The Last Big Job hc-4

by Nick Oldham

  ‘ Who does the room belong to?’ the Russian demanded of him.

  Loz’s eyes flickered to Henry who was standing a few paces down the corridor. ‘Him.’

  Henry’s eyes wavered from the petrified Danny, to her abductor, to Loz and back again. He gave Danny the best look of reassurance he could muster, sickeningly aware that it was probably not very reassuring at all. He wasn’t certain how to handle this. Henry was a trained hostage negotiator, but this situation did not fit neatly into anything he had learned. Most hostage-takers were amateurs driven by greed, emotion, sickness or commitment to a cause; they were not usually professional killers and the negotiator wasn’t usually part of the scenario.

  ‘ Stay calm,’ he said to Danny, then to Ivankov, ‘What’s this about?’ Henry had decided that time spent in the corridor was a bonus. It meant other people might see what was going on and raise the alarm. Once inside the hotel room, out of sight, the Russian would be in complete control. ‘Let’s talk.’

  Ivankov was not about to fall for any delaying tactics. He sniggered and said, ‘Open the door and go into the room.’ He pushed his gun hard against Danny’s cheek. ‘Or I’ll kill her here and now, and then the both of you — as you know I’m capable of doing.

  Henry licked his dry lips and slowly went for the room key in his trouser pocket.

  ‘ Well, I’ll be going then,’ Loz said brightly, as if to walk away. ‘You obviously don’t need me. This is something between yourselves.’ He smiled and bowed humbly.

  Ivankov’s gun swung towards him again. Loz cowered back against the wall. ‘I think not.’ He turned back to Henry, tightened his grip across Danny’s throat and reiterated, ‘Open up.’ He smiled and Henry thought, This man is not concerned that he’s outnumbered here. He’s actually enjoying this. It’s a test of his skills — and not much of a test at that. Additionally, Henry thought desolately, None of us three will walk away from this encounter alive.

  Ivankov drew Danny back a couple of feet as Henry went to the door, unlocked it. He pushed it open and stood back, letting the Russian see into the room. Ivankov waggled his gun at Loz. ‘You first — then you.’ He indicated Henry. ‘Please don’t do anything silly or suddenly, or I’ll kill you all very quickly… it’s not a problem to me.’

  Ashen-faced and fearful, Loz trudged into the room, followed by a dry-throated Henry whose fingertips were starting to dither with anxiety; then Ivankov and Danny, who was beginning to go faint as the blood supply to her brain kept being cut off and then opened as the pressure from Ivankov’s forearm varied.

  The hotel room was fairly standard. There was a short hallway, off which was a bathroom; beyond was a double-bedded room with fitted wardrobes and a small writing desk. A floor-to-ceiling sliding window led out on to the balcony overlooking the pool. The curtains were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness, a slit of sunlight cutting through the narrow gap between the curtains. The bed was unmade and in disarray, and Henry’s clothes, and some of Danny’s, were scattered around. The indent of their bodies was still visible where they had been lying and making love earlier that morning.

  Loz and Henry stood sheepishly in the space between the bed and the sliding window, facing Danny and Ivankov.

  ‘ I think you can let her go now, don’t you?’ Henry said firmly. For any chance of survival, Henry reckoned Danny had to be away from the Russian.

  Once more, it was as if Ivankov was reading Henry’s thoughts. He shook his head and pushed the Makarov hard into Danny’s waist, just above the hipbone. She uttered a squeak of pain. ‘You are a policeman, aren’t you?’

  ‘ Yes, I am.’

  ‘ I knew it when I saw you with Jacky Lee,’ Ivankov said with a hint of triumph.

  ‘ And that’s why you’ll never get away with this, or the murder of Jacky Lee.’

  On those last words, Danny now understood who was holding her and she said, ‘Oh God!’ instinctively, then, ‘Ahhh!’ as Ivankov wrenched his arm back on her throat to shut her up.

  ‘ Keep quiet,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘otherwise I’ll break your neck. And as for you’ — he looked across at Henry — ‘making those stupid claims just serves to annoy me intensely, because I always — always,’ he stressed, ‘get away with it… but what interests me here and now is, what is this all about? Why were you’ — and here he addressed Loz — ‘knocking on a policeman’s door?’

  Loz opened his mouth, but Henry interjected quickly. ‘He’s a witness against Billy Crane. I know you’ve come for Crane, but you’re too late, Yuri. He’s being arrested at this moment by the Spanish police on my behalf. So you can go back to Russia and tell Alexandr that the chase is over and the law has won.’

  ‘ I’m impressed, Mr Policeman,’ the Russian said genuinely. ‘You know my name.’

  ‘ That’s because you make mistakes.’

  Ivankov’s face hardened at the slight to his professionalism. He looked away from Henry and pointed his gun at Loz. ‘Is it true that Crane is being arrested now?’

  ‘ Y-yeah,’ Loz responded hesitantly after eyeing Henry for a lead and giving the lie away. This hesitation meant that the Russian pulled the trigger and shot him. With no more than the sound the metallic click of the hammer falling to indicate firing, the silenced slug struck his shoulder, exploding in the joint on impact, sending Loz spinning back against the curtains which he tried to cling to as he fell to the floor. Blood poured out of the devastating wound and he went immediately into shock.

  ‘ You bastard!’ Henry snarled, but had the sense not to make a move.

  Ivankov screwed the smoking muzzle into Danny’s waist and raised his eyebrows. ‘Now then,’ he said in a businesslike way, ‘do not waste my time, Mr Policeman. Just tell me the truth of the matter and where I can locate Mr Crane. I’ll be upfront with you. Even if you tell me willingly, I’m going to kill you all. If you don’t tell me willingly, then I will have to waste precious time extracting the information from you using techniques in which I’m a little rusty. But I guarantee that you’ll regret not telling me willingly in the first place. So, either tell me now and die quickly, or refuse and die slowly… the choice is yours.’

  Ivankov regarded Henry with an ice-chilling stare, critically appraising the cop standing across the room from him. In that instant, the Russian made a judgment call. He pulled the gun out of Danny’s side and pointed it at Henry. ‘In fact, you’re going to die now, Mr Policeman, because I’m quite sure I’ll be able to get all the information I need from this woman.’ He tightened his grip on Danny’s throat with a hard, backwards jerk. ‘You’d be just too much like hard work.’

  The gun rose and seemed to focus in on Henry’s palpitating heart.

  Henry emitted a gasp of fear. He was about to back away, saying, ‘No, no,’ about to plead for his life when Danny, with a surge of strength, twisted into Ivankov and lashed out with her right hand in a sudden, chopping motion, bringing it down on to Ivankov’s wrist with such force that his fingers spasmed open and the gun dropped on to the bed.

  Screaming, ‘Get the gun, Henry, get it!’ Danny kept on turning into the killer, at the same time driving her right heel down on to his foot.

  Ivankov was thrown off-balance by the tiger in his grasp — but only momentarily. In a flurry of limbs he quickly overpowered her and was back in charge, though Danny refused to cease struggling wildly, antagonising him.

  Briefly taken aback by the distraction, Henry was now moving swiftly across the room towards the bed — and the gun.

  Ivankov saw Henry’s intentions.

  Roaring, he grabbed hold of Danny’s hair in his right hand, his left hand going to the back of her neck. With a powerful jerk he snapped her head backwards with his right hand and pushed forwards with his left. He then threw her down on to the floor beside him where she flopped.

  Then he went to beat Henry to the gun.

  Too late.

  Henry was there just before the Russian, having hurled himself across the bed, fumb
ling the gun into his trembling hands but still able to aim it up at the advancing figure, stopping him in his tracks.

  His breathing laboured, Henry looked up at Ivankov along the barrel which trembled in his grasp.

  ‘ Ha!’ The Russian’s hands went up in surrender. He stepped back, stood upright, then without warning launched himself towards Henry, figuring that he would be too lightning quick for the cop who was bound to hesitate about pulling the trigger anyway. Hadn’t he already proved that once before?

  Henry’s eyes took in the frame of the Russian coming at him, a wild, murderous look on his face. And he did hesitate. The conscience of a cop gnawing at him, wondering how he would be able to justify killing an unarmed man. But then he saw the stiletto blade in Ivankov’s right palm. How had that got there? Where had it come from? Down the sleeve! He was no longer unarmed. He was capable of murder.

  Henry’s mind processed all these thoughts in the fraction of a second before his finger jerked back on the trigger. The bullet struck Ivankov in the cleft of skin just below the Adam’s apple, ripping out his throat. The energy from the impact contorted his body obscenely in mid-air.

  Henry rolled to one side and the Russian slammed down heavily on to the bed beside him, where he lay twitching like a huge fish in a fast-spreading pool of blood, which soaked into the covers. He twitched for a long time and Henry watched, both fascinated and repulsed. A man dying, only inches away from him. A man he had killed.

  When the Russian stopped moving, Henry exhaled, slumped on to his back, breathless, and attempted to regain control.

  He was still on the bed, the Russian lying next to him. Dead.

  He got to his feet and looked down at Loz who was whimpering quietly like a kicked dog. His eyes were closed and he lay coiled in the foetal position, prostrate in a lake of his own blood. He was in urgent need of medical attention.

  Still quivering, Henry turned slowly round and looked towards Danny, lying spreadeagled on the floor on the other side of the bed. Unmoving. His legs buckled, a hand grasping at his short hair in a gesture of anguish as a terrible realisation hit him. He tried to say the word, ‘Danny,’ but no sound came from his lips.

  Slowly, he circled the bed and sank to his knees, next to her. His fingertips reached slowly to stroke her pretty, flushed cheek, but he knew she was dead. Her neck had been broken with ruthless efficiency by the most dangerous man he had ever met.

  Epilogue

  Externally, for the next six weeks, Henry Christie remained a fully functioning Detective Inspector, dealing with everything in a cool, professional manner.

  There were many issues to resolve.

  Firstly, the Spanish authorities refused to release Danny’s body for five weeks. The circumstances of her death and the manner of it, as well as the death of Ivankov and the serious wounding of Lawrence Brayfield, caused uproar. Many questions were asked, most went unanswered. Bureaucracy was unleashed on an almighty scale and had to be addressed and managed by Henry who was well in the thick of it. He was accused of murder himself at the beginning, though never arrested, then accused of conspiracies, then corruption, until eventually he persuaded his Spanish inquisitors, by his openness, frankness and honesty, that he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as had Danny. He had done what had to be done — an act of self-defence which had saved his own life, but not that of his colleague.

  In the end, because it didn’t look as though Danny’s body could ever be released, he made a plea to the Foreign Office; he didn’t give a shit about himself, but Danny’s devastated parents were being messed about from pillar to post by the Spanish police and enough was enough. Keeping her body in the freezer would achieve nothing. He begged the FO to intervene and pull some strings… and incredibly, they did. From a high level, the order came down for her body to be returned and at last, the parents could have some sort of closure. Henry had met Danny’s mother and father during this period and he became a crutch for them, a role which put him under massive personal pressure. He desperately wanted to blab his relationship with their daughter to them, but felt he could not, for her sake. That would have put them over the edge, after all the business with Jack Sands, her ex-lover, topping himself not many months before. Another relationship with a married man… Henry could have imagined their reactions.

  And while all this was going on, there was the question of Billy Crane to sort out, which also fell to Henry.

  The day after Danny’s death, a specially trained armed unit of the Spanish police carried out a pre-dawn raid at Crane’s Gomerian villa.

  As is so often the case in such matters, the actual laying of hands on Billy Crane was a very subdued affair, an anti-climax. He was roused from bed by four armed officers and submitted dazedly to their pidgin-English instructions. He offered no resistance, but maintained his silence other than to demand the services of a lawyer. At Tenerife he was incarcerated awaiting extradition proceedings. His slick brief, a man who was used to representing British felons in Spain — usually on the Costas — presented all types of delaying tactics. Henry doubted whether he would see Crane in the UK this side of six months.

  The location of the stolen money remained a mystery. Despite the efforts of Lancashire Constabulary’s Financial Investigators and those from the Metropolitan Police and Interpol, and a raiding party on all the bank accounts belonging to Billy Crane, the money was not recovered. Crane’s accounts did reveal?3.1 million from drugs dealing, and proceedings were instituted to freeze the money and ultimately seize it. As the weeks went by, though, the likelihood of finding the money from the heist seemed less and less probable.

  What did seem likely was that Lawrence Brayfield, once he had recovered from his shoulder wound, would leave Tenerife, go into a witness protection programme and in the due course of time — after he had successfully given evidence against Crane — receive his reward money.

  It was during the course of one of Henry’s many conversations with Loz that he was reminded, purely by chance, of the existence of Nero the lion. Henry had charged out of the hospital ward and raced to Uncle B’s where he found the emaciated, barely-living animal, surviving against the odds in a disgusting shit-hole. The Spaniards immediately wanted to have him destroyed, but Henry was in no mood for another unnecessary death, nor the possibility of litigation that might follow; the police had a duty of care for prisoners’ property and the destruction of Nero could easily have been used as another delaying tactic by Crane’s legal eagle.

  A place was found for Nero in a private zoo on Lanzarote where after only a few days’ recuperation he established himself as the dominant male in the resident pride, beat the living daylights out of the incumbent king, and claimed several lionesses in a mad whirl of sexual domination… so there was one happy ending at least.

  And while all this was going on, the internal structure of Henry Christie, delicately balanced at the best of times, was close to collapse.

  He was only grateful that he had to spend a great deal of time commuting backwards and forwards to Tenerife. Time spent with his wife and daughters was proving so difficult for him. Kate remained supportive but slightly aloof and he once caught her looking at him, on one of his infrequent visits home in those weeks, rather contemptuously. He wondered if she knew, or suspected, about him and Danny. Had she guessed? Or had it been so obvious that a blind person could have read the signs?

  The time he had in Tenerife was busy, but this was the only opportunity he had to be alone to grieve for the woman who, rightly or wrongly, had grown on him and with whom he had fallen in love. His hotel rooms became places of retreat, for crying, for heavy drinking, for thinking and coming to terms with her death, knowing he could never tell anyone about their relationship; knowing he somehow had to pick up the pieces of his life and make a decision about the future and leave Danny behind. Easy to say, not so easy to put into practice — particularly having discovered something that completely blitzed his mind during Danny’s autopsy, something he
prayed would not become general knowledge.

  She was cremated one week after her body had been flown back from Tenerife, six weeks to the day after her death. The service took place in a crematorium outside Burnley in East Lancashire, the town of her birth, not far away from the dinosaur-like bulk of Pendle Hill. There was a huge police presence. The Chief Constable attended and several of the ACCs, including Fanshaw-Bayley. Karl Donaldson, Henry’s friend from the FBI office in London, also came, having met Danny previously on another enquiry.

  Henry was relieved when it was over. Kate sidled up next to him, hugged him and looked up with a hesitant smile. There were tears in her eyes. Henry responded with a weak grin. He knew things had moved on too far for him to slip back into his old life. He had fallen deeply in love with Danny, and her death had devastated him. Some major decisions were now due to be made about his future. Being with Kate felt wrong, somehow — for both of them — but in his grieving state, the phrasing of the sentence with the word ‘divorce’ in it eluded him.

  Most of the police contingent from Blackpool had come to the funeral by coach. As is the fairly cold culture of the police on such occasions, they stopped off on their way back at a pub on the outskirts of Blackpool to pay their last respects to Danny by way of alcoholic consumption. Henry, Kate and Donaldson — who was staying overnight at the Christies’ — having driven across to Burnley by car, decided to join them. Kate generously offered to drive the rest of the way home so that Henry had the chance to have a few drinks.

  By the time they arrived, the coach had de-bussed and there was a deep throng of thirsty people crowded round the bar of the unsuspecting pub. Somewhere amongst them FB could be heard demanding that he be bought drinks by his detectives.