The Last Big Job (42 page)

Henry shrugged. He had expected nothing more.

‘
What a bleedin’ mess, this and the bomb scare at Control
Room. . .’ FB was saying to no one in particular when one of the
traffic officers came from the crash scene and said, ‘Excuse me -
found this tucked down between the dead guy’s legs.’ She held up a
revolver between finger and thumb. A blob of blood dribbled off the
end of the barrel.

FB eyed Henry, who allowed himself a wry, slightly victorious
smile. ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ FB said, licking his
lips.

‘
Aren’t I just?’ said Henry. To the traffic officer he said,
‘Get someone from an ARV to check it over, make it safe, then get
it bagged up for evidence.’ The policewoman moved away.

Henry perched a cheek of his backside on the edge of the front
wing of Danny’s damaged car. ‘There’s another thing,’ he said to
FB. ‘The guy’s got previous for damaging police
property.’

‘
How do you know that?’

‘
I recognise him, what’s left of him - the head, that is.’
Unusually, FB was lost for words. Danny swivelled, snatched her
cigarette out and looked at Henry, awestruck.

‘
You recognise him! You didn’t tell me that,’ she said, almost
stamping her feet.

‘
Yeah, well ... you should know him, too,’ Henry told her.
‘Something we’ve already been talking about today. 1986 -
remember?’

‘
We were talking about Billy Crane, weren’t we? That’s not
him, is it?’

FB’s ears pricked up at the mention of the name.

‘
No, it’s not,’ Henry said. ‘You mentioned you locked someone
else up that night, didn’t you? A police dog bit him after he’d set
fire to a few cop cars in the yard at Northgate.’

‘
You mean that’s ..?’ She couldn’t remember his name. ‘But
I’ve had a look. I didn’t recognise him.’

‘
It’s not that easy to recognise a head, especially when it’s
been sliced off at the neck, flattened and bounced down the road
like a football. Go and have another look,’ Henry
suggested.

‘
I will.’ Danny walked towards the ambulance.

FB stepped close to Henry and pointed at him
thoughtfully.

FB was one of the few ACCs in the country who had served in
only one Force, having risen from PC to his present rank in
Lancashire. He knew that if he aspired to become a Chief Constable
he would need to do some ‘butterflying’ around a couple of other
Forces, but for the present he was happy. Having remained in one
Force, though, meant that he had a good knowledge of the villains
operating in the county - pretty unusual for an ACC in the modern
police service. He stuck his finger on Henry’s chest. ‘Billy
Crane... correct me if I’m wrong ... big time crim, operates mostly
with small teams. He shot Terry Briggs, didn’t he?’ Henry nodded.
‘And he had an unusual MO, didn’t he?’ Henry nodded
again.

FB pulled his finger off Henry’s chest and sniffed. Slowly, he
said, ‘He creates diversions.’

‘
Keeps the cops busy while he does his own
business.’

‘
Such as blowing up police cars.’

‘
Or helicopters.’

‘
Sending bomb threats to Control Room. And also to the Comms
Room at Lancaster police station.’ FB shook his head in wonderment.
‘Taking a risk doing that helicopter, though.’

‘
Tch,’ Henry guffawed. ‘How many operational cops are there at
the dream factory likely to stop such a thing happening? How good
is the security?’

‘
Point taken,’ FB conceded.

‘
Anything else been happening in the last hour that’s
unusual?’

‘
Not that I know of.’

Danny had reached the ambulance. She asked one of the
paramedics if he would show her the severed head of the deceased,
which had been put into a plastic bag and sealed. Hoping to make
her jump, the paramedic picked it up from the floor of the
ambulance and swung it towards her with a laugh. She did not
respond, but shot the man a pitying glance and tilted the head up
to the daylight. It was a very gruesome sight, floating in thick,
setting blood, and she did feel slightly queasy, but maintained her
composure. She peered closely at the features. ‘Thanks,’ she said,
and returned to Henry and FB who were deep in conversation. They
drew apart as she approached.

‘
You were right,’ Danny told Henry. ‘It’s Callum Riley, I
remember his name now - the guy I arrested all those years ago. Not
a pretty sight.’

‘
Never was,’ remarked Henry.

FB turned on his heels and strutted away, fingering his chin,
his decision-making process in action. Then he pirouetted and
strode back. Henry and Danny watched him, wondering what masterplan
was about to be unleashed.

‘
I want you to get into this now - something big could have
happened somewhere in the county and when it comes in I want us to
be ready for it. I want us to be ahead of the game - got
me?’

‘
I’m off sick,’ Henry stated.

‘
In that case get yourself back on duty,’ FB ordered him. ‘You
look all right to me.’

‘
And I’m working on the triple murder at
Blackpool.’

FB gave one of his deep, pissed-off sighs which seemed to beg
the question, ‘Am I the only one committed here?’ ‘Not now you’re
not, Doris,’ FB told Danny. ‘Now get on with it,’ he added quickly
and walked away before Danny could respond to the jibe, ‘Doris’
being an old-fashioned, derogatory term for a
policewoman.

‘
One day,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, ‘I’ll punch that
bastard’s lights out.’

Crane reversed the fully-laden Sherpa into the warehouse
loading bay and Smith closed the roller doors. The Audi containing
the other three drove into the warehouse through the smaller door.
They all got out and bustled eagerly to the back doors of the
Sherpa which Smith was unlocking.

He opened them slowly, but with a flourish, and could not
resist punching the air at the sight of all the money
boxes.

‘
Brilliant!’ Gunk uttered enthusiastically. He lunged to grab
one. Crane stepped in front of him, barring his way.

‘
Come on, let’s get ‘em opened,’ Gunk whined. ‘I want to see
some dough.’

‘
No, not yet,’ Crane said quietly. ‘You start messing with
these and an indelible coloured dye gets released all over the cash
and you - which is neither use nor ornament to anybody. You’ll be
walking around with a pink head for months and no one’ll touch the
cash. They need to be opened properly.’

He pushed Gunk back, not in any way worried by Gunk’s powerful
body and mean temper. Crane knew he could deal with Gunk, no
problem.

‘
Don? How long?’ Crane asked Smith.

‘
He’ll be here in half an hour - so in the meantime I suggest
we all get changed and showered in the bogs back there. Get the
clothing back into the plastic bags, get all the weapons and ammo
together, then let’s chill out.’

‘
Shit!’ said Thompson irritably. He too was fired up by the
sight of all that money, so near, yet so far.

‘
He’s right,’ Drozdov agreed with Crane. ‘Let the expert do it
when he arrives. We’ve come this far. Waiting another half hour
will not do us harm.’

FB revelled in his rank. He loved strutting around
Headquarters, barking at people, ordering them around and being
generally unpleasant. He was not a people person, but a hard
taskmaster who pushed himself even harder than his subordinates.
But such power and drive did have its upside because within minutes
of returning to HQ, FB had turfed a handful of Human Resource
managers out of a room they had been using for a meeting in the LEC
building adjacent to Headquarters and declared it to be the hub of
Operation Head Hunt - the first name that sprang to his whirling
mind.

Henry and Danny looked on rather shamefacedly as the HR
managers collected their belongings and shuffled out, shooed along
by FB with words and phrases like, ‘Too many bloody meetings these
days anyway,’ and ‘Not enough focus on operational policing,’ and
‘I’m not even sure what you lot do, anyway.’

They left bristling with annoyance. FB basked in their
reactions.

When they were gone, the ACC turned to the two
detectives.

‘
Down to you,’ he said, and left.

‘
Thanks a fucking bunch,’ Henry said to himself. He sat down
heavily, no enthusiasm in him at all. He examined the room. The LEC
- Local Emergency Centre - building is a single-storey
construction, consisting of a series of rooms which, in the event
of a large-scale disaster, incident or emergency, would be staffed
by the relevant people from the Police, Fire and Ambulance
Services, together with representatives from other agencies. It is
geared up to handle such an occurrence in terms of communications
and facilities. In between times, the rooms are used by whoever
needs them, for whatever purpose - such as an HR managers’
meeting.

Two phones were already installed, together with a fax
machine. Points for dozens of others to be put in were available.
Flipcharts and dry-wipe boards were dotted around the
room.

Henry picked up one of the phones and spoke to the Duty
Officer in Control Room. His staff were now back in place following
the bomb alert. Henry informed him of his presence and function in
the LEC and asked him to forward any information which might be of
relevance - particularly reports of large-scale crime in the
county.

Coffee and tea were brought into the room. Henry poured
himself a large black coffee and sipped it ruminatively while he
tried to clear his thoughts. Everything had happened so quickly
over the last hour and a half - from the emotional outburst aimed
at Danny, to the explosion, to the decapitation, to this: running
an Incident Room when there hadn’t even been an incident, a
Non-incident Room, perhaps. Ridiculous. It was all assumptions and
guesses.

He sighed. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ He picked up a
marker pen and went to one of the dry-wipe boards on the wall. He
rubbed it clean with the side of his fist. ‘Other than nothing,’ he
added.

‘
Three things to start with: the hoax calls to Control Room
and Lancaster Comms. Then the explosion.’

He began to write.

‘
Callum Riley, a gun,’ Danny prompted. ‘Riley’s previous
convictions, linked to Billy Crane’s MO.’

‘
And I’ve seen Crane recently. He has connections with Gary
Thompson and Gunk Elphick, two Manchester thugs, and a Russian guy,
Drozdov, an active member of the Russian Mafia.’ Henry scribbled
the names up, as well as Don Smith’s. He looked at what he’d
written. ‘But it’s all conjecture and doesn’t mean a
thing.’

‘
Yet.’

Henry shrugged - a gesture which was starting to annoy Danny
intensely. All it said to her was, ‘I don’t care’ - a defeatist
attitude which was not Henry at all. It reminded her starkly that
she and he had unfinished personal business to attend
to.

‘
What else have we got?’ she thought out loud, trying to
inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

‘
Nothing.’ Henry sat down, looking like he was bored
rigid.

‘
Give that to me.’ Danny snatched the marker pen from his
hand. She stood by the board, reading what was on it, then reached
up and wrote,
Operation Head Hunt
along the top, but knew the name would have to be
changed. It was completely inappropriate, just the kind of thing
she would have expected from FB. She underlined the words with a
squiggle. Then she drew a ring around the words ‘Lancaster
Comms’.

‘
Why Lancaster Comms?’ she probed Henry and the
room.

‘
Why not Blackburn? Why not Blackpool?’

Henry remained dumb, uninterested.

‘
Come on,’ she urged, ‘we’re supposed to be detectives. We’re
supposed to come up with things. Ideas. Hypotheses.’

‘
Yeah, I’m sorry.’ He rocked forwards and stood up. ‘There
should be a map of the county in one of these cupboards.’ He opened
a few until he found a large rolled-up map which he spread open on
a table-top. He pinned it down with two cups and two saucers. He
took another marker pen and drew a ring around Lancaster and
another around Hutton, location of Headquarters.

Danny sidled up next to him, arm to arm.

‘
What’ve we got?’ he said. ‘Lancaster: covers the port of
Heysham, two nuclear power stations, Glasson Dock, the Duke of
Westminster’s house, the M6, one or two MPs’ and ex-MPs’ homes;
Royals visit the area regularly - officially and unofficially.
There’s lots of banks, building societies, and other financial
institutions in the towns.’

‘
And Control Room,’ said Danny, picking up the train of
thought, ‘Controls the Force radio network and deploys patrols on
the motorways - the M6, M55, M65 and M61.’

‘
Common denominator?’

‘
The M6,’ said Danny quickly. ‘That’s the first thing that
strikes me. It runs through Northern Division and Control Room look
after it.’

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.