Private Royals: BookShots (A Private Thriller) (7 page)

‘I think it’s going to rain,’ Morgan assessed with a pilot’s eye for the weather.

He was right. Not thirty seconds later the clouds opened.

‘You know any shortcuts?’ Morgan questioned Cook, cursing as others in the road braked and slowed as the rain bounced from the tarmac.

‘Nothing legal,’ she replied. Outside, the rain ceased as if a tap had been turned.

‘We can’t risk the police stopping us.’ Morgan shook his head, frustrated. ‘Did you get hurt back there?’

‘He didn’t land a finger on me,’ the soldier said, with more than a little pride. ‘He needs to take some time off the weights and work on his cardio.’

‘The beating you put on him, he’s going to be taking time off from everything.’

Cook’s smile dropped a little.

‘I was praying he was our guy,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

‘I would have beat Abbie’s location out of him if he was,’ Cook promised.

‘I know.’ Morgan considered giving his prospective employee a pep talk on the need for good conduct and rules of engagement, but he held his tongue. The truth was, Jack himself would have done whatever it took to get the information that could save Abbie Winchester – there was an innocent life at stake.

‘Flex will come back at you,’ she warned.

Morgan nodded. ‘He will.’

‘Ex-SAS and he runs mercenaries. The guy has a reputation to protect, Jack. You need to watch him.’

‘I will,’ Morgan promised, hearing the concern underlying the professional warning. ‘Thanks,’ he told her.

‘For what?’ Cook asked, taking her eyes off the road and meeting his.

‘For everything so far, and for having my back.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and paused, weighing up her next words. ‘It’s a nice back to have.’ Cook smiled, and the pair laughed. It was a laugh of relief as adrenaline wore away from tired muscles.

‘We’re almost there,’ Morgan said, checking the GPS, then turning his serious eyes onto Cook. ‘You’re our liaison here, Jane. You don’t have to come in for this.’

‘You think Abbie’s going to be there?’ she asked.

Morgan nodded.

Cook said nothing more. She didn’t need to.

Up ahead was the truck yard. The soldier brought the Range Rover to a stop and, with a look to Morgan, stepped out.

MORGAN’S FEET SPLASHED
down into a puddle as he stepped down from the Range Rover, his eyes on the haulage firm’s yard in the near distance. Leaving Cook behind, he made off at a casual walking pace, covering all four sides of the truck yard’s perimeter. There was little for him to see save a line of trucks, a Portakabin office and rain-filled wheel ruts.

As Morgan had expected, Jones Brothers Haulage were closed for the weekend, the gate bolted shut.

‘We’ll go through the fence,’ he told Cook, rejoining her at the Range Rover.

‘You found a way in?’

‘We’ll make one,’ he said, lifting a pair of bolt cutters from the boot.

‘They could have CCTV,’ Cook warned.

‘If the police come, we’ll either be gone or have Abbie. Here.’ Morgan handed over the cutters. ‘They’ll be armed. This is the best we can do.’

‘I hate doing this kind of thing without a firearm,’ Cook confessed. ‘I feel naked.’

‘Come work for me in LA, and you won’t have to be.’ Morgan spoke without thinking, and Cook couldn’t help a sly smile.

‘But it’s an option, right?’ she said.

For the first time in hours, a ghost of Morgan’s usual happy, handsome face appeared. ‘Come on,’ he said, trying to fight it. ‘Let’s go and get her.’

‘We’re not waiting for help?’

‘You’re in the artillery, right?’ he said. He moved off, Cook following on his shoulder. ‘When you’re sending forward observers behind enemy lines to spot your targets, do you send the entire unit, or a small team?’

‘A small team,’ she conceded. ‘And they call in the heavy stuff.’

‘There you go.’ Morgan smiled.

‘OK. But who are our big guns?’

‘SCO19,’ he answered – the Metropolitan Police’s firearms unit. ‘If we find Abbie, and there’s no way we can safely pull her out of there, then we’ll call them in.’

Carrying the wheel brace from the breakdown kit, Morgan led Cook to a stretch of fence that was hidden from the haulage yard’s Portakabin by a line of wheeled bins. Cutting a hole through took moments, then the pair ran low across the open ground to the cabin. The curtains were open. Morgan took a cautious glance through the window. The cabin was empty.

‘We’ll check the trucks,’ he whispered.

The company’s lorries were arranged in a single row, a mixture of flat-panel and dump trucks. Morgan and Cook made their way slowly around the dozen vehicles, looking into the cabs and listening for any trace of sound.

‘Jack,’ Cook whispered. ‘Over here.’

Morgan came to her side and found himself looking at a truck-sized space between two other vehicles. It was the only one missing from the neatly arranged line.

‘The ground’s dry,’ he declared, looking up to the sky and thinking of the recent shower. ‘We just missed them. Damn it!’

‘You don’t know that,’ Cook said, trying to be positive, but Morgan pointed to a rusty-coloured patch at the edge of the dry ground.

‘That’s blood. Probably Grace’s blood. They held Abbie in a truck here, and now they’re moving closer to the parade.’

Cook tried, but could find no flaw in the logic.

‘It’s nine forty,’ she told him, looking at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes until they call to arrange the drop. Will the Duke have the money?’

Morgan shook his head. ‘He was never supposed to pay, but Waldron heard “Duke” and thought “billionaire”.’

‘So what now?’

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. ‘We’ve got an hour to find that truck, or Abbie dies.’

IN THE LAB
of Private HQ, Hooligan turned in his chair to watch Knight pacing the room like a caged animal. ‘You want to be out there, mate,’ he stated to his friend and superior.

Knight shrugged. Of course he did, but he also knew that the Duke was their only tangible link to Abbie and her kidnapper, and Morgan had wanted him to be on hand to handle the next and final ransom call that was expected in nineteen minutes’ time. Knight was also the head of Private London, and sometimes – as much as he hated to admit it to himself – that meant delegating the tasks on the ground to others.

He told Hooligan as much.

‘Bollocks.’ The Londoner laughed, his tone quickly becoming serious as he saw the incoming call from Jack Morgan. ‘Go ahead, boss,’ Hooligan told him, patching Morgan through the lab’s speakers. ‘Peter’s with me.’

‘Peter,’ Morgan said, the Range Rover’s revving engine audible in the background, ‘he’s been holding Abbie in a flat-panel truck. The company is Jones Brothers, but he’s probably pulled off the decals or painted over them. I think he’s moving Abbie closer to Horse Guards before he makes the last call.’

‘Where are you?’ Knight asked.

Hooligan pulled up a GPS tracking screen to show him as Morgan answered.

‘Heading for Westminster Bridge,’ said Morgan, ‘but the traffic is packed. We need the police’s help on this now, Peter. But low-key. Can you make the call to Elaine?’

‘I can.’

‘Put out a description of the van. See if we can get a location, but no intervention.’

‘You’ve got it,’ said Knight.

‘Check back in with me after you talk to her,’ Morgan told him and hung up.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Hooligan said over his shoulder before realising he was talking to an empty space.

‘I’ve got my own plan,’ Knight said, running through the door.

DESPITE HIS MONIKER
– given to him as a rowdy teenager by his siblings – Jeremy ‘Hooligan’ Crawford, a few speeding tickets notwithstanding, rarely broke the law.

‘I’m a bloody model citizen,’ he said firmly, as if trying to convince himself.

He had grounds to believe the statement. After all, Jeremy Crawford had shown that, no matter what circumstances a person was born into, they could rise high with a dash of natural talent and a bucketful of hard work.

Hooligan had earned degrees in both mathematics and biology from Cambridge University by the age of nineteen. By twenty, he’d added a masters in criminal and forensic science from Staffordshire University. There he’d been headhunted by MI5. Hooligan had worked in the government’s domestic intelligence agency for eight years before Private had lured him away with a staggering pay rise. In those eight years the East Ender had played a key role in building the systems that monitored London’s surveillance grid for signs of terrorism, and as one of its architects, he knew of the system’s weak points, its windows and its doors.

‘I must be bloody mad,’ he giggled nervously under his breath.

Because he was about to break into one of those weak points.

INSPECTOR ELAINE POTTERSFIELD
was a long-term servant of the Met, the service giving her a salty edge that had led to her blaming Peter Knight for the death of her beloved sister – Knight’s adored wife. It had taken the events of the London Olympics to reconcile the pair, and now Elaine was the doting aunt to Knight’s two children that he’d always wanted her to be. Early on a Saturday morning, she expected that her brother-in-law’s phone call would be an invitation to lunch, or perhaps to join him and the children in the park.

It wasn’t.

‘We’re in the shit,’ Knight told her over the phone whilst running at speed through the corridors of Private HQ.

‘Let’s hear it,’ Elaine said, switching from loving aunt to ice-cold detective in the blink of an eye.

‘There’s a flat-panel truck around Westminster with precious cargo. Either Jones Brothers signage or freshly painted over. We need it found.’

‘That’s not much to go on.’

‘I know,’ said Knight. ‘And we’ve got less than an hour to find it.’

‘Bloody hell, Peter! If you want me to work miracles, I need a little more information.’

‘You can narrow the radius down to one mile around Horse Guards.’

‘Horse Guards?’ Elaine asked. ‘Today’s Trooping the Colour. If there are lives at stake here, Peter, then you need to come clean – like right bloody now.’

‘One life,’ Knight confessed. ‘And if I thought a full blues-and-twos response was the best way to keep them alive, then you know that’s what I’d do, Elaine.’

There was a pause as his sister-in-law thought it over.

‘I’ll put out a call. Find and follow, no intervention.’

‘Thank you,’ Knight said and hung up the phone. He came to a halt at a desk to the rear of Private HQ’s large offices.

‘Can I help you, Mr Knight?’ the motor pool attendant asked.

‘Get me a bike,’ Knight told him. ‘A fast one.’

HOOLIGAN’S FINGER HOVERED
over the speed dial. With a wry smile he realised that what he was about to do could possibly spell the end of his career.

He pushed the button.

‘Boss?’ he asked as the call connected.

‘Go ahead,’ Morgan answered, his voice thick with frustration.

‘I’m gonna give you bad news, bad news, good news, good news.’

‘Spit it out, Hooligan.’

‘Bad news number one is that Peter has left the building.’

‘What? Where’s he gone?’

‘More bad news first, boss.’

‘Jesus. Just tell me, Hooligan.’

‘I may have hacked into the security service’s CCTV network.’ Hooligan held his breath, as Morgan let out his.

‘You know that’s a terrorism charge if they catch you?’ said Morgan.

‘I know. And I take full responsibility, boss, but there’s a girl’s life at stake.’

‘You’re a good guy, Hooligan.’

‘I’m a great guy, boss. And now the good news – I think I’ve got the van. Flat-panel truck that’s had a fresh paint job. Really fresh, like Daz whites. It’s on Horseferry Road, about a kilometre south of Horse Guards.’

‘They must have taken the next bridge to the south.’ Morgan swore, and Hooligan thought he could hear the sound of the dashboard being hit in frustration. ‘We’re never going to make it through this traffic in time to cut him off, by vehicle or on foot.’

‘Well, that’s where the second bit of good news comes in, boss.’

‘Hooligan, you’re doing a great job, but please, just get it out.’

‘Sorry.’ Hooligan cleared his throat. ‘It’s Peter, boss. He’s on a bike, and he’s cutting through traffic.’

‘Can he get to Abbie?’ Morgan asked, suddenly more optimistic.

‘He can,’ Hooligan confirmed, checking his screens. ‘He’s going to intercept in one minute.’

AS A MARRIED
man Knight had been forbidden by his wife from owning a motorcycle, despite the amount of time it would have taken off his daily commute. In the years following her passing, he had taken up riding as a way to escape London, and to empty his mind of every painful thought as he concentrated solely on the road ahead.

He was in that zone now, weaving and cutting through traffic, the bike’s 850cc engine roaring as he opened up the throttle and pushed through the crawling vehicles.

Knight glanced at the GPS strapped to the bike’s handle. It showed two dots controlled from Private HQ by Hooligan. One was the position of the truck that was assumed to be the kidnapper’s. Another showed Knight’s own location. As he turned onto Horseferry Road, the two dots became one.

‘I see him.’ Knight spoke into the mic in his helmet. ‘I’m going in closer.’

‘Peter,’ Morgan’s voice came through the speakers in the helmet. ‘Just stay on his ass.’

‘How far are you guys from me?’

‘Too far. At least five minutes.’ He heard Cook curse.

‘Then I’m getting tight on him,’ said Knight. ‘If he goes off script and makes a move, I need to be in place to stop it.’

‘Roger that,’ Morgan answered, realising there was no other option, but hating it nonetheless.

Knight eased his way around the final few cars and positioned himself in the blind spot for the truck’s mirrors, seeing that the rear shutter-type door had been secured by a thick, shiny new padlock.