A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (11 page)

He noticed a camera crew on the steps, filming a well-known TV political correspondent. They always liked this shot. It was emblematic of the Home Office, like Westminster Green for politicians or New Scotland Yard for police stories.

There had been two main issues on that meeting’s agenda. The first, dictated partly by the surge in popularity of anti-European sentiment in the country, had concerned East European prostitution in the capital. The government was worried by the growth in support for anti-immigration policies and had decided it was time to get tough, or rather to be seen getting tough, on sex crime, tax evasion and non-EU issues. Hence Operation Tomboy, a crackdown on brothels and street prostitution.

The second was budget cuts.

As he’d sat in the meeting, watching a PowerPoint presentation on the ‘Nordic approach’ to prostitution – criminalizing the customer – Corrigan idly wondered where the spokespersons were from the English Collective of Prostitutes. Surely, he thought, if anyone knew about the sex industry it would be somebody who worked at the coalface, so to speak. Did an academic from the University of Sussex really know as much as someone who actually worked the streets, or shouldn’t they at least be allowed their say? Evidently not. As far as policy was concerned the prostitutes could be studied like, say, macaque monkeys, but not allowed any voice or input. That had to be done by a specialist in prostitution. Not, God forbid, by a working girl.

He had tried raising the point and had been asked, patronizingly, if he was in favour of inviting, for example, murderers or armed robbers to comment on Home Office policy on police tactics.

Polite laughter.

Corrigan’s sympathies were with the whores. They got shafted every which way, literally and figuratively.

Corrigan thought of all the outreach and consultancy work that went into community and gang-related crime and relations. Not into prostitution. It reminded him of mental health care, the right ignored it because of cost implications and fear of ‘nanny state’ accusations; the left because of complex libertarian issues. As per usual it would be the police responsible for the mess. The civil servants at the table and the representatives from the London Assembly didn’t care what he thought. He was old and out of touch, and nobody liked the ECP because they didn’t toe anybody’s line but their own and, like him, they didn’t have academic qualifications, which evidently meant their opinions didn’t have any validity.

Poncey university bastards.

He didn’t have a degree. Perhaps that was why he felt they secretly despised him. Them and their degrees. Their cherished bits of paper.

He increased his pace as he walked along Horseferry Road towards the pub in Pimlico where he’d arranged to meet Mawson. People moved out of his way as he bore down on them. At six feet five, with his battered, raw-looking face currently wreathed in a scowl, the assistant commissioner was an alarming sight. He looked like a doorman untethered from a nightclub entrance rather than a senior policeman. A bad-tempered doorman at that.

He passed a bar that purported to be an Irish pub. It advertised the joy of the ‘craic’ as well as Guinness. It was the kind of pub that would have kitsch Irish decorations like an oversized wooden spade labelled Finn McCool’s spoon, and a Blarney Stone. Leprechauns! London Irish himself, he hated phoney Irish bars with a passion.

They could kiss his fucking Blarney Stone. His frown deepened.

He felt his blood pressure rise another notch with every step of his large Dr Martened feet. They beat out a rhythm of resentment. Civil servants, bastards. Stamp. Fake Irishry. Stamp. Unfair hounding of the police. Stamp. Being forced to use unorthodox methods for fear of his emails/mobile being hacked. Stamp.

He felt the blood thundering through his heart, felt a vein pulse in his temple. Calm down, for God’s sake, he told himself.

Make an omelette, but don’t, for God’s sake, break any eggs.

He tried to remember if he’d taken his morning beta blocker. Thank God it’s Mawson I’m meeting, he thought. He’ll calm me down. Despite his degree. And fill me in on Hanlon. I hope to God she’s behaving herself.

He passed a newsagent’s, where the paper on display caught his eye, its headlines shouting.

Police Corruption, Scandal Deepens.

His blood pressure rose another couple of mmHg.

And I’ll have the pasta melanzane, please,’ said Mawson, handing back the large, stiff pseudo-parchment menu to the waitress. He looked around the airy, modern Italian restaurant with pleasure, a man at ease with his life, his surroundings and his character, and beamed at his dining companion, Assistant Commissioner Corrigan.

‘Still not eating meat?’ asked Corrigan. The two men looked at each other affectionately. He’d calmed down now. Mawson had that effect on him. They’d known each other since Hendon, more than thirty years now. Corrigan’s career had taken him more or less to the very top of the career tree but Mawson’s, although not unsuccessful, was considerably more low key.

Mawson pulled a face at the thought. ‘I don’t like killing things,’ he said.

Corrigan replied, ‘Yeah, but it’s only natural, nature’s way.’

‘What, like murder, then?’ Mawson replied.

Corrigan smiled bleakly. ‘It’s always been there, Harry. I suppose it keeps us in a job.’

‘Oh well,’ said Mawson, ‘I guess it does.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ve been reading a book, the
Tao Te Ching
. That in a way makes the same point.’ He closed his eyes and quoted from memory.

‘Heaven and earth are impartial, to them all things are straw dogs.

The Sage is impartial, to him the people are straw dogs.’

He smiled at Corrigan. ‘In other words, Eamonn, we’re all utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. None of it matters.’

‘Well, there we are, Harry, very comforting.’ Corrigan shrugged. ‘I can’t say they’re sentiments I’d disagree with, but in the meantime there are still villains to nick.’

‘Or,’ countered Mawson, ‘we could be concentrating on reducing crime, thus freeing ourselves from the need to nick so many people.’

‘You’re such an old hippy, Harry,’ said Corrigan. He waved his fork. ‘All this airy-fairy mysticism.’

‘Peace and love aren’t really that silly, Eamonn. Not really. And I’m doing my bit, aren’t I, promoting user-friendly police interfaces and, yin and yang, I’m teaching the firearms unit to shoot straight. That’s an uphill task, believe me.’

It was a classic case of opposites attracting, the differences between the two men widening as the years rolled by. Corrigan, enormous, raw-faced, a bull of a man, and the small, sleek figure of Mawson, who looked more like a teacher or a librarian than a policeman. Mawson was the bookish one. He even had a degree, a BA from SOAS in London. He was also a highly experienced firearms officer and, of course, former Bisley champion, although he no longer worked in that sector of the police. Corrigan, by contrast, had left school at fifteen and the only exams he ever passed were internal police ones. But the two men had always got on well despite, maybe because of, in Corrigan’s eyes, an eccentric streak of mysticism in Mawson. Mawson’s Taoist quote was typical. Harry Mawson would have said it was his yin to Corrigan’s yang.

‘I’ll have the beef carpaccio followed by the saltimbocca,’ said Corrigan to the waitress, ‘and another large Barolo.’

Mawson said, ‘
Di me acqua minerale frizzante per favore
,’ and added something in Italian that made the waitress laugh. Corrigan rolled his eyes.

‘Show-off,’ he said. For all his modesty, Mawson liked parading his achievements, his abilities.

Mawson smiled. ‘You know I don’t eat meat, Eamonn. I just don’t like killing things.’

Corrigan looked at him quizzically. It was odd that a man who could hit a playing card dead centre at five hundred yards with a bullet should be so implacably opposed to killing animals. Particularly as Mawson had shot and killed two criminals in the course of his career as a police marksman. Maybe that had put him off.

Mawson smiled at Corrigan again. It was almost as if he was psychic. ‘That was years ago, Eamonn, and, besides, the last thing I shot was a runaway bullock that had escaped from a field. And that was with a dart. I’m not even an authorized firearms officer now. Although they let me train still, in an “advisory capacity”. But really I’m just Missing Persons and Community policing, you know that. And, of course, your chaperone.’

Corrigan shrugged. ‘How’s Hanlon?’

‘Oh, fine,’ said Mawson. ‘A bit sulky.’

‘She usually is,’ said Corrigan.

‘A bit panda-eyed at the moment,’ said Mawson, removing his glasses and circling his eye socket with his forefinger for emphasis.

Corrigan felt a sense of foreboding. ‘What’s she been up to?’

Mawson polished his glasses on his napkin. ‘A sporting injury, she said.’ He squinted at his glasses and held them up to the light. ‘I didn’t say anything to her, sleeping dogs and all that, but I’d rather not have my officers look like they’ve been scrapping unless it was in the line of duty. Maybe you could have a word.’

‘I wasn’t planning on seeing her for a while,’ said Corrigan. ‘She’s a bloody good police officer, Harry, go easy on her. Anyway,’ he said, ‘yin and yang, I’m sure Hanlon’s black eye restored equilibrium in the cosmos somewhere.’

Mawson laughed. ‘Touché,’ he said. ‘I’m notoriously easy-going, anyway, Eamonn. Face it, that’s partly why you asked me to create a vacancy for her. Which of course I did. ’

Yeah, thought Corrigan, and I’m paying for her. She’s on my budget, not on Thames Valley’s.

‘I’m even taking her shooting,’ said Mawson. ‘When I can find the time.’

‘She’ll like that,’ said Corrigan. He had a sudden picture in his mind of Hanlon, prone on the ground, one grey eye squinting down a telescopic sight, her long, strong index finger gently squeezing the trigger, her coarse dark hair pulled back off her forehead.

‘I bet she’ll be bloody good.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Mawson. ‘There’s a lot more to shooting than just pulling a trigger. Believe me, a lot more.’

‘
Ecco, li
,’ said the waitress. Their starters had arrived. ‘
Carpaccio per lei
and
carciofi alla Romana per lei, signori. Enjoy.
’

Corrigan looked down enthusiastically at his translucent slices of very red, wafer-thin, sliced raw beef, drizzled with olive oil. Nicer-looking than Mawson’s artichokes. Baffling bloody vegetables.

‘So, Hanlon’s behaving herself?’

‘Impeccably,’ said Mawson. ‘Now, you were going to tell me about some Russians.’

Hanlon sat at a table in a pub opposite number 50 Beath Street, Marylebone. Oksana had given her the address; it was where Charlie had gone to meet his contact in the Russian sex trade. Oksana thought that Tatiana would have some idea of what might have happened to Charlie Taverner. Hanlon thought, Even if she did, she would keep her mouth shut. But she wanted to have a look, maybe meet the girl.

She should have been hard at work at the office in Langley, Slough, not engaged in this unofficial exploration of the whereabouts of Charlie Taverner.

But Mawson had a day off, Shona McIntyre wasn’t the kind who would hassle her and she wanted to see where Taverner had met up with his London source of information. Whoever Tatiana was, thought Hanlon, she wouldn’t have come cheap. A flat in the building opposite would be worth well over a million.

Once Hanlon had the bit between her teeth, she was unstoppable. Arkady Belanov represented everything she hated in one unattractive parcel. It would be fair to say that she had become obsessed with him. Obsession – a habit of hers that was both her strength and her Achilles heel. It led her to stupidly thoughtless actions. She didn’t care. Hanlon, like many highly successful people, had an unshakeable belief in her own abilities, in her own righteousness.

Right now she was thinking of Oksana. She was thinking of her grief for her dead husband and her fatalistic belief that she would never see justice done.

Hanlon’s bleak grey eyes narrowed as she remembered Arkady Belanov. His rolls of fat, his piggy, sadistic gaze. She remembered how the girl who had worked for Iris Campion had shown her Belanov’s legacy to her, the angry, red scar tissue from where he had burned her with a butane torch. The Russian liked hurting women. Hanlon had hurt him. Not enough.

She ran her eyes over the expensive, desirable mansion block opposite. She nodded to herself. Now she knew that she was right to have come. This was where Belanov was seeking to expand his business.

Hanlon thought again about Belanov’s legacy, a litany of hurt, the dead husband of Oksana, God knows how many others. And they were dead and mutilated while Belanov and his hired help, Dimitri, lived in a state of some luxury, insulated from justice by the power of their money, the power of their influence and the power of the fear that they spread.

She, however, couldn’t be bought, she couldn’t be intimidated and she couldn’t be scared off. I’m your worst nightmare, Belanov, she thought grimly.

Overlooking Hanlon, staring out of a third-floor window at the street below but not seeing her, not seeing anything in the present, in the here and now, was Danny. Mentally, he was back in the Three Compasses.

‘He got me to arrange a meet with Jordan, your brother,’ Jackson had said.

‘Who’s “he”?’ Anderson’s voice was patient. He might have been discussing the weather.

Returning to the Beath Street flat had brought all the memories flooding back.

‘This Myasnikov geezer. He couldn’t come himself, he sent some other Russian. They call them “shestiorka”, it means a gofer. This shestiorka told Jordan they wanted to buy Beath Street. With all fixtures and fittings. Jordan laughed. “How much?” “Five hundred,” said the Russki. Jordan said, “You’re having a laugh, aren’t you, the flat alone is worth one point seven five.” “Let me finish,” said the Russki, “five hundred and we let you live.”’