Джеймс Паттерсон: Revenge

Already installed at a table, wearing a pinstriped suit and looking incongruous among the yummy mummies and retirees, was his appointment: the man from MI5, Simon Claridge. He was slouching a little, reading the Daily Telegraph as he sipped his coffee, but he looked up as Shelley turned from the counter and made his way across the coffee shop. “Hello, Shelley,” he said.

Shelley placed his coffee down, removed his newsboy cap, and dropped it on the table, running fingers through his hair and dragging his scarf from around his neck.

Claridge watched it all with a half-smile. “Looking good there, Shelley,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “In fact, you’re looking like a man who’s enjoying a well-earned rest in the company of the beautiful Lucy.” He laid his Telegraph to one side and pulled up his chair, ready to talk.

“Careful,” replied Shelley, “or I’ll tell her you said that.”

Grinning now, the MI5 man held up his hands. “I beg you, anything but that. How is she? Well, I hope?”

Claridge knew Lucy, but they hadn’t seen each other since the three of them had worked together to bring down the Quarry Company, a sick hunting-game organization that had murdered their friend and comrade Cookie.

After leaving the Regiment, Shelley and Lucy had retired to their cute Stepney Green terrace in order to look after their dog Frankie and cook up ideas for their fledgling PSC.

Cookie, however, had fallen on hard times and taken to living on the street. Then a bunch of blokes with too much money and bad taste in high-powered weapons hunted him down and killed him for sport. The Quarry Company. The bastards had killed Frankie too.

After taking down the Quarry Company, Shelley and Lucy had to spend time on the run—just over a year—until Claridge had been able to assure them that the coast was clear. With that they’d returned home to resume their lives, which meant renewing attempts to get the business off the ground. Their low-profile period, while proving to be a wonderful holiday, hadn’t exactly done much to advance their plans in the PSC department.

“She’s fine,” Shelley answered. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“I see, and what about you?” asked Claridge. “How’s life treating you?”

“Well, you know,” shrugged Shelley, “can’t complain.”

“Hmm, not much of an answer, is it? Okay, but if you were to complain, what would you be complaining about?”

Shelley felt one side of his mouth lift in what he knew would be a somewhat wintry smile. “I guess things could be a bit more comfortable. Financially, I mean. It’s not like the work is flooding in.”

Claridge nodded. “And that’s why Lucy is ‘mostly’ fine?”

“She misses life in the forces more than I do. She’d be happier back in Iraq, I reckon, as long as she had something to keep her occupied.”

“And you’ve got nothing in this country to keep her occupied?”

“Like I say, the work isn’t flooding in.”

Claridge frowned. “The last time we spoke, I told you that if you had difficulty finding work then you were to get in touch. Now you tell me that you are having difficulty finding work but that’s not the reason you got in touch, is it?”

“I like doing things on my terms,” sighed Shelley. “As soon as I start accepting work from someone, even someone I trust, I’m surrendering that luxury. I stop being the one who says yes or no, and I start being the one who says ‘thank you, I’ll do it.’”

Claridge rolled his eyes. “Welcome to the real world, Shelley. It’s called commerce. And really, it’s no great hardship. You decline work if you don’t like the sound of it, wait for something more suitable to come along, and if you put a few noses out of joint doing that, well, who cares, frankly. None of those noses will belong to me, of that I can assure you. What does Lucy say?”

“If Lucy was here she’d be nudging me in the ribs right now, going, ‘See? I told you so.’”

“There you go.”

“Look,” said Shelley, “I’m really grateful for the offer, you know I am. Let me just try it my own way first, see if I can make a go of it, and if I can’t, then I’ll try it your way, the Lucy way. How does that sound?”

“Can’t say fairer than that, I suppose,” said Claridge. “So, let’s get to the matter that brought us here today.”

Shelley nodded slowly, his mind returning to Emma Drake.

“Okay, before we start, there is one thing I need to get clear.” Claridge had laid his hands on the table, palms down, fingers spread. “Have you told the police everything you know?”

“You’re talking about the phone call.”

Claridge nodded.

“My phone went. I ignored the call. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Claridge offered him an appraising look, his head cocked slightly to one side. “You’re asking me to believe that you just ‘ignored the call.’”

Shelley looked away, across the coffee shop, where moms tended to babies in strollers and gossiped with other mums, where older gentlemen sat with newspapers, looking like relics from another time. In the old days when phones had handsets, and even dials, and no little readout to tell you who was calling, you just picked the fuck up. Nowadays you got to “screen” your calls. And that was what had happened. He’d ignored her call because he was screening.

He returned his attention to Claridge. “I get the occasional cold call,” he explained. “I didn’t recognize the number so I chose not to answer. I figured if it was important—”

“Somebody wanting to hire you, for example,” pushed Claridge.

“Somebody trying to hire me,” conceded Shelley, “then they would leave a message.”

“And?”

“No message. And now I feel like shit and wish I’d taken the call. Happy?”

Claridge lowered his eyes. “My apologies. I’m being in-sensitive.”

Shelley leaned over and pretended to give Claridge a slap. “Don’t be daft. No, you’re not. Christ, people die. Even young people, sometimes. That’s the way the world is—we know that better than most. It’s just that she was a great kid. So much spirit.”

Claridge was sipping his coffee. He placed his cup to the saucer before he spoke again. “So what are you saying? You’re surprised she killed herself ?”

Shelley thought. “No, not really. People change, don’t they? Nobody can look at a ten-year-old kid and predict they’re going to kill themselves. But there’s something up about this one—something a bit more than usually off about it all. For a start, she called me, out of the blue, for no good reason I can think of. Why would she do that? Secondly, her dad’s employed security. Three guys. Three .”

“All right,” said Claridge, “I’ll tell you what I’ve got. Victim: Emma Drake, twenty-four years old. Cause of death: self-inflicted gunshot wound. But you know all this already.”

Shelley nodded. “Do we know where she got the piece?”

“No, we don’t.”

“What sort of gun was it?”

“Nine millimeter, semi-auto. Croatian Parabellum. The sort of thing you can buy in a pub, which is probably where she got it.”

“Stolen?”

“No doubt. Originally. Serial number hasn’t given us anything yet.”

“Right,” said Shelley, seeing something pass across Claridge’s face. “What?” he asked.

“Did you know that she had a history of intravenous drug use?”

Shelley screwed up his eyes in a wince. “Ah, shit. Really?”

“I’m afraid so. She was a user, Shelley, of some vintage. My apologies if that comes as a shock.”

It did. But then again it didn’t. He would have hoped that Emma, of all people, might have stayed away from hard drugs, but he knew how easy it was to fall into. He, Lucy, and Cookie had carried out operations against the cartels. He’d seen the pain and suffering drug addiction inflicted indiscriminately. It was a scourge with no respect for gender or class. It didn’t look at a bright young girl from a good and loving family and decide to walk on by. It didn’t work like that.