The Innocent Girl

by Alex Coombs

  27

  Back in London, he finalized his plans for Dame Elizabeth. Her hero, Kant, was famous for never having left Königsberg and for having a routine so punctual and unvarying you could set your watch by him. Dame Elizabeth liked to emulate him.

  This addiction to routine would be partly her downfall. He was counting on it.

  He was looking forward to her death, to seeing her die.

  The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.

  Also sprach Zarathustra.

  Every Sunday night, from six thirty to eight thirty, Dame Elizabeth was to be found in the small lecture hall near her office, marking essays and doing paperwork. She also let it be known that she would be there for any student needing help or advice. She was a strong believer in lecturers having a visible presence, particularly philosophy dons. They should be there, like beacons of sanity in a disturbed world. That’s what was most disturbing to her about the deaths, the notion that philosophy itself would be mocked. She could imagine the philistine jeering headlines in the red-top press, or the legion of adverse Twitter comments and noticeboard pages making sarcastic remarks about her subject. The British were fond of mocking anything intellectual, jeering at culture.

  He knew that the booking list for students was empty; he’d seen it. He knew that she’d be alone on this Sunday night. Five minutes was all he would need with her, that’s more or less how long ‘D.I.S.C.O.’ lasted. He’d have to use his iPod, though, he could hardly play the music through the lecture hall speakers. Nobody would be around on a Sunday night, except for the old security guy at the desk in the foyer, but better safe than sorry.

  His preparations were complete. He had bought a dog collar and lead from a pet store, south of the river. It was a dog choke-chain collar, essentially designed to strangle the animal into submission. He slipped it experimentally over a cushion and pulled it tight. The steel links bit into the fabric with a satisfying solidity and strength. It would be marvellous to see and feel it in action on smooth, human flesh.

  He put the song on his stereo and cranked up the volume. First came the rhythm and the pan-pipe intro, breathy and urgent, then the song kicked off. He put the choke chain back round the cushion. He imagined the chain around Dame Elizabeth’s neck, D, the chain bit, I, he pulled harder, S, now he was pulling as hard as he could, and holding for two beats, C, O and repeat.

  He was breathing hard now, with excitement, not exertion. ‘D.I.S.C.O.’

  Then he undid the chain and lead and put them into his dishwasher, to remove any stray fabric or trace. He would leave the chain around her neck when he had finished and didn’t want anything there for forensics to find.

  He would be wearing latex gloves tonight. Leather was a more pleasing material but latex, well, you had a much better tactile sensation.

  He looked at his watch. Four hours. Like Kant, he was obsessive about time.

  Dame Elizabeth would have appreciated the irony.

  28

  Hanlon, atypically, decided to wear a dress for her meeting with Dame Elizabeth. Her wardrobe was far from extensive, but she really only had a few kinds of situations to be catered for. Work meant practical, in case it got damaged, and non- provocative – she didn’t want her colleagues surreptitiously ogling her. For court appearances, she wore a dark suit, and this doubled for funerals. Then she had her sports clothing. None of these seemed particularly suitable for what was going to be a momentous meeting. So the dress it was, bought to take Whiteside out for a birthday dinner. He’d been very amused and secretly very flattered. He knew that she wouldn’t have made the gesture for anyone but him.

  It was grey, tight-fitting and came to just above her knees. It showed off her legs and flattered her slim figure. She remembered being concerned at the time that it would restrict her movements. Whiteside had laughed. ‘We’re having dinner, not arresting someone. We’re not going to have a punch-up.’

  Now, of course, Whiteside was not having dinners any more. He was being fed nutrients through tubing. That would be one of the arguments used to hasten the end of his life, its lack of quality. But Hanlon, with all the mulish stubbornness she was capable of, believed that he might recover. Such things had happened before; they might happen again. Besides, who was to say he wasn’t actually conscious? Admittedly there was no brain activity to measure, but you couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he wasn’t still thinking, in some form.

  She still didn’t know what to do about his parents. Without their intervention, the status quo could go on for a long time. No one would be rushing to end the life of a policeman injured in the line of duty. The fact it was a civil-service matter, too, would help prolong any decision. Nobody in government employ rushes to do that, to make a difficult decision, if they can possibly help it. Form a committee, that would be the default position.

  She put Whiteside from her mind and concentrated on the here and now.

  She mentally calculated the time it would take to get to Bloomsbury. Like all Londoners she didn’t think of distance in the capital in terms of mileage, but in journey time, in minutes or hours. Parking wouldn’t be an issue, she could use the staff car park. Seven o’clock they’d agreed. She’d get there at quarter to and kill time outside. Hanlon was never late.

  She was feeling unusually nervous. No one had ever given her any information about her father and now, well, she didn’t believe in God, but it was like some form of Providence, some kind of Fate, had intervened. Whatever happened it would be life-changing.

  29

  He checked the contents of the bag he’d packed. He was nothing if not methodical. Latex gloves, four pairs. He’d double glove his hands to minimize the risk of them splitting. Rubber S&M mask. This was one of the simpler designs, like a ski mask made of black latex. Some of the ones he’d seen were extraordinary, looking like pilot’s oxygen masks or thirties-style military anti- gas hoods, complete with arcane, mysterious attachments. In his view, they went a step too far. You can gild the lily too much.

  Then the choke chain and lead. Last of all, his iPod, the song ‘D.I.S.C.O.’ cued and ready. He hummed the chorus to himself and executed a couple of the moves he’d use later. He was a great dancer, all the practice his mother had forced upon him was coming in useful.

  Six thirty, that’s when Dame Elizabeth Saunders would arrive. Seven o’clock, that’s when she would depart.

  30

  Dame Elizabeth looked around her with approval. When she’d been an undergraduate at Girton College in Cambridge, she’d been appalled by the show-off techniques in tutorials, the one- to-one, or small-group time, that dons had with their students.

  She hated the faux Brideshead fetishism, the emphasis of eccentricity over professionalism. There was the tutor with a pronounced hygiene problem, who would lie theatrically on a chaise longue, another whose room was full of cats, another who would insist on a sherry break. Lots of sherry breaks, judging by the state of his nose. At his funeral he’d been described as convivial. Yeah, right, thought Dame Elizabeth, in the same way that George Best or Oliver Reed suffered from conviviality.

  The lack of respect shown to students who had worked extremely hard to get there, and the unbridled egomania, disgusted her. Dining at High Table was the worst. It would have been amusing, the high regard in which the dons valued their intellectual abilities if it hadn’t been so risible. Did knowledge of the Saffavid dynasty, for example, qualify you to hold forth on the state of the British economy in the twenty-first century? No.

  Dame Elizabeth was far from left wing, but something about the smugness of the lecturers brought out the revolutionary in her and she would have liked to herd them, Cambodian Pol Pot style, out into the flat fenland fields around Cambridge for forcible re-education.

  The small auditorium was the antithesis of the cosy tutor’s room. It was her reaction to the closeted Oxbridge world. Marking her work here, in full view of anyone who hap
pened to poke their head in, was Dame Elizabeth’s way of saying, we work at this university. This is what we do and I’m in charge, I’m accountable, the buck stops here.

  She was a very visible head of department.

  She was grading essays at the moment, or at least going through the motions. Her mind was mainly full of Hanlon and Hanlon’s father. She had dreamed about him last night, his unnervingly intense grey eyes, his superb body, his arrogant grace. Jann Hanlon. His daughter seemed to have inherited these traits, but not his charm. Admittedly, she didn’t know her well, but Hanlon seemed noticeably deficient in this quality.

  If you Googled Dame Elizabeth, you would find she’d writ- ten about twenty books on philosophy and philosophers and meta-ethics. There were nearly a hundred articles cited. If you searched for Jann Hanlon it would get you nowhere.

  He was supposed to be writing, or have written, the defining work on the philosophy of art. She’d never seen it. His lazy brilliance might never have been. It was as if he had never existed.

  It was as if he had left no trace whatsoever on history, other than his daughter.

  To redress the balance, she’d written Hanlon a letter, a memoir of the man she’d known. Writing was easier for Dame Elizabeth than speech. It was short, about five pages, and was in a buff envelope, together with some photographs she had found of Jann. It contained everything she could think of that Hanlon might want to know about her father. She had just finished rereading it. She was pleased with what she’d written.

  When she saved the document on her PC, she labelled the file Accounts Due. That more or less summed up how she felt about Jann.

  She’d written DCI Hanlon on the envelope; she realized she didn’t know Hanlon’s first name.

  And what, she wondered, would Jann have made of his daughter? He would have been a terrible father, no doubt about it. Leopards don’t change their spots, thought Dame Elizabeth, somewhat unphilosophically. He wouldn’t have changed nappies or done any of the school runs. He’d have been out at parties. He wouldn’t have done any housework. No nanny or au pair, no attractive mother at playgroup would have been safe from his attentions, from his charm. He had that inner glow particular to men who women find attractive. Women certainly loved him, and the daughter would have too. She’d have forgiven him his affairs. Jann was beloved.

  Maybe, she thought, he wasn’t meant to make old bones. Jann defined himself enormously through his physical attractive- ness and that’s not a quality that lasts. Maybe an old Jann would have been dreadful to behold.

  She looked at the clock on the wall to her right. Ten to seven. Hanlon would be here soon, she wasn’t the kind of person to be late.

  The auditorium was in semi-darkness; only the lights above the small stage provided for the lecturer were switched on. There was a door to the left of the stage where the lecturer could exit. Stairs ran down the raked seating, twelve rows, seating for sixty, dividing it in two.

  She felt stupidly nervous and to settle her mind she typed Jann Hanlon: Born Dublin 1939–Died Berlin 1979 on the keyboard, then pressed return, and the words flashed up on the interactive whiteboard behind her. It was as good a way to start as any.

  Dame Elizabeth had always been able to hold an audience. She’d begin with that, hold Hanlon’s attention, give her the letter to read and then a Q&A session. Perfect. She had a lesson plan.

  She saved it and clicked on the menu icon. The screen was now blank, apart from the toolbars.

  There was a sudden bright glow as the auditorium door opened and when she looked up, a figure was outlined in the light. Hanlon had arrived, she thought.

  31

  Hanlon reversed her car in a perfect arc into a tight parking space off Gower Street. A car to Hanlon was like an extension of her own skin; she had complete spatial awareness. She grinned suddenly to herself at memories of Enver parking, the worried frown of concentration, the more or less random movements of the steering wheel. The way he would drive to the furthest end of a car park to have a bay free on either side, and then when he did finally stop the car it would invariably be parked at some strange angle, or with the bonnet or boot poking out.

  The entrance to the staff car park had been dug up by workmen and coned off, meaning that she had to go round in a tortuous loop because of the one-way system. This had added a lot more time to her journey than she had anticipated.

  She took her phone and texted Dame Elizabeth to say she’d be ten minutes late.

  * * *

  He stood looking at her, across the desk. His eyes were slightly unfocused, dreamy almost. She wondered momentarily if he’d been drinking.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, I just wanted to run something past you,’ he said. He unzipped a small rucksack he had with him and took out a plastic wallet with a small, battered black book inside. He put it on the desk between them.

  She looked closely at it.

  Die fröliche Wissenschaft; The Gay Science, the title read.

  By Friedrich Nietzsche.

  He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. ‘It’s a first edition,’ he said. ‘From1883. The first English translation. I promised the library I’d be very careful with it.’ He indicated the gloves. ‘I’ll just slip these on. They don’t want it damaged. It’s so easy to damage or break things. I just wanted your opinion on this.’ He opened the book to a passage near the beginning.

  She looked up at the clock. Five past seven. ‘If you’re quick.’ She was thinking of Hanlon; she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be late.

  ‘Oh, I will be,’ he promised.

  * * *

  Hanlon walked across the deserted square to the main university building and banged on the glass door, until the security guard at reception ambled over and let her in. She showed her student pass, explained she was here to see Dame Elizabeth and he signed her in. It took a while. English wasn’t his first language. He logged the time, 19.05.

  * * *

  He opened the book and stood behind her. ‘Could you read this?’ he said, indicating the relevant passage. She cleared her throat and started to read aloud.

  ‘One holds that what is called good preserves the species, while what is called evil harms the species. In truth, however, the evil instincts are expedient, species-preserving, and indispensable to as high a degree as the good ones; their function is merely different.’

  As she finished reading, she became aware of what sounded like the tinny noise of the repetitive beat of a dance song, leaking out from an iPod’s earphones. She wondered what he could be doing. She turned her head.

  Looking down at her was not his face but a featureless, black leather mask through which she could just see his eyes. His head swayed to the beat. She opened her mouth incredulously. She’d never seen anything like it in her life. It was a mix of the terrifying, like an executioner’s hood, and disgusting. Some- thing that belonged in a nightmarish, perverted sex game.

  She wondered what on earth he thought he was playing at.

  It was like some sick practical joke.

  Her lips started to form the circular shape of the syllable ‘Wh—’ but before she was able to finish forming the final ‘—at’ of the word, his left, latexed hand, with terrible speed, was around her throat, crushing her windpipe. She fought for breath, but no air could enter her screaming lungs.

  His hand forced her backwards, against her chair. Her eyes bulged, the small blood vessels starting to rupture as the pressure rose, then she could see in front of her the glint of metal, as he slipped the choke chain over her head.

  Her hands clawed ineffectually at the metal links, as he stood behind her, one knee braced on the back of her chair while he sang along to the song. ‘D.I.S.C.O.’

  With every letter he uttered he yanked back savagely on the chain and then relaxed it slightly. D. Yank. I. Yank. S. Yank. C. Yank. O. Yank. Each time he did that, her head flew backwards and then forwards, so it looked as if she were nodding along wi
th the infectious beat, like he was. The word was repeated twice in the intro. He hummed along in ecstasy.

  The chain had completely crushed her trachea and her hands had fallen away from her throat to hang by her sides. Her neck muscles were now completely slack and her head lolled forward.

  He let go of the chain, did a little shimmy, spun round gracefully in a complete circle and laced his gloved fingers into her thick, white hair. Dancing was such a liberating experience.

  He rocked her head from side to side with the music as he sang along.

  The music in his ears swelled and reached a crescendo before the infectious chorus kicked in. It was a tune he’d learned to move to, as a kid, in his dance class.

  At this point, he slammed her head forward as hard as he could into the desk in front of him. Skin broke, bone cracked, her face was now a bloody wreck. He pulled her inert head back up in time with the beat.

  ‘Dee, dee, dee dee

  She is Ohhhh, ohhh, ohhhh D.I.S.’ Slam again of the head into the blood-spattered wooden surface. ‘C.O.’

  The sound of her head striking the desk was loud and percussive. Blood stained its surface.

  The door at the top of the auditorium opened.

  Hanlon had arrived.

  32

  As soon as she opened the door that led into the lecture room, heavy and resistant on its hinges, Hanlon saw, far below her, the bloodsoaked face of Dame Elizabeth. Standing directly behind her at the desk was the masked figure of a man.

  Hanlon didn’t stop or hesitate. She started running down the steps towards them.

  ‘Police!’ she shouted. The tight dress hampered her movements, as did her shoes. She kicked these off as she ran and, keeping her eyes on the masked man, reached into her handbag for the knife that she habitually carried.