It did not take long for her to find him; Jarvis Whyte, immaculate in black tie, and with several members of Parliament’s more extreme groups surrounding him in the centre of the spacious grandeur.
In the more social surroundings, Whyte was the antithesis of his earlier self before the cameras, charming an apparently inexhaustible string of guests with light conversation and laughing uproariously at whatever jokes were thrown in. The lack of alcohol in no way diminished his joi de vivre, and he behaved as though he were working the crowd at a constituency fund-raiser, holding his glass of water like it was an aged Scotch, with each sip to be savoured in the memory.
The first part of Lucie’s plan was dangerous, not least because of the risk not just to her but that posed to Monika too; hence Ismail now busily preparing the second part of the plan. But she reasoned it was the only way. If the British press had paid so little attention to the disappearance of a number of European women including the murder of one of them, it would take something pretty special to wake them up now. Likewise, it stood to reason that the politician into whose businesses the women had vanished would have some idea how the political pressure on the police not to investigate the crimes had been leveraged. Lucie knew she had to create that unwanted attention herself.
She cut through the crowd silently, never taking her eyes from Whyte’s face, until she hung at the back of the crowd around the MP as he regaled them with tales of his own back-breaking efforts in bringing the contract to Britain, and how the contract’s success would send a message to the Remoaners with their ‘project fear’ that there was a prosperous future for the country.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Lucie coldly pointed out as the laughter and cheers died down.
The chatter stopped and Whyte looked pointedly at her, his brow creasing over his glasses and the slightest hint of pink appearing on his cheeks as he processed the unexpected question in a room which was supposed to have been wholly complimentary towards him.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, you didn’t answer the question. Today, in the press conference. You were asked how it was that all of the sub-contracts for the Red Mako project are connected in some way to WaterWhyte Defence. Sounds almost like a monopoly to me…”
“Madam, I’m sorry but I’ve no idea what you’re talking about…”
“Yes you do.”
Whyte’s brow, already furrowed in confusion at the unexpected and decidedly unwelcome approach, creased further still.
“I’m afraid I…”
“I suppose it must just be a coincidence,” she cut him off, her voice still austere and controlled. “Just like it must be a coincidence that six women have disappeared without trace, at a time when six women seemingly appeared out of nowhere and were employed in admin positions within your company. Another was murdered, Mr Whyte. Perhaps she failed the interview.”
The chattering had stopped, replaced with whispers and puzzled looks, Whyte’s own features morphing from confusion to outright anger as he puffed and stumbled for some kind of answer, before a spark of distant recognition appeared behind his eyes.
“Wait a moment… yes, I thought so, you’re Algers’ girl, aren’t you? I might have known that even unconsciousness isn’t enough to stop him from being a pest.”
It was enough for the laughter from the braying chorus behind him to start again, the sound reviving the confidence in Whyte’s features.
“That’s not very nice, Mr Whyte, Kasper is in in hospital right now, put there by a man on your payroll, no less.”
“There’s no evidence…”
“The same man who chased after me and a friend of mine in a car the other night, firing bullets at us.”
“Look, if you have something the police ought to be aware of, then I can only recommend that…”
“And I’m nobody’s ‘girl’ Mr Whyte,” Lucie replied with fixed eyes above her cynical smile. “I’m the woman who will bring you down and reveal all your little secrets to the whole watching world. You Brexshitters have got most of the British press in your pockets, but there are still enough independent minds out there to take an interest in your handiwork, even if they have to go to other countries to be published.”
Whyte’s voice dropped to match Lucie’s, and his face took on a stern and sinister quality totally at odds with his public persona.
“And they’d be bloody stupid to try,” he almost whispered to her. “Let them publish what they like and they won’t just be damned, I’ll destroy them in every libel court in the land. I worked my fingers to the bone to bring this contract to WaterWhyte Defence, and I’ve made sure thousands of people can keep their jobs because of it. And for traitorous Remoaners like yourself to try and throw all of that into doubt, just because you don’t like the result of a democratic vote is beyond the pale!”
“Democratic vote?” Lucie smirked, resisting her desire to relish the man’s discomfort and keeping her mind focussed, knowing that every twitch of her features and inflection in her voice further infuriated him. “A vote that only certain people are allowed to take part in can’t call itself democratic. You Brexshitters don’t care about democracy, despite all your bleating; you just care about perverting it enough to suit your ends, and to hell with everyone who gets crushed in the process.”
“Now, really, this is outrageous…” Whyte spluttered.
“Tough,” Lucie interrupted, her voice calm and measured as she fought to control her rising anger.
“I know about the women, Mr Whyte,” she continued. “And I know you know what happened to them.”
The glamorously attired guests assembled behind the frothing MP were rising in number as voices hushed and eyes focussed on him, his cheeks rapidly turning from simple pink, moving with each syllable through dark ochre before settling on an indignant crimson. While ignoring her new audience, Lucie played to them masterfully, stepping closer to Whyte, her finger pointing inescapably at him.
“And I know who the next woman on the list is, too. It ends. Now.”
The expression on Whyte’s face twisted into one of pure hatred, and for a moment Lucie thought he might actually try to strike her, before he regained control of himself and spoke loudly to the guests still flocking around the scene.
“I’m glad you’re all here to see this,” he said loudly. “This woman works in the offices of the infamous Kasper Algers. And while all of us are sorry at the fate that has befallen him, we can at the same time condemn the attitude and opinions of those who claim him as a figurehead. They’re so desperate to ignore the opportunities of Brexit that they’ll even stoop to using the tragic murder of an innocent to smear those of us who champion those opportunities!”
The crowd was back onside, save for a small handful who looked curiously from Whyte to Lucie and hung back from the group. For the most part though, they laughed and crowed, some making boorish comments fuelled by the booze they had managed to sneak into the event, while others cried ‘shame’ and tutted, as though they were still sleeping off their lunches in Parliament.
Seizing his moment of victory, Whyte stepped closer, his voice once more dropping to a sinister level.
“I wonder if the press will pick up your story after all,” he said, “or whether tomorrow’s headlines will instead condemn the Remoaners who would use the memory of a murdered woman to attack Britain’s future.”
Before Lucie could respond, the elegant figure of Al-Khatani appeared beside her, his face as emotionless as it had appeared in the conference, his voice stern.
“My apologies, madam, but other guests have complained, and your behaviour is causing a disturbance.”
“Well we can’t have that, can we?”
“Though I would prefer if you stayed, I must ask you to address your behaviours, lest you be required to leave. Now, may I fetch you some water?”
“Don’t bother,” said Lucie, grinning, “this one’ll do.”
Snatching the glass from Whyte’s hand, Lucie thre
w the contents at the MP, who gasped as the cold water coated him and a fanfare of condemnation blew up around her.
“Madam!” exclaimed Al-Khatani, at whose beckoning, two robed, muscular men began to move through the crowd towards them.
“Remember,” Lucie hissed at the dripping Whyte, “it ends now, or I end you.”
The look he fixed her with before she turned and headed from the building stayed burned into Lucie’s mind as she walked, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She had played her hand in the most public way possible, and she could only hope both that it was enough to provoke retaliation, and that she and Ismail could prevent another victim from being added to the list.
Brushing past the gate security, Lucie headed down Charles Street, before turning onto Queen’s Street, where she had parked the car allocated to her after the untimely demise of Ismail’s Peugeot. As she opened the door to the scratched and dented Fiesta, she wondered momentarily whether Lake had a side-line in crap used cars, before her thoughts returned to the danger she had placed Monika in.
It was a hunch, Lucie acknowledged, to believe that Monika was necessarily the next on Whyte’s list, but she had learned to trust her instincts, and was grateful that Ismail had begun to do likewise. She also acknowledged, a little more shamefully, that she was gambling the woman’s safety on Lucie’s own ability to protect her; a wager she would feel significantly more comfortable about if she knew precisely what form the threat would take.
Monika’s name appeared on their files for a reason, and she matched the profile of the others too completely for it to be a coincidence. Lucie’s antics in the embassy would, she was sure, lead either to them making their move to have her disappear the same way as the others, or backing away before scrutiny became too great; she hoped it was the latter. Lucie switched on the engine and pulled into traffic, telling herself again that this was the only way to save her new friend. She could only pray silently that the second part of her plan would work.
NINETEEN
The drive from Mayfair to Shoreditch took around forty minutes, and Lucie’s nerves did not settle at any point in the journey. She had left Ismail earlier that evening, with Monika’s safety his paramount concern, and she had sent a text as she left the embassy to let him know she was on the way, but the natural concern she had for the recruiter had soon given way to worry as no reply came. Twice on the way she had tried calling Ismail, but his phone remained stubbornly silent.
By the time she turned into the freshly gentrified Totter’s Lane, her worry had turned to fear. There was still no answer from Ismail, while across the driveway of number 76, where Monika resided, sat a black Audi of the type that had chased them so relentlessly through Primrose Hill, nights before. Lucie cruised past the house, straining to see inside the curtained windows for any signs of life or activity but to no avail. Most likely, she mused, the road itself was being watched for either signs of trouble, or perhaps the arrival of Lucie herself; if she were the one inside the property, it was what she would do.
Pulling the car in at the far end of the lane, Lucie ducked into the driveway of the end house and scrambled over the gate which gave entry to the small back garden. Gentrified though the district had become, the houses themselves were still reliable old terraces, solid in construction and linked at the rear by a modest yard and garden space, punctuated by wooden fencing in various states of disrepair. Lucie negotiated those fences as silently as she could as she made her way towards number 76, pressing herself against cover whenever a kitchen light flicked on or a window opened.
By her count, the next garden would be behind 76, and Lucie could see that the untidily kept lawn was bathed in a shallow light, coming from the rear French windows, but still she could see no movement or discern any noise. The upper bedroom windows were closed shut and curtained, and while she could look straight into the kitchen, the light was off and there was no-one within, at least none that she could see. The French windows themselves were at too tight an angle for her to look fully inside.
The freezing damp in the night air had begun to provoke her bad knee into its usual belligerence, and she warned herself not to give in to its twinges as she slipped her gun into her hand and slid over the fence. Keeping to the edges, she skipped over unkempt flower beds and pressed her back against the cold bricks of the house, pausing to scan the area before ducking under the kitchen window and straightening up as she reached the edge of the tall glass panes through which the dim light shone out. A knot of anxiety tightened within her as she paused to fill her lungs in readiness for whatever lay within, and it grew tauter still as she cautiously inched her head around the brickwork, the sight filling her at once with horror and righteous fury.
Inside the otherwise unremarkable room sat Ismail, broken and bloodied, strapped to a wooden chair, his head lolling and his chest heaving erratically. Lucie’s eyes flashed to all the alcoves in the room she could see, before calling her bad knee into action and kicking hard at the handle of the windows, slamming them open with tremendous force before rushing to her stricken friend and kneeling by him, lifting his head and willing his eyes to focus on her.
“Look at me, “he ordered, “Asif, look at me!”
The eyes, devoid of the mischievous charm she had come to depend on rolled up towards her and he began shaking his head, almost violently.
“Don’t,” he spluttered, “they’re here for you, it’s a trap.”
“Of course it’s a fucking trap,” she answered, a sad smile on her face and her eyes dampening. “But that’s not going to stop me helping you.”
The thump of boots on stairs sounded above and Ismail leant forward to touch his forehead against Lucie’s, both understanding what was coming next.
“My angel,” he whispered.
“The foolish kind,” she smiled softly back.
On cue, the living room door smashed open, splintering against the wall, and Lucie spun on her knees, the gun still clasped tightly in her hands, and fired off two shots into the shins of the of the first black-clad figure lurching towards her. Rolling away in time to dodge the shot from the second figure entering the room, Lucie re-aimed and fired a felling shot into his shoulder, the masked man crumpling alongside his fallen comrade.
“Look out!”
Ismail forced the warning from his battered body and Lucie turned just in time for the swinging knuckles of a third attacker, fresh from the adjoining kitchen, to connect against her temple. Dazed, she staggered backwards and felt the gun being knocked from her hand by the third thug, insults directed at both she and her mother as he did so. Her focus returning as a second punch came her way, Lucie caught the fist in the air with both hands and moved swiftly to twist the limb upwards behind her attacker’s back. The man fell to his knees, reaching in vain over his shoulder, unable to break free from Lucie’s grip.
“Where’s Whyte keeping them?” she shouted into his ear.
“Fuck you, bitch!”
“Where?” she roared again, punctuating her request with a further twist to his arm.
“You’ll find out soon enough!”
The new voice came from behind her, and Lucie cursed as another sickening thump struck across her skull, sending her sprawling. Her senses reeling, she could only listen in helplessness to the echoey voices of her assailants.
“Fuckin’ whore,” spat the one she had bested. “Take her upstairs, let’s see how she likes it when she can’t move her arms.”
“That’s not the deal,” voiced the one who had struck her from behind. “Bring the van round, get her and the Paki inside.”
“The van can fuckin’ wait!” The oaf was becoming argumentative. “This is the bitch that did Jon in, now look what she’s done to Nige and Jake!”
The screams of the two felled gunmen still filled the air, and Lucie tried to raise her head towards them.
“You might have thought the sun shone out of Healey’s arse, but I couldn’t give a fuck, now get them in the fuckin’ van!”
“But Nige and Jake!”
A noise like the sound of a heavy book hitting a table filled the room twice, which even Lucie’s addled brain recognised as the double shot of a silenced handgun, taking with it as it died away the screams of the injured men.
A moment of silence enveloped the room, save for Ismail’s heavy breathing, before Lucie heard a quiet but angered voice cursing emphatically.
“See?” said the other, “I don’t give a fuck about Nige and Jake, either, and if you think you’re charming and intelligent enough to be the exception to the rule I’d advise to think again. Now fuckin’ MOVE!”
Their arguing gave Lucie the respite she needed to stretch life back into her fingers, as her eyes settled on the gun that had been knocked from her hands. Stretching her arm forward a centimetre at a time, her middle finger brushed the grip of the weapon and a flame of excitement lit within her as she focused on the game-changer within her reach.
Instead of the sensation of the gun in her grasp, a boot stamped down onto her outstretched hand and a second met her ribs, sending a burning pain through her body which caused her to curl up in agony.
“Nighty night, bitch,” she heard the calmer voice spit into her ear, before the hard rubber of a cosh smacked across the back of her head, and blackness overcame her.
TWENTY
Lucie wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been out, and it took a few minutes for her mind to fully embrace lucidity after her eyelids first began to flicker back into life. She was in a vehicle of some sort, that much was obvious by the noise of traffic and the thuds that shook her body every few seconds as whatever she was in traversed the roads. Trying to move, she quickly found her hands tied behind her back. She was also hooded, something she had experienced once before when dragged through the Afghan desert by her captors.
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