The Last Big Job

by Nick Oldham

  He pushed Gunk back, not in any way worried by Gunk’s powerful body and mean temper. Crane knew he could deal with Gunk, no problem.

  ‘Don? How long?’ Crane asked Smith.

  ‘He’ll be here in half an hour - so in the meantime I suggest we all get changed and showered in the bogs back there. Get the clothing back into the plastic bags, get all the weapons and ammo together, then let’s chill out.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Thompson irritably. He too was fired up by the sight of all that money, so near, yet so far.

  ‘He’s right,’ Drozdov agreed with Crane. ‘Let the expert do it when he arrives. We’ve come this far. Waiting another half hour will not do us harm.’

  FB revelled in his rank. He loved strutting around Headquarters, barking at people, ordering them around and being generally unpleasant. He was not a people person, but a hard taskmaster who pushed himself even harder than his subordinates. But such power and drive did have its upside because within minutes of returning to HQ, FB had turfed a handful of Human Resource managers out of a room they had been using for a meeting in the LEC building adjacent to Headquarters and declared it to be the hub of Operation Head Hunt - the first name that sprang to his whirling mind.

  Henry and Danny looked on rather shamefacedly as the HR managers collected their belongings and shuffled out, shooed along by FB with words and phrases like, ‘Too many bloody meetings these days anyway,’ and ‘Not enough focus on operational policing,’ and ‘I’m not even sure what you lot do, anyway.’

  They left bristling with annoyance. FB basked in their reactions.

  When they were gone, the ACC turned to the two detectives.

  ‘Down to you,’ he said, and left.

  ‘Thanks a fucking bunch,’ Henry said to himself. He sat down heavily, no enthusiasm in him at all. He examined the room. The LEC - Local Emergency Centre - building is a single-storey construction, consisting of a series of rooms which, in the event of a large-scale disaster, incident or emergency, would be staffed by the relevant people from the Police, Fire and Ambulance Services, together with representatives from other agencies. It is geared up to handle such an occurrence in terms of communications and facilities. In between times, the rooms are used by whoever needs them, for whatever purpose - such as an HR managers’ meeting.

  Two phones were already installed, together with a fax machine. Points for dozens of others to be put in were available. Flipcharts and dry-wipe boards were dotted around the room.

  Henry picked up one of the phones and spoke to the Duty Officer in Control Room. His staff were now back in place following the bomb alert. Henry informed him of his presence and function in the LEC and asked him to forward any information which might be of relevance - particularly reports of large-scale crime in the county.

  Coffee and tea were brought into the room. Henry poured himself a large black coffee and sipped it ruminatively while he tried to clear his thoughts. Everything had happened so quickly over the last hour and a half - from the emotional outburst aimed at Danny, to the explosion, to the decapitation, to this: running an Incident Room when there hadn’t even been an incident, a Non-incident Room, perhaps. Ridiculous. It was all assumptions and guesses.

  He sighed. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ He picked up a marker pen and went to one of the dry-wipe boards on the wall. He rubbed it clean with the side of his fist. ‘Other than nothing,’ he added.

  ‘Three things to start with: the hoax calls to Control Room and Lancaster Comms. Then the explosion.’

  He began to write.

  ‘Callum Riley, a gun,’ Danny prompted. ‘Riley’s previous convictions, linked to Billy Crane’s MO.’

  ‘And I’ve seen Crane recently. He has connections with Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick, two Manchester thugs, and a Russian guy, Drozdov, an active member of the Russian Mafia.’ Henry scribbled the names up, as well as Don Smith’s. He looked at what he’d written. ‘But it’s all conjecture and doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Yet.’

  Henry shrugged - a gesture which was starting to annoy Danny intensely. All it said to her was, ‘I don’t care’ - a defeatist attitude which was not Henry at all. It reminded her starkly that she and he had unfinished personal business to attend to.

  ‘What else have we got?’ she thought out loud, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

  ‘Nothing.’ Henry sat down, looking like he was bored rigid.

  ‘Give that to me.’ Danny snatched the marker pen from his hand. She stood by the board, reading what was on it, then reached up and wrote, Operation Head Hunt along the top, but knew the name would have to be changed. It was completely inappropriate, just the kind of thing she would have expected from FB. She underlined the words with a squiggle. Then she drew a ring around the words ‘Lancaster Comms’.

  ‘Why Lancaster Comms?’ she probed Henry and the room.

  ‘Why not Blackburn? Why not Blackpool?’

  Henry remained dumb, uninterested.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘we’re supposed to be detectives. We’re supposed to come up with things. Ideas. Hypotheses.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ He rocked forwards and stood up. ‘There should be a map of the county in one of these cupboards.’ He opened a few until he found a large rolled-up map which he spread open on a table-top. He pinned it down with two cups and two saucers. He took another marker pen and drew a ring around Lancaster and another around Hutton, location of Headquarters.

  Danny sidled up next to him, arm to arm.

  ‘What’ve we got?’ he said. ‘Lancaster: covers the port of Heysham, two nuclear power stations, Glasson Dock, the Duke of Westminster’s house, the M6, one or two MPs’ and ex-MPs’ homes; Royals visit the area regularly - officially and unofficially. There’s lots of banks, building societies, and other financial institutions in the towns.’

  ‘And Control Room,’ said Danny, picking up the train of thought, ‘Controls the Force radio network and deploys patrols on the motorways - the M6, M55, M65 and M61.’

  ‘Common denominator?’

  ‘The M6,’ said Danny quickly. ‘That’s the first thing that strikes me. It runs through Northern Division and Control Room look after it.’

  Annoyingly, Henry shrugged again. Danny ignored it this time, but glanced up at him. He’d gone distant again. She nudged him hard in the ribs.

  He looked into her eyes. A flicker of excitement shivered through her as he spoke. ‘If this is all linked together, and we’re not just wasting our time, then I have a good idea what this is all about.’

  Danny waited.

  ‘Money,’ he said.

  The next visitor turned up on time. Smith greeted him at the door of the warehouse. Everyone else stayed out of sight in the office. They had all showered and changed back into their original clothing. Their ‘operating gear’ had been bagged up in black plastic bin liners, the guns and ammunition put in a holdall. The weapons which had been fired were wrapped separately in plastic bags inside the holdall. Smith was going to arrange the disposal of the clothing and guns later that day.

  As Crane, Drozdov, Thompson and Elphick sipped coffee, Smith introduced the man to his task.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘Easy peasey.’ The man, who was only young, in his mid-twenties, placed a small toolkit down by his side. He opened it and took out a cordless drill into which he inserted a thin bit. ‘First one?’ he said.

  Smith dragged one of the money cases out of the Sherpa, put it on the floor. The man knelt down and started work.

  Henry picked up a phone and punched in the extension number of the Duty Officer, Control Room, again.

  ‘Have you been notified of any large movements of cash today, up and down the motorway?’ Henry knew it was procedure for many security companies to inform police forces if unusually large amounts of money were being carried around or through their areas.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll check ... we’re only just getting back to normal after that bo
mb hoax...’ There was a pause during which Henry could hear the workings of Control Room in the background. ‘Yep, we have,’ the Inspector came back. ‘Three today. Two are cash deliveries from the Royal Mint - one of which is going right up the county without stopping; the third is another non-stopper, north to south down the M6 - a cash disposal.’

  ‘Any problems reported with any of them?’

  ‘Not as yet. They’re all vague timetables anyway – nothing fixed in stone.’

  Henry tutted, disappointed. It had been a good idea come to nothing. ‘Can you give me details of all three? I’ll contact each company and check anyway.’

  ‘Sure.’ The Inspector read them out, Henry noted them down. He replaced the phone slowly. ‘If you were a robber, Danny, which would you rather have, given the choice - a load of brand-new notes, or a load of used ones?’

  ‘The latter. Untraceable.’

  ‘Me too. I’ll call this company first.’

  ‘There we go,’ the young man said three minutes later with a satisfied smile. He leaned back from the money case. ‘Unlocked and disabled, hopefully.’

  ‘Hopefully?’ Smith queried.

  ‘There’s always the possibility of it going wrong, but if this one is OK, the others will be a piece of piss.’

  Smith nodded. He dragged the case away across the floor. He flipped the catches cautiously, expecting to be sprayed with dye. Nothing. Next he eased the lid up very slowly until the case was completely open. Again, nothing. No dye, no alarm.

  What did happen was that he was faced with a suitcase full of tightly packed and bound notes. All twenties. He eased one bundle out. They were literally packed like sardines. He read the wrapper. It indicated he was holding one hundred £20 notes. Two thousand pounds. He quickly counted how many more were in the case. Two hundred and fifty - which equated to half a million pounds in used, utterly untraceable cash.

  Smith’s heart pounded, making him gasp.

  Another forty-nine such cases were stacked in the back of the Sherpa. If each one contained the same, and Smith had no reason to doubt otherwise, they had just stolen twenty-five million pounds. Not as much as Hodge had promised - but who could quibble? Twenty-five mill went a long, long way.

  ‘How much time to do the rest?’ Smith asked the man.

  ‘Minute each, now that I know what I’m doing - maybe less.’

  ‘Get going with it, then.’

  Henry’s bones grated when he stretched. He and Danny had just finished phoning the headquarters of each security firm and received negative responses. Nothing untoward had occurred with any of their vehicles in Lancashire that day.

  ‘Worth a try, I suppose,’ he mumbled defensively. He poured himself another coffee. It was lukewarm, tasted bitter, reflected his mood.

  ‘What now?’ Danny enquired.

  He opened his mouth to respond when his pager vibrated on his hip bone. He slid it off his belt and read the display. ‘Hang on,’ he said to Danny, ‘just got to make a call.’ He picked up the phone and jabbed in a number.

  ‘American Embassy, London. Julie Duke speaking,’ came the voice after an interminable wait. ‘May I help you?’

  ‘Yes, please, Julie. Can you put me through to the FBI office? Karl Donaldson, please. This is Henry Christie calling.’

  ‘Hold the line please, Mr Christie.’

  Smith sauntered across the warehouse to the office, leaned through the door. ‘He’s having a few problems.’ He jerked his head backwards to indicate the guy at work on the money cases. The faces of the four men showed pain and impatience. Gunk groaned angrily. Smith quickly added, ‘Nothing insurmountable. It’ll be OK. Bill, can I have a quick word?’

  Crane necked the last dregs of his coffee and followed Smith out of the office.

  ‘They’re getting edgy,’ Crane said, ‘and so am I. Every minute we spend in here, we’re at risk.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s his problem?’

  ‘There isn’t a problem, not with this guy, anyway. He’s cracked it. He’s opened the first one and he’ll take about an hour to get the rest of them done. But there’s only half a mill in each one - well short of what Hodge had us believe.’

  ‘I can live with that,’ Crane said, stifling a laugh. Then he became serious. Referring to the men in the office, he said, ‘We need to think about how we’re going to sort these three cunts out now.’

  Smith waited for Crane to call the shots. They eyed each other.

  ‘Don’t know about you, Don,’ Crane whispered, ‘but I think we should cut them out of the deal completely and split it fifty-fifty, me and you - not forgetting to payoff Hawker and Price and everyone else. Those bastards killed my mate Jacky Lee and that’s a good enough reason to slot the twats. I’ve used ‘em, now let’s abuse ‘em.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ Smith responded.

  ‘FBI office, Karl Donaldson, how can I help?’ The second cheery American voice came down the telephone line.

  ‘It’s me, Henry.’

  ‘Hey, pal - thanks for calling back so quickly. Got some snippets I thought you might be interested in concerning our Russian comrade, Yuri Ivankov.’

  Henry did not have the heart to tell Donaldson he was not really interested, but feigned it nonetheless. ‘Fire away, Karl.’

  ‘First off, from your Customs people in Manchester Airport ... they spotted him going through and catching a BA flight to Paris the day after the Jacky Lee shooting. Got a pretty good photo of him from one of the surveillance cameras on a travellator. We’ve checked the passenger list, but we haven’t been able to pin any particular name to him. There were lots of single businessmen on that flight.’

  ‘He went to France?’

  ‘Yeah, but that ain’t all. Just to expand on something else I mentioned to you before: you know the Paris underworld is one of the busiest in the world, a real mish-mash of ethnic groups operating there. Recently the Russians have been expanding there, muscling in to a big degree and throwing their weight around when the Frogs haven’t seen the benefits of cooperation. One particular sticking point for the Russians was a high-ranking mobster called Serge Garnier. Controlled a lot of business to the north of Paris. The Drozdovs had been very interested in what he was doing, particularly in terms of prostitution and drugs, and wanted a percentage of the action. Garnier told them to go away in no uncertain terms. Then we think the Russians approached some of Garnier’s lieutenants, promised power and money and they set the poor bastard up.’

  ‘Just like Jacky Lee,’ Henry observed.

  ‘Exactly.’ Donaldson continued, ‘And within hours of Ivankov landing in Paris, poor old Garnier was dead meat. We think our man left Paris by road or rail and we haven’t had any sightings of him since. As usual, it’s all conjecture based on intelligence - but he definitely did it.’

  ‘Can you fax me a copy of the airport surveillance photo? I’m on...’

  Whilst Henry was telling Donaldson the number, Danny’s pager vibrated. She rang the number displayed from another phone.

  ‘Rik Dean? It’s Danny Furness. You got something for me?’

  ‘Yeah - bit of a result from that mugshot of Billy Crane that you sent me.’

  ‘That was quick - go on.’

  ‘I got a sheet of similar-looking dudes together as per PACE and showed it around the waiters and reception staff at the Imperial. Two picked out Crane as the man who was in company with Don Smith.’

  ‘Well done, Rik. I owe you one - but don’t show the photos to anyone else now, please, just in case we need to go for an ID parade. What you’ve done is brilliant.’

  ‘Thanks, Danny. I’m still sorry about the other night.’

  ‘Don’t fret - I’ve frightened off more men than just you. Look, Rik, make sure everything is properly documented and recorded. This could be very important. I’ll tell you more when I know myself, but thanks again.’ Danny hung up, a smirk of triumph on her face.

  Henry ended his call to Don
aldson at the exact same moment as Danny did with Rik Dean. Danny could not resist observing saucily, ‘Henry, dear, we finished together. How sweet.’

  He laughed for the first time. ‘Unusual too. Generally I finish first.’

  He worked diligently, sweating and breathing heavily. He kept to his promise and each of the remaining boxes was opened within a minute. With the occasional breather and fag break, seventy minutes later he had completed the job. He packed away his tools and pulled on his coat. Smith handed him a roll of notes.

  ‘Two and a half, as agreed.’

  The man blinked. Smith knew he was going to chance his arm and was ready for it. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of money in there,’ the man said. His greedy eyes flickered towards the Sherpa. ‘I think I deserve some more.’

  ‘We agreed a price,’ Smith growled low. He stepped close to the man. ‘Don’t even think about it. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go right this minute and suffer memory loss. If you don’t, and I hear about it, I promise you’ll be a dead man, guaranteed.’

  ‘Fine,’ the man said brightly. ‘No harm in trying.’ He stuffed his money into his jacket. Smith shepherded him to the door.

  The slow-moving security van driven by Hawker pulled off the motorway after an uneventful but bottle-testing journey. A couple of minutes later he slowed on a quiet country lane and turned into a track, driving the van out of sight of the road. He leapt out, abandoned it and joined Price in the Audi. They looped back towards the motorway and headed North, knowing they were half a million pounds richer.

  Crane and Smith were standing near to the back of the Sherpa.

  Thompson, Elphick and Drozdov were in the office. Voices in low conversation could be heard coming from there.