The Last Big Job

by Nick Oldham

  Danny - there was no need for telepathy because she could read his face like a book - suddenly realised what he was going to do.

  ‘No,’ she warned him.

  He revved the engine, gave her an evil ‘sideways’, released the clutch and almost stood upright on the gas pedal. The wheels screeched and the car lurched towards the impossible gap. Henry held on tight to the steering wheel. Danny whimpered, cowered and covered her eyes in horror. ‘My car, my car,’ she cried.

  At the very last moment, the driver suffered the gravest doubts as to whether the little sports car would be narrow enough to squeeze through and come out the other side in a fit state to keep working.

  By then it was too late to brake.

  ‘Breathe in,’ Henry suggested.

  Danny clamped her eyes tight shut.

  Many years before, as a young, bright and often very stupid and immature uniformed PC, Henry had become somewhat of an expert in getting police cars, vans, Land Rovers and the like, through unlikely gaps between fence posts, bollards and all other manner of very narrow places. There had been occasional scrapes, but generally his reckoning had been perfect. All it took, he boasted to his colleagues, was nerve, skill and the innate ability to line up the vehicle at the correct angle.

  But now, the older man, whose self-judgement was muddied by the passage of time, was horrified to see the fast-approaching gap between the bollards getting tighter and tighter and tighter - and then suddenly he had no choice because the car was in there and he had to keep going - or get stuck.

  Snap! Snap!

  The wing mirrors were shorn off with clinical precision.

  And that was it. He was through. He whinnied an almost hysterical roar of triumph.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Danny yelled. ‘My car!’ Henry careered on to the opposite side of the road, wrestling with the tiny steering wheel, causing a car which was hurtling down the road to brake, swerve and pass with an enraged blast of the horn from a driver who had been certain his number was up.

  ‘We haven’t finished yet,’ Henry said grimly.

  ‘You’d better be sure this is the right guy,’ Danny warned him.

  Underneath, however, she was secretly exhilarated both by the chase and the change in Henry Christie as the cop in him had slicked back into place. Even if it was a cop suffering from the ‘red mist syndrome’.

  A hundred yards down the A59, he slammed on sharply, lifting the rear end of the car, yanked the steering wheel down to the left and mounted the kerb with a crash of front bumper and a sickening scrape of sump.

  He drove across the pavement and on to a short footpath which led through to a cul-de-sac abutting the dual carriageway. As the MX-5 bounced down, a car in front of them tore away from the side of the road, slithering. It was a white Ford Escort XR3i. Though now a few years old it had been lovingly maintained by a careful owner who, at the moment, beavering away in her office in Preston, was blissfully unaware the car had been stolen. It could still pick up its skirts. The driver looked back over his shoulder and saw the MX-5 behind. He jumped to the right conclusion.

  The cops were on his tail.

  He cursed with a violent tongue and rammed the accelerator to the floor. At the same time he leaned across into the passenger footwell with his left hand and picked up the revolver lying there. He slotted it, barrel down, between his thighs.

  In the MX-5 Henry asked Danny if she had a personal radio with her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Looks like we’re on our own,’ he breathed philosophically.

  The MX-5 was right up the rear end of the Escort. Henry was determined this was going to be a victory.

  As the driver of the Escort sped towards the junction with what used to be the main road between Preston and Liverpool before the dual carriageway had been built, he was faced with a major decision.

  To go right would mean travelling in the direction of Preston. Busy roads, built-up areas, slow-moving traffic, lots of cops. But also lots of rat runs, possibilities to ditch the motor and leg it over the fences, gardens and down back alleys.

  Turning left would take him towards more rural areas. Fast-winding roads, fields, cows, fewer cops. And also the chance to outpace and out-manoeuvre the bastard behind.

  Both ways had good and bad selling points.

  The only reason, in the end, the driver chose to go left was for practical driving purposes only. It was easier to negotiate the left-hand turn at speed. So without any noticeable reduction in mph, he skidded out of the side road, slewing sideways across the tarmac. He wrestled with the wheel, almost losing the car in the gardens opposite. Then he regained control and gunned it away.

  Ahead of him was a tractor, pulling an empty, flat trailer, trundling merrily along. Easy to pass.

  Behind, Henry edged out of the side road with more prudence than his prey. From bitter experience, he knew that fully liveried cop cars are far less likely to get hit than plain ones.

  Intending to shoot by the agricultural combination, the driver of the Escort veered out on to the wrong side of the road, desperate to put the farm vehicles between himself and the pursuing Mazda.

  And then the tractor driver did something that happens far too regularly on country roads.

  He fucked-up the townie driver.

  Without a signal, without a warning, not even a backward glance, he turned right across the path of the overtaking car.

  The Escort driver had nowhere to go. Braking was useless, quick manoeuvring was out of the question. He screamed.

  The front end of the Escort smashed into the coupling between the rear of the tractor and the front of the trailer. The roof of the car was effectively sliced off, but the rest of the car did not continue to go underneath the trailer and come out of the other side to continue a comic pursuit. It became a tangled, mangled, twisted mess.

  The driver was killed instantly. His head was severed from his body with the efficiency of a guillotine.

  Henry Christie found it a hundred yards back down the road where it had rolled face down into a grate.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took longer than anticipated to carry out the transfer. There were fifty money-containers constructed of Kevlar-steel, all about the dimension of a medium-sized suitcase. They were all very heavy indeed and must have been tightly packed inside. Even allowing for a prearranged systematic transfer, there was a very edgy ten minutes during which everyone of the team felt vulnerable and exposed as they passed the containers from the back of the security van, down the line, into the back of the Sherpa.

  Then it was done. The money was in. Crane and Smith slammed the rear doors shut.

  Hawker jumped into the driver’s seat of the security van and started the engine. A minute later he was on the M6 heading south. Behind him, in one of the Audis, was Price. Their task was to run the van down to Staffordshire and dump it about a mile away from the gates of the security waste-disposal unit. By doing this, time would be bought for Crane and Smith to sort out the money as necessary - if the radio-control room of the security company were not alarmed by the length of the stoppage which would have been transmitted to them from the tracker unit fitted to the van.

  Putting their minds at rest was Hawker’s first job.

  ‘Alpha One to base, Alpha One,’ he called up on the radio system.

  ‘Alpha One - go ahead. We’ve been concerned.’

  ‘All OK. Repeat, all OK,’ Hawker said coolly. ‘A bad case of the runs in here today, but we’re back on the road now. Please inform the waste centre we’ll be running late.’

  ‘Roger - wilco.’

  The money weighed down the back of the Sherpa, making steering light and very imprecise. Crane edged slowly away from between the two HGVs, but instead of driving on to the motorway, he went up the Staff Only road at the back of the service area, turned right at the end of it, and drove over the motorway towards the A6. From there he would travel north up to Lancaster and then back over to the warehouse in Mor
ecambe.

  While he drove, Smith busied himself with a mobile phone and left a message on a pager.

  In the truckers’ cafe on the northbound side of the service area, two lorry drivers had been dawdling over a long meal and numerous cups of coffee. One of them received Smith’s pager message. He looked up at the other man and nodded. ‘Time to move.’ These were the two men who had earlier parked the two curtainsided heavy goods vehicles parallel to each other, leaving a space wide enough for the security van to squeeze into. They paid for their grub, then walked across the covered footbridge to the southbound side of the services. Their task was to now abandon the HGVs. A few moments later both were thundering down the motorway. Unbeknown to one of them, he was carrying four corpses.

  Smith slid his mobile phone on to the dash. ‘That went like a fucking dream, even if I say so myself.’

  Crane nodded grimly. He negotiated a tight curve in the road.

  ‘No cops, nothing,’ Smith said. ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘They’ll be wondering what’s hit them,’ Crane agreed. He checked his mirrors. Close behind was the Audi sports car driven by Gunk Elphick. Thompson was in the passenger seat, Drozdov in the rear. Crane recalled the Russian’s actions in swiftly disposing of the two security guards, almost as a challenge. The man was a ruthless, clinical killer, someone to be wary of. ‘It’s not over yet,’ Crane said. ‘Not by a long chalk.’

  Henry remembered that when he had joined the police twenty-odd years earlier he had actually been issued with a piece of yellow chalk; it had come with his appointments - his staff and handcuffs - and also a tape measure and two pairs of white cotton gloves. He had only ever used the chalk once and had lost the tape measure and gloves. He was thinking about this because he was watching a traffic officer dutifully marking the position of the vehicles in the road with her piece of trusty yellow chalk. Subsequently she would measure up the scene and draw a plan of the accident.

  The road was closed in both directions, completely blocked, probably for several hours to come. The traffic department, now renamed the Road Safety Department, had moved in and taken control. The Fire Brigade were busy disentangling the gnarled wreckage of the tractor/trailer unit and the Ford Escort. It was proving a difficult thing to achieve and was made all the more distasteful by the ghost-like presence of the headless body trapped in the driver’s seat, still gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

  Henry and Danny stood a little way back, leaning on her scratched and battered MX-5.

  Henry’s euphoria at the chase had dissipated; his excitement gone. He was starting to feel cold and not a little dithery. Maybe shock was setting in. His hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets.

  Next to him, Danny stood there arms folded, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She was slightly disgusted with herself in that she was more concerned with her damaged car than a fatal road traffic accident victim. She was about to remonstrate with Henry but stopped when she caught sight of FB approaching, purpose in his stride and a bundle of something in his hands.

  ‘Yours, I believe,’ he said, presenting Danny with two smashed side mirrors. She took them from him and tossed them into the back of the MX-5. To Henry he said, ‘Is this the guy who did the ‘copter?’ He jerked his thumb towards the carnage.

  Henry looked down at FB. He was much taller than him. ‘I think so.’

  FB chortled with disbelief. ‘You think so? Fuck me, that’s brilliant. You chase some poor fucker and chop his friggin’ head off - and you think so? For your sake, it better be right, otherwise you’ve some real hard explaining to do - because I won’t be doing it for you when the press come snapping, understand?’

  Henry shrugged. He had expected nothing more.

  ‘What a bleedin’ mess, this and the bomb scare at Control Room. . .’ FB was saying to no one in particular when one of the traffic officers came from the crash scene and said, ‘Excuse me - found this tucked down between the dead guy’s legs.’ She held up a revolver between finger and thumb. A blob of blood dribbled off the end of the barrel.

  FB eyed Henry, who allowed himself a wry, slightly victorious smile. ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ FB said, licking his lips.

  ‘Aren’t I just?’ said Henry. To the traffic officer he said, ‘Get someone from an ARV to check it over, make it safe, then get it bagged up for evidence.’ The policewoman moved away.

  Henry perched a cheek of his backside on the edge of the front wing of Danny’s damaged car. ‘There’s another thing,’ he said to FB. ‘The guy’s got previous for damaging police property.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I recognise him, what’s left of him - the head, that is.’ Unusually, FB was lost for words. Danny swivelled, snatched her cigarette out and looked at Henry, awestruck.

  ‘You recognise him! You didn’t tell me that,’ she said, almost stamping her feet.

  ‘Yeah, well ... you should know him, too,’ Henry told her. ‘Something we’ve already been talking about today. 1986 - remember?’

  ‘We were talking about Billy Crane, weren’t we? That’s not him, is it?’

  FB’s ears pricked up at the mention of the name.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Henry said. ‘You mentioned you locked someone else up that night, didn’t you? A police dog bit him after he’d set fire to a few cop cars in the yard at Northgate.’

  ‘You mean that’s ..?’ She couldn’t remember his name. ‘But I’ve had a look. I didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘It’s not that easy to recognise a head, especially when it’s been sliced off at the neck, flattened and bounced down the road like a football. Go and have another look,’ Henry suggested.

  ‘I will.’ Danny walked towards the ambulance.

  FB stepped close to Henry and pointed at him thoughtfully.

  FB was one of the few ACCs in the country who had served in only one Force, having risen from PC to his present rank in Lancashire. He knew that if he aspired to become a Chief Constable he would need to do some ‘butterflying’ around a couple of other Forces, but for the present he was happy. Having remained in one Force, though, meant that he had a good knowledge of the villains operating in the county - pretty unusual for an ACC in the modern police service. He stuck his finger on Henry’s chest. ‘Billy Crane... correct me if I’m wrong ... big time crim, operates mostly with small teams. He shot Terry Briggs, didn’t he?’ Henry nodded. ‘And he had an unusual MO, didn’t he?’ Henry nodded again.

  FB pulled his finger off Henry’s chest and sniffed. Slowly, he said, ‘He creates diversions.’

  ‘Keeps the cops busy while he does his own business.’

  ‘Such as blowing up police cars.’

  ‘Or helicopters.’

  ‘Sending bomb threats to Control Room. And also to the Comms Room at Lancaster police station.’ FB shook his head in wonderment. ‘Taking a risk doing that helicopter, though.’

  ‘Tch,’ Henry guffawed. ‘How many operational cops are there at the dream factory likely to stop such a thing happening? How good is the security?’

  ‘Point taken,’ FB conceded.

  ‘Anything else been happening in the last hour that’s unusual?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Danny had reached the ambulance. She asked one of the paramedics if he would show her the severed head of the deceased, which had been put into a plastic bag and sealed. Hoping to make her jump, the paramedic picked it up from the floor of the ambulance and swung it towards her with a laugh. She did not respond, but shot the man a pitying glance and tilted the head up to the daylight. It was a very gruesome sight, floating in thick, setting blood, and she did feel slightly queasy, but maintained her composure. She peered closely at the features. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and returned to Henry and FB who were deep in conversation. They drew apart as she approached.

  ‘You were right,’ Danny told Henry. ‘It’s Callum Riley, I remember his name now - the guy I arrested all those years ago. Not a prett
y sight.’

  ‘Never was,’ remarked Henry.

  FB turned on his heels and strutted away, fingering his chin, his decision-making process in action. Then he pirouetted and strode back. Henry and Danny watched him, wondering what masterplan was about to be unleashed.

  ‘I want you to get into this now - something big could have happened somewhere in the county and when it comes in I want us to be ready for it. I want us to be ahead of the game - got me?’

  ‘I’m off sick,’ Henry stated.

  ‘In that case get yourself back on duty,’ FB ordered him. ‘You look all right to me.’

  ‘And I’m working on the triple murder at Blackpool.’

  FB gave one of his deep, pissed-off sighs which seemed to beg the question, ‘Am I the only one committed here?’ ‘Not now you’re not, Doris,’ FB told Danny. ‘Now get on with it,’ he added quickly and walked away before Danny could respond to the jibe, ‘Doris’ being an old-fashioned, derogatory term for a policewoman.

  ‘One day,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, ‘I’ll punch that bastard’s lights out.’

  Crane reversed the fully-laden Sherpa into the warehouse loading bay and Smith closed the roller doors. The Audi containing the other three drove into the warehouse through the smaller door. They all got out and bustled eagerly to the back doors of the Sherpa which Smith was unlocking.

  He opened them slowly, but with a flourish, and could not resist punching the air at the sight of all the money boxes.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Gunk uttered enthusiastically. He lunged to grab one. Crane stepped in front of him, barring his way.

  ‘Come on, let’s get ‘em opened,’ Gunk whined. ‘I want to see some dough.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Crane said quietly. ‘You start messing with these and an indelible coloured dye gets released all over the cash and you - which is neither use nor ornament to anybody. You’ll be walking around with a pink head for months and no one’ll touch the cash. They need to be opened properly.’