Jack Morgan 02 - Private London (18 page)

We could have done what Sam wanted and informed the authorities. But that would have resulted in the entire Tube network being closed down and we would have had no way of protecting Hannah Shapiro.

I didn’t believe they would set the bomb off – if, indeed, it was live. But I could understand the logic of it. They had to make sure the merchandise we were using for the exchange was the genuine article. Hannah was their security. If they handed her over before they could check, they had no way of knowing whether the ransom paid was genuine.

This way they did. It would take time to disarm the explosives strapped around Hannah. Through my work with the RMP I knew a thing or two about bombs. None of it good. But in the RMP we didn’t disarm them, we simply marked and secured them for the experts to get in. And we didn’t stay too close when they did!

Sam and Del Rio were now waiting at Baker Street. We had received a further email saying that if everything was as it should be then Hannah and her father would disembark there. The journey from Finchley Road gave the kidnappers time for their expert to get his loupe out, I guess, and examine the stones. They would find them genuine. Not easy to get five million pounds’ worth of gems on a Sunday afternoon. But, like I said, Private has resources and reach.

Del Rio had also talked to Jack Morgan who had spoken to a high-ranking member of the Noccia family on the West Coast.

The word had come back that the Italian-American we had seen with Ronnie Allen, Sally Manzino, was a made man, and highly placed in the family’s operation. He had nothing to do with Hannah’s kidnapping and we could take that as cast-iron. Jack Morgan had some kind of deal with the Noccia family, I don’t know what. Apparently he had helped them out over some turf war of their own a year or two back so there was some kind of mutual back-scratching.

Either way, Manzino was out of the frame. This was looking like a totally home-grown operation.

I looked at my watch again. Three minutes to go. Harlan Shapiro turned to me. His eyes were sunken, haunted.

‘My daughter is very precious to me, Mister Carter,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘I made a very grave error of judgement some years ago, and Hannah had to pay a terrible price.’

I nodded. He was right.

‘My wife, of course, paid the ultimate price. And if I could change events in time I would gladly have taken her place. Do you understand me?’

‘I do, sir,’ I said. And I did.

‘These animals who have taken my daughter. If anything goes wrong on this train journey … I want you to track them down and slaughter them.’

He looked at me, his eyes animated now. ‘Will you do that?’

‘You have my word: we won’t let this lie, Mister Shapiro. But these people are businessmen. They have a perverse logic to what they are doing. The logic means that they will keep you alive, Mister Shapiro. You and your daughter.’

‘They are terrorists, Mister Carter. I don’t believe logic is the driving force here.’

‘They are acting like terrorists but they’re not the same thing. If they detonate any explosive device on a London Underground train they will have the full and focused attention of the national police forces bearing down on them. Together with the Home Office, the anti-terrorism squad and your own Homeland Security department. They don’t want that. Believe me.’

He nodded. His eyes weak, unfocused. ‘I guess we have to believe that.’

Chapter 70

THE OVERHEAD MONITOR showed that the train would be arriving in one minute.

As I looked up at it a train clattered into the platform. Jubilee Line. False alarm.

It was very warm. One of those days you get in May which are like a glorious early summer and I was wearing polarised aviator sunglasses against the brightness of the sun.

Finchley Road is an open-air station. From there to all destinations west, the Tube is actually overground. It is at Finchley Road station heading east that the Metropolitan Line enters the tunnel network. The underground labyrinth connecting all parts of London. The Jubilee Line train left. Thirty seconds later the Metropolitan Line train came in.

It was crowded, particularly for a Sunday. But there was a big concert on later at the O2 Arena, the re-formed Take That were headlining and thousands of people were heading east for it.

Harlan Shapiro and I stood up as the train pulled to a stop, and headed to the door which opened opposite the seat we had been told to wait at.

Harlan Shapiro stepped aboard.

I scanned the carriages and what faces I could see I didn’t recognise. The doors closed and the train began to pull out.

I let the carriage go, then jogged alongside the train and leapt in between two of the carriages where there was a small gap for the guard to walk through.

The train picked up speed and as it went into the tunnel the lights dimmed and it became dark.

My feet flew from under me and I fell backwards towards the gap.

Chapter 71

LUCKILY SOMEONE HAD opened the window on one of the doors.

I managed to grab its top edge before I was sucked under the train.

I pulled myself upright and opened the door. A group of middle-aged women looked at me, startled. I smiled apologetically and tried to make my way through.

It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to achieve by getting on the train but I couldn’t just do nothing. I’d made a promise first to Hannah Shapiro and now to her father, and I intended to keep it. I made my way about halfway down the carriage when the train stopped briefly, as it often did on this stretch of track. I walked on to the end of the carriage and it started up again.

I looked through the windows between the carriages but there was no sign of Hannah or her father. I opened the door again, apologising to the people who had to move out of the way. I considered flashing them my card but decided against it. Given the circumstances, it was probably best not to let people know who I was or who I was working for.

I worked my way down through the next carriage. It was just as packed as the others. Mainly women – a lot of them in their thirties or forties. Dressed a lot younger and giggling like schoolchildren on their way to their first concert.

What would happen if the kidnappers detonated the explosives didn’t bear thinking about.

I had been entirely rational in my reassurances to Harlan Shapiro. But logic was one thing and human emotion another, and emotion was a far stronger force than logic. As I was just about to find out.

Chapter 72

PETER CHAPPEL WAS a forty-five-year-old ophthalmic optician with a small practice in Chesham, a quiet Buckinghamshire market town set amidst the rolling natural beauty of the Chilterns.

His premises were on the High Street and, although it was a Sunday, he had come into his shop to sort through some paperwork and receipts that he needed to send off to his accountant for the quarterly VAT return. He had an elderly female assistant who worked with him, but as often as not he would find himself coming into the shop on his day off to catch up with the admin.

He put all the receipts together into a large white envelope, sealed and addressed it, walked through to the reception area and left it on his assistant’s desk to go out in the morning post. He was ahead of schedule but Peter Chappel was a man who paid attention to detail.

He walked back to his examination room. It was windowless, with an old-fashioned roll-top desk in the corner that he used for an office. He unplugged and picked up the laptop that was sitting on the faded green leather and deliberated for a moment.

It was a few minutes past three o’clock and Peter Chappel made a decision. Pulling at an eye-test chart, he swung it out from the wall to reveal a safe behind it.

He put the laptop into the safe, closed the door and spun the dial. Then he put the eye chart back in place and bustled back out through reception.

He picked up a couple of carrier bags that he had left by the front door and then went out onto the street, putting them down again so he could lock the door behind him.

He looked at his watch again and set off for home. He was a little late but not much and he certainly didn’t want to miss any of the fun. Luckily he lived just a hundred yards or so away from his shop in Punch Bowl Lane. Quite appropriate, Peter Chappel thought to himself as he strolled quickly along Red Lion Street – there was no show without Punch, after all, as the old saying goes.

Chapter 73

TOM CHALLONER HAD worked for the Underground for thirty years.

He was a stationmaster and would be retiring in the autumn. At ten minutes past three he was sitting at his desk taking what he considered a well-earned tea break, timing himself as he finished The Times crossword.

The shock waves from the explosion shattered the window of his office and knocked him from his chair to lie unconscious on the floor.

Near Edgware Road Tube station, Kirsty Webb was sitting at her desk in one of the CID offices at Paddington Green. Cursing the ever-increasing bureaucratic demands that meant she and her colleagues spent more time doing paperwork than they ever did out on the street solving crimes. Or trying to.

She had given up on the paperwork an hour ago and had been working on a presentation that she would be giving in a few days’ time in Manchester. She had been shortlisted as one of three final applicants for the new post in the newly created division. Each of them had to give a fifteen-minute talk. A case study of a successful murder case on which they had worked.

Kirsty had wanted to give her presentation on the ‘Ring-Finger Murders’ as one of the red-top papers had named them – a title that had been taken up by most of the broadcast media. But she had been sidelined on the case because it had been taken over by the serial-crimes unit and she found herself relegated back to donkey work. Taking statements, filing reports, dead-end policing.

She put her pen down, picked up a sheet of paper with random thoughts and doodles on it, screwed it into a ball and was about to throw it across the room into a waste-paper bin when a call came.

She looked at the caller ID, then across the room to where a couple of male colleagues were discussing yesterday’s football game. She walked out of the office, along to the steps at the end of the corridor and answered it.

‘DI Webb,’ she said.

‘Kirsty, it’s Doctor Lee. I’ve got some news.’ Kirsty felt a small flutter of expectation. She could tell by the woman’s voice that something significant had happened.

‘What have you got for me, Wendy?’

‘Dan had me run the DNA analysis for you.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Kirsty impatiently.

‘We’ve got a hit.’

‘Hang on.’ Kirsty lodged the phone in the crook of her shoulder and pulled out her notepad and pen.

‘Shoot.’

‘She’s a Romanian national. A nurse – and she’s got a criminal record back at home so we got lucky. You wouldn’t have got a hit on your police systems and would have had to go to Interpol, which would have taken even longer.’

‘Thanks, Wendy.’

‘Thank Dan. He put me on it on my day off.’

‘Sorry about that.’

‘I’m only kidding. I was just waiting for a call at my end. We’re all eyes out on the Shapiro case, anyway. Nobody’s having any time off.’

‘I guess not.’

‘So you can buy Dan a beer when you see him.’

‘If I can get hold of him I will. He’s not answering his phone.’

‘I know – I tried him first. Probably out of network coverage or his phone’s run down.’

Kirsty nodded.

‘So, my Jane Doe. What’s her name?’

‘Adriana Kisslinger. She was twenty-seven.’

‘What was her offence?’

‘Prostitution. She was offering executive bed baths in the hospital she was working at, apparently. The ward sister didn’t approve.’

‘And it’s illegal in Romania?’

‘Prostitution is, yes. Ironic, isn’t it? Romania is listed as one of the biggest sources of human trafficking in the world.’

‘I know. Thanks again for this, Wendy.’

‘Like I said—’

‘Yeah, yeah. I know,’ Kirsty interrupted. ‘I will when I speak with him.’

Chapter 74

HANNAH SHAPIRO LOOKED up, surprised, as I walked towards her.

She was standing, holding on to one of the poles in the doors section of the carriage. Surrounded by more excited women but, whereas their faces were bright with anticipation, hers was crumpled, her haunted eyes still free of make-up. They welled with tears as I quietly said her name. She spun round and walked straight into my enfolding arms.

I hugged her tight to me. She was wearing an oversized white raincoat and not much beneath it.

Which was good news. She might have just had her underwear on but at least she wasn’t strapped around with explosives. After a moment she stepped back a little and I was glad that she did. Like I said, Hannah had grown quite a bit since I had last seen her.

‘What happened?’ I asked her.

‘They took my dad, Mister Carter. They’ve taken him.’

‘How?’

‘When the train stopped in the tunnel. There was someone outside, waiting. They went through those.’ She pointed at the connecting doors.

They had got off the train the same way I had got on. But it didn’t make any sense – they could hardly have walked back through the tunnel. Not with the trains running.

‘Did you recognise any of the men who took you?’ I asked as daylight filled the train once more as it pulled into Baker Street station.

Hannah shook her head. ‘They were wearing masks when they jumped on us in the street. And I never saw their faces in the house they kept me in. I was in the dark the whole time.’

‘And today?’

‘This morning they were all painted black. They painted me, too.’

I nodded. ‘I saw you but we couldn’t get to you.’

‘I know.’

‘And this afternoon they were all wearing comedy Take That face masks.’

‘Where did you get on the train?’

‘I don’t know. Out in the country.’

We stepped out onto the platform and she wobbled a little, holding my arm to steady herself and then gripping it harder.