Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

It had always been at the back of his mind that one day his past would catch up with him and destroy him. Now it was beginning to happen.

Eight years of placid retirement, shaken like the walls of Jericho by a phone call and then a visit from a woman detective. A bloody woman shaking him up! He had not liked her on the phone; in person he detested her with a passion because she had got her foot in the door and now all she needed, possibly, was a bit of muscle and she would have forced an entry.

He was trembling like an alcoholic on his next visit to the fridge, filling his glass with an even greater measure of Scotch. Then he slumped down on one of the sofas and shuddered as if he had the flu. It didn’t bear thinking about, but he had to get this detective to back off. Quick.

With reluctance he picked up the phone and dialled a well remembered number.

‘ I need to speak to Billy Crane — urgently,’ Gillrow gasped when the phone was answered.

A detective can only work on actual words spoken during an interview. Body language is not evidence of anything, no matter how much it might say. And Danny Furness, during her years on the Family Protection Unit before joining the CID, had interviewed numerous people with dark, horrible secrets to hide. Whether they admitted them verbally or not, Danny could always tell the truth from the NVCs.

Over seventy per cent communication is by way of non- verbals, it’s just that most people don’t know how to read them consciously.

Danny had been reading the signals for years, trying to interpret them, just as she did whilst walking back to Los Cristianos in the sunshine.

Barney Gillrow’s hands, eyes, head, posture, had all told Danny he was one big fucking liar. She knew this, not just because of his highly defensive body language, but because even in the bad old days of slack procedures and loose guidelines, informants needed handling, nurturing — and sucking dry of everything they had to offer. They take time and effort. They take money and reassurance. And because of that, they do not fade in the memory unless you’re suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Barney Gillrow was as sharp as a knife still and could easily have been in the job had he so wished, because Inspectors and above can work up to the age of sixty before enforced retirement.

So what had he got to hide? Danny asked herself as she reached the promenade and turned left towards Los Cristianos. Informants were always a dirty business. She guessed that Gillrow was probably hiding some deep, dark secret concerning his involvement with Fitch. The question Danny posed for herself was — how do I prise the top off this particular can of worms?

The massive doors clattered open and Terry Briggs reversed the Mercedes Box Van fully into the unit. The doors closed as soon as the vehicle was inside. He jumped down from the cab and trotted round to the back doors, which he opened. He then started to load the boxes of whisky into the back with the assistance of another couple of U/C cops who were killing a bit of time between jobs.

Henry was on the landline to the FBI office in London, speaking to Karl Donaldson.

‘ Thanks for the fax. Sobering stuff.’

‘ You’ve got some major problems up there, I’d say.’

Henry agreed. ‘I think we probably do need an operation to nip this in the bud, if possible. This whole thing started off as a murder enquiry and it seems to have snowballed. I need to get my thinking cap on and see if I can think of a way of scamming the Russians at the same time as my other targets.’

‘ If you’d like us to get involved, the offer is there,’ Donaldson said. ‘We have good intelligence on these guys and we’d be happy to share it with you. Well,’ the American qualified the statement, ‘up to a point.’

Henry understood. Intelligence was power and influence. You don’t just chuck it at people, whoever you are. Cops are notoriously tight-fisted with it; it’s a cultural thing.

‘ There is another twist as well.’

‘ What’s that?’ Donaldson asked.

Henry told him about the sudden, unexpected appearance of Billy Crane on the scene, which Henry hoped he had weathered. Crane had shown no sign of recognising him. After all, it was twelve years since they had confronted each other in the Casualty Department at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Crane had been well out of it at the time. Henry had not seen him since as he had pleaded guilty at trial. But Crane surfacing like that had nearly given him a thromb. He would have to be very careful in future.

‘ I don’t know what’s going on, but Crane has been remarkably quiet since he got out of jail, and now here he is, back again.’

‘ Well, stick in there, buddy — and keep looking over your shoulder because I wouldn’t trust any of these people, even the cops,’ he chuckled.

Words which turned out to be prophetic.

Loz had been left in charge of Nero again and, by implication, in charge of the businesses whilst Crane was away from the island. What it really meant was that Loz should feed Nero and clean up his piss and shit and not do anything to rock the boat businesswise whilst Lord and Master Crane was abroad.

Loz was on the rooftop of Uncle B’s Bar and Disco with a six-foot-long piece of bamboo cane in his hand, staring disconsolately at the beast, having poked the mean bastard evilly several times just to annoy him. And annoyed the animal was, angrily pacing the small cage, grunting with each step, his eyes burning towards Loz who pushed the cane pole through the mesh and jabbed it at the cat again. Nero’s temper was worsened by the fact that a bucketful of bloody horsemeat was at Loz’s feet, the aroma driving the hungry cat madder and madder.

‘ Come on, you bastard, suffer like you made me do.’ Loz held up his bandaged hand and waved it at Nero. With his other hand he poked the bamboo into the cage. Nero reacted this time by turning quickly, swiping at the — offending stick and dragging it out of Loz’s grasp.

‘ Shit!’

Nero licked his lips and looked down his long nose at Loz and growled.

‘ In that case, you can wait for this, you swine.’ Loz kicked the bucket at his feet.

Loz was now a very unhappy person. Following his faux pas in hiring a stupid girl with an even stupider boyfriend to deliver drugs which had ended up in the hands of the cops, Billy Crane had been treating him very badly indeed. After the incident with Nero, Crane had virtually shunned Loz, used him as a gofer and a waiter and told him to forget about hiring any more mules. ‘Your judgment is so clouded,’ Crane had once screamed at him, ‘that I wonder if you’re a junkie yourself.’

Loz had denied it, even though it was beginning to be true.

When he had started in the game, he’d been clean. But then he got a taste for it, bit by disastrous bit. Until he reached a point where he was skimming for his own use, something Crane did not know, but may have suspected.

Now he was being denied access to free drugs and he had been forced to go buying himself — and it was a problem. Money was getting tight. He’d dipped his fingers into a few of Crane’s tills even though he was aware that this was a quick way to a very dusty death if he wasn’t very careful. The thieving had to stop, but unless he could persuade Crane to let him get back into the trade, it would be a struggle.

Crane had also cut him off from everything else that was happening.

Loz could feel something big was in the air, but did not know quite what. The appearance of Smith and that pathetic little turd called Colin had signalled something on the horizon. Try as he might, Loz could not quite work out what.

Then Crane and Smith had suddenly departed for the UK, separately, leaving a festering man ‘in charge’.