Cade clicked the door shut, then locked it. Took three steps back to the end of the stretcher where the man’s head was laid on a basic foam cushion. Blood oozed out of his lip and ran down his cheek, onto the pillow. He replaced the mask.
“She’s right. Not nice is it?” He looked into the man’s eyes. They were like all the rest of the team, shark-like.
“You see, that young lady has a mean right hook, whereas I know other ways of causing you real discomfort. The type that your boss, the Jackdaw, decides is acceptable to dish out, to a captive audience.”
He pulled the clear mask up and onto the man’s head and left it there, waiting for the lack of oxygen to start to take effect. Checked his favourite watch, admired the sweep of the second hand. Waited a minute. Watched as the young man’s eyes started to change and his skin started to subtly change colour.
He tied to resist but this was a battle of wills he would lose.
Next came the increase in blood pressure, then the dizziness.
Cade checked his watch.
“Are we ready to be sensible yet?”
There was a knock on the door. “Can I come in yet?”
“Another few minutes should be all I need – thanks. He’s doing well.”
He looked down at him, then up at the drip, flicked his eyebrows up and down and smiled.
The PM himself had said the team needed to become feral.
“Listen, pal where I come from, we respect the police. We acknowledge the hard work of the authorities and we certainly would never do that to a lady.” He gestured out of the ambulance, looking at O’Shea stood on the street.
“No, you see, in Britain we do things by the book. Now, the problem for you is I’ve never read this particular book, so it’s kind of ad-lib from here. But I have seen plenty of films. I think this might have been in one.”
He reached up and turned the screw on the intravenous drip. Slowly at first, watching the trickle of pain-reducing fluids come to a stop. Blood started to run backward now, up the clear tube.
“The thing is I have no idea what this is doing to you. But I’m guessing it hurts?” One minute left. He watched as his prisoner’s pupils began to dilate. The fentanyl in his bloodstream had reduced his pain levels to bearable, now they were back and worse. Seventy times stronger than the morphine he had been given at first, he needed it, desperately.
“You’ve got one minute and then I leave. And no one comes back. If the pain doesn’t kill you, the heart failure will. Start thinking about what it is you really need to tell me about the Seventh Wave.”
He let the combination of air and drugs, or rather the lack of it, take effect.
“You have everything to lose.” Fifty seconds.
“Nothing.” The word was spat out, blood-laced.
“Oh, dear.” He turned the screw fully now.
“Think of your dear mother back there in Bucharest. She is waiting for you to return home. So proud…her special son…”
“The Jackdaw will kill me.” Good, he was seeing sense. Thirty seconds.
“No. You will kill yourself within minutes. Feel that chest starting to hurt? A sense of panic? Breathing getting laboured now? I can hear you from here. Talk!” Cade held his cheeks between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed until it felt as if his gums were going to collapse.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t” It was a like the men’s singles at Wimbledon and Cade was Federer, masterful across the court, slicing, spinning, finishing off the unseeded folk hero with a powerful volley until he relented.
“OK. Please.”
“Please?” Cade’s raised eyebrows emphasised the question.
“Give me air.” Wherever the air was escaping from Cade could only guess, but knew he needed to replace it. He slipped the mask back over the man’s face. “Ten, nine…”
“There are two teams. One is going to hit the banks and get cash. They are splitting it fifty-fifty with Jackdaw.” He looked as if he had just plunged a knife into his boss’s heart.
“And the other?”
“The other is…the vault.” He struggled to push the word out, but Cade heard it clearly.
“The vault? The Tower of London?” It was the intelligence they had heard, the chatter, the source of information. Perhaps it was true. But no one targeted the Tower. A few had tried, but it was beyond impregnable. It made no sense.
“The Tower of London?”
“No. That would be impossible. The vault…where the money is kept. That is what Jackdaw wants.”
Cade felt he had nothing to lose. The door was being banged again. He ignored it.
“Keep talking my friend and you have my word that I will protect you from further pain.”
“No one can. He is everywhere. They say he is the Gypsy King.” He was drifting now. Perhaps time to increase the opiates? He teased the dial back, watching the blood flush and the fentanyl re-enter his bloodstream. Once more he held him in abeyance.
“Well, I’ll tell you that the man you clearly fear is nothing more than a man with money and power. He’s as invincible as you, or he is until someone shuts down his air.” He held onto the mask.
“No! I will tell you.”
“Then hurry because our friend outside in the green jumpsuit is getting impatient. The vault?”
“Where they keep the gold. There are seven vaults in London.”
“Seems to be his lucky number.” Cade twisted the man’s wrist, looking at the blue tattoo. It was fresh, the blue tinged with a black border around which the skin was a vivid red.
“Is this all worth it, just for that?”
“I have nothing else to…value.”
“Why is he going after the seven vaults?” It was a question designed to trap.
“He isn’t.” He breathed deeply, inhaling the elixir of life. “There is one within the city. Not the biggest. But it still has gold. He is going for the three at the airport. Now please, go, let me live. I need to learn how to lie to his face.” He looked genuinely afraid.
“Mr Cade. I am coming in in one minute.” That was fine. It gave him a minute more.
The male looked up, over the misted-up mask. “I will tell Jackdaw I met Mr Cade. The man he hates more than anyone.”
“Impressive street skills there, but you heard her shout out, and that is cheating in my book.” He stood up, stretched his back and made for the door.
“Jack. Mr Jack Cade. She is Carrie O’Shea, the girl who punched me. The one who tried to kill me is Alex’s daughter. There is a price on her head.”
“OK, so you listen well.”
“I was a soldier, Mr Cade. I know what to remember and who to forget. If you threatened to stop those drugs again, I could name most of your team. Pick them out from photographs. You are all targets. He’s coming for you one by one, by one.”
“So that’s it. You all know my name, and the names of my team and one of your groups is going to try to break into a bank vault and steal gold. Sounds great in theory.”
“Trust me, it will happen. He has an ace card in his pocket.” His smile creased the cut in his lip and allowed the bright red blood to flow into the mask.
“Don’t tell me? Mr Jackdaw has a secret government document that will bring down the British government, and he intends to use it to blackmail them for more than is in that vault?”
The man shrugged as best he could. “Maybe.”
“Then maybe we already know that. So your value is limited.” He removed the mask and turned the dial.
“The document is of no value. It has always been a smokescreen.”
“Seems you know a lot more than a humble foot soldier should.”
“Then it seems you are right, Jack. I am one of Alex’s best men. He calls me his lieutenant – I’m just happy to be called Gheorghiu.”
Cade smiled. It was ironic, but a smile nonetheless.
“Well, we meet at last. I almost shot you a while ago, on the Th
ames. I recognise you now.”
“You did shoot me. Luckily, you are a very bad shot.”
He hissed as he gasped for air.
“We can make a deal together Jack.” His skin was changing from tanned to blue once more.
“Only if you reveal the ace. You have one turn of the cards left Gheorghiu.”
“Then turn it for me.”
“You people have no scruples, do you?”
“I do not understand.”
“You have no honour. Alex would betray his own mother.”
“I honour one man and one woman. Me, and my mother. And I need to tell you I forgive you for shooting me in the boat that day.” He even smiled. “And as for Alex’s mother…he killed her. And his father, too. He is beyond evil.”
“But you choose to stay with him?”
“Consider it like a bad marriage.”
Cade moved closer, put his ear as close as he could. Then listened. He had at last made a deal with someone other than the devil.
“Now please, give me the drugs. The pain in my ribs is unbearable.”
“Happily.” He looked at the tray of controlled drugs. Fentanyl. He knew that they would have given him fentanyl.
He leant on his rib cage, causing him to recoil in pain.
“Not nice, is it? I bet it hurts, just there.” He poked the wound, causing another instant reaction. “Talking about the Thames. A long time ago I went to the aid of a lovely young lady, lying in the cold river, dying. Tied to a metal grid and left to choke on river water. Not nice.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Jack.”
“I’m sure you are. Another friend of mine drowned there. In the same river. Seems to be a trend. She was a good person. A beautiful person, whose only crime was one of passion. Tied to a wooden platform.” He watched Gheorghiu’s eyes shrink. Got you, you little bastard.
“Pegged her out in the mud, let the river consume her. She would have drowned really slowly. She was deprived of her dignity too, naked, disrespected. What sort of man would do that? Her name was…”
He nodded a weak confirmation. “Nikolina. I know. And I am truly sorry. He made me do it. You need to understand he is a dangerous man.”
“And so am I, Gheorghiu.”
He slipped the needle into the vial, drew out the drug and inserted it into the injection port on the intravenous bag. Then pushed the plunger until it all blended seamlessly.
“That should help.”
“Thank you, sir.” His eyes began to close.
“Sleep well.”
It was only murder if you could prove malice. As far as Cade was concerned the intent and the act would be subtly separated. And besides they had to prove it.
“Forty-Fifteen.”
He pocketed the vial, slipped the mask back onto Gheorghiu’s face, put a thumb up and smiled.
“That’s for Niko and her daughter.”
Match point.
Outside he thanked the paramedic, then lowered O’Shea into the passenger seat, leant across her as he clipped the seat belt into place and gently kissed her on the cheek, then walked to speak to Roberts.
“So, all is well in the world. I see you and the boys turned up as it was all over!”
“Cheeky bastard Cade. I’ll have you know we’ve driven a long way and set off at least three red light cameras.” He held out his hand, which Cade took. “You OK, buddy? You look like you could do with a long black?”
Cade exhaled. “I need more than coffee, pal. It’s fair to say I’ve had better years.”
“Well need I remind you it’s only January?”
“Thanks, Jason. Helps enormously. This is a cluster of the highest order. How the hell are we going to write this one up?”
“We are not. I am. And we’ll take the Home Secretary at her word shall we? What was it she said? ‘Do what you need to do my boys, to protect the city from this scum.’”
Cade’s eyebrows raised. “I don’t think that was verbatim Jason.”
“Well, it’s good enough for me. Look, you do what you need to do to get Carrie and Elena back to the ranch. I’ll send one of the lads with you. I need to stay here and control things, make sure we come out of this on top. Word will soon get back to Stefanescu. This is personal now, Jack. Oh, and it’s a crime scene so watch where you bloody walk.”
He put his hand on Cade’s shoulder. “Not good, my friend. So, you learn anything from the OK Corral here?”
“More than you could ever imagine.” He outlined what he had heard, then threw in some hypothesis.
“And you think they’ll be brazen enough to go for the vaults?”
“Absolutely. The mad leading the blind. You forget he was allowed to walk out of a top security prison because doing so was easier than him staying behind and running the bloody place.”
“It’s war, Jack. And having been literally bitten, you and I are in no place to be gentlemen any longer.”
“I couldn’t agree more. See you later.” He walked towards the pool car and as he did so he checked the surroundings, then quickly flicked the vial up onto the roof of a Chinese takeaway.
‘They’ll never look there.’ His internal dialogue was calm and guilt-free. They never did.
He got into the car, buckled his seatbelt, looked at O’Shea who was still fighting the adrenaline rush and then looked in the mirror at Elena.
“Thank you.”
“This is the beginning, Jack. You need to end it. You didn’t fly all the way to Australia just to see me in a beautiful swimsuit.”
He blushed slightly. “I’m not with you.”
“You obviously believed I could help you – that’s why you went. And I can. Remember what I told you that night. But also know that it is going to get very…” She hunted for the word. “Messy.” She smiled her smile and once again Cade was torn between the daughters of the Devil and the deep blue sea.
O’Shea closed her eyes. Tried not to think of them, on an island, blue seas, white beaches, warm evenings, the scent of Hibiscus flowers, wine, alone.
She could tell her own mind all she wanted. But she still wanted him more.
Chapter 53
Alex stood on the balcony of his rented apartment. Rented in another man’s name, using his account in fact. It mattered not. He was long dead anyway, lying in the third mortuary stretcher from the right, waiting for the day that someone was finally able to identify him. Somebody may as well benefit from his demise.
The man they called the Jackdaw looked out across London. It was a beautiful city. Not like so many he had visited, with their lines of tall, faceless buildings. London had its skyscrapers, but most were cleverly designed; distinctive, glassy and caught the eye.
And he liked London.
Decided he loved being there.
He missed the attention of the opposite sex. In his heyday, when he ruled the city of Craiova, he could summon two or three to his bedside. Whores, in many ways just like him, willing to do almost anything for money. But London was different. At this level a high-class escort was needed or they would talk, and even then would he really trust a woman, who when it all came down to it was a prostitute just like the rest?
For now, he was relishing the freedom.
He loved being there alright. Absolutely.
Better still, he adored being able to walk the streets, watch the skyline and cause chaos, all from the lap of luxury. They would never find him. He was one of many. Too many.
“There should be a club for people like us, Constantin. A place where men like us can go, here in the city.”
The voice responded from inside the cavernous Kensington apartment, sitting on the top floor of an already prestigious block.
“If there was a gentleman’s club in London for top-flight criminals, it would have a waiting list a mile long.” He smiled as he filled two simple, crystal glasses with single malt, straight from the cupboard, then threw the cork into the bin.
Taking the glass out to Alex, he too admired the
skyline. An eclectic mix of new and old, and older still. They had such a wonderful view.
“Are you ready to teach them a lesson?”
“I was born ready, Constantin. Bring the laptop.”
The older Romanian man walked back into the kitchen, picked up the laptop, checked the connection to the dark net then opened up the dialogue box and typed Romulus Six.
He hit enter and waited. For the sake of the interchange, he was Remus Seven.
Romulus and Remus, suckled by the she-wolf. Mythical beings of Roman folklore. It made sense to both of them. They had both been betrayed before.
Constantin had asked the question on the dark web – where could he find a specialist in crypto currencies, and where would he find another that could manipulate systems?
In Romulus Six he had found both – in one person. They assumed it was a man.
Trust was nothing more than a five letter word. Do the job, you get rewarded, paid in whatever currency you care to name. Betray us, we will find you. Dark net or not. That was the extent of their contract.
The pursuit through the streets of South London had attracted media and public attention. Two days at best, then the newspapers became chip wrappers, Will-o'-the-Wisps that littered the street corners for a day or two before joining a pile of other no longer relevant things.
Four days passed.
Ninety-six hours.
And the team had counted every one of them. Some of them had even started to place bets on things happening at chosen moments on the clock face, a phone ringing, a church bell ringing, which a few of the tired ones had failed to grasp seemed to happen on the hour. Anything that could alleviate the boredom. They were bored, and bored cops were like underemployed puppies.
How many red buses in a minute?
Bored.
Cade, O’Shea and Petrova had moved into a new apartment, courtesy of the government. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a flat screen TV that could be seen from space. Roberts too, sharing with Daniel. Their wives had been moved to places of safety, one in the UK, the other twelve thousand miles away. Safe.
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