Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3)

by Lewis Hastings

  “No, this is shaving foam. It’s time to tidy you up for the cameras.”

  Her mind was whirring. A hundred miles an hour in one direction, two hundred in the other. ‘No, No. No!’

  “Look, whatever you want with us, just do it quickly. Please.”

  “But dear Caroline, no one knows where you are. Not even you, with all your analytical training. So there really is no rush. Shout. Scream. Call for Cynthia. No, wait, she is probably floating down the river as we speak, on the night tide, unless she sinks and gets trapped beneath a log or something.”

  “I cannot cry any more tears. So just do your worst.”

  “I suspect you can. Anyway, I must get on, time is money. I just need to finish a little message that was started many years ago. A little love letter to Mr Cade.”

  She stared at him blankly. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Me too,” said Thomas, earning a slap full across the face, then a punch, driven deep into the groin. It would keep her quiet for a while.

  “Remember when Alex sent a man into your home all those years ago? He cut a line into your neck and a curl from your pretty hair and mailed it to your lover boy?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Well, I would have done a better job.”

  “You mean like the one you did when you tried to poison me, you sick bastard.”

  “That would have worked, but for the knight in his shining armour. I watched him arrive, you know. Watched him run to be by your side. I just got the mixture wrong.”

  She said nothing.

  “No, you see, I need to send a message to the men in your life once more. Alex told me I could play with you for a while, but he was very specific. He wants to distract your team, so he can get on with his final operation in your beautiful, overcrowded city. That is why you are here.”

  He inhaled slowly. “It is not personal. If the team are looking for you, and putting out our fires, they will have no time to see what is going on, under their pretty little noses.” He held the tip of his nose up with his index finger.

  As he laughed, he ran the scissors down her body, removed a patch of lustrous hair and placed it into the bag. He laid the scissors onto the table then sprayed the first of the white foam onto her stomach, drawing a smiley face before massaging it with his fingers until it covered her stomach and down into her hips before finally spreading it into and over the dark brown pubic patch.

  “Bear with me, I have never done this before.” He smirked, producing a gleaming cut-throat razor, turning it into the path of the bright light, admiring the clinical edge as the reflection lit the darkest corners of the room.

  He gently ran his finger against the grain.

  “Ouch. So sharp.”

  The first scrape was clean. He teased the hair up and allowed the blade to do its job. He flicked his hand at the end of the stroke, deftly, almost as a concert pianist finishes a note. The first cut left a smooth track of skin between the dark brown margins. Again he slid the blade against her flesh. She laid completely still. Now, she was quietly panicking.

  Thomas spoke. “Please Constantin, there is no need for this. For any of this. Just let her go. Do what you like with me.”

  “Oh, but I intend to. She is part of my strategy. You are a plaything for my amusement. Shut up now, you have said enough, unless you wish me to slip?”

  He had removed three strips of hair now, dropping them onto the concrete. He was, to be fair, adept with the blade. In minutes she was cleanly shaven. He rinsed her off, with real empathy, as if he knew it was a highly personal thing to do to her. Then, just as gently, he patted her down with a towel. Then ran his nose along her torso, inhaling.

  “Lovely. Now you look and smell so much sweeter.” He took a photo. “Smile.”

  He then ran a length of tape across her neck and under the table, wrapping it until it stuck to itself. She was going nowhere.

  He cut the tape from her head and pulled it quickly, causing her to yelp as it clutched at smaller hairs but allowed him access to her head.

  “Now, for the best part.” He walked around the table and produced a set of scissors. He held them expertly, lifting the first strand of her precious hair up and between his middle fingers, cutting as if he did it for a living. She could hear the blades sliding against each other, rhythmically removing sections of her hair, which was being carefully collected.

  Ten minutes later he had removed all of her lustrous curls. She now had a basic military-style cut. It was the ultimate insult as far as she was concerned. How did he know she prized it so much?

  He put the hair into a plastic zip-lock bag and sealed it.

  “A present for Jack and Jason. They will be so thrilled. DNA will show it is you and they will know you are alive. Or rather, you were when I removed it. Can they tell how long a person has been dead from their hair?” He thought for a while. “Interesting subject. Something to read about next time I am in a prison library.”

  “You could have taken one hair and sent it, you sadist twat.”

  “Well, that is hardly very kind, Miss O’Shea. A haircut like this in London would cost you hundreds and I haven’t finished yet.”

  He wet her scalp and squirted more of the soap onto it, rubbing it vigorously with his fingertips.

  “Dear God, no.” O’Shea began to cry. He wiped the tears away, licking one. “Salty, we must be by the sea!”

  The blade slid across her scalp, inch by perfect inch until she was bald, almost shiny. It was strangely rather attractive. It was as if he had removed the last of her strength, her dignity and her fight.

  Two small cuts were tended to until they stopped bleeding.

  He took another photo.

  “OK, last time. Smile.”

  He took one from above her. The flash lit up the room. Then one up between her legs, capturing her breasts and chin in the same shot. Then he swapped to the other end of the table and obtained one from her head to her toes.

  He ran his hand over her head, down her cheek, across her neck, held his hand against her windpipe, watched her eyes bulge, then pinched her nostrils shut with his spare hand. Waited. Then smiled as she hauled air into her lungs.

  His hands continued to explore her, up and over her breasts. He drew a line across her stomach, walked his fingers down towards the newly smooth part of her body, circled around her, then down her thighs to her feet.

  Lastly, he licked the sole of her foot, marvelling at how it tightened under his touch. Just in the middle, curling the toes.

  “Isn’t the human being a wonderful thing, Caroline?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I asked you a question.” He placed the cut throat blade on her stomach, handle pointing up to her face.

  “Yes. It is. Now, have you finished your sick game?”

  “I am simply shocked that you think this was a game. This was to make you feel better. You were dirty and I know how compulsive you are. Your bathroom was a thing of beauty, all the bottles lined up in a row. The mirror. Oh, so clean. The towels, straight, not a stray hair in the shower tray or that lovely deep bath. And your underwear drawer, lined with paper and a sprig of fresh lilac. So pretty. You see, I know what my customer wants. You will feel so much better.”

  He pulled a sad face. “Or, if you are unhappy with the service, then please complain to the manager.”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “Good. You do understand what I have just done, don’t you, my dear girl?”

  “Given me a great haircut?”

  He smiled a splintered smile.

  “No. I have deliberately and expertly humiliated you.” He tapped her below the right knee, watching her reflexes remonstrate. “Marvellous. Simply marvellous. You can relax now. It’s your turn, Lucy.”

  He gave a look that said he hadn’t slept well in days and had bottled up years of hatred that he now needed an outlet for. And she was it.

  “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Such a lovely name. For a woman. But you
are something else entirely. I mean, look, there it is. We can all see it. Small and insignificant though it is. Cold, are you?”

  “Yes, I am freezing. Please, we were such friends. Be kind to us.”

  “Again, past tense. In the past. And now very tense!” His knowledge of English shocked his audience, but they forgot he had spent a lot of time reading, and alone.

  He rubbed his fingers along the soles of Thomas’ feet too, gaining the same reaction.

  “Aren’t feet strange, Carrie? I am not a foot person, but they are a remarkable contraption. Hideous things, but we are lost without them. Unable to run away. Would you agree?”

  “Yes, feet are strange.”

  “Have you heard of Bastinado?”

  “Other than when people refer to you? No.”

  “Such wittiness. Then watch as I educate you.” He picked up a cane. Ran the tip over Lucy’s feet, making them squirm. She was obviously ticklish. Then Constantin struck the soles with a vicious blow.

  “That is bastinado!” The sound was similar to a high velocity rifle shot, cracking in the air. Then he did it again. “Practiced in many prisons as a form of discipline.” He walked around as if presenting a lecture to a group of eager students.

  “Very painful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Thomas could hardly speak. And then it came again. And again.

  “Happened to me as a child, then in prison. My feet are like granite now. How would you…”

  He whipped the soles of Lucy’s feet again.

  “…describe the pain? Burning? Throbbing? Piercing? I used to find it piercing. Painful, oh yes, very painful. The guards in my first prison used to whip me until I was almost bleeding. Then they would barely touch me and the pain was worse. It has something…” Thwack, he hit her again, harder, right in the middle of the foot. “…to do with the nerves.”

  He stepped forward and snapped the cane through the air. The tip hit Thomas’ genitals, almost tearing a hole in the skin.

  “But they say that that is even more painful. Or here…” The cane rushed through the air as he struck Thomas across the nipples.

  “Nice, eh? A good feeling. So good to be alive!”

  He dropped the cane and grabbed hold of a roll of flesh above the pubic bone and ripped the hair by the roots. Thomas screamed.

  “Please. Can’t you do it like you did it to her?”

  It was exactly the request he wanted.

  “With the razor? Yes, my dear, it would be a privilege. The only problem is…” He yawned as if he were in front of an intimate theatre audience. “The problem is I am so tired and I could slip…at any moment.”

  He lowered the blade towards the greying-brown hairs and took the first cut. “Et voila! It means there you go.”

  He threw the hair to the floor, knowing it would be washed away soon. The police would probably empty the drains when they finally found the place, but by then Constantin knew he’d either be a long way away, or dead.

  “And another careful cut…” He handled the blade very well, cutting, turning, wiping it on a towel. Then he ran the blade across Lucy’s stomach, in a curving, free-form line, creating a scarlet wave.

  “That is beautiful. A wave, like the one I have on my wrist. Yours is red, whereas mine is blue. You should see this Carrie, a work of art. I need to get a mirror next time I go shopping.”

  He then ran the back of the blade up Lucy’s body, pausing at her neck, knowing that one cut would end her life. He ran the handle over the Adam’s apple just to see the reaction. He raised his eyebrows, indicating a sense of irony. “Such a shame it ended this way.”

  “No, please Constantin, no, think. Think what you are doing. Please.” Lucy was most certainly a male now, no more show business, cross dressing fantasy or roleplaying. He was a naked male, strapped to a makeshift platform in a derelict factory. Nothing more. And he was potentially minutes from death.

  “Oh, I am not going to kill you. When you make love to someone beautiful, the best part is the foreplay. This is the foreplay.”

  He checked the tightness of duct tape that held his head in place, a tight band across the forehead, wound a few times around the bed. It was simple but effective.

  The blade started to cut into the left eyebrow, Thomas felt a combination of nausea and fear, then heat, then cold. He was sweating. His pulse raised. Then he blacked out.

  Constantin cut diagonally, downwards, skirting the eye socket and missing the nose, slicing through his lip, which bled profusely, bright red, dripping down and around his neck. Then the lower lip and across his chin.

  He carefully placed the blade next to Lucy’s right eyebrow and repeated the action. His work was done, for now. Thomas’ face was covered in blood, but when it stopped, as it would, he would be left with a perfect red cross on his face.

  “I’m done with you. I have crossed you off my list! OK? Time for bed. Let me cover you both up, you look frozen. Imagine how it must feel to live like this for weeks, months, longer? My family members died in the Nazi prison camps…gassed and tortured because they were Romani. Did you know our people were the second largest group to be exterminated because of our ethnicity?”

  Carrie knew she needed to engage with him.

  “Yes. What they did to your people was terrible. But what you are doing to us, for revenge or whatever your agenda is, it is just as bad. Constantin, I just need you to stop and think. It is just as bad.” She had hoped this would somehow plant a seed of doubt in his shattered mind.

  He walked around for a while, composing himself.

  “Just as bad?” His voice raised, his mouth filling with bile. “My family were at Dachau, Caroline. I was told of one little girl who leaned forward to catch a raindrop in her mouth. She was shot where she stood and left there for days. They took our people’s names and replaced them with a number etched into their skin. My uncle told me of a time he saw a door opened by soldiers and a wall of pregnant women and children fell onto the floor. He had no idea how many there were. He was a little boy. He lied about his age so they would put him to work rather than kill him.”

  “I despise what they did to your people. But you mark yourself now, with that wave tattoo.” What she was about to say wasn’t without risk. “Isn’t that similar?”

  “Similar? Forced to stand for days, without food or water, then eventually, thankfully, killed? No. The wave shows I belong to a better group, one that rewards me for who I am, and where I am from.”

  He picked some old damp blankets from the floor and lovingly tucked both of his prisoners in, kissing them both on the foreheads.

  “Goodnight. I am off for a stroll by the river.” Then he walked out and switched the portable light off.

  O’Shea waited a second, blinking to try to regain her night vision. “You alright?”

  There was no reply, just the gentle sound of a broken man sobbing, his tears washing the blood away from his face. Sticky, drying, congealed.

  O’Shea continued. “He’s lost the plot, Lucy. We have to get out of here soon. I don’t know if it’s the heroin or just psychosis, but we have to leave. Tonight.”

  Half a mile away, Constantin’s younger team had edged down a bank and lowered Cynthia into the Thames. They couldn’t do it quick enough. Touching a body is considered taboo by Romani, connecting to the supernatural, something that is to be avoided.

  They turned, but one, the youngest, couldn’t take his eyes off the body as it began its last journey, face down along the impressive river; covered in a veil of mist and drifting silently towards the sea.

  Cynthia moved gently with the tidal flow before getting stuck in an eddy, which caused her to slowly turn. The men watched, transfixed, as she appeared to come back towards them.

  Romani believe that the dead might come back to wreak havoc on the living. Their rituals are massively different to other ethnic groups. They distance themselves from the dead, burning their possessions, asking for forgiveness and concern themselves that should the
y not make a good impression on the dying or dead, that the spirit will return as a Mulo – what gypsies refer to as the undead.

  Their greatest fear is that the spirit may reappear to resolve unpaid debts.

  “That woman has a debt to settle. Come on, let’s go. Please. We need to go now.” The boy’s voice was breaking, stammering. It wasn’t the cold.

  Watching Bell’s corpse change direction caused the men to retreat up the bank, one falling, sliding into the river, grabbed by a friend.

  “Get me out. Get me out!”

  Bell turned over in the frigid river, her face now visible in the partial moonlight. She was staring at the men; her face illuminated, cold eyes open. The water began to cover her face, but they could still see her, just beneath the blackened water. They were unable to look away. Mesmerised.

  She began to slide into the depths, her grotesque arm the last thing to disappear below the surface.

  And she was gone. For now.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Hyundai took the next corner at eighty, the narrow front tyres screaming in protest. Stefan grabbed at the door handle, trying to turn, to look back, fighting against the G-force. They had been driving like this for a few kilometres since McCall had lost them in the town of Pitesti. The BMW was a distant threat for now.

  “Where did you learn to drive?”

  “New Zealand mate. You can start at fifteen there.”

  “You can start at that age in Romania.”

  “But I’m talking legally. I first drove on the old man’s farm, everywhere sideways. Then later, I got a licence and when I joined up, they taught me how to drive properly.”

  “So you are military?”

  “Yes, mate. I thought we had established that?”

  “By the way you caused havoc back at the nightclub…”

  “That was nothing. If my team had been with me…boom!”

  Stefan found a moment to smile. He felt that if he had a chance to escape, then it was better to do it alongside this man. For once he pitied his brother, if anyone knew how to outsmart him it might be this mysterious man that had called himself the Bushman.