kicked in? What could be worse than that?’

‘You getting locked up in Feltham.’

He frowned. I wondered if he had the knife on him. Then I saw the bulge in the pocket of his hoodie and I didn’t have to wonder any more.

‘What’s Feltham?’ he said.

‘Feltham Young Offenders Institution,’ I said. ‘It’s a prison for male juveniles near Hounslow. If you stick your blade in one of those creeps who killed your dad, that’s where they will send you. Because you’re under eighteen.’

He looked at me and for the first time I thought that I might be getting through to him.

‘I understand how you feel, Steve. I understand why you want to do it. And I can even understand why they deserve it. I saw your dad the night he died.’

The boy flinched as if he had been slapped.

‘And I saw you that night,’ I said. ‘And your sister Kitty. And your mum. And I was there in the Old Bailey when those three bastards got off with a slap on the wrist. But that doesn’t mean you should take the law
into your own hands. Because if you do, then the law is going to come down on you. And I promise you, Steve, you are not the kind of lad who thrives in Feltham.’

I stood up.

‘Get rid of the knife,’ I said. ‘On your way home – drop it down a drain. The first drain you see. Then go home and take care of your mum and your sister. They need you more than you can imagine.’

I began to walk away.

His voice called me back.

‘Is that it?’ he said. ‘Is that the only reason I can’t get even with the bastards? Is that the only reason I can’t stick a blade in those bastards who killed my dad? Because of what will happen to me if I do?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s the only reason. But it’s the only reason you need.’

In New Scotland Yard’s Room 101, Sergeant John Caine put the kettle on while I walked into the Black Museum and stared at the hanging tree. More than twenty ropes were draped over the three-legged gallows’ pole, arranged with the loving care of decorations on a Christmas tree. Next to the hanging tree there was a framed photograph of Albert Pierrepoint and a quote from 1974.

‘
The fruit of my experience has this bitter aftertaste. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing but revenge.
’

‘Sorry, no triple espresso in here,’ John Caine told me, holding out a mug of steaming tea. He took a sip from his BEST DAD IN THE WORLD mug.

‘You’re having a bit of a quiet week, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Nobody’s been hanged on YouTube.’

I nodded. ‘Three murders in July and now nothing for the first seven days in August. Why would they stop, John?’

‘Lots of reasons why they might jack it in. One of them might have died. They could have fallen out with each other. Somebody’s wife found out what her old man has been doing and begged him to stop for the sake of the kiddies. Or – most likely reason a crew stops – they might think that they’ve been rumbled and you’re going to kick down their front doors at five o’clock tomorrow morning.’

I laughed bitterly.

‘Not much chance of that happening.’

DCI Whitestone had not turned up for work this morning because her son was having another operation on his eyes. This meant I was still the acting SIO. In the absence of any leads, I had done what I always do when I need guidance – come for a cup of tea at the Black Museum.

‘Or one of them lost their nerve,’ John said. ‘Or all of them lost their nerve. Or they’ve ticked off everyone on their kill list. That’s possible. Or they’re quitting while they’re ahead because they’re intelligent enough to know that if they keep doing it, they’ll get caught.’ He took a thoughtful sip of his tea. ‘Maybe they’re cashing out while they’re ahead.’