James Patterson - Private London

‘Keep me posted. And tell her to dig into a meatball by the name of Ashleigh Roughton while she’s down there. Captain of the rugby team. Make him a priority.’

‘On it!’ She snatched up the phone.

Maybe we’d make a field agent out of her yet. I walked across the office to the water cooler, pulled a cup out of the dispenser and poured myself some.

Sipping on the water, I strolled over to Adrian Tuttle’s workstation. He had three computers on it, a big Apple cinema display screen and two laptops. The footage of Hannah bound and reading the message that her captors had given her was freeze-framed. Adrian looked up from the laptop he was working on as I approached.

‘You got any good news for me, Adrian?’ I asked.

He shook his head apologetically. ‘The email address is a hotmail account, as you know. Use it and lose it kind of thing.’

‘And the YouTube account?’

‘Linked to that address. I’m trying to get the computer signature but I’m not having any luck.’

‘YouTube won’t release it?’

‘Not short of a warrant. And the original film has been taken down.’

‘You can’t trace the ISP remotely?’

Adrian shook his head. ‘Sponge might have been able to but…’ He shrugged. ‘Outside of my pay grade.’

I nodded. Nothing I didn’t expect. ‘Keep on it.’

The phone rang. Lucy answered it and waved me across.

‘It’s them,’ she said.

‘Put it through to my office, Lucy, I’ll take it there.’

I gestured to Sam to follow me and headed into my office. As Sam closed the door behind me I hit my speakerphone button.

‘It’s Dan Carter. Talk to me.’

‘There’s a trade on the table if you’re interested.’

‘Of course we’re interested.’

‘Good. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Parliament Square. There is a statue of Sir Robert Peel on the south-west corner of it.’

‘I know it.’

‘Good again. Be there then. Be alone. And have one million pounds’ worth of cut diamonds with you.’

I looked at my watch. ‘That might be tricky to arrange in time.’

‘Your problem, not mine. And make sure they are perfect. No flaws. After all… neither of us want to be left with damaged goods when this trade is completed, do we?’

‘No,’ I said. Picturing Hannah Shapiro dressed in her underwear, terrified. I gripped the phone tighter.

‘Then we have an understanding?’

‘I’ll be there,’ I agreed.

‘Any…’ there was a slight hesitation ‘… woodentops, as you call them, show up… and it’s on your head, Mister Carter. Don’t let her down. She’s counting on you.’

‘I want to hear her voice.’

The line went dead.

I clicked on my computer screen and pulled up the incoming-call register. Nothing. I slammed the phone down. ‘Son of a bitch!’

‘At least we know something from that.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not an American outfit that’s taken her.’

‘How so?’

‘He said woodentops. Quite pointedly. Not likely an American would use the expression.’

‘Not impossible. They have English cop shows over there too, and he said as you call them. Meaning the British, as though he were foreign.’

‘It’s more a term used in the force than out. And it’s hardly a current one, is it?’

‘True.’

‘Could have been deliberate.’

‘I’m pretty sure everything he said was deliberate.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Get the diamonds. Make the trade.’

‘No cops.’

‘Absolutely no cops. We can handle this,’ I said with a degree of confidence that I certainly didn’t feel.

Professor Annabelle Weston looked at her watch and pushed aside a second-year student’s essay that she had been marking.

Jungian archetypes in contemporary graphic novels. She sighed dismissively and picked up the telephone, tapping in some numbers. After a while, the phone she was calling clicked into a recorded message – she waited for it to finish.

‘Laura, this is Professor Weston, just to remind you that you were due for a tutorial. I can understand if you’re not coming in but I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. Please give me a call.’

She hung up and twirled a perfectly manicured finger around a lock of her strawberry-blonde hair. She looked at the first paragraph of the essay again and put it to one side once more, unable to concentrate.

She snatched the phone up again, consulted a business card that was sitting on her desk and dialled another number. After a second or two it was answered.

‘Dan Carter.’

She smiled a little hesitantly. ‘Dan, it’s Professor Weston. Annabelle.’

‘Hi,’ he said and she could hear the warmth in his voice, picture the smile at the other end of the line. He had a nice smile. He was bright, too, she could tell that much.

‘I just wondered if there had been any developments your end? I have spoken to the police, of course, and all they can tell me is that they are pursuing all lines of enquiry. Which I take to mean that they have no idea.’

‘They’ll be doing all they can.’

‘I guess they are. I just feel so helpless. I feel like I should be doing something.’

‘I know it’s hard. But remember what the poet said. “They also serve who only stand and wait”.’

‘Shakespeare?’

‘John Milton. He was referring to his blindness. And even if it does feel like we are stumbling around in the dark, professor, we’re not. There is light ahead and we will guide Hannah home by it.’

‘You sound like something has happened.’

‘Just experience. Things happen for a reason. And when we understand why – then we can take steps to deal with them.’

‘And you are close to an understanding?’

‘I believe we are working towards that, yes.’

‘And you’ll let me know when you can?’

‘We will.’

‘Thanks, then.’

Annabelle Weston hung up, running her thumb and the first finger of her right hand around the wedding-ring finger of her left. There was still a faint white band from where her wedding ring had been removed some years earlier.

A slight smile tugged wistfully at the corners of her lips. I wonder what Dan Carter would be like in bed? she thought to herself.

Her smile faded as she picked the phone up for a third time and hit the speed-dial button.

‘Kht Mn Qlby…’ she said as the call was answered. ‘It’s me.’

Gary Webster had the word Mechanic written in the job section of his out-of-date passport.

He also had a medium-sized bodywork and repair shop in Marylebone not far from the thrust and bustle of the High Street that would stand testimony to the truth of it. Certainly as far as the taxman was concerned that was how he made his money. Crash repairs, bodywork, paint jobs, brake and wheel replacements.

In reality, though, he had a number of other profitable sidelines from which he derived his main income. None of them legal.

He was sitting in his local, The Prince Regent – what he called a proper Victorian boozer – on Marylebone High Street, drinking a pint of Abbot Ale when I walked in and went up to him. I sat on the stool next to his.

‘Dan,’ he said, gesturing to the barmaid, and holding out his hand for me to shake. I waved his hand away.

Gary Webster had a grip like a Russian arm-wrestler overloaded on steroids. He was a good three inches shorter than me and a good few inches off the chest too. I’m a forty-four long and he was about a thirty-eight, I reckoned. But his forearms were like legs of pork and I hadn’t shaken hands with him since he’d left the fifth form and gone to work with his dad. Not because I hadn’t seen him, but because I didn’t want my hand mangled.