The Last Big Job (10 page)

Henry eyed Lee narrowly for a few tense seconds. Lee was
waiting, testing.

Henry’s mouth kinked into a grin and his eyes flushed with
humour. The grin evolved into a smile which became a chuckle and a
head-shake of disbelief. Lee responded with a giggle.

‘
I had to think about you, pal. I had to think about every
cunt,’ Lee explained when the mirth had subsided. ‘But you - I knew
it couldn’t be you. You’ve put too much bent gear my way for it to
be you.’

Henry’s mind breathed a sigh of relief.

‘
Yeah, you know me too well, Jack,’ Henry said, remembering
how he had once spent a whole Christmas with Lee and his family up
in the North-East - mother, sisters, granny, nieces and nephews and
even had a holiday in Spain with the guy once. They knew each other
very well. ‘I’m just like you. Making a living. Buying and selling.
Just a commodity broker.’

‘
Yeah, you’re right. That’s all we are - commodity brokers,
market traders without a pitch. Just selling on goods. I like that
- commodity broker.’

The Rolls drew to a halt outside an apartment block. New,
swish with good security, overlooking one of the basins of the Ship
Canal. Lee had built the whole complex, financed it one hundred per
cent. The eighty apartments he’d already sold had netted him
somewhere in the region of six million.

‘
Love to invite you up, pal,’ Lee said, ‘but I got some hot
totty waiting up there. Gagging for it, she is.’

‘
Hey, no problemo.’

‘
Good. So - see ya.’ Lee opened his door but crimped back
suddenly to Henry before getting out of the car. ‘The issue we’ve
just been discussing, by the way. . .’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Y’know, the grass?’

Henry waited.

‘
Sorted it,’ Lee said with a wink. ‘Fish food. No more
problems for Jack. See ya.’ He got out, slammed the door and
slapped the roof and strode briskly, if unevenly, to the apartment
block.

‘
Where to, sir?’ the driver asked through the
intercom.

Henry told him the name of a hotel in the city centre. The
Rolls pulled quietly into the night. A quick glance over his
shoulder confirmed that the BMW was staying with him all the
way.

He sank into the comfortable seat and tried to control his
pulse-rate, careful not to let the mask slip because the driver was
constantly monitoring him in the rearview mirror. Henry was
actually elated by the way things had gone. Without any pushing or
probing, which could have put Lee on his guard, the crim had begun
to talk about ‘having sorted his problem’ and once people like him
began to brag, the rest was usually easy.

Soon, Henry was sure, he would have Jack in the
bag.

Of course the refrigerator had gone. Because Jack Sands’s
brains had been handily collected in it, there had been no need to
bag up the bits and pieces. The fridge door had been closed and the
whole thing accompanied the body to the mortuary where the
pathologist had simply helped himself to particles of the skull and
brains as required during the autopsy. Like he was raiding the
fridge for a snack or something.

But Danny could still see the scene, clear and graphic as ever
in her mind’s eye.

She remembered opening the kitchen door, full of apprehension
. . . And there he was. Jack Sands, former lover, lying with his
head in the fridge, his legs and arms were splayed and twisted
gruesomely. The single-barrelled shotgun lay by his right side.
Danny had to step right into the kitchen to actually see his
head.

Or what was left of it.

The shotgun had literally blown it right off.

Somehow Sands had wedged the muzzle underneath his chin, in
the cleft of soft skin in the ‘V’ of the lower jawbone, angled it
slightly, stretched forward and pushed the trigger back with his
right thumb. His long arms had easily reached down the length of
the barrel.

All because she had ended a relationship between them that was
going nowhere, doing no one any favours.

Danny had reeled away in horror back into the hallway and
hurled up the contents of her stomach. She remembered little else
about the next few minutes until the cops and ambulance people
arrived on the scene.

Now she stood and looked at the box-shaped space where her
Zanussi had been positioned. She wondered how she should be
reacting. Although the scene was still there with her, she found
she actually felt very little now. As if it had all been a terrible
dream.

Certainly there was nothing here - now - in physical terms. No
tangible memories of Jack. Indeed, prior to his suicide, Danny had
emptied the house of all memories of him in a fit of
pique.

So there was nothing. Every last speck had been cleared away.
All the mess which had managed to seep out of the fridge had been
sponged away by Henry Christie and some other
colleagues.

Danny sighed, walked across the kitchen and plugged the kettle
in. A nice, hot cup of tea, without milk, was a good enough
homecoming.

In
his rage, Billy Crane had gone a
whole lot further than he’d intended. He found himself possessed by
some uncontrollable inner demon to punish Loz for the lack of
judgement that had cost fifty grand.

He’d dragged Loz down to the ground and forced the screaming
man’s hand into the lion’s cage through the food-tray flap. Nero,
his wild instincts fired up by the events outside his cage, leapt
towards the hand. His two massive front paws smashed down on to it,
talons extended, and his mouth opened wide, revealing his fearsome
array of teeth... at which moment Crane realised that Nero was
about to rip Loz’s arm off. With a curse on his lips, Crane tried
desperately to extract Loz from the lion’s clutches.

Nero responded by holding tighter, pulling harder and sinking
his claws into the hand.

The initial, searing pain had been incredible for Loz: the
puncturing of the skin by those dirty, germ-laden claws. Then,
mercifully, endorphins and other body chemicals kicked into Loz’s
system and it all became unreal for him. A blur. He went limp and
allowed it to proceed, unable to put up any fight or
struggle.

With one last almighty wrench, Crane managed to drag Loz to
safety, though Nero’s talons dug deep, leaving lines of ripped
flesh in the back of the little man’s hand.

Deprived of his kill, the lion roared terribly, throwing
himself against the cage in a frenzy. For a while Crane was fearful
that Nero had the power to pull the structure down. But it held.
Just.

Twenty minutes later Crane had calmed down, smoked his fourth
cigarette. He sat on a chair, elbows on knees, deep in
thought.

Loz cried softly on the rooftop, holding his injured arm
between his knees. He rocked like a baby, in a pool of his own
blood. The arm was in a terrible mess.

‘
Help me,’ he whined. ‘Billy - help me, man.’

Crane stood up, tossed his cigarette down and stamped it out.
‘I’ll get a doctor,’ he announced, turned and left Loz lying
there.

Nero, now also calm, having devoured the remaining contents of
the coolbox, sat regally inside the cage, eyes focused on
Loz.

Chapter Three

The next day started in a haze of confusion for Henry
Christie. He woke groggily to the sound of not one, but both his
mobile phones ringing. He rolled across the expansive double bed
and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

Then, a little more focused, he blinked down at his phones
which seemed to be in competition with each other as to which one
could produce the more ludicrous ringing tone. Which was which?
Henry had to stop and think for a moment. God, he wasn’t used to
this crap. He was out of practice and that could become a problem.
A fatal problem if he wasn’t careful.

Which was business? Which was private?

He plumped for one of the phones - it didn’t help that they
were exactly the same make and model, either - and stuffed the
other one underneath a pillow to drown out its chirping. Then he
pressed one of the buttons to receive the call.

‘
Frank Jagger,’ he said. Already his heartbeat was on the
increase.

The Russian had been on the road for two hours. He had driven
north from Portsmouth, picked up the A34 and skirted around Oxford
before joining the M40 northbound towards Birmingham.

Before setting off on his journey, he had quickly but
expertly checked the car, firstly for any explosive devices and
secondly for any tracking or surveillance equipment. He found
neither. Then as he drove, he had remained cautious, always keeping
an eye on the rearview mirror, noting and remembering vehicles
behind and in front (he had a prodigious memory for car numbers,
makes and colours), carefully watching those overtaking, those
allowing him to overtake and those parked in lay-bys. By the time
he was driving down the motorway slip road north of Oxford, he
was
almost
sure -
he never allowed himself to be a hundred per cent certain - that no
one was following him. The Russian had been at this game for a long
time and was proud of his professionalism. This is what had kept
him -alive and put others underground.

In the world of counter- and anti-surveillance, the Russian
was classed as a trained agent - which he was. Surveillance
subjects fall into three categories: the type who are totally
unaware; those who are crude but aware - and this refers to people
who are expecting to be followed and who indulge in
anti-surveillance methods to try to detect whether they are under
observation. And lastly, as mentioned, the trained agent who is
subtle and sophisticated and could easily be taken by watchers as
someone who is totally unaware.

The Russian hardly ever indulged in obvious anti-surveillance
tactics. He usually discovered if he was being followed using the
one, two, three method; one sighting of a person or vehicle is
acceptable; two sightings is coincidence. . . three means someone
definitely has him under surveillance. Only then would he take some
form of action, probably evasion - unless he wanted to kill his
followers.

As he drove on to the motorway, he was feeling content. Six
miles down the motorway, having travelled at a respectable speed,
even slowly overtaking a cruising police Range Rover at one stage,
he was even more sure - not a hundred per cent, of course - that no
one was with him.

At the second motorway service area he came to - Warwick - he
exited. He needed food. He had left Portsmouth without eating
breakfast. He also needed to use the toilet.

The service area was nicely set away from the noise of the
motorway.

The Russian parked, got out of the car and leaned against it
whilst he smoked a cigarette. He watched arrivals and departures
and listened to the sky. Not for a helicopter, but a plane. More
difficult to spot - impossible when driving - and he knew the
British security services often used light planes to tail suspects
on the move. . . but there was no sign or sound of
anything.

Satisfied, he inhaled the last of his cigarette and went for
breakfast.

Henry Christie pressed the ball of his right foot on to the
accelerator pedal. The big Jaguar XJS surged away from the lights,
leaving everything else standing. It was the only perk of the job,
he was thinking. Being able to pose around in this motor - just
like the flash crim he was. He could think of nothing else that was
as good as he hung a left and found himself driving alongside the
Manchester Ship Canal towards the apartment block where he had left
Jacky Lee the previous night. He pulled into the visitors’ parking
bay and left the Jag there. Locked up and alarmed, of course. The
Firm wouldn’t be very pleased with him if thirty-odd grand’s worth
of car got lifted by a Mancunian car thief.

He swaggered cockily to the front entrance, fixing the
unnecessary Ray-Bans on to the bridge of his nose, and was buzzed
through into the reception area. A security guard observed him
suspiciously as he walked to the desk. Henry cast the man a quick,
supercilious look of contempt, achieved by a slight raising of the
nose. He thrust his hands into the black leather reefer jacket and
leaned against the reception counter.

‘
Mr Lee’s expecting me. I’m Frank Jagger.’

The pretty woman looked up and Henry acknowledged her by
lifting up his sunglasses and giving her a quick wink and a smile.
She pressed a button. The lift doors to her right hissed open. ‘Top
floor,’ she said sweetly, returning the smile.

‘
Cheers,’ said Henry, repositioning the sunglasses with his
forefinger.

He entered the lift and pressed the required button. The doors
slid to quietly. Even though he was alone, Henry did nothing other
than to lounge against the side of the lift, - fold the sunglasses
into his jacket pocket, yawn and rub the stubble on his chin. Frank
Jagger yawned a lot and tended not to shave. Two of his character
traits.

Henry was also aware there was a CCTV camera installed in the
top corner of the lift and that - most probably - his progress
through the building was being monitored by Lee or his men. Henry
could not afford to let anything slip at any time, or under any
circumstances. It all had to be perfect. He was dying to scratch
the small of his back where the wire was strapped on with sticky
tape.