Cold Revenge (2015) (30 page)

What you see is all there is.

Alison rolled her eyes and clicked her phone off. ‘Milan,’ she said. ‘Like headless chickens. I’ll have to go over there tomorrow now.’

She stopped the machine and dipped a finger in the cream. He watched as she held it up to her mouth and saw the pink tip of her tongue as she licked it.

There was a feeling in the room like the heavy electrical charge you get before a savage thunderstorm. He could feel the hairs on his head and arms bristle.

She took the whisk attachments off the machine and put them in the sink. Then she smiled and moved towards Enver.

He suddenly knew with a terrible clarity that she felt the same way about him as he did her.

He could imagine closing his eyes in ecstasy as he felt her arms around him, her body pressing against his.

He could imagine kissing her and tasting the cream on her tongue.

He could imagine moving upstairs with her, still clinched together, she walking backwards, step by step, their bodies pressing into each other, then, on the landing, as she said at the door of the spare room, ‘In here. No one goes in my room apart from me.’

But he didn’t. Alison Vickery was still a witness in a murder enquiry, but above all Enver knew he would feel, rightly or wrongly, that he had somehow taken advantage of her. He was an old-fashioned kind of man. He coughed and smiled despairingly at her and she, divining his thoughts, smiled sadly and ruefully back.

What might have been and now never was.

‘More tea?’ she asked again.

He nodded; he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Hanlon walked into Room 8 of the Tate Modern in Southwark by the River Thames. Both of the Tate Galleries – indeed, now she thought about it, more or less every gallery she had ever been in – were mysterious places, like mazes, labyrinthine. And like a well-designed maze there was always something half-glimpsed in the distance that made you think you knew where you were going, until you got there and it was illusory.

The great former power station, a testimony to the glory of brick construction, was one of her regular places to visit in London. Its shape made her think of the other industrial complex she’d seen recently, in Edmonton. But Southwark, with its enormously expensive property, is a hymn to wealth, Edmonton, a London blues song of poverty and the paucity of dreams. If you did have a dream in Edmonton, it would be to get out.

This wasn’t her favourite gallery. She preferred Tate Britain, always so much quieter and intimate than the assertive Tate Modern, that and more user friendly. The Tate Modern was a very shouty building. It bellowed Art at the top of its voice. She also enjoyed walking through the creamy, white stucco streets of Pimlico, which always seemed a haven of tranquillity after the noisier parts of London. The streets often seemed strangely deserted there. At times it was almost dreamlike, particularly with the ziggurat shape of the MI6 building like a Mayan temple opposite, on the other side of the river.

Here was the reverse. Opposite was the whirlwind of activity of the City clustered round the epicentre of the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street. The river traffic was heavy, tourist boats and commercial barges ploughing through the dirty, thick water of the Thames. The huge river was the kind of nondescript grey, green-brown colour that you get when you’re a kid painting in class and you keep rinsing your brush out in a jam jar. The South Bank was full of tourists wandering along from the west of London, or maybe visiting the Globe Theatre next door. There were joggers and City refugees, who’d walked across from the North side to escape the commercial hubbub. There were living statues and a Mickey Mouse, and a small stage was being prepared for a band to play later that lunchtime.

Then there was the human traffic over the Millennium Bridge, from which you could see the spires and towers of Canary Wharf in the distance.

Hanlon made her way through the immense building that was the Tate. She wanted to see again some of the work by the man she assumed her father had liked, the artist whose signed photograph hung on her wall. The gallery was fairly quiet today and the room with the Beuys sculptures was virtually empty of other gallery visitors.

After several false starts and turnings, she found the Beuys.

At first glance, the sculptures themselves seemed disappointing, the usual kind of thing that gets modern art ridiculed. She felt disappointed, slightly cheated. Then she looked more carefully. There were three pieces on display. Hanlon found herself drawn to
Hirschdenkmal
or
Monument to Stag
, whose juxtaposition of metal frames and tubing on floor and table reminded her uncomfortably of the dead, still warm, body of Dame Elizabeth. Even the table that the sculpture lay on echoed Dame Elizabeth’s blood-spattered desk. What had been a hyper-intelligent, energetic über-woman in the prime of her life, a woman with so much to give, had been reduced by the actions of some moral cretin to a bag of bones and flesh.

It wasn’t so much the cruelty of her death that upset Hanlon, as the fact it had been caused by a selfish idiot.

Thinking about Dame Elizabeth’s death sent a powerful current of rage surging through her body.

If she had arrived five minutes earlier, she could have prevented that. She put aside the thought. What’s done is done. No use torturing herself with regrets.

She looked again at the sculpture, at its title. Someone had killed the stag. Someone had killed Dame Elizabeth, Jessica McIntyre and Hannah Moore.

Opposite the dead stag was another sculpture, this one huge, an enormous elongated triangle of pitted and corrugated black steel hanging down from a girder.

Stag with Lightning in its Glare.

It was like the flash of a vengeful thunderbolt. Hanlon stared at it, her face withdrawn and sinister. She rubbed the scar on her head, invisible under her thick hair.

She thought of lightning; she thought of revenge.

Now it was time for the hunter to become the hunted.

I am the Lightning, she thought. I am the storm.

She was glad now she’d visited the gallery. The Beuys sculpture was a coded message from beyond the grave.

She thought, Dame Elizabeth wouldn’t approve, she hadn’t believed in revenge. Kant wouldn’t have approved. Tough, thought Hanlon, I do.

She walked outside the gallery and sat on one of its wide steps, looking out at the broad Thames and the flat temple-like shapes of the buildings across the water on the far bank, with the dome of St Paul’s rising above them. There was a cool breeze and it caught her wiry, curly hair, blowing it across her face. Her phone vibrated and she checked the text message.

It was from the anonymous caller.
Whiteside Senior claims incapacity benefits
, it read.

Hanlon thought back to her meeting with the Whitesides.

‘
John preaches down at the market.
’

‘
My husband carries them down to the market.
’

‘
He’s ever so strong.
’

All said by Mrs Whiteside.

Hanlon thought of the heavy wooden crate, the A-board for the ‘Repent!’ signs, the bull-like chest of the father, similar to that of his son’s. Whiteside senior might be incapacitated emotionally or morally, but as far as Hanlon could see, the Good Lord had seen fit to grant him perfect health.

Hanlon’s secondary school had been a C of E girls’ grammar school. She had come away with religion. She knew the major prayers, she could still remember the words to ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away’ and ‘All things Bright and Beautiful’.

They hadn’t covered homosexuality in RE, but theft had certainly been on the curriculum. She could still remember the dessicated, elderly Miss Ardglass saying:

‘Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death.’

And, more succinctly,‘
Thou shalt not steal.
’

Well, well, well. She scrolled through the hundreds of her contact names on her phone, until she came to Desmond Jardine of the DWP. He was a senior Fraud Investigation Officer and he loved his work.

‘Hi, Des, it’s DCI Hanlon here... Yes, they promoted me... Actually, you could. Could I call in and see you for ten minutes if you’re around... This afternoon would be fantastic. See you then.’

A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal.

She thought to herself, well, Mr Whiteside, judge not lest ye be judged.

And the DWP will be coming to judge you. And they will be in a wrathful mood.

Hanlon’s next stop was Regent Street and the revamped area incorporating Carnaby Street. It was almost the reverse side of the City. That was a place, a secular temple, devoted to the making and worship of money. Its buildings were stone, glass and concrete hymns to mammon. It was an almost spiritual place. The West End was just consumerism gone berserk. Hanlon wandered around Carnaby Street and the adjacent area. For years it had been full of shops selling tat, T-shirts with the Pope smoking a spliff, or bearing the legend
My Sister went to London and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
. Now it had become chic again.

She missed Whiteside terribly as she looked for something to wear. He’d loved helping her whenever she’d bought anything. He loved shopping. Hanlon did not particularly enjoy clothes shopping. It seemed a frivolous waste of time. But she knew what suited her and after all, she only had to buy one dress and shoes.

She thought of Mark in his room in the hospital, wired up to machinery, in the endless sleep of his coma. She tried to imagine him next to her, his powerful, shapely body, his mocking laugh.

She settled on a shimmery, tight-fitting dress for her ‘Women in Policing’ dinner. It was probably not formal enough but Hanlon liked it. Whiteside would have done. If Corrigan didn’t he could always send her home. Then again, Corrigan would be delighted that she hadn’t turned up wearing something deliberately designed to annoy him.

It was a very sixties style that suited her slim, athletic figure. The shop assistant looked at her admiringly. She wished she had Hanlon’s legs. In fact, she’d have settled happily for the rest of Hanlon, given the chance. The dress was breathtaking and Hanlon looked stunning.

She studied herself critically in the mirror.

‘Is it for a date?’ asked the shop assistant timidly. Serving Hanlon was unnerving. She wanted the scary, monosyllabic woman out of the shop. Startled by the question, not one she was used to being asked, Hanlon started to glare, grey eyes narrowing menacingly. The shop assistant quailed inwardly. Then Hanlon suddenly thought, yes, it is, in an odd way. I am buying it for a date with a man I like and respect. Surprising but true. She had never really thought about Corrigan except as a necessary evil, but the truth was, she suddenly realized, I really do have a lot of time for him.

He’d started as a beat copper when to be Irish was a dirty word, when houses that offered accommodation had signs up:
No blacks, No Irish, No Dogs
.

Now he was almost top dog in the Met and one of the most respected figures in British policing. And he likes me, she thought wonderingly, which considering all the trouble I’ve brought him, is quite amazing.

She remembered a conversation she’d had with him when she was recovering after the business with Conquest in Essex.

‘What have you been doing, sir?’ she’d asked.

‘Digging you out of the shit, DI Hanlon. What do I spend my time doing? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your reply.’

‘Digging me out of the shit, sir.’

She smiled at the memory.

Tonight I’ll do what normal people do. It won’t be spectacular, but I’ll have a nice time. I’ll enjoy myself.

I’ll eat, drink and be merry. I’ll be a credit to the force. It can’t be that hard.

‘Yes,’ she said, almost shyly. ‘Yes, it is for a date.’

Dimitri and Sam Curtis, a young Oxford thug who worked for the two Russians, got out of the white van that Curtis had stolen from Coventry the previous day. It was a five-year-old Ford Transit, now fitted with false plates. Dimitri liked white vans, their anonymous ubiquity. Arkady had wanted no connections to be made at all between Oxford and the dead policewoman. He’d also been very specific on how he wanted her killed.

Dimitri had wanted to take his time; he wanted to beat her to death, slowly. Arkady vetoed that. The woman had shown herself to be more than resourceful. Besides, who knew who else might be in the house, or indeed what else. For all they knew she might have a Rottweiler or some such animal, a Doberman, for example. The point was to do the job simply, effectively, cleanly, without anything going wrong.

Arkady had several handguns at the Woodstock Road property, two SR1 Gyurza 9 mm pistols and a Makarov. He also had his favourite piece, a Baikal. This was a small, snub-nose handgun and it had enough power to pierce a bulletproof jacket. They were old friends, old military service issue. He’d served his year of compulsory military service in Chechnya. It was the end of the nineties. Arkady wasn’t partying like it was 1999; he was in Putin’s second Chechen war. He’d learned how to kill, not just Chechens either.

Dedovschina
, forcible male prostitution and rape, is commonplace for military conscripts, but Arkady was already a tough survivor of Russian state institutions. People had tried it on with him before and he’d killed the first soldier who’d tried to take him. There was no trouble after that. This soldier was what they called a ‘Grandad’, a conscript whose time was up and who’d soon be going home. Perpetually drunk and not caring about how they behaved now they could see the dazzling light of freedom after a year or two of terrible food, lice, stolen pay, perpetual danger and squalor, the ‘Grandads’ were the most feared group in the army, after the officers, of course. They could do what they wanted. In Arkady’s unit punishment beatings were common, sometimes for no reason at all other than just for the hell of it. If Arkady had killed an officer, he’d never have survived.

He’d dumped the dead ‘Grandad’ at Konservny, the mass open grave on the edges of Grozny, the state capital. No one cared. In fact, Arkady’s CO promoted him, impressed with his abilities. He was transferred to an ‘Elimination Group’. They were given a list of targets and a Polaroid camera to photograph the corpse. Then either a trip back to Konservny if they were minded to return the body or, if not, ‘pulverization’ as they called it. This involved strapping the body to a high-explosive artillery shell. Absolutely nothing was left.