by Alex Howard
The only question there had to be in his mind was did she work for Schneider or the police or security forces? He had obviously recognized her from the demo in Islington. Her unorthodox approach must have meant that he’d plumped for the former. In Spencer’s mind she was obviously some kind of hired right-wing thug, probably ex-army or mixed martial arts, certainly not connected to the Old Bill. So she could expect... She rolled over immediately.
There was a sharp crack as Spencer pulled the trigger, and a fine spray of dirt and rock fragments as the bullet struck a flint embedded in the soil where her head had been a second earlier.
Well, she thought, he’s certainly not messing around.
She took a look down into the valley. Spencer reloaded the rifle and started up the hill towards her at a fast jog, Jet trotting at his side. Hanlon sprang to her feet and disappeared into the strip of maize bordering the field.
If she’d expected to be hidden she was in for a disappointment.
Almost immediately a whole flock of pheasants, maybe twenty or thirty, zoomed up into the air, squawking, their wings beating loudly. Hanlon groaned to herself. If she had tried to communicate where she was going she could hardly do a better job. Spencer could have been half-blind and partially deaf and still tracked her progress. She heard the dog bark joyfully at the exciting new game they were playing.
She took another step, more bloody birds! They whirred around her, making that weird metallic-sounding alarm that echoed around the valley.
She heard the rifle crack again. God knows where the bullet went. Hanlon decided to put her faith in her fitness.
She crashed through the maize, higher than her head, leaving a trail an idiot could have followed of trampled plants, and then she was in the woods, head down and running in what she hoped was the direction of the hotel.
29
Enver Demirel felt he had never left a kitchen after about five minutes, which was really just as well.
The Rosemount was frantically busy. There were only thirty or so people booked in to the restaurant but there was a business conference which had to be catered for and then the preparation for the evening service as well.
Enver’s job was compounded by the fact that he had no idea what any of the dishes were or where in the variety of fridges things might be found.
The sous chef was a cheery Londoner called Harry Jones.
‘Will you be OK working the grill section, Enver?’
‘Sure,’ said Enver. He had been brought up in the family’s restaurants, two kebab shops and what had eventually become an up-market Turkish restaurant. He had been grilling meat since he was old enough to peer over the chargrill.
And this was where he was standing now, as he:
– Grilled beef fillets on the chargrill (medium-rare) for beef with a red wine and shallot reduction sauce
– Roasted guinea fowl to go with a light tomato jus
– Chargrilled venison fillets, to go with a venison faggot, girolle mushrooms and a juniper and tawny port jus
– Seared duck breasts with a morello cherry and kirsch foam and piroski
And then there were things to pan fry that were the responsibility of this section: sea bass, liver.
The pressure was relentless and two or three times he cocked up and had to be reprimanded by Jones.
He had almost forgotten the superhuman memory that a chef requires. At one point he looked down and realized that he had about twenty pieces of meat, bird, fish all cooking, all needing different times and temperatures and all for a variety of different orders, while the sweat poured off him and the kitchen rang to shouts, pleas and swearing, commands and counter-commands in a variety of accents and languages.
The dishes looked superb. Enver had eaten in a couple of Michelin-starred places but he hadn’t enjoyed himself, even though he was the customer. He felt he might somehow disgrace himself, eat with the wrong cutlery, commit some solecism or clumsily knock something over. A sense of unspecified dread, of impending doom, had hung over both occasions.
Now, busy in the kitchen, he was far too occupied to worry about anything. He only had a vague idea of what he was doing, he could only see his part of the picture.
There was one chef for the sauces, one for vegetables, he was doing most of the meat and fish, concentrating on the order sequence and the timings that each item needed so it would be ready when needed.
Enver thought the sous was exemplary. Jones controlled the whole operation like a conductor with a small ensemble, his nimble fingers plating up the dishes with speed, dexterity and elan. As well as that, he had to make time to ensure that the food for the function room was of a good enough quality for the hotel’s exacting standards. He was a perfect example of grace under pressure.
About quarter to two, they sent their last main course and Jones took him outside. The door from the kitchen to the yard by the bins was open and a long, metal-chain fly screen hung down to protect the kitchen from insects. There was a plastic touchpad on the wall outside about shoulder height that controlled the lock to the back door. Opposite them the long low concrete staff accommodation block stood, like Soviet Union style social housing.
Jones had two bottles of Corona. He opened them with his cigarette lighter and lit a Marlboro. He offered Enver a cigarette and Enver shook his head.
‘I don’t smoke.’
Jones handed Enver a beer and they both drank, sitting companionably on two plastic beer crates.
‘Well, you were great,’ he said to Enver. ‘Where was the last place you worked?’
‘Çiçek,’ said Enver, giving his aunt’s restaurant’s name, ‘and some other places.’ He didn’t want to be put through a series of questions on the London catering scene. ‘What are the brigade like here?’ he asked Jones to close down this line of enquiry.
He paid close attention as Jones ran through the merits and demerits of the other chefs. Enver asked questions about the Muslim chefs, the ones on Gower’s agenda. Privately, he was convinced that this was all a bit of a wild goose chase – in his experience chefs were profoundly uninterested in politics or extremist Islam.
‘Anyway,’ said Jones, ‘you’ll be in the main kitchen tomorrow and then you’ll be at the lodge for the next few days after that, sorry.’
‘The lodge?’ Enver finished his beer and put the bottle down. It had been delicious. The kitchen had been like a sauna. His thick hair was plastered to his head with sweat. His chef’s whites were sodden.
‘Yeah, it’s like a four bedroom house in the grounds with a big fuck-off hedge around it. It’s got its own gym, massage room, and kitchen. And the kitchen has its own chef – that’s you, sunshine. From six a.m. to about midnight.’
‘An eighteen-hour day, then?’ Enver’s voice was resigned.
‘Yep. But you are getting hourly paid, none of that lot would be,’ pointed out Jones, indicating the kitchen. ‘You speak to the client, see what he wants, then let me know cos it’s a separate costing and we might need to order special stuff in, but they’ll pay for it so whatever he wants he can have. I’ll give you some ideas menus, or, of course, they can eat up here. But they’ve paid for privacy so they normally don’t leave the lodge.’
‘Oh, well.’ Enver pointed at the plastic touchpad on the wall. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s thumbprint sensitive, controls the lock on the door. I’ll log you on to the system tomorrow.’ He yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m knackered. Been here since seven. I’m on a split but I’ll just work straight through. I’ve got a hundred panna cotta to make. Fuck-nuts in there, Colin, pastry CDP, I gave him the recipe, told him to get on with it, disaster.’
‘Hard to mess up panna cotta,’ said Enver. ‘What did he do?’ He was genuinely interested.
Jones shook his head. ‘I asked him just now, how did they turn out? Oh fine, he says, I added another five sheets of gelatine in case they didn’t set. I said you fucking what! I took one, bit into it, you could have played squash with it
, like india rubber. Unbelievable stupidity. That lot can’t go out... well, not unless absolutely necessary. He was about to chuck ’em and I said don’t do that yet, we might just need them if mine haven’t set. They should be OK by tonight but...’
‘There’s always a “but”,’ agreed Enver.
Jones nodded. ‘I’ve made him clean out the freezer on his break as punishment. He can reflect on the importance of following instructions while he freezes his arse off.’ He put his cigarette out. ‘So I’m making panna cottas now instead of sleeping. C’est la vie. I’ll get one of the kids to show you to your room in the staff block.’
‘Thanks,’ said Enver.
‘Oh, one last thing,’ Jones said. ‘Is that your old Volvo out there, the burgundy one with the dents in?’
‘Yes.’ Enver felt slightly defensive about his car.
‘You’ll want to move it round there, to staff parking. It’s a bit plebby for the public car park.’
They stood up and stretched and went back inside the kitchen, the fly chains jingling pleasantly as they walked back in.
Enver, with a junior pastry chef in tow to guide him, went in search of his car so the battered old Volvo wouldn’t upset the guests.
30
Hanlon’s feet pounded through the fallen leaves on the floor of the wood. Somewhere behind her would be Mark Spencer with his .22 and a burning desire to do her harm. Hanlon’s breathing was easy, her hair bouncing as she ran, her long, strong legs effortlessly eating up the distance.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t have a problem. She’d seen Spencer’s cycling times on Deke’s Strava app and knew hers would have been much better. She knew she was fitter and she guessed he was no distance runner. If he had been he wouldn’t be the shape that he was. No, what worried her was the dog. She heard it bark, closer now.
She reflected as she ran through the beech and oak trees of the woodland, the occasional clump of rhododendron, their lithe twisted trunks sinuous under their evergreen foliage, that only the fact that the dog seemed unsure of its role in the chase had allowed her to get this far. If it sank its teeth into her leg, it’d all be over. They’d be tumbling around on the floor together, the dog wouldn’t give up easily. Would Spencer really shoot her? She doubted it, but she didn’t want to put it to the test. He might just want to give her a good kicking, or use the rifle butt on her. She had, after all, hurt him a fair bit the other day.
Not to mention humiliated him.
He would want revenge.
Now she could see the trees starting to thin and the dark green of the hawthorn hedge that surrounded the lodge.
She heard a bark near at hand, low and aggressive: Jet. She had a terrible urge to look behind her but worried that she might fall over something or run into a tree. Then a low growl. She glanced down and the dog was running parallel to her, its lips drawn back from its very white, very sharp-looking teeth.
A quick look ahead – there were the steps that led down to the bunker and its comforting iron door.
The dog jumped up at her, snarling, and as it did so Hanlon balled her fist and slammed it into the dog’s head. She felt a burst of pain from her knuckles as they made contact with the animal’s iron skull. It was like hitting a metal bollard.
The Dobermann took the blow in mid-air and it knocked it sideways. It landed and shook its head then walked after Hanlon who had leapt down the steps to the bunker and was now facing the animal, her back to the door, as it stood on the ground above looking down at her.
Hanlon reached behind her with her fingers. She didn’t want to turn her back on the dog. The door had been designed to open outwards. Her fingers found the handle and the edge of the door and she pulled hard. Nothing. No movement.
Jet growled, his brown eyes locked on Hanlon’s grey ones.
She heaved forward desperately. A slight give in the heavy metal door, then it moved open. She pulled harder, still facing the animal that was hunkering down, gathering itself to spring. The dog shuffled its rear, transferring its weight to its hind legs. It bared its teeth. Hanlon’s blow had hurt it, not a great deal, but enough to make it wary.
The door was now open about twenty centimetres, it was enough. Hanlon suddenly slipped inside as quickly as she could as the animal sprang forward. She grabbed the handle and pulled it shut, throwing her weight into the motion.
She heard snarling from the other side and pulled again. There was a snap as the handle came off in her hand, the seventy-year-old metal, partially rusted away, had finally perished.
The door was virtually closed but she could see the dog’s nose and teeth and an angry paw as it tried to squeeze through after her. She looked around. There was daylight at the other end of the bunker, shining through a rectangular hole about head height.
Hanlon ran down the length of the bunker, some twenty-odd metres. There was nothing to impede her, the room was mostly empty as far as she could see. She reached the window hole just as the Dobermann managed to wriggle its way inside. It saw her and barked, streaking towards her. Hanlon reached above her, put her hands on the window sill and heaved herself up. The aperture was wide enough to take her body and she dropped down on to the grass of the lodge’s garden within the circle of the hawthorn hedge.
She looked around. From behind her she heard angry, frustrated snarling. The dog equivalent, she guessed, of swearing.
There, on her right, was the shed that Czerwinski had mentioned. There were no steps to the bunker this side of the hedge, but the ground sloped downwards to it, so it lay in a kind of a dip.
Around the shed three rhododendrons had been planted, to screen both it and what little you could see of the bunker. Standing on the top of the dip, looking down, framed against the skyline, doubtless attracted by the barking, was Schneider’s dog.
Hanlon stared at it in utter disbelief.
It was huge, and massively muscled. It emanated a sinister, vast strength. It looked like a dog that pumped iron and ate steroids. The Dobermann was big enough, but compared to the Presa, Jet was like a small, thin puppy.
Ridges of muscle lay under its short grey and brown fur, its ears, that had pricked up, looked tiny on its wrinkled head. Its paws were enormous. It was a dog from hell.
She guessed it would weigh as much as she did, if not more, and she calculated her chances of survival, if it attacked, would be virtually nil. She had never seen such vicious malice as that animal had in its eyes.
The Presa growled. Or rather it rumbled terrifyingly, an incredibly deep gargling kind of snarl, and took a step towards her. She looked back at the window, calculating her chances of getting back inside with the Dobermann.
Virtually nil.
Hanlon felt utterly powerless, it was a dreadful sensation. For once in her life, she had literally no idea what to do. There was nothing to do. The Presa took another step towards her and made a kind of limbering-up motion with its shoulders.
Then, there was a burst of blurred movement in the periphery of her vision and a thud as the Dobermann landed on the grass near her. In her eagerness to attack Hanlon, Jet had managed to clear the window, taking an almighty leap to bring him from inside the bunker to outside into the garden.
The Dobermann looked at Hanlon and drew its jowls back in a snarl. Compared to the other animal Jet was laughably insignificant. Go on, do your worst, thought Hanlon, see if I care. Then the dog noticed the Presa.
There was no questioning the Dobermann’s bravery, although its judgement was seriously awry. It immediately forgot about Hanlon.
Without flinching the Dobermann pulled its gaze away from her and headed up the slope to the other dog.
They circled each other, the Dobermann’s hackles virtually vertical, its teeth bared, growling aggressively. The Presa was ominously silent. Hanlon backed up against the door of the bunker and tried the handle, it didn’t move. She took a glance at the dogs, they were engrossed in each other. She thanked God for that.
The Presa regarded the Dobermann with
no trace of emotion whatsoever, no growls, no hackle-raising, then, with ferocious speed for a dog its size, it sprang forward and sank its teeth into the shoulder of the Dobermann and, as though it was as light as a toy, tossed the animal into the air with a single shake of its massive head and neck. It was an awesome display of strength. As the smaller dog landed on its back, its belly and throat exposed, the Presa lunged forward with shocking speed.
Hanlon leapt upwards, caught the window and hauled herself back inside. She heard the Dobermann howl once in anguish and agony and then a terrible silence. Her heart thudding, she ran the length of the bunker and out through the other door.
She slammed it shut and ran up the steps. She guessed that Spencer had been relying on the Dobermann catching her and incapacitating her to find her. He’d have been listening out for frenzied barking and shouts. Without those to guide him, he’d have little chance of finding her.
Quite frankly, she didn’t care.
After what she’d seen, Spencer with a .22 was infinitely preferable.
From behind the hedge she heard a noise, a single loud bark of ferocious triumph.
Hanlon sank down on to her knees under the beech trees and threw up.
31
Huss was at the meeting of the Serious Crimes investigation into Elsa’s death. There had been, according to the pathology report, severe head injuries so although she was alive when she was set on fire, it was doubtful that she was aware of what was happening to her.
‘Which is some crumb of comfort,’ said Templeman, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the details of the damage to her skull. ‘At least the poor woman didn’t suffer too much.’ I hope, anyway, he thought.
‘There is that,’ agreed McKenzie.
Templeman was still angry with him at his late arrival at the crime scene. He went on: nothing usable from forensics, no witnesses, the fingertip search had revealed nothing, the area fairly trampled by the boots of the emergency services, the only real hope was footage from a CCTV camera that monitored a nearby junction that was an accident blackspot: a rat run that connected with the road just round from a blind bend. That was being examined now.
