She had quickly become one of the boys; with an ear for great intelligence and a flair for getting in the face of criminals, she had swiftly earned a reputation as a gritty and brave fighter – the many faded commendations that now sat in a dilapidated cardboard box in her loft bore testament to this.
She had an almost imperceptible scar on her face, running from her left eye down to her jawline. It was too soon to ask, but Cade made a mental note, when things had improved, to ask how it had got there.
Her lips were pursed and slightly twisted to the left, as if she was chewing the inside of her own cheek. She was.
She had a good figure, possibly not as trim as she was when she left training school, but she still looked fit enough to be eye-catching.
Her upper body was very much in proportion with her lower half and she held herself impeccably upright, an almost perfect posture, the upshot of a broken back sustained in a hideous car crash a few years prior.
Her hands were more delicate than he had expected, almost those of a piano player. The skin was soft-looking and the nails immaculately manicured without any need for colour. Cade noted that she wore no rings, the absence of a whiter band across her ring finger hinting that possibly, just possibly, she might not be married.
A small and much-loved Casio G Shock watch sat on her left wrist, another legacy from the past.
Cade wasn’t sure why, but he found her deeply attractive. She wasn’t pretty in the classic way, the way in which most men found women pretty, but she had a certain allure, a draw, as a spring tide draws the countless grains of sand away from a beach she began to rein him in and he simply didn’t understand why.
She certainly wasn’t his type, but then his type had ended up naked in a swimming pool with Grant Bastard Cooke and his band of merry swingers.
It was an odd feeling. Nikolina was attractive, very pretty in fact, and the subject of many male fantasies. In truth he had been the envy of the station when he had arrested her only days before, but this girl was unusual, powerful almost, yet somehow needing a caring shoulder to lean on.
Jesus, as if he didn’t have enough to contend with.
He blinked his eyes and brought himself back to earth. Whatever her appeal was, he was unlikely to get within an inch of her anyway, given her alleged dislike of the male species. Perhaps she was disinterested in males too?
Roberts broke the silence.
“Jack, my old son, this is Carrie O’Shea. Carrie is ex-job, long story and all that, anyway. These days she’s far brighter than most of us, one of my best analysts in fact. She can do things with an Excel spreadsheet that would make a…” He searched the air for a one-liner, something to break the ice even further, but all that came to mind was likely to earn him a quickly delivered slap.
Petrov simply smiled and carried on pointing at the computer screen.
Cade held out his hand and introduced himself to O’Shea.
“Carrie, I’m Jack, nice to meet you.” His hand hovered awkwardly in the air for a few moments until he tried again.
“I’m Jack Cade, from East Midlands Airport, I hear you can do great things with software, I’d like to get to know a lot more about you. I think we can work well together; we may have a common bond. Would that be possible, Carrie?”
She drank from an unforeseen Postman Pat mug, swallowed the hot tea and looked up.
What she saw was not what she expected. He had been described as a sergeant, so she formed the opinion that he would be a detective. But he wasn’t. The business card that he had slid onto her desk just said Sergeant – Intelligence Manager.
His voice gave her cause to think t. Hehat he was older, possibly in his fifties, but again, she was wrong. His rank and his role assured her that he would be as arrogant as all the other bastards in her office but when she fixed her eyes onto his, she knew that for the first time since her early teenage years she had found someone whom she could trust.
She connected with him there, and then. The t had been crossed, the i neatly dotted.
His eyes were intensely blue, but warm; again, it was completely contradictory to her foolish assumptions. His hand was equally warm, smooth but not soft, he wasn’t afraid of hard work but he looked after himself.
Try as she might, she found herself humming the baseline to the Paul Carrack song for the rest of the morning and dwelling on just one line.
The team members that had been unsuccessful with Carrie considered her a lesbian or at best bi-curious. They were wrong. That she hadn’t leapt into bed with every man in the office meant something. And besides, let them think what they wanted to. If all they had were their male fantasies, then so be it. She pitied their wives and partners.
In truth she was blatantly heterosexual, always immaculately dressed and always, always compulsive about things that she did.
If she put fuel in her car, the numbers always had to total an amount plus sixty-nine. She wasn’t sure when it had started or why, but she liked to hear the attendant mention the figure when she finally got to pay. It amused her.
If she ironed her clothes, the creases had to be ‘just so’, anything else would not do; the legacy of spending time at Hendon Police College and the consequence of having a famous father in the job.
If her hair didn’t sit ‘just right’ she would wash it again until it did.
If she was ever lucky enough to have sex, it would have to run in a pattern culminating in a certain position. If her partner was unwilling to let her take control – and most were – then she would literally disengage and never see him again.
It happened with Clive Wood, a middle-aged detective who had been on the team for over ten years. One Christmas the inevitable had happened, she had drunk far too much at the office Christmas party and in truth Wood knew this.
He’d taken advantage of her; in fact, he had made a bet with some of his peers that he would do just that. When she had sobered up, she took the reins once more, athletically and breathlessly undressing him.
It had been, up unto a point, a night to remember for the heavily married but rather overweight and desperately hirsute Welshman.
Outside The Yard the city was still heading hurriedly towards the festivities as he noisily turned her over face-down onto his cluttered desk.
He then opened the blinds so that they could both see out onto the street before he continued his vain attempts at seduction.
Her partially naked body was easily the more attractive of the two; the myriad sodium street lights provided them both with a sultry orange tan. However, despite her desirable figure and the erotic situation he failed in his quest to seduce her, alcohol doing its part in preventing him from keeping up his side of the bargain.
She soon resisted, dragging him onto the office floor, and rapidly moved herself into her favourite position. Unexpectedly, he didn’t like it. In fact, he protested so much that she simply climbed off him, pulled her knickers back on, dressed, switched on the office lights and dumped his garments in the lift.
She took the stairs as it gave her more time to enjoy the fact that he would have been naked and scrambling for cover whilst his sweaty clothes were bound for the main reception.
She reached the ground floor, waited for the lift to announce its arrival, propped open the door, said goodbye to the night security team, left the building and began the walk home.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a brightly lit shop window; the tears of anger had reddened her eyes, causing the pupils to change subtly colour from grey to green. It only ever happened when she was angry and occasionally when she was aroused. The latter had not happened for a very long time.
Wood made it to the floor below, running for his life to avoid the close-circuit television. He entered the changing room and found some old uniform items in his locker.
Pulling them on and struggling to do up the buttons, he found himself thinking that he didn’t know what was worse: being found late at night naked in Scotland Yard or being found in the Kingdom
of the Detective – whilst wearing plod’s uniform?
From that moment Wood detested her and took every opportunity to perpetuate the myth that she was an ice-cold lesbian.
“She’d have to be to turn down Clive ‘Ivor’ Wood,” he had said to anyone prepared to listen.
A few days later, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the unusually quiet office was home to Wood and O’Shea; everyone else had taken time off with their families.
After three long hours Wood had managed to avoid her gaze – and she, his. However, she had spent a few satisfying minutes in the stationery cupboard selecting some new highlighter pens and a Staedtler 6H pencil – the hardest graphite compound on the market. It was the one with the red and black barrel; very traditional, O’Shea was also a strict traditionalist at heart and this design reminded her of her happier school days.
She took just one of the writing instruments, even though she had the opportunity to take the whole box, then after locking the cupboard she walked inaudibly back to her desk. Just as she had sat down, he made the mistake of looking at her.
In her anger she snapped the new bonded lead on the desktop, then slowly, efficiently placed it into the aperture of her motorised sharpener until it appeared once more, pointed, unsullied and resembling a factory-fresh model.
She stood, adjusted her neat pleated skirt and straightened her blouse so it was ‘just so’ and walked directly towards Wood’s desk.
He looked again. Here she came. For all intents and purposes, she resembled a schoolteacher from the early Fifties; altogether very prim and quite proper.
Conversely, underneath her rather staid clothes she wore a pair of blue silk knickers and an equally lacy bra that made the very most of her figure. She considered it essential to look her best in any situation and besides, her mother always told her to wear clean underwear in case she got run over by a bus. It always made her smile.
Stereotypically, he pretended to pick up the phone and make a call, but O’Shea was a few steps ahead of him. Seeing his left hand sat on the desk, she took the chance to ram the sharpened point of her favourite pencil directly into the web between his thumb and his forefinger, causing the lead to once more disintegrate.
She then twisted the point slowly, purposely; a chess player would have likened the move to that of the great Russian Master Vasily Smyslov – who deliberately twisted the end of a chess piece in order to gain a psychological advantage over his opponent.
His scream could be heard throughout the floor, but they were alone. There were no witnesses and whilst the damage was intensely painful, she knew he wouldn’t need an ambulance and furthermore she also knew he didn’t have the courage to make a complaint.
It was what she considered to be an ‘understanding’, a way of forever righting a wrong. And for now at least, they were equal.
She smiled as she ground the lead into his thumb and spoke quietly into his left ear.
“You wanted something, you got it. I wanted something in return, now I’ve got it. In Latin it is called quid pro quo but you being Welsh I doubt you’d understand boyo.”
She kissed him sardonically on the forehead as she twisted the weapon out of his hand and slowly wiped the blood onto his faded shirt sleeve. She then walked back to her desk and re-sharpened the pencil to remove any trace of blood and skin.
Any sense of revenge on Wood’s part was forever absent; he simply didn’t have the courage to take her on. However, it affected her greatly.
For a very short time she had found herself back in that cold, desolate and falsely seasonal office, she felt as if she were gripping the barrel of her favourite pencil, ready to strike once more, but then looked up and realised that she was still holding Cade’s hand. The glance had become a stare, and it was now uncomfortable. She let go and spoke.
“Sergeant Cade. I’m sure you can find plenty of people in here that can help. I’m rather busy. It’s been lovely.”
With that, she looked back down at her paperwork and acted out some note taking.
Cade wasn’t buying into her sarcasm-laden act – Roberts had convinced him that she was the analyst he needed – being ex-job gave her the edge and truth be told he quite liked her ‘attitude’.
Sensing the importance the Home Office had put upon his project and the need to set some boundaries, he replied.
“Correction, Miss O’Shea. You were busy. Now you are much busier. I’ll see you in the morning at eight thirty. There’s a café across the road. I’ll buy you breakfast. We have a lot to talk about.” Cade started to walk away.
She stood, causing a few in the office to sit up and pay attention.
Clive Wood nudged his partner and whilst involuntarily rubbing the circular, dark red scar on his left hand said in a thick accent, “Oh, here we go again, hide the stationery, I don’t think much to his chances boyo. If she grabs her pencil, make a run for the fire escape!”
O’Shea stood with her manicured hands on her hips, ignored the Welshman and offered a belligerent challenge.
“What if I don’t make it, sergeant?”
Cade smiled, continued walking without turning around and said, “You will.”
Chapter 25
It was early morning, and Cade was at the office before Roberts. He was a creature of habit and took the unoccupied twenty minutes to talk to a few of the team who seemed to warm to him and his passion for Eastern Europe.
“The fing is boss, we ain’t seen none of that there Euro stuff around ‘ere yet. This is Met ground, our manor. Do you really reckon it’ll kick off here, right in the ‘eart o’ London? I mean, really? It all sounds a bit pony to me.”
Cade’s father had spent years in the prison service, rising slowly through the ranks and eventually gaining a reputation as a hard but fair bastard. He spent a lot of time with prisoners, both black and white, and when he wasn’t talking in a pseudo-Caribbean accent, it was faux Cockney. As a result, there was a rarely a normal sentence in the Cade household and as a consequence he could talk rhyming slang with the best of them.
“You think I’m ‘aving a giraffe? Fillin’ you with a load of old pony? Trust me on this one. Yer plates are on the end of your Scotches for a reason, old son. Perhaps you should use ‘em to get out there and find out what’s going on under your bugle!”
The office went quiet for a moment as one or two of the staff tried to translate what he had just said.
Roberts chose that moment to spring into the office.
“Morning all! Kettle on? Lovely – mine’s the usual black, no sugar, and bring me a chocolate Digestive. I see Sergeant Cade is learning the lingo. For those of you that require a little of the old local translation he was saying get out on your bloody feet and find out what’s going on under your noses! Well, go on then piss off the lot of you!”
He turned to Cade.
“Bloody ‘ell, the Met’s not what it was Jackie lad – half of ‘em aren’t even from London anymore. It comes to something when a bleedin’ northerner knows more than half of my team.”
“I thought you said you were a Jockney?” Cade countered.
“Yes, I did. I did, didn’t I? Anyway, that’ll be our little secret unless you want my size ten up your Arris!”
Cade knew exactly what he meant and as he whistled O Flower of Scotland he looked at Roberts, pointed to the door with his thumb and said, “We ready Jason? Let’s go and look at this body, shall we?”
They travelled off the area to the public morgue at Camden. Whilst the Met could and would go anywhere in the capital, they were fiercely protective of their own Boroughs. Given Cade’s current mandate, Roberts knew he could go wherever he wanted.
“As you can see Jack, a typical street robbery victim for this part of the world, he’s got reasonable dress sense, nice shoes, swarthy, probably Albanian, most likely he’s done the dirty on his dealer or stepped onto someone’s manor without knowing.”
Cade took a while to scan the naked body, which now lay on the clinical
stainless-steel bench. The male that lay before him was now just a shell of a former life with pallid skin and dark, heavily pooled blood in his back and hips and was at best probably in his early twenties. Even in death he appeared to have a scornful look upon his lifeless face.
Cade looked up at Benjamin Mortimer, the local Mortuary Technician. He smiled at the irony of his surname and then asked a question.
“Do you mind?”
Mortimer replied casually as he munched on a sandwich, “No, of course, be my guest. He’s been dead for about twelve hours by the way – you can see the liver mortis clearly just here.”
He moved the body reverently but scientifically explained his every movement, clearly passionate about his job.
“I believe this young man was moved after his initial death, but you’ll need your experts to confirm this for you. He was found face down, but the pooling is in his back. Fascinating, isn’t it? But I guess you two gents know all of this?”
He carried on moving the body with one hand whilst he consumed the food with the other.
“Livor mortis starts approximately twenty minutes to three hours after death and is congealed in the capillaries in around four to five hours. You can appreciate how those little rascally myosin heads continue binding with the active sites of actin proteins and how the muscle is unable to relax until further enzyme activity…”
Roberts held up his hand.
“Chief, that’s all well and good my old China but what killed him?”
Mortimer laughed out aloud and pointed to his neck.
“Well, I’m not prepared to stake what’s left of my tattered career on this detective sergeant, but at a guess I’d say the three-inch hole on this side of his neck!”
“Cheers, nice one, eloquently put doc, thanks,” replied a slightly awkward Roberts.
“Oh, I’m no doctor, Mr Roberts, just the man who gives the dearly departed a loving home for a short while.”
He looked at Cade, who was now busy examining the body.
“A man after my own heart, bloody brilliant the human body, isn’t it? What have you spotted?”
Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1) Page 36