by Alex Howard
‘No pressure, someone’s giving me Hinds’s external hard drive tonight anyway, but if you wouldn’t mind having another go.’
‘That’d be fine, Melinda, just bring it down to me whenever.’ He stood there fiddling with the evil eye bracelet that he wore on his wrist. The stylized white eye on the blue glass bead stared at her glassily.
‘I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about giving you the brush-off on that, sorry.’
She smiled and watched him as he wandered off. She had a bit of a soft spot for Evan, as did one or two other women at the station. He was quite good-looking in a slightly effeminate way.
*
It was about nine o’clock that Huss got the news. She was in the canteen when DI Ed Worth, one of her favourite colleagues, came up to her looking worried.
‘Thank God, you’re still here, Melinda. There’s been an almighty fuck-up. I can’t find the duty officer and there’s been a serious incident called in, I’ve got two cars responding. Fire and ambulance are on the scene but could you get down there and hold the fort until Harry deigns to put in an appearance?’ Worth was temperamentally a bit of an old woman, thought Huss. Right now he looked so nervous he might throw up.
‘Templeman will do his nut,’ he added, miserably.
‘Sure,’ said Huss, on her feet and moving to go and get her coat. ‘I’m on my way.’
Worth visibly brightened up now Huss had taken charge. Not only was he secretly in love with her, a condition he’d managed to conceal for about three years, he had a great deal of respect for her judgement. He was not a man born for leadership and, to his credit, he knew it.
They strode through the practically deserted station, just the skeleton evening shift on duty.
‘What’s it all about?’ she asked as they pounded along the blue carpet that ran throughout the place.
‘There’s a body on fire,’ said Worth. ‘A jogger called it in. Thought at first it was something to do with Hallowe’en. Up by the university parks near Jericho, off Wilson Road.’
A horrible sense of dread started to rise within Huss.
‘Wilson Road?’
They had reached the big glass door to the car park. Ed Worth hit the button and the door swung slowly open. They walked towards Huss’s Polo. It was a cold night and their breath steamed in the air under the brilliant floodlights of the car park. The razor wire on top of the walls glinted menacingly.
‘One of the uniforms said it was that old tramp woman you see around there quite often. Really nasty, someone seems to have doused her with petrol and—’
Huss yanked open her car door, her face furious. ‘Tell them I’m on my way.’
Worth watched her drive away. In the five years he had known her, he had never seen her look so upset.
He wondered what was going on.
24
Hanlon found Huss easily enough. It certainly wasn’t hard. There were three police cars with lights flashing, a parked up fire engine and half a dozen uniforms sealing a perimeter off with tape. There was still a smell of burning, of charred meat, in the air.
Traffic lights had been installed so the lane that ran past the bus stop was sealed off, and within the traffic cones Huss was talking to a man in a suit. Huss shook hands with the detective and walked over to where she could see Hanlon waiting.
Huss said to her, ‘That’s Brian McKenzie, he’s the SIO on this. What a mess.’
Hanlon looked at the activity – she could see the inner and outer search perimeters indicated with fluttering tape, the entrance and exit walkways to the crime scene. At first light there’d be God knows how many police on their hands and knees crawling around, doing a fingertip search.
‘What happened?’
‘You see that bus shelter there.’ Huss pointed to the clear Perspex structure, now also cordoned off. ‘Elsa Worthington lived just behind it, there’s a couple of trees and a clearing on the ground. The woman who found her told me she’d been there at least five years. She hated hostels, said they were smelly and full of nutcases.’
‘They must be grim if people prefer sleeping out here.’ Hanlon shivered. It was a cold, starry night. She’d driven straight here as soon as Huss had texted her. North London is not far from Oxford.
‘We’re quite tough on the homeless here in Oxford,’ Huss explained. ‘You can be done under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. We’ll bus you off to Coventry to get rid of you so you don’t upset the tourists. Nobody goes to Coventry. Well, not unless they have to. That’s why she had this, her “country retreat”, I’m guessing, hiding away from the council.’
Her attractive face was hard as she contemplated Elsa’s sad life. Commuting from her bus shelter to the centre of town, to the colleges where she used to lecture.
‘At nine thirty, Marian Keys, that’s the jogger, ran along the road – she jogs here most evenings, there’s not much traffic and the pavement’s wide – saw flames and went to investigate.’
‘So that’s when she was found.’
‘She’d had petrol tipped over her and was set alight. Burnt alive.’ Huss’s voice was grim. She was thinking of the gentle eyes of the former don. What a way to have your life taken from you.
‘Why?’ asked Hanlon.
Huss said, ‘When they examine her and cut what’s left of her clothes off, there’ll be what’s left of an external hard drive in there. Under the rags.’ She looked at Hanlon. ‘That’s why. Killed for something she didn’t know the reason for. Let’s go back to the station, I need to do the paperwork on what I’ve been up to tonight for McKenzie so he can make a start on his incident log.’
‘I’ll follow you back. Is that your Golf I’m parked behind?’
‘Yeah, that’s mine.’
The two women walked back to their respective cars.
‘So, you think Eleuthera did this?’ asked Hanlon as they passed the shelter.
‘Yes,’ said Huss, testily. ‘Who else? Clean Up Oxford?’
Hanlon shrugged. ‘Could be an attack on the homeless.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Huss’s voice was scathing. ‘In Oxford the students sometimes piss on them, or give them a good kicking, but not this.’
They had reached their cars.
‘So how did Eleuthera know you were due to meet Elsa tonight?’
‘That,’ said Huss grimly, ‘is what I’m going to find out.’
25
Hanlon decided not to accompany Huss back to the station. She had her own plan of action.
Georgie Adams, she thought, as she drove through the quiet Oxford streets. You came to my meeting, time to return the favour.
CLASS STRUGGLE
DO WE STILL NEED THE WORKING CLASS?
ARE THE TRUE PROLETARIAT THE UNWAGED & STUDENTS?
SUMMERTOWN CHURCH HALL SAT 7-10.00
BRING BOTTLE, OPEN MIND AND REVOLUTIONARY FERVOUR!
The venue wasn’t far from St Wulfstan’s where she’d been with Huss the other day.
She parked her Audi a couple of streets away where its sleek lines wouldn’t attract unwanted, revolutionary attention. That being said, the anti-capitalists seemed strangely drawn to consumerist goods. The ones at the protests she’d seen were walking billboards for major tax-evading companies. The anarchists didn’t do irony.
She reached down into the passenger well and took out the two two-litre bottles of cider that she had brought with her, the price of her admission. Merrydown cider. Drink of revolutionaries.
There were a couple of anarchists on the door: one white with dreadlocks, the other a traveller type, burly in second-hand military cast-offs and steel-toed workboots.
Hanlon strode up to them with her customary arrogance as they politely blocked her entrance.
‘Lambeth Feminist Collective,’ said Hanlon, curtly.
They nodded and opened the door.
It gave way onto a small entrance hall. There was a kitchen on the left, toilets on the right and in front were the double doors leading to the hall. I should ha
ve got here earlier and picketed them, thought Hanlon, gobbed at them as they walked past and shouted rape threats. See how they like it.
There was a goth girl with a nose piercing and multiple ear-studs bustling around the kitchen, laying out food, opening wine. Hanlon handed her the cider. She recognized the girl from the demonstration as the one who had spat at Hübler and called her a ‘German bitch’. She looked blankly at Hanlon – she was quite stoned and there was no glint of recognition.
‘You shouldn’t be reinforcing gender stereotypes,’ said Hanlon nastily, handing her the bottles, then turned on her heel and went inside.
There was a good turnout for the meeting, the hall was full, all the seats taken. On stage the speaker was just coming to an end.
He was a good-looking man in his thirties with a leather jacket. The number of vegans on the revolutionary left and right must be infinitesimal, she thought. In many ways, the speaker was not too dissimilar to Schneider in his appearance. And they both favoured leather. But a cut-price Schneider. The real deal would have had them on their feet, ready to burn the colleges, bastions of privilege and knowledge, to the ground. Here there was quiet approbation, nothing more.
The audience applauded and Georgie Adams, who had been sitting onstage with another couple of organisers, walked forward. The hall was in darkness, there were just a couple of spotlights on her.
Their first meeting had been fraught and brief. She hadn’t had a chance to look at the girl properly. Under the spotlights, now she did. Hanlon thought, she’s breathtakingly beautiful. You couldn’t blame Marcus Hinds for flirting with the devil when the devil took such a form. Her very dark hair with the green highlights haloed her fine features, her slim body in figure-hugging jeans and a simple white tailored blouse had surprisingly generous curves. The blouse was unbuttoned slightly to show the swell of her breasts and the mysterious geometric tattoos that she favoured. Most of the men in the audience would be salivating.
Had it been her who had doused Elsa in petrol? No, she thought, she was the type who would have ordered someone else to do it and watched. Watched appreciatively. There was a hint of cruelty to Georgie’s beautiful face that Hanlon could imagine would drive men wild.
‘Thank you to Paul Mattocks from Camden Active for that thought-provoking talk. In a moment we’ll have refreshments.’ It was the kind of cut-glass middle class Scottish accent that might introduce a fete in genteel Morningside: ‘And now, in the pavilion, the major will be judging the vegetable produce...’
‘While that’s happening we’ll be collecting for the Calais migrant camp for Smash the Borders. So, I’d like to ask again for another big hand for Paul and an even larger one for yourselves, thank YOU for coming!’
The audience applauded, whistled and stamped. Georgie certainly knew how to work a crowd, thought Hanlon.
She thought of the burned remains of the old bag-lady.
She thought of the hate-filled faces of Georgie’s fellow anarchists.
‘FASCIST WHORE!’
Hanlon moved to stand close to the door. Any moment now. A moment of dispassion, seeing herself from outside, tough, grim, flexing her fingers.
You shouldn’t be doing this!
The same pleasurable feeling of anticipation filling her body as when she had climbed into the ring with Phil Campbell earlier that week. The adrenaline building. Heartbeat rising. Pupils dilating.
ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!!
Someone switched the lights on and the audience started talking, stretching, coughing, all the pent-up noise of a group of people forced to sit silently and now released. Chairs squeaked on the polished parquet floor of the hall as people stood up.
Georgie raised her eyes from the lectern where she had been standing and caught sight of Hanlon. She did an almost theatrical double-take.
That’s shattered your poise, thought Hanlon.
Hanlon was leaning by the door, her arms folded in an aggressively challenging posture. For a moment Georgie had struggled to place her. The last time she had been wearing a short skirt, jacket, blouse and boots. Now it was a bomber jacket, combat trousers and high-sided DMs, but there was no doubting the tough, good-looking face, the hard eyes. Her hand involuntarily went to her stomach where Hanlon had hit her.
It was like a slap in the face, a gauntlet thrown down, a challenge.
Georgie turned to one of the men on the stage, a man with a shaved head and more tattoos that she guessed had been at the demo, and pointed at Hanlon and said something. His face turned to one of ugly rage and he hurriedly made his way towards her.
Hanlon slipped out through the door, through the lobby and the small crowd, the anarchists keen to get to their sausage rolls and cider, and into the night.
The two men who had been on the door were no longer there, probably inside getting a drink, she thought.
There was a small car park in front of the hall and Hanlon hung around momentarily until she saw the doors burst open and shaved head accompanied by the traveller appear.
She walked swiftly and purposefully away from them. She had no need to look back, she knew that they would follow. She continued into New Inn Hall Street. St Wulfstan’s, like all the major colleges, was located in the centre of Oxford. The buildings were brilliantly lit and she moved with her customary grace through the heart of the town. The two men were in pursuit but they didn’t want to start anything, not here, not in the centre of town.
Although it was a Saturday night, this part of Oxford was practically deserted and it felt like walking through an empty film or stage set. Most of the students would be drinking in the college bars and the historic centre was not overburdened with pubs and nightclubs. The graceful stone buildings rose up around her, a tableau of living history.
As she walked along St Giles, the very broad road that ran past St John’s College, she put her hands in her pockets and slipped on a pair of gloves, thick, black leather, to ensure her knuckles wouldn’t break.
The clock in St John’s College was striking ten; the two men following Hanlon lengthened their stride.
Action time. Shaved head was keen to vent his wrath on the tool of capitalist oppression. Or maybe he was just keen to beat up the woman who had hit his girlfriend. Hanlon had caught the look that he had given her on the stage.
As she walked her mind raced. She doubted they would attack her in a brightly lit street like the one she was on, so she turned down one of the small side streets off St Giles. She knew this area well. It was near where the brothel had been, that Arkady Belanov had owned and run.
It was October. The men were wearing bulky coats that would protect their stomachs from a punch, or at least muffle the blow, but their faces would be exposed. Hanlon intended hitting them very hard.
The thought made her feel strong, made her feel confident. She’d fought Arkady Belanov and won.
She smiled a cold, sinister smile. She wasn’t going to lose to these idiots. Anarchist pricks. I’m not a helpless old lady you can set on fire. I’m not someone you can gob at who’ll just stand there and smile and wipe it off.
She felt anger well up in her heart. I don’t do defeat, she thought, grimly. Her strong fingers tightened and she tossed her hair provocatively as she walked, the men a few steps behind.
In her mind she remembered Freddie Laidlaw’s comment to her:
‘You’re the best I’ve got, Hanlon, the fastest and the brightest and you’re hard to hit.’
The streetlights here were dim and the houses in darkness.
She tensed, ready for action.
I love you, Freddie, I won’t let you down.
She heard the footsteps quicken behind her and sensed rather than saw the blow about to fall. The iron bar that shaved head had been carrying arced through the air. He had no intention of messing around. This woman was destined for intensive care or the morgue. The centre of Hanlon’s unruly corkscrew hair its target. As the bar came down, Hanlon exploded into movement.
She sprang b
ackwards into the body of her attacker. The bald man. In boxing, most of the power in a punch comes from springing forward off the back foot, here she used the same principle in reverse. She also knew that by getting so close to him, any strike with his arms would go over her head and body. And that is exactly what happened.
The steel bar, about a foot in length, overshot her head but the man’s arm crashed down on her shoulder. As it did so, still moving back into him with the momentum of her body, she drove her elbow back hard into his stomach. Even his heavy coat couldn’t cushion the blow as the tip of the bone slammed into his solar plexus with explosive power.
It drove the breath out of him.
He gasped and swore and she spun round and slammed her fist into the side of his head in a vicious left hook, twisting her body into the punch, driving it home with all the terrific power in her hips and thighs. Then, as his head snapped to the side, she brought her other fist forward in a powerful right cross into the front of his face.
There was a snapping sound as her leather glove smashed home. His head flew back and he gave a moan and toppled over. As he went down she snatched the iron bar from his hand and swung it at the shorter one, the traveller.
The sheer speed of Hanlon’s attack had left him frozen to the spot. That hadn’t been in the script.
Not at all.
He put an arm up to defend himself and cried out as the metal thwacked into the bone on his forearm above his wrist. His head would have made a perfect target but Hanlon had other plans.
The bald man that she had knocked to the ground was starting to haul himself upright. She glimpsed tattoos on the side of his neck. Hanlon kicked him as hard as she could between the legs and he gave a choking gasp and curled up into a foetal position, fighting the incredible agony that was engulfing his body from his badly hurt testicles. There was no fight left in him now. Hanlon’s two punches had left him barely conscious and now there was this sea of gut-sickening pain. Even if he’d been capable of movement he had no intention of getting anywhere near her.
The shorter man was clutching his injured arm. Hanlon shot her hand out and grabbed a clump of the matted hair on his head, yanking him forward viciously. He had thick curls, almost dreads, ideal to hold fast. He cried out but didn’t struggle. She knew he was hers for the taking. It was like when a dog shows submission to another dog by rolling over. His hands hung down by his sides. Whoever this man was, she could feel by the lack of resistance that he wasn’t going to put up any more of a fight.