The Hanging Club (DC Max Wolfe) by Tony Parsons Page A

dressing gowns smoking their last cigarette of the day beyond the big glass doors of the main entrance. When I came back to the waiting room, she was awake and sitting up.
    ‘Max,’ she said, and I knew that there had been no real rest for her in this place. She slowly put her glasses on and I had never seen her face look more vulnerable.
    ‘How’s your son?’ I said. ‘How’s Just?’
    She nodded, as if struggling to understand their new reality.
    ‘He – uh – lost his sight in one eye.’ She shook her head. ‘Somebody hit him in the face with a bottle, Max.’ She put on her child-sized trainers, ran her fingers through her messy blonde hair. ‘In a club. A fight. Over some girl. He was meant to be looking at some girl. And his right eye – his right eye took the full force of the blow and the left eye got a shower of glass fragments. He’s lost that right eye, Max. That’s gone. That’s mush. Forget about that right eye, Max. The left eye has a detached retina and all the bits of glass in it and – uh – they are trying to save that other eye. Dr Patel is doing his best, Max. But there’s glass . . . bits of glass . . . in his eye . . . his left eye.’
    ‘Pat,’ I said. ‘My God, Pat.’
    She scratched her head. She sighed. She exhaled.
    ‘So that’s where we are,’ she said. ‘Waiting for news about his other eye.’ She shook her head and then she looked at me and her face stirred with the start of a smile. ‘What about you?’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘I left you in the lurch. Up at West End Central. The press conference. How did it go?’
    ‘You didn’t see it?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Of course not. Of course you didn’t see it. It went well.’
    ‘That’s good, Max.’
    I felt like putting my arm around her. But she looked me straight in the eye and I saw that she was still the woman I knew, she was still my boss, she was still the most experienced homicide detective in 27 Savile Row, and the moment passed, even though her eyes were wet with tears, even though I had never felt closer to her.
    I sat down next to her.
    ‘What happened, Pat?’
    She shook her head. She told me the story in broken fragments. Because it made no sense and yet at the same time it was all horribly easy to imagine.
    ‘Just the usual teenage rubbish,’ she said. ‘It started with a lie – Just told me he was going to play videogames at his friend’s house. I believed him. And his friend told his mother the same lie. And instead they sneaked off to this place. To have a few drinks. To pretend that they’re not children any more. It’s what teenagers do, Max. Some boys out – Just and a couple of his friends from school – nice kids – they were in some little pub off the Holloway Road – then suddenly these other boys were shouting at Just – that he had looked at a girl – but his friend – I spoke to his friend – his friend sat in the hospital all night long, too scared to go home – he said that Just didn’t do anything – he didn’t even see this girl – but they – one of them – this gang – the Dog Town Boys, they call themselves – they put a bottle across his face – and it broke – the glass – and his eyes . . .
    I took her hands in mine.
    She needed to say no more. It was the kind of ordinary madness that happened every night of the year. But it usually happened to someone else.
    ‘We’re such a small family, Max. Me and Just. You don’t realise it until a time like this. I feel like I should call someone. But who can I call? My parents are dead. I don’t have brothers or sisters. There’s no one to call, is there?’
    ‘What about his father?’ I said, and when I saw her face twist with anger I knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say.
    ‘He’s dead to us,’ she said. ‘He left us to get on with it. And we will get on with it. Even this.’
    Then we were silent until a doctor appeared in the doorway. A thirty-something Asian in blue scrubs, in a rush. He looked around