by Nick Oldham
‘ What do we do now, Karl?’ Karen asked.
‘ Wait,’ said Donaldson. ‘I’m sure he’ll contact us when he can. In the meantime, let’s have a cup of tea and get these little ladies back to their beds.’ He winked at Karen and gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen.
‘ They were after those statements as much as anything,’ Donaldson said quietly to her. ‘What did you do with ‘em, babe?’
‘ They’re down my knickers — almost. As soon as I heard them at the door I grabbed the paperwork and folded it down the front of my jeans.’
Donaldson’s face turned into a wide smile. ‘Now I know why I love you,’ he said. ‘Any chance of me removing them with my teeth?’
She punched him gently on the arm. ‘Every chance.’
Henry was wet and shivering again, the dryness of the car having been left behind ten minutes ago.
He and Rider were, once more, in dark shadow. This time they were fifty metres down the road from the front of Rider’s club, watching the last of the stragglers stagger away from the doors.
At last the place closed up and the lights went out.
The street was quiet. Nothing moved.
Ten minutes later the door opened again and the staff left en masse, a small posse of people probably on their way to a curry house.
The door closed.
‘ Jacko should be leaving soon, then we’ll have the place to ourselves.’
Ten more minutes.
No Jacko.
‘ I don’t like this.’
‘ Perhaps he’s robbing the till.’
Rider ignored the remark. ‘I didn’t see the bouncers, either. They usually leave with everyone else.’
He nudged Henry. Both of them trotted across the road and into a high-walled alley which ran down one side and the rear of the club. They stuck to the building line and at the point where the alley took a right-angled turn, Rider pressed Henry and himself into a doorway.
‘ Two minutes here, just in case,’ Rider whispered into Henry’s good ear.
The rain continued to fall, straight down, like thin steel rods. Unrelenting. Cold.
For Henry the wait was interminable. He needed to lie down. Here would do, but preferably in a hospital bed with lots of nurses fawning over him.
Rider tugged his sleeve.
They stepped out of the doorway and almost immediately there was a scuffling noise and a cough behind them. Rider flattened himself against the wall, dragging the slow-witted Henry with him.
A man walked down the alley, back-lit by street lights. He had that peculiar stagger which denotes someone pissed out of their heads who firmly believes himself to be sober.
The man paused unsteadily in mid-step, looking in their direction, peering towards them in the gloom. He was ten feet away. Henry could smell the beer and spirits on the man’s breath.
The man unzipped his flies, turned to face the wall. With both hands he directed his urination up and down the wall, making fancy patterns. He belched, broke wind, then vomited through the arc of piss. He spat the remnants of the Chinese meal out and finished his bodily function. He shook the drops off and slid the member away.
Henry’s stomach turned.
The man wiped his mouth on his sleeve, turned and wandered happily back out of the alley, muttering something.
They let him go before moving again.
Rider located the gate which led into the back yard of the club. It was locked.
‘ We’ll have to go over.’
‘ Fine, fine,’ acceded Henry.
‘ Give me a leg up,’ said Rider, seeing Henry did not seem able. ‘I’ll open the gate from the other side.’
Henry nodded. He intertwined his fingers, crouched low with his back to the wall, braced himself and hoped Rider hadn’t stepped into any dog muck.
Rider put his right foot into Henry’s hands, counted softly and on ‘Three!’ Henry heaved up, propelling Rider who got his left foot onto Henry’s shoulder and a moment later was lying astride the top of the wall. He shuffled his legs over and dropped into the yard.
Uncaringly, Henry wiped his hands down the sides of his trousers, dog shit or not.
The gate opened. Rider beckoned him through into the yard, which was not particularly big and was full of empty beer barrels and all the paraphernalia associated with the waste from licensed premises.
The back door to the club was a huge steel panel, riveted to the brickwork.
Henry studied it despairingly. ‘How the hell do we get in here? We’ll need bloody cutting gear.’
‘ We don’t — we get in up there.’ Rider pointed up to a window at first floor level. ‘We’ll stack up some barrels and climb up. It should open OK. This place is about as secure as Buckingham Palace.’
‘ I’m surprised you haven’t had it screwed.’
‘ We have. Security’s crap on the outside, but the bar area’s pretty tight.’ Together they manoeuvred two barrels on top of three others and Rider climbed cautiously onto the top one to find his head and shoulders more or less on a level with the window. He heaved at the window. Nothing gave. He tried to lap his fingers underneath the frame, which was rotten, and he started to ease it away. With great effort and persistence there was some movement. But the window remained firmly shut.
Using the initiative which seemed to have deserted his recent actions, Henry scoured the yard to find some kind of implement to assist.
More by luck than judgement he kicked against a rusty hand-trowel of the type used by builders. He handed it up to Rider who jammed it between window and frame and applied leverage.
With painful slowness the window moved. Eventually it was wide enough for him to get his fingertips in properly, and he completed the task with a loud, splintering crack, nearly overbalancing off the barrels at the same time.
Seconds later he was inside the club.
Henry followed, dropping down behind Rider into what was a long disused lavatory.
‘ Thank God for-’
‘ Shh!’ Rider warned him hoarsely. ‘You never know — cops could be at the bar, waiting for us to show. Let’s take it one step at a time.’
Chastened, Henry nodded silently. He followed Rider out of the toilet and into a dark corridor. With soft footfalls, they made their way along.
‘ What we can do,’ Rider whispered over his shoulder, ‘is get some sleep up here. We won’t be disturbed. Then tomorrow…’ His words drifted.
‘ Yeah, tomorrow,’ said Henry sourly.
They stopped at the first door they came to. There was a bolt on the outside which Rider slid back. He placed his hand on the doorknob and suddenly the door seemed to have a life of its own and exploded open.
A huge form careered out of the blackness, brandishing a chunk of wood which was about the size, weight and length of a pick-axe handle.
The wood swished down into thin air, slicing through the point where a split-second before Rider’s head had been.
Rider crimped himself out of the way and the blow was completely ineffective. In a continuation of the same movement, Rider swung back, and landed an iron-hard punch into the guts of the attacker. The wooden weapon dropped out of his hands and bounced on the floor as the impact of the fist whooshed the wind out of the man, who sank down to his knees, clutching his stomach.
Rider stepped behind the figure, clamped his right hand across the man’s mouth, yanked him upright and growled, ‘Jacko, you dumb stupid bastard, it’s me!’
From what they could see of him in the darkness, Jacko looked a mess. Conroy’s men had not been nice to him. His nose was knocked out of shape, and one eye was cut, swelling and oozing some sort of unpleasant looking greasy substance. A tooth was loose and his ribs and stomach were a welter of bruises and grazes.
The three of them were in the room in which Jacko had been imprisoned. Henry stood on guard at the door, cocking his head down the corridor and half-listening to Jacko who was giving Rider the lowdown. Rider listened w
ithout interruption.
‘ Six of them, you say?’ he asked finally.
‘ That’s all I saw. Could be more.’
‘ They came in, took the place and they’re still here. I wondered why we didn’t see our door staff leaving. What d’you make of it, Henry?’
‘ Conroy… the guns?’
‘ Yeah, makes sense, taking the place over. But why, tonight, unless he needs the place now, or later today for something. Jacko, did they mention anything that could give us a clue?’
He wracked his brains. Couldn’t think of anything.
‘ What’re they doing now?’ Rider asked.
‘ Just hanging about, I think. I got dumped here and haven’t seen any of ‘em since. I couldn’t hear anything because we’re so far away nom the front of the club here.’
Rider looked up at Henry again. ‘They’re here for a reason and it’s nothing to do with selling drugs, because there ain’t no one here to sell ‘em to. I think you’re right, it’s connected with the guns. Let’s go and have a look what they’re up to.’
Exhausted, Henry’s heart dropped.
‘ Jacko — you leg it out of the window and stay low. We’ll lock this door and if they check up on you it’ll look like you’re still in here.’
‘ Anything you want me to do?’ Jacko asked.
‘ Yeah — gimme your fags and matches and don’t get involved. Henry
… let’s go looksee.’
‘ This place used to be a casino, closed early sixties. When I bought it, though it was being run as a club, it was in a pretty dangerous condition once you got beyond the public areas. So were some of the public areas, come to that. The ceiling over the dance floor is not the most secure in the world. I keep expecting the rotating silver ball to crash to the floor and kill some poor bastard underneath.’
‘ Any electric up here?’
‘ No, only on ground level.’
Rider was leading Henry along an endless maze of dark, dusty corridors populated by spiders’ webs, dust, planks and other miscellaneous pieces of rubbish which made quiet progress difficult and walking hazardous. The lack of lighting made it all much worse.
‘ What you see downstairs is only a fraction of what there is,’ Rider continued. ‘There’s two floors over that. Lots of rooms have been bricked off for whatever reason. It’s just incredible, really. You don’t appreciate what there is until you start looking.’
Rider struck a match which flared briefly, lighting up his face and also what he wanted to see — a door.
‘ I think we’re here.’ He extinguished the match, but before he threw it down ensured its tip was cold. ‘It’s so dry in some places, wet in others, don’t want to chance a match anywhere. The place could go sky high. Fire hazard, really.’
‘ Sounds a peach of a building.’
‘ It will be, it will be,’ Rider said, seeing his dreams for a moment. ‘We need to be real quiet now. If I’m right we should be over the main part of the club once we go through the door. I think the floor’s… not good, shall we say?’
‘ So I could drop through.’
‘ Distinct possibility.’
Henry thought about two broken legs. It would round things off nicely.
‘ Why are we going in here?’
‘ I’ll show you. Tread carefully.’
Rider pushed the door open and edged into the room. It was large and expansive. There were windows but all were boarded up and blocked out any light. Henry stuck behind him but found that he could see quite well; his eyes were taking advantage of all available light.
Rider went down onto his hands and knees in a movement so swift that Henry thought he’d gone through the floor.
‘ Look at this.’ He had found a trapdoor which he hauled open. Henry bent down onto one knee and peered into the hole.
‘ This room is directly above where the main part of the casino used to be. There’s a few of these trapdoors in this room. I think the management used them to keep tabs on the tables below, using one-way glass.’
‘ Bit primitive.’
‘ Before the days of CCTV.’
Henry looked into the void. It was black. ‘Can’t see anything.’
‘ No, you won’t be able to. That’s a false ceiling you’re looking at, and below that there’s another suspended ceiling. If we’re careful, we could remove a panel from this ceiling and try to move a panel from the suspended one, then maybe we could see down into the club, find out what’s going on.’
‘ Risky, but what the fuck.’
Rider reached into the space and fumbled about. ‘Got it.’
Henry fully expected Rider to come back with a ceiling panel in his hand, but he got the shock of his life when the other man produced a revolver which had been hidden in the space between floor and false ceiling.
‘ We may need this.’
‘ I suppose you shot Munrow with that, did you?’
A beat passed between the two men which sent a tingle of apprehension down each one’s spine.
‘ Thought so,’ said Henry, feeling sick.
‘ There’s two bullets left…’
After a whispered debate they decided that the best time to do any messing with the ceiling would be round about 4 to 5 a.m. From Henry’s experience, this was when people were at their lowest ebb. In the meantime, they tried to get some sleep — after Henry had set the alarm on his Casio wrist-watch.
Completely drained though he was, Henry could not sleep on the dusty, uncomfortable floor. His mind whizzed and banged as it thought through his predicament from every angle.
He made one incontrovertible decision. In the morning he would seek out Karl Donaldson and with his protection he and Rider would go to Police Headquarters and demand to speak to the Chief Constable. She was his only hope of salvation and fairness. Karl was his only hope of staying alive.
He knew he could not go on the run. No doubt Rider would be able to guide him through the low-ways and by-ways of the underworld, but it wasn’t for Henry.
He believed in justice. Old-fashioned though that belief was, it had seen him through twenty-one years as a frontline cop and he wasn’t about to have those values shattered by a corrupt squad which believed itself to be beyond the law. At whatever cost he would fight. Even if it meant becoming a protected witness, a change of name and address and that job in Asda stacking shelves. He would win… because they had made him angry. He almost laughed at the triteness of it: ‘They have made me angry.’
Talk about a fucking understatement.
As for Rider — he could do whatever he wanted.
‘ Henry… time?’ Rider asked.
In the darkness Henry could see the tip of a burning cigarette brighten as Rider sucked.
He checked his watch. ‘Four-fifteen.’
‘ I take it you can’t sleep?’
‘ You guessed.’
‘ Ten minutes, then we’ll do some joinery.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Breakfast was conducted at a leisurely pace. Champagne, strawberries and then a choice of full English or continental. Coffee or tea to finish off with.
Morton had departed early, leaving Conroy to entertain Hamilton and de Vere. McNamara was scheduled to arrive shortly.
At 9.45 a.m. Conroy said, ‘We need to be moving now.’ He was annoyed that McNamara had not yet appeared, because part of the deal would be that his haulage company would deliver the weapons to any point in Europe requested by the client. Conroy was also dying to tell McNamara the good news about the prostitute, which he’d only just heard himself.
But there could be no further delay. De Vere wanted to see what was on offer. His customers were pressing.
On the steps outside the country club, Conroy’s Mercedes drew up, ready to take passengers. A second car drew up behind, two bodyguards on board.
De Vere and Hamilton settled in the rear seat. Conroy was about to drop into the passenger seat when his attention was drawn to a car speeding up t
he driveway towards the club.
The car skidded to an ostentatious stop and two good-looking young men dressed in jeans and trainers bounced out, all smiles and teeth — appearances which belied their chosen profession.
Hamilton got out of the Mercedes. ‘These are the gentlemen I told you about — the professionals: Wayne and Tiger Mayfair. Old friends of mine.’
‘ Hi,’ they said in unison and with a wave.
‘ Glad to meet you,’ Conroy said. He looked closely at Tiger and saw four scratches down his cheek. ‘Problem with a lion or something?’
Tiger chuckled. ‘You could say that.’ He exchanged a knowing glance with Hamilton.
‘ I want these wankers out of here now,’ Morton said to Gallagher, eyeing the motley assortment of men who had made the bridgehead into Rider’s club. ‘Fucking shite.’
‘ Right, lads, you’ve done your bit. Now you can fuck off. You’ll get your dosh later, as arranged.’
They trooped out of the place with fierce looks of contempt on their faces at being ordered around by cops.
‘ A car stolen from Preston last night has been found in Blackpool, boss. It was nicked at the same time we were searching for Christie and Rider.’
‘ So?’
‘ Could be they’re here in Blackpool, lying low. There was blood on the passenger seat. We might’ve shot one of them.’
‘ You should’ve shot ‘em both — in the back of the head,’ Morton said sarcastically. ‘How hard can it be?’
‘ Just bad luck.’ Gallagher pointed to his swollen eye and held up his bandaged wrist. ‘We’ll get them. It’s Donaldson who worries me now. Where did he hide those statements?’
‘ I presume you searched everybody in the house?’
The look on Gallagher’s face gave the game away. ‘In view of the fact we were searching for a wanted man, I think it would have been OTT to start strip-searching folk, don’t you?’
‘ No, I fucking don’t. You stupid, stupid bastard. How can I soar like an eagle when I’m surrounded by donkeys?’ he wanted to know. He took a deep sigh, but try as he might, he could not shake his sense of foreboding. Henry Christie was proving to be hard to handle.