‘You can believe that or not, I don’t give a toss,’ he said. ‘Doll’s dad – my late father-in-law – was a black cab driver. He had her tooling up and down the Walworth Road when she was ten years old. Sitting in that black cab, hardly able to see over the steering wheel, the old man killing himself laughing in the back seat.’ He smiled fondly at the image. ‘Driving in London was in her blood. She knows these streets. She can drive. So she drove for them, Max. That’s all she did. Christ, she was old enough to be the grandmother of the rest of them. But she was the driver. Because of what that bastard Welles did to Daniel. Two years for killing an innocent little kid!’ He gripped my arm and, even at his advanced age, I felt the power of the man and I was glad to have Billy by my side. ‘Doll was the driver. I told you – not my style. Not my style at all, Max. If I was going to slot the bastard, it wouldn’t have been with a rope. Just the driving, Max, that’s all she did.’

I patted his powerful arm.

‘We can talk about all that later, Paul,’ I said gently. ‘But right now you have to take me to Doll.’

We stood there in silence for a moment. Then he ran a hand through his thinning blond hair and smiled with sadness. There was no point in fighting it.

‘She’s waiting,’ he said.

We followed him upstairs to the master bedroom. He opened the door and we saw Doll Warboys lying on top of the covers.

Billy cried out beside me.

Doll Warboys was wearing her wedding dress, her eyes closed and her hands together as she clasped a bouquet of fresh flowers to her lifeless chest.

I moved quickly to the bed and touched her wrist and her skin had the texture of paper. It was very cold.

On the bedside table were a dozen pill bottles and a half-drunk glass of red wine. I read their labels as I felt her pulse. Zolpidem. Zaleplon. Zopiclone.

Enough sleeping pills to help you sleep forever.

Billy was calling for an ambulance. He was still young enough to believe that it was never too late to get help. But in the end we all run out of time.

I looked at Paul Warboys as he stared at the woman he had married a lifetime ago.

‘All these years,’ he said. ‘And she still fits into her wedding dress.’

36

It was not over.

The two surviving members of the Hanging Club were on remand in Her Majesty’s Prison Holloway, sometimes known as Holloway Castle, where they would remain in single cells until brought to trial at the Central Criminal Court, almost always known as the Old Bailey.