‘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.
34
I watched Tara Jones cross MIR-1. I watched her every step of the way. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I thought she might have said something about my new suit. I thought she might give me some secret smile. But she just placed a thick file on my desk.
‘You might need this,’ she said.
It was the original voice biometric analysis of the interviews with Paul Warboys and Barry Wilder. She returned to her desk with her shoulders slumped and her hair hanging in her face, as if something precious had already been lost. But I couldn’t work out what.
‘Check it out, Max,’ Edie said.
She was running the kidnap of Abu Din for Dr Joe up on the big HD TV screen. The black-and-white CCTV footage showed scores of men kneeling in the drab Wembley street as Abu Din faced them in his long grey robes, flanked by a couple of heavies, his index fingers pointing to the heavens, as if predicting rain.
‘Do you want me to fast-forward to the van, Dr Joe?’ Edie said.
‘Just let it run at normal speed, please,’ said the forensic psychologist. We were all looking now. Edie and Billy Greene. DCI Whitestone and me. And Tara, her chin lifted as her eyes flitted from the screen to Dr Joe’s lips.
‘What exactly are we looking for, Dr Joe?’ Whitestone said.
‘We’re looking for what they don’t want us to see,’ he said.
At the back of the crowd I could see PC Rocastle, his heavyweight’s bulk standing directly in front of Philip Maldini in his wheelchair, his sister Piper behind him, her hands resting on her brother’s shoulders as he held up his placard.
My Country – Love It or Leave It.
And then it all kicked off.
PC Rocastle began to run, desperately shouting into the radio attached to his shoulder. Philip Maldini’s wheelchair lurched onto the pavement and his sister seemed to place herself between the young man and what was coming down the street. And then the crowd was getting off their knees.
Pointing. Shouting. Running for their lives.
The black transit van came into frame and seemed to aim itself at the crowd, suddenly mounting the pavement to avoid the Maldinis.
The transit van came to a halt.
The crowd was gone.
Abu Din was wagging a finger at the black van.
‘You can’t park that there, mate,’ Edie said, and we all laughed.
And then we stopped laughing as Albert Pierrepoint got out of the van. And another Albert Pierrepoint. The masked faces scanned the street. At the top of the screen I could see PC Rocastle, flat on his belly, calling it in. When he turned his head to check the street, you could see a third Albert Pierrepoint at the wheel of the transit van, gunning the engine.
‘Stop,’ Dr Joe said.
Edie hit a button and froze the frame.
In total silence we stared at the three Albert Pierrepoint masks on the screen.
Then Dr Joe spoke.
‘Those Albert Pierrepoint masks serve a dual purpose,’ he said. ‘They’re more than symbolic. Yes, the Hanging Club see themselves as justice incarnate. Yes, they see themselves as meting out punishment to the wicked. Yes, they believe they are the heirs of Pierrepoint. All of that is true. But those masks also serve a practical purpose – we focus on them. We look at the masks. They distract our eye. They sidetrack our senses. They’re a diversion.’
Professor Hitchens walked into MIR-1. He placed his motorbike helmet on his workstation and waddled off to the coffee machine. I walked to his workstation, picked up his motorbike helmet and threw it at him as hard as I could. It hit him high and hard and sent a fountain of cappuccino all over him.
‘You fucking maniac, Max!’
Then I was in his face.
‘You knew,’ I said. ‘You knew that it was Newgate, Professor. That little farce you played in here. And you knew. You knew from the start!’
He was backing away from me with sudden fear in his eyes.
‘No,’ Hitchens said. ‘No!’
Edie Wren and Billy Greene were grabbing my arms. I shrugged them off.
‘Come on, Hitch,’ I said. ‘Newgate! The human zoo. Chamber of horrors. Monument to the cruelty of this great city. “Abominable sink of beastliness and corruption.” Come on! You’re one of this city’s leading historians! You’re telling me you didn’t know that Newgate was still down there, buried alive under the Old Bailey? I don’t believe you, Professor.’
‘You knew?’ Whitestone said to him, her voice hard and cold. ‘Is this true?’
He ran his hands down his coffee-stained shirt.
‘No,’ he said. Then he hesitated. ‘Not immediately . . .’
Whitestone exploded. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘It seemed so unbelievable at first,’ he said. ‘That they could possibly be so bold. But – as a place of execution – Tyburn was followed by Newgate, and so it made perfect sense.’
‘When did you know?’ Whitestone said, white-faced with controlled fury.
‘From the start,’ I said. ‘He knew from the start.’
‘No!’ he said. ‘Not from the start!’
‘You obstructed this investigation,’ Whitestone told him. Her voice was not much more than a whisper but I had never seen her so angry. ‘You nearly got one of my team killed. Do you know what that means, Professor? You’ve obstructed a murder investigation. You’ve perverted the course of justice. You’ve concealed evidence. Do you think you could do three years’ hard time, Professor Hitchens? I’m not sure you would make it.’
There was true terror in his eyes now. Not the fear that I might give him a slap across the cakehole. The fear that he could end up in jail.
‘I didn’t know from the start, I swear it,’ he insisted. ‘It was only from the time they took Abu Din. When he got away and they showed pictures of the Sangin Six on those walls . . . the walls of . . .’