The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  Hanlon, in her dark, respectable two-piece suit, tailored jacket and skirt, wasn’t dressed for climbing, but the skirt was short so she could run in it if necessary and her boots were flat for the same reason.

  She walked alongside the wall in the direction of Edmonton Broadway until she found a suitable tree and glanced around her. Nobody was in sight. In the distance she could see the backs of a couple of women pushing babies in buggies. She took a short run forward and leaped upwards; her strong fingers made contact with the lowest branch of the tree.

  It bent alarmingly, but Hanlon wasn’t heavy and she pulled herself up. For her it was simplicity itself; she did a lot of chin-

  * * *

  ups and pull-ups in the gym. She liked the sensation of just using the natural weight of her body to exercise. Sometimes she would strap on a couple of weights round her waist for added difficulty, to make her biceps really sing out. Occasionally, if there was an ostentatious, look-at-me kind of guy in the gym – the kind of idiot with a cutaway vest who swaggered with the sort of over-developed look she detested – she’d do a couple of one-armed pull-ups, her face studiously expressionless. The muscle-bound macho man would watch with baffled awe as Hanlon gracefully achieved what he never could. Her body was light, her sinews like thin cables of steel. The ratio of body weight to muscle was formidably on her side. She would seek to meet his eye with a contemptuous glance. Suck on that, Mr Universe, she would think. Let’s see you try.

  Once in the tree, she climbed up to the branch that overhung

  the graveyard and, nimble as a squirrel, careful not to lose a boot, she moved along its length until she was over the wall.

  She looked out over the enormous graveyard, an elongated rectangle full of the geometric rows of grey gravestones. Near to the entrance by the wall she noticed what looked like a storeroom, a building almost like a lodge house, with a low-pitched roof slanting backwards towards the road. From there, she would have an excellent view of the mourners by the grave without having to join the throng. Some of those attending she would probably have nicked at some stage or other. She’d certainly had dealings with Cunningham, the Andersons’ coke-addicted lawyer, and he’d be there, that was for sure, glassy-eyed and sniffing loudly. Despite her invite, she’d rather watch informally.

  She could see Danny and his helper quickly patrolling the

  rows of gravestones. It confirmed her earlier theory. If what Iris Campion and Albert Slater said was true, and Hanlon never

  * * *

  took information for granted, that Dave Anderson’s brother Jordan had been murdered in some turf war, there was every possibility that those responsible might take the opportunity to have a pop at another Anderson.

  The two minders were working their way from the cemetery gates to the back of the graveyard, row by row. It was a simple job, the marker stones virtually all uniform, the monotony varied only occasionally by an angelic statue. It wasn’t like a higgledy-piggledy necropolis full of vaults, mini graveyard housing and other stone follies and monuments – the kind of place that was full of cover. In Highgate Cemetery, a veritable jungle of trees and overgrown bushes and shrubs and jumbled masonry, for example, you could hide a regiment if you were so minded. Here there were just the endless, neat markers written in Hebrew and English. The paths between each row were ruler straight. One quick glance down each row would suffice. Hanlon swung down from her branch and dropped down gracefully to the stone chippings of the path. She made her way towards the front of the cemetery to the small building she had seen earlier. It was slightly offset from the entrance path and in the corner formed by its side wall and the brickwork of the graveyard perimeter was a large, green wheelie bin. She climbed on top of this, stood on its lid, put her hands on the edge of the parapet, hauled herself up and lay on the roof of the lodge. From this vantage point, as she had worked out earlier, she could see over the top of the gravestones to the place delineated by ropes and discreet bunting where the

  internment would take place.

  She checked her watch, nine fifty-five.

  At a quarter past ten the guests started to arrive. First came the pallbearers, carrying the simple plain pine coffin, followed by the immediate family. Hanlon had a small pair of old Zeiss

  * * *

  binoculars in her bag, and she took them out now and adjusted the focus.

  There was a stout, balding man with glasses and an officious air, presumably a rabbi; Hanlon knew nothing about Jewish burial protocol. She didn’t even know if this burial was religious at all or secular. The Andersons’ word in Edmonton was law. Whatever religion Malcolm Anderson had been, if Dave Anderson wanted his dad buried here whoever ran the cemetery could either accede to the request or end up here himself. Whatever he was, he seemed to be in charge. There was Anderson himself, tall, thin, his lank hair trailing the thin high shoulders under his dark suit. There was a shorter, fuller-faced version of him that she guessed was Terry, the other brother, and a woman in her sixties with a blonde beehive hairdo that Hanlon thought must be Andrea, Dave’s mother and Malcolm’s ex.

  More and more people filed into the cemetery, virtually all of

  them hard-faced men – various versions of the same type. Her vision, seen through the tunnel-like prism of the binoculars, swept here and there.

  The grim faces of the Anderson family; the coked-out, stoner look of Cunningham, the lawyer – how did no one notice? marvelled Hanlon. Even at this distance he looked out of it. The sun was glancing off the bald and shaven heads of London’s most prominent villains, all there to pay their respects.

  She idly swept the glasses upwards to look beyond the family by the side of the grave. It was taking her a while to get over the strange sensation of the world as viewed through the constrictive narrowness of the Zeiss lenses of the binoculars. She had lost most of her sense of peripheral vision.

  There was an impressionistic sensation of a montage of funeral black, a large amorphous grouping of bodies, with occasional detail. The very stoned face of the lawyer, Cunningham, the

  * * *

  hard-as-nails facelifted features of Anderson’s mother, more vicious-looking by far than her dead bank-robber ex-husband had been. The fatter features of Anderson’s younger brother. The plump, bulky rabbi.

  She’d noticed a sudden movement and raised the binoculars slightly, looking over the heads of the crowd. There, perched on a gravestone, was a small robin. Its fluttered wings were what had caught her attention on the extremely limited periphery of her vision. If it hadn’t been for the bird she wouldn’t have seen what happened next.

  There was a sudden puff of masonry dust and several cracks appeared on the gleaming black surface of the grave marker with its sombre gold Hebrew lettering. The robin flew off, alarmed. For a fraction of time Hanlon looked on, uncomprehending, before she realized that what she had seen was the result of a bullet hitting the grave marker.

  She swung her binoculars down to the mourners. They remained where they were, oblivious of the danger. The impact of the shot had gone either unheard or unnoticed in the general noise surrounding the burial.

  The target was obvious. Hanlon leaped to her feet and looked round to where the bullet must have come from. It had to have come from above. She knew the direction from which it had travelled. Only one place really fitted the bill. The office block over the road.

  To think was to act. Hanlon acted.

  She leaped to her feet on top of the roof. From there, she jumped onto the parapet of the engirdling cemetery wall, mercifully free of barbed wire on the section that fronted the main road, hung briefly by her fingertips, then dropped on to the pavement.

  Danny, standing at the cemetery gates with the other two,

  * * *

  Polite Paul and Robby, spun round at the sound of her feet hitting the ground as she sprang down to the pavement a few feet away from them.

  It was as if she’d fallen out of the sky. The three of them stared at her in amazement.
She had risen up from where her legs had folded under her to take the impact of landing on the hard pavement, pointed to the building over the road and shouted, ‘Gun!’

  Danny understood the implication of the word immediately. He turned, shouting, ‘You go with her,’ to Robby and sprinted into the graveyard, pulling his own firearm out of a belt holster where it had been hidden by the cloth of his jacket.

  Now, head down, arms pumping, Hanlon ran across the road. Cars braked furiously, horns sounding, as she sprinted towards the office block opposite the cemetery gates. Hanlon hit the far pavement running and accelerated down the pavement opposite her car towards the flat-roofed office block. She was followed by the lean, shaven-headed figure of Robby. From a distance, in their dark, formal clothes, it looked as if they were in some odd white-collar race.

  Up on the flat roof of the third-floor office building the uzkoglazik, the Chinaman, clicked his tongue irritably. He glared at Nikita.

  The roof had a metre-high parapet. On this, the uzkoglazik had folded his jacket to rest the .243 rifle he was using. A slug from this rifle could drop a red deer stag at five hundred metres. He had Anderson a moment ago perfectly in the cross-hairs of the sight when he held his breath and gently squeezed the trigger back.

  The rifle kicked against his shoulder, the suppressor on its barrel reducing the sound of the shot to that of a .22 air rifle.

  * * *

  It would be inaudible at street level. Mounted on a tripod was a pair of binoculars he had used to check the target area; the field of vision in a sight was so narrow it was often hard to locate a given object in a wider field.

  A lesser shooter would not have bothered with checking where the bullet had gone. They’d have fired and almost immediately, and unconsciously, raised their heads. The Chinaman didn’t. He wanted to know exactly where his shot had gone.

  He could still see Anderson standing. The Chinaman had unaccountably missed. He put the rifle down hurriedly and squinted through the binoculars. He swore, ejected the casing, pocketed it and put another round into the breech of the rifle. The day before he had painstakingly centred the sights at five hundred metres, adjusting them so they were perfect, putting several bullets one after another through the bullseye at the centre of the target to make it as sure as sure could be that the sights were accurate. They had been; now they weren’t. Someone had almost certainly knocked the telescopic scope out of alignment.

  That someone had to be Nikita, the balding idiot that Belanov had foisted upon him. Well, there wasn’t time for recriminations. God knows how long he had now. It should all be over. Anderson should be lying on the ground, a small hole in the front of his black jacket, a much larger one in the rear, while the mourners milled around wondering what, where and who.

  Should, should, should. Now he’d have to readjust the sights or he might as well go home.

  ‘You. Here. Look through these.’ He pointed at the binoculars. ‘See that black angel?’ To save time he kept his sentences short; he also mistrusted the Russian’s ability to understand English. Nikita did as he was told, then nodded. The Kitayets,

  * * *

  the Chinaman as they called him, could see his scalp where the few sparse long hairs had been trained over the top of his head where they grew on the side, glued down to keep them in place.

  ‘Tell me where the shot hits.’

  The body wasn’t yet buried. He had maybe five minutes before they moved away from the graveside. The mourners were oblivious to the drama behind them and the danger from the rooftop overlooking the cemetery.

  Five minutes to recalibrate the sights and finish the job. Three hundred seconds. He didn’t really care about Anderson one way or another; it was a question of pride. He did not want to be known as a man who missed targets. He slid the bolt back, put a shell in, closed the breech, aimed, the black marble angel filling the sights as he centred on the angel’s navel, where it would have a navel were it human, and fired.

  Two hundred and forty seconds to go.

  ‘Top left,’ said Nikita. He moved the barrel slightly, scoping that direction. He could clearly see the mark the bullet had left where he said. His practised fingers twirled the screws to adjust the sight. He reloaded, fired again. This time the angel’s gown was marked dead centre. He could see the fractured, chipped impression that the bullet had left.

  The muzzle of the rifle depressed slightly as he adjusted his aim. Anderson’s face filled his telescopic sight: the cruel, chiselled structure of his face framed by the lank, shoulder-length hair. He toyed with the idea of a head shot; it would be elegant. But heads could move quickly; there was an increased chance of a miss and one miss was bad enough. He dropped the muzzle down to focus on the gangster’s body, the slight breeze playing with his black tie.

  But this Anderson wasn’t the target. It was the brother.

  * * *

  He moved the scope so he was focused on the body of the remaining sibling.

  His breathing, as always, was deep and even. His mind floated free and serene. A line from the Taoist texts came to him. Only through purity and tranquility can the world be ruled.

  He was aware of the breeze on his face, of the sun in the sky, the throng of people at the graveside.

  In the midst of life we are in death.

  The speed of a bullet is round about two thousand miles an hour. Even if Anderson were able to hear the rifle, the bullet would arrive before the sound.

  By non-action everything can be done.

  The Chinaman’s finger started to tighten on the trigger.

  The sound of the three shots had an electrifying effect on the crowd of mourners. Virtually everyone there was either directly or indirectly involved in crime. The crowd was made up of former criminal associates of Malcolm Anderson, other crime families temporarily setting aside their business differences. Everyone in violent crime liked a good funeral; you never knew when yours might be. There was also the added plus that it wasn’t you who was in the box. One day it would be, but not today.

  The heightened bonus of being alive.

  As well as the criminal guests, there were people the dead man had done time with and, of course, his own crime organization, now run by Dave. Even the handful of non-criminals, friends and family, all went shooting and knew what a gunshot sounded like.

  Danny saw the crowd of mourners almost immediately he entered the graveyard. There were so many people they had backed up on themselves as far as the main central pathway

  * * *

  through the graveyard. He slid the safety off his firearm, pointed the gun skyward and pulled the trigger three times in succession. The throng by the grave threw themselves down on the ground. The Anderson brothers, their reactions faster than anyone’s, got there first. The Chinaman’s bullet passed over Terry’s body as he fell. Antony Brooker, a former cellmate of Malcolm Anderson’s, fifty-eight, twenty stone, reactions slowed by the surplus fat, beta blockers and the three pints he’d sunk prior to the service, took the shot in his chest. He died instantly. Now the crowd was moving, taking cover behind gravestones and funeral ornaments, people pulling concealed weapons from

  wherever they’d hidden them about their bodies.

  Up on the roof the Chinaman looked at the scene far below, a disturbed anthill, with resigned acceptance. Nikita, peering over the parapet, had seen Hanlon and Robby start across the road. He turned to the Chinaman to warn him.

  It was his last action on earth. The Kitayets had reloaded and as Nikita pointed and started to speak, he shot him in the heart at point-blank range, killing him instantly.

  As Hanlon, followed by Robby, started up the outside stairs of the building, the Chinaman abandoned the binoculars and the body of Nikita, gathered up his rifle and jacket, and thrust the spent shell casings into his pocket before running for the doors that led into the building. Pushing them closed, he entered the internal stairwell that ran down to the ground. Its doors on to the roof were fire doors and didn’t open inward
s.

  Nikita lay on his back on the tarmacked roof, blood pooling outwards from the exit wound by his spine. His sightless eyes stared at the blue heavens of a perfect London day and the wind patiently unravelled his comb-over, strand by strand.

  18

  Assistant Commissioner Corrigan looked at the agenda for the meeting which was neatly set out on the A4 piece of paper with its standard crown and portcullis logo. It was helpfully headed Agenda, in bold type. Then he looked at his watch, trying to calculate how long the meeting would last, then at his fellow attendees around the long, rectangular table. Corrigan was not a meetings man.

  Back to the agenda. The date: today; the location: the Home Office, Marsham Street, fifth floor. The meeting room, a meeting room like just about every meeting room he had ever sat in, although the table here was real wood, which made a change from laminate.

  His eyes dropped down to the list of attendees: Eamonn Corrigan, Metropolitan Police; Francine Edwards, Home Office; Serg Surikov, Thanatos Institute; Paul Fredericks, MOPAC; Sarah Lansdale-Brown, Home Office Immigration Compliance and Enforcement.

  Apologies: Edward Li, Thanatos Institute.

  Lansdale-Brown opened the meeting. She was very tall and slim, made even taller by improbably high-heeled shoes. Balanced on these, she was nearly Corrigan’s height. Even sitting down she appeared taller than anyone else there. Her back was fearsomely erect. She was intelligent, efficient and no-nonsense. Corrigan liked her a lot.

  * * *

  She quickly ran through the agenda of Project Volga, an offshoot of Tomboy, which was the monitoring of prostitution and people-trafficking from Russia and the various republics of the former Soviet Union. Amongst the older generation of government employees there was a feeling that things had been a lot simpler pre-fall of the Berlin Wall. Better, much better, from our point of view. The Cold War might have been unpleasant, but it had been kind of a Garden of Eden time with clearly defined enemies and clear boundaries. You’d known where you’d stood. It had been a more innocent, pre-Lapsarian epoch of good and bad, black and white. Now everything was a dispiriting shade of grey.