The Hanging Club

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A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. Every thing told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all – the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose.

Dr Samuel Johnson

PROLOGUE

After PrayErs

After Friday prayers Mahmud Irani walked back to where he had parked his taxi and within a few minutes he had picked up the man who was going to kill him.

The man was standing opposite the entrance to London Zoo, dressed in a suit and tie, the jacket buttoned up despite the steaming midday heat. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses and he had one arm already raised in the air to hail a cab, as if he was fully expecting Mahmud to be driving round Regent’s Park’s Outer Circle immediately after prayers, as if he knew he was coming.

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