A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (4 page)

Enver nodded, not altogether happily. He knew a detective inspector in Oxford who could help. In fact, he had a shrewd idea that she might well know who the police informant was. But Enver was very reluctant to reveal this information that he had acquired, to his own discomfort, in an unorthodox way. Equally, he knew that if he scratched Corrigan’s back, it would be reciprocated.

Off-the-record investigations were, in his opinion, PR disasters waiting to happen. He could think of two high-profile ones that were currently in the papers; he didn’t want to add to them. ‘I do know someone from Oxford CID reasonably well, sir.’

‘So, there we are,’ said Corrigan. ‘I knew my faith in you would be justified, Detective Inspector.’

There was an unmistakeable note of dismissal in the final sentence. Enver said, ‘Why not ask DCI Hanlon, sir?’

She knew Arkady Belanov better than anyone. She’d humiliated him and Dimitri. Then Enver immediately felt ashamed of himself. What he had really meant was, Let her take the risk. She’s already as good as destroyed her career, what would another high-profile controversy matter? Keep me out of it.

It was a deeply cowardly suggestion on his part.

No sooner had he asked the question than he knew he’d made a mistake. But a mistake of a different kind. The expression of genial affability on Corrigan’s face froze and was replaced by one of pure aggression. It was an astonishingly speedy transformation. Like many people, he’d fallen into the trap of assuming that Corrigan was some slow, lumbering old-time copper. An elderly has-been, slightly out of touch with the modern world, on the point of retirement. Doing things the old-fashioned way on a whim.

But Corrigan was a hard old bastard, ruthlessly efficient, still ambitious and frighteningly bright. A friend of his was probably dead, police complicity was suspected and Corrigan didn’t just want answers. He wanted results. And he wasn’t going to take any nonsense from inexperienced, junior officers.

Particularly from patronizing junior officers.

And certainly not at the expense of a woman who, although unbelievably troublesome, he deeply respected.

‘Don’t try and tell me how to do my job, sunny Jim,’ said Corrigan. He leaned forward close to Enver’s face so he could see the expression in his eyes. His voice rumbled ominously ‘In fact, don’t even think about trying to tell me how to do my job. Is that clear?’

‘Totally, sir,’ said Enver.

Corrigan didn’t need to add an ‘or else’. He never did. He never made threats; he didn’t need to.

Corrigan sat back and stared at Enver with hostility.

‘You can go now, Detective Inspector Demirel.’ His voice was dismissive. ‘You have my personal number. When you have something worth telling me I suggest you use it.’ Corrigan nodded a curt farewell.

Enver stood up, one hand clutching the towel covering his groin. To have saluted would have been ridiculous in the circumstances.

‘I’ll be in touch, sir,’ he said.

‘You do that, Detective Inspector, you do that. And don’t be long either. I want this put to bed asap.’ He looked at Enver and said, cruelly, ‘Give my regards to DI Huss, DI Demirel.’ With satisfaction, he noted Enver’s eyes start from his head and a kind of muscular ripple run up his body as if he’d been electrocuted. Serves you right for questioning my judgement, Enver, he thought.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Enver in a strangled tone. How could Corrigan have known?

‘Off you go,’ said Corrigan.

Corrigan watched Demirel’s broad, muscular back disappearing through the clouds of steam. Strange that Enver Demirel had brought up Hanlon’s name. Hanlon would be safe where he had put her. Twice she’d nearly got herself killed. Corrigan was going to make sure there wasn’t a third time.

He thought with exasperated affection of Hanlon’s corkscrew hair and angry eyes. If anyone had a genius for getting into trouble, he reflected, it was her.

She’d be safe in Thames Valley for now, chasing missing old ladies, looking for lost cats. Safe until this IPCC business had blown over and she could return to the Met. People have short memories.

I bet she’s cursing me, he thought, but I most certainly don’t want her involved with the Russian mafia. Let Enver do something strenuous for a change, other than building bridges.

Langley High Street was a five-minute walk away from the industrial estate. Hanlon and her new colleague Shona McIntyre were walking back to the office with some sandwiches from a local deli. Hanlon had spent half an hour in the quiet company of her new boss, DS Mawson, while he’d explained to her the role that they played in the Thames Valley Police. Mawson was particularly keen on the potential uses of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. He seemed disappointed by Hanlon’s obvious lack of expertise at social networking.

She and McIntyre had spent the morning looking at the two prominent missing person cases. One was Peter Baranski, the Pole, aged twenty-seven, who had gone missing from a squat in Chalvey, a suburb of Slough. Slough was home to an enormous number of Polish immigrants and, as Hanlon was becoming increasingly aware, there was a whole secretive illegal immigrant community too, many living parallel lives crammed into slum-style outhouses built in the backyards of the town’s backstreets – ‘sheds with beds’, as they were known locally.

One of the obvious side-effects of this hidden population was an unwillingness to talk to the police. Things did not bode well for the investigation.

‘Why are we interested in him?’ asked Hanlon. ‘Maybe he just moved away; maybe he’d had enough of Slough.’ God knows, I have, she thought. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly wrong with the place; it was just so very dull. It was famous for a huge Mars confectionary factory, a John Betjeman poem, ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough’, and for the fact that the TV comedy
The Office
had been set there. Other Slough highlights included the first linked traffic-light system in the UK and a stuffed dog in a glass case on one of the platforms at the railway station. She was practically weeping with boredom.

McIntyre explained that the squat was well known as a junkie hang-out and there’d been a number of criminal incidents surrounding it.

‘This Peter,’ she said, ‘Peter Baranski, is a heavy heroin and ketamine user. He hasn’t got the energy or the inclination to go far.’

Hanlon nodded; that made sense. Strung out on smack and special K, he’d find doing his shoelaces up a struggle, let alone disappearing anywhere. ‘Who reported him missing?’

‘His girlfriend,’ said Shona McIntyre. ‘She thinks he’s been murdered. She’ll be coming to the station at eleven; we’ll meet her down there with DI Hennessy.’

The trip to the police station was a waste of time. Paris Dowd, the girlfriend, was a no-show and her phone resolutely switched off. They stayed long enough for Hanlon to have her suspicions confirmed that she really didn’t care about Peter Baranski with his list of previous convictions, mainly drug-related petty theft in his native Poland and two over here for affray and Grade A (heroin) drug possession.

At the station she was aware of the curious glances of her colleagues, keen to take a look at the controversial DCI Hanlon, foisted on them by the Met. At times like this, she felt like some sort of freak. But then she thought, In a sense I’ve created this image. I can hardly feel hard done by.

They turned off the High Street, past a pub into a lane that was a cut-through to the industrial estate. Parked illegally on the kerb was a battered pickup truck. An aluminium extension ladder was wedged against the rear nearside tyre where a decorator had been painting the soffit boards of the property, just under the eaves.

He was taking a cigarette break and he leered aggressively at the two women as they walked past. Attractive, confident, well dressed, they more or less represented everything he hated in female form. Hanlon looked him over with disdain. Her brief glance summed him up. He was short, stocky and bald and he had an unpleasant, slightly fat, aggressive face. He was like a sneer in human form.

He registered her contempt.

It was his eyes or, rather the look in them, that struck Hanlon as his least attractive feature. Their gaze was on the lookout for any kind of weakness that he could exploit. If they’d been disabled or students, or had learning difficulties, he would have tailored the abuse to meet the target. Cripple. Poof. Spaz. He was the kind of guy who got his rocks off trolling on Twitter. As they were women, he’d obviously decided upon sexual harassment.

Her sharp eyes noticed that the tyre by the passenger door was bald, well below the minimum legal tread. Momentarily she was tempted to nick him for that, three points on his licence.

The truck was a mess, an exposed jumble of old paint cans and detritus. The lackadaisical attitude extended to safety. He’d left a pot of paint balanced precariously on the penultimate rung of the ladder. What a cowboy, thought Hanlon contemptuously.

Their eyes met, hers coolly disparaging, his actively hostile. Two successful attractive women, a sight he hated. I just bet your sex life centres around Internet porn, she thought. No woman with an ounce of sense would touch you with a bargepole. Good job you’ve got a right hand.

‘Give us a kiss, darling,’ he said to Hanlon, with a suggestive pout. The jut of his body was full of displayed aggression. ‘You know you want it,’ he said, thrusting his crotch at her. What a target, she thought, entertaining a momentary vision of driving either her knee or her Chelsea-booted foot between his legs. No, don’t think about it, she told herself. I haven’t been here long; I mustn’t cause trouble. Annoyed at her lack of reaction, the absence of fear, he turned his attention to McIntyre as they drew level with him.

‘Oi, nigger bitch, show us your tits!’ he called out to her.

McIntyre ignored him, keeping her eyes averted, stony-faced. Hanlon, feeling a sudden familiar rage surge through her body, gave in to it almost joyfully. Sod it, she thought. I should keep on walking, she thought. I should rise above these things. I should act professionally.

But, she thought. But. . .

Hanlon despised bullies. Those who picked on the weak she regarded as fair game. It was a personal urge to redress the balance. She also liked fighting. There was a berserker streak in her that craved release. Any old excuse would do. She had it here in spades. She let it out.

Here we go, she thought.

She kicked hard and sideways with her foot at the ladder as she walked past. It was a vicious kick. The ladder quivered, moving a few centimetres with a metallic scraping noise as its aluminium tips scratched at the exposed brickwork of the wall, and the three-litre pot of white gloss paint toppled forward, jolted off the rung by the motion, voiding its contents as it fell.

It went even better than she had dared hope.

There was no lid on it and a wave of thick white emulsion, followed by the now almost-empty tin, hit the man. It clattered loudly as it fell to the pavement. McIntyre stared at him in horror.

The stuff covered half of his head and one shoulder. More paint pooled over the lower half of his body, his boot and the pavement. For a second they all stood rooted to the spot by the spectacle. The man had the presence of mind to fumble in his pocket for a rag to clear the paint from his right eye so he could see.

Hanlon surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction. ‘Oops,’ she said loudly.

He advanced towards her, left arm outstretched to grab hold of her, the right arm drawn backwards, fist clenched. Sexual harassment, verbal abuse, the unexpressed threat of rape, had disappeared now. He wanted violence; he wanted to give Hanlon a good kicking.

Hanlon didn’t shout,
Come on, then!
She grinned at him. It was so much more enraging.

‘You fucking bitch!’ he hissed, advancing on her.

Hanlon didn’t retreat. She moved with her customary speed and grace, sure-footed and with an accuracy born of long years of practice. She seized his outstretched wrist and pushed it back on itself, transferring her iron grip to his splayed fingers, instantaneously bending them back. It stopped him in his tracks before he could throw the punch with his right.

His fingers were on the point of breaking. He automatically reached forward with his right hand to pull her hand and arm away.

Hanlon was so close to him now she could smell the paint, the cigarette smoke on his breath and the stale sweat of his unwashed body. But, above all, the paint. There was so much of it, its heavy fumes were eye-watering. Below his thin hair, plastered to his balding head with emulsion, two small bloodshot eyes, one rimmed with white, shone with malice and pain. She pushed the fingers back some more. He grabbed her arm and she swept out her right leg in a scything motion, forward and back.

The rear of her calf hooked round his and he stumbled with the unexpected pressure and fell to the ground. Hanlon still had control of his wrist. He was now on his knees and Hanlon inhaled sharply as she prepared to break his carpal bones. She looked at his face and just as she leaned in for a final push that would shatter the bone, she felt McIntyre tugging at her jacket.

‘Leave him be!’ she said to Hanlon. Her voice was shocked and angry. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

Hanlon did as McIntyre asked. The two women hurried away down the side street, Hanlon’s victim kneeling on the pavement, paint-spattered and clutching his injured forearm. He made no move to pursue them. He’d had enough.

McIntyre was slightly taller than Hanlon and longer-legged. She increased her stride to make Hanlon work to keep up with her. Hanlon, who had previously found McIntyre’s relentless good nature irritating, was now discomforted by the woman’s obvious ill humour. The other woman didn’t need to speak. Her erect spine, shoulders thrown back, and the look on her face made speech unnecessary.

She followed McIntyre’s angry back for two streets until she’d had enough. She suddenly increased her speed, overtook McIntyre, wheeled round and blocked her on the pavement.

‘What’s the matter? Have I upset you?’ she demanded.