“OK, thanks. I suspect the body that was lying in the field to the west of you was their last patient.”
“You know they’ve recovered another body across the water?”
“I do. Bit of a mess, Mac. Appreciate the call.”
“Hold on, my old mate. I’m not done.”
There was a sinister tone to Sergeant Mac Woods’ voice. Cade waited.
“In what I can only describe as their briefing room were some photographs – call it an organisation chart.”
A shiver ran along Cade’s shoulders and down his back.
“Where do I feature?”
“In the middle, actually. Did you expect to be at the top, you vain sod?” There was almost a bit of light-heartedness in the question.
“No. I’m not that important.”
“The PM is at the top, his team below him. Pyramid, very pretty. You, Jason and a John Daniel are next, then three females.”
“Carrie? Cynthia?”
“Yep. And a rather pretty lass called Elena.”
“Thanks Mac. Get my crew to photograph everything. Are you putting a SOCO through or do you want me to send a team?”
“Being done as we speak. The Kent Police don’t wait around for orders, Jack. You know that. Hey look after yourself and that team. If they were mine I’d be thinking about safe houses. The shit hasn’t hit the fan yet, but it’s mid air, somewhere over London, and looking for a place to land.”
“Eloquent as ever, Mac. Great to talk and thank you. Say hello to the team. Is either DS McGee or Fisher there?”
Woods handed his phone over. “Your boss would like a word.”
“Boss.”
“Bridie. Photograph everything. I’m expecting loads of prints. They aren’t worried about forensics. Check bins, check hiding places, check the perimeter. They left in a hurry. Nearest CCTV, petrol stations, you name it, you know the drill. And get that org chart taken down, bagged up and brought back. I’m at the hospital. Ring me or Jason if you need anything.”
He pressed the red icon and opened the door to the ICU. A series of five beds met his gaze. He looked from bed to bed, feeling intrusive. She was here somewhere.
“Can I help you, sir? Visiting is…” She stopped when she saw the ID. Cade smiled, “I’m on your side. You have one of my team. Was medevacked earlier today.”
“Ah yes, the young lady in bed four. She’s unwell. It was a cold night, and she was in a bad way when she arrived. We’ve stabilised her, but she is still very groggy.”
“Drugs?”
“No, toxicology was clear. Just hypothermia. It’s not nice. Can ruin the body. Take your time, stay as long as you need to. She could do with a warm hand to hold. Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t respond.”
He turned the volume down on his phone and quietly sat beside her. The rhythmic noises from the other beds told their own story. People in varying degrees of survival. Belligerence and medical expertise were all that lay between them and a gathering of people in black suits singing hymns they didn’t want to sing.
“Hello Carrie. It’s been a while. I love what you have done with your hair.”
He held her hand as instructed, actually; it felt like he should. It was cold. He exhaled. It had been a long week. It had been a long bloody decade. He craved peace, the hiss of the Pacific Ocean on the white sand of the Coromandel Peninsula. As he looked at her, her head savagely shaved, eyes drawn, skin white, sunken veins trying to drag blood around her body, he knew, there, at her bedside that he had let her down. The girl with the fancy taste in knickers and under-the-table humour. He laughed quietly, sat in the half-light of the Intensive Care Unit.
Intensive. Care. He’d failed on both fronts. He had allowed her to be poisoned. She survived that, left her in a bad way, so much so that she sent the wrong signals. Or, in his defence, Cade read had them badly. Women. Venus. Men. Mars. And she was definitely a girl.
The girl with the view of the Queen’s private quarters, a bright and shining light in a world of darkness and depravity.
The girl he had dragged to safety. The girl who had told him, repeatedly, to fuck off in a style reminiscent of an upmarket fish wife. The one he had shared vintage whisky with, and a smile, and expensive coffee and a bed. Once.
She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. It said it all.
He had to make a choice and Elena, as pretty as she was, as sexy as she was and as captivating as she could be, there was something about her that said red rag/bull. And yet he went back, moth to her flame. The world was screaming no, avoid her, she is trouble.
But oh God, she was pretty, sassy, sultry, athletic and clever. No one wore his shirts like she did. No one, no girl, looked over her shoulder as she entered a bedroom and dragged him along on an unseen lead.
But then there was Carrie O’Shea.
He checked the Tissot. Time yet. A few hours. Allowing a drive north against the traffic. Blue lights if he needed to. Hours. She was worth it. He held her hand.
“Can I get you a tea?” It was the same nurse. Whispering.
He replied in a similar tone, “Actually, that would be really good.”
Speak to her, she had said. They can hear you. He’d been here before. Nothing to lose.
“So, Jason sends his love. Still has an awful taste in ties. JD is doing his level best not to run the squad. The Home Secretary sends her best too. Quite a following you have there…”
He was running out of things to say. They were platitudes.
“Carrie. I’m sorry. First day I ever met you. Well, to be accurate, heard you, I thought ‘now there’s a girl with some fight in her.’”
Her eyelids flickered. She could hear him. Just couldn’t open the damned things.
“We’ve been through a few things, you and me. Some fun, some not. Some naughty. Some nice. I bet you wish you had never met me, eh?”
His phone buzzed deep in his pocket. He ignored it. They could wait.
Outside a Kent armed response unit had arrived, dark clothing, baseball caps, Magnum boots, Glocks in leg holsters, the whole works. Overtime probably, paid for by the Met. Cade could see them talking to the Ward Manager. They took up their places. Sent a message. About time, Cade could have been anyone. But they were all on the same side. Competing priorities, it was called. For the next few hours, O’Shea was his.
He’d met a few women since Penny. One or two were just moments in time – Elizabeth Delaney, for example, those perfect green Irish eyes and that velvet-smooth skin, against the moonlight. He often wondered how she was. But it was one night. And neither of them regretted it. He would go back one day, but she would have moved on. They always did.
Elena was different. More confident. Tangible. And bloody dangerous. The blow she had delivered to Cade’s ribs in the Whitsundays could have easily killed him. Pretty girl indeed.
He’d travelled all that way for what? A place in the sun, white beaches, blue waters, and her – a chance to experience her once more. But there was something different. She was carrying a secret, and he had needed to make the journey to look into her eyes. He still wanted her. Who wouldn’t? That island off the coast of New Zealand, just them on a boat, alone, wild. It was incredible. They were incredible.
And yet a voice said, ‘You are a fool Jack. Call yourself experienced? She is playing you.’ Or was she?
His hand twitched again. It was her – O’Shea, communicating, trying to break his chain of thoughts. She was mentally screaming, ‘Hey Cade – over here!’
He nodded and pushed back, gently increasing the pressure. It was her and no one else. He’d speak to Elena Petrova another day. Tomorrow.
He needed a rest, a break from the insidious chaos that had surrounded him. It had made him unwise in the way he made decisions – he knew he had let people down. His career growth had been stellar – possibly too much. Right place, right time, his old boss had said.
Tomorrow. He’d tell her tomorrow.
O’Shea jolted. Cade
hung onto her. Leaned in and gave her a hug, whispered into her right ear. “It’s OK, mate. I’m here.”
Whether he would be in a few weeks, he didn’t know. He yearned for the good old days of policing, haring around from A to B via Z, drowning in work, backed into a corner, pushing the panic alarm on the radio, chasing someone you should be running away from.
‘I’m two minutes away!’ When everyone knew, that meant ten.
He was back on that platform, Nottingham train station, in an unwanted embrace with a fiery drunk, rolling onto the lines, in front of that train. He could smell the tracks – mixture of steel and diesel.
And he craved it.
O’Shea broke the spell once more, not with a grip or jolt but a slurred word or two.
“Good. When I’m better.”
“What? When you are better what?”
“I’m going to kick your bloody arse.” She had no energy to smile, but he knew she was.
“Well, I come all this way to rescue the damsel in distress, wrap some cotton wool around her and that is all the thanks I get?”
“Funniest…”
He nodded encouragingly.
“…Looking knight I’ve ever met.” She was struggling. But he loved the fact that she was as sarcastic as ever.
“Well, hello. Welcome to earth. We are peaceful people.”
“Go fuck yourself.” She emphasised every word, made it sound sexy.
“Wow. What have they given you?”
“Hope,” she smiled, “I heard every word. Just couldn’t speak. We’ll be OK, won’t we?” Her words trailed. He needed to leave soon, hand over care to the nurses and the two staff with G36s and a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree awareness.
“We will be absolutely fine. Thank God you are safe. You really need to stop bringing attention to yourself. Bridie and Nick are down at the scene.” He stopped himself.
“It’s OK. I escaped. John didn’t.”
“John?”
“You knew him as Lucy. He was a brave man Jack. Very.” She was drifting again.
“I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. We will move you nearer to home as soon as we can. You are safe. We are stepping up a gear, even the PM is involved.”
“What the hell have we stumbled across Jack?”
“Between you and me, Carrie? I have no idea.” He leant forward, kissed her on the forehead, ran the back of his fingers across her cheek.
“We’ll be just fine.” He stood, waved, and didn’t look back. A tear had formed, and he knew that was the indication he needed to change tack. Feral was the word she had used. She wants feral? She’ll get it, in bucket loads.
As he left, he shook hands with the Kent Police staff.
“Do whatever you need to do to keep her safe.”
“Anything boss?” One of them smiled. He was missing the tip of his finger, which Cade thought was strange for a marksman and also somehow familiar.
“Have we met?”
“Rochester, boss. I understand your targets are still on the run. About time we turned up the heat.” He winked. “Blew the tip off my trigger finger at that job.”
“Sharkey!” They shook hands warmly. “It’s been a while. Nice stripes. How’s your tea making?”
“Thanks. Someone needs to look at lessening Mac Woods’ workload! Tea is still shit boss. But I have learned to shoot again. Your girl is a hundred percent safe with me on deck.”
“Good man. Here is my number. I’ll take yours. Anything you need, and I mean from government level down – you ask.”
As Cade walked back to this pool car one thing resonated. ‘Your girl’.
Chapter Forty-Six
He leant against the immaculate white-painted balustrade that separated him from a reasonable height and the Wellington Court, Kensington address where a contact had acquired him a six-bedroomed penthouse with five receptions, a lift and a gym.
He looked down onto the street, hidden by the height and the perfectly manicured hedging that ran around the rooftop, hiding them from all but eyes in the sky. He could walk around naked if he chose. He might do later. Stand on the rooftop garden and gaze down at Harvey Nichols or across to Hyde Park. He laughed. Raised his hands skywards and blew a kiss into the evening sky.
“More coffee? It’s the very best. Made from beans that weasels vomit up in the jungle.”
He pulled a pained face. “Do you have normal coffee?”
“Blue Mountain good enough?”
He smiled. Raised the mug to the air. “Yes, of course. Isn’t this place incredible?”
“It is – and for the price it should be. Eighty thousand a month.”
They laughed. It was the first time Alex had genuinely relaxed and felt the chemical infusion that laughter provided. The first time since Pazardzhik.
“Did you see how many cushions were on the bed in my room? Ten. Ten, my friend.” For a sociopath he had taste. “Ten more than I had in prison where all I had to lay my head on was a damp concrete plinth. Bastards.” He took a moment to allow the bitter taste to drift back down his throat.
“There is a bath that I will never use, bigger than my cell. This balcony, ten times bigger than the exercise yard that we were never allowed to visit. The marble in that bathroom there? Worth more than my first ever squalid home in Romania. But look at us now.”
“We have come a long way, Alexandra. Your grandfather would be proud. Your parents too…” He stumbled, cautious.
“It’s OK. Theirs was a short life. But they were happy. Anyway, we must eat. I am hungry. Mexican. I want Mexican.”
“Shall I call someone?”
“No. Are we forever to be looking over our shoulders, Constantin? Afraid?”
“In a city with half a million cameras? Is that wise?”
“They remember us from our prison photos. Not looking like this – and besides, our friend has created new identities that will fool anyone, anywhere. Come on. I am hungry.”
Constantin pressed a button on his phone – one of a series that was destroyed daily. He left footprints, but Alex told him not to worry. Their friend assured them they were all but invisible.
It was dark when the Uber car pulled up outside the address moments later. A dark blue Jaguar. It was understated, like the clothes the two men wore and pulled away smoothly into traffic, the driver asking to confirm where they were heading then indicating that he would only speak if they wished. They didn’t, so he headed north east.
The immaculately shaved dark head and blue eyes that reflected in the blackened glass stared back at their host. He nodded, confidently, almost a smile as they wended their way through the inevitable traffic towards Covent Garden.
Practically invisible.
The driver sensed the need to be discreet, so he turned onto Constitution Hill, the familiar barbed wire, brick wall to the left, St. James’ Park to their right. Arguably one of the most surveilled areas of the city and here they were in their understated car, expensive but understated clothing, in a city overflowing with similar, understated people.
They arrived thirty-five minutes later. The fare had been pre-paid, the driver did not expect a tip, not even a goodbye, but he got one anyway.
“Be safe, my friend. You never know who is around the city these days. I can get you a lot of work, work that requires discretion. Do I make myself clear?”
The driver held his hand and nodded – chose not to match the steel grip. He understood entirely. He would, for they spoke the same language.
They walked ten feet at most, and were met at the large wooden door by a good-looking man in his early thirties. Twenty pounds found its way into his hand – he declined.
“Sir, thank you, but I am sure we can find a table. Welcome to Cantina Laredo.”
“Hola. Tienes algun lugar privado?”
It wasn’t perfect, but the manager knew that they required somewhere private. He had just the place.
“Por supuesto.” Of course. It suited the manager too, tu
ck them out of the way. They had a look that embraced his belief that they were to be treated well, but not at any cost. There were plenty of places where their type could eat. Criminals or cops, these days they all looked the same. He was in London now though, not Mexico City. He needed to learn to unwind.
“A drink for your gentlemen?”
Alex replied in Spanish, it was passable anywhere the language was spoken. At least he tried.
“Patron silver. Two. And bring us some of your best food. We are hungry, my friend – guacamole to start, your best and steak, cooked in the true Mexican style! Bring it all at once. And please, allow us some privacy. My friend here has just arrived from Bangkok. He is sick of the food there. Loves Mexican. Just doesn’t speak Spanish, or even English!”
It was a lie that none of them believed.
He’d seen their type before. Faces that spoke volumes about their past. But they had money, a hint here, a clue there. Money. It was the younger man’s eyes. Blue over black. They disturbed him, but he valued the reputation of the restaurant far more than kowtowing to criminals. He could ask the owner to ask them to leave – but whilst they behaved he would accommodate them. Be nice. Be professional. But if the police ever asked, yes, he thought he would recognise them again. He was good at it; you had to be where he had lived.
He looked down at Alex’s bald head. It was gleaming with a dark sub-layer, freshly cut but without a blemish, the only scars were faded and plentiful, a scrape here, a slice there, rudimentary stitch marks.
The manager handed them over to his best waiter, a young guy with a tan and a dazzling smile who told them with pride that he was from the Dominican Republic – as he deftly cut avocados in two, scooping the flesh, mixing it at the table with skill and speed; sweet onion, apples, coriander, serranos, pineapple and pomegranate seeds.
“Bravo. We shall eat well. Gracias.” Alex slid ten pounds across the wooden tabletop.
Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3) Page 44