The Seventh Wave: Cade even hated thinking the name, let alone saying it audibly, and he certainly despised their bright blue tattoo and their arrogant and at times cruel methods. Their strength had not been in their numbers, but their networks. Allowing themselves to collaborate with other equally Machiavellian groups had been wise, long before others had even contemplated the idea. Sharing the profits from across Europe into North Africa and the Middle East had been inspired.
Cade missed the job – that of a streetwise police officer. But times had changed and so had he. He was stood now, watching younger staff, knocking out intelligence reports with one hand and updating their social media pages with the other. He felt old, but in his forties was far from it. A look in the nearest mirror reminded him that grey, or as he fashionably called it, titanium, was the new black. The girls loved it, the women more so. With a flash of marine-blue eyes and a year-round, natural tan, he felt he still had the ability to charm the birds from their safe haven.
He had blended into the background at the office of the DCPCU, watching the afternoon develop. His old partner Roberts had covered off the word of the day and the daily occurrences and having completed the online quiz had finished on a good news story. He always did. Cade wasn’t sure where he found half of them, but good news travels fast in a police station. Never as fast as bad news, mind you, Cade thought out loud.
Roberts sported a light blue suit, white shirt and a handkerchief in his jacket pocket. As always, he wore black, rather superb Oxford brogues, and his ensemble was finished off with a garish and broad tie. The tie had a double Windsor knot and sat almost halfway up his chest in homage to a bygone era. In that regard, nothing had changed.
Today’s offering was lime green, as bright as the lurid paintwork on the Lamborghini Gallardo that had just driven past the Yard, turning left and out onto Broadway.
“So how have you been me, old China?” Roberts was ebullient as ever.
“Really average mate. Actually, that’s not fair, I’ve been great. I left you and trawled around the UK and Europe. Haven’t had the courage to return to New Zealand yet. JD’s got it all in hand. I left behind a lot of a mess. He sees to it that my lawn gets mowed now and then, collects mail from the post office and slags me off to anyone that knows me. I haven’t been back since…”
“I’m sure my friend, but head back you must. Remember, you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon!”
“Must be tiring.” They both laughed. “Talking of which, Jason, did you ever learn to play the banjo?”
“I never did Jack. Truth is, I never could.”
“No, seriously? I would never have known.”
Roberts placed a hand on Cade’s back. “Come on pal, let’s head to The Sanctuary, it’s still there. I’ll buy you a lemon fruit tea or whatever it is you kiwi types drink. They’ve done it up. Really swish it is.”
“Really? I’m shocked. What have they done?”
“Changed the beer mats!”
There was genuine laughter now. Cade relaxed and walked towards the door, knowing from muscle memory where to head next. “Hang on, mate. Just wait one?”
He walked back across the office to O’Shea’s desk. She saw him coming and started to rotate a pencil through her sharpener.
“I hope you’ve got a licence for that thing, Miss O’Shea?”
“I have Inspector Cade.” She smiled. “How are you, Jack?” She was more sincere than he expected.
“I’m fine. One hundred percent.”
“That’s good.”
It was painful. Cade had two choices.
“Carrie, we are heading to The Sanctuary. See you there in twenty?” He recalled that she sometimes liked it blunt, delivered without prose.
“Only if you are buying and promise to be good.”
Cade inhaled and grinned “I’m nothing if not predictable. See you there.”
He walked back towards Roberts. O’Shea removed the pencil and slid it back into her drawer. It didn’t need sharpening, anyway. She located a small bottle of Chanel No 5 in her desk drawer and applied some to her wrists and neck, stood, locked her drawers and made towards the lift. As it arrived, she walked in and stood in a group of six people. She’d lost weight. She looked good. She couldn’t jump for joy but would have done if the lift had been empty.
The late afternoon became the evening and along with the newer members the old team had made a pact to remain in touch and do whatever they could to put every last member of the Seventh Wave team in a prison cell, for some were still out there, carrying on the dream of their beloved leader. Their leader, the man who referred to himself as the Jackdaw and who, to everyone’s frustration, anger and amazement had been released from the Romanian prison he had been transferred to in 2006.
When the Spanish and British authorities had questioned the decision, the response was simple, it was easier to release him than manage the chaos that he caused inside the high security prison, and to be rational he had only committed lower level offences in Romania that they knew of and were able to successfully prosecute.
The Spanish judge had sentenced him to ten years for his role in being part of an organised criminal group – it was ambiguous at best. Yes, there were probably unsolved murder cases, people trafficking and a smorgasbord of other cases, but with witnesses either hostile or missing each case collapsed or was withdrawn, leaving one of the most wanted men in Europe with a surprisingly small list of convictions.
Cade made his excuses – he knew that he needed to play a longer game with O’Shea. On paper she had probably forgiven him for walking away, but she had a pachydermic quality and hadn’t yet forgotten or forgiven completely. Time would tell.
“Good night team. Carrie, you OK to get home?” She still had a slight limp, a legacy of her attack in 2004 when something concealed deep inside her physical make up had shifted, permanently.
“I’m a big girl, Jack. But thank you.”
He knew when to quit. “As you wish my lady. I’ll perhaps see you tomorrow? I leave soon.”
“Perhaps.”
He walked out of the pub and stood. Left or right? Right took him towards O’Shea’s place and he had long lost the rights to enter there. Left ended up down by the river near the Houses of Parliament. Why not, he’d never walked down there at night, as a tourist, when in Rome and all that.
Although it was relatively late the streets were well lit and Cade felt safe. He’d once chased a gunman down this same street, had been forced off the road by a vanload of men hell bent on killing his passenger, and had crawled in subterranean passages, up to his neck in river water and sewage. He had literally lived the metropolitan dream. So yes, for Jack Cade, nomadic police officer, the streets of London felt safe.
He turned when he heard the familiar growl of an Audi V10 engine – sat somewhere in the body of a flouro-green Italian thoroughbred. ‘Nice, but not that practical’ thought the man who then recalled that somewhere, twelve thousand miles away he had his own mid-life crisis locked in a garage, covered in a dust sheet, the only dynamic aspect of which was a ticking clock.
He crossed the road and began to walk towards Westminster Bridge. He was amazed at the size of the crowd when he got there. A group of tourists had bolstered the ranks of twenty to thirty other sightseers, busy snapping photographs, two fingers respectively showing to the cameras in every pose.
His pocket was buzzing, that familiar feeling that someone wants you. He pulled out the phone and checked the screen; it was Roberts. ‘Bless, he misses me already.’
He enjoyed the fact that Roberts had to make up something minor in order to ring him. He was a good man – one day their paths would cross again. Of that Cade was sure. For now, he pressed the red button and condemned Roberts to an answerphone message.
He shuffled into the crowd and stepped to one side to avoid a jogger. She was running at speed and looked quite impressive, and he envied her. He knew her gender as it was clearly a female from the build.
He resented that she could leave her home at this time of the day, wherever that may be, and run through the streets of the iconic city unencumbered by the trials of life.
The runner did that thing where she diverted onto one foot and then the other. He mirrored her moves. She was wearing a hood to combat the cold and woollen gloves, but the rest of her clothing was pure athlete, Lycra, wrapped around an obviously honed body. For a thousandth of a second, he locked onto her eyes. Jade, perfectly shaped and alluring. He took it all in. A slender pink scar over the left brow, slightly tanned, almost olive skin. It was all going in subconsciously.
A collision looked inevitable, but the female managed to swerve around Cade, brushing against him, spinning him one hundred and eighty degrees, stumbling slightly, righting herself before she blended into the building line and headed up the road towards Parliament Square. The very place that Cade had chased Constantin all those years before.
He wondered what had become of him. Not for long, but he wondered nonetheless. He involuntarily favoured the collarbone where the bastard had sunk his teeth into him, ripping a piece of flesh that had never recovered, leaving a dark red and hollowed out reminder every time he looked in the mirror.
He shook his head and muttered to himself, ‘You need to let it all go John Cade. You need to let it all fade away.’
He heard the car again, knowing that the engine note belonged to the German V10. It was accelerating away from him, shifting rapidly between the gears.
‘Nice. Very nice.’
He continued walking. It was cold, so he increased his step. As he passed an office on Storey’s Gate he cursed, remembering that he still had a slightly creased envelope in his jacket pocket. It was a Christmas card which he intended to post weeks before, early enough to get there among the thousands of others trying to beat the annual postal deadline.
Addressed to a small property in a semi-rural location near the town of Whitianga, on the Eastern Pacific Coast of New Zealand, it was a simple greeting to an old friend to whom he owed his life. Inside, double-sealed to stop pilfering, he had placed a cheque for a thousand dollars, a door key and an inscription. It read:
“To my warrior friend. My home is your home. I’ll be back at some point in 2015. Use my place over the festivities and have a great time. The drinks cupboard is full – empty it. The keys to the car are on the hook just inside the garage. Don’t break it. Kind regards, always. Manuia le Kerisimasi / Merry Christmas. Jack.”
It was already stamped and ready to go. He slipped it into the letterbox and nodded. It was a good thing to do in the season of goodwill, for a man who worked tirelessly, living off the land where possible and trying to shape his life once more. He had very little but the genuine love of his family. In a strange way Cade envied him out there on his favourite beach, collecting seaweed and harvesting the shoreline with just the waves and the call of the oystercatchers for company.
The temperature had tumbled. Ten paces up the road and back up to speed, he put his hands back in his pockets. It was starting to snow and as fast as his pace was, he was still feeling the effects as the large flakes began to drop from the sky, bringing a sense of silence to the ever-busy streets.
His hand stopped on a piece of paper. It immediately felt extraneous. Running his fingers over it he became curious so he removed it, slowly unfolded it and used the nearby streetlight to help him read the words. He brushed a few of the beautifully symmetric flakes from the white paper and read it twice.
‘Catseye Lodge – Whitsunday. 17/01/2015.’
He cast his eyes over the words once more, turning to see if anyone was watching him, trying to understand how the note had got there. Perhaps it had been there for a while? Perhaps, it wasn’t for him? The date meant nothing, the location even less, although he knew of its reputation as a breathtakingly pretty place, tucked into the Great Barrier Reef off the east coast of Australia. But it was in the middle of bloody nowhere. Why would he go there? Too many questions. He folded the paper back into a neat square and resisting the urge to throw it away put it into his jacket, started walking towards his apartment and decided to revisit the situation the next day.
As he walked, he sent John Daniel a text message. Simple and to the point. ‘I’ll be home in January – get the barbie cleaned and the wine in the fridge. Love to you both. All is as well as it can be.’
It was three the next morning when he woke with a start. The female on the bridge. She had put the note in his pocket. It had to be her. Of course it did. No one else had the opportunity. It was obvious, unless you were exhausted and your mind lacked the capacity to absorb so much as another word.
He sat up, turned on the bedside lamp. She had woken him from an unbroken sleep. She had invaded his subconscious mind.
It looked like her. She had her eyes, of that he was certain. The more he thought back to the scene, the crowd, the girl, the skill it would have taken to deposit the note without him realising, the more he knew.
It was her. And she was alive.
Acknowledgments
In the acknowledgements section of my first thriller Seventh I said that there were countless people I could thank. That was true, of course, but the reality is I have to thank people in order.
In 2014, I took special leave to fly halfway around the world. It was a trip that was awash with adjectives. It was cathartic like no other journey and above all it was uplifting, heart breaking and final.
On a late spring afternoon in the County of Kent, England, I sat in a hospice, reading aloud from my first ever book, my autobiography, Actually, The World Is Enough.
I had been putting off writing it for years until the momentum to complete it was spurred on by the unwelcomed and devastating news that my dear old dad was terminally ill.
I sat next to him for days as he lay, with incredible dignity, waiting to die. I read page after page to him as he continued to charm the nurses and make outrageous offers to anyone that would listen to him whilst he held court. Why not? He had nothing to lose.
At one point he stopped me and with tears in his eyes he said, “You know son, that piece right there, the story and the way you tell it should be a complete book. It deserves to be told. Do it for me?”
Flying home, I had a whole day to contemplate life. In truth, I spent most of the journey crying and sleeping and thinking; staring out of the window, holding my wife’s hand, looking down at a landscape I neither knew nor appreciated.
The moment I got home, I started the Seventh Wave trilogy. Three years later, Seventh was published and now only six months later its sequel Seven Degrees has gone to print (and for our many friends who inhabit the paperless world – Kindle!).
I must also thank Claire. Without divulging any more information, Claire is one of those six degree, lifetime, tectonic friends. Our paths crossed many years ago when as complete strangers we helped a mutual colleague who needed defending at a time of crisis. Claire was ‘ex-job’ – retired early with injuries sustained on duty and frankly far too good to be ignored as a source of information and literary debates over the ludicrous and infinite potential of the female mind.
To Mum. For your support and love when times were really tough. We got there in the end, didn’t we? I always knew we would.
My children, Stephanie and Andrew, growing up so fast that I didn’t quite spot that they were both in their late twenties. Where would I be without you two – and where has that time gone? You complete the perfect family; with your combined menagerie of wonderful animals and delightful children you support me totally. I simply cannot find words to say how much I appreciate you both and how proud of you I am. The only way I could do it was to offer you both cameo roles in the series and these books as a legacy.
Amanda. My first, my always. Watching you read Seventh in four days, whilst in paradise, under an island sun was both intriguing and bloody nerve wracking. You are indeed my greatest critic, but for all the right reasons; for saying the things I need to hear (and keeping
those other lesser thoughts to yourself). Thank you for caring for me. A veritable tower of strength. I love you more.
To my early readers; that sounds so pretentious. Your feedback and genuine warmth is truly humbling. I hope that one day you can be among the elite who can sit back and say, “I knew him when he was awful and unknown.”
To the characters in the series. You know who you are. Some of you are still propping up the thin blue line so require an air of anonymity; some have moved on, but with each of you there is a bond stronger than many could ever imagine. You are the mortar in society’s brickwork. Thank you for your support, your love and your dedication and above all thank you for allowing me to craft a character out of you. It’s never easy. I hope they meet with your approval!
Finally, ‘Mr Russell’. I saved you until last. What can I say? Your seven series logos deserve to be seen around the world. Simple but clever at the same time, it could be argued, a lot like us.
Anyone that can put up with my myriad editing disasters deserves recognition. “Seriously, you should never be allowed near your book again!” was the low point. Helping you with your own work of art helped to ease my burden somewhat. If you love football and want to read a heart-warming tale of one man’s obsession with a second-tier football team, read Dell Boy.
As this sequel heads to the presses in time for Christmas, I know I have to start the final leg of the journey – either that or my best-selling series will be a two book trilogy. New characters, a continuing story and the possibility of a new, standalone novel. Whether I write it is down to you, my sanity, and if I am gifted with enough time – for that is one commodity none of us should take for granted.
Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2) Page 60