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

The thin guy didn’t look happy, but he picked up a briefcase that was at his feet. Lolly noticed how the case was bulging. He left through the inner bar door, presumably to get out through the same window by which Al had entered.

  Al and the second bodyguard helped the injured man to his feet. The two big guys then left, keeping a safe distance from Lolly as they did so.

  ***

  Finally, Lolly was alone with Al.

  “What are you doing here?” repeated Al.

  Lolly could tell that he had mixed feelings about seeing her. He clearly did not want anyone to know about this clandestine meeting and yet he didn’t seem annoyed that she was here.

  “Because I’m fascinated by you,” replied Lolly, honestly. “You, me, James and Sam. We’re the same. I needed to see you.”

  Al looked concerned.

  “Look, you know me and Sam are sort of seeing each other, don’t you?” he said, awkwardly. “Aren’t you James’s girlfriend?”

  “Relax, stud,” said Lolly, laughing. “It’s your powers I’m interested in. I want to be friends, that’s all.”

  Al looked relieved.

  “You must have questions about how you got your ability?” she asked.

  “Sam said it was to do with an accident I had.”

  “She’s almost certainly right. But nobody understands these powers like me and my father. I can help you find answers.” She drew breath.

  “Can I see you do your thing?” she asked. There was something amazing, thrilling about finding another person like her. Lolly shivered. Her whole body tingled as she waited to see Al’s power in action. If necessary, she would have got down on her knees and begged him.

  Al couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

  “It’s a pretty cool power.” He took a small packet of white powder out of his pocket.

  “Cocaine?” asked Lolly.

  Al nodded.

  “Is that what you were giving those guys?”

  Al’s smile flickered momentarily.

  “Look, I’ll show you my power, but don’t interfere in my business, Lolly,” he warned.

  Whatever he was up to must be important to him, she reflected.

  “You don’t have to get defensive with me, Al. I have no moral objection to you selling drugs. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Darwinism in action. Society’s way of getting rid of the weak. I’m just thinking that maybe I can help you.”

  “I don’t sell drugs,” said Al, forcefully. “I just don’t believe in laws telling people what they can and can’t do.” Then his face softened. “But I’m interested to know how you can help me.”

  Lolly was about to perch on the nearest table but, seeing how dirty it was, she decided against it.

  “I need to pay off Nicky Cairo, to stop him from hurting you or the Blakes,” she said, simply. “I think he’ll accept drugs as payment. Can you give me some?”

  “I don’t want to give that mug nothin’,” snapped Al.

  Lolly sighed.

  “Al, this is business. You don’t want Cairo as an enemy. Please trust me. I’m trying to help you. And Sam.”

  Al started pacing the room. He studied a broken fruit machine.

  “How much do you need?” he asked, tapping at the glass fascia.

  “A fair chunk,” replied Lolly.

  Al looked around. He walked off through the inner door.

  ***

  Al returned a minute later with a large tin of coffee.

  “Found it in the kitchen.”

  He opened the lid. It was nearly full.

  “I guess nobody who came to this pub liked coffee,” observed Al as he placed the packet of cocaine next to the tin on the table.

  “I have to be touching whatever it is,” he explained.

  Lolly watched, transfixed, as he placed two fingers of his left hand in the white powder and immersed his right hand in the coffee granules. He closed his eyes. Lolly switched her gaze between his face and his hands. Al’s brow was furrowed and his hands were trembling. And then it started. It was so gradual that it almost fooled the eye into believing it wasn’t happening. The brown coffee gradually became white. The consistency of the two substances was so similar that the transformation looked strangely unspectacular. Lolly blinked, looked away, and when she focused on the table again, there was a small bag of white powder — and a large tin of white powder.

  Al took his hand out of the tin and dusted it off.

  “There,” he said, a little breathless. He lifted up the tin of what had been coffee and showed it to Lolly. “Cocaine. It’s only instant, I’m afraid,” he joked.

  Lolly’s eyes were shining. No matter how incredible her own ability, and the remarkable things that her father had introduced her to, she was always left overawed when she saw a new power demonstrated.

  And this particular ability was just what she needed.

  “I’ll need some Super D, too,” she said.

  “Why?” asked Al, warily.

  “Trust me. If you want to protect Samantha and your own family, let me handle Nicky Cairo.”

  Al shrugged. Lolly sized him up. He was an interesting character. Passionate, focussed, good looking and comfortable with himself. She could see why Samantha liked him.

  “You know you’re better than this,” said Lolly, indicating the derelict pub.

  “What you mean? This place is great. Cops don’t look in here. It’s where we meet.”

  “Al, your gift puts you up there among the elite, not in the gutter with those people that you were meeting.”

  “That guy is a social media genius, man. I’m buying his expertise. He wants paying in drugs, that’s fine by me.”

  “For what?” said Lolly. “I heard you when I was upstairs. You said you were planning something big. Will I be disappointed when you tell me what it is? Please say it isn’t just one of your parties.” Lolly hoped she sounded suitably disdainful.

  “This ain’t just any party,” Al fired back. “It’s what should have happened in 1977. Anarchy. Get rid of the monarchy. Tell the rich that people like us ain’t going to take it no more. I’m organizing the mother of all riots. Finally, there’s going to be anarchy in the UK.”

  “Wouldn’t alchemy in the UK be better?” asked Lolly.

  Al laughed and looked exasperated at the same time. Lolly didn’t think her joke was that funny.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, getting up and walking in a circle around her. “You and your father are stinking rich. Ok, I don’t know much about you, but I bet you went to private school. I bet you’ll never have to work if you don’t want. I bet you’ll never need to worry about how you’re going to eat.”

  Lolly couldn’t let that one pass.

  “You’re right. I won’t. But it’s nothing to do with how much money my father has or what school I went to. It’s my abilities that make me special. I will never starve and neither will you, for exactly the same reason, so spare me your inverse snobbery,” she demanded, putting her face to within a few centimetres of his. “We’ll never be like everybody else. Stop thinking like one of them.”

  Al seemed surprised by her vehemence.

  “Lolly, we can help people. We can set them free. We have the power to make a difference in society.”

  “With riots? Like last year?”

  “Yeah. Damn right. Not just people nicking stuff for no reason. But a proper rejection of authority. An event that says we’re not going to be pushed around anymore. What keeps people oppressed? The need for money, right? Well, I can change all that. If people have all the money they need, they get a chance to live how they want, not how they’re told to.”

  Lolly smiled at him. Privately, she thought the idea was naive and ill-conceived, but she could see where he was coming from. In many ways, he had the same end goal as her father. Daddy wanted to lift humanity up, too. But whereas her father wanted to empower people to help themselves, Al just wanted to throw money at them and let them get on with it.
Nevertheless, her father would be impressed by Al’s passion to use his power for the greater good.

  Their eyes were locked. His skin smelled of soap. There was an eternity of silence between them. For a second, Lolly wanted to kiss him. Just to see if he would respond. Just to see if he preferred her to Samantha.

  She leaned forward so that her face was angled, looking up at him. She pursed her lips ever so slightly. His eyes widened.

  Then Lolly thought of James. And she wondered why she was doing this.

  The moment passed.

  Lolly turned her back to Al, just as another thought popped into her head, one that got her genuinely excited. She was really outdoing herself now. Daddy would be proud. She could envisage how a series of riots could be incredibly helpful in her plan to rescue her father.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Sorry, Lolly. I like your style, girl, but I’m not telling you all my secrets, at least not yet.”

  “What if I want to help you?”

  “Why would you?”

  “I like your style, too. And if it’s a riot that you want, believe me, I’m your girl. You just ask my father.”

  “It’s going to take more than you just flicking your hair and shaking your booty,” said Al, patronizingly.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn about me, little boy. What you need is bodies. Obviously, they won’t be bodies as hot as mine, but I can get you a mob.”

  Al laughed.

  “Ok, I believe you.” He suddenly became serious again. “Look, just don’t tell Sam about this, ok? I want to tell her about it myself.”

  “Good luck with that,” giggled Lolly, imagining Sam’s outraged reaction. “You might find that your riot starts early when you tell Miss Goody Pants.”

  “It’ll be fine,” replied Al, unconvincingly. “She’ll understand.”

  Lolly smirked. She really was having a huge amount of fun again.

  ***

  After she had left Al, Lolly took herself off to a cafe to wait for her meeting with Nicky Cairo. She amused herself by reading through Sam’s text messages and emails. Ugh, the girl was just so infuriatingly nice. So boring, although no doubt other people would call it ‘sweet’. Lolly longed just to mess her up a bit.

  A text message came through from an unknown number. Lolly couldn’t resist reading it, and got something of a surprise. The message read:

  ‘Welcome back to school Blake. You need to start paying your tax.’

  Lolly blinked. She re-read the text. What did it mean? The phone pinged again and a second text came through from the same number.

  ‘It’s us against you Blake. We’ll do to you what we did to your friend.’

  Oh, how pathetic. Sam had obviously made an enemy at school. A second later and the phone screen went blank. Then it came back, with the download icon appearing in the top left of the screen. Then it went blank and came back again. Weird. What did it mean?

  Was Sam being bullied? Surely not. She’d only been back three days. Sam could crush any potential bully without a second thought. Why hadn’t she stamped on this ant? She was just so wet! Lolly made a mental note to speak to Sam about that when she got home. It was ok for her to treat Sam as she wanted, but she wasn’t going to accept some arrogant little weed doing it.

  Chapter 28

  Nicky Cairo fidgeted nervously in his chair in the repaired office of the New Cross Empire Casino. The window behind his desk had been fixed that morning and he’d swapped his broken desk for one from another office. He didn’t like it. The veneer was scratched, there were only two drawers and it was rickety.

  He gripped the edge of the desk to try and work out which was the short leg, and inadvertently put his thumb in some mouldy chewing gun that was stuck to the underside. Who the hell had put that there?

  Yesterday had been a terrible day for his pride. First he had been beaten up by the Russians in his own home. That was bad enough. But then to be bested by four kids in his own office, the centre of his power — that was utter humiliation. He’d wanted to torch the black kid’s family shop and then go after each of the other children in turn. But he’d exercised caution and intelligence. When Lolly Rosewood had phoned him, every instinct of which he was capable told him to wring her neck. But he’d listened. She had a proposition. Now to see if it would pay off.

  He’d Googled her, of course. Most of the articles on the net were about her father and his glitteringly successful career as Britain’s greatest entrepreneur. There was very little information about Lolly — apart from her full name, Lauren Abigail Rosewood — but there were plenty of pictures. Nicky scrolled through photos of the girl hanging off her father’s arm at parties, parading on beaches, and generally looking glamorous and spoilt. It was the same girl who had been in his office yesterday, there was no mistake about that.

  Nicky looked at his watch. 11:57. She was due any minute. He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out his .22 revolver, checked it, then replaced it in the drawer. He left the drawer open. He wanted the gun within easy reach.

  Nicky had no scruples about shooting a teenager if it was absolutely necessary. The girl was dangerous, that much was obvious, which Nicky had concluded must be something to do with this Super D steroid drug. Nevertheless, a bullet would still make a mess of her.

  Zak stood by Nicky’s side, anxiously fingering the gun in his suit pocket.

  “This chick makes me nervous,” said Zak. “Those kids are freaks. It’s all wrong.”

  “Patience my old mucker,” murmured Nicky, but privately he shared Zak’s concerns.

  ***

  12:03. The phone rang. It was security, downstairs. Lolly Rosewood had arrived. Nicky instructed his people to show her up. He’d used the two guys from yesterday, Darius and Mo, who were sporting their injuries from the fight with the kids. Darius had a busted nose and a black eye. Mo had a cracked rib. No point in risking two healthy guys.

  The girl in question sauntered into Nicky’s office and looked around like there was a bad smell under her nose. She was dressed like she was going to a party. A fancy trouser-suit thing. She carried an expensive girly bag like his wife would buy for a thousand pounds, and, incongruously, a cheap white shopping bag with a tin in it.

  Darius and Mo kept themselves more than an arm’s reach away.

  Nicky rose to his feet and courteously gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

  “Please, do sit down, Miss Rosewood,” he said, charmingly.

  “Thank you,” said Lolly, and the stuck-up kid looked at Zak to pull the chair out for her, which he reluctantly did.

  The girl seemed to be treating the whole event like it was a day out. She dusted off the chair and sat down, placing her bags on the floor. “I like your new desk, by the way,” she said. “Veneer is a bit scratched, though. Look, right there.” She pointed.

  Nicky ignored the comment.

  “I hope you won’t mind if we dispense with the pleasantries and me giving you ice cream. You’ve got 60 seconds to tell me what you’re offering before I shoot you.”

  Nicky maintained his charming smile.

  The girl didn’t look remotely put out. She radiated an infuriating sense of superiority that he just wanted to knock out of her.

  “I want your help, Nicky,” she said, sweetly. “And in return, I have something to give you.”

  Her confidence was intriguing, as was her proposition.

  “Tell me what you’re offering first.”

  Nicky lit a cigarette and settled back in his chair to hear the story.

  “You’re a drug dealer,” stated Lolly. “Yesterday you were trying to get hold of a new drug called Super D from Alvin Lester.”

  Nicky slowly blew a plume of smoke in her direction.

  “What’s your point?”

  “A man like you has a lot of enemies, Nicky. Super D could be very useful to you. Both in terms of selling it, or using it to make your organization stronger.”

  Nicky laughed.


  “You do a lot of thinking, darling. Shouldn’t little girls like you be more concerned about make-up and getting spots?”

  “You’re not the first gangster I’ve met, Nicky, and you’re certainly not the toughest. And for your information, there are no girls like me.”

  “I haven’t heard what you’re offering yet, sweetheart,” said Nicky, leaning forward in his chair. The gun was only centimetres from his right hand.

  “Simple. Where do you think Super D came from in the first place?”

  The penny dropped for Nicky. Of course, Sir Michael Rosewood ran the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world: G-Netik. Super D must have come from G-Netik’s labs. That’s what she was saying, wasn’t it? Now he was properly interested.

  “Your father made Super D?”

  “Correct. Smart boy, Nicky.”

  This was promising. Maybe the girl could be of use. But something wasn’t right. A big pharmaceutical does not create a powerful drug like Super D and then release it to the party circuit, or offer it to drug dealers. No, they sell it and make a fortune through regular commercial channels.

  “All right, sweetheart. I believe your father makes the stuff. I even believe you can get hold of it. But why give it to me? Doesn’t make sense. So what’s the catch? Is this some teenage rebellion thing? Has daddy cut your allowance, so this is how you’re paying him back?”

  “The catch is that, contrary to what was said in the news, my father is not retired and living quietly in paradise. He’s being held by MI5 in a secret safe house.”

  Nicky sat back in his chair and took a long drag on his cigarette. He swapped glances with Zak. Surprise, but not disbelief. It had the ring of truth.

  “Why?” he asked, simply.

  “Because he’s a man who’s not afraid to do what he thinks is right, even if it means going against the law.”

  “A man after my own heart. But he must have riled some important people if he’s being kept in a secret service dungeon.”

  “Do you have children, Nicky?”

  “Two daughters.”

  “Bet you wish your daughters were like me. Because I love my father and I’ll do anything for him. Right now, that means I want to rescue him.”