Private London (Private 4)

Chapter 108

I PULLED UP the zipper on my jacket.

‘Why’d you do it, Laura? You’re a bright kid. You’re at a top university.’

‘You got any idea what it costs to go to university nowadays? The sort of debt you leave with?’

‘A lot of people deal with it.’

Anger danced in her eyes. She had the kind of beauty that made it easy for her to get what she wanted in life. Easy for her to justify her actions to herself. She wore her sense of self-entitlement as easily as she wore her designer jeans.

‘Yeah, well, I was dealing with it too,’ she said. ‘A little dealing. A little video work. Then Hannah offered me the big score. Even if her father didn’t ante up – and she didn’t expect him to – then she was going to pay me big time anyway.’

‘Never mind who got hurt along the way.’

‘No one was supposed to get hurt!’ Laura shouted at me. ‘My dad’s a plumber, for chrissake! I didn’t have money like Hannah and Chloe or most of them at college. I didn’t have privilege. All I had was debt. And she had the power to take that away.’

She shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a hard call to make. Besides, you know …’ She shrugged again, collecting herself, a cruel smile curving her lips. ‘It was supposed to be fun.’

I nodded to Del Rio and we walked out the front door. She’d learn soon enough what fun was.

Five minutes later and we watched from the front seats of my car, parked back a bit and across the road from her house.

Laura came out wearing a black parka, with the rucksack slung over her shoulder. She walked away from us without even looking around. Already high on whatever she had sampled from the media student’s stash, no doubt.

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.