The second missed call.
“I’ve rung Jason. He’s travelling to the flat with some backup. Jack I’m so very sorry, I’ve fucked up royally so I have. MP are aware and units in Chelsea, Kensington, Westminster, they all know. I’ll resign in the morning, but until then give me chance to hunt these bastards down?”
The message ended.
His phone rang again.
“Jack, Jason, been busy mate? I gather Clive has rung you, given you the SP and all that? Instead of enjoying a nice vegetarian Ruby with Mrs Roberts I find myself tearing the city apart looking for your fuckin’ bird, might be nice if you answer your bloody phone once in a while.”
Cade paused theatrically. “Finished?”
“I ‘ave mate. Not called for.”
“No, Jason, it wasn’t. Need I me remind you it was your bloody staff that were allegedly looking after her?”
“Touché. Right let’s call a truce and crack on. I’ve got all ports alerts in on the Mondeo. We’ve got India 99 up and MP has put out a message to all section and Trojan staff too. I want the latter given that Clive reckoned they were armed. I’ve put in a call for CO19 to join the hunt. All adjoining forces are aware and we’ve put an ANPR alert on the motor. I want these bastards nailed son. Nailed, to a fuckin’ great cross outside West-fucking-minster…”
“I know, fucking Abbey. I get it. We’ll find her Jason. Where do we start?”
“Needle: Metropolitan haystack.”
The fact that Roberts had called in the aces was an indicator of his concern about the situation, and his career. The Trojans, or Armed Response Vehicles, were never more than eight minutes away from any armed incident in London, CO19 on the other hand were a specialist unit, called out when the ante was well and truly upped.
“Start point? At the beginning I guess me old China. I’ve got a team going to the area around the flat – we’ll start our search there, given that she could be miles away by now, the worst we can do is try to see if they’ve been a little slapdash in their planning. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Cade had little choice, he knew his counterpart was right, but he felt impotent.
“Any theories Jack? I mean, do you think that she’s been forcibly taken or is this a set-up?”
“Plenty, but the obvious one is they knew she was likely to talk, and they wanted her in their hands rather than ours. Call me cynical but I doubt there will be any ransom demands and no, to answer your question I don’t think this is a bluff.”
“Oh come on mate, there’s always hope and you are the current expert on all this Euro-stuff remember. Let’s not give in just yet. This isn’t a problem, it’s a challenge.”
“Fuck off Jason.”
“Fair point. I’ll ring you in thirty.”
Cade stretched his aching neck, allowing his head to fall backwards.
He stared at the wall for a moment before erupting.
“Christ Carrie, what sort of a shower of shit do you work for? Eh? Tell me? It’s like Cirque de fucking soleil but without the acrobats. Keep Detective Wood away from me or seriously I will put him in hospital. That poor woman has risked everything, for what? To be let down by another group of people who just want to exploit her…”
“Jack…”
“Back off Carrie…I mean it, leave me alone for a minute.” His jaw muscles were clenched, his teeth ground together to the point where he wanted to crush them.
O’Shea knew that what she was seeing was a mixture of anger and raw emotions, strangely she gained an enormous sense of compassion for Cade, watching his overt sense of helplessness, his obvious anxiety at having let Petrov down. His anger and emotions were palpable. For the first time she saw how incredibly blue his eyes really were, the emotions heightening the irises to an almost unnatural level.
She walked away, leaving him to his thoughts. Nothing else would have sufficed.
Ten minutes later she returned. She was angry too. Her agenda was biased towards her own feelings – she truly regretted missing the opportunity to sleep with this highly attractive man.
“Jack, listen to me then tell me to back off, but please listen?”
He nodded.
“I have nothing to offer other than my analytical skills, but I can sift the wheat from the chaff better than anyone in this city. I don’t have your street skills anymore but I see patterns in raw data that most couldn’t see if they stared at it for a year. I could earn a fortune in the banking industry, but I stay because I hate criminals too. Please, Jack, let me help?”
Her tone was measured, calm and reassuring, it was exactly what he needed and somehow she even made the phrase ‘data’ sound sexy. He smiled, rubbed his face, exhaled and apologised.
“Bang out-of-order Carrie. No excuses. I guess we both want the same?”
“Absolutely Jack, in every possible way.”
“Carrie, at any other time…”
“Jack. No excuses, right? Good.”
He was right of course; his priorities had altered in the last hour, however much they were both frustrated the next few hours were critical. They owed Petrov a debt of gratitude – Cade knew that she had offered up her soul and a raft of information that the British police may have unsuccessfully sought for years. She held the key but now Cade had no idea which lock it would fit. And somehow, he knew there was more to this beautiful girl – and a lot more information, some of which she had promised to tell him, when the time was right.
“Come on, we need to get out on the streets. Roberts rates you higher than any analysts he’s ever had – you should be honoured. Let’s get that analytical mind of yours operating before we end up personally and professionally distracted!”
“That was kind of my plan. She’ll show up Jack. It’s London, people still talk, despite what you read in the papers. We’ll have her back within twenty-four hours. If not, I have a few ideas. I’m not alone; we have the might of the Metropolitan Police behind us. But yes, for now let’s go and see what havoc we can wreak on this amazing city.”
She turned towards the door, stopped, thought about re-arranging her sofa cushions, saw Cade’s eyes following her every move, smiled and headed for the stairs.
She paused. Sensing he might have overstepped the mark he leaned towards her. She put her arms around him and they hugged for about a minute. Short enough to feel a sense of warmth, long enough to show compassion. He’d never embraced a comparative stranger for quite so long, quite so intensely. They both exhaled slowly.
He held her at a distance and smiled, “Thanks Carrie, I’ve known you five minutes and yet I feel a sense of connection I never had with my wife – or any other woman for that matter. If I never tell you again, I think you are a very special person.”
“Thanks Jack, that’s what they all say. A shame, I’m fed up with being either everyone’s entertainment or just ‘special’. I was hoping that I might have found someone I could finally fall for. It’s not just about sex you know…”
“Carrie, you don’t need to justify your obvious and insatiable lust, it’s OK.”
“Sod off, Cade.”
“Sod off, Sergeant Cade.”
He slapped her forcefully across her backside causing her to shriek.
“You’ll wait, my little obsessive, compulsive lovely.”
She kissed him vigorously, pocketed her cell phone and put her jacket on.
“I’m ready Ca…Sergeant Cade, let’s go and kick some serious backside.”
O’Shea was correct. The might of the biggest metropolitan force in Britain was starting to swing into action. A juggernaut, it would slowly get up to speed, calling on various individuals and departments, the emphasis and importance slowly gaining impetus as each link in the chain of command was reached. It might take an hour for the ripples to come to a halt, for command and control to take over but at least Cade was content that something was being instigated, no doubt by an equally manic Roberts.
Armed with this knowledge Cade and O’Shea set out t
o carry out their own search for Petrov – a foreigner in a foreign land.
It was late; the temperature had dropped and a hint of mist was rolling in from the Thames. The streets resembled a scene from a Dickensian horror film, the sodium lighting doing its best to add to the unnatural atmosphere.
Out of the darkness an iconic shape appeared, first, a pair of yellowy headlamps, long past their sell by date but doing their utmost to illuminate a path for their driver, they belonged to the familiar large-grilled façade of a Post Office red AEC Routemaster double decker bus.
The Routemaster was one of those globally recognised icons, as familiar as cheese on toast and as dependable as a comfortable pair of tartan slippers.
Cade stepped out into the street and held up his warrant card.
“Jack, what the hell are you doing?” asked a still excitable O’Shea.
“I’m availing myself of the benefits of a warrant card; free travel. Come on, let’s talk to the driver, he’ll know these streets better than most.”
“But why don’t we wait for a job car? It would be quicker, surely?”
“Surely it would, but even plain ones stand out like Bulldog’s testicles. So, when in London…”
The Routemaster driver saw Cade appear through the enveloping mist, pumped his right foot on the brakes, temporarily closed his eyes and hoping for the best came to an abrupt halt. Empty but for its driver it was one of the last of a line of dependable, driver/conductor vehicles still in service in the city.
At the wheel was an Afro-Caribbean man in his late fifties called George Douglas.
Douglas was heading to his professional home. The last of the line, he and his beloved steed had seen every type of human behaviour, upbeat and equally, negative. Douglas even had a name for his bus; Dolly.
He often joked that he and Dolly were like an old married couple, they spent countless hours together, but hardly ever talked – the only difference being that when they did, she always won the arguments.
He sat on a seat long past its best; worn, gnarled brown leather cosseted him, but every crease had a tale to tell. The steering wheel was enormous when compared to its modern counterpart. To his right a pair of simple switches, one for the headlights the other for the wipers.
To his left the model number was inscribed simply on the wall of the vehicle and a green sign told the driver that the poorly fitted sliding window was his emergency exit. Douglas opened it in the summer when the temperature in the cab became unbearable. With only one non-fault crash in his driving history, he had never needed it for anything else.
Douglas and his partner had covered almost half a million miles with only a break for six days when he had lost his real-life childhood sweetheart, Cynthia; she had been so brave, succumbing after a silent, valiant and belligerent battle against stomach cancer.
Douglas wasn’t always a slightly bowed man; he had once been a part of the Jamaican youth athletics squad, long before the nation would stun the world with its repeated list of champions. His thick wiry hair wasn’t always tinged with silver either, but his chestnut eyes had always been passion-filled and when he and Cynthia danced to Otis, she loved nothing more than to look into them, losing herself, and for a short while her problems too.
During the seventies and eighties, Douglas had sported one of the best moustaches the fleet had ever seen. The morning after he lost the love of his life, he shaved it off, hair by hair, allowing each one to slip quietly away into the plumbing of his Victorian terraced home south of the river.
Those that knew Douglas said he changed from that day on.
He switched routes, moving north of the Thames but had negotiated that his old colleagues looked after Dolly at Camberwell. His Regional Manager, a man who unlike many of his peers recognised that loyalty was a two-way street had allowed it to happen. It was one of the reasons his crews were the most engaged.
Douglas had certainly seen it all and now on his penultimate drive to his favoured garage he found himself confronted by yet another fool, except this one was waving something at him. He shoved his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose, focused, and then rammed his foot into the worn carpet, hoping Dolly would do as she was told.
He slid the driver’s window back with his right hand and started to tell the white man exactly what he thought of him.
“What in God’s heaven do you tink you are doing, bwoi? ‘Ave you got a death wish or sometin’? Why I should come out there and kick your backside from ‘ere to Camberwell…”
Douglas continued to focus. He knew in reality he had needed new glasses for a few months, but like Dolly they had been faithful servants. He’d make do for one more day.
What he saw through the frosted lenses was a police warrant card inscribed with the name Jack Cade.
He shook his head from side to side before sucking air in through his teeth.
“Well, there’s a surprise, a police officer. If you ask me, your lot are either cynical, paranoid or racists…”
Cade paused and replied with a gritty façade, “Sorry, I don’t believe a word of that, either that or I’m hearing voices, or perhaps, is it because you are black?”
Douglas looked at him with an equally stony face, then burst out laughing.
“Boy, you are sometin’ else, some-tin else. Girl, you should keep your hand on this one, he’s a keeper. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a bus to deliver safely back home…”
Cade smiled, knowing his approach had not been without risk.
He held out his hand, “Jack Cade, temporarily assigned to the local police – and this wonderful lady is called Carrie. She drew the short straw. Look, my friend, I wouldn’t normally ask, but we’ve had a very serious incident tonight. One of our team has been kidnapped. I don’t make a habit of forcibly stopping wonderful old girls like this, but I need your help.”
Cade stroked the cooling front wing of the Routemaster, causing Douglas to instantly mellow.
The wonderfully soulful eyes that looked back at Cade had lost their bitterness; Douglas leant out of the window slightly and returned the handshake. His skin was burred but warm.
“OK, sergeant – this may be the most reckless thing I have done, but what do you need?”
Cade swiftly explained – what he needed was to drift through the streets unseen and Dolly was the perfect Trojan horse.
“Come to the front of the bus once you board, if you need me shout through the window to the left of the cab, I’ll hear you, but I must warn you if tings get hairy this old girl will respond. I held the lap record at Chiswick Driver Training Centre, man I could put these beauties sideways!”
“Will do. Tell me, isn’t there another way to communicate? Do you have a cell phone I can give you a bell on?”
“Mister, the only bell on dis bus is the one you press to get my attention. My Conductor Eddie normally does that, but I dropped him off earlier – he had a hot date. One ring for stop the bus, two for it’s OK to go and three rings to cancel the two rings. Easy, right? By the way…”
“Yes.”
“You might want to try it on top, you get a better view.”
O’Shea bit her lower lip in an attempt not to smile before following the instructions to board the bus via the iconic rear door.
Cade and O’Shea stood in the aisle on the iconic vehicle, waiting for their new team member to get going. She started giggling, an act that rarely visited her.
“I think you need to ring the bell, Jack…”
He leant up and hit the button twice.
Douglas started his companion and hearing its durable Leyland engine rumbling into life looked in his right-hand mirror and merged back onto the road. He had rediscovered his youthful exuberance once more. His eyes shone. Where was Cynthia when he needed her?
As the Routemaster took them along the quiet street Cade turned to O’Shea.
“Come on you, upstairs.”
O’Shea was genuinely surprised and feigned a servant/Lord of the manor role
-play.
“Ooh sire, I never thought…”
“Daft bugger, we’ll see more from up there. Go on, after you.”
O’Shea navigated the curved staircase, aware that Cade was immediately behind her. He knew that she knew that he was staring at her backside. It was a great view after all, but now was not the time, nor the place. They made it to the front of the top deck and started to scan left and right.
“Shit, this is one hell of a big city Carrie!”
“It is, but you know, if it was me, I’d either be on a ferry to Calais by now or I would look to lay low nearby. Why risk being stopped by a random patrol vehicle?”
Douglas duly stopped at traffic lights and controlled junctions, moving off effortlessly with such a light payload. He looked in his periscope mirror and could see his passengers. They were an attractive couple and like many on board Dolly were probably finding the temptation to engage in a clandestine sexual act almost unbearable. Alone and later at night, many couples did.
He laughed when he recalled a young couple doing just that. It was in the early eighties, slightly intoxicated, she was the driving force, pulling her summer dress over her head and revealing a young tanned body, a pair of matching white knickers and a smile. Her lover was a year younger and almost unable to restrain himself. He certainly couldn’t believe his luck.
From the moment the Conductor had rang the bell, they had begun. Her underwear was nestled on her shoes and her outstretched hands were up against the front window, her conquest industriously entering her, his right foot on the seat next to him providing extra leverage, looking over his shoulder, the fear of being caught adding to the excitement. He wouldn’t last long.
What they hadn’t accounted for was a certain Jamaican called George Douglas. In his prime and desperate to get home to see his own beloved girl, he had voyeuristically watched the whole act through the periscope.
Upstairs, his only passengers were enjoying a different pastime.
Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1) Page 43
