A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (2 page)

Then their eyes met and Oksana decided that Hanlon would be nobody’s pushover. Oksana thought they belonged less to those of a state official and more to those of a gangster, someone from the Uralmash mafia. They were disconcertingly chilling. The eyes were matched by a face whose expression was equally cold.

Oksana had grown used to the, in her eyes, overly friendly British. Where she came from, people didn’t usually apologize, say please or thank you or smile in a self-deprecating way. It had taken her a while to realize that politeness didn’t equal weakness. No chance of that happening with Hanlon’s face, she thought. For a second or two Oksana wondered if maybe her English had let her down and she wasn’t in Missing Persons but somewhere more sinister, or if Charlie’s death (she was sure it was murder) was being handled by the British equivalent of the FSB, the Federal Security Bureau.

Hanlon looked back at Oksana Taverner and saw a tall, very attractive dark-haired woman in her late twenties with classic Slavic features, high cheekbones, large almond-shaped brown eyes. She was casually but expensively dressed in muted browns and greys, a vivid-coloured scarf artfully tied around her long, shapely neck.

Her eyes dropped to the glossy photo of Charlie Taverner that beamed at her through a see-through plastic wallet. Oksana, a veteran of Russian bureaucracy, had also appended photocopies of his passport, driving licence, security ID for the Home Office and their wedding certificate. She had even included a photocopy of her birth certificate, passport and her degree in metallurgy from USTU, the Urals State Technical University. Oksana had also gone to the bank and withdrawn a thousand pounds in nondescript twenties just in case a
vziatka
– a bung – was needed, as it would be back home. It was in her bag, in a manila envelope.

Hanlon looked at the photo of a chubby-faced amiable-looking man with glasses and a receding hairline, aged about fifty. Then up again at the beautiful Russian woman young enough to be his daughter.

And just what, she wondered cynically, could possibly have attracted you to the well-paid and securely pensioned Mr Charlie Taverner with his large detached house in Windsor, a spitting distance from the castle?

‘How long has he been missing?’ asked Hanlon wearily.

‘Sunday night. Today is Thursday so four nights. He should have been with your Metropolitan Police for a meeting on Monday. He was not there either.’ Oksana looked at Hanlon with a hint of disdain that implied the glamorous world of the Met was something that Hanlon could only dream of, here in Langley Police Station. Langley, thought Oksana dismissively. It wasn’t even Slough.

The policewoman said nothing, but tugged at a loose strand of the coarse, dark hair that framed her face in a fringe of unruly corkscrews. Oksana would have straightened it before coming to work, even in a place as pointless as this. She began to regret taking Charlie’s boss’s advice to seek out this woman. She decided to emphasize Charlie’s importance, his proximity to high-ranking officers that this lowly woman could never know, never have.

‘He should have been presenting evidence to commission chaired by Assistant Commissioner Corrigan on Russian mafia in London.’

Now she had Hanlon’s attention. Oksana’s sharp glance noticed a slight stiffening of posture, a narrowing of the eyes in the woman opposite. Hanlon looked hard at her. Corrigan had sent Hanlon into this living exile in Berkshire. Was Charlie Taverner a lifeline back to her old job in some form of serious crime with the National Crime Agency?

Corrigan, thought Hanlon. The name had jolted her awake.

Until now, Hanlon had not been paying that much attention to the Russian. Everything came at a cost and Oksana was paying the price for her beauty. No one really took her seriously except when her exams had been marked without anyone knowing what she looked like. Hanlon herself was not immune. She had mentally dismissed Oksana as a mail-order bride and had more or less assumed that her husband was probably playing away with some other woman of doubtful virtue. Some other East European bimbo from an agency.

‘May I ask what he was supposed to give evidence about at this inquiry?’ she asked.

‘Prostitution and their. . .’ For a moment Oksana’s mind went blank as she mentally searched for the English; she knew them as
soutiner
. Then it came to her. ‘Pimps, particularly growing connections between Moscow and London,
lya, lya, lya
.’ She shrugged. ‘Russian population here is increasing. Five years ago, Charlie tells me, there were maybe forty thousand Russians here in London, now, who knows how many now. Some say two hundred thousand, some say four hundred thousand. V.V. says Russian oligarchs own Chelsea now.’

‘Who’s V.V.?’ asked Hanlon, baffled.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich. President Putin,’ said Oksana, rolling her eyes and her ‘r’s.

‘Oh,’ said Hanlon.

‘But is dangerous to lift up rocks and look underneath,’ said Oksana. ‘Sometimes you find more than you expect. That is what Charlie was doing, picking up rocks.’

‘What do you think has happened to your husband?’ asked Hanlon. She raised her voice slightly as another jet passed overhead. She was beginning to get used to the endless noise of the flightpath. Heathrow was only a couple of miles away. Both Mawson and McIntyre were out of the office and the place was silent apart from the roar above them. Absent-mindedly she touched the tender, bruised flesh around her eye, a sparring injury from her boxing training.

‘Charlie is dead,’ said Oksana flatly. There was a bleak acceptance in her voice that touched Hanlon, who was used to people being either in denial or more visibly shaken. The woman across the desk was calm and matter-of-fact. There was no ‘I can’t believe this could have happened’. She was just stating a fact. If there is one thing Russians are, Hanlon thought, it’s tough. She’d met a few. Oksana’s face was expressionless.

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.

Oksana looked at her steadily. ‘The people Charlie knew, particularly from Moscow, that is how they deal with problems. They eliminate people.’

‘I see,’ said Hanlon. Maybe in Russia, she thought, but not in Windsor, not tubby ex-civil servants like Charlie. Litvinenko, yes; Taverner, no. ‘But you shouldn’t really be talking to me about this. Your husband was a civil servant, ex-Foreign Office, an important man. You have a reasonably convincing story suggesting a crime has been committed. Go to Corrigan. He’s surprisingly accessible.’

‘No,’ said Oksana.

Hanlon wasn’t over-burdened with work but the Baranski disappearance was generating more than its fair share of paperwork and she had a meeting with Child Protection looming that she had to prepare for. Oksana’s problem wasn’t her problem.

Even if what she said was true, her husband’s disappearance wouldn’t fall under a Missing Persons remit. It would be Thames Valley’s Serious and Organized Crimes’ baby.

She also suspected that Mawson would not be happy at Hanlon taking it upon herself to bypass procedure. He’d made it clear that such things would not be tolerated.

‘Look,’ said Hanlon, leaning across her desk and pushing some hair from her forehead. The light through the window picked out several long, pale scars on her forearm. There was a slight kink to her nose that suggested it had been broken some time ago. Oksana noted the fine lines that time and pain had etched on Hanlon’s forehead, the tiredness around her eyes. She had obviously known hardship and trouble in her life.

She also noted the ligaments moving elegantly under Hanlon’s skin. Oksana, a former gymnast when younger, until she had become the wrong shape – too curved, too tall – could appreciate how strong Hanlon was. Her eyes now ran over the elegant musculature of Hanlon’s frame. She could easily imagine her on a parallel bar or a beam.

‘You need the National Crimes Agency. Maybe even MI5 or 6.’

If it’s a threat to the country, which I doubt, she thought. I wish you’d go away.

‘Not me. I’m Missing Persons, OK, Mrs Taverner,’ said Hanlon wearily. ‘I find errant husbands and sometimes I order reservoirs dragged for missing Polish junkies.’

As I am at the moment, she thought, thinking of Datchet Reservoir, Peter Baranski’s probable resting place. She should be seeing the Specialist Search people really, rather than wasting time with this woman. She thought, You really don’t need me, not unless Charlie is shacked up with his secretary in South Berkshire.

Oksana shook her head angrily. ‘
Nyet, nyet, nyet
, Hanlon. Sorry, I mean no. These other people. They are
nomenklatura
.’ She virtually spat the word out.
Nomenklatura
, the high priests of the ruling caste. Every Russian’s nightmare. There was no Party in the UK, but there was its equivalent, the civil service.

‘They are officials, government officials. Charlie’s killers have access to
obshchak
.’ She hunted in her mind for the English word; the policewoman was looking baffled. She found it. ‘To trough, like pigs. But a trough full of money. They will have someone to help them in government. They will have someone in police. We say in Russia, ‘roof’, a
krysha
. They have millions to spend. You cannot trust government.’

‘I’m the government,’ said Hanlon acidly. She had a certain amount of sympathy with Oksana’s views but she didn’t appreciate someone from the back of beyond, the Urals, telling her the score.

‘Yes,’ said Oksana. ‘But you are different. I have seen your file.’

You have done what? thought Hanlon. Her thoughts – alarm, rage and wonder – were painfully transparent to the Russian opposite.

Oksana said simply, ‘You cannot trust government. Like I said.’

‘So you’ve read my file.’ Hanlon’s voice was low, menacing. Hanlon was a very private person and the idea that someone like Oksana could access it was as alarming as it was enraging. How the hell had that happened?

‘Yes. Charlie’s firm has many connections. It is think tank, it has many government connections.’

‘Oh, does it now,’ said Hanlon menacingly.

She had a mad desire to leap over the desk and smack the woman opposite hard across the face. What right have you to review my life? she thought. Not even my account of my life either, but that of some official. Presumably it went into detail as to why I’m stuck here, in Missing Persons, cleared of any serious charges but deemed unsuitable for front-line police work. Better deployed in back-office jobs, like this.

Oksana smiled. ‘Yes. You are not corrupt, Hanlon, you are just crazy. I read your file. It is all there.’

‘Is it?’ asked Hanlon. I very much doubt that, she thought bitterly. My side of things won’t be there. So much for data protection.

Taverner’s widow nodded. ‘But back to Charlie. In Russia we say
navomnye ubiistvi
. Contract killing. If I go to normal police, I think nothing will happen.’ She paused and her long fingers with their shapely ox-blood nails played with her expensive Hermès scarf. ‘They know Charlie is missing, they will go through motions, that is all.’ She frowned angrily. ‘I have spoken to some policeman already. He asked me if I knew Charlie liked to go to see whores.’ A contemptuous look flickered across her face. ‘Yes, I say, is where his contact is. This policeman, he as good as told me that he was with some whore for sex, not information.’ Oksana made an expansive gesture with her hands. The movement encompassed her incomparable body, her beautiful face. Look at me, it said, look at me.

Hanlon looked at her as Charlie had almost certainly done, five feet ten of unbelievable sex appeal. Oksana nodded at her. Look what Charlie got for free at home. No sex worker was going to compete with her, that was for sure.

‘You can make things happen, I know this,’ she said. ‘I read your file. Facts are facts.’

I could help you, thought Hanlon, looking at her, but I’m not going to. I can’t fight the world’s battles. She thought of Mark Whiteside lying silently in the room in the hospital in his drug-induced coma. The sands of time were running out for him. Maybe Taverner was dead; she had the living to attend to. She had her own priorities and Oksana’s husband was not one of them. Priorities. She shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Finality was in her voice. ‘Speak to Corrigan. He’ll help.’

Oksana leaned forward. ‘Please, I beg you. Charlie is dead. I cannot bring him back. In Russia I cannot touch his killers. Here, you can. Please will you help me?’

‘No,’ said Hanlon simply.

The Russian woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘None of us can bring back dead, that I do not expect. What I was hoping for was justice, an eye for an eye, as they say. A life for a life.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Hanlon’s voice was curt.

Oksana recognized the irrevocability in Hanlon’s tone. She stood up, tall and elegant. Hanlon had rarely seen such a beautiful woman. She even smelled fantastic; some expensive light floral perfume that Hanlon didn’t recognize. The Russian woman had a point. If you had Oksana to come home to, you wouldn’t want to play away. She also revised her earlier opinion of Taverner. Oksana was not the kind of woman to just want a sugar daddy. And there was no doubt that she cared very much for her missing husband.

Her almond-shaped brown eyes rested contemptuously on Hanlon. ‘So the
vor
and his
suki
, his bitch Belanov, have won then. Is nothing more to say.’

Hanlon stiffened behind her desk. Arkady Belanov. Now Oksana had her interest.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Taverner. I think I’ve just changed my mind.’

Oksana Ilyinichna Taverner, née Yegorov, put her hand in her pocket and took out a memory stick.

‘It is all here, if you want it.’

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
Shona McIntyre, her colleague, had told her that.

Hanlon nodded and took the memory stick. Oksana gave her a curt, formal smile and sat down.

‘Why don’t we begin at the beginning, Mrs Taverner?’