by Alex Howard
The taxi pulled up outside Chantal’s flat. He got out and paid off the driver. The car pulled away and Enver’s thoughts of Huss vanished as he looked at the doorway sandwiched between a betting shop and a fast-food outlet that sold fried chicken.
His good humour evaporated. Chantal’s surroundings were as depressing as her life. Win, win, win screamed the betting shop, its frontage bright with vibrant primary colours, green and red and yellow, its lettering bold, emphatic, confident.
Its optimistic slogan was negated by its neighbour. The fast-food shop’s photos of the takeaways it sold had been bleached and yellowed by the sun and time. The chicken in the pictures was gnarly with dun-brown corrugated batter, like growths waiting to be removed. The shop smelled sharply of rancid fat.
Enver could imagine only too well what the kitchen would look like, the cracked rubber seals of the fridge grimed with dirt like a tramp’s fingernails, the off-putting reek of out-of-date chicken in stained plastic tubs and boxes of congealing coleslaw. He knew the horrors that lurked in crappy kitchens only too well – not in the Demirels’ kitchens, but in rival places he’d worked when he’d been a student.
He walked up to Chantal’s front door. Someone had pissed in the recessed doorway during the night and there was still a residual puddle of thickened, semi-evaporated urine in front of the scuffed white door, the smell mingling with that of the chicken joint next door.
He pressed the buzzer and heard Chantal’s voice, sounding slightly out of breath, metallic and tinny on the scuffed, steel honeycomb of the intercom.
‘Hello?’
‘DI Demirel,’ he said. The door buzzed and he pushed it open, stepping carefully over the puddle as he went.
He glanced at his watch as he stood at the bottom of the narrow, steep carpeted stairs, the beige fabric unpleasantly stained here and there. A smell of stale skunk clung to the walls.
He thought of Huss longingly. Only a few more hours, he thought.
He started up the stairs and knocked gently on the door. Chantal opened it and he went into the cramped flat. Enver looked at her with concern. She had obviously been crying. Her eye make-up had run, and her fingers plucked nervously at the hem of her dressing gown. It was a cheap, oriental-effect garment made of red synthetic fabric with a gold dragon, the kind of thing you bought on a stall in a not-very-good market for a tenner. It looked highly flammable. He had the feeling that she was naked underneath the tawdry gown, which added to his discomfort.
He hoped that her unhappy state had nothing to do with him. He had a sudden surge of resentment at Corrigan. All well and good for Corrigan from his bastion of gentlemen’s clubs and the upper floors of New Scotland Yard to issue instructions on ‘shaking the tree’, but it was Enver who had to do the dirty work and it looked as if it was Chantal who had borne the brunt of things. There was a swelling by the side of her eye that she had attempted to conceal with foundation. It hadn’t concealed it. It was now a foundation-coloured swelling. Enver knew a thing or two about bruising and contusions – what boxer didn’t? – but there was a time and a place, and in his mind the place was never on a woman’s face. Curtis, he thought. He had a sudden desire to give Curtis a good going over. See how he likes it, thought Enver.
‘Are you OK, Chantal?’
She nodded, avoiding his eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. Then she raised her gaze to his and opened up the dressing gown, flasher style.
It was the last thing Enver expected and it certainly caught his attention. He stared at Chantal’s slim body, the strip of dark pubic hair, her surprisingly full breasts. What the hell is going on? he thought, unaware of the bathroom door opening quietly behind him.
His body suddenly exploded with pain and his legs gave way as if they’d been severed. He fell face forward, his head thudding heavily to the floor, dazing him even further as the pain increased and his body twitched while his mouth made inarticulate sounds.
Chantal watched in horrified fascination as Dimitri stood over the body of Enver, the yellow taser in his hands like a child’s toy pistol, its primary yellow colour lending it an almost clown-like quality as it clicked away insect-like in a busy, threatening staccato manner.
‘Give it thirty seconds,’ Joad had said. It was a standard police-issue taser, property of Thames Valley Constabulary. Joad had stolen it a few months ago during a raid on a crack-house in High Wycombe. Whichever of the three views held by his colleagues on Joad – likeable rough diamond; sleazy, yes, bent, maybe, but a good copper; corrupt, lazy, a disgrace, should be locked up – everyone, even Huss, agreed he was very useful in a ruck. He was in great demand whenever physical trouble loomed. When things had kicked off during the raid and everyone’s attention had been fully occupied, Joad had coolly expropriated the taser and sold it later to Belanov for three times its list price.
Joad had said the best place to use it was on the back, which was why Dimitri had got Chantal to engage Enver’s attention. Dimitri was also very wary of the bull-like policeman. Enver had hit him in the face once and that had nearly knocked him unconscious; Dimitri was taking no chances.
He dropped the taser and kicked Enver hard between the legs, so hard it moved Enver’s body up off the floor. It was a precaution, but more than that it was payback. The first instalment. It was revenge, a cold revenge, one he had longingly rehearsed in his mind like a sexual fantasy.
We all have certain memories that we worry at like a loose tooth or picking a scab – unforgotten resentments that continue to fester and haunt us. Dimitri could still vividly picture being in the street in Bow in East London behind the wheel of the stolen white van. It had been dark, late at night, and he had only been half alert. He’d been waiting for Hanlon, waiting to settle his score with her, when he had become aware of a presence at the open window of the driver’s door. He’d turned his head irritably and seen a face, Enver’s face, before Enver’s fist had slammed into his head, breaking his already damaged cheekbone.
The force of Enver’s punch had nearly knocked him out. The next thing he’d known, he was being dragged on to the London pavement where he’d lost consciousness momentarily before coming round, his body a sea of pain.
Now God, or the Devil, had brought Enver back within reach.
He handcuffed Enver’s hands behind his back and rolled him over. Enver was still moaning slightly from the excruciating pain in his testes and the residual effects of the electrocution. Dimitri had a roll of black gaffer tape and wrapped a length three times round Enver’s mouth then flipped him back over, face down, and, sitting on his back so Enver couldn’t move, taped his legs together at the ankles.
Enver was secure; now Dimitri could relax. Chantal watched silently. There was no fight in her, no resistance.
She sat helplessly on the bed, waiting to be told what to do. She had never really in her whole short life made a decision herself. Her mother had put her in and out of care, depending on how sober or remorseful she’d been feeling. Handed back and forth like a parcel, she’d never had any feeling of being anything but a burden to everyone. School, a disaster. Work, a disaster. No one had ever wanted Chantal. If she’d been a puppy she’d probably have ended up being put down. The runt that nobody wanted, that would never be rehomed.
Only sex had made her feel in demand and appreciated, even if it was pretty grim most of the time. But if you were out of it mentally enough it was bearable. Valium, temazepam, vodka and coke and weed, they all helped. And now her mind was practically blank with misery. She didn’t want to allow herself the ability to think. Any rational thought would just bring further pain. Curtis was dead; no help there. The policeman helpless, as good as dead; no help there. She couldn’t run away. As always, others would decide her fate.
‘You’re nothing,’ her mother had said. ‘You’ll never amount to anything, Jenkins,’ her form teacher had said in Year Ten.
And now her destiny lay entirely in the hands of Dimitri.
Well, that wasn’t encouraging, was i
t? she thought. She felt a ridiculous desire to burst out laughing, hysterically.
Dimitri took a hypodermic from his jacket pocket and a small glass bottle full of a clear liquid. He put the needle through the cap of the bottle and filled the body of the syringe, then pulled Enver’s trousers down slightly to reveal the swell of his buttocks.
Chantal watched silently.
She had once found a small bird – she didn’t know what sort, it had been brown, terrified – on the doorstep of the home she’d been living in at the time. It had obviously been young, it wouldn’t or couldn’t fly; maybe its wing had been broken. They had looked at one another, its eyes terrified, and she had closed the door on it, hoping something good would happen to it. Later she’d found its small, dead body by the scruffy hedge in the front garden. She had dug a shallow grave for it in the weed-choked flowerbed.
She stood, as motionless as the bird had been, as Dimitri inserted the needle into the policeman’s backside and pushed the plunger. Enver sighed and she watched as his body relaxed.
Yesterday had been her twenty-third birthday. There’d been no cards. Not even a text.
17
It was eight o’clock on Wednesday morning, the day of Malcolm Anderson’s funeral in Edmonton. Earlier that morning Hanlon had driven up through the City towards North London.
The differentials in character between the districts she passed through were as sharply defined as rings on a severed tree trunk. The City with its ancient names – Leadenhall, Ludgate, St Mary Woolnoth – but now all high-tech, steel and concrete, even the food angular and spiky, sushi bars and terse, monosyllabic takeaways, Eat, Graze, Pret. The names themselves sounded like commands. Then Hoxton, hipper and more boho, followed by Stoke Newington, the trailblazer in the gentrification stakes as the native middle class was forced out of the centre of London by the colonizers from abroad.
For Hanlon, the drive was becoming an exercise in nostalgia. She’d lived here once, a junior officer in the Met, with a growing reputation both for efficiency and as a troublemaker.
The early morning traffic was heavy and her progress was slow. The further north she went, the more Turkish the influence became. Ubiquitous kebab shops, names like the Istanbul Grill, Karadeniz Meats, branches of the Turkish Bank, halal butchers, a couple of Turkish mosques. It was round about here that her last partner – then DS, currently DI, Enver Demirel – had grown up, before the family had decamped to Enfield.
In fact, she thought, he still lives around here, somewhere in south Tottenham.
She thought of Demirel with nostalgia. His mournful face and his endless, doomed attempts to fight the flab. She’d seen him box once, back before he’d joined the Met. Then there had been no fat on his body. Then he’d been an up-and-coming young fighter. An eye injury had put paid to that. Now, although only about thirty, he seemed to be embracing middle age with enthusiasm. He had grown a thick, black, drooping moustache; he was growing a double chin. He still had his impressive musculature but it was well concealed under his collection of cheap suits and growing flesh.
But his hangdog demeanour was misleading. In some respects Enver was like a bear. You saw him and thought he was quite sweet, cuddly-looking, but if provoked (and here the analogy broke down, he needed a lot of provoking) he could take your head off. Hanlon had seen Enver flatten a man with one punch, and his gloomy pessimism hid a fierce intelligence and an equally fierce ambition.
Enver’s father had arrived in London as a penniless teenager from Rize province in Turkey and died a relatively wealthy and successful restauranteur. The same qualities of hard work and ability ran deep in Enver. Enver had, at one time, been ranked in the top ten UK professional fighters of his weight. He was never going to be a world champion, never, come to that, be a British champion, but to have got as far as he did was one hell of an achievement.
He was doing equally well in the police. He held a fistful of aces in his hand. Young, intelligent, efficient, untainted by scandal, and the fact he was non-Caucasian would stand him in good stead. And he wasn’t ethnic enough to frighten anyone. He’d be a potent symbol of racial diversity, something the Metropolitan Police could well do with.
Hanlon herself, despite an exemplary work record, had faced charges of tokenism – yeah, well, it’s because she’s a woman – although rarely to her face. She was too frightening a figure for that and she had some equally hard-hitting supporters. The Hanlon fan club was small, but fanatical.
And Enver had a powerful sponsor. Corrigan, one of the Metropolitan Police’s assistant commissioners, had taken him under his wing. Enver, thought Hanlon, was going places, and he knew it. Whereas I, she thought to herself, I’ve reached the end of my time with the police.
The thought took her almost by surprise. It was a quiet epiphany. Startled, she repeated it to herself. I’ve reached the end of my time with the police.
She suddenly realized that she had known for a long time that enough was enough, but had never consciously admitted it. It was like being in a marriage that you knew wasn’t working, then one morning decided was over. I don’t love you any more. We’re through.
It was an amazing revelation. A Damascene conversion. For nearly twenty years she had defined herself by her job. And the police force had, by and large, tolerated her. It was a useful, symbiotic relationship. Hanlon was undoubtedly a nuisance, but she was a good detective, she wasn’t corrupt and she was useful to wheel out occasionally as proof that there were career opportunities for women in the force. She also could be relied upon to keep her mouth shut. The Met had, on the whole, backed her up. She had got results and any resulting mess had been swept under carpets. But this latest transfer was a signal that the party was over.
They’d both had enough of each other.
Hanlon had known for a while that she was as far up the career pole as she could hope to get. With a record like hers, particularly in the past year, no promotion board would dream of moving her upwards. She didn’t mind. She knew she was poor at administration, rash, hasty, not good at communicating and inclined to hoard information. In fact, she was everything you wouldn’t want in a position of executive power that involved planning and attention to detail – stupidly impulsive, rash, intolerant. She needed a minder, a short leash. Where she was, she was perfectly suited.
But now, she thought, enough is enough. We define our lives as a narrative, a story, she reasoned, and mine’s been to fight the enemy by whatever means I have at my disposal. I was DI Hanlon, the woman who did it her own way, but it’s time to move on.
I’ll find Taverner’s killers, she thought. I’ll do that for you, Oksana, then I’ll resign. I’ll even get some shyster lawyer to screw the Met over for me. If I have a leaving party only Enver and Corrigan will come. We can hold it in a stationery cupboard. Her eyes softened as she thought of Enver again. I wonder what he’s up to now.
Hanlon missed Enver. She hoped he was well in his safe environment of protocol and meeting rooms, liaising with people.
She guessed too that she was lonely, not that she liked to admit it. Perhaps I’ll make new friends, she thought, join a dating agency. Hanlon laughed sardonically to herself at the idea.
The traffic had only moved a couple of metres in the last five minutes. In the distance she saw a traffic light change to red. She flipped down the sun visor on her Audi TT and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her sea-grey eyes looked back at her. Her eyebrows were dark and curved and her black corkscrew hair framed her face. There were dark patches under her eyes and she could still see the faint bruising around her cheekbone. It was a strong face rather than a pretty one.
On the passenger seat was a small black leather handbag. In it was her purse with warrant card. I won’t be needing that soon, she thought. She put the car in gear and drove northwards to Edmonton.
She left her car in a car park near the Broadway and headed into the backstreets of the Andersons’ manor. The streets were quiet. She found her destination quickly
enough.
There were two things that surprised Hanlon about the cemetery in Edmonton. Firstly that it was surrounded by a three-metre-high wall topped with razor wire. It seemed out of keeping with the function of the place. You didn’t associate security with a graveyard. Hanlon frowned to herself as she walked along the path by the towering wall that was more suitable for a low-risk prison than a graveyard. The wall to her left seemed endless; it was a brisk ten-minute walk from one end to the other. The opposite side of the walkway on her right-hand side was an estate of small, low-rise houses with landscaped public areas of grass. It seemed peaceful enough and the area by the path was litter-free. It was quite a pleasant spot.
She walked alongside the wall, searching in vain for a gate, until she came to its end in a cluster of more social housing, this time small flats. She looked around her. Most of the buildings here were low-rise, the only visible exceptions a sizeable tower block near the High Street and station back the way she had come and, in the opposite direction, the high, slim tower of the Edmonton Waste Incinerator, pointing skywards like an admonitory finger, the tallest chimney in London that she could remember. It dominated the area.
She looked at it again. She remembered one of her conversations with Anderson, his casual comment about how it was often the final destination for his business rivals. It was Anderson’s own personal crematorium.
She paused and checked the map on her phone. The cemetery was the shape of an elongated triangle; she had walked down one side of it and was now at the base. This fronted on to the main road and it was here that Hanlon found both the entrance and her second surprise.
The cemetery was Jewish. She checked the sign on the gate just to make sure. No, no mistake there. Was Anderson Jewish? Based on what she knew of him it seemed unlikely, but then again, why shouldn’t he be? The surname was Scandinavian, if anything, but it could well have been changed for assimilation purposes, anything for a quieter life.
