The Last Big Job (43 page)

He looked into her eyes. A flicker of excitement shivered
through her as he spoke. ‘If this is all linked together, and we’re
not just wasting our time, then I have a good idea what this is all
about.’

Danny waited.

‘
Money,’ he said.

The next visitor turned up on time. Smith greeted him at the
door of the warehouse. Everyone else stayed out of sight in the
office. They had all showered and changed back into their original
clothing. Their ‘operating gear’ had been bagged up in black
plastic bin liners, the guns and ammunition put in a holdall. The
weapons which had been fired were wrapped separately in plastic
bags inside the holdall. Smith was going to arrange the disposal of
the clothing and guns later that day.

As Crane, Drozdov, Thompson and Elphick sipped coffee, Smith
introduced the man to his task.

‘
Can you do it?’

‘
Easy peasey.’ The man, who was only young, in his
mid-twenties, placed a small toolkit down by his side. He opened it
and took out a cordless drill into which he inserted a thin bit.
‘First one?’ he said.

Smith dragged one of the money cases out of the Sherpa, put it
on the floor. The man knelt down and started work.

Henry picked up a phone and punched in the extension number of
the Duty Officer, Control Room, again.

‘
Have you been notified of any large movements of cash today,
up and down the motorway?’ Henry knew it was procedure for many
security companies to inform police forces if unusually large
amounts of money were being carried around or through their
areas.

‘
Hold on, I’ll check ... we’re only just getting back to
normal after that bomb hoax...’ There was a pause during which
Henry could hear the workings of Control Room in the background.
‘Yep, we have,’ the Inspector came back. ‘Three today. Two are cash
deliveries from the Royal Mint - one of which is going right up the
county without stopping; the third is another non-stopper, north to
south down the M6 - a cash disposal.’

‘
Any problems reported with any of them?’

‘
Not as yet. They’re all vague timetables anyway – nothing
fixed in stone.’

Henry tutted, disappointed. It had been a good idea come to
nothing. ‘Can you give me details of all three? I’ll contact each
company and check anyway.’

‘
Sure.’ The Inspector read them out, Henry noted them down. He
replaced the phone slowly. ‘If you were a robber, Danny, which
would you rather have, given the choice - a load of brand-new
notes, or a load of used ones?’

‘
The latter. Untraceable.’

‘
Me too. I’ll call this company first.’

‘
There we go,’ the young man said three minutes later with a
satisfied smile. He leaned back from the money case. ‘Unlocked and
disabled, hopefully.’

‘
Hopefully?’ Smith queried.

‘
There’s always the possibility of it going wrong, but if this
one is OK, the others will be a piece of piss.’

Smith nodded. He dragged the case away across the floor. He
flipped the catches cautiously, expecting to be sprayed with dye.
Nothing. Next he eased the lid up very slowly until the case was
completely open. Again, nothing. No dye, no alarm.

What did happen was that he was faced with a suitcase full of
tightly packed and bound notes. All twenties. He eased one bundle
out. They were literally packed like sardines. He read the wrapper.
It indicated he was holding one hundred £20 notes. Two thousand
pounds. He quickly counted how many more were in the case. Two
hundred and fifty - which equated to half a million pounds in used,
utterly untraceable cash.

Smith’s heart pounded, making him gasp.

Another forty-nine such cases were stacked in the back of the
Sherpa. If each one contained the same, and Smith had no reason to
doubt otherwise, they had just stolen twenty-five million pounds.
Not as much as Hodge had promised - but who could quibble?
Twenty-five mill went a long, long way.

‘
How much time to do the rest?’ Smith asked the
man.

‘
Minute each, now that I know what I’m doing - maybe
less.’

‘
Get going with it, then.’

Henry’s bones grated when he stretched. He and Danny had just
finished phoning the headquarters of each security firm and
received negative responses. Nothing untoward had occurred with any
of their vehicles in Lancashire that day.

‘
Worth a try, I suppose,’ he mumbled defensively. He poured
himself another coffee. It was lukewarm, tasted bitter, reflected
his mood.

‘
What now?’ Danny enquired.

He opened his mouth to respond when his pager vibrated on his
hip bone. He slid it off his belt and read the display. ‘Hang on,’
he said to Danny, ‘just got to make a call.’ He picked up the phone
and jabbed in a number.

‘
American Embassy, London. Julie Duke speaking,’ came the
voice after an interminable wait. ‘May I help you?’

‘
Yes, please, Julie. Can you put me through to the FBI office?
Karl Donaldson, please. This is Henry Christie calling.’

‘
Hold the line please, Mr Christie.’

Smith sauntered across the warehouse to the office, leaned
through the door. ‘He’s having a few problems.’ He jerked his head
backwards to indicate the guy at work on the money cases. The faces
of the four men showed pain and impatience. Gunk groaned angrily.
Smith quickly added, ‘Nothing insurmountable. It’ll be OK. Bill,
can I have a quick word?’

Crane necked the last dregs of his coffee and followed Smith
out of the office.

‘
They’re getting edgy,’ Crane said, ‘and so am I. Every minute
we spend in here, we’re at risk.’

‘
I know.’

‘
What’s his problem?’

‘
There isn’t a problem, not with this guy, anyway. He’s
cracked it. He’s opened the first one and he’ll take about an hour
to get the rest of them done. But there’s only half a mill in each
one - well short of what Hodge had us believe.’

‘
I can live with that,’ Crane said, stifling a laugh. Then he
became serious. Referring to the men in the office, he said, ‘We
need to think about how we’re going to sort these three cunts out
now.’

Smith waited for Crane to call the shots. They eyed each
other.

‘
Don’t know about you, Don,’ Crane whispered, ‘but I think we
should cut them out of the deal completely and split it
fifty-fifty, me and you - not forgetting to payoff Hawker and Price
and everyone else. Those bastards killed my mate Jacky Lee and
that’s a good enough reason to slot the twats. I’ve used ‘em, now
let’s abuse ‘em.’

‘
I was hoping you’d say that,’ Smith responded.

‘
FBI office, Karl Donaldson, how can I help?’ The second
cheery American voice came down the telephone line.

‘
It’s me, Henry.’

‘
Hey, pal - thanks for calling back so quickly. Got some
snippets I thought you might be interested in concerning our
Russian comrade, Yuri Ivankov.’

Henry did not have the heart to tell Donaldson he was not
really interested, but feigned it nonetheless. ‘Fire away,
Karl.’

‘
First off, from your Customs people in Manchester Airport ...
they spotted him going through and catching a BA flight to Paris
the day after the Jacky Lee shooting. Got a pretty good photo of
him from one of the surveillance cameras on a travellator. We’ve
checked the passenger list, but we haven’t been able to pin any
particular name to him. There were lots of single businessmen on
that flight.’

‘
He went to France?’

‘
Yeah, but that ain’t all. Just to expand on something else I
mentioned to you before: you know the Paris underworld is one of
the busiest in the world, a real mish-mash of ethnic groups
operating there. Recently the Russians have been expanding there,
muscling in to a big degree and throwing their weight around when
the Frogs haven’t seen the benefits of cooperation. One particular
sticking point for the Russians was a high-ranking mobster called
Serge Garnier. Controlled a lot of business to the north of Paris.
The Drozdovs had been very interested in what he was doing,
particularly in terms of prostitution and drugs, and wanted a
percentage of the action. Garnier told them to go away in no
uncertain terms. Then we think the Russians approached some of
Garnier’s lieutenants, promised power and money and they set the
poor bastard up.’

‘
Just like Jacky Lee,’ Henry observed.

‘
Exactly.’ Donaldson continued, ‘And within hours of Ivankov
landing in Paris, poor old Garnier was dead meat. We think our man
left Paris by road or rail and we haven’t had any sightings of him
since. As usual, it’s all conjecture based on intelligence - but he
definitely did it.’

‘
Can you fax me a copy of the airport surveillance photo? I’m
on...’

Whilst Henry was telling Donaldson the number, Danny’s pager
vibrated. She rang the number displayed from another
phone.

‘
Rik Dean? It’s Danny Furness. You got something for
me?’

‘
Yeah - bit of a result from that mugshot of Billy Crane that
you sent me.’

‘
That was quick - go on.’

‘
I got a sheet of similar-looking dudes together as per PACE
and showed it around the waiters and reception staff at the
Imperial. Two picked out Crane as the man who was in company with
Don Smith.’

‘
Well done, Rik. I owe you one - but don’t show the photos to
anyone else now, please, just in case we need to go for an
ID
parade. What you’ve done is
brilliant.’

‘
Thanks, Danny. I’m still sorry about the other
night.’

‘
Don’t fret - I’ve frightened off more men than just you.
Look, Rik, make sure everything is properly documented and
recorded. This could be very important. I’ll
tell you more when I know myself, but thanks again.’ Danny
hung up, a smirk of triumph on her face.

Henry ended his call to Donaldson at the exact same moment as
Danny did with Rik Dean. Danny could not resist observing saucily,
‘Henry, dear, we finished together. How sweet.’

He laughed for the first time. ‘Unusual too. Generally I
finish first.’

He worked diligently, sweating and breathing heavily. He kept
to his promise and each of the remaining boxes was opened within a
minute. With the occasional breather and fag break, seventy minutes
later he had completed the job. He packed away his tools and pulled
on his coat. Smith handed him a roll of notes.

‘
Two and a half, as agreed.’

The man blinked. Smith knew he was going to chance his arm and
was ready for it. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of money in there,’ the
man said. His greedy eyes flickered towards the Sherpa. ‘I think I
deserve some more.’

‘
We agreed a price,’ Smith growled low. He stepped close to
the man. ‘Don’t even think about it. If you know what’s good for
you, you’ll go right this minute and suffer memory loss. If you
don’t, and I hear about it, I promise you’ll be a dead man,
guaranteed.’

‘
Fine,’ the man said brightly. ‘No harm in trying.’ He stuffed
his money into his jacket. Smith shepherded him to the
door.

The slow-moving security van driven by Hawker pulled off the
motorway after an uneventful but bottle-testing journey. A couple
of minutes later he slowed on a quiet country lane and turned into
a track, driving the van out of sight of the road. He leapt out,
abandoned it and joined Price in the Audi. They looped back towards
the motorway and headed North, knowing they were half a million
pounds richer.

Crane and Smith were standing near to the back of the
Sherpa.

Thompson, Elphick and Drozdov were in the office. Voices in
low conversation could be heard coming from there.

Crane grabbed Smith’s elbow and pulled him across to the
holdall in which the guns had been stashed.

The faxed photograph from the airport camera was good quality.
It showed the Russian clearly, standing on a travellator at
Manchester Airport, and was timed and dated. His face was circled
with a black ring to highlight him. To be honest, Henry could not
be certain if it was the same man who had so publicly taken out
Jacky Lee at the transport cafe. But that fact did not concern him
too much. He pushed the fax over to Danny. She peered at Ivankov,
as he knew she would.

‘
Recognise him?’ Henry asked.

‘
No, can’t say I do.’

‘
I don’t mean Ivankov - I mean the guy standing next to him.’
Danny looked closely. She sat up sharply. ‘It’s Billy Crane ... is
it?’

‘
Sure looks like him.’

‘
But what’s he doing with Ivankov?’

‘
That’s a good question.’ Henry sighed. ‘But, whatever, this
gives you something very good in terms of the job at Blackpool - a
time and a date. That shows Crane was in the country on the morning
after the murders. If you can pin him down by means of some good ID
evidence to the Imperial Hotel the night before, at least you can
prove he was in the vicinity at the right time. Proving he actually
pulled the trigger might be a trifle more problematic. What you
could do with is finding out exactly where Crane is living now. I
know we think it’s Tenerife, but we could do with finding out for
sure. You also could do with trying to check the passenger lists
for all flights leaving Manchester around that time.’ Henry picked
up the fax. ‘This could mean absolutely nothing, but on the other
hand. . .’