Private London Read online

  She got about twenty yards before DI Kirsty Webb stepped out of an unmarked police car, followed by a uniformed officer, and put her under arrest.

  As busts went, it wasn’t the high-profile case that Kirsty had been looking to solve this weekend. But it probably gave her a degree of personal satisfaction as she cuffed Laura none too kindly and shoved her head down as she manoeuvred her into the back of the car. Like I said, Kirsty was fond of Chloe too.

  And also like I said, I had made a call earlier. Laura Skelton might not have made it to a phone box but I had given my ex the heads-up. I had made one other phone call, too.

  Del Rio looked at me from the passenger seat. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  I nodded, resisting the impulse to say I was born ready.

  ‘Let’s finish it,’ I said instead.

  Chapter 109

  THE ENFORCER COULD open triple-locked and bolted doors. The trunk of a BMW was no match. The lid flew open and an alarm started shrieking.

  We were in the car park at the back of the Turk’s Head, up the road a half-mile or so from where we had watched Laura Skelton being driven away into a whole new world of misery.

  Del Rio was leaning, in his normal casual style, against the brick wall of the pub, his gun held alongside his leg, watching the back exit.

  A short while later a stocky man came through the door, some five foot nine inches tall, barrel-chested and with a neck about twice the size of mine. He was carrying a set of car keys in his hand.

  ‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he said to me, not quite believing what he was seeing. His eyes bulging like a pug’s on steroids. He pushed the key fob to turn the alarm off.

  ‘He said it was okay,’ I said and pointed to Del Rio who was now pointing his gun at the bull-necked man.

  ‘You know whose car that is?’

  I nodded. ‘We were invited.’

  The man looked at Del Rio, his hand twitching. The bulge under his jacket showed he was carrying. I guess he was weighing up the odds.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Del Rio.

  The man held his hands up and let Del Rio take his gun off him.

  ‘No one’s going to spank you for this,’ I said to the heavy. ‘We take full responsibility.’

  He glared back at me and then smiled. It was not a pretty sight. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘It’s your fucking funeral.’

  I reached into the boot of Brendan Ferres’s BMW and pulled out the baseball bat that I was pretty sure I would find there.

  Showtime.

  Chapter 110

  THE HEAVY WALKED into the pub, hands held high.

  There were no customers as such. Ronnie Allen sat at his usual table with Brendan Ferres, the East Coast Mafiosi Sally Manzino and his glamorous companion.

  Sitting next to Brendan Ferres was Rebecca Allen, Ronnie Allen’s daughter who was engaged to be married to the man whose baseball bat I was holding. She was every bit as large as life as I remembered her. She was dressed to kill in tight jeans, a low-cut peasant blouse, her full lips were painted blood-red and her big blue eyes sparkled beneath the mass of blonde hair that tumbled around her heart-shaped face. I think she rather liked the look of Del Rio. I was probably too much the urban sophisticate for her. She smiled and sat back to watch.

  Brendan Ferres turned round to see what she was smiling at and nearly spat out the beer he was drinking. He put his pint down and pulled out a gun. He was fast, I’ll give him that much.

  ‘Tell the prick to drop the piece, Carter,’ he said. ‘Or I’m going to put one in you.’

  I flashed a quick smile back at him. ‘I don’t think so, Brendan. You and me, we’re going to have a little dance.’

  ‘The fuck you talking about?’

  Ronnie Allen tapped Brendan on the shoulder. ‘Give me the gun, Brendan.’

  Ferres looked at him puzzled for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Sure, boss. But shoot him in the gut – I’d like to see him wriggle a while before he dies.’

  Ronnie Allen held the gun secure on the table. ‘I believe the gentleman asked you for a dance.’

  Now Ferres looked really perplexed. ‘What’s going on, Ronnie?’

  Rebecca Allen turned her gaze back on me. ‘Did you bring the item you mentioned on the phone?’ Her voice was low but sultry. She reminded me of the young Diana Dors. Marilyn Monroe on steroids, maybe.

  I walked across to the table and tossed the DVD I had taken from the media student down in front of her.

  Chapter 111

  THE DVD WAS titled Snake Charmer and the cover featured a naked Brendan Ferres and Laura Skelton.

  They were engaging in an act not taught on the media-studies course.

  Ferres looked across at it, the colour draining from his face. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘Your contact at Chancellors, Brendan. Laura and the media student. Little sideline for him. He likes to make films. Specialist nature. Mail order.’ I smiled at him again. ‘Sometimes people don’t even know they are being filmed.’

  Ferres shook his head. ‘There’s been some kind of mistake,’ he said to Ronnie Allen. His tongue darting nervously to lick his suddenly dry lips.

  ‘You told me you had nothing to do with his god-daughter being hurt,’ said Ronnie Allen, his voice soft.

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Yeah, her head got in the way, scumbag,’ I said. ‘And you were just practising for a try-out with the New York Yankees.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Ferres turned to Ronnie Allen. ‘Why is this fuck even still here?’

  ‘Because I invited him,’ said Rebecca Allen. Her voice was warm, friendly, but her eyes had gone arctic cold.

  ‘That’s not me.’ Brendan gestured at the damning evidence.

  ‘You know anyone else who’s enough of a dipshit to get a tattoo of a snake doodled on his wing-wang?’ I asked.

  Brendan Ferres looked at me. The colour had come back into his face now. He was flushed with it. A dark angry red.

  ‘Fuck this!’ he said and charged at me.

  Like I said, he was quick.

  I swung the baseball bat, but he got to me before I could finish the swing. Grabbing me in a bear hug and pushing me backwards to smash against the wall.

  He locked his arms around me and I held back just as tightly. He was grunting with fury and I couldn’t shake him loose.

  ‘You sure you want to do this?’ Del Rio asked me, gesturing with his gun to let me know he could put an end to things.

  I couldn’t speak. Damn it, I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. I shook my head and rammed my knee upwards into Ferres’s crotch. He moved sideways as I did, grunted but didn’t loosen his grip. I dipped my head and then butted upwards, catching him under the chin. His grip loosened. I stepped back and drove the end of the baseball bat hard into his solar plexus.

  He doubled over, making a painful gurgling sound. I stepped back to take a breath or two into my own pained chest, then swung the baseball bat as hard as I could into his left knee.

  Ferres crashed to the floor. His face purple now as he sucked in air, trying to hold his hands to his shattered knee as if he could piece the fractured pieces back together. He looked up at me, a squealing sound issuing from between his clenched teeth.

  ‘Why don’t you finish him?’

  I turned round. Rebecca Allen was standing behind me, watching her fiancé writhe on the floor in agony.

  ‘I’m done here,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t finish him, he’s going to come find you and kill you,’ said Del Rio.

  He was right. I had killed before, God knew. I had killed that very night. Put a round of high-velocity ammunition into the forehead of a beautiful woman. There was nothing beautiful about Brendan Ferres. Nothing redeemable about him as a human being. The world would be a far better place without his breath in it. I pictured him swinging the same bat that I was now holding into Chloe’s head. And I pictured myself doing the same to his. Cracking it open like a coconut.
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  Instead I let my arm go limp, resting the head of the baseball bat on the floor.

  I turned to Del Rio. ‘I’m done here,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Rebecca Allen, and took the baseball bat from me.

  I looked over at her father. ‘We good?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re good,’ he said.

  I nodded to Del Rio who touched his fingers to his forehead, tipped them as a kind of salute to Rebecca, and then followed me out of the door.

  The door closed mercifully before the screaming started up in earnest again.

  I didn’t think we would be seeing Brendan Ferres any more. I didn’t think I’d lose much sleep over it, either.

  An hour and half later I was having three broken ribs checked over in the hospital.

  As the doctor stepped away Chloe came into the treatment room and into my arms.

  If there were tears in my eyes it was probably because she hugged me a little too hard.

  Chapter 112

  Morning. One week later.

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR KIRSTY Webb closed her car door behind her.

  She ducked under the police-cordon tape that had once again been put up to keep the public away from the lock-up in King’s Cross. The same lock-up where the gruesome discovery had been made by the hapless Jason Kendrick just a week before.

  Two lock-ups were open now. The one that Kirsty had already seen and the one beside it. The serious-crime squad had worked through the numerous files and boxes of paper that the deceased surgeon Alistair Lloyd had kept in his garage and had made a connection between him and Edward Morrison, the owner of the original lock-up.

  Morrison had been part of the ring with the surgeon and a few others, it transpired. They were still compiling a list. Adriana Kisslinger only knew some of the contacts the surgeon had.

  Kirsty nodded to Adrian Tuttle as he came out of the building, his camera bag slung over his shoulder.

  The inside of the lock-up had been turned into a child’s bedroom. A young child’s, with a cartoon bedspread on the adult-sized bed, stuffed toys everywhere, including an enormous giant panda. There was a video camera mounted on a tripod facing the bed.

  Doctor Wendy Lee was handing some paperwork to Kirsty’s boss, DSI Andrew Harrington, for him to sign. She nodded briefly to Kirsty as she passed, clearly in a hurry to get out of the place. Kirsty didn’t blame her. Just being there made her skin itch, made her want to turn around and stand in a hot shower for thirty minutes.

  Instead, she reached into her pocket and drew out an envelope with her letter of resignation inside and looked across at her boss.

  DSI Harrington was a slightly built man in his mid-forties. He was of average height with a sallow complexion and a receding hairline. His teeth were slightly nicotine-stained and his eyes could not hold her gaze for long. She had never liked the man.

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get the job, Kirsty,’ he said.

  ‘Most likely the better man did.’

  ‘You’re a field operative. It’s what you’re good at. Do you really see yourself behind a desk, juggling phones and computer files?’

  ‘No, I don’t, sir. Which is why, as I said, I’m resigning.’

  She held out the envelope.

  ‘You absolutely sure about this?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in my drawer for a week or so. You’re due the leave anyway.’

  ‘Won’t make any difference.’

  ‘Still.’

  Kirsty nodded, then looked around the ‘set’ that had been constructed in the lock-up. She didn’t care to think about what had taken place there and was heartily glad she didn’t have to view the DVDs they had found, or try to identify the victims.

  ‘So this just about wraps it up?’ she said.

  ‘I guess it does.’

  Kirsty knew that her failure to get the job was partly down to Harrington and the testimonial he had written. She wasn’t supposed to have seen it but she had. She had access to resources of her own. Maybe it was flattering that he had been careful enough to praise her, but Harrington had left enough between the lines to edge her out. He wanted to keep her on his team. Keep her on his terms. And she’d had enough of that.

  Which was why she walked out of the lock-up and didn’t tell him how wrong he had been.

  Wrong about everything.

  This didn’t wrap it up at all.

  Chapter 113

  THE SURGEON KNELT down and removed the wilted flowers from the vases on the left and right of the small plot.

  She laid them neatly to one side. Replaced them with fresh flowers as a shadow fell across the white pea shingle.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked without looking round. The surgeon was of medium height and dressed in a dark grey trouser suit. Her hair was silver, the colour of brushed aluminium. Her eyes were alert, intelligent but filled with sadness.

  ‘My name’s Kirsty Webb, Doctor Lloyd. I’m a detective inspector from the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘I thought you might be.’ Doctor Lloyd gathered the flowers she had collected, put them in a plastic shopping bag and stood up.

  ‘I’m here to talk about your husband.’

  ‘Ex-husband. We were divorced over a year ago. Attention to details, detective. I should imagine it is just as vital in your line of work as it is in mine.’

  ‘The devil is in the detail?’

  ‘Gods and devils. I guess your job is finding out which.’

  ‘We get there in the end. Sometimes.’

  The surgeon nodded. ‘So what led you to me?’

  ‘Everything was a little too neat.’ Kirsty shrugged. ‘Something about it all seemed hinky to me.’

  ‘Hinky?’

  ‘Something not quite right. An American expression. My husband is over-fond of using them, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’re not wearing a ring.’

  ‘Ex-husband, I should have said.’

  The older woman tilted her head slightly, as if approving.

  ‘I went to the pubs near to the area where Colin Harris’s body was found. He had alcohol in his system. Sleeping medication. We were supposed to think it was suicide – but things didn’t add up.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One of the barmen in a local pub recognised his picture. Remembered him drinking a short while before the incident. He was with a woman. The woman he described matched you, Doctor Lloyd, when I looked into it. I showed the barman your photo from the hospital records and he confirmed it.’

  ‘Female intuition?’

  Kirsty shook her head. ‘Police intuition.’

  Doctor Lloyd gazed down at the grave of her daughter. ‘Female intuition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’ she said.

  Chapter 114

  ‘WHEN DID YOU find out about him?’ Kirsty asked.

  Doctor Lloyd looked up at her for a moment or two, then sighed. Her whole body relaxed, as if an intolerable burden that she had been carrying for some time had been lifted from her. Her eyes were still desolate, however. Filled with the kind of pain that can never go away.

  ‘About the sort of monster he was?’

  Kirsty waited for her to continue.

  ‘You’d think a wife would know. It’s the sort of detail, after all, that …’ Doctor Lloyd shook her head, letting the words trail off. The enormity of what she had discovered seemingly beyond her power to articulate it. ‘She came to me. The whore …’

  ‘Andrea Kisslinger?’

  Anger sparked in the surgeon’s eyes. ‘Alistair was paying her. But not enough. It never is enough for people like her, is it? She figured the shame and the scandal. But she didn’t realise …’

  The older woman bent over and straightened the new flowers, not speaking for nearly a minute. Kirsty waited, letting her compose her thoughts, find the words she needed to say.

  ‘She was nine years old, inspector, and she hung herself.’

  Kirsty nodded – she already knew. ‘I’
m sorry.’

  ‘Have you any idea what it is like for a mother to walk in to her child’s bedroom and discover that?’

  ‘I can’t even imagine.’

  ‘I watch people die every day, Inspector Webb. It’s my job. As much as I … as we try to save them. We can’t. We can’t save them all.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Some people don’t deserve to live, it’s as simple as that. You see a cancer, you cut it out, you stop the infection spreading if you can. People say we doctors play God, and in some ways we do. Once you have had the power of life and death … well, it wasn’t hard to do what I did. At least they gave something to others in the end. One of them even saved a life. A deserving life. Shame it couldn’t have worked like that with the others.’

  ‘Why take the organs, then?’

  ‘Evidence, inspector. Just enough, no more. The final nail, if you like, in his coffin.’ Doctor Lloyd smiled humourlessly, her lips thin with more than the chill in the air. ‘I know the police like things tied up as neatly as we surgeons do.’

  Kirsty Webb looked at the older woman’s eyes. To her, she seemed perfectly sane. Sounded perfectly rational. Who knew … maybe she was. Compared with her husband and people like him – maybe she wasn’t mad at all.

  ‘You confronted Alistair?’

  ‘I gave him a choice, inspector.’ She looked down at the small grave. ‘Which was more than Emily had.’

  ‘You should have come to us.’

  ‘You’d think it would be hard for this kind of people to find each other, wouldn’t you? But it isn’t. And do you know why, Inspector Webb?’

  Kirsty shook her head.

  ‘Because there are so damn many of them. And you all know that.’

  Kirsty didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. The woman was right. Doctor Lloyd straightened herself. A half-smile played on her lips for a moment and she squared her shoulders.

  ‘So are you going to place me under arrest?’ she said. ‘You have no proof, I take it, other than that a woman who looked like me was seen in a pub with Colin Harris?’