Private London Page 8

  ‘We’re on it, Dan.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But there’s more,’ she added.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Sam.

  Suzy picked up the envelope again. ‘I went back to the footage from the quad, wound back a couple of hours. The university had a visitor you both might recognise, and I’m guessing he wasn’t there because he had a tutorial on Spenser’s Faerie Queen.’

  She slipped the final photo out and flipped it down on the table.

  She was probably right about the tutorial. The man in the dark suit and matching sunglasses was about Sam Riddel’s height but a good few stone heavier, and certainly no vegetarian. His name was Brendan ‘Snake’ Ferres and he was one of the most unpleasant men to walk the planet.

  ‘Not good,’ I said simply.

  ‘Not good at all,’ agreed Suzy.

  ‘As far from good as it can get,’ added Sam.

  Brendan Ferres was the right-and left-hand man of Ronnie Allen. And Ronnie Allen was a very serious customer. He was the go-to man north of the river for drugs, prostitution, guns, murder. You name it – if it was illegal his fingers were going to be in the pie somewhere. But not kidnapping, so far as I knew.

  I picked up the photos, sliding them back into the manila envelope.

  ‘You see Allen mixed up in this?’ I asked Sam.

  He shrugged and finished his drink. ‘Not his usual thing. But then again, we don’t really know what this thing is. We don’t know who has got Hannah Shapiro and as yet we don’t know why.’

  He had a point.

  Or he did. Until my phone rang, jangling on the Formica-topped table. I looked at the caller ID.

  Jack Morgan.

  Chapter 37

  DI KIRSTY WEBB desperately fancied a cigarette.

  She hadn’t smoked in over ten years, but she reckoned she could kill for one now as she watched the forensic pathologist preparing to examine the corpse.

  It was supposed to be Kirsty’s weekend off. Fat chance of that now with a girl gone missing, abducted right off the street, and another woman found eviscerated and dumped. Murdered, most likely.

  Three weeks earlier Kirsty had been the lead DI called to the Putney rowing club on the Surrey side of the Thames.

  Six-thirty in the morning on the first of May, Dr Jonathan Brown, a twenty-seven-year-old academic specialising in medieval hagiography, had been preparing to go on the water. He was a hotly tipped single-sculls hopeful for the 2012 Olympics and pretty much every minute of his spare time was spent training for the event.

  As he was putting his scull onto the water that morning, however, Dr Brown saw something that caused him to step back, make the sign of the cross and mutter a prayer to Saint Andrew the Apostle, the patron saint of fishermen. What he was looking at was the mottled arm of a dead woman.

  The woman was lying at the end of the ramp running down to the river, looking as though she was trying to pull herself out of the water. Dr Brown looked at the arm, horrified for a moment, unsure what to do. Then, as the tidal waters gently rocked into shore, the body was lifted and turned by the swell.

  The medieval scholar saw that her body had been cut open. A gaping wound across her torso. He staggered back, gagging – and for the first time in over five years he didn’t do any training that morning.

  Kirsty Webb had been trying to track the identity of the woman ever since.

  Chapter 38

  THE WOMAN WAS estimated to be in her mid-to late twenties, was naked and had no identifying marks or tattoos on her body.

  Her fingerprints didn’t show up on any database. Neither did her DNA but it had taken three weeks for DI Webb to get that information: the report had landed on her desk only that morning. The dead woman’s teeth were intact but were useless for identification purposes – unless they found a candidate to match them against.

  The only significant clue apart from the fact that she had had her heart surgically removed was the fact that the third finger on her left hand had been severed at the second knuckle. If she had been married there was no evidence of it now.

  The press had run wild with the story. All manner of theories were put forward. The most lurid of which was that the woman had been slaughtered in some kind of blood sacrifice or voodoo ritual.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. Kirsty remembered the West African boy that the Metropolitan Police had called Adam. His torso had been found in the Thames. Chemicals in his stomach had been identified as a so-called ‘magic potion’ containing traces of pure gold, a clear indication that his murder had most likely been a ritual killing.

  And now, three weeks since the first mutilated woman’s body had been discovered on the banks of the Thames, a second had been found a few miles away in King’s Cross.

  Organs removed, wedding-ring finger amputated. Kirsty Webb had no doubt they were dealing with a serial killer.

  Or killers. If the same people had taken the young student Hannah Shapiro last night – then the police were definitely dealing with a group of them.

  Remembering Hannah made Kirsty think of Dan Carter and his god-daughter, still lying unconscious in an intensive-care room. And thinking of him made her remember that today was their wedding anniversary – and then she really, really did want that cigarette.

  Damn the bloody man! Everywhere she turned in London he popped up like the proverbial bad penny. But fingers crossed that all that would change soon. Kirsty was on the shortlist for a new initiative being set up to coordinate worldwide information on serial murder. It was a prestigious job, carrying with it a promotion, a commensurate salary hike and, most importantly of all, it was based in Manchester! About two hundred miles north from Dan bloody Carter as the crow flew.

  If she could crack the mystery wide open she had a far better chance of getting the post. The only thing was, of course, that the serial-killer element had taken her off this case as lead. She was just a cog in the machine now.

  So Kirsty needed to make things happen – which was why she was here on her day off watching the post-mortem on the unknown woman found in a vermin-riddled lock-up in the King’s Cross area.

  She had tracked down the owner of the garage. A certain Edward Morrison, a retired motor mechanic from Paddington. They had arrived at the address with enough blue lights to decorate Oxford Street. However, a startled Mr Shah and his young bride, the new occupants of the ground-floor flat, had informed them that Edward Morrison no longer lived there.

  He had died of a heart attack some six months earlier. There were no living relatives and no one had been officially aware of the lock-up until the Met had traced its ownership. It was another dead end in a series of dead ends.

  Doctor Harriet Walsh looked over at the detective. ‘Still no idea who she is?’

  ‘None at all. We’re going through the missing-persons register, obviously, but she could be from anywhere in the country. It’s going to take time.’

  The doctor nodded thoughtfully. ‘Or from another country.’

  ‘Exactly. There anything you can tell me ahead of the post?’

  ‘Are you lead on this?’

  ‘No. Just conscientious.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘We know about the finger being cut off. Are there other similarities?’

  The doctor walked across to a cabinet and picked up some photographs.

  ‘There was extensive damage done to the soft tissue, as you know.’

  ‘The rats.’

  ‘Yes. I took some photos and then had them enlarged. If you look here on the third rib you can see a definite scratch.’

  Kirsty took the photo and looked at it. ‘And this tells us what?’

  ‘It tells us that this didn’t come from a rat’s teeth but from a man-made item.’

  ‘What kind of item?’

  Doctor Walsh walked over to her instrument tray. ‘One of these,’ she said – and picked up a scalpel.

  Chapter 39

  KIRSTY SHUDDERED AS
the doctor replaced the instrument.

  ‘How long ago?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll know more when we have done the proper post-mortem.’

  ‘And the scratch?’

  ‘Most likely from an operation.’

  Kirsty Webb nodded. It confirmed her worst fears. ‘And how long ago would that have taken place?’

  ‘Probably a number of days. Maybe up to a week. But no longer.’

  ‘Somebody killed her and then removed her organs.’

  The doctor put the scalpel back on the tray and put a mask over her mouth. Then she turned back to the DI. ‘Let’s hope he killed her first!’ she said before picking up the hand-held, powered circular saw.

  Chapter 40

  JACK MORGAN HAD received a textmail from whoever had taken Hannah Shapiro.

  It had been sent from an untraceable phone and it was flagging up as an overseas call. It said simply that an email would be sent to the London offices shortly and a phone call would follow this afternoon.

  Ten minutes after the call from Jack and we were sitting back in the conference room.

  An hour later and the screen at the end of the table beeped again. We’d already had five false alarms. The screen was set to computer mode, the bottom quarter of it a large monitor now. I used the hand-held gizmo to move the mouse over incoming mail and clicked on the new message.

  The sender’s address was a series of capital letters and numbers: KJP9OU56KL@hotmail.com. The subject line read DAMAGED GOODS.

  With a sense of dread I moved the cursor and clicked to open the mail. It revealed a hyperlink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=118ecF3VzMM.

  I puffed out a sigh and clicked on the link. It led to a YouTube video. Darkness for a number of seconds. A faint, whimpering, mewing sound in the background.

  Not good.

  A bright light came on. Throwing a spotlight on Hannah Shapiro sitting against a plain wall, a window beside her with its slatted blinds closed. The darkness surrounding the pool of light on Hannah indicating that the time was late night.

  Hannah was dressed only in her underwear: black silk matching bra and boxer-style briefs. Some rope was hanging from her left wrist. A ball gag lying on the floor.

  Her hair was tangled, her face was distraught, deathly pale. Make-up running around her tear-stained reddened eyes like one of those Japanese Noh dancers caught in a rain shower. She had a piece of paper in her hand. She looked up at the camera, heartbreaking desperation in her eyes.

  ‘Please do what they say,’ Hannah said. ‘They will hurt me. They have made that very clear. Hurt me in terrible ways. Do not contact the police. Do not attempt to find me. They will be in touch with instructions in due course. Do not contact the police.’

  The light went off. It was dark for a few seconds and then came the sound of Hannah crying before it was suddenly muffled.

  I played the clip back again: there was an option to play it at HD, which I clicked on, but the quality wasn’t greatly improved.

  I turned to Adrian Tuttle, our only remaining computer expert now that Sponge had gone back to Russia. ‘Adrian, get out there and see if you can track the traffic line on this. And burn the footage from YouTube. I want to put it in our system. See what we can do with it.’

  ‘Boss.’

  He hurried his gangling frame out of the conference room, back to his workstation. A real-life Ichabod Crane. I would have smiled at the thought but seeing Hannah Shapiro humiliated, trussed up and scared for her life had left me too furious for levity.

  I used the remote to click back to our email in-box. Nothing there.

  I’d promised I’d take care of Hannah. Doing a fine job of it so far, I thought sourly. I slammed my hand down on the conference table in frustration and looked around at my colleagues. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘I’d say the ball is in play now. That’s something,’ said Sam.

  I nodded. Hannah was unhurt thus far. That was important – our job was to make it stay that way. And Sam was right: the ball was in play. We had something to focus on now. They had made contact: that was far better than the alternative.

  We watched the tape through a couple more times, blowing it up to full-screen. Learned nothing more.

  ‘So, we sit and wait?’ Suzy asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We need to get down to the college, look into those rugby players. This barman. We need to keep moving, guys.’

  ‘I’ll get on it,’ she replied.

  I nodded. ‘Take Lucy with you, Suzy. Get down to the bar. You might find out something that the police haven’t picked up on.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘But be careful, okay?’

  ‘Boss.’

  She stood up and left and I turned to Sam. ‘Why don’t you and I go and have a word with Brendan Ferres and his puppet master?’

  ‘That wise? Before we know what the deal is?’

  ‘Probably not. But we’re going to do it anyway. Let’s kick the apple tree a little, see what drops,’ I said.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 41

  THE DOOR FLEW open and a flustered Lucy hurried in.

  ‘Sorry, sir, there was nothing I could do,’ she said.

  Following in behind her was my ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb of the Metropolitan Police, and several of her colleagues in smartly pressed blue uniforms.

  ‘Dan Carter,’ she began ominously. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of interfering with the course of justice.’

  ‘You are shitting me,’ I replied.

  She gave me a pointed look of the kind that I remembered only too well. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Kirsty waited for me to come back with a smart remark. I didn’t give her the satisfaction.

  She nodded to one of the burly uniformed officers. ‘Cuff him, George.’

  I held my hands out and smiled sweetly at her as the cop slapped the cuffs on my wrists.

  ‘What did I do? I forget it was our anniversary?’

  I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Take him down the nick,’ she said tersely to George. ‘Make sure he doesn’t fall down too many stairs.’

  Chapter 42

  HALF AN HOUR later I was in a holding cell.

  It was painted a sickly pale lime green. An inset concrete bed with a thin pallet on it. No windows. I had checked the door – it was locked.

  Kirsty hadn’t said a single word to me on the journey over. It would have been hard to – she’d been travelling in a separate car. I had been bundled unceremoniously into the back seat of a modified Range Rover with caged partitions. It felt like I’d been picked up by the police dog-handling unit. Maybe I had been.

  I’d taken my jacket and shirt off. Kept my white cotton T-shirt on to spare the blushes of any visitors, and was doing press-ups. I had done about a hundred and twenty when I heard the viewing hatch slide open and a voice announce, ‘You got a visitor, Carter.’

  I got a faint hint of perfume, something floral and musky, and considered moving on to finger-and-thumb press-ups, but thought better of the idea.

  Was I any fitter now than I’d been before an Iraqi roadside bomb and a couple of well-aimed insurgent bullets had seen me hospitalised for two months all those years ago? The truth was that I probably was.

  I didn’t take my immortality for granted any more, that was for damn sure. And I kept my body in as fit a condition as I could manage. Doing press-ups in the cell gave me something to do other than think of Hannah and Chloe. Didn’t work, but when you get dealt a crap hand you’ve got to play it the best you can.

  The door opened and I stood up.

  It was Alison Chambers. Black suit, white silk blouse. Her make-up perfectly applied and the perfume as heady as that from a field of poppies.

  ‘What the fuck have you done now, Dan?’ she said, kind of spoiling the
moment.

  I shrugged as the thickset uniform shut the door on us. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you tea,’ I said as I sat down on the pallet and patted the space beside me for her to join me.

  She folded her arms and gave me the kind of look my beloved ex had given me earlier. You know the kind – the sort a judge might give you before slamming down the gavel and sending you off to the colonies for fifteen years’ hard labour.

  ‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ she said.

  ‘Alison,’ I said. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  And I honestly didn’t.

  Chapter 43

  I TOOK A sip of tea.

  It was awful. Too much sugar, too much milk. I made a tutting sound and got a reproachful look from Alison Chambers.

  She was now sitting next to me on the bed. A businesslike notebook open on her lap, on the pages of which she was writing businesslike notes, I assumed. The nib of her Mont Blanc fountain pen appeared to scratch into the paper a tad deeper than was probably necessary.

  ‘The tea not to your satisfaction?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘It’s not PG Tips, I can tell you that much,’ I said.

  ‘And this isn’t the Ritz either, if you hadn’t noticed. It’s the Paddington Green nick.’

  ‘Yeah, I did notice that. The last time Kirsty took my trouser belt off on our wedding anniversary she didn’t take the shoelaces as well!’

  I looked down at my brogues. Without the laces the tongues of both shoes flopped out like those of overheated dogs.

  ‘You don’t seem to be taking this seriously, Dan. So I am not sure I can help you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m taking this deadly seriously, I can assure you.’

  ‘You bring a woman into this country under a false passport. You enter your so-called god-daughter into the same college as her, also under a false name, but at least that’s not a crime so far as I know.’

  ‘Nor me,’ I agreed.

  ‘But you had Chloe working for you, didn’t you?’ Alison pressed angrily.

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘And now the girl you smuggled in illegally,’ she continued, ‘has been kidnapped and you refuse to tell the police a damn thing.’