by Alex Coombs
‘An Audi,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘You amaze me, Phil. Not an Audi, oh, there’s probably only, what, a few thousand in Oxford. You’ve practically nailed him. Promotion beckons.’
‘Very funny, Dave,’ said Joad. ‘It was an Audi, like that bloody arsey woman from London was driving, the DCI. Here for the Fuller inquiry.’
‘DCI Hanlon. A TTS Coupé?’ said the desk sergeant.
‘No way was it a TTS Coupé. It was an RS,’ countered Joad. ‘No, it bloody well wasn’t.’
‘RS. I used to be in Traffic.’ ‘So did I. It was a TTS.’
‘Bet you a fiver it wasn’t.’ Joad dangled the offer of the money provocatively and the desk sergeant took the bait.
‘Done,’ said the sergeant. ‘Prove it!’ said Joad.
He shrugged and typed into the keyboard in front of him, calling up the CCTV images from Friday and the approximate time. Both men watched as Hanlon’s scarlet Coupé rolled into the station car park and neatly reversed into an empty bay. The camera froze on the image of the bonnet and front number plate.
The desk sergeant looked at Joad in triumph. Ian Joad sighed and pulled out his wallet.
‘Better luck next time,’ called the sergeant.
As soon as Joad was round the corner, he pulled his notebook out and jotted down the number.
Five minutes later, he ran her plates through the PNC and had her address.
Bingo! he thought.
But if Joad was stalking Hanlon, Huss was stalking Joad. DI Huss approached the desk sergeant with her firm, steady walk and land-girl physique. She was from generations of Oxfordshire farming stock and looked it. There were three hundred years of Husses in the local churchyard. Her lineage would have stretched way back beyond then, before recorded history for the non-aristocracy.
She could drive a tractor at ten; her father’s old second-hand MoD Land Rover when she was eleven. Now he relied upon her to fix it. It was a Series 2 1964 Land Rover, which made it almost a quarter of a century older than Huss.
She could repair fences, milk cows, trim hedges, plough and harvest. She could butcher a cow, pig or sheep, and her baking skills were formidable. She could do her father’s tax returns and sort out his computer, apart from the occasion when he had attacked it in a fury with his powerful, scarred fists. She was also a regular finalist in the BASC twelve-bore shooting contests in Oxfordshire.
Police work was dealt with in the same can-do spirit, but like most farmers Huss had a formidable temper.
Like all her family, indeed like most country people, she also held a grudge, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Huss hated Joad.
It was Huss’s self-appointed mission to get Joad sacked. One day, please God, he would really mess up incontrovertibly.
‘Hi, Dave,’ she said cheerily to the desk sergeant.
‘DI Huss. Are you still free for the darts night next week?’
Dave Rennison ran the police team and Huss was probably his most talented player. It was a source of grave regret to him that the younger police didn’t seem interested in the game at all. Too busy farting around with stupid electronic things.
‘Wouldn’t miss it for all the world. What was Joady after, Dave?’
The sergeant explained. Huss thanked him, then walked off and out of the building. The desk sergeant’s reply had given her plenty to think about.
Huss was now heading back to the Blenheim Hotel, where she hoped that Irek would have the information she needed on access to Fuller’s room.
She arrived sooner than she wanted at the Blenheim and to kill some time, trotted up the steps of the Ashmolean Museum opposite.
She sat on a bench in the first gallery that she came to, oblivious to the paintings around her, and thought about Joad. One thing Joad did know about was cars. She’d heard him shooting his mouth off often enough, about the merits of this gearbox compared with that, where to buy the best tyres locally, the strengths and weaknesses of this new car versus that. A lot of it, she suspected, would be recycled Top Gear or What Car? gossip, but he would have known what car Hanlon drove.
That was without a shadow of a doubt.
No, he wanted that image so he could get her number plate details. It had to be that. Nothing else made sense.
Huss now jumped to the right conclusion, but the wrong reasons. Obsessed as she was by the Fuller case, she assumed that Joad would be gathering information to sell to journalists about the investigation. Hanlon’s car registration could well give Joad access to more personal details. And if he was going down the press-informant route, why stop at Hanlon? She and Templeman could end up splashed across some Sunday supplement or on a TV programme.
It had to be that. Only sex or money would motivate Joad, and even Joad wouldn’t be stupid enough to try it on with Hanlon.
As soon as I get back to the station, I’m pulling Joad’s roster schedules, she thought. He’ll want to see the journalist in person in order to get paid. With Joad, it’d be cash all the way.
He’s not going to be paid in anything traceable. I’m going to follow that bastard.
She thought there was one good thing about a useless cop like Joad. She could follow him mounted on her father’s prize bull and he would never notice.
Satisfied with her decision, she left the Ashmolean, crossed the road and headed up the steps of the Blenheim, to see if Irek had any information for her.
Twenty minutes later she reappeared with a face like thunder. Irek did indeed have information for her. Someone had used an executive pass key to enter Fuller’s room at five past eleven on the Friday morning.
At that time, Fuller was being interviewed by DCI Temple- man. The new evidence would now be totally inadmissible. The crime scene had been irrevocably compromised.
Huss shook her head mentally in irritation at the thought of having to tell Hanlon she had been right all along.
Joad, you bastard, she thought venomously. You should have thought of this. Well, I’m going to make sure you get done for something, even if it kills me.
47
Joad left the Summertown police station at four o’clock on the dot. Oxford is a city that does its best to deter traffic from the centre and, like many of his colleagues, Joad was forced to park in one of the park-and-ride schemes out of town.
He caught a bus into the town centre, Huss dawdling along behind on her old mountain bike. Oxford is very bicycle friendly, or certainly tries to fool itself it is, strong on initiatives, short on action, but the bike remained the most sensible way to tail Joad.
Wearing a college scarf she was not entitled to, with a helmet and mask, Huss blended in perfectly with the myriad other cyclists. She was invisible.
She slowed as the bus arrived in the centre of Oxford. The road here near George Street was a bottleneck. It was a horrible cocktail of exhaust fumes, angry motorists, bewildered visitors, throbbing bus engines and coaches disgorging or collecting tourists who milled around in the road, adding to the confusion. The streets themselves here always seemed narrow and meanly proportioned. It was her least favourite part of central Oxford, a human anthill that had been poked with a stick.
Joad had spotted Huss from more or less the moment he left the police station. There was a major flaw in Huss’s assessment of Joad’s character. Contrary to Huss’s opinion of him, Joad was far from stupid. He also had a paranoid streak, exacerbated by his own criminal activities, which led him to assume the eyes of the authorities were on him at most times. He was forever looking over his shoulder.
He did wonder why Huss was following him. The trouble was that Joad had four or five scams on the go and he wasn’t sure which one had engaged her interest. The most likely one would be his expense claims for informant pay-offs. Huss’s boss, Templeman, signed off on these and Joad had been sailing close to the wind with the flasher investigation. That’s what he assumed this was about.
Joad always liked to have an acceptable explanation for everything, no matter how far-fetched.
<
br /> He used his time on the bus to review his own explanations for payments to known prostitutes. These were, of course, for sex, but highly discounted for police rates. He would claim that he was questioning them to see if they knew the flasher. He was probably local. He probably used sex workers. He was reported as having genital malformation. Maybe the prostitutes could put a face to the penis. The prostitutes needed to be paid for their time. That sounds reasonable, he thought to himself.
Huss’s fond belief that she had blended seamlessly with the student traffic was misplaced. Joad would have recognized her burly frame no matter what she’d been wearing. Huss was quite distinctive in that respect. From his vantage point on top of the double-decker bus, he was ideally situated to keep her in sight and to decide when to lose her. She was also wearing a pink cycling helmet and Joad could easily keep track of her. As the bus slowed near George Street, very close to the Blenheim Hotel, the other traffic crowded round and Joad made his move.
Huss was hanging back about ten metres from the bus when Joad slipped off the vehicle behind the sizeable bulk of an overweight woman, who had to squeeze herself past the metal pole by the middle door of the bus. Cornmarket Street was full of shoppers and he could see Huss’s head swaying backwards and forwards as she tried to spy him in the crowd. She caught a glimpse of the back of his head as he slipped into a major department store on the opposite side of the road to George Street. Huss was now in a quandary. She didn’t want simply to abandon the bike to its fate outside the shop and she also felt that she’d be ridiculously conspicuous in her cycling gear if she walked through a shop catering for middle-aged women, full of safe, conservative, clothing.
Continually checking that the sweating Lycra-clad form of Huss wasn’t behind him, Joad strode confidently to the rear of the store, taking his warrant card out of his pocket as he went. He walked up to a cheerful-looking middle-aged woman shop assistant and said to her, ‘Sorry to bother you, love. Police. No need to be alarmed. Is there a rear entrance that I can use?’
‘Of course, follow me.’ She smiled excitedly. This was a welcome break from routine.
She led Joad helpfully down a couple of corridors at the back of the shop to a loading-bay area.
‘Go through that door, that’ll take you to Turl Street.’ ‘Thanks very much,’ said Joad.
He passed through the loading bay and, as she had said, found himself in the broad, quiet streets behind George Street. There was no sign of Huss.
Five minutes later, he was ordering what he felt was a well- deserved pint, in the pub he had chosen for his meeting with Dimitri.
Here’s to informants and the Oxford flasher, he thought.
He became aware of a hulking presence at his side.
‘Hello, Dimitri,’ said Joad cheerily. ‘What can I get you to drink?’
48
An hour later Dimitri was back at the house on the Woodstock Road in Arkady’s office.
‘She’s police,’ he said. Arkady nodded. That made sense. Of course, and presumably one acting very much of her own volition. He was no expert on British police methods, but he was sure they did not include what had happened to him and Dimitri.
‘How come Joad didn’t know her, Dima?’ Aside from the obvious reason of wanting to rip me off, he thought.
‘She’s Metropolitan Police, Arkasha.’ Dimitri only ever used the diminutive form of Arkady’s name when they were alone. It would have been disrespectful to do otherwise. He didn’t want to do anything that might anger Belanov. ‘She’s investigating this Fuller character for murder. We would be his alibi.’
Arkady smiled bleakly. ‘Alibi, us! He would have to be so desperate.’
Dimitri shrugged. Who cared. He doubted Fuller would have given Hanlon their details. She must have worked it out herself. ‘Joad gave us her address, in London.’
Arkady sipped his vodka. It was a cheap, rot-gut brand from Moscow. He preferred it to the smooth, effeminate stuff he sold in the bar. It reminded him of who he was and where he had come from. He was not one of these Russian criminals who wanted to reinvent themselves as a businessman. That put him in a minority but he didn’t care. He had old-style Vor v zakone thinking in that respect. He was happy to remain outside the law. He didn’t want a house in Rublyovka or a dacha in Kievskoye.
‘Well, you’d better pay her visit then.’
Dimitri nodded. Arkady’s word was law for him. There is a word in Russian, opushenny, meaning low or debased for life. Its usual use is in the context of male rape. Arkady had saved Dimitri from this in Moscow’s Butyrka prison, where Dimitri was on remand for a stabbing and Arkady doing two years for drug offences.
It was Dimitri’s first time in prison and it was hell. He was one of forty prisoners in a twenty-four-bunk cell. Dimitri was bottom of the pecking order and had to sleep next to the parasha, the communal toilet, the dirtiest, smelliest place in the cell.
Dimitri quickly fell foul of the cell leader, the Starshi, the Oldest. He was from North Ossetia. This technically made him a Russian but for Dimitri he wasn’t. He was rossianen, Russian in name only. Dimitri was russky, a proper Russian. Full of the arrogance of youth, Dimitri insulted the Starshi’s homeland. Retribution was immediate and terrible.
At a barked command from the Oldest, he was held down by four of his cell mates, one man on each arm, one man on each leg, his prison trousers and underpants around his ankles, bucking and struggling, snarling abuse and threats, while a jeering queue formed in his cell, waiting their turn.
The line was headed by the Starshi, naked, his body a mass of prison tattoos detailing his twenty years inside in pictorial detail. His whole life story was there, from the tattooed dagger entering his neck showing he had killed in prison and was available for hire, to the stars on his knees showing he knelt for no man. Every killing, every robbery, every sentence, all inked into his skin in a life that had taken him through Russia’s grim penal system. On his stomach was written:
Death is not vengeance, The dead don’t suffer.
After they finished with him they were going to tattoo Dimitri, but this would be a tattoo of shame, a tattoo of punishment. Two eyes, one on each hip, so that Dimitri’s lower quarters would form a face, with his penis as the nose. It would be a symbol of homosexuality, marking Dimitri out as a designated plaything in the prison.
Arkady and two minders broke it up.
Arkady had saved Dimitri from gang rape. His body might or might not have recovered, maybe not – Aids was common, treatment only available to the rich – but his spirit wouldn’t. Arkady burst into the cell, shank in one hand, shouting at the Ossetian in a language Dimitri would come to recognize as Chechen. The Ossetian might have been Starshi of the cell, but Arkady was Starshi of the block. He was a Brigadir, young as he was, the trusted head of muscle for the Klitchka or Vor who ran the prison. Arkady left, taking Dimitri with him.
Ever since that moment, Dimitri was Arkady’s man. It had been twelve years ago, but Dimitri relived the shame and fear on a nightly basis.
‘Opushenny.’
The Hanlon situation was nowhere near this on the scale of things, but both had been humiliated and both men were hypersensitive to any kind of ridicule. As far as they were concerned, Hanlon had signed her own death warrant. Nothing else would really do.
‘When?’ asked Dimitri.
‘Some time soon,’ said Arkady. ‘I want you to do it, Dima, I don’t want any mistakes made.’
Dimitri nodded. ‘It will be pleasure,’ he said.
49
Hanlon woke up at her usual time of around six in the morning. Bed, for Hanlon, was typically spartan. She did some warm-up stretches, pulled a tracksuit on and then headed down at a steady jog to the River Thames. The City was just starting to wake up properly now, the coffee shops and sandwich chains opening their doors, the smell of coffee spilling out into the street, traffic starting to pick up.
The day was going to be warm and full of promise. Hanlon felt unusually c
heerful, as she ran over the graceful span of the Millennium Bridge to the south side of the river and headed east in the direction of Greenwich.
Neither happiness nor contentment could be called default settings for Hanlon. Her usual mental state was one of dis- satisfaction or wary aggression. Today, though, it was as if some strange drug had been administered while she slept. I feel happy, she thought. It was a peculiar sensation, but she was sure that’s what it was. Once or twice before in her life she had felt it and then the floodwaters of her natural world- weariness – weltschmertz, she’d learned the Germans called it – had risen and joy had disappeared once again.
It wasn’t that she was an unhappy person; it was more like living with a defective sense of smell or colour. You knew that these senses existed, you knew everyone else appreciated them, but for you they simply weren’t there.
But right now she felt happy and it felt good.
Her feet pounded the pavements. Her body felt light and strong. I’m in fantastic shape, she thought, and allowed herself a small smile of triumph.
The Thames was huge and powerful this morning, the movement of its brown, smooth water muscular, as it ran under the piles of Tower Bridge. There was very little river traffic around at this hour, only the occasional working barge cruising up and down the river.
As she ran, she felt an unusual joy at the strength in her body. She was too used to taking it for granted, she thought. She never savoured its power and beauty. She spent hours effectively torturing it day after day, week after week, so she could run, cycle or swim a few seconds faster than some equally deranged female obsessive from, say, Vilnius or Glenrothes, at some sparsely attended triathlon meeting in the middle of nowhere. It was all utterly pointless really. She never kept trophies or cups or medals. She binned them. Whiteside had a couple of the more prestigious ones that he’d saved. ‘Just so your grandchildren know you didn’t make the whole thing up,’ he’d said.
