The Innocent Girl

by Alex Coombs

  ‘Now, tell mother what brings you here.’ She smiled sardonically at Hanlon. ‘Please tell me you’d like a job, you’d be a fantastic domme. I saw the way you handled Yuri.’

  ‘Dr Gideon Fuller,’ said Hanlon, not wasting any time. ‘I’m not sure I feel like discussing our clients, if indeed we have anyone by that name on our books. We’re not a knocking shop, dearie. We’re a private members’ club, Detective Chief Inspector. Surely you know I’m not going to discuss my membership lists.’

  Hanlon nodded. What else was Campion going to say. ‘It’s up to you,’ Hanlon said with a shrug. ‘But if you want

  a full Health and Safety audit, including fire regs, if you want me to get the council to check that you’re complying fully, without deviation, with whatever licence you’re operating under, if you want a couple of uniforms posted in the street outside to “reassure” your clients and, of course, I’d be dropping by regularly, then you go right ahead and not discuss him. It’s a free country. The choice is yours.’

  Campion looked at Hanlon. She was a good judge of character and she could see from the other woman’s face she would not back down. A fight with Hanlon would mean trouble. Campion knew what trouble looked like when she saw it looming.

  She made her mind up. It wasn’t a fight worth having. She nodded. ‘OK. Fair enough. What do you want to know?’

  ‘General background,’ said Hanlon. ‘That’ll do for now.’

  Campion sipped her whisky-freighted coffee. ‘Well, our good doctor is a classic dom. That means, as you can guess, he likes to be totally in charge. That’s in general.’

  ‘So the women do what they’re told,’ said Hanlon. Campion nodded.

  ‘They do what they’re told, or he punishes them. And of course it goes without saying that the girls make sure he gets to punish them. He also has his own special preferences. He’s really into AgePlay, which for him means teacher/student relationships and also breath control.’

  ‘Do you mean strangulation?’ asked Hanlon. It was obvious she wasn’t talking about yoga. Pranayama, that was the term, she thought.

  The madam nodded. ‘Exactly. Just make-believe, obviously. But he does like to be dominant, which is not always the case. Particularly with teachers. They usually get enough of that at work. We get all sorts here, obviously,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But you’d be surprised how many bottoms or subs we get.’ Hanlon looked puzzled.

  ‘Submissives,’ Campion explained. ‘We get a lot of them. Dr Fuller, though, well, let’s just say I’ve had to have a word with him on occasion. He’s certainly not submissive. Some of the girls complained; he can get a little too rough. Is that what this is about?’

  ‘In a sense,’ said Hanlon guardedly. ‘You mentioned AgePlay, student/teacher role-play. Might that include peculiar sexual favours for higher marks, that kind of thing? In a role-play sense.’

  She was thinking of Abigail Vickery, Fuller’s possible first victim. Had he blackmailed her into sex? Could that have happened with Hannah Moore?

  ‘But of course,’ said Campion, matter-of-factly. ‘Art reflects life, so does sex. You should know that, DCI Hanlon. If it happens in real life, it will absolutely happen here, and if it happens here it’ll probably happen in reality.’ She sipped her Scotch. ‘It’s the circle of life.’

  Hanlon nodded thoughtfully. ‘How plausible would it be to suggest someone like Dr Fuller would strangle someone accidentally?’

  ‘Very unlikely,’ said the madam firmly. ‘S&M fans are big on contracts and consensus. We use safe-words a lot. There’s no mystique to it, just common sense.’

  ‘But accidents happen?’

  ‘Very few in S&M, Detective Chief Inspector Hanlon.’ There was a knock on the door and Campion said, ‘Come.’

  A tall man, naked but for a leather thong and a black face mask, shuffled into the room. His feet were shackled together with a section of chain. The mouth of the mask was closed with a zip.

  Campion was watching Hanlon. The policewoman’s face remained expressionless.

  ‘Have you cleaned my bedroom?’ asked Campion menacingly. The cowled figure nodded. ‘The bathroom?’ A shake of the head, then a gesture towards its mouth. It, Hanlon thought, not he. Reification it was called, she seemed to remember, treating people as things.

  She wondered if Fuller thought of his women in the same way. Things not people. Was that why Hannah Moore had been hooded, so he hadn’t found it necessary to look at her face as he killed her? Would he have been unable to meet her gaze as his fingers crushed her windpipe? Did the simulated violence mask a desire for real violence? Like taking off a mask to reveal another mask.

  She guessed that the appearance of this man was a lesson from Campion, a window into her world.

  It was a stage-managed world, the realm of S&M. It was a world devoid of chance, a scripted world like an intricate, violent sexual dance with its own steps and its own music, the music of pain, the rhythm of control.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Campion said and the figure leaned forward, while she unzipped its mouth. It bowed in gratitude and disappeared. The door closed gently behind it.

  Hanlon looked at the madam.

  ‘He’ll need his tongue to clean properly,’ Campion said, looking challengingly at Hanlon. ‘Does that shock you, Detective Chief Inspector?’

  She leaned forward in her chair, so their faces were almost touching. Hanlon could smell the whisky on her breath, her stale perfume and a faint sheen of perspiration. Campion reached out a finger and gently touched Hanlon’s swollen eye.

  ‘And how did you get that beauty?’ she asked softly, almost tenderly.

  Hanlon didn’t move. She returned the other woman’s stare dispassionately, her grey eyes looking into the slightly bloodshot brown ones of her host. It was like some kind of test, a peculiar kind of intimacy, the iron wills of the two women almost audibly clashing. Then suddenly, as quickly as it started, it was over. Campion nodded. The test was over. Hanlon stood up; it was time to go.

  ‘I’d be very careful with Dr Fuller if I were you,’ she said to the madam.

  ‘If I were you,’ repeated the other woman scornfully. ‘If I were you.’ There was no mistaking the bitterness in the intonation now.

  She suddenly stood up with a speed and a lightness of which Hanlon would never have imagined her capable. ‘You,’ she said contemptuously, pointing a forefinger at Hanlon, ‘you have no fucking idea what it’s like to be me, no fucking idea at all, and pray to God you never will.’ Her voice was very quiet, very threatening. She looked down at Hanlon; she was a good few inches taller.

  ‘Before you leave, DCI Hanlon, do me a favour.’ Hanlon looked at her. ‘Just lift your shirt up for me a few inches.’

  Hanlon unzipped the light jacket she was wearing, reached down and pulled up her blouse, exposing the skin from the waistband of her trousers to the base of her ribs. It was a riot of blue and purple bruising. Sparring or no sparring, Jay had certainly left his mark. She pulled her shirt back down.

  The other woman nodded to herself, as if having had a suspicion confirmed and asked, ‘What happened to the person who did that?’ Hanlon shrugged, her silence eloquent. As she turned and left the room, she heard the sound of the whisky bottle being opened and Campion’s voice.

  ‘It’s not just Fuller that likes hurting people is it, DCI Hanlon? Who are you to judge us? Eh? Who the fuck are you to decide?’ Hanlon walked out of the Dean Street brothel into a bright

  Soho morning that did not reflect her thoughts.

  Who am I? she thought. I wish I knew.

  10

  Hanlon decided to eat in the university canteen on Tuesday lunchtime. She’d put in a couple of hours at the gym, followed by a five-mile run, and wanted something different to eat to vary her monotonous diet of lightly grilled chicken, pasta and salads. She also had an ulterior motive. She was hoping she might come across Michaels.

  Hanlon had developed a keen interest in the chef. She liked t
he way he seemed to view the world, with a wry yet tough amusement. She felt he would make an admirable witness, reliable and trustworthy. She was also conscious of the fact that they were getting nowhere with the Hannah Moore killing. Michaels was someone who had known Hannah. He knew the philosophy class and he knew Fuller. Indeed, technically, both employed by the university, they were colleagues. She felt that his input could prove very useful. He knew Fuller’s work reputation and since so much time is spent in the workplace, he would be aware not only of his own dealings with the man but those of other staff members. She fully intended to benefit from this.

  The university canteen was better than she’d envisaged. It was large, airy and open-plan, with a kitchen that gleamed in a space-age way, where you could see the chefs working. The food was far better than anything available at a police canteen, where everything seemed stodgy or fried, despite endless initiatives designed to help those in the Met lose weight.

  There must have been a couple of hundred students in the hall and it made her feel old and dowdy. She’d never particularly cared about clothes and she suddenly realized that the students probably thought she was somebody’s mother. She found the idea disquieting. Hanlon was used to being the centre of attention. At work, her reputation preceded her and as a woman she was in a minority. Not here, at Queen’s College. Here she was a nobody. She felt slightly deflated and began to wish she hadn’t come.

  It wasn’t just the age difference, although most of the students looked absurdly young with unlined faces and gravity-defying bodies. Hanlon thought, the main difference between me and them is really one of optimism. They’re looking forward to everything, but what have I got? Job satisfaction at best. I arrest people, she thought gloomily, and I spend my time with lowlifes and criminals. The rest of the time I spend with the police. It was sometimes hard to tell which was more dispiriting.

  She had chosen a table nearest the open-plan kitchen, so that if Michaels did show up, he could see her. Although the canteen was crowded, her table was empty. She had attributed this to the fact that she was older than the students, looking like someone’s mother. Most of them, however, found the sight of Hanlon – haughty, grim, with a black eye where Jay’s gloves had caught her during their sparring session, and sitting ramrod straight – intimidating at best, or at worst, genuinely frightening. Nobody wanted to sit next to her, because nobody dared.

  Michaels appeared from the back of the kitchen, saw her and waved from across the pass, the steel dividing counter between kitchen and dining area. He was not the kind of man to be intimidated by people or situations.

  He was wearing chef’s whites with the sleeves rolled up and the whiteness of the jacket accentuated his Mediterranean colouring. He had a striped butcher’s apron on and a kitchen skullcap, which gave him a priestly air. He was wearing highly polished, black, steel-toed Caterpillar boots on his feet and appeared, to Hanlon’s eyes, ready to rise to any challenge. He looked intensely competent.

  She watched him moving swiftly round the kitchen, tasting, testing food, bobbing up and down as he checked fridges. The other chefs quickened their pace, looked more alert, adjusted their posture. It was like a general reviewing the troops.

  She got up and went over to him.

  ‘Gallagher, nice to see you. Everything OK with your food, I hope?’ he asked, leaning over the barrier between canteen and kitchen.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ she said. She couldn’t actually remember what she was eating, simply because she didn’t care what she ate.

  ‘Good. Good.’ He hesitated, glanced round the busy kitchen. ‘Look, I’m a bit up to my eyes in it right now.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Hanlon, lying with practised ease. ‘I was hoping to get some input on Dr Fuller’s attitudes to women. I know that Dame Elizabeth is keen to have my feedback, given what I do for a living.’

  For a second he looked puzzled, then nodded and said, ‘Oh, I see, that EU thing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hanlon. ‘Gender equality?’

  ‘Gender equality,’ confirmed Hanlon. ‘Particularly in adult education, it’s a fertile ground.’

  She thought that the bait, the lure, of being given the opportunity to criticize Fuller, a man whom she suspected Michaels couldn’t stand, would prove irresistible. She was right. He nodded his head again in agreement. He glanced up at the clock on the wall.

  ‘I have to go and cook in the executive dining-room kitchen right now. Come and keep me company and I’ll let you know what I think of our esteemed tutor.’

  The last three words were heavily seasoned with sarcasm. ‘That’d be great,’ said Hanlon. She was particularly keen to learn more about Hannah and her love life. Hannah had given herself up to her killer, that much was obvious. There was no struggle, no fight. Hanlon wanted to know if Hannah’s lovers were restricted to the philosophy circle, or had she spread her

  favours wider as Jessica had implied.

  Michaels could help with this. Now his attention was on the canteen kitchen.

  ‘Just give me a couple of minutes,’ he said, glancing around. ‘I need to make sure this lot are OK.’

  He turned his attention to the team of chefs and called out, ‘Molly! Here a minute.’ A hugely overweight girl came running over.

  Molly was enormous. Her blonde, wispy hair was tucked under a headscarf and she had slightly bulging psychotic eyes. She looked very pale beside Michaels. Her forearms were like slabs of veal. She had a huge chest under her chef’s jacket and apron.

  ‘She’s bloody good,’ said Michaels to Hanlon. He spoke quietly so Molly wouldn’t hear.

  Molly arrived in front of them. She stared at Hanlon, a non-chef, with obvious disapproval.

  ‘Yes, chef!’ She looked at Michaels with slavish devotion, like a human Labrador.

  ‘Righto, Molly,’ said Michaels briskly, ‘you’re in charge down here. I’ll be upstairs with Kieran.’

  Molly nodded. Michaels’ eyes suddenly narrowed with genu- ine anger as he looked at the young chef. Hanlon wondered what could have caused it.

  ‘I’m sorry, I must have missed that,’ said Michaels. Hanlon noticed that he spoke lightly but there was a genuine hint of steel in his voice, harsh and threatening.

  Molly blinked. ‘Yes, chef.’ She stressed the word.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Michaels. ‘We don’t want to forget who’s in charge, do we?’

  ‘No, chef.’

  Michaels nodded, satisfied his authority had been properly acknowledged. He turned to Hanlon and motioned with his head to her.

  Hanlon felt faintly shocked at Michaels’ peremptory rude- ness. She had no problem with the chef’s desire to stamp his authority on his workforce, but she wouldn’t have done that in front of a stranger. She decided there was a cruel streak somewhere inside the man before her.

  ‘We’d better go. It’ll be hellish up there,’ he said quietly and laughed. He didn’t look remotely concerned.

  Hanlon followed Michaels out of the canteen and up and down corridors, many of which were marked Staff Only, until she was thoroughly lost. Eventually they emerged in a kitchen space in a part of the university she’d never been in.

  It was at moments like this that Hanlon appreciated just how vast a building Queen’s was. It was labyrinthine, almost nightmarish. Like many public buildings there was a kind of parallel world built for the staff and functionaries. It was an unseen world of shabby and secretive service corridors and windowless rooms, an underworld known only to the initiated.

  The kitchen was quite small and compact. Michaels pointed to an area at the end of the pass where the waiting staff would collect the dishes.

  ‘If you stand there, Gallagher, we can talk and you won’t be in anyone’s way. I’ll introduce you to Kieran.’

  He called out and a young chef with a fluffy, ill-developed beard appeared. He smiled politely at Hanlon.

  ‘All set?’

  ‘Yes, chef.’ Service began.

  As the orders ro
lled in from the waitresses in the dining room, sent wirelessly to the small, black plastic cheque machine, she watched while Kieran did the simple stuff. He put the pre- cooked vegetables in boat-shaped, eared dishes and microwaved them, or arranged and dressed the pre-prepared salad ingredients on a plate according to photos pinned up on a wall.

  ‘Spec sheets,’ Kieran said over his shoulder, practised fingers moving speedily, expertly. ‘Just follow the photos, simple as.’ He deep-fried Parmentier potatoes, similar to chips in cube form, or pommes soufflé, which were like puffed-up crisps. He also had the two large Hobart ovens. They were dual function, and could be set with the turn of a knob, to steam as well as to bake. One of them was set on the steam function and when he opened it to put something in, vast clouds of superheated vapour surrounded him.

  And so it went. Fast, pressurized, relentless.

  One hour later, Hanlon had a great deal more respect for the catering trade than she had ever thought likely. The speed at which they worked was breathtaking.

  While they discussed the course and their fellow students, Michaels was a blur of movement.

  In the time that Kieran took to make one salad – for example, pear, goat’s cheese, curly endive and hazelnut with a hazel- nut vinaigrette – he had started chargrilling duck, pan-seared blackened chicken breasts, laid out Parma ham-wrapped cod loin and set a steak on the go, while doing other starters, more complicated vegetables than Kieran was allowed to, and arranging and saucing.

  His concentration was absolute, his movements deft, exact and amazingly quick. She had never seen anyone work so fast or so neatly. His coordination was precise and balletic. Occasion- ally she saw his lips moving as he repeated an order to himself, making sure that all the parts of the dishes were ready.

  Michaels could obviously separate the cooking from the conversational part of his mind. He managed to carry on a conversation in spite of the stress he was under. She learned that he regarded Hannah as someone to be protected. He found her startlingly naive and above all over-anxious to please.