30. Tiernan
TIERNAN
I’m watching the breaking news broadcast from Lorcan’s office when my phone buzzes. It’s him.
“You seeing this?” he asks.
“Yeah. Someone grabbed Snowden.”
“The same people he wanted protection from. They moved faster than he probably expected.”
“Do you think they knew he was in talks with you about… Knightsbridge?”
“A hundred per cent they knew. I want to know who it is.”
I lean forward in the chair and flick off the station. Mainstream media tells you nothing useful. Mostly they just lie or deflect. It’s the independent journalists you want to hit up. Those who don’t care whose cage they rattle as long as the truth gets out there.
I grunt. “I’ll find out. You’re still going to the Caymans?”
“More reason to go now. Snowden’s quarter million just became more interesting.”
“You really think you need to carry it yourself?”
“No one is going to stop a private jet belonging to Lorcan Keane to search it or me for a briefcase full of unmarked bills.”
“True,” I concede. “I’m just curious why you are taking time out to do it.”
“Everything’s connected, Tiernan. You know that.”
He hangs up before I can respond, which is typical Lorcan. I toss the phone onto the desk and stare at the black screen.
Snowden’s abduction isn’t random. Nothing in our world is. Someone wanted him gone right when he was making moves, and that someone has resources and intelligence that goes deep enough to know about his conversation with Lorcan.
I pull up my encrypted messaging app and fire off a text to David, who specialises in finding people who don’t want to be found. Alex Snowden. Find him.
His response comes back within thirty seconds. Already on it for Grovesworth. Price doubled.
I snort and type back. Triple if you give it to me first.
We’ll see…
“Jerk,” I mutter, but I have to appreciate the opportunism.
The office feels too noisy without Lorcan’s presence. It’s a goddamn social club out there—chatter, coffee cups cluttering desks, people lingering like they’ve got all day. None of it happens when Lorcan’s here. His presence alone shuts it down. I don’t give a fuck, and they all know it.
Fintan is downstairs somewhere, probably brooding over his confession to Elle last night, which took me by surprise. I can only imagine how she must feel about it. I wonder if he regrets it. Probably not. Fin doesn’t regret anything.
I scrub a hand over my face and stand up, pacing to the window.
The city stretches out beneath the window, a slick grid of rain-smeared streets and charcoal rooftops, endless and unconcerned.
Somewhere out there, Snowden is either already dead or wishing he was.
The people who took him aren’t amateurs. He said they were coming.
But who the fuck is ‘they’?
My phone buzzes again, and I frown at it. “Marion?” I say, answering it. “Everything okay?”
“Mr Tiernan,” she says, her voice tight in a way I’ve never heard before. Marion doesn’t do panic. She’s been with Lorcan for years and has seen everything. “Mr Lorcan’s phone is off. There’s someone here.”
That snaps me into the present. “Who?”
“Two men. They say they’re police, but they don’t look like no coppers I’ve ever seen. They’re asking about Elle Langley.”
My blood goes cold. “Did you open the gates?”
I can almost see the sneer. “What do you take me for? A rookie?”
“I’m on my way.”
I hang up and dial Fintan as I move out, grabbing my jacket and heading for the door. He picks up on the first ring.
“Marion called. Two men at Lorcan’s asking about Elle. She says they claim to be police, but she says otherwise.”
“Fuck. I’m in the car park. I’ll beat you there.”
I take the stairs instead of waiting for the lift, my mind running through scenarios.
I hit the street level, and the cold air bites as I push through the exit.
Fin drives like a maniac when he needs to.
He’ll get there fast enough to deal with whoever thinks they can show up at Lorcan’s door asking questions about Elle on the day Alex Snowden was abducted.
The drive takes fifteen minutes through traffic that makes me want to ram every car in front of me. I dial Marion again as I weave through lanes.
“Still there?” I ask when she picks up.
“Sitting in their car at the gate. Haven’t moved. Haven’t tried to force their way in either.”
“Good. Keep the gates locked. Fintan should be there any second.”
“He’s just pulled up,” she says.
I disconnect and take the next turn hard enough that the tyres squeal.
I pull up to Lorcan’s place and see Fintan already out of his car, standing between the gates and a top-end black SUV that definitely doesn’t belong to any coppers I know.
The windows are tinted dark enough that I can’t see inside, but I don’t need to.
The driver’s door opens, and a man steps out. Mid-forties, grey suit, no tie. His face is deliberately unremarkable, but that makes him instantly memorable to anyone trained to spot threats. His partner stays in the passenger seat.
“Gentlemen,” the man says, his accent pure London but with something underneath it. Something that doesn’t quite fit. “We’re looking for Elle Langley.”
I don’t react to the name. Neither does Fintan. “Who’s asking?”
I hold his gaze and wait.
The man reaches into his jacket slowly, deliberately, and pulls out a wallet. He flips it open. “Detective Inspector Mark Hollis,” he says. “Metropolitan Police. We have some questions regarding a missing persons case.”
I take a step closer, keeping my expression neutral. The ID looks good, but that doesn’t mean shit. I’ve seen better forgeries at half the price. “Missing persons?”
“We have reason to believe she may be in danger.” His eyes flick between Fintan and me, assessing. “We’d like to speak with her.”
“About what?” Fintan asks, his voice flat.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of an ongoing investigation with anyone other than Miss Langley.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck, because I’ve never heard of her.”
“Mr Keane,” Hollis says. “We can do this the easy way, or we can come back with a warrant.”
“Get your warrant then,” I say. “Until then, fuck off.”
His face twists into an ugly expression that he quickly smooths out.
Definitely not law enforcement.
My gaze lingers on his face. I let the silence continue, watching his micro-expressions.
He clenches his jaw, his eyes flicking towards his partner, who is still sitting in the car.
Police don’t sit in SUVs with blacked-out windows.
They don’t show up at private residences without backup, and they sure as fuck don’t get outwardly pissed off when someone tells them to get lost.
“You’re making a mistake,” Hollis says.
“Wouldn’t be my first. But I’m comfortable with it.”
His hand moves toward his jacket again.
Fintan steps forward. “I wouldn’t.”
The quiet darkness of his tone makes Hollis freeze.
Hollis’s hand drops to his side. “We’ll be back.”
“Sure you will,” I drawl.
He gets back in the SUV, and I watch as it disappears around the corner. I wait until I can’t hear the engine anymore before I turn to Fintan.
“Scandinavian,” I say.
Fintan’s eyebrow goes up. “New.”
“Very. Or old and connected a bit further to the east.”
Fin’s eyes narrow as he gets my drift. “Connected to Snowden or not?”
“Hard to say. Why do they want Elle? She isn’t connected to Snowden in any real way.”
“Unless it’s just a way in the door.”
“Precisely. But where did they get Elle’s name from?”
“Anywhere. Multiple people saw Lorcan torment her that first night.”
“Inside job?”
He pauses.
I growl. “Linton Farnworth?”
“Let’s go and pay him a visit.”
I slide into the passenger seat of Fintan’s car, and he peels out before I’ve even closed the door properly. The city blurs past the windows as he navigates through traffic with a focused aggression that comes from years of not giving a fuck about speed limits.
“You think Linton’s stupid enough to sell us out?” Fintan asks.
“I think Linton’s stupid enough to do a lot of things when he’s drunk or scared or both. He already ratted out Bastion to Snowden.” I pull out my phone and send a message to Marion that those arseholes have gone, but to be on alert.
The response comes back fast. Of course.
Fintan takes a corner hard enough that I brace against the door. “If it was Linton, we need to know who he talked to and what he said.”
“And then we need to make sure he never talks again.”
The drive to Linton’s Kensington house takes twenty minutes in the bastard traffic. Fintan pulls up outside the building, a Victorian townhouse passed down from people who knew better than to talk about the wrong shit to the wrong people.
I get out and scan the street. Nothing looks out of place, but after the SUV at Lorcan’s, I’m not taking chances. We walk up the steps to the glossy black door, and I don’t bother with the bell. I bang on it hard enough to rattle the frame.
Nothing.
I bang again, harder this time. “Linton! Open up!”
Still nothing.
Fintan moves past me and tries the handle. It turns. The door swings open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a hallway that smells faintly of expensive cologne and stale cigar smoke.
“That’s not ominous at all,” I mutter, stepping inside.
The house is too quiet. I move through the hallway, checking rooms as I go. Living room—empty. Kitchen—spotless and unused. Study—desk covered in papers but no sign of anyone.
“Tiernan,” Fintan calls from upstairs.
I take the stairs two at a time. Fintan’s standing in the doorway of a bedroom, his expression carefully blank. That’s never a good sign.
I push past him and stop.
Linton Farnworth is sitting in an armchair by the window, head tilted back, throat slashed.
“Well. That’s annoying,” I say, looking around. “Someone got to him first.”
“The people he was working for? A double cross gone wrong?” Fin asks, pulling out a pair of black latex gloves from his inner jacket pocket and putting them on.
I roll my eyes at his meticulousness and walk over to the chair, crouching beside Linton’s body and studying the wound. It’s clean, professional. One deep slash from left to right, severing the carotid. He would’ve bled out in under a minute.
“Someone knew what they were doing,” I say, examining the angle. “No hesitation marks. No defensive wounds on his hands.”
“He knew them,” Fintan says from behind me. “They got close enough to do this without a fight.”
I stand and scan the room. Nothing looks disturbed. No signs of a struggle. The whisky decanter on the side table is half empty, with two glasses beside it. One empty, one untouched.
“He had company,” I say, nodding at the glasses. “His guest didn’t drink.”
“Didn’t leave prints, you mean,” Fintan says, searching the desk in the corner. I leave him to it and check the en suite bathroom. Nothing. I move to the wardrobe next, pulling open drawers.
“Tiernan.”
I turn. Fintan’s holding a burner phone, the cheap kind you buy at any corner shop with cash. “This was taped under the drawer.”
“Oh no, that is interesting,” I say.
He nods, already pulling out a handy zip lock.
“My God, man. Do you go around with an entire forensic kit in your jacket?”
“Yes,” he replies solemnly. “Don’t you?”
I shoot him a death stare. “No.”
“Obviously,” he mutters.
I ignore the jab. “Anything else?”
He shakes his head, pocketing the phone in the bag. “Nothing obvious. We should go before someone calls this in. We weren’t exactly subtle out there.”
I take one last look at Linton’s body, and we leave the way we came in.
Fintan pulls the door shut behind us. The street is still quiet, no curtains twitching, no concerned neighbours rushing out to ask questions.
This is the kind of neighbourhood where people mind their own business, even when they shouldn’t.
I climb back into the car, and Fintan pulls off his gloves before he starts the engine.
My phone buzzes, and I pull it out, glancing at the screen. “Lor,” I say, answering it.
“What in the hell? I leave for two minutes, and shit hits the fan.”
“Farnworth is deader than Whistles on a Wednesday night,” I reply.
Silence.
Then, “Ouch. That is pretty dead. What happened?”
I relay the events from Marion’s phone call to Fintan driving away from Farnworth’s townhouse.
“Fuck’s sake,” Lorcan says, and I hear the creak of leather, probably him sitting down in whatever private jet luxury seat he’s occupying. “They’re cleaning house. Farnworth talks to Snowden, Snowden talks to me, and now both of them are gone.”
“Snowden’s still alive, maybe,” Fintan says loud enough for Lorcan to hear.
“Maybe,” Lorcan repeats, sounding unconvinced. “Elle doesn’t need to know any of this.”
“But what if she knows who those fuckers are who came to your house?”
“How? She doesn’t know jack shit. Her words.”
“Okay, but maybe she’s seen them around?”
“She stays out of it. If either of you drag her into this, you will find my foot so far up your arse, you will struggle to remember what it feels like without it.”
I grimace at the threat but don’t argue because he’s not wrong. Elle doesn’t need this weighing on her, not when she’s already dealing with her own shit.
“Fine,” I say. “We keep her out of it.”
“Good. I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Keep me updated.”
He disconnects, and I pocket my phone. Fintan drives in silence.
“Connecting the dots yet?”
He shakes his head. “This is all very sudden. Elle waltzes into the club, unaware of where she is. Alex comes knocking on Bastion’s door, gets abducted, and two arseholes turn up at Lorcan’s looking for Elle.”
“You think Elle is connected to these guys?”
“Whether she means to be or not. She’s the catalyst.”
“Maybe. Seems unlikely.”
He nods slowly, willing to accept that his theory might be wrong.
“Go to the penthouse. We need to make sure she’s okay.”
“Already on it,” he says, then slams on the brakes as the same SUV cuts in front of us, blocking off the road, and another pulls up behind, boxing us in.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter and reach under the seat for the Glock I know is there.