The Innocent Girl

by Alex Coombs

  ‘Thanks, Ed,’ she said.

  Worth watched Huss’s broad back disappear across the office. She was a big girl, he thought, but oh so sexy. Mentally he wished her luck in her feud with Joad.

  Back at her own desk, Huss logged on as Joad and went to his history folder. There, amongst what were almost certainly porn sites, was a request for number-plate identification. Hanlon’s number plate. Her address was of course listed.

  Bingo, Huss thought.

  She sat at her desk, thinking, tapping her strong white teeth with the end of a pen. She had the following day off, so she could stay in London if she wanted, or come back to Oxford on the last train.

  Joad and Hanlon; Hanlon and Joad. What could it be about?

  Well, she thought, I can discount the journalist theory. No writer would be after information like that, post-Leveson. Hanlon’s disciplinary record, yes; her car registration, her address, no way. So who else would possibly want to know a policewoman’s home address and why?

  She could think of several reasons, none of them pleasant. Well, one thing was for sure, she’d get nothing from Joad. She wouldn’t be able to do anything at all official with the information, but she could pass it on to Enver. He could act on it and say it came from an informant, which would be essentially true, and keep her name out of things.

  She got her phone out and texted him.

  59

  Enver was on the train back from Leeds. He was in a strange mood, in which elation and sadness were mixed.

  On the one hand, he had almost certainly succeeded in solving the crime. He had been over and over in his head what he had learned about Michaels. It simply had to be him.

  He tried to think of a scenario in which Michaels was an innocent party. It didn’t work. If Fuller was innocent, it must have been him.

  Maybe just as importantly, and as Hanlon had suspected, this new information would prevent a major miscarriage of justice. On the debit side, he felt guilty because inadvertently he was about to cause Alison Vickery more unhappiness. Bad enough to have a dead daughter; now her ex was about to be charged with murder. But there was nothing he could do about that.

  His phone told him he had a message and he saw that Huss had texted him. He texted her and she replied almost immediately,

  Where are you? :/ she wrote.

  On a train, coming back from Leeds. I’ll be at King’s Cross at seven. It took time for Enver to text. His fingers were long, thick and strong, and they often depressed neighbouring keys.

  Are you free tonight? I need to talk to you. :/ The reply was almost instantaneous. Huss by contrast, to Enver’s way of looking at things, was lightning fast.

  Sure, he replied.

  I’ll meet your train. : )

  I look forward to it, he wrote. It was true. He liked Huss.

  She seemed solid and dependable.

  He put his phone away and wondered what DI Huss could possibly want to see him about. It had to be Fuller.

  60

  Fuller was no threat to her. He was no threat to anyone. He had been cling-filmed round and round the pillar, so he looked like he’d been bound by some huge spider, as if he was a chrysalis.

  More cling film had been wrapped over his face, giving him a Botoxed, face-lifted look. The skin was pulled tightly back, but she could see there was a tear in the plastic membrane around his nose, so he could breathe.

  Then Hanlon felt the most tremendous blow to the side of her head and she was knocked sideways by the force of it, dropping her handbag. Her thick hair protected the skin of her scalp from splitting open with the impact of the strike, but she staggered and her left leg buckled underneath her. She was too dazed to feel any pain. As she knelt on her left knee on the kitchen floor, dark spots circled and exploded in her blurred vision.

  Hanlon was very nearly unconscious. She had lost all rational thought and really didn’t know where she was at all. She shook her head and out of the periphery of her vision, she saw a highly polished, black steel-toecapped boot scything towards her stomach. There was a yellow-orange tab on the back of the boot and the legend Caterpillar.

  The tip of the boot buried itself in Hanlon’s iron-hard stomach muscles and the impact lifted her body off the ground and upwards. It drove all the wind out of her and left her gasping and retching, in a series of shallow, agonized pants, for breath.

  A powerful hand grabbed hold of her wrist and dragged her across the tiled floor of the kitchen, to where Fuller was bound. Dimly, before losing consciousness, she heard the familiar click of a handcuff lock and then a second one. She was now shackled to the pillar next to the philosophy lecturer.

  Her head was exploding with pain and she felt as if she was going to throw up, but amazingly, she was able to breathe. And then the pain in her head and the screaming agony, from the nerve endings in her stomach, reached a crescendo and darkness took her.

  61

  In the back of the taxi on the way to Bow, Huss outlined to Enver what Joad had been doing. She had no idea why anyone in the Oxford area might be interested in bribing an officer to find Hanlon’s address. Huss didn’t know about Hanlon and Arkady Belanov; Enver most certainly did. Joad, a corrupt officer operating out of Oxford and interested in Hanlon, was almost certainly their information conduit. Now he knew they had an address for her, Enver felt very worried indeed.

  He never felt particularly Eastern in his outlook. The Demirels were fairly Western in their world view, and his mother, of course, was English. But he was acutely aware of the gulf between the sexes, outside of Europe, and he had appreciated what Hanlon had not, the extent to which the Russians would feel humiliated and enraged by her actions. Honour was something that you could kill over, and for the Russians, hardened career criminals, it would be bad business practice not to. Coming from a man her actions would have been bad enough. From a woman, a deadly insult. Or, equally plausibly, Hanlon knew but simply didn’t care.

  He suspected the latter.

  He could imagine her not caring at all what they thought.

  The angrier it made them, the better.

  In his mind’s eye he could see her careless shrug. He felt a visceral surge of affection for Hanlon crash over him and, like a wave with powerful back suction, a feeling of acute worry for her. She was stupidly brave in his opinion.

  He had been trying since he arrived in London to contact Hanlon, and this was adding to his concerns. He had toyed with the idea of calling her from Leeds, but something had held him back.

  He had called Murray and asked to have Michaels picked up for questioning, even though there was, of course, no actual hard evidence against him. Probably there was none whatso- ever. Hanlon had explained to him the philosophical theory of Occam’s razor, that the simplest explanation was often the true one. Who else could have done the murders besides Michaels? He doubted the CPS would be so impressed. From what he had learned from Alison, and from his knowledge of the meticulous planning of the murders, he knew that Michaels would not be the kind of man who would obligingly leave hard evidence around, or crumble and confess at the first sign of trouble.

  Anyway, at least Murray had sounded delighted. He tried Hanlon’s phone again.

  The lack of an answer led to his decision to try the address in Bow. Maybe she would be there. At least he’d be doing something constructive. He was beginning to feel slightly panic- stricken.

  Now he was beginning to regret his not calling from the train. If he had, she’d have met him at King’s Cross, anxious to talk. The fact that she was not answering the mobile was highly worrying. But how could he have known then about this threat to her from the Russians? The fact that he couldn’t didn’t stop him from blaming himself.

  He looked at Huss sitting next to him in the taxi, sensibly dressed for town in a stylish lightweight summer Barbour jacket and polished brown ankle boots. Their eyes met briefly.

  Huss smiled reassuringly at Enver. God, he looks so worried, she thought. She had been watching his refle
ction in the glass panel that separated the passengers in the black cab from the driver. Occasionally a thunderous look would pass across his face and Huss intuitively knew that he was thinking about anyone hurting Hanlon.

  He tried the phone again. Nothing. His worry for Hanlon ratcheted up a gear. She had no social life. She never left her mobile unanswered. If she was training or running, she’d have had the phone on. Tonight wasn’t a boxing night. She couldn’t be out with friends, she hadn’t got any, or at least they were a luxury she took a morbid pleasure in denying herself. He was unable to shake off the image of Hanlon, injured, or worse, dead. Enver thought, if the worst happens I’ll make sure the

  Russians pay, and this bent copper Joad.

  He wasn’t quite sure what he hoped to achieve by visiting the address in Bow, other than it was something to do. It was a form of action, and action was infinitely better than doing nothing.

  Huss, who had finished telling Enver about Joad and the PNC check, watched as one bearlike hand tugged on his moustache, while the other curled and uncurled into a very large clenched fist. He alternated between frowning in anger and worrying his lower lip between his teeth. She felt a resigned sense of jealousy at his obvious concern for DCI Hanlon, a woman she’d have thought more than capable of standing on her own two feet. It’s always about her, isn’t it, she thought bitterly.

  Enver was checking a street map on his phone as they approached Bow, and he leaned forward and told the driver to drop them two streets away.

  The taxi pulled over and parked behind a skip. They got out and Huss looked around, while Enver paid off the driver. Bow, she had heard, was a fairly working-class area of London, but she could see what looked like the telltale signs of gentrification starting in the street. Soon, she thought, it would be sourdough, couscous, bicycle shops and chiropractors.

  The taxi pulled away and she looked at Enver.

  ‘We’ll check on the perimeters first,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll go to the house. Keep an eye out for her car.’

  Check for what? she thought.

  The two of them walked purposefully northwards along the pavement. Enver’s face was like a stony mask. Other pedestrians gave them a wide berth. His muscular girth, but above all his expression, cleared the path for them.

  As they drew near to the end of the road where Hanlon’s address was registered, Huss suddenly slipped her arm around Enver’s waist and buried her face in his chest. He could smell her hair and perfume, as she pushed herself into him.

  He started in surprise and automatically pulled away, but Huss’s arm tightened around him like a tentacle. He realized that he hadn’t appreciated what a strong woman Huss was.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he hissed into her ear.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Huss, with an ominous calm. ‘Keep walking.’

  62

  Hanlon’s mind swam in and out of consciousness, until with a mental jerk, she snapped into wakefulness.

  Her head was bowed and ferociously painful. She lifted it up, her surroundings still out of focus through her blurred vision, but slowly her brain began to work again and she started to piece together what had happened.

  The first and most pressing feeling was one of agony, from her head and from where she’d been so savagely kicked in the stomach. She retched now and tasted blood in her mouth. She put her head to one side and spat it out. As her chest rose and fell when she breathed, she could feel a sharp pain in her side and guessed a rib was probably broken.

  Her legs were stretched out in front of her. She had one shoe on and one shoe off. She glanced down and saw that the stitching on the seam of her tight dress, from her left hip up to her middle ribs, had given way during the attack. For some reason she found this almost unbearable. I really liked this dress, she thought sadly. Now it’s ruined. Hanlon wondered vaguely where she was but her head hurt too much to think. Had she got drunk or something? She had no recollection of where she was.

  She closed her eyes momentarily and reopened them, to find herself looking at a pair of legs in black cargo trousers.

  ‘Hello, DCI Hanlon,’ said Stephen Michaels.

  63

  Sam Curtis sat in the rented VW Polo, behind yet another skip, and looked again at the clock display on the dashboard. It was eight o’clock. He’d been here three hours now and his bladder was bursting. The skip was beginning to look good. It wasn’t that full and he thought, in half an hour I’ll climb in and kneel down and no one will see me.

  There was a pub up the road with a toilet he could use, but he thought, if Hanlon arrives and I’m in there, Dimitri will kill me. And with the giant Russian that wasn’t necessarily a figure of speech.

  Curtis thought of being attacked by Dimitri. He had never met a more frightening man in his life.

  He was incapable of holding a thought for long. God, I’m bored, he thought. I’ll give it half an hour and then I’ll have a piss in the skip. The evening stretched ahead of him like a long and dull road. He had a low threshold for tedium. He wanted to play games on his phone but he thought, if Dimitri comes along to check on me and sees me doing that I’ll be well fucked. Plus he’ll never use me again.

  He rolled himself a joint, with some grass he had in his pocket. This’ll help to kill the time, he thought.

  A couple walked along the pavement towards him. He bowed his head and shrugged his body down in its seat, to appear less conspicuous, as he built his joint. They were obviously on some kind of date, she was clutching on to him passionately. He tried to see her face in the car mirror but she started kissing the guy she was with, some big, fat fucker. As they walked by the car all he could see of her was her hair.

  There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but he paid no attention. They were obviously local, nobody would come to Bow on a date.

  He started thinking of his own girlfriend, Chantal. He lit the joint. Would it be better to have the window down so the smoke all billowed out at once, or open it a crack and have the car fill up with smoke?

  It was a tricky question.

  64

  ‘So, it was you,’ said Hanlon flatly. Her head was still agonizingly painful, but at least her mind was working.

  Michaels nodded. ‘Oh yes.’ He stood looking at her, his hands on his hips. He was wearing a double layer of latex gloves on each hand and as he talked, he lifted each foot in turn and slipped on a pair of plastic, disposable shoe- covers like the ones they give out at swimming-pool changing rooms.

  Hanlon said, ‘Abigail Vickery was your daughter, wasn’t she?’

  The chef nodded. Hanlon’s quick mind filled in the rest of the details, as Enver’s had done.

  ‘You must really hate him,’ said Hanlon, jerking her head at the mummified figure of Fuller.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I do.’ Michaels looked at him with real venom. ‘Life’s always so easy for people like that, isn’t it. I’ll just bet he had a privileged background. Public school, ponies, that sort of thing. You can always tell.’

  Hanlon sensed, rather than felt, Fuller’s body moving. She craned her neck to one side and saw his ribs shaking under the folds of cling film, as if he were laughing.

  Perhaps it was hysteria, she thought. Neither of us is going to live that much longer. Of that we can be sure.

  ‘How did you get him here?’ she asked. Hanlon didn’t really know why she was bothering to talk to Michaels. Like Belanov, she had settled to die with as much dignity as possible, while waiting for either a miracle to save her or, almost as unlikely, Michaels to make some fatal mistake.

  ‘I texted him, saying it was you – I even bought a new phone for that – and that you’d give him a second chance. I think I added something like, only someone like you can know what I mean. Some trite platitude. What a dickhead.’ He looked scornfully at Fuller.

  Hanlon suddenly felt very sorry for Fuller. S&M hadn’t killed him in the end; good old-fashioned romance had. Passion for Hanlon had. It was the thought of seein
g her that had brought him here, and that alone. He’d fallen in love with her and was now going to pay a terrible price.

  At least he had an excuse, which was more than she did.

  How could she have been so stupid? She felt a surge of contempt for herself. And now you’re going to die in your new party dress, she thought.

  She suddenly thought of Corrigan, crossly looking at his watch and cursing her non-attendance. Typical Hanlon, he’d be thinking. Bloody woman. And here she was, a victim of a self-pitying murderer, bemoaning the hand that fate had dealt him.

  ‘You’d have thought being a university lecturer, he’d have shown a bit more intelligence, but oh no, thick as pigshit,’ he said. ‘You know, I always wanted to go into teaching. Three lecture jobs at catering colleges I’ve been rejected for now, whereas privileged perverts like him can get anything they want.’

  There was no mistaking the bitterness in Michaels’ voice now. There was no mention in the list of complaints against Fuller of Abigail Vickery. Hanlon suddenly thought, your daughter’s death was just an excuse to hang all of this on, wasn’t it? Your resentment in life has sparked all this off but you’ve cast yourself not as the embittered loser, but as the revengeful vigilante. Just to make yourself feel better.

  You make me sick, she thought.

  ‘I could do his job myself,’ he continued in the same aggrieved tone. ‘I’d like to see him try and do mine. He wouldn’t last five minutes. Or that bitch Dame Elizabeth. Do you know what she was being paid? Nearly two hundred K, six times more than me and I do a sixty-hour week. She only worked, if you call it working, six months a year.’