‘No, Brendan. You answer to me.’
He said it quietly but Ferres got the point. He shrugged
‘Okay. It’s just business. One of the guys there at the college… we have dealings with him. I don’t know the first flying fuck about some cooze being kidnapped.’
Allen turned to me and flashed me a quick smile. ‘That answer your questions, gentlemen?’ he asked without a hint of irony.
I nodded. I didn’t get the sense he was lying.
‘That’s good, Mister Allen,’ I replied, showing him the respect he expected. ‘But if I find out King Kong Junior here had any hand in it, I will come back and put him in the ground,’ I said, showing a little less respect.
Brendan Ferres would have leapt up but Allen put a quiet hand on his knee and he stayed put. If looks could kill I’d certainly have been dead by then. I returned his look, letting him know I meant every word.
‘You let this man come into your place of business and talk this way?’
It was the silver-haired man speaking. He had an American accent – the East Coast, if I was any judge. Italian-American at that. His suit was hand-cut and he wore a watch on his wrist that I reckoned cost more than the Jaguar my mate Gary Webster had squirrelled away in his lock-up. The theme tune of The Godfather played in my head and I deduced he probably wasn’t here as a food critic for the Washington Post.
‘Someone took a baseball bat to my god-daughter’s head when the girl was taken,’ I said by way of explanation.
‘Family is very important,’ said Ronnie Allen.
The American guy nodded in agreement.
‘I’m telling you, Ronnie. This has got nothing to do with us,’ said Ferres.
Allen gestured at me, shrugging and holding his hands a little wider apart. ‘I’m sorry we can’t help you.’
‘You going to give me the name of your contact at Chancellors?’ I asked Ferres. He snorted in reply.
‘Not prudent business practice – I am sure you can understand why,’ said Ronnie Allen smoothly. The sort of smoothness a razor blade has.
I could have threatened him with taking what I had to the police, but I couldn’t see the point. What I had was bupkis, after all. The square root of sweet Fanny Adams. Nada.
I gave Ferres a final pointed look instead. Letting him know we weren’t done. He looked straight back at me – and If I’m perfectly honest I didn’t see his knees knocking either. I nodded to Sam and we walked out. I kept my shoulders straight despite the feeling that someone had just painted a bullseye on my back.
As I walked through the pub doors and out into the street beyond I considered making the same one-fingered backwards gesture that Alison Chambers had made to me yesterday.
I resisted the urge.
Chapter 59
It was quiet in the hospital.
But somehow it was still full of sound. Machines in the background. Monitoring equipment beating out a steady rhythm. Life going on. Footfalls in distant corridors. Snoring.
I opened the door to the intensive-care room and walked in. The woman sitting on the chair at the head of the bed looked up at me and smiled. She was pleased to see me, at least. The smile made me feel good for a moment, but only for that instant. The sight of my unconscious god-daughter kind of took the fun out of it for me.
‘Mister Carter,’ the woman said.
‘It’s Dan, please, Professor Weston,’ I replied.
‘In which case you had better call me Annabelle.’
She smiled again but I couldn’t smile back. The young woman lying on the bed deserved my entire focus. And Annabelle could prove to be too much of a distraction. Maybe when things got back on an even keel I could try the full Dan Carter charm offensive on her. But for now I had to be all about business. Strictly professional. No time for romance.
I was wrong about that, as it turned out. But not in the way I expected.
I looked down at Chloe. Her eyes still closed. Her breathing even. ‘Have there been any developments?’ I asked Annabelle.
The professor shook her head. ‘The registrar was just here with Chloe’s mother. Chloe is stable but still in a coma.’
‘Where is Barbara now?’
‘She’s gone to get us some tea.’
Barbara Lehman, nee Smith, had driven down overnight from North Scotland, where she had moved a year ago. She’d set out as soon as she had heard what had happened to her daughter. Her new husband Martin Lehman worked in the petrochemical industry and was moved around the country every few years or so. Martin Lehman didn’t like me and I wasn’t, to tell the truth, too disappointed that he hadn’t accompanied his wife.
‘I just thought I’d check in on Chloe.’ Annabelle gestured sadly at some fruit in a bowl on the bedside cabinet. ‘Bit of a cliche, I know.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be grateful when she wakes up.’
The professor nodded and stood up. She was still dressed casually in jeans and a jumper. Still looked a million dollars.
‘I’d better leave you to it. I don’t think the ward sister will like a crowd in here.’
‘It was good of you to come.’
Annabelle shook her head. ‘Chloe’s one of our students. I’m her tutor.’
‘Even so.’
‘She’s a very bright girl. Very brave too, from what I hear. She nearly fought them off.’
‘They weren’t playing by the Queensberry Rules.’
‘No.’
She leaned down to smooth Chloe’s hair.
‘I take it you have no news yourself,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. Lying as smoothly as a politician. ‘But Hannah Shapiro’s father will be here tomorrow morning. Maybe the kidnappers will make contact then.’
‘Annabelle looked at me, a little surprised. ‘You still think that this is what it was, then? A straightforward kidnapping? Why haven’t they been in contact? Made a ransom demand?’
‘I don’t know.’
That’s the trouble with lying: once you start you’ve got to keep doing it – and I didn’t like lying to Annabelle. I could see how distraught she was.
‘What?’ she said.
I guess I had been staring. ‘Her father has got money,’ I said. ‘That’s what it usually comes down to. Money.’
Money or sex, I thought to myself but didn’t articulate the thought.
‘I didn’t realise she came from a wealthy background.’
Saying Harlan Shapiro had money was a bit like saying a forest has a tree or two in it. ‘Yeah. Her father is pretty well off,’ I said, not telling her that he had already agreed to pay the ransom and I had the diamonds already stashed in the safe at our offices.
‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? Like we said. I mean… better that the motive is money.’
I couldn’t keep the image of Hannah Shapiro stripped to her underwear out of my mind and couldn’t help agreeing.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s better than the alternative.’
‘You’ll keep me posted if there are any developments?’
‘Of course I will.’
Annabelle seemed to hesitate, looking up at me with those almost fey turquoise eyes. There was a definite charge. Then she seemed to catch herself, blushing just a little, but on her alabaster skin it made her look almost unbearably vulnerable.
‘Tell Barbara I’ll come back tomorrow,’ she said and hurried out of the room, leaving behind a faint trail of a sweet floral perfume. I looked back at my comatose god-daughter and told myself to snap out of it. Like I said, I didn’t have time for distractions.
A few minutes later the door opened again and Chloe’s mother walked in. Barbara Lehman was in her early forties and still had the figure of a woman half her age. She was slim, tanned, beautiful. Her hair every bit as dark, curly and lustrous as her daughter’s. Her large expressive eyes brimmed as she saw me.
She put the cups of tea she was holding down on a side table and rushed into my arms.
‘Oh, Dan,’ she said unable to hold back the tears.
I pulled her to me, hugging her as tight as I dared, patting my arm on her back as she sobbed against my shoulder.