trust anyone again.’
‘ I thought you said you’d eliminated the problem,’ Henry responded. He could feel the urge to run coming over him.
Lee raised his eyebrows. ‘I mean, just how the fuck do I really know you’re not a cop, Frank?’
Henry snorted a short laugh. ‘You don’t.’ He looked seriously at Lee, eye to eye. ‘Except I’m not and you fucking know I’m not.’
‘ Maybe.’
‘ No maybe about it.’ Henry sensed, rather than saw, Lee’s two men take a step closer to him.
‘ You won’t mind if these two guys search you for a wire, will you?’
One of them acted too quickly placing a hand on Henry’s elbow. Henry shrugged him off violently, eyed him savagely and spun back to Lee. On the periphery of his vision, he saw the other guy’s right hand slide under his jacket. ‘What is this shit?’ Henry demanded.
‘ Common sense, Frank. Now, let’s just get this over with, then we can do business. Just fuckin’ humour me, OK?’
Henry moved slowly away from the car and raised his arms, hands outstretched like he was on a cross. The two men, who Henry knew to be called Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick, moved in and started to pat him down.
‘ You cut yourself shaving?’ he asked Gunk, noticing a Band-Aid on his ear. Gunk smiled wickedly at him.
Henry’s face became impassive as the four hands worked quickly around his body. Underneath the exterior he was struggling to prevent a bowel movement, even though he was pretty certain they would not find the wire. Because of his previous conversation with Lee, where Lee had mentioned mulling over who had blabbed on him, Henry had thought it prudent to reposition the wire on his person, which he did — literally. Normally it was taped to the small of his back. Today it was in his underpants with his cock resting alongside it.
The two men did a reasonably systematic search, quartering him. Henry hoped that human nature would prevent them from doing anything more than a light cursory pat down around his privates and arse. And they were inexperienced searchers and probably didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. He was confident because he knew that police officers who searched prisoners day in, day out, still miss things, sometimes even the size of a hammer.
‘ He’s clean.’ The men stood back.
‘ And now,’ Henry said, face thunderous, ‘what about you, Jacky? All those years in jail — how the hell do I know you haven’t turned? You might be setting me up, for all I know. This could simply be bluffing shite.’
‘ Want to search me?’
‘ Too right.’
‘ Be my guest.’ Lee clambered out of the BMW He opened his arms wide to Henry who swiftly ran his hands around Lee’s outer clothing, more as a gesture than anything. He did find one thing — the butt of a revolver pushed down the rear of Lee’s waistband.
Henry moved away.
‘ OK, Frank?’
Henry nodded.
‘ Then let’s get down to business and forget this crap. I feel good about today.’
After two hours of constant travelling averaging sixty miles an hour, the security van was close to its destination. Just to the north of Stafford, Colin Hodge, the driver, exited the motorway. Within minutes of leaving the junction, he was driving on to a fairly new industrial estate. Eventually he stopped outside the gates of a very large, secure-looking compound. The notice board gave the name of the company as ‘Secure-a-Waste’, followed by a phone number and e-mail address. There was nothing to suggest the company specialised in the disposal of all types of security waste from paper to chemicals. In this particular compound they had a huge incinerator which completely destroyed anything made of paper. It was not recycled, simply sent into the sky as smoke and into the earth as fertiliser. As the company held the contract with the Royal Mint, it was here they burned used, tattered, torn and otherwise worn-out banknotes of the realm.
Hodge honked his horn a couple of times. A massive sliding gate, twenty feet high, topped with razor wire, and fifteen feet across, grated slowly open. He drove in and pulled up with the radiator grille nose up to a second similar gate. The first gate closed behind them, sealing the van in a sterile, mesh-roofed compound.
It was very much like entering a prison.
Hodge’s two colleagues had to disembark here and go to wait in a secure office. Only the driver and the security guard inside the back of the van were allowed through to the next stage of the process.
Once the two were behind a locked door and the relevant paperwork had been duly signed, the inner gate opened. Hodge drove the van into the complex which basically consisted of a road which ringed a large, low, brick- built building; on its roof, in one corner, was a tall, wide chimney.
Hodge reversed the van up to a roller door which rattled open. Once it was open at its full height, he manoeuvred the van back into the bay beyond. The roller door closed. For the second time the vehicle was in a secure area. He switched off the engine.
This was the only time other people seemed to enter the equation.
Two men in overalls, wearing industrial face masks and driving a forklift truck each, came out from behind a steel door and approached the van. Hodge watched and noted their movements through his wing mirrors.
Hodge’s colleague in the rear exchanged passwords, then opened the rear door of the van from inside and began to pass out the metal boxes which contained the money collected that day. The men in overalls stacked them high on the forklifts until they were all piled up.
Hodge’s insides flipped at the thought of all that money burning.
The back door was closed and one of the men slapped the side of the van. Hodge fired up the engine. In his mirrors he watched the men drive their nippy vehicles through the steel door, out of reach.
The roller door opened.
Hodge collected all his mates from the entrance and began his journey back up North. He glanced across at Secure-a-Waste. Already black smoke was billowing out of the chimney. Hodge winced painfully.
Henry Christie, Terry Briggs and Jacky Lee sauntered across the lorry park towards the transport cafe. They had inspected the contents in the rear of Terry’s box van. Jacky was over the moon by what he had seen — lots and lots of stolen whisky. He and Frank Jagger were back in business — a carbon copy of their first-ever transaction. He believed the whisky was from a blagging at a cash-and-carry warehouse somewhere down South.
At?4.00 a bottle, Lee was not bothered where they came from, but for the purposes of Henry Christie’s scenario, Lee needed to think they were stolen.
‘ Forty grand… that’s a lot of money,’ Lee was moaning, even though he would make treble that amount within a couple of months as the whisky filtered through his pubs and clubs.
‘ No, it’s not,’ Henry argued. ‘It’s bloody cheap and you know it. I’m the one on tight margins,’ he bleated. ‘So many fucking people to pay down the line, I’ll be lucky to get fifty pence a bottle. Next time the price goes up, Jacky.’
‘ Yeah, yeah, yeah, my fucking heart bleeds, you whingeing twat.’ He slapped Henry on the back. ‘But business is business and it feels good to be doing it with you again.’
They filed into the transport cafe, past Gary Thompson, who squirmed out of the door, nodding at his boss. ‘Just had a piss, boss,’ he explained for no reason. He trotted back to the BMW which was parked at the front of the cafe with Gunk lounging by it. The cafe was less busy now, but still doing a good trade. Henry, Terry and Lee sat at an empty table in a booth, having ordered three teas.
‘ Now then, payment,’ Lee began. ‘Where and when?’
‘ As we agreed,’ Henry said firmly. ‘All on delivery, here and now, otherwise the lorry goes. I’ve got at least three others sniffing around, cash in hand.’
‘ OK, fair enough,’ Lee conceded, holding up his hands in surrender.
The tea arrived, steaming and brown.
Lee inspected his and said, ‘Think I need a piss, guys. Back in a minute.’ He headed for the gents, his back watched by the two detectives. Henry quickly ran his fingers on the underside of the table to check for any hidden
