The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  ‘Joad says there is nothing unusual, nothing strange locally. No one is interested in us. This cop is Metropolitan politseyskiy, London, not Oxford. The Chinaman says nothing unusual too in London. They don’t seem to know about Anderson’s brothel. He’s covered that up.’ Arkady was wearing voluminous cream linen trousers and a bright blue Hawaiian shirt with a motif of yachts. It was loose-fitting but his huge gut strained at the fabric. The top of his slacks were darker than the rest where sweat had soaked through. He swirled the ice around in his drink. ‘Anderson must have got rid of the bodies effectively.’

  Myasnikov frowned. ‘The Chinaman didn’t do very well with terminating Anderson’s brother at the cemetery. It was a fuck-up, Arkasha.’

  Arkady nodded. ‘Yes, Konstantin Alexandrovich, but not the Chinaman’s fuck-up. Nikita dropped his rifle, messed up the sights.’

  ‘Mm-hmm, and the Chinaman certainly messed Nikita up, I gather.’ Good, he thought. He didn’t like loose ends. It saved them a job.

  ‘So, all in all, Kostya, not too bad. And the Chinaman gave me the lead on Anderson’s lawyer, Cunningham. They’re ready to negotiate.’

  * * *

  ‘Good,’ said Myasnikov. He thought for a minute and then looked out of the window. The gardens of the brothel were immaculate. He’d checked everything with his usual rigour, including the accounts.

  The brothel was registered to his UK company, Godunov Holdings. The brothel was technically a ‘wellness’ centre. The dozen or so girls who worked out of it were qualified masseuses and reiki practitioners, nutritional experts and NLP counsellors. He’d bought a job lot of qualifications for them over the Internet. They were framed and sat on the walls of the girls’ bedrooms. They were all perfectly genuine qualifications. In Myasnikov’s opinion it was scandalous that you could buy such things legally. How could you know who to trust?

  His filed accounts kept him just slightly over the wire, tax-wise, enough not to excite the attentions of HMRC, not enough to hurt. The warehouse in Slough was part of the portfolio. Myasnikov always did enough to stay on the right side of the authorities when he could.

  The farm outside Oxford was registered in another name. Security within security. He had made millions through his hard work and he wasn’t going to have his wealth jeopardized by the government taking it away, if, God forbid, he were ever caught and sentenced. It’s partly why he was in England, a safe haven for his money. You couldn’t trust the Russian government and he most certainly didn’t trust the rouble.

  If England was good enough for the oligarchs, it was good enough for him. Maybe he would take out citizenship.

  He checked the slim, expensive watch on his wrist.

  ‘Tell Dimitri to make sure that the girl watches while he works the policeman. I want her to be in no doubt as to what will happen to her if she doesn’t cooperate fully. Oh, and, Arkady, tell Dimitri not to be too enthusiastic. I want him alive

  * * *

  and able to talk tomorrow morning. They’re fixing the farm to hold him for a couple of days. Just to recapitulate. Move him and the girl to Slough now, store them there till tonight, then we’ll move him back to the farm later when it’s ready. You and me will call in tonight, Arkasha. I want to see the girl. I want to see my investment. I want to make sure she’s worth keeping alive. Face it, Dima will fuck anything. I also want to make sure this Demirel is more or less in one piece. Tell Dimitri if he kills him, well, I’ll be unhappy.’

  ‘Yes, Konstantin Alexandrovich, it will be done.’

  * * *

  It was a day of meetings. While Myasnikov and Belanov were meeting at the brothel in Woodstock Road in Oxford, Anderson, Morris Jones, Danny and Robby were in the back bar of the Three Compasses, Edmonton.

  It was a lot less salubrious than the brothel in Oxford. ‘Did you get a photo, Morris?’ asked Anderson. Today, Morris

  Jones was wearing a paisley shirt and faded blue jeans; his training shoes with blue stitching had been handmade in Jermyn Street. Anderson was also casually dressed, in an old tracksuit that had been cheap when he’d bought it at Edmonton market. He was unshaven and Danny thought he looked crazier than usual.

  Danny wasn’t feeling too clever himself. He’d spent the weekend on the piss, drinking himself unconscious. He couldn’t seem to clear the images of death out of his mind. He was alarmed to find himself trembling every now and again. It wasn’t dramatic but it worried him. He found that his heart would start racing at the same time and he would feel cold sweat on his brow. His nerves were pretty much shot. He was terrified that someone would notice. He didn’t want to end up like Barry Jackson and he didn’t want to end up like Jordan Anderson. He was between a rock and a hard place.

  * * *

  What with the Russians on one side and his employers on the other, Danny was beginning to feel very much out of his depth.

  Morris Jones rested a speculative eye on him. Danny glared at him aggressively. Why are you looking at me like that? he thought. He felt his palms starting to sweat. Please God, not a panic attack, he prayed.

  Morris Jones nodded and handed over a glossy head and shoulders print of a woman. Robby looked at it briefly. He’d had the best look at the woman. She had been caught looking into the camera. The expression was confident, maybe slightly arrogant, the dark hair thick and kinked, almost corkscrew-like. Her eyebrows were black and gracefully arched. Her jaw was determined, the eyes grey, but there were dark shadows underneath them as if she didn’t sleep well. It was a handsome face but hard. She had an attractive mouth yet it was somehow difficult to imagine it smiling.

  ‘That’s her,’ Robby said. ‘She can’t half run. Who is she anyway?’

  Anderson smiled. He’d known it would be her. How many other women would jump from a twelve-foot wall at a gangster’s funeral, issue instructions to his security team, instructions that they’d all obeyed without thinking, and then outpace Robby up all those stairs to confront an armed man?

  Danny had thought it might be her, but he’d only met her once, briefly, a while ago. He was unsure of her, but then he had been behaving a bit oddly of late. Anderson made a mental note. Maybe it was time to get rid of Danny.

  ‘That, Robby, is DCI Hanlon of the Met.’

  Robby looked puzzled. ‘She didn’t stick around, not when we found matey up there. What was all that about then?’

  ‘That,’ said Anderson, ‘is what we’re going to find out.’ He

  * * *

  turned to Morris Jones. ‘Arrange it, Morris. Cunningham will know where to find her.’

  Anderson looked at the photo of Hanlon he held between his strong fingers. I knew we’d meet again, he thought pleasurably.

  20

  Enver Demirel woke up feeling terrible. He felt sick, sore and disorientated. There were no effects from the taser but the ketamine that he had been injected with had left him tired and lethargic. Its pain-killing effects had worn off and he was aware of an aching pain in his groin from where Dimitri had kicked him.

  He shook his head to clear it and looked around. His thoughts were still slow and confused. He was mentally zoning in and out of the here and now like a randomly focused lens.

  He was in a very large empty room with a high corrugated roof. Light filtered in from small windows set up in the walls near the ceiling. The overall impression was one of dark, damp, grey gloom. The only objects in the vast space seemed to be several oil drums, nothing else. He shifted his attention to his own body. His hands were behind his back and he was secured by his wrists to an old-fashioned radiator. Handcuffed with what looked suspiciously like his own police-issue rigid cuffs. The cold radiator was made of heavy iron and securely bracketed; he wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry. His ankles were

  gaffer-taped together.

  He sank back into unconsciousness.

  He awoke again with no knowledge of how much time had elapsed since he had last come to. He was still feeling disassociated from his surroundings by the drug. He clo
sed his eyes and maybe he drifted off; he wasn’t quite sure. He opened his eyes again and this time noticed that he wasn’t alone.

  Chantal Jenkins was also attached to the other end of the radiator. She looked at him unhappily. ‘Are you awake now?’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Back at her flat, when she’d opened the door to let Enver in and seen this big, powerful man with the kind face, the floor creaking under his heavy tread, momentarily hope had flared in her heart. For a flickering instant she had thought of pointing at the bathroom door where Dimitri was and mouthing something. A warning; a plea.

  But equally quickly had come the knowledge that even if Enver overpowered and arrested him, Dimitri would be released by the end of the evening. Or, even if he wasn’t, Belanov would come for her and, if not him, someone else. And where could she hide, where could she go? Nowhere. They would come for her. Nobody had ever helped her in her life and they weren’t going to start now.

  The best it ever got had been Curtis. That was far from brilliant but he had cared for her in a way. Now he was gone. So she’d done what Dimitri had told her, distracted Enver with the sight of her body, allowing Dimitri to emerge and

  taser him in the back.

  ‘Hello, Chantal,’ said Enver. He remembered everything clearly up until he had been tasered. Dimitri, he guessed. He bore her no ill will. He rubbed his thick hair against the radiator, tested the metal of the rigid handcuffs. Oh, for a malfunction. They were working perfectly; he was going nowhere.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked.

  Chantal shook her head. ‘We were in the back of a van,’ she said. ‘You were in a box,’ she added unhappily. ‘I looked at

  * * *

  my watch, we’re about an hour from Oxford. Most of it was on the motorway.’ She paused. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not really, I suppose,’ Enver said. He tested the mounting of the old-fashioned radiator with his strong hands. It didn’t move a millimetre.

  Enver briefly considered his fate. All in all, he decided, it didn’t look promising. Dimitri could hardly release him – well, not unless he planned a return to Russia. The odds on a successful extradition attempt would be low. That was his only chance really. That, and being rescued by some fluke. Still, at least he was still alive. That was something.

  But his work colleagues thought he was in France. The only person who would miss him would be Melinda Huss.

  ‘Have you still got your watch?’ he asked Chantal. She shook her head. ‘They took it.’

  What would Huss do? thought Enver. He pictured her getting off the train at Paddington, failing to find him. The unanswered calls to his mobile, her rising anger, her returning on the train to Oxford. He clamped down on the thought as best he could. Enver was one of those people who would fret about trivial things – what will happen if … ? – and construct elaborate, doom-laden scenarios based on nothing but pessimism. Faced with real and terrifying danger, such as the inevitability of much physical pain when boxing and the possibility of severe

  injury, even worse, he was cheerily fatalistic.

  He had confronted the certainty (at the time) of death and he had been pleased by the stoicism he had shown. He had survived that. It was a good precedent. Perhaps he would survive this. Well, he wasn’t going to worry about it any more than he had to. ‘Well, Chantal,’ he said, ‘since we’re here and there’s nothing else to do, why don’t you tell me everything you know about

  Dimitri and Arkady Belanov?’

  * * *

  Chantal thought about it. She had little to lose. She looked at Enver, shackled to the other end of the radiator. He had lost his shoes somewhere along the way; she assumed Dimitri had removed them for some reason. After he’d been injected with the ketamine, two men – they had to be twins, they were so alike – had turned up at her flat carrying the empty box with its reinforced base, like a pallet, so a forklift could slide its prongs underneath. She guessed it had been used once to carry something like a washing machine. The unconscious Enver had been jackknifed into it, the box sealed and slid down the stairs, then put into the van waiting outside on the pavement. Then she’d climbed in after him.

  It was all very well planned. Of course it would be, she

  thought unhappily. Her thoughts were drawn to the oil drums, their squat, sinister shapes unpleasantly suggestive of menace. It was the way they had been placed in the centre of the big, empty echoing space of the warehouse that drew the eye to them. Dimitri had left her a bottle of water and she took a mouthful.

  Only one of her wrists was attached to the radiator; her other arm was free. Enver watched enviously as she drank. He was desperately thirsty.

  ‘I’ve been with Sam, Sam Curtis, for eight months,’ she began. She was determined to begin at the beginning. No one had ever expressed any interest in her life story before and she had a horrible feeling that Enver would soon be in no position to repeat anything.

  * * *

  The sky as revealed by the row of small windows changed to a deeper and deeper blue and the light gradually faded in the warehouse. There were obviously streetlights because a dim orange glow from outside cast enough of a diffuse illumination to make out close-at-hand objects.

  * * *

  They could see each other and the suggestive oil drums revealed themselves only as deeper cylinders of darkness in the gloom of the warehouse.

  Chantal had finished speaking and the two of them were silent, Chantal too miserable to think, Enver only too glad to consider a subject other than his own fate.

  There was a lot to think about. The murders of at least four people and the Russians’ criminal connections. The Russians had someone on Oxford Council, they had minimally one tame policeman, they had maybe another high-ranking police official or civil servant or NGO on board. They had the brothel on the Woodstock Road. They had this place. They had a great deal of money and probably half a dozen men working for them plus subcontracted local criminals such as Sam Curtis. And they had a keen brain running them in the form of this vor, Myasnikov.

  Well, I’ve done what Corrigan wanted, thought Enver bitterly. I’ve shaken the tree. I’ve found that Belanov is the watcher and I know the name of the vor. All I have to do now is unshackle myself from this radiator and get out of this building and I can go and present my report in person. He will be delighted. I now know more about this than I ever would have thought possible.

  His reflections were broken by the noise of an engine outside the warehouse. It was a vehicle pulling up and parking.

  ‘Chantal,’ said Enver quietly, ‘if we’re lucky that could be a security patrol. The estate probably has one. I’m going to count to three and I want you to shout Help with me, OK?’

  Chantal nodded.

  ‘One, two, three,’ said Enver, ‘and HELP!’

  The dead air and acoustics of the warehouse made a mockery of their calls for assistance, but they tried again. Then Enver’s straining ears heard something, the sound of a key turning in

  * * *

  a lock, and briefly there was a flash of light as the outside door to the loading bay opened. Then it disappeared as the external door closed, and then the electric light in the entrance lobby came on. There was an opaque glass panel in the double doors that led to the lobby and the light, diffuse as it was, seemed very bright after their virtual darkness.

  The doors opened and the giant form of Dimitri stood there, looking at them. In his left hand he held a sports bag. He walked towards them. Enver heard Chantal gasp in fear. He could certainly sympathize.

  The huge Russian walked up to them with a slow measured tread. He stopped a couple of metres away from Enver and stared at him. Their eyes locked. It was like when two boxers met before the fight, that first moment that could sometimes decide the outcome.

  His brutal face, which seemed composed of flat planes, with little that was rounded in it, looked down at Enver in sadistic satisfaction. Enver’s eyes conveyed angry, defiant conte
mpt.

  Dimitri said nothing but slowly unzipped the sports bag and took out a variety of objects. A plumber’s blowtorch. A chisel. A hammer. Pliers. Duct tape. A screwdriver. A lighter. A Stanley knife.

  He carefully lined these up in a row.

  ‘All for you,’ he said to Enver. Enver was silent; what use were words? He wouldn’t give Dimitri the satisfaction of pleading. Chantal was silent too, but she was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks, glistening in the light from the door.

  ‘Who sent you to her and why?’ asked Dimitri, addressing Enver.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Enver, almost conversationally.

  Dimitri smiled. ‘You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that,’ he said.

  * * *

  He picked up the duct tape and neatly severed a length, which he attached over Enver’s mouth.

  ‘Where to begin?’ he asked no one in particular. He looked at his array of tools and picked up the claw hammer. He walked over to Enver.

  ‘We start with this.’

  Chantal closed her eyes as Dimitri bent over Enver. Enver couldn’t make any noise but she heard the hammer and she heard Dimitri.

  That was maybe even worse.

  21

  Anderson was waiting patiently for Hanlon near the office building where she worked. He had used his lawyer, Cunningham, with his extensive list of police contacts, to track down her whereabouts.

  The first time they’d met, he’d been in prison on remand for cocaine possession. A lot of cocaine. Hanlon had freed him in return for his help to find a child kidnapper. He had provided the information, and she had tampered with evidence so that it would be declared inadmissible. It was with grim amusement that he learned from Cunningham the blame for this had fallen on several other Metropolitan Police who had also coincidentally been tampering with evidence in exchange for money. Their vehement denials of their involvement in Crown v. Anderson had fallen on sceptical ears. He’d heard that one of them had, in fact, confessed to it as part of a kind of plea bargain.