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

  “Where are you going, you overgrown baby?” asked Nicky. “I only want your sister. Be a good boy and maybe I won’t mess her up too much.”

  Sam shivered. Nicky was a different man from the one she had met in his office on Tuesday. The thin veneer of civility had been totally stripped away now. He was like a mad dog left out in the midday sun.

  James’s face flashed with anger. Maybe he couldn’t help himself, but he took a step forward and raised his hand.

  “If she has so much as a broken nail or a split end…” he began.

  Nicky fired the gun.

  It took Sam’s brain a few seconds to catch up with what she saw. The flare of the muzzle, James propelled back through the shelving and landing in a messy heap of fruit and blood on the shop floor.

  Sam screamed and screamed, but it barely registered above the melee outside. She couldn’t even see anymore, as her eyes filled with tears and her body went numb. She was aware of being manhandled by Nicky and two of his men out onto the street, dragged across the road and into a car.

  “Shut her up,” ordered Nicky.

  Sam never even felt the blow that knocked her out.

  Chapter 51

  It was a ringing sound in her ear that woke Sam up. The sound of a telephone. Sam opened her eyes and all she could see was the back of a seat and the floor of a car. She felt nauseous as the car lurched left, right and then left again. Then the bottom dropped out of her world as she remembered what had happened to her brother.

  For a second, she had an image of James in her mind. He was making her laugh, and grinning like an idiot. Then it was replaced by the blood-splattered freeze-frame of him slamming into the shelving in Al’s dad’s shop, a look of startled horror in his eyes.

  Everything she felt about life — all the joy, the well of happiness, the enthusiasm to try new things, have fun, fall in love — just withered like autumn leaves. She started crying and nothing she could do would make it stop.

  She replayed the shooting in her mind. She kept focussing on James’s outstretched hand. Had it been her imagination, or had Nicky’s gun arm wavered in the moment before he fired? Had James used his telekinesis to deflect Nicky’s aim just enough so that the gunshot wasn’t fatal?

  But there had been so much blood. Just thinking about it sent her body into spasms as she sobbed uncontrollably.

  “Shut her up.” It was Nicky Cairo’s voice.

  A boot dug viciously into her ribs.

  “Kid. Shut up. Boss is on the phone,” said a gruff voice.

  The ringing stopped.

  “What is it?” Nicky’s voice. Despite her own grief and her sobbing, Sam registered the same note of panic and fear that she herself felt.

  “Where are my family?” Nicky demanded.

  Sam forced herself to stop crying.

  The voice at the end of the telephone was perfectly audible, like Nicky had it on speakerphone.

  “Mr Cairo, you sound distressed.” A Russian accent. Calm. Assured.

  “Damn right I’m distressed,” said Nicky, peppering his sentence with a liberal dose of swear words. “Give me my family back. Now.”

  “Mr Cairo, calm down. You don’t sound very well. Perhaps we shouldn’t be doing business with you at all.”

  There was a pause. The car lurched, there was a jolt. Nicky growled but didn’t speak.

  “However, we will be happy to return your pretty wife and beautiful daughters in the condition we found them in, assuming you have our compensation ready.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ve got it,” panted Nicky. “Please, please, just don’t hurt them.”

  It was like listening to Al’s dad pleading for his son’s life, thought Sam. And me, if I’d known what he was going to do to James.

  “Very good, Mr Cairo. Money, or do you have the replacement merchandise?”

  “Drugs. I’ve got two million quid of cocaine,” said Nicky.

  “Very good, I’m very impressed. Perhaps you are a good business partner after all,” mocked the Russian voice. “You’ll bring it to us. There is an airfield west of London. I will send you the location. Shall we say 12 o’clock?”

  “Are you crazy?” shouted Nicky. “Look out your window. London is in the middle of a riot. I’m collecting the drugs now, but it will take me hours to get there. Three o’clock. I’ll be there at three. Make sure my family are too and they’d better be unharmed.”

  There was another pause. Sirens wailed, tyres screeched, the car lurched and the engine groaned.

  “Very well,” agreed the Russian voice. “We are reasonable men. Three o’clock it is. Don’t be late.”

  There was a beep, and the conversation ended.

  “I won’t be late, but you will be, pal,” rasped Nicky.

  So that’s it, thought Sam. The reason for Nicky’s mania. Someone was threatening his family. And right now, Sam could understand that kind of rage. Nicky was a monster, but they were all sharing the same hell.

  ***

  The journey took a long time. Sam spent most of it crying. Every now and then Nicky Cairo would tell her to shut up, in between driving very fast and shouting at people on the street.

  “Make her sit up,” Nicky ordered.

  One of Nicky’s thugs grabbed Sam’s arm and pulled her up so she was sitting next to him on the back seat. Nicky had one hand on the steering wheel and the other was waving Sam’s phone at her.

  “It’s changed,” yelled Nicky, accusingly, as he dodged cars and motorbikes and drove straight over a roundabout.

  Sam wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to focus on the map, no easy feat when the motion of the car was throwing her left, right, up and down. However, she didn’t need the map to know they were going over the river, as Nicky accelerated onto one of the bridges that crossed the Thames. Westminster Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben were right in front of them.

  They were immediately faced with a stationary line of cars. The sound of horns was deafening, but there was no sign of an actual riot here. Nicky yanked the steering wheel again and accelerated the car onto the pavement.

  “Stop it,” demanded Sam, as pedestrians hurled themselves out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Some poor man doing magic tricks for tourists had his stall smashed and was forced to throw himself over the narrow barrier and into the Thames.

  “Is it the Palace?” shouted Nicky, shaking the phone in front of her face.

  Sam tried to look at the map again.

  “Is it?” he bellowed.

  The red circle was around Buckingham Palace and Horseguards Parade. That’s where they would find the party, and they were almost there. Sam looked at the clock in the car. 11:43. The party was due to start at noon.

  “Yes,” she shouted back.

  Nicky dropped the phone into his lap and put both hands on the wheel. Having crossed the bridge, they encountered a problem. Another car had tried the same trick as Nicky, and mounted the pavement to get ahead of the traffic. Unfortunately, in doing so it had crashed into a bollard. Both pavement and road were impassable.

  Nicky was forced to slam on the brakes. He instructed the thug in the passenger seat to get out and remove the obstruction, which he duly did. The man lifted the car up by the bonnet and simply rolled it on top of an adjacent taxi. Then he snapped off the top of the bollard and threw it to one side.

  Nicky didn’t even wait for the heavy to get back in the car, he just floored the accelerator and sped on past.

  Sam looked out of the back window. Big Ben and Nicky’s dumbfounded thug quickly receded into the distance. She just had time to witness the man getting into a fight with two others before Nicky lurched the car across a junction, smashing two other vehicles out of the way. Sam tried to put her seatbelt on, but it was impossible. She was grateful to the thug next to her, who stopped her from being thrown through the windscreen.

  St James’s Park was just ahead of them and to the right. Nicky yanked at the steering wheel and the car hurtled in through
the narrow gates. They thumped along a footpath leading up to a pond. It was a miracle that Nicky managed to keep control of the vehicle as he crashed through a wooden fence, obliterated a row of deckchairs, and destroyed a beautiful flower bed. The only thing he swerved to avoid was a dog. He showed no such compunction in driving over people.

  ***

  The journey eventually came to an end as a result of the sheer size of the crowd ahead of them. Hundreds of people were swarming in the direction of Buckingham Palace.

  Nicky leant on the horn, revved the engine, even tried accelerating through the group, but it quickly became clear that these partygoers had taken Super D. A thin, chic girl who was standing in Nicky’s way stuck her leg out so the car crashed into it. The bonnet crumpled immediately and the car stalled. Nicky tried to restart it, but to no avail. Within seconds the vehicle was surrounded by people but, although they banged on the roof and on the wrecked bonnet, they didn’t appear threatening.

  “We’re getting out,” decided Nicky. He turned to face Sam and pointed his gun at her head.

  “Stick with me. If we get separated, for any reason, I’m going to start shooting people. You understand? So it’ll be down to you. You don’t want people to get hurt, you hold my jacket and you don’t let go.”

  Sam looked at him, blankly.

  “Nod if you understand,” he said.

  Sam nodded.

  She, Nicky and the remaining thug got out of the car. Nicky indicated for her to take hold of his jacket. Her fingers squelched on the material. It was almost wringing with sweat. Sam cringed and they started pushing their way through the crowd, the thug placing a big, meaty hand on her shoulder and following behind her.

  There was a definite carnival atmosphere. Loud music, the kind of stuff Al would play, and lots of whistles and yelling.

  Thanks to Nicky ruthlessly pushing people aside, they quickly reached The Mall, the road that led up to Buckingham Palace. The beautiful tree-lined avenue, with its long row of elegant low-rise white buildings, and the wide red road were teeming with hundreds, probably thousands of people, just as they had been on the day of the royal wedding last year.

  However, this event didn’t have the feel of an organized celebration and the reason why was obvious. As Sam looked first towards the Palace, then back at Admiralty Arch, she could see that The Mall was blocked in both directions. Two large, low-loader lorries were pulled across both carriageways, preventing the traffic from moving in either direction. Inside that protective cordon was a third low-loader which acted as a stage for Al. He was dressed in his DJ Alchemy skeleton suit, standing behind his record decks, flanked by enormous speakers. A lad with a video camera stood to one side of him, alternately filming Al and the crowd.

  At either end of the stage were a series of video screens, placed together in the shape of a rectangle so they could be seen from any direction. Al’s face filled each one.

  There were four dancers on the stage with Al. Two male, two female, dressed in skeleton suits, although minus masks. They alternated between performing their dance routines and distributing plastic bottles, taken from crates, among the crowd.

  Al seemed to be having a fantastic time as he played records and called out to the revellers. The crowd were loving him right back. It was just like the Friday party, except this time it was all in sight of Buckingham Palace.

  “I’m sorry Her Majesty ain’t here to see this,” said Al in his modulated, robotic voice. “But we want to wish her happy birthday while she’s in Hyde Park, being all Queen-like.”

  Sam recognized the Sex Pistols song God Save the Queen blaring through the massive speaker system. The crowd roared and sang along.

  Surely the police were going to break this up? Things like this weren’t allowed so close to the Queen’s house, were they? Then Sam remembered the riot she had seen in New Cross. By now, incidents like that might have broken out in the one thousand locations around the city that Al had left Super D.

  There were flashing blue lights right the way back towards Admiralty Arch. So the police had arrived, but they obviously couldn’t get through the human cordon. She jumped up and down on the spot to get a better view.

  Jets of water were being fired into the crowd from funny tank-like vehicles. But this was no ordinary mob, they were all pumped up on Super D and even from this distance Sam could see that people were laughing and playing with the water. To Sam’s astonishment, one girl had taken all her clothes off and was jumping up and down in front of a jet.

  Sam looked at Al, up there on the stage, having a good time, pleased with himself while her brother lay bleeding, possibly dead already. While people had their houses and their shops destroyed. While they cowered in fear. And while a man like Nicky Cairo was planning on getting hold of the substance that had made it all possible.

  “They promised us, people, that the streets of London are paved with gold,” Al pontificated.

  A big cheer went up from the crowd.

  “But I look down and I just see a red carpet that people like us aren’t allowed to walk on.”

  This was greeted by another roar of approval.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Nicky. “We need to get him.” But as he took a step forward, he convulsed and clutched at his chest.

  The Super D must be hitting his system hard, thought Sam. She could have clubbed him down and grabbed his gun, but she was caught in a moment of indecision and she just couldn’t bring herself to hurt an injured man.

  Nobody else seemed to have noticed, apart from the thug who was standing behind her.

  “What’s the matter, boss?” he asked, nervously.

  “He’s having a heart attack,” explained Sam. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

  “I don’t need a hospital,” gasped Nicky, “and I ain’t having no heart attack.” Still clutching his chest, he managed to straighten his back. His face was twisted in agony and drenched in sweat.

  His next words were drowned out as Al made an announcement.

  “You’ve watched the videos all week. You’ve seen the scum of humanity get their comeuppance.”

  Nicky’s eyes flashed with anger, but he was hurting too much to speak.

  “It’s time to see something special with your own eyes. Something that will make you punch a banker with joy.”

  Al left a record playing on his decks and jumped off the lorry with a flourish, landing neatly on the road below. He was too quick for the cameraman, who clambered down onto The Mall to keep the people’s hero in the shot.

  Everyone gave Al some space as he performed a pirouette on the road.

  “Thank you, thank you, good people. Let’s see, shall we? Let’s see.”

  “Let’s see what?” wondered Sam.

  “Let’s see if the streets of London really are paved with gold.”

  Of course. It was so obvious now. She watched Al peel off his gloves. He was clutching something in his left hand. The camera performed a close up. It was a gold ring.

  “This was my mother’s wedding ring. And greed took my mum from me. Greed and the need for money. It’s the tyranny that we are held under. Well, no longer. I couldn’t save my mum, but I can save London, and I’m about to start paying something back. Remember everyone, London belongs to us.”

  The crowd chanted the message back to him.

  Helicopters swooped overhead, a combination of TV news and police choppers. Ropes dropped down from the bigger helicopters. Sam had seen enough films to know that men would start sliding down the ropes next, probably carrying large guns.

  Al was undeterred.

  He knelt down on the road in a manner strangely reminiscent of the Pope. He was taking things way too far. The cameraman kept getting jostled and struggled to keep Al in the shot. The crowd were chanting, singing, and dancing.

  Al begged for space, and the crowd backed away to give him a clear area around his body of approximately two metres’ diameter. Sam wished they could get closer so she could see proper
ly, rather than just following events on the big screen.

  Nicky Cairo was captivated. No doubt he wanted to see for himself if Al really could perform miracles.

  Al placed his right hand on the road, splayed his fingers wide, and simply said, “Gold.”

  The camera moved closer and focussed on his right hand.

  And then it started… the transformation. An area of about half a metre in diameter around Al’s hand was changing colour. The Mall’s distinctive red, rusty surface was becoming shinier and started to glitter in the sunshine. The texture of the road was now lumpy and hard, and it was shrinking. It was turning into gold.

  Chapter 52

  Sam blinked. Surely Al couldn’t turn the entirety of The Mall into gold?

  The crowd went quiet, awed by what they were seeing. The transition was slow, but within a few minutes, the area around Al’s body was a swollen, sunken, clump of gold and it was spreading. By the time the transition reached the edge of the mob Al’s hand was trembling, but he kept going.

  Before long, many people had gold under their feet and one man, obviously pumped up on Super D, bent over and drove his fist down onto the road. The gold fragmented, and the guy lifted up a chunk the size of an egg in triumph. The crowd roared approval and, predictably, tried the same thing themselves.

  Within a minute, over a hundred people were ripping up pieces of gold from The Mall, holding it aloft, and dropping back down to their knees to get more.

  Sam watched the frenzy of hammering and digging. Not everybody had Super D, and so they were reliant on just using their hands to scrabble for gold dust and pebbles. But the more people who did it, the less gold there was available, and people were harvesting the riches faster than Al was able to convert it.

  “Hang on, party people,” he said, but the authority had gone from his voice as the exertion took its toll. His whole body was shaking under the strain of what he was trying to do, like he was having some kind of fit.

  The mood of the crowd was changing. They had seen riches and they wanted more.