anyone.’
‘ Go on. I won’t.’
‘ I’ve heard that Danny Furness was up the spout. Preggers. Post-mortem apparently showed it… very, very recent pregnancy.’
‘ Bloody ‘ell! So it must’ve been Henry Christie, the dirty fucker. Wonder if his wife knows.’
‘ I doubt it — have you seen her? All soppy and like a puppy dog around him. Sad bitch… Anyway, c’mon, I’ve got a drink and a fella waiting.’
The two women left the toilets and Kate emerged from the cubicle. She washed her hands, dried them and walked slowly back into the pub, trancelike in her appearance.
Henry was still sitting alone. His eyes narrowed as he surveyed his colleagues around him. He was under no illusions about keeping Danny’s pregnancy under wraps, just as he was under no illusion that his rape would one day seep out and become public knowledge; in the police, secrets are never well kept. He wondered if his wife would ever find out about either.
Kate stood in front of him. Henry looked up at her. Immediately he knew that she knew.
Quietly, she said, ‘I didn’t want to believe it, Henry, not again. Not after what we’ve been through. How could you hurt me again? I thought that sort of thing was over. I was wrong, obviously. Even when I dialled 1471 that day and Danny’s number came up, I still didn’t completely believe you’d cheat on me again.’
‘ Kate…’ Henry began, getting to his feet.
‘ NO!’ she said sharply. Henry’s mouth closed. ‘Is it… was it
… your baby?’ she asked simply.
Henry hesitated and that was enough.
‘ In that case,’ Kate’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper, ‘our marriage has just ended.’ She walked away without a further word.
It was only by pure chance that the police eventually stumbled on Don Smith’s home address. The ground- floor resident in a small block of private flats in Lytham St Anne’s, just south of Blackpool, awoke one morning to see his bathroom ceiling sagging and leaking, about to collapse, from a water burst in the flat above. Unable to think of anyone else to help, he called the police, who responded. A bobby arrived and when he could not get a reply from the upper flat, nor find anyone with a key, he forced an entry on the pretext that there might be a body lying undiscovered. He didn’t find anyone decomposing, but switched off the water and called a plumber out.
A search of the flat, to try to trace the owner, uncovered documents relating to Don Smith. The officer was sufficiently switched on to make a connection and immediately informed the MIR at Headquarters.
Many pieces of evidence linking Smith to Crane and Colin Hodge were found in the flat. To Henry Christie, one of the most interesting was the rough draft of a letter Smith had obviously intended to send to Crane after the robbery.
It read, Dear Bill, by the time you read this you’ll be well pissed off with me. You see, I’m totally pissed off with you and have been since we screwed that building society in ‘86. How the fuck could you set me up for a fall, you bastard? You were quite happy to let me go to jail and for you to get away with it, weren’t you? I’m glad it backfired on you. I thought we were friends. Obviously not. It’s been festering in me ever since, so I thought I’d fuck you up too big style… (indecipherable)… so none of the money from the job turned up in any of yow; accounts, did it? Hah! That’ll fucking teach you. You’ll never find any of it — the guy who laundered it got instructions from me well before we handed the cash over to him and now it’s all in accounts belonging to me… (more squiggles… indecipherable)… so I used you like you used me. And don’t bother trying to find me. I’ve got enough money to keep ten steps ahead of you. The letter ended there, unfinished, unsigned.
Henry had guessed correctly that it would take six months to complete extradition proceedings against Billy Crane.
It was a torrid six months for Henry. He was served with divorce papers, shunned by his daughters, barely acknowledged by his own mother and overworked in the office, sorting out the complex legal aftermath of the robbery and murders. He sat through discussions with divorce solicitors, where he learned he would be unlikely to come away with anything other than his pants; he sat through court proceedings in Tenerife, most of which he could not follow, and moved out of his home into lodgings with another would-be divorce on his uppers. They made a very sad pair, sitting night after night in front of a portable black and white TV, eating pre-cooked dinners and drinking cheap Belgian lager. Henry hated his new existence, but Kate was unrepentant.
Henry and Dave Seymour picked up Billy Crane from Tenerife on the day the extradition hearings finished. Henry cuffed Crane with rigid handcuffs and kept them firmly on the villain’s wrists throughout the flight, despite Crane’s constant whingeing and threats.
Even though Henry had, by default, beaten Alexandr Drozdov to Crane, he remained cautious. He had arranged to be met at Manchester by a firearms team for protection. After landing and once all the other passengers had disembarked, only then did Henry, Crane and Seymour leave the plane.
Henry breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the four armed cops waiting at the gate, all kitted out and tooled up with body armour and deadly weapons. They accompanied the prisoner and his escorts through the airport, by- passing Customs by prior arrangement. Three cars were waiting outside the arrivals hall. They were directed to the middle car. Henry sat in the front passenger seat — pulling rank on Seymour, who sat in the back with Crane. The firearms team divided themselves up between the front and rear cars.
The escort began to roll.
‘ Made it,’ Henry said over his shoulder to Crane, who responded with a grunt.
They drove out from underneath the covered underpass and accelerated up to the first roundabout, less than 200 yards ahead. They needed to go round this and loop back towards the motorway system.
‘ Glad to be back?’ Henry asked.
‘ Great,’ Crane said sourly.
The car slowed at the roundabout, almost to a stop.
Henry gave a laugh, cut short in his nasal passage as the window next to Crane disintegrated into minute fragments as the first bullet smashed it, went right through the car and exited via the window next to Dave Seymour. There was no time for any sort of reaction as a high-velocity bullet — later to be identified as 7.62mm fully jacketed, standard NATO ammunition, travelling at 2,700 feet per second — entered Crane’s right ear canal on a certain pathway to his brain. Once the trajectory of the shell had been interfered with by striking Crane’s flesh and bone, it tumbled over and over through his head and burst out through his left temple, causing a devastating wound which removed most of the left side of his face, killing him instantly.
DC Dave Seymour was lucky to survive. The shell, deflected in Crane’s head, twisted downwards and slammed into the car door by the detective’s left knee. He was, however, showered with blood and debris and several shards of Crane’s skull stuck into his thigh like darts.
Crane slumped across Seymour’s fat thighs, the blood, bones, slush and brains spilling out over the unfortunate detective. Crane’s brain stem had been pulverised, the nerves channelled through it comprehensively destroyed. He did not even experience any reflexive motor action — just pitched over and died.
By the time the firearms team reacted — almost instantaneously — it was too late. The killing shot had been made and the offenders fled.
It did not take long to discover where their lair had been — on top of a grassy bank in the landscaped grass nearby, hidden by low bushes, about 150 yards away from the roundabout. Their weapons had been discarded, left behind. One was a Heckler amp; Koch sniping rifle — the one used to break the window; the other an Accuracy International Sniper Rifle which had been the one to deliver the fatal shot. It was obvious that a pair of highly trained marksmen had been working together with devastating effect; one to take out the window, thereby removing any barrier to total accuracy, the other one to follow up and kill Billy Crane. They had fired within a milli- second of each other. It had been superb shooting.
As Henry took charge of the scene, deep down inside he was not surprised by what had happened. He had always suspected that old man Drozdov would want to see his vengeful legacy for his grandson enacted before he died himself.
