The Innocent Girl

by Alex Coombs

  Hanlon looked puzzled. ‘No, I’ve got no idea. Why?’

  ‘We’ve had a witness come forward,’ said Enver. ‘He’s a student who lives just above Hannah. He’s been away, but was around on the day of the murder. He says the walls and floors are quite thin in that Hall of Residence, sound travels. It’s quite common for students who are . . .’ he looked embarrassed, ‘having sex, to play loud music. To drown other noises out, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I have grasped the concept,’ said Hanlon acidly.

  Enver continued. ‘Well, anyway, he said that on the day of the murder he was trying to write an essay about three o’clock in the afternoon and was put off by, and I quote, “cheesy” disco music. He says it was Donna Summer, his dad likes her. That’s how he knew who it was. I just wondered if Fuller had given any hint as to his musical tastes. The same student says he’s heard similar music from her room at other times.’

  Hanlon shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea but it’s something to bear in mind.’ She frowned thoughtfully.

  Enver took the opportunity to look at her properly. He saw her long, powerful fingers, the nails cut short and painted with clear varnish. Wisps of dark, curly hair snaked down over her forehead. Hanlon had made no attempt to conceal her bruised eye and its startling colouring seemed to enhance the integrity of her face. He saw faint lines on her forehead that hadn’t been there when he had first met her. As always, she looked tired, but it suited her, in a strange way. He tried to picture her laughing or looking carefree, but it defeated his imagination.

  He’d once fought an opponent who had come into the ring to the music of a band performing a song called, ‘Born under a Bad Sign’, and he thought the title would suit Hanlon.

  His surname, Demirel, meant Iron Hand in Turkish. When he’d been boxing his manager, who came from Birmingham, had wanted him to walk to the ring to Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’. Enver had firmly vetoed the idea. It was bad enough that he shared the name with a former Turkish president.

  He cleared his throat to try and pull himself together, disentangling his mind from the whirl of memories. ‘So, what next, ma’am?’

  ‘I’ve got to meet Dame Elizabeth, Fuller’s boss – the one with all the connections, who specifically requested a low-key investigation. There’s no class tonight, Fuller and the Queen’s College Philosophy Society are off to some Oxford College, St Wulfstan’s, for a seminar. It’s an overnight thing. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting with DCI Murray, who’s the SIO on this.’ Enver looked mournful again. ‘I’ll bring up interviewing the classmates. To be honest, if we don’t get some sort of break, ma’am, it’s all looking pretty futile. We’ve got a suspect, but no evidence.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  Hanlon stood up to leave. The bruised skin around her ribs felt tight and constrictive. She put her hands on her hips and leaned backwards, stretching her spine with a supple grace that left Enver sickeningly jealous. His own back had been causing him a great deal of trouble. Bending down to tie his shoelaces was painful; he had to put his foot on something high up. I can’t touch my toes any more, he thought. Of course, his growing girth didn’t help. He could feel his belly folds rippling upwards when he leaned forward. Fatso, he thought bitterly.

  He couldn’t rid himself of the image of his fingers groping helplessly towards his shoelaces, now tantalizingly out of reach. On impulse he asked, ‘Can you touch your toes, ma’am?’

  Hanlon zipped her jacket up and looked at him with irritation. With one fluid movement she bent from the hips, her legs straight, and placed both palms effortlessly flat on the floor, her nose touching her knees, her hair tumbling forward, then she straightened up. Again it was a smooth, effortless motion.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Enver watched her admiringly as she walked away from him towards the office door. Perhaps I ought to take up yoga or something, he thought, secure in the knowledge it wasn’t going to happen.

  14

  Later that afternoon Hanlon sat at the back of the small lecture hall, watching Dame Elizabeth give a talk on Kant, the German philosopher.

  Hanlon rarely read books. She occasionally bought Triathlon magazine or The Economist if she had to make Tube journeys, but fiction she found pointless. Sometimes she studied history, or books on art, and philosophy had always interested her. It was why she’d read some of Dame Elizabeth’s books. She had that rare skill of being able to make a subject intelligible to the layperson. It was also, Hanlon guessed, the mental equivalent of a healthy snack. You felt a glow of virtue afterwards, for doing something not too arduous, but which was generally agreed to be good for you. At least that was how Hanlon, who subjected her body to endless workouts, felt. She should at least attempt something similar mentally, exercise for the brain.

  She was annoyed that she was finding philosophy in class so difficult and simultaneously annoyed with herself at being annoyed.

  Like anything, it had its own special vocabulary, terminology and shorthand, so she knew it was ridiculous to think that she could just come in cold and pick it up. Nevertheless, that’s how it was. She was used to being the expert, she guessed, to having people, even those who couldn’t stand her, defer to her. To be the weakest in the class was an unpleasant shock. Hanlon was big enough to recognize this. Maybe I need taking down a peg or two, she thought. Maybe I’ve grown too big-headed. Dame Elizabeth was proving everything Hanlon hoped she’d be. She stood in front of the desk, speaking without notes to the students in the raked seating of the auditorium. Although not tall, her personality dominated the large room, making it hard to look elsewhere. She was eye-catching, controlling, authoritative.

  Hanlon guessed she must be in her mid-sixties now. Her snow-white hair was cut expertly and expensively short and contrasted with her tanned skin and piercing blue eyes, visible even at this distance. She was wearing a beautifully cut skirt and jacket. She looked immaculate, like an ex-Vogue cover girl, and she had a larger-than-life aura that commanded attention. True beauty is timeless and Dame Elizabeth was still beautiful, but Hanlon could imagine that when she was young she would have been effortlessly desirable. She was a world away from the hackneyed image of the smelly old lecturer, looking unwashed, in twinset tweeds and Oxfam jewellery.

  She easily held the students’ attention as she talked about the Categorical Imperative and Synthetic and Analytic propositions. Hanlon hadn’t got a clue what she was on about, but it somehow didn’t matter. You don’t have to read music, or play an instrument yourself, to enjoy the sound it makes.

  At the end of the lecture, there was a Q&A session and one part of this Hanlon did understand. The question of whether or not it was ever permissible to lie. In many ways, Hanlon’s whole life was taken up with lies, half-truths and evasions. Endless memories of interviews came instantly to mind.

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘No, I swear . . .’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘No. Maybe. It depends what you mean by . . .’

  ‘I didn’t actually . . . I wouldn’t have unless . . . He/She/It made me . . .’

  And all possible permutations of that theme. And her own job at the moment. She wasn’t Gallagher, working for the Home Office. That was a lie too. She lived her life surrounded by falsehood.

  Was Fuller a killer, or was he innocent?

  Was it truth, or lie?

  It was a philosophical question and a very real one.

  Dame Elizabeth said that, according to Kant, lying was never justified. Indeed could never be justified.

  A student put her hand up and asked, what about if you were in Holland in 1942, sheltering a Jew in your attic and the Gestapo came to your house? Should you tell the truth about your guest, knowing they’d be taken to a death camp?

  Yes, said Dame Elizabeth, you should, you must, tell the truth. She had been anticipating this question; it invariably came up. According to Kant, she explained, there can be no exc
eptions. There are no ifs and buts. It’s not up to you to decide which bit of a moral law you decide to obey. If you start tinkering around with the main premise, you’re left with nothing.

  ‘I hope that answers your question,’ she said. The student, who was Jewish, looked far from convinced. Dame Elizabeth continued. ‘For example, killing. If you kill, you have a very shaky right to condemn others.’

  Hanlon frowned her disagreement.

  Killing, for Hanlon, was not an abstract notion.

  ‘And I’ll leave you with this thought,’ said Dame Elizabeth. ‘All actions, all decisions have consequences whether seen or unforeseen. In choosing to do what you regard as the right thing, rather than obey a moral, universal law, you might be doing something terribly wrong.’ She paused. ‘Think about it! See you all next week.’

  The audience, with the exception of Hanlon, got to their feet with the usual rustling of papers, conversations initiated or restarted, bags being moved, zipped up, tablets and laptops closing, goodbyes being said. Soon there was just Hanlon left, her elbows on the shelf in front of her, chin resting on the bridge formed by her interlaced fingers.

  Her grey eyes studied Dame Elizabeth dispassionately. Hanlon was almost certainly the only person in the room to have killed other people. One purely in self-defence, one for vengeance and one for justice. Is my conscience clear? she thought. Yes. To you, Professor, and to you, Herr Kant, these are just theories.

  Not for me.

  I know what it’s like to have a life in the balance. Iris Campion’s words returned to her memory. Who are you to judge? Answer me that, Professor.

  The professor looked up at Hanlon, the only person left in the room. She had requested the meeting and guessed this was the policewoman sent by Corrigan. Gallagher, she remembered, was the name that the assistant commissioner had given her. She thought with affection of the huge figure of the AC. Corrigan was one of those people who seemed to enjoy hiding their light under a bushel. Most academics in her experience pretended to be much brighter than they were. Corrigan pretended to be slow on the uptake and then, just as you relaxed, unleashed a salvo of expertly chosen fact and tight, analytical reasoning. She knew him well from her civil service committee work and advisory positions she had held. When the murder had happened, she turned to him immediately. Now he had sent her this unlikely-looking figure. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this woman.

  Dame Elizabeth was not a superstitious woman, but the motionless figure sitting near the back of the auditorium looked very much as she would have imagined the Angel of Death to appear – dark, brooding, implacable.

  She mentally shook herself in irritation at this atypical flight of fancy.

  ‘Do come down,’ she called, with an authority she didn’t really feel. ‘Come and join me in my office.’

  She watched as, with an easy grace, Hanlon descended the stairs towards her. Dame Elizabeth shivered. Something about the policewoman was very disturbing indeed.

  15

  Hi, Mum! I’m so excited about tonight. All the Phil. Soc. are coming and some of the dons from the other colleges, and I spoke to the college chef and he’s got a couple of mates in to help with the extra catering so it’s all good. Yay! Anyway, am sooo looking forward to meeting Dr Fuller. Will be in touch, love you heaps, Laura. PS Say hi to Dad!

  Laura pressed send on her iPhone and glanced round her room. It looked perfect. It was almost like a stage set. Even the old stone-flagged steps of Staircase Five had been mopped clean earlier in the day. Generations of student feet had worn them away so they sloped upwards at a slight angle. They shone where the light hit them.

  Laura was an optimistic girl; why not? She was nineteen, just gone, and things usually went well for her. She knew that tonight would be a wonderful night, one to cherish and remember. Behind her geek-chic glasses, her eyes were shining with the happiness of the moment.

  16

  Dame Elizabeth looked at the woman across the desk from her. She had spent her whole working life grading and assessing people – students, civil servants, university lecturers, lovers – and she knew she was good at it.

  How, she wondered would she judge the policewoman? First of all, she thought, Corrigan had obviously made an excellent choice. Dame Elizabeth had specified she did not want anyone who would stand out. She didn’t want students, or faculty for that matter, protesting they were being spied on by the authorities. Universities were a breeding ground for silly, paranoid fantasies, not helped by organizations like Special Branch occasionally launching fantastically stupid undercover investigations. Now there were the torrent of unauthorized incidents of surveillance as revealed by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Undercover policewomen at a strongly left-wing university, it could so easily go disastrously wrong.

  Gallagher, or whoever she really was, certainly did not look like she was in the police. She didn’t look groomed enough. With her springy, slightly unkempt hair, the black eye and the rather expensive blouse she was wearing, she reminded Dame Elizabeth of the radical student activists of her youth. There was something about the cast of the face that was anti-authoritarian. She could easily imagine Gallagher petrol- bombing the US Embassy in protest against the Vietnam War or leading a Baader-Meinhof protest march in what was then West Germany. It was a fanatic’s face. But if you looked closely, you could see she was surprisingly good-looking. She had high cheekbones, a full mouth, dark, curved eyebrows, and her figure was excellent.

  She also looked like trouble. It was spelled out in the com- bative set of the jaw and the far from friendly expression on her face.

  Her estimation of Corrigan, already quite high, rose another notch. She wouldn’t be brave enough to employ this woman, no matter how good her qualities. He was a bloody good judge of character. I’m getting old, she thought, annoyed at herself. I’m choosing the easy route and I’m getting risk averse.

  Hanlon also reminded her of someone she’d once known back in her youth. The face hung tantalizingly at the back of her mind, but Dame Elizabeth had met a lot of people and she didn’t follow the thought up.

  ‘So, have you found anything relevant to add to DCI Murray’s investigation?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hanlon. She made no attempt to elaborate or say more. It was this unusually abrupt reply that triggered Dame Elizabeth’s formidable memory. Now she knew who Hanlon reminded her of.

  The possibility alarmed her, almost like meeting a ghost. It’s not so, she told herself. There is something almost horrific about the past returning to haunt you. It’s ill omened. It never presages good. Her face, schooled in a thousand meetings, showed nothing of her inner turmoil. It cannot be.

  She moved the thought to one side for later inspection. There is no point getting sidetracked in a meeting, particularly if you’re the one doing the distracting. She concentrated on the business in hand.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ she said. Time to remind the policewoman who was in charge here.

  ‘I’ve established that Dr Fuller is a habitual customer of a brothel specializing in S&M. That there is quite compelling circumstantial evidence linking him to the death of Hannah Moore,’ Hanlon said.

  Dame Elizabeth rolled her eyes. ‘Dr Fuller’s sexual inclinations are his business,’ she said. She looked with hostility at Hanlon. ‘How many of your fellow male officers use pornography, have affairs or take favours from prostitutes on their patch?’ she demanded. She would not accept a lecture about morality from someone in the police.

  Hillsborough, the Lawrence affair, Plebgate, the police federation, frivolous personal-injury claims involving kerbs and paper- cuts. And those were just what sprang immediately to mind.

  ‘More than I’d care to admit,’ said Hanlon, ruthlessly honest. ‘Fortunately, I don’t have to work with any bent policemen.’ Thank God for Enver, she thought, even DCI Murray for that matter, a perfectly happily married man, who bored his colleagues rigid with tedious stories and photos of his children.

&n
bsp; Dame Elizabeth nodded, surprised at Hanlon’s candid answer.

  ‘There you are then,’ she said.

  ‘There is the possibility that he may have been pressuring students into sex for better grades,’ said Hanlon. It was a rumour she’d heard from a woman in her class, and one substantiated by Michaels, but she thought she’d air it, just to see the professor’s reaction.

  Dame Elizabeth raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘The possibility,’ she said with heavy emphasis. ‘All sorts of things are possible; let’s try and confine ourselves to the empirically verifiable. Dr Fuller seems to be the victim of a certain amount of rumour and innuendo, none of which would warrant disciplinary proceedings, let alone police interest. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘May I remind you a girl is dead, Dame Elizabeth. That’s why the police are interested. It’s not out of a prurient interest in Dr Fuller’s sex life.’

  Prurient, thought Dame Elizabeth. Not a word you hear every day. She looked into Hanlon’s menacing, cold eyes.

  ‘And that’s why we all want to find out who did it,’ she parried briskly. ‘Now, what do your fellow students have to say about him?’

  ‘That he’s hard-working, a good teacher, they like him,’ admitted Hanlon.

  ‘And what do you think?’ Dame Elizabeth tilted her open palms towards Hanlon in an over-to-you gesture.

  Hanlon hesitated, unusual for her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She was thinking back to Iris Campion, to her statement that some of the girls say he can get a little too rough.

  She pushed a hand through her unruly hair and the sleeve of her dark jacket slipped backwards revealing her slim, muscular forearm. She was wearing a very geometric, severe silver and platinum bracelet. Its unadorned simplicity and austerity seemed chosen to mirror Hanlon’s personality. Dame Elizabeth stared at it, aghast. Veteran as she was of the need to keep a public face on at all times, her features remained impassive.