professionalism on your part. You should have realised at an early stage in our relationship that we always stick to our word and demand that others do the same. It is not much to ask. So, why the two of you?’
Thompson glanced at the other man who had remained silent. He was a bruiser of a guy, shaven head, earring, fairly low intelligence. A goon. His name was Gunk Elphick. ‘He came to watch my back.’
The Russian withheld a guffaw. ‘You do not trust us?’
No reply.
The Russian sniffed, considered matters with a slow, thoughtful nodding of the head. He came to a decision. ‘I, as an act of goodwill, will show you that we still have faith in you. The job will be done, but I wish you to know that if you had done this in Moscow — turned up with more people than expected or arranged — you would both be dead now.’ He blinked underneath the stocking. ‘That is no boast. That is the reality of the Russian way of life. I would have killed you both without question. But as we are in England, a more civilised and forgiving society, I shall let it pass… this time.’ The last two words were spoken with a stone-cold certainty. ‘Now tell me about the target.’
Thompson nodded towards the briefcase on the dressing table. ‘There’s a couple of photos in there. Recent ones.’
The Russian pulled them out. ‘He looks a tough man.’
‘ He is, so be careful. Do you think you can handle it?’
‘ I’ve handled you two without too much difficulty, haven’t I?’ he responded coolly. ‘Right — I need you to keep me informed of his whereabouts over the next few days, his plans, his intended movements. Are you able to do that simple thing, follow that simple instruction?’
‘ We live in his pocket, so it’s not a problem. We’ll contact you here.’
The Russian shook his head and pointed to a piece of paper on the bedside cabinet. ‘There is a mobile phone number on that. I will not be remaining here.’ He stood up. ‘It’s probably better you don’t know where I am… if only for your own safety.’
‘ OK. Now, you going to let us go, or what?’ Thompson asked.
‘ You are responsible for your predicament.’ He reached for the door handle.
‘ You chickenshit bastard!’ Gunk screamed.
The Russian’s hand hovered over the door handle. He crossed back into the room and stood by the bed. He raised his Browning and pointed it at Gunk’s head. The skinhead’s face contorted horribly at the prospect of a bullet. Thompson cowered away too.
Suddenly the Russian slid the gun into his jacket pocket and as he pulled his hand out, he slashed across the air to Gunk’s face. The stiletto shot down into his palm and he sliced it across Gunk’s earlobe, almost cutting it off with the deadly sharp blade.
‘ Next time,’ the Russian said, turning to go, ‘I’ll cut your heart out.’
Chapter Four
It is claimed that prisons are the University of Crime, and there is some truth in that. However, the belief that a young car thief, for example, who finds himself behind bars will come out as a safe cracker, knowing all the tricks of the trade, is a misconception. The sad truth is that, more than likely, he will come out as a dope-head no-hoper and fall back into a grubby existence of petty crime and drug abuse followed by further spells inside which get longer and longer.
On the other hand, it would be unusual for a criminal who has a recognised trade and makes a good living (a professional, in other words) to come out of prison and fall into such a way of life. He is more than likely to come out a better, more well-connected, more wary criminal or, perhaps, like Billy Crane, to actually see the error of his ways… and then move into a completely different line of activity.
When Crane received his twelve-year jail sentence in I986 for the safe job at the Halifax Building Society and Grievous Bodily Harm on PC Terry Briggs (reduced from Attempted Murder), he entered prison as a hero. Career criminals such as Crane are highly respected in that fraternity and life in prison was a doddle for him. He was a very hard, uncompromising man anyway, and he got no hassle from the prison rulers.
Although he buckled down to the inevitability of prison life, Crane began to brood in his cell. He constantly rubbed the sore shoulder where that bastard cop had shot him, and started to doubt his whole existence as a professional criminal. He came to think of himself as a blacksmith. A man with lots of skills, learned and acquired over many years, but which had become anachronistic in the modern world of crime.
Robbery and burglary were very hard ways to make a living, even though the buzz of committing such offences was incredible.
Then he got to comparing himself to the manufacturing industry, trying to survive in an economic climate dominated by service industries. The main service industry in the criminal world being the drugs trade, of course.
As the realisation dawned on him that safe breakers and bank robbers were old hat, not least because the cops had started shooting back these days, and that there were far easier ways to make a crooked pound sterling, Crane concluded he needed to do something about it: make plans for his release. The last thing he wanted was to become the grand-daddy of safe-crackers and blaggers, locked up at the age of sixty because he could not run fast enough, telling boring war stories to young wannabes.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers, he often though to himself.
The prisons he guested in over his period of custody — Strangeways, Wymott, Leeds and Walton — became his closed university. Four prisons, four seats of learning. The drugs trade was his chosen subject. He left clutching a Master’s degree.
Not that the theoretical principles were too difficult to learn. They were as follows. It was an easy trade so long as you did not become an addict yourself. The profits were unbelievable for a paltry outlay. You mustn’t tread on anybody’s toes — unless you mean to break them. And finally, if your organisation is set up correctly from the word go, you will not get caught because, basically, cops are thick. The connection should never be made to you, and you become rich on other people’s hard work, suffering and death.
A peach of a trade.
And Billy Crane had a very large deposit to put into his new venture — his share of the money he’d heisted from the Building Society in I986 which had never been recovered, plus a fair amount of cash from other jobs.
Ten years after entering prison he was released with a very firm business plan, some new connections and the idea that he wanted to live somewhere warm, fairly friendly and in the same time-zone as England.
It didn’t take him long to choose Tenerife as the base for his operation. He had considered the Spanish Costas, but dismissed them. They were already overrun by British criminals and were well policed. The Canary Islands were only just beginning to feature prominently in the drug trade. Within six months he owned a small bar in Los Cristianos, paid for in cash, and had bought four other apartments which he rented to holidaymakers. Within eighteen months a supply line of high-trade marijuana had been established into the UK, out of North Africa, via Tenerife and on to the streets of grubby Lancashire towns. Fourteen months on and he was shooting heroin and cocaine up through the vein of holiday air travel into the same area, using stupid young holidaymakers who came to the island for a good time and were always eager to earn extra cash.
After two years, he owned three disco-pubs on Tenerife, a couple of bars on Lanzarote, and had just bought a gorgeous villa on La Gomera, an island reached by hydrofoil from Los Cristianos harbour. He estimated himself to be worth around three million pounds sterling. Life was good and relatively easy. Sometimes, though, things went awry. And fifty grand is fifty grand in anybody’s money. It wasn’t so much the losing it that annoyed Crane. It was the manner in which it had been taken from him.
Sheer stupidity.
He believed that he, personally, needed to make a statement about this. And that was why, two days after he almost fed Loz to Nero, Crane was sitting in a plane making its final descent into Manchester Airport.
He bolted his seat belt as instructed and leaned back in the upright seat, thinking about Nero. Somehow the lion had just been a natural progression — pet-wise. All through his life he had owned big, vicious dogs which fuelled his ego. He’d even owned a couple of pit bull terriers in his time which had been confiscated by a court and
