James Patterson - Private London

I slapped him on the shoulder instead and took the bottle of Corona the barmaid had brought across for me. It wasn’t the first time I had been in that particular pub.

‘How’s business?’ he asked.

I waggled my hand in a banking-aeroplane movement. ‘I’ve had better days,’ I said.

‘Why you contacted your old pal, I guess?’

I nodded in agreement. ‘Why I got in touch.’ I took a long pull on the Corona.

‘So… this is calling for something outside the legitimate range of your normal operations?’ He took a pull of his pint.

‘Again, your guess would be correct,’ I concurred.

‘What do you need?’

‘Same as last time.’

He smiled sardonically. ‘Nothing for Tonto?’

He was referring to Sam. They didn’t get on. ‘Sam doesn’t touch them – you know that.’

‘Yeah, I know that. Wuss.’

‘Say that to his face.’

Gary grinned. ‘I would if I could reach that high.’

I drained the Corona and he did likewise with two deep swallows of his ale.

‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff. It looks like pond water.’

He stood up and slapped my shoulder. ‘It’s the canonical ale, Dan. Puts lead in your pencil – and might in your mitre.’

We took Gary’s car. Nothing too flash on the outside: an oldish Mercedes saloon. A three-litre S320 about fourteen years old – you could probably pick one up for under a grand.

You wouldn’t get one like this, though. Gary had tweaked it a little. Putting the kind of muscle under the bonnet that can get you from nought to sixty in the time it takes a patrol cop to switch on his siren, and out of sight before he’s made it into third gear. It wasn’t registered to him and he never made the mistake of boy-racering it through town. Time would come when its secret powers would be needed and when that time came he would make a nice little earner out of it.

Gary always drew a line between business and pleasure. That was what marked the difference between the professionals and the amateurs in his game.

You could feel the sheer power of the engine, though, even as it purred in low gear through Marylebone High Street. But it was muscle of a very different kind that had brought me to see Gary Webster.

The killing kind.

Ten minutes later we were in a lock-up about a quarter of a mile from Gary Webster’s garage.

The place wasn’t registered in his name. Was registered, in fact, to a bogus person in a bogus company should anyone want to look too closely.

Gary pulled the door shut behind him and flicked on the overhead strip lights. In the centre of the room was an almost new Jaguar XK five-litre V8 convertible. About seventy-three grand and upwards the last time I looked at one in the windows of the showroom in Berkeley Street, Mayfair.

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there waiting to have its wheels balanced and a bit of detailing done.

Gary led me past the car to the back of the lock-up. An old-fashioned safe was to one side amidst a pile of used motor parts. He spun the dial and opened the safe, taking out a pump-action shotgun and a semi-automatic pistol that he handed to me. I slipped them into a holdall I had brought along for that purpose.

He reached in again and brought out a couple of boxes of ammunition, which I put in the bag as well. Then I pulled up one of the towels that I had put into the bag earlier to cover everything and zipped the bag closed.

‘Is it a good idea keeping stuff like this here, Gary?’ I asked.

‘The wife doesn’t like them at home.’

‘You’re not married.’

‘Anyway. They’re not here any more.’

‘Just a couple of days.’

‘You use them, you lose them.’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Yeah, well, a lot of things best said go unsaid.’

‘You turning philosophical on me?’

Gary gave me a quizzical look, building up to it. Anyone else it would have been no questions asked. But Gary Webster and I had been best friends at school and, even if we hadn’t seen a lot of each other over the years since, it was still a bond that would never be broken. We had both had to watch each other’s back too many times for that.

‘So…’ he said finally. ‘You going to tell me what the gig is?’

I looked him square in the eye. ‘What’s the word on the street with Brendan Ferres?’

Gary reacted. ‘Snake Ferres?’

‘Yup.’

He shook his head. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ he said finally.

I shook my own head.

‘Well, the word is he’s hung like a donkey and has a striking cobra tattooed on it.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the size of his Johnson, Gary.’

‘Yeah, well, it gives you an idea of his intelligence. His pain threshold too, come to think of it.’ He grimaced and then grinned. ‘He had the head of the snake tattooed on his bell end, for Christ’s sake!’

I didn’t grin back. ‘Ferres might be mixed up in a bit of business.’

‘And?’

‘A bit of business I’m going to sort.’

Gary looked at me to see if I was being serious. I was.

‘Have you completely lost the plot? He’s Ronnie Allen’s right-hand man.’

‘I know exactly who he is.’

‘You can’t go up against Allen, Dan. Not even you.’ He shook his head again. ‘Especially not you.’

‘Brendan Ferres has waltzed into this particular dance. I can’t walk away from it, Gary.’

‘Quite right. You shouldn’t walk. You should bloody run!’

‘A student was kidnapped last night. Chancellors University.’

Gary reacted, shaking his head. ‘That’s not Ronnie Allen’s style. Kidnapping. Never heard that.’

‘Maybe he’s branching out.’

‘Can’t see it.’

‘Brendan Ferres was seen going into the building earlier in the day. The building the students had just left before being assaulted, and one of them taken.’

‘Maybe it’s coincidence.’

‘I don’t believe in that kind of coincidence.’

‘They happen, Dan. And for the sake of your health I suggest you start believing in them.’

‘One of the girls was abducted. One of them was cut with a knife. And one of them had a baseball bat taken to the back of her head.’

‘Jesus. Even so, Dan. Let it go.’

I shook my head. ‘The girl someone took a baseball bat to was Chloe. It was Chloe Smith, Gary.’

He took it in for a heartbeat and then his jaw set. ‘You need backup?’

‘No. This is my shout.’

‘You’ll let me know?’

I nodded gratefully but I had no intention of involving him any more than I already had.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to go and ask him. Let him know if the girl is harmed in any way whatsoever… that there will be consequences.’

‘If he’s got her, that is. I can’t see that. Like I say, it’s not his style.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘If he’s got her.’

‘Brendan Ferres is a mountain gorilla in a suit. He doesn’t do anything unless Ronnie Allen tells him to.’

‘I know.’

‘And he’s engaged to his daughter.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, he is. And little Becky Allen is the apple of her father’s eye.’

He was being a little sarcastic. Rebecca Allen was thirty-two years old, five foot ten tall and built like Kirstie Alley at her curvy best. There was nothing little about her – including her sexual appetites if the rumours about her fiance were not exaggerated. And Gary was quite right – her father treated her like an absolute princess.

‘That I did know,’ I agreed.

‘So be careful. Could turn nasty. Face is everything to a man like Ferres.’

‘Still got to ask the question.’