‘Come into money have ya, pet?’
He knelt alongside and picked up three or four of the notes that still lay on the floor and handed them to her with a quizzical look.
‘Bingo last night. Two hundred and fifty quid.’
She pushed the notes into her pocket, stood up and closed the locker door, but with him there, she was unable to do anything further to satisfy herself that the money was safe.
‘Looks like you’ve robbed the bloody tills, but if you take me out, pet, I’ll not let on,’ he chuckled.
‘Yeah, when you’ve left school you might get lucky.’
She pushed past him with a saucy smile and left the locker room, then waved to her friend, now busy with a queue of customers as she left the store. As she gained the street, she let out a huge gasp of air, realising she had virtually held her breath while hiding the cash. When clear of her workplace, she took the cash she had dropped from her pocket and quickly counted it. Two hundred and eighty quid in twenties but the bundle looked so thin. Just how much had she hidden in her locker? Must be thousands – but how many thousands? She was dying to count it all – to find out just how sweet was her revenge for the loss of Billy. She quickly put the cash neatly in her purse. She couldn’t help but worry that someone would go in her locker. Perhaps the lad from the stockroom. Did he believe her about the bingo win? As she walked, her breathing steadied and she rationalised that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box, and for now the cash was safe. She forced herself to think about what the hell to do next. She knew the money was a whole lot safer than she was.
By the time she’d collected her youngest from her mother’s and turned into her own street, she’d made some decisions. When Frame rang as he’d promised, she’d tell him the police had been round looking for him. That shouldn’t come as any surprise as he’d brought it up. If he mentioned the holdall, she’d tell him that she thought the police were now watching the house. That’d keep him away. She felt proud of herself for working it out. Proud but still frightened.
As she rounded a bend in the road, close to her house, Debbie stopped in her tracks, and once again found herself holding her breath. She spun the pushchair round and walked back the way she had come. Outside her house were three marked police cars with a uniformed copper standing guard at her wide-open front door.
*
At exactly that same moment, the blue Jag turned into the street adjoining Debbie’s. Frame had decided to collect the holdall and then go to another of his several girlfriends’ homes where they would lie low until it was time to do the job. His sense of excitement at this final robbery had grown during the trip back up north and he was keen to get on with things. They had got back up to Newcastle more quickly than he had anticipated and although it was earlier than he had agreed with Debbie, he tried ringing her. There was no answer.
‘Pull over, Mick,’ he instructed.
Keegan knew they were heading for Billy’s house and was amazed Frame was risking going anywhere near that bitch Debbie. He didn’t trust her. Look how she’d run straight into the arms of Frame after Billy had “disappeared”. He was so tightly wound. Frightened of what was going to happen tonight. Not frightened of the job. They’d planned that well and it would go off fine – as long as this dickhead Steve Long did as he was told. No, he was worried about what would happen after. He knew Frame needed him to skipper the boat, so he was at least safe until they got to Holland. But there was Long to be disposed of, and what did Frame really have in mind for him? He was itching to refuse to go anywhere near Billy’s house but knew Frame was getting sick of his anxieties, so he pulled in as he was bid.
Frame sat quietly tapping his mobile against his chin, deep in thought.
In the back of the car, Holland leaned forward and stuck his head between the front seats, still playing his part. ‘Where are we? What we stopped for?’
Keegan looked back at him and shook his head in disgust.
Frame ignored Holland’s questions. He tried Debbie again but with the same result. He didn’t want to hang about so decided to check out the house and use his own key if it all looked quiet. Although he was pretty sure her house was safe, as she and Billy hadn’t lived there long, he knew the police had more chance of tracing Billy due to his previous conviction.
‘Drive on, Mick. We need to go to Debbie’s.’
‘Bloody hell, Pete, why? For fuck’s sake, Billy lived there… they might have the address. Let’s just go to the boat.’ Keegan finally exploded.
Holland picked up on the past tense – Billy lived there. With Debbie? He lodged the information in his memory banks.
Calmly, Frame swivelled in his seat to face the driver. ‘I need to collect the gear. I don’t want to go near the boat until we cast off tonight. Now drive.’
‘Who are Debbie and Billy?’ piped up Holland.
Again he was ignored and Keegan pulled the car back into the light traffic on the estate heading towards Debbie’s home. The Jag approached the house from the opposite direction to that which Debbie had done only five minutes before, and just as for her the sight of the police activity came into view all of a sudden. They were within fifty yards of the police cars and travelling at about thirty miles an hour towards them and Keegan’s automatic reaction was to brake hard. The big car came to a sudden halt, which drew the immediate attention of the copper on duty at the front door.
‘Drive on. Drive on,’ hissed Frame.
They could each see that the copper had registered them and the car. He reached for his radio and strode down the short garden path, across the pavement and scruffy grass verge until he was in front of the car. He raised his right hand in the classic stop signal and began walking towards the still stationary Jag.
‘Go. Fucking go,’ yelled Frame.
With a screech of rubber, the big car shot forward and with a sickening crunch, the front offside wing struck the police officer.
It had only been within the last half-hour or so that he, like all others on duty in the city, had received the radio message to be on the lookout for the dark blue Jaguar containing three men believed to be in the Newcastle area and planning an armed robbery. Although not privy to all the details, he did know that the house in front of which he was standing guard was being searched in connection with the crimes already perpetrated by this same gang. So quickly joining the dots had been pretty simple. What was less simple was how to react in those split seconds – and he made the wrong but instinctive choice. He had only had the chance to excitedly shout into his radio ‘PC 987 to Control… urgent message,’ when that instinct had kicked in. As he folded over the wing of the car before somersaulting in the air to land on his back on the road, he was strangely aware of his radio crackling away and asking him to ‘Go ahead, 987’. As he looked at the strange position of his right leg, he felt no pain and was able to tell the control room exactly what his urgent message was all about.
As the powerful car shot past the three marked police cars, Holland looked back at the officer. He could see that he was alive and talking into his radio. He calmly reported what he had seen to Frame and Keegan but realised he had slipped out of role. How would Long have reacted?
‘Fucking hell,’ he laughed, ‘you bastards don’t mess about. He’s gon’ ’ave ’ell of a headache. But I reckon he’ll ’ave got the car number.’
Concentrating on their escape, neither Frame nor Keegan noticed Debbie as they sped past her, still walking away from her home with the pushchair and with her back to them. The speed of the car would have attracted anyone’s attention as it passed by on the narrow urban road, and she easily recognised it as the car she had seen Frame get into early that morning. She again made a mental note of the number and headed for the phone box at the end of the road.
‘Head for the industrial estate, Mick, we’ll have to dump the car,’ Frame commanded.
Holland had bee
n careful ever since entering the car at Ferrybridge not to leave his fingerprints in the vehicle, having used the sleeve of his jumper to both open and close the door. He needn’t have worried, as within the next five minutes they’d pulled up in a remote corner of a small industrial estate and, using a can of petrol from the boot, Keegan had torched the car. The three of them walked briskly through a series of alleyways onto a busy arterial road and then boarded a bus, where they sat well apart. Within half an hour, they were sitting in the small kitchen of a house in a completely different part of the city.
Frame had introduced the other two men to his girlfriend Stella, a reasonably attractive woman of about forty. Stella had immediately busied herself making them a pot of tea. Keegan had no idea who Stella was and Holland had no idea where they were. Despite trying his best to keep track during their escape from the torched car and subsequent bus journey, he was now completely disorientated. He had been impressed how quickly and decisively Frame had responded to the incident, which, he had now gathered from the other men’s conversations, had been outside Debbie’s house – where clearly at one time Billy had lived. Billy Pike presumably – the third man – where was he?
He realised how little the two men had let slip. During the journey north they had hardly spoken to each other, let alone to him. He knew nothing about the planned crime. The only snippets he had picked up were that Keegan had a trawler and Frame a yard. Where the hell was Pike, the third man Darnley had led him to expect? With no mobile and now apparently in hiding at Stella’s house, he couldn’t see how he was going to get a message to Darnley. But he needed to. It was obvious from the police presence at Debbie’s and the reaction of the officer they had run over, that the cops were aware of the blue Jag. How? Now they knew that three men had been in it. When he’d gone to meet Frame at Ferrybridge, just a few hours ago, Darnley had told him the job was going to be in Hull, probably next week. What had changed? He knew the crime was going to take place up here – presumably in Newcastle. What did the police know? What did Darnley know?
Despite his predicament, he remained icily calm and confident. He’d been in tricky situations before. Things had a way of working out. He wondered what Stella knew, if anything. She was obviously in thrall to the smooth-talking ex-army officer and seemingly not in the least concerned about why he had suddenly appeared on her doorstep with two mates. She handed out mugs of strong tea with a broad smile.
Frame pulled her to him and hugged her. ‘Thanks, love, we’ve just got a bit of a problem with the coppers… you know how it is. Okay if we stay here for a bit? We’ll be out your hair before bedtime.’
Stella looked blissfully unconcerned at this news, seemingly overjoyed to have him, and even his two mates, there.
‘Course, darling. I’ll have to nip out and get something for your tea, though. Not got enough in for four,’ clearly as pleased as punch to have the company.
‘You still got that holdall safe?’ Frame asked.
‘Of course,’ she responded, smiling proudly.
‘Good girl. Now just leave us for ten minutes while we have our tea. Get us a nice steak and all the trimmings,’ as he pulled two twenty-pound notes out of his wallet.
As she moved out of the kitchen into the small front hallway and began to pull on her coat, Keegan leaned towards Frame and hissed, ‘Bloody hell, Peter, who the hell is she? She shouldn’t be going out… she could grass us up.’
In character, Holland loudly joined Keegan’s objections. ‘Yeah, how do we know we can trust her? We’ve just nearly bloody killed a copper for fuck’s sake.’
He’d quickly decided to let Stella know they’d run over a police officer, hoping it might make her start to ask questions, and Frame or Keegan would have to respond. Something about tonight’s plans might spill out. She heard exactly what he had intended and marched back into the kitchen with her coat only half on.
‘Should have killed the black bastard as far as I’m concerned. Tell them you can trust me, Peter.’
Frame stood up beside her and helped her on with her coat, squeezing her shoulder in an expression of support before ushering her back into the hall and closing the door on her. As soon as he heard the front door slam, he opened the cupboard beneath the stairs, seconds later returning and dumping a navy blue holdall on the scuffed kitchen table. Without a word, he unloaded its contents. Three pairs of navy overalls, three navy balaclavas, three pairs of gloves, two baseball bats, a sawn-off shotgun and a box of cartridges. Clearly, there was only ever going to be three of them.
‘Stella’s sound. I’ve been seeing her for about six months and storing stuff here as well as on the Blaydon and at Debbie’s. This gear will do us for tonight.’
Holland picked up on the name Blaydon, surmising it was the name of Keegan’s trawler. He wanted to get them talking. He needed information. To get a reaction, he reached for the sawn-off and was surprised when Frame didn’t stop him. He handled it knowing that he would look like he knew what he was doing, breaking it open and looking down the barrels. Seeing it was unloaded, he flicked it shut.
‘Nice. Clean.’
He put it back on the table, wanting them to wonder how come he could handle the sawn-off so nonchalantly.
It was Keegan who asked the question. ‘You’ve handled one of them before. Tell us when and why.’
Holland subtly altered his Steve Long persona. ‘I’ve been around. I’m not one of Grantmore’s hired hands. He’s a mate and he asked me to do him a favour. Gun crime in Hull is as rare as rocking horse shit but I’m from Manchester and in the same line as Sean… massage parlours, girls, drugs… but over there you need a gun, so I know what I’m doing. And like Stella… you can trust me.’
Steve Long had raised his credibility a notch. Frame and Keegan exchanged glances and then Frame, much like he had done with Stella, squeezed his shoulder as a sign of solidarity.
‘Then you are going to come in very handy tonight. I suggest we put our feet up now, and then enjoy a nice steak dinner during which Mick and I will fill you in about tonight’s robbery. We’ll be leaving here about eleven and by just after midnight, you will be heading south considerably better off.’
Frame began stuffing the kit back into the holdall.
An element of success. A robbery taking place between eleven and midnight, so it must be pretty close by, probably in Newcastle itself? They’d be using a sawn-off shotgun, baseball bats and masks. The picture was building. The trawler was called Blaydon, Frame had a yard and clearly the police already knew about the address of Debbie and Billy Pike and had presumably found the stuff Frame had stored there. He knew Stella’s address. The potential sites for Darnley to eventually secure evidence were growing, but how could he alert him and prevent tonight’s robbery?
‘Heading back south after midnight. How’s that gon’ ’appen then?’ Holland asked.
‘We lost the Jag but I’ve got another motor ready to use tonight. You can take that when the job’s done. Just dump it in the car park at Ferrybridge.’
‘But what about you two?’
Frame grinned at Keegan.
‘We’ll be leaving by other means of transport. Won’t be needing a car, so it’s all yours.’
Keegan’s boat? Another piece in the jigsaw.
But Keegan exploded: ‘Another car, a second safe house, a second bloody girlfriend, another firearm… what else don’t I know?’
Frame just smiled and quietly said, ‘Remember Billy.’
Holland held his breath. This had been voiced as a clear threat.
Keegan visibly shrunk and almost whispered, ‘After Billy, how can I ever trust you?’
Holland could see Frame was furious at Keegan, and decided to push things further, hoping for more revelations.
‘Christ, if he don’t know what’s going on and I know sweet fuck-all, how the ’ell do we pull this off tonight?’ He prodded
Frame in the chest. ‘I want some details… now.’
Frame grabbed the hand that had prodded him and in one fluid movement twisted it viciously up Holland’s back, before forcing him face down onto the top of the holdall that still sat on the table. He continued to force the arm further towards Holland’s shoulders while bending over and whispering in his ear.
‘You’ll find out when I’m ready to share it with you. I do not take risks and at this stage you are a risk. In less than eight hours, you will be ten grand richer and on your way home. Until then, just keep your mouth shut.’
He gave Holland’s arm a final shove and then let go of him. Keegan looked as if he was about to continue with his objections but then decided against it. Holland straightened up, rubbing at his painful arm, concluding he too had best remain quiet. From their short exchange about Billy Pike, he now guessed that Frame had disposed of him. Presumably like Emmerson he had become a risk. No wonder Keegan was so wound up.
The small kitchen became claustrophobically quiet, each man apparently consumed by his own thoughts, sipping at their mugs of strong tea. After about ten minutes of silence, Frame pushed back his chair and went out into the small rear garden where he lit a cigarette. Keegan joined him and the two of them began to talk, and from their demeanour and glances towards the kitchen, it was obvious to Holland that he was the main topic of conversation. He used the opportunity to carefully wash the mugs they had each used, conscious that at some point he also needed to remove his fingerprints from the shotgun.
For the first time since he had met the two men, he began to feel uneasy. Frame was highly aggressive and seemingly ruthlessly efficient – in all likelihood a psychopath. It was patently obvious that Keegan no longer trusted him and was totally strung out – a time bomb waiting to explode. Holland looked at his watch – three thirty. In about eight hours, he was going to have to take part in an armed robbery with these two mad bastards, unless he could somehow get in touch with Darnley. He considered waiting for the opportunity to just clear out and let Darnley know what he knew. But if he disappeared, they’d do likewise and he didn’t know their target so nothing would be gained. It wasn’t hard for him to remember why he was there. Getting them meant getting Grantmore. Revenge.
A Duty of Revenge Page 28
