The Angel of Whitehall

by Lewis Hastings

  Laurie gazed at her for a while, then said, “I’d find him another role ma’am, before he does the same for you.”

  She laughed at the timing, then heard a gentle but firm knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  “Ma’am. Just checking everything is OK?”

  “That’s very kind, Seb. It will be, after tomorrow.”

  “Nothing else you need?”

  “Nothing you can provide at this hour.”

  “Ma’am.” He turned on his heels.

  “Seb!”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Thank you. An old sailor told me recently that loyalty and kindness are the new currencies. Don’t ever forget that, will you?”

  “I’ll try my best not to ma’am, goodnight.”

  Lane waited a moment, then dialled a number.

  “Hello well what a nice surprise. And how is the nation’s sweetheart this evening?” The male voice was caramel smooth.

  “Piss off, former Prime Minister!”

  “Ooh feisty. I like it when you are angry.”

  “You wish. Anyway, look, I need an early night but I’ve just had a visit from Cartwright.”

  He paused. “Oh yes, what does that insipid little viper want at this hour?”

  “He wanted to let me know he’s watching my every move.”

  “He said that?” Cole was incredulous.

  “In as many words, James.” She sighed.

  “Want me to pop round?”

  “And end the constant rumours and scandal in the tabloids? No, let’s leave that until the time is right. I need to ask you a question.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You had a troublesome pain in the backside once Home Secretary, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yes, did I just.” His mind reverted back to Harry Halford and the Operation Orion team and their mission to save the city from a chaotic night on the Thames. “What about him?”

  “Well, what did you do?”

  “I had him put out to pasture.”

  “Oh. Rumour around here is that someone shot him.” She smiled into the mouthpiece.

  “Well now, wouldn’t that be one for the press to dine out on. Speak tomorrow and remember, you’re the boss, don’t take any nonsense from anyone, least of all an interfering ex-PM. Goodnight, darling.”

  “Night.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  RAF Bottesford, Leicestershire

  She’d spent most of the night pushing against the lock, hoping it would ease enough to open. Seven long hours. A male, one of the fitter ones, took over and began to kick the panel.

  “We are wasting our time. This building is old, but very strong. That is why they put us here. We need to think of some other way. If we don’t, we will die in this cold place and I for one am not willing to give up what is left of my life for these people.”

  She was crying. Angry tears, shaped by months of living in the dark and cold, fed on lies and a basic meal of bread and an occasional lump of something gristly that resembled meat. Now and then an apple was passed around. They had fresh water from a tap inside the old hangar.

  “What do you think this place was?”

  “A war building. Somewhere they stored planes. Where they repaired them before they headed off to fight once more.” He sniffed, forcing back the misery that dripped from his nose onto the stained concrete floor.

  “And now they repair us, ready to go into service. I miss Kamsar. Ha! Who would have thought I would have said that only months ago?”

  “Who do you hate the most Benjamin? The people in Africa that sold us? Or the people here in England that bought us?”

  “Neither. I hate myself for agreeing to make the journey. Something has gone wrong, Hasani. Wait. Listen…”

  The noise was distinctive. Not like the deeper tone of the trucks that brought more people and what they classed as food to the one-time Royal Air Force airfield, almost literally in the middle of England. This engine note was a few octaves higher. Faster. He pressed his eye to the crack in the wall that had provided a commentary on many things since Day One of their isolation; the weather, their food, the stars and talk of home.

  “A car, possibly two, no, more. I can see…” He pushed his cheek into the wall, blinking away the cold. “Six white cars, a van with yellow and blue. Police. Police! We need to get out of here now.”

  “They might be good people.” Someone shouted out from the dark.

  “No! Everyone that can stand get to the door now and start pushing.”

  In a few moments those younger members of the group who could still function were at her side, kicking and pushing, caring not for the noise they made. They had realised long ago that no one ever came to this place, with its ghosts of the past and newer dark grey electric fence that kept everyone away – that and the abandoned cornfields that grew all around them, slowly swallowing up the outer perimeters of the airfield.

  “Kick. Push. Come on, we have minutes. With all your might. Like your lives depend upon this moment!” The Lioness roared and her pride followed, kicking, scraping, punching, bleeding, running at the panel until it gave way.

  “We are free. Take what you need, leave everything…” She stopped herself, swallowed hard. “Leave everyone that cannot walk, and may they be saved by someone greater than me. When we are in the corn, we hide, and wait, and when they open the gates, we run for freedom. There are too many of us for them to stop.”

  “What if they have guns?”

  “We are like diamonds to them, remember? We have a value.”

  She never thought she would ever say that aloud.

  “We have a value.” She ran her hand over her stomach where the dark red scar remained, still tender to the touch.

  “And I for one will run until I find a better life. You can come, or you can stay.”

  The first Ford Focus estate car pulled up to the gates of the old airfield. The driver and passenger got out, slipped on their leather gloves and pulled their yellow reflective coats up around their necks.

  “Bloody hell, it’s cold Paul.”

  “Tell me about it,” replied his long-time partner Pete O’Neil, busy stamping his feet to get the blood flowing.

  Paul Kirk had a few weeks left in his career, O’Neil too. He was heading for a new life in Spain with ‘her indoors’, the woman he referred to as ‘my beau-ti-ful Pamela’, his wife of forty years.

  Neither man could wait. Cutbacks had made the winter years of their careers seem hostile and foreboding. They hated the cuts as much as the politicians that had sanctioned them. The current Home Secretary was despised for his lack of foresight. He’d made the thin blue line so fragile it resembled an old guitar string wound to breaking point.

  “You won’t find that weasel Cartwright out here in the freezing bloody rain.”

  “I hate that bastard. Trust me Pete, sooner or later he’ll regret his decision to reduce the ranks. Something will happen and he’ll realise what a complete arse…”

  O’Neill held up a gloved hand as four more vehicles arrived slowly behind them, then a fifth a mile back which contained a sergeant.

  They waited until his car pulled up and the supervisor left his own warm and comfortable vehicle.

  “Bloody hell boys, it’s cold enough to freeze the whatsits off a friggin’ youknowwhat…” He clapped his hands together trying to retain some heat. “At least the rain’s stopped. You can almost see the frost forming. Right, like you I got turned out of the station following some weird and wonderful call from London, which got to our duty inspector who deemed it worthy of sending almost the entire eastern half of the force out on what is likely to be a fool’s errand.”

  John Westwood was a popular man, also approaching D-Day as he called it. He’d done his time and couldn’t wait to sit at home with a good book and a cup of tea whilst his pension supported him into his old age.

  “Sounds like a load of old bollocks to me, sarge,” said the ex-printer O’Neill. “I jo
ined this job to make a difference and I’ve loved almost every minute, but this takes the piss. Six cars for one job when we could be sat in the nick with our feet toasting by the radiator!”

  Kirk hissed. “Quiet. Did you hear that? A weird noise, like a humming sound.”

  “You mean like a choir?”

  “No, like bloody moaning.”

  “Like a bad choir?”

  “Piss off Pete, listen.”

  The other crews all gathered around and listened. Nothing.

  “I heard something around the back.” He stood as another vehicle pulled up. Matrix security, it said on the side of the van.

  The overweight pair that got out looked less capable than Pete’s missus when it came to dishing out some discipline.

  “Evening all. I got a call to come and turn the power off.” The man in his twenties and weighing as many stones also shuddered at the temperature.

  “And how will we search the place with the power off?”

  “Oh no, you misunderstand me. That’s on a different circuit. I mean to that.” He pointed at the fence with his torch. “Ready?”

  “Absolutely. We’ll mount up and follow you in.”

  Hasani had corralled her people. They were huddled down in the old field, among dead sheaves of wheat, bronzed and decaying and crackling under their bodies that lay still, trying to stop the tell-tale signs of human presence, breathing down into the ground, into their sleeves.

  She’d performed a rapid head count. The numbers stunned her. Ninety. Nearly a hundred people, all that was left out of over two hundred. The rest had disappeared over time, buried somewhere without a name or a simple prayer. Those that they now left behind wouldn’t make it through another night, but would hopefully get some recognition. Either that or they’d be buried together as one.

  “Wait. Not yet.” Her words were passed across the field, which sat a few hundred feet from the hangar in complete darkness.

  She watched the van and the six white police vehicles drive in and up to the main hangar door. She knew they had moments now. When the floodlights illuminated their dash for freedom could be over.

  “Now!”

  They stood and ran, some dropping food, another a picture of his mother. They ran as fast as they thought they ever could, towards the gaping hole in the fence and out into the open countryside.

  Their dark skin and darker clothes enabled them to blend quickly with hedgerows and partially filled ditches at the side of the old road, a pathway that led to salvation.

  “Jesus! Quick, get the dragon light.” O’Neill was running now too. At fifty-five he’d long given up the noble art of the foot chase but with some forty or so targets he knew he stood a chance of catching at least one, and with a few hours to go until his first rest day he was seeing pound signs. Rest day less than eight, they called it. And it meant double time. And O’Neill was flying now.

  Kirk got to the patrol car, illuminated the compact but intensely powerful searchlight, and lit up the path that O’Neill was making into the night.

  “Lads, there’s loads of ‘em. Runners.” He called up the force control room on the VHF radio. “Whisky Romeo Seven urgent message.”

  The stampede of the living was outweighed by the site that greeted Westwood. A column of dying people led to the hole in the wall, crawling like ants that had been poisoned, desperate to get back to their nest.

  And then there was the silence of the dead.

  “Good God.” Westwood retched, put a gloved-hand over his mouth as the narrow beam of his own torch lit up the massive room.

  He turned to the security guard, grabbing him by the throat.

  “Did you know about this? Well?” He screamed into his face, fighting back tears of sheer rage.

  The guard who was far bigger than the sergeant struggled to speak.

  “No. No, of course not. We just turn off the power when we are told to – to let the trucks in – to…” He also caught sight of what Westwood had seen and vomited onto the floor of the hangar.

  “On my kid’s life, I haven’t got anything to do with this. Please. I beg you; this is so wrong.”

  Westwood found a cupboard with a padlock firmly in place.

  “Key for this?” he asked with an empty voice.

  The guard opened the cabinet and flicked the main switch, then began to turn on the lights one by one as the hangar slowly came to life.

  “My dear God,” was all Westwood could say.

  Men, women and two small children were lying huddled together, desperate for warmth, more so for food.

  He shone his torch into the face of one, then another until he counted one hundred and fourteen bodies. Exactly the number of days he had until he retired. He shook his head as he pointlessly checked the pulse on another body.

  “You’d better be telling the truth or trust me when you’ve dug their graves you can join them.”

  “I swear. Last time we came up here, the place was empty.”

  “And when was that?”

  “A month ago.”

  “Jesus, they could have been in here for four weeks? Without food? Without warmth? Without water?”

  The slighter of the two guards spoke for the first time.

  “Oh no, that’s not entirely true, they had water. Look, there’s a tap over there.” He pointed with his two-cell Maglite. As he turned back to face Westwood, the blow struck him across the chin and knocked him backwards.

  Westwood was rubbing his fist and strutting around.

  “Do you want some as well?” It was the first time in thirty years he had ever broken the rules.

  “No boss. Look, we didn’t mean to…”

  “Get your people out here. I want the bosses and their bosses and whoever pays their wages out here by morning. And stand there until I tell you to move.”

  He walked outside to see O’Neill and three of his colleagues walking back up the deserted lane with half a dozen older women.

  Westwood lined them up, shone his torch in their faces.

  “What do you reckon, African?” he asked of anyone that might have a clue.

  “Do you speak English?”

  Nothing. They all looked down.

  “Get the cars started and get the heaters on and let’s get them bloody warmed up. Kirkie get the duty inspector here sharpish, and CID and a Crime Scene Photographer. Soon as. I need to make a call.”

  In London O’Shea was sipping a cup of ginger and lemon tea and trying to figure out how her trip to England, with a five-star hotel by the Thames and the man she loved in tow had gone, as Dave Francis had so eloquently put it, completely tits up.

  She was scanning the internet for some inspiration when her desk phone rang.

  “O’Shea.”

  “Hello Control Room here, listen I’ve got a call from Leicestershire Police, some sergeant with his teeth chattering, talking about a hangar and some runaways? He asked for you. Can you take it?”

  “Put him through.” She waited a moment. “Carrie O’Shea, so tell me what you found in the land of plenty!”

  Silence. She pressed her ear to the phone. There was someone there.

  “Hello. You OK?”

  “Sergeant John Westwood here. No, miss I am not. Not sure what you expected to find up here, but we’ve got over a hundred bodies in this place. All ages, men and women. I’m about to arrest two security guards on suspicion of something, murder or manslaughter probably.” It was obvious she shouldn’t interrupt.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m done. After today I quit.”

  “Sergeant, can you outline exactly what you have found, start taking pictures, please. I’ve got a horrible feeling that when the squad turns up from the Home Office, there might be some evidence…misplaced.”

  “Sorry? Can this get any worse? Are you trying to tell me that this is a government-run prison camp for refugees?”

  “I’m not entirely sure what it is, John, but I know that people have got very rich as a result. Ta
ke photos, John. Lots of them. Do it now. I’ll send my email address. And John.”

  “Go ahead.” He stared up at the front of the old Lancaster bomber hangar and tried to imagine what the old boys of the RAF would have made of this.

  “Post a guard on the gate. Start an incident log. I need to know the name of everyone that enters that place or tries to. Photograph the pages as they are completed. And get someone to identify all nearby CCTV. Can you do that for me, John?”

  He took a second to answer.

  “I can.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Fort Hoo, Kent

  Cade’s phone vibrated against his thigh. He ducked down into an old fireplace, shielded the light and read the message. It was from O’Shea.

  ‘114 dead in Leicestershire. All appear to be African. Some ran away, possibly fifty. Other forces in the region searching the remaining hangars. This is not good.’

  Cade multiplied the sites by the numbers and hated the potential answer. Like most cops, he erred on the dark side of negative.

  “Carrie reckons we might have upwards of a thousand people in the air force hangars JD. What’s a life worth these days? Ten K, five?”

  “At least that, plus the diamonds. If, or rather when this reaches the press there will be a frenzy. Anyone that was connected and still is…”

  He rubbed at his face, trying to wipe away the anger.

  “Let’s get this sorted first and then I’ll fill you in on the seedier side of British politics and how it’s almost a business.”

  “No, how about right now John. I can deal with those two anytime. They’re not going far. I need to trust you first. So go on…I’ve got all night.”

  As the screen on Cade’s phone dimmed, Daniel began to speak.

  “This goes way beyond any security clearance you’ve ever had or dreamt of. When I was a young copper, fresh out of uni I was identified as one of a group of blue-flames, the future of modern-day policing. Back then, promotion was often done on merit rather than just exams. A panel invited me to an interview. I sat there wide eyed and listened. Never answered one question. Only asked one.”