The Last Big Job (26 page)

Danny tore his jacket off, threw it to one side. He did the
same with hers and whipped it away down the hall, then pulled her
blouse out of her skirt waistband and finished unbuttoning
it.

‘
God! Fucking clothes,’ she breathed.

‘
A pain, a real pain,’ he agreed, reaching behind her,
unhooking the Marks & Spencer bra. She unfastened his shirt,
ripped it out of his pants and removed it with his assistance. Now,
both their top halves were naked. They embraced again, Danny
revelling in the sensation of her breasts being crushed against
Rik’s chest.

They lurched further down the hall, bouncing from wall to
wall, kissing, fondling, moaning, until they twisted into the
kitchen where Danny slammed him up against her new fridge. Still in
darkness, no lights.

Here they separated and Danny’s eyes bore into Rik’s. So as to
save time, she unhitched her skirt and shimmied it down her hips,
at the same time removing her damaged tights, knickers and kicking
off her shoes. She was naked in front of him.

She swallowed, moved towards him, her mouth working over his
face, across his shoulders to his chest, smooth and hairless,
muscled. She sank lower, tongue flickering over his stomach and she
thought, Jesus, a real six-pack! And then she was kneeling in front
of him, her face inches away from his groin, fingers fumbling with
his belt, unbuckling it. Then his flies. She tugged his trousers
down to his thighs, revealing white boxers with an unbelievably
huge and hard penis outlined inside them.

Almost with dread, she took hold of the boxers and peeled them
down, revealing a wonderful, glistening cock which she needed to
devour.

‘
No! Fucking hell!’ Rik screamed and pushed Danny away from
him, hitching his pants back up.

Danny fell backwards onto her arse, stunned. ‘What’s the
matter?’

‘
I can’t do this!’ he shrieked, searching frantically for his
shirt. ‘No way.’

‘
Why, why, what have I done?’

‘
It’s too weird. God! This is where he did it, didn’t he? Jack
Sands - blew his freakin’ head off in here and we’re going to . . .
no chance, babe.’

He picked up his coat and shirt and ran down the hallway and
out of the front door, slamming it shut behind him.

Danny closed her eyes.

She had forgotten, actually forgotten, about Jack Sands - for
the night, at least ... but it was quite obvious others had not.
She sat up and rubbed her face, everything having drained out of
her. The ghost of Jack Sands was alive and well and seemed to loom
out of the fridge and sneer at her. She started to sob.

Chapter Eleven

Henry Christie surveyed himself in the mirror over the
washbasin. What he saw could not be described as a pretty sight.
Both sides of his head were red, tender and sore as a consequence
of Gunk’s initial punches which had felled him. The bridge of his
nose, which had been head-butted, was not broken, or so he
believed, but the impact of the blow had blackened his left eye and
given a certain amount of swelling to his right. Blood caked and
crusted around his nostrils.

Henry stood upright and gingerly raised both arms. Blotchy
purple and black bruises dotted the right side of his ribcage, each
one a result of Gunk’s steel toe-capped shoes. Like his nose, Henry
believed his ribs had escaped breakage.

He lowered his arms and looked down at his naked body.
Carefully he wrapped his testicles up in the palm of his right hand
and massaged them very gently. They were very sore indeed. He
winced. The deep pain caused by Gunk’s knee was still lurking in
his lower abdomen. He doubted his ability to be able to father
children again. Not that he wanted to, but the necessary attributes
to do so would have been nice. It was one of those ‘man’
things.

Behind him the bath was almost full of steaming hot water,
frothing with bubbles. He bent down to switch the taps off. The act
of bending sent a shockwave of agony through him. Four hours in bed
since the hammering had only served to make him feel
worse.

Before easing his troubled body into the bath, he swallowed
another couple of aspirins, then sank slowly into the water,
thinking back to what had happened.

Henry thanked the Almighty that Thompson and Gunk Elphick had
only been blessed with a peanut for a brain between them. Had they
had something more substantial between their ears, he knew that he
would probably be floating face down in the ship canal now, brains
blown out.

He had been given a good solid beating, been crudely
interrogated and denied their allegations - so he must be innocent.
Henry knew of some cops who worked along those lines: if someone
doesn’t ‘cough’ a job under such circumstances, then how could they
possibly have done it? That was the theory. Henry was fully aware
that getting a prisoner to admit guilt was a far more subtle
process than that. Quite often, physical violence was
counter-productive. Good interview technique was far more
effective, and neither Thompson nor Elphick had it. They simply
relied on intimidation and a sound thrashing. Probably it usually
worked. But he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He had to hold
out because it was a matter of life and death for him. If he
admitted talking to the cops as Frank Jagger, he would have been
dead; if he had told them he was an undercover cop, he would have
been dead. There was no way he could have admitted
either.

After their questioning, they had allowed him to get dressed
and cleaned up in a bathroom which adjoined the office. Then,
although he wasn’t fit for anything other than a visit to a
Casualty Department, they had wanted to talk business with
him.

He had difficulty maintaining concentration, but he kept in
there, even though he was quickly working his way through a toilet
roll in an effort to stem the blood flow from his nose.

‘
I hope you understand why we had to do that, Frank,’ Gary
Thompson had said on Henry’s return from the toilet. ‘We can’t be
too careful in this game, as you well know, and we don’t have time
to arse around asking nicey, nicey questions.’

Henry muttered something from behind the bog roll.

‘
So, nothing personal? No hard feelings?’ Thompson slapped his
thighs. ‘Down to business, eh?’

They were all seated on the Chesterfields; Thompson next to
Henry on one, Gunk and the mysterious stranger on the
other.

Henry sniffed up and a blob of blood shot down his throat. He
hacked it up into the tissue and wiped his mouth. He looked round
at them.

Gary - ‘Gazzer’ - Thompson, was the one with the majority of
the peanut brain. Or at least he talked a good story, and had the
less intellectual Gunk under his thumb, although they were
obviously a team. He was a cool-looking guy, well-dressed, lots of
gold, with furtive eyes and a moustache which gave Henry the
creeps. Henry imagined that Gazzer was pretty good with
women.

Then there was Edward - ‘Gunk’ - Elphick. Short, squat,
powerful, built like a Sherman tank and probably just as
intelligent. His nickname had come from
his juvenile tearaway days when he spent much of his time
with oily hands from
stealing engine parts
from cars. He wore an array of earrings either side and was dressed
rather unoriginally in a black dinner suit and bow tie, though the
latter featured Disney characters. He had a smirk on his face as
Henry’s eyes momentarily caught his. Henry was very uncomfortable
with Gunk. Not just because of his physical power, but because he
had a violent sexual deviance streak in his character. His previous
convictions detailed two horrific assaults on young boys. Now Henry
had the very real perception that Gunk saw him as a potential
conquest; he had an unpleasant feeling that Gunk might try to
chance his arm. Henry was not a violent man, but he knew that if
there ever came a legitimate chance of beating the living shit out
of Gunk, he would do it and enjoy it.

Next along was the mystery man. Henry looked at him for an
instant, then back to Thompson.

‘
What’s the score now, Gazzer? Now that Jacky’s gone to
gangster heaven? I need to know before I do business.’

‘
It was very sad that Jacky got taken out like that. Despite
what you
might think, Frank, we had
nothing to do with it. We both miss him very much. He was a good
boss, a fair man.’ Thompson made a valiant effort with his body
language to convey grief. Henry covered his mouth with tissue and
tried to hide a smile. ‘But the sad fact is, he’s gone. Yes, gone
to gangster heaven, I would guess. But the business still has to
run. Me and Gunk have stepped into Jacky’s shoes to keep the
momentum going. A dirty business, but someone has to do it. So
that’s the score, Frank.’

‘
And who is this personality?’ Henry pointed at Mr Mystery
with a gesture of his blood soaked tissues.

‘
A friend, a business partner.’

Henry looked at him. The man’s deep-set eyes returned the
stare. Henry though he looked deadly and cold.

‘
Look, Gazzer, I’m not being funny, but I really don’t like
doing business with people I don’t know. Commonsense, really. I
could be compromised. I need to know who he is, and if I can trust
him.’

‘
Fair enough. I’ll
introduce you.
Frank Jagger - Nikolai Drozdov. Him and us are in business together
now. He’s from Europe.’

Drozdov offered his pale hand to Henry, who shook it. It was
cool and small, like a woman’s. But there was no time to talk
further. There was an urgent knock from the office door. Gunk
opened it to a man who tumbled into the room,
breathless.

‘
Trouble ... down at the door. Some heavies from Moss Side are
causing problems. We need you down there to sort it, otherwise it’s
going to get out of hand.’

Thompson nodded. ‘Right.’ He turned to Henry. ‘We’ll be in
touch.’

Now, as he lay in the bath in his hotel room a few hours
later, running these events through his mind, Henry began to
marshal his thoughts.

Firstly he needed to get a grip on Rupert Davison, that
two-faced bastard of a Detective Superintendent who had lied
bare-faced to him and got him beaten up. Secondly he had to do some
research on Nikolai Drozdov, who Henry suspected was a fully
paid-up member of the Russian Mafia, and to bone up on the Russian
Mafia itself; he had heard lots about them and their ever-spreading
influence, but had never yet met one face to face, except. . .
Henry had a very disturbing thought: maybe he had come face to face
with the Russian Mafia before, not so very long ago, and did not
realise it at the time. Maybe the guy who had done the business on
Jacky Lee had been one of them and maybe the incomprehensible words
he had uttered at Henry were Russian words. And maybe Jacky Lee had
been ousted by the Russians so that they could move in and control
his little empire, working alongside Thompson and
Elphick.

Wow, Henry thought. He settled deep into the bath, the hot
water having a soothing effect on his wounds, and tried to remember
exactly what the killer had said. Henry had thought it gibberish at
the time.

Another person suffering that morning, though not in exactly
the same way as Henry Christie, was Danny Furness.

She sat at her desk balancing her forehead on her forefinger,
swallowing in an effort to hold back the contents of her stomach
which threatened to burst forth at any moment, and wishing she was
dead. Being so would end all her suffering. As well as her stomach
being bad, her head was no better, being the cranial version of
hellfire; and she was also suffering from the acute embarrassment
of having a man’s erect penis almost in her mouth and him running
out on her because it was all too weird.

Surely that could not have happened to any other woman,
anywhere, ever?

Danny took a chance and lifted her head off her finger to look
around the office through a pair of eyes which refused to open
properly. No doubt about it, she should still be in bed, suffering
her physical and mental anguish - alone.

The phone on her desk rang. She let it. It stopped
eventually.

She had missed the daily murder briefing at eight, not having
landed until well after nine, and that had been a miracle, so she
had no idea if there had been any overnight
developments.

‘
Oh God.’ Her mouth fell open; her bottom lip sagged heavily.
She got to her feet slowly, steadying herself on her desk, and
walked, one measured, controlled step at a time, out of the office.
She ignored the lift. The very thought of it made her queasy. She
went up the stairs to the MIR, one tread at a time, pausing on each
one to regain equilibrium.

Eventually she made it to the right floor and shuffled into
the Incident Room which was very quiet. Everyone who should be, was
out investigating. Everyone but her.

She went across to the Receiver’s desk. The Detective
Constable assigned to that role raised his eyes.

‘
Anything doing?’ she enquired.

‘
This has just literally arrived by fax - results of the
dental identification on your man.’ He held up a sheet of paper.
Danny snatched it from his hand and read with glee. At last, a
major step forwards.