‘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.’
‘You ever meet a villain that smart?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Me neither.’
I inspected the ropes on the hanging tree. The oldest – four thin strands now black with age – was two hundred years old. The newest – in pride of place at the front, like the star on top of a Christmas tree – dated back to 1969, the year that capital punishment was officially abolished. It was made of eight thick strands of hemp that were gathered in a large brass thimble. They looked slick and sticky.
‘Vaseline,’ John said. ‘Stops the rope from burning off skin. That’s the Sixties for you – when they hanged you with a bit of compassion.’
‘What am I doing wrong? I’m no nearer to them than I was a month ago.’
He adjusted the ropes on the hanging tree. If anything was touched in here, then he wanted it to be exactly as it was before.
‘You’re not following the leads you’ve got,’ he said.
‘But I don’t have any leads. No kill site. No witnesses. No prints that are worth a damn – nothing that shows up on IDENT1.’
He looked at me as if I was missing the obvious.
‘You’ve got two men with criminal records who both had serious beefs with two of the dead,’ he said. ‘Back in the day, Paul Warboys and his brother Danny gave Reggie and Ronnie Kray and Eddie and Charlie Richardson a run for their money. Paul Warboys didn’t get a life sentence just because he took out a lawyer’s tongue with a bolt cutter. He got life because the lawyer bled to death. Now – if Paul Warboys would kill a man for talking to the police, what’s he going to do to a man who runs over and kills his grandson?’
I shook my head.
‘But I don’t buy it. Warboys is retired. He’s been retired for twenty years.’
‘You don’t think he’d come out of retirement for the man who knocked down and killed his grandson?’
‘But we ran a Trace, Interview and Eliminate on Warboys. Of course we did. And he made the point – and I thought it was a good point – that if he had wanted Hector Welles dead, he would not have bothered with putting a post on YouTube.’
‘And does he have a cast-iron alibi for when Welles was hanged? Because he had a very good one the time that lawyer had his tongue taken out – Warboys and his brother were miles away, doing the Lambada on the Costa del Sol. But that didn’t stop a judge finding him guilty and sending him down for life.’
I thought about it.
‘The funny thing is, Warboys doesn’t have a cast-iron alibi for when Welles was killed,’ I said. ‘He was at home with his wife and we have no other witnesses to confirm it. But that makes me believe him. As he said to me himself – if you were going to invent an alibi, you would come up with something much better than that.’
I drank my tea. It was strong enough to stand up your spoon in. Real builder’s tea.
‘It’s the cast-iron alibis that I never quite believe,’ I said. ‘Good tea.’
‘Thank you. And then there’s Sofi Wilder’s dad,’ John said. ‘Barry Wilder. He did time, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but that was kid’s stuff. Years ago. And he was in a different league from Paul Warboys.’
‘But look what they did to his daughter, Max. Look what they did! This grooming gang, they got away with it for so long because everyone was afraid of seeming racist. The police, the social services – we practically held their coats while they were raping and torturing children.’
‘I’m not denying he’s got motive. But Wilder is another one with an alibi that’s not good enough to be made up, another one that says he was home with the wife watching television. And what about Bert Page? How does he fit into this?’
‘Who’s Bert Page?’
‘The Normandy veteran that Darren Donovan put in a coma for fifty pence. As far as we can see, Bert Page doesn’t have any violent criminals to avenge him. In fact, despite all the hand wringing in the press, Bert doesn’t have anyone to give a toss about him. He was living in care until Donovan put him into the hospital. There’s a middle-aged daughter in Australia and that’s it. Why would someone want to hang the nasty little creep who hurt him?’
Sergeant John Caine shrugged.
‘I don’t know, Max,’ he said, making a minute adjustment to one of the ropes on his hanging tree. ‘Maybe just because it’s the right thing to do.’
At the end of the working day Edie Wren and I stood outside a big house in Canonbury Square. We were close enough to Highbury Corner to hear the unbroken rumble of the traffic on the Holloway Road and Essex Road, but Canonbury Square itself was green and leafy, like a millionaire’s fantasy of the English countryside.
Edie consulted her phone as I rang the doorbell. ‘Tara Jones lives in the whole house?’ she said. ‘The whole house?’
A child in his pyjamas opened the door. Maybe three years old. That age when they stop being babies and start being the person they will be for the rest of their life. And I could see Tara in the child. The pale face, the huge green eyes and especially that almost Asian hair.
I crouched down so that our eyes were at the same level.
‘Is your mummy in?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, but a Filipina nanny came to collect him and a man appeared, still wearing the suit and tie he had worn to his office in Cheapside or Canary Wharf.
‘Can I help you?’ He had an accent that was full of privilege and a nose that had been broken more than once, the telltale signs of someone who had played a bit of rugby at his private school.
‘I’m DC Wolfe and this is my colleague DC Wren from West End Central,’ I said, standing up. ‘I believe your wife is expecting us?’
He nodded and went to get her, leaving Edie and I alone on the doorstep. Down the corridor we could see large mirrors, tasteful prints on the walls, a home of money and taste.
Edie chuckled softly. ‘And to think I felt sorry for her when she arrived in Savile Row,’ Edie murmured. ‘You know – the brave young deaf woman making her way in the world. To think I felt sorry for her! She’s got everything, hasn’t she?’