by Alex Coombs
He shook his head in baffled surprise. I’m losing, he thought incredulously.
He dropped his guard slightly and that was enough for Hanlon. Another punch rode over the protective gloves in front of Jay’s face, catching him off balance, and then as his feet moved awkwardly to restore his equilibrium, Hanlon was on him, sending what would have been rib-breaking body shots into his lower body, if she hadn’t pulled the power of the punches. ‘Break,’ said Laidlaw, moving between them, pushing them aside with his hands. He covered his mouth to hide his grin of delight. The old Hanlon was back. Lean and mean, he thought, lean and mean.
Hanlon moved over to a corner and rested against the ropes. She listened critically to her body. She was pleased, her breathing was perfect, her legs felt like steel. Jay came up to her pulling his headguard off and they sportingly touched gloves. She could smell his short, cropped hair and youthful perspiration. He grinned at her, taking his mouthguard out as he did so, his teeth startlingly white against his black face. Hanlon thought, he’s ridiculously good-looking.
‘Respect,’ he said. Hanlon smiled at him. Good boxers are, paradoxically, usually gentlemen. Jay nodded and rejoined his companions.
Hanlon took her gum shield out and rinsed and spat into the bucket that Laidlaw was holding. The water was tinged pink with her blood where one of Jay’s head shots had damaged her mouth. Perspiration soaked through the faded grey fabric of her baggy, sleeveless top and Laidlaw could smell a hint of scent through her sweat.
‘Are you wearing perfume?’ he asked. He’d never known her to do that. Hanlon’s unfriendly gaze met his.
‘I was seeing someone I know earlier,’ she said. ‘A friend.’ Her expression dared him to ask another question. Laidlaw had plenty of experience of reading hostility in faces and body posture; he wasn’t going to make that mistake. He knew the high price she put on her privacy.
He watched Hanlon’s back, her head held high, as she walked back across the gym. Several of the other fighters touched her shoulder gently as she passed. Laidlaw shook his head with rueful affection and sighed. She was back.
As she left, a figure in the shadows of the viewing gallery above the ring, who had been watching the fight unobserved from the darkness under the roof eaves, quietly got to his feet and slipped away towards the exit.
Hanlon showered in Laidlaw’s personal bathroom and pulled her clothes on. She felt elated. She had won; he had lost. The best of feelings.
She winced as she dressed. She studied her half-naked body in the mirror and could see the skin around her ribs changing colour, darkening, as she began to bruise. Her left eye, too, was puffy and swollen where Jay had caught it with a punch she couldn’t avoid. By the morning it would be black.
Later that night she knew she’d be in considerable discomfort from the beating her body had taken from Jay’s gloves, but Hanlon didn’t mind that kind of pain. It was there because of what she’d achieved. No pain, no gain. If there’s no charge, it’s not worth attending the show.
She was pleased overall with her performance. It was the first time she had been in a fight since her struggle with Conquest on the island, which was a couple of months ago. Her arm had healed perfectly and her fitness levels were better than ever.
She walked out of the fire door at the rear of the building, sure-footed and silent on the metal steps of the fire escape. Her sports bag in her left hand was partially unzipped and jutting out from it was the handle of a standard-issue police telescopic baton. Hanlon had made a fair number of enemies in her time and she suspected one of them would come looking for her some day. She also didn’t trust the dark streets of Bermondsey at the best of times, no matter how up-and-coming its image. Either way, she was ready.
As she exited the narrow alleyway into the dark, dimly lit street she saw a tall figure step out of the gloom.
With one fluid movement, she drew the carbon-steel baton as a familiar voice said, ‘It’s me, DI Hanlon. You can put the baton away now, unless you want to be arrested for assaulting a senior officer.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hanlon. Her hand moved away from the comforting metal handle. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked.
‘You can join me for dinner, Detective Inspector,’ said the assistant commissioner, stepping into the soft halo of a street light. ‘I’ve got a job offer for you.’
3
Hanlon and Corrigan sat together at a small table at the rear of the Sultan Ahmet restaurant near the brutalist sprawl of the South Bank complex, home of Lasdun’s hymn to concrete, the National Theatre and the Hayward Gallery by the Thames, just across the river from Westminster.
The restaurant was owned by relatives of Hanlon’s former partner in the Met, Enver Demirel. His aunt, Demet, ran the place. Hanlon could see her, standing behind the bar, organizing everything with tight-lipped efficiency. Short, beaky-nosed, and whippet thin with a shock of dyed brown hair, she looked like a small, angry bird. Enver, and the other relatives of his who Hanlon had met, were all placid by temperament and good- natured. Neither adjective applied to Aunt Demet.
She watched the waiters moving with professional grace, and as they exited and entered the kitchen she caught glimpses of the chefs toiling away. She reflected how much Enver had hated the catering world, how he had once told her that boxing and the police force were relatively stress free compared to working for the family-run restaurant business that the Demirels had. Mind you, she thought, I got Enver shot and nearly killed, a charge that couldn’t be levelled at his family.
Corrigan’s six-foot-five frame was uncomfortably wedged between banquette seat and table. His huge hands made the knife and fork he was holding look child-sized. He poured himself another Efes Pilsen and emptied half of it down his throat.
If Demet Gul looked bird-like, thought Hanlon, then Corrigan with his slab-like builder’s features was more like an ox or a bull. It had led many people to think him slow-witted, a huge mistake. Corrigan had a consummate political aware- ness that had kept him at the top table of the Met for about a decade now, and she felt uncomfortable under his shrewd, calculating gaze.
Hanlon and Corrigan were sharing a mezze-style starter, a selection of salads and various kebabs. Corrigan’s eyes brightened at the sight of the food.
‘What’s this again?’ he asked, pointing at a salad. Most of the mezze he could recognize, falafel, hummus, mini-kebabs, even Baba Ghanoush. Hanlon glanced at the plate.
‘Kisir, sir. It’s a salad with nuts in.’
‘It’s very good.’ He had another forkful. ‘What kind of nuts?’ ‘Hazelnuts, I believe, sir.’
‘Ingenious,’ said Corrigan.
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it, sir.’
Hanlon ate sparingly. She could at least pretend to be enthusiastic about her food, Corrigan thought, food that was extremely good. From the expression on her face, she might as well have been eating cardboard. Her mouth seemed to attack the mezze as if eating were some sort of unpalatable duty. She never lightens up, he thought.
‘I see you’re keeping yourself fit, Detective Inspector.’ Con- versations with Hanlon often ended up as a series of sarcastic interchanges.
‘A healthy mind in a healthy body, sir,’ said Hanlon, pointedly eyeing the AC’s prominent gut.
Pictures of the great mosque in Istanbul covered the walls, along with stylized portraits of various Ottoman emperors.
‘Have you been there?’ asked Corrigan, changing the subject and pointing to a framed photo of the mosque’s enormous courtyard, lit up at night.
‘Yes,’ said Hanlon. Corrigan waited for more information. None was forthcoming. Hanlon looked back at him silently, unemotionally. Her eye was swelling up and her face was puffy. You need to get some ice on that, he thought. He had a mouthful of his Efes Pilsen beer and waved the waiter over to order another one.
He was beginning to feel thoroughly annoyed with Hanlon, a not uncommon sensation. This silent treatment from her had everything to do with Whiteside. Corrig
an knew that she visited him in hospital three times a week. She had been there earlier that evening, before the gym.
Sergeant Mark Whiteside was in a coma, as a result of a shooting. Neither he, Corrigan, personally nor the Metropolitan Police had anything to do with the circumstances relating to it. Corrigan suspected that Whiteside was where he was because of Hanlon and he had the innocent person’s natural resentment at being blamed for something of which he was not guilty. Hanlon was always convinced she was in the right, thought Corrigan. The fact that she often was had given her a messianic belief in herself. It was a source of huge strength but one day, thought Corrigan, it’ll go horribly wrong. In one
sense, it already had.
Hanlon was very much of the ‘act immediately, think later’ school. Corrigan suspected that she herself knew that, which is why she relied upon cooler heads like Whiteside and now Demirel.
Not that there was any point raising this with her.
‘Do you know Dame Elizabeth Saunders?’ he asked now. ‘The philosopher?’ said Hanlon, surprised.
She did indeed. Dame Elizabeth was someone she revered. Hanlon never read fiction, regarding it as a pointless waste of time, but she was interested in history and philosophy and Dame Elizabeth, an expert on moral and existential philosophy, was one of her favourite writers. And she always felt better educated after reading a Saunders book, even if she disagreed with it.
She also admired how Dame Elizabeth had shouldered her way up the male-dominated world of academia, crunching through glass ceilings like an Arctic ice-breaker. She was high profile too. Dame Elizabeth appeared on book-judging panels, arts programmes, politics and media items on various TV stations.
Corrigan nodded. The Saunders name seemed to have jolted Hanlon out of her foul mood.
‘What do you know of her?’ he asked.
Hanlon frowned. ‘Well, she’s a well-known popular philosopher and broadcaster. She taught at Oxford and I’ve seen her on the TV. She specializes in moral philosophy, what is good and what is bad, that kind of thing, but also she’s done quite a bit of government work. I guess that’s a result of the moral philosophy. Most recently she was on that inquiry held by the IPCC on how we evaluate mental illness in arrested suspects.’ ‘I know,’ said Corrigan through gritted teeth. ‘We’re police, not mental-health experts, for heaven’s sake.’ One of Corrigan’s duties was to handle the media and he’d had a grim time recently. Accusations of racism in the Met, corruption, systemic perjury and, as if that wasn’t enough, both they and the prison service were facing the consequences of a mental-health policy that left people in need of treatment rather than punishment out at large for the police to deal with.
‘Well, we do get more than our fair share of nutters, sir,’ said Hanlon.
Corrigan snorted derisively. ‘I hadn’t realized you had such a caring side, Detective Inspector. You certainly keep it well hidden.’
‘Oh, I care, sir,’ said Hanlon quietly. ‘I care about justice, something Dame Elizabeth has written extensively about.’ She paused. ‘Do you, sir?’
Hanlon’s mind was on Whiteside. Mark Whiteside kept alive by machinery, drips, tubing and a colostomy bag. Whiteside would have particularly hated that last demeaning touch. Even though the perpetrators were dead, she couldn’t help but feel they’d got off lightly compared to him. The innocent were punished, the guilty roamed free. Where was the justice in that? Hanlon was hurting, and like any hurt animal she wanted to lash out. Her tone was one of barely veiled anger.
Corrigan restrained a childish urge to kick the table over and storm out. He’d had a terrible day and he really did not need this shit from Hanlon. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He was on beta blockers for his high blood pressure and he could feel a vein throbbing ominously in his forehead. Ironic if I keeled over here, face down in the hummus, felled by a Hanlon-induced stroke, he thought.
Something must have shown in his face because Hanlon asked, almost meekly for her, ‘What about Dame Elizabeth, sir?’ It was as close to contrition as she was likely to get.
‘Dame Elizabeth, as you may or may not know, is the professor of philosophy at Queen’s College here in London,’ said Corrigan.
‘No, I didn’t know that, sir.’ ‘Well, now you do. She is.’
‘Why this interest in philosophy, sir?’ asked Hanlon. ‘It’s very Zen of you.’
Corrigan stifled a smile. Hanlon was one of the few people who dared to tease him. His work persona was one of angry efficiency.
He took the tablet he had on the table next to him and the screen brightened as he searched for something. A photo of a man filled the screen and Corrigan swivelled it round so Hanlon could see.
He was in his mid-thirties, she guessed, with longish, floppy hair, a linen jacket and a scarf that was probably from some Oxford or Cambridge college. It was thrown casually around his neck. She disliked him immediately. He was confident and good-looking, but to Hanlon’s eye there was a hint of weakness in the face, the self-deprecating grin a little too forced, with that air that some people have of trying slightly too hard. It was the kind of face that begged people to like him, the kind of person who would smile too much. It was a puzzling mix, arrogance tinged with desperation.
She looked quizzically at Corrigan.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is Dr Gideon Orlando Fuller, who also lectures in philosophy on a five-year contract at Queen’s College. Hired by Dame Elizabeth herself. He is a suspect, the main suspect, in the death of this girl, Hannah Moore, who was strangled – either by accident or design – during some sort of S&M-style sex, a week ago. This photo is from her Facebook page.’
Hannah Moore pouted at them provocatively from the screen. It was an attempt to appear sexually alluring, but her face and body were not the stuff of male fantasy. Hanlon looked at her dispassionately.
She was obviously overweight and her heavily made-up eyes were small and piggy in the generous expanse of her face.
She had dyed her hair blonde, but not her dark eyebrows, and at the front the roots showed their true colour. Yet in those eyes, framed by inexpertly applied make-up, was a real look of intelligence. Hanlon shook her head with irritation.
The girl must have known that she looked both slightly pathetic and ridiculous. That FHM/Loaded look was not for her, but she’d been desperate enough to try. Why could she not just have settled for quiet dignity; she was a student, not a Page-3 girl.
She looked again at Corrigan. ‘And?’
‘Hannah Moore was in one of Fuller’s evening classes. Dame Elizabeth, who has a lot of clout in the government and civil service, has demanded and received assurances that our investigation will be discreet and low-key.’
‘Is that right?’ said Hanlon contemptuously. Much as she admired Dame Elizabeth, she didn’t see why the Met should be forced to dance to a civil servant’s tune, no matter how distinguished.
‘Why on earth should we care what Dame Elizabeth thinks?’ she asked.
Corrigan looked at her sharply. ‘Dame Elizabeth taught the PM at university and also the leader of the Opposition. Oh, and the mayor too. Philosophy was very much in vogue then, it would seem.’ He paused, allowing time to absorb the fact that the request for discretion had come from on high. ‘She’s also a non-exec director of a major newspaper and she is adviser to the civil service pay-review body. Let me repeat myself, Detective Inspector, our investigation will be discreet and low-key.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said mutinously.
‘Not boring you, am I, DI Hanlon,’ said Corrigan sarcastic- ally. ‘You don’t seem to be concentrating.’ He raised his eyebrows and leaned his head forward across the table close to Hanlon’s to emphasize the point. He suddenly looked very menacing. Decades ago, when Corrigan had walked the beat, and later in the flying squad, policing had been a lot more physical. He’d always been first choice if a ruck seemed inevitable. ‘How do we want the investigation to proceed?’
‘Low-key and discreet, sir.’
‘And he’s the prime suspect?’
Corrigan nodded. ‘There’s forensic evidence linking him to the scene, and circumstantial evidence. He has no alibi for the time in question. But the officer in charge will fill you in better than I can.’
Hanlon looked sceptical. ‘Won’t my turning up at his evening class at this point seem a bit suspicious?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Corrigan. ‘Fuller’s evening class has to be at least fifteen in number to pay for itself, or it’ll be axed. The students will be told that you were at the head of a waiting list, should a vacancy occur, which it manifestly has.’ He drank some more of his Efes Pilsen lager, the half-pint glass looking dainty in his huge hand. He beckoned the waiter for another one. He looked at Hanlon’s strong-featured, intelligent face. Nobody would question her intellectual capability and he could rest assured that she’d keep her mouth shut. Hanlon never confided in anyone, no risk of any leaks from her. ‘That happens to be true. The finance part. Times are tough. Everyone will be pleased with you for saving their class. You’re also one of the few officers we have who would look remotely credible on a philosophy course.’
‘Really?’ said Hanlon sceptically.
‘Really,’ said Corrigan. ‘They’ll think you are a militant feminist.’
Hanlon raised her dark, curved eyebrows in surprise.
Corrigan beamed at her.
‘Exactly, Hanlon, that’s the kind of look we want. Just the ticket. Aggressive scepticism. I knew you’d be perfect. You will be a civil service adviser on a quango for women’s equality. That’s dull enough as jobs go to stop any questions and you’re intimidating enough to block most enquiries. Queen Anne’s Gate Human Resources department will authenticate any queries about Ms Rachel Gallagher.’
‘That’s my name, is it?’ said Hanlon.
