James Patterson - Private London

‘And is he?’ DI James pulled out her notebook and flicked through a couple of pages.

‘He’s smart in some areas, dumb as a box of rocks in the ones that count.’

DI James stepped up to the safe and spun the dial clockwise and counterclockwise a number of times. She paused and tried the handle.

Nothing.

‘Try his number plate,’ Kirsty suggested.

DI James flicked through her notebook, spun the dial again a few times and turned the handle.

Open sesame.

Inside was the laptop that the optician had placed there earlier. DI James reached in took it out and put it on the desk. There was nothing else in the safe.

Kirsty eased the laptop open and pressed the power button.

The computer’s desktop display appeared. A coastal scene – somewhere near Dover, by the looks of it.

The desktop was remarkably uncluttered. Kirsty probably had fifty or sixty icons on her machine’s desktop.

She used the track pad below the keyboard and clicked on the Windows symbol. The system was a few years old and running Vista by the looks of it. Kirsty went to the start function and clicked on recent documents. It revealed a drop-down menu of about ten jpegs. Kirsty clicked on one and a picture filled the screen.

After a moment Kirsty swallowed dryly and nodded to her colleague.

‘Well, there’s your motive,’ she said.

The Sun was still high in the sky that Sunday.

But it was late afternoon, almost evening, now and a light wind had picked up. The caretaker was doing his final rounds in the cemetery and it would soon be time to lock up.

He looked across at a lone figure, the only visitor left in the park. Kneeling in front of a child’s plot that had a large white marble headstone. Disproportionately large compared with the tragic smallness of the plot. It was more than a headstone, it was a monument in the grand Victorian style.

Fresh flowers had been laid there every day for the last month. Some parents looked after their children in death better than others did in life, the caretaker thought to himself as he glanced at his watch. He’d give it five minutes and then he’d have to lock up. Sad world, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time, in which you have to lock a cemetery against the ravages of vandalism and mischief.

The inscription on the gravestone read: ‘In loving memory of Emily Jane Lloyd: she danced through our lives all too briefly, and now she dances with the angels. 14/2/2000 – 19/3/2009.’

There was a small lidded chalice at the front of the plot among the stone angels and the vases of flowers. The surgeon leaned forward and raised the lid.

If the caretaker had been able to see what was inside the chalice, he would have had far more troubling thoughts about the state of the world than those caused by mere vandalism that he’d had earlier.

The surgeon opened a small handkerchief and removed the object inside. A scarred, burned piece of flesh. A human finger. Or part of it. The surgeon put it in the pot among the others and closed the lid, replacing the container back with the other objects adorning the shrine to the dead girl.

The voice was a soft whisper, almost a chant. ‘Just one more to go, my darling.’

Hannah Shapiro was dressed now.

Tight jeans tucked into knee-length chocolate-brown boots, a sweater, her hair tied back, make-up on. The transformation was amazing.

She was rubbing her right wrist, still red from the rough abrasion of the rope she had been tied with. Attention to detail. You have to admire that.

‘We know it was a set-up, Hannah. Tell us now what we need to know and it’ll go easier for you.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve made a mistake, Mister Carter.’

Mister Carter. Just like the mechanical voice had called me on the telephone. It had been her all along, laughing at us. Laughing at me.

I remembered the younger Hannah once more, sitting next to me on the flight over, discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald and teasing me. I realised the past wasn’t just another country, as another novelist once said. You can travel to another country but the past is a whole different life.

‘Where have they taken your father, Hannah?’ I asked.

She shrugged.

I felt like taking two steps forward and backhanding her across the face. My god-daughter had been hospitalised because of her. She’d had us dancing around like puppets while she jerked the strings and it made me angrier than I had felt for a long, long time.

She must have seen something in my eyes because she stepped back a pace.

Her eyes flickered nervously. There was still something wrong with the picture. But I couldn’t work out what.

‘You can talk to us, Hannah…’ I said. Her eyes flicked to Del Rio who was leaning against the wall and saying nothing.

He’d told me earlier that it was my play. He’d follow my lead. I didn’t think we’d need the good cop, bad cop routine. We had her cold and she knew it. Just a matter of time.

‘Or we can take you down to Paddington Green and you can talk to the cops,’ I continued.

‘He deserved it!’ she spat out finally.

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Hannah shouted back at me, incredulous. ‘Why do you think, you dumb prick!’

Her West Coast accent had come back strongly now. ‘He refused to pay the ransom and my mother died. She died, Mister Carter! But not before I was made to watch her being raped. And then they shot her.’

She broke down in tears and I regretted the urge to slap her. I felt more like putting my arms around her. She was right in some ways. Maybe Harlan Shapiro did deserve a bit of payback. But not this.

‘My god-daughter nearly died,’ I said instead.

‘She wasn’t meant to get hurt. She wasn’t even meant to be there.’

‘Who were the others, Hannah? We know about Laura, but who were the others who were there?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to tell you. I don’t care what you do. He deserved this. So he’s had a fright? Look what I had to go through.’

‘If anything happens to him, Hannah, you will be in a whole world more trouble than you’re in already.’

‘Nothing is going to happen to him,’ she said. But her eyes were darting around again and she was rubbing her scraped arm, unaware that she was doing it.

Hannah didn’t believe herself, either.

And that worried the hell out of me.

Adrian Tuttle rewound the video clip again.

I got him to pause it and enhance the image. It was the first video they had sent and I had to admit that Hannah did a pretty good acting job. I got Adrian to split the screen and then played the second clip. I freeze-framed it. Zoomed in on her arm.

‘See that, Adrian?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. Like I said, he was good at spot-the-difference.

Wendy Lee was passing and leaned over. ‘Contusions on her arm in the second video. Not in the first.’

‘And what does that tell us?’

‘That she was faking being tied up the first time round and not the second.’

The memory of her rubbing her arm just a short while ago flicked into my mind. Her arm was definitely sore.

‘So what changed? What was it?’

‘Have you found the other girl yet?’

I shook my head. I had called Sam to meet me at the student accommodation block. Laura Skelton wasn’t there. Her wardrobe was empty, clothes hangers on the floor. Empty drawers left open. It looked as though she had packed a bag and left. Hurriedly. Sam was out trying to track her down. I didn’t hold out much hope.

I let the second tape play on.

Hannah looked at the camera, her voice trembling. ‘They want you to know,’ she said, ‘that this bomb I am wearing can be triggered remotely. Any attempt to do anything other than what you are instructed to do and it will be detonated. Likewise if you attempt to deliver fake diamonds. They will be examined and if they are not genuine the device will be detonated. If police are there again as they were this morning, the device will be detonated.’