The Irishman looked at Francis’ medals. Saw the Northern Ireland ribbon, with its familiar green and purple stripes. Knew he was among friends.
“No sir we are fine, tempers got a bit frayed, as they sometimes do at weddings and funerals. I’ll be off.”
“Can I help? The weather is awful. We could get you to your car quicker if I push.”
“Do I need to start tapping myself sarcastically gents? I am still here you know.” asked Reddington, perplexed and also sick of standing in the rain.
“I can see that ma’am, but respectfully this old soldier is getting wet and cold too. Best I make a move. My respects to your family. Your grandfather was a fascinating man.”
Francis began to wheel him away.
“And who are you exactly?”
“Who I am is not who I was. Best leave it at that.” With that, he began to wheel the retired warrant officer down a slight hill towards another car park.
Reddington followed. Grabbed hold of Francis. Stopped him in his tracks.
“That was not an answer soldier. I demand that you tell me who you are.”
Francis peeled her fingers off the chair. “I am Soldier A as far as you are concerned ma’am. Now if you don’t mind.”
She pushed him a short sharp open hand to the chest.
Cade spotted it first. “Come on, mate, we need to sort this. Those two are on their toes too.” He motioned towards Doto’s two bodyguards who were walking quickly towards Francis. The diplomat followed them, walking as quickly as her heels would allow.
Now there was a group, in the most celebrated of cemeteries in the pouring rain and a fight was about to start.
Roberts was out of the car having made a quick call for backup. You never knew how things might escalate. ‘Run to a fire, walk to a fight’ was the first thing he had remembered from his training school days. And it wouldn’t be the first fight he’d been to at a funeral.
But this one was different. Reddington was pushing Francis again and almost tipping the Irishman out of his wheelchair.
“Take your feckin’ hands off my friend here you jumped up little bitch,” said the Irishman, almost spitting the words out.
Francis was now grappling with Reddington, wondering quite what the hell he had walked into. “Just let go!”
In the end he resorted to what he called old school active resistance, grabbed hold of her wrist and twisted it in one fluid movement until she was overbalanced.
This was no meek and mild little woman though. She was a soldier. She ran her shoe down his leg and rammed it onto his foot.
“Oh, you shit!” He winced as the heel of her service shoe ground the fine layer of skin from his shin bone.
He twisted the wrist even more, making her scream so she clawed at his face with her free hand. Francis was not enjoying this at all. What he wanted to do was punch her fully in the face but he was a gentleman.
It was clear she was no lady though. With her foot she pushed the Irishman away. His wheelchair careered down the track and stopped against a large monument to a fallen icon.
Patrick Caulfield, the celebrated artist had arranged to have his passing marked with a headstone that had the word DEAD carved into a simple stone slab.
The Irishman was now leant against it, partly tipped out of his chair and wheezing, gripping his left arm. He was having one of his feared angina attacks.
The irony struck him hard. He shouted.
“I am not going to die next to a dead man yer hear me?” But it was clear no one was listening.
He managed to look back up the hill to see the melee had now started in earnest. Francis was on the ground with Reddington who appeared to have the upper hand. Two large black men were running towards the pair with a striking looking black woman following up. And behind them two white men in suits, one carrying what looked like a stick.
The Irishman started laughing. He hoped he lived long enough to witness the end to this event.
The two bodyguards reached Francis, the first struck him with his boot, caught him in the lower ribs and drove the air out of him. He dropped to his knee, still holding Reddington who went down hard onto the tarmac pathway.
He rolled onto his back offering a perfect target for the second male who drove his patent leather shoe straight into his groin. For now Francis was down and out.
“Stop!” Roberts yelled as they approached.
Reddington was getting up, brushing herself down.
“Go away we don’t need any help. I will sort this out. It’s just a misunderstanding.” She was composed, almost ice cold.
“Police. Do I need to get more of my staff here or are we going to sort this like adults?” asked Roberts in his best authoritative tone.
The largest of the two large bodyguards decided to ignore Roberts completely and swung an audacious punch at the DCI who managed to drop slightly and avoid the blow.
For Cade the gloves were off. He drove a punch into the opponent, not like his police instructor had taught him, but how a one time possible girlfriend called Elena had. It was a flat-fisted, well-aimed blow straight into the man’s right upper torso which literally dropped him onto his knees. A lesser man might have fared a lot worse, probably suffering the misery of a ruptured liver.
The second male hit Cade hard, a quickfire double punch that took him by surprise. The gloves were off alright.
Cade looked at Roberts. ‘Here we go again…’
Doto was screaming something in her mother tongue. It wasn’t an order from a diplomat to calm down, to desist and apologise. She was encouraging her men to win the fight.
The Irishman was scrabbling in his pocket for his old clam-shell phone. “Police and an ambulance. That’s right. There’s a fight at Highgate Cemetery so there is. Two women, four…no make that five men. Nasty, you’ll need a van. The ambulance? No love that’s for me, I think I’ve had a heart attack so I have. Yes, I’ll update you as it develops.”
All he could do was watch as Doto clambered onto Cade’s back and rode him around the wide-ranging mix of gravestones. She had her hands around his throat and dug her long, false red nails into his neck.
“Get off me or seriously I will knock you out.” Cade was struggling to speak.
The Irishman did as promised and kept a running commentary going. “One of the police officers is trying to get a rather fabulous looking black girl off his back. She’s got some strength I’ll give her that! Imagine Venus Williams on a racehorse. Yes, like that. Me? Oh I’m fine thank you but best get that ambulance here before I die.”
Roberts was fighting off Reddington and the second male as Francis tried his best to get to his feet and support him.
Cade, fearing the worst at the hands of a woman who gripped his neck like a pair of tectonic plates, was blacking out. She had hold of him across the carotid. He knew his time was limited, and he needed to take action. Woman or not he needed to hurt her.
He started to punch backwards into her face which slowed her down but proved to be ineffective. He tried to steer her back towards the group at least then one of his colleagues might be able to help him.
“Yes, that’s right, punching her in the face. Marvellous, I could sell tickets for this. She’s not letting go mind you, spirited wee lassie. Hang on, he’s changing his course of action. I’ve got a bit of pain now, best keep the paramedics coming though in case one of this lot need them.”
Cade’s vision was tunnelling now. His last attempt to get her off his back was to change course and run backwards into an old oak tree. The collision was horrible. He heard her cheek bone crack as his own head was driven backwards into her face. And then she let go.
He took a moment to recover, coughing up his lungs and cursing her at the same time. She was getting up.
“Jesus woman what is wrong with you. Stay down.”
But she was almost up and screaming like a banshee. Cade knew the time for chivalry was over. As she got up off her left knee, she was slightly off balance s
o he kicked her, as a rugby player would convert a ball, following through across her chin.
The Irishman yelled down the phone with unbridled glee. “Three points for the conversion!”
Cade turned back towards the group. Francis was still panting like a dog on a hot July day. Roberts was on the ground, wrestling with a west African leviathan and Reddington had gone. Simply vanished.
“What the? Jack where did she go?”
The Irishman, always the soldier, had tried to keep up with her but was now slumped in his chair pointing into the trees. His last words were supposed to be so much more prophetic than ‘that way…’
Cade ran towards his partner. He could feel his phone pulsing in his pocket. Not now.
O’Shea left a voice mail. ‘Jack. It’s me. Ring as soon as you get this. I’ve got news.’
Roberts managed to throw his ASP towards Cade who scooped it up and swung his right arm in a powerful arc allowing the friction baton to open. It was only short, but made of dense steel it hurt. And in the hands of someone who knew how to use it even more so.
‘Never hit your opponent in the head team.’ He could hear his PTI’s words even now. ‘There are plenty of other targets.’
The baton swept through the cold air and hit the bodyguard on the right arm. It was a brutal strike and just as they had taught him; he held the weapon in place for a split second. Something to do with the transfer of energy, he hadn’t really been listening. It was a long time ago now.
The effect was swift. It seemed to inflame the bodyguard even more. He ripped open his shirt and started pounding his own chest.
“Lady I have no idea what is going on here but you’d better think about getting a dog and a helicopter. This isn’t going to end until someone is dead. And trust me there’s enough dead people here to fill a cemetery. Listen, I’m done. I hope they find me. I’m not that hard to spot. Tell ‘em to look for an old soldier in a wheelchair propped up against a fancy modern grave. It’s unlikely there’ll be two of me.”
Cade yelled to Roberts. “You got this?”
“I could do with a hand Jack!” he replied. He was busy striking the bodyguard as hard as he could with a stone urn that he had grabbed from a nearby Victorian grave, figuring if he disabled both of his attackers’ arms he would at least reduce his potential to be a raw and unhinged killer.
Doto was still out cold. Laid on her back in an undignified position, showing way too much thigh, the heel on her left Jimmy Choo snapped off and still upright in the mud.
Her main protection officer was lying on his side clutching his ribs.
“Baton!” Cade threw the black machined weapon back to his friend. He did a quick head count. Francis was up on one knee and looked average. Roberts was in his element, having a good old scrap, the type that DCIs never had.
They could hear the sirens now.
“I need to go Jason!” Cade yelled.
He ran down the hill towards the old soldier.
“You OK?”
“I’ve been better sonny. Just a wee heart attack so it is.”
“Got any meds?”
“Oh aye, of course! In all the excitement I clean forgot. Loads of them, there, in my bag.”
Cade began to search.
“No, I haven’t got any feckin’ tablets! Do you not think I’d have taken them before now you feckin’ ejit?”
Cade looked at him. Shrugged his shoulders. “Listen, I have to go soon, what’s your connection? And I need you to be brief as I’ve got a blonde to chase.”
“Short story it is. I served with a man called Denby. Good man too. He knew what her father was up to long ago, but rumour has it he forgot the important parts. Stress and trauma can do that to a man. He’s long gone according to my sources, but I promised when we were younger that I’d attend that bastard’s funeral and make sure he was actually dead. Tom said Reddington would take his secrets to the grave.”
Cade pushed him for an answer as quickly as he could. “Is the story about people smuggling true?”
“One hundred percent. Trouble is who’d have believed us pair? Most of the crew of the Albatross are long dead and the few that remained either died in suspicious circumstances or of natural causes.”
“Tom’s alive.”
“Well, bugger me with a bottle of scotch. How’s his memory?”
“Coming back, in dribs and drabs.”
“Then write down the dribs, they were always the most important in my book. I had no time for his drabs.” He laughed, clutching his chest. He held his hand out.
“Patrick O’Connor, warrant officer, I’m sorry I called you an ejit. And you are?”
“Jack Cade.”
“As in the famous English rebel from the fourteen hundreds?”
“Exactly.”
“Well then, Tom is in good hands. Give the old bugger a kiss from Paddy O. would you? He’ll remember me. And if you catch that lassie tell her I was able to stand long enough. She’ll understand.”
“I will. Paddy, what’s her connection to this?”
“Sins of the father.”
“But she’s his granddaughter.”
“So she is. Her father was killed a while ago. Coroner ruled it as misadventure. But I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Go on…”
“Rumour has it he found out about his little girl. He hated that she had a close relationship with her grandfather. Her dad despised him, threatened to tell the authorities what he knew.”
“So the brigadier had him killed? His own son?”
“It gets worse. They say he was killed by his daughter. Just watch her, she’s a dangerous one that one. Not all she seems.”
“Look I have to go, she’s probably long gone but I need to search for her. Looks like the cavalry is here.” He pointed to a Ford Focus, a Ford Transit and an ambulance that had arrived with sirens loud enough to wake the dead.
As Cade made to run off, he called back “Paddy, if you get chance, run any of that lot over with your chair would you?”
“Any of them?”
“I think you know which ones I mean.”
“It would be my pleasure.” He grinned showing the huge gaps in his teeth. Where he was going, he didn’t need to eat. He started to laugh, what a way to go. His eyes started to blur, his heart began to race, his jaw was clenched.
A yellow-coated female officer was running towards him.
He was holding his arm again and breathing rapidly.
“Sir…sir…are you OK? There’s an ambulance here now. Just talk to me. My name is Sally…”
Paddy O’Connor had fought his last campaign. He was gone. There would be fewer people at his funeral. But Cade would make a point of being one of them, for he had told him something so valuable in his last moments.
Roberts took great pleasure in handing over the two males and their Amazonian boss to the local uniform staff.
“Let me know where you are taking them and above all seek a remand in custody.”
Doto was coming around quickly, groggy, with a headache like no other, but angrier by the second. She hissed at the two young male constables.
“Get these handcuffs off me now. Do you have no idea who I am?”
“No, madam I don’t. Let me guess…”
“Listen smart boy, I have diplomatic immunity, get these off now or you will lose your job.”
The young PC turned to Roberts who was nursing a few wounds and driving his baton noisily into the footpath to close it back up.
“Guv? I need your advice on this one.”
Roberts rubbed his eyes, then his bruises.
“Yes, sadly she is right. Let them go but get their details if they will provide them. If she plays up and there’s justification, spray her for me would you?”
He turned to Francis. “You alright Dave?”
“Nothing that a large shot of Macallan won’t cure. I understand they stock it at the Sanctuary.”
“If they do, I’ll join you
. Right come on we’d better try to find Jack, last I saw he was hot-footing it past dead poets and an old soldier hunting for the attractive blonde.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Roberts dialled Cade’s number. He answered quickly, panting.
“Jason, where are you?”
“In the car, trying to see if we can find the elusive Captain Reddington. By the way, looks like the old boy in the wheelchair didn’t make it. Such a shame, he died in vain.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. I’ll explain later.” He stopped.
“Jack?”
“I haven’t seen her yet Jason. Christ, this area is huge. Did we get a dog or the helicopter?”
“Neither. Are you seriously going to deploy a dog onto an army officer?”
“Just rewind the clock ten or so and ask yourself that question.”
Roberts did just that, could feel the pain in his left eye. “She tried to gouge my eye out the little bitch. Agreed, I’ll get a dog. A huge one with extra teeth.”
“Stand by. I’ve seen her.”
“Where?”
“No idea where I am. I’ve just run past a grave with a dog guarding it if that helps?”
“Bloody hell mate, that’s the West Cemetery. The grave of the Victorian prize fighter Tom Yates. His dog was called Lion. You’re covering ground fast.”
“Thanks for the history lesson. Listen, not as fast as her mate, she’s like a whippet on speed.”
“What can you see directly in front of you?”
“Looks like a church. Really tall steeple…” He was gasping for air. “I’m stopping for a minute. I’m knackered.”
He scanned the area. There was no one, anywhere. The trees formed a perfect developing canopy overhead. A few hundred metres north was a circular mausoleum, containing the tombs of celebrated members of society from the Victorian era.
Talk of hauntings and ghosts kept most people away from the place during the evening and night but Cade had seen enough death and destruction in his lifetime that he was unphased. He made a mental note to bring O’Shea to the place though, she’d love it.
Day or night he just needed to catch Reddington and find out what her game was. She’d made it personal by pushing the old soldier to his death.
The Angel of Whitehall Page 31
