Alex Howard - Time to Die

He walked up some steep, shabby wooden stairs. The walls were a dark green and every so often, every few steps, there were old, framed posters for fights featuring long-forgotten names of boxers from the past. The smell of the gym — old sweat, damp, disinfectant — grew stronger; he would be able to guess where he was blindfolded. Enver opened a door at the top to a rudimentary reception area. No Nespresso machine here. Just a kettle. A lime-scaled kettle.

There was a man of about fifty behind the desk, short and wiry, with a nose that had seen better days. The computer monitor in front of him was old-fashioned and massive and beige. He looked up, his eyes hard and suspicious. ‘We’re closed. Opening hours are listed on the door.’ His tone was unfriendly.

‘I’m not here to join,’ said Enver. His own tone was flat and matter-of-fact. His eyes wore their usual sleepy look but the other man recognized a kindred spirit in them. He sat up in his chair to better pay attention. He saw a thirty-year-old man with a gut but he also took in Enver’s powerful musculature, the slightly marked face and the attitude. Enver was impressively menacing.

‘How can I help you then?’ the manager asked. Momentarily he wondered if he was going to be made an offer he’d be foolish to refuse. Enver did have more than a hint of gangland enforcer about him. He could be quietly threatening when he wanted to be. Boxers intimidate.

Enver produced his warrant card and showed it to him. The man behind the desk looked at the ID, singularly unimpressed, and asked, ‘What do you want then, Sergeant?’

‘DI Hanlon.’

The man looked up at him, this time actively hostile, eyes narrowed. He leaned forward slightly in an aggressive way.

Enver returned his stare with his own heavy-lidded, sleepy look. Come on then, come on! was the message his own look sent out. Enver felt his pulse rate increase and he welcomed it. The brutal truth was that Enver would have been delighted if the manager started a fight. It had been a long, frustrating, highly depressing day, if not week. Not only that, it was complicated. The whole situation was complicated. A simple, satisfyingly violent fistfight would suit him nicely. It wouldn’t be the manager he was hitting, it would be everything that was getting him down. The case, Ludgate, the Whiteside shooting, maybe life in general. Enver would feel a lot better if he beat someone up.

‘What if I told you she wasn’t here?’ said the manager. He relaxed back in his chair. It was a submissive gesture; he was backing down.

Enver sighed. Corrigan had said that every Saturday from six to eight she was here, provided she wasn’t working. And Enver knew that after a piece of really grim news, the Whiteside incident, she’d want to be here, working out her anger, working out her pain. Where else would she go? A support group? Friends? Of course she’d be here.

Then the man looked again at the warrant card that Enver was still holding and said, with dawning recognition, ‘Demirel, eh? Did you used to box?’ Enver nodded. ‘Were you Iron Hand Demirel?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

The gym manager grinned, stood up and proffered his hand. ‘Freddie Laidlaw.’ Enver took his hand and shook it. ‘I saw you fight at the Vauxhall Recreation Club in Luton. I won a monkey betting on you.’ His attitude had changed completely. ‘You were a big hitter, bit slow on your feet, if I recall right.’

Enver remembered the fight. It was a northern boxer from Blackpool, Jason Clitheroe, that he’d fought then. He’d stopped him in the fourth. He shook Laidlaw’s hand. Laidlaw had become a lot friendlier now he knew that Enver was an ex-boxer. Or maybe it was because he’d won five hundred pounds on him.

‘Sorry I was a bit unfriendly,’ he apologized. ‘The DI likes to come here when we’re closed. Some of the members have got form, are a bit tasty, if you see what I mean. I used to think she’d seen enough criminals at work and that’s why she wanted to avoid them, but to be honest, I think she just prefers being alone. I can’t imagine any of them would worry her. They’d leave well alone. Do you want to speak to her?’

Enver shook his head. He decided to tell Laidlaw the truth, or at least a version of it. He seemed a decent man. ‘I’m supposed to babysit her,’ he said. ‘Follow her around, protect her back.’

Laidlaw was looking at him doubtfully. ‘You’re supposed to protect her? Are you sure?’ He placed a very heavy emphasis on the last two words.

Enver was stung by the obvious implication he wasn’t up to it. ‘Yes. Yes, I am sure,’ he said. ‘DI Hanlon has quite a few enemies at the moment.’ He didn’t bother adding that they were mainly to be found within the police.

‘Oh well, follow me, I’ll take you to her.’ Laidlaw didn’t sound as though he believed Enver was up to it.

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Enver. ‘It’s supposed to be without her knowledge.’ Laidlaw frowned. He was obviously puzzled.

‘I guess it’s because she’d refuse protection if she was offered it,’ Enver explained. He didn’t like lying but this contained more than a grain of truth. Anyway, thought Enver, it was probably true. Hanlon, from what he knew of her, would not accept protection even if she needed it.

Corrigan had told him to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid, by which Enver assumed he meant maim or kill someone in retaliation for Whiteside. He’d told him to stick close to Hanlon, intervene if necessary.

‘OK,’ said Laidlaw decisively. ‘Come with me and we’ll see how she’s doing. I know her routine.’ He motioned Enver round to a door behind the desk that he opened. More stairs led upwards into darkness. ‘The gym’s got a gallery above it. The lights are out and she won’t see us. Just be quiet and I can work out how much longer she’ll be.’

The two men walked quietly up the wooden stairs, which groaned slightly under their weight. The stairway was unlit save by the light from the reception area filtering upwards. Laidlaw opened a door at the top and, as they went through, gently closed it behind them. They moved silently on to a wooden spectators’ gallery with half a dozen rows of seats. As the manager had said, the gallery was unlit and ran round three sides of the gym hall so they were shrouded in blackness. Below, Enver could make out two boxing rings in darkness. Spotlights on gantries hung above them. Between the two boxing rings a heavy bag was hanging from a chain attached to the ceiling. This was lit by two of the spotlights, a circle of brilliant white light. In front of the heavy bag was Hanlon, wearing dark blue tracksuit trousers, a baggy grey top and heavy gloves.

She was throwing combination punches at the bag, jab, jab, cross, then jab, jab, right hook. Her punching was fluid, graceful and very fast, particularly her left jab. Enver thought if he were fighting her, he’d be very wary about being caught with that. As she punched, her head swayed, almost mongoose-like, so as not to present a static target. The two former professionals watched admiringly, Laidlaw with more than a hint of proprietorial pride. Hanlon moved beautifully. Enver guessed he’d coached her. Moving like that she’d be very hard to hit. He noted too the way Hanlon’s chin, the most vulnerable point on a fighter’s face, was kept tucked in, just like it should be. The bag below thudded with the impact of her punches and he could hear her forceful breathing and the occasional squeak of her trainers on the polished wooden floor. The blows, the bag, her breaths were the only real sounds.

‘She’s bloody good,’ whispered Enver.

Hanlon’s punches were hard, vicious and fast. Even from up here, at this distance, you could sense their power, not only by the movement of the heavy bag, but the percussive noise her gloves made on its surface. Laidlaw nodded, then put a finger to his lips.