He removed his hand, allowing her to breathe again and kissed her once more, this time easing small amounts of the Balvenie into her willing mouth. It tasted sublime; sweet, warm and wild.
A small amount ran over her chin and onto her neck.
She tipped her head backwards, revealing her throat.
He followed the rivulet of liquid as it traced a meandering line towards her cleavage, licking it away with a deliberate stroke of his tongue.
His hand traced downwards, across her right breast, along the contours of her ribs and lower across her soft stomach until he reached the luxuriously lacy top of her matching white and obviously expensive knickers. They were a revelation, and certainly not what he expected to find.
His fingertips slipped underneath the material, causing her to take a sharp intake of breath. He could feel her immaculate silkiness beneath his exploring fingers and began to circle his index and second finger, just as he had done earlier, rhythmically and in time with her panting breaths, lower with each cycle.
Her luxurious underwear was now slipping onto the floor. She kicked it away with her foot, taking care to ensure they landed in an obvious place, so she could retrieve them later.
Annoyingly Cade could hear a sound, more evident by the second, louder and louder, a deep constant rumble.
He ignored it. O’Shea tried her hardest to disregard it too.
After twenty seconds it became an irritant. O’Shea apologised, her frustration evident, and fished around in the cushion of her sofa to find Cade’s work phone – her intention being to turn it off. Whoever it was could wait. Casually she glanced at the screen, it displayed three missed calls.
The black pixelated letters on the Nokia 3410 were clear on the green screen.
One call was anonymous, a landline. The other, a cell phone number, stood out on the display with a time and date. Whilst no different to any other missed call, this one, even the screen, looked different, more alarming. More demanding. The call was from Wood.
Chapter 29
Petrov was disorientated, her natural compass had failed, the result of being in an unfamiliar place and under extreme stress. The clear plastic carrier bag that had been rammed over her head had only sought to exacerbate the situation.
At the point of sheer terror one of her captors had removed it, tempting though it was to watch her panic through the translucent material he was under strict instructions to ensure she lived.
She had been transferred from the Mondeo into an anonymous van, one of many hundreds that would visit the city that day. She tried to imagine where they were heading, to listen for telltale sounds that might later benefit her, but she heard only silence. It was late, and they were most likely in an area of London that would not attract visitors.
As she lay in the foetal position in the back of van, she heard distinctive Romanian accents. One, a male was talking to another, also a male, they boasted about what they would do with her if Alex had given them carte blanche. But they all knew better than to tamper with their beloved leader’s girl.
Her only chance of salvation lay in convincing her captors to let her go, or possibly to contact Alex and provide a plausible story – she was consumed with fear but trying to think on her feet.
Her training should be kicking in by now; she had disarmed Wood – more’s the pity – so she could do it again. She knew there were three of them, all male, all she needed was a chance. However, with her hands bound behind her back and her feet shackled by plastic one-use cable ties she felt powerless.
Rewinding the evening’s events, she realised that Wood was just a fool, an overweight man who thought he had a chance. Hindsight taught her that she would rather have gone the distance with him than find herself at the behest of this group of foul-smelling individuals.
She was still fully clothed, all previous such events at the hands of Alex or one of his many associates had commenced and ended with her being naked. This felt different.
Her mouth was bound with duct tape, but she could see each of her custodians. For evidence gathering this was a positive, for the longevity of her life not so. She knew that their intention was to harm her, abuse her, and then most likely kill her.
A phone rang in the twilight. A guard answered it and then placed it against Nikolina’s ear.
The voice began in a rasping tone, measured, but menacing in a familiar way.
“Well, well, my lovely we finally get to talk again. How are you my dear Nikolina? Of course, you cannot reply. Won’t Mr Cade be upset, he and his little team of heroes? So, tell me Niko, should I spare you or leave it up to the imagination of my fine men to decide how to deal with you?”
She tried to form words, but they were futile.
The featureless voice spoke again, quietly, assured.
“You had everything Nikolina, everything. I always said I would hunt you down like a dog if you betrayed me, and now you have. At least I have our little girl to care for, such a pity she will never see her mother again. I cannot ever trust you now and you know what trust means to me? Of course you do. Oh well, bye-bye, I would like to say I will see you in heaven but it appears I will not be going there. The Devil has a plan and a place in one of his blackest corners, just for me.”
He laughed his familiar crow-like laugh.
“At least you will look good for the cameras my pretty. Farewell.”
He paused before disconnecting the phone.
She was panicking now for she knew her end was in sight; unlike so many previous complex situations she was simply unable to escape from this one. The circumstances, the tape across her mouth, and the desperate sense of fate started to create a feeling of complete anxiety and foreboding. She was too afraid to cry.
She had no idea of time or place when the van eventually came to a stop. The two males in the rear of the Transit placed her on her back. The driver joined them and sat on her feet immobilising her. He produced a pair of scissors, her eyes expanded and she formed a muffled scream.
The male cut through her clothing with the aplomb of a master tailor, making cuts here and there until they were able to remove her clothes.
One hissed at her, “Tempting though it is my beautiful thing I have my orders and a few minutes with you is not worth the pain and suffering he will cause me.”
As part of a pre-ordained plan they picked her up and laid her onto an A-shaped wooden frame, fastening her arms and legs into position with cable ties. Finally, her neck was also tied to the wooden template. At the top of the A was an aperture through which they had tied a length of rope.
Outside the van, a few cars headed home alongside the embankment to the River Thames. Soon it would be quiet and they could carry out the next phase unhindered. An hour slowly evaporated, they’d coolly eaten some cheese and consumed a bottle of cheap wine between them. One of them, the youngest couldn’t take his eyes off her; she was beautiful, their wretched plan seemed a waste, but who was he to argue if he wanted a life of opulence?
The driver was different; he’d removed her clothing with skill but without a hint of empathy. He had dark, almost black, raven-like hair and black soulless eyes that matched his mood. He lit up a cigarette, took one deep drag and flicked it, almost whole into the side of the road. The red embers fought to stay alive but quickly extinguished and soon were as cold as the Victorian gutter that they ended their life in.
It was time.
He checked the environs for passersby and seeing that the street was deserted he tapped on the back door and climbed back in, making his comrades ready for the last phase of their lucrative mission.
The driver removed a red plastic petrol can, opened the vessel and made a small hole in the duct tape that laced across Petrov’s mouth. Playfully, he pretended to tip fuel into her mouth, but in reality, the fuel was intended for another act. Despite his bravado he’d made a mistake, a teaspoon of the fuel had entered her mouth and she began to choke.
They quickly raised the frame so that she coul
d recover and in doing so offered her a last chance of salvation. Perhaps it wasn’t her time after all?
The driver leant forward and spoke, flicking spittle into her face as he emphasised his ill-educated and nicotine-stale words.
“Worry not. You will not die by burning to death my lovely. No, Alex has another plan for you. The petrol is to burn the van later. After all, we don’t want to be caught now, do we?”
Two of the men laughed, the youngest was becoming more ill at ease by the second.
Summoning up what strength she had she blew the foul-tasting fuel out of the tape and straight into his face, it stung wildly as it entered his eyes and ran down his face. Ordinarily this would be punishment enough but in her circumstances she needed fortune to shine on her.
It would. Ever the compulsive smoker he had removed the last one from its packet and had chosen that time to ignite it. The vapour erupted and swiftly engulfed his head and face. Searing hot flames tore into his skin and hair, which in the confined space of the van began to overpower the other occupants. Unlike her his screams were not muted, but with limited or no foot traffic his cries for help were likely to go unheard.
His colleagues smothered his face with an old sheet and sat him against the metal wall of the van. The damage was done. His eye would never recover and he would bear the scars until he died.
Growling with rage he instructed his associates to carry on with their role. They opened the door and carried her onto the tree-lined street. The driver followed, hissing instructions, constantly scanning for road users, favouring the damage to his face and wanting her last moments to be as painful.
He tied the rope to the wrought iron fencing and then ordered that she be lowered over the side and down to the mudflats that lay beneath her. The younger male climbed over the fence and down a ladder that had been bolted to the algae-covered river wall many years earlier. Despite the constant attention of the elements, it had withstood the test of time.
They had rehearsed this repeatedly – albeit on dry land. The plan was coming together precisely, albeit they had missed a serviceable set of steps about fifty paces to their left.
The youngest male was now on the shoreline, stepping carefully in the faded light, avoiding the mud and debris that littered the riverbank; scaffold poles, weather-beaten timber, man-made detritus and various other non-descript hazards.
He was joined by the second male, a forgettable man in his forties with a wispy black moustache, the type that indicated that its owner was unsure whether to sport it, or not.
The frame was pushed down into the mud at their chosen location, an old outlet from a nearby water system, beautifully made during Victorian times and directly in line with the iconic Battersea Power Station. The rope was removed and thrown into the river soon drifting out of sight and adding to the debris field.
Petrov pleaded with the male, her eyes full of expression of fading hope and longing, longing to be anywhere other than here. She had realised where her fate now lie.
Her body was strapped to the rudimentary frame. The lower part of which was buried into the glutinous mud ensuring that her feet and shins were trapped.
But for the fact that she was naked, and petrified, she could in lesser circumstances have been one of the many people who foraged among the foreshore for long-lost treasures; just another ignored resident of an anonymous city.
In Romanian across her forehead in black permanent marker it had been written:
Tradator.
Traitor.
Running from right to left over the top of her thighs were four letters:
WH and RE.
Alex had been most explicit about this. He wanted Nikolina’s svelte body to provide the most intimate of missing letters. It was a final gesture of hatred for his most costly whore.
The hours had passed quickly. It was nearly four in the morning.
In a quiet corner of the city, off Ebury Bridge Road the van had soon become engulfed in flames, erasing all trace of both it and any evidence it contained.
A week later the police would identify the vehicle, stolen a month before from a hapless courier driver and now another undetected crime in a city where such events were not the exception.
Having removed every conceivable hint of their existence the occupants planned to disappear into the underbelly of a metropolis that was starting to waken, to open one semi-interested eye on a misty, late-summer morning.
Nikolina Petrov stood rigid among the frigid waters of the capital’s artery. In an hour and forty minutes it would be high tide and she would disappear beneath the water. If she was lucky, someone, somewhere may see her and set her free, but the calculations were not in her favour.
The construction workers at the adjacent power station did not board their barges until six; by then unless providence had played her part Petrov’s pretty head would be submerged.
The speed and power of Old Father Thames increased her anxiety tenfold. She prayed for an early dawn, of deliverance, but the waters kept coming, rising up her body, slowly, purposefully enveloping her.
The smell of the river was overpowering; the mud, water, fuel and remnants of its historic past all combined to create an unmistakable odour. Were she to live she would recall it, were she to live, she would recall it fondly.
The river water started to enter the opening in the silvery tape. Her tongue pushed against it in a futile gesture but she was tiring.
All her knowledge, her training, wasted.
Her exquisite body was now almost beaten, the tide tugging at her breasts and rocking her body gently from side to side. She was beyond cold, slipping rapidly into a hypothermic state and now her tears flowed, adding their own genetic footprint into one of the greatest waterways on the globe.
She forced her tongue against the gap and upwards to avoid the water that was now trickling from her nose and into her throat. Her hair was taking on a life of its own, swaying in the water, almost ethereal; it retained its defiant red colouring but was becoming darker by the second.
Her eyes, once sparkling and welcoming, the window on a positive future, now lost all sense of hope. The water lapped onto them, more aggressively now, high tide had arrived with a vengeance.
Across the river she could make out the blurred outlines of workers arriving for another shift, she could see them; they were oblivious to her presence, laughing and joking about the events of the night before.
Her hearing was the last sense to cave in. Somewhere a siren announced the arrival of organised chaos, a lone gull flitted across the surface of the river, calling out to an unseen mate and a dredger chugged tirelessly from her right, heading downstream to Dartford.
On a nearby road bridge a solitary red London bus chugged its way anonymously south, heading home to a local equally anonymous depot.
She wished she had taken the time to tell him everything. Seconds from the end of her short life she started to count off the things she still needed to do, checked the ones that she had and lamented the ones she had not. Now, as her life ebbed, she considered the one person left in the world that she trusted. She bore him no malice, for unlike the others he had been as loyal to his word as he could have been.
‘Find her. Protect her. Please.’
She closed her eyes and said a quiet prayer. She could see her mother and father, her relatives and the few friends she had nurtured and knew that she would be with them soon. She considered her short and interesting life and finally consented to the river consuming her.
As the stale water filled her lungs, she breathed her last and thought of Cade, hoping that he would remain true to his word, shielding her beautiful daughter from harm.
Her spirit flowed downstream, captured temporarily by swirling eddies before being released to drift once more, hidden by the mist and carried on the current.
Chapter 30
As Petrov had fought her tumultuous battle with her unknown foes Cade and O’Shea’s evening had ended in absolute frustration. The
temptation to ignore Wood was paramount, and it was a thought shared by Jack and his newfound and unexpected liaison.
“Seriously, Clive, this had better be important,” said Cade with an air of annoyance. “Carrie, I’m sorry but I have to.”
“I know, Jack. It’s fine, really, there’ll be another time, perhaps?” Her comment was more of an optimistic question than a statement.
He leant forward and kissed her whilst dialling his answerphone messages, slipping his arms into his shirt.
“There will be. I promise.”
He deleted the first; it was from Penelope, enquiring about some banal problem that he wasn’t interested in nor cared about. The second was from Wood, the third from Roberts.
The messages started to scroll with Wood first.
“Boss, it’s Clive…” he was out of breath and sounded full of dread.
Cade switched the phone onto speaker mode and beckoned for O’Shea to listen – all the while re-dressing herself with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Boss…I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know what came over me…”
“Get to it man,” said O’Shea unsympathetically. “I bet he’s made a pass at her Jack; I can almost guarantee it. I told the boss not to trust him. Didn’t I?”
Wood continued, fighting for breath.
“She’s gone Jack. I was so bloody stupid, I tried it on with her and she broke my bloody nose. Look, I deserved it right? I did, I know I did. Fuck it Jack she ran off, so I chased her. I drew my baton and bloody chased her for about half a mile. I was trying to call you.”
The first missed call.
“I rang again; I was within seconds of grabbing her. She was getting into your car. I knew I’d be knee-deep in shit so I backed off and let her go. It wasn’t until the Mondeo drove past me that I saw that she had been captured. It was your car Jack, the section Mondeo, but you weren’t in it. Some bastard had a Glock to her head.”
Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1) Page 42
