Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

‘ You bastard!’ Henry snarled, but had the sense not to make a move.

Ivankov screwed the smoking muzzle into Danny’s waist and raised his eyebrows. ‘Now then,’ he said in a businesslike way, ‘do not waste my time, Mr Policeman. Just tell me the truth of the matter and where I can locate Mr Crane. I’ll be upfront with you. Even if you tell me willingly, I’m going to kill you all. If you don’t tell me willingly, then I will have to waste precious time extracting the information from you using techniques in which I’m a little rusty. But I guarantee that you’ll regret not telling me willingly in the first place. So, either tell me now and die quickly, or refuse and die slowly… the choice is yours.’

Ivankov regarded Henry with an ice-chilling stare, critically appraising the cop standing across the room from him. In that instant, the Russian made a judgment call. He pulled the gun out of Danny’s side and pointed it at Henry. ‘In fact, you’re going to die now, Mr Policeman, because I’m quite sure I’ll be able to get all the information I need from this woman.’ He tightened his grip on Danny’s throat with a hard, backwards jerk. ‘You’d be just too much like hard work.’

The gun rose and seemed to focus in on Henry’s palpitating heart.

Henry emitted a gasp of fear. He was about to back away, saying, ‘No, no,’ about to plead for his life when Danny, with a surge of strength, twisted into Ivankov and lashed out with her right hand in a sudden, chopping motion, bringing it down on to Ivankov’s wrist with such force that his fingers spasmed open and the gun dropped on to the bed.

Screaming, ‘Get the gun, Henry, get it!’ Danny kept on turning into the killer, at the same time driving her right heel down on to his foot.

Ivankov was thrown off-balance by the tiger in his grasp — but only momentarily. In a flurry of limbs he quickly overpowered her and was back in charge, though Danny refused to cease struggling wildly, antagonising him.

Briefly taken aback by the distraction, Henry was now moving swiftly across the room towards the bed — and the gun.

Ivankov saw Henry’s intentions.

Roaring, he grabbed hold of Danny’s hair in his right hand, his left hand going to the back of her neck. With a powerful jerk he snapped her head backwards with his right hand and pushed forwards with his left. He then threw her down on to the floor beside him where she flopped.

Then he went to beat Henry to the gun.

Too late.

Henry was there just before the Russian, having hurled himself across the bed, fumbling the gun into his trembling hands but still able to aim it up at the advancing figure, stopping him in his tracks.

His breathing laboured, Henry looked up at Ivankov along the barrel which trembled in his grasp.

‘ Ha!’ The Russian’s hands went up in surrender. He stepped back, stood upright, then without warning launched himself towards Henry, figuring that he would be too lightning quick for the cop who was bound to hesitate about pulling the trigger anyway. Hadn’t he already proved that once before?

Henry’s eyes took in the frame of the Russian coming at him, a wild, murderous look on his face. And he did hesitate. The conscience of a cop gnawing at him, wondering how he would be able to justify killing an unarmed man. But then he saw the stiletto blade in Ivankov’s right palm. How had that got there? Where had it come from? Down the sleeve! He was no longer unarmed. He was capable of murder.

Henry’s mind processed all these thoughts in the fraction of a second before his finger jerked back on the trigger. The bullet struck Ivankov in the cleft of skin just below the Adam’s apple, ripping out his throat. The energy from the impact contorted his body obscenely in mid-air.

Henry rolled to one side and the Russian slammed down heavily on to the bed beside him, where he lay twitching like a huge fish in a fast-spreading pool of blood, which soaked into the covers. He twitched for a long time and Henry watched, both fascinated and repulsed. A man dying, only inches away from him. A man he had killed.

When the Russian stopped moving, Henry exhaled, slumped on to his back, breathless, and attempted to regain control.

He was still on the bed, the Russian lying next to him. Dead.

He got to his feet and looked down at Loz who was whimpering quietly like a kicked dog. His eyes were closed and he lay coiled in the foetal position, prostrate in a lake of his own blood. He was in urgent need of medical attention.

Still quivering, Henry turned slowly round and looked towards Danny, lying spreadeagled on the floor on the other side of the bed. Unmoving. His legs buckled, a hand grasping at his short hair in a gesture of anguish as a terrible realisation hit him. He tried to say the word, ‘Danny,’ but no sound came from his lips.

Slowly, he circled the bed and sank to his knees, next to her. His fingertips reached slowly to stroke her pretty, flushed cheek, but he knew she was dead. Her neck had been broken with ruthless efficiency by the most dangerous man he had ever met.

Externally, for the next six weeks, Henry Christie remained a fully functioning Detective Inspector, dealing with everything in a cool, professional manner.

There were many issues to resolve.

Firstly, the Spanish authorities refused to release Danny’s body for five weeks. The circumstances of her death and the manner of it, as well as the death of Ivankov and the serious wounding of Lawrence Brayfield, caused uproar. Many questions were asked, most went unanswered. Bureaucracy was unleashed on an almighty scale and had to be addressed and managed by Henry who was well in the thick of it. He was accused of murder himself at the beginning, though never arrested, then accused of conspiracies, then corruption, until eventually he persuaded his Spanish inquisitors, by his openness, frankness and honesty, that he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as had Danny. He had done what had to be done — an act of self-defence which had saved his own life, but not that of his colleague.

In the end, because it didn’t look as though Danny’s body could ever be released, he made a plea to the Foreign Office; he didn’t give a shit about himself, but Danny’s devastated parents were being messed about from pillar to post by the Spanish police and enough was enough. Keeping her body in the freezer would achieve nothing. He begged the FO to intervene and pull some strings… and incredibly, they did. From a high level, the order came down for her body to be returned and at last, the parents could have some sort of closure. Henry had met Danny’s mother and father during this period and he became a crutch for them, a role which put him under massive personal pressure. He desperately wanted to blab his relationship with their daughter to them, but felt he could not, for her sake. That would have put them over the edge, after all the business with Jack Sands, her ex-lover, topping himself not many months before. Another relationship with a married man… Henry could have imagined their reactions.

And while all this was going on, there was the question of Billy Crane to sort out, which also fell to Henry.

The day after Danny’s death, a specially trained armed unit of the Spanish police carried out a pre-dawn raid at Crane’s Gomerian villa.

As is so often the case in such matters, the actual laying of hands on Billy Crane was a very subdued affair, an anti-climax. He was roused from bed by four armed officers and submitted dazedly to their pidgin-English instructions. He offered no resistance, but maintained his silence other than to demand the services of a lawyer. At Tenerife he was incarcerated awaiting extradition proceedings. His slick brief, a man who was used to representing British felons in Spain — usually on the Costas — presented all types of delaying tactics. Henry doubted whether he would see Crane in the UK this side of six months.