Private Games

Chapter 25

IN THE STUNNED silence that now briefly seized the fabled Lobby Bar, the shooter, an agile figure in black motorcycle leathers and visor helmet, spun away and jumped off the window ledge to flee.

‘Someone call an ambulance,’ Pope yelled. ‘He’s been shot!’

The bar erupted into pandemonium as Joe Mascolo vaulted over his prone client and bulled forward, ignoring the patrons screaming and diving for cover.

Knight was two feet behind the Private New York operator when Mascolo jumped over a glass cocktail table and up onto the back of a plush grey sofa set against the bar’s west wall. As Knight tried to climb up beside Mascolo, he saw to his surprise that the American was armed.

Gun laws in the UK were very strict. Knight had had to jump through two years of hoops in order to get his licence to carry a firearm.

Before he could think any more about it, Mascolo shot through the window. The gun sounded like a cannon in that marble and glass room. Real hysteria swept the bar now. Knight spotted the shooter in the middle of the cul-de-sac on Harding Street, face obscured but plainly a woman. At the sound of Mascolo’s shot she twisted, dropped and aimed in one motion, an ultra-professional.

She fired before Knight could and before Mascolo could get off another round. The bullet caught the Private New York agent through the throat, killing him instantly. Mascolo dropped back off the sofa and fell violently through the glass cocktail table.

The shooter was aiming at Knight now. He ducked, raised his pistol above the sill and pulled the trigger. He was about to rise when two more rounds shattered the window above him.

Glass rained down on Knight. He thought of his children and hesitated a moment before returning fire. Then he heard tyres squealing.

Knight rose up to see the shooter on a jet-black motorcycle, its rear tyre smoking and laying rubber in a power drift that shot her around the corner onto the Strand, heading west and disappearing before Knight could shoot.

He cursed, turned and looked in shock at Mascolo, for whom there was no hope. But he heard Pope cry: ‘Guilder’s alive, Knight! Where’s that ambulance?’

Knight jumped off the couch and ran back through the shouting and the gathering crowd towards the crumpled form of Richard Guilder. Pope was kneeling at his side amid a puddle of champagne and a mass of blood, ice and glass.

The financier was breathing in gasps and holding tight to his upper stomach while the blood on his shirt turned darker and spread.

For a moment, Knight had an unnerving moment of déjà vu, seeing blood spreading on a bed sheet. Then he shook off the vision and got down next to Pope.

‘They said there’s an ambulance on the way,’ the reporter said, her voice strained. ‘But I don’t know what to do. No one here does.’

Knight tore off his jacket, pushed aside Guilder’s hands and pressed the coat to his chest. Marshall’s partner peered at Knight as if he might be the last person he ever saw alive, and struggled to talk.

‘Take it easy, Mr Guilder,’ Knight said. ‘Help’s on the way.’

‘No,’ Guilder grunted softly. ‘Please, listen …’

Knight leaned close to the financier’s face and heard him whisper a secret hoarsely before paramedics burst into the Lobby Bar. But as Guilder finished his confession he just seemed to give out.

Blood trickled from his mouth, his eyes glazed, and he slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.