The Last Big Job

by Nick Oldham

  The moment of weakness had passed. The moment when she almost drove back to Geena’s instead of returning to her own house which she had not seen for three months ... where tragic memories lurked ... where someone had committed suicide in her kitchen.

  It was 2 a.m. The sixth cigarette butt in a row was tossed out of the driver’s window on to the pavement.

  Danny’s resolution to go home had deserted her like a rat from a sinking ship when she drove her new Mazda MX-5 into the street where her house was located. She had parked directly outside the semi, not even daring to pull into the driveway.

  She had rolled the window down and lit a cigarette, drawing the heavy smoke deep into her lungs. She stared at the house, illuminated by the fluorescent street-light. Nothing had changed, other than the addition of a For Sale sign embedded in the front lawn. No prospective buyers had been to view the property. It was probably still too soon. The story was still fresh in everyone’s mind. The illicit love affair. The suicide when Danny ended it. The shotgun in the mouth. The brains blasted into the fridge. The revelations in the newspaper afterwards - another smut-scandal in the police. The media lapped it up. Photographs of the wronged wife. Danny, the Scarlet Woman (even invited on to a morning TV chat show!). Jesus, it had been completely horrendous. Then the funeral - not attended by Danny. The inquest... all major life-shattering events, the ramifications of which still bubbled on. Danny still faced the prospect of internal discipline proceedings for bringing the Service into disrepute, amongst other things.

  And she had never set foot in the house since the day Jack Sands, her boss and lover, had blown the whole of his head above his jaw into the freezer compartment and top shelf of her fridge.

  Danny lit the seventh cigarette.

  Her eyes burned with tiredness.

  This was the first time she had ever smoked in her smart new car. And would be the last, she decided firmly, and made up her mind. She flicked the cigarette out of the window, then got out herself. She drew in as deep a breath as her smoke-saturated lungs would allow and walked up to the front door, slotted in the Yale key.

  She was home.

  A scrawny lion had once been rescued by some do-gooders from a tiny cage on top of a bar in Tenerife. The beast had been a pitiful sight. Poorly treated, badly fed and cared for, its ribs pushed out like a xylophone, its mane a tangled, dried-up mess, its eyes oozing pus. No doubt it could still have killed a man, given the chance - and enjoyed the feast - but it was a pathetic specimen by any standards. It deserved to be saved and the owner strung up.

  However, the lion which, at 2 a.m. on that warm, balmy night in Los Cristianos, Tenerife, prowled the large cage on the roof top of Uncle B’s English Bar and Disco was a different matter altogether. He was fit, healthy and rippling with muscle. His tawny grey-yellow coat was glowing, smooth as a peach. The mane was black and looked as though it had been shampooed and trimmed by Vidal Sassoon himself.

  The lion’s name was Nero, and he was capable of bringing down a Cape buffalo and a zebra at the same time.

  Nero paced his cage, his large pads slapping down on the hard floor. A serious grunt emanated from his throat with each tread. He was impatient. And hungry.

  He moved up and down the length of the cage, his head and eyes always fixed on the point where the staircase opened out on to the roof terrace. There was a click, followed by a scraping noise as a metal door was drawn backwards. Then there was the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs.

  Nero stopped moving, his shining black eyes concentrating on the opening through the mesh of the cage.

  Unusually, two men appeared instead of one.

  Nero recognised the first one by his smell: the aftershave and the cigar smoke complemented by alcohol fumes. It was an aroma Nero loved - but only because there was the pleasure of food associated with this human being who was also his owner.

  The first man up the stairs was carrying a coolbox.

  Nero knew this contained his food for the day.

  The first man walked confidently up to the cage whilst the second man hesitated in the background, hovering nervously. Nero picked up on this. The man smelled very much like the first one - smoke, aftershave and alcohol - but there was something else there which sent a tremor of excitement down the great beast’s spine.

  Fear.

  ‘Hey, Nero, look what I got for you.’ The man held up the coolbox and rapped his knuckles on it.

  A deep roar emanated from the beast’s throat, like thunder approaching.

  ‘The best horsemeat money can buy,’ the man said. He walked up to the cage and placed the box on the floor next to a specially constructed sliding tray at ground level. He pulled the flap open and dragged out the metal tray.

  Nero’s pace grew quicker, up and down the cage, impatience showing. He was hungry. He wanted food.

  The man at the cage glanced over his shoulder at his colleague who had remained at the top of the steps, ready to bolt. He’d lit a cigarette. Shaking fingers placed it between his lips. Jesus, the lion scared the hell out of him. He spent as little time as possible on the roof.

  ‘Hey, come over here, you soft bastard.’

  ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. Frightens the shit out of me.’

  ‘We all have our fears, Loz. We’ve all got to come to terms with them.’

  ‘I don’t mind coming to terms with normal things, but a fucking lion? No way.’

  Nero snarled. The man at the cage looked at him and smiled. ‘It’s OK, pal. You’ll have some din-dins in a minute.’ He turned back to Loz. ‘C’mon,’ he coaxed, encouraging him to come across the divide with a gesture of his fingers. ‘You gotta do this. It’ll be good for your soul.’

  The man called Loz, short for Lawrence, shook his head.

  ‘I said c’mon,’ the first man said more firmly.

  Loz’s mouth dried up. His eyes narrowed. What the hell was this about? he wondered. ‘No, look I-’

  ‘Get your fucking arse over here,’ the first man said fiercely. Then his tone lightened. ‘I mean, who the hell’s going to look after this baby while I’m away? You, Loz - you - so you’ve got to get used to feeding him.’

  ‘Just so long as I don’t have to take him for a walk.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  Loz stomped on his cigarette, blew a lungful of smoke into the clear Atlantic night and dragged himself reluctantly across the roof to the cage. His eyes never left Nero; his imagination never moved away from being ripped to shreds by those paws which were as big as shovels and teeth which were as sharp as nails.

  The first man was kneeling down by the coolbox, having prised off the lid. Two hands went in and eased out a dripping horse steak, the size of a dinner-plate.

  ‘A Frog would give his right arm for this,’ the man joked. ‘Now, this is the tricky bit,’ he explained to Loz. ‘Making sure Nero don’t get the chance to tear your hand off.’

  He dropped the meat into the sliding tray and pushed it under the cage to the waiting lion. Nero grabbed it immediately between his teeth, reared back and with snuffling grunts of pleasure, padded to the far corner of the cage and began to tear at it. He held it between his paws and ripped it with his teeth and licked it with his massive, rough tongue.

  ‘What a brilliant animal,’ the man said. He loved the lion.

  ‘Yeah,’ Loz answered uneasily. ‘Brill.’ Something was pricking at Loz’s mind - something the other man had said, about going away. It was the first time he had even mentioned it and Loz wondered why it should suddenly come up here, at two in the morning on the rooftop whilst feeding that bastard of a lion. Something did not fit right here, Loz’s instinct warned him.

  ‘You give him the next piece, eh? When he’s finished that one.’

  Loz shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, boss.’ His eyes bored into the back of the man’s head while he tried to figure out what his employer was up to. Loz couldn’t get a handle on it. Why had Billy Crane asked him up here tonight?

/>   Crane spun round quickly and caught Loz looking at him.

  ‘Problem, Loz?’

  The younger guy shook his head.

  Nero had devoured the first piece of horseflesh. He knew there was more to come. He rose to his feet, his belly only partially filled, and strolled back across to the two men. He was not as impatient now; the first steak had taken the edge off his craving.

  ‘Everything go all right at the airport this morning?’ Crane asked conversationally.

  ‘Yeah, no probs.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Crane held up the palms of his hands and inspected them; they were still covered in blood from handling the meat. ‘So we should be fifty grand richer pretty soon, shouldn’t we?’

  Loz’s senses tingled alarm bells. ‘Yeah,’ he said, brow furrowed. ‘Should be.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Crane sniffed, then indicated the next piece of meat in the coolbox. ‘Grab that, Loz.’

  Loz took a breath, steeled himself and delved into the box.

  Behind the mesh of the cage, Nero regarded both humans expectantly, the short, dark, vertical stripes of the inner corners of his eyes virtually pointing at them. Loz could see the lower canines jutting out of the lower jaw like mini, sharpened tusks, but yellow, with off-brown bases, as thick as a grown man’s thumb. Nero smelled all lion too: bad breath which was overpowering, a strong mustiness emanating from him and, of course, the thick smell of urine. It was a combination which made Loz want to retch.

  Swallowing hard, he wrapped his fingers around the slimy piece of meat which he carefully lifted out, trying to get as little blood as possible on his hands.

  ‘You said you were going away, Bill. Where to?’

  ‘Back home for a while. Got something to do.’

  ‘Urgent?’

  ‘Necessary, shall we say?’

  Loz looked at the meat in his hand. That, too, stunk. Obviously not the freshest meat in the world. Not that a lion would care.

  ‘What should I do now?’ There was an expression of distaste on his face.

  Billy Crane groaned with annoyance. ‘Give it to me, you pathetic git!’ He snatched the meat from Loz’s hands and said, ‘Here I’ll show you.’

  He made a show of weighing the meat in his hands, then without warning he slammed it into Loz’s face and wound it round like a custard pie, smearing blood all over Loz’s face. Before the other man could react in any way, Crane had thrown the meat down and gripped Loz’s throat crashing him hard up against Nero’s cage, rattling the mesh.

  Nero was stunned by the flurry of movement. He roared.

  The fingers of Crane’s right hand circled Loz’s throat and lower jaw, pinning him against the cage, squeezing, distorting Loz’s face like a cinematic special effect. Crane’s left forearm was crushing Loz’s throat, using his victim’s shoulder as a lever to apply pressure and make him gurgle.

  Loz’s eyes were wide and terrified. The thought of Nero only inches away behind him made him twitch fearfully but it was the unleashed anger of his boss that made him wet himself in fear.

  Crane was nose to nose with Loz.

  ‘I pay you good money to pick up sensible, trustworthy mules and you go and choose that silly bitch. I am so fucking annoyed, Loz, you would not believe it. I am struggling to express myself.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Loz croaked.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Crane’s voice grated dangerously. ‘I got a phone call not very long ago to say that she was picked up at the airport. Not because of a routine check - I could have lived with that - but because of her behaviour and her stupid boyfriend’s behaviour. Two fucking drunken louts. So why did you pick her, Loz? Why?’

  He crashed Loz’s head against the cage again.

  Behind, Nero bristled and growled, fascinated by what was happening. His black eyes shone with anticipation.

  ‘She seemed OK, honest, Bill. But you can’t fucking tell.’

  ‘Why pick her?’ Crane insisted. ‘I have lost a lot of money over this and I’m not happy, not one bit.’

  Loz closed his eyes and whispered, ‘She gave me a blow job.’

  There was little to be gained by lying to Crane. Better to admit things than submit to his interrogation techniques.

  Crane relaxed his grip slightly. ‘A blow job? Fifty grand’s worth of coke for a blow job? Is that how you recruit them? It is, isn’t it? That’s a superb way of seeing if they have all the necessary skills for the job, isn’t it? “Will you suck my cock? Well then, you must be a good drug carrier”.’

  He let go and stood back.

  Loz coughed, massaged his throat, took his eye off Crane. A mistake. He never saw the fist coming. All he knew was that the front of his face exploded in a searing white light of pain. He sank to the ground, dazed. He didn’t see the knee coming either as Crane drove it into his face.

  Loz pulled himself slowly up the cage on to his hands and knees, his head drooping loosely between his arms. He could tell his nose was broken, crushed, and his cheekbone possibly fractured. Blood poured out of his nostrils, blobbing on to the floor with strands of snot and saliva.

  But Billy Crane had not finished with him yet. His rage had not subsided.

  He hauled Loz to his feet and hurled his face against Nero’s cage. The huge beast, 108 kilos of rippling muscle and sinew, launched himself through the air, his huge paws spread wide, claws extended.

  Even though there was the mesh between them, Loz cowered away with a scream just a nano-second prior to Nero’s full weight crashing against the cage. The lion rolled away backwards and regained his feet in one flowing, feline motion. The smell of blood and fear was starting to drive him wild.

  And still Billy Crane had not finished.

  With a roar himself, he took hold of Loz’s brightly coloured shirt, pulled him roughly on to his feet and pinned him against the cage again. Tipping Loz off-balance, he dragged the unfortunate man along the cage, winding up its inhabitant, who paced angrily behind Loz. The latter screamed, shrieked and provoked even more of a response from Nero.

  In all, Crane dragged Loz up and down the cage four times. By the end of this Nero was emitting unworldly noises which seemed to come from the very pit of his guts; noises more akin to a wild African night than a balmy one in the Canaries.

  By now, Loz had taken the leap beyond fear. The whole episode had become unreal to him following the massive blows to his face. It was like a nightmare from hell.

  Panting heavily, Crane threw Loz to the ground, where he snivelled like a baby.

  ‘Fifty fucking thousand pounds,’ Crane gasped. ‘You arsehole. What is that worth, eh? An arm? A leg? An eye?’

  He bent down and withdrew Nero’s food tray from the cage and flung it clattering across the roof. There was now a gap of about four inches high by ten long in the netting at floor level.

  ‘Or a hand?’ Crane said. His eyes blazed anger and retribution.

  Loz’s face snapped up at Crane as the implication of what had been said struck home. ‘No, Billy,’ he uttered in disbelief. ‘Please. . . I don’t deserve this. No way do I deserve this.’

  Nero roared in his ear. Crane bent towards him menacingly.

  Almost as soon as she inserted the key into the lock, Danny lost her nerve. She fell against the door for support and butted her head against it in an expression of frustration at herself.

  This is stupid, she thought bleakly. It’s two in the morning - no time to be returning alone to a house which holds such tragedy. I need moral support for this.

  She took her mobile phone from her pocket and tried to remember Henry Christie’s number. ‘Phone me any time,’ he’d told her. Oh yeah, she thought sardonically. He’d really appreciate me calling him at this hour, wouldn’t he just? His wife would be none too happy either.

  The fleeting image of Henry asleep in the same bed as his wife made Danny wince with jealousy. She slid the mobile back into her pocket, put the key into the lock once again, turned it and pushed open the d
oor.

  A musty aroma wafted to her flaring nostrils.

  She looked towards the closed door of the kitchen. Where it had happened. And stepped across the threshold on to a pile of letters which cracked beneath her shoe. Geena had been collecting the mail for her, but it was about two weeks since the task had last been done. There was a small mountain of the stuff, mostly junk. She stepped beyond it into the hall, closed the door behind her and stood there for a moment in the darkness. All she could hear was the beating of her own heart and the nervous rasp as she inhaled, exhaled, shallowly.

  Her hand reached for the light switch.

  The light came on, illuminating a familiar scene.

  In sudden flashback, she saw herself, three months before, treading slowly down the hallway carpet in her bare feet, a dressing gown wrapped tightly around her naked body. Walking with trepidation towards the closed kitchen door from behind which had come the boom of a shotgun being discharged.

  She swallowed in the here and now, hardly daring to move. Then she stepped forwards and the unexpected noise from her house alarm almost made her leap out of her clothes, skin and bones. The movement sensor fitted above the kitchen door had picked her up and set the house alarm going, giving Danny one minute to get to the control panel and switch it off.

  ‘Hell, Christ!’ she yelled, covering her ears.

  She had forgotten about the alarm, something she’d had fitted in response to problems experienced prior to Jack Sands’s death. She ran down the hall, ducked under the stairs, desperately trying to recall the code number to deactivate it.

  Her own collar number.

  She tapped it in and the cacophony ceased as quickly as it had begun, leaving a hollow ringing in her ears.

  At least the episode had achieved something. She was now right by the kitchen door, only inches away from the handle.

  Without further ado, she grabbed it, opened the door, flicked on the lights and stepped into the kitchen.