Private London

Chapter 60

Soho in the late evening is always a busy place.

Plenty of the pubs remained open and the many restaurants were still alive with chatter and laughter.

I walked along Shaftesbury Avenue, turning left into Dean Street. I had left Barbara some forty minutes ago after giving her as much reassurance as I could. But I was no medical man. Someone was going to pay for it, though, I had told her. Making it a mantra for myself. As if saying it a lot of times would make it so. Coming good on the promise might be a different matter, but I meant every word I said.

Jack Morgan was going to hold me to it, too. This was every bit as personal to him and it was killing him not to be over here working the case with me. But it wouldn’t help me, Hannah or Jack himself if he were arrested. A Supreme Court judge gets sent down for a crime she didn’t commit because Jack Morgan skips a subpoena and the consequences for Private in the States didn’t bear thinking about. So Jack was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so were we.

And time was running out.

I had assumed earlier that there was no connection to the States with Hannah’s kidnapping. That it was a local operation. Lightning striking twice and her captors lucking onto a jackpot.

But now I wasn’t so sure.

Brendan Ferres going into Chancellors. It was conceivable enough that he did have business there. His lot dealt in drugs. Students used drugs. This wasn’t news. But the black-suited man sitting at the table with Ferres and Allen was old school Mafia, I’d put money on it. The first time that Hannah Shapiro had been kidnapped it was by a couple of hoods recently fired from an East Coast outfit. Like I said, I don’t like coincidences. If this was all leading back to the States it put a whole new complexion on things. And it was a complexion I didn’t much care for.

I strolled past the French House and then the Pitcher and Piano and up to the front door leading into the building where my flat was.

I looked across at the Crown and Two Chairmen. A group of young men and women stumbled out. Drunk, happy, not a care in the world. I toyed with the idea of going in for a bottle of beer but shrugged the notion away. I had to be up early tomorrow, I had an exchange to make and I needed to have my wits about me. Too much was at stake.

I walked up the three flights of stairs and jiggled the keys into the lock of my front door.

As soon as I walked into the small hallway inside I knew that something was wrong.