A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (23 page)

He watched with a sense of pride as she left the building and crossed to her car down below in the car park. She’d politely said goodbye and that she’d be in bright and early the following day. There’s progress for you, he thought proudly. Bright and early.

Hanlon started her car and drove out of the car park. Anderson, here I come, she thought, bright and early.

The pub lived up to her unenthusiastic billing. The Three Barrels wasn’t a bad place but it lacked charisma. She walked in and immediately checked the layout, an automatic habit. It was L-shaped with the bar at the top of the letter, entrance at the bottom and a room just off on the right that she guessed in the old days would have been a separate bar, now knocked into one.

It was a working-man’s pub with no concessions to family or women. Four thirty p.m. was builders’ drinking time, most construction workers following an eight-until-four day. She’d guessed this would be the clientele from the pickup trucks which were parked outside. There were also a couple of small Nissan flatbeds with scaffolding and the scaffolders’ names emblazoned on the sides, which were crammed into the small car park behind the pub. She had glanced down at the pavement and seen there were still splashes of paint on the grey stone from her altercation with the painter and decorator.

Hanlon had turned the corner and entered the doorway of the pub. As she walked in she could see the backs of half a dozen plaid shirts lined up at the bar, and an old TV tuned to a sports channel.

Curious heads turned to examine her. The pub obviously didn’t attract a female clientele. One of the faces was familiar, all too familiar despite not being covered with white paint. Decorator Man.

Hanlon didn’t pause or flinch. Retreat was not an option in her mind. The sensible thing to do would have been to just turn and leave, but she wasn’t made that way. Sensible wasn’t part of her character. When she went to bed that night she couldn’t have faced closing her eyes, knowing that she’d backed down. She’d have despised herself.

She walked up to the bar and ordered a Coke. There was a strange, almost eerie silence as the builders stared at her, not impolitely but obviously all wondering what she was doing in here, an attractive woman in a skirt and jacket. She guessed it was the office clothes more than anything that puzzled them. A man in a suit would have been baffling, although a woman in here of any description would have been a rare enough sight.

Decorator Man said nothing, but stared at her menacingly while he rolled a cigarette. The barman said something to him, he was obviously a regular, and he nodded without listening. All his attention was fixed on Hanlon. He was as unattractive as she remembered, his face sneering and piggy-eyed. She suddenly thought, I bet he hasn’t told any of his drinking buddies what happened, why he was coated in paint the other day. He wouldn’t dare say he’d been beaten up by a woman. He wouldn’t be man enough to bear the teasing. He wasn’t the kind of guy to go in for humorous self-deprecation. In fact, she thought, he probably hasn’t admitted it happened even to himself.

She paid for her drink and nodded civilly to the sweat-stained scaffolders, then went to sit down in the bottom part of the pub, out of sight of the bar round the corner. She sat with her back to the wall, awaiting the inevitable.

Her keen senses heard the conversation by the bar start up again and then the squat figure of the decorator appeared from round the corner. He was carrying a pint of Guinness, which he put on the table that she was sitting behind. He sat down opposite and stared at her. The unlit cigarette that he had rolled hung from his lip.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ he said. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, as unappealing as the rest of him. She had obviously been preying on his mind, beaten by a woman, and here she was, an answer to a prayer.

He leaned forward menacingly across the table, bringing something out of the pocket of his paint-stained dungarees. He held his right hand around something fist-sized, there was a click and a slim blade appeared.

‘Cat got your tongue, bitch?’ he said, in his hoarse, squeaky voice. He was looking intently into her face, obviously hoping to see fear, something he could taste. Something he could feel. He wanted to see her suffer. Hanlon sat immobile, her cold grey eyes staring him out, relying on her peripheral vision so that if he did slice at her face with the knife she would have a chance to react.

She felt a rising rage at her own stupidity. She should have known that for Decorator Man his humiliation would have been festering like a boil, and now here was the chance to lance it. She had thought that what he wanted to do was frighten her. It was only now that she realized she had seriously underestimated him. The knife was wholly unexpected. He had gone nuclear.

He hadn’t produced a knife just to scare her. Now she suspected it was to mark her forever, so that whenever she saw herself in a mirror from now to the end of her time she’d think of him.

He would go for her face any second now. That was for sure. That was a given. She rehearsed what she could do. She couldn’t jerk her head back, away from the knife, there was a wall there. She’d have to go sideways. His arms were short; he’d have to stand to make sure of reaching her face. So, as he rose, she’d flip the table towards him, using the momentum to propel herself away and then throw herself forward at him. He wouldn’t be expecting that. He wouldn’t be expecting her to attack; he would be expecting tearful pleading.

‘Bitch,’ he repeated, provoked by her lack of reaction. Ever since he’d been humiliated by her he’d been fantasizing about what he’d do to her and now the moment had come. Now she was going to pay.

Hanlon smiled contemptuously and rested the palms of her hands on the underside of the table. When she reached three she would act, explode into action. She started counting in her head.

One, two
—

The door of the pub opened and Anderson walked in, flanked by Morris Jones and Danny.

Decorator Man wouldn’t have noticed if a brass band had walked in. All his attention was on Hanlon. Absolutely nothing was going to distract him. Even if he had been aware of the door opening he wouldn’t have cared. From a casual entrant’s perspective there was nothing strange or potentially violent going on. What would anyone coming in see? The back of a man’s head as he sat opposite a woman. Nothing unusual. Nothing to worry Decorator Man about anyone walking in. He was just annoyed by the absence of fear on the bitch’s face.

Hanlon watched impassively, her eyes not moving from Decorator Man’s face. The stocky figure of Danny in jeans and an expensive-looking bomber jacket moving out of sight to the bar, Morris Jones in chinos and a red-and-white striped shirt, what looked like diamonds in his cufflinks sparkling, advancing purposefully towards Decorator Man’s left and Anderson to the right. Dave Anderson’s face was hard, menacing. His eyes glittered in their deep sockets.

Decorator Man became aware of Anderson only as Anderson leaned over him, his rat’s tails of long hair brushing his bald patch. Decorator Man twitched, but was so intent on Hanlon he didn’t look round.

‘Boo!’ said Anderson, softly in Decorator Man’s ear.

That got his attention all right. Decorator Man jumped and twisted his neck, looking up in surprise at Anderson. It was maybe that action, presenting his nose as a target, that determined what happened next. Anderson drove his forehead with practised skill hard into the man’s nose, just at the bridge where it met his forehead. There was a crunching noise, as if someone had stepped on a pair of glasses. Simultaneously, his large, powerful hand descended onto the man’s wrist as fast as if he was swatting a fly, to trap the blade, and Morris Jones’s knuckles thudded in, hard and vicious, to the back of Decorator Man’s skull.

Head, hand, fist. Bang. Bang. Bang. The whole process was unbelievably quick and efficient. It must have taken less than two seconds.

Decorator Man’s head had been driven into the table from the force of Jones’s short punch. The table was heavy and sturdy. It barely moved as his forehead made contact with its surface. He was still conscious but in no shape to do a great deal. The three short, sharp blows to his head – nose, back of head, forehead – had taken their toll. Blood started to trickle from his nose as Jones hauled him upright, the legs of his chair screeching on the cheap lino of the floor, and bundled him out of the pub door.

He went in an unprotesting sort of way. Probably he was barely conscious or, if he was conscious, not wanting to provoke his attackers any more.

Anderson took the vacated chair. He picked up the flick knife from the table and inspected it. He raised his eyebrows, retracted the blade and put it in the pocket of his tracksuit jacket. He said to Hanlon, ‘Friend of yours?’

‘We’d met before,’ said Hanlon.

Anderson smiled at her. ‘I guessed so,’ he said quietly.

They looked at each other, both conscious that Anderson had evened things up after the cemetery incident.

‘Not Russian, is he?’ asked Anderson.

Hanlon shook her head. ‘A domestic incident,’ she said.

Jones reappeared and Danny joined them with a tray of drinks. Anderson nodded at Decorator Man’s half-drunk Guinness. He looked at it with disfavour. The froth from the head had congealed, like a slug trail, up the side of the straight glass.

‘Take that back to the bar, Danny. Buy his friends a drink. Make sure the natives aren’t restless.’ He turned to Jones. ‘What did you do with chummy, Morris?’

‘I left him with Robby. Robby’s taken him round the back.’

Anderson nodded, satisfied. Jones turned and positioned himself near the entrance to the alcove-like part of the bar where they were, to prevent any newcomer, if there were any, from sitting near his boss.

Anderson had a bottle of Pils in front of him and a glass. He poured the contents of the bottle into it and watched the bubbles. Hanlon waited for him to speak. His eyes flicked from the glass to Hanlon.

‘You heard about my problem.’

It was a statement, not a question. Hanlon nodded.

‘Turf war, eh, Hanlon.’ Anderson rubbed his chin. ‘I haven’t had any problems since I nailed that cunt to a door.’

Hanlon’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’d rather you didn’t use that expression,’ she said.

Anderson gave a short bark of laughter. She hadn’t expressed any reservations about the incident to which they both knew he referred, when he’d used a nail-gun to attach a rival named Phil Woodward to a door, crucifix fashion. But here she was, objecting to his language.

Jones looked round in surprise. He didn’t hear his employer make that sort of noise usually.

‘OK,’ said Anderson, raising his palms in a placatory manner. ‘I won’t.’ He dipped a finger in his lager and removed it, inspected it and tasted it with his tongue. ‘Now, I know it’s Russians. I know they want me out of the running. I could do with some names confirming. And addresses. Could you help?’

He studied the woman opposite, slim and elegant. She’d taken her jacket off. It lay folded neatly beside her on the faux leather of the banquette bench seat that ran across the wall of this end of the bar. It was a navy jacket and he could see its lining, cream with blue spots. The jacket looked very small and fragile, strangely feminine. He examined his sizeable right hand. He could probably lean forward, pick it up and enfold it within the grasp of his powerful fingers. He looked at the face of its owner as she considered his question.

Hanlon looked up. The nails on her hand, which she’d been studying, were cut short. Earlier that day she had done twenty-five slow, perfect form push-ups, supporting her weight on the ends of her fingertips.

She raised her eyes to Anderson, to the burning eyes under the rat’s tail of stringy hair. Her gaze took in the elegant, expensively dressed figure of Morris Jones. His red and white, double-cuffed shirt with its gleaming cufflinks was not designed to hang outside trousers as it did at the moment. The shirt tail was too long; it was meant to be tucked in. Jones was not the kind of man who would make a sartorial mistake like that. There would be a gun under there. She knew that for a certainty.

Anderson was obviously a concerned man.

Decorator Man, although he’d have been processed by now at the hands of Robby, could count himself lucky he was still alive.

Anderson looked at her quizzically. She was annoyed with herself that she actually quite liked him.

She reached a decision. ‘Arkady Belanov, Woodstock Road, Oxford, and his minder, Dimitri something or other, are the two who will have organized the hit on you and the one on your property in Marylebone. They are working for a man known as the
vor
.’

‘You know about Marylebone?’ said Anderson, not smiling any more.

Hanlon stood up. ‘I know lots of things. I’m a knowledgeable woman. I know that the
vor
is called Myasnikov. I know his nickname is the Butcher of Moscow. I don’t, however, know where I can find the body of a man called Charlie Taverner, and that I would like to know.’

She slipped her jacket on. She had no bag; it was in her car. She took a card from her jacket pocket.

‘My number.’

Anderson nodded. She walked past Morris Jones.

‘Mr Jones.’ She nodded goodbye and left the pub.

He looked at Anderson in surprise. ‘How come she knows my name?’

‘She knows lots of things,’ said Anderson. He stood up too. ‘Come on, Morris, let’s go.’

From behind the counter, the barman watched the three of them leave the pub. He breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

He turned to the three scaffolders. ‘Drinks are on the house. I’m having a fucking large one.’

DI Huss waited with mounting impatience for Enver Demirel at Paddington Station. She checked the watch on her wrist yet again, even though she was hardly unaware of the time. The electronic information board for Arrivals and Departures, the constant announcements of train movements, the phone in her other hand and the frantic busyness of the place at six in the evening, filled with commuters desperate to get home – she would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have realized that it was around six o’clock and that Enver was late, and she had heard nothing from him since the day before.