Джеймс Паттерсон - Revenge

“And guys like Gurney and Johnson?”

“Okay, look, I’ll be the first to admit they’re a bit rough around the edges, but you’d want them at your back.”

“I’ll have to beg to differ, mate.”

“They’re my men, Shelley. They were doing their job. In the case of Johnson he didn’t do his best, and we’ve had to have a word about that, a little refresher, you might say, regarding unnecessary confrontation. In Gurney’s case, he simply wound you up, and while I can understand you might not like him as a result, he wasn’t at fault. He was simply proceeding as per his orders.”

Not that he’d show it, but Shelley was impressed with Bennett’s loyalty to his men. It would have been easy to sell them out and win brownie points with Shelley, especially as this was so obviously Operation Schmooze. But he hadn’t.

“Sounds like you got a tight little unit there,” said Shelley. “All the more reason why you don’t want me hanging around like a fart in a trance.”

Bennett shook his head. “Look, here’s the thing. You knew Emma. I didn’t. But from everything I’ve heard about her, she was a great kid who didn’t deserve what happened to her. Neither did her parents because they’re good people, too. Susie wants you on board with us. That’s why I’m here. Man on a mission. It was Susie who asked me to come. Message: please join us.” Shelley sighed and Bennett held up his hand. “Just consulting if you want. Same fee as me—and I can tell you it’s a good fee.”

“I’ve already given her my answer,” said Shelley. “I’m not getting involved in any revenge deal. End of.”

“If Susie was here she’d tell you that it’s not about revenge, retaliation, payback, whatever—you can pick your synonym. She’d say that it’s about making sure these people don’t do to any more girls what they did to Emma.”

“Who? What people?”

“Well, for a start, the cam channel operator, where girls are forced to work to pay off their drug debts. There’s a word for that, Shelley: slavery.”

Shelley felt his jaw clench. “You know who they are?”

Bennett nodded. “Name’s Foxy Kittenz, would you believe. With a Z. And we know where they’re based.”

“Where are they based?”

“Ah, well, that I can’t tell you just yet. Are you in or out?”

Shelley cast a sideways glance at Lucy. Her face was unreadable. “I need time to think it over.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Bennett went to stand. “In the meantime, I’ve got something else for you. Susie would like you to call her after you’ve watched it.”

“Watched what?”

Bennett reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small USB stick that he placed carefully on the coffee table.

CHAPTER 20

AS THEY CLEARED away the coffee cups neither Shelley nor Lucy mentioned the USB stick, which remained on the table where Bennett had left it. They needed to visit Sainsbury’s anyway—those food cupboards weren’t going to fill themselves.

“What is it about the Circuit?” she asked him. “What do you have against it?”

He sighed. “Haven’t we been over this?”

“But Shelley, it’s what we do. It’s what we are.”

“Is it?”

She stood with the empty cafetière in her hand, looking solemn all of a sudden. “Yes. Like it or not, yes. That’s the path we chose.”

“And we can’t try a new path, a little bit off the beaten track?”

“You know what I think it is?” she said. “It’s that moral compass of yours. When you were in the army you could tell yourself that you were on the side of the angels, but the job of a security company isn’t to do good in the world, it’s to make money, and that’s what you can’t take, isn’t it? You want to be noble, Shelley. You want to be doing right.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No, of course not, and that’s exactly what I’ll tell myself when I’m starving to death: thank God for my husband’s sense of personal integrity.”

They washed up the cups in silence and then, just before they left, Shelley moved the USB stick to the mantelpiece, placing it beside the photo of Lucy and Frankie.

Later, with the trip over, the shopping bought and packed away, Lucy broached the subject they’d been avoiding. “Well? And before you say ‘well, what?,’ you know exactly what I mean, so don’t say it.”

He scratched his head. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll have seen worse.”

“That’s not really the point.”

“Sure,” she conceded. “Okay, then, how about you take yourself upstairs, go have a shower or something? I’ll report back.”

He retired to the bedroom, where he closed the door and sat on the bed, waiting.

When Lucy called he returned downstairs to find her closing the laptop lid, eyes wet with tears that she brushed away.

“Well?” he said.

“She was tough,” said Lucy, nodding in admiration. “Brave.”

“Is it brave, killing yourself?”

She shook her head, not wanting to go there. “Where did he get it from? The film. Can anybody see that?”

“Online, I guess. There’s some fairly shady shit out there.”

Hanging in the air between them was the knowledge that Cookie had been the guy in their patrol who took care of all the tech stuff.

“There’s something else,” said Lucy.

“What?”

“She said something, just as she pulled the trigger.”

“What did she say?” said Shelley.

A short time later he rang Susie.

“Thank you for seeing Mr. Bennett,” she said. “He tells me you were most welcoming.”

“He seems all right.” Shelley heard the begrudging note in his own voice.

“Did you watch it?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he lied. “Did you?”

“No,” she said. “Nor did Guy.”

“Emma’s last words before she pulled the trigger . . .” he began, and then stopped.

“Yes. Mr. Bennett told me that she said something,” said Susie. “He couldn’t quite make it out, because . . .”

Because of the gun barrel in her mouth.

“I know what she said, Susie. I could make it out. She said, ‘Be lucky.’”

“I see,” said Susie.

“You remember . . .”

“Yes, I remember.”

He took a deep breath. “Listen, Susie, if I’m on board nobody dies, nobody gets hurt. We’re after justice, not revenge.”

“Maybe justice is revenge,” she said softly.

“Maybe.”

There was a pause before she asked, “Well?”

PART TWO

CHAPTER 21

“WHAT IS THIS place?” the man with the cropped hair demanded to know.

Sergei looked around at the cars parked either side of them, at the sign that said “MOT & Service Center,” and at the open roller doors of the garage through which they could see cars on ramps and men in overalls, and said, “This place? This is a tanning salon.”

“Very funny,” growled his passenger. “You people do have a sense of humor after all, then.”

Sergei decided to ignore the “you people.” After all, simply by coming here his passenger was placing his head into the lion’s mouth. So if he wanted to kid himself that he held the upper hand, then let him. Saying otherwise would be like telling a kid there’s no tooth fairy.

They made their way to the entrance, a frosted-glass door that needed a bit of persuasion to open, and then stepped into the front office. Sergei was a regular visitor, of course, and usually there’d be a young woman called Sofia there to greet him, a receptionist who booked in cars, took payment, and behaved as though the garage really was a garage.

Which it was. Partly. But given that the owner was Dmitry—not the registered owner, but the owner all the same—it was also concerned with another sort of business. Dmitry business. Company business. Whatever that might be.