Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

Behind him the bath was almost full of steaming hot water, frothing with bubbles. He bent down to switch the taps off. The act of bending sent a shockwave of agony through him. Four hours in bed since the hammering had only served to make him feel worse.

Before easing his troubled body into the bath, he swallowed another couple of aspirins, then sank slowly into the water, thinking back to what had happened.

Henry thanked the Almighty that Thompson and Gunk Elphick had only been blessed with a peanut for a brain between them. Had they had something more substantial between their ears, he knew that he would probably be floating face down in the ship canal now, brains blown out.

He had been given a good solid beating, been crudely interrogated and denied their allegations — so he must be innocent. Henry knew of some cops who worked along those lines: if someone doesn’t ‘cough’ a job under such circumstances, then how could they possibly have done it? That was the theory. Henry was fully aware that getting a prisoner to admit guilt was a far more subtle process than that. Quite often, physical violence was counter-productive. Good interview technique was far more effective, and neither Thompson nor Elphick had it. They simply relied on intimidation and a sound thrashing. Probably it usually worked. But he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He had to hold out because it was a matter of life and death for him. If he admitted talking to the cops as Frank Jagger, he would have been dead; if he had told them he was an undercover cop, he would have been dead. There was no way he could have admitted either.

After their questioning, they had allowed him to get dressed and cleaned up in a bathroom which adjoined the office. Then, although he wasn’t fit for anything other than a visit to a Casualty Department, they had wanted to talk business with him.

He had difficulty maintaining concentration, but he kept in there, even though he was quickly working his way through a toilet roll in an effort to stem the blood flow from his nose.

‘ I hope you understand why we had to do that, Frank,’ Gary Thompson had said on Henry’s return from the toilet. ‘We can’t be too careful in this game, as you well know, and we don’t have time to arse around asking nicey, nicey questions.’

Henry muttered something from behind the bog roll.

‘ So, nothing personal? No hard feelings?’ Thompson slapped his thighs. ‘Down to business, eh?’

They were all seated on the Chesterfields; Thompson next to Henry on one, Gunk and the mysterious stranger on the other.

Henry sniffed up and a blob of blood shot down his throat. He hacked it up into the tissue and wiped his mouth. He looked round at them.

Gary — ‘Gazzer’ — Thompson, was the one with the majority of the peanut brain. Or at least he talked a good story, and had the less intellectual Gunk under his thumb, although they were obviously a team. He was a cool-looking guy, well-dressed, lots of gold, with furtive eyes and a moustache which gave Henry the creeps. Henry imagined that Gazzer was pretty good with women.

Then there was Edward — ‘Gunk’ — Elphick. Short, squat, powerful, built like a Sherman tank and probably just as intelligent. His nickname had come from his juvenile tearaway days when he spent much of his time with oily hands from stealing engine parts from cars. He wore an array of earrings either side and was dressed rather unoriginally in a black dinner suit and bow tie, though the latter featured Disney characters. He had a smirk on his face as Henry’s eyes momentarily caught his. Henry was very uncomfortable with Gunk. Not just because of his physical power, but because he had a violent sexual deviance streak in his character. His previous convictions detailed two horrific assaults on young boys. Now Henry had the very real perception that Gunk saw him as a potential conquest; he had an unpleasant feeling that Gunk might try to chance his arm. Henry was not a violent man, but he knew that if there ever came a legitimate chance of beating the living shit out of Gunk, he would do it and enjoy it.

Next along was the mystery man. Henry looked at him for an instant, then back to Thompson.

‘ What’s the score now, Gazzer? Now that Jacky’s gone to gangster heaven? I need to know before I do business.’

‘ It was very sad that Jacky got taken out like that. Despite what you might think, Frank, we had nothing to do with it. We both miss him very much. He was a good boss, a fair man.’ Thompson made a valiant effort with his body language to convey grief. Henry covered his mouth with tissue and tried to hide a smile. ‘But the sad fact is, he’s gone. Yes, gone to gangster heaven, I would guess. But the business still has to run. Me and Gunk have stepped into Jacky’s shoes to keep the momentum going. A dirty business, but someone has to do it. So that’s the score, Frank.’

‘ And who is this personality?’ Henry pointed at Mr Mystery with a gesture of his blood soaked tissues.

‘ A friend, a business partner.’

Henry looked at him. The man’s deep-set eyes returned the stare. Henry though he looked deadly and cold.

‘ Look, Gazzer, I’m not being funny, but I really don’t like doing business with people I don’t know. Commonsense, really. I could be compromised. I need to know who he is, and if I can trust him.’

‘ Fair enough. I’ll introduce you. Frank Jagger — Nikolai Drozdov. Him and us are in business together now. He’s from Europe.’

Drozdov offered his pale hand to Henry, who shook it. It was cool and small, like a woman’s. But there was no time to talk further. There was an urgent knock from the office door. Gunk opened it to a man who tumbled into the room, breathless.

‘ Trouble… down at the door. Some heavies from Moss Side are causing problems. We need you down there to sort it, otherwise it’s going to get out of hand.’

Thompson nodded. ‘Right.’ He turned to Henry. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Now, as he lay in the bath in his hotel room a few hours later, running these events through his mind, Henry began to marshal his thoughts.

Firstly he needed to get a grip on Rupert Davison, that two-faced bastard of a Detective Superintendent who had lied bare-faced to him and got him beaten up. Secondly he had to do some research on Nikolai Drozdov, who Henry suspected was a fully paid-up member of the Russian Mafia, and to bone up on the Russian Mafia itself; he had heard lots about them and their ever-spreading influence, but had never yet met one face to face, except… Henry had a very disturbing thought: maybe he had come face to face with the Russian Mafia before, not so very long ago, and did not realise it at the time. Maybe the guy who had done the business on Jacky Lee had been one of them and maybe the incomprehensible words he had uttered at Henry were Russian words. And maybe Jacky Lee had been ousted by the Russians so that they could move in and control his little empire, working alongside Thompson and Elphick.

Wow, Henry thought. He settled deep into the bath, the hot water having a soothing effect on his wounds, and tried to remember exactly what the killer had said. Henry had thought it gibberish at the time.

Another person suffering that morning, though not in exactly the same way as Henry Christie, was Danny Furness.

She sat at her desk balancing her forehead on her forefinger, swallowing in an effort to hold back the contents of her stomach which threatened to burst forth at any moment, and wishing she was dead. Being so would end all her suffering. As well as her stomach being bad, her head was no better, being the cranial version of hellfire; and she was also suffering from the acute embarrassment of having a man’s erect penis almost in her mouth and him running out on her because it was all too weird.