Substantial Threat

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Still got away, though, didn’t they?’

  ‘Only two of the four of them, though, and’ – Ray laughed frostily – ‘they didn’t get the money, did they? That’s somewhere down the river attached to a probably very drowned Dix. Little hope of getting that back.’

  ‘You never know.’ Miller shrugged. ‘He might’ve got out alive. But, just a bit more pressing, what’re we going to do about the two bodies?’

  ‘Good question. Dispose of them – we’ll sort it. And in the meantime I want you and Crazy to do some asking around. I want to find the people behind the people who dared to rob me. I reckon it’s too big a job for four knuckleheads to take on alone. They must have a backer.’

  ‘You don’t recognize the two dead ’uns?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Nope. I’ll bet they’re from Manchester or further south.’ He thought for a while. ‘I wonder . . . maybe the Midlands would be a good starting point. I want you two to do the digging for me. I’ll pay, and pay good.’

  ‘Okay, I’m game,’ Miller said.

  ‘Me too,’ Crazy concurred.

  ‘You and Crazy’d be a good team, I reckon, having just seen you in action. I’m annoyed I didn’t see it before . . .’ Ray paused for a few more moments of thought, then pulled his mobile out and looked at his two men. ‘Those two bodies – had a thought – we might not know who they are, but the cops would find out for us, wouldn’t they? If we make sure they get dumped somewhere a bit public, we could wait for the cops to ID them. That’d give you something to work on, wouldn’t it? You know, I’m full of good ideas.’

  Henry stopped what he was doing and gazed down into Jane’s face beneath him.

  ‘Oh God, that feels good,’ Roscoe breathed, her jaw line rotating.

  ‘Feels wonderful.’

  ‘Oh God.’ – She said ‘Oh God’ quite a lot during lovemaking, Henry observed. ‘We fit together very well.’ She smiled with a depraved curl of the lips and dug her nails into his flesh just hard enough to send something very sensational though him.

  ‘Oh God!’ he uttered, falling into her trap, ‘not long now . . . oh . . . ohh.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and bit his neck. ‘Come on. It feels fantastic.’

  Henry lost it then. All semblance of technique and coolness went right out the window as his primitive urge took over. Underneath him, Jane responded with a wild passion she had never known before as the feeling inside her exploded with an unbelievable relaxing warmth.

  They lay quiet for a long time, breathing heavily, their hearts pounding.

  Eventually he propped himself up on his arms, kissed her neck, ran his tongue across her breasts, then rolled off, but still held on to her, hugging her close so he could feel her body from top to toe.

  ‘That felt so right,’ she said quietly and bit his earlobe.

  ‘It did.’

  ‘I’m glad you decided to take your socks off.’ She grinned, tickling his feet with her toes. ‘It wouldn’t quite have had the same magic.’

  ‘No, true.’

  ‘I’ve never been unfaithful,’ Roscoe admitted.

  Henry said nothing.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ he agreed and kissed her slowly on the lips, not wanting to admit how many times he had been unfaithful to his wife in his life. Too many.

  Harry Dixon had been convinced he was going to drown. The irony of it was that it would be in a river less than twenty feet wide and three feet deep and he had a bag with him containing a small fortune. Yet the surging flow was so powerful, it constantly knocked his legs from under him so he could not stand up and wade to the bank. Every time he thought he was getting somewhere, he was toppled over again and sent spinning downriver like a twig. The weight of the bag strapped to his back did not help matters, but something would not let him let go of it.

  Eventually he found he could no longer fight the current. The sheer cold, the power of the water, sapped all his energy. He decided that the icy river could have him.

  ‘Suppose I’d better go,’ Roscoe declared sleepily. She sat up and stretched. It was 1 a.m. and the bedroom was still nippy even though Henry had turned the central heating on as soon as they had come in.

  Henry looked at her body and thought it was wonderful. He rolled on to his side and laid his hand on her tummy between her belly button and pubic hair. She juddered at his touch.

  ‘Think you can make love to me again?’ she asked.

  Henry glanced down. When he saw his penis as erect as it had ever been, he thought he was nineteen years old again.

  ‘It’d be rude not to,’ he said, and put his mouth around one of her hard, dark, purple nipples.

  The River Irwell begins life as a trickle in the wind-ravaged moors high above Bacup in east Lancashire. It flows through the Rossendale Valley, never more than a few feet wide or deep, then meanders through some picturesque landscapes and villages as it makes its way to Greater Manchester. Sometimes it widens out, but never by very much.

  The rushing waters, forced through the narrow gorge, washed Dix about a mile downstream, often crashing him against mid-stream boulders and various other bits of debris, like broken prams and bedsteads, until, near the area known as New Hall Hey, it slowed dramatically before pouring down a weir.

  Dix could not believe he was still alive: he had swallowed what seemed like gallons of foul-tasting, ice-cold water, and retched much of it back; he had been bashed to hell. Suddenly the strength of the river weakened and he found himself close to the bank, near overhanging trees.

  Exhausted though he was, his innate survival instinct was reborn. He paddled desperately to the side, feeling weaker with each movement. He caught and hung grimly on to a branch and started to tremble.

  He saw a footbridge fifty metres ahead and the lights of houses and street lamps.

  Still holding the branch for support, he dragged himself to his feet and lurched up the bank, out of the water, slipping and sliding in the mud and grass. He forced his way through bushes which tore at his skin and clothing, but he was so chilled he did not feel the snags and cuts. He tumbled over a low fence on to a narrow, muddy path, which he followed towards the lights. It brought him out by the bridge and into New Hall Hey. It was quiet. Nothing moved.

  Sodden and shaking, he made his way to a telephone box.

  ‘Have to let ’em know I’m okay,’ he wheezed desperately.

  Once inside the phone box, he began to dial a number which would eventually connect him to Ray Cragg.

  He was on the last digit of the dial when he stopped to think.

  His exact thoughts were: I’ve got a quarter of a million pounds strapped to my back . . . There’s a very good chance people now think I’m dead, drowned . . . Now there’s a thing. He hung up the phone with a dithering hand. Whatever, he thought, I need to get dry otherwise I will die . . . of pneumonia.

  He pushed himself out of the phone box and looked up and down the street. He needed to get inside somewhere warm, fast, before hypothermia set in.

  Jane and Henry separated, bathed in sweat, shattered, breathing heavily. They lay staring at the ceiling, legs and arms splayed out across each other.

  ‘You know, I really wanted to hate you when I met you . . . but as soon as I saw you, I knew deep down that you’d change my life.’

  Henry said nothing. A slight feeling of trepidation in his guts.

  ‘I’ve been in love with you from the first,’ Jane whispered.

  Still he said nothing, but his mind was racing. He thought, She’s married, I’m trying to get my life together – oh God!

  Her mobile phone rang. With a rumble of annoyance, she fumbled for it among her discarded clothing and studied the display.

  ‘Hubby,’ she said thinly and pressed a button.

  Henry lay back, hands clasped behind his head while she talked to her obviously irate spouse, who was wondering where the hell she was. She kept her composure, raising her eyes at Henry as she talked him
down from the heights and assured him she would be home soon. Things had got very hectic and it looked like being a long, involved investigation, this last bit being news her husband did not take well.

  ‘Yes, a long one. Comes with the territory . . . Right, fine! I’ll be home soon but I’ve got to be back at work by half seven, so I’m going straight to bed . . . What? Well if that’s your attitude, I will.’ She pressed the ‘end-call’ button, scowled at the mobile as though it was its fault and tossed it back on her clothing, shaking her head. ‘He said I might as well find a hotel cos it’s not worth me going home – so I’ll do just that,’ she said haughtily, tossing her fine mane of hair back, ‘I’ll stay here if you’ll let me.’

  Henry had been secretly hoping she would go, but he said, ‘Sure, no problem, but we’d better get some sleep. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.’

  It was an end-terraced cottage, up for sale and unoccupied by the looks of it. Dix was shivering badly, unstoppably. He needed to get out of his clothes and get warmed up. The cottage was an ideal place.

  The street was deserted. Dix went round the back, expecting to find that each cottage in the row would have a separate walled yard which would have provided him with some sort of cover from snooping neighbours. Instead, all the yard walls had been demolished long ago and each house now had a lawned back garden, divided by low stone walls.

  Dix cursed, but then had some luck. There was a clothesline next door with jeans, T-shirts, socks and underpants strung across it. They appeared to be about his size. He unhooked the holdall from his shoulders and deposited it by the back door of the empty house and stepped slowly across the garden walls until he reached the line, then helped himself. They felt cold and damp, but at least they were not drenched like his own clothes.

  He was inside the empty cottage within moments. Having been a prolific housebreaker in his younger days, burglary was a skill that had never left him.

  The house was completely empty, but had the ambience of having been recently habited. It was warm and cosy and even warmer and cosier when he lit the gas fire in the living room and turned it up full. The curtains had been left open, so he drew them and stripped off, then stood in front of the fire, turning himself round as though he was a pig on a barbecue. The heat permeated his body very slowly.

  Ten minutes thawed him out. Fifteen minutes and he was glowing.

  He dressed in the stolen clothes, which fitted nicely, and stayed by the fire, taking the damp and chill out of them, trying to dry his zip-up jacket. The worst things were his feet and his sodden trainers. He sat on his backside and toasted his soles on the gas fire, wriggling his toes like mad, trying to get full circulation back.

  Half an hour found him in the right frame of mind to unzip the holdall and inspect the cash. Drawing back the zip he wondered if the water had done much damage to the contents.

  He almost did a jig when he saw that each block of one thousand pounds was in its own plastic wallet. The money was safe and sound. He’d had visions of having to dry it out, plastering it all over radiators and heaters. Now no such problem existed.

  His only remaining problem was what to do with the cash.

  Dressed in overalls and wellingtons, Ray, Crazy, Marty and Miller dragged the two bodies out of the house, leaving a slippery trail of blood behind each, and heaved them into the back of a van. They drove up on to the high moorland between Rawtenstall and Rochdale where they threw the dead men into a flooded quarry known as the Blue Lagoon – as were so many across the country. This particular one had been the disposal place for a number of bodies in the past. Ray Cragg knew it would not be long before the men were found and subsequently identified by the police.

  They returned to the counting house where they began a clean-up operation with mops, buckets, bleach and detergents. About an hour later they had finished their ghastly task and dispatched Marty to the Irwell to fling the equipment they had used into the river. He threw the blood-soaked items into the fast flow and watched them disappear into the night, just like that idiot Dix had done with the money – got washed away.

  Marty was feeling very depressed. He sat down on a stone and pulled out his mobile phone, dialling a well-remembered number.

  It rang for a while before being answered by a sleepy voice.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘We’re back to square one . . . not good, not good,’ he whined. He watched the river in front of him. ‘We’re right up shit creek now,’ he observed, looking at the murky water of the Irwell.

  Henry slept fitfully, unused to having a stranger in bed with him who, when she fell asleep did not move at all. He, on the other hand, could not get comfortable, finding himself right on the edge of the bed, half-in, half-out of the covers, half-hot, half-cold.

  He nodded off about 4 a.m., then sprang back to life when his mobile phone rang on the bedside cabinet. Next to him, Jane did not stir.

  The display said ‘Anonymous Caller’.

  ‘Yeah,’ Henry said groggily.

  ‘It’s me,’ said a voice.

  Henry rubbed his eyes. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘Troy.’

  ‘And why are you phoning at this time?’

  ‘Got some gen, need to see you, can’t tell you on the phone.’

  ‘Where and when?’ said Henry, abruptly fully awake. ‘And how much?’

  ‘Somewhere there’s no bloody CCTV cameras for a start – how about the White Café in St Anne’s? Say twenty minutes? I’ll talk dosh when I see you . . . but it won’t be cheap.’

  Henry swung his legs out of bed and started to dress in the dark, not wishing to disturb Jane. As he crawled around the edge of the bed on his hands and knees, searching by touch for his underpants and socks, he heard her move and groan. He looked up and saw her face peering over the bedside. She was smirking.

  ‘Doing a runner?’ she asked.

  He laughed as his hand found the item of clothing he needed. He stood up and pulled on his white Marks & Spencer Y-fronts. ‘Just got a call from Costain. Says he’s got some info, but wants to see me now.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’

  Dawn was still a long way away as Henry drove on to the car park adjacent to the White Café on the beach in St Anne’s. Jane huddled down in her coat in the passenger seat next to him, shivering, even though the heater was blowing hot.

  Henry had wanted to speak to Troy Costain alone, but Jane had insisted on accompanying him. It was her case and she had a right to keep her finger on the pulse, she argued as she dressed herself. Henry was too weary and shell-shocked by his recent sexual encounter to put up much of a fight. She was ready before he was.

  He drove to the far side of the car park and stopped near the lifeboat station, doused the lights and sat there with the engine ticking over. He reclined his seat, closed his eyes and waited. Jane did the same, letting her right hand rest on his thigh, her little finger slotted into a fold in his trousers just by his groin. She squeezed his leg and despite himself, Henry began to harden.

  A tap on the window by his ear made him jerk. Costain’s face pressed up to the glass almost made him scream. He opened the window.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ Costain demanded.

  ‘Same as before – it’s her case.’

  ‘I talk to you, no one else, Henry, that’s the deal.’

  Henry gave Jane a look. She got the message. ‘I’ll go for a walk,’ she said and got out of the car. Costain walked round and dropped into her warmed-up seat. In silence, the two men watched her amble away.

  ‘You tommin’ her?’ Costain grinned.

  ‘Nope,’ said Henry shortly.

  ‘She’s worth one . . . a bit motherly, maybe, could do wi’ losin’ a bit o’ weight, but nice tits ’n’ arse.’ Costain’s face curled up lustfully.

  ‘What’ve you got for me, Troy? I hope it’s good because I hate getting up for nothing. Know what I mean?’

  ‘I’ve been working me socks off for
you over the last few hours and all you do is whinge about being woken up – great!’

  ‘Just get on with it,’ Henry snapped, aware of Jane tramping around the car park, getting cold.

  ‘Okay, okay, but it’ll cost – a lot.’

  ‘I’ll decide how much it’s worth. I’ve always paid well for good value.’

  Troy Costain took a deep breath, tipped his head back against the headrest and gazed at the car roof. ‘Johnny Jacques was a good mate of mine. We go back a long time. He used to be clean, well, sort of, but then he got into crack and it screwed his head.’

  ‘My heart bleeds.’

  Costain turned sharply on Henry. ‘Look, you twat, he was a mate, okay? Maybe not like your middle-class friends, but he was still a mate and he meant a lot to me.’ Chastened a little, but not much, Henry shrugged. ‘You might think we’re pond life, you stuck up git, but we do have mates and feelings – I don’t think I want to talk to you now.’ Costain’s hand went to the door handle.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Henry. ‘Come on, tell me what you’ve got.’ His voice had become soft and encouraging. ‘I’m just tired.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ murmured Costain. ‘JJ kept his head above water, financially, that is, by doing a bit of dealing here and there. Not much, just pocket money. But his living wage came from being a delivery boy. He ran errands. Dropped things off, picked things up for people.’

  ‘Like a white-van man?’

  ‘Summat like that.’

  ‘What sort of things did he pick up and drop off, as you so eloquently phrase it?’

  ‘You name it – mainly drugs, sometimes guns, often money.’ Costain twisted his lips. ‘Thing is, I know JJ had a bit of a bad habit. Sometimes he helped himself to his packages.’

  ‘Ooh, bad boy . . . what did he help himself to?’

  ‘Some junk, and he used to peel off the occasional tenner here and there. Not much, not regularly, but it must’ve built up over time, maybe into hundreds.’

  ‘So you’re saying he skimmed from the people he worked for?’

  ‘That pretty much sums it up. I saw him about a week ago and he was getting worried about it, said he was going to stop doing it – as if,’ Costain said sardonically.