The Angel of Whitehall

by Lewis Hastings

  “Well…”

  “Thank you. Enough said. Anyway, I’ve had a thought. Now, if you’d be so kind as to find me a knife or something sharp. If my memory serves me right, I’ll perhaps be able to show you what it is I’m babbling on about. If not, Jack will have to pick up the bill.” Denby was sprightlier than he had been in years.

  “A knife? What in the devil for?” She wasn’t worried, she’d disarmed plenty of men before, physically and otherwise. Just curious.

  “My fingers are not as strong as they used to be, and I’ll need something decent. If I’ve got it right.”

  Fascinated, she dug into her handbag. “Swiss army knife, do you?”

  “Perfect. Now give me a second.” He paced back to the exact spot that he had been stood in earlier. Closed his eyes. Ran his hands up the wall, then stopped as his fingertips felt a slight ridge, as a blind person reads Brail. He smiled at O’Shea, then as the door opened, he began to hack away at the wallpaper and plaster.

  “Gone to the wall, Carrie!”

  Cade re-entered the five-star room and saw it first. “Carrie. Anything we need to know here? I leave you for five minutes and I note Tom is now involved in a rather drastic makeover…”

  Roberts followed. “More importantly. He’s now armed with a knife.”

  Denby spoke without turning around. “Trust me you are quite safe. If I had wanted you dead, I would have done it before now. No, you see what I am trying to find is…” He dug a little deeper, lifting a piece of the pink-coloured plaster away, dropping it at his feet, then another piece as dust began to fall onto the immaculate carpet.

  “I guess that’s your deposit gone Jack. Fancy raiding the mini bar whilst he’s at it?”

  “Funny bastard at times aren’t you Roberts? Tom, what exactly are you doing?”

  O’Shea put her index finger up to her lips. “Shh…”

  Cade raised his hands in surrender.

  “Just another few…” Denby pushed the knife in, wiggled it around and then a large plaster panel fell to the floor sending a cloud of dust into the room.

  The old man just stood, coughing, hanging onto his catheter and praying that the urine-filled bag strapped to his leg wouldn’t burst.

  Roberts, waving his hands around theatrically said, “Sure you don’t want that drink Jack?”

  The old man was buoyed by his success, despite the fact that no one else in the room had a clue what he was doing.

  He probed around in the cavity and then stopped. “Well, I’ll be buggered. It’s still here. After all this time. You wanted some pieces in the jigsaw? Well…” He pushed his whole arm down into the gap and pulled out a package, about the size of an A4 envelope, brushed the debris from it, moved the vase containing a fresh orchid and placed it onto the small leather in-laid table.

  The Ancient Mariner was a dark horse indeed.

  “Et voilà!”

  “Don’t tell me. A guide to London in French?” Cade.

  “A French guide on how to repair a hotel room?” Roberts.

  “Hotel Deposits for Dummies?” Cade.

  “Should have gone to Specsavers.” Roberts.

  “When you two have quite finished. Perhaps it is something that Tom might explain if you give him half a chance?” O’Shea.

  Denby smiled, blew some more dust into the air and began to lovingly unwrap the package. First the outer layer of waxed brown paper, then another and one more. Then sheets of newspaper, dated from the seventies, British mainstream, talking about strikes and an oil shortage.

  “I put this in the wall in nineteen seventy-three. It’s been there ever since.”

  “You don’t say.” Roberts.

  “No, he does. I heard him.” Cade.

  “Shut up. Please.” O’Shea.

  “And I’m guessing you’d like to know what it is?” Denby.

  “No Tom, as the man paying for your hotel accommodation, I’d like to know why it was in the wall in the first place and really importantly, how in God’s name you came to hide it in a hotel room in the seventies and no one knew! That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Denby beamed. “Ah, well you see young man, in the seventies, this wasn’t a hotel. Or at least this part wasn’t. No, this grand old girl has links to the Secret Intelligence Service back in the twenties. The MOD just decided to hang onto a few of the nicer rooms and some of the apartments. It was almost first come, first served. I got this room as an office and lived upstairs – so I was able to cut a panel out and repair it the same night. No one had a clue. I was quite the plasterer back then.”

  He continued. “The office next door was occupied by a liieutenant colonel. Obnoxious old bastard called Reddington. British Army. We never did get on.”

  Roberts tapped the side of his nose, smiling, almost knowing what was going to come next.

  “You’ve got about as much an idea as I have Jason.” Cade rubbed his eyes to remove some of the dust. “Do tell. Please, whilst I work out what’s left on my credit card.”

  “You know I wanted to move rooms?”

  “Yes…”

  “Well, this is the one I wanted all along. It just felt right. I suggested the Royal Horseguards when we left the hospice. I was rather hoping you’d say yes. Frankly, I have no idea what I would have done if you’d booked us into a Travel Lodge.” He also wiped some plaster dust from his ruddy face.

  “Please tell us before one of us has something wholly unexpected happen.” Roberts was looking at his watch again but desperate for answers.

  “OK stop. Tom, you deliberately brought me here, knowing you were going to demolish half of the Riverview Suite with a penknife, because you knew there was a package in the wall that you put there forty years ago? And yet you can’t remember what you had for breakfast?”

  “Cornflakes. And they weren’t very nice.”

  “Forget the bloody cornflakes.”

  “But they weren’t very nice. They weren’t Kelloggs you see. Cheap and nasty. Chinese imports at a guess.”

  “Tom! Forget the bloody cornflakes!” said Roberts and Cade in unison. “What is in the package!”

  Denby held up a withered hand, commanding silence, then peeled back the last piece of wrapping paper.

  “Patience my boys.” He unwrapped the last part. “Feast your eyes on that!”

  Roberts looked first. Then Cade, followed by O’Shea.

  “No way!” said Roberts staring.

  “Surely not?” asked Cade, running his hand through his hair and removing bits of plaster.

  “Fuck me!” said O’Shea causing the room to become instantly silent.

  “I wish I had the energy love, I really do,” said the retired sailor.

  “I need to make a call.” Roberts, phone in hand, left the room and was connecting as he walked.

  “Yes, I’d like to speak to the Prime Minister, please.”

  “Well, I’m sorry sir, that’s not how it works.”

  “Well, it is now. Tell her DCI Jason Roberts is holding.”

  “DCI?”

  “Roberts. From Operation Orion.”

  In three minutes, the call was connected.

  “DCI Roberts. As lovely as it is to talk to you, I hope this is important? We’ve got bloody Brexit meetings coming out of our…ears.”

  “I can only imagine Ma’am. Look I’ll cut to the chase. I would really like to meet, and soon. You remember my colleague, Jack Cade?”

  “Of course.” She had a soft spot for Cade. Lovely blue eyes, engaging smile. Always dressed so well. Smelled divine. Givenchy Gentleman from memory.

  “Can I be candid Ma’am? You’ll recall I work best that way.”

  “Be my guest.” She checked her watch. “You’ve got three minutes.”

  “Well, it seems Cade has put his hand into a pile of dog shit and come out with a fistful of roses Ma’am.”

  “How lovely, Chief Inspector. Any better analogies?”

  “Apologies Prime Minister. Look, any chance you could s
huffle your books a little. I know it’s rude of me given your workload, but…”

  “Is this anything to do with the last European rabble that threatened to undermine us?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That could have sunk us all you know.”

  “Indeed. Ma’am, forgive me, but actually, this is as bad.”

  She paused. It was fair to say that the Orion team had done an amazing job on severing the many heads of the organised crime Hydra that had threatened to destabilise the United Kingdom.

  “Tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. And bring Cade.”

  “Prime Minister.”

  She had already cleared the line. But Roberts punched the air and walked back to the suite which was slowly returning to normal, but for a fine sheen of plaster dust, everywhere.

  “Jack, be at my place for nine tomorrow. We are back in business my son. By the way, my brother-in-law is a plasterer. He could sort that mess out in no time. He’d do a job for half a monkey.”

  “A what?”

  “Two fifty. Two tons and a bullseye. Ten ponies.”

  “Have you been drinking DCI Roberts?”

  “No. But I might start this evening. Come to the Sanctuary later we’ll blow the top off a couple. If not nine o’clock at the Yard.”

  Lieutenant Commander Denby had failed to tell the group one important detail. At his age, in his condition, it was perhaps understandable that he would forget. After all he was a very old man.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Operation Orion Briefing Room, Scotland Yard

  “OK, everyone it is now zero nine hundred by my watch. All doors are closed and the blinds are down. The only thing that leaves the room after this briefing is you lot. Clear?”

  No one answered, they knew the drill.

  The Operation Orion team had been formed to counter an Eastern European criminal syndicate and had achieved extraordinary success under situations that were at times taxing and harrowing. They had also lost highly valued members of their team; two detectives, a detective sergeant and a bright young analyst.

  The first detective had hung himself following the death of the team’s most prized intelligence source. The second was deliberately decapitated as he rode his motorcycle home after a long shift. The DS was shot and bled to death in the back of an obs van, in the arms of another DS who had never got around to admitting how much she had loved him.

  The analyst was tortured. Then thrown into the Thames, about half an hour away from the briefing room, as the crow would fly.

  DCI Jason ‘Ginger’ Roberts looked at his squad. Some old hands, some new. All had the same attitude. If a thief needed taking, they were the team. They called him Ginger not because of his hair colour, more a dark blond, but because of his almost-obsessive dislike of the humble gingernut biscuit, which he was prone to throw at unwitting couriers.

  To his right O’Shea, making notes with a pad and pencil. She was an attractive woman, difficult to age, not too thin, just about right in a world of waif-like super models. Her hair was short, because not long ago, someone, who would remain nameless as long as she lived had razor-cut it down to the skin. On her torso was an equally fresh vivid red X.

  It was best that you didn’t ask.

  To her right a white male in his early forties, dark hair sprinkled with flecks of silver, ocean-blue eyes and a year-round tan. He was wearing a simple, yet tasteful navy pinstriped suit, a white shirt with cufflinks and a blue and red tie. His feet were nestled inside black, polished Oxford shoes. Re-soled for the second time. He liked them a lot.

  Roberts spoke. “Boys, girls, some of you will remember Jack Cade. Jack was an inspector here at Scotland Yard, formerly from Nottingham but we’ll forgive him that. He helped us set up this team in fact. Almost lost his life in the process. At least once. What he doesn’t know about intelligence-led policing and people groups is frankly not worth…” He looked for the word.

  “A wank, guv?” The room erupted into laughter. Work hard – play harder.

  “Thank you Del. That’ll be enough. I can’t stand cheeky kids.”

  “OK, what have we got to focus on today then guv?” Del Murphy, a time served detective and ex-firearms officer was always to the point.

  “Nice of you to ask Derek. This one is a little different.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Get that, would you and tell them politely to sod off.”

  “Guv, I think you might want to let this one in?”

  The door opened. Stood in the opening was former Detective Chief Inspector John Daniel. He also had an all-year-round tan and looks that belied his age. Recently retired but still young in the scheme of things, Daniel had ‘pulled the pin’ and had headed down under to start a new life.

  But unlike many of his peers Daniel had been paid a retainer of sorts by the Commissioner. ‘Come back if and when we need you JD?’

  Daniel walked in, around the room shaking hands with those he knew and those he didn’t before removing his favoured Aquascutum raincoat.

  He found a vacant seat next to O’Shea who he kissed politely on the cheek. “You OK?”

  She smiled. “I am now boss, yes.”

  “Team. Please, don’t mind me. The lamp was shone up into the night sky over New Zealand and here I am, jet lagged and in need of a decent cup of English tea.”

  Roberts was in his element. The old team, drawn back together, under a warrant of sorts, a blend of serving police staff, and a few that were for all intents deputised by the government. And a few others who fitted neither category and were rarely discussed.

  Roberts continued. “Are we all sat comfortably? Good, then I shall begin and pay attention. This is a complex briefing and I need to be done in an hour as we have an audience with the PM at her place and they do a lovely cup of tea and there are never ginger-bloody-nuts on the biscuit list.” His upper body shuddered. “Can’t stand ‘em. OK, let’s move on.” He walked to the whiteboard that had been partially started by his Detective Sergeant Bridie McGee.

  “Bridie, if you’d be so kind to chip in as we go.”

  “Guv.”

  “Right take your minds back to the Second World War…”

  “Bloody ‘ell boss we looking at war crimes now?” Came a question from the floor.

  “Just listen.” Cade looked at the young detective who thought it was a decent question. “Please.”

  Roberts picked up where he left off. “Right, many things happened during the war, forget all the battles and scenes in your heads, think about this one element. Britain was running out of supplies. It needed to source them from places that were in theory, safe. The Germans had Europe pretty much locked down. We got our much-needed supplies from elsewhere and in this case, West Africa. The seas around that region were not as well patrolled by the U-boats…”

  The team were looking at him, no one yawned, some made notes.

  “Bauxite and a few other minerals were in short supply. The educated among you will know that it is the primary source of aluminium. The American has had it by the ton, even named a town after it, but they were using all of theirs to support their own war efforts. The Germans had locked down the European sources and Australia was too far, plus they had their own issues in the Pacific. So, a couple of bright young things decided to start swapping resources. Even in wartime there was money to be made.”

  He pointed to the map.

  “From here in West Africa the British – in the guise of foreign registered vessels, managed to ship both Bauxite and willing stowaways up to Blighty – all to help the war effort. The bauxite became aluminium, the stowaways soldiers and the women…”

  He looked at Cade for approval. He nodded.

  “The women became unwitting guests at what can best be described as baby farms. Producing the new generation.”

  “Bloody hell boss that’s a bit much isn’t it? Was it even legal?”

  “Legal or not things happened and things happened out of necessity.
To an extent I guess both sides committed atrocities. Anyway, let’s move on. The war ended. Britain was in a bit of a mess. We still needed supplies and people. And West Africa needed cash. More than any other commodity. The Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia…every-bloody-where in fact. Wars of this, conflicts of that striving for liberty and independence. And all the while we were supplying arms – all in secret of course. You scratch my back Mr. Dictator…”

  Cade interrupted. “Team, you may be thinking ‘where is all this heading’ – well we were too until yesterday. Bear with us because this gets good…”

  “Cheers Jack. OK, zoom forward. The shipments of minerals were gradually slowing, the French were regaining ground in West Africa. We had a few narrow strongholds like the British Protectorate we now call The Gambia, but things were changing, into the sixties and seventies there were more upheavals than you could throw a spear at. And all the while we were shipping willing, smiling people up to our homeland. The poster probably said, ‘Come to England for a better life’.”

  “And what’s this got to do with us? And why is Mr Daniel back? And Mr Cade? Where’s the link boss? We are a crime-driven team. Where’s the crime? It’s why we exist.” DS Dave Williams was as loyal as they came, however, he spoke for the team.

  Roberts exhaled loudly and loosened his tie, a garish lime green number, tied in a double Windsor. “This room and this room only. We are still involved in the trade of people from West Africa.” He let that particular bomb shell settle.

  “But it’s no longer ‘legal’.” He did that thing with his fingers, paired, to indicate speech marks.

  “And that is where Operation Orion comes back into the fold. For many years the people that rounded up the poorest of the poor, added a little something extra for their customers in London, a sweetener to keep the trade deals flowing.”

  “But that’s in the past, right boss?” asked Chris White.

  “No, Christopher it most certainly isn’t.”