by Nick Oldham
Cheryl flopped on to her back, drew up her knees and folded her arms across the cushion in a huff ‘Well, thank you very much. Shows how much you care about me — NOT!’
‘ Oh, quit whingeing.’ Spencer stood up and headed towards the bedroom. ‘I’m going to get some zeds.’ At the bedroom door he bent his knees, pointed his rear end at Cheryl, exposed his backside by pulling down his underpants and emitted a massive fart in her direction… a noise which coincided with the front door of the flat being smashed down.
The meal progressed equably. The main course was consumed. Small talk dominated. It was an opportunity for Billy Crane to get updated on gossip. He had been out of the North-West criminal mainstream for four years. It was good to talk.
They reached the end of the meal at 9.30 p.m. Smith paid with his credit card, adding an extravagant tip for the service which had been good — but not that good. The two men left the restaurant and exited the hotel through the revolving doors. Smith waved a hand. A few moments later a black Ford Granada drew up at the foot of the steps. They climbed into the rear and the car pulled smoothly away, out on to the promenade, heading north.
‘ This better be good, Don. I don’t want to spend any more time than necessary in this fucking country. I’m freezing my balls off already.’
‘ Billy, I promise you, it is good. You’d be well upset if I hadn’t brought it to your attention.’
Crane eased back into the plush seat.
‘ Don’t get comfy,’ Smith warned. ‘We ain’t staying in this motor. It’s a bit too flashy, wouldn’t you say?’
‘ Depends on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.’
They cut inland at Gynn Square, heading east out of Blackpool on the A585. At a lay-by on Garstang Road, the Granada drew in behind a battered-looking Vauxhall Carlton. A man was sitting at the wheel, the engine ticking over.
‘ Come on.’
Smith and Crane jumped out of the Granada and dived into the rear of the less salubrious saloon.
‘ Move it,’ Smith uttered to the driver as soon as the doors slammed shut. Without a word the man released the clutch, looped the car into a U-turn and headed back into Blackpool. The Granada set off and continued east. The change over had taken only a matter of seconds.
‘ You never know,’ Smith said.
‘ Can’t be too careful,’ Crane sighed. He was becoming agitated.
Smith saw Crane’s expression in the light cast by the streetlamps. ‘You’ll know soon enough… and I guarantee you’ll like it.’
‘ Yeah, right.’ Crane stared out of the window, grating his teeth.
Less than five minutes later they were back in Blackpool, motoring south down the promenade then driving into a car park at the rear of a pub in South Shore. It was an establishment controlled, though not owned, by Smith. He took the profits from the bandits and the drugs. The landlord kept his mouth shut, ran a tight ship as far as the law could see, and got a cut big enough to keep him happy.
Smith led Crane in through the back door of the pub and up a flight of stairs to a first-floor room, large enough to have a raised stage at one end, a temporary bar at the other and a dance-floor in between. A couple of rows of chairs and tables were stacked up in front of the stage.
One table and three chairs were set up near to the disused bar. In one of the chairs sat a man holding a pint glass, half full of beer. A whisky bottle and three glasses stood on the table. One of the glasses contained the man’s measure of the spirit which he was drinking as a chaser. An open packet of cigarettes was next to the bottle, resting on its tilted lid, several cigarettes poking out, ready to be selected. The man had one in his mouth. The ashtray indicated he had been smoking pretty heavily.
He rose cautiously as Smith and Crane entered the room.
Smith shook his hand and patted him reassuringly on the arm. The man’s eyes were checking out Crane all the time.
‘ I’d like you to meet my partner,’ Smith said to the man. ‘Names don’t matter at the moment. All you need to know is that this man can make things happen.’
Just to appease Smith, Crane proffered his hand to the man and shook his sweaty paw.
‘ This,’ Smith continued for Crane’s benefit, ‘is Colin Hodge. Colin’s got a very interesting story to tell, haven’t you, Colin?’
Fear made her vomit. She brought up a combination of Martini and semen, all of which coagulated horribly on her chest and stomach. She was still naked. They had taken her that way, but had not touched her other than by accident. That was one of the things which told her these guys were professionals, neither distracted nor interested in a naked female. They had come to do a job, that was all.
She was lying on the freezing cold, hard, concrete floor. Shivering. Her hands were bound behind her back, attached to her ankles by a cord. Her feet were strapped together with wide, silver-coloured sticky tape. She could not move other than to wriggle. She tried to see into the darkness, but there was nothing. No movement. No points of light. No sound. She could sense she was in a building of sorts, maybe a factory. Otherwise she was disorientated and alone.
Oh God, where is Spencer? she thought desperately, knowing they had taken him too.
Her mind raced back to the door of the flat flying open and the two men bursting in.
Spencer cried out, ‘What the fuck?’ hitched up his underpants and spun to face the intruders.
Their names were Hawker and Price, ex-military, and they moved lightning quick. Hawker rammed a rod of some sort into Spencer’s chest and the youth was launched into the bedroom as though at the epicentre of an explosion; he was literally lifted off his feet by the voltage from the shock baton.
Cheryl got to her knees, clutching the cushion across her chest.
Price dragged her to her feet by her hair, tore the cushion from her grasp and touched her ribcage underneath her left breast with another shock baton, the same model that had pole-axed Spencer.
It was like being hit by an express train as the charge of electricity seared into her. Suddenly life went totally blank. A huge chest-encompassing pain drove all the air out of her, sucking it from her very toes and fingertips, sending her reeling into inner space.
Next thing she knew she was in the back of some sort of vehicle or another, being driven over some rough ground. She squirmed and found she was secured by cord and tape then. When the van slowed right down and started to manoeuvre, reverse, pull forwards, reverse again, she heard doors opening and closing, but could see nothing.
Then the van doors opened.
A light poured in. Cheryl looked up, blinking. The men were not wearing any masks and they looked surprised to see she was awake.
Another round swiftly delivered by the shock baton booted her back into instant oblivion…
Then, much later, she woke on the concrete floor.
Her heart was beating irregularly. Her head was spinning sickeningly, like a bad crack hit. She tensed. There was a noise, a moan behind her.
‘ Spencer?’ she whispered through her dry mouth.
‘ Yuh…’
‘ Oh God, you’re alive… what’re we going to do?’
He did not reply.
‘ I want some reassurances before I start to say anything,’ Colin Hodge announced, finding courage from the alcohol he had consumed before the arrival of Crane and Smith.
‘ Such as?’ Smith asked.
Hodge eyed the two men, thinking he was their equal on every level. A stupid mistake on his part. All three were sitting at the table. Each had a drink in his hand — whisky from the bottle. Hodge looked distrustfully at Crane — the new man on the scene, the man with the connections, and thought, I could take you now, you cunt. You’re nothing, absolutely nothing but a sack of shit, sitting there with your smug expression and your suntan.
Crane’s eyes and features were impassive, giving nothing away.
‘ OK,’ said Hodge, nodding his head, biting his lip. ‘The whole thing is my information,
my idea, my job. All you’re going to do is to help me to sort it out. I want fifty per cent — and believe me, that leaves a lot of money for you.’
Smith tried to give the impression he was ruminating on the matter, even though he wasn’t. He and Crane, particularly the latter, were the ones who made the rules and decided who got what.
‘ I think we can live with that,’ Smith said.
‘ That’s good,’ Hodge sniffed. A victory. He glanced quickly at Crane for a reaction, got none. Crane took a minute sip of whisky.
There was silence.
Each man also had a cigarette. In the still atmosphere, the smoke hung languidly just above the level of their heads, swirling gently.
Crane had yet to say anything. He was too busy trying to speculate what the hell he had let himself in for. At that moment he was very unimpressed by Hodge, who he had already labelled as a dangerous jerk. However, he kept his tongue.
Hodge shifted uncomfortably. He said, ‘No details yet, no pack drill.’ With his fingers he wiped the spittle from the corners of his mouth. ‘I want this to proceed at my pace, on my terms. Is that clear to both of you?’
Smith nodded. Crane did not move, other than to flare his nostrils. He was getting more and more irritated by this arsehole by the second.
‘ Right,’ Hodge proceeded. ‘I work for a security firm who collect and deliver money, to and from banks.’
Try as he might, Crane could not stop his eyes closing despairingly. Another bent security guard. They were a liability. Useful to a degree, then… eminently disposable.
‘ There’s a big difference to this firm, though. They do all the normal, two-bit runs all over the place, sometimes carrying a lot of dosh, right. But every so often they do a special run.’ Hodge paused for effect. His eyes played patronisingly over Smith and Crane. ‘Do I have your attention now?’
Crane licked his lips.
Smith urged him on. ‘Yes, you do.’
‘ Good. Every so often — it varies, depending on the circumstances — my company collects money. Untraceable used notes from the banks all across Southern Scotland and Northern England. These notes are delivered to a specialist waste company in the Midlands where under high security, they are incinerated. In fact, I did such a run today.’
‘ Tell us how much you carried,’ Smith said. His eyes betrayed greed and Crane noticed this.
‘ You want to know how much I carried in the back of my van?’ Hodge teased and looked at Crane for the answer.
‘ Yes,’ Crane said, with a rancid smile.
‘ Fifty million pounds — and not one penny of it traceable anywhere.’
Chapter Six
‘ What we do is this: we keep him sweet, we string him along and we milk him of all the information he has to give us. We let him believe he’s got clout and that he’s running the show — because that’s what he wants to believe. We feed him cash, we feed him birds, booze and smack if that’s what turns him on. We con the living shit out of him and then we bury the twat!
‘ See — I’m not having no stinking little security guard trying to tell me what to do,’ Crane went on. ‘No fucking way under God’s sky. We run him. Be doesn’t run us.’ Crane turned to Smith. His eyes were lit by passing fluorescent street-lights as the car moved swiftly northwards through the easy traffic. They were back in the shabby Vauxhall Carlton, having concluded their meeting with Colin Bodge. ‘Is that clear?’
Smith’s face cracked with a smile of pleasure. ‘I take it from that you’re in?’
Crane extended his right hand. Smith shook it and clasped his left over it. ‘I knew you’d be interested. I needed you along. You’ve got all the right contacts for this one.’
‘ And I don’t want to take that little bastard’s word for anything,’ Crane said, referring to Bodge. ‘Do some background on him, make sure he’s not telling us a load of crap. Make sure he’s not a cop or a snout, either. Check everything out, mega-style. Take nothing at face value. I’ve had so-called mates informing on me in the past and I didn’t like it one bit.’
Smith guffawed.
‘ What’s the joke?’
‘ Nah — you’ll see very soon. Something very pertinent to what you’ve just said.’
‘ Stop stringing me along, will you?’ Crane was annoyed.
‘ Hey, Bill, stick with me, eh? It’ll come good. You can trust me.’
‘ Right, sure,’ he said without enthusiasm.
They were driven north to Bispham and on to a small industrial estate. The whole place was dead.
‘ Here we are,’ Smith announced as the car drew to a halt. ‘Lesson time.’
Way above in the ceiling, the strip-lights pinged on. Cheryl blinked. The lights were very bright after the darkness and hurt her eyes. She was extremely cold. Her legs and hands were numb. She saw, at last, what sort of premises she was in — a garage. There were two hydraulic car ramps, over two inspection pits. A car was on one and the ramp was raised high. There was no car on the other ramp nearest to her. Cheryl could see the black, rectangular inspection pit. It reminded her of a newly dug grave.
She heard footsteps and began to sob.
Cheryl and Spencer, both naked, were now seated on plastic chairs, placed side by side. Their feet and wrists were still secured by tape, their arms pulled around the backs of the chairs. Cheryl had wet herself and was sitting in a puddle of her own urine. Spencer had gone one step further in his terror and soiled himself. A tremendous stench wafted from underneath him.
‘ Fifty thousand pounds, that’s what I lost,’ Billy Crane said in a gentle voice — for the tenth time — leaning into Cheryl’s face. He was wearing a pair of overalls.
‘ I’m so sorry,’ she gurgled. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘ Sorry doesn’t cut it, you stupid bitch.’ Though the words were harsh, Crane’s voice remained calm. As a result, he was all the more fearsome. He was playing with them and enjoying it.
He turned his head slowly, rather like Dracula, and cast his eyes to Spencer who quickly looked away and stared down at the oozing shit between his legs. ‘I don’t need to
say very much to you, sonny, do I?’
Spencer did not respond.
Crane reached across and tipped up Spencer’s chin with a forefinger. There was no resistance. ‘You are a stupid little boy who thinks he’s a man, aren’t you?’
Spencer blinked rapidly and swallowed.
‘ Men do not crap themselves, Spence.’
Crane stood up to his full height, looked around the floor and saw a couple of eight-foot wooden planks, each about four inches thick, lying nearby. ‘Lay those two planks on top of each other,’ he said.
Hawker and Price, the two men who had so efficiently abducted the couple, materialised from behind them. They carried out Crane’s instructions, placing one plank on top of the other.
Crane watched them work, then turned to address Cheryl and Spencer. ‘I want you both to see how angry you have made me and to realise how wrong you were to be such fools. I’ll deal with you first.’ He glared directly at Spencer.
‘ Oh fuck — no,’ Spencer screamed. ‘I didn’t even know she was carrying the stuff. Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!’ he babbled. ‘I’ve done nowt.’
‘ Pick him up and lie him face down, parallel to the planks,’ he instructed Hawker and Price.
On hearing the words, Spencer shot to his bound feet and threw himself sideways in an effort to escape. The two men caught him quickly and easily. One punched him hard in the guts, doubling him over, driving all the air and fight out of him. Spencer crumpled with a groan. Then they laid him out as instructed.
‘ About two feet away,’ Crane directed. ‘Good. Now, release his arms.’ Crane squatted on his haunches near to Spencer’s head and spoke quietly. ‘Listen to me, Spencer. ‘I’m going to get these guys to let your arms go free, so you can do this whatever way you want. I don’t give a shit. If you struggle or fight at all, things will be worse for you.’ Crane shrugged
. ‘You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’
Spencer nodded, his face pressed into the oily concrete of the garage floor. His hands came free.
‘ Good. Now, Spencer, keep yourself face down and reach out with your right arm, straight out from your shoulder and place the palm of your hand down on top of the planks. That’s it, good lad. Keep your arm rigid and keep your elbow nice and locked. Excellent.’
Crane stood up stiffy, stepped over Spencer so that he was standing in the gap between Spencer and the planks. He placed the sole of his right shoe on the point of Spencer’s elbow and tested it with a little bit of pressure, but no real body weight.
He nodded at Cheryl and smiled foully.
Her face was a mask of horror and disbelief.
Spencer began to weep.
Crane’s expression was evil. ‘This is part payment for fifty grand,’ he announced. At the exact moment he finished speaking, he rose up, put all his weight on to his right foot and forced Spencer’s elbow down like he was breaking a twig. The joint went first time with a loud splintering crack. Spencer roared in pain.
Crane stepped off.
‘ I do not fuck about,’ he said, lurched over to Cheryl, grabbed her face in the palm of his hand and squeezed, distorting her features. ‘And now it’s your turn, girl,’ he growled.
Henry Christie stared with growing disbelief at Detective Superintendent Rupert Davison, then emitted a high-pitched laugh with a slightly hysterical tinge to it. ‘Did I hear you right? You’re asking me why I didn’t shoot him?’
‘ You had the opportunity.’
‘ Yeah — and he was being driven away in a car by some kid and he presented me with no danger whatsoever, except from exhaust fumes. Not only that, I was holding a firearm which I’d taken from Jacky Lee’s body which, it will probably transpire, was no doubt used by Lee to waste a guy a few weeks ago… the reason I was on Lee’s tail in the first place.’
Henry sat down after realising he had been pacing the room — a classroom at Sedgely Park, Greater Manchester Police’s training school. This was where a hasty rendezvous had been arranged for him and Terry Briggs to meet Davison for a debrief of Lee’s shooting.