An Incidental Death Read online

  Corrigan sighed. I’ll make a speech too, he thought. Time to cut him off. He leaned forward and coughed, looked stern. It wasn’t a hard look to pull off, Corrigan was a hard man, people tended to be frightened of him. He was used to dominating meetings.

  ‘We at the Metropolitan Police are committed to protecting the public whatever their shades of opinion, sir. However, what we are not prepared to do is have the manner of our policing dictated by those we are seeking to protect.’

  ‘I absolutely agree,’ said Schneider with shining sincerity.

  Gower frowned. ‘I gathered from your colleague that you had reservations—’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ Schneider interrupted him. ‘Christiane, as my head of staff, was natürlich, sorry, naturally, concerned that after the horrific murder of Gunther Hart, being on the same hit list I might be sensitive to the proximity of Muslims, but nothing could be further from the truth.’

  ‘So no objections to DI Demirel being with you?’ Gower stepped in swiftly, anxious to have his original plan restored.

  ‘No, but not visibly,’ said Schneider.

  ‘I beg your pardon? Not visibly?’ Corrigan was confused. Then angry again. Presumably Schneider thought that it would be bad for his image if he were seen to be accompanied by a Muslim, who instead of trying to kill him was keeping him alive.

  ‘I would like to suggest a compromise, like we had when I was in France recently when I went to visit Marine Le Pen, and we did the same in Holland when I shared a platform with Geert Wilders.’

  The name-dropping was so pointed that Corrigan nearly smiled. ‘Look at me, look how important I am,’ was the obvious message. He’d be getting his phone out soon, showing them his selfies: ‘Here’s me in front of the European Parliament, here’s me at the Hague...’ It could not be denied, though, that Schneider was a seriously important politician.

  Corrigan had, as always, done his homework. ‘So, what did the French and Dutch police provide?’ he asked sceptically. Schneider was a much bigger deal on mainland Europe than he was in the UK.

  Schneider smiled and fiddled with his phone and gave it to Corrigan to look at. I knew it, he thought. He scrolled across the images and passed it to Gower without comment.

  Photos of Schneider and politicians; next to Schneider in France a dark-haired woman, in Holland a blonde. The uniting fact, hard faces, watchful demeanour. Corrigan and Gower could smell a cop even on the screen of an iPhone 6.

  The message to Schneider’s followers: a man popular with women. A tough man who did not need bouncer-style bodyguards.

  Vote for me.

  ‘I will level with you, Commissioner Corrigan.’ Schneider opened his hands to demonstrate his sincerity. Corrigan could feel his charm. It was a mix of intelligence, sincerity and a kind of everyman quality that politicians usually lacked. Schneider had it. You trusted him. If he wasn’t exactly the guy next door he was the kind of man you hoped that the guy next door would be.

  ‘I very much do not wish to be beheaded like those unfortunates in Syria or Iraq, and I do not want my throat cut like Gunther. Those are worst-case scenarios.’ That vote-winning smile again. ‘What is much more likely is that I will be pelted with eggs or flour or jostled.’ He shrugged charmingly. ‘Well, I’m used to that, but I’d rather it didn’t turn ugly. If I could have a woman protection officer it would defuse tension. I don’t want to strut around like a tough guy, I want calm, calm is good for rational debate. A female presence soothes people, in my experience.’

  And she’ll look good in your attempt to woo lady voters, thought Corrigan. Fine then, politics is the art of the compromise, of the possible. Since Schneider didn’t object to Enver per se, he’d keep him on the team but in a back-door role, one where Schneider wouldn’t have to face the indignity of being visibly protected by the sort of person he wanted to exclude from Europe. Honour would be satisfied on both accounts. And since he wanted a woman officer, then that was what he could have.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘That easy?’ asked Schneider, slightly taken aback by Corrigan’s ready agreement. ‘You have someone in mind? Can I meet her first?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Corrigan.

  ‘Is she tough?’ Schneider looked slightly worried. He wanted someone feminine enough to look attractive on his media pages but hard enough to deter aggressors. He wanted a Twitter/Facebook/Instagram decoration. Someone who appealed to his demographic support, who would attract both women and men voters. A difficult juggling act.

  Corrigan smiled. ‘That you can judge for yourself.’

  7

  Marcus Hinds knew he had very little time, but he was a resourceful man. He had discovered that morning his PC had been hacked. That meant beyond a shadow of a doubt his phone had too. Carrying it, with its built-in tracking device, would be tantamount to wandering around with a megaphone and a hi-vis jacket shouting, ‘I’m here!’

  His car was out of the question too. Eleuthera were highly organized, very computer literate. Some of its members were, unsurprisingly, part of the Anonymous hacking network. If his security had been compromised then he felt sure a tracker, costing peanuts and easily available, could well be attached somewhere to the old Renault that he drove.

  Pulling his clothes on in the grotty one-bedroomed flat, he glanced down at the huddled form of Georgie Adams, Eleuthera’s press and communications officer, under his duvet. Strands of her dark hair – the ends of her swept-across fringe coloured green – and the tips of her painted fingertips were visible. He heard a faint snore. That girl would sleep through anything.

  Nine thirty a.m.

  He and Georgie hadn’t gone to bed until two, she had no college today, she’d be comatose until noon.

  Georgie was typical of the Eleuthera membership: young, idealistic, committed. Attractive. That’s really what had made him notice the anarchist group first, the fact that there was a hard-core of extremely desirable women, and he, as a genuine member of the proletariat, a real working-class hero, had been of equal interest to them as well.

  Like many of the anarchists who belonged to Eleuthera, she chose to keep her membership a discreet secret. Although they weren’t a prohibited organization, they preferred to operate under the radar. It had taken Hinds considerable ingenuity to track them down.

  Well, now things were going terribly wrong. He had uncovered things he shouldn’t have.

  He had looked under the wrong rock.

  He glanced out of the window. The street outside was quiet. Those going to work had done so and the school run was over. The street was occupied mainly by young professionals – the old and middle-aged had sold up and students couldn’t afford the rents.

  One more issue for Eleuthera to get fired up about.

  Redistribute the property!

  Occupy the colleges!

  Smash the rich!

  Destroy.

  End the stranglehold of elitism. That would play well in Oxford.

  The small block of flats he was in would be deserted apart from himself and Georgie. All the other occupants at work. He found the silence during the day quite eerie.

  The same could be said about the whole road.

  There was, however, one resident impervious to economic conditions. That was the old bag lady who often slept opposite. He could see her out of the window now. Huddled in her layers of blankets, bedding that she would often roll up and push around in an old shopping trolley. She had a variety of locations. He often saw her outside St John’s when he passed by in the morning, she liked to spend her days there.

  Someone had told him she had a bus stop she liked to use as well, somewhere on the outskirts of town where the council wouldn’t harass her for upsetting the tourists with her non-picturesque grime. But this morning she was huddled in the doorway across the street. No trolley today, just a few large, plastic bags.

  He felt a twinge of pity when he saw the alcoholic homeless, coupled with an uneasy feeling that he could be l
ooking at his own future.

  There was a half-smoked joint on the desk by his open laptop. He lit it and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He quickly copied several files to a spare memory stick and thrust it into his pocket, then he disconnected the small external hard drive and added that to it.

  Can’t have too much information, he thought, in a slightly fuddled way.

  He looked out of the window again. No one in the street. The bag lady was searching for something in one of her plastic carriers. This morning she was sponsored by Sainsbury’s. Today he felt a stab of jealousy. Nobody was going to try and kill her, except maybe herself. She’d be alive today; he doubted he could be so sure about himself.

  He laced his boots up and looked in the mirror at his handsome, stubbled face and pushed a hand through his dark, tousled hair. There were lines now starting to appear on his forehead and crow’s feet around his eyes, but he was still good-looking, a Byronic East Ender living on his wits.

  He bet most of Eleuthera hadn’t heard of Byron. They’d think he was a burger chain. He poured himself a shot of Courvoisier from the bottle on the stained table, toasted his reflection, downed it in one and quietly let himself out of the front door.

  As he did so, and the door clicked to behind him, Georgie sat up in bed and looked around the empty bedsit. Her face was hard and imperious, her naked upper body toned and tattooed with geometric designs. She recalled her instructions to her fellow anarchists. She took her phone from the bedside table, fingers moving swiftly over the screen.

  He’s on his way.

  She put the phone down. She’d miss Marcus. Well, the sex anyway. But he lacked ideological commitment, that was for sure.

  Perhaps she’d attend the funeral, she thought, as she pulled the duvet over her. She looked good in black.

  8

  Corrigan, with Wolf Schneider in tow, climbed the creaking wooden stairs to the boxing gym in Bermondsey.

  Schneider had looked out of the rain-streaked window of Corrigan’s car with approval at the housing estates and the red-brick railway arches of the borough where the gym was located. It was his kind of place. It’s where his roots were, industrial, working class, white, unloved. Even the boxing club was familiar to him from one that he had belonged to, years ago. Again, it epitomized what he felt he represented, the true voice of his country. A sport that the intellectuals and theorists who ran Germany despised, but that the blue-collar society, their jobs undercut by cheap foreign labour or taken overseas, loved.

  Bob’s Gym was not for the faint of heart. It was run-down, unglamorous. It smelled of sweat, damp, effort and pain. It was old-school, it didn’t offer boxercise classes or go in for white-collar boxing where businessmen could act out fantasies about being real fighters. It was a serious gym for serious athletes. Hanlon was the only woman to belong, mainly because Laidlaw, the owner, liked her and allowed her to use the place when it was closed. Sometimes he would train her or, when it was closed to all but the handful of boxers that he managed, she would spar with them at lightweight or welterweight, on occasions heavier. Any qualms they had about fighting with a woman soon disappeared once they realized that pound for pound Hanlon was exceptionally gifted.

  Power in a punch doesn’t come from big muscles, it’s a whole body involvement. It was partly what made her so formidable. If Hanlon hit you it was from her feet upwards, it was explosive. And that force, allied to her speed, accuracy and concentration, added up to an astonishingly good boxer. If Freddie grew tired of explaining this verbally, he’d put them in with Hanlon, let them experience it physically.

  ‘Go on, Hanlon,’ patting her head-guard, ‘paint me a picture. Better than a thousand words.’

  Corrigan and Schneider reached the top of the narrow stairs and went through the scuffed glass-panelled door into the reception area.

  Schneider looked around him with interest. He’d boxed to a reasonable level himself in Stuttgart as a kid and still had a keen interest in the sport. A lot of boxers, young kids from deprived backgrounds, were members of the NS too. They were a fertile audience for his message. Occasionally his rallies would be attacked by the militant left or the anarchists, and then the hard-nut, skinhead kids could be let off the leash.

  The lobby was low maintenance, a couple of old armchairs, a dusty, glass-topped coffee table and threadbare carpeting. Old framed posters for long-gone contests featuring long-forgotten boxers decorated the walls.

  Corrigan was talking to a young kid behind the desk with a beard and some serious tattoos.

  ‘Yes, she is here.’ The kid looked at them unfavourably. ‘But we’re closed. She’s sparring with Chris Campbell.’

  Corrigan leant over the desk. He showed his ID. The young boxer was tiny in comparison to his looming height, he must have been a bantam or lightweight, thought Schneider. He was intrigued by this unexpected jaunt to the seamier side of London. He looked around him appreciatively. This was more like it, no intellectuals here.

  Schneider hated intellectuals even more than he hated Muslims.

  Intellectuals, the great betrayers of the people. The back-stabbers. People who had rejected what had made Germany great.

  Not the scientists who had made Germany the intellectual powerhouse of Europe.

  Not the engineers and industrialists whose legacy still lived on in the great names of cars and machinery.

  Corrigan glanced at his companion. He had gone strangely quiet.

  ‘Who’s Chris Campbell?’ asked Corrigan of the kid.

  ‘He’s got a shot at a southern area heavyweight title.’

  ‘Heavyweight?’ Corrigan was baffled. Against Hanlon.

  The young kid behind the desk gave a bark of laughter. ‘It ain’t a mismatch, mate. Not with Hanlon. She’s class. Freddie wants to show Chris how fast a good fighter can punch. Chris is a bit slow. He’s up at the York Hall soon, he’d better buck his ideas up. He’s been babied up till now.’

  Corrigan nodded appreciatively. The York Hall, Bethnal Green, home of British boxing.

  ‘So if you two gentlemen want to come back in an hour or so...’ The kid indicated the door with his head, just in case there were some misunderstanding.

  Corrigan, suddenly enormous and menacing, leaned over his desk.

  ‘Didn’t you read what it said on my ID?’

  ‘Yes, Assistant Commissioner, I did.’ The kid swallowed slightly nervously. Obviously he had wondered what had brought someone so high ranking here. Normally the police were a red rag to a bull for him, especially as he’d done nothing wrong. It was just a natural reaction, the way he’d been brought up.

  Don’t talk to coppers.

  Corrigan knew that. He didn’t care about his attitude. He didn’t give a fuck. The kid’s attitude was insignificant. Corrigan’s face filled his vision. The scars and lines on his face, his large battered nose. It was a face designed by nature to intimidate and he knew it.

  ‘Good.’ Corrigan pointed at Wolf Schneider. ‘Now we know who I am, this gentleman has come all the way from Germany to see Hanlon. We don’t want to disappoint him, do we, sunshine?’

  It wasn’t only the air of quiet menace in Corrigan’s voice that was so effective, it was the absolute certainty of getting his way that led the kid to say, ‘Yes, Assistant Commissioner, now...’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Corrigan dismissively. He’d had enough of the conversation. ‘I know the way.’ He turned to Schneider. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

  Wolf Schneider, ever the politician, nodded politely at the receptionist, gave him a comradely wink and followed the broad back of Corrigan as he headed to a scuffed door at the rear of the threadbare reception area and opened it, revealing a narrow staircase.

  The kid watched the two backs disappear up the stairs that led to the gallery that overlooked the gym. He shrugged, he wouldn’t mind joining them. He always loved watching Hanlon fight. It was beautiful.

  9

  Marcus closed the door behind him and sta
rted down the stairs. They were broad and unadorned, zigzagging three storeys towards the front door, around a central well.

  He was wishing he hadn’t smoked the grass now – he felt unpleasantly stoned, disassociated from reality. It added to the nightmare, hallucinatory quality of what was happening.

  There were three flats per floor, his was on the third. The heels of his boots clattered as he descended the steps. Sounds always echoed in this block. At night a firmly closed front door would sound like a gunshot. As he went down, he heard footsteps coming up the staircase towards him. He rounded a corner. A momentary impression.

  Two men, their heads bowed, wearing hoodies.

  If they hadn’t had the hoods over their heads, things could have turned out very differently. With the hoods up it was like displaying a warning banner, screaming, WE MEAN BUSINESS.

  Marcus, keyed up, expecting a fight, was already almost as high on the adrenaline pumping round his body as he was on the THC and the booze.

  No one in these flats dressed like that. But nobody. There were a couple of hipsters, a couple of Boden wearers and a Hooray Henry, upper class LAMF red trousers guy. None of them would wear a hoody and trainers, not even in a gym. They wouldn’t be seen dead in them. These two didn’t belong.

  He recognized them immediately as trouble.

  Well, that was just fine with him.

  Most of Eleuthera were middle-class intellectuals, grammar school or privately educated, unused to violence. Not so Marcus Hinds. He had grown up in Bethnal Green and Hayes fighting Somali gangs. His family had form, and he had a vicious streak.

  Right, you wanky, nerdy anarchist muppets, used to harassing women or filming yourselves pushing a policeman and uploading it to the net, let’s show you how we do it in Bethnal Green.

  Not fucking Sevenoaks.

  Let’s party.

  His fingers clenched into fists, his eyes narrowed. Concentrate.

  Rather than pass them on the stairs, his body a defenceless target open to attack from all sides, he pressed his back against the wall. Without making eye contact, heads bowed, they walked abreast up the stairs towards him and then changed to single file to get past him, Grey Hoodie leading.