by Alex Howard
He pushed her back so she could feel the edges of the teacher’s table in front of the whiteboard against the back of her legs. His face moved closer to hers as he tried to kiss her. The grey eyes under her dark, shapely eyebrows narrowed. She was nearly his, he thought.
It was then that Hanlon struck.
When you headbutt someone, it helps if they’re taller than you, otherwise you run a high risk of a clash of heads. That achieves little. It’s the softer, more vulnerable areas of the face that you want, the nose, the mouth, the cheekbones. Fuller, two inches taller than Hanlon, was an ideal height.
She stepped in towards him and swung her arms upwards, breaking the hold he had on her clothing. Now it was her turn.
She seized the lapels on his jacket and pulled him suddenly towards her. For one delirious second Fuller thought she wanted to embrace him. As she did so, she drove her head forward with all the strength in her sleek, powerful neck muscles. Headbutting someone is a real art and she did it perfectly.
Fuller was taken completely by surprise; the speed with which Hanlon’s head descended was awesome. The iron-hard bone of her forehead smashed into the soft tissue of Fuller’s nose. It caught him just on the bridge.
The bone broke with a thud and Fuller instinctively brought both hands up to his ruined face. Just as instinctively, as not everyone who’s headbutted goes down and it’s always best to have a backup plan, Hanlon kicked Fuller as hard as she could between the legs.
The force of the kick was tremendous. To kick someone successfully is quite a difficult thing to do. It’s a clumsy way of going about things and it’s usually easy to avoid, but when it works, it really works. Until the tip of Hanlon’s shoe thudded into his testicles like a sledgehammer, Fuller was totally preoccupied with his nose. All the strength of Hanlon’s legs – legs that were capable of carrying her over a marathon, a hundred and eighty kilometre cycle race and a three point eight kilometre swim – went into the movement.
Fuller staggered back and collapsed on the floor, one hand cradling his crotch, the other his bleeding nose. His shirt, decorated with small roses, was stained with blood. His whole body was convulsed with agony. Tears poured from his eyes. Hanlon stood looking grimly down at her attacker. She wondered idly whether or not to tell him she was a police officer.
Fuller moaned in pain. Maybe now wasn’t a good time, she thought to herself.
Then she noticed something on the table behind them that made her change her mind about Fuller. There was a dog’s choke chain, more or less identical to the one that had been embedded in the neck and throat of Dame Elizabeth, and a pair of functional-looking chain handcuffs. She picked them up and examined them. They weren’t the fluffy pretend kind used in sex games. They were professional restraints. She recognized the brand; some of her colleagues swore by them.
Were you going to use that on me? she thought. Well, we’ll see, shall we.
Hanlon wrapped her left hand in Fuller’s sweat-stained hair and yanked him to his feet. He was still dazed and compliant. She attached one end of the cuffs to his right wrist, pushed his arm upwards, threw the chain-metal links of the handcuffs over the metal projector boom that jutted out slightly above his head height, and fastened it to the other wrist. Fuller was now standing shackled to the interactive whiteboard. His eyes flickered and opened fully.
While she was doing this, she noticed what would have otherwise been invisible. She would never have had any reason to look so closely at the top of the overhead projector. A small Lumix digital camera had been carefully gaffer-taped to the side of the boom. The duct tape was a metallic grey in colour and was a perfect match for the colour of the boom. The camera was practically invisible.
Hanlon reached into her pocket and took out her knife. Fuller had his eyes open now and was watching her nervously. She clicked the blade open and sawed through the tape. She removed the camera and examined it.
The screen at the back showed it to be set to one-minute time lapses. She scrolled back through the images and there on the small screen at the back of the camera, were the two of them in a succession of reasonable-quality photos. It was like some strange flick book, Fuller standing by the table, Fuller grabbing her jacket, her pushed against the table, her headbutting Fuller, Fuller collapsed, most of him now out of camera shot.
Hanlon walked over to the whiteboard. Fuller was still oddly silent, watching, seemingly resigned to his fate. The projector boom was mounted on a vertical metal track so that it could be raised or lowered. Hanlon clicked its catch off and pushed it upwards a couple of centimetres, forcing Fuller to stand on tiptoe. If he relaxed his stance, the metal links of the handcuffs would bite into his wrist as he hung from them. She clicked the catch back on.
Hanlon lined up the exhibits on the table. The choke chain and the camera. The handcuffs were obviously being modelled by Fuller.
‘Well?’ she said interrogatively.
‘I find you incredibly attractive,’ said Fuller by way of explanation, with what, to Hanlon’s ears, sounded like worrying sincerity.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said incredulously.
‘I’m sorry I alarmed you,’ he said. His nose was running like a tap, the blood rolling down his shirt now that the fabric was saturated, unable to absorb any more.
‘Really? What were you trying to do then?’ she asked.
Fuller rolled his eyes. ‘I was trying to make a pass at you,’ he explained. ‘And if you’d responded, favourably, I mean,’ he added hastily, ‘we could have maybe taken it up a gear. That’s why I brought the cuffs and the chain.’
Hanlon picked up the choke chain. ‘So you like choke chains?’
‘Yes,’ said Fuller. ‘Well, it depends.’
‘OK then, so what’s the idea behind the camera?’
‘I wanted some photos of you,’ said Fuller. ‘Please can you lower me down a bit, this is starting to hurt.’
‘Why did you want photos of me?’ continued Hanlon remorselessly.
Fuller sighed. ‘For masturbatory reasons.’
Hanlon stared at him, startled. ‘What!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Fuller, trying to look as dignified as a man could who was chained to a whiteboard, with face and shirt covered in clotting and drying blood. She had to hand it to him, though, it did sound like a remarkably candid answer.
‘Is it so hard to understand?’ he said in an almost irritated way. ‘I wanted to create sexual images of you so I could have a wank.’ Hanlon shook her head in disbelief. I’ve heard everything now, she thought.
‘Obviously,’ said Fuller, with masterful understatement, ‘things have not gone according to plan.’
‘So you weren’t trying to assault me at all,’ said Hanlon. ‘I must have jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘Exactly,’ said Fuller, before adding hurriedly, ‘I can quite see how you made that mistake, though.’
‘Mm hm.’ Hanlon’s voice was low and measured. ‘And if I take this evidence to the police,’ she pointed at the camera, ‘who do you think they’ll believe, Dr Fuller?’
‘I had nothing to do with those killings,’ said Fuller wearily. ‘Someone is trying to frame me.’
‘And you don’t have sex with your students?’
‘Not generally, no. I don’t like people, OK?’ Fuller’s voice was angry. ‘I don’t like them in my life, I don’t like them in my flat, I don’t like them in my bed. I like fucking whores, so I don’t have to socialize.’
Once again Fuller was confusing Hanlon. He was terribly plausible. She began to feel angry with herself. Nearly twenty years’ experience in the police and she hadn’t got a clue if the major suspect was innocent or guilty.
‘You tried to have sex with me, though. I’m one of your students,’ pointed out Hanlon.
He shook his head in exasperation. ‘You’re not listening to me. I said, generally. In fifteen years there’ve been two, you and a girl called Abigail Vickery. She was like me, just like I thought
you were.’
‘What, into S&M?’
‘No,’ said Fuller irritably. ‘Fucked up mentally, like I am. Damaged goods.’
Well, Dr Fuller, you certainly know how to romance a girl, thought Hanlon. Tell them you want to wank over them then imply, no, wrong verb, state they were mentally impaired. It was undeniably a novel approach.
Hanlon looked at him thoughtfully, then made her mind up. Tomorrow would tell if Fuller had or had not been involved in the Oxford killing. If he had, or she had any doubt whatsoever of his guilt, she’d take tonight’s evidence to Murray.
She took two evidence bags out of her inside jacket pocket and dropped the chain in one, the camera in another.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Fuller nervously. Hanlon stood up and stretched.
‘I’m going home.’
‘And me?’ Fuller looked understandably agitated as she walked towards the door. His legs did a kind of jig. ‘My calves are on fire. You can’t just leave me here.’
‘Can’t I?’ said Hanlon.
‘What will people think?’ wailed Fuller.
‘They already think you’re a murderer,’ said Hanlon. ‘Perhaps they’ll just think you’re eccentric.’
She switched the light off as she left and closed the classroom door behind her.
41
If you had two to three million pounds to spend on property, you too could own the house that Arkady Mikhailovich Belanov had on the Woodstock Road in Oxford. Its eight bedrooms were in more or less continual use throughout the afternoon and evenings, seven days a week. The client list was extensive and carefully vetted. Arkady and his minder, Dimitri, always took the trouble to meet each of their customers. This had a twofold purpose. Arkady was genuinely proud of the quality of the service he provided and liked the customer to know that every whim, no matter how strange, would be catered for.
He also liked to give a little pep talk to explain what might happen should his privacy be breached or his name mentioned. Dimitri, sleeves rolled up, displaying some of his many prison tattoos, mainly related to the right-wing SS, Slavyanski Soyuz group, a Russian neo-Nazi party, showed them photos on a tablet. These illustrated the punishment he had inflicted on various people foolhardy enough to cross Arkady Mikhailovich. As a result, none of the clients ever dared mention his name or the address of the property.
In many ways the clients felt more secure knowing their confidentiality was so well protected. Arkady had a high customer-satisfaction rate.
Hanlon arrived at eleven a.m. She knew from Tatiana that this was the best time to catch Arkady. The brothel didn’t open until twelve and Belanov would be catching up with his paperwork.
‘He is creature of habit,’ she said.
Hanlon had parked in the street round the corner, in an old Lexus she’d borrowed from a dodgy car dealer she knew. She’d specified something fast and anonymous. The plates were false. Hanlon knew that when she left number 41 she might well be followed or at the very least be leaving in a hurry.
She rang the doorbell and waited for a moment. She heard footsteps echo on the tiles in the hall and then the door opened.
The man standing in front of her was huge. Hanlon guessed he was at least six foot six and he had the over-developed bulk of a bodybuilder. He was wearing a tight T-shirt to emphasize his enormous arms. His skin was a swirly mass of inky tattoos.
They were incredibly ornate, beautifully executed. Each had a criminal meaning. Hanlon found herself gazing at the onion domes of an intricate Russian church peeping over the scooped neck of his T-shirt. She didn’t know that for Russian criminals each of the domes meant a period in prison. That didn’t matter. She didn’t have to be an expert in body-art semiotics to work out she was dealing with a violent thug.
His pectoral muscles looked like hot-water bottles under the Lycra fabric. An inky spider was visible crawling upwards through the neck of the T-shirt. Hanlon thought to herself contemptuously, you’d last about two minutes if they put you in a ring with Enver. All that pointless bulk. This had to be Dimitri, Dima to his friends, not that he had any. He was Arkady’s minder and bodyguard.
He is balbesy, a thug, Tatiana ‘Tanya’ had said, Arkady Mikhailovich is avtoritet, criminal leader.
She ran her eyes over him speculatively. Like a lot of bodybuilders, as opposed to weightlifters, he over-favoured the top half of his body, the chest, biceps and lats. The lats stretched upwards and outwards like vestigial wings. He smelled of cheap eau de cologne.
‘Yes,’ he said, looking down at Hanlon with curiosity. He saw a tall, slim woman with dark, curly hair. Despite the warm, early autumn weather, she was wearing a Burberry-style raincoat, belted tightly around the waist.
She looked him in the eyes, undoing the belt of the raincoat to allow the Burberry to fall open. Dimitri ran his eyes greedily over the figure-hugging black stripper’s basque. It belonged to Tatiana, who was slightly smaller than Hanlon, and it was extremely tight.
‘Paul Molloy sent me,’ she said demurely. ‘I’m a present for Mr Belanov.’
Dimitri grinned. ‘You’d better come in then.’
Hanlon followed the enormous kite-shaped back of the Russian into the house. The floor tiles were Victorian, but the pictures hanging in the gold picture frames in the hall were not of that period, like Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen or the Death of Gordon, but showed hyper-real pornographic sex, mainly of a violent nature.
‘Stop here,’ said Dimitri coldly, in the middle of the entrance hall. ‘Hands on head.’
She did as she was told and Dimitri unbuttoned her coat and looked at her. ‘Very nice,’ he said. She felt his eyes moving up and down over every curve of her body.
Quickly and professionally he ran his hands over her, searching for concealed weapons. He made her turn out her pockets, then remove her stiletto-heeled boots so he could check inside. He ran his fingers down the seams of her raincoat. He even had a quick look through her thick, curly hair to make sure there wasn’t a razor blade tucked away. It was like being groomed by an unpleasant ape.
The downstairs front room had been turned into a bar area and here Dimitri stopped and pointed. ‘You, wait there. What is your name?’
‘Candice,’ said Hanlon. ‘But you can call me Kandi, with a K.’
‘OK, Kandi, with K. Take seat. I’ll be back soon.’
Hanlon sat down in the small bar area, making an inventory, as she always did, of her surroundings. She kept her hands demurely folded in her lap. She was very careful not to touch anything. She counted eight small round tables, a mahogany-topped bar and a high ceiling with an elaborately moulded central rose for the chandelier and moulded cornices.
She was satisfied with the way things had gone so far. Enver would have gone crazy if he’d known what she was doing, but Hanlon had no doubts she was doing the right thing. She was, by nature, a risk-taker and prone to over-confidence. But so far she had always triumphed and the game was worth the cost. One day, she knew, her luck would run out, just let it not be today.
Each table had a drinks menu with eye-wateringly expensive spirits, Grey Goose vodka, Courvoisier, malt whiskies, premier cru wines and champagne. There was also a laminated menu of a different sort.
Ten photographs of skimpily dressed girls with names, ages and potted biographies. The girls described their sexual preferences and areas of expertise. Hanlon repressed a shudder.
According to Campion, Paul Molloy was a vicious little pimp who had clashed with Arkady Belanov over money. Molloy had a couple of pubs in Cowley, legitimate businesses where he could launder his vice earnings, and Dimitri and some hired help had trashed one of them. Sending a girl for his approval would be exactly the kind of peace offering Molloy would make. Hanlon was characteristically trusting to luck that Arkady wouldn’t contact him to check. Tanya had said that would be beneath his dignity.
Dimitri reappeared in the bar a couple of minutes later and jerked his head at Hanlon to follow him. She did so and they cro
ssed the hall into Arkady’s office.
Tatiana had explained in detail Arkady’s sexual preferences but she had omitted to tell Hanlon what he looked like. For some reason she had imagined a man rather like Dimitri, or Campion’s Yuri, in other words, an unshaven Slavic thug.
She hadn’t expected the mound of flab that was Arkady. He looked like a giant baby, in a turquoise velour tracksuit. He had an enormous double chin, or rather a single wattle of fat, that hung from the underside of his face. He smiled beatifically at Hanlon. His lips were huge, pendulous.
‘This is Kandi,’ said Dimitri.
‘Show me what you can do, Kandi,’ Arkady commanded.
The first thing she did was put her hands in her pockets and take out a pair of black, elbow-length suede gloves and put them on. That was the fingerprint issue sorted, she thought. I certainly don’t want to leave any prints. Arkady practically purred with pleasure. He loved gloves. Particularly long ones.
In his office, as well as his desk and a workstation with a semi-circular groove cut in it to accommodate his swollen belly, was a couch such as you find in a doctor’s surgery.
Hanlon shrugged herself out of her trench coat. Arkady greedily drank in the lines of her body as revealed by the skin-tight basque.
Dimitri was standing, watching impassively, leaning against the far wall. While Arkady’s body stiffened, Hanlon could sense the bodyguard relaxing. There was nowhere she could possibly be concealing a weapon.
Hanlon patted the doctor’s couch invitingly, coaxingly, and Arkady stood up with alacrity and stripped naked. His very pallid, white flesh hung in folds from his heavy, short frame. He rubbed his large, pudgy hands over the straining flesh of his paunch and his pendulous breasts in happy anticipation. Unlike Dimitri his body was tattoo-free apart from an eight-pointed star on his shoulder. Tatiana had explained to Hanlon that this meant he was a high-ranking criminal.
He is one of the new crime bosses, novye vory v zakone, not tattooed so much as old ones, she had said.
Arkady hadn’t made his money the soft way. His pale skin bore many angry scars. Life had certainly left its mark on him. He climbed on to the black, padded sofa, doggy-style, and looked at Hanlon.
