Count to Ten
James Patterson
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by James Patterson
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Originally published by Century in the United Kingdom in 2016 as Private Delhi
First U.S. trade paperback edition: November 2017
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948579
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-5963-9 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-6027-7 (large print), 978-1-5387-5965-3 (ebook), 978-1-5387-5962-2 (hardcover library edition)
E3-20171003-NF-DA
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One: Killer Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Two: Deliverer Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Part Three: Martyr Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Epilogue Chapter 111
Chapter 112
About the Authors
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Part One
Killer
Chapter 1
THE KILLER EMPTIED the final bag of ice into the bath and shut off the cold tap.
With the tub full he stood back to admire his handiwork, watching his breath bloom. Winter in Delhi, it was cold, but the temperature in the small bathroom was even lower than outside and falling fast, just the way he wanted it.
From outside came the sound of footsteps on the stairs and the killer moved quickly. His victim was early but that was fine, he was prepared, and in a heartbeat he left the bathroom and crossed the front room of the apartment, scooping his hypodermic syringe from a table as he passed. A scratching sound announced the key in the lock and the victim opened the door.
The killer attacked from behind, grabbing the victim, pulling him into the room, and smothering a cry of surprise with one gloved hand. He used the syringe and for a second the victim struggled, then went limp. The killer let him drop to the carpet, checked the corridor outside, and then kicked the door shut. He bent to the victim and began to undress him.
Ten minutes later the victim awoke, naked and gasping in the bath. The bathroom light was off and his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the gloom but he heard the clicking of the ice cubes and knew instantly where he was. His arms had been hoisted overhead, handcuffed to the taps; submerged in the ice, his feet and knees were bound. As he began to struggle he heard someone enter the room and then a gloved hand pushed his head beneath the cubes. He inhaled icy water, feeling his airways fill and his heart constrict with the shock of the sudden cold. When the hand allowed him back to the surface, his coughs and splutters were punctuated by the violent chattering of his teeth.
The figure loomed over him, a shadow in the darkened bathroom. “You’ll feel it in your toes and fingertips first,” he said. “Tingling. Then numbness. That’s your body redirecting resources to protect the vital organs. Clever thing, the body, it can adapt quickly. If you were an Inuit, an Aborigine, even a Tibetan Buddhist monk, then withstanding this kind of cold would be simple for you, but you’re not those things, you’re…”
The killer moved into view. In his hand was the victim’s name badge, taken from his shirt. “Rahul,” he read, and then tossed it into the bath. “Oh, I do apologize. I’m sure you know all about the effects of cold on the human body. You know all about the slow shutting down of the various functions, how the brain dies before the heart.”
“Who are you?” managed Rahul. He squinted. “Do I know you?” The attacker’s voice was familiar somehow.
“I don’t know,” said the attacker. “Do you?” He perched on the edge of the bath and Rahul could see he wore all black, including a black balaclava. Opaque surgical gloves seemed to shine dully in the gloo
m, giving him the appearance of an evil mime.
“You’re wondering why I’m here,” said the man, as though reading his thoughts. He smiled and removed from his pocket a tiny little tool that he showed to Rahul. “Are you familiar with a procedure called enucleation?”
Chapter 2
JACK MORGAN ENJOYED risk. Why else would he be standing outside this door at 4 a.m., barely daring to breathe as he used a tiny lubricating spray on the lock and then went to work with his pick, nudging interior tumblers into place?
But not blind risk.
Again, that was the reason the owner of the world-renowned Private investigation agency had arrived in Delhi two days earlier than his official schedule predicted, and more discreetly than usual. It was because he liked his risk with a little forethought.
He liked calculated risk.
He slid into the darkened apartment like a shadow. From his pocket he took a rubber doorstop, closed the front door as far as he could without making a sound, and then wedged it.
Next he listened. For close to five minutes Jack stood in silence by the door, letting his eyes adjust and taking in the scant furniture—a sofa, a television, an upturned packing crate for a coffee table—but more than anything, listening—listening to the noise that emanated from the bedroom.
What he heard was the sound of a man enduring a fitful sleep, a man who mewled with the pain of nightmares.
Jack trod noiselessly through the apartment. In the kitchen he opened the fridge door and peered inside. Nothing. Back in the front room he went to the upturned crate.
On it stood a bottle of whisky. Johnnie Walker.
Oh, Santosh, thought Jack to himself. Tell me you haven’t.
From the bedroom the sound of Santosh Wagh’s nightmares increased, so Jack Morgan finished his work and let himself out of the apartment and into the chill Delhi morning.
Chapter 3
IN THE UPMARKET area of Greater Kailash in South Delhi, in a row of homes, a young couple stood at the gate of an abandoned house.
“This is it,” said the boy, his breath fogging in Delhi’s winter air.
“Are you sure?” asked the girl at his side.
“Sure I’m sure,” he replied. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”
They climbed over the gate easily and made their way through overgrown grass to the front door. Padlocked. But the boy used a pick to crack the lock in less than two minutes. Not bad for an amateur, he thought to himself.
He went to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“What’s wrong?” asked the girl. She was shivering and cold and desperately wishing they’d decided to go to the cinema instead of opting to make out here.
The boy was puzzled. “I thought it was unlocked…”
“What do we do now, then?” said the girl.
Like all young men governed by their libido, the boy wasn’t about to give up easily. Yes, it was cold, but he’d come armed with a blanket and the garden was sufficiently overgrown to screen them from the street.
“We don’t need to go inside. Let’s just stay out here,” the boy suggested.
“But it’s so cold,” she gasped.
“We’ll soon warm each other up,” he assured her, leading her to an area close to the front of the house. The grass was damp but he covered it with the blanket from his backpack, and the foliage not only screened them but also protected them from the chill breeze. She tried to imagine that they had found themselves a secret garden, and when he produced a spliff, it sealed the deal.
They sat and spent some minutes in relaxed, agreeable silence as they smoked the spliff, listening to the muted sounds of the city drifting to them through the trees. Then they lay down and began kissing. In a few moments they were making love, cocooned in weed-induced sexual bliss.
“What’s that?” she said.
“What’s what?” he asked, irritated.
“That noise.” Then her senses sharpened. “It’s the ground. The ground is—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Suddenly it was as though the grass were trying to swallow them. Subsidence. A sinkhole. Something. Either way, the earth gave way beneath them, and the two lovebirds crashed through the lawn and into a nightmare beneath.
Chapter 4
DAZED, THE GIRL pulled herself to her hands and knees, coughing and gagging at a sudden stench, a mix of caustic chemicals and something else. Something truly stomach-turning.
The floor was rough concrete. She was in a low-ceilinged basement. A gray patch of light in the ceiling indicated where they’d fallen through. Plasterboard, turf, and rotted wooden beams hung down as though in the aftermath of a storm.
And pulling himself up back through the hole was her boyfriend.
“Hey,” she called. “Where are you…?”
But he was gone.
Naked, wincing in pain, and consumed with a creeping sense of something being terribly, terribly wrong, the girl looked around, her eyesight adjusting to the gloom. She saw gas masks and coveralls hanging from pegs. A small chainsaw. Dotted around the concrete floor was a series of plastic barrels with some kind of toxic chemical fumes rising from each one. And even in her traumatized state she realized it was those fumes that had eroded the ceiling structure enough for it to collapse.
And then she saw other things too. They seemed to appear out of the darkness. A table, like a butcher’s block, with a huge meat cleaver protruding from the bloodstained wood. And from the plastic barrels protruded hands and feet, the skin bubbling and burning as though being subjected to great heat.
Bile rising, she knew what was happening here. She knew exactly what was happening here.
Chapter 5
A CHARNEL HOUSE, thought the Commissioner of Police, Rajesh Sharma, when he returned to the office the next day, with the stink of chemicals and decomposition clinging to him. Rarely had he been quite so grateful to leave a crime scene. Those poor bastards who’d had to stay.
The call had come in at around eleven o’clock the night before. A neighbor had heard screaming, looked out, and seen a terrified young woman, her clothes in disarray, running away from the house.
A short while later it was sealed off. The team had been inside for eight hours and would be there for many more days. They had determined the perp was using hydrofluoric acid to dissolve the bodies in plastic tubs. There was no way of counting how many, but say one for each barrel, that made eleven at least. Quite a death toll. What’s more, it didn’t take into account any corpses that might already have been disposed of.
But here was the bit that had really taken Sharma by surprise: the house was owned by the Delhi state government.
Mass murder. On government property. He would have to ensure the press did not get hold of this story; in fact, he’d have to make sure the news reached as few ears as possible.
Sharma had washed his hands. He’d rubbed at his face. But he could still smell the corpses as he sat behind his desk at police headquarters and greeted his guest.
The man who took a seat opposite was Nikhil Kumar, the Honorable Minister for Health and Family Welfare. Photoshoot-perfect, not a strand of jet-black hair out of place, Kumar wore simple khaki slacks, an Egyptian cotton shirt, a Canali blazer, and comfortable soft-leather loafers. His very presence made Sharma feel overweight and scruffy by comparison. Well, let’s face it, he was overweight and scruffy. But Kumar made him feel even more so.
“What can I do for you, sir?” Sharma asked the minister. It paid to be courteous to ministers.
“Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,” said Kumar.
“I’m happy to help. What’s on your mind?”
“I am given to understand that your men searched a house in Greater Kailash today. I was wondering if you could share some information regarding what you found.”
Sharma tried not to let his irritation show as he considered his response. On the one hand he wanted to keep Kumar satisfied; on the other, experience had taught him that it was
always better to keep politicians out of police inquiries.
“How about you tell me what your interest in this matter is?” he said. “And how you found out about it?”
“As I’m sure you’re about to remind me, I have no jurisdiction with the police. You and I stand on the battlements of two opposing forts in the same city. But I have contacts, and I find out what I can. You want to prevent leaks, run a tighter ship.”
Sharma chortled. “This is your way of buttering me up, is it, Minister? Coming into my office and criticizing the way I run my police force?”
“Let me be frank with you,” said Kumar. “It may not be wise to delve too deeply into this case.”
“Minister, we’ve got at least eleven potential murders here.” He was about to reveal he knew the building was owned by the state but stopped himself, deciding to keep his powder dry. “While I appreciate the need for discretion, we will be delving as deeply as we need to in order to discover the truth.”
“Suffice to say that you would be adequately compensated,” said Kumar.
Sharma was taken aback. “For what?”
“For your cooperation.”
Sharma sat back and made Kumar wait for a response. “I tell you what, Minister—you leave now, and I’ll think about your offer.”
Sharma watched with satisfaction as Kumar stood and tried to leave the office with as much dignity as he could regain.
Only when the door had closed did Sharma allow himself a smile. This was what they called an opportunity. And when life gives you lemons…
Chapter 6
SANTOSH WAGH OPENED the front door of his home to find Jack Morgan on the doorstep.
“Santosh!” said Jack, and before Santosh could react he had stepped inside.
As ever, Santosh was happy to see his boss. The thing with Jack was that as soon as he appeared, whatever the time, whatever the place, you were simply a guest in his world. It was impossible not to feel reassured by it. It wasn’t just the gun Jack carried; it wasn’t just the fact that Jack was enormously wealthy and could boast powerful and high-profile friends. It was just Jack, being Jack.
