But because of me his daughter was now comatose in an intensive-care hospital bed.
Jack Morgan had told me to keep a special eye on the million-dollar baby. He’d told me it was personal to him. Well, it was just as personal to me now.
Chapter 26
IT TOOK ME a moment or two to realise that someone had slid their hand into my own and was squeezing it.
Sympathetically. As a friend would. I turned round, a little dazed, shaking my head as if to clear my brain from the dark thoughts that were dancing around inside it.
‘Who is she?’ asked Alison Chambers.
‘She’s my god-daughter,’ I said.
‘I didn’t know you had a god-daughter.’
‘I don’t. Not really. “Godfather” was kind of a nickname she had for me. I was an unofficial godparent – a guardian angel, she would call me. Teasing me.’ I shook my head again. ‘Some guardian angel.’
‘So who is she?’
‘Her name’s Chloe, Alison. Chloe Smith.’
‘Why did you never tell me?’
‘You remember my best man at the wedding?’
‘The wedding I wasn’t invited to!’ she said pointedly
I nodded, thinking back. It was a year before the Second Gulf War. May the twenty-first 2002. Richard Smith had just made captain and I was getting married. A double celebration.
I remembered looking over my shoulder at the people who had filled every seat in the room. Some more had had to stand at the back. Admittedly it wasn’t a large room. On one side, dotted among the civilians, a number of men and women in the full-dress rig of the RMP and on the other side of the divide, and likewise among the civilians there, the blue serge uniforms of the capital city’s finest.
There was a bit of a low murmur and I turned back to face the serious-looking minister who was giving me an unimpressed look.
‘And do you, Daniel Edward Carter, take Kirsty Fiona Webb to be your lawful wedded wife?’ he said.
I looked across at the woman standing next to me. Her jet-black hair cut in a bob that would have put Louise Brooks to shame. Her brilliant green eyes sparkling, her Cupid’s-bow lips painted a dark red, the 1920s gown she was wearing a miracle of lace and white satin hugging her toned body like a second skin. Cliché, I know, but she had never looked more beautiful to me. If I was Eric Clapton I could have written a song about it. But I wasn’t. I was Sergeant Dan Carter of the Royal Military Police and I was about to marry the girl of my dreams – Police Constable Kirsty Webb of the Metropolitan Police.
‘I do,’ I said and beamed at her.
It wasn’t, on reflection, the best of times for my mobile phone to ring. The shrill retro sound of an old telephone bouncing off the walls.
‘Sorry, I thought I’d turned it off,’ I mumbled as I fumbled the phone out of my pocket. But Kirsty was too quick for me and grabbed the phone out of my hand like a heron spearing a trout. She looked at the phone, turned it off, threw it to the side and slapped me hard across the face.
Behind me I could hear my best man fighting hard to suppress a laugh. But Kirsty fixed him with a basilisk stare and any thought of laughter disappeared like a candle flame snuffed out in a high wind. She turned back to her uncle, the minister.
‘Get on with it, then,’ she said.
The minister, Reverend Crake, cleared his throat and then smiled at her. ‘And do you. Kirsty Fiona Webb, take Daniel Edward Carter as your lawful wedded husband?’
She waited long enough to twist the hook and then nodded. ‘I do,’ she said.
It hadn’t been the best omen for our marriage.
I remembered Richard Smith’s amused, laughing eyes that day. And then I looked down at his daughter’s eyes nine years later. Closed now. Machinery keeping her alive.
I’d find the sons of bitches who’d done this to my beautiful god-daughter and make them pay, I swore to myself.
Or I’d die trying.
Chapter 27
I FOLDED MY other hand over Alison’s and gave it a squeeze. ‘Kirsty didn’t want you there, you know that.’
‘Of course I knew that. I’d told her plenty of times that there was no reason to be jealous.’
I grimaced slightly. ‘Yeah. That probably didn’t help.’
‘I know.’
‘My best man at the wedding was Captain Smith. Her father.’ I nodded at Chloe. ‘The man who saved my life.’
‘The war,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
I had never spoken to Alison about the war. Never spoken to anyone about it. They tried to get me to have counselling. But Dan Carter is strictly old school.
As I said, I’d come home invalided out. Eventually I was out of the wheelchair. But I swapped my baton for a bottle and tried to chase the demons away with that. I wasn’t the first and I sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.
All I managed to do, however, was chase away my wife, my family, my friends.
Like I say, it’s a familiar story, not one I’m proud of. Not one I beat myself up over, either.
Look closely at who most of the homeless in London are, or at those who are languishing in prisons when they should be in hospitals. Military men and women who had given more than they were asked in service to their country and got short shrift for change.
I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t end up freezing to death on a West End backstreet while the civilians walked by with their gazes averted. Eventually I came to terms with things. I realised I was carrying the guilt like a lame man who’d been cured hanging on to a walking stick that he no longer needed. But it wasn’t my guilt to carry and so I tossed it down and started living again. I went back into work. I turned my life around.
But not in time to save my marriage.
On cue, like the devil you speak of, my ex-wife turned the corner of the corridor at that moment and walked towards us.
My hand flew guiltily away from Alison’s. Stupid, I know, but it was a knee-jerk reaction and I could see that Kirsty had noticed it. Some emotion was playing in her eyes – was it a frown or was it a smile? I couldn’t tell. Maybe that was the problem. I never could tell with Kirsty. Never sure whether she was going to slap me or kiss me. Or both.
But I had a notion of what the look in her eye was that Friday evening. It looked a lot like sympathy.
‘Alison,’ she said simply.
‘Kirsty.’
Kirsty looked at me, hesitating for a moment, and I felt a chill dancing over my heart. Someone walking on my grave.
‘I’ve got some bad news, Dan,’ she said.
Chapter 28
IT WAS DARK outside now.
I leaned against the cool brick wall of the hospital and took a couple of breaths. Alison was inside, trying to find a coffee machine, and Kirsty had left to pursue her own investigations.
I was still taking in what she had told me but couldn’t make the connection. After what I had seen earlier that evening I refused to make a connection.
Someone had taken Hannah Shapiro, we knew that much. We didn’t know if she was the primary target. Whether she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I needed to know what the motive was and I needed to know soon, because one thing I did know for certain – the longer it went on without her being found the worse it would be for her. Statistics wouldn’t lie in this case.
I pulled out my phone and hit speed-dial. After a few rings I heard the smooth, unmistakably West Coast accent I had been expecting.
‘Jack Morgan.’
‘Jack,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a major problem.’
‘What is it, Dan?’
‘Hannah – she’s been abducted. Just outside the university campus. A group of hooded men. Unmarked van.’
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then: ‘When did it happen?’
His voice was as tight, as serious, as I’d ever heard it.
‘An hour or so ago.’
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘No ransom dema
nd as yet.’
‘Maybe they’re not after money.’
I didn’t respond. I knew all too well that young women were abducted for all kinds of reasons. By no means all of them financial. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the memory of what I had seen in the lock-up at King’s Cross. Failed.
‘I want you to drop everything else, Dan! Everything. That girl is your only priority, you hear me?’
‘You don’t have to tell me, Jack. The people who took her also put my god-daughter in intensive care.’
‘I’ll be getting on a plane as soon as the FBI let me loose. Meanwhile Private worldwide is at your entire disposal. You need anything – anything at all – you let us know.’
‘I appreciate it.’
‘Just get the girl home safe, Dan. Money isn’t an issue.’
‘You think it’s a kidnapping?’
There was another pause on the end of the line and I could hear the frustration in Jack’s voice. ‘There are things you need to know about Hannah Shapiro,’ he said. ‘It all goes back to 9 April 2003.’
Some minutes later I hung up. I looked down and opened the hand clenched tight around my car key. The metal had cut into my flesh. I held the wound to my mouth and tasted the iron in it.
Like I said. Someone was going to pay.
Part Three
Chapter 29
I LIVE IN a small apartment in Soho, on the third floor of an old building on Dean Street.
I have a lounge, a bedroom, a small kitchen that I rarely use and a bathroom. I had the front window double-glazed shortly after I moved in and the place is snug. I have a small television and a digital internet radio.
Dean Street is one of my favourite places in the world. Home to The Crown and Two Chairmen, the Groucho Club and the best bar in the western hemisphere – The French House – even if it does sell beer only by the half-pint and you have to steer well clear at lunchtime when it’s packed with media types and tourists.
But at half-six in the morning the pubs are closed tighter than a drum. The little Italian café round the corner was open early, though. I bought an espresso to go, which I sipped as I walked across town to the office.
I was short of the recommended eight hours of shut-eye – by about seven hours, I reckoned – and the sharp, bitter jolt of the caffeine was kicking in fine. Normally, before going into work, I’d have gone to the gym I used just off Piccadilly Circus near the Café Royal. But Chloe was still unconscious in intensive care, Hannah Shapiro was still missing and we still didn’t have a clue why she had been taken.
Jack Morgan had been straight in touch with Hannah’s father, Harlan Shapiro, who was getting on this evening’s flight to London.
Her abductors had made no contact. We didn’t know if Hannah’s cover had been blown or if a ransom demand was imminent. Given what Kirsty had told me last evening I very much hoped that was the case. If she hadn’t been taken for money … I shook the thought away, dropped my empty espresso cup in a litter bin outside a newsagent’s and picked up my pace. The clock was ticking and we didn’t have a minute to waste.
Ten minutes later I sprinted up the stairs to my office. I never take the elevator if I can help it. I don’t like elevators.
Lucy, my PA, flashed her cut-glass smile as me as I punched in the security code and stepped through to the open-plan reception office. She was blonde, beautiful and had a top-drawer accent to go with the smile.
‘Morning, Lucy. Everyone in yet?’
She shook her head. ‘Dr Lee is on her way in but Sponge won’t be coming in today. The rest are in the conference room.’
‘What do you mean, he won’t be coming in?’ If my tone was a tad sharp I didn’t apologise for it
‘It’s his mother.’
Vladimir Kopchek, or ‘Sponge’ as he was known because of his ability to soak up every bit of information and retain it, was our computer and technical support expert. He defected to the west before glasnost. He’s in his fifties now and has a mind sharper than an ex-wife’s tongue. His mother back in Russia had fallen ill and he was awaiting the results of tests. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘They don’t give her very long. Maybe three months. He’s booked himself on the first flight over.’
I nodded, resigned. I couldn’t blame the guy, but he was going to be hard to replace.
Wendy Lee came through the door, carrying a paper sack. ‘I got you coffee,’ she said.
We walked into the conference room. About twenty foot by eighteen. A long walnut table running to the wall opposite the door. Flush with the end of the table and rising up the wall some ten foot by eight was a state-of-the-art LED television screen. Fractions of an inch thick.
When it was switched to video-conference mode it connected to Private’s other offices around the world. So that the table seemed to carry on beyond the screen into an identical office. Except in that office it would be Jack Morgan’s team sitting around the table in his octagonal war room, or the crew of our outfits in Rome – or Paris or New York.
Today, though, it was just my team who were there for the briefing.
Chapter 30
AROUND THE TABLE were Adrian Tuttle, Wendy Lee, Suzy Malone, Brad Dexter and Sam Riddel.
Sam is my number two at the agency. He was wearing a coal-black three-piece suit and a dark blue tie. He’s a six foot four ex-copper and ex-boxer, and he’s black. He’d never killed a man in the ring, but I wasn’t so sure about out of it. He grew up on one of the worst estates in South London. Two of his brothers were killed before he was ten years old. Killed in the drug-turf wars that were still a feature of everyday life in that part of London. The fact that Sam had survived it, had never turned to the dark side as it were, meant he could pretty much survive anything in my book.
Suzy was in her early thirties. Ex-Metropolitan Police. Five foot six, auburn hair, fifth-degree black-sash Wing Chun kung fu, Third Dan kick-boxing, a marksman, a loyal friend, a deadly enemy, openly bisexual and one of my favourite people in the whole world. The Met Police’s loss was decidedly our gain. Likewise Brad Dexter. Early fifties, built like an American-style fridge, he had taken early retirement from the close-protection unit of the Met. He now headed up our personal-security division.
‘Okay, guys,’ I said as I picked up a small white remote-control unit from the desk. ‘Everything else is off the agenda. What I am going to tell you about now needs our total focus. Jack Morgan would be flying over himself to head this up, but he can’t. He’s subpoenaed to appear in federal court and can’t leave the country.’
‘What’s going on, Dan?’ asked Wendy Lee.
I pointed the remote control at the TV and clicked the on button. I would say it was state-of-the-art Apple and Sony TV technology – but it wasn’t, Apple wouldn’t be bringing their version out for a year or so.
As it was, I wasn’t using the sophisticated conference facility – I was just using it for a slide show.
First up was a recent picture of Hannah Shapiro. I couldn’t believe it was the same nervous girl I had brought over from America less than eighteen months ago. Chloe had told me that Hannah had come out of herself a lot, becoming more confident and outgoing. But the transformation was incredible, even so.
Hannah looked bold, comfortable and gorgeous. Her hair now full and wavy, a tumble of deep brunette curls. Her eyes bright, a killer smile. Her figure was more shapely, filled out – she had become a woman. A very sexy one at that.
I felt guilty thinking it. Remembering the small nervous hand holding mine on that bumpy flight. She was like a completely different person.
‘Hannah Shapiro,’ I said. ‘Registered at Chancellors University under the name “Hannah Durrant”.’
‘Why the name change?’ asked Lucy.
‘Her father is Harlan Shapiro. A very wealthy West Coast industrialist. Electronic systems. Communications.’
‘And …?’ Wendy Lee asked.
I took a sip of my coffee, remembering what Jack had told me
the night before. Hannah’s mother hadn’t died of cancer like she had told me on the flight. She had died in circumstances almost too horrific to take in.
‘A good few years ago,’ I replied, ‘on Hannah’s twelfth birthday, she and her mother were kidnapped. A ransom was demanded. A ransom that her father didn’t pay.’
‘What happened?’ Lucy again. Sam wasn’t saying anything – I’d briefed him last night. He knew who Chloe was, too – and what she meant to me.
‘The people who took them, Vincent Cabrello and John Santini, were a couple of low-life hoodlums who had fallen foul of some connected people in New York State. They hightailed it over to the West Coast to lie low, enjoy some sunshine and make what they figured would be some easy pickings.’
‘And they picked on Hannah Shapiro and her mother?’ Suzy asked.
I nodded. ‘The kidnapping wasn’t planned. Hannah and her mother weren’t specifically targeted.’
‘Opportunistic?’
‘Seems that way. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cabrello and Santini, pumped up on speed and bourbon, waited in their van in an underground car park. They just planned to take the first likely candidate they saw. They figured that anybody shopping in this particular mall would have serious money, and they were right …’
I pointed at the picture of Hannah. ‘They hit the jackpot with Hannah and Jessica Shapiro. Only trouble was, they were bringing another lightning storm down on their heads at the same time. And this one they wouldn’t be able to run away from.’
‘Jack Morgan,’ Sam grunted.
Chapter 31
I NODDED.
‘Jessica Shapiro told her captors exactly who she and Hannah were, what they were worth and said she was a hundred per cent certain that her husband would pay the ransom.’
‘But he didn’t,’ Wendy Lee said.
‘No. John Santini contacted Harlan Shapiro and gave him a couple of days to come up with the money. No police or all bets were off and then he would be collecting his wife and daughter in plastic bags. Given their history as enforcers for East Coast organised crime it was no idle threat. Not that Harlan Shapiro knew that, of course. He is a man used to getting his own way.’
Private London Page 6