A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series)

by Alex Howard

  It was all too simple to see Myasnikov as some sort of deadly, criminal mastermind, which in a sense he was. But as well as being the hunter, he was himself the hunted. Easy, too, to forget, in the wake of the deaths he had caused and the human misery, that Myasnikov was in Britain because Russia was too dangerous for him. Bigger and more dangerous predators swam in those cold, faraway seas.

  So finding Myasnikov might be far from easy. But in Myasnikov’s death lay Mark Whiteside’s potential rebirth.

  ‘The point is that the Russians’ man in the force will tip them off, Melinda,’ said Hanlon. ‘And we’ll end up with either them moving him so we’ll never find him, and he’ll be dead, or there will be some sort of shoot-out or a prolonged hostage situation. Then, when – if – they are all nicked, they’ll be out on bail and I would imagine they’ll come looking for you and your lovely family, who have conspired to deprive them of their liberty and put them inside where Anderson can probably get to them. Isn’t that right, Danny?’

  Surprised to hear his name, Danny almost jumped.

  ‘Oh, yeah. If they end up on remand they might as well top themselves, save someone the bother of doing it. The Russians are dead men if they get banged up. Anderson will see to that.’ He shrugged. ‘But they’ve got a lot of money, a lot of pull probably. They’ll be able to buy a judge to keep them out, I’d have thought, or good enough lawyers. They can claim their human rights would be infringed, that they won’t be treated fairly inside. I bet someone like Cunningham could get them out. The human rights issue will probably do the trick. Lack of a fair trial, questionably obtained evidence, that kind of thing. Plus they’d have a good chance of getting at the jury.’

  Hanlon looked at Huss levelly. ‘So, who do you trust more to keep Enver alive? Us, or the British justice system?’

  Huss rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not happy about this,’ she said. She stood up and walked over to where the tools were propped against fertilizer sacks, and came back to the table with a bundle wrapped in a plaid blanket in her arms. She put it down on the table and opened it up.

  ‘None of us are happy, Huss,’ said Hanlon.

  Huss passed Hanlon the .22 rifle that had been wrapped in the blanket. ‘It’s Derek’s. He uses it for foxes. That’s a night scope on it; sights are set to two fifty metres.’

  Hanlon nodded. She’d have preferred her own gun, still in the boot of her car, but she needed a night scope.

  Next to the rifle was an up-and-under pump-action shotgun. ‘Is that for me?’ asked Danny.

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ said Huss.

  ‘Can you use it?’ asked Danny.

  Huss shook her head disbelievingly. ‘I live on a farm, Danny, and I’m the third best shot with a twelve bore in South Oxfordshire. That’s official. Have you won many cups for shooting?’

  Danny was silent.

  Huss leaned forward aggressively, her sleeves rolled up over her powerful forearms. ‘I said, how many trophies have you won for shooting, Danny? I’ve got lots. Have you ever shot anything at all. . . ? I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Huss angrily. ‘I suggest you keep your mouth shut unless you’ve got something useful to say.’

  The two of them squared up at each other across the table. Hanlon could see they were both so on edge, so keyed up, that they were practically hysterical. There was a prospect of very real violence.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better tell you how to use a shotgun or rifle,’ Huss carried on with heavy sarcasm. ‘You put a cartridge in this end, bullets or shot come out of the end with a hole, this wiggly thing is called a tri—’

  ‘Let’s all calm down,’ said Hanlon acidly. ‘Now, can we please go and find Enver.’

  Huss and Danny glared at each other.

  ‘Danny, you’re coming in my car,’ said Hanlon firmly. Huss and Danny exchanged looks of implacable dislike.

  35

  Joad was in Arkady Belanov’s office. He was busy doing what no sane man would ever dream of doing. He was burgling the safe.

  When Huss had told him that Hanlon had found the address to the farm and it was tonight it was all going down, he suddenly realized that it would be practically impossible to get any more money out of Belanov.

  It hadn’t slipped Joad’s mind that it wasn’t primarily money that had caused him to want to betray the Russians. It was the fact that they were going to kill him. It was ironic really, thought Joad. The seeds of Myasnikov’s destruction lay in the fact that he was too ruthless, too obsessed with housekeeping. If he hadn’t decided to remove him for security reasons, then Joad wouldn’t be busy digging a trap to catch him. If Joad hadn’t stepped up to the plate, who knows where they’d be. If, if, if. Joad didn’t deal in ifs.

  DI Ian Joad was not the kind of man who dealt with conditional hypotheses and he certainly wasn’t one to buckle under pressure. He was used to the idea that the world was out to get him. He knew that Huss certainly was. Myasnikov’s threat was just one more example of what he was up against. Business as usual.

  Belanov’s safe was operated by a standard keypad. It wasn’t particularly large; it wasn’t particularly sophisticated. It contained the takings for the brothel for two or three days, which was a great deal of money. Two hundred pounds an hour, per girl, and there were ten girls working. Clients preferred to pay in cash. Card payments would be listed as the Bulgakov Treatment Clinic to make it sound more therapeutic. But cash was king. No customers wanted awkward questions.

  It also had the bar takings and a large float for the till.

  The safe also contained quantities of recreational drugs with which clients could enhance their pleasure, plus Viagra for the older generation. There were a couple of handguns in there, some expensive man jewellery that Belanov liked to wear, and a manila envelope stuffed with euros, dollars and roubles, Belanov’s just-in-case fund.

  Tonight, the brothel was in full swing. There were fourteen clients, more men than working girls, as some of the customers liked to watch while they shared a girl with a friend. Joad had recognized a couple of senior figures from the more prominent colleges in the town, eminent dons, enjoying pre-coital drinks at the bar.

  Good to see the university represented, he thought. Unbeknown to the customers, security had been ramped up. Myasnikov was concerned that Anderson might stage some kind of revenge attack. There were an extra seven men on duty. Two men at the front and back doors, and three in the room with the CCTV monitors. Myasnikov had been in earlier to give them a little pep talk about what would happen if they failed to spot anything untoward. He’d shown them some footage from his phone that he’d taken in Moscow.

  ‘If a man can’t use his eyes properly when he’s paid to, why should he be allowed to keep them?’ he had asked, in his reasonable voice.

  One of the guards had rushed out of the room to throw up.

  The following night all the genuine clients would be replaced by balbesiy, foot soldiers, in Hanlon’s honour. Belanov would be taking no chances. And Myasnikov would be on his plane.

  Joad had seen Belanov use the safe once and had memorized the combination. It had taken the fat man a while to actually open it. The safe was at floor level, bolted to the wall and boards, and to use it Belanov had had to laboriously get down on his hands and knees, which with his weight and girth had taken some time. Getting up had been even more of a struggle. Joad had had to take one of his enormously fat arms and haul him up. It had been like pulling a dustbin up from the bottom of the sea.

  Now Joad crouched down lightly, keyed in the number and heard the click as the safe door sprang open. He took the manila envelope after eyeing the handguns thoughtfully. Better not, he thought, God knows what killings those have been linked to ballistically. He put the envelope away in the inside pocket of his seersucker sports jacket (no laundering required!) and brushed some dandruff off the shoulder.

  He closed the safe door and stood up. It was fortunate he
had finished. Belanov’s office door opened and Myasnikov stood there, with another man wearing motorcycle leathers. In Joad’s eyes he looked too old to be a biker, but these days even eighty-year-olds seemed to be throwing their aged legs over motorbike saddles.

  The cult of youth, thought Joad sadly. Fifty-year-olds dressed as toddlers in Day-Glo T-shirts and granddad rockers. What is the world coming to?

  Joad didn’t miss a beat. ‘Good evening, Mr Myasnikov. Can I help you?’

  Myasnikov didn’t look remotely surprised to find Joad in Arkady Belanov’s office. He had come firmly to believe in his own myth, that no one would be crazy enough to try to cross them. He assumed the policeman had a valid reason to be there.

  ‘Actually, you can. You can drive me to farm,’ said Myasnikov. He turned to the other man in the leathers. ‘Coming with us?’

  The other man shook his head. ‘I have some things I need to do first,’ he said. ‘I’ll take my bike, meet you there later.’ He nodded to Joad and left the room. He didn’t look overly happy to have met the policeman.

  ‘I don’t know where the farm is,’ said Joad.

  ‘Well, I suggest you use satnav,’ said the Butcher. ‘It’ll be on there, won’t it.’

  Now why didn’t I think of that? thought Joad as the two of them left the office. The money in Joad’s pocket made a hugely incriminating bulge. As he closed the door behind him he glanced at the grandfather clock in the foyer of the brothel. Arkady thought it lent the place a classy touch.

  Eleven thirty p.m.

  I hope to God Hanlon’s on time, thought Joad. I wish I’d taken one of those automatics now.

  As they got into the Mercedes, his Mercedes, Joad noticed a scuff mark and a small dent by the headlight on the driver’s side. He got in the car and adjusted the seat. It had been pushed far back. Dimitri must have been driving. He was a careless driver. Joad felt a surge of rage at what he’d done to the blameless car with his selfish ineptitude. Dimitri had never really got used to driving on the left.

  My car, he thought.

  As he started the engine he patted the steering wheel soothingly. He’ll pay for that, he promised the car.

  36

  A huge full moon illuminated the flat fields over the Oxfordshire farmland. A hunter’s moon, they called it in the country. Hanlon had dropped Danny off at the top of the track that led to the farm from the main road. She’d told him to remain out of sight with his gun drawn and phone on silent, to await further instructions.

  Quite frankly, she had no great faith in Danny. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who had initiative. She didn’t doubt he’d be useful in a fight. He wouldn’t be Anderson’s minder otherwise. But, like an attack dog, you’d have to explain who to go for. She also seriously doubted his ability to hit anything with that automatic of his. But what he could do was keep an eye on the road.

  Huss walked behind her as she led the way through the wood. As Derek had said, the path was easy to find and it was only about half a mile across one field, then through the trees, before they came to the field behind the farm.

  The path was a ghostly silver in the bright moonlight from overhead, the trees that lined it like columns in a church. Hanlon recognized the trees they were walking through, spectral, graceful, very tall with few side branches, as beech. As the ground fell away from the path the trees changed to spruce that had been planted in orderly lines.

  It was very tranquil in the wood. The only sound was the faint noise of their footsteps, practically silent on the beech mast covering the path, and the occasional hoot of an owl. Once they heard a high-pitched yelping bark that Huss recognized as a fox.

  They reached the end of the wood. The trees stopped abruptly at the edge of the field behind the farm. Huss recognized the plants in the field as oilseed rape. It was in flower and its heavy smell hung in the air. By day it would be a brilliant blaze of yellow. In the monochrome of the moonlight it was an expanse of silvery grey.

  They were standing on a slight ridge overlooking the farm and Huss took a quick glance, then passed Hanlon the pair of night-vision binoculars. She focused them on the buildings in front of her.

  Parked down below in the cobbled rectangle of the yard was a large white van she assumed was the one that Chantal had mentioned, a BMW estate and a Harley-Davidson chopper she guessed had to be Dimitri’s. It had ape hanger bars and she could easily imagine him in sawn-off denims and mirrored aviator sunglasses cruising around, trying to impress the girls. It was the kind of bike that would almost certainly have red flames painted on to the gas tank. A pimped-up bike for a pumped-up pimp.

  There was nobody around. She looked again, more closely this time. She could see an enormous stack of silage, packed into standard-size green plastic bales and stacked up six high like a pile of giant-sized child’s cylindrical building blocks. A newish-looking tractor was parked near the silage heap next to several bewildering, spiky, dangerous-looking tractor attachments. The Massey Ferguson still had the bale-moving attachment for lifting the silage bags connecteded to its front. The bale mover looked like two enormous metal grips on hydraulic arms that would move together like the jaws of a vice until the bag was securely compressed between them so it could be lifted up and manoeuvred. The grab arms meant that the tightly wrapped bags wouldn’t get punctured and the grass inside would ferment, not rot. Not like if you used a forklift on them, which often risked tearing the packaging. Huss had used something similar on her father’s farm.

  The Russians appeared to be doing a reasonable job of running a farm. Huss would doubtless know what the other pieces of machinery were, thought Hanlon. Melinda Huss had been driving her dad’s tractor since she’d been old enough to reach the pedals.

  There were no lights on in the house. Hanlon scratched her head irresolutely. Part of her wanted to go down there and set something on fire, see who came out of the house to investigate and then shoot them, the targets hopefully illuminated by the flames. But that would risk burning Enver to death or suffocating him. Would it be better to break in?

  She texted Danny, nothing happening where he was. Hanlon reached a decision. In a low voice she breathed her plan into Huss’s ear. Huss nodded silently.

  The two women walked down through the oilseed rape field down to the farm. The crop came practically up to their shoulders. The plants were densely packed but a tractor had made a track down which they could walk easily.

  Soon they had reached the farmyard and were crouched down in the lee of the silage bags. Each bag was like a large, green, plastic-wrapped cylinder, shoulder high. They looked over the top of one of the lower bags at the base of the stack. The stack rose up next to them like a step pyramid. Hanlon unslung her rifle and rested it on top of the bag. She chambered a round, and looked at Huss and nodded.

  Huss too had loaded the shotgun. She slid the safety off, and walked round the back of the silage pile to the outhouses. Fuel for agricultural vehicles, red diesel, was tax exempt, and somewhere in the outhouses would be a store of it. There were only three outhouses; all were unlocked.

  She struck lucky in the second outhouse. There were a dozen ten-litre cans of the stuff. Diesel was hard to set alight, unlike petrol, but given a wick, or enough vapour coming off it or a sufficient accelerant, it would go up. Huss shone her torch along the shelves. Meths, good, then paint thinners, even better. Then, bingo, a five-litre drum of petrol. Hanging on a nail above the diesel was a Massey Ferguson key on a fob, almost certainly a spare for the tractor. Huss unhooked it and put it in her pocket.

  Hurriedly, careful not to spill anything on to herself, she made her preparations, including two petrol bombs, simple Molotov cocktails. She’d done this before, aged thirteen, with a boy from a neighbouring farm. It had worked then, the target had been an already burned-out car at the bottom of a field. Her father had gone berserk. It would work now. Good job he never found out about the strip poker too, she thought.

  Huss glanced at her watch. Twelve fifteen a.m.
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  She texted an OK to Hanlon. She glanced down at the phone; no signal here in the dip where the farmhouse was. She waved her arm instead. Seconds later, she watched as Hanlon soundlessly, lightly ran across the yard to the farmhouse. She could see from here that the lights in one of the upstairs windows were on, though nothing showed in the downstairs rooms. Huss guessed that the door leading on to the yard would almost certainly be the one for the kitchen; it was in most farmhouses. The main door for the house would face out to the drive at the front. It would be reserved for visitors and kept for best, like the front room, the old-fashioned parlour.

  The kitchen window was in darkness. She watched as Hanlon tried the door handle and slipped inside.

  Huss’s heart was thundering in her chest like crazy and her mouth was very dry. As if to compensate, her hands were slick with sweat and her head felt it was encased in an iron band. The band grew tighter and tighter. I’m terrified, she realized.

  Then almost immediately came the thought that she was in the middle of nowhere, outside a house containing a group of men, number unknown, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her and were holding the man that she loved hostage. It wasn’t a game. It wasn’t a training exercise. In a couple of minutes either they would be dead or she would.

  She felt a terrible, almost overpowering desire to turn tail and run. And run and run and run. No one will ever know, said a voice in her head, they will never tell. They won’t be able to. They’ll be dead.

  You’ve every right to be terrified, thought her brain, but you’re going to carry on anyway. Fuck, I’m scared, thought Huss.