The Last Big Job (47 page)

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 taken. Then he sent
a traffic cop down to Staffs to inspect the tachograph to see what
clues it could provide as to the possible location of the robbery.
Even Henry, a non-traffic-orientated cop, knew that anyone with a
bit of knowledge of tachographs could retrace journeys quite
accurately.

That was done by 7.30 a.m., at which moment a grumpy FB walked
in, not pleased at having been woken several times during the
night.

Henry briefed him quickly. After that FB made the decision
that, subject to the views of Staffordshire police, Lancashire
would pick this up and run with it, as everything pointed to
something big having gone down on their turf. If it later
transpired it had happened somewhere else, then it would be handed
over with alacrity.

When Henry asked FB who the SIO would be, the older man fixed
him with one of his famous stares, designed to ensure the
recipient’s anus twitched.

‘
You are that man,’ FB said. ‘It would be crackers to bring
anyone else in, even though it’s still early doors. You have all
the information, the holistic view, the experience and above all’ -
here FB smiled thinly - ‘I trust you to get results.’

‘
I should’ve stayed off sick.’

‘
Don’t be a fucking Nancy - get on with it.’

Things began to move when he walked - still shell-shocked -
back into the Incident Room in the LEC building to tell Danny the
news. Before he could speak she waved a message pad under his nose,
just received from the police in Morecambe.

Henry read it, took it in, murmuring the words out loud:
‘“Four bodies found apparently shot to death in a warehouse on the
White Lund Industrial Estate. Two identified (not formally) from
documents found on them. One: Gary Thompson. Two: Graham “Gunk”
Elphick.”’ Henry raised his head and swallowed. ‘Gunk,’ he
repeated, stunned by the news. ‘Bloody hell!’

‘
Yeah,’ Danny said.

He puffed out his cheeks. ‘We need to have a look at this
now,’ he decided, whilst experiencing a very unusual feeling down
in the pit of his stomach at the sight of Gunk’s name and the
possibility he might now be dead. He was slightly ashamed to
discover the feeling was one of high elation.

They were at the scene within the hour.

Even from first glance, Henry worked out that a tremendous gun
battle had taken place. The question was - had anybody survived and
left the scene? And additionally, was this slaughter connected with
the theft of twenty million pounds?

‘
If it isn’t,’ Henry mused to no one in particular, ‘then I’m
a monkey’s uncle.’

He was able to identify the bodies of the other two dead
people immediately.

Nikolai Drozdov and Don Smith. But no Billy Crane, Henry
thought.

He paused over Gunk’s body, wondering whether to kick
it.

Even as they were inspecting that blood-splattered scene of
carnage, having great fun working out what had gone on, testing out
theories, angles and the like, another message came from the police
at Carnforth, a small town to the north of Lancaster. A stolen HGV
had been discovered that morning on a lorry park on the A6, near to
Junction 34 of the M6. The police officer who attended the report
soon found the lorry was empty - with the exception of four dead
bodies on the trailer, all shot, and all dressed in the uniform of
security guards.

The convoy came slowly down the gravel driveway. Two
motorcyclists were leading, followed by a plain car, a liveried
traffic car and another plain car bringing up the rear. The plain
cars were carrying the firearms team - eight officers in total -
and the traffic car, driven by a PC accompanied by a detective from
the Murder Squad, was carrying the dignitary. On this occasion, a
Russian gangster.

At the last moment, the motorcyclists peeled away and zoomed
back up the drive to seal the entrance. The remaining cars stopped
in the mortuary car park.

The firearms team poured out of their cars, each officer
taking a pre-determined point to protect the traffic car, MP5s at
the ready, their eyes roving surrounding buildings and open spaces
for possible threats. Henry had briefed them first thing that
morning and was empathetic to their feelings. Despite body and head
protection, they were very vulnerable indeed. Drozdov was the class
of target that if anyone seriously wanted to take him out, a bunch
of armed cops, however well-trained, would not be able to stop
them.

Henry now felt vulnerable. He wore no protection - but, he
thought wryly, if someone did take a pot shot, there was no way he
would be throwing himself into the line of fire.

One of the rear doors of the traffic car opened and a huge
bear of a man with a beard got out.’ He was much younger than Henry
had anticipated, which was puzzling. Henry offered his hand in
greeting, but the man blanked him out, went to the opposite door
and opened it.

The bear gently assisted out a small, frail old man and set
him on a pair of very unsteady feet; he held him there and reached
into the car for a walking frame which he unfolded and placed in
front of the old man.

This, Henry realised, was Alexandr Drozdov, grandfather of
Nikolai. He could not have been over five-two tall, was incredibly
wizened, his skin pure white, but not albino; he was hunched over
with a pronounced curvature of the spine. He looked a hundred years
old. Henry gawped stupidly at him, unable to imagine this pensioner
as a ruthless gangland warlord with a worldwide business empire. He
did not look capable of taking a deep breath. Looked like a good
meal would kill him. Not for the first time, Henry’s stereotypical
expectations of what a gangster should look like were
dashed.

Henry held out his hand again.

The old man’s eyes flickered up and that gave the game away.
Henry firmly believed the eyes were the window to the soul, and
Drozdov’s pair of steel blue ones made Henry freeze inside. His
bony, almost transparent hand, which Henry could easily have
crushed, was in direct contrast to the fire which burned behind the
eyes.