The Last Big Job

by Nick Oldham

  That night, as Henry Christie cruised through the streets of Manchester in the firm’s Jaguar XJS, eventually finding a parking spot, the city was heaving with bodies. It was a cold night, but that did not stop most of the young men on the prowl from dressing in jeans and skimpy T-shirts or vests. The women were no more sensible; their skirts were nothing more than wide belts, displaying a mixed variety of legs and ankles, and their tops were paper-thin and appeared to be several sizes too small for their chests.

  Henry, with his leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder, did not look too much out of place. He might have felt like the oldest swinger in town, but in the persona of Frank Jagger he swaggered confidently amongst the crowds, smiling at the women, scowling dangerously at the lads who were happy to avoid this older, tough-looking guy, giving him a wide berth.

  Music, occasionally muted, blaring mostly, emanated from the licensed premises, betraying their characters: heavy rock, disco, jungle or pop. The smell of greasy fast food invaded Henry’s nostrils as well as the acrid scent of grass.

  Everyone was ecstatic. There was not the ever-present lurking atmosphere of violence that was so apparent in other big cities. People were out here to enjoy themselves, though maybe the highly visible cops played their part too.

  Henry threaded his way through the city centre until he arrived at the front door of ‘Angel’s Silver’ off Cross Street. It was close to midnight and a long queue waited patiently for admission into the night club. Some people had a horrendously long wait ahead of them as the doormen were allowing only a couple or three people in at a time. Henry knew this was a good club and had he been twenty-odd years younger, he would have meekly joined the queue.

  Frank Jagger did not have the time to hang around.

  He sauntered down the line, aware of eyes following him, mostly angry ones because they could sense he was about to jump the whole lot of them and walk straight in. He ignored the looks, keeping a thin smile on his face.

  When he reached the front, he waited patiently as the doors were opened and a giggling couple admitted. The doormen turned out towards the queue, both dressed in black trousers and dark red T-shirts, probably to hide the bloodstains, Henry thought.

  They looked formidable. Non-nonsense bastards. They sneered down their noses at Henry, arms folded across their chests, aware that they could make or break people’s nights out.

  ‘What?’ one said. He had a shaved head, goatee beard, earrings and forearms as thick as car tyres, plastered with very tasteful tattoos. He did not wait for an answer from Henry. ‘The back of the queue is that way.’ He raised a forefinger. ‘So fuck off and find it. There’s no favours here, pal,’

  Henry moved in close to him. The guy tensed up, expecting violence. ‘I’m here to see Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick. They’re expecting me. I’m Frank Jagger.’

  The bouncer deflated and opened the door with a quiet, ‘Sorry.’

  Henry entered the club, accompanied by cat-calls from the patient queue. He gave them a middle-finger salute.

  In the steamy seaside resort of Blackpool, someone else was entering a night club at exactly the same time as Henry.

  Danny Furness had attended the evening debrief and listened intently as investigating officers brought the SIO team up-to-date with progress so far. In a nutshell there had been none. Although Danny knew she should not have been pleased by the news, in a wicked sort of way she was glad everyone else was getting nowhere. Just like her.

  She had been very tired and had made a commitment to herself that she would go straight home to bed.

  Her willpower was tremendous.

  At the very moment one of her fellow detectives asked her if she wished to join him and a few others for a bevy in a local pub, her resolve to go home came down faster than the Berlin Wall. She said yes. All of a sudden her taste buds were demanding that a cool Stella Artois and lime should be showered over them. Once that image was fixed, there was no turning back for Danny.

  It was about time she went out with a group of people from work, she justified to herself. Up to now, since Jack had killed himself, she had only been out with close friends on sour, introverted nights, often ending in tears. She had never let her hair down, hiked up her skirt and had a good laugh.

  Danny needed a bit of a bender. She had to move on, stop thinking about the past, stop moping about Henry Christie, get on with her life, get it lived.

  And the way to kicks tart it might just be a couple of drinks, a few ciggies, and a belly laugh or two at some inappropriate jokes.

  Even before leaving the police station, her intended alcoholic intake had doubled. Still, what was the harm? A couple or three halves ... she could easily drive home on that. Well under the limit. No problem.

  The Murder Squad were in good fettle. Despite their lack of progress they were all buoyant and cheerful. It was early days, there were so many things to go on and all were confident of a quick result. And a good team-building session was exactly what was needed to keep the momentum going - that and the fact that for at least another week, overtime was not an issue.

  By the time Danny had consumed her fourth half-lager, moved on to dry white wine and soda and fired up her sixth cigarette on the trot, the determination to keep consumption down had disappeared into the smoky atmosphere. She was well into the dynamics of the session, which looked like being a good one and she didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone or anything other than getting ‘rat-arsed’, going to a club for a dance and then getting a mouth-charring Vindaloo.

  Which is why she found herself, surrounded by half a dozen male detectives, heaving her way to the front of a queue outside a night club in the resort, ignoring shouts from the people who were waiting, huddled against a fierce biting wind swirling in from the sea and being allowed in on the production of what is affectionately referred to as the ‘International Club Card’ - otherwise known as a warrant card.

  The fact that every other detective was a man, each one of them with designs on getting into her knickers, did not put Danny off at all. She was going to thoroughly enjoy the night and tease all their pricks and egos if need be . . . unless one of them really took her fancy and she did more than tease.

  Colin Hodge was more afraid than he had ever been in his life. The fear gripped him like a beast, tearing at his intestines and his chest. He was literally shaking with it. He even held his hand up to confirm it; it vibrated visibly. He reached out and clicked the bedside light off, plunging the room into total darkness for a moment or two before his eyes adjusted.

  He rolled off the bed and stood up. His legs were weak. He walked slowly towards the window and pulled the curtain back half an inch. Outside was the garden, big and well-tended. Beyond a line of lime trees was a high wall, illuminated by upward-facing lamps set into the ground. Several lines of razor wire ran along the top of the wall, keeping people in as well as out.

  His eyes focused on the ornamental bars just outside his window. It was possible to open the window, but there was no way to climb out and drop the fifteen or so feet to the gravel path and escape.

  A movement in the garden caused him to raise his eyes. He frowned as he caught sight of a dark shape moving slowly through the shrubs and trees. Hodge watched the figure carefully, then clocked another figure padding along close behind. A man and a very large dog. The man - Hodge recognised him as the driver of the Mercedes from earlier - clutched something across his chest. A gun of some sort.

  Hodge winced. His heart surged and a pain shot across his shoulder, then was gone. Indigestion caused by stress. He let the curtain slip back into place.

  He walked across the room, tried the door handle again.

  Locked.

  He returned to the bed and sat down, dropping his head into his hands.

  A prisoner.

  The booze and the atmosphere turned Danny into a flirt. She danced shamelessly with each of the men in her party, moving her butt and breasts provocatively to the rhythm of ‘Disco Inferno
’ and other such classics. Often she draped her arms around the neck of her dancing partner. Often she ground her pelvis against their hips. In a fairly short time she got every one of them thinking they were in with a chance. The truth was, not one of them did anything for her.

  And then she spotted Detective Rik Dean across the other side of the dance-floor. He was watching her antics with a wry smile on his face. Danny knew Rik had a mega-reputation as a seducer of policewomen and she knew why: he was charming, good-looking, with dark eyes which reminded her of Elvis Presley, a nicely toned body with a rear end she would have loved to dig her fingernails into, and (reportedly) he always let the lady come first.

  Rik had only recently been transferred on to the CID and normally worked in Preston, though he lived in Blackpool. He had then been seconded temporarily to the Conference Planning Team at Headquarters, the team specifically dedicated to organising the policing operation of the Labour Party conference held later in the year in Blackpool. Rik was on the vetting team.

  Drink, that wonderful stripper of inhibition, ensured that Danny weaved unsteadily across the dance-floor and presented herself in front of Rik like a debutante - but without the class. A naughty smile played on her lips. Rik’s wonderful eyes regarded her with a mixture of warmth and humour. They were definitely ‘come to bed’ eyes.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, suppressing a hiccup.

  Rik nodded.

  Danny briefly cast her eyes back to the table around which the Murder Squad were huddled. They glared back, each one with a face like thunder as they saw their chance of a sexual conquest slip through their fingers like sand.

  ‘You with anybody?’

  ‘Only my mate,’ Rik replied.

  ‘Good,’ said Danny firmly. She took a long drink and handed her empty glass to him. ‘White wine and soda.’

  Henry lounged indolently at one of the bars in the night club. He surveyed the action taking place in front of him. In his hand was a pint of lager which he sipped very slowly because it had cost him £4.00. He was going to make it last, even if it had been bought on expenses.

  ‘Angel’s Silver’ was a big club with several dance-floors dotted around the ground-floor level, accompanied by a number of themed bars. A huge light, sound and video system hung from the ceiling like a clinging insect, thumping out bass lines capable of mushing brain-matter into pulp. Several sets of stairs led up to the first-floor level where there were more bars, a separate dance-floor playing smoochy music, and a restaurant serving anything from burgers to a la carte; several places offered good vantage points down into the lower disco area.

  Then there was another set of stairs which led up to the second-floor offices. Henry was positioned at a bar near to these.

  On entering the club he had mooched around the place, unable to see Thompson or Elphick. It was simply a matter of waiting. They would show up sooner or later.

  He sipped his drink. It tasted as if it had been diluted by tap water, warm tap water at that. Not that he was a beer connoisseur, but Henry knew enough about the stuff to realise when he was drinking shite.

  He was desperately trying to keep on track in the role of Jagger, but he was struggling because of the turmoil he had experienced at home over the last couple of days.

  To say that his wife, Kate, had been unresponsive to his flowers and sexual advances as a form of appeasement was an understatement. She had not even been at home for him to try initially and he had waited in all that first afternoon wondering where the hell she was on her day off. He learned when his daughters came home from school.

  ‘Mummy has gone into full-time work,’ Leanne, his younger daughter, announced to him. ‘She said she might as well because you’re never home’.

  ‘And,’ said Jenny, the elder, now in her first year of A-levels, ‘she’s really pissed off at you, Dad.’

  That evening, when Kate landed home, tired and irritated, a major row erupted which Henry did not handle well at all. ‘What about the kids?’ he had demanded at one point. ‘You should be at home when they get in from school.’

  ‘Should I?’ Kate said. ‘You never have been.’

  ‘And what’s all this about full-time work? We don’t need the money. It’s stupid.’

  ‘Stupid?’ Kate picked up on the inadvisable word. ‘You’re telling me I’m stupid, are you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just not necessary for you to work full-time, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘I wouldn’t work full-time, if you were at home when you should be. I’ve had enough of this. I’m off out to my dance-class.’

  ‘Dance-class?’ Henry had exploded. ‘When did you start that?’

  She didn’t even bother to reply and did not come home until gone eleven, by which time Henry was in bed, fast asleep.

  And that set the tone for his break at home.

  A lump of bile rose in his throat. He took another drink of the weak beer, this time a long draught, and realised he should not be here. He should have been at home, sorting out his domestic problems. And yet, there was something inside him that kept him back from going home, and it wasn’t just the job...

  At that moment Gunk Elphick came down the stairs which led up to the offices and beckoned Henry towards him.

  Frank Jagger clicked into gear.

  Elphick led Henry up the stairs, through a heavy door which closed automatically behind him, on to a landing. The sound of the club became muted. Henry was thankful for that. The reduction in volume assisted him to think more clearly. The landing led to a further set of steps which opened out into a wide, deeply carpeted hallway, off which were several doors.

  Gunk signalled Henry with a hand gesture and walked down the hall, turning without knocking into the third door along. Henry followed nonchalantly.

  There was a small office behind the door containing a desk and chair. Behind the desk was another door which Gunk shouldered his way through, Henry at his heels.

  The inner office was much bigger. Henry’s eyes quickly circumnavigated the room. There was a large, leather-topped mahogany desk with executive swivel chair; on the desktop was a blotter and a laptop. Behind the desk was a large window which, if Henry’s geography was correct, looked out over Cross Street. To one side of the desk were two massive Chesterfield settees in red leather - a style of furniture that never appealed to Henry, who was a G-plan man at heart. The Chesterfields faced each other square on, separated by a glass-topped coffee table. Up against another wall was a filing cabinet and on another were a couple of TV monitors, one which had a screen split into half a dozen images, showing scenes from within the night club below, transmitted from CCTV cameras dotted strategically around the club.

  Henry’s eyes returned to the Chesterfields. On one sat Gary Thompson; on the other sat a mean, sleek-looking individual, but rather pasty-faced. He reminded Henry of the 1970’s version of Bryan Ferry.

  ‘Hey, Frankie baby,’ Thompson boomed loudly, ‘how you doing?’

  ‘I’m doing good,’ Henry nodded.

  Less than a second later, Henry was not doing good at all.

  Gunk Elphick, who had entered the room ahead of Henry – a good, psychological manoeuvre designed to put Henry subconsciously at ease - spun round unexpectedly, at a speed Henry could not have anticipated, and hit him hard on the side of the head. Henry flew across the carpet on to the sharp edge of a filing cabinet. For a moment he saw stars and moons, and it felt like his brain had become detached from its moorings. He did not have any time to consider this, because Gunk danced across the room after him and followed up the first punch with one to the pit of the stomach, and then another to the opposite side of Henry’s head.

  Before Henry could sink into disorientated oblivion, Gunk stepped in real close, head-butted the bridge of the detective’s nose and jabbed his right knee into Henry’s testicles. Henry pitched sideways and slithered down the wall, doubled up with the terrible shocking pain roasting up from his balls, yet with both hands cupped over his
face, stemming the blood flow from his nostrils.

  Gunk was ruthless.

  If Henry thought that was the end of the matter, he was wrong. Gunk’s steel-toe-capped Doc Martens booted him several times in the ribs as he lay squirming in agony. Then he lifted Henry on to his back, grabbed the front of his bloodstained jumper and hauled him to his feet.

  Henry reeled, uttering gibberish, swearwords and blasphemy.

  Gunk dragged him across the room towards the desk, then forced him down on to his knees in a praying position and rammed the side of Henry’s face into the desktop. Gunk stood behind him, knees jammed into his shoulder-blades, pressing Henry’s chest against the desk and skewering his features whilst blood and snot flowed from his nose, mixing with saliva dribbling from his twisted mouth.

  Gunk put his mouth to Henry’s ear. ‘Right, you cunt,’ he said. Then he reached down and pulled up Henry’s jumper, running his harsh hands over Henry’s chest, stomach and back.

  ‘Nothing there, Gazzer,’ Gunk said to Thompson.

  ‘Strip the fucker,’ Thompson shouted. He had been watching the beating from the comfort of the Chesterfield, legs crossed, relaxed.

  ‘On your fucking feet,’ Gunk growled. He heaved Henry up. ‘Come on, get up.’

  ‘What. . . Why . . .?’ Henry spluttered, hardly able to balance.

  ‘Now you can do this hard or easy,’ Gunk explained. ‘Get your clothes off.’

  ‘But ... why?’

  Gunk slammed an open hand across Henry’s head, lifting the detective off his feet, reeling him round full circle and depositing him in a heap on the floor. Henry regained his hands and knees, shaking his head, aware of blood dripping on the carpet.

  Gunk leaned over. ‘Take your kit off, or I’ll kill you now.’

  Henry rocked back on to his haunches and eased the V-neck jumper over his head, dropping it on to the floor. He wore nothing underneath it. He struggled to his feet, stage by stage, unbuckled his belt, waistband, and unzipped his chinos. He let them drop to his ankle. He swayed, only just able to remain standing.