Private London (Private 4)

A movement behind me. I turned too late.

I dropped like a felled tree.

Chapter 102

SOME TIME LATER I came to and tried to move.

I couldn’t. My hands had been tied behind my back to a wooden chair. Suzy and Del Rio sat beside me, similarly trussed.

My head felt like I’d landed on it when I’d dropped from the helicopter. But I was alive and I was conscious. I guess my skull was a bit thicker than Chloe’s, which would be unusual. Female skulls are usually a little thicker than men’s. Maybe whoever had hit me hadn’t been as good as Chloe’s attacker.

We were in the lounge of a very expensively decorated house. There was colour everywhere. Golds and reds and greens. On the expensive rugs that dotted the floor, on the wallpaper that covered the walls, on the drapes that were curled back from the French windows that led out to an extensive lawn, and on the exquisitely upholstered furniture.

I lifted my head and looked across at Suzy and Del Rio, wincing as the pain nailed through the back of my head.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You were hit with a golf club.’

‘A driver,’ added Suzy. ‘Titleist, I think.’

‘And you guys?’

‘People stepped out with semi-automatic weapons. A few of them. We considered it politic to comply with their instructions.’

‘Hard to argue with an AK-47’

Del Rio nodded. ‘That is a fact.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Not formulated one as such.’

At that moment Harlan Shapiro walked into the room.

Chapter 103

HARLAN SHAPIRO’S MOUTH was bound with duct tape and he held his hands high in the air.

He was followed in by Annabelle Weston holding a gun, and by a woman wearing the full burka.

‘So it was the professor in the drawing room with the revolver all along,’ I said.

‘Sit over there,’ Annabelle said to Harlan, ignoring me and gesturing with her gun to a high-backed red leather chair.

Harlan Shapiro crossed over and sat down. Outside, a large man in black fatigues and with a scarf wrapped round his head walked past the French windows.

Mujahedin as security guards. Nice neighbourhood.

‘And you must be Mary Angela,’ I said, addressing the woman in the burka. ‘Shame to cover yourself up – you have beautiful eyes.’

The woman swept her hand up, removing the part of her garment covering her head, and swinging her lustrous hair behind her. She looked at me and smiled.

‘That’s very courteous of you to say so.’

I must have registered some surprise because her smile deepened. ‘Oh, I only wear it when it suits.’

‘Nice house you have, too. Mister Burka must be paid a pretty penny for his translation skills.’