James Patterson - Private London

Doctor Walsh walked over to her instrument tray. ‘One of these,’ she said – and picked up a scalpel.

Kirsty shuddered as the doctor replaced the instrument.

‘How long ago?’ she asked.

‘I’ll know more when we have done the proper post-mortem.’

‘And the scratch?’

‘Most likely from an operation.’

Kirsty Webb nodded. It confirmed her worst fears. ‘And how long ago would that have taken place?’

‘Probably a number of days. Maybe up to a week. But no longer.’

‘Somebody killed her and then removed her organs.’

The doctor put the scalpel back on the tray and put a mask over her mouth. Then she turned back to the DI. ‘Let’s hope he killed her first!’ she said before picking up the hand-held, powered circular saw.

Jack Morgan had received a textmail from whoever had taken Hannah Shapiro.

It had been sent from an untraceable phone and it was flagging up as an overseas call. It said simply that an email would be sent to the London offices shortly and a phone call would follow this afternoon.

Ten minutes after the call from Jack and we were sitting back in the conference room.

An hour later and the screen at the end of the table beeped again. We’d already had five false alarms. The screen was set to computer mode, the bottom quarter of it a large monitor now. I used the hand-held gizmo to move the mouse over incoming mail and clicked on the new message.

The sender’s address was a series of capital letters and numbers: KJP9OU56KL@hotmail. com. The subject line read DAMAGED GOODS.

With a sense of dread I moved the cursor and clicked to open the mail. It revealed a hyperlink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=118ecF3VzMM.

I puffed out a sigh and clicked on the link. It led to a YouTube video. Darkness for a number of seconds. A faint, whimpering, mewing sound in the background.

Not good.

A bright light came on. Throwing a spotlight on Hannah Shapiro sitting against a plain wall, a window beside her with its slatted blinds closed. The darkness surrounding the pool of light on Hannah indicating that the time was late night.

Hannah was dressed only in her underwear: black silk matching bra and boxer-style briefs. Some rope was hanging from her left wrist. A ball gag lying on the floor.

Her hair was tangled, her face was distraught, deathly pale. Make-up running around her tear-stained reddened eyes like one of those Japanese Noh dancers caught in a rain shower. She had a piece of paper in her hand. She looked up at the camera, heartbreaking desperation in her eyes.

‘Please do what they say,’ Hannah said. ‘They will hurt me. They have made that very clear. Hurt me in terrible ways. Do not contact the police. Do not attempt to find me. They will be in touch with instructions in due course. Do not contact the police.’

The light went off. It was dark for a few seconds and then came the sound of Hannah crying before it was suddenly muffled.

I played the clip back again: there was an option to play it at HD, which I clicked on, but the quality wasn’t greatly improved.

I turned to Adrian Tuttle, our only remaining computer expert now that Sponge had gone back to Russia. ‘Adrian, get out there and see if you can track the traffic line on this. And burn the footage from YouTube. I want to put it in our system. See what we can do with it.’

‘Boss.’

He hurried his gangling frame out of the conference room, back to his workstation. A real-life Ichabod Crane. I would have smiled at the thought but seeing Hannah Shapiro humiliated, trussed up and scared for her life had left me too furious for levity.

I used the remote to click back to our email in-box. Nothing there.

I’d promised I’d take care of Hannah. Doing a fine job of it so far, I thought sourly. I slammed my hand down on the conference table in frustration and looked around at my colleagues. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I’d say the ball is in play now. That’s something,’ said Sam.

I nodded. Hannah was unhurt thus far. That was important – our job was to make it stay that way. And Sam was right: the ball was in play. We had something to focus on now. They had made contact: that was far better than the alternative.

We watched the tape through a couple more times, blowing it up to full-screen. Learned nothing more.

‘So, we sit and wait?’ Suzy asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We need to get down to the college, look into those rugby players. This barman. We need to keep moving, guys.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ she replied.

I nodded. ‘Take Lucy with you, Suzy. Get down to the bar. You might find out something that the police haven’t picked up on.’

‘You got it.’

‘But be careful, okay?’

‘Boss.’

She stood up and left and I turned to Sam. ‘Why don’t you and I go and have a word with Brendan Ferres and his puppet master?’

‘That wise? Before we know what the deal is?’

‘Probably not. But we’re going to do it anyway. Let’s kick the apple tree a little, see what drops,’ I said.

Then all hell broke loose.

The door flew open and a flustered Lucy hurried in.

‘Sorry, sir, there was nothing I could do,’ she said.

Following in behind her was my ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb of the Metropolitan Police, and several of her colleagues in smartly pressed blue uniforms.

‘Dan Carter,’ she began ominously. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of interfering with the course of justice.’

‘You are shitting me,’ I replied.

She gave me a pointed look of the kind that I remembered only too well. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Kirsty waited for me to come back with a smart remark. I didn’t give her the satisfaction.

She nodded to one of the burly uniformed officers. ‘Cuff him, George.’

I held my hands out and smiled sweetly at her as the cop slapped the cuffs on my wrists.

‘What did I do? I forget it was our anniversary?’

I couldn’t help myself.

‘Take him down the nick,’ she said tersely to George. ‘Make sure he doesn’t fall down too many stairs.’

Half an hour later I was in a holding cell.

It was painted a sickly pale lime green. An inset concrete bed with a thin pallet on it. No windows. I had checked the door – it was locked.

Kirsty hadn’t said a single word to me on the journey over. It would have been hard to – she’d been travelling in a separate car. I had been bundled unceremoniously into the back seat of a modified Range Rover with caged partitions. It felt like I’d been picked up by the police dog-handling unit. Maybe I had been.

I’d taken my jacket and shirt off. Kept my white cotton T-shirt on to spare the blushes of any visitors, and was doing press-ups. I had done about a hundred and twenty when I heard the viewing hatch slide open and a voice announce, ‘You got a visitor, Carter.’

I got a faint hint of perfume, something floral and musky, and considered moving on to finger-and-thumb press-ups, but thought better of the idea.

Was I any fitter now than I’d been before an Iraqi roadside bomb and a couple of well-aimed insurgent bullets had seen me hospitalised for two months all those years ago? The truth was that I probably was.

I didn’t take my immortality for granted any more, that was for damn sure. And I kept my body in as fit a condition as I could manage. Doing press-ups in the cell gave me something to do other than think of Hannah and Chloe. Didn’t work, but when you get dealt a crap hand you’ve got to play it the best you can.