The Last Big Job

Chapter Four

It is claimed that prisons are the University of Crime, and there is some truth in that. However, the belief that a young car thief, for example, who finds himself behind bars will come out as a safe cracker, knowing all the tricks of the trade, is a misconception. The sad truth is that, more than likely, he will come out as a dope-head no-hoper and fall back into a grubby existence of petty crime and drug abuse followed by further spells inside which get longer and longer.

On the other hand, it would be unusual for a criminal who has a recognised trade and makes a good living (a professional, in other words) to come out of prison and fall into such a way of life. He is more than likely to come out a better, more well-connected, more wary criminal or, perhaps, like Billy Crane, to actually see the error of his ways… and then move into a completely different line of activity.

When Crane received his twelve-year jail sentence in I986 for the safe job at the Halifax Building Society and Grievous Bodily Harm on PC Terry Briggs (reduced from Attempted Murder), he entered prison as a hero. Career criminals such as Crane are highly respected in that fraternity and life in prison was a doddle for him. He was a very hard, uncompromising man anyway, and he got no hassle from the prison rulers.

Although he buckled down to the inevitability of prison life, Crane began to brood in his cell. He constantly rubbed the sore shoulder where that bastard cop had shot him, and started to doubt his whole existence as a professional criminal. He came to think of himself as a blacksmith. A man with lots of skills, learned and acquired over many years, but which had become anachronistic in the modern world of crime.

Robbery and burglary were very hard ways to make a living, even though the buzz of committing such offences was incredible.

Then he got to comparing himself to the manufacturing industry, trying to survive in an economic climate dominated by service industries. The main service industry in the criminal world being the drugs trade, of course.

As the realisation dawned on him that safe breakers and bank robbers were old hat, not least because the cops had started shooting back these days, and that there were far easier ways to make a crooked pound sterling, Crane concluded he needed to do something about it: make plans for his release. The last thing he wanted was to become the grand-daddy of safe-crackers and blaggers, locked up at the age of sixty because he could not run fast enough, telling boring war stories to young wannabes.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, he often though to himself.

The prisons he guested in over his period of custody — Strangeways, Wymott, Leeds and Walton — became his closed university. Four prisons, four seats of learning. The drugs trade was his chosen subject. He left clutching a Master’s degree.

Not that the theoretical principles were too difficult to learn. They were as follows. It was an easy trade so long as you did not become an addict yourself. The profits were unbelievable for a paltry outlay. You mustn’t tread on anybody’s toes — unless you mean to break them. And finally, if your organisation is set up correctly from the word go, you will not get caught because, basically, cops are thick. The connection should never be made to you, and you become rich on other people’s hard work, suffering and death.

A peach of a trade.

And Billy Crane had a very large deposit to put into his new venture — his share of the money he’d heisted from the Building Society in I986 which had never been recovered, plus a fair amount of cash from other jobs.

Ten years after entering prison he was released with a very firm business plan, some new connections and the idea that he wanted to live somewhere warm, fairly friendly and in the same time-zone as England.

It didn’t take him long to choose Tenerife as the base for his operation. He had considered the Spanish Costas, but dismissed them. They were already overrun by British criminals and were well policed. The Canary Islands were only just beginning to feature prominently in the drug trade. Within six months he owned a small bar in Los Cristianos, paid for in cash, and had bought four other apartments which he rented to holidaymakers. Within eighteen months a supply line of high-trade marijuana had been established into the UK, out of North Africa, via Tenerife and on to the streets of grubby Lancashire towns. Fourteen months on and he was shooting heroin and cocaine up through the vein of holiday air travel into the same area, using stupid young holidaymakers who came to the island for a good time and were always eager to earn extra cash.

After two years, he owned three disco-pubs on Tenerife, a couple of bars on Lanzarote, and had just bought a gorgeous villa on La Gomera, an island reached by hydrofoil from Los Cristianos harbour. He estimated himself to be worth around three million pounds sterling. Life was good and relatively easy. Sometimes, though, things went awry. And fifty grand is fifty grand in anybody’s money. It wasn’t so much the losing it that annoyed Crane. It was the manner in which it had been taken from him.

Sheer stupidity.

He believed that he, personally, needed to make a statement about this. And that was why, two days after he almost fed Loz to Nero, Crane was sitting in a plane making its final descent into Manchester Airport.

He bolted his seat belt as instructed and leaned back in the upright seat, thinking about Nero. Somehow the lion had just been a natural progression — pet-wise. All through his life he had owned big, vicious dogs which fuelled his ego. He’d even owned a couple of pit bull terriers in his time which had been confiscated by a court and destroyed after they had attacked a crying child and almost torn the brat to shreds. At his villa on La Gomera, a couple of Dobermans patrolled the grounds with evil on their minds. He loved them dearly.

The chance to own a lion had been too good to pass up. Nero had been sold to him by an Arab drug dealer and shipped secretly across from Morocco without bothering the Spanish authorities. Crane planned a new enclosure for Nero on La Gomera which would give the beast more space and a better environment. Maybe then Crane would find a mate for him.

He hoped Loz was looking after him properly.

The plane touched down without a hitch. Crane passed through Customs, no problem, and was met by a driver on the other side. Five minutes later he was in the rear of a Ford Granada speeding northwards. He picked up the mobile phone and began to make some arrangements. He wanted to conduct his business swiftly and get back to Tenerife as soon as possible.

The last collection was made at lunchtime. The discreet but heavily armoured security van drew up outside the bank in Carlisle. Two guards jumped out of the front cab, leaving one man at the wheel and another locked inside the rear of the van. All the men were dressed in identical protective clothing: full-face crash helmets, bulletproof Kevlar vests and body armour to protect arms, legs and groins. Even the one inside the back of the van was required by strict company regulations to wear this outfit at all times, although he rarely wore the helmet.

Following a prearranged signal, the two guards were allowed into the side door of the bank. The money was already waiting for them in four suitcase-sized boxes with carrying handles. They were locked, of course. The guards picked up the containers and signed the receipt. A minute later they were outside again. The shute on the side of the van opened and the boxes were slid quickly into the waiting hands of the guard inside. He stacked them up alongside all the other boxes, just under fifty in total, collected from banks all over Southern Scotland and Northern England.

The guards jumped into the front cab. One of them slid on to the seat behind the driver. The doors were locked and the van set off.

Within minutes they were travelling south on the M6.

The driver was a man called Colin Hodge. He gave his workmates a sidelong glance as they chatted with relief. The last collection meant there had been no hitches and now they were on the motorway, it was plain sailing. Hodge smiled thinly, trying hard to mask his evil thoughts.

He turned his attention back to the driving.

His heart was beating fast and he was sweating. The palms of his hands were slimy and damp, making gripping the steering wheel difficult.

None of the security guards knew the exact amount they were carrying in the van. However, it did not take too much discreet nosying about, a few questions here and there, a little listening at doorways, plus the professional guesstimates of people familiar with heaving large amounts of cash about, to make a pretty good stab at the size of the load, all of which was in used, crinkled, sometimes damaged — but eminently serviceable — Bank of England or Scotland notes which were being transported to be incinerated to nothing.

Hodge nearly whimpered in frustration at the thought.

What a waste of perfectly good money!

He pressed his foot on the accelerator and increased the speed of the van to sixty, the maximum it was permitted to travel. He tried to keep his mind focused on the three lanes ahead, blocking the thought from his mind that very soon, if all went well, some of that money would be bypassing the incinerator and going into his pockets instead.

Henry Christie stared at the grease-laden meal in front of him. Typical transport-cafe fare. The Trucker’s All-day Breakfast Special. No wonder, he thought, so many drivers died of heart attacks. All that cholesterol must clog up their veins. The new, health-conscious Henry Christie, the man who had shed half a stone, who had motivated himself to run for twenty minutes every day, found the thought terrifying. His alter ego, Frank Jagger, however, was not so fussy. He tucked in with relish, whilst keeping a wary eye on the comings and goings around him.

He was sitting in a cafe on the A580 East Lancs Road, south of Leigh, near to Junction 23 of the M6. It was an establishment catering almost exclusively for long-distance lorry drivers. There must have been over sixty heavy goods vehicles outside in the huge lorry park, and the cafe itself was bubbling with the last dregs of the lunchtime trade. Although he was not certain, Henry suspected that Jacky Lee had some financial interest in the place. Even if he hadn’t, it was an ideal place to do business, particularly involving large shipments of stolen goods, because it was one of those busy, stop-start places where everyone and everything is transient.

Henry cut into a thick, burned sausage and placed a segment of it in his mouth. It was like biting into a piece of cinder. He nearly spat it out. Instead he washed it down with a mouthful of tea from the cracked mug. It was two in the afternoon. Henry was expecting to meet his contact here soon, after which he was supposed to call Jacky and say, ‘Game on.’

At quarter past, a Mercedes 7.5 ton Rigid Box Van pulled off the main road and stopped in a line of HGVs. Henry watched the driver hop down from the cab and get into a laughing conversation with a couple of other good buddies as he walked towards and into the cafe. Henry smiled inside, glad to see his old friend Terry Briggs. Still on the National Crime Squad after seven or eight years, having been an undercover cop on and off for about half that time. It had been the combination of Terry and Henry that had put Jacky Lee on the path to prison six years before.

Henry watched Terry and thought he was good, bloody good. The lorry driver legend was one of Terry’s undercover roles and he played it like a natural. If anyone is playing a role, they have to be at ease with it and Terry had trained as an HGV driver before joining the cops, but had never actually worked as one. When the chance of going U/C as a trucker presented itself, he jumped at it. But there is far more to being a lorry driver than simply holding a licence. There is the culture, the camaraderie, knowing things about places and people; there are the mannerisms, they way you fit in; there is the language and the accompanying body language, the unwritten dress codes. Terry had them all off by heart, slipped easily into the persona, and no one could begin to tell that out of the role he was a shy, retiring guy, quiet and studious.

Terry bought himself a Trucker’s Dinner — plate meat pie, chips, peas, thick gravy, three rounds of bread and butter and a mug brim-full of tea. He came across to Henry’s table and sat down opposite.

‘ Frank,’ Terry nodded.

‘ Eric, how are you, old mate?’ Henry reached across and shook Eric Barnes by the hand. They never, ever called each other by their real names, even when they were a hundred per cent certain they were not being overheard. To do that was a dangerous game. One slip could easily mean at best blown cover, at worst… Both men always stayed deeply in role.

‘ I’m good.’

‘ You got it?’ Henry went straight to the point.

Terry nodded.

Henry stood up, reaching for his mobile which was clipped to the belt of his jeans. He left the cafe and made a call.

Once again, Henry was feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable — two feelings which often sit alongside the term ‘undercover’. The result of the ‘Game on’ phone call he’d made to Jacky Lee was that, forty minutes later he was sitting in the Jaguar in a lay-by a couple of miles east of the transport cafe, tapping the steering wheel nervously with his fingertips.

The tinted-window BMW which had tailed him the other night around Manchester drew in behind. Henry watched it through the rearview mirror. It looked a sleek and sinister car, all black. There was a blast from the horn. Henry’s nostrils flared. He got out of the XJS and walked slowly back towards the BMW. A rear window opened and Jacky Lee shoved his face towards Henry.

‘ What’s going on?’ Henry, now in role as Frank Jagger, wanted to know. He placed both hands on the shiny roof of the car and leaned in. The front doors opened and Lee’s two minders slid out. They stood behind Henry, one on either side of him. He looked up and eyed them with disdain. Real fear, however, gripped his balls; he could feel his testicle sac contracting in his underpants.

‘ I’m still a nervous man, almost paranoid actually,’ Lee explained. ‘And I’ve made a solemn vow never to trust anyone again.’

‘ I thought you said you’d eliminated the problem,’ Henry responded. He could feel the urge to run coming over him.

Lee raised his eyebrows. ‘I mean, just how the fuck do I really know you’re not a cop, Frank?’

Henry snorted a short laugh. ‘You don’t.’ He looked seriously at Lee, eye to eye. ‘Except I’m not and you fucking know I’m not.’

‘ Maybe.’

‘ No maybe about it.’ Henry sensed, rather than saw, Lee’s two men take a step closer to him.

‘ You won’t mind if these two guys search you for a wire, will you?’

One of them acted too quickly placing a hand on Henry’s elbow. Henry shrugged him off violently, eyed him savagely and spun back to Lee. On the periphery of his vision, he saw the other guy’s right hand slide under his jacket. ‘What is this shit?’ Henry demanded.

‘ Common sense, Frank. Now, let’s just get this over with, then we can do business. Just fuckin’ humour me, OK?’

Henry moved slowly away from the car and raised his arms, hands outstretched like he was on a cross. The two men, who Henry knew to be called Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick, moved in and started to pat him down.

‘ You cut yourself shaving?’ he asked Gunk, noticing a Band-Aid on his ear. Gunk smiled wickedly at him.

Henry’s face became impassive as the four hands worked quickly around his body. Underneath the exterior he was struggling to prevent a bowel movement, even though he was pretty certain they would not find the wire. Because of his previous conversation with Lee, where Lee had mentioned mulling over who had blabbed on him, Henry had thought it prudent to reposition the wire on his person, which he did — literally. Normally it was taped to the small of his back. Today it was in his underpants with his cock resting alongside it.

The two men did a reasonably systematic search, quartering him. Henry hoped that human nature would prevent them from doing anything more than a light cursory pat down around his privates and arse. And they were inexperienced searchers and probably didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. He was confident because he knew that police officers who searched prisoners day in, day out, still miss things, sometimes even the size of a hammer.

‘ He’s clean.’ The men stood back.

‘ And now,’ Henry said, face thunderous, ‘what about you, Jacky? All those years in jail — how the hell do I know you haven’t turned? You might be setting me up, for all I know. This could simply be bluffing shite.’

‘ Want to search me?’

‘ Too right.’

‘ Be my guest.’ Lee clambered out of the BMW He opened his arms wide to Henry who swiftly ran his hands around Lee’s outer clothing, more as a gesture than anything. He did find one thing — the butt of a revolver pushed down the rear of Lee’s waistband.

Henry moved away.

‘ OK, Frank?’

Henry nodded.

‘ Then let’s get down to business and forget this crap. I feel good about today.’

After two hours of constant travelling averaging sixty miles an hour, the security van was close to its destination. Just to the north of Stafford, Colin Hodge, the driver, exited the motorway. Within minutes of leaving the junction, he was driving on to a fairly new industrial estate. Eventually he stopped outside the gates of a very large, secure-looking compound. The notice board gave the name of the company as ‘Secure-a-Waste’, followed by a phone number and e-mail address. There was nothing to suggest the company specialised in the disposal of all types of security waste from paper to chemicals. In this particular compound they had a huge incinerator which completely destroyed anything made of paper. It was not recycled, simply sent into the sky as smoke and into the earth as fertiliser. As the company held the contract with the Royal Mint, it was here they burned used, tattered, torn and otherwise worn-out banknotes of the realm.

Hodge honked his horn a couple of times. A massive sliding gate, twenty feet high, topped with razor wire, and fifteen feet across, grated slowly open. He drove in and pulled up with the radiator grille nose up to a second similar gate. The first gate closed behind them, sealing the van in a sterile, mesh-roofed compound.

It was very much like entering a prison.

Hodge’s two colleagues had to disembark here and go to wait in a secure office. Only the driver and the security guard inside the back of the van were allowed through to the next stage of the process.

Once the two were behind a locked door and the relevant paperwork had been duly signed, the inner gate opened. Hodge drove the van into the complex which basically consisted of a road which ringed a large, low, brick-built building; on its roof, in one corner, was a tall, wide chimney.

Hodge reversed the van up to a roller door which rattled open. Once it was open at its full height, he manoeuvred the van back into the bay beyond. The roller door closed. For the second time the vehicle was in a secure area. He switched off the engine.

This was the only time other people seemed to enter the equation.

Two men in overalls, wearing industrial face masks and driving a forklift truck each, came out from behind a steel door and approached the van. Hodge watched and noted their movements through his wing mirrors.

Hodge’s colleague in the rear exchanged passwords, then opened the rear door of the van from inside and began to pass out the metal boxes which contained the money collected that day. The men in overalls stacked them high on the forklifts until they were all piled up.

Hodge’s insides flipped at the thought of all that money burning.

The back door was closed and one of the men slapped the side of the van. Hodge fired up the engine. In his mirrors he watched the men drive their nippy vehicles through the steel door, out of reach.

The roller door opened.

Hodge collected all his mates from the entrance and began his journey back up North. He glanced across at Secure-a-Waste. Already black smoke was billowing out of the chimney. Hodge winced painfully.

Henry Christie, Terry Briggs and Jacky Lee sauntered across the lorry park towards the transport cafe. They had inspected the contents in the rear of Terry’s box van. Jacky was over the moon by what he had seen — lots and lots of stolen whisky. He and Frank Jagger were back in business — a carbon copy of their first-ever transaction. He believed the whisky was from a blagging at a cash-and-carry warehouse somewhere down South.

At?4.00 a bottle, Lee was not bothered where they came from, but for the purposes of Henry Christie’s scenario, Lee needed to think they were stolen.

‘ Forty grand… that’s a lot of money,’ Lee was moaning, even though he would make treble that amount within a couple of months as the whisky filtered through his pubs and clubs.

‘ No, it’s not,’ Henry argued. ‘It’s bloody cheap and you know it. I’m the one on tight margins,’ he bleated. ‘So many fucking people to pay down the line, I’ll be lucky to get fifty pence a bottle. Next time the price goes up, Jacky.’

‘ Yeah, yeah, yeah, my fucking heart bleeds, you whingeing twat.’ He slapped Henry on the back. ‘But business is business and it feels good to be doing it with you again.’

They filed into the transport cafe, past Gary Thompson, who squirmed out of the door, nodding at his boss. ‘Just had a piss, boss,’ he explained for no reason. He trotted back to the BMW which was parked at the front of the cafe with Gunk lounging by it. The cafe was less busy now, but still doing a good trade. Henry, Terry and Lee sat at an empty table in a booth, having ordered three teas.

‘ Now then, payment,’ Lee began. ‘Where and when?’

‘ As we agreed,’ Henry said firmly. ‘All on delivery, here and now, otherwise the lorry goes. I’ve got at least three others sniffing around, cash in hand.’

‘ OK, fair enough,’ Lee conceded, holding up his hands in surrender.

The tea arrived, steaming and brown.

Lee inspected his and said, ‘Think I need a piss, guys. Back in a minute.’ He headed for the gents, his back watched by the two detectives. Henry quickly ran his fingers on the underside of the table to check for any hidden mikes and broke their rule when he quickly whispered, ‘He’s got a gun.’ Terry merely nodded. They reverted to role and picked up their drinks.

‘ Shit, that’s hot!’ Henry spluttered as the tea burned the top of his mouth.

His eyes drifted to the window and out to Lee’s BMW The two minders leaned against it, smoking, Thompson talking on a mobile phone. The smaller, stockier one, Gunk, was fingering his plastered ear. He looked to be in pain. Both men looked spooked and nervous.

‘ Them too, I think,’ Henry said without moving his lips. Again Terry nodded.

The one on the phone finished his chat and said something quickly to the other, then thumbed an urgent gesture towards a car which had driven on to the lorry park and was heading for the rear of the cafe.

The two minders tensed up and exchanged a few words. Thompson threw down his cigarette and crushed it out, yanked open the driver’s door of the BMW and dropped into the seat. Gunk just threw his fag to one side and scurried around the car, skidding in the gravel, and dived into the front passenger seat.

‘ You see what I see?’ Terry said laconically. He had been observing the antics of the bodyguards too.

‘ I think we’re being set up here,’ Henry said, standing up quickly, knocking his boiling tea over.

‘ I want you to make this a very public execution,’ the Russian’s masters had told him. Being a former soldier and then a member of the world’s most ruthless intelligence agency, the KGB, he always carried out orders as instructed, even if he felt they were flawed. He would really have preferred to do something more subtle and classy — but if public was how they wanted it, public it would be.

Since the meeting in the hotel in Fleetwood, he had spent the next couple of nights in a Travelodge on the outskirts of Manchester, in the guise of a travelling salesmen. He was continually in touch, via the mobile, with Thompson, keeping abreast of the target’s present whereabouts and future plans. When he was told that the target had arranged business at a transport cafe, he was interested. Without having visited the place, it seemed a good location for a hit — next to a fast main road, close to a motorway junction, with a choice of direction depending on the circumstances prevailing at the time.

The Russian then reconnoitred the location, grabbing a cup of tea and using the toilets. Although he remained there a short time only, his experienced eyes — which had weighed up dozens of prospective assassination sites before — recorded everything and came to a conclusion: This would be the place where Jacky Lee would die.

At a second quick meeting with Thompson, who came alone this time, the Russian outlined his requirements and questioned Thompson deeply about the nature of the business Lee would be conducting at the cafe. Who was he meeting? Was he likely to be armed? Could he possibly constitute a threat?

When everything was answered to his satisfaction, he nodded.

It was a goer.

The Russian was assured that Johnny Snowden was the best getaway driver in the North-West, a big claim for a twenty-year-old. He had, he was told, six armed robberies to his credit and a multitude of other less serious crimes. He had outrun the cops on the four occasions he’d been pursued and was very much in demand for jobs. The Russian accepted the accolades, but Snowden’s past history did not interest him. Nor did any small talk, so when the youngster started chatting, he said, ‘Shut up. This is real business. Do your job, do it well and your reputation will be sealed for ever.’

Snowden closed his mouth.

‘ Cock up, however, and you’ll be dead,’ the Russian added in a friendly way.

They waited for the call in a country lane a short distance away from the cafe.

When it came, the Russian simply said, ‘Go,’ and pulled on his favourite garment — his stocking mask. Nothing, he believed, worked as well when it came to intimidation.

Snowden drove the Ford Mondeo, stolen, on false plates, down on to the A580 and into the lorry park adjoining the transport cafe, swinging wide to park behind the cafe.

The Russian saw Thompson and Elphick scrambling into their car and could not prevent a lip curl at the thought of his masters operating with such rank amateurs.

Then they were at the rear of the cafe. The Russian picked up the American Arms Spectre from the footwell and got casually out of the car. He was faced with two doors. The one on the right led directly into the kitchen; the one on the left was a fire door opening on to a short corridor off which the toilets were located, but which led into the cafe itself.

If Thompson had done his job right, this latter door should be unlocked.

It was.

‘ Can’t say I’m a happy Teddy here,’ was Terry’s understated response to the situation. He stood up a fraction more slowly than Henry.

They moved away from the table and stopped in their tracks at the sight of Jacky Lee emerging unconcerned from the toilet corridor. He was zipping up with a little jump and adjusting himself shamelessly. He brushed the front of his trousers where there was a little damp patch. Then he looked up out of the cafe door — which was all windows and a wooden frame — to see his BMW careering away across the lorry park.

Henry’s mind adjusted to this new development quickly. He had not expected to see Jacky Lee again because he believed Lee was part of the set-up. He thought Jacky had done a runner out of the back. Now there was a very different complexion to this: perhaps it was Jacky who was being set up?

A puzzled expression crossed Lee’s face. His bushy eyebrows knitted together over the bridge of his nose. He put his hands on his hips as a sign of confusion and stepped nearer to the door to get a better view of the retreating car. ‘What the fuck…?’ he started to say, turning his head to look at Henry.

The timing was impeccable. The Russian slid into the corridor the moment after Jacky Lee came out of the toilets and made his way back to the main body of the cafe. He recognised Lee immediately and that old twist of excitement knotted his lower stomach. Good luck favours the brave, he thought.

At the end of the corridor, because of the way the light from the glass door was falling, Lee was framed in a perfect silhouette. Just like a figure in the firing range — and this little job was turning out to be as academic as a training session. The Russian transferred the Spectre to his left hand, deciding to use the Browning instead which he drew from his waistband. A much better, more effective, close-quarters weapon.

Henry opened his mouth to say something to Lee, but no words ever left his mouth.

The sound of gunfire was tremendous. Suddenly the front of Lee’s chest exploded as though aliens were bursting out. He was driven forwards by the impact of the bullets, writhing as each one impacted his back, then exited through his chest. He was thrown against the door of the cafe — a sheet of normal glass that had never been replaced in twenty years. He crashed through it, fell, and a jagged, deadly shard of glass shaped like a stalagmite tore into his neck, another into his stomach.

The other diners uttered yells of disbelief and fear, diving for cover behind anything they could find. A waitress screamed and huddled herself into a ball, covering her head with her hands and a menu.

Henry counted six shots.

He started to move towards Lee who lay squirming face down in the glass. His back was a terrible bloody mess. The glass had deeply gouged his neck. It seemed incredible he could still be alive. He jerked involuntarily, his head moving back, releasing a perfect arc of blood from his jugular which rose, then died away to a splutter.

The Russian stepped out of the corridor, the Spectre waving warningly in his left hand, the Browning in his right.

Henry stopped, as did Terry.

The Russian shouted something indecipherable, followed quickly by the words, ‘Keep back.’ He edged towards Lee, eyes locked on Henry and Terry all the while. He aimed quickly and put two more bullets into the back of Lee’s head. That stopped him squirming. He then spun round and ran back down the corridor to the rear exit.

Henry stepped over to Lee. Trying to ignore the blood, he lifted Lee’s leather jacket and pulled out the handgun, finding it to be a two-inch barrelled Smith amp; Wesson revolver, Detective Special, a model Henry was familiar with.

It did not take the Brain of Britain to realise that the car which had driven round the back of the transport cafe as the BMW was driving away was probably involved in the shooting. Henry strode out of the door over Lee’s body and set off running along the front of the cafe where he figured the car was likely to appear.

As he rounded the end of the building, the Mondeo skidded away.

Henry saw two people on board. A young lad at the wheel — and the killer, still wearing the stocking mask. The car swerved on the gravel surface, the driver adjusting and readjusting, then regaining full control.

Henry dropped into a combat stance: feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent and flexible, gun in his right hand supported by his left, elbows locked, arms forming an isosceles triangle. He aimed at the driver, his finger curved around the trigger tight enough for the hammer to roll back. Then he thought, Shit, what am I doing?

The car hurtled past, out of the lorry park and headed west along the A580 towards the M6.

Henry thumbed the hammer back into place and lowered the weapon. He felt slightly sick. He had almost done a stupid thing in the heat of the moment — fired at someone who presented no threat. That would have taken a lot of explaining to a coroner’s court. He returned quickly to the murder scene and found Terry.

‘ Let’s get lost,’ he said to him.

Against all their instincts as cops, but in keeping with their undercover legends, they legged it.