The Last Big Job (49 page)

There was no way either of them would compromise themselves or
their jobs by doing anything so foolish as frolicking in the major
incident room. It would have been Henry’s luck to have FB walk in
just as he was table-ending Danny across one of the HOLMES
consoles.

Danny flicked open the door lock. ‘You look worried,’ she
remarked.

He returned to his chair and loosened his tie, about to
speak.

‘
Oh, by the way,’ she said before he could begin, ‘FB said
he’d be here in an hour for a rundown. To quote a phrase, he said,
in typical FB terms, “I’ll want to know when he intends making an
arrest and how he intends getting back that twenty million quid -
and if he can’t tell me, he might as well pick up his P45 on the
way out”.’ Danny mimicked FB’s voice and manner with uncanny
accuracy.

Henry drew a breath. He knew FB was going to show at some time
that day, having previously made the arrangement with him. ‘We’d
better be in a position to tell him something.’

With a flourish, Danny held up the pieces of paper she had
brought with her. ‘Maybe these will help.’ She came over to the
desk and placed all but one of them carefully in front of him. She
watched him as he read.

‘
The stuff from the financial analysts,’ he said,
concentrating.

Danny could not keep a wide smile from her face as she enjoyed
the jittery feeling in her tummy she got from being with Henry. It
was something she had only ever experienced once before - and not
with Jack Sands, her previous lover. It was a sensation which told
her she was deeply, ecstatically in love.

She closed her eyes, shook her head and opened them again. The
feeling had not gone away.

Danny had been poached by Henry to act as the office manager
in the MIR, effectively removing her from the triple murder at
Blackpool. But because she was well into that, she was also the
main liaison between the two enquiries because of the common
denominator: Billy Crane.

Over the previous two days she and Henry had worked very
closely together, doing sixteen-hour shifts. At the end of each one
they had raced - discreetly - back to her house where they had made
frantic love. Henry had then gone home to sleep with Kate, dropping
exhausted into the marital bed, leaving Danny alone and
unhappy.

Maybe once the investigation was over, something would come of
the relationship, Danny hoped, but had a horrible premonition it
would all end in tears - hers. She wanted Henry badly, so badly she
was prepared to live through a difficult separation and divorce to
get him. But did he love her enough to commit this sacrifice? There
had been occasions during their lovemaking when he had seemed on
the verge of saying the three little words, but held back. She was
not going to push him, but desperately wanted to hear them
whispered in her ear. As soon as the time was right, they needed to
sit down and discuss things before the whole scenario blew up in
their faces. Danny did not want to enter a difficult relationship
without payback.

Henry looked up at her. ‘These are very interesting,’ he
remarked. No doubt about it, he thought, financial analysts can
make an investigation.

‘
And here’s another one which may be of interest to you.’ She
handed him the other sheet of facts and figures, which he started
to read. ‘All about Barney Gillrow.’

‘
Wow - you have been busy.’

‘
Yes, I have, and so have the analysts.’

Henry looked across the desk, thinking Danielle Louise Furness
was the most breathtakingly beautiful woman he had ever known. Her
eyes were to die for. Her lips needed kissing and biting every day
without fail. She needed to be made love to frequently. She had to
be his.

‘
Remember when we first made love?’ he asked.

She blushed endearingly. ‘How could I forget?’ she said
softly.

‘
I was going to tell you something when you very rudely
interrupted me by forcing me to make love to you again.’

‘
Oh, I’m sooo sorry,’ she said. ‘What was it?’

‘
I-,’ he began and stopped abruptly when the office door burst
open and FB marched in, trumpeting, ‘Right, Henry, come on. What
the hell’s going on? Don’t give me any tactical crap. Give me
strategy -
now.
I
want the big picture.’

Behind him stood Rupert Davison.

Tenerife was roasting. Loz was sitting under a sunshade on the
private roof terrace of Uncle B’s English Bar and Disco, a large
whisky in his good hand. He groaned, winced and opened his mouth to
feel the loose teeth at the front of his lower jaw. ‘Shit,’ he
muttered angrily. He gingerly touched the bridge of his nose which
had a bruise right across it, then laid a fingertip gently on the
puffed-up left eye, which was swollen and weeping. They were all
new injuries to add to the ones which had only just healed up from
his previous battering.

He necked the whisky with one gulp and slammed the glass down
on the table. Holding his breath against the pain, he unravelled
the bandage from his left hand, the one Nero had snacked on. It was
a mess, looked infected, greenish. There was a musty stench to it
which worried Loz, as did the gradual blackening of his little
finger.

In the cage at the other end of the roof, Nero paced
relentlessly. Loz stood up and walked over to him. As his previous
weapon, the bamboo pole, now layout of reach on the floor of the
cage, Loz picked up a broom-handle and shoved it through the mesh,
trying to jab at Nero’s flank as the beast walked past. Nero was
wise now, however, and easily swerved away with a snarl and clawed
the stick. Loz continued to prod and tease, a look of sheer hatred
on his face.

‘
Yeah, you heap of crap, nothing you can do now, is there, now
your master isn’t here to help you.’ He rammed the stick at Nero’s
face; the lion deflected it with a big paw. ‘Look what he’s done to
me again.’ Loz pointed at his own face. ‘Bastard. If he thinks I’m
looking after you, he’s fucking well wrong. You can starve for all
I care, you smelly, mangy piece of meat.’

Loz, tired of the abuse, flicked two good fingers up at Nero
and went back to the table.

On it, besides the whisky, was a whole sheaf of British
newspapers, going back over the last two days. He picked up a copy
of the
Mail
and
read the headlines for the tenth time.
£20
MILLION STOLEN: EIGHT DEAD
they
proclaimed.
MASSIVE POLICE
HUNT.

The story dominated the whole of the first three pages and
contained a photograph of the officer leading the enquiry, DI Henry
Christie, and lots of bland quotes from him. There were articles
about gangland, the Russian Mafia and suggestions of a link to an
earlier multiple killing in Blackpool. A huge reward had been
posted by the banks - £200,000 for information leading to the
arrest and conviction etc.

Loz laid the paper out on the table. . .

The telephone call the day before from Billy Crane had come
unexpectedly. Tersely, Crane had instructed Loz to pick him up from
Los Rodeos Airport in the north of the island where he had just
landed from Madrid. Loz drove there straight away in the Ssang
Yong.

Crane looked very tired, had little to say and indulged in no
small talk until Loz said conversationally, ‘Had a wee bit of a
problem while you were gone, but I’ve sorted it.’

‘
Oh?’ Crane looked stone-face at Loz.

‘
A detective from England came nosing around - a
woman.’

Instantly alert, Crane said, ‘When, exactly?’ thinking the
cops had moved damn quick to be sniffing around Tenerife already.
‘Two weeks ago, something like that.’

Crane relaxed a little. That was before the robbery, but after
the killings in Blackpool. ‘What did she want?’

‘
She didn’t come to see you, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Came to see that ex-cop, Gillrow. Something to do with a guy who’d
been wasted in Blackpool. . . can’t remember his name.’

‘
Malcolm Fitch,’ whispered Crane, more to himself than to
Loz.

‘
Yeah, that’s the name. He used to be one of Gillrow’s snouts,
apparently.’

‘
What did he tell her?’

‘
Nothing, other than to piss off out of it, but he came
simpering around to me, shitting bricks about it.’

‘
And?’

‘
As you weren’t here, I sorted it.’

Crane examined Loz’s profile. ‘Sorted it? What does that
mean?’

‘
Oh, nothing much - just put the frighteners up
her.’

‘
How?’ Crane’s nostrils flared.

‘
Gave her a bit of a slapping and told her to back off – but
tactfully, like. Y’know, I wasn’t specific, just made sure she knew
what I meant.’ He did not care to admit the truth of the matter in
that the slapping had not gone quite as planned and the tables had
been turned.

‘
Good, good, well done.’ Crane patted his shoulder. Loz
smiled, thinking he had done well. Maybe he had wormed his way back
into Crane’s good books.

‘
What have you been up to?’ Loz enquired now that Crane seemed
to have chilled out.

‘
This and that,’ he said vaguely.

They drove on in silence for a while until Crane could stand
it no longer. He stretched. ‘I could do with a leak. Pull off here,
will you? Too much to drink on the plane.’ He pointed to a junction
which led up to San Isidro.

Unsuspecting, Loz hung a right, looped off the highway and
stopped in an appropriate place. Crane got out, saying, ‘Have a
smoke, if you want. I think this’ll be a long one.’ He walked down
a slight, rocky incline where he urinated on some bushes that
looked like they need the liquid. Behind, Loz leaned against the
high vehicle and lit up.

Crane, having finished, came back up the gradient to the car
and stood next to Loz for a moment before punching him as hard as
he could in the belly. The cigarette shot out of Loz’s lips like a
small rocket and he doubled up as the breath whooshed out of him.
Crane followed that up with a couple of fist blows to the side of
the head which felled him. Then Crane dragged him back to his feet,
pinned him against the side of the car and growled, ‘You stupid
fucker! You don’t have the sense you were born with, do you? You’ve
alerted the cops and warned ‘em off Warned ‘em off! You don’t do
that to the cops - they just come back mob-handed, dickhead.’ He
drove his knee up into Loz’s groin. A scream of pain came out, but
Crane did not let him go, slamming him hard against the car. ‘You
have no conception of what you’ve done, have you?’

‘
Billy, why? What’s going on?’ he gasped. ‘I don’t
know.’

‘
I’ll tell you, shall I? That fucking girl and her stupid boy
friend who lost me fifty grand got taught a lesson. I did ‘em both
in. At the same time I did a personal one on another guy who’d
caused me grief previously - Malcolm Fitch. Now I’m back having
just pulled the biggest fucking all-cash job ever - in which eight
people got killed and I walked away with twenty million - and the
last thing I want is cops. Does that make sense to you? I’m
probably the most wanted fucker in Europe at this moment in time.
The only reason I don’t fucking kill you now is that I need you to
do something for me. Do you think you can?’

‘
Yeah, yeah, whatever. . .’

But Crane had not finished his assault. In a final spasm of
rage, he head-butted Loz who crumpled to the ground like a
sack.

So now here he was, battered and bruised once more, still
looking after Nero and keeping an eye on the business while Crane
had done a runner to lie low in La Gomera. His boss had left strict
instructions for Loz, to inform him immediately if any cops turned
up sniffing around, to get some goons to watch the ferry terminal
at Los Cristianos for signs of any cops, Spanish or English, and to
keep things ticking over - and not to do anything stupid or
thoughtless! Crane had said he would always be on the end of a
mobile, but just in case he couldn’t be contacted that way, Loz had
to e-mail him from the office at Uncle B’s.

The instructions had concluded with an ominous warning for
Loz. Since divulging his crimes to him, Crane had had serious
misgivings; Loz was a weak and stupid man, wide open to temptation.
A liability.

‘
Let me make something very clear to you, old mate,’ Crane
said, his eyes never once leaving Loz’s. ‘You know some major shit
about me . . . am I right?’

Loz swallowed what felt like a rock and nodded
dumbly.

Crane spoke the next words slowly, forming them with
exaggerated movements of his lips. ‘Don’t do anything you might
regret.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise you are dead - and
no-one’ll ever find your body, unless they analyse what comes out
of a lion’s arse-hole. Understand?’ he whispered.

But Loz had had enough of the other man pushing him round,
beating him up when he felt like it, shoving his hand into Nero’s
cage, treating him like a piece of shit. Enough was enough. A man
can only take so much. He had his dignity, his basic human rights
and they had been well violated. If he, Loz, could handle things
just right, there would be nothing to worry about.