‘Put your arm round me and keep walking,’ said Huss quietly to Enver. He did as he was told.
He wondered what on earth she was doing, but Huss was the kind of woman who inspired confidence. It was a long time since he’d been so close to a woman. Her springy hair smelled of some light floral shampoo as she pulled his head close to her, her powerful fingers twined in his thick dark hair. She could feel his breath on her cheek and the roughness of his thick, drooping moustache.
Huss had arrested Sam Curtis twice in her career and interviewed, or sat in on interviews with him, on three other occasions. All of these had involved crimes of violence, or intimidation of one form or another. She knew him as a thoroughly nasty little thug. To find him here was a genuinely unpleasant surprise. Curtis also knew her face well, or he should have done. He’d spat in it once when she’d nicked him.
That had been the time when Curtis had been employed by the Russians to trash Paul Molloy’s pub. It was a commission Curtis had carried out with exemplary zeal. Nobody had testi- fied against him, and he’d walked.
She had no doubt he would have recognized her immediately. They rounded the corner, out of Curtis’s sight, and Huss let go of Enver, who almost sprang away from her. She was very disappointed by the alacrity with which Enver had let her go. Ed Worth would have clung on for dear life, his hands desperately trying to cover as much ground as possible. Of that she was quietly confident.
Quickly she told Enver who had been sitting in the car and why she had averted her face. There could only be one reason Curtis was there and that was Hanlon. Why else would he be in central Bow?
Occam’s razor again, thought Enver. Why would an Oxford villain be in a car at the end of Hanlon’s road? To wait for her, presumably.
There was one street for Hanlon’s address: one road, two entrances to the road. Curtis at one end.
‘Come on,’ said Enver, turning into the street parallel to the one with Hanlon’s address. ‘Let’s see if Mr Curtis has got a colleague.’
Huss smiled up at him. She did quite a bit of shooting in her spare time and she enjoyed stalking. Enver might have slipped out of her sights; time to find a different prey.