Private London

Chapter 102

Some time later I came to and tried to move.

I couldn’t. My hands had been tied behind my back to a wooden chair. Suzy and Del Rio sat beside me, similarly trussed.

My head felt like I’d landed on it when I’d dropped from the helicopter. But I was alive and I was conscious. I guess my skull was a bit thicker than Chloe’s, which would be unusual. Female skulls are usually a little thicker than men’s. Maybe whoever had hit me hadn’t been as good as Chloe’s attacker.

We were in the lounge of a very expensively decorated house. There was colour everywhere. Golds and reds and greens. On the expensive rugs that dotted the floor, on the wallpaper that covered the walls, on the drapes that were curled back from the French windows that led out to an extensive lawn, and on the exquisitely upholstered furniture.

I lifted my head and looked across at Suzy and Del Rio, wincing as the pain nailed through the back of my head.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You were hit with a golf club.’

‘A driver,’ added Suzy. ‘Titleist, I think.’

‘And you guys?’

‘People stepped out with semi-automatic weapons. A few of them. We considered it politic to comply with their instructions.’

‘Hard to argue with an AK-47’

Del Rio nodded. ‘That is a fact.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Not formulated one as such.’

At that moment Harlan Shapiro walked into the room.