Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

Hodge nearly whimpered in frustration at the thought.

What a waste of perfectly good money!

He pressed his foot on the accelerator and increased the speed of the van to sixty, the maximum it was permitted to travel. He tried to keep his mind focused on the three lanes ahead, blocking the thought from his mind that very soon, if all went well, some of that money would be bypassing the incinerator and going into his pockets instead.

Henry Christie stared at the grease-laden meal in front of him. Typical transport-cafe fare. The Trucker’s All-day Breakfast Special. No wonder, he thought, so many drivers died of heart attacks. All that cholesterol must clog up their veins. The new, health-conscious Henry Christie, the man who had shed half a stone, who had motivated himself to run for twenty minutes every day, found the thought terrifying. His alter ego, Frank Jagger, however, was not so fussy. He tucked in with relish, whilst keeping a wary eye on the comings and goings around him.

He was sitting in a cafe on the A580 East Lancs Road, south of Leigh, near to Junction 23 of the M6. It was an establishment catering almost exclusively for long-distance lorry drivers. There must have been over sixty heavy goods vehicles outside in the huge lorry park, and the cafe itself was bubbling with the last dregs of the lunchtime trade. Although he was not certain, Henry suspected that Jacky Lee had some financial interest in the place. Even if he hadn’t, it was an ideal place to do business, particularly involving large shipments of stolen goods, because it was one of those busy, stop-start places where everyone and everything is transient.

Henry cut into a thick, burned sausage and placed a segment of it in his mouth. It was like biting into a piece of cinder. He nearly spat it out. Instead he washed it down with a mouthful of tea from the cracked mug. It was two in the afternoon. Henry was expecting to meet his contact here soon, after which he was supposed to call Jacky and say, ‘Game on.’

At quarter past, a Mercedes 7.5 ton Rigid Box Van pulled off the main road and stopped in a line of HGVs. Henry watched the driver hop down from the cab and get into a laughing conversation with a couple of other good buddies as he walked towards and into the cafe. Henry smiled inside, glad to see his old friend Terry Briggs. Still on the National Crime Squad after seven or eight years, having been an undercover cop on and off for about half that time. It had been the combination of Terry and Henry that had put Jacky Lee on the path to prison six years before.

Henry watched Terry and thought he was good, bloody good. The lorry driver legend was one of Terry’s undercover roles and he played it like a natural. If anyone is playing a role, they have to be at ease with it and Terry had trained as an HGV driver before joining the cops, but had never actually worked as one. When the chance of going U/C as a trucker presented itself, he jumped at it. But there is far more to being a lorry driver than simply holding a licence. There is the culture, the camaraderie, knowing things about places and people; there are the mannerisms, they way you fit in; there is the language and the accompanying body language, the unwritten dress codes. Terry had them all off by heart, slipped easily into the persona, and no one could begin to tell that out of the role he was a shy, retiring guy, quiet and studious.

Terry bought himself a Trucker’s Dinner — plate meat pie, chips, peas, thick gravy, three rounds of bread and butter and a mug brim-full of tea. He came across to Henry’s table and sat down opposite.

‘ Frank,’ Terry nodded.

‘ Eric, how are you, old mate?’ Henry reached across and shook Eric Barnes by the hand. They never, ever called each other by their real names, even when they were a hundred per cent certain they were not being overheard. To do that was a dangerous game. One slip could easily mean at best blown cover, at worst… Both men always stayed deeply in role.

‘ I’m good.’

‘ You got it?’ Henry went straight to the point.

Terry nodded.

Henry stood up, reaching for his mobile which was clipped to the belt of his jeans. He left the cafe and made a call.

Once again, Henry was feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable — two feelings which often sit alongside the term ‘undercover’. The result of the ‘Game on’ phone call he’d made to Jacky Lee was that, forty minutes later he was sitting in the Jaguar in a lay-by a couple of miles east of the transport cafe, tapping the steering wheel nervously with his fingertips.

The tinted-window BMW which had tailed him the other night around Manchester drew in behind. Henry watched it through the rearview mirror. It looked a sleek and sinister car, all black. There was a blast from the horn. Henry’s nostrils flared. He got out of the XJS and walked slowly back towards the BMW. A rear window opened and Jacky Lee shoved his face towards Henry.

‘ What’s going on?’ Henry, now in role as Frank Jagger, wanted to know. He placed both hands on the shiny roof of the car and leaned in. The front doors opened and Lee’s two minders slid out. They stood behind Henry, one on either side of him. He looked up and eyed them with disdain. Real fear, however, gripped his balls; he could feel his testicle sac contracting in his underpants.

‘ I’m still a nervous man, almost paranoid actually,’ Lee explained. ‘And I’ve made a solemn vow never to trust anyone again.’

‘ I thought you said you’d eliminated the problem,’ Henry responded. He could feel the urge to run coming over him.

Lee raised his eyebrows. ‘I mean, just how the fuck do I really know you’re not a cop, Frank?’

Henry snorted a short laugh. ‘You don’t.’ He looked seriously at Lee, eye to eye. ‘Except I’m not and you fucking know I’m not.’

‘ Maybe.’

‘ No maybe about it.’ Henry sensed, rather than saw, Lee’s two men take a step closer to him.

‘ You won’t mind if these two guys search you for a wire, will you?’

One of them acted too quickly placing a hand on Henry’s elbow. Henry shrugged him off violently, eyed him savagely and spun back to Lee. On the periphery of his vision, he saw the other guy’s right hand slide under his jacket. ‘What is this shit?’ Henry demanded.

‘ Common sense, Frank. Now, let’s just get this over with, then we can do business. Just fuckin’ humour me, OK?’

Henry moved slowly away from the car and raised his arms, hands outstretched like he was on a cross. The two men, who Henry knew to be called Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick, moved in and started to pat him down.

‘ You cut yourself shaving?’ he asked Gunk, noticing a Band-Aid on his ear. Gunk smiled wickedly at him.

Henry’s face became impassive as the four hands worked quickly around his body. Underneath the exterior he was struggling to prevent a bowel movement, even though he was pretty certain they would not find the wire. Because of his previous conversation with Lee, where Lee had mentioned mulling over who had blabbed on him, Henry had thought it prudent to reposition the wire on his person, which he did — literally. Normally it was taped to the small of his back. Today it was in his underpants with his cock resting alongside it.

The two men did a reasonably systematic search, quartering him. Henry hoped that human nature would prevent them from doing anything more than a light cursory pat down around his privates and arse. And they were inexperienced searchers and probably didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. He was confident because he knew that police officers who searched prisoners day in, day out, still miss things, sometimes even the size of a hammer.

‘ He’s clean.’ The men stood back.

‘ And now,’ Henry said, face thunderous, ‘what about you, Jacky? All those years in jail — how the hell do I know you haven’t turned? You might be setting me up, for all I know. This could simply be bluffing shite.’