Nick Oldham - Big City Jacks

‘No. . looks like a recce, though.’

Henry spoke into his PR, using the dedicated channel for the SIO team. ‘Jane, you receiving?’

‘Yeah — go ahead.’

‘If you haven’t done so already, move the car into a more discreet location, will you? We don’t want to spook anyone.’

‘Done it already.’

‘Good stuff.’

Henry and Donaldson were about to rise from their damp position when another car turned in from the main road.

‘Getting busy down here,’ Henry commented.

The car that had only just cruised by them moments before reappeared from the opposite direction. Instinct made the pair of detectives drop even lower, their bellies almost on the grass. The cars drove slowly toward each other and when they were alongside each other, only a matter of feet from where they lay hidden, they stopped.

Words inaudible to either Henry or Donaldson were exchanged by the people in the cars. Neither man hardly dared to raise his head an inch, but the temptation to have a look-see was overwhelming.

After a brief conflab, the cars separated. The one which had just turned into the road drove straight on into the industrial estate. The other executed a three-point turn and followed.

The two men rose from their secret place when they were sure the cars had gone.

Henry got on to his radio again. ‘Jane, call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I think it might be as well if we had some back-up here after all. It’s hard to say what might or might not be happening, but I’d rather have it coming and not use it.’

‘Yeah — what do you need?’

‘Whatever we’ve got closest to hand. At the very least get an armed-response unit on the way and see if there’s any support unit on in the Valley. You act as the RV point. Can you fix it?’

‘Yep. I take it you don’t want GMP telling.’

‘No — just use our people, OK?’

‘Roger, will do.’

‘And we will maintain radio silence for a while now. . we’re just going on to the estate.’

Crouching and running from shadow to shadow, they set off towards the Big City.

They discovered Lynch’s car parked up, unlocked, behind a block of industrial units some way from the Big City. One of the things Henry had always taken pleasure in doing was disabling cars belonging to criminals. He had often done it in his younger days just for fun. Now he took the opportunity to dive under the bonnet of Lynch’s motor and yank the spark-plug leads out, whilst Donaldson kept nicks. He knew it wasn’t a subtle thing to do, but it would be effective for a short time and might give Henry some advantage. Not knowing how things were going to pan out, he would be happy to gain any advantage. This done, the two detectives moved on, keeping to the building lines of the industrial units and using all cover available, their senses sharp, alert for anything. Both men were nervous, not having a clue what they were getting into.

They emerged from between two units and looked across a road to a huge, detached unit which seemed to go on forever. The bottom half of it was constructed of breeze block, the top half corrugated metal. It had no windows on the side they were looking at. ‘This is it,’ Henry said. ‘The Big City. GMP have it on lease for God knows how many years. It’s just like a little high street inside. I think there’s even a Burton’s shopfront. Lots of alleys, the works. What you’re looking at is the gable end, in effect, because the front entrance is round that side.’

Donaldson just nodded. Henry had noticed he had gone extremely quiet, but put it down to tension and circumstance.

They legged it across the road, flattening themselves against the outside wall of the Big City. There was a lot of cover next to the building, several builders’ skips, a couple of tractor units, an old van and piles of building materials, all typical of such an estate.

On a signal from Henry, they sidled up to the corner of the building where they crouched under the lee of a skip filled with what looked suspiciously like asbestos. They dropped to their hands and knees and, comically, peeked around the corner, one head above the other, so they could see down the front elevation. It stretched far and there was a big car park and a large porch on the front of the building.

Two cars were parked up. One being one of the two cars Henry and Donaldson had seen minutes before on the road.

Three people were getting out. Henry squinted in the growing darkness, trying to get a good look at them. ‘I recognize one of them,’ he hissed.

‘Mendoza,’ Donaldson gasped. ‘The guy on his left is Lopez. . the other will be Sweetman.’

‘Father, son and holy ghost,’ Henry said less than reverentially. Both men drew back out of sight.

‘Struck gold here,’ Donaldson said. ‘This must be the return of the drug consignment. . shit. .’

‘What?’

‘Don’t know about you, H, but I’ve never known something like this go smoothly for any of the parties. Tears are often shed.’

‘I want to see what’s going down.’

‘Me, too.’ Henry thought hard. ‘There are several emergency exits dotted around the building, one on each wall, I think. Maybe we could get in through one of them to watch things.’

‘Worth a try,’ said Donaldson, then clutched his chest. Henry thought he was having a heart attack, but it was actually the American’s mobile phone vibrating silently above his heart. ‘Shit. . let me get this.’ He scurried away a few steps out of Henry’s earshot.

It was rather like a badly built shopping mall, lit by massive, but not brilliant, lights suspended from the metal roof.

They met in the middle of the main street in the Big City.

Easton was flanked by Lynch and Hamlet, their breath visible in the chill air of the industrial unit. Three holdalls had been placed on a trestle table in front of them.

Sweetman, with Mendoza and Lopez at either shoulder and Grant behind them both, like a formation of fighter planes, walked slowly down the road, which had been named, appropriately enough, Ambush Alley by the cops in the public-order units which trained there regularly. Officially it was called simply ‘Main Street’. The four stopped, twenty metres away from Easton and his crew.

‘I thought we agreed only two assistants,’ Easton said.

‘He’s my solicitor,’ Sweetman said, thumbing a gesture at Grant. ‘He’s here just to oversee the legal niceties.’

‘Not a good start to proceedings.’

Sweetman shrugged.

‘Is that my property?’ He pointed at the holdalls.

Easton said it was, then, ‘Where do we go from here?’

‘You all step back twenty paces, leave the bags where they are and we pick them up. When we’ve gone, the matter is over. It’s that simple.’

‘Nothing is that simple,’ Easton said.

The seven men stared at each other.

Suddenly the tension was broken by a mobile phone announcing that a text message had just landed. It was Mendoza’s and he instinctively pulled it out of his pocket and thumbed the ‘read message’ button. That was the thing about texts. They were impossible to ignore, even in the most stressful of situations. Mendoza glanced at the display and skim-read the message, his face growing darker with each word he read, as it confirmed something which he had been suspecting for a long time now.

All eyes were on him, but as he replaced the phone in his pocket, looked up and shrugged, everyone’s attention returned to the task in hand. Mendoza’s mind was on other things as he sidled up to Lopez and smiled broadly at his second in command. He placed an arm around his shoulder and said, ‘Soon all our troubles will be over, amigo.’ He nodded in the direction of the drugs. Lopez frowned at this out of character display from Mendoza, and he never got the opportunity to put his plan into action. On his signal, he had intended that he and Grant would draw their weapons and start shooting. Grant would take down Easton, Hamlet and Lynch. Lopez would take great pleasure in wasting Mendoza and Sweetman. Then he and Grant would be in business.