The Angel of Whitehall

by Lewis Hastings

  “No. Of course not. I have a young friend here who is eighteen and has never yet experienced a woman, so whatever happens you must stay a while to show him what you know – what the priests taught you.”

  She tried to focus as the younger boy manfully fingered the stock on a black pistol that he had stereotypically shoved into the waistband of his trousers.

  He grinned, and she hated him. Hated them all. Found herself looking around for some sign of salvation. Where were the ghosts when she needed them most?

  “Then if you won’t let me go why should I help you at all?” she asked, still as defiant as ever.

  “That is for me to decide. There are things we can do to help you choose your own destiny. A quiet departure with some pleasure and no pain. A horrible journey into hell accompanied by pain or your darkest fears all wrapped up in a cloak of complete suffering – then hell.”

  He picked a piece of dirt from under his thumbnail and wiped it on her face. “Anyway, time is money and the faster we work the more profit we make. Gentlemen, if you can do as we discussed, please?” He almost sounded English and educated. Almost.

  The two subservient men took an arm each and slid her along the old iron beam whilst her interrogator hauled her back up into the roof space again. When they were directly in line with the fire, he began to lower her down, inch by perfect inch.

  “So cold in here, my dear. Do you mind if I put another log on the fire?” He nodded. They placed some more of the old wooden pallet onto the dying flames. Within a few minutes they were licking at her hands.

  He lowered her down a little further. She shook her head. A little more.

  Then he asked the first question as she tried to curl into the foetal position, marooned on the rope like a desperate circus performer.

  “I will scream.”

  “No, you won’t. OK, question one. You arrived into Britain on a ship from West Africa. Correct?”

  It was. And if this was the standard of questioning, then they were amateurs.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  She relaxed a little. Her heartbeat was now slowing, one of the few positives of being upside down.

  “Two. You arrived into London with other women. When we caught you, you were alone, but you were doing something with a padlock. Correct?”

  “Yes.” She was sweating now, the heat starting to burn the fine hairs on her arms.

  He pushed her away from the heat. She swung out across the void below and let out a pathetic scream as she stared down at the floor twenty-five feet below, where perfect pools of stagnant water allowed a brief glimpse of her true situation. When she swung back to him, he grabbed her arms so that she could feel the heat on her back. In one sense it resembled a loving father pushing his daughter on a swing – at least in principle, in reality it was a dark and sinister act.

  “Lower her slightly.” They did. He ran his tongue across her face and over her breasts until she flinched. “Salty. You taste good enough to eat. Another half an hour, perhaps longer, and I think you will be cooked. I like my girls medium rare.” His inverted smile looked more sinister than it had done earlier.

  He realised she had answered the second question truthfully, which left him only one. But it was his game, wasn’t it?

  “I forgot to tell you,” he said, as his tongue traced its way back up to her lips and tried to force his tongue between them. “I make the rules. I will add another three questions until we get what we need. And we have all night, and tomorrow, and the next day. And you will tell us. Won’t you?”

  He let her go. Now she was closer than ever to the flames, and her hair crackled and smoked as a few strands ignited. The smell was horrendous. They raised her a foot or so. Her tears hissed as they hit the burning wood.

  “Question two once more. What were you doing with the padlock?”

  “I was leaving a message for my boyfriend. To tell him that I was in London. He is illegal here too.”

  “As are we all my dear, as are we all.” He slapped her fully across the face, causing a cut to appear. Then with the back of his hand making it bleed more.

  “Question two again.” Now he punched her in the stomach, causing her to bend in pain. He looked at his men. “Want to have a go?”

  “OK” She sobbed. “I was looking for a message from someone.”

  “Now, isn’t that better? And what was the message? Think carefully.” He held the rope in one hand, the sinews in his forearm beginning to ache.

  “Just a name of a place where we could go to be safe. To meet a man.”

  A female voice began to speak. The middle of the three men, a solid man with massive legs and broad sinewy shoulders, was holding a large-screened smart phone upon which was the face of a woman. He turned the screen to face the girl. She was struggling to make out who the woman was.

  She spoke. “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “My name is Baki Maciji. Yours is not worth knowing. Why I am doing this is my business. But you will tell my men what they want to know. For now, I just wanted to admire your courageous battle to survive. You see, my boys will tell you that I like this sort of excitement. It turns me on. Call it a movie for one, but with none of that awful popcorn. It sticks in your teeth you see and…”

  “I have heard of you. They say that you…” She was clearly frightened now.

  “They say lots of things, dear. Almost all of them are true.” She laughed like a hyena.

  “So, how are we doing boys? Has she told you the answer to question three yet?”

  “No, boss.”

  “Then ask her!” She yelled into the microphone so loud it crackled.

  “Where is the White Angel?”

  “I have no idea who that is.” She was almost certainly telling the truth.

  “I will ask again.” He lowered her again so that her hair twisted and squirmed under the heat, the acrid smell drifting up and over her.

  “Have you photographed her like I told you to do?”

  They had forgotten. The leader pointed his phone at the girl and started to film from her head to her toes, taking time to turn her around on the rope as if he was examining a potential gift, checking every inch of her, every possible hiding place. He spent more time filming her back, hunting for information that the lines and lines of old scars might offer.

  “Done. I’ll send them to you as soon as I have finished with her.”

  “Ask her again.”

  “The White Angel?”

  Nothing. She was motionless, desperate to say nothing that might end her life sooner.

  “Drop her into the flames. Do it!” came the disconnected voice of the Mamba.

  He did as he was told. She fell fully into the fire and screamed as the heat blistered her young skin.

  A passing cyclist thought he heard something, but thought better of letting anyone know and pressed on, head down into the wind.

  The large African male lifted her back out of the fire, but the rope was now burning. It was time for Plan B.

  They untied her feet and dragged her across the stone floor, the cool nature of which provided a temporary relief from the nerve tingling burns on her arms and back. She tried to scream but gave up. She had little fight left.

  The two younger men bound her feet and began to pull on the rope that had been made a hundred years earlier and about forty miles south of the river. She swung up into the air like a sack of grain and came to a stop. Once again, she was staring at his malevolent face. She recognised him now, upside down he was ugly, so she decided he was even worse the right way up. It was a shallow victory of sorts. She whispered something, so he came closer. She opened her mouth.

  “Kiss me. Be the last man to do this. Please.”

  It was a strange request, but he’d heard about captives falling for their kidnappers. It gave him a sense of power. He leant forward and opened his mouth to kiss her as the two younger men watched in awe.

  Th
en she spat the large ball of foamy white saliva into his mouth, hoping he’d choke or at least have to swallow some of her pride.

  “Bitch!” He struck her with sheer anger, causing her to swing backwards like a human punch bag. He allowed her to stop. He decided that he had all night now.

  “Bring me the hottest pieces of wood.”

  They did as they were told. They had never seen him so angered. His words were spittle-laden, some of it his, mostly hers.

  He rammed the first still-hot stick into her chest.

  “There! Another scar for your collection.” Then again, until her body dampened the heat. “Pass me another.”

  The next was hotter. He pushed it into her lips. She tried in vain to resist, but he pushed harder until it passed her teeth and sizzled against her tongue and the back of her throat. He left it there to cool.

  “Now. Do we understand each other lady?”

  They winched her into the new area of the second storey and onto the gantry which led to what the locals called the Cut. She was at a new level now. Her face staring at his waist. He looked down. Tempted to unzip himself.

  He shook his head. “I should, but I don’t trust you.”

  He pulled her knickers upwards, in effect down just above her knees, and left them there.

  “There, I have robbed you of your dignity, just like the priests did, back home. Feel lucky I don’t do anything else. Now…who is the White Angel?” He yelled down into her face. She stayed quiet, so he slapped her.

  She whimpered, “I don’t know. I promise you. Please.” Her lips were raw, bleeding from the burns.

  “I’m done with her. Let us do what I told you about.”

  They pulled on the rope and she was now moving up once more, about level with his face. They opened the large wooden door to the Cut, London’s oldest canal, which flowed from the River Lee to the River Thames as it had for more than two hundred years. Still ten-foot-deep in places, it was once the pride of the area, where two lanes of traffic plied their trade back and forth.

  “In Britain, in the old days, they used to dunk witches in the water until they told the truth. Seems fitting that we should do the same to you. For after all, aren’t you a witch?”

  “No. I am just a girl. A girl who wanted to start a new life.” She hurt like never before, burnt and betrayed. She tried to spit at him again, but now her mouth was dry and only blood flowed across her lips.

  He pushed her as hard as he physically could, out of the building, swinging on the old hoist, out into the frigid air. Surely someone would see this?

  As she swung back into the building, she summoned up what strength she had and balled her fist, then stretched out her index finger. As she neared his face, she drove it straight into his eye. The force was incredible, greater than either could have expected. As the momentum pulled her backwards, she crooked the finger slightly and felt the eye give slightly.

  He screamed. No one outside the building heard it. No one that mattered anyway.

  “Fucking drop her! Then bring her up an do it again and again!”

  The rope whistled through their hands, faster than they had anticipated until she hit the surface of the freezing water, down, deeper, ten foot now into the silt and mud and debris of a long-lost past.

  And she stayed there. Trapped by old beams that had been tipped from the building during the first renovation and forgotten about.

  “She’s stuck!”

  She was beyond panic. She was beyond caring. She opened her eyes and looked around her for a few last solitary seconds. The view was obscured by the dark green murky water – but she’d made it to England, and now no one could stop her.

  Upside down in an old canal with only the relics of two hundred years for company. She pulled and pulled until she was partially free, but the exertion was too much.

  Her tears had ceased, and she began to let go. Bubbles of life left her mouth, the cold water stifling her breathing, until she remembered her mother and father, her dear grandmother, her friends and the way village life used to be. It was time.

  On the staircase outside the derelict room, the team that had waited quietly for a decision that finally came pressed the metaphor of a doorbell and announced their arrival. The old wooden door splintered into myriad shards of ancient wood, puncturing anything that got in their way. The rush of air blew the large male that was still stood staring into the water, out of the doorway and down into the canal. He didn’t shout or scream, just fell unceremoniously into the freezing water and straight onto an old scaffolding pole that cruelly pierced his abdomen, tearing into his body with little regard for the precious organs that hid away beneath his impressive physique.

  The girl from Kamsar was still alive, or at least in a state of suspended animation. The jolt to her system as he entered her world, crashing into the canal, was enough to bring her back into a temporary existence. She looked through the watery veil at the face of the male who screamed in the depths, awash with his own blood which dispersed and bubbled up to the surface.

  She actually smiled at him. It wasn’t compassion or even pity. It was unbridled bliss.

  Then she reached out with her hand and took his before unfolding her young fingers one by one until she dropped a dark brown eyeball into his hand. He screamed out as he let it go, oxygen bubbles forcing themselves up to the frigid surface as the eye zig-zagged down into the mud, and for a brief moment the little girl with the familiar scars, from Kamsar, Guinea was ever so slightly back in control.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Old Shades, Whitehall

  The team of six, dressed down in black overalls, black gloves, black balaclavas and equally dark, sinister weaponry were clearly drilled and trained and drilled again. They’d done this a hundred times that month alone. Train, train and train again.

  And now they were in to another old building, hoofing the door in, as they liked to say, and rubbing a few people up the wrong way as they also liked to say. They had a set of rules and a dictionary of their own making, full of patter that equally rubbed their colleagues up the wrong way too.

  But if you wanted a job doing well – without herald or fuss, at the time or afterwards then you asked for them. You just closed your ears later when the beer flowed and the inevitable pissing contest started.

  ‘Look ‘em in the eyes boys. Make ‘em shit their pants. Get a positive outcome every time!’

  It’s how their boss operated. Love him or hate him he got the results, and he liked them to be great. He liked that very much and at times it showed. Almost, as he put it, giving him a ‘right old hard on.’

  The boss drove them harder than ever. To even get a chance to apply for his team you didn’t have to be good. You had to be so much better.

  And before you got onto the squad you cleaned their boots. Rinsed their pubic hairs from the showers. Cleaned their weapons. Made the tea and paid for the best biscuits – chocolate, always, none of that cheap shit.

  And when you had earned their trust, you bought the first round at their favoured pub too, an old Grade II listed building in the heart of Westminster called The Old Shades. Good food, great beer, where they could be assured of privacy whenever they needed it, which was often. Now and then a famous face could be seen having a quiet one, or a politician, looking to escape the rat race and the ever-watchful eye of the media. Each group left itself to itself. That was the unwritten rule. And in the Shades, there was never any trouble.

  The team could have chosen any pub in London. After all, there are hundreds. But the Shades had an appeal – close to Whitehall too and the home of the military. And as the boss was what he liked to call ‘ex-but always ready’ that was where they supped a pint after work and now and then, before work.

  It was also the haunt of the local office girls who loved to flirt, have drinks bought for them and pay the boys back in kind.

  And as they did after every ‘job’ they found themselves in their own little side room enjoying a few.
<
br />   “You see that big fella’s face when I lit him up? I swear he was going to shit himself. Too scared though. Yeah, I’ll ‘ave another if you’re buying…”

  “Yeah, fancy being too scared to actually shit yourself? Anyway, what about that little twat, what a mistake to make!” said Roman Tony. He’d got some Italian in him somewhere along the line, hence the nickname. He always employed an overly exuberant Italian accent to emphasise any given situation.

  “Seriously Roman that kid didn’t stand a chance did he?” asked Scott Tracey – named after a peculiar walk that he did now and then when he got excited, reminiscent of the Thunderbirds character.

  “Bang, bang and then another, right in the zone,” mimed Roman with both hands, recoiling with each shot.

  The team had entered the old derelict building with a resounding thunder-like crack. Shock and awe was their approach, and it was instantly obvious that they had the upper hand. With one of the three targets fortuitously blown out of the loading doors another holding a phone with a face like he’d been caught ‘at it with his mate’s sister’, the ratio of six to two was never likely to be fair.

  But as far as fairness counted for the Authorised Firearms Team that called themselves Raptor there was only ever one winner. The boys – for they were always boys – wanted to go home each night.

  Raptor was unofficial. As far as the Metropolitan Police were concerned, they were one team of six that provided tactical support to the frontline staff that patrolled one of the busiest cities in the world.

  The youngest of the trio who had put the girl through hell was rapidly trying to pull out the pistol from his oversized jeans when the first round had hit him in the chest. Two shots, from two separate weapons all hitting him in the central mass. He would stay down and probably never speak again. His weapon clattered over the edge of the stone floor and dropped down into the mirror-like pool of water on the floor below.

  The one who thought he was in charge, with the taste of the girl’s saliva still on his tongue was luckier. He was only hit with a TASER. The hook-like barbs dug into his clothing, then into his skin and delivered the required amount of volts to stop most humans in their tracks.