The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe) by Tony Parsons Read Free Book Online Page B

Hammersmith.’
    ‘Do you know this child, Max?’ Whitestone said.
    ‘I think I’ve met his grandfather,’ I said. ‘Paul Warboys.’
    There was silence in MIR-1.
    ‘The Paul Warboys?’ the Chief Super said.
    I nodded.
    Paul and Danny Warboys ran West London back in the day when Reggie and Ronnie Kray were running the East End while Charlie and Eddie Richardson ruled the roost in South London.
    I could easily believe that Paul Warboys had a grandson named after his beloved brother Danny.
    ‘How long did Hector Welles go down for?’ Whitestone asked.
    ‘He was sentenced to five years for dangerous driving,’ Edie said. ‘Also fined ten grand and banned from driving for three years. Let off with a slap on the wrist because there was not a trace of drugs or booze in his bloodstream. And also because he had the best brief that his employers could buy and apparently he wept a lot in the dock. In the end, he served just under two years. And they even gave him his old job back.’
    We were silent. The phones had stopped ringing. The only sound was the low drone of the cars down on Savile Row and the laptop of the voice analyst with the swinging hair.
    ‘ 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 . . . ’
    ‘Two years for knocking down a little kid,’ I said. ‘It’s not enough, is it?’

8
     
    Paul Warboys was the last of the line.
    The last of those old gangsters whose names were known to the general public. The last of the career villains who wore suits and ties and had a short back and sides even when everyone else in the Sixties was growing their hair, wearing flares and dropping acid.
    The very last of the true crime celebrities.
    Back in the Sixties and Seventies, Paul Warboys and his brother Danny held court in West London, from their Hammersmith home to the massage parlours, knocking shops and drinking dens of old Soho. While Ronnie and Reggie Kray nursed their grievances in dingy East End boozers and Charlie and Eddie Richardson rattled around their South London scrapyards dreaming of striking gold in Africa, the Warboys brothers sucked the juice from the West End.
    Paul and Danny Warboys had made more money than all of them.
    ‘Nice gaff,’ said Edie Wren as I steered the BMW X5 down the great sweeping driveway of the Essex mansion where Paul Warboys and his wife lived when they were not in Spain.
    I could see staff dotted all around the grounds. A man trying to capture a solitary leaf that glided on the pristine swimming pool. A team of gardeners fussing around the flower beds and mowing the lawn. A maid in traditional black-and-white uniform giving strict instructions to a supermarket delivery driver.
    But Paul Warboys opened his front door himself.
    ‘I’ve been expecting you, Max,’ he told me, almost smiling. ‘Come in.’
    Paul Warboys was dressed for the beach and had a deep tan that did not come from a spray can. Polo shirt, khaki shorts, flip-flops. Chunky gold jewellery clinked on his thick muscled arms. No tattoos. His thinning patch of hair was dyed an unbelievable shade of blond but he looked like what he was: an extremely fit old man who had not had to worry about money for a long time.
    ‘I thought you might come alone,’ he said, squinting over my shoulder at Edie Wren.
    ‘I can’t do that, Paul,’ I said. ‘You know that.’
    ‘Trace, Interview and Eliminate,’ he said. ‘Right, Max?’
    ‘DC Wren, Homicide and Serious Crime Command,’ Edie said, holding out her warrant card.
    Paul Warboys’ smile grew bigger. His teeth were the dazzling white of a game-show presenter. Then he nodded.
    ‘Put it away, sweetheart,’ he told Edie. ‘I believe you.’
    We followed him into the living room. An English Bull Terrier padded across the carpet towards me, wagging his stumpy tail. I held out the back of my hand and the dog bent his magnificent sloping head towards me,