by Alex Coombs
They left the car, angled at a slight – but to Huss irritating –
diagonal in the bay. Outside, the drizzle turned to rain. She had an umbrella; he didn’t.
‘Do you want to share my umbrella?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ll be fine.’ His voice was tight and stiff with irritation. Typical, thought Huss as Enver strode beside her, relishing his discomfort, silently blaming her for his driving incompetence and the Oxford weather. Huss’s blue eyes narrowed. She was getting cross.
The restaurant was deserted apart from an irritable-looking bald man at a nearby table, expensively dressed and reading a copy of the Economist. Enver noticed, with a pang, that the fellow customer was quite slim. As he breathed he could feel his stomach pressing against the fabric of his shirt, tight against his belt. How had it got so big? How come he wasn’t doing anything about it?
Conversation was stilted, awkward silences cropped up with increasing regularity and grew wider and wider, cracks widening into chasms. The lack of any kind of buzz in the restaurant, the absence of distractions, only deepened their mutual discomfort. Their conversation became brittle, disjointed and stalled. Enver wished he wasn’t there.
Huss sat opposite him, stony-faced. She felt her artfully chosen clothes, flattering with more than a hint of sexy, were
* * *
lost on Enver. She might as well have kept the boilersuit on. Silence enveloped the table. The waiter took their order, trying to jolly things up with smiles and remarks about the weather. He guessed they were an old-established couple. He’d have put them down as married but they had no rings. It was usually the married people who chose to come to an expensive restaurant to argue about things. You’d have thought you could do that at home. For free. Where was the sense in paying good money for a bust-up? Soon they’d probably start hissing at each other, the way the middle class always argued, quietly, venomously. In a let’s not make a scene kind of way.
‘It’s all your fault.’
‘God, how I despise you.’
‘No wonder the children hate you.’ He doubted he’d get much of a tip.
Enver wanted to tell Huss how nice she looked, how he’d missed her and would she like to go to the cinema with him. There was an old art deco picture palace near where he lived in Tottenham and it had been lovingly restored by a friend of one of Enver’s brothers. An up-and-coming local chef, he’d worked at Le Gavroche and the Square, and was running a pop-up restaurant there. Enver had bought two tickets for a ‘romantic evening’ that included a three-course set dinner and a film viewing of the old classic, A Room With a View. They were in his pocket. Huss was free that night; he had checked with one of her colleagues that he knew.
Huss would love it.
Physically, Enver was a brave man. It took real guts to climb through the ropes of a boxing ring and face someone, a fit, trained athlete who has devoted his life to basically beating people to a pulp. In the police force he’d encountered varying levels of intimidation and violence and a certain amount of
* * *
attempted bullying. He had even experienced being threatened with a gun. He had been shot. But he was nervous with women and he was not only attracted to Huss physically; he felt disturbed by thoughts bordering on obsession for her.
If I ask her out, and she says no, what then? he thought. He even worried that she might laugh at the idea, that he was out of her league. He feared rejection; he feared ridicule. A fat, has-been ex-boxer who might – if he was lucky – do OK in the Met. A man who came from a background of kebab shops and who lived in a studio flat in south Tottenham.
Enver, although born and brought up in London, had been instilled with his father’s essentially peasant values. While some of them had stood him in good stead – thrift, hard work, a mulish refusal to be intimidated – he felt ill at ease in social situations like this. Huss, he felt, was a cut above him, a landowner.
He was nervous and out of his depth. He felt tongue-tied, clumsy, awkward. He kept putting his hand inside his jacket to check the tickets were still in the pocket, as if touching them would give him the courage to ask her out.
‘So what brings you down to Oxford?’ asked Huss. She wished he’d stop fiddling about in his jacket pocket. It was beginning to annoy her.
‘Corrigan wants me to look into Arkady Belanov’s business dealings,’ said Enver. He’d maybe wait for a better time to ask her out. He knew he had bottled it. He was going to stick grimly to business.
Huss raised a quizzical eyebrow. The gesture mesmerized Enver. Her eyebrows were very shapely. They were light brown. His heart lurched.
‘Oh. Does he?’ said Huss flatly. Enver didn’t recognize the danger signs. He carried on, marching to his doom.
* * *
‘Yes,’ said Enver, ‘in an off-the-record kind of way.’ He smiled winningly. Huss found it infuriating.
‘So that’s why you wanted to see me, is it?’ asked Huss. She didn’t like being made to feel a fool and she felt like one now. So much for her romantic expectations. ‘To help you and Corrigan in some secretive Met enquiry?’
‘Well, no, yes.’ Enver could see the whole thing was going terribly wrong. He wasn’t quite sure where, but he recognized the signs. Surely talking about work was like the weather, a neutral subject, something they both had to endure. He had thought they’d be on common ground, which evidently wasn’t the case. He floundered on, flailing. ‘Sort of.’
Huss stood up. ‘Sort of!’
She was very angry indeed. She could easily imagine the conversation: Sweet-talk Huss into helping you, she’s a size 12, she’ll do anything for a date. And to think that she was harbouring feelings for this idiot. She glared down at Enver. ‘You can get the bill, Enver. You can direct any further police-related questions to me at the nick via the proper channels.’ A sudden horrible thought struck her. ‘Is DCI Hanlon involved in any of this?’
‘No,’ said Enver, looking confused. ‘Why should she be?’
Huss glowered at him. Because I can’t stand that bloody woman, she thought, that’s why. I’m not being logical. Sod logic. She gestured at the waiter, who came with alacrity. ‘My coat, please.’ She slipped it on while Enver sat motionless, looking at her helplessly.
‘I’ll make my own way home.’
She swept out of the restaurant. There was a taxi stand across the street. Enver watched through the glass of the restaurant window as she climbed into the back of an old, grey Mercedes and he watched its tail lights as it drove off. The rain beat down remorselessly.
* * *
The waiter looked at him sympathetically. ‘Bill, please,’ said Enver.
Enver walked slowly back to his car, his clothes completely sodden now. His right foot, the foot where he’d been shot a year or so ago, ached. It did that occasionally, particularly when it was cold, and Enver’s feet were soaking.
He felt angry, depressed, sorry for himself.
He walked up the concrete stairs that led to the third floor of the multi-storey where he’d so ineptly parked. They smelled faintly of urine, damp cement and weed. He got into the car and turned the ignition on. The inside of the windscreen fogged up from his damp body heat and he turned the fan on to clear it. As he waited for it to de-mist he thought, Fuck.
He flapped down the sun visor and looked at his face in the mirror. The fat face of a loser. His hard, brown eyes were reflected back at him. His thick, black hair, his quite prominent nose, like an eagle’s beak. The scar on the side of his left eyebrow. He remembered that fight. Comprehensively behind on points, a Southern Counties championship final. His opponent, a black kid, he’d forgotten his name, had opened up a cut there and it had been bleeding badly. He’d known the fight was more or less over.
Demir, in Turkish, means iron; el means hand. Enver’s surname was Demirel, Iron Hand, a good name for a boxer, and true in his case. He was a poor mover – in boxing terms, awkward – but he had a big punch, and in the third round, on the point of d
efeat – the referee would stop it soon because of the cut – he’d caught the kid with a massive right hand. He’d gone down like he’d been shot, his legs crumpling under him. KO. Sparko. There was surely a lesson there.
He touched the scar again. He put the car in gear. He’d come from behind once; he could do it again.
Back on the farm, Melinda Huss had angrily ripped her clothes off. She stared at her buxom body in her white lingerie. A sight Enver Demirel certainly wouldn’t be seeing, she thought. Her carefully chosen clothes lay accusingly on the floor of her bedroom where she’d flung them, and she pulled the stiff fabric of the boilersuit, with its smell of engine oil, over her body. The Freelander awaited.
There was a knock on her bedroom door and she opened it, expecting it to be either her mother or father.
Her eyes widened in surprise, as did Enver’s. Huss hadn’t got round to doing up the buttons of the boilersuit. It framed her generously curved body, her underwear a geometric arrangement of triangular, vertical and horizontal white stripes. Her body was all he could have dreamed, and then some. She made no move; she held the door open with one hand.
‘I wanted to ask you out,’ said Enver, speaking quickly so he wouldn’t forget the lines he’d rehearsed in the car and so she couldn’t interrupt. ‘But I didn’t. I hoped you might want to go out with me to see this.’ He handed her the ticket. ‘If you do, call me.’
She watched as he turned and clattered down the stairs. It was an old farmhouse and the ceiling where the staircase turned was low. There was an audible thud as his forehead struck the beam above the stairs. Huss winced. Enver kept going. He had a head like a rock.
She closed the door and sat down on the bed. A Room with A View, and dinner. She raised her eyebrows, but in a good way. Enver was sitting stationary in traffic when his phone beeped. He glanced down at the screen. Huss. She would like to come. There was a name, Sam Curtis, and an address in Cowley. Try him, she suggested. He works for Belanov. A
file was attached.
* * *
He remembered the night in Basingstoke, the sweaty, noisy venue. The referee holding both their wrists: ‘A-a-a-a-nd tonight’s winner, and the NEW … ABA… Southern… region Middleweight champion is… Enver… Ironhand… Demirel!’ Contentedly, he turned the car round at the next roundabout and followed the signs for Cowley back into Oxford. He felt
euphoric. Everything would work out just fine.
Enver Demirel walked past the door to Chantal’s flat twice before he found it, the entrance squeezed between a betting shop and a fast-food outlet. He’d read the documents in a car park off Cowley High Street. Huss had sent him a PDF file that contained what little relevant information she had on the Russian duo of Arkady Belanov and Dimitri. It had more information on Curtis, including the fact that Chantal was his girlfriend. It was a lot better than walking around pubs with dodgy reputations to ask about Curtis, whose name he knew from his previous run-in with the Russians. This information wasn’t official police intelligence; it was part of Huss’s vendetta against Joad.
The Russians were only of tangential interest to Huss. It was
Joad that she was focused on. Huss hated Joad. It wasn’t solely because Joad was bent. There were several police she worked with who fell into that category, from the trivial, falsifying expenses, fiddling overtime, to the more serious, turning blind eyes in exchange for favours, particularly sexual, and leaking information to media and suspects’ lawyers for cash. But there was only one Joad. She wouldn’t have cared if the man turned over a new leaf and became pope; nothing would change her visceral loathing of the man.
Joad was Belanov’s man in Oxford CID and Huss was busy preparing enough hard information to present a rock-solid case against him. It was difficult because of Joad’s innately furtive
* * *
nature and his inexplicably numerous mates in the force, all fifty-year-old men. They would close ranks; there was no doubt about that. They were the kind who would hear nothing bad against Joad, saying he was old school (dinosaur, thought Huss), or ‘a bit of a character’ (rude, unhelpful) or ‘not PC’ (porn-obsessed, lecherous, racist, homophobic) and ‘one of the lads’ (drink problem, aggressive). The strength of his involvement with the Russian pimp was still a matter of conjecture.
Belanov was out of bounds to Enver. He’d only met Dimitri once: it was unlikely Dimitri would have forgotten. An enraged Enver had hit him in the face, shattering his already fractured cheekbone, then dragged him out of the van he’d sat in and given him a good kicking.
But Sam Curtis didn’t know Enver and Huss had information he was at his girlfriend’s address. Chantal Jenkins, twenty-three, two counts of shoplifting and one of soliciting, later dropped. Curtis had a lengthier, more professional criminal record.
Enver stood irresolutely by the shabby, narrow entrance and looked at the row of buzzers, the name Jenkins in a curly feminine script written on a peeling white sticker. ‘Off the record,’ Corrigan had said. To this end he’d taken a week’s leave, told his colleagues he was going to France. He’d give it a week; he owed Corrigan that much. He had decided he wasn’t going to bust a gut; he had a date with Huss at the cinema on Wednesday.
‘Shake the tree, see what falls out.’ Those had been Corrigan’s words. Well, Enver wasn’t one for confrontation; the Dimitri incident had been atypical. But he’d do enough to credibly claim a tree had been shaken. He’d see Chantal. She’d tell him where to go, or Curtis would. He’d leave. They’d tell Belanov some copper had been making enquiries and presumably Joad would go into overdrive trying to find out what was happening, who
* * *
had authorized it, what was known. Then Huss would monitor whatever he was up to. It was a nice, simple plan.
Best of all, he wouldn’t be involved. All he had to do was alarm Curtis.
It was a bit like the kids’ game of ringing the doorbell and running away, and that simple. He wasn’t interested in results, just doing enough to satisfy Corrigan.
He took out his warrant card and studied the photo under the Metropolitan Police banner. He only had one chin in that picture. Now that was no longer the case. He should exercise more. Maybe jogging? God, the very thought. He hadn’t run since he’d given up boxing. He was beginning to lack confidence in the ability of his legs to carry him at speed. Any speed. Sometimes Hanlon’s training involved running up and down a hill for an hour to increase her power and endurance. Enver shuddered. Even the idea of running was becoming strange, alien. Like being asked to tango or to belly dance.
Top-floor flat. He rang the bell and a girl’s voice answered. ‘Police,’ he said. The door buzzed, he pushed and it opened. He stepped inside and sniffed the air. It was dark inside and the light grey walls were scuffed and discoloured. The stairwell smelled faintly of skunk and damp carpet. The grey, stained stairway stretched upward, gloomy and uninviting.
Laboriously, the stairs creaking under his weight, he started the ascent.
At the top of the stairs, quadriceps aching, he knocked on the shabby white door, warrant card in hand. It opened and the girl who stood facing him asked, ‘What do you want?’
It was probably the question that Enver heard the most in his life as a policeman. If the party concerned was innocent it usually came out as, Can I help you, Officer? but it was essentially the same question, and it came with a variety of intonations – curiosity, worry, fear, sarcasm. Rarely was it welcoming. The tone this time was unmistakably one of fear.
‘Chantal Jenkins?’ ‘Yes.’
‘I’m DI Demirel. Can I come in?’
She turned and indicated the flat. Enver walked into a small bed-sitting room. The window was ajar and there was a strong smell of stale smoke and grass, overlaid with incense.
He looked at Chantal Jenkins. Like Huss, she was blonde, pretty and female, but there the resemblance ended. Chantal had a narrow face, pallid, and her complexion was poor. Huss looked like the farmer’s daughter she was, broader-fa
ced, broader-beamed. Huss too was sturdy; she had a solid, powerful frame. Melinda Huss also always looked ridiculously healthy – tanned in the summer, glowing in the winter. The result of a lifetime spent outdoors.
The girl before him looked as if she had never seen sunshine or natural light. Chantal Jenkins was slim to the point of thin, her eyes restless and haunted. Enver felt enormous standing in front of her. She looked so fragile – a sudden movement, a harsh word and she’d break. Enver felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for the girl with her worried and careworn face. He knew she was about twenty-three, but she could have been a decade older.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. She looked round the untidy, grubby room with an air of hopelessness. Discarded dirty clothing lay here and there. Her voice was nervous, as if she thought he might be bringing bad news.
He looked around him. ‘Can I sit down?’ he said. Chantal looked at him blankly and he gestured to the only seat, a stained armchair, cigarette or joint burns in the arms. He felt he would be less intimidating sitting down than looming over her.
* * *
‘Please do,’ Chantal said. She indicated the kitchen area of the bedsit. ‘Do you want a coffee or something?’
Her gesture took in a sink piled with dirty dishes, a hotplate and plug-in convection oven to the left, a microwave and toaster on a shelf above. Three of these were connected to a single multi-adaptor. The shelf with the microwave and toaster, a dip in the middle from where the melamine bowed under the weight, was more or less directly over the sink. It looked potentially lethal. Enver’s childhood and adolescence had been largely spent in family-run restaurant kitchens and he found himself looking at Chantal’s rudimentary cooking arrangements with almost