The following morning, after the rush hour had died down, Hanlon got off the Underground train at Lambeth North. She left the Tube station and looked around her, orienting herself with the twin landmarks of the Shard and the London Eye. It was nine thirty a.m.
Her arm was in a sling, the wrist heavily strapped up, and the traces of her black eye gently disfigured one side of her face. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a shop window and smiled grimly.
Lambeth seemed very light and open in the morning sun. If the colour scheme of Euston and Bloomsbury was dark and forbidding, then this part of London seemed light grey, palely reflecting the clouds above. The sky seemed huge. The roads were wider than she was used to; the traffic was light. It was surprisingly nice.
She remembered a music-hall song she knew about the place and it ran briefly through her head.
Any time you’re Lambeth way
Any evening any day
You’ll find us all, doin’ the Lambeth walk.
Its jaunty air, as dated as a boater hat and Max Miller, was at odds with her angry mood.
She remembered that the Imperial War Museum was near here. Perhaps fittingly, it had been a mental hospital in a previous incarnation. The Mutiny on the Bounty’s Captain Bligh’s house was opposite. Hanlon was pleased to remember these disparate facts, even though South London was a bit of a mystery to her, a North Londoner.
She checked Whiteside’s parents’ names and address on her phone – Anna and Peter Whiteside. She crossed a couple of roads until she was in the right street. It was quiet and a long, low block of flats ran down one side of it. A blue plaque stated that William Blake, Poet and Visionary, had once lived there, or rather in a house on the site of the flats.
She walked round the back of the building and found the door of the ground-floor flat that the Whitesides lived in. In the window was a crucifix and a framed religious text that had been painstakingly embroidered.
I am the Way, the Truth and the Light.
Hanlon’s heart sank. She rang the bell and the door was opened by a short, rather attractive woman of about sixty. She had a similar nose to her son but that was the only resemblance that Hanlon could see. She looked Hanlon up and down.
‘Can I help you?’ ‘I’m DCI Hanlon.’
‘Yes?’ she said enquiringly.
‘I’m here to talk about Mark,’ said Hanlon. ‘I’m a friend of his.’
The woman nodded. ‘You’d better come in then. I’ll put the kettle on.’
Hanlon followed her into the flat. It smelled of polish and stale air. The smell of sanctity.
An hour later Hanlon was drinking another cup of tea, this time with Anna Whiteside’s polar opposite, Iris Campion.
The madam sipped her Scotch, while she waited for her tea to cool, and studied the policewoman opposite. She was wearing a dark jacket and trousers and an expensive-looking cotton flowery shirt. As if mocking the feminine floral design, she had a strapped-up wrist that had been bandaged halfway up her forearm. Her unmarked eye had dark bags underneath it almost as severe as the bruising on the other had been. Her face was set and hard. Hanlon looked dangerous and viciously attractive, thought the madam.
‘Well, you look royally pissed off, dear,’ said Campion cheerily.
‘I am,’ said Hanlon.
The conversation with Whiteside’s parents had been as bad as she could have imagined. Maybe even worse. Whiteside’s father had sat next to his wife on the sofa, a balder, fatter version of his son. Like his son, he was heavily built, old muscle now, but still formidably strong. His sleeves were rolled up and his forearms were covered in fading tattoos. Hanlon guessed he had been a builder when he was younger. Maybe he still was. Something manual anyway. He had the physique that came from years of hard graft, not sculpted gym muscle. His sparse hair was carefully stuck to the top of his head in a comb-over. He was holding his wife’s hand in a visible display of unity.
Their front room was eerily reminiscent of Campion’s. There were occasional tables with hand-embroidered cloths covering them, antimacassars on the backs of chairs, but unlike Campion’s room, everything had a biblical motif. There was a reproduction of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World, a bearded, hippy-looking Jesus, lantern in hand, his head haloed by a distant moon, knocking symbolically on a closed, weed-choked door, that gave on to this world. Jesus reminded Hanlon of a drugs squad officer she’d once worked with.
‘I can give you five minutes, no longer,’ Whiteside senior said. His tone made it clear that his time was valuable.
‘John preaches down at the market on a Monday,’ Anna said proudly.
‘I am a voice, crying in the wilderness!’ John Whiteside said. ‘Make straight the paths of the Lord!’ Presumably, thought Hanlon, for my benefit.
The following conversation had been utterly pointless. She asked them, in as near as she had ever come in her life to begging, to grant Mark a stay of execution. John Whiteside’s position was clear.
First of all, God’s will was to be done. For whatever reason, He had decided that Mark should be in a coma.
Who was she to question the Lord?
Second, there was Mark Whiteside’s homosexuality. Rather to Hanlon’s surprise, his father raised it himself.
‘We must all answer to the Lord in the fullness of time, DCI Hanlon, and Mark is no exception. Possibly the Lord has gathered Mark to his bosom to save his soul from straying. You know what I’m talking about,’ he said accusingly. You evil fag hag, Hanlon could imagine him thinking. He continued:
‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: It is abomination. As Leviticus says.’
‘Amen,’ said his mother, her eyes downcast.
‘Well,’ said Hanlon. John Whiteside had obviously given the subject some considered thought.
‘If there is a man who lies with a male as a man lieth with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death,’ added John Whiteside sonorously.
‘Leviticus 20,’ said Anna, like a good student.
And that was more or less that. Hanlon could see no point in continuing the farce. Icily polite, she thanked them for the tea. In the hall was a large wooden crate filled with leaflets of a religious nature and an A-board; REPENT! it said.
Anna, who was showing Hanlon out, said proudly, ‘My husband carries them down to the market to stand on when he testifies. He’s ever so strong.’ Her voice caught on the word strong, and her eyes flooded with tears. ‘Just like . . . You’d better go,’ she said suddenly, too proud to break down in front of Hanlon. She held the door open and Hanlon heard it click shut behind her back as she left.
Hanlon jerked herself back to the here and now in Campion’s office. The madam was wearing a great deal of make-up this morning and looked huge, in a sleeveless black dress that emphasized her doughy, muscular arms.
‘Finished thinking, have we, dearie?’ she asked mockingly. ‘You can almost see the wheels turning.’
Hanlon sipped her tea and looked steadily back at Campion.
The latter pointed at Hanlon’s wrist.
‘Did you get the bloke that done that?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Hanlon. Campion nodded, not unsympathetically.
An almost friendly silence descended, then Hanlon spoke. ‘In central Oxford there’s a brothel that will provide S&M
sex and is used by Dr Fuller.’
‘Surely not,’ said Campion with heavy sarcasm. ‘Not in Oxford, not in the city of dreaming spires.’
Hanlon carried on. ‘Despite considerable pressure, even though he’s facing a possible murder trial, Dr Fuller has declined to name this place. So, I’m looking for a brothel with truly frightening management. Does any of this ring any bells?’
Campion reached behind her and took out another bottle of Macallan. She poured herself a generous measure. ‘The sun is over the yard-arm,’ she said. She squinted at the cuckoo clock on the wall. ‘Somewhere in the world anyway. I don’t know anything about Oxford. I can’t help you.’
Hanlon could smell the Scotch from where she sat.
‘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.’