"Bitch!" shouted Donovan. He lowered his fist.
"How much did she pay you?" he asked.
"Our standard fee. One hundred and twenty pounds plus expenses."
"What?" Donovan was confused. The going rate for a hit in London was fifteen thousand, minimum.
The front door opened. Mark and Laura were there.
"Den? What's happening?" shouted Mark, rushing down the path to the street.
"Who the fuck are you?" asked Donovan.
"I'm a solicitor's clerk," said the man, gasping for breath.
"I serve writs in the evenings, for the overtime."
"You're what?"
Mark rushed up behind Donovan.
"What's going on?" he asked.
Donovan ignored him.
"You've got a writ for me?"
The man nodded, then coughed violently. He tried to nod towards his chest.
"Inside pocket," he said, then coughed again.
Donovan shoved his hand inside the man's coat and groped around. His fingers found an envelope and he pulled it out. He stared at it. His name was typed on it in capital letters. In the top left-hand corner was the name and address of a firm of City solicitors.
"How did you know where to find me?" Donovan asked.
"I had a list of addresses. This was the third I tried. Can I get up now? My back's killing me."
"Den, what the hell's going on?" asked Mark.
Donovan helped the solicitor's clerk to his feet and brushed down his raincoat.
"Nothing," he said.
"It was a misunderstanding, that's all."
The solicitor's clerk was shaking like a sick dog, and he couldn't look Donovan in the eyes.
Donovan took out his wallet and thrust a handful of fifty-pound notes into the man's hands, then pushed him away. The man walked unsteadily down the street, one hand against the side of his head.
Mark put his hand on Donovan's shoulder.
"Den, would you just tell me what the hell that was all about?" he asked.
Donovan held up the manila envelope.
"Special delivery. Vicky."
Mark frowned.
"What is it?"
"An injunction," said Donovan. He ripped open the envelope and scanned the legal papers.
"Shit," he said.
Laura hurried down the path.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"It's about Robbie," said Donovan.
"It says I can't take him out of the country. Bitch!" He screwed up the papers and threw them into the gutter.
"I'll kill her!"
"Den, calm down," urged Laura. She picked up the papers and straightened them out.
Donovan shook his head, refusing to be mollified.
"Who does the bitch think she is? She fucks around behind my back and then she sets the law on me!"
Laura held out the papers to him.
"You're going to have to show these to a lawyer, Den."
Donovan snatched them from her.
"There's no point in getting upset, Den," said Mark.
"Just calm down."
"Calm down? You fucking calm down. He's my son and she's trying to tell me what I can and can't do? Fuck her! She's dead! Dead meat!" Donovan stormed off down the street, the legal documents flapping in his hand.
Mark and Laura hugged each other as they watched him go. Upstairs, the curtain twitched at Robbie's bedroom window.
It was hot and airless in the van, and Detective Constable Ashleigh Vincent was all too well aware that her male partner had been on a curry hinge the previous night, but what had happened on the street outside had taken her mind off the pungent odours of chicken vindaloo and Cobra lager. The motor drive clicked away as she took picture after picture of the retreating man in the fawn raincoat.
"Get his car number plate," said Vincent's partner as she focused on the man's vehicle.
"Gosh, I wish I'd thought of that, Connor," said Vincent. Her partner had only been in plainclothes for the best part of a month, but he seemed to be under the impression that he was the senior member of the surveillance team.
They'd been sitting in the van outside Mark and Laura Gardner's house for almost twelve hours and had been about to call it a night when Den Donovan had arrived. There was no doubting it was Tango One: they had a dozen surveillance photographs of him sellotaped up around the darkened window that they were looking through. They'd photographed him arriving in the black cab and going into the house, and waited patiently for him to come out.
The man in the fawn raincoat had caught Vincent by surprise. She hadn't noticed him pull up in his Ford Fiesta and she had no idea how long he had been sitting there waiting for Donovan. The first she'd seen of him was when he walked up behind Donovan, his hand moving inside his raincoat.
Vincent's partner had sworn out loud.
"Fuck, he's got a gun!"
"Bollocks," Vincent had said, clicking away on the camera.
"If this was a hit, he'd have the gun out." As the words left her mouth she'd had a sudden feeling of doubt, that maybe she'd called it wrong, but she kept on taking photographs. She'd known she was right as soon as the man called out Donovan's name. If it had been a professional hit, the man would have shot Donovan in the head from behind, there'd have been no warning.
Vincent had been impressed by the speed with which Donovan had moved once he'd been aware of the man. There didn't appear to have been any fear on Donovan's part: he'd moved instinctively, putting the man down and then throwing himself on top. Vincent had kept on taking pictures while her partner continued to curse.
"Fuck me, look at that!"
They'd both watched as Donovan took the envelope from the man's pocket.
"What the hell's that?" Vincent's partner had asked.
"His lottery numbers," Vincent had said scathingly.
The man in the raincoat drove off in his Ford Fiesta.
"Fill in the log, Connor," said Vincent, still clicking away in the camera. She couldn't wait until her bosses at the Drugs Squad saw the pictures. She'd have to find a way to make sure that Connor was otherwise engaged that way she could claim more of the credit for herself.
Laurence Patterson kept Donovan waiting in Reception for fifteen minutes, but had the good grace to hurry out of his office apologising profusely. He pumped Donovan's hand and ushered him into his office.
"Got a client just been pulled in on a robbery charge, he's screaming blue murder. Sorry."
"Business is good, yeah?" asked Donovan, dropping down on to a low black sofa. A huge white oak desk dominated one end of the palatial office, but Patterson always preferred to talk to his clients on the sofas by the window and its expansive view of the City. Patterson's firm hadn't deliberately chosen the location to be close to London's financial powerhouses the offices were just a short walk from the Old Bailey, where the firm's criminal partners did most of their work.
"Busy, busy, busy," said Patterson, sitting down on the sofa opposite Donovan.
"Can I get you a drink?"
Donovan shook his head. He handed Patterson the writ that the solicitor's clerk had given him. Patterson read through it quickly, nodding and murmuring to himself. He was barely out of his thirties and Donovan had used him for almost seven years. Patterson had a razor-sharp mind, an almost photographic memory and had the ear of the best barristers in London. His father was a bigtime villain, now retired on the Costa Brava, whose coming-of-age present to his son had been the names and private telephone numbers of six of the most corrupt coppers in the UK. Patterson had helped get charges dropped against members of Donovan's team on several occasions. He wasn't cheap, nor were his police contacts, but they guaranteed results.
Patterson shook his head to the side, throwing his fringe away from his eyes. He had a long, thin face and a slightly hooked nose, and with his inquisitive eyes he had the look of a hawk on the hunt for prey.
"Seems pretty straightforward," he said.