by Alex Howard
Hanlon closed in on him. Her left hook had opened the skin at the end of his eyebrow, and blood was trickling into his eye, blinding him. She had no need to pace herself, the important thing was not to let up for a second. His body was straight on before her, she had the whole pick of him for a brief moment as a target. She danced up to him and kicked him straight between his legs with her steel-toed boots.
All her force. All her strength. Slamming into his balls.
His core exploded with pain.
There was no referee to stop her, no rules. Muller gave a grunt of agony and folded up, his body dropping down. As he did so, her hands, left and right, hooked into the side of his head.
I’M GOING TO PUT YOU TO BED sang through her head, sang through her brain.
Explosive, sweet punches. Harder than she’d ever hit anyone before. Into his temples. Right and left.
BANG!
BANG!
The force of the blows rocked his head to one side and then the other, he was completely disoriented, black shapes swirled in front of his eyes and he thought he was going to throw up. He could no longer stand or lift his arms.
He fell to his knees and, barely conscious, crawled across the dirt floor of the shelter. As if kicking a rugby ball she booted her steel-toe cap as viciously and hard as she could into his right kidney. His body sagged down and he roared with pain and she did it again, in the same place.
She could see his eyes close and his body go limp as he finally lost consciousness.
She stood there looking down at him in the semi-darkness. She pulled off her constrictive balaclava and shoved it in her bag, shaking her wiry, dark hair free.
She felt slightly dazed. For her the world had contracted to just the space where she was and the bloodied body on the floor in front of her. She had forgotten where she was.
A male voice she had heard before said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to make the count, DCI Hanlon.’
Schneider stood there behind her, a torch snapped on and she could see he was not alone. The .22 that Spencer had used the other day, its muzzle unmovingly trained on her, was held by Georgie Adams.
53
Huss lay in the darkness of the lodge’s wellness centre. She had heard selective noises filtering down from above: the sound of the car alarm; footsteps from running feet; the banging of the front door.
In her state of heightened awareness where every sound could have vital significance, she felt almost psychically attuned to what was going on. Whether or not this was simply imagination or reality, her five senses keyed to a pitch they never normally had to work at, she didn’t know. Maybe it was like the sensation when you have a car crash, that everything is happening in slow motion.
She thought with excitement, It has to be Hanlon. If it were her colleagues there would be an awful lot more activity, not least calls for the occupants of the lodge to emerge. None of that.
She sensed disturbance, urgency, and then she heard voices, calm now, measured tones, and her heart sank.
She thought sadly of Marcus Hinds, his handsome face and tousled dark hair casually shrouded in a bin bag, and she remembered too the sadistic glee in Georgie Adams’s eyes.
She had no doubt now that Adams was involved in this not for any money – her wealthy Scottish family were more than capable of buying her anything she could have wanted. In an idle moment, back at the station, she had googled her father who was, as Templeman had said, a prominent lawyer in the corporate world and non-exec director of several firms.
Georgie Adams was doing this because she liked hurting people; more than that, thought Huss. She liked killing them.
She thought of Adams, going to Russia as part of her university studies, getting drawn into the shady Russian bizniss world where crime and capitalism and politics meet. No, that was wrong, Adams wasn’t the sort of person who would be drawn in, she had gone there to deliberately find the kind of lawless, amoral thrills that she craved. Sex, power, money, crime.
It was all there to be had.
And what a find for the Russian Mafia, what an envoy. Posh, rich, British student, no suspicion attaching to her. And studying politics, of course she could meet people like Kellner, she had perfect cover.
And she had brains and organizational ability and, with a face and a body like that, the most amazing hold over men.
And the awful thing was she would probably get away with it. Muller would spirit the bodies of poor Arzu and Hinds away. Both of them killed to take the blame for murders that they hadn’t committed.
She would die and the non-existent Al-Akhdaar would take the blame and Schneider’s popularity would rise another few percentage points.
She lay in the darkness and thought that in a way it was significant that Adams had stage-managed the crucial killings of Gunther Hart, Christiane Hübler – both of whom had been on the verge of exposing Schneider – to look like the work of an IS splinter group. She was a kind of Jihadi John figure for whom the main attraction was not ideology, but death.
And death would come to her soon.
That much she knew.
54
The rifle in Georgie Adams’s hands was ominously steady. The three of them, Schneider, herself and Hanlon, marched back to the lodge. Muller had been left where he lay. Kellner opened the door to them blinking in surprise, his reward a torrent of German from Schneider, and they went through into the kitchen.
‘Go and stand in the corner over there,’ ordered Adams. Hanlon did so. Her back was against the stove. Under the table she noticed a bucket of dirty water with a couple of tea towels in that had been left there by Enver’s lazy kitchen porter earlier.
‘You might as well give yourselves up,’ Hanlon said.
The three others stood looking at her from across the broad kitchen table that lay between them.
Hanlon spoke again. ‘There are two bodies in that van, Huss is here, I’m here and Frank Muller will need hospital. What are you going to do? You’re screwed.’
Adams said, ‘Muller’s not going anywhere.’
Adams had obviously decided that Muller was not going to live. Hanlon realized that the dynamics of the situation had changed and that it wasn’t Schneider now who was in charge. Georgie Adams called the shots.
Now, as Adams looked contemptuously at Schneider, as she turned her head and Kellner was polishing his glasses, Hanlon moved her hands behind her back and closed them around the tub of chilli powder that she had seen earlier.
‘Get rid of her now,’ said Kellner.
‘No, I want the bitch to know we’ll get away with it,’ replied Adams. ‘And, Florian, shut the fuck up and never, I said never, try and tell me what to do.’
There was a smile on her face, but her voice was cold. Kellner’s not going to last, thought Hanlon suddenly.
‘Sorry, Georgie,’ said the chastened deputy leader.
Now, as the two of them discussed her, glaring at each other, she, hardly daring to breathe, flipped the lid off the spice and tipped the container’s contents into her hands. She now had two handfuls of chilli powder. Hanlon imperceptibly moved closer to the red heat of the hotplate on the stove.
Adams looked at Hanlon, the rifle cradled in her arms.
‘After you’re dead, you’ll join the others in the back of that van. I’ll take it on the ferry over to Calais.’ She smiled. ‘As you may know, there’s an anarchist camp down in the refugee area they call “the jungle”. I’ve spent time there. The police down there are overwhelmed, not just with rioters and people trying to jump lorries but there are also quite a few murders, Afghanis killing Africans, Iraqis killing Syrians. Lot of unsolved crime.’
Kellner replaced his glasses. Adams addressed him, raising the rifle to her shoulder now. The muzzle pointing unwaveringly at the centre of Hanlon’s body.
‘Crime that goes unreported, crime that the French police have no intention of solving.’
She turned to Kellner.
‘Florian, you can go down
stairs now and kill that woman.’
Kellner’s fat, baby lips twitched with pleasure. ‘How?’
‘I want as much blood as possible in the room, none on you, I want her to bleed out, slowly but surely. I’m sure you’ll cope, you’re a doctor.’
‘Oh, Florian,’ Schneider’s voice was gentle, ‘I told her it wouldn’t hurt, give her a local anaesthetic or something, do it gently...’
Kellner looked at Adams for confirmation.
‘Fine, I don’t care, I’ll cut her head off later.’
You bitch, thought Hanlon. Their eyes met across the room, Hanlon’s grey eyes gleaming with hatred.
Kellner smiled and left the room. Schneider stood trying to look impassive. In fact, he looked distinctly ill at ease.
‘Arzu and Hinds will be found in the fields. They’ll be put down as dead refugees. Nobody will investigate them. I’ll let the dog alone with your body for a bit.’
She paused to let the message sink in. ‘We don’t want identifiable hands and face.’
Schneider added, more, Hanlon guessed, from a politician’s dislike of being sidelined than anything else, ‘You’ll just have disappeared, Hanlon. Huss and Muller will be found dead in the morning, killed by Al-Akhdaar. Kellner and I will leave in about half an hour, Muller staying behind to settle our bill and then catch the eleven o’clock flight to Stuttgart, and all of this will all be over.’
Georgie Adams raised her rifle.
55
The light flickered on in the treatment room and Huss turned her head slightly to see who was coming in.
She had been hoping against hope that some form of rescue might come. It was always Hanlon that she thought would deliver her, if anyone. Thoughts of rescue filled her mind, visions of an armed response team clattering down the stairs to her rescue, hopefully after some heavy small-arms fire upstairs.
But now all hope faded as she saw Kellner with his blubbery, creepy grin and a small medical bag.
He put his bag down on the desk, took out a hypodermic syringe and inserted the needle into a small glass bottle, which he dropped back into his bag. He held the hypodermic up to the light and did an air shot to make sure there was just liquid in the barrel of the syringe.
He stood next to her as she lay bound and immobile on the table, then reached down and pulled her shirt up so he was looking at the expanse of flesh between her waistband and her ribs. Then he gently inserted the needle and injected her with whatever was in the syringe.
It was painful, but not unduly so.
‘It’s a local anaesthetic,’ he explained. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, DI Huss.’
He waited a minute or so, then dropped the syringe into his bag and took out a skewer-like implement.
He pushed the end into Huss’s side. She felt the skin part and then a dull pain as it made its way into her body, but most of the pain was countered by the local. The probe disappeared inside her, then there was a feeling of resistance and she felt – she couldn’t have heard, could she? – a slight pop and Kellner’s features, on which had been a frown of concentration, relaxed.
He swiftly pulled the instrument out and almost immediately a thin trickle of Huss’s blood followed.
Kellner stroked her cheek. ‘I’ve made a small nick in your liver, DI Huss, and you’ll just slowly bleed away. It won’t hurt at all. You’ll feel a bit faint, that’s your blood pressure dropping. In about a quarter of an hour you’ll lose consciousness, but I’ll be down to see you before that... We have unfinished business to attend to, my darling. We were interrupted last time...’
His hand stroked her with greater urgency, he leered at her.
‘...then, after I’ve finished, in about another quarter of an hour, you’ll be dead. Das ist nicht so schlimm. But don’t worry, it’ll be painless, like going to sleep.’
He stood up and straightened his tie.
‘See you soon, meine liebling! Tschüss.’
She watched as he walked away up the stairs. She hoped she would be unconscious before he returned.
She lay there still and silent.
What else could she do?
*
I’m dying now, she thought.
She wasn’t in any pain, the local anaesthetic in her side had taken care of that, all she could feel as the blood trickled out from her right side was a faint tickling sensation as it flowed down her skin and a spreading warmth as it pooled underneath her body.
She could see the redness of her blood if she raised her head off the table and she could hear it dripping on to the floor. It was almost beautiful. Other people’s blood, and she had seen a fair amount, made her feel sick, but she didn’t mind the sight of her own. She could smell it too, heavy and warm.
She was still feeling quite calm, tranquil almost, but she could feel herself becoming light-headed. She wondered how much blood she had actually lost. She felt another warm trickle down her body. It seemed to be leaving her body in irregular bursts. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, if you had to choose a way to die, bleeding out like this was not a bad way to go at all.
She thought of Enver Demirel, her fiancé. He would miss her. Poor Enver. She thought of Hanlon.
Hanlon would avenge her, she thought.
Nothing would stop Hanlon.
She closed her eyes and her breathing slowed.
56
Kellner reappeared in the kitchen.
‘All done?’ asked Adams.
‘Yes,’ said Kellner.
‘Tot?’ asked Schneider.
He nodded. ‘Sie stirbt.’ He looked at Adams. ‘She’s dying.’
Hanlon was waiting coldly for her moment. Huss was dead. She had failed to rescue her, but she might be able to avenge her. Melinda Huss would want that.
‘And now it’s your turn,’ smiled Georgie Adams.
The rifle barrel centred on Hanlon’s face. She took a deep breath, inhaling as much as she could till her lungs were full, and tipped the contents of both hands on to the burning metal.
As she felt the chilli powder spill from her fingers, she instantly closed her eyes.
The fumes released as the fine spice hit the red-hot metal of the griddle were invisible, more of a gas than a cloud of smoke. With unbelievable speed it filled the kitchen. It was like the heat of a chilli but squirted into the soft tissue of the eyes and nose. Incandescently painful. And totally immediate. No real warning.
One instant Adams had Hanlon’s face squarely in the sights of the rifle while she tried to think of a more discreet way of killing her that would avoid spilling blood. The next her eyes were in absolute agony and her nose and mouth on fire.
Adams had no idea what was happening. She automatically opened her mouth, gasping in shock, and in her panic sucked in a lungful of the searing gas. She bent double with the pain. Uncontrollable tears blinded her – it was more or less the same effect as the pepper spray had on the dog and Muller.
The two men were similarly affected. It was the same ingredient, capsaicin, as in the spray, the sort that’s used in mace and crowd control agents, and to Adams, Schneider and Kellner it felt like acid had been rubbed into their eyes and tipped into their lungs.
Hanlon heard the gasps, shouts, choked swear words and coughs from the three of them. She heard the noise of the table squealing as its legs pushed against the tiles of the kitchen. She heard a crash as Kellner blundered into the tall steel bin by the back door.
Adams’s rifle was useless. She was blinded by the gas. She had no idea where Hanlon was. She was in too much pain to think. She couldn’t see.
Hanlon, her eyes still firmly closed, dropped down to her knees. Her foot had been resting against the bucket of water with the cloths in, and now she plunged her hands into the bucket, grabbed three wet tea towels and swathed her head in them.
The soaking wet cloth over her face, mouth and lungs protected her from the main effects of the gas, as far as breathing was concerned, but she knew that her eyes would be affected the moment tha
t she opened them. She at least knew what was causing the pain, she knew what was coming.
She jumped to her feet, parting the wet cloth that obscured her face so it looked like she was peering out from a veil, niqab-style. Kellner had his back to her, his eyes firmly closed, and was fumbling for the door into the garden, escape foremost on his mind.
Adams had both hands over her face, the rifle lay on the table and Schneider, coughing and choking, hands and arms outstretched like a man playing blind man’s buff, was heading to the door of the kitchen.
Hanlon leaned across the table and grabbed the rifle by the tip of its barrel and pulled it towards her, but now her own eyes were streaming uncontrollably. Still, she had the gun now. Triumph and relief flooded her.
Then she thought, Huss?
57
Bent over, coughing and wheezing, barely able to see, Schneider ran into the hall and kept going.
Still in the kitchen, Hanlon was not in much better shape than the three others. She couldn’t believe how much the stuff hurt. She had the rifle, she felt along it until she located the safety and checked it was off. The gun felt heavy and reassuring, but she doubted she could hit anything except a wall. Her eyes were on fire. Coughing and crying, bent double, tears streaming from her eyes, she staggered into the hall after Schneider.
Practically blind, Schneider tripped over Kellner’s medical bag that he had left in the hall. As he stood up after his stumble, Hanlon was on him. She dropped the rifle. She wanted him in her hands, she wanted to tear him limb from limb. All rational thought had disappeared in a wave of bloodlust.
She slammed a straight right into his face and as he fell back from the force of the punch, hit him with a flawless left hook. Schneider staggered back in the direction of the steep stairs leading down to the treatment room and Hanlon pushed him hard so he fell backwards step after step after step in a whirl of arms and legs.
Now Hanlon grabbed the .22 and ran down after Schneider. He moved backwards into the treatment room. He cowered away from her as Hanlon stared at Huss, like a body on a morgue table, covered in a blood-sodden sheet, her eyes open.