Substantial Threat

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Who did he run for?’

  ‘I haven’t finished my story yet. Saving that to last.’

  Their faces turned to the front of the car. Jane had done a couple of circuits of the car park and was now standing at the radiator of the car with her palms out. She said, ‘Will you please fucking hurry up. I’m freezing my balls off out here.’

  Dix was warm and dry. He was almost back to normal apart from having just counted out £267,000 in hard cash. He unwrapped two of the plastic wallets and stuffed two grand into his pockets, which would be his operating money. The rest he carefully stashed back into the holdall which he had dried in front of the gas fire.

  Two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds left.

  Nice.

  All he had to do now was get away with it. Make some plans. Change the money. Get out of the country. Never come back. Let people think he was dead.

  He left the house as secure as he had found it and turned out on to the early morning streets of New Hall Hey where a cold, snow-threatening wind was starting to blow. He chose an easy car to steal, an old F registered Ford Escort. He was into it within seconds, had hot-wired it seconds later. It started first time and he was away. He had no intention of keeping the car for long. He just wanted to be somewhere that was populated, where he was not well known and where he could choose a form of transport to get him away.

  Jane wrenched open the back door of Henry’s Vectra and got in.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘You two go walkies and I’ll stay here.’

  Costain glared furiously at Henry.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Henry said. ‘Honestly. Trust her.’

  Unenthusiastically, Costain nodded.

  ‘So who did he run for?’ Henry probed again.

  ‘Not finished. The shooting yesterday?’

  ‘That has something to do with JJ?’

  ‘It was a drugs thing.’

  ‘We’ve already sussed that.’

  ‘The dead guys were muscling into some hallowed territory.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Listen, Henry, these guys are very bad people and I’d better be able to trust you two because when I say this name, I’ll get a bullet in my brain if they ever find out.’

  Just at that moment it clicked and suddenly Henry knew who Costain was going to finger.

  ‘I don’t know who pulled the triggers, I don’t know if they are responsible for JJ’s death, but I do know that JJ thought they were on to him for his skimming.’

  ‘Say the name,’ Henry urged. ‘Say the name and we’ll do the rest. You don’t have to worry. No one’ll ever know you talked to us and I will make it worth your while.’

  Costain took a deep, frightened gulp, then blurted out the names, ‘Ray and Marty Cragg.’

  The exact same names Henry was thinking of.

  By 5 a.m. Ray, Marty, Crazy and Miller were back on the coast at a flat in South Shore, one of several Ray owned in the resort. It was nothing more than a bedsit, but was well equipped with everything needed to lie low for a few days: food in the fridge and freezer, tins of food, cooker, microwave, toaster, kettle, satellite TV and video, a settee and a half-decent bed with clean sheets. He had flats like this all over the resort and in other places around the county. He ensured they were always well maintained and serviced because you never knew when you would have to go to ground.

  However, that morning, Ray had no intention of lying low.

  He had taken enough trouble to cover his tracks all day long and believed himself to be safe. All he wanted to do was get home and climb into bed and sleep. He gave the others keys to similar flats should they want to use them. But whatever they chose, he wanted them back in action by noon. Particularly Crazy and Miller. He wanted them to start hunting down the people who had tried to rob him and had survived the shooting.

  The last thing he did before going home that morning was to telephone Lancashire police and tip them off about two bodies which could be found in a flooded quarry in Greater Manchester. He knew the message would be passed on immediately. He needed to know the names of the two dead men and the sooner the cops were on the case, the sooner he would find out.

  They went their separate ways. Miller drove himself home while Crazy dropped Ray off at his home and then Marty at his own flat. Marty gave him a wave and watched him drive away. When he was sure he had gone, he called a number on his mobile. A groggy voice answered.

  ‘Can I come round?’ he asked.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes – now.’

  ‘Will it be safe?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s gone to bed and I need to see you.’

  ‘Come round then.’

  ‘Be there soon.’

  Henry handed over the contents of his wallet to Troy Costain. Fifty pounds was all he had, but he promised him more soon. Costain took the money grudgingly and got out of the car. He disappeared over the sand dunes into the dull grey morning. Roscoe climbed across from the back seat and plonked herself down.

  ‘Use of unregistered informants is against Home Office guidelines,’ she said disapprovingly. She was feeling mean and crusty. Henry looked at her stonily.

  ‘I wouldn’t register him if he was the last informant on earth,’ he said. ‘When I was on CID here and then on RCS as it was, he gave me more run of the mill prisoners on Shoreside than anyone else. It would ruin him if he was registered and if you blab on me I’ll never ever speak to you again.’ He stuck his tongue out.

  She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  Marty left his car on the outskirts of the small estate and walked the last quarter of a mile or so to the house, skulking round to the back door so he would not be kept waiting at the front door in open view.

  A woman opened the door. She was wearing a short dressing gown, exposing her long, tapering legs.

  ‘Come on in.’ He stepped into the kitchen and they fell into each other’s arms, kissing greedily. Her gown fell open, revealing a lithe, tanned body. She pulled his shirt out of his trousers and expertly flicked open the buttons, her hands going to Marty’s hairless chest, pinching his nipples hard. A moment later her hands were at his belt buckle, unfastening it, zipping his jeans open. She eased the jeans and underpants over his backside and erect penis, then slid to her knees in front of him. She looked up dirtily as she took his member in her hand and eased it away from his belly.

  Seven

  ‘If you ask me, it’s bloody odd,’ said Ray Cragg. ‘That river’s nothing more than a stream, even if it was swelled up by the rain. Four days and nothing!’

  ‘He’ll turn up,’ said Marty. ‘Dead as a duck.’

  They were sitting in a restaurant on the seafront at Lytham, a premises which Ray had no connection with, which he had never tried to muscle in on and never would. There had to be some places left untouched. They were in the dining room, overlooking the wide green towards the windmill and the Ribble Estuary.

  Jack Burrows was sat with them, snuggling up to Ray.

  Marty had his girlfriend with him. He had not really spoken to her or even acknowledged her presence since coming into the restaurant. She did not seem to mind. She ate and drank whatever was placed in front of her and spent the rest of the time, long thin legs crossed, filing her already perfect nails. Her name was Kylie and she was seventeen.

  ‘And what about all that money?’ Ray whined pitifully, very depressed.

  ‘You can kiss that goodbye,’ Marty said. It was said without humour, more with an air of despair.

  ‘Are we sure Dix is dead?’ Ray asked. ‘He could easily have got out the river and done a runner with the cash.’

  ‘Course he’s dead,’ said Marty. ‘If he wasn’t, he’d have brought the money back.’

  ‘I don’t know . . . unless it was him that set the whole thing up, unless he got tempted. Even the best of us get tempted, Marty.’

  ‘I need to go and powder my nose,’ Jack Burrows announced.

  �
�Have a slash, you mean?’ said Ray in an ungentlemanly manner.

  ‘If you like,’ she said, very pissed off. She stood up, her eyes catching Marty’s for a split second.

  ‘Dix has a bird, hasn’t he?’ Ray asked.

  ‘Yes, she lives in Fleetwood,’ Marty said.

  ‘Can you find her? Ask if she’s heard from him? Put some pressure on her?’

  ‘Pleasure.’ Marty’s eyes sparkled at the prospect.

  ‘Wonder how Crazy and Miller are getting on?’ Ray pondered, changing the subject slightly.

  Marty’s insides churned. ‘Dunno . . . I need a piss too.’ He patted Kylie’s exposed knee and headed for the toilets.

  ‘You’re gonna file your fucking fingers away,’ Ray said to Kylie with a sour, disdainful look on his face. He looked out towards the windmill.

  The police in Greater Manchester announced the identities of the two murdered men found floating in a flooded quarry just inside their boundary three days after discovering them. They had identified them quite quickly, actually, but had wanted to give themselves a couple of days’ uninterrupted investigation before telling the world at large who they were.

  It was as a result of that public announcement that Crazy and Miller travelled to and began to trawl the streets of Stockport, the home town of the two men.

  Their plan was extremely simple: go in feet first, annoy people, ruffle feathers and see what bugs came skittering out.

  Marty came face to face with Jack Burrows in the corridor leading down to the toilets. ‘Is there anybody in there?’ Marty nodded towards the ladies’ toilet.

  ‘It’s empty,’ she said.

  Marty took her by the hand and yanked her to the door. On his right he saw a disabled person’s toilet.

  ‘Even better,’ he said gleefully, opening the door. ‘More room.’

  He swung her into the room and locked the door behind them.

  ‘Marty, we don’t have time for this,’ she warned him, aware of the danger. However, there was a look of mischief on her face.

  He winked at her. Suddenly they were in an embrace, kissing passionately, their hands running up and down each other’s bodies.

  ‘I’d rather have sixty seconds of this than nothing,’ he breathed, his lips slavering up and down her neck.

  ‘What are we going to do, Marty?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t know,’ he said, his mouth moving up and down her sweet-smelling neck. ‘I’ll figure something out.’ He pushed her away from him reluctantly. ‘We’d better get back.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, smoothing her skirt down.

  Marty went to unlock the door, but Burrows put a hand over his and stopped him, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘I fucking love you,’ she said and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  ‘That was a long piss,’ Ray remarked as the two unruffled people came back from the loo, chatting amicably and sharing what appeared to be an innocent laugh. Burrows gave Ray a nice peck and sat down next to him. Marty sat next to Kylie and she smiled thickly at him, then returned to the more important subject of her fingernails, which were superb examples of a blank intellect.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ray said. ‘I think you should definitely go and visit Dix’s bit of stuff. See if she’s heard anything from him. I’m not convinced he’s dead until I see his body on a slab. And in the meantime I’ll have a chat with my friend on the force.’

  The Murder Incident Room (MIR) was up and running smoothly under the auspices of Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Henry Christie. There was a lot of information and intelligence coming in and being dealt with. All in all, Henry was content with the way things were progressing. The room was buzzing, a sign that everyone in the team was feeling confident.

  But in spite of everything he suspected, there was very little coming in that pointed in the direction of Ray and Marty Cragg, the chief, but unofficial, suspects of the shootings and maybe also of the deaths of Johnny Jacques and his girlfriend. The latter investigation, though, was being kept fairly low key.

  Henry had moved into Jane Roscoe’s office and they shared it between them. Jane was out following some leads and Henry was in the office becoming frustrated by the lack of stuff coming in about the Cragg brothers. It was pretty apparent that their reputation as hard men was keeping people at bay.

  He was taking a breather from the hubbub of the MIR just to skim through and review a wide range of material from Victim Association Charts to Sequence of Events Charts and the policy log in which he had to document all decisions made and the reasons for them.

  One of the tasks he had asked the intelligence cell to undertake was to research the history and associations of the Craggs and to distil the information down into a brief, readable format.

  For the umpteenth time he sat and read a précis of the life and times of Ray and Marty Cragg.

  The Craggs were born of the same mother but two different fathers. Ray was thirty and Marty was twenty-seven. Ray had been making a living from crime since the age of ten. He had started off as a petty thief, graduating to burglary and street robbery. By the time he was thirteen he was well known for selling stolen goods throughout the Fylde coast and further afield. Information had once come in that he had been dealing in stolen VCRs in Manchester, showing that even at such a young age he had a good strategic mind on his shoulders. It also showed that he had the intelligence to distance himself, whenever possible, from the actual act of committing first-line crimes. He had become a middleman, dealing profitably with stolen property, but not having the risks associated with actually stealing the gear in the first place.

  It was during these early years that, in spite of his small stature, he developed a reputation as a hard case. Very willing to fight dirty. He was known to have stabbed at least two people, though his follow-up intimidatory tactics ensured that he was never prosecuted for them.

  By the age of fourteen he was dealing drugs and pimping for teenage girls.

  At twenty he was believed to have established connections with the Colombian drug cartels, Eastern European drug traffickers and Asian heroin exporters. He was reported to be a millionaire several times over, though he remained living with his mother, moving to a detached house with her in Poultonle-Fylde. He did not indulge in a flamboyant lifestyle which would keep him in the public eye, and this helped him to keep his businesses going for so long.

  He had later become involved in a turf war in north Lancashire over drugs. Two people had been shot dead and Ray and Marty were the main suspects, but nothing was ever proven against them. They had walked even before they reached court and the police had found out how very forensically aware Ray was. Add that to his uncompromising reputation and here was a man who could evade the law.

  Ray was also believed to have some police officers on his payroll.

  Marty, it seemed, just followed in Ray’s wake, trying to emulate him, but never quite succeeding in doing so.

  Henry skimmed through the rest of the summary, then moved on to the Association Charts. He decided he needed a coffee to assist his concentration.

  Dix’s girlfriend, Debbie Goldman, lived in a small terraced house in Fleetwood, well maintained, quite pleasant and near to the seafront, within the sound of waves and the Isle of Man ferry. Marty called round that afternoon on the off chance he would find her in. There was no reply to his knock. He was about to turn away from the front door when he heard the telephone in the hall begin to ring. It rang for a very long time, then stopped.

  As part of the work carried out by the analysts, they had photocopied any custody records relating to the Cragg brothers as a tool to increase their knowledge about them and in case there was anything of value to be gleaned from them.

  There were four custody records for Ray. One related to the shootings in Lancaster when he had been arrested on suspicion of murder, two related to assault charges that were never substantiated and another to a public order offence committed when he stupidly became embroiled in a drunken
fracas outside a pub in South Shore a year before. He had been cautioned for it.

  Marty had eight custody records. One was for the shootings. Three related to him beating up his girlfriends, all of whom had called the police in terror when he had been knocking them around. Four more related to public order and drink-related incidents. He had been charged with two of them, had appeared in court and been fined.

  Both brothers, it seemed, had a penchant for violence.

  Henry skimmed through the documents, his head bursting with an overload of information. He had reached his limit for the day and stacked the papers up neatly. As he was doing this, something made him crease his brow. A name. He had read a name on one of the custody records, but could not remember which one and in what context.

  His mind cleared and he started to read the records again. This time he did it very carefully and very methodically.

  Dix’s girlfriend was back at her home just after 5 p.m. Marty was not far behind, knocking on the door before she had chance to take her coat off. The door was already chained and she opened it slowly, peering out at Marty. He stood there with a friendly grin on his face.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said dubiously, not taken in by his appearance.

  ‘I’m Marty Cragg,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘I know,’ she said frigidly.

  ‘You’re Debbie, aren’t you? Harry’s girlfriend?’

  She nodded unsurely.

  ‘Look . . . do you think I could come in and have a chat? Won’t take long.’

  She nearly unlatched the chain, but thought better of it. She knew of Marty’s character, but had never actually met him before. Dix had often talked about his instability, particularly with woman.

  ‘We can talk here.’

  Marty shrugged. ‘Okay, no probs . . . it’s just that⎯’ He burst into violent action and flung his whole bodyweight against the door. The chain did not have a chance. It’s tiny screws were no match for Marty’s power as they were dragged out of the door frame. Marty stepped menacingly into the hall and seized Debbie, twirling her round and hauling her into him, one hand covering her face, the other securing her squirming body.