James Patterson: Private London

I couldn’t be sure but I thought I detected an amused quirk in the set of her mouth as she asked the question.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take care of you.’

Part Two

Present day: London, England

London is the greatest city in the world and don’t let anyone tell you different.

It is in May, at least. When the sun is shining.

I was standing by the panoramic window of my office, looking out over New Oxford Street.

Private has grown into a worldwide private detective agency. We have offices in Los Angeles, New York, Rome, Dublin – and right here in London, of course. We are expanding all the time. We are the biggest and we are the best. Our clients range from rock legends and movie stars to government departments. From a wife suspicious of her philandering husband to the Metropolitan Police itself.

One of our biggest clients was the woman I was watching from my office window as she walked across the street.

Alison Chambers, chief ‘Rainmaker’ from the law firm occupying the four storeys below us – Chambers, Chambers and Mason – hips swaying as if she knew she was being watched. Of course she was being watched! Alison Chambers drew glances like a foxglove draws bees.

She pushed the button on her key to open the car locks and then held her right hand facing back above her head and extended her middle finger. I grinned. She was having dinner with me later. It was her idea of a joke. I liked that about her. Always the tease.

I looked over at the framed original film poster of Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep hanging on the wall by the window. As ever, Bogey seemed to be judging me. I couldn’t see Bacall ever flipping him the bird. The print was a gift from an ex-wife who, I guess, thought she was pretty funny. I’m a private detective, after all. But that’s where the similarity ends. The difference between Dan Carter and the man in the hat is that I just have my wits to live on. I’m an Englishman – we’re not licensed to carry a gun!

I had just finished a video conference with Jack Morgan. He was a material witness in a big case just coming to trial in Los Angeles. A Supreme Court judge charged with the murder of her lesbian lover. And so he would be off the radar for a while. The case was drawing more attention than the OJ Simpson trial, and, even if he could have done, Jack would never have walked away from the free publicity.

He couldn’t walk away, though. The judge was a friend of his, and the men in black suits had slapped a subpoena on Jack. Putting him in a hotel with a couple of FBI agents babysitting him. Monday morning he’d be in court or he’d be in jail for contempt of it.

But Private London had nothing that needed his attention. We’d had a good month, settled a couple of long-running corporate cases and had plenty more business lined up on the books. Nothing that needed drastic action. For once – once in a blue moon – Dan Carter had a work-free weekend lined up. And I intended to make the most of it.

That guy leaning out from the prow of the Titanic probably felt just the same kind of optimism I was feeling. I’d never seen the film but I’m guessing it didn’t work out too well for him, either.

The phone on my desk rang. I picked it up.

‘Dan, it’s Wendy Lee. I’ve got a problem.’

Chancellors University London

A half-mile across London from the offices of Private, heading south and east. A barman in his late twenties called Ryan pushed a tray of shot glasses filled with tequila towards a red-faced pair of students.

They carried them to a nearby table and handed them round to a group of equally flushed young men. They were all wearing the university rugby colours and were chasing pints with slammers. One of them dropped his glass into his pint of lager and shouted: ‘Depth charge!’

Contempt was too mild a word for what the barman thought of them. He was a postgraduate student who had worked two jobs while getting his first degree and was still left with a mountain of debt. This lot of braying jackasses wouldn’t know a day’s work, or debt, if it bit them on their privileged arses. He looked across at a pretty dark-haired woman who was standing further along the bar. Sometimes he hated his job. Sometimes he liked it.

Chloe Wilson didn’t even notice the barman looking at her. She was feeling hot.

And not in a sexy manner, but in a sweaty, giddy kind of way. The three of them had come out all heels, squeals and ready to partay! At least, that had been the plan. Her two friends, Laura Skelton and Hannah Durrant, had been knocking back the vodka and Red Bulls since six o’clock like they were going out of fashion. And why not? They were all twenty-something-year-old students in the heart of the fine city of London on a Friday evening in spring – what the hell else were they supposed to be doing? But Chloe had held back on the booze. She had to. Someone had to keep a clear head. London could be a dangerous place, after all. Even on campus.

Chancellors University London, also known as CUL or Chancellors, was spread throughout the capital – as were most London-based colleges. But CUL dated way back to the sixteenth century. It had been founded by Henry VIII’s Chancellor – Cardinal Wolsey. It had a central block or two of ancient residential buildings and lecture halls in a warren of inner connecting squares and passages. In the sixteenth century it had been a theological school set to rival Magdalen College at Oxford University.

Nowadays it had a more secular curriculum. After the Reformation the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin had been one of the first to go under the sledgehammer. All trappings of Catholic worship stripped out. Now it was simply the Chapel Bar. It was at the northern end of Chancery Square beneath the main rectory and was a stone-flagged cellar that on this evening was packed wall to wall with animated young adults.

Like the three beautiful young women near the busy bar – making hay while the May sun shone bright.

Ryan stepped over to ask if they needed any more drinks. The dark-haired woman he had been watching earlier shook her head. But her friends drained their glasses and held them out for a refill. Not so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’.

Some of them were coming to the end of their time at college, Ryan knew. Some of them were coming towards the end of their first year. All of them with a bright future ahead. Their confidence was evident in their loud voices, their designer wear and perfect teeth. The privilege that they had inherited would be passed on through generations to come, as it always had been.

Some of them, though, had no future.

They just didn’t know it yet.

Adrian Tuttle, A tall, gangly, floppy-haired man in his late twenties, pushed the passenger door of my car shut with a bit more force than he probably intended.

It slammed closed. The sound of it echoed all along the street.

‘All right, Adrian,’ I said. ‘Take it easy. You sign on for Private, you’re on call twenty-four seven. Love life always takes second billing. It’s in your contract.’

‘What love life?’

I looked at my watch. Adrian had had to cancel a date when the call from the Met had come in, but I had no intention of missing mine.

Adrian was Private’s forensic photographer. He had his own company car waiting for him but had failed his driving test six times. His luck with the ladies was equally as spectacular. Wendy Lee, his line boss, a five-foot bundle of Chinese energy and an ex-Forensic Science Service pathologist, had called in from Holborn. Her car had broken down so I’d agreed to drive Adrian to the crime scene and meet there. I didn’t fancy his chances taking a taxi through London traffic on a Friday night. Official business meant I could put the detachable blue light on the roof of my BMW 4x4, blast the siren and cut through the commuters like a hot knife through butter.