A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (37 page)

‘Just one thing I’d like to make clear.’ Huss balled her fist and slammed it into Ian Joad’s stomach, driving the wind out of him. He doubled up in pain. It was an upper-cut and the force of it nearly lifted Joad off his feet. Good punch, thought Hanlon admiringly. He straightened up, using the bonnet of the car for support, taking shallow gasps of painful air.

‘Don’t call me fatso,’ she said.

Huss walked back to her side of the car and got in. She slammed the door shut. Joad straightened up, wincing, barely able to breathe.

Hanlon smiled and watched as the Mercedes reversed away and headed off round the farmhouse to the track that led to the main road.

‘Shall we go?’ she said to Serg.

Traffic was light on the M40 heading back to London. Hanlon had pulled over at a car park as they had been leaving Oxford, and called Anderson to tell him about the Russians and to ask him to clean up the resultant mess. She also told him to return Serg’s car to his hotel and Huss’s car to the park-and-ride car park at Headington. And she’d texted Slater’s address to Huss.

Then she sent one last text. The most important one she had ever sent in her life.

‘So it was Myasnikov that brought you over here to Britain?’ asked Hanlon. The engine sounded good to her ears; she was aware of the compelling shape of Serg next to her in the small cockpit of the powerful car. For once she was obeying the speed limit. At seventy in the Audi TT, it felt as if she was deliberately dawdling, which in a sense she was. She felt an almost medicated sense of relief. To be alive, that was amazing. Everything felt wonderful, every breath, the comforting feel of the hard steering wheel between her fingers, the lights of the dashboard, the car seat under her thighs. She was alive. She could be lying face down with Melinda Huss, like poor Danny, but she wasn’t.

And Enver was OK, and Huss, and for once, none of this mess was her responsibility. She felt a blessed freedom from guilt. Beside her, Serg nodded.

‘Technically, yes. As you know, I am FSB, the Federal Security Service, a full colonel, in fact.’ She could see a bitter smile on his face when she glanced at him quickly as she overtook a slow-moving lorry.

‘But, really, it was just an excuse. Myasnikov, he was one of the
novye vory v zakone
, the new-style
vors
, and he was, as you know,
a nasty piece of work
– I think that is the correct expression?’

‘It’ll do,’ said Hanlon. ‘Understated, but it will do. What about Mawson?’

‘Belanov was Myasnikov’s UK bagman,’ said Serg. ‘The money that he controlled would have fallen under Mawson’s control. He’d have become what we call
derzhatel obshchaka
, the controller of the money fund.’ He remained silent for a moment and continued, ‘Everyone, Russians included, thought of
Miasnik
as a great criminal brain. But he wasn’t. Mawson would have bided his time, then killed him, or a Russian gangster would.’

‘Or the state,’ said Hanlon.

‘But of course,’ he agreed. ‘The state is just a bigger and more powerful mafia than the mafia,’ said Serg dismissively.

Hanlon thought of the trail of dead back at Tragoes Farm. She also thought in particular of Danny. So young.

‘And you serve it?’ she said to Serg, disbelief in her voice. ‘This mafia state?’

‘
Nyet
, Hanlon. I serve Russia,’ said Serg proudly. ‘Governments come and go, political systems come and go, presidents come and go. My duty is to Russia. That is who I serve. That is where my loyalty lies.’

First and foremost, my country is my love, thought Serg. As it was my father’s. There was silence for a while as the Audi law-abidingly ate up the miles down the motorway through the black night. Then Serg resumed their conversation.

‘I told my boss that Myasnikov was part of some unspecified plan to assassinate the Mayor of Moscow, that there was a
skhodka
, a special thieves’ meeting, with disaffected Chechens and rogue police here in London, and I would go as a guest of Edward Li and Thanatos and investigate.’

‘They believed that?’ said Hanlon.

Serg shrugged. ‘Who knows, who cares? It could well be true. Belanov was connected with all sorts of criminals. My boss let me come, that’s the main thing. For all I know he works for some rival of Myasnikov. The Surikov family are like FSB royalty. We’re part of the
siloviki
, the power guys. We run Russia.’ He gave a mirthless bark of laughter. ‘It’s true in, oh, so many ways.’ Serg’s great-grandfather had been with the CheKa, forerunners of the NKVD where his grandfather had served, who had later become the KGB, who became the FSB. It was a distinguished lineage.

‘That was my excuse anyway,’ continued Serg. ‘And it was good enough to get me here, and soon I shall write a report that I have neutralized the threat of Myasnikov and the Chechen-supporting policeman, and my superiors will be happy and Myasnikov’s
vor
rivals who bribe them will be happy. Everybody will be happy.’

Hanlon could hear the bitterness in his voice.

‘And what will make you happy, Serg?’ Hanlon asked gently.

He turned his head and looked at her proud face in profile, fitfully illuminated by the lights of oncoming traffic. You could make me happy, DCI Hanlon, he thought. But here is what would satisfy me.

‘My father was killed by Arkady Belanov. He had been sent to investigate something even bigger than the usual corruption in the 58th Army at their staff headquarters. That’s in a place called Vladikavkaz near the Chechnya–Ingoushetia border. The middle of nowhere. He was murdered. The army said Chechens, but I found out it was a Group Vympel elimination group. That’s four men.’ Another bark of laughter. ‘They’re FSB. My own kind. One talked to me, before I threw him off that roof.’

‘That’s why they call you the Angel?’ asked Hanlon.

Serg nodded. ‘They say when you see me coming for you, you will fly with the angels. Belanov was in the elimination group. He will lead me to the man who organized it. Belanov is nothing by himself, just a weapon, just a tool.’

They were now entering the outskirts of London.

‘So I’m glad you didn’t kill him. I need him to talk to me, then he will die.’

They drove in silence through the deserted streets of central London – orderly, quiet, well lit, beautiful in Hanlon’s eyes – each lost in thought. Then up through Camden, past Little Venice where so many of Serg’s countrymen were buying properties.

Hanlon pulled up outside Albert Slater’s end-of-terrace house in time to see Joad about to get into the Mercedes. He leaned on the open door as she stopped alongside.

‘They’re in there, together with the doctor that he sent.’ He pointed at Serg. ‘The other copper seems OK, according to him. Anyway, I’m off. I’m feeling a bit under the weather.’ He smiled his infuriating smile. He patted the roof of the car in an almost proprietorial way. ‘I think I need a bit of time off work.’ He looked seriously at Hanlon. ‘Maybe a lot of time. I’d say it was stress. Adios, Hanlon.’

He slid into the driver’s seat and pulled away.

Hanlon watched him go. She put the handbrake on in the Audi but left the engine running and got out, as did Serg. She opened the boot and took out his gun bag and gave it to him.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’ he asked. The tension between the two of them was almost palpable, electric. They stood silently, looking at each other. Hanlon pushed her hair back from her forehead.

‘Please,’ said Serg gently. Hanlon got the feeling it wasn’t a word he had to use a great deal.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve still got things to do.’

She thought of Oksana; she thought of the man she had to speak to. Debts to be discharged.

He nodded. ‘Can I see you again?’ He was feeling almost light-headed with desperation. He hadn’t felt like this since he’d been a teenager. I’m thirty-four, he thought, almost wonderingly. Not seventeen.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. She got in the car. She didn’t turn her head to say goodbye.

He watched as her tail lights moved away.

The bar at Corrigan’s club officially closed at one a.m, but Corrigan had bribed the night porter to allow him to use it for his meeting with Hanlon.

She looked exhausted. James, the night porter, was ex-army. He had raised an eyebrow slightly at Hanlon, even though he’d been forewarned by Corrigan. The woman he admitted through the forbidding club entrance was unusual to say the least.

She smelled of smoke and sweat and blood. James knew the signs of combat when he saw them. She was wearing an old, faded, man’s denim shirt over a navy T-shirt, and he suspected he knew what the dark stains were on her chest. Her combat trousers were filthy and her dark hair matted and powdered with dust. She was wearing high-sided army boots – not British, he knew what they looked like only too well – American, he guessed. There were several deep gashes and scrapes across her knuckles.

‘I’m Hanlon,’ she said, her gaze imperious. James straightened his back automatically and fought a desire to salute.

‘If you’d like to follow me, ma’am,’ he said.

They walked across the marble foyer, lit only by a single lamp, James leading the way, and then up the broad marble stairs with the red carpet and the golden brass runners at the base of each step. After the hellhole of the farm, the club seemed supernaturally opulent and so quiet she could almost feel the silence throbbing. The stairs ended at the broad gallery that overlooked the foyer and the members’ bar was one of the rooms just off it. Like the foyer, it was lit by a single lamp.

‘He’s in there, ma’am,’ said James.

Corrigan was sitting in a pool of soft light that did little to mitigate the harshness of his craggy, slab-like face. He had been to a black-tie dinner and was still wearing his jacket and bow tie that on him gave the impression of a high-class bouncer in a low-class club. He had undone his bow tie and it hung like a short scarf around his thick neck. His dress shirt was rumpled. He was holding a cut-glass tumbler of single malt; she could smell it from where she stood.

‘Good evening, Hanlon,’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’

She sat down opposite him. He ran his eyes over her. She looked terrible, but she was alive. Enver’s silence over the last couple of days had become to Corrigan a deafening roar. Now, thank God, he would get some answers.

His eyes were hard as ever, but inside he felt a terrible anguish as he looked at Hanlon. He had tried to keep her safe and had failed spectacularly.

‘How’s Enver Demirel?’ he asked.

How are you feeling, Enver?’ asked Huss. Enver Demirel was lying in Albert Slater’s guest bedroom, which was mercifully free of oriental or whimsical touches. It had clean, hard, modern Scandinavian lines and its colour scheme consisted of greys and shades of white, with the occasional strip of black and clever lighting. Mirrors made the room bigger and lighter than it was naturally.

The lights had dimmer controls and the bedroom was bathed in a very soft light. He was feeling tranquil and relaxed. He looked at the tall, bald Russian doctor with sleepy eyes and yawned.

Enver lay propped up in bed. Huss, her touch sure and gentle from handling sick animals, had helped the doctor to clean Enver up, treated his wounds, mainly bad burns and occasional deep cuts, bandaged his head and strapped him up where necessary.

‘Fine,’ he said and closed his eyes.

‘It seems pretty much superficial,’ said the doctor, satisfied. ‘I’ve given him morphine-based painkillers. Give him two of these.’ He pressed several bottles and blister-packed packages of tablets on Huss. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories: it was a comprehensive pharmacopoeia. More instructions followed. Three days’ worth. In a day or so she’d get him checked over properly. Enver appeared to be sleeping.

She accompanied the doctor downstairs. In the front room Slater was at his desk, Chantal pouring him tea.

‘Let Dr Zhivago out, Chantal, there’s a good
feele
,’ he said to her. Chantal nodded. Huss thought she seemed to have adopted the role of PA to Slater. Chantal said politely to the doctor, ‘If you’d like to come this way, Dr Zhivago.’ She led the baffled-looking doctor to the front door. Chantal was dressed demurely in a white blouse and dark skirt. She looked relaxed and content, so much better than the wreck from a couple of nights before.

‘I think I’ll let the little
palone feele
stay,’ said Albert Slater. ‘Poor tart. I know what it’s like to work the meat rack. I was a
dilly boy
once and very much in demand, may I tell you, not that you’d guess it these days. But,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to be tough to survive and she ain’t that.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s street, but she’s not tough.’ He sipped his tea. ‘How’s the
charpering omi
?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Huss. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He means your policeman friend,’ explained Chantal sweetly, as she came back into the room. ‘Mr Slater’s been teaching me Polari.
Palone
means a woman and
feele
means a child.’

Slater looked at her approvingly. ‘It’s all very Pygmalion,’ he said. ‘In a way.’

‘He’s fine,’ Huss said, and yawned. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You left your bag here the other day,’ said Chantal. ‘I put it in the same room as the policeman.’

Huss excused herself and went upstairs.

Enver seemed asleep. She found her bag that she’d packed for a night of cinema, food and sex. It felt like an awfully long time ago. She took out the exotic nightwear she’d been planning to wear just in case Enver still hadn’t got the message.

She padded into the bathroom, undressed and stood under the shower for what felt like a very long time, washing and scrubbing her hair and body with intense concentration, cleansing every bit of the day from her. She could feel the tension and the excess adrenaline flowing away down the drain with the dirty water. Tomorrow I’ll get a sauna somewhere, she thought, exfoliate even more. She had brought a bin bag upstairs with her and she had stuffed it with the clothes she’d been wearing. Everything connected with Tragoes Farm would go.