Alex Howard - Time to Die

Hanlon had run ten miles that morning, really pushing her body to extremes, relishing the pain and the tiredness, feeling it cleanse her spiritually. As she ran through the London streets and parks, she thought about the events of the day before. In Hanlon’s mind it was a question of personalities as much as of events and as her legs rhythmically moved and her feet bounded along the streets of London, traffic very quiet on the Sunday morning, she thought of them like a deck of cards, fanned out in her mind’s eye. Hanlon had a very visual memory. Whiteside, the handsome, bearded Jack of Clubs. The Knave of Hearts, Rabbit Bingham; Corrigan, the King of Diamonds; Ludgate, the Jack of Diamonds; the shadowy Queen of Spades, the woman responsible for abducting Baby Ali, her face veiled from sight, obscured by shadow. I’ll get you, you bitch, thought Hanlon. She was sure it was the same woman who had shot Whiteside. She did not believe he would have invited a man he didn’t know into his flat. There was another card too, the Joker, face down so she couldn’t see his face, Conquest’s man, or possibly woman, hiding their true colours behind a Met uniform, one of her colleagues. And behind them all, the Dealer, Conquest himself, with his deck of souls, supplier of children. Every step she took hardened her resolve; every beat of her heart strengthened her will. I will triumph, Conquest, and you will lose. It was as simple as that.

After Whiteside’s shooting, she had dismissed any idea of going public with what she suspected. Conquest had an informant in the police force and anything they did, any action they took, would be potentially known to him.

Look at what had happened to the Yilmaz family. Mehmet had said he had new information; a short while later he was dead.

Look at what had happened to Whiteside. Sent to investigate Conquest; now the victim of an attempted murder.

At home she showered, dressed and went into work where she checked on the disappeared boy. She felt sure that it was Conquest. She didn’t believe in coincidences. The Somali girl, Baby Ali, both sexual victims, and now a twelve-year-old boy had disappeared.

She checked on the Whiteside investigation. He was still alive, barely, and they’d induced a coma, hoping that the swelling and bruising to his brain would gradually resolve itself. The bullet lodged in the front of his head had been successfully removed but it had caused a great deal of damage. The effect of that damage remained unclear. The forensics people were checking the bullets recovered from his body to see if they had any matches; the shell casings had been removed by the shooter.

Hanlon sat alone in her office and thought of what she was about to do. She had no proof that would satisfy anyone. Her actions to date were guaranteed to get her suspended from any investigation, if not the police force.

She scratched her head and opened a can of Diet Coke while she thought about the situation again. First, what she knew.

The number eighteen, written on a bunker, on a lock gate, then on a scrap of newspaper, was present at three separate crime scenes. This irrevocably linked the three crimes; it was beyond coincidence.

Whiteside in his phone message to her had said that eighteen stood for Adolf Hitler. Conquest’s dogs were named after Hitler’s animals. It was tenuous, but it was a link between Conquest and the crimes. There was another link too. Conquest was involved with Bingham. That spelled child sex. Two of the crimes were sexual in nature and involved children; the third, Peter Reynolds, was probably sexual in nature.

Whiteside had found information on Conquest that they didn’t have on their own police records. That was almost certain proof of some criminal connection.

The Yilmaz family had been silenced after Mehmet had phoned the police and said he had new information about the woman who had taken Ali.

From these facts Hanlon decided that Conquest lay behind this. He had the temperament, the brains, the organizational ability and the money to carry it out. Hanlon also thought it a safe bet Conquest had someone on the inside. Conquest and Bingham were linked in this somehow. Conquest had at least three other people working for him. There was the woman behind the Baby Ali kidnap and the two men who had taken the Yilmaz family. Then there would be a fourth person, his Metropolitan Police informer. She suspected that Whiteside had obviously trusted whoever had shot him enough to let them into his flat. That’s why she was assuming it was the woman, possibly even Conquest’s contact in the Met. His mobile phone was missing. Hanlon guessed he had recorded the interview on that.

Hanlon drank more Coke and looked out of her window at the uninspiring view of the brick wall. If only she could find out what Whiteside had discovered. The Shapiro Institute would not allow her access; she would have to tell them she had lied to get Whiteside through their door. They were not an official Israeli government agency and would not be pleased that Saul had provided fraudulent documentation to a Met policeman. They would be very angry indeed at this breach in protocol. She had already, in their eyes, compromised their security and they were frantically, justifiably in their view, paranoid. That avenue was closed to her.

She wondered how Conquest could have known that Whiteside had been at the institute. Maybe he’d been followed. Maybe he’d mentioned it to Childs who had told someone else. She didn’t suppose it really mattered how he’d found out. Maybe one day she’d have the opportunity to ask him.

Either way, Conquest had obviously decided that Whiteside, who was, as far as he knew, a bona fide journalist, needed dealing with and he had done just that. He must have got a nasty shock when he discovered he’d been responsible for shooting a Met policeman.

She couldn’t make public her suspicions. Ludgate was leading the Ali murder enquiry and was in overall charge of the SIOs for the Yilmaz and Reynolds disappearances. He was viewed as a safe pair of hands and particularly good at handling the media. Much as she disliked him, she agreed. If she approached him with what she knew, it would be giving him her head on a plate. She doubted she could begin to calculate all the rules she’d broken, bent or infringed. Corrigan would go crazy. She might as well resign.

On the plus side, if she kept quiet, she was free to act as she saw fit. Hanlon’s spirits rose slightly. She’d do it her way. She also had a team, if you counted Enver Demirel. She would be unconstrained by police procedural rules. She wasn’t even all that concerned if what she did prejudiced the outcome of a potential trial. She didn’t want a trial; she wanted justice. Hanlon didn’t really want to leave justice in the hands of a system she didn’t trust, that she thought favoured the guilty over the innocent. At least she could rely on herself. She couldn’t trust anyone apart from Demirel and she wouldn’t even trust him fully. Well, luckily, she didn’t need to tell anyone what she was going to do next. She picked up the phone and made a call.

A while later she replaced the phone on its handset. Rabbit Bingham, she thought. We’ll meet again.

Alastair Fordham, the governor of Wendover Prison, studied himself in the mirror in his office. As usual, not a hair out of place. Fordham was an ex-Marine and it showed. He was also Cambridge educated and no stranger to the media. If there was a news item on prisons on Newsnight or a documentary, the chances were that Fordham would be there, giving the professionals’ point of view. Fordham was held in high regard at the Home Office and strangely in the prison service, or the National Offender Management Service as it’s officially known, as well. The two bodies rarely agreed on anything else.