Crane climbed swiftly up the van steps and pointed his gun at the man in the passenger seat who was already reaching for the red emergency button on the dashboard radio.
‘ Don’t,’ Crane warned him with a snarl, ‘or I’ll kill you where you sit.’
The man froze, his finger an inch away from the button. He eyed Crane’s weapon and the hooded figure.
Crane saw the man’s dilemma. ‘The choice is yours,’ Crane said slowly, ‘but if you do, I promise you’ll be dead before you pull your finger off the button.’
The guard’s mouth twisted. He made his decision and lurched for the button.
‘ Wanker!’ screamed Crane and shot him three times on the side. One slug slammed into his neck, the second his biceps and third spiralled between two ribs and tumbled through the lungs, the force of the rounds smashing him up against the door.
Unfazed, still supremely confident, Crane turned his attention to the third terrified guard sitting behind. ‘You too?’
The man shook his head. Definitely not.
Crane beckoned him. ‘Get out this side. Slowly. Don’t try any crap, or I’ll fucking do you.’ Crane backed off, giving him space to climb down.
The guard held up his hands and slithered across the bench seat, contorting his way out of the cab. He was just in time to see Hodge’s feet disappearing under the curtain flap of the vehicle trailer. ‘Oh shit, I’m next, aren’t I?’
‘ Not necessarily,’ Crane said.
Hawker and Price reappeared from underneath the curtain and dropped to the ground. Crane pushed the security guard towards them. ‘Look after him.’ He himself climbed back into the cab, reached across and unlocked the opposite door against which the wounded security guard was slumped. He was not yet dead and watched Crane through glassy, half-closed eyes, bubbles of blood on his lips as he laboured to breathe with severely damaged lungs. Crane winked at him through the eye-hole in his mask.
Drozdov and Thompson had drawn their car across the front of the security van and they were now standing at the nearside door of the van. ‘Get this fucker out of here,’ Crane yelled to them. Drozdov reached up and opened the door, stepping back as the guard flopped backwards and dropped out, smashing heavily down to the ground. He squirmed and groaned for a few moments, then died.
Drozdov picked up his feet, Thompson his arms and they dragged him around the rear of the van.
‘ Can you hear me back there?’ Crane called to the last remaining guard, the one in the back of the van. Crane’s voice was very calm, very assured. He was feeling good, alive and kicking, his senses switched on, buzzing. He had missed this since coming out of jail and was blissfully conscious that he had a semi hard-on and that his cock was still growing, beginning to throb. Coordinating a highly successful drugs operation was good, but nothing compared to the rush of this. He did realise, however, even while the adrenaline pumped through him there and then, that this was it now, the last big job he would ever contemplate pulling — probably the biggest ever cash-only heist on the British mainland. One for the history books. He was going to enjoy it to the full.
‘ Yeah,’ came a quivering response through the speaker.
‘ Two of your mates are down already,’ Crane said. ‘Don’t know if they’re dead or not. Don’t give a shit,’ he shrugged. ‘But now the choice is yours. You can go the same way or you can open up nice and easy, get out, keep cool, be tied up for a while and live. See your family and friends again.’
‘ You can’t get in here,’ the guard said defiantly.
‘ In order to kill you, I don’t need to. I’ve got two canisters of gas here, one of which will kill you in seconds if I push it through the vent. The other is CS which will make you want to get out anyway — but I warn you, if I have to use the CS, I’ll kill you as soon as you open the door.’
There was silence.
Drozdov opened the driver’s door. Crane ‘shushed’ him with a gesture before he could speak.
‘ I’m coming out,’ the guard said weakly.
Both Crane and Drozdov raced round to the back of the van as the door opened a quarter of an inch.
The guard peered out through the crack. Crane motioned him out.
Hesitantly he stepped down. Hawker grabbed him and flung him against the ERF trailer on to which the body of the security guard had been dumped alongside Colin Hodge. He stood next to his mate. They exchanged glances of abject terror. They were ordered to put their hands on their helmets and face the trailer.
‘ What do we do with these two?’ Drozdov hissed to Crane.
Crane eyed him. ‘I’ve shown my balls — now it’s down to you.’
Drozdov walked up behind the guards. Quickly, without any degree of remorse, he shot them in the back of their necks with clinical precision, angling the muzzle of his pistol upwards, killing them instantly.
He spun and bowed graciously to Crane.
Henry Christie was thinking hard as he powered Danny’s MX-5 down Hutton Hall Avenue towards the exit. Yes, he had seen a guy walking towards the helicopter, but his mind and emotions had been elsewhere. Now he was trying desperately to recall some facts. What was he wearing? What did he look like?
He put his foot down and screamed the engine in first out of the gate, over the speed ramps — and up to the junction with the dual carriageway, the A59, which ran by Police Headquarters, left to Liverpool, right to Preston. He could not actually cross the carriageway at this point because the gap in the central reservation had long since been sealed to traffic: too many accidents caused by too many drunken cops was the reason Henry had been given.
That meant he had to turn left, no matter what.
Which was a problem because as his sharp eyes skimmed the immediate vicinity he spotted a man on the other side of the road running down a narrow path which led on to a quiet lane backing on to the A59.
It was only a fleeting glimpse, but enough for Henry, from years of culminated experience, to say, ‘That’s him — shit!’ He struck the steering wheel in frustration.
Then he peered at the gap in the central reservation which had been closed to cars and other motor vehicles by use of concrete bollards. It was still possible to get across on a push bike or on foot.
Henry’s mouth sagged open as he examined the width of the gap between the posts. Surely a car as petite as a Mazda MX-5 could fit through?
Danny — there was no need for telepathy because she could read his face like a book — suddenly realised what he was going to do.
‘ No,’ she warned him.
He revved the engine, gave her an evil ‘sideways’, released the clutch and almost stood upright on the gas pedal. The wheels screeched and the car lurched towards the impossible gap. Henry held on tight to the steering wheel. Danny whimpered, cowered and covered her eyes in horror. ‘My car, my car,’ she cried.
At the very last moment, the driver suffered the gravest doubts as to whether the little sports car would be narrow enough to squeeze through and come out the other side in a fit state to keep working.
By then it was too late to brake.
‘ Breathe in,’ Henry suggested.
Danny clamped her eyes tight shut.
Many years before, as a young, bright and often very stupid and immature uniformed PC, Henry had become somewhat of an expert in getting police cars, vans, Land Rovers and the like, through unlikely gaps between fence posts, bollards and all other manner of very narrow places. There had been occasional scrapes, but generally his reckoning had been perfect. All it took, he boasted to his colleagues, was nerve, skill and the innate ability to line up the vehicle at the correct angle.
But now, the older man, whose self-judgement was muddied by the passage of time, was horrified to see the fast-approaching gap between the bollards getting tighter and tighter and tighter — and then suddenly he had no choice because the car was in there and he had to keep going — or get stuck.
Snap! Snap!
The wing mirrors were shorn off with clinical precision.
And that was it. He was through. He whinnied an almost hysterical roar of triumph.
‘ Jesus Christ!’ Danny yelled. ‘My car!’ Henry careered on to the opposite side of the road, wrestling with the tiny steering wheel, causing a car which was hurtling down the road to brake, swerve and pass with an enraged blast of the horn from a driver who had been certain his number was up.
