James Patterson - Private London

‘You threatening me, Tim?’ I asked.

‘I’m promising you.’

‘Because if you want Suzy here to…’

He shrank back into the sofa.

‘He didn’t want to wait to meet you, Dan. I had to persuade him.’

‘You didn’t have to break my nose.’

‘He took a swing.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s a girl to do?’

‘You want to tell us what you are doing here, Tim?’ I asked.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

I sighed. ‘See, this isn’t one of those good cop, bad cop situations. We’re both bad cops.’

‘Right,’ he snorted derisively. ‘You’re not even cops.’

I took three paces across the room and hit him. Hard. Backhanded my fist to the left side of his head. He flew off the sofa and landed on the floor, whimpering. Tears starting in his eyes.

I was glad. Truth was I was tempted to bust him on the nose again – finish the job that Suzy had started. But I needed to get some answers first.

‘Let me explain something to you, Mister Graham,’ I said, squatting down on my heels and speaking patiently. ‘Laura and Hannah drugged my god-daughter. She was clubbed with a baseball bat like a baby seal and was left to die in the gutter.’

I bent down, grabbed him with both hands, picked him up and threw him back onto the sofa.

‘Do I have your attention now?’ I asked.

Graham nodded, holding a hand to his nose which was running with blood and drool.

‘Because of them she is lying in intensive care, fighting for life.’ That last bit wasn’t strictly true any more but I had no intention of letting the maggot squirming on the sofa know that.

‘I had nothing to do with any of it.’

I turned to Suzy. ‘I’m going outside for a cigarette. Why don’t you see if you can loosen his memory some?’

I headed for the door. He wasn’t to know that I didn’t smoke.

‘Wait!’ He practically shouted it.

I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want Suzy putting the hard question to me, either. And I’m a professional tough guy.

‘She wasn’t supposed to get hurt.’

‘Who wasn’t?’

‘Chloe. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. Laura slipped something in her drink. It should have knocked her out of things for a while. Not enough to do any damage.’

‘Where did she get it?’

Graham shifted nervously on the sofa. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Where do you live?’

He shrugged. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Suzy, ask him again for me.’

‘Sure, boss.’ She stepped forward from the wall.

‘Okay, okay. Just keep that mad bitch away from me!’

I saw Suzy’s upper lip twitch a fraction and figured that young Tim would pay for that remark sooner or later.

‘I live across the hall,’ he said.

I hauled him upright. ‘Lead on, MacDuff.’

At the end of the corridor we entered a living room much like the one where we had just been. Only this one was littered with the kind of detritus you would expect from a bunch of male students.

Tim Graham was making a show of looking for the key to his bedroom door. Patting his pockets. I raised my right leg and kicked the door off its hinges.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Who are you people?’

I pushed him inside.

Suzy followed us in, wrinkling her nose. ‘For Christ’s sake, Tim, you ever think of opening a window sometimes?’ she said and crossed to do just that.

I was glad she did. If the outer room was a mess, this was a midden. I pushed the student onto his unmade bed and started going through his chest of drawers. Third drawer down I found what I was looking for.

‘Studying to be a pharmacist?’ I asked.

‘Media studies, actually,’ Tim Graham replied petulantly and Suzy slapped him around the head.

‘What was that for?’

‘If there’s one thing I hate more than students,’ she said, ‘it’s bloody media-studies students.’

I tipped the contents of the drawer over him. Folded packets of paper. Bags of dope. Lumps of resin. Bottles of pills. I guess Tim Graham was your go-to guy on campus for recreational chemicals.

‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with,’ he said angrily.

‘Are you threatening me again, Tim?’

‘It’s not me you have to worry about.’

I knew who he was talking about. I’d get to him later. I picked up a DVD that had landed on the floor and put it in my pocket.

‘You got no right to take anything.’

‘You want to wait here with him, Suzy, while I phone this through to the police?’ I said.

‘No. Don’t do this, man. We can work something out.’

Man? Was he living in the 1960s?

‘Start talking.’

‘It was all supposed to be a joke.’

‘Some joke.’

‘Well, not a joke. Payback for Hannah’s old man. She was always ragging on about him. We were just going to wind him up. You know?’

‘I haven’t got the faintest idea.’

‘Laura asked me to get some of the guys to help.’

‘And you just went along with it.’

‘Laura said she’d make it worth my while, you know what I mean.’

He gave me a conspiratorial nod. I felt like smashing my fist into his face.

‘So it was all supposed to be an elaborate joke. Hannah getting back at her father. What went wrong? How did my god-daughter end up in hospital?’

Graham stood up from the bed, holding his hands out apologetically. ‘Like I said, Chloe wasn’t supposed to be there. Laura brought someone along. A real heavy dude.’

I had a fair idea who the ‘dude’ was and I had a fair idea who had introduced him to Laura Skelton.

‘Collect that stuff up,’ I said to Suzy.

‘Hey, come on, man.’

‘That’s “Mister Carter” to you.’

‘I told you all I know.’ Graham looked over nervously at his stash. ‘I need to move that on.’

‘Not going to happen.’

Suzy upended a kitbag that was lying on the floor and then scooped the drugs into it.

‘I got to sell that to pay for it. You know how this works. They’ll kill me.’

‘Hopefully,’ I said.

‘Shit,’ Graham said. I thought he was going to start crying again.

‘Where’s Laura Skelton now?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know. Honestly. She hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Nobody knows where she is.’

‘Come on,’ I said to Suzy and walked to the door.

‘They’re going to hurt me bad,’ Graham called out to me.

‘Get used to it,’ said Suzy and kicked him full in the nuts.

He really shouldn’t have called her a bitch.

‘Where to now, then, Mister Carter?’ said Suzy with decidedly ironic deference.

‘What?’ she said then, puzzled by the look on my face.

‘I’ve been ten kinds of idiot, Suzy.’

I hurried down the corridor and back to the apartment that Chloe shared with Hannah and Laura. In Laura’s bedroom I picked up from the floor the bathrobe that she had been wearing earlier. It pretty much confirmed what I had suddenly realised. I sniffed it.

‘You going to tell me what this is all about, or am I just putting you down as another typical male pervert, Dan?’ said Suzy.

I tossed her the bathrobe ‘Do you smell that?’

‘Perfume?’

‘Chanel No. 5.’

Suzy held the robe closer and smelled again. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said.

I knew I was. I’d spent enough on the stuff for my ex-wife over the years.

‘I wouldn’t have put Hannah down for that,’ said Suzy.

‘She wasn’t wearing it,’ I replied. ‘Look at the collar.’

She looked at a faint red smudge. ‘Lipstick.’

‘Right.’

I knew exactly who wore Chanel No. 5, the colour of lipstick that could leave such a mark and who also insisted on calling me ‘Mister Carter’. I remembered the hand that she had stroked Hannah Shapiro’s cheek with. It hadn’t been a maternal gesture as I had imagined.