Private London (Private 4)

‘That so?’ I replied, master of ready wit that I was, and took another pull on the Corona. Registering that it was nearly empty, I tilted the bottle and finished the job. ‘I get the feeling I’m going to need another one of these.’

I headed back into the kitchen, pulled another bottle from the fridge shelf and held the cold bottle against my forehead for a moment before popping the cap. I went back to the lounge.

‘Okay, doll face,’ I said recovering some of my legendary savoir faire. ‘Spit it out.’

Chapter 62

KIRSTY PUT THE brandy snifter down on a small table that she had placed next to my couch.

The sofa itself was positioned under the window that looked down on Dean Street below, and across to Meard Street – which had once been a favoured haunt of drug addicts and prostitutes but had gone downmarket now and was favoured by media types.

The lounge was small and contained a three-seater sofa that converted into a double-sprung bed, a thirty-two-inch Sony Bravia HD television which I very rarely watched, and an original Victorian fireplace which, though unused, was stacked with wooden logs. An art deco drinks cabinet which Kirsty had raided. A Moroccan rug on the floor and a bookcase by the television housing most of the books I was supposed to have read when I’d been studying English at Reading University – Dickens, Hardy, Shakespeare, lots of poetry – and which had hardly been glanced at since. When I did read anything nowadays it was most likely in paperback form, and the kind of book that once read you gave away to a friend or dropped off in a charity shop.

So that’s my lounge, bijou but comfortable and with everything just as I liked it – apart from the dark-haired woman with dangerously come-to-bed eyes that was sitting on the sofa.

‘I’ve applied for a job in Manchester,’ she said.

I nodded, although I had absolutely no idea where she was going with this.

‘I figured, get out of town,’ she continued. ‘You and me won’t keep bumping into each other. Take a spade and bury the past where it belongs.’

‘You always were the romantic one.’

‘Yeah – it wasn’t me taking text messages from your girlfriend when you were supposed to be marrying me.’

I took another slug of beer. Kept me from talking, at least, and this was one argument I was never going to win. I swallowed and said, ‘So you’re going to move to Manchester. What do you want me to do, help you pack?’ I was being a regular Jack Benny that night.

‘It’s a new position. They’re setting up a serial-killers unit. Worldwide coordination. Profiling. The whole shebang. Bit like the FBI have out at Quantico.’

I gestured with the beer bottle for her to continue.

‘I’m in with a chance, but there’s a lot of competition.’

‘So why do you need my help, Kirsty?’

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I need Private’s.’

Chapter 63

I GUESS THAT put me back in my box.

‘Lay it out for me,’ I said.

‘We’re working on a couple of cases. May or may not be linked. Private have already given a forensic assist on one of them. The Jane Doe we found last night in King’s Cross.’

‘Yeah, Adrian Tuttle and Wendy Lee were on it.’

‘Two women. Both killed. Both had organs removed. Both had half of their wedding-ring fingers removed.’

She ran the fingers of her right hand over her own now bare wedding-ring finger. She had bounced the ring that used to adorn it off my face quite a few years ago. Nearly blinded me. I wasn’t sure if she was aware what she was doing with her fingers. Either way she stopped doing it.

‘We thought there was a pattern. A serial monster preying on women.’

‘Seems a fair deduction.’

‘Except we were wrong.’

‘Go on.’