The Palindrome Cult: A gripping, page-turning, crime suspense thriller, its fast pace takes you from London to New York, via Dubai and the Virgin Islands. (Hedge & Cole Book 1) Read online

  He turned to a man in the crowd, who had been watching the scene with a scared look on his face. ‘Hey, I want you to call out the time. Start from one minute and call out every fifteen seconds. I need to know how long the lad has not been breathing for.’

  The man took off his watch and stared at it intently.

  ‘Ok, one minute,’ he said.

  Hedge pushed everything else off the table and looked closely at the boy. He wiped some of the blood away from the boy’s face, and then tilted his head back and tried to see what was stuck in the child’s throat. He couldn’t see anything, as the light in the cafe wasn’t very good. He probed the back of the boy’s throat with his fingers. He could feel a blockage but it felt solid, and he was worried in case he pushed it further down making things worse. He removed his fingers quickly.

  ‘One minute and fifteen seconds,’ shouted the man with the watch.

  The other diners in the cafe had started to gather close to the table. They all had concerned looks on their faces. A few of them had covered their mouths with their hands. Some of them were still making calls on their phones. One man had his cell phone held in front of him and he looked like he was filming the scene.

  ‘Hey you! Stop taking pictures. Turn that camera off now,’ Hedge screamed at him.

  The man looked embarrassed by his actions and put his phone back in his coat pocket.

  Hedge looked around the room. ‘Are there any doctors or medical people here?’ he asked hopefully.

  No one responded, so Hedge shouted for someone to ring for an ambulance again.

  ‘We have a slowly dying boy here,’ he said, ‘make sure the emergency operator is aware of that.’

  The mother sobbed loudly and put her head close to the boy’s mouth.

  ‘He’s not breathing. He needs help. Please someone, help him,’ she cried.

  ‘One minute and thirty seconds.’

  Hedge knew something had to be done, something drastic, and it needed doing now. He had seen on television how people had been saved when their throats were blocked, but the process was usually carried out by qualified medical staff who knew what they were doing. Hedge certainly didn’t fall into that category.

  Hedge shouted over to Antonio, the cafe manager. ‘I need your sharpest knife, some clean towels and a small plastic tube. It needs to be something bigger than a straw, maybe the size of a hosepipe, and around six inches long. Have you got anything like that?’

  Antonio spun around without a word and headed off quickly towards the kitchen.

  ‘One minute and forty five seconds.’

  Hedge turned to the mother. He spoke bluntly but he didn’t have a choice. She had to know the facts and she needed to understand the risks.

  ‘Your son hasn’t been breathing now for nearly two minutes. I am not sure but I believe that if you don’t breathe for around four minutes then you are effectively brain dead. We have no medical people here and the ambulance will be a while yet. We have run out of time. I can try to cut open his throat to see if we can get air into him, but I will be honest with you, I have no idea how to do it. If I get it wrong and cut his main artery, then he will probably die from blood loss.’

  ‘Two minutes.’

  The mother was ashen faced. She looked at Hedge but didn’t know what to say. What sort of choice was that? Her son was suffocating and would die soon due to lack of air. She looked at her beloved child lying motionless on the table.

  ‘You have to save him,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him die.’

  ‘Is there any more news on that ambulance?’ Hedge shouted to no one in particular.

  A few people shook their heads.

  ‘Keep calling them,’ he said loudly.

  ‘Two minutes and fifteen seconds.’

  Just at that moment Antonio returned with the items that Hedge had requested.

  Hedge looked at the mother. She looked back at him but showed no expression. She said nothing. Her eyes looked far away.

  Hedge turned and stared around the room at the faces of the people gathered there. When his eyes passed over them they each turned away from his gaze.

  Hedge looked down at the boy on the table and his heart started thumping in his chest. He could feel beads of sweat building up on his forehead. What should he do? He felt very scared.

  ‘Two minutes and thirty seconds.’

  He wiped the sweat off his hands and picked up the knife.

  Chapter Three

  Hedge asked a young man standing nearby to pull the child’s head back and hold it still. Using his right hand he felt the boy’s throat to see if he could locate the wind pipe. He could feel the hardness of the throat passage, but he had no idea where the main artery was in relation to that part of the neck. He knew, like most people, that the jugular vein was in the neck somewhere. He believed it was at the front near the main airway. He needed to cut a hole in the boy’s windpipe without damaging the jugular. He carried on feeling with his hand, not sure what he was looking for exactly.

  ‘Two minutes and forty five seconds.’

  Hedge made up his mind. He had to act now. He glanced down at the knife in his hand and touched the blade lightly with his thumb. He could feel the surface of his skin break slightly. It seemed very sharp.

  He placed the knife against the centre of the boy’s throat and pushed gently. The skin gave easily and Hedge made a cut of around one inch long. Blood started oozing out and several people in the watching crowd took a sharp intake of breath.

  Hedge continued to cut and pushed the knife harder against the fibrous material of the neck. The knife went into the throat to a depth of about half an inch. He continued with the knife until there was a small slit clearly visible.

  ‘Three minutes,’ shouted out the man with the watch.

  ‘Damn,’ said Hedge. ‘We are running out of time. I need to make this hole wider.’

  Hedge tried to force the knife sideways to enlarge the slit. The boy’s eyes, which had been closed, suddenly flicked open and stared straight at him. Was it a reaction, or was it pain? Hedge wasn’t sure. A middle-aged woman from the watching crowd stepped forward, and picking up a small towel, started to wipe away some of the blood.

  Hedge looked over at her and tried to smile. His hands were shaking. He felt very nervous. He had a lot resting on his shoulders right now. He wanted to vomit, but pushed the thought out of his head and tried to regain his focus on the task in front of him.

  He now had to get the blade out of the hole he had made in the throat. He moved the blade slowly and it was almost out when a jet of bright crimson liquid surged from the skin around the hole. The blood sprayed all over the boy’s neck and onto the table. The woman with the towel frantically tried to mop it up but there was too much of it. She threw down the sodden towel and picked up a fresh one.

  The boy’s mother started sobbing again and then shouted, ‘Oh god, no. Please, no.’

  Hedge wasn’t sure what had happened. Several people in the crowded room turned their heads away and two of the women screamed. The lady wiping the blood away had started using the clean towel, but this was now also becoming saturated.

  Hedge turned the boys head to one side to try and stop the blood draining back into his throat. The blood flow started slowing. After a few more seconds it had almost stopped. Hedge felt a wave of relief, but it wasn’t over yet.

  ‘Three minutes and fifteen seconds,’ the time keeper shouted.

  Hedge could clearly see the hole in throat now and he reached for the tube that Antonio had provided. He thought it looked ideal for the job. It was a clear piece of piping made of some kind of thin, flexible plastic. It was around six inches long as he had requested. He pushed the tube into the boy’s throat so that half of it was still visible. He told the middle-aged woman, who had been wiping the blood, to try to make a seal around the tube where it connected with the boy’s throat. She found another fresh towel and placed it around the base of the tube and pressed down gently.


  Hedge knew the young boy’s time must be nearly up. He had heard of people drowning in just one or two minutes and being unable to be resuscitated. He put his mouth around the tube and blew into it. The boy’s chest rose slightly. Hedge repeated this several times. Although the boy’s chest moved up and down as the air went into his lungs, he remained motionless.

  ‘Three minutes and thirty seconds.’

  Hedge blew air into the tube in a regular rhythm and carried on doing so for a full minute. He stopped and looked up at the boy when the man with the watch called out the latest time at four minutes and thirty seconds. The boy lay quite still. Hedge realised it was too late. The crowd of people in the room had gone quiet. The mother of the boy was just sitting staring into space, tears running down her face. The younger brother sat whimpering in his chair with his head in his hands.

  Hedge was devastated. He stopped blowing into the tube and looked down at the boy. He was quite still and his face had gone very pale. He looked completely lifeless. There was nothing more that Hedge could think of to do.

  The boy was dead.

  Chapter Four

  Hedge took a step back from the table. The boy lay still. A tall man in the crowd moved towards Hedge. He was holding his cell phone in an outstretched arm.

  ‘The ambulance will be here in around two minutes,’ he said.

  Hedge took the phone and spoke quietly into it. ‘It’s too late. The boy hasn’t been breathing for around five minutes now. I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ said the voice on the end of the phone. ‘I am a paramedic and I am on my way with the ambulance. We will be with you very soon. Are you able to get any air at all into the patient’s windpipe? Is his chest moving at all?’

  ‘Yes to both,’ said Hedge, ‘but I think it’s all too late.’

  ‘Keep it going anyway, we will be there in a minute,’ said the paramedic.

  Hedge stepped back towards the table and leaned down over the young boy. He felt like it was a waste of time, but he started to blow into the tube again. He watched the boy’s chest move up and down. It all felt a little fruitless to him now.

  It seemed like an eternity until he finally heard the siren of the ambulance as it arrived outside the cafe. The crowd parted behind him and two uniformed men rushed towards the young boy, one of them holding a small metal case. They did some checks on the child before quickly placing two round electrodes on his chest. They told the crowd to stand back, and then gave him an electric shock to try and get his heart beating again. One of the paramedics carefully removed Hedge’s tube from the boy’s throat. He disposed of it in a clear plastic bag. He then reached into the metal case and pulled out a smaller tube attached to an electric pump. He placed this new tube in the boy’s throat and secured it with some medical tape. He flicked a small switch on the side of the pump and it started to hum quietly.

  The boy’s chest was now moving rhythmically up and down. The paramedics worked quickly and efficiently. They had clearly been in this situation many times before. They set up a drip into the boys arm and when they were happy with it, they gave him an injection into the top of his thigh from a small plastic syringe.

  Without warning, the boy’s eyes opened again and he tried to scream. The noise came out as a gurgle, as it was forced from the hole in his throat. He moved his hands as if to pull the tube out of his neck but the paramedics gently restrained him.

  ‘Lie still,’ one of them said to him.

  The mother had suddenly come back to reality. Her eyes regained their focus and she shouted at the paramedics. ‘Is he breathing, is he alive, will he be ok?’

  The pump on the boy’s throat was turned off and the paramedic removed it from the tube. The crowd watched as he started breathing for himself. The air hissed into the plastic pipe in his throat, erratically at first, and then it settled down into a steady rhythm. The colour slowly started to return to the boy’s face and he lifted his hands towards his mother.

  ‘We need to take him to hospital now. You can come along in the ambulance. Bring your other son,’ said one of the paramedics.

  The boy was taken off to the waiting ambulance on a stretcher and the mother followed them, pulling her younger lad behind her.

  The paramedic who had spoken to the mother looked around at the crowd of faces in the room. His eyes looked slightly menacing. ‘Who is the butcher responsible for causing all this blood?’ The tone of his voice was angry and aggressive.

  Hedge paused for a second or two, then stepped forward and gingerly raised his hand. He said nothing as he was still somewhat shocked from all that had just happened.

  The paramedic looked at him with a grievous expression. ‘That was a stupid thing to do, as you could easily have killed that boy. Did you have any idea what you were doing? That was a very dangerous procedure you carried out. The boy could easily have died of shock, blood loss or other complications.’

  Hedge felt very small and looked down at the floor. Some of the people standing near to him moved away slightly, as if he was now some sort of pariah.

  The paramedic stormed off towards the front of the cafe. He opened the door to leave and turned around to speak one final comment to Hedge before he left.

  ‘However, young man, if you hadn’t done what you did, that boy would have certainly died.’

  With that the paramedic rushed out pulling the door shut behind him. He was half way back to the ambulance when he heard the crowd inside the cafe erupt into loud cheering and applause.

  Chapter Five

  It had been an interesting time for Hedge since the incident in the cafe. The local newspapers had all interviewed him, and they had published several articles on the events of that day. At work he was regarded as a bit of a celebrity.

  He was a creature of habit, and he always took his lunch break at noon and he always ate at the Cafe Roma, which was just a short walk from where he worked in the centre of London. He’d had a busy morning in the office and was looking forward to his midday break. It was a cold day in March and as he headed off to the cafe, he thrust his hands hard into his coat pockets in an attempt to reduce the impact of the biting wind.

  He was deep in thought as he made his way down Regent Street. He was thinking about his life, as he often did. He hadn’t always lived in London. In fact, he was born in the United States. His family came from near Houston, in Texas, so he was officially an American citizen. His father had been in the US Air Force, and the family had moved to England when he was just eight years old. His dad had been deployed to the 48th Fighter Wing (also known as the Statue of Liberty Wing), which was permanently based at Lakenheath in Suffolk, a lovely part of England.

  Tragically, just after Hedge had celebrated his tenth birthday, both his parents had been killed in a car crash near the base. He remembered the day it happened as if it were only yesterday. He had no brothers or sisters, so he had felt quite alone in the world. His uncle Larry had taken charge of the funeral and other formalities, and Hedge had then gone to live with him and his family in London. They had two of their own children, a boy and a girl, and they had all been happy to welcome him into their home. His uncle was employed in a senior position with a large bank, and Hedge had found his work at the bank of great interest.

  Despite the trauma of losing his parents, he thought he had done reasonably well for himself. His Uncle had paid for him to go to a good English boarding school, and following that he had attended Cambridge University. He wasn’t what might be described as a top student, but he had worked hard, and had done just enough to scrape his place at one of England’s finest places of learning. The main focus of his study had been in the area of Economics, and after three years of hard work he had achieved a BA Honours degree.

  He had enjoyed his time in Cambridge, but he had been keen to get out into the wider world and start his career. With a little help from his uncle Larry, he had secured a position in a small investment bank in London, where he was employed as a Client Relationshi
p Manager. He had a good job, and he lived in a smart house in a pleasant suburb of the capital. At twenty eight years old he felt relatively content with his life.

  Hedge kept himself in good shape due to regular visits to his local gym. He was a fraction under six feet tall, with dark hair, and, as he was often told, he had a very pale complexion. Although everyone called him Hedge, that wasn’t actually his real name. His passport stated him as Tom Millar. The only person who still called him Tom though, was his aunt. To everyone else he was simply known as Hedge. The reason for this was that for as long as anyone could remember, he had been fascinated with money and finance. Even as a young boy he would keep a record of his pocket money – how much he received and how he spent it. When he was at junior school in Houston, he had regularly followed the share price movements on the New York stock exchange. He read financial magazines and books, and he had been a daily reader of the Financial Times ever since he had moved into his uncle’s house in London. When he was just seven years old, before the family had moved to England, his father had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. To everyone’s amazement he had announced that he would like to be a ‘Hedge Fund Manager’. He wasn’t actually sure what one of those was at the time, but he knew it was an important financial job, and anyway, he quite liked the sound of it. So the name had stuck, and from then on everyone had called him Hedge. Most people who knew him now would probably not even be aware of his real name.

  His mind came back to the present as he approached his lunch destination. Entering the cafe he noticed that it was a fairly quiet day. He looked across to his favourite seat and it was vacant, so he headed over to it and sat down. He picked up one of the white paper serviettes from the wooden holder in the middle of the table and quickly wiped the surface of the table clean. His eyes flicked around the cafe to see if anyone had noticed what he had done. A bad habit of his - he liked things tidy. He moved the serviette holder to the left side of the table, it looked better being there. Next he picked up the white plastic salt and pepper pots and moved them next to the serviette holder. Much better – he definitely liked things tidy. Finally he grabbed hold of the menu and looked up to see who was serving today.