by Alex Howard
The clock told him it was seven in the morning. Please, God, let her not be up. Please, please, God. I’ll do anything.
There wasn’t a great deal else in his room. His mother had confiscated most of his toys. He had hidden Vulture, a rubber bird he’d won as a prize at a fair, so she couldn’t take him away.
He could smell urine, overlaid with the rubberized odour of the special sheet she put on his bed to protect the mattress. He hated the smell of that sheet and its cold, sticky feel. He got up and lifted the duvet. There was an oval-shaped wet patch, but it really wasn’t too bad. She probably wouldn’t notice.
His pyjama bottoms were sodden, however. He pulled on a pair of underpants. They were too large for him and the elastic had gone in the waist. His mother didn’t believe in wasting money on new clothes for him and that included underwear. Everything he wore was second hand.
Holding the Y-fronts up with one hand, the bundled-up pyjamas in the other, he pushed open his bedroom door.
The flat, just off Gloucester Place in central London, was small with two bedrooms, a galley kitchen and a bathroom, all opening on to a central living area. She had been up late with his ‘Uncle’ Phil, the producer of the show she presented, the BBC’s Let’s Dance. Monica Fuller was one of the arts correspondents. She specialized in dance. ‘Big’ was Uncle Phil’s nickname for her. It stood, as he liked to put it (‘and I do like to put it, as the actress said to the bishop,’ Phil liked to say), for big hair, big tits, big glasses. His colleagues found the nickname very funny. Uncle Phil was famous for his sense of humour at the Corporation. He was very popular there. He was one of the lads.
The boy looked nervously out at the lounge, where the table was covered with several wine glasses, some half full. She must have had more than one friend round. Hers were easy to identify; they were marked with crescent moons from the very red lipstick she favoured. They’d used a couple of the glasses as an ashtray. Now they were full of a greying mass of sludge and cigarette ends and a couple of roaches from smoked joints. She must still be asleep, he thought, good. I can bury these in the washing basket and wash them later, when she’s at work.
He was halfway across the room when the door to her bedroom opened and she appeared.
‘What are you doing sneaking around?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing, Mummy,’ he said defensively.
‘What’s that you’ve got, give it me.’ He handed over the wet trousers, his stomach knotting in fear and misery. Please, God, please let her not be too angry, he prayed. He could smell the stale alcohol and cigarettes on her breath as she leaned over him.
‘God, you sicken me, you dirty little sod,’ she said with genuine disgust. ‘It’s no wonder your father left.’
She had on a housecoat with nothing underneath, showing a lot of cleavage. He stared at her large, heavy breasts, blue-veined, with fascinated repulsion.
‘I’ll have to punish you now,’ she said. ‘I should have been firmer with you from the word go. Phil says I mollycoddle you.’
She turned and opened the sideboard drawer and took out a heavy, old-fashioned wooden ruler.
‘Hold your hand out,’ she commanded.
He did as he was told, and six times the pain flared up his arm from his palm as she beat him, making him count out the strokes. Although he was in agony, he refused to cry. He would do that later.
‘Now, go to your room so I don’t have to look at you, and stop trembling, you pathetic little girl. It’s sickening. And don’t forget it’s your dance class after school. I’d better see some improvement, you’re supposed to be my son, for God’s sake. You could at least learn to stick to a basic rhythm. It’s not exactly difficult, it’s not rocket science. Just fucking try, will you, if that’s not too much to ask.’
He did as he was told, closing the door gently behind him. He sank down on the floor and cradled Vulture. Now he would let himself cry.
‘I hate you,’ he whispered to his absent mother. But it wasn’t true. He didn’t hate her at all. It was himself he knew he should hate. He was bad; he deserved to be punished. He was worthless. It’s what he’d been taught and he was a good pupil. He was very diligent.
In the flap of his school satchel was the letter he’d been given from school. It began: Dear Mr and Mrs Fuller, I am delighted to tell you that Gideon has won the class award for outstanding ability.
5
Laura sat at her desk in her room on Staircase Five and looked out of the antique, small, leaded window, its glass divided into diamond shapes, on to the clipped lawns of the inner quad at St Wulfstan’s College.
It was her second year at Oxford and Room 2B, Staircase Five, was quite simply the most wonderful place she had ever stayed in her nineteen years on the planet. The college rooms were seventeenth century and she often thought wonderingly, there has been a student like me in here for four hundred years, although obviously not female (the college had only been co-ed for ten years and that was in the teeth of stiff opposition from the dons) and certainly not from a comprehensive school in Northampton.
It was like a fairy tale come true, being here. Neot’s Avenue where she lived in Northampton was a perfectly pleasant road, wide and relatively traffic-free, the early seventies’ houses quite spacious, but my God, was it dull. St Wulfstan’s was exciting and not in some kind of unpleasant, semi-fascistic Bullingdon Club way.
She loved her studies, drank endless coffees with her friends, stayed up late and talked and talked. Her college valued her and had given her these rooms as a reward for her tireless good works, foremost in organizing and running the Philosophy Society. Laura was a formidably good organizer.
Laura was quite short and her feet barely reached the floor in the chair she was sitting in. In front of her on the desk was a list of those who would be attending the Philosophy Soc. Seminar she was busy arranging. Some, the keynote speakers, other VIPs and the women attending would get college accommodation. It was a long weekend at St Wulfstan’s, in honour of some age-old benefactor, and several students had agreed to let her use their rooms for a small fee. So she was able to dangle cheap college accommodation as an extra incentive to the invitees, particularly the Londoners. She felt sorry for the London students. They had to pay huge amounts of money to live in grotty accommodation; not that Oxford itself was cheap, far from it, so it was a good balancing act to give them this opportunity to stay somewhere nice for once.
Fair, she thought.
She unzipped her Scooby Doo pencil case and took out some brightly coloured felt pens that she carefully lined up in front of her Apple Mac. Some work she preferred doing the old-fashioned way. She got a piece of paper and wrote in her firm, graceful hand, Dr Gideon Fuller.
She was so excited that he’d be coming; she had a bit of a crush on Dr Fuller.
6
DI Enver Demirel opened the bedroom door in the student flat off Gower Street. He ushered Hanlon into the small room and gently closed the door behind them.
‘This is her room, Hannah’s room,’ he said. Hanlon looked around her. It was quite spartan. The room had a bed with a table beside it, a built-in wardrobe, a sink and another table that would serve as a desk. There was a bookcase and Hanlon bent forward to examine its contents. There were a few philosophy books, that was to be expected, and a shelf full of self-help books. There was Deepak Chopra, Coelho, Anthony Robbins, Men Are From Mars, that kind of thing. There were books about how to organize your day, your life, your relationships and your career.
The optimism of the books’ subject matter emphasized the sad squalor of Hannah’s death. It was the library of a hopeful optimist, of someone determined to get ahead. Hanlon hated murderers. She despised their overwhelming, shallow egotism. She wanted revenge for Hannah Moore.
There was an open book on the shelf. ‘Can I look at this?’ she asked.
‘Sure, ma’am,’ said Enver. ‘We’re done here.’ Enver was delighted with Hanlon’s promotion. His own increase in rank, to DI, had put
him temporarily on a par with her and he had secretly been dreading the unlooked-for equality.
He couldn’t work out what that meant; was he slavishly addicted to following the woman around or was it because it showed their relationship could be rekindled? Oh, who cares, he thought. He did know he felt radiantly happy to be back in the presence of the monosyllabic Hanlon, currently sporting a vicious-looking black eye.
He leaned against the closed door, his muscular arms folded across his expanding midriff, with almost proprietorial pride.
The inquiry into the deaths of the child traffickers in Norfolk had completely exonerated him, and the rescue of the kidnapped child had resulted in his promotion to Detective Inspector. Hanlon’s evidence had cast him in a heroic light while taking any blame for breaches of procedure upon herself. Enver had kept Assistant Commissioner Corrigan’s part in the matter to himself. He had been rewarded with this promotion. It was deserved, he knew that, but he still had to contend with snide remarks from some of his colleagues that he’d only got it because he was a Muslim, or because he was non-white. Enver placidly asked them if they’d been shot in the line of duty, or how many paedophile rings they had broken up.
Hanlon picked up the Dr Suzy Kirschbaum book that Hannah had been reading. Self-realization through the power of dreams. The contrast between the hopes of Hannah Moore and her sad, undignified death was total. Hanlon felt again a surge of almost homicidal rage against her killer. How dare they do this. It wasn’t just the crime, it was the arrogance behind it. It was the way Hannah had been swatted out of existence like an insect.
I’m like the Duracell bunny, she thought, except I’m powered by anger, not by a battery, and I’ll keep on going.
I want you, she thought of Hannah’s killer, I want you and I’m going to get you.
Enver studied Hanlon covertly while she leafed through the book. She looked fully recovered now from the killing fields that the island had become, he thought. Since that night he had only seen her a couple of times and in all honesty that had hurt. He had felt she was evading him and he didn’t know why. But here they were back together as if nothing had happened. He was pleased to see her looking so well and overjoyed to be working with her again.
The dark, tight trousers she was wearing emphasized her long, slim legs. Her white blouse was partially unbuttoned and he could see her collarbone and the sharply defined muscles in her neck as she bent her head. Stray corkscrew curls of her dark, coarse hair fell over her face.
She closed the book and looked at Enver expectantly. He cleared his throat.
‘She was found face down here, ma’am, on the bed.’ He showed her the relevant photograph on his laptop.
Hanlon looked at the image of the dead girl. Enver stared at the photo mournfully and used the end of a biro as a pointer to indicate the relevant features. Her head was invisible, covered in a black velvet hood like a bag.
‘We found several hairs on the outside of the bag that didn’t belong to the victim. We have Fuller’s DNA on file after a drink-driving conviction five years ago; the hairs were a match.’
Hanlon nodded. All of this was in the report she’d read, but she liked to hear it to confirm she’d processed the important facts. Reports tended to be over-detailed in her view, officers worried that they may not have spelled something out clearly enough and so erred in the opposite direction, burying you in a pile of unnecessary details. ‘Cause of death?’
‘Strangulation, ma’am. Not with a ligature, manually. There’s no sign of any struggle and we’re assuming that the killing took place during some sex game. A consensual sex game. There were marks on the victim’s buttocks consistent with being beaten, whipped, with something narrow, a cane maybe or a riding crop. There is no evidence of penetration, however, and no semen or other bodily fluids.’
Hanlon looked at Enver for clarification.
He said, ‘According to her Facebook wall, her status was that she was in a relationship with two people, male and female, both married. The killing could have been committed by a woman. I’m assuming the victim was face down, the killer sitting on top of the body. She couldn’t really struggle. Death wouldn’t have taken long, according to the pathologist. Unconsciousness through strangulation can be as quick as fifteen seconds, a minute would be ample.’
‘Any ideas as to whether it might be murder, or a sex game gone tragically wrong?’ asked Hanlon.
Enver shook his head. ‘No. I’d like to think if it was an accident then the other party would have come forward, but these days that’d be too much to ask. Taking responsibility for your actions seems very old-fashioned these days.’
He was an old-fashioned kind of man. Because he had once been a boxer, people assumed he’d be aggressive, in your face. Enver was neither. He’d drifted into boxing as a youth because he’d been shy and timid and his father, a traditionalist from the countryside, a man of simple views, had thought it would make a man of his quiet son. He’d been a very good fighter, a rock-solid chin and a formidable puncher, but never quite good enough. Deep in his heart he knew he lacked that vital something to ever be a champion. He was a good journeyman fighter, top ten maybe, but he’d never strap a belt on. When injury, a detached retina, forced his retirement, he’d gone into the police. Anything but the family restaurant business.
Hanlon nodded. ‘Do we have anything else on Fuller?’ A sudden image of the man’s good-looking but essentially weak face came into her mind. He looked just the kind of person who’d try and evade responsibility.
Enver nodded. ‘Hannah Moore was writing a blog about Fuller, claiming that he was an active sexual predator and she was going to stop him. She said that Fuller is into S&M and that he was partly responsible for the death of another student, an Abigail Vickery, some seven years ago. Either a sex game gone wrong or murder, she claimed.’
‘So, like this,’ said Hanlon.
Enver nodded and continued. ‘She also said that when Fuller has sex with a girl he likes to keep a trophy, a cutting of pubic hair and underwear.’
Hanlon looked questioningly at Enver.
‘The dead girl had a section of pubic hair absent that had obviously been cut away. Her pants were missing too.’
‘Does Fuller have an alibi?’ asked Hanlon.
Enver shook his head. ‘The murder took place in the afternoon; Fuller says he usually has a siesta at that time. So, no alibi there. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we took him in for questioning, but he lawyered up and we had to release him without charge.’
‘So no other evidence, forensic or otherwise?’
‘No, ma’am. There used to be a CCTV camera that recorded the street door to this place, but that was removed as an infringement of civil liberties, after a student complained. So, we’ve no way of knowing who came and went. As for forensic, no. Nothing.’
Enver stroked his moustache. It was full and drooping. He looked at Hanlon. ‘Fuller did not dispute the fact that the hood was his, but he said it had gone missing from his briefcase which he keeps unlocked in his office, to which most of the faculty, staff and students have access. He would neither confirm nor deny rumours of his sexual habits, but he emphatically denied having Hannah Moore as a sexual partner. I would have dearly loved a search warrant for his house, to see if that underwear/souvenir collection existed, and if so, was there anything traceable to Hannah? But no way would I have got it.’
‘And what about this Abigail Vickery allegation?’ asked Hanlon.
‘I looked into it, ma’am. The history is appended to the report.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s as Hannah said, but the coroner recorded an open verdict. She was found hanged and she did have a taste for S&M-style bondage sex, but whether or not it was suicide, or a sex game gone wrong, well, who knows? Fuller was her lecturer; he was said to be having an affair with her. Her father kicked up a stink, claimed Fuller had murdered her, but no one seriously believed that.’
Hanlon said speculatively, ‘And do you think he did it?’ She had
a very high estimation of Enver’s intelligence.
Enver shrugged. ‘I really don’t know.’ He paused. ‘I’ve interviewed a fair few people and I like to think I’m good at it, but he seemed more outraged than anything that we should think he’d be having sex with Hannah Moore. It was as if she wasn’t good enough for him. He certainly showed no sense of pity or sadness that a girl he knew had died, more irritation at having his day disrupted. I do think that if he had done it, he’d have maybe tried harder to cut a more sympathetic figure. Well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself tomorrow, anyway.’
‘Anything else about him worth mentioning?’
Enver shook his head. ‘For what it’s worth, I think we should have breath-tested him before we interviewed him. He stank of booze. It would have potentially made anything he did say inadmissible. As it was, his brief took a while to arrive and he didn’t say anything anyway, but if he does have a drink problem, it could be relevant. The drink-driving could be symptomatic. It would explain an accident or, if he had a propensity to violence, it might heighten it.’
‘That’s true,’ said Hanlon. ‘Well, anyway, I get to meet him soon enough. I’ll come back with you now and we’ll go through my story again. Corrigan has arranged some business cards and other Home Office related stuff for me, like my work pass and things, so I’ll look the part.’
‘What are you going to say about your eye, ma’am?’ said Enver. Hanlon’s left eye was badly swollen and the skin underneath it turning an interesting colour. Enver guessed more or less correctly what had happened, but it was undoubtedly unfortunate timing.
Hanlon raised a shapely dark eyebrow. ‘Nobody will dare ask, Detective Inspector. Believe me.’
7
The philosophy course that Dr Gideon Fuller taught was for part-time students, two hours on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and it led to a qualification, a diploma awarded by Queen’s College, London, a kind of mini-degree.
