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

‘It had better not,’ said McIntyre fiercely. ‘You might come here from the Met with your big city ways of doing things, but. . .’

  Hanlon forced herself to look contrite and not smile as McIntyre seemed intent on portraying Slough as some innocent, bucolic, country paradise. Your big city ways. McIntyre gestured wildly to indicate Langley.

  This was what Hanlon saw.

  There was a small park behind them, bordered by a mangy privet hedge.

  On a bench three street drinkers sat clutching super-strength lager. A woman walked by with an English bull terrier and a Staffordshire straining at the leash. The Staffie added a curl of excrement to the others on the pavement. ‘Good boy, Tyson,’ said the owner.

  More of the endless jets flying to Heathrow roared overhead through the grey skies. An old BMW with a new paint job and a wobbly exhaust, filled with Asian kids smoking weed, passed by. Aggressive rap thundered through a sound system more powerful than the car.

  Oh, Jerusalem, thought Hanlon, England’s green and pleasant land.

  McIntyre continued, ‘But out here in Berkshire we don’t need patronizing, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Hanlon.

  ‘And it’s not up to you to go around like some loony vigilante.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Hanlon contritely.

  ‘And I’m a Christian,’ said McIntyre.

  Hanlon was puzzled. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me there, Shona. I don’t really get your point.’

  McIntyre’s elegantly braided hair swayed as she shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s just that, well, I take my religion very seriously,’ the other woman said. ‘And in the Bible it’s very clear that we should forgive those that trespass against us, and not start handing out self-imposed punishments. Well, that of course is police policy anyway, I mean the punishment bit, not the forgiveness. Well, you know what I mean, but that’s by the by. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Hanlon nodded her head. During her short acquaintance with Shona McIntyre, she had decided that McIntyre was one of the nicest people she had ever met. Niceness shone out of her eyes.

  The nice-people list was surprisingly short. Most of her colleagues wouldn’t make it. Enver Demirel, her former sergeant, yes, but even Corrigan, her long-suffering boss who had often gone out on a limb for her, had faults that called niceness into question. He was politically ruthless and highly ambitious. He was happy to use her as his gofer. On occasion he had used her to discomfort colleagues, or simply get things done, knowing she’d ask no questions.

  She knew she herself would never make the list. She didn’t think of herself as nice. She knew she was violent. She liked intimidating people. She knew she was intolerant. She was over-competitive, hypercritical. Several high-ranking Metropolitan Police had given her a kind of nickname as Corrigan’s attack bitch. It was almost justified. She had done questionable things for him and kept her mouth shut afterwards. Mark Whiteside, her former partner whom she adored, was also flawed. Like Hanlon he had a vicious streak. She hadn’t equated McIntyre’s silver cross around her neck with anything other than ornamentation. Hanlon’s encounters with the faithful in the past had led her to unflattering conclusions about religion.

  But McIntyre exuded goodness and Hanlon appreciated that.

  ‘Fine,’ said Hanlon.

  McIntyre held out her hand formally. ‘Please let’s be friends,’ she said. Hanlon shook her proffered hand. Like the rest of McIntyre, it was long, cool and elegant.

  ‘Friends.’ McIntyre, satisfied, gave her one of her brilliant high-wattage smiles and they set off together back to the office on the small industrial estate.

  This is so unlike me, thought Hanlon as she walked beside her. McIntyre was explaining about how important bridge-building was with the community, particularly in multi-ethnic Slough. It was DS Mawson who had the vision, she explained. He was very well regarded in community-planning circles. Hanlon feigned interest.

  ‘That station in Langley, it’s only open part time. It just seems to work quite well, us being out here. We’re also handy for Heathrow,’ she said. ‘We’ve got parking as well, which is a bonus. But, of course, it’s more than that.’ A messianic tone entered her voice. McIntyre was a woman with a mission.

  ‘Old-style police stations are expensive and old fashioned,’ she continued. ‘We need to put policing back into the community. People have negative feelings about the police station. If you’ve got a missing loved one you’ll be feeling worried enough without having to turn up at some local nick where we’re dragging in lowlifes, all that effing and jeffing, speaking to whoever’s on the front desk through reinforced glass. No, this way’s better. Better for us, better for the community.’ She pointed at a woman with a toddler in a buggy. ‘Better for her, better for him. I think in the future you’re going to see a lot more contact points for the police and neighbourhood bases rather than the traditional fortress-like cop shops. It’s the way forward.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hanlon. McIntyre felt quite passionate about policing. She carried on. A year with Mawson had expanded her horizons. He was passionate about his vision and so was she. Policing was, after all, a social contract; it could only work if the public let it work. They had to shed the ‘them and us’ image. The new-style police stations would help to do it.

  McIntyre adored Mawson. He really cared about people, she explained to Hanlon. If only more coppers were like him.

  ‘Our colleagues in the probation service usually operate these days out of buildings much more accessible to the public. We need to be more accessible to our clients.’

  Hanlon looked at her colleague dubiously. She had a small scar on her ironing-board flat stomach where she had been stabbed, another one hidden on her head by her thick hair where she’d been knocked unconscious, and both arms had been broken at different times. Forgive me, she thought, looking at McIntyre’s pleasant face, if I feel less than trusting of our ‘clients’.

  ‘Of course, the boss won’t be around when we get back,’ said McIntyre. ‘He’ll be down at Bisley.’

  ‘Bisley?’ said Hanlon in surprise. It was the home of British shooting.

  ‘They shoot down there,’ said McIntyre.

  ‘I know that,’ said Hanlon with a touch of impatience. ‘Does Mawson shoot?’

  McIntyre looked at her haughtily. ‘Detective Superintendent was the small-bore champion at Bisley a few years ago, and he does still instruct firearms courses. So, yes, he does shoot.’

  Hanlon nodded, impressed. They turned into the industrial estate.

  Then McIntyre’s quotation came back to her. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

  Hanlon thought of the injured painter and decorator nursing a hugely sprained wrist and sore head, from where the heavy can had struck him, as well as a bruised ego. He could wash the paint away and the bruises would fade, but at least, thought Hanlon, he’d learned that women aren’t always an easy target. Another Bible quotation, this time from her school years, further ago than she cared to admit, came to her.

  And I am the avenger, who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

  She smiled grimly to herself. That’s more like me, she thought. And, she thought, I wasn’t crossing my fingers when I promised, but I was crossing my toes.

  And that counts.

  4

  Danny stared at the two bodies and the other thing, with horrified, sickened astonishment. He, and they, were at 50 Beath Street, Marylebone, London W1. It was a nice flat in a nice place in a nice street. Marylebone is a wealthy, exclusive London neighbourhood. It didn’t have a racy reputation like, say, Chelsea. It was respectable. Number 50 was respectable too. It was a tall, narrow, discreet red-brick Georgian townhouse, subdivided into three apartments. Its neighbours in the terrace were service flats with a transient population, private doctors’ surgeries and a clinic for rich people with minor psychiatric problems.

  Number 50 wasn’t a clinic. It was one of a number of flats owned by a man called
Dave Anderson, a North London criminal, and used as a place for prostitution. It was both home and working premises to a girl called Tatiana, whose dead eyes were now looking blankly at the ceiling.

  The brothel’s customers were wealthy, powerful and discreet. They had that in common with the clients of the medical neighbours on either side, although number 50 was catering for sexual rather than residential or psychiatric needs. Beath Street didn’t advertise its presence. It didn’t need to. Money bought access to everything.

  The brothel was not far from Harley Street, and the street it was in had more than its fair share of private medical businesses. If anyone had asked, not that they would, Tatiana would have said it was a private treatment centre, which in a sense it was.

  People came and went, everyone minded their own business and number 50, as it was known, passed unnoticed and unremarked.

  He looked around him again, shaking his head. Danny had seen some things that few people not involved in violent crime would ever see, but nothing like this.

  He’d known before he’d arrived that something untoward had happened, but he certainly hadn’t expected this.

  Danny had seen execution killings; he’d helped Anderson do two. He’d seen prologue, deed and aftermath. What he was now staring at was in a totally different league.

  There were two bodies, a man and a woman, sitting side by side on the sofa. And the thing on the table. Danny, gagging slightly, had forced himself to check the bodies. There was a smell of death in the air, a scent of corruption, and he’d opened the window, letting the sounds of the traffic enter together with the merciful fresh air. He recognized the woman, one of Anderson’s East European girls, Tatiana. The man was middle-aged, balding, overweight with glasses. He had a shirt with double cuffs; the cufflinks were gold with an enamelled British bulldog embossed on each. His glasses had expensive-looking frames. His face, now expressionless in death, looked as if he’d been clever and humorous. His jacket was thrown over a chair, blue pinstripe like his trousers.

  Both he and Tatiana had been shot in the chest. The blood from the entry wounds had long since oxidized to a dull rust colour. Danny guessed they had both been sitting down where they were now when it had happened. The same could not be said of the other victim.

  The head that had been placed on the coffee table and now looked sightlessly at Tatiana and her last customer had a face Danny knew well. It was Jordan, Dave’s impulsive elder brother, not that long out of Armley prison in Leeds.

  Armley. He’d been there to see him a few times. Danny thought fleetingly of the prison’s crenellations and Gothic fortress facade. It had been like visiting Windsor Castle. It had looked great lit up at night. Jordan’s eyes, angry and restless in life, mournful in death, gazed sightlessly across the expanse of polished mahogany tabletop.

  Danny went round behind the bar in the large living room of the flat and poured himself a stiff brandy. His hand was rock steady, but his heart was beating wildly and his mouth was dry. He took a healthy mouthful of the powerful spirit, an aged Courvoisier, and looked at the clock on the wall opposite. Eight thirty a.m.

  He took a packet of Marlboro out of his coat pocket and drummed the fingers of one hand on them while he thought about what to do. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He knew what he was going to do; it was just he hated being the bearer of bad news.

  He would dearly have liked to light up a cigarette, but Anderson’s father had just died of lung cancer and it seemed somehow disrespectful. Two dead in one week in the Anderson family. He picked up his phone and called Dave Anderson.

  ‘Yes?’ came the toneless voice at the other end of the phone. Dave Anderson was always emotionless, not like his brother Jordan. Jordan had been a nutter but at least he’d been human. Dave was something else. Danny took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m at 50, Boss, I can’t really describe it, but you need to see it with your own eyes.’

  There was a momentary silence. Danny could imagine Anderson, his thin, sunken face, and those eyes that looked as if they belonged to some religious fanatic. Funny, thought Danny, his eyes burned, but his voice never did.

  He could see Anderson in his imagination, in his memory, his face framed with his longish, lank hair, holding his mobile. Morris Jones, his lieutenant, would be with him. He always was. Like a faithful dog. Jones’s eyes wouldn’t be burning; they were dead and fish-like, glazed. Anderson didn’t waste words. He trusted Danny and knew he would never exaggerate. If Danny said he needed to see it, he meant it.

  ‘One hour,’ was the reply. Danny thought of logistics, North London to here, a small crew to organize. It couldn’t be done any faster.

  He automatically straightened his back. ‘As soon as possible, Boss, please.’ He took a deep breath and looked around the bar. ‘We need cleaners.’

  There was a pause on the phone. ‘Jordan?’

  ‘Jordan’s here,’ said Danny. No need to elaborate; Dave Anderson would see what had happened to his brother only too soon.

  ‘Within the hour,’ said Anderson coldly. His voice wasn’t ice; it was liquid nitrogen.

  The cleaners arrived within thirty minutes. Impressive speed by any standards. By ‘cleaners’, Danny had meant people to deal with the crime scene. Anderson wasn’t a messy criminal. He always made sure that things were tidy and the people who worked for him, whether full or part time, knew it. He hated sloppiness, hated untidiness. There were three of them, accompanied by Morris Jones, Anderson’s right-hand man.

  For Danny, with only the dead to keep him company, the half-hour had seemed a very long time indeed. He thought about going elsewhere in the flat, the bedroom or the kitchen, but the thought of leaving the corpses alone was even less appealing than being with them. He had experienced a kind of hallucinatory thought that the bodies might somehow, horror-film fashion, rise up from where they sat so patiently, to come and find him, to traipse through the doorway in single file, searching him out. At least in here, he thought, slightly hysterically, in here I can keep an eye on things.

  The sense of relief when his mobile rang to tell him they had arrived was enormous. He opened the door to the four men and ushered them inside. They followed Danny into the living room and stood there silently, taking in the charnel-house scenario. Their faces revealed a mix of horror, revulsion and bewilder ment, but not Jones: his face was its usual deadpan blank.

  Jones was tall and formidable with an impressive pedigree of violence, but that wasn’t why Anderson employed him. Muscle was ubiquitous. He was a superb organizer. The three cleaners, junior employees of Anderson, stood awaiting their instructions. They cast fascinated, horrified looks at the bodies round the table. Particularly the head. The severed head. Nobody had seen anything remotely like it. On the TV, yes, on the news, at the cinema, but not in real life.

  Jordan’s disembodied head dominated the room as he had never done in real life.

  Morris Jones was always beautifully dressed. Today it was a charcoal suit and a camel overcoat. He was tieless; it wasn’t a fashion choice. He didn’t like wearing ties purely on utilitarian grounds. He was a man used to violence and in his youth, when he’d been in a great deal of fights, he’d had opponents use his tie to grab hold of him. So the hint of colour that he felt was needed in his ensemble was provided by a brilliant-red silk scarf hanging around his neck.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Danny. He didn’t need to elaborate as to who ‘he’ referred to. Jones checked his watch. A Patek Philippe.

  ‘He’ll be about ten minutes,’ said Jones. ‘It’s the old man’s funeral next week, and now this. What a fucking mess.’ His tone of voice carried more a sense of weary irritation than anything. A harassed housewife faced with some more mess that thoughtless children had left behind.

  ‘You two,’ said Jones to the men with him, ‘start in the other rooms, you don’t need me to tell you what to do, and you, Mickey, down to the van, start bringing up those bags, OK. I need a quiet word with Danny here.’

 
The three men nodded and disappeared to their allotted tasks. Jones looked at Danny.

  Danny nodded at the bodies and the table. ‘I just don’t understand all of this. I really don’t.’

  Morris Jones gave him a contemptuous look. I don’t care what you make of this, the look said, your opinions are of no interest to me whatsoever.

  Jones went over to the bar and poured himself a bitter lemon. He gazed at the green/blue drink and sipped it appreciatively. He ran his eyes over Danny speculatively.

  ‘Seen Jackson around, have you?’

  The question was anything but innocuous. After Jordan’s release from Armley a couple of months previously, Anderson had assigned a reliable man called Barry Jackson to him as his minder. Dave Anderson had told his brother it was because he had received death threats and he wanted extra security, but the real reason was to make sure Jordan, loyal but hot-headed, didn’t do anything stupid. Well, nothing too stupid anyway. To keep him out of trouble.

  Jordan had had a tendency to lose his temper and cause trouble. The incident that had got him sent to Armley was a road-rage explosion, pure and simple, nothing to do with business. He’d forced a motorist who’d cut him up off the road and beaten him senseless. It had been stupid, thoughtless and violent. That was Jordan for you. Jones or Dave Anderson might kill or injure you, but only for professional reasons. Not Jordan.

  And now Barry Jackson was missing.

  Danny shook his head. ‘No, Morris.’ Jones nodded, then stretched his powerful arms as if relieving stress or tension in his muscles. He had a very long reach. Danny was a stocky, muscular six feet, the other man was taller, rangier. Jones opened his mouth wide and took the plate that held his top teeth out of his mouth. A baseball bat in the face causes havoc dentally, as does a steel-toed boot. Most of Jones’s face had been broken or fractured over the years. Mouth included. He put the denture down on the bar. Its pink plastic, set with replica front teeth, grinned wetly at Danny. Morris Jones smiled humorlessly at the other man.