Private London Read online

  The Turk’s Head was just one of many buildings owned by Ronnie Allen. And every Saturday night the man himself was usually in attendance, playing poker or dealing with business. Not the sort of business the revenue men got a cut of.

  Sure enough, that night Allen was at his usual table at the back of the bar. I knew it was his usual table because I had done some business with him before. That is to say Private had. He’d bought a dog-racing track two years ago and had totally refurbished it. He had hired us to overhaul and update all the security. A lot of money changes hands at a dog track, millions of pounds over the year, and there are people in the world stupid enough, seemingly, to try stealing from the man. Brad Dexter had been in charge of the project and we had never had any complaints from Ronnie Allen. He even paid his bill.

  Like I said, there were very few people stupid enough to cross him but here Sam and I were, about to beard the lion in his den.

  We walked towards his table and a couple of very large men in regulation goon suits stood up and glared at us.

  ‘Bottle of Corona for me, and …’ I looked across at Sam.

  ‘Mineral water for me,’ he said. ‘Ice, no slice.’

  ‘You’re going to need a straw to drink it through the face cast, motherfucker!’ said the first goon.

  ‘It’s okay, Ralph – this man is known to me,’ said Ronnie Allen.

  Ralph, for God’s sake. Seems even meatball-headed thugs had designer names now.

  Ronnie Allen was sitting with Brendan Ferres. Another dark-suited man with an extremely glamorous blonde was sitting opposite them. I didn’t know the other man. He was in his late forties, with sleek silver hair, and was wearing sunglasses. I didn’t know his companion either but she looked like she had been poured into her cream-white dress and was nearly spilling out of it.

  Ronnie Allen himself was a small man, five seven at a push, with cropped grey hair and amused eyes. Apparently they stayed amused even if one of his associates was taking a baseball bat to someone’s knees, or a blowtorch to their bare feet.

  I flashed a smile at the blonde woman. ‘Sorry to interrupt your evening,’ I said.

  ‘Spit it out, Carter. I’m in a business meeting,’ said Allen.

  ‘Hannah Shapiro,’ I said simply.

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘She was kidnapped last night.’

  He shook his head, genuinely puzzled as far as I could tell. ‘The fuck has that got to do with me?’

  I pointed a finger at Brendan Ferres. ‘Little Boy Blue here was seen at the premises shortly before she was taken.’

  Allen looked over at Ferres who shrugged. It was like a bison rolling its shoulders. His cold, piggy eyes weren’t amused. They were full of hate. I managed to stop my knees from knocking as he glared at me.

  ‘I ain’t got a clue what he’s on about, Ronnie,’ he said.

  ‘Chancellors University. Yesterday afternoon. I take it you weren’t there getting a thesis marked.’

  He ignored me and turned to his employer. ‘How about I just bounce these bozos out and teach them some manners?’

  ‘How about you just answer the question?’ Allen replied rhetorically.

  ‘What, I have to answer to some pansy-assed window peeper now, do I?’

  ‘No, Brendan. You answer to me.’

  He said it quietly but Ferres got the point. He shrugged

  ‘Okay. It’s just business. One of the guys there at the college … we have dealings with him. I don’t know the first flying fuck about some cooze being kidnapped.’

  Allen turned to me and flashed me a quick smile. ‘That answer your questions, gentlemen?’ he asked without a hint of irony.

  I nodded. I didn’t get the sense he was lying.

  ‘That’s good, Mister Allen,’ I replied, showing him the respect he expected. ‘But if I find out King Kong Junior here had any hand in it, I will come back and put him in the ground,’ I said, showing a little less respect.

  Brendan Ferres would have leapt up but Allen put a quiet hand on his knee and he stayed put. If looks could kill I’d certainly have been dead by then. I returned his look, letting him know I meant every word.

  ‘You let this man come into your place of business and talk this way?’

  It was the silver-haired man speaking. He had an American accent – the East Coast, if I was any judge. Italian-American at that. His suit was hand-cut and he wore a watch on his wrist that I reckoned cost more than the Jaguar my mate Gary Webster had squirrelled away in his lock-up. The theme tune of The Godfather played in my head and I deduced he probably wasn’t here as a food critic for the Washington Post.

  ‘Someone took a baseball bat to my god-daughter’s head when the girl was taken,’ I said by way of explanation.

  ‘Family is very important,’ said Ronnie Allen.

  The American guy nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m telling you, Ronnie. This has got nothing to do with us,’ said Ferres.

  Allen gestured at me, shrugging and holding his hands a little wider apart. ‘I’m sorry we can’t help you.’

  ‘You going to give me the name of your contact at Chancellors?’ I asked Ferres. He snorted in reply.

  ‘Not prudent business practice – I am sure you can understand why,’ said Ronnie Allen smoothly. The sort of smoothness a razor blade has.

  I could have threatened him with taking what I had to the police, but I couldn’t see the point. What I had was bupkis, after all. The square root of sweet Fanny Adams. Nada.

  I gave Ferres a final pointed look instead. Letting him know we weren’t done. He looked straight back at me – and If I’m perfectly honest I didn’t see his knees knocking either. I nodded to Sam and we walked out. I kept my shoulders straight despite the feeling that someone had just painted a bullseye on my back.

  As I walked through the pub doors and out into the street beyond I considered making the same one-fingered backwards gesture that Alison Chambers had made to me yesterday.

  I resisted the urge.

  Chapter 59

  IT WAS QUIET in the hospital.

  But somehow it was still full of sound. Machines in the background. Monitoring equipment beating out a steady rhythm. Life going on. Footfalls in distant corridors. Snoring.

  I opened the door to the intensive-care room and walked in. The woman sitting on the chair at the head of the bed looked up at me and smiled. She was pleased to see me, at least. The smile made me feel good for a moment, but only for that instant. The sight of my unconscious god-daughter kind of took the fun out of it for me.

  ‘Mister Carter,’ the woman said.

  ‘It’s Dan, please, Professor Weston,’ I replied.

  ‘In which case you had better call me Annabelle.’

  She smiled again but I couldn’t smile back. The young woman lying on the bed deserved my entire focus. And Annabelle could prove to be too much of a distraction. Maybe when things got back on an even keel I could try the full Dan Carter charm offensive on her. But for now I had to be all about business. Strictly professional. No time for romance.

  I was wrong about that, as it turned out. But not in the way I expected.

  I looked down at Chloe. Her eyes still closed. Her breathing even. ‘Have there been any developments?’ I asked Annabelle.

  The professor shook her head. ‘The registrar was just here with Chloe’s mother. Chloe is stable but still in a coma.’

  ‘Where is Barbara now?’

  ‘She’s gone to get us some tea.’

  Barbara Lehman, née Smith, had driven down overnight from North Scotland, where she had moved a year ago. She’d set out as soon as she had heard what had happened to her daughter. Her new husband Martin Lehman worked in the petrochemical industry and was moved around the country every few years or so. Martin Lehman didn’t like me and I wasn’t, to tell the truth, too disappointed that he hadn’t accompanied his wife.

  ‘I just thought I’d check in on Chloe.’ Annabelle gestured sadly at som
e fruit in a bowl on the bedside cabinet. ‘Bit of a cliché, I know.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be grateful when she wakes up.’

  The professor nodded and stood up. She was still dressed casually in jeans and a jumper. Still looked a million dollars.

  ‘I’d better leave you to it. I don’t think the ward sister will like a crowd in here.’

  ‘It was good of you to come.’

  Annabelle shook her head. ‘Chloe’s one of our students. I’m her tutor.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘She’s a very bright girl. Very brave too, from what I hear. She nearly fought them off.’

  ‘They weren’t playing by the Queensberry Rules.’

  ‘No.’

  She leaned down to smooth Chloe’s hair.

  ‘I take it you have no news yourself,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. Lying as smoothly as a politician. ‘But Hannah Shapiro’s father will be here tomorrow morning. Maybe the kidnappers will make contact then.’

  ‘Annabelle looked at me, a little surprised. ‘You still think that this is what it was, then? A straightforward kidnapping? Why haven’t they been in contact? Made a ransom demand?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  That’s the trouble with lying: once you start you’ve got to keep doing it – and I didn’t like lying to Annabelle. I could see how distraught she was.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  I guess I had been staring. ‘Her father has got money,’ I said. ‘That’s what it usually comes down to. Money.’

  Money or sex, I thought to myself but didn’t articulate the thought.

  ‘I didn’t realise she came from a wealthy background.’

  Saying Harlan Shapiro had money was a bit like saying a forest has a tree or two in it. ‘Yeah. Her father is pretty well off,’ I said, not telling her that he had already agreed to pay the ransom and I had the diamonds already stashed in the safe at our offices.

  ‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? Like we said. I mean … better that the motive is money.’

  I couldn’t keep the image of Hannah Shapiro stripped to her underwear out of my mind and couldn’t help agreeing.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s better than the alternative.’

  ‘You’ll keep me posted if there are any developments?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  Annabelle seemed to hesitate, looking up at me with those almost fey turquoise eyes. There was a definite charge. Then she seemed to catch herself, blushing just a little, but on her alabaster skin it made her look almost unbearably vulnerable.

  ‘Tell Barbara I’ll come back tomorrow,’ she said and hurried out of the room, leaving behind a faint trail of a sweet floral perfume. I looked back at my comatose god-daughter and told myself to snap out of it. Like I said, I didn’t have time for distractions.

  A few minutes later the door opened again and Chloe’s mother walked in. Barbara Lehman was in her early forties and still had the figure of a woman half her age. She was slim, tanned, beautiful. Her hair every bit as dark, curly and lustrous as her daughter’s. Her large expressive eyes brimmed as she saw me.

  She put the cups of tea she was holding down on a side table and rushed into my arms.

  ‘Oh, Dan,’ she said unable to hold back the tears.

  I pulled her to me, hugging her as tight as I dared, patting my arm on her back as she sobbed against my shoulder.

  Chapter 60

  SOHO IN THE late evening is always a busy place.

  Plenty of the pubs remained open and the many restaurants were still alive with chatter and laughter.

  I walked along Shaftesbury Avenue, turning left into Dean Street. I had left Barbara some forty minutes ago after giving her as much reassurance as I could. But I was no medical man. Someone was going to pay for it, though, I had told her. Making it a mantra for myself. As if saying it a lot of times would make it so. Coming good on the promise might be a different matter, but I meant every word I said.

  Jack Morgan was going to hold me to it, too. This was every bit as personal to him and it was killing him not to be over here working the case with me. But it wouldn’t help me, Hannah or Jack himself if he were arrested. A Supreme Court judge gets sent down for a crime she didn’t commit because Jack Morgan skips a subpoena and the consequences for Private in the States didn’t bear thinking about. So Jack was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so were we.

  And time was running out.

  I had assumed earlier that there was no connection to the States with Hannah’s kidnapping. That it was a local operation. Lightning striking twice and her captors lucking onto a jackpot.

  But now I wasn’t so sure.

  Brendan Ferres going into Chancellors. It was conceivable enough that he did have business there. His lot dealt in drugs. Students used drugs. This wasn’t news. But the black-suited man sitting at the table with Ferres and Allen was old school Mafia, I’d put money on it. The first time that Hannah Shapiro had been kidnapped it was by a couple of hoods recently fired from an East Coast outfit. Like I said, I don’t like coincidences. If this was all leading back to the States it put a whole new complexion on things. And it was a complexion I didn’t much care for.

  I strolled past the French House and then the Pitcher and Piano and up to the front door leading into the building where my flat was.

  I looked across at the Crown and Two Chairmen. A group of young men and women stumbled out. Drunk, happy, not a care in the world. I toyed with the idea of going in for a bottle of beer but shrugged the notion away. I had to be up early tomorrow, I had an exchange to make and I needed to have my wits about me. Too much was at stake.

  I walked up the three flights of stairs and jiggled the keys into the lock of my front door.

  As soon as I walked into the small hallway inside I knew that something was wrong.

  Chapter 61

  I WAS PRETTY sure I hadn’t left my lounge light on.

  But there was light coming through the gap at the bottom of the closed door. I picked up an old left-handed five-iron that I kept in a walking-stick holder in the hallway and kicked the door open.

  I wasn’t expecting laughter.

  ‘You got any idea how ridiculous you look, Dan?’

  My ex-wife. Sitting on the sofa, sipping on a generous glass of my Remy Martin Louis XIII Grande Champagne cognac. Retailing at about twelve hundred pounds, depending where you bought it. I didn’t much care: I hadn’t bought it, and I didn’t drink brandy very often. It was a gift from a grateful client.

  I turned around, put the golf club away and crossed to my small kitchen. I opened the fridge, took out a bottle of Corona and popped the cap with a bottle opener I had mounted on the small work surface. With a metallic tingle, the cap tumbled into the litter basket I kept underneath. There were plenty more in there and when the basket was full I’d take it to the recycling centre. I’m almost a model citizen. I took a long pull on the cold beer, sighed, then went back into my lounge.

  ‘How did you get in here, Kirsty?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m police,’ she replied. ‘We have ways and means.’

  ‘Yeah, you also have a mobile phone – maybe you could have called me.’

  ‘Maybe I did. Maybe you had your phone switched off!’

  I took out my phone and looked at it. She was right. I had turned it off at the hospital at the request of the ward sister. A two-hundred-and-something-pound African-Caribbean woman with whom I wasn’t about to argue. I switched it back on. Sure enough, there was a message from my ex-wife flashing.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. Kirsty took another sip of the brandy.

  ‘Nice drop,’ she said.

  ‘You can take it with you when you leave.’

  ‘You asking me to go?’

  ‘No, I’m just going to stand here looking all masculine until you tell me what you want.’

  She smiled again. Damn, it was a sexy smile.

  And damn again if everything about her
wasn’t sexy. She had changed out of her businesslike two-piece suit, and was wearing a flouncy white skirt, too short, some kind of peasant blouse laced open at the front and a denim jacket. She was also wearing black Doc Marten boots with blue boot socks and her hair was tied back. The whole outfit should have looked ridiculous.

  It didn’t.

  ‘I want your help, Dan,’ she said simply.

  It surprised me more than finding her in my flat in the first place.

  ‘That so?’ I replied, master of ready wit that I was, and took another pull on the Corona. Registering that it was nearly empty, I tilted the bottle and finished the job. ‘I get the feeling I’m going to need another one of these.’

  I headed back into the kitchen, pulled another bottle from the fridge shelf and held the cold bottle against my forehead for a moment before popping the cap. I went back to the lounge.

  ‘Okay, doll face,’ I said recovering some of my legendary savoir faire. ‘Spit it out.’

  Chapter 62

  KIRSTY PUT THE brandy snifter down on a small table that she had placed next to my couch.

  The sofa itself was positioned under the window that looked down on Dean Street below, and across to Meard Street – which had once been a favoured haunt of drug addicts and prostitutes but had gone downmarket now and was favoured by media types.

  The lounge was small and contained a three-seater sofa that converted into a double-sprung bed, a thirty-two-inch Sony Bravia HD television which I very rarely watched, and an original Victorian fireplace which, though unused, was stacked with wooden logs. An art deco drinks cabinet which Kirsty had raided. A Moroccan rug on the floor and a bookcase by the television housing most of the books I was supposed to have read when I’d been studying English at Reading University – Dickens, Hardy, Shakespeare, lots of poetry – and which had hardly been glanced at since. When I did read anything nowadays it was most likely in paperback form, and the kind of book that once read you gave away to a friend or dropped off in a charity shop.

  So that’s my lounge, bijou but comfortable and with everything just as I liked it – apart from the dark-haired woman with dangerously come-to-bed eyes that was sitting on the sofa.