‘ Hold on, I’ll check… we’re only just getting back to normal after that bomb hoax…’ There was a pause during which Henry could hear the workings of Control Room in the background. ‘Yep, we have,’ the Inspector came back. ‘Three today. Two are cash deliveries from the Royal Mint — one of which is going right up the county without stopping; the third is another non-stopper, north to south down the M6 — a cash disposal.’
‘ Any problems reported with any of them?’
‘ Not as yet. They’re all vague timetables anyway — nothing fixed in stone.’
Henry tutted, disappointed. It had been a good idea come to nothing. ‘Can you give me details of all three? I’ll contact each company and check anyway.’
‘ Sure.’ The Inspector read them out, Henry noted them down. He replaced the phone slowly. ‘If you were a robber, Danny, which would you rather have, given the choice — a load of brand-new notes, or a load of used ones?’
‘ The latter. Untraceable.’
‘ Me too. I’ll call this company first.’
‘ There we go,’ the young man said three minutes later with a satisfied smile. He leaned back from the money case. ‘Unlocked and disabled, hopefully.’
‘ Hopefully?’ Smith queried.
‘ There’s always the possibility of it going wrong, but if this one is OK, the others will be a piece of piss.’
Smith nodded. He dragged the case away across the floor. He flipped the catches cautiously, expecting to be sprayed with dye. Nothing. Next he eased the lid up very slowly until the case was completely open. Again, nothing. No dye, no alarm.
What did happen was that he was faced with a suitcase full of tightly packed and bound notes. All twenties. He eased one bundle out. They were literally packed like sardines. He read the wrapper. It indicated he was holding one hundred?20 notes. Two thousand pounds. He quickly counted how many more were in the case. Two hundred and fifty — which equated to half a million pounds in used, utterly untraceable cash.
Smith’s heart pounded, making him gasp.
Another forty-nine such cases were stacked in the back of the Sherpa. If each one contained the same, and Smith had no reason to doubt otherwise, they had just stolen twenty-five million pounds. Not as much as Hodge had promised — but who could quibble? Twenty-five mill went a long, long way.
‘ How much time to do the rest?’ Smith asked the man.
‘ Minute each, now that I know what I’m doing — maybe less.’
‘ Get going with it, then.’
Henry’s bones grated when he stretched. He and Danny had just finished phoning the headquarters of each security firm and received negative responses. Nothing untoward had occurred with any of their vehicles in Lancashire that day.
‘ Worth a try, I suppose,’ he mumbled defensively. He poured himself another coffee. It was lukewarm, tasted bitter, reflected his mood.
‘ What now?’ Danny enquired.
He opened his mouth to respond when his pager vibrated on his hip bone. He slid it off his belt and read the display. ‘Hang on,’ he said to Danny, ‘just got to make a call.’ He picked up the phone and jabbed in a number.
‘ American Embassy, London. Julie Duke speaking,’ came the voice after an interminable wait. ‘May I help you?’
‘ Yes, please, Julie. Can you put me through to the FBI office? Karl Donaldson, please. This is Henry Christie calling.’
‘ Hold the line please, Mr Christie.’
Smith sauntered across the warehouse to the office, leaned through the door. ‘He’s having a few problems.’ He jerked his head backwards to indicate the guy at work on the money cases. The faces of the four men showed pain and impatience. Gunk groaned angrily. Smith quickly added, ‘Nothing insurmountable. It’ll be OK. Bill, can I have a quick word?’
Crane necked the last dregs of his coffee and followed Smith out of the office.
‘ They’re getting edgy,’ Crane said, ‘and so am I. Every minute we spend in here, we’re at risk.’
‘ I know.’
‘ What’s his problem?’
‘ There isn’t a problem, not with this guy, anyway. He’s cracked it. He’s opened the first one and he’ll take about an hour to get the rest of them done. But there’s only half a mill in each one — well short of what Hodge had us believe.’
‘ I can live with that,’ Crane said, stifling a laugh. Then he became serious. Referring to the men in the office, he said, ‘We need to think about how we’re going to sort these three cunts out now.’
Smith waited for Crane to call the shots. They eyed each other.
‘ Don’t know about you, Don,’ Crane whispered, ‘but I think we should cut them out of the deal completely and split it fifty-fifty, me and you — not forgetting to payoff Hawker and Price and everyone else. Those bastards killed my mate Jacky Lee and that’s a good enough reason to slot the twats. I’ve used ‘em, now let’s abuse ‘em.’
‘ I was hoping you’d say that,’ Smith responded.
‘ FBI office, Karl Donaldson, how can I help?’ The second cheery American voice came down the telephone line.
‘ It’s me, Henry.’
‘ Hey, pal — thanks for calling back so quickly. Got some snippets I thought you might be interested in concerning our Russian comrade, Yuri Ivankov.’
Henry did not have the heart to tell Donaldson he was not really interested, but feigned it nonetheless. ‘Fire away, Karl.’
‘ First off, from your Customs people in Manchester Airport… they spotted him going through and catching a BA flight to Paris the day after the Jacky Lee shooting. Got a pretty good photo of him from one of the surveillance cameras on a travellator. We’ve checked the passenger list, but we haven’t been able to pin any particular name to him. There were lots of single businessmen on that flight.’
‘ He went to France?’
‘ Yeah, but that ain’t all. Just to expand on something else I mentioned to you before: you know the Paris underworld is one of the busiest in the world, a real mish-mash of ethnic groups operating there. Recently the Russians have been expanding there, muscling in to a big degree and throwing their weight around when the Frogs haven’t seen the benefits of cooperation. One particular sticking point for the Russians was a high-ranking mobster called Serge Garnier. Controlled a lot of business to the north of Paris. The Drozdovs had been very interested in what he was doing, particularly in terms of prostitution and drugs, and wanted a percentage of the action. Garnier told them to go away in no uncertain terms. Then we think the Russians approached some of Garnier’s lieutenants, promised power and money and they set the poor bastard up.’
‘ Just like Jacky Lee,’ Henry observed.
‘ Exactly.’ Donaldson continued, ‘And within hours of Ivankov landing in Paris, poor old Garnier was dead meat. We think our man left Paris by road or rail and we haven’t had any sightings of him since. As usual, it’s all conjecture based on intelligence — but he definitely did it.’
‘ Can you fax me a copy of the airport surveillance photo? I’m on…’
Whilst Henry was telling Donaldson the number, Danny’s pager vibrated. She rang the number displayed from another phone.
‘ Rik Dean? It’s Danny Furness. You got something for me?’
‘ Yeah — bit of a result from that mugshot of Billy Crane that you sent me.’
‘ That was quick — go on.’
‘ I got a sheet of similar-looking dudes together as per PACE and showed it around the waiters and reception staff at the Imperial. Two picked out Crane as the man who was in company with Don Smith.’
