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Back The Hanging Club
Chapters (49)
  1. About the Book
  2. About the Author
  3. Also by Tony Parsons
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Prologue
  8. Part One
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. 13
  22. Part Two
  23. 14
  24. 15
  25. 16
  26. 17
  27. 18
  28. 19
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. 23
  33. 24
  34. 25
  35. Part Three
  36. 26
  37. 27
  38. 28
  39. 29
  40. 30
  41. 31
  42. 32
  43. 33
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. 37
  48. Author’s Note
  49. Copyright

‘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.