Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3)

by Lewis Hastings

  “Where the bloody hell did you lot come from?” The question was yelled over the whine from the engine of the impressive grey helicopter to his right. The boy in blue to the dark-haired, brown-eyed man in green.

  McCall put a strong gloved-hand on the officer’s shoulder.

  “Sent by the man upstairs brother, sent by God. One of my team will help you wave at traffic.”

  They shook hands.

  “Jeff. Good to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jeff. Any ETA for a ground ambulance or fire brigade?”

  “I’ve been here as long as you mate. You look like you know what you are doing. I’ll leave that bit with you. I’ve updated my comms as best I can. I’m on my own here, nearest back up is at least half an hour away. I’ll start getting some cones out and grabbing some imagery, looks serious, not much I can do for the poor girl. She’s unresponsive.”

  “Roger that. Do me a favour chief?”

  The patrol officer was already jogging away. “Go ahead.”

  “Keep your camera stowed until we’ve gone?”

  The longer hair, the three-day growth, the lack of a name and the quality of his kit should have been the clue. They were all the same. They looked physically different too. And confident beyond the norm. He smiled and tapped the front pocket of his body armour.

  “Staying right here. Right here.”

  With a thumbs up, McCall joined his team.

  “Well?”

  “Well, she’s pretty boss. And pretty fucked if I’m honest, she’s not heading in the right direction that’s for sure. And the car stinks of smoke.”

  “Nothing? No signs? You sure?” He knew the stench of black powder emanated from the multiple airbags.

  McCall was the most experienced medic on the team having been there, done that and got more than a few T-shirts. He quickly took control.

  “Tell the helo we won’t be long. We achieve miracles in five minutes or we bugger off. Five OK? No longer.”

  He started the timer on his green-strapped G-Shock and dropped to the ground and pulled himself into what was left of the car. The build quality of the German coupe was renowned, but the structural integrity had been fully tested when it had rolled repeatedly. The cabin was in complete disarray, as cabins of vehicles always are after a high speed, violent collision. Once neatly stowed, here and there, possessions now littered the furthest reaches, stained roof linings and ripped and shredded flesh. There was a smell familiar to him.

  He grunted and twisted until he was face to face with the woman.

  His teammate was right, she was striking; covered in blood and dust and pale-faced fear, she was quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “Now then my lovely, how did you end up like this, eh? You must have a pulse somewhere. I know you can hear me. So it’s time to get a little personal. No offence, miss.”

  He ran his fingers across a number of points on her body where he knew he could find a pulse. The carotid was made difficult by her position, on her side with her head tilted, a few attempts were futile. The radial was non-existent. She was bent awkwardly, so the abdominal aorta was equally pointless as an indicator of life.

  “Apologies love, I normally like a bit of foreplay – and prefer for my girlfriends to be conscious…”

  He lifted her dress and cut through her underwear.

  He pressed the middle finger of his left hand onto the femoral vein and closed his eyes. Waited.

  “Come on…come on.” He blanked everything else out of his mind. “There!”

  He wiped a swab across her skin and then another over his hands, then called out to his teammate.

  “Green needle and morphine.”

  He knew there was no way he could or should move her. With time against him and her awkward position he could be causing myriad other problems, but for now he could just keep her from entering through the proverbial Pearly Gates and having a chat about graciousness.

  The large needle entered her body and propelled the pain-killing drug straight into her veins. Dark red blood seeped back into the syringe. He extracted it slowly and pushed his finger onto the exit wound.

  “A plaster if you would be so kind.”

  He held the adhesive in place and waited with her, twisted, trying to maintain his own comfort whilst he watched for a signal from her unconscious body. And there it was. This girl was a fighter.

  And she had heard everything for the second time that day. She would remember his voice anywhere, as sweet as Manuka honey.

  “OK, my lovely. Whoever you are, hopefully that will allow you to fight another day.” He checked his watch then ran his hand along her left arm, partly to comfort, partly to see if she had a significant other. It was wrong, but what an introduction it would make when he visited her in hospital.

  “Hi. I’m the dark knight that saved you…”

  What he found in her left hand was a folded piece of paper, four sheets to be accurate. The back was blood-smeared and almost glued to her fingers. This thing was important, that much was clear.

  She heard every word.

  She held onto the paper, as if her life depended upon it.

  She had sought it out with her bruised and bloodied fingertips; through rapidly closing eyes and the vice-like grip of death, she had found it.

  And she heard the new voice – his expression was so calm, polished, reassuring. So very close. His breath upon her eyes. He even reeked of confidence.

  She felt his solid hands upon her, touching her, pressing, hunting for a sign of life, then pulling at the paper until it was gone. Her lashes knitted together once more than she slipped further into the void. His voice would remain one that she would remember for a lifetime.

  He prized the document from her hand and unfolded it. A quick scan stopped him in his tracks. What was this report and why was a woman in her twenties on a deserted New Zealand road holding it? And what was its real value?

  It was at that moment that Sergeant Scott McCall, New Zealand Special Air Service, chose to sacrifice all to protect his sisters.

  He saw the value of what the girl held, saw it in any currency. He just needed to find a buyer and the first clue was in the name on the top right, written in smudged graphite.

  Jackdaw.

  ‘I have no idea who you are Mr J but we need to talk. I need to find you.’

  He turned his head from side to side looking for other evidence. He was now damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Hung for a sheep as a lamb, or whatever his father used to say.

  McCall re-folded the papers and placed them into his cargo pocket, taking care to close the seams tightly. He regretted it already.

  “For the girls. No other reason, Scottie.” His words hung in the air, mixing with the diminishing stench of black powder, cooling liquids and blood.

  He started to extricate himself. He was shuffling across her body and back out onto the road when she shuddered – not awake but now further from death than she had been.

  “Jack!”

  And she was gone again. Unconscious, but breathing.

  He had no idea who Jack was, but McCall considered him a lucky man. Somehow he couldn’t correlate Jack and Jackdaw. Were they one and the same?

  “I’m going now, miss. You’ll be just fine.” He paused, knowing that his inbuilt morality had collapsed for the first time in his life. He held her cold hand for a second.

  “I’m sorry, miss. Truly.”

  The Westpac medics arrived at the scene and were quickly briefed by McCall’s team.

  “Looks like the boss has got her stable. Bloody hero, as usual.”

  The comparatively young trooper smiled, slapped the medic on the back and said, “Leave it with you, mate. We have places to go and maidens to seduce.”

  He yelled to McCall, “Five!”

  His wrist throbbed gently, his watch reminding him that time was indeed up.

  In five minutes the helicopter had landed on rough terrain and its occupants ha
d stabilised a complete stranger. Saved her, possibly. As they gained height and turned away McCall felt nauseous. It wasn’t from the visual disturbances created by the aircraft, the torque or impending sickness.

  What he held in his pocket disturbed him greatly.

  His father would hate him for betraying his integrity – but he would understand. Wouldn’t he?

  It was for the girls.

  ‘And that made it acceptable’, he whispered to no one but himself, staring down at the ground that blurred as the helicopter gained altitude.

  Within the hour the rescue helicopter had arrived at Middlemore Hospital, south of Auckland. It was used to dealing with almost everything when it came to trauma.

  The Emergency Department doctor took one look at her and raised his eyebrows. He knew.

  “Did you do this?” Looking at the paramedics.

  “Partially, yes. But she had some help from a guardian angel who happened to be passing by.”

  “Then she’s a very lucky girl. Who is she?”

  “Now that’s more difficult. No one has a clue.”

  Chapter Five

  Nottingham, England, 14th January 2015

  “Name?”

  “Mr Lee?”

  “And do you have a first name, Mr Lee?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what are the chances of you divulging this today?”

  “I have no idea what that word means.”

  “Do you understand what the word enlighten means?”

  “No, sir. I don’t.”

  “Right. What about ‘the truth’?”

  As tempted as he was David Beggs was bound by the rules and knew, like any other custody sergeant in the United Kingdom police that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act had been created to protect both him and his many customers.

  He recalled with fondness how things used to be. Sat there on an elevated stool, looking down on the man placed before him by a pair of battle-hardened constables, who were now wishing they had never met the aforementioned Mr Lee.

  Beggs took a long considered swig of his dark brown, twice-heated tea, placed the mug back onto the heavily stained cardboard coaster and started again.

  “OK. This is how it’s going to be Patrick. My name is Sergeant Beggs. I’m the custody sergeant. What I say goes.”

  “So you’re the boss man?”

  “That’s right. Over everyone else in this building, my love.”

  “So you can get me a cup of that tea if I asked nicely?”

  “I could.”

  “And will you be doing?”

  “I might.”

  It was going to be a long night.

  The male in Cell Two shifted, tossed and turned and cursed the moment they had closed the door loudly behind him. The pale green plastic mattress that lay on the concrete plinth, that just about warranted the term bed was the most uncomfortable thing he had laid on since his time in a mainstream British prison. In comparison to this place, HMP Wormwood Scrubs seemed more like the Hilton.

  He despised everything around him. Everyone. Except his fellow prisoner. He knew there was an order, a scalar chain of command in any custody area. He looked through the edge of the steel spy-hole that separated him from the relative space and sanity of the custody area.

  This new man, standing at the sergeant’s desk, trying his best to manipulate him. He was no stranger to a cell or a prison. It bled out of every pore.

  Five foot eight, medium build but with broad shoulders and broader fists. His red-and-white checked, long sleeve shirt hid a forest of self-made tattoos and scars. His black business trousers, slightly too long, seems worn away, draped over a pair of working boots and held in place by a brown leather belt, made larger over the years. Hair, thick, golden-red like a freshly harvested corn field and a face that could tell a hundred stories, some of which were questionably true.

  It was said that the eyes were the window to the soul. Patrick Lee’s were deep green and smiling. But they were a long way from Ireland and hadn’t seen the truth in years.

  The caged tiger in Cell Two walked another circuit. He wiped a smear of blood from his nostrils. He should have been quicker. The drunk had reacted quicker than he expected. But then any man would have done if he knew that what followed was to be his last hour on earth.

  The tiger had no idea what time it was, nor did he care. Where he was heading time was his greatest enemy. Boredom his nemesis. If they didn’t have a library he had decided to end his life. It was easier. Without study, without knowledge, or the very limited friendship of one specific person, his life was pointless. He no longer needed the mind-altering drugs of his past, what he needed was freedom, and right now, on whatever day of the week it was, wherever he was, in the middle of England they held the key.

  If he was unable to get away, then he would slowly saw through his wrists with the sharpest-edged implement he could find.

  At the custody desk Patrick Lee looked up at his keeper and waited for the next question, whilst his two captors looked overtly at their watches and calculated whether their day had been ruined, or fortuitously that their bank balance was about to be enhanced. A cunning overtime plan, one of them called it. And if PC Tris Robertson had his way, every arrest would be on the last day of his working week, a few hours before he was due to head home; for an arrest at the eleventh hour rewarded in so many ways.

  Arrests on the last day of seven similar shifts were the very best, the most lucrative. Tomorrow a new team would be on duty with its own agendas and characters. They would have their own arrests and issues to contend with.

  For the ever-jovial Robertson, this arrest had been different.

  The very last thing he wanted was to spend hour after futile hour trying to identify a member of the travelling community. Some called them gypsies, or diddicoys, others less-favourable names. He often used a fishing analogy when describing his many interactions with the humble gypsy. He found, for professional reasons, that it was more convenient.

  ‘Now squire, envisage catching a magnificent salmon? Indeed. Now, imagine when the silver beast approaches from the depths, towards the shores, and you learn with some amount of horror that it is in fact an eel…absolutely! A bloody eel, messing up your tackle, twisting and turning, trying to get off the hook. That there is your humble traveller. The most slippery eel of all.’

  It made sense to anyone gifted with the powers of a constable. Sometimes it was just better to let them go – let them off the hook. But Lee was different. He had a few warrants in his name and Robertson and his partner Phil Brown knew that if they played their cards correctly, they could be home within the hour, having accrued four hours overtime. All they had to do was correctly identify their man.

  And that task was often not as easy as it sounded for the honourable non-gypsies, or gorgers as they were known among the travelling community.

  It was Beggs’s turn to try again.

  “Right, Mr Lee. It’s time to play again. Do you have a date of birth and an address?”

  “I was born on a Wednesday if that helps?”

  “Oh, it does. Enormously.” Sarcasm was Beggs’s strongest suit.

  “But as for an address. I move around a lot, wherever the mood or the work takes me. I’m a traveller, sergeant, not settled like your good self. A free spirit. A true Romany.” Lee had a strong Irish accent and yet neither Beggs nor Robertson were confident that he had ever set foot in the Emerald Isle.

  “So we are saying no fixed abode then Patrick?”

  “If that means what I think it means. Yes.”

  Beggs rubbed his eyes. As the custody sergeant of the Meadows Police Station, in the southern half of the city of Nottingham, things were always busy. It was just varying degrees of busy.

  Familiar excrement – alternate day.

  He took another sip of his now-cold tea.

  “OK fella, last chance. What is your date of birth?”

  “I’m twelve and so is me, father!” It was a joke,
but Beggs had lost his sense of humour.

  “Mr Lee you are detained for the purposes of executing these warrants. Someone from the Metropolitan Police will come and fetch you tomorrow and you can be out of my hair. Sleep well. Cell Two, please gents and don’t give him a bloody cup of tea until he confesses to everything.”

  “As is your wish, sergeant.” Robertson looked at his colleague and tapping his wallet, winked. “Home in time to imbibe a refreshing and delicious ale, I do believe?”

  Lee was remonstrating as Robertson guided him robustly towards his bed for the night.

  “He said he was going to execute me!”

  “Yes, he did. But not until the morning. He drew the long straw. I was gutted. Anyway, here we are sir, the canal-view suite awaits. I shall try to rustle up a frozen sandwich from the last millennium. Don’t forget to swipe your rewards card before you leave us. Thank you for choosing the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, we do appreciate you have a choice.”

  Lee stopped as they got to the cell door. It was quite common. If he was going to fight, it was now. The final frontier.

  He leant towards the officer who was now visibly backed up by his colleague.

  Whispering, his index finger subconsciously shielding his words, he said, “I have something to tell you.”

  “Oh, do please tell. Is it the lottery numbers? Or my fortune? I bought some lucky heather from one of your team once, did bugger all to improve my life or luck. And the pegs were no better. This had better be good. I am all ears.”

  “I’m not from around here.” Lee opened with this and continued with an equally ambiguous, “But I know lots of people.”

  Brown countered with, “Absolutely fascinating, Mr Lee. Goodnight.”

  The door was opened with an impressively large steel key as Robertson and his long-term colleague guided Lee into the darkened space.

  Lee braced himself against the doorframe and looked up at the taller officer. Now he was belligerent and stronger than any ox.