The Last Big Job (8 page)

His room was neat, functional and clean. He showered, taking
it long and hot, swilling off the dust and smell of travel, dried
off and slumped into the double bed. Yawning, he refitted the knife
to his wrist, then immediately fell asleep.

Just before midnight, a rustling noise awoke him. He came to
quickly, his eyes darting around the room, his senses alert and
prickling. He rolled off the bed and picked up the envelope which
had been pushed under the door. He listened, ear to the door, but
there was nothing to hear. Good. It meant the delivery boy had
gone, was not curious.

Inside the envelope was a car key. On a small card was a make,
model and registration number. A nondescript Ford. Nothing flashy.
Again, functional.

The other item in the envelope was the most recent photograph
of the man with whom he was required to do business.

A man who, within forty-eight hours, would be dead.

Danny had definitely decided to go back to her own place that
night. Even if Geena’s ever-hopeful boyfriend had not been an
issue, she had had enough of living out of a suitcase, sleeping in
a single bed, not having her own toilet, not having the privacy to
be a slob. She was too old and set in her ways to feel comfortable
living like that. She needed her own space; room to get on with her
life.

She was going to be brave and return home.

It had been a long day at work, complicated by Mickey Mouse
and the redirected holiday jet landing at Blackpool Airport. But by
11 p.m. Danny had managed to get everything tied up.

‘
Mr Mouse’ had eventually decided to come clean about his true
identity. He had been charged with Grievous Bodily Harm and was
appearing in court in the morning. The file for that had been done
and dusted.

Spencer had been refused bail and charged with offences
relating to his behaviour on the plane. He had also been questioned
extensively about the drugs in Cheryl’s suitcase, but denied all
knowledge. Danny believed him. Cheryl, meanwhile, was as guilty as
sin. She was going nowhere, either, other than in custody to the
Magistrates’ Court on a charge of importing cocaine and assaults on
the plane. The Crown Prosecution Service intended to oppose further
bail for her, but Danny suspected the court would probably allow
conditional bail - reporting to a police station coupled with
confiscation of passport and strict residence and curfew
impositions.

Danny actually felt sorry for Cheryl. She was obviously a
mule, bringing in dope on behalf of some big-time dealer or
organisation and getting nothing but problems for her
reward.

Just after eleven, Danny left work and raced to a local pub
where she knew her request for alcoholic beverage would be met with
sympathy. She also found a couple of Detective Constables there and
spent the next hour chatting to them. . . by which time the pub had
emptied and the landlord wanted to know if they were staying put
for a lock-in, or were leaving; if the latter, could he shut up
shop?

They left. Danny walked to her car and got in. She rested her
hands on the steering wheel and allowed her head to droop between
her arms. Then she raised her face and brushed her hair
back.

The moment of weakness had passed. The moment when she almost
drove back to Geena’s instead of returning to her own house which
she had not seen for three months ... where tragic memories lurked
... where someone had committed suicide in her kitchen.

It was 2 a.m. The sixth cigarette butt in a row was tossed out
of the driver’s window on to the pavement.

Danny’s resolution to go home had deserted her like a rat from
a sinking ship when she drove her new Mazda MX-5 into the street
where her house was located. She had parked directly outside the
semi, not even daring to pull into the driveway.

She had rolled the window down and lit a cigarette, drawing
the heavy smoke deep into her lungs. She stared at the house,
illuminated by the fluorescent street-light. Nothing had changed,
other than the addition of a For Sale sign embedded in the front
lawn. No prospective buyers had been to view the property. It was
probably still too soon. The story was still fresh in everyone’s
mind. The illicit love affair. The suicide when Danny ended it. The
shotgun in the mouth. The brains blasted into the fridge. The
revelations in the newspaper afterwards - another smut-scandal in
the police. The media lapped it up. Photographs of the wronged
wife. Danny, the Scarlet Woman (even invited on to a morning TV
chat show!). Jesus, it had been completely horrendous. Then the
funeral - not attended by Danny. The inquest... all major
life-shattering events, the ramifications of which still bubbled
on. Danny still faced the prospect of internal discipline
proceedings for bringing the Service into disrepute, amongst other
things.

And she had never set foot in the house since the day Jack
Sands, her boss and lover, had blown the whole of his head above
his jaw into the freezer compartment and top shelf of her
fridge.

Danny lit the seventh cigarette.

Her eyes burned with tiredness.

This was the first time she had ever smoked in her smart new
car. And would be the last, she decided firmly, and made up her
mind. She flicked the cigarette out of the window, then got out
herself. She drew in as deep a breath as her smoke-saturated lungs
would allow and walked up to the front door, slotted in the Yale
key.

She was home.

A scrawny lion had once been rescued by some do-gooders from a
tiny cage on top of a bar in Tenerife. The beast had been a pitiful
sight. Poorly treated, badly fed and cared for, its ribs pushed out
like a xylophone, its mane a tangled, dried-up mess, its eyes
oozing pus. No doubt it could still have killed a man, given the
chance - and enjoyed the feast - but it was a pathetic specimen by
any standards. It deserved to be saved and the owner strung
up.

However, the lion which, at 2 a.m. on that warm, balmy night
in Los Cristianos, Tenerife, prowled the large cage on the roof top
of Uncle B’s English Bar and Disco was a different matter
altogether. He was fit, healthy and rippling with muscle. His tawny
grey-yellow coat was glowing, smooth as a peach. The mane was black
and looked as though it had been shampooed and trimmed by Vidal
Sassoon himself.

The lion’s name was Nero, and he was capable of bringing down
a Cape buffalo and a zebra at the same time.

Nero paced his cage, his large pads slapping down on the hard
floor. A serious grunt emanated from his throat with each tread. He
was impatient. And hungry.

He moved up and down the length of the cage, his head and eyes
always fixed on the point where the staircase opened out on to the
roof terrace. There was a click, followed by a scraping noise as a
metal door was drawn backwards. Then there was the sound of
footsteps on the metal stairs.

Nero stopped moving, his shining black eyes concentrating on
the opening through the mesh of the cage.

Unusually, two men appeared instead of one.

Nero recognised the first one by his smell: the aftershave and
the cigar smoke complemented by alcohol fumes. It was an aroma Nero
loved - but only because there was the pleasure of food associated
with this human being who was also his owner.

The first man up the stairs was carrying a coolbox.

Nero knew this contained his food for the day.

The first man walked confidently up to the cage whilst the
second man hesitated in the background, hovering nervously. Nero
picked up on this. The man smelled very much like the first one -
smoke, aftershave and alcohol - but there was something else there
which sent a tremor of excitement down the great beast’s
spine.

Fear.

‘
Hey, Nero, look what I got for you
.
’
The man
held up the coolbox and rapped his knuckles on it.

A deep roar emanated from the beast’s throat, like thunder
approaching.

‘
The best horsemeat money can buy,’ the man said. He walked up
to the cage and placed the box on the floor next to a specially
constructed sliding tray at ground level. He pulled the flap open
and dragged out
the metal tray.

Nero’s pace grew quicker, up and down the cage, impatience
showing. He was hungry. He wanted food.

The man at the cage glanced over his shoulder at his colleague
who had remained at the top of the steps, ready to bolt. He’d lit a
cigarette. Shaking fingers placed it between his lips. Jesus, the
lion scared the hell out of him. He spent as little time as
possible on the roof.

‘
Hey, come over here, you
soft
bastard.’

‘
I’d rather not, if you
don’t mind.
Frightens the shit out of me.’

‘
We all have our fears, Loz. We’ve all got to come to terms
with them.’

‘
I don’t mind coming to terms with normal things, but a
fucking lion? No way.’

Nero snarled. The man at the cage looked at him and smiled.
‘It’s OK, pal. You’ll have some din-dins in a minute.’ He turned
back to Loz. ‘C’mon,’ he coaxed, encouraging him to come across the
divide with a gesture of his fingers. ‘You gotta do this. It’ll be
good for your soul.’

The man called Loz, short for Lawrence, shook his
head.

‘
I said c’mon,’ the first man said more firmly.

Loz’s mouth dried up. His eyes narrowed. What the hell was
this about? he wondered. ‘No, look I-’

‘
Get your fucking arse over here,’ the first man said
fiercely. Then his tone lightened. ‘I mean, who the hell’s going to
look after this baby while I’m away? You, Loz -
you
- so you’ve got to get used to
feeding him.’

‘
Just so long as I don’t have to take him for a
walk.’

‘
That’s the spirit.’

Loz stomped on his cigarette, blew a lungful of smoke into the
clear Atlantic night and dragged himself reluctantly across the
roof to the cage. His eyes never left Nero; his imagination never
moved away from being ripped to shreds by those paws which were as
big as shovels and teeth which were as sharp as nails.

The first man was kneeling down by the coolbox, having prised
off the lid. Two hands went in and eased out a dripping horse
steak, the size of a dinner-plate.

‘
A Frog would give his right arm for this,’ the man joked.
‘Now, this is the tricky bit,’ he explained to Loz. ‘Making sure
Nero don’t get the chance to tear your hand off.’

He dropped the meat into the sliding tray and pushed it under
the cage to the waiting lion. Nero grabbed it immediately between
his teeth, reared back and with snuffling grunts of pleasure,
padded to the far corner of the cage and began to tear at it. He
held it between his paws and ripped it with his teeth and licked it
with his massive, rough tongue.

‘
What a brilliant animal,’ the man said. He loved the
lion.

‘
Yeah,’ Loz answered uneasily. ‘Brill.’ Something was pricking
at Loz’s mind - something the other man had said, about going away.
It was the first time he had even mentioned it and Loz wondered why
it should suddenly come up here, at two in the morning on the
rooftop whilst feeding that bastard of a lion. Something did not
fit right here, Loz’s instinct warned him.

‘
You give him the next piece, eh? When he’s finished that
one.’

Loz shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, boss.’ His eyes bored into
the back of the man’s head while he tried to figure out what his
employer was up to. Loz couldn’t get a handle on it. Why
had
Billy Crane asked
him up here tonight?

Crane spun round quickly and caught Loz looking at
him.

‘
Problem, Loz?’

The younger guy shook his head.

Nero had devoured the first piece of horseflesh. He knew there
was more to come. He rose to his feet, his belly only partially
filled, and strolled back across to the two men. He was not as
impatient now; the first steak had taken the edge off his
craving.

‘
Everything go all right at the airport this morning?’ Crane
asked conversationally.

‘
Yeah, no probs.’

‘
Good, good.’ Crane held up the palms of his hands and
inspected them; they were still covered in blood from handling the
meat. ‘So we should be fifty grand richer pretty soon, shouldn’t
we?’

Loz’s senses tingled alarm bells. ‘Yeah,’ he said, brow
furrowed. ‘Should be.’

‘
That’s good.’ Crane sniffed, then indicated the next piece of
meat in the coolbox. ‘Grab that, Loz.’

Loz took a breath, steeled himself and delved into the
box.

Behind the mesh of the cage, Nero regarded both humans
expectantly, the short, dark, vertical stripes of the inner corners
of his eyes virtually pointing at them. Loz could see the lower
canines jutting out of the lower jaw like mini, sharpened tusks,
but yellow, with off-brown bases, as thick as a grown man’s thumb.
Nero smelled all lion too: bad breath which was overpowering, a
strong mustiness emanating from him and, of course, the thick smell
of urine. It was a combination which made Loz want to
retch.