The Angel of Whitehall

By Lewis Hastings

Twelve women hunted by a deadly enemy

A young African woman's body is found slumped in a London side street. Her stomach slashed open, a single diamond hiding within.

 

A shameful secret that must remain hidden

An elderly sailor with just weeks to live harbours a dark secret that he has to share before he dies. The only problem. His memory is failing through dementia.

 

What's the connection?

Former British police officer Jack Cade is the only man who can help unravel the mystery. Piecing together the fragments of information that the old man's fragile memory reveals, Cade unearths a people trafficking conspiracy with links to the heart of the British Establishment.

 

They want his source silenced. Cade is the only person who can protect him. But who can Cade trust?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobeck Books
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913793111

Book preview

Prologue

Out of Africa

They met on the quayside. Pink dust everywhere. In a certain light, it was almost orange. Whatever its colour, it was considered a necessary evil. It clung to everything, like influenza clings to lungs and cancer to cells. Contaminated crops withered and died, the water supplies were undrinkable in places, and the children had developed an asthmatic cough that they could not shift. Some of the men of the town claimed it made them impotent. But it made a lot of men very rich.

For a country that was considered to be mid-table in the poorest of African nations, it saw itself as rich compared to its nearest cousins. And they had oil coming soon, and gas, and then the men in suits would make them all rich. And then they could begin to live a better life, a life of not having to watch every penny, of not looking over their shoulders for fear of attack, in a more prosperous town in a country with a brighter future.

The English man that stood on the quayside brushed a thin layer of dust from his clothes, shined his shoes on the back of his trousers, cleared his throat and in his best Oxbridge accent announced to the driver where he wished to go.

No one goes there, sir. It is not considered safe. Perhaps somewhere else? I can recommend many fine places where you could get an equal bargain.

No, thank you, I wish to go there and I wish to go now. He mopped beads of sweat from his brow, wishing he had worn a more appropriate suit. The white handkerchief was stained with the Bauxite dust, like every other bloody thing in what he saw as a flea-bitten, shit-stained hell hole.

And why he was heading on a long journey in an old Mercedes taxi to meet a boat to take him upriver in a region of West Africa, that was renowned for danger was beyond him.

He was sent. That is why.

And in his line of work, one did as one was told. And he was white, and in this region that meant he stood out like a cockroach on a wedding cake.

The boat trip was memorable. People stared at him along the river bank, some waved, he produced an insincere wave back. He cared not for the people of this land. Not one iota. And he began to question once more why he was there when he could have been at Lords watching the bloody cricket.

His organisation had seen to it that he alone should travel to Africa and make good on his promise to come back with something other than venereal disease. The whole place was awash with it, they said.

‘Watch your back old boy’ the men in high-backed leather chairs had cheered as they slid back into a cigar-filled haze and read The Times or played backgammon or slept, dreaming of their exponential wealth.

A young officer in the British Army, Edward Reddington was a man of some distinction. He’d climbed mountains, walked in the foothills of the Himalayas, crossed oceans and fought in conflicts from a young age. His father was an officer too, and his before him.

With a tuft of dirty blond hair and piercing blue-green eyes, he considered himself a ladies’ man, whilst on tour. And yet here he was in a bloody dug-out canoe making his way upriver to meet a chief – at least he called himself a chief. Bloody savages as far as he was concerned; few morals and even fewer people skills. God, he hated the place.

He draped his hand into the river to cool off, then removed it quickly. He was brave, not stupid. Who knew what lurked just beneath the surface?

But orders were orders, he reminded himself as he swatted yet another fly hell-bent on crawling across his cheek and adding to his sense of despair.

They arrived, he walked, the people of the village parted as if he were royalty. A woman, somewhere, was crying, a child too. In front of Reddington stood a dark-skinned man, in his thirties with tribal clothing and a small hat that resembled a bucket woven out of reeds and sitting perfectly on his short black hair. He felt resplendent. Reddington thought he looked ridiculous.

The chief smiled a perfect smile.

Welcome, Mr. Reddington. His English was better than Reddington’s French, let alone a tribal dialect almost forgotten about.

It is good to see you again. They’d met before.

And you, my friend. He handed an envelope to the chief. Manilla, large enough to carry a lot of cash.

You must be hungry?

No, thank you. I just need to do my business with you and leave to sail for London. Tonight. His smile said a polite no. His mind retched at the thought of another grub, lightly warmed for his satisfaction. What he’d give for a boiled egg and toast right now.

Then so be it. Our stocks are very good at the moment, I have seen to it that you alone will choose only the very best of what the area has to offer. Fresh, healthy stock that will see a fine profit. You can load them onto the ship tonight if you like? Shall we go and look?

That would be most ideal. I do need to catch the boat back to London tonight. After you.

They left the chief’s comparatively palatial quarters and walked through the village until they reached a clearing where he laid eyes on the reason for his visit.

Practised in Benin and Togo and Ghana, many people had tried to stop it. Tried to make it appear unfitting for a country that was trying to develop.

He looked around him. They were everywhere, the fruit of the land and all as described by the chief. Young and fit, some as young as six, virgin girls sent to the Troxovi shrines as payment to the gods to make amends for the wrongdoing of a family member. Sent, abandoned by their family into a life of servitude. And life meant just that. And the debt was never considered paid off. When the girl died, she was replaced by the next in line. Either that or be struck down with a curse worse than death.

The villagers knew that the gods would search for them anyway, so why not just hand the girls over? Girls like Enyonam, seven years old with conker-brown and frightened eyes and tightly plaited hair, were committed to a lifetime of slavery and sexual abuse. They called it Trokosi – tro meaning fetish, kosi meaning slave.

The United Nations had worked tirelessly to rid the region of the problem, even encouraging Ghana to make the tradition illegal. And yet upwards of thirty to forty thousand girls were known to be living to pay off debts, to offer unpaid labour and for all intents condoning legalised prostitution of girls as young as ten.

They hated it. Felt sick to their stomach, but were trapped in a lifetime of slavery where the priests lived off the profits and gave nothing, not even food, in return.

Western countries hid from the fact that the term existed, let alone the practice, which they saw as a flagrant violation of the women's and children’s rights.

What rights? The chiefs and the priests agreed, said it was an honour for the girls to belong to them – better still, the gods, and they could not understand anyone who thought differently. It was their culture.

To the chiefs, the girls were theirs for life. If they produced children, those children would be the responsibility of the girl’s family.

Trokosi. Whatever it really meant, Reddington knew that none of the girls from seven to seventy were happy, so why was it such a bad thing that he bought them, took them to a better place, where admittedly they would still in effect be slaves?

It was a better place. It was England. A proud country where standards were set hundreds of years ago; not some backwater bloody hovel where middle-aged men preyed on young girls.

The girls were given a chance to earn a fee, one that could be paid to the chief to release them from servitude and their families from a lifetime of fear, a pity that the chiefs set the bar so high that they knew none of the girls would ever be able to afford the extortionate amount required.

But they knew the sweating man in the dark suit with the dusty shoes, white hair and blue-green eyes could. And he did, each time he visited.

Two of those. Six of those – they look good. Three dozen of the older ones – you decide, and I’ll take her too and her sister, that makes fifty if my maths is correct. It was as if he was choosing vegetables for his Sunday lunch.

They were rounded up, crying, and led to boats where the journey to the quayside began. They had never heard stories from the girls that went before them, but surely life could only improve from here on in?

Only a few hours later he was back on board the freight ship.

Captain Reddington. All ready when you are, sir. The cargo is loaded and all passengers are present and correct. With your permission we need to cast off or we’ll be here in this Godforsaken hole another night and I don’t know about you but I need a decent drink and a bath.

Both men knew that what they were doing was wrong, but they both followed orders and the trafficking of people had been overlooked for generations, and now, right now, Britain needed workers, and other trades were only too willing to snap up the girls who were willing in every possible way.

If the British people knew what was happening there would be an outcry, slavery had been abolished long ago, hadn’t it?

Reddington watched as the freighter eased out into the channel and slowly put the West African country behind it, hopefully for the last time. As a gambler returns to the tables, he knew that such trips were not only necessary; they were personally profitable. Every man in the syndicate thought the same. Blind eyes could and would be turned.

He turned to the officer on the bridge. In your hands from here on in Denby.

I have a name, captain, and I’d thank you for using it. Worst case call me chief.

The army officer pointed to a diminishing shoreline. Denby, I’ve had it up to here with bloody chiefs just lately and as for respect, you gave up any right to that the first time you set sail from that festering place to England. Now, if you don’t mind, I shall head to my cabin for a well-earned rest. Get your people to send my meal to me, would you? Goodnight.

Goodnight. He waited until Reddington was long gone, before shaking his head with the rest of the naval crew. They didn’t like the army at the best of times, often called them by their colloquial name of pongoes. Where the army goes, the pong goes. And as far as the navy were concerned, they were the Senior Service.

But in part he had given up the right to say he was a part of the Royal Navy, since he had first set sail on a clandestine voyage under the banner of something they referred to in hushed briefings as ‘Griffin’.

He stepped outside onto the bridge wing and wished he smoked. He could be alone here, exposed to the elements but close to the bridge if needed. What he needed was a moment alone, to ponder his past and his future. He wiped a tear from his eye. How much longer would he have to endure his own servitude?

There had to be a way to help these poor people, these poor children?

As the moon danced around the stern and its pure-white reflection flickered among the discreet waves that the aging freighter created, he made a decision.

This can’t go on forever. One day I’ll make good on my promise and all this will be behind us. He looked up to the night sky which was velvety black and smothered in white glimpses of hope – a night sky like no other.

One day. He tossed a coin into the ocean and hoped it landed on heads.

Down in the depths of the ship a young girl cried too, the tears running across the scar on her left cheek that marked her out as a slave.

One day she hoped to be free.

Chapter One

Many years later

They had boarded the old black-and-red and anonymous steamer late at night, under a moonless sky, so dark that only the stars of the northern hemisphere served as a reminder that they were still alive.

The witching hour, they sometimes called it. That uncertain time between people staying up and making the most of what was left of the day, and the early hours of the next morning, when legend has it bad things can happen.

A time when here and there people began to rise and head off to wherever they were going. Creatures of habit.

Everywhere was quiet. Not a sound, unless you stood and allowed yourself to become one with nature. And only then would you feel their presence, occasionally hear them. Wild and partly domesticated animals moving around the outskirts of the town and down on the quayside, the hunters and the hunted.

People too, here and there, each trying to find a way to survive through fair means or foul.

The night shift, those lucky enough to have work, returned, grey faced, impassive, passing their equally drained morning equivalents, heading to the port or the new refinery. The only advantage of making it through the night was that you got to smile at your early rising neighbours, knowing that for now you had the best of two options.

A bed and a chance to dream of a happier place.

The day and night dwellers had missed the monthly cargo operation that had occurred just north of the expanding port that lay on the west coast of Africa between Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone.

Actually, most hadn’t missed a thing. They went about their daily routines and kept their heads down, drove their pink-dust-covered old Nissans and Toyotas to and from the port, and turned a blind eye. It was what you did in that part of the world. That and avoid the heat.

If and when they were asked, the one export the local population knew about was Bauxite.

And that was all. Ask them anything else they’d just smile a nicotine-stained smile and walk off, or shrug their colourful yet weary shoulders and pretend they could not understand you. It’s how it was. How it would probably always be.

Another nameless ship had sailed. North, out of the warm waters of the tropics towards a European winter. Another cargo of dusty orange-pink Bauxite destined for the land of milk and honey.

But the valuable mineral wasn’t all they carried. Why waste valuable space? It would be a crime to do so.

The British have a saying: where there’s muck, there’s brass.

In Kamsar, the locals had their own. Where there are ships, there are people. And where there are desperate people there is money to be made.

And where there were people queuing, gripping onto their life savings and a few meagre possessions, there was always a man in an expensive suit, with the latest phone and an open and seemingly ever-generous wallet.

‘Come aboard tonight, we sail at three. This is your one chance to be free, to live the life that you can only dream of – then one day return, to see your family and be treated like royalty.’

It was what they had been saying for years. And a select few families had made it work and were treated as celebrities. And that alone was reason enough to risk everything. For some it meant putting your eldest child on board with their sibling, throwing a rope, looking the other way, blaming the dust for your tears, watching them cast off into the night. The chance of a better life. A chance to live.

---

The journey had been longer than expected, as if the old ship had detoured, waited out at sea, then run at full speed. Its passengers, down below in the bowels of the ship, were at one with the rusting hulk. They could sense when the old iron lady slowed and when she sped up. And now she was running at full steam. The hull shuddered, but the ship sailed on, pounding through a force seven north-easterly, hugging the central shipping lanes, trying to avoid any form of contact. If they were challenged, they responded with an efficient, professional and polite radio message.

Change course? Yes, sir. As you say. Thank you.

They had been sat out in the North Sea for two days. Somewhere off the coast of Lincolnshire. Three thousand miles from home as the crow flies, with a few necessary detours. It was more like three and a half.

The call came. Now or never. Stick to the plan. Creatures of habit.

---

The British-flagged freighter MV Argonaut docked half an hour late. She was soon alongside, cranes lifting her wares up, over and onto the quayside that had existed in one form or another since Roman times.

NLS was a family company which had employed local people to conduct the unloading of small to medium freighters for years, clinging onto a meagre living. As around them and north across the Humber estuary, larger multi-nationals watched their operations grow; roll-on roll-off vessels arriving with new cars from around the world, and nearby an oil refinery did its bit to supply an ever-hungry market.

Once the vessel was unloaded, the nightshift cleaned down, secured the site, checked and re-checked the storage facilities and headed off home to bed, so that they could return the following day to watch the ship depart at high tide.

The locals called her the Argo, and they held her in high esteem. She, or rather her contents, kept a roof over their heads and a meal on the table in a part of England that had seen years of unemployment and uncertainty.

The Master of the ship held Jimmy Cossins, the Director of North Lincolnshire Stevedore’s Ltd, in higher esteem. For the last twenty years he had accepted a Christmas card from him, handed over on the frigid quayside, and in return had handed one back. They raised a glass to see in the festivities, then both men went about their business.

All very above board. Unless you considered the number written on the inside of each envelope. Each year, a new bank account number; monies taken out and paid in, once, on the eve of Christmas.

It was what the ship held below board that made their relationship far from pleasant.

---

How long before we go?

I don’t know, but I will be right here, little sister, right here.

She held her tighter than she had ever done. She was as afraid but couldn’t let it show.

---

The gates opened at just before midnight, and four white Volvo tractor units drove into the compound. They were as anonymous as possible. No company names and number plates that were cloned.

Each was reversed up to an awaiting trailer that in turn held a container. The driver never checked the load, just drove to the nearby disused Royal Air Force airfield at North Killingholme.

As a place name where your future began, it did not bode well.

Less than half an hour later, the containers were inside the former Lancaster hangar and the main doors shut and double locked.

Now a solitary German shepherd dog and its handler patrolled under the dim sodium lighting, as a cold mist rolled in off the sea.

---

Inside the first container they moved quietly, trying to stretch weary limbs. Some slept, some tried to eat, some desperately held onto the contents of their bladders, others had long since stopped worrying about pride and squatted in the darkened metal box, in a corner designated for such activities.

The container was damp. The container was freezing cold. It reeked of ammonia and fear.

Thirty men aged from eighteen to thirty and ten women of a similar age. They huddled together, frigid and afraid.

In the next container the story was the same, and the next, and the next.

When will they come, sister? the youngest girl asked, still full of hope.

Soon, they will come soon and then we can eat and start our new lives. She tried to peer out through the smallest of cracks in the door, but all she saw was darkness, her cheek sticking to the freezing metal, her tears running down and onto the floor. She was more afraid than her little sister, for she knew just what a terrible situation they were in.

When they had left their home, it had been a warm, sultry, almost unbearably humid night with a promised daytime temperature in the high eighties. Now she shook involuntarily as the temperature dropped below freezing. She had never been so cold. Somewhere in the darkened void a male voice let out a deep moan that signalled he had given up hope.

Actually, he had lost his fight with the cold and hunger and was the first in that container to die. His brother held him in his dying moments, also perilously close to death. Most had brought basic provisions and the simplest of food – for that’s what they were told to bring.

They were a commodity with a value just like the Bauxite – but less important. If half survived, it was a bonus. Three quarters, a miracle.

It had taken eight days to make the journey. They didn’t stop once, pounding north as fast as they could. Time was money. Eight days of living in a sealed tomb with people she either knew vaguely from her home or had never met before. They all had a common bond, a goal and a vision that stayed with them until now, as they began one by one to slip into unconsciousness. Victims of their own hopes and aspirations and the greed of their fellow man.

They were modern slaves – destined for a life of servitude, bound by contracts tied up with fear.

Slaves. The year was 2016 and contrary to the wishes of one old man, it was still happening.

The girl from Guinea and her sister didn’t have a name, she was just known as woman No. 5 and her sister No. 6.

That’s how important they really were.

---

She woke with a jolt. Her heart beating faster than it had for days. There was a sense of animation, a pinprick of golden light lit up her face with its small scar on the left cheek. The temperature had risen a degree or two.

She stared out of the gap that had been her porthole to the future – she saw trees. They were different to the ones back home. And wooden poles with wires slung from post to post. And fences, and fields, all laden with pure white. Animals were here and there, also making the most of the natural shelter to avoid the onslaught of the vicious wind that swept in across the flat Lincolnshire countryside.

A house. Then another. Then more fields. She relayed back and soon the whole container, minus the two that didn’t make it, was awash with elaborate and seamlessly embellished stories of hope.

‘Yes, brother, she saw beautiful houses and horses and sheep. We are here, in beautiful England.’

She became the lookout – for no one else had the energy to even stand.

There are no more houses now, just white fields, she said in her native tongue. Just white fields…

---

The four containers split up in north Lincolnshire. One headed further north, and three headed south, using country roads until they reached larger, more direct routes that with luck would remain open, free of the snow.

One container reached an old RAF base in Yorkshire and was reversed into a surviving hangar now used as a logistics base. It was detached from the tractor unit and left. The driver obeyed his briefing to the letter.

His instructions were very clear.

Deliver the container, secure it in the hangar using the key provided. Do not open it, as it contains potentially harmful chemicals. He was no fool and wanted to get home to his family. And besides, the job paid well.

The third container arrived at RAF Syerston or what was left of it. Another old building and another abandoned container. The third one reached the now partly private airfield in Langar on the border or Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. The largest of the main hangars was being used by a transport company, its more remote sister was ideal as a place where not even nosey children would go. The signs told of great danger, of dogs and electrified fencing. Now and then a few ardent Irish travellers would pitch up and spend as many nights in their caravans as the local council would allow, themselves nomads, they missed nothing, not a trick or a chance to profit, but they knew to keep away from this particular building. There was entrepreneurial and there was plain stupid. And this place gave them the feeling that the dead patrolled at night. They didn’t stay long.

The enormous door was slid shut, bolted and double locked as the driver clapped his gloved hands together to try to warm up. He drove north east and never looked back.

The last vehicle pulled into the former RAF station called Bottesford near the small village of the same name in North Leicestershire, now partly derelict, it retained one large former Lancaster bomber hangar and had been leased years ago by a syndicate that no one ever bothered to research for they paid on time each and every month.

The driver swung the cab around and backed the vehicle up to the door. It was getting light, but the temperature was set to remain around freezing all day. The sooner he got home to bed, the better.

He backed in, disconnected the trailer and stood for a while listening. A few wild pigeons scattered, startled by his presence. He had a fascination for derelict military buildings, trying to imagine what it would have been like in the war, a hive of activity, people everywhere, fighting the enemy from afar.

And now the place was silent. Apart from a low-level sob. He was told that he was carrying agricultural chemicals. He’d been around long enough to know that as a commodity they remained pretty quiet.

There it was again. His head dropped.

Oh, bloody hell, that’s all I need, he said in a broad Yorkshire accent. Stowaways…

He fetched a torch and walked back to the rear of the trailer, got his gloved fist and banged on the door. Nothing. But no, there it was again. It sounded like a child.

He put his face up to the corner of the container and shone the torch into the gap.

Jesus H Christ! He almost fell backwards.

A dark brown eye was staring back at him. It looked like that of a solitary despondent cow, waiting at the market for its fate. He’d never hunted, but he knew that if he was to ever look into the eye of a frightened animal, it would be like this. And there was no way he would be able to pull the trigger.

Please, sir. Help us… a female voice, whispering in broken English, trailing as if it was the last thing she might ever say.

What would our Pat say? he asked, mumbling as he strutted around the vast building, his voice echoing, only the pigeons for company, staring down at him, willing him to make the right decision.

She’d say open the bloody thing, Pete Hopkins, that’s what she’d say.

Hopkins, nearly sixty, going on seventy and longing for retirement, grabbed a crowbar and began to work at the locks. Nothing. He wasn’t strong enough. His cheeks were already ruddy and lined with myriad micro veins. His nose was bulbous and pockmarked and his short stature, powerful arms and a habit of pipe smoking earned him the nickname Popeye.

He wrapped a chain around the lock and backed the wagon up to a girder, then wrapped it around that and hoped for the best. He jumped up into the cab, forgetting how cold he had been. Then started the powerful engine and surged forward. The whiplash crack told him one thing.

He ran to the back and found the door open.

Then he sank to his knees, staring back at a young black girl and an even younger one in her arms.

Thank you, sir. She is my sister. Please take her. She looked like she had seen a saint. Please…

He moved forward to take the girl who could have only been ten, twelve at the most. She was as cold as a morgue and stank like a public toilet during a month-long strike. The smell was overpowering.

Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the light in the metal box and his nose to the stench, he began to retch.

He counted, one, two, five, ten…

Oh, no. No, please, not this. Not to me. He laid the girl down on the concrete floor and ran to his cab, got in and started it up. Sat there, waited, then went back, got the girl and her sister and walked one, carried the other to his portable home. Once he was sure they were safely inside, he got behind the wheel and drove north, leaving his troubles behind.

None of them said a word.

What was there to say?

‘When I parked the trailer up, it was secure and I didn’t see anything wrong.’ That would be his defence if and when they came for him.

An hour later he spoke.

I need to drop you off at a hospital or a police station.

No sir, we must not be found. Only the nice man can help us. You ring him for us? She pushed a grubby piece of paper at him. It had a printed phone number on one side and stains on the other.

It couldn’t hurt, could it? And at least he’d be doing the right thing.

He dialled the number, waited, aware it was early. A voice answered.

Where are you exactly? Not who are you? Or, what do you want?

Erm well I’m somewhere between Bottesford and home, I was heading towards Nottingham, to the hospital to get these girls checked…

The voice interrupted. Checked a map. Gave directions. The driver listened.

Well I can, if you think it will help?

It would. He’d wait.

He pulled off the A52, the main road between Grantham and Nottingham, into a looping tree-lined muddy layby. He’d been there before a few years ago, when there was a woman in a caravan selling tea and coffee and bacon sandwiches to the weary truckers who hauled their goods from east to west and back again.

The trees had grown a lot since then.

He waited. It was daylight and bitterly cold. His beloved Volvo was cooling rapidly, so he turned the engine on again to try to keep the girls from freezing to death. He asked no questions. They waited and asked none in return.

An hour later a vehicle approached from behind, another from the front. Dark saloon cars, navy blue and grey, each containing two well-dressed men. The grey car stayed back, its occupants watching back towards the main road. The men from the blue car approached the Volvo. One opened the passenger door, held his arms up and gathered the youngest girl, carried her safely back to the grey car, a Vauxhall of some kind.

The driver opened the cab door and smiled. We won’t keep you long, sir. You’ve done the right thing.

Immigration. Or Police. Some sort of government agency. He’d know them anywhere with their haircuts and confident stance.

The blue car driver waited a moment as his mate collected the older girl and repeated the journey. The grey car accelerated, spinning its front wheels in the icy mud, and turned onto the main road and headed towards Grantham.

The driver of the blue car smiled once more. Thanks, you’ll be rewarded in heaven.

Well, it’s certainly nice to be able to tell my wife I did a good deed today; can I ask one question?

Of course.

Will they be OK?

Absolutely. You have my word. There was that smile again, cold air spilling out from the corners of his lips.

Right then, I’ll be off home to bed. It’s been a long night. He went to pull the door shut when a whistling whip crack alerted his mind to danger. The hollow point 9mm round hit him in the right temple. It was enough, no need to fire another.

The driver pulled the good Samaritan down into the mud and with his mate they dragged him across the track and into a partly flooded storm drain. Using a long branch, the passenger pushed their victim into the water just far enough that he lodged against the roof of the large pipe.

Within the hour the Volvo has hooked up to the container back in the old hangar, and left. For all intents and purposes, to a casual or professional observer this was a people trafficking operation gone wrong with a driver summarily executed and his body dumped God alone knew where.

Quite why half the dead had their stomachs cut open would be a question for the local police force to investigate. They could take weeks, months probably, and they’d be wide of the mark. The only person that could shed some light was Popeye Hopkins and he would be a decomposed mess lying in an isolated drain wondering just what the hell had hit him.

Chapter Two

New Zealand, Autumn 2015

The first indication that John ‘Jack’ Cade was ill came late on the Tuesday night. He had what some men bravely and stubbornly called male influenza – it was bequeathed a word, and was a real thing, apparently.

Walking with it in the late evening, late summer Southern Hemisphere rain with her had seemed like a fine idea. Until it manifested weeks later as pneumonia.

The fever was the second indicator. The cough the first. A gentle and persistent reminder, followed later by a hacking bark that sounded like an unexplained noise in a remote jungle at night. You found it interesting, yet avoided it like the plague.

It was a Friday that he had the first high-temperature dream. Staring at his own limbs and watching in fascination as people moved through them, causing him to jolt, and watch in morbid confusion as particles of his body followed them and shrouded them in a green and red mist.

He called out. But no one came.

He screamed.

She bathed his head with cooling water, held his hand, hushed him back into a semi-conscious state.

It was over.

---

It seemed like many months had lapsed since backs had been warmly slapped, hands had been strongly shaken and cheeks gently kissed. A few men had hugged him and more women had kissed him, one, squarely on the lips. It was fine. He was fine with it, and so was she.

In fact, it was only weeks.

If he stood still long enough to consider the past ten years or so, to count his friends and the encounters they had all had, and the colleagues he had lost, he wouldn’t have once more boarded the long-haul flight from Auckland, New Zealand to London Gatwick via Dubai.

It seemed that life was pleading with him to listen, ‘Never go back, Jack. It just won’t be the same. We both know it.’

He ignored the voice in his head. He could, it was his own after all, so he had complete control. He was good at that, at least. In many ways he was a trouble-free rarity. A normal career police officer; practically squeaky-clean, only unjust complaints against him, no addictions, no hang-ups, no dusty skeletons in dustier cupboards.

But he was what his long-term friend and colleague DCI Jason Roberts called, affectionately, a ‘complete shit magnet’.

As the aforementioned stuck to a blanket, so it seemed did bad news and chaos attached themselves to him and anyone who associated with him.

You found him interesting, yet, if you had a modicum of sense avoided him like the plague.

---

The Emirates check-in process was seamless – as always.

Into the lounge; a small plateful of food, a glass of Rabbit Ranch with its warm notes and fragrant ruby-red colours and then that wait for the world’s longest non-stop flight.

Thank God for business class – better still, thank the man upstairs for shedding good fortune on him during a hedonistic night in Hong Kong, back in the day, when lady luck had seen to it that he could, at the very least, leave the world of full-time employment, add the word consultant to any email signature and within reason ask a price that everyone considered reasonable.

The A380 was at cruising altitude and its inhabitants bedding down for the night. Indonesia scrolled across the screen in front of him and all around him his fellow passengers snored the hours away in comfort, or through red and tired eyes selected another film, waiting for the inevitable next meal and arrival into Dubai after a seventeen-hour haul across countries and time zones.

Downstairs, the living dead endured the economy, trying to find a position of comfort and failing. A few walked around the vast cabin, stretching, yawning, gazing at their fellow prisoners, or out of the emergency exit port hole onto a black ocean a few miles below.

Cade laid back, switched the headphones to noise cancel mode, and contemplated the past. A career police officer, things had taken a turn – for the better.

He had taken a chance, convinced a girl to trust him, then helped to fish her naked, neglected and tortured body out of London’s River Thames only days later. Ten years on and he had done the same with her daughter, another redhead, but this time in the upturned wreck of a German sports car, on a deserted New Zealand road, a very long way from her Bulgarian home.

He had to leave her there, and that was a cross he was to bear until they met again, her very much alive and Cade very much torn between choosing her and the woman he had first worked with at Scotland Yard, one of their best analysts, a fiery girl called O’Shea who he grew to find too attractive to ignore. His ego had almost killed her too.

Three beautiful women. One sociopathic man and a syndicate of criminals. Cade had thought from the outset that the link was him, but he was wrong, it was larger and interwoven, insidious, and threatening. What made it worse was that the most dangerous person of all was at the heart of the British government, a man they and the people they led were encouraged to trust.

Jack saw to it that a contact of his killed him.

A single round, skating through a storm-laden sky, over the Thames and perfectly placed into his head. If the public had known the truth, more heads would have rolled. If they had known why, they would have carried the new Prime Minister around on their shoulders. Cade’s team had prevented civil unrest and financial chaos, had protected the city and its inhabitants from an unprecedented flood and the knowledge that the government had tried to disband the British monarchy – all in the same week.

His team, who had flourished under the banner of the Metropolitan Police unit called Orion, had succumbed too. He had lost three of his very best people, four if you counted their covert human intelligence source, a transvestite prostitute with more courage than many men and a mind dirtier than a mechanic’s fingernail.

The man they called the Jackdaw also known as Alexandru Stefanescu had the key to all of the above and was within days of making history, and an obscene amount of money. Cade had fought with him in a flooded part of the Thames Barrier, watched him almost decapitated, losing both of his hands and then his soul to the same river that had claimed so many of his victims.

Jack didn’t mean to be dramatic the day that he had delivered Alex’s hands to the Prime Minister. he just took him at his word. ‘Let me see actual proof that the bastard is gone and out of our bloody lives.’

---

All of that, and more, had happened only weeks before. Days, if you could be bothered to stand and count them, hours with a lot more patience.

The redhead called Elena, a girl Cade had known intimately and all too-briefly had found someone new, a soldier they called Mack. Cade’s long-term friend and mentor John ‘JD’ Daniel had retired for the second time and had headed back to New Zealand, vowing to stay there to run his restaurant with his wife.

DCI Jason Roberts, ‘Ginger’ to his many friends, had remained in London to head up the newly funded Orion squad, clinging onto what was left of the original team.

Which left Cade, who had also headed back to his adopted home in New Zealand, to a marina-side dwelling called Spindrift, a place he could lay his weary head and relax. He needed to. No man, or woman, can continue at such a pace. And when they do, nature normally comes calling.

Catherine ‘Carrie’ O’Shea had joined him. Life was beginning to settle into a pace, one only enjoyed by those that were lucky enough to reside by the edge of Pacific Ocean in a Southern Hemisphere early Autumn; longish, warm days, with trees offering teasing glimpses of their winter coats and the bluest of seas cooling to a brisker temperature.

---

He had returned from his ritual run and an ocean swim that beautiful morning, grabbed O’Shea by the waist and hoisted her up into his arms for a salt-laden and pine-scented kiss.

She was doing well, all things considered.

Her hair was finally growing back, the colour was lighter and spoke of a night she was keen to forget. One of many. It seemed that being attracted to him came with its own fair share of problems. One of them, a nasty piece of work called Constantin, who had poisoned her, then later, kidnapped her, allowed her to be used as a lever to extract information and had finally watched as his boss, the Jackdaw had lovingly carved a cross into her stomach. That was the only visible scar she carried now. The others were buried in a lead-lined casket somewhere in the deeper recesses of her quarrelsome mind. At the foot of the deepest ocean trench.

Cade was running his fingers through her hair and tracing a heart on her back and relaxing when he noticed the neon blue light on the answering machine.

It could wait.

---

Minutes later he was back in the kitchen, pacing. This is where it all started last time.

There was nothing to fear, they were gone, and the remaining members of their criminal team were either locked up in British prisons, for good, or held by their European counterparts for an equal amount of time. Gone and forgotten.

But that bloody light still blinked. He had begun to associate the phone with trouble, almost developed a phobia. Leave it. Ignore it.

Well, Jack, are you going to answer that?

No, let’s leave it, head over to see JD for lunch, it can wait.

He had thought about locking the place, setting the alarm and jumping into the new car, but there it was, blinking rhythmically, it may as well have been calling his bloody name.

‘Jack…Jack Cade, Inspector…answer me…you know you want to.’

OK. Bastard. You win. He pressed the button, killing the blue light.

As he began to listen an English voice began to speak, well-educated, hesitantly at first then with more urgency.

Hello…Mr. Cade. Please don’t delete this. You don’t know me, but I think you could help. At least they say you can. Can you ring me on this number? As soon as possible? Please.

Cade recognised it as a UK number, wrote it down on the back of a cereal packet and deleted the message. The light still flickered. Christ, would they ever leave him alone? This time the call was live. He stood and listened once more – knowing that the caller was actually stood in his own home, far away talking to himself but hoping he had an audience.

Mr. Cade, it’s me again. Are you there? Time is against us; now they tell me that he’s only got weeks at the most. If it helps, and it’s a rather long story, your father once suggested I ring you if the time came. He gave me your number, said if you couldn’t help my dad then frankly no one could. He always spoke fondly of you…

The voice paused, broke slightly, took a deep breath.

Cade was listening now. Any mention of his parents had that effect. Carrie quietly stirred the coffee in her favourite red cup, the one with the equally favoured brand name. She was listening too.

My dad is in his nineties now. Has very limited time left. He’s in a hospice, in Kent – as chance would have it, the same one that looked after your dad. Mine’s got dementia, among other things, but he’s as fit as the day he left the navy. Anyway, I’m rambling now…

Cade picked up the phone. Hello. How can I help?

Jack?

Yes.

Thank you, my friend. It’s Digby Denby here. It’s late, but I needed to speak.

Digby? Unusual name. Did your parents not like you?

He laughed for the first time. I’m in the navy. No one has a real name in the mob.

Then Digby it is. Sorry, carry on.

 My father, Tom…

Stop. He needed a second. The name. That name was so familiar.

You say Tom Denby? The old naval officer?

Yes! His son seemed relieved, surprised, if not emotional.

Tell me more.

That’s it, Jack. I don’t know. He started rambling on about an operation a few days ago, and it’s taken this long to track you down. The thing is I know he had a serious role in the navy, later the Ministry of Defence, something to do with national or border security. But what he is telling me sounds farcical. He’s mentioned an operation that might have been called Griffin. But he says he needs to speak to someone he can trust.

And that’s me? Via six degrees of separation? Cade asked, looking at O’Shea who nodded encouragingly.

I’m afraid so. You are all that is left. I think most of the old boys are all gone, windswept headstones in unkempt corners of cemeteries around England. There was a young man called Daniel too, but he’s disappeared off the face of the earth, and if I ring up the Home Office and even begin to tell them what I am hearing – they will either have me sectioned or lock me up for good or treason or all three.

Cade looked at Carrie, shrugged his shoulders.

So, JD was part of this. It was sounding familiar.

How long have we got? Honestly?

I’ve no idea, Jack. Days? A few weeks at most. Months? Who knows? He doesn’t realise he has stage four cancer, in that respect dementia is a blessing.

OK, what do you want me to do?

His voice broke now. He was crying. Come and sit beside an old man’s bed and hold his hand…and listen to what he has to tell you. Because if he tells you what he told me, then you are going to want to hear his story. The problem is he’ll have no idea he told me and in truth I was half asleep so only heard the ending.

Cade looked at O’Shea. ‘Well?’ She nodded, thumbs up, encouraging.

I’ll be there. Two days. And if it helps, John Daniel will hear about this when I’ve hung up from you. He lives a few miles away from me.

So, it’s John. I always thought he was called Daniel. But he’s still alive? Bloody hell, this has been worth tracking you down just to hear that. Dad was his mentor…spoke so highly of him.

So where are you these days, Digby? asked Cade, fishing a little.

Right now? I’m in the UK about to deploy back to the Gulf in a few weeks, piracy patrols. Oh yes, all the top jobs. Will teach me to come from a military family, won’t it? Everywhere you look it seems.

What does your wife think of the deployments?

I have no idea. I don’t see her anymore, Jack. She’s in the army, done well by all accounts. Takes after her father.

Well Digby, I wish you well. I’ll get some tickets booked and head on home. You’re lucky you caught me a good time, I’m bored, you see, like a puppy with nothing to entertain him – I go looking for trouble.

And you reckon you can solve Dad’s ramblings?

I reckon I can give it a bloody good go.

Digby’s silence spoke volumes, but he was at last able to smile.

---

Cade picked up his cell phone and pressed three.

Hello Jack, what time are we expecting you for lunch? Daniel’s ebullient voice had never changed.

In thirty minutes. And when I get there prepare yourself for a shock.

Don’t tell me you are going to offer to pay for lunch?

Funny man. In fact, process this now and we’ll see you soon. I’ve just had a call from Tom Denby’s son in England.

Never!

One hundred percent. He’s asked for me. He’s got weeks left, John. Needs to leave some kind of legacy. Wanted you but you are listed as missing, presumed retired.

Daniel was clearly thinking on his feet. They knew each other well.

So, the old sea dog is finally willing to let go of the bone? Daniel inhaled. I often wondered when the day would come. See you in twenty. That new car needs running in.

Remember what happened last time? I’ll take it easy. And I expect a thorough briefing over a chicken liver, two salad leaves, and a drizzle of oil that you have the audacity to call lunch!

I cannot abide cheeky kids. See you soon. And about time I drove the Jag.

When you can convince me you are truly sorry for calling my last vehicle a hairdresser’s car!

---

Cade looked out onto the driveway. She sat there raising her eyebrows. Flirting. Waiting as she always did, a willing mistress with an incredibly cute arse, lifting her skirt ever-so-slightly.

She even looked fast stood still. ‘I’m all yours. Come and play…’

Cade was glad he had listened to his inner voice and traded up, treating himself. Up until then he had had very little else to spend his money on, so why not? The boat was idle, rising up and down at her moorings twice a day, encrusted in barnacles, the ocean’s refugees, and he really needed to sell her. So, she moved to a different harbour, and he was able to finally close the door on another deep-rooted chapter.

He plipped the remote on the new toy, a dark grey, Jaguar F-Type, held the door for O’Shea, who to be fair had a backside with similar attributes, allowed the big cat to settle to a purr before setting off along a road, that for him at least had two different meanings.

Death and Life.

Chapter Three

Kent, England

Having arrived at London Gatwick airport, Cade and O’Shea picked up the hire car, a grey Audi and joined the continual throng that headed down the M25 and into the county of Kent.

Good to be back? O’Shea smiled, sensing how Cade had lifted, sat more upright, alert. He was back on his old ground.

You can take the boy out of England Carrie…

That’s what they say. So now what? Where to from here? Have you told Ginger yet?

Not yet. John Daniel is obviously aware now and will clear it with Lynne to travel back.

So more of the same then? Long hours, you abandoning me to my fate and back to Scotland Yard in time for tea and medals with the new Prime Minister?

Not so sure this time. I need to meet Tom first, find out just what it is he wants to tell me.

You’ve flown twelve thousand miles to find out, it had better be good.

He’s held this secret to himself for a while. He’s a sailor Carrie. Their stories are always worth listening to.

Cade accelerated, third to fourth, enjoying the small-engined, turbocharged Audi. Doesn’t quite have the roar of the Jaguar does it?

No, but then the exhaust note on that does remind me of a really hungry lion, just before it rips into a helpless baby antelope.

Cade loved how she loved cars, or at least pretended to.

A lion? Should really be a voracious Jaguar don’t you think? he asked as he pulled back into the middle lane, allowing a marked Volvo patrol car to hurtle past him, its sirens demonstrating the true Doppler effect as it disappeared onwards into the light rain horizon.

We’ll be there in fifteen.

Do you know what you are going to say yet?

Nope. Not a clue. I’ll do what the best thriller writers do, just sit down and hope that what I say makes sense and captivates him enough to continue with the story.

He’s got dementia, Jack. You need to allow for that. What if what he tells you is all nonsense?

Then I’ll write a different book. I need to know what happened then, not now. Sufferers of dementia can remember way back, but forget what they had for breakfast.

Says the man who can never find his car keys!

Says the woman who promised not to get kidnapped. He cringed.

Too soon Jack. Way too soon. The look she gave him enforced it too. She had a reputation of stabbing people with stationery did Carrie O’Shea. Pencils were her weapon of choice. Freshly sharpened. They entered the skin with limited fuss.

Touché. I apologise to the lady unreservedly. Anyway, I never lose the keys to the Jag. He indicated, turned off the M20 and onto a link road into Rochester, a town in Kent, and in a Jaguar F-Type about half an hour south of London.

Ready?

No. She smiled, gave him a hug. I know how tough this is.

She knew.

The last time Cade had walked out