The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe) (17 page)

They began to scatter.

Running for their lives.

A black transit van was being driven at speed. It appeared to be heading straight for the crowd but suddenly it mounted the pavement to avoid the young man in the wheelchair. I automatically looked for anything that would make the transit van unique. Dents, scratches, words that had been sprayed over. But there was nothing. There was brown duct tape plastered over the registration plate. Simple but effective.

The crowd had done a runner. Apart from Abu Din, who was wagging an admonishing finger at the black van.

He was still wagging it when Albert Pierrepoint got out of the van. And then another Albert Pierrepoint. The faces of the two kindly uncles scanned the street. At the top of the screen I could see the young uniformed copper on his belly, radioing for assistance. Another kindly uncle sat at the wheel of the transit van, gunning the engine.

‘Albert Pierrepoint masks,’ I said. ‘Nice touch.’

‘And the duct tape over the registration plates is an even nicer touch,’ Whitestone said. ‘Whoever they are, they know exactly what they’re doing.’

Abu Din’s bodyguards were nowhere to be seen as the preacher was bundled into the back of the black van without ceremony. It began to reverse at speed down the suburban street and then it was gone, the street gradually filling with worshippers watching it leave, the uniformed copper slowly getting to his feet.

Billy hit a few buttons and the big screen became the standard CCTV grid of nine, all of them views of fast-flowing evening traffic.

‘The CCTV followed them on the North Circular heading in an anti-clockwise direction and then we lost them. And then we picked them up again.’

The grid was replaced by a single still image of the transit van burning on what looked like the surface of
an abandoned planet. In the background I could see the faded sign of a giant oil company.

‘They switched vehicles,’ I said.

‘Disabled the cameras in this abandoned petrol station and torched their old ride,’ Edie said. ‘So we’ve got one CCTV camera for every person in London but it does us no good at all because we don’t know what we’re looking for.’

Telephones suddenly began to ring, chime and vibrate. Edie scanned a text on her mobile.

‘Getting the first pictures from what we believe to be the execution of Abu Din,’ she said. ‘Let me put it on the big screen.’

She pounded her keyboard and a hangman’s noose appeared on the TV. The camera zoomed in and then out again, as if getting focused. It settled on the noose, hanging stark against the familiar cell-like space, mildewed with the ages, beyond all light. Then the camera slowly pulled back and you could see the four black-coated figures.

‘Production values definitely improving,’ Edie muttered.

But this time was different. Because there was no condemned man wild-eyed with terror at the centre of it all. Instead the camera focused on a series of photographs on the wall.

Servicemen. Six of them. Smiling, happy, proud.

Edie looked up from her laptop.

‘Getting reports – unconfirmed – that those are the Sangin Six.’

‘I remember the Sangin Six,’ I said. ‘Sangin is a district in the east of Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Six of our servicemen – and women – were in a patrol vehicle in Sangin that got hit by an IED. They all survived the blast but then they were torn to bits by a mob. They didn’t show it on the mainstream media because it was too gruesome. Body parts hanging from bridges while the locals danced in the street.’

The camera tracked slowly across the faces of the six dead soldiers. I looked across at Tara Jones who was running voice biometrics on the film.

She saw me watching her.

‘Are you picking up any dialogue, Tara?’ I said.

‘Just ambient sounds,’ she said. ‘It’s not traffic. Sounds like some kind of major building work going on nearby.’

‘Abu Din was vocal in his praise of the killers of the Sangin Six,’ Whitestone said. ‘He insisted on calling them the Six Crusaders. The elderly grandmother of one of the Sangin Six said that he should be hanged.’

‘Then why didn’t they?’ Edie said.

The camera zoomed in for another close-up on the empty noose. And then the image froze.

‘Maybe it’s a trailer,’ Edie said. ‘Stay tuned for the main event.’

‘Maybe they think hanging’s too good for him,’ I said.

The early morning crowds filled the Imperial War Museum. But it was very quiet in the basement room where I sat with the young woman in a wheelchair. I had met Carol through my first SIO in Homicide and Serious Crime Command, DCI Victor Mallory. It was because of him that I could come to her for help at any time.

‘I was in Camp Bastion when the Sangin Six died,’ she said. ‘It felt like a turning point in the war on terror.’ A short laugh. ‘That’s when it started to feel like terror had declared war on us.’

She moved her wheelchair closer to the desk and scrolled through some images of hell. Jubilant crowds. Scraps of human remains. The pitiless sun of Afghanistan.

‘I don’t know how much you want to see of this stuff, Max,’ Carol said. ‘There’s plenty that they couldn’t show on the evening news, but I’m not sure you can learn anything from it.’

I checked my phone again for a message from Edie Wren. We kept expecting the execution to go live. But the morning after the abduction of Abu Din, it still hadn’t happened.

‘I really wanted to sound you out about Abu Din,’ I said.

‘The Mental Mullah,’ she grinned. ‘They took him, didn’t they?’

I nodded. ‘Who would want to string him up, Carol?’

‘Are you kidding? Anyone who served. Anyone who loved someone who served.’ She slapped the sides of her wheelchair without anger or self-pity. ‘Anyone who came home in one of these.’

I thought of the two protestors held back by one uniformed cop in Wembley.

‘But that’s not the same as doing it,’ Carol continued. ‘And besides – the style’s all wrong.’

‘You mean abduction and the mock trial and the hanging?’

‘All of it. The masks. The drama. The little hashtags. Why hang him? There are far easier ways to kill someone.’

One in the head and one in the heart.

Jackson Rose, I thought. Who the hell are you?

My phone began to vibrate.

‘We’ve got Abu Din,’ Edie said. ‘And he’s alive.’

‘Inshallah, there was a mighty fire,’ said Abu Din. ‘And it was revealed to me that this country is Dar al-Harb – the land of war.’

Edie looked at her notes.

‘So this was when they burned the van just down the road from Brent Cross, right?’ she said. ‘This is when you had your revelation about the land of war? At Brent Cross?’

He turned his face away from her, the pink tip of his tongue flecking his lips. He smoothed down his grey robes and stared out of the window of his home. It was as if Edie had never spoken. I followed his gaze. On the street where they had taken him, his followers were already gathering, excited at the news of his miraculous return. Some of them were praying. Others were taking pictures with their selfie sticks.

Abu Din had been found alive at London Gateway service station, on the very edge of the city. He had spent the night locked up in the back of an abandoned
container lorry until he eventually kicked his way out and raised the alarm. Perhaps his followers were right. It seemed a miracle that his execution was not being watched on YouTube.

‘Please tell me everything you remember, Mr Din,’ I said.

He nodded, his eyes behind the wire-rimmed spectacles flicking on me and then away.

‘Allahu akbar,’ he murmured, not for the first time. ‘They took me. The men in their masks. And then they burned the first vehicle and put me in another vehicle. Then we drove to the car park with many lorries. The big lorries.’

‘Container lorries,’ I said.

‘And all of them gathered around me as they locked me in the metal box.’ His eyes swivelled to the heavens. ‘But the metal was weak, Allahu akbar, and it was not my time to die.’

I looked down at his sandalled feet, both of them bandaged, both of them weeping blood where he had spent the night kicking out the rusted side of a container lorry.

‘Did they say anything?’ I asked.

‘Before they locked me away, one of them – the big one – asked me if I knew why I was being punished. This made another very angry and he slapped the side of the lorry, calling for silence. They were trying not to
talk. And then they locked me in and left me and all three of them returned to their vehicle. I heard it drive away.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘
Three
of them locked you up? So there was another one that remained in the cab?’

‘No. They all came to lock me away.’

‘So you’re saying there were only three of them?’ I said.

Abu Din nodded. ‘The two who took me and the one who was driving.’

Edie and I exchanged a look.

‘Then where was the fourth man?’ I said.

‘Maybe he was driving the change vehicle,’ Edie said. ‘It was the smart move to switch vehicles and burn the kidnap van.’

‘But he would still need a ride, wouldn’t he? After the first vehicle was torched.’ I turned back to Abu Din.

‘Did you see their faces?’ I asked him. ‘Did they remove their masks? Did you hear voices? Did they say any names?’

‘You asked me this already. I saw their white hands. I smelled their lack of faith. They were
kuffars
– unbelievers. Like you.’

‘Any tattoos or distinguishing features on their hands? Did they say anything at all?’

He did not answer me.

‘You’re very lucky to be alive,’ Edie said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

He knew.

Abu Din gripped his right hand with the left, but still he could not stop it shaking. But he was playing the big man for the followers who were out in the street and who had crammed into the large council house in Wembley. We could hear them stomping around upstairs while we conducted our interview. And it crossed my mind that perhaps he truly believed that it was some god who had saved him today.

‘It was not my time for
jannah
,’ he said.

‘
Jannah
is paradise, right?’ I said.

He said nothing, unimpressed by my sketchy knowledge of Arabic. ‘London cops know fifty words in fifty languages,’ I said, smiling at him.

No response.

‘Mr Din, we are going to give you an Osman Warning,’ I said. ‘It’s an official warning that we believe your life is in mortal danger and we are offering you police protection.’

His thin-lipped mouth twisted into a smile.

‘Do you think I need the protection of unbelievers?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And we’ll talk again.’

We closed our notebooks.

Abu Din went off to address the followers who were gathering in the street. Edie and I went to the window and watched. It was the kind of shabby suburban street that looks grey and tired even in the middle of a blazing
summer. But there was no mistaking the buzz of excitement that ran through it when Abu Din began to speak in Urdu.

‘Why didn’t they just do him straight away?’ I said.

‘Maybe their kill site was being used for a yoga class,’ Edie said. ‘Do you believe he didn’t see or hear anything, Max?’

I nodded. ‘If they knew enough to cover their registration plates, and if they knew enough to burn all forensics in the van, then they knew enough not to make all the usual dumb mistakes – like calling each other by their names or showing their faces in the presence of their victim.’

We walked out into the street.

Beyond the heads of the crowd of men listening to Abu Din – and they were all men – I could see the uniformed black cop who had been minding the street when the transit van bowled up. Beyond him, the young man in the wheelchair was back with the young woman who accompanied him. They still had their placard and the young man in the wheelchair held it up as Abu Din slipped from Urdu into English.

‘In the mighty fire much was revealed to me,’ he declared. ‘It was revealed that the black flag of Islam will fly above Buckingham Palace and it will also fly above Downing Street.’

‘Don’t hold your fucking breath,’ Edie said.

Skirting the crowd, we walked to the end of the street and introduced ourselves to the uniformed cop. Our people were still here, but not in great numbers and holding back. The SIO – DCI Whitestone, back where she belonged – the CSIs and the search teams had all been and gone on this grey street and now they were up at the London Gateway services on the M1, rummaging around the derelict container where Abu Din had been imprisoned.

We showed our warrant cards to the uniform. Up close he was far bigger than he had looked on CCTV and much younger. He couldn’t have been long out of Hendon.
Rocastle
, it said on his name tag. He was embarrassed he hadn’t done better when the transit van came barrelling down the road.

‘You did the right thing,’ I said. ‘You got out of the way. They wouldn’t have stopped for you or anyone else.’

‘Did you see their faces?’ Edie said. ‘Hear anything when they got out of the van?’

‘They had those masks on when I clocked them,’ he said. ‘The Albert Pierrepoint masks. There was a lot of screaming and hollering when they were getting Abu Din into the van, but I couldn’t tell who was shouting.’

‘If you catch them,’ said a woman’s voice, ‘give them a medal.’

She was standing behind the young man in a wheelchair. For the first time I saw that he was wearing what
looked like the remains of a uniform. Green army-issue T-shirt, DPM desert camouflage trousers that hung loosely on prosthetic legs fitted into Asics trainers so unused they could have just come out of the box. As they looked at my warrant card I saw they shared the same brown-eyed, black-haired good looks and the kind of skin that tans easily.

‘DC Wolfe,’ I said. ‘But who are you?’

The woman laughed. At first I had thought they could be twins, but now she seemed to be a few years older than the young man in the wheelchair.

‘You people are unbelievable,’ she said, her mouth tight with bitterness. ‘Mr Din down there is talking about flying his flag over Downing Street and you really want to see
our
ID?’