Arkady was very conscious of the explosive just below his heavy, dangling balls. His scrotum visibly tightened. He reached a decision.
‘Thursday. Two weeks ago. Three to five thirty. He was here, with Oksana,’ he said.
Hanlon lit the paper she was holding and looked at the flame. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Now, please...’
Hanlon looked at his face. She was fairly sure that he was telling the truth. He certainly looked anguished enough.
Hanlon dropped the lighted spill into the gunpowder. Arkady screwed his eyes tightly shut, in anticipation. Instead of the explosion he had been dreading, the little pile of blue rectangles caught fire and burned with a hot yellow flame. It licked upwards. Arkady let out a stream of what Hanlon took to be Russian swear words as the flames singed the pubic hairs off his scrotum and perinaeum. A horrible smell of burned hair filled the room.
‘You should learn something about how ballistics work,’ said Hanlon, ‘given your fondness for firearms.’
‘You bitch,’ said Arkady. ‘Who sent you?’
For some reason Hanlon suddenly thought of the quiet, dignified old man in his archaic uniform, selling
The Watchtower
, outside Mark Whiteside’s hospital. There was an air almost of sanctity about him and Hanlon, despite her lack of religious beliefs, always bought a copy.
If only Mark had been here, she thought.
She picked up Arkady’s Y-fronts, held his nose, and when Arkady opened his mouth to breathe, she stuffed them inside, careful not to let him bite her through the fabric. She secured them with tape.
She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, ‘The Salvation Army.’
Then Hanlon picked up her Burberry and put it on. She opened the sash window, climbed into the garden and was gone.
‘You did what!’ said Enver, horror-struck. He remembered a saying of which his mother was particularly fond,
I was literally tearing my hair out
. That’s what he was practically doing now. His powerful fingers were laced into the hair on his head, tugging at the roots as Hanlon calmly tipped another bucket of outrageous behaviour over his head.
I’m beginning to understand how Corrigan must feel, he thought.
Enver was no fool and he could sense how promotion was gradually beginning to change him. He’d had to deal with two cases of good police work being undone by methods that would not stand up in court. He was beginning to learn that unaccountable actions led to unfortunate consequences. He’d always known this, of course, but now he was responsible for the actions of others he was beginning to take a more managerial view of things: that having a system, even though it inevitably contained flaws, was better than anarchy.
And anarchy was what he was looking at now. He had seen a couple of the photos of Fuller, looking as if he’d received the most terrible beating, with the handcuffs round his wrists.
What if this makes the papers? That was his immediate thought.
‘Please tell me they weren’t your cuffs, ma’am,’ he said to Hanlon. She shook her head innocently.
‘No, mine are SpeedCuffs. These ones are a different make. They’re his all right.’
The meeting with Fuller, the chief suspect in a murder enquiry, was bad enough. It was irregular, but it would pass muster. If it did come to trial, though, it would be a gift from heaven to the defence lawyer. Coercion would be the first thing to spring to mind, followed by police brutality.
Fuller had been found by one of the cleaners at six in the morning, still shackled to the whiteboard. Once the cleaner and his colleagues had finished staring, and, as it transpired, taking photos, they had to phone maintenance to find some bolt cutters to free him. Half an hour later the pictures, several of them, had been uploaded to the Internet. It had become the most talked about thing at the university, although so far Fuller had remained silent about what had happened and who had been involved.
Enver had hoped, when he first heard about it, that maybe the incident was related to Fuller’s peculiar sex life, but deep down he had suspected Hanlon’s involvement and sure enough, here it was.
‘Fuller won’t complain,’ she said confidently.
Since the day before, when she had obtained the information she needed from Arkady, Hanlon had been feeling much more like her old confident self. In his lessons – ironically he had given one called ‘Well-Being’ – Fuller had provided a quotation from his beloved Nietzsche on happiness that summed up her current feelings.
A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal.
After the incident on the island, she’d been feeling not exactly depressed, but flat. Life seemed to have lost its savour. She wondered if it could be some form of post-traumatic stress. If it was, she’d deal with it in her own way. She didn’t want to see a police shrink; she had a paranoid feeling that she’d be recommended as mentally unsuited to return to active duty.
That would suit many of her colleagues.
Mind you, she felt she had reason enough to feel down. Her best friend was in a coma, for which she blamed herself. It had been her unofficial investigation into a child serial killer that had got Mark shot in the head.
Hanlon was perfectly aware that her unorthodox actions might have unexpected consequences, but it was a risk she was impelled to take. She was, at heart, a gambler and the highest stakes were when she was playing with her own life. When you won on a bet like that, the reward was tremendous. She was also prepared to pay the price for her actions herself. If it meant being sacked, so be it. If it meant being beaten up or injured, so be it. If it meant death, well, that would be that and obviously she’d be in no position to complain.
It was also a step in her quest for vengeance to punish Dame Elizabeth’s killer. From a selfish point of view, she’d had the chance to learn about her father snatched away from her. Hope can be so cruel. Revenge can be so strong.
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
Another quote from the German philosopher, courtesy of Fuller. She should have reminded him of it as she tied him to the boom of the overhead projector, given him something to ponder.
Basically, she’d felt out of control of her own life, but the Arkady incident had made her feel a great deal better. Positive action at last.
A Yes.
She had managed to confirm that she was right to be suspicious of the Oxford incident, even if it did weaken the police case against Fuller.
A No.
‘He won’t complain,’ she said again to a dubious Enver.
‘You say he won’t complain now,’ said Enver. ‘But when he’s standing in court facing a murder charge he might feel very different. Particularly, ma’am, when there’s a picture of him chained to that blackboard,’
‘Whiteboard,’ corrected Hanlon.
‘Chained to that whiteboard with his nose broken and his face covered in blood. Both of which you did.’
‘Don’t forget, he tried to assault me!’ protested Hanlon.
‘It’s your word against his,’ said Enver.
‘I’ve got it on film, thanks to him and his perverted camera and porn obsession,’ countered Hanlon. ‘And it’s his camera. He can hardly claim he was unaware his image was being recorded. I think it would be ruled in as admissible evidence.’
‘What you did to him, it does look awfully like torture, ma’am,’ said Enver.
Hanlon shrugged. ‘He started it,’ she said mutinously.
Enver thought, I won’t even begin to answer that.
‘Well, ma’am, I’m sure his lawyer will say, why didn’t you arrest him?’
‘I don’t think he did those murders,’ said Hanlon, simply.
Enver stared at her in amazement. ‘Why not? He even had a choke chain with him when he attacked you.’
‘Because he has an alibi for the time the Oxford killing was committed,’ she said confidently.
Enver looked at her with surprise. ‘Who alibied him?’
Hanlon went through her story of the day before with the two Russians. Enver stared at her aghast. The Fuller business was bad enough. This was off the scale.
I’m glad I don’t drink, he thought. This would drive anyone down the pub.
‘So,’ Hanlon said smugly, ‘I have every reason to believe him, and before you say anything, I think it’s highly unlikely that Arkady Belanov is going to log a complaint to the Oxford police about an assault. It’s not really his style.’
‘No, no, it’s not, ma’am. But I’m sure that what is his style is to have some form of surveillance camera in the reception and bar area at least, and I’m also sure that there’ll be at least one of our colleagues in Oxford on the Belanov payroll. That’s going to be his style. Really it is. He’ll know exactly who you are by the end of the week, if not sooner.’
He put his hand back into his thick hair for comfort. It was so typically Hanlon, blithely convinced of her own indestructibility. She’d been careful enough not to leave fingerprints and then almost certainly allowed herself to be filmed.
She never thinks things through, not fully, he thought. It’s action, action, action, no planning.
‘You might as well have taken a photo and sent it to him on SnapChat or Instagram. Or a selfie. Please tell me you didn’t.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Enver,’ said Hanlon. ‘You’re such an old woman. He’ll put it down to business. One of those things. It’s an occupational hazard for a criminal.’
‘Ma’am, you threatened to blow his balls off,’ said Enver, shaking his head in disagreement. ‘He’s not going to forgive that in a hurry.’
‘Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ Hanlon sounded flippant, but she had to admit that maybe Enver had a point. Someone from the brothel would have eventually found and released Arkady and Dimitri and while obviously no one would have dared take photos, as had happened with Fuller, it was the kind of story that would inevitably leak out. They’d been made a fool of by a woman and this would add insult to injury. A very big insult probably. They couldn’t afford not to do anything.
‘I don’t know what Murray is going to make of this, ma’am,’ said Enver.
Now it was Hanlon’s turn to look alarmed.
‘Surely you’re not going to tell him about any of this?’ she said. He looked at her mournfully. He couldn’t play the them-and-us game any more. Enver shook his head.
‘We’ll have to tell him about Fuller, ma’am. Just in case. I think it would be better coming from you. You can claim you were upset. Get your side of the story in first.’
‘I was upset, Detective Inspector. First he tried to assault me, then he said he enjoys masturbating while thinking of me. Who wouldn’t be upset,’ said Hanlon. ‘And he questioned my sanity.’
I wonder why he’d do that? thought Enver to himself sarcastically.
‘Exactly, ma’am. So upset, your judgement was clouded temporarily, but now you want to make sure everything is done by the book, now you’re less upset. Luckily you’ve got photographic evidence showing Fuller attacking you. It’s all very much out there in the public domain, isn’t it, as you said. I agree that the Belanov incident shouldn’t come out, but what are we going to do about the fact it points to Fuller’s innocence?’
Hanlon felt that there had been some kind of seismic shift in their relationship. Although Enver was technically lower in rank, he seemed very much to be dictating the agenda. It was like talking to a junior version of Corrigan. She reluctantly conceded that he did have a point.
‘Well, we’ll just have to find the real killer, won’t we?’
A Straight Line.
‘We have no suspects. Nobody except Fuller,’ pointed out Enver. ‘And let’s not forget that the only person who really thinks he’s innocent is you, and that’s based on evidence that would be totally inadmissible in court.’
Now it was Hanlon’s turn to get annoyed. ‘What I have managed to do is prove to my own satisfaction that Fuller, weirdo creep though he is, did not kill Jessica McIntyre and very probably, almost certainly, did not do the other murders. It may have been a bit irregular, but I think now you can put some pressure on Oxford to recheck their investigation.’
A Goal.
Enver shook his head dejectedly. It’s up to me then, is it? I wonder what I can say to DI Huss.
‘Well, I’ll see what can be done,’ he said.
Hanlon stood up and walked away from Enver’s desk without a backward glance. It was a deliberate snub. Enver felt undervalued and upset as he watched her slim, elegant back leaving the office. He sighed and picked up the phone on his desk and dialled Summertown. Hopefully DI Huss might be able to help.
DI Huss was having troubles of her own. This problem, too, had a human face, DS Ian Joad.
Every office, every place of work, has someone who is generally universally reviled, and Summertown nick had Joad. DS Joad, with nearly thirty years’ history of taking small bribes, sexual coercion of prostitutes, fiddling expenses, complaining and generally being a pain in the arse.
The last few years he had added ‘stress’ to his repertoire of annoying habits and two or three times a year would come down with it. He would signal these bouts of stress in advance with dramatic sighing and waving of his arms, pantomime panic attacks. Then he’d be off for a month. It was, of course, illegal to enquire too much about Joad’s stress, because that in itself would be inherently stressful. No senior officer doubted Joad’s ability to keep just the right side of the law, and that included employment legislation. No senior officer underestimated his cunning.
One memorable time he tried to submit an expense claim for overtime at a court appearance he’d scheduled for himself, when he knew it was a rostered day off and he could claim a day’s extra pay for a five-minute showing. The ‘stress’ had got in the way of the actual court appearance, but he argued that had he not been stressed, he’d have received the money and so should be paid it.
It was the day Templeman exploded. No one had seen anything like it before or since. The mild-mannered, church-attending Scot had screamed, ‘Is that meant to be some sort of fucking joke, Joad?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Not exactly.’
Even Joad was alarmed. He’d pushed the DCI too far.
‘I’ve never seen a bigger disgrace than you in my life, Joad. Now get out of my sight.’