London Belongs to the Alchemist (Class Heroes Book 4) Read online

  Lolly looked up the phone number for the New Cross Empire Casino on the internet. She rang the number, spoke to a girl and demanded to be put through to Nicky Cairo. Initially the girl refused, until Lolly mentioned offering to pay for the broken window and desk in Nicky’s office, whereupon there was a pause and a click. Finally, there was Nicky’s hybrid London/Egyptian accent at the other end of the phone.

  “Who is this?” he demanded.

  “I’m just phoning to make sure you got your mango for dinner,” giggled Lolly.

  There was a snort from the other end of the phone.

  “Very funny, sweetheart,” said the voice, with barely concealed menace. “But remember, mangos are better when they’re cooked. I haven’t ruled out sending my boys to your friend’s shop with a can of petrol.”

  “Relax, Nicky,” said Lolly, civilly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You, hurt me!?” exploded Nicky. “Little girl, when I find out who you are, I’m going to forget my rule about not hurting kids and you’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

  “Then let me save you the job of finding out. My name is Lolly Rosewood. Look me up on the internet; I bet I’m more famous than you. And as it happens, I can help you.”

  “You trying to wind me up, sweetheart?” snarled Nicky.

  “Certainly not. I want to meet with you. I think you want something very badly and I think I can help you get it.” She let that sink in, then lowered her voice so nobody else in the house would be able to hear. “And I hope you’ll be able to help me in return.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the phone, and Lolly guessed that Nicky had just come up with some rather interesting Google hits against her name.

  “All right, Miss Rosewood,” said Nicky, in a cautious, but more agreeable, voice. “Come to my office at midday tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

  Lolly ended the call.

  She sat on the bed, thinking. It took her a few moments to realize somebody was knocking at the door. Lolly tensed up, not really knowing why. She hoped it wasn’t the mother.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Yvonne opened the door and smiled at her.

  “How are you feeling, dear?” she asked.

  “Fine,” said Lolly, politely. “Just a little tired.” What did the woman want?

  “Roger told me what you did today, and what you are going to do tomorrow. I just wanted to say thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Lolly.

  “Just so you know,” said Yvonne, “you can stay here as long as you like.” The woman was holding something in her hand. It was a key on a fob. The keyring had a small rubber London bus attached to it.

  “Door key,” explained Yvonne. “James liked buses when he was younger,” she added, pointing at the fob, and she placed it on the table beside Lolly’s bed.

  Lolly smiled, involuntarily.

  “Thank you.”

  “Dinner won’t be long. Steak tonight, hope that’s ok.”

  The woman left. Lolly sat on the bed, staring at the key fob. She sighed deeply.

  ***

  A short while later, Lolly heard James calling out to his sister. Curious, Lolly went to see what the fuss was all about.

  “Steve Roadhouse sent me this link,” said James, waving his phone around. “It’s another video message from Al. And it’s for you!”

  “For me?” asked Sam, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

  James played the video. Lolly saw a boy dressed in a black and neon skeleton outfit, standing on a rooftop. Lolly caught a glimpse of Canary Wharf in the background. That brought back bad memories for her, but she pushed the thought to one side.

  “Is that Al?” asked Lolly. “Who would wear that?”

  “It’s his stage outfit. He’s a DJ,” said Sam, witheringly.

  “Welcome to today’s video from DJ Alchemy,” said Al. Once again, his voice was modulated to sound robotic. “Today’s lesson is about love. I met a girl on Friday, and ever since then I can’t stop thinking about her. It makes me want to go—” and he launched into a series of backflips across the rooftop, until he disappeared over the edge.

  “Oh my god!” shrieked Sam, putting her hand up to her mouth.

  “It’s ok, just kidding,” said the robotic voice, and moments later Al clambered back over the ledge and jogged back to face the camera. “It’s just I did a similar thing when I first met her. I hope she gets to see this video. The lesson for today is, find somebody special in your life. Somebody who makes you want to live every day to the full. When you have that, it makes you a better person. Let’s all change the world for the better. I’ll see you again tomorrow. Remember. London belongs to us.”

  The video faded to black.

  “Wow,” said Sam, in disbelief.

  Interesting guy, thought Lolly. And the fact that he seemed smitten with Sam could be a good thing, in terms of having him as a future ally.

  All told, the plan was going well so far.

  Chapter 22

  With Mrs Stannard due to arrive at the house at eight o’clock that evening, Lolly asked James if she could wait in his bedroom. He seemed happy enough and nobody else raised any objections, although Sam was looking daggers at her all the way through dinner.

  Roger had prepared the meal and Lolly ate appreciatively. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten home-cooked steak and chips.

  While Sam and James helped their father to clear away the dinner things, Lolly helped Yvonne tidy up the spare room and hide all of Lolly’s possessions.

  “I’ll put your clothes in our bedroom, and replace them when Mrs Stannard has gone,” said Yvonne, pulling out a yellow sundress from the wardrobe.

  “Oh, that’s so pretty,” said Yvonne, and Lolly flushed. “Where did you buy it? It’s lovely. I can see how that would really suit you.”

  “Thanks. I normally have things made for me,” said Lolly, hoping she didn’t sound boastful. “So I wasn’t sure about this.”

  “Oh, you’ve got such a lovely figure, you’d look nice in anything,” said Yvonne, scooping up some jumpers and carrying them off to her own bedroom.

  With everyone busy, Lolly slipped downstairs. She took the house phone off its cradle and dialled the number for her own phone. She accepted the call and then muted her own phone.

  She then hid the house phone in the dining room. It seemed to be the location for family conferences, so Lolly gambled that this was where the Blakes would entertain Mrs Stannard.

  Now she could listen to any conversation going on in the dining room. She just hoped nobody would need to use the house phone in the meantime.

  Lolly took herself upstairs, collected a change of clothes, laid on James’s bed and played with his camera. She experimented with the exposure levels and took some sample pictures in the room, alternately switching the lights on and off.

  At five minutes to eight Lolly called down to the Blake family, saying that she was closing the bedroom door and would not make any more noise.

  She quickly changed into a black top, black leggings and tied her hair in a ponytail. She left her shoes off. She put the camera in a pocket of her black top and zipped it up. She hid her other clothes, unlocked the sash window, lifted it up, then climbed out onto the ledge. James’s bedroom was at the back of the house and overlooked the garden.

  Lolly’s strength and agility made it easy for her to scale the wall of the house using the thick, solid drainpipe and uneven bricks for supports. It was a short climb and she clambered across the roof like a monkey until she reached the apex. She then lay down so that her body was stretched across the rear-facing side of the roof, and she could peer over the summit to look down on the driveway and the street beyond. For extra cover, she manoeuvred herself closer to the chimney stack. She took the camera and her phone out of her pocket, cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder, and waited.

  ***

  Ten minutes later a car pulled up a short distanc
e from the house. A man and a woman got out. The woman was tall, had red hair, wore a business suit and had an air of brisk authority. Lolly had a feeling she might even have met this woman once before, in Suffolk.

  The man was shorter, dressed in black jeans and a black shirt. The two of them were engrossed in conversation. The woman pointed at the Blakes’ house, then pointed to another house closer by. The man nodded and ran towards the second house, disappearing from Lolly’s field of vision.

  The woman checked her phone, then walked purposefully in the direction of the Blakes’ house.

  Lolly adjusted the camera’s telephoto lens and took several photos of the woman as she approached the driveway. She managed ten photos in total before the woman reached the doorway of the Blake house and was obscured from Lolly’s line of sight. Lolly emailed the photos from the camera to her phone.

  She heard the ring of the doorbell via the receiver on her phone. Muffled voices. The sound of a door being closed. Then Roger saying, “Through here”.

  Lolly had guessed correctly, the meeting was going to take place around the dining-room table.

  “Nice to see you again, Sam, and you, James.” An unfamiliar voice, so obviously Mrs Stannard.

  “You too, Mrs S.” That was James.

  Yvonne offered tea. More pleasantries, tea arrived, people settled into chairs. Get on with it, thought Lolly. This felt unusually uncomfortable, and not just because an uneven roof tile was digging into her thigh.

  “I take it you got away from Nicky Cairo unharmed, Samantha?” asked Mrs Stannard.

  There was a pause, then Sam said in an uncertain voice, “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’m sorry to have called you earlier, Jennifer.” It was Roger now, and the intonation of his voice screamed ‘damage limitation’. It was obvious he wanted to get the woman out of his house as soon as was polite to do so. “I know you are busy and can’t be expected to drop everything for us. It won’t happen again.”

  “That’s not a problem, Roger,” said Mrs Stannard, and now Lolly could detect a slight edge to her voice, too. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help earlier on. But I did some investigation into Nicky Cairo. His real name is Ibrahim Bassam, son of an Egyptian immigrant and a hairdresser from Catford.” She sounded like she was reading from a report. “He grew up in Lewisham and became an amateur boxer when he was 18, which is when he changed his name to Nicky Cairo. He learned about nightclubs and casinos from his uncle, who came to London at the same time as his father. The drug squad are investigating Mr Cairo, but he’s not on our watch list.” There was another pause. “So I’m wondering what he wanted with you, Sam?”

  Lolly could see why Roger considered Mrs Stannard’s friendship a necessary evil. It was useful to have powerful friends, but you want to have control over those friends. You don’t want to be at their mercy.

  “I was with my boyfriend,” said Sam, hesitantly. “Nicky had some kind of problem with him. I don’t know what, but we managed to get away.”

  “I see,” said Mrs Stannard, obviously not believing Sam. “Perhaps I should take a closer look at your boyfriend, just to make sure he’s not into anything that could cause your family a problem?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Roger, quickly. “I don’t feel comfortable spying on a 15-year-old boy.”

  “Very well,” said Mrs Stannard.

  Lolly wished she was in the room so she could get the measure of the woman’s body language. She had the distinct feeling that Mrs Stannard was playing cat and mouse with the Blakes.

  “Tell me,” the woman continued, “have any of you seen Lolly Rosewood recently?”

  Lolly pressed the phone receiver closer to her ear. She didn’t want to miss this.

  “No, none of us have,” said Roger, casually. “How is Sir Michael?”

  “He’s safe,” replied Mrs Stannard, simply. Clearly she wasn’t going to give away any useful information. “It’s Lolly I’m concerned about. We haven’t managed to catch her yet.”

  “Perhaps she’s left the country,” said James, and his voice went a little high-pitched at the end of the sentence. Lolly sighed. Bless him, he was trying to help but his acting was atrocious.

  “We know she is still in the country,” Mrs Stannard corrected him. “In fact we know that she is in London, and that today she was in Ealing.”

  Silence. Lolly raised an eyebrow. The Security Service were never far behind her but she hadn’t realized how close they had got. She was surprised to realize that her first emotion was a pang of regret. She thought about the warmth of the Blakes’ house and compared it to the endless cold, faceless hotel rooms she had been living in.

  “How do you know that?” asked Sam.

  “I can’t tell you. But it is part of the reason I’m here. I wanted to warn you, in case she is here to threaten you in some way. You’re sure you haven’t seen her?”

  Lolly could imagine the woman looking at each of the Blakes in turn, trying to work out if they were telling the truth.

  “I haven’t seen her, and I’m sure the children would have said if they had,” said Roger. He was far more convincing than his son, thought Lolly. How strange that he would lie to protect her.

  “I see,” said Mrs Stannard again. Another pause and Lolly wondered if the connection had dropped out. It was frustrating not being able to see. Then the woman’s voice again. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you? If she is threatening you in some way? I can help you. You know you can trust me.”

  “Of course,” Roger assured her. “I suspect Lolly Rosewood is a long way away by now.”

  “She may be,” said Mrs Stannard, heavily. Lolly heard the shuffling of papers, then the woman’s voice again. “Although I couldn’t help Sam when she was being held at Nicky Cairo’s casino, I did check out the CCTV cameras in the area. Take a look at these.”

  More silence.

  “These are stills taken from the CCTV along New Cross Road.”

  A long, uncomfortable pause.

  “That is you, isn’t it James?” said the woman. “And that is quite obviously Lolly Rosewood. You seem quite friendly. Would you care to explain?”

  Lolly shifted uncomfortably on the cold slate tiles. She quickly re-evaluated her situation. The Blakes might betray her, in which case she would have to run. She could try and hide in the back of Mrs Stannard’s car and overpower the woman when she returned to her home. The problem was she had no method of surreptitiously breaking into the car. What to do?

  “I can explain,” said Roger, eventually. “Lolly Rosewood came to the house not long before Sam was abducted, under a flag of truce, for want of a better phrase.”

  Lolly listened intently, like her whole future depended on it.

  “What do you mean?” asked Mrs Stannard.

  “I mean that she virtually threw herself on my mercy, offering her apologies for everything she and her father had done, and asking for forgiveness.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “Yes,” said Roger, adamantly. “I think it was sincere. Despite what she’s done in the past, you have to remember that she’s just a child and she’s got nobody to look after her.”

  “She’s 16 and she’s dangerous,” said Mrs Stannard, coldly.

  “Everyone is potentially dangerous if they’re desperate enough,” Roger countered. “I saw a vulnerable girl who needed help.”

  “What did she want?”

  “To make amends for what she had done. I must admit my first thought was to call you and get her tasered until she didn’t know what day it was. But I just couldn’t do it. She offered to rescue Sam and I had no doubt that she could pull it off, so I took a chance. James went with her to make sure Sam would know Lolly was a friend.”

  “You realize you’ve assisted a fugitive?” said Mrs Stannard, disbelievingly. “That’s very serious. And as a friend, I have to say it was incredibly stupid. It could have consequences for you and your family.”

  “I let her rescue my daugh
ter. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same. Lolly Rosewood isn’t her father. She’s not dangerous unless she’s backed into a corner, like any frightened animal. If I’d thrown her out into the street she might have killed someone just to pass the time. But if she’s taught right from wrong, and shown respect, maybe she has a chance to redeem herself.”

  Lolly swallowed, hard. She wasn’t used to feeling guilty, but the Blakes were risking prison to protect her and she was just using them.

  “So what do you want me to do? Send her on a holiday to Majorca and set her up with a counsellor?” The friendly tone had gone from the woman’s voice. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Roger.

  “Is she in the house?”

  “No.”

  “Mind if I take a look around?”

  “Be my guest.”

  What did it mean? Roger had been trying to protect her, hadn’t he? Was this some kind of bluff? Was he hoping that Mrs Stannard wouldn’t search?

  Lolly heard a noise. It was from the rear of the house. Was somebody in the garden? She crawled back down the sloping roof until she reached the ledge. To her astonishment, the man in the black suit whom she’d seen with Mrs Stannard was looking up at her while hanging onto the drainpipe outside James’s bedroom window. He looked as surprised to see her as she did him. Then he reacted. Close up, she could see that he had a black holster across his body with a taser gun in it. Clinging on to the drainpipe with one hand, he reached for the gun.

  Lolly drew back from the edge of the roof so she was out of his line of sight. If he wanted to shoot her, he would have to join her up here. She backed away up the sloping roof in order to let the man think she was scared, hoping he would follow.

  Sure enough, his head popped up over the level of the guttering, just briefly, as he checked her position. She was several metres away, closer to the chimney, and now facing away from him. Seeing there was no immediate danger, and assuming she was trying to escape, the guy neatly pulled himself up onto the slate tiles, in a half-crouched position in order to maintain his balance. He reached for his taser.