by Nick Oldham
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 & 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.
Chapter Five
One and off, the argument had been raging since their arrests the previous Sunday. The tiny rooms of Cheryl’s grubby little council flat in Blackpool often rang to the high-decibel noise of her exchanging verbals with boyfriend Spencer. But that evening, drink entered the equation as, sooner rather than later, it was bound to do so.
Spencer had been out since lunchtime, drinking heavily with his churns, spending one of the many state benefits he claimed on the booze and then urinating it away against the porcelain. His favoured drink was bitter beer. He adored the stuff and managed to consume nine pints over the course of the afternoon.
When he rolled into Cheryl’s flat just after seven, holding a lukewarm fish-and-chip takeaway, he reeked of beer. On the journey from the chip shop to home the wrapping had started to work loose from around the food. Grease patches had seeped through the paper. He grabbed another beer from the fridge and plonked himself down on an easy chair in front of the stolen TV He flipped open the beer, emptied a large mouthful down his throat and unwrapped his meal.
His face was creased and mean. There were some grazes on his cheek where he’d exchanged blows with a ‘mate’ earlier in the afternoon. Nothing serious.
Cheryl was already in the flat, watching the news. She had been drinking too, having spent a couple of hours at a friend’s house, quaffing sweet Martinis. She was feeling pissed and rotten. Her eyes were red raw, she was tired and in no fit state to sign on at the police station between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., as her bail conditions stipulated. All she wanted to do was sit where she was, wrapped in a skimpy dressing gown, stare at the TV and continue boozing until her supply ran dry.
However, the unexpected return of Spencer crashing through the door, bearing food, was some sort of motivation to do something.
‘Give us a chip,’ she demanded.
He leaned forwards protectively over the meal which he’d spread out on the paper over his lap. ‘No, fuck off.’
‘Oh, come on, you tight-assed get,’ Cheryl whined. ‘I’m starving.’ She hoisted herself up from her position deep in the settee and reached across to help herself from Spencer’s pile of greasy chips.
He saw her hand approaching and moved his knees just far enough to keep the food out of her reach. ‘I said fuck off.’ He took a swig of beer, belched loudly from the pit of his guts.
‘Oh, come on,’ she pleaded, getting annoyed. ‘I haven’t had owt all day. I’m starving.’
He sighed, turned to look at her. ‘Why the fuck should I give you anything, eh? You stupid bitch. You deserve sod all.’
‘Oh, fucking forget it.’ She slumped back, folded her arms and crossed her legs haughtily.
‘No, I won’t forget it. I still want to know why you didn’t tell me about that fucking Charlie. If I’d known, I would’ve kept my gob shut on the plane, wouldn’t I? Then we could have sold the gear ourselves, made a few bob out of it. But no, you didn’t have the bottle to tell me, did ya?’
It was not so much the issue about carrying drugs that was driving a wedge between them, more the fact that Spencer felt cheated because he’d lost out on the opportunity to sell the drugs himself to his pals in Blackpool.
‘Coulda made a fortune,’ he wittered.
‘Oh, like, yeah,’ sneered Cheryl, ‘as if they’d really let you do that. Are you fucking stupid or something, Spencer? You could never have walked away with those drugs. You’d be dead if you did. . . I might be dead now, for all I know,’ she concluded desolately.<
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‘Bollocks,’ he spat in disbelief. ‘We could be rollin’ in it now, but because you never told me, we haven’t even got your pay packet, have we? An’ how much was that gonna be?’
‘Three hundred quid,’ she replied sheepishly.
‘And now we’ve got fuck all, you stupid cunt.’ Spencer folded a particularly large chip into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of beer.
‘Yeah, you’re dead right there.’ Cheryl’s face pinched tight. ‘I’ve got you and that’s as good as fuck all because I’m fucking sick to death of you.’
Spencer shrugged. He grabbed the TV remote and flicked channels to Star Trek. ‘You know what you can do.’
‘No, you know what you can do,’ she retorted, her anger bubble bursting. ‘It’s my flat, so you can go. Go on, piss off and leave me alone. I hate the fucking sight of you.’ Cheryl was now gearing up for full throttle and her mouth was beginning to take over before her alcohol-riddled brain cells advised caution. ‘It was a fucking pleasure to give that guy a blow job. At least he had a proper-sized dick.’
Spencer blinked as the words filtered through his own alcohol barrier.
Cheryl covered her mouth. Too late, the words had already left.
Spencer turned his bleary eyes to her. ‘Blow job? What blow job? What guy?’
‘The one I carried the drugs for.’
Spencer stared uncomprehendingly at her for a few silent moments, his mouth lolling open stupidly. One or two things slotted into place for him. Mysterious absences by Cheryl on their holiday. He’d not bothered about them at the time, mainly because he’d been drunk or recovering for the bulk of the time. And - over one two-day period - with a bunch of guys he’d met out there, he’d gone walkabout anyway and ended up screwing some nameless girl in an apartment somewhere in Los Cristianos. They had all screwed her and her four mates. Cheryl did not need to know about that, Spencer reasoned.
‘You slag!’ he uttered, as though disgusted by her behaviour. For a drunken person he moved quickly. He rose from the chair, shifting the fish-and-chip supper on to the palm of his right hand. He catapulted across the room and before she could react, he had slammed the takeaway full into her face, following it up with a punch and a scream.
Cheryl was a mean fighter. She had been raised tough in the world of alcoholic and abusive parents and children’s homes. One of her bare feet connected hard with Spencer’s scrotum, sending him stuttering back across the room, clutching his balls.
‘You bastard!’ Cheryl jumped to her feet, picking the broken fish and crushed chips off her face and out of her hair, throwing the bits down with exaggerated flicking of her fingers. ‘I’ll get you for that.’ She hunted round for a suitable weapon, found nothing, so went for Spencer like an alley cat.
He was no slouch in the fighting arena either, but the lucky strike on his testicles had taken his breath away. It was all he could do to fend off her blows. He went under until he was curled up in a tight ball with her raining punches and kicks on him - most fairly ineffectively - until she collapsed exhausted on the settee.
Silence fell between them, punctuated by the sound of the adventures of Captain Kirk on the TV.
Eventually and cautiously, Spencer raised his head. ‘You finished?’
She nodded. There was a tear in her eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘Yeah, me too.’
They were not the kind of couple who bore grudges against each other. They lived hand to mouth, mostly for the moment, wondering where their next drink was coming from, or their next spliff. They didn’t have the time or the intellectual capacity or complexity of thought to dwell on things for too long.
Still smeared in chip grease, Cheryl slid off the settee on to her knees and shuffled across to Spencer. He pushed himself into a sitting position. The pain in his lower abdomen had become a dull ache. ‘I didn’t mean what I said. I love you really.’
‘An’ I love you.’
Their mouths clashed and locked in a ferocious kiss.
‘I want a blow job too,’ Spencer broke off with a gasp.
‘Sure, sure,’ she panted, planting kisses all over Spencer’s spotty face and neck. She drew him on to the floor and pushed him back, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, followed by the zipper on his jeans. She rolled down his underpants to reveal his eager but droopy penis. Cheryl tried to hide her disappointment: The man who said his name was Loz, whom she had fellated on Tenerife in order to get the courier job, really did have a very large one. She took Spencer whole in her mouth and worked diligently on him. He reached down between her legs and inserted his fingers into her.
Billy Crane did not return to his home town of Blackburn. Instead, he was driven to the Lancashire coast where he took a room at the Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, which had been booked for him under an assumed name. The hotel was on the sea-front, North Shore, and was the one in which high-ranking politicians usually stayed during political conference week. He was shown to a suite on one corner of the building, overlooking the promenade. In the past, he was reliably informed by the porter, the room had been occupied by Prime Ministers during their stay at the resort.
When the porter left, Crane gazed round the room fairly unimpressed. It seemed a lot of money for not much. But it was fine for his needs and it was unlikely he would be recognised in this environment. He walked to the window and looked at the grey Irish Sea, his countenance set grim.
Then he lay on the wide bed, set his alarm and dozed off. Travel was very tiring. He woke before the alarm, showered, shaved and dressed smart but casual. Fifteen minutes later he was in the bar ordering a gin and tonic.
Not long after, another man sauntered in. Crane’s business partner. After a quick drink, they gravitated into the restaurant and ordered dinner.
Anyone observing them would have found it difficult to guess that between them, they operated one of the most successful drug-smuggling operations in Britain, or that, unless the observer could lip-read, their conversation that evening revolved around the subject of murder.
Totally naked, Cheryl and Spencer lay on the carpet, warming themselves next to the triple-bar electric fire.
Cheryl was dribbling beer into Spencer’s mouth from her own. Both were smoking, passing a tatty joint back and forth filled with very potent Moroccan skunk, giggling as the weed took effect. Their world was now a very pleasant, if slightly off-centre, place to be.
Reality did strike when Cheryl glanced up at the teddy-bear clock on the wall. She squinted at it, focused, and worked out it was ten past eight.
‘Oh shit.’ She pushed herself up. ‘I should’ve signed on. Fuck.’ She tried to get up, but Spencer pulled her back - a gesture that probably sealed their fate that night.
‘Fuck ‘em,’ he told her. ‘It’ll be all right. I should know - I’ve been on bail loadsa times.’ He manoeuvred her so that her small breasts were positioned over his face. He opened his mouth and sucked in the left nipple and a fair proportion of the mammary behind it, filling his mouth.
His name was Don Smith. He operated and controlled the British end of Billy Crane’s Tenerife-based drugs connection. Crane, Smith and another man had been the three who had committed the Building Society robbery in Blackburn in 1986; subsequent to that, Crane and Smith had served time together, though Smith’s sentence had been shorter than Crane’s. Their time banged up together had been the foundation of the drugs business, Crane being very much the man in charge.
‘I’m glad you decided to come over, Bill,’ Smith said. ‘We don’t see enough of each other.’
‘Let’s keep it that way, Don.’ Crane wiped his mouth as he finished the last of his soup. ‘You never know who’s watching us. It’s best we stay apart.’
‘Yeah, I know that. Communication being what it is, we don’t need to meet so much. But it is good to see you.’
Crane nodded in agreement.
‘I want to take advantage of you while you’re here,’ Smith went on. ‘I know you wa
nt to do the business and then get home quick, but I’ve had an approach from someone and I want you to meet him. Something I want you to consider.’ Smith was excited.
‘I’ve come for one thing only.’
‘I know, but this is well worthwhile, believe me. And,’ he said mysteriously, ‘there’s something else on top of that you’ll be interested in.’
Crane rolled his eyes. He did not have time for games.
‘Hey,’ Smith said placatingly, recognising he was beginning to wind his friend up. ‘Trust me.’
‘I do trust you, Don.’ A waiter arrived and removed their soup dishes. ‘I enjoyed that,’ Crane said to him.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Crane leaned on the table when he’d gone. ‘It’s not you I don’t trust.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s all the other cunts.’
‘Bill, believe me . . . everything tonight will be worth your while.’
Crane shrugged. ‘OK - so what about the first item on the agenda - fifty g’s worth of smack in police hands?’
‘As we speak, it’s being sorted.’
Detective Sergeant Danny Furness stared down at the assorted paperwork on her desk which contained figures, charts, graphs, crime-pattern analyses - all produced on Excel software in very pretty multi-coloured bar charts and pie charts - and rubbed her gritty eyes. She had been attempting to make sense of the statistics which told her, in a complicated format, that crime was rocketing unchecked throughout Blackpool and whatever the police tried to do was failing miserably. Unfortunately Danny had the unenviable task of communicating this bad news to the Divisional Management Team at their next meeting and explaining why things were going wrong.
She knew she was going to get a pasting.
‘Stuff it,’ she hissed, tidied all the papers up and dropped them into one of the wire baskets on her desk. It did not matter which one. They were all brimful of paper, everything crying out to be dealt with - now!
