It was when Fuller first grabbed hold of her that Hanlon decided to headbutt him.
As he reached his hands towards her, seizing the lapels of her jacket, it was a decision that made itself. The cast on her damaged right wrist had effectively immobilized it. She couldn’t use that hand. She knew that if she hit him, not only would the pain be excruciating, but she wouldn’t be able to get enough power behind the punch.
Fuller’s handsome face was covered in a faint sheen of sweat and she could smell the sweet, sickly residue of alcohol on his breath, as he brought his face closer and closer to hers.
They had been standing at the front of the classroom, the plastic chairs for sixteen students laid out in a classic semi-circle, facing the interactive whiteboard that dominated the front of the room. It was mounted on its high-tech metal frame and had a metre-long projector boom jutting out from the top at right angles. It looked a bit like a street lamp welded on to the top of the whiteboard.
Hanlon had known from the moment she received Fuller’s cryptic email, telling her it was urgent they meet up, that it would probably end in trouble, but she couldn’t afford not to. She also felt more than able to rise to whatever threat Fuller posed. Hanlon’s self-confidence was reckless. Enver would have pointed out that only a few hours ago her attitude had got her attacked and locked in a fridge. Hanlon wouldn’t have listened.
If Fuller was the man who had killed Dame Elizabeth, then he had already run away from her once and hadn’t had the guts to tackle her in the kitchen. If he wasn’t the killer, then he was just an ineffectual university lecturer with a sad sex life. But she had to meet him. She had to know. There was too much to risk losing had she refused. She hadn’t, however, been expecting this.
Fuller’s office and the adjoining classroom were on the fourth floor, above what had been Dame Elizabeth’s lecture hall. Memories of the previous night flashed through her mind.
A deserted public building at night is an eerie place. The space, designed for large numbers of people, is unsettling when you are the only one in it. Noises are magnified; shadows proliferate. As she walked down the long, wide, empty corridors, lit by recessed bronze art-deco light fittings in the shape of bas-reliefs, reminiscent of Roman torches, she half expected a masked figure, like she had seen the previous night, to leap out at her.
She was fully prepared for that. It was a possibility she actively welcomed.
Hanlon was wearing a loose jacket and her strapped right hand was inside the diagonal slash of the pocket holding her knife. To bring it out would take under a second. In some ways Hanlon was itching for a violent confrontation. She had held herself in check for the union rep and for Whiteside’s parents; she’d had dreams and hopes created for her only to see them destroyed in front of her; she’d been attacked and imprisoned. It was a sizeable debit column and only a great deal of hurt to a guilty party would wipe it out.
She was tired of self-restraint. She wanted action.
As she approached Fuller’s office, she could see the door open, a light inside. She wondered again about the man. It wasn’t that he was a mass of contradictions; it was as if Fuller was hiding some vital part of his personality, putting on an act. Everyone has a public face and she wondered what the real face of Fuller would look like under the public mask. She found it hard to believe that violence lay under his skin; God knows she’d seen enough of that over the years, it was commonplace to her. Fuller managed to project something more like a terrible despair. There was a little-boy-lost quality about the man that she felt, but couldn’t understand.
Hanlon wasn’t quite sure how she knew this. She had never regarded herself as empathetic, or gifted with the ability to see people’s souls; generally speaking she couldn’t care less, but something about Fuller called to her.
It was undeniable but true. There was something compelling about the man.
Fuller was sitting on the table in front of the whiteboard in chinos, patterned shirt and polished brogues. He was looking very Sunday supplement trendy lecturer. He was Boden man, staring at the floor, lost in thought. He raised his head, to see her framed in the doorway.
‘Do come in,’ he said. He sounded a little strange, his speech slightly strangulated. It was only as Hanlon approached him and smelled the alcohol that she realized Fuller was very drunk. ‘You said you wanted to see?’ she said. The hand in her pocket toyed idly with her knife. She was expecting Fuller to produce the letter that she was sure Dame Elizabeth would have written to her.
‘That’s right.’
She walked up to him, mentally downgrading Fuller’s threat level. He stood up and swayed gently, his eyes unfocused. He didn’t look as if he’d be able to stand unaided, much less attack anyone. That’s where she was wrong.
As she came within reach, moving with surprising speed and grace, almost like a dancer, propelling himself forward, Fuller grabbed hold of her jacket. Using the momentum of attack, he swung her round.
‘Come here,’ said Fuller thickly, his voice low and vibrant. He could smell her hair, feel her surprisingly solid body in his hands. She looked insubstantial, but it was only now that he realized how strong she probably was.
‘I want you,’ he whispered, his mouth against her face.
He pushed her back so she could feel the edges of the teacher’s table in front of the whiteboard against the back of her legs. His face moved closer to hers as he tried to kiss her. The grey eyes under her dark, shapely eyebrows narrowed. She was nearly his, he thought.
It was then that Hanlon struck.
When you headbutt someone, it helps if they’re taller than you, otherwise you run a high risk of a clash of heads. That achieves little. It’s the softer, more vulnerable areas of the face that you want, the nose, the mouth, the cheekbones. Fuller, two inches taller than Hanlon, was an ideal height.
She stepped in towards him and swung her arms upwards, breaking the hold he had on her clothing. Now it was her turn. She seized the lapels on his jacket and pulled him suddenly towards her. For one delirious second Fuller thought she wanted to embrace him. As she did so, she drove her head forward with all the strength in her sleek, powerful neck muscles. Headbutting someone is a real art and she did it perfectly.
Fuller was taken completely by surprise; the speed with which Hanlon’s head descended was awesome. The iron-hard bone of her forehead smashed into the soft tissue of Fuller’s nose. It caught him just on the bridge.
The bone broke with a thud and Fuller instinctively brought both hands up to his ruined face. Just as instinctively, as not everyone who’s headbutted goes down and it’s always best to have a backup plan, Hanlon kicked Fuller as hard as she could between the legs.
The force of the kick was tremendous. To kick someone successfully is quite a difficult thing to do. It’s a clumsy way of going about things and it’s usually easy to avoid, but when it works, it really works. Until the tip of Hanlon’s shoe thudded into his testicles like a sledgehammer, Fuller was totally pre- occupied with his nose. All the strength of Hanlon’s legs – legs that were capable of carrying her over a marathon, a hundred and eighty kilometre cycle race and a three point eight kilometre swim – went into the movement.
Fuller staggered back and collapsed on the floor, one hand cradling his crotch, the other his bleeding nose. His shirt, decorated with small roses, was stained with blood. His whole body was convulsed with agony. Tears poured from his eyes. Hanlon stood looking grimly down at her attacker. She wondered idly whether or not to tell him she was a police officer.
Fuller moaned in pain. Maybe now wasn’t a good time, she thought to herself.
Then she noticed something on the table behind them that made her change her mind about Fuller. There was a dog’s choke chain, more or less identical to the one that had been embedded in the neck and throat of Dame Elizabeth, and a pair of functional-looking chain handcuffs. She picked them up and examined them. They weren’t the fluffy pretend kind used in sex games. They were professional restraints. She recognized the brand; some of her colleagues swore by them.
Were you going to use that on me? she thought. Well, we’ll see, shall we.
Hanlon wrapped her left hand in Fuller’s sweat-stained hair and yanked him to his feet. He was still dazed and compliant. She attached one end of the cuffs to his right wrist, pushed his arm upwards, threw the chain-metal links of the handcuffs over the metal projector boom that jutted out slightly above his head height, and fastened it to the other wrist. Fuller was now standing shackled to the interactive whiteboard. His eyes flickered and opened fully.
While she was doing this, she noticed what would have otherwise been invisible. She would never have had any reason to look so closely at the top of the overhead projector. A small Lumix digital camera had been carefully gaffer-taped to the side of the boom. The duct tape was a metallic grey in colour and was a perfect match for the colour of the boom. The camera was practically invisible.
Hanlon reached into her pocket and took out her knife. Fuller had his eyes open now and was watching her nervously. She clicked the blade open and sawed through the tape. She removed the camera and examined it.
The screen at the back showed it to be set to one-minute time lapses. She scrolled back through the images and there on the small screen at the back of the camera, were the two of them in a succession of reasonable-quality photos. It was like some strange flick book, Fuller standing by the table, Fuller grabbing her jacket, her pushed against the table, her headbutting Fuller, Fuller collapsed, most of him now out of camera shot.
Hanlon walked over to the whiteboard. Fuller was still oddly silent, watching, seemingly resigned to his fate. The projector boom was mounted on a vertical metal track so that it could be raised or lowered. Hanlon clicked its catch off and pushed it upwards a couple of centimetres, forcing Fuller to stand on tiptoe. If he relaxed his stance, the metal links of the handcuffs would bite into his wrist as he hung from them. She clicked the catch back on.
Hanlon lined up the exhibits on the table. The choke chain and the camera. The handcuffs were obviously being modelled by Fuller.
‘Well?’ she said interrogatively.
‘I find you incredibly attractive,’ said Fuller by way of explanation, with what, to Hanlon’s ears, sounded like worrying sincerity.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said incredulously.
‘I’m sorry I alarmed you,’ he said. His nose was running like a tap, the blood rolling down his shirt now that the fabric was saturated, unable to absorb any more.
‘Really? What were you trying to do then?’ she asked. Fuller rolled his eyes. ‘I was trying to make a pass at you,’ he explained. ‘And if you’d responded, favourably, I mean,’ he added hastily, ‘we could have maybe taken it up a gear. That’s why I brought the cuffs and the chain.’
Hanlon picked up the choke chain. ‘So you like choke chains?’
‘Yes,’ said Fuller. ‘Well, it depends.’
‘OK then, so what’s the idea behind the camera?’
‘I wanted some photos of you,’ said Fuller. ‘Please can you lower me down a bit, this is starting to hurt.’
‘Why did you want photos of me?’ continued Hanlon remorselessly.
Fuller sighed. ‘For masturbatory reasons.’ Hanlon stared at him, startled. ‘What!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Fuller, trying to look as dignified as a man could who was chained to a whiteboard, with face and shirt covered in clotting and drying blood. She had to hand it to him, though, it did sound like a remarkably candid answer. ‘Is it so hard to understand?’ he said in an almost irritated way. ‘I wanted to create sexual images of you so I could have a wank.’ Hanlon shook her head in disbelief. I’ve heard everything now, she thought.
‘Obviously,’ said Fuller, with masterful understatement, ‘things have not gone according to plan.’
‘So you weren’t trying to assault me at all,’ said Hanlon. ‘I must have jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘Exactly,’ said Fuller, before adding hurriedly, ‘I can quite see how you made that mistake, though.’
‘Mm hm.’ Hanlon’s voice was low and measured. ‘And if I take this evidence to the police,’ she pointed at the camera, ‘who do you think they’ll believe, Dr Fuller?’
‘I had nothing to do with those killings,’ said Fuller wearily. ‘Someone is trying to frame me.’
‘And you don’t have sex with your students?’
‘Not generally, no. I don’t like people, OK?’ Fuller’s voice was angry. ‘I don’t like them in my life, I don’t like them in my flat, I don’t like them in my bed. I like fucking whores, so I don’t have to socialize.’
Once again Fuller was confusing Hanlon. He was terribly plausible. She began to feel angry with herself. Nearly twenty years’ experience in the police and she hadn’t got a clue if the major suspect was innocent or guilty.
‘You tried to have sex with me, though. I’m one of your students,’ pointed out Hanlon.
He shook his head in exasperation. ‘You’re not listening to me. I said, generally. In fifteen years there’ve been two, you and a girl called Abigail Vickery. She was like me, just like I thought you were.’
‘What, into S&M?’
‘No,’ said Fuller irritably. ‘Fucked up mentally, like I am. Damaged goods.’
Well, Dr Fuller, you certainly know how to romance a girl, thought Hanlon. Tell them you want to wank over them then imply, no, wrong verb, state they were mentally impaired. It was undeniably a novel approach.
Hanlon looked at him thoughtfully, then made her mind up. Tomorrow would tell if Fuller had or had not been involved in the Oxford killing. If he had, or she had any doubt whatsoever of his guilt, she’d take tonight’s evidence to Murray.
She took two evidence bags out of her inside jacket pocket and dropped the chain in one, the camera in another.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Fuller nervously. Hanlon stood up and stretched.
‘I’m going home.’
‘And me?’ Fuller looked understandably agitated as she walked towards the door. His legs did a kind of jig. ‘My calves are on fire. You can’t just leave me here.’
‘Can’t I?’ said Hanlon.
‘What will people think?’ wailed Fuller.
‘They already think you’re a murderer,’ said Hanlon. ‘Perhaps they’ll just think you’re eccentric.’
She switched the light off as she left and closed the classroom door behind her.