“Up or down?”
“Not sure. Most likely up. He had fallen onto his back and the rounds hit him in the front, so yes. Up.”
“And Constantin has escaped.”
“Yes. How did you know, just a guess?”
“No. He called me from a payphone earlier. Last night too. He sounded paranoid. Said he wanted to see me, one last time.”
Cade, sensing an opportunity, nodded encouragement to his partner.
“And? Did you say you would meet?”
“Of course. He pays well, and he’ll be done in a few minutes. I know the tricks of the trade. He never hangs around afterwards. One last time might have some added bonuses.”
“What time? Where?”
“Tomorrow. Seven o’clock. He said he had things to do tonight and tomorrow.”
“1900 hours?”
“If you say so, sweetie.”
“In the evening? It’s important H.”
“Yes. In the evening. Can I call you J?”
“You can call me whenever and whatever you like. But H…”
“Yes, J?”
“Do not let him into your apartment.”
In a layby south of the River Thames, just off the M2 motorway, the red Vauxhall sat, engine running, windscreen steamed up; a solitary occupant hidden from view.
Minutes away, Bluewater, one of Britain’s largest shopping complexes pulsated with people indulging in varied forms of retail therapy, all blissfully unware and frankly disinterested in the occupant of the car, who was eagerly consuming the heroin smoke that drifted upwards from its grubby tinfoil substrate. It found its way into a makeshift tube and into his body – its narcotic effect immediate upon his neural pathways.
The initial rush succeeded in calming him, allowing him to think.
He slumped into the worn seat and slept soundly for a few hours – as the world passed him by, oblivious to him and he, in turn, to it.
But his thoughts were forming now, more defined than ever.
First it would be Artur Gheorghiu. He must pay. Why did he ever accept his offer of work? He had enough knowledge to forge a new life without him and his people. And, if he had not met him, he would have not met dear Dorin Gabor. Such a sweet boy. They could have been lovers, in the end. It would have taken time, but he saw the look; that state of raw inquisitiveness that he had once shown, back in the motherland, in a beautiful government apartment where he too had learned to love and be loved by his fellow man.
“No! You need Gheorghiu. What are you thinking? Leave him. Get close. Leave him. Deal with him in the future. When the time is right. What are you thinking?”
He drifted again. The desire to sleep had become burdensome. He would have remained in a deep slumber if a heavy goods vehicle had not started up and pulled away from the layby. It felt like he had been asleep for seconds, but an hour had passed. The sun was starting to set, to drop below the industrial horizon, and yet people, western capitalists, continued to head for their Mecca.
“Don’t these fools ever sleep? Bastards.”
He ran the back of his hand across the windscreen, creating a small aperture in the condensed glass.
“And you, Mr Policeman. You are next. And trust me, you will be sleeping for a very long time.”
He began to answer his own questions, his mind awash with thoughts. And now he was hungrier than he could ever recall. He looked down at his fingers and saw the turmeric stains, considered the passenger seat and noted the presence of the discarded burqa. He wiped his eyes. It had been a long day. A long week. A longer life.
‘How have you ended up here?’
He shook his head, clearing his senses, and then asked himself another question.
“Why kill him? His suffering will be over too soon. To harm his woman is to harm him. Why should he have a person to love when mine has been taken away from me? Cause her pain. A slow, agonizing death. Then perhaps you will respect me. All of you.”
O’Shea had sent another simple text:
Heading home, been a long day. Going to try some old-fashioned photography stuff. Come to bed and be very bad with me x
Cade opened the message an hour or so later. He remembered how Carrie had told him about her love of photography. He’d congratulated her on one of her landscape shots. He’d used complimentary words and hoped he had got it right. She seemed happy. He told her that one day he would hang a framed copy in his home and that perhaps, just perhaps, it would be a place that they could share.
The day had given way to the evening, but Cade and Roberts were still at work, having dutifully stood the rest of the team down. Now they were frantically trying to transpose the events of the day onto their system. Exhausted as they were, it needed to be done. He rang Daniel and appraised him of the situation.
“Jack, you’ve all done well. But we’ve got twenty-four hours. Sorry. I can’t get a minute more. The deputy commissioner wants us to re-deploy to these street robberies. Without evidence – evidence of wrong-doing on our patch, I’ve got nothing to go back at him with.”
Cade considered the words for a moment. He understood the quandary, but knew that the individuals they had been hunting and the group that funded them were capable of more, and he suspected that the lack of commitment from his bosses was the green light they were looking for.
“Sir. If we pull away now…well, you know my position on this. Remind the bloody D/C that we’ve had high-speed pursuits, murder, attempted murder of your staff, kidnapping. I mean really JD, how much more bloody evidence do you want? I’m sick of the up and down decision making here. I can’t will these bastards to step onto the streets of London and start a battle with us. They are smarter than that. Shall I put a full-page ad in the Daily Express? They’ve stolen tens of thousands of pounds from ATMs and destroyed buildings in the process. The average street robbery results in twenty quid and a phone.”
He took a breath.
“They’ve shot at police staff and endangered the public. Do you want me to go out and drum up some more business? It seems like I’m the Pied Piper of Bloody Hamelin when it comes to attracting the rats around here.”
“Actually, Jack, I want you to go home. Rest. Catch up with that woman of yours. She looked tired too. We all are. We’ll hit the ground running tomorrow and re-group. I’ll give it one last go, but if I were a betting man, I’d say put it on Street Robbery by a nose.”
“I’ve never wasted a penny on the nags boss, and I’m not about to start. Mug’s game. I’ll give it another hour then head around to see ‘that woman’ of mine and hopefully I’ll be somewhat exhausted in the morning. Night.”
He pressed the red button on his phone and walked to the kitchen, shouting ‘Roberts’ as he did so.
“Coffee, you old queen?”
“Queen? How very dare you? The most homoerotic thing I’ve ever been accused of was falling in love with two school bags.”
Roberts didn’t have a clue. “Go on…”
“My teacher said I was bi-satchel.”
Roberts laughed. He was too tired not to.
“When you put it in such a politically correct manner boss, yes, I’d love a coffee.”
O’Shea was approaching her flat when she saw a face from the past. It stopped her in her tracks. It was an old colleague from her policing days. He had been her tutor and things had gone remarkably well until one evening he had overstepped the mark.
O’Shea would admit years later it was as much to do with her body language as his desire to rid her of her uniform, and contrary to expectations they had remained friends.
“Derek Fox, you old dog. As I live and breathe. I thought you had retired long ago?”
The tall male straightened his back, puffed out his chest and walked across the road as regimentally as he did when once a member of the Coldstream Guards.
He came to a halt, wrapped his arms around her, hugged her and beamed a broad, straight smile as he held her at arm’s length as if to admire a thing of beauty.<
br />
“Constable O’Shea of the Yard. Well, blow me down with a feather. I did retire two years ago now. Finished off in a dark back office with a view of a damp, dark wall. Lost Madeline six months ago. Anyway, that’s all thoroughly depressing, how’ve you been my darling? Do tell.”
They quickly recounted the last five years – in reality it took thirty minutes. Standing in the poorly lit doorway of an accountancy practice, Fox seized the moment.
“Carrie, can you spare some time to make an old copper happy?”
She feigned an embarrassed smile and theatrically looked around, “Well that depends Foxy, right here in the doorway? What do you have in mind?”
“A drink. That’s all. I learned my lesson that fateful nightshift!”
“Ah, ever the gallant gent. Then yes.” She looked at her watch. “I can spare you an hour. The old place suit you?”
“Of course. Nice to see some things never change.”
Roberts sank into his office chair, shoulders slumped. He let out a lengthy sigh.
“Mate, I am done. Mrs Roberts is out tonight and I heard Carrie say she was playing with photographs. Let’s pop to the pub for a swift one and a bowl of beef in a tepid and tasteless brown sauce which the menu describes as curry.”
Cade was far too tired, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. The offer was accepted.
“Top man. I’ll fetch the car. The Sanctuary awaits. We could even have a shandy.” He rubbed his palms together vigorously.
Cade cleared his desk – it was a habit that he’d retained for as long as he had been entitled to his own workspace.
“Right, let’s go, what isn’t done can wait till tomorrow. For now, all quiet on the western front.”
“Jesus boss, you’ll be singing It’s a Long Way To Tipperary next!”
Without further encouragement, the two colleagues walked out of the office performing the First World War classic in the style of a pub singer.
Within walking distance of home, O’Shea confidently pushed open the door to the team’s local watering hole. Fox followed a few paces behind.
Familiar faces nodded, some carried on reading the newspaper, a threesome noisily played darts and the rest of the early evening crowd did what most inhabitants of an old-fashioned English pub did; talk about the weather, about politics and most of all about football.
Fox bought the drinks, adjourned to a corner table and began the conversation.
“So Miss Caroline, how’s life treating you? I hear the team has been busy lately. From all accounts, it’s like the bloody Wild West out there!”
O’Shea smiled, “Crikey, it’s a long time since anyone has called me by my full name!” She recounted some of the jobs that she’d either heard about or been present at and went into fine detail about the bus incident.
“Christ, girl, you were lucky. That said, I’m not sure this new man of yours is a lucky charm, you know. If you get bored, you know where to find me.” He winked and sipped the top of his pint, gazing back at her inquisitive gaze.
“How do you know about Jack?”
“Word travels fast among retired coppers love. Besides, what else have we got to do but watch Countdown and gossip with other like-minded manic depressives on Facebook?”
“You need a hobby.”
“Do I now? So what’s yours?”
“Well, I’m a long way from retirement Foxy, but mine is photography. I’ve even started developing my own images. Jack says my spare bedroom smells like the ICI factory sometimes!”
“Tres romantique mon cheri!”
They laughed and O’Shea found herself relaxing whilst keeping a discreet eye on the time. Her drinking partner kept an eye on the door. Old habits died the hardest. Years as a Special Branch officer and close connections to Northern Ireland did that to a man.
“No really, it is an art form, it goes back many years. Jack thinks I’m mad. Blames my occasional ‘absences’ on chemical inhalation. I’m currently working on a technique known as the wet plate collodion process. I’ve bought a large format camera, which means I get to develop some amazing monochrome, that’s black and white images…”
Fox was listening, but distracted.
“I’m boring you, aren’t I Foxy?”
He smiled before adding, “No, absolutely not, I’m just trying to get my head around just what it is you are on about lady!”
She took a long sip of her drink and continued, buoyed by his interest.
“I use potassium cyanide as a fixing agent…it’s pretty sexy stuff…”
“For Christ’s sake Carrie, isn’t that also pretty stuff lethal?”
“No, not at all. Well yes, very, but it’s how you mix it, and where and with what.”
“You’ve studied this and that worries me, I certainly don’t want to make an enemy of you. Thank God you didn’t know about this shit when I tried it on with you or I’d be in Highgate Cemetery!”
“You would you dirty old man, and rightly so. No, seriously, it’s a safe process. As with all chemicals they are often stable in isolation, it’s when they mix that things can…develop. See what I did there?”
He did. He still found her very attractive and that inquisitive nature and those come to bed eyes did nothing to diminish the sensation. But he’d had his chance and now his feelings were more paternal. He certainly felt old enough. He gazed at her for a while as she swept the room for risks.
The edgy, pockmarked male who had been leaning against the bar did the same, then looked away when Derek Fox caught his eye. He unhurriedly slid his empty glass back towards the barmaid, nodded, smiled a vacant smile and exited, turned right, then left and walked at a pace that showed purpose. Within minutes he was just another inhabitant of one of the world’s busiest cities.
Fox took a brief moment to process what he had seen, considered the male to be a pickpocket, and placed the matter in File 13. If he tried anything on either of them out on the street, he would swiftly find himself en route to the local hospital. At fifty-four Fox was a young retiree and still very capable or inflicting pain; unless, of course, the recipient no longer felt it.
Roberts held The Sanctuary door for Cade who walked in, said good evening to Roger the landlord and found himself a chair in the private room that was almost always on standby for the various units that had adopted it as their own.
“Guten tag mon ami,” said an upbeat Roberts before adding “Two of your finest foaming pints of brown dishwater and a couple of chipped bowls of what you fraudulently market as beef curry, if you please landlord.”
“Jason, you can fuck off to the Jewel of Bengal if you want the real thing you know!”
“Please, Roger, I never knew you were so passionate about your culinary expertise. Slip a large sherry into a glass and come and join us, you sexy beast.”
“Thanks, but no thanks I’d rather dip my balls in hot custard. Oh, and Sergeant…”
“Yes, barman?”
“As a special deal for you and your boyfriend, that’ll be fifteen quid.”
Roberts slipped the cash across the bar, ensuring it absorbed some of the previously spilled drink that floated on top of the aged wooden surface.
“GFY Roger, GFY.”
“Do what?”
“It’s code. You wouldn’t understand, you were only ever a traffic warden.”
With drinks in hand and feeling smug Roberts joined a man he considered to be his friend and lately his boss and they did what most good police officers did after a stressful period – they laughed at the most inappropriate things and let what was left of their hair down, whilst Roberts extolled the virtues of heating a saucepan of custard to boiling point.
Half a mile away the same pockmarked male eased himself into O’Shea’s flat, closed the door behind him and swept the rooms for inhabitants. It had been easy to find. The information Valentin had provided was extremely accurate.
Constantin was coming down from his latest heroin-fuelled nightmare and was now surprisingly fully in
control of his faculties. His mouth was dry, sticky almost, but he had become so used to the feeling that it had become the norm.
Unable to produce endorphins naturally, he needed more excitement, more risk, greater danger and this was driving him towards his goal. Just as heroin was driving him uncontrollably towards an almost inevitable and somewhat painful death.
He was talking to himself, happy in the fact that he was alone in her home. He cared not that she might come home. She had entered the pub with that man, and it wasn’t her lover. Clearly she was a whore and deserved punishing. He would like to punish her.
He opened her wardrobe, ran his hands along her clothes, stopped, rubbed the silk lining on a charcoal grey skirt between his thumb and forefinger, then closed the door.
He stepped towards her bedside drawers and opened the top one. As he expected, it was full of personal ‘things’ – things he neither had the time nor the inclination to look at.
The second drawer, equally predictably, contained underwear. He carefully folded a few items over until he reached the bottom of the pile. His fingers adapted to the change in material. Cotton gave way to silk. He again rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, creating an exquisite feeling. He lifted the item out, held it up, admired it and then placed it reverently against his cheek.
He held it there for a while, content in the fact that he had truly invaded her privacy. But she was a woman, and that fact alone was reason to place the item back where he found it. His presence aroused him enough – she didn’t.
He knew someone who would look extraordinary in the camisole. Even for Constantin this was on the wrong side of the moral compass, but still he rolled the sheer black underwear up, folded it again and placed it into his pocket.
He walked carefully around the flat until he located her photography equipment in a walk-in wardrobe that she had lovingly and rather cleverly converted. Her images were fine. He actually liked them. She had an eye for light. In another life he might even deign to hang one on his wall – if he had a wall, let alone a home. He admired talent, and the girl had it in bucket loads.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 21