The year before she had been part of a team that had tracked down and arrested a guy who’d stabbed another man eight times in a Brixton nightclub. It had been a frenzied attack. When Hanlon had interviewed him, he’d shrugged and told her that the guy had looked at him ‘in a funny way’. And the terrible thing was, deep down, Hanlon knew exactly how he had felt. She was no stranger to uncontrollable rage.
Hanlon was worried about what she might do. She could picture the scene now, another sneer from the blonde girl, an insult from her. She had a horrible feeling that if an argument developed between her and the girl it would rapidly escalate, and not in a good way. An uppercut to the girl’s midriff, short left hook to her head. No, no, no, she thought. No. She was in enough trouble as it was without being arrested for assault in Scotland. ‘Just avoid crime…’ That had been Dr Morgan’s advice.
She certainly didn’t want to commit one.
She retreated into one of the three cubicles, locked the door behind her and sat down on the seat.
‘Let it pass…’ That’s what Dr Morgan would suggest.
Drunken laughter from the other side of the door, then the smell of weed. Hanlon hated the sickly, compost stink of grass at the best of times; she sat in the cubicle, fuming, her temper rising, trapped by her dislike of others and the mistrust of herself.
She ground her teeth listening to the joint-smoking trio, their words punctuated by loud sniffs as they did lines, and shrieks of laughter. Her temper rose. God, they were annoying on so many levels: the arrogance, the in-your-face drug-taking, the noise. The smell of the cannabis. ‘Is it because they are young with their lives ahead of them? In contrast with you?’ Shut up, Dr Morgan, Hanlon thought angrily. You’re not here to counsel me, you’re in millionaires’ row in Hampstead with your collectible 1930s Weimar German ceramics. You smug woman.
The conversation was weirdly polyglot; the girls were speaking German with other languages thrown in. Maybe Polish or Czech, with occasional snatches of English, which she guessed was a language they all knew a bit of. She assumed they were from different countries.
‘Ist der Koks gut?’ Is the coke good? translated Hanlon from behind the door.
‘Koks? Was ist?’
‘Koks… Cocaine… coke.’
‘Oh, ja, super-toll…’ more loud laughter ‘… ausgezeichnet, hier… du probierst.’
‘Was?’ She means it’s very good, thought Hanlon. Are you thick or what?
‘Super good… you try.’
‘Oh, ja… JA! Das ist von Kai, ja.’
In the toilet stall, listening to the conversation floating over the door like the smoke from the weed, she remembered Big Jim’s cigarette in the restaurant. The Mackinnon Arms was not overly keen on smoke alarms. Hanlon’s ears pricked up as she eavesdropped on the conversation. Kai, if you need anything, just see me. Von Kai must mean ‘from Kai’. They had bought the coke from the barman; that was what he had been offering her, not sex. Do I look like a cokehead? she thought, annoyed. It was harder to know what was worse: being mistaken for a sex-starved forty-year-old or a drug addict.
On the other side of the door the drug-fuelled conversation continued.
‘Mmm, hmm. Ich werde fuck him, sex für coke.’ Sex for coke, she thought.
‘Er hat eine Girlfriend… in der Ecke.’
‘Oh, ja…’ sarcastic emphasis on the ‘ja’ ‘… das Buttenschleck.’
Buttenschleck? she wondered. Judging by the reply, she wasn’t the only one.
‘Was?’
‘The old lesbian in the corner…’
That means me, thought Hanlon, incredulous. The old lesbian. They’re talking about me! Her fingers automatically curled into fists.
Her mind went back to Dr Morgan.
‘There’s a technical term, Hanlon. In layman’s terms it’s called pushing the fuck-it button. That’s when addicts give in to their chosen addiction big-time. They know it’s going to have terrible consequences, but they’ve ceased to care. They almost seem to relish it.’
You were right, Dr Morgan, thought Hanlon, standing up. Not that you ever doubted it. Fuck it! she thought to herself. Whatever a Buttenschleck is, it’s coming to get you! All thoughts of restraint evaporated. Fuck you, IOPC! Fuck you, career! Fuck you, world!
Old lesbian. In a fucking corner!
CRASH!
The door to the cubicle smashed against the wall and the three girls turned in unison, jumping out of their skin as an enraged Hanlon emerged to confront them.
Her eyes took in the expected scenario. There was a zip-up bag with white powder inside on the counter by the sink. The joint that she had smelled was being held by the brunette with her hair in plaits. Next to the coke was a small hand-mirror, a curled-up ten-pound note and a credit card that they had obviously been using to chop and line the white powder up with.
Hanlon took a stride forward, grabbed the plastic bag and put it in her pocket. There was a shocked silence but everyone froze, too frightened of Hanlon to do or say anything. Then Nose-stud shouted something in German; the other two girls, seeing the furious look in Hanlon’s eyes and the purposeful body language, drew back. They were having no part of it.
Nose-stud wanted her coke back. She grabbed Hanlon’s arm. Hanlon shook her off. She swore at her in German and threw an amateur punch at Hanlon’s head. Hanlon jerked her head to one side, avoiding the blow easily. She could have straightened up and driven a left hook into Nose-stud’s ribs. Then a straight right or an upper-cut to finish her off.
She didn’t.
Look at my restraint, Doctor! SATISFIED?
She just
