Private London (Private 4)

After about an hour Suzy paused the tape – she had watched it up to the girls leaving the bar – and then rewound. She zoomed in a little on Hannah and Chloe who were talking. Having to shout to make themselves heard. Suzy killed the volume from the other cameras, turned up the one focused on the girls and let the sequence run again.

Chapter 35

‘Good thinking, girlfriend. Bunch of goddamned horny schoolboys in here, is all. I need to pee first, though, honey.’

Hannah looped her arm through that of Laura who was being chatted up by a lanky youth and headed to the loos.

Chloe put a hand on the bar, seeming to steady herself.

‘She look all right to you, Lucy?’ asked Suzy as she paused the footage again.

‘No. Not for the amount she’s had. She’s not been drinking as much as the other girls.’

‘No. She’s keeping herself sober. Or trying to.’

‘Always on the case.’

Suzy nodded. ‘She’s a pro. You figure her drink was spiked?’

‘Looks that way.’

Suzy nodded and ran the tape again, watching as the barman chatted to Chloe who then nearly collapsed as she walked away. She stood up unsteadily and brushed away the hand of one of the rugby players who had come across to help her.

Chloe was five foot ten in her bare feet and the man seemed surprised at her strength. He backed off, holding his hand up, and Chloe stumbled through a crowd of his friends who were singing loudly. She lurched through them, through the door and up the ancient stone steps out into the night.

‘Someone spiked her drink,’ said Suzy. ‘I guarantee it.’

‘Maybe it was caught on camera?’

‘Let’s find out,’ said Suzy as she rewound the footage and fast-forwarded it again. Slowing it down as drinks were poured and handed over.

Some half an hour or so after the girls had entered the bar she paused it again. Then ran it backwards and forwards a few more times. The crowd of rugby players and another bunch of male students were at the bar and the barman was obscured from view for a while. When the crowd cleared, Chloe had a new drink in front of her.

‘One of those men at the bar?’ asked Lucy.

‘Could be.’ Suzy tried to adjust the angle of view but there wasn’t a camera behind the bar pointing down, only one pointing outwards, so there was no way they could see what had happened to Chloe’s drink. She pulled out her phone and hit a speed-dial button. She listened to Dan’s recorded voice as the call went direct to voicemail.

‘Dan, it’s Suzy,’ she said after the beep. ‘Get someone onto Chloe’s blood works at the hospital. It looks like she was slipped a Mickey of some sort.’

She closed her phone and turned back to the screen.

‘Why would someone have just targeted Hannah?’ asked Lucy.

‘I don’t know. Unless they knew who she was.’

Suzy pressed the remote again and they sat and watched as the external security cameras picked up the action. Switching data files as Chloe came up the steps leading into the quad, walking across it and out into the side street.

She flipped the control again and called up the earlier footage as Chloe left the bar. She watched her leave, weaving through the group of drunken rugby players. One of them was watching her very closely.

Suzy let the tape run for a few moments more and then whistled quietly.

‘Well, well, well,’ she said.

She clicked another button and the printer standing in the corner of the room beeped and hummed into life.

Chapter 36

THE UNION JACK Café near Shaftesbury Avenue was one of the last of a dying breed in the capital. A proper greasy spoon.