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Back The Hanging Club Save as PDF
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

He was still staring at the screen.

‘Where is that place?’ he said, as if he should know.

7

I ran all the way to 27 Savile Row.

It was early in the evening but the heat was sticking to the city and I was soaked in sweat by the time I climbed the stairs to the top floor of West End Central. Major Incident Room One was already crowded.

DCI Whitestone was deep in conversation with our boss, DCS Swire, the Chief Super, as the two women stood before the giant TV screen, watching the man in the suit and tie hang one more time.

I realised with a jolt that they seemed relieved.

‘But are we sure?’ DCS Swire was saying in her hushed Margaret Thatcher voice. ‘Are we absolutely sure, Pat?

‘Yes, ma’am,’ DCI Whitestone said. ‘The victim is definitely an IC1.’

IC stands for identity codes and it is the system our people use to describe ethnicity. IC1 meant the man who had just been hanged was a white man of North European stock.

Mahmud Irani had been an IC4.

‘Good,’ said the Chief Super. ‘Then whatever the motive – it’s not race. Thank God for that!’

Edie Wren was furiously pounding her laptop as she conducted a conversation with Colin Cho of the Police Central e-crime Unit. TDC Billy Greene was on the phone fending off a reporter who had somehow been put through from the switchboard. And there was a shockingly attractive young woman I had never seen before who had her laptop plugged into one of the MIR-1 workstations. She was watching the same segment of the new film over and over again.

‘Do you know why you have been brought to this place of execution? Do you know why you have been brought to this place of execution? Do you know . . .’

She had a long pale face, very serious, and the kind of hair that doesn’t move so much as swing. When she leaned forward to stare at the screen her hair swung forward, like a long black veil falling over her serious face, and she pushed it back, biting at her lip with concentration.

‘DC Wolfe,’ I introduced myself to her. ‘Are you running some kind of voice analysis on that dialogue?

But she just glanced at me for a second and then turned back to the screens, pushing back the long black veil of hair, a glint of gold on the third finger of her left hand. So that was the end of that conversation.

Edie Wren looked up from her workstation. On the screen before her I could see the online traffic reacting to the second hanging.

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‘It feels like it never went away,’ Edie said.

‘Who is she?’ I said, nodding towards the woman with the swinging hair.

‘Tara Jones. Speech analyst. Voice biometrics, they call it.’

‘Is she any good?’