She’d either be run over, which would annoy her immensely or attract somebody, either in a car, or a heavy goods vehicle or on the network of cameras that scanned the area. She wasn’t choosy.
In five minutes they were five hundred metres away. Nothing. No alarms. No shouting. No frantic activity. Ten more and they were closer to the traffic noise. It was to their right, but the track went straight ahead.
Cross the fields, with their uneven surfaces or stick to the track?
The wind whipped across the open landscape and wrapped itself around them, cooling their body temperatures, dragging them down.
O’Shea recognised the signs. “Come on John we need to keep moving. If we stop, we die. Here, in a freezing field. OK?”
“OK.” It was all he could find in his otherwise normally flamboyant vocabulary. It was enough for her.
“This way, come on.”
It was getting damp underfoot, their strides became laboured. They were on the track now and they sensed that their environs had changed. The moon peered out from under the covers and for a short time offered them a view. Of the River Thames. They had gone the wrong way.
She steepled her hands up, against her lips then drummed her fingers against her knuckles. It was how she thought in times of stress, done it since she was a troubled teenager.
“Where are you, Jack?”
“I’m behind you.”
“No, sorry, I said Jack. God I wish he was here now.” She took stock of the situation, looked around. The motorway was there, to their right, but to get to it they had to navigate along a riverbank in the dark and Old Father Thames was an unforgiving soul at the best of times.
They could go back. No, that wasn’t an option. Sooner or later someone would raise the alarm. She knew where they were, roughly. North Kent, at this time of night, half an hour from London and yet there wasn’t a single bloody house for miles. Cars, hundreds of them snaked back and forth across the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. Aircraft, overhead, heading for Heathrow and the smaller airport in the heart of London. And the river, flowing from their left to their right, wending its way out of the capital, past the marshes and banks, and mudflats and the estuary and the place where fresh became salty and then the North Sea.
So they had to turn left. A sound stopped them both. A haunting call. A female screaming for help.
‘Help…help…’
The sound was one of solitude, visceral.
“It’s OK. It’s a vixen. We need to move.”
Thomas nodded. Living in a city, he had seen foxes in an urban environment, but had never heard the call. He shuddered.
“John. This way, we walk slowly, they won’t find us out here, we’ve made some ground on them. We just need to get to a house with a phone, then we are safe. Do you hear me John?”
She knew she was losing him.
“John? We have to go.” She grabbed his arm and led him into the undergrowth.
“Stop!” It was Thomas this time. “There’s a car coming.”
“OK. You stay here and I’ll flag them down.”
“No. It’s them Carrie. I know it is.”
A swathe of bright light lit his face, red, dried and weeping sores and a dark crimson hole where his eye had once been.
The driver was concentrating on the task and had looked down to turn the radio off. They were passing the old factory and making their way to the river.
The face could have been a barn owl, silently drifting around the night sky, hunting. Or an optical illusion, a reflection off the surface of the river. It mattered not; he had turned the lights off now, hadn’t seen a thing, and that provided O’Shea with the one chance she needed to drag Thomas into the undergrowth.
“Stay down. And don’t move.” Her words seemed to echo across the field and beyond. She could hear both of their hearts pounding.
They half crouched into a ragged hawthorn bush and waited, prayed that they would remain unseen.
The van slowed, changing down instead of braking, then rolled to a stop. No brake lights. Smart.
They were all within feet of the river. Three men got out, two from the back, one, the driver shone a small torch into the load area.
She could hear them now. Their accents were heavily laced, foreign to an English-speaking girl and her cripple of an associate.
She couldn’t understand what they were saying, yet she was able to gather from their tone that one was in charge and what he said, went.
“Come on, we need to hurry, Jackdaw told us to do this and be back…” He checked his watch. “In ten minutes.”
The three of them climbed into the van and rolled the rock out and onto the pallet truck. It clattered down, snapping the weak timbers and remained where it had dropped. Now they pushed and pulled and moaned and wheezed and sighed. Mopped their brows, looked at their watches.
“I will push it with the van.”
Who were they to argue? It seemed like the only idea they had left. He turned the vehicle around, tyres slipping on the wet mud, then lined it up, turned on the sidelights so he could see. The last thing he wanted was to end up in the river too.
He released the hand brake and began to accelerate in second gear, hoping to get more traction. The two men stood back, but the driver called out to them. “Push me, we need to do everything we can. If we fail we will end up like that woman. Come on!”
He drove, they pushed. The London Stone was resolute.
O’Shea and Thomas watched, motionless from the sanctuary of the hedgerow, amazed that they hadn’t been seen, feeling that they stood out like the Shard on the London skyline.
The men were focused on their task.
The driver pushed the accelerator harder, trying not to spin the wheels. Nothing.
“Stop brother,” said the youngest. “I have an idea.”
He began to break the pallet into pieces, creating a roadway of his own. “Try now.”
The stone began to move. It wasn’t rolling, more a case of sliding in the cold mud. Slowly it edged towards the river.
“We need more light.”
He knew it was not without risk but turned the lights onto main beam. The river lit up, a slight mist rolled across the surface. The water was cold, and dark and deep.
He pushed more, eager to complete the task. They had come all this way for this. This apparently famous stone had been stolen, torn from its roots after a thousand years just to make a point. And now, they were tipping it into the river? It made no sense. But he knew it made less sense to challenge his leader.
And then it rolled, and kept rolling. Momentum was a wonderful thing. A gentle, steady pace, gathering speed until it began its journey down the bank and entered the water with a tremendous dull thud. A few ducks, startled by the noise, cackled and took flight.
The men stood and watched it sink, away from the bank, a few muddy bubbles rising to the surface.
Beneath the misty river the rock continued to roll, down, deeper towards the river bed, colliding with a long-submerged tree. It struck it hard, pushed it at least a foot and then came to rest.
The London Stone was gone and its theft would send shockwaves through the city and across the internet.
‘Famous city landmark stolen!’
The men shook hands quietly. One produced a packet of cigarettes. Offered them around. The youngest declined. “I don’t smoke.”
“You do tonight brother. Come on, let’s finish these and go and get some sleep, see what the other team did, see if they have brought us some money. Yes? A good idea?”
The younger one coughed, trying to clear his lungs. He flicked the cigarette into the river, its arc followed by the red embers until it hissed defeat into the cold water. He watched it circle in a small tidal eddy, then sink. He was transfixed, stood, swallowing hard, shaking and pointing.
The two older men looked at where he was pointing, ten feet off the bank, in the water, illuminated by the headlights.
O’Shea saw her too. Pushed her righ
t hand up to her mouth to stop the scream, took it away, then back, silently retched. Thomas said nothing but stared. He could see now.
All five living were staring at the dead.
The rock had dislodged her.
Cynthia Bell had surfaced, her bloated, bleached body bobbed up, face first. O’Shea could swear she was smiling as she drifted downstream, towards the sea.
The men turned, got back in the van and headed back to the factory. Terrified. The dead had come back for them. The woman had looked at them. They made a pact. Tell no one. In fact, keep driving, to the port, head home. Forget the money, forget the fame. Forget it all.
Take the long way home.
O’Shea stood for a minute, maybe two, trying to compose herself. She had known her friend had died. Yet somehow hoped they had just buried her. Not tipped her body into the river to join the floating debris, cleansed by the outgoing tide.
“Bastards.”
“Not now Carrie. We need to get to safety. Come on.” For the first time Thomas had taken control, peering out through his good eye he took her hand and made towards a partially lit house about half a mile away.
He broke her trance again. “Come on. When they get back to that place they will wake the others and then we will be hunted. Right now we have the advantage, a head start. But not for long.”
The Transit van was about to drive by the old fireworks factory, turn left and head to the motorway and the port of Dover. Home was calling. The driver stopped and turned to his colleagues.
“We can’t go. We have to tell Jackdaw. If we leave, he will have us tracked across Europe. Before we even get home, they will find us and we will be treated like animals. Or if we are lucky, he might just shoot us. I cannot live a life looking over my shoulder. Think about what he did to those people. That was for fun.”
He had made the decision. He reversed back down the track and parked. They walked in, through the unsteady door, the noise woke the guard, who jumped up, flashed his torch at them, then realised he had been asleep. He stared at them. “Please do not tell anyone. I beg you.”
He handed over his own cheap watch and some cigarettes. It was the currency of shame and he was easily bought. He walked quickly to the room that had been a cell, stepped through blood-tainted rags, slipped on a pool of stale urine, tried not to inhale, then turned on the light.
He put his hands up to his head. Balled his grubby fists. He may as well kill himself right now. He called out. Weak at first, then louder. “Help. Help”
They came running.
Jackdaw lifted himself off of his make-shift bed and walked. He knew.
“I will deal with you another day. Go. Get out there and find them. On foot, no cars. No lights, do I make myself clear? And when you come back, I need to speak to you, man to man.”
The second and third van arrived. Constantin went to them, up to the driver’s door.
“We have cash boss. Lots of it.”
“I don’t care. Go back out, onto the road, you go left, you right, they have escaped. Find them, but bring them back alive. If you have to, kill the man, but bring the woman back in one piece. Now go.”
Men ran into the night, trying to find their footing on an unforgiving landscape which the moon chose not to illuminate. It was on O’Shea’s side. Someone had to be.
She was moving at a pace now but suddenly found herself pushed down in the long and cold and wet grass that had a cool crispness to it. If they made it to the next morning, she knew they would see a heavy frost.
“Stay still. They are coming.”
“I can’t hear them.”
“I can. I have the advantage Carrie. My ears are working better than they ever did. They are close. Stay down.”
They waited. “OK, let’s go, make for the house. Split up if we have to. Good luck.”
She stopped him. “John. Thank you.”
He smiled, focusing with what was left of his favoured sense and nodded. “No sweetheart, thank you.”
Chapter Forty
It took an hour of crawling through the deep grass before they had reached the outer-edge of a garden. A solitary detached house, inland from the Thames, shrouded in mist and now frost. Bordered by a tall hedge, chickens safely tucked up for the night, away from the inquisitive eyes of the vixen.
There was a horse somewhere, disturbed by their presence but loyal to their cause.
O’Shea moved slightly, causing the clothes she wore to creak and crack, their damp seams now frozen. She was right. If they hadn’t been in such an abysmal situation, it would have been magical. The frost was beginning to appear, around them, on them, crystals linked together plunging the surroundings into an arctic pallor.
“Christ, it’s cold…” She was too exhausted to lift her hands to her mouth and blow what warm air she had left across them.
How they had made it this far was beyond her. Human endurance and all that. A headline that would never appear.
‘You are a belligerent soul Miss O’Shea…’ The words of her deputy head, long ago. He was right. She was. ‘I can only hope your stubbornness rewards you one day.’
“You stay here John, I’ll go and get help. There is a light on, looks like the kitchen. John? John?”
She pushed him but all he could do was roll over onto his back, mouth open, eye socket oozing blood, thinned by the night air, matting his face and hair and mixing with the last remains of eye liner and foundation. A grotesque carapace, on a forlorn face, in a lonely corner of England, only metres from salvation.
They were so close.
O’Shea began to sob. Each inward breath hurt her lungs. She tried to stand but had little in the way of energy. She lay down, her eyes close to the tundra-like soil, bitterly cold. Only a small insect was moving. It stepped cautiously across the ground, picking its way beyond her line of sight, stopping, she was sure, to gaze at her and smile, before slipping between the cracks and heading for somewhere less hostile.
She was hearing voices now. A rolling series of words, cascading through her mind. None of them made sense, but they carried on regardless.
Jackdaw had called off his attack dogs a few hours before. She had lain in the undergrowth, watching tail lights; some turning left, the others right. Hour after hour, waiting for the all clear and a chance to move.
The group had left the old fireworks factory, also leaving one of their own behind, forced to step off an old wooden box into the next life or die another day. Either way, it would be at his own hand, whilst Alex Stefanescu watched.
‘Your choice.’
A rope. A knife or a cooling drink of battery acid. Laid out like a recipe challenge on a television programme.
‘All fun and games my dear boy.’ He had smiled as he watched the young man grabbing at the rope, legs spinning, eyes bulging, his feet frantically trying to get back to the box, which Constantin pushed with his foot, teasing, each time, an inch too far. His body swung and kicked and writhed, desperate, worse, dying. He had seconds left. He could hear his young girlfriend calling him. Then a violent, pulsing heartbeat.
“This is what happens when you fall asleep on duty gentlemen. Do I need to say anything else?”
Whilst he waited for anyone brave enough to answer he looked at the young male, who was now slowly swinging to a halt. Arms at his side, palms facing the group in a hopeless, almost inquisitive gesture.
‘Why me?’
There was no time for tears. That function had been shut down. Eyes open. Tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. A pendulum of death, saved onto Alex’s cell phone as a movie file. Short and sweet and unsavoury. Another one for the holiday snap album.
‘No sir. Nothing.’
“Good. Then clear this place up, put him in one of the vans and find somewhere to dump him. But please…do it where no one will find him!” He almost danced as he paced around the floor, partly fuelled by adrenaline, mainly to fight off the cold.
“So now what?” Constantin asked his boss, impas
sive as it was possible to be. He had seen hangings before. Preferred to drown his victims.
“Now? We execute something more worthwhile. Phase Two. Send home those that have had enough, with the usual warning. Select the better ones and contact the new teams. I want to start very soon. And find me somewhere better to stay than this shithole.”
“It is all organised. We will pick up a car soon. A local friend will help us. Someone from the travelling community. He asked no questions. Then yes you and perhaps I can sleep in a far better place, whilst your workers earn their corn.”
Alex smiled a lopsided smile. He did need to sleep. But not just yet. He needed to run a few things through his mind. Once or twice.
Their vehicle had stopped. He could hear Constantin talking, somewhere nearby. He opened one eye. People looking at him, wrapped up against the cold, almost bowing, willingly handing over a new mode of transport, one that would not attract attention. A reputation was worth its weight in gold.
When his head clashed against the tinted side window of the Audi A7 for the third time, he knew he needed to sleep. “Did you send those postcards and packages?”
“I arranged it, yes.”
“Good. Wake me when we are there?”
He didn’t hear the answer.
In the fields, close enough to smell the early crucifixion of some wholemeal bread O’Shea shuffled further on. She had laid alongside Thomas, all night, hoping he would still be alive, and praying she would survive long enough to call for help through her frost-parched lips.
She knew he was dead. But hope cost nothing. She raised an arm, a desperate attempt to attract the right attention, tried to focus through chilled lashes that tore at her sensitive skin each time she opened them. She looked at the bloodied fingertips, raw from crawling along the frigid ground, then let her arm drop back down beside her and closed her eyes.
It had been the longest night of her life.
Half an hour north west, at the Home Office the mail was being delivered. Bright and early as it always had been. A simple yet effective system ensured the In mail was dealt with first, then the Out when things had calmed. Another brutally cold day in London had seen staff arriving, some on buses, some on the tube. A few had cycled, some hardier souls had walked. All were cold, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves. Stamping their feet at bus stops to stay warm. Talking to no one.
Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3) Page 39
