Cold Revenge (2015) (21 page)

‘I was talking to Dave Anderson the other day,’ she said. Campion’s back stiffened and she looked at Hanlon with new respect.

‘You do get around, duckie,’ she said neutrally.

‘I met his father too. He told me to send his regards.’ The two women looked steadily at each other, both powerful, both intimidating.

‘Malcolm Anderson,’ said Campion wonderingly. ‘I’d heard he was dying.’

‘He is,’ said Hanlon simply.

‘I didn’t want to go and see him,’ said Campion quietly. ‘I want to think of Big Mal as he used to be. In his car coat, you won’t remember those, you’re too young. He was very good-looking. Does he still have those sideburns?’

Hanlon shook her head, ‘Chemo,’ she said.

‘Poor fucker,’ said Campion, sighing deeply. ‘Mind you, a lot of people would be glad to see him burn in hell.’

‘Like Maltese Alex?’ asked Hanlon innocently.

Campion looked suddenly very angry. ‘Don’t you push your luck, Hanlon.’

‘He asked after you.’

Campion sat up very straight and stared in a hostile way at Hanlon. ‘And just why, exactly, did my name come up, DCI Hanlon?’

Hanlon ignored the question. ‘He mentioned someone called Razor Lewis.’ Campion blinked and her hand involuntarily went to the scars that ran down her face.

‘Mind yer own fucking business, Hanlon.’

‘He said that you should help me,’ Hanlon carried on, undaunted.

‘Malcolm Anderson said that?’

‘Yes.’

Campion sipped her malt whisky and looked at Hanlon with narrowed eyes. Perfectly relaxed and unmoving, Hanlon levelly returned her gaze. The policewoman had that rare gift of almost complete immobility that animals have, and humans rarely do. Hanlon’s eye had virtually healed but Campion remembered the heavy bruising to her body and now the strapped wrist. Her cold grey eyes were fixed expressionlessly on Campion. Somehow she seemed to have the Andersons, God forbid, on her side. Campion wondered how on earth she’d managed that. The boy, as she still thought of Dave Anderson, was psychotic.

Hanlon must be odder than she had at first believed. The flowery blouse under her tailored jacket somehow added to the sinister effect of the policewoman’s presence. Campion knew tough people when she met them, it had been her life. Hanlon was that unusual mix that you hardly ever came across. Violence and high intelligence.

Well, she wasn’t going to cross Dave Anderson, that was for sure.

She picked her phone up from the table and scrolled down, punched a button.

‘Tatiana. Downstairs, now please.’

‘You’ll get what you want,’ Campion said to Hanlon.

‘I know that,’ said Hanlon. Her face was expressionless. ‘I usually do.’

Campion looked at her, her emotions a mix of contempt, sympathy and respect. ‘I’d be careful what you wish for, dearie. It might just come true.’

Gideon Fuller came to on his sofa. His mouth was furred and dry, there were two empty bottles of wine next to the sofa and he guessed there would be more lying around in the kitchen.

His head ached as he pieced together the events of the previous night. Dimly he remembered his conversation with the policeman. So they wanted to talk about Dame Elizabeth, did they? Well they would have to wait a bit. He was now, he guessed, more or less on leave from the university. He could hardly turn up for work as though nothing had happened.

He wandered, yawning, into the kitchen of his flat. There were the other two empty bottles by the sink. He put his coffee maker on. He sat down on a chair while he waited.

The press would be round. He’d better look good for them.

The last philosopher he could think of who’d killed anyone was Althusser, a Frenchman, who had strangled his wife in 1980. Fuller recalled he had got three years in a psychiatric hospital. More to the point, people still knew his name, which was more than could be said about his Marxist theories, which now seemed pointless and very dated.

Foucault, another French philosopher specializing in society’s attitude to madness, was rumoured to have knowingly carried on having unprotected sex while diagnosed with Aids. Murder by proxy, death by virus. Fuller didn’t believe the story, but it certainly hadn’t done Foucault’s reputation any harm.

Maybe being linked to a series of murders would do his own career some good.

Fame at last, he thought bitterly.

After his shower he would call his solicitor. He was sure he would get the police off his back soon enough; they’d got no evidence. They couldn’t have. After that he’d have to think hard about his future. Well, he wasn’t going to buckle, that was for sure. He hadn’t survived childhood to be kicked to death on the shores of adulthood. He’d turned his unhappiness into strength before and he would do it again.

What does not kill me makes me stronger.

He made his coffee, strong, black, and went into his bedroom. On the pillow next to his was a familiar face. He was a lot older now and the paint had faded from his feathers so he was virtually monochrome, a dark greenish-black. His one eye looked lovingly at Fuller, and of course he still had only one wing. Fuller automatically pulled the duvet slightly higher so Vulture was covered. He gently patted him on the head. You could always trust Vulture.

He turned on his computer and checked his emails, then he opened his photo files to the one marked
Gallagher
.

He had built up a file of about fifty images of Animal Play and Pup Play. These were women dressed in dog-style outfits, collar, lead and so on, and an anal plug with a tail. They were engaged in dog-style activities, many of a hard-core sexual nature.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Nietzsche had nailed it again, he thought. That man was a genius.

His personal favourite was the girl on a choke chain being led to a dog bowl. He opened his wardrobe. Half of it was devoted to his S&M gear. He took down a choke chain and tightened it experimentally round his arm. It felt good. He loved choke chains, the feel of the metal links, the pattern they made on the skin, the sensation of total control. He imagined slipping it round Gallagher’s neck and pulling it taut.

He was becoming obsessed by Gallagher.

Now all he had to do was to get into the classroom where he could place a camera in the interactive whiteboard, grab some good head shots of her and Photoshop them on to his image collection. Then he’d have a better idea of how she’d look as he wanted her, tied up, submissive, helpless.

He wondered, as he stripped off to shower, how he was going to do that, but he smiled grimly to himself. He hadn’t got a first from Magdalen and a Ph.D. for being stupid.

Gallagher should feel honoured. As Nietzsche said: He desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction.

He washed his hair carefully with the shampoo that claimed to thicken and volumize. He felt his mood brightening.

The door opened and a tall, slim, Slavic-looking girl with short, brown hair entered. She had enormous blue eyes. She was wearing a towelling dressing gown and she smiled nervously at Hanlon. She probably thinks I’m a client, thought Hanlon sadly. Campion indicated a chair and the girl sat down.

‘Tell this lady about Arkady Belanov,’ said Campion. The girl’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Actually,’ Campion added, ‘show her what Arkady likes to do.’

Tatiana stood up and shrugged off the dressing gown. Underneath she was wearing a Minnie Mouse T-shirt and a pair of girl-boxer shorts. She turned her back on Hanlon and pulled up the material of her underwear. She put a hand on her glutes and lifted. The skin there in the crease below each buttock, which would normally be unseen, was a mass of angry scar tissue, a semi-circular crescent of former agony and perpetual humiliation. Hanlon leaned forward and examined the scarring. It wasn’t from cuts, it was burns, probably from a blowtorch. It was also, in its strategic placing, ingeniously placed to cause pain and discomfort long afterwards. It would have taken forever to heal. No air could really get to it. And for a working girl like Tatiana, the bulk of her clients would never see it. Unless, of course, they wanted to. Unless, of course, it was the kind of thing that excited them. And every time she lay on her back to please them, the friction would have been utterly agonizing.

I think I can have a fair guess as to the character of Arkady, thought Hanlon.

‘Fire-play, it’s called,’ said Campion dispassionately. ‘OK, darling, you can get dressed now.’

‘He likes this,’ Tatiana said. ‘He likes very much.’

‘What else does he like?’ said Hanlon. Tatiana looked confused.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I think,’ said Campion, ‘I think she would very much like to meet him.’

‘Are you crazy woman?’ demanded Tatiana.

‘No,’ said Hanlon evenly.

That’s a matter of opinion, thought Campion. Then she spoke to Tatiana. ‘Tell her where the house is, tell her how to get inside, tell her how to get to meet Arkady.’

Tatiana looked at Hanlon fearfully. ‘If he knows I spoke with you he will kill me. This,’ she indicated her backside, ‘was just for fun.’

‘If you don’t help,’ said Hanlon, ‘I’ll find him anyway and I’ll tell him where he can find you.’ She spoke very quietly. Her face was half in shadow, her black eye partially obscured by some unruly curls of her thick dark hair. One grey eye gleamed menacingly at the Russian girl.

‘Tell her what she wants,’ said Campion warningly.

Tatiana looked at Hanlon with utter disgust. ‘You are not crazy, you are bitch.’

‘I’m waiting,’ said Hanlon. Tatiana sat upright in her chair, as if she were at school, and told Hanlon what she needed to know.

Fuller had managed his morning well. The police interview was farcical. He was getting used to what had once been a novel situation, police interrogation, with surprising ease. Then again, essentially a police interview was not too different from a viva or oral exam, which he’d had to do as part of his Ph.D. The subject matter was different, in this case the murder of Dame Elizabeth Saunders and his innocence thereof, but the principle was the same. He’d always done well in exams; this was no different. He walked it. They had nothing to tie him to Dame Elizabeth’s murder. He knew it and they knew it.

Suck on that, DCI Murray, he thought to himself.

The expected press scrum had failed to materialize. There had been two or three photographers outside the police station, but the magic needed to grab a paper’s imagination seemed to be missing.

Fuller thought wryly how upset Dame Elizabeth would have been. In many ways she had thought extraordinarily highly of herself. And the world she inhabited had reflected the image back to her.

This public indifference to her fate would have been most galling.

It was an official world Dame Elizabeth lived in and so she was forever in London’s heartland. The Houses of Parliament for committee work, the Mansion House, the London Assembly, the RA, Whitehall. It was against London’s finest and most imposing backdrops that Dame Elizabeth flourished. But it was a world that meant little to most people, one of cosy civil service patronage, agreeable long lunches and formal dinners, prestigious but undemanding meetings, albeit in the most spectacular of surroundings. The fact that most people didn’t care about these things and nor would they shed a tear that she would never now take her seat in the House of Lords, or become the head of the BBC Trust, would have upset her greatly.

Fuller looked as if he was from that world, but he wasn’t. He was very much an outsider and was made to feel one. The establishment’s rules were as codified as S&M and its motives every bit as self-gratifying, just as self-satisfying. Just as ridiculous in many ways.

Ironically, it was also a world of which the Home Office bitch Gallagher was part, although she was but an insignificant cog in the machine.

The woman preyed on his mind. There was some quality about Gallagher that attracted Fuller hugely. When he closed his eyes at night, he thought of her face. He felt somehow, no, he knew, that deep down, she was like him. He was certain of it. He hadn’t felt so sure of being with a kindred spirit since he had met Abigail Vickery.

If you’re gay, you’re supposed to have a gay radar. Sado-Masochism is similar. He felt he could tell fellow S&M spirits, and by that he meant people who didn’t simply play at suffering, but people who knew what suffering was. People who didn’t fear hell; people who’d experienced it. Gallagher had, somewhere, somehow, he knew it. She was damaged like he was.

Like calls to like.

Fuller was obsessed with her.

Well, tonight he would find out. Tonight he would tell her everything. It was time to gamble, as if he was in a casino, playing roulette. He would take the pile of chips he had amassed during his life and put them all on one number, then spin the wheel.

He typed the email address he had from the university for her into the address section of the Compose Mail box.

My office 8 p.m. tonight. We need to talk.

He pressed send.

He’d get there for seven. Rig his digital camera up to film them. That way he’d have some record of what happened, even if things didn’t go according to plan. If things did go the way he wanted, he would of course have more tangible souvenirs. He had absolutely no doubt that she would be there.

OK
came the reply.

He nodded. It was all going to work out fine.

Hanlon looked thoughtfully at her phone. Fuller’s was an invitation she couldn’t turn down. It was possible that he might make a clean breast of the killings; it was equally possible that he might attack her. Hanlon felt more than equal to the challenge.

She dismissed Fuller from her mind and looked around the police station office. After the Whitesides and Campion, she had felt the need to see someone she trusted, someone normal, and was now sitting at Enver’s desk, waiting for him to come out of a meeting with Murray.

She took in the details of the crowded office with jealousy. Everyone, naturally, knew each other. There was the typically low-key noise of such a place, quiet conversation, phones ringing, the chatter of printers, laughter. It must have been at least a year since she’d been part of station life and although she’d never been exactly popular, she’d been accepted. It had enabled her to have her cake and eat it. She’d managed to be both solitary and part of the herd.