The Last Big Job

Chapter Seventeen

It took longer than anticipated to carry out the transfer. There were fifty money-containers constructed of Kevlar-steel, all about the dimension of a medium-sized suitcase. They were all very heavy indeed and must have been tightly packed inside. Even allowing for a prearranged systematic transfer, there was a very edgy ten minutes during which everyone of the team felt vulnerable and exposed as they passed the containers from the back of the security van, down the line, into the back of the Sherpa.

Then it was done. The money was in. Crane and Smith slammed the rear doors shut.

Hawker jumped into the driver’s seat of the security van and started the engine. A minute later he was on the M6 heading south. Behind him, in one of the Audis, was Price. Their task was to run the van down to Staffordshire and dump it about a mile away from the gates of the security waste-disposal unit. By doing this, time would be bought for Crane and Smith to sort out the money as necessary — if the radio-control room of the security company were not alarmed by the length of the stoppage which would have been transmitted to them from the tracker unit fitted to the van.

Putting their minds at rest was Hawker’s first job.

‘ Alpha One to base, Alpha One,’ he called up on the radio system.

‘ Alpha One — go ahead. We’ve been concerned.’

‘ All OK. Repeat, all OK,’ Hawker said coolly. ‘A bad case of the runs in here today, but we’re back on the road now. Please inform the waste centre we’ll be running late.’

‘ Roger — wilco.’

The money weighed down the back of the Sherpa, making steering light and very imprecise. Crane edged slowly away from between the two HGVs, but instead of driving on to the motorway, he went up the Staff Only road at the back of the service area, turned right at the end of it, and drove over the motorway towards the A6. From there he would travel north up to Lancaster and then back over to the warehouse in Morecambe.

While he drove, Smith busied himself with a mobile phone and left a message on a pager.

In the truckers’ cafe on the northbound side of the service area, two lorry drivers had been dawdling over a long meal and numerous cups of coffee. One of them received Smith’s pager message. He looked up at the other man and nodded. ‘Time to move.’ These were the two men who had earlier parked the two curtainsided heavy goods vehicles parallel to each other, leaving a space wide enough for the security van to squeeze into. They paid for their grub, then walked across the covered footbridge to the southbound side of the services. Their task was to now abandon the HGVs. A few moments later both were thundering down the motorway. Unbeknown to one of them, he was carrying four corpses.

Smith slid his mobile phone on to the dash. ‘That went like a fucking dream, even if I say so myself.’

Crane nodded grimly. He negotiated a tight curve in the road.

‘ No cops, nothing,’ Smith said. ‘Brilliant.’

‘ They’ll be wondering what’s hit them,’ Crane agreed. He checked his mirrors. Close behind was the Audi sports car driven by Gunk Elphick. Thompson was in the passenger seat, Drozdov in the rear. Crane recalled the Russian’s actions in swiftly disposing of the two security guards, almost as a challenge. The man was a ruthless, clinical killer, someone to be wary of. ‘It’s not over yet,’ Crane said. ‘Not by a long chalk.’

Henry remembered that when he had joined the police twenty-odd years earlier he had actually been issued with a piece of yellow chalk; it had come with his appointments — his staff and handcuffs — and also a tape measure and two pairs of white cotton gloves. He had only ever used the chalk once and had lost the tape measure and gloves. He was thinking about this because he was watching a traffic officer dutifully marking the position of the vehicles in the road with her piece of trusty yellow chalk. Subsequently she would measure up the scene and draw a plan of the accident.

The road was closed in both directions, completely blocked, probably for several hours to come. The traffic department, now renamed the Road Safety Department, had moved in and taken control. The Fire Brigade were busy disentangling the gnarled wreckage of the tractor/trailer unit and the Ford Escort. It was proving a difficult thing to achieve and was made all the more distasteful by the ghost-like presence of the headless body trapped in the driver’s seat, still gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

Henry and Danny stood a little way back, leaning on her scratched and battered MX-5.

Henry’s euphoria at the chase had dissipated; his excitement gone. He was starting to feel cold and not a little dithery. Maybe shock was setting in. His hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets.

Next to him, Danny stood there arms folded, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She was slightly disgusted with herself in that she was more concerned with her damaged car than a fatal road traffic accident victim. She was about to remonstrate with Henry but stopped when she caught sight of FB approaching, purpose in his stride and a bundle of something in his hands.

‘ Yours, I believe,’ he said, presenting Danny with two smashed side mirrors. She took them from him and tossed them into the back of the MX-5. To Henry he said, ‘Is this the guy who did the ‘copter?’ He jerked his thumb towards the carnage.

Henry looked down at FB. He was much taller than him. ‘I think so.’

FB chortled with disbelief. ‘You think so? Fuck me, that’s brilliant. You chase some poor fucker and chop his friggin’ head off — and you think so? For your sake, it better be right, otherwise you’ve some real hard explaining to do — because I won’t be doing it for you when the press come snapping, understand?’

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.

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…’

‘ It might mean a big conspiracy,’ Danny finished. ‘My head hurts.’

Crane jogged ahead of Smith, a black Ruger P85 in his hands, the one he’d used for the robbery, now reloaded, one in the chamber, fifteen in the magazine, another mag tucked into his waistband just in case. Smith was armed with a heavier Skarab Skorpion.

Crane stopped momentarily at the office door and took a deep breath. He counted with his left hand, slicing the air, one, two, three. Then he twisted into the office and said, ‘Sorry boys, but this is the way it is,’ and began firing, aware that Drozdov was not in the room, just Gary and Gunk. Where the hell was the Russian?

It did not make Crane hesitate. He shot them where they sat.

Gary was hit first. One in the face, one in the neck, two in the chest. The massive impact of the bullets lifted him from the chair and toppled him backwards, legs rising upwards and over.

Gunk threw himself to one side with a scream. Crane was surprised by his speed for an instant. Then he was back on track, aiming and firing at the bulk of Gunk’s moving body, hitting him in the shoulder, ribs and hip. Gunk contorted and writhed on the floor of the office, dragging a metallic filing cabinet down on top of himself

Crane rushed forwards and finished him off with one to the side of the head.

He checked Gary, who twitched like he was being tickled, but was very definitely dead.

Crane ejected the magazine from the handle and dropped it into his pocket, replacing it quickly with the full one from his waistband. His eyes made contact with Smith who stood in the doorway, astounded by his partner’s deadly efficiency.

‘ Where’s the other fucker?’ Crane hissed. He was hardly out of breath, but in control, enjoying this.

The response to the question was immediate and fatal.

Suddenly Smith began a wild, macabre dance as bullets riddled into him, discharged from the Uzi held by Drozdov. Black holes burst open across his chest, hurling him backwards. His gun flew out of his grasp and he was slammed violently against the office wall. There was a short pause — long enough for Smith to look down and inspect the wounds across his chest and then look up at Crane, disbelief on his face — by which time Drozdov had readjusted his aim and opened fire again. He put a line of bullets across Smith’s face which removed his lower jaw.

Crane dropped to the floor like a stone, cursing. He then crawled behind the filing cabinet which had fallen over Gunk’s body.

Drozdov strafed the office. As the wall was only thin plasterboard, little protection was offered to Crane who was pinned down, nowhere to run.

The firing stopped abruptly when the magazine clicked empty.

Crane knew he had to move now. His current position was indefensible and he was dead if he stayed there.

He scrambled to his feet, using Gunk’s neck as purchase to achieve momentum, and launched himself head first out of the office. He threw himself into a forward roll which took him to the back wheel of the Audi where he crouched down, protected by the car, dry-mouthed, now breathing heavily, his senses at their most acute, listening hard, unsure of Drozdov’s exact position, which was not a good thing. He could hear re-loading taking place and knew he was out-gunned. Pistol versus machine pistol. Bad odds at this sort of range.

Where the hell was the Russian?

Behind the BMW? Near to the Sherpa?

Christ, he was good, Crane thought magnanimously. How had he managed to get out of the office without being seen? Crane gave a short, bitter laugh. He realised that he and the Russian were two of a kind. He’d seen it in the eyes. Watched it in the way he’d disposed of the security guards. Cold. Clinical. No fuss, just business. And the problem was, when people like this clashed, there could only be one victor. A draw was unacceptable.

Crane peered cautiously over the boot of the Audi. He guessed the Russian was probably over by the BMW, protected by the bulk of its engine, probably no more than twenty feet away. Beyond was the gloom of the warehouse. Floor-to-roof shelving, stacked with goods, mainly cigarettes, booze and perfume. The shelves were end-on to where Crane was positioned and he could see down the aisles which were wide enough for forklift trucks to operate down. Around the inner warehouse wall, about fifteen feet from the ground, was a metallic walkway reached by steps next to the office door, about eight feet to the right from where Crane was hunched. Fifteen feet to his left was the Sherpa parked in the loading bay. That vehicle, maybe, offered some protection, but at that moment, Crane could not even think of reaching it.

Incredibly there was a sudden movement in the office. Crane’s head snapped round and he saw something amazing.

It was Don Smith. Jaw-less, riddled with bullets, he was dragging himself through the door, slipping and slurping in his own pool of deep red, nearly black, blood. Most of his face had been ripped off by Drozdov’s shooting. Crane could not believe what he was seeing.

‘ Don!’ he gasped.

Smith’s eyes pleaded with his partner. Then there was a dull ‘thu-thu-thu’ of bullets being sprayed from the Uzi. Smith’s head exploded with their impact.

And Crane was able to pinpoint Drozdov’s position behind the BMW and took advantage of the distraction.

He ran low and fast towards the Sherpa and dropped into the loading bay, putting the Sherpa between himself and Drozdov.

Drozdov loosed off a lazy burst towards the Sherpa, the shells smacking into the side panel of the vehicle, making a sound like hailstone.

Crane rolled towards the front of the Sherpa, getting more protection from the engine block. He was tempted to return fire, but it would have been useless, just a gesture, nothing more. He had little ammunition and needed to save it for critical incidents — when he had a good chance of taking Drozdov’s life.

The stench of cordite hung heavily in the atmosphere. Smith’s body lay grotesquely positioned in the puddle of his blood, coagulating like tar, his head destroyed. Beyond him, Crane could just see Gunk underneath the filing cabinet, his head a gory mess too and though he too was dead, his mouth popped open and closed repeatedly, like a fish.

Nothing had happened for at least a minute. Maybe longer, maybe not. Time had lost its substance.

Crane was convinced Drozdov had not moved, was still behind the BMW He was reluctant to make the first move because he didn’t want it to go to rat-shit and be his last. Yet to have to react to Drozdov could be fatal. From what Crane knew of the Russian Mafia, shoot-outs like this were ten a penny in Moscow and people like Drozdov were experienced in dealing with such situations. Conversely, Crane’s shoot-outs had always tended to be one-sided. His opponents were not usually armed, which was a big advantage. This was a new scenario for Crane, but he wasn’t fazed by it. It was like a game of chess — but with consequences.

He was squatting down by the front offside wheel of the Sherpa, close to the driver’s door, taking his main cover from the engine. He knew car panels were useless against bullets and had known people die behind them, thinking they were safe. The front of the vehicle faced the roller door and the operating panel was on the wall, about five feet above ground. The control button was ten feet away from Crane himself.

A grimace creased his face as he weighed up the possibility of doing a runner. The keys were still in the ignition. All he needed to do was open the door, get in and drive away with the money.

Yeah, sure. Dream on.

The roller door would take an eon to open and Sherpa vans were notoriously bad at quick starts.

Stalemate.

‘ You did what I would have done. I respect that,’ Drozdov called out from behind the BMW ‘We can talk. I know there is far more money than you led us to believe. We can split it. We are businessmen, after all.’

‘ You killed my friend, Jacky Lee.’

‘ You butchered my colleagues.’

‘ Big difference,’ Crane shouted. ‘Fucking big difference.’

‘ And you would have killed me.’

‘ Likewise, wanker.’

‘ Such is life. It is not easy, but we can negotiate. I am a man of my word.’

‘ Ivan the fuckin’ Terrible. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could spit. I smelled you for trouble as soon as I saw you.’

‘ I’m honoured. So what is it to be? Sit here until we grow old and die of natural causes — or do we compromise? Remember, you are outgunned and out-positioned. I can be a very poor shot with this Uzi and yet still mow you down; you have to be a marksman with a pistol. Compromise, Billy Crane — a good word — a very good offer.’

Crane looked at the Ruger. The Russian was right. It is very difficult to be accurate with a pistol other than at very close range, whereas it’s dead easy with a machine pistol set on automatic. Aiming did not come into it. Point, pull, shoot, sweep, kill.

In that case, Crane decided, I’ll have to get in close to the bastard.

He reached up with his right hand for the driver’s door handle which he gripped firmly and pressed quietly with his thumb.

There was a click which seemed loud and echoey, but drew no response from Drozdov. The door opened a quarter of an inch. Crane released the handle and eased his fingertips under the bottom edge of the door and pulled it slowly open. All the while he was expecting a hail of fire from Drozdov, but nothing came; he assumed the Russian was either squatting down behind the BMW and not looking, or was manoeuvring his way round for a better shot. Whatever, Crane knew his time was limited. When the door was open wide enough, he reached up towards the key in the ignition in the steering column, just behind the wheel. His idea was to try to see if the engine would start and use the noise as a distraction to cover the sound of any movement. He just had to hope the thing would get going without use of the gas pedal because he could not safely contort himself to turn the key with one hand and dab the accelerator with the other. Climbing up and sitting in the driver’s seat was obviously out of the question.

Crane turned the key. The engine coughed, died.

‘ Shit!’

He was about to try again when Drozdov stood up and sprayed a line of bullets in to the Sherpa, sending Crane diving back behind the engine block.

Not a good idea, he thought, as the sound of gunfire died away. If nothing else it would be folly to put the Sherpa at risk from damage by bullets. If one hit something vital, he would be struggling to transport the money — if he came out of this alive.

He controlled his breathing again. The only way to win this, he decided, was to take direct action. He had to take the fight to the Russian.

Crane checked the Ruger again, making damn sure there was one ready in the chamber and that the magazine was full. Yes, on both counts.

He leaned back against the front wheel and inhaled deep, slow breaths, calming himself, thinking of tactics.

The only way he could imagine taking the Russian was by a sudden, unexpected, frontal assault, using the element of surprise and, if necessary, going out in a blaze of glory.

His wet right hand gripped the handle of the gun. The sweaty tip of his forefinger curled around the trigger. He cupped his left hand underneath his right and lifted the gun. 32 oz seemed very heavy.

Before he moved, he visualised every step of the way in his mind’s eye. First, the relative positions of the vehicles. He imagined he was a bird, looking down, seeing the layout from above. The Sherpa in the loading bay, the Audi in the warehouse, almost parallel to it and in front of that, skewed at an angle, the big BMW behind which Drozdov was taking cover. What was on the floor that might trip him? Crane thought hard. Nothing, he could recall nothing. Then he began to envision his course of action, frame by frame. Up on to his feet — then into a roll which would take him the ten feet or so to the rear of the Audi, and on the way loosing off two shots to keep Drozdov’s head down. Once behind the Audi, no pause. Dive fast and low towards the BMW, somewhere in the region of the rear nearside wheel. Down to the floor and fire underneath the car to take out Drozdov’s feet and legs and arse if he happened to be sitting on it, using every last bullet in the gun to do as much damage to the bastard as possible.

He counted down from five.

On ‘one’ he came to life and moved, twisting across the front of the Sherpa and suddenly seeing that the gap between that vehicle and the Audi was wider than he remembered. As he threw himself into the dive which would become his roll, this reality hit him and he knew he would be exposed twice as long as he intended.

‘ Bam! Bam!’ He fired his planned two shots and launched himself, hit the ground hard, jarring his left shoulder and morphed what should have been a single forward roll into a double.

Drozdov reacted immediately, rising and raking the blurred figure of Crane with fire from the Uzi, but all the while shooting just a fraction behind him — until Crane disappeared behind the Audi and half a dozen of Drozdov’s slugs slammed into the tough, Teutonic bodywork.

The gunfire was deafening. But Crane still managed to hear the metallic click of the hammer on the empty chamber and the muted curse from Drozdov’s lips as the Uzi dried up. A competent gunman would have the new magazine slotted in within seconds. Crane had no illusions that the Russian was anything less than competent, but at the same time knew that the moment had come and he had to grab it, or die.

He scrambled to his feet, his toes losing purchase on the concrete floor for a precious moment before they gripped. He ran across to the BMW veered around to it far side, handgun ready to fire. He found the Russian leaning against the car, fumbling to ram in the new magazine.

Drozdov, magazine in his right hand, useless Uzi in his left, stopped instantly and looked up at the menacing figure of Billy Crane. He held up the separate parts with a shrug and a smile of resignation and hurled them at Crane, crabbing away backwards.

Crane dodged the metal. He aimed deliberately at the retreating Russian and pulled the trigger six times, blasting 9mm holes into his chest and stomach until Drozdov lay there without moving, probably dead.

Crane stood over him like a Colossus and put another two into his head.