The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  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 easygoing, 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.’

  11

  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.<
br />
  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.

  12

  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 had been 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.”’

  * * *

  At the table outside the pub, Hanlon drank some of her tonic water and looked at the photos on her phone taken at the airport.

  * * *

  In Danny’s head, Jackson’s voice resumed its monologue from beyond the grave.

  * * *

  ‘“OK,” Jordan said, “give the big man a bell. I want to speak to the organ grinder, not the fucking monkey.” “I don’t understand,” said the shestiorka. Hardly surprising really. “What, don’t you speak fucking English?” said Jordan. I could see he was getting angry. He was quite pissed and he’d been taking jellies. He was out of it, really. Really fucked, and nasty with it. You know how he loved downers. Phone your boss, I said. That’s what he means. The Russki was mystified by Jordan, hadn’t got a clue what he was on about. Phone your boss, I said.’

  So there was Dimitri, mused Hanlon, man mountain, six and a half feet of pointlessly sculpted muscle; there was Joad, his head and mouth reminding her of an eel, and there was the vor, the crime boss, the man responsible for the death of Oksana’s husband, looking like an unimportant, unassuming businessman.

  Danny dragged himself away from the window and got on with his job of checking the flat to make sure that all traces of the killing had been removed. All of Tatiana’s clothing and personal effects were now gone as well. He forced himself to look at all the rooms, inspecting everything for traces of blood or forgotten personal effects. It didn’t have to withstand a police forensic team, it just had to look presentable until Anderson moved another girl in. That would be easier said than done. Rumours were spreading. The Anderson name was becoming synonymous with being killed.

  He sat down on the sofa and the interior recording of Barry Jackson’s voice resumed.

  ‘The Russian stank of sweat and cheap aftershave. He spoke into the phone in his own language, he waited, then he said to Jordan, “Is ‘vor’. Big boss. You want to speak to him.” Jordan had

  * * *

  one hand in front of him, the other behind his back. He took the phone from the Russian, spoke into it. “Can you hear me?” he said.’

  Danny took his wallet out and chopped himself a line of coke on the glass coffee table. The new glass coffee table, not the old one, which was irreparably stained where Jordan’s disembodied head had rested. A nice new glass one from an expensive interior design shop round the corner. He snorted the coke down and sat back on the sofa. The new sofa, not the one where Tatiana and the client who looked like a Conservative

  MP had died.

  ‘The Russian sneered at Jordan and started to speak. He said, “Is offer you can’t—” The next word he said should have been “refuse” but Jordan’s other hand appeared from behind his back. He was holding a gun and he shot the Russian in the kneecap. The Russian screamed and clutched at his shattered leg. Blood was everywhere, blood through his fingers as he tried to stop the flow, blood soaking his trouser leg. Jordan’s eyes were big with killing lust. He held the phone near the guy’s head so the vor could hear the screams. “Hear that?” Jordan shouted. “Hear that, you Russian cunt?” Then he brought the gun up and shot the Russki between the eyes. “Hear that? That’s my answer.”

  ‘Arkady arranged everything,’ Jackson said. ‘He found me. He said you were history, Boss, his words not mine. He said they wanted number 50 and he was going to take it. You’d been offered a fair price and said no.’

  Anderson had looked bored. ‘Arkady,’ he’d said. Jackson nodded. ‘Arkady Belanov, based in Oxford.’ Anderson had smiled thinly. ‘Well, well, well.’ He’d looked at Morris Jones and said, ‘I’ve heard enough.’ Jones had picked up the heroin-filled syringe and Jackson had swallowed and closed his eyes. Again he saw Anderson, a look of bored disinterest on his face, as Morris Jones had gently inserted the silver sliver of the

  * * *

  hypodermic needle into the thick vein in the crook of Barry Jackson’s forearm, Jackson looking away, sweat pouring off his forehead, biting his lip to try to control himself. The swirl of red blood as Jones gently drew back the plunger to check the correct positioning of the needle, and then the slight pressure forcing the lethal dose of smack into Jackson’s arm. Jackson had grunted with pleasure as the morphine rush hit him like a freight train before it carried him away into a final oblivion. He’d sighed and stiffened, then his body had slumped as unconsciousness had claimed him and the black waters had

  closed over his head.

  They’d watched him die dispassionately.

  ‘Not a bad way to go,’ said Morris Jones thoughtfully.

  Danny stood up, put his wallet back in his pocket and left the flat. He locked the door behind him and thought, I wonder who’ll be next.

  From her table across the road, Hanlon saw him leave. She’d met him before once, a long time ago it seemed now. She didn’t know his name, but she knew his face and she knew who he worked for. She wouldn’t need to see Tatiana now. The jigsaw puzzle was becoming clearer. The vor and now Taverner’s contact.

  What part did Anderson have in this? she wondered.

  Well, she knew one way to find out. She stood up and flagged down a bl
ack cab; she leaned into the open window,

  ‘Dean Street,’ she said to the driver as she crouched down and stepped inside. ‘Soho.’

  13

  Lunch at the Lebanese restaurant was not going well. The two of them sat unhappily opposite each other at a table by the window overlooking the High Street like an illustration from an article about unhappy relationships. Broken Dreams might have been the title. Melinda Huss was low-key elegant. Back home she had changed into a low-necked blouse that discreetly but emphatically emphasized her chest, and trousers that slimmed down her muscular thighs.

  Rubens would have liked painting Huss, there was quite a lot of her and it all looked good.

  She’d picked the restaurant to flatter her partner. To allow Enver, who was highly knowledgeable about the cuisine, to sparkle with information, to maybe entertain her with some funny anecdotes about working in the family restaurants or the eccentricities of his Anglo-Turkish family. She’d have been more than willing to listen, applaud his insights, laugh at his jokes.

  What could go wrong?

  Enver, unused to driving in Oxford, unused to driving full stop, nearly collided twice with cyclists (angry exchanges), stalled the car in traffic on Broad Street (multi-horn honkings) and made a meal of parking in a multi-storey, reversing in and driving out of a bay about four times. Huss was a highly

  * * *

  competent driver who not only was police-trained but had grown up manoeuvring tractors and horse boxes in confined spaces. If it had been anyone else, she’d have ordered them out of the driver’s seat and done it herself. She’d noticed Enver’s powerful fingers tightening on the wheel, the muscles in his arms beneath the fabric of his cheap suit swelling with impotent rage at the unusual stress of handling a car. He never drove in London.