James Patterson - Private London

‘No. Strangely enough, I don’t usually order a bottle of champagne if I’m driving,’ she said dryly. ‘What’s going on?’

I shook my head and slipped my jacket on. ‘I need to get a taxi,’ I said simply.

Alison hurried after me and slid her arm through mine. ‘What’s wrong, Dan?’ she pressed, the concern clear in her voice.

‘Everything,’ I replied.

I cursed as the taxi pulled to a stop at yet another traffic light.

I leaned back, closing my eyes. Willing my heart to beat slower. Thinking of the young girl I had fetched across the Atlantic to London.

The worst possible thing had happened. She’d been kidnapped on our watch. Taken by violent men. Had her cover been compromised? Was it a random attack?

I remembered her small hand holding mine. I had said I was going to take care of her.

I felt sick as I played over in my mind what Kirsty had told me had happened to the other girl. Another girl I had also promised to protect. A promise made long ago in a foreign land when her father, who had given his life to save mine, had begged me to look after her.

Twenty minutes later I stood outside the intensive-care room looking through the slatted blinds at the frail, young woman who lay in the hospital bed. Surrounded by wires and drips and monitors.

Chloe Smith. Who had just as much heart and guts as her father.

Jack Morgan had wanted somebody undercover at the university to keep an eye on Hannah. A companion, he’d said, not a bodyguard. And I had thought Chloe was the perfect choice.

She’d had a gap year travelling round the world and was going to sign up to join the police. She was as bright as a button and fearless in the way that only youth can give you.

Her mother and I had discussed it. University would be an ideal opportunity for her. She would come out with a law and psychiatry degree and should she still wish to join the police she would be fast-tracked as a graduate and get where she wanted to be far quicker. Private would pay all her fees and a salary as well. Jack Morgan had sanctioned that and Hannah’s father had gladly written the cheques. There would be a job for Chloe in the company if she changed her mind about joining the force. It was win win all round. Or should have been.

Chloe had enrolled at Chancellors under a cover name, much as Hannah had. She had befriended the American girl as planned. It wasn’t hard to arrange.

The same course, the same accommodation. Private has connections. The strings were pulled and it was supposed to be straightforward. Chloe was meant just to keep an eye on Hannah, report back if there was any trouble. Chloe was clearly her father’s girl, though. She had gone in, guns blazing, to the rescue and to hell with the consequences. I had done something similar all those years before and her father had come to my rescue. If it hadn’t been for him I wouldn’t be alive today.

But because of me his daughter was now comatose in an intensive-care hospital bed.

Jack Morgan had told me to keep a special eye on the million-dollar baby. He’d told me it was personal to him. Well, it was just as personal to me now.

It took me a moment or two to realise that someone had slid their hand into my own and was squeezing it.

Sympathetically. As a friend would. I turned round, a little dazed, shaking my head as if to clear my brain from the dark thoughts that were dancing around inside it.

‘Who is she?’ asked Alison Chambers.

‘She’s my god-daughter,’ I said.

‘I didn’t know you had a god-daughter.’

‘I don’t. Not really. “Godfather” was kind of a nickname she had for me. I was an unofficial godparent – a guardian angel, she would call me. Teasing me.’ I shook my head again. ‘Some guardian angel.’

‘So who is she?’

‘Her name’s Chloe, Alison. Chloe Smith.’

‘Why did you never tell me?’

‘You remember my best man at the wedding?’

‘The wedding I wasn’t invited to!’ she said pointedly

I nodded, thinking back. It was a year before the Second Gulf War. May the twenty-first 2002. Richard Smith had just made captain and I was getting married. A double celebration.

I remembered looking over my shoulder at the people who had filled every seat in the room. Some more had had to stand at the back. Admittedly it wasn’t a large room. On one side, dotted among the civilians, a number of men and women in the full-dress rig of the RMP and on the other side of the divide, and likewise among the civilians there, the blue serge uniforms of the capital city’s finest.

There was a bit of a low murmur and I turned back to face the serious-looking minister who was giving me an unimpressed look.

‘And do you, Daniel Edward Carter, take Kirsty Fiona Webb to be your lawful wedded wife?’ he said.

I looked across at the woman standing next to me. Her jet-black hair cut in a bob that would have put Louise Brooks to shame. Her brilliant green eyes sparkling, her Cupid’s-bow lips painted a dark red, the 1920s gown she was wearing a miracle of lace and white satin hugging her toned body like a second skin. Cliche, I know, but she had never looked more beautiful to me. If I was Eric Clapton I could have written a song about it. But I wasn’t. I was Sergeant Dan Carter of the Royal Military Police and I was about to marry the girl of my dreams – Police Constable Kirsty Webb of the Metropolitan Police.

‘I do,’ I said and beamed at her.

It wasn’t, on reflection, the best of times for my mobile phone to ring. The shrill retro sound of an old telephone bouncing off the walls.

‘Sorry, I thought I’d turned it off,’ I mumbled as I fumbled the phone out of my pocket. But Kirsty was too quick for me and grabbed the phone out of my hand like a heron spearing a trout. She looked at the phone, turned it off, threw it to the side and slapped me hard across the face.

Behind me I could hear my best man fighting hard to suppress a laugh. But Kirsty fixed him with a basilisk stare and any thought of laughter disappeared like a candle flame snuffed out in a high wind. She turned back to her uncle, the minister.

‘Get on with it, then,’ she said.

The minister, Reverend Crake, cleared his throat and then smiled at her. ‘And do you. Kirsty Fiona Webb, take Daniel Edward Carter as your lawful wedded husband?’

She waited long enough to twist the hook and then nodded. ‘I do,’ she said.

It hadn’t been the best omen for our marriage.

I remembered Richard Smith’s amused, laughing eyes that day. And then I looked down at his daughter’s eyes nine years later. Closed now. Machinery keeping her alive.

I’d find the sons of bitches who’d done this to my beautiful god-daughter and make them pay, I swore to myself.

Or I’d die trying.

I folded my other hand over Alison’s and gave it a squeeze. ‘Kirsty didn’t want you there, you know that.’

‘Of course I knew that. I’d told her plenty of times that there was no reason to be jealous.’

I grimaced slightly. ‘Yeah. That probably didn’t help.’

‘I know.’

‘My best man at the wedding was Captain Smith. Her father.’ I nodded at Chloe. ‘The man who saved my life.’

‘The war,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

I had never spoken to Alison about the war. Never spoken to anyone about it. They tried to get me to have counselling. But Dan Carter is strictly old school.

As I said, I’d come home invalided out. Eventually I was out of the wheelchair. But I swapped my baton for a bottle and tried to chase the demons away with that. I wasn’t the first and I sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.