Conspiracy

by Adrian Wills

  Conspiracy

  A Tom Blake Thriller

  Adrian Wills

  Conspiracy

  A Tom Blake Thriller

  First Kindle Edition

  Copyright © Adrian Wills 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Author’s note

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  Chapter One

  An almost perfectly round, pink bloody smear patterned the inside of the shattered windscreen and below it, the man Blake knew only as River was slumped over the dashboard with a mashed-up face and his breath wheezing in a wet rasp. An innocent victim. Collateral damage. Not that Blake was too concerned. It wasn’t as if the guy’s injuries were life-threatening. He’d be sore for a while, but he’d survive.

  He was more worried about the teenager to River’s left and whether she’d noticed he’d unclipped his seatbelt in the final few seconds before the collision. Probably not. She was staring vacantly into space and gripping the handle above her head with a white-knuckled death grip. ‘Jenni? Are you okay?’ he asked, rubbing a hand over his neck.

  She continued to stare silently through the windscreen, eyes wide and her face pale. At least she wasn’t screaming, which he guessed meant she wasn’t hurt. That would have taken some explaining.

  Crashing the van hadn’t been part of the plan, at least not until the opportunity had presented itself. Blake had acted on instinct as his options narrowed, and on reflection, it had worked out pretty well. If nothing else it had bought him some time, although he hadn’t counted on the crowds, drawn by the noise of the smash. Londoners had grown fearful of terrorist threats in recent years, and the screeching metal and hollow bang that reverberated off the walls of the tall buildings must have sounded like a bomb going off. No wonder everyone looked so shocked.

  The front of the van had crumpled like cardboard and steam rose from the ruptured radiator with an angry hiss. The police patrol car hadn’t fared much better, shunted across the road with its rear end mangled. Luckily, neither of the two police officers who’d taken up positions at the junction to enforce a road closure outside the Bank of England had been injured. They’d jumped clear as they heard the over-revving van approach from behind and were both now back on their feet, their semi-automatic carbines cocked and raised.

  Muffled groans and the stiff movement of injured bodies came from the back of the vehicle. Blake imagined a tangle of arms, legs and broken bones in the cramped and dusty load bay. And yet he didn’t feel the slightest trace of guilt. He had a job to do. He shouldered open his door and stepped out into the street, wincing as a jagged dagger of pain spread across his shoulders and up his neck. A touch of whiplash. Nothing serious.

  The two police officers crabbed closer, staring down the sights of their rifles trained on Blake’s chest.

  ‘Put your hands on your head,’ one of them screamed. ‘And get down on your knees.’

  Blake couldn’t blame them for being pissed off. The police had been on high alert as anti-capitalist protests spiralled out of control across the city. But he wasn’t in the mood to be bullied by two angry cops. He slammed the door of the van shut, keeping his hands in plain view of the officers. No point inviting them to shoot. ‘There was nothing I could do, officer,’ he said. ‘The brakes on this old thing —’

  ‘I said get down on the ground!’ the officer yelled before he could finish.

  ‘My daughter’s in the cab. I think she’s hurt.’ Blake figured neither of the cops had it in them to pull the trigger if he kept his movements slow and deliberate, with his hands in full view. ‘I need to check she’s okay. She’s only fifteen.’

  The officer opened his mouth and shut it again, marking Blake’s every move with his weapon as he edged towards the passenger door.

  He helped Jenni out, guiding her by her arm. ‘Honey, are you okay?’ he asked with genuine concern.

  Jenni squinted at him as if trying to place his face.

  ‘I think she’s okay,’ said Blake, feigning relief, ‘but my friend looks in a bad way. I think he needs an ambulance.’

  As Blake stepped to one side, the second officer caught sight of River’s bloodied body and immediately leapt into the cab, calling for urgent medical assistance on his radio.

  ‘There are some others in the back who might be hurt too,’ Blake explained to the first cop.

  ‘Show me. Slowly.’

  Four pairs of eyes blinked in the sudden light when Blake wrenched open a sliding door. The young woman, who called herself Pixie, clutched her arm at an odd angle. She was one of those earth mother types with wide hips and a superior sneer etched on her face. ‘You idiot,’ she hissed at Blake. ‘What have you done?’

  Blake tried and failed to hide his self-satisfied smile.

  Next to Pixie, Woody lay on the floor holding his face with bloodied hands. It looked suspiciously like he’d broken his nose. Two others, Ed, with a mouthful of crooked teeth and ash-blond dreadlocks tossed over his shoulder, and Leif, who had the arresting looks of a male model, were sitting quietly with pained expressions.

  The officer sucked in his breath when he stepped closer and saw the collection of hammers, crowbars, axe handles and bricks. Then he caught the stench of petrol that had spilled from half a dozen bottles stuffed with rags they intended to use as firebombs. He raised his gun and ordered the four of them out.

  Pixie spat in his face. ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I said, get out.’

  ‘Don’t touch me, pig!’

  Blake grabbed Jenni’s hand and edged away from the van while the officer’s attention was distracted. They shuffled towards the throng of bystanders gawping for a better look at what all the commotion was about, and in a moment were swallowed up in the crowd.r />
  Blake headed for a dark alley between two buildings, conscious they didn’t have much time before the policemen realised they were gone.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ said Blake.

  ‘What about River?’ Jenni snatched her hand from Blake’s grasp and tried to turn back.

  ‘No, you don’t. I’m taking you home,’ said Blake, grabbing her arm.

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ she yelled. ‘I want to be with River and the others.’

  ‘In a police cell for the night? Is that what you really want?’

  ‘Let me go.’ Jenni stamped a foot and cried out in frustration. ‘Who do you think you are anyway?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh right,’ she said. ‘I suppose you work for my father. Did he put you up to this?’

  ‘Look, I’m only doing my job, and that’s to get you to safety.’

  ‘I was perfectly safe until you crashed the van.’

  ‘Come on, your parents are worried.’

  ‘Like they care. I’m not going home.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with you.’

  ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jenni, grow up,’ Blake snapped.

  ‘Let me go, or I’ll scream. And when the police come I’ll tell them you threatened to rape me. I know what they do to paedos in prison. It’s not very pretty.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘They’ll probably cut off your —’

  ‘Enough! If you’re arrested, how long do you think it will be before it’s all over the papers?’

  Jenni stuck out her bottom lip like a sulky child and lowered her gaze.

  ‘Well?’ said Blake.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You’d better start caring, because when they find out you’ve been holed up in a scrubby squat with a bunch of druggies and dropouts, they won’t leave you alone. Your face will be plastered over every news website and newsstand in the country.’

  ‘Don’t call them that. They’re my friends.’

  ‘Can you imagine the headlines?’

  ‘They won’t be interested in me.’

  ‘Of course they will,’ said Blake, losing patience, ‘especially when they find out you’re Henry Bowater’s daughter.’

  Chapter Two

  When Blake had first seen Jenni Bowater, she was sitting on a mattress on the floor with her legs coiled around a crumpled sleeping bag, picking hairs from a brush. He’d studied her picture in the briefing notes but was still surprised at how small she appeared in the flesh, how pale and innocent-looking.

  The intelligence teams had tracked her to a squat in a leafy north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath, in one of the most expensive suburbs in London. Blake’s job was to return the teenager home safely with no fuss and no drama. It wasn’t exactly his usual line of work, but Harry Patterson was insistent his peculiar set of skills made him ideal for the job, especially as discretion and subtlety were top priorities given her father’s power and influence. He was to remove her from the squat and reunite her with her parents with the minimum fuss and no fanfare. It should have been easy, but sometimes the simplest jobs can become the most complicated.

  The house was an impressive three-storey, double-fronted Victorian villa with boarded up windows and an air of neglect. River, a foppish kid with a posh, cut-glass accent was easily won around to allow Blake to stay a few nights when he turned up begging a bed in return for a bag of a weed and the use of his van. With his beard grown out, his hair unwashed and dressed in clothes that looked and smelled like they’d never seen soap or water, Blake didn’t appear remotely out of place, even though he was probably twice River’s age. He told them he’d crashed out of a lucrative career in the city to follow an alternative, nomadic lifestyle, and River lapped it up.

  He introduced Blake to Pixie, Leif, Ed, Woody and Jenni in a communal living and sleeping area in the basement where they were all lounging around on the floor surrounded by filth and squalor and the stink of blocked drains. Taking a seat on a dirty, frayed sofa, Blake assessed the room with the seasoned eye of a man used to watching his back. There was only one way in and out, up a wooden staircase into the main body of the house and that made Blake nervous. He preferred to sleep with multiple options for a quick exit, but River explained they all slept in the basement for safety, away from the lunatics and junkies who might just wander in uninvited.

  As the evening wore on, and the beer and drugs flowed evermore freely, talk turned to the group’s plans for the next day.

  ‘Where better to strike than the heart of the oppression of the working classes,’ said River, dragging on the end of a soggy joint.

  ‘But the Bank of England’s one of the most well-protected buildings in London,’ said Blake, raising an eyebrow. ‘You’re not going to get far.’

  ‘We’re not after their money. All we want to do is disrupt them for a bit.’

  Which was exactly why Blake needed to get Jenni away. It would be unthinkable for her to be caught up in any kind of civil unrest.

  It was past three in the morning when everyone finally succumbed to the seductive advances of sleep. Ed, a financier’s son who’d apparently dropped out of school and run away from home at sixteen, was the last to drop off. He crushed the remnants of a roll-up on top of a can of coke and hunkered down under a filthy duvet.

  As soon as his breathing deepened and he began to snore, Blake relaxed. He hated the company of strangers and would have much preferred to have been dug into a foxhole in the desert or hiding out in a mountain-top cave with only his own thoughts and fears for distraction. He certainly didn’t want to be hanging out in a dingy, flea-ridden squat listening to the rantings of a bunch of middle-class layabouts who thought they could change the world by dropping out and getting stoned.

  Stretched out on the sofa with a sleeping bag thrown over his legs, he watched Jenni sleeping for a while. The strong coffee he’d used to wash down two pregnenolone pills to block the effects of the cannabis kept him lucid and clear-headed, although his eyes stung from the fumes of a sagging church candle which flickered in its death throes.

  One of the men coughed in his sleep, sniffed and turned over. Time to act. Blake rolled his sleeping bag into his rucksack and silently slipped on his boots. He knelt at Jenni’s side, noticing a shock of freckles across her elven nose and a rash of acne across her forehead. A silver stud protruded through her bottom lip and long, dark lashes fluttered against her cheek. He laid a hand on her shoulder and shook gently. ‘Jenni, wake up.’

  When she didn’t stir, he shook harder, sensing the lightness of her skinny body. Glassy eyes sprang open, her pupils full and dark, struggling to focus as she was pulled too quickly from her drug-induced dreams.

  ‘Come on, we have to get out of here,’ he whispered.

  She scrunched up her nose, pulled her sleeping bag up to her chin and rolled her back to him. Her breathing deepened and slowed. Blake checked the room. No one stirred. He swept the hair away from her ear and found her lobe. When he pinched it between the nails of his thumb and forefinger she jolted awake.

  ‘Quiet,’ he whispered, clamping a hand over her mouth and putting a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  Jenni nodded, like she understood, wide-eyed with fear. She sat up as he slowly released his hand from her mouth. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to take you home.’

  The blade appeared from nowhere, a small flick knife Jenni must have had hidden under her pillow. She aimed wildly for his body and nicked his shoulder, cutting through his woollen sweater and t-shirt, down to the skin. Blake knocked her hand away sending the knife across the room. Jenni screamed loud enough to wake the entire house and suddenly the room was alive with people demanding to know what the hell was going on. A bright torch shone in Blake’s face, and Ed lumbered unsteadily across the room with his fists clenched, tossing his filthy dr
eadlocks out of his face. ‘What the fuck, man?’

  Blake was halfway to his feet when he was knocked back to the ground by a punch on his chin. Not the heaviest blow he’d ever taken, but he rolled with it anyway, falling onto his back as River loomed over him.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ he said, kicking Blake’s leg.

  Blake held up a submissive hand while rubbing his jaw for effect. ‘She was having a nightmare.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Did he touch you?’ River asked.

  Jenni nodded solemnly. She was sitting with her back to the wall and had pulled her knees up to her chest with tears rolling down her face.

  ‘We trusted you,’ said River, scowling at Blake.

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, she’s only a kid. You’re old enough to be her father.’

  Like the pathetic punch, Blake took that one on the chin too. He hated the slow creep of age, but didn’t consider late forties to be old at all. He took good care of his body, ate healthily, and prided himself on still being able to bang out a sub-twenty three miler. Maybe he wasn’t as strong or as fast as in his military days, but he was still in pretty good shape. Not quite destined for the scrapheap yet.