Джеймс Паттерсон - Revenge

“But what I’m suggesting is for our mutual benefit. Believe me, I wouldn’t be suggesting it otherwise. Let me go, and you can deal with your demons here, I’ll deal with mine, and we’ll both go to our graves knowing that with all this shit going on, at least we did one thing right.”

Karen stood. Smiled. She reached for the gun on the table and for a moment Susie thought she might simply put a bullet in her there and then. Instead she tucked it into the waistband of her trousers.

“There is no deal,” said Karen. “You tell Dmitry all you want. I’ll take my chances. And you and your daughter can both burn in hell.”

She spat on the sandwich, turned on the heel of her black boot, and left.

CHAPTER 50

SHELLEY HAD FOLLOWED Claridge back to the Drakes’ home, Shelley in his Saab, Claridge in an agency Lexus.

“What if the media get hold of all this?” Shelley had asked before they left the hospital. “Back in the day Drake was what you’d call a celebrity.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Claridge had said.

“Really? Some inquisitive journalist—”

“‘Inquisitive journalist’?” Claridge had scoffed. “They don’t exist anymore. Journalists get all their news from Twitter and Facebook, and people like us telling them things we want them to hear. Fortunately, like you say, Guy Drake’s day was before the advent of social media. He might as well not exist as far as the new world is concerned. A few lines about his daughter’s death is pretty much where the interest in the Drakes starts and stops. The media are far more interested in Kim Kardashian unveiling her new bottom.”

As for the crash at the Drakes’ gates and the ongoing investigation, the police had managed to impose a media blackout. The road was closed off, supposedly with works, although Shelley knew that the men in hi-vis jackets were in fact cops.

Driving up to the gates Shelley saw that Johnson’s BMW had been removed, though there were a couple of scene of crime officers still in attendance. Wearing white Tyvek suits, they were gathering the last of the evidence. The SOCOs looked up briefly but without much interest as Claridge and then Shelley passed through the twisted gates and onto the driveway, where their two cars joined what was a veritable fleet of police cars and other vehicles.

Inside the house was a hive of industry. Guy’s home was in the unique position of being the center of two major crimes: the gruesome mutilation and murder of ex-Para Johnson as well as the kidnap of Susie Drake. There were so many cops there, all getting under each other’s feet, that as officer in charge DI Phillips was ordering men to leave.

Also unique: the cops knew—or at least were 99 percent certain—exactly who were the perpetrators of both crimes. They even thought they knew why, despite the fact that Drake, Bennett, Gurney, and Shelley were all staying tight-lipped about the raid on Foxy Kittenz.

Needless to say, all of this was business that would need attending to in due course, when the dust had settled and it was time to make a forensic analysis of how the situation had advanced from point A, the suicide of Emma Drake, to point Z, the kidnap of her mother, Susie. But for the time being all such considerations were prioritized down. The cops, despite their suspicions, prejudices, and in some cases outright hostility toward Drake’s crew, had one priority and that was to see Susie Drake returned safely.

Back in London they’d knocked on doors, of course. Detectives had been laughed at by Chechens who provided them with cast-iron alibis.

In one corner of Drake’s vast lounge were Drake, Shelley, Bennett, DI Phillips, and Claridge. In other parts of the room were the members of the Met’s tech support team, ready to intercept and triangulate any call, even though, as they were constantly reminding the others in the room, there were ways for the bad guys to work around it.

Claridge had opened up his laptop to show Drake pictures of the perpetrators. Which was where the cracks that had already begun to appear developed into much more severe fissures.

Drake shook slightly, Shelley noticed. And his breath stank of Scotch. He was a man at the mercy of his demons, internal and external. Shelley found his heart going out to him. He wished he’d done more, been more emphatic, put his foot down. He wished he’d picked up the phone to Emma. He wished that he hadn’t left in such a hurry all those years ago. He wished that he and Susie Drake had never shared that kiss.

“So these are the Russians, are they?” said Drake. And it wasn’t just his hands that shook.

Claridge peered over the top of his glasses at Drake with concern. They could all smell the booze. “They’re Chechens, Mr. Drake. They don’t like being called Russians.”

“Then I’ll call them Russians if it’s all the same to you,” snapped Drake, and Claridge nodded, the way you do when a man at the end of his tether says something patently ridiculous.

Shelley tried to catch Drake’s eye, telepathically tell him to calm the fuck down, but failed. The bigwig smiling on page four of the Daily Mirror —that geezer was unrecognizable now.

The MI5 man continued flicking through the pictures until they got to Karen. Here, Shelley took over.

“You remember the kidnap attempt, of course,” he said to Drake. Once more he tried to bring him to a place where they could have a reasonable conversation, one untainted by anger and resentment and all the shitty emotions bobbling around them like escaped party balloons.

Drake nodded.

“There was a woman, remember?” pressed Shelley. “I broke her arm.”

“I’ve not lost my marbles. I remember, Shelley,” barked the older man defensively.

“Right, well. This is her. This is that woman.” He told Drake about her involvement with the Chechens, the union of the two families, adding, “Now, it’s possible . . . well, look, what I’m thinking is that she crossed paths with Emma somehow. Say the two of them recognized one another. Maybe that’s why Emma killed herself, out of fear. Or maybe she was compelled to do it somehow, I don’t know. I can’t speculate about that right now. Just that there’s this connection. Just as she—”

“She killed Emma?”

All eyes were on Drake. He was breathing heavily through his nose.

“I’m saying it’s possible, yes,” replied Shelley carefully.

“Now she’s kidnapped Susie,” stated Drake.

“That much is beyond doubt,” said Claridge. “Positive IDs from Lucy, and from the women at the spa. Unfortunately, we also have thirty Chechen women who will say that she was at a charity function the exact moment the kidnap was taking place, meaning that right now, we haven’t got a thing on her.”

Drake turned a scornful gaze on Claridge. “So you’re just sitting on your arse waiting for her to call the shots?”

Claridge met Drake’s fierce stare. Perhaps he was thinking that Drake only had himself to blame for his current predicament. But ever the diplomat, the good civil servant, he held his tongue on that score and said, “It’s the only avenue open to us, Mr. Drake.”

Shelley jumped in, thinking this would be a good time to speak to Drake alone. “Listen, let’s call a break, shall we? I want to have a word with Guy, if that’s all right with you.”

Judging by the relief written all over the faces of the men around the table, it was a popular decision.

CHAPTER 51

“GUY, YOU HAVE to calm down, mate. You’re losing control. And you’ve been drinking. Why the fuck did you think your wife being kidnapped was a good time to start knocking back the booze in the middle of the day?” He spoke loudly and in a way that he doubted Drake had been spoken to in a long, long time. If Shelley didn’t need him to stay calm and focused for Dmitry’s impending phone call, he would have been happy to keep him out of the game altogether—send him to bed with a big glass of Scotch and a couple of happy pills. Perfect. “I need you to stay strong,” he told Drake.