A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) Read online

  The only other things the room contained were a steel frame like a U-shape that supported a bar Hanlon could use as a squat rack, or position above her head for pull-ups, and a pile of weights from twenty kilos downwards to add to the barbell.

  The sole decoration was a large framed photograph, black and white, of a seated man in his late forties, in jeans, workboots, shirt and a fisherman’s vest. He was wearing a kind of Homburg hat and looked faintly anguished. His eyes were soulful, his build powerful. It looked like it had been taken in the sixties. It had been signed but Huss couldn’t read the signature.

  The table had a copy of a triathlon magazine and a history of Iran.

  The room was frighteningly spartan.

  Huss sat down on the chair as instructed and watched as Hanlon opened a cupboard, pulled out a pair of jeans, a hooded top and, from a shoe rack, a pair of calf-high army boots. Ignoring Huss, she stripped off the clothes she was wearing, hung up the jacket and skirt, and put her blouse and tights in a basket in the cupboard. Huss looked enviously at Hanlon’s gymnast’s body revealed in her black, minimalist underwear. The effort and the discipline it would take to make it look that way was awe-inspiring.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Huss asked. Hanlon zipped up her jeans, her flesh above her hips taut over the waistband. Huss could see the outlines of Hanlon’s stomach muscles under the skin above her navel. She stood holding the hoodie.

  ‘I think I may have some idea where Enver is being held,’ she said. ‘So I’m going to take a look.’

  Huss stood up. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Hanlon, putting on her hoodie. She pushed the legs of her jeans up, showing shapely muscular calves, and pulled on socks.

  ‘Write this address down,’ she ordered Huss. Melinda Huss felt irritated at Hanlon’s high-handedness, but it was a huge improvement on feeling sick with worry for Enver.

  She dictated the Slough address to Huss, who keyed it into her phone while Hanlon laced up the army boots. They were US Army issue, light, perfectly fitting and sturdy. She could run well in them, climb in them, kick in them, and they were amazingly comfortable.

  ‘That’s where I’m going. I’m collecting someone to help me get in. I’ll be back about midnight.’

  She stood up, collected her phone and car keys and another couple of items Huss couldn’t see, and shoved them in a small black rucksack.

  Hanlon’s face was grim but confident.

  ‘And if you’re not back by midnight?’

  ‘Call Corrigan.’

  ‘We could do that now,’ said Huss. ‘Make it official.’

  Hanlon stood up. ‘I want a run at this by myself. If we call Corrigan now he’ll have no choice but to do everything by the book, you know that. And from what you tell me, then Belanov will know everyone’s coming. Joad will tell him, this other guy he’s got will tell him, and he’ll put Enver where he won’t be found. And if they bring Belanov and Dimitri in for questioning they’ll lawyer up. In fact, they’ll probably demand an interpreter,’ she said irritably, ‘buy themselves even more time.’

  Huss knew she was right, but discipline ran deep. ‘But we’ve got resources if we do it properly.’

  ‘We’ll get nothing if we do it officially,’ said Hanlon. ‘Just give me four hours, then we’ll know one way or another. Besides,’ she added, ‘Enver might not even be there. It’s just an educated guess on my part.’

  ‘OK,’ said Huss warningly. ‘Get in touch before midnight or I’ll call Corrigan.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Hanlon contemptuously. ‘You just go ahead and do that.’ Huss silently watched her leave. The door clicked to behind her. Enraging and rude, but if anyone was going to find Enver, she’d bet on Hanlon.

  Alone, feeling annoyingly useless, Melinda Huss looked around Hanlon’s one-roomed apartment. She sighed and stood up, went over to the cupboard that contained what passed for Hanlon’s kitchen and put the kettle on. She opened a cupboard and found some tea bags. There was little else in the cupboard – tins of tuna, dried pasta, rice.

  Huss found a cup and opened the fridge. Some cheese, eggs, no milk. She found salt but no sugar. Her stomach rumbled; she was starving. She should have been in the pop-up restaurant with Enver.

  Where was he?

  Enver, she thought, what have you done?

  There was a full-length mirror on the wall facing the bars, where she imagined Hanlon would do intense workouts, checking her form in the mirror. It wouldn’t be there for vanity, although it had to be admitted, she thought, that Hanlon was a highly attractive woman. Huss had seen her virtually naked and the effect on a man would be electric.

  It was strange but she no longer resented Enver’s obsession with Hanlon. The woman was weirdly compelling, as if she exerted an irresistible gravitational pull. Huss was beginning to understand the respect that Hanlon seemed to command, not just in her colleagues from Corrigan down but the world in general. But at what cost? Hanlon’s apartment said it all really. A life devoid of comfort, fun, friends.

  Oh, well, thought Huss, she’s chosen this path, good luck to her. I wouldn’t want to be her, although I wouldn’t mind those abs. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. She prodded her own stomach experimentally. Bit more give there than on Hanlon’s. A lot more, if she was honest. Well, she was attractive too, in a large, generously proportioned way. She smiled at her reflection. Her best dress and jacket were wildly inappropriate for her new, monastic surroundings. She thought, I’ll probably have to spend the night here. Huss, in happy preparation for her night with Enver, had packed an Agent Provocateur kimono and a ridiculously skimpy nightdress. She groaned at the thought of wearing them in front of Hanlon; she could imagine her sardonic amusement.

  Huss was thinking of anything to avoid thinking of Enver Demirel. Please God, let him be all right, she prayed.

  She kicked her heels off and looked around again. No TV, Hanlon’s laptop was almost certainly password protected, her own iPad was at home. She hadn’t been expecting this. What could she do to kill time? To take her mind off Enver?

  She picked up Hanlon’s book. She didn’t want to be reading this, or anything, for that matter. She wanted to be watching Helena Bonham Carter in a dark cinema, holding Enver’s large hand and feeling the sap rising. She shook her head in disbelief. God, I hope he’s all right. She started reading about pre-Achaeminid Iran circa three thousand BC. She read that the Elamites destroyed Ur round about two thousand BC. And they’re still at it, Huss thought. She turned another page.

  It was going to be a long night.

  23

  After meeting Albert Slater at Iris Campion’s, in an idle moment at work, Hanlon had looked up his criminal record, which had begun when he was sixteen and had gone on, in various forms, until he was sixty. It took in everything from sex, when being gay had been a crime, to real crime. There had been importuning in a public toilet and gross indecency, Slater’s gay martyrdom, that would only end in 1967 when homosexuality was legalized. However, this sexual persecution was leavened with his first conviction for burglary at eighteen and a string of other offences, mainly other counts of burglary of commercial premises. Sex crimes (i.e., convictions for homosexual behaviour) ended in 1967, and real crime, burglary and robbery, took over until the late eighties. His record was sprinkled with occasional affray and a couple of GBH convictions. Slater was quite a violent man.

  Something about the aged villain had stimulated Hanlon’s curiosity and she had gone for a quiet drink with a copper, now retired from the force, who she had worked with years previously. McClennan had worked with Tremayne, her guv’nor from way back, when she had been a probationer. He knew Albert – Vicious little bastard, he used to get pissed and cause fights. He’d really camp it up to provoke a reaction and then go for it. McClennan had taken another sip from his pint. They’d been in a pub in Wardour Street, very close to the Krafft Club, an establishment he would have known well by name, not as a punt
er.

  Francis McClennan had leaned over the small, heavy, circular wooden table and put his face close to hers. The pub had been packed, the noise deafening.

  ‘I tell you something, Hanlon, he was very good at breaking and entering – neat, tidy, knowledgeable. I think he got used on some big jobs, couple down in Hatton Garden, very high security, but Albert was good with electronics. He moved with the times.’

  She looked affectionately at McClennan, paunchier, jowlier, redder of face and nose than he had been fifteen years earlier, but still good-looking in a kind of dad-off-the-leash way. He’d got carried away once, drunkenly frisky, and had tried to grab her at a police do when he was very pissed. She’d kneed him hard in the groin. Neither bore the other any resentment. Now McClennan had a business running background checks on people for companies seeking in-depth profiles of potential employees – high-risk, high-responsibility jobs where the employer wanted to know every scrap of carefully buried dirt that may have stuck to the candidate in question. McClennan had the expertise and the contacts and the mindset that made his services highly sought after. He’d been delighted to hear from Hanlon and assist her.

  ‘Albert, hey. I think he sells Chinese stuff now; goes to Hong Kong a lot.’

  ‘Drugs?’ asked Hanlon hopefully. McClennan shook his head.

  ‘No, all legit. Furniture, rugs, that kind of stuff. Chinoiserie, that’s what it’s called, isn’t it?’ He shook his head ruefully at the way of the world. Hanlon could smell his industrially powerful aftershave; his hair was swept back and lacquered into place. He had a consoling mouthful of beer. She looked at him with genuine regard. ‘Chinoiserie. I don’t know, Hanlon. A grown man selling knick-knacks.’

  ‘Do you know his address, Frank?’ she asked innocently.

  McClennan smiled at her. ‘Same old Hanlon, eh?’ he said. She had a reputation for leaning on people, for extorting favours. He wondered what she would want from Slater. He considered her request. Hanlon was tainted goods, but she had been his mate’s protégée and she had an odd effect of charming people when she wanted to. McClennan looked at her and pushed a hand through his hair, still thick and abundant at sixty-four. He looked at her hard, attractive face, the gleam of her eyes. I wish I was thirty years younger, he thought.

  ‘I’ll find out and email it to you.’

  And he had. Before he had left Hanlon, he had turned to her. ‘You’ve got my mobile number. You need info on anyone, any time, Hanlon, I’ll drop what I’m doing and help. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Thanks, Frank,’ she’d said, touched by the affection in the old copper’s voice.

  After leaving Huss, Hanlon went straight to Albert’s place. It was at the end of a street in Kentish Town on the way up to Tufnell Park, near the Forum. It had been a crappy street in a crappy part of town but now, with the tide of gentrification spreading inexorably from the epicentre of Camden, it had become desirable.

  His house was at the end of a terrace. She guessed that there had been another house at one time next to it but it had been demolished, making space for a kind of yard that abutted on to Albert Slater’s property. Yellowing bricks that made up the high wall were topped by sagging barbed wire to deter intruders.

  Hanlon thought to herself that if anyone knew how to prevent a break-in it would be Albert Slater. She looked more closely at the rusty, sagging barbed wire, saw a double row of gleaming razor wire concealed by the old stuff. A suitable metaphor for Albert himself.

  Access to the yard was via a gate wide enough to allow a single vehicle through. The red, rusty metal gates looked old and rickety, but when you got close you noticed that the hinges holding them up were massive and recessed into the brickwork. You also noticed the state-of-the-art computerized keypad, again recessed neatly into the bricks, and a couple of small skeletal cameras monitoring the gates.

  She moved on to the house and rang the doorbell. All the windows that faced on to the street were protected by ornamental wrought-iron metal grilles. She noticed again that there was a small camera above the door that inquisitively moved around on its gimbelled mounting as it surveyed her.

  The intercom by the door asked, ‘And who might you be?’ It was Slater’s voice, tinny and robotic through the small speaker.

  She pushed back the hood of the top she was wearing and stared up at the camera. Their unblinking gazes, her grey eyes, the lens of the camera, met and held.

  ‘DCI Hanlon,’ she said. ‘Lily Law.’

  Hanlon and Albert Slater looked at one another. The elderly criminal was wearing an ornate Chinese mandarin-style dressing gown, the style of which Chantal’s Rayon copy had tried childishly to emulate. He was wearing a white silk shirt underneath it, black trousers and black kung fu-style slippers.

  The clothes suited him. He looked like a sinister tai pan from Hong Kong. He was dressed more for Kowloon or Canton than Kentish Town.

  He had led her from the doorway, a state-of-the-art console just inside the door providing views of the doorway and the street. Her professional eyes had noted the three bolts that would slide into the wall of the house from the door when he closed it. They were activated by a palm-sensitive motion detector that she could hear engaging other locks with synchronized precision. It would have cost thousands. The frame was steel-reinforced. The hinges belonged on a safe. Good luck trying to break that door down, she thought, if the police tried to raid him.

  ‘This way, Hanlon,’ he said.

  She followed him down the narrow hall passage, piled high with cardboard boxes done up for delivery or receipt, then into Slater’s front room.

  It was very warm in there and smelled of smoke, stale air and incense. It was dimly lit and crammed with artefacts and handicrafts, some cheap and gimcrack, some obviously extremely expensive. A couple of battery-operated, plastic cats, the kind that you saw in cheap and cheerful Chinese restaurants, their white faces with fixed, painted smiles, endlessly waved their paws in a hypnotically metronomic way. There were expensive-looking oriental rugs, rolled up and stacked like logs of wood, a Chinese suit of armour on a frame – ‘Tang Dynasty,’ said Slater – ceremonial swords on racks, and other lethal-looking antique weaponry, familiar to her from Hong Kong kung fu films. There were vases and a phalanx of replica terracotta warriors. As well as the chinoiserie, there were reminders of another more techno-savvy Slater. Steel shelving held carefully labelled electronic equipment and circuitry, a bank of monitors flickered randomly, showing images of the front and back of Albert Slater’s property, the yard adjoining the house with an old classic Mercedes sports car from the late sixties – ‘1968 280SL,’ said Albert Slater – and next to it a nondescript white Ford Transit van. Other TV screens stacked on top were broadcasting Sky News, a Chinese channel and several showing a variety of hard-core gay porn like a homoerotic TV showroom. Sucking and fucking, fisting and golden showers, waves of cum sprayed and dripped over faces, buttocks, groins and eager tongues and mouths. The good-luck battery-powered cats sat waving their paws tirelessly at them. The screens displayed the silent, heaving bodies, money shots and the black-and-white exterior of street and yard.

  The walls of heavy red-flock wallpaper were decorated with Tom of Finland prints, some signed, Robert Mapplethorpe male nudes and classic Chinese landscapes. There were Japanese shunga prints, serious-looking oriental women being penetrated by eye-wateringly large Japanese penises, their owners also serious-looking, inscrutable. The room was dominated by a huge, black-lacquered desk.

  Hanlon was inspecting a print showing a gay orgy, more fucking and sucking – there are only so many variations after all – enormous engorged penises, ferociously intent anal sex. Brows were furrowed. More of the same was going on silently on the TV screen.

  ‘Did your omi-palone sharpy friend like Tom of Finland?’ asked Slater from behind his desk. His voice was sarcastic, the usage of the archaic Polari gay slang a deliberate anachronism to disconcert Hanlon. He had an oriental opium pipe in his hand, a long, t
hin stem and small bowl.

  ‘He preferred action to looking at pictures,’ said Hanlon. ‘He was kind of old fashioned that way.’ She sat down opposite Slater. The room was lit by a Tiffany lamp. The shadows were deep. The desk had an Apple Mac connected to some kind of external drive before the cable snaked away into the gloomy recesses of the room.

  Slater touched the device gently. ‘Firewall,’ he said. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

  Next to the Mac was an old-fashioned telephone with a circular dial. The front of it was given over to numbers 1–9, arranged like a clock. You didn’t key the numbers in; you inserted a finger and turned. A receiver was balanced on top: one end for speaking; one end for listening. A curly cable connected it to the box.

  ‘No, no, you can’t,’ said Hanlon. Slater lit his pipe and inhaled deeply. A plume of greasy black smoke rose upwards. Hanlon could smell the burning opium now, heavy, stifling, powerful. Slater closed his eyes luxuriantly; the room was extremely hot. There were stacks of currency on the desk, tens, twenties, fifties, euro notes and ones she didn’t recognize with Chinese characters, presumably yuan. The lazy, oily, fragrant smoke curled into the dark, heavy shadows that surrounded the circle of warm light from the lamp.

  ‘Very daring of you to come and visit an old fruit like me,’ said Slater drowsily. ‘Sticking your esong where it doesn’t belong.’

  ‘I need your help,’ said Hanlon simply.

  ‘Do you now.’ His voice was bored; he sounded extremely stoned.

  He didn’t see her expression. His eyes were closed. Hanlon stood up very quietly and walked over to behind Albert Slater. She eyed the cord that connected the telephone receiver to its box. She toyed with the idea of wrapping its coiled wires round the old man’s throat, and tugging.