“What are we looking for Jack?”
“We? I like it. I on the other hand am looking for whatever the Irishman was going on about. Secrets. And if I have to dig out, the entire thing by hand to satisfy myself, I will. Go and find a spade Dave. I might need one.”
He grabbed another handful of soil, which stuck to his hand like black treacle, looked closer, then pulled at a white piece of paper.
“This soil has obviously dropped into here since the grave robbers visited. They obviously used the digger to clear it away and by the looks of that marking they probably ripped the lid off with it too. Give me a second. I’ve got something here.”
It was an envelope, lying on the soldier’s chest, among the silver shiny buttons and the myriad medal ribbons dating back to conflicts such as the Falklands War.
Cade brushed the sticky soil off the paper and handed it up to Roberts.
“Should we be bagging this up Jack?”
“You tell me, you’re the expert investigator! I’m just the poor grave digger your worshipful highness. I think there’s only one crime being committed right now, and that’s me in this beautiful suit, knee deep in blood, mud and corpses. I feel like I’m surrounded by them.”
“Open it then?”
“Why not, before I end up in here with him, frozen and concussed? I’ve no idea how you would tell Carrie. He didn’t look too well, so we thought we’d cut out the middleman…”
Roberts opened the envelope as Francis came walking back with a double-handed spade contraption.
“Wow. I did not expect that.” Roberts read it again.
“Well, are you going to put us all out of our misery? What is it the old brigadier has to tell us?”
“Nothing. Well, he doesn’t, but someone does. It’s computer printed. I’ll read it to you.”
He took a deep breath.
“Sir. We have what you are looking for. Stop the searching. You came second. We are honourable people. You can have the information in exchange for Farin Mala’Ika. There is a padlock on Westminster Bridge. Find it, you will find what you are looking for. Leave him there for us. No questions. No answers. No, stupid games. One chance Jack.”
“Well, that makes our lives a little easier. Not sure about you but I’m sick of their games already. Tom is on very borrowed time let’s not forget. If we lose him, they gain nothing.”
“And if we do?”
“We’ll be none the wiser.”
“Except for the ever-increasing pile of female bodies in the city. That’s not a great look, however you look at it.”
“You think I don’t get that? It wasn’t you that received the call that started all of this Jas. I promised his son I’d help, now I wish I’d never looked down the rabbit hole. Get onto JD, find out where Tom is. We’ll park him up on the bridge and have sentries posted every-bloody-where. In the meantime, get someone to have a discreet look on the bridge for this padlock.”
“Bad news on that front Jack. Kate was running the analysis for me on that little task, they even visited the bridge. She lost count at approximately two thousand.”
“Then start now. It’s obvious whoever the author of that is knows me and therefore you and everyone else. Sound African to you?”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Roberts desperately trying not to allow his teeth to chatter.
“Just the way it’s worded. Almost mocking, but not quite right grammatically.”
“Shall I get them to stay behind after class when we catch up with them?”
“Sod off Roberts, and give me a hand, I need to get out of this bloody rabbit hole before that old bugger starts talking.”
“Agreed. And make sure you wash your hands before you get in my car.”
Doto sat upright in her lake-sized bathtub and perused the document. It was more a piece of fabric than a document. But she recognised it for what it was. A treasure map by any other name. A faded cloth, yellowed by time. On it, a circle, surrounded by a set of numbers. And that, it appeared, was that.
Except she was collecting numbers, and hopefully tomorrow she’d collect another and another until she had the whole set – like an eager child gathers the latest collectible, so too did Doto; the girl, the woman, the friend to ambassadors and generals alike.
She had come a very long way.
The problem was she now had two – no, make that three more complications than she had when she had pushed the youngest male staff member out of her bed that morning.
“Go…before anyone notices.” It was a strange game, as in time she had slept with them all, or at least tried. The one who surprised everyone, a good Christian boy, who was built like an ox, said no. And was politely reminded where the front door was and to never look back or say a word.
Her first problem was the desire to collect those numbers and form something profound from them.
The second was how to deal with Cade and his bunch of investigative misfits. They were too large a team, so she knew she needed to pick them off one by one. As a jackal does in the wild.
The third was altogether much harder. How would she, the second born, from the township of Kamsar, the girl they called Doto Adesida, ever truly feel like she belonged to the very white, devoutly British family they called the Reddingtons?
How could that even be so?
Put simply it happened. In a moment of rare pity, Edward Reddington, British Army had looked into her eyes and given her a chance. It was a flawed promise.
‘I can’t take you with me young lady. But come to find me in England one day. I will look after you. Give you fine things. The finest. Now come here and be kind to Uncle Edward. You know what to do.’
And when she did turn up, after months of thinking about nothing else, of travel, of hunting, of watching and waiting she had spotted him one evening. She never forgot a face and there he was.
She skipped up to him in the street. Sweetness personified.
She stopped him in his tracks. ‘Dear God she actually came.’
Two options. Option One: Hold her at arms-length or make good on his promise. Option Two: Have her quietly ‘disappeared’ to protect his reputation as a good man, a loyal, professional soldier and sincere family man.
But he couldn’t resist her. And she knew it. Even as a young teenager she had the body of a goddess. And a willingness that defied belief.
“Make me yours Uncle Edward.” She once asked, wide-eyed and breathless in his cheap rented bedsit south of the Thames, far from the inquisitive and perfectly judgemental crowd.
“It’s not that easy Doto my dear.” He had said as he ran his fingers over the scars on her torso, marvelling at how they felt under his fingertips. He then caught a glimpse of himself in a worn-out mirror and dressed quickly, feeling slightly ashamed. “It’s just not that easy. You need to go. Go back home. I will send you money. You will never be poor. I give you my word. It’s my job you see, my…reputation.” He said the last word slowly, deliberately, assuming she might understand.
She fished into her hessian bag, the one with two long straps and an internal pocket that contained everything dear to her.
“Is this your reputation Uncle?” she beamed. Fresh-faced, smiling, so young. A smiling bloody assassin. “Uncle?”
He stared down at the picture. ‘How?’ ‘When?’
“You like Uncle? I like it so much. I keep it right next to me all the time.” She spoke in the voice of a little girl. He liked that. Then her voice changed, dropped an octave.
“And just in case Uncle, I had two more copies made. And they are hidden away. But I give you this one. As a present. You can put it on your desk at work. Because you will give me a present too. No? Or you could keep it a secret and take it to your grave.”
She knew. She knew very well indeed. She had played him like a sailfish, exhausted but eventually set free to roam the ocean and worry about when his torrid tale might surface.
‘Conniving little bitch.’
What could he do
? He had no choice. It had to look right, right for the community in which he lived. A good Christian man, with strong morals. Clean shaven, clean living. An army officer who had served overseas, maintaining the very reputation of Britain. They rarely came better qualified than that.
And his wife? What would she say? He knew what she would do. The daughter of a leading publisher, she was set to inherit a small fortune. It was how they lived the life that they did. Everyone knew it wasn’t because of his comparatively pathetic wage.
He’d adopt her! Yes, that would work, a missionary by any other name. And as positions went, it was his favourite. But she had learned very quickly. And for that reason, he just had to say yes. That lustful desire – and the fear of the other photograph. And his wife’s inheritance.
He had no choice. His wife would agree because she was a good Christian woman. And in doing so he could also keep a hold over the girl and maintain his hideously mundane marriage. And so, quietly and beneath the radar, the lovely young lady called Doto had been secretly adopted, handed the genuine papers by her new-found father.
He could have lied to her, but he had gone too far, created just enough rope to hang himself with.
Adopted. By the man she had just exhumed.
It had been so sad when he had fallen to his death. Those that counted had been at his funeral. His wife didn’t show. She had died a while ago, leaving Edward everything. Many knew of his charity work in the smaller West African countries, more knew of his desire to be bestowed a Queen’s award, an MBE at worst, surely?
No one knew that the dear little girl that the Reddingtons had made their own, also had a sinful mind and an almost fanatical desire to seek revenge. But that wish had been a long time coming to fruition. It had to be. She needed the family fortune to mature, for properties to increase in value and for his pension to deposit a marvellous lump sum into his bank account shortly before he was due to retire. The account she held the key to – literally.
She wanted every last drop, every penny, everything he owned. There would be no will. She saw to that. She had bled him dry, time and time again. At least he might go to the grave with a smile on his face.
They’d never find Edward’s killer. She’d seen to that. Technically, even on camera, there was no killer. In the end, he did as he was told. Fall from grace, fall to your death, you dirty old bastard and keep your precious reputation, or reach the end of the bridge and find London’s most predatory journalist waiting with his pocketbook and pen.
Now she had a dilemma. She could either work with Susan Reddington; her sweet, blonde, quite successful step-sister – who had her own filthy secrets, or kill her outright, just the way she had killed her own blood sister, kneeling on her in the bathtub where she now luxuriated – and that way she could have whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted and without ever being challenged or looked down upon.
All the while she held the Guinean ambassador by his average-sized manhood and walked him around like a wide-eyed puppy, because she controlled him like the pathetic man he was. His son too, albeit he was far more playful.
She was about as undiplomatic as they came. And yet no one checked or questioned or stopped speaking when she walked into a room. No one dared. She had fostered a reputation as a calm, controlling woman of immense physical and mental strength. And that made her very happy indeed.
There was one thing missing. She felt she needed to be crueller, and that was a plan in the making. The world had been cruel to her, and she had begun to feel a state of arousal when she harmed people. It wasn’t right. However, in her waking hours alone, it didn’t seem wrong either. She was a high-class rat catcher, ridding the city of vermin.
She knew if she continued to overly deny the veiled accusations that she was a witch, then this would only seek to make those mythical stories even more plausible. She’d better deny them then.
They called her the Black Mamba. And out of her hearing, a witch. A woman who in African tradition carried her powers in her stomach, her age and wisdom were also linked and as she aged, they said she became more powerful, preyed on the weak, drank their blood, engaged in nocturnal and nefarious acts of lust. On that latter part, they were quite right.
She smiled. Let them. Let them think it. Let them believe it. Let them all. Their time is coming.
The numbers will soon add up. She just needed luck and the right people to help her. And if they wouldn’t they soon would.
She also needed to extract the very best from everyone that she was associated with and to. Adaeze had told her something about the old man they called Tom – and who she called Farin.
“He hasn’t got long. Leave him to die in peace. He is owed that for what he did for us.”
Indeed. And he had a matter of weeks if her departed sister was to be believed.
She knew she had killed her too soon. As exquisite as it was to hold her down and watch the last of the bubbles rise to the surface, she had made a fatal error. Adaeze knew more than she had divulged. Her loss was indeed a tragic waste.
In a month, possibly less, everything Doto had fought for since her abysmal childhood could be gone. Yes, she had the money coming to her from her adopted father, but that was only the icing on the cake. She needed the knowledge that the old sailor had in his head, and the chances of finding him were slim at best. So, she had to concentrate on gathering the ingredients for the best birthday cake ever – in just three weeks – and when she found what she needed, she could place the delicious cherry on the top herself.
For now, she had to think, think about who could best help her. There was no point in trying to kidnap members of the police. That was too high a risk, wasn’t it? But she needed those precious numbers before they disappeared forever and with them the real key to what she sought. The problem remained, even when she had all the numbers, they were just that. Numbers.
He’d marked those girls for a reason. Knew he was going to become forgetful. Losing his mind, just as she had lost her virginity to that man she called uncle. She retched a little.
So now what?
She could always ask little adopted half-sister for help. The blonde army captain, the girl with the looks that all the men couldn’t ignore.
Yes, she should ask her. Right now, she wasn’t alone.
Bath time was always more fun with two. She leant forward, squeezed the large natural sponge across the girl’s shoulders and let the hot scented water run down her back.
“Susan, I need your help.”
“That feels so nice. What do you need?”
“Everything you know about Jack Cade and his people.”
“I’m one step ahead of you on that.”
“Good. Then I need to know how these numbers can help me.” She corrected herself. “By that, I mean us.”
“I’m not sure. But grandfather had tried and failed. He was eternally frustrated by Tom Denby, and the cruellest twist is that the old man hasn’t got a clue anymore either.”
“So, what do we do, little sis?”
“We try a different approach.”
“And what is that?”
“Something I’ve been thinking of all day. When I looked at Cade lying on the church floor earlier, I knew the answer.”
“What, we go around hitting innocent police officers over the head with collection plates?” She laughed as she released more water over Red’s shoulders.
“He’s hardly innocent, Doto. No, we play one of our two aces. We call in the favours that we will repay when we find Denby’s hidden gains. There are two people who can help, and I’ve already done the groundwork.”
“They hold an ace too, in Denby and what he knows.”
“Trust me, sister. It will all work out.
Doto trusted no one, least of all the white woman sat in her bathtub.
“OK. I trust you. Make it happen. Tomorrow.”
She squeezed the large natural sponge and watched the water trickle down the white woman’s back. The temptation to end
her life was almost too much to bear.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Operation Orion HQ, London
“Morning all. Cool out there again, but I’m told spring is on its way.” Roberts was unwinding the navy blue lambswool scarf from his neck.
“Yeah boss, just like Father Christmas apparently.”
‘Less of it DS Murphy or you’ll be getting nothing out of my sack this year.”
“Boss…do you realise what you just said was…”
“Deliberate? Yes, Del, I did. Now enough, we have work to do.” He sipped on a double shot take away coffee, scolding his lips slightly on the plastic rim. “Shit, I’m sure they use a welding torch to heat that up.”
He grabbed a bottle of water next to him. It belonged to Bridie McGee, but she wouldn’t object. Much. Swilling it around his mouth, he continued.
“This is what we know so far.” He pointed to the slides that were transitioning across the screen.
“Tom Denby is in protective custody. Trouble is he keeps bloody escaping.” He looked around and saw two of his detectives busy looking out of the window, wanting to be somewhere else. “Doesn’t he?”
Cade took over. “Team, things have taken a turn. Our primary source has got weeks to live. Luckily, for us at least, his memory is being kind. He’s recalling stuff from years ago that has been imprisoned in his mind since his involvement in legalised people trafficking.”
He pointed to the next slide with his own now lukewarm latte.
“We know we need to locate twelve numbers, that this will equate to an answer that might lead us to find nothing at all, or, with luck on our side we might find something of great value, the tangibility of which we just don’t know. Next slide.”
Doto Asaeda appeared on the screen.
“You all now know who this is. She is confirmed as Person of Interest One.” Reddington then appeared to a few lower-level whistles.
“Easy team, I had a run in with this lovely lady yesterday.” He turned so that they could see the mark on the back of his head. “Trust me, she ain’t no lady and she goes straight in as this week’s number two POI.”
The Angel of Whitehall Page 33
