Billy Crane sat in the 24-hour self-service restaurant, staring blankly down at the plate full of food he had not touched. It was going cold, but he did not have the energy to lift a fork up to his mouth. He looked around at his fellow night-time travellers and wondered when the man would turn up, the one contracted by Don Smith to deal with the money. The one who would launder it, then make it reappear clean and as if by magic in bank accounts around the world — half for Crane, half for Smith. At least, that’s how it should’ve been. Now it all belonged to Crane.
He was exhausted, felt like a zombie, unable to be enthusiastic about the thought of all that cash. The events of the day had drained him, mentally and physically. Just as the commission of the crime had been a greater rush than maintaining hard drugs, the aftermath was even worse than the worst cold turkey. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep and then get back to Tenerife and recuperate in the sunshine. But even that wouldn’t be so easy now because the cops would be hunting him worldwide: they might not know exactly who they were looking for, or where he lived, but they’d definitely want him. He would have to keep a very low profile for a long time. Wind up the drugs business, sell off his bars — without too much of a show — maybe just keeping Uncle B’s going, maybe not, and spend lots of time at the villa on La Gomera being a model citizen.
Lost in his thoughts he did not see the man approaching, but was suddenly aware of someone standing nearby. His dark eyes rose to see a young man, smart but casually dressed, looking at him uncertainly. Crane knew this youngster was the one — a twenty-three-year-old financial whizz-kid from the City who worked at a futures desk during the day but whose clandestine speciality was making bad money look good… for a flat fee of ten per cent.
Chapter Nineteen
Two days later, on a clear, fresh, chilly morning, Detective Inspector Henry Christie stood outside the public mortuary situated behind Lancaster Royal Infirmary. He stamped his feet in order to keep them warm and drank weak, hot tea from a plastic cup. He was accompanied by the overweight, sexist, racist DC Dave Seymour. Seymour was munching a bacon sandwich bought from the hospital canteen and the slapping noise his mouth was making as he ate made Henry feel a little unwell.
‘ Eat quietly — that’s an order,’ Henry said.
‘ Yes, boss — sorry.’
Throughout his career, Henry had met, mingled with, arrested and put away some very major players. He had chatted on first-name terms with bosses from the biggest crime families in England, he had observed American Mafia chiefs, shouted at serial killers and rapists and child murders and, on occasion, been face to face with desperate contract killers and corrupt officials, all of whom would have been more than happy to put a bullet into his head.
But today — so he had been briefed, warned, whatever — he was about to meet probably the wealthiest, most ruthless and most successful criminal he had ever come across in his life. A man who operated every conceivable form of criminal activity Henry could think of, from drug smuggling and assassinations on an international scale, to arranging massive art thefts across Europe, to pimping in the white slave trade — intelligence had it that this man had set up routes for young kids out of the former Yugoslavia and into paedophile networks, particularly in Holland and Belgium. He arranged thefts, burglaries and handled stolen goods across all borders. He bribed officials and when they did not respond, he had them murdered. He intimidated businessmen and when they didn’t kow-tow, he had them murdered too. He was intent on continually expanding his criminal empire and when he met resistance, he killed. This was something Henry Christie had personally witnessed when Jacky Lee had been executed right in front of him in a transport cafe.
Henry knew virtually everything about this man, yet those facts, he knew, should not blind him to the reason why he, Henry, was about to meet him that morning at Lancaster Public Mortuary.
The man was coming to make a formal identification of a body on a slab, a body believed to be that of his grandson.
The man’s name was Alexandr Drozdov. He was the most powerful member of the Russian Mafia. The name of the grandson was Nikolai Drozdov: he had been brutally murdered.
Henry knew he would have to play this one by ear. It was usual in murder investigations to attach a liaison officer to the bereaved family. Just because the family were criminals and from Russia, should they be denied such an offer? This was one thing Henry was wrestling with; another was the capacity of the Drozdovs to react to Nikolai’s murder in a way Henry would not want. That is, to go and discover the murderer themselves and then assassinate him by way of revenge. Henry had to talk Alexandr out of such a course of action, which he knew would not be easy.
Dave Seymour moaned, ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘ He’ll be here soon.’ Henry had arranged for a traffic car, motorcycle escort and a Mobile Firearms Team to pick up Drozdov from Blackpool Airport where the Russian’s private jet had landed. As far as he knew, things were running on time. The firearms team had been provided as the result of a specific request from Drozdov, via Interpol — who had informed him of his grandson’s death on behalf of Henry. Wherever he went in Russia, apparently, he was always accompanied by a protection unit. The implication was that this ‘protection unit’ consisted of armed personnel. Because Drozdov would clearly not be allowed to bring such a unit of his own thugs into the UK, Drozdov had insisted on an armed police guard because he was always in danger. Despite feeling that he was pandering to the ego of a common criminal, Henry fixed this up. Better that, he reasoned, than Drozdov’s goons turning up armed to the back teeth with Kalashnikovs and having to deal with that.
‘ DI Christie receiving?’ Henry’s PR asked him from his jacket pocket. It was Lancaster Comms calling him. He acknowledged. ‘Information received from Control Room: two minutes, repeat, two minutes. Understood?’
‘ Yeah, thanks for that.’
Two minutes and Drozdov would be here. Henry emptied the last of his tea down his throat and crushed the plastic cup in his palm, tossing it away. He went into the mortuary to check that everything was set up in the viewing room.
Nikolai’s body was laid out as tastefully as possible in the circumstances, ready to be identified, a wide white bandage wrapped skilfully around his head to hide the horrendous injuries caused by the bullets which had been pumped into it.
Henry went back outside as the police convoy turned down the driveway towards the mortuary.
The two minutes had passed very quickly — almost as quickly as the last two days.
When a murder investigation kicks off, no matter how run of the mill or extraordinary it might be, all hell breaks loose. It is the responsibility of the SIO to get hold of everything and pull it all together. There is information and intelligence overload, all of which has to be constructively managed. A policy book, recording all the decisions taken and the reason for them, has to be started. The team needs to be drawn together and led, IT systems have to be put into place, people have to be allocated jobs according to their skills. Their welfare needs to be catered for because it is true that in the first seventy-two hours, everyone is up for it, wanting to get the case solved; after that, overtime becomes a burden, families start whining about absences and enthusiasm wanes. Intelligence cells have to be formed. And a myriad other things have to be considered, not least of which is sticking to legal and procedural guidelines. All of it is down to the SIO.
When Henry went into work with Danny the morning after their first night together — in separate cars, obviously — he had no idea he would end up as SIO on one of the biggest cash robberies ever in the UK, together with a multiple murder.
He had a good idea there was a major enquiry in the offing… but not quite so gi-fucking-normous.
He knew everything that had happened the previous day, and on top of that was the discovery of the security van decorated in blood found in Staffordshire with twenty million pounds and four guards missing from it. A police pathologist inspected the interior of the van and concluded that someone had probably died inside it, or had at the very least been seriously wounded. Where this had happened had yet to be established, but Henry had a nasty feeling that Lancashire was the host.
One of the first things he did was speak to the security firm and find out what route the vehicle should have
