Jack Morgan 02 - Private London (8 page)

But at half-six in the morning the pubs are closed tighter than a drum. The little Italian café round the corner was open early, though. I bought an espresso to go, which I sipped as I walked across town to the office.

I was short of the recommended eight hours of shut-eye – by about seven hours, I reckoned – and the sharp, bitter jolt of the caffeine was kicking in fine. Normally, before going into work, I’d have gone to the gym I used just off Piccadilly Circus near the Café Royal. But Chloe was still unconscious in intensive care, Hannah Shapiro was still missing and we still didn’t have a clue why she had been taken.

Jack Morgan had been straight in touch with Hannah’s father, Harlan Shapiro, who was getting on this evening’s flight to London.

Her abductors had made no contact. We didn’t know if Hannah’s cover had been blown or if a ransom demand was imminent. Given what Kirsty had told me last evening I very much hoped that was the case. If she hadn’t been taken for money … I shook the thought away, dropped my empty espresso cup in a litter bin outside a newsagent’s and picked up my pace. The clock was ticking and we didn’t have a minute to waste.

Ten minutes later I sprinted up the stairs to my office. I never take the elevator if I can help it. I don’t like elevators.

Lucy, my PA, flashed her cut-glass smile as me as I punched in the security code and stepped through to the open-plan reception office. She was blonde, beautiful and had a top-drawer accent to go with the smile.

‘Morning, Lucy. Everyone in yet?’

She shook her head. ‘Dr Lee is on her way in but Sponge won’t be coming in today. The rest are in the conference room.’

‘What do you mean, he won’t be coming in?’ If my tone was a tad sharp I didn’t apologise for it

‘It’s his mother.’

Vladimir Kopchek, or ‘Sponge’ as he was known because of his ability to soak up every bit of information and retain it, was our computer and technical support expert. He defected to the west before glasnost. He’s in his fifties now and has a mind sharper than an ex-wife’s tongue. His mother back in Russia had fallen ill and he was awaiting the results of tests. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘They don’t give her very long. Maybe three months. He’s booked himself on the first flight over.’

I nodded, resigned. I couldn’t blame the guy, but he was going to be hard to replace.

Wendy Lee came through the door, carrying a paper sack. ‘I got you coffee,’ she said.

We walked into the conference room. About twenty foot by eighteen. A long walnut table running to the wall opposite the door. Flush with the end of the table and rising up the wall some ten foot by eight was a state-of-the-art LED television screen. Fractions of an inch thick.

When it was switched to video-conference mode it connected to Private’s other offices around the world. So that the table seemed to carry on beyond the screen into an identical office. Except in that office it would be Jack Morgan’s team sitting around the table in his octagonal war room, or the crew of our outfits in Rome – or Paris or New York.

Today, though, it was just my team who were there for the briefing.

Chapter 30

AROUND THE TABLE were Adrian Tuttle, Wendy Lee, Suzy Malone, Brad Dexter and Sam Riddel.

Sam is my number two at the agency. He was wearing a coal-black three-piece suit and a dark blue tie. He’s a six foot four ex-copper and ex-boxer, and he’s black. He’d never killed a man in the ring, but I wasn’t so sure about out of it. He grew up on one of the worst estates in South London. Two of his brothers were killed before he was ten years old. Killed in the drug-turf wars that were still a feature of everyday life in that part of London. The fact that Sam had survived it, had never turned to the dark side as it were, meant he could pretty much survive anything in my book.

Suzy was in her early thirties. Ex-Metropolitan Police. Five foot six, auburn hair, fifth-degree black-sash Wing Chun kung fu, Third Dan kick-boxing, a marksman, a loyal friend, a deadly enemy, openly bisexual and one of my favourite people in the whole world. The Met Police’s loss was decidedly our gain. Likewise Brad Dexter. Early fifties, built like an American-style fridge, he had taken early retirement from the close-protection unit of the Met. He now headed up our personal-security division.

‘Okay, guys,’ I said as I picked up a small white remote-control unit from the desk. ‘Everything else is off the agenda. What I am going to tell you about now needs our total focus. Jack Morgan would be flying over himself to head this up, but he can’t. He’s subpoenaed to appear in federal court and can’t leave the country.’

‘What’s going on, Dan?’ asked Wendy Lee.

I pointed the remote control at the TV and clicked the on button. I would say it was state-of-the-art Apple and Sony TV technology – but it wasn’t, Apple wouldn’t be bringing their version out for a year or so.

As it was, I wasn’t using the sophisticated conference facility – I was just using it for a slide show.

First up was a recent picture of Hannah Shapiro. I couldn’t believe it was the same nervous girl I had brought over from America less than eighteen months ago. Chloe had told me that Hannah had come out of herself a lot, becoming more confident and outgoing. But the transformation was incredible, even so.

Hannah looked bold, comfortable and gorgeous. Her hair now full and wavy, a tumble of deep brunette curls. Her eyes bright, a killer smile. Her figure was more shapely, filled out – she had become a woman. A very sexy one at that.

I felt guilty thinking it. Remembering the small nervous hand holding mine on that bumpy flight. She was like a completely different person.

‘Hannah Shapiro,’ I said. ‘Registered at Chancellors University under the name “Hannah Durrant”.’

‘Why the name change?’ asked Lucy.

‘Her father is Harlan Shapiro. A very wealthy West Coast industrialist. Electronic systems. Communications.’

‘And …?’ Wendy Lee asked.

I took a sip of my coffee, remembering what Jack had told me the night before. Hannah’s mother hadn’t died of cancer like she had told me on the flight. She had died in circumstances almost too horrific to take in.

‘A good few years ago,’ I replied, ‘on Hannah’s twelfth birthday, she and her mother were kidnapped. A ransom was demanded. A ransom that her father didn’t pay.’

‘What happened?’ Lucy again. Sam wasn’t saying anything – I’d briefed him last night. He knew who Chloe was, too – and what she meant to me.

‘The people who took them, Vincent Cabrello and John Santini, were a couple of low-life hoodlums who had fallen foul of some connected people in New York State. They hightailed it over to the West Coast to lie low, enjoy some sunshine and make what they figured would be some easy pickings.’

‘And they picked on Hannah Shapiro and her mother?’ Suzy asked.

I nodded. ‘The kidnapping wasn’t planned. Hannah and her mother weren’t specifically targeted.’

‘Opportunistic?’

‘Seems that way. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cabrello and Santini, pumped up on speed and bourbon, waited in their van in an underground car park. They just planned to take the first likely candidate they saw. They figured that anybody shopping in this particular mall would have serious money, and they were right …’

I pointed at the picture of Hannah. ‘They hit the jackpot with Hannah and Jessica Shapiro. Only trouble was, they were bringing another lightning storm down on their heads at the same time. And this one they wouldn’t be able to run away from.’

‘Jack Morgan,’ Sam grunted.

Chapter 31

I NODDED.

‘Jessica Shapiro told her captors exactly who she and Hannah were, what they were worth and said she was a hundred per cent certain that her husband would pay the ransom.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Wendy Lee said.

‘No. John Santini contacted Harlan Shapiro and gave him a couple of days to come up with the money. No police or all bets were off and then he would be collecting his wife and daughter in plastic bags. Given their history as enforcers for East Coast organised crime it was no idle threat. Not that Harlan Shapiro knew that, of course. He is a man used to getting his own way.’

I took a sip of my coffee. ‘Harlan Shapiro decided to make a stand. Like his government he was going to stand firm in the face of terrorism, as he saw it. He needed a private detective agency known for getting the job done. One that would not hesitate if lethal force was required. One that wouldn’t be hamstrung with legal bureaucracy and Miranda rights, etc.,
etc.
One that would get his wife and daughter back safe. He never believed that if he paid the money the kidnappers would make good on their promise. Most likely he was right.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Sam agreed.

‘Yeah, so he went to a private-investigation outfit he had used a few times before. Run by a guy called Prentiss who assigned Jack Morgan to the case.

‘Right off the bat Jack advised Harlan Shapiro to pay the ransom. From what he had heard of the operation he deduced they were dealing with a couple of chancers whose ambitions far outstretched their likely experience. Pay the ransom and he could practically guarantee they would trace the kidnappers down, recover the money and deliver them to justice.’

‘But Shapiro didn’t listen to him?’ asked Suzy.

I shook my head. ‘No. He didn’t.’

‘Jack obviously managed to get them back, though?’ asked Lucy puzzled.

‘Not entirely. He saved Hannah. But not before she was forced to watch her mother being raped by Vincent Cabrello and murdered by John Santini.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘You’ve got to remember that Jack didn’t have the resources of Private behind him at the time, Lucy. When he got there he was too late for Jessica but at least he saved Hannah.’

‘What happened to the kidnappers?’

I smiled bleakly. ‘Let’s just say they didn’t make it to trial.’

‘You reckon the two cases are connected?’ asked Brad Dexter.

Chapter 32

I SHOOK MY HEAD.

‘I can’t see how. Cabrello and Santini were operating independently. Their ties to the East Coast were cut. This was their cock-up, pure and simple. So whoever has her now has nothing to do with that first abduction. That’s the one thing we can be a hundred per cent sure of.’

‘Still no ransom demands?’ asked Sam.

‘Not so far.’

Adrian held up his hand.

‘You don’t have to put your hand up, Adrian.’ I gestured at him to spit out his thoughts.

‘Maybe it isn’t a kidnapping as such.’

‘Go on?’ I prompted.

I knew where he was going with this and I didn’t like it one bit.

‘Maybe it’s not a kidnap for ransom as such, like the last time was. The murder scene I was called out to last night. A young woman … she maybe had organs harvested from her.’

‘Maybe?’

‘We’re waiting on the post-mortem,’ added Wendy Lee.

‘The tip of her wedding finger was missing,’ added Adrian Tuttle.

‘And this relates to Hannah Shapiro how?’ asked Sam.

‘Because it’s not the first time, Sam,’ I said. Facing the fact that it might already be far too late for Hannah.

Wendy Lee nodded and put it out there. ‘It looks like there’s a serial killer,’ she said. ‘In the city. Targeting healthy young women.’

‘Women like Hannah,’ said Adrian Tuttle, looking at the picture of the beautiful young American woman that filled the video screen.

Chapter 33

PROFESSOR ANNABELLE WESTON was older than Hannah but every bit as striking.

I’d have placed her in her mid-thirties if I’d had to guess. Five seven or eight, give or take the heels on a pair of court shoes. Long strawberry-blonde hair, lively, almost turquoise eyes. A light splash of freckles across her shoulders but her face was alabaster-clear with high cheekbones. Her teeth wouldn’t have looked out of place in a San Diego beauty pageant – and she certainly wasn’t dressed like any professor from my day!

She was wearing skintight jeans, cowboy boots and a pastel-blue cashmere sweater that did nothing to distract from her womanly figure.

Her hair was tied back in a loose kind of scarf, and she had a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose, just the way Alison wore them. These were tortoiseshell, giving her an academic look, which I guess she was entitled to. The eyes behind the lenses of those glasses were deadly serious.

‘You’re not working with the police on this, then?’ she asked.

Her voice was as English as her strawberries-and-cream complexion. Home counties. Money. Pound to a penny she had polo ponies featuring somewhere in her childhood.

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said leaning forward and handing her my card. ‘We often work with the police in an official capacity, but in this instance we are pursuing a separate investigation.’

‘I don’t understand. We have had the proper authorities talking to everyone here already. What is your interest, specifically?’

She glanced at my business card, then looked at me challengingly. There was steel behind the beauty. I wouldn’t fancy my chances if I was one of her students trying to bluff my way to an extension on an overdue assignment.

‘We’re representing Hannah’s family,’ said Sam Riddel who was sitting beside me.

‘And we have a personal interest too,’ I added.

‘And what would that be?’

‘You were Hannah’s tutor, is that right?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I was.’ She caught herself. ‘That is to say, I am her tutor.’

‘And likewise Chloe Wilson’s?’

‘Yes. Both of them.’

‘Chloe Wilson is my god-daughter, Professor Weston.’

‘Oh …’

She reacted, taking it in, and the hardness in her eyes softened to genuine concern. ‘How is she? Has she regained consciousness?’

‘She’s stable but still critical. They are keeping an eye on her round the clock.’

‘If there’s anything I can do …?’

‘That’s why we’re here, professor. Whoever did this isn’t going to get away with it. I can promise you that, and I can promise we will find Hannah and bring her home unharmed.’