‘You’re not married.’
‘Anyway. They’re not here any more.’
‘Just a couple of days.’
‘You use them, you lose them.’
‘Goes without saying.’
‘Yeah, well, a lot of things best said go unsaid.’
‘You turning philosophical on me?’
Gary gave me a quizzical look, building up to it. Anyone else it would have been no questions asked. But Gary Webster and I had been best friends at school and, even if we hadn’t seen a lot of each other over the years since, it was still a bond that would never be broken. We had both had to watch each other’s back too many times for that.
‘So…’ he said finally. ‘You going to tell me what the gig is?’
I looked him square in the eye. ‘What’s the word on the street with Brendan Ferres?’
Gary reacted. ‘Snake Ferres?’
‘Yup.’
He shook his head. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ he said finally.
I shook my own head.
‘Well, the word is he’s hung like a donkey and has a striking cobra tattooed on it.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the size of his Johnson, Gary.’
‘Yeah, well, it gives you an idea of his intelligence. His pain threshold too, come to think of it.’ He grimaced and then grinned. ‘He had the head of the snake tattooed on his bell end, for Christ’s sake!’
I didn’t grin back. ‘Ferres might be mixed up in a bit of business.’
‘And?’
‘A bit of business I’m going to sort.’
Gary looked at me to see if I was being serious. I was.
‘Have you completely lost the plot? He’s Ronnie Allen’s right-hand man.’
‘I know exactly who he is.’
‘You can’t go up against Allen, Dan. Not even you.’ He shook his head again. ‘Especially not you.’
‘Brendan Ferres has waltzed into this particular dance. I can’t walk away from it, Gary.’
‘Quite right. You shouldn’t walk. You should bloody run!’
‘A student was kidnapped last night. Chancellors University.’
Gary reacted, shaking his head. ‘That’s not Ronnie Allen’s style. Kidnapping. Never heard that.’
‘Maybe he’s branching out.’
‘Can’t see it.’
‘Brendan Ferres was seen going into the building earlier in the day. The building the students had just left before being assaulted, and one of them taken.’
‘Maybe it’s coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in that kind of coincidence.’
‘They happen, Dan. And for the sake of your health I suggest you start believing in them.’
‘One of the girls was abducted. One of them was cut with a knife. And one of them had a baseball bat taken to the back of her head.’
‘Jesus. Even so, Dan. Let it go.’
I shook my head. ‘The girl someone took a baseball bat to was Chloe. It was Chloe Smith, Gary.’
He took it in for a heartbeat and then his jaw set. ‘You need backup?’
‘No. This is my shout.’
‘You’ll let me know?’
I nodded gratefully but I had no intention of involving him any more than I already had.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to go and ask him. Let him know if the girl is harmed in any way whatsoever… that there will be consequences.’
‘If he’s got her, that is. I can’t see that. Like I say, it’s not his style.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘If he’s got her.’
‘Brendan Ferres is a mountain gorilla in a suit. He doesn’t do anything unless Ronnie Allen tells him to.’
‘I know.’
‘And he’s engaged to his daughter.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, he is. And little Becky Allen is the apple of her father’s eye.’
He was being a little sarcastic. Rebecca Allen was thirty-two years old, five foot ten tall and built like Kirstie Alley at her curvy best. There was nothing little about her – including her sexual appetites if the rumours about her fiance were not exaggerated. And Gary was quite right – her father treated her like an absolute princess.
‘That I did know,’ I agreed.
‘So be careful. Could turn nasty. Face is everything to a man like Ferres.’
‘Still got to ask the question.’
‘Yeah.’
I hefted the bag. ‘And I appreciate the assist.’
‘You got it. You taking Sam with you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘See if you can persuade him to carry, then.’
I smiled regretfully. ‘Never going to happen.’
Chapter 56
Di Kirsty Webb was wishing she had simply switched off her mobile phone and taken the weekend off.
The drive out of London heading west into the boondocks had been a nightmare, with traffic clogging up Western Avenue and the air-conditioning unit on her car packing up. The first truly hot day of the year and that was when it decided to go on the blink! She had kept the windows open for a while but anyone who has been stuck in traffic in London knows it’s not an ideal solution for long.
When she had broken clear of the M25 the roads had cleared, though, and she made better progress. But all in all she couldn’t help feeling it was bound to be a bit of a wild-goose chase.
The old market town of Aylesbury is only some forty-five miles north and west of London, but on a good day it could still take an hour and a half to get there. Kirsty would have taken the A41 route but roadworks on the North Circular would have made the journey even more unbearable.
Nice to get out of London, though, she thought, goose chase or not, as she drove into the large car park of Stoke Mandeville hospital and switched off the car radio.
A female DI from the local force was waiting to meet her as she headed into reception. A formidable-looking woman in her late thirties but with steel-grey already dominating her hair.
‘Natalie James,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Kirsty Webb.’
‘You’d better come with me.’
The DI walked off briskly and Kirsty followed her into the hospital, through reception and down a series of corridors.
The body had been moved to a small side room. A young uniformed officer was standing guard outside. DI James gave him a cursory nod and opened the door, leading Kirsty in.
The corpse was lying on a gurney and had been covered once more with a sheet.
‘His car was hit by a high-speed train going at full tilt. Brain death would have been near-instantaneous.’
‘I can well imagine.’
‘And his body took a considerable amount of trauma.’
‘So the injury to his hand could have happened at the same time?’
‘We thought so at first,’ said the grey-haired detective. ‘But a pathologist took a closer look. The top half of his finger was definitely severed post-mortem. No blood loss, et cetera. There’s no doubt about it.’
The DI lifted the blanket covering the left side of Colin Harris’s body and showed Kirsty the mutilated hand.
Kirsty shook her head, not quite believing it. ‘Do we know what was used?’
‘We think a scalpel.’
‘Right.’
‘I understand you have some similar cases?’
‘Kind of. Only ours were two women. Early to mid-twenties. Both as of yet unidentified.’
‘And both had the same finger chopped off.’
‘The wedding-ring finger. Half of it, anyway. And they both had organs removed.’
‘What the hell is going on?’ The DI was obviously a little rattled. You weren’t supposed to have serial killers in Buckinghamshire.
‘I don’t know, inspector. But we’ve got a break in the pattern here. That could be significant.’
‘How could somebody have known, though? Then sneak into our morgue and cut a finger off a dead body in broad daylight!’
‘Who was it who authorised the transplant? What’s the procedure?’
The DI pulled out a small black book and consulted her notes. ‘First of all, brain death has to be established by two independent doctors.’
‘Independent of the hospital?’
‘No, of the doctors involved with the donation or the transplantation team.’
‘So brain death was established by two independent doctors. And then what happened?’