by Nick Oldham
He helped himself to a strong black coffee from the machine and sat next to Terry at the table in the small canteen. Terry was scribbling notes down in his pocket book.
Henry’s phone rang. He answered it, listened, ended the call, looked at Terry. ‘We’re on.’
Danny was showered, made up and ready to roll by 8.15 p.m. This would be her last evening in Tenerife and she was going to fly home next day if she could get a flight. She intended to make the most of her time and planned to have another harbour-view meal at the same restaurant she had visited last night, then carouse around the bars until well after midnight, get tipsy, smoke too much and stagger back to the hotel.
She walked out on to the balcony, and smiled at the view across the bay. She could see right across to the lights of San Sebastian on La Gomera. It was a wonderful clear evening. Her thoughts, however, turned to Gillrow.
She hated coincidences. She tried to talk herself out of thinking that just because he lived on Tenerife he was involved, somewhere along the line, in the murder of a man who used to be one of his informants, who had ended up dead with two other people who were importing drugs from Tenerife. She gazed up at the star-filled night sky, willing herself not to make any assumptions or jump to any conclusions which could backfire… Yet why had he been so uncooperative? There was no obvious reason for it.
She tried to put herself into his boots. Eight years retired, living a life of moderate luxury in the sun, being asked dumb questions about someone he might not have seen for a dozen years. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that, had it been her, she would have welcomed the opportunity to chat about the good old days. Retired bobbies, in her experience, relished it.
Gillrow’s whole attitude had a certain whiff about it.
Which is why she banged both hands on the balcony rail and said to the night, ‘Mr Gillrow, you’re going to get another visit tomorrow, mate, because I’m not happy with you at all.’
‘ I need to see Billy Crane.’
‘ You can’t, he’s away. I’m in charge. I’ll deal with any problem you might have.’
Gillrow looked unsurely at Loz, not really liking what he saw, but feeling he had no other choice.
Loz, in turn, regarded Gillrow coldly. He knew he was an ex-cop and that he and Crane had some sort of relationship, based on what, he did not know. Probably bribes, he guessed. Or maybe the passing of police intelligence. Or perhaps Billy Crane could have been a snout for Gillrow once upon a time, although Loz doubted that idea.
Loz knew that Crane would definitely appreciate him giving Gillrow help if he required it. Loz could see Gillrow was nervous.
‘ All right,’ Gillrow said, swallowing. He looked around the bar. They were in one of Crane’s dives in Los Cristianos, a small English bar serving lots of fried food, crappy English beer and showing live Premiership matches on a big screen. It was quiet at the moment. By ten-thirty it would be heaving. ‘I’ve got a problem. It concerns Malcolm Fitch, who is now dead with bullets in his brain.’
‘ Go on,’ Loz urged, not having the slightest clue as to who Malcolm Fitch was.
‘ I’ve just been questioned by a detective from Lancashire today, come all the bloody way from Blackpool, would you believe? Investigating Fitch’s murder. Rooted out my file on Fitch and came to bloody see me. Can’t believe it. I didn’t say anything, but I’m not happy. Something needs to be done or me and Billy could be in big trouble. She wasn’t satisfied with what I told her and I’m afraid if she starts digging, there could be ructions.’
‘ Hold on — did you say “she”?’ Loz asked incredulously.
Gillrow nodded.
‘ You’re intimidated by a woman?’
‘ It doesn’t matter that she’s a woman — she’s a detective.’
Loz sneered contemptuously at this. ‘A bloody woman!’
‘ Look, sex doesn’t fucking matter, does it? What does matter is that she’s going to start digging and when she does that, we could be in the shit.’
‘ Why, haven’t you covered your tracks?’
‘ Twelve years ago — yes. Now they have the systems and stuff to dig deeper than we did in my time. I’m worried.’
‘ Is she still on the island?’
‘ I think so.’ Gillrow held up Danny’s card, showing him the back of it where she had scribbled the name of the hotel and her room number.
Loz snatched it. ‘Leave her to me, I’ll sort it. Don’t you worry your pathetic little head.’ He patted Gillrow on the cheek using his bandaged hand, which smelled dreadful.
Henry drove the XJS behind the box van being driven by Terry. Henry was pretty comfortable about the situation into which they were headed. It confirmed that Thompson, Elphick and the Russian, presumably, had accepted him as one on their cronies after their initial suspicion and that Billy Crane hadn’t clocked Henry as a cop. At the party the other night Gunk had even begun to stutter some admissions to Henry about Jacky Lee’s murder. A few more deliveries like this one and Henry believed they would be falling over themselves to confide in him and also to reveal the extent of the Russian involvement which was fascinating Henry. At the same time, it was giving Henry a paradox to deal with.
If he could persuade the hierarchy to run an operation against the Russians, then the arrest of Thompson and Elphick for Lee’s murder might have to go on the back burner for a while, particularly if Henry took on a greater role in their activities. Henry was prepared to argue that, for the greater good, the arrest of the brothers could wait a while. But he knew that because of Superintendent Davison’s precarious predicament as an SIO, he would have one hell of a job convincing him. Davison needed a result on the murder PDQ.
For the present, Henry was content to coast along and let Thompson and Co. believe they were buying stolen whisky. He whistled as he drove and smiled. What had started off as something he had not wanted to get involved in was opening out and becoming more and more interesting. The Russian Mafia, for God’s sake. Fucking up their expansion plans would be great fun.
But unbeknownst to Henry Christie, three people who had never met each other, but who had all met him, were thinking very dark thoughts about him.
Chapter Fourteen
‘ If you are ever thinking of pulling a job and you need some manpower or equipment, anything at all, you give me a bell. I won’t let you down, pal. I’ve got good contacts — discreet and very, very trustworthy.’
These were the words uttered by Jacky Lee to Billy Crane on the day Lee had been released from prison, following his sentence on the conspiracy and handling indictments which — way back down the line — had been instigated by Henry Christie. Crane and Lee had become cellmates by accident on transfer. Crane had been brought across from Wakefield and Lee from Wymott, both into Strangeways and slammed in the same pokey. Their relationship had blossomed and both had confided their plans for the future to each other. Lee had decided to shift his operating base from Newcastle to Manchester and Crane was planning to move out to the Canaries.
Crane remembered Lee’s words well and he knew they were genuinely meant.
He had given Crane a few contact numbers and then stepped out of Strangeways to build his life in the Manchester underworld, leaving Crane brooding and envious in his cell.
He thought that would be the last he saw of Lee, but had been proved wrong on his own release from clink, later the same year, 1996.
Unexpectedly, Lee met Crane at the gates in a gleaming white Roller with smoked-glass windows and a stunning Jewess in the back of it with the longest, shapeliest legs Crane had ever seen for many years, anyway. Lee took Crane to a pub in Crumpsall, north Manchester, where he threw Crane a ‘getting out’ party. This included an hour-long session with the Jewess in a first floor bedroom where Crane was fortunate enough to end up with those legs wrapped around various parts of his anatomy at different times.
At the end of the night Lee reiterated the words he’d said earlier to Crane and both men embrace
d each other.
It had seemed obvious to Billy Crane that when he needed muscle or equipment, a man like Jacky Lee was the one to approach, particularly as Crane had lost some contact with the part of the criminal world which could acquire shooters, cars, clothing and other blagging equipment easily.
Following the information-gathering sessions with Colin Hodge on La Gomera, Crane and Smith had flown back to England separately, both by roundabout routes. Smith went straight back to Blackpool to get things rolling from his end, and Crane went into Manchester to track down Jacky Lee.
He made his way back to the pub where his release party had been held. Very little had changed in the intervening years, except for when he asked the barman to put him in touch with Lee. It was only then that Crane learned of his death.
Crane had been a quick-thinking criminal since the age of ten. Although Lee’s death left him breathless for a moment or two, he quickly recovered and said, ‘Then, in that case I’d like to speak to whoever is looking after his business for him.’ Crane did not have time for sentimentality at that moment. That could come later, maybe. He needed quick action and if Lee’s successor could accommodate, then it was OK by him.
The barman made a discreet, hushed phone call.
‘ Someone’ll come along and see you,’ he said on replacing the receiver. ‘Drink?’
Crane settled down to a mineral water at the bar, positioned so he could see all the doors… just in case.
He had a short wait. Twenty minutes later, two seedy-looking characters strutted confidently into the pub. The barman nodded in Crane’s direction.
One of the men spoke to Crane without preamble or ceremony: ‘The message for you is that Gary Thompson now controls all of Jacky Lee’s businesses. He knows your name, knows your connection to Lee and says that if you are willing to talk, he is too. If not, fuck off’
‘ Business is business,’ Crane said philosophically. ‘I want to talk.’
The man jerked his head. ‘Come on then, we’ll take you.’
Out in the car park they searched Crane, found him to be clean. He was then driven by them, in silence, in the back of a battered Granada out to Heywood near Rochdale, where Thompson was throwing the birthday party for his girlfriend’s thirtieth.
It was as Crane was led into Thompson’s presence that he came face to face, fleetingly, with Frank Jagger. Crane definitely felt he knew Jagger’s face, but could not place him. Things moved so positively and quickly with Thompson that Crane did not have time to dwell on the encounter with Jagger, or ask any questions about him.
Crane revealed his plan to Thompson in a cautious way, saying that he wanted to hit a security van that was carrying a quarter of a million — tops. Big money by any standards. To have told Thompson that fifty million was up for grabs would have been asking for trouble. That kind of money makes people go glassy-eyed and start to scheme.?250,000 ensured that greed stayed more controlled.
Crane had holed up in a south Manchester hotel, near to the airport.
On the evening that Frank Jagger was due to sell a van full of stolen whisky to Thompson, Crane and Smith were dining in the hotel restaurant, bringing each other up to date on the progress of their arrangements.
Things were going smoothly.
Thompson, Elphick and Drozdov were eager to get involved in the blagging themselves. They would form the bulk of the personnel who would carry out the job. Smith was well on with his side of things: guns were being obtained from dealers all over the North so that no one person would get nosy after supplying a lot of hardware all at once; vehicles were being prepared by a car ringer in Blackpool. And Colin Hodge was still sweet and eager.
Both men were well satisfied.
At the end of the meal, Crane got up and visited the toilet. While he leaned over the urinal, concentrating on the task in hand, the image hit him like a mallet. He stood upright with a shocked expression on his face, uttering a violent swearword under his breath. He hurried back to the table, sat down heavily opposite his partner.
‘ You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Smith observed, puzzled.
‘ I have, Don.’ Crane stared thoughtfully past Smith’s shoulder, then pinged him squarely in the eye. ‘We might have a problem.’
Rupert Davison had always been a high flyer. He had decided at a very early stage in his career about the path it should take and then he had made it happen. He had been twenty-four years old when he joined the police with a business-related degree behind him and two years in industrial management. Two years after joining the Force he had passed his promotion examination to Sergeant, gaining the highest marks in the whole of the country that year. This automatically made him eligible to apply for the accelerated promotion scheme (APS) and after a series of gruelling interviews — at which he excelled — Davison found himself officially classed as a high flyer and was promoted to Sergeant, to the despair of his colleagues. It seemed to them only to confirm that the system was flawed. Two years after that he was an Inspector with high expectations of progressing further.
Davison’s career plan had two prongs to it: one was to be a high-ranking detective at some stage, and another was to become part of that elite group of top cops known as ACPO — the Association of Chief Police Officers. He had his heart set on becoming a Chief Constable by the time he was forty-five.
Whenever possible, he engineered time on CID duties; this was fairly easy to do, as people on the APS could, to a degree, pick and choose their developmental posts. Hence he did short spells as a Detective Constable, Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspector — to get these on to his CV. He eventually got stuck at uniform Chief Inspector, much to his annoyance. Because of this he answered a job advert in Police Review asking for suitably qualified officers to apply for Superintendents’ vacancies in the Greater Manchester Police.
He sailed through the selection procedures, was transferred form Lancashire and appointed to uniform Superintendent. Eventually, assisted by his CV, he got a job as a Senior Investigating Officer on the CID.
This was where his problems began.
He had not realised that a wide CID background was a necessity for this role. He had thought of the SIO more as a management function, rather than an investigative one. He was wrong. Whilst the management side of it was very important, the nous of an investigator — a body-catcher, a detective with a good nose for a collar — was probably even more important.
The first couple of murders he found himself heading were cleared up easily, lulling him into a false sense of security. The next six got nowhere and he started to panic. Six major investigations stalling was not good news for someone who wanted to go higher.
He desperately needed a spectacular success.
Davison knew that in his early days as a cop, his reputation had been one of recklessness. He had managed to curb that very successfully, even though on some occasions this trait would resurface: once, for example, as a uniformed Inspector, he single-handedly rugby-tackled a gunman at a siege, putting his own life and those of others in extreme danger, but at the same time achieving a remarkable result. He had been severely criticised for his actions internally, but externally the media hailed him as a hero.
It was that side of his personality that was driving his actions at the present time. If he didn’t get a result in the Jacky Lee murder case, he knew his time as an SIO would come to an ignominious end and maybe his promotion prospects would be spoiled for ever.
Desperation and the possibility of a superb result made him use Henry Christie and Terry Briggs’s statements and actually interview Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick himself. He could almost visualise the newspaper headlines acknowledging his success. But his lack of criminal interviewing skills showed when both men laughed in his face and admitted nothing; then when Henry had been beaten up, he realised what a stupid error he had made — hence his idea to make the master interview tapes ‘disappear’ from the library to cover his tracks.
And now his career was
facing its biggest ever crisis: Henry Christie’s threat to expose his incompetence.
Davison knew that if Henry kept his word — and there was no reason to doubt it — he was finished. Certainly his time as an SIO would end. The subsequent enquiry would highlight his foolhardiness in jeopardising the life of an undercover cop and he would no doubt be accused of corrupt and improper practice for interfering with the interview tapes, maybe even theft. His police career could well come to an end in shame and disgrace.
Yes, Davison realised, in Henry Christie he had a problem.
Six hours after the Russian, Yuri Ivankov, had landed in Paris from Manchester over a week earlier, he was sitting in a cafe in the north of the city of Boulevard des Batignolles at the busy junction with Rue de Constantinople. He was eating a plate of oysters followed by ris de veau and had been there for thirty minutes, mixing in easily and inconspicuously with the early evening crowd, when the target arrived.
Yuri had been adequately briefed on his arrival in the city by a man who sat next to him on the coach from the airport. Little had actually been said, but that did not surprise the Russian. In his area of speciality, most people did not want to interact socially with him. He understood this, took no umbrage. The man simply handed him a slim briefing pack to read, containing a few, but essential, details; these included several recent photographs of the target, when and where he could be found that evening, where and what type of weapon would be available for use.
