Authors: James Patterson

Hunted (13 page)

BOOK: Hunted

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‘Love you too.’

His call ended, Hill checked his emails and texts for the tenth time that hour. Entering his podcast app, he scrolled through a dozen shows on entrepreneurship and business management. Hitting refresh, Hill searched in vain for a new episode.

‘Bloody purgatory,’ he groaned under his breath. He reached for his briefcase and opened it, pulling a sheaf of bound papers from within.

These were Hill’s business plans, drawn up over the past two years, and he spent the next hour poring over them, even though every detail was ingrained in his memory. As a regular gym-goer, and former centre for the national police rugby team, Hill had been looking for a way to turn his passion for fitness into a career. Two years ago, he’d finally found it.

Hill wanted to create a national chain of gyms, but he also knew that 80 per cent of independent gyms failed in their first five years of business. Hill didn’t intend to become one of those failures. Instead, he would buy those that did fold, streamline them, and so grow his own chain of twenty-four-hour, low-cost fitness centres.

All he needed was money.

He had scrimped and saved what he could, but living in central London sapped even a detective inspector’s fifty thousand a year. Deb had insisted on the finest ring and wedding, and soon she’d want a family. Both in their mid-thirties, that day would have to come sooner rather than later, and with it the bills. Always the bloody bills.

So Hill had snatched at the opportunity for voluntary redundancy that the police budget cuts had mandated, and the package would almost give him enough money to buy the first of the failing gyms. It was a small step in what he saw as the beginning of an empire. Having studied the markets and gone over the figures until he saw them in his sleep, Hill was now desperate for the day of his redundancy and the beginning of his new life.

Until then he was bored. Frustrated and bored. So he went in search of something to occupy him.

He found it in the form of Detective Inspector David Morgan. The Welshman was a drinking partner of Hill’s after a long day or a trying case.

‘You look like someone pissed in your tea, Mo,’ Hill greeted his friend. ‘What’s up?’

Morgan was pulling his winter coat over his thick shoulders.

‘Got a right stinker of a job, mate. Just about to call it a day for the weekend, and they shaft me with a bloody robbery in Hatton Garden.’ Morgan sniffed, gesturing at the notes on his desk.

‘Diamonds?’ Hill asked with interest.

‘Take a look.’

Hill picked up the notes, flicking quickly through.

‘So this wasn’t called in by a jeweller’s, and none of them have reported anything stolen?’ Hill assessed, eyes narrowing.

‘That’s right. The robbery was a snatch and grab on the street. Except it was more like a Royal bloody Rumble than a snatch and grab, by the sounds of it. The witness’s details are in there.’

‘Who the hell does a street robbery in Hatton Garden?’ Hill posed, puzzled. The high-end area was awash with CCTV. ‘And the uniforms didn’t get there until everyone had vanished?’

‘Exactly. Hence why I’ll be in all bloody weekend. This one’s got organised crime written all over it. It should be the NCA’s case, but they won’t touch it unless there’s something tangible. So it looks like I won’t get to watch Wales smash the French.’

‘You go, mate. I’ll take the job,’ Hill said, shocking the Welshman.

‘Bollocks, man, it’s your last week.’

‘It’ll be my last week on the planet if I don’t find something to keep me busy. And this has got something to it, I can tell.’

Morgan was unconvinced, so Hill came clean.

‘You know what the last case I closed was, don’t you?’ he asked his friend.

Morgan knew. Everyone knew. It was one of those stories that circulated around the station like wildfire.

A young woman had been murdered. Hill had been close with the grieving family for weeks, and then had discovered that the blood was on the victim’s husband’s hands. Before the man could be brought into custody, he’d taken his own life. The reason was money – two lives cut short by bankruptcy.

‘I don’t want to look back on this job and remember that as my last case,’ Hill told him with honesty.

Trying to lighten the mood, Hill put out his hand.

‘And twenty quid says I’ll have it wrapped up by the time you get back from watching the French kick your Welsh arses.’

‘I suppose I could just sign it back from you next week,’ Morgan conceded. ‘And you can keep your twenty quid when you lose. Rugby’s priceless.’

‘Right then. You clear it with the guv and I’ll get on my way to Hatton Garden.’

‘Don’t be shopping for Deb while you’re on the clock, mind,’ the Welshman laughed.

‘Bit out of my price range,’ Hill replied, smiling to himself.

AS THE TUBE
rattled into King’s Cross Underground station, Scowcroft raised his gaze from the carriage floor and met the eyes of Barrett amongst the other passengers.

This was their fourth and final station on the Underground, the multiple legs taken as a way to lose tails. As part of their escape, the trio had changed clothing in an alleyway with garments pulled from their backpacks. There, Charlotte had done what she could to clean up Barrett’s battered face, but baby wipes and a baseball cap did little to hide the destruction of his nose.

‘It’s the London Underground,’ Barrett had comforted his accomplices. ‘No one points fingers or talks to strangers. I’ll be fine.’

Hoping that he was right, they had boarded the westbound train from Chancery Lane to Bond Street. There they’d changed trains and lines for Waterloo, doing the same again to Leicester Square and then taking the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross. Having emerged from the Underground, the thieves once again changed clothing in the mainline train station’s public toilets. In the privacy of the stalls, secondary bags were pulled from within the original backpacks, which were then stuffed inside their replacements. Barrett had suggested
that precaution, knowing that disposing of a bag in a train station was likely to raise an alarm in a city wary of terrorism.

Scowcroft stepped out onto the concourse and scanned the faces of those stood waiting for their trains. He saw nothing that raised his hackles. He looked over his shoulder, seeing Charlotte and Barrett in position behind him. He wasn’t worried if they should lose him in the crowd – they both knew the rendezvous point.

He kept his head down, fitting in amongst dozens of commuters and tourists and looking at the phone in his hand. The screen was locked, but it was the perfect excuse to keep his face from the cameras. Behind him, Charlotte and Barrett did the same.

Scowcroft took an escalator up to the champagne bar. He waited there patiently until his two accomplices appeared on his shoulder. The trio was now complete, and aside from Barrett’s nose, they resembled respectable tourists.

‘I’ve got a reservation,’ Scowcroft told the young hostess, who smiled at the handsome man in front of her as he gave a false name. ‘Ashcroft. Sorry I’m a bit late.’

‘That’s no problem, Mr Ashcroft,’ the hostess told him, pushing her hair back from her face. ‘If you’d like to follow, I’ll show you to your table.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied, wishing for a moment that he truly was an innocent tourist. His fantasy was cut short as he caught sight of the shock on the young woman’s face when she took in Barrett’s shattered nose.

‘He’s a cage fighter,’ Scowcroft shot in quickly. ‘We both are, except I’m a lot quicker than him.’

‘Not too quick, I hope,’ the hostess replied with a smile and swiftly left.

The table was at the English end of the champagne bar, and offered excellent views over the station below – if there was trouble, the thieves would see it coming. They all knew the location of the fire escapes, and their emergency rendezvous at St Pancras Gardens, but this was doing little to calm their fraying nerves as the adrenaline of that morning was being replaced by a bone-crushing weariness.

‘Be nice if we could remember why we’re here, instead of you trying to shag anything with a pulse,’ Charlotte scolded Scowcroft as they took their seats.

‘I know why I’m here,’ he shot back, his mood shifting from arousal to anger in a split second. ‘I’m here because Tony’s my brother. I wasn’t the one who tried to run out on him when he came back like he did.’

Charlotte’s first retort died as an angry choke on her lips. The second was stalled by Barrett’s intervention.

‘Easy now, Alex. We’re all here because we love Tony. Doesn’t matter if it’s by blood, marriage or mates. We’re all here for him.’

‘I’m not having her talk to me like that,’ the young man grumbled, showing the immaturity behind his confident facade. ‘You’re not my family,’ he told her, the words quiet but resonating.

‘I’m
his
family,’ Charlotte hissed. ‘I’m his family, in a way you can’t even imagine.’

‘We’ll see about that when he gets the full story,’ Scowcroft told her. ‘We’ll see who’s family when my brother wakes up.’