A Hard Woman to Kill (The DCI Hanlon Series) (7 page)

‘What do we want?’

‘
Pay equality
.’

‘When do we want it?’

‘
NOW!
’

Hanlon’s features were concealed behind a V-for-Vendetta-style plastic mask. Normally these sent her blood pressure soaring with rage: she associated the smug Hidalgo- style features with middle-class anarchists attacking the police. So it was with a certain ironic satisfaction that she used it to hide her policewoman’s face.

This wasn’t a collection of sex workers outside Belanov’s brothel; this was a demonstration by twenty-four short-term contract university administration staff (plus Hanlon) protesting about their pay conditions. When he had bought the house, Arkady Belanov hadn’t realized that the property to the left of his contained one of the offices of the finance department of Oxford University. More specifically, it housed the office of the finance director.

Women employees at the university finance office, it seemed, who were on part-time contracts, were not being paid bonuses and overtime entitlements that full-time staff received. In effect, this was dragging their pay down. This was what the demo was about.

Hanlon had flashed a forged NUJ card she had and, claiming to be a freelance journalist, had joined in. One of the protestors, Beth, had lent her the mask. Beth had one too. Hanlon was hoping to catch a glimpse of her real quarry, Arkady Belanov.

This demonstration was beginning to cost the Russian a great deal of money. None of Belanov’s customers wanted to use his brothel while the protestors were there. Belanov charged a couple of hundred pounds an hour for use of a girl, minimum. More for specialist services. His clients were well heeled, well connected. Many of them worked directly or indirectly for the university. Many were dons, lecturers in the colleges. They were frightened in case one of the protestors knew them or local media might appear with cameras. They certainly didn’t want spouses, students or colleagues asking them what they were doing there. They were as camera-shy as wild animals.

It was setting him back several thousand pounds a day. He watched the demonstration now out of one of the upstairs windows, together with Dimitri, his minder, and a third man, local to Oxford and non-Russian.

The two Slavs made a distinctive couple. Arkady Belanov was porcine, extremely obese, virtually hairless, his eyelashes and eyebrows so pale they were practically invisible. He looked like a huge, malignant baby. His enormous stomach presented him with a perpetual clothing problem, familiar to all fat men: trouser belt under, so the rolls of fat overhung, or belt over the gut, like a parody of pregnancy wear.

The onesie had been a wonderful development, ideally designed for someone of Belanov’s shape. He often padded around the brothel in one. Today, though, he was wearing a turquoise velour two-piece tracksuit. A mockery of athleticism. Heavy rings adorned his strong, sausage-like fingers.

His companion, Dimitri, a head taller than the other two, was also wearing a tracksuit. But with his overly developed muscular physique, a hard-core bodybuilder’s ridged, ripped and defined muscles, it seemed appropriate. Non-ironic.

He had on a sleeveless, low-cut vest beneath the unzipped top, his pecs like hot-water bottles, and the third man, Detective Inspector Joad, surreptitiously examined Dimitri’s intricate array of tattoos that were visible over the inverted arc of the material. He didn’t like tattoos usually, or Dimitri, come to that, but even Joad was impressed with the artistry and theatricality of the body art. One evening Dimitri had been very drunk and had good-humouredly explained them to Joad.

The colourful multi-onion-domed cathedral on his chest (Joad had thought it was the Kremlin at first), one dome for each year served in prison.

The dagger round the neck showing he had murdered while in prison. The two drops of blood that dripped from its end the number of murders.

The spider on one shoulder in its intricate web denoted a high criminal rank.

There were plenty more. Skulls, slogans in the Cyrillic alphabet that Joad couldn’t read. One of them, he remembered, meant
I live in sin, I die laughing.

There were universal symbols that needed no explanation, like a roaring tiger and a swastika that covered his arms. Unseen, but the policeman knew they were there, were thieves’ crosses on his knees, indicating that Dimitri kneeled for no man, and fetters around his ankles that referred to the length of Dimitri’s various prison sentences. All of Dimitri’s criminal history, like a graphic autobiography, inked on to his skin. The illustrated man.

Although it was only ten o’clock in the morning, all three men were drinking Ruskova vodka, a cheap, potent brand that reminded Arkady of home in Moscow. Good old Nizhny Novgorod, he thought with affection, thinking of the city where the vodka came from and where he’d opened his first brothel. He’d worked for the owner, then made him a business offer, later burying him in a field outside the city. Happy days, his first steps as an entrepreneur.

‘
Suki
, bitches,’ said Arkady, glowering at the women. Women should know their place. He hated this aspect of Britain, career women. No wonder the country was in such a mess. What were women good for? Cooking and fucking.

Dimitri in turn glowered at the other man present, DI Joad. Joad might have been there as another type of physique to contrast with the fat, spherical Arkady and the raw-boned, muscular hulk of Dimitri. Joad was thin, wiry and narrow-shouldered, his hair, showing no signs of thinning despite his fifty years, greasy with a side parting. Broken veins on his cheekbones from years of heavy drinking added a splash of colour to his unhealthy pallor.

‘You should do something about those
bliyad
.’ Joad looked blank. ‘Bitches. You are police. We pay you,’ said Dimitri irritably.

Back in the industrial slums of Moscow where the Russians came from, they owned the local police – at least they owned enough of them to get a minor protest like this broken up. Dimitri sometimes found adjusting to life in Oxford hard. Joad should be out there directing a couple of police with batons, in Dimitri’s view. Crack a couple of those lesbian bitches’ heads open. Job done. He took another drink. He’d love to do it himself.

Joad shrugged and sipped his vodka. He raised his glass.

‘
Nu boudem
,’ he said. Cheers. A bit early in the day, even for him, but when in Rome. He was aware of Dimitri’s provocatively unfriendly gaze, deliberately running his eyes contemptuously from Joad’s scuffed shoes, up his cheap, dated shiny suit, to his dandruffed head. He knew that Dimitri was trying to humiliate him. Joad didn’t care. He’d weathered worse than Dimitri. He was blissfully disdainful of others’ opinions. Buddha-like, he had reached satori. He didn’t give a rat’s arse what the Russians thought of him, so long as they kept paying him.

‘And you say you have no information on the
bliyad
Hanlon?’ said Arkady, changing the subject. She was omnipresent in his thoughts. He saw her face last thing at night. He saw her mocking grey eyes first thing in the morning. Belanov didn’t like women and didn’t like the police. Hanlon was both and Hanlon had caused him to lose a great deal of face as well as physically hurting him. He very much wanted her dead.

Every day he prayed to God to deliver Hanlon to him.

Joad looked at him. This was why they were so antsy. Hanlon had humiliated Arkady and kicked the shit out of Dimitri. God knows how, the Russians never spoke about it, but he’d seen the aftermath. Dimitri bandaged around the head; Arkady walking in a strange, bow-legged way. No prizes for guessing where Hanlon had left her mark. They were desperate for revenge.

‘I told you,’ said Joad. ‘After she was discharged from hospital she was on sick leave. Then suspended from active duty pending the IPCC report, and now God knows where. Maybe transferred out of London.’

Arkady looked at him in annoyance. ‘I think maybe I’m wasting my money on you,’ he said to Joad. ‘Eh, Dima?’ he added, using the diminutive of the bodybuilder’s forename.

‘I’m looking into it,’ said Joad affably. He was in no hurry, no hurry at all. He was like a taxi and the clock was running. Arkady glared at him and added something in Russian and Dimitri laughed unpleasantly.

‘Sure, Arkady Mikhailovich,’ he said, using Belanov’s patronymic.

Joad looked at them with equanimity. He didn’t know what they were saying, although he had recognized the word
zhopa
, which he knew meant arsehole. He didn’t care. Sticks and stones, boys, sticks and stones. The way he saw it, the world had spent fifty years trying to bring him down and he was still here, with a swelling bank account and a luxury villa in Spain. He liked Spain. Hot and cold running water, hot and cold running whores. Cheap booze, good food. He’d retire there soon. He didn’t know what the future would bring these idiots, but he thought an early grave likely.

And when that happened, he’d make a point of visiting and then piss on them. Until that happy day. He finished his drink.

‘Well, I’d better be off. Terminal Five, Heathrow.’

Arkady nodded. ‘You have details flight, his mobile. He will be with companion, just one. You have sign?’

Joad nodded.
Konstantin Myasnikov
printed in Cyrillic on a laminated sheet of A4 paper. Dimitri pulled on his tracksuit top.

‘Come, time to go.’

The two men left the lush, panelled room and Arkady Belanov continued staring at the women below with unconcealed irritation.

Disruptive bitches.

Hanlon had grown bored with the demonstration. She had joined in so she had the chance to check out the front of the brothel to see if anything had changed. It looked the same as before. She noted a couple of CCTV cameras swivelling backwards and forwards atop ornamental, retro lamp posts in the front garden.

The sight of the house brought back memories of her last time there – the naked, fat bulk of Arkady Belanov, the giant form of Dimitri, the printed menus of the girls available, smiling strained smiles to the camera, for ageing, wealthy men to drool over their firm young flesh in such contrast to their own. Still in business, then, by the looks of things. Sex never dated.

She looked at the women on the picket line next to her, oblivious of the horrors that lay about fifty metres from where they were standing. It wasn’t that Belanov was selling sex; it was that his hookers were essentially slaves. Some drug addicted, some forced to work for him for fear of family reprisals back home, some brought to Britain on false promises of nannying or bar work and intimidated into prostitution. Work or die, and Belanov liked hurting people very much. So very much.

The terror of the Russian criminal system is no longer hidden behind an iron curtain, thought Hanlon. It’s not thousands of miles away. It’s behind those expensive-looking net curtains just over that attractive garden wall. And the criminals aren’t behind bars. They’re behind that expensive, ornate ironwork scrolled around the gates, and your husbands, ladies, or their colleagues are subsidizing it.

What had Oksana called Belanov? One of the
smotriashchyi
, one of the watchers who looked after the interests of the
vor
, the criminal boss.

She’d wondered at the time how he’d got the money to pay for this large house in the centre of Oxford; it must have been worth a couple of million. Now, courtesy of Charlie Taverner’s notes and Oksana’s explanations, she had a better idea. It was money from the
obschak
, the trough or the criminal fund based in Moscow. It was an international investment.

She’d parked her car in the street to the rear of the house. Now she walked back there. This road was quiet with residents-only bays. Belanov’s house had the back garden tarmacked over so his clients wouldn’t have to search for parking. High-security gates blocked access and there was an intercom built into a post so the driver could speak and be buzzed in.

Hanlon slid behind the wheel of her Audi and scratched her head thoughtfully. They were near the centre of Oxford and an intrusive development like Belanov’s car park, extremely visible gates and security system would have required hard-to-get planning permission. Whoever had signed off on that from the council would be well worth investigating, thought Hanlon. Money, big money, must have changed hands. She had a feeling too that if you converted your garden into a hard surface area you were responsible for making arrangements to deal with the water run-off from rains and storms.

Hanlon was a big fan of harassing criminals with unexpected visits and inspections. She would have no compunction about threatening whoever was responsible for these things into action. The thought of council JCBs tearing up Arkady’s forecourt and ruining his business filled her with glee.

Joad and Dimitri climbed into one of Belanov’s cars from the car park that had attracted Hanlon’s attention. It was a Mercedes S-Class saloon. Joad was behind the steering wheel, the first time he had ever driven a car that cost in the six-figure mark. House price rises in Oxford had swelled the value of Joad’s modest one-bedroom flat, but he was acutely aware that Belanov’s car was not far short of his property’s value.

As they buckled their seat belts, Dimitri said to him, his voice dripping with scorn, ‘Arkady Mikhailovitch might want to employ you, but I think you are fucking waste of space. You make one more mistake and I’ll kill you. And you’d better fucking find Hanlon.’

Joad said nothing. He raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Dimitri might be as strong as an ox, thought DI Joad, but he was as bright as one. He was unfazed by Dimitri’s threats. He noted dispassionately that Dimitri had mastered ‘fuck’ as an adverb but was still at sea with ‘a’ and ‘an’.

‘I’m glad to see your English is improving,’ he said to his passenger enthusiastically. ‘It’s getting quite idiomatic – “waste of space” and all that, very impressive, me old cocker!’