Seven Degrees
Lewis Hastings
Contents
By Lewis Hastings
Are you a thriller seeker?
Note on the Seventh Wave trilogy
Prologue
Part Four
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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Also by Lewis Hastings
Reader reviews
This edition published in Great Britain in 2020
by Hobeck Books Limited, Unit 14, Sugnall Business Centre, Sugnall, Stafford, Staffordshire, ST21 6NF
www.hobeck.net
Copyright © Lewis Hastings 2017, 2020
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in this novel are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Lewis Hastings has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder.
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-913-793-16-6 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-913-793-15-9 (ebook)
Cover design by Jem Butcher
http://www.jembutcherdesign.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Seven Degrees logo © Russell Budden
Poem: ‘Imogen’ (abridged) by Claire Borlase
Created with Vellum
By Lewis Hastings
From the Seventh Wave trilogy:
Seventh
Seven Degrees
Seven of Swords
The fourth Jack Cade novel:
The Angel of Whitehall
Autobiography:
Actually, The World Is Enough
Are you a thriller seeker?
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Note on the Seventh Wave trilogy
My most detective-worthy readers will note that the number seven features in my writing; I met ‘her’ on the seventh and the trilogy is in seven parts. When I started the story there was only one book. Then it grew, and grew, so if you are finding yourself immersed in this book and wondering why there is a Part Three without a Part One or Two… Now you know, you might want to park this one up and start with Seventh (Parts One and Two), then finish off with Seven of Swords (Parts Four, Five, Six and Seven). Case solved…
Lewis
My past has gone;
Though the storm rages on.
She underestimates me;
Her destructive force threatens;
Intrinsic beauty under her skin.
My senses transcend.
I…fear being alive.
Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy proposed the six degrees of separation theory in his early twentieth century work ‘Chains’.
Karinthy suggested that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on the planet. His concept being that any two people could be connected in a maximum of six steps.
But what if there were seven degrees?
Prologue
I knew as soon as I saw her, that things were going to be difficult.
With a recently estranged and at times God-awful wife in my wake, I had set out to press the reset button, only a week after a career-altering event with a senior officer. I had friends in high places it seemed. I had earned their respect and in turn, they had gained mine. Take the opportunity and go they said. It wouldn’t be the last time I heard that statement, just when I thought things couldn’t be any better.
I walked into a regional British airport, a few hours north of London and knew within a few paces that I had made the right decision. You do. Your heart tells you so. Policing does that to you, makes you cynical. But as cynical as I had become, because of the way I had been treated, I knew I had to embrace change and start from scratch. A change, I was told, was as good as a rest.
Day One, a mixture of handshakes and moments of mental chaos, akin to drinking from a fire hose. You know how to do it but it isn’t quite as simple as it looks. Looking back now there was really only Day One.
Day Two and Three were a blur. She saw to that, with her incredible eyes, that shock of red hair and a body that would look good in a hessian bag, she had it in spades. And she knew it too. But that was what I fell for – she was sexy and arrogant and beautifully naïve all at once.
Nikolina Petrov drove a stake into my heart and planted a seed deep in my mind that day. Over many hours I interviewed her, checked and cross-checked her account. I allowed her to amble, then pinned her down. Not once did I find fault in her story, because it was true.
She had arrived, under the guise of a normal passenger – albeit she had training, confidence and a false travel document. That apart, yep, she was normal alright, right up until the moment she started to confess and play with my mind.
By the following morning I knew her life story and she knew me as Sergeant Cade.
I had finished my interview with her on a Wednesday morning, it may have been a Thursday, life had a habit of compressing things. As I wrapped the exhibit label around the interview tape, she put her hand across the table and held mine. Her hands were strong but soft, her nails needed cutting but I could sense that this was a lady who had recently experienced the things that only serious money could buy. She held my hand a little too long. It was a deliberate act and something told me to allow it.
As I signed the exhibit labels she carried on with her story – now off the record. She had shredded her life just as they had taught her. I could learn a lot from Niko – as she liked to be called.
She told me her plans were to return to her daughter once it was safe, guide her to Britain and start a new life. Just the two of them. She needed my help, that much was obvious, but she also had the help of someone else, someone in a position of authority. But that, she said, was a strict need to know. As curious as I was, I decided not to ask.
Once she had told me what she knew, she stopped and began to cry. And she cried f
or hours.
She had tried to kill him and failed, and now, amongst other things he was coming after her.
The sociopath and the rose. But this rose had thorns.
That was all she ever told me. It was as if she had run out of life. My years of instinctive policing offered me two clear choices; believe her, or not.
I believed her of course. Her story was too convincing. And she had gained my complete attention from that moment on. All I needed to do was protect her.
She became my intelligence source; I prevented her removal from Britain – probably bent the rules, at the very least adapted them for the first and only time in my career. I extended her life and gave her hope. John ‘Jack’ Cade, police officer and defender of the weak. It felt good to be a knight in shining armour once more.
I slept well, for the first time in years. She approached me in a dream that night, the first of many. I could literally feel her next to me. She smelt of vanilla and evening orange groves, her hair shone, her skin radiated pure wellbeing and above all she sensed hope.
Within days, she was dead.
Days later, what she had told me began to happen. Everything, just as she had said it would. Almost to the letter. Simple, yet brilliantly efficient. A plague of locusts stripping away the goodness, ripping the heart out of the financial sector of the city. Her legacy left me with two decisions, only one of which I knew I could abide by.
Protect the city, or protect my team.
I couldn’t do both.
Part Four
Chapter One
New Scotland Yard London 2004
The team had been stood down, many were surviving on adrenaline but typical of teams like them around the world they never knew quite when to give in.
‘Another ten minutes guv and I’ll be out of here…’ which was normally followed with a swift call home. ‘It’s me. I’ll be late.’
Detective Sergeant Jason ‘Ginger’ Roberts was saying goodbye to them in the car park, it was something he always did, thanking his staff, every day, for their hard work and dedication. He was an exception to the managerial rule.
It was mid-afternoon, most of them had been on the go for thirty-six hours, grabbing disturbed sleep when and wherever they could. One of the small group was walking away from the Yard when he received a text message. He stopped, digested the contents twice then dug deep into his reserves of energy and ran back to the car park.
“Boss, stop the team, I’ve got some news, and it’s not good.”
Detective Constable Del Murphy handed his phone to Roberts.
“I’ve read it three times.”
Roberts stared at the words and managed to form them into a cohesive sentence.
“Gather everyone together at The Sanctuary, Del. I’ll be there in twenty.”
Roberts was walking across the car park when he met an equally weary male walking towards him.
Good looking, in a salt-and-pepper hair, just-awake fresh blue eyes and always smelling of something exotic, it was his partner, and technically his boss, John ‘Jack’ Cade. Cade had arrived from a small but demanding international airport two hundred miles north of London. His exact reason for being on the team was best described as fate. Or luck, good or bad, hadn’t quite been established. Either way, he had impressed the right people and at risk of falling into a stereotypical trap, favoured by crime writers, had taken the offer of a permanent job in the city of London – or technically, according to the locals the City of Westminster. This somehow added to the mystique of the place for a man who was born in the south of England, gravitated north and had never spent any formative time in the capital.
It was either take the opportunity or remain in Nottingham, live separately from his openly adventurous wife and end up before a custody sergeant on a charge of attempted murder – of his boss, not his estranged wife. With any luck, Penelope, for that was the bitch’s name, would contract a hideous social disease and simply fade away.
Carrie O’Shea, Roberts’ brightest analyst and a female with a bittersweet relationship with the Metropolitan Police, was two steps behind Cade.
“I know you are both knackered, but I need you to support me at the pub. The team’s re-grouping as we speak. We need to meet…to have a drink to...”
“But boss I’m exhausted, Jack needs to get to a doctor to have those wounds looked at, he’s struggling to walk for God’s sake, this had better be important!”
Roberts spoke quickly. Staccato words, trying to create a sentence. “Clive’s dead, Carrie. Took his own life. Hung himself with his regimental tie. His missus got home an hour ago. Found him. A local unit is holding the fort. I’m heading there with the boss after we’ve toasted his memory. I know you two didn’t…”
She cut him off.
“I’ll be there, boss. Clive was an arsehole who couldn’t keep his hands to himself but he was a bloody good detective and I won’t denigrate his professional memory. The team needs to stay strong. I think what we witnessed in the last twenty-four hours was only the start. I will be there.”
“Me too. That is if I’m now part of this sorry bunch of misfits you call a team Jason?” Cade shuffled awkwardly, trying to find somewhere comfortable to stand.
Roberts slapped Cade across the backside. “Course you are, you muppet!”
Whilst Cade stifled a cacophonous scream worthy of a Stephen King novel, now was not the time to shed a tear. His injuries were very much in the pre-healing phase, seeping, as raw as the news that had just been delivered about the demise of long-term member of the team, former paratrooper-turned-detective Clive Wood.
How Cade had sustained the injuries was relatively easy to explain – if explained quickly, he found that preferable.
He had leapt from the rear door of an iconic red, double decker London bus during a high-velocity-round-firing pursuit that had ended with a public servant dead, a police officer in hospital, a young, as-yet unidentified male in a mortuary and two more on the run, one with an obvious wound – the work of a single 5.56 mm round unleashed by the leather-wrapped index finger of its tactical operator. It was all in a day’s work, if that work happened to involve crime and the people that perpetrated it.
Wood had never been able to get to know his new boss, but the fact that Cade had leapt from what appeared to be a perfectly serviceable bus would have appealed to him greatly.
The fact that the bus was at the time on its side, sliding gracefully along a comparatively quiet city road, was neither here nor there. He had leapt from it and had endured the almost interminable slide along the carriageway, its abrasive surface shredding the clothing, a defiant leather belt and the primary layer of skin from Cade’s backside and hip.
Respect indeed. And now, in time-honoured fashion a number of people had gathered to pay their respects to Wood, a man who had more friends than enemies, but like most hardworking police officers had a few of the latter – and one, ironically, in the same office.
O’Shea had stated without hesitation that she hated him since the night when he had taken the liberty that he had. Alone in an office with the ‘girl-next-door’ that was Carrie O’Shea, in the doyen of British policing – New Scotland Yard.
He thought that things were going well until she tried to take control. Wood, being a full-blooded Welshman and former soldier, felt intimidated, impotent almost, so pushed things just a little too far.
Hindsight would tell O’Shea that ramming a highly sharpened pencil into the back of his hand, into the web between his thumb and forefinger and through to the other side may not have been ideal.
Thoughtfully wiping the condensation off a scotch glass in the dowdy English pub, she reflected upon that night and couldn’t help but smile.
Leaving him in the office naked without so much as an excuse as she made good her escape, dumping his clothes in the foyer of New Scotland Yard was, in the Welshman’s eyes, unforgiveable.
She smiled again now – for the first time she had found a place in her heart
to forgive him, the dirty old bastard.
Roberts was beginning a speech, like he did all of his speeches.
“Team. I assume you know what has happened? Like you, I’m gutted. I’m too tired to bloody cry and too angry to go anywhere right now. So ladies, gentlemen, supporters of Welsh rugby, people who have never leapt from a perfectly serviceable aircraft, or bus for that matter, and the rest of you that simply didn’t fit into a category that Clive considered honourable…”
He stopped. Paused and looked around the private bar at The Sanctuary, the adopted, nicotine-stained London pub and default choice of the section. It was a conscious decision to look at every face in the room. That morning and for the first time, for the first time, he began to worry about who might be next and unlike some bosses, he genuinely cared.
Whilst the group that called themselves The First Wave were not directly responsible for Wood’s death they had, Roberts felt, somehow played their part in it. Their presence alone meant that he had found himself guarding precious cargo, in the form of a perfectly shaped Bulgarian female, from a long line of beautiful girls, each with a history of survival. He only hoped her value was going to mean more to the team than office eye candy.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 1