The Angel of Whitehall

by Lewis Hastings

  “A cover up. I am listening. But I don’t see what this has to do with you, or me, or Jack or anyone living in the twenty-first century?”

  “I didn’t expect you to lad. It’s far too complex for someone with your training and background. You’ve had it easy, you say you are tired working ten-hour days, hungry when you’ve had breakfast and broke when you’ve got an overdraft and four credit cards.”

  Silence. Cade too, as he drove towards the city.

  “You have no bloody idea! The kids I helped escape hadn’t eaten for a week, had never seen money, let alone be bloody overdrawn, and they considered an hour’s sleep where they were left alone, by all who preyed on them, to be a moment of luxury. But now the story is going to be told.”

  “The story, or their story?”

  “The story Jason. There are very few of them left. The elite I mentioned have seen to that, or rather their snivelling little descendants have.”

  Cade spoke. “I’ve heard as much as you with one exception Jason.”

  “Go on.”

  “I know where one of the dozen is right now. And I think I know where another is.”

  “Care to enlighten me?”

  “Well, you’ve just left one in the mortuary. And the other is back at the hospice.”

  “You left her?” Roberts’ voice was incredulous.

  “Yes, Jason, I left her. She pleaded with me. But I’m beginning to think I made a mistake.” He rubbed his eyes, squinting a little as a light covering of rain danced on the green-tinted windscreen, beads of water going this way and that before slipping away from view.

  “Jack after what I have just seen, I’m beginning to agree with you.”

  The old man sat forward from his high-back leather chair, straightened his back slightly, then stood, slowly. His knees clicked in unison, a loud report that rang out in the communal room.

  He placed his dog-eared hands onto the metal walking frame and shuffled out, towards his room, telling people what he thought of them as he passed by.

  It was seven minutes before he reached his small but warm bedroom in the southern-most corner of the building.

  He closed the door behind him, then jammed a wooden chair up against the handle.

  Satisfied he was alone he opened a draw and took out a bible. It had been given to him when he had joined the Royal Navy. Like a lot of ex-sailors, he had stayed in the town where he had been stationed for so long, and now as the blackbird flew, was only minutes from the dockyard he once called home.

  Inside the bible, in an aperture cut-to-fit, was a Blackberry phone.

  He looked at the faded lottery ticket pinned on a corkboard next to his bed. The numbers he had chosen were never intended to win anything; a win would have been ludicrous. The numbers related to a person.

  He dialled and spoke clearly and quietly.

  “Hello. It’s Turner. He’s left, with a man called Jack Cade.”

  He gave them the details of the car.

  He listened, nodding.

  “Yes, she’s here. Finishes at six.”

  The voice thanked him. Told him they would never speak again.

  He hung up and carefully placed the phone back into the bible, quickly now as he heard footsteps outside his bedroom. Before the inevitable interruption came, he palmed something from the drawer.

  There was a polite knock and a female voice called out – trying not to patronise.

  “Michael, it’s dinner time soon, are you going to come back and join everyone? We’ve got your favourite.”

  “Fuck off!”

  It was all he ever said, the cantankerous old bastard.

  He closed the drawer. Locked it. Stood slowly, straightened his tie, opened his old arthritic yellowing hand, mapped with a long lifeline, thought of his comrades and his friends and his beloved late wife Mary and took a last look around the room. He’d had just about enough.

  He got to the dining room and took his place at the table, then took the pills that the staff had laid out, in their easy-open Monday to Sunday packets, as they did for each and every meal, drank the room temperature water, swallowing hard as each went down, then he added the one from the drawer, the one that he’d kept since the sixties.

  Another sip of the tepid water helped the final daily capsules on its way. Content, he made to stand, steadied himself and watched as one of the nurses made towards him. He held up a hand.

  “I’m fine nurse. Really. Now, if you don’t mind?”

  She looked at him, then at a colleague. This was Michael Turner?

  The most obnoxious man they had ever had to nurse? And he was speaking. One could only shrug to the other.

  Turner tapped his spoon on the table, quietly at first then louder until everyone had stopped what they were doing.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. It has been an absolute honour to serve with you quite awful and miserable bastards.” He raised his glass. Smug to the end. “The Queen.”

  The local autopsy and death certificate concluded that Michael Turner, Chief Petty Officer, Royal Navy Retired had died of liver cancer. Tissue samples also showed a minute trace of Botulinum, and if anyone had thought to expand upon its presence, or rather had they been allowed to, they might have concluded that he died of another cause.

  The much-fabled fake Cyanide appeared to be an also-ran in the handbook of poisons, whereas Botulinum was considered quite the deadliest of all.

  Turner would die because he had followed orders, and one dear to his heart. What he had failed to do was watch his back.

  On both sides, the old servicemen were waiting in the shadows, sat in high-back chairs dribbling into their tea and ignoring the overly loud television, to anyone that cared to look. It was the ones who acted so naturally that were the most dangerous.

  Turner’s death wasn’t ever likely to be linked to any criminal act. His intended final moments were designed to be pure theatre, surrounded by gasps and panicked calls for an ambulance as his body shuddered and his mouth foamed. Theatre at its very best and a well-rehearsed chance to extract him from the hospice and put him out to pasture, away from the tentacles of a government that might soon be hell-bent on retribution against its former servants.

  A pity really that as he fell to the ground dead, he didn’t see the smiling faces of his assassins, now fast asleep in their own high-backed chairs.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Doctor Adaeze waved goodbye to the reception team, checked her handbag for the keys to her white Fiat 500 – the one with the blue stripe that ran up and over the bonnet and across the roof. She loved it. It was her only nod to success.

  Driving home through the Medway Towns she arrived at her less opulent flat.

  It got dark later now; the nights had drawn out, hinting at summer. In a nearby garden a song thrush sang out to its mate whilst in the grounds of her flat – one of five in a converted Victorian detached home – a blackbird called out in alarm, a cat probably, after its offspring.

  It was dusk now, the street lights were beginning to appear, a soft glow of amber attracting moths and the rapid quivering shadow of a Pipistrelle bat.

  She heard it before she saw it. A higher-pitched tone, almost subliminal. It reminded her of her youth, watching the much larger night creatures that inhabited her homeland.

  She exhaled, relaxed. She would miss him, but she knew he had to go now, or not at all. Cade arriving when he did had been divine intervention at its best. She smiled, pressed the key fob, heard the chirp of the alarm system and walked towards her flat.

  Flat C. The one with the vacant slot in the nameplate. A simple white piece of paper, curling at the corners and covering over the previous occupant who had left before the bailiffs caught up with him. They still called now. She chose to ignore them.

  As she reached the main door, she heard a voice.

  “Hello Apiyo. It has been a very long time.”

  She turned, dropping her keys, instinctively placed her foot onto them. This was a robbery. She w
as ready. Her hand gripped onto the pepper spray.

  But something stopped her. The face that came into view, into the light was that of a female, with a face as dark as her own, and this one had a few more scars, could tell a few more stories.

  “Sannu ‘yar uwu.” Hello sister.

  She processed the three simple words. But as much as she knew what they meant – she too spoke the language, among many others – it was their meaning that made her throat tighten and her hands knot.

  “I’m sorry I don’t know you. I think you are…mistaken. Please, I need to get on, it has been a long day.”

  The female spoke, in English once more.

  “It has been a much longer life Apiyo. I knew I would find you one day, if I kept on looking.”

  Adaeze stared at her, made a mental note of the scars, looked into the eyes, deep pools of triple espresso, eyes that sat in a sea of glistening white. Her hair was long, braided, past shoulder length. She was trim, almost athletic. Her chest bore the criss-cross track marks of scarification.

  She had a gap in her front teeth that you could almost park a cigarette in. And she had, plenty of times, the nicotine staining the white edges brown.

  She wore three gold chains around her neck, interwoven and meeting in the middle with a diamond. It caught Adaeze’s eye. Diamonds that large came from one place only. Africa.

  The whole moment had taken just that. She was frozen, her foot beginning to tremble on the keys. She needed to stoop down to get them, to get to the front door, to get the key in the lock, to turn it to the right, just beyond the point where it always stuck, belligerently.

  She needed to get that key in, open the door, slam it again and run to her flat, do the same again, turn the key. The key. Get the key, pick it up Adaeze. Pick it up Apiyo. Pick it up.

  She was frozen still. The signals in her brain fluctuating between fighting or running. She fumbled for the spray. Felt her phone. She tried to speak but her throat was arid.

  “What do you want? Who are you? I don’t have a sister.” She held onto the phone. Tracing her index finger across the screen. One chance. Connect…please.

  “I am disappointed you don’t know me. I am your sister. I have been looking for you for so very long.”

  “No. My sister died many years ago. You are mistaken.”

  “Was she left in a bush? Just outside the town of Kamsar? Well?”

  “Yes, she was. But she died, and so did our mother. So please, just leave me alone.”

  “I will, but I came to give you this.” The visitor placed her hand out, opened her fingers and revealed a chain, soiled but probably a piece of cheap gold. On the gold was a padlock.

  “It was your mother’s. Our mother’s. Go on, take it.”

  It had been many years since the girl that had become the doctor had cast eyes on the piece of jewellery. It was, just then, the final piece of information she needed. She held her own hand out to take the chain.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you…sister.” She smiled, dropped her shoulders slightly, relaxed looked into her sister’s eyes with affection. She had survived, all these years. She felt a tear welling up in her own deep brown eyes and struggled to swallow.

  The arm that came up and across her throat was as unseen as the large African male that now stood behind her, slowly applying pressure, slowly lifting her onto the tips of her toes, slowly…

  She thrashed around – a dying fish on the deck of a boat, frantic, trying to figure out how to fight back. She tried to focus but her vision was starting to blur. Was this it? Was this to be her very last moment on earth? Stood outside a one-roomed apartment, with its dim lighting and overhanging trees, in a street of closed curtains and bolted front doors?

  She had seconds. That was all. The song thrush fled; the bat flitted away into the darkness.

  “OK. I think my big sister has the message.”

  The female appeared to be in charge of three men, two more had joined the group from the shadows in the oblivious street. They came forward quickly now and helped carry the woman they called Doctor Adaeze to a nearby van. They slid the door open and bundled her in, face down.

  Captive, she was unable to make a sound. Not a shout, or a scream or a squeak of protest. It was if they had somehow paralysed her every thought and action.

  “Drive.” The female voice once more. Strong. In control.

  “Where to, boss?”

  “Baki Maciji. Take the side roads. Keep off the cameras.”

  She heard every word and began to retch. Fear sometimes did that to people. She had spent years looking over her shoulder and then one day a voice and face from the past had come back into her life and had started a series of events that she could not foresee, but knew somehow would happen. One day.

  They called him John ‘Jack’ Cade. A good man. An honourable man. She just lay there now and prayed that he was as good as his word and that somehow he would soon hear every one of hers.

  All she had now were her thoughts and her prayers.

  If she reached the one they called the Black Mamba, then she was as good as dead.

  The last block on her phone screen flashed once, then again and then it began to shut down. Vibrating once before the battery died.

  The Mamba is the most toxic of snakes, the deadliest in Africa. Fast, agile and predatory. It feared nothing.

  Just its name was enough to stop people in their tracks, to rob them of speech, prevent them from running away. It was too fast, and with multiple savage bites it could kill an adult human in half an hour, its toxin delivered by repeated aggressive bites, puncturing the skin, pumping venom into the bloodstream, shutting down the nervous system and paralyzing the victim. It was said that you could hear the end of your life occurring and do nothing about it.

  Its fatality rate, if not subject to rapid intervention is one hundred percent.

  And they named her after it, for all those reasons. And the girl they called Adaeze was being taken to meet her, for the first and possibly the last time.

  Cade had reached the underground car park at the hotel. Reversed in. Saw the little light flashing on his phone. A message. He swiped his finger up, down and across, opened the screen and saw the cell phone number. It wasn’t familiar. It could wait.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Royal Horseguards Hotel, Whitehall

  Cade left the car, pressed the button, watched it glow blue and waited for the lift to arrive. He wedged the door open with the overnight bag that Adaeze had given him. Then returned to the car, watching, listening, almost waiting to be challenged.

  It was as if he had never been away from anxiety and chaos, yet lived for every opportunity to exploit both.

  “Come on young man, let’s get you out of here.” He ushered him into the lift and hoped it would bypass the lobby.

  They reached their floor. Cade checked left and right and helped the old man along the corridor. He knew there would be cameras. It was London. They were everywhere. It was probably one of the most surveilled cities in the world.

  “There’s no need to rush lad. I’m an old man you know.”

  “I appreciate that Tom but trust me, we need to get you to your room.”

  “Well, why can’t we go to the Admiralty or a police station lad?”

  It was a fair question.

  “Tom, call me paranoid, but I’ve learned over the last few years that you find people you can trust, and then you call on their services. Not before.”

  “Right you are, lad. Still, it’s nice here. Is there a free paper?”

  “For you, everything is free. Call it payback for your years of valued service. In here.” He ushered him sideways, to the right.

  They got into the room, Cade flicked the door shut with his heel and allowed Denby to get his bearings.

  “I’ve got to go back to the car – get some stuff. You stay here. I hope you like it, it will be your room for a while. Nice view, but stay away from the windows.”

  “Why, do yo
u think someone might shoot me?” His face smiled but there was a genuine question in among the lost soul that stared at Cade.

  Cade looked back. Tried to imagine the old man that stood before him, clinging onto the bridge in a warship, hostility all around, bitter northern gales, the ever-present threat of U-boats. He had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander, from humble beginnings and yet here he was, bothered only about a free newspaper.

  “Just stay here. OK?”

  On the way back to his car, he placed a call to O’Shea.

  “Hi, it’s me. I’ve managed to get him back to the ranch. For how long I don’t know. Can you get over here and charm your way into getting us another room?”

  “I can, do you want me to use my womanly charm or my more direct approach? And why don’t we just take him to a safe house? Or somewhere out in the country?”

  “Look, I don’t know. Call it instinct. But I want him where I can control him.”

  “And that’s at a five-star hotel in the centre of bloody London?” She sounded incredulous.

  “Yep. Bear with me. You’ll see the method in my madness…”

  He cleared the line then rang another number.

  “Jason Roberts, a man for all seasons at your service.”

  “Jase, it’s me.”

  “I know. I don’t answer like that to everyone you know! So, what do you want?”

  “I need the following, and I need them soon.” He outlined his needs.

  “Is this all worth it Jack?”

  “Jason. The value of what he holds in what is left of his mind is as yet undetermined. But I believe him.”

  “You’re not letting emotions get in the way of policing, are you? You know that leads to calamity of the highest order.” He was right. Policing was an art form that not everyone could master.

  “You forget I’m no longer a copper Jas. These days, I’m a…consultant, to the British government.”