Dimitri and Sam Curtis, a young Oxford thug who worked for the two Russians, got out of the white van that Curtis had stolen from Coventry the previous day. It was a five-year-old Ford Transit, now fitted with false plates. Dimitri liked white vans, their anonymous ubiquity. Arkady had wanted no connections to be made at all between Oxford and the dead policewoman. He’d also been very specific on how he wanted her killed.
Dimitri had wanted to take his time; he wanted to beat her to death, slowly. Arkady vetoed that. The woman had shown herself to be more than resourceful. Besides, who knew who else might be in the house, or indeed what else. For all they knew she might have a Rottweiler or some such animal, a Doberman, for example. The point was to do the job simply, effectively, cleanly, without anything going wrong.
Arkady had several handguns at the Woodstock Road property, two SR1 Gyurza 9 mm pistols and a Makarov. He also had his favourite piece, a Baikal. This was a small, snub- nose handgun and it had enough power to pierce a bulletproof jacket. They were old friends, old military service issue. He’d served his year of compulsory military service in Chechnya. It was the end of the nineties. Arkady wasn’t partying like it was 1999; he was in Putin’s second Chechen war. He’d learned how to kill, not just Chechens either.
Dedovschina, forcible male prostitution and rape, is com- monplace for military conscripts, but Arkady was already a tough survivor of Russian state institutions. People had tried it on with him before and he’d killed the first soldier who’d tried to take him. There was no trouble after that. This soldier was what they called a ‘Grandad’, a conscript whose time was up and who’d soon be going home. Perpetually drunk and not caring about how they behaved now they could see the dazzling light of freedom after a year or two of terrible food, lice, stolen pay, perpetual danger and squalor, the ‘Grandads’ were the most feared group in the army, after the officers, of course. They could do what they wanted. In Arkady’s unit punishment beatings were common, sometimes for no reason at all other than just for the hell of it. If Arkady had killed an officer, he’d never have survived.
He’d dumped the dead ‘Grandad’ at Konservny, the mass open grave on the edges of Grozny, the state capital. No one cared. In fact, Arkady’s CO promoted him, impressed with his abilities. He was transferred to an ‘Elimination Group’. They were given a list of targets and a Polaroid camera to photograph the corpse. Then either a trip back to Konservny if they were minded to return the body or, if not, ‘pulverization’ as they called it. This involved strapping the body to a high-explosive artillery shell. Absolutely nothing was left.
It was that experience that taught him Chechen. And it was the attempted rape that had spurred him on to rescue Dimitri a couple of years later in the prison cell.
He didn’t want to use the Russian handguns. He didn’t want to leave any clues as to their ethnicity. From what Joad had told them of Hanlon, there would be quite a list of people wishing her harm. So, he thought, let’s not narrow the field down. Let the Met look for home-grown killers not Russians.
The previous night he’d hacksawed off the barrels of the twelve bore, the one she’d hit Dimitri with, and given him the sawn-off. One barrel for Hanlon’s body, one for the head. After that there’d be very little left of her that would be recognizable as human, apart from arms and legs. There was also very little room for error.
Dimitri and Sam Curtis had been here now, outside the end-of-terrace house in Bow, parked diagonally opposite, since twelve. Curtis stared in surreptitious fascination at Dimitri’s intricate tattoos on his massive forearms. He wished he had some like that. They made his own look stupid.
‘What does that one mean again?’
Dimitri looked at him and said, ‘It means, I live in sin, I die laughing.’
Sam asked, ‘Where did you have it done?’
The giant Russian said, ‘In Labour Colony Number 40, in Perm.’ He pointed at some characters on Curtis’s arm. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s Chinese. It says, Death or honour,’ said Curtis. Dimitri suppressed a smile. ‘Where did you have it done?’ ‘Woody’s Parlour in the Iffley Road,’ said Curtis. Not exactly
‘The Crosses’ prison in St Petersburg, thought Dimitri con- temptuously. He turned his attention back to the house. Nobody had entered or left the house, apart from an old woman, who Dimitri guessed to be in her seventies. Maybe it was Hanlon’s mother.
Dimitri found himself getting increasingly suspicious of this address, this house. It did not seem the kind of place a woman like Hanlon would live. The net curtains, the tiny regimented flowerbed, the cheap statue of a robin in the neat, postage- stamp-sized front garden, it just wasn’t her.
He had texted Arkady to confirm the address; maybe it was a postcode error. It wasn’t. He suddenly realized that it was probably a poste restante, a delivery address and noth- ing more. A cut-off point between Hanlon and the outside world.
He had an A4 padded envelope with Hanlon’s name and address on. He checked that the sawn-off was loaded and clicked the safety off. He had a deep, diagonal inside pocket, sewn into his tracksuit top, which would contain most of the gun. The excess part of the butt was hidden by the folds of material of the jacket. He doubted that she was in the house, but he would look stupid if she opened the door to him and he wasn’t armed.
‘Hi, remember me!’
‘Wait here,’ he said to Curtis. He got out of the van and stretched painfully. He’d been cooped up in that Ford for hours. They’d been sitting in the back where they couldn’t be seen, a mirror propped on the front seat reflecting the image of Hanlon’s front door. Or to be more precise, a front door.
He crossed the road and opened the gate, rang the doorbell.
He could hear the sound resonating inside.
The door had a stained-glass panel, depicting art nouveau- style tulips. Their red heads drooped mournfully. He could make out a figure approaching slowly. Not Hanlon, the old lady. He reached inside the tracksuit jacket and slipped the safety back on.
The door opened, a pair of shrewd eyes assessed him, tak- ing in his huge, pumped bulk, his intimidating features. The enormous biceps distorted the sleeves of his jacket.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I have package for DCI Hanlon.’
She looked at him dubiously. For a nano-second, he toyed with the idea of simply disposing of her. One blow, that’s all it would take. One blow. His fist would shatter her face, she’d go down, and then a stamp with his foot on her throat or neck, it’d be over. Her bones would break like dry twigs. It was very easy to kill old people, he knew from experience. Then he could just wait for Hanlon to arrive in comfort.
But Arkady hadn’t sanctioned it.
‘Do you want me to sign for it?’ asked the old woman. ‘No, is valuable. I must have DCI Hanlon’s signature. When is she back?’
He could see the old woman didn’t believe a word he was saying.
‘Oh, I don’t know, dear, she comes and goes. Do you have a card, I’ll tell her you called, Mr . . .?’
‘Is not important. My boss will call her, thanks for your help.’ ‘What delivery company are you, dear?’
He smiled meaninglessly at her. ‘I am sorry.’ He grimaced. ‘My English not too good. I come back.’
He turned and retreated down the path.
Well, he realized he was beaten for now, but he knew that he had guessed correctly. The place was a poste restante and the old woman would almost certainly tell Hanlon someone suspicious had been asking after her. She’d probably be calling Hanlon in the next few minutes.
Hanlon would want a description. Eastern European, huge. She’d know it was him and she’d want to come over and check things out. She wouldn’t be deterred by the thought he might be waiting.
He doubted she would be making anything official. Her actions in Woodstock were proof enough that she was working alone; she would want to keep it that way. When she turned up – and she would come, he had no doubt of that – it would be by herself.
He heard the door close behind him and he got back into the van, started the engine and moved away quickly. He knew that the woman would immediately go upstairs to check the street. The road was quiet, with two entrances at either end where Hanlon might appear. At least he knew the make of her car and he would certainly never forget what she looked like.
At the end of the street he parked and said to Curtis, ‘Go to nearest car-hire place and come back with something small. Park other end of street.’ He jotted down the number and the make of her Audi. ‘This is her car. You see it, you call me.’ He scrolled through the image gallery on his phone and sent her image to Curtis’s.
‘This is photo of Hanlon. You see her, you call me. Every thirty minutes, you text me.’
‘Sure, boss,’ said Curtis. He was eager to ingratiate himself with the huge Russian. Dimitri and Arkady were like gods to him. It was an enormous promotion to have got a job with Belanov’s firm and he wanted to prove himself worthy of the honour.
As he left the van, he wondered again who had damaged Dimitri’s face. He must have some balls, he thought. He must be built like a brick shit-house. It was probably some other branch of the Russian mafia that had done it, he decided. Who else would dare?
Curtis turned his attention to the job in hand. This new task would give him the chance to show how good he was. Already he was planning on Googling car-rental places in Bow; he had a fake driving licence that was registered at Swansea.
Today was his chance to shine. He fully intended to make the most of it.