The Last Big Job (6 page)

Both women worked silently at the sink. Geena washed, Danny
dried.

There was something in the air; both could sense it and both
reached their decision to tell the other at the same time, breaking
the silence simultaneously and also snapping the tense atmosphere
with giggles.

‘
No, no - you first,’ Danny insisted, relieved.

‘
Shall we sit down?’

Geena poured them both a cup of tea and they gravitated into
the lounge. They sat close together on the settee.

‘
Danny, I’m sorry about this,’ Geena started hesitantly. ‘You
are my best friend and I love you. I’ve really, really enjoyed
having you stay with me. It’s been fantastic.’ She sighed down her
nose, lost for how to continue.

‘
But ..?’ Danny probed gently.

‘
I want to make a go of things with Alex.’ She looked at
Danny, a pleading, almost pitiful expression on her face, one which
begged understanding. ‘He wants to move in and I would love him to.
It’s just that, if you were here. . .’ She shrugged
helplessly.

‘
Two’s company, I know.’ Danny made it easy.

Geena clasped Danny’s hands. ‘He’s my last chance of real
happiness, Danny. I know we can make it work. I really love
him.’

‘
Then that’s what matters,’ Danny said with a little
grin.

‘
Oh, thanks, Dan.’ Geena put her arms around Danny and they
hugged each other - and all Danny could think was, You poor cow,
he’s nothing but a shit. She resolved to tell Geena immediately so
that her best friend would not get involved in a relationship that
would end in heartbreak and regret - like most of Danny’s
had.

‘
You were going to say something, Danny?’

‘
No, no.’ Danny shook. her head. ‘It was nothing, nothing at
all.’ She felt like a coward, but then justified it. What was the
point in destroying someone else’s prospect of joy, or maybe even
wrecking a friendship when she herself hadn’t put her own tragedy
behind her, hadn’t even got her mind around the enormity of what
had happened three months earlier when her married lover had taken
his own life. In her house. In the kitchen. By blowing his head off
with a shotgun into the refrigerator which he had thoughtfully
opened to catch his skull, brains and blood. This was no time for
Danny to risk losing a friend who had taken her in, looked after
her, and almost brought her back on to an even keel.

‘
I’ll be out of here tonight, Geena. I need to get back home
and kick my arse into gear. I can’t run away for ever.’

The catalogue of misbehaviour continued on the
Tenerife-Manchester flight as soon as the plane levelled out at
37,000 feet.

Spencer’s Bacardi had disappeared fairly quickly down his
throat. He then demanded bar service and a frightened stewardess
actually gave him four Bacardi miniatures and a couple of mini-cans
of Coke before she was warned not to serve any more alcohol to him.
He drank the booze with his knee digging into the back of the seat
ahead of him, aggravating the man sitting in it, who constantly
pushed backwards against his knee-caps to demonstrate his
displeasure. All to no avail.

Next to Spencer, Cheryl was feeling queasy. The indulgence of
the previous night - drugs, oral sex and extremely greasy beef
burgers - was starting to exact its toll on her slight frame. When
the pre-cooked breakfast was placed in front of her on the tray,
she retched, belched, but managed to retain control of her stomach
contents. Undeterred by the message from her body, she peeled the
tinfoil lid off the food tray, sniffed the bacon, sausage and
beans. That did the trick. She was immediately sick all over the
meal and also the knees of the poor unfortunate woman next to
her.

The woman emitted a shriek of disgust, catapulted out of her
seat and overturned her own breakfast.

Spencer, whose constitution was far stronger, munched a
mouthful of sausage and shouted, ‘Yeah - way to go!’

DS Danny Furness looked despondently at the computer screen in
the Custody Office at Blackpool Central police station. Nineteen
prisoners were still in custody from overnight; forty had actually
been locked up for one thing or another since six the previous
evening, but twenty-one had been dealt with and sent on their way.
Out of these remaining, about six were possible customers for the
CID. However, Danny decided that only two of them would be
processed by detectives. These were the two who had been arrested
for serious assaults - unconnected - in a night club. One of the
victims was critical and the other had been stitched up like a
knitted quilt.

Sunday morning, she thought. Wonderful. Loads to do, hardly
anybody to do it with.

She trudged wearily up the stairs, forsaking the lift for
health reasons, and headed for the CID office. She was particularly
‘made up’ when she saw the note on her desk informing her that one
of her detectives had reported sick. That meant she would have to
deal with one of the prisoners now.

‘
Listen, you,’ the man said, twisting round in his seat and
looking angrily over the headrest. ‘Get your knees out of my back.
This is the last time of asking. Next time I’ll
punch your dim lights out.’

Spencer eyed the man disdainfully. The guy looked handy but
probably hadn’t had a fight since he was a kid. And he was at least
forty now with a podgy wife sitting next to him. He probably didn’t
really want to mix it. Spencer wasn’t in the least intimidated, yet
he nodded and removed his knees as requested.

When the man had settled back down, Spencer jammed his knees
back in the seat and wedged himself into such a position that the
man in front could almost feel the knee-caps pressing into his
spine.

The man shot up and pressed the button above his head to
summon cabin staff.

The Chief Stewardess, accompanied by a rather effeminate male
colleague, arrived within moments. Spencer had been kept under
observation throughout the flight which was approaching the halfway
stage. The man Spencer had annoyed was irate and bustling. ‘That
person,’ he said through gritted teeth, pointing menacingly at
Spencer, ‘refuses to keep his knees out of my back. I have asked
him several times but he only does it worse then. I want something
done about it.’

With placating gestures, the Chief Stewardess tried to calm
the situation. The body language, coupled with soothing talk, did
the trick. The man settled back down into his seat when she
promised some action.

The aisle seat next to Cheryl was now unoccupied. The woman
who had been sitting there, who had been vomited on, had been moved
to a vacant seat further back - one of only four
on the whole plane.

The stewardess sat down on it and addressed the
couple.

‘
I have spoken to the Captain about your behaviour,’ she said
firmly, but with a faint touch of nervousness in her voice, because
she recognised the instability of the two. ‘If you continue, he has
told me that there will be no alternative but to restrain you and
ensure the police are waiting for you when we land at Manchester. I
don’t want that to happen, and I’m sure you don’t either, so I
suggest you start to behave now, otherwise you’ll leave us with no
choice in the matter.’

The detectives flicked a coin for which prisoner they
got.

Danny ended up with the anonymous male who had slit another
guy’s throat in an argument over a girl. The first job was to find
out who ‘Mickey Mouse’ was, as he had named himself on arrival at
the station at two o’clock that morning. Had Danny been paid a
pound for every Mickey Mouse she had met in her service, she would
have been a rich woman.

Mickey was in a foul mood. The alcohol which had worked
through his system had left him feeling very poorly and very
obnoxious. When a gaoler brought him from his cell to the Custody
Office, he was dressed in a white paper suit because his clothes
had been seized for Forensics as soon as he’d arrived in custody.
He looked like a prisoner in some science fiction film.

‘
Now then,’ the Custody Sergeant said amicably. ‘Would you
like to begin by telling me your real name? Because it’s not really
Mr Mouse, is it?’

Mickey did not speak. He closed and opened his eyes in an
expression which said ‘Fuck you!’ He then gave voice to the
expression.

The Custody Sergeant remained unperturbed. Danny wanted to
slap the prisoner.

‘
The implications of refusing to give your name are that you
will not get bail whatever you might have done and you’ll
definitely go to court in the morning without passing
Go.’

Mickey spat at the Custody Officer.

The problems on the Manchester-bound flight from Tenerife
eased when Spencer and Cheryl fell asleep. Cheryl claimed the
vacant seat next to her, propped her feet on it, curled up and
dropped her head into Spencer’s lap. Peace then reigned for about
an hour.

Until Spencer woke up. Cramped, ill-tempered and bursting to
go to the toilet.

Cheryl was still sleeping. He poked her roughly and she came
to, sitting up groggily, feeling dry and with a head thumping to
the beat of the dance music she’d bopped to for most of the
previous night.

‘
Jesus,’ she moaned pitifully. ‘God, I feel so rough. I want
to be sick again.’

‘
Well, don’t fuckin’ do it on me,’ Spencer warned her
unsympathetically. He stood up stiffly, using the headrest of the
seat in front to lever himself on to his feet. In the process of so
doing, he yanked the seat back several degrees. The man in it,
Spencer’s tormentee, turned and glared up at him. On seeing the
man’s face, Spencer leaned aggressively forwards, hissing, ‘And as
for you, just fuck off, you cunt.’ He flicked the man’s face with
his middle finger, very, very hard. An action which prompted an
angry outburst.

‘
You little shit!’ the man shouted. He shot to his feet, but
before he could spin round and lay a good punch on Spencer, one
which had been festering for almost three hours, Spencer got in
first. His fist powered into the back on the man’s neck, sending
him sprawling across the seat in front of him.

‘
Ha!’ yelled Spencer gleefully.

With a roar, the man lunged for Spencer. The youth got another
good punch in before they both grappled into each other’s arms.
There then followed a scrap which spilled out on to the aisle,
across seats, across other passengers, on to the aircraft
floor.

Bedlam ensued. Cabin crew raced to the scene, by which time
Spencer had bloodied the man’s nose and knocked a tooth
loose.

The crew grabbed both participants and hauled them
apart.

But Spencer had flipped. He head-butted a stewardess on the
nose, kneed a male steward in the testicles and struck, slapped,
punched and scratched anyone else who came near him. Eventually
force of numbers overwhelmed him. The staff, assisted by some
helpful passengers, began to subdue him - a situation which
unfortunately provoked another reaction. This time from
Cheryl.

‘
Let go of my boyfriend, you poxy slag!’ she screamed, and
launched herself like a wild cougar at the Chief Stewardess; the
woman crashed to the floor, stunned. This did not stop Cheryl, in
the tight space available, from raining kicks into her curled-up
body.

This new attack startled and distracted those who had been
restraining Spencer. He broke free with a surge of angry energy,
scrambled to his feet and raced headlong down the plane with some
wild thought in his mind of bursting on to the flight deck and
having a go at flying the plane.

Blocking his way was the effeminately-mannered male steward,
holding out his right hand in a number one stop signal: hand raised
to shoulder height, arm extended, elbow locked, palm facing
out.

Spencer’s expression turned to a scornful snarl as he hurtled
towards the petite man. A roar grew in his throat and he adjusted
his pace to deliver a flying kick, aimed somewhere around the
steward’s midriff.

Had it connected, the force behind it would, at the very
least, have broken bones and could possibly have damaged internal
organs. However, rather like a balletic bullfighter minus the cape,
the steward side-stepped gracefully out of Spencer’s flight path at
the last possible moment. As the youth hurtled past him, the
steward delivered a well-aimed blow on the side of his head which
had the immediate effect of making Spencer think he’d slammed
against a brick wall. He crumpled and thudded down into the aisle,
a quivering blob.

Within seconds, the steward had skilfully turned Spencer over
on to his stomach, wrenched his arms behind his back and secured
his wrists with a pair of clear plastic handcuffs which resembled
the plastic rings which kept six-packs of beer together.

Halfway down the plane, Cheryl was continuing to cause havoc.
She bit, scratched, kicked, clawed and continually broke free from
the fingers of would-be captors. She connected several good punches
and many of the people around her were bleeding or
bruised.