Big City Jacks

by Nick Oldham

  Seventeen

  As sour as things had become for Mendoza, this did not prevent him from indulging in the pleasures of the flesh.

  Following the dispatch of Teddy Bear and Cromer to execute their jobs of the night time, the two bosses were left with little to do other than wait for a result. Despite the two men being fellow felons, they had little in common with each other and would have struggled to conduct a sustained conversation about anything beyond criminal activities.

  Neither was tired, both high from the adrenaline rush of stress, a stress which demanded a release. To alleviate this, Sweetman suggested they hit the city, let their hair down, relax, get laid.

  Which is exactly what they did.

  Accompanied by Grant and Lopez, they lurched out of the hotel and were immediately in the city centre. Within minutes they were inside one of the big nightclubs, spending a couple of hours drinking and talking to women. Sweetman fixed them both up with a couple of expensive girls, one being a dark one, with Mediterranean looks which the Manchester hood thought the Spanish one would appreciate. He did.

  The two players gravitated back to Sweetman’s quayside apartment, via a meal in Chinatown, where Mendoza and his appointed hooker took up residence in the guest bedroom. Grunts, cries and gasps drifted from the room for the next hour or so, whilst Sweetman paid his girl off and sent her packing. He knew he was not up to anything and when his head hit the pillow, he was out like a busted light.

  Meanwhile, both second in commands returned to the city centre hotel, both accompanied by ladies of the night.

  In the morning Grant and Lopez met for breakfast in the restaurant, both wrecked by the previous night’s overindulgence in food, sex and drink.

  It was nine a.m. when they ate.

  ‘When shall we break the news?’ Lopez asked. He was drinking black coffee.

  ‘How about noon?’ Grant suggested.

  Lopez grinned. ‘Si . . . I like that very much. High Noon.’

  A clown in a Citroën. That was all Henry Christie could see in the dark swirl of the unconscious mind. Blackness. A horrible scraping, tearing noise. A clown in a Citroën. Then nothing. Other than he now knew he was awake. Sensation flooded through him. His leg twitched. He coughed and opened his eyes like a doll. And then the headache hit him hard, an iron ball and chain swinging against his cranium.

  ‘Oh thank God, thank God.’

  His head rolled to one side and he blinked rapidly at Kate. He tried to say a word, wasn’t sure what word. Any word would have done.

  Kate looked ashen, desperately anxious. ‘Henry . . . oh, thank God,’ she cried. Tears streamed down her face, cascading like a mini waterfall. Henry tried to force a smile. Hell, this was all so confusing . . . a clown, a Citroën . . . a storming headache . . . like an axe in his head, splitting his brain in half.

  He exhaled, found more pain across his body. Across his chest, his lungs were tight and sore, had spikes hammered into them.

  Kate was half-on, half-off the bedside chair, holding herself up, looking down at him, tears still streaming.

  What? he wanted to say. That was it, that was all, that was the word he was searching for. What? He still could not force it out.

  Instead, in a haze of pain and puzzlement, he closed his eyes again. It was much easier and the last thing he heard was a cry of anguish from Kate.

  ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Sore . . . confused. My brain feels like it’s in a mush,’ Henry said.

  ‘You suffered a severe blow to the head and your body got a sound battering, too.’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyes hurt as he squinted at the doctor, a drilling behind his eyeballs. The white coat made him look away. It was too much.

  ‘As it happens, you’re basically OK. X-rays show no skull damage, nor any damage to the rest of your body. You’re just bruised. Your experience is rather like having thrown yourself into a spin-drier. Wearing your seat belt probably saved your life.’

  ‘Seat belt?’ Henry’s face screwed up. ‘Er . . .?’ he found himself at a loss. ‘Have I been in an accident or something?’

  He was in a side ward, did not even know which hospital. Alone now. Everyone had left for the moment; even the worried Kate had withdrawn. They would all be back soon, crowding him. A nurse had propped him up on soft pillows. He carefully laid his head back. The pain had been held at bay for the time being. Drugs. Good drugs. Warm, soft, fuzzy drugs, comforting him. He closed his eyes again, thanking the world for drugs. Apparently he was lucky to be alive. But why? What did that mean? Why was he so bloody lucky?

  What the hell had happened?

  Try as he might, nothing would come. He had no idea why he was lying in Bolton Royal Infirmary. And he was getting to the point where he needed to know, because it was driving him nuts.

  * * *

  They came at noon. Their faces were serious, grave even. He was sitting up now, a bed tray across his knees, trying to digest some food which did not really want to go down. He had been concentrating on drinking the fruit drink, all he felt capable of keeping inside.

  A few moments passed before he actually recognized his visitors: Detective Superintendent Anger and DI Jane Roscoe. Anger’s face stayed very serious, Jane’s relaxed a little with relief. They pulled up chairs on either side of the bed.

  ‘Welfare visit?’ Henry said with a forced smile.

  Anger merely raised his thick eyebrows impatiently. ‘The consultant tells us you’re fit enough to talk to now.’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ Henry said brightly.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ Roscoe asked.

  The patient shrugged. ‘OK, I guess. Battered, bruised and a mushy-pea head, but otherwise not too bad.’

  ‘Good – can you tell us what happened then?’ Anger blurted sharply.

  ‘About what?’ Henry said blankly. His brain was hurting.

  ‘The accident.’

  ‘What accident?’ His mind was adrift again.

  Anger sighed, seething, and opened his mouth to remonstrate. Jane Roscoe held up a calming hand to hold him back.

  She spoke. ‘What do you remember?’ Her voice was gentle.

  Henry shook his head slowly. ‘Erm . . .’ he began pathetically, but could not follow it up.

  ‘Do you remember going to Manchester with the chief?’

  ‘The chief constable? Why would I be going to Manchester with FB?’ Henry said, rubbing his tired eyes, trying to concentrate. Then something came back to him. ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’ He paused, forcing his grey matter to get hold. ‘I remember having a Big Mac with him, surrounded by a load of kids.’

  ‘What else?’ Roscoe probed.

  ‘Nothing, nothing there.’ He was getting frustrated with himself. He banged his fist on the bed tray, rattling the cutlery and crockery. ‘Shit!’

  ‘It’s OK, Henry,’ Roscoe said consolingly. ‘It’ll probably take time for it to all come back. Funny thing, memory.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said dreamily.

  Dave Anger was less understanding and his dislike of Henry surfaced like a bubble coming up from the slime in the bottom of a cesspit and popping on the surface. ‘I think you’re taking the piss, Henry.’

  ‘Boss!’ Roscoe said sharply.

  Henry stared distastefully at him.

  Anger shot a warning look at Roscoe. ‘No,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘This is all one big piss-take. Someone ducking and diving their responsibility, trying to wangle their way out of a messy situation.’

  ‘Boss!’ Roscoe said again.

  ‘No – he’s having this, the bloody bastard.’ Anger rose to his full height, like a bear about to attack. Then he bent over close to Henry and pointed a thick, stubby, accusatory finger at him. He growled through clenched teeth. ‘I want to know fucking everything, Henry. I want to know why there were two guns in the car and two knives and an Intel file, what’s been going on, who the third person was and I want you to stop playing this bloody amnesia game with us. It’s
boring and very annoying.’

  Henry felt himself draw back into his pillows and stare at Anger like a confused, frightened rabbit.

  ‘Mr Anger!’ Roscoe protested. She stood up, hands on hips, trying to reign him back. She looked pretty intimidating to Henry, but Anger was having none of it.

  ‘No! There’s questions that need answering and this bastard has those answers in that – allegedly – jumbled-up head of his.’ He towered over Henry. ‘You – start talking – Now!’ he ordered Henry.

  Henry shook his head despairingly, on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t fucking remember!’ he insisted.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Look, you pathetic bastard, the chief constable’s lying through there in a bloody coma and there’s a dead guy lying stiff as a board in the mortuary who was in the back of your car. And we found guns, too – one was a Luger – and some ammo. You’d better start remembering, because there’s some very big questions need answering.’

  They came at noon. Their faces were serious, grave even.

  Sweetman and Mendoza were hunched bleary-eyed at the table in the dining room of Sweetman’s apartment, picking over the crumbs of a very late breakfast.

  Mendoza’s prostitute had gone and they were alone.

  Lopez and Grant came in. Their approach had been well rehearsed.

  ‘Cromer and Teddy Bear unearthed anything yet?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Not so far as I know,’ Sweetman said. They were the first words he had uttered that day. He swilled some fresh orange juice down his throat.

  ‘They won’t,’ Grant said firmly.

  Sweetman raised his eyes. He did not ask the Why? question, no need to.

  ‘It’s not one of them,’ Grant said.

  ‘One of who?’

  ‘One of the people they’ve been sent to terrorize. It’s not one of them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Had a whisper from a good source, a reliable source, who doesn’t want to be named.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Like I said . . .’

  ‘OK, OK. So you’ve had a whisper . . . what’s the whisper?’

  ‘I’ve been given a name.’

  Mendoza and Sweetman sat upright.

  ‘Speak it,’ Mendoza said.

  Grant paused for effect, keeping his eyes away from Lopez. He cleared his throat, then spoke.

  Anger’s approach may not have been the most considered and appropriate (and he did get himself escorted from Henry’s room by the consultant and a nurse) but it did have some positive effect on Henry. Things, images, began to tumble along his battered dendrites. Now he could see the gun. Napoleon Solo. A Luger. Now he could visualize a journey along the motorway, adjusting his rear-view mirror, looking in his side mirrors, seeing headlights. But all these things did not merge into coherence. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the lid.

  He had been driving a car which had crashed. That he knew because he had been told so, not because he remembered.

  FB had been severely injured. Another man had died. What other man? Why had there been an accident? What had caused it? What had he done wrong? The lights in the mirrors were something to do with it.

  Henry wracked his brain, banging his forehead with the balls of his hands.

  It would not come.

  Perhaps if he got up and went to see FB. That would be a good memory jogger.

  He was no longer connected to anything. The blip-machines had been removed, the drips extracted from his veins. No longer tied down to any medical technology, he was a free man. He sat up, hung his legs over the side of the bed, aware that he was only wearing a rear-fastening hospital gown, loosely tied up the back – and that he was completely naked underneath.

  His feet touched the cold floor. Gingerly he took his own weight, stood up and felt OK. The first time he had been up, all previous visits to the bathroom via bedpan alley. Two steps, then a wobble. Balance out of kilter slightly. One more step . . . whoa! Not good. He grabbed the bed and eased himself back into a sitting position.

  For the moment, Henry Christie was going nowhere.

  Eighteen

  Karl Donaldson opened his eyes. Warm, tawny sun filtered through the latticed shutters, spreading a glow across the room. He sat up slowly, rubbed his caked-up eyes and breathed deeply, blinking to try and focus. He looked at his own body, saw he was naked, saw how battered it was and knew he was fortunate to be alive.

  Slowly he got to his feet, steadied himself and padded across the cold marble floor to the shuttered window, which he opened.

  The view made his lips purse in wonderment. A beautiful valley, a river snaking through the floor of it and far away in the distance the shimmer of the sea in the heat haze. Rays of sunshine flooded in, caressing his body like a warm massage as he stood there gazing down the mountainside. Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe he was dead, maybe this was heaven.

  There was a soft tap on the door.

  Donaldson turned slowly, his aching joints not allowing quick action.

  The door opened to reveal a beautiful girl standing on the threshold, long golden hair cascading across her shoulders, a dark Mediterranean shade to her glowing skin, wide brown eyes, dark eyelashes. A simple dress covered her, but also accentuated her full figure, her breasts pushing up against the fabric.

  Yes, I am dead, Donaldson thought. I have gone to heaven and this is my angel.

  The clothes were rough, well worn, but clean and cared for. The girl carried them in front of her. She crossed to the bed and laid the items carefully on it, together with a pair of shoes she placed on the bedroom floor. Her eyes stayed low, looking away from Donaldson’s nakedness, though they did occasionally flicker in his direction.

  ‘I heard you moving,’ she said, drawing back to the door, Donaldson watching her open-mouthed. ‘There is a towel there’ – she pointed to a rail – ‘and the shower is down the hallway.’ She smiled nervously.

  She held up a finger, silencing Donaldson, who was about to speak. She shook her head. ‘Get a shower, shave if you like, then come out on to the terrace. You’ll find it.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ he said quickly.

  She nodded impatiently.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘Two days? What the hell has been going on?’

  ‘You’ve been recovering,’ she said. ‘You had a fever, then you slept and now . . .’ She shrugged.

  ‘One more thing . . . are you Spanish?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled. ‘English.’ With that she closed the door, leaving him alone. He stretched, standing in the sun, feeling it warm his bones, but also feeling aches and pains inside him. He closed the shutters and walked back to the bed, reaching for the towel, which he wrapped around his waist.

  The shower, down the hall as described, worked very well. It was hot and powerful and Donaldson revelled in it, soaping himself gently, allowing the heat of the water to permeate through his tired muscles, helping to ease their tension. As he showered, his mind worked back to everything that had happened to him. It was as these thoughts rearranged themselves into order, he started to panic.

  ‘Give me an hour,’ Lopez had said to Donaldson. The hour stretched forever as the big American sat in the restaurant in Ciudad Quesada, drinking café solo, hoping the huge quantities of caffeine would keep him alert and ready for the worst. He was beginning to think this little unauthorized jaunt might not be such a good idea after all. No one in the office knew where he was, he hadn’t even told Karen, though at least Henry knew something. But because he was in Spain very unofficially, it also meant there was no chance of being armed and at that moment he was feeling very vulnerable indeed.

  Midnight came, went. Diners filtered away from the restaurant, leaving him and a couple of other hangers-on to annoy the waiters who were clearly desperate to wind up for the night.

  Donaldson had nowhere to go.

  Even the other two stragglers asked for their bills,
paid up and left.

  A chill descended on the night. The waiters began stacking chairs. One sauntered hesitantly up to him and said, ‘Señor?’ with a shrug. ‘We are closing now.’

  Donaldson nodded. ‘Si . . . la cuenta, por favor,’ he said, much to the man’s relief. It looked like Lopez was a no-show. He counted out his euros on to the saucer, was about to stand and leave when a large black Mercedes, with tinted windows and a driver, drew up outside.

  Lopez climbed out and trotted up the restaurant steps, nodding at the waiters. He walked confidently across to Donaldson’s table and sat down, beckoning a waiter. The man scurried over, all tugging forelock and bowing and scraping. It was plain to Donaldson that Lopez was well known to the staff.

  ‘Do you wish for anything more?’ Lopez asked Donaldson.

  ‘Espresso.’

  Lopez barked the order, then turned and regarded Donaldson.

  In the records which Donaldson kept on Lopez, he was known only under the codename ‘Stingray’. Lopez did not know this, but it seemed an appropriate name for him as his lips reminded Donaldson of those of a stingray. It was a horrible, pale mouth, pink and bloodless, shiver-inducing. Donaldson did not like or trust him, but he was willing to become bedfellows with anyone who gave him a chance of nailing Mendoza.

  Lopez had approached him in the first instance and had provided good information initially, but never quite enough. He realized that Lopez was playing his own game here, too. Quite what it was could only be guessed at. Maybe he would find out more tonight . . . and even as Donaldson considered this, his instinct warned him: ‘Be very careful here. This man is an informant and he is meeting you out in the open on his turf . . . what does that signal?’ Though it had been Donaldson’s idea to meet here, he would have respected Lopez’s decision to meet somewhere more discreet.

  The American’s whole being came on the alert.

  Showered, shaved, fully clothed – although no garment actually fitted him properly, everything just too small because he was a large, broad man – Donaldson took a deep breath and wandered through the house, walking out of the kitchen and emerging on to the terrace, which had the same view as his bedroom, only without the frame. There was a large wooden dining table, six chairs, a stone-built oven; beyond was a swimming pool.