Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

He necked the whisky with one gulp and slammed the glass down on the table. Holding his breath against the pain, he unravelled the bandage from his left hand, the one Nero had snacked on. It was a mess, looked infected, greenish. There was a musty stench to it which worried Loz, as did the gradual blackening of his little finger.

In the cage at the other end of the roof, Nero paced relentlessly. Loz stood up and walked over to him. As his previous weapon, the bamboo pole, now layout of reach on the floor of the cage, Loz picked up a broom-handle and shoved it through the mesh, trying to jab at Nero’s flank as the beast walked past. Nero was wise now, however, and easily swerved away with a snarl and clawed the stick. Loz continued to prod and tease, a look of sheer hatred on his face.

‘ Yeah, you heap of crap, nothing you can do now, is there, now your master isn’t here to help you.’ He rammed the stick at Nero’s face; the lion deflected it with a big paw. ‘Look what he’s done to me again.’ Loz pointed at his own face. ‘Bastard. If he thinks I’m looking after you, he’s fucking well wrong. You can starve for all I care, you smelly, mangy piece of meat.’

Loz, tired of the abuse, flicked two good fingers up at Nero and went back to the table.

On it, besides the whisky, was a whole sheaf of British newspapers, going back over the last two days. He picked up a copy of the Mail and read the headlines for the tenth time.?20 MILLION STOLEN: EIGHT DEAD they proclaimed. MASSIVE POLICE HUNT.

The story dominated the whole of the first three pages and contained a photograph of the officer leading the enquiry, DI Henry Christie, and lots of bland quotes from him. There were articles about gangland, the Russian Mafia and suggestions of a link to an earlier multiple killing in Blackpool. A huge reward had been posted by the banks — ?200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction etc.

Loz laid the paper out on the table…

The telephone call the day before from Billy Crane had come unexpectedly. Tersely, Crane had instructed Loz to pick him up from Los Rodeos Airport in the north of the island where he had just landed from Madrid. Loz drove there straight away in the Ssang Yong.

Crane looked very tired, had little to say and indulged in no small talk until Loz said conversationally, ‘Had a wee bit of a problem while you were gone, but I’ve sorted it.’

‘ Oh?’ Crane looked stone-face at Loz.

‘ A detective from England came nosing around — a woman.’

Instantly alert, Crane said, ‘When, exactly?’ thinking the cops had moved damn quick to be sniffing around Tenerife already. ‘Two weeks ago, something like that.’

Crane relaxed a little. That was before the robbery, but after the killings in Blackpool. ‘What did she want?’

‘ She didn’t come to see you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Came to see that ex-cop, Gillrow. Something to do with a guy who’d been wasted in Blackpool… can’t remember his name.’

‘ Malcolm Fitch,’ whispered Crane, more to himself than to Loz.

‘ Yeah, that’s the name. He used to be one of Gillrow’s snouts, apparently.’

‘ What did he tell her?’

‘ Nothing, other than to piss off out of it, but he came simpering around to me, shitting bricks about it.’

‘ And?’

‘ As you weren’t here, I sorted it.’

Crane examined Loz’s profile. ‘Sorted it? What does that mean?’

‘ Oh, nothing much — just put the frighteners up her.’

‘ How?’ Crane’s nostrils flared.

‘ Gave her a bit of a slapping and told her to back off — but tactfully, like. Y’know, I wasn’t specific, just made sure she knew what I meant.’ He did not care to admit the truth of the matter in that the slapping had not gone quite as planned and the tables had been turned.

‘ Good, good, well done.’ Crane patted his shoulder. Loz smiled, thinking he had done well. Maybe he had wormed his way back into Crane’s good books.

‘ What have you been up to?’ Loz enquired now that Crane seemed to have chilled out.

‘ This and that,’ he said vaguely.

They drove on in silence for a while until Crane could stand it no longer. He stretched. ‘I could do with a leak. Pull off here, will you? Too much to drink on the plane.’ He pointed to a junction which led up to San Isidro.

Unsuspecting, Loz hung a right, looped off the highway and stopped in an appropriate place. Crane got out, saying, ‘Have a smoke, if you want. I think this’ll be a long one.’ He walked down a slight, rocky incline where he urinated on some bushes that looked like they need the liquid. Behind, Loz leaned against the high vehicle and lit up.

Crane, having finished, came back up the gradient to the car and stood next to Loz for a moment before punching him as hard as he could in the belly. The cigarette shot out of Loz’s lips like a small rocket and he doubled up as the breath whooshed out of him. Crane followed that up with a couple of fist blows to the side of the head which felled him. Then Crane dragged him back to his feet, pinned him against the side of the car and growled, ‘You stupid fucker! You don’t have the sense you were born with, do you? You’ve alerted the cops and warned ‘em off Warned ‘em off! You don’t do that to the cops — they just come back mob-handed, dickhead.’ He drove his knee up into Loz’s groin. A scream of pain came out, but Crane did not let him go, slamming him hard against the car. ‘You have no conception of what you’ve done, have you?’

‘ Billy, why? What’s going on?’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know.’

‘ I’ll tell you, shall I? That fucking girl and her stupid boy friend who lost me fifty grand got taught a lesson. I did ‘em both in. At the same time I did a personal one on another guy who’d caused me grief previously — Malcolm Fitch. Now I’m back having just pulled the biggest fucking all-cash job ever — in which eight people got killed and I walked away with twenty million — and the last thing I want is cops. Does that make sense to you? I’m probably the most wanted fucker in Europe at this moment in time. The only reason I don’t fucking kill you now is that I need you to do something for me. Do you think you can?’

‘ Yeah, yeah, whatever…’

But Crane had not finished his assault. In a final spasm of rage, he head-butted Loz who crumpled to the ground like a sack.

So now here he was, battered and bruised once more, still looking after Nero and keeping an eye on the business while Crane had done a runner to lie low in La Gomera. His boss had left strict instructions for Loz, to inform him immediately if any cops turned up sniffing around, to get some goons to watch the ferry terminal at Los Cristianos for signs of any cops, Spanish or English, and to keep things ticking over — and not to do anything stupid or thoughtless! Crane had said he would always be on the end of a mobile, but just in case he couldn’t be contacted that way, Loz had to e-mail him from the office at Uncle B’s.

The instructions had concluded with an ominous warning for Loz. Since divulging his crimes to him, Crane had had serious misgivings; Loz was a weak and stupid man, wide open to temptation. A liability.

‘ Let me make something very clear to you, old mate,’ Crane said, his eyes never once leaving Loz’s. ‘You know some major shit about me

… am I right?’

Loz swallowed what felt like a rock and nodded dumbly.

Crane spoke the next words slowly, forming them with exaggerated movements of his lips. ‘Don’t do anything you might regret.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise you are dead — and no-one’ll ever find your body, unless they analyse what comes out of a lion’s arse-hole. Understand?’ he whispered.