by Nick Oldham
‘What can I do for you, Jacky?’
‘I want to know what you can offer me, Frank.’
Henry made a show of rolling his neck as if it was aching, letting his gaze drift slyly towards Natasha. She was looking away from him. ‘What do you want?’
Frank Jagger was a person who could get most things, but he specialised in booze.
‘Cheap spirits for a start.’ Jacky Lee stood up. ‘Come and have a look at this view,’ he said, taking a mug of coffee across to the picture window. Henry watched him. He was a squat, powerfully-built individual who moved with the confidence that comes from toughness. Henry joined him, admiring the development around the canal basin. The penthouse was in a very desirable position.
‘Nice,’ Henry murmured.
‘People seem to float to the surface in it,’ Lee ruminated. His face was contorted in frustration. ‘Pity, that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Henry probed, thinking: Come on, you bastard, admit what you’ve done.
‘Nah, nothing.’ Lee shook his head. Henry hid his disappointment and did not push the matter. ‘Cheap booze is what I want and fags, maybe.’
‘I can do both,’ Henry said. It was no boast.
‘OK then, let’s chat.’
Despite the sunshine, a cold wind was cutting in from the Irish Sea like razor blades. The Russian shivered and wrapped his winter coat tightly around himself. The chill reminded him of the old days, being frozen to the bone in the severe Russian climate. Not pleasant.
Nowadays he spent much of his spare time mooching around the Mediterranean, only returning to Russia when his masters demanded it.
Arrangements had been made to meet his contact here in Fleetwood, on the Lancashire coast. After a stroll around the small town, he wandered back into the North Euston Hotel and went to the bar where he ordered a coffee. Then he took his cup to a table from which he could easily see the revolving door at the main entrance, but where he could not easily be spotted by someone entering the hotel. He sat down to wait, checking his watch. It was almost 4 p.m.
Two men came into the hotel, walked past the desk and made purposefully for the tiny lift at the end of the foyer. One was carrying a briefcase.
From his position, the Russian watched them. He had never seen either man before, yet he knew they were the ones. His nostrils flared and a little flush of adrenaline gushed into his bloodstream.
The men stepped into the lift. The doors closed and the lift rose to the first floor.
The Russian was seething with anger. He had been told there would only be one contact. It was very unprofessional to send two.
He stood up and walked swiftly to the stairs.
The cases of Spencer Grayson and Cheryl Jones were the last to be heard that day at Blackpool Magistrates’ Court.
Spencer, sober, bad-tempered and reeking to high heaven, slouched defiantly in the dock.
Cheryl stood next to him, head bowed, terrified: not of the judicial consequences Gail would have been a godsend) but of the other, more sinister form of retribution she might have to face.
Their cases - bail hearings only - were dealt with swiftly. Both were remanded on bail to reappear before the court in three weeks’ time. Because of the additional charges levelled against Cheryl, extra conditions were imposed on her: her passport was confiscated and she was ordered to report twice daily to Blackpool police station and ‘sign on’.
The pair shuffled out of the court in silence and mooched moodily towards the town centre on their release. Neither noticed the man who was following them.
The two men were huddled by the room door, concentrating hard, paying no attention to what was going on around them. The corridor was dimly lit, shadows everywhere, enabling the Russian to tread with silence, unseen, towards them. His martial arts skills seemed to make him invisible.
He was on the men before they knew he was there. He chopped the neck of the first one, landing the hand-edge blow underneath the ear. The man crumbled like a bad wall.
The second man uttered something incomprehensible, but all he saw was the blur of something coming towards him in the half-light, felt a blinding crash of excruciating pain in his forehead and then the blackness of unconsciousness.
They awoke within seconds of each other, lying side by side on the double bed in the Russian’s hotel room. Their wrists were secured behind their backs and the position in which they found themselves was extremely painful and uncomfortable with little room to even wriggle.
The Russian had drawn the dressing-table chair up to the bed. He was sitting on it, legs crossed, leaning forwards with an elbow on his knee. Dangling loosely in his right hand was the Browning automatic; the weapon, combined with the stocking mask pulled tight over his face, distorting his features, made for a truly terrifying sight.
‘So, you wake up?’ he observed, purposely adopting a thick, stereotypical Russian accent, reminiscent of James Bond films.
The first man, named Gary Thompson, the one who should have come alone, focused his eyes. ‘What d’you think you’re playing at, you bastard?’ he demanded, struggling to free himself, but instead rolling precariously towards the edge of the bed. The Russian pushed him back using the bottom of his foot.
‘I don’t play at anything,’ the Russian replied evenly, a hint of irritation in his voice. ‘I follow instructions and expect others to do likewise.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘You came with a colleague. Our meeting was supposed to be one to one.’
Thompson’s mouth twisted with guilt. ‘So fucking what?’
‘I was naturally upset by the change of plan and wished to negotiate from a position of control, shall we say?’
‘You can say what you fucking well like. Now let me go or-’
‘What?’ the Russian asked sharply. ‘My friends in Russia will be very disappointed by this lack of professionalism on your part. You should have realised at an early stage in our relationship that we always stick to our word and demand that others do the same. It is not much to ask. So, why the two of you?’
Thompson glanced at the other man who had remained silent. He was a bruiser of a guy, shaven head, earring, fairly low intelligence. A goon. His name was Gunk Elphick. ‘He came to watch my back.’
The Russian withheld a guffaw. ‘You do not trust us?’
No reply.
The Russian sniffed, considered matters with a slow, thoughtful nodding of the head. He came to a decision. ‘I, as an act of goodwill, will show you that we still have faith in you. The job will be done, but I wish you to know that if you had done this in Moscow - turned up with more people than expected or arranged - you would both be dead now.’ He blinked underneath the stocking. ‘That is no boast. That is the reality of the Russian way of life. I would have killed you both without question. But as we are in England, a more civilised and forgiving society, I shall let it pass. . . this time.’ The last two words were spoken with a stone-cold certainty. ‘Now tell me about the target.’
Thompson nodded towards the briefcase on the dressing table. ‘There’s a couple of photos in there. Recent ones.’
The Russian pulled them out. ‘He looks a tough man.’
‘He is, so be careful. Do you think you can handle it?’
‘I’ve handled you two without too much difficulty, haven’t I?’ he responded coolly. ‘Right - I need you to keep me informed of his whereabouts over the next few days, his plans, his intended movements. Are you able to do that simple thing, follow that simple instruction?’
‘We live in his pocket, so it’s not a problem. We’ll contact you here.’
The Russian shook his head and pointed to a piece of paper on the bedside cabinet. ‘There is a mobile phone number on that. I will not be remaining here.’ He stood up. ‘It’s probably better you don’t know where I am. . . if only for your own safety.’
‘OK. Now, you going to let us go, or what?’ Thompson asked.
‘You are responsible for your predicam
ent.’ He reached for the door handle.
‘You chickenshit bastard!’ Gunk screamed.
The Russian’s hand hovered over the door handle. He crossed back into the room and stood by the bed. He raised his Browning and pointed it at Gunk’s head. The skinhead’s face contorted horribly at the prospect of a bullet. Thompson cowered away too.
Suddenly the Russian slid the gun into his jacket pocket and as he pulled his hand out, he slashed across the air to Gunk’s face. The stiletto shot down into his palm and he sliced it across Gunk’s earlobe, almost cutting it off with the deadly sharp blade.
‘Next time,’ the Russian said, turning to go, ‘I’ll cut your heart out.’
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 fi
fty 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.
