In the patrol vehicle, Cade felt her body jolt. And again. She exhaled deeply. And then she was still.
Chapter Seventeen
Cade knew they could not afford to detour towards Roberts – this was a case, if ever there was one – of now, or never.
“Boys do whatever you need to do, break the bloody law if you have to. You have my permission.”
Roberts’ police ID had stayed firmly in his pocket as he breached the doorway of the club. Feeling inappropriately dominant he almost brushed the leather-clad doorman to one side.
“Detective Sergeant Jason Roberts to see…” he paused awkwardly “…Master Toby.”
It was a simple, swift instruction in a place that at any other time would be just too surreal. He couldn’t do it any other way. He needed to be strong.
The doorman was immense but appeared to have a softer, submissive side – he stepped backwards and beckoned with his left hand to a side door.
“The Master awaits.”
Roberts, despite his external body language was genuinely afraid he would never leave the building again. He felt young, inexperienced and yes, for the record, attractively vulnerable. He thanked a God somewhere that he wasn’t in uniform.
Cade owed him a debt of gratitude. However, now was not the time to cash it in.
A white male in his fifties with suspiciously black hair stood up from behind a large white desk. Had he have been positioned anywhere in the business district of the City of London he would have been taken for a stockbroker, a merchant banker or a solicitor.
He wore Armani was well as any man; classic navy with a subtle pinstripe, white shirt, blue tie, white handkerchief, Cartier watch. His hands were immaculately groomed, nails trimmed to perfection.
Through nephrite-green eyes he considered the man before him.
Slim, attractive and self-assured. He cared not for his dress-sense but he admired his audacity – walking into his domain without a conventional reason – his introduction had been enough.
He held out a tanned hand, upon which jet-black hairs bristled, an indication of his hirsuteness.
His grip was intense and surprised Roberts.
“Jason Roberts. I’ll cut to the chase sir, you have something for me which I need now.”
“Charmed I’m sure. Mallory St John at your service. It is pronounced Sinjun. Your driving licence, please?” He held out an impeccably clipped hand.
“What?”
“I made myself quite clear, Sergeant.” Dominant.
Roberts, sensing a battle lost, handed over his licence. Submissive.
“I’ll be back for that.”
“I’m counting on it my dear officer.” His eyes shone as he revealed a perfectly white and straight set of teeth and as it ran over them he also saw a silver stud in his serpent-like tongue.
“Take this, send my love to Lucy and do let me know about that poor girl. Now go, hurry along and decamp, as you boys in blue often say.”
He ushered him away with his exquisitely manicured hand.
Roberts took the package and turned upon his heels, not wishing to look back, but ever-mindful that he had just handed over a key item of identity to a man clearly more adept at being in control than he was. He waved his own goodbye, trying to be dismissive but only managing to look outrageously camp.
The irony that he had travelled to the venue from Old Queen Street was far from lost on him.
Mallory St John sat back down, leant back in his walnut-leather chair at precisely thirty-two degrees and placed his feet up on the table.
He took a moment to admire the monochrome, size ten high heels before rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
A male employee entered the office. He was white, slender and outwardly submissive. His almost hairless body was criss-crossed with leather straps and shiny steel buckles. Despite being an employee he actually paid a weekly sum for the privilege of working for St John. By day he conducted himself as a senior manager in a blue chip organisation, but as the sun dipped below the horizon, he became Mallory St John’s personal plaything.
The Master selected a ball from the desk drawer and threw it across the office.
“Fetch.”
The male did as he was told, allowing St John to contemplate the attractive young police officer once more. He smiled, gently picked a piece of food from his teeth, examined it and allowed it to drop to the floor.
“Oh yes. I’m absolutely counting on it officer.”
Back in the Rover, Roberts was immediately onto his phone.
“Jack, it’s me, I’ll be with you…” he paused, working out approximately where their journeys would bisect, “…in three minutes. Are you aware there’s a crash outside St Thomas’ Hospital? Ambulance versus van. Chaos. The lads here say divert to Guys. We are coming up behind you now.”
Roberts was using the classic international police timescale. ‘Now’ was often designed to make the officer requiring immediate back-up feel more secure, when, in actual fact ‘now’ meant at least three or four minutes.
Cade yelled at his driver. “You said the crash was on the bridge, it’s outside the hospital. We need to divert to Guys. Get to Guys, but when you see the other unit, stop. Just do it, please.”
As Cade had finished the sentence the driver looked in his rear-view mirror and saw his colleagues approaching at Warp Factor Five. He slowed and then having conversed on the force radio, pulled over in the middle of the road. They were joined by the paramedic.
Roberts leapt out of the car, handed the ampoule to the medic and opened the rear door of the patrol car containing the patient.
Cade nodded at his partner. He was unable to do more.
“Out of the way, please.” It was the medic, hypodermic in hand. He pulled the dressing gown to one side, dabbed the skin with an antiseptic wipe and stopped.
“Sir, do I have your permission to do this? What I am about to do goes against everything I stand for and have trained to deal with. I do not actually know what is in this bottle. Therefore, we should wait.”
It was the first time that the notion had entered Cade’s head. Damned if he did.
“Do it.”
The surgically sharp tip of the needle entered her cold skin and allowed the liquid to enter her body.
Cade now prayed out loud.
“Right, go, get her to Guys. I will go ahead and brief the Casualty Team.” John Parker got back onto his BMW lowered his visor and accelerated north east. The convoy followed.
Roberts’ phone rang.
“It’s me. He’s still near the girl’s house. How is she? How was Toby? How are you?”
“Too many questions Lucy. Carrie is not good, not good at all. And by the way Toby is called Mallory and took my bloody driving licence off me in lieu of the drugs and I am royally pissed off, truth be told. But thank you. If she survives, which is touch and go, then I owe you.”
“Call it honours even Jason, you know, for when we first met. Oh, and by the way.”
“Go on.”
“You didn’t have to hand your licence over! You obviously wanted to go back you naughty man. He does it to everyone. That’s why he is the Master and you…”
“Lucy, Dave or whatever your bloody name is, if you call me a slave, just once, I’ll kick your back door in!”
“Ooh promises, promises you wicked man. Let me know how the girl is. Now go, be brave my liege. The city needs you.”
Roberts offered an expletive but Thomas had already gone.
Cade walked with the medical team as they examined O’Shea en route from the patrol car.
“Mr Cade, you say you think this is cyanide? There are no obvious signs with such poisoning so we have to be careful. Has she had any other medication? Anything at all?”
Cade paused, looked at the paramedic and knew he had to fall upon his own sword.
“She’s been injected with an ampoule of amil nitrite. In lieu of a Cyanokit. There was chaos with the crash at St Thomas’ –
it was the best we could do.”
“Your idea? Did you administer it?” The voice of the Canadian doctor was neither accusatory nor supportive as his head turned from Cade to the Paramedic.
Cade did not hesitate. “My idea – yes, on both counts.”
“Then you may have saved this ladi’s life, Inspector. Well done. Inspired.” He checked O’Shea’s shallow heart rate and started to instruct his team.
He looked at his junior colleague.
“OK, shall we do this?”
It was a rhetorical question but one designed to set the medical wheels in motion.
Doctor Anthony Hay, a native of Vancouver and in London for ‘the ride’ started to orate as he worked. It was for everyone’s benefit, including his own.
“OK people. In patients with acute poisoning from hydrogen cyanide gas the principle acute care concerns are what?”
A wide-eyed and enthusiastic Korean female answered immediately.
“Hemodynamic instability and cerebral edema?”
“Good. Very good.”
Cade knew this was how senior doctors worked with house officers, but he wanted them to stop discussing her as if she were a lecture topic and concentrate on providing some positive news. He knew enough about medicine to second guess much of what they were discussing. It sounded far from positive.
Hay continued, “Now, this normally healthy lady is rather unwell, once we stabilise her and add to her existing drugs…she may improve; however team, a couple of key points please?”
He looked around the room, his facial expression soliciting an answer.
“Continuous cardiac monitoring?” offered a freckle-faced male.
“Excellent.”
“Respiratory and cardiovascular support?” offered the Korean doctor.
“Spot on – and I want to see frequent neurological evaluations too.” He then looked at the staff nurse.
“Let’s keep oxygenation at optimum levels please and monitor her cardiac stats. I’m not one hundred percent happy with her oxygen levels so I may intubate her, get some more of that lovely stuff into her lungs, give her the fighting edge. For now, let’s look at serum lactates, chemistry and arterial and venous gases please Vicky. Thank you.”
He turned towards Cade.
“Your partner will stay with us until her signs improve and I can be assured that she is on the mend.”
Hay was about to walk away when he stopped to talk to Cade. He beckoned for the group to continue onto the next patient.
“Tony Hay.”
“Jack Cade. Carrie’s…boss. Partner. Confidante. Jesus, what a week.”
He took a moment.
“Hey Jack, good to meet you. You can call me Tony. I only reserve the Redeemer for when I perform true miracles. Look, I think I can be blunt with you? Miss O’Shea is critically ill. She may not survive. Does she have family? If so, you should start to notify them.”
Cade took a moment and soon realised that he had never discussed family members with her. Not once. And vice versa. He would instruct Roberts to do this. It seemed appropriate.
“Jack, the problem with cyanogens is that poisoning symptoms sometimes don’t manifest, or importantly, become truly life threatening for many hours after exposure. We will be watching her like a hawk. You are welcome to stay day and night, or I can ring you if anything transpires. If all goes to plan we will need to re-evaluate her for the next seven to ten days. This wasn’t self-inflicted was it?”
Cade’s look provided the answer that Hay needed.
“You might want to be here or you might want to use your obvious…” He hunted for a suitable word… “Passion, to go and hunt down the Neanderthal that did this. My carefully chosen personal words of course, not the opinion of the British National Health Service you understand?”
Cade nodded wearily and looked at O’Shea. He had seen her in various stages of vulnerability, both on and off duty, but he had never seen her like this. Alive, but somewhere approaching death. A number of machines continued to monitor her vital signs and Cade could do no more than gently hold her hand. He was torn. Stay, holding her hand, waiting for one of two things to occur or leave her and track down the bastard responsible.
“How long Tony?”
“In that state?”
“Yes.”
“Unassisted? Twenty-four hours at best. Hooked up to that gear? Weeks. If she’s going to survive we’ll know within two days.”
He subconsciously looked at his wristwatch, a battered and much-loved graphite Zietner Chronograph that once belonged to his father.
Cade was also a man working against the clock and shook Hay’s hand, allowing him to leave without the need for another word. They were both men on a mission, albeit entirely different.
He nodded at the two uniformed staff who had arrived to provide an increased level of protection to O’Shea. Both were armed and planning to spend the night at the hospital.
Cade beckoned for their car keys as his cell chirped into life.
“Cade.”
“Jack, John Daniel. I’ve been briefed. I’ve elevated this to the next level. We are getting some buy-in. Jason and the team are out and about looking for the offender and uniform and ARVs are swamping the area. CID are talking to their sources. We’ll get him Jack. Jack?”
Cade had abrogated himself of responsibility, leaving her bedside and now walking at a fast pace, a man with a plan. He got into the Ford Mondeo and turned the key hoping his mind could unravel exactly what the plan was.
“Sorry JD, I’ve left Carrie at Guys. I need to get back to the scene. I’m useless here.”
“I disagree, you should stay. I’m heading in to work, let me know if I can do anything...”
Daniel was the iceberg; the tip, the middle and the bottom, the archetypal mentor. He knew what to say and when, but Cade had already hung up and was now accelerating towards O’Shea’s flat.
Roberts was back in Old Queen Street area, with Dave Williams and Detective Constable Chris White the newly arrived replacement for Clive Wood. He was gathering evidence at a fast pace but knew that there was no way his team would or should deal with the file. As soon as the local staff arrived he would hand over, removing himself from the chain of evidence.
“Right boys, here’s the plan. We throw a net over the local area. Jack reckons our man is still somewhere nearby although God only knows why he would be unless he’s like one of those weird fire starters. We get uniform to patrol the wider area – where possible a few on foot would be good, then we hunt him down and nail the bastard to the cross. Any questions?”
Cade was inbound to Old Queen Street when his phone started to vibrate once again.
Private number.
“Cade.”
“Valentin.”
“Go ahead.”
“You are hunting a wounded animal Jack. I don’t think he will give up easily. I wish I could be more useful but for now I am tracking everywhere. Your own people need to search the camera systems, talk to their informants, think like hunters, there is no time for kindness. I believe he will kill again. He has crossed the final boundary. He has nothing to lose.”
“Valentin, do me a huge favour?”
“Of course.”
“When this is all over, reveal yourself, I will offer you as much protection from prosecution as I can, but worst case can we meet, anywhere in the world, somewhere you consider safe? I just want to shake your hand. I am in your debt, and that is not something they teach us to admit at training school.”
“It is entirely possible that we will meet. One day Jack, one day, until then I will help how and where I can. For now you need to know that this team is bigger than Constantin. They are still operating all over the south of England and their numbers are growing and they are operating right under your feet – their plan is to head north soon. One unit has committed three hundred offences against one of the largest banks by aiming at their cash point machines. Three. Hundred. Where they are not gainin
g actual cash they are obtaining data, and in the right hands that is just as valuable. I will leave you to work out the numbers Jack but it is fair to say somebody, somewhere is smiling. And that person most likely calls himself Jackdaw.”
In the preceding weeks Cade had heard that bastard’s name on many occasions but had intentionally decided not to dwell on who or what he was. Once he worked out the where then he could seek some wider assistance from his international colleagues and perhaps his new-found and unanticipated friend.
“Thank you Valentin. For now, I have three priorities; Carrie, your friend Constantin and somehow I need to influence my leaders to put some greater emphasis on locking up these bank offenders. As you say at a hundred thousand pounds a team they are making somebody a very rich man. But he will wait for now, his day will come, and when it does, I want to be the one who wraps my hands around his throat like a Scotsman caresses a caber…”
“Positive words my friend but I suspect you will remain frustrated, he is evading bigger fish than you Jack. Right now he is laughing at the European authorities more than I am, and I have…as you would say, the sense of humour too.”
Cade paused. “OK, Valentin I need your help and I will get you the rewards – I suspect that for you this does not mean financial. Help us find Constantin and then do your best to direct us towards the offending teams that are hitting the banks; I can get more staff directed at that operation. Then tomorrow, perhaps another time in the future we can both track and capture your Jackdaw.”
“Of course, but for now I must continue to gain his trust. He is not an enemy of mine. Albeit I do not like him. I will ring him. Do not forget, Constantin, he is somewhere near you – he too hides in the shadows, he is your priority.”
Cade looked at his phone and wondered out loud when the sun might add some light to these bloody shadows that everyone seemed to excel in hiding amongst.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 25