“How did you know?”
“Carrie, many a man can visit the Tower and see the Crown Jewels, but not every man can open the case and run his hands across them.”
“Cryptic this morning aren’t we, Inspector Cade?”
“I think you know where I’m coming from, Carrie.”
“OK, do I have your permission to take one for the team then?”
“Naughty. Go on, what did he say?”
“No Jack, I want to know, do I or not, because if the answer is no then it’s too late.”
Cade stopped walking. Leant against a railing separating him from dry land and the Thames. The ironwork was ancient and freezing. Another few degrees down and he’d be stuck to it.
“Then so be it.”
“Jack! I was winding you up!”
“I know.”
“Bastard.”
“Bitch.”
“Still love me?”
“No.”
“Ditto.”
“Now, where were we?”
“I was about to reveal all.”
“For the second time in so many minutes, your reputation is slipping Miss O.” He was smiling now and walking west again.
“As I was saying, our man has told me a few things we didn’t know about his own colleagues. Starting with the fact that a group of them are descendants of the old Griffin team.“
“Still involved?”
“Up to their nuts in it, Jack. Up to their nuts.”
“Part of an internal investigation?”
“As tight as a nun’s Julie.”
“A what?”
“A nun.”
“I got the ecclesiastical part…”
O’Shea laughed. “Julie. It’s what we used to call your downstairs.”
“Your cellar?”
“No! Your front bottom.”
“Ah, how delightful. I’ve got a friend in Queensland called Julie. I must let her know next time I’m passing by her basement.”
“Anyway, stop trying to throw me off the scent. You know I’m good at this stuff. I was born to do it.”
He conceded. “You were, so let’s let you off the hook a little, let the chain slacken a bit. Go and get them.”
“Who?”
“You tell me, you’re the attack dog.”
“I am. And I’m ready to play. What if we offer to get into bed with the army?”
“What, all of them? Jesus, Carrie you are insatiable.”
“Cade, you know I hate you, don’t you?”
“I do. Find out everything about Reddington. The living one. I know the other one is long dead, I’m still trying to get the smell of him out of my nostrils.”
“I still hate you…”
He’d already hung up. He trusted her one hundred percent. She’d call if she needed backup. And besides, call him old-fashioned, call him patronising, but he would always rather have that back up closer than five minutes away. A lot could happen in London in five minutes.
He navigated quickly on his phone.
Then sent the text.
‘In position, guv.’ Came the rapid reply. Better to be safe.
The two-man team were on foot and capable, watching O’Shea’s every move the second she exited the Defence building for a local café.
Across town, the first three cars blended with the constant thrum of inner-city traffic. From here on in they’d talk when they needed to, leave the convoy when it was necessary and be replaced by one of the other three cars that loitered around the back streets.
“Right, let’s go and hunt some jackal.” Murphy smiled at his partner whilst in the second BMW DS Bridie McGee did the same. For her, righting any wrong was a cathartic way back to happiness. Losing the love of her life, in what had been described in the press as a ‘tragic accident’ – ‘wrong place, wrong time’ – didn’t help one bit. She knew that next time she met the man of her dreams that she’d hold onto him, at least tell him how she felt. Before it was too late.
“We’ll soon be on plot skipper,” said Andy Rhodes, a black-haired, squat northerner, son of a gamekeeper and twice as cunning.
“We will, so let’s start looking out for our targets and their vehicles and let’s not forget these people are bloody dangerous. Strict SOPs from here on in.”
She picked up the microphone, held it low down in the cabin to avoid prying eyes.
“Charlie One One to all units. Signal check.”
The units called in on one of the special channels reserved for operations.
Like the good mother hen, she counted her chicks from one through to six.
“Fancy kicking some ass?”
“Sounds like a plan. So how are you doing, boss? I mean, really?”
“Nice of you to ask Andy. I’m genuinely somewhere between very sad and deliriously happy, I guess the anti-depressants help.” She looked at her co-driver. “My secret, yeah?”
“Our secret boss. Our secret. I’ve been on them for years. Couldn’t live this life without the bloody things. I reckon half the force is on them these days.” He accelerated into a gap and made toward their hunting ground. The posh end of town, where all the new money lived, and where the sewer rats that lived off the scraps.
“Charlie Two Two to One One.”
“Go ahead.”
“Eyeball on Target Three. Repeat Target Three.”
McGee nodded. That was quick. She checked her list, she didn’t need to, she would know their faces anywhere. Three was just a young boy really, seventeen going on fifty. More attitude than an LA rapper and half the confidence. She’d love to put him there, on the ground, all baggy basketball shirt and jeans around his bloody knees. He’d last what, five minutes?
“Stand by. Stand by.” The two teams edged forward. Two on foot, two in their vehicle, a grey Telecom van. At least it was Telecom today, tomorrow it would be the realm of a plumber or an electrician. Kitted out with everything a small surveillance team needed, it could go anywhere in the city.
The boy they called the jackal didn’t know what had hit him.
Two men, dressed down, casual as could be and twice as smart. They wore motorcycle jackets and helmets and balaclavas underneath.
Before he had chance to speak, let alone shout, he was in the back of the van and cable tied, face down and trying not to cry. The van was on the move.
“My breddas will get you for this. Yeah? Buss a blank bro!” He snorted through bloodshot eyes.
“You breddas ain’t got nuttin’ on us bwoi…” Came the reply. Thickly accented patois. Straight out of Jamaica.
He picked him up and shoved him against the inner wall of the van. The boy tried to focus, desperately wanting his night vision to return.
His kidnapper was black too. It didn’t surprise him. Most of his enemies were the same colour, but this guy, there was something about him. He was arctic cold.
“What?” The boy asked, trying to appear rough but failing.
“You tell me…” came the whispered reply as the words flicked across his face, ruffling his eyelashes. So close.
“What?”
“I’ve got all night, my friend. All day tomorrow and the next day and then next week too. You can repeat yourself all day long. You won’t be missed. You’ll talk. They all do.”
The black balaclava added to the menacing nature of his kidnapper’s eyes. But he was black. The boy knew it. He could just tell.
“Where you from?”
“Me? I’m from here. This is my city. But you and your friends, they don’t belong here. Get me?”
“You Yardies?” There was a hint of respect returning to his stammering voice.
“Worse, bredda. So much worse.” He slipped another of the thick black industrial cable ties around the boy’s neck. Allowed his eyes to do the talking.
The boy could see there were three men in the van, but he had no idea who was driving. They were behind some form of wooden panel.
Now the cable tie started to close, one plas
tic click at a time. And the boy they called the jackal started to swallow hard.
“I understand you like to play dirty. To terrify little girls. You see…” He clicked the strap again. “Where we come from you respect women, especially little girls. Make love to them, but show some respec’. You know, once this strap goes beyond a certain point, the only way to get it off is with a really sharp knife, or these.”
He held up a pair of secateurs.
“I failed last time. It was really messy. Pity mummy will have to work extra hours at the betting shop to raise the money for her little jackal’s headstone.”
It was working.
Click. Click. Click.
Eyeball to eyeball. He could smell what the masked man had had for breakfast.
Click.
“OK! Stop. Please. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Interesting. We don’t need to know everything. Just the following. And for each refusal you get to hear the little click of what I call my angel’s necklace. Agreed?”
“Whatever.”
“Is that a yes, or the casual and disinterested response of a drop kick teenager?” The voice had changed slightly, more educated now, and that made the jackal sit up a little, take note.
“Whatever you need to know. Look, I’m only seventeen. Please.”
“We know. All about you. Now question one. Who pays your wages?”
“A man. That’s all I know.” Click.
“Question Two. Where will we find him?”
He hesitated. Watched the dark brown hand of his foe move towards the lengthening black plastic.
“Wait. Kensington. Up town, really posh, that’s all I know. Near the embassies, they all drive well flash cars, they’ve got money. It’s why I belong.”
“You really think you belong in the same league as those boys? And who is the woman?” Straight for the jugular.
That scared him.
“I don’t know. Honestly. They call her Baki. That’s all I know, sir.”
So it was sir now. Things were progressing nicely. Click.
Panic setting in now. Five more steps, possibly four.
“Please! She is called Baki. Promise.”
“I want you to bring her to me.”
“No way. I’m nothing. Just a runner. I do the dirty stuff.”
“Look at this. Look at it!” He held a phone up to the jackal’s face.
It was his mother. With a gun to her head. Face down on the living room carpet with a size ten Nike holding her head firmly in place.
“No. Please. OK. I’ll try. I give you my word.”
“Tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Don’t be late and don’t call the police. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. I hear you.”
He pulled the boy’s top lip towards him, then held the secateurs millimetres away then squeezed gently until the top blade added enough pressure for him to feel it.
“I promise! Please.”
“Just showing you what happens to lickle bwois that talk too much.”
“You have my word, man. I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Be gone, shoe-shine boy. Inna da morrows.”
I’ll see you tomorrow. He knew what it meant.
The captor cut the straps on his wrists and waited for the right moment for the van to stop.
“Who do I ask for?”
“You ask for Duppy.” He wrote the number on the jackal’s hand in permanent marker. Then Duppy on his chest. Black ink on dark brown skin. Permanent, and it would still be there tomorrow.
Duppy meant many things to different people. But whether you were African or of Caribbean descent, it meant ghost. And it meant the boy was more afraid now than he had been when the unknown men had dragged him into their world and off what he had previously considered his streets.
The cargo door slid open, and he was pushed out, landing on his feet, trying to cope with the sudden daylight, in an area he didn’t know, that and the overwhelming tightness of the shiny black plastic collar around his neck.
He grabbed his phone from his jeans pocket. He was trying not to panic as the number connected.
“It’s me.” He gasped. “I need to meet up. We’ve got real trouble. Real bad trouble.”
The van stopped a few miles away and the team partially de-kitted. DS Dave Williams pulled the balaclava from his sweating face and rubbed it dry.
“Well, chaps, I think that went as well as one could have expected.” Pure Oxbridge and riddled with humour.
He speed-dialled McGee.
“Any luck your end? We just caught a jackal. Almost wet himself when I told him my street name. You know there’s something to be said for having the gloves removed by someone as high as the leader of the country.”
“There is. But let’s be careful, Dave. We need to make sure that if we end up taking this lot down, they stay down, in an ideal world they won’t make their day at court. Got to go, unless you fancy round two as your new alter ego?”
“Where are you?”
McGee passed their location.
“On our way.”
“McGee to all units. We have visual on Target Two.” She licked her lips. This was getting interesting. Their enemy was getting slack, their street reputation might be ferocious but their training was poor and they stood out like the Adam’s apple on a Bangkok whore.
Cade met Roberts in the car park of the Yard.
“Successful morning, amigo?” asked Roberts, looking dapper in a newly acquired three-piece suit with one of his trademark bright ties, which he described as more raspberry than red.
“Well, if you can call leaving Carrie at the behest of a senior British army officer who clearly wants to rip her clothes off then yes.”
“Do you trust her not to stab him in the eye with a pencil if he does?” It was a reference to O’Shea’s now historical, but still talked about, attack on a colleague who tried it on with her late one night in the office.
If you made an advance on Catherine O’Shea, you needed to make sure she found you equally attractive or it was well away from the stationery cupboard.
“You up to anything right now Jack?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
“Fancy hunting bear?”
“Grisly or Polar?”
“African.”
“Then as much as I think you’ve got your species and continents mixed up a little, I’m your man.”
“Listen, mate, if it gets hairy there are weapons in the usual places. Use them. Agreed?” It just got serious.
“Well, the PM herself allowed us to remain armed, me particularly, and that’s not exactly standard practice is it, given my now ex-status?”
“You can take the boy out of the Metropolitan Police, Jack.”
“Agreed. Anyway, you expecting things to get shitty?”
“Frankly, yes. New intelligence indicates the team we’ve been playing with and against are upping their game. Dave Francis has done some great work, Carrie too. Whilst we’ve been poncing around in graveyards, they’ve been doing some outstanding analysis and online stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Such as listening and learning, watching CCTV and allowing our human source database to grow just a little with the injection of some cash. It seems all roads lead to Lieutenant Commander Denby’s secret stash.”
“You telling me we now have an idea where that is?”
“Nope. Not a clue! Could be right there in that panel behind the wall for all I know, but knowing the old sea dog it’s somewhere nautical.”
“A drop in the ocean, perhaps?”
“Badoom…” Roberts hit the imaginary cymbal. “Right let’s head out to the Pride Lands and see what’s roaming, shall we?” He looked over his right shoulder, indicated and merged. Eight minutes later, all hell had broken loose.
“MP from Metro Six Six air priority.”
The control room operator lifted her head and cocked an ear. Unusual to hear that callsign.
“Metro Si
x Six go ahead.”
“Urgent assistance required. Stand by…”
She waited; trained and luckily very experienced, poised over the keyboard waiting to enter a new job, another event in the day to day organised chaos that centred around the policing of modern London.
“We are Vauxhall Bridge Road behind a blue Bentley.” He passed the registration. “This is a target vehicle, the driver or occupants are wanted in relation to the attempted murder of a senior police officer.” Cade winked at Roberts.
“Bit much. He dragged me down the street. Hardly attempted murder. Criminal damage to one of my nicest ties, possibly. I loved that green tie. It’s never been the same. Oh, hang on here we go.”
The Bentley was joined by a Mercedes. Similar guise, heavily tinted windows and plates that looked as false as a pair of selfie-obsessed celebrity eyelashes.
“MP, another vehicle when you are ready.” Cade was poised. Watching their speed and making a note of their location.
He passed the registration and asked for other units to join them. Potentially dangerous felt good when you had the right partner and a sea of resources.
“Metro Six Six, the first vehicle confirms as a blue Bentley Flying Spur. Are you with the vehicle now?” This always meant there was something about the car or the occupants that the operator did not want the occupants to hear. In Cade’s old force, it had a Ten Code number.
“Negative at this time. Pass the details. Still Vauxhall Bridge Road, south towards Vauxhall Bridge, normal speed, road conditions are good, surface is dry, traffic is moderate.”
He looked at Roberts. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yep, any minute now that Merc is going to try to ward us off. Any minute…now!”
“MP from Six Six, we’ve been rammed over. Outside…” He scanned quickly. “Outside the Embassy of Lithuania. Minor damage. Offending vehicle is the black Mercedes Benz. Two occupants that I can see, driver and front seat passenger.”
Roberts did well to accelerate and get alongside the German car.
“Six Six, that vehicle is coming back with a number of intelligence markers on it. You are to exercise caution. Repeat…”
Cade saw the action of the passenger.
“Jason, drop back now!”
He did as instructed, stamping on the brakes and swerving in behind the Mercedes.
The Angel of Whitehall Page 35
