“Cheers Jack.”
“How did you know my name?”
“It’s on that ID card round your neck, I may be fat but I’m not thick.”
“Fair point, right, now we’ve been introduced do carry on before I lose the will to live.”
Pullen, happy with his new law enforcement friend now continued with gusto.
“By the way, you’ve got a rather big Glock too.”
Cade replied, “We’ve only just met Geoffrey; bit soon for such talk don’t you think?”
Perhaps it was a good thing he’d seen the pistol. If Cade threatened him, at least he knew he meant business?
Pullen seemed completely unperturbed by the firearm and carried on, “You know what Jack me old mate, I like you. So anyway, I said to her did she fancy coming back to my place to listen to me House collection, I love it I do, I base myself on Norman Cook, my mates call me Slimboy Fat!”
He punched Cade on the shoulder causing a look that said ‘if you do that again I will cut your foot off and shove it up your arse’.
Pullen, valuing his ability to walk got the message and carried on.
“I know what you are thinking Ace, did she say yes?”
Cade was starting to feel nauseous; the damp, the stench and the overpowering bullshit were becoming a heady cocktail.
“Please tell me she said yes?”
“No, she didn’t, but she gave me this and then just walked off, she got into a taxi about two minutes ago, I was watching her in my door mirror, you know like that Jason Bourne would. I’ve just seen her head off in a white Mercedes. I got the registration too!”
Pullen handed an envelope to Cade. He opened it immediately and tipped the contents out onto his lap. There were six pieces of paper.
Two photocopies of birth certificates, two of passports, a business card belonging to some despot Ambassador from a place Cade had never heard of and what appeared to be a hand-written note on an aircraft sick bag.
Cade read the note twice.
“My name is Nikolina, I am not a bad person, but I know bad people. I have a good life, expensive jewellery, cars and holidays. But it is wrong. I do this no more. I am afraid. I need to claim asylum. Help me, my life is in danger. Please. Give to Police or person you trust.”
He turned to Pullen and said with an air of urgency, “So, why didn’t you give this to the Police like she asked you?”
He replied, equally urgently, “Because I don’t trust the police and I thought it was her phone number, you know, for later…” His eyebrows arched to emphasise his anticipation.
“On a fucking sick bag? Are you mad?”
Pullen got the impression that Cade was unhappy. He turned to him and said, “I get it hombre, that’s…”
“Yes, I know, Spanish.” Cade cut him off callously.
“I get it; this is that counter espionage shit isn’t it? And she’s a spy. I knew it, she were gorgeous an’ all. I could have made it with a bloody beautiful Russian spy.”
Cade had had enough.
“Geoff, you are forty, fat and you smell like a pair of three-week-old Y-fronts that frankly even a tramp would avoid. You smother yourself in bloody Lynx to mask the smell but it’s never quite enough, another two cans might do it, but honestly it’s like trying to hide an aircraft carrier under a…carrier bag!”
Pullen, thick-skinned as ever said, “So, what are you saying Jack?”
Shaking his head Cade replied, “I’m saying you’re a prized twat, I wish I’d never got in the car with you and right now you are lucky I don’t arrest you for obstruction. That woman’s life might be in grave danger.”
Pullen looked genuinely disappointed, sad almost.
“OK, I’m sorry Jack, alright? I didn’t get it. I trust you, which is why I gave you the note. I put my own needs before the life of a beautiful girl. She was blonde and pretty and trim. We were a match made in heaven…”
Pullen drifted off into a world of lurid fantasy, the only sound in the battered Astra being the asthmatic fan and the occasional squawk of the perished wiper blades.
“She had a little blue tattoo on her wrist. I couldn’t see it but I knew it was sophisticated. And she smelled of Chanel No. 5. Classy like, dead classy. Me, I still favour that Kudos, it’s a classic fragrance…”
As the sentence hung in the air it abruptly changed the situation for Cade, he could smell it too. Chanel No. 5. It was on the envelope.
He looked into his lap. He knew that the simple white unwritten envelope was empty but he still picked it up and opened it. Inside he saw a fine, long, single hair. It was red.
Forgetting himself entirely and importantly forgetting who was behind the wheel Cade yelled at Pullen, “Follow that bloody car. Now!”
Pullen was in seventh heaven. It was the first ever order from a copper that he was willing to obey.
Cade grabbed the Motorola radio and keyed the microphone.
“India One, Sierra Two Zero.”
Hazard was walking through the Departure Lounge, eagle-eyed and alert, smiling at a group of Norwegian students, all of them female and as luck would have it all sensational on the eye. Unusually, he was so engrossed he missed the call.
“India One, Sierra Two Zero.” Cade repeated his message, this time with a hint of urgency.
“Go ahead.” Hazard replied, hoping it wasn’t anything that was about to drag him away from his current commitment.
It was.
“Steve, I need some backup. Remember that customs’ target?”
“Yes, over.”
“Well, it’s a she, not a he, and she’s in a white Merc taxi heading east, probably towards the M1. I think she’s in danger. I’m with the original target in a white G plated Astra. Get control to ring me on my cell. Get someone else mobile as soon as possible and I’ll give you directions when I’ve got them. You are looking for a white 200 series Mercedes with Capital Cars on the door. It’s got a five-minute head start on us. Out.”
“10/4 en route.”
Hazard hardly knew his new team mate, but he knew his background and if he was asking for backup, then he needed it, it was the same the world over. He ran through the terminal, flashed his ID card across a reader and burst out onto the tarmac, running another hundred metres to his Volvo T5. He stowed the MP5 in the gun safe, jumped in and gunned the throttle.
Cade’s radio hissed again.
“India One from Uniform One.” It was Booth.
“Go ahead.”
“Boss I’m en route with Uniform Two, confirm south or north on the M1?”
Cade took a second: Stop. Think. Plan. It was an old model for decision making but it had never failed him yet.
Why would she head north?
Pullen, now almost an old hand at policing shouted to his partner.
“Jack, she’s heading south remember, London, to get away from Jack Dawes.”
He was right, God bless the little fat ginger fucker. Cade conveyed the message.
“M1 south gents, south, white Mercedes 200. Capital Cars. Can we alert Leicestershire in case this is not a kosher taxi?”
“It’s already done boss!” came the reply from Booth’s team mate Stumpy.
“OK, remember I am in a white, unmarked Astra, belongs to a member of the public. Don’t ask why but he’s driving, just make sure you give him some room when the time comes. Out.”
The Astra was already running so Pullen slammed it into reverse and accelerated aggressively. The resultant collision as they demolished a set of luggage trolleys made the bemused car park occupant run for cover.
Pullen was unfazed; wiping the driver’s window and windscreen with an old sock he felt one hundred percent in control.
Cade just shook his head.
“Geoff, pull over.”
“It’s Geoff Pullen!” He laughed as he eventually selected first and floored the aging throttle. The front wheel drive Vauxhall scrabbled for traction. Somehow its Dunlop tyres, long past their best, wire carcass
hanging from the front left and smoother than the proverbial baby’s backside somehow got the white elephant under way.
With a partially flattened trolley now attached to the tow bar they were nothing if not obvious.
Passengers grabbed their cell phones, pushing their luggage and loved ones to one side and screamed into their handsets for the police.
Pullen was now navigating through a grapefruit-sized porthole in the misted-up screen and using his dilapidated horn to warn passersby.
Cade supported him by using the other sock to clear the glass.
“Stop the bloody car Geoff before you kill someone. Geoff. Geoff. Stop!”
“Sorry mate but I’ve waited years to do this and besides, no-one knows Tracey like I do?”
Cade was deliberating who Tracey was when he first spotted the yellow fibreglass car park barrier. Pullen hadn’t, either that or he was now so focused on catching the girl he chose to ignore it.
The Astra struck the barrier at forty miles an hour causing it to explode and Pullen to bellow a Dukes of Hazard war cry.
They were sideways now, sliding across the damp tarmac, negotiating the first real test for the aging Vauxhall. Pullen skilfully corrected the drift with a flick of opposite lock which in turn caused the contents of the back seat and floor wells to be instantly redistributed into the front of the cockpit. A thunderous crash to their right was the result of the trolley hitting a road sign.
Cade made a comment about the paperwork but Pullen was oblivious. He then remarked that being in the Astra was reminiscent of living in a skip.
“But so much worse and dirtier too!”
“Reminds me of a girl I once met in Ibiza,” replied Pullen shamelessly.
Cade looked down to see a pair of stained, greying, women’s knickers and a festering McDonald’s burger wrapper had made their way into his lap.
He held the size 24 Marks and Spencer lace knickers up with a rusty spanner which had also appeared on his seat.
“Seriously, did any person of the opposite sex ever wear these?”
“So that’s where they got to!” replied an eager Pullen.
“Those are my favourites, belonged to a fat lass from Bristol called Tracey. I named the car after her. We did it in that seat after a flight back from Magali.”
“Left here, left. Down there!” ordered Cade rubbing the windscreen with the underwear before ejecting it out of the passenger window.
“Good job I’ve got more where they came from” said Pullen as he weaved through the traffic with the skill of a getaway driver.
He continued, quite casually, “I’ve got bikini, thong, midis, short, Brazilian, shapewear, black, white, red and my favourite…”
“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?” Cade bellowed, now unable to put the passenger window back up again.
“Getting away from you bastards!” replied Pullen with a punch of the air.
John ‘Jack’ Cade was questioning where the back-up was as they screamed down the slip road and onto the ever-manic M1 motorway. He pulled down the passenger visor and looked into the mirror, wondering how life had come to this.
Here he was in pursuit of an enigmatic Bulgarian redheaded criminal, a helpless passenger in a decrepit Vauxhall and unwittingly at the hands of a ginger knicker thief.
He promised himself that one day, somewhere in the not too distant future he would have a better life, less complicated and far more rewarding. He also decided that Geoffrey Pullen would play no part in it.
He put the visor back up, unable to look at himself any longer.
The visor fell off and soon joined the knickers somewhere on the hard shoulder of Britain’s most iconic highway.
Despite it’s almost Neolithic status the Astra soon got up to speed as a casual, yet slightly paranoid glance from Cade revealed they were doing over a hundred miles an hour. It was fine whilst they were moving but he decided that if they needed to stop in less than half a mile, they would die a horrible soiled-lingerie-laden death.
“There! Middle lane. Lima Alpha Zero Two,” shouted Cade as they hurtled down the outside lane, blue smoke pouring from the exhaust.
“India One from Sierra Two Zero.”
“Go ahead, vehicle sighted, registration Lima Alpha Zero Two…partly obscured by a tow bar but it’s our car Steve.”
“Roger, with you in one.”
Cade knew that universally police staff underestimated their response time so expected them to be at least five minutes.
He placed his left hand out of the gaping chasm that doubled as a window and grabbed the passenger door mirror, trying to adjust it so that he could observe his colleagues coming up behind them, he knew they would be approaching at Warp Factor Five so wanted to warn Pullen.
Without the merest hint of surprise Cade saw the glass break into three pieces, clinging onto the frame rather than letting go and whistling back down the road, joining other bits and pieces of unrecognisable urban waste.
Pullen didn’t see the two Volvos in his rear-view mirror but he saw what looked like three in his passenger side.
He yelled, “I’m suing for that, and the visor and those knickers of Tracey’s…”
Decelerating from a hundred and forty Sierra Two was now alongside and talking to Cade on his radio.
“Jack, get Fatboy Slim to back off we’ll consider a TPAC if this thing doesn’t stop.”
“Roger, understood. I don’t think we’ll last much longer!”
Cade had been trained in Tactical Pursuit and Containment manoeuvres and knew how deadly they were in the wrong hands.
“Geoff, back off now, let the professionals take over, you’ve done well.”
Cade saw the Red Mist had cast a worrying veil over Pullen. It was a look he knew all too well. He’d seen it in the best of police drivers but now it was on the face of an overweight northern Disc Jockey. It was, to say the least, not very promising.
“Geoff, back off. Now!”
The driver of the Mercedes looked into his own rear-view mirror and smiled. In his late thirties Gabriel Cazaku’s luxuriant black hair had started to grey prematurely. A long-term employee of an anonymous Romanian business man, based in London, whose name he never knew, he was paid well to deliver the cargo from the airport to his office.
No questions.
Upon first seeing the police vehicles he exhaled, hoping they weren’t after him; he knew that his passenger was important; perhaps the authorities had identified her? If that was so then they were both in trouble.
He decelerated slightly, trying not to bring attention to himself.
The patrol car lights illuminated once more and the white Astra slowed.
“Good, they were after that old Vauxhall,” Cazaku whispered under his breath as he pressed send on a pre-formatted text message.
He moved to the centre lane and cruised at eighty miles an hour, a hundred metres in front of a large articulated truck.
It was also a white Mercedes but infinitely more powerful, but it had no connection with Cazaku. It was laden with potato crisps and bound for Oxford.
On the inside lane another white Mercedes 200 with the partial registration Lima Alpha Zero Two was keeping pace with the wagon. It also had a tow bar.
On board the second car, a fifty-five-year-old Eastern European male handed a magnetic sign to his passenger. The sign was exactly the same size as the plates that adorned the white taxi a hundred metres in front of them. It had written upon it ‘Capital Cars’ and a randomly plagiarised phone number.
The driver and passenger depressed the switches on their tinted windows and fought briefly against the wind, which buffeted against their arms, causing them a short-lived sense of unease as they placed the plates onto the driver and passenger door panels. The fit wasn’t pin-point perfect but it would serve a purpose.
The driver rang Cazaku.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Vehicle Two accelerated along the motorway and joined
the centre lane about fifty or so in front of Vehicle One. At the same time Vehicle One braked, darted to the left and tucked in behind the relative safety of the artic.
To the regular motorway user, it was two similar cars travelling in the same direction. To the trained eye it was automotive ballet. The only person that saw it and thought it unusual was Chris Tring the driver of the heavy goods vehicle.
He sensed something untoward but soon carried on listening to Radio Two, begrudgingly eating a banana – he was determined to keep up his new healthy regime, at least until the next truck stop.
In the outside lane Hazard and Booth arrived on scene, lights and wailers activated and ready to carry out a stop. Any resistance would be met with the TPAC manoeuvre.
For once Pullen obeyed Cade and hung back. Cade had told him that if he interfered, he would be shot in the face. Pullen believed him.
“Sierra Two Zero, India One.”
“Go ahead.”
“Leicestershire are on the other carriageway mate, miles away, do we wait or do this now? Your call.”
“It’s a taxi Steve, I don’t expect any issues, let’s give it a tug. On your word, we’ll hang back now just to the rear of the wagon but be ready to assist once the circus comes to a halt. Let’s keep this clean, I’ve got a member of the public on board and I have a bad feeling about this.”
In time-honoured fashion Hazard replied, “Yes, Yes. Will do.”
Hazard took over the stop, the artic slowed, Tring, a balding man in his early fifties and one of the oft-named Knights of the Road was quick to observe the action. He’d seen it all before. He gave a wave to Stumpy as they eased by him and got a thumb’s up in return.
Now safely behind the Mercedes, Hazard flashed his headlights and pointed to the driver to pull over to the hard shoulder, Booth gently edged ahead of them, allowing Johnson to reinforce the instruction with a positive hand gesture.
The taxi driver nodded and started to drift to the left-hand lane, but then accelerated enough to cause the pursuing cars some concern.
Cade spotted it too.
“Geoff, pull in behind the wagon, something’s not right.”
They were covering the ground quickly, in less than half a mile there was a slip road, off the motorway and onto the A512 Ashby Road.
Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1) Page 29