The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  from sitting near his boss.

  * * *

  Anderson had a bottle of Pils in front of him and a glass. He poured the contents of the bottle into it and watched the bubbles. Hanlon waited for him to speak. His eyes flicked from the glass to Hanlon.

  ‘You heard about my problem.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Hanlon nodded.

  ‘Turf war, eh, Hanlon.’ Anderson rubbed his chin. ‘I haven’t had any problems since I nailed that cunt to a door.’

  Hanlon’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’d rather you didn’t use that expression,’ she said.

  Anderson gave a short bark of laughter. She hadn’t expressed any reservations about the incident to which they both knew he referred, when he’d used a nail-gun to attach a rival named Phil Woodward to a door, crucifix fashion. But here she was, objecting to his language.

  Jones looked round in surprise. He didn’t hear his employer make that sort of noise usually.

  ‘OK,’ said Anderson, raising his palms in a placatory manner. ‘I won’t.’ He dipped a finger in his lager and removed it, inspected it and tasted it with his tongue. ‘Now, I know it’s Russians. I know they want me out of the running. I could do with some names confirming. And addresses. Could you help?’

  He studied the woman opposite, slim and elegant. She’d taken her jacket off. It lay folded neatly beside her on the faux leather of the banquette bench seat that ran across the wall of this end of the bar. It was a navy jacket and he could see its lining, cream with blue spots. The jacket looked very small and fragile, strangely feminine. He examined his sizeable right hand. He could probably lean forward, pick it up and enfold it within the grasp of his powerful fingers. He looked at the face of its owner as she considered his question.

  * * *

  Hanlon looked up. The nails on her hand, which she’d been studying, were cut short. Earlier that day she had done twenty-five slow, perfect form push-ups, supporting her weight on the ends of her fingertips.

  She raised her eyes to Anderson, to the burning eyes under the rat’s tail of stringy hair. Her gaze took in the elegant, expensively dressed figure of Morris Jones. His red and white, double-cuffed shirt with its gleaming cufflinks was not designed to hang outside trousers as it did at the moment. The shirt tail was too long; it was meant to be tucked in. Jones was not the kind of man who would make a sartorial mistake like that. There would be a gun under there. She knew that for a certainty.

  Anderson was obviously a concerned man.

  Decorator Man, although he’d have been processed by now at the hands of Robby, could count himself lucky he was still alive.

  Anderson looked at her quizzically. She was annoyed with herself that she actually quite liked him.

  She reached a decision. ‘Arkady Belanov, Woodstock Road, Oxford, and his minder, Dimitri something or other, are the two who will have organized the hit on you and the one on your property in Marylebone. They are working for a man known as the vor.’

  ‘You know about Marylebone?’ said Anderson, not smiling any more.

  Hanlon stood up. ‘I know lots of things. I’m a knowledgeable woman. I know that the vor is called Myasnikov. I know his nickname is the Butcher of Moscow. I don’t, however, know where I can find the body of a man called Charlie Taverner, and that I would like to know.’

  She slipped her jacket on. She had no bag; it was in her car.

  She took a card from her jacket pocket. ‘My number.’

  * * *

  Anderson nodded. She walked past Morris Jones. ‘Mr Jones.’ She nodded goodbye and left the pub.

  He looked at Anderson in surprise. ‘How come she knows my name?’

  ‘She knows lots of things,’ said Anderson. He stood up too. ‘Come on, Morris, let’s go.’

  From behind the counter, the barman watched the three of them leave the pub. He breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

  He turned to the three scaffolders. ‘Drinks are on the house.

  I’m having a fucking large one.’

  22

  DI Huss waited with mounting impatience for Enver Demirel at Paddington Station. She checked the watch on her wrist yet again, even though she was hardly unaware of the time. The electronic information board for Arrivals and Departures, the constant announcements of train movements, the phone in her other hand and the frantic busyness of the place at six in the evening, filled with commuters desperate to get home – she would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have realized that it was around six o’clock and that Enver was late, and she had heard nothing from him since the day before.

  Enver and late were not a collocation, words that went together naturally. If ever there was a man who was pathologically early, who would normally provide updates on his progress on a practically minute-by-minute basis, it was Enver.

  Huss wasn’t by nature a frantic clock addict. On the farm, where she’d grown up, time was dictated at a more leisurely pace. If you had to start work at five to milk cows it didn’t matter if it was four fifty or five oh five that you started, you just had to be up round about then. Similarly, in lambing season, when you were putting in twenty-hour days, it was fairly elastic. Things took the time they should take. You couldn’t make barley grow faster by screaming and shouting at it. Fence repair, drainage

  * * *

  issues, feed time, all the enormous number of jobs around a farm

  they all had times to be done, but clock-watching was no help. Enver, by contrast, had come from a catering background, which was ruled by clocks. Opening times, closing times, food-preparation times, service times, cooking times, order times: everything was done at the bayonet point of time. Seconds

  counted.

  And then boxing, at first a sport, then semi-pro, then – all too briefly, six months – fully professional. Time was king again. When he trained, a stopwatch was always in someone’s hand. And in the ring, the length and number of rounds, defeat, survival or victory – the tyranny of the clock.

  For him to be late was a non-issue. Huss, although by nature placid, easy-going, was starting to get more than a little worried. Two texts later to Enver’s work colleagues and she was even more concerned. She knew that Enver was not in France on a well-deserved break but probably busy with this ill-conceived,

  face-saving exercise for Corrigan.

  She bought herself a coffee and sat down on a bench. Her overnight bag by her feet mocked her. She tried Enver Demirel again; no reply. Huss was not one to shy away from troublesome thoughts. If Enver wasn’t here, it was because someone had made sure he wasn’t here. Work could be ruled out. Arkady Belanov couldn’t.

  What have you done, Enver? she thought with increasing alarm. Where are you? At last, she could stand it no longer.

  Huss clicked on to the contacts list of her phone. She looked at the name she’d thought she would never need to use, someone she heartily disliked.

  ‘Sod it.’

  She pushed her finger against the screen. The answer came almost immediately.

  * * *

  ‘Yes?’ Just the one word, the usual arrogant tone. She gritted her teeth. ‘It’s Melinda Huss.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It’s about Enver. I’m worried.’ ‘Where are you?’

  Huss told her.

  ‘Half an hour,’ said Hanlon.

  Hanlon had said half an hour and she was as good as her word. Huss saw her striding across the station concourse, grim-faced, the commuter crowd unconsciously parting to let her past as she cut through them like a torpedo slicing water. Huss explained what had happened in the back of a black taxi as it ferried them through London.

  Huss didn’t know London that well, but she recognized St Paul’s as they drove past, and the style of the buildings surrounding it – modern, massive, simplistic, temples and shrines to money – as the City. Then the taxi stopped, they got out and she followed Hanlon’s slim, muscular back down a couple of narrow, mysterious streets, not much wider than alleys.
<
br />   It was now nearly seven and the City – London’s financial centre – was virtually empty, which, Huss guessed, was how Hanlon liked things. The large, imposing buildings rose up around them, eerily quiet. It was like a deserted film set. The two women slipped through a narrow gate at the back of a tall, darkened, office building, the entry to a shadowy, tiny yard, and squeezed past some wheelie bins overflowing with shredded paper. Hanlon unlocked a nondescript door and motioned ahead of her, locking the door behind them. A secret tradesman’s entrance. Huss, still carrying her overnight bag, trotted up a narrow, dingy staircase. She guessed it was the fire exit for the floors that lay the other side of barred emergency

  * * *

  doors. It was a part of the building the workers would rarely get to see. The secret world of service corridors, access shafts and service elevators. Not for the general public. Three floors later the staircase ended in two plain green doors, one labelled Roof access, the other Staff only. She stood to one side while Hanlon unlocked the latter and they ascended a last flight of steps to Hanlon’s rooftop eyrie.

  Huss gasped in surprise at the stunning view, gazing south over the Thames. It was blocked in part by another couple of office buildings, but you could see the great fast-flowing tidal river, the lights of the Embankment, the buildings like Tate Modern and the Globe on the other side. They were brilliantly illuminated far below.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked. ‘Home,’ said Hanlon irritably.

  It was, in fact, a planning mistake on the architect’s part. The space she inhabited had originally been designed as a penthouse for the directors of a company that leased one of the floors below. A change in building regulations regarding fire and purpose of usage had made it impractical. Unusable.

  It belonged to the offshore owners of the building itself and Hanlon, who knew one of the partners, had been here ten years. The room was a footnote in an inventory of the portfolio of a British Virgin Islands company, as noteworthy to the auditors as the concrete shed in the yard they’d walked past, where flammable cleaning products were stored, or the underground storage facility for bicycles for people who worked in the building. The office workers didn’t really know of its existence and the maintenance staff remained incurious. Hanlon never brought people here. Only Mark Whiteside, her friend and colleague, and even then she’d preferred visiting

  * * *

  him at his own flat in Holloway. She was furious that Huss was here, furious that fate had conspired to make this inevitable. She was fiercely solitary. She hated having people in her space.

  They took up too much room. They polluted it.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Hanlon shortly. The seat. There was only the one, a hard wooden chair by a small table with a laptop and an anglepoise lamp. Its metallic, slim, engineered functional lines reminded Huss of Hanlon.

  Huss sat on the chair. She looked around Hanlon’s one-roomed apartment. She thought, She obviously doesn’t do much entertaining. Then she immediately rolled her eyes mentally at the stupidity of the notion that Hanlon might entertain. Not Hanlon.

  These two items, chair and table, were the only visible pieces of furniture. Hanlon’s flat was amazingly bleak, not minimalist chic, just bleak. The front of the flat, a rectangular box, was mostly glass. One side was given over to fitted cupboards. The other side was more glass, opaque building blocks of the stuff, and a door leading out to the flat roof of the office building with its maze of ducting and extractor-fan cooling hoods. The other wall had a door, through which they’d come, louvred doors that would open out to reveal a sink and two hotplates with a glass plug-in convection oven and fridge, Hanlon’s kitchen, and another door concealed shower and toilet.

  The only other things the room contained were a steel frame like a U-shape that supported a bar Hanlon could use as a squat rack, or position above her head for pull-ups, and a pile of weights from twenty kilos downwards to add to the barbell. The sole decoration was a large framed photograph, black and white, of a seated man in his late forties, in jeans, work boots, shirt and a fisherman’s vest. He was wearing a kind of Homburg

  * * *

  hat and looked faintly anguished. His eyes were soulful, his build powerful. It looked like it had been taken in the Sixties. It had been signed but Huss couldn’t read the signature.

  The table had a copy of a triathlon magazine and a history of Iran.

  The room was frighteningly spartan.

  Huss sat down on the chair as instructed and watched as Hanlon opened a cupboard, pulled out a pair of jeans, a hooded top and, from a shoe rack, a pair of calf-high army boots. Ignoring Huss, she stripped off the clothes she was wearing, hung up the jacket and skirt, and put her blouse and tights in a basket in the cupboard. Huss looked enviously at Hanlon’s gymnast’s body revealed in her black, minimalist underwear. The effort and the discipline it would take to make it look that way was awe-inspiring.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Huss asked. Hanlon zipped up her jeans, her flesh above her hips taut over the waistband. Huss could see the outlines of Hanlon’s stomach muscles under the skin above her navel. She stood holding the hoodie.

  ‘I think I may have some idea where Enver is being held,’ she said. ‘So I’m going to take a look.’

  Huss stood up. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Hanlon, putting on her hoodie. She pushed the legs of her jeans up, showing shapely muscular calves, and pulled on socks.

  ‘Write this address down,’ she ordered Huss. Melinda Huss felt irritated at Hanlon’s high-handedness, but it was a huge improvement on feeling sick with worry for Enver.

  She dictated the Slough address to Huss, who keyed it into her phone while Hanlon laced up the army boots. They were US Army issue, light, perfectly fitting and sturdy. She could run well in them, climb in them, kick in them, and they were

  * * *

  amazingly comfortable.

  ‘That’s where I’m going. I’m collecting someone to help me get in. I’ll be back about midnight.’

  She stood up, collected her phone and car keys and another couple of items Huss couldn’t see, and shoved them in a small black rucksack.

  Hanlon’s face was grim but confident. ‘And if you’re not back by midnight?’ ‘Call Corrigan.’

  ‘We could do that now,’ said Huss. ‘Make it official.’ Hanlon stood up. ‘I want a run at this by myself. If we call

  Corrigan now he’ll have no choice but to do everything by the book, you know that. And from what you tell me, then Belanov will know everyone’s coming. Joad will tell him, this other guy he’s got will tell him, and he’ll put Enver where he won’t be found. And if they bring Belanov and Dimitri in for questioning they’ll lawyer up. In fact, they’ll probably demand an interpreter,’ she said irritably, ‘buy themselves even more time.’

  Huss knew she was right, but discipline ran deep. ‘But we’ve got resources if we do it properly.’

  ‘We’ll get nothing if we do it officially,’ said Hanlon. ‘Just give me four hours, then we’ll know one way or another. Besides,’ she added, ‘Enver might not even be there. It’s just an educated guess on my part.’

  ‘OK,’ said Huss warningly. ‘Get in touch before midnight or I’ll call Corrigan.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Hanlon contemptuously. ‘You just go ahead and do that.’ Huss silently watched her leave. The door clicked to behind her. Enraging and rude, but if anyone was going to find Enver, she’d bet on Hanlon.

  Alone, feeling annoyingly useless, Melinda Huss looked

  * * *

  around Hanlon’s one-roomed apartment. She sighed and stood up, went over to the cupboard that contained what passed for Hanlon’s kitchen and put the kettle on. She opened a cupboard and found some tea bags. There was little else in the cupboard

  tins of tuna, dried pasta, rice.

  Huss found a cup and opened the fridge. Some cheese, eggs, no milk. She found salt but no sugar. Her stomach rumbled; she was starving. She
should have been in the pop-up restaurant with Enver.

  Where was he?

  Enver, she thought, what have you done?

  There was a full-length mirror on the wall facing the bars, where she imagined Hanlon would do intense workouts, checking her form in the mirror. It wouldn’t be there for vanity, although it had to be admitted, she thought, that Hanlon was a highly attractive woman. Huss had seen her virtually naked and the effect on a man would be electric.

  It was strange but she no longer resented Enver’s obsession with Hanlon. The woman was weirdly compelling, as if she exerted an irresistible gravitational pull. Huss was beginning to understand the respect that Hanlon seemed to command, not just in her colleagues from Corrigan down but the world in general. But at what cost? Hanlon’s apartment said it all really. A life devoid of comfort, fun, friends.

  Oh, well, thought Huss, she’s chosen this path, good luck to her. I wouldn’t want to be her, although I wouldn’t mind those abs. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. She prodded her own stomach experimentally. Bit more give there than on Hanlon’s. A lot more, if she was honest. Well, she was attractive too, in a large, generously proportioned way. She smiled at her reflection. Her best dress and jacket were wildly inappropriate for her new, monastic surroundings. She thought, I’ll probably

  * * *

  have to spend the night here. Huss, in happy preparation for her night with Enver, had packed an Agent Provocateur kimono and a ridiculously skimpy nightdress. She groaned at the thought of wearing them in front of Hanlon; she could imagine her sardonic amusement.

  Huss was thinking of anything to avoid thinking of Enver Demirel. Please God, let him be all right, she prayed.

  She kicked her heels off and looked around again. No TV, Hanlon’s laptop was almost certainly password protected, her own iPad was at home. She hadn’t been expecting this. What could she do to kill time? To take her mind off Enver?