Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

The fact that every other detective was a man, each one of them with designs on getting into her knickers, did not put Danny off at all. She was going to thoroughly enjoy the night and tease all their pricks and egos if need be… unless one of them really took her fancy and she did more than tease.

Colin Hodge was more afraid than he had ever been in his life. The fear gripped him like a beast, tearing at his intestines and his chest. He was literally shaking with it. He even held his hand up to confirm it; it vibrated visibly. He reached out and clicked the bedside light off, plunging the room into total darkness for a moment or two before his eyes adjusted.

He rolled off the bed and stood up. His legs were weak. He walked slowly towards the window and pulled the curtain back half an inch. Outside was the garden, big and well-tended. Beyond a line of lime trees was a high wall, illuminated by upward-facing lamps set into the ground. Several lines of razor wire ran along the top of the wall, keeping people in as well as out.

His eyes focused on the ornamental bars just outside his window. It was possible to open the window, but there was no way to climb out and drop the fifteen or so feet to the gravel path and escape.

A movement in the garden caused him to raise his eyes. He frowned as he caught sight of a dark shape moving slowly through the shrubs and trees. Hodge watched the figure carefully, then clocked another figure padding along close behind. A man and a very large dog. The man — Hodge recognised him as the driver of the Mercedes from earlier — clutched something across his chest. A gun of some sort.

Hodge winced. His heart surged and a pain shot across his shoulder, then was gone. Indigestion caused by stress. He let the curtain slip back into place.

He walked across the room, tried the door handle again.

Locked.

He returned to the bed and sat down, dropping his head into his hands.

A prisoner.

The booze and the atmosphere turned Danny into a flirt. She danced shamelessly with each of the men in her party, moving her butt and breasts provocatively to the rhythm of ‘Disco Inferno’ and other such classics. Often she draped her arms around the neck of her dancing partner. Often she ground her pelvis against their hips. In a fairly short time she got every one of them thinking they were in with a chance. The truth was, not one of them did anything for her.

And then she spotted Detective Rik Dean across the other side of the dance-floor. He was watching her antics with a wry smile on his face. Danny knew Rik had a mega-reputation as a seducer of policewomen and she knew why: he was charming, good-looking, with dark eyes which reminded her of Elvis Presley, a nicely toned body with a rear end she would have loved to dig her fingernails into, and (reportedly) he always let the lady come first.

Rik had only recently been transferred on to the CID and normally worked in Preston, though he lived in Blackpool. He had then been seconded temporarily to the Conference Planning Team at Headquarters, the team specifically dedicated to organising the policing operation of the Labour Party conference held later in the year in Blackpool. Rik was on the vetting team.

Drink, that wonderful stripper of inhibition, ensured that Danny weaved unsteadily across the dance-floor and presented herself in front of Rik like a debutante — but without the class. A naughty smile played on her lips. Rik’s wonderful eyes regarded her with a mixture of warmth and humour. They were definitely ‘come to bed’ eyes.

‘ Hi,’ she said, suppressing a hiccup.

Rik nodded.

Danny briefly cast her eyes back to the table around which the Murder Squad were huddled. They glared back, each one with a face like thunder as they saw their chance of a sexual conquest slip through their fingers like sand.

‘ You with anybody?’

‘ Only my mate,’ Rik replied.

‘ Good,’ said Danny firmly. She took a long drink and handed her empty glass to him. ‘White wine and soda.’

Henry lounged indolently at one of the bars in the night club. He surveyed the action taking place in front of him. In his hand was a pint of lager which he sipped very slowly because it had cost him?4.00. He was going to make it last, even if it had been bought on expenses.

‘ Angel’s Silver’ was a big club with several dance-floors dotted around the ground-floor level, accompanied by a number of themed bars. A huge light, sound and video system hung from the ceiling like a clinging insect, thumping out bass lines capable of mushing brain-matter into pulp. Several sets of stairs led up to the first-floor level where there were more bars, a separate dance-floor playing smoochy music, and a restaurant serving anything from burgers to a la carte; several places offered good vantage points down into the lower disco area.

Then there was another set of stairs which led up to the second-floor offices. Henry was positioned at a bar near to these.

On entering the club he had mooched around the place, unable to see Thompson or Elphick. It was simply a matter of waiting. They would show up sooner or later.

He sipped his drink. It tasted as if it had been diluted by tap water, warm tap water at that. Not that he was a beer connoisseur, but Henry knew enough about the stuff to realise when he was drinking shite.

He was desperately trying to keep on track in the role of Jagger, but he was struggling because of the turmoil he had experienced at home over the last couple of days.

To say that his wife, Kate, had been unresponsive to his flowers and sexual advances as a form of appeasement was an understatement. She had not even been at home for him to try initially and he had waited in all that first afternoon wondering where the hell she was on her day off. He learned when his daughters came home from school.

‘ Mummy has gone into full-time work,’ Leanne, his younger daughter, announced to him. ‘She said she might as well because you’re never home’.

‘ And,’ said Jenny, the elder, now in her first year of A-levels, ‘she’s really pissed off at you, Dad.’

That evening, when Kate landed home, tired and irritated, a major row erupted which Henry did not handle well at all. ‘What about the kids?’ he had demanded at one point. ‘You should be at home when they get in from school.’

‘ Should I?’ Kate said. ‘You never have been.’

‘ And what’s all this about full-time work? We don’t need the money. It’s stupid.’

‘ Stupid?’ Kate picked up on the inadvisable word. ‘You’re telling me I’m stupid, are you?’

‘ No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just not necessary for you to work full-time, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘ I wouldn’t work full-time, if you were at home when you should be. I’ve had enough of this. I’m off out to my dance-class.’

‘ Dance-class?’ Henry had exploded. ‘When did you start that?’

She didn’t even bother to reply and did not come home until gone eleven, by which time Henry was in bed, fast asleep.

And that set the tone for his break at home.

A lump of bile rose in his throat. He took another drink of the weak beer, this time a long draught, and realised he should not be here. He should have been at home, sorting out his domestic problems. And yet, there was something inside him that kept him back from going home, and it wasn’t just the job…

At that moment Gunk Elphick came down the stairs which led up to the offices and beckoned Henry towards him.

Frank Jagger clicked into gear.

Elphick led Henry up the stairs, through a heavy door which closed automatically behind him, on to a landing. The sound of the club became muted. Henry was thankful for that. The reduction in volume assisted him to think more clearly. The landing led to a further set of steps which opened out into a wide, deeply carpeted hallway, off which were several doors.