by Nick Oldham
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 bomb 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 l
ot 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 Donaldson 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.
Crane grabbed Smith’s elbow and pulled him across to the holdall in which the guns had been stashed.
The faxed photograph from the airport camera was good quality. It showed the Russian clearly, standing on a travellator at Manchester Airport, and was timed and dated. His face was circled with a black ring to highlight him. To be honest, Henry could not be certain if it was the same man who had so publicly taken out Jacky Lee at the transport cafe. But that fact did not concern him too much. He pushed the fax over to Danny. She peered at Ivankov, as he knew she would.
‘ Recognise him?’ Henry asked.
‘ No, can’t say I do.’
‘ I don’t mean Ivankov — I mean the guy standing next to him.’ Danny looked closely. She sat up sharply. ‘It’s Billy Crane… is it?’
‘ Sure looks like him.’
‘ But what’s he doing with Ivankov?’
‘ That’s a good question.’ Henry sighed. ‘But, whatever, this gives you something very good in terms of the job at Blackpool — a time and a date. That shows Crane was in the country on the morning after the murders. If you can pin him down by means of some good ID evidence to the Imperial Hotel the night before, at least you can prove he was in the vicinity at the right time. Proving he actually pulled the trigger might be a trifle more problematic. What you could do with is finding out exactly where Crane is living now. I know we think it’s Tenerife, but we could do with finding out for sure. You also could do with trying to check the passenger lists for all flights leaving Manchester around that time.’ Henry picked up the fax. ‘This could mean absolutely nothing, but on the other hand…’
‘ It might mean a big conspiracy,’ Danny finished. ‘My head hurts.’
Crane jogged ahead of Smith, a black Ruger P85 in his hands, the one he’d used for the robbery, now reloaded, one in the chamber, fifteen in the magazine, another mag tucked into his waistband just in case. Smith was armed with a heavier Skarab Skorpion.
Crane stopped momentarily at the office door and took a deep breath. He counted with his left hand, slicing the air, one, two, three. Then he twisted into the office and said, ‘Sorry boys, but this is the way it is,’ and began firing, aware that Drozdov was not in the room, just Gary and Gunk. Where the hell was the Russian?
It did not make Crane hesitate. He shot them where they sat.
Gary was hit first. One in the face, one in the neck, two in the chest. The massive impact of the bullets lifted him from the chair and toppled him backwards, legs rising upwards and over.
Gunk threw himself to one side with a scream. Crane was surprised by his speed for an instant. Then he was back on track, aiming and firing at the bulk of Gunk’s moving body, hitting him in the shoulder, ribs and hip. Gunk contorted and writhed on the floor of the office, dragging a metallic filing cabinet down on top of himself
Crane rushed forwards and finished him off with one to the side of the head.
He checked Gary, who twitched like he was being tickled, but was very definitely dead.
Crane ejected the magazine from the handle and dropped it into his pocket, replacing it quickly with the full one from his waistband. His eyes made contact with Smith who stood in the doorway, astounded by his partner’s deadly efficiency.
‘ Where’s the other fucker?’ Crane hissed. He was hardly out of breath, but in control, enjoying this.
The response to the question was immediate and fatal.
Suddenly Smith began a wild, macabre dance as bullets riddled into him, discharged from the Uzi held by Drozdov. Black holes burst open across his chest, hurling him backwards. His gun flew out of his grasp and he was slammed violently against the office wall. There was a short pause — long enough for Smith to look down and inspect the wounds across his chest and then look up at Crane, disbelief on his face — by which time Drozdov had readjusted his aim and opened fire again. He put a line of bullets across Smith’s face which removed his lower jaw.
Crane dropped to the floor like a stone, cursing. He then crawled behind the filing cabinet which had fallen over Gunk’s body.
Drozdov strafed the office. As the wall was only thin plasterboard, little protection was offered to Crane who was pinned down, nowhere to run.
The firing stopped abruptly when the magazine clicked empty.
Crane knew he had to move now. His current position was indefensible and he was dead if he stayed there.
; He scrambled to his feet, using Gunk’s neck as purchase to achieve momentum, and launched himself head first out of the office. He threw himself into a forward roll which took him to the back wheel of the Audi where he crouched down, protected by the car, dry-mouthed, now breathing heavily, his senses at their most acute, listening hard, unsure of Drozdov’s exact position, which was not a good thing. He could hear re-loading taking place and knew he was out-gunned. Pistol versus machine pistol. Bad odds at this sort of range.
Where the hell was the Russian?
Behind the BMW? Near to the Sherpa?
Christ, he was good, Crane thought magnanimously. How had he managed to get out of the office without being seen? Crane gave a short, bitter laugh. He realised that he and the Russian were two of a kind. He’d seen it in the eyes. Watched it in the way he’d disposed of the security guards. Cold. Clinical. No fuss, just business. And the problem was, when people like this clashed, there could only be one victor. A draw was unacceptable.
Crane peered cautiously over the boot of the Audi. He guessed the Russian was probably over by the BMW, protected by the bulk of its engine, probably no more than twenty feet away. Beyond was the gloom of the warehouse. Floor-to-roof shelving, stacked with goods, mainly cigarettes, booze and perfume. The shelves were end-on to where Crane was positioned and he could see down the aisles which were wide enough for forklift trucks to operate down. Around the inner warehouse wall, about fifteen feet from the ground, was a metallic walkway reached by steps next to the office door, about eight feet to the right from where Crane was hunched. Fifteen feet to his left was the Sherpa parked in the loading bay. That vehicle, maybe, offered some protection, but at that moment, Crane could not even think of reaching it.
Incredibly there was a sudden movement in the office. Crane’s head snapped round and he saw something amazing.
It was Don Smith. Jaw-less, riddled with bullets, he was dragging himself through the door, slipping and slurping in his own pool of deep red, nearly black, blood. Most of his face had been ripped off by Drozdov’s shooting. Crane could not believe what he was seeing.