by Alex Howard
She had reached the side of the house when she saw the Presa. It must have been sitting outside the back door and now its keen nose had picked up her scent. It didn’t bark, it strode arrogantly out to the edge of the lawn and then silently ran towards her, its ears cocked, its tongue lolling and its very white teeth glinting in its open mouth.
Hanlon crouched low, waiting for the animal. The Presa snarled, a deep, vicious noise, and leapt forward, the target for its teeth Hanlon’s face and throat.
She braced herself for the impact.
The Presa, almost without slackening pace, its lips drawn back over its white teeth, hurled itself at Hanlon. She crouched down, steadying herself with her back foot, and raised her left arm that was protected by the heavy leather strapping of the weight belt.
The force nearly knocked her over, it was more like being hit by a truck than an animal but she managed to stay upright. The dog bit down on her arm, growling and snarling. Reflected in the moonlight, its eyes were shining, glowing discs. It threw its weight to one side, trying to flip her over so her throat would be exposed. The pressure she could feel through the leather protecting her arm was awesome. She wondered how many psi it was.
Quickly, before the dog relinquished her arm and moved on to her face, she brought up the can of Soviet Union era pepper spray that Serg had given her, which was in her right hand, the stuff that could neutralize a bear, and squirted it in the animal’s face from point-blank range.
Ever since she had seen the Presa destroy the Dobermann, she had been wondering how she was going to deal with it should she have to.
The effect of the spray was immediate. The dog let go of her arm and, whimpering, backed away, rubbing its muzzle on the ground in pain and shock from the searing effects of the chemically enhanced capsicum on its sensitive nose and eyes.
It zigzagged along the lawn, leaving a furrow of bent grass as it tried to seek solace and relief from the cold ground for the terrible burning sensation in its face. It had never experienced anything like that in its life, and had no intention whatsoever of going anywhere near Hanlon now. It had decided she was too dangerous.
Keeping a careful eye on the animal, Hanlon resumed her walk to the rear of the house. It didn’t follow.
Huss, where the hell are you? she wondered.
50
Hinds ran over to Huss. She looked at him from the table and he tugged the tape from her mouth.
‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine, untie me.’ Hinds reached down to free the restraints from her wrists when they both heard voices and the door at the top of the stairs opened.
Hinds froze where he was. Huss saw him desperately glance around the room. The steps into the basement were straight down with a solid wall that formed the banister. Unless you actually leaned over and looked down you wouldn’t see anyone, your sight line being the room itself as it opened up in front of you. Hinds ran to the wall and flattened himself against it.
Muller appeared, walking slowly down the steps, looking at Huss with a kind of grim smile on his face. He stopped and looked at the open window with a measure of surprise but mentally shrugged and continued down. Huss saw Schneider appear, following him.
As Muller reached the bottom, Hinds sprang at him. It was almost like a flying rugby tackle and the giant German staggered as Hinds crashed into him. He stumbled into the wall and turned his head as Hinds’s fist slammed into him.
Huss watched as the two men grappled with each other. Muller was enormous, but Hinds was resourceful and Hinds was strong and Hinds was good in a fight.
He grabbed Muller’s wrists and the giant, who was in a kind of half-crouch now on the slippery, modernistic glass and marble tiles underfoot, slipped forward as Hinds heaved again, putting the weight of his back into it. The two of them staggered around as their balance went, collapsing with a muted thud in a heap on the floor. Hinds was up first and he drove his knee into the side of Muller’s head, dazing the giant who was knocked backwards, legs and arms sprawling.
Schneider had stayed back from the fight until this moment, but now he acted. He had moved so he was behind Hinds, who had his hands full with Muller. There was a pair of surgical scissors on a shelf, shiny, pointed stainless steel, their tips needle sharp. They glinted in the overhead strip light.
Schneider snatched these up and drove them hard like a dagger into Hinds’s unprotected back. The handles of the scissors jutted out from the fabric and a wet patch almost immediately visibly formed through the black fabric.
Hinds gave a kind of hoarse scream. He reached backwards, his hands unable to reach the scissors, fingers ineffectually scrabbling to reach the source of the agony, but by now Muller was on his feet, powerful hands grabbing at him.
Blood, very, very red, poured out of his back on to the whiteness of the tiles and still Muller was on him. Huss watched powerless, Muller standing over Hinds who sank to his knees as the giant’s hands circled his throat, choking the life out of him.
It seemed to take a very long time. An agonizing death for Marcus Hinds.
Huss watched as Hinds’s body relaxed, his arms, which had been clawing at Muller’s, dropped to the floor and his head fell forward.
From above they heard a woman’s voice. ‘Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess! What the hell have you been up to?’
Georgie Adams was back.
51
‘That’s much better,’ said Georgie Adams approvingly.
Kellner had appeared behind Adams with his arms full of cleaning materials and the three men and Adams had set to work.
The body of Marcus Hinds had been wrapped in bin bags, the floor and all the other surfaces were being meticulously cleaned.
Adams had taken over control of the situation, to the obvious relief of all concerned. She paused after a few minutes and spoke to Schneider.
‘Tell Muller to get upstairs and check on the perimeters and the house security. I closed the gate behind me, and I can’t see any reason why we should be disturbed, but I want to know that everything’s OK up there.’
Schneider nodded and relayed her instructions to Muller, who put down his mop with relief. He disappeared up the stairs.
Now Schneider and Kellner looked up at her expectantly.
‘Get that lot,’ she said, pointing to the bin bags containing Hinds’s body, ‘into Muller’s van. I want Arzu in there too. Leave the hand. We’ll need that for later, add the finishing touches.’
Schneider and Kellner nodded. Within ten minutes the basement at the lodge was spotless.
Schneider said, ‘Won’t there still be traces of blood around?’
Adams nodded. ‘Probably, but there’s four litres or so in her,’ she said, pointing at Huss. ‘We’ll spread it around a bit, a few of Arzu’s fingerprints here and there. Another victim of Al-Akhdaar.’
‘Sehr schön,’ said Schneider admiringly.
‘Shall we kill her now?’ asked Kellner.
Adams shook her head. ‘No, last minute. I want us to be able to access this room if necessary without getting blood anywhere it shouldn’t be.’ She looked at Huss in an evaluating way. ‘Also, if anything goes wrong, we’ve always got a hostage.’
Huss lay miserably on her table with her eyes open but unseeing. She hadn’t cried until the death of Hinds. Now she felt nothing. She guessed she was in a state of shock.
No help would be forthcoming. The protection team up at the hotel would have no cause to come here. Presumably Schneider, Kellner and Muller would all decamp later. She’d be found in the morning, why wouldn’t anyone assume that Al-Akhdaar had done it? She probably would if she were in their shoes. They all believed so strongly now in ISIS’s potent reputation that of course everyone would think they did it. Murdering an attractive, young blonde British policewoman, what could be more ISIS? Arzu’s prints everywhere. They certainly wouldn’t imagine that Schneider would have had a hand in it – what could he possibly gain?
And even Templeman would probably put h
er death down to her own impetuousness, her own desire to have her conspiracy theories proved right, hiding in the lodge hoping to arrest some imaginary anarchists, who, irony of ironies, were imaginary.
Hinds’s other woman, his other source, if she ever came forward, would back up the Al-Akhdaar theory and Marcus Hinds would forever remain a suspect in two murders, maybe even her own, if there were a stray piece of forensic evidence that hadn’t been tidied up.
She opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of Georgie Adams. They were slightly almond shaped and her round face with its small nose and slight dusting of freckles and a very full, very cruel-looking mouth was extraordinarily attractive.
Adams leaned forward. ‘Don’t go away,’ she said. She left the room, turning out the light as she went.
52
Hanlon looked up at the tall walls above her. Apart from one room, the lodge was in darkness. She was at the rear of the house. She heard voices and moved away into the darkness of the garden. Muffled instructions, the noise of the front door being opened, footsteps on the gravel of the drive and then the crash of the rear doors of the van being slammed. She waited a few minutes for things to settle down and then crept forward, back towards the house. She quickly moved to the lighted window that was next to the back door and looked in.
It was the kitchen where Enver had spent his time working. He had naturally left it scrupulously clean. It was a large, square room with a large, square steel table in the centre. It was very much a part-time kitchen that saw occasional use. Most of the guests would choose to eat at the hotel in Michelin-starred luxury. There was none of the signs of use of a kitchen in which someone actually cooks a lot. There were no bottles of oil or pans and dishes left out, no sign of disorder, no scrunched-up tea towels. It was quietly, forensically tidy.
The big work table in the centre was a gleaming, blank surface. In the far corner an expensive gas range with a section that she guessed was a built-in griddle. There was still a prep list in Enver’s handwriting on the shelf containing spices and herbs. No wonder the kitchen looked so tidy with Enver fussing over it, she thought. God, if anything happens to Huss he’ll never forgive me.
She did note with wry amusement that he, or more likely the kitchen porter, had forgotten to switch off the griddle plate of the stove. The icon under it was glowing bright red.
There was a double sink and various machines, white goods, dishwasher, fridge, freezer under the expensive work surfaces. It was very sleek and minimal, the walls bare apart from a metal shelf with cartons and containers of spices over by the stove in the corner.
She noticed outside the back door, near where she was standing, was a mat with two dog bowls, one for food, which was empty, and one for water. There was a kennel behind them. The Presa’s lair.
She tried the handle to the back door and to her relief it was open. She’d be able to get in easily if necessary. She closed it again. Somewhere in this house she expected to find Huss or some sign of Huss. She resumed her circumnavigation of the outside walls.
The next window along proved to be the living room. She peered in. There were four people in there: Schneider, Muller, a third man that she hadn’t met but recognized as Florian Kellner, and Georgie Adams, looking very much coolly in charge.
They were all sitting down, deep in discussion. Hanlon thought briefly. She was weighing up the odds if it came to a fight. Kellner could be discounted as a physical threat, too old, too flabby. Adams, she felt perfectly capable of flattening. Schneider she likewise discounted. He was a politician rather than a fighter. That only left Muller. If he were taken out of the equation she knew who she would put the money on if it came to a fight.
Huss would be somewhere in the lodge, where else could she be?
Muller was a risk she was able to accept. Nobody could possibly imagine there might be someone prowling around, not with the dog securing the outside perimeter.
Hanlon moved back the way she had come to the front of the lodge and studied the van that was parked outside.
It was a large white Mercedes with German plates. She guessed it was Muller’s, that inside there would be a cage for the Presa. It was unlocked and she opened the passenger door and climbed inside. Sure enough, there was a massive barred structure in the rear of the van to contain the dog, with two thick rolls of carpeting inside.
She heard a whining and a scrabbling at the van door. She looked out, the Presa was outside, wanting to get in.
Hanlon looked around her. The car key was in the ignition. She took it out and put it in her pocket, then, holding the can of pepper spray at the ready, she opened the passenger door a fraction, then pushed it open with her foot.
The gigantic dog barely paid her any attention. It recognized her as the pain-dealing woman to avoid but it didn’t want her anyway. It was the stuff in the back that it wanted to get at, the stuff with the meaty smell. It leapt into the front seat and then disappeared over the top of that into the back of the van. It pressed its muzzle up against the mesh of the cage, sniffing and growling.
Hanlon looked at the rolled-up carpeting with new eyes. Not one, but two rolls, six-foot lengths.
The dog’s sinister interest aroused her suspicions. God, I hope that’s not Huss in there, she thought. She held her torch between her teeth and reached a couple of fingers through one of the gaps in the square mesh and tore open a gap in the bin bag that poked out from the carpeting like the filling in a wrap. She wriggled her fingers inside, and felt. Hair. She shone the torch down, dark hair.
Hanlon repeated the performance with the other roll, this time it was boots, boots too big to be worn by Huss.
Two bodies, neither of them Huss’s.
Hanlon toyed with the idea of getting help, instantly rejected it. There was no way of knowing what would happen to Huss if she did. Personally she thought it more than likely that Georgie Adams would kill her at the first signs of police intervention. Serg had translated the police report for her on Adams’s history and crime involvement and it made grim reading. And who knew what Schneider would do.
What she had learned from Lottie would be enough to destroy him, two more bodies would be the final straw. The end of his political career, the end of his existence. He might well decide to go out in a blaze of glory.
Götterdämmerung.
The twilight of the gods.
Hanlon jumped out of the van and slammed the door shut. She locked it with the remote and moved away to the bonnet where she would be hidden from the view of anyone coming out of the front door.
Time to take out Muller, her biggest obstacle to finding Huss. She thought of Huss in Adams’s hands and allowed her rage to build up inside her.
Come on, Muller, she thought.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, then the movements of the Presa triggered the internal sensors of the van and the alarm started its two-tone wailing, in time with the lights flashing.
The front door of the lodge opened and then slammed shut as Muller stood there, swearing in German. Hanlon unlocked the door with the control.
Hanlon heard ‘Scheisse’ and ‘Hund’ and then the scrunch of his feet on the gravel as he went up to the driver’s door and went to yank it open, or tried to.
As he did, Hanlon materialized alongside him. He blinked in surprise as in one smooth, ultra-fast movement she turned side on to Muller, minimizing herself as a target, right hand shielding her face, left ready to jab. Moving off her back foot, she straightened up and leapt forward.
Hanlon’s fist thudded into his face. Her mind went back to when she’d been in the ring with a comparable-sized man, God, she thought, it was only just over a week ago that she’d been sparring with Chris Campbell in the Bermondsey gym.
This was so different. Muller was his size, but he didn’t know how to fight. He had no guard. As she sprang towards him he had blinked in surprise, his hands held at shoulder height. Her knuckles had powered through his lack of defence.
It was her left fist
that had smashed into his eye socket, fracturing the bone, and as he recoiled from the force, her other hand, her right, driven by the force of her hips and legs, had crashed into the mass of hair that was his face. Blood poured from his smashed nose, splashing down his T-shirt.
A look of pained surprise, then anger crossed his face.
The force of the punch was immense and he staggered back, his hands flailed at Hanlon but he was woefully slow. She side-slipped one wild throw of his huge fist and ducked, crouching low, as another passed over her head. Then she turned and ran.
Muller was slow on his feet. She ran just fast enough so he couldn’t catch her. She sped away from the house in the direction of the shelter, Muller panting after her. She slipped through the bunker’s open door, giving him time to grab a hold of her jacket. He was almost twice her weight, nearly twenty stone, but momentum was on her side and as his fingers dug in she dived forward, pulling him off balance, twisted like an eel and sprayed the last of the Russian pepper spray into his eyes.
He immediately let go of her and clasped both hands to his head, a hissed litany of curses escaping his lips. Now Hanlon really went to town.
Muller was blind and in agony.
Another combination of punches from Hanlon, a left hook into the side of his head, another right hand, and now he had both hands in front of his face, trying to shield his head whilst he tried to work out what was going so terribly wrong.
His head was ringing with concussion and pain. His eyes were burning, acid, he thought, I’m blind, and on top of that hard blows, massive punches were raining down on him. Nobody had ever hit him like this. How can this be happening? he thought. It can’t be happening.
But it was.
Suddenly she saw his legs go, she had knocked him practically unconscious.