Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2)

by Lewis Hastings

  “I can see that. I see why you protect her. Yes, man to man, I understand why. Is she fun in bed? I imagine she is. The quiet ones often are in my experience. So quiet, so shy, until the door closes. But please understand also that I can cut her out of your life in a heartbeat. Tick, tick, tick...”

  He left the last word to hang until Cade broke the silence.

  “OK, I’ve listened to you. I will do my best to work with you, but you have to…”

  “Jack, please. Do not start with your negotiation techniques. Seriously, do not insult me.” His voice was now raised, angry. “Just do as you are told or next time…next time the scalpel will go just a little deeper, sliding beautifully into the carotid, so much pressure...”

  Cade held the phone to his chest for a second, trying to think of something rational and nonchalant in response. His silence was all he had to offer.

  The call continued for another eighteen seconds.

  Alex knew he was listening and enjoyed watching the fine silver second hand on his exquisite mantel piece clock slicing across its pure white face, just like Copil had done with the girl.

  Sweeping, deliberate, necessary. Deadly.

  “Bye bye Jack.”

  Cade gathered the team quickly, almost shouting.

  “Right, I’ve been told not to tell anyone this, but here goes.”

  He outlined the conversation he had just had with the male. What he deliberately failed to do was repeat what the voice has said about O’Shea.

  ‘When the time was right, Jack, when it was right; not before.’

  “I’m told we couldn’t trace the call, but if I was a gambling man, and trust me I’ve never won a bloody thing on the horses then I would slap a grand on this caller being connected to Nikolina, the bank attacks and the pursuit involving the bus. I believe I have just had my first conversation with the man who refers to himself as the Jackdaw.”

  “We need to lure this bastard and his team into the open. They are greedy. It’s just a matter of time. Any thoughts?” He scanned the room. It was Campbell who responded first.

  The team braced for the mixed metaphors that were sure to follow – but they were all slightly disappointed.

  “Bird in the hand boss, is worth two in Shepherd’s Bush.”

  It was a direct homage to the area that the team were working in, albeit it was another jumbled up metaphor.

  Roberts responded first.

  “Terry my son, just what the sweet fackin’ child of mine are you on about?”

  “Easy skipper, we catch the guy with the missing teeth by using Miss Lucy to lure him out into the open. Nice and easy, lemon squeezy.”

  Roberts looked at Cade who was still trying to process the earlier call.

  “I think our Tel is onto something, Jack. Agreed?”

  Cade had little energy left to disagree, and besides, he thought it was the most sensible idea yet.

  “Agreed. Right, get on with it, I’m off to meet Julia Fleming. Carrie, grab something to write with and a voice recorder. I want to make sure I stay on top.”

  He looked back at Roberts, who was busy poking his index finger into a hole made with his other thumb and forefinger.

  O’Shea walked past him and slapped him across the back of the head.

  “Sorry, guv, must have slipped.”

  Cade walked into Shot, a new café not quite half a mile from Scotland Yard. He closed the door behind him.

  An attractive woman, in her thirties with a short and well-cut head of hair that one moment shone chocolate brown, the other it was flecked with hints of deep vibrant red. She stood and motioned towards him. She was visibly put out to see O’Shea was with him.

  “Julia?”

  “Yes, you must be Inspector Cade? And this is?”

  Cade disliked her dismissal of his colleague – more so he disliked it because he considered her to be his lover too.

  “And this Miss Fleming is Carrie O’Shea – in my opinion, the finest criminal analyst on both sides of the Thames. She’s my go-to person for crime science matters, knows just what to do with a hypothesis, and is truly wicked with a freshly sharpened pencil. She’s also a great friend and is more often than not one step ahead of me.”

  Fleming appeared defeated.

  “I bet. Anyway, we need to talk. Carrie, can you get us some coffee, I’ll pay.”

  O’Shea was quietly furious, but agreed nonetheless. She deliberately scraped her chair on the stone floor and walked up to the counter, ordered three coffees and three scones, hers with apricot preserve, Flemings was chosen with raspberry jam. O’Shea hoped the pips would be stuck in the bitch’s teeth for days.

  The waitress brought the coffee to the table five minutes later. Fleming and Cade were deep in conversation with O’Shea making notes and interjecting at appropriate times. Fleming found herself warming to the pair and ventured to ask a question.

  “Jack, are you two a couple?”

  “Why do you ask Julia?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering, you seem so close, if you aren’t perhaps you should be, after all you seem to spend all day together.”

  Cade paused, sipped his coffee, smiled momentarily, almost imperceptibly, and continued.

  “Julia, would it matter one iota if we spent all night together too? Would it change things in your eyes? Might it feature in your subsequent story? You know, a nice catchy headline. ‘The long arm of the whore’…”

  “Mr Cade, I work for the BBC. We are not the tabloid press, and as such are not known for our smutty one-liners.”

  He had the upper hand now. “I’m pleased to hear it, Miss Fleming – it’s why I choose to watch your programme. Now that we’ve got the power-plays over, can we establish what you need from us?”

  “Thank you, I’m sure you feel I deserved that. I want to be able to ride along with your team as they hunt down these…men. You say they are not terrorists, I agree to differ. But I will report on the facts. When can I start?”

  “Ten minutes ago, Julia. You’ll need this ID, and you are to report to Detective Terry Campbell. I want you to feature every word he says. You have my cell phone number, ring me if you need anything. Do not screen anything without me seeing it first. Miss O’Shea and I have some serious matters to attend to. Thank you for the coffee. Catch up soon.”

  He slid his chair back across the floor, again deliberately as he had seen how it set her teeth on edge the first time.

  Ever the successful professional, Fleming felt she had retained the upper hand as she watched the two police staff walk out of the bustling café and back towards their headquarters.

  The same waitress enquired if everything was to her satisfaction and handed her the bill. She looked at the total and called the waitress back to the table.

  “Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee?”

  “Yes madam, it’s our finest. We think it’s the finest money can buy, actually. Did you enjoy it?”

  Fleming shook her head as she fumbled for her credit card. “Oh immensely. I’ll need a receipt.”

  As the couple walked back to the iconic police headquarters Cade smiled and brushed O’Shea’s arm.

  “She was right, she did deserve that. If I’m not mistaken that was Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, was it not Miss O’Shea?”

  “I wouldn’t know Inspector, I’m just a simple analyst.”

  “Glad you are back, boss.” It was Murphy.

  “You missed me, Del?”

  “Always guv. Anyway, some geezer has been on the dog and bone asking for you. I told him to ring back.”

  Cade froze.

  “Russian accent, Eastern European perhaps?”

  “I’ve got no frigging idea, guv, ‘e just wanted a natter with you. Sorry.”

  Just over an hour away in the historical Kent town of Rochester, Constantin sat naked in a pile of money. He threw another handful in the air and then another. It stank of financial and criminal drama.

  In an adjoining room, Dorin Gabor sat penniless but
assured of his rewards. He heard Constantin call his name. Cautiously, he approached his bedroom door and knocked.

  “There is no need to knock, come in, boy. I have something for you.”

  Gabor eased slowly into the half-light. Sat on a dank, off-white mattress as stained and flaccid as the man himself, Constantin was hoping the sight of his naked body, the abundance of money and the sheer thrill of the last few hours would be enough to entice the boy into the heart of his temporary and squalid lifestyle.

  He had even contemplated giving up the drug if this beautiful young man would relent – and give into his clear yearnings for the older, more experienced man.

  He tapped the edge of the bed.

  “Do not be afraid, Dorin. Come in, come and claim what is rightfully yours. Take a thousand, I’ll help you count it. Have a drink with me, you have earned it. Then we must shower, to remove the evidence of what we have done.”

  He looked directly into the younger man’s eyes before continuing.

  “Perhaps, I should say, what we are about to do.”

  The tutor was becoming aroused, but his apprentice showed no interest, physically or otherwise.

  “I am sorry, Constantin, I just need the money. Please understand. I do not mean to offend you. You are very kind to me but…I like women…”

  His heart said ‘grab the money and run’, his head merely said ‘run’.

  Constantin sighed, looked up once more and spoke. He was still sat on the bed in the half-light. Growing less aroused by the second and beginning instead to feel uneasy, embarrassed and ashamed.

  He asked a question.

  “What has become of me, Dorin? Look at me. Help me and I will reward you with whatever you need to make a good life for yourself back in your home.” He paused. “Please.”

  It might be a mistake, a ploy to lure him into a relationship he would never be willing to embrace, but he had saved him from injury and he had already rewarded him handsomely. He decided that he would help him. For now, this was all he had. A decaying counterpart, a deadly occupation and a fusty, unloved and deliberately anonymous home in a street, town and place he knew nothing about.

  It was a rented end-terraced home on Pagitt Street. Long past its prime, the former home had become a shop in the 1930s and provided a much-needed service to the locals, who, back then, all knew one another.

  Now it was an easy location from which to come and go, and no-one really cared whether they came or went. They were just two more men arriving and departing at odd hours, trying to appear guiltless as they went about their obviously nefarious acts and therefore were of no interest to the locals.

  Except to Edward Francis.

  Ted Francis was eighty-one. A true Kentish Man – depicted by the fact that he was born on the west side of the River Medway in the county that bordered the south eastern edges of London. He had made a career out of carpentry and was known as a quiet and unassuming soul who had an eye for detail a peregrine falcon would kill for.

  He was one of a kind now. Born and bred in the same home, his home for over eighty years. His parents had died there, his younger sister had died there too, a victim of polio only a number of years before it had begun to decline. She had a son out of wedlock who was spirited away to live with extended family in Broadstairs, a lovely English town on the Kent coast. The boy would grow up to be strong and resilient, unlike his poor frail mother.

  Ted had worked in the area, unable to go to war because of his flat-feet. He felt ashamed watching his boyhood friends departing to France, and the feelings never left him. Ironically, many of those young men never returned and Francis felt alone in so many ways.

  In the post-war years he had helped many other tradesmen to rebuild the heavily bombed Medway towns. He worked tirelessly, his contribution to the memory of his pals who had failed to come home.

  Having witnessed the rebirth of his home town he literally carved out a business repairing antique furniture, gaining a name as a true master carpenter. His attention to detail was exquisite.

  His eyesight was phenomenal – for a man of his age. His hearing, too. It was just his hands that were ruined. A cruel legacy of a life of using manual woodworking tools.

  He had painted the outside of his home seven times. Each time the front door would change colour, the rest of the woodwork remaining defiantly white.

  “Not unlike the local population.”

  His current choice for front door colour was bottle green. He felt it symbolised a devout Englishman’s home, and besides, he knew a Trades Officer who worked at the local prison and the only two colours George Miller could easily ‘obtain’ were Classic White, and ‘Prison Green’ as he liked to call it.

  The entry point to this Englishman’s castle had seen better days. The paint was peeling badly now, the bottom left corner starting to rot. It had been twenty-two years since he had made it the most resplendent home in the street. It seemed like yesterday.

  “It seemed more like last week.”

  Off the street, inside the small hallway, he stood and watched. The singular spyhole had been a marvellous investment, fitted with care by the occupant just before he gave the door its new steam-train-green finish.

  He’d added a doorbell too. Not one of those irritating, fancy, foreign battery gadgets, but a proper, wind-up doorbell that would last a month with three and a half turns.

  It was last rung a year ago by kids playing trick or treat. It was neither.

  “Bastards!”

  If he could catch them he’d take them to the local Bobby, who’d give them a clip around the ear, and then he’d take them home to their father, who’d no doubt do the same.

  “I should wind you up really, in case the milkman calls for his money,” he said looking at the dome-shaped mechanism.

  He was saying this to himself as he watched through the marble-sized glass viewing hole. He could see people approaching from the left.

  “Indians probably, the street is full of them now”.

  He didn’t dislike them, just their insular ways. He had heard that their food was an acquired taste.

  “Why can’t you buggers just get along with the rest of us?” he asked, to no one in particular.

  The reality was, he was now the minority. An Englishman, in an Englishman’s castle, in an Englishman’s street. Living among a hundred other people, none of whom shared his ancestry.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a racist. No, not at all, I like these people. The women, yes, I like the women, rather exotic. The men, I can take or leave, they talk to themselves all the time. But the women I like. You’d like them too, Mother.”

  He continued to ramble on, stringing sentences together with ease for an audience of one. He was the epitome of loneliness in modern Britain: Born, bred, educated, employed, popular and hardworking, a man fashioned by his parents to inherit their modest home, among a real community where being inquisitive was a pre-requisite skill and giving a neighbour your last shilling was an act of simple kindness.

  “They wouldn’t give me the dew off their noses.” He tutted, staring through the glass tube.

  “Oh, here we go. The family at number seventeen are heading off to the mosque again, all dressed up. You have to give it to them, they are nothing if not keen. I’ve not been to church for months. I really should go. Father Gary would kill me if he knew I’d become so lapsed.”

  He hadn’t been to Saint John Fisher in eighteen years. He really should go.

  “I really should go. I have a few things I need to get off my chest.”

  And this is how he spent his days.

  Sat in the kitchen, drinking tea, reading the coveted free newspaper, washing up his cup, wandering around the small but neat back yard, looking out into the scrub-land that was once the pride of the street and back to the front door.

  What was left of the Axminster carpet was worn, his constant footfall leaving a trail from the rear of the property to the front door. Its trademark red and blue colour
ing was now all but gone, a few flecks of colour here and there were all that remained. Francis smiled when he reflected upon the time he had come home from school to find the carpet fitter finishing off the job.

  He could hear his words as if he were stood in the doorway.

  “Now then young man, what do you think about that? Your father has bought well there, this will last out his time…and yours, just remember to give it a good clean once a week and it will serve you well.”

  On special occasions he would go through the gate at the back of the property and walk through the vegetable garden. In its day it was the envy of the neighbourhood. He helped his dear Dad grow the finest produce there, most of which was sold for very little, or at best given away just to attract praise.

  He couldn’t recall the last time he’d walked through the larger garden, to the old shed, but he did remember that when he had, he couldn’t find it.

  “It was somewhere in the corner, just beyond the compost heap…”

  He never used the best lounge. Mother wouldn’t allow it. Such a shame, he would love to be able to go in and play the piano just one more time.

  Sitting on the Kemble upright piano and as dusty as the instrument that it sat upon was a solitary black photo frame. The frame contained a simple, faded image of a smiling soldier, sitting post-passing out parade, tie slightly askew, surrounded by his mates.

  The soldier wore a cap, upon which was fastened a gleaming badge. The Latin inscription read, ‘Deus Vult’ – God Wills It. The call of the Crusades.

  “I should ring Constable Brown about those two buggers across the road. Coming in at all hours with their bags. Full of money, if you ask me. Swarthy creatures, don’t trust ‘em. In my day I’d give ‘em a bunch of fives.”

  He danced around the hallway, safe, practising his long-forgotten boxing skills, knocking down his opponent with a fierce single blow.