Substantial Threat

by Nick Oldham

  ‘I take it you already know something, then?’

  ‘Not saying that.’ Costain became cagey. ‘But if I did’ – he opened his palms – ‘it would be expensive. Big drugs people involved there, I’d say.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Henry. ‘I would never have guessed.’ He paused, then for the first time turned in his seat and looked squarely at Costain, who shrank a little deeper into the upholstery. ‘I’ll make it worth your while, but you’d better get something quick. Slow won’t do.’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  ‘Good man. Hey, just an afterthought, you knew Johnny Jacques, didn’t you?’

  The words penetrated Costain’s cranium quite slowly. He said, ‘What d’you mean, knew?’

  ‘I take it from that reaction he used to be a bit of a buddy of yours?’

  ‘Bit of a buddy? Bloody good mate . . . what’s all this “knew him” and “used to be” crap?’

  ‘You haven’t heard? He’s been taking flying lessons, only his wings didn’t flap fast enough. Splat!’ Henry clapped his hands once to reinforce the last word.

  ‘Jesus! Dead?’

  ‘Dead as a pancake, I think the expression goes. So who would want to hoiek him out of a window?’

  ‘His bird? He was always messing her around.’

  ‘She got burned to death in her flat, Troy, the same flat JJ took a leap from.’

  Costain reached for the door handle. ‘I’ll be back to you soon.’

  ‘You know my mobile number,’ Henry called out to Costain’s retreating back.

  ‘It’s Dix,’ Crazy said watching the CCTV monitor. He pressed the door release button and Dix went out of sight as he stepped into the counting house, reappearing a couple of seconds later in the living room, sports bag in hand, humble in his body language.

  ‘Sorry about the lateness,’ he apologized. He gave the bag to Crazy who immediately unzipped it and tipped the contents out on to a table top.

  ‘You’d better explain. We should be out of here by now,’ said Ray.

  ‘It’s that idiot, Zog. He’s just one lazy twat. Doesn’t want to hand any money over, can’t be arsed to collect it in the first place. I had to shove the shotgun up his shitter and go round all his people to collect his debts. Took time, Ray, but at least it’s all there.’ Dix nodded at the pile of cash. ‘Eleven grand.’

  Ray sighed. Zog had been getting to be a nuisance. The only problem was that his string of contacts was second to none and his infrastructure of drug selling in Fleetwood was excellent. He was just very lazy, reluctant to pay up and a user himself. ‘We’ll have to see about him,’ Ray said. ‘Later.’

  ‘Yep – it’s all here,’ Crazy said, leaning back from the task of counting the money. It had been easy to do because Dix always presented it in neat bundles anyway. Crazy picked up one of the bundles and tossed it to Dix, who caught it expertly. His week’s pay.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Okay, Dix, you can get going and we’ll see you in a week’s time,’ said Ray. ‘Meanwhile I’ll have a think about Zog.’

  ‘Sure.’ Dix checked his watch. Miller should have filled up by now, should be pulling up at the top of the street to take Dix back to the coast. ‘See you guys.’ He folded his money and tucked it into his jeans’ pocket, collected his now-empty sports bag and turned to the door. ‘Give me a buzz out,’ he told Crazy.

  Crazy watched him walk out of the room into the short hallway. He glanced at the CCTV monitor, saw nothing untoward on the street and pressed the electronic door release. At the same time the screen went blank. Puzzled, but still with his finger on the door release button, Crazy smacked the side of the monitor in the hope that this tried and tested method of repair would work. It had no effect.

  ‘Strange,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’ said Ray, who had been transferring the recently counted cash into the big holdall. Crazy directed Ray’s eyes to the blank screen. Then both men looked up as Dix walked back into the room. His face was a veil of fear, his eyes terrified and pleading because there was a massive revolver skewered into the back of his neck, held there by a large man wearing a stocking mask pulled down over his face, distorting his features. Three other men, similarly attired and armed, crowded in behind him.

  ‘There was nothing I could do, Ray,’ Dix wailed plaintively.

  The man pushed Dix hard away from him, making him stumble towards Ray. The three other men fanned out into the room, brandishing their guns with cool menace.

  The one who had herded Dix into the room pointed his gun at Ray. ‘Hard or easy,’ his voice rasped behind the stocking. ‘That’s always the choice. Just hand the money over, nice ’n’ easy and there’ll be no problem at all.’

  Miller had been in the business long enough to know when something wasn’t quite right and the dark shapes huddled in the parked cars only a matter of yards away from the counting house put his senses on a high. He drove past as though he had not seen them and pulled in a few streets away where he sat and inhaled deep breaths.

  Then he leaned over to the passenger side where Dix had been sitting and reached into the footwell. His fingers curled round the barrel of the pump-action sawn-off shotgun Dix always took with him on collection days. Miller knew the weapon was fully loaded and ready to fire.

  There was a very uneasy silence between request and response. Both parties weighed up each other’s strengths and weaknesses. There was no contest here. Ray and Crazy, even if Dix was included in the reckoning, were outnumbered, outgunned and outmanoeuvred and they knew it.

  ‘Looks like it’s all yours,’ Ray said, admitting defeat.

  The biggest of the four intruders, the one who had done the talking so far, said, ‘Good speech. You’ – he pointed to Dix – ‘pick up the bag nice and careful.’

  Dix shot Ray an anxious glance.

  ‘Do it,’ Ray confirmed the instruction. He was standing still, his nostrils flaring, assessing the situation continually, looking for an advantage.

  With a tremulous hand, Dix reached for the holdall containing the week’s takings. His fingers closed around the handle loops.

  Ray said, ‘You don’t really think you’re going to walk out of here with my money, do you?’ His voice was soft.

  ‘Yes we do.’ Their spokesman raised his weapon, a Star Model 30M, 9mm, originating from Spain. He pointed it at Ray’s chest. ‘Oh aye, we do.’

  Miller came down the street, his back tight to the building line, staying deep in shadow, the sawn-off held diagonally across his chest, ready for instantaneous use.

  He was a former soldier. Nothing special, just an infantryman, but he had done time in a few of the world’s hot spots in his younger days. This situation reminded him of Northern Ireland, a semi-derelict Belfast street of the 1970s. He had been up and down numerous of them and even now he expected a sniper to have him in his sights.

  He was at the door of the counting house only seconds after he had watched the four masked men force Dix back inside ahead of them at gunpoint. With his back to the wall by the front door he reached out and pushed with his left hand, hoping the door would be open. It was.

  The masked man held his gun steady, pointing unwaveringly at Ray Cragg’s upper body. Very briefly, Ray thought about the impact of the slug into his small frame: it would shatter him. Then he dismissed the thought because it wasn’t going to happen. No one was going to shoot him because he was invincible. This was merely a battle and he would live to fight another day and annihilate the people who dared to be so brazen as to steal from him.

  He glanced at Crazy, still seated by the dead TV monitor. He had not moved, just sat there quietly, taking everything in. One hell of a cool bastard, Ray thought. Didn’t even look worried. And where was Marty? Typical of him to choose the wrong moment to go for chips.

  Next he looked at Dix, his hand grasping the handles of the holdall with close to £270,000 in it, all counted, all sorted.

  Ray’s mind flashed: was Dix up to some scam or other?
>
  No. The expression on his trusted gofer’s face told its own story.

  ‘It’s okay, Dix, pick up the bag. Do as they say,’ Ray told him.

  Ray turned back to the masked man who seemed to be the leader. ‘Take the money and fuck off,’ he said, ‘but don’t think for one second I won’t find out who you are.’

  The man laughed behind his mask. ‘Don’t count on it.’ He gestured for Dix to come. All four men, plus Dix, began to reverse out of the room, into the hallway, leading to the front door.

  The first of the men backing into the hall turned towards the front door and stopped dead. The last word to leave his mouth was, ‘Shit!’

  Miller stood there on the threshold of the front door like an avenging devil. His face was hard but deadpan, almost lacking expression. The shotgun was held with the sawn-off butt to his groin, ready to fire.

  The one thing Miller’s military training had taught him was that to hesitate is to die. Miller did not feel like dying on that particular night.

  The shotgun came up, fast. He pulled the trigger and the man staggered backwards into one of his colleagues. The shot had whacked him right in the middle of his chest, causing his sternum to disintegrate with massive damage to his heart and lungs. His arms flailed and his gun flew out of his hand. He died before he hit the floor.

  One down, three to go.

  Miller twisted out of the door, standing with his back pressed tight to the wall, and racked the shotgun. The action was smooth and well oiled. The spent cartridge ejected and a new one slid easily into the breech to replace it and those few seconds were as long as Miller was prepared to give them. He spun back into the doorway faster than ever and saw the three remaining men in disarray, shocked at having been ambushed so spectacularly, stunned and unready for Miller’s next onslaught.

  He came round at a crouch, as low as a shadow.

  The shotgun roared again and he gritted his teeth as his body jerked against the kickback.

  Another masked man went down with a scream, this time hit in the belly and the groin area. He continued to scream horribly.

  The remaining two men dragged their unwilling hostage, Dix, into the kitchen, slamming the door behind them just as Miller reloaded and loosed his third, and penultimate, shot into the closing door.

  He racked the final shell into the breech and flung himself against the wall as a bullet was fired back through the kitchen door, down the hall, whizzing dangerously close to his head. Another bullet splintered through the door, then another.

  Miller dived low through the living-room door and came up into a crouch, breathing heavy.

  Ray and Crazy stood stock still for a frozen moment, then seemed to come to life.

  ‘Well done,’ Ray said. ‘Let’s get these fuckers, Crazy.’

  Crazy jumped out of his seat, crawling underneath the table on which the TV monitor was positioned, tearing away at the tape which held three guns to the underside. He tossed a revolver to Ray, kept one for himself.

  The remaining two men were not about to wait. Things had gone wrong and they knew time was against them, that the odds had changed. They bundled Dix out through the kitchen door into the backyard, then out into the alley where they did a right turn towards the Irwell, pushing, prodding, forcing Dix ahead of them.

  One was definitely dead. The other would probably die sooner rather than later. Ray yanked the stockings off their heads, firstly to see if he recognized them – he didn’t – and secondly to ask the living one some quick questions. It was obvious that the pain he was in made him impervious to any quizzing. After a few yelled questions, Ray dropped the man’s head hard on the floor and left him to die.

  Miller picked up a discarded gun – another Star revolver – and tucked it into his waistband, then took up position at one side of the kitchen door with Crazy at the opposite side. Ray Cragg hung back.

  Miller counted to three, then twisted to face the door. Crazy reached across, pulled down the handle, then stood back as Miller booted the door open. It flew back on its hinges revealing the empty kitchen.

  ‘You don’t need me, let me go,’ Dix pleaded. ‘Here’s the money, just take it and run.’

  ‘Shut it,’ the lead masked man snapped, and pushed his gun into the small of Dix’s back, urging him forwards.

  They had run across a grassed area and over a low fence taking them to the steep river bank. They had been hoping to loop back to where they had left their cars, but in their panic to escape, they had become disorientated. At the point where they reached the Irwell it was perhaps only twenty feet wide. Normally it was quite shallow and easily crossable. But the river was running heavily following torrential rain on the moors high above. On the opposite bank was a road and more terraced housing.

  ‘Down there – and keep hold of the bag,’ the man ordered Dix. ‘We go across the water.’

  Dix peered down the almost perpendicular bank. The rise and fall of his throat made the sound like that of the mouse in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. ‘It looks a bit dangerous to me,’ he said.

  ‘It’s either that or a bullet in your spine.’

  Ah, certain death either way, Dix thought. ‘I’ll go for drowning, then,’ he said. He took a firmer grip on the holdall and dug his heels into the bank as he stumbled, tripped and fell towards the water, accompanied by his two captors.

  One shot a glance back. ‘They’re coming,’ he said, spotting the low approach of Ray, Miller and Crazy. ‘Move it,’ he urged.

  Dix stepped gingerly into the fast-running water. Its bitter coldness immediately took his breath away. He gasped.

  ‘Get across.’ He felt a jab in the back from the gun muzzle.

  Dix stepped further in, expecting it to be fairly shallow. Instead, his right leg went in as far as the knee and he had to fight to keep balanced.

  ‘This is friggin’ dangerous,’ he shouted.

  ‘Just get across and keep hold of the money.’

  Only just keeping on his two feet, Dix heaved the cash-laden holdall on to his back, putting his arms through the handles and wearing it as though it was a haversack.

  He put another foot into the water, feeling for a steady place to put it down. The water was freezing cold, so cold it burnt his legs. He wobbled unsteadily.

  ‘Go, you fucker,’ one of the men shouted and pushed him hard.

  ‘Right, I’m going,’ he said, stepped into the current and lost his balance completely. It was as though the river was practising its judo throws as it swept his legs away from under him. He toppled over, caught his right ankle between some rocks on the river bed and fell sideways.

  He had expected to be able to stand up again, but the strength and depth of the water were too much for him. Before he could surface properly, he was sucked under and dragged downstream. Now he was sure he was going to drown.

  Henry and Jane spent a further couple of hours in the hostelries of South Shore, but Henry could not weed out any more of his informants, registered or otherwise. Obviously word had got round he was out on the prowl. Just after 11.30 he suggested that they drive back to central so he could drop her off at her car. She agreed and they headed back north up the promenade in companionable silence. He drove to the police station and she directed him to her car, a neat little Toyota.

  With her fingers looped around the door handle, she hesitated. ‘It’s been nice to see you again, Henry. I’m glad we’re working together.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You’d better be getting home to the missus.’ Jane smiled painfully. ‘She’ll be wondering where you are.’

  ‘Not tonight. I’m going to crash out at the flat so I’m nearer to the action. She’s not expecting me home.’

  ‘Oh. Anyway, good night, Henry, see you in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Bye.’

  He waited until she was in her car before driving away with a quick salute. He drew up outside the flat a few minutes later and called Kate on the mobile. She was in bed, sleepy, and the conversation
was short. When it was over, he sat at the wheel of his car, mulling things over and sighing occasionally.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone tapped on the window.

  ‘Jane,’ he said, surprised, or maybe not so surprised, as he wound down the window.

  She leaned in and, without a word, kissed him full on the lips. Their mouths seemed to be a perfect fit. She was wonderful to kiss and Henry wanted it to go on for ever. She bit his bottom lip, then slowly drew away, her hand on his face, her eyes fixed on his.

  ‘Take me to the flat,’ she said quietly. ‘You can do anything you want to me, so long as you wear something.’

  Henry was stunned. ‘Okay . . . I’ll keep my socks on,’ he said with a squeak. They both burst into a fit of giggles which lasted all the way up the back stairs to the flat.

  Six

  ‘And you’ – Ray pointed with a forefinger, which, if it had been a dagger, would have shot through the air like a missile – ‘you come waltzing back carrying fish and chips as though nothing had happened. Ffff . . .!’ he hissed and shook his head irately at his half-brother, who hung his head in shame. ‘Fish and chips! You’d gone for fish and chips and four armed men come in and rob me of a week’s takings. So there’s two stiffs that need taking care of, two bastards who got away and my money washed down the bleedin’ river.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Marty bleated plaintively.

  ‘No, maybe not, but somehow it feels like it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it always does, doesn’t it? I can’t do anything right – except shoot somebody for you, y’know? Murder somebody, something you seem to forget so very bloody easily, Brother.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, right. I need to think.’

  They had left the counting house and were parked in a picnic area on the Grane Road, the winding A-class road which snakes across the moors from Haslingden to Blackburn. It was pitch black and very cold. Sleet had started to slant across the sky.

  Ray got out of the car and paced round the car park before climbing into Miller’s motor. The heater was turned well up.

  ‘You did well, Miller,’ Ray admitted.