‘Newgate,’ I said for him. I shook my head. ‘What’s in it for you? Why keep it a secret? Who are you to let these creeps deal out death and judgement?’
I saw the anger flare in his eyes.
‘And who are you to deny it? Look at the filth they hanged, Max. Mahmud Irani – a child groomer who disfigured his own daughter! Hector Welles – a rich banker who killed a child in his sports car! Darren Donovan – a junkie who ended the life of a war veteran!’
I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.
He flinched away from me.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he whimpered. ‘I never lied to you! I never wanted anything bad to happen to you, Max!’
I was struggling to control my rage. I had him by the lapels and I would not let him go. He held up his hands to protect his face. I could see his fingers, stained dark yellow with nicotine. But I was not going to hit him. And he knew it.
The knowledge emboldened him.
‘You think it stops here?’ he said. ‘After you catch them? It will go on. They’ve lit a fire that will never go out until we have burned this nation clean.’
And suddenly I realised that I could smell him. The lifetime of cigarettes, and the cheap cologne he used to cover it. And it reminded me of another smell, of unfiltered Camels and Jimmy Choo perfume and Juicy Fruit chewing gum. And I suddenly laughed out loud.
‘There was a smell in the back of the van,’ I said to Whitestone. ‘It was a sickly-sweet smell. Like dead flowers. Like rotting fruit. Something foul that had been sugar-coated with something sweet.’ I stared at her. ‘And I know where it came from.’
‘What are you saying?’ Whitestone said.
I had let go of Professor Hitchens. I had forgotten all about him. But his smell – his stinking roll-ups and the buckets of cologne – had unlocked a door that had been closed to me. There was a rank smell of cigarettes, perfume and chewing gum behind that door.
I slapped my hand on the thick folder that Tara had given me.
‘Bring them in,’ I said. ‘Paul Warboys. Barry Wilder. And Philip Maldini.’
Whitestone and Edie exchanged a look.
‘The kid in the wheelchair?’ Whitestone said.
‘The three of them. And do it now. I’m not asking you to arrest them. I want them to come in voluntarily. But if they refuse, I want us to have the power to bring them in.’
‘And how do I do that?’ Whitestone said.
‘I want you to designate the three of them as significant witnesses. Warboys. Wilder. And Maldini. That would work, wouldn’t it?’
Whitestone shook her head, although it was doubt rather than denial. It was the responsibility of the SIO to identify significant witnesses, to record her decision in the investigations policy file and be prepared to justify why a witness was given SW status in court. If any or all of this blew up in someone’s face, it would not be my face. It would be the Senior Investigating Officer’s face.
‘Pat,’ I said. ‘I need you to trust me on this one.’
DCI Whitestone stared at me for a moment and then she nodded. ‘OK.’
Edie indicated Professor Hitchens. ‘What do we do with him, ma’am?’ she said.
‘Get him out of my sight,’ DCI Whitestone said.
An hour later the four members of our MIT were in the CCTV bunker of West End Central.
It was a darkened room where one large screen showed a grid revealing nine live CCTV images. Together they surrounded the block around 27 Savile Row. One camera showed West End Central’s underground car park. One camera looked north on Boyle Street. One camera looked south on Clifford Street. Three cameras looked out on Burlington Gardens. And three cameras surveyed Savile Row – looking north, looking south and looking directly down on the steps below the big blue lamp.
‘Here they come,’ Greene said.
We watched Barry and Jean Wilder arrive outside West End Central. They waited under the big blue lamp, Jean Wilder smoking furiously. ‘What are we looking for?’ Whitestone said.
‘Watch,’ I said.
A black cab pulled up. The driver helped Piper Maldini manoeuvre her brother’s wheelchair out of the taxi. Philip Maldini settled in his wheelchair, nodding briefly to Barry Wilder.
‘Do Barry Wilder and Philip Maldini seem like friends to you?’
‘No.’
‘That’s because they have never met before,’ I said. ‘Now look at Jean Wilder and Piper Maldini.’
The two women were conferring like old friends.
Jean Wilder threw a cigarette in the gutter and immediately pulled out another. Piper Maldini held a match for her. Jean Wilder lightly touched the younger woman on her arm.
‘Do they look like strangers to you?’ I asked.
Whitestone was staring at me.
‘What are you saying, Max?’
‘The discrepancies on Tara’s voice analysis were not because Barry Wilder and Paul Warboys were guilty,’ I said. ‘It was not even because they were lying. It was because neither Paul Warboys or Barry Wilder were telling us the whole truth.’
They were all looking at me now.
‘That smell in the back of the van was cigarette smoke covered by perfume and chewing gum,’ I said. ‘Lots of unfiltered Camels masked with a good spray of Jimmy Choo perfume and plenty of Juicy Fruit. Dr Joe said we were being distracted by the masks and he was right. It made us miss the most obvious thing about the Hanging Club.’
On the CCTV outside 27 Savile Row, Piper Maldini and Jean Wilder suddenly stared up at the camera watching them.
‘Three of them are women,’ I said.
35
The four of them were waiting outside the interview rooms.
Jean Wilder’s jaws moved furiously as she watched us coming down the corridor. In the confined space outside the row of interview rooms, the smell of unfiltered Camels, Jimmy Choo and Juicy Fruit almost made me gag.
She looked me in the eye and she saw that I knew.
‘One thing I don’t understand,’ I said.
Jean Wilder laughed bitterly. ‘I think there are a lot of things you don’t understand!’
I glanced at Piper Maldini. And I watched her mouth tighten as she saw that it was over now. Perhaps it had been over from the moment Andrej Wozniak disappeared under the steel wheels of a tube train. Or perhaps they would have kept going until there was not one of them left. We would never know.
‘Why Darren Donovan?’ I asked Jean Wilder. ‘You had a good reason to hate Mahmud Irani and so did Andrej Wozniak. The Warboys had a good reason to hate Hector Welles for killing their grandson.’ I nodded at the Maldinis and their dark good looks seemed to drain under the lights of West End Central. ‘And I understand why you would hate a man like Abu Din,’ I said quietly. Then I stared into Jean Wilder’s furious face. ‘I can even understand why you would hate me for getting in your way and for coming after you.’
Jean Wilder shook her head.
‘You really don’t understand. Believe me.’
‘Jean,’ her husband said. ‘Don’t say anything.’
‘Shut up,’ she told him. ‘We don’t hate you because you came after us. We hate you because you’re always on the side of the filth. You protect the men who rape our daughters because you care more about their human rights than you do about our children. It’s a fact. You don’t care. You don’t get it. You truly don’t understand. And that’s why we hate you.’
I looked at Piper Maldini.
‘There were only three of you when Abu Din was abducted,’ I said. ‘At first I thought it was because you, Piper, were seen day after day on that street in Wembley and one of the faithful might recognise you – even behind an Albert Pierrepoint mask. But that wasn’t it, was it?’
Piper Maldini still had not spoken. Her brother twisted in his wheelchair to look at her.