A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series)

by Alex Howard

  She paid for her drink and nodded civilly to the sweat-stained scaffolders, then went to sit down in the bottom part of the pub, out of sight of the bar round the corner. She sat with her back to the wall, awaiting the inevitable.

  Her keen senses heard the conversation by the bar start up again and then the squat figure of the decorator appeared from round the corner. He was carrying a pint of Guinness, which he put on the table that she was sitting behind. He sat down opposite and stared at her. The unlit cigarette that he had rolled hung from his lip.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ he said. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, as unappealing as the rest of him. She had obviously been preying on his mind, beaten by a woman, and here she was, an answer to a prayer.

  He leaned forward menacingly across the table, bringing something out of the pocket of his paint-stained dungarees. He held his right hand around something fist-sized, there was a click and a slim blade appeared.

  ‘Cat got your tongue, bitch?’ he said, in his hoarse, squeaky voice. He was looking intently into her face, obviously hoping to see fear, something he could taste. Something he could feel. He wanted to see her suffer. Hanlon sat immobile, her cold grey eyes staring him out, relying on her peripheral vision so that if he did slice at her face with the knife she would have a chance to react.

  She felt a rising rage at her own stupidity. She should have known that for Decorator Man his humiliation would have been festering like a boil, and now here was the chance to lance it. She had thought that what he wanted to do was frighten her. It was only now that she realized she had seriously underestimated him. The knife was wholly unexpected. He had gone nuclear.

  He hadn’t produced a knife just to scare her. Now she suspected it was to mark her forever, so that whenever she saw herself in a mirror from now to the end of her time she’d think of him.

  He would go for her face any second now. That was for sure. That was a given. She rehearsed what she could do. She couldn’t jerk her head back, away from the knife, there was a wall there. She’d have to go sideways. His arms were short; he’d have to stand to make sure of reaching her face. So, as he rose, she’d flip the table towards him, using the momentum to propel herself away and then throw herself forward at him. He wouldn’t be expecting that. He wouldn’t be expecting her to attack; he would be expecting tearful pleading.

  ‘Bitch,’ he repeated, provoked by her lack of reaction. Ever since he’d been humiliated by her he’d been fantasizing about what he’d do to her and now the moment had come. Now she was going to pay.

  Hanlon smiled contemptuously and rested the palms of her hands on the underside of the table. When she reached three she would act, explode into action. She started counting in her head.

  One, two—

  The door of the pub opened and Anderson walked in, flanked by Morris Jones and Danny.

  Decorator Man wouldn’t have noticed if a brass band had walked in. All his attention was on Hanlon. Absolutely nothing was going to distract him. Even if he had been aware of the door opening he wouldn’t have cared. From a casual entrant’s perspective there was nothing strange or potentially violent going on. What would anyone coming in see? The back of a man’s head as he sat opposite a woman. Nothing unusual. Nothing to worry Decorator Man about anyone walking in. He was just annoyed by the absence of fear on the bitch’s face.

  Hanlon watched impassively, her eyes not moving from Decorator Man’s face. The stocky figure of Danny in jeans and an expensive-looking bomber jacket moving out of sight to the bar, Morris Jones in chinos and a red-and-white striped shirt, what looked like diamonds in his cufflinks sparkling, advancing purposefully towards Decorator Man’s left and Anderson to the right. Dave Anderson’s face was hard, menacing. His eyes glittered in their deep sockets.

  Decorator Man became aware of Anderson only as Anderson leaned over him, his rat’s tails of long hair brushing his bald patch. Decorator Man twitched, but was so intent on Hanlon he didn’t look round.

  ‘Boo!’ said Anderson, softly in Decorator Man’s ear.

  That got his attention all right. Decorator Man jumped and twisted his neck, looking up in surprise at Anderson. It was maybe that action, presenting his nose as a target, that determined what happened next. Anderson drove his forehead with practised skill hard into the man’s nose, just at the bridge where it met his forehead. There was a crunching noise, as if someone had stepped on a pair of glasses. Simultaneously, his large, powerful hand descended onto the man’s wrist as fast as if he was swatting a fly, to trap the blade, and Morris Jones’s knuckles thudded in, hard and vicious, to the back of Decorator Man’s skull.

  Head, hand, fist. Bang. Bang. Bang. The whole process was unbelievably quick and efficient. It must have taken less than two seconds.

  Decorator Man’s head had been driven into the table from the force of Jones’s short punch. The table was heavy and sturdy. It barely moved as his forehead made contact with its surface. He was still conscious but in no shape to do a great deal. The three short, sharp blows to his head – nose, back of head, forehead – had taken their toll. Blood started to trickle from his nose as Jones hauled him upright, the legs of his chair screeching on the cheap lino of the floor, and bundled him out of the pub door.

  He went in an unprotesting sort of way. Probably he was barely conscious or, if he was conscious, not wanting to provoke his attackers any more.

  Anderson took the vacated chair. He picked up the flick knife from the table and inspected it. He raised his eyebrows, retracted the blade and put it in the pocket of his tracksuit jacket. He said to Hanlon, ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘We’d met before,’ said Hanlon.

  Anderson smiled at her. ‘I guessed so,’ he said quietly.

  They looked at each other, both conscious that Anderson had evened things up after the cemetery incident.

  ‘Not Russian, is he?’ asked Anderson.

  Hanlon shook her head. ‘A domestic incident,’ she said.

  Jones reappeared and Danny joined them with a tray of drinks. Anderson nodded at Decorator Man’s half-drunk Guinness. He looked at it with disfavour. The froth from the head had congealed, like a slug trail, up the side of the straight glass.

  ‘Take that back to the bar, Danny. Buy his friends a drink. Make sure the natives aren’t restless.’ He turned to Jones. ‘What did you do with chummy, Morris?’

  ‘I left him with Robby. Robby’s taken him round the back.’

  Anderson nodded, satisfied. Jones turned and positioned himself near the entrance to the alcove-like part of the bar where they were, to prevent any newcomer, if there were any, from sitting near his boss.

  Anderson had a bottle of Pils in front of him and a glass. He poured the contents of the bottle into it and watched the bubbles. Hanlon waited for him to speak. His eyes flicked from the glass to Hanlon.

  ‘You heard about my problem.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Hanlon nodded.

  ‘Turf war, eh, Hanlon.’ Anderson rubbed his chin. ‘I haven’t had any problems since I nailed that cunt to a door.’

  Hanlon’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’d rather you didn’t use that expression,’ she said.

  Anderson gave a short bark of laughter. She hadn’t expressed any reservations about the incident to which they both knew he referred, when he’d used a nail-gun to attach a rival named Phil Woodward to a door, crucifix fashion. But here she was, objecting to his language.

  Jones looked round in surprise. He didn’t hear his employer make that sort of noise usually.

  ‘OK,’ said Anderson, raising his palms in a placatory manner. ‘I won’t.’ He dipped a finger in his lager and removed it, inspected it and tasted it with his tongue. ‘Now, I know it’s Russians. I know they want me out of the running. I could do with some names confirming. And addresses. Could you help?’

  He studied the woman opposite, slim and elegant. She’d taken her jacket off. It lay folded neatly beside her on the faux leather of
the banquette bench seat that ran across the wall of this end of the bar. It was a navy jacket and he could see its lining, cream with blue spots. The jacket looked very small and fragile, strangely feminine. He examined his sizeable right hand. He could probably lean forward, pick it up and enfold it within the grasp of his powerful fingers. He looked at the face of its owner as she considered his question.

  Hanlon looked up. The nails on her hand, which she’d been studying, were cut short. Earlier that day she had done twenty-five slow, perfect form push-ups, supporting her weight on the ends of her fingertips.

  She raised her eyes to Anderson, to the burning eyes under the rat’s tail of stringy hair. Her gaze took in the elegant, expensively dressed figure of Morris Jones. His red and white, double-cuffed shirt with its gleaming cufflinks was not designed to hang outside trousers as it did at the moment. The shirt tail was too long; it was meant to be tucked in. Jones was not the kind of man who would make a sartorial mistake like that. There would be a gun under there. She knew that for a certainty.

  Anderson was obviously a concerned man.

  Decorator Man, although he’d have been processed by now at the hands of Robby, could count himself lucky he was still alive.

  Anderson looked at her quizzically. She was annoyed with herself that she actually quite liked him.

  She reached a decision. ‘Arkady Belanov, Woodstock Road, Oxford, and his minder, Dimitri something or other, are the two who will have organized the hit on you and the one on your property in Marylebone. They are working for a man known as the vor.’

  ‘You know about Marylebone?’ said Anderson, not smiling any more.

  Hanlon stood up. ‘I know lots of things. I’m a knowledgeable woman. I know that the vor is called Myasnikov. I know his nickname is the Butcher of Moscow. I don’t, however, know where I can find the body of a man called Charlie Taverner, and that I would like to know.’

  She slipped her jacket on. She had no bag; it was in her car. She took a card from her jacket pocket.

  ‘My number.’

  Anderson nodded. She walked past Morris Jones.

  ‘Mr Jones.’ She nodded goodbye and left the pub.

  He looked at Anderson in surprise. ‘How come she knows my name?’

  ‘She knows lots of things,’ said Anderson. He stood up too. ‘Come on, Morris, let’s go.’

  From behind the counter, the barman watched the three of them leave the pub. He breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

  He turned to the three scaffolders. ‘Drinks are on the house. I’m having a fucking large one.’

  22

  DI Huss waited with mounting impatience for Enver Demirel at Paddington Station. She checked the watch on her wrist yet again, even though she was hardly unaware of the time. The electronic information board for Arrivals and Departures, the constant announcements of train movements, the phone in her other hand and the frantic busyness of the place at six in the evening, filled with commuters desperate to get home – she would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have realized that it was around six o’clock and that Enver was late, and she had heard nothing from him since the day before.

  Enver and late were not a collocation, words that went together naturally. If ever there was a man who was pathologically early, who would normally provide updates on his progress on a practically minute-by-minute basis, it was Enver.

  Huss wasn’t by nature a frantic clock addict. On the farm, where she’d grown up, time was dictated at a more leisurely pace. If you had to start work at five to milk cows it didn’t matter if it was four fifty or five oh five that you started, you just had to be up round about then. Similarly, in lambing season, when you were putting in twenty-hour days, it was fairly elastic. Things took the time they should take. You couldn’t make barley grow faster by screaming and shouting at it. Fence repair, drainage issues, feed time, all the enormous number of jobs around a farm – they all had times to be done, but clock-watching was no help.

  Enver, by contrast, had come from a catering background, which was ruled by clocks. Opening times, closing times, food-preparation times, service times, cooking times, order times: everything was done at the bayonet point of time. Seconds counted.

  And then boxing, at first a sport, then semi-pro, then – all too briefly, six months – fully professional. Time was king again. When he trained, a stopwatch was always in someone’s hand. And in the ring, the length and number of rounds, defeat, survival or victory – the tyranny of the clock.

  For him to be late was a non-issue. Huss, although by nature placid, easy-going, was starting to get more than a little worried.

  Two texts later to Enver’s work colleagues and she was even more concerned. She knew that Enver was not in France on a well-deserved break but probably busy with this ill-conceived, face-saving exercise for Corrigan.

  She bought herself a coffee and sat down on a bench. Her overnight bag by her feet mocked her. She tried Enver Demirel again; no reply. Huss was not one to shy away from troublesome thoughts. If Enver wasn’t here, it was because someone had made sure he wasn’t here. Work could be ruled out. Arkady Belanov couldn’t.

  What have you done, Enver? she thought with increasing alarm. Where are you? At last, she could stand it no longer.

  Huss clicked on to the contacts list of her phone. She looked at the name she’d thought she would never need to use, someone she heartily disliked.

  ‘Sod it.’

  She pushed her finger against the screen. The answer came almost immediately.

  ‘Yes?’ Just the one word, the usual arrogant tone.

  She gritted her teeth. ‘It’s Melinda Huss.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It’s about Enver. I’m worried.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Huss told her.

  ‘Half an hour,’ said Hanlon.

  Hanlon had said half an hour and she was as good as her word. Huss saw her striding across the station concourse, grim-faced, the commuter crowd unconsciously parting to let her past as she cut through them like a torpedo slicing water. Huss explained what had happened in the back of a black taxi as it ferried them through London.

  Huss didn’t know London that well, but she recognized St Paul’s as they drove past, and the style of the buildings surrounding it – modern, massive, simplistic, temples and shrines to money – as the City. Then the taxi stopped, they got out and she followed Hanlon’s slim, muscular back down a couple of narrow, mysterious streets, not much wider than alleys.

  It was now nearly seven and the City – London’s financial centre – was virtually empty, which, Huss guessed, was how Hanlon liked things. The large, imposing buildings rose up around them, eerily quiet. It was like a deserted film set. The two women slipped through a narrow gate at the back of a tall, darkened, office building, the entry to a shadowy, tiny yard, and squeezed past some wheelie bins overflowing with shredded paper. Hanlon unlocked a nondescript door and motioned ahead of her, locking the door behind them. A secret tradesman’s entrance. Huss, still carrying her overnight bag, trotted up a narrow, dingy staircase. She guessed it was the fire exit for the floors that lay the other side of barred emergency doors. It was a part of the building the workers would rarely get to see. The secret world of service corridors, access shafts and service elevators. Not for the general public. Three floors later the staircase ended in two plain green doors, one labelled Roof access, the other Staff only. She stood to one side while Hanlon unlocked the latter and they ascended a last flight of steps to Hanlon’s rooftop eyrie.

  Huss gasped in surprise at the stunning view, gazing south over the Thames. It was blocked in part by another couple of office buildings, but you could see the great fast-flowing tidal river, the lights of the Embankment, the buildings like Tate Modern and the Globe on the other side. They were brilliantly illuminated far below.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked.

  ‘Home,’ said Hanlon irritably.

  It was, in fact, a planni
ng mistake on the architect’s part. The space she inhabited had originally been designed as a penthouse for the directors of a company that leased one of the floors below. A change in building regulations regarding fire and purpose of usage had made it impracticable. Unusable.

  It belonged to the offshore owners of the building itself and Hanlon, who knew one of the partners, had been here ten years. The room was a footnote in an inventory of the portfolio of a British Virgin Islands company, as noteworthy to the auditors as the concrete shed in the yard they’d walked past, where flammable cleaning products were stored, or the underground storage facility for bicycles for people who worked in the building. The office workers didn’t really know of its existence and the maintenance staff remained incurious.

  Hanlon never brought people here. Only Mark Whiteside, her friend and colleague, and even then she’d preferred visiting him at his own flat in Holloway. She was furious that Huss was here, furious that fate had conspired to make this inevitable. She was fiercely solitary. She hated having people in her space.

  They took up too much room. They polluted it.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Hanlon shortly. The seat. There was only the one, a hard wooden chair by a small table with a laptop and an anglepoise lamp. Its metallic, slim, engineered functional lines reminded Huss of Hanlon.

  Huss sat on the chair. She looked around Hanlon’s one-roomed apartment. She thought, She obviously doesn’t do much entertaining. Then she immediately rolled her eyes mentally at the stupidity of the notion that Hanlon might entertain. Not Hanlon.

  These two items, chair and table, were the only visible pieces of furniture. Hanlon’s flat was amazingly bleak, not minimalist chic, just bleak. The front of the flat, a rectangular box, was mostly glass. One side was given over to fitted cupboards. The other side was more glass, opaque building blocks of the stuff, and a door leading out to the flat roof of the office building with its maze of ducting and extractor-fan cooling hoods. The other wall had a door, through which they’d come, louvred doors that would open out to reveal a sink and two hotplates with a glass plug-in convection oven and fridge, Hanlon’s kitchen, and another door concealed shower and toilet.