Private London (Private 4)

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.