“God’s sake, Jack. What have we done?”
“I am not entirely sure, my friend. We’ve poked the hornet’s nest, that’s for sure. We’ll get ‘em. Mark my words. They won’t just be able to disappear, big city or not, people talk, and when it comes to informants, I’m going to empty JD’s CHIS budget overnight.”
Cade knew, in reality, that a CHIS – or Covert Human Intelligence Source was possibly the only way Cade and the Breaker team might find their targets now.
“Come on, pal. Let’s get you comfortable. There’s a shit-tonne of cops out there looking for them. Don’t know about you, but I’ve had a guts full of action for one day. How does McDonalds sound? I hear they’ve got a new Happy Meal…”
“Nice. I fear it may be hospital food for a while.” He exhaled, twisting, trying to find somewhere resembling comfortable before slumping back down onto the train floor and slipping back into a state of semi-consciousness.
Cade looked at the girl-next-door-pretty Emily who had given up adjusting her pencil skirt and now sat in a position that also offered basic support and comfort to both her and Roberts.
“Thank you, Emily. I’m sure this will be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
She smiled and nodded. “It’s OK, my pleasure, we should help you guys more often, but we don’t always have the chance – or the courage. Sorry.”
Cade was about to remonstrate. She had done really well to keep his colleague’s spirits high. He looked through the doorway and saw that more staff were arriving, along with a motorcycle paramedic.
He looked familiar.
“Hello mate. We meet again. You seem to attract chaos. How’s your female colleague, any news?”
Cade was horrified. For many hours he had been so pre-occupied he hadn’t given O’Shea a second thought.
“I have no idea, mate, I’m ashamed to tell you. I’m sure she will be fine.”
“I’m sure too.” He wasn’t. He looked down at Roberts. “Now then fellow, what’s happened to you, some weird stuff at the club you went to or did you try to ride without a ticket?”
Shipley was thirty or so metres onto Blackfriars Bridge. She looked across its ornate span into the Borough of Newington. She saw nothing except a river of pedestrians that she had no interest in. She turned and jogged back, stopping alongside an iconic and latterly it seemed unused phone box.
An electrician was busy arguing with a Traffic Warden, the tradesman was getting visibly angry, telling the ‘Officious Nazi’ just where to place his ticket. Shipley intervened.
“Gents, sorry to burst into your debate, but have either of you seen two men in the last few minutes? One possibly carrying a backpack. Got a limp. Probably in a hurry?”
“Madam, I am trying to do a job here. I have seen hundreds of men, in the last hour. You expect me to note the descriptions of everyone I see?”
“No, I…”
The ‘spark’, as electricians were often known, now sensing a possible ally joined in.
“Oy Hitler, do us both a favour. Yes darling, it so ‘appens I have. But I only saw one, he’s a plumber, Polish I think. Had a cut on his eye. Said his missus walloped ‘im for playing away. You Old Bill, are you? Thought so.”
Convincing himself Shipley was a police officer he continued, “Went into that building there, just before Adolf ‘ere started reading the Riot Act to me. I mean, seriously, ‘ow’s a bloke supposed to earn a bloody livin’ around ‘ere when you’ve got the Waffen SS strutting around like it’s nineteen thirty bloody nine? Eh?”
He looked around, enjoying his new audience of one, only to find she had gone.
“What is it wiv this place? It’s like everyone I talk to is part aborigine. There one minute – gone the next!”
Shipley had moved on, conscious of the need to remain at least in visual contact. She checked her phone and thought about dialling but knew she couldn’t search and speak. If all hell broke loose, the electrician would come to her aid. She pressed on.
Stefanescu had abandoned his vehicle, on double yellow lines on a Thames-side street called Bermondsey Wall East. The car was void of any incriminating evidence and would be towed soon, and someone, at some point, would go and claim it from the compound. Or not. He had never registered it as his. As with all the vehicles he drove, it was a clone. High powered, high value but ultimately worthless. He’d just place an order to have a new one stolen.
He checked his phone for messages and increased the pace, walking past a bronze statue of an elderly male, sat on a bench staring across the walkway at two more statues, one of a little girl, the other, perched on the river wall, a cat. On any normal day, any normal individual would stop and admire the artwork, or possibly even have a photograph taken.
He shook his head, mocking the English before pacing towards a boardwalk and crossing over a small white footbridge that descended to a mooring. Without even looking for a custodian or an owner, he climbed aboard a small boat and checked for keys.
Finding nothing, he moved onto another. A male shouted from the footpath. He simply cupped his ear, shrugged, waved back and started the second boat.
Once he had left the small berthing area, used by a local Thames river cruise company he moved upstream as quickly as he could. The tidal flow was impressive and enough to propel him along at just below the locally posted limited. He wanted to get somewhere quickly but not attract attention. He pushed on. The tide was in his favour and coming in rapidly.
Ahead and to his right lay the landmark sites of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. He was disinterested at best, keeping any eye open for anyone in authority who might be watching for him specifically, or an over-eager official looking to make his quota. Either way he needed to remain anonymous. He kept left, under the bridge, and took a moment to look up, dwarfed by its impressive span and architecture.
The Tower was equally imposing. He looked at it and thought aloud that it would have made him a fine home.
He’d keep the jewels too, naturally.
With his phone in one hand and the other on the wheel, he was making progress, tucking in tightly alongside HMS Belfast, a floating leviathan of the last world war.
Although he was making excellent headway, he wanted to go faster, but whilst the tide was on his side, time wasn’t. He had misjudged the duration of the journey, wishing now he had sought out a vessel closer to his pre-arranged meeting point. Damn the authorities, who were they to control him? Or, was he in fact just like them?
Cutting under the Millennium Bridge, he was at last in reach of his end destination, Blackfriars.
Looking over his shoulder he began to time his change of course, looking left, right and ahead, an eagle scanning its environs. There were people everywhere; on the river, on the bridges and on land. But in a throbbing metropolis was anyone really interested in his activities?
Two minutes.
“I hope you have followed the instructions?” He asked aloud, more than anything to himself, for no one else was close enough to hear.
Shipley moved quietly through the ground floor of the former café, checking rooms as she went, placing her phone onto silent. Quite what she was going to do when she caught up with them was something, unusually for one so highly organised, that she had not yet considered.
Much of the ground floor was a building site. Why would they hide here? Knocking over a half-empty bottle, she ground to a halt, waited, her breathing overly loud. She measured it until she was able to calm down and move on. The next room was lighter, its old sash windows, jammed in place by years of over-painting allowed a stream of light into the space, creating pockets of chromatic bright light in a sea of dust. She brushed it away and realised that the particles had been caused by recent human disruption.
They were here.
Chapter Twenty
John Daniel was about to leave Scotland Yard when he sensed a figure in the doorway to his office. He pulled his glasses down from the top of his forehead, slid them into place
and looked up.
It was Frank Waterman.
“Frank, how are you, sir?”
“Better than you by the looks of it, JD. About time you took a break. How’s it going? How’s Lynne? I heard about Roberts.”
“Thanks, yes, bloody awful actually. Lynne is great thank you for asking. Roberts? Lucky to be alive and pissed off. There you go, all three answered in one easy sentence.”
The desk phone chirped a familiar classical melody.
“Daniel.”
He listened briefly, then exhaled without any difficulty and looked up at his boss whilst shaking his head gently.
Waterman was right. Time to head home.
“Penny for ‘em, John.”
“It’s O’Shea, she’s taken a turn for the worst. Not looking good, what with that and the RAF girl too. Cade’s out on a manhunt for the bastard that got them. God help him if he finds them first.”
“Remind him of the ancient laws of England and Wales, please John. As for O’Shea, does he know?”
“No.”
“Then keep it that way, John.”
“Will do, Frank. Oh, and Frank, did you want me for something?”
He had already started to leave Daniel’s office but shouted back, “I want you to spend some time with Hewett. An opportunity might be coming up to work in France – but of a joint op with our boys and Interpol. He’s the man to broker it, for you and Cade too if he can make his bloody mind up on his future. But for now, it’ll wait.”
Waterman had slipped Hewett’s embossed business card onto the desk.
“Give him a bell, but do it tomorrow. He’s a good man. Not to everyone’s taste, bit too handsome for my bloody liking, but as an operator he’s first class, and he seems loyal, and importantly, I trust him too. Go home, John. That’s an order.”
Daniel tapped the cell phone details into his phone, placed the business card into his desk and shut the drawer and locked it. He hit Control, Alt and Delete, locking his computer before pushing back the leather office chair and picking up his car keys.
In the lift on the way to the car park, he rang his wife.
“It’s me.” She knew what was coming. “Sorry. I’m likely to be late. I owe you one. Again. I’ll grab some dinner on the way home.”
Shipley was on her toes now, walking skilfully through the building and wishing she had a firearm, or better still a few of her colleagues by her side. She also thought about her running partner and for the first time she acknowledged that he kept interrupting her thoughts, entering her mind when her guard was down. She made a mental note to ring him, or better still, head to his room and show him, physically, how much she thought of him.
She paused, listened, and moved forward. The smallest hairs on the back of her neck stood up, she shuddered but wasn’t cold. She swore she could hear someone breathing just around the corner. She exhaled, tensing up her diaphragm just as she had been taught.
She knew that in order to continue the hunt she had to take two, possibly three steps into the half-light. Discarding the opportunity to find a weapon of opportunity, she would rely on her hands and feet. She stepped down, one step, and then another into the cellar. The electrician was right; it was wet through, a trace of mildew and aging paint clung in the air. If she had stood still long enough, she could have heard the flaking cream-coloured emulsion fluttering from the walls and onto the surface of the dank water below.
She waited a moment, blinking, allowing her eyes to acclimatise, and then gently stepped into the pool. A pump lay in it, discarded and clearly ineffective. The water was about six inches deep and still. If she could see clearly, it would have been green and opaque. She could hear water running nearby and decided to follow the sound to its source. She closed her eyes, allowing her hearing to take primacy.
Bottom left. She moved towards the sound. She could feel her phone vibrating furiously in her pocket. There was no time to answer it.
“No answer from the informant boss. Control room staff are trying to track her on available CCTV as we speak.”
“Thanks, keep me informed and let the control room know everything – if we have new information, they get it in the very next call. Everything, alright?” He patted Roberts on the back, gently but with enough strength to make him realise he was going.
“Got to go Jase, I, or rather we, need to find these scum and get them locked up. I’ll come and find you as soon as I can and I promise, when this is over, I’ll treat you to guitar lessons. Right, I’m out of here.”
For the second time that day, Cade handed someone he cared a great deal about into the care of a sole paramedic. He didn’t have to say another word.
Cade and three staff left the claustrophobia of the platforms and made their way back up towards daylight, passing two more ambulance staff heading in the opposite direction. The police team were soon joining the hubbub of daily activities and the tumult of vehicular traffic that criss-crossed over the bridge, heading north to south and vice versa. Cade found himself wanting to be below ground again, it was quieter and allowed him space to think.
He stood for a while, getting his bearings, trying to listen above the din.
“Where to boss?” It was the youngest of the three staff, clearly keen to arrest or shoot someone. He was a follower and as with all followers, he needed a leader to galvanise him.
“Just give me a second boys. I can’t explain why, but I’ve got a feeling she’s close, and if she’s nearby, then they are too. Call it intuition, call it balls-to-the-wall exhaustion, but bear with me?”
Who were they to argue?
Her shoes and socks were saturated, and she was now cold, but the red mist had lowered. There was no way she was turning back. The police needed to know where the two offenders had gone. Better still, if she could detain them they could arrest them and allow the officer on the train to have some justice, preferably summary and out of the way of prying eyes. Down here, off the beaten track, would be just perfect.
She came to a door, half open, stuck fast in deeper water. She squeezed into the gap, struggling, even with her slight frame. As she emerged into another corridor, the first of two rapid blows hit her. One to the face, the other to her left arm.
She was stunned by the impact but switched into fight mode. She moved backwards quickly, re-adjusted her footing and focused on her target. It wasn’t the drug addict but a slightly younger, stockier male. He was holding a length of wood in his right hand. She’d strike that first – if only she had the space, if only this bastard was on a mat, in a brightly lit gym. She would literally kick the shit out of him.
She tried to kick out, but the water reduced the power and direction of her primary weapon. The male moved back, countering a possible blow and struck back, hitting her again on the upper left arm. She had to isolate that weapon.
She punched out, exhaling, driving the air up through her lungs and let out a considerable yell. Her fist, expertly positioned, struck his right bicep, sending a shock wave through the muscle and nerves. His reaction was instantaneous, he dropped the wood into the water and almost involuntarily lowered his upper body to retrieve it.
He’d planned to show her how to have some respect. It was a naïve mistake.
She drove her knee into his chin, knocking him backwards into the water. It felt good. She was in a cat stance, ready for the next counter. She was bouncing from left to right; even the water couldn’t stop her now.
“Come on. Try again.” She was actually enjoying the fight and resisting the urge to react to the pain that coursed through her recent injuries.
She looked beyond her opponent, who was recovering from the surprise strength of his sparring partner. There was the addict again and now he was moving through the water rapidly, causing small waves to lap against the decaying walls. She could see he was holding a hammer.
She was ready for him. His colleague had made a mistake, and she hoped he’d do the same. She’d immobilise his fighting arm in two seconds, then dri
ve her palm up and into his nose.
Her teacher had always told her, “Leave this as your last resort, MJ. If you get it right, it will be very wrong for your opponent. Very wrong indeed.”
The younger male was trying to get up. She slammed her right fist into the top of his head and then another onto the collar bone, rendering him, for the short time, ineffective.
The room was noisy now, sounds of water sloshing back and forth, of pain and energy being consumed. It was confined chaos.
She couldn’t reach the older male, but if she could she would have hit him so very hard, the vile little weasel. Look at him, with his hideous face and loathsome smile.
She made her first mistake at that very moment. In the worsening light, she failed to see him throw the hammer. It left his hand, rotated twice and hit her, shaft first between her eyes. At first the noise was worse than the pain, but then the headache started. Her vision was blurring and pain encompassed her. Her natural human reaction was to place her hands up to her face, and in doing so she lowered her guard.
She felt hands on her lower legs, dragging her down. She fell backwards, striking her shoulder blade on a submersed hazard.
The hands dragged her by her feet, through the water and quickly submerging her face. She knew not to scream, instead keeping her lips tightly sealed.
Gheorghiu had the strength of an ox. He was up now and standing, and pulling her unceremoniously through the building, away from the street and possible rescue. Constantin was forging ahead, just as he was told. He moved down another level, lifted a hatch in the floor and exposed a tunnel. His partner was alongside him now, still clinging to the girl who was recovering and starting to resist.
As they picked her up she lashed out, striking Constantin under the nose. He heard the cartilage break, a deep-seated cracking sound reverberated inside his head – the noise was awful, like a stubborn tooth being extracted.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 31