The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Danny. He didn’t need to elaborate as to who ‘he’ referred to. Jones checked his watch. A Patek Philippe.

  * * *

  ‘He’ll be about ten minutes,’ said Jones. ‘It’s the old man’s funeral next week, and now this. What a fucking mess.’ His tone of voice carried more a sense of weary irritation than anything. A harassed housewife faced with some more mess that thoughtless children had left behind.

  ‘You two,’ said Jones to the men with him, ‘start in the other rooms, you don’t need me to tell you what to do, and you, Mickey, down to the van, start bringing up those bags, OK. I need a quiet word with Danny here.’

  The three men nodded and disappeared to their allotted tasks. Jones looked at Danny.

  Danny nodded at the bodies and the table. ‘I just don’t understand all of this. I really don’t.’

  Morris Jones gave him a contemptuous look. I don’t care what you make of this, the look said, your opinions are of no interest to me whatsoever.

  Jones went over to the bar and poured himself a bitter lemon. He gazed at the green-blue drink and sipped it appreciatively. He ran his eyes over Danny speculatively.

  ‘Seen Jackson around, have you?’

  The question was anything but innocuous. After Jordan’s release from Armley a couple of months previously, Anderson had assigned a reliable man called Barry Jackson to him as his minder. Dave Anderson had told his brother it was because he had received death threats and he wanted extra security, but the real reason was to make sure Jordan, loyal but hot-headed, didn’t do anything stupid. Well, nothing too stupid anyway. To keep him out of trouble.

  Jordan had had a tendency to lose his temper and cause trouble. The incident that had got him sent to Armley was a road-rage explosion, pure and simple, nothing to do with business. He’d forced a motorist who’d cut him up off the road

  * * *

  and beaten him senseless. It had been stupid, thoughtless and violent. That was Jordan for you. Jones or Dave Anderson might kill or injure you, but only for professional reasons. Not Jordan.

  And now Barry Jackson was missing.

  Danny shook his head. ‘No, Morris.’ Jones nodded, then stretched his powerful arms as if relieving stress or tension in his muscles. He had a very long reach. Danny was a stocky, muscular six feet, the other man was taller, rangier. Jones opened his mouth wide and took the plate that held his top teeth out of his mouth. A baseball bat in the face causes havoc dentally, as does a steel-toed boot. Most of Jones’s face had been broken or fractured over the years. Mouth included. He put the denture down on the bar. Its pink plastic, set with replica front teeth, grinned wetly at Danny. Morris Jones smiled humorlessly at the other man.

  For a second Danny wondered what Jones was doing. Only for a second. Then he found out.

  Danny had known some people who moved fast and Jones was up there with the best. Before he knew what was happening, Jones had grabbed his right wrist and spun him round so his back was against Jones’s stomach, then the taller man twisted his right arm back and upwards in a form of hammerlock.

  He forced Danny over the back of a heavy, leather Chesterfield sofa, the twin to the one that Tatiana and the unknown man sat companionably on, and applied pressure viciously. Danny could feel the ligaments in his shoulder start to give.

  ‘Jesus, Morris, you’re breaking my arm,’ gasped Danny. ‘Where’s Barry Jackson, Danny?’ asked Jones. His mouth was

  close to Danny’s head and he spoke in an unnerving whisper. ‘It’s him I want, not you.’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He could smell the leather of the sofa and the smell of Jones, cigarette smoke and some kind of expensive aftershave.

  Jones increased the pressure. Danny groaned again in agony. It hurt so much he could see stars floating in his vision. He tried to move but Jones’s body weight was on top of him. Jones repeated the question and Danny could feel his hot breath on his ear.

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ he repeated. He knew Jones would have no compunction about breaking his arm, or anything else come to that. Anderson wouldn’t care; he also knew that. Danny’s left arm was trapped under his own body by his chest. He tried to move it out but Jones leaned more of his own weight forward to prevent this and reached his free hand down between Danny’s legs, seizing his testicles and squeezing hard and rotating at the same time. He’d known some pain in his life, but nothing remotely like this. He’d been kicked in the nuts before and that had been bad enough, bowel-churning, sickening pain, but this was worse and it went on, and on and on. He had always felt that things were never as bad as you might expect. Not any more. Now he knew that some things were exponentially worse than you could ever have imagined. The pain was excruciating. He thought he was going to vomit. If Danny had known, he would have told him. Not only was the pain dreadful, so was Jones himself. There would be no point holding out against Morris Jones, no point at all. Not

  if you knew what was good for you.

  ‘Where is he, Danny?’ Jones’s voice was merciless in his ear. ‘Tell me what you know.’ Tears ran involuntarily down Danny’s face. Jones had a terrible reputation. Once Danny had unexpectedly walked in on him in the cellar of the Three Compasses. That was the name of the North London pub that

  * * *

  the Andersons owned. He’d stammered an excuse and left, but not before he’d seen a huddled form on the rough concrete floor, covered by a blanket, and the bloodstained long-nosed electricians’ pliers in Morris Jones’s hand.

  One naked foot, a man’s foot, had been poking out from the blanket. It hadn’t been moving. Jones had looked at Danny impassively. He’d been bare-chested, his shirt and suit jacket hanging neatly on the back of a chair. Danny had assumed he didn’t want to get them dirty.

  The pupils of Jones’s eyes had been like pinpricks. Danny had heard the rumours about Morris Jones’s heroin habit; he guessed it was true.

  ‘I swear to God, I don’t know.’ More pressure on his arm and testes. He tried to resist, to push away, but Jones’s strength was terrifying. He felt a roaring in his ears and thought he was going to black out. Fleetingly he thought, If Jones is a junkie, he’s in bloody good condition.

  Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Leave it, Mo, he’s had enough.’ Danny felt the remorseless grip slacken and stop. The weight disappeared from his body and he sank to his knees, coughing. The pain in his lower body was intolerable. For another long moment he thought he was going to vomit. He leaned forward

  on all fours, breathing deeply, willing the pain away.

  ‘Boss,’ said Morris Jones to Anderson. He moved back to the bar and replaced his teeth. He glanced at Danny incuriously. Danny hauled himself upright. His knees were trembling from the incredible ache in his pelvis. He retched drily and staggered to his feet.

  Anderson stood looking at the silent figures on the sofa and Jordan’s head on the table.

  ‘Did you know, Danny, on average there are two to three murders per week in London? Statistics, eh, Jordan.’ He picked

  * * *

  up his brother’s head gently and looked into the dead eyes as if seeking confirmation. Something about the face puzzled him and Danny and Jones watched as he gently tilted the head and, using his thumb and forefinger, opened Jordan’s jaws to look into his now open mouth.

  Danny, his pain subsiding, watched his boss with awed fascination. Anderson was taller than Jones, gaunt, his hair hanging in its almost shoulder-length rat’s tails. His cheeks were sunken and the eyes glittered, as always, with a kind of unhealthy fire. With the severed head between his hands, he looked crazier than ever. He looked like an insane prophet.

  He kissed his brother’s cold forehead gently, placed the head back down on the table and turned to Jones.

  ‘Check their mouths,’ he said. Jones nodded and went to the sofa. He didn’t need to ask what for. It had to be obvious or Anderson would have told him. He started his grim task with his face expres
sionless. Anderson came over to Danny.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked, with no real interest. Danny nodded. Anderson looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘Whoever did this was known to Tatiana,’ he said. ‘Someone who works for me. She let them in. Someone knew where this place was. Someone knew where to bring Jordan’s head so I’d find it. I’m satisfied to see it wasn’t you.’ Anderson’s eyes held Danny’s momentarily. It was a frightening sensation. ‘If I thought you might…’ said Anderson, indicating the bodies behind him.

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  Anderson produced an iPad from the leather briefcase he had with him and tapped at it. Google Maps appeared and he pressed a couple more keys.

  ‘There’s a tracker installed in Jackson’s car,’ he said matter-

  * * *

  of-factly, ‘and right now Barry Jackson, or at least his car, is here.’ He pointed with a long, strong finger at the screen.

  Danny looked at the map. A display marker hovered over the countryside near Ongar in Essex, north of London. ‘Jackson’s from Essex,’ said Anderson. ‘Do you know Essex at all, Danny?’

  ‘Not really, Boss.’

  ‘Well, today’s your lucky day.’

  Morris Jones looked up from the table, his task finished. He put Tatiana’s head back down gently as if replacing an ornament. ‘Nothing there, Dave.’

  Anderson nodded. ‘I’ll leave you here, Morris, to finish off tidying everything up. Get rid of the bodies, usual place.’ Morris Jones nodded.

  ‘Look at this, Morris, when you’re done here. I want you to wait for us there.’ His finger indicated a place on the screen. Jones came over, stood beside him, looked and nodded.

  ‘Just there?’ he asked.

  ‘Just there,’ confirmed Anderson. ‘And Jordan?’ Morris Jones asked.

  ‘Put him in the lock-up in the freezer there. Until we decide what to do with him. He deserves better than the others.’ Morris nodded.

  ‘And the others?’ asked Morris. ‘The usual,’ said Anderson.

  Morris Jones nodded. ‘Same old, same old?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anderson. ‘Oh, Morris, I take it they both had their tongues?’ He indicated the heads.

  ‘Yes, Dave,’ said Jones. They might have been discussing the weather, thought Danny.

  ‘Jordan didn’t,’ said Anderson. ‘Come on, Danny.’ He switched off the tablet, his face expressionless. ‘Let’s pay Barry a visit. In lovely, leafy Essex. He will be surprised.’

  5

  Hanlon stood in the picket line outside Belanov’s sizeable house on the Woodstock Road in Oxford with the other protestors, and waved her placard. Underneath the strap heading of the Socialist Worker Party, a slogan read:

  Pay Parity.

  Twenty-five women of varying sizes, shapes and ages stood in an orderly crescent shape and chanted harmoniously.

  ‘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.