Cold Revenge (2015) (31 page)

It was that experience that taught him Chechen. And it was the attempted rape that had spurred him on to rescue Dimitri a couple of years later in the prison cell.

He didn’t want to use the Russian handguns. He didn’t want to leave any clues as to their ethnicity. From what Joad had told them of Hanlon, there would be quite a list of people wishing her harm. So, he thought, let’s not narrow the field down. Let the Met look for home-grown killers not Russians.

The previous night he’d hacksawed off the barrels of the twelve bore, the one she’d hit Dimitri with, and given him the sawn-off. One barrel for Hanlon’s body, one for the head. After that there’d be very little left of her that would be recognizable as human, apart from arms and legs. There was also very little room for error.

Dimitri and Sam Curtis had been here now, outside the end-of-terrace house in Bow, parked diagonally opposite, since twelve. Curtis stared in surreptitious fascination at Dimitri’s intricate tattoos on his massive forearms. He wished he had some like that. They made his own look stupid.

‘What does that one mean again?’

Dimitri looked at him and said, ‘It means,
I live in sin, I die laughing
.’

Sam asked, ‘Where did you have it done?’

The giant Russian said, ‘In Labour Colony Number 40, in Perm.’ He pointed at some characters on Curtis’s arm. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s Chinese. It says,
Death or honour
,’ said Curtis.

Dimitri suppressed a smile. ‘Where did you have it done?’

‘Woody’s Parlour in the Iffley Road,’ said Curtis. Not exactly ‘The Crosses’ prison in St Petersburg, thought Dimitri contemptuously. He turned his attention back to the house. Nobody had entered or left the house, apart from an old woman, who Dimitri guessed to be in her seventies. Maybe it was Hanlon’s mother.

Dimitri found himself getting increasingly suspicious of this address, this house. It did not seem the kind of place a woman like Hanlon would live. The net curtains, the tiny regimented flowerbed, the cheap statue of a robin in the neat, postage-stamp-sized front garden, it just wasn’t her.

He had texted Arkady to confirm the address; maybe it was a postcode error. It wasn’t. He suddenly realized that it was probably a poste restante, a delivery address and nothing more. A cut-off point between Hanlon and the outside world.

He had an A4 padded envelope with Hanlon’s name and address on. He checked that the sawn-off was loaded and clicked the safety off. He had a deep, diagonal inside pocket, sewn into his tracksuit top, which would contain most of the gun. The excess part of the butt was hidden by the folds of material of the jacket. He doubted that she was in the house, but he would look stupid if she opened the door to him and he wasn’t armed.

‘Hi, remember me!’

‘Wait here,’ he said to Curtis. He got out of the van and stretched painfully. He’d been cooped up in that Ford for hours. They’d been sitting in the back where they couldn’t be seen, a mirror propped on the front seat reflecting the image of Hanlon’s front door. Or to be more precise, a front door.

He crossed the road and opened the gate, rang the doorbell. He could hear the sound resonating inside.

The door had a stained-glass panel, depicting art nouveau-style tulips. Their red heads drooped mournfully. He could make out a figure approaching slowly. Not Hanlon, the old lady. He reached inside the tracksuit jacket and slipped the safety back on.

The door opened, a pair of shrewd eyes assessed him, taking in his huge, pumped bulk, his intimidating features. The enormous biceps distorted the sleeves of his jacket.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I have package for DCI Hanlon.’

She looked at him dubiously. For a nano-second, he toyed with the idea of simply disposing of her. One blow, that’s all it would take. One blow. His fist would shatter her face, she’d go down, and then a stamp with his foot on her throat or neck, it’d be over. Her bones would break like dry twigs. It was very easy to kill old people, he knew from experience. Then he could just wait for Hanlon to arrive in comfort.

But Arkady hadn’t sanctioned it.

‘Do you want me to sign for it?’ asked the old woman.

‘No, is valuable. I must have DCI Hanlon’s signature. When is she back?’

He could see the old woman didn’t believe a word he was saying.

‘Oh, I don’t know, dear, she comes and goes. Do you have a card, I’ll tell her you called, Mr...?’

‘Is not important. My boss will call her, thanks for your help.’

‘What delivery company are you, dear?’

He smiled meaninglessly at her. ‘I am sorry.’ He grimaced. ‘My English not too good. I come back.’

He turned and retreated down the path.

Well, he realized he was beaten for now, but he knew that he had guessed correctly. The place was a poste restante and the old woman would almost certainly tell Hanlon someone suspicious had been asking after her. She’d probably be calling Hanlon in the next few minutes.

Hanlon would want a description. Eastern European, huge. She’d know it was him and she’d want to come over and check things out. She wouldn’t be deterred by the thought he might be waiting.

He doubted she would be making anything official. Her actions in Woodstock were proof enough that she was working alone; she would want to keep it that way. When she turned up – and she would come, he had no doubt of that – it would be by herself.

He heard the door close behind him and he got back into the van, started the engine and moved away quickly. He knew that the woman would immediately go upstairs to check the street.

The road was quiet, with two entrances at either end where Hanlon might appear. At least he knew the make of her car and he would certainly never forget what she looked like.

At the end of the street he parked and said to Curtis, ‘Go to nearest car-hire place and come back with something small. Park other end of street.’ He jotted down the number and the make of her Audi. ‘This is her car. You see it, you call me.’ He scrolled through the image gallery on his phone and sent her image to Curtis’s.

‘This is photo of Hanlon. You see her, you call me. Every thirty minutes, you text me.’

‘Sure, boss,’ said Curtis. He was eager to ingratiate himself with the huge Russian. Dimitri and Arkady were like gods to him. It was an enormous promotion to have got a job with Belanov’s firm and he wanted to prove himself worthy of the honour.

As he left the van, he wondered again who had damaged Dimitri’s face. He must have some balls, he thought. He must be built like a brick shit-house. It was probably some other branch of the Russian mafia that had done it, he decided. Who else would dare?

Curtis turned his attention to the job in hand. This new task would give him the chance to show how good he was. Already he was planning on Googling car-rental places in Bow; he had a fake driving licence that was registered at Swansea.

Today was his chance to shine. He fully intended to make the most of it.

Fuller entered the university through a back entrance that few knew about. The university, like just about every university he had worked or studied in, apart from the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which were more like mini-fortresses with their main gates and high walls, was a jumble of buildings with a variety of approaches.

The one Fuller chose was down an alleyway and then along a cul de sac, which ended in a small barred gate hidden behind some bins. The gate should have been locked, but never had been in all the time that Fuller had worked there.

The gate led to an access road that ran round the back of the main university building and was used for deliveries and waste collection. At this time of night, six p.m., it was deserted. Fuller was wearing hipster jeans that were a bit of a squeeze to get on these days, Converse sneakers and a hooded Queen’s College top which obscured his face. CCTV would show him up as a generic student.

He could easily have got into the university through the main entrance, but tonight it would very much suit his purpose to be incognito.

Around the corner was one of the smaller student-union meeting rooms. There were half a dozen in the university, to serve the ten thousand strong student body. Access to it was theoretically only possible via the internal corridors branching off the university main halls.

Tuesday nights in this particular meeting room were pre-booked all term by the al-Nahda (in Arabic it meant ‘renaissance’) society. They were a moderate group of Muslim intellectual students, who debated the perennial issues gripping the Arab world. Israel, American foreign policy, democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood, the usual. More importantly for Fuller, he knew their routine. He had been a guest speaker at their meetings a couple of times, and a lot of them, particularly the overseas Middle Eastern students, smoked. The emergency door was propped open to allow exit to the outside for this purpose.

Prayer time for early evening tonight was six thirty p.m. Fuller lingered in the shadows outside, until he heard the opening of the
Shihaada
in the
Adhan
, the call to prayer:

‘Allah u Akbar.’

He knew this meant God is Greatest. More importantly, he also knew that it would be repeated three times and that everyone inside would be facing the Qibla, the direction of the Ka’aba in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Fortunately for Fuller, this was opposite the door he was about to use. Everybody’s back, without exception, would be turned.

He slipped through the door unseen. He was in the corridor outside the meeting room and he could see the backs of heads of about forty Islamic students engrossed in their devotions. Nobody looked round; nobody saw him.

Unseen and unnoticed, he slipped into the main university building.

In the capacious pockets of his jacket he had a choke chain and mask.

He was ready for her this time. This time he knew she wouldn’t say no.

Enver sat in the kitchen with Alison Vickery. Her cooking was every bit as good to taste as to smell. A while ago he had started to feel major guilt pangs about eating so much and mentioned this to Alison. She was one of those people who he met occasionally that he just clicked with. Like the missing piece of a particularly irregular cut in a jigsaw. She rolled her eyes impatiently.

‘Shut up, Enver,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite.’

Enver had taken his jacket off and Alison Vickery could see his powerful ridged pectoral and shoulder muscles; she could guess at the iron-hard sinew beneath the skin.

‘You’ve got a lovely body,’ she said to him. She meant it.

‘I’m overweight.’ said Enver gloomily. ‘I eat too much.’

Sex was off the agenda, but Alison was one of those women that he felt an affinity with. Usually he was very shy with women, but not with her.

‘Well, you’re not size zero, that’s for sure. But if girls want to date Mo Farrah, they’ll hang around more athletics meetings,’ said Alison. ‘You look pretty good to me. Now, have you got any more questions?’

He looked round the sizeable kitchen for inspiration. He didn’t want this moment to end. He felt at ease in his skin.

The room was functional. She hadn’t tried to turn it into a farmhouse kitchen, or a Sunday-supplement version of one. Enver knew that Huss’s mother’s kitchen, which was a real farmhouse kitchen, was full of dog baskets, bits of machinery like distributor caps, Defra correspondence and tools. It drove Huss mad.

Only Alison’s utility room, seen through an open door, showed any signs of non-culinary activity. On top of the cupboards above a double sink, and extending to some ancillary shelving, were various industry awards that had been presented to her over the years, old framed photos, cups for netball and ice skating that she’d won, and even a stylized John Travolta in his trademark pose out of
Saturday Night Fever
. Things she didn’t want to throw away, but equally didn’t want to display.

Enver was terrible at dancing. He thought he probably looked like a tormented bear. On the dance floor he felt like everyone was pointing at him and sniggering.

‘So, you dance as well,’ he said aimlessly, looking at the dance trophy.

‘Oh, that,’ said Alison. ‘That’s not mine, that belongs to my ex. He loves dancing. It’s an obsession.’

Hanlon ordered a bitter lemon at the pub near the British Museum while she waited for Michaels. She felt oddly conspicuous in her new dress and matching shoes with a slight heel. Generally speaking, she dressed so as not to be noticed, or if she was competing in a triathlon, the only thing that distinguished her from the others was usually a race number fastened to her top. Invisibility was the intended objective.

She suddenly thought, what if Michaels thinks I’ve made the effort for him?

So tonight was unusual. She had become aware of several men looking surreptitiously at her, when they thought she wasn’t going to notice. Hanlon scowled irritably. She was beginning to feel overdressed. Had she made a mistake in wearing this to the ‘Women in Policing’ do? She was not a fine judge of dress code. She suddenly had a morbid fear of being laughed at. She recognized this to be stupid but there was nothing she could do about it. Well, it was far too late to go home and change.

To take her mind off this train of unproductive thought, she recalled her afternoon with the Whitesides. It was a minor victory, but it had left a taste in her mouth as sour as the slice of lemon in her drink.

The last time she had been to see the Whitesides it had been as a supplicant, a beggar. This time it was like threatening a criminal. No, it wasn’t like that, it
was
that. Whiteside senior had been manifestly guilty of defrauding the Department of Work and Pensions. If he was well enough to carry his heavy crate of religious pamphlets into Lambeth market and stand for a couple of hours, haranguing the locals on the need for repentance and to call on the Lord to forgive their sins, then he was well enough to work. Well enough to realize he was lying, when he said he was suffering from crippling back pain that kept him housebound.