by Nick Oldham
‘ Did that include murdering Jacky Lee? Is that one of your methods of “furthering interests”, as you put it?’
‘ Do I detect a trace of anger in your voice, Mr Christie?’
‘ What would be the point of anger?’
‘ Exactly. As I said — different values. We work differently to you… and now, I think I am getting tired of this.’
‘ Me too,’ said Henry. ‘This detective here’ — he pointed to Dave Seymour — ‘will take a short statement from you about your identification of Nikolai’s body, then you may go — but I stick what I said earlier: no one should lose a grandson in such circumstances, even if the grandson was deeply involved in violent crime himself. Because of that, I will not falter in my efforts to bring this killer to justice and unravel the sordid goings-on behind it all.’ Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘Different values.’
He got out of the car.
Whilst waiting for Seymour to take the statement, Henry drifted into the mortuary and found himself standing by the fridges in which the bodies were stored. He could not resist pulling out the sliding tray on which Gunk Elphick’s body was resting after the post-mortem. He was wrapped in a linen shroud. Henry looked round to see he wasn’t being watched and unravelled the shroud from around Gunk’s head.
Henry simply wanted to wish him one last thing.
‘ Rot in hell, you evil bastard.’ Childish, he knew. Nor did it achieve anything. But it made him feel much, much better.
With a signal from one motorcyclist to the other, the police escort pulled away from the mortuary. Henry and Dave Seymour watched it leave.
‘ Let’s get back to Headquarters,’ Henry said quickly and climbed into the firm’s Mondeo.
In the back seat of the traffic car, Alexandr Drozdov spoke quietly into the ear of his bodyguard, whispering two words. ‘Yuri Ivankov.’
Less than three-quarters of an hour later, the two detectives drove into police Headquarters. Henry, at the wheel, drove past the front of the HQ building on his right, the sports-field on his left. The grass still bore the charred, vivid scars where the Force helicopter had been destroyed. The wreckage had been removed piecemeal to the Forensic Science Lab down at Euxton, near Chorley, and was being examined by experts there. First indications fed to the MIR were that a couple of grenades were responsible for blowing the machine to smithereens.
Henry drove over the speed ramps too quickly, jarring the unsuspecting Seymour out of his seat, and headed towards the LEC building which had been commandeered by Henry and his Murder Squad — now totalling forty officers and support staff — for the enquiry. He stopped in the yellow hatch markings outside the front door and abandoned the dirty Mondeo there. Inside he went directly to the main room which was being used for the incident. Danny and several others were working away, heads buried in masses of paper.
‘ Danny,’ he called across the room. ‘Got a minute? Pretty urgent.’
She grimaced and held her hands wide as if to say, ‘I am busy, you know.’
‘ Aren’t we all,’ he said. ‘Come on,’ and gestured her out.
‘ OK, boss,’ she said with resignation.
‘ And bring everything,’ he instructed as an afterthought — although he wasn’t specific as to what ‘everything’ actually meant. He ducked out of the room and went to the one he had claimed as his office, throwing his jacket over a chair and helping himself to a coffee from the filter machine. He thudded down into his chair, mind churning.
There was a light knock and Danny entered, carrying a few sheets of printed paper. She clicked the door lock behind her and leaned against the door, adopting a provocative pose.
‘ If you were any sort of boss,’ she pouted, ‘we’d be screwing on that desktop right now.’
Henry perused her from head to toe. His teeth grated together with the memory of her body. He shifted uncomfortably to allow a surge of blood to pass into his loins.
‘ I only have to look at you to get a hard on,’ he said.
‘ And I only have to look at you to want you inside me.’ Breathless.
Henry stood up slowly, maintaining eye-contact with her. He walked towards her. She raised her chin, exposing her long neck, looking down her nose at him with a ‘let’s do it now’ expression.
He stopped inches away from her, his fingers at his trouser fly. Then, unable to maintain the charade, he burst out giggling. She did the same.
There was no way either of them would compromise themselves or their jobs by doing anything so foolish as frolicking in the major incident room. It would have been Henry’s luck to have FB walk in just as he was table-ending Danny across one of the HOLMES consoles.
Danny flicked open the door lock. ‘You look worried,’ she remarked.
He returned to his chair and loosened his tie, about to speak.
‘ Oh, by the way,’ she said before he could begin, ‘FB said he’d be here in an hour for a rundown. To quote a phrase, he said, in typical FB terms, “I’ll want to know when he intends making an arrest and how he intends getting back that twenty million quid — and if he can’t tell me, he might as well pick up his P45 on the way out”.’ Danny mimicked FB’s voice and manner with uncanny accuracy.
Henry drew a breath. He knew FB was going to show at some time that day, having previously made the arrangement with him. ‘We’d better be in a position to tell him something.’
With a flourish, Danny held up the pieces of paper she had brought with her. ‘Maybe these will help.’ She came over to the desk and placed all but one of them carefully in front of him. She watched him as he read.
‘ The stuff from the financial analysts,’ he said, concentrating.
Danny could not keep a wide smile from her face as she enjoyed the jittery feeling in her tummy she got from being with Henry. It was something she had only ever experienced once before — and not with Jack Sands, her previous lover. It was a sensation which told her she was deeply, ecstatically in love.
She closed her eyes, shook her head and opened them again. The feeling had not gone away.
Danny had been poached by Henry to act as the office manager in the MIR, effectively removing her from the triple murder at Blackpool. But because she was well into that, she was also the main liaison between the two enquiries because of the common denominator: Billy Crane.
Over the previous two days she and Henry had worked very closely together, doing sixteen-hour shifts. At the end of each one they had raced — discreetly — back to her house where they had made frantic love. Henry had then gone home to sleep with Kate, dropping exhausted into the marital bed, leaving Danny alone and unhappy.
Maybe once the investigation was over, something would come of the relationship, Danny hoped, but had a horrible premonition it would all end in tears — hers. She wanted Henry badly, so badly she was prepared to live through a difficult separation and divorce to get him. But did he love her enough to commit this sacrifice? There had been occasions during their lovemaking when he had seemed on the verge of saying the three little words, but held back. She was not going to push him, but desperately wanted to hear them whispered in her ear. As soon as the time was right, they needed to sit down and discuss things before the whole scenario blew up in their faces. Danny did not want to enter a difficult relationship without payback.
Henry looked up at her. ‘These are very interesting,’ he remarked. No doubt about it, he thought, financial analysts can make an investigation.
‘ And here’s another one which may be of interest to you.’ She handed him the other sheet of facts and figures, which he started to read. ‘All about Barney Gillrow.’
‘ Wow — you have been busy.’
‘ Yes, I have, and so have the analysts.’
Henry looked across the desk, thinking Danielle Louise Furness was the most breathtakingly beautiful woman he had ever known. Her eyes were to die for. Her lips needed kissing and biting every day without fail. She needed to be made love to frequently. She had to be h
is.
‘ Remember when we first made love?’ he asked.
She blushed endearingly. ‘How could I forget?’ she said softly.
‘ I was going to tell you something when you very rudely interrupted me by forcing me to make love to you again.’
‘ Oh, I’m sooo sorry,’ she said. ‘What was it?’
‘ I-,’ he began and stopped abruptly when the office door burst open and FB marched in, trumpeting, ‘Right, Henry, come on. What the hell’s going on? Don’t give me any tactical crap. Give me strategy — now. I want the big picture.’
Behind him stood Rupert Davison.
Tenerife was roasting. Loz was sitting under a sunshade on the private roof terrace of Uncle B’s English Bar and Disco, a large whisky in his good hand. He groaned, winced and opened his mouth to feel the loose teeth at the front of his lower jaw. ‘Shit,’ he muttered angrily. He gingerly touched the bridge of his nose which had a bruise right across it, then laid a fingertip gently on the puffed-up left eye, which was swollen and weeping. They were all new injuries to add to the ones which had only just healed up from his previous battering.
He necked the whisky with one gulp and slammed the glass down on the table. Holding his breath against the pain, he unravelled the bandage from his left hand, the one Nero had snacked on. It was a mess, looked infected, greenish. There was a musty stench to it which worried Loz, as did the gradual blackening of his little finger.
In the cage at the other end of the roof, Nero paced relentlessly. Loz stood up and walked over to him. As his previous weapon, the bamboo pole, now layout of reach on the floor of the cage, Loz picked up a broom-handle and shoved it through the mesh, trying to jab at Nero’s flank as the beast walked past. Nero was wise now, however, and easily swerved away with a snarl and clawed the stick. Loz continued to prod and tease, a look of sheer hatred on his face.
‘ Yeah, you heap of crap, nothing you can do now, is there, now your master isn’t here to help you.’ He rammed the stick at Nero’s face; the lion deflected it with a big paw. ‘Look what he’s done to me again.’ Loz pointed at his own face. ‘Bastard. If he thinks I’m looking after you, he’s fucking well wrong. You can starve for all I care, you smelly, mangy piece of meat.’
Loz, tired of the abuse, flicked two good fingers up at Nero and went back to the table.
On it, besides the whisky, was a whole sheaf of British newspapers, going back over the last two days. He picked up a copy of the Mail and read the headlines for the tenth time.?20 MILLION STOLEN: EIGHT DEAD they proclaimed. MASSIVE POLICE HUNT.
The story dominated the whole of the first three pages and contained a photograph of the officer leading the enquiry, DI Henry Christie, and lots of bland quotes from him. There were articles about gangland, the Russian Mafia and suggestions of a link to an earlier multiple killing in Blackpool. A huge reward had been posted by the banks — ?200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction etc.
Loz laid the paper out on the table…
The telephone call the day before from Billy Crane had come unexpectedly. Tersely, Crane had instructed Loz to pick him up from Los Rodeos Airport in the north of the island where he had just landed from Madrid. Loz drove there straight away in the Ssang Yong.
Crane looked very tired, had little to say and indulged in no small talk until Loz said conversationally, ‘Had a wee bit of a problem while you were gone, but I’ve sorted it.’
‘ Oh?’ Crane looked stone-face at Loz.
‘ A detective from England came nosing around — a woman.’
Instantly alert, Crane said, ‘When, exactly?’ thinking the cops had moved damn quick to be sniffing around Tenerife already. ‘Two weeks ago, something like that.’
Crane relaxed a little. That was before the robbery, but after the killings in Blackpool. ‘What did she want?’
‘ She didn’t come to see you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Came to see that ex-cop, Gillrow. Something to do with a guy who’d been wasted in Blackpool… can’t remember his name.’
‘ Malcolm Fitch,’ whispered Crane, more to himself than to Loz.
‘ Yeah, that’s the name. He used to be one of Gillrow’s snouts, apparently.’
‘ What did he tell her?’
‘ Nothing, other than to piss off out of it, but he came simpering around to me, shitting bricks about it.’
‘ And?’
‘ As you weren’t here, I sorted it.’
Crane examined Loz’s profile. ‘Sorted it? What does that mean?’
‘ Oh, nothing much — just put the frighteners up her.’
‘ How?’ Crane’s nostrils flared.
‘ Gave her a bit of a slapping and told her to back off — but tactfully, like. Y’know, I wasn’t specific, just made sure she knew what I meant.’ He did not care to admit the truth of the matter in that the slapping had not gone quite as planned and the tables had been turned.
‘ Good, good, well done.’ Crane patted his shoulder. Loz smiled, thinking he had done well. Maybe he had wormed his way back into Crane’s good books.
‘ What have you been up to?’ Loz enquired now that Crane seemed to have chilled out.
‘ This and that,’ he said vaguely.
They drove on in silence for a while until Crane could stand it no longer. He stretched. ‘I could do with a leak. Pull off here, will you? Too much to drink on the plane.’ He pointed to a junction which led up to San Isidro.
Unsuspecting, Loz hung a right, looped off the highway and stopped in an appropriate place. Crane got out, saying, ‘Have a smoke, if you want. I think this’ll be a long one.’ He walked down a slight, rocky incline where he urinated on some bushes that looked like they need the liquid. Behind, Loz leaned against the high vehicle and lit up.
Crane, having finished, came back up the gradient to the car and stood next to Loz for a moment before punching him as hard as he could in the belly. The cigarette shot out of Loz’s lips like a small rocket and he doubled up as the breath whooshed out of him. Crane followed that up with a couple of fist blows to the side of the head which felled him. Then Crane dragged him back to his feet, pinned him against the side of the car and growled, ‘You stupid fucker! You don’t have the sense you were born with, do you? You’ve alerted the cops and warned ‘em off Warned ‘em off! You don’t do that to the cops — they just come back mob-handed, dickhead.’ He drove his knee up into Loz’s groin. A scream of pain came out, but Crane did not let him go, slamming him hard against the car. ‘You have no conception of what you’ve done, have you?’
‘ Billy, why? What’s going on?’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know.’
‘ I’ll tell you, shall I? That fucking girl and her stupid boy friend who lost me fifty grand got taught a lesson. I did ‘em both in. At the same time I did a personal one on another guy who’d caused me grief previously — Malcolm Fitch. Now I’m back having just pulled the biggest fucking all-cash job ever — in which eight people got killed and I walked away with twenty million — and the last thing I want is cops. Does that make sense to you? I’m probably the most wanted fucker in Europe at this moment in time. The only reason I don’t fucking kill you now is that I need you to do something for me. Do you think you can?’
‘ Yeah, yeah, whatever…’
But Crane had not finished his assault. In a final spasm of rage, he head-butted Loz who crumpled to the ground like a sack.
So now here he was, battered and bruised once more, still looking after Nero and keeping an eye on the business while Crane had done a runner to lie low in La Gomera. His boss had left strict instructions for Loz, to inform him immediately if any cops turned up sniffing around, to get some goons to watch the ferry terminal at Los Cristianos for signs of any cops, Spanish or English, and to keep things ticking over — and not to do anything stupid or thoughtless! Crane had said he would always be on the end of a mobile, but just in case he couldn’t be contacted that way, Loz had to e-mail him from the office at Uncle B’s.
&n
bsp; The instructions had concluded with an ominous warning for Loz. Since divulging his crimes to him, Crane had had serious misgivings; Loz was a weak and stupid man, wide open to temptation. A liability.
‘ Let me make something very clear to you, old mate,’ Crane said, his eyes never once leaving Loz’s. ‘You know some major shit about me
… am I right?’
Loz swallowed what felt like a rock and nodded dumbly.
Crane spoke the next words slowly, forming them with exaggerated movements of his lips. ‘Don’t do anything you might regret.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise you are dead — and no-one’ll ever find your body, unless they analyse what comes out of a lion’s arse-hole. Understand?’ he whispered.
But Loz had had enough of the other man pushing him round, beating him up when he felt like it, shoving his hand into Nero’s cage, treating him like a piece of shit. Enough was enough. A man can only take so much. He had his dignity, his basic human rights and they had been well violated. If he, Loz, could handle things just right, there would be nothing to worry about.
‘ This is how it stands.’ Henry was addressing FB and Rupert Davison, though his eyes continually strayed to the latter. Danny sat at the back of the office, looking supportive1y at Henry. ‘We have ascertained by means of the tachograph fitted to the security van that the robbery took place on Lancaster Services on the M6, southbound. A search of the car park found blood on the tarmac and this has since been matched to one of the victims. No witnesses have yet been found, probably because there was a row of builders’ portacabins outside the services themselves which obscured views from the shops across the lorry park.
‘ At the scene of the shooting at the White Lund industrial estate in Morecambe, the forensic people — who have worked their backsides off for us — have matched blood found on two sets of overalls found there with all four of the dead security guards. We can be sure, therefore, that the people found dead at the warehouse are the ones who committed the robbery and murdered the guards. This is further confirmed by the guns found there, too. Ballistic matches have been made with the bullets found in the bodies of the security guards. The owner of the warehouse, a very dodgy importer, who, incidentally, reported the job, hasn’t been very helpful yet, but we’re keeping up the pressure on him. He’ll crack, but I don’t think he was involved directly with the robbery or the shooting afterwards.’