She looked around her. The blanket had come off the judge’s head as he had struggled to free himself and he looked at her, wide-eyed with terror. Hanlon pulled the ski mask off her face and shook her hair free. Yes, Lord Justice Reece, this is what I look like, look at me, look at my face. Her eyes blazed with bloodlust. I don’t need to hide behind a mask, she thought. She strode to the door and closed it, stepping over Robbo’s body as she did so with as little thought as if he had been a rug. She walked back to the bed and checked on the boy who still lay there on the floor, unconscious.
She went to the table where the boy’s insulin was. She was well aware how dangerous it could be. Hanlon knew that insulin in a healthy person would lead to coma and death. Years ago, she had been a constable on a murder investigation where this had happened, a husband and wife thing, not too dissimilar to the death of Sunny Von Bülow, very possibly inspired by it. Insulin had recently led to several hospital deaths in the north of England when saline drips had been deliberately contaminated with it. She picked up the boy’s syringe and looked closely at it to see how it worked. It was simple enough. She twisted it experimentally and it clicked as a number of units were dialled. She decided that twenty would probably do. She’d make it fifty to be on the safe side. She turned the injection pen and saw it would allow her to go up to thirty-three. Well, if that was the maximum dose for a type-one diabetic, it would surely be more than enough for a healthy adult.
She thought of the boy’s mother, she thought of Whiteside, she looked at the tranquil face of the boy himself. She thought of the charred body of the Somali girl and the drowned corpse of Baby Ali and his dead family. She looked at the judge, then at the syringe. An expression of terrible fear spread over his face as he guessed what she was intending to do. He caught her eyes and silently shook his head, pleading with her not to do it. Hanlon’s face was expressionless, her eyes cold, hard and distant.
She saw Whiteside clearly in her mind’s eye. It was an image, a memory from the past, a couple of years ago. It was before he’d grown his beard. They’d arrested a pompous financier for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and Hanlon had rough-housed him a little, slammed him against a wall, if she remembered correctly. He’d said, who do you think you are? He had been more outraged than hurt. Whiteside had answered for her, she’s the face of postmodern feminist policing, sir, get used to it. She smiled at the memory. Now Mark was lying in a hospital bed, his head shattered, his body damaged beyond repair, all to protect Conquest and his wealthy customers. Whiteside would never make her smile again. The judge saw her face soften and for a second hope blazed in his heart. Then he looked at her expression as she turned her head back to him. It was the face of a beautiful Medusa. It was then that all hope died for Lord Justice Reece.
Hanlon sat on the bed next to him. Tears were streaming from his eyes now; he could see no mercy in her face. No humanity at all. Hanlon moved the blanket aside. She looked with dispassionate distaste at his body, his thin limbs, his pot belly, deciding where to put the syringe. He felt the prick of the needle as Hanlon injected him in his groin, near the base of his penis. It seemed to her appropriate. She was sick of the powerful and the connected evading justice. She could even envisage a scenario where the judge would be allowed to walk because it was deemed politically expedient, his arrest considered detrimental to the public good. His trial might undermine faith in the incorruptibility of justice. She covered him up with the blanket, ignoring the mute appeal in his eyes, and wiped the syringe clean where her fingers had touched it, removing her prints with a medicated tissue from a box on the table. Then she crouched over the corpse of Robbo, putting the syringe in his right hand and closing his fingers around it tightly, before holding it with another tissue as she placed it back on the table where she had found it. She glanced at it dispassionately. When SOCO arrived to investigate what had happened, let Robbo take the blame for the judge’s death.
She went back to where Peter lay on the floor and manoeuvred him underneath the bed. Hiding him was the only thing she could think of doing with him. She looked around the room one last time and took her phone out of her bag to check it. No signal. There was no landline in the room either. She guessed that Conquest had never bothered to have one installed. Somewhere in the house would be a satellite phone like those used on boats and ships, but she had more pressing problems. Two down, two to go.
Time for Conquest.
37
It was as Hanlon had guessed. There was a satellite phone in Conquest’s study. It was a new Inmarsat and it rested on a docking station behind his desk. He had toyed with the idea of getting a landline installed, the expense was no deterrent, but what he didn’t want was outside intrusion on his privacy. Conquest believed you could not be too careful. The satphone was fine. It rang now. He picked it up and listened carefully. Clarissa watched as, still holding the phone, he went to the gun cupboard in his study, opened it, and took out a.22 rifle and a box of shells. The Makarov pistol was at the bottom of the North Sea about two miles from the island. He had two shotguns in the cabinet as well as the rifle, but he had no intention of blowing holes in his house or painting walls and ceiling with Hanlon’s blood and tissue. If he did have to shoot her, he’d keep it neat. Conquest doubted it would come to that. He had every faith in his abilities.
‘Sure, Jim. Understood. No, we don’t need help. I’ll handle this myself,’ he said with finality and put the phone down. He slid the bolt of the rifle back and put a bullet in the chamber of the gun. He gently pushed the bolt back into position.
‘Hanlon’s on the island,’ he said to Clarissa. He threw over the remote to her and she nodded, using it to switch on the TV and access the channels that were connected to the CCTV cameras in the house and garden. There was a full bank of monitors down in the basement where Robbo had an office adjacent to his bedroom, next to the cell that Peter had occupied. On Conquest’s TV, in his study, you had to view the camera shots individually. Clarissa quickly ran through the options in the house with rapid clicks on the remote. A series of images filled the high-resolution TV screen, one after the other.
The cell. Empty apart from the dog.
Robbo’s office, empty.
The hall downstairs, then the landing upstairs, empty.
The Bridal Suite. Here was Robbo, face down on the floor, his head haloed in a rusty red stain. The judge, spread-eagled naked on the bed, gagged and bound, his eyes closed. His chest moved, he was obviously still alive, and sitting on the bed, tying her training shoes, Hanlon.
Conquest studied the picture and frowned, deciding on his options. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
Clarissa nodded. She watched him through the half-open door of his study as he gracefully, silently, ran up the stairs, rifle in hand. She moved closer to the door and now she could see two images, one on TV of a two-dimensional Hanlon tying a final double knot in her shoe and standing up from the bed, and one in real life of a three-dimensional Conquest taking a position by the door. He clicked the safety on the rifle and held it above his shoulder by the barrel, like a club, or like a baseball player waiting for the ball.