James Patterson - Private London

Brendan Ferres turned round to see what she was smiling at and nearly spat out the beer he was drinking. He put his pint down and pulled out a gun. He was fast, I’ll give him that much.

‘Tell the prick to drop the piece, Carter,’ he said. ‘Or I’m going to put one in you.’

I flashed a quick smile back at him. ‘I don’t think so, Brendan. You and me, we’re going to have a little dance.’

‘The fuck you talking about?’

Ronnie Allen tapped Brendan on the shoulder. ‘Give me the gun, Brendan.’

Ferres looked at him puzzled for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Sure, boss. But shoot him in the gut – I’d like to see him wriggle a while before he dies.’

Ronnie Allen held the gun secure on the table. ‘I believe the gentleman asked you for a dance.’

Now Ferres looked really perplexed. ‘What’s going on, Ronnie?’

Rebecca Allen turned her gaze back on me. ‘Did you bring the item you mentioned on the phone?’ Her voice was low but sultry. She reminded me of the young Diana Dors. Marilyn Monroe on steroids, maybe.

I walked across to the table and tossed the DVD I had taken from the media student down in front of her.

The DVD was titled Snake Charmer and the cover featured a naked Brendan Ferres and Laura Skelton.

They were engaging in an act not taught on the media-studies course.

Ferres looked across at it, the colour draining from his face. ‘What the fuck is that?’

‘Your contact at Chancellors, Brendan. Laura and the media student. Little sideline for him. He likes to make films. Specialist nature. Mail order.’ I smiled at him again. ‘Sometimes people don’t even know they are being filmed.’

Ferres shook his head. ‘There’s been some kind of mistake,’ he said to Ronnie Allen. His tongue darting nervously to lick his suddenly dry lips.

‘You told me you had nothing to do with his god-daughter being hurt,’ said Ronnie Allen, his voice soft.

‘It was an accident.’

‘Yeah, her head got in the way, scumbag,’ I said. ‘And you were just practising for a try-out with the New York Yankees.’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Ferres turned to Ronnie Allen. ‘Why is this fuck even still here?’

‘Because I invited him,’ said Rebecca Allen. Her voice was warm, friendly, but her eyes had gone arctic cold.

‘That’s not me.’ Brendan gestured at the damning evidence.

‘You know anyone else who’s enough of a dipshit to get a tattoo of a snake doodled on his wing-wang?’ I asked.

Brendan Ferres looked at me. The colour had come back into his face now. He was flushed with it. A dark angry red.

‘Fuck this!’ he said and charged at me.

Like I said, he was quick.

I swung the baseball bat, but he got to me before I could finish the swing. Grabbing me in a bear hug and pushing me backwards to smash against the wall.

He locked his arms around me and I held back just as tightly. He was grunting with fury and I couldn’t shake him loose.

‘You sure you want to do this?’ Del Rio asked me, gesturing with his gun to let me know he could put an end to things.

I couldn’t speak. Damn it, I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. I shook my head and rammed my knee upwards into Ferres’s crotch. He moved sideways as I did, grunted but didn’t loosen his grip. I dipped my head and then butted upwards, catching him under the chin. His grip loosened. I stepped back and drove the end of the baseball bat hard into his solar plexus.

He doubled over, making a painful gurgling sound. I stepped back to take a breath or two into my own pained chest, then swung the baseball bat as hard as I could into his left knee.

Ferres crashed to the floor. His face purple now as he sucked in air, trying to hold his hands to his shattered knee as if he could piece the fractured pieces back together. He looked up at me, a squealing sound issuing from between his clenched teeth.

‘Why don’t you finish him?’

I turned round. Rebecca Allen was standing behind me, watching her fiance writhe on the floor in agony.

‘I’m done here,’ I said.

‘You don’t finish him, he’s going to come find you and kill you,’ said Del Rio.

He was right. I had killed before, God knew. I had killed that very night. Put a round of high-velocity ammunition into the forehead of a beautiful woman. There was nothing beautiful about Brendan Ferres. Nothing redeemable about him as a human being. The world would be a far better place without his breath in it. I pictured him swinging the same bat that I was now holding into Chloe’s head. And I pictured myself doing the same to his. Cracking it open like a coconut.

Instead I let my arm go limp, resting the head of the baseball bat on the floor.

I turned to Del Rio. ‘I’m done here,’ I said.

‘I’m not,’ said Rebecca Allen, and took the baseball bat from me.

I looked over at her father. ‘We good?’ I asked.

‘We’re good,’ he said.

I nodded to Del Rio who touched his fingers to his forehead, tipped them as a kind of salute to Rebecca, and then followed me out of the door.

The door closed mercifully before the screaming started up in earnest again.

I didn’t think we would be seeing Brendan Ferres any more. I didn’t think I’d lose much sleep over it, either.

An hour and half later I was having three broken ribs checked over in the hospital.

As the doctor stepped away Chloe came into the treatment room and into my arms.

If there were tears in my eyes it was probably because she hugged me a little too hard.

Morning. One week later.

Detective Inspector Kirsty Webb closed her car door behind her.

She ducked under the police-cordon tape that had once again been put up to keep the public away from the lock-up in King’s Cross. The same lock-up where the gruesome discovery had been made by the hapless Jason Kendrick just a week before.

Two lock-ups were open now. The one that Kirsty had already seen and the one beside it. The serious-crime squad had worked through the numerous files and boxes of paper that the deceased surgeon Alistair Lloyd had kept in his garage and had made a connection between him and Edward Morrison, the owner of the original lock-up.

Morrison had been part of the ring with the surgeon and a few others, it transpired. They were still compiling a list. Adriana Kisslinger only knew some of the contacts the surgeon had.

Kirsty nodded to Adrian Tuttle as he came out of the building, his camera bag slung over his shoulder.

The inside of the lock-up had been turned into a child’s bedroom. A young child’s, with a cartoon bedspread on the adult-sized bed, stuffed toys everywhere, including an enormous giant panda. There was a video camera mounted on a tripod facing the bed.

Doctor Wendy Lee was handing some paperwork to Kirsty’s boss, DSI Andrew Harrington, for him to sign. She nodded briefly to Kirsty as she passed, clearly in a hurry to get out of the place. Kirsty didn’t blame her. Just being there made her skin itch, made her want to turn around and stand in a hot shower for thirty minutes.

Instead, she reached into her pocket and drew out an envelope with her letter of resignation inside and looked across at her boss.

DSI Harrington was a slightly built man in his mid-forties. He was of average height with a sallow complexion and a receding hairline. His teeth were slightly nicotine-stained and his eyes could not hold her gaze for long. She had never liked the man.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t get the job, Kirsty,’ he said.

‘Most likely the better man did.’

‘You’re a field operative. It’s what you’re good at. Do you really see yourself behind a desk, juggling phones and computer files?’