The Innocent Girl

by Alex Coombs

  He moved to stand directly in front of the trussed-up Fuller. His face was furious with resentment. ‘And there was all the extra money she earned, on committees, lecture tours. She was minted. Yet ask her for a raise and it was a different story. Can you imagine that, the hypocritical bitch.’ He looked Fuller up and down and balled his fists.

  ‘I’ve worked at the Dorchester.’ He hit the bound man bru- tally hard in the stomach with his right hand. His latexed fist thudded into Fuller’s gut. The lecturer bound to the pillar took the full force of the vicious blow. ‘The Georges Cinq in Paris.’ Another savage punch with his left. Hanlon wondered if Michaels was going to beat him to death while working through a list of famous restaurants he’d worked in, like a homicidal San Pellegrino Top One Hundred restaurant award. ‘And Claridges, and no one gives—’ a last vicious right – ‘a fuck. They just don’t care, Hanlon. They couldn’t fucking care less. Well, now it’s payback time.’

  Fuller couldn’t move. He was a human punchbag. His head sagged. Michaels surveyed his handiwork with an air of satisfaction.

  ‘And that upper-class whore McIntyre. I fucked her, you know.’ He sounded aggrieved about his role as a sex toy. ‘And you know what she called me? Her bit of rough. And that, Hanlon, that was supposed to be some sort of compliment. The perfidy of women, Hanlon, the perfidy of women.’

  He took a filleting knife off a magnetized holding strip on the wall, walked behind the pillar and started cutting Fuller free. The lecturer’s body was leaning forward and a couple of seconds later, as the support of the plastic holding him up gave way, he toppled forward, trailing cling film. He was on his hands and knees, as Michaels put the knife down and started gathering up the torn plastic around him and stuffing it into a black bin bag.

  Despite herself, Hanlon found something beautiful about Michaels’ movements. All those years in top-class kitchens had left him with an impressive ability to work fast, gracefully, efficiently and, above all, tidily. And the importance of meticu- lous planning had been beaten into him from an early age in his sixteen-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week apprenticeships in Britain’s top restaurant kitchens. Hanlon had little doubt that when it was eventually discovered, the crime scene would look exactly how Michaels wanted it to look.

  He approached her now with the knife and, despite herself, she swallowed. He squatted down next to her and lifted her chin up with his thumb and forefinger. His calm, brown eyes looked deep into her furious grey ones. Her throat was completely exposed.

  He put the point of the knife into the material of her dress, about a centimetre below the collar, and ripped upwards, gashing the fabric. The razor-sharp blade left her skin unmarked. Michaels’ expertise with a knife was unrivalled. Then he put the knife down and, using both hands, tore a rip in the dress so her collarbone and the top of her chest were visible.

  He stood up again and put the knife down on a work surface, then he turned to look at Hanlon.

  ‘The only person I feel sorry for, really, is that stupid girl Hannah Moore. I thought killing her would be enough, what with putting Fuller’s hair on her and everything. But oh no, I had to keep going. Well, that’s why you’re here, Hanlon. To lend credibility to Fuller’s demise. If anyone’s likely to kill a suspect in the Met, it’s you. Nobody will be surprised. You’ve established a bit of a reputation. You should Google yourself. Full of alarming comments about you.’

  He stood next to Fuller, still face down, and grabbed him by the hair with one hand and the waistband of his underpants with another. Fuller hung as motionless as a log in Michael’s arms and Hanlon found herself staring at the crown of his head, where he was starting to go bald. Michaels braced himself and suddenly swung Fuller forwards like a human battering ram into Hanlon’s face.

  She could do very little about it, but she pushed her head against the pillar for the impact and tucked her chin in, so Fuller’s face would smash against hard bone.

  There was an audible thud as Fuller’s face met her forehead. The pain was excruciating, but she was largely unscathed. Fuller’s face, nose, mouth and the thin skin around his eye socket, however, already damaged by Hanlon’s head from the university encounter a week or so before, exploded in blood.

  Hanlon’s face was covered in it. Michaels dragged Fuller’s crimson face over her dress, holding his lolling head by a fistful of hair, smearing more of his blood down her. Then he took Fuller’s right hand and scraped it down her exposed flesh, leaving claw-like scratches from her shoulder, to halfway down her breast.

  He stood back and surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. Then he pulled Fuller up by his hair like a giant rag doll, marched him over to the walk-in freezer, opened the door and

  pushed him in.

  He slammed the hugely thick door shut. The freezer door, like the fridge, had a hasp for a padlock and Michaels pushed a knife steel through it so the door couldn’t be opened. Just like he’d done with Hanlon in the walk-in fridge. There was an LED display on the outside of the door, minus eighteen degrees Celsius, it read. Hanlon wondered how long Fuller would survive.

  As if reading her mind, Michaels said, ‘I think he’ll last about half an hour. They’ll find him tomorrow, with bits of your skin under his fingernails, where he tried to rape you. You fought him off and locked him in there, while you went to get help.’ He walked over to where she was secured and stood over her.

  ‘I am sorry about this,’ he said. You don’t look it, thought Hanlon. ‘But you know, Hanlon, when you cook meat, say beef, if it’s fifty-seven degrees it’s medium rare, all lovely and tender and pink. Well, that’s how my heart used to be, but when you heat beef up to about seventy, it’s all tough and dry. I’m afraid that’s me these days.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘That’s what life has done to me, I’m afraid.’

  I don’t give a rat’s arse about cookery or beef, thought Hanlon. Or your pathetic self-justification. I want to kill you. He looked towards the internal kitchen doors at the far end of the room. The drain was still blocked and the resultant puddle was now wide and shallow, but in its centre, where the drain grill was, the water was probably a couple of centimetres deep.

  He jerked his head in its direction.

  ‘And that’s where they’ll find you tomorrow, Hanlon. Col- lapsed with your injuries, drowned in there. A tragic accident. You bravely fought off your attacker, only to die so needlessly, in a puddle of water. God knows I’ve submitted enough memos about that fucking drain. Did anyone listen?’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I’ve told them, time and time again, that it’s a health hazard and a potential death trap, but would anyone do anything about it?’ He mimicked a kind of mimsy voice. ‘Oh no, we’ll have to dig the whole floor up to fix it. It’ll cost a fortune. We haven’t got the budget. It’s not covered by insurance. It’s grade- one listed.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, I’ll have been proved right, won’t I! You won’t have died wholly in vain.’

  Momentarily she wondered if Michaels was entirely sane. He sounded genuinely aggrieved by the blocked drain. A decent man, pushed by idiots into unreasonable behaviour.

  He looked down at her, grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled upwards. Back braced against the pillar, she straightened her legs until she was standing.

  Hanlon looked bleakly towards the drain, her final resting place. Then she saw something that gave her the kernel of an idea, and hope blazed inside. At least she felt she had a chance and that might be all she needed.

  A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal.

  Michaels slipped the choke chain around her neck and held the other end behind the pillar.

  ‘I’m going to unlock the cuffs. I want you to put your hands behind your back.’ She heard a click, then felt one arm being taken out of the open metal bracelet. Docilely she moved her arms behind her back, as Michaels had demanded. She gasped as the chain bit into her neck. Michaels was taking no chances. She felt the cuffs tighten on her wrist as he relocked them, and now both her hands were secure behind her back. T
he choke chain was removed and Hanlon stepped forward. As discreetly as possible, she flexed the long powerful muscles in her legs.

  Her legs felt good. They felt strong.

  ‘Now,’ said Michaels, ‘over to the freezer door. Good, turn round, face me, touch the handle. Good girl, now the top of the steel, excellent.’ Satisfied there were enough of her prints on the door, he looked her in the eye.

  ‘Come on, Hanlon,’ said Michaels gently, looking at the puddle. ‘Time for your bath.’

  65

  ‘Put your arm round me and keep walking,’ said Huss quietly to Enver. He did as he was told.

  He wondered what on earth she was doing, but Huss was the kind of woman who inspired confidence. It was a long time since he’d been so close to a woman. Her springy hair smelled of some light floral shampoo as she pulled his head close to her, her powerful fingers twined in his thick dark hair. She could feel his breath on her cheek and the roughness of his thick, drooping moustache.

  * * *

  Huss had arrested Sam Curtis twice in her career and interviewed, or sat in on interviews with him, on three other occasions. All of these had involved crimes of violence, or intimidation of one form or another. She knew him as a thoroughly nasty little thug. To find him here was a genuinely unpleasant surprise. Curtis also knew her face well, or he should have done. He’d spat in it once when she’d nicked him.

  That had been the time when Curtis had been employed by the Russians to trash Paul Molloy’s pub. It was a commission Curtis had carried out with exemplary zeal. Nobody had testi- fied against him, and he’d walked.

  She had no doubt he would have recognized her immediately. They rounded the corner, out of Curtis’s sight, and Huss let go of Enver, who almost sprang away from her. She was very disappointed by the alacrity with which Enver had let her go. Ed Worth would have clung on for dear life, his hands desperately trying to cover as much ground as possible. Of that she was quietly confident.

  Quickly she told Enver who had been sitting in the car and why she had averted her face. There could only be one reason Curtis was there and that was Hanlon. Why else would he be in central Bow?

  Occam’s razor again, thought Enver. Why would an Oxford villain be in a car at the end of Hanlon’s road? To wait for her, presumably.

  There was one street for Hanlon’s address: one road, two entrances to the road. Curtis at one end.

  ‘Come on,’ said Enver, turning into the street parallel to the one with Hanlon’s address. ‘Let’s see if Mr Curtis has got a colleague.’

  Huss smiled up at him. She did quite a bit of shooting in her spare time and she enjoyed stalking. Enver might have slipped out of her sights; time to find a different prey.

  66

  ‘After you,’ said Michaels politely to Hanlon, indicating the other end of the kitchen, near the door of the walk-in fridge where Hanlon had been trapped several days before. She still had one shoe off and one shoe on. The slight imbalance made her bob up and down as they walked.

  The further down into the kitchen they went, the louder was the noise of the extractor fans. They roared overhead. There was a peculiarly harsh, strong smell of chemicals and she noticed that the oven doors were open.

  There were four of them, two banks of two, Hobart again, the same German make as the ones she’d seen when she had been with Michaels in the upstairs kitchen. These were much bigger, though.

  She guessed that the ovens must be having some sort of deep clean and that the insides had been sprayed with a degreaser. That would explain the smell and the fans.

  She stood, head bowed, by the work surface facing Michaels, outwardly awaiting her fate. In the centre of the kitchen the puddle spread out across the floor. In a minute she guessed he would stun her, either with his fists, or against some surface. She was already so badly bruised on her head, stomach and shoulders, from the choke chain and the handcuffs, that the pathologist would find it impossible to work out what had happened. Once she was half conscious, her slow death would begin.

  She had a sudden vision of herself, lying pale and inert, naked on the morgue table, while her body awaited the Y-incision, so they could determine cause of death. Of the two bodies the police would have to deal with, she’d be autopsied first. Fuller would have to wait until he’d fully thawed out, like a piece of frozen beef.

  Who would mourn her?

  Enver, she thought, and felt a huge wave of affection for her gloomy colleague. Enver will be distraught.

  Michaels would lead her to the centre of the puddle where the drain was and the water was deepest. He would sweep her legs away and lower her down face first, in a kind of baptism, and almost certainly sit gently on the base of her lower back while he held her face against the tiles. So long as her nose and mouth were underwater, it would be enough. Within two to three minutes she’d have lost consciousness, and he could afford to relax. She guessed that Michaels would wait around for a quarter of an hour to check she was quite dead.

  She raised her head and looked into Michaels’ brown eyes. His face looked as calm as ever. She turned her head to look at the water and he did too.

  Behind her back was the waist-high electrical socket for the slicer machine. The one the sign had warned against, the one missing its safety guard. Despite the warnings, it was plugged in.

  Unseen by the chef, Hanlon’s fingers located the switch and she pressed it down.

  Behind Michaels’ back, on its steel work-table, the unguarded slicing machine started into action. There was nothing between the blade and the air, no guard, no protection at all. Its razor- sharp cutting blade spun so fast it looked almost stationary, any noise it made being drowned out by that of the fans. It was about a metre behind Michaels’ back. He didn’t notice it. His attention was focused on Hanlon.

  She nodded at the water. ‘Please,’ she said imploringly, ‘not that way, please, I beg of you.’ She got down on one knee in front of him submissively. She bowed her head and kept her gaze fixed on the floor; she didn’t want Michaels to see the look in her eyes. She made a weeping noise, or tried to. It wasn’t a natural sound for her.

  She heard him say in an exasperated tone, ‘At least show some dignity, Hanlon. Whining won’t do you any good.’

  The blade of the slicer spun behind him. It was industrial spec. You could push a partially frozen ham as thick as your thigh through, using your little finger, and it would effortlessly cut it in two, it was that sharp.

  ‘Please don’t kill me,’ moaned Hanlon, as pathetically as she could.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sa—’

  He didn’t get to the final syllabic ‘k’ of the word. With all the strength in her legs, all that power accumulated from years of cycling, running, swimming, endless punishing squats in the gym with heavy weights on the bar, she drove herself forwards and upwards into Michaels’ chest.

  Her shoulder smashed into him with irresistible force and the impact of her body knocked him backwards into the revolving blade of the slicer.

  Michaels roared with pain and anger, as the razor-sharp steel of the spinning disc cut deeply into his flesh.

  Hanlon, hands bound behind her back, took a step back- wards and watched as Michaels stood upwards and away from the machine whose shining silver blade was now a bloodsoaked crimson disc. Fine droplets of blood spattered the white-tiled walls behind him and the floor in front of him. He turned and stared in disbelief at the machine, before looking at Hanlon.

  She was a fearsome sight, scarcely human. Until now, obsessed with his own plans, Michaels hadn’t really paid her much attention. He’d been too preoccupied; Hanlon had been an abstraction.

  Now she stood facing him, her dark corkscrew hair matted and covering her face, mottled with Fuller’s blood. Her torn, bloodstained dress clung to her slim, muscular figure and her lips drew back in a snarl from her sharp, white teeth. Her feral grey eyes shone through her curly hair with hatred and bloodlust. There was no rationality there, no compassion, no humanity.


  The right sleeve of Michaels’ chef’s jacket was now a very dark red, as the blood soaked into the fabric. His hand and arm hung uselessly at his side. He started to feel faint and sick. The blade had severed nerves and tendons. Every second that passed played into Hanlon’s hands. The deep wound was not going to stop bleeding and the human body can only afford to lose so much blood before it collapses.

  Michaels was now one-handed and weakening. Hanlon, of course, didn’t have the use of either of her hands, so the advantage still lay with Michaels. Hanlon grinned savagely at him. Whatever happened, his plan to frame Fuller had now come to nothing. There was enough of Michaels’ DNA bleeding out of him to paint this whole end of the kitchen, let alone cover a slide for a forensics specimen.

  The chef looked around for a weapon. I need a knife, he thought. He blinked rather stupidly. Loss of blood, shock and the extreme pain in his back were slowing his thought processes. He shook his head angrily. I’m the head chef, he thought, I own this kitchen.

  The obvious place to get a knife was the magnetized rack on the wall. It was full of them. But Hanlon stood between him and it, and in his weakened state he didn’t want to get close to her. Hanlon continued to grin crazily at Michaels. All normal thought had more or less departed. She wanted him dead. She bared her sharp, white teeth at him and snapped her jaws. She didn’t have her hands, but she had teeth, canines, incisors and Michaels had a throat.

  Under the long metal table that supported the still spinning slicer and a couple of microwaves, was a long, metal shelf with steel mixing bowls, colour-coded plastic chopping boards and the huge, three-kilo plastic rolling pin that Hanlon had picked up the other day.

  To see it was to act. He bent forward to grab it. You can suck on this, bitch, he thought, as his fingers stretched out for it. As his body reached a ninety-degree angle, Hanlon kicked him as hard as she could in the stomach.