fearfully but it was the unleashed anger of his boss that made him wet himself in fear.
Crane was nose to nose with Loz.
‘ I pay you good money to pick up sensible, trustworthy mules and you go and choose that silly bitch. I am so fucking annoyed, Loz, you would not believe it. I am struggling to express myself.’
‘ I don’t know what you mean,’ Loz croaked.
‘ Well, I’ll tell you,’ Crane’s voice grated dangerously. ‘I got a phone call not very long ago to say that she was picked up at the airport. Not because of a routine check — I could have lived with that — but because of her behaviour and her stupid boyfriend’s behaviour. Two fucking drunken louts. So why did you pick her, Loz? Why?’
He crashed Loz’s head against the cage again.
Behind, Nero bristled and growled, fascinated by what was happening. His black eyes shone with anticipation.
‘ She seemed OK, honest, Bill. But you can’t fucking tell.’
‘ Why pick her?’ Crane insisted. ‘I have lost a lot of money over this and I’m not happy, not one bit.’
Loz closed his eyes and whispered, ‘She gave me a blow job.’
There was little to be gained by lying to Crane. Better to admit things than submit to his interrogation techniques.
Crane relaxed his grip slightly. ‘A blow job? Fifty grand’s worth of coke for a blow job? Is that how you recruit them? It is, isn’t it? That’s a superb way of seeing if they have all the necessary skills for the job, isn’t it? “Will you suck my cock? Well then, you must be a good drug carrier”.’
He let go and stood back.
Loz coughed, massaged his throat, took his eye off Crane. A mistake. He never saw the fist coming. All he knew was that the front of his face exploded in a searing white light of pain. He sank to the ground, dazed. He didn’t see the knee coming either as Crane drove it into his face.
Loz pulled himself slowly up the cage on to his hands and knees, his head drooping loosely between his arms. He could tell his nose was broken, crushed, and his cheekbone possibly fractured. Blood poured out of his nostrils, blobbing on to the floor with strands of snot and saliva.
But Billy Crane had not finished with him yet. His rage had not subsided.
He hauled Loz to his feet and hurled his face against Nero’s cage. The huge beast, 108 kilos of rippling muscle and sinew, launched himself through the air, his huge paws spread wide, claws extended.
Even though there was the mesh between them, Loz cowered away with a scream just a nano-second prior to Nero’s full weight crashing against the cage. The lion rolled away backwards and regained his feet in one flowing, feline motion. The smell of blood and fear was starting to drive him wild.
And still Billy Crane had not finished.
With a roar himself, he took hold of Loz’s brightly coloured shirt, pulled him roughly on to his feet and pinned him against the cage again. Tipping Loz off-balance, he dragged the unfortunate man along the cage, winding up its inhabitant, who paced angrily behind Loz. The latter screamed, shrieked and provoked even more of a response from Nero.
In all, Crane dragged Loz up and down the cage four times. By the end of this Nero was emitting unworldly noises which seemed to come from the very pit of his guts; noises more akin to a wild African night than a balmy one in the Canaries.
By now, Loz had taken the leap beyond fear. The whole episode had become unreal to him following the massive blows to his face. It was like a nightmare from hell.
Panting heavily, Crane threw Loz to the ground, where he snivelled like a baby.
‘ Fifty fucking thousand pounds,’ Crane gasped. ‘You arsehole. What is that worth, eh? An arm? A leg? An eye?’
He bent down and withdrew Nero’s food tray from the cage and flung it clattering across the roof. There was now a gap of about four inches high by ten long in the netting at floor level.
‘ Or a hand?’ Crane said. His eyes blazed anger and retribution.
Loz’s face snapped up at Crane as the implication of what had been said struck home. ‘No, Billy,’ he uttered in disbelief. ‘Please… I don’t deserve this. No way do I deserve this.’
Nero roared in his ear. Crane bent towards him menacingly.
Almost as soon as she inserted the key into the lock, Danny lost her nerve. She fell against the door for support and butted her head against it in an expression of frustration at herself.
This is stupid, she thought bleakly. It’s two in the morning — no time to be returning alone to a house which holds such tragedy. I need moral support for this.
She took her mobile phone from her pocket and tried to remember Henry Christie’s number. ‘Phone me any time,’ he’d told her. Oh yeah, she thought sardonically. He’d really appreciate me calling him at this hour, wouldn’t he just? His wife would be none too happy either.
The fleeting image of Henry asleep in the same bed as his wife made Danny wince with jealousy. She slid the mobile back into her pocket, put the key into the lock once again, turned it and pushed open the door.
A musty aroma wafted to her flaring nostrils.
She looked towards the closed door of the kitchen. Where it had happened. And stepped across the threshold on to a pile of letters which cracked beneath her shoe. Geena had been collecting the mail for her, but it was about two weeks since the task had last been done. There was a small mountain of the stuff, mostly junk. She stepped beyond it into the hall, closed the door behind her and stood there for a moment in the darkness. All she could hear was the beating of her own heart and the nervous rasp as she inhaled, exhaled, shallowly.
Her hand reached for the light switch.
The light came on, illuminating a familiar scene.
In sudden flashback, she saw herself, three months before, treading slowly down the hallway carpet in her bare feet, a dressing gown wrapped tightly around her naked body. Walking with trepidation towards the closed kitchen door from behind which had come the boom of a shotgun being discharged.
She swallowed in the here and now, hardly daring to move. Then she stepped forwards and the unexpected noise from her house alarm almost made her leap out of her clothes, skin and bones. The movement sensor fitted above the kitchen door had picked her up and set the house alarm going, giving Danny one minute to get to the control panel and switch it off.
‘ Hell, Christ!’ she yelled, covering her ears.
She had forgotten about the alarm, something she’d had fitted in response to problems experienced prior to Jack Sands’s death. She ran down the hall, ducked under the stairs, desperately trying to recall the code number to deactivate it.
Her own collar number.
She tapped it in and the cacophony ceased as quickly as it had begun, leaving a hollow ringing in her ears.
At least the episode had achieved something. She was now right by the kitchen door, only inches away from the handle.
Without further ado, she grabbed it, opened the door, flicked on the lights and stepped into the kitchen.
Danny’s bleak thoughts concerning the whereabouts of Henry Christie were way off the mark. Not only was he not in bed with his wife Kate, he had not slept on the marital bed for almost two weeks. At that moment in time he was leaving a very sophisticated night club in Manchester’s city centre, with his arm thrown around the shoulders of one of the biggest and most feared villains in the North of England.
Jacky Lee believed himself to be one of the elite hundred or so men in the country who were considered by the cops to be the top of the tree, crime-wise. One of those crims who lead flash lifestyles, drive big cars, own big houses, screw second-rate models, knock about with footballers and pop stars, and who have no visible means of support. The police know their way of life is financed by crime, but because they cleverly distance themselves from the sharp end, they are rarely caught.
However, Lee’s belief had been somewhat dented six years earlier when he found himself in front of a Crown Court jury in York, facing drugs importation charges for which he subsequently received eight years in jail. Good
