Hector Welles looked as though he had been flayed alive from his chin to his chest. There was not a piece of skin left intact, just a sickening mass of minced meat where his neck used to be.
Professor Hitchens said, ‘Dear God . . . what does he have stuck in his neck? They’re not . . .’
The CSI gently removed something else with the tweezers. There were ten of them in total.
I nodded.
‘Fingernails,’ I said. ‘Hector Welles’ fingernails. When he was hanging, he tore at the rope around his neck so hard he ripped out all of his fingernails.’
Professor Hitchens quietly emptied his stomach over the blue baggies on his shoes.
A summer breeze stirred the tent.
I shuddered, my skin crawling at the proximity of all that ancient horror, and the wind in the trees of Hyde Park sounded as if all the ghosts of Tyburn were moaning.
10
I was packing my kit bag for the gym. Scout was off for a sleepover with her friend Mia, and down on the street the meat market’s night was just beginning. After the day I had spent at Marble Arch, I knew that sleep would be a struggle for me if I did not exhaust myself at Fred’s.
Then Edie called with what felt like our first breakthrough.
‘The good news is we’ve got prints,’ she said. ‘All our forensics are back for Mahmud Irani and Hector Welles and the same print is on both of the victims’ clothes.’ I could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘It’s a glove print, Max, but really sharp. A thumb. A left thumbprint on both of the dead men.’
Most criminals believe that gloves hide fingerprints. But it is not true, especially with more modern gloves made of latex or something similar. The thinner the glove, the more likely the telltale ridges, whorls, arches and loops are to be left behind.
‘And what’s the bad news?’ I said.
‘None of it rings any bells on IDENT1.’
IDENT1 is the country’s major database for storing fingerprints and contains the fingerprints of knocking on for ten million people. That only leaves about fifty million people who are not on there – the part of the population who have never come into contact with the police.
‘And both of our potential suspects are on IDENT1,’ I said. ‘Because both Paul Warboys and Barry Wilder have criminal records.’
‘Wilder for his youthful indiscretions at the football, and Warboys because crime was what he did for a living,’ Edie said.
‘Are we sure it’s not them?’
Fingerprint analysis is not the exact science that it is always cracked up to be in the movies. Fingerprint officers have been known to get it wrong. Until 2001, a sixteen-point standard existed for fingerprint matches – meaning there were sixteen identical points required on a latent print to legally match it to a suspect. The system was scrapped because it didn’t work.
‘It’s not even close, Max.’
‘But we still don’t have the kill site, so we don’t have prints on surfaces, do we?’ I argued. ‘Paul Warboys or Barry Wilder could have glove prints, fingerprints, footprints and DNA all over the kill site. This one print found doesn’t mean either Barry Wilder and Paul Warboys – or both of them – weren’t there. It doesn’t mean they had nothing to do with it.’
‘It makes it a lot less likely though, doesn’t it?’
I had to give her that. ‘Yes.’
Jackson came into the loft, soaked in sweat from his evening run. Stan got off the sofa and padded across to greet him. The pair of them stared at me talking on the phone.
‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ Edie said.
‘There’s a very strong possibility that these guys don’t have criminal records.’
‘Clean skins,’ Edie said. ‘I bloody hate clean skins. I’ll see you in the morning, Max.’
‘This is the thing on the news,’ Jackson said, his fingers scratching the back of Stan’s neck. ‘The Hanging Club.’
I nodded.
‘So what are they?’ Jackson said. ‘Some kind of vigilante group?’
‘We have a psychologist who works with us,’ I said. ‘Dr Joe. American. His theory is that they think of what they’re doing as capital punishment. They don’t think they’re committing murder. They don’t see it like that. They believe they are carrying out a death sentence.’
‘But they’re only killing scumbags, right? A child groomer and a hit-and-run driver.’
I smiled. ‘They’re not allowed to kill anyone, Jackson. It’s against the law.’
He looked thoughtful.
‘Still – it can’t feel good having to go after them. For you, I mean, Max. Like you’re a lawyer or something.’
I shouldered my kit bag.
‘Did they give you any choice about going to Afghanistan, Jackson? Did they ask you if there was somewhere you would prefer to go?’
He shook his head.
‘You went where you were sent,’ I said. ‘Same here. We just do our job. That’s all we do. The law’s not just there for nice people. I’m off to the gym.’
‘Bit late to be training,’ Jackson said.
‘I need to work off the day,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll never get any sleep.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You just had a run.’
He laughed. ‘Another hour of cardio won’t kill me.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’m just saying – what they’re doing is illegal. But does that make it wrong?’
‘You talk like you admire them.’
‘And you talk like you don’t. A child groomer, Max. A hit-and-run driver. No great loss.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘What is the point?’
‘The point is – who made them God? Who elected them judge, jury and executioner? They’re not the law.’
‘I forgot,’ he smiled. ‘You are.’
‘I was at the Old Bailey,’ I said. ‘Some boys kicked a man to death. His name was Steve Goddard and he was forty years old. They got off too lightly and it made me mad. I was going to go for them. I wanted to wipe the smiles off their faces. I wanted to hurt them, to punish them in a way that the court had not punished them. I wanted to give them what they deserved. Stupid, right? I’ve got Scout to raise. I’m no good for her sitting in a jail cell. But it was a moment. Then one of the court ushers got in my face and the moment passed.’
‘That’s you, Max. For some people, the moment doesn’t pass.’ He paused. ‘But the hanging’s weird. A funny way to do it, I mean. You ever see anything like this before?’
I shook my head. ‘Never.’
‘Even if you hate these bastards, why would you go to all the trouble of stringing them up?’
I smiled at him. ‘What would you do? Beat them to death with your spatula?’
He didn’t smile back. His dark eyes slid away from me.
‘If I wanted to kill someone that deserved to die, I wouldn’t hang them.’
‘What would you do, Jackson?’
He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put a rope around his neck.’
‘But what would you do? Put a bullet in their brains from half a mile away?’
‘I’m no sniper, Max. I’m a chef. But I’d get close enough to smell what they had for breakfast.’ He stared at the open palms of his hands as though noticing them for the first time. ‘Then one in the head,’ he said. ‘And one in the heart.’
We were silent. Then he gave me his gap-toothed grin and the moment was broken. He gestured at my bag.
Fourteen-ounce gloves. Shirt. Shorts. Trainers. Gum shield.
‘Can you lend me some kit?’ said my friend.
We banged the bags at Smithfield ABC.
One of Fred’s famous circuits – ten three-minute rounds on the bags, alternating the heavy bag and the speedball, with one minute between rounds for ten burpies and ten press-ups. No rest for your heart. Recover while you work.
‘You’re so lucky to be training!’ Fred shouted at us. ‘If it was easy, everybody would do it! Pain is just weakness leaving the body!’