Hanlon saw Leo appear from around the corner, the sun glinting on his short blond hair, his vestigial mohican. He had pulled a blue denim Levi’s jacket on over his T-shirt. There was a lot of blue ink on Leo. The blue tattoos that he had over his body, the spider-web on his neck, the letters spelling out love and hate on his knuckles. His name inked indelibly on the centre of his collarbone.
He pulled a remote from his jeans pocket and the car doors clicked unlocked. Leo put it back in his jeans jacket pocket. Hanlon got in the passenger seat and Leo slid behind the wheel.
‘OK?’ he said to Hanlon, giving her one of his high-wattage smiles. His eyes looked even crazier than normal, their colour a faded light blue.
‘Sure.’ Hanlon felt a twinge of unease at being alone again with Leo. He didn’t inspire confidence.
Leo drove through Paisley’s back streets – at least he drove normally, thought Hanlon, even if his behaviour was weird – and then onto a dual carriageway. Hanlon had absolutely no idea where they were going. The road ran through the industrial-looking suburbs of Glasgow. As he pulled off the road she saw a sign marked Govan. He drove slowly along a potholed broad street that led past abandoned warehouses, an old industrial area; she could see the occasional crane and guessed they must be near the Clyde. Where they were driving to had certainly seen better days. He drove past soot-streaked and blackened tenement blocks. They couldn’t have been cleaned in decades. Very few people were around. Shops were shuttered; they passed two burned-out cars, one on some waste ground, one parked by the side of the road. Poverty and abandon lay all about them. Weed-choked waste grounds, sagging wire fences topped with rusting barbed wire. They hardly passed a soul, the occasional pedestrian, people with Staffy terriers on leashes, a liquor store with barred windows. Hanlon felt a prickle of unease. There was a silence in the car that was hardly companionable. She was suddenly very aware that nobody knew where she was or who she was meeting.
Leo turned off the main road into a side street. He stopped outside a block of flats, about three storeys high. One of the flats was abandoned and had boarded-up windows. Leo drove around the side and there was a garage underneath the building with a barred gate accessed by a sloping drive. He put his hand in his jacket pocket, took out the keys, pressed a button on a remote attached to the Merc fob and the door slowly slid open. He drove in and stopped the car.
This isn’t Lee Anne’s address, thought Hanlon. How could he have a remote for her basement garage?
She got out of the car, her face expressionless, a sinking feeling in her stomach. The iron barred door slid closed with a hollow, reverberating clang. No escape that way.
Leo got out of the car.
He smiled meaninglessly at her.
‘What’s going on, Leo?’ she asked, her voice level.
Leo walked around to her side of the car.
‘What’s going on, Leo?’ he said in a high falsetto, parodying her voice. ‘What’s going on, Leo?’
He stared menacingly at her, no fake good humour any more. Just hate, violence and lust.
‘Bitch!’ he said flatly. ‘Fucking police bitch.’
He opened his mouth wide and waggled his tongue at her; the stud embedded in the pink leathery flesh glinted dully in the dim light that filtered through the bars of the door. Oh shit, thought Hanlon.
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, bitch,’ he said, no smile now. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’
‘… things are escalating. You deliberately put yourself in positions of extreme danger…’
Dr Morgan’s voice in her head.
Leo drew his fist back, the one with ‘hate’ tattooed on his knuckles.
‘Here ye go, Hanlon. Here’s tae you!’
27
If Leo had thought Hanlon was going to just stand there like a lamb to the slaughter, he was in for a rude awakening. He had almost certainly had other people fall on their knees pleading for mercy, or back away trembling with fear. ‘Please no’ were words he’d heard many times. He had almost certainly never had anyone he’d regarded as a helpless victim fight back as professionally as Hanlon. Leo was a violent, capable thug, but he was a big fish in a small pond and Hanlon had met and beaten worse.
After days of being the victim, of being drugged, attacked and semi-drowned, she was keyed up to dishing some punishment out. She was in tremendous physical shape as well as more than mentally prepared. She sprang towards Leo off her back foot and drove her own fist towards the centre of his face.
Leo was taken by surprise. He was not expecting this. He stumbled backwards to avoid the punch, jerking his head to one side, but not quick enough to stop Hanlon’s knuckles grazing his cheekbone. The blow jarred her hand; it left a red weal on Leo’s face.
They squared up to each other, Leo looking at her with astonishment.
‘Och, I’m so feart!’ he said contemptuously. Hanlon didn’t reply; she waited, fists raised, her body side on, minimising the target.
‘I’m police, Leo, you shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said.
‘You’re finished, Hanlon,’ he jeered. ‘Manny tells me you’re an auld has-been.’
Hanlon threw her head back and laughed scornfully. Has-been. I couldn’t attack the person at work who called me that, but you’ll do, Leo, you’ll do nicely.
Her narrowed eyes scanned him contemptuously. Come on, then, Leo, you prick.
He feinted at Hanlon, who stood there, waiting. The punch would be short, she knew that. An old has-been, well, let’s see, Leo. She didn’t flinch or move, then he took a step towards her.
He was in range. Hanlon threw a fast
